Chicoms commit act of war against Philippines in Spratly Islands' Second Thomas Shoal, Biden sits idly by despite actual treaty of 1951 pledging mutual defense

 ‘Only pirates do this’: Philippines accuses China of using bladed weapons in major South China Sea escalation 

"They are Philippine Navy vessels, and according to international law, they enjoy what we term as sovereign immunity,” Koh said. “That is very dangerous, because, if anything, that could even be construed as an act of war.”

Instead of bailing out a bunch of deadbeat ingrates' student loans for votes in November maybe demagogue Joe Biden should have built some ships to help us fulfill our promises to our freedom-loving friends around the world.

The $8.1 billion Indo-Pacific Security Supplemental Appropriation for Taiwan et alia passed yesterday 385-34-1-11, all the Nays being Republicans

 The roll call vote is here.

I would have reported in real time but Blogger had a major outage yesterday afternoon lasting several hours.

Nine marines of the Philippines vs. The Chicoms

Nine marines of the Philippines aboard this ship at Second Thomas Shoal contest ownership of the Spratly Islands against the Chicoms. It is the former USS LST-821, originally launched in October 1944. The Wall Street Journal has the story here.

 

 

 

Tell me again about your problems

 This Navajo warrior, Joe Lee Kieyoomia, survived the battle for the Philippines, the Bataan Death March, prison camp torture, transport by Japanese hell ship, and the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, and died at the age of 77.

World Health Organization protects Xi Jinping's feelings, adopts Omicron for new South African variant B.1.1.529 instead of Nu or Xi

alpha beta gamma delta epsilon

zeta eta theta

iota kappa lambda mu nu

xi omicron pi 

rho sigma tau upsilon

phi chi psi omega

 

This is the first thing you learn in Greek 101, the alphabet. You've got it down when you can say it from memory after lighting a match and you don't burn your fingers, which you will need to write all the funny letters.

Looks like WHO needs to retake the course, however.

This new South African variant, B.1.1.529, will be very confusing since almost a year ago there was a South African variant everyone got hysterical about but it didn't take over the world. The India variant did instead.

That South African variant (B.1.351), was beta, retroactively so designated at the end of May 2021 with all the variants, which is probably why no one remembers it.

The UK variant (B.1.1.7), dominant in the US in April, May, and June, is alpha. 

The gamma variant (P.1), from Brazil, never amounted to much in the US, though that was fear-mongered, too.

The India variant (B.1.617.2) is delta, dominant in the US from July 1.

Epsilon covers variants from California, B.1.427/B.1.429.

Zeta is another Brazilian one, P.2.

Eta and iota cover variants from New York, B.1.526/B.1.525.

Theta was first detected in the Philippines, P.3.

Kappa's another one from India, B.1.617.1, as is B.1.617.3, which oddly hasn't its own Greek letter designation even though it's on radars.

Lambda is from Peru, C. 37.

Mu variants come from Colombia, B.1.621/B.1.621.1.

Nu and Xi are being skipped:

The WHO made the announcement about the B.1.1.529 variant out of Johannesburg, South Africa, passing over a letter many observers presumed would be next — “Nu” — as well as the subsequent letter, “Xi,” which composes part of Chinese leader Xi Jinping‘s name.

I'm looking forward to Beijing being called Peking again one day. 

I mean, who orders "Beijing Duck"?

At any rate, the reality, as one wag put it,  is that they are all Xi variants.

 

And as another answered, the final variant will be communism. 

 

MacArthur was right about China:

Here in Asia is where the communist conspirators have elected to make their play for global conquest. 

 

Elites today everywhere are on their side.

 

 

As China expands illegal military operations in the Spratly Islands, the Biden administration is reiterating strongly its support for the Philippines

“The most significant change in military posture in 2021 is the appearance of Chinese special mission aircraft and helicopters at Subi and Mischief Reefs, indicating the PLA may have commenced routine air operations from those airfields,” Mr. Dahm said in an interview. ...

Beijing officials on Monday denounced a statement by Secretary of State Antony Blinken hailing the fifth anniversary of an international tribunal ruling that ruled against China’s claim to own 90% of the sea under the “Nine-Dash Line” boundary.

Mr. Blinken reaffirmed Sunday a year-old policy shift announcing that any Chinese military attack on Philippine military or civilian vessels or aircraft in the South China Sea would trigger the U.S.-Philippines Mutual Defense Treaty.

More.

Update for COVID-19 English-speaking world case fatality rates as of 1/19/21

 Per Johns Hopkins University (data changes slightly as we write):

Global totals:

deaths 2,044,445 / cases 95,703,104

Case fatality rate 2.13%

G-7 nations Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK, US, plus Australia and New Zealand:

deaths 713,992 / cases 36,041,142

Case fatality rate 1.98%

Rest of the world 2.23% 

Ten other nations with the largest English-speaking populations (India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Philippines, Bangladesh, Egypt, Ghana, Russia, Thailand, South Africa / data quality obviously varies):

deaths 295,121 / cases 17,399,153 

Case fatality rate 1.69% 

South Korea, not shown above, is a good example of how no matter what nations seem to do to stop the spread of the disease, case fatality rates everywhere seem to be ending up in the vicinity of 2%.

Early on South Korea was impressing with a rate well below 1%, but today it is at 1.75%. Japan is up to 1.33%. Much vaunted New Zealand is up to 1.10%.

Compared with Canada 2.51%, France 2.38%, Germany 2.32%, Italy 3.45%, the UK 2.61%, and Australia 3.16%, the good ole USA 1.657% is doing much better than the hysterical headlines would have you believe.

That said, in the US COVID-19 is still sixteen and half times more deadly than influenza. This is a serious crisis, the long term health effects of which are not known.

A recent long term study from May to November in the US showed an alarming rise in hospitalizations for COVID among children. Another study from the UK indicated an alarming rise in the death rate for individuals six months after recovering from COVID. The impact of the disease on the human vascular system is typically acute in the lungs, but remains a still not well understood threat to the rest of the body and its organs.

You don't want to get it. 24 million in the US already have, just 7% of the population.  

For some reason Peter Meijer, Justin Amash's replacement, feels the need to parade his combat cred, basically admits to mental illness: "fully uniformed", "parachute in ... not literally", "a through and through combatant"

Here, apparently because some people doubt it. He did, after all, bail out of West Point and will forever live with the stigma.

Read the whole thing and you'll see the freshman congressman is already psychoanalyzing his colleagues while admitting to the need for some himself.

Unbelievable. This is what we elect to Congress. A rich kid trying to be somebody.

There's a lot of things I respect about Rep. Amash. At the end of the day, you're going to be your own person. I think much of my approach is guided by my experiences overseas. I was fully uniformed, a through-and-through combatant in Iraq; I'd do intelligence operations. That gave me one vantage point. When I was working in disaster response efforts around the world, you—not literally, but kind of—parachute into an area, whether it was the Philippines or South Sudan, domestic response for tornadoes and hurricanes. You have to make a little bit of order out of the chaos. And then when I was in Afghanistan later for a couple of years, as a conflict analyst for the humanitarian aid community, that was a very different perspective, too. But I saw a sense of, how do things fall apart and how can they be rebuilt? ...

We've inserted ourselves into the middle of civil wars; we've taken sides. Sometimes those sides switch. In Iraq, we're backing the Sunnis one time, we're backing the Shia the other. In Afghanistan, it becomes a shifting set of alliances.

Ultimately I think that erodes something at the core of our national soul that we kind of paper over. That's something that I'll have to sit on a therapist's couch to better understand.

ESPN kowtows to China, reproduces China map with 9 dash line claim in South China Sea which International Court of Justice ruled against in July 2016

An international tribunal in The Hague delivered a sweeping rebuke on Tuesday of China’s behavior in the South China Sea, including its construction of artificial islands, and found that its expansive claim to sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis. 

More here.

ISIS bomb blasts kill 20 celebrating mass at Cathedral of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Jolo, Philippines

Jolo church attack: Many killed in Philippines BBC News 27 January 2019

China installs missiles in Spratly Islands, Admiral Harry Harris says China eroding the free and open international order

China has no business annexing this territory, and the international court of The Hague has so ruled already in July 2016.

Here:

China has installed anti-ship cruise missiles and surface-to-air missile systems on three of its fortified outposts in the South China Sea, sources tell CNBC. ... The Spratlys, to which six countries lay claim, are located approximately two-thirds of the way east from southern Vietnam to the southern Philippines.

The weekend help at Drudge can't spell Philippines

I admit it, I still have to look that one up myself even after all these years.

Las Vegas shooter's girlfriend feared wired money to Philippines was his way of breaking up with her

From the story here:

“I was grateful, but honestly I was worried that first, the unexpected trip home and then the money, was a way of breaking up with me".

Obama can negotiate with Iranian terrorists and visit the communist police state of Cuba . . .

. . . but Trump can't talk to the president of independence-minded Taiwan or invite the pusher-killing president of the Philippines to visit the White House.

Got it.

Hague Tribunal rules in favor of Philippines in South China Sea, saying China has never exercised exclusive authority over the waters

China doesn't give a damn.

Story here.

China's nine-dash-line claim in the South China Sea will finally get its day in court

But China won't be there to defend it.

From the story here in The Diplomat:

On Thursday, October 29, the Permanent Court of Arbitration awarded its first decision in the The Republic of Philippines v. The People’s Republic of China. The court ruled that the case was “properly constituted” under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, that China’s “non-appearance” (i.e., refusal to participate) did not preclude the Court’s jurisdiction, and that the Philippines was within its rights in filing the case. In short, Thursday’s decision means that the Permanent Court of Arbitration rules in the Philippines’ favor on the question of jurisdiction. With the jurisdictional issue resolved, the case can move forward to evaluating the merits of the Philippines’ legal assertions in the South China Sea. ...

First, and most vexing for China, is the status of Beijing’s nine-dash line claim in the South China Sea. Manila argues that the nine-dash line is an excessive maritime claim and not in line with the entitlements for coastal states under UNCLOS. With jurisdiction question resolved, we can look forward to China’s nine-dash line getting its day in international court (although, notably, without China taking part to defend it). China has kept the scope of its nine-dash line ambiguous under formal and customary international law, but once the Court decides on the matter, its ability to maintain ambiguity will be limited.

Second, based on the first point, that the nine-dash line is an excessive claim, the Philippines is arguing that China’s occupation of various features in the Spratly Islands is illegal.

Obama's Lazy Mind At Work

"Danes have punched above their weight in international affairs."

"I've said this before, but I want to repeat: Norway punches above its weight."

"We have no stronger ally than the Netherlands. They consistently punch above their weight."

"Ireland punches above its weight. It's a small country."

"The Philippines is not the largest of countries . . . It punches above its weight."

See the video here.

h/t The Weekly Standard