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Category: China

  • The ultimate guide to why the COP26 summit ended in failure and disappointment (despite bright spots)

    ANALYSIS: By Robert Hales, Griffith University and Brendan Mackey, Griffith University

    After two hard-fought weeks of negotiations, the Glasgow climate change summit is, at last, over. All 197 participating countries adopted the so-called Glasgow Climate Pact, despite an 11th hour intervention by India in which the final agreement was watered down from “phasing out” coal to “phasing down”.

    In an emotional final speech, COP26 president Alok Sharma apologised for this last-minute change.

    His apology goes to the heart of the goals of COP26 in Glasgow: the hope it would deliver outcomes matching the urgent “code red” action needed to achieve the Paris Agreement target.

    At the summit’s outset, UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged countries to “keep the goal of 1.5℃ alive”, to accelerate the decarbonisation of the global economy, and to phase out coal.

    So, was COP26 a failure? If we evaluate this using the summits original stated goals, the answer is yes, it fell short. Two big ticket items weren’t realised: renewing targets for 2030 that align with limiting warming to 1.5℃, and an agreement on accelerating the phase-out of coal.

    But among the failures, there were important decisions and notable bright spots. So let’s take a look at the summit’s defining issues.

    Weak 2030 targets
    The goal of the Paris Agreement is to limit global temperature rise to well below 2℃ this century, and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5℃. Catastrophic impacts will be unleashed beyond this point, such as sea level rise and more intense and frequent natural disasters.

    But new projections from Climate Action Tracker show even if all COP26 pledges are met, the planet is on track to warm by 2.1℃ — or 2.4℃ if only 2030 targets are met.

    Despite the Australian government’s recent climate announcements, this nation’s 2030 target remains the same as in 2015. If all countries adopted such meagre near-term targets, global temperature rise would be on track for up to 3℃.

    Technically, the 1.5℃ limit is still within reach because, under the Glasgow pact, countries are asked to update their 2030 targets in a year’s time. However, as Sharma said, “the pulse of 1.5 is weak”.

    And as Australia’s experience shows, domestic politics rather than international pressure is often the force driving climate policy. So there are no guarantees Australia or other nations will deliver greater ambition in 2022.

    Phase down, not out
    India’s intervention to change the final wording to “phase down” coal rather than “phase out” dampens the urgency to shift away from coal.

    India is the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, after China and the United States. The country relies heavily on coal, and coal-powered generation is expected to grow by 4.6 percent each year to 2024.

    India was the most prominent objector to the “phase out” wording, but also had support from China.

    And US climate envoy John Kerry argued that carbon capture and storage technology could be developed further, to trap emissions at the source and store them underground.

    Carbon capture and storage is a controversial proposition for climate action. It is not proven at scale, and we don’t yet know if captured emissions stored underground will eventually return to the atmosphere. And around the world, relatively few large-scale underground storage locations exist.

    It is hard to see this expensive technology ever being cost-competitive with cheap renewable energy.

    In a crucial outcome, COP26 also finalised rules for global carbon trading, known as Article 6 under the Paris Agreement. However under the rules, the fossil fuel industry will be allowed to “offset” its carbon emissions and carry on polluting. Combined with the “phasing down” change, this will see fossil fuel emissions continue.

    It wasn’t all bad
    Despite the shortcomings, COP26 led to a number of important positive outcomes.

    The world has taken an unambiguous turn away from fossil fuel as a source of energy. And the 1.5℃ global warming target has taken centre stage, with the recognition that reaching this target will require rapid, deep and sustained emissions reductions of 45 percent by 2030, relative to 2010 levels.

    What’s more, the pact emphasises the importance to mitigation of nature and ecosystems, including protecting forests and biodiversity. This comes on top of a side deal struck by Australia and 123 other countries promising to end deforestation by 2030.

    The pact also urges countries to fully deliver on an outstanding promise to deliver US$100 billion a year for five years to developing countries vulnerable to climate damage. It also emphasises the importance of transparency in implementing the pledges.

    Nations are also invited to revisit and strengthen the 2030 targets as necessary to align with the Paris Agreement temperature goal by the end of 2022. In support of this, it was agreed to hold a high-level ministerial roundtable meeting each year focused on raising ambition out to 2030.

    The US and China climate agreement is also cause for cautious optimism.

    Despite the world not being on track for the 1.5℃ goal, momentum is headed in the right direction. And the mere fact that a reduction in coal use was directly addressed in the final text signals change may be possible.

    But whether it comes in the small window we have left to stop catastrophic climate change remains to be seen.The Conversation

    Dr Robert Hales, director of the Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith University and Dr Brendan Mackey, director of the Griffith Climate Change Response Programme, Griffith University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons licence. Read the original article.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • China And Solutions To Climate Change

    Last year, President Xi Jinping, pledged that China’s CO2 emissions would peak before 2030, and China would become carbon neutral before 2060. 

    China has a track history of setting ambitious, nearly impossible goals and then achieving them–often before deadline–so this pledge is significant.  Under the CPC, China has already created “an economic miracle” in transforming China into the largest economy in the world. It ended extreme poverty while creating the largest middle class in the world.  It has virtually eradicated Covid through non-pharmaceutical methods, while vaccinating up to 20 million people daily, and pledging the largest number of vaccines (2.2 Billion) and distributing over 1 Billion-to the rest of the world. 

    The post China And Solutions To Climate Change appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • China and Solutions to Climate Change

    The Earth’s greenhouse-gas (GHG) concentrations are driving catastrophic climate change, and creating an existential threat to the planet. But there is a way out.

    Last year, President Xi Jinping pledged that China’s carbon-dioxide emissions would peak before 2030, and that the country would become carbon-neutral before 2060.

    China has a history of setting ambitious, nearly impossible goals and then achieving them –often before deadline – so this pledge is significant.

    Under the Communist Party of China (CPC), Beijing has already created an “economic miracle” in transforming China into the largest economy in the world. It ended extreme poverty while creating the largest middle class in the world.

    It has virtually eradicated Covid-19 through non-pharmaceutical methods, while vaccinating up to 20 million people daily, and pledging the largest number of vaccines (2.2 billion) and distributing more than a billion to the rest of the world.

    It has also been applying similar focus and national resolve to tackle climate change.

    China has the greatest program of adopting renewable energy of any country. It generates more renewable power than North, Central and South America – 42 countries – combined.  It has more solar parks and wind farms than any other country. Last year it established more wind power than the rest of the world combined.

    It has more electric vehicles than any other country: it operates 420,000 electric buses, 99% of the world’s total; Shenzhen alone has 16,000 e-buses and 22,000 e-taxis. It aims to have 325 million electric vehicles operating by 2050.

    Its high-speed rail network spanning 38,000 kilometers is so extensive and effective that air travel is starting to become obsolete.  No country has as dense, large, and efficient system of clean public transportation and high-speed rail as China.

    In addition, China has the greatest carbon-sequestration afforestation program in the world, creating forests the size of Belgium every year. It has doubled its forest coverage to 23% over the past 40 years. Satellite analysis over the past 20 years by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Ames Research Lab proves that China has contributed more to greening the planet than any other country in the world.

    In other words, by almost every sustainability index, China is a world leader – far ahead of the US, for example – and is pioneering a way forward for the planet. It will likely hit its targets ahead of time.

    These things are happening because the CPC has written sustainability and ecological development directly into its constitution. This is then implemented into regional and local policy, such as sustainable eco-city mandates, transportation policy, energy infrastructure, and advanced research, as well as dedicated funding for alternative energy development for companies to start up and build clean energy technology.

    These commitments exist despite the fact that China’s historical and per capita GHG and CO2 emissions are a fraction of the world’s total. According to the World Bank, on an annual per capita basis, China’s share is less than half of the United States; its household energy consumption is one-eighth of America’s.

    Even more important, here’s a chart showing the cumulative emissions by country.


    Cumulative historical amounts matter because CO2 does not dissipate but accrues in the atmosphere: stocks, not flows, are what matter. In accounting, you look at one’s total accrued debt, not one’s daily credit expenditures, to determine what he or she owes to others. Likewise, you have to look at historically accrued GHG to understand harms, liabilities, and mitigation responsibilities accurately.

    Note also, between 14% and 33% of China’s annual GHG emissions are actually the West’s that have been offshored through manufacturing. This way, the West gets to have its cake and eat it too: consume, pollute and destroy the planet, while virtue-signaling and blaming developing countries like China for the cost of Western consumption.

    Coal: the real story

    Much, too, has been made of China’s coal plants, but the fact is that they are advanced supercritical or ultra-supercritical plants, which means they are much more efficient and cleaner than many of the industrial-era legacy plants of the US.

    China has a more sustainable approach along the entire chain of production and consumption. That said, China understands coal as a transitional source that it wants to phase out, except that the US has an explicit military plan to choke off China’s alternative fuel imports through the South China Sea.

    China needs to maintain backup capacity in clean coal as it leapfrogs into renewables, which will constitute fully 80% of its energy portfolio by 2060. As for funding overseas coal plants, 87% of that finance comes from the West or Japan, and China has committed not to fund any more foreign coal plants.

    With these commitments, China has demonstrated that it is dedicated and committed to both national and global sustainability and carbon neutrality.

    Credit where it’s due

    Last, most calculations of GHG emissions leave out the US military boot print, the single largest institutional emitter in the world, greater than the combined emissions of 140 nations. Add the cost of endless US wars, and subtract offshored GHG from the West from China’s total, you get a different picture of responsibility for global emissions.

    Despite the hypocritical finger-pointing at China at COP26 by the worst polluters, the US and the West, the simple facts refute the lies.

    China is a net GHG creditor nation, not a debtor. The Lancet showed that 92% of emissions above the safe level of 350 parts per million can be attributed to the Global North, of which 40% of these emissions are the United States’ alone. By contrast, China is a net creditor nation.

    In other words, the atmosphere (atmospheric carrying capacity), a precious global commons, has been colonized and monopolized by the West to the detriment of the rest of the world. In this, the US bears the greatest individual responsibility for the global climate crisis.


    Despite all this, China leads in solutions – in technology, policy, transition planning, and implementation.  It is not only pulling its weight, it is showing the world a way forward.

    This is in stark distinction to the US, where 25% of Congress members still refuse to believe in human-caused climate change and where the last president claimed that global warming was a “Chinese hoax.” The US was also responsible for disabling the original 1997 Kyoto Protocol by lowering standards, engineering carbon indulgences (“carbon trading”), exempting military emissions, and unjustly trying to offload responsibility to developing countries.

    In the recent China-US Joint Glasgow Declaration on Enhancing Climate Action, the US momentarily dropped its China-bashing, and pledged to strengthen implementation of the Paris Agreement.

    Is this about-face a sign of meaningful attempt to work together, or is it a temporary, opportunistic respite for  domestic electoral reasons? Is the US capable of cooperating for the global good, or is this a momentary tactical reset within a general strategy of escalating hostility against China?

    The constant demonization of China by the US leadership, not only on climate change, but on all fronts, reinforced through endless echo-chambering in the mainstream media, would suggest that this is not a good-faith change of heart.

    For the sake of the planet, sanity must prevail to seek real win-win cooperation on all fronts to tackle the existential threat of our time. China is doing its part by demonstrating what an ecologically sustainable civilization based on common prosperity could look like.

    Will the neoliberal West and the US follow suit, learn and cooperate, or will they play at politics and war, doubling down on the suicidal carbon-fueled endgame?

    Clear-sighted citizens must challenge the lies, the mendacity, and the escalating demonization, and urge their governments to work for peace and cooperation.

    The future of the world depends on it.

    The post China and Solutions to Climate Change first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • News on China | No. 75

    China is now the world’s largest exporter of vaccines. China’s earlier smog problems caused the Chinese leadership to aim for high-quality economic growth, thereafter easing particulate emissions.

    The post News on China | No. 75 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Winter Olympics top sponsors ‘silent’ over China’s human rights record

    Human Rights Watch says it only received one reply after writing to 13 companies involved in Beijing Games

    Corporate sponsors of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics have been accused of “squandering the opportunity” to pressure China to address its “appalling human rights record”.

    The Games’ top level sponsors, including Coca-Cola, Airbnb, Procter & Gamble, Intel and Visa, were on Friday accused of ignoring China’s alleged “crimes against humanity against Uyghurs” and other Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang as well the repression of free speech in Hong Kong.

    Continue reading…

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

  • China’s Vision on Common Prosperity

    Author’s Note:  This is my presentation at a webinar by the Chonyang Institute of the Renmin University of Beijing.

    *****

    What always impresses me about the Chinese concept of development is the vision for sharing – the intent of sharing wealth and prosperity.  It fits typically the concept of Socialism with Chinese characteristics.

    This Chinese Vision on Common Prosperity is no different.

    China is embarking on her vision of comprehensively building a modern socialist country, envisioning a future where prosperity is shared by everyone in the country.

    And let me add China’s vision of a shared prosperity goes way beyond her borders as shown by the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to mention just one gigantic initiative that aims at building a more equitable world by spreading not only the concept of “Common Prosperity”, but also the notion of learning through physical work and organization in cooperation with countries around the globe.

    Common Prosperity refers to affluence shared by everyone both in material and cultural terms and should be advanced step by step. It should be emphasized that such prosperity does not cover only a few people or parts of the country. It aims at an equilibrium of wealth and prosperity throughout the country.

    Common Prosperity should be attained through hard work and innovation, with chances for more people to become moderately prosperous.

    Common Prosperity is a key element of socialism. It is not just an equal distribution of goods and assets. It is much more.  It involves people, working and engaging themselves on gaining knowledge to make Common Prosperity a sustainable objective, and to incite new ideas, for example, through education programs and interchange of experiences, as well as joint country-to-country projects with Technical Assistance (TA) through the Belt and Road Initiative.

    In February this year, President Xi Jinping, addressed the nation on China’s achievements in eradicating poverty and to commend outstanding efforts by individuals. He said China stands for a people-centered development philosophy. China unwaveringly pursues improving people’s well-being and realizing Common Prosperity, being the essential requirements of socialism.

    President Xi also stressed the importance of consolidating poverty alleviation achievements and rural vitalization, with the objective to work towards narrowing the wealth gap between urban and rural areas. This is the next step after eradicating extreme poverty last year.

    China emphasizes Common Prosperity, ever since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, when the country has gradually put Common Prosperity in a more prominent position.

    A logical next step to poverty alleviation is sharing prosperity within the boundaries of China, bringing an improved equilibrium to well-being in the country, especially between the western parts of China and the industrialized East, with the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

    In addition to Common Prosperity for her country, China has favorable conditions, to help bringing Common Prosperity to the rest of the world, especially to those nations still struggling under poverty and unfavorable economic conditions, often still the remnants of western colonialism.

    China is also a Consultative Democracy, of which the distinctive feature is a People’s Democracy.

    China’s social networks and information technology have made it possible for the widest range of public opinion to be better represented. These channels have become an important reference for democratic policymaking.

    Part of this policy making process is the concept of “Shared or Common Prosperity”. Therefore, “Common Prosperity” is not just a top-down decision – it is a policy shared and supported by the people. Since it is people supported, it is sustainable. It is a policy that gains momentum as it advances.

    The very process of collaboration with people, with people even from other countries and different cultures – I mentioned before the Belt and Road Initiative – is a dynamic process. It brings about new ideas – a concept of building a world, envisioning Common Prosperity and a shared future for all.

    Common Prosperity is a noble and worthy objective that helps connect the world in Peace and – yes – in Prosperity.

    The post China’s Vision on Common Prosperity first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Chinese agents operating abroad to get Uyghurs deported, ICC told

    Uyghur representatives file third attempt to have international criminal court investigate China

    Chinese officials are operating in foreign countries to get Uyghurs deported back to China by creating visa problems and coercing them into becoming informants, evidence given to the international criminal court alleges.

    The submission by Uyghur representatives is the third attempt to have the ICC investigate Chinese authorities for alleged crimes against humanity and genocide, including the use of forced deportations of Uyghurs back to China.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Ning-Nong Diplomacy, China and Paul Keating

    Former Australian prime ministers tend to be less conspicuous in public life than their counterparts in other countries.  Occasionally, they make an appearance at political functions and events to remind us that they are still alive, their estate still breathing, their lawyers still working.  For the most part, the pronouncements are less than profound, let alone relevant.  But there are a few radiant surprises.  Malcolm Fraser was one, considered dour when prime minister through the latter part of the 1970s and early 1980s, yet utterly provocative on becoming an elder statesman.  It was he, a Cold War warrior so keen on keeping the US involved in the Asia-Pacific, who became the firmest critic of the US-Australian alliance.

    The Labor side of politics has Paul Keating, the last, dare one use the word, visionary, in the prime ministerial pack.  With his electoral defeat in 1996 at the hands of the undistinguished, anti-Asian John Howard, Australia returned, in large measure, to the reassuring protections of the US military alliance.  The Asia-Pacific region was less one to accommodate than seek armour against.  Ever risky, ever dangerous, they remained the swarthy barbarians of alien tongues and troublesome ambition.  There were threats nearby and everywhere, and it would require a lengthy alliance without qualifications to protect Canberra.

    This sort of foolishness is yielding its grim results.  Not a day goes by that does not see Australian politicians sign themselves up to the next suicidal conflict that might take place over Taiwan or over the South China Sea.  On November 10, Keating, at the Australian National Press Club, was bursting to speak to the audience about his taking of the geopolitical temperature.  It was his modest effort to try to arrest this seemingly imminent move.

    His targets were many, largely because so many have been offered.  The AUKUS security alliance, made over the cadaverous remains of the Australian-French submarine contract to build 12 attack class submarines, involved an undertaking by the UK and the United States to aid Australia in building eight nuclear-powered submarines.  Such submarines are never going to meet water till two decades have passed, and this was the equivalent of “throwing a handful of toothpicks at a mountain.”

    As for Chinese ambitions themselves, Keating projected an attitude starkly reminiscent of that mischievous history don, A.J.P. Taylor, when he turned his eye to the ambitions and behaviours of great powers in Europe.  China was not a rule breaker, but instead working within the very rules that had been created by an international order preceding their rise to power.  They were behaving according to standard dictates of power and, along the way, “remodelled” in its entirety, the Australian economy.  “They are in the adolescent phase of their diplomacy, they have testosterone running everywhere, the Chinese, but we have to deal with them because their power will be so profound in this part of the world.”

    Reasoned in such a way, China was “simply too big and too central to be ostracised.”  It was “now so big and it is going to grow so large, it will have no precedents in modern social and economic history.”  The United States would have to play the role of a “balancing and conciliatory power in Asia” and Australia would be foolish to involve itself in the Taiwan dispute, it “not [being] a vital Australian interest”.  Alas, Washington had other ideas – at least for the moment, having not “come to a point of accommodation where [it] acknowledges China’s pre-eminence in east Asia and the Asian mainland, in which case we can start to move towards a sensible relationship with China.”

    As for where Australia fitted into the alliance structure of the Indo-Pacific and Asia-Pacific, Keating offered a razor-sharp assessment.  “We have no relationship with Beijing, so why would the Prime Minister of Malaysia or Thailand talk to us about east Asia when we are non-speakers with the biggest power, the Chinese?”  A significant power such as Indonesia had been consistently, and assiduously ignored.  Canberra persisted in trying to find its “security from Asia rather than in Asia.”

    He also levelled a blow at his own party’s shadow foreign minister, one Penny Wong, who had “taken a position there shouldn’t be an ounce of daylight between her and the [governing] Liberal Party.”  Doing so, he suggested, meant that “you end up with a pretty quiet political life.  No big disputes because you are glued to the government.  But you make no national progress.”  This was a source of much regret for the bruiser of old, repudiating that “proud history of engagement with Asia and including China” Labor held.  “Now it’s just gone ‘pass’ so debate trickery goes on.”

    His suggestion, and one that will be rebuffed with apoplectic fury in Canberra and the strategic fold, is to accord China a degree of recognition befitting its stance.  “If we give China the recognition I believe it is due in terms of legitimacy … then I think a lot of these issues, the so-called 14 points, sort off fall of the table.”

    On the role of Britain, Keating was appropriately savage.  This desire to be involved east of Suez, again, was a childish nostalgia impervious to reality.  “Can Britain help us here?  No.  The other state that was able to help us was France and we rudely turned our back on it.”

    The reaction to such sober edged analysis was never going to go down well in the lunatic, zombie establishment gearing, and oiling, for war.  There are invisible submarines to build, a regional arms race to encourage, false promises to make.  Australia’s Defence Minister, Peter Dutton, suggested the title of “Grand Appeaser Comrade Keating”.

    Australia’s noisiest shock jock commentator for Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, Andrew Bolt, concluded that Keating was not of this planet. “Keating’s big message was this: Australia’s in China’s region.  China is very big, and we, and we – and America – should stop challenging it … and instead, in his words, accommodate ourselves to China.”  Such rubbish regularly gilds the tree of conversation on Australia’s strategic ambitions.

    There have been some defenders of the former prime minister, insisting that he has something sensible to say.  ABC host and commentator Stan Grant tells his audience that Keating “is not an apologist for Chinese authoritarianism but a cold-eyed realist about Chinese power and how it can be incorporated into a global political order.”  But realism, for the moment at least, has been anathemised.  The Anglophone alliance that is AUKUS is testament to that fact.  Blood-thirsty nostalgia, and the ning-nongs, are intent on running the show.

    The post Ning-Nong Diplomacy, China and Paul Keating first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Wealth, power and corruption in China

    Desmond Shum was a businessman in China during the period of market reform. Chris Slee reviews his book, which gives an insight into the corruption that accompanied the process of capitalist restoration.

    This post was originally published on Green Left.

  • Big Tech crackdown will make China ‘more civil’ than US: Keating

    Former Prime Minister Paul Keating has backed Chinese government moves to curb market powers and social influence of large technology companies, saying recent regulatory interventions will make China a “more civil society than the United States”. During highly anticipated address to the National Press Club, Mr Keating slammed the Australian government’s animosity towards China, which…

    The post Big Tech crackdown will make China ‘more civil’ than US: Keating appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • President al-Assad: Syria is keen on developing relations with China

    President Bashar al-Assad made a telephone call on Friday with Chinese President Xi Jinping, during which the two sides discussed the close bilateral relations and means of expanding mutual cooperation.

    During the phone call, the two sides affirmed the great importance given to develop bilateral relations as President al-Assad considered the relationship with China as pivotal and important in order to support the Syrian people’s struggle against internationally-backed terrorism and the blockade that largely affected different aspects of their life.

    President al-Assad stressed Syria’s keenness to develop ties between the government institutions in both countries, particularly with the improvement of security situation in most regions, and at the same time, accessing to “the Belt and Road Initiative,” which constitutes a road for economy and development.

    President al-Assad expressed the Syrian people’s appreciation for China’s political support at international forums, a thing that affirms China’s commitment to international law and world peace and the efforts exerted to preserve the territorial integrity of Syria and stop the terrorist war waged on it.

    The president thanked the Chinese President for the large humanitarian assistance that China offered to the Syrian people to alleviate their suffering in light of terrorism and the blockade to which they are exposed.

    President Al-Assad reaffirmed that Syria is determined to liberate all its territory from terrorists and the occupied foreign armies.  At the same time, Syria is determined to push the process of dialogue among political parties forwards without any external interference until reaching full stability.

    President al-Assad congratulated his Chinese counterpart on the 50th anniversary of China’s regaining its legitimate seat at the United Nations, which represents a victory for the right of Chinese people and reflects the importance of the constructive role that China plays on international arena and its contribution to peace and development in the world .

    President al-Assad stressed Syria’s support to China in the face of western campaigns which attempt to strike stability in Asia southeastern region and China South Sea, as the world today needs peace and development, not tension or threats.

    The Chinese President, for his part, said that friendship between China and Syria is deeply rooted and Syria was one of the first Arab countries that held diplomatic relations with China and one of the countries that proposed the draft resolution regarding China’s regaining its legal seat at the United Nations.

    He added that throughout 65 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, bilateral relations have been able to withstand the tests of changes in international situations, and friendship between the two countries become more stronger with the passing of time, as both countries adhere to principle of non-intervention in internal affairs, reject hegemony and policy of force and maintain common interests.

    The Chinese president underlined that his country is ready to exert efforts for enhancing the friendly cooperation between the two countries and fulfilling more common achievements, affirming that China firmly supports the Syrian efforts for reconstruction and development, and welcomes the Syrian participation in “the Belt and Road Initiative.”

    • First published in SANA Syrian Arab News Agency

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  • Chinese Diners Can Now Grab v2food Vegan Meat Steamed Buns

    4 Mins Read Australian vegan meat leader v2food has forged a number of new partnerships with local food companies in China to expand its reach in the country. Collaborating with two brands as well as a major food content and recipe platform, diners in the country will now be able to get their hands on steamed buns, noodles […]

    The post Chinese Diners Can Now Grab v2food Vegan Meat Steamed Buns appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • China Opens First Clinic To Support Transgender Youth In Shanghai

    The Children’s Hospital of Fudan University in the eastern city of Shanghai recently inaugurated a new multidisciplinary clinic to provide support for transgender children, including safely managing their transition needs, the Global Times, a newspaper operated by the Communist Party of China-owned People’s Daily, reported on Friday. According to the paper, the clinic was formed in reaction to the hospital’s encounter with trans children, whose needs they had inadequate means to support.

    The post China Opens First Clinic To Support Transgender Youth In Shanghai appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Write for Rights 2021 launched

    AI has launched the world’s biggest letter writing campaign to help 10 human rights defenders around the world facing.

    Millions of letters, emails and texts will be sent to support people who have been jailed, attacked or disappeared 

    Amnesty International has launched its flagship annual letter-writing campaign, Write for Rights to support 10 activists from around the world who have been attacked, jailed, harassed or disappeared for standing up for their rights.

    This year, Write for Rights – which is funded by players of the People’s Postcode Lottery – will be supporting ten individuals, including:

    • Imoleayo Adeyeun Michael from Nigeria, who faces years behind bars for joining the #EndSARS protests against the notorious Special Anti-Robbery Squad last year;
    • Janna Jihad, a 15-year-old journalist from Palestine, who faces harassment and death threats for reporting on the racist brutality her community experiences;
    • Zhang Zhan, a citizen journalist from China who faces four years in prison for attempting to expose the extent of the Covid-19 crisis; [see also https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/11/06/chinese-journalist-zhang-zhan-at-imminent-risk-of-death/]
    • Sphere, a Ukrainian LGBTI and women’s rights NGO, which is struggling to operate against frequent homophobic attacks, threats and intimidation;
    • Mohamed Baker, an Egyptian human rights lawyer denied a trial and put behind bars for his work supporting people who have been imprisoned unjustly; and
    • Ciham Ali Ahmed, a US-Eritrean national, who was arrested nine years ago at the Sudanese border when she was trying to flee Eritrea aged 15 and has not been seen since. 

    Sacha Deshmukh, CEO of Amnesty UK, said:

    “These individuals have been thrown behind bars, attacked, harassed or disappeared just for standing up for their rights. By coming together, people around the world have the power to raise their profile and increase their chances of protection or release.

    “Sending a letter or email might seem like a small act, but when sent in their thousands they can have a huge impact. People in power are forced to listen. 

    Amnesty International’s Write for Rights campaign: Write for Rights goes back to the very roots of Amnesty International, which was founded in 1961, with Amnesty’s early campaigners writing letters of support to those affected by human rights abuses, as well as letters of concern to governments around the world.

    During last year’s Write for Rights campaign [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/11/09/amnesty-internationals-write-for-rights-campaign-2020-launched/] :

    • More than 360,000 actions were taken for Algerian journalist Khaled Drareni, who was imprisoned for his reporting on the Hirak protest movement. He was provisionally released in February 2021.
    • Over 300,000 messages were sent to and on behalf of Paing Phyo Min, a satirical poet and student leader jailed for criticising the military in Myanmar. He was freed early in April 2021.
    • More than 777,000 actions were taken for Saudi women’s rights campaigner Nassima al-Sada. As a result, a G20 summit hosted by Saudi Arabia was overshadowed by international calls to free Nassima and other women human rights defenders. Nassima has since been conditionally released.

    View latest press releases 01 Nov 2021

    https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/worlds-biggest-letter-writing-campaign-launches-help-10-people-around-world-facing

    Write for Rights

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

  • Does Repeatedly Calling China a Threat Reify It?

    Hegemony requires a coordinated mechanism to be in place for a belligerent entity to designate enemies, attack the leader(s) of the designated enemy, control the narrative (i.e., lie), launch unprovoked attacks that murder a citizenry, destroy the economic basis of the named enemy, loot its resources, topple the enemy’s leadership, and replace the leadership with one deemed acceptable to the attacking entity. Such a mechanism is multifaceted, and it requires a government, industry, military, and media that operate as a unit, along with other supporting facets. The United States is an entity that functions to support capitalism, imperialism, militarism, and situate itself as the global hegemon. The profit from the violence is funneled to the American plutocratic class.

    One supporting facet of empire is the think tanks that are called upon to produce propaganda and disseminate disinformation through its mass media. In the US, one highly influential think tank is the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).

    In the book Wall Street’s Think Tank, author Laurence Shoup examines the CFR think tank. In its review of Shoup’s book, the socialist magazine Monthly Review wrote:

    The Council on Foreign Relations is the world’s most powerful private foreign-policy think tank and membership organization. Dominated by Wall Street, it claims among its members a high percentage of past and present top U.S. government officials as well as corporate leaders and influential figures in the fields of education, media, law, and nonprofit work… Shoup argues that the CFR now operates in an era of “Neoliberal Geopolitics,” a worldwide paradigm that its members helped to establish and that reflects the interests of the U.S. ruling capitalist class.

    If the US is going to wage serial wars, then it knows that it needs to stir up patriotic fervor to rally public support for the fighting forces. Therefore, it is critically important to control the narrative. In the case of the CFR, it has its own in-house media to assuage the message — the journal Foreign Affairs.

    In an article on 2 November, Foreign Affairs (FA) continues to demonize China, but it also cautions against the US putting all its militaristic eggs in the China basket. It calls for a balancing of US foreign policy. After all, there are plenty of other designated enemies out there.

    FA: “In view of its global economic weight, rapidly expanding military capabilities, illiberal values, and growing assertiveness, Beijing poses a formidable long-term threat to American security and freedom.”

    Analysis: From the Chinese perspective, the same could be said of the US — but magnified. The US is still the largest economy by the GNP metric. It has by far the largest military budget in the world, one that exceeds the spending of the next 11 countries. Moreover, the US has been deeply immersed in warring ever since its founding in 1776 — a founding based in the genocide of the Original Peoples. How is that for assertiveness? In contrast, China has not been at war for over 40 years, and this war lasted less than four weeks. So who poses “a formidable long-term threat” to who?

    Is the Chinese navy conducting so-called freedom-of-navigation exercises through waters off the coast of the US? Why this tendentious “freedom-of-navigation” descriptor? When has China ever stated that marine traffic was not permitted through the South China Sea? China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said, “With the joint efforts of countries in the region including China, passage through the South China sea has been smooth and safe for a period of time, and not a single vessel has ever reported that its navigation is hindered or safety threatened in the South China Sea. The US allegation of ‘freedom of navigation’ in the South China Sea threatened is simply untenable.”

    Yet, FA says that Biden must keep challenging China on passage through the South China Sea. Obviously, there is nothing peaceful about US maneuvers in the South China Sea as Zhao noted, “[T]he US willfully sends large-scale advanced vessels and aircraft to the South China Sea for military reconnaissance and drills and illegally intruded into China’s territorial waters and space and water and air space adjacent to islands and reefs. Since the beginning of this year, the US side has conducted close-in reconnaissance for nearly 2,000 times and over 20 large-scale military drills on the sea targeting China.”

    One ought also ask whether China is encircling the US with military bases, as the US has encircled China?

    Lastly, what is launching wars if not a decidedly illiberal value. It seems that right off the bat that FA has been hoisted on its own petard.


    FA: “Biden has said that Chinese President Xi Jinping is ‘deadly earnest on becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world.’”

    Analysis: What level of readership intelligence is FA targeting? Isn’t the proper response: so what? After all, which country strives to be insignificant or inconsequential? Isn’t striving for esteem bound with the essence of patriotism, love of country? Cheer for your team?

    FA: “At the Pentagon, China is said to be the ‘pacing threat,’ while Secretary of State Antony Blinken describes U.S. relations with it as ‘the biggest geopolitical test’ of the twenty-first century. Going further, the undersecretary for policy at the U.S. Defense Department has described China strategy as involving not one element of national power, or even the entirety of the U.S. government, but rather a ‘whole-of-society approach.’”

    Analysis: As for pacing threat, US Department of Defense chief Lloyd Austin defined it thus: “It means that China is the only country that can pose a systemic challenge to the United States in the sense of challenging us, economically, technologically, politically and militarily.” Do Austin and his colleagues mean that everything is hunky dory so long as China doesn’t develop too much to upset the US top dog?

    FA: “And among the primary rationales for Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan has been to free up resources for China instead.”

    Analysis: Should the US have continued to sacrifice the lives and well-being of its soldiers in Afghanistan? And one must not forget the threat that US occupation forces posed to the lives and livelihoods of Afghanis. Was wasting trillions of dollars to subdue goat herders with AK-47s a great strategy (with all due respect to goat herders bravely resisting foreign invaders)?

    In the aftermath of the US pullout, China sits well positioned to engage in win-win trade with Afghanistan and expand the Belt and Road Initiative.

    FA: “In view of Beijing’s ascendance, it is entirely reasonable for American policymakers to seek to devote new diplomatic, economic, and military resources to the challenge.”

    Analysis: How long do the American politicians figure they can keep a nation of 1.4 billion people down? And they can’t do this because China is rising. It has eliminated poverty. It leads in supercomputer technology. China has built the world’s fastest programmable quantum computers, said to be 10 million times faster than the world’s current fastest supercomputer. China has built the world’s first integrated quantum communication network, “combining over 700 optical fibers on the ground with two ground-to-satellite links to achieve quantum key distribution over a total distance of 4,600 kilometers for users across the country.” In AI, China claimed 35% of the global robotics patents between 2005 and 2019 (25,000), almost three times more than the 9,500 robotics patents received by the US during the same time. China has also made massive strides in space exploration. And this is just a snippet of China’s growing technological and scientific prominence. (For more see Godfree Roberts’s extremely informative China resource).

    FA: “Defending Asia against Chinese hegemony is important…”

    Analysis: In The Governance of China (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2014, location 3918) chairman Xi Jinping said with crystal clarity,

    As China continues to grow, some people start to worry. Some take a dark view of China and assume that it will inevitably become a threat as it develops further. They even portray China as a terrifying Mephisto who will someday suck the soul of the world. Such absurdity couldn’t be more ridiculous, yet some people, regrettably, never tire of preaching it. This shows that prejudice is indeed hard to overcome.

    The American side, however, likes to think that if it parrots the China-hegemon mantra often enough that it must be so in the minds of others; this is despite Chinese officials on several occasions stating otherwise. Do not actions speak louder than words?

    Noam Chomsky got it right when he responded to the threat of China:

    I mean, everyone talks about the threat. When everyone says the same thing about some complex topic, what should come to your mind is, wait a minute, nothing can be that simple. Something’s wrong. That’s the immediate light that should go off in your brain when you ever hear unanimity on some complex topic. So let’s ask, what’s the Chinese threat?

    FA: “Beijing sees the United States and Europe as two power centers rather than one allied bloc and has long sought to drive wedges into the transatlantic relationship… China needs to understand that the United States and its allies are united in countering its economic and military pressure…”

    Analysis: The fact that FA merely opines that this is so (and opinion it is since no substantiation was provided for such a claim) is hardly compelling. Besides a simple comparison between China and the US reveals the inanity of the FA article: Which country resorts to initiating sanctions against other countries? Which country is engaged in warring against other countries?

    The FA article ends with a rather damning quotation: “As former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has said, ‘In the 40 years since Vietnam, we have a perfect record in predicting where we will use military force next. We’ve never once gotten it right.’”

    If the US would ever decide to use military force against China (which it won’t because that would risk a nuclear conflagration in which there are no winners as that would end life on Earth as we know it), then it would have gotten it wrong for the last time.

    The post Does Repeatedly Calling China a Threat Reify It? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Blacklisting the Merchants of Spyware

    In a modest effort to disrupt the global spyware market, the United States announced last week that four entities had been added to its blacklist.  On November 3, the US Department of Commerce revealed that it would be adding Israel-based companies NSO Group and Candiru to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, business people, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

    Russian company Positive Technologies and the Singapore-based Computer Security Initiative Consultancy also made the list “based on a determination that they traffic in cyber tools used to gain unauthorized access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.”

    The move had a measure of approval in Congress. “The entity listing signals that the US government is ready to take strong action to stop US exports and investors from engaging with such companies,” came the approving remarks in a joint statement from Democrat House Representatives Tom Malinowski, Anna Eshoo and Joaquin Castro.

    This offers mild comfort to students of the private surveillance industry, who have shown it to be governed by traditional capitalist incentive rather than firm political ideology.  Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program observes how such entities have actually thrived in liberal democratic states.  “Relevant companies, such as Cellebrite, FinFisher, Blue Coat, Hacking Team, Cyberpoint, L3 Technologies, Verint, and NSO group, are headquartered in the most democratic countries in the world, including the United States, Italy, France, Germany, and Israel.”

    The relationship between Digital China and Austin-based Oracle shows how talk about democracy and such ideals are fairly meaningless in such transactions.  Digital China is credited with aiding the PRC develop a surveillance state; software and data analytics company Oracle, despite pledging to “uphold and respect human rights for all people” was still happy to count Digital China a global “partner of the year” in 2018.  Its software products have been used to aid police in Liaoning province to do, among other things, gather details on financial records, travel information, social media and surveillance camera footage.  What’s bad for human rights is very good for business.

    In its indignant response to the Commerce Department’s blacklisting, NSO wished to point out to US authorities how its own “technologies support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime, and thus we will advocate for this decision to be reversed.”  Portraying itself as a card-carrying member of the human rights fraternity, the company claimed to have “the world’s most rigorous compliance and human rights programs that are based [on] the American values we deeply share”.  Previous contracts with governments had been terminated because they had “misused our products.”

    As NSO has shown on numerous previous occasions, such strident assertions rarely match the record.  In July, an investigation known as the Pegasus Project, an initiative of 17 media organisations and groups, reported how 50,000 phone numbers had appeared on a list of hackable targets that had interested a number of governments.  The spyware used in question was Pegasus, that most disturbingly appealing of creations by NSO designed to infect the phone in question and turn it into a surveillance tool for the relevant user.

    The range of targets was skin crawlingly impressive: human rights activists, business executives, journalists, politicians and government officials.  None of this was new to those who have kept an eye on the exploits of the Israeli concern. Its sale of Pegasus has seen it feature in lawsuits from private citizens and companies such as WhatsApp keen to rein in its insidious practices.

    Despite denying any connection, the company will be forever associated with providing the tools to one of its clients, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to monitor calls made by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a fellow dissident scribbler, Omar Abdulaziz.  In October 2018, Khashoggi was carved to oblivion on the premises of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad with prints stretching back to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  In a legal suit against NSO, lawyers for Abdulaziz argue that the hacking of his phone “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Mr Khashoggi.”  To date, the vicious, petulant modernist royal remains at large, feted by governments the world over as a reformer.

    While NSO has hogged the rude limelight on the international spyware market, that other Israeli-based concern, Candiru, has been a rolling hit with government clients.  Their products are also tailored to infecting and monitoring iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and, discomfortingly enough, cloud accounts.

    Those behind this company evidently have a distasteful sense of humour; the original candiru of Amazon River fame is, goes one account in the Journal of Travel Medicine, “known as a little fish keen on entering the nether regions of people urinating in the Amazon River.”  Equipped with spikes, the fish invades and fastens itself within penis, vagina or rectum, making it a gruesome challenge to remove.  However colourful the imaginative accounts of the Candiru’s exploits are – William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is merely one – the Israeli version is far more sinister and deserves consternated worry.

    In July this year, the Citizen Lab based at the University of Toronto identified over 750 websites that had been influenced by the use of Candiru spyware.  “We found many domains masquerading as advocacy organizations such as Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as media companies, and other civil-society themed entities.”  The company, founded in 2014, maintains an opaque operations and recruitment structure, reputedly drawing expertise from the Israeli Defence Forces Unit 8200, responsible for code encryption and gathering signals intelligence.

    Within two years of its founding, the company had raked in $30 million in sales, establishing a slew of clients across Europe, states across the former Soviet Union, the Persian Gulf, Asia and Latin America.  A labour dispute between a former senior employee and the company shed some light on the company’s activities, with one document, signed by an unnamed vice president, noting the offering of a “high-end cyber intelligence platform dedicated to infiltrate PC computers, networks, mobile handsets, by using explosions and disseminations operations.”

    NSO Group’s reputation, and credentials, are now impossible to ignore.  The Israeli government, which grants the export licenses that enable the likes of NSO and Candiru to operate, is splitting hairs.  “NSO is a private company,” insists Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, “it is not a governmental project and therefore even if it is designated, it has nothing to do with the policies of the Israeli government.”  In his view, no other country had “such strict rules according to cyber warfare” and “imposing those rules more than Israel and we will continue to do so.”

    No Israeli government is likely to entirely abandon companies that make annual sales of $1 billion in the business of offensive cyber.  The efforts by governments the world over to attack encrypted communications while trampling human rights on route have become unrelenting.  In that quest, it matters little whether you are a citizen journalist, a master criminal, or a terrorist.  Those deploying the spyware rarely make such distinctions.

    The post Blacklisting the Merchants of Spyware first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Blacklisting the Merchants of Spyware

    In a modest effort to disrupt the global spyware market, the United States announced last week that four entities had been added to its blacklist.  On November 3, the US Department of Commerce revealed that it would be adding Israel-based companies NSO Group and Candiru to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, business people, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

    Russian company Positive Technologies and the Singapore-based Computer Security Initiative Consultancy also made the list “based on a determination that they traffic in cyber tools used to gain unauthorized access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.”

    The move had a measure of approval in Congress. “The entity listing signals that the US government is ready to take strong action to stop US exports and investors from engaging with such companies,” came the approving remarks in a joint statement from Democrat House Representatives Tom Malinowski, Anna Eshoo and Joaquin Castro.

    This offers mild comfort to students of the private surveillance industry, who have shown it to be governed by traditional capitalist incentive rather than firm political ideology.  Steven Feldstein of the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program observes how such entities have actually thrived in liberal democratic states.  “Relevant companies, such as Cellebrite, FinFisher, Blue Coat, Hacking Team, Cyberpoint, L3 Technologies, Verint, and NSO group, are headquartered in the most democratic countries in the world, including the United States, Italy, France, Germany, and Israel.”

    The relationship between Digital China and Austin-based Oracle shows how talk about democracy and such ideals are fairly meaningless in such transactions.  Digital China is credited with aiding the PRC develop a surveillance state; software and data analytics company Oracle, despite pledging to “uphold and respect human rights for all people” was still happy to count Digital China a global “partner of the year” in 2018.  Its software products have been used to aid police in Liaoning province to do, among other things, gather details on financial records, travel information, social media and surveillance camera footage.  What’s bad for human rights is very good for business.

    In its indignant response to the Commerce Department’s blacklisting, NSO wished to point out to US authorities how its own “technologies support US national security interests and policies by preventing terrorism and crime, and thus we will advocate for this decision to be reversed.”  Portraying itself as a card-carrying member of the human rights fraternity, the company claimed to have “the world’s most rigorous compliance and human rights programs that are based [on] the American values we deeply share”.  Previous contracts with governments had been terminated because they had “misused our products.”

    As NSO has shown on numerous previous occasions, such strident assertions rarely match the record.  In July, an investigation known as the Pegasus Project, an initiative of 17 media organisations and groups, reported how 50,000 phone numbers had appeared on a list of hackable targets that had interested a number of governments.  The spyware used in question was Pegasus, that most disturbingly appealing of creations by NSO designed to infect the phone in question and turn it into a surveillance tool for the relevant user.

    The range of targets was skin crawlingly impressive: human rights activists, business executives, journalists, politicians and government officials.  None of this was new to those who have kept an eye on the exploits of the Israeli concern. Its sale of Pegasus has seen it feature in lawsuits from private citizens and companies such as WhatsApp keen to rein in its insidious practices.

    Despite denying any connection, the company will be forever associated with providing the tools to one of its clients, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to monitor calls made by Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a fellow dissident scribbler, Omar Abdulaziz.  In October 2018, Khashoggi was carved to oblivion on the premises of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad with prints stretching back to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.  In a legal suit against NSO, lawyers for Abdulaziz argue that the hacking of his phone “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Mr Khashoggi.”  To date, the vicious, petulant modernist royal remains at large, feted by governments the world over as a reformer.

    While NSO has hogged the rude limelight on the international spyware market, that other Israeli-based concern, Candiru, has been a rolling hit with government clients.  Their products are also tailored to infecting and monitoring iPhones, Androids, Macs, PCs, and, discomfortingly enough, cloud accounts.

    Those behind this company evidently have a distasteful sense of humour; the original candiru of Amazon River fame is, goes one account in the Journal of Travel Medicine, “known as a little fish keen on entering the nether regions of people urinating in the Amazon River.”  Equipped with spikes, the fish invades and fastens itself within penis, vagina or rectum, making it a gruesome challenge to remove.  However colourful the imaginative accounts of the Candiru’s exploits are – William S. Burroughs’ Naked Lunch is merely one – the Israeli version is far more sinister and deserves consternated worry.

    In July this year, the Citizen Lab based at the University of Toronto identified over 750 websites that had been influenced by the use of Candiru spyware.  “We found many domains masquerading as advocacy organizations such as Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as media companies, and other civil-society themed entities.”  The company, founded in 2014, maintains an opaque operations and recruitment structure, reputedly drawing expertise from the Israeli Defence Forces Unit 8200, responsible for code encryption and gathering signals intelligence.

    Within two years of its founding, the company had raked in $30 million in sales, establishing a slew of clients across Europe, states across the former Soviet Union, the Persian Gulf, Asia and Latin America.  A labour dispute between a former senior employee and the company shed some light on the company’s activities, with one document, signed by an unnamed vice president, noting the offering of a “high-end cyber intelligence platform dedicated to infiltrate PC computers, networks, mobile handsets, by using explosions and disseminations operations.”

    NSO Group’s reputation, and credentials, are now impossible to ignore.  The Israeli government, which grants the export licenses that enable the likes of NSO and Candiru to operate, is splitting hairs.  “NSO is a private company,” insists Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, “it is not a governmental project and therefore even if it is designated, it has nothing to do with the policies of the Israeli government.”  In his view, no other country had “such strict rules according to cyber warfare” and “imposing those rules more than Israel and we will continue to do so.”

    No Israeli government is likely to entirely abandon companies that make annual sales of $1 billion in the business of offensive cyber.  The efforts by governments the world over to attack encrypted communications while trampling human rights on route have become unrelenting.  In that quest, it matters little whether you are a citizen journalist, a master criminal, or a terrorist.  Those deploying the spyware rarely make such distinctions.

    The post Blacklisting the Merchants of Spyware first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • What are the Prospects for Peace?

    Events are unfolding at a quickening pace. Facing an alarming escalation in tensions around the world, we are looking to our most respected and renowned thought leaders for an honest assessment of both U.S. foreign and military policy to offer their most current thoughts and insights. We know they have some ideas for improving the prospects for peace.

    Dan Kovalik

    Dan Kovalik is the author of critically-acclaimed No More War: How the West Violates International Law by Using ‘Humanitarian’ Intervention to Advance Economic and Strategic Interests, The Plot to Scapegoat Russia, The Plot to Attack Iran, The Plot to Control the World, and The Plot to Overthrow Venezuela. He has been a labor and human rights lawyer since graduating from Columbia Law School in 1993. He has represented plaintiffs in ATS cases arising out of egregious human rights abuses in Colombia. He received the David W. Mills Mentoring Fellowship from Stanford Law School, and has lectured throughout the world. His responses below are exactly as he provided.

    The questions focus on the realities of the international power struggle unfolding in real time. They directly address the role of the U.S. in the escalating tensions and its capacity to reduce them. We also probe the role of everyday citizens in affecting the relationship the U.S. now has and will have with the rest of the world community.

    Here is what Dan Kovalik had to say.

    *****

    John Rachel: The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has recently put the hands of the Doomsday Clock to 100 seconds before midnight. Midnight means all out war, probably nuclear holocaust. This is the closest it has every been. Do you agree with this dire assessment?

    Dan Kovalik: Yes, of course. First of all, after the tragic collapse of the USSR and the assumption of the Soviet Union’s weaponry by the respective, numerous former Soviet Republics, the chances for accidental nuclear war increased greatly.The West recognized this immediately and had offered to help the various Republics secure these weapons, but of course quickly reneged on this promise, making the world ever more dangerous. In addition, the US over the years has taken a more and more aggressive policy towards Russia and China – both nuclear states of course – intensifying the encirclement of Russia through NATO and increasing its provocative acts against China in the South China Sea.  The chances for a Third World War are greater than ever, and with this the risk of accidental or intentional nuclear war.  Finally, we have the elephant in the Middle Eastern living room – Israel – which is a nuclear power without declaring itself to be one. The chances that Israel will file a nuclear weapon to protect its advantage in the Middle East seems a real possibility, especially as the world is beginning to awaken to and reject Israel’s cruel domination of the Palestinian Territories. Israel is left with nothing but brute force to carry out its will, and its nuclear weapons are the greatest fount of this force.

    JR: The U.S. always portrays itself as the greatest force on the planet for peace, justice, human rights, racial equality, etc. Polls tell us that most other nations actually regard the U.S. as the greatest threat to stability. What in your view is the truth here?

    DK: This is undoubtedly true as international polls acknowledge and as Martin Luther King opined years ago with his famous statement that “the US is the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.”Jimmy Carter has recently stated this truth, proclaiming that the US is the most war-like nation in the history of the world.  The US has more military bases around the world by far than any Empire in history, with over 800 such bases around the globe. Meanwhile, the US is at war in numerous theatres in one way or another. In total, the US is waging wars, mostly through Special Forces and private contractors, in at least 80 different countries.  And, these wars, carried out exclusively in the developing world of the Global South, are invariably being waged against people of color to deprive them of their right of self-determination and their right to manage and benefit from their own natural resources. These conflicts are making the targeted countries less safe, less stable and less prosperous, and that is the goal. The US has decided that the best way to open up the world to maximum exploitation is by sowing chaos and destroying states abroad in order to take away any resistance to the ability of US corporations to extract valuable resources and exploit labor without limit.  The US is also engaging in such operations through proxies when it is not doing it directly.  One of the more notable examples of this is the DRC where the US has been using African proxies (especially Rwanda and Uganda) to plunder that country beyond recognition.  The result is over 6 million dead – a Holocaustal figure which highlights just how brutal the US Empire has become.

    JR: Here’s a chicken-or-egg question: The U.S. accuses both Russia and China of rapidly expanding their military capabilities, claiming its own posturing and increase in weaponry is a response to its hostile adversaries, Russia and China. Both Russia and China claim they are merely responding to intimidation and military threats posed by the U.S. What’s your view? Do Russia and China have imperial ambitions or are they just trying to defend themselves against what they see as an increasingly aggressive U.S. military?

    DK: It is undoubtedly true that Russia and China have their own ambitions for increasing power, prestige and influence in the world. However, Russia and China do so largely through means of offering development and infrastructure assistance and business relations to developing countries rather than by dropping bombs on other nations.The US takes the quite opposite tack, opting instead to wage war against other countries to obtain their ends.  Indeed, it is almost laughable that the US government and media panic over China’s “vaccine diplomacy” and Belt and Road Project – two examples of influence-building through constructive means – when the US is bombing other countries into oblivion. It is the US which is the threat to China and Russia, and not the other way around. It is the US which has troops up to the Russian frontier; Russia does not have analogous troops along the US frontier, for this would be unthinkable. It is the US which is provoking China through military manoeuvres in the South China Sea; China is not doing the same off the US coasts. As is its usual wont, the US is projecting its own sins upon others (in this case, China and Russia) so as to deflect blame and soul-searching for its own crimes.

    JR: The U.S. always denies that it has imperial ambitions. Most unbiased experts say that by any objective standards, the U.S. is an empire — indeed the most powerful, sprawling empire in history. Does the U.S. have to be an empire to be successful in the world and effectively protect and serve its citizenry?

    DK: The US is undoubtedly the greatest Empire that has ever existed in the history of humankind. However, the fact is that the maintenance of this Empire, in addition to devastating the lives of millions of people around the world, is actually counterproductive to the well-being of the American people. First of all, the US is spending over $1 trillion a year to maintain this Empire. These are monies which could otherwise be used to meet the needs of the American people by fixing and maintaining the US’s own crumbling infrastructure, and to provide healthcare, food, affordable education, housing and a social safety net to the millions of Americans in dire need of such things. In addition, the maintenance of the Empire through war as the US has opted to do has devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands of mostly working-class Americans who have been sent to kill, die and/or be maimed abroad. American soldiers who manage to return from the numerous imperial conflicts often return broken, physically and/or emotionally, causing hardships for themselves, their families and their communities. The wars always come home in numerous, devastating ways and this too is a terrible result of Empire.

    And of course, as the Democratic Party wisely stated in its party platform of 1900, “no nation can long endure half republic and half empire …”  By now, it is fair to say that the US is no longer a republic; that the Republic has indeed fallen to the Empire. We now have a country in which wars are waged without public consent, and many times without even public knowledge. The US government and compliant press actively collude to keep the American public in the dark about US military operations and motives. This was most recently revealed in the “Afghanistan Papers” which showed that, to a person, those leading the war in Afghanistan actively lied to the American people about the purposes of the war and the prospects for success. Trillions of dollars of US taxpayer dollars were, consequently, funnelled into the coffers of arms manufacturers and private military contractors on a war of twenty years which only the leaders knew was unwinnable because their was no real objective beyond enriching the private defence industry. That is, the war was not meant to be won, it was meant to be unending as George Orwell once pointed out. In this way, truth and democracy, and the well-being of the American people, were undermined. And Afghanistan is just one of many such wars built on lies and deception. We are left, as Jimmy Carter recently acknowledged, with no functioning democracy in our country. Instead, we have a military-industrial complex posing as a republic.

    JR: The highest ranking commanders of the U.S. military recently sounded the alarm. They have concluded that the U.S. — widely regarded as the most formidable military power in history — can’t defeat either Russia or China in a war. These military commanders are saying we need to dramatically increase our military capabilities. What do you make of this claim and the resulting demand for more DOD spending?

    DK: Such statements are simply madness, rivalling that of the crazy Generals in Dr. Strangelove. While it may be true that the US could not militarily defeat Russia and China, this begs the question of why the US would ever need to defeat them. In this new Cold War in which we are living, it is clear that it is the US which is the aggressor. Russia and China, both of which have known the devastation of war in ways which the US cannot even fathom, have no interest in starting a world conflagration. Indeed, as Jimmy Carter, speaking specifically of China to then President Trump, it is because China has waged no war since 1953 that it has been able to develop so quickly and to build the world’s greatest speed trains. Where are our speed trains, Carter then asked Trump. Of course, there are none because all of our resources are tied up in war. This illustrates the respective priorities of these countries – China (and Russia as well) spending much less on their militaries in order to use their resources to build their economies and infrastructure, and the US having the exact opposite priorities. All of this reveals that the US does not need to build its military to confront China and Russia unless it is the US which is planning to attack these countries. And if that is indeed the plan, we are all doomed.

    JR: In 2009, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton announced a reset with Russia, heralding greater cooperation and understanding. By 2014, Obama had made a sharp reversal. A sweeping regime of sanctions has since been imposed on Russia to cripple its economy. Hillary Clinton and the Democrats now relentlessly demonize Russia and Putin, blaming them for every imaginable ill. Both in the media and from official pronouncements by government officials, Russia has become the favorite whipping boy for both the U.S. and its “special friend”, Great Britain.  Why?  What happened?

    DK: This is a good question.I think that the break with Russia came when Russia would not go along with, and indeed actively opposed the US foray into Syria. Recall that Russia had assented to a limited intervention by the US/NATO in Libya in 2011 by abstaining on UN Security Council resolutions which, by their terms, allowed for NATO to set up a no-fly zone over Libya and to protect (all) Libyan civilians. This abstention, and China’s too, were conditioned upon NATO refraining from a grander regime-change operation in Libya.  Of course, as we all know, as soon as NATO started intervening in Libya in March of 2011, it made it clear that regime-change was the end game. And, true to this aim, NATO bombed Libya continuously from March to October of 2011 until Gaddafi was toppled and then murdered. Chaos, destruction and even human slavery followed this operation. Russia, and particularly Vladimir Putin, saw this as a huge betrayal. Apparently, Putin watched the video of the brutal sodomizing and killing of Gaddafi twice and with horror. He vowed he would never allow such a thing to happen again, and specifically, he vowed that he would not let the US get away with this in Syria as it was then beginning to do. Putin’s military intervention to counter the US/Israel/Gulf States intervention in Syria is what led to Obama and Clinton to take an adversarial role towards Russia and Putin. Their regime-change plans for Syria were foiled by Russia, and they would never forgive Russia and Putin for this.

    JR: The number of spy missions, nuclear-armed bomber flights, and war games near Russia’s borders have vastly increased over the past year. Same with China. Is all of this just business-as-usual geopolitical posturing? Or does it represent a dangerous escalation and a new ominous direction in U.S. strategic positioning? What is the justification for what Russia and China see as provocations and aggressiveness, if not actual preparation for a war?

    DK: It is very clear that the US is preparing for war with Russia and/or China, and US leaders are not shy in saying so. Thus, in 2018, Defense News ran a story openly stating that Pentagon was redesigning its forces specifically to plan for war with Russia and China. Many have opined, and I agree, that Trump’s attempt to withdraw from Afghanistan, and Biden’s carrying out this withdrawal, are part of this re-focus on Russia and China; that the US is planning to withdraw forces from the Middle East so it can focus on these two greater adversaries. The next war, if we cannot mobilize to prevent it, will be a world war between the US and one or maybe both of these countries. The powers-that-be in the US know now that the US cannot compete with China, and to a lesser extent Russia. China is now the dominant economic power in the world, and has increasingly greater diplomatic prestige than the US. The only way the US can change this, our leaders believe, is by brute force. Of course, this could lead to nuclear conflagration and the end of the world, and thus must be opposed with every fiber of our being.

    JR: Between the FONOPS in the South China Sea and the recently expressed enthusiasm for Taiwan’s independence, the risk of military conflict with China keeps increasing. Where is this headed? If People’s Republic of China decides to use military force for full reunification of Taiwan, do you see the U.S. going to war in an attempt to prevent it?

    DK: It could very well be the case that the dispute over Taiwan will be the pretext for the war that the US is seeking with China.While Taiwan is not really the issue – it is China’s dominant economic power which is – a dispute over Taiwan could be the excuse the US will use to start a war.  We must be very vigilant about this.

    JR: The U.S. against the clear objections of the government in Syria is occupying valuable land, stealing the country’s oil, and preventing access to the most agriculturally productive region, effectively starving the population. The world sees this for what it is, a cruel game sacrificing innocent people for some perceived geopolitical advantage. Is this the kind of reputation the U.S. wants? Or does it simply no longer care what the rest of the world community thinks?

    DK: The US gave up long ago on carrying what the world thinks about its actions.The US government has taken us into war against one country after another (Vietnam, El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya … ) as most of the world has looked on in horror and disapproval. The US has made it clear that it will do what it wants around the world because it has the military might to do so; it doesn’t need the approval of the UN Security Council or the nations of the world. And, the US has gone out of its way to show this, for example in the former Yugoslavia and the second Gulf War in which it flouted international law and opinion by simply refusing to seek UN Security Council for its military interventions. The US is now a full-on rogue nation, and proudly so, pulling out of the International Court of Justice and even sanctioning the International Criminal Court for daring to state its intention to investigate US war crimes in Afghanistan. The US continues to stand nearly alone in such things as unconditionally supporting Israel’s brutal occupation over Palestine and in its blockade of Cuba. The US does so just as it stood nearly alone in supporting Apartheid in South Africa until the bitter end. The US believes that it’s might makes right, and it manifests this belief with reckless abandon.

    JR: In a democracy, at least in theory citizens have a say in all matters of public policy. Yet, in the end none of the recent military campaigns and undeclared wars seem to achieve much popular favor or support. What is and what should be the role of everyday citizens in determining the foreign policy and military priorities of the country? Or are such matters better left to the “experts”?

    DK: Of course, in a real democracy, it is the people who should decide whether or not to go to war. Indeed, this is one of the most important and fateful decisions a country can make, and it is therefore the people – the ones who bear the brunt of the war’s costs and effects – who must decide this. Our so-called “experts” – the Robert McNamara’s, the Donald Rumsfeld’s and the Dick Cheney’s – have proven time and again how little expertise and how little sanity and rational judgment they have when it comes to deciding whether and how to prosecute war.Such “experts” are nothing but war criminals who should have been jailed at The Hague rather than lauded as elder statesemen.

    JR: Related to that, the citizenry and most of Congress are kept in the dark with respect to special missions, proxy funding, CIA operations, and swaths of unknown unknowns constituting psyops, cyber ops, and regime change ops, all done in our name as U.S. citizens. The funds to support this sprawling “dark world” of sabotage and terror being inflicted on the rest of the planet, is also a secret. Now there’s pervasive spying on U.S. citizens right here at home. What place does any of this have in “the land of the free”? Does this mean government of the people, by the people, for the people is just a sham?

    DK: The US War against Vietnam really taught us how much contempt the US government has for its people.We learned from The Pentagon Papers how US leaders viewed the American people, and especially those in the peace movement, as the enemy which needed to be effectively propagandized, silence or suppressed. The Afghanistan Papers showed us the same. When US wars are waged, the targets of the war – e.g., the Vietnamese, the Iraqis, the Libyans, the Afghans, the Syrians – know what is happening to them, know who is doing it to them and why it is being done. The goal of US domestic intelligence and propaganda operations are aimed at making sure that the American people do not have such an awareness, and that those who do have such awareness are marginalized and silenced. But there is some hope one should have from this recognition. This should prove to us what apparently the US warlords already know – that an informed and mobilized American citizenry can prevent and stop a war. This is quite a comforting thought. We must only make this thought a reality.

    JR: Recently we’ve seen some token but precedent-setting direct payments to citizens in the form of Covid relief. There is also the ongoing discussion about reparations to descendants of slaves. If it could be unequivocally established that the government has abused DOD funding, misused and squandered vast sums of money to promote unjustified wars, purchase unneeded equipment, unnecessarily expand U.S. military presence across the globe, and regularly lied to the American public to manufacture consent for these misadventures and fraudulent activities, practical and political considerations aside, do you see any constitutional or other legal barriers to the public identifying, expecting, or even demanding proper compensation? A cash refund or citizen reparations for massive, authenticated abuse of power?

    DK: Well, first and foremost, the US owes a great debt to the peoples of the countries it has waged war against.The US is legally and morally obligated to compensate these countries for the infrastructure it has destroyed; the millions of lives that it has destroyed; the babies who continue to be born with birth defects from the chemical and biological agents dropped by the US; and the environmental harms caused. In terms of the US population, all of the veterans and their families are certainly owed reparations for the harms they have endured in the process of fighting wars which they agreed to fight based on lies and deceptions told to them by the US government and media. Compensation is also owed to those who have suffered from drug addiction made possible and indeed likely by the drugs brought into this country as part and parcel of US wars (e.g., those in the inner city who succumbed to the addiction to cocaine which the CIA helped peddle in order to fund the Contras, and those who became addicted to the Afghan heroine which became abundant as a consequence of the US defeat of the Taliban in 2001). Such reparations do not seem fanciful to me at all. Indeed, I believe that there is a good case to be made that all of the weapons manufacturers and private military contractors should be disgorged of the trillions of dollars they made from these wars based on lies, and these monies should be used to compensate the types of victims described above, and to rebuild the infrastructure and health and education systems which were left to rot as the resources needed to build and maintain them were siphoned off by these merchants of death.

    The post What are the Prospects for Peace? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • News on China | No. 74

    At the G20 leaders’ summits, President Xi calls on developed countries to lead on emissions reductions and support developing nations. China’s per capita emissions are only 40% of the US’s (2019).

    Chinese scientists develop technology to produce animal feed from industrial gas by-products, which could reduce soy imports and carbon emissions.

    China implements Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), regulating the collection, use, and transfer of data to safeguard consumer privacy.

    The post News on China | No. 74 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • People Worldwide Name US as a Major Threat to World Peace. Here’s Why.

    Iranians burn a U.S. flag during a demonstration against American "crimes" in Tehran on January 3, 2020, following the assassination of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Major General Qassim Suleimani in a U.S. strike on his convoy at Baghdad international airport.

    How is it that people across the globe have come to agree that the United States is now one of the primary threats to world peace and democracy?

    Having leveled two Japanese cities with atomic bombs and established itself as the world’s top superpower following the collapse of the international order in the aftermath of World War II, the U.S. quickly became intoxicated by its newfound military superiority.

    The U.S. soon went on to introduce a doctrine that positioned itself as the world’s police, drop more bombs in the Korean and Vietnamese wars than there had been dropped in the whole course of World War II, and orchestrate military coups against democratically elected governments throughout Latin America. It ended up in turn supporting brutal dictatorships and establishing more foreign military bases than any other nation or empire in history all over the globe.

    All this occurred within the first 30 or so years after the end of World War II. By the time the 21st century came around, the U.S. was the only military and economic superpower in the world. Yet, that did not put an end to U.S. imperial ambitions. A “global war on terrorism” was initiated in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, with the U.S. ending up by 2013 being seen by people around the world as “the greatest threat to world peace.”

    What are the roots of U.S. imperialism? What has been the impact of imperial expansion and wars on democracy at home? Is the U.S. empire in retreat? In this interview, scholar and activist Khury Petersen-Smith, who is Michael Ratner Middle East Fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, discusses how U.S. imperialism has undermined democracy, both home and abroad, with the wars abroad even being tied to police brutality at home.

    C.J. Polychroniou: The U.S. has a long history of war-on-terror campaigns going all the way back to the spread of anarchism in late 19th century. During the Cold War era, communists were routinely labelled as “terrorists,” and the first systematic war on terror unfolded during the Reagan administration. Following the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration renewed the war on terror by implementing a series of far-reaching policy initiatives, many of which, incidentally, went unnoticed by the public but also continued during the Obama and Trump administrations, respectively, which subverted democracy and the rule of law. Can you elaborate about the impact of war-on-terror policies in the dismantling of U.S. democracy?

    Khury Petersen-Smith: It’s true: The tactics and beliefs that the U.S. has deployed in the war on terror have deep roots that stretch well before our current time. I would argue that the U.S. has never been a democracy, and that a key reason is its basically permanent state of war, which began with its founding. New England settlers, for example, waged a war of counterinsurgency against Indigenous peoples here who resisted colonization in King Philip’s War. The settlers besieged Indigenous nations, considering communities of adults and children to be “enemies” and punishing them with incredible violence. This was in the 1670s.

    In a different U.S. counterinsurgency, in the Philippines in the early 20th century, American soldiers used “the water cure,” a torture tactic comparable to the “waterboarding” that the U.S. has used in the war on terror. This was one feature of a horrific war of scorched earth that the U.S. waged as Filipino revolutionaries fought for an independent country after Spanish colonization. The U.S. killed tens of thousands of Filipino fighters, and hundreds of thousands — up to a million — civilians. There was also a staggering amount of death due to secondary violence, such as starvation and cholera outbreaks, and due to the U.S. declaration that civilians were fair game to target (as seen in the infamous Balangiga Massacre). It was during that episode in 1901 on the island of Samar, when an American general ordered troops to kill everyone over the age of 10. The designation of whole populations as the “enemy” — and therefore targets for violence — has echoes that reverberate in Somalia, Yemen, Iraq and other places where the U.S. has fought the war on terror.

    This is to say that there are different chapters in the history of U.S. empire, but there is a throughline of justifying military violence and the denial of human rights in defense of U.S. power and “the American way of life.” This history of wars informs those of the present.

    In the 20th century, labeling various activities “terrorism” was one way of rationalizing the use of force. The U.S. did this especially with its allies in response to anti-colonial liberation movements. So the South African apartheid regime called anti-apartheid resistance “terrorism,” and the Israeli state did (and continues to do) the same to Palestinian resistance, however nonviolent. The U.S. has armed and defended these states, embracing and promoting the rhetoric of war against “terrorism.”

    The flip side of “terrorism” — the blanket enemy against which all violence is justified — is “democracy” — the all-encompassing thing that the U.S. claims to defend in its foreign policy. But again, the 20th century saw the U.S. embrace, arm and wage war with and on behalf of anti-democratic, dictatorial forces on every continent. The decades of violence that the U.S. carried out and supported throughout Latin America in the latter part of the 20th century, in response to waves of popular resistance for social and economic justice, serve as a brutal chapter of examples.

    All of these things helped constitute the foundation upon which the Bush administration launched the war on terror.

    To answer your question more directly, military violence always requires dehumanization and the denial of rights — and this inevitably corrupts any notions of democracy. War, in fact, always involves an attack on democratic rights at large. When the U.S. launched the war on terror in 2001, the federal government simultaneously waged military campaigns abroad and passed legislation like the USA PATRIOT Act, issued legal guidelines and other practices that introduced new levels of surveillance, denial of due process, rationalization of torture and other attacks on civil liberties. These efforts especially targeted Muslims and people of South Asian, Central Asian, Southwest Asian and North African origin — all of whom were subject to being cast as “terrorists” or “suspected terrorists.”

    It is worth noting that while Bush drew upon the deep roots of U.S. violence to launch the war on terror, there has been incredible continuity, escalation and expansion throughout it. Bush launched the drone war, for example, and President Barack Obama then wildly expanded and escalated it. President Donald Trump then escalated it further.

    Have the war-on-terror policies also affected struggles for racial and migrant justice?

    The war on terror has been devastating for racial and migrant justice. The Islamophobic domestic programs that the U.S. has carried out are racist. And once they were piloted against parts of the population, they could be expanded to others. This is how U.S. state violence works. Indeed, the mass policing, mass incarceration regime built up in the 1990s — which was supposedly directed at “fighting crime,” and the “war on drugs” — targeted Black people and Latinos in particular, building an infrastructure that was then deployed against Muslims and others in the war on terror. With policing vastly expanded in the name of the war on terror, its force came back to Black and Indigenous communities — as it always does in the United States.

    It is important to acknowledge the new level of credibility and power that the police attained after 9/11 and in the war on terror. There was actually a powerful wave of anti-racist protest against the police in the 1990s — especially strong in cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. In New York, thousands mobilized to demand justice for Amadou Diallo, Abner Louima, Patrick Dorismond, and others brutalized and killed by the New York City Police Department. The police were on the defensive. They seized upon the post-9/11 moment and the beginning of the war on terror to rehabilitate their image and attain new powers.

    With this in mind, I wonder if the current moment of “racial reckoning” unfolding in the U.S. over these two years — brilliant and important as it is — could have actually happened 20 years ago. I think that anti-racist movements were on track to do it, and the war on terror set us back two decades. Consider all of the Black lives lost in that time.

    And yes, the war on terror has been catastrophic for migrant justice. One of the early measures was the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which forced the registration of non-citizens from South and Central Asian, Middle Eastern, and North and East African countries. It was largely unopposed, setting the stage for more racist, targeted policies, like the Muslim ban. Before the war on terror, there was no Department of Homeland Security, no Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The U.S. government seized the opportunity of the war on terror to build on the long history of white supremacy in controlling migration and open a new chapter of border militarization, policing and surveillance of migrants, and deportation.

    The United Nations condemned this past summer, for the 29th year in a row, the U.S. trade embargo on Cuba. Indeed, the U.S. is notorious around the world for violations of international law and has been widely perceived as the greatest threat to world peace. However, the influence of the U.S. in world affairs is sharply in decline and its so-called “soft’ power has all but evaporated. Are we living through the death of an empire?

    I’m afraid that U.S. empire is far from death, or even dying.

    From the perspective of humanity and the planet, the war on terror has been catastrophic in its levels of destruction and death. But from the perspective of the proponents of U.S. empire, those at its helm, it was a gamble. Bush administration officials were clear from the start that the invasion of Afghanistan was the opening of what they conceived of as a series of invasions and other military operations to demonstrate U.S. hegemony, and punish the minority of states located in the most strategic regions of the world that were not solidly in the American orbit. After invading Afghanistan, Bush declared the “Axis of Evil,” targeting Iraq, Iran and North Korea. The U.S. then invaded Iraq, implying that Iran and North Korea could be next. The idea was to project U.S. power and to disrupt and prevent the rise of potential rivals to it.

    The U.S. lost the gamble. Not only did untold millions of people around the world suffer from the wars, but the U.S. also failed in its strategic objectives. The regional and world powers whose ascension the U.S. sought to curtail — especially Iran, Russia and China — emerged more powerful, while U.S. power was set back.

    But the U.S. remains, far and away, the most powerful country in the world. And it will not surrender that status quietly. On the contrary, even as it continues and supports military operations as part of the war on terror, it is very openly preparing for confrontation with China. It is pursuing a belligerent path that is driving rivalry and militarization — a path toward conflict.

    The story of the path the U.S. is pursuing regarding hostility toward China is another that reveals the subterranean, forward motion of empire that continues across presidential administrations. President George W. Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy first signaled that, “We are attentive to the possible renewal of old patterns of great power competition,” and identified China as one potential competitor. In 2006, the Bush administration gestured further toward identifying China as posing a problem for U.S. empire, saying, “Our strategy seeks to encourage China to make the right strategic choices for its people, while we hedge against other possibilities.”

    When President Obama took office, the U.S. foreign policy establishment had clearly united behind the notion that China was an enemy to be isolated and whose rise was to be curtailed. Then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared “America’s Pacific Century” and argued for a winding down of American attention to Iraq and Afghanistan, and a new strategic focus on Asia and the Pacific. Obama launched the “Pivot to Asia,” which involved shifting military weapons and personnel to the region and building more facilities there, all aimed at addressing China’s ascension. President Trump, of course, brought anti-China hostility to a fever pitch, blaming China for the COVID-19 pandemic, openly using crude, racist language directed at China (but impacting Chinese American people and many other Asian Americans), and opening the door for Fox News personalities and officials like Sen. Tom Cotton to talk directly about the supposed “threat” that China poses and call for military action against it. That brings us to today, where there is near consensus between both parties that the U.S. should be gearing up in armed competition with China.

    Unfortunately, empires do not simply die. This means that we — around the world, and especially those of us located in the United States — are called upon to resist, undermine and disrupt empire. We need to, across borders, envision a radically different world, and fight for it.

    This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Chinese Journalist Zhang Zhan at imminent risk of death

    On 4 November 2021 the Observatory for the Protection of Human Rights Defenders, a partnership of the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) and FIDH, has received new information and requests your urgent intervention in the following situation in China.

    New information:

    The Observatory has been informed by the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD) about the imminent risk of death of freelance journalist Zhang Zhan, who has been detained since May 2020 as a reprisal for her coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic from February 2020 until her arrest. Ms. Zhang is a former lawyer whose licence was suspended in retaliation for her activism and a well-known and outspoken journalist on the situation of human rights in China. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/01/06/china-eu-deal-what-about-human-rights/

    According to the relatives of Zhang Zhan, the journalists’ life is at imminent risk of death as a result of the partial hunger strike she started in June 2020 to protest her arbitrary detention and later her sentencing. The mother of Zhang Zhan was allowed to have a videocall with her daughter on October 28, 2021, after which she reported that the journalist weights less than 40 kg, is unable to walk unassisted and cannot raise her head without assistance. Her health is extremely poor, as she suffers from severe malnutrition, a gastric ulcer and swollen legs and feet. During her detention, she has been restrained and force-fed via a nasal tube.

    The relatives of Zhang Zhan have been consistently denied their right to visit the journalist and only been allowed to communicate with her by video calls on two occasions, on October 28 and February 2021, and by a phone call on August 2021. Moreover, Zhang Zhan’s mother requested the Chinese security police the permission to visit the journalist in prison to persuade her to abandon the hunger strike. At the time of publication of this Urgent Appeal, she had not received a reply.

    The Observatory recalls that Zhang Zhan was hospitalised in a prison hospital between July 21 and August 11, 2021 due to her deteriorating health conditions. During her hospitalisation, she was tied to a hospital bed and force-fed by prison authorities. On August 11, she was transferred back to the Shanghai Women’s Prison, where she remained detained at the time of this Urgent Appeal.

    The Observatory further recalls that on May 14, 2020, Zhang Zhan went missing in Wuhan, Hubei Province, one day after releasing a video that criticised the government’s measures to contain the virus, claiming the authorities were being negligent. Zhang Zhan had travelled to Wuhan from her home in Shanghai in early February 2020 to report from the epicenter of the Covid-19 pandemic. She reported numerous stories, including the detention of other independent reporters and harassment of families of victims seeking accountability, via her WeChat, Twitter, and YouTube accounts.

    After seven months of pre-trial detention, on December 28, 2020, the Shanghai Pudong People’s Court found Zhang Zhan guilty of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” (Article 293 of China’s Criminal Law) and sentenced her to four years in prison. The court rejected the application filed by Zhang Zhan’s lawyers to request bail, live streaming of the trial, and a time extension of the proceedings. Their requests to have the defense witnesses appear in court to present exculpatory evidence was also rejected by the court. Zhang Zhan attended her trial in a wheelchair because of her poor health.

    The Observatory is deeply concerned about the health conditions and risk of death of Zhang Zhan and urges the Chinese authorities to immediately and unconditionally release her and grant her immediate access to adequate and comprehensive medical treatment.

    https://www.fidh.org/en/issues/human-rights-defenders/china-journalist-zhang-zhan-at-imminent-risk-of-death

    https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/china/human-rights-watch-calls-for-immediate-release-of-chinese-journalist-who-reported-on-covid.html

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

  • Hypersonic Panic and Competitive Terror

    During his eventful time in office, US President Donald Trump took much delight in reflecting about the lethal toys of his country’s military, actual or hypothetical.  These included a hypersonic capability which, his military advisors had warned, was being mastered by adversaries.  Such devices, comprising hypersonic cruise missiles and hypersonic boost-glide vehicles, have been touted as opening a new arms race, given their ability not merely to travel at five times the speed of sound – as a general rule – but also show deft manoeuvrability to evade defences.

    Undeterred by any rival capability, Trump claimed in May 2020 that the US military had come up with a  “super duper” weapon that could travel at 17 times the speed of sound. “We are building, right now, incredible military equipment at a level that nobody has ever seen before.”  Ever adolescent in poking fun at his rivals, Trump also claimed that the missile dwarfed Russian and Chinese equivalents.  Russia, he claimed, had one travelling at five times the speed of sound; China was working on a device that could move at the same speed, if not at six times.  Pentagon officials were not exactly forthcoming about the details, leaving the fantasists to speculate.

    In 2019, Russia deployed its own intercontinental hypersonic missile, the Avangard strategic system, featuring a hypersonic glide vehicle astride an intercontinental ballistic missile. “It’s a weapon of the future, capable of penetrating both existing and prospective missile defence systems,” claimed Russian President Vladimir Putin at the time.  The President claimed to have reason to crow.  “Today, we have a unique situation in our new and recent history.  They (other countries) are trying to catch up with us. Not a single country possesses hypersonic weapons, let alone continental-range hypersonic weapons.”

    For all of this claimed prowess, nothing quite creased the brows of Pentagon officials quite as China’s July 27 hypersonic missile test.  General Mark  Milley, chairman of the Joint of Chief of Staff, said in a Bloomberg interview this October that it was “a very significant event” and was “very concerning”.  The test was first reported by the Financial Times on October 16, which also noted, without additional detail, a second hypersonic systems test on August 13.

    The People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force had already caught the attention of US military planners in the last decade with advances in the field.  The Dongfeng-17 (D-17) hypersonic boost-glide missile, for instance, made its appearance in 2014 and was found to be dismayingly accurate, striking their targets within metres.

    The July test, however, was another matter, even if it missed its target by 19 miles and had been described by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian as a “routine test” of space vehicle technology.  It had used, for instance, a variant of the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System, a low-orbit missile delivery method pioneered by the Soviets to frustrate detection.  It got the drummers from the military-industrial complex all riled up, despite the US having been actively involved in the development of hypersonic weapons since the early 2000s.  In the imperial mindset, any seemingly successful experiment by the military of another power, notably an adversary, is bound to cause a titter of panic.  Pin pricks can be treated as grave threats, even to a power that outspends the combined military budgets of the next seven states.

    When it comes to the perceived advances of Beijing and Moscow, Alexander Fedorov of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology offers a mild corrective.  Russia had “experience without money, China has money without much experience, and the United States has both, although it revived its efforts later than did Russia or China and is now playing catch-up.”

    The US military establishment prefers a gloomier reading, a point they can then sell to Congress that Freedom’s Land is being somehow outpaced by upstarts and usurpers.  George Hayes, chief executive at defence contractor Raytheon, spoke disapprovingly of the US as being a laggard in the hypersonic field, being “years behind” China.  Michael Griffin, former undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, told NPR that “it is an arms race” which “we didn’t start”, thereby providing moral reassurance for future additions to it. Milley was also not averse to inflating the significance of the July test.  “I don’t know if it’s quite a Sputnik moment, but I think it’s very close to that.  It has all of our attention.”

    USA Today certainly wished its readers to give it all their attention.  “That method of delivery also means the US could be attacked by flights over the South Pole.  American defense systems concentrate on missile attacks from the north.”

    The Biden administration has already requested $3.8 billion for hypersonic research for the Pentagon’s fiscal year 2022 budget.  This is a sharp increase from the previous total of $3.2 billion, which was itself an inflation from the $2.6 billion figure the year before that.  In June, Vice Admiral Jon Hill, director of the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), warned the Senate Armed Services subcommittee on strategic forces of current and impending risks, thereby making the case for more cash to be thrown at the enterprise.  As things stood, “US aircraft carriers are already facing risks from hypersonic weapons that are now entering the inventory of American adversaries and the Navy has developed early defences for the threat.”

    The prospect of yet another arms race (do they ever learn?) can only cause the sane to be worried.  Zhao Tong, senior fellow with the nuclear policy program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, notes that such weapons “introduce more technological uncertainties and ambiguities compared with traditional ballistic missiles, which will increase the possibility of misjudgement and overreaction during military conflicts”.  Just the sort of thing a planet troubled by climate change and pandemics needs.

    Hypersonic panic is here to stay, and defence contractors are rubbing their hands and hoping to grease a few palms.  Hayes is one of them, expecting that the US would “have weapons to challenge the adversaries but most importantly, I think our focus is how do we develop counter-hypersonics.  That’s where the challenge will be.”  The National Review is in full agreement, encouraging the US to “deploy missile-defense interceptors in Australia and more sensors in space, as well as work toward directed-energy weapons that would be the best counter to hypersonic missiles.”  Yet another competitive front for military lunacy is in the offing, even before it has begun.

    The post Hypersonic Panic and Competitive Terror first appeared on Dissident Voice.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • US Military Interests Are Promoting a Culture of Fear With China

    Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley listens to a question during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on September 28, 2021, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.

    Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley recently called China’s testing of a hypersonic missile designed to evade U.S. nuclear defenses “very close” to a “Sputnik moment” for the United States. The comments underscore an ongoing pattern on the part of the U.S. government and corporate media structure that reinforces and instigates dangerous preexisting geopolitical tensions with China, a rhetorical theme unnecessarily produced by a Sinophobic bipartisan U.S. political elite.

    In this interview, international relations scholar Richard Falk provides the historical context of Sputnik and summarizes U.S. interests in promoting a culture of fear with China. Falk also outlines how prospects for a new Cold War could ultimately subside due to increased focuses about the climate emergency and COVID, thus rendering geopolitics less relevant, which is both fortunate and unfortunate for its own sets of reasons.

    Daniel Falcone: On Bloomberg Television, Gen. Mark Milley referred to China’s hypersonic weapons test as close to a “Sputnik moment” that has our attention. Can you comment on the meaning of this language and provide historical context?

    Richard Falk: I interpret General Milley’s remark as primarily intended to raise security concerns relating to the deepening geopolitical rivalry with China, or perhaps as a reflection of these. To call the hypersonic weapons test by China “close to a Sputnik moment” was suggesting that it was posing a systemic threat to American technological supremacy directly relevant to national security and the relative military capabilities of the two countries. The reference to a Sputnik moment was a way of recalling an instance when the geopolitical rival of the day, which in 1957 was of course the Soviet Union, suddenly caught the U.S. by surprise, becoming the first sovereign state with the capacity to send a satellite into space with an ability to orbit the Earth, and possibly in the future by this means dominate the political life of the entire planet.

    This capacity was not in of itself a threat but was taken to mean that the Soviet Union was more technologically sophisticated than was understood by the public, and apparently even by the U.S. intelligence. It was politically used as a spur to increased investment in space technology, and it led some years late to a triumphant moment for the United States when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in 1969, enabling the U.S. to reclaim the lead in the space dimension of the Cold War rivalry and to indirectly recover confidence in its military prowess. In retrospect, the actual relevance of the Sputnik moment was in the domain of symbolic geopolitics without real relevance to the course or outcome of the Cold War.

    Supposedly the aim of the Chinese test is to develop a supersonic missile capable of encircling the Earth with a spatial orbit and a flexible reentry capability, which is perceived as having the ability to evade radar and existing defense systems currently in use to intercept incoming missiles. In that sense, Milley’s pronouncement in the course of the Bloomberg interview can best be understood as an intensification of the slide toward geopolitical confrontation with China, a set of circumstances that already possesses many features of a second Cold War, although occurring under radically different historical circumstances than the rivalry with the Soviet Union.

    It will likely become the beginning of agitation and a campaign to increase the bloated defense budget still further, which is as always likely to find a receptive and gullible bipartisan audience in the U.S. Congress. No recent statement by a chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has enjoyed such success as Milley in setting off national security alarm bells, uncritically highlighted by mainstream media.

    What I found surprising, yet in keeping with the mobilization of anti-China public opinion, was the failure of both Milley and the commentary to suggest a different twist to this news. It could have been presented a dangerous and expensive technological threshold that calls for mutual restraint and possibly agreements limiting further developments. President Joe Biden or Secretary of State Antony Blinken could have used the occasion to declare that the world at this stage could not afford such costly and risky distractions, as an all-out arms race in space.

    It seems that this Sputnik moment by an imaginative military leader could have turned to an opportunity for peace rather than a threat of future war. It might have provided a dramatic moment to embark upon a path of reconciliation with China that would benefit not only the two countries but humanity in general. Of course, such a turn would be viciously attacked by the militarists in both parties as weakness instead of strength. Remember the derision heaped on President Barack Obama for daring “to lead from behind” in the 2011 North Atlantic Treaty Organization intervention in Libya. Given the mess resulting from that military operation, there is reason to view Obama’s reluctance as a show of strategic wisdom as well as prudence.

    Is this a political statement in your estimation, or a sober comment by high-ranking official?

    I do consider Milley’s statement, made without qualifications and accompanying comments, as providing the basis for two possible lines of response: a geopolitical reflex of alarm and heightened tensions in keeping with the confrontational character of recent American foreign policy, or a measured reaction that urged mutual restraint and a search for a cooperative framework with respect to the militarization of space in the interests of world peace, but also with respect to the avoidance of an expensive and highly uncertain extensions of arms competition.

    The fact this “road not taken” was not even mentioned by Milley as an alternative is deeply disappointing, although in keeping with the prevailing mood in Washington. As well, the feverish media reportage of his provocative sounding of Sputnik alarm bells suggests that public policy debate is taking place in an atmosphere of ideological closure if the issue involves China. This should be deeply worrying.

    President Biden recently participated in a CNN “town hall” and again instigated China. China does not seem to be intimidated by the United States. Can you elaborate on how that reality impacts heads of state overall?

    We are witnessing once again a superpower interaction that threatens to dominate international politics — this time in a global setting still trying to recover from the COVID pandemic and faced with dire warnings in the form of a consensus from climate experts that if more is not done with a sense of urgency to address climate change, catastrophic harm will result. In this new configuration of global social, political and ecological forces, if rationality prevails, geopolitics will be moved to the sidelines so as to focus on challenges that cannot be ignored any longer. It is unfortunate that that political will in the U.S. remains mainly geared toward addressing real and imagined traditional security threats stemming from conflict and nothing else when it comes to foreign policy.

    Some advocates for peace are worried that a failed or stalled infrastructure legislative package will force liberal Democrats into more hawkish positions in order to show “resolve.” Can you comment on the validity of this concern?

    A persisting shadow hovering over American politics is the sobering realization that there seems to be no down side for hawkishness by a politician when it comes to embracing the warped logic of geopolitical rivalry or military spending. Whether this will have an impact upon the bargaining component of the search for sufficient support in Congress to fund a domestic infrastructure program is not knowable at this time, but it would come as no surprise. Many liberal Democrats do not depart from the bipartisan mainstream if the issues at stake are defense, Israel and now China, especially when a favored domestic program seems in jeopardy.

    NPR has reported on how “Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on countries to support Taiwan’s participation in the United Nations. The self-governed island has not been a member of the body since October 1971, when the U.N. gave Beijing a seat at the table and removed Taiwan.” What are the regional implications of the Taiwan factor regarding Biden’s and Milley’s remarks? How is this pertinent and what is happening here?

    It was a most unfortunate departure from the Shanghai Communique of 1972 establishing relations between the U.S. and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to speak in favor of giving Taiwan a more active role in the UN system. First, it seemed contrary to the spirit of what was agreed upon with respect to Taiwan in 1972, centering on an acceptance by Washington of a “One China” policy. As Henry Kissinger has argued, the language used deliberately avoided endorsing the PRC view of “One China,” leaving open the interpretation followed by Washington that Beijing could only extend its territorial sovereignty to Taiwan by way of a diplomatic agreement with Taiwan (formerly, the Republic of China, which had lost the right to represent China at the UN).

    Despite efforts by Taiwan to gain diplomatic recognition as a separate political entity, it has only managed to secure a favorable response from 15 countries, and not one “important” country among them, with even the United States refraining. At one point, Taiwan did attempt to become a member of the UN, but the effort was firmly rejected by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, relying on UN General Assembly Resolution 2756, which set the terms of Chinese representation in 1971, relegating Taiwan (what had been represented by China at the UN until that time as the Republic of China) as “the province of Taiwan” within the larger reality of China. A strenuous U.S. effort in 1971 to retain the Republic of China as a participant in UN activities was rejected, leaving the PRC as the sole representative of China.

    What makes the Blinken comment doubly inflammatory is that it occurred in the midst of increasing overall U.S.-China tensions with a growing focus on the security of Taiwan. With China apparently testing the nerves of Taiwan and the resolve of the United States by a naval buildup and air intrusions, for Blinken to choose this moment to support an increased independent status for Taiwan is either misguided or clearly meant to be provocative. Such irresponsible talk was further amplified by Biden’s implications that the U.S. would defend Taiwan if attacked rather than calling for a tension reducing diplomatic conference. Then comes General Milley’s “Sputnik moment” remark, as if the Chinese security challenge has crossed a threshold of strategic threat to the United States that it dares not ignore. Further signals of hostility were sent to China by activating the QUAD informal alliance (U.S., Japan, India and Australia) some months ago, and more recently establishing the AUKUS alliance, which included Australian development of nuclear-powered submarines.

    There are two lines of structural threat that seem to be creating an atmosphere of pre-crisis confrontation: firstly, the so-called Thucydides Trap by which a hitherto dominant power faces an ascending challenger and opts for war while it still commands superior military capabilities rather than waiting until its rival catches up or gains the upper hand; the Milley comment and reaction must be viewed in this light. And secondly, the insistent belligerent assertion that what is at stake with Taiwan is the larger ideological struggle going on in the region and world between those governments that are democracies and those that are authoritarian. The Taiwanese president, Tsai Ing-wen, in a recent article in Foreign Affairs stridently articulated this theme, and so imparted larger meaning to what was at stake by keeping Taiwan safe and independent.

    From a longer temporal perspective, the right-wing of the political class in Washington has never gotten over the trauma of “losing China” as if it were the U.S.’s to lose! It is the persistence of this geopolitical hubris that edges Taiwan tensions ever closer to an armed encounter, with true losers on both sides. A further reason to favor diplomatic de-escalation while there is still time is the apparent realization that the U.S. cannot match China in the South China Sea by relying on conventional weapons and can only avoid defeat by having recourse to nuclear weaponry. This is not alarmism. It has been openly declared by leading voices in the Pentagon.

    This geopolitical context should not lead the world or the region to overlook the well-being of the 23.5 million people of Taiwan. Given what is at stake, the best approach would be to restore the “constructive ambiguity” that was deliberately written into the Shanghai Communique, and work for an atmosphere where Taiwan and the PRC can negotiate their futures on the basis of common interests. Although the recent experience in Hong Kong suggests that this, too, is a treacherous path, but less so than flirting with a geopolitical flare-up that could easily get grotesquely out of hand.

    This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The West’s China Complex: Beijing as the Enemy and the Savior

    “Could China’s economy collapse?” was the title of an October 15 article published by QUARTZ magazine. The article makes an ominous case of a Chinese economic crash and its impact on China’s and global economies.

    This is one of numerous reports appearing in recent weeks in Western mainstream media, all motivated by recently published economic indicators pointing to less-than-expected growth in various sectors of the Chinese economy, especially in the field of construction.

    It is understandable that the volatility of global markets could instigate immediate concern among economists worldwide, especially when the economic output of a country the size of China – the world’s overall fastest-growing and second-largest economy – stalls, however briefly.

    What is puzzling is how a fully predictable economic slowdown – considering the adverse effects of the pandemic on global trade – becomes a compelling reason to fuel predictions of a supposedly imminent Chinese collapse.

    For QUARTZ, China’s supposed economic woes are an outcome of Beijing’s centralized economy, the Communist party’s political crackdowns and the restructuring of the private sector. If growth continues to slow down, “China may well witness civil unrest,” the article predicts, though without providing concrete evidence to back up such a dramatic assertion.

    Compare this doomsday reading of the manufactured ‘crisis’ in China to the real fuel crisis in the UK, where a collective panic led to millions of people rushing to buy petrol and diesel fuels, resulting in massive disruptions, shortages of supplies and traffic jams. Western media downplayed the unprecedented crisis, as if it was merely the outcome of simple bureaucratic mismanagement or a mere miscalculation pertaining to supply and demand. If the equivalence of the UK’s dystopian scenes were witnessed in China, Western journalists would be ready to report on the ‘civil unrest’ and the impending revolution, even.

    However, the anti-China media hype, which has been on the rise since the beginning of the Donald Trump Administration’s term in office, is a double-edged sword. While media propaganda, which habitually portrays China as an unstable country and depicts its decades-long economic growth as if a fleeting phenomenon, benefits greatly from downgrading China’s status, Western economies will be the first to pay the price should China enter a long-term economic recession.

    Unlike the Soviet Union, which economy had existed in near-total isolation of Western markets, the Chinese economy is closely intertwined with the global economy, from Europe to North America, to Africa and beyond. The saying ‘if China sneezes, the world catches a cold’ has never been truer.

    According to a recent Bloomberg illustration, displaying “Contributions to Global Growth” by various leading economic powers, China, especially starting 2010, served the role of the backbone of the global economy. The year 2020 was particularly interesting, as only China sustained a significant growth above the zero-percentage point.

    The centrality of China as the main fuel of global economic growth presents the West with an impossible dilemma. On the one hand, the US and its allies want to ensure that China remains a minor global political power while, on the other hand, they continue to rely on the Chinese ‘economic miracle’ to keep their own economies afloat. It should come as no surprise that, according to the European Commission, “China is the EU’s biggest source of imports and its second-biggest export market”.

    As US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin headed to Brussels on October 21 to join his first in-person NATO defense ministers’ conference, the Washington Post reported that Austin was joining the highly-influential meeting “with China on his mind”.

    What worries Austin and the US military more than the vast capabilities and constant improvements of its Chinese counterpart, is NATO’s supposed failure to appreciate the ‘China threat’. Indeed, despite the US’ repeated warnings about China’s military ascendency, Europe and most NATO members remain largely nonchalant.

    Simply put, Washington wants Europe to shoot itself in the foot. By isolating China, Europe would consequently isolate itself, thus curtailing its own economic growth and, by extension, slowing down the entire global economy. Considering the trust deficit between the EU and the US, resulting from the instability of the Trump Administration’s years, Biden’s failure to completely change course, and the more recent Afghanistan withdrawal debacle, chances are Europeans will not be following in Washington’s footsteps this time around, as they have during the height of the US-Soviet Cold War.

    The above assertion has been demonstrated, time and again, in real numbers, the latest of which was a survey by the European Council on Foreign Relations, which polled Europeans in twelve different EU member states. Most Europeans, 59 percent, the survey showed, felt that their countries are not involved in a cold war with China.

    Foreign Policy magazine reported on the findings with the following title: “Europeans Want to Stay Out of the New Cold War”. Chances are neither Western media alarmists nor Austin’s interventions at the NATO conference will change this reality.

    China’s economy is likely to continue experiencing its ebbs and flow, thanks to the global recession resulting from the pandemic. On their own, such fluctuations will unlikely change the narrative of the determined Chinese rise as a global power, or that of the unmistakable western decline. The sooner we acknowledge this reality, the better.

    The post The West’s China Complex: Beijing as the Enemy and the Savior first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Europe: The Subordinate Ally of the United States

    In recent months, European countries and the European Union have been put under pressure from the United States to substantially break ties with the People’s Republic of China as well as to orient Europe’s military towards confrontation with China. The pressure campaign – which began with US President Donald Trump and continues with his successor Joe Biden – goes against the obvious interests of most European countries.

    The post Europe: The Subordinate Ally of the United States appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Cover-up of U.S. Nuclear Sub Collision in South China Sea

    “When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.”

    So warned Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in his address to the UN General Assembly on September 22, 2020. He was referring to the consequences for East Asia of a conflict between the US and China.

    Fast forward to October 2, 2021, about one year later, and the first patch of grass has been stomped on by the U.S. elephant, trudging stealthily about, far from home in the South China Sea. On that day the nuclear-powered attack submarine, the USS Connecticut, suffered serious damage in an undersea incident which the U.S. Navy ascribed to a collision with an undersea object.

    After sustaining damage, the submarine apparently surfaced close to the Paracel Islands which lie only 150 nautical miles from China’s Yulin submarine base in Hainan Province. The Connecticut is one of only three Seawolf class of submarines, which are assumed to be on spying missions. But they can be equipped with Intermediate Range (1250-2500 km) Tomahawk cruise missiles which can be armed with nuclear warheads. It is claimed that they are not so equipped at present because the Navy’s “policy decisions” have “phased out” their nuclear role, according to the hawkish Center For Strategic and International Studies.

    When a US nuclear submarine with such capabilities has a collision capable of killing U.S. sailors and spilling radioactive materials in the South China Sea, it should be front page news on every outlet in the U.S. This has not been the case – far from it. For example, to this day (October 30), nearly a month after the collision, the New York Times, the closest approximation to a mouthpiece for the American foreign policy elite, has carried no major story on the incident, and in fact no story at all so far as I and several daily readers can find. This news is apparently not fit to print in the Times. (A notable exception to this conformity and one worth consulting has been Craig Hooper of Forbes.)

    A blackout of this kind will come as no surprise to those who have covered the plight of Julian Assange or the US invasion of Syria or the barely hidden hand of the United States in various regime change operations, to cite a few examples

    The U.S. media has followed the narrative of the U.S. Navy which waited until October 7 to acknowledge the incident, with the following extraordinarily curt press release (I have edited it with strike-outs and italicized substitutions to make its meaning clear.):

    The Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine USS Connecticut (SSN 22) struck an object while submerged on the afternoon of Oct. 2, while operating in international waters in the Indo-Pacific region in the South China Sea near or inside Chinese territorial waters. The safety of the crew remains the Navy’s top priority The crew is being held incommunicado for an indefinite period. There are no life threatening injuries. This allows the extent of injuries to the crew to be kept secret.

    The submarine remains in a safe and stable condition hidden from public view to conceal the damage and its cause. USS Connecticut’s nuclear propulsion plant and spaces were not affected and remain fully operational are in a condition that is being hidden from the public until cosmetic repairs can be done to conceal the damage. The extent of damage to the remainder of the submarine is being assessed: is also being concealed. The U.S. Navy has not requested assistance will not allow an independent inspection or investigation. The incident will be investigated cover-up will continue.

    Tan Kefei, spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense although not so terse, had much the same to say as my edited version above, as reported in China’s Global Times:

    It took the US Navy five days after the accident took place to make a short and unclear statement. Such an irresponsible approach, cover-up (and) lack of transparency … can easily lead to misunderstandings and misjudgments. China and the neighboring countries in the South China Sea have to question the truth of the incident and the intentions behind it.

    But Tan went further and echoed the sentiment of President Duterte;

    This incident also shows that the recent establishment of a trilateral security partnership between the US, UK and Australia (AUKUS) to carry out nuclear submarine cooperation has brought a huge risk of nuclear proliferation, seriously violated the spirit of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, undermined the construction of a nuclear-free zone in Southeast Asia, and brought severe challenges to regional peace and security.

    “We believe that the actions of the US will affect the safety of navigation in the South China Sea, arouse serious concerns and unrest among the countries in the region, and pose a serious threat and a major risk to regional peace and stability.

    The crash of the USS Connecticut goes beyond the potential for harmful radioactive leakage into the South China Sea, with potential damage to the surrounding nations including the fishing grounds of importance to the economy. If the US continues to ramp up confrontation far from its home in the South China Sea, then a zone of conflict could spread to include all of East Asia. Will this in any way benefit the region? Does the region want to be turned into the same wreckage that the Middle East and North Africa are now after decades of US crusading for “democracy and liberty” there via bombs, sanctions and regime change operations? That would be a tragic turn for the world’s most economically dynamic region. Do the people of the region not realize this? If not, the USS Connecticut should be a wake-up call.

    But the people of the US should also think carefully about what is happening. Perhaps the foreign policy elite of the US think it can revisit the U.S. strategy in WWII with devastation visited upon Eurasia leaving the US as the only industrial power standing above the wreckage. Such are the benefits of an island nation. But in the age of intercontinental weapons, could the US homeland expect to escape unscathed from such a conflict as it did in WWII? The knot is being tied, as Krushchev wrote to Kennedy at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and if it is tied too tightly, then no one will be able to untie it. The US is tying the knot far from its home this time half way around the world. It should not tie that knot too tight.

    The post Cover-up of U.S. Nuclear Sub Collision in South China Sea first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • News on China | No. 73

    China breaks the US-led blockade to assume its UN seat 50 years ago. A 10% drop in magnesium production has occurred. China accounts for 85% of global magnesium production.

    Pang Jianwei and collaborating scientists have established the first integrated quantum communication network, an “unhackable” network.

    The post News on China | No. 73 first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Global activists gather at Rome G20 to demand tougher action on China

    Counter-meeting attendees urge leaders not to let China off hook over human rights abuses in return for climate cooperation

    Legislators from around the world have gathered on the fringes of the G20 summit in Rome to protest against the presence of the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, and urge leaders not to let China off the hook over human rights abuses in return for Beijing’s cooperation on the climate crisis.

    Many of those at the Rome counter-meeting have been banned from travelling to China as punishment for campaigning against Chinese repression in Xinjiang.

    Continue reading…

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

  • Sustainability in China: What Do Chinese Consumers Really Think About It?

    4 Mins Read A new report on sustainability in China explores how consumers in the country perceive sustainability and what drives eco-purchases.

    The post Sustainability in China: What Do Chinese Consumers Really Think About It? appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • As Asia ‘lives with covid-19’, media may need to be less adversarial

    ANALYSIS: By Kalinga Seneviratne in Sydney

    Indonesia’s popular tourism islands of Bali opened for tourism last week, while Thailand announced that from November 1 vaccinated travellers from 19 countries will be allowed to visit the kingdom including its tourism island of Phuket.

    Both those countries’ tourism industry, which is a major revenue earner, has been devastated by more than 18 months of inactivity that have impacted on the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of people.

    India and Vietnam also announced plans to open the country to vaccinated foreign tourists in November, and Australia will be opening its borders for foreign travel from mid-November for the first time since March 2020.

    Countries in the Asia-Pacific region — except for China — are now beginning to grapple with balancing the damage to their economies from covid-19 pandemic by beginning to treat the virus as another flu.

    The media may have to play a less adversarial role if this gamble is going to succeed.

    October 11 was “Freedom Day” for Australia’s most populous city Sydney when it came out of almost four months of a tough lockdown.

    Ironically this is happening while the daily covid-19 infection rates are higher than the figure that triggered the lockdowns in June.

    ‘It’s not going away’
    Yet, New South Wales Premier Dominic Perrottet told Sky News on October 11: “we’ve got to live alongside the virus, it’s not going away, the best thing that we can do is protect our people (by better health services)”.

    Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, addressing the nation on October 9, said: “Singapore cannot stay locked down and closed off indefinitely. It would not work, and it would be very costly”.

    He added, “each time we tighten up, businesses are further disrupted, workers lose jobs, children are deprived of a proper childhood and school life”.

    Singapore is coming out of lockdown when it is facing the highest rates of daily infections since the covid-19 outbreak.

    Both Singapore and Australia adopted a “zero-covid” policy when the first wave of the pandemic hit, quickly closing the borders, and going into lockdown.

    Both were exceptionally successful in controlling the virus and lifting the lockdowns late last year with almost zero covid-19 cases. But, when the more contagious delta virus hit both countries, fear came back forcing them back into lockdowns.

    However, PM Lee told Singaporeans that lockdowns had “caused psychological and emotional strain, and mental fatigue for Singaporeans and for everyone else. Therefore, we concluded a few months ago that a “Zero covid” strategy was no longer feasible”.

    ‘Living with covid-19’
    Thus, Singapore has changed its policy to “Living with covid-19”.

    In a Facebook posting on October 10, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said: “The phenomenal response from Australians to go and get vaccinated as we’ve seen those vaccination rates rise right across the country, means it’s now time that Australians are able to reclaim their lives. We’re beating covid, and we’re taking our lives back.”

    On October 8, Australia’s Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said that though infection rates might still be a bit high, yet less than 1 percent of those infected were in intensive care units (ICUs).

    Why didn’t political leaders take this attitude right from the beginning and continue with it? After all the fatality rate of covid-19 has not been that much higher than the seasonal flu in most countries.

    True, it was perhaps more contagious according to medical opinion, but fatality rates were not that large in percentage figures.

    According to the Worldometer of health statistics, there have been 237.5 million covid-19 infections up to October this year and 214.6 million have recovered fully (90.4 percent) while 4.8 million have died (just over 2 percent).

    According to the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, there have been between 39-56 million flu cases, about 700,000 flu hospitalisations recorded in the US during the 2019-2020 flu season up to April 2020.

    They also estimate between 24,000 to 62,000 flu deaths during the season. But did the media give these figures on a daily or even a weekly basis?

    New global influenza strategy
    In March 2019, WHO launched a new global influenza strategy pointing out that each year there is an estimated 1 billion flu cases of which 3-5 million are severe cases, resulting in 290,000 to 650,000 influenza-related respiratory deaths.

    This has been happening for many years, but, yet the global media did not create the panic scenario that accompanied covid-19.

    Unfortunately, the media’s adversarial reporting culture has helped to create a fear psychosis from the very beginning of the outbreak in early 2020, which may have contributed to millions of deaths by creating anxiety among those diagnosed with covid-19.

    During the peak of the delta pandemic in India, many patients died from heart attacks triggered by anxiety. Would they have died if covid-19 were treated as another flu?

    In the US out of the 44 million infected with covid-19 only 1.6 percent died. In Brazil from 21.5 million infected, 2.8 percent of them died, while in India out of 34 million infected only 1.3 percent died.

    But what did we see in media reports? Piles of dead bodies being burnt in India, from Brazil bodies buried in mass graves by health workers wrapped in safety gear and in the US, people being rushed into ICUs.

    They are just a small fraction of those infected.

    Bleak picture of sensationalism
    I was the co-editor of a book just released by a British publisher that looked at how the media across the world reported the covid-19 outbreak during 2020. It paints a bleak picture of sensationalism and adversarial reporting blended with racism and politicisation.

    It all started with the outbreak in Wuhan in January 2020 when the global media transmitted unverified video clips of people dropping dead in the streets and dead bodies lying in pavements. Along with the focus on “unhygienic” wet markets in China this helped to project an image of China as a threat to the world.

    It contributed to the fear psychosis that was built up by the media tinged with racism and politicisation.

    If we are to live with covid and other flu viruses, greater investments need to be made in public health.

    In Australia, health experts are talking about boosting hospital bed and ICU capacities to deal with the new policy of living with covid, and they have also warned of a shortage of health professionals, especially to staff ICUs.

    What about if the media focus on these as national security priorities? Rather than giving daily death rates and sensational stories of people dying from covid — do we give daily death rates from heart attacks or suicide?

    We should start discussing more about how to create sustainable safe communities as we recover from the pandemic, and that includes better investments in public health.

    We need a journalism culture that is less adversarial and more tuned into promoting cooperation and community harmony.

    Kalinga Seneviratne is co-editor of COVID-19, Racism and Politicization: Media in the Midst of a Pandemic published in August 2021 by Cambridge Scholars Publishers. IDN is the flagship agency of the Non-profit International Press Syndicate. This article is republished in partnership with IDN.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.