Boots & Sabers

The blogging will continue until morale improves...

M
Category: Foreign Affairs

Canada Legalizes Euthanizing the Mentally Ill

by | 2039, 16 Jul 23 | , | 5 Comments

It’s a death cult, and it’s unconscionable.

An expansion of the criteria for medically assisted death that comes into force in March 2024 will allow Canadians like Pauli, whose sole underlying condition is mental illness, to choose medically assisted death.

Canada legalized assisted death in 2016 for people with terminal illness and expanded it in 2021 to people with incurable, but not terminal, conditions. The legal changes were precipitated by court rulings that struck down prohibitions on helping people to die.

 

The new mental health provision will make Canada one of the most expansive countries in the world when it comes to medical assistance in dying (MAID), according to an expert panel report to Canada’s parliament.

Russian Rebellion

by | 0822, 24 Jun 23 | | 5 Comments

I’m not sure that I trust any of the news coming out of the area – even (especially) by Western journalists – but something is up in Russia. Putin’s response validates that this is a serious threat. Or it could be a planned provocation to give Putin an excuse to seize more power. But does he need more power? He’s proven that he has full control of the nation already. So it maybe that this is exactly what it looks like… an armed rebellion by the Russian power players who are frustrated with Putin’s actions.

ROSTOV-ON-DON/VORONEZH, Russia (Reuters) -Russian military helicopters opened fire on Saturday afternoon on a convoy of rebel mercenaries already more than half way towards Moscow in a lightning advance after seizing a southern city overnight.

 

President Vladimir Putin vowed to crush an armed mutiny he compared to Russia’s Civil War a century ago.

 

Fighters from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s private Wagner militia were in control of Rostov-on-Don, a city of more than a million people close to the border with Ukraine, and were rapidly advancing northwards through western Russia.

 

A Reuters journalist saw army helicopters open fire at an armed Wagner column that was advancing past the city of Voronezh with troop carriers and at least one tank on a flatbed truck. The city is more than half way along the 1,100-km (680-mile) highway from Rostov to Moscow.

15,000 Venezuelans Flood Border

by | 1720, 29 Apr 23 | , | 1 Comment

We’re being invaded and Biden is inviting it.

BROWNSVILLE, Texas (AP) — Shelters in a Texas city struggled to find space Saturday for migrants who authorities say have abruptly begun crossing by the thousands from Mexico, testing a stretch of the U.S. border that is typically equipped to handle large groups of people fleeing poverty and violence.

 

The pace of arrivals in Brownsville appeared to catch the city on the southernmost tip of Texas off guard, stretching social services and putting an overnight shelter in an uncommon position of turning people away. Officials say more than 15,000 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, have illegally crossed the river near Brownsville since last week.

 

That is a sharp rise from the 1,700 migrants that Border Patrol agents encountered in the first two weeks of April, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

 

“It’s a quite concerning because the logistical challenge that we encounter is massive for us,” said Gloria Chavez, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol Rio Grande Valley Sector.

US and South Korea Sign Nuclear Accord

by | 2117, 26 Apr 23 | , , | 0 Comments

Wasn’t this the SOP anyway? Also, can South Korea really rely on the US to hold up our end of the bargain if push comes to shove? Do we, Americans, really still want to be on the hook for defending South Korea?

US President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol have secured a landmark deal which includes plans to periodically deploy US nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea.

Washington has also agreed to involve Seoul in its planning for any use of nuclear weapons against North Korea.

 

In return, South Korea has agreed to not develop its own nuclear weapons.

 

The deal, called the Washington Declaration, will strengthen the allies’ co-operation in deterring a North Korean attack, Mr Biden said.

He spoke on Wednesday during a joint press conference with Mr Yoon, who is in Washington this week to discuss issues including the war in Ukraine, climate change, cyber co-operation and nuclear power.

 

The South Korean leader said the Washington Declaration – the centrepiece of this week’s state visit – marked an “unprecedented” step to enhance extended deterrence, a commitment from the US to deter attacks and protect US allies using its military power, including nuclear weapons.

Army Can’t Keep Up with Munitions for Ukraine

by | 2059, 23 Apr 23 | , , | 2 Comments

It would be one thing if Ukraine was paying for this, but they are not. We are. There’s a lot to digest in this story.

The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant is at the vanguard of a multibillion-dollar Pentagon plan to modernize and accelerate its production of ammunition and equipment not only to support Ukraine, but to be ready for a potential conflict with China.

 

But it is one of just two sites in the U.S. that make the steel bodies for the critical 155 mm howitzer rounds that the U.S. is rushing to Ukraine to help in its grinding fight to repel the Russian invasion in the largest-scale war in Europe since World War II.

 

The invasion of Ukraine revealed that the U.S. stockpile of 155 mm shells and those of European allies were unprepared to support a major and ongoing conventional land war, sending them scrambling to bolster production. The dwindling supply has alarmed U.S. military planners, and the Army now plans to spend billions on munitions plants around the country in what it calls its most significant transformation in 40 years.

 

[…]

 

The Army is spending about $1.5 billion to ramp up production of 155 mm rounds from 14,000 a month before Russia invaded Ukraine to over 85,000 a month by 2028, U.S. Army Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo told a symposium last month.

 

Already, the U.S. military has given Ukraine more than 1.5 million rounds of 155 mm ammunition, according to Army figures.

 

But even with higher near-term production rates, the U.S. cannot replenish its stockpile or catch up to the usage pace in Ukraine, where officials estimate that the Ukrainian military is firing 6,000 to 8,000 shells per day. In other words, two days’ worth of shells fired by Ukraine equates to the United States’ monthly pre-war production figure.

 

[…]

 

The factory — built for the Delaware, Lackawanna and Western Railroad just after 1900, when the city was a rising coal and railroad powerhouse — has produced large-caliber ammunition for the military going back to the Korean War.

 

But the buildings are on the National Historic Registry of Historic Places, limiting how the Army can alter the structures.

New Zealand Ceases Livestock Exports

by | 1226, 22 Apr 23 | , | 0 Comments

Well…

WELLINGTON (Reuters) – New Zealand’s last exports of livestock by sea have been completed and live exports have ceased, its agriculture minister said on Friday, as it fully implemented a ban on export shipments of animals on the grounds of their welfare.

 

The government announced in 2021 that shipping animals offshore, largely for building herds in trading partners like China, would be halted but farmers would be given two years to transition out of the profitable export business.

 

“Our position on the map means that the journey to northern hemisphere markets will always be a long one and this brings unavoidable animal welfare challenges,” Agriculture Minister Damien O’Connor said in a statement announcing that live exports had ceased.

Chinese Police Enforcers Arrested in Manhattan

by | 2007, 17 Apr 23 | , | 0 Comments

Concerned yet?

US prosecutors have arrested two men in New York for allegedly operating a Chinese “secret police station” in Manhattan’s Chinatown neighbourhood.

Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, both New York City residents, face charges of conspiring to act as agents for China and obstruction of justice.

 

They are expected to appear in federal court in Brooklyn on Monday.

 

China has previously denied operating the stations, calling them “service centres” for nationals overseas.

Mr Lu of the Bronx and Mr Chen of Manhattan worked together to establish the first overseas police station in the United States on behalf of China’s Ministry of Public Security, the US Department of Justice alleged on Monday.

 

The outpost was closed in autumn of 2022, the department said, after those involved became aware of an FBI investigation into the station.

“This prosecution reveals the Chinese government’s flagrant violation of our nation’s sovereignty by establishing a secret police station in the middle of New York City,” said Breon Pearce, the top prosecutor in Brooklyn.

 

[…]

 

According to prosecutors, Mr Lu was closely connected to Chinese law enforcement, and was enlisted to help China with “repressive activities” in the US beginning in 2015, including harassing Chinese dissidents.

 

In 2018, he allegedly participated in efforts to push a purported Chinese fugitive to return to China, including repeated harassment and threats to the individual and his family, living in China and the US. And prosecutors said he was also enlisted to locate a pro-democracy activist in China. Mr Lu denied these actions when confronted by US authorities.

Finland Opens New Nuclear Reactor

by | 2032, 16 Apr 23 | , , | 2 Comments

This is the way.

OL3’s operator Teollisuuden Voima (TVO), which is owned by Finnish utility Fortum and a consortium of energy and industrial companies, has said the unit is expected to meet around 14% of Finland’s electricity demand, reducing the need for imports from Sweden and Norway.

 

The new reactor is expected to produce for at least 60 years, TVO said in a statement on Sunday after completing the transition from testing to regular output.

 

“The production of Olkiluoto 3 stabilises the price of electricity and plays an important role in the Finnish green transition,” TVO Chief Executive Jarmo Tanhua said in the statement.

 

Construction of the 1.6 gigawatt (GW) reactor, Finland’s first new nuclear plant in more than four decades and Europe’s first in 16 years, began in 2005. The plant was originally due to open four years later, but was plagued by technical issues.

China Encircles Taiwan

by | 0739, 8 Apr 23 | , | 0 Comments

Well, they practice it. Practice makes perfect, eh?

China’s military is rehearsing the encirclement of Taiwan during three days of military drills.

Beijing – which views Taiwan as a breakaway province of China – called the operation a “stern warning” to the island’s government.

 

The exercises began hours after President Tsai Ing-wen returned from a trip to the United States.

The Taiwanese Defence Ministry said 71 Chinese military planes and nine ships crossed the Taiwan Strait median line.

Spy Balloon Worked

by | 1615, 3 Apr 23 | , | 11 Comments

I was assured that this wouldn’t happen.

The Chinese spy balloon that flew across the U.S. was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.

 

China was able to control the balloon so it could make multiple passes over some of the sites (at times flying figure-eight formations) and transmit the information it collected back to Beijing in real time, the three officials said. The intelligence China collected was mostly from electronic signals, which can be picked up from weapons systems or include communications from base personnel, rather than images, the officials said.

 

The three officials said China could have gathered much more intelligence from sensitive sites if not for the administration’s efforts to move around potential targets and obscure the balloon’s ability to pick up their electronic signals by stopping them from broadcasting or emitting signals.

So… our president allowed the Chinese to spy on us. When caught, we didn’t do anything about it. Who is he working for?

Russia to Use Belarus for Launching Nukes

by | 1336, 25 Mar 23 | , | 3 Comments

This is kind of a big deal.

Russia will station tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus, President Vladimir Putin has said.

President Putin said the move would not violate nuclear non-proliferation agreements and compared it to the US stationing its weapons in Europe, according to Russian state media.

Moscow would not be transferring control of its arms to Minsk, he added.

Inflation Tops 10% in UK

by | 0801, 22 Mar 23 | , | 0 Comments

Ouch

U.K. inflation unexpectedly jumped in February, as food and energy bills continued to rise, placing further pressure on households.

 

The consumer price index (CPI) increased by an annual 10.4%, above the 9.9% consensus forecast among economists in a Refinitiv poll and up from 10.1% in January. On a monthly basis, CPI inflation was 1.1%, exceeding a forecast of 0.6%.

Biden Sends More Money to Ukraine

by | 2113, 20 Mar 23 | , | 0 Comments

Taxpayers are bailing out banks and Ukraine while we all go into the poor house.

WASHINGTON — The State Department announced Monday that the U.S. will send Ukraine $350 million in weapons and equipment, as fierce battles with Russian forces continue for control of the city of Bakhmut, and troops prepare for an expected spring offensive.

 

The latest package of aid includes a large amount of various types of ammunition, such as rockets for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, and an undisclosed number of fuel tanker trucks and riverine boats.

Kennan’s Take on Compromise

by | 1807, 18 Mar 23 | | 1 Comment

Here’s an interesting perspective from Gaddis’ biography of George F. Kennan:

 

“Foreign policy was not, therefore, a contest of good vs. evil. To condemn negotiations as appeasement, Kennan told a Princeton University audience early in October, was to end a Hollywood movie with the villain shot. To entrust diplomacy to lawyers was to relegate power, ‘like sex, to a realm in which we see it only occasionally, and then in a highly sublimated and presentable form.’ Both approaches ignored the fact that most international conflicts were ‘jams that people have gotten themselves into.’ Trying to resolve them through rigid standards risked making things worse. Evil existed, to be sure: the Soviet regime reflected it, as had Nazi Germany. Sometimes you had to fight it, sometimes you had to deal with it. The important question was ‘what sort of compromises we make,’ not how to ‘escape altogether the necessity of making such compromises.'”

Mexico is Safer than the U.S.

by | 2122, 13 Mar 23 | , | 1 Comment

Snort.

President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, who has threatened to urge Mexican-Americans not to vote for Republican candidates if they continue their criticism, rejected U.S. official security warnings that depict much of Mexico as a risky place to visit.

 

“Mexico is safer than the United States,” he told reporters when questioned about the warnings at a news conference. “There’s no problem with traveling safely around Mexico.”

 

[…]

 

At 28 per 100,000 people, Mexico’s murder rate was around four times higher than in the United States in 2020, according to data published by the World Bank. Homicides fell about 7% last year in Mexico, but the current government is on track to register a record total for any six-year administration.

Make Prison Suck Again

by | 1359, 25 Feb 23 | , | 0 Comments

Let’s hope that they can make their country safe for good people.

President Bukele declared a “war on gangs” last March, passing emergency measures which have been extended several times.

The emergency powers have been controversial as they limit some constitutional rights, such as allowing the security forces to arrest suspects without a warrant.

Gang members wait to be taken to their cells after 2000 gang members were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement CenterREUTERS
Gang members wait to be taken to their cells after 2000 gang members were transferred to the Terrorism Confinement CenterREUTERS

More than 64,000 suspects have been arrested in the anti-crime drive.

Authorities have said criminal gangs such as MS-13 and Barrio-18 number tens of thousands and are responsible for homicides, extortion and drug-trafficking. The aim of the mass arrests is to make the gangs “disappear altogether”, the government says.

Biden Says Relations With China Are Not Damaged By Balloon

by | 2339, 8 Feb 23 | | 0 Comments

Ask yourself… why aren’t relations damaged? Shouldn’t they be? They invaded our space with an intentionally provocative act? Why wouldn’t it damage relations?

President Joe Biden said in a new interview that the recently recovered Chinese spy balloon that traversed the continental US did not damage bilateral relations between the two countries.

“The idea shooting down a balloon that’s gathering information over America and that makes relations worse?” Biden told PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff in a wide-ranging interview a day after his second State of the Union address.

“I made it real clear to Xi Jinping that we’re going to compete fully with China, but we’re not looking for conflict. That’s been the case so far.”

Biden’s response marks the second time this week that he’s sought to downplay the effect of what US officials deemed a “brazen” act by Beijing to send an intelligence gathering balloon across several US states – with signs it loitered over key military installations.

Biden’s Balloon Finally Pops

by | 1800, 4 Feb 23 | , , | 20 Comments

Oh, fer cripes’s sakes. He waits until it has traversed the entire nation collecting whatever data it could before doing anything. This isn’t the 1960s where a surveillance craft had to drop its payload to be retrieved and analyzed. Whatever it collected has already been transmitted. And while I have mad respect for our pilots, it’s not much of a brag to say that they shot it down with “one missile.” It’s a friggin’ balloon. This whole fiasco has been a national embarrassment and the world is laughing at us.

Joe Biden praised the Top Gun fighter jet pilot who shot down the Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina today after he vowed to ‘take care of it.’

 

An F-22 Raptor out of Langley Air Force base took the balloon down with a single AIM-9X sidewinder missile at 2.38pm, separating its surveillance payload and sending it plummeting towards the ocean off Myrtle Beach.

 

Footage showed the jet screaming towards the spy aircraft before firing the missile as stunned locals watched from the coast.

 

[…]

 

Biden first became aware of the balloon last Sunday, January 28, when it was spotted over Alaska. The US military tracked it over Canadian airspace and as it re-entered US territory on Tuesday.

 

The following day, Biden was given a detailed report on the aircraft and its course, attended by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley.

Omar Removed From Committee

by | 2052, 2 Feb 23 | , | 3 Comments

Excellent. She is a vocal antisemite. It is like having a member of the Klan on that committee – a committee that deals with foreign relations.

House Republicans on Thursday voted to kick Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar from the Foreign Affairs Committee over her anti-Semitic comments in chaotic scenes in Congress.

 

Democrats screamed ‘no’ before the GOP completed Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s bid to get the Squad member removed over past comments comparing Israel to Hamas and the Taliban and saying the relationship between the Jewish state and the U.S. is ‘all about the Benjamins’ in 2019.

 

‘She described 9/11 by saying “some people did something”,’ McCarthy said when explaining why he wanted to boot her from the committee in a press conference after she was kicked off

Chinese Spy Balloon Hovering Over the U.S.

by | 2048, 2 Feb 23 | , , | 10 Comments

This is how wussy we have become. We are not willing to shoot down a spy baloon – both to remove it from spying and to make it clear to the Chinese that we will respond to their spying with force – because of the miniscule chance it will land on someone in one of the most sparsley populated states in out nation. We are failing as a nation

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a couple days, but the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down due to the risk of harming people on the ground, officials said Thursday. The discovery of the balloon puts a further strain on U.S.-China relations at a time of heightened tensions.

 

A senior defense official told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. has “very high confidence” it is a Chinese high-altitude balloon and it was flying over sensitive sites to collect information. One of the places the balloon was spotted was Montana, which is home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

Login | Register

Archives

Categories

Pin It on Pinterest