Two recent articles have recently appeared in the Russian journal Strategic Culture that point to significant changes that are occurring among western nations toward Russia and China. These changes have been in the wind for some time but in recent months the tempo has accelerated. Both Russia and China are pointing the way to a new system, the ramifications of which will have extraordinary effects on the geopolitical world.
The first of these articles was written by Finian Cunningham and appeared in Strategic Culture on 13 October. The article “Veering to the Abyss … U.S. and Allies are Intellectually Comatose” is based on an interview that Mr Cunningham did with the American academic Professor Michael Brenner.
Professor Brenner commences his argument by pointing to what he calls an abject failure of political leadership and strategic thinking. This failure is most clearly seen with regard to Washington’s persistent antagonism towards China and its inability to conduct meaningful dialogue and diplomacy with Beijing for the purpose of resolving major issues.
The situation is so dire in Professor Brenner’s view that what he calls a lamentable lack of strategic and political thinking by the United States is driving the rest of the world to an abyss.
Brenner says that “any description of a coherent strategic design to the Biden administration is misplaced.” Rather, he sees Biden’s control over his national security team as tenuous. United States officials such as secretary of state Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan as being unanimous in their view that China is a lethal threat to American dominance. These two see a confrontational approach as being the only logical response to China’s growth.
Washington thinks only in terms of a coercive mindset because that is the only concept that they are capable of. The only way this can be resolved is for the United States to take responsibility for the deteriorating relationship between the two countries.
Brenner points to the recent development of the AUKUS (Australia, United Kingdom and the United States) as a political gesture that is designed to achieve two ends: first, to place an immediate obstacle in the way of Sino-Australian relations, and second, to tighten the United States grasp on Canberra’s foreign policy options in the Asia Pacific region.
He describes the Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison as someone who is just posturing, Brenner is not the first person to point out that there will be economic losses as a consequence of Australia’s posture toward China. It is difficult to understand how Australia could, in fact, follow a foreign policy that is so detrimental to its economic relationship with China, which is far and away its biggest trading partner. One of the alarming features is that Morrison’s suicidal conduct toward trading relationships with China has had so little effect on his popularity. The Australian media has played a major role in not alerting the readership to the economic dangers of Australia’s blind adherence to American foreign policy wishes with regard to China.
An even more significant point than the deteriorating relationship between China and Australia is Brenner’s acknowledgement of the fundamental change in Japan’s relationship with China, that he describes as a 90° shift in its attitude. He referred to the recent meeting of the presidents of the two countries where they agreed to pursue “constructive and stable relations” based on an increased dialogue.
The second article worthy of mention is an editorial which appeared in Strategic Culture on 15 October entitled “Best Laid Plans… Washington’s Zero-Sum Mindset Alienates Allies.” The editors of Strategic Culture see the consequences of Washington’s Cold War style confrontational policy towards China as being responsible for an ever-growing rift with United States’ allies in both Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. This was evident during the G-20 and ASEAN discussions both held this week where numerous countries expressed their deep misgivings about Washington’s relentless push for divisive relationships with China.
These allies were caught totally unaware by the formation earlier this month of the new tripartite relationship between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS). This development completely blindsided the United States’ European allies.
It is not too difficult to see the reasons for Europe’s alarm over any deterioration in a relationship with China. China is now their most important trading partner, having recently overtaken the United States in that role. Germany, which is the most important economy in the European context, is now heavily dependent on China’s market. The Germans would clearly resist any attempts by the Americans to diminish China’s important role in their trading relationship.
The editorial also observes that many Asian nations have also become alarmed by Washington’s Cold War activism towards China. Although several of the ASEAN nations have a dispute with China over access to what they regarded as territorial waters, that is a dispute that is being resolved by consultations between the parties, which is a classic Asian means of resolving difficulties between parties.
In what has become a rather tiresome repetition, the United States talks about upholding what they are pleased to call the “rules based international order.” This is a particularly tiresome phrase for many countries who distinguish the so-called rules based international order from the long-standing and well-established system of international law. These countries correctly recognise the rules based international order as simply a device whereby the Americans and their allies impose their view of what they want to see happen upon the rest of the world. It is in short simply another means of seeking to maintain their dominance over others.
Strategic Culture concludes by saying that the world is ineluctably diverging from the United States and that is because the world is now finding that American power is the fundamental irreconcilable problem, rather than a solution.
These two articles are important because they highlight what is a fundamental trend in world geopolitics. That is that the world is moving away from a framework constructed by the United States and which dominated for much of the post-World War II period. As such it is a trend to be encouraged.
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.
Abby Martin is an American journalist, TV presenter and activist. She helped found the citizen journalism website Media Roots and serves on the board of directors for the Media Freedom Foundation which manages Project Censored. She hosted Breaking the Set on the network RT America from 2012 to 2015, and then launched The Empire Files in that same year as an investigative documentary and interview series on Telesur, later released as a web series.
The US administration is attempting to draw Europe into its cold war policy against China, which so far the European Union, in particular, has refused to participate in. This makes the region a key focal point in world politics today.
This threatening U.S agenda, which is completely against the interests of the people of Europe, China and the US, is unfortunately and persistently being advanced by the US administration. But significant opposition to this dangerous cold war approach is also growing across the world, including in Europe.
The opposing interest of the US proponents of the new Cold War and interests of the people of Europe is particularly clear. This new cold war against China was started by former US President Donald Trump.
The notion of Chinese democracy is not the same as that in the West. The political system in China is more about consensus building within a greater voice rather than the protracted bargaining to arrive at decisions common in the West.
The country’s application of democratic principles follows an approach Chinese President Xi Jinping has termed “whole-process people’s democracy.” The concept was put forward about two years ago, during Xi’s visit to a civic center in Shanghai.
Based on people’s congress system, the “whole-process people’s democracy” enables the Chinese people to broadly and continuously participate in the day-to-day political activities at all levels, including democratic elections, political consultation, decision-making and oversight.
The story of Chinese lawmaker Liu Li gives a glimpse into how China’s whole-process democracy operates.
Before it’s too late, we need to ask ourselves a crucial question: Do we really — I mean truly — want a new Cold War with China?
Because that’s just where the Biden administration is clearly taking us. If you need proof, check out last month’s announcement of an “AUKUS” (Australia, United Kingdom, U.S.) military alliance in Asia. Believe me, it’s far scarier (and more racist) than the nuclear-powered submarine deal and the French diplomatic kerfuffle that dominated the media coverage of it. By focusing on the dramatically angry French reaction to losing their own agreement to sell non-nuclear subs to Australia, most of the media missed a much bigger story: that the U.S. government and its allies have all but formally declared a new Cold War by launching a coordinated military buildup in East Asia unmistakably aimed at China.
It’s still not too late to choose a more peaceful path. Unfortunately, this all-Anglo alliance comes perilously close to locking the world into just such a conflict that could all too easily become a hot, even potentially nuclear, war between the two wealthiest, most powerful countries on the planet.
If you’re too young to have lived through the original Cold War as I did, imagine going to sleep fearing that you might not wake up in the morning, thanks to a nuclear war between the world’s two superpowers (in those days, the United States and the Soviet Union). Imagine walking past nuclear fallout shelters, doing “duck and cover” drills under your school desk, and experiencing other regular reminders that, at any moment, a great-power war could end life on Earth.
Do we really want a future of fear? Do we want the United States and its supposed enemy to once again squander untold trillions of dollars on military expenditures while neglecting basic human needs, including universal health care, education, food, and housing, not to mention failing to deal adequately with that other looming existential threat, climate change?
A U.S. Military Buildup in Asia
When President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared their all-too-awkwardly named AUKUS alliance, most of the media focused on a relatively small (though hardly insignificant) part of the deal: the U.S. sale of nuclear-powered submarines to Australia and that country’s simultaneous cancellation of a 2016 contract to buy diesel-powered subs from France. Facing the loss of tens of billions of euros and being shut out of the Anglo Alliance, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the deal a “stab in the back.” For the first time in history, France briefly recalled its ambassador from Washington. French officials even cancelled a gala meant to celebrate Franco-American partnership dating back to their defeat of Great Britain in the Revolutionary War.
Caught surprisingly off guard by the uproar over the alliance (and the secret negotiations that preceded it), the Biden administration promptly took steps to repair relations, and the French ambassador soon returned to Washington. In September at the United Nations, President Biden declared that the last thing he wants is “a new Cold War or a world divided into rigid blocs.” Sadly, the actions of his administration suggest otherwise.
Imagine how Biden administration officials would feel about the announcement of a “VERUCH” (VEnezuela, RUssia, and CHina) alliance. Imagine how they’d react to a buildup of Chinese military bases and thousands of Chinese troops in Venezuela. Imagine their reaction to regular deployments of all types of Chinese military aircraft, submarines, and warships in Venezuela, to increased spying, heightened cyberwarfare capabilities, and relevant space “activities,” as well as military exercises involving thousands of Chinese and Russian troops not just in Venezuela but in the waters of the Atlantic within striking distance of the United States. How would Biden’s team feel about the promised delivery of a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines to that country, involving the transfer of nuclear technology and nuclear-weapons-grade uranium?
None of this has happened, but these would be the Western Hemisphere equivalents of the “major force posture initiatives” U.S., Australian, and British officials have just announced for East Asia. AUKUS officials unsurprisingly portray their alliance as making parts of Asia “safer and more secure,” while building “a future of peace [and] opportunity for all the people of the region.” It’s unlikely U.S. leaders would view a similar Chinese military buildup in Venezuela or anywhere else in the Americas as a similar recipe for safety and peace.
In reaction to VERUCH, calls for a military response and a comparable alliance would be rapid. Shouldn’t we expect Chinese leaders to react to the AUKUS buildup with their own version of the same? For now, a Chinese government spokesperson suggested that the AUKUS allies “should shake off their Cold War mentality” and “not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties.” The Chinese military’s recent escalation of provocative exercises near Taiwan may be, in part, an additional response.
Chinese leaders have even more reason to doubt the declared peaceful intent of AUKUS given that the U.S. military already has seven military bases in Australia and nearly 300 more spread across East Asia. By contrast, China doesn’t have a single base in the Western Hemisphere or anywhere near the borders of the United States. Add in one more factor: in the last 20 years, the AUKUS allies have a track record of launching aggressive wars and participating in other conflicts from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya to Yemen, Somalia, and the Philippines, among other places. China’s last war beyond its borders was with Vietnam for one month in 1979. (Brief, deadly clashes occurred with Vietnam in 1988 and India in 2020.)
War Trumps Diplomacy
By withdrawing U.S. forces from Afghanistan, the Biden administration theoretically started moving the country away from its twenty-first-century policy of endless wars. The president, however, now appears determined to side with those in Congress, in the mainstream foreign policy “Blob,” and in the media who are dangerouslyinflating the Chinese military threat and calling for a military response to that country’s growing global power. The poor handling of relations with the French government is another sign that, despite prior promises, the Biden administration is paying little attention to diplomacy and reverting to a foreign policy defined by preparations for war, bloated military budgets, and macho military bluster.
Given the 20 years of disastrous warfare that followed the George W. Bush administration’s announcement of a “Global War on Terror” and its invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, what business does Washington have building a new military alliance in Asia? Shouldn’t the Biden administration instead be building alliances dedicated to combating global warming, pandemics, hunger, and other urgent human needs? What business do three white leaders of three white-majority countries have attempting to dominate that region through military force?
While the leaders of some countries there have welcomed AUKUS, the three allies signaled the racist, retrograde, downright colonial nature of their Anglo Alliance by excluding other Asian countries from their all-white club. Naming China as its obvious target and escalating Cold War-style us-vs.-them tensions risk fueling already rampant anti-Chinese and anti-Asian racism in the United States and globally. Belligerent, often warlike rhetoric against China, associated with former President Donald Trump and other far-right Republicans, has increasingly been embraced by the Biden administration and some Democrats. It “has directly contributed to rising anti-Asian violence across the country,” write Asia experts Christine Ahn, Terry Park, and Kathleen Richards.
The less formalized “Quad” grouping that Washington has also organized in Asia, again including Australia as well as India and Japan, is little better and is already becoming a more militarily focused anti-Chinese alliance. Other countries in the region have indicated that they are “deeply concerned over the continuing arms race and power projection” there, as the Indonesian government said of the nuclear-powered submarine deal. Nearly silent and so difficult to detect, such vessels are offensive weapons designed to strike another country without warning. Australia’s future acquisition of them risks escalating a regional arms race and raises troubling questions about the intentions of both Australian and U.S. leaders.
Beyond Indonesia, people worldwide should be deeply concerned about the U.S. sale of nuclear-propelled submarines. The deal undermines efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons as it encourages the proliferation of nuclear technology and weapons-grade highly enriched uranium, which the U.S. or British governments will need to provide to Australia to fuel the subs. The deal also offers a precedent allowing other non-nuclear countries like Japan to advance nuclear-weapons development under the guise of building their own nuclear-powered subs. What’s to stop China or Russia from now selling their nuclear-powered submarines and weapons-grade uranium to Iran, Venezuela, or any other country?
Who’s Militarizing Asia?
Some will claim that the United States must counter China’s growing military power, frequently trumpeted by U.S. media outlets. Increasingly, journalists, pundits, and politicians here have been irresponsibly parroting misleading depictions of Chinese military power. Such fearmongering is already ballooning military budgets in this country, while fueling arms races and increasing tensions, just as during the original Cold War. Disturbingly, according to a recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey, a majority in the U.S. now appear to believe — however incorrectly — that Chinese military power is equal to or greater than that of the United States. In fact, our military power vastly exceeds China’s, which simply doesn’t compare to the old Soviet Union.
The Chinese government has indeed strengthened its military power in recent years by increasing spending, developing advanced weapons systems, and building an estimated 15 to 27 mostly small military bases and radar stations on human-made islands in the South China Sea. Nonetheless, the U.S. military budget remains at least three times the size of its Chinese counterpart (and higher than at the height of the original Cold War). Add in the military budgets of Australia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and other NATO allies like Great Britain and the discrepancy leaps to six to one. Among the approximately 750 U.S. military bases abroad, almost 300 are scattered across East Asia and the Pacific and dozens more are in other parts of Asia. The Chinese military, on the other hand, has eight bases abroad (seven in the South China Sea’s Spratley Islands and one in Djibouti in Africa), plus bases in Tibet. The U.S. nuclear arsenal contains about 5,800 warheads compared to about 320 in the Chinese arsenal. The U.S. military has 68 nuclear-powered submarines, the Chinese military 10.
Contrary to what many have been led to believe, China is not a military challenge to the United States. There is no evidence its government has even the remotest thought of threatening, let alone attacking, the U.S. itself. Remember, China last fought a war outside its borders in 1979. “The true challenges from China are political and economic, not military,” Pentagon expert William Hartung has rightly explained.
Since President Obama’s “pivot to Asia,” the U.S. military has engaged in years of new base construction, aggressive military exercises, and displays of military force in the region. This has encouraged the Chinese government to build up its own military capabilities. Especially in recent months, the Chinese military has engaged in increasingly provocative exercises near Taiwan, though fearmongers again are misrepresenting and exaggerating how threatening they truly are. Given Biden’s plans to escalate his predecessors’ military buildup in Asia, no one should be surprised if Beijing announces a military response and pursues an AUKUS-like alliance of its own. If so, the world will once more be locked in a two-sided Cold-War-like struggle that could prove increasingly difficult to unwind.
Unless Washington and Beijing reduce tensions, future historians may see AUKUS as akin not just to various Cold-War-era alliances, but to the 1882 Triple Alliance between Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy. That pact spurred France, Britain, and Russia to create their own Triple Entente, which, along with rising nationalism and geo-economic competition, helped lead Europe into World War I (which, in turn, begat World War II, which begat the Cold War).
Avoiding a New Cold War?
The Biden administration and the United States must do better than resuscitate the strategies of the nineteenth century and the Cold War era. Rather than further fueling a regional arms race with yet more bases and weapons development in Australia, U.S. officials could help lower tensions between Taiwan and mainland China, while working to resolve territorial disputes in the South China Sea. In the wake of the Afghan War, President Biden could commit the United States to a foreign policy of diplomacy, peace-building, and opposition to war rather than one of endless conflict and preparations for more of the same. AUKUS’s initial 18-month consultation period offers a chance to reverse course.
Recent polling suggests such moves would be popular. More than three times as many in the U.S. would like to see an increase, rather than a decrease, in diplomatic engagement in the world, according to the nonprofit Eurasia Group Foundation. Most surveyed would also like to see fewer troop deployments overseas. Twice as many want to decrease the military budget as want to increase it.
The world barely survived the original Cold War, which was anything but cold for the millions of people who lived through or died in the era’s proxy wars in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Can we really risk another version of the same, this time possibly with Russia as well as China? Do we want an arms race and competing military buildups that would divert trillions of dollars more from pressing human needs while filling the coffers of arms manufacturers? Do we really want to risk triggering a military clash between the United States and China, accidental or otherwise, that could easily spin out of control and become a hot, possibly nuclear, war in which the death and destruction of the last 20 years of “forever wars” would look small by comparison.
That thought alone should be chilling. That thought alone should be enough to stop another Cold War before it’s too late.
Power is the ability to control what happens. The more control you have, the more powerful you are.
That’s why power is like crack for the ego. Egos are all about control; obtaining safety and security so as to ensure the survival and success of one particular human organism. The impulse to exert control over our surroundings is why our recently-evolved brains create egos in the first place.
The more tightly clenched the ego, the greater the desire for control. This can manifest as trying to dominate one’s family and romantic partner with greater and greater totality. It can manifest as starting a cult. It can manifest as trying to shore up massive amounts of wealth. And it can manifest as the pursuit of power.
Those who rise to positions of power tend to be those who’ve placed the pursuit of it above all else, or to have been trained since birth to prioritize power by the powerful families they’re born into. This is especially true in the giant globe-spanning power structure that is loosely centralized around the United States.
The loose alliance of plutocrats and government agency insiders who rule this giant empire pursue power above all else. For all the historically unprecedented power these imperial oligarchs have, it’s still not enough for them.
Their objective is to control everything that happens in any nation on earth; to ensure that everything that occurs on this planet serves them and their interests. That’s what absolute power would look like.
The imperial oligarchs wish to rule our world as Greek gods from Mount Olympus. If any population on earth disobeys them, they want to be able to cause sweeping famines in that nation, or rain down fire upon them from on high. They want to be able to control not just how all humans behave, but how they think as well.
And, for the most part, they absolutely can do this. The drivers of empire can inflict famines upon entire populations by imposing starvation sanctions upon them using their control over international financial systems. They can rain down fire upon any disobedient population using the most powerful military force ever assembled. They can control the way we think, act, spend, consume, and vote to ensure it serves their interests, and their control over our minds is continually advancing.
But they don’t have total control over those things everywhere on earth. To find where they lack this control, you need only ask yourself which parts of the world the imperial propaganda machine most aggressively tells you you must oppose.
China and Russia have not been absorbed into the globe-spanning empire, and because they are relatively strong compared to the weaker nations the empire likes to target, the imperialists don’t have much control over what happens there. Their control is not strong enough to starve their populations on a whim. They could not rain down fire upon those nations without risking their own lives and assets. They cannot exert control over how those populations think and behave.
For a healthy human being, this lack of control would not present as a problem. For a human being that is infected with a tightly clenched ego and an insatiable thirst for power, this lack of control is seen as a direct existential threat.
So we are bombarded with propaganda about how horrible China and Russia are, for the exact same reason adherents to religions have historically been indoctrinated with beliefs about how horrible heretics and apostates are.
These gods are jealous gods. They do not tolerate unbelievers. Lands which do not worship them are the badlands, the lands of the heathens, the lands of the condemned.
That’s all we’re looking at with the nonstop mass media shrieking about Russia and China. Not a truthful representation of reality. Not warnings about a dire threat to our lives. Just inflamed egos screaming fire and brimstone sermons at their flock about the land of infidels and idolaters.
Free people do not worship these gods. Free people do not heed their dogmas. And a truly free world will have evolved beyond any tolerance for people with the power parasite in their minds.
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Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population (4.66 billion people) uses the internet. It’s our source of instant information, entertainment, news, and social interactions.
But where in the world can citizens enjoy equal and open internet access – if anywhere?
In this exploratory study, our researchers have conducted a country-by-country comparison to see which countries impose the harshest internet restrictions and where citizens can enjoy the most online freedom. This includes restrictions or bans for torrenting, pornography, social media, and VPNs, and restrictions or heavy censorship of political media. This year, we have also added the restriction of messaging/VoIP apps.
Although the usual culprits take the top spots, a few seemingly free countries rank surprisingly high. With ongoing restrictions and pending laws, our online freedom is at more risk than ever.
We scored each country on six criteria. Each of these is worth two points aside from messaging/VoIP apps which is worth one (this is due to many countries banning or restricting certain apps but allowing ones run by the government/telecoms providers within the country). The country receives one point if the content—torrents, pornography, news media, social media, VPNs, messaging/VoIP apps—is restricted but accessible, and two points if it is banned entirely. The higher the score, the more censorship. https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/IBnNS/3/
The worst countries for internet censorship
North Korea and China (11/11) – No map of online censorship would be complete without these two at the top of the list. There isn’t anything either of them doesn’t heavily censor thanks to their iron grip over the entire internet. Users are unable to use western social media, watch porn, or use torrents or VPNs*. And all of the political media published in the country is heavily censored and influenced by the government. Both also shut down messaging apps from abroad, forcing residents to use ones that have been made (and are likely controlled) within the country, e.g. WeChat in China. Not only does WeChat have no form of end-to-end encryption, the app also has backdoors that enable third parties to access messages.
Iran (10/11): Iran blocks VPNs (only government-approved ones are permitted, which renders them almost useless) but doesn’t completely ban torrenting. Pornography is also banned and social media is under increasing restrictions. Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are all blocked with increasing pressures to block other popular social media sites. Many messaging apps are also banned with authorities pushing domestic apps and services as an alternative. Political media is heavily censored.
Belarus, Qatar, Syria, Thailand, Turkmenistan, and the UAE (8/11): Turkmenistan, Belarus, and the UAE all featured in our “worst countries” breakdown in 2020. But this year they are joined by Qatar, Syria, and Thailand. All of these countries ban pornography, have heavily censored political media, restrict social media (bans have also been seen in Turkmenistan), and restrict the use of VPNs. Thailand saw the biggest increase in censorship, including the introduction of an online porn ban which saw 190 adult websites being taken down. This included Pornhub (which featured as one of the top 20 most visited websites in the country in 2019).
Authorities using predictive policing and human surveillance on Muslims in Xinjiang, thinktank says
Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report.
The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions.
Letter from 137 lawmakers urges fund to drop stakes in firms accused of human rights violations or linked to Chinese state
A cross-party group of more than 137 parliamentarians, including 117 MPs, have called on parliament’s pension fund to disinvest from Chinese companies accused of complicity in gross human rights violations or institutions linked to the Chinese state.
The signatories include Lisa Nandy, the shadow foreign secretary, and former Conservative cabinet ministers Liam Fox, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Tebbit. Others include the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesperson, Layla Moran, and shadow foreign affairs minister Stephen Kinnock. The Conservative MP David Amess was also a signatory, one of his last political acts before his death on Friday.
No one can stop him. He can barely stop himself. The former Australian prime minister, Tony Abbott, seems to be everywhere, fighting the poor cause. At the very least, he is everywhere with the press cameras, the niggling concerns, the irritations that make it into the twenty-four-hour news cycle before sinking with toxic charm. He is the perfect ingredient in a stew of conflict, the agitator, the irritant.
The range of issues that have seen his intervention have taken him to conservative, often reactionary fora, the world over. He has given a gloss of legitimacy to the Great Replacement theory, worried that Christian Europeans have somehow forgotten how to breed, including members of the British Royal Family. He has been praised by Hungary’s authoritarian Viktor Orbán for defending Western civilisation against the dark and swarthy. He has expressed a preference for a social Darwinian model in containing COVID-19, advising governments that the elderly are dispensable citizens. He has sold his brutal “turn back the boats” formula to European states with, it has to be said, some success. The United Kingdom and Denmark, for instance, are increasingly aping his stance in lifting the drawbridge and detaining those seeking asylum.
Then, it was time for the ironman pugilist to pay a visit to Taiwan, something he considered a duty to do and must have had, at least on some level, the nod of approval from Canberra. “Taiwan’s friends are so important right now.” He went, not as a peace envoy but as a representative flagging future conflict.
Abbott’s October 8 address to the Yushan forum began with an admission. Two years ago, he had hesitated to attend the conference, “lest that provoke China.” But since then – and here, Abbott keeps company with the war drummers in Canberra – China had altered the facts. Beijing had shredded the one-country, two systems understanding on Hong Kong, placed a million Uighurs into concentration camps, increased cyber surveillance of its own citizens, embraced its own cancel culture “in favour of a cult of the new red emperor”, attacked Indian soldiers, coerced rival claimants in its eastern seas and “flown evermore intimidatory sorties against Taiwan.”
Much of this is true enough, though Abbott minimises the aggravations. China’s “weaponised trade” against Australia was only because Canberra had “politely” sought an “impartial inquiry into the origins of the Wuhan virus.” It all led him to believe that “China’s belligerence is all self-generated.”
It wasn’t always like that. Abbott told his audience of how his government “finalised China’s first free trade deal with another G20 country, in part, because we thought that would help us build trust between China and the democracies.” His government also readied to join the Chinese-led Asia Infrastructure Investment bank as he “thought it would help to give China a stake in a rules-based global order.”
Anyone invoking the expression “rules-based global order” is bound to be hiding behind the façade of global politics, where power is exerted with lofty ambition and justified in the language of noble refrain. But for Abbott, there is an inherent decency to such rules, even if they were, historically speaking, imposed on non-white nations of the planet in a civilising mission of some brutality.
And such rules can be broken, as evidenced by Abbott’s own remarks about Taiwan’s accepted international status, which he has ignored with near child-like determination. “Why would they want to get caught up in the old arguments about who is the ‘real’ China?” he asks about the Taiwanese – except that the seat of government of the “real” China remains in Beijing, with the assumption that Taiwan will, eventually, join the PRC.
Australia had behaved, according to Abbott, entirely appropriately despite becoming an unquestioning satellite of US power in the Indo-Pacific with a promise of acquiring nuclear-powered submarines. “If the ‘drums of war’ can be heard in our region, as an official of ours has noted, it’s not Australia that’s beating them.” The only beating of drums, he insisted, were for “justice and freedom – freedom for all people, in China and Taiwan, to make their own decisions about their lives and their futures.”
Having minimised Australian provocations, it is left to Abbott to add his own paving to war’s road, pointing the accusing finger towards Beijing, whose policy makers had been so creative as to create the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue against themselves. “Sensing that its relative power might have peaked, with its population ageing, its economy slowing, and its finances creaking, it’s quite possible that Beijing could lash out disastrously very soon.”
Such a lashing could well take place across the Taiwan Strait, though Abbott is keen on the provocation. “I don’t think America could stand by and watch Taiwan swallowed up. I don’t think Australia should be indifferent to the fate of a fellow democracy of almost 25 million.”
Taiwan has become the fetishized object of hostility towards Beijing, a powder keg increasingly at risk of being lit. Its foreign minister, Joseph Wu, could only capitalise on the addition of another member to the Taiwan fan club, suggesting that the former Australian PM had been “doing something right” in enraging China’s “wolf warriors”. If success can be measured by offence, Wu may be correct. But if success is a measure of how peace can be preserved, he was distinctly off the mark.
Once used in the hunt for fugitive criminals, the global police agency’s most-wanted ‘red notice’ list now includes political refugees and dissidents
Flicking through the news one day in early 2015, Alexey Kharis, a California-based businessman and father of two, came across a startling announcement: Russia would request a global call for his arrest through the International Criminal Police Organization, known as Interpol.
“Oh, wow,” Kharis thought, shocked. All the 46-year-old knew about Interpol and its pursuit of the world’s most-wanted criminals was from novels and films. He tried to reassure himself that things would be OK and it was just an intimidatory tactic of the Russian authorities. Surely, he reasoned, the world’s largest police organisation had no reason to launch a hunt for him.
When Japan selected its new prime minister Fumio Kishida on 4 October 2021, there were concerns that his known conservative views did not augur well for Japan’s relationship with China. Thus far, however, those fears appear to have been overly pessimistic. Four days ago on the 50th anniversary of the establishment of China-Japan formal diplomatic ties, the Japanese Prime Minister telephoned his Chinese counterpart.
By all accounts, the conversation was very friendly. For his part Xi noted that Japan and China were close neighbours and he cited an ancient Chinese saying that good neighbourliness is a treasure of a country. He made the point that the development of friendly and cooperative relations between the two countries is in line with the fundamental interests of both countries and their people, and also conducive to Asian and even global peace, stability and prosperity.
Xi Jinping’s comments to his Japanese counterpart were notable for the positive spin he placed on the relationship, highlighting the potential that existed between both countries to benefit from cordial relations. And in what has become a trademark of Xi’s approach to international relations, he stressed that both should seek a “win-win” approach to their relationship. They should practice true multilateralism, carry forward the East Asian wisdom of seeking harmony without uniformity and work together to coordinate their response to global challenges.
For his part, Kishida extended his congratulations on China’s National Day. He said that under the current international and regional circumstances Japan-China relations were entering a new era. He expressed Japan’s willingness to work with China in the new era that their relationship was entering. He saw the 50th anniversary of the normalisation of diplomatic relations as an opportunity to make a joint effort in building a constructive and stable relationship between the two countries.
Kishida stressed that the two sides should manage their differences through dialogue. He said that Japan was ready to work with China to continuously strengthen economic co-operation. He saw merit in continuously strengthening people to people exchanges. Potential also existed in working together on issues such is the response to COVID 19 and also climate change.
Both leaders expressed the view that the conversation was both important and timely. They agreed to continue their interaction through various means to ensure that their relationship continued in the right direction.
This may be seen as a remarkable event on a number of bases. The relationship between Japan and China has not been an easy one. Part of this has been the influence of the United States, whose hostility to China has a long history. The United States has asserted an enormous influence on Japan since the end of World War II. Today there are still approximately 80,000 United States troops stationed in Japan, about 2/3 of whom are on the island of Okinawa.
This presence is extraordinary. It is more than 75 years since the end of World War II and yet one of the victorious powers in that war, the United States, continues to occupy the defeated Japanese long after any possible basis for the occupation ceased. The Japanese economy has been strong and today it remains the world’s third largest economy. Its constitution prohibits the formulation of belligerent forces, and even if it did, it is difficult to imagine modern Japan having any belligerent attitudes to its neighbours. Japan has created an extremely modern economy and in most respects is superior to that of its American equivalents.
On the face of it there is no legitimate basis for the continued occupation of the country by an extensive United States occupying force. The reason is not difficult to conceive. For the United States, Japan provides a series of major bases, home to 80,000+ troops, located in proximity to China.
The United States’ hostility to China is the overwhelming reason for their continued occupation, in much the same way that the presence of United States troops in Germany is linked to their hostility to Russia. Mr Kishida’s discussions with the Chinese president, and the expressions of friendship and hopes for improved relationships are therefore highly significant.
There have been other moves taken that signify a different and better relationship between Japan and the People’s Republic of China. China is now Japan’s largest trading partner. Total trade last year amounted to more than $350 billion. The nature of the relationship between Japan and China, as exemplified by Mr Kishida’s remarks, makes a continuation of that relationship a strong likelihood of continued growth.
In the light of these developments, it is all the more curious that Japan has allowed itself to be a part of the so-called Quad of nations, along with the United States, India and Australia, that is manifestly anti-China in its intentions and outlook. The inclusion of India in this group is also extremely odd. India has a long-established relationship with Russia, and in 2017 became a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Notwithstanding some border disputes with China, that country in 2020 became India’s largest trading partner.
The formation of the AUKUS group of nations this year would have given both India and Japan pause to consider just how sincere the United States is in its QUAD relationship. Manifestly, the existence of this group does nothing for the relationship of either Japan or India with China.
The challenge for Mr Kishida will be to develop further his country’s relationship with China in the face of what will obviously be United States hostility and every attempt being made by the United States to undermine any moves towards deeper cooperation between Japan and China. The contact between Kishida and Xi and the sentiments expressed by both men as quoted above clearly signal that the Japanese are intent on moving beyond the Cold War mantra that marked the attitude and behaviour of Kishida’s predecessors.
The reaction of the Americans to these moves by Japan to approve its relationship with China will be interesting. It is a safe bet that the move towards improving the relationship will not be welcomed by the Americans. There has thus far been no overt United States response to the Kishida-Xi telephone call, although it is a safe bet that they would not have been happy with the cordiality of the meeting and the positive public comments of both the Japanese and Chinese leaders.
Perhaps the Americans feel that the large number of troops that remain in Japan, and the acquiescence of previous Japanese leaders to United States wishes on the China relationship will sufficiently hamper Kishida from giving effect to the sentiments he expressed in the conversation with Xi. In that they are almost certainly mistaken. For the first time in decades the Japanese are actually looking to Japan’s vital interests rather than being an echo chamber for United States’ interests.
As such, the election of Mr Kishida may be yet another signal that the situation in East Asia continues to alter radically. It is a development that will make the Americans unhappy, but it is a sign that the political landscape is undergoing inexorable change.
Virginia Democrat Rep. Elaine Luria, who early this year was elevated within the House Armed Services Committee, wants Congress to pre-authorize President Biden to take military action to defend Taiwan against China.
“The president has no legal authority to react in the time necessary to repel a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and deter an all-out war,” Luria, a 20-year Navy veteran, wrote in anop-edpublished by the Washington Post this week. “If the president’s hands remain legally tied in preventing Chinese military action against Taiwan, then an even larger conflict with China is most certainly assured.”
As Luria notes in her article, Republican lawmakers agree with her that Congress, which has the power to authorize war by the U.S. Constitution, should cede its war powers on this matter to the president. Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) and Rep. Guy Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) have introduced a bill called the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act that would authorize the president “to use the Armed Forces of the United States and take such other measures as the President determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to secure and protect Taiwan” against China. The measure had 18 House Republican co-sponsors in the previous Congress.
At the Quincy Institute’s website Responsible Statecraft, attorneyElizabeth Beaverswrote that Luria’s proposal “rests on a fantasy of American exceptionalism in which the United States can and must lead Taiwan to a military victory against Chinese invasion.
“It also defies logic to suggest that such an authorization would deter or prevent large-scale conflict, as it would surely be seen as a provocation by China. By establishing an overly-available military option, Congress would be setting in motion a chain of events that could hamper diplomatic possibilities and make war between two nuclear powers all the more likely.”
Luria has been in Congress since 2019 and she is rapidly gaining foreign policy influence in the Democratic caucus. She was seated this session on the Armed Services Committee’s Readiness Subcommittee and the Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, which has jurisdiction over acquisition and procurement of items like military ships and submarine-launched weapons. She was also elected in February as the vice chair of the House Armed Services Committee, a committee leadership position that suggests she has the confidence of the chairman, hawkish Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.).
Defense contractors’ PACs donated $42,750 to Luria’s campaigns from January 2019 to June 30, 2021. When she was first a candidate for Congress during the 2018 cycle, Luria promised voters in her district that she would not take donations from corporate PACs, taking a pledge organized by End Citizens United, but she quietly backed out of the pledge in late 2020, when she took funds from the PACs of defense contractors including BAE Systems, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Rolls-Royce North America, which she kept for herself as payback for money she had loaned her campaign.
Luria’s office defended the decision to withdraw from the “No Corporate PAC Money” pledge by saying to theVirginian-Pilotof the corporate PACs she is now taking money from that “all these PAC funds come from individual small dollar contributions from employees.” But a review ofcampaign finance data from Code for Democracyreveals that since 2019, the PACs of the top five defense companies, all of which have donated to Luria besides Northrop Grumman’s, have received donations of at least $1,000 from 332 senior executives and that the average amount that these executive-donors have given to them is $2,113. Forty defense executives, who told the FEC their titles included president, CEO, chairman, or director, have given their employers’ PACs more than $10,000 since 2019.
It’s trippy how a government that’s been democratically elected by free people behaves in exactly the same way you’d expect a government to behave if it was run by corporations.
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I just cannot understand how we keep failing to solve the world’s problems using a system of making as much money as you can while paying your workers as little as you can and offloading as many of your costs onto the biosphere as possible.
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What’s funny about Joe Rogan is he clearly didn’t start off with an oppositional relationship to the mainstream media; that opposition was thrust upon him by the mass media constantly lying about him and smearing him for having a large audience without conforming sufficiently to establishment groupthink.
This was the most significant part of the Rogan-Gupta exchange, and it's not getting enough attention. The media class' open disdain for Rogan is turning him further and further against them, and now it's got him asking if western media run propaganda for US foreign policy. pic.twitter.com/26bEeaNJvZ
So now you’ve got someone with a massive platform who nobody can control openly asking if the public is being propagandized by the media about nations targeted by the US-centralized empire. If he keeps chasing that rabbit, things could get very interesting and/or very ugly.
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Propaganda is the answer to most important political questions. Why are things so fucked? Propaganda. Why do people keep supporting corrupt parties and voting for corrupt assholes? Propaganda. Why is there no antiwar movement? Propaganda. Why don’t the people rise up? Propaganda.
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What is the functional difference between a regime which directly censors the internet to prevent dissent and a regime which works with Silicon Valley plutocrats to control information via algorithms and has institutional safeguards which prevent dissent from having any effect?
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You don’t actually have “free speech” in your country if there are mountains of institutional roadblocks set up to prevent anyone from using their speech to effect meaningful political changes. It doesn’t matter what you’re allowed to say if it doesn’t matter what you say.
“I can say whatever I want in my country!” Yeah you can say whatever you want on a desert island too, and because your status quo is locked in place in countless ways it will make the exact same amount of difference.
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Wikipedia is just as aggressively manipulated by imperial narrative managers as news media and social media. Whoever controls the narrative about the world controls the world itself.
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The financial elite hate crypto not because crypto itself poses a threat to their empire, but because its existence is destroying trust and belief in the “realness” narrative of money among regular people. Bitcoin is imaginary, but it’s worth real money. Why? Because money is also imaginary.
The complexity of the markets is absolutely essential in controlling the narrative around why a few live like kings while the rest work like slaves just to keep a roof over their heads. You, regular person, are not meant to understand it. Because if you did it could not continue.
If you define crypto as shares it makes it clear that shares don’t need to be based in any kind of physical reality in order to create “value” in a market-based system. Crypto as currency makes it clear that currency doesn’t need the trade of a national economy to back it.
Crypto shows that it’s all made up, this whole psychopathic numbers game where the digits on your bank app dictate whether you live or die, or the digits on spreadsheets dictate whether we avoid near-term extinction or not, it’s all made up. And we can change it whenever we like.
I’ve always hated Monopoly. What a tedious, vindictive waste of a perfectly good afternoon. I am so pissed off that we’re going extinct over what essentially is just a global game of Monopoly that virtually none of us want to play.
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In the escalations between the US and China, one is the aggressor and the other is acting defensively. You can tell which is which by asking yourself how the other would react if the situation was reversed. If China started doing this to the US there would be war instantaneously:
People say “That military presence is to protect China’s neighbors from Chinese aggression.”
Look up all the USA’s murderous interventions in Central and South America. China would be far more justified setting up a military presence to protect nations like Cuba and Venezuela. Yet it doesn’t. This means between the US power alliance and China, Washington is the aggressor and Beijing is acting defensively in response to that aggression. The reason western news media do not report on these escalations in this way is because western news media is propaganda.
When you’re used to being in power a movement toward equality can feel like a personal attack. Marginalized groups being elevated gets turned into “There’s a war on white men!” China refusing to let the US rule the world gets turned into “China’s trying to take over the world!”
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That there would be a second cold war was guaranteed after the success of the first one. If your empire succeeded in attaining global hegemony in a game of subversion and manipulation which happened to greatly enrich your military-industrial complex, why wouldn’t you do it again?
I mean sure you’re gambling the life of every terrestrial organism every day you roll the dice on brinkmanship with nuclear-armed nations, but you wind up sitting pretty if your gamble pays off and the world doesn’t get incinerated. It’s a no-brainer for people with no brains.
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Seems like every country on earth gets compared to Nazi Germany except the imperialist one that’s been slaughtering people by the millions to conquer the world because it believes it’s exceptional.
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If: ✅ Police come to your doorstep ✅ To question you about social media posts ✅ And interrogate you about protest activity
Things are so deeply, deeply fucked in so very, very many ways, and they are getting worse so very, very fast. And because status quo narrative control is so effective, hardly anyone is even aware of this. If humanity makes it out of this mess alive, it will look like a miracle.
But also, there is so very, very much we do not understand, and humans have so very, very much untapped potential we simply haven’t woken up to yet. There is plenty of room for future miracles to be hiding in all that space.
We are where we are because of our collective conditioned behavior patterns. Any movement away from our self-destructive patterning will necessarily come from an unpatterned direction, and will therefore be unexpected and unanticipated. That’s why it will look like a miracle.
We go on because we go on. Because our heart keeps beating and our lungs keep inhaling, and because the human organism is deeply hardwired to desire life, and because life is beautiful and delightful. We fight on because what the hell else are we going to do?
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As power-driven agendas of global conquest give rise to international propaganda wars that are increasingly turning our information ecosystem into white noise and indecipherable gibberish, people may soon cease looking outside themselves for truth and begin looking within.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Friends of Socialist China formed out of what we saw as a dire need to gather all information, original and otherwise, to counter the misinformation being spread about China. We didn’t include the word “socialist” in our title for gimmick or display but rather to send a firm message of respect and admiration to the Chinese people’s socialist path. In many ways, the propaganda war against China possesses a dual mission: the ramping up of a dangerous U.S.-led New Cold War against China and the demonization of the socialist mode of development.
“Clear Differences Remain Between France and the U.S, French Minister Says,” is the headline to a remarkable piece appearing in the New York Times. The Minister, Bruno Le Maire, is brutally frank on the nature of the differences as the quotations below Illustrate. (Emphases in the quotations are jvw’s.) In fact, they amount to a Declaration of Independence of France and EU from the U.S.
It is not surprising that the differences relate to China after the brouhaha over the sale of U.S. nuclear submarines to Australia and the surprising (to the French) cancellation of contracts with France for submarines. Mr. LeMaire, sounding very much like a reproving parent, characterized this as “misbehavior from the U.S. administration.”
While China’s rapid progress as a major player in space technology and capability is undeniable, the ‘achilles heel’ to its next step may be the restraint of the private sector. On 29 April this year a China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) Long March 5B Y2 rocket was successfully launched from the Wenchang launch […]
Freedom on the Net 2021 finds that while some democratic governments have made good-faith attempts to regulate the technology industry, state intervention in the digital sphere worldwide has contributed to the 11th consecutive year of global decline in internet freedom.
Governments around the world are increasingly asserting their authority over technology platforms, forcing businesses to comply with censorship and surveillance and contributing to an 11th consecutive year of global decline in internet freedom, according to Freedom on the Net 2021, the annual country-by-country assessment of internet freedom released today by Freedom House.
Global norms shifted dramatically toward greater state intervention in the digital sphere over the past year. Of the 70 states covered by Freedom on the Net 2021, 48 pursued legal or administrative action against technology companies. Some measures reflected legitimate attempts to mitigate online harms, rein in misuse of data, or end manipulative market practices. Many governments, however, proposed new policies that obliged businesses to remove content and share personal data with authorities, at great cost to free expression, privacy, and public accountability.
This change in the balance of power between companies and states has come amid a historic crackdown on freedom of expression online. In 56 countries, officials arrested or convicted people for their online speech. Governments suspended internet access in at least 20 countries, and 21 states blocked access to social media platforms, most often during times of political turmoil such as protests and elections. Authorities in at least 45 countries are suspected of obtaining sophisticated spyware or data-extraction technology from private vendors.
“The rights of internet users around the world, especially the rights to free expression and privacy, are being massively violated as a result of recent state actions,” said Michael J. Abramowitz, president of Freedom House. “Instead of using regulation to curb the immense power of tech companies, many governments are wielding it for their own repressive purposes.”
The decision by several platforms to deactivate the accounts of outgoing US president Donald Trump—in the wake of the January 6 assault on the Capitol—intensified concerns about the arbitrary power of a few firms to shape political debate, as well as their responsibility to stem offline violence. The move sparked a plethora of new regulatory and legislative proposals, including bad-faith attempts to prevent companies from moderating the accounts of politicians and state-run media. Tech companies faced high-profile showdowns with illiberal and authoritarian leaders in India, Nigeria, Russia, and Turkey that will have global implications for the future of free expression online.
“In these high-stakes battles between governments and tech companies, human rights risk becoming the main casualties,” said Adrian Shahbaz, director for technology and democracy at Freedom House. “Given the examples to date, you can hardly blame people for being skeptical that government regulation will lead to greater protection of their rights online. Regulations should ensure that power does not accumulate in the hands of a few dominant actors, whether in government or the private sector.”
Internet freedom plummeted by 14 points in Myanmar—the largest annual decline ever recorded on Freedom on the Net’s 100-point scale—after the military refused to accept the results of the November 2020 general elections and launched a deadly coup in February 2021. Electoral disputes also led to major internet freedom declines in Belarus, where authoritarian incumbent Alyaksandr Lukashenka claimed victory in a fraudulent presidential election in August 2020, and Uganda, where authorities shut off the internet and blocked social media platforms during marred general elections in January 2021. In addition, officials in both Myanmar and Belarus sought to silence independent online media by shutting down news outlets and harassing, assaulting, and torturing online journalists.
“Governments everywhere are invoking a vague need to retake control of the internet—whether from foreign powers, multinational corporations, or even civil society,” said Shahbaz. “In the absence of a shared vision for a free and open internet, many states are imposing restrictions on the free flow of information across borders, denying people access to life-changing tools based solely on their location. This fragmentation is diminishing the emancipatory power of the internet.”
“The daunting complexity of internet regulation makes it all the more important for democracies to take the lead and set a high bar by introducing regulatory approaches that protect human rights online and preserve a free and open internet,” said Allie Funk, senior research analyst for technology and democracy at Freedom House. “The laissez-faire approach to the tech industry spurred some forms of innovation, but it has also created opportunities for authoritarian manipulation, data exploitation, and widespread malfeasance. Democratic governments should pursue well-crafted regulations that tackle these problems while protecting people’s rights to express themselves, share information across borders, and hold the powerful to account.”
KEY FINDINGS:
Global internet freedom declined for the 11th consecutive year. The greatest deteriorations were documented in Myanmar, Belarus, and Uganda, where state forces cracked down amid electoral and constitutional crises.
Governments clashed with technology companies on users’ rights. Authorities in at least 48 countries pursued new rules for tech companies on content, data, and competition over the past year. With a few positive exceptions, the push to regulate the tech industry, which stems in some cases from genuine problems like online harassment and manipulative market practices, is being exploited to subdue free expression and gain greater access to private data.
Free expression online is under unprecedented strain. More governments arrested users for nonviolent political, social, or religious speech than ever before. Officials suspended internet access in at least 20 countries, and 21 states blocked access to social media platforms. Authorities in at least 45 countries are suspected of obtaining sophisticated spyware or data-extraction technology from private vendors.
China ranks as the worst environment for internet freedom for the seventh year in a row. Chinese authorities imposed draconian prison terms for online dissent, independent reporting, and mundane daily communications. The COVID-19 pandemic remains one of the most heavily censored topics. Officials also cracked down on the country’s tech giants, citing their abuses related to competition and data protection, though the campaign further concentrated power in the hands of the authoritarian state.
The United States’ score declined for the fifth consecutive year. False, misleading, and manipulated information continued to proliferate online, even affecting public acceptance of the 2020 presidential election results. The new administration took promising steps to enforce stronger protections for internet users.
State intervention must protect human rights online and preserve an open internet. The emancipatory power of the internet depends on its egalitarian nature. To counter digital authoritarianism, democracies should ensure that regulations enable users to express themselves freely, share information across borders, and hold the powerful to account.
Freedom on the Net 2021 assesses internet freedom in 70 countries, accounting for 88 percent of internet users worldwide. The report focused on developments that occurred between June 2020 and May 2021. Detailed country reports, data on 21 internet freedom indicators, and policy recommendations can be found at freedomonthenet.org.
Freedom on the Net 2021: The Global Drive to Control Big Tech
In the high-stakes battle between states and technology companies, the rights of internet users have become the main casualties, according to Freedom on the Net 2021, the annual country-by-country assessment of internet freedom released by Freedom House. Read the Report
The Royal Australian Navy is forging ahead with its acquisition of new frigates. What electronic warfare capabilities might protect these new ships? The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) will start to commission the first of three ‘Hunter’ class frigates in 2031. These vessels are based on BAE Systems’ Type-26 class Global Combat Ship design. Alongside the […]
The military leaders from three countries had assembled with their interpreters in Beijing’s historic Forbidden City. Chinese general Wei Fenghe hosted North Korean vice-marshal Kim Jong-gwan and the Russian army general Valery Gerasimov. Those gathered were feeling quite jovial, as they clinked glasses of champagne.
“Fight fire with fire. Isn’t that what they say,” said vice-marshal Kim.
They all raised their glasses again.
Kim likened the newly formed CHRUNK (China-Russia-North Korea) to the AUKUS collaboration where the United States and United Kingdom agreed to partner and supply nuclear submarines to Australia. CHRUNK would see North Korea being provided with nuclear submarines by China and Russia.
“Uncle Sam isn’t going to like this,” added Kim with a wry grin.
“And what is Uncle Sam going to do about it?” said the usually dour-faced Gerasimov.
“What can Uncle Sam do about it?” said the wispy-haired general Wei. “Nothing.”
Kim and Gerasimov smiled at their Chinese host.
“You can probably expect an increase of American navy ships through the South China Sea,” said Gerasimov, waving his right arm off to his side. “And they’ll probably come with a flotilla of nuclear submarines. I hope they can navigate the sea,” he added referring to the USS Connecticut‘s recent collision.
“Let them come,” said Wei. “We each will have our own nuclear submarines now.”
“But the Americans, and of course the Brits and Aussies — the barking pets of the Americans — will complain about us contributing to nuclear proliferation,” considered Kim.
“Well, the Americans should have thought about that before providing nuclear submarines to Australia, and pissing Macron off in the process,” countered Gerasimov.
“The thing is that the Aussies don’t have nuclear weapons and you do,” said Wei looking at Kim.
“True, but we have a no-first-use policy just like China does,” demurred Kim.
Gerasimov struck a pose with his left arm across his body, his right elbow on his left hand, and his right hand tucked under his chin like Rodin’s “The Thinker.”
“There is nothing much more to sanction in any of us, as it is,” chuckled Gerasimov.
“And it helps that we cooperate to overcome the sanctions. At any rate, we Koreans will maintain our juche,” said Kim.
*****
Back in Washington, the mood was decidedly different than in Beijing. In the Oval Office president Joe Biden was fuming. “How dare they do this,” he bellowed, thumping his clenched fist on the table.
His inner circle sat silently. Vice-president Kamala Harris switched placement of her hands, one on top of the other on the lap of her pantsuit, à la the fashionista Hillary Clinton. National security adviser Jake Sullivan nodded his head. Secretary of defense Lloyd Austin sat stern-faced. Secretary of state Antony Blinken chimed in, “We have to do something about these communist upstarts.”
Austin turned to his colleague and looked at him solemnly. He thought to inform the secretary of state that Russia was no longer communist, but he bit his tongue. Then he spoke, “What do you propose we do? We have sanctioned them, done our best to get our allies to not do business with them, had their tech CFO holed up with extradition proceedings. We broke our One-China undertaking, and we sent gunboats to try and scare them. Where has all that gotten us?”
The air in the room grew heavy and tense. Aside from Biden, who now appeared to be nodding off, the others knew what the retired general Austin hinted at: the unthinkable. War. War with nuclear-armed adversaries.
*****
The Beijing meeting of CHRUNK concluded with a next agenda that proposed discussing freedom of navigation flotillas in the Straits of Florida, support for Puerto Rican independence, and possible CHRUNK expansion to Cuba and provisioning it with nuclear submarines.
“To protect Taiwan we must be prepared to go to war with China.”
~ Imperialists who just lost a war to the Taliban
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I’m genuinely disturbed at how many people would be willing to fight a world war over Taiwan’s governmental preferences. The power and effectiveness of the imperial propaganda machine never ceases to amaze me.
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The astonishing amount of pushback I’m getting for my very sane and normal “Let’s not fight World War Three over Taiwan” position makes it abundantly clear that many people don’t truly understand that starting a war means you have to actually send actual human beings to go fight that war.
The correct response to someone who supports going to war if China attacks Taiwan is “Are you enlisted?”
The correct response when they inevitably answer “no” is “Then shut the fuck up.”
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People who are fine with the idea of increasing aggressions between nuclear-armed nations simply haven’t thought hard enough about what nuclear war is and haven’t learned enough about the many different ways it could occur. It’s a comfort held in place by compartmentalization.
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The decision to go to war with China would be the single most important and consequential decision ever made in human history. You’d have to weigh it against millions to billions of deaths. Defending Taiwan’s preference of government clearly wouldn’t weigh enough to justify that cost.
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The empire's greatest weapon is not its military, but its propaganda machine.https://t.co/z9Balij66M
The empire’s greatest weapon is not its military but its propaganda machine. There’s simply never been anything like the global narrative control provided by the western news media, Silicon Valley, and Hollywood. The military fights wars, the propaganda machine wins them long before they start.
A lucid and well-informed examination of the world’s problems will keep bringing you back to this one fundamental issue: that Earth’s inhabitants are being psychologically manipulated at mass scale into organizing themselves in ways that serve the powerful instead of the people.
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Congratulations to those who were awarded the same highly esteemed Peace Prize as Barack Obama and Henry Kissinger.
It’s very cute how we all think that everyone else is gullible except for us. Even assuming that is true is already very gullible.
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Humans are not inherently fucked up, we’re just traumatized and manipulated by an abusive system into doing fucked up things. Very few of the ugly behaviors we see in people would exist if we had conscious and compassionate systems in place for organizing ourselves in this world.
Everyone gets that it’s wrong to blame an entire group on the misdeeds of a few of its members, but few people seem to apply that same logic to humanity as a whole. All our systems are dominated by the worst among us, simply because they’re sociopathic enough to climb to the top.
Really it just boils down to the fact that the majority don’t understand how sociopaths’ minds work or how to counter them, and that the trauma of preceding generations keeps giving rise to sociopaths. I think the initial trauma stretches back to our evolutionary ancestors who literally spent their lives running from giant monsters who were trying to eat them. Our nervous systems still operate that way today, even though those monsters are long gone.
If we could just catch a break for one or two generations to heal that trauma, I think we’d be fine. But we keep passing our trauma on to new generations because the worst among us keep thwarting everyone’s attempts to set up conscious systems.
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To compensate for the fact that it won’t ever give the left any economic concessions the empire has been loudly amplifying some concessions on racial and sexual justice, so now even though nothing really changed you still get rightists saying politics moved “too far to the left”. This gives the propagandists a couple of different tools: it keeps discourse tied up on issues that will never hurt the agendas of any plutocrat or warmonger, and feeds into the culture war dynamics which facilitate us-vs-them propaganda tactics.
Propaganda is the foundation of all our problems, and the us vs them dynamic is the foundation of propaganda. If humans can awaken in a visceral, experiential way to the reality that all is one we can inoculate ourselves against propaganda and begin moving toward health together.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that US troops have been stationed in Taiwan, which China considers part of its territory, for over one year. The Journal’s revelations, which Chinese officials saw as a semi-official announcement by the US government, came amid the most dangerous standoff between the US and China since the 1958 Taiwan Strait Crisis.
The US is playing a dangerous game of putting a public face on a policy of defending Taiwan from China, for which it has zero capability to implement.
Following a recent escalation of tensions between Beijing and Taipei, Chinese President Xi Jinping vowed on Saturday to pursue “reunification” with Taiwan by peaceful means and warned foreign nations about meddling in the issue.
For the past several years, the air force of the People’s Republic of China has been flying sorties into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone, or ADIZ, as a means of sending a signal to Taipei that China does not recognize its claims of independence and, as such, any notion of an ADIZ is null and void. These incidents, which have been escalating over the years, recently reached a crescendo: China, according to Taipei, flew 38 aircraft in two waves into Taiwan’s ADIZ on October 1, 39 more on October 2 (also in two waves), and 16 the following day.
In response, the US State Department spokesman Ned Price issued a statement.
The United States is very concerned by the People’s Republic of China’s provocative military activity near Taiwan, which is destabilizing, risks miscalculations, and undermines regional peace and stability. We urge Beijing to cease its military, diplomatic, and economic pressure and coercion against Taiwan.
Taiwan belongs to China and the US is in no position to make irresponsible remarks. The relevant remarks by the US side seriously violate the one-China principle and the stipulations of the three China-US joint communiqués and send an extremely wrong and irresponsible signal.
On October 4, Taipei said that China sent its largest wave of aircraft yet into Taiwan’s ADIZ, some 56 in total, including 36 J-16 and Su-30 fighter jets, 12 nuclear-capable H-6 bombers, 2 Y-8 anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft and two KJ-500 airborne early warning and control (AEW&C) aircraft.
Alarmed by these developments, Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen declared that
Taiwan does not seek military confrontation. It hopes for a peaceful, stable, predictable, and mutually beneficial coexistence with its neighbors. But Taiwan will also do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life.
‘Whatever it takes’, however, is an infinite concept backed up by the finite reality that Taiwan has a military of about 165,000 active-duty troops and about 1.6 million reserve soldiers which has been equipped with billions of dollars of advanced American-made military equipment.
While Taiwan’s military may look good on paper, it is ill-prepared for the realities of the kind of full-scale combat that will be directed at them if China ever decides to go through with an invasion. As the world learned in Afghanistan, impressive numbers on paper do not automatically translate into an impressive fighting force on the ground. And China would be delivering violence on a scale several orders of magnitude above what the Taliban could ever contemplate.
If China ever decided to invade Taiwan, the working assumption would be that it had conducted an extensive intelligence-based assessment of its chances of victory, which would have to be near-certain in order for China to undertake an action that would bring with it the condemnation of much of the world. China would have located with pin-point precision the garrisons and deployment locations of every major Taiwanese ground combat unit. It would have done the same with every combat-capable aircraft in the Taiwanese inventory. And it would have identified the logistics bases used by Taiwan to sustain its frontline combat forces. All of these would be subjected to extensive pre-assault bombardment by the Chinese air and ballistic missile forces.
Any surviving Taiwanese units would then be faced with the daunting task of repelling a massive invasion which would likely comprise a combination of amphibious and air assault forces. Assuming enough units survived the pre-assault bombardment to put up a competent defense, they would rapidly run through their on-hand stocks of ammunition, fuel, and food. Units that were cut off from resupply would begin to surrender, and the notion of surrender would become contagious. Pockets of die-hard defenders could survive to fight on for a period, but the reality is that Taiwan would fall in less than a week.
Much has been made about the US ability to come to Taiwan’s defense. While the US may have made great waves sailing its navy through the Taiwan Strait, such a maneuver would be suicidal in a time of conflict. The US Navy would be relegated to standing by far to the east of Taiwan, out of the range of China’s deadly ballistic missile capability, launching aircraft which would have limited combat capability given fuel and weight limitations. The same holds true for the US Air Force. The fact is, any aircraft the US dispatched to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion would be rapidly attritted, with no replacements available in a time frame that could change the course of the battle on the ground in Taiwan.
Much has been made about media reports concerning the presence of US forces in Taiwan for the purpose of training the Taiwan military. These forces are not part of any formal alliance or defense pact, but rather part of what is known as “foreign internal defense” training missions, in this case involving a few dozen US Special Forces and US Marines doing small-unit training. This is not the kind of large-scale operational training undertaken by formal alliances such as NATO, where interoperability is essential for any joint combat operations.
The best the US could hope to do when it comes to defending Taiwan would be to modify existing warplanes for the reinforcement of South Korea. This war plan, known as OPLAN-5027, has a subsection known as a Time-Phased Deployment List, or TPFDL, which has identified the forces and equipment necessary to reinforce South Korea in time of war. At one time, the TPFDL had earmarked 690,000 troops, 160 Navy ships, and 1,600 aircraft for deployment from the US to South Korea within 90 days of a war breaking out on the Korean peninsula.
Two things come to mind—by the time the US cavalry was ready to arrive in Taiwan, they would be about 83 days too late. And, more importantly, China would have consolidated its hold on Taiwan making any US effort to retake it suicidal. OPLAN-5027 envisions US forces flowing into South Korean ports that are controlled by the South Korean government. It is not an amphibious assault plan, and any effort to transform it into one would fail.
This is the reality-based state of play today when it comes to the defense of Taiwan by the US. The only alteration that could be made would be for the US to use nuclear weapons in defense of Taiwan. This, of course, would trigger a general nuclear war with China, and the US is not prepared to commit national suicide for a nation it doesn’t even have a formal defensive pact with.
Ned Price might want to keep all of this in mind the next time he approaches the microphone to speak about defending Taiwan. He and the rest of the US government are writing checks with their mouths neither Taiwan nor the US military can cash. A better course of action would be to work with China and Taiwan toward the goal of peaceful unification which preserves intact the democratic system of government that exists in Taiwan.
Taiwan has been in the news a lot lately, and it’s really bringing out the crazy in people.
The mass media have been falsely reporting that China has been encroaching on Taiwan’s “air defense zone”, which gets stretched into the even more ludicrous claim that China “sent warplanes flying over Taiwan”. In reality Chinese planes simply entered an arbitrarily designated area hundreds of miles from Taiwan’s coast it calls its “Air Defence Identification Zone”, which has no legally recognized existence and contains a significant portion of China’s mainland. This is likely a response to the way the US and its allies have been constantly sailing war ships into disputed waters to threaten Beijing.
As Moon of Alabama reports, US warmongers inflamed this non-controversy even further by feeding a story to the press about the already public information that there are American troops in Taiwan training the military there, citing “concern” about the danger posed by China.
This past weekend, warships from six countries entered the South China Sea. Nearly all came from the other side of the world.
Chinese aircraft also briefly entered the "Taiwan ADIZ" — an air defense zone unrecognized by international law.
Now headlines are blaring about President Tsai Ing-wen responding to this non-event with the announcement that Taiwan will “do whatever it takes to defend its freedom and democratic way of life.” Former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott just visited Taipei to advocate that “democracies stand shoulder to shoulder” with Taiwan against China. The CIA has announced the creation of a new spy center that will focus solely on China, which CIA Director William Burns says will “further strengthen our collective work on the most important geopolitical threat we face in the 21st century: an increasingly adversarial Chinese government”.
A recent poll says that now more than half of Americans would support sending US troops to defend Taiwan from an invasion by the mainland, plainly the result of the aggressive propaganda campaign that has greatly escalated public hysteria about China. In Australia the mass media are cranking out unbelievably insane 60 Minutes episodes ridiculously pushing the idea that China may attack Australia and that Australians should be willing to go to war to protect Taiwan. I’ve been having many disturbing interactions with people online who emphatically support the idea of the US and its allies going to war with China over Taiwanese independence.
This is clearly nuts, and anyone who buys into this line of thinking is a brainwashed fool.
This isn’t some kind of complicated anti-imperialist issue, and it has nothing to do with which side you take in the debate over what government Taiwan belongs under. The US and its allies engaging in a full-scale war with nuclear-armed China over Taiwan is a prospect that should be vehemently opposed out of simple, garden variety self-preservation.
Obviously if Beijing decides to launch a military assault on Taiwan in its bid to reunify China that would be a terrible thing which would cause a lot of suffering. I don’t think that will happen unless western powers push Taipei into declaring independence or otherwise upset the delicate diplomacy dance in some major way, but if it does happen under any circumstances that would be awful.
But Taiwanese independence is not worth fighting a world war that could kill millions, and potentially billions if things go nuclear. This should be extremely obvious to everyone.
War proponents will reference Hitler, as they literally always do whenever there’s talk of war against someone the United States doesn’t like, arguing that China taking Taiwan would be like the Nazis invading Poland after which they’ll just keep invading and conquering until they are stopped. But there’s no evidence that China has any interest in invading Japan, much less Australia, still less everyone else, or that it has any ambitions on the world stage beyond reunification and securing its own economic and security interests.
The idea that China wants to take over a bunch of foreign lands, make you live under communism and give you a social credit score is the same kind of foam-brained bigoted othering which told previous generations that Black men want to take over your neighborhood so they can have sex with your wives. It’s the sort of belief that can only find purchase in an emotionally primitive mind that lacks the ability to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and understand that not everyone wants what you have.
The jarring amount of pushback I’ve been getting for my very sane and moderate position that we should not be willing to start World War Three between nuclear powers over Taiwanese independence makes it abundantly clear that many people don’t truly understand that starting a war means you have to actually send actual human beings to go fight that war. All the big brave warrior men bloviating about the need to stand up to China know they’ll never find themselves on the front line of that conflict because they’re too old, but they’ll happily send my kids and the kids of countless of other mothers to go and fight in it. It’s like a video game or a movie to them.
Propaganda has made us so compartmentalized and detached from the realities of the horrors of war. If people could really see what war is and what it does, truly grok deep down in their guts how their own governments are inflicting those horrors on people right now, they’d fall to their knees in anguish and never again advocate for such things. No sane person would support a war of this scale if they truly understood what it would mean.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
The overwhelming majority of intellectuals have historically been servants of the status quo.
That was the case more than half a century ago, when Noam Chomsky pointed out as much in his classic essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” and it continues to be the case today, when oppositional public intellectuals continue to be a small minority.
Indeed, if anything, the number of critical/oppositional public intellectuals — in other words, thinkers who are versed to speak on a wide range of issues from an anti-establishment standpoint — has been in decline in recent decades, even as the public sphere has grown bigger and louder due to the dramatic expansion of the internet and social media. One factor in this trend may be universities’ overwhelming emphasis on narrow, specialized and even arcane knowledge, and a resistance within academic culture to prioritizing making an impact on the public arena by addressing issues that affect directly people’s lives and challenge the status quo. Another factor may be the rising tide of anti-intellectualism in the U.S. and beyond.
Yet, in a highly fragile world facing existential threats, we need the voice of critical intellectuals more than any other time in history. In the interview that follows, Noam Chomsky — the scholar, public thinker and activist who has been described as a “world treasure’” and “arguably the most important intellectual alive” — discusses the urgent need for more intellectuals not to “speak truth to power” but to speak with the powerless.
C.J. Polychroniou: Long ago, in your celebrated essay “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” you argued that intellectuals must insist on truth and expose lies, but must also analyze events in their historical perspective. Now, while you never implied that this is the only responsibility that intellectuals have, don’t you think that the role of intellectuals has changed dramatically over the course of the last half century or so? I mean, true, critical/oppositional intellectuals were always few and far between in the modern Western era, but there were always giants in our midst whose voice and status were not only revered by a fair chunk of the citizenry, but, in some cases, produced fear and even awe among the members of the ruling class. Today, we have mainly functional/conformist “intellectuals” who focus on narrow, highly specialized and technical areas, and do not dare to challenge the status quo or speak out against social evils out of fear of losing their job, being denied tenure and promotion, or not having access to grants. Indeed, whatever happened to public intellectuals like Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre, and to iconic artists like Picasso with his fight against fascism?
Noam Chomsky: Well, what did happen to Bertrand Russell?
Russell was jailed during World War I along with the handful of others who dared to oppose that glorious enterprise: Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht, Eugene Debs — who was even excluded from postwar amnesty by the vengeful Woodrow Wilson — to mention only the most famous. Some were treated more kindly, like Randolph Bourne, merely ostracized and barred from liberal intellectual circles and journals. Russell’s later career had many ugly episodes, including his being declared by the courts to be too free-thinking to be allowed to teach at City College, a flood of vilification from high places because of his opposition to the Vietnam War, scurrilous treatment even after his death.
Not all that unusual for those who break ranks, no matter how distinguished their contributions, as Russell’s surely were.
The term “intellectual” itself is a strange one. It is not applied to a Nobel laureate who devotes his life to physics, or to the janitor in his building who may have little formal education but deep insight and perceptive understanding of human affairs, history, culture. The term is used, usually, to refer to a category of people with a degree of privilege who are somehow regarded to be the guardians of society’s intellectual and moral values. They are supposed to uphold and articulate those values and call upon others to adhere to them.
Within this category there is a small minority who challenge power, authority and received doctrine. It is sometimes held that their responsibility is “to speak truth to power.” I’ve always found that troubling. The powerful typically know the truth quite well. They generally know what they are doing, and don’t need our instructions. They also will not benefit from moral lessons, not because they are necessarily bad people, but because they play a certain institutional role, and if they abandon that role, somebody else will fill it as long as the institutions persist. There is no point instructing CEOs of the fossil fuel industry that their activities are damaging communities and destroying the environment and our climate. They’ve known that for a long time. They also know that if they depart from dedication to profit and concern themselves with the human impact of what they are doing, they’ll be out on the streets and someone will replace them to carry out the institutionally required tasks.
There remains a range of options, but it is narrow.
It would make a lot more sense to speak truth not to power, but to its victims. If you speak truth to the powerless, it’s possible that it could benefit somebody. It might help people confront the problems in their lives more realistically. It might even help them to act and organize in such ways as to compel the powerful to modify institutions and practices; and, even more significantly, to challenge illegitimate structures of authority and the institutions on which they are realized and thereby expand the scope of freedom and justice. It won’t happen in any other way, and it’s often happened in that way in the past.
But I don’t think that’s right either. The task of a responsible person — anyone who wants to uphold intellectual and moral values — is not to speak what they regard as truth to anybody — the powerful or the powerless — but rather to speak with the powerless and to try to learn the truth. That’s always a collective endeavor and wisdom and understanding need not come from any particular turf.
But that’s quite rare in the history of intellectuals.
Let’s recall that the term “intellectual” came into use in its modern sense with the Dreyfus trial in France in the late 19th century. Today we admire and respect those who stood up for justice in their defense of Dreyfus, but if you look back at that time, they were a persecuted minority. The “immortals” of the French Academy bitterly condemned these preposterous writers and artists for daring to challenge the august leaders and institutions of the French State. The prominent figure of the Dreyfusards, Emile Zola, had to flee from France.
That’s pretty typical. Take almost any society you like and you will find that there is a fringe of critical dissidents and that they are usually subjected to one or another form of punishment. Those I mentioned are no exception. In recent history, in Russian-run Eastern Europe, they could be jailed; if it was in our own domains, in Central or South America, they could be tortured and murdered. In both cases, there was harsh repression of people who are critical of established power.
That goes back as far as you like, all the way back to classical Greece. Who was the person who drank the hemlock? It was the person who was “corrupting” the youth of Athens by asking searching questions that are better hidden away. Take a look at the Biblical record, roughly about the same period. It’s kind of oral history, but in what’s reconstructed from it, there were people who by our standards might be called intellectuals — people who condemned the king and his crimes, called for mercy for widows and orphans, other subversive acts. How were they treated? They were imprisoned, driven into the desert, reviled. There were intellectuals who were respected, flatterers at the Court. Centuries later, they were called False Prophets, but not at the time. And if you think through history, that pattern is replicated quite consistently.
The basic operative principle was captured incisively by McGeorge Bundy, a leading liberal intellectual, noted scholar, former Harvard dean, national security adviser under Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, then director of the Ford Foundation. In 1968, when protest against the Vietnam War was peaking, Bundy published an article in the main establishment journal Foreign Affairs in which he discussed protest against the war. Much of the protest was legitimate, he conceded: there had in retrospect been some mistakes in managing such a complex effort. But then there was a fringe of “wild men in the wings” who merit only contempt. The wild men actually descended so far as to look into motives. That is, they treated the U.S. political leadership by the standards applied to others, and hence must be excluded from polite company.
Bundy’s analysis was in fact the norm among liberal intellectuals. Their publications soberly distinguished the “technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals” from the “value-oriented intellectuals.” The former are the good guys, who orchestrate and inform policy, and are duly honored for their constructive work — the Henry Kissingers, the kind who loyally transmit orders from their half-drunk boss for a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia, “anything that flies against anything that moves.” A call for genocide that’s not easy to duplicate in the archival record. The latter are the wild men in the wings who prate about moral value, justice, international law and other sentimentalities.
The U.S. isn’t El Salvador. The wild men don’t have their brains blown out by elite battalions armed and trained in Washington, like the six leading Latin American intellectuals, Jesuit priests, who suffered this fate along with their housekeeper and her daughter on the eve of the fall of the Berlin Wall. Who even knows their names? Properly, one might argue, since there were many other religious martyrs among the hundreds of thousands slaughtered in Washington’s crusade in Central America in the 1980s, managed with the assistance of technocratic and policy-oriented intellectuals.
It is, regrettably, all too easy to continue.
I believe it would be of great interest if you talked about the historical context of “The Responsibility of Intellectuals,” but also if you elaborate on what you mean when you say intellectuals must see events from their historical perspective.
The essay was based on a talk given in1966 to a student group at Harvard. It was published in the group’s journal. They’ve probably expunged it since. It was the Harvard Hillel Society. The journal is Mosaic. This was a year before Israel’s military victory in 1967, a great gift to the U.S., which led to a sharp re-orientation in U.S.-Israeli policies and major shifts in popular culture and attitudes in the U.S. — an interesting and important story, but not for here.
The New York Review of Books published an edited version.
Since the talk was at Harvard, it was particularly important to focus on intellectual elites and their special links to government. The Harvard faculty was quite prominent in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. Camelot mythology is in considerable part their creation. But as we’ve been discussing, it’s just one phase in a long history of intellectual service to power. It’s still unfolding without fundamental change, though the activism of the ‘60s and its aftermath has substantially changed much of the country, widening the wings in which “wild men” can pursue their value-oriented subversion.
This impact has also greatly broadened the historical perspective from which events of the world are perceived. No one today would write a major diplomatic history of the U.S. recounting how after the British yoke was overthrown, the former colonists, in the words of Thomas Bailey, “concentrated on the task of felling trees and Indians and of rounding out their natural boundaries” — in “self-defense,” of course. Few in the ‘60s fully grasped the fact that our “forever wars” began in 1783. The horrendous 400-year record of torture of African Americans was also scarcely acknowledged by mainstream academics; more, and worse, is constantly being unearthed. The same is true in other areas. Dedicated and conscientious activism can open many windows for valuable historical perspective to be gained.
The world has changed a great deal since the era of the Vietnam War, and I think you would agree with me that we are facing greater challenges today than ever before. Moreover, we live in a much smaller world, and some of the challenges facing us are truly global in nature and scope. In that context, what should be the role of intellectuals and of social movements in a globalized world and with a shared future for humanity?
You’re quite right that we face far greater challenges today than during the Vietnam era. In 1968, when liberal intellectuals were excoriating the value-oriented “wild men,” the leading issue was that “Viet-Nam as a cultural and historic entity [was] threatened with extinction [as] the countryside literally dies under the blows of the largest military machine ever unleashed on an area of this size,” the judgment of the most respected Vietnam specialist, military historian Bernard Fall.
It is now organized human society worldwide that is “threatened with extinction” under the blows of environmental destruction, overwhelmingly by the rich, concentrated in the rich countries. That’s apart from the no less ominous and growing threat of nuclear holocaust, being stoked as we speak.
We are living in an era of confluence of crises that has no counterpart in human history. For each of these, feasible solutions are known, though time is short. There is no need to waste words on responsibility.
Who is undertaking the historic task of addressing these crises? Who carried out the Global Climate Strike on September 24, a desperate attempt to wake up the dithering leaders of global society, and citizens who have been lulled into passivity by elite treachery? We know the answer: the young, the inheritors of our folly. It should be deeply painful to witness the scene at Davos, the annual gathering where the rich and powerful posture in their self-righteousness, and applaud politely when Greta Thunberg instructs them quietly and expertly on the catastrophe they have been blithely creating.
It’s clear the rich are thinking: Nice little girl. Now go back to school where you belong and leave the serious problems to us, the enlightened political leaders, the soulful corporations working day and night for the common good, the responsible intellectuals. We’ll take care of it, ensuring that the betrayal will be apocalyptic — as it will be, if we grant them the power to run the world in accord with the principles they have established and implemented.
The principles are not obscure. Right now, governments of the world, the U.S. foremost among them, are pressuring oil producers to increase production — having just been advised in the August IPCC report, by far the direst yet, that catastrophe is looming unless we begin right now to reduce fossil fuel use year by year, effectively phasing them out by mid-century. Petroleum industry journals are euphoric about the discovery of new fields to exploit as demand for oil increases. The business press debates whether the U.S. fracking industry or OPEC is best placed to increase production.
Congress is debating a bill that might have slightly slowed the race to destruction. The denialist party is 100 percent opposed, so the fate of legislation is in the hands of the “moderate” Democrats, particularly Joe Manchin. He has made his position on climate explicit: “Spending on innovation, not elimination.” Straight out of the playbook of PR departments of the fossil fuel companies, no surprise from Congress’s leading recipient of fossil fuel compensation. Fossil fuel use must continue unimpeded, driving us to catastrophe in the interests of short-term profit for the very rich. Period.
On the rest of the Biden package, Manchin — the swing vote — has made it clear that he will accept only a trickle, also insisting on cumbersome and degrading means testing for what is standard practice in the civilized world. The posture is certainly not for the benefit of his constituents. As for other “moderates,” it is much the same. Without far more intense public pressure, there was never much hope that this Congress would allow the country to begin to beat back the cruel assault of overwhelming business power.
There is no need to tarry on what this entails about responsibility.
And again, we dare not neglect the cloud that was cast over the world by human intelligence 75 years ago and has been darkening in recent years. The arms control regime that had been laboriously constructed over many decades has been systematically dismantled by the last two Republican administrations, first Bush II and the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, then Trump wielding his wrecking ball with abandon. He left office barely in time for Biden to salvage the New START Treaty, accepting Russia’s pleas to extend it. Biden continues, however, to support the bloated military budget, to pursue the race to develop more dangerous weapons, and to carry out highly provocative acts where diplomacy and negotiations are surely possible.
A major point of contention right now is “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea. More accurately, as Australian strategic analyst Clinton Fernandes points out, the conflict concerns military/intelligence operations in China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) extending 200 miles offshore. The U.S. holds that such operations are permissible in all EEZs. China holds that they are not. India agrees with China’s interpretation, and vigorously protested recent U.S. military operations in its EEZ.
EEZs were established by the 1982 Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The U.S. is the only maritime power not to have ratified the Law, but asserts that it will not violate it. The relevant wording about military operations in the Law is not entirely precise. Surely this is a clear case where diplomacy is in order, not highly provocative actions in a region of considerable tension, with the threat of escalation, possibly without bounds.
All of this is part of the U.S. effort to “contain China.” Or, to put it differently, to establish “The fact that somehow, the rise of 20 per cent of humanity from abject poverty into something approaching a modern state, is illegitimate — but more than that, by its mere presence, an affront to the United States. It is not that China presents a threat to the United States — something China has never articulated nor delivered — rather, its mere presence represents a challenge to United States pre-eminence.”
This is the quite realistic assessment of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, reacting to the recent AUKUS (Australia-U.K.-U.S.) agreement to sell eight advanced nuclear submarines to Australia, to be incorporated in the U.S. naval command in order to respond to the “threat of China.”
The agreement abrogates a France-Australia agreement for sale of conventional subs. With typical imperial arrogance, Washington did not even notify France, instructing the European Union on its place in the U.S.-run global order. In reaction, France recalled its ambassadors to the U.S. and Australia, ignoring the U.K., a mere vassal state.
Australian military correspondent Brian Toohey observes that Australia’s submission to the U.S. does not enhance its security — quite the contrary — and that AUKUS has no discernable strategic purpose. The subs will not be operational for over a decade, by which time China will surely have expanded its military forces to deal with this new military threat, just as it has done to deal with the fact that it is ringed by nuclear-armed missiles in some of the 800 military bases that the U.S. has around the world (China has one, Djibouti).
Toohey outlines the naval military balance that is disrupted further by AUKUS. It’s worth quoting directly to help understand how China threatens the U.S. — not in the Caribbean or the California coast, but on China’s borders:
China’s nuclear weapons are so inferior that it couldn’t be confident of deterring a retaliatory strike from the US. Take the example of nuclear-powered, ballistic missile-armed submarines (SSBNs). China has four Jin-class SSBNs. Each can carry 12 missiles, each with a single warhead. The subs are easy to detect because they’re noisy. According to the US Office of Naval Intelligence, each is noisier than a Soviet submarine first launched in 1976. Russian and US subs are now much quieter. China is expected to acquire another four SSBNs that are a little quieter by 2030. However, the missiles on the subs won’t have the range to reach the continental US from near their base on Hainan island in the South China Sea. To target the continental US, they would have to reach suitable locations in the Pacific Ocean. However, they are effectively bottled up inside the South China Sea. To escape, they have to pass through a series of chokepoints where they would be easily sunk by US hunter killer nuclear submarines of the type the [Australian] Morrison government wants to buy. In contrast, the US has 14 Ohio-class SSBNs. Each can launch 24 Trident missiles, each containing eight independently targetable warheads able to reach anywhere on the globe. This means a single US submarine can destroy 192 cities, or other targets, compared to 12 for the Chinese submarine. The Ohio class is now being replaced by the bigger Columbia class. These [are being] constructed at the same time as new US hunter killer submarines.
That’s before eight new advanced nuclear subs are built for Australia. In nuclear forces generally and other relevant military capacity, China is of course far behind the U.S., as are all potential U.S. adversaries combined.
AUKUS does serve a purpose, however: to establish more firmly that the U.S. intends to rule the world, even if that requires escalating the threat of war, possibly terminal nuclear war, in a highly volatile region. And eschewing such “sissified” measures as diplomacy.
It is not the only example. One of these should have been on the front pages in the past few weeks as the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, executing Trump’s cynical sell-out of Afghans in his February 2020 deal with the Taliban.
The obvious question is: Why did the Bush administration invade 20 years ago? The U.S. had no interest in Afghanistan, as Bush’s pronouncements at the time made explicit; the real prize was Iraq, then beyond. Bush also made it clear that the administration also had little interest in Osama bin Laden or al-Qaeda. That lack of concern was made fully explicit by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when the Taliban offered surrender. “We do not negotiate surrenders,” Rumsfeld stormed.
The only plausible explanation for the invasion was given by the most highly respected leader of the anti-Taliban resistance, Abdul Haq. He was interviewed shortly after the invasion by Asia scholar Anatol Lieven.
Haq said that the invasion will kill many Afghans and undermine promising Afghan efforts to undermine the Taliban regime from within, but that’s not Washington’s concern: “the US is trying to show its muscle, score a victory and scare everyone in the world. They don’t care about the suffering of the Afghans or how many people we will lose.”
That also seems a fair description of current U.S. strategy in “containing the China threat” by provocative escalation in place of diplomacy. It’s no innovation in imperial history.
Returning to the responsibility of intellectuals and how it is being fulfilled, no elaboration should be necessary.
