Western intelligence sources told Fox News on Tuesday that Iran has dispatched another oil tanker to Syria in defiance of U.S. sanctions. Meanwhile, the first sanctions-busting ship was leased to the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in another apparent gesture of defiance to the United States.
Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing chief executive Carrie Lam spun this weekend’s titanic peaceful protest as a victory for her administration on Monday, claiming the lack of violence was a sign the city is “returning to peace” and vaguely offering a “platform for dialogue with people from all walks of life” to find “a way out” of the crisis.
The U.S. State Department on Monday warned Greece not to allow the Iranian oil tanker Adrian Darya 1 to dock because the ship is carrying “illicit oil to fuel the Iranian regime’s and Syrian regime’s campaigns of terror and oppression.” Greek officials insisted they have not received a request from the tanker for docking, even though its destination appears to be the Greek port of Kalamata.
Employees of Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific airline on Tuesday described a “white terror” gripping the company as the Chinese Communist Party forces a purge of staffers who support the Hong Kong Protest movement, a campaign that has already ended the careers of several pilots, top executives, and CEO Rupert Hogg.
The British Foreign Office on Tuesday said it was “extremely concerned” by reports that trade and investment officer Simon Cheng Man-kit of the Hong Kong office has been detained by Communist China while traveling to the mainland for a business event. Cheng was listed as a “missing person” for over a week before there was any official confirmation he was in custody. The Chinese government has not explained why he was arrested.
The United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney in Australia released a report on Monday that warned America has lost its military superiority in the Indo-Pacific region and Chinese missiles could wipe out its bases with “precision strikes in the opening hours of a conflict.”
According to international watchdog CTBTO, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization, two of Russia’s nuclear monitoring stations went dark two days after a mysterious missile test explosion on August 8 that was originally portrayed as a non-nuclear incident. Adding to the uneasy parallels with the infamous Chernobyl incident, doctors at a Russian hospital complained on Sunday they were not informed that casualties from the explosion had been exposed to radiation.
The Hong Kong protest movement filled the streets on Sunday with an estimated 1.7 million people, almost a quarter of the city’s population, eleven weeks after protest marches began. The rally was a remarkable demonstration of defiance against Communist China, which has been sending ominous signals that a crackdown is imminent and ratcheting up pressure against supporters of the movement, including foreign companies that do business in Hong Kong.
China’s state-controlled Global Times on Friday lashed out at U.S. President Donald Trump, accusing him of feigning support for Chinese President Xi Jinping in a ruse to squeeze trade concessions out of China. The Communist paper interpreted Trump’s good wishes as a “bullying” tactic and a tacit admission the U.S. is manipulating the Hong Kong protests to further its own ends.
Thursday was the 74th annual Liberation Day in South Korea, commemorating the end of Japanese occupation after World War Two, featured demonstrations denouncing both Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo and South Korean President Moon Jae-in at a time of heightened tensions between the two countries.
China’s nightmare scenario is that Hong Kong’s huge protest movement could spread to other cities – especially Macau, which is only an hour away and also has semi-autonomous “Special Administrative Region” status.
Rupert Hogg, chief executive officer of Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, announced his resignation on Friday along with chief customer and commercial officer Paul Loo.
A look at the Chinese Communist Party’s annual conclave by Nikkei Asian Review found the Party and Chinese businessmen at odds over economic policy, which several sources described as confused and subject to political squabbles among the Communist elite.
Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has not visited the controversial Yasukuni Shrine since 2013, but he paid for a ritual offering on Thursday, which was enough to ruffle feathers across Asia. The shrine is seen in Japan as a memorial to peace, and by many other Asian nations as a nostalgic celebration of Japan’s militaristic era.
A group of over 350 Hong Kong civil servants wrote a petition to the government on Thursday that said they are “absolutely disgusted” by the excessive use of police force against demonstrators and warning they might call a strike if the abuse continues.
A massive rally in the Yemeni city of Aden on Thursday expressed support for the separatists who took over the vital southern port city, the seat of Yemen’s internationally-recognized government ever since it was driven from the capital city of Sanaa by Iran-backed Houthi insurgents in 2014.
The Pew Research Center on Tuesday released a poll showing the number of Americans with an unfavorable view of Communist China at an all-time high of 60 percent.
Similarities between the protest movements in Hong Kong and Moscow have not gone unnoticed by the authoritarian rulers of China and Russia. Russia’s state-run Tass news service on Wednesday quoted the new Chinese ambassador calling for the two countries to “cultivate our relations at a higher level” and “open a new page” in their friendship.
Chinese billionaire Ren Zhengfei, founder of telecommunications titan Huawei, wrote an internal memo this week laying out plans to overhaul the company over the next three to five years and create an “invincible iron army” to fight against regulatory pressure and competition from the United States.
Fresh from a successful campaign to force several foreign fashion designers to pull shirts off the market, Chinese Internet users trained their sights on Starbucks this week, demanding the American coffee company fire a Hong Kong barista accused of writing pro-democracy messages on cups.
The Russian state weather agency on Tuesday revealed that radiation levels in the city of Severodvinsk increased by 400 percent to 1,600 percent after a missile exploded at a nearby port facility last Thursday.
The United Nations is investigating at least 35 cyberattacks thought to have been perpetrated by North Korean hackers against targets in 17 countries, with the goal of stealing or extorting enough money to finance the rogue Communist nation’s nuclear missile program.
Residents of Hong Kong have been nervously watching Chinese military and police movements near their borders, fearing each new report of personnel or vehicles arriving near the border city of Shenzhen could be the prelude to a Tiananmen Square-style crackdown.
Hong Kong’s embattled chief executive Carrie Lam lashed out against the immense protest movement on Tuesday, accusing “hard-hearted” demonstrators of using “hate speech against the police” and trying to “push the city into the abyss of destruction.”
China pressured American luxury clothing brand Coach, Italian designer Versace, and French fashion house Givenchy into apologizing on Monday for selling T-shirts that depicted Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan as countries separate from Communist China.
About 50,000 people filled the streets of Moscow over the weekend for the fifth straight week of demonstrations, making it the largest Russian protest movement of the past decade.
China’s state-run Global Times on Sunday argued the death of Jeffrey Epstein is evidence the entire American system is fundamentally corrupt, rich criminals are treated far too well, and change is impossible because Americans only get to choose between two parties when they vote.
Hong Kong police officials on Friday announced that former Deputy Commissioner Alan Lau is coming out of retirement to accept a temporary position as second-in-command of the force, with a focus on controlling the enormous anti-government protests that have rocked the island. Lau, who retired late last year, was instrumental in suppressing the 2014 democracy movement, the most vigorous challenge to mainland China’s authority until now.
The annual hajj pilgrimage that brings some two million Muslims to the religion’s holiest site in Mecca has once again become the subject of political controversy as Muslims opposed to the government of Saudi Arabia are urging others to boycott the event.
The U.S. State Department denounced the Chinese Communist government as a “thuggish regime” after a pro-Beijing newspaper published personal information about an American diplomat who met with Hong Kong student leaders, including the names of the diplomat’s children.
South Korea’s National Assembly held a hearing on Thursday to discuss the possibility of replacing the national anthem, “Aegukga,” on the grounds that it was written by a composer who supported Japan during its occupation of Korea in the first half of the 20th Century.
On the same day New Zealand summoned China’s diplomatic team to formally rebuke Beijing for encouraging violence against supporters of the Hong Kong protest movement at the University of Auckland, the Chinese Communist Global Times was praising violent pro-China students in New Zealand and Australia for using “creative methods to protect national sovereignty and dispel misrepresentation of pro-independence forces.”
The Iranian military on Tuesday unveiled three “advanced precision-guided smart bombs” it claims can be mounted on drone aircraft. According to Iranian media, all three of the weapons are domestically produced.
The Trump administration on Thursday ordered the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to freeze between $2 billion and $4 billion in aid authorized by Congress during the 2018 and 2019 fiscal years.
A liquid-fueled rocket engine exploded at a military test site in the Arkhangelsk region of Russia on Thursday, killing two people and wounding four others. The Russian Defense Ministry initially denied that any form of contamination was released in the explosion, but later said that a “short-term spike in radiation levels” was detected in the nearby city of Severodvinsk.
The New Zealand Foreign Ministry met with Chinese officials on Monday and formally denounced China for attempting to suppress freedom of speech by encouraging violence against supporters of the Hong Kong protest movement in New Zealand last week.
The South China Morning Post on Wednesday noted a sharp escalation in Chinese information warfare against the Hong Kong protest movement as an army of trolls poured out of a forum supported by Chinese state media to push pro-Beijing memes and harass protest supporters.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Wednesday the Atlantic alliance must counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific, working closely with allies such as Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and South Korea.
A spokesman for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced on Tuesday that the passports of Chinese visitors will soon be stamped with a map of the Philippines, prominently including islands in the South China Sea claimed by both Manila and Beijing.
Russian Deputy Defense Minister Gen. Dmitry Bulgakov said on Tuesday that a string of spectacular explosions at the Kamenka ammunition depot in Siberia’s Krasnoyarsk region was probably the result of “human error,” but added that “investigative authorities and prosecutors will tell for sure.”
