Category Archives: Trump Administration

DNC Platform Mentions ‘whites’ 15 times, all Damning

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Just being born white appears to be a basis for ridicule and shaming. Imagine that.

The draft 2020 Democratic National Committee platform being circulated in Washington aims to reinforce the view that liberals are best situated to battle for minorities seeking higher wages, better housing and jobs, and more money for schools.

With the August convention coming on the heels of the Black Lives Matter protests, it features support for the movement and an expanded pledge to root out racism.

The preamble says, “We will give hate no safe harbor. We will never amplify or legitimize the voices of bigotry, racism, misogyny, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or white supremacy.”

In promising change, it sets up one group that has it too good and is holding minorities back: whites.

In more than 80 pages in the draft platform published by Politico, whites are mentioned 15 times, all critical, including three references to white supremacy or supremacists and one to white nationalists. The document doesn’t capitalize white as it does Black, Latinos, Asian Americans, and Native Americans.

In most mentions, the reference is to how whites are better off at the expense of others. And the promise often is to “close the gap” between minorities and whites, though no solutions are offered.

While the nation elected its first black president in 2008, racial issues still rage, and that is a huge factor in former Vice President Joe Biden’s consideration of a running mate in time for the Democratic National Convention, where the platform will be confirmed.

As part of the preamble to the DNC 2020 draft:

Democrats will fight to repair the soul of this nation. To unite and to heal our country. To turn this crisis into a crucible, from which we will forge a stronger, brighter, and more equitable future. We must right the wrongs in our democracy, redress the systemic injustices that have long plagued our society, throw open the doors of opportunity for all Americans, and reinvent our institutions at home and our leadership abroad. We do not simply aspire to return our country to where we were four years ago. We know we must be bolder and more ambitious. We must once again stop another Republican recession from becoming a second Great Depression. President Trump and the Republican Party have rigged the economy in favor of the wealthiest few and the biggest corporations, and left working families and small businesses out in the cold. Democrats will forge a new social and economic contract with the American 1people—a contract that creates millions of new jobs and promotes shared prosperity, closes racial gaps in income and wealth, guarantees the right to join or form a union, raises wages and ensures equal pay for women and paid family leave for all, and safeguards a secure and dignified retirement.

The full draft text is found here.

A sample of how this ‘whiteness’ thing has spread around the nation, enter Rutgers University. Without much press….

Rutgers University: Acceptance Rate, SAT/ACT Scores, GPA source

H/T: The College Fix has uncovered a fascinating change in programming plans for the English Department and Writing Center at Rutgers. You see, teaching all of the rules of grammar, sentence structure and where to put the nouns, verbs and adjectives is apparently insensitive. To whom, you might ask? Well, the title of the memo detailing all of the proposed changes is, “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter.”

Titled “Department actions in solidarity with Black Lives Matter,” the email states that the ongoing and future initiatives that the English Department has planned are a “way to contribute to the eradication of systemic inequities facing black, indigenous, and people of color.”

One of the initiatives is described as “incorporating ‘critical grammar’ into our pedagogy.”

It is listed as one of the efforts for Rutgers’ Graduate Writing Program, which “serves graduate students across the Rutgers community.

***

This should be added to yet another item that also too got almost no press and that is the Smithsonian Museum. There is a unique separate wing called National Museum of African American History and Culture. It is not only funded by private donations of which Oprah Winfrey is a top donor with more than $30 million but Congress also provided funding. Why is this a big deal you ask?

National Museum of African American History & Culture | NMAAHC

There is a specific portal and ‘whiteness’ here too is a political target.

Phase one of the portal features eight foundational subjects including:

  • Being Anti-Racist: a conscious decision to make frequent, consistent, equitable choices daily.
  • Bias: the inclination or prejudice toward or against something or someone.
  • Community Building: connecting and engaging with others doing anti-racism work and exploring issues of race.
  • Historical Foundations of Race: how race, white privilege, and anti-blackness are woven into the very fabric of American society.
  • Race and Racial Identity: how societies use race to establish and justify systems of power, privilege, disenfranchisement, and oppression.
  • Self-Care: caring for one’s mental, emotional, and physical health to sustain the work of dismantling racism.
  • Social Identities and Systems of Oppression: systems built around the ideology that some groups are superior to others.
  • Whiteness: an ideology that reinforces power at the expense of others.

 

Obama Admin Ok’d China Huge Investments in US, Security Threats

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In recent months, perhaps years, we have witnessed how China is a major threat to our national security. What we don’t know is the depth and width of that threat matrix but the Trump administration is for sure addressing the issues as fast as they can.

China says US orders it to close its consulate in Houston ... source

The theft by the Chinese Communist Party of intellectual property appears to have no limit and hence the cost cannot be determined either. Below are just a few items of interest that prove the points above.

  1. (Reuters) – The U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday indicted two Chinese nationals over their role in what the agency called a decade-long cyber espionage campaign that targeted defense contractors, COVID researchers and hundreds of other victims worldwide. U.S. authorities said Li Xiaoyu and Dong Jiazhi stole terabytes of weapons designs, drug information, software source code, and personal data from targets that included dissidents and Chinese opposition figures. They were contractors for the Chinese government, rather than full-fledged spies, U.S. officials said. An unnamed “UK artificial intelligence and cancer research firm” was on the list of 25 victims released by the US Department of Justice
  2. The United States ordered the Chinese government and diplomatic staff to shutter the Chinese consulate located in Houston and to leave the country in 72 hours. In a Tweet by Senator Marco Rubio:“# The Chinese Consulate in Houston is a massive spy center, forcing it to close is long overdue,” he said, describing it as a “central node” of the Chinese Communist Party’s spy operations. .“It had to happen,” he tweeted. (locals called the fire department to report a fire at that location, but upon arrival found they could not enter sovereign land and it was merely Chinese personnel burning documents) A firetruck is positioned outside the Chinese Consulate Wednesday, July 22, 2020, in Houston. Authorities responded to reports of a fire at the consulate. Witnesses said that people were burning paper in what appeared to be trash cans, according to police. China says the U.S. has ordered it to close its consulate in Houston in what it called a provocation that violates international law. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) source

    Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said during a news conference Wednesday that “the unilateral closure of China’s consulate general in Houston within a short period of time is an unprecedented escalation of its recent actions against China.”

    He warned of firm countermeasures if the U.S. does not reverse itself. Besides its embassy in Beijing, the U.S. has five consulates in mainland China, according to its website. They are in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuhan and Shenyang.

  3.  In 2015, Chinese company acquired a Texas oil fields in $1.3 billion deal where Yantai Xinchao acquire oil assets in the western Texas Permian Basin that are currently owned by Tall City Exploration and Plymouth Petroleum. The deal is part of a larger transaction between Yantai Xinchao and a second Chinese firm. The purchase, which includes oil fields in the state’s Howard and Borden counties, has already been approved by the U.S. Committee on Foreign Investment, the filing said.
  4. China (CNOOC) has increasingly been looking to the Americas for raw materials it needs to sustain the boom. As private investment dwindled with the global financial crisis, the cash-flush Chinese went on a regional shopping spree. Noted in 2018: — Goldman Sachs (GS) said it would create a $5 billion fund with China Investment Corporation, the country’s sovereign wealth fund, to invest in US companies.
    — Qualcomm (QCOM) signed $12 billion in non-binding deals to supply semiconductors to Chinese smartphone brands Xiaomi, Oppo and Vivo.
    —Sinopec (SHI), China’s state-owned oil and gas company, said it would explore an investment of up to $43 billion in Alaska’s energy sector.
    — China Energy Investment Corp., which is also state-owned, signed a non-binding agreement with the state of West Virginia to invest nearly $84 billion in shale gas and chemical manufacturing projects.
    — Boeing (BA) announced that it would sell about $37 billion worth of planes to a government holding company that buys jets for state-owned carriers such as Air China and China Southern Airlines.
  5. Perhaps worst of all is Nike and Apple.               Why? Slave labor known as Uighars. Per the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in part:The Chinese government has facilitated the mass transfer of Uyghur and other ethnic minority1 citizens from the far west region of Xinjiang to factories across the country. Under conditions that strongly suggest forced labour, Uyghurs are working in factories that are in the supply chains of at least 83 well-known global brands in the technology, clothing and automotive sectors, including Apple, BMW, Gap, Huawei, Nike, Samsung, Sony and Volkswagen.This report estimates that more than 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang to work in factories across China between 2017 and 2019, and some of them were sent directly from detention camps.2 The estimated figure is conservative and the actual figure is likely to be far higher. In factories far away from home, they typically live in segregated dormitories,3 undergo organised Mandarin and ideological training outside working hours,4 are subject to constant surveillance, and are forbidden from participating in religious observances.5 Numerous sources, including government documents, show that transferred workers are assigned minders and have limited freedom of movement.6

    (gotta wonder where former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick is now right?) –>Since 2017, more than a million Uyghurs and members of other Turkic Muslim minorities have disappeared into a vast network of ‘re-education camps’ in the far west region of Xinjiang,11 in what some experts call a systematic, government-led program of cultural genocide.12 Inside the camps, detainees are subjected to political indoctrination, forced to renounce their religion and culture and, in some instances, reportedly subjected to torture.13 In the name of combating ‘religious extremism’,14 Chinese authorities have been actively remoulding the Muslim population in the image of China’s Han ethnic majority.

    The ‘re-education’ campaign appears to be entering a new phase, as government officials now claim that all ‘trainees’ have ‘graduated’.15 There is mounting evidence that many Uyghurs are now being forced to work in factories within Xinjiang.16 This report reveals that Chinese factories outside Xinjiang are also sourcing Uyghur workers under a revived, exploitative government-led labour transfer scheme.17 Some factories appear to be using Uyghur workers sent directly from ‘re-education camps’.

    The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) has identified 27 factories in nine Chinese provinces that are using Uyghur labour transferred from Xinjiang since 2017. Those factories claim to be part of the supply chain of 83 well-known global brands.18 Between 2017 and 2019, we estimate that at least 80,000 Uyghurs were transferred out of Xinjiang and assigned to factories through labour transfer programs under a central government policy known as ‘Xinjiang Aid’ (援疆).19

They Really Mean No Marxism No Peace

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Today looks just like 1966. The founders of the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale wrote a 10 point plan that is being played out across the nation today.

Chris King's First Amendment Page: KingCast explains Huey ... Huey Newtoncranes are flying: The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the ... Bobby Seale

Frankly, the FBI Director, Christopher Wray should call back the former agents, mobilize a team and run a counter-intelligence surge for domestic gang/terror sweeps.

Three Key Things PBS Black Panther Documentary Left Out ...

For those that may not remember, here is the old plan.

What We Want Now!

  1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black Community.
  2. We want full employment for our people.
  3. We want an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black and oppressed communities.
  4. We want decent housing, fit for shelter of human beings.
  5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
  6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
  7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
  8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
  9. We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their Black Communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
  10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace.

What We Believe:

  1. We believe that Black People will not be free until we are able to determine our own destiny.
  2. We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated to give every man employment or a guaranteed income. We believe that if the White American business men will not give full employment, the means of production should be taken from the businessmen and placed in the community so that the people of the community can organize and employ all of its people and give a high standard of living.
  3. We believe that this racist government has robbed us and now we are demanding the overdue debt of forty acres and two mules. Forty acres and two mules was promised 100 years ago as redistribution for slave labor and mass murder of Black people. We will accept the payment in currency which will be distributed to our many communities: the Germans are now aiding the Jews in Israel for genocide of the Jewish people. The Germans murdered 6,000,000 Jews. The American racist has taken part in the slaughter of over 50,000,000 Black people; therefore, we feel that this is a modest demand that we make.
  4. We believe that if the White landlords will not give decent housing to our Black community, then the housing and the land should be made into cooperatives so that our community, with government aid, can build and make a decent housing for its people.
  5. We believe in an educational system that will give our people a knowledge of self. If a man does not have knowledge of himself and his position in society and the world, then he has little chance to relate to anything else.
  6. We believe that Black people should not be forced to fight in the military service to defend a racist government that does not protect us. We will not fight and kill other people of color in the world who, like Black people, are being victimized by the White racist government of America. We will protect ourselves from the force and violence of the racist police and the racist military, by whatever means necessary.
  7. We believe we can end police brutality in our Black community by organizing Black self-defense groups that are dedicated to defending our Black community from racist police oppression and brutality. The second Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives us the right to bear arms. We therefore believe that all Black people should arm themselves for self-defense.
  8. We believe that all Black people should be released from the many jails and prisons because they have not received a fair and impartial trial.
  9. We believe that the courts should follow the United States Constitution so that Black people will receive fair trials. The 14th Amendment of the U.S Constitution gives a man a right to be tried by his peers. A peer is a persons from a similar economic, social, religious, geographical, environmental, historical, and racial background. To do this the court will be forced to select a jury from the Black community from which the Black defendant came. We have been, and are being tried by all-white juries that have no understanding of “the average reasoning man” of the Black community.
  10. When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and nature’s god entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, and that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its power in such a form as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accused. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, and their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards of their future security.

In recent days, a rather scandalous matter hit the headlines dealing with the Smithsonian Museum and the National Museum of African American History and Culture shaming Whiteness. The museum has many donors including Oprah Winfrey, one of the largest donors of more than $20 million. Beyond the reverse racism of ‘whiteness’, the museum does have some access to

The Black Panther Party: Challenging Police and Promoting Social Change

showing the work and mission to be all positive. However, per the FBI Vault:

The Black Panther Party (BPP) is a black extremist organization founded in Oakland, California in 1966. It advocated the use of violence and guerilla tactics to overthrow the U.S. government. In 1969, the FBI’s Charlotte Field Office opened an investigative file on the BPP to track its militant activities, income, and expenses. The files are here.

 

Law Enforcement Surveillance of BLM/Protests Goes Tech AI

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Meet Dataminr, the leading artificial intelligence platform for real-time event and risk detection. In a world characterized by unexpected and rapidly moving events that can impact operations in innumerable and unforeseen ways, relevant information can surface anywhere at any time. Dataminr discovers, distills and delivers alerts from the increasingly diverse and complex landscape of publicly available information—including social media, blogs, information sensors, and the dark web—ensuring that businesses have the knowledge they need to act with confidence.

Build the Movement to Defeat Racism!/¡Construir un ... source

Back in January, The New York Post had a short article on how the NYPD on Monday was ordered to respond to a request for records related to its surveillance of Black Lives Matters protestors’ cell phones and social media.

The secret police documents were among a Freedom of Information Law request by the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of Millions March NYC, an activist group affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement.

But, the Glomar response kicked in. What is that? It is used often actually. It is where an agency refuses to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records. The term “Glomar” originates from a case related to the CIA’s classified Glomar Explorer project, in which the agency sought to recover materials for military and intelligence purposes from a sunken Soviet submarine in the Pacific Ocean.

George Floyd protests: Trump blames 'antifa' for violence ... source

It is not just about Black Lives Matter, add in ANTIFA, The Youth Liberation Front and Boogaloo among others, perhaps even MS-13.

Okay, circling back to Dataminr.

Leveraging close ties to Twitter, controversial artificial intelligence startup Dataminr helped law enforcement digitally monitor the protests that swept the country following the killing of George Floyd, tipping off police to social media posts with the latest whereabouts and actions of demonstrators, according to documents reviewed by The Intercept and a source with direct knowledge of the matter.

Dataminr helps newsrooms, corporations, and governments around the world track crises with superhuman speed as they unfold across social media and the wider web. Through a combination of people and software, the company alerts organizations to chatter around global crises — wars, shootings, riots, disasters, and so forth — so that they’ll have a competitive edge as news is breaking. But the meaning of that competitive edge, the supercharged ability to filter out important events from the noise of hundreds of millions of tweets and posts across social media, will vary drastically based on the customer; the agenda of a newspaper using Dataminr to inform its breaking news coverage won’t be the same as the agendas of a bank or the FBI. It’s this latter category of Dataminr’s business, lucrative government work, that’s had the firm on the defensive in recent years.

In 2016, Twitter was forced to reckon with multiple reports that its platform was being used to enable domestic surveillance, including a Wall Street Journal report on Dataminr’s collaboration with American spy agencies in May; an American Civil Liberties Union report on Geofeedia, a Dataminr competitor, in October; and another ACLU investigation into Dataminr’s federal police surveillance work in December. The company sought to assure the public that attempts to monitor its users for purposes of surveillance were strictly forbidden under its rules, and that any violators would be kicked off the platform. For example, then-VP Chris Moody wrote in a company blog post that “using Twitter’s Public APIs or data products to track or profile protesters and activists is absolutely unacceptable and prohibited.” In a letter to the ACLU, Twitter public policy chief Colin Crowell similarly wrote that “the use of Twitter data for surveillance is strictly prohibited” and that “Datatminr’s product does not provide any government customers with … any form of surveillance.”

Dataminr continues to enable what is essentially surveillance by U.S. law enforcement entities, contradicting its earlier assurances to the contrary, even if it remains within some of the narrow technical boundaries it outlined four years ago, like not providing direct firehose access, tweet geolocations, or certain access to fusion centers.

Dataminr relayed tweets and other social media content about the George Floyd and Black Lives Matter protests directly to police, apparently across the country. In so doing, it used to great effect its privileged access to Twitter data — despite current terms of service that explicitly bar software developers “from tracking, alerting, or monitoring sensitive events (such as protests, rallies, or community organizing meetings)” via Twitter.

And despite Dataminr’s claims that its law enforcement service merely “delivers breaking news alerts on emergency events, such as natural disasters, fires, explosions and shootings,” as a company spokesperson told The Intercept for a previous report, the company has facilitated the surveillance of recent protests, including nonviolent activity, siphoning vast amounts of social media data from across the web and converting it into tidy police intelligence packages.

Dataminr’s Black Lives Matter protest surveillance included persistent monitoring of social media to tip off police to the locations and activities of protests, developments within specific rallies, as well as instances of alleged “looting” and other property damage. According to the source with direct knowledge of Dataminr’s protest monitoring, the company and Twitter’s past claims that they don’t condone or enable surveillance are “bullshit,” relying on a deliberately narrowed definition. “It’s true Dataminr doesn’t specifically track protesters and activists individually, but at the request of the police they are tracking protests, and therefore protesters,” this source explained. There is much more detail here from The Intercept.

So, if law enforcement in various locations has a partnership with Dataminr, it puts to question why destructive protests of an ongoing basis continues to happen costing lives, injuries and ruining business and livelihoods. Ah that is a question for governors, mayors, prosecutors and judges but you can be assured that in many cases arrests have been made and investigators have additional tools for build cases against alleged criminals.

So, if there is to be law and order and any kind of restoration to community peace or civil society, tools such as Dataminr are valuable that is if the unlawful acts are prosecuted in the first place.

 

 

Cold War with China Escalating due to S. China Sea?

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South China Sea dispute - INSIGHTSIAS source

WSJ/HONG KONG—The U.S. plans to for­mally op­pose a swath of Chi­nese ter­ri­to­r­ial claims in the South China Sea, ac­cord­ing to peo­ple fa­mil­iar with the mat­ter, as Wash­ing­ton takes a harder line against Bei­jing’s ef­forts to as­sert con­trol over the strate­gic wa­ters.

While Wash­ing­ton has pre­vi­ously said it sees Bei­jing’s ex­pan­sive sov­er­eignty claims over most of the South China Sea as un­law­ful, the State De­part­ment is pre­paring to is­sue a po­si­tion pa­per that of­fi­cially re­jects spe­cific Chi­nese claims for the first time, the peo­ple said.

Such a ges­ture de­parts from past U.S. prac­tice of not tak­ing sides on ter­ri­to­r­ial dis­putes in the South China Sea, the peo­ple said.

The pa­per could be is­sued this week, the peo­ple said, just af­ter the fourth an­niver­sary of a 2016 rul­ing by an in­ternational tri­bunal that found no le­gal ba­sis for Bei­jing’s claims to his­toric and eco­nomic rights in most of the South China Sea.

Re­cently, the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has crit­i­cized Bei­jing for as­sert­ing “un­law­ful mar­itime claims” in the South China Sea while ramp­ing up naval op­er­a­tions to chal­lenge those claims This month, the U.S. sent two air­craft car­ri­ers to par­tic­i­pate in one of its largest naval ex­er­cises in re­cent years in the South China Sea—at the same time that China was hold­ing drills in the area.

The State De­part­ment didn’t im­me­di­ately re­spond to re­quests for com­ment.

China has re­peat­edly re­jected the rul­ing, is­sued by a tri­bunal at the Per­ma­nent Court of Ar­bi­tra­tion in The Hague fol­low­ing a le­gal chal­lenge brought by the Philip­pines in 2013. Bei­jing didn’t take part in the tri­bunal, which it has in­sisted had no ju­ris­dic­tion on the mat­ter. In­stead, China con­tin­ued ef­forts to build ar­ti­fi­cial is­lands around dis­puted South China Sea fea­tures and for­tify them with weaponry.

At the time of the rul­ing, the Obama ad­min­is­tra­tion called on rel­e­vant par­ties to re­spect it while stat­ing that the U.S. doesn’t take sides on spe­cific ter­ri­to­r­ial dis­putes in the South China Sea. Wash­ing­ton has long in­sisted that it has an in­ter­est in main­tain­ing free­dom of nav­i­ga­tion in the area.

In the pa­per, the U.S. would state that “Chi­na’s mar­itime claims pose the sin­gle great­est threat to the free­dom of the seas in mod­ern his­tory,” ac­cord­ing to a draft seen by The Wall Street Jour­nal. “We can­not af­ford to re-en­ter an era where states like China at­tempt to as­sert sov­er­eignty over the seas,” the draft said.

The U.S. re­jects a num­ber of Chi­nese claims to cer­tain ar­eas and fea­tures in the South China Sea that are also claimed by South­east Asian coun­tries, in­clud­ing Brunei, Ma­laysia, In­done­sia, the Philip­pines and Viet­nam, ac­cord­ing to the draft.

Wash­ing­ton also states its view that Chi­nese ef­forts to “ha­rass South­east Asian fish­ing or hy­dro­car­bon de­vel­op­ment, or to uni­lat­er­ally un­der­take such ac­tiv­i­ties on its own, in these ar­eas, are un­law­ful,” ac­cord­ing to the draft.

***

The U.S. is not a party of the UN Law of the Sea treaty that sets out a mechanism for the resolution of disputes. Despite that, the State Department noted that China and its neighbors, including the Philippines, are parties to the treaty and should respect the decision.

The United States has no claims to the waters but has deployed warships and aircraft for decades to patrol and promote freedom of navigation and overflight in the busy waterway.

China claims almost all of the South China Sea and routinely objects to any action by the U.S. military in the region. Five other governments claim all or part of the sea, through which approximately $5 trillion in goods are shipped every year.

China has sought to shore up its claim to the sea by building military bases on coral atolls, leading the U.S. to sail warships through the region in what it calls freedom of operation missions. More here.