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AFP reports US special forces quietly training Taiwanese military


Hong Kong Free Press
Fri, 08 Oct 2021 16:39 UTC
Taiwan air force
© Taiwan Presidential Office, via Flickr.
Taiwan Air Force
US special operations forces have been quietly training Taiwanese troops for months, a move which China warned Friday could cause "serious harm" to relations between Washington and Beijing.

A contingent of around 20 special operations and conventional forces has been conducting the training for less than a year, the Pentagon official, who declined to be identified, told AFP Thursday, adding that some of the trainers rotate in and out.

The official largely confirmed a Wall Street Journal report which said the training has been going on for at least a year, amid China's rising verbal threats against the island ally of the United States.

Comment: Taiwan is being used as a pawn in the Biden administrations inept policies towards China:

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Attention

Biden Education Secretary dodges when asked if parents should be 'primary stakeholder' of child's education

Tim Pearce
The Daily Wire
Thu, 30 Sep 2021 00:01 UTC
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona
© Joshua Roberts/Getty Images
Education Secretary Miguel Cardona stopped short of claiming that parents should be the "primary" stakeholders in their children's education on Thursday.

Cardona sat before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions on Thursday to testify on school reopening strategies and policies around COVID-19. Under questioning from Sen. Mike Braun (R-IN), Cardona refused to call parents the "primary stakeholders" in a child's education.

"Do you think parents should be in charge of their child's education as the primary stakeholder?" Braun asked the Education secretary.

Comment: In other words, Cardona is completely onboard with the Great Reset agenda and sees children as the property of the state, to be 'educated' as the state sees fit, damn the parents.

See also:

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Dollars

NYC investigators to release report into de Blasio's NYPD security detail

Tina Moore, Larry Celona, Nolan Hicks and Tamar Lapin
New York Post
Wed, 06 Oct 2021 20:17 UTC
bill de blasio
© Matthew McDermott
Mayor Bill de Blasio came under scrutiny for using taxpayer funds to pay for his security detail while traveling for his long-shot presidential bid in 2019.
The city Department of Investigation on Wednesday said it is set to release the findings of a probe into Mayor Bill de Blasio's NYPD security detail.

The DOI will make public a 40-page report and hold a press conference about the "allegations involving the Mayor's security detail" on Thursday morning.

Law enforcement sources said the probe concerned use of city resources for personal use, a possible violation of New York's Conflicts of Interest Law.

Comment: See also:

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Alarm Clock

CIA sounds alarm over capture, killing of dozens of informants: report

Samuel Chamberlain
New York Post
Tue, 05 Oct 2021 11:56 UTC
central intelligence agency
© Getty Images
The CIA has called on its frontline spies to step up their operational security around the world after dozens of informants have been arrested, killed or otherwise compromised in recent years, the New York Times reported Tuesday.

A cable sent last week from top US counterintelligence officials to every agency station and base included the exact number of human sources arrested or executed by rival services — a detail that is typically a closely guarded secret, the Times reported.

The document lays several issues at the feet of case officers responsible for recruiting new informants — including poor tradecraft, underestimating the counterintelligence prowess of foreign agencies, and focusing on recruitment without paying proper attention to potential risks. It goes on to remind officers to focus on those issues in addition to bringing new sources into the fold.

Comment: Is this CIA losing it's touch?

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Bullseye

Watch Sen. Josh Hawley's epic confrontation with Biden lackey over DOJ's threats to 'silence and intimidate' parents voicing concerns about their children's education

Leo Hohmann
leohohmann.com
Wed, 06 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
Sen. Josh Hawley

Senator Josh Hawley, R-MO, grilled deputy attorney general Lisa Monaco and delivered a stunning rebuke to the Biden administration’s “weaponization of federal agencies” against Americans. Watch the video below.
A U.S. Senator took the Biden administration to task Tuesday during a Senate hearing into a memorandum that the Department of Justice issued Monday, Oct. 4, that seems to threaten parents and discourage them from showing up at local school board meetings to express their concerns about what their children are being taught.

Parents nationwide have been turning out en masse to voice concerns to their local boards of education about sexualized books in the schools, curricula promoting racial hatred, gender confusion, pedophilia and all manner of filth.

That has caught the attention of federal law enforcement agencies.

Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, questioned Lisa Monaco, deputy attorney general of the United States, during a hearing on the controversial, some say intimidating, memorandum that was issued Oct. 4 by her boss at the Justice Department, Mr. Merrick Garland.

Read the full memorandum. Read the DOJ's Oct. 5 press release about the one-page memorandum.

Sen. Josh Hawley said the Biden administration has moved with lightning speed since taking office on Jan. 21 to politicize and "weaponize" the DOJ against the American people.
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Arrow Down

Dumb-In-Chief: Kerry says Biden not 'aware' sub deal with Australia would irk France

Mark Moore
New York Post
Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
John Kerry
© Bloomberg via Getty Images
John Kerry, special presidential envoy for climate, insists President Biden is trying to move on from the US-UK-Australia submarine deal blunder.
United States climate envoy John Kerry claimed Tuesday that President Biden had no idea the US-UK-Australia submarine deal would upset the French government and "had not been aware of what had transpired" — as Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Paris in an effort to ease the diplomatic tensions.

Kerry, secretary of state in the Obama administration, was asked in an interview on French television about the Biden administration forging the agreement with Australia — even though France already had a $40 billion deal with Australia for 12 submarines.

"President Biden asked me about it, and I told him and expressed...," Kerry said, according to the National Review​.

Comment: See also:

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Whistle

Facebook whistleblower is leftist activist repped by lawyer for 'whistleblower' behind Trump impeachment

Luke Rosiak
The Daily Wire
Tue, 05 Oct 2021 00:00 UTC
Haugen
© Sky News
'Whistleblower' Frances Haugen
The Facebook whistleblower, Frances Haugen, has a record of donations to far-left Democrats and a history of raising issues about purported bias while at previous employers, a Daily Wire review found. She is working with Democrat operatives to roll out her complaint and has the same lawyers as the anonymous Ukraine "whistleblower" whose allegations led to Donald Trump's impeachment, but who reportedly turned out to be then-Vice President Joe Biden's top advisor on the country.

In a previous role at Pinterest, Frances Haugen was behind a "recent change to give users the option to filter searches to specific skin tones." At Gigster, she gave a talk on how "if we don't build with an eye towards inclusion, we can end up enshrining bias."

Comment: Lie, Cheat, Steal: Dems are firing on all cylinders to reconform communications and gain exclusive political turf. This whistleblowing is just the current ploy, certainly not the end run.

See also:
Greenwald: Democrats and media do not want to weaken Facebook, just commandeer its power to censor

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Chess

CIA creates new unit to focus on 'key rival' China, calling it the 'most important geopolitical threat we face'

Brooke Singman
Fox News
Thu, 07 Oct 2021 20:54 UTC
china us flag
Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns announced the formation of the China Mission Center to counter Beijing, while warning the "increasingly adversarial" Chinese government poses "the most important geopolitical threat" to the United States in the 21st century.

Burns announced the agency's adjustments to its organization structure and approach to "best position it to address current and future national security challenges."

"CMC will further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century, an increasingly adversarial Chinese government," Burns said.
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Target

Austrian prosecutors target Kurz in bribery investigation

Francois Murphy
Reuters
Wed, 06 Oct 2021 01:09 UTC
Kurz
© TFP
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz
Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has been placed under investigation on suspicion of bribery and breach of trust, anti-corruption prosecutors said on Wednesday after raids on the offices of Kurz's conservative party and several top aides.

The investigation, which prosecutors confirmed hours after raids on the Chancellery, Finance Ministry and the offices of Kurz's party, is a fresh political threat to Kurz, whom anti-corruption prosecutors placed under investigation separately in May on suspicion of perjury. Kurz and his People's Party (OVP) dismissed the investigation as politically motivated.

The suspicion in this investigation is that, starting in 2016 when Kurz was foreign minister and seeking to become party leader, and later as he became chancellor, the conservative-led Finance Ministry paid for advertisements in a newspaper in exchange for polling and coverage favourable to him. The Prosecutor's Office said in a statement:
"The Prosecutors' Office for Economic Affairs and Corruption has placed Sebastian Kurz and nine others as well as three organisations under investigation on suspicion of breach of trust ... corruption ... and bribery ..., partly with different levels of involvement."
The early morning raids took place at locations including the homes and Chancellery desks of three senior Kurz aides.

"I am convinced that these accusations, too, will prove to be false," Kurz said in a brief statement, adding that text-message exchanges had been taken out of context to "construct" a case against him.
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Footprints

Taliban 'removing' Uyghur militants from Afghanistan's border with China

Reid Standish
RFE/RL
Wed, 06 Oct 2021 02:41 UTC
Taliban fighter
© Jorge Silva/Reuters
Taliban fighter
The Taliban has removed Uyghur militants from an area near Afghanistan's border with China, sources in the region told RFE/RL, in a move that analysts say signals growing coordination between Beijing and the Afghan militant group.

The Uyghur fighters that have been relocated inside Afghanistan are believed to be members of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) -- an Uyghur extremist group that Beijing blames for unrest in its western province of Xinjiang and refers to by its former name, the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM).

The Taliban allowed Uyghur groups to operate in Afghanistan during its rule in the 1990s and is believed to still have links with them. China has demanded the Taliban cut any ties with the militants. Analysts say the Taliban's move marks a new step in its ties with Beijing, marking the first time the militants have taken action on the ground to assuage Chinese security fears since they seized power in Afghanistan in August.

Bradley Jardine, a fellow at the U.S.-based Wilson Center's Kissinger Institute on China and the United States, told RFE/RL:
"It's what China wants and what the Taliban needs to provide if it is to encourage deeper cooperation with Beijing. The real question is whether they can fully follow through."
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