US sails massive, F-35-laden warship in disputed South China Sea

In the latest show of military muscle in the South China Sea, the U.S. has apparently sailed its USS Wasp amphibious assault ship near a strategic reef claimed by Beijing and Manila that lies just 230 km (140 miles) from the Philippine coast.

Filipino fishermen near the site known as the Scarborough Shoal initially spotted what appeared to be the massive U.S. vessel on Tuesday, according to ABS-CBN News. It said planes were seen landing and taking off from the ship, some 5 km (3 miles) away from the fishermen’s boat. A video clip shown by the news network appeared to corroborate their account.

Contacted by The Japan Times, a U.S. military spokeswoman would not confirm or deny the Wasp’s presence near the collection of outcroppings that barely jut out above water at high tide, citing “force protection and security.” However, the spokeswoman did confirm that the Wasp “has been training with Philippine Navy ships in Subic Bay and in international waters of the South China Sea … for several days.”

Scarborough Shoal, which is also claimed by Taiwan, is regarded as a potential powder keg in the strategic waterway. It was seized by Beijing in 2012 after an extended standoff with Manila. China later effectively blockaded the lagoon, which is rich in fish stocks, and routinely dispatches scores of fishing vessels and government-backed “maritime militia” ships to the area to continue its de facto blockade.

The Wasp was taking part in the annual Balikatan U.S.-Philippine military training exercise “that focuses on maritime security and...

Massive ESPN Financial, Subscriber Losses Drag Down Disney’s First-Quarter Sales

A year that saw arguably the five greatest championship game performances of all time should have helped right the ship for ESPN, and at the very least stopped the trend of massive subscriber losses which have plagued the Bristol-based sports giant for the last few years.

Well, that did not happen, and ESPN appears to be a sinking ship, dragging parent company Disney down with it.

Bloomberg reports that ESPN badly hurt Disney’s first quarter sales, falling well short of projections.

According to The Wrap, “Cable networks, particularly ESPN, have been an albatross on Disney’s stock price even as the company’s two other major prongs, movies and theme parks, continue to perform well. As cheaper TV alternatives began to proliferate, ESPN hemorrhaged subscribers during the course of 2016 and is now at less than 88 million, compared with a peak of 100.1 million in 2011. At an estimated $7 per subscriber, that dip has been a substantial hit to Disney, especially considering media networks made up 49 percent of Disney’s profits during fiscal 2016.”

In other words, everyone else at Disney met or exceeded their projected goals, except for ESPN who lost more than twelve million subscribers in just under six years.

But, the problem for ESPN goes deeper than just losing subscribers and money. The Wrap explains, “At the same time, rights fees for the live sports ESPN specializes in broadcasting continue to go up, as there’s plenty of competition for one of the few pieces of programmed television that still delivers monster ratings. ESPN will pay $7.3 billion for content this year – the biggest price tag among all media companies. Operating income at Disney’s cable networks division — primarily ESPN — plunged 11 percent compared with the same time the previous year. Disney attributed that drop entirely to lower ESPN revenue.”

Less cash on hand means less cash to purchase rights to sporting events, which can prove particularly harmful to an entity that considers itself a sports network. Now, Disney and ESPN have laid much of the blame for their subscriber loss at the feet of ...

Industrial-Scale Election Fraud – Did It Happen?

I’ve read pieces from congresspeople, CEOs of tech companies, from hacks on television (like Karl Rove) that there was no election fraud, let’s move on.

Wait just a minute.

I led the team that built the fraud detection engine for the largest online auction house on the planet. They were on the front page of USA Today because some mother never received that gift for her child after sending in her last dollar. The auction house publicly said their multi-billion-dollar brand was in jeopardy.

I led industria-scale fraud investigations in the biggest of the big leagues, and proved fraud.

Cyberauction fraud is really complicated. A perp runs a scam where they sell a computer, for instance, get paid and ship the product. They do this for weeks, building trust. Then they sell 20 computers, keep the dough, ship nothing, and off they go.

What can the auction house do?

They kick the perp off the site. What does the perp do? He changes his name, credit card, mailing address, every bit of information about himself and rejoins as a new, clean seller. And another bunch of customers gets screwed!

The Secret Service, the FBI, about every fraud detection company tried to solve a problem where the perp changed every identifier thus left no trail. No pattern recognition. No matching on any field. Neural net = zero. Nothing.

Well, my team built a cyber-fraud technology and solved the problem. We broke insurance fraud rings where the insurance firm’s 30-person, police trained, 25-year experienced fraud team said there was no fraud. The funniest example is where we flagged a doctor, the recipient of a decade’s worth of six figure checks from this insurer. The fraud team said the guy was clean. Nothing to see here!

The CEO, sitting at the head of the board room table looked at us. We smiled. We then showed the address to which they had sent several million dollars was a federal prison.

We were hired by most of the top 10 property and casualty insurance firms to find fraud they could not find any other way, fraud that their expert teams said did not exist. It did, at industrial scale.

We quickly learned fraud is icky, unsightly, uncomfortable and those with a vested interest in not finding it, because they couldn’t, denied it. Happens all the time.

My team and I know industrial-level fraud and I can tell you with 100% certainty that the 2020 presidential election had massive, organized, discoverable fraud in most of the swing states.

How do I know this in the face of virtually every media company denying significant fraud?

Let’s do a fraud look-see, actually several, together.

Industrial fraud in insurance, Medicaid, or credit cards never starts with a flashing red light with letters, in English and Spanish, saying fraud, look here! There must be a starting point and the starting point is often only one or two cases that lead to tens of thousands of incidents across hundreds of participants.

Let’s see if there are any starting points here:

Jesse, a truck driver has a semi-tractor rig delivering dogfood to pet shops across America. This particular brand is the expensive stuff yuppies buy for their Schnoodle dogs bred by crossing Schnauzers and Poodles and costing about $1,000. Only the best for Pierre.

Jesse, our truck driver, sees something sketchy. He has been driving this route for months, yet something this day is different. Jesse looks into the truck and sees the labels do not quite look the same. He reports it to his boss, then to the trucking service, and nobody does anything.

Jesse, a dog lover, goes to PETA and they do a video. Jesse signs an affidavit under penalty of perjury, gets on TV for a couple of days saying this dog food may not be the real thing. It might be fake, from China. He just wants someone, anyone to look into it.

Dog lovers across America would stop buying that dog food until the company had an open, public investigation. The board of directors would probably fire the CEO if an investigation showed she was not all over this possible claim. Sales would collapse. No major pet chain would carry the dog food until everything was investigated.

Ya think maybe there would be a full-scale investigation? Do you think people would stand up and say: “…there is no evidence! There is no reason to investigate!”

A third-tier media company obtains the laptop from the cocaine addicted, meth-addled son of...

This is believed to be the last picture taken of Titanic before her sinking

Morgan Robertson Writes About the Titanic... 14 Years Early

A hundred years before James Cameron turned douchebaggery into an art form at the Oscars, American author Morgan Robertson wrote a shitty book called Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan, about the sinking of an "unsinkable" ocean liner. When you see the cover, you figure you're pretty clearly looking at a fictionalized version of the Titanic story.

No surprise there; it's a story that's been told over and over (there were 13 Titanic movies before Cameron's, including one by the Nazis) but Robertson's book was first.

Where it Gets Weird:

He was so eager to be first, apparently, that he didn't bother to wait for the Titanic to actually sink before writing about it. The Wreck of the Titan was published in 1898, 14 years before RMS Titanic was even finished being [cheaply] built.

The similarities between Robertson's work and the Titanic disaster are so astounding that one has to imagine if White Star Line built Titanic to Robertson's specs as a dare. The Titan was described as "the largest craft afloat and the greatest of the works of men," "equal to that of a first class hotel," and, of course, "unsinkable".

Both ships were British-owned steel vessels, both around 800 feet long and sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic, in April, "around midnight." Sound like enough to keep you up at night? Maybe that's why Robertson republished the book in 1912 just in case enough people didn't know that he wrote it.

And you thought this guy was an ass.

Where it Gets Even Weirder:

While the novel does bear some curious coincidences with the Titanic disaster, there are quite a few things that Robertson got flat wrong. For one, the Titanic did not crash into an iceberg "400 miles from Newfoundland" at 25 knots. It crashed into an iceberg 400 miles from Newfoundland at 22.5 knots.

Wait, what the fuck? That's one hell of a lucky guess!

What 41.1 million square miles looks like.

But maybe the weirdest thing about Titan were points that had nothing to do with the story, but check out after numerous inquires and expeditions to the Titanic wreck site.

For one, both the Titan and the Titanic had too few lifeboats to accommodate every passenger on board; the Titan carrying "as few as the law allowed." While Robertson decided to be generous and include four lifeboats more on his ship than Titanic, it's an odd point to bring up when you consider that lifeboats had nothing to do with the fucking story. When Titan hit the iceberg (starboard bow, naturally), the ship sank immediately, making the point made about lifeboats inconsequential. Why the fuck mention this?!

It'd be like HAL 9000 addressing the danger posed by O-rings at low temperature decades before the Challenger disaster.

Oliver North: China Will Reverse-Engineer Weapons Left in Afghanistan

U.S. weapons and military equipment abandoned by the Biden administration in Afghanistan will be reverse-engineered by China and Russia and then used against American interests, retired Lt. Col. Oliver North said on Wednesday’s edition of SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Daily with host Alex Marlow.

The Biden administration leftist behind “some of the most sophisticated weapons and equipment we’ve ever made for the military,” North stated. He warned, “It’s going to be reverse-engineered in China. It will be reverse-engineered in Russia. It will be used against us in other campaigns.”

North predicted that the Taliban, ISIS, and Haqqani Network would collectively become “the best armed criminal enterprise in the history of mankind” due to the Pentagon’s abandonment of military equipment, vehicles, and weaponry in Afghanistan.


He said, “What’s happening to a lot of [abandoned equipment] is that they’re being dragged across the border in Conex boxes and on trucks. A HET is a heavy equipment transporter. When we offload a tank — an M1 tank, 70 tons — off a ship, and set it down on the pier, it’s loaded onto a HET a transported to where it’s going to fight, because you don’t want to wear out the treads and don’t want to burn up more fuel than you need to need to.”

Taliban fighters atop a Humvee vewhicle take part in a rally in Kabul on August 31, 2021 as they celebrate after the US pulled all its troops out of the country to end a brutal 20-year war — one that started and ended with the hardline Islamist in power. (Hoshang Hashimi/AFP via Getty Images)

Heavy equipment transporters have been used to transport two M1 tanks from Afghanistan into Pakistan, North claimed. He remarked, “They’re going to be heading to the port where they will be loaded aboard a ship and taken to communist China for exploitation. That’s what’s happening to anywhere between five and ten of every piece of equipment. The Taliban, by the way, are getting rich on...

10 Offbeat Stories You Might Have Missed This Week (8/3/19)

If you’ve had a busy week, you might have overlooked some of the stranger stories that hit the headlines. Luckily for you, this list is here to help you catch up. If you missed last week’s offbeat list, you can check it out here.This time, we have for you a clown brawl, a zombie chicken, and an antique sex toy. There’s a blast from the past as John Dillinger’s body gets dug up, and we look toward the future with human-animal hybrids.


10 No Clowning Around

A British cruise ship had to deal with a mass brawl that was allegedly sparked by one of the guests dressing up as a clown.The Britannia, operated by P&O Cruises, was sailing to Southampton after a week spent admiring the Nordic fjords. One evening included a black-tie event which, supposedly, took place after an afternoon-long party on deck which involved copious amounts of alcohol.During the formal event, one passenger was said to have showed up dressed as a clown. This greatly annoyed another person who really hated costumes and had specifically booked a cruise with no dressing up.[1] This resulted in a confrontation that soon turned violent.The matter was turned over to the Hampshire Police once the cruise disembarked. A spokeswoman said that three men and three women were assaulted and ended up with cuts and bruises. A man and a woman in their forties, both from Essex, were arrested.The story later took a turn when both the police and the cruise line denied any reports that a clown had been onboard the ship, let alone involved in an altercation. The more straightforward cause of the fight was people drinking too much. It is unclear at the moment how the clown made it into the tale.


9 A Close Encounter

Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech
An asteroid branded a “city killer” came within a “cosmic whisker” of Earth last week, and scientists had no idea that it was on the way.Just so everyone can relax, the rock passed close to our planet by space standards. At its nearest approach, it was still 72,000 kilometers (45,000 mi) away.[2] Still, that is about five times closer to us than the Moon.The asteroid, dubbed 2019 OK, is roughly 60 to 130 meters (200–420 ft) across and was racing through space at a speed of 87,000 kilometers per hour (54,000 mph). If it made contact, it would have hit Earth with the force of 30 Hiroshima bombs. Astronomers didn’t know about it because it came our way from the direction of the Sun, and they could only see the rock a few days prior to it passing us.


8 Public Enemy Back From The Grave

Photo credit: Federal Bureau of Investigation
The body of notorious Depression-era gangster John Dillinger is set to be exhumed next month from Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.[3]Dillinger, one of America’s most famous outlaws, was gunned down by FBI agents in 1934 in front of the Biograph Theater in Chicago. He and his gang were responsible for at least ten murders and numerous violent robberies.Now, 85 years later, a request to dig up his remains has been approved by the Indiana State Department of Health. The request came courtesy of his nephew, Michael Thompson. He claims to have evidence that suggests the body in the cemetery might not belong to John Dillinger. In fact, he believes the FBI gunned down the wrong man that fateful night in front of the Biograph Theater. An FBI spokesperson dismissed the claim, saying that there is plentiful proof of Dillinger’s identity, including three sets of fingerprints.The exhumation will be filmed for a documentary and, afterward, Dillinger’s body will be interred in the same place as before. Thompson has until September 16 to go through with it.


7 Putting On A Prayer

Photo credit: BBC News
People who will be visiting Rochester, Kent, during August will surely stop to see the 900-year-old Rochester Cathedral, where they will be able to enjoy a few holes of miniature golf.For the entire month, the main central part of the church (nave) will be converted into a nine-hole course of crazy golf where each hole includes a famous British bridge alongside a panel with information about said bridge. This overpass obsession is due to the fact that the course was developed and paid for by the Rochester Bridge Trust.[4]A spokesman said that they are hoping the initiative will bring more young people and families into the beautiful cathedral, and while they are there, they might also learn a few things about the structures of different bridges. Reverend Rachel Phillips with the Rochester Cathedral believes that the minigolf will inspire people to build or mend metaphorical bridges in their lives.Not everyone is thrilled with this plan. Other church officials have decried the move, saying that it is “born of desperation” or that it tricks people into a “search for God.”


6 Is The Zombie Chicken Real?

A viral video people refer to as “zombie chicken” is freaking everybody out. Seemingly taking place in a restaurant, it shows a piece of raw meat start moving right off the plate and off the table while a woman is screaming in the background.Of course, given the day and age we’re living in, one question is on everyone’s minds: Is the video real? While we can’t say with certainty, it appears possible, although with a few caveats.The video comes from Asia and first went viral back in June on Chinese social media site Weibo. By the time it became a hit in the West, people referred to the video as “zombie chicken.” Although the meat could possibly be real, it is definitely not chicken. A few Asian media outlets identified it as skinned frog, which would make more sense.We have seen in the past footage of extremely fresh frog meat which started twitching when it was salted because the still-active neurons reacted to the sodium ion in the salt.[5] If this new video is real, then that is likely what is happening here, although to an extreme degree. However, at least one expert has dismissed the mystery meat as being frog, so that remains a pretty big “if.”



5 A Dildo For Ireland

Photo credit: The Irish Times
The Irish online community banded together and crowdfunded the purchase of an antique dildo to keep it in the country.Back in 2017, sex shop owner Shawna Scott from Dublin found out about the auction of a Victorian-era sex toy which she considered to be an important part of Ireland’s sexual history. Described as a “ladies’ companion,” the dildo was carved out of ivory and was kept in a...

Do the Chinese Own Joe Biden?

Americans will need to come to grips with a mounting, deadly serious crisis. The Democrat nominee for the presidency appears saturated with corruption, and worse -- yes, there’s a worse here -- he’s compromised himself to foreign powers, one of which -- the People’s Republic of China (PRC) -- is rightly regarded as an enemy of the U.S. Sly Vlad Putin and whoever runs the Ukraine owns Joe Biden, too. Russia and the Ukraine having the goods on Biden is bad enough, but China is the U.S.’s principal rival for global dominance. The blackmailing of a President Joe Biden is a chilling prospect. Biden as president imperils the nation in ways never experienced before.

What does this mean to the Sino-American rivalry? It means that with Biden blackmailed and in the White House, the Chinese may never fire a shot to gain hegemony over the U.S. -- the domination that tyrant Xi Jingping dreams about.

Did you know that in the last week the Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group was deployed to the South China Sea? Let’s examine this development and then tie it in to the growing Biden uber-scandal.

Per USNI News, October 15, 2020:

The carrier strike group] is now operating in the South China Sea for the third time as part of its current underway period. Meanwhile, a destroyer made a transit of the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday.

USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76) and its strike group passed through the Strait of Malacca and entered the South China Sea on Monday, according to ship spotters. Accompanying the carrier was guided-missile cruiser USS Antietam (CG-54) and destroyer USS Halsey (DDG-97).

Why has the U.S. sent a strike group back for a third time recently? More from the USNI News report:

USS Barry (DDG-52) passed through the strait on Wednesday, a first for a U.S. warship since Aug. 31. “The ship’s transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific,” read the statement. [italics added]

While the U.S. under Donald Trump’s leadership has routinely contested the PRC’s fraudulent claim to the South China Sea as its territorial waters, the strike group’s deployment involves much more this time. It targets recent PRC threats to Taiwan. President Trump intends selling advanced weapon systems to Taiwan as a counter to mounting Chinese threats. If war comes with the PRC, sooner rather than later, Taiwan is the flashpoint.

From the Washington Post, October 12, 2020:

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- With tensions soaring in the Taiwan Strait, China responded to Taiwanese overtures for dialogue by releasing new footage showing a large-scale military exercise simulating an invasion and a purported confession from a Taiwanese businessman held captive in China on spying charges.

The double-barreled release by the influential China Central Television late Saturday and Sunday signaled a hard line from Beijing on the same weekend that Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen offered conciliatory remarks expressing a desire to hold talks as fears grow that China's increasing threats toward Taiwan could spill over into military action.

And, finally, this from the Post report:

Are Mitch McConnell and His Wife Financially Tied to Communist China?

Following the money has always been the surest way to finding where a politician’s true loyalties lie.

Peter Schweizer, a senior contributor for Breitbart and author of such exposés as Clinton Cash and Profiles in Corruption, said on Fox News’ The Next Revolution that McConnell’s “position on China has softened over the years,” a change Schweizer attributed to the growing relationship between the Chinese government and the Chao family’s company.

“Really, it goes to the fact that Mitch McConnell and Elaine Chao, his wife, are financially tied to the Chinese government,” Schweizer explained. “And it comes through the shipbuilding company that Elaine Chao’s family owns. That relationship was forged in December of 1993 when James Chao, Elaine Chao’s father, Elaine Chao, and the new son-in-law, Senator Mitch McConnell, visited Beijing, China, at the invitation of the China state shipbuilding corporation.”

“This was a coup to Beijing because Tiananmen square had happened just four years earlier. Very few high officials went there,” the author continued. “The result of that meeting and the deals that followed is that today the Chinese government finances the construction of the ships for the shipbuilding company, they build the ships, they provide the crews for the ship, and they provide the cargo for the ship.”

He went on to explain that Beijing could immediately end its dealings with the shipbuilding corporation if it wanted to, which would be bad for McConnell. The Chinese government, according to Schweizer, only does business with this corporation because of McConnell’s role as a powerful U.S. Senator.

“So, the Chinese government could pull the plug tomorrow on this business. And the reason they’re doing business with them, let’s make it clear, is because Mitch McConnell is a very powerful figure in Washington, D.C. And the problem is … that his position on China has softened over the years the closer that this commercial relationship has become, and he’s a direct beneficiary of what this business does.”

Per Schweizer, this is the “strategy” communist China uses around the world. “They seek out political elites and give them commercial deals,” he said, adding that the McConnells are “wedded to the Chinese. They don’t want to anger the Chinese because they could destroy their families financially.”

McConnell will remain Majority Leader until noon on January 20, with the inauguration of Joe Biden. Kamala Harris’ ascendance to the vice presidency will give Democrats (due to the vice president’s role as president of the Senate with tie-breaking ability) the voting majority they need to assume control of the chamber.

As The New American has previously reported, McConnell is apparently pleased with the impeachment of President Trump, seeing it as a way to purge the party of him.

Nevertheless, in the battle for the hearts of Republican voters, Donald Trump remains the unquestioned victor. Polling shows that a solid majority of the base still supports the president’s recent behavior and would like him to be the 2024 presidential candidate.

It should be noted that McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, was until recently President Trump’s secretary of transportation. She resigned from the post in response to the Capitol breach on January 6.

“Yesterday our country experienced a traumatic and entirely avoidable event as supporters of the President stormed the Capitol following a rally he addressed,” wrote Chao in a letter to colleagues in the Department of Transportation. “As I’m sure is the case with many of you, it has deeply troubled me in a way that I simply cannot set aside.”

McConnell has shown himself to be, if anything, an astute and cunning politician who knows how to stay at the center of Washington politics and use the influence of his office for his own financial benefit, constantly winning over the...

A Ship Of Fools, A Ship Of Lies...

Scores Of 'Dark Vessels' Belonging To China's Maritime Militias Are Operating In Contested Waters

A new Chinese law allows for vessels to turn off their transponders in some of the world's most densely trafficked and tense waterways.

A large number of China's "little blue men," the irregular maritime militia forces that receive support and training from the Chinese government, have gone dark on traditional maritime tracking systems thanks to a new law. The inability to track these ships is worrisome given the role many Chinese fishing and commercial vessels play in Beijing’s plans to assert itself in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, some of the most hotly contested areas of the Pacific.

A new report underscores the safety and intelligence gaps caused by a cybersecurity and data privacy law passed by China last year which caused a large number of Chinese vessels operating in or near the country’s territorial waters to disappear from global tracking systems. The new data detailing the scope of China’s fleet was published by commercial satellite firm Unseen Labs, which specializes in tracking and identifying radiofrequency (RF) transmissions from space.

In a February 18 press release, the company writes that “most ships are not visible from traditional surveillance systems once they get close to Chinese shores” and that “more than 60% of ships in the area have disappeared” from the automatic identification system, or AIS, the global standard for tracking and identifying ships at sea.

UNSEEN LABS


A graphic showing vessels detected by radiofrequency emissions, white, and vessels broadcasting AIS data, red.


AIS data includes a vessel's identity and type, its position, course, speed, navigational status, and other safety and positioning-related information. AIS systems were made mandatory for most ships by the International Maritime Organization in 2004, but included provisions that nations “may exempt certain ships from carrying an AIS.”

Ships that are required to transmit AIS include cargo ships weighing 300 gross tons or more engaged on international voyages, cargo ships weighing 500 gross tons not engaged on international voyages, and all passenger ships. Individual nations also have their own AIS laws that pertain to their waters; in the United States, all commercial self-propelled fishing vessels of 65 feet or more in length must broadcast an AIS signal at all times. Most military vessels are not required to transmit AIS signals and do not regularly do so under low-threat conditions, although the U.S. Navy mandated that ships use the system while transiting congested waters after a pair of damaging collisions in 2017. Currently, most AIS systems are radiofrequency based, meaning they only work ship-to-ship or near coastlines. Multiple nations have been launching satellites since the early 2000s to expand the reach of AIS services, which help offer coverage in areas of the open sea far from shore.

USCG


A U.S. Coast Guard specialist monitors AIS signals in New York Harbor.

To calculate the lack of AIS signals in Chinese waters, Unseen Labs used satellites to detect the RF emissions from ships operating in Chinese waters, and found during one eight-day period that the vast majority of ships operating in the East China Sea were not broadcasting an AIS signal. “As a result, most ships are not visible from traditional surveillance systems once they get close to Chinese shores. In this new context, the AIS system doesn’t provide an accurate picture of...

Navy SEALs spend more time on diversity training than warfighting, SEAL vets say

Multiple former U.S. Navy SEALs confirmed Donald Trump Jr.’s claim last week that members of the elite force are spending more time on diversity training than they are shooting under Commander-in-Chief Joe Biden’s presidency.

“I have friends on SEAL teams that told me they spend more time now in diversity training than they do shooting,” Trump Jr. said at a Florida State House campaign event on Aug. 19.

Trump Jr. was attacked over the comments, prompting Navy SEAL Robert O’Neill — who is known for killing Al Qaeda terrorist leader Osama bin Laden — to corroborate Trump Jr.’s claims.

“He’s telling the truth. I’ve had this discussion with @DonaldJTrumpJr and so have other SEALs. Retention is an issue and so is recruitment,” O’Neill tweeted. “This is more than a political talking point. It’s happening and it’s not good.”

Retired Navy SEAL and Wisconsin congressional candidate Derrick Van Orden also confirmed the veracity of Trump Jr.’s comments.

“The amount of time that the military and special operations [are] spending on diversity, equity, and inclusion training is superseding a lot of the actual combat training,” Van Orden told Breitbart News.

“The military is spending an inordinate amount of time on the subjects that really don’t pertain to warfighting,” he continued, noting that sailors are severely lacking in basic skills – an issue that already led to the destruction of USS Bonhomme Richard. The warship was destroyed in an arson fire, but inadequate training delayed the fire response and contributed to the complete loss of the ship.

“If God forbid, we ever go to war with China, that’s exactly the ship we need because you embark Marines and helicopters on there. And that burnt to the keel because the sailors did not put out a cardboard fire and their chain of command couldn’t figure out who should...

How Joe Biden and the I.R.S are Performing Criminal Acts

To dismantle our borders and destroy our country.

Discussions of the border problem often touch on the criminal element that violates our unenforced border laws beginning with drug dealers, sex traffickers, and migrant smugglers. But the crime problem is vastly understated in these references which give the impression that it is largely confined to the countries they have left, and has no impact on the country they have invaded. In July 2018, the Government Accountability Office issued a report containing “Criminal Alien Statistics,”[2] which serves to correct this false impression. Among its conclusions, the report states that one in five federal prisoners in the United States is a criminal alien. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The G.A.O. report covered the period between 2011 and 2016. During that time frame, approximately 2 million foreigners crossed the border into the United States illegally – which is just about the number of unvetted foreigners whom border officials predict will cross the border illegally this year alone. In that same time frame there were more than 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, federal and state, and local jails. Criminals are not usually arrested the first time they commit a crime, and are often released with minimal time served when they are. So while there were 730,000 criminal aliens in U.S. prisons, they accounted for 4.9 million arrests and 7.5 million offenses – which would translate into a 10 times greater number of victims than offenders.

The offenses of these criminals, according to the report, included more than 1 million drug crimes (number of victims unknown); 500,000 assaults; 133,800 sex offenses (number of actual victims who may have been reluctant to report the crimes also unknown); 24,200 kidnappings; 33,300 “homicide-related events:” and “1,500 terrorism-related crimes.”

How many lives were damaged or destroyed by these aliens who entered the country illegally and should never have even been here in the first place, will never be known, and yet the lawless Biden administration which will not enforce existing immigration laws is planning to continue the outrage and pile up the victims at an even greater rate.

And worse. On July 14, 2021, Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson revealed the Biden Administration had suborned the U.S. military to ship tens of thousands of illegals into cities across the country at taxpayer expense. Laughlin Air Force Base in Texas was used as the platform from which to secretly board illegals and fly them, under dark of night, to locations across the U.S. Many other illegals were being sent to occupy the American interior, also at taxpayer expense, but by bus rather than by jet. In the words of Center for Immigration Studies fellow Todd Bensman, “a conveyor belt of commercial and charter buses … are carrying tens of thousands, sight unseen, from Texas, Arizona, and California borderlands northward, and they are dropping their Haitian, Venezuelan, Cuban, and Central American family units in Florida and New Jersey, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, and to large cities in Texas such as Dallas and Houston.”

The fact that the Biden administration chose the middle of the night to ship illegals secretly is a clear indication that the White House was quite aware it was conducting an illegal operation. Its goal, as Tucker Carlson claimed was “changing the electoral map” of the United States and enacting “demographic transformation in our country, without our consent, and in violation of our laws.” Former Trump White House advisor Stephen Miller explained on the same show: “[W]hat is happening now is unprecedented…. This is not about an administration that is unable to protect the border. This is about an administration that in a very purposeful, planned, deliberate, painstaking fashion has turned our Border Patrol and I.C.E. [Immigration & Customs Enforcement] agencies into resettlement agencies…. This is a planned resettlement. The largest of its kind, I would suggest, perhaps in the history of the world in terms of the number of illegal border crossers being resettled into the interior of our country in violation of plain law.”

In a similar vein, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis reported in early November 2021 that, over the course of the preceding summer, dozens of flights had transported groups of illegals from America’s southern border to Jacksonville, Florida in the middle of the night. “Over 70 air charter flights [on] jetliner airliners coming from the southwest border have landed at Jacksonville International Airport,” said Larry Keefe, DeSantis’s public safety spokesman. “On average, there’s 36 passengers on each of these flights,” added Keefe. “And that has been going on over the course of the summer through September…. Who is facilitating this travel? How are they getting here? Who are the support people? Who are the sponsors?”

To answer Keefe’s questions, the support people and sponsors of the aforementioned flights were, in many cases, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that have long enjoyed tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. This status permits donors to give money to NGOs while claiming their donations as tax deductions. In many cases, the cost of the midnight flights was paid in full by faith-based and open-border NGOs that had contracted with, and were being paid by, the federal government.

Using tax-exempt foundations to defraud taxpayers into subsidizing an illegal invasion of the United States was only possible because of the collusion of the White House and the I.R.S. in supporting this subversion of the American immigration system. And this was only the big picture lawlessness. The smaller details were also full of improprieties. As...

US seeks to seize Iranian oil destined for Venezuela

The U.S. prosecutors allege that these payments made between Caracas and Tehran will help fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who Washington has designated as a terrorist organization.

“[These payments] support the IRGC’s full range of nefarious activities, including the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, support for terrorism, and a variety of human rights abuses, at home and abroad”, U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Zia Faruqui claims in the filing.

The prosecutors claims that Iranian businessman, Mahmoud Madanipour, who is allegedly behind these shipments, is affiliated with the IRGC and has been using his firms based in the United Arab Emirates to organize the sale of Iranian crude while evading the unilateral American sanctions, according to the newspaper.

Madanipour purportedly falsified the oil’s origin in papers and used mid-sea, ship-to-ship transfers to fool authorities and has allegedly been working on expanding his operations beyond Venezuela, finding buyers in China and Malaysia too.

The prosecutors claim to have obtained the businessman’s communications in which he discussed ways of transferring the money without triggering the US sanctions, with potential buyers suggesting an array of...

REVEALED: US maritime surveillance plane was over Black Sea minutes before Russian flagship Moskva was ‘hit by Ukrainian missiles’

The US Navy deployed one of its Boeing Poseidon P-8 maritime surveillance aircraft on the Black Sea coast over Romania in the hours before the Ukrainian attack on the Moskva

• A P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft was patrolling the coast before the attack
• The high-tech jet can spot ships on radar at ranges of more than 100 miles
• Ukraine sunk Moskva after firing two Neptune anti-ship missiles on April 13

The US Navy used its new marine surveillance aircraft to provide accurate targeting data to Ukrainian forces to sink the Russian Black Sea flag ship Moskva on April 13.

Ukraine claimed it fired two Neptun missiles at the Russian warship which was patrolling south of Odesa.

Russia initially claimed the vessel, which had more than 500 crew on board had blown up after a fire onboard.

Later, the Kremlin was forced to admit the vessel - named in honour of the Russian capital - had been taken out by hostile action.

The Moskva sank shortly after this image was taken following the missile strike on the cruiser

According to The Times, a US marine surveillance P-8 Poseidon aircraft, was tracking Moskva in the hours before it was attacked before supplying its location to the Ukrainian military.

The Boeing-made aircraft is based upon the Boeing 737-800 jet - which is widely used by airlines such as Ryanair.

However, instead of passengers, the Poseidon is packed with state-of-the-art surveillance equipment which can track surface vessels and submarines at ranges of more than 100 miles.

According to The Times, the P-8 took off from Italy and took up station on the Romanian Black Sea coast where it attempted to locate the position of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, a range of NATO surveillance platforms and drones have been monitoring Russian movements from the Polish coast, along the Ukrainian border and down to...

Russia Deploys Anti-Ship Missiles Near Japan On Disputed Kuril Islands

Russia has just seriously escalated the ongoing historic dispute with Japan over the Kuril islands, which Tokyo calls the Northern Territories. The status of ownership of the islands, which Russia de facto currently controls and has small bases on, is still unresolved since the end of WWII as a treaty regarding their status is still being negotiated.

On Thursday the Russian Defense Ministry announced the military stationed has stationed its Bastion coastal missile defense system on a remote part of the island chain near Japan, identified as the island of Matua. These are considered "shore-based anti-ship missile systems" - seen as also potentially threatening to Japan's Western allies, given for example US warships have recently traversed nearby waters.

This marks the third Bastian defense system deployed to the islands, amid a major push to beef up Russia's military infrastructure there.

The Bastion has a reported range of up to 450 kilometers, and while deemed "defensive" in nature, there's little doubt Tokyo will take it as an unnecessary and threatening posture regarding the islands' ownership.

Russia has defended the missile deployments so near Japan, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying in fresh statements, "Russia is free to place on its territory those objects that it considers (necessary), and in those areas of our country in which it considers appropriate. This is our sovereign right, this is the right of any state, it is unlikely that it can be challenged by anyone." Peskov added: "And we retain the political will to continue a comprehensive dialogue with our Japanese partners in order to find ways to resolve this fundamental problem."

Russia (at that time as the Soviet Union) has exercise de facto control over the Kurils since it seized them in the final days of World War II. The United States recognizes Japan's sovereignty over the islands, however.

Russia's near-future plans for continuing to build-up defense on the islands were described in The Moscow Times as follows:

The Pacific Fleet has erected a special "autonomous military town" on the uninhabited volcanic island to provide operational maintenance for the Bastion, which has a range of up to 450 kilometers.

According to Interfax, the Russian military has previously announced plans to build an airfield for light military transport aircraft and a base point for Russian Navy ships on Matua.

Japan's Foreign Ministry has in the recent past frequently protested Russia's military build-up just to its north stressing in prior statements: "We are constantly gathering information about...

This Is How The Titanic REALLY Sunk...

This is believed to be the last picture taken of Titanic before her sinking

The Titanic Compared With a Modern Cruise Ship

The Titanic leaves port in 1912

An iceberg photographed in 1912 bearing an unmistakable mark of black and red paint. It is believed that this is the iceberg that sake the Titanic.

Titanic survivors boarding the Carpathia in 1912

Please Don't Insult The Titanic

The last commercial sailing ship, Pamir, to round Cape Horn in 1949.

China Closer to Dominating Southeast Asia

While the world is preoccupied with Ukraine, China continues to make aggressive moves in the South China Sea, almost the entirety of which China claims to be part of its territory. One of China's most controversial moves in the area has been to build artificial islands in the Spratly archipelago and then proceed, despite promises to the contrary, to militarize them. 

• "China has fully militarized at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment, and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby... that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region." — US Admiral John C. Aquilino, Associated Press, March 21, 2022.
• "Relevant construction activity that China is undertaking does not target or impact any country and there is no intention to militarize." — Communist Chinese President Xi Jinping, in 2015, The Times, March 21, 2022.
• "[T]his presents a security risk to all countries in southeast Asia... where China has now built itself the capacity to control the skies and control the sea lanes through that region very effectively... It reflects the overall growth of the Chinese military... control of the South China Sea would be a major step for the PRC in prosecuting a military campaign against Taiwan. It certainly makes it much harder for the United States for example to get its military forces closer to Taiwan... it really becomes a mechanism to control all of southeast Asia, this is a region of ten countries, 650 million people... if you are the military dominant power in the South China Sea you dominate south east Asia. That at least was the strategic thinking of the Japanese in the Second World War and I think it is the strategic thinking of China right now." — Peter Jennings, Executive Director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, interview with ABC Radio Australia, March 22, 2022.
• The drill coincided with China's announcement of its annual military budget for 2022, according to which China will be increasing its defense spending by 7.1% to $230 billion, up from a 6.8% increase the year before.... The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute has found that China consistently under-reports its actual defense budget.
• China, however, is not transparent about what its defense budget includes -- and does not include.
• "Beijing conducts dozens of operations in its neighbors' EEZs every year which, if civilian in nature, are illegal or, if military, are exactly what China claims other countries are not allowed to do in its own EEZ." — Greg Poling, Center for Strategic and International Studies, rfa.org, March 1, 2022.

"China has fully militarized at least three of several islands it built in the disputed South China Sea, arming them with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, laser and jamming equipment, and fighter jets in an increasingly aggressive move that threatens all nations operating nearby.... They have advanced all their capabilities and that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region."

The South China Sea covers roughly 3.5 million square kilometers, and is estimated to have deposits under the seabed of around 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 11 billion barrels of oil, in addition to (fast declining) fishing stocks that are estimated to generate $100 billion annually. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague firmly rejected China's claims of sovereignty over the South China Sea.

China, however, has never accepted the court's authority, and continues to pursue sovereignty over the sea, parts or all of which are claimed by other countries in the area, including Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

"The ruling is illegal and null and void. China does not accept or recognize it," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said as recently as January 2022.

"China has historical rights in the South China Sea. China's sovereignty and related rights and interests in the South China Sea have been established in a long period of history and are consistent with international law."

Wang's comments were in response to a US State Department report, "Limits in the Seas", released in January, which presented the US view that China's claim is inconsistent with international law and has no legal basis.

One of China's most controversial moves in the area has been to...

Muslim Sacralized Rape and Feminized Sweden

On a visit to Stockholm several years ago, a Swedish professor

The Oseberg ship, a well-preserved Viking ship discovered in a large burial mound
at the Oseberg farm near Tønsberg in Vestfold county, (Photo: norskevaapen.no) 

blandly told me the old Vikings were not as warlike as we think.  He told me this flaming lie while we were gazing at an enormous burial mound of some Viking chieftain long ago, when Scandinavian Vikings raided and terrorized Europe's coastal settlements from Scotland to the Mediterranean, reaching even to the Duchy of Muscovy.  The name "Russia" (Roos, or "red") dates back to that time, when red-haired Viking warriors rowed their raiding ships up the Moskva River, planning to kill, rape, burn houses, take slaves, and steal whatever took their fancy – unless they were met by equal force.  In which case they engaged in perfectly peaceful slave trading.

My Swedish professor knew all that perfectly well, of course, but he still felt obliged to tell me the PC lie of the day.

Sweden's coat of arms shows two fierce, roaring lions.  But a few years ago, Swedish feminists successfully campaigned to castrate the rampant lions (on a local version of the royal coat of arms), because their penises were too obviously ready for business.

Swedish politicians obligingly removed the offending members.  They have done much the same thing to themselves.

And thereby hangs a tale of feminized Sweden and the Muslim rape epidemic.

My visit to Sweden came to mind recently when I read that a parliamentary party leader in Stockholm just proposed that Sweden's Jews (who have lived there for centuries) should either renounce their religion or leave Sweden.  After the predictable public uproar, he clarified his comments by saying everybody should take on a specifically Swedish identity and leave his or her old one behind.

Bjorn Soder was desperately trying to dodge telling the truth.  The problem isn't peaceful groups of Swedish citizens practicing their faith.  The problem is violent religious groups whose name starts with an "M."  But just as with Obama, Mr. Soder could not allow himself to say the M-word.

And the ruling coalition is now trying to abolish all religious schools – not because they...