Tag: china

Lawmakers Demand Answers From Costco Over Sale Of Surveillance Equipment Made Using ‘Banned Chinese Components’

Two bipartisan lawmakers are demanding answers from Costco over its decision to continue selling Chinese-manufactured security products that have been linked to human rights abuses and cybersecurity risks.

In a letter dated Oct. 31, Rep. Christopher Smith (R-N.J.) and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) questioned the retail giant’s continued sale of Lorex security products, noting the company previously had ties to China-based company Dahua, whose products are restricted in the United States by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

Lorex is a former subsidiary of camera maker Zhejiang Dahua Technology, a China-based company that was added to the U.S. trade blacklist in 2019 owing to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP’s) treatment of Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.

The U.S. Department of Commerce, in placing the company on the blacklist, said it and other entities “have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups” in China’s Xinjiang region.

Additionally, the FCC last year banned the sale of new telecommunications and surveillance equipment made by Dahua, citing an “unacceptable risk” and national security concerns.

Dahua sold Lorex earlier this year to Taiwanese-based company Skywatch for around $72 million.

However, in their letter to Costco Chief Executive W. Craig Jelinek, Mr. Smith and Mr. Merkley said Dahua still supplies all the component parts for the Lorex cameras and other surveillance equipment.

The continued sale of Lorex security equipment throughout the retailer’s stores allows Dahua to profit from the U.S. market despite its equipment being banned from U.S. government use, they argued.

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Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Vindicated – China’s Top Spy Agency Warns of “Gene Weapons’ Able to Target Specific Ethnicity or Race

In July, Robert Kennedy, Jr. took heat from the leftwing media and The New York Post after he alleged that both the U.S. and China had done research into ethnically-targeted bioweapons.

Kennedy added, “History shows that Jews, Africans, and the indigenous have the most to fear from such technologies,” he said, adding, “We must rein in all bioweapons research, whether these weapons are ethnically targeted or not. We saw what COVID did to the world when it was leaked from a laboratory.“

Kennedy made these comments after NY Post reporter Jon Levine wrote a hit piece on Kennedy after sitting next to him at “party filled with farting and beer drinking” and accused him of anti-Semitism for suggesting the COVID Pandemic hit some ethnic groups harder than others and that European Ashkenazi Jews and Asians fared better with the virus.

During the party Robert Kennedy, Jr. spoke about how scientists are now developing viruses as bioweapons. The US is sponsoring these laboratories financially. And scientists are currently working on ethnically targeted microbes. This was all true

On Tuesday, the top Spy Agency in China confirmed that “some countries” have armed themselves with deadly bioweapons targeting human genes. This was the first time a Chinese state body has mentioned such a threat publicly.

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‘He made it up’: Police say George Santos lied about Chinese communists kidnapping

During a series of phone calls with a New York Times journalist, Rep. George Santos (R-NY) claimed that his extended family was victimized by the Chinese Communist government which was behind the brief kidnapping of his niece.

According to a police official: it never happened.

In an extensive piece for the Times, journalist Grace Ashford detailed a history of receiving calls from the embattled lawmaker at all hours, where he alternately defended himself and complained about the turn his life has taken since entering Congress, one time claiming, “I literally threw my entire life into the toilet and flushed it to get elected.”

In the midst of those calls, he claimed his niece had been abducted in Queens and hinted the Chinese Communist government was possibly behind it.

According to Ashford, Santos was complaining about the threats he has faced when he confessed to her, “I’ll give you one, I’ll give you one story that nobody talks about,” she wrote before adding that he related, “… how his 5-year-old niece disappeared from a playground in Queens, only to be located 40 minutes later on a surveillance camera with two Chinese men. He said the incident was the subject of an active police investigation, implying heavily that it might have been in retaliation for his vocal stance against the Chinese Communist Party.”

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Pentagon Officials Say US Ready to Fight War with China While Supporting Ukraine and Israel

Defense Department officials said US military assets in East Asia are sufficient to confront China as the Pentagon supplies the Israeli and Ukrainian armies with weapons. One official described 2023 as a “banner year” for Washington increasing its military presence in the region surrounding China. 

On Tuesday, the Pentagon held a press conference to discuss 180 “unsafe…unprofessional… corrosive and risky” encounters between Chinese and American aircraft over the past two years. However, reporters asked the officials, Commander of Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM) Admiral John C. Aquilino and Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Dr. Ely Ratner, about the Pentagon’s ability to deter China as it arms Israel and Ukraine. 

Aquilino said that INDOPACOM has not seen any reduction in military assets available in the region, and the US was ready to win a war with China. “What I’ll tell you is I haven’t had one piece of equipment or force structure depart. The US is a global power, and that means we can deliver effects and execute our deterrence responsibilities across the globe, but I don’t think any other nation can do that at this time, but the US can,” he explained. “INDOPACOM prepares every day to ensure we execute both of the missions the Secretary gave me. Number one, to prevent conflict in the Indo-Pacific; and number two, if mission one fails, be prepared to fight and win.”

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China Censors Athlete Hug Photo for Inadvertently Showing Tiananmen Anniversary Date

A photo of two women track and field athletes embracing after a particularly contentious Asian Games event prompted widespread online censorship in China this week as a result of their assigned numbers – six and four, which together form the date of the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, June 4.

Runners Lin Yuwei, the gold medalist in the event, and Wu Yanni, who was disqualified from a silver medal over a false start, hugged each other in their national regalia and draped in the Chinese flag, creating an image of apparent unity and solidarity on China’s “National Day,” the anniversary of mass murderer Mao Zedong imposing communism on the country. The state television network CCTV shared the image in its coverage of the race on Weibo, China’s largest legal social media outlet.

By Tuesday, the photo had disappeared from state media, prompting widespread confusion among Chinese social media users over why it was censored, as China has for decades censored any mention of the Tiananmen massacre and many Chinese citizens do not know it happened.

The Chinese Communist Party never explains its censorship to the public, but regularly deletes content from social media that in any way could be interpreted as a reference to the 1989 killings, including overt references such as “Tiananmen Square” and the date of the beginning of the massacre – June 4, 1989 – but also a vast array of potentially related items such as candle emojis (used in online candlelight vigils for the dead); the numbers six, four, and 1989; and even the word “today” if typed into a Chinese government social media search engine on the anniversary. The word “tank,” potentially a reference to an iconic photo of a protester staring down a Chinese military tank holding only what appears to be a grocery bag, also faces censorship online in China, particularly as the anniversary of the event approaches.

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US To Cut Special Forces In Pivot From Mideast To ‘China Threat’ Readiness

The US military’s recruiting struggles have been no secret, having been reported widely for years, at a moment Washington hawks look for “new enemies” following two decades of the so-called global war on terror (GWOT) and the deeply unpopular ‘forever wars’ Iraq and Afghanistan. 

On Thursday The Wall Street Journal has learned that the Pentagon is set to significantly cut its fighting force among special operations units. But the controversial plan is already receiving significant pushback among top brass overseeing special warfare and training of foreign allied forces.

While special operators’ heyday was the type of counterterror operations that defined the GWOT era of elite forces, the thinking on Capitol Hill is that the future will involve potential conflicts with large powers like Russia or China. 

The Journals’ sources spell out that the cut is motivated by a shift in strategic priorities away from the Middle East and especially toward the “China threat”. 

“The Army is cutting about 3,000 troops, or about 10% from its special-operations ranks, which could include so-called trigger-pullers from the Green Beret commando units who have conducted some of the nation’s most dangerous and sensitive missions around the world, from the jungles of Vietnam to the back alleys of Baghdad,” writes the WSJ.

US military officials listed out the types of Army jobs on the chopping block as follows: psychological warfare, civil affairs, intelligence operators, communications troops, logistics and other elite support roles, with all of these related to special forces.

The report tallies that in total Special Operations Command would be reduced by about 3,700 troops since last year. But this has resulted in pushback from senior officers who argue that the training of partner forces – such as in Ukraine or Taiwan – could be negatively impacted by the cuts.

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Bloodthirsty female kingpins of nationwide sex trafficking ring circulated videos showing brutal torture of rivals

The depraved ringleaders of a Queens-based, nationwide sex-trafficking and prostitution ring with “significant” ties to “China” posed for cheery selfies hours after a victim they targeted was “viciously beaten by a rolling pin,” prosecutors said.

The doe-eyed duo —  manager Yuan Yuan Chen and her boss Rong Rong Xu —  were part of a Flushing-based sex ring that extended all the way to Oregon and included hundreds of sex workers, most of whom were migrants from China forced to hand over their passports, according to U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace.

Prosecutors said both women made numerous trips from Flushing’s Chinatown to China.

Yuan Yuan Chen, 30, was indicted on September 15 after Xu, 31, was arrested last year.

The selfie they took together — just hours after allegedly siccing enforcers on rival sex workers at a Kansas hotel in 2020 — was included in paperwork prosecutors filed to deny Chen bail

In “complete disregard for the victim,” the two women “posed for nearly a dozen ‘selfies,’  smiling and having fun, hours after the victim . . . had been viciously beaten with a rolling pin,” prosecutors wrote.

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Air Force General Defends Memo That Predicted War With China By 2025

The four-star general in charge of the US Air Force’s Air Mobility Command has defended a memo he sent to his officers earlier this year where he predicted the US would be at war with China in 2025.

“My assessment is that war is not inevitable, but the readiness I’m driving with that timeline is absolutely essential to deterrence and absolutely essential to the decisive victory,” Gen. Mike Minihan said last week when asked about his prediction, according to Defense One.

“There needs to be tension on readiness, more than just ‘be ready tonight.’ You need to have readiness that drives urgency. The urgency and the action are paramount,” he added.

Minihan noted that the memo, dated February 1, included the words: “I hope I am wrong.” But the memo to his officers ordered them to be prepared for a fight with China, and while the Pentagon distanced itself from Minihan’s timeline, the US is openly preparing for a direct war with China by building up its forces in the Asia Pacific and increasing military support for Taiwan.

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Chinese researchers create dancing microrobots using lasers

A team of researchers has come up with a method that utilizes femtosecond lasers to make micromachined joints, showcased by tiny “dancing” micro robots that look like humans.

Inspired by the flexible joints of humans, the scientists from the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), of the Chinese Academy of Science, led by Prof. Wu Dong, proposed a two-in-one multi-material laser writing strategy that creates the joints from temperature-sensitive hydrogels as well as metal nanoparticles. 

What are femtosecond lasers? 

Femtosecond lasers are pulsed lasers that use short, intermittent irradiation. They feature the shortest pulse width, just one quadrillionth of a second (10-15 sec). Unlike a continuous wave laser, the material that’s affected by the pulse is instantly removed. 

The technique of femtosecond laser two-photon polymerization, a “true three-dimensional fabrication technique with nanoscale precision,” as the press release from USTC  describes it, has been widely used recently to create a number of functional microstructures. 

Such microstructures have been showing promise for applications in micro-nano optics, micro sensors, microelectromechanical systems. The study specifically mentions soft grippers, artificial muscles, and wearable devices as possibilities. The challenge lies in “integrating multiple microjoints into soft robots at the micrometer scale to achieve multi-deformation modalities,” as the scientists write in their paper, published in Nature Communications. 

One possibility would be to equip terrestrial robots with multiple shape memory alloy joints that can “realize linear/curvilinear crawling, walking, turning, and jumping by laser-inducing,” as the study proposes. Another use would be to create flexible hands with multiple joints as an aid to disabled people. This would allow them to grip different kinds of objects.

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Real threat to world is the nation encircling the planet with its military bases

In the eyes of some Westerners, China is accused of posing a “systematic challenge” to the “world order.” However, failing to specifically articulate this challenge or threat, many across the West resort to citing a list of fabricated claims regarding China’s internal political affairs including the status of the island of Taiwan as well as pointing toward territorial disputes in the South China Sea. 

While the West often depicts these territorial disputes as exclusively between China and the rest of the region, omitted is the fact that all other claimants in the region also have disputes with each other. Despite the sometimes heated nature of these disputes, these nations still maintain close ties with one another and with China, revealing this as an excuse rather than a genuine reason to label China as the biggest threat to global security and prosperity.

While Western leaders struggle to justify labeling China as a challenge or threat, the collective West led by the US has participated in the worst acts of aggression of the 21st century. The US, for example, led an invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. This was followed by a bloody occupation that spanned two decades ending only as recently as 2021. 

In 2003, the US yet again led the West into an act of unprovoked military aggression, this time against Iraq. The war resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. US troops remain in a deeply divided and destabilized Iraq to this day. 

In 2011, a US-led attack against the Libyan government destroyed, destabilized and divided Libya. One of the enduring outcomes of the war is modern-day slavery including slave auctions flourishing in the failed state, as US-based Time Magazine reported in 2019. 

In just the 21st century alone, the US and its allies have cut a swath of death and destruction from North Africa to Central Asia, killing hundreds of thousands and displacing or otherwise disrupting the lives of tens of millions. The instability the US has sown globally has created a climate of insecurity as weapons the US surges into proxy wars, including now in Ukraine, are finding their way to battlefields elsewhere around the globe. 

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