COLD WAR II: Scores Of ‘Dark Vessels’ Belonging To China’s Maritime Militias Are Operating In Contested Waters.

A large number of China’s “little blue men,” the irregular maritime militia forces that receive support and training from the Chinese government, have gone dark on traditional maritime tracking systems thanks to a new law. The inability to track these ships is worrisome given the role many Chinese fishing and commercial vessels play in Beijing’s plans to assert itself in the South China Sea and the East China Sea, some of the most hotly contested areas of the Pacific.

A new report underscores the safety and intelligence gaps caused by a cybersecurity and data privacy law passed by China last year which caused a large number of Chinese vessels operating in or near the country’s territorial waters to disappear from global tracking systems. The new data detailing the scope of China’s fleet was published by commercial satellite firm Unseen Labs, which specializes in tracking and identifying radiofrequency (RF) transmissions from space.

In a February 18 press release, the company writes that “most ships are not visible from traditional surveillance systems once they get close to Chinese shores” and that “more than 60% of ships in the area have disappeared” from the automatic identification system, or AIS, the global standard for tracking and identifying ships at sea.

Communist China enjoys all the advantages of maritime trade and shoulders none of the responsibilities and respects none of the laws. Hell, the CCP rejects them outright when they aren’t merely flaunting them.

It won’t end well but it isn’t yet clear for whom.

COLLABORATING WITH DICTATORS HAS ITS PRICE, EVEN TODAY: AP: NBC Olympics a ratings “disaster” — and now a tainted brand. “The Beijing Winter Olympics started off as a “cataclysmic” failure in TV ratings, and it ended the same way. . . . This had nothing to do with the performance of the athletes. Viewers knew after NBC’s atrocious brown-nosing of Vladimir Putin’s Soviet iconography in Sochi’s opening games that they already knew what the coverage from Beijing would be like. And they turned out to be correct. This time, though, the moral issues were even more obvious, and yet produced no real shame in Beijing’s corporate partners.”

TRUNALIMUNUMAPRZURE! ‘Are You Guys Out Of Your F**king Mind?’: Joe Rogan Says Biden ‘Can’t Talk Right’ Anymore.

“He’s [Biden] not a good example, because he’s basically a shell, you know, cognitively,” Rogan shared. “And the fact that that took a long time for people to admit. That was one of the things that people were saying that I was a Trump supporter during the election because I said I would vote for Trump before I would vote for Biden.”

“But I didn’t vote for either,” he added. “The reason why I said that was like, ‘You don’t see this? Are you guys out of your fucking mind? You guys don’t see that this guy can’t, he can’t talk right anymore?’ Go watch videos of him from twenty years ago. He was a dummy, he said a lot of silly shit, he lied about a bunch of things, but at least he was articulate.”

Don’t worry, all the best people assured us in 2020; it’s just a stutter: Biden’s Ukraine Response After-Party Produces Some Horrific Optics. “Things got even weirder at the end of the roundtable, though. Biden gets asked an obvious question about Putin, and instead of answering it, the president starts smirking and picking at his teeth, while staring blankly for over 20 seconds. It was an incredibly odd scene.”

EVERYTHING IS GOING SWIMMINGLY: S&P 500 Charts Are So Bad Even Bulls Are Looking to Adjust Bets.

BIDEN: A UNITER, NOT A DIVIDER! Representatives Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz, AOC and Cori Bush joined 39 other lawmakers in urging Biden to seek congressional approval before sending troops to Ukraine.

DOG BITES MAN: Biden Update Does Not Inspire Confidence in Ukraine’s Future. “Biden spoke for a good 30 seconds before he began stumbling over his words and losing his train of thought.”

LAW FIRMS GRAPPLE WITH THE GREAT RESIGNATION.

IT’S ALL THEY HAVE LEFT!  Media Clings To Democrats’ Dying Hopes.

WE SHOULD TIE HER AND FAUCI IN A SACK:  Canada’s Evil Gnome.

No cats, dogs, monkeys or whatever the Romans put in there needed.

IT WAS FICTION, BUT NOW IT’S TRUE:  The Odessa Steps.

NOT BECAUSE SHE QUOTED ME, BUT BECAUSE IT’S A THOUGHTFUL PIECE:   The Reason for the Police Violence in Ottawa is Not What You Think.

GET RID OF LEFTIST PEOPLE IN POWER:  CDC Lowers Bar for Children’s Speech Development.

Do it for the children.

BEHOLD! MY SHOCKED FACE:  Tamara Lich Accused Of Pre-Crime, Gets No Bail.

OF COURSE THEY DO: Trudeau Provides The Template: Large Majority of U.S. Democrats Support Canada’s Crackdown On Protests.

They fail to appreciate the size and…. uh…. complexity difference between the countries. They’re not very deep thinkers. They have all the depth of a puddle in a Colorado summer.

I LOVE A HERO:  Including this state trooper.

NON EXPERTS DO TOO:  Experts Blast CDC for Failing to Publish Critical Covid-Related Data It Collected.

WELL, OF COURSE HE DOES:  Ottawa Mayor Wants to Sell Confiscated Freedom Convoy Vehicles.

Crooks and Marxists. They all are both.

WE CAN DO NO OTHER:  Here We Stand.

THE FUNNY THING HERE IS NOT FINDING OUT THAT THINGS DIDN’T HAPPEN AS WE THOUGHT:  The smallpox pandemic response was eerily similar to COVID.

No, the hilarious thing is that this writer, debunking one lie buys into the other, that the industrial revolution sent the dispossessed to the cities to be “economic slaves.” In our own time, we’ve found that countries industrializing have trouble keeping the poor from working in industry versus agriculture. And worse, if you read books written at the time you find people in rural areas complaining they can’t find servants, no matter what they pay.

Yeah the conditions of the urban poor were terrible compared to ours. But apparently not compared to the rural poor. Assuming that was idyllic because you love gardening is a stupid mistake.

IN MY HUMBLE OPINION: HURRAY AND THERE SHE GLOWS.

Could I be wrong? Sure. But I don’t like the smell of it.

EVERY SOROS PROSECUTOR SHOULD BE REMOVED FROM OFFICE. AT THE VERY LEAST. LA County prosecutors overwhelmingly vote to support recall of George Gascon. “There are 672 members of LAADDA so 83 percent participation works out to 560 who chose to vote and of those just shy of 98% support the recall. The prosecutor in the Robert Durst case told NBC the vote was a testament to Gascon’s ‘deplorable and unethical leadership.'”

Yeah, that sounds about right.

MIKE BLOOMBERG TRIES TO WARN THE DEMOCRATS: San Francisco Shows Democrats Have a Seismic Challenge Ahead.

OPEN THREAD: I WONDER.

HOW DO YOU UNLOCK A KEY? Researchers unlock the keys to designing an interstellar sail. “Breakthrough Starshot aims to develop a light sail that would carry a microchip-sized probe at 20% the speed of light. This high-speed pace would see the probe reachAlpha Centauri In just about 20 years.”

DROPPING THE MASK: NYT executive editor Dean Baquet sums up ‘the job of the New York Times’ — and accidentally gives away the MSM’s game.

* * * * * * * *

I feel very strongly—and I know this is not embraced by everybody—that nobody is objective. The system of “objectivity” (and I know that’s going to be a bad word) was designed to create a system—Wesley Lowery is right when he describes that—in which the organization’s job was to make sure that whatever your perspective was it didn’t get in the way of reporting the truth. I believe in that very strongly. That’s not the job of every institution. But the job of the New York Times should, in the end, be to come out with the best version of the truth, with your own political opinion held in check by editors and editing. Not everybody believes that, but I believe that. And I think that if you come to work for the New York Times—if you really want to work for the New York Times—you have to embrace that, because that’s what the New York Times is. Independence means being independent of everybody and of ideology—it just does.

Or not — as the paper’s original ombudsman admitted in 2004: “Is the New York Times a Liberal Newspaper? Of course it is.”