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Chinese Military,Political and Social Superthread

Ooops, says today's Good Grey Globe:

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Chinese nuclear-powered submarine sank earlier this year, U.S. defence official says​

REUTERS
PUBLISHED 3 HOURS AGO

China’s newest nuclear-powered attack submarine sank earlier this year, a senior U.S. defence official said on Thursday, a potential embarrassment for Beijing as it seeks to expand its military capabilities.

China already has the largest navy in the world, with over 370 ships, and it has embarked on production of a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines.

A senior U.S. defence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said China’s new first-in-class nuclear-powered attack submarine sank alongside a pier some time between May and June.

The official said it was not clear what caused it to sink or whether it had nuclear fuel on board at the time.

“In addition to the obvious questions about training standards and equipment quality, the incident raises deeper questions about the PLA’s internal accountability and oversight of China’s defence industry – which has long been plagued by corruption,” the official said, using an acronym for the People’s Liberation Army.

“It’s not surprising that the PLA Navy would try to conceal” the sinking, the official added.

China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

A series of satellite images from Planet Labs from June appear to show cranes at the Wuchang shipyard, where the submarine would have been docked.

As of 2022, China had six nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, six nuclear-powered attack submarines and 48 diesel-powered attack submarines, according to a Pentagon report on China’s military. That submarine force is expected to grow to 65 by 2025 and 80 by 2035, the U.S. Defense Department has said.

On Wednesday, China said it had successfully conducted a rare launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean, a move likely to raise international concerns about the country’s nuclear buildup.

The United States and China held theater-level commander talks for the first time earlier this month, amid efforts to stabilize military ties and avoid misunderstandings, especially in regional hot spots such as the South China Sea.

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⬇️ This ⬇️ is, apparently, it in happier times.
that is one ugly submarine.
 
The Globe and Mail hints that Bill Blair, acting, on assumes on the orders of Prime Minister Trudeau's PMO, delayed the investigation of Toronto Liberal politician Michael Chan:

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CSIS agents frustrated by delay for electronic warrant against long-time Liberal politician​

ROBERT FIFEOTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
STEVEN CHASE SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
INCLUDES CORRECTION
PUBLISHED YESTERDAY UPDATED 5 HOURS AGO

It took at least six weeks for Bill Blair, then-public safety minister, to sign an electronic and entry warrant to monitor former Ontario cabinet minister Michael Chan in the lead-up to the 2021 federal election, according to documents tabled at the foreign-interference inquiry.

Sworn testimony made public Friday suggests that the delay was eight weeks or more.

The public inquiry was looking into a report last year by The Globe and Mail that Mr. Blair took about four months to sign off on the surveillance of Mr. Chan, an influential Liberal Party powerbroker in the Greater Toronto Area.

The lag led to operational frustration from Canadian Security Intelligence Service officers, since it normally takes 10 days to get ministerial sign off.

A national-security source told The Globe then that the delay left little time for CSIS to get the final approval of a federal judge to plant bugs in Mr. Chan’s cars, home, office, computers and mobile phones before the 2021 campaign got under way.

The Globe did not identify the source because they risked prosecution under the Security of Information Act.

Mr. Blair has denied that his office delayed approving the warrant. He told the inquiry in April that he signed the Chan warrant some three hours after it landed on his desk.

Former CSIS director David Vigneault, who left the spy agency in July, and his former second-in-command Michelle Tessier, were interviewed by commission counsel this summer about the delay in authorizing the warrant. The transcripts of those discussions were tabled at the Hogue inquiry Friday.

Although the name of the target is not mentioned in the documents, Gib van Ert, a lawyer for Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong, told the inquiry Friday that Mr. Blair had agreed in earlier testimony that Mr. Chan, now deputy mayor of Markham, was the target of that warrant.

The inquiry heard Friday that the warrant sat in Mr. Blair’s office for 54 days from mid-March to May 11, 2021.

Ms. Tessier told the commission in the summer that “CSIS regional office, headquarters, the operational employees were very frustrated with what they perceived as a delay in obtaining the minister’s approval for the warrant.” She said there appeared to be no reason for the delay as Public Safety did not come back with questions about the warrant.

Ms. Tessier said CSIS provided a briefing on the warrant to Mr. Blair’s chief of staff, Zita Astravas, two weeks after the spy agency applied to the minister’s office for the electronic eavesdropping authority.

But she also testified that she had earlier given Ms. Astravas a head’s up that CSIS planned to submit a warrant on Mr. Chan.

Asked by Mr. van Ert when that notice took place, Ms. Tessier said: “I don’t recall if it was days or weeks.”

“How could it have been in his [Mr. Blair’s] office for all that time, with his chief of staff knowing about it, for 54 days and more – and not sharing that with him? Do you have any explanation?” Mr. van Ert asked Ms. Tessier. She replied: “I can’t explain that.”

Ms. Tessier testified that she wasn’t “under the impression that the warrant would be stalled” and that it was her interpretation of what Ms. Astravas was telling her “that the warrant was moving ahead.”

Ms. Astravas declined comment Friday, saying in an e-mail that “it would be unlawful for me to comment on, confirm or deny specific warrants or cases.”

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There's more but you get the idea. Blair denies it of course; says he signed the warrant as soon as it hit his desk. I suspect that is the literal truth. The 54 day delay was while it sat in his outer office.
 

CSIS officials revealed increasingly sophisticated tactics used by Beijing to influence Canadian elections and public opinion, highlighting a chilling new concept introduced by former CSIS Director David Vigneault: cognitive warfare. This advanced form of psychological manipulation, Vigneault warned, is aimed at altering how entire populations think about critical geopolitical issues.

“Cognitive warfare is designed to change how an entire population will be reflecting and thinking,” Vigneault testified before the Hogue Commission.

“One of the most concrete examples of this has been the PRC targeting the population of Taiwan,” Vigneault explained. Using technology, psychology, and social media manipulation, the PRC has bombarded Taiwanese citizens with disinformation, gradually eroding resistance to the idea that Taiwan’s annexation by China is inevitable.

But Taiwan is only one of many targets.

CSIS officials, including Vanessa Lloyd, emphasized that Canada is also a key focus of the PRC’s foreign interference efforts. Lloyd testified that CSIS has been investigating foreign interference for over 40 years, with China’s tactics evolving from basic influence campaigns into complex operations that manipulate elections, control public discourse, and deepen divisions within diaspora communities.

“China directs its foreign interference activities in a very party-agnostic way to individuals it views as most friendly or willing to advance China’s interests,” Lloyd said. The Chinese party-state’s long-term goal, the Commission heard, is to bolster its own security by influencing Canadian policies and weakening democratic institutions.

These operations are not limited to elections. The PRC has built a network of political actors across Canada, often using community and cultural organizations to disseminate pro-China narratives. These networks, Lloyd explained, amplify Chinese policy positions and spread disinformation, subtly undermining Canadian policies that conflict with Beijing’s objectives.

However, the most alarming development, according to Vigneault, is the use of cognitive warfare.

“Cognitive warfare now uses new approaches in psychology, new understanding about brain functions, and technology like social media to penetrate into people’s homes—and through their devices, through their brains,” Vigneault said.

My paranoid take -

The CCP and the PRC feel humiliated and the people that humiliated them were the Round Eyes, in particular the Brits and to a lesser extent their offspring - the Yanks, Canucks, Aussies and Kiwis.

The CCP aim is to reverse the humiliation, reset the yin and yang. They will not be happy until the humiliation is avenged, the middle kingdom is back in the ascension, face is regained and the Anglos are all kowtowing to them.

Success is achieved when the global community treats the whites Anglos like the aberrant outcasts they believe us to be.

...

People that have historic grievances against the Anglos and their parliamentary liberal democracy.

The Chinese
The Indians
Slave traders of all races including the Arabs
The Russians
The Brazilians
The Argentinians
The Germans
The French
The Vatican

For starters.
 



My paranoid take -

The CCP and the PRC feel humiliated and the people that humiliated them were the Round Eyes, in particular the Brits and to a lesser extent their offspring - the Yanks, Canucks, Aussies and Kiwis.

The CCP aim is to reverse the humiliation, reset the yin and yang. They will not be happy until the humiliation is avenged, the middle kingdom is back in the ascension, face is regained and the Anglos are all kowtowing to them.

Success is achieved when the global community treats the whites Anglos like the aberrant outcasts they believe us to be.

...

People that have historic grievances against the Anglos and their parliamentary liberal democracy.

The Chinese
The Indians
Slave traders of all races including the Arabs
The Russians
The Brazilians
The Argentinians
The Germans
The French
The Vatican

For starters.
You need to visit the museum near Guangzhou which is devoted to the Opium Wars and the humiliation - they use that word over and over again - that 🇨🇳 suffered at the hands of imperialist 🇬🇧
 
You need to visit the museum near Guangzhou which is devoted to the Opium Wars and the humiliation - they use that word over and over again - that 🇨🇳 suffered at the hands of imperialist 🇬🇧

Somewhere during the last 60 odd years I have lost the incentive to turn the other cheek, to be polite and to accommodate other opinion.

Strangely enough I feel more Brit, more Anglo, more Presbyterian, more Protestant, more "liberal parliamentary democrat", more "capitalist" - and dare I say it, more white, than I have ever felt in my life.

I guess DEI works.


Here's to Mclean and Mclean.
 
A few days old but important reading from the Globe and Mail:

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China now more ‘audacious and sophisticated’ in foreign-interference operations, Hogue inquiry told​

ROBERT FIFE OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF
STEVEN CHASE SENIOR PARLIAMENTARY REPORTER
OTTAWA
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2024UPDATED SEPTEMBER 27, 2024

China has become more “audacious and sophisticated” in foreign-interference operations and its hostile cyber activities have evolved significantly over the past two years, senior officials at Canada’s signals intelligence agency have told the Hogue inquiry.

Officials from the Communications Security Establishment told the Foreign Interference Commission Thursday that China, Russia, Iran and North Korea pose a cyberthreat to Canada, but they also identified India and Saudi Arabia as growing players in foreign meddling here.

CSE Chief Caroline Xavier singled out the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the greater threat because of its relentless cyber and foreign-influence operations in Canadian domestic affairs.

“The PRC is a sophisticated actor, a persistent actor, a patient actor,” she said, calling Beijing a “strategic threat toward Canada.”

Ms. Xavier testified to the inquiry headed by Marie-Josée Hogue that China “permeates multiple spaces, online and otherwise” and is heavily involved in software development, telephone companies and applications such as popular social-media platform TikTok.

Alia Tayyeb, deputy chief of CSE’s signals intelligence and foreign cyber operations, said the tactics and techniques used by China and other hostile states have evolved from simple espionage to “hack and leak” – using hacked networks of computers to flood social media with disinformation, and using artificial intelligence to amplify narratives and harvest data.

Even more worrying, the inquiry heard, is that China is outsourcing cyber disinformation campaigns to third parties, including criminals, or using commercial providers and online marketplaces to obfuscate its operations.

At times, China is successful in evading some social-media platforms’ mechanisms to spot fake content.

“In addition to cyberthreats, we have seen actors like the PRC use traditional foreign-interference tools such as use of proxies, use of proxy organizations, use of state run media” as well as social-media campaigns and data collection, Ms. Tayyeb testified.

Ms. Xavier also noted that India is seeking to become a player in cyber activities to influence diaspora communities in countries such as Canada. Without going into detail for security reasons, she said CSE detected Indian misinformation and disinformation operations directed at Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He was singled out for his 2018 trip to India and in 2023, after he publicly accused Indian agents of orchestrating the slaying of Canadian Sikh leader Harjit Singh Nijjar.

“We recognized that there was some misinformation and disinformation going on,” she said.

A document submitted by Global Affairs Canada’s Rapid Response Mechanism, which monitors social media for disinformation, said numerous pro-India government outlets painted Mr. Nijjar as a terrorist. It said other outlets accused Mr. Trudeau of fabricating the murder accusation against India to play up to some Sikh Canadians who seek to carve an independent Sikh state out of India.

In a prehearing interview made public Thursday, Ms. Tayyeb said Russia has not appeared interested in meddling in Canadian elections specifically. Its cyber efforts seem more aimed at sowing mistrust.

Russia does have a long-standing campaign to discredit the U.S. and its allies, and Western democracy in general, which affects Canada and other allies, according to the summary of her interview. Ms. Tayyeb added that CSE has observed Russian cyberthreat activity in Canada, but not directed against Canadian democratic institutions.

Last October, Global Affairs’ Rapid Response Mechanism reported that MPs, including the Prime Minister and Official Opposition Leader Pierre Poilievre, were the targets of a disinformation campaign known as “Spamouflage” that was carried out by the Chinese government in August and September.

RRM said Spamouflage is a tactic that uses networks of new or hijacked social-media accounts to post and amplify propaganda messages across multiple platforms.

Global Affairs reported in July, 2023, that RRM detected a disinformation operation on WeChat directed against Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong in May of that year.

That same month, Mr. Chong learned from The Globe and Mail that Beijing had targeted him and his relatives in Hong Kong in the lead-up to the 2021 election, a revelation that led the federal government to expel a Chinese diplomat behind the effort.

The government later disclosed that former Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole and NDP MP Jenny Kwan had also been targeted by Beijing in 2021 – and that they remained targets.

CSE warned in late December, 2023, that cyberattacks are on the rise in national elections around the world, including in NATO countries. It said the proportion of elections targeted by cyberthreat activity has increased from 10 per cent in 2015 to 26 per cent in 2022.

Most of these attacks are orchestrated by China and Russia and are forecast to increase in the next two years to target countries of strategic significance, CSE said.

Canada’s next federal election is scheduled for the fall of 2025, but a campaign could take place before then after the New Democratic Party withdrew its support from a pact with the minority Liberal government.

The CSE report said it expects foreign adversaries such as China to use AI-generated deep fakes in the next federal election in Canada because they see this activity as an “obscure and risk-averse way of impacting Canada’s policy outcomes.”

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Ever worth the read. Ms Xavier is one of those "high fliers" I mentioned in another thread. She brings a well focused resume to her post: SigInt + Security + Policy Management.
 
CSE warned in late December, 2023, that cyberattacks are on the rise in national elections around the world, including in NATO countries. It said the proportion of elections targeted by cyberthreat activity has increased from 10 per cent in 2015 to 26 per cent in 2022.




....

Danielle is insisting on

Voter ID
Canadians only
Paper ballots and hand counts

....

Municipalities are creatures of the provinces.

....

We have already seen how foreigners are interacting with the low hanging fruit at the municipal level.
 



....

Danielle is insisting on

Voter ID
Canadians only
Paper ballots and hand counts

....

Municipalities are creatures of the provinces.

....

We have already seen how foreigners are interacting with the low hanging fruit at the municipal level.
From the second article:

“The people who have permanent residency also retain their citizenship in the country they left, and that’s what concerns me,” he said.
So I guess he is concerned about dual citizens too?
 
The CRTC seems unable or unwilling to enforce rules on Chinese language media in breech of their regulations.

 
The CRTC seems unable or unwilling to enforce rules on Chinese language media in breech of their regulations.

Why would they? If they did they'd be branded as "racist" etc.
 
  • Humorous
Reactions: ueo
This is turning into quite the investigation! It just keeps getting worse and worse. I wonder where the tipping point is for anybody to take action?

This is turning into quite the investigation! It just keeps getting worse and worse. I wonder where the tipping point is for anybody to take action?

For a second there I thought this would be about misconduct of another type.
 
China not being nice to Bhutan


Quietly taking over the world one neighbour at a time.... very Chinese:



China Is Quietly Expanding Its Land Grabs in the Himalayas​

As the world worries about an invasion of Taiwan, Beijing is methodically continuing its seizure of territory in Bhutan.​


As the U.S. government has spent ever more of its time in recent years preparing to respond to any potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, Beijing has been busy slicing away parts of the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. Over the last few years, China has built massive infrastructure with hundreds of concrete structures, military posts, and administrative centers in the region of Beyul Khenpajong, some 12,000 feet in the northern Himalayan mountains. The so-called “hidden valley” is deemed sacred by Bhutanese, with the country’s royal family tracing its ancestral heritage to the area.

China’s blatant land grab of Bhutanese territory is just its latest move to control areas of significance in Buddhist culture, exploit a far less resourceful neighbor, and challenge its regional rival India in the Himalayas.

China’s expansion in the Beyul was first reported in Foreign Policy in 2021 by Robert Barnett, an expert on Tibet and the China-Bhutan border. Barnett wrote that while China had announced the settlement of a single village called Gyalaphug in the contested valley back in 2015, tens of miles of road and several key military buildings were in place in the Beyul and the neighboring Menchuma Valley by 2021.

He spoke to Foreign Policy from Paris last week and said that over the last two years, construction in the valley “more than doubled.”

In his 2021 report, Barnett and his team of researchers spotted 66 miles of new roads, a small hydropower plant, a communications base, five military or police outposts, and a major signals tower, among other edifices, in the Beyul and the Menchuma Valley.


 
For a second there I thought this would be about misconduct of another type.

cbc kc GIF by Kim's Convenience
 
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