Beijing accuses nations of using Games ‘for political manipulation’ amid diplomatic boycotts
China has said that Australia, Britain and the US will pay a price for their “mistaken acts” after deciding not to send government delegations to February’s Winter Olympics in Beijing, in the latest warning demonstrating China’s escalating diplomatic tensions with the US and its major allies.
The US was the first to announce a boycott, saying on Monday its government officials would not attend the February Games because of China’s human rights “atrocities”, weeks after talks aimed at easing tension between the world’s two largest economies.
President Biden, in full mood of marking “red lines” against Russia and Ukraine in a virtual meeting with Vladimir Putin, does not forget the importance of boycotting China’s Winter Olympic Games. It’s a diplomatic boycott only, so says Madame Jen Psaki, White House press secretary. Nevertheless, she and Biden are wishing the US sport-participants best of luck and they will support them throughout. So, they say. US athletes are allowed to part-take in the games. It’s the US diplomacy that is held back. It’s a hypocrisy that only Washington – and perhaps Brussels as EU and NATO headquarters – can muster. Now Australia has also joined the nefarious club.
Do they seriously hope the rest of the world will follow suit, because they want to be “with” the US and not be perceived as “against” the Big Empire? – Perhaps some will, indeed, be copy-cats. Fear is the name of the game, be it for covid or political sanctions. Western humanity is trembling from fear. So much fear, that the thought process has literally stopped functioning according to logic, even by the tyrants themselves.
Ms. Psaki explained the boycott as a response to “Beijing’s human rights violations”, adding what she calls “genocide and crimes against humanity”. She was, of course, referring to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), a landlocked autonomous region of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), by surface the largest single territory of China, located in the northwest of the country, close to Central Asia.
It is well possible that the Press Secretary doesn’t know what she is talking about, but is just repeating the current narrative. There is a set of standard accusations that are regularly being launched against China, with no substance at all. This is one of them. See “Xinjiang in My Eyes”: Debunking the Lies and Anti-China Propaganda Focusing on China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region“. Suffice it to say that the Xinjiang region is a pivotal point for the famous Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), connecting China with Europe via Central Asia, as well as with the Indian Ocean.
Washington sees China, and especially the BRI, as an economic threat on their perceived supremacy, therefore does everything to denigrate China, and especially the Xinjiang region, where about 12 million Uyghurs live, mostly Muslims, out of a total population of 26 million. What is not said by Washington, is that the CIA and other US secret services recruit Uyghur Muslims, train them and send them to the Middle East to fight the Jihad, mostly in Syria, but also in Iraq. If, and when, they return, they were trained to create havoc and instability in Xinjiang. The Chinese Government is re-educating them for reintegration in the Uyghur society of the Xinjiang region.
The other area of China on which Washington and its western allies like to attack Beijing, is Taiwan, a Chinese territory. When the Kuomintang, the Chinese Nationalist Party, lost the civil war against Chairman Mao’s Communist Party in 1949, they fled to the island of Taiwan which they occupied ever since. However, Taiwan is part of China. In October 1971, the UN General Assembly passed a Resolution, that stopped recognizing Taiwan as China and, instead, decided the PRC would represent China, implying that Taiwan was part of the Peoples Republic of China. It looks like the US have stayed back in history, still looking at Taiwan as an independent country and their ally.
As President Chi has mentioned on several occasions, Taiwan will be integrated into the PRC in a peaceful way. Outside interferences, like by the United States and some of their European allies, have no place in these negotiations. It is a Chinese internal affair. Just imagine, China getting involved and taking sides in US internal affairs. Unimaginable!
What also seems to escape most western powers — still fond of the “freedom seeking” US of A — is the Unites States abysmal human rights record. It is so unabashed and shameful. The Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as well as Guantanamo in Cuba, are well known as America’s torture chambers, where human rights do not exist. And these are just two out of some 100-plus US prison camps where human rights are not only trampled by military boots, but where in most cases they are openly abolished. Torture is the name of the game. Only an extreme hypocrite could accuse any other country of human rights abuse.
Earlier this week, Beijing announced stern counter measures, in case the US will indeed implement their “diplomatic” boycott of the Chinese Olympic Winter Games.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said that China would see such a move as outright political provocation. However, he did not offer any details as to how China might respond to the “diplomatic boycott”. He also said that after the virtual summit last month between Presidents Xi and Biden, no American diplomats, nor the President, were invited to the Olympic Games. This means, without saying so, the “boycott” is a mere US public relations farce.
Western supporters of the move hope to draw falsely negative attention to China’s human rights record. Even American athletes may be “trained” to openly accuse the Chinese human rights record, reproaching them of Uyghur tortures, although they have no clue what they are talking about, because they would simply parrot messages, without knowing what they are actually saying.
In fact, most countries expected to toe the line given by Biden, don’t know the truth, or they do know the truth, but are keen to stick to their hypocrite master’s lies.
So, Beijing has a number of avenues to “boycott” the US back – as in “Build Back Better”. For example, by trade sanctions. Mainland China and Taiwan are the largest producers of semi-conductors used in modern cars. If China holds back on producing and/or supplying semi-conductors, the entire western car industry comes to a halt. Supply shortages, due to covid-caused delivery-chain interruptions, are already affecting the Japanese and South Korean car industry. Currently, the Toyota car production is basically at a standstill.
The west also depends 70% to 90% on medical equipment (70%) and medication (up to 90%) on China. With a ferocious pandemic being sold to the people in the west, a pandemic that by reducing the human immune system will create all kinds of diseases that require regular medication, shortages of medication may be problematic. A supply chain interruption may trigger not only consternation, but outright disaster.
Is it possible that Biden and his top advisors do not understand what China’s counter-measures could mean to a US car industry that is already largely outsourced? Let alone to the health sector, plagued by a western manufactured disease that is currently “ravaging the west”, and is depending badly on Chinese made medication.
3Mins Read Once a meat-based brand, Canadian vegan brand Noble Jerky has officially launched in mainland China. The news follows recent expansion into Walmart Canada. The company believes China’s vegan scene is growing and the move is designed to offer more choice to plant-based snackers. Earlier this year it was reported that Canadian company Noble Jerky saw […]
China remains the world’s worst jailer of journalists; India and Mexico rank among the deadliest
New York December 9, 2021–The number of journalists behind bars reached a record high in 2021, with 293 behind bars as political upheaval and media crackdowns reflect increasing intolerance for independent reporting around the world. At the same time, targeted killings of journalists persist, with 24 documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists in its annual prison census and survey of attacks on the press.
China continues to be the world’s worst jailer, with CPJ’s 2021 prison census documenting 50 behind bars as the country prepares to host the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022. It is followed by Myanmar (26), which arrested scores of reporters in a wave of repression following its February 1 military coup, then Egypt (25), Vietnam (23) and Belarus (19). For the first time, CPJ’s census includes journalists jailed in Hong Kong, such as Apple Daily founder, Jimmy Lai, who was honored with CPJ’s 2021 Gwen Ifill Press Freedom Award. In Ethiopia, an escalating civil war prompted new media restrictions that saw it emerge as the second-worst jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa, after Eritrea.
“This is the sixth year in a row that CPJ has documented record numbers of journalists imprisoned around the world. The number reflects two inextricable challenges — governments are determined to control and manage information, and they are increasingly brazen in their efforts to do so,” said CPJ Executive Director, Joel Simon. “Imprisoning journalists for reporting the news is the hallmark of an authoritarian regime. It’s distressing to see many countries on the list year after year, but it is especially horrifying that Myanmar and Ethiopia have so brutally slammed the door on press freedom.”
Rounding out the top ten were Turkey, Eritrea, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Iran, where leaders routinely weaponize tech and security laws to stifle dissent and continue to flout international norms without consequence. Globally, anti-state charges remain the most common, but this year CPJ also documented at least 17 jailed journalists charged with cybercrimes, which in some cases can result in criminal prosecution for anything published or distributed online.
In Europe, Belarus, which infamously diverted a commercial flight from to arrest journalist Raman Pratasevich, now has 19 journalists behind bars – the country’s highest since CPJ started keeping data on imprisoned journalists in 1992. In Latin America, which historically has had fewer numbers in prison, journalists were jailed in Cuba (3), Nicaragua (2) and Brazil (1), and threats to press freedom intensified across the region.
No journalists were jailed in North America at the time of the census deadline. However, the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker, a partner of CPJ, recorded 56 arrests and detentions of journalists across the U.S. during 2021, with the vast majority occurring during protests.
While countries like Turkey and Saudi Arabia seemingly bucked the trend of putting more journalists in prison than in previous years, this does not signal an improved climate for press freedom, but rather a diversification of censorship, with authorities using tools like surveillance and internet shutdowns along with prisoner releases under conditions that deny the very notion of freedom.
Globally, India had the highest number – four – of journalists confirmed to have been killed in direct retaliation for their work, and another killed while covering a protest. Mexico, however, remained the Western hemisphere’s deadliest country for journalists, with three murdered for their reporting and the motives for six other killings under investigation.
Of journalists killed worldwide this year, nearly 80% were murdered. In democratic and authoritarian regimes alike, the cycle of impunity remains, sending a chilling message that perpetrators will not be held accountable.
This week the Summit for Democracy, a new foreign policy centerpiece of the United States, includes participation by at least seven countries on CPJ’s prison census, several of which also have a record of impunity, including Brazil, India, Iraq, and the Philippines, where authorities continue to retaliate against independent journalists like this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Ressa, issuing yet another trumped up charge against her this week.
Despite the grim picture painted by the report, CPJ continues to fight against censorship. CPJ advocacy contributed to the early release of at least 100 imprisoned journalists worldwide in 2021. Recently, as part of A Safer World For The Truth, CPJ and partners launched a People’s Tribunal to address impunity in journalist killings. The tribunal, a form of grassroots justice, relies on investigations and high-quality legal analysis involving specific cases to provide a framework for justice and accountability.
CPJ’s prison census is a snapshot of those incarcerated at 12:01 a.m. on December 1, 2021. It does not include the many journalists imprisoned and released throughout the year; accounts of those cases can be found at http://cpj.org. CPJ’s analysis of journalists killed for their work is based on data as of December 1, 2021. CPJ’s website is continually updated at cpj.org/data/killed/
***
CPJ is an independent, nonprofit organization that works to safeguard press freedom worldwide.
Note to Editors:
CPJ’s report is available on cpj.org in multiple languages. CPJ experts are available for interviews.
Making moral statements in the blood and gristle of international relations can often come across as feeble. In doing so, the maker serves the worst of all worlds: to reveal a false sense of assurance that something was done while serving no actual purpose other than to provoke. Anger, and impotence, follow.
The Biden administration is proving to be particularly good on that score. Since taking office US President Joe Biden has nipped at the heels of China’s Xi Jinping with moral urgency. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has lectured Beijing on human rights abuses with mistaken clarity. The Pentagon has been firming up plans for militarising the Indo-Pacific and expanding its military footprint, notably in Australia.
Now comes a sporting boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics. On December 6, the White House announced that US officials would not be attending the games. In the words of White House press secretary Jen Psaki, the administration would “not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”
During the briefing, Psaki told the press about Biden’s remarks to President Xi: that “standing up for human rights is in the DNA of Americans.” Sporting personnel, however, would still be competing, suggesting that the spirals of such DNA might be wonky.
Washington’s additional aircraft carriers – the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada – proved to be three appendages in chiming imitation. UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, while stating to MPs that he did not generally support such measures, thought this exceptional. “I do not think that sporting boycotts are sensible and that remains the policy of the government.”
Canada’s Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, claimed that Beijing could hardly be surprised by his country’s stance. “We have been very clear over the past many years of our deep concerns around human rights violations.” Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, in justifying not sending diplomats and politicians, suggested that it was “in Australia’s national interest” and “the right thing to do.”
Such moves strike a farcical note. For one, boycotts of the Olympics in the name of human rights abuses have generally been ineffectual. The International Olympic Committee has been a consistent and firm opponent of the formula, insisting that sporting endeavours are politically neutral matters. They have been aided by the fact that such boycotts are rarely uniform or evenly applied.
In 1956, Spain and Switzerland refused to send contingents to the Olympic Summer Games in Melbourne in protest against the Soviet invasion of Hungary. (Neither country could hardly claim to have squeaky clean human rights records, least of all Spain’s bloodstained fascist General Francisco Franco.) The Netherlands recalled their sporting team after they arrived in Melbourne for the same reason, though Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon did so for a rather different grievance: the Suez Crisis. “The little-noted absence of these athletes from competition,” writes Heather Dichter, “had no effect on global politics.”
The hollowness of these recent gestures against China is also evident by the fact that the ones who matter at such fixtures – the athletes – will be free to participate. Superficially, they have been treated as politically childish, even insentient. The competing athlete should have little time to ruminate over the plight of oppressed minorities or the conduct of a brutal regime.
This is the attractive, if fashionable nonsense of the IOC and, it should be said, many sporting bodies. It denies the reality that athletes are very much walking and participating statements of their country, whatever their personal beliefs. They often receive State funding and are implicated in their programs. Along with participation comes patriotism.
Sporting contingents have also expressed frustration at being used as examples of political furniture. The effects of US President Jimmy Carter’s decision to boycott the 22nd Olympiad in Moscow in protest against the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union did not go down well on the performers’ circuit. Swimmer Brian Goodell, who won the 400m and 1500m freestyle events in world-record time as a stripling of 17 at the Montreal Olympics, was crushed by Carter’s decision. “In Moscow, I would have been 21 and in the prime of my career. And zippo. (Carter) screwed with everybody’s lives. I could have made some pretty good coin.” Hardly an enlightened view, but then again, athletes are rarely selected for their capacious intellects and firm moral compasses.
When whole blocs of states have pursued sporting boycotts, some measure of difference has been achieved. The New Zealand Rugby tour of apartheid South Africa in 1976 saw a number of African states demand that the IOC expel New Zealand. Officials were cool to the suggestion, arguing that rugby had last featured as an Olympic game in 1924.
The ensuing boycott by some 20 African and Arab states of the Montreal games, which also featured the withdrawal of athletes, caused quite a stir. It troubled the UN Secretary General at the time, Kurt Waldheim, who wished “to point out that the Olympic Games have become an occasion of special significance in mankind’s search for brotherhood and understanding.”
Fancifully, the Commonwealth Secretary General Shridath Ramphal went so far as to argue that participating in the games, not withdrawing from them, would aid the “propitious resolution of wider questions”.
By not participating, the countries in question helped spur one particularly propitious resolution: the signing of the 1977 Gleneagles Agreement between Commonwealth States. In reaching the agreement, the signatory members agreed to “combat the evil of apartheid by withholding any form of support for, and by taking every practical step to discourage contact or competition by their nationals with sporting organisations, teams or sportsmen from South Africa or any other country where sports are organised on the basis of race, colour or ethnic origin.” Isolated, apartheid South Africa began facing searching domestic questions about the future of that political system.
An event free of wine guzzling and canapé gobbling dignitaries is something to cheer but leaving the sporting figures out of a “sporting boycott” is a proposition that remains pointless and absurd. The point was not missed by the authoritarian IOC president Thomas Bach. “The presence of government officials is a political decision for each government so the principle of IOC neutrality applies.”
At Beijing, sporting participants will be able to avoid the Carter experiment of 1980 and the babble about human rights and the liberty of the subject. Expect a few, however, to take the knee, though not for the Uighurs. In the meantime, the policies of the PRC will remain unchanged.
Currently, the West and its monopoly media are inordinately fixated on an allegation of a crime against an individual in another country, a country that is denigrated as a threat. The alleged crime serves as a pretext to punish that individual’s country, as if the country were the perpetrator or an accomplice in the alleged crime, or involved in a cover-up of the alleged crime.
The New York Timesheadlined a piece, “The Tennis Chief Taking on China Over Peng Shuai.” The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA) chief Steve Simon has suspended tournaments in China over “the treatment” of Chinese player Peng Shuai. It reads as if China, the country, has mistreated Peng.
A WTA standard has been established: an entire country may be penalized based on an allegation (even an allegation purportedly denied by the purported alligator) of sexual misconduct against a compatriot — this despite no charge having been filed, tried, or judged to have occurred.
When allegations of a crime arise, those interested in justice being served must guard against jumping to conclusions, as due process demands investigating and weighing the facts. Given the timing (just before the Beijing Winter Olympics slated for February 2022), geo-political posturing might be a motivation behind this demonization of China.
This is exemplified by a statement issued on behalf of president Joe Biden by White House press secretary Jen Psaki: “We join in the calls for PRC (People’s Republic of China) authorities to provide independent and verifiable proof of her whereabouts and that she is safe.”
It starts with an allegation of sexual assault in a post attributed to Peng Shuai that appeared and was deleted from Weibo, a Chinese social media site.
An excerpt from a purported screenshot of Peng’s post, from what China expert Wei Ling Chua calls “a notoriously anti-CCP platform,” revealed:
The part in bold translates to Peng saying “she was taken to the house [of the retired Communist Party official Zhang Gaoli] and forced to have sex.” The Chinese text is included because it is a basis for a translation by others. At least one translation, without the original Chinese text, appears elsewhere claiming there was no allegation of a sexual assault.
Since the post appeared, the situation has transmogrified from a “missing” Peng to a no longer missing Peng. Her subsequent public appearance did not satisfy the WTA. They want to hear Peng speak. Peng did speak to the International Olympic Commission and satisfied them that she was, despite the hullabaloo, more-or-less fine. The WTA was not satisfied. What does the WTA want? Peng wrote an email to the WTA:
Regarding the recent news released on the official website of the WTA, the content has not been confirmed or verified by myself and it was released without my consent. The news in that release, including the allegation of sexual assault, is not true. I’m not missing, nor I am unsafe. I’ve just been resting at home and everything is fine.
If the WTA publishes any more news about me please verify it with me, and release it with my consent.
Simon was still unsatisfied. He said, “Peng’s sexual assault claim must be investigated with ‘full transparency’ and she should be allowed to speak ‘without coercion or intimidation’.” There is innuendo in what Simon purports: a “sexual assault claim” — a claim denied in the Peng email — and that Peng is being coerced and intimidated without presenting any evidence to support this insinuation.
Peng is the person who can speak to what really happened. But must Peng leave her motherland to explain her personal affairs to the WTA? Peng asked that her privacy be respected. The WTA claims skepticism to the email and, thereby, refuses to respect the request for privacy. What should Peng do? If the social media post was an inaccurate venting by Peng, then to force her to come forward could be construed as the WTA humiliating Peng. But what about the demonization of China?
Ultimately, if Peng comes to the US and continues to maintain that “the allegation of sexual assault, is not true,” it is egg on the face of the WTA and its chief Steve Simon. It would also be an embarrassment for the others that have piled on China: the US, the EU, and the UN. However, western governments will all too often continue to unashamedly repeat ad nauseam their discredited lies, such as the genocide in Xinjiang or the Tiananmen Square massacre.
In the US, as in China, jurisprudence confers a presumption of innocence until one is proven guilty of a crime. What Simon and the WTA have done is to punish a third party, a party not charged with committing, colluding, or having been found guilty of any offense. Nonetheless, the WTA in its wisdom took the step of suspending WTA tournaments in China. In effect, the WTA has pronounced Chinese tennis and, by extension, the nation of China as being guilty of, presumably, laxity or indifference to the crime of sexual assault.
The WTA has now assumed the role of judge and jury for what it identifies as a crime against one of its players.
If a crime was committed against Peng, then she needs to file a police report. Chinese police, like police most anywhere, do not investigate cases that have not been reported or made known to them.
Wired has used the alleged incident to accuse China of censorship. Wired writes that the initial post from Weibo was scrubbed in half an hour and Peng and Zhang’s names were unsearchable thereafter. One can be forgiven if at first blink one suspects censorship. Do we know who deleted Peng’s post? Might censorship even be justifiable? It is too easy to complain of censorship, but what also needs to be considered is libel. If an allegation is untrue, then a libel has been committed. Sometimes an allegation may be true, but it is not provable in a court of law.
So what does Wired suggest: that someone who might turn out to be innocent of an alleged crime have had his/her name dragged through the mud — mud that tends to leave an indelible impression? Is this justice? Or should names and accusations be kept under wraps within the justice system until a determination can be reached?
Peng’s allegation, as she herself stated in the Weibo post, is unverifiable. (See above: 是我没有证据，也根本不可能留下证据。Translated: “I have no evidence, and it is impossible to leave evidence at all.”) If Peng does an about face and says she was forced to have sex with the former vice premier Zhang, it amounts to hearsay. The WTA is responding to hearsay.
Now to avoid hypocrisy. There is a corroborated complaint that according to the standard set by the WTA that calls for action. In the United States sits a president who is alleged to have committed a sexual assault against a former senate staffer Tara Reade. Unlike Peng, Reade came forward and filed a complaint with a congressional personnel office and much later filed a police report.
Reade is not a professional tennis player, but many WTA tournaments are played in the US, and since the WTA claims concern for the safety of its players, does it not behoove the WTA to suspend all its tournaments in the US?
The alleged allegation in the Weibo post is serious, and it must be handled in a serious manner. If the allegation can be confirmed, then the wheels of justice must proceed, and if guilt is determined for a perpetrator, then whatever punishment is merited must be meted out.
But the inordinate global magnification of the allegation is obviously not about a concern for justice. It is not about concern for the safety of a tennis player. This is about the capitalist West and its capitalist allies reacting to a socialist country soaring past them economically, eliminating poverty, and pulling off great technological marvels. At its core, it smacks of envy.
A Republican senator who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee stated on a Tuesday Fox News appearance that he strongly supports keeping US military action on the table if Russia invades Ukraine, up to and including a first-use nuclear attack.
“I would not rule out military action,” Senator Roger Wicker told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. “I think we start making a mistake when we take options off the table. So I would hope the president keeps that option on the table.”
“What does military action mean, senator?” Cavuto asked.
“Well, military action could mean that we standoff with our ships in the Black Sea and we rain destruction on Russian military capability,” the senator replied. “It could mean that. It could mean that we participate – and I would not rule that out – I would not rule out American troops on the ground. You know we don’t rule out first-use nuclear action. We don’t think it will happen. But there’s certain things in negotiations – if you’re going to be tough – that you don’t take off the table.”
Wicker emphasized that his position was entirely bipartisan.
“To the extent that you’ve had Democrats on the show right before me saying that we should be tougher, I support that and I appreciate that,” Wicker said. “I think they represent the fear that we have, the realization that we have in the Congress, that losing a free democratic Ukraine to Russian invasion would be a game-changer for a free Europe.”
Top Biden administration diplomat and neoconservative Ukraine coup plotter Victoria Nuland didn’t go quite as far, but did assert that a perceived attack on Ukraine would see Russia financially cut off from the entire world.
“What we are talking about would amount to essentially isolating Russia completely from the global financial system, with all the fallout that would entail for Russian businesses, for the Russian people, for their ability to work and travel and trade,” Nuland told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.
It remains to be seen whether tensions between NATO powers and Moscow over Ukraine will improve or get worse after a two-hour talk between President Biden and President Putin on Tuesday, but it is already abundantly clear that we are as usual being aggressively deceived about the situation. As the Moon of Alabama blog explained the other day, the narrative that Russia is poised for an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine is flimsy at best, and could easily be designed to frame Russia as the aggressor should a future attack on rebel-held territories in eastern Ukraine by US, NATO and Ukrainian forces cross one of Putin’s red lines and provoke a military response from Moscow.
Whatever’s happening, hawks in the US political/media class keep trying to amp the public up for a direct military confrontation between nuclear superpowers.
“If Russia invades a non-NATO partner vital to US-led operations in Iraq/Afghanistan, whose integrity we guaranteed in 1994 and defense we materially support, so soon after the abandonment of our allies in Kabul, the damage done to US credibility and hegemony will be immeasurable,” tweeted MSNBC’s Noah Rothman in contribution to the Ukraine controversy.
If Russia invades a non-NATO partner vital to US-led operations in Iraq/Afghanistan, whose integrity we guaranteed in 1994 and defense we materially support, so soon after the abandonment of our allies in Kabul, the damage done to US credibility and hegemony will be immeasurable.
There’s a lot going on in that post, like the ridiculous claim that Ukraine played a “vital” role in US-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and the bizarre suggestion that Washington guaranteed it would militarily defend Ukraine’s integrity in 1994. But what’s most interesting is Rothman’s refreshingly honest admission that if the hawks get their way in the event of a Ukraine conflict, people’s sons and daughters would be sent to kill and die in a war over something as stupid as “US credibility and hegemony.”
Indeed, all US wars in recent memory have been over US hegemony. When they occur they are always portrayed as heroic acts of defense against evil hostile aggressors; self-defense, defense of human rights, defending freedom and democracy, defending populations which can’t defend themselves, etc. In the imperial doctrine of the US political/media class, the empire never attacks, it only “defends”.
But if you break down the underlying causes of those military interventions they always boil down to preserving US unipolar hegemony, i.e. undisputed planetary domination. It’s not an accident that US military interventionism is consistently most concentrated in areas of high geostrategic value, focused on maintaining the ability to control the world’s crucial resources and shipping lanes, militarily surrounding disobedient governments, and continually expanding the ability to quickly launch devastating attacks on any population which acts against the will of the empire.
That’s the real reason you’re hearing so much hysterical shrieking about China lately, as well as governments which cooperate with it like Russia. It’s got nothing to do with Ukraine or Taiwan or election meddling or human rights concerns in Xinjiang, it’s because China is the head of a rising bloc of non-empire-aligned governments which threatens US hegemony. It’s because Russia and China have been getting closer and closer after western empire managers predicted the exact opposite would occur.
We are living in a geopolitical watershed moment.
As the US-NATO-EU imperial bloc escalates its new cold war on China and Russia, Beijing and Moscow are on the verge of creating an official alliance – militarily, economically, and politically https://t.co/0fnnDS1ZeE
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told the Bloomberg New Economy Forum last month that she’d “heard for years that Russia would become more willing to move toward the west, more willing to engage in a positive way with Europe, the UK, the US, because of problems on its border, because of the rise of China.” But that’s not what occurred.
“We haven’t seen that,” Clinton said. “Instead what we’ve seen is a concerted effort by Putin maybe to hug China more.”
Had the predictions of US empire architects proved correct, the Russia-China tandem described in 2017 by Gilbert Doctorow would never have come to be, and China would have been far weaker and far more vulnerable to US subversion as a result. All the panicked consent-manufacturing you’ve been seeing from empire managers these last few years is due to the frantic need to course-correct after those forecasts fell flat.
As Noam Chomsky recently observed, the real “threat” China poses is that it cannot be bullied into complying with the will of the US empire.
“The U.S. will not tolerate the existence of a state that cannot be intimidated the way Europe can be, that does not follow U.S. orders the way Europe does but pursues its own course. That is the threat,” Chomsky told Democracy Now last month.
Whatever your opinions on Chomsky at this point in his life, you cannot deny that he is correct here. Beltway empire managers determined after the fall of the Soviet Union that the US must prevent the rise of another rival superpower at all cost, and all the attempts you are seeing to undermine China and its geostrategic support system are simply the effects of that resolution playing out exactly as intended.
"What exactly is the 'China threat'? The 'China threat' is China's existence. The US will not tolerate the existence of a state that cannot be intimidated. That does not follow US orders but pursues its own course." –Noam Chomsky slams Biden's hostile foreign policy towards China pic.twitter.com/AebcMZjFJU
But what are the consequences of that resolution? What does it mean when history’s first ever unipolar planetary hegemon must maintain that unipolar hegemony even if it means risking a third world war against an alliance of nuclear-armed nations? What does it mean when the decline of an empire meets with the imperial doctrine that planetary domination must be held in place by any means necessary, and when we now have US senators talking on national television about launching a nuclear first strike on Russia if it invades a nation hardly any Americans could even find on a map?
It means the world has gotten a lot less safe.
The main argument you’ll hear from those who support the continued existence of a US-led world order is that if it wasn’t Washington ruling the world it would be Beijing or Moscow, which is just silly “If I don’t steal it someone else will steal it” nonsense that isn’t substantiated by facts. The planet never had a unipolar hegemon until three decades ago; there’s nothing inscribed upon the fabric of reality which says there needs to be one, and all the evidence coming from Beijing and Moscow is that those governments want a multipolar world, not to dominate a unipolar one. Besides, it’s not like the US has been making global domination look sexy during that time by rapidly burning itself out and teetering on the brink of collapse.
The other main argument you’ll hear in favor of US unipolar hegemony is the claim of “Pax Americana“; that it makes the world a more peaceful place. But, again, how true is that if US unipolar hegemony must be held in place by endless violence and is now forcing humanity toward a world war between powerful nuclear-armed nations?
After all, “Pax Americana” has already killed millions of people and displaced tens of millions in US wars of geostrategic domination just since the turn of this century. The US-backed assault on Yemen alone will have killed 377,000 people by the end of this year, and the horrors show no sign of stopping. Unilateral starvation sanctions on disobedient populations are deliberately murdering civilians around the world. And now, no longer able to make due with simply smashing weaker nations, we are being fed the usual “defense” propaganda about Ukraine and Taiwan to gin up support for world war in the nuclear age.
The western media have been screaming that Russia is about to invade Ukraine any minute now for years on end. The narratives we’re being fed about Taiwan are blatantly propagandistic. All they’re doing is brainwashing the public into consenting to aggressions which are so dangerous that, all by themselves, they completely invalidate the argument that US unipolar hegemony makes the world safer or more peaceful.
________________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
On Monday, the current U.S Joe Biden administration confirmed it would not be sending any government officials to the Beijing Olympics. In response, the Chinese Foreign Minister declared the move a statement of ideological prejudice. Jen Psaki, Press Secretary for the White House alleged as the reason for this diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics, supposed crimes against humanity committed by Chinese authorities and abuses of human rights.
The Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, has confirmed his country’s officials will not attend the Beijing Winter Olympics, joining the US in a diplomatic boycott of next year’s Games and prompting accusations from Beijing of political posturing.
Morrison told reporters in Sydney it was “not surprising”, given the deterioration in the diplomatic relationship between Australia and China, that officials would not attend next year’s winter Games.
On May 25, 2021, when the date of June 16 was announced for the summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, it seemed a good idea to waste no time in warning Biden and his neophyte advisers that a major shift in the “world correlation of forces” (to borrow an old Soviet term) was bound to heavily influence the June talks. China, of course, would not be taking part in the bilateral talks, but it would be very much present.
In other words, a half-year ago, we worried:
“Whether or not Official Washington fully appreciates the gradual – but profound – change in America’s triangular relationship with Russia and China over recent decades, what is clear is that the US has made itself into the big loser. The triangle may still be equilateral, but it is now, in effect, two sides against one. …
The Morrison government is considering citing Covid restrictions as a reason for officials to stay away from the Beijing Winter Olympics, as calls grow for Australia to follow the US in a diplomatic boycott.
Guardian Australia understands while an announcement could be made soon, the government is unlikely to take as strong a position as the Biden administration, which blasted China over “ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity”.
A new study out of York University in Toronto, Canada finds that the US military plays a large role in the spread of diseases globally, including past and present pandemics. Clearing the FOG speaks with one of the lead authors, K J Noh, an expert analyst on the geopolitics of the Asian-Pacific region and health, about the study. Important factors in the spread of disease are Status Agreements that the US military makes with local and national governments that exempt members of the military from being required to follow public health measures and a culture of impunity within the military that leads to members defying all public health restrictions, even those measures imposed by the military. Noh also explains how the weaponization of disease is causing harm to everyone and why the US establishment doesn’t want the public to know there are governments designed to serve their populations.
We survived the nuclear horror of the cold war only to see our rulers turn around and start another one for no legitimate reason, this time against two nations simultaneously. And almost no one objected.
The first cold war was colored by a healthy fear of nuclear annihilation, by support for detente in mainstream political factions, and by an understanding that this was a situation we should ideally get ourselves out of as soon as possible. This new cold war features none of these, and is against two nuclear powers, Russia and China, instead of just one. Twice as many unpredictable moving parts. Twice as many things that can go cataclysmically wrong. And this one’s got a whole new dimension of danger in the race to put weapons in space. Our odds here are not good.
I probably won’t feel such an urgent need to keep talking about this as much once I start seeing some real sustained acknowledgement in mainstream circles that there is a very very dangerous game being played here and heroic efforts need to be made to de-escalate it. But right now there just isn’t. Everyone is asleep at the wheel. Nobody’s noticing how dangerous this nuclear tightrope walk is getting.
❖
China is the same kind of country it was during the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. All that’s changed is the level of power it has on the world stage, and therefore the threat level it poses to US planetary domination.
❖
China is building up its military might in correct anticipation of an eventual confrontation with the US empire. The empire’s choices are now (A) abandon the goal of indefinite unipolar hegemony and pursue detente, or (B) orchestrate some kind of massive attack soon before China becomes too powerful to defeat.
❖
I will admit to being more rude to hysterical anti-China types than I am to most people. This is partly because the agendas they’re facilitating are so dangerous, and partly because they’re often a very abrasive combination of stupid and uninformed yet arrogant and condescending. They’ve seriously got the worst low-info/high confidence ratio of any faction I’ve ever encountered.
❖
If this prediction had proved correct, the rapidly tightening Russia-China tandem we're seeing today would never have happened, and China would be far weaker on the world stage as a result. This is the real reason there's been such panicked aggression against both nations lately. https://t.co/1NTlIJH48F
Many Bible verses have done lots of damage over the years, but among the most destructive has been “The poor you will always have with you” from Matthew 26:11. It’s been used often to argue that poverty cannot be eliminated, which at this point in our development is simply false.
As Buckminster Fuller once said, “It is now highly feasible to take care of everybody on Earth at a higher standard of living than any have ever known. It no longer has to be you or me. Selfishness is unnecessary. War is obsolete. It is a matter of converting the high technology from weaponry to livingry.”
Allowing poverty to continue is now a choice. It’s not a choice being made by you or me or any ordinary person, but it is still a choice, being made by the drivers of global capitalism. We could eliminate it, but we don’t, and we accept this as normal because we’re brainwashed.
We could be living in a world where people collaborate with each other toward everyone’s benefit but instead we’re waiting around to find out if we’ll all die in a nuclear holocaust because some neocons convinced everyone in Washington that the US must maintain unipolar hegemony.
❖
“How come you still write about the world like nothing’s changed since Covid?”
Because as far as my line of commentary is concerned nothing has. We’re still hurtling toward armageddon and dystopia just as I was describing before 2020, there are just new justifications and details behind some aspects of that trajectory. We’re still headed for disaster unless the people rise up and use the power of their numbers to turn us away from the trajectory toward doom, and that’s still not going to happen as long as people are being propagandized. This is all still the case just as it was in 2019.
The emotions of the Hot News Story of the Day often make it hard for people to clearly see the horrific nature of the status quo that has already been in place for a long time, the abuses of which have been far, far greater than the Covid-related ones. In terms of abusive systems held in place by propaganda and authoritarian force, the ones we had in place in 2019 dwarf the measures we’ve seen put in place since by orders of magnitude. Many just didn’t notice them because they’ve been conditioned to accept them as normal.
A big part of what I do here is try to help people see the mundane horrors of the status quo with fresh eyes. If someone was teleported here from an alternate Earth with a healthy society, they’d never stop screaming.
❖
Leftists who spend a lot of energy conformity-policing the online left are admitting that they’re only in this for the egoic currency of social media reactions. There’s no other reason to look at our world’s problems and decide that’s the most useful expenditure of your energy. If you look at the dire straits humanity is in and then decide you’re going to spend your time and energy calling Jimmy Dore a fascist or Max Blumenthal an anti-vaxxer or whatever, you’re admitting you’re not in this to make the world better. You’re not interested in fixing this thing.
❖
The US opposes legally binding restrictions on the use of lethal autonomous weapons because its plans for the future involve widespread use of those weapons.https://t.co/JymwgHeITN
The most powerful people in our world pursue power for its own sake and do so with amoeba-like levels of wisdom and insight. Don’t attribute any higher order of decision-making capability to them than you would to any random acquaintance in your life. If anything, attribute less.
Most people are deeply unconscious and patterned. Ruling elites are no exception, and in fact they are more unconscious. It’s a common error to think of these people as rational actors; really their minds are running on autopilot in response to conditioning put in place long ago.
That’s why you’ll see them continuing policies which destroy the biosphere they depend on for survival or escalating military aggressions between nuclear powers. They’re not making cool, rational decisions, they’re acting out impulses within themselves that they don’t understand.
You’ll hear people say “They wouldn’t nuke themselves, it’s irrational” or “If the climate situation was really that bad they’d have taken drastic action long ago,” but this assumes you’re dealing with rational minds and not what are essentially neurological computer programs. Really you’re just looking at highly traumatized organisms mindlessly acting out patterns set in place much earlier in their lives to cope with distress and gain a feeling of safety and security. And virtually none of those patterns are useful for running the world in a sane way.
Any analysis which holds that elites wouldn’t do something simply because it’s not rational is an analysis which omits the important fact that, as Robert Heinlein put it, “Man is not a rational animal; he is a rationalizing animal.”
These people are not gods. They’re barely even humans.
❖
You’re far from the truth if you believe the official government runs things. You’re closer to the truth if you believe unelected plutocrats and secretive agencies run things. You’re standing in the truth if you see that the self is an illusion and no one ultimately runs things.
❖
It’s not true that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; the absence of beauty is. Beauty is everywhere; it’s the natural, default state of perception. The inability to see beauty in something is the result of mental projections added onto that natural state by the beholder.
_______________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
After a day of political showdown that at times involved shouting battles and personal clashes, the much anticipated motion of no confidence against Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was defeated by 32 votes to 15 with two abstentions.
With the capital city Honiara virtually closed for business yesterday, attention turned to Vavaya Ridge where Parliament was debating the motion.
The motion came on the back of social unrest that saw the looting and burning of some 56 buildings across the city and the re-engagement of foreign forces in Honiara to arrest the situation two weeks ago and restore law and order.
In moving the motion, opposition leader Matthew Wale admitted that he had been conflicted by the need for this motion at this hour in “our history”.
“On the one hand we are dealing with it today because there is need for a political solution to the causes of the tragic events of two weeks ago,” he said.
“On the other, I am conscious that what we say in ventilating this motion may further add to what are already high levels of anger in certain quarters of our society.”
Wale said that as a result of the tragic events that caused so much loss and destruction and even cost lives he had called on the Prime Minister to resign.
‘Eruption of anger’
“I did not make that call out of malice toward him personally. I made that call in recognition of the fact that the tragic events were not isolated events, nor were they purely criminal, but were the eruption of anger based on political issues and decisions for which the PM must bear the primary responsibility,” he said.
“It is democratic for a Prime Minister to be called upon to resign, there is nothing undemocratic about the call. And if he chose to resign that too would be democratic.
Opposition leader Matthew Wale speaking to the no-confidence motion … “The tragic events were not isolated events, nor were they purely criminal, but were the eruption of anger based on political issues and decisions for which the PM must bear the primary responsibility.” Image: APR screenshot
“As is the case, the Prime Minister refused to resign, and therefore has necessitated this motion,” he said while moving the motion.
“Although [the people] are resource rich, yet they are cash poor. They have hopes that their children will have access to better opportunities than they did.”
— Opposition leader Matthew Wale
In arguing his case, Wale stated several issues.
On the economy, the MP for Aoke/Langalana said the vast majority of “our people live on the margins of our economy”.
“Although they are resource rich, yet they are cash poor. They have hopes that their children will have access to better opportunities than they did.
“They work hard to afford the high cost of education, though many children leave school because of lack of school fees. Our people are angry that education is so expensive, and that only those that can afford it are able to educate all their kids to a high level of education,” Wale said.
Access to healthcare challenging
“On health, Wale said the vast majority of our people lived where access to healthcare was challenging at best.
He said basic medicines and supplies are often not adequate to meet their health care needs adding that the state of the hospitals are perpetually in crisis management.
The opposition leader pointed out that at the National Referral Hospital Emergency Department patients were sleeping on the floor.
“Why is this the case? Who is responsible? Our people are angry about this,” he asked in Parliament.
Wale also highlighted logging companies disregard of tribal and community concerns, that drive conflict and disputes within tribes and communities. He said the government stood with the logging companies.
He also accused Sogavare of the use of the People’s Republic of China’s National Development Fund (NDF) money to prop up the Prime Minister as another of those issues that was undermining and compromising the sovereignty of the country.
He said the PM was dependent on that money to maintain his political strength.
Chinese funding influence
“How is he then supposed to make decisions that are wholly only in the interests of Solomon Islands untainted or undiluted by considerations for the PRC funds,” he asked.
“You see public anger has been built up over many years by all this bad governance. No serious efforts have been taken to address these serious issues. Provincial governments have increasingly over the past several years repeated their desire that they be given the constitutional mandate to manage their own affairs. Honiara has been consuming almost all the wealth that has been generated from resources exploited from the provinces,” Wale said.
He stated that the provinces had lost trust in Honiara.
“Erratic, poor, mercenary, and politically expedient decision making makes what is already a bad situation worse.
Wale said this was the situation specifically with Malaita.
“Malaita has stood on principle that a PM that lies to the country and Parliament does not have moral authority and legitimacy. Malaita would not accept it.
“Because of that principled position, this PM has not ceased to scheme and plot the consistent and persistent persecution of Malaita.
Malaita sought peaceful protest
“Malaitans have sought to petition the PM, twice, but were ignored and brushed aside in a rather juvenile manner. Malaita asked to stage peaceful protests, but these were denied.
“Malaitans sought an audience with the PM, but they were summarily dismissed. So what are they then supposed to do to get the PM’s attention? The PM consistently refused to visit Auki,” Wale said.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare speaking in Parliament yesterday … “We never received any formal log of issues from [Malaita].” Image: APR screenshotIn his response, Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare strongly rejected the claims stating that he had never received any issues of concerns from Malaita province.
“We never received any formal log of issues from them so that the government sits with them and dialogue over it,” he said.
He stressed that the government runs on rules and protocols on how they deal with each other.
Regarding the motion, Sogavare said it should never be brought to the floor of Parliament.
He accused Wale and his cohorts for driving the interests of a few people.
Willing to face justice
Sogavare said the majority of peace loving Malaitans condemned with utter disgust what had happened.
On corruption allegations, that the foreign forces were helping to protect his government, Sogavare said he was willing to face justice.
“I am very willing and if the leader of opposition can prove the allegations he has against me. This is the easiest way to remove the Prime Minister—that is to send him to jail,” he said.
On the lack of government support in terms of development on Malaita, Sogavare argued that despite the current economic environment his government had performed very well.
In that regard, he said the government did not fail the people of the country, including Malaita province, in the implementation of the twin objective of his government’s policy re-direction.
He said that the government had done so much for Malaita — as a matter of fact more than what some provinces that contributed so much to the country’s economy were getting.
Eight MPs including the PM spoke on the motion.
Robert Iroga is editor of SBM Online. Republished with permission.
Australia and its Quad partners need to better cooperate on critical technologies and launch co-investment vehicles to counter the growing dominance of China, according to an Australian Strategic Policy Institute report. The report aims to benchmark the Quad countries – Australia, the US, India and Japan – in terms of critical infrastructure capability, and build…
The Solomon Islands prime minister came in for searing criticism when he faced a confidence vote in Parliament today.
A motion of no confidence against Manasseh Sogavare was debated amid tight security in the capital Honiara, where hundreds of regional security forces have deployed following major political unrest less than two weeks ago.
About 250 defence force and police personnel from Australia, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and New Zealand were on high alert in anticipation of potential unrest around the outcome of the vote.
Local media reported that numerous local families departed from Honiara aboard interisland ferries to return to home villages to avoid potential unrest in the capital, where many shops and schools had also closed.
The motion was tabled by opposition leader Matthew Wale, who has accused Sogavare of allowing corruption to fester, and of treating the people of Malaita province with contempt.
Malaitans played a central role in the late November protest that sparked the unrest, which left extensive destruction in Honiara, prompting Sogavare’s request for regional security help.
Suidani denies instigation claims
Malaita’s provincial Premier Daniel Suidani, whose administration has fallen out with the national government, especially over the country’s move to switch diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China, has denied claims by the coalition that he instigated the unrest.
Wale told Parliament that the actions of the rioters should not obscure the real issue behind the unrest.
“We must condemn all the criminality in the strongest terms, but it pales, Mr Speaker, in comparison to the looting happening at the top,” he said.
Speaking in favour of the motion, former prime minister Rick Hounipwela described Sogavare as the ultimate opportunist whose accession to prime minister over four stints “has always been under abnormal circumstances”.
Blaming the prime minister for negligent management of the country’s finances, Hounipwela said the country’s corruption problem had deepened under Sogavare’s rule.
“We’ve experienced huge tax exemptions worth millions of dollars given to the people who least needed it, usually the loggers and mining operators.”
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare speaking in Parliament today … “When we are under attack from forces of evil, we must stand up for what is right.” Image: APR screenshot
In today’s debate on the motion, Sogavare said the motion had been filed against the backdrop of an illegal attempted coup.
‘Stand up to tyranny’
“When we are under attack from forces of evil, we must stand up for what is right, we must stand up to this tyranny. We cannot entertain violence being used to tear down a democratically elected government.”
Sogavare rejected the opposition’s accusation of corruption against him.
Hounipwela, the MP for Small Malaita, accused the prime minister of using the pandemic State of Emergency to give himself authoritarian powers.
He also claimed Sogavare had used police to repress public criticism of his leadership, and of directing foreign embassies and high commissions in the country to notify the government of their moves around the provinces.
“To vote against [the motion], members would be aiding and abetting his zeal for power and to rule this country with an iron fist. That’s what we see as a track record,” Hounipwela said.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
When the nukes start flying, when we see the mushroom cloud growing on the horizon, when reality comes crashing down in the most overt way possible, when the realization slowly dawns that this really is the end, none of our old stuff will matter anymore.
It will not matter if you are American, Russian or Chinese. It will not matter if your skin is darker or lighter. It will not matter if you feel like a man or a woman or both or neither. It will not matter if your politics are left, right or center. It will not matter who you voted for. All that will matter, in that final moment, is that it is ending.
We will behold that final moment standing alongside progressives and conservatives, racists and radlibs, socialists and soldiers, communists and cops, and all our irreconcilable differences will suddenly dissolve into nothing.
Against the suddenly visible backdrop of total annihilation, the existence of any human anywhere is a miracle, and the existence of life on this planet is a priceless gift. We won’t even care whose fault it was, whether it was deliberate or accidental, or whether it was the result of some malfunction, miscommunication, or misunderstanding. All we will care about is that it is ending.
And in that final moment we will hug our loved ones tight, whether we are Christian or atheist, Jew or Arab, Indian or Pakistani, anti-vaxxer or Antifa.
And in that final moment we will say, in our heart of hearts, with our innermost voices, “Oh, I see it now! I see how easy it is to stand together! I see how small our differences are compared to this great commonality! I see where we went wrong, and how very easy it would be to fix it!”
And in that final moment we will say, “We see it now! We see the mistakes we made, and made and made and kept on making! We understand our fundamental error! Just give us one do-over and we can correct it immediately! Could we have a do-over please? Could we have a do-over please?”
In that final moment, we will ask, “Could we have a do-over please?”
_________________________
_________________________
_________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Chris Hedges discusses the decline of the American empire and the new global order with Professor Alfred McCoy, who holds the Harrington Chair in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. McCoy looks at past empires and how they disintegrated in his book ‘To Govern the Globe’. The familiar patterns of decline allow him to speculate about what lies ahead as the global dominance of the United States crumbles under the weight of disastrous military adventurism, the collapse of public institutions, a rapacious and greedy oligarchic elite, and inept political and military leadership. The new world order, McCoy argues, will see China ascendant.
China is imposing harsh regulations on private education, big tech, and billionaires. The new Cold Warriors in the U.S. government and media call these moves authoritarian, leftward tyranny, and bad for business. But Chinese president Xi Jinping calls it part of a “common prosperity” agenda to create a more equitable society on the road to building socialism. To help understand the Chinese point of view, Rania Khalek was joined by Tings Chak, a writer and researcher with Dongsheng News and the Tricontinental Institute.
Cobalt, A Key Metallic Element Used In Lithium Batteries And Other “Green” Technology, Is Sourced From Slave Labor In The Democratic Republic Of Congo. As The West Points The Finger At China, The US Africa Command Is Indirectly Policing Mining Operations That Profit US Corporations.
Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, China announces that it will donate 600 million doses of vaccines for African countries and produce 400 million doses in partnership with African countries. China will send 500 specialists for ten agriculture and poverty alleviation projects on the continent, among other commitments.
Macao tightens regulations on casino operators. The ex-Portuguese colony overtook Las Vegas in 2006 as world’s largest gambling hub while Xi’s 2014 anti-corruption campaign targeted money laundering and capital outflows; tycoon Alvin Chau is among 11 people recently arrested for illegal gambling practices.
International media are reporting that the Ugandan government has turned over Entebbe airport to a Chinese bank in order to make payment on a loan. “Museveni to surrender Uganda’s only international airport over Chinese loan,” claimed The Guardian . Similar headlines have appeared widely and all repeat as fact an allegation that Uganda will lose its airport to Exim bank. Uganda has not defaulted on the $200 million loan yet the false bad news continues to be reported. Despite denials from China and Uganda the story continues to circulate and is now accepted as being true.
Taiwan’s defence ministry announced on 28 November that the Republic of China Air Force (RoCAF) had scrambled its fighter jets to warn off a flight of 27 People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) aircraft off its southern air defence identification zone (ADIZ), while also deploying its missile defences as a precaution. According to the Ministry […]
Congress is itching to pass a sweeping bipartisan package that threatens to enshrine a new Cold War, this time against China, and they’re counting on the American public’s inattention to get it through by the end of the year. After months of stalling in the House, and a failed attempt to attach the legislation to the annual defense bill, majority leader Chuck Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi struck a deal this week for a bicameral conference on the anti-China legislation.
The US Innovation and Competition Act is a massive piece of legislation purporting to make the United States more “competitive” with China economically, politically, and technologically. Mainstream media outlets and lawmakers have framed the bill as the most expansive industrial policy legislation in US history, and as being crucial for countering China’s economic rise.
Members of the Devon Regiment round up local people in a search for Mau Mau fighters in Kenya in 1954. Photograph: Popperfoto/Popperfoto/Getty Images
The UK government is considering boycotting China’s winter Olympic Games to be held in Beijing. The British foreign office cites “international efforts to hold China to account for its human rights violations in Xinjiang.”
“It is the longstanding policy of the government that the determination of whether genocide has taken place should be made by a competent court with the jurisdiction to try such cases, rather than by the government or a non-judicial body.”
Setting aside the pathetic allegation of “human rights violations” (vastly downgraded from the absurd allegation of a genocide) in Xinjiang, Britain ought to look in the mirror and submit its own human rights abuses and genocides to the International Criminal Court or International Court of Justice. It will take many years because there are so many abuses and genocides to be tried.
How does one think that the Indigenous populations were subdued in the colonies of Australia, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Canada, the United States, the Caribbean, Africa, and Asia? Did the Indigenous peoples roll over and say please depopulate us, so you can take the land?
Did the Nepalese, Bhutanese, the peoples of the Indian subcontinent, and Sri Lanka (Ceylon) say please subdue us and rule over us?
No need to be mired too far in the past for British aggression and war crimes. There have been plenty in the 20th and 21st centuries.
In 1912, Britain carried out the Jallianwala Bagh Massacre in Amritsar, Punjab. In 1948, Britain ended the Palestine Mandate and facilitated the Jewish ethnic cleansing of Palestinians. Near the end of 1946, British troops of the Scots Guards murdered 24 Malays in the Batang Kali Massacre. In 1952, Britain carried out the Mau Mau Massacre in Kenya.
Recently, the Guardian published an article, “Slaughter in Indonesia: Britain’s secret propaganda war,” that described Britain’s role in, according to the CIA, “one of the worst mass murders of the 20th century.”
Didn’t British Prime Minister Tony Blair conspire with George W Bush to fix the facts and intelligence around a policy that led to a staggering estimate that “2.4 million Iraqis have been killed since 2003 as a result of our country’s illegal invasion, with a minimum of 1.5 million and a maximum of 3.4 million” posited on the lie of Iraq having weapons-of-mass-destruction (which Britain actually has)?
Were the Brits not also found guilty of war crimes in Afghanistan? Were the Brits not involved in the destruction of Libya and the carnage in Syria?
It leads anyone with a slight insight into history to ask upon what moral basis do Brits claim a right to denounce other countries for alleged crimes?
Yes, there was a violent skirmish between China and India in 2020, but China has not been at war for over 40 years — a 3 weeks and 6 day war with Viet Nam in 1979. And one must not overlook the war crimes Britain committed against China. After all, Britain fought the Opium Wars to force China to open its market to opium in the mid-19th century. The Qing dynasty was weak and China lost. As penance, China had to cede Hong Kong and Kowloon to Britain and pay reparations.
Has Britain ever repaid the ill-gotten reparations along with rent for the colonization of Hong Kong?
What should one conclude about the British politicians who denounce China without irrefutable evidence? Are they dishonest charlatans or are they intellectually inept as far as their own history? George Monbiot wrote, “Deny the British empire’s crimes? No, we ignore them.”
Any human rights abuses or war crimes that China or any nation might commit must be judged, not by bombast but with solid evidence. Such evidence must be presented to a neutral tribunal, not by the scofflaws, but by reputable countries as untarnished and unbiased as possible by great crimes.
The only manufacturing jobs left in the US are military weapons and consent.
❖
Gotta keep dropping bombs because they gotta keep making bombs. Gotta keep making bombs because they made the entire economy dependent on bomb-making. This is the only type of system that could possibly work.
❖
The goal of internet censorship is to suppress and marginalize unauthorized ideas so much that the internet actually becomes a net negative for ordinary people, because the only ones who will be able to rapidly share ideas of consequence will be the propagandists and their acolytes.
❖
Because people who object to US-led imperialist aggressions against their governments are routinely purged from social media, those of us who do not live in nations that are being targeted by those aggressions have a special duty to forcefully speak out against US imperialism.
❖
“Come to our Summit for Democracy,” said the nation whose elections are completely fake and whose intelligence agencies have interfered in scores of foreign elections and which openly works to topple democratically elected governments around the world all the time.
I mean, come on:
Biden has invited Venezuelan opposition figure (to say leader would be a stretch) Juan Guaidó to a virtual “summit of democracies”
Guaidó doesn’t hold any public office & competing opposition parties outperformed his coalition in recent elections https://t.co/iMn8IUSWQM
Capitalism is such a garbage system that news media will shriek all day about “crime” like it’s this mysterious alien phenomenon being inflicted upon society from the outside instead of a very obvious symptom of economic injustices with very obvious and widely known solutions.
❖
I was fully expecting Biden to be absolute shit but I will still admit to being disappointed that he just flat-out lied about ending the war in Yemen. Yes I know it serves me right for getting my hopes up. But it is still horrific that this atrocity continues.
❖
“You’re Australian, don’t write about America.”
You’re a literal empire. Everyone gets to talk about you. Shut the fuck up.
When people would tell me to shut up about the US because I’m not American I used to point out that my co-writer/husband Tim is American, but I quickly realized that’s giving way to much credence to the idea that non-Americans can’t criticize a planet-dominating unipolar empire.
❖
Covid is interesting in that it has a propaganda campaign that everyone’s aware of and encouraged to participate in. So you’ll see things like when Jimmy Dore got slammed earlier this year for talking about his adverse vaccine reaction, not because it was false, but because it hurt the propaganda effort.
Read the replies.
Sharing one's experience of adverse reactions to the mRNA jab is now apparently taboo; people are, absurdly, labeling such anecdotes as "antivax propaganda".
Perhaps if they quit ignoring these stories, they might begin to grasp why shot uptake has plateaued. https://t.co/3ooM6231TC
— Clifton Duncan: BFA, MFA, FHRiTP (@cliftonaduncan) May 23, 2021
There’s no basis whatsoever for the belief that Dore lied about having adverse reactions, but he got raked over the coals anyway. You see things like that all the time: people forcefully discouraged from talking about raw facts because it might hurt the vaccine effort or whatever.
You are free to believe this propaganda campaign is a good thing, or that it’s a necessary evil, but what you can’t do is deny that it’s a propaganda campaign. There’s a concerted effort to manage perception, and the rank-and-file public is actively participating in that effort.
None of this is to deny that there’s misinformation about Covid and vaccines etc; there’s an incredible amount of stupid bullshit and sloppy thinking out there. But there’s also a fair bit of real information that people simply cannot discuss outside certain echo chambers without being stomped down.
This is a fairly new development, where the public is encouraged not just to share a certain message but to aggressively shut down anything which doesn’t perfectly align with it regardless of whether or not it is based in fact. Narrative managers are watching this one closely.
❖
The increasing likelihood of nuclear war between the US power alliance and Russia and/or China is the most important issue in the world. It’s self-evidently priority number one, because there will be no politics, protests, Covid vaccines, racial issues, healthcare etc if we are all dead.
There is no other issue that could instantly turn all the other issues into a non-issue tomorrow. Opposing the way the US and its allies are rapidly ramping up hostilities against Russia and China simultaneously and shutting down any possibility of detente must be our foremost priority.
I just keep seeing a day not far in the future were a nuke gets discharged amid the chaos and confusion of escalating cold war tensions between nuclear-armed nations and all we’ll be thinking about as the world ends is all the stupid nonsense we’d been arguing about previously.
❖
I'm not a historian but it seems like maybe world powers splitting into two increasingly hostile alliance groups could lead to something bad. https://t.co/QZ1eyVxKSz
The advent of nuclear weapons didn’t prevent a third world war, it just postponed it. It is not a coincidence that the two most powerful nations the US has been unable to absorb into its field of control are nuclear-armed ones. But now a final confrontation is on the horizon.
After the second world war the US became the top imperialist aggressor, and since it couldn’t take out Russia and China it set about absorbing weaker nations into its imperial folds. Now only a few nations remain unabsorbed, and the drums of war against Russia and China are beating ever louder. There was a tiny four-year window after Hiroshima before Stalin got the bomb, and China followed five years later. By doing so they were able to postpone a direct confrontation with the US empire for the rest of the century, but they’ve been marked for absorption ever since.
And now the campaign to shore up total global control is approaching its final stage.
❖
Things are fucked, the people who are making them fucked will keep doing so until stopped by the public, and the public is being psychologically manipulated away from stopping them by propaganda. That’s our whole struggle right now, and it’s happening on many different fronts.
__________________________
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Get the Marines ready. Store the supplies. Marshal the allies. The United States is getting ready for war (the preferable term in Washington is policing) in the Indo-Pacific region, and is hoping to do so with a range of expanded bases across client states, or what it prefers to call friends.
On November 29, the Pentagon announced that US President Joe Biden had accepted the recommendations made by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III in the Global Posture Review commissioned in February. The news might have been delivered by Austin himself, but this solemn duty fell to Mara Karlin, discharging her duties as deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. As the GPR remains classified, we are left with a sketchy performance that should make many across the Indo-Pacific seek cover and a bunker.
For the most part, Karlin’s performance was gibberish, masked by lingo hostile to meaning. The review was intended to “inform” the approach of the Biden administration in terms of national defence strategy, which did not mean that it would necessarily inform anybody else. “That guidance asserts that the United States will lead with diplomacy first, revitalize our unmatched network of allies and partners and make smart and disciplined choices regarding our national defense and responsible use of our military,” Karlin stated. How reassuring.
She continued in non-revelatory fashion to mention how the “global posture review assesses DOD overseas forces and footprint along with the framework and processes that govern our posture decision making.” The GPR had “strengthened our decision-making processes by deliberately connecting strategic priorities, global trade-offs, force readiness and modernization, interagency coordination and allied and partner coordination to global posture planning and decisions.”
The only thing to conclude from this remarkable display of non-meaning was that the US imperium was on the march, and it was keen to ensure that its allies would be marching in step with it. At one point, Karlin let the cat out of the bag. A primary focus of the GPR is the Indo-Pacific, with China proving to be the continuing fixation. Cooperation between Washington, its allies and its partners to “advance initiatives” that aid regional stability and deter Chinese military aggression and threats from Pyongyang, are matters of urgency.
This puts Australia, Guam and various Pacific Islands in the spotlight, with the US keen to use them as staging grounds in any forthcoming conflict with Beijing while reducing their troop presence in other global theatres. The press conference was not quite so blunt, but the implications were clear enough. According to Karlin, the Pentagon will seek a “range of infrastructure improvements in Guam, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands and Australia.” New US rotational fighter and bomber aircraft deployments to Australia and further logistics cooperation with Canberra are promised.
When asked by a journalist why Australia and Guam had been specifically mentioned in the address, Karlin showed some rare candour in admitting that “those were notable, which is why I cited those specifically” though the US was broadly “engaged in consultations with our allies and partners across the Pacific.”
The remarks pertaining to Australia simply affirmed the observations made by Austin in September, the same month the trilateral AUKUS security partnership between Australia, the UK and the US was announced. AUKUS, explained Austin at the time, would “help contribute” to the concept of “integrated deterrence in the region,” an unimaginative way of saying that the US would lead a regional policing effort in the Indo-Pacific, with the assistance of Australia and like-minded partners. While Washington sought “a constructive, results-oriented relationship with the PRC, we will remain clear-eyed in our view of Beijing’s efforts to undermine the established international order.”
Such a clear-eyed disposition involved making good use of Australian territory, with Canberra agreeing to “major force posture initiatives that will expand our access and presence in Australia.”
Access is imperial speak for US power. It sounds so much better than military occupation. Becca Wasser of the Center for a New American Security is well versed in that argot. “If you want to change posture – whether that is expanding or consolidating bases, or deploying new capability – you need access,” Wasser toldBreaking Defense. “Access is something only allies and partners can provide and changes to access usually require a lengthy consultation process.” Appearances must be kept.
A sense of how the GPR has been received can also be gathered from the security think-tankers, those delightful sorts who make it their tanking business to find enemies for budget reasons. A co-authored report by John Schaus of the hawkish Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington and Michael Shoebridge of the Canberra-based US appendage, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, praises the Review as “an enormous opportunity to signal, and demonstrate, US commitment to regional security in ways that will reassure partners and deter potential adversaries.”
There is an unabashed encouragement of greater US garrisoning and military presence in Australia. Australia would commit to investing in and expanding naval facilities in Darwin and on the west coast. This, in turn, could be “matched with a greater US naval presence at these facilities, for the purpose of joint activity through the Indian Ocean and up into Southeast Asia.”
The authors take issue with conservative US troop numbers that had been present through Marine Corps rotations in Northern Australia during the Obama-era. It was time to roll up the sleeves and co-opt Australian real estate and resources to advance Washington’s agenda. “Specifically, the United States should forward deploy Navy surface, subsurface, and uncrewed vessels to Australia; expand the Air Force rotational presence to include larger numbers and more frequent presence of high-endurance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms; and increase both Marine and Army presence to facilitate greater training and integration within the alliance.”
While the GPR remains under lock and key, we can be certain that many of the bellicose wishes of Schaus and Shoebridge are bound to be there. The war monger’s script is getting increasingly long and relentless.
Right away, the Australian 60 Minutes Youtube video titled “Prepare for Armageddon: China’s warning to the world” signals a polemic against China. The video’s opening backdrop features chairman Xi Jinping with a slightly raised fist flanked by a jet, tank, and a battery of missiles.
The program is rife with ad hominem, propaganda, disinformation, and lies of omission.
At the start, host Tom Steinfort says, “The message coming out of China is getting louder by the day, it doesn’t like other countries, especially Australia, ganging up and meddling in its affairs.”
Which country likes others ganging up and meddling in its domestic affairs? Does Australia like it if others meddle in Australian affairs? Yet Australia is notorious for meddling, or rather warring, in other countries. Among the wars that Australians have fought in are the war on Korea, the war on Viet Nam, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Iraq, and the war on Syria. The horrific Australian war crimes in Afghanistan were decried by Chinese government spokesman Lijian Zhao.
Steinfort complains that Beijing is doing its best to punish Australia. But he did not directly answer the question of whether China initiated negative actions against Australia?
The host goes on to cavil about Xi’s ratcheting up the rhetoric about the perils of a new cold war? In other words, said the host: “If we don’t stop poking the panda, we’ll face serious consequences.”
The host’s comment points to Australia being the initiator that caused China to respond to the “poking.” Australia is asked to stop meddling and poking the panda. Moreover, the substitution of the beloved roly-poly panda for the revered, sleek and imposing dragon could, in itself, be interpreted as a not-so-subtle poke at China.
To a critical viewer, the instigator is obviously the American cat’s paw, Australia. China has not been at war with any country for over 40 years and pledges itself to peace. China is not launching missiles into Afghanistan; it is not occupying Syria and stealing its oil; it is not trying to cripple the economies in Cuba, Iran, and the Democratic Republic of Korea; it is not trying to topple elected governments as the US has done in Haiti and Honduras and is now doing in Venezuela and Nicaragua; it is not siding against legitimate Palestinian resistance to Jewish war crimes; it is not aligned with a Saudi genocide in Yemen; it did not destroy Libya. No, this “meddling” in the affairs of other countries is by the United States — supported by its ally, Australia.
The host continues, “It is worth taking that [Chinese] threat seriously.” As per usual among the Anglo-Saxon alliance, China — which is neither attacking nor oppressing any country and has only one military base abroad — is declared a threat for becoming socially, technologically, and economically preeminent.
60 Minutes goes to the crux of the matter: “the looming war with China,” the “unthinkable” Armageddon — the final battle between the forces of good and evil.
Richard Spencer, the former US secretary of the navy appears saying, “It’s gonna be waged on the economic front; it’s gonna be waged on the social affairs front. They’re gonna come at us in all ways.” Presumably “all ways” includes the military front.
Thus 60 Minutes asks, “How prepared are we?”
In 1946, the pacifist physicist Albert Einstein wrote a response to such a query in a letter to US congressman Robert Hale: “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. The very prevention of war requires more faith, courage and resolution than are needed to prepare for war. We must all do our share, that we may be equal to the task of peace.”
60 Minutes proceeds to demonize China as a belligerent poised to militarily invade Taiwan. The program interviews a Taiwanese tech entrepreneur, Xin Qing Xiao, who fears Chinese rule because of “losing all your freedoms…. It is just unimaginable that, you know, that we would be reunified with a authoritarian regime and then surrender such freedoms.”
It would be very easy to go into any country and find a person to speak out against whatever government is demeaned as a “authoritarian regime.” Notable throughout the program is that contrasting views will not be presented except for one exception (while acknowledging the former diplomat Victor Gao as an expert, 60 Minutes rudely described their guest as an “unofficial mouthpiece”).
As for losing all freedoms in China, Frans Vandenbosch, who has been living in China since 2002, writes:
I moved to China for my private and professional FREEDOM
After some years, I returned to my home country in Europe, lived in Germany for 3 years. And went back to China.
For the FREEDOM. In China, there’s real freedom, in Western Europe it’s just a show.
Having lived and worked in several EU countries (Germany, Belgium, UK, ..) I moved to China because of the professional and private FREEDOM in China.
To the question “2 million Taiwanese work and live in China. How do they feel about living in mainland China, the ‘enemy’ of Taiwan?,” Kan Lui replied:
As a Taiwanese working in China, I fall into this category.
Based on what I see, people in the cities are happy and enjoy a high degree of freedom, and are reasonably informed…. Life is good and there is almost no street crime. As an ordinary person I am treated like everyone else by the government, who can be seen everywhere but doesn’t really intrude into my daily life, and most people don’t really care where you are from.
When I go back to Taiwan, I can see Taiwanese politicians sacrificing Taiwan’s economy for political leverage, and the Taiwanese media being surprisingly homogenous and highly biased on their coverage on China, which are primarily targeted at and gleefully consumed by those with almost no first hand knowledge of China.
I, too, from personal experience, having lived over seven years in China did not feel any loss of freedom while there.
Although 60 Minutes calls Taiwan “a renegade province,” it ought to point out that Australia and the US both acknowledge that there is one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. This fact is also affirmed by the United Nations General Assembly Resolution 2758.
It is important to bear in mind that criticism by the US and Australia is criticism from countries constituted through genocide and the dispossession of the Indigenous peoples. To wit, previously I asked, “What if China promoted Hawaiian independence?”
From Taiwan, 60 Minutes turned to Hong Kong saying, “The crackdown on democracy in nearby Hong Kong is be a warning of what may be to come.” Again a one-sided, unsubstantiated, and hypocritical depiction of what the rioting was about in Hong Kong and who was behind it. Not mentioned was that Hong Kong was wrested from China in the Opium Wars and that under British colonial rule Hong Kong enjoyed no democracy.
The disingenuity of 60 Minutes becomes patently transparent when it selectively and incorrectly quotes “the hardline” of chairman Xi on the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party of China: “Anyone who dares to try and do that will have their heads bashed bloody against the great wall of steel forged by our 1.4 billion Chinese people.”
Dares to try what? Why did 60 Minutes not mention this? Could it be that in proper context another clearer meaning emerges? Why is it that in a 5170-word speech that so many in the western monopoly media only cherrypick a few words — and still get it wrong?
So what did Xi say?:
We Chinese are a people who uphold justice and are not intimidated by threats of force. As a nation, we have a strong sense of pride and confidence. We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us. Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.
Now that provides context. Xi very saliently states, “We have never bullied, oppressed, or subjugated the people of any other country, and we never will. By the same token, we will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us.” The history of the Century of Humiliation by Europeans and Japan will not be forgotten by the Chinese.
Besides, walls are defensive structures. To run into a wall is foolhardy.
Militarism
60 Minutes objects to Chinese military jets breaching Taiwanese airspace.
First, a look at Taiwan’s claimed air defense identification zone reveals that it includes a sizeable chunk of mainland China.
Second, the fact that Taiwan is a province of China undermines any such objection to Chinese flights.
Third, under the 1992 Consensus both Taiwan and China have agreed that there is only one China, subject to different interpretations by both sides.
Responding to Steinfort’s presenting China as a threat, Gao asks him, “Do you really want to fear a panda?”
Enter erstwhile Australian major general Jim Molan: “I believe that the Chinese Communist Party’s aim is to be dominant in this region and perhaps dominant in the world.” The Council on Foreign Relations agrees with Molan’s assessment that China is seeking to become the “dominant force” in the Asia-Pacific region.
What does “dominant” mean? Most important, powerful, or influential? Molan says China must remove America from the Western Pacific to be dominant in the region. He envisions a Chinese military expansion.
60 Minutes, however, suggests that China’s military could be stymied by swarming miniature drones.
The Global Timesreports that China has a defense for this with the YLC-48, the “terminator of drones,” so small that it can be carried by a single soldier — China’s first portable phased array radar that “can effectively detect and track incoming targets from any angle.”
A new wrinkle has been added in the calculation toward the down-under country following Australia’s joining the UK and US (AUKUS) to become equipped with nuclear-powered submarines. Argued Gao, “The safe approach is to target Australia as a nuclear-armed country.”
Steinfort says “senior figures in China” have stated that Australia is indeed a target for nuclear weapons. To be a target is one thing, but to be fired upon is another. China is on record as pledging no first use of nukes.
What does the future hold?
There is a dichotomy in tactics emphasized between Spencer and Molan on intervening in a hypothesized war between Taiwan and China. The American is cautious and pragmatic. “You have to think about what the results are and at what cost.”
This echoes the Chinese military genius, Sunzi:
Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to win or lose.
Molan channels the domino theory asking where will it all end if China is allowed to retake Taiwan. However, what seemingly eludes Molan is that China would simply be taking back into the fold what is internationally recognized as already being a part of China. Nonetheless, Molan finds, “This situation now is an existential threat to Australia as a liberal democracy.”
Steinfort narrates, “It’s China’s move now.”
Gao taps the spirit of Chinese people when he says, “China prefers peace rather than war. That’s the key.” In his speech on the centenary of the Communist Party of China, Xi said:
We must continue working to promote the building of a human community with a shared future. Peace, concord, and harmony are ideas the Chinese nation has pursued and carried forward for more than 5,000 years. The Chinese nation does not carry aggressive or hegemonic traits in its genes. The Party cares about the future of humanity, and wishes to move forward in tandem with all progressive forces around the world. China has always worked to safeguard world peace, contribute to global development, and preserve international order.
On the journey ahead, we will remain committed to promoting peace, development, cooperation, and mutual benefit, to an independent foreign policy of peace, and to the path of peaceful development.
Unfortunately, one is unlikely to hear such peaceful overtures from the current Australian or American governments.
Peter Boyle argues AUKUS, the new military alliance between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, represents a deliberate and dangerous escalation of the US-led confrontation with China that must be challenged.
An editorial in the Chinese English-language mouthpiece Global Times has accused Australia — and the United States — of “conniv[ing] with and even encourag[ing] the unrest” in the Solomon Islands after three days of rioting last week destroyed much of Chinatown in the capital Honiara.
“Even though [100] Australian troops and police were sent to keep order in the Solomon Islands,” said the tabloid newspaper at the weekend.
“What is right and what is not is obvious. Hence, aren’t [Prime Minister Scott] Morrison’s remarks of ‘not indicat[ing] any position’ actually a support for the evil doings?“
The Global Times is published under the umbrella of the Chinese Communist Party’s official flagship publication People’s Daily and is viewed by critics as often publishing disinformation.
“Defending against China’s influence into the South Pacific has been an outstanding geopolitical consideration of the US and Australia, which has been welcomed and longed [for] by the Taiwan authorities, because four of the remaining 15 countries that keep ‘diplomatic ties’ with Taiwan are in the South Pacific — and the future to consolidate such ties is uncertain.”
The editorial said:
Rioters ‘stormed Parliament’ “The capital city of the Solomon Islands has been under riots for days. The rioters have stormed the Parliament, set fire to a police station, and attacked Chinatown and other businesses there.
“Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare on Friday blamed foreign interference for instigating the anti-government protests over his government’s decision to cut ‘diplomatic ties’ with the island of Taiwan and establish diplomatic ties with the Chinese mainland. Though, he didn’t specify who is among the ‘other powers’ that fomented the violence.
“Sogavare emphasised that the choice to establish diplomatic ties with Beijing conforms to the trend of the times and international laws.
“The Solomon Islands is a country with nearly 690,000 people in the South Pacific region. After Sogavare assumed office in 2019, his administration made a choice to set up diplomatic ties with Beijing. However, the island of Malaita [in] the country, where most of the rioters are reportedly from, has maintained its relations with the island of Taiwan.
“The New York Times said the Solomon Islands has been in a ‘heightened political tug of war’, citing a former Australian diplomat stationed in the Solomon Islands saying that the US has been providing Malaita with direct foreign aid. Such analysis is representative of the US and Australia.
“Defending against China’s influence into the South Pacific has been an outstanding geopolitical consideration of the US and Australia, which has been welcomed and longed by the Taiwan authorities, because four of the remaining 15 countries that keep ‘diplomatic ties’ with Taiwan are in the South Pacific — and the future to consolidate such ties is uncertain.
“The South Pacific countries and the Chinese mainland have a strong capacity to cooperate under the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. Over the years, many small nations have, on their own, chosen to have closer ties with Beijing.
‘Dollar diplomacy, coercion’
“The measures taken to prevent these small countries from establishing diplomatic ties with China have included ‘dollar diplomacy’, coercion, and inciting unrest within these countries to topple local governments.
“Australia has been offered a hand to maintain security in the Solomon Islands. Recently, Canberra has again deployed more than 100 police and defense force personnel to the country. Against this backdrop, it is not hard to imagine how easy it will be for an external force to wreak havoc there.
“Australia, the US, or the Taiwan authorities haven’t admitted to being behind the ‘foreign interference’ condemned by Sogavare. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison insisted that Australia’s ‘presence there does not indicate any position on the internal issues of the Solomon Islands’. Canberra even alleged the move was in response to a request from Sogavare.
“Nonetheless, the Associated Press cited observers as saying that ‘Australia intervened quickly to avoid Chinese security forces moving in to restore order’. More importantly, neither Canberra nor Washington has condemned the riots in the Solomon Islands so far, despite the fact that the unrest has violated the basic spirit of democracy and the rule of law.
“Media coverage of the riots in the US and Australia was ‘matter-of-fact’ and highlighted the rioters’ political opposition to diplomatic relations with China.
“It is clear that Australia’s overall attitude, and that of the US, is to connive with and even encourage the unrest, even though the Australian troops and police were sent to keep order in the Solomon Islands. What is right and what is not is obvious. Hence, aren’t Morrison’s remarks of ‘not indicate any position’ actually a support for the evil doings?
“The government of the Solomon Islands and their people know what is really going on there. It is also not hard for the outside world to know. Prime Minister Sogavare noted there were other powers fomenting the riots, shouldn’t the international community believe the words of this legitimate leader of the Solomon Islands?”
And the PNG Honiara community out on the streets today for a cleanup session Pictures by Rodney Arofasei pic.twitter.com/HnRS3Pji6o
According to the Global Times, “this handout image taken and received on 25 November 2021 from ZFM Radio shows parts of the Chinatown district on fire in Honiara on Solomon Islands, as rioters torched buildings in the capital in a second day of anti-government protests.” Image: Global Times/VCG
Honiara 
community out on the streets today for a cleanup session 
Pictures by Rodney Arofasei 