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Category: China

  • Belabored: Strike Averted at the New Yorker, with Gili Ostfield

    Reflections on what The New Yorker Union won, how they did it, and what other workers can learn from their victory.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Why Democracies in G7 and NATO Should Reject U.S. Leadership

    Photo credit: BPM Media – Protest at G7 summit in Cornwall UK

    The world has been treated to successive spectacles of national leaders gathering at a G7 Summit in Cornwall and a NATO Summit in Brussels.

    The U.S. corporate media have portrayed these summits as chances for President Biden to rally the leaders of the world’s democratic nations in a coordinated response to the most serious problems facing the world, from the COVID pandemic, climate change and global inequality to ill-defined “threats to democracy” from Russia and China.

    But there’s something seriously wrong with this picture. Democracy means “rule by the people.” While that can take different forms in different countries and cultures, there is a growing consensus in the United States that the exceptional power of wealthy Americans and corporations to influence election results and government policies has led to a de facto system of government that fails to reflect the will of the American people on many critical issues.

    So when President Biden meets with the leaders of democratic countries, he represents a country that is, in many ways, an undemocratic outlier rather than a leader among democratic nations. This is evident in:

    – the “legalized bribery” of 2020’s $14.4 billion federal election, compared with recent elections in Canada and the U.K. that cost less than 1% of that, under strict rules that ensure more democratic results;

    – a defeated President proclaiming baseless accusations of fraud and inciting a mob to invade the U.S. Congress on January 6 2021;

    – news media that have been commercialized, consolidated, gutted and dumbed down by their corporate owners, making Americans easy prey for misinformation by unscrupulous interest groups, and leaving the U.S. in 44th place on Reporters Without Borders’ Press Freedom Index;

    – the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, with over two million people behind bars, and systemic police violence on a scale never seen in other wealthy nations;

    – the injustice of extreme inequality, poverty and cradle-to-grave debt for millions in an otherwise wealthy nation;

    – an exceptional lack of economic and social mobility compared to other wealthy countries that is the antithesis of the mythical “American Dream”;

    – privatized, undemocratic and failing education and healthcare systems;

    – a recent history of illegal invasions, massacres of civilians, torture, drone assassinations, extraordinary renditions and indefinite detention at Guantanamo—with no accountabllity;

    – and, last but not least, a gargantuan war machine capable of destroying the world, in the hands of this dysfunctional political system.

    Fortunately, though, Americans are not the only ones asking what is wrong with American democracy. The Alliance of Democracies Foundation (ADF), founded by former Danish Prime Minister and NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, conducted a poll of 50,000 people in 53 countries between February and April 2021, and found that people around the world share our concerns about America’s dystopian political system and imperial outrages.

    Probably the most startling result of the poll to Americans would be its finding that more people around the world (44%) see the United States as a threat to democracy in their countries than China (38%) or Russia (28%), which makes nonsense of U.S. efforts to justify its revived Cold War on Russia and China in the name of democracy.

    In a larger poll of 124,000 people that ADF conducted in 2020, countries where large majorities saw the United States as a danger to democracy included China, but also Germany, Austria, Denmark, Ireland, France, Greece, Belgium, Sweden and Canada.

    After tea with the Queen at Windsor Castle, Biden swooped into Brussels on Air Force One for a NATO summit to advance its new “Strategic Concept,” which is nothing more than a war plan for World War III against both Russia and China.

    But we take solace from evidence that the people of Europe, whom the NATO war plan counts on as front-line troops and mass casualty victims, are not ready to follow President Biden to war. A January 2021 survey by the European Council on Foreign Affairs found that large majorities of Europeans want to remain neutral in any U.S. war on Russia or China. Only 22% would want their country to take the U.S. side in a war on China, and 23% in a war on Russia.

    Few Americans realize that Biden already came close to war with Russia in March and April, when the United States and NATO supported a new Ukrainian offensive in its civil war against Russian-allied separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. Russia moved tens of thousands of heavily-armed troops to its borders with Ukraine, to make it clear that it was ready to defend its Ukrainian allies and was quite capable of doing so. On April 13th, Biden blinked, turned round two U.S. destroyers that were steaming into the Black Sea and called Putin to request the summit that is now taking place.

    The antipathy of ordinary people everywhere toward the U.S. determination to provoke military confrontation with Russia and China begs serious questions about the complicity of their leaders in these incredibly dangerous, possibly suicidal, U.S. policies. When ordinary people all over the world can see the dangers and pitfalls of following the United States as a model and a leader, why do their neoliberal leaders keep showing up to lend credibility to the posturing of U.S. leaders at summits like the G7 and NATO?

    Maybe it is precisely because the United States has succeeded in what the corporate ruling classes of other nations also aspire to, namely, greater concentrations of wealth and power and less public interference in their “freedom” to accumulate and control them.

    Maybe the leaders of other wealthy countries and military powers are genuinely awed by the dystopian American Dream as the example par excellence of how to sell inequality, injustice and war to the public in the name of freedom and democracy.

    In that case, the fact that people in other wealthy countries are not so easily led to war or lured into political passivity and impotence would only increase the awe of their leaders for their American counterparts, who literally laugh all the way to the bank as they pay lip service to the sanctity of the American Dream and the American People.

    Ordinary people in other countries are right to be wary of the Pied Piper of American “leadership,” but their rulers should be too. The fracturing and disintegration of American society should stand as a warning to neoliberal governments and ruling classes everywhere to be more careful what they wish for.

    Instead of a world in which other countries emulate or fall victim to America’s failed experiment in extreme neoliberalism, the key to a peaceful, sustainable and prosperous future for all the world’s people, including Americans, lies in working together, learning from each other and adopting policies that serve the public good and improve the lives of all, especially those most in need. There’s a name for that. It’s called democracy.

    The post Why Democracies in G7 and NATO Should Reject U.S. Leadership first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • On Contact: Dying For An iPhone

    On the show this week, Chris Hedges talks to Professor Jenny Chan about the people in China who make iPhones, iPads and Kindles, driving the huge profits of two of the world’s most powerful companies – Foxconn, the world’s largest provider of electronics manufacturing services, and Apple with its $2 trillion market value.

    Jenny Chan, along with Mark Selden and Pun Ngai, did extensive field research for almost a decade to produce their book, ‘Dying for an iPhone: Apple, Foxconn, and The Lives of China’s Workers’. What they show is that workers in China earn a fraction of what unionized workers in the United States earn. They have no job protection, are forced to work punishing hours of overtime, as much as 130 hours of overtime a month, live under constant surveillance, are severely disciplined for minor infractions and must meet punishing quotas that leave them physically drained and sometimes injured and sick.

    The post On Contact: Dying For An iPhone appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • NATO Summit: Building Unity against Russia, China, Cyberattacks

    NATO members at its first in-person gathering since 2018 have adopted a new 2030 strategic concept proposed by Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. The joint communiqué of the bloc’s 30 nations said that they agreed further to strengthen NATO in the face of any threats.

    “[We will] strengthen NATO as the organizing framework for the collective defense of the Euro-Atlantic area, against all threats, from all directions,” the statement said.

    The alliance members have stated that they are facing “systemic competition from assertive and authoritarian powers” as well as growing security challenges. They specifically focused on Russia and China, among the leading causes of their concerns, with a nod to the nuclear deal with Iran.

    The post NATO Summit: Building Unity against Russia, China, Cyberattacks appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Pentagon Papers Whistleblower Reveals US Weighed 1958 Nuclear Strike on China

    As President Biden meets with leaders of NATO countries, where he is expected to continue stepping up rhetoric against China and Russia ahead of his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin this Wednesday in Geneva, we speak with famed Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg about why he recently released another classified document showing that U.S. military planners in 1958 pushed for nuclear strikes on China to protect Taiwan from an invasion by communist forces. The top-secret study revealed the U.S. military pressed then-President Dwight Eisenhower to prepare a nuclear first strike against mainland China during the Taiwan Strait crisis of 1958. Taiwan “could really only be defended, if at all, by the U.S. initiating nuclear war against China,” says Ellsberg. The document also shows that U.S. military planners were ready to accept the risk that the Soviet Union would launch its own nuclear retaliation, including against Japan. Although Ellsberg’s online release of the document was publicized in May, he reveals that he shared the same information with Japan decades earlier. “I had given the entire study to the Japanese Diet,” Ellsberg says.

    TRANSCRIPT

    This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

    AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now! I’m Amy Goodman.

    This week does mark the 50th anniversary since The New York Times published the first excerpts of the Pentagon Papers, leaked by our guest, the legendary whistleblower Dan Ellsberg. Last month, he made headlines again after sharing a top-secret document with The New York Times revealing that the U.S. military in 1958 pressed then-President Dwight Eisenhower to prepare a nuclear first strike against mainland China during the Taiwan Strait crisis. The document shows U.S. military planners were ready to accept the risk that at the time the Soviet Union would launch its own nuclear retaliation on behalf of its ally China and that millions of people would die.

    Dan, can you talk about the document and why you decided now to release it, decades after it was actually written? And the significance of it today? Could have gone to nuclear war in 1958. If we made it to now, what it means, as President Biden ups the rhetoric against China and Russia, as he makes his way, his first international trip, from NATO to the summit with Putin?

    DANIEL ELLSBERG: It was clear, even in 1958, that to defend a couple of rocks occupied by Chinese nationalist Chiang Kai-shek forces one mile off the mainland — Quemoy and Matsu — could really only be defended, if at all, by U.S. initiating nuclear war against China. And nevertheless, the president and the Joint Chiefs all agreed that if the Chinese pressed their attack, their blockade of Quemoy, we would have to and we would use nuclear weapons against China, and that that would lead, they assumed, rightly or wrongly — I would guess, wrongly — but they assumed that the Soviet Union would respond, annihilating Taiwan. Ten years later, we heard about destroying a town to save it: Ben Tre in South Vietnam. Well, we were going to destroy Quemoy and Taiwan to save it from the communists in ’58. And more recently, it would seem, people are talking that way.

    The Japanese had not been told that the Soviets might actually respond against Japan, as well as Okinawa and Guam, where we had bases. We had bases in Japan, as well. And I don’t think they were at all aware of the risk we were running in their name for them at that time.

    So, when an issue arose — now, this isn’t usually a program for breaking news. I will break a little news here, which I didn’t share with Charlie Savage, who did a wonderful job in telling this story in context in The New York Times last May 22nd. He just did wonderful. But I didn’t want to prejudice him too much against telling that, about how close we had come to nuclear war in ’58, as we are now doing. If I had told him or mentioned to him that I had given that same full study, top-secret, to a former Times man, very famous, wonderful, Tom Wicker, who had, for reasons not known to me, chosen not to print it, not to do anything with it — didn’t want to discourage Charlie by that precedent.

    Moreover, I had given the entire study to the Japanese Diet, who had translated it into Japanese, split-split, like in two days, with their parliamentary capability. And it was over in Japan, not mentioned at all in the U.S. It will be interesting, when they try me for this, how they explain why they didn’t bother to prosecute me for this top-secret release 40 years ago. But that’s the way they do. They do it when it’s helpful to them, or not.

    The reason I did it now again was that now again we are faced with the possibility, very quickly, of initiating war with Japan, which once again will raise the problem whether we can defend it against the newly armed Chinese without using nuclear weapons.

    Let me make a prediction, which I hope is false. Many people are advising Truman — pardon me for saying that; I go way back. Many people are advising Biden to announce no first use, along with Putin, at the coming summit, that neither will, under any circumstances, initiate nuclear war for any reason, even including Taiwan. That is nothing other than that is sane. That is sane thinking. To initiate nuclear war means the annihilation of Taiwan and probably the annihilation of many, many other people, including Japan. My prediction is he won’t say that. And I say I hope I’m wrong. But I hope people will urge him otherwise and he will obey it.

    I think he won’t give up the implicit threat, the open threat on the table, of initiating war in hopes that it will deter. And it may deter, or it may not. We are clearly facing a Prime Minister Xi who fears he would lose office if he accepted a status that many Americans are urging Taiwanese to assume, and that is to declare full sovereign independence from a country which up until this century, all through last century, every Chinese accepted was part of China, a secession like the 11 Confederate states, whose secession was not met with favor by the president at the time.

    We should not initiate nuclear war, in my opinion. But I am not in decision. I think that Americans and Japanese and Taiwanese should have the full opportunity to examine the nature of the thinking that is brought to bear in secret about their futures. Insane thinking.

    AMY GOODMAN: Dan — Dan, we just have —

    DANIEL ELLSBERG: Insane thinking.

    AMY GOODMAN: We just have a minute, but I want to ask you one last — about a news headline, and then we’ll do a post-show on the other whistleblowers, like Daniel Hale, about to be sentenced, Julian Assange, Ed Snowden. But Attorney General Merrick Garland is meeting today with executives of CNN, The New York Times and The Washington Post around the revelations that they have been spied on by President Trump, that their reporters were being watched, their email requested, that the Trump administration secretly sought email and phone records from their reporters. Merrick Garland told lawmakers he’ll prioritize investigating, though, at the same time, he said, a massive tax leak to the news outlet ProPublica. But what message do you have to reporters in this time of this crackdown? And now the Biden administration said they will not go after reporters. We have 30 seconds.

    DANIEL ELLSBERG: I think the — I’ve certainly been led, more than almost anyone, to appreciate the necessity of our First Amendment, our almost unique First Amendment, the protection of the freedom of the press, the freedom of the thought in this. You can’t have democracy without it. And not only now is the Trump administration, now the Biden administration, are using the Espionage Act against a journalist — no freedom of the press involved there — I’m talking about Julian Assange. Biden should drop the appeal he has made, that Trump initiated, to extradite Julian Assange. He should drop the case against Daniel Hale.

    AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, but we’re going to continue the discussion after the show. Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower. Check out democracynow.org. Fifty years ago, that’s the date. I’m Amy Goodman.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Vague Alternatives and G7 Summitry: The Build Back Better World Initiative

    Summits often feature grand statements and needless fripperies.  In Cornwall, the leaders of the G7 countries were trying to position and promote their relevance as the vanguard of democratic good sense and values.  They, the message went, remained relevant, valuable and essential to the order of the earth, despite challenges posed by the autocrats.

    Never let contradiction get in the way of such a united front.  Babbling about liberal democratic values matters little when it comes to crusty realpolitik.  The UK and the US continue to supply armaments to their favourite theocracy, Saudi Arabia, even as they take issue with Russia and Chinese actions they deem aggressive, cruel or authoritarian.   Germany’s position on dealing with Russia remains distinct within the grouping, not least on the issue of energy politics and the Nord Stream 2 gas project.  Nor does the G7 necessarily share the same attitude in dealing with China, each having had its slant in coping with Beijing’s actions in recent years.

    The China Syndrome has produced some form of united response at the summit.  Welcome, then, to the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative.  This will entail, according to a White House factsheet, “a values-driven, high-standard, and transparent infrastructure partnership led by the major democracies to help narrow the $40+ trillion infrastructure need in the developing world, which has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.”  The initiative will also involve “the G7 and other like-minded partners” coordinating and mobilising “private-sector capital in four areas of focus – climate, health and health security, digital technology, and gender equity and equality – with catalytic investments from our respective development finance institutions.”

    A senior official in the Biden administration told Reuters that, “This is not just about confronting or taking on China.  But until now we haven’t offered a positive alternative that reflects our values, our standards and our way of doing business.”

    Since 2013, President Xi Jinping’s multi-billion dollar Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has niggled the sphere of influence watchers.  While the developed world went into something of an investment coma after the Great Recession of 2007-9, notably in developing economies, China took its wallet out.  Attached conditions to the investment would be few; questions about human rights, freedoms and business transparency would not be obstacles.  As this was happening, high-income states went into chatter mode while keeping their shut purses, formulating principles for quality infrastructure investments.

    The BRI infrastructure program, currently featuring 2,600 projects, is China’s geopolitical bridge to developing states, linking Beijing through an assortment of road, maritime and rail projects.  These include the $100 billion China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, and the $62 billion China Pakistan Economic Corridor.  Over time, the initiative has moved into 5G technologies and fiberoptic networks.

    The BRI initiative is also a way of jostling out countries long presumptuous about keeping their backyard free of competition.  (Australia, for instance, has shown alarm that its long standing position as Pacific bruiser and charity giver is facing dethroning.)  And it has worried recipient states initially warmed by Chinese offers of investment.  In 2016, Pakistani Senator Tahir Mashhadi, chairman of the Senate Standing Committee on Planning and Development, issued a warning.  “Another East India Company is in the offing; national interests are not being protected.  We are proud of the friendship between Pakistan and China, but the interests of the state should come first.”

    The G7 states have been doing much head scratching as to how to rival and blunt the BRI.  In 2019, the Trump administration, along with Japan and Australia, suggested their own counter: the Blue Dot Network, the principles of which underpin B3W.  The BDN initiative seeks to promote “equality infrastructure investment that is open and inclusive, and transparent, economically viable, financially, environmentally sustainable and compliant with international standards, laws, and regulations.”  The inaugural meeting of the Blue Dot Network’s Executive Consultation Group took place on June 7.

    While not specifically referencing the BDN (anything deemed worthy by President Donald Trump is to be assimilated rather than acknowledged), US President Joe Biden has been making regular sprays about, as he told reporters in March, establishing “a similar initiative coming from the democratic states, helping those communities around the world.”

    In April, Biden and his Japanese counterpart, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, met to discuss “practical commitments” in establishing an alternative to BRI projects.  There was a special emphasis on promoting and protecting “the technologies that will maintain and sharpen our competitive edge” based on “democratic norms that we both share – norms set by democracies, not autocracies.”

    Cornwall has become the site for similar assurances.  The B3W is all about, as the Biden administration claims, “offering a higher-quality choice”.  The choice will be offered “with self-confidence … that reflects our shared values”.  Kaush Arha, who worked as the US G7 sherpa for the Blue Dot Network in 2020, sees the way paved “for BDN to earn the endorsement of the G7” and feature at the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference of the Parties in November.

    The details of this new plan, for all its claims to transparency, remain opaque.  In the first place, it places strong emphasis on private sector contributions that are supposedly drawn in an open, accountable manner.  Robert Daly, director of the Wilson Centre’s Kissinger Institute on China and the United States asks the question “whether this is going to be actually new funding, new capacity to build infrastructure in the region, or is this a repurposing and repackaging of resources that are also available.”  Eventually, the participating powers will have to show the money.

    The post Vague Alternatives and G7 Summitry: The Build Back Better World Initiative first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Biden Advances Anti-China Agenda At G7 Summit

    This weekend’s G7 summit in the UK will be dominated by US President Joe Biden’s efforts to consolidate an anti-China axis.

    In a piece for the Washington Post published last Saturday, Biden stated that his mission is to ensure that the US and its allies “not China or anyone else write the 21st century rules around trade and technology.” His comments echo his speech to Congress this April when he said, to a standing ovation, “We’re in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century.” On Tuesday, the US Senate passed a $250 billion “China competitiveness bill” in preparation for escalating trade and military conflict.

    Securing the support of the European powers is key to this strategy. In an opinion piece for Bloomberg, former NATO chief and US Navy admiral James Stavridis explained, “Only Europe has the population, geography, values and—above all—economic heft to meet the needs of the U.S. in achieving a credible counterweight in this emerging cold-war pas de deux…

    The post Biden Advances Anti-China Agenda At G7 Summit appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Agnes Chow: activist leaves jail as China says Hong Kong ‘pawn in geopolitics’

    Key figure in 2019 anti-government protests was imprisoned for more than six months under national security law imposed by mainland China

    The Hong Kong democracy activist Agnes Chow has been released from jail after serving more than six months for taking part in unauthorised assemblies during 2019 anti-government protests that triggered a crackdown on dissent by mainland China.

    Chow, 24, was greeted by a crowd of journalists as she left the Tai Lam women’s prison on Saturday. She got out of a prison van and into a private car without making any remarks.

    Related: Hong Kong film censors get wider ‘national security’ powers

    Continue reading…

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

  • News on China | No. 54

    The post News on China | No. 54 first appeared on Dissident Voice.


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China’s Uyghurs living in a ‘dystopian hellscape’, says Amnesty report

    Widespread internment, torture and rights abuses have been claimed by former detainees as Beijing continues a policy of denial

    Amnesty International has collected new evidence of human rights abuses in the Xinjiang region of China, which it says has become a “dystopian hellscape” for hundreds of thousands of Muslims subjected to mass internment and torture.

    The human rights organisation has collected more than 50 new accounts from Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities who claim to have been subjected to mass internment and torture in police stations and camps in the region.

    Related: ‘Nobody wants this job now’: the gentle leaders of China’s Uighur exiles – in pictures

    Continue reading…

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

  • Gallery: ‘Migrant lives matter’ protest slams NZ policies – Palestinian justice and Tiananmen massacre also feature

    Asia Pacific Report newsdesk

    New Zealand’s largest ever crowd in support of migrant rights gathered in Auckland’s Aotea Square at the weekend in triple protests that also marked solidarity for Palestinian justice and the Tiananmen Square massacre in Beijing, China.

    More than 1500 people filled the square on Saturday proclaiming “migrant lives matter” with speakers calling on them to stand up for their rights.

    New Zealand governments over the past few years were accused of cynically exploiting migrant workers and that Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s “nation of 5 million people” excluded about 300,000 migrants.

    The protesters then marched down Queen Street calling for changes to the “broken” immigration policies.

    Among demands were:

    • Visas to be extended to allow for workers who had been trapped overseas, and
    • Creation of “genuine pathways” to permanent residence.

    Unite union president Michael Treen said successive governments had built the economy on the back of migrants and then consistently “lied” to them about their prospects.

    President of the Migrant Workers Association Anu Kaloti said migrants were suffering at the hands of the “broken immigration system”.

    Before the march, Palestinian community leader Maher Nazza declared to the crowd “No one is free until we are all free”, saying that the world community must pressure Israel into honouring the United Nations resolutions and restore justice and hope for Palestinians.

    A smaller crowd of Chinese dissidents marked the 32nd anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, with more than 10,000 deaths, according to a BBC report.

    One speaker said: “If I said the truth [about the Chinese Communist Party] as I am saying here today in China, somebody would come within minutes and take me away.”

    Palestine, migrant rights and the Tiananmen massacre
    1 of 12
    Gallery: Palestine, migrants and Tiananmen
    Pal 1: Community leader Maher Nazza speaks at the Palestine solidarity rally. Image: David Robie
    Pal 2: “No one is free until we are all free.” Image: David Robie
    Pal 3: “Put Palestine back on the maps.” Image: David Robie
    Pal 4: Maher Nazza and Joe Carolan speaking at the Palestinian solidarity rally. Image: David Robie Joe Carolan at the
    Pal 5: PSNA’s Neil Scott and Palestine supporters at the Auckland rally. Image: David Robie
    Pal 6: Aotearoa’s “team of 5 million” – what about the migrants?
    Pal 7: I am a migrant: “When can I speak to my parents?” Image: David Robie
    Pal 8: “migrant Lives Matter”. Image: David Robie
    Pal 9: “Let them stay.” Image: David Robie
    Pal 10: “Reunite families.” Image: David Robie
    Pal 11: Rembering the Tiananmen massacre. Image: David Robie
    Pal 12: “Criminal China!”- the Tiananmen massacre. Image: David Robie

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Media Converges On The Narrative That UFOs May Be Russian/Chinese Threat

    Listen to a reading of this article:

    So in case you haven’t been keeping up it’s been pretty thoroughly confirmed that the US government’s highly anticipated UFO report due this month won’t contain any significant revelations and certainly won’t verify anyone’s ideas about these phenomena being extraterrestrial in origin, but it absolutely will contain fearmongering that UFOs could be evidence that the US has fallen dangerously behind Russian and Chinese technological development in the cold war arms race.

    Unknown US officials have done a print media tour speaking to the press on condition of anonymity (of course), with first The New York Times reporting their statements about the contents of the UFO report and then CNN and The Washington Post. Each of these outlets reported the same thing: the US government doesn’t know what these things are but is very concerned they constitute evidence that Russia and/or China have somehow managed to technologically leapfrog US military development by light years. All three mention these two nations explicitly.

    This narrative was then picked up by cable news, with MSNBC inviting former CIA director and defense secretary Leon Panetta on to explain to their audience that the US government should assume UFOs are Russian or Chinese in origin until that possibility has been exhausted.

    “Is it your assumption that it is Russia or China testing some crazy technology that we somehow don’t have, or are we sort of over-assuming the abilities of China and Russia and that the only other explanation is that if it is not us ourselves then it is something otherworldly?” MSNBC’s Chuck Todd asked Panetta.

    “I believe a lot of this stuff probably could be countries like Russia, like China, like others, who are using now drones, using the kind of sophisticated weaponry that could very well be involved in a lot of these sightings,” Panetta replied. “I think that’s the area to go to very frankly in order to identify what’s happening.”

    “It sounds like you think we should exhaust that out, exhaust that hypothesis first before you start dealing with other hypotheses,” Todd said.

    “Yeah, absolutely,” said Panetta, who for the record is every bit as much of a tyrannical, thuggish imperialist cold warrior as any other CIA director.

    This UFOs-as-Chinese/Russian-threat narrative has quickly been picked up and thrust into mainstream orthodoxy by all the major branches of the mass media, from Fox News to Reuters to The Guardian to Today to the BBC to USA Today. Whenever you see the imperial media converge to this extent upon a single narrative, that’s the Official Narrative of the empire. We can expect to see a lot more of this going forward.

    Interestingly, the only mass media segment I’ve seen on this topic since the New York Times story broke which doesn’t promote the UFOs-as-Chinese/Russian-threat narrative is a guest appearance on Tucker Carlson Tonight by Lue Elizondo, the military intelligence veteran who got the ball rolling on the new UFO narrative which emerged in 2017. Elizondo goes out of his way to tell Carlson (who himself has been promoting the idea that UFOs may be a foreign adversarial threat with cartoonish melodrama) that there’s no way these could be Russian or Chinese aircraft.

    Elizondo, who seems to favor the UFOs-as-extraterrestrials narrative, argues that there are extensive records of military encounters with these phenomena stretching back seventy years, which rules out China since it could barely keep its head above water back then and rules out Russia because it shared its UFO knowledge with the US after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

    I don’t know what’s going on with that last bit; I see no reason to trust that an American spook is acting in good faith on such an easily manipulated topic, but it is entirely possible that Elizondo set out on this road out of a sincere desire for government disclosure on UFOs and is now trying to regain control of the narrative now that he sees the cold war arms race direction it has taken.

    Chris Melon, another major player in the new UFO narrative, recently complained on Twitter that “some important information was not shared” with the public in the UFO report. So who knows, maybe the initiators of this new UFO narrative were acting in good faith and their efforts were just swiftly hijacked by forces beyond their control to advance preexisting cold war agendas.

    Regardless of whether or not that’s true, it was always inevitable that this strange new rabbit hole of UFOs going mainstream was going to lead to more cold war propaganda. I’ve been interacting a bit with the online UFO community for the first time ever, and it seems like they’re mostly decent people with good intentions and a lot of hope for this new governmental investigation. But it also seems like they’re largely a community which mostly just talks to itself and is only just beginning to meet the cold harsh light of day that is the impenetrable depravity of the US war machine.

    The US government is pure swamp; you can’t use the swamp to fix the swamp. Democrats were never going to use a Special Counsel to remove Trump, Trump was never going to take down the Deep State, and the US government isn’t going to investigate itself and tell everyone that aliens are real.

    If there are indeed extraterrestrials and they are indeed flying around our world in strange aircraft, we are more likely to get the truth about this from the extraterrestrials themselves than from the US military. The war machine only does killing and destruction; it’s not going to suddenly develop an interest in truth and transparency. The sooner UFO enthusiasts realize this the better.

    __________________

    The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on , , Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi,  or . If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  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, . 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Myanmar school strikes and a plane diverted to Minsk: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to China

    Continue reading…

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

  • Remembering Tiananmen in Hong Kong: An increasingly risky act of resistance

    By Oiwan Lam in Hong Kong

    Hong Kong police on June 4 deployed 7000 officers in Victoria Park and across the city to ensure that there was no organised commemoration of the 1989 Tiananmen Massacre in public spaces.

    At 7.40 am, four police officers arrested democracy activist Chow Hang-tung outside her office building to prevent her from heading to Victoria Park. There have been no reports indicating that she has been released.

    Hong Kong held candlelight vigils to commemorate the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre for three decades.

    In 2020, Hong Kong police banned the event for the first time, citing anti-coronavirus measures. Victoria Park is the park where the vigils were held.

    Chow is the vice-president of the Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China (HK Alliance), the group that organised the annual vigil.

    She told press that she would go to Victoria Park on her own and light a candle on June 4, despite the threat of jail time for “inciting illegal assembly”.

    24 activists charged
    At least 24 pro-democracy activists were charged with participating in last year’s unauthorised vigil, of whom four have been sentenced to jail terms up to 10 months.

    The others are awaiting trials and sentencing.

    Hong Kong Secretary for Security John Lee warned that under the Public Order Ordinance, offenders could face up to five years in prison for attending the vigil, or up to one year for promoting it.

    After the vigil was banned, Beijing’s political adviser on Hong Kong affairs Tian Feilong urged Hong Kong security services to investigate HK Alliance for breaching the infamous national security law that Beijing imposed on Hong Kong last year.

    He argued that the organisation’s mission statement, which calls for the end of one-party dictatorship, is in violation of the law, since the Chinese Communist Party’s dictatorship is written into the Chinese constitution.

    On June 3, Executive Council member Ronny Tong warned that people wearing black clothing and chanting slogans such as “end one-party dictatorship” could be prosecuted for violating either that law or the law against unauthorised assembly.

    It would not matter if protesters appeared in different parts of the city, as long as their actions could be viewed as coordinated, Tong said.

    He did however state that individual commemorations of the anniversary were not forbidden.

    Safe spaces targeted, shut down
    As police mobilised across the city to prevent potential demonstrations, law enforcement units and pro-Beijing groups harassed the public in order to prevent them from attending other potential commemoration activities – even those being held in private venues.

    Seven Catholic churches which planned to hold evening mass on June 4 became a focal point for attacks:

    On June 2, HK Alliance announced that its June 4 Museum had been shut down after officials from the Food and Environmental Hygiene department accused it of operating as a place of public entertainment without required licences.

    In spite of all the legal threats, individuals are finding their own ways to commemorate the anniversary in public.

    On June 3, a group of artists put on a public art performance at Causeway Bay:

    A number of individuals went to Victoria Park to hold “one person vigils”:

    A large number of June 4 posters were seen in different districts across the city today.

    June 4 posters in Hong Kong
    A large number of June 4 posters were seen in different districts across the city today. Image: Stand News/Global Voices

    Many citizens wore clothes that conveyed political messages. They said on social media that they planned to light candles at 8 p.m, regardless of where they were in the city.

    Oiwan Lam is Global Voices northeast Asia regional editor. She is also a media activist, researcher and educator currently based in Hong Kong. Her Chinese writings are in inmediahk.net and her twitter account is @oiwan. This article is republished from Global Voices under a Creative Commons licence.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • China Urges U.S. to Clarify Doubts over its Bio-labs

    The Biden administration is pressing for an investigation into a possible leak from the Wuhan bio-lab of the SARS-Cov-2 virus. China has called for the same transparency from the United States bio-labs.

    The post China Urges U.S. to Clarify Doubts over its Bio-labs first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China flexes strategic airlift muscles near Malaysia

    China has dispatched 16 Ilyushin Il-76 and Xi’an Y-20 heavy transport aircraft to the vicinity of Malaysia-administered shoals in the South China Sea as well as its national airspace, prompting the Royal Malaysian Air Force (RMAF) to warn of “serious threats” to the country’s sovereignty. “The aircraft were detected flying in an in-trail tactical formation […]

    The post China flexes strategic airlift muscles near Malaysia appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • The Politics Of The Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis

    US president Joe Biden has ordered a “hunt for new intelligence to determine whether the Chinese government covered up an accidental leak” [1] at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a laboratory in Wuhan, the city in which the novel coronavirus was first identified. The lab is a biosafety level 4 (BSL4) facility, the highest level.

    Twelve months ago, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo also “asked intelligence agencies to continue looking for any evidence to support” (what the New York Times at the time) called “an unsubstantiated theory that the pandemic might be the result of an accidental lab leak.” Times’ reporters Edward Wong and Ana Swanson added that the intelligence community had told Pompeo that “they most likely will not find proof.”

    The post The Politics Of The Wuhan Lab Leak Hypothesis appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Data Centres & 5G: China’s Digital Emissions Set To Increase 289% By 2035, Report Reveals

    4 Mins Read According to a new report by non-governmental environmental organization Greenpeace East Asia, the electricity consumption from China’s digital sector, which includes data centres and 5G base stations, is set to soar by a predicted 289% between 2020 and 2035, despite the country’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality. The report draws attention to the carbon emissions from […]

    The post Data Centres & 5G: China’s Digital Emissions Set To Increase 289% By 2035, Report Reveals appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • First human case of infection with H10N3 strain, China NHC

    Zhenjiang, China

    A 41-year-old man in China’s eastern province of Jiangsu has been confirmed as the first human case of infection with the H10N3 strain of bird flu, China’s National Health Commission (NHC) said on Tuesday.

    The man, a resident of the city of Zhenjiang, was hospitalized on April 28 after developing a fever and other symptoms, the NHC said in a statement.

    He was diagnosed as having the H10N3 avian influenza virus on May 28, it said, but did not give details on how the man had been infected with the virus.

    The man was stable and ready to be discharged from hospital. Medical observation of his close contacts had not found any other cases.

    H10N3 is a low pathogenic, or relatively less severe, strain of the virus in poultry and the risk of it spreading on a large scale was very low, the NHC added.

    The strain is “not a very common virus,” said Filip Claes, regional laboratory coordinator of the Food and Agriculture Organization’s Emergency Centre for Transboundary Animal Diseases at the Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific.

    Only around 160 isolates of the virus were reported in the 40 years to 2018, mostly in wild birds or waterfowl in Asia and some limited parts of North America, and none had been detected in chickens so far, he added.

    Analyzing the genetic data of the virus will be necessary to determine whether it resembles older viruses or if it is a novel mix of different viruses, Claes said.

    Many different strains of avian influenza are present in China and some sporadically infect people, usually those working with poultry. There have been no significant numbers of human infections with bird flu since the H7N9 strain killed around 300 people during 2016-2017.

    No other cases of human infection with H10N3 have previously been reported globally, the NHC said.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • Trade and tourism resume’s on Pak-China border with strict SOPs.

    Gilgil Baltistan, Pakistan,

    The Pak-China Border on Gilgit-Baltistan has been reopened for all kinds of trade and tourism activities after a closure of almost one and a half years due to fears of Covid-19 pandemic, reported Pakistan local News Tv Channel.

    The Pak-China border on Gilgit-Baltistan was closed for every kind of trade and tourism activity since 2019 in an effort to contain coronavirus spread. The border closure caused severe economic hardships for traders of not only GB but all over the country.

    In a notification released by the federal ministry for foreign affairs on Monday, it was stated that the Chinese embassy had informed about the reopening of the border (from Chinses side) for every kind of trade and tourism goings-on.

    The border area from the Pakistani side of Gilgit-Baltistan is also being reopened with stringent standard operating procedures in place, the notification said.

    The trader community has hailed both governments decision regarding the reopening of the border.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • The Chinese Dreamers vs. the U.S. Hegemon

    Do China and the US have fundamental goals that constitute a contradiction, that is, goals so profoundly at odds with one another that the goals cannot coexist? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.

    Such a contradiction means that one side must abandon its aims if a disastrous conflict is not to ensue. Which country should step back? Is there a moral, ethical or common-sense basis for making that call, a basis on which humankind can readily agree?

    What are these contradictory goals?

    China’ overwhelming objective is clearly economic development, a policy to which it has hewed closely and which it declares for its future. That is no surprise; it is the dream of every developing nation. It is “The Chinese Dream.”

    f such goals were no more than words on paper, there would be no problem. But China is succeeding as is widely acknowledged now. Its economy surpassed the U.S. in terms of GDP (PPP) in November of 2014 according to the IMF and is growing faster. Over 700 million have been brought out of poverty, with extreme poverty eliminated in 2020. The middle class now comprises over 400 million people. The retail market is enormous and the ecommerce market by far the world’s largest. China is the world’s largest manufacturer and trader.

    According to the World Bank, China is 7th from the top of the Upper-middle-income group as of 2020 and poised to enter the ranks of the 59 countries in the High-income group. China has a set a new goal, a standard of living enjoyed by the most prosperous countries in the West, to be achieved by 2049 the centennial of the birth of the Peoples Republic of China.

    With this in mind let’s turn to the American side of the equation. The U.S. has a long history of expansion and imperialism with the inevitable appeals to Exceptionalism and racism. However, the ambition of world dominance, global hegemony, emerged consciously among the US foreign policy elite in 1941 before entry into WWII as Stephen Wertheim documents in Tomorrow the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy. Henry Luce expressed the idea in his 1941 essay, “The American Century” in which he enjoined the U.S. “to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful nation in the world and in consequence to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit.”

    After World War II when the U.S. colossus looked down at the rest the world prostate after the war, we heard a similar sentiment from George Kennan considered as perhaps the principal architect of postwar U.S. foreign policy:

    Furthermore, we have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. … Our real task in the coming period is to … maintain this position of disparity …. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality …. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
    — George F. Kennan1

    (This statement of Kennan’s is discussed in detail here.)

    More recently and equally starkly at the end of the Cold War, the Wolfowitz Doctrine was enunciated by Paul Wolfowitz Under Secretary of Defense for Public Policy.

    It can be summed up in a single sentence:

    We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.2

    China fits the definition of a “potential competitor”; it not only “aspires” to a larger regional role and global role but has already attained it! By the Wolfowitz principle, China must not only be “contained” but returned to a non-competitor status by whatever “mechanism” that the US can devise.

    And so we come to the basic contradiction. The U.S. insists that it be the world’s greatest power, an unassailable hegemon. This means that it must be the number one economic power since all power ultimately derives from economic power.

    Now assume that China’s per capita GDP is equal to that of an advanced Western country, the goal of China by 1949. Take the US as an example. Since China’s population is about four times that of the US, then it will have a total national GDP four times that of the US! The US will then be far from the dominant power; the Wolfowitz Doctrine will go up in smoke.

    This does not mean that the U.S. will lapse into penury or even that its living standard will be compromised. Indeed, there is no reason that the U.S. cannot continue to be an increasingly prosperous country. In that sense the contradiction between the US and China is not a conflict of interests between the American people and Chinese people. But it is a contradiction between the U.S. governing Elite and 1.4 billion Chinese dreamers.

    Even now with China on a par with the U.S. economically in GDP (PPP) terms the U.S. cannot operate as a hegemon or as an unchallenged world power.

    How can the U.S. maintain its ambition of hegemony? Simply put, China’s development must be halted or reversed. Thus, the drive for U.S. superiority is a war on the aspirations of the vast Chinese population, not simply a war on the Chinese state. Will China’s people, nearly 20% of the global population, passively accept this fate?

    How then are we to look at the China-US contradiction in moral or ethical terms? Given the U.S. goal of hegemony versus the Chinese dream of a Western standard of living, which has the greater claim on the support of decent humans everywhere? The 1.4 billion Chinese dreamers or a tiny U.S. governing Elite?

    1. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, Volume I, p. 509-529.
    2. Defense Planning Guidance for the 1994-1999 fiscal years, dated February 18, 1992, from the office of Paul Wolfowitz.
    The post The Chinese Dreamers vs. the U.S. Hegemon first appeared on Dissident Voice.


    This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by John V. Walsh.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Australia Is A Giant US Military Base With Kangaroos: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    Listen to this article:

    ❖

    Everyone around the world should criticize the US empire constantly and without apology. Nobody anywhere ever needs to justify or defend criticizing the most powerful, destructive and influential government on earth. It’s always right to criticize America, in any way you choose.

    ❖

    Consider the possibility that the most powerful government on earth got that way largely by being willing to do whatever it takes to claw its way to the top, no matter how many people it’s needed to kill and oppress to get there and remain there.

    ❖

    The US empire is the single most depraved and murderous power structure on earth. The Democratic and Republican parties are two Nazis arguing over which route to take to bring their captives to the concentration camp.

    ❖

    Growing up in crushing poverty is inherently traumatic. Not everyone who’s been traumatized goes on to hurt people, but everyone who hurts people has been traumatized. Supporting a status quo which includes an impoverished underclass is supporting widespread crime and violence.

    ❖

    ❖

    If you believe anti-Zionism is anti-semitism, then you’re naturally going to see an uptick in “anti-semitism” every time Zionism rips children’s bodies apart with explosives.

    ❖

    What is being done to Palestinians would be horrific and inexcusable regardless of the ethnicity or religion of their persecutors. Opposing apartheid injustice and abuse has nothing to do with opposing anyone’s religion, and attempts to claim it does are made in bad faith.

    ❖

    If I wanted to sabotage the pro-Palestine movement, I would make myself a part of the conversation by criticizing Israeli abuses and supporting Palestinian rights, then I’d start going “This rise in anti-semitism sure is concerning though, can we pause and focus on this please?”

    ❖

    Zionists will spend 100 times more energy attacking and smearing an influential Jewish defender of Palestinian rights than opposing a brazen Jew-hating white supremacist. Supporters of Israeli apartheid don’t care about fighting anti-semitism, they care about narrative control.

    ❖

    The rapist was forced to murder his rape victim because she tried to fight him off. The rapist has a right to defend himself. Rape has a right to exist. This is actually a very complex issue, too complicated for you to understand.

    ❖

    ❖

    If Moscow hadn’t intervened in Crimea in 2014 and Syria in 2015, the US wouldn’t have begun training us all to hate Russia in 2016.

    If Russia would’ve just let the US do its thing with the Ukraine coup and the proxy war to topple Damascus, there would not have been a Russia panic, because the US war machine would not have felt an argent need to manufacture one. But then Russia would’ve eventually found itself surrounded by a sea of hostile empire and forced to relinquish its sovereignty.

    Same goes for China asserting its own power regionally and economically. At some point Russia and China both realized that if they don’t start taking bold action to prevent the US empire from absorbing the entire world, they’re going to slowly see their allies and trading partners disappear until they’ve got no choice but to join. That’s all we’re seeing with all this hysteria.

    If you don’t interfere in the empire’s agendas of conquest and absorption, it won’t be in a hurry to get rid of you; it will just absorb you when it’s got time and nothing else to devour. Interfere with its war machine, though, and you’re in for it.

    ❖

    Steal from The New York Times. It’s not legitimate for the “paper of record” whose narratives shape your world to hide its stories from you behind a paywall. Use apps, use private browsers, use archive.is; any method used to access NYT and similar outlets without paying them is perfectly legitimate. That information is your right; you shouldn’t have to pay a plutocratic propaganda institution just to find out what it’s telling people.

    ❖

    ❖

    The US-centralized oligarchic empire has no ideology and no values beyond the acquisition of more power. If Islamic fundamentalism serves them in one part of the world they’ll support that there, while simultaneously backing woke progressivism overseas if that serves them in that part of the world.

    Imperialists often favor corporate liberals over conservatives in the western world because they now see liberals as better custodians of the empire’s western branches. There’s dwindling support for Bible thumpers and racists in our society, so the empire seeks better drivers.

    And you may be sure that the opposite would have been the case if our society hadn’t become too conscious to accommodate the right’s ugliest aspects at mass scale. If racism had retained widespread popular support, all oligarchic institutions would’ve backed Trump to the hilt. All they care about is power and continuing their reign.

    ❖

    If you think it was a big red pill to realize that the media’s narratives about the world are nothing like real life, wait til you realize that the same is true of your own narratives about your own life.

    _____________________________

    My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on , , Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi,  or . If you want to read more you can buy my books. Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, . 

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Australia’s ambassador to China denied entry to trial of Yang Hengjun

    Envoy raps Beijing for failing ‘treaty obligation’ to allow consular access to author accused of spying

    Australia’s ambassador to China has labelled the treatment of Yang Hengjun “arbitrary detention” on the morning of the writer’s closed-door trial for espionage charges.

    The envoy, Graham Fletcher, was on Thursday denied entry to the Beijing court where Yang will be tried after spending more than two years in jail.

    Related: Yang Hengjun: Australian writer says he is unafraid of ‘suffering and torture’ ahead of trial in China

    Related: Joe Biden orders US intelligence to intensify efforts to study Covid’s origins

    Continue reading…

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

  • The Russia-China Relationship Points to a Better Future for the World

    The United States is openly stating its desire for a better relationship with Russia. At the recent meeting in Reykjavík, Iceland, United States secretary of state Blinken and his Russian counterpart Lavrov held what has been termed as a cordial meeting. It is well known that United States president Biden is anxious for a meeting with his Russian counterpart Putin. The Russians are correct to be cautious about such a meeting. Biden has some lost ground to make up. His television interview shortly after being elected in which he agreed with the interviewer that Putin was a “killer” has not been forgotten in Moscow.

    The Americans have made other gestures to signify that they are interested in a better relationship with Russia. Among these gestures is the dropping of United States attempts to stifle the completion of the Nord Stream 2 project that will bring electricity from Russia to Germany. That deal is due for completion later this year and will probably be delivering Russian power to Germany by September.

    United States opposition to the deal always had a high level of self-interest as they wished the Europeans to buy their own, much more expensive, electricity. The Germans were never interested in that deal, for multiple reasons, not the least being that it would place German industry even more susceptible to United States influence than is already the case.

    Although Nord Stream 2 now looks highly likely to be completed, it is not yet a done deal. There is some significant opposition within Germany itself, somewhat surprisingly, coming from the Green Party who are currently polling well is advance of September’s elections. It is surprising because the Green Party attitude placed them in line with the American view, which is one indicator of how far the Greens have travelled from their early days.

    The support of German industry is likely, however, to be decisive, regardless of the outcome of September’s elections. The election also marks the retirement of Chancellor Angela Merkel who has been the dominant German leader for the past 15 ½ years, making her Germany’s third longest serving leader.

    The United States gestures toward improved relationships with Russia has, of course, a subtext. The Americans have decided that the greatest threat to their continued domination is the rise of China. If the Americans are to compete with China, they see the need to separate Russia and China.

    It is a fact that the Russian-China relationship has grown markedly in recent years. In trade terms alone, Russia’s trade with China grew 20% in the first quarter of this year. Apart from trade there are a number of other areas where the two nations are building an ever-closer relationship, not least in their bilateral trade, but also through the joint membership of the Shanghai Corporation Organisation and other international organisations.

    Those organisations have a common interest in developing strong trade relations, freed from the often-suffocating embrace of the western dominated financial institutions that have dominated world international trade for the past 70+ years.

    China has been at the forefront of developing this new system. It is exemplified, for example, by its Belt and Road Initiative, which now embraces more than 140 countries around the world, having representation in all of the world’s regions including Africa and Latin America. Those two regions have historically been under the heavy influence of the British and the Americans respectively.

    It is no surprise that the United States is a prominent non-starter with the Belt and Road Initiative, seeing it as a threat to their earlier domination. Unsurprisingly, they are joined in this antipathy by Australia whose federal government recently blocked moves by the state of Victoria to participate in the BRI. The Australian government has gone out of its way to antagonise the Chinese in recent years, which, to put it mildly, is a singularly stupid policy to pursue with one’s largest trading partner by a considerable margin.

    Australian ministers have recently complained that their phone calls to Chinese counterparts go unanswered and not returned. According to the Australian government it is all China’s fault, which tells one more about the Australian mindset than it does about the reality of the relationship.

    China in the meantime continues its relentless advance. As measured by the more reliable indicator of parity purchasing power, rather than gross domestic product, China is now the world’s largest trading entity, having passed the United States some years ago. One of the reasons for China’s success, in the BRI and elsewhere, is that they base their relationship with their trading partners on what Chinese leader Xi calls a “win-win” situation.

    Unsurprisingly, this approach, so different from the West’s way of doing business, is one that finds favour with a vast number of countries. United States attempts to contain China and limit its ever-growing influence around the world is therefore unlikely to succeed.

    That does not make the United States challenge any less serious and one fraught with potential risks. United States has had things its own way for so long, and has used and abused that power with virtual impunity, that it will not take the emergence of a serious competitor lightly. Therein lies the greatest danger to the world.

    The Chinese are not going to allow any return to the dark years when they were dominated by Western influence. If the Americans do something stupid, like a military response to their declining power and influence around the world, then the Russia-China close relationship will doom that effort to failure. The majority of the world’s countries who are benefiting from the new form of partnership will certainly lend their influence to ensure the return to the old days of United States dominance remains very much a matter of the past.

    The post The Russia-China Relationship Points to a Better Future for the World first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Emperor’s New Rules

    Credit:  pinterest.com

    The world is reeling in horror at the latest Israeli massacre of hundreds of men, women and children in Gaza. Much of the world is also shocked by the role of the United States in this crisis, as it keeps providing Israel with weapons to kill Palestinian civilians, in violation of U.S. and international law, and has repeatedly blocked action by the UN Security Council to impose a ceasefire or hold Israel accountable for its war crimes.

    In contrast to U.S. actions, in nearly every speech or interview, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken keeps promising to uphold and defend the “rules-based order.” But he has never clarified whether he means the universal rules of the United Nations Charter and international law, or some other set of rules he has yet to define. What rules could possibly legitimize the kind of destruction we just witnessed in Gaza, and who would want to live in a world ruled by them?

    We have both spent many years protesting the violence and chaos the United States and its allies inflict on millions of people around the world by violating the UN Charter’s prohibition against the threat or use of military force, and we have always insisted that the U.S. government should comply with the rules-based order of international law.

    But even as the United States’ illegal wars and support for allies like Israel and Saudi Arabia have reduced cities to rubble and left country after country mired in intractable violence and chaos, U.S. leaders have refused to even acknowledge that aggressive and destructive U.S. and allied military operations violate the rules-based order of the United Nations Charter and international law.

    President Trump was clear that he was not interested in following any “global rules,” only supporting U.S. national interests. His National Security Advisor John Bolton explicitly prohibited National Security Council staff attending the 2018 G20 Summit in Argentina from even uttering the words “rules-based order.”

    So you might expect us to welcome Blinken’s stated commitment to the “rules-based order” as a long-overdue reversal in U.S. policy. But when it comes to a vital principle like this, it is actions that count, and the Biden administration has yet to take any decisive action to bring U.S. foreign policy into compliance with the UN Charter or international law.

    For Secretary Blinken, the concept of a “rules-based order” seems to serve mainly as a cudgel with which to attack China and Russia. At a May 7 UN Security Council meeting, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that instead of accepting the already existing rules of international law, the United States and its allies are trying to come up with “other rules developed in closed, non-inclusive formats, and then imposed on everyone else.”

    The UN Charter and the rules of international law were developed in the 20th century precisely to codify the unwritten and endlessly contested rules of customary international law with explicit, written rules that would be binding on all nations.

    The United States played a leading role in this legalist movement in international relations, from the Hague Peace Conferences at the turn of the 20th century to the signing of the United Nations Charter in San Francisco in 1945 and the revised Geneva Conventions in 1949, including the new Fourth Geneva Convention to protect civilians, like the countless numbers killed by American weapons in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.

    As President Franklin Roosevelt described the plan for the United Nations to a joint session of Congress on his return from Yalta in 1945:

    It ought to spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries – and have always failed. We propose to substitute for all these a universal organization in which all peace-loving nations will finally have a chance to join. I am confident that the Congress and the American people will accept the results of this conference as the beginning of a permanent structure of peace.

    But America’s post-Cold War triumphalism eroded U.S. leaders’ already half-hearted commitment to those rules. The neocons argued that they were no longer relevant and that the United States must be ready to impose order on the world by the unilateral threat and use of military force, exactly what the UN Charter prohibits. Madeleine Albright and other Democratic leaders embraced new doctrines of “humanitarian intervention” and a “responsibility to protect” to try to carve out politically persuasive exceptions to the explicit rules of the UN Charter.

    America’s “endless wars,” its revived Cold War on Russia and China, its blank check for the Israeli occupation and the political obstacles to crafting a more peaceful and sustainable future are some of the fruits of these bipartisan efforts to challenge and weaken the rules-based order.

    Today, far from being a leader of the international rules-based system, the United States is an outlier. It has failed to sign or ratify about fifty important and widely accepted multilateral treaties on everything from children’s rights to arms control. Its unilateral sanctions against Cuba, Iran, Venezuela and other countries are themselves violations of international law, and the new Biden administration has shamefully failed to lift these illegal sanctions, ignoring UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’ request to suspend such unilateral coercive measures during the pandemic.

    So is Blinken’s “rules-based order” a recommitment to President Roosevelt’s “permanent structure of peace,” or is it, in fact, a renunciation of the United Nations Charter and its purpose, which is peace and security for all of humanity?

    In the light of Biden’s first few months in power, it appears to be the latter. Instead of designing a foreign policy based on the principles and rules of the UN Charter and the goal of a peaceful world, Biden’s policy seems to start from the premises of a $753 billion U.S. military budget, 800 overseas military bases, endless U.S. and allied wars and massacres, and massive weapons sales to repressive regimes. Then it works backward to formulate a policy framework to somehow justify all that.

    Once a “war on terror” that only fuels terrorism, violence and chaos was no longer politically viable, hawkish U.S. leaders—both Republicans and Democrats—seem to have concluded that a return to the Cold War was the only plausible way to perpetuate America’s militarist foreign policy and multi-trillion-dollar war machine.

    But that raised a new set of contradictions. For 40 years, the Cold War was justified by the ideological struggle between the capitalist and communist economic systems. But the U.S.S.R. disintegrated and Russia is now a capitalist country. China is still governed by its Communist Party, but has a managed, mixed economy similar to that of Western Europe in the years after the Second World War – an efficient and dynamic economic system that has lifted hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in both cases.

    So how can these U.S. leaders justify their renewed Cold War? They have floated the notion of a struggle between “democracy and authoritarianism.” But the United States supports too many horrific dictatorships around the world, especially in the Middle East, to make that a convincing pretext for a Cold War against Russia and China.

    A U.S. “global war on authoritarianism” would require confronting repressive U.S. allies like Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, not arming them to the teeth and shielding them from international accountability as the United States is doing.

    So, just as American and British leaders settled on non-existent “WMD”s as the pretext they could all agree on to justify their war on Iraq, the U.S. and its allies have settled on defending a vague, undefined “rules-based order” as the justification for their revived Cold War on Russia and China.

    But like the emperor’s new clothes in the fable and the WMDs in Iraq, the United States’ new rules don’t really exist. They are just its latest smokescreen for a foreign policy based on illegal threats and uses of force and a doctrine of “might makes right.”

    We challenge President Biden and Secretary Blinken to prove us wrong by actually joining the rules-based order of the UN Charter and international law. That would require a genuine commitment to a very different and more peaceful future, with appropriate contrition and accountability for the United States’ and its allies’ systematic violations of the UN Charter and international law, and the countless violent deaths, ruined societies, and widespread chaos they have caused.

    The post The Emperor’s New Rules first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A*STAR & Pinduoduo Announce First Asia-Based Research On Human Health Impact Of Plant-Based Protein

    4 Mins Read A new research collaboration has formed between Chinese agri-food tech firm Pinduoduo and the Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation (SIFBI), part of the government’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR). The joint study will focus specifically on the impact of novel plant-based meat on human health with quantifiable data comparing the nutritional […]

    The post A*STAR & Pinduoduo Announce First Asia-Based Research On Human Health Impact Of Plant-Based Protein appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Coming up: Voices of Uyghur camp survivors – a conversation with Gulbahar Jalilova

    The Voices of Uyghur camp survivors : a conversation with Gulbahar Jalilova, is organised by the International Service for Human Rights and the World Uygur Congress. This event will be held in English, with Uyghur and French interpretation. Time 25 May 2021 11:00 AM in Zurich

    Description Over a million Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims people are held in internment camps in the Uyghur region, exposed to harsh detention conditions, sexual violence, and the suppression of culture and
    religious practice.

    Gülbahar Jalilova was arbitrarily detained for sixteen months: now in exile, she’s decided to speak out on what she’s been through as a woman detainee despite the very high risks she faces.

    Last February, ten UN independent experts wrote to the Chinese government about her case, raising grave concern about violations of international human rights and requesting explanations. What is the impact of this letter? What can the United Nations do to push for greater documentation, accountability, and justice for victims?

    An event with Gülbahar Jalilova, Elizabeth Broderick (Chair of the UN Working Group on discrimination against women and girls), and Zumretay Arkin (Program and Advocacy Manager, World Uyghur Congress). Moderation by Raphael Viana David (ISHR).

    https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_aTNzmcMfTVqxuhkLNoqTsw

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

  • 5th China Human Rights Lawyers Day on 9 July 2021


    The fifth China Human Rights Lawyers Day will be held virtually on July 9, 2021. [see also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/07/12/china-five-years-after-major-crackdown-international-community-must-support-to-human-rights-lawyers/]

    The China Human Rights Lawyers Day was created on July 9, 2017 in acknowledgement of the tireless efforts of Chinese human rights lawyers in their struggle for justice and the rule of law. It commemorates the mass arrest of lawyers that occured on July 9, 2015, and celebrates the ideals, courage, and tenacity of human rights lawyers in China. [see: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/12/18/chinas-continuing-crackdown-on-human-rights-lawyers-shocking-say-un-experts/]

    Most human rights lawyers are not famous, nor are they wealthy, but they have irrefutably stood out in the Chinese legal community, elevating the profession to a worthier height. Over the past two decades, they have represented clients in all aspects of human rights and public interest, including but not limited to freedom of speech, freedom of belief, political dissent, property rights, women’s rights, labor rights, minority rights, anti-discrimination, food safety, and redress of wrongful convictions and other grievances. Their clients are from all walks of Chinese society, including political dissidents, religious believers, human rights defenders, civil society activists, farmers who lost land to illegal appropriation, factory workers, NGO practitioners, private entrepreneurs, writers, journalists, ordinary netizens, street vendors, victims of miscarriage of justice, and even Chinese Communist Party officials who have become prisoners in the so-called anti-corruption campaign. Their clients are often either opponents of the authoritarian regime or those whose rights and dignity are trampled.

    Human rights lawyers have performed their duties in the process of defending their clients under the law, but precisely because they take both the law and their duties seriously, they have been subject to increasingly strong hostility from the authorities. Since the emergence of the legal rights defense movement in the early 2000s, these lawyers have only faced worse repercussions for their work; many have been arrested and tortured, suspended and disbarred. But the mass arrests on July 9, 2015, marked the beginning of a broader persecution of human rights lawyers by the Chinese authorities. Dozens of human rights lawyers and their assistants were suddenly arrested and hundreds of lawyers were threatened across the country. The jailed lawyers were subjected to harrowing physical and mental abuse. They were deprived of legal representation, forcibly injected with unknown drugs, forced to make confessions. Over the past two decades, more than 70 human rights lawyers have been disbarred, and about 40 of them have had their licenses revoked or cancelled in the past five years. At least 50 human rights lawyers have been illegally barred from leaving the country.

    Even though most of the 709 detainees have been released, imprisonment of human rights lawyers has not ceased. Today, 13 human rights lawyers remain in prison in China, and one has been missing for more than three years.

    Although human rights lawyers are a small group among China’s half-million lawyers, they are among those holding a torch lighting the road to rule of law and freedom for the Chinese people. They emerged during the most dynamic period of China’s reform and opening up, and now face hardship and great danger. In a totalitarian state in possession of an overwhelming state apparatus, they have opted for a challenge that few of their peers would be willing to take, but they have no regrets and hold their heads high in their vocation. They and their families have endured sufferings and setbacks, but have remained resilient and steadfast. They have been writing history and they are paving the road to the future. More than 15 human rights lawyers figure in the Digest of Human Rights laureates: see https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest.

    For this special day, we call upon members of the public, whoever and wherever you are, to send a message of appreciation and encouragement to human rights lawyers in China by:

    ·  Printing or handwriting your message on a sheet of paper (or displaying it on your laptop screen);

    ·  Taking a photo of yourself with your message (group photo is welcome); and

    ·  Sending it to humanrights.lawyers.day@gmail.com with your name, profession, and location. Your email address will be carefully guarded and not shared or used for any other purposes. Deadline: June 10, 2021

    We will play your message in a video collage called “Messages to Human Rights Lawyers in China.” 

    Organizers:

    Humanitarian China (U.S.), ChinaAid (U.S.), China Change (U.S.), Judicial Reform Foundation (Taiwan), New School for Democracy (Taiwan), Taiwan Support China Human Rights Lawyers Network

    https://chinachange.org/2021/05/22/announcing-the-5th-china-human-rights-lawyers-day-calling-for-one-person-one-photo-messages/

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

  • Shipbuilding – A Numbers Game

    While experience grows among Indo-Pacific naval designers, order numbers remain crucial to keeping costs down and yards in business. The Indo-Pacific region has a significant number of shipyards that have the capability to undertake naval shipbuilding. However, depending on the sub-region and the country, the extent to which that capability has developed enough to build […]

    The post Shipbuilding – A Numbers Game appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • 70 years of Pak-China friendship celebrates by Ali Zafar and Xiang Minqi croon.

    Islamabad,

    Pakistani singer Ali Zafar’s creative approach to matters that demand a spark of innovation has caused the artist to stand out from the rest.

    Now he has come up with another outstanding initiative that speaks volumes of his ‘originality’ when it comes to creating art and then inspiring others through it.

    Singer Ali Zafar has introduced a new song to celebrate 70 years of Pak-China friendship in collaboration with Chinese singer Xiang Minqi croon.

    The 70th anniversary of such beneficial relations between the two countries demanded some protocol and Ali Zafar as always delivered.

    Actor Zafar declared that he had to learn some Chinese for the song which we think was worth it.

    Ali Zafar’s gesture was deeply appreciated by social media users and the comment section is covered with comments containing admiration and respect.

    President Xi said, ‘The 70-year-old friendship between China and Pakistan is rock-solid’.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.