Dave Patterson: China Ends 2025 With Large Provocation

As the calendar year 2025 ended, China conducted one of its most provocative exercises, threatening Taiwan. In the final days of December, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and the China Coast Guard (CCG) conducted a joint training operation called Justice Mission 2025 in the Taiwan Strait and other waters surrounding Taiwan. This was the second such exercise that year, simulating a blockade of major Taiwanese ports to shut down transportation to the island as a prelude to an invasion. The first was called Strait Thunder-2025A, conducted April 1-2 of last year, and it had similar objectives.

China Is Stepping Up Its Taiwan Blockade Exercises

Mark Angelides: Blockade - Venezuela Gets the Terror Treatment

A total blockade of oil tankers entering or leaving Venezuelan waters has been imposed by the Trump administration, ratcheting up tensions that came to a head Tuesday evening, December 16. Ordering a “total and complete blockade,” President Donald Trump has escalated the South American situation in an effort to disrupt and destroy the flow of illegal drugs into the US. And yet, the political and economic ramifications go far beyond the drug cartels.