Research, editing : Gan Yung Chyan, KUCINTA SETIA
Taiwan vowed on 31 August 2022 to 'counter-attack' if Chinese warships and fighter planes enter its territory, in the wake of Beijing's huge military drills around the island.
The self-ruled, democratic island lives under constant threat of an invasion by China, which claims it as part of its territory to be seized one day - by force if necessary.
On Wednesday, defence officials said Taiwan would exercise its right to self-defence should Beijing decide to move against the island.
Taipei's willingness to fight back appeared to be demonstrated a day earlier, when Taiwan's military fired warning shots at Chinese drones that were flying over its outposts just off the Chinese coastline.
Taiwan's forces said in a statement that troops took the action on Tuesday after drones were found hovering over the Kinmen island group.
The statement Wednesday referred to the unmanned aerial vehicles as being of 'civilian use,' but gave no other details. It said the drones returned to the nearby Chinese city of Xiamen after the shots were fired.
Taiwan previously fired only flares as warnings.
Tensions in the Taiwan Strait have soared to their highest level in decades after China staged an unprecedented show of force in retaliation for US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's visit to Taipei earlier this month.
For a week after Pelosi's visit, China sent warships, missiles and fighter jets into the waters and skies around Taiwan, which condemned the drills and missile tests as preparation for an invasion.
Asked how Taiwan would respond if Chinese warplanes and naval ships entered its territorial air space and waters, a defence official said 'the closer the incursions are to Taiwan, the stronger our countermeasures will be'.
'We will use naval and air forces and coastal fire to repel PLA (Chinese People's Liberation Army) forces that enter our 24-nautical-mile or 12-nautical-mile zones,' said Major General Lin Wen-huang, director of operations and planning division.
'When the PLA aircraft and ships are in our 12-nautical-mile territorial sea and air space, we will act in accordance with operational orders to exercise the right of self-defence to counter-attack,' he said at an online news briefing.
Lin also said Taiwan would "counter-attack"' when asked to comment on the recent string of drone sorties from China to Taiwan's offshore Kinmen and Matsu islands.
Taiwan maintains control over a range of islands in the Kinmen and Matsu groups in the Taiwan Strait, a relic of the effort by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists to maintain a foothold on the mainland after being driven out by Mao Zedong's Communists amid civil war in 1949.
Taiwan's Defence Ministry said China's actions failed to intimidate the island's 23 million people, saying they had only hardened support for the armed forces and the status quo of de-facto independence.
On Tuesday, Taiwan's military fired warning shots for the first time to repel a Chinese drone that flew into a restricted area near Kinmen.
Drone incursions have increased at the same time as Beijing's drills earlier this month, some surveilling military outposts.
The military will determine 'whether to engage the target and exercise the right of self-defence to counter-attack', if the drones fail to leave after warnings, Lin said.
It is not clear who is flying the drones from the Chinese mainland.
Kinmen lies just a few kilometres off China's coast, meaning a civilian could feasibly fly a commercial drone that distance.
However, China has also stepped up so-called greyzone tactics against Taiwan in recent years, including the drone incursions.
'Greyzone' is a term used by military analysts to describe aggressive actions by a state that stop short of open warfare and can use civilians.
China has also ramped up incursions by warplanes into Taiwan's air defence identification zone. Taiwan's ADIZ is much larger than its airspace. It overlaps with part of China's ADIZ and even includes some of the mainland.
Officials said anti-drone defenses were being strengthened, part of a 12.9% increase in the Defense Ministry's annual budget next year.
The government is planning to spend an additional 47.5 billion New Taiwan dollars (£1.37 billion), for a total of 415.1 billion NTD (£11.9 billion) for the year.
The U.S. is also reportedly preparing to approve a £1 billion defense package for Taiwan that would include anti-ship and air-to-air missiles to be used to repel potential Chinese invasion attempt.
Following the Chinese drills, the U.S. sailed two warships through the Taiwan Strait, which China has sought to designate as its sovereign waters.
Foreign delegations from the U.S., Japan and European nations have continued to arrive to lend Taipei diplomatic and economic support.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is currently visiting Taiwan to discuss production of semiconductors, the critical chips that are used in everyday electronics and have become a battleground in the technology competition between the U.S. and China.
Ducey is seeking to woo suppliers for the new £10.3 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) plant being built in his state.
Last week, the Indiana governor visited Taiwan on a similar mission.
Taiwan produces more than half the global supply of high-end processor chips. China's firing of missiles during its exercises disrupted shipping and air traffic, and highlighted the possibility that chip exports might be interrupted.
On Monday (29 August 2022), former President Donald
Trump called for a redo of the 2020 presidential election.
Trump
demanded the new election following Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s
admission that Facebook limited distribution of the Hunter Biden laptop story
in the run-up to the 2020 election based on warnings from the FBI.
“So now it comes out, conclusively,
that the FBI BURIED THE HUNTER BIDEN LAPTOP STORY BEFORE THE ELECTION knowing
that, if they didn’t, ‘Trump would have easily won the 2020 Presidential
Election,'” Trump wrote in a post to his Truth
Social account.
“This
is massive FRAUD & ELECTION INTERFERENCE at a level never seen before in
our Country. REMEDY: Declare the rightful winner or, and this would be the
minimal solution, declare the 2020 Election irreparably compromised and have a
new Election, immediately!”
On Thursday, Zuckerberg made the admission during an interview on “The Joe
Rogan Experience” podcast.
“The FBI, I think,
basically came to us — some folks on our team — and was like, ‘Hey, just so you
know, you should be on high alert,” Zuckerberg said.
“We thought that there was a lot of
Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically,
there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be
vigilant.’”
While
the social media giant did not outright ban the story in the same way its
competitor Twitter did, Facebook nevertheless restricted its reach.
“We just kind of thought, ‘Hey,
look, if the FBI’ — which I still view as a legitimate institution in this
country, it’s a very professional law enforcement — ‘they come to us and tell
us that we need to be on guard about something, then I want to take that
seriously,’” Zuckerberg said.
As
backlash over the bombshell began to swell, specifically in conservative
circles, the FBI released a statement Friday night explaining the situation.
“The FBI routinely notifies U.S.
private sector entities, including social media providers, of potential threat
information, so that they can decide how to better defend against threats,” the
FBI said, according to NBC
News.
Trump’s
claims that censorship of the Hunter
Biden laptop scandal impacted the 2020 election are far from
fruitless.
According to a November 2020 poll
from NewsBusters,
as many as 9.4 percent of Biden voters in swing states may have changed their
vote if they had full knowledge of the Hunter Biden scandal.
Of
those polled, 45.1 percent of swing-vote Biden voters said they were unaware of
the scandal in its entirety.
If
9.4 percent of those voters had abandoned Biden, NewsBusters claimed all six of
the swing states Biden won
could have been flipped to Trump.
This
would have handed Trump 311 electoral votes, winning him the election.
News (3)
Biden filed for president reelection despite Democratic concerns
Reporter : Nikki Schwab etal., Daily Mail / Image : Web Screenshot
President Joe Biden filed for reelection Tuesday (30 August 2022) with the Federal Election Commission.
Documents signed 30 August 2022 show a filing for "Biden for President," which is designated as a principle campaign committee for the office of president.
Candidates listed on the filing include Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
News (4) to (5) / Reporters : Elizabeth Elkind etal., Daily Mail
News (4)
Republicans want to impeach Biden if they retake the House
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene is planning on re-introducing articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden in the new Congress next year, DailyMail.com has learned.
It comes as a vocal faction of the House GOP is ramping up calls to impeach Biden if their party takes control of the House of Representatives in the November midterms.
Republicans are still projected to overtake Democrats' slim majority in Congress' lower chamber despite a slump in support following the Supreme Court and several red states' rollbacks of abortion rights.
News (5)
Republicans want to try Biden for "high crimes" over the border and Afghanistan withdrawal
The last year and a half has seen multiple GOP lawmakers accuse Biden of "high crimes and misdemeanors," primarily over the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and the continuing crisis on the southern border with Mexico.
The largely symbolic efforts had no chance of passing in the Democrat-controlled House.
But with less than three months before the races - which have the potential to upend Biden's agenda-setting power for the latter half of his term - conservative lawmakers are making clear that ousting the president is one of their top priorities.
Greene - who has introduced impeachment articles against Biden in the past over Afghanistan, the border and the Supreme Court - will be doing so again next year.
"Congresswoman Greene wanted Joe Biden to be impeached on his first day in office. She thinks it should happen as soon as possible," Greene's spokesman Nick Dyer told DailyMail.com.
"She will be introducing Articles of Impeachment in the 118th Congress."
Rep. Andy Biggs of Arizona said Tuesday morning that it's 'not just Biden' they're after.
He suggested on Twitter that "we'll be coming for Mayorkas and Garland too," amid growing GOP calls to impeach the Homeland Security Secretary over the migrant crisis and verbal attacks on the Attorney General over the Justice Department's investigations into Donald Trump.
Texas Rep. Chip Roy's office pointed DailyMail.com to the former sheriff's recent calls for Biden and Mayorkas' impeachment earlier this month.
"Over the past several months, President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have blatantly and consistently refused to do their constitutional duty to take care that the immigration laws be faithfully executed, as required by Article II, endangering countless American and foreign lives in the process," Roy told Fox News on 3 August 2022.
Illinois conservative Rep. Mary Miller called for the president's removal exactly one year after an ISIS-K suicide bomber killed nearly 200 people including 13 US service members outside of Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul in the midst of the American military's evacuation.
"Joe Biden’s presidency consists of the biggest national security failure in the history of our country,' Miller said in a public statement on Friday.
"I’ve called for immediate oversight hearings on the mismanagement of the withdrawal from Afghanistan in addition to the impeachment of Biden and other top Pentagon officials."
A recent CBS News poll suggests the GOP is still solidly expected to retake the House of Representatives in November - however, their projected lead has shrunk to just eight seats.
It is not clear if House Republican leaders will entertain calls for impeachment, given concerns of distancing Independent and moderate voters ahead of the critical 2024 election cycle.
In taking a shot at Democrats' two impeachments of Trump, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy pledged in April that Republicans would not impeach Biden for "political purposes" - but did not totally rule out the move.
'We’re going to uphold the law. At any time, if someone breaks the law and the ramification becomes impeachment, we would move towards that. But we’re not going to use it for political purposes,' he told Fox News' Sunday Morning Futures.
House GOP Whip Steve Scalise and Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik have similarly been silent on impeachment, though the latter called Biden "unfit" for office following the deaths of the 13 U.S. troops in Kabul.
DailyMail.com has reached out to McCarthy, Scalise and Stefanik's offices for comment.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in September 2020 that he opposed impeaching the Democrat commander-in-chief.
"Look, there isn’t going to be an impeachment, but I think we have a good chance of winning that election next year," he said following calls for the president's ouster over the Afghanistan withdrawal.
At the time, he did not specify whether he would change his mind with a GOP-dominated Congress in 2023.
Newslink
Biden threatens to use military jets on "right wing Americans"
News (6)
Last Soviet leader dies at 91
Reporter : Chen Beichen / Editor: Hu Long / https://www.ntdtv.com/gb/2022/08/30/a103514730.html / Image : Mikhail Gorbachev (left), the last leader of the Soviet Union, and then U.S. President Ronald Reagan, at their summit in Washington on 8 December 1987, signed a treaty agreement to eliminate the U.S. and the Soviet Union medium- and short-range nuclear missiles. (AFP via Getty Images)
According to Russian news agencies, Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, has died at the age of 91.
TASS, RIA Novosti and Interfax all reported that the last top leader of the Soviet Union had died, citing the Central Clinical Hospital of the Russian Presidential Administration. Gorbachev died after a long illness, according to a statement from Moscow's Central Clinical Hospital, without giving further details.
Gorbachev will be buried next to his wife in the Novodevichy cemetery in Moscow, TASS news agency reported.
Gorbachev was the leader of the Soviet Union from 1985 until the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991.
As general secretary and president of the Soviet Union, he helped negotiate arms reduction agreements with the United States and other Western powers and dismantle the Iron Curtain between East and West. After Chernobyl, he withdrew from the Soviet-Afghan war and began a summit with U.S. President Ronald Reagan to limit nuclear weapons and end the Cold War.
Gorbachev is widely regarded as one of the most important figures of the second half of the 20th century, and the subject of controversy.
The Soviet Union disintegrated 30 years ago on 25 December 1991. Gorbachev resigned from the presidency of the Soviet Union. Russia's first president, Yeltsin, lowered the Soviet sickle and hammer flag in the Kremlin and raised the Russian tricolour flag.
Vladislav M. Zubok, a professor of international history at the London School of Economics and a famous historian of the Cold War and Soviet Russia, wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the Soviet Union collapsed not because of Western pressure or economic difficulties, but because of Gorbachev failed reforms.
News (7)
Center for Security Policy: U.S. deluded about threat posed by CCP
Reporter : Hannah Ng, The Epoch Times PREMIUM
The threat imposed on the United States by the Chinese regime far exceeds the Soviet nuclear threat, according to executive chairman at the Center for Security Policy Frank Gaffney.
“The Soviet nuclear threat …. was nothing, nothing, compared to what we now face in terms of the comprehensive threat …. from the Chinese Communist Party,” Gaffney said in a recent interview with EpochTV’s “American Thought Leaders” program.
“[Yet], we have persisted in this delusion that they’re not at war with us or that,” Gaffney said. “We can continue to do business with them, we can engage with them, we can prop them up, we can enrich them, we can make them more powerful, we can make them more dangerous, without any danger to ourselves. It is madness.”
Bankrolling warfare
Gaffney pointed to the estimated three to six trillion dollars of United States pensions, retirement, and investment funds pouring into the Chinese economy, which he said, “has enabled them [China] to have us bankroll their unrestricted warfare against us.”
The money, stemming from federal government employees, either military or civilian [ones], is being “moved into [Chinese] companies that are building weapons systems with which to kill those men and women in uniform,” the expert noted.
“[Yet] Wall Street sees no problem with this. They say, ‘Well, as long as it’s not illegal, we’re going to continue to do it,’” he added.
Gaffney described such behavior as “betraying [our] country.”
“If they persist in it, it is treason … and it ought to be treated as such,” he said.
The expert singled out the “hide and bide” strategy, meaning “Hide your strength, bide your time,” coined by former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping.
According to Gaffney, this approach has been applied in China’s business dealings with the United States.
“The Chinese … conceal their determination to destroy the United States under the false pretense that they just want to be a partner with us, they just want to be a member of the international community,” Gaffney said. The pretext is that China simply wants to enrich its people and become more integrated into the world community.
That strategy has succeeded in luring the U.S. business sector into opening up technology, operations, and even its most proprietary information, Gaffney added, such that “over time, biding their time, the Chinese would be able to destroy our industrial base, most of our supply chains, certainly the independence that we had in virtually every area initially, and move all of those supply chains and the stuff that goes into them to China,” Gaffney added.
“Deng … understood that by getting the United States completely dependent upon China, they would have a degree of resilience against the kind of punishment that Reagan meted out to the Soviets that ultimately resulted in their destruction,” he said.
To prove this point, Gaffney quoted Chinese expert Gordon Chang, “Food, energy, medicines, personal protective equipment, rare earth minerals, steel, everything you need for war, in short, they are now hoarding and husbanding and making less and less available.”
“It’s hard to get your head around the horrible [things] that could flow from the kind of dependencies that we continue to have and the vulnerabilities that arise from it,” Gaffney said.
Pushing back
To counter the challenges posed by the CCP regime, Americans need to understand that the enemy is a transnational organization and must be treated as such.
“We need to disengage from this mortal enemy. The supply chain and other dependencies is a formula for our destruction, absolutely unquestionably,” Gaffney said.
Rebuilding the military is an urgent priority, Gaffney stressed. The U.S. military is “neither situated nor capable of dealing with the kind of threat that we have helped the CCP military become,” he added.
The expert further called for Americans to cut off “the most serious of our self-inflicted vulnerabilities, the financing that we are providing to the Chinese Communist Party that is enabling all of this.”
“Every American, who has money in the U.S. capital markets today must say to their financial managers, their pension fund managers, the people who are handling their investments, ‘I don’t want my money invested in Chinese Communist Party companies. Period. Get it out of there,’” Gaffney said.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (above) skipped a $25,000-a-plate fundraiser for New York gubernatorial candidate Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) on 28 August because of an “unforeseen tragedy,” according to a Zeldin spokesperson.
“An unforeseen tragedy forced Governor DeSantis to reschedule his trip to New York,” Zeldin’s spokeswoman, Katie Vincentz, told the New York Post. “While we’re rescheduling with Governor DeSantis for a later date, tonight’s fundraiser will proceed and is expected to raise almost a million dollars.”
Vincentz didn’t elaborate on the circumstances, and neither DeSantis nor his team made a public comment about the specifics of the matter on Aug. 29.
A spokesperson for DeSantis pointed to the governor’s schedule in a comment to The Epoch Times later on Aug. 29. At 11 a.m., the governor was scheduled to attend a funeral in Miami for Jose Perez, a Florida Department of Law Enforcement agent who was killed in the line of duty, according to his schedule.
Zeldin, a congressman from Long Island, is running against Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was lieutenant governor until former Gov. Andrew Cuomo stepped down amid allegations of misconduct that he categorically denied.
In recent days, Hochul has disparaged Florida and DeSantis. Several weeks ago, Hochul criticized that state during a Holocaust memorial event.
“I just want to say to the 1.77 million Jews who call New York home: Thank you for calling New York home,” Hochul said. “Don’t go anywhere or to another state. Florida is overrated … look at the governor.”
When it was announced DeSantis would be heading to New York, state Democratic leaders criticized the move and attacked Zeldin.
“Lee Zeldin and Ron DeSantis are not just any Republicans,” state Chairman Jay Jacobs said in a recent Zoom call, without elaborating. “They are cut from the same cloth of a far-right fringe who want to roll back fundamental rights and push an extreme agenda on New Yorkers.”
DeSantis is facing his own reelection battle against former Gov. Charlie Crist, a Democrat. Meanwhile, he has deflected questions about a rumored presidential bid in 2024.
In a recent CNN interview, Crist, also a former congressman, said he needs more money to take on DeSantis; otherwise, the governor will grow too popular and powerful in his state.
“It is the Democrats’ last chance to stop him, and it’s going to be a lot cheaper to do it in Florida than it would be in 50 states,” Crist told CNN, while repeatedly plugging his campaign website.
Earlier this year, DeSantis confirmed that his wife, Casey, was free of cancer—coming months after she was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Two senators on Monday (29 August 2022) demanded all communications about Hunter Biden’s laptop between the FBI and Facebook following a bombshell admission from Facebook and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg that FBI officials told him in late 2020 that there would be reports that were actually Russian disinformation.
Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) on Monday sent a letter to Zuckerberg saying that in October 2020, “when the New York Post published articles based on evidence from Hunter Biden’s laptop, many news and social media organizations inappropriately rushed to censor and discredit the initial reporting and falsely labeled it as ‘disinformation.'”
In the Rogan interview, Zuckerberg said Facebook actively reduced the reach of posts and articles regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop, which contained messages and emails about the younger Biden’s overseas business dealings as well as communication with his family, including President Joe Biden, regarding his deals.
Earlier this year, legacy news outlets ultimately reported that the laptop was real—not Russian disinformation.
“Basically, the background here is the FBI, I think basically came to us, some folks on our team, and was, like, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert. We thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election. We have it on notice that, basically, there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,'” Zuckerberg told Rogan last week.
The two Republicans demanded Zuckerberg hand over any relevant information and communications by 12 September 2022.
Letter
“Whistleblowers have also alleged to Senator Johnson that local FBI leadership instructed its employees not to look at the Hunter Biden laptop immediately after the FBI had obtained it,” the senators continued, adding that Americans “deserve to know whether the FBI used Facebook as part of their alleged plan to discredit information about Hunter Biden.”
Communications between Facebook and the FBI should be turned over to the two Republicans because Americans need to know whether the FBI pressured Facebook to discredit information regards to Hunter Biden ahead of the election, they wrote.
“Congress and the American people require clarity with respect to the extent the FBI communicated with Facebook during the 2020 election about Hunter Biden-related information,” they said.
Over the past weekend, the FBI responded to Zuckerberg’s comment and said that it provided a general warning to Facebook and other social media firms. It did not include a call to action, the bureau said.
The FBI “cannot ask, or direct, companies to take action on information received,” said the statement.
Meanwhile, Meta, the parent company of Facebook, issued a statement saying that the FBI shared general warnings about the election and did not mention Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.
According to the letter, Zuckerberg’s revelation that “Facebook took steps to censor information about Hunter Biden on its platform based on the FBI’s guidance raises even more questions about the FBI’s actions regarding Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
“As you may know, whistleblowers have recently alleged to Senator Grassley that in August 2020, FBI officials initiated a scheme to downplay derogatory information on Hunter Biden for the purpose of shutting down investigative activity relating to his potential criminal exposure by labeling it ‘disinformation,'” it continued.Facebook has not immediately responded to a request for comment.
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