Pitz Defense Analysis

SeaLight Investigation: A Conspiracy Made in 🇨🇳#China Whoever wrote the obviously fake 🇵🇭Teodoro letters thinks in Chinese official lingo, argues like China's foreign ministry and found his distributors among Beijing's friends. Imagine the #Philippines' Harvard Law-trained defense secretary Gilberto Teodoro writing a formal, unclassified letter to an obscure 🇺🇸US Embassy officer -- on official letterhead and over his own signature -- to confess to everything his critics say about him. That's what the "Teodoro letters" ask you to believe, but whoever made them forgot to cut off the "Made in China" tag. The letters don't read like a Filipino official, or frankly anyone proficient in English. They read like Chinese bureaucratese translated word for word from Mandarin. One sentence pairs "complete qualifications" with "good reputation," a stock formula Chinese agencies use when choosing contractors. The May letter calls Washington "the US side", while the Armed Forces of the Philippines is inverted into the "Philippine Armed Forces" by its own Secretary; and what the China Coast Guard does in the West Philippine Sea is referred to as "law enforcement." Oh, and the author has a real problem with the article, "the". Almost as if it was written by someone whose language doesn't have an equivalent. In other words, someone used to reading Chinese accounts in the Chinese language. The July letter even recasts Beijing's own talking points about the July 20 clash as a Teodoro confession. Because that's totally what a highly educated Filipino politician and attorney would do. 🙄 And the people who had the letters first? All friends of Beijing, without exception. The Philippine Department of National Defense says the letters are fake. They clearly are, and they're bad fakes at that ... right down to the 100% identical signatures. The more interesting question is who wrote them. SeaLight Director @GordianKnotRay lays out the evidence, and it points directly back to Beijing. Full investigation at the link in the comments below. 👇

A major 🇨🇳#PRC maritime militia rotation has begun in the #SouthChinaSea, with 24 of the large Qiong Sansha Yu ships leaving 3 ports on Hainan Island headed SW toward the Spratly Islands & Scarborough Shoal. Meanwhile, 8 militia ships have left Scarborough toward Hainan. It is likely that we'll see similar departures begin from the Spratlys once the ships headed that way get closer.