Two Chinese aircraft landed on disputed reefs and Beijing's coast guard reportedly blocked a Filipino boat from a contested shoal, in acts of defiance after a landmark ruling found China's vast claims in the South China Sea legally baseless.
Vietnam protested Thursday that the recent Chinese actions seriously violated Vietnamese sovereignty.
Chinese state media reported that two Chinese civilian aircraft landed successfully Wednesday on two new airstrips on Mischief and Subi reefs. China also said it had completed four lighthouses on disputed reefs and was launching a fifth.
In the Philippines, ABS-CBN TV network reported that Chinese coast guard ships blocked a Filipino fishing boat from approaching the disputed Scarborough Shoal on Thursday. Journalist Chiara Zambrano reported the two speedboats approached and encircled the Filipino boat carrying her and local fishermen.
One video the network aired showed the Filipino boat being tailed by a white Chinese coast guard ship in an area Zambrano said was a few miles (kilometers) from Scarborough, where the local fishermen were blocked from entering to fish. Another video showed the Chinese coast guard personnel using a bullhorn and ordering the Filipinos to leave "this area immediately."
Mayor Arsenia Lim of the northwestern town of Masinloc, where the fishermen live, said they sailed to Scarborough to test China's compliance with the ruling.
"What they're doing is bad because it shows as if there is no law," Lim told The Associated Press by telephone. "Our government should defend the livelihood of these people because it's the only place where they get their income."
The ruling Tuesday from the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, Netherlands, was based on the 1982 U.N. Convention on the Law of the Seas, which both China and the Philippines ratified. The Philippines sought arbitration in 2013 after witnessing China's activities in Scarborough and elsewhere in the sea rich with fish and potential energy resources.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who said before the ruling that he wanted to start talks with China on the issue, asked former leader Fidel Ramos late Thursday to travel to China and start the discussions. He has not commented on the arbitration ruling but described the territorial disputes as a complicated issue that may affect the country's ties with treaty ally the United States and the Philippine economy.
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad has accused the United States of not being serious about defeating ISIS.
He said Russian military support for his regime had 'tipped the scales in his favour' and he said he was confident he would reclaim the whole of his country 'within months'.
Assad said President Vladimir Putin had not demanded anything of him but just wanted his regime to help defeat the 'terrorists'.
Putin is due to meet US Secretary of State John Kerry in Moscow later today and it is thought the future of Assad in Syria will be on the agenda.
But Assad denied they would be reaching a deal which would be 'bad news' for him and he said he had never been pressured to go by Putin.
'Only the Syrian people define who's going to be the president, when to come, and when to go. They (the Russians) never said a single word regarding this,' he said in an interview with NBC.
Assad claimed the US did not have the same determination as the Russians to defeat ISIS.
'They're not serious,' he told interviewer Bill Neely.
“There is no Christianity without Judaism and there is no Jesus without a Jewish
Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.”
Israel warned the European Union on Thursday night that supporting a UNESCO resolution which views the Temple Mount as a solely Muslim site is akin to ignoring Europe’s Christian roots.
“If the Europeans have a hand in a UNESCO decision that rejects or does not deal with the Jewish people’s relationship to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem, are they not rejecting their own identity?” asked Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon.
“There is no Christianity without Judaism and there is no Jesus without a Jewish Jerusalem and the Temple Mount,” he said.
“If the Europeans have a hand in a UNESCO decision that rejects or does not deal with the Jewish people’s relationship to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem, are they not rejecting their own identity?” asked Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nachshon.
“There is no Christianity without Judaism and there is no Jesus without a Jewish Jerusalem and the Temple Mount,” he said.
The EU, he warned, could be willing to make this “ugly and hypocritical gesture to the Palestinians.”
He also issued a slightly toned down version of the message on Twitter.
Emmanuel spoke out after learning that EU representatives in Istanbul could be putting forward a resolution on Jerusalem that spoke of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, exclusively by its Muslim name of al-Haram al-Sharif.
He also issued a slightly toned down version of the message on Twitter.
Emmanuel spoke out after learning that EU representatives in Istanbul could be putting forward a resolution on Jerusalem that spoke of the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, exclusively by its Muslim name of al-Haram al-Sharif.
Jordan and the Palestinians are pushing for a resolution to this effect to be approved by the 21 members of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Committee, which is meeting in Istanbul from July 10 to 20 to vote on new sites for its World Heritage List.
It is also reaffirming its list of endangered sites, such as the Temple Mount.
It is also reaffirming its list of endangered sites, such as the Temple Mount.
After Israel’s initial objection, the EU attempted to find a compromise text and is poised to submit a new draft resolution.
But Israel has learned that is still does not speak of the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount which is Judaism’s holiest site.
“We’re not optimistic,” Nachshon said.
According to UNESCO it can be voted on as late as Tuesday morning.
The countries on the committee are Angola, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Cuba, Finland, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Tunisia, Turkey, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
But Israel has learned that is still does not speak of the Jewish connection to the Temple Mount which is Judaism’s holiest site.
“We’re not optimistic,” Nachshon said.
According to UNESCO it can be voted on as late as Tuesday morning.
The countries on the committee are Angola, Azerbaijan, Burkina Faso, Croatia, Cuba, Finland, Indonesia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Korea, Tunisia, Turkey, Tanzania, Vietnam and Zimbabwe.
As if there isn’t enough to worry about already, it seems there is new confirmation that our entire society is hanging by a thread.
The 21st Century is run off of electricity, and in the United States, that electric grid is woefully out of date – and that has left the country quite vulnerable. People’s daily lives depend upon reliable energy, and there are many, such as hospital patients, whose very survival depends upon electricity in the short term.
But in the event of a long-term outage, nearly everyone’s lives would be placed in jeopardy, as commerce, deliveries, fuel, communications and more would grind to a halt.
According to the Wall Street Journal made clear in their special report, the dated grid is completely vulnerable to attack:
The Bakersfield attacks last year were among dozens of break-ins examined by The Wall Street Journal that show how, despite federal orders to secure the power grid, tens of thousands of are still vulnerable to saboteurs.
The U.S. electric system is in danger of widespread blackouts lasting days, weeks or longer through the destruction of sensitive, hard-to-repla
ce equipment.
Most substations are unmanned and often protected chiefly by chain-link fences. Many have no electronic security, leaving attacks unnoticed until after the damage is done. Even if there are security cameras, they often prove worthless. In some cases, alarms are simply ignored.
The vulnerability of substations was broadly revealed in a Journal account of a 2013 attack on PG&E’s Metcalf facility near San Jose, Calif. Gunmen knocked out 17 transformers that help power Silicon Valley; a blackout was narrowly averted. The assailants were never caught.
It isn’t just EMPs and natural disaster that poses a threat to the grid, but there is also the potential for attacks on individual power substations in the vast network of decentralized and largely unguarded power grid chain. A U.S. government study established that there would be “major, extended blackouts if more than three key substations were destroyed.”
Whether by criminals, looters, terrorists, gangs or pranksters, it would take very little to bring down the present system, and there is currently very little the system can do to protect against this wide open threat. As the WSJ notes:
Federal officials have long known about the vulnerability of electrical substations. A 1990 report from the federal Office of Technology Assessment warned that “virtually any region would suffer major, extended blackouts if more than three key substations were destroyed.”
[…] individual substations “if rendered inoperable or damaged could result in widespread instability,” or cascading blackouts in any of the three separate sections of the U.S. power grid.
3 comments:
From yesterday...this is interesting...and from Fox News no less...
"Mysterious object appears moments before NASA live feed ends"
http://video.foxnews.com/v/5035540236001/mysterious-object-appears-moments-before-nasa-live-feed-ends/?#sp=show-clips
Breaking on Fox – “Military coup underway in Turkey”
ISTANBUL – Turkey’s military announced on Friday night that army had taken over “the entire management of the country to restore rule of law” as the country’s prime minister admitted an “attempt” by a group within the military while falling short of calling the attempt a military coup.
A military statement read on Turkish state TV announced that martial law had been imposed across the country and a curfew had been declared. The statement added that Turkey was now being run by a “peace council” and that a new constitution would be drawn up soon.
Earlier, the Dogan news agency published a statement from the military saying the coup was carried out “to reinstall the constitutional order, democracy, human rights and freedoms, to ensure that the rule of law once again reigns in the country, for the law and order to be reinstated.”
(continued)
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/07/15/military-coup-underway-in-turkey.html
This is really big news prophetically - we know Turkey will be part of Gog-Magog and Erdogan wasn't really getting along with Putin/Russia, as he was covertly helping ISIS. I've been watching Turkey closely for something else.....I'm betting that whoever takes over (even if it stays with the military) - the next leader will be pro-Russia and talk about aligning with Russia..Very interesting development
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