Australia, Japan, and U.S. Counter Beijing Aggression with Navy Drills in South China Sea

Naval assets from Australia, Japan, and the U.S. will meet in the South China Sea this week, gathering off the western Philippines to highlight their commitment to the rule of international law in the region after a recent show of Chinese aggression in the disputed waters, Filipino security officials said Sunday.

Chinese coast guard ships recently used water cannon against Philippine vessels in the contested waterway where disputes have long been regarded as a potential flashpoint and have become a fault line in the rivalry between the U.S. and China in the region.

HIGH-STAKES WATER GUN FIGHT! China Warship Fires Water Cannon at Philippine Coast Guard Vessel

The drill will include three aircraft and helicopter carriers sailing together in a show of force and undertaking joint drills, AP reports.

Their commanders are set to meet with Filipino counterparts in Manila after the offshore drills, two Philippine security officials told the outlet, as China shows no sign of stopping its relentless push to colonise the area as part of its imperialistic ambitions.

This is despite Beijing having its claim to “territorial sovereignty and marine rights” to almost the entire region categorically rejected in 2016 by an international tribunal in The Hague.

The U.S. plans to deploy an aircraft carrier, the USS America, while Japan would send one of its biggest warships, the helicopter carrier JS Izumo. The Royal Australian Navy would send its HMAS Canberra, which also carries helicopters, one of the two officials said, adding the joint drill was planned a few months ago.

The Philippines would not be part of this week’s drills due to military logistical limitations but is open to becoming a participant in the future, the official said.

The move comes at the same time the Biden administration is building naval forces in the Middle East across the disputed Strait of Hormuz in a bid to counter aggression from Iran.

As Breitbart News reported, U.S. warships have moved to the area while the Pentagon considers offering armed sailors and U.S. Marines to commercial ships transiting the key strait in an attempt to foil any plans by Tehran to stop, board, and seize ships in international waters as they pass through the key seaway.

https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2023/08/20/australia-japan-and-u-s-counter-beijing-aggression-with-navy-drills-in-south-china-sea/

Spanish Official Admits Arson the Cause for Tenerife Wildfires Despite ‘Climate Crisis’ Media Narrative

The wildfires that have ravaged the Spanish tourist island of Tenerife were a result of arson, a local official has admitted despite the persistent media narratives blaming climate change for the fires.

On Sunday, Canary Islands regional President Fernando Clavijo confirmed that the wildfires on the island of Tenerife were started deliberately, adding that police currently have three open investigations to apprehend the arsonist or arsonists involved in setting the fires.

“They not only endanger their lives but also those of the people who have to rescue them,” Clavijo is quoted as saying by el Diario.

According to Tenerife governor Rosa Dávila, some 12,000 people have been evacuated from their homes and hotels since the fire broke out on Tuesday. As of Saturday, over 8,000 hectares (20,000 acres) of forest have been burned on the island, however, this figure is likely to have increased by Sunday, Dávila said.

Thankfully, no one has been injured as a result of the man-made fires, and firefighters have so far successfully prevented the fires from burning any houses, though the fires are continuing to threaten to spread to 11 towns.

Despite the admission of arson, the supposedly politically-neutral Associated Press news wire service highlighted the supposed role of climate change in the fires, claiming — without providing evidence — that the droughts experienced over the past few years on the Canary Islands were a result of “changing weather patterns impacted by climate change.”

The fires in Tenerife are far from the only to be suspected as a result of arson, with Greek Climate Change Minister Vassilis Kikilias admitting last month that the majority of wildfires seen across the country this summer “were caused by human hand”.

In nearby Italy, police drone footage taken in the Calabria region last month showed a man apparently attempting to spark a wildfire. In an effort to combat the scourge of arsonists, the local governor established a special task force, including a fleet of police drones to patrol for people starting fires intentionally.

Greek newspaper Kathimerini has previously noted that laws surrounding arson may be failing to act as a deterrent, given that most arsonists are tried with “negligence” because it is difficult to prove that the fires were started intentionally.

Therefore, in Greece, the paper said, arsonists “tend to get away with small sentences, rarely serve any prison time and face no other penalty for the terrible destruction they cause.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/08/20/spanish-official-admits-arson-the-cause-for-tenerife-wildfires-despite-climate-crisis-media-narrative/

Zelensky Claims Netherlands to Send Entire Fleet of F-16 Fighter Jets After Meeting with Dutch PM

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksy has claimed that the Netherlands will send all 42 of its F-16 fighter jets after he met with outgoing Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Sunday.

In his second visit to the Netherlands since the Russian invasion last year, Mr Zelensky toured a military airbase in Eindhoven on Sunday morning, where globalist lame-duck Prime Minister Mark Rutte showed off his fleet of F-16 fighter jets, which have been cleared by the Biden administration to be sent into battle in Ukraine, with Washington having final say over where they are deployed given that they are made in the United States.

Following the meeting, Zelensky posted on social media: “Today, we took another step to strengthen Ukraine’s air shield. F-16s. These jets will be used to keep Russian terrorists away from Ukrainian cities and towns.

“Prime Minister Mark Rutte and I reached an agreement on the number of F-16s to be transferred to Ukraine once our pilots and engineers have completed their training. 42 jets. And this is just the beginning. Thank you, Netherlands!”

However, despite Zelensky’s proclamation, the Dutch Ministry of Defence has so far refused to confirm exactly how many F-16s it would be sending to Kyiv, with 42 representing the country’s entire stock of the American-made jets.

The Dutch government has also refrained from giving a specific timeline as to when the warplanes will be delivered, explaining that such a determination will need to wait until there are enough Ukrainian pilots properly trained on how to operate them, according to public broadcaster NOS.

Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who is currently serving in a caretaker role until the autumn elections, was also far more ambiguous than his Ukranian counterpart, saying: “We need some of them to help with training in Denmark and soon also in Romania. We’re going to see if we can supply the rest of the devices, but we don’t yet know exactly how many we can deliver.”

In July, a Western coalition of Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom pledged to help train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s.

President Zelensky has a history of putting the cart before the horse when it comes to the supply of Western fighter jets, with the Ukrainian leader using his address to the British parliament in February to thank the United Kingdom “in advance” for providing the country with warplanes before any announcement was made by London.

Following his visit to the Netherlands, Zelensky also travelled to Denmark on Sunday, where he said he would also be discussing the issue of F-16s with Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen. The pair were both pictured sitting inside the cockpit of one of Demmark’s F-16s. Frederiksen said that Denmark is prepared to send 19 of the jets to Ukraine.

In May, President Joe Biden said that the Ukrainian president had provided him “flat assurance” that F-16 jets would not be used to attack the Russian mainland for fear of expanding the proxy war in Eastern Europe into a wider conflict.

However, it is unclear how the Kremlin will respond if American-made jets are used to attack territories Moscow currently controls in Ukraine and indeed considers its own, such as in the Donbas or the Crimean Peninsula, which Vladimir Putin annexed in 2014.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/08/20/zelensky-claims-netherlands-to-send-entire-fleet-of-f-16-fighter-jets-after-meeting-with-dutch-pm/

Pentagon facing ammunition crisis – WaPo

A shortage of raw materials has left the US scrambling to restock its arsenal as the Ukraine conflict drags on

The US Department of Defense is having trouble keeping up with the demands of the Ukraine conflict, the Washington Post reported on Saturday, warning that failure to sustain current production levels could jeopardize security on the home front.

US military contractors are soon expected to double the rate of standard NATO artillery round production recorded prior to the current phase of the conflict. However, even churning out 28,000 shells per month is insufficient to satisfy what the outlet called “Ukraine’s astonishing hunger for artillery ammunition,” let alone shore up depleted reserves at home.

A shortage of raw materials – particularly the explosive TNT, which the US no longer produces – has hampered the Pentagon’s efforts to restock its own arsenal, which has been severely depleted by its support for Ukraine. Washington currently obtains much of its TNT from Poland but has been searching for new suppliers, including in Japan, after losing production partner Zarya when the region where the factory was located voted to become part of Russia in last year’s referendum.

Limited supplies of the propellant used to move artillery shells through gun barrels are also hampering defense contractors’ production capabilities, according to Czech propellant charge manufacturer Explosia. Spokesman Martin Vencl told the Post that the raw materials required to make propellant, including nitroglycerin and nitrocellulose, are in short supply.

Bureaucratic hurdles also mean that just 40.8% of the Pentagon’s $44.5 billion in Ukraine-related production contracts have been finalized, according to the Post. An industry expert from the Center for Strategic and International Studies defended the figure as better-than-usual performance, as concluding a major defense contract normally takes as long as 16 months.

An unnamed Pentagon official suggested that the solution to avoiding future shortages was to maintain “consistent high demand” for ammunition. The Pentagon should “continue to procure at that level over a longer period of time so that we have not just healthy stocks, but a healthy production and industrial base that’s able to meet them,” the person told the Post. The Pentagon hopes to increase output to 1 million shells per year by the fall of 2025.

“One of the lessons learned out of the Ukrainian experience is we need to go back and revisit those minimum standards [for ammunition stocks]. And we may have underestimated,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth told reporters last month.

US President Joe Biden requested another $20.6 billion for Ukraine from Congress last week, even as officials began to quietly admit that Kiev’s counteroffensive has been a failure. The much-hyped initiative, which has retaken just a handful of villages since June, has cost Ukraine 43,000 troops and nearly 5,000 pieces of equipment, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.

https://www.rt.com/news/581547-pentagon-struggles-ammunition-ukraine-materials/

Russian Spacecraft Crashes Into Moon After Reporting ‘Abnormal Situation’

MOSCOW (AP) – The Russian space agency says its Luna-25 spacecraft has crashed into the moon.

Russia’s unmanned robot lander crashed after it had spun into uncontrolled orbit, the country’s space agency Roscosmos reported.

The launch earlier this month was Russia’s first since 1976 when it was part of the Soviet Union. The crash comes after Roscosmos reported an “abnormal situation” that its specialists were analyzing on Saturday.

“During the operation, an abnormal situation occurred on board the automatic station, which did not allow the maneuver to be performed with the specified parameters,” Roscosmos said in a Telegram post.

The spacecraft was scheduled to land on the south pole of the moon on Monday, racing to land on Earth’s satellite ahead of an Indian spacecraft.

The lunar south pole is of particular interest to scientists, who believe the permanently shadowed polar craters may contain water. The frozen water in the rocks could be transformed by future explorers into air and rocket fuel.

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/08/20/russian-spacecraft-crashes-into-moon-after-reporting-abnormal-situation/

Jim Jordan Subpoenas Citibank for Alleged ‘Back Channel’ Sharing of Customer Data with FBI in Jan. 6 Probe

Citibank was subpoenaed Thursday by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan after the company refused to cooperate with the committee’s investigation into whether or not financial institutions illegally shared Americans’ private data with the FBI.

The Judiciary Committee, as explained in the August 17 letter, seeks to discover the “extent to which financial institutions, including Citibank, may have shared customer information with federal law enforcement despite the customers having no individualized nexus to criminal conduct.”

The alleged data sharing primarily consisted of transactions made in the Washington, D.C., area, near the time of the January 6 Capitol incursion.

“The Committee and Select Subcommittee have obtained evidence showing that at least one major financial institution provided the FBI with private financial data without legal process,” the fiery Republican from Ohio wrote in announcing the subpoena.

“As first noted in our June 12 letter, testimony from current and former FBI officials shows that Bank of America (BoA) provided the FBI—voluntarily and without any legal process—with a list of individuals who made transactions in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area with a BoA credit or debit card between January 5 and January 7, 2021.”

Individuals with a firearms purchase on their bank records were elevated to the top of that list, “regardless of the time or place of the firearm purchase,” Rep. Jordan said.

Further, documents obtained by the committee reportedly show that the FBI “supplied BoA with specific search query terms” to identify BoA customers “who had made ‘ANY historical purchase’ of a firearm, or that had purchased a hotel, Airbnb, or airline travel within a given date range.”

This data, according to The Hill, could have been used to track the travel of individuals suspected of rioting at the Capitol.

“Given this concerning testimony, the Committee has written to other major financial institutions, including Citibank, to determine whether those entities were involved in similar conduct,” the letter read.

The institutions previously contacted by the committee included Bank of America, Citibank, J.P. Morgan, PNC, Truist, U.S. Bank and Wells Fargo, The Hill reported.

Of these, Citibank is the only one that has chosen not to comply with the Judiciary Committee’s investigation, The Hill reported.

As the letter noted: “On June 12, 2023, we requested your voluntary cooperation with our oversight to determine the extent to which financial institutions, such as Citibank, have worked with the FBI to collect Americans’ financial data.”

“To date, Citibank has declined to comply with our request voluntarily, and counsel has represented that it will only comply pursuant to a subpoena.”

Citibank is implicated in this investigation since a representative from their company was “included on emails and Zoom discussions organized by the FBI and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network,” Jordan wrote.

These discussions “focused on ‘identifying the best approach to information sharing, both strategic and operational,’ in the wake of the events of January 6,” the letter said.

Jordan continued, condemning the FBI’s “alarming” use of “back-channel discussions with financial institutions.”

“The Committee and Select Subcommittee must understand how and to what extent financial institutions, such as Citibank, worked with the FBI—and potentially other executive branch entities—to collect Americans’ data without an individualized nexus to criminal conduct,” the letter read.

Jordan also sent out another set of subpoenas on Thursday to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and FBI Director Christopher Wray, alleging the FBI and DOJ together “pressured and colluded with Big Tech and other intermediaries to censor certain viewpoints” in direct violation of the First Amendment.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/jim-jordan-subpoenas-citibank-alleged-back-channel-sharing/

>>19394649

Hi Nig?

Biden rival labels F-16s for Ukraine ‘a disaster for humanity’

Supplying US-made fighter jets to Kiev would only benefit the defense industry, RFK Jr. says

The looming delivery of US-made F-16 fighter jets to Ukraine will not prevent the “collapse” of the country’s military and will only benefit the military-industrial complex, Democrat presidential hopeful Robert F. Kennedy Junior has claimed.

The Ukrainian conflict should be resolved through negotiations, RFK Jr. argued in a thread on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), stating that supplying F-16s to Kiev was a “great decision for the defense industry, but a disaster for Ukraine and humanity.”

“F-16s won’t stop the collapse of the Ukrainian military (which some experts say is imminent). These planes require a lot of training and maintenance. This isn’t the movies,” Kennedy stressed.

The presidential hopeful has long-opposed the enduring Western aid to Ukraine, spearheaded by Washington, arguing that the US should admit its “failure” in the country and focus on domestic issues instead. Kennedy’s criticism of the fighter-jet delivery comes after Washington enabled its European allies to re-export older planes to Ukraine, and hours before the move was officially announced by Denmark and the Netherlands.

The upcoming delivery was heralded by Dutch PM Mark Rutte on Sunday as he hosted Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky at a military airbase in Eindhoven.

“Today we can announce that the Netherlands and Denmark commit to the transfer of F-16 aircraft to Ukraine and the Ukrainian Air Force, including cooperation with the United States and other partners once the conditions for such a transfer have been met,” Rutte said at a press conference.

Simultaneously, the Danish Ministry of Defence released a statement confirming its pledge to provide Kiev with F-16s from its inventory, once certain “conditions” are met. The conditions “include, but are not limited to, successfully selected, tested and trained Ukrainian F-16 personnel as well as necessary authorizations, infrastructure and logistics,” it said.

Kiev has long-demanded modern aircraft, as well as other, increasingly sophisticated weaponry, from its Western backers, arguing the planes would help it turn the tide of the conflict with Russia, which has been going on since February 2022. Moscow has repeatedly urged the collective West to stop the military deliveries, arguing they would only prolong the hostilities rather than change their ultimate outcome.

https://www.rt.com/news/581543-kennedy-ukraine-f16-delivery/

>>19394681

tyb or n

o7

>>19394686

Go collect the rest of the notes.

>>19394713

What's wrong with talking big to a big man?

>>19394717

I just think of them as inedible potatoes.

>>19394724

ty

>>19394738

Jesus' tomb is in Japan?

Kirisuto no haka

Alleged tomb of Jesus in Shingo Village

Main article: Shingō, Aomori § Local attractions

Shingō village in Japan contains another location of what is purported to be the last resting place of Jesus, the so-called "Tomb of Jesus" (Kirisuto no haka), and the residence of Jesus' last descendants, the family of Sajiro Sawaguchi.[18] According to the Sawaguchi family's claims, Jesus Christ did not die on the cross at Golgotha. Instead his brother, Isukiri,[19] took his place on the cross, while Jesus fled across Siberia to Mutsu Province, in northern Japan. Once in Japan, he changed his name to Torai Tora Daitenku, became a rice farmer, married a twenty-year old Japanese woman named Miyuko, and raised three daughters near what is now Shingō. While in Japan, it is asserted that he traveled, learned, and eventually died at the age of 106. His body was exposed on a hilltop for four years. According to the customs of the time, Jesus' bones were collected, bundled, and buried in the mound purported to be the grave of Jesus Christ.[20][21]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomb_of_Jesus

>>19394752

Frequently heard today church statement.

>>19394748

I understand that you want to close your eyes to anything inconvenient.

>>19394767

?

>>19394767

Who the hell are you?

An angel?

>>19394778

^

>>19394761

>>19394767

^

>>19394761

>>19394798

ty

o7