… NATO doesn’t respect anything about Russia. NATO knows no limits.

— Scott Ritter

It is difficult for the person-on-the-street to get a proper handle on what is happening in a war. Regarding the current fighting between Russia and Ukraine, the monopoly media in the “West” has often pointed to Ukraine winning. Other independent sources will state the opposite. Who should one believe?

Beware. The aphorism “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” cautions against too readily believing a known source of disinformation. To do so runs the risk of being made to look foolish. There are several instances of the United States pulling the wool over gullible people’s eyes. But one instance of lying is sufficient to throw doubt on the source of disinformation.

A legal maxim holds, Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus (false in one thing, false in everything). According to this legal wisdom, one instance of mendacity suffices to discredit future information from the same source. At the very least, one should regard with extreme skepticism what that discredited source claims.

File photo of US Secretary of State Colin Powell holding up a vial as he addresses the UN Security Council. (Photo by Timothy A. Clary / AFP)

In 2003, then-US secretary of state Colin Powell, to his everlasting disgrace, held up a vial of anthrax and lied throughout his testimony to the UN security council. The US subsequently launched a devastating war (“shock and awe” as the military behemoth bragged) against Iraq, on the pretext of it having WMD. It didn’t.

Why then would thinking people trust the US about not having committed the war crime of sabotaging the Nord Stream pipelines? Why would people believe the monopoly media that has so often gotten it wrong but somehow still manages to attract a readership/viewership?

So again: who to trust? There are two American patriots steeped in US militarism: former Marine intelligence officer (and the UN weapons inspector who warned that Iraq was “fundamentally disarmed”) Scott Ritter and retired colonel Douglas MacGregor, both of whom have stated emphatically, and have done so all along, that Russia will win and is winning the war in Ukraine. That these two sources are former US military and profess to love their country gives them credibility.

Giving credence to the statements of Ritter and MacGregor is a Turkish media source, Hürseda Haber, that has reported data on the fighting in Ukraine that indicates a one-sided death toll. But the data also reveals that the fighting is not two-sided:

UKRAINE:
The casualties of Ukraine, which was on the ground with 734 thousand soldiers (plus 100 thousand reservists) and NATO officers, soldiers and mercenaries, are as follows:

Aircraft – 302
Helicopters – 212
(S)UAV – 2,750
Tanks and armored vehicles – 6,320
Howitzers (Artillery systems) – 7,360
Air defense systems – 497
Dead – 157,000
Injured – 234,000
Captives – 17,230
Dead – NATO military trainers (US and UK) – 234
Dead – NATO soldiers (Germany, Poland, Lithuania, …) – 2,458
Dead – Mercenaries – 5,360

RUSSIA:
Russian losses in the field with 418 thousand soldiers (plus 3,500,000 reservists) and the increasing number of Wagner mercenaries:

Aircraft – 23
Helicopters – 56
(S)UAV – 200
Tanks and armored vehicles – 889
Howitzers (Artillery systems) – 427
Air defense systems – 12
Dead – 18,480
Injured – 44,500
Captives – 323

• Google translate of data from Hürseda Haber.

Giving further credence to Ritter and MacGregor, and so many others that have stated this is a proxy war, is the death toll that reveals that the Russians are fighting not just Ukrainians but also NATO military trainers, NATO soldiers, and mercenaries (thousands of the NATO personnel and mercenaries having died).

Ritter had pointed out the consequence of failing to accept the Russian demands that Ukraine be neutral, eliminate Nazism, and recognize the independent republics of Donetsk and Lugansk:

… basically what the Russian position will be is, if you don’t accept this, then what we can offer you is death. And not just death of your soldiers, but death of the nation.

Russia is one country going up against many countries. That will magnify the success of attaining Russian military objectives. Conversely, such a NATO defeat will be a massive loss of face for hyped-up American military dominance and throw cold water on the NATO alliance.

The post Russia is Taking on All of NATO plus Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Japan’s actions in a certain period of the past not only claimed numerous victims here in Japan but also left the peoples of neighboring Asia and elsewhere with scars that are painful even today. I am thus taking this opportunity to state my belief, based on my profound remorse for these acts of aggression, colonial rule, and the like that caused such unbearable suffering and sorrow for so many people, that Japan’s future path should be one of making every effort to build world peace in line with my no-war commitment. It is imperative for us Japanese to look squarely to our history with the peoples of neighboring Asia and elsewhere… [emphasis added]

— Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, “Peace, Friendship, and Exchange Initiative”

When considering the state of affairs between two nation states, understanding the history of the relationship is critical.

Japan’s current prime minister Fumio Kishida ought to consider Murayama’s advice to look squarely at Japan’s history with neighboring countries. However, before addressing Kishida’s recent demands of China, there are some pertinent questions to consider in the relationship between the two countries?

Has China ever invaded Japan? Sort of. It was back in the 13th century CE, and it was the Mongol Dynasty (aka the Yuan Dynasty) and its Mongolian Emperor, Kublai Khan — the grandson of Genghis Khan, that twice attempted to invade Japan, in 1274 and 1281. The weather gods, however, were aligned against the Mongol Empire as typhoons, known as the kamikaze (divine winds), scuppered both invasion attempts. China was an ally of the US in World War II, a fact that seems to hold negligible currency with the US, as it prefers its defeated enemy, Japan.

Has Japan ever invaded and occupied China? Yes, Japan has invaded and occupied China and committed unspeakable atrocities against the Chinese people. Among the atrocities are the Nanking Massacre (unwrapped by Iris Chang in The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II, 1997) and the cruel biological and chemical weapons experiments carried out on Chinese by Unit 731 in Harbin, China.

Has Japan ever apologized for its war crimes? Murayama’s prolix non-apology speaks to the evasions of several Japanese politicians whereby Japan as a nation has abjectly failed to take the necessary first step toward atonement for past national crimes. Individual prime ministers have often expressed remorse, regret, sorrow — weasel words that evade saying sorry, which has seldom been meaningfully spoken. What does this mean in a country where apologizing on an individual level is deeply entrenched in the culture? Japan is a society where people profusely apologize for the slightest indiscretion. But on a national level, it is another story. It seems an apology by the Japanese Diet, rather than cleansing the national consciousness, is considered to sully the national image. Thus, the Diet has never officially apologized to the people and nations it victimized during WWII and before. Instead the Japanese government evades any obligation to apologize.

There is, in fact, no serious will among collective Japanese politicians to apologize. This is clear on many levels. Japanese leaders, to the consternation of aggrieved nations, still visit the Yasukuni Shrine which houses the kami of Japanese war criminals. History is sanitized. Japanese students are taught a history that elides Japan’s crimes. Japan has even lobbied other governments to remove statues of a comfort woman erected in their jurisdiction — stark reminders of the crimes of the Japanese military.

Comfort woman statue in Berlin, a replica of a model placed in 35 countries.

And what has this historical revisionism wrought? There is pressure from the US — contrary to the pacifist American-drafted constitution imposed on Japan — to beef up Japan’s military and even gang up on a formerly victimized country, China.

“It is absolutely imperative for Japan, the United States and Europe to stand united in managing our respective relationship with China,” said Kishida. This is portrayed as “enhancing Tokyo’s U.S. alliance in the face of growing challenges from Beijing.” Given the history, one wonders how it is that China is presented as a “growing challenge” to Japan?

According to Kishida, China is also a central challenge to the United States. This raises another pertinent question:

Have the US and Europe ever invaded China? Chinese remember how the US, Europeans, Russians, and Japanese effected the Century of Humiliation for China. Britain would impose the first of the unequal treaties on China following the First Opium War and assume control over Hong Kong. Other unequal treaties forced China to make concessions to the Portuguese, French, Germans, Russians, Americans, and Japanese. With this history in mind, why is it that China is presented as a threat by the victimizing countries? What are astute thinkers to conclude about the current propaganda targeting China by the western-allied bloc?

Kishida posited, “The international community is at a historical turning point: the free, open and stable international order that we have dedicated ourselves to upholding is now in grave danger.” These weasel words are easily parsed. What is meant by “international community” given that Kishida only calls for a united front with the US and Europe? What about Asia, Africa, and Latin America? Are they not part of the international community? And what kind of order is the “international order”? Why is the “international order” in grave danger, and for who is this a danger? Arguably, the “international order” as Kishida envisions it ought to be abandoned in favor of a world that is truly “free, open and stable.” Wouldn’t that be preferable to a world split between a so-called developed world and developing world or, as it is more euphemistically framed, as between the West and the Global South.

US president Joe Biden is on side with the alarmist tone of Kishida, and he commended Japan’s recently announced “historic” defense build up.

China’s vision for the international order differs from the views of Japan and the United States in some ways that the allies “can never accept,” said Kishida. This seems puzzling because China calls for multipolarity. The international order for Japan, however, is not about reducing power asymmetry among nations.

Japan’s acquiescence to a lower ordered rank is revealed by never having rid itself of the lingering vestiges of occupation — a stark reminder of its defeat in WWII. Seventy-seven years later, US military bases are still situated throughout Japan, especially in Okinawa much to the chagrin of Okinawans.

Depending on which source one trusts, the US has 750 to 900 military bases around the world. This is the international order that Kishida speaks of, an order that adduces US hegemony. China, on the other hand, rejects hegemonic status.

Kishida complains of China’s rejection of unipolarity. “China needs to make a strategic decision that it will abide by established international rules and that it cannot and will not change the international order in ways that are contrary to these rules.”

Kishida’s “shameful subservience to the US” (as Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia, put it, according to the Guardian) is odd considering that the US is the country that firebombed Tokyo and dropped nuclear bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Yet, one can deduce from Kishida’s words that Japan accepts being a vassal of the hegemon.

Nonetheless, the tides of history have begun to erode the “international order.” China, Russia, India, Turkey, Iran, and other countries are no longer willing to exist as second-class nation states.

Image credit: geschichte der gegenwart.

The post The History between Japan and China first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Chilling to think the Palestinians may be doomed, but active and passive resistance, international protests, UN Declarations, boycotts, divestments, silent sanctions, myriad of articles, sympathetic words, and anger at Israel’s violent repression have not changed the direction of their struggle. Since 1948, the pendulum has swung in one direction, a consistent increase in repression and destruction of the Palestinian community. The Israel government now includes Religious Zionism, which won 15 seats, making it the second largest bloc in the expected ruling coalition. A Wall Street Journal report, October 23, 2022, “Israel’s Far-Right Itamar Ben-Gvir Poised to Become Political Force,” by Dov Lieber and Aaron Boxer, indicates a rapid increase in the destruction.

Mr. Ben-Gvir has told voters that he hopes to make Israelis safer by deporting people who he believes undermine the Jewish state, executing terrorists and giving immunity to Israeli troops and police who shoot and kill Arabs who are seen holding stones or Molotov cocktails, even before they throw them.

Israel has the power to enforce a solution that maintains the security it claims it wants and enable the Palestinians the freedoms and ontological security they need. That power refuses a commitment to justice and replaces peace with pieces. Spurious use of the word “security” is just another means to rationalize the repression. Baseless attacks on Palestinian NGO’s, closing their offices, allowing a record number of 6,000 Jews to visit the flashpoint Haram al-Sharif, and permitting Israeli settlers’ desecration of the Ibrahimi Mosque in the city of Hebron, “where hundreds of settlers stormed the Ibrahimi Mosque, performed Talmudic rituals, and held a loud concert in its corridors,” are Israel’s latest attempts to deprive Palestinians of attachments to remaining institutions and end their hopes for ontological security. We witness the final elements of an insidious plan, in which the Zionists hope to break the will of the Palestinians and have them choose between leaving a domination that would have assigned them to a ghetto or submitting to a domination that assigns them to a ghetto; a choice between living in exile or slowly dying inside their plundered homeland. Either choice leads to genocide, the decline of the more than 2000 year-old Palestinian community.

Mohammad Abbas and his government are in a no win position, constrained by a military that can enforce its will on any Palestine leadership. International agencies have no political or military force, can only assist Palestine and not desist Israel; the Palestine diaspora, fearful of revenge attacks that can invalidate their status, are restrained; and a sympathetic world community protests but cannot get their governments to act. The United States (US) is the major culprit in support of Israel’s deadly activities, and the United Kingdom (UK) and Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) passively support the destruction. All three nations have refused to use their power to actively contain and reverse the destruction and remain prominent stakeholders in determining the fate of the Palestinians. They have been parties to genocides in the past, and for money, votes, and deception, they are willing participants in another genocide.

For 75 years, reports, articles, and media mention the human rights violations, killings, atrocities, and violence committed by Zionist Israel upon the Palestinian people. The oppression is more than violations of rights and obligations; Israel’s oppressive tactics form a pattern, a calculated attempt at genocide. Knowing it could not physically eliminate the Palestinians, Israel adopted a covert method of genocide, the denial of ontological security, a stable mental state derived from a sense of continuity of events in one’s life.

The severe Israeli repression terrorizes communities, isolates individuals, produces anxiety, institutes immobility, disables breadwinners, and hinders family strength, which creates loss of personal and community identity. Purposeful denial of agriculture, water rights, and fishing rights, willful ruin of cherished olive and orange groves, and interference in acquiring livelihood and employment reduces ontological security and accelerates the deterioration of the Palestinian community. Without laws and leaders to protect them, the Palestinians are victims of genocide.

The uniqueness of the unfolding genocide of the Palestinian people defies comprehension.

• Happening in an age of mass communication and world leaders failing to respond.
• Ongoing for 75 years, day after day, without relief, and no end in sight.
• Obviously planned, not initially, but placed in motion after the oppressors realized they could succeed.
• Foreigners, who could have lived elsewhere and have gained little by living on stolen Palestinian land, are principal protagonists of the genocide.
• An array of disbursed individuals, governments, and institutions, with no benefit to themselves, support and encourage the genocide.

Is it possible that faced with accurate knowledge, democratic people will support the protagonists of genocide?

These discouraging words resonate as a doomsday invitation, as a premonition to the last gasp of an indomitable people. Why? Dedicated people continue extraordinary efforts in fighting the oppression. Despite spectacular growth in acceptance of the Palestinian positions and converts to its cause, the oppression grows stronger and the Israeli juggernaut continues to pulverize the West Bank and Gaza. The exemplary, courageous, and meaningful efforts to combat the oppression are insufficient.

The lack of meaningful response to the misleading PBS documentary, America and the Holocaust, whose contents were reproached in a previous article, “PBS Spurious Narrative of America and the Holocaust,” signifies the weakness of the Palestinian movement. Activists failed to capitalize on an exceptional opportunity to expose and counter American media’s contrived shaping of American minds and alert Americans of their nation’s participation in the genocide of the Palestinian people.

In review and as talking points:

• An America, that enslaved people, stole lands, fought innumerable wars, and committed genocide of the Native American tribes, does not need attachment to the World War II Holocaust to survey and criticize its past.
• If the purpose of the documentary was to alert Americans to be more vigilant in their duty to assist oppressed peoples in escaping from genocidal actions, why didn’t it discuss contemporary genocides for a contemporary audience?
• The United States has played a direct role, economically, militarily and politically in supporting Israel’s calculated destruction of the Palestinian people. Wouldn’t that be an appropriate genocide to discuss?
• Put it all together and we have the obvious: The documentary has an agenda, which is to have the present and future generations of Americans believe they have committed a grave commission against the Jewish people and owe the Zionists and Israel continuous support in their destruction of the Palestinians, today, tomorrow, and forever.

Countering the spurious documentary and its agenda, in a manner that does not imply lack of recognition of the Holocaust, could solicit support from many groups offended by the insult to Americans’ sacrifices in World War II and PBS’ malicious use of the Holocaust. Showing that the documentary did not respect its own words — “If the time to stop a Holocaust is before it happens” ─ would expose America’s participation in the intended genocide of the Palestinian people.

Not challenging PBS and the documentary’s producers, Ken Burns, Lynn Novick, and Sarah Botstein are major errors. At conferences they represent a few of the thousands of wartime snafus, errors in commission and admission, as a conspiracy against the Jewish people. The childish, immature, and exaggerated performances rival those of the Trump contingent of conspiracy theorists who falsely claim the last US election was stolen.

One example of the many specious comments, “America did do much more than any other nation in admitting Jews, but it could have admitted one million more,” contradicts an earlier comment from Sarah Botstein, “Instead of opening doors (to Jewish refugees), we shut them.” Ken Burns should be asked to specify the location of these one million refugees. Before U.S. entrance into the Second World War, potential Jewish refugees, about 500,000 who were able and eager to leave, came mainly from Germany and Austria and about 80 percent of them managed to find a place of refuge, with the United States taking in the vast majority. In spring 1941, Nazi Germany prevented emigration from its country and from its occupied nations. Escape doors were locked, and America could no longer play a vital role in enabling refugees to leave Europe. After December 7, 1941 and a declaration of war with Germany, U.S. authorities had no means to acquire first-hand information on the impending doom of European Jewry. The U.S. administration juggled rumors, sketchy information, and considerations of what to and how to do it until the Holocaust, which intensified in mid-1942, became completely verified in December 1942. With entire Europe a battleground in 1943 and the concentration camps located in Poland, how could any refugees, let alone one million, be lifted from the camps, travel through wartime Poland to ports, be placed on ships (how do they get to the ports?) and be escorted to America’s shores?

Other discussions that coincide with the PBS documentary arouse suspicions. The emphasis on increasing anti-Semitism and recent rash statements, one of which appeared during a PBS News Hour interview, that Jews are packing their bags and are ready to flee the next onslaught, create the suspicion of an arranged scheme.

Few people absorb details of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports on the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States. If they did, they will learn that the reports demand attention but do not describe a desperate situation. There have been several murderous attacks in synagogues and, naturally, they create anxiety and feelings of threat. The violence, polarization, and hate in the United States engulf Jews in the same violence that engulfs all Americans and affects all aspects of U. S. society —  schools, mosques, Black churches, Catholic churches, offices, and homes. Attacks on Jews are frightening, but not unique, and are a subset of attacks on all of the American public.

ADL reports contain mostly verbal and non-violent abuses. Included in the 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents of the 2018 ADL report are 1,015 instances of subjective harassment. One hundred of the harassment cases were a single spree of bomb threats made against American Jewish institutions. Israel police eventually arrested an Israeli Jewish teenager, who was evidently provoking hatred against fellow Jews to stir up the pot – a usual Mossad trick. Should those one hundred deliberate paddings of the statistics be included in the report? Are there other dubious harassments?

The subjective term “vandalism” accounted for 952 incidents, most of them being the tumbling of cemetery tombstones, which is a national recreation, and posting of Swastika drawings, such as “Swastika in Walgreens bathroom,” and “Nazi flag discovered in housing complex,” which were not specifically directed against Jewish persons. Tombstone vandalism is mainly performed by teenagers and rarely has a direct link to a specific prejudice.

The ADL report has 19 assaults against Jews in 2017 – certainly more than a few one is alarming. The statistic is less alarming when only six were considered as serious, and, of these, two of the more serious were (1) Jewish family harassed at local Target, and (2)  A 12-year old boy was attacked on his way home from outside a synagogue after Friday night prayers (no detail of injuries or if attacked because of being Jewish).

Packing of bags in preparation for an immediate onslaught is a bit of a stretch. I understand African-Americans fearing police knocks on their doors, Chinese-Americans fearing the FBI will entangle them in espionage charges, and Palestinian-Americans hesitant to assist their compatriots because they may be accused of helping Hamas or Islamic Jihad. Jews are well protected by laws and institutions — government, private, and fraternal.

Examine these three simultaneous and highly publicized comments on Jewish life in America — rising anti-Semitism, America’s role in the Holocaust, and Jews packing their bags — each of which is controversial, somewhat exaggerated, and, noting their exposition occurring at the same time as increasing violence against the Palestinians, and it is not farfetched to assume all of these are related. The confluence has an agenda, which is the same as previously mentioned, “to have the present and future generations of Americans believe they have committed a grave commission against the Jewish people and owe the Zionists and Israel continuous support in their destruction of the Palestinians, today, tomorrow, and forever.” Supporters of the Palestinians have failed “big time” by not recognizing the need and advantage in countering the unholy trinity of the PBS documentary, false charges of anti-Semitism, and the ridiculous assertion that “Jews are packing their bags.”

Are the Palestinians doomed? Not a satisfactory question to ask and never to be answered in the affirmative. The preferred question is, “What are the recommendations to halt the trajectory toward genocide of the Palestinian people?” Other than BDS, nothing has proved successful; admittedly, it is a difficult task.

Daily reports highlight what is being done to the Palestinians, riveting narratives of the repressions and violence committed against them. More attention is required to ascertain what can be done for them, preparation of a strategic plan that leads to their liberation. Force is proportional to mass; the mass of Palestinian supporters equates to a mighty force. The Palestinians must find a way to harness that mass and direct the accumulated force in a coordinated effort that tells the world, “THIS IS A GENOCIDE,” and pulverizes the genocidal architects. Loud and clear, the Palestinians and their supporters need more decisive actions.

The post Are the Palestinians Doomed? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

Nancy Pelosi, speaker of the United States House of Representatives, is reportedly scheduled to visit Taipei in August 2022. The stated purpose is supporting Asian democracy. The trip has more than irked the Chinese.

The trip has obviously not been approved by the one recognized government of China in Beijing. Some may downplay the speaker of the US House of Representatives as being largely ceremonial, but the Speaker is second in line, after the vice-president, should the addled president be unable to fulfill his duties, a scenario wholly within the realm of possibility.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian warned that Pelosi’s trip would have a “grave impact” on US-China ties:

If the US were to insist on going down the wrong path, China will take resolute and strong measures to safeguard its sovereignty and territorial integrity. All the ensuing consequences shall be borne by the US side.

The US paid scant heed to the red lines that president Vladimir Putin expressed about Russian security concerns, and Ukraine is paying the military consequences of this right now while European countries are reaping the economic blowback of sanctions they leveled against Russia.

It is now widely conceded that Putin does not bluff.

To underscore the sincerity of China about the Pelosi trip to Taiwan, another Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said, “We mean what we say.”

Biden seems to be wavering on the Pelosi visit, saying, “I think that the military thinks it’s not a good idea right now, but I don’t know what the status of it is.”

The US has placed itself in a no-win situation: either it backs down from the provocation of a Pelosi visit or it opens itself to “resolute and strong measures” from China.

The intrigues against China are not new. What is different is the Chinese response. China has become decidedly more forceful in its diplomacy.

The Biden administration carried forward the Sinophobia from the outgoing Trump administration. This was apparent in the meeting of Chinese and American heads in Anchorage, Alaska. US Secretary of state Antony Blinken spoke of:

deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyberattacks on the United States and economic coercion toward our allies. Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters…

In his remarks, Yang Jiechi, Chinese director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs pointed out salient differences between the US and China:

China’s per-capita GDP is only one-fifth of that of the United States, but we have managed to end absolute poverty for all people in China….

Our values are the same as the common values of humanity. Those are: peace, development, fairness, justice, freedom and democracy.

What China and the international community follow or uphold is the United Nations-centered international system and the international order underpinned by international law, not what is advocated by a small number of countries of the so-called rules-based international order.

A stage was set in Alaska; China emphatically laid out its intention to follow a peaceful, non-hegemonic world order based on international law.

Nonetheless, the US contrary to signed state-to-state undertakings of a One China Policy has frittered away its word and corralled Europe into its deceit. Thus on 6 July, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg alleged:

China is substantially building up its military forces, including nuclear weapons, bullying its neighbors, threatening Taiwan … monitoring and controlling its own citizens through advanced technology, and spreading Russian lies and disinformation…

Japan as American Catspaw

A second US zone of contention is the South China Sea. In the case of Taiwan, the US and allies, such as Japan, seek to undermine the One China Policy.

The recently assassinated former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in late November 2021:

Any armed invasion of Taiwan would present a serious threat to Japan. A Taiwan crisis would be a Japan crisis and therefore a crisis for the Japan-U.S. alliance.

Japan is a former colonizer of Taiwan. Being militarily weak, the Qing dynasty was forced by the Treaty of Shimonoseki to cede Taiwan. The Potsdam Proclamation at the end of WWII saw Taiwan revert to Chinese sovereignty. However, the US 7th fleet intervened in a Chinese civil war and allowed for the Guomindang, led by Jiang Jie Shi (known in the West as Chiang Kai-shek), to escape from the mainland to Taiwan, thereby leading to two claimants to be the government of China.

Japan paid no reparations for its occupation nor apologized for its recruitment of Chinese women into sexual slavery. WWII saw Japanese invaders kill 35 million Chinese,¹ including the infamous Rape of Nanking,² and exceedingly cruel, torturous experimentation on Chinese civilians.

Japan abides in words to the One China Policy, but it hands are tied by its American hegemon.³

Japan claims concern about a threat to its territorial security if Taiwan were to be formally reunited with China. But such a concern reeks of hypocrisy because territorial and defensive concerns underlie Russia control over what Japan calls its Northern Territories, the islands northeast of Hokkaido: Habomai, Shikotan, Kunashiri and Etorofu.

China Says Blame for the Ukraine Conflict Lies with the US

Taiwan spills over into Ukraine. When a country considers itself a unipolar power, then it will seek to compel obedience with its directives elsewhere in the world. Thus, NATO head Stoltenberg has demanded that China condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

First, what the Russians are doing in fighting Nazism in Ukraine is completely different from the responsibility to protect pretext that NATO cited for fomenting violence in ex-Yugoslavia, Libya, and Syria. Russia finally intervened after eight years of Ukraine shelling Donbass — what Putin calls a genocide. Second, China is a close and staunch ally of Russia and calls for a peaceful settlement of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Since the US controls the anti-Russia media narrative at home and supplies Ukraine with weaponry, it is argued that the fighting in Ukraine represents a proxy war against Russia.

It is little wonder given US non-compliance with the One China Policy that China identifies the US as a belligerent in Ukraine. Nonetheless, it is China that NATO has declared a “systemic challenge.”

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian responded in his Regular Press Conference on 6 July:

The history of NATO is one of creating conflicts and waging wars. From Bosnia and Herzegovina to Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Ukraine, the self-claimed “defensive organization” has been making advances into new areas and domains, arbitrarily launching wars and killing innocent civilians. Even to this day, there is no sign of change. Facts have proven that it is not China that poses a systemic challenge to NATO, but NATO that brings a looming “systemic challenge” to world peace and security.

Zhao in his Regular Press Conference on 19 July said:

As the one who started the Ukraine crisis and the biggest factor fueling it, the US needs to deeply reflect on its erroneous actions of exerting extreme pressure and fanning the flame on the Ukraine issue and stop playing up bloc confrontation and creating a new Cold War by taking advantage of the situation. The US needs to facilitate a proper settlement of the crisis in a responsible way and create the environment and conditions needed for peace talks between parties concerned.

In deeds, China has revealed itself to be a steadfast ally. In words, China has become an assertive voice for peace based on international law and order.

1. See Gideon Polya, US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide (2020).
2. Visit the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre, erected on a site where many of the 300,000 victims were dumped in a mass grave. Read Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II (1997).
3. Daojiong Zha, “The Taiwan Problem in Japan-China Relations: From an Irritant to a Destroyer?” Indian Journal of Asian Affairs, 14(1/2), June & December, 2001: 15-31.

The post The US Boxes Itself in over Taiwan and Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.