Majorityrights News > Category: Russian Politics

An interesting story appeared at ASPI today, regular people have now become aware of the existence of the ‘left of launch’ strategy. Which you can read about at the links included in the Cyber wrap 154 which I’ve reproduced in full below.

The utility of having people know about the ‘left of launch’ strategy is that it even further reduces the credibility of any of Donald Trump’s feigned hyperventilating about the alleged (and in fact non-existent) ‘threat’ of Iran ever attaining a nuclear weapon, much less having the ability to use such a weapon against anyone.

Armed with this information, it is possible for people to go out into the world and make the case that even if one were to entertain the idea that Iran were willing to create some improbable doomsday scenario, there is no need for anyone to send a single American aircraft, tank, or armoured patrol vehicle anywhere near Iran in order to avert such a scenario.

If Donald Trump and his supporters continue to behave like Iran is a ‘major nuclear threat’ despite the existence of the ‘left of launch’ strategy in public view, there is only one place that such a ridiculous narrative can be actually originating from, and that place is Israel. That is the case which should be made over and over again, until it becomes a kind of mantra.

Here’s ASPI’s Cyber wrap:

ASPI - The Strategist, ‘Cyber wrap 154’, 08 Mar 2017 (emphasis added):

Welcome back to your weekly fix of cyber news, analysis and research.

The New York Times reported last Saturday that, back in 2013, President Barack Obama ordered cyber sabotage operations against Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. The persistently high failure rate of the US’s kinetic antimissile weapons, despite significant investment, reportedly prompted Obama to consider a cyber supplement. The project to pre-emptively undermine missiles in their development stages, known as a ‘left of launch’ strategy, receives dedicated resources at the Pentagon and is now President Trump’s to play with. However, experts are concerned that this kind of cyber offensive approach sets a dangerous precedent for Beijing and Moscow, particularly if they believe that US cyber operations could successfully undermine their nuclear deterrence capability.

Staying stateside, the future of the NSA’s spying powers are   under scrutiny this week as elements of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) approach sunset. Section 702 of the Act forms the basis for the NSA’s monitoring of foreign nationals’ communications around the globe in the interests of national security. It was under this FISA authority that the US’s infamous “big brother” program PRISM—revealed in the Snowden disclosures of 2013—was established.

While the legislation is designed for foreign targets, there have long been concerns it could be used to surveil US citizens through their contact with foreigners. Human rights advocates such as the American Civil Liberties Union are protesting the renewal of this legislation in defence of international privacy. The issue also has the trans-Atlantic data-sharing agreement on thin ice, especially given that EU Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova has made it clear that she ‘will not hesitate’ to suspend the painstakingly crafted arrangement should the US fail to uphold its stringent privacy requirements.

That task may be even more difficult after WikiLeaks’ overnight release of a dossier, dubbed ‘Vault 7’, detailing the CIA’s cyber espionage tools and techniques. WikiLeaks released over 8,000 documents it claims were taken from a CIA computer network in the agency’s Center for Cyber Intelligence. The documents detail the agency’s expansive and sophisticated cyber espionage capability, including compromising the security common devices and apps including Apple iPhones, Google’s Android software and Samsung televisions to collect intelligence.

China’s Foreign Ministry and the Cyberspace Administration of China this week launched the country’s first International Strategy of Cooperation on Cyberspace. The Strategy outlines China’s basic principles for cyber diplomacy and its strategic goals in cyberspace. Encouragingly, the Foreign Ministry’s Coordinator for Cyberspace Affairs Long Zhao stated that ‘enhancing deterrence, pursuing absolute security and engaging in a cyber arms race…is a road to nowhere’. Unsurprisingly, the Strategy offers strong support for the concept of cyber sovereignty, stating that ‘countries should respect each other’s right to choose their own path of cyber development’, and emphasises the importance of avoiding cyberspace becoming ‘a new battlefield’. You can read a full English language version of the Strategy here.

The revelation that the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) was temporarily forced to rely on diesel generators during last month’s heat wave has prompted the government to significantly upgrade to the agency’s infrastructure. The Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Cyber Security told Parliament on Wednesday that it was recommended by ActewAGL and the NSW Department of Environment that ASD switch to back up power on 10 February as part of state-wide load shedding to protect power supplies. The new $75 million project, funded by the Defence Integrated Investment Program, is intended to bolster the intelligence agency’s resilience.

Several cyber incidents have kept the internet on its toes this week. The Amazon Simple Storage Service cloud hosting service went down last week, knocking hundreds of thousands of popular websites and apps offline. The disruptive incident, originally described by the company as ‘increased error rates’, was actually not the result of cyber criminals or hacktivists, but that of an employee’s fat fingers entering a command incorrectly—whoops! Yahoo is in the doghouse (again) with the awkward announcement in its annual report to the Security and Exchange Commission that 32 million customer accounts are thought to have been compromised through forged cookies. This isn’t to be confused with the entirely separate and very embarrassing loss of 1 billion accounts in a 2013 breach, which recently cost the company $350 million in its acquisition deal with Verizon and CEO Marissa Mayer her annual cash bonus. And if you’ve been tracking the #cloudbleed saga, catch up with some post-mortems here, here and here.

Finally we’ve got you covered for your weekly cyber research reads. A new Intel report, written by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, examines the discrepancies in cyberspace that put defenders at a disadvantage. Titled Tilting the Playing Field: How Misaligned Incentives Work Against Cybersecurity, the report reveals the gaps between attackers vs. defenders, strategy vs. implementation and executives vs. implementers, offering recommendations to overcome such obstacles. And get your fix of statistics from PwC’s annual Digital IQ assessment based on a survey of more than 2,000 executives from across the world. The research reveals that only 52% of companies consider their corporate Digital IQ to be ‘strong,’ a considerable drop from 67% last year.

TOO, “200 Years Together: Chapter 9 — And Some Mysterious Search Engine Results”, 2 Mar 2017:

200 Years Together: Chapter 9 — And Some Mysterious Search Engine Results

Kevin MacDonald on March 2, 2017 —

From the translators of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s 200 Years Together:

Today, we published the English translation of chapter nine. You can find it here: —

https://twohundredyearstogether.wordpress.com/2017/03/01/chapter-9/

There’s an important development this week. Every week, I check the blog stats to see how many people this information is reaching. I check search engine results for “two hundred years together”, without quotes as well. This is done on DuckDuckGo and StartPage (a Google proxy).

Dr. Kevin MacDonald linked to the site on The Occidental Observer about a week and a half ago. The site, understandably, saw an explosion of traffic which sustained until now. Searching for “two hundred years together” would return the link to the post he published (in top 15 results) in addition to several pages (main page about result #25, then chapters 2, 6, 7) on the blog.

Two days ago, I checked the search engine ranking for “two hundred years together”, without quotes. Nothing. Then, I tried “200 years together”, also without quotes which returned no link to the blog. Finally, I tried “two hundred years together” with quotes and that returned a link to chapter 7 near the end of the search results (about #33). In all cases, the result for the post on Dr. MacDonald’s site no longer appears in the search results.

Now, I can get a result for chapter 3 about result #15. Dr. MacDonald’s post doesn’t appear still. There’s no results returned from Google for the blog at all.

This flies in the face of everything I understand about Internet marketing. From the WordPress admin console, I see tons of links from Twitter, links to the blog from various forums around the world, and, until a couple days ago, organic inbound traffic from search engine results. People are sharing links to this blog. Normally, when more sites link to yours or your content gets shared on social media, your ranking goes up. Also, there can’t be heavy competition for the words “two hundred years together” or the result set would be much larger than ~35 results.

My only conclusion here is that the blog is being removed from search engine results and actively censored. I figured the blog would get taken down at some point, but I didn’t think it would get removed from search engine results. I’m not surprised given what chapters like #8 and this week’s, #9, are discussing.

If the blog gets removed, I’ll make another one. These chapters will be published on torrent sites when we’re done. This content isn’t going anywhere. People need to understand that what we are living through now has happened already elsewhere and we need to wake up.

Please, please, please, share this blog. Get this information out there. It is obvious to us certain people do not want people to read these translations. Help us counter the narrative by linking to it anywhere you can.

RT, a propaganda organ of “Active Measures,” is pressuring a private London club to have open doors liberalism. Cirque le Soir nightclub in Soho has a policy standard for private clubs, of not allowing groups of unaccompanied males into the club. When confronted with a group of black male athletes, a bouncer for the club apparently observed their demeanor and added what was perhaps a code-reason for discrimination - “too urban.” RT jumped all over that for being racial profiling, racial stereotyping, and therefore “racist”. 

Nevertheless, if “too urban” was indeed a code word for a black group with a dangerous profile, it would merely be a practical observation and precaution to take to discriminate against them. Young black males, especially in groups (including wealthy professional athletes) are statistically far more violent; and the club was exercising what should be its right as a free and private club to deny servitude, to protect its interests and protect is clients.

The freedom of London clubs to defend not only their businesses, but their patrons against profiles known to be violent and otherwise destructive is apparently of no concern to RT and Active Measures. This is a swift route to the destruction of our native European EGI and the naive among us who lack meaningful experience of blacks in numbers.

The kind of liberal “anti-racist” propaganda that RT is engaging-in goes back to the days of The Soviet Union - it put such pressure on The US to atone for its history of slavery that it empowered liberals to destroy untold numbers of innocent Whites, attempting by their sanctioned means (The Constitution and The Golden Rule), compelled by their politicians and (((those coercing))) their politicians to force them to try to live the impossible - “Thou Shalt Not Discriminate”, “Thou Shalt Not have senses and defend yourself”, “Thou Shalt Enter into involuntary contract” - “thou” must live pure in pure servitude, fresh White prey: un-hypocritical, ideologically living-up to the pure banner of “freedom and liberty for all” - non-discrimination: this has led basically to the destruction of America - America did not win the cold war. When you cannot discriminate against blacks, you are not free and you have big problems.

“Deep ecologists” may argue that blacks are returning American cities like Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans—the city these athletes are nominally playing for—that they are returning these cities harrowed by blacks to a “state of nature.” It is a feral state indeed: let those who advocate non-discrimination against them go and live with them.

RT’s charges of “racism”, compelling Whites and White institutions to leave themselves vulnerable to black aggression - a phenomenon that any fool would instinctively know to be on guard and discriminate against - is unconscionable. 

The Alt Right is incredibly naive as it continues to treat The Russian Federation as being in perfect alignment with White Nationalism - its great White hope even: what they are actually doing is serving as free propaganda for a very cynical Kremlin.

RT, “NFL players turned away from London nightclub for being ‘too urban”, 1 March 2017:

       

A popular London nightclub which allegedly barred a group of American football NFL stars for being “too urban” is being accused of racial profiling.

The New Orleans Saints team members had booked a table at Cirque le Soir nightclub in Soho, but said on arrival the bouncer turned them away for being “six big guys” and “too urban” – a phrase often used as a euphemism for black.

The nightclub has since denied it would turn anyone away based on ethnicity, but has a policy of not admitting all-male groups.

Mark Ingram Jr, 27, a running back, was with Sterling Moore, 27, BW Webb, 26, Vonn Bell, 22, all defensive players, and two friends when they tried to get into the club on Monday.

The players were visiting London in preparation for their game at Wembley in October against the Miami Dolphins as part of the NFL’s international series.

Mark Ingram II
✔
@MarkIngram22

Is this what 6 big “too urban” guys look like?! @CirqueLeSoir @TheVonnBell7 @SterlingMoore @OhGi_3Dawg3 @burtleyc @Flintsbadguy #AllSmiles
2:10 AM - 28 Feb 2017

Ingram tweeted: “We pull up to Cirque le Soir where we have reservations and this is what they tell us. They told us we were ‘six big guys’ that are too ‘urban’ but nobody taller than 5’11!”

Following the tweet, the hashtag #TooUrban began trending on Twitter. Many have accused the club of racial profiling.

Suzanne @girls_with_guts

@MarkIngram22 one of the #toourban “big guys” next to my 5’7” daughter…ooooh he’s so scary. @CirqueLeSoir your moms didn’t

D @barker1980

I’m confused. This is the same place that called @MarkIngram22 #TooUrban ? https://twitter.com/cirquelesoir/status/827565983720230912 …
3:54 AM - 28 Feb 2017

  84 84 Retweets
  116

Chris @burtleyc

Thanks to everyone for support! Historical socioeconomic and racial prejudices still impact society. I’m from Flint, proud to be #TooUrban
10:47 PM - 28 Feb 2017

Sly Gemstone @SlyGems

Thanks to everyone who has reached out to us! Stereotyping and discrimination are real in our world. Never let anyone define you! #TooUrban
7:23 AM - 1 Mar 2017

Gillian ‘Slick’ E. @SlickEToffee

#TooUrban So are white British celebs gonna boycott @CirqueLeSoir or do they only stand up against American racism?
12:46 PM - 1 Mar 2017

The club is a favorite with US music stars including Rihanna, Lady Gaga and Kanye West, and actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

In response to criticism, a nightclub spokesperson said: “All of the team at Cirque le Soir are really upset by the suggestion that there was anything malicious in our turning away of Mark Ingram and his friends. We proudly celebrate diversity, not only as part of our shows, but as part of who we are.

“We would not dismiss anyone as ‘too urban’ and we would not turn anyone away on the basis of their ethnicity, sexuality or any other characteristic, other than those expressed in our door policy.

“Admitting an all-male group goes against our policy and is clearly stated on Facebook and all reservation confirmation emails.”

...along with Trump, adores Putin and Le debt, er, Le Pen.

Active Measures is playing the right populist card across The US and Europe and The Alt Right is distributing their propaganda enthusiastically. 

Vincent Law, another one coming from a perspective down on Britain, while fancying an expansive bridge between Germany and Russia, registers his enthusiasm for Trump, Putin and le Pen in this regard.

            Original article, Russia Insider. Translation, Vincent Law.

AltRight, “Russia’s “Alt Right” Ecstatic About Trump”, 17 Feb 2017:

The author is director of the Liberty Institute, a Russian think tank, and a senior official in the Motherland (Rodina) party, a conservative party represented in Russian parliament.

The popularity of the new US president among Russian New Right patriots seems, at first glance, to be something of a paradoxical phenomenon. However it is in fact, a continuation of an old Russian custom. Russians have a tradition of taking foreign ideas concerning politics as their own, adapting them to Russia.

It all started back in the days of Prince Vladimir- (whose historical memory is experiencing a Renaissance in Russia.) Vladimir, for political, economic and military reasons, embraced the faith and order of the neighboring Byzantine Empire, laying the foundation for the future concept of a “Third Rome.” It was Vladimir who carried out large-scale social and political reforms, influenced by ideas taken (this time) from the East.

The next major political and social import came from the West. Peter the Great “opened a window into Europe” as the saying goes when he established the city of St. Petersburg. He immediately began importing Dutch and German culture into Russia.

Soon after, French influence began to influence Russian society. The Russian aristocratic class began to speak almost entirely in French. Even on the eve of the War of 1812, Napoleon Bonaparte enjoyed incredible popularity among the Russian officers that were arrayed against him. What is remarkable is that Napoleon was probably more popular then among Russians than Trump is now. But this did not prevent the Russian people from going out to stop Napoleon’s invasion and eventually going on to march all the way to Paris.

Moving along through history, the Decembrists in 1825 picked up many ideas from the French and American revolutions as a result of their time in the West after the defeat of Napoleon. Liberty, equality and fraternity; the republic and nationalism, populism and aristocracy. They eventually would go on to unsuccessfully lead an officer’s coup in Russia in the name of these principles.

Then of course came the events of 1917. The February Revolution was imbued with the spirit of both the French Revolution and the pathos of the English parliamentary system…even if the end result resembled neither. And the October Socialist Revolution bore the hallmark of German and American ideological strains (old Russian patriots in this case like to focus on the Jewish roots of the Bolshevik movement, but I’m putting that detail aside for now). The theory of the Bolsheviks was imported from Germany (Marx and Engels). And the pace of the public-political movement was borrowed from the United States. Trotsky admired America quite a bit, and believed that the revolution would not have been possible without America’s help.

Many Third Position philosophers in Europe considered the United States and the Soviet Union to be two sides to the same coin. They referred to both entities as “mondialist” (which is similar to the term “globalist” which is more in vogue now.)

In turn, the Russian White Army exiles of the 20s and 30s borrowed many ideas from the European Right. But unlike the Russian Bolsheviks, the Russian White Army exiles never succeeded in bringing reforms to Russia based on these Third Position principles.

Then came Gorbachev’s perestroika program and Yeltsin’s democratic reforms, where the Western model was imported wholesale to Russia- even if it was never quite fully adopted. During that period, even the Russian opposition youth movements tried to adopt Third Position ideas from the first half of the 20th century.

Therefore, the current Russian fascination with Trump and Le Pen is quite normal for Russia.  The American and French populist right-wing alternative movements serve as inspiration for Russian patriots just as previous historical movements have throughout all of Russia’s history. Only now, there is an interesting new element in the relationship. There is a mirror-effect where patriots in the West seem to have taken a great liking to President Putin as well. He seems to be especially popular among the so called “Alternative Right”.

We don’t yet know how Trumpism and Le-Penism will be adapted and adopted in Russia. But now it is clear from Trump’s victory, the potential success of Le Pen, and the rise of Eurosceptic parties all over Europe that things have finally started to go our way. All signals from the West are clear to the Russian New Right. They read: “Alternatives exist & victory is possible.”

“Everything will change, right here and right now” – Trump said in his inaugural speech. He was speaking to the American people, but his message was heard loud and clear in Russia as well. To everyone in Russia, in whose veins “flows the red blood of patriots,” a new day has come.

The Alternative Right everywhere is ablaze with excitement at Trump’s victory.

The Hill, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn resigns”, 14 Feb 2017:

National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has resigned, after reports he misled senior Trump White House officials about his conversations with Russia. President Trump has named retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg as acting national security adviser. Kellogg previously served as Flynn’s chief of staff on the National Security Council.

The embattled Flynn blamed his resignation late Monday on the “fast pace of events” that led him to “inadvertently” give Vice President Mike Pence and others “incomplete information” about his phone conversations with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Kislyak.

“I have sincerely apologized to the president and the vice president, and they have accepted my apology,” Flynn wrote in his resignation letter.

Politico, “Why Donald Trump let Michael Flynn go”, 14 Feb 2014:

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who has known Kellogg for decades, said early Tuesday that he is a “good man” who was among the earliest Trump loyalists.

But he doubted he will be a permanent replacement for Flynn.

“He won’t be the selection,” McCaffrey predicted, saying Flynn’s permanent replacement has to be “someone with the chops needed to deal with Bannon and Miller, references to two of the president’s top political advisers, Steve Bannon and Stephen Miller.

Flynn’s decision to resign came after it became clear to him that he had lost the president’s trust, officials said.

TomDispatch: “Is President Trump Headed for a War with China?” All Options Are “On The Table” - Rajan Menon, 12 Feb 2017:

Forget those “bad hombres down there” in Mexico that U.S. troops might take out. Ignore the way National Security Adviser Michael Flynn put Iran “on notice” and the new president insisted, that, when it comes to that country, “nothing is off the table.” Instead, focus for a moment on something truly scary: the possibility that Donald Trump’s Washington might slide into an actual war with the planet’s rising superpower, China. No kidding. It could really happen.

Let’s start with silver-maned, stately Rex Tillerson, Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of state. Who could deny that the former ExxonMobil CEO has a foreign minister’s bearing? Trump reportedly chose him over neocon firebrand John Bolton partly for that reason. (Among other things, Bolton was mustachioed, something the new president apparently doesn’t care for.) But an august persona can only do so much; it can’t offset a lack of professional diplomatic experience.

That became all-too-apparent during Tillerson’s January 11th confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He was asked for his view on the military infrastructure China has been creating on various islands in the South China Sea, the ownership of which other Asian countries, including Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, and Brunei claim as well . China’s actions, he replied, were “extremely worrisome,” likening them to Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, an infraction for which Russia was slapped with economic sanctions.

The then-secretary-of-state-designate — he’s since been confirmed, despite many negative votes — didn’t, however, stop there. Evidently, he wanted to communicate to the Chinese leadership in Beijing that the new administration was already irked beyond measure with them. So he added, “We’re going to have to send China’s leaders a clear signal: that, first, the island building stops and, second, your access to those islands is not going to be allowed.” Functionally, that fell little short of being an announcement of a future act of war, since not allowing “access” to those islands would clearly involve military moves. In what amounted to a there’s-a-new-sheriff-in-town warning, he then doubled down yet again, insisting, slightly incoherently (in the tradition of his new boss) that “the failure of a response has allowed them to just keep pushing the envelope on this.”

All right, so maybe a novice had a bad day. Maybe the secretary-of-state-to-be simply ad-libbed and misspoke… whatever. If so, you might have expected a later clarification from him or from someone on the Trump national security team anyway.

That didn’t happen; instead, that team stuck to its guns. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer made no effort to add nuance to, let alone walk back, Tillerson’s remarks. During his first official press briefing on January 23rd, Spicer declared that the United States “is going to make sure we defend our interests there” — in the South China Sea, that is — and that “if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yes, we are going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country.”

And what of Trump’s own views on the island controversy? Never one to pass up an opportunity for hyperbole, during the presidential campaign he swore that, on those tiny islands, China was building “a military fortress the likes of which the world has not seen.” As it happened, he wasn’t speaking about, say, the forces that Hitler massed for the ill-fated Operation Barbarossa, launched in June 1941 with the aim of crushing the Red Army and the Soviet Union, or those deployed for the June 1944 Normandy landing, which sealed Nazi Germany’s fate. When applied to what China has been up to in the South China Sea, his statement fell instantly into the not-yet-named category of “alternative facts.”

Candidate Trump also let it be known that he wouldn’t allow Beijing to get away with such cheekiness on his watch. Why had the Chinese engaged in military construction on the islands? Trump had a simple answer (as he invariably does): China “has no respect for our president and no respect for our country.” The implication was evident. Things would be different once he settled into the White House and made America great again. Then — it was easy enough to conclude — China had better watch out.

Standard campaign bombast? Well, Trump hasn’t changed his tune a bit since being elected. On December 4th, using (of course!) his Twitter account, he blasted Beijing for having built “a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea.” And it’s safe to assume that he signed off on Spicer’s combative comments as well.

In short, his administration has already drawn a red line — but in the way a petulant child might with a crayon. During and after the campaign he made much of his determination to regain the respect he claims the U.S. has lost in the world, notably from adversaries like China. The danger here is that, in dealing with that country, Trump could, as is typical, make it all about himself, all about “winning,” one of his most beloved words, and disaster might follow.

  Whose Islands?

 
  China claims disputed islands are ‘sacred territory’

A military clash between Trump-led America and a China led by President Xi Jinping? Understanding how it might happen requires a brief detour to the place where it’s most likely to occur: the South China Sea. Our first task: to understand China’s position on that body of water and the islands it contains, as well as the nature of Beijing’s military projects there. So brace yourself for some necessary detail.

As Marina Tsirbas, a former diplomat now at the Australian National University’s National Security College, explains, Beijing’s written and verbal statements on the South China Sea lend themselves to two different interpretations. The Chinese government’s position boils down to something like this: “We own everything — the waters, islands and reefs, marine resources, and energy and mineral deposits — within the Nine-Dash Line.” That demarcation line, which incidentally has had ten dashes, and sometimes eleven, originally appeared in 1947 maps of the Republic of China, the Nationalist government that would soon flee to the island of Taiwan leaving the Chinese Communists in charge of the mainland. When Mao Ze Dong and his associates established the People’s Republic, they retained that Nationalist map and the demarcation line that went with it, which just happened to enclose virtually all of the South China Sea, claiming sovereign rights.

This stance — think of it as Beijing’s hard line on the subject — raises instant questions about other countries’ navigation and overflight rights through that much-used region. In essence, do they have any and, if so, will Beijing alone be the one to define what those are? And will those definitions start to change as China becomes ever more powerful? These are hardly trivial concerns, given that about $5 trillion worth of goods pass through the South China Sea annually.

Then there’s what might be called Beijing’s softer line, based on rights accorded by the legal concepts of the territorial sea and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Under the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which took effect in 1994 and has been signed by 167 states (including China but not the United States), a country has sovereign control within 12 nautical miles of its coast as well as of land formations in that perimeter visible at high tide. But other countries have the right of “innocent passage.” The EEZ goes further. It provides a rightful claimant control over access to fishing, as well as seabed and subsoil natural resources , within “an area beyond and adjacent to the territorial sea” extending 200 nautical miles, while ensuring other states’ freedom of passage by air and sea. UNCLOS also gives a state with an EEZ control over “the establishment and use of artificial islands, installations, and structures” within that zone — an important provision at our present moment.

What makes all of this so much more complicated is that many of the islands and reefs in the South China Sea that provide the basis for defining China’s EEZ are also claimed by other countries under the terms of UNCLOS. That, of course, immediately raises questions about the legality of Beijing’s military construction projects in that watery expanse on islands, atolls, and strips of land it’s dredging into existence, as well as its claims to seabed energy resources, fishing rights, and land reclamation rights there — to say nothing about its willingness to seize some of them by force, rival claims be damned.

 
  Subi Reef, being built into an artificial island-landing strip in 2015

Moreover, figuring out which of these two positions — hard or soft — China embraces at any moment is tricky indeed. Beijing, for instance, insists that it upholds freedom of navigation and overflight rights in the Sea, but it has also said that these rights don’t apply to warships and military aircraft. In recent years its warplanes have intercepted, and at close quarters, American military aircraft flying outside Chinese territorial waters in the same region. Similarly, in 2015, Chinese aircraft and ships followed and issued warnings to an American warship off Subi Reef in the Spratly Islands, which both China and Vietnam claim in their entirety. This past December, its Navy seized, but later returned, an underwater drone the American naval ship Bowditch had been operating near the coast of the Philippines.

There were similar incidents in 2000, 2001, 2002, 2009, 2013, and 2014. In the second of these episodes, a Chinese fighter jet collided with a US Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane, which had a crew of 24 on board, less than 70 miles off Hainan island, forcing it to make an emergency landing in China and creating a tense standoff between Beijing and Washington. The Chinese detained the crew for 11 days. They disassembled the EP-3, returning it three months later in pieces.

Such muscle flexing in the South China Sea isn’t new. China has long been tough on its weaker neighbors in those waters. Back in 1974, for instance, its forces ejected South Vietnamese troops from parts of the Paracel/Xisha islands that Beijing claimed but did not yet control. China has also backed up its claim to the Spratly/Nansha islands (which Taiwan, Vietnam, and other regional countries reject) with air and naval patrols, tough talk, and more. In 1988, it forcibly occupied the Vietnamese-controlled Johnson Reef, securing control over the first of what would eventually become seven possessions in the Spratlys.

Vietnam has not been the only Southeast Asian country to receive such rough treatment. China and the Philippines both claim ownership of Panatag (Scarborough) Shoal/Huangyang Island, located 124 nautical miles off Luzon Island in the Philippines. In 2012, Beijing simply seized it, having already ejected Manila from Panganiban Reef (aka Mischief Reef), about 129 nautical miles from the Philippines’ Palawan Island, in 1995. In 2016, when an international arbitration tribunal upheld Manila’s position on Mischief Reef and Scarborough Shoal, the Chinese Foreign Ministry sniffed that “the decision is invalid and has no binding force.” Chinese president Xi Jinping added for good measure that China’s claims to the South China Sea stretched back to “ancient times.”

Then there’s China’s military construction work in the area, which includes the building of full-scale artificial islands, as well as harbors, military airfields, storage facilities, and hangars reinforced to protect military aircraft. In addition, the Chinese have installed radar systems, anti-aircraft missiles, and anti-missile defense systems on some of these islands.

These , then, are the projects that the Trump administration says it will stop. But China’s conduct in the South China Sea leaves little doubt about its determination to hold onto what it has and continue its activities. The Chinese leadership has made this clear since Donald Trump’s election, and the state-run press has struck a similarly defiant note, drawing crude red lines of its own. For example, the Global Times, a nationalist newspaper, mocked Trump’s pretensions and issued a doomsday warning: “The U.S. has no absolute power to dominate the South China Sea. Tillerson had better bone up on nuclear strategies if he wants to force a big nuclear power to withdraw from its own territories.”

Were the administration to follow its threatening talk with military action, the Global Times added ominously, “The two sides had better prepare for a military clash.” Although the Chinese leadership hasn’t been anywhere near as bombastic, top officials have made it clear that they won’t yield an inch on the South China Sea, that disputes over territories are matters for China and its neighbors to settle, and that Washington had best butt out.

[...]

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        Thtar crothed path

       
        I wath tho proud to help him, to be a part of hith life.

...and hith thupport from Hillel. ...but ..(((Thtephen Miller))) - He ith hith own man. Tho, there, I thaid it!

Yeth I did! Tho what? Are you going to make thomething of it?

What ith the problem? He wath a conthervative just like I wath…

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A couple of weeks ago (((Steve Sailer))) hypothesized in the Taki’s Magazine article, “Choose Your Words Wisely” (4 Jan 2017), that right-wing populist nationalism was taking off in western countries NOT because of, say, any nefarious orchestration by Russian Jews, but rather perhaps because western elites, in their white, self destructive, integrationist madness all share the same lingua franca - English - and are therefore more easily seduced into eachother’s madness.

One reason it’s happening over much of the planet is because the various establishment elites have become so homogenous in their ideology, unconsciously egging each other on into more extremism. For example, after the normally cautious Angela Merkel made her historic refugee blunder in 2015, Hillary Clinton repeatedly endorsed Merkel’s foolhardiness, even as the German leader herself came to regret her imprudence.

But the corporate press has been no more aware of its own drift toward anti-border fanaticism than a fish notices it’s wet. Thus, the American establishment’s increasingly comic conspiracy theory blaming its political failings on a nefarious Kremlin plot. After all, what else could explain why voters did not respond appropriately to the media’s furious instructions to elect Hillary besides Muscovite mind-control rays?

A sensible exception has been Fareed Zakaria, who pointed out last month:

The one common factor present everywhere, however, is immigration. In fact, one statistical analysis of EU countries found that more immigrants invariably means more populists. One way to test this theory is to note that countries without large-scale immigration, such as Japan, have not seen the same rise of right-wing populism.

That raises the question of why Japan’s ruling class didn’t feel the necessity of going down the same mass-immigration path as did so many other advanced countries: Why is Japan such an exception?

“The coming global monoculture of English could be highly productive…until it’s not.”

One reason is that Japan isn’t a white country, so it’s immune to white guilt. Sure, the Japanese abused other East Asians 1931– 45, but that was in the name of organizing against white colonialism. So hassling Japan isn’t a high priority like it is for Germany.

Another reason is that Japan is linguistically quite isolated from the growing worldwide dominance of the English language.

If elites unthinkingly think alike, one reason could be because they increasingly share a language: English. Across much of the world, English is becoming the lingua franca. ...

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