Lone Candle
Champion of Truth
“the U.K. became the first new member to join the tongue-twisting Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) since it was formed in 2018.
It’s also the first country that doesn’t at least have a coast fronting the region.”
https://www.politico.eu/article/britains-bold-new-world-as-a-pacific-trading-nation/
“The U.S. and others suggest China’s navy is establishing a permanent base at Ream, which would give it easier access to the Malacca Strait, a critical shipping route between the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Controversy over the Chinese activity at Ream initially arose in 2019 when The Wall Street Journal reported that an early draft of an agreement seen by U.S. officials would allow China 30-year use of the base, where it would be able to post military personnel, store weapons and berth warships.
Cambodia’s government has denied such an agreement or any intention to grant China special privileges at the base, though Beijing has funded its expansion.
In September, Cambodia’s Defense Ministry said that China is giving its navy two warships of the type it has had docked there for months. China is set to hand over two newly built Type 56 corvettes — smaller vessels typically used for coastal patrols — next year at the earliest, after Cambodia requested China’s support.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/first-time-8-years-us-074249979.html
Chinese massively hack U.S. phone network. They may have been listening to Trump’s calls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3CL4l3AUhE
“American consumers and businesses bore roughly 93 percent of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, according to one analysis by Moody’s. The U.S. Trade Commission concluded in 2023 that American companies and consumers “bore nearly the full cost” of the tariffs Trump levied on steel, aluminum, and many goods imported from China.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/04/peter-navarro-should-not-have-power-over-u-s-trade-policy-or-anything/
Russia is acting aggressively toward Europe and Europe is not responding with enough urgency.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kE6e-bkSWPM
Russia is unilaterally changing sea borders.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDnMYztaxfI
The U.S. needs to massively rebuild its military industrial capacities in order to deter and win wars.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7d5RJm52ks
Russia may have been paying bounties for killing Americans in Afghanistan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gt6_9m5qXdU
Nuclear weapons are on the rise–more of them, more dangerous ones, more advanced ones.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnZLWjOkHU
“A Russian court on Monday denied relief to a U.S. citizen serving 12 years in a penal colony for treason in connection with a $51.80 donation she made, while in the U.S., to a pro-Ukraine charity.
Ksenia Karelina, who is also a Russian citizen, was arrested in January during a trip to visit her 90-year-old grandmother and other family members in Yekaterinburg, Russia. She immigrated to the U.S. in 2012 and became a citizen in 2021.
Trouble for Karelina, 33, began shortly after landing in Russia, where the Federal Security Service (FSB) flagged her after learning she had a U.S. passport. The agency interrogated her, took her cell phone—on which the FSB discovered her 2022 donation to Razom, a charity dedicated to “actively contributing to the establishment of a secure, prosperous, and democratic Ukraine”—and ultimately arrested her for “petty hooliganism,” which was later ratcheted up to treason. Her prosecution is part of a larger Russian crackdown on alleged treason that is unprecedented even by the country’s illiberal standards.”
https://reason.com/2024/11/13/russian-court-denies-appeal-of-u-s-citizen-sentenced-to-12-years-for-donating-51-to-pro-ukraine-charity/