Chinese scientists unveil mind-controlled drone

RUSSIA TODAY | SEPTEMBER 4, 2012

Chinese researchers have unveiled a system that allows users to control drones with their thoughts. The technology was designed to help handicapped people, but could have ample applications in other fields as well.

A video posted to YouTube by researchers at Zhejiang University shows how the system, called Flybuddy2, works. And it appears that you don’t have to be a nuclear scientist to build one. All you need is an EEG headset with a Bluetooth connection to a laptop – plus a quadrotor Parrot AR Drone linked to the computer.

“The computer can receive EEG signals via Bluetooth and convert them to specific commands to control the AR drones through WiFi,” a presenter explains.

To get the drone to raise or to land, a user would need to “think left” hard. “Think left lightly” if you want to rotate clockwise and “right” if you want it to lurch forward. Give it a lift in the air by thinking “push.” And imagine clenching it if you want to bring it back down to earth.

But moving around is not the only task it can do. Remember how they tell you to avoid blinking when taking photos? Well here it’s the opposite: blinking is the command that tells the drone to photograph its environs.

The video shows a man in a wheelchair using the technology to get a closer view of flowers, to take pictures and even to guide his drone through a battle with another quadrotor controlled through a handheld remote control. Needless to say, mind triumphs over matter and the hand-managed drone is hustled off the mat by its thought-controlled analog.

The students hope their technology will be able to help disabled people become more interactive with the world around them, and are slated to present their invention at the ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (Ubicomp), which will be held next week in Pittsburg.

While handicap assistance and gaming is one potential application for the system, only the imagination can limit the potential uses mind-controlled drones could have in the future, both for civilian and other purposes.

The World’s Debt is China’s Wealth

By LUIS MIRANDA | THE REAL AGENDA | AUGUST 30, 2012

Debt is never seen as a positive outcome, however there are times when someone’s incapacity to handle finances becomes wealth for others. A clear example is the current state of economics in both the developed and developing worlds, where indebted nations are the subject of hefty fees and interest rates on loans they cannot mathematically pay. In fact, the irresponsibility of politicians and bureaucrats to manage their countries monies has made them slaves of their own greed.

But for other countries like China, which has bought most of the debt from countries like the United States, a nation’s hell has become a bonanza. China’s leverage has allowed to accumulate a gigantic purchasing power, which many people also attribute to the Chinese management of their currency value. China, they claim, purposely devalues the Yuan, in order to keep its products at more competitive prices. China’s currency manipulation and the fact that its labor is one of the cheapest in the world allowed the country to accumulate large amounts of wealth.

Where is all that money going? To purchase land and resources all over the world. But China’s race to acquire land, mainly to plant food for its growing population, and to sell it to other countries, is not unique. Countries like Saudi Arabia and organizations like the UN are also investing their cash in large portions of land. The practice of buying land abroad is also known as the third wave of the outsourcing movement, although many call it a new form of neocolonialism.

The Chinese have gone everywhere they find open arms to effectively acquire property and infrastructure, sometimes hiding their purchases behind a veil of bilateral agreements or simply financial aid that is not expected to be returned. The Chinese government has built soccer stadiums in Costa Rica, offered millions of dollars to local governments in Brazil, bailed out the US in multiple occasions by purchasing its debt, and now, it is buying Europe up.

If anyone is in doubt about where do European bankers get all the money they’ve given to their corporate friends in so-called ‘rescues’ and ‘bailouts’, please look at two main sources. First, massive electronic creation of money; as in typing digits on a computer keyboard and charging the interests generated from those ‘rescues ‘to many generations to come, and two, Chinese purchase of European Union bonds. The latter is the same mechanism used by the United States to get cash flow or liquidity to maintain its gigantic empire going.

The Chinese couldn’t have come to Europe at a better time, because not even Germany, the sudden shiny house at the top of the hill, was able to handle the scandalous sovereign debt catastrophe that most EU members are into. Meetings and conversations already begun, with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Prime Minister of China, Wen Jiabao, providing a quick pick into what they call the first fruit of their encounter, but which in reality could be a rotten fruit. The president of the Asian giant has confirmed that his country would continue to buy sovereign bonds in the EU, but also deeply analyze their risks.

After the meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on official visit to China, Wen said Beijing would improve consultation and communication with the EU, the European Central Bank (ECB), the multilateral financial institutions and major countries to help the most indebted European states to cope with their problems.

In this regard, he said that China hopes that the EU can achieve a balance between fiscal austerity and economic stimulus, a formula that is the fundamental way to solve the crisis.

Cooperation with Germany and the EU as a whole, said the Prime Minister, should focus on boosting confidence. “We must let people see hope, oppose trade protectionism and promote collaboration to explore the markets,” said Wen.

Meanwhile, the Chancellor said that the euro zone has the political will to address the crisis. Wen and Merkel led today the second round of intergovernmental consultations between their respective countries, with the participation of seven German ministers, which accounts for half of Merkel’s Cabinet.

Following the meeting of the two, China announced the purchase of 50 Airbus A320 model, the value of 2,790 million euros ($3,500 million).

It seems that the Chinese financial rescue of the European Union has begun, except it is not to rescue Europe, but to rescue China itself. The deeper in debt  countries get with China, the more products they have to buy from that country and the lesser finished goods they will produce. China’s investments will yield not only access to markets with less regulations for its cheaply made toxic products, but also and most importantly, dependence.

China is on the way to becoming the landowner, the producer and the seller who no one will be able to contest.

UN Sterilization Campaigns In Developing Countries Accelerating

By JURRIAAN MAESSEN | EXPLOSIVEREPORTS | JULY 10, 2012

The real trick is, in terms of trying to level off at someplace lower than that 9 billion, is to get the birthrates in the developing countries to drop as fast as we can. And that will determine the level at which humans will level off on earth.”

From a MIT lecture by professor Penny Chisholm.

For over half a century demographers at the United Nations have attempted to “convince” people from both developing and developed nations to limit their households to one child. In the decades after WW2 no means were spared in order to get this message across. Radio, television, newspapers were cleverly used to reach people in the remotest areas. By the mid-seventies, all available instruments of propaganda were strategically set in motion, with taxpayer’s money to spare and lots of “human resources” to scale back (as social engineers prefer to call us). The justification that could be given to the Western middle class was wonderfully simple: under the guise of developing the undeveloped, the UN sold its Third World population agenda. Simultaneously the developing nations were propagandized into surrendering their people’s birthright to procreate and multiply- two things our species is prone to do. All those resisting the onslaught of information were characterized as a scourge on the environment. Because the eugenicists have an enemy that is not easily defeated, namely human instinct and dignity, it was crucial to discredit human nature first, making it suspect, while replacing human nature with an artificially created “shadow nature” which readily rejects notions such as life and liberty, embracing covert eugenics and tyranny instead. Although the UN in the west has learned to speak of “sustainable development” when speaking of population control, their language in developing countries has been more crude, more closely resembling the original eugenic tongue on how best to keep their populations in check.

Despite all these efforts the overall human population has increased. The UN began to grow restless and less impressed with its own propaganda efforts. In the West populations may have decreased, in the developing world they increased all the more. More drastic measures began to be proposed for the Third World with the aim of speeding up the population agenda. From the beginning of this century onwards all kinds of horror-stories began dripping in, describing among other things state-sponsored sterilization policies in the Third World.

Uzbekistan

In 2010, the British Independent featured an AP article detailing suspicions that health officials in the Republic of Uzbekistan are widely involved in involuntary sterilization-practices.

The AP-reporter spoke with a 24-year old housewife named Saodat Rakhimbayeva, an extremely brave woman who tells a heart-wrenching tale of state-sponsored eugenics in her home country of Uzbekistan. After giving birth to a premature boy, she had to witness her son dying just three days later.

“Then”, states the article, “came a further devastating blow: She learned that the surgeon had removed part of her uterus during the operation, making her sterile.”

“According to rights groups, victims and health officials, Rakhimbayeva is one of hundreds of Uzbek women who have been surgically sterilized without their knowledge or consent in a program designed to prevent overpopulation from fueling unrest.(…). The order comes from the very top,” said Khaitboy Yakubov, head of the Najot human rights group in Uzbekistan.”

This statement by Yakubov has more significance that he himself probably realizes. By “the very top” he likely refers to the central Uzbek government. As it turns out, the order came from even higher up.

An official communiqué from the embassy of Uzbekistan in New Delhi gives us more insight in a remarkable initiative by the Uzbek state and the different partners with which it collaborates:

“The complex of measures for the “Mother’s and Child’s Screening”, directed to prevent the childbirth with the hereditary diseases, accompanying with intellectual backwardness as well as inspection of pregnant women is carried out in the Republic with the purpose of revealing anomalies of development of a child-bearing. (…). Within the framework of the State Programs the cooperation is continuing with the WHO, UNICEF, UNFPA, USAID, JICA, KfW Bank, World Bank, Asian Development Bank (…).”

The United Nations Population Fund concurs. It admits helping Uzbek authorities screen its citizens:

“In Azerbaijan and Uzbekistan, UNFPA worked to strengthen national capacities to collect, analyze and disseminate gender disaggregated data on population, development and reproductive health and to integrate population variables and gender concerns into development and environmental planning.”

Now what this really mean? A Japanese International Corporation Agency, profiling Uzbekistan’s disability policies, states the following in regards to the Uzbek national screening program (page 11):

“By 2001, 124.000 of new-borns had been examined, 2.800 children in at-risk groups had been identified; and 160 had been registered in health clinics. For genetic reasons, 1.381 pregnancies were terminated.”

Furthermore, an Uzbek government-website acknowledges receiving generous funding for its eugenic programs and restates the UN-funded mission:

“Up-to-date medical technologies help detect possible defects in the development of a fetus at an early stage of pregnancy. To preclude birth of children with genetic disease accompanied by mental abnormalities and to detect fetus abnormality (…).”

Another Uzbek government website gave a description of the ultimate goal of the “Mother and Child screening” program as follows:

“(…) reducing the birth of disabled children.”

In the same publication, the above-mentioned “screening” of possible “intellectual backwardness” serves to “prevent childbirth with hereditary diseases”.

Interestingly the link to that webpage is now dead. However they can not erase away the fact that these practises constitute eugenics in its purest form. And transnational organizations like the UN, World Bank and the German KfW Bank are directly and fanatically involved in the funding of these “screening”-programs conducted by Uzbek health authorities.

The UN itself admits in its own publications to its “long-standing partnership and track-record working in Uzbekistan.”:

“The UN’s mandate in supporting the implementation and monitoring of the MDGs (UN Millennium Development Goals) at the country level is a substantial comparative advantage in assisting the Government (of Uzbekistan) to enhance living standards, and achieve higher levels of human development. As a credible and trusted partner of the Government, we provide policy advice, technical assistance and programmatic support, drawing on best global practices.”

An important item of the UN’s “programmatic support” is their ideas on population-screening and control, making sure that Uzbek women:

“… have access, as and when they require, to what we call reproductive health.- family planning, contraception, and medical care during pregnancy, at delivery and afterwards.”

In a publication by USAID, the largest US aid institution paid for by US tax dollars, reference was made to the contributions of the United Nations Population Fund:

“UNFPA provided IUD’s, injectables and pills. Health facilities hold at least 3 different methods, though their quantities are not sufficient.”

In regards to USAID’s own contributions, which include training local Uzbek health officials, the document lists a training-course:

“The two week-training included theory and extensive practise. Each participant passing the course received a set of instruments for minilaporotomy. During training courses 39 clients were sterilized. 88 clients have been sterilized by trained providers to date.”

Another USAID-document from 1993 recommends some actions to be taken in regards to Central European nations, such as Uzbekistan (page 10):

“New contraceptive technologies should be offered, with training in their application and in the counseling of clients on the choices available to them. Policy change will be required in some countries to permit sterilization to be included among available options for both women and men. To assure the commitment of health sector leadership, study tours in the united States would be useful, as would inclusion of the heads of medical training institutions in the redesign of medical and nursing curricula to integrate family planning into health care.”

Remember the reports from the Uzbek woman reporting involuntary sterilization practices by Uzbek doctors. It seems it is being done with US taxpayer dollars, and with additional donations from the World Bank, German development bank, the United Nations Population Fund- and let’s not leave out another important contributor, the World Health Organization. The WHO reports on their own website:

“Uzbekistan and WHO: A close relationship exists between WHO and the Ministry of Health (MOH).”

Listed under “Opportunities”, the WHO mentions that:

“Uzbekistan now receives substantial funding for health programmes with contributions from many key partners.”

India

According to a report out of India earlier this year, several victims of forced sterilization by state officials have come forward, providing bone-chilling evidence of widespread sterilization practices in Madhya Pradesh, a huge province in India’s heartland. An item carried by India Today, under the header “conned into sterilization” features no less than 8 victims of Indian government officials, who routinely round up citizens and sterilize them just to meet the state’s family planning targets. As it turns out, it’s not just the state’s targets they are meeting. Every time some chicken-necked eugenicist grabs a surgical knife, it is the desires of the UN and World Health Organization he’s satisfying.

The victims interviewed include a 98-year old man and an 80-year old man, both of whom were forced to undergo vasectomy. Government officials threatened the men with withholding their social benefits if they refused.

“While these men got to live the life they wanted till a ripe old age, 24-year old Jamuna Kori of Sidhi district was not so lucky. One day, he was just picked up from a road by two men, sterilised and left on the highway again.”

The article, written by correspondent Rahul Singh, also features a woman who was drugged into submission:

“They gave me something to drink and I fell unconscious. When I woke up I realized they had operated on me. I want an inquiry”.

The video also shows several mentally challenged individuals, who were not even threatened but just directly operated upon.

The clip also features a 25 year old man who took his 2 year old son for an anti-rabies vaccine after the boy was bitten by a dog. The doctors told the man they would only treat his son if the father would undergo sterilization. The Telegraph carried an article recently about this case, in which the young father said:

“My son’s life was more important. I was told private hospitals charge 900 Rupees (£11) for each injection,” he told The Indian Express.”

“In 2010”, states a 2011 article out of New Delhi, “Madhya Pradesh achieved a record sterilization target of 645,000, luring villagers with freebies such as mobile phones, two-wheelers and gold coins to undergo sterilization.”

But now, in 2012, it seems the eugenicists in the UN are loosing patience as now they just order people picked up from the road to have them drugged and sterilized.

In an ad put out by the UNFPA (the United Nations Population Fund) for the job of family planning consultant (7 vacancies) the candidates are being informed about the reasons for more hands:

“Given that the presence of the private sector is marginal, there is major client load on the public health system. Hence, if sterilization services in Madhya Pradesh have to pick up, public health system has to gear itself and other options of public–private partnership, wherever feasible, will have to be explored.”

Another piece of evidence that the sterilisation-efforts contributed to the state is actually being coordinated by the UNFPA:

“It is proposed to have a dedicated technical person in the office of divisional joint director, as divisional family planning consultant, supported by UNFPA. The consultant would be physically located in the office of divisional joint director health services and will work under direct administrative and technical control of joint director health services.”

In fact, these practices are being conducted worldwide- always with the help of the same old modus operandi: the World Bank and their UN partners constrict sovereign nations to the point of them accepting trading-“privileges”. In order to safeguard a seat around the transnational table, these nations- often struggling with widespread poverty- accept every and any condition by the lender of last resort (IMF, World Bank). These conditions are far from secret. They are actually right out in the open. This latest Indian horror story is further evidence of the fact that not the Indian state is the initiator of these forced sterilization policies, as the article by Rahul Singh argues. It is the UNFPA rather, the enforcement arm of the eugenicists, which both sets the standards, provides the technology, recruits the medical personnel, and- on a global level- enforces these sterilization policies through binding treaties and other supranational strangleholds.

In the context of the 2011 UN’s World Population Day several developing nations were quick to pledge allegiance to the eugenic deity. In the east-Indian state of Bihar, officials put out the announcement that:

“The Bihar government will soon formulate a new population control policy. The policy will be framed in collaboration with the United Nations Population Fund (UNPF).”

Another Indian state, Karnataka, had President Gladys Almeida “observe World Population Day” at which event she told local government employees:

“There is a need to create an awareness on the need for population control.”

Another individual present said:

“as the population increases, nature takes its own method to control it.”

Another compliant nation, Pakistan, had their Federal Minister for Population Welfare Firdous Aashiq Awan announce that:

“The government is taking serious measures to control population growth in the country.”

The government in Islmabad even recruits religious leaders (a trick stolen from the UN) in order to sell population control to the masses:

“(…) religious leaders are being empowered. For the first time, ‘Imam Masjid’ is being made a partner in population Welfare programmes. He would act as a social mobilizer, she (Awan) added.”

These pledges of allegiance to the UN and their set goals of reducing human numbers are not exclusively made by developing countries. Developed countries have accustomed themselves with the same line of reasoning. The only difference is that, as of yet, the language has been more “friendly”, masking the true purpose of the scientific dictatorship implemented.

China

Via news outlet the Global Times, the Chinese State in 2010 lamented the “issue of unauthorized births” in light of the UN’s stated goal of “efficient population control.”

The UN’s World population Day, July 11, was originally set up in 1989 by the Governing Council of the United Nations Development Programma to “raise awareness of global population issues.”

“The theme of this year’s (2010) 21st World Population Day”, mentions the article, “is “Everyone Counts”, and the activities in China will focus on the 2010 population census and emphasize the right to life.”

“In China”, the article goes on to say, “the issue of unauthorized births is at the forefront of its efforts to control the growth of its population as it undermines the country’s family planning policy, or “one-child policy”, which was implemented in 1980.”

“According to Chinese statistics, the national population reached 1.3 billion at the end of 2008, with 6.7 million born that year. Unauthorized births accounted for a large percentage of those births.”

“Since the family planning policy was implemented, local governments strictly controlled the births of each family, and allowed each couple to have one child, but with a more flexible policy in China’s ethnic minority areas. However, not all couples obeyed the rules (…).”

Besides the horrible “obeyed the rules”, the bone chilling term “unauthorized births” is used several times in the article to describe families exceeding their allowance of babies they decide to put on this earth. As we know, having more than one baby provokes direct interference from the Chinese State, which can tax, fine, threaten and even terminate the new life considered by the all-powerful state to be a burden on the environment. The article also mentions the existence of a “household contract responsibility system”- created nationwide to make sure the population control policies would be strictly carried out. Such a slave-state is exactly what the UN envisions for their desired world government. Although the UN itself tempers the tongue when it comes to their stated goal of reducing the world’s population, the Chinese authorities know exactly what goals the UN expects them to pursue:

“It (the UN) also aims to stress the importance of efficient population control by means of collecting and analyzing the latest data so as to make an impact on decision-making and improve people’s lives.”

A statement written for World Population Day by the Secretary-General of the UN reads as follows:

“On this World Population Day, I call on decision-makers everywhere to make each and every person count. Only by considering the needs of all women and men,girls and boys,can we achieve the Millennium Development Goals and advance the shared values of the United Nations.”

These shared values were described in detail by UN’s Agenda 21:

“(…) a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced: a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level.”

The stifling silence that envelops this subject in developed nations, will only make it easier for the UN to go ahead with their population policies in developing ones. And to anyone in the West who thinks strict population policies in the Third World are sad but necessary, I would like to point out that under a global government, or “global governance” as the UN prefers to say, developed and developing nations alike are subject to its decrees. So every time we wave these facts away like an irritating fly, be assured it will come back to haunt us.

What will Money be like? The Future is Being Written Now

By AMERICANFREED | JUNE 22, 2012

Reform of monetary system … IMF should build multiple reserve currencies including SDR and supervise their issuance and cross-border capital flows … Today, the most urgent task for the G20 is reform of the international monetary system. With sharply fluctuating exchange rates, it is difficult to monitor international capital flows, identify financial risks in advance, and save the global system once a crisis happens. If the current international monetary system cannot be successfully reformed, a new great financial crisis will soon be upon us. So, the G20 should focus on its historical mission to urgently reform the international monetary system. – China Daily

Rigged Gold Market, A Secret Payoff To China … “Gold is a reserve currency, as far as the market is concerned,” Sprott Asset Management’s Eric Sprott told FinancialSense Newshour’s Jim Puplava in an Oct. 2011 interview. Sprott went on to say that central banks and the shrewd money know the endgame for the dollar will include gold as the backbone of a new global monetary system—a system that presently finds China sorely lagging in gold reserves when compared with the core EU nations and the U.S … – ETF Daily News

The world’s new monetary system is being constructed as we write. You can spot the evidence in various articles, both mainstream and alternative. This article will profile two such stories.

First, there is an ETF Daily News article entitled, “Rigged Gold Market, A Secret Payoff To China.”

It complements a most important article from China Daily entitled, “Reform of the Monetary System.”

Together these two recent articles may provide us with significant insights into what is REALLY going on.

According to the ETF Daily News, Western powers-that-be are secretly funneling gold to China in anticipation of a new monetary system now being constructed. China needs more gold to be part of the planned new world monetary order – or so the Daily News article suggests.

For those who believe in directed (conspiratorial) history, such a scenario is certainly believable. The global elites seem to be creating economic chaos in anticipation that they shall then be able to introduce a world currency – possibly one based on a bundle of currency and informally backed by gold.

This will not happen all at once, but will happen over time. If the euro fails, this will surely be an elite setback, but that does not mean the enterprise itself will be halted. The elites that want to run the world – and are willing to produce any amount of agony to get their way – don’t give up easily.

The globalist currency may be run by the elite-controlled International Monetary Fund and could built out of the current Special Drawing Rights (SDR) “super currency” that the IMF has been attempting to implement around the world.

The China Daily article provides us with astonishing confirmation of what may be the IMF’s role. China Daily is widely seen as a private mouthpiece of Chinese government policy.

Reading between the lines, the two articles provide further evidence that China’s top leaders – actually those secretly behind the public’s leaders – are on board with the globalist plans of Western elites.

This has been speculated about before because the paradigm that Western elites use is to ally with the people at the very top of a society. Often hostilities are commenced against such countries.

The idea is always to control the topmost leaders while positioning the opposing country as a threat in order to consolidate further domestic control.

In China, it’s been speculated that some specific dynastic families are involved in controlling that great country – and work with Western banking families such as the Rothschilds.

An alternative to this perspective is that of a three-headed shadow control that includes elements of the communist leadership (Mao was supposedly a “Soviet agent” – and the top Soviets in turn were allied with the West), the Hong Kong Tycoons (later entrants) and the Triads mafias.

This makes sense if one believes that the power players in Mainland China fled to Hong Kong during Mao’s reign and allied themselves with the Triads for purposes of developing political and criminal muscle.

Once China’s mismanagement had reached a critical level – after the failure of the Great Leap Forward – the stage was set for elite re-penetration of that vast state.

When one looks at China today, one sees a kind of Western parallel – but one that is even more extreme. The Chinese economic model is based on corrosive and inflationary central banking that has no doubt allowed elite interests to corral huge amounts of Chinese economic and industrial resources.

China is probably near the end of this particular cycle of monetary activity, with hundreds of empty skyscrapers and dozens of empty cities dotting the landscape. The ChiComs no doubt expect an implosion.

No, there will likely be no “soft landing.”  This is providing the ChiComs with a further incentive to cooperate with Western elites to create a new monetary system built out of the old, collapsing one.

The China Daily article “Reform the Monetary System” provides us with an astonishingly detailed plan for how the new world currency is to come about.

Here are some of the points:

•The IMF should build multiple reserve currencies including SDR and supervise their issuance and cross-border capital flows.

•The G20 should set up a permanent secretariat within the International Monetary Fund to improve its policymaking and implementation capabilities.

•A diversified international monetary system should consist of multiple currencies, such as the Special Drawing Rights, the US dollar, the euro and the renminbi.

• A good way to start the reforms would be to encourage the use of Special Drawing Rights for a broader range of activities and to start reducing the weight of the US dollar in the reserve currency system.

The article explains that, “such reforms would mean granting the IMF the ability to conduct open market operations as the world’s central bank.”

U.S. and Philippines Stage War Games

REUTERS | APRIL 25, 2012

U.S. and Philippine commandos waded ashore on Wednesday in a mock assault to retake a small island in energy-rich waters disputed with China, part of a drill involving thousands of troops Beijing had said would raise the risk of armed conflict.

The exercises, part of annual U.S.-Philippine war games on the southwestern island of Palawan, coincide with another standoff between Chinese and Philippine vessels near Scarborough Shoal in a different part of the South China Sea.

China has territorial disputes with the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Malaysia and Taiwan across the South China Sea, each searching for gas and oil while building up their navies and military alliances.

China said last week the drill would raise the risk of confrontation. On Wednesday, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Cui Tiankai said China was committed to dialogue and diplomacy to resolve the dispute.

“We are certainly worried about the South China Sea issue,” Cui told a news briefing in Beijing, saying “some people tried to mix two unrelated things, territorial sovereignty and freedom of navigation”.

The comments come before high-level talks with the Obama administration. China, which claims the South China Sea based on historical records, has sought to resolve disputes bilaterally but its neighbors worry over what some see as growing Chinese assertiveness in its claims in the region.

“Location (of the drill) is irrelevant,” Ensign Bryan Mitchell, spokesman for the U.S. Marines, told reporters.

“These exercises take place on a regular basis. This year it happens to be in Palawan. The planning for this took place months ago prior to any events that are currently in the headlines.”

U.S. President Barack Obama has sought to reassure regional allies that Washington would serve as a counterbalance to China in the South China Sea, part of his campaign to “pivot” U.S. foreign policy towards Asia after wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Philippine military officials sought to play down the exercise. Lieutenant General Juancho Sabban, military commander for the western Philippines, said the drill “simply means we want to work together, improve our skills”.

Sabban’s area of command includes Reed Bank and the Spratlys, a group of 250 mostly uninhabitable islets spread over 427,350 sq km (165,000 sq miles) west of Palawan.

The Spratlys are claimed entirely by China, Taiwan and Vietnam and in part by Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines.

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