The People’s Republic of China’s government is in a tizzy because some international airlines, on their flight schedules, still don’t refer to “Taiwan” as a part of the PRC. And, like José Jiménez, they don’t want to talk about it.
China has rebuffed a US request for talks about China’s demand for international airlines to start referring to Taiwan as part of China[.]
There’s nothing to discuss, and we shouldn’t be trying.
The Republic of China is a sovereign and independent nation.
Full stop.
The People’s Republic of China did this to our aircraft in Africa, too. And, yes, it’s the PRC. No one else, save us and possibly Russia, have this capability. Russia isn’t in the East China Sea.
Lasers have targeted pilots of American military aircraft operating over the western Pacific Ocean more than 20 times in recent months….
…
Officials said all of the incidents occurred in and around the East China Sea, typically where the Chinese military or other Chinese civilians operate. The laser signals directed at American aircraft appeared to be coming from fishing boats operating in the area and from shore….
As the People’s Republic of China responds to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, motivated in part by the PRC’s cyber-theft of American technology and proprietary information and the PRC’s extortion of the same and its demand for backdoors into foreign business’ (including especially American) core software as a condition of doing business in the PRC, buckle up, indeed, as the article at the link above suggests.
The PRC will do far more than this, though, as it attempts to coerce the US in the pursuit of its Warring States strategy.
President Donald Trump often decries Europe’s NATO nations for their lack of seriousness about their defense, and he zealously insists that they honor their commitment to spend 2% of their national GDP on defense. It’s arguable that Trump could ease off (a little bit) and acknowledge the progress he’s made in getting Europe’s NATO members to boost their spending.
But only a little bit because those nations don’t appear to be stepping up in any serious way, as these numbers from a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed demonstrate.
Overall inflation-adjusted military spending by every NATO member excluding America grew 1.8% in 2015, 3.1% in 2016, and 4.8% last year.
Norway is asking us to double the number of troops we have stationed there and to move them closer to its border with Russia. It’s a pittance—700 Marines vs the 330 we have there now—but we need to work with Norway very seriously to figure out how to do this.
Norway said the invitation was about NATO training and improving winter fighting capability.
“Allies get better at training together,” Defense Minister Frank Bakke-Jensen told reporters.
Yewbetcha. And joint training is especially important in the face of demonstrated Russian aggression and its stationing of nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad.
The members of the Group of Seven, just met in Canada last week, were invited to form a tariff-free trade zone by President Donald Trump.
no tariffs, no barriers…and no subsidies.
International trade doesn’t get much freer than that.
Will anyone in the G-7 have the courage to take Trump up on his offer—or to call his bluff, if that’s what they think it is?
Anyone? Beuller?
German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas thinks President Donald Trump is “consciously accepting” that things like our withdrawal from Iran’s nuclear weapons deal is hurting our allies in Europe and the Middle East. Deutsche Welle cited him as saying that
We cannot look away. He knows that what he is doing is of direct detriment to Europe.
No, what is acting to the direct detriment of Europe (and to our Middle East allies and friends) is Europe’s insistence on preserving a nuclear weapons deal that allows Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. The extent to which European nations are consciously accepting of this destructive deal is the extent to which we have to act unilaterally.
Germany has one, and it centers on immigrants assimilating into German culture rather than holding themselves apart while taking advantage of the German benefits that drew the immigrants in the first place. It’s articulated by Joachim Gauck, President of Germany from 2012-2017. He told Bild
“I find it unacceptable that people who have been living in Germany for decades cannot hold a conversation in German, do not attend parent-teacher conferences or keep their children from going to classes or sports.”
Great Britain’s Labour Party is about to offer legislation that looks a great deal like it [emphasis added].
It shall be a negotiating objective of Her Majesty’s Government to ensure the United Kingdom has full access to the internal market of the European Union, underpinned by shared institutions and regulations, with no new impediments to trade and common rights, standards and protections as a minimum.
There’s very little difference between this and Remain. Labour is suggesting Britain’s abject surrender in the Brexit negotiations with the Moghuls of Brussels.
“Senior European officials” are sad because the deal might be in jeopardy. They even wrote a letter to President Donald Trump, worrying that
their efforts to save the Iranian nuclear accord by maintaining major trade and investment with Tehran are buckling in the face of planned US sanctions.
My heart bleeds. These worthies shouldn’t be trying to trade with a terrorist-supporting nation bent on getting nuclear weapons. Especially since Iran will use those weapons to fulfill its long-standing commitment to destroy Israel, and it will sell such weapons to its terrorist clients for them to use…on Europe as well as on us.