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China slams Pentagon's downing of balloon as an 'excessive reaction'
February 05, 2023
China's Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement Saturday condemning the Pentagon for shooting down a balloon that Beijing says was a civilian aircraft that drifted over the United States by mistake.
"The Chinese side clearly requested that the U.S. appropriately deal with this in a calm, professional, and restrained manner," the ministry said, again dismissing the Pentagon's claim that the high-altitude balloon was part of a surveillance operation aimed at monitoring sensitive military sites.
"For the United States to insist on using armed force is clearly an excessive reaction that seriously violates international convention," the ministry continued, invoking force majeure, which under international law refers to unforeseen circumstances that are beyond a state's control. China has claimed the balloon was a civilian weather research aircraft that was blown way off course by unexpected winds.
"China will resolutely defend the legitimate rights and interests of the enterprise involved, and retains the right to respond further," the ministry concluded.
War hawks in the Republican Party, including former President Donald Trump, predictably reacted with hysteria to the Pentagon's Thursday announcement that it detected the balloon over the state of Montana.
"President Biden should stop coddling and appeasing the Chinese communists. Bring the balloon down now and exploit its tech package, which could be an intelligence bonanza," said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), one of the most vocal warmongers in Congress. "And President Biden and Secretary Austin need to answer if this was detected over Alaskan airspace. If so, why didn't we bring it down there? If not, why not? As usual, the Chinese Communists' provocations have been met with weakness and hand-wringing."
An unnamed Pentagon official said Saturday that this latest incident is one of several times a Chinese balloon has been detected in U.S. airspace in recent years. The other balloons were not shot down.
"[People's Republic of China] government surveillance balloons transited the continental United States briefly at least three times during the prior administration and once that we know of at the beginning of this administration, but never for this duration of time," the official said in a briefing with reporters.
Tensions between the U.S. and China have risen sharply in recent months, largely over Taiwan. The Biden administration recently announced that it is expanding the U.S. military's footprint in the Philippines, a move widely characterized as a message to China.
As The New York Times reported Thursday, "A greater U.S. military presence in the Philippines would... make rapid American troop movement to the Taiwan Strait much easier. The archipelago of the Philippines lies in an arc south of Taiwan, and the bases there would be critical launch and resupply points in a war with China. The Philippines' northernmost island of Itbayat is less than 100 miles from Taiwan."
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said late last month that the odds of a U.S. war with China within the next two years are "very high," echoing the assessment of the head of the Air Mobility Command.
Far from promoting diplomatic talks with China, Republicans in Congress appear bent on ratcheting up tensions further—and some Democrats are joining them. Last month, with overwhelming bipartisan support, House Republicans established the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party.
Upon her appointment to the panel on Thursday, Rep. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.) called the Chinese Communist Party "a threat to our democracy and way of life" and said the select committee represents the "best opportunity to accomplish real results for Americans and respond to China's aggression."
Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), the chair of the select committee, has said the panel's goal is to help the U.S. "win this new Cold War" with China.
Nearly two dozen House progressives issued a statement last month opposing the formation of the committee, saying the U.S. "can and must work towards our economic and strategic competitiveness goals without 'a new Cold War' and without the repression, discrimination, hate, fear, degeneration of our political institutions, and violations of civil rights that such a 'Cold War' may entail."
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'Critical victory': Anti-abortion group forced to pay nearly $1 million to local Planned Parenthood
February 05, 2023
An anti-abortion group in Spokane has been ordered to pay about $960,000 to Planned Parenthood of Greater Washington and North Idaho after its protests were found to have interfered with patient care, the Spokane Spokesman-Review reported.
The Church at Planned Parenthood was ordered to pay $110,000 in civil damages to Planned Parenthood last month after a Spokane County judge ruled that the group interfered with patient care, violating state law, the Spokesman-Review reported.
The anti-abortion group also will be required to pay attorneys’ fees totaling $850,000, it reported, citing Legal Voice, a legal advocacy organization in the state of Washington. That number was reached as part of a settlement between Planned Parenthood and the church’s insurance company.
“This is a critical victory for Planned Parenthood at a time of historical attacks on abortion access,” said Planned Parenthood's Paul Dillon.
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CINCINNATI — In politics, logical and moral consistency often aren’t the highest priorities. That was starkly true in the 2018 campaign to make then-Rep. Larry Householder speaker in the legislative session that would begin the following January, according to evidence presented in federal court on Wednesday.
Householder is accused of racketeering in a scheme to use $61 million in utility company contributions to elect a legislature that would elect him speaker and pass a $1.3 billion ratepayer bailout of failing nuclear and coal plants. At the time of his arrest in 2020, federal prosecutors said it was likely the biggest bribery and money-laundering scandal in the long history of public corruption in Ohio.
In 2016, a financially struggling Householder was running for his old Perry County House seat with an eye toward regaining the speaker’s gavel two years later. At the same time, Akron-based FirstEnergy was losing so much on its nuclear-and-coal-plant subsidiary that it was starting a process that would ultimately send it into bankruptcy. Prosecutors have suggested that the ratepayer subsidies made them easier to spin off.
Householder and the company’s executives quickly formed a relationship that appears to have been formalized on a joint trip to Washington, D.C., for Donald Trump’s January, 2017 inaugural during which they flew on private jets and enjoyed a series of fancy meals.
Just a few weeks later, two Householder-controlled 501(c)(4) “dark money” groups were founded — including one by a FirstEnergy lobbyist who would later become Gov. Mike DeWine’s governmental affairs director. Shortly thereafter, what would become tens of millions of FirstEnergy dollars started to flow into and between them, and becoming dark money in the process.
In U.S. District Court on Wednesday, federal prosecutors laid out in stupefying detail how the dollars traveled through the dark money groups, Generation Now and Partners for Progress, and into political action committees and limited liability companies with names like Hardworking Americans and Hardworking Ohioans.
Dark money groups don’t have to disclose their donors and in her opening statement last week, Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Glatfelter said the entire point of sending the dollars on such a tortuous journey was to make them hard to trace. But on the stand, FBI Special Agent Blane Wetzel explained how he used subpoenaed bank statements, extracted text messages, emails and wiretaps to do so.
Wetzel testified that in early 2018, Householder was working to get a slate of House candidates through the May Republican Primary. The hope was also to get them through the November General Election, so they could vote to make him speaker the following January.
Glatfelter walked Wetzel through how dark money originating with FirstEnergy eventually ended up being spent on campaign ads. One, against Householder’s primary opponent, went after him for taking dark money.
In other words, dark money was being used to slam the use of dark money.
It slammed Kevin Black for “dirty money, dirty politics” over the funding — and because he had been supported by former Republican Speaker Cliff Rosenburger, who had been the object of an FBI investigation.
The latter criticism could seem ironic, given that Householder himself became the object of an FBI investigation in 2004 during his first stint as speaker.
But consistency and avoiding hypocrisy hardly seemed to be the point in a March 2018 wiretapped phone conversation between Householder and political consultant Neil Clark. The consultant was also charged in the case, but he died by suicide in 2021.
Referring to the ad attacking Black, Householder said, “I kind of like the word ‘dark’ because it means black.”
Wetzel, the FBI agent, also described a TV ad funded with Householder-controlled dark money that attacked Montgomery County Commissioner Dan Foley, a Democrat running against a member of “Team Householder” in the 2018 General Election.
The ad showed police cam video of Foley, who said he was stopped for speeding and that he passed a field sobriety test. The ad, however, said Foley had failed several tests and that he was “just another corrupt politician.”
It closed by saying “We can’t trust Drunk Dan Foley,” the Dayton Daily News reported at the time.
Householder’s own epic corruption trial resumes Thursday and is expected to last until March.
Political operative Juan Cespedes, who has pleaded guilty, is expected to testify after Wetzel’s testimony is complete.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.
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