radiofree.asia

Category: China

  • Nobody’s Coming to Humanity’s Rescue; We’ve Got to Save Ourselves

    AI isn’t going to save us. Tech innovation isn’t going to save us. Your favorite politician isn’t going to save us. The Epstein files aren’t going to save us. China isn’t going to save us. The aliens aren’t going to save us.

    No one is coming to save us. There is no deus ex machina resolution to the plotline of the human story.

    We’re going to have to save ourselves.

    In ancient Greek theater, they used to resolve plays by having gods come in at the end to punish the villains and reward the heroes. The actors playing the gods would either be lowered onto the stage by a crane or raised by machine from a trap door below, hence the term deus ex machina. Today it’s used to refer to any lazy plot resolution where the protagonists are rescued out of the blue by an external force rather than by the fruit of their own struggles and character development; if the gods just come in to save them at the end, then nothing they did up until that point mattered, leaving the audience dissatisfied and staring at the writer instead of at the story.

    When you look at the existential crises facing humanity today, it’s tempting to find hope in the belief that external forces will rescue us without our having to struggle or change ourselves. You see such salvation stories everywhere:

    • Elon Musk is going to automate everything so we don’t have to work and then help humanity become an interplanetary species.
    • Artificial superintelligence is right around the corner, and it will explode our scientific understanding of the universe and give birth to transformational new technologies.
    • The release of the Epstein files will expose all the corruption that’s been poisoning our society and lead to the arrest and disempowerment of all the evil bad guys.
    • Electing progressive Democrats or populist Republicans can put heroes into office who will transform the American political system for us.
    • The rise of China is going to reshape the world order and help bring about the end of capitalism.
    • UFO disclosure is happening any minute now, and it’s going to bring in alien technologies that will save humanity from destruction.

    And it never happens. The Greek god never makes his entrance. The actors are left standing there in a long, awkward silence while the set collapses around them.

    It’s never gonna happen, folks. Apollo missed his entrance, and Zeus is a no-show.

    Nobody’s going to save us but us. We’re going to have to change. We’re going to have to act. We’ll keep hurtling in the direction of tyrannical dystopia, environmental catastrophe, and nuclear armageddon until we do.

    We’re going to have to help each other snap out of the hypnotic trance of propaganda and awaken to the truth of what’s really going on in our world, and show each other that real change is both necessary and possible.

    We’re going to have to wake up enough that we can use the power of our numbers to force our rulers to stop stealing from us, oppressing us, killing our biosphere, and murdering people.

    We’re going to have to awaken from the trance of ego and become a truly conscious species, so that we can build a healthy world without falling back into our self-destructive patterning when the revolution is over.

    Everyone wants change, but no one wants to change. That’s why the deus ex machina plot resolution is preferable in our minds.

    It’s just a fantasy, though. Change is coming from nowhere but ourselves. Maintaining hope in the fantasy is the first obstacle preventing us from waking up to reality.

    Every species eventually reaches a point where it must either adapt to changing conditions or go extinct. We are at that juncture today. We’ll either pass that test or we won’t, and if we do, it will be because of our own efforts, sacrifices, and self-transformation.

    Nobody’s going to do it for us.

    The post Nobody’s Coming to Humanity’s Rescue; We’ve Got to Save Ourselves first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ramzy Baroud: Pathetic attempt to achieve by Gaza decree what US-Israel failed to gain through brute force

    COMMENTARY: By Ramzy Baroud

    UNSC Resolution 2803 is unequivocally rejected. It is a direct contravention of international law itself, imposed by the United States with the full knowledge and collaboration of Arab and Muslim states.

    These regimes brutally turned their backs on the Palestinians throughout the genocide, with some actively helping Israel cope with the economic fallout of its multi-frontal wars.

    The resolution is a pathetic attempt to achieve through political decree what the US and Israel decisively failed to achieve through brute force and war.

    It is doomed to fail, but not before it further exposes the bizarre, corrupted nature of international law under US political hegemony. The very country that has bankrolled and sustained the genocide of the Palestinians is the same country now taking ownership of Gaza’s fate.

    It is a sad testimony of current affairs that China and Russia maintained a far stronger, more principled position in support of Palestine than the so-called Arab and Muslim “brothers.”

    The time for expecting salvation from Arab and Muslim states is over; enough is enough.

    Even more tragic is Russia’s explanation for its abstention as a defence of the Palestinian Authority, while the PA itself welcomed the vote. The word treason is far too kind for this despicable, self-serving leadership.

    Recipe for disaster
    If implemented and enforced against the will of the Palestinians in Gaza, this resolution is a recipe for disaster: expect mass protests in Gaza, which will inevitably be suppressed by US-led lackeys, working hand-in-glove with Israel, all in the cynical name of enforcing “international law”.

    Anyone with an ounce of knowledge about the history of Palestine knows that Res 2803 has hurled us decades back, resurrecting the dark days of the British Mandate over Palestine.

    Another historical lesson is due: those who believe they are writing the final, conclusive chapter of Palestine will be shocked and surprised, for they have merely infuriated history.

    The story is far from over. The lasting shame is that Arab states are now fully and openly involved in the suppression of the Palestinians.

    Dr Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and editor of The Palestine Chronicle. He is the author of The Last Earth: A Palestinian Story (Pluto Press, London). He has a PhD in Palestine Studies from the University of Exeter (2015) and was a Non-Resident Scholar at Orfalea Center for Global and International Studies, University of California Santa Barbara. This commentary is republished from his Facebook page.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • “Historic Betrayal”: UNSC Approves US Plan to Control Gaza as Russia, China Abstain

    The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2803 this week, after permanent members Russia and China chose to abstain instead of using their veto power. In addition to giving a framework for Gaza that would put Israel and the U.S. in control, the language of the motion is extremely vague, and it gives no guarantee that there will be an end to the genocide.

    Craig Mokhiber, an international human rights lawyer and former senior United Nations human rights official, noted that: “the ceasefire is a lie. The idea that there is a peace process is a lie. What we have here in this resolution is a betrayal of historic proportions.”

    He also said that while Russia and China may be going off of the Palestinian Authority’s support for the resolution, we have to remember that the PA operates “under occupation,” and “under the thumb of of the Americans.” And when it comes to the language that was passed: “this resolution doesn’t even demand the unfettered flow of aid. All it does is use some rhetorical language that underscores the importance of humanitarian aid.”

    The post “Historic Betrayal”: UNSC Approves US Plan to Control Gaza as Russia, China Abstain first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump’s Gaza “Peace” Plan: A Cruel Joke in a Conflict and Peace Illiterate World


    “The Throne of Peace is Now Empty and the UN Cancelled” • AI-generated image by Jan Oberg

    The UN Security Council adopted a U.S.-drafted resolution on November 17, 2025, endorsing Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan. It authorised an International Stabilisation Force (ISF), backed a transitional governing body called the “Board of Peace”, and declared that conditions may now exist for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and eventual statehood. The vote passed 13–0, with Russia and China abstaining. This is UN SC Resolution 2803.

    This goes against everything the UN stands for. Of course, China and Russia wisely abstained. They want no involvement and co-responsibility with this fake peace plan and are smart enough to see that it will never lead to true peace.

    I ask myself – did the Trump Regime give the UN its death knell yesterday? It remains to be seen, but the consequences will be devastating and, tragically, associated with the name of its otherwise decent S-G, who has been completely outmanoeuvred.

    On October 14, the China Academy and its editor, Mimi, of “China Roughly” conducted the interview below with me, which begins with my harsh criticism of this nonsensical, absurd, and unacceptable way of making peace.”Peace.” No wonder the video title: “Trump’s Gaza Ceasefire Plan Was Hilarious from the Start – Best US Joke Ever.”

    I call it a joke, and I will add that, if this has anything to do with peace, there is no need for political satire anymore. This is a satire on peace, intellectualism, international law and political ethics.

    Quick and simple reasons for that:

    • A party to a conflict can not be a mediator or peacemaker; it has to be a neutral third party. The US has been on the side of Israel all the time and is the leading enabler of its genocide.
    • A war criminal and habitual international law-violator cannot be a mediator or lead a peace process; Trump and his suggested “peace” board member, Tony Blair, both have that status, albeit being non-convicted.
    • The conflicts that lie under and cause the unspeakable violence in Gaza, characterised by words such as apartheid, historical injustices, asymmetry, nuclearism, occupation and Zionism, as well as Hamas militancy, are not analysed or addressed. The underlying conflict, not the surface violence, is the key to solving a conflict. This “peace” plan is pure symptom treatment.
    • The larger conflicts in the Middle East region that this conflict is part of are not addressed.
    • The whole project smacks of contemporary colonialism – we Westerners put ourselves up as those who shall run Gaza, and we have decided that it shall be demilitarised while we say nothing about Israeli militarism, occupation and nuclearism.
    • There is no understanding of this particular type of a-symmetric conflict which requires different approaches from symmetric conflicts.
    • All involved parties have not been addressed with three simple but fundamental questions: What do you think this conflict is about? What do you fear most and what future would you prefer or accept to live with – from which a mediator begins to look at possible arrangements and various possible futures.
    • There is no idea about consultations leading to a negotiation table. It is all done from outside by an incompetent, impossible “mediator” who has snatched the conflict from the weaker party.
    • Professional peace-making would build economic and other relations into a plan in such a way that the parties to a conflict would see it as more advantageous to cooperate than to fight each other in the future. There is no mention of anything like that, and of course, there will be more violence and no peace.
    • Professional peace-making would have utilised the world’s most experienced peace-making machinery, namely the United Nations. Instead of experienced, principled, trained and neutral UN peacekeepers and other UN elements drawn from around the world, this plan will deploy personnel from countries with a special political and/or economic interest that have no training in peacekeeping – perhaps, God forbid, even NATO countries.
    • A professional peace-making would have focused on post-violence processes and institutions such as forgiveness and reconciliation, a truth commission, security sector reform, de-militarising all sides, and discussing how schoolbooks, culture and cooperative projects could help the parties to live with what has happened and, slowly but surely, become partners in a process leading eventually to peace, stability and cooperation among all parties.

    One could go on and on.

    The fact that the UN Security Council has passed this cynical, miserable humbug “peace” resolution and virtually all parties and media call this a peace plan speaks volumes of the world’s peace illiteracy, of its peace and overwhelming endorsement of militarism.

    That the UN Secretary-General goes along with this sidelining of his organisation and the defilement of everything the UN stands for only adds to the tragedy.

    *****

    And why is true peace, as predictably as tragically, now dead?

    Because people of low intelligence and/or being uneducated in conflict understanding prefer violence to non-violence.

    Because we have no peace education, no peace academies, no university-level peace research and public education. Because media, politics and research have cancelled, tabooed and disappeared peace, by and large, since the fall of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of Yugoslavia – that is, the ravaging of the US-led unipolar world that is now coming to its end, also with this resolution.

    Because not a single government leader has an adviser who knows the slightest about alternatives to militarist “solutions” – knows about mediation, peace-making and reconciliation – as a science and an art.

    Because kakistocrats and the MIMAC – the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex – see all problems as something to use a hammer on because they only have a hammer in the toolbox.

    Because peace requires creativity, knowledge and empathy – which are no longer characteristic of, or needed in, foreign policy- and security policy-making.

    I am sure that with this Las VeGaza “peace” plan, Trump will be a high-ranking candidate for the 2026 NATO-aligned Nobel Peace Prize – that is, if it doesn’t finally decide to give it posthumously to Adolf Hitler…

    PS The countries of the Security Council that made this fatal decision are: The US, Russia, China, France, the UK (all permanent members) + Algeria, Denmark, Greece, Guyana, Pakistan, Panama, Republic of Korea, Sierra Leone, Slovenia and Somalia – in other words, mostly countries that will follow orders from Washington. As mentioned, China and Russia abstained.

    *****

    The post Trump’s Gaza “Peace” Plan: A Cruel Joke in a Conflict and Peace Illiterate World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Canberra pandering to Prabowo, while ignoring unrest in West Papua

    While Indonesians worry about President Prabowo Subianto’s undemocratic moves, the failures of his flagship “breakfast” policy, and a faltering economy, Australia enters into another “treaty” of little import. Duncan Graham reports.

    COMMENTARY: By Duncan Graham

    Under-reported in the Australian and New Zealand media, Indonesia has been gripped by protests this year, some of them violent.

    The protests have been over grievances ranging from cuts to the national budget and a proposed new law expanding the role of the military in political affairs, President Prabowo Subianto’s disastrous free school meals programme, and politicians receiving a $3000 housing allowance.

    More recently, further anger against the President has been fuelled by his moves to make corrupt former dictator Soeharto (also Prabowo’s former father-in-law) a “national hero“.

    Ignoring both his present travails, as well as his history of historical human rights abuses (that saw him exiled from Indonesia for years), Prabowo has been walking the 27,500-tonne HMAS Canberra, the fleet flagship of the Royal Australian Navy, along with PM Anthony Albanese.

    The location was multipurpose: It showed off Australia’s naval hardware and reinforced the signing of a thin “upgraded security treaty” between unequals. Australia’s land mass is four times larger, but there are 11 Indonesians to every one Aussie.

    Ignoring the past
    Although Canberra’s flight deck was designed for helicopters, the crew found a desk for the leaders to lean on as they scribbled their names. The location also served to keep away disrespectful Australian journalists asking about Prabowo’s past, an issue their Jakarta colleagues rarely raise for fear of being banned.

    Contrast this one-day dash with the relaxed three-day 2018 visit by Jokowi and his wife Iriana when Malcolm Turnbull was PM. The two men strolled through the Botanical Gardens and seemed to enjoy the ambience. The President was mobbed by Indonesian admirers.

    This month, Prabowo and Albanese smiled for the few allowed cameras, but there was no feeling that this was “fair dinkum”. Indonesia said the trip was “also a form of reciprocation for Prime Minister Albanese’s trip to Jakarta last May,” another one-day come n’go chore.

    Analysing the treaty needs some mental athleticism and linguistic skills because the Republic likes to call itself part of a “non-aligned movement”, meaning it doesn’t couple itself to any other world power.

    The policy was developed in the 1940s after the new nation had freed itself from the colonial Netherlands and rejected US and Russian suitors.

    It’s now a cliché — “sailing between two reefs” and “a friend of all and enemy of none”. Two years ago, former Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi explained:

    “Indonesia refuses to see the Indo-Pacific fall victim to geopolitical confrontation. …This is where Indonesia’s independent and active foreign policy becomes relevant. For almost eight decades, these principles have been a compass for Indonesia in interacting with other nations.

    “…(it’s) independent and active foreign policy is not a neutral policy; it is one that does not align with the superpowers nor does it bind the country to any military pact.”

    Pact or treaty?
    Is a “pact” a “treaty”? For most of us, the terms are synonyms; to the word-twisting pollies, they’re whatever the user wants them to mean.

    We do not know the new “security treaty” details although the ABC speculated it meant there will be “leader and ministerial consultations on matters of common security, to develop cooperation, and to consult each other in the case of threats and consider individual or joint measures” and “share information on matters that would be important for Australia’s security, and vice-versa.”

    Much of the  “analysis” came from Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s media statement, so no revelations here.

    What does it really mean? Not much from a close read of  Albanese’s interpretation: ”If either or both countries’ security is threatened,

    to consult and consider what measures may be taken either individually or jointly to deal with those threats.”

    Careful readers will spot the elastic “consult and consider”. If this were on a highway sign warning of hazards ahead, few would ease up on the pedal.

    Whence commeth the threat?  In the minds of the rigid right, that would be China — the nation that both Indonesia and Australia rely on for trade.

    Keating and Soeharto
    The last “security treaty” to be signed was between PM Paul Keating and Soeharto in 1995. Penny Wong said the new document is “modelled closely” on the old deal.

    The Keating document went into the shredder when paramilitary militia and Indonesian troops ravaged East Timor in 1999, and Australia took the side of the wee state and its independence fighters.

    Would Australia do the same for the guerrillas in West Papua if we knew what was happening in the mountains and jungles next door? We do not because the province is closed to journos, and it seems both governments are at ease with the secrecy. The main protests come from NGOs, particularly those in New Zealand.

    Foreign Minister Wong added that “the Treaty will reflect the close friendship, partnership and deep trust between Australia and Indonesia”.

    Sorry, Senator, that’s fiction. Another awkward fact: Indonesians and Australians distrust each other, according to polls run by the Lowy Institute. “Over the course of 19 years . . . attitudes towards Indonesia have been — at best — lukewarm.

    And at worst, they betray a lurking suspicion.

    These feelings will remain until we get serious about telling our stories and listening to theirs, with both parties consistently striving to understand and respect the other. “Security treaties” involving weapons, destruction and killings are not the best foundations for friendship between neighbours.

    Future documents should be signed in Sydney’s The Domain.

    Duncan Graham has a Walkley Award, two Human Rights Commission awards and other prizes for his radio, TV and print journalism in Australia. He now lives in Indonesia. This article was first published by Michael West Media and is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • The UN Has Voted to Put the Occupation of Iraq in Charge of Gaza


    Ah, those were the days. The UN had been blocked by a worldwide popular movement from approving of a war on Iraq. British Prime Minister Tony Blair had dragged the UK along after secretly demanding that George W. Bush first attack Afghanistan, because Blair believed he would be better able to sell a war on Iraq once there was a war on Afghanistan. And once the destruction of Iraq was well underway, the UN crept out of some New York sewer pipe to support the occupation, er, excuse me, the peaceful transition to paradise.

    Blair once had a meeting with Bush in which Bush schemed up plans to get a war in Iraq started, such as painting an airplane with “UN” on it, flying it low, and hoping to get it shot at. Then Bush and Blair wandered out to a press conference at which they swore they were doing everything possible to avoid a war. To my knowledge, neither the UN nor any “journalist” in the room that day has, since the exposure of the pre-press-conference conversation, publicly expressed the slightest concern.

    Fun fact: no war has ever been launched by people doing everything possible to avoid it.

    Bonus fun fact: no modern war has ever been launched by people not claiming they were doing everything possible to avoid it.

    The United Nations has now voted — the “Security” Council that is (with Russia and China abstaining, as if they have some other planet to live on) — for an Orwellian “Peace Board” concocted by Donald Trump, to be run by Tony Blair, to oversee a military occupation of what’s left of Gaza.

    If there were ever a moment for the nations of the world to save themselves, to step forward and override the Security Council through the General Assembly with a “Uniting for Peace” measure (such as this) this is it!

    Sadly, some opponents of genocide raised in a culture unable to imagine solving certain problems without a military have convinced millions of people that any “Uniting for Peace” action must involve a military force. The Security Council has now provided the military force under Viceroy Blair. The General Assembly would now have to not only take bold action it has refused to take for years, but also reverse the action taken by the Security Council in the name of “peace,” and bar the use of a military labeled “peacekeepers” in favor of nonmilitary solutions beyond the imagination of millions of people. This is what one might call a big ask.

    The alternative is the normalization of not just genocide but also colonialism. By this precedent, which country will elder statesman Benjamin Netanyahu oversee the Peaceplundering of in some future decade?

    If that course is unacceptable, and the United Nations is thoroughly useless, and giving up is not an option, what should we do?

    The fact that not everyone immediately knows the obvious answer to that question is the fundamental educational dilemma of our time.

    We should of course multiply our nonviolent activism 1,000 fold. We should send daily flotillas. We should block the doors to all government buildings and the path of all weapons shipments. We should general-strike every country with a genocide-supporting government. Why should Italians have all the fun? We should not allow a moment’s tranquility to any war profiteer or to any elected official not actively working to

    1. Arrest Israeli or any other officials facing arrest warrants from the International Criminal Court.
    2. Prosecute Israeli criminals under universal jurisdiction.
    3. Establish a complete embargo on weapons or weapons parts to or from Israel and to or from any nation not upholding such an arms embargo on Israel.
    4. End diplomatic relations with Israel.
    5. End financial transactions, trade, and travel to and from Israel.
    6. Train and send unarmed civilian defense teams, food, medicine, doctors, and aid workers to Palestine.
    7. Develop a major public educational campaign about the genocide in Gaza and the propaganda that has facilitated it.
    8. Halt membership or support for weapons-dealing institutions that do not uphold an arms embargo on Israel: the Abraham Accords, NATO, etc.
    9. Prevent any support or participation in the War Board Occupation of Gaza.

    How can we find the resources to do all that and also take on the devastating and omnicidally risky wars in Ukraine, Sudan, and elsewhere — with more coming in Venezuela, etc.?

    The answer to that is much easier and simpler, and yet even more elusive for even more people. The answer is to stop distinguishing good from bad mass slaughters, to drop the idea of a theoretical good one, and to work for the immediate reduction and abolition of all militarism. Here’s the to-do list:

    1. Make governments reduce military spending to zero.

    The post The UN Has Voted to Put the Occupation of Iraq in Charge of Gaza first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China Tells G7 To Abandon Cold War Mentality

    China asked the Group of Seven (G7) countries to abandon their Cold War mentality and ideological bias on Thursday, November 13, after they accused China of causing instability in the East Asian region.

    The G7 should “take a clear grasp of the global trend, abandon the Cold War mentality and ideological bias and stop manipulating issues related to China,” said Lin Jian, spokesperson of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while answering a question related to the allegations made by the G7.

    On Wednesday, a joint statement issued after the G7 foreign ministers’ meeting in Niagara in Canada expressed support for “Taiwan’s meaningful participation in appropriate international organizations” and accused China of causing political and economic instabilities.

    The post China Tells G7 To Abandon Cold War Mentality appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Chinese investment may have handed over UK drone and missile tech

    Over the past decade, rampant Chinese investments in the UK may have effectively handed over military grade technology to China.

    Yet when one tech boss raised the alarm to the British government, he was told that nothing could be done.

    The 2010s was a surge of Chinese investment in the UK. The £45bn Chinese spending spree included the purchase of a firm that developed technology with potential uses for drones and missiles. An investigation by BBC’s Panorama will reveal how the last Tory administration (2010-2024) did not intervene, instead standing by the sidelines.

    A former British intelligence chief has warned that the UK was too permissive in allowing investments that carry security risks, without addressing the question of how to trade with China:

     Former GCHQ chief Sir Jeremy Fleming said:

    This is the trillion-dollar question […] My personal view is that we have been far too free in allowing access to strategically important industries in science and technology.

    Canyon and Imagination deal

    The concerns centre on Imagination Technologies, a Hertfordshire-based tech-firm.

    Having lost a major contract in 2019, the equity firm Canyon Bridge brought out the company.

    Canyon Bridge has one investor: Yitai Capital, owned by the Chinese state-linked body, China Reform.

    Imagination’s engineers made semi-conductors used for a range of civilian tech like smart phones. As the BBC reported:

    A potential buyer would be buying into this expertise. What is more, the algorithms behind its technology, although developed for other products, could be put to military use in missiles and drones.

    Imagination’s CEO states that at the time he was told that the takeover was purely profit-driven. Later, the Chinese investors told him they were appointing new directors and would focus on leveraging its expertise and technology.

    Black warned the British government, but officials said there was little they could do.

    Concerned about the potential transfer of military-grade technology, Mr. Black resigned. Following his departure, he claims, the UK government began to take notice, and China Reform abandoned its efforts to appoint new C-suite directors.

    Although Mr Black withdrew his resignation he was dismissed by the firm. He and sought legal recourse for unfair dismissal through an employment tribunal which ruled in his favour.

    The firm involved and the Chinese embassy deny any wrongdoing. The Foreign Office said it had not published its full audit, citing security reasons and non-disclosure protocols.

    Featured image via Getty Images/Upsplash

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • European Parliament pledges to tackle transnational repression against human rights defenders

    On 14 November 2025, Scilla Alecci of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inc. (ICIJ) wrote about a parliamentary report which identified China and other authoritarian regimes as harassing and attacking dissidents abroad, echoing findings from ICIJ’s China Targets.

    European Parliament in Brussels, Belgium.

    The European Parliament has adopted a resolution urging member states to confront efforts by authoritarian regimes to coerce, control or silence political opponents and dissidents living in Europe. “Human rights defenders are a key pillar of democracy and the rule of law, and they are insufficiently protected,” a statement from the parliament said.

    The resolution, adopted with a majority of 512 votes (to 76 against and 52 abstentions), called for targeted sanctions against perpetrators, market surveillance of spyware and better coordination among European authorities to counter what lawmakers labeled “transnational repression.”

    “For the first time, the European Union will call this phenomenon by its name,” rapporteur Chloe told reporters ahead of the Nov. 13 vote. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2024/03/19/transnational-repression-human-rights-watch-and-other-reports/]

    The resolution is not legally binding but signals that European lawmakers want to take a clear position on the issue and draw attention to it, Elodie Laborie, a spokesperson for the Parliament’s Subcommittee on Human Rights, told the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists in an email.

    The parliamentary report identifies China, Egypt and Russia among 10 countries whose governments are responsible for nearly 80% of known cases, which include targeted killings, abductions, harassment and the misuse of international policing tools such as Interpol’s red notice system.

    It confirms findings by ICIJ’s China Targets investigation, which revealed how Beijing continues to use surveillance, hacking and threats against Chinese and Hong Kong dissidents, Uyghur and Tibetan advocates and their families to quash any criticism of the regime abroad.

    See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2025/04/28/chinas-tactics-to-block-voices-of-human-rights-defenders-at-the-un-major-report/

    https://www.icij.org/investigations/china-targets/european-parliament-pledges-to-tackle-transnational-repression-against-human-rights-defenders

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Trump’s Reckless Tariff Flailing Is a Destructive Turn by a Declining Power

    workers as a whole have endured a lot of losses in the class war. Globally-mobile companies have deserted communities with unionized workforces, successive administrations raised up oligarchs by slashing taxes on the rich, a major epidemic put the country on edge, and landlords are using technology to collude on raising rents more rapidly. But all this conventional class war is now…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The US War On China, Venezuela, And The International Left

    Everywhere you look, the United States is at war– at home, through military occupation of cities, institutional violence, and state-sanctioned kidnappings, and abroad, through economic coercion, proxy warfare, and endless intervention. In times like these, when it is far too easy to be overwhelmed by the inexhaustible nature of the war machine, we must remember that these are not separate crises, but different fronts of the same struggle. And to resist one is to resist them all.

    The enemy, in every case, is U.S. imperialism.

    The post The US War On China, Venezuela, And The International Left appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Canadian Auto Isn’t In ‘Crisis’, It’s In Danger Of Extinction

    Canadian autoworkers have faced many crises over the years, but the present threat is distinct. Lana Payne, President of Unifor, has warned that “If we don’t push back hard against him [US President Donald Trump] and against these companies, we’re going to lose it all.” So far, the debate over what to do has started and stopped with Trump’s tariffs. But the threats go deeper, both for auto companies and for our ability as workers and citizens to determine democratically what kind of society we want – that is, for Canada’s substantive and not just formal sovereignty.

    The post Canadian Auto Isn’t In ‘Crisis’, It’s In Danger Of Extinction appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Chaos: The Trump Doctrine for Latin America

    The US, under Trump, is unapologetically an empire operating without pretense. International law is for losers. A newly minted War Department, deploying the most lethal killing machine in world history, need not hide behind the sham of promoting democracy.

    Recall that in 2023, Trump boasted: “When I left, Venezuela was ready to collapse. We would have taken it over; we would have gotten all that oil.” As CEO of the capitalist bloc, Trump’s mission is not about to be restrained by respect for sovereignty. There is only one inviolate global sovereign; all others are subalterns.

    Venezuela – with our oil under its soil – is now in the crosshairs of the empire. Not only does Venezuela possess the largest petroleum reserves, but it also has major gold, coltan, bauxite, and nickel deposits. Of course, the world’s hegemon would like to get its hands on all that mineral wealth.

    But it would be simplistic to think that it is driven only by narrow economic motives. Leverage over energy flows is central to maintaining global influence. Washington requires control of strategic resources to preserve its position as the global hegemon, guided by its official policy of “full spectrum dominance.”

    For Venezuela, revenues derived from these resources enable it to act with some degree of sovereign independence. Most gallingly, Venezuela nationalized its oil, instead of gifting it to private entrepreneurs – and then used it to fund social programs and to assist allies abroad like Cuba. All this is anathema to the hegemon.

    Further pushing the envelope is Venezuela’s “all-weather strategic partnership” with China. With Russia, its most consequential defense ally, Venezuela ratified a strategic partnership agreement. Similarly, Venezuela has a strong anti-imperialist alliance with Iran. All three partners have come to Caracas’s defense, along with regional allies such as Colombia, Brazil, and Mexico.

    The US has subjected Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution to incessant regime-change aggression for its entire quarter-century of existence. In 2015, Barack Obama codified what economist Jeffrey Sachs calls a remarkable “legal fiction.”  His executive order designated Venezuela as an “extraordinary threat” to US national security. Renewed by each succeeding president, the executive order is really an implicit recognition of Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution as a counter-hegemonic alternative that challenges Washington’s world order.

    The latest US belligerence testifies to the success of the Venezuelan resistance. The effects of asphyxiating US-led sanctions, which had crashed the economy, have been partly reversed with a return to economic growth, leaving the empire with little alternative but to escalate its antagonism through military means.

    The AFP reports “tensions between Washington and Caracas have dramatically risen” as if the one-sided aggression were a tit-for-tat. Venezuela seeks peace, but has a gun held to its head.

    Reuters blames the victim, claiming that the Venezuelan government “is planning to…sow chaos in the event of a US air or ground attack.” In fact, President Nicolás Maduro has pledged “prolonged resistance” to Washington’s unprovoked assaults rather than meekly conceding defeat.

    The death toll from US strikes on alleged small drug boats off Venezuela, in the Pacific off Colombia and Ecuador, and as far north as Mexico now exceeds 75 and continues to rise. But not an ounce of narcotics has been confiscated. In contrast, Venezuela has seized 64 tons of drugs this year without killing anyone, as the Orinoco Tribune observes.

    Russian Foreign Ministry’s María Zakharova quipped: “now that the US has suddenly remembered, at this historic moment, that drugs are an evil, perhaps it is worth it for the US to go after the criminals within its own elite.”

    On November 11, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, and its accompanying warships arrived in the Caribbean. They join an armada of US destroyers, fighter jets, drones, and troops that have been building since August.

    In a breathtaking understatement, the Washington Post allowed: “The breadth of firepower…would seem excessive” for drug interdiction in what it glowingly describes as a “stunning military presence.”

    Venezuela is now on maximum military alert with a threatening flotilla off its coast and some 15,000 US troops standing by.  Millions of Venezuelans have joined the militia, and international brigades have been welcomed to join the defense. President Maduro issued a decree of “external commotion,” granting special powers in the event of an invasion.

    The populace has united around its Chavista leadership. The far-right opposition, which has called for a military invasion of its own country, is more isolated than ever. Only 3% support such a call.

    Their US-designated leader, María Corina Machado, has gone bonkers, saying “no doubt” that Maduro rigged the 2020 US election against Trump. According to the rabidly anti-Chavista Caracas Chronicles, the so-called Iron Lady “is not simply betting Venezuela’s future on Trump, she is betting her existence.”

    The legal eagles at The Washington Post now find that “the Trump administration’s approach is illegal.” United Nations experts warn that these unprovoked lethal strikes against vessels at sea “amount to international crimes.”

    Even high-ranking Democrats “remain unconvinced” by the administration’s legal arguments. They’re miffed about being left out of the administration’s briefings and not getting to see full videos of the extrajudicial murders.

    The Democrats unite with the Republicans in demonizing Maduro to achieve regime change in Venezuela, but wish it could be done by legal means. The so-called opposition party unanimously voted to confirm Marco Rubio as secretary of state, fully aware of the program that he now spearheads.

    The corporate press has been complicit in regime change in its endless demonization of Maduro. They report that Trump authorized covert CIA operations as if that was a scoop rather than business as usual. What is new is a US administration overtly flaunting supposedly covert machinations. This is part of Washington’s full-press psychological pressure campaign on Venezuela, in which the follow-the-flag media have been its eager handmaiden.

    The AP reports that Jack Keane, when he served as a US Army general, instructed staff to “see reporters as a conduit” for the Pentagon. This was cited as a criticism of Trump after a few dozen embedded reporters turned in their Pentagon badges. Trump has called out the Washington press corps as “very disruptive in terms of world peace,” proving the adage that even a blind dog can sometimes find a bone.

    The Wall Street Journal opines: “Nobody in the [Trump] administration seems prepared to ask the hard questions about what happens if they do destabilize the [Venezuelan] regime but fail to topple it.” Political analysts Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies suggest the answer is carnage and chaos  – based on Washington’s past performances in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, Syria, and Yemen, to mention a few.

    Foreign Policy’s perspective – aligned with the Washington establishment – is that regional fragmentation is at its highest level in the last half-century. Regional organizations have become dysfunctional –  UNASUR has been “destroyed,” CELAC is “useless,” and the OAS canceled its summit. The factionalism, Responsible Statecraft agrees, “marks one of the lowest moments for regional relations in decades.” Bilateral “deals” with the US are replacing regional cohesion.

    This is Latin America under the beneficence of Trump’s “Monroe Doctrine.” The alternative vision, represented by Venezuela, is CELAC’s Zone of Peace and ALBA-TCP’s development for mutual benefit.

    The post Chaos: The Trump Doctrine for Latin America first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China commissions its third aircraft carrier, Fujian

    China commissioned its third aircraft carrier, Fujian, in a ceremony witnessed by Chairman Xi Jinping on 5 November. The vessel is the country’s second domestically designed and built carrier, but it is the first one to be fitted with an electromagnetic aircraft launch system (EMALS). The commissioning took place at Sanya Naval Base on Hainan […]

    The post China commissions its third aircraft carrier, Fujian appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • China upholds harsh 7-year prison sentence for journalist Dong Yuyu on spy charges

    New York, November 13, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists on Thursday urged Chinese authorities to immediately release journalist Dong Yuyu and allow him to reunite with his family, after a Beijing court upheld his seven-year sentence on espionage charges.

    The Beijing High Court issued a ruling saying it affirmed the conviction of the 63-year-old, his family told CPJ. The court did not provide reasons in rejecting Dong’s appeal, which is final under the Chinese justice system.

    “This is an unconscionable decision. Today’s ruling shows China is determined to deny Dong Yuyu the justice he deserves,” said CPJ Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi. “Speaking with diplomats is routine work for journalists — not espionage. China must release Dong immediately, or it is sending a message to the world that its stated goal of open engagement is empty talk.”

    In a statement, Dong’s family said the decision was a “shameless act of persecution” and would “go down in history as one of the most egregious offenses against journalists and intellectuals by the Chinese authorities.”

    Dong, a veteran editor and columnist at the state-owned Guangming Daily, was arrested in February 2022 while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing. He was convicted of espionage in November 2024 and his appeal, submitted the following month, was postponed three times before Thursday’s hearing. His family have been unable to visit him since he was detained.

    Dong’s son, Yifu, has described the charges against him as “purely political” and the case has become emblematic of the increasingly restrictive media environment in the country. China is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with at least 49 in prison, according to CPJ’s research.

    A journalist for more than 30 years, Dong has earned respect both domestically and internationally for writing that is recognized as advocating for reform in China, including support for the rule of law and constitutional democracy. Dong’s work has been published in The New York Times’ Chinese-language website and he won a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2006-2007.

    CPJ will honor him with a 2025 International Press Freedom Award later this month.

    CPJ wrote to China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday urging him to consider steps that would allow Dong to be reunited with his family. The foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a CPJ’s emailed request for comment after the appeal ruling.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China upholds harsh 7-year prison sentence for journalist Dong Yuyu on spy charges

    New York, November 13, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists on Thursday urged Chinese authorities to immediately release journalist Dong Yuyu and allow him to reunite with his family, after a Beijing court upheld his seven-year sentence on espionage charges.

    The Beijing High Court issued a ruling saying it affirmed the conviction of the 63-year-old, his family told CPJ. The court did not provide reasons in rejecting Dong’s appeal, which is final under the Chinese justice system.

    “This is an unconscionable decision. Today’s ruling shows China is determined to deny Dong Yuyu the justice he deserves,” said CPJ Asia-Pacific Director Beh Lih Yi. “Speaking with diplomats is routine work for journalists — not espionage. China must release Dong immediately, or it is sending a message to the world that its stated goal of open engagement is empty talk.”

    In a statement, Dong’s family said the decision was a “shameless act of persecution” and would “go down in history as one of the most egregious offenses against journalists and intellectuals by the Chinese authorities.”

    Dong, a veteran editor and columnist at the state-owned Guangming Daily, was arrested in February 2022 while having lunch with a Japanese diplomat in Beijing. He was convicted of espionage in November 2024 and his appeal, submitted the following month, was postponed three times before Thursday’s hearing. His family have been unable to visit him since he was detained.

    Dong’s son, Yifu, has described the charges against him as “purely political” and the case has become emblematic of the increasingly restrictive media environment in the country. China is the world’s leading jailer of journalists, with at least 49 in prison, according to CPJ’s research.

    A journalist for more than 30 years, Dong has earned respect both domestically and internationally for writing that is recognized as advocating for reform in China, including support for the rule of law and constitutional democracy. Dong’s work has been published in The New York Times’ Chinese-language website and he won a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University in 2006-2007.

    CPJ will honor him with a 2025 International Press Freedom Award later this month.

    CPJ wrote to China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday urging him to consider steps that would allow Dong to be reunited with his family. The foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a CPJ’s emailed request for comment after the appeal ruling.


    This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Beijing court to rule in appeal of jailed Chinese journalist Dong Yuyu

    Detention of Dong on espionage charges has been criticised by human rights and press freedom organisations

    A court in Beijing is expected to rule on Thursday in the appeal of Dong Yuyu, a Chinese journalist who is serving a seven-year jail sentence on espionage charges.

    The detention of Dong, a senior columnist with a long career in Chinese state media, has been criticised by the US government and by international human rights and press freedom organisations.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • When Trash Infests Our Oceans, Some Choose to Act

    Every year, around 8 million tons of plastic waste finds its way into the world’s oceans. Some of this plastic takes centuries to break down. For the plastic that drifts to the coast of Zhejiang, China, a new opportunity presents itself. Here it is collected, brought ashore and given a second life thanks to the “Blue Circle”. With nature’s generosity in mind, a growing number of people is choosing to stand with the ocean.

    The post When Trash Infests Our Oceans, Some Choose to Act first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by CGTN.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

    Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

    In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

    The Sound of Barking

    In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

    Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

    The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

    A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    The Bite

    In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

    A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Five Scenarios for US Intervention

    Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

    Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

    Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

    The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

    Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

    China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

    A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

    Originally published on  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

    The post The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

    Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

    In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

    The Sound of Barking

    In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

    Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

    The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

    A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    The Bite

    In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

    A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Five Scenarios for US Intervention

    Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

    Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

    Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

    The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

    Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

    China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

    A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

    Originally published on  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

    The post The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

    Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

    In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

    The Sound of Barking

    In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

    Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

    The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

    A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    The Bite

    In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

    A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Five Scenarios for US Intervention

    Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

    Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

    Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

    The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

    Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

    China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

    A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

    Originally published on  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

    The post The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution

    Children play on the beach during a security deployment in Anzoátegui, Venezuela, 19 September 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Since early September, the United States has given every indication that it could be preparing for a military assault on Venezuela. Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research partnered with ALBA Movimientos, the International Peoples’ Assembly, No Cold War, and the Simón Bolívar Institute to produce red alert no. 20, ‘The Empire’s Dogs Are Barking at Venezuela’, on the potential scenarios and implications of US intervention.

    In February 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez travelled to Havana to receive the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s José Martí Prize from Fidel Castro. In his speech, he likened Washington’s threats against Venezuela to dogs barking, saying, ‘Let the dogs bark, because it is a sign that we are on the move. ’ Chávez added, ‘Let the dogs of the empire bark. That is their role: to bark. Our role is to fight to achieve in this century – now, at last – the true liberation of our people.’ Almost two decades later, the empire’s dogs continue to bark. But will they bite? That is the question that this red alert seeks to answer.

    The Sound of Barking

    In February 2025, the US State Department designated a criminal network called Tren de Aragua (Aragua Train) as a ‘foreign terrorist organisation’. Then, in July, the US Treasury Department added the so-called Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns) to the Office of Foreign Assets Control’s sanctions list as a ‘transnational terrorist group’. No previous US government report, either from the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) or the State Department, had identified these organisations as a threat, and no publicly verifiable evidence has been offered to substantiate the claimed scale or coordination of either group. There is no evidence that Tren de Aragua is a coherent international operation. As for the Cartel de los Soles, the first time the name appeared was in 1993 in Venezuelan reporting on investigations of two National Guard generals – a reference to the ‘sun’ insignia on their uniforms – years before Hugo Chávez’s 1998 presidential victory. The Trump administration has alleged that these groups, working with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, are the primary traffickers of drugs into the US – while providing zero evidence for the connection. Moreover, reports from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and the DEA itself have consistently found Venezuelan groups to be marginal in global drug trafficking. Even so, the US State Department has offered a $50 million reward for information leading to Maduro’s arrest – the largest in the programme’s history.

    Members of the first cohort of the Tactical Method of Revolutionary Resistance (Método Táctico de Resistencia Revolucionaria, MTRR) course smile after completing training at the Commando Actions Group in Caracas, Venezuela, October 2025—credit: Miguel Ángel García Ojeda.

    The US has revived the blunt instrument of the ‘War on Drugs’ to pressure countries that are not yielding to its threats or that stubbornly refuse to elect right-wing governments. Recently, Trump has targeted Mexico and Colombia and has invoked their difficulties with the narcotics trade to attack their presidents. Though Venezuela does not have a significant domestic drug problem, that has not stopped Trump from attacking Maduro’s government with much more venom. In October 2025, the Venezuelan politician María Corina Machado of the Vente Venezuela (Come Venezuela) movement won the Nobel Peace Prize. Machado was ineligible to run for president in 2024 largely because she had made a series of treasonous statements, accepted a diplomatic post from another country in order to plead for intervention in Venezuela (in violation of Article 149 of the Constitution), and supported guarimbas (violent street actions in which people were beaten, burned alive, and beheaded). She has also championed unilateral US sanctions that have devastated the economy. The Nobel Prize was secured through the work of the Inspire America Foundation (based in Miami, Florida, and led by Cuban American lawyer Marcell Felipe) and by the intervention of four US politicians, three of whom are Cuban Americans (Marco Rubio, María Elvira Salazar, and Mario Díaz-Balart). The Cuban American connection is key, showing how this political network that is focused on the overthrow by any means of the Cuban Revolution now sees a US military intervention in Venezuela as a way to advance regime change in Cuba. This is, therefore, not just an intervention against Venezuela, but one against all those governments that the US would like to overthrow.

    A woman holds a rifle during a security deployment in the Petare neighbourhood of Caracas, Venezuela, 15 October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    The Bite

    In August 2025, the US military began to amass naval forces in the southern Caribbean, including Aegis-class destroyers and nuclear-powered attack submarines. In September, it began a campaign of extrajudicial strikes on small motorboats in Caribbean waters, bombing at least thirteen vessels and killing at least fifty-seven people – without offering evidence of any drug trafficking links. By mid-October, the US had deployed more than four thousand troops off Venezuela’s coast and five thousand on standby in Puerto Rico (including F-35 fighter jets and MQ-9 Reaper drones), authorised covert operations inside the country, and flown B-52 ‘demonstration missions’ over Caracas. In late October, the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group was deployed to the region. Meanwhile, Venezuela’s government has mobilised the population to defend the country.

    A woman from the Peasant Militia (Milicia Campesina) holds a machete during her graduation as a combatant from the MTRR course, October 2025. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Five Scenarios for US Intervention

    Scenario no. 1: the Brother Sam option. In 1964, the US deployed several warships off the coast of Brazil. Their presence emboldened General Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco, chief of the Army General Staff, and his allies to stage a coup that ushered in a twenty-one-year dictatorship. But Venezuela is a different terrain. In his first term, Chávez strengthened political education in the military academies and anchored officer training in defence of the 1999 Constitution. A Castelo Branco figure is therefore unlikely to save the day for Washington.

    Scenario no. 2: the Panama option. In 1989, the US bombed Panama City and sent in special operations troops to capture Manuel Noriega, Panama’s military leader, and bring him to a US prison while US-backed politicians took over the country. Such an operation would be harder to replicate in Venezuela: its military is far stronger, trained for protracted, asymmetric conflicts, and the country boasts sophisticated air defence systems (notably the Russian S-300VM and Buk-M2E surface-to-air systems). Any US air campaign would face sustained defence, making the prospect of downed aircraft – a major loss of face – one Washington is unlikely to risk.

    Scenario no. 3: the Iraq option. A ‘Shock and Awe’ bombing campaign against Caracas and other cities to rattle the population and demoralise the state and military, followed by attempts to assassinate senior Venezuelan leadership and seize key infrastructure. After such an assault, Nobel Peace Prize winner Machado would likely declare herself ready to take charge and align Venezuela closely with the US. The inadequacy of this manoeuvre is that the Bolivarian leadership runs deep: the roots of the defence of the Bolivarian project run through working-class barrios, and the military would not be immediately demoralised – unlike in Iraq. As the interior minister of Venezuela, Diosdado Cabello, recently noted, ‘Anyone who wants to can remember Vietnam… when a small but united people with an iron will were able to teach US imperialism a lesson’.

    The commander general of the Bolivarian National Police, Brigadier General Rubén Santiago, holds a rifle with a sticker of Chávez’s eyes during a security deployment in Petare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    Scenario no. 4: the Gulf of Tonkin option. In 1964, the US escalated its military engagement in the Vietnam War after an incident framed as an unprovoked attack on US destroyers off the country’s coast. Later disclosures revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) fabricated intelligence to manufacture a pretext for escalation. The US claims it is now conducting naval and air ‘training exercises’ near Venezuelan territorial waters and airspace. On 26 October, the Venezuelan government said it had received information about a covert CIA plan to stage a false-flag attack on US vessels near Trinidad and Tobago to elicit a US response. Venezuelan authorities warned of US manoeuvres and said they will not give in to provocations or intimidation.

    Scenario no. 5: the Qasem Soleimani option. In January 2020, a US drone strike ordered by Trump killed Major General Qasem Soleimani, head of Iran’s Quds Force. Soleimani was one of Iran’s most senior officials and was responsible for its regional defence strategy across Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza, and Afghanistan. In an interview on 60 Minutes, former US chargé d’affaires for Venezuela James Story said, ‘The assets are there to do everything up to and including decapitation of [the] government’ – a plain statement of intent to assassinate the president. After the death of President Hugo Chávez in 2013, US officials predicted that the project would collapse. Twelve years have now passed, and Venezuela continues along the path set forth under Chávez, advancing its communal model whose resilience rests not only on the revolution’s collective leadership but also on strong popular organisation. The Bolivarian project has never been a one-person show.

    China and Russia are unlikely to permit a strike on Venezuela without pressing for immediate UN Security Council resolutions, and both routinely operate in the Caribbean, including joint exercises with Cuba and global missions such as China’s Mission Harmony 2025.

    A member of the Juventud Socialista de Venezuela (Socialist Youth of Venezuela) shows a coin given to graduates of the MTRR course during a security deployment in La Guaira, Venezuela, October 2025. Based on the methods of Vietnamese General Võ Nguyên Giáp, the MTRR course is designed to train people with no prior military experience for possible guerrilla warfare. Credit: Rosana Silva R.

    We hope that none of these scenarios come to pass and that the United States takes its military options off the table. But hope alone is not enough – we must work to expand the camp of peace.

    Originally published on  Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research

    The post The United States Continues Its Attempt to Overthrow Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Transnational repression by China reaches New York

    On 6 November 2025 Human Rights Watch issued a press release on how Chinese Police Harass Filmmakers, Families to Undermine Free Expression Abroad

    9da2a6d2-e1fd-4b3d-a322-ba3c24f25b37
    A still from Jiangnan Xu’s film “Friends from Jiangnan.” © Zhu Rikun

    Chinese authorities harassed several dozen Chinese film directors and producers, as well as their families in China, causing them to pull films from the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York City. On November 6, 2025, the festival’s organizer, Zhu Riku, announced that the film festival, scheduled for November 8-15, had been “suspended.”

    “The Chinese government reached around the globe to shut down a film festival in New York City,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s aim to control what the world sees and learns about China.”

    Chiang Seeta, a Chinese artist and activist, reported that nearly all participating directors in China faced intimidation. Even directors abroad, including those who are not Chinese nationals, reported that their relatives and friends in China were receiving threatening calls from police, said Chiang.

    On November 1, the organizers issued an announcement on social media saying they had received messages from some film directors and producers and their families about Chinese government harassment: “We are deeply concerned about the situation. … [I]f you are under pressure not to attend the festival … we fully understand and respect it.” By November 4, more than two-thirds of participating films had cancelled their screenings.

    After the festival was suspended, Zhu issued a statement that the decision was not out of fear, but rather to “stop harassment of … directors, guests, former staff, and volunteers associated with the festival, including my friends and family.”

    Independent film festivals in China have faced intensifying crackdowns over the past decade, Human Rights Watch said. The Chinese authorities have shut down all three major independent film festivals in China: Yunfest, founded in 2003; the China Independent Film Festival, founded in 2003; and Beijing Independent Film Festival, founded in 2006.

    When the authorities shut down the last screening of the Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014, they cut off electricity from the venue, confiscated documents from the organizer’s office, and forced the organizers to sign a paper promising not to hold the festival. Many festival organizers have tried without success to adapt, for instance by changing their format to screenings at multiple venues.

    The 14th China Independent Film Festival was shuttered in 2018, the last time such a festival took place in China.

    A court in January 2025 sentenced Chen Pinlin, known as Plato, to three-and-a-half years in prison for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he made a documentary about the “white paper protests” during Covid-19 lockdowns. Transnational repression can be defined as government efforts to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals living abroad, their families at home, or members of the country’s diaspora. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2025/10/17/un-report-highlights-chinas-targeting-of-human-rights-defenders-abroad/]

    The Chinese government’s transnational repression of the arts has not been limited to film. Chinese officials interfered with an exhibition in Bangkok and censored artwork by Uyghur, Tibetan, and Hongkonger artists in August.

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/07/china-authorities-shut-down-film-festival-in-new-york

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Transnational repression by China reaches New York

    On 6 November 2025 Human Rights Watch issued a press release on how Chinese Police Harass Filmmakers, Families to Undermine Free Expression Abroad

    9da2a6d2-e1fd-4b3d-a322-ba3c24f25b37
    A still from Jiangnan Xu’s film “Friends from Jiangnan.” © Zhu Rikun

    Chinese authorities harassed several dozen Chinese film directors and producers, as well as their families in China, causing them to pull films from the inaugural IndieChina Film Festival in New York City. On November 6, 2025, the festival’s organizer, Zhu Riku, announced that the film festival, scheduled for November 8-15, had been “suspended.”

    “The Chinese government reached around the globe to shut down a film festival in New York City,” said Yalkun Uluyol, China researcher at Human Rights Watch. “This latest act of transnational repression demonstrates the Chinese government’s aim to control what the world sees and learns about China.”

    Chiang Seeta, a Chinese artist and activist, reported that nearly all participating directors in China faced intimidation. Even directors abroad, including those who are not Chinese nationals, reported that their relatives and friends in China were receiving threatening calls from police, said Chiang.

    On November 1, the organizers issued an announcement on social media saying they had received messages from some film directors and producers and their families about Chinese government harassment: “We are deeply concerned about the situation. … [I]f you are under pressure not to attend the festival … we fully understand and respect it.” By November 4, more than two-thirds of participating films had cancelled their screenings.

    After the festival was suspended, Zhu issued a statement that the decision was not out of fear, but rather to “stop harassment of … directors, guests, former staff, and volunteers associated with the festival, including my friends and family.”

    Independent film festivals in China have faced intensifying crackdowns over the past decade, Human Rights Watch said. The Chinese authorities have shut down all three major independent film festivals in China: Yunfest, founded in 2003; the China Independent Film Festival, founded in 2003; and Beijing Independent Film Festival, founded in 2006.

    When the authorities shut down the last screening of the Beijing Independent Film Festival in 2014, they cut off electricity from the venue, confiscated documents from the organizer’s office, and forced the organizers to sign a paper promising not to hold the festival. Many festival organizers have tried without success to adapt, for instance by changing their format to screenings at multiple venues.

    The 14th China Independent Film Festival was shuttered in 2018, the last time such a festival took place in China.

    A court in January 2025 sentenced Chen Pinlin, known as Plato, to three-and-a-half years in prison for allegedly “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” after he made a documentary about the “white paper protests” during Covid-19 lockdowns. Transnational repression can be defined as government efforts to silence or deter dissent by committing human rights abuses against their own nationals living abroad, their families at home, or members of the country’s diaspora. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2025/10/17/un-report-highlights-chinas-targeting-of-human-rights-defenders-abroad/]

    The Chinese government’s transnational repression of the arts has not been limited to film. Chinese officials interfered with an exhibition in Bangkok and censored artwork by Uyghur, Tibetan, and Hongkonger artists in August.

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2025/11/07/china-authorities-shut-down-film-festival-in-new-york

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • A Question of Needlessness: Selling Iron Dome to Australia

    The world of defence policy is truly another planet. There, budgets are given to astronomical burgeoning and bizarre readings. Threats can be invented or exaggerated. Insecurity can be inflated. Decisions for the next project supposedly more lethal and more effective than ever can be made with cavalier disregard to realities. And the next cockeyed, buffoonish idea can be given a run for other people’s money. Those other people are, as always, the good tax paying citizenry of a country.

    Australia has been doing superbly of late in this regard. It has given over territory and money to the United States, its appointed arch defender, so that the security of Washington’s imperium can be assured. It has done so in a manner suggesting advanced dementia, its politicians and strategists drivelling about the need to combat the barbarian yellow-red hordes to the north in a “changing security environment”.

    First came the AUKUS trilateral security pact with the US and the United Kingdom, which enshrines the costly fantasy of nuclear-powered submarines Australia may never get and certainly does not need. Nor is there an obligation on the part of the US to part with any, a prospect ever more unlikely given the failure of its own submarine base to keep pace with annual production. Let’s not even start on the prospects of an AUKUS-designed submarine, which will be lucky to make it to the construction stage without sinking.

    To itemise any number of foolish ventures and items being pursued by the Australian defence department would be injurious to one’s well being. This is largely because they keep coming in their risible daftness. Of late, the idea that Australia needs an anti-missile defence shield along the lines of Israel’s Iron Dome system is becoming more than a flirtation. And it’s being given a sense of frisson by Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, the Israeli company responsible for implementing and maintaining it.

    The chance for Rafael to shine came at the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition, an event running from November 4 to 6. Its presence, along with the Australian subsidiary of Israel’s primary unmanned vehicle manufacturer Elbit Systems, had piqued activists from the Palestine Action Group (PAG), who gathered just before the opening of the exposition to protest that fact.

    A predictably muscular reaction from the New South Wales police followed. According to PAG organiser Josh Lees, they “immediately attacked” the peaceful gathering with pepper spray and horses. The NSW Premier Chris Minns, for his part, was enthralled by the economic prospects of the gathering: defence exports were there to be grown, deals to be made.  That these were with merchants of death was no big matter. “They’re not selling nuclear weapons … we want to see the industry grow.”

    For its part, Rafael had pulled out the bells and whistles. The company, according to its display, offered “an integrated, combat-proven portfolio that delivers end-to-end protection and impactful projection for Australia’s naval forces, ensuring freedom of action in Australia’s northern approaches and across vital sea lines of communication.”

    In an interview at the exposition, the company’s vice president of international business development, Gideon Weiss, hawked Iron Dome’s technology with salesmanship enthusiasm. “The perception that Australia is far and distant and isolated is completely untrue,” he remarked with stern certitude. “There’s absolutely no reason in the world why any Australian would think… that in a conflict, Australia would not be attacked.” The unasked question here is why Australia would make itself an appealing target to begin with. But Weiss did not break his stride: “Your enemies have a great arsenal of ballistic missiles, hypersonic ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and long-range UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles]. Why wouldn’t they use them against you if they wanted to?”

    Asked whether the company’s message had bitten in Canberra, Weiss was assured. The “capability and the maturity of the technology” had been noted by Australia’s defence wonks and Rafael was always keen to focus on “sovereignty, about the Australian industrial context.” There was “infrastructure which to Australianise, if you will, these technologies.”

    The company has shown ample familiarity with the soil they wish to till. The Australian Defence Strategic Review of 2023 declared the need to “deliver a layered integrated air and missile system (IAMD) operation capability urgently. This must comprise a suite of appropriate command and control systems, sensors, air defence aircraft and surface (land and maritime) based missile systems.” The current program to develop a “common IAMD capability” was “not structured to deliver a minimum viable capability in the shortest period of time but is pursuing a long-term near perfect solution at an unaffordable cost.”

    Defence analysts called upon to comment on the matter are slavering. Jennifer Parker, a regular talking head on the subject, rues the fact that Australia can never, given its geographical size, be protected in its entirety. “Unlike Israel, where they can defend the entire country against missiles broadly … that’s not feasible for Australia because of our size.” Focus, she suggests, on the “critical infrastructure elements that we need to protect, like HMAS Stirling, Pine Gap and bases around Darwin, and design integrated air and missile defence around that concept”.

    The United States Studies Centre, an Australian outpost soddenly friendly to the military-industrial complex and the needs of the imperium, is also unrelenting about the need for a more expansive missile defence system. Peter Dean, senior advisor on defence strategy, cites “the lack of effective ground-based air defence and an Integrated Air and Missile Defence system” as “the most critical gap in the achievement of Australia’s strategic goals.”

    Another outfit most friendly to US interests, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, is also much in love with missile interception. “If we want to get serious about integrated missile defence,” ASPI senior analyst Malcolm Davis posits, “we need to have long-range, ground-based interceptor missiles that can handle threats like intermediate range ballistic missiles launched by China.”

    The next wasteful program of military expenditure looms happily on the horizon, leaving the question of need unanswered.  Weiss has good reasons to be optimistic that a train has been set in motion. “I wouldn’t want to name names,” he says with confidence, “but everyone knows us very well.”

    The post A Question of Needlessness: Selling Iron Dome to Australia first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • UK academics call out Chinese state repression over Uyghur research

    A UK scholar says she has received death threats over her research into Chinese oppression of Uyghur communities. Sheffield Hallam University China expert professor Katie Murphy told how she and others were put under considerable pressure over their research interests. Murphy initially spoke to the BBC about how Sheffield Hallam:

    negotiated directly with a foreign intelligence service to trade my academic freedom for access to the Chinese student market.

    Murphy has now spoken out further, saying:

    I think that there are a lot of people who experience some version of this, typically more subtle, usually not so black and white. But it’s too risky to speak out against their university. They’re worried they might suffer consequences.

    She had been researching supply chains and China’s use of Uyghur people as forced labour.

    Now, an academic at Nottingham University has also spoken out about feeling pressured. Political scientist Dr. Andreas Fulda told the Guardian ‘spoof’ emails were sent to colleagues announcing his resignation:

    What I’ve come to learn is that once you reach a certain perception threshold in the eyes of the Chinese security agencies, you are punished to dissuade you from airing your views.

    A difficult tightrope

    China have already sanctioned an academic from Newcastle University for their work on Uyghurs. Jo Smith Finley, who was reprimanded in 2021, said:

    Ever since then, Newcastle University has been walking a very difficult tightrope in its treatment of me, because I’ve become a liability in a context where universities are all dependent on Chinese student tuition fees.

    It’s extremely heavy, the pressure that the Chinese authorities bring to bear, both on university representatives working in the PRC [People’s Republic of China] on recruitment and also on university managers in the UK.

    There are numerous report of Uyghurs, a Muslim minority group in China, being brutally repressed by the Chinese state. This includes imprisonment, forced labour and erasure of their culture – and even their villages. China denies this. The Chinese embassy in London has inferred Murphy is an anti-Chinese intelligence asset.

    The allegations are now being investigated by police under counter-terrorism laws aimed at stopping foreign state interference. Sheffield Hallam initially put a stop to Murphy’s research. That ban was lifted in October after accusations that the university had done so to protect the lucrative income stream from Chinese students.

    The university denied this, claiming the ban was due to:

    a complex set of circumstances at the time, including being unable to secure the necessary professional indemnity insurance.

    However, now that more academics are speaking out, China’s influence in repression of British research on Uyghur minorities is more than troubling.

    Featured image via the Canary

    By Joe Glenton

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • China Surprised The US: Round One Goes To Beijing

    In this episode, KJ Noh joins India & Global Left to break down the real meaning of the recent Xi–Trump talks — beyond the headlines. We explore why China surprised the United States, why “Round One goes to Beijing,” and what leverage each side truly holds in this evolving geopolitical contest.

    We also look at the deeper strategic competition shaping U.S.–China relations, the power shifts happening underneath the diplomacy, and what this moment means for the future of the Global South as more countries seek autonomy, multipolarity, and alternatives to the Western-led order.

    The post China Surprised The US: Round One Goes To Beijing appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself

    In a conversation lasting one hour and forty minutes according to the Chinese stopwatch– “a long meeting” on President Donald Trump’s clock    —  President Xi Jinping first knocked the stuffing out of Trump’s warmaking threats, then forced him to beat a retreat behind a 12-month ceasefire with the man the Pentagon has designated its principal enemy but whom Trump praised effusively as “a great leader, great leader of a very powerful, very strong country…a tremendous leader of a very powerful country and I give great respect to him.”

    “Uh,” Trump told reporters on board his aircraft as it rocked in crosswinds flying eastward, “a lot of things we discussed in great detail. A lot of things we brought to finalization. A lot of finalization.” This was false.

    Worse for the Trump warfighting strategy, the Chinese have retained escalation dominance by making Trump’s concessions their pre-condition for China’s temporary suspension of their sanctions on rare earths exports and imports of US computer chips. For this, Xi offered to buy US soybeans slowly for $34.2 billion over four years – roughly half in tonnage, half in price over twice the interval that China had agreed to in the past.

    In General Sun Tzu’s ancient manual for warfighting, “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. The old man also confessed his limitation: “there is an intelligent way to eat a live frog – I just don’t know what it is.” Xi just demonstrated the way to do it. Trump went down smiling.

    Xi has not yet telephoned President Vladimir Putin to brief him on what happened. After Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 6, Putin telephoned Xi on August 8. “So far,” said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, ”there is no such conversation in the schedule, but it can be quickly agreed upon if necessary,”

    The Russian state media have interpreted the outcome of the talks to be a “temporary ceasefire” achieved by not discussing the key economic and territorial war issues at all. “There have been no joint statements yet,” Tass noted, “and some of the most important issues of bilateral relations, such as Nvidia chips and advanced products, have remained unresolved.” Nothing was achieved, the official Moscow commentators think, in the US attempt to split Xi from Putin, and secure Chinese pressure on Russia to end the Ukraine war on US and NATO terms. “Ukraine came up, uh, very strongly,” Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington. “We talked about it for a long time and we’re both gonna work together to see if we can get something done. Uh, we agreed the, the sides there, you know, locked in, fighting, and sometimes you have to let him fight, I guess. Crazy. But he’s gonna help us and we’re gonna work together on Ukraine.”

    The Russian state media have yet to notice that Trump is abandoning his attempt, through the Rosneft and LUKOIL oil trade sanctions of October 25, to stop China buying Russian oil. “There’s not a lot more we can do,” Trump replied to a reporter who asked if he and Xi had discussed his threat to sanction Chinese companies for buying Russian crude oil and petroleum products. “Uh, you know, he’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a, a big part of China. And, you know, I, I can say India’s been very good, good on that, uh, front. Uh, but, uh, we, we didn’t really discuss the oil. We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished. You know, it doesn’t affect China.”

    The post China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself

    In a conversation lasting one hour and forty minutes according to the Chinese stopwatch– “a long meeting” on President Donald Trump’s clock    —  President Xi Jinping first knocked the stuffing out of Trump’s warmaking threats, then forced him to beat a retreat behind a 12-month ceasefire with the man the Pentagon has designated its principal enemy but whom Trump praised effusively as “a great leader, great leader of a very powerful, very strong country…a tremendous leader of a very powerful country and I give great respect to him.”

    “Uh,” Trump told reporters on board his aircraft as it rocked in crosswinds flying eastward, “a lot of things we discussed in great detail. A lot of things we brought to finalization. A lot of finalization.” This was false.

    Worse for the Trump warfighting strategy, the Chinese have retained escalation dominance by making Trump’s concessions their pre-condition for China’s temporary suspension of their sanctions on rare earths exports and imports of US computer chips. For this, Xi offered to buy US soybeans slowly for $34.2 billion over four years – roughly half in tonnage, half in price over twice the interval that China had agreed to in the past.

    In General Sun Tzu’s ancient manual for warfighting, “the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting”. The old man also confessed his limitation: “there is an intelligent way to eat a live frog – I just don’t know what it is.” Xi just demonstrated the way to do it. Trump went down smiling.

    Xi has not yet telephoned President Vladimir Putin to brief him on what happened. After Putin’s meeting with Trump in Alaska on August 6, Putin telephoned Xi on August 8. “So far,” said Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov, ”there is no such conversation in the schedule, but it can be quickly agreed upon if necessary,”

    The Russian state media have interpreted the outcome of the talks to be a “temporary ceasefire” achieved by not discussing the key economic and territorial war issues at all. “There have been no joint statements yet,” Tass noted, “and some of the most important issues of bilateral relations, such as Nvidia chips and advanced products, have remained unresolved.” Nothing was achieved, the official Moscow commentators think, in the US attempt to split Xi from Putin, and secure Chinese pressure on Russia to end the Ukraine war on US and NATO terms. “Ukraine came up, uh, very strongly,” Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington. “We talked about it for a long time and we’re both gonna work together to see if we can get something done. Uh, we agreed the, the sides there, you know, locked in, fighting, and sometimes you have to let him fight, I guess. Crazy. But he’s gonna help us and we’re gonna work together on Ukraine.”

    The Russian state media have yet to notice that Trump is abandoning his attempt, through the Rosneft and LUKOIL oil trade sanctions of October 25, to stop China buying Russian oil. “There’s not a lot more we can do,” Trump replied to a reporter who asked if he and Xi had discussed his threat to sanction Chinese companies for buying Russian crude oil and petroleum products. “Uh, you know, he’s been buying oil from Russia for a long time. It takes care of a, a big part of China. And, you know, I, I can say India’s been very good, good on that, uh, front. Uh, but, uh, we, we didn’t really discuss the oil. We discussed working together to see if we could get that war finished. You know, it doesn’t affect China.”

    The post China’s Ten Noes: Sun Tzu Has Swallowed the Frog and Is Keeping His Smile to Himself first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Angel Yeast Opens Giant Fermented Protein Factory to Boost China’s Biomanufacturing Prowess

    angel yeast protein
    4 Mins Read

    China’s Angel Yeast has begun operating an 11,000-tonne production line for its yeast protein, bolstering the country’s sustainable food leadership.

    Already accounting for 15% of global yeast production and nearly 60% of the market in China, Angel Yeast is expanding its dominance as it kicks off industrial-scale manufacturing of its fermented protein.

    The firm has started operations at its yeast protein facility at the Baiyang Biotechnology Park in Yichang, Hubei. It can currently produce 11,000 tonnes of high-purity protein annually, with built-in expansion capacity to meet future market growth.

    “As global priorities continue to shift toward health, nutrition and sustainability, we see unprecedented market potential for yeast protein,” said Li Ku, general manager of Angel Yeast’s Protein Nutrition and Flavoring Technology Center.

    “We will continue to accelerate production expansion to deliver more innovative, high-quality and dependable yeast protein solutions to customers and consumers worldwide and help drive a more sustainable future for the global food industry.”

    Angel Yeast eyes sports nutrition and weight management markets

    yeast protein
    Courtesy: Angel Yeast

    Angel Yeast uses fermentation to turn brewer’s yeast into AngeoPro, an ingredient with over 80% protein. It has all nine essential amino acids and a PDCAAS score of 1.0 (on par with animal proteins like whey and eggs), and boasts B vitamins, minerals, and 5g of fibre per 100g.

    It supports muscle protein synthesis and recovery after exercise, and a recent study proved its efficacy to boost calcium absorption, improve bone health, and enhance gut health. It’s why AngeoPro is geared towards the weight management and sports nutrition markets.

    Plus, it has “industry-leading purity” and a neutral flavour profile, which allows for direct consumption or blending whey, soy or other ingredients to create nutrition supplements, meat and dairy alternatives, protein bars and beverages, baked goods, snacks, and more.

    Angel Yeast’s production process for the yeast protein significantly lowers land use, water consumption and greenhouse gas emissions in comparison to animal proteins.

    “We are using high-density fermentation to reduce the use of water resources. We have also adopted a circular economy method in post-extraction to reduce water emissions, which can increase manufacturing efficiency and save energy consumption,” Yan Zhang, dean of Angel Yeast’s research institute, explained in a video on its website.

    The new facility enables the automation of the entire process, from fermentation and autolysis to separation and drying. At the same time, it establishes an end-to-end production system encompassing raw materials, packaging and warehousing.

    The entire manufacturing process occurs within controlled fermentation tanks, making it independent of weather or location and enabling year-round production. Angel Yeast stated that the development significantly enhances its global manufacturing footprint and extends its leadership in the sustainable protein market.

    China builds its biotech dominance

    angel yeast
    Courtesy: Angel Yeast

    The demand for yeast protein is expanding rapidly, thanks to its health and environmental advantages. This market is already worth $1.5B today, and is set to grow by 8.5% annually to reach $2.3B in 2030.

    Several companies are innovating with brewer’s yeast proteins globally. In Switzerland, Yeastup raised $10M last year to repurpose a former dairy factory for its spent brewer’s yeast ingredients, while Germany’s ProteinDistillery broke ground on a large-scale plant for its yeast-derived Prew:tein ingredient. And Indian startup SuperYou, co-owned by Bollywood actor Ranveer Singh, launched a protein powder made from biofermented brewer’s yeast in August.

    But Angel Yeast is one of the world’s leading yeast manufacturers, and its new facility signals China’s readiness to lead the future food ecosystem. Its 30-60 climate policy is aimed at hitting peak emissions by 2030 and becoming carbon-neutral by 2060, which will only happen if 60% of the country’s protein supply comes from alternative sources by the latter year.

    The government has been pumping in resources to propel its biomanufacturing sector. Its bioeconomy development strategy aims to advance novel foods, and President Xi Jinping has called for a Grand Food Vision that includes plant-based and microbial protein sources.

    This year, China saw its first alternative protein innovation centre open in Beijing, fuelled by an $11M investment from public and private investors to develop novel foods like fermentation-derived proteins. And in the Guangdong province, officials are planning to build a biomanufacturing hub for plant-based, microbial and cultivated proteins.

    And at the annual Two Sessions summit, top government officials called for a deeper integration of strategic emerging industries like biomanufacturing, while a document signalling China’s top goals for the year underscored the importance of protein diversification, including efforts “to explore novel food resources”.

    The country’s biotech capabilities have been recognised globally. Last year, the US national intelligence director’s annual threat assessment labelled China’s strategic advancements in “synthetic biology and agricultural biotechnology” as an attempt to “lead the broader biotechnological landscape”, prompting Congress members to call for strategic measures that solidify the US’s “resilience in this critical sector”.

    The post Angel Yeast Opens Giant Fermented Protein Factory to Boost China’s Biomanufacturing Prowess appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.