Monday, March 21, 2022
U.S. Admiral: Beijing Armed South China Sea Islands in ‘Largest Military Buildup Since WWII’
The three artificial islands were built on Mischief Reef, Subi Reef, and Fiery Cross Reef, territories belonging to the Spratly Islands, an archipelago legally under the territory of the Philippines.
China’s presence on the islands is illegal regardless of the nature of its construction there. China claims nearly the entirety of the South China Sea, including territory belonging to the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Brunei, as well as waters off the coast of Indonesia. In 2016, the Philippines won a lawsuit against China at the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague in which the court ruled that China had no legal right to be present in the disputed territories, including the three reefs Aquilino discussed this weekend.
Chinese officials called the ruling a “farce” and ignored it; the government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has repeatedly refused to seek enforcement of the ruling.
The Chinese government seized the three reefs – as well as several others in another chain, the Paracel Islands, disputed by the Philippines and Vietnam – and built artificial islands that Beijing claims are necessary for weather research and surveillance. Chinese dictator Xi Jinping asserted in 2015 that China would not “pursue militarization” in the Spratly Islands.
Extensive evidence since the completion of the artificial islands, including statements from the Chinese government, has suggested that Xi did not adhere to his promise.
According to the Associated Press, Aquilino described the three artificial islands as equipped with completed “missile arsenals, aircraft hangars, radar systems and other military facilities.”
“The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of the PRC [China] beyond their continental shores,” the outlet quoted the admiral as saying. “They can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems.”
The facilities, he warned, “threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace.”
“I think over the past 20 years we’ve witnessed the largest military buildup since World War II by the PRC,” Aquilino said, noting that China appeared to have “advanced all their capabilities and that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region.”
Multiple American presidential administrations have warned since at least 2015 that the Chinese Communist Party was seeking to build illegal military facilities in the South China Sea. The Chinese government has enthusiastically denied any plans to militarize the region for years. Xi Jinping himself denied such a plan in 2015 while visiting the White House.
“Relevant construction activities that China are undertaking in the Nansha [Spratly] Islands do not target or impact any country, and China does not intend to pursue militarization,” Xi said.
Shortly before Xi’s visit in September of that year, the People’s Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, more specifically claimed that the construction in the region was necessary for...
The calliope is crashing to the ground
Madman drummers bummers
Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps
His way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder
Feeling kinda older, I tripped the merry-go-round
With this very unpleasing, sneezing and wheezing
The calliope crashed to the ground
The calliope crashed to the ground
But she was
Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce
Another runner in the night
AOC Challenger Tina Forte’s New Ad Has AOC and her Squad Pals Shaking in Their Boots
According to her website, Forte is a small business owner who supports the police and condemns politicians like New York Congresswoman AOC and former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio who attack law enforcement.
A major part of Forte’s campaign is her focus on increasing funding for law enforcement and implementing better oversight to fire bad cops and reward good cops.
On top of that, she supports measures to lower healthcare costs and improve healthcare accessibility for all individuals. Her campaign is also focused on fully funding Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), while also pushing for measures that strengthen a border wall.
School choice is also on Forte’s agenda, as she wants to promote charter schools and vouchers as a way to foster more competition in the education sector.
In correspondence with BLP, Forte stated, “AOC is a communist sympathizer. She’s the darling of the Democratic Socialists of America – a Marxist organization that glorified Cuba’s Castro regime and Venezuela’s Maduro regime.”
Forte added:
AOC and her allies have killed New Yorkers with their bail reform and soft-on-crime policies, imprisoned us in our homes with lockdowns, ruined small businesses with shutdowns, violated our rights with mandates, and tortured children with masks for political science, not medical science. Enough is enough.In the last few weeks, Forte has been on a tear on social media.
New Yorkers have suffered because these liberals acted like dictators drunk on power. They must be stopped and it starts with firing AOC.
On March 13, 2022, Forte tweeted, “Help me get these signs all over New York’s 14th Congressional District.
Donate today at http://TinaForteForCongress.com so we can cover the Bronx and Queens!
I’d hate for @AOC to miss out on seeing these! #MABA”
On March 14, she tweeted,
“New York was built by freedom-loving people who fled oppressive regimes.
@AOC is a communist sympathizer.
NY deserves someone who will fight for us, not embrace failed Marxist ideas.
I’ll stand up for you and never stop fighting for freedom.
Join me at http://TinaForteForCongress.com”
Forte is the challenger that is needed to make AOC sweat. In the current political environment we live in, there needs to be strong candidates who stand firmly against...
7 hospitalized after fentanyl illegally imported across open Mexican border spreads through air vents at Ohio detention center
Four juvenile inmates and three wardens at an Ohio detention center were hospitalized late Sunday after fentanyl spread through air vents, according to officials.
The health alarm at Northwest Ohio Juvenile Detention Center in Stryker was sparked after some of the young inmates started collapsing, the Williams County Sheriff’s Office told WTOL.
After a search, response teams found fentanyl had been released in the air ventilation system, Deputy Jeff Lehman told the station, saying that an investigation was still looking into how it got there.The remaining Juveniles were moved to an adult prison where they will stay until the matter is resolved.
Response teams found fentanyl had been released in the air ventilation system but are still unsure how it got there.Corrections Center of Northwest
The four juveniles and three staff members were all taken to a local hospital in stable condition, the deputy told WTVG.
The other juveniles were transferred to the adult detention facility, where they will remain separated from adult inmates while the health scare is fully investigated, the officials said.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is typically 50 times more potent than heroin and is the most common drug in overdose death, and inhaling the substance can have fatal...
The four juveniles and three staff members were all taken to a local hospital in stable condition, the deputy told WTVG.
The other juveniles were transferred to the adult detention facility, where they will remain separated from adult inmates while the health scare is fully investigated, the officials said.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is typically 50 times more potent than heroin and is the most common drug in overdose death, and inhaling the substance can have fatal...
New Hampshire House Passes Bill Allowing Pharmacists to Dispense Ivermectin Without a Prescription
New Hampshire may become the first state to allow the antiparasitic drug ivermectin to be obtained without a prescription. A Republican-sponsored ivermectin bill (HB 1022) passed in the N.H. State House Wednesday on a vote of 183-159 and has been sent to the State Senate for review.
“Ivermectin is available over the counter in 79 countries,” State Representative Jim Kofalt, R-Hillsborough noted during a legislative hearing in January. “And it has a good safety profile.”
Republicans argue that granting easy access to ivermectin will allow individuals to make medical choices that are prohibited by the medical establishment.
“We still have patients who don’t know how to find the doctors who will write prescriptions for ivermectin,” said Rep. Leah Cushman, who is also a nurse. “It’s safer than having to go to the farm store.”
On Monday, the Republican-led committee voted on several other bills related to the pandemic, including a bill barring the state from enforcing any federal vaccine mandate, which passed on partisan lines.
The committee also rejected a Democrat bid to undo a law passed last year that enshrined medical freedom regarding vaccine mandates.
N.H. lawmakers unanimously rejected a bill to add the COVID vaccine to the list required to attend public schools.
The Portsmouth Herald made its disapproval of Ivermectin clear in its report on the bill’s passage, describing promoters of the potentially life-saving drug as “anti-vaccine activists,” and claiming that there is “no evidence to support” that it can treat the coronavirus.
“During the pandemic, COVID-19 vaccine skeptics and anti-vaccine activists have latched onto ivermectin, though it has not been approved by the FDA as a treatment for COVID-19, nor is there evidence to support that it can treat the virus,” wrote Herald reporter Josh Rogers in the paper’s website Seacoastline.com.
In truth, there have been numerous studies that show evidence of large reductions of mortality in COVID patients treated with ivermectin.
The paper linked to another Herald report titled: ‘Misinformation can be deadly’: Doctors say Ivermectin does not work to treat COVID-19.
That article quotes several doctors who don’t recommend Ivermectin because it can have harmful side effects if taken in large doses.
Dr. Neil Meehan, chief physician executive and an emergency room doctor at Exeter Hospital, testified during the Jan. hearing that “poison control lines are saying that almost 100% of their toxicity calls right now are about Ivermectin.”
Also, the docs argued that randomized trials show that it doesn’t work to treat COVID. However, at least some of these studies appear to have been designed to fail.
In Oxford’s Principle trial on Ivermectin, for instance, researchers treated late stage COVID patients with Ivermectin, but the drug works best as a preventative, and as an early treatment to COVID, doctors like...
Read the Letter Biden’s SCOTUS Pick Wrote Calling a Journalist ‘Irredeemably Evil’
While clerking for a federal judge, Supreme Court nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson denounced a Boston Herald columnist as "irredeemably evil" for criticizing unrestricted immigration.
Jackson wrote a letter to the editor of the Herald in response to a piece from columnist Don Feder that noted that the population of white people in America could decrease steeply as a result of open borders immigration policy. The text of both 1997 writings were obtained by the Free Beacon through a news archive.
"To my mind, he's also like the liberal's purported view of American history—irredeemably evil," Jackson wrote of Feder, whose column also attacked black civic leaders such as Louis Farrakhan. The judge disclosed the letter in a questionnaire for the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Law clerks seldom share political opinions in a public forum during their terms of service. Clerkships run one or two years in the federal courts and are highly coveted by law students. Clerks are expected to reflect their judge's neutrality in public and avoid overt political participation or expression to protect public perception of the courts as nonpolitical entities. Today, clerks often go dark on social media—or delete online accounts altogether—for the extent of their clerkships.
"The Code of Judicial Conduct that prohibits federal judges from engaging in any activity that would undermine their independence or impartiality likewise binds their law clerks, so it is troubling that Jackson would write such a letter while serving as a clerk," said Carrie Severino, the president of the Judicial Crisis Network. "It shows a lack of awareness on her part regarding the role of the judiciary."
The Herald letter is a mixed blessing for Republicans as they prepare for Jackson's confirmation hearings. Probing the judge's departure from normal law clerk practices is a legitimate avenue for lawmakers to assess her impartiality. But the Herald exchange broaches deep racial divides that Republican lawmakers might be wary of approaching, particularly since Democrats would like nothing more than to paint Judiciary Committee Republicans as racially obtuse throughout the proceedings.
Feder's column argued that race remains salient in America because of "race hustlers intent on exploitation" and Democratic coalition politics. He wrote the column to defend himself from allegations of racism arising from a prior piece, in which he expressed concern that an open border immigration policy will diminish the population of white people in America.
"I'd sleep a bit easier if Louis Farrakhan wasn't the most admired man in the black community," Feder wrote. "I wish minority voters didn't feel compelled to elect a gonif (the late Harold Washington), a total incompetent (David Dinkins), or a coke-head (Marion Barry) to high public office because he's a brother."
Jackson specifically takes issue in her letter with Feder for "denouncing black voters for selecting incompetent, incorrigible, or inebriated leaders."
"For someone who claims not to consider certain groups morally or intellectually inferior to his own," Jackson writes, "Don Feder spends much of his column spewing out disagreeable facts about the high-crime rate in the black community and denouncing black voters for selecting incompetent, incorrigible, or inebriated leaders," Jackson wrote.
"By his own definition, Feder is a racist," she added before calling him "irredeemably evil."
Efforts to reach Feder were unsuccessful. He left the Herald staff in June 2002 after almost two decades with the paper.
Though the fact of Jackson's intervention is striking, asking questions about it could be risky for the GOP.
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) who chairs the Judiciary Committee, is already signaling he will hold Republican feet to the fire on tone. He accused Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) of disrespecting the nominee after Hawley aired concerns about Jackson's record on child pornography cases.
"I'm troubled by it because it's so outrageous," Durbin said in...
What Happened When Jackson Went Easy on This Sex Offender
In text messages, Neil Stewart talked explicitly about his interest in sex involving minors while setting up what he thought was a meeting at the National Zoo with a man and his 9-year-old daughter, according to a prosecutor’s memo.
“What a bday gift that would be,” Stewart said, referring to the meeting happening on his 31st birthday in October 2015, if the 9-year-old girl “would like to play.”
In February 2017, U.S. District Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson sentenced Stewart to 57 months in prison, or just under five years, after his conviction for possessing and distributing child pornography.
That punishment, far less than the 97 to 121 months prescribed by federal sentencing guidelines, is likely to come up Monday during Jackson’s Senate confirmation hearing on her appointment to the Supreme Court.
In another text, Stewart “provided advice” on how to begin convincing a child to have sexual intercourse, which then could be captured on video.
“The trick,” he wrote, “is starting with really small toys and gradually moving up until something is the same size. And vibration.”
Prosecutors quoted obscene and graphic language in Stewart’s texts for Jackson’s consideration in sentencing that can’t be repeated in a family publication.
In her presentence mitigation report on the case, Jackson wrote that “the conviction alone is devastating to Mr. Stewart,” later adding that his “risk of recidivism is exceedingly low.”
But on Jan. 5, 2020, the St. Mary’s County Sheriff’s Office in Maryland arrested Stewart, then 35, on four counts of possessing a controlled dangerous substance other than marijuana, as well as drug paraphernalia.
Stewart’s case is one of seven sex offender cases highlighted by Senate Judiciary Committee member Josh Hawley, R-Mo., in the days leading up to the confirmation hearing for Jackson, 51, President Joe Biden’s nominee to the Supreme Court.
Stewart referred explicitly and crudely to sexual activity in his text exchanges about child porn and meeting “willing” children in late 2015. In one text, he said he liked children ages “5-11,” according to the court document from federal prosecutors.
Anticipating meeting the 9-year-old at the National Zoo on his birthday, he wrote: “That’s so hot, god I hope this is real.”
It wasn’t real.
Stewart didn’t know he actually was communicating with an undercover D.C. police detective.
The detective delayed the meeting past Stewart’s birthday. During that time, Stewart unknowingly relayed to the detective that he had large amounts of child porn on his computer, asserting he had “many flash drives” and “can bring it all” to the meeting.
The FBI was able to track Stewart’s email addresses and gained a search warrant, with which investigators found more than 600 images and videos of child pornography on various...
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