“unpresidented act”
If only the irony wasn’t so scary and depressing…
Rachel Maddow did a great report about this last night.
“It’s natural for us to take possession of and research for a bit these types of things that America sends to our doorstep,” Yang said.
The drone is commercially available. Anyone can buy one.
Misleading headline photo- it is actually an underwater drone that was stolen by the Chinese. Don’t just grab the first ‘drone’ photo and paste it in.
well, it is a drone, in the water…
“If China has not returned our drone by the time I’m sworn into office, then I will threaten war with them. I know that they’ll back down, because General Tso’s chicken.”
That was excellent. Maddow makes me wish I had cable news. Thanks for posting.
No sense explaining to Trump’s (yet to be hired) China expert there is no such thing as conducting unclassified research in areas abutting the Chinese homeland, or that even Chinese-built commercially available drones count as “spy vehicles”.
I fully expect North Korea’s economy will improve substantially as China will outsource US boundary-testing duties to them :fistpump:
" Everything’s going according to plan " … Bob Dole —
Shit like this was why Obama was trying to restructure the trading balance in the Pacific Rim.
But the Populists.
Why is it that people fail to see that trade is the strongest diplomatic tool we have? Sometimes the choice may be between war and job loss. I suppose the people who are most concerned with job loss will choose war since it produces jobs.
No wonder we can’t stop being hostile.
Trump Supporters: China is so scared of Trump, they are returning it because he tweeted.
Putin: You bet!
I’m surprised a Trump surrogate hasn’t already issued these exact words.
He really, seriously needs to STFU until well after he is sworn in, so he can receive Remedial Tutoring in every area, including Communication with the press. We have a bumblefuck president elect.
“The louder they shout, the more their protests ring hollow.”
Words someone should stable to Donald Trump’s forehead. He also clearly never learned the adage ‘Big dogs don’t need to bark’.
So how much trouble is the Chinese captain in?
This didn’t happen in a vacuum. The accompanying flight and live-fire demonstration from Liaoning that China just conducted was clearly intended as an intimidation move. It’s also not an effective one. While the J-15A is certainly a respectable aircraft, Liaoning is basically the Chinese refurbishing an old Admiral Kuznetsov hull the Russians stripped and sold 18 years ago. She’s slow, with an incredibly small air wing for the theater, and the Chinese know it. The ship is (predictably, really) outclassed in pretty much every way by Ronald Reagan, which currently has western Pacific duties, and can be reinforced quickly by Nimitz, Carl Vinson, Theodore Roosevelt, and John C. Stennis, all of which are based on the U.S. West Coast (in California and in Washington.
Granted, China has the large unsinkable carrier known as ‘Mainland China’, but the burden of power projection in the South China Sea is more likely to fall on the man-made atolls they’ve recently militarized.
Offer a trade deal that puts Human and environmental rights in front of profit and corporate immunity and it will sell.
Put a trade deal together with the help of Labor and environmental activists and it wins.
But put a trade deal together in the dark with corporate and bankers insiders being allowed to write portions that the Senate is not even allowed to see and NO
put a deal together that, for practical purposes, waives all humanrights issues, labor protection and environmental laws and No Put a deal together that creates a “super” arbitration court owned and operated by corporations that can issue rulings that would require countries to rewrite any laws that obstructs greed and No
Put together a trade deal that has international corporations being given extraterritorial immunity from environmental and labor laws and No
the TTP was a seriously flawed piece of corporate legerdemain to strip legal sovereignty from countries all in the name of greed.
When a treaty holds a country liable for “potential lost” profit if environmental, labor, health or zoning laws might adversy affect the bottom line of any corporation it is an unacceptable piece of paper and a source of shame for those who would promote it.
Stopping the TTP was a progressive action, the populist’s just hitched a ride.
I do agree that populism is an ugly political virus. Remember Populist’s gave us the klan, huey long, father coughlin and all so many more dangerous and vile movemnets that plague humanity.
Populism gave the US the klan.
Progressives birthed the grange movement.
You pick.
Trump thinks his tough guy tweets got it back.
That person should recognize that it’s very likely this was a demonstration on China’s part (and ours) of how these things are handled between adults. Don’t think I’ll hold my breath though.