Crossposted from Flopping Aces
As Hillary cozies up to China on behalf of her boss, Obama, in order to keep the currency flowing into the US, the Chinese themselves have been emboldened in aggression. That is if you can consider Chinese vessels harassing an unarmed US surveillance ship, manned by a hefty crew of civilians, “emboldened”. Cowardly is the first description that pops into my mind… schoolyard bully stuff.
The Chinese vessels involved were one Navy intelligence collection ship, a Bureau of Maritime Fisheries Patrol Vessel, a State Oceanographic Administration patrol vessel ,and two small Chinese-flagged trawlers.
The Pentagon reports that five Chinese vessels stalked the USNS Impeccable while in international waters… approaching within 25-50 feet of the ships hull, moving into it’s path, attempting to snag the LF sonar equiment, and throwing debris into the water.
The Pentagon said Monday that Chinese ships harassed a U.S. surveillance ship Sunday in the South China Sea in the latest of several instances of “increasingly aggressive conduct” in the past week.
During the incident, five Chinese vessels “shadowed and aggressively maneuvered in dangerously close proximity to USNS Impeccable, in an apparent coordinated effort to harass the U.S. ocean surveillance ship while it was conducting routine operations in international waters,” the Pentagon said in a written statement.
The crew members aboard the vessels, two of which were within 50 feet, waved Chinese flags and told the U.S. ship to leave the area, the statement said.
“Because the vessels’ intentions were not known, Impeccable sprayed its fire hoses at one of the vessels in order to protect itself,” the statement said. “The Chinese crewmembers disrobed to their underwear and continued closing to within 25 feet.”
After the Impeccable alerted the Chinese ships “in a friendly manner” that it was seeking a safe path to depart the area, two of the Chinese ships stopped “directly ahead of USNS Impeccable, forcing Impeccable to conduct an emergency ‘all stop’ in order to avoid collision,” the statement said.
“They dropped pieces of wood in the water directly in front of Impeccable’s path.”
The Pentagon reports this is one of the most aggressive incidents they’ve seen in some time, and the US Embassy in Beijing lodged a formal protest with the Chinese government. The Chinese have refused comments.
This is the third of similar incidents over the past week.
The Pentagon cited three previous instances of what it described as harassment, the first of which occurred Wednesday, when a Chinese Bureau of Fisheries Patrol vessel used a spotlight to illuminate the the ocean surveillance ship USNS Victorious.
In that incident, which occurred about 125 miles from China’s coast in the Yellow Sea, the Chinese ship “crossed Victorious’ bow at a range of about 1,400 yards” in darkness without notice or warning. The following day, a Chinese Y-12 maritime surveillance aircraft conducted 12 fly-bys of Victorious at an altitude of about 400 feet and a range of 500 yards.
The next day, a Chinese frigate approached Impeccable “and proceeded to cross its bow at a range of approximately 100 yards,” which was followed less than two hours later by a Chinese Y-12 aircraft conducting 11 fly-bys of Impeccable at an altitude of 600 feet and a range of 100 to 300 feet, the statement said.
“The frigate then crossed Impeccable’s bow yet again, this time at a range of approximately 400-500 yards without rendering courtesy or notice of her intentions.”
And on Saturday, a Chinese intelligence collection ship challenged Impeccable over bridge-to-bridge radio, “calling her operations illegal and directing Impeccable to leave the area or ’suffer the consequences,’ ” the statement said.
The USNS Impeccable is an Ocean Surveillance Ship, part of the Military Sealift Command’s (MSC) Special Mission Ships Program. Most special mission ships are operated by civilian mariners who work for private companies under contract to MSC. The Impeccable, launched in 1998, and delivered to the Navy in 2001, deploys LF passive sonar while underway, requiring a combined crew of merchant marines, surveillance towed array sensor system operations (SOC) technicians, and U.S. Navy sonar technicians.
The merchant marines operate, navigate and provide all the maintenance of the ship while the SOC techs are responsible for the sonar itself. They handle the maintenance of the sonar and the operational equipment that the Navy sonar technicians use to gather the data.
Ocean Surveillance ships’ missions work in accordance with the Navy’s Sea Shield initiative by sustaining access for maritime trade, coalition building, and military operations. One of six programs of the ONR Future Naval Capability (FNC) program, the Sea Shield focuses on missile defense, anti-submarine warfare, mine countermeasures and fleet/force protection technologies that support projecting global defensive assurance… and their main tasks are to identify and track undersea threats.
At the time of the incident, the Impeccable was sited about 75 miles south of Hainan, China… well outside any possible claim by China for territorial waters.
As the US economy remains fragile, and the Obama administration’s lofty ambitions require vast spending and borrowed money, I expect we can see increased flexing of Chinese muscles in our future.
Also:
Obama Lift’s Ban On Taxpayer Funded Stem-Cell Research…MSM Cheer
You know the MSM has the back of our President when they put a headline up like the following:
Obama Aims to Shield Science From Politics
Really?
So is he going to get rid of ALL restrictions on human experimentation? Would not any restrictions be considered “political interference” in science?
The short answer….nope….he will not get rid of all restrictions when it comes to human experimentation.
He is going to shield science from the interference his base wants him to get rid of only. That of stem-cell experimentation:
President Barack Obama on Monday cleared the way for a significant increase in federal dollars for embryonic stem cell research and promised no scientific data will be “distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda.”
Obama signed the executive order on the divisive stem cell issue and a memo addressing what he called scientific integrity before an East Room audience packed with scientists. He laced his remarks with several jabs at the way science was handled by former President George W. Bush.
“Promoting science isn’t just about providing resources, it is also about protecting free and open inquiry,” Obama said. “It is about letting scientists like those here today do their jobs, free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what they tell us, even when it’s inconvenient especially when it’s inconvenient. It is about ensuring that scientific data is never distorted or concealed to serve a political agenda and that we make scientific decisions based on facts, not ideology.”
He said his memorandum is meant to restore “scientific integrity to government decision-making.” He called it the beginning of a process of ensuring his administration bases its decision on sound science; appoints scientific advisers based on their credentials, not their politics; and is honest about the science behind its decisions.
Appoint scientific adviser based not on politics but on their credentials? Sure thing. We will be waiting for an appointed adviser who believes, as millions of other Americans believe, that destroying a human embryo for experimentation is morally wrong.
I think we will be waiting a long time for that appointee.
The MSM and the left have been quite successful in defining this debate as the big bad Republicans banning stem-cell research. That’s a lie, and they know it. That kind of research was legal during the Bush administration, the only thing that was not legal was taxpayer money paying for it. Private funding was perfectly ok during the Bush years.
But the MSM has a long history of being disingenuous. At least the NYT’s was a little itty-bitty honest about it:
The ban, known as the Dickey-Wicker amendment, first became law in 1996, and has been renewed by Congress every year since. It specifically bans the use of tax dollars to create human embryos — a practice that is routine in private fertility clinics — or for research in which embryos are destroyed, discarded or knowingly subjected to risk of injury.
For a time, the ban stood in the way of taxpayer-financed embryonic stem cell research, because embryos are destroyed when stem cells are extracted from them. But in August 2001, in a careful compromise, President Bush opened the door a tiny crack, by ordering that tax dollars could be used for studies on a small number of lines, or colonies, of stem cells already extracted from embryos — so long as federal researchers did not do the extraction themselves.
But then we get this kind of disingenuousness from the WaPo:
The decision by President George W. Bush to restrict funding for stem cell research has been seen by critics as part of a pattern of allowing political ideology to influence scientific decisions across an array of issues
Once again, it’s only political ideology….not the fact that many find it MORALLY reprehensible, which the WaPo admits to deep into the article:
But the research is highly controversial because the cells are obtained by destroying embryos, which some consider to be immoral.
If one views it as immoral, as President Bush did, then it has nothing to do with political ideology.
“I’ve always believed it’s morally wrong to use taxpayer dollars that destroy human embryos. But now it’s not only morally wrong, but also completely unnecessary. It is as thought the administration and the abortion-rights Left in this country has completely ignored the extraordinary medical advances of the last year and a half, which have essentially rendered destructive embryonic stem-cell research unnecessary…From the very beginning of this administration, this president has been trampling on the sensibilities of pro-life taxpayers — using taxpayer dollars to fund abortion overseas, and the omnibus bill actually erodes the historic protection of Kemp-Kasten. And now this decision — it’s all part of a pattern.”
“The President’s action today is not about whether or not to permit stem cell research, or even embryonic stem cell research in America. We already do each of those things. Today’s action is about forcing taxpayers to fund ethically troublesome – and unproven – research that destroys life.
“Nearly every American supports continued stem cell research, and Republicans laud the miraculous innovations made in ethical and sensible adult stem cell research. Unfortunately, today the Administration wasted an opportunity to unite our country around these ethically and scientifically sound innovations by allowing the use of taxpayer money for embryo-destructive stem cell research, which millions of Americans find morally reprehensible. This divisive action will divert scarce federal resources away from innovative and proven adult stem cell research.”
The fact of the matter is that private companies have done plenty of research on stem-cells, and nothing…absolutely nothing…has come out of it. The same cannot be said for adult stem-cell research.
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