United States

Fabricating data in China, it turns out, is not only a favorite government pastime. Publicly traded, if state-owned, phone giant Unicom Group fabricated financials relating to 1.8 billion yuan ($261 billion) in revenue over a five-year period from 2012 to 2016 - or as the company admitted, it engaged in an "unprecedented degree of falsified revenue."  This is China we are talking about, where the definition of "unprecedented" is very different from the US.

In the second incident between US and Chinese planes this year, two Chinese Su-30 fighter jets came within 150 feet of a U.S. Air Force WC-135 radiation detection plane while it was flying over the Yellow Sea in international airspace on Wednesday, CNN reports, citing an unidentified U.S. official.

The Chinese jets came within 150 feet of the US plane, with one of the Su-30s flying inverted, or upside down, directly above the American plane, the official said. 

One month ago, when we first discussed that in addition to the CVN-70 Carl Vinson aircraft carrier group, the US was deploying two more carriers toward the Korean peninsula, some took the Yonhap-sourced report skeptically: after all, what's the incremental symbolic impact of having two aircraft carriers next to North Korea when just one would more than suffice.

With most expecting Trump to strike North Korea as part of his next foreign military adventure-cum-distraction from the chaos in D.C., the president once again surprised everyone by pulling a lighting bolt, striking twice in one month in the same place.

The Assault on Trump

Paul Craig Roberts

We are witnessing an assault by the national security state and its liberal media on a President of the United States that is unprecedented.