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Chinese Suggest Arming Hawaiian Independence Activists Due to US-Taiwan Arms Sales

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Photo Credit: Free Beacon China has suggested arming Hawaii’s independence activists in retaliation for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan and recently threatened to challenge American sovereignty by making legal claims to the Pacific islands as its territory.

Chinese threats to back several groups of Hawaiian independence activists who want to restore the islands’ constitutional monarchy, ousted in a U.S.-backed coup over a century ago, has raised concerns that military facilities on the strategic central Pacific archipelago are threatened at a time when the Obama administration is engaged in a major shift toward Asia as part of its military and diplomatic rebalance.

Michael Pillsbury, a Pentagon consultant and author of the recent book 100 Year Marathon, said Chinese military hawks, known as “ying pai,” told him they are ready to provide arms to Hawaiian independence activists in retaliation for U.S. arms sales to Taiwan.

“Beijing’s extraordinary sensitivity to American arms sales to Taiwan—even one bullet or a spare tire for a jeep—often provokes angry words,” said Pillsbury who has held talks with 35 Chinese generals in recent years.

“A favorite comparison the ying pai has made to me is ‘How would the Pentagon like it if we provide arms to our friends in Hawaiian independence movement?’” he said. “I was incredulous because I had never heard of such a movement in Hawaii, but, after checking I met a few of them.” (Read more about the Hawaiian Independence Movement attracting Chinese interest HERE)

Follow Joe Miller on Twitter HERE and Facebook HERE.

Incredible: 3,600 Year Old Mummy Suggests Brain Surgery was Performed

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Photo Credit: Daily MailA skull that’s more than three and a half millennia old has revealed signs of an early form of brain surgery.

The perforated skull belongs to a mummified woman found in the Xiaohe tomb in China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

Experts said that the hole, which measures around 2 inches (50mm) in diameter, was most likely an early form of craniotomy . . .

This procedure has been performed since prehistoric times, and cave paintings indicate that ancient people believed the practice would cure epileptic seizures, headaches and mental disorders.

Lead archaeologist Zhu Hong who made the discovery said: ‘[The wound] suggests the female, who died in her 40s, must have lived for at least a month, or even longer, after receiving the surgery.’ (Read more from “Mummy Suggests Brain Surgery” HERE)

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China has Stepped In as World’s New Bank

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Photo Credit: Bloomberg View Thanks to China, Christine Lagarde of the International Monetary Fund, Jim Yong Kim of the World Bank and Takehiko Nakao of the Asian Development Bank may no longer have much meaningful work to do.

Beijing’s move to bail out Russia, on top of its recent aid for Venezuela and Argentina, signals the death of the post-war Bretton Woods world. It’s also marks the beginning of the end for America’s linchpin role in the global economy and Japan’s influence in Asia.

What is China’s new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank if not an ADB killer? If Japan, ADB’s main benefactor, won’t share the presidency with Asian peers, Beijing will just use its deep pockets to overpower it. Lagarde’s and Kim’s shops also are looking at a future in which crisis-wracked governments call Beijing before Washington.

China stepping up its role as lender of last resort upends an economic development game that’s been decades in the making. The IMF, World Bank and ADB are bloated, change-adverse institutions. When Ukraine received a $17 billion IMF-led bailout this year it was about shoring up a geopolitically important economy, not geopolitical blackmail.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government doesn’t care about upgrading economies, the health of tax regimes or central bank reserves. It cares about loyalty. The quid pro quo: For our generous assistance we expect your full support on everything from Taiwan to territorial disputes to deadening the West’s pesky focus on human rights. (Read more about the world’s new bank HERE)

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Chinese Christmas Celebrations Explode Along With Persecution of the Church

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Chinese XmasWhy Christmas Is Huge in China

By Robert Foyle Hunwick. There’s a joke going around: “Santa Claus was descending into China from the sky. Due to the heavy smog, he fell to the ground, but no one dared help him up. While he was still lying in the snow, his bag was ransacked for presents, and his reindeer and sleigh taken away by the chengguan. Therefore, no Christmas this year.”

While some of the humor needs context—there are digs at China’s notorious bystander effect and much-despised urban-management officials, chengguan—the larger meaning is clear. Ironic jokes about Santa’s routine being disrupted with uniquely Chinese characteristics are a sure sign that, yes, they do know it’s Christmas time in communist China.

Retailers lead the way here: An annual spending season that once focused on Chinese New Year in the winter is now bloated and elongated, stretching from the invented Singles’ Day on November 11 through February, with Christmas as a kind of hump day. Even before December, shops, streets, and hotels begin filling with slightly off-kilter Yuletide scenes: performers in elf suits play traditional cymbals while a grinning plastic Santa Claus toots a saxophone outside his gingerbread cabin. Why the sax? Theorists point to everything from romantic associations with the avuncular Bill Clinton jamming on the instrument in the 1990s, to the smooth alto-sax muzak that is the preferred soundtrack of Santa’s typical dwelling, the shopping mall.

There’s no sign of Jesus, but in many big cities, you’re still more likely to see Father Christmas’s face than that of “Uncle” Xi Jinping, as state media has characterized the country’s president, presenting a homely, familial image that’s quite at odds with the repressive manner in which he’s coldly eliminated opponents. But Xi is not above the fray himself, visiting Santa’s official cabin in Rovaniemi, Finland in 2010.

The Western religious festival is so trendy, in fact, that it may be the second-most-celebrated festival in China . . . Read more from this story HERE.
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Communists Crackdown on Christians Ahead of Chinese Christmas

By DIDI TANG. Two days before Christmas, members of a rural Christian congregation in the eastern city of Wenzhou welded some pieces of metal into a cross and hoisted it onto the top of their worship hall to replace one that was forcibly removed in October.

Within an hour, township officials and uniformed men barged onto the church ground and tore down the cross.

“They keep a very close watch on us, and there is nothing we can do,” said a church official, who spoke to The Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because of fear of government retaliation. “The situation is not good, as any attempt to re-erect the cross will be stopped.”

That means that the worshippers in Wenzhou, like many Christians in the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, will worship this Christmas under a cross-less roof. Provincial authorities have toppled crosses from more than 400 churches, and even razed some worship halls in a province-wide crackdown on building code violations.

Many Christians say their faith has been singled out because authorities, wary of its rapid growth, are seeking to curb its spread in a campaign that has targeted China’s most thriving Christian communities. Read more from this story HERE.

NSA Chief: China, Other Countries Can Hack Into U.S. Electric Grid

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Red China flag 2 SCChina and at least one other country are capable of hacking into critical infrastructure such as the electric power grid or water systems, potentially causing “catastrophic failures” that could kill Americans or damage property, the head of the National Security Agency confirmed publicly for the first time Thursday.

“The cyber challenges we’re talking about are not theoretical. This is something real,” said Adm. Michael Rogers, who also leads U.S. Cyber Command.

He said his agency has detected “nation-states” probing critical infrastructure and industrial control networks, looking for vulnerabilities, and investing in the capability to damage or destroy those systems.

“All of that leads me to believe it is only a matter of the when, not the if, that we are going to see something dramatic,” Rogers said.

Though U.S. officials have long warned of a potential “cyber Pearl Harbor,” this was the first time a senior official has confirmed that hackers working for a foreign government have the capability to pull it off.

Read more from this story HERE.

Rep. Smith: Obama Gave $227M to UNFPA Implementing Forced Abortion in China (+video)

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Photo Credit: CNSNews.com / Penny StarrRepresentative Chris Smith (R-N.J.) said at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday that despite his and other congressmens’ efforts to hold Communist China accountable for its one-child, forced abortion policy, President Barack Obama and his administration are not only ignoring the policy but are advancing the “brutal program.”

“I respectfully submit that not only is the Obama administration turning a blind eye to the atrocities being committed under the one-child policy, but it is even contributing financial support–contrary to U.S. law–to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA),” Smith said in a keynote address at the event.

“Under Presidents Reagan, Bush and Bush, Mr. Obama, unlike them, has thus far provided $227 million in tax payer funds–grant money–to the UNFPA, an organization that supports, plans, implements, defends–and maybe for international audiences this is most important–whitewashes the Chinese government’s brutal program.”

Smith, who is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee and chairs its subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organization, was referring to his and other Republicans’ 1984 legislation that became law as a part of a foreign aid bill that prohibits funding organizations like UNFPA that support China’s one-child and forced abortion policy.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chinese Gov't Gives Tips on Ensuring Babies are Dead

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Photo Credit: LifeNews Reggie Littlejohn positively glows, perhaps with the radiance of someone whose life has purpose and fulfillment.

The woman with the boy’s name is on a mission to save the girls of China.

As she sat down at the Heritage Foundation on Thursday, WND asked what was the most shocking thing she had encountered in her journey as the world’s leading opponent of forced abortions and sterilizations.

That was easy.

“Best practices – infanticide,” she replied without hesitation.

She described her horror while reading an email train on the official website of the Chinese Communist Party for obstetricians and gynecologists, discussing how best to kill infants born alive during late-term abortions.

Read more from this story HERE.

Chinese Twins Aborted at 9 Months Due to One-Child Policy

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Photo Credit: LifeNewsThis week, China will mark 34 years of the one-child family planning policy that has resulted in massive human rights abuses, including forced abortions and coercive sterilizations.

Started in 1980, the policy, which prohibits most Chinese couples form having more than one baby and limits rural residents to two, has resulted in severe human rights abuses. Family planning officials frequently jail couples who refuse to comply, sentence them to house arrest or labor camps, revoke jobs or governmental support, use physical harassment or violence and often target other family members.

Pro-life advocate Sarah Terzo, on her blog, recalls one of the most brutal incidents that occurred in China under the pro-abortion, anti-human rights policy.

A report presented to a Congressional Committee told the following story about forced abortion in China. The babies in this case were nine months along, twins, who were aborted against the mother’s wishes:

“On December 13, 2007 Mrs. Dong (34 years old) from Wutong Town, Yongtai County, Fuchou City was pregnant with unplanned twin babies for almost 9 months. She was working in Ganzhe Town, Minhou County, Fuchou Province together with her husband.

Read more from this story HERE.

Pentagon says Chinese Jet Carried Out ‘Aggressive’ and ‘Dangerous’ Intercept of Navy Intelligence Jet

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The Pentagon on Friday called a Chinese jet’s encounter with a U.S. anti-submarine warfare aircraft an “aggressive” and “dangerous” act and said it has protested the action with Beijing.

Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby told reporters that the incident took place Tuesday in international airspace.

“We have registered our strong concerns to the Chinese about the unsafe and unprofessional intercept, which posed a risk to the safety and the well-being of the air crew and was inconsistent with customary international law,” Kirby said, adding that the incident was “very, very close, very dangerous.”

“Also—and we’ve made this clear—that it undermines efforts to continue developing military-to-military relations with the Chinese military.”

Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Jeff Pool said the aerial incident took place 135 miles east of Hainan Island when a Chinese J-11, a version of the Russian Su-27, came within 20 feet of a U.S. Navy P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft.

Read more from this story HERE.

As China Stalks Satellites, U.S. and Japan Prepare to Defend Them

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Photo Credit: Getty Images

Photo Credit: Getty Images

In May 2013 the Chinese government conducted what it called a science space mission from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China. Half a world away, Brian Weeden, a former U.S. Air Force officer, wasn’t buying it. The liftoff took place at night and employed a powerful rocket as well as a truck-based launch vehicle—all quite unusual for a science project, he says.

In a subsequent report for the Secure World Foundation, the space policy think tank where he works, Weeden concluded that the Chinese launch was more likely a test of a mobile rocket booster for an antisatellite (ASAT) weapon that could reach targets in geostationary orbit about 22,236 miles above the equator. That’s the stomping grounds of expensive U.S. spacecraft that monitor battlefield movements, detect heat from the early stages of missile launches, and help orchestrate drone fleets. “This is the stuff the U.S. really cares about,” Weeden says.

The Pentagon never commented in detail on last year’s launch—and the Chinese have stuck to their story. U.S. and Japanese analysts say China has the most aggressive satellite attack program in the world. It has staged at least six ASAT missile tests over the past nine years, including the destruction of a defunct Chinese weather satellite in 2007. “It’s part of a Chinese bid for hegemony, which is not just about controlling the oceans but airspace and, as an extension of that, outer space,” says Minoru Terada, deputy secretary-general of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Read more from this story HERE.