The Chinese navy reportedly has commissioned the second of its Type 052D Luyang III class destroyers earlier this month and deployed the ship to its fleet in the South China Sea.
The destroyer, dubbed Yangsha, is likely to operate from the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) base at Yalong Bay on Hainan Island, reports Jane's Defense Weekly.
The Type 052D features a universal vertical launch weapon system capable of firing anti-air, anti-surface, anti-submarine, and land attack missiles – a system not found on the preceding Type 052C.
Earlier this month, the seventh Type 052D emerged from the building shed at a shipyard in Shanghai and joined the sixth member of class which is currently fitting out, Jane’s reported. Builders have also made significant progress on the hulls of the eighth and ninth ships, circulating photographs show.
Type 054A Jiangkai II class frigates Yangzhou and Handan – the 19th and 20th ships of the class – have been handed over to the PLAN and are believed to have been commissioned, or will be shortly, Jane’s reports. Four more are under construction at two shipyards.
On July 17, the latest Type 056 Jiangdao class corvette was launched at a shipyard in Huangpu. This is the 27th of the class and the eighth to be equipped with variable depth and towed array sonars.
Reports suggest that two days later, the 22nd of class, Suqian, also an ASW variant, was commissioned. Earlier in the month, the sixth Type 056 to be built at the Lushun Liaonan shipyard was launched, Jane’s reports.
His back to us, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier is seen running towards a building that bears a striking resemblance to the Japanese-built Presidential Office in Taipei. Following a collage of tanks and artillery firing rounds of ammunition, the scene switches back to infantry, which is seen approaching and eventually entering what is, presumably, the same building.
According to reports in Chinese media, those scenes, featured in a three-minute video clip aired on state-run CCTV on July 5, come from Series C of this year’s live-fire Stride 2015 Zhurihe (跨越-2015·朱日和C) military exercises, which commenced at the Zhurihe Training Base in Inner Mongolia last month.
Unnamed military experts cited in the reports inform us that the five-story structure, which is ostensibly computer generated, is of about the same height as the Presidential Office in Taipei, which has led to speculation that the object of this years Zhurihe’s exercise is to develop the skills necessary to resolve the “Taiwan issue” by force. The PLA Daily reported on July 21 that the exercises aimed to practice “winning a battle to gain control of major urban stronghold.” Citing PLA brigade head Ding Chao (丁超), the PLA Daily reported that the C exercise simulated urban combat sites copied from real city environments.
Although the reports have understandably sparked some concern in Taiwan, the release of the footage should be taken in its proper context. Above all, given the sensitivity of the matter, and since it was aired on the CCTV 4, it is almost certain that the decision to air the segment, and to do so now, required the approval of senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Although not everything that appears on CCTV or Xinhua is necessarily controlled and approved by CCP officials, something as controversial as a simulated assault on the seat of government in Taipei certainly falls in the category of material that does necessitate a green light from above.
One of Oregon’s top earthquake experts predicts the “really big one” will wipe out the entire Northwest. In fact, the area’s FEMA director said everything west of I-5 “will be toast”.
In The New Yorker article “The Really Big One”, Northwest FEMA Director Kenneth Murphy predicts 13,000 people will die in what’s referred to as the “Cascadia Earthquake and Tsunami”. Another 2,500 people are expected to be hurt in the devastating quake.
The article quotes an Oregon State University scientist who said the odds of the “really big one” are 1 in 10, especially since the area is 72 years overdue.
“You’d be pretty hard-pressed to find a hazard of this magnitude that could essentially cut off lifelines and supply chains and structures for 2 weeks,” Andrew Phelps, director of the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, explained.
According to Phelps, once the “really big one” hits, Portlanders should expect up to 6 minutes of shaking. Then come the landslides, followed by a 50-foot high tsunami. In The New Yorker’s article, Seaside’s city planner said people there will only have 10-30 minutes to get out.
“Along the coast, it’s going to be a bad day for the state of Oregon, that’s for sure,” Phelps said. “But again, you can’t do everything to prevent hazards, but we can try to prevent those hazards from becoming disasters.”
Phelps said he recommends having an emergency preparedness kit ready with 2 weeks worth of supplies.
The New Yorker’s article also cites an Oregon safety policy group that estimates it could take up to 3 months after the quake to restore electricity. It could take another 6 months to fix major highways in the region and a year for sewer services to get back up to speed.
ISLAMIC STATE (Isis) are plotting to use toy drones to bomb major events like football matches and music festivals in Britain, it emerged today.
Terrorists want to use the unmanned machines - available for as little as £100 on the high street - to drop explosives on large crowds at popular sporting and cultural gatherings.
Defence chiefs fear they could launch a multi-drone attack carrying several bombs, even using airborne cameras to film the bloody carnage below for twisted propaganda videos.
Senior MI5 figures believed that Isis has already tested how much plastic explosive the flying machines can carry, getting as far as experimenting with detonation devices.
A counter-terrorism source said: "Islamist plotters have been trying to launch a drone-borne bomb attack for some time, as these machines are getting more hi-tech every year.
"They want the spectacular devastation of such a raid, which would cause murder and maiming in a crowd, while filming it for a sick video.
"Isis is obsessed with re-creating the horror of 9/11 and believes this may be possible by launching a multi-drone attack on large numbers of people in a synchronised attack."
Toy drones, which are popular with amateur photographers, are available from mainstream retailers like Amazon and Maplin and cost as little as £100.
Each agile machine could carry enough explosive to kill or maim a person if detonated nearby, and the effects of a fleet of drones dropping bombs on a crowded area would be bloody and devastating.
It is thought that evil Islamist fanatics could be looking to target crowds at open-air music festivals and Premier League football grounds for maximum effect.
Colonel Richard Kemp, who has advised the Government on terrorism, told the Mirror: "There is a genuine threat from Islamists wishing to deliver high explosives by drone to crowded areas. The effects could be devastating."
Alternatively, it is thought the terrorists may attempt to build a copycat drone of their own to avoid having to buy one and potentially raise the suspicions of police and security services.
More worryingly still they could attempt to buy commercial drones like ones used by the military. These machines would be able to carry enough explosive and shrapnel to kill scores of people in a single attack.
Once society has set its course for total control, there is no bounds it will not cross in order to achieve it.
Obviously, governments have been willing to violate rights and unleash technology to spy upon the entire population.
But did you know they were also willing to dig through your trash and messy waste to uncover offenses, impose penalties and control social behavior?
This is exactly what’s going on in Seattle, where the city is now using trash collectors to snoop in trash cans to catch residents and businesses who are in non-compliance with new requirements to compost materials that break down. Wow! Talk about sinking to new lows.
Watchdog.org issued this shocking report that stinks of tyranny:
Seattle is on the cutting edge of nanny state-ism with a new citywide ban on throwing any compostable material into the trash, no matter how gross, smelly or disgusting it might be. The city government is serious about this — so serious that they have deputized the trashmen as a sort of secret police who are being ordered to rat on residents’ trash habits to the nannies at Seattle Public Utilities.
Of course, fines will follow for Seattle residents after an “education period” where violators are issued written warnings for actions as simply as tossing an apple core.
Moreover, trash collectors are being trained to open up and peer into not just trash cans, but individual trash bags in order to spot banned items that were required to head for the compost, then report residents and commercial offenders to Seattle utility authorities.
According to training documents obtained by PLF, garbage collectors are being told to enforce the policy with ‘zero tolerance’ and are being taught to remove bags to inspect a garbage can, peer into translucent bags and open torn or untied bags.“In short, this program calls for massive and persistent snooping on the people of Seattle,” said Hodges. “This is not just objectionable as a matter of policy, it is a flagrant assault on people’s constitutional rights.”
Of course, the composting and recycling program itself is basically a good idea in effort to reduce landfills and treat wastes that break down in ways that benefit the soil and environment; however, forcing everyone to comply with the program through not only fines, but a secret police doing very messy work is well, just a stinky business.
“While it’s laudable to encourage recycling and composting, the city is going about it in a way that trashes the privacy rights of each and every person in Seattle,” said Brian Hodges, managing attorney for PLF’s Pacific Northwest Center, based in suburban Seattle.
Lawsuits are underway in attempt to block this draconian and over-the-top nanny state behavior.
But things won’t stop there either.
Police have worked with scientific developments to test wastewater for illegal drug use, and trace it back to the specific communities and even homes from which they are flushed — all without a warrant. Natural News reported:
In a naked attempt to shred the Constitution’s privacy and due process provisions, drug warriors are pursuing a new avenue of prosecution: Testing your sewage waste to see if you’ve been naughty or nice when it comes to using a drug Uncle Sam has deemed illegal.“The war on drugs could get a boost with a new method that analyzes sewage to track levels of illicit drug use in local communities in real time. The new study, a first-of-its-kind in the U.S., was published in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology and could help law enforcement identify new drug hot spots and monitor whether anti-drug measures are working.”
Measures like mandatory blood testing, alcohol breathalyzers, and DNA screening have been employed or suggested as well… and that’s just what they’ve come up with so far.
Again, total control knows no bounds.
Efforts to defund Planned Parenthood steamrolled Wednesday as Sen. Rand Paul introduced an amendment to cut off federal support, citing concerns raised in two undercover videos about the organization’s handling of fetal-tissue donations from abortion.
The Kentucky Republican, a contender for the GOP presidential nomination and an eye doctor
, introduced an amendment to H.R. 22, the vehicle for the highway bill, that would end Planned Parenthood’s roughly $500 million in federal funding.
, introduced an amendment to H.R. 22, the vehicle for the highway bill, that would end Planned Parenthood’s roughly $500 million in federal funding.
That represents nearly half of Planned Parenthood’s annual revenues, which were $1.2 billion in 2012-13, according to the organization’s annual report.
“The continued disregard and disrespect for human life at Planned Parenthood, a partially taxpayer-funded organization, is shocking and appalling,” Mr. Paul said.
“Recent video revelations, involving potentially criminal activity, make it more obvious than ever that this organization has absolutely zero respect for the sanctity of human life and is an affront to the most basic human dignity enshrined in our founding documents. Not one more taxpayer dollar should go to Planned Parenthood and I intend to make that goal a reality,” he said.
His proposal follows a bill submitted Tuesday by Rep. Diane Black, Tennessee Republican, for a one-year moratorium on Planned Parenthood funding while Congress conducts a “full investigation into the organization’s activities.”
conducts a “full investigation into the organization’s activities.”
Her bill already has 80 original cosponsors.
“The fact that Planned Parenthood performs upwards of 327,000 abortions a year is heartbreaking and barbaric enough on its own,” Ms. Black said in a statement. “The news that its employees engaged in the harvesting of aborted babies’ body parts is almost too much to bear and is incredibly revealing as to the true nature of the big abortion industry.”
that its employees engaged in the harvesting of aborted babies’ body parts is almost too much to bear and is incredibly revealing as to the true nature of the big abortion industry.”
Several House Democrats have sent a letter to the Justice Department asking for an investigation of the group that made the Planned Parenthood videos, claiming that state and federal laws could have been broken.
If DoJ does investigate, its intent will be to intimidate CMP rather than look for any violations of law. It would be a stretch to find CMP guilty of violating federal law, although California apparently has some pretty strict rules on recording people. CMP might want to make the argument that the videos are political speech and protected by the 1st Amendment.
Once again, Democrats are looking to criminalize speech that they don't much care for.
[Forget about babies in the womb being ripped apart and their organs being sold - the democrats want the focus to be how the information was obtained. You can't make this stuff up]
Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D., Ill.), who has endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for president, is leading a group of House Democrats who accuse the Center for Medical Progress of possibly violating federal and state law when secretly recording videos of Planned Parenthood officials discussing the sale of aborted baby parts.
According to The Hill, Schakowsky authored a letter with three of her colleagues to the Department of Justice on Wednesday, alerting Attorney General Loretta Lynch of the “elaborate scheme” by the Center for Medical Progress that they estimate could be illegal.
The note was signed by Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D., Calif.), Jerry Nadler (D., N.Y.), and Yvette Clarke (D., N.Y.).
After the first video captured Dr. Deborah Nucatola, senior director of medical services at Planned Parenthood Federation of America, touting the sale of heart, liver and other aborted baby body parts, House Speaker John Boehner (R., Ohio) demanded hearings be held on the “gruesome” abortion practices.
Hillary Clinton has received more campaign cash from Planned Parenthood—almost $10,000 from nine different employees—than all of her liberal rivals.
Hours after a second video of a Planned Parenthood official discussing the sale of aborted baby parts surfaced Tuesday, Rep. Diane Black (R., Tenn.) introduced the Defund Planned Parenthood Act, which would strip the organization of taxpayer dollars.
GOP presidential candidate Carly Fiorina slammed Hillary Clinton and other Democrats for their “absolute deafening silence” in the wake of the second video.
The executive director of the Center for Medical Progress David Daleiden dismissed the “attack” by Schakowsky and her fellow Democrats on the organization’s investigation of Planned Parenthood’s abortion practices.
“They will attack me and my organization all day long, but that does not change the facts about what our investigation has uncovered and what the American people now know — that Planned Parenthood is engaged in an enterprise-wide operation that traffics and sells baby body parts,” Daleiden said in a statement.
In the same-sex marriage battle, the left’s heroes have consistently been portrayed as committed gay couples whose only desire is to be accorded the same legal status and recognition for their families that straights have enjoyed for centuries but are denied homosexuals. Although characterized as victims of a religio-conservative conspiracy to oppress, these gay superheroes with super powers that allow them to be just like heterosexual couples, have managed to outwit and out-organize marriage advocates at every turn with a well-thought out, brilliantly-executed game plan that culminated in the Supreme Court’s decision in Obergefell.
The goal of radical activist groups like GLSEN (Gay Lesbian and Straight Education Network) has been to turn tolerance into full-blown acceptance and to normalize homosexuality by equating it with heterosexuality and obliterating from the culture any sense of heterosexism -- the observation that heterosexuality is the norm, which it overwhelmingly is given that 98% of the population is straight.
With sleight of hand, extremists in the gay rights and marriage equality movements have successfully deconstructed the ironclad, scientifically-based genders of male and female and recast them as malleable social constructs.
They have cleansed our vocabulary of verboten words and punish anyone who uses them or even thinks about them. Any action taken against anyone who is gay is presumptively hate-based.
On the other side of the political divide, conservative heroes in the same-sex marriage battle are the pastor threatened with jail; the videographer who is fined; the church or synagogue that has its tax-exempt status revoked; the photographer who is forced to take pictures; the florist who is driven out of business; the CEO who is dismissed from his job; the baker who is silenced by a gag order; and the marriage license bureaucrat who must decide between her livelihood and her conscience.
The enemies in this conflict are legion: the overweening state that imposes the fine, threatens the jail time, forces the baking, and denies the speech; the justices who substitute their hubris for the will of the people; the activists who protest, bully and boycott the pizzerias, smear anyone who dissents, and defame adversaries as haters and bigots; and the journalists who glowingly write about the courage of gay marriage advocates versus the zealotry of ignorant believers who want to impose their outmoded dogma on everyone else.
Sadly, the Obegefell decision has served to do one thing: pit citizen against citizen and family member against family member. As neighbor tussles with neighbor over colliding rights, and the belly of society is eviscerated by militants with a cause, we will have to face the reality that we are in a Cold Civil War for the vanishing soul of America.
Those fighting on the side of freedom of conscience, will be indentured servants to a morality they do not embrace. They will be pilloried in the public square and forced to wear a rainbow-colored H; they will lose jobs, be fined or incarcerated, re-educated, and have their businesses closed if they don’t conform to the new ways. This isn’t fearmongering. With the exception of wearing a rainbow-colored H, it’s already happened.
In the minds of the evolved, this is a fitting punishment for haters and bigots. But really, it’s just an excuse for those who claim to have been oppressed, to wear the uniform and carry the stick of the oppressor.
And the people who brought this on? Five justices who have life tenure guaranteed by the very Constitution they refuse to abide by and, their activist brethren, who are protected against discrimination by the very Constitution they use to wield their own brand of discrimination. Like ants attacking a caterpillar, they descend in hysterical hordes on anyone who dissents -- deriding them, demanding their jobs, depriving them of income, disparaging their voice, demonstrating at their homes. And while many agree with the five justices and their activist minions, countless others have been bullied into accepting their rainbow ideology out of fear.
How is this any different from Nazi Germany or Communist Russia where regular Germans and Russians -- who really wanted no part of their respective regimes -- were forced to accept the swastika and hammer and sickle in order to keep their jobs and homes? Like a repeat nightmare, freedom of speech, press and conscience must always yield to the official political narrative, or else….
I don’t have a problem with gay people but I do have a problem being told what I must believe and that to believe otherwise amounts to hate that must be criminalized. If, through popular vote, the law permitted gay marriage but didn’t criminalize those who were against it, I would have no problem with this. But that’s not what we have. Instead, we see pastors threatened with jail in Idaho and Vermont and bakers in Oregon run out of business and gagged.
Being persecuted for believing in the Ten Commandments is no different than being persecuted because you believe that marriage between one man and one woman is sanctified by G-d. I don’t believe anyone should be persecuted for being gay or engaging in gay sexual activity -- that is ultimately between them and their G-d. But don’t come between me and my G-d by persecuting me for my beliefs.
Make no mistake: This is another Inquisition. Searches of one’s past comments, articles, and donations on the internet and your right to life, liberty, and property evaporate. Joe “Torquemada” Biden hails this as the most important issue on the planet. Dissent will not be tolerated. Minds will be changed. If “they” decide you are a heathen or a Luddite, you will be stripped of everything.
Also see:
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President Obama Summoned to Trial September 9,2015 my day, location Mount Zion (Isreal)All Charges by the Sanhedrin are true & just.
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