China is now even taking aggressive actions in Japanese EEZ waters. At some point someone is going to get fed up with this and take aggressive actions back at these ships and that is what everyone is going to fear will lead to an international incident:
Australia on Saturday accused the Chinese navy of likely causing minor injuries to Australian naval divers by operating its sonar while they were trying to clear fishing nets from their ship’s propellers.
The Australian government has expressed its serious concerns to the Chinese government over what it called the unsafe and unprofessional conduct earlier this week, Defense Minister Richard Marles said in a statement on his official website.
There was no immediate comment from the Chinese side. The U.S., Canadian and Australian militaries have complained multiple times about what they say have been dangerous actions by the Chinese navy and air force in the western Pacific. Analysts fear a collision or other accident could spark an international incident and escalate into conflict.
Via a reader tip comes this news of an assault of a Korean woman in Sydney by two Australian teenage women:
Disturbing footage shows the moment a teenager brutally attacked a young Korean woman in Sydney in the early hours of Sunday morning.
According to Instagram account ‘degeneratehunting’, which uploaded the footage, the Korean woman and her friend were walking back to their hotel when they were approached by two teenagers near Town Hall in the city’s CBD.
The women, who are from Melbourne and aged 23 and 32, “suddenly passed a group of young teenagers slurring racist remarks and threats towards them”.
“The teenagers then turned from their direction of travel and began following the two Korean girls, bringing one of them to start recording for self defence,” the post read.
Footage shows the Korean woman in a tussle with one of the teenagers on the street before she is dragged to the floor and struck multiple times.
The woman manages to get to her feet briefly before she is dragged back down again and kicked and continuously struck in her head.
Australia’s military is expanding its role in the Pacific this time participating in a trilateral exercise in South Korea:
Over 130 U.S., South Korean and Australian aircraft began large-scale airpower drills this week to improve their teamwork, three days after U.S. and South Korean soldiers concluded a ground and air exercise.
Vigilant Defense, a five-day exercise that kicked off Monday, is taking place throughout South Korea with 25 types of aircraft, including U.S. F-35B Lightning IIs and F/A-18 Hornets, and South Korean F-35As and E-737 airborne early warning and control aircraft, according to a Ministry of National Defense news release Saturday.
A KC-30A multirole tanker transport from the Royal Australian Air Force will conduct aerial refueling drills, the release said. The Australian air force first appeared for the exercise last year when a KC-30A refueled South Korean KF-16s and U.S. F-35Bs.
It is amazing how many women this guy was able to rape before finally having the police investigate him:
A man described as a “prominent member” of Sydney’s Indian community is currently on trial for 13 counts of rape, among multiple other sex crimes, in Australia.
Balesh Dhankhar, former president of the Indian diaspora organization OFBJP Australia, stands accused of rape by five women, all of whom are Korean and in their mid-20s. The women claimed that they were lured by Dhankhar under the pretext of offering them jobs before he drugged and raped them in his apartment between January 2018 and October 2018.
Dhankhar reportedly posted a job ad for Korean-to-English translation work on the classified ads site Gumtree to lure women to Sydney’s Hilton Hotel bar, which is located near his apartment.
You can read more at the link, but there are many more women out there that he assaulted because the police found 47 videos of him raping unconscious women. Incredibly this turd is pleading not guilty. I assume his defense is going to be that every woman he had sex with did so consensually and then passed out. I think it is unlikely that a jury will believe that.
Friendship flight of S. Korea-Australia aerobatic flight team This photo, provided by the South Korean Air Force, shows members of the South Korean aerobatic flight team, the Black Eagles (bottom), and its Australian counterpart, Roulettes, posing for a photo after conducting a friendship flight over the Twelve Apostles, a collection of limestone stacks off the shore of Port Campbell National Park in Victoria, Australia, on Feb. 27, 2023. Black Eagles came to Australia to join the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace & Defence Exposition set for Feb. 28-March 5 at Avalon Airport in the largest Victorian city of Geelong. (Yonhap)
China’s Foreign Minister told Penny Wong the Coalition government was the “root cause” of Canberra and Beijing’s spectacular bilateral breakdown and said four things need change to get the relationship “back on track”.
The resilience that Australia has shown against China’s economic retaliation has likely been a major surprise for the CCP. Instead of weakening Australia it has actually strengthened and embolden the country to stand up even more against CCP human rights violations, economic coercion, and territorial expansion:
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison speaks at a press conference in Canberra on Aug. 17; Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks at Macau’s international airport on Dec. 18, 2019.
If the scale of China’s trade coercion against Australia is unprecedented, it also offers an intriguing experiment: What does a sudden economic decoupling from China look like? With China accounting for nearly 40 percent of Australian exports, one might assume the costs of Canberra’s defiance would be grave.
But in fact, the effects have been surprisingly mild. The reason is trade diversion: When a trade barrier is erected, businesses seek alternate outlets for their products. In open international markets, the outcome is rarely the destruction of export industries. Most of the time, trade flows adjust around the barrier.
Coal provides an illustrative example. Once China banned imports of Australian coal in mid-2020, Chinese utilities had to turn to Russian and Indonesian suppliers instead. This, in turn, took Russian and Indonesian coal off the market, creating demand gaps in India, Japan, and South Korea—which Australia’s stranded coal was able to fill. What’s more, the global energy crunch has pushed up the price of coal, leading Australian coal producers’ export earnings to rise this year—not exactly the effect China had in mind.
You can read more at the link, but for a commodity based economy like Australia has, it is easier to decouple from China. However, for countries that have tech and manufacturing relationships with China it will be harder to decouple because new factories have to be built and new skilled workers have to be trained elsewhere. This would likely be a multi-year process. However, if countries don’t start this process now they could find their economies compromised if China threatens to close them as part of economic pressure to coerce governments to side with them during any future conflict over the South China Sea for example.
