Chinese Military Aggression Towards Taiwan is Escalating, Biden Ignores

Posted on November 29, 2021November 29, 2021 by Denise Simon

A small congressional delegation arrived in Taiwan last week to assess the defense conditions and operations in Asia. It is remarkable however that prior to the departure, the Chinese embassy in Washington DC sent an email demanding the trio be cancelled. Imagine that…our elected officials are supposed to comply to the Chinese Communist Party and their demands?

In part from Axios:

Six Republican lawmakers who visited Taiwan earlier this month to meet with Tsai and other Taipei officials faced similar calls from Beijing’s embassy in Washington, per Foreign Policy.
Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.), the House Veterans’ Affairs chair, and leader of the delegation to Taiwan, praised Taiwan to Tsai as a “democratic success story, a reliable partner and a force for good in the world,” in comments that are sure to further anger Beijing, per Reuters.

“Under [Tsai’s] administration, the bonds between us are more positive and productive than they have been for decades. Our commitment to Taiwan is rock solid and has remained steadfast as the ties between us have deepened. Taiwan is a democratic success story, a reliable partner and a force for good in the world.”

— Rep. Takano

The big picture: Takano, Slotkin and Reps. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), Colin Allred (D-Texas) and Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.) were in Taiwan to discuss matters including regional security, U.S.-Taiwan relations “and other significant issues of mutual interest” with Taipei officials, per a statement from the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto embassy.

Slotkin tweeted Thursday, “The auto industry’s largest supplier of microchips is here in Taiwan, so supply chain issues will most definitely be on the agenda.”

Background: The Chinese government has in recent months escalated military and political pressure in its claims over the island, which separated from China in 1949 amid civil war.

Go deeper: Taiwan among 110 participants invited to Biden’s “Summit for Democracy”

Meanwhile, as a response to the trip, China decided to once again threaten the region with 27 aircraft invading a ‘buffer zone‘.

Taiwan’s defense ministry says its air forces were mobilized to warn off 27 Chinese warplanes. The incursion into Taiwan’s air defense zone included 18 fighter jets, five nuclear-capable bombers and a refueling aircraft.

Taiwan’s defense ministry said Sunday the island’s air force had scrambled fighter jets to warn off 27 Chinese aircraft that had entered its air defense identification zone (ADIZ) while missile systems were deployed for monitoring purposes.

Taiwan’s ADIZ is not the same as its territorial air space but instead is self-declared airspace that is monitored for national security purposes.

The latest ratcheting up of tensions comes on the heels of a US Congressional delegation to the island, the second this month in support of Taiwan.

China has vowed to take back Taiwan by force if necessary.

Beijing disapproves of anything that lends international legitimacy and recognition to the government in Taipei and registered its disapproval of American lawmakers visiting the island.

What happened in Taiwan’s ADIZ?

The Chinese air force sent 18 fighter jets, five nuclear-capable H-6 bombers and a Y-20 aerial refueling jet, suggesting China may have refueled mid-flight. The Chinese military is still working on its mid-air refueling capabilities as it seeks to project power around the globe.

In the map provided by the Taiwanese defense ministry, the H-6 bombers and six of the fighter jets flew south of Taiwan into the Bashi Channel separating Taiwan from the Philippines before steering out into the Pacific and returning to China.

Taiwan has complained for months of incursions into its ADIZ by China’s air force, usually in the southwestern part near the Pratas Islands which it controls.

Why are tensions high between Beijing and Taipei now?

On Friday, a spokesperson for the Eastern Theater Command of the People’s Liberation Army said the Chinese military carried out “naval and air force combat readiness patrol in the direction of the Taiwan Strait.”

Challenging the Most Recent FBI/DHS Domestic Terrorism Report

Posted on November 29, 2021November 29, 2021 by Denise Simon

Terrorism appears to have taken on a wider set of definitions and is no longer confined to militant Islam. Seems on the domestic front, there are all kinds of profiles, groups, politics and criminals now in the classification according to the most recent government report.

After the January 6th event in Washington DC, the FBI applied every available human resource and technology to identify potential criminals that they deemed performed a criminal act such as parading. Meanwhile, we have heard little if anything about convictions from all the destruction, death and looting from last summer much less how it continues now with the smash and grabs. It has been reported that the FBI embedded some point people in the J6 Trump rally and that is a common practice with thousands of cases for decades by the FBI, so the did the FBI embed anyone in any of the ANTIFA or BLM or with these large groups across the country doing smash and grabs?

We should have regard for the rank and file FBI and DHS employees but we must challenge management for obvious reasons. Let’s go a little deeper shall we?

Notice ‘intimidate civilian’ population…

Notice ‘destruction of critical infrastructure’…

The report is not very long and it is suggested you read it here.

The next scandal to be mentioned is the school boards versus parents and the Department of Justice. It is not just about critical race theory, it also includes forced mask wearing and then what else is being taught in the classroom without parental knowledge or consent such as sexual diversity. In fact much of what is taught when it comes to sexual diversity is actually pornography. No one at the Department of Education or the Department of Justice even cares about those violations of laws involving minors. Riots in America: Why is the Fuse So Short? | Clarion Project

Simply Americans are being coerced into believing application of the law is fair and equal, that is hardly the case. We have an activist government and it is being propped up by activists in every agency at the Federal level and now we are seeing it at the state level as we discover these ‘Soros’ District Attorneys refused to prosecute and the same goes for hundreds of judges. It goes far beyond the defunding of the police.

America is in a bad place when it comes to law and order. Laws have no value unless they are applied and applied equally. Criminals and activists are using social media apps and encrypted apps to communicate and coordinate…is that being investigated?

Is the U.S. Healthcare System About to Collapse?

Posted on November 22, 2021November 22, 2021 by Denise Simon

There’s a reason a 76-year-old woman with a broken femur had to wait 95 minutes for an ambulance at the main TSA checkpoint in the middle of the nation’s busiest airport over the summer.

Half of Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport’s fleet of fully-staffed EMS ambulances were 500 miles away.

11Alive’s investigative team tracked the airport’s Medic 1 and Medic 2 ambulances to the back lot of a factory in Ohio, where Atlanta Fire & Rescue had sent them for extended rebuilds with no replacements ready.

We were told at the time when those two ambulances went into the shop that they will only take 90 days to get it back in service,” Airport General Manager Balram Bheodari told the Atlanta City Council Transportation Committee on Aug. 11. “However, because of the disruption of the supply chain, we were informed it would take 180 days to get those ambulances back,” Bheodari testified.

But the city was told the ambulances would be out of service for 240 days, according to internal documents obtained by The Reveal through public records requests.

The vendor’s written quote with the 240-day estimate was delivered to the city in November of last year, six months before the ambulances were sent to Ohio. Both Medic 1 and Medic 2 were sent for refurbishment at the same time, further reducing available ambulances at Hartsfield-Jackson, the nation’s busiest airport.

The airport had purchased new ambulances in the past, which can replace the old units with no loss of service. However, it’s not clear why the city chose a lengthy rebuild instead, or why both units were sent to Ohio simultaneously instead of one at a time.

Crazy…but then again…emergency rooms cant handle patients anyway as noted below.

Hospitals battle burnout, compete for nurses as pandemic spurs US staffing woes | S&P Global Market Intelligence

LONG BEACH, Long Island (WABC) — The emergency department at a Nassau County hospital has temporarily closed due to nursing staff shortages as a result of New York’s vaccine mandate.

Officials at Mount Sinai South Nassau said Monday that all other options were exhausted before the decision was made to close the ER, starting at 3 p.m.

Instead, patients in need of emergency care will be directed to the hospital’s main campus in Oceanside. An ambulance will be stationed at the ER at all times for the duration of the closure.

The closure will last for up to four weeks and could be expanded, depending on staff availability.

***

Hospitals and nursing homes around the U.S. are bracing for worsening staff shortages as state deadlines arrive for health care workers to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

With ultimatums taking effect this week in states including New York, California, Rhode Island and Connecticut, the fear is that some employees will quit or let themselves be fired or suspended rather than get the vaccine.

“How this is going to play out, we don’t know. We are concerned about how it will exacerbate an already quite serious staffing problem,” said California Hospital Association spokesperson Jan Emerson-Shea, adding that the organization “absolutely” supports the state’s vaccination requirement. source

***

Cyndy O’Brien, an emergency room nurse at Ocean Springs Hospital on the Gulf Coast of Mississippi, could not believe her eyes as she arrived for work. There were people sprawled out in their cars gasping for air as three ambulances with gravely ill patients idled in the parking lot. Just inside the front doors, a crush of anxious people jostled to get the attention of an overwhelmed triage nurse.

“It’s like a war zone,” said Ms. O’Brien, who is the patient care coordinator at Singing River, a small health system near the Alabama border that includes Ocean Springs. “We are just barraged with patients and have nowhere to put them.”

The bottleneck, however, has little to do with a lack of space. Nearly 30 percent of Singing River’s 500 beds are empty. With 169 unfilled nursing positions, administrators must keep the beds empty.

Nursing shortages have long vexed hospitals. But in the year and a half since its ferocious debut in the United States, the coronavirus pandemic has stretched the nation’s nurses as never before, testing their skills and stamina as desperately ill patients with a poorly understood malady flooded emergency rooms. They remained steadfast amid a calamitous shortage of personal protective equipment; spurred by a sense of duty, they flocked from across the country to the newest hot zones, sometimes working as volunteers. More than 1,200 of them have died from the virus. source

CVS changing the business model could be a clue of what is to come –>

CVS announced its plans to begin closing its doors–about 900 locations across the country. Though that looks like a lot, it’s only 10 percent of the company’s retail locations. Though don’t expect the remaining 90 percent to look 100 percent like CVS stores as we know them. Because the big news is really less about its closures and more about what’s to come for the future of the pharmaceutical retailer. And that’s the accessibility of healthcare services across the nation. What CVS is doing is exactly what it set out to do when it first launched nearly six decades ago in 1963.

In the words of the company’s mission, its goal is to “make high-quality health and pharmacy services safe, affordable and easy to access.”

This is a crucial reminder to businesses everywhere: growth doesn’t mean getting bigger, it means getting better. That does not mean getting better at everything, as many are compelled to do. But getting better at what matters most: your core offering. Because it’s also the core reason customers choose your business over the alternatives. And in the case of the pharmaceutical retailer, that’s healthcare.

Your local CVS will no longer necessarily be a place to go when you realized you’re out of milk or to pick up a greeting card–and never mind a late-night destination to grab that 6-pack when no other stores nearby are still open. But your local CVS will be turned into “destinations that offer a range of health-care services, from flu shots to diagnostic tests,” according to the company’s news release.

In other words, a place to go for all things health–as one would expect a pharmacy to be. However, it had become a company that wore many hats. Not only does it serve as a drug store, but also as a convenience store, a grocery store, and in some places, even as a liquor store. With so many revenue channels, there were a number of ways in which the company could grow.

For example, in an effort to expand it could have worked to more directly compete with Walmart, which also offers in-store pharmacies. Or it could have gone after the eCommerce giant, Amazon, which acquired PillPack and entered the pharmaceutical space with its own online pharmacy.

But in a wise–and evidently strategic–decision, it opted to expand in terms of depth. In other words, rather than continuing to be a jack of all trades, it will focus on being the master of easily accessible healthcare And to make strides towards this decision that reinforces its mission, it’s stepping away from offering the breadth of its current offerings. After all, cigarettes and scratch tickets aren’t exactly synonymous with health. source

Biden Admin is Forcing Every City/Town to be an Illegal Sanctuary

Posted on November 22, 2021November 22, 2021 by Denise Simon

Where is the compliance to law on this?

Flying into the United States from any foreign country, passengers even though vaccinated with validated proof still go through extreme procedures due to Covid including additional testing, including American citizens returning home. Yet….walking across the Southern border requires….NOTHING. NOTHING. NOTHING.

According to CDC requirements, all air passengers two years of age or older traveling internationally, regardless of vaccination status, must provide a negative test to the airline before boarding the flight.

Passengers fully vaccinated must provide a negative test no more than three days before the flight’s departure from a foreign country, in addition to showing proof of vaccination.

Passengers over two years of age not fully vaccinated must provide a negative test no more than one day before the flight’s departure. Except in the limited circumstances allowed by CDC, unvaccinated travelers will be US citizens and legal permanent residents.

Those who recently recovered from COVID-19 may travel with documentation of recovery and a letter from a licensed healthcare provider or public health official indicating the patient is cleared for travel.

However, it was just a few months ago that a Federal judge blocked portions of Florida law passed in 2019 preventing the entire state of Florida from being a sanctuary state.

A federal judge in Miami on Tuesday blocked Florida from enforcing a ban on so-called sanctuary cities, declaring portions of a law unconstitutional and tinged with “discriminatory motives.”

The judge’s ruling struck down a key portion of the 2019 law that prohibits local and state officials from adopting “sanctuary” policies for undocumented migrants, a main focus for Gov. Ron DeSantis, who vowed to ban “sanctuary cities” in Florida when running for governor in 2018 even though there were none in the state.

The judge also blocked the state from enforcing a provision in the law that requires law enforcementofficers and agencies to “use best efforts to support the enforcement of federal immigration law” when they are acting within their official duties. But the court allowed other provisions to stand, including one that required state and local law enforcement agencies to comply with immigration detainers — federal requests to hold undocumented immigrants past their release dates so that immigration agents can pick them up. The entire ruling is found here.

So, the Biden administration is taking advantage of this ruling by flying into the State of Florida, secretly and without any warning, several dozens flights full of illegal immigrants. Frankly, Governor De Santis should revoke all landing rights to DHS chartered flights…but read more….

TSA screeners face vaccine deadline with up to 40 percent lacking shots - The Boston Globe Policies and procedures are NOT law by the way…

Under a new policy, federal immigration law enforcement is now largely prohibited from arresting criminal aliens in your neighborhood if you live near a playground, a recreation center, a school, a place of worship or religious study, a location that offers vaccinations (such as a pharmacy), a community-based organization, any location that hosts weddings (such as a civic center, hotel, or park), any location with a school bus stop, any place “where children gather,” and many more places that are common to most towns.

What used to be safe spaces for law-abiding Americans and vulnerable members of society have been transformed into safe spaces for violent offenders with no right to be in the United States.

The scope is virtually limitless and prohibits all of the authorities of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), such as “arrests, civil apprehensions, searches, inspections, seizures, service of charging documents or subpoenas, interviews, and immigration enforcement surveillance.”

Officers are prohibited from doing their job anywhere “near” a so-called “protected area,” an imprecise standard that Alejandro Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), admits has “no bright-line definition.” Mayorkas, who outlined the new policy last month, claims that putting a sanctuary in every community is a “noble” way to “advance our country’s well-being” and ensure that illegal aliens have access to “essential services” and can engage in “essential activities.”

ICE already had a sensitive locations policy that largely prohibited enforcement in religious institutions, at weddings, at hospitals, and at marked school bus stops when children are present, for example. The Biden administration’s new “protected areas” policy is meant to look similar, but it’s an overbroad, nationwide sanctuary policy in disguise and applies to locations that aren’t even open.

Because it “applies at all times and is not limited by hours or days of operation,” this means that ICE officers are now prohibited from making arrests or even conducting surveillance near any location where a wedding might occur even if a wedding isn’t occurring, or near any location that has an unmarked school bus stop in the middle of summer when school is out, or near a recreation center that’s closed for the winter, for example. When you plot out on a map the locations that are now no-go zones for federal law enforcement, it becomes clear that the real intent of this policy is to transform huge portions of our communities into safe havens for criminal aliens.

Biden’s DHS explains that the limitations don’t apply where there’s an “imminent” risk of harm or a “hot pursuit,” but those are rare circumstances. It means that officers are prohibited from arresting a known child abuser on the same street as a playground unless they observe the alien starting to victimize someone. Of course, officers are prohibited from conducting surveillance near playgrounds anyhow, so officers likely wouldn’t be present to stop an assault from happening.

The Biden administration has already limited which illegal aliens can be arrested; most foreigners who violate our immigration laws, including most criminal aliens, are currently allowed to run free. But even for those violent offenders the Biden administration claims to support arresting, the ability of ICE officers to make a targeted arrest (which often requires surveillance in order to confirm whether a target is at a location) has been dramatically curtailed by this policy. Public safety has taken a backseat to illegal alien advocacy.

To those who live in a neighborhood near a church, a school, a playground, or near any of the dozens of other locations implicated by this policy: Biden’s political appointees have decided that you and your family don’t deserve the protection you once had, and that shielding criminal aliens from the law is the top priority. source

SecDef and SecState Announce they have no Clue What Russia is Doing

Posted on November 22, 2021November 22, 2021 by Denise Simon

That is a pathetic condition by our agency secretaries and that means the National Security Council at the White House along with the president himself have no clue, hence no policy. What is the problem with Russia you ask?

Not in order of priority.

Early on November 15 astronauts aboard the International Space Station received an unexpected directive: Seek shelter in your docked spacecraft in case of a catastrophic collision. The station was about to pass through a freshly created cloud of orbital debris that posed a significant risk to the seven space travelers on board.

Four NASA astronauts, who had arrived just last week retreated, to their SpaceX Dragon capsule, while Russia’s two cosmonauts and another NASA astronaut took cover in their Soyuz spacecraft. They stayed inside these orbital lifeboats for about two hours, then repeated the exercise roughly 90 minutes later, as the station again passed through the new debris cloud. NASA has since canceled a handful of planned activities, warning that the schedule would be in flux.

“It’s a crazy way to start a mission,” mission control told the crew during a briefing.

The U.S. State Department later confirmed that the debris endangering the space station was produced when Russia tested an anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon and intentionally destroyed one of its own defunct satellites. The impact left behind hundreds of thousands of debris objects that now pose a risk to the ISS crew and other satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO).

“Even though we know they have this capability, we were shocked that they chose to test it as they did,” says Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The test shredded a satellite whose orbit intersects with the path of the ISS, putting the humans on board, including Russian cosmonauts, at risk.

“The things rumbling around my mind are: Why now? What is this tied to? What message are they trying to send? And why that specific satellite?” she says.

The Russian defense ministry has since released a statement confirming the test but denying any risk to the space station: “The U.S. knows for certain that the resulting fragments, in terms of test time and orbital parameters, did not and will not pose a threat to orbital stations, spacecraft and space activities.” more details

Russia has more than 92,000 troops amassed around Ukraine’s borders and is preparing for an attack by the end of January or beginning of February, the head of Ukraine’s defense intelligence agency told Military Times.

Such an attack would likely involve airstrikes, artillery and armor attacks followed by airborne assaults in the east, amphibious assaults in Odessa and Mariupul and a smaller incursion through neighboring Belarus, Ukraine Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told Military Times Saturday morning in an exclusive interview.

Russia’s large-scale Zapad 21 military exercise earlier this year proved, for instance, that they can drop upwards of 3,500 airborne and special operations troops at once, he said.

The attack Russia is preparing, said Budanov, would be far more devastating than anything before seen in the conflict that began in 2014 that has seen some 14,000 Ukrainians killed. source

The Ukraine military’s assessment of a how a potential attack by Russia would play out shows the country ringed by Russian battalion tactical groups, or BTGs. (Courtesy of Ukraine military)

HALIFAX, Nova Scotia — A top Space Force official admitted on Saturday that the U.S. has “catching up to do very quickly” to match Beijing’s hypersonic capability, one week after China successfully launched a missile that circled the globe before striking a target.

Russia also launched a hypersonic missile from a warship in the Arctic this week, underscoring how quickly Washington, D.C.’s two primary competitors are racing ahead in this technology.

“We’re not as advanced as the Chinese or the Russians in terms of hypersonic programs,” Gen. David Thompson, vice chief of space operations, said during his appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum.

Hypersonic missiles fly at least five times the speed of sound, but their ability to glide on the atmosphere while changing direction at such a high speed makes them virtually impossible — with existing radars — to track and destroy.

While the Pentagon has pushed the development of new hypersonic missiles, the Army isn’t slated to field its first missile until 2024. The Navy is aiming to put its own version of the missile on a destroyer in 2025 and on Virginia-class submarines in 2028.

“It should be no surprise to anyone that China is developing capabilities that would be viewed negatively by like minded allies and partners,” Adm. John Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, told a small group of reporters on the sideline of the event.

The Space Force is working to “figure out the type of satellite constellation that we need” to track these missiles, Thompson told POLITICO after his public remarks. “It’s a new challenge, but it’s not that we don’t have an answer to this challenge. We just have to understand it, fully design it, and fly it.”

While there’s no timeline for when these new satellites can get into orbit, “we’re evolving our approach and our timelines rapidly,” Thompson said.

Both Thompson and Aquilino expressed concerns for how the often slow and risk-averse acquisition process is affecting the military competition from under the sea and into space.

“The bureaucracy that we’ve built into our defense and acquisition enterprise, not just in space but in other areas, has slowed us down in many areas,” Thompson said. “The fact that we have not needed to move quickly for a couple of decades — in the sense of a strategic competitor with these capabilities — has not driven us or required us to move quickly.” In this photo taken from a video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Oct. 7, 2020, Russian Zircon hypersonic cruise missile is launched. Washington, D.C.’s two primary competitors, China and Russia, are racing ahead in this technology. | Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP

The Russian Air Force is training Syrian MiG-29 pilots in air-to-air training, the Russian Ministry of Defence’s Zvezda TV channel reported on 15 November.

“An important stage in the training of any pilot is the launch of guided air-to-air missiles,” Zvezda quoted Maxim Aleksanin, a Russian squadron commander, as saying. “For the first time, Syrian pilots used R-73 guided missiles from MiG-29 aircraft. In the future, we plan to improve the tactics of conducting close and long-range air combat in order to prevent provocations in the skies of Syria, as well as near its borders.”

The video that accompanied the report showed two Syrian MiG-29s (3431 and 3436) being prepared and taking off with R-73 missiles, although not launching them, and at least one was shown carrying a missile as it landed.