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Asia

China-Celac Forum Brings Latin America And China Together

Ten years after its creation, the China-CELAC Forum has consolidated its position as one of the most relevant platforms for dialogue between Latin America, the Caribbean, and Asia. “The platform has strengthened cooperation between CELAC members and China, based on sovereign equality, mutual respect, plurality, and shared benefits,” states the meeting’s final joint declaration. Under the theme “Planning development and revitalization together, jointly building a China-LAC community with a shared future,” the meeting brought together representatives from more than 30 countries and leaders such as Xi Jinping (China), Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Brazil), Gustavo Petro (Colombia), and Gabriel Boric (Chile).

Workers In South Asia Celebrated May Day

Thousands of workers took to the streets in different parts of South Asia to celebrate International Workers’ Day on Thursday, May 1. A sea of red flags and chants of “workers of the world unite” and “long live the martyrs of Chicago” reverberated in the atmosphere. Workers in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, and elsewhere marched in discipline and raised the demands for fair wages, better working conditions, and employment rights for everyone. They reiterated their resolve to fight against capitalist exploitation and to create an alternative socialist world, extending their solidarity to the anti-imperialist movements across the world.

Close The US Military Bases In Asia

President Donald Trump is again loudly complaining that the US military bases in Asia are too costly for the US to bear. As part of the new round of tariff negotiations with Japan and Korea, Trump is calling on Japan and Korea to pay for stationing the US troops. Here’s a much better idea: close the bases and return the US servicemen to the US. Trump implies that the US is providing a great service to Japan and Korea by stationing 50,000 troops in Japan and nearly 30,000 in Korea. Yet these countries do not need the US to defend themselves. They are wealthy and can certainly provide their own defense.

Birthing A New International Order

Writing in his cell as a political prisoner in fascist Italy after World War I, the philosopher Antonio Gramsci famously declared: “The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.” A century later, we are in another interregnum, and the morbid symptoms are everywhere. The U.S.-led order has ended, but the multipolar world is not yet born. The urgent priority is to give birth to a new multilateral order that can keep the peace and the path to sustainable development. We are at the end of a long wave of human history that commenced with the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Vasco da Gama more than 500 years ago.

The Chris Hedges Report: The World After Gaza

The Holocaust is the quintessential example of human evil for people in the West. In the rest of the world, especially in the Global South, the atrocity of the Holocaust — genocide — has had a closer proximity both in time and place. Colonialism in Africa, destructive wars in Asia and most recently, genocide in the Middle East, have shaped the lives of billions of people. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, essayist and novelist Pankaj Mishra joins host Chris Hedges to discuss his latest book, “The World After Gaza.” Mishra argues that the shifting power dynamics in the world means the Global South’s narrative on atrocity can no longer be ignored and the genocide in Gaza is the current crux of the issue.

Harris And Trump Want US Hegemony Over The World To Continue

On November 5, the people of the United States will head to the polls to elect their next president and legislators. The two leading contenders in the presidential race, Donald Trump from the Republican party and Kamala Harris from the Democratic Party are neck and neck in the majority of opinion polls so far, generating increased speculation on what the outcome will be and what impact their policies may have on the world. With regards to South Asia, historically, the US has maintained relationships of a different character with countries in the region, and these relationships have rarely been impacted by a particular electoral outcome.

Britain Cedes Control Of Chagos Islands But Maintains Pentagon Base

After nearly six decades, the right to self-determination and independence is still being denied to the Indigenous people as the United States prepares for expanding imperialist wars in Asia and Africa.

How Australia Helps The United States Destabilize Asia

September 15 marked the third anniversary of the announcement of the AUKUS (Australia, the UK, the US) agreement. The purpose of this agreement is for Australia to buy nuclear-powered submarines from the UK and the US This increases interoperability with US forces that are projecting their power in the region along the Chinese coast. Furthermore, Australia is participating in the QUAD and SQUAD, “[i]nformal Alliances in the Indo-Pacific.” The city of Darwin in northern Australia has been opened up for the US forces, including planes carrying nuclear weapons. In addition, Australia has long housed bases for US spy satellite systems.

‘Brain Dead’ And Dangerous, NATO Proceeds

It is now five years since Emmanuel Macron, in one of those blunt outbursts for which he is known, told The Economist, in a reference to the collective West, “What we are currently experiencing is the brain death of NATO.” The French president thereupon shocked officials across the Continent. “That is not my point of view,” Angela Merkel responded augustly. “I don’t think that such sweeping judgments are necessary.” Heiko Maas, the German chancellor’s foreign minister, added imaginatively, “I do not believe NATO is brain dead.” The North Atlantic Treaty Organization celebrated its 75th anniversary last week, 32 presidents and prime ministers assembling in the same Washington auditorium where earlier leaders, 12 of them then, signed its founding treaty on April 4, 1949.

Asian NATO Under A New Guise

Over the past couple of years there has been a flurry of activity linking NATO, and some of its constituent countries with the states of American East Asia, principally Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has been a frequent visitor, and in December 2023, the US embassy in Seoul arranged for senior representatives from eight NATO countries to visit South Korea to “engage in discussions on the security situation in the Indo-Pacific region and other pertinent issues”. Meanwhile back in Washington Representative Mike Lawler has introduced a bill in Congress aimed at “establishing [a] task force for NATO-like Indo-Pacific Alliance”.

Russia’s Turn From The West

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s steady, able, intellectually quick foreign minister, last week held one of those wide-ranging press conferences he and his boss favor. Lavrov’s remarks are subtly delivered but of a significance we must not miss. Tass published a useful summary of them on Jan. 18. Here are a few of Lavrov’s pithier remarks. The first of these appeared under the subhead, “On friends of Russia.” I take the liberty of minorly cleaning up the English translation: “Relations between Russia and China currently experience the best period of their centuries-long history. Their relations are firmer, more reliable, and more advanced than a military union as we understood these in the previous Cold War-era. In all cases, the interests of Russia and China reach a common denominator after negotiation, and this is an example for resolution of any issues by any other participants in global communication.

World’s Economic Centre Of Gravity Is Returning To Asia

In October 2023, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) published its annual Trade and Development Report. Nothing in the report came as a major surprise. The growth of the global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) continues to decline with no sign of a rebound. Following a modest post-pandemic recovery of 6.1% in 2021, economic growth in 2023 fell to 2.4%, below pre-pandemic levels, and is projected to remain at 2.5% in 2024. The global economy, UNCTAD says, is ‘flying at “stall speed”’, with all conventional indicators showing that most of the world is experiencing a recession.

Activists Detail Frontline Struggles Against US Militarism In Asia

With the US President Joe Biden waging an all-out economic war against China and aggressively pursuing new forms of collective security alliances to reinforce the military encirclement of China, the Asia-Pacific region has once again become a hotspot in Washington’s new Cold War. From the expansion of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (US, Japan, India, and Australia) to include South Korea, New Zealand, and Vietnam in 2021, the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework in May 2022, the participation of Asian heads of state in NATO meetings in 2022 and 2023, and the cementing of the Japan-Korea-US trilateral alliance at Camp David this August, Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy has been dead set on forging a new anti-China Cold War bloc across the region.

Trilateral Missile Defense System A Step Towards Asian NATO

The United States, Japan, and South Korea will fully operationalize a missile warning system “by the end of December.” While justified as a means to counter North Korea’s missile launches, more worrisome, it escalates tensions in the region with China through the “NATOification” of all three countries, agreed upon in the “Spirit of Camp David” agreement. The agreement was hailed as a “new era of trilateral partnership” during the August 18 press conference following a meeting between the heads of state of all three countries. Western media echoed the sentiment, calling it “historic” and “unprecedented.” China, listed in the agreement as a regional concern, accused the United States of creating a “mini NATO in Asia.”

West Asian Governments Take Assertive Stances Against Israeli Occupation

The responses to Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza from some of the West Asian countries have set an interesting pattern. These responses defy a decades long trend of muted opposition and behind the curtain compromises. More importantly, this is yet another indication of growing assertion and independence of these countries from US hegemony. Since the 1980s, the US was able to use its military and economic power to create a complete hegemony over the ruling classes in the West Asian region. The countries which maintained their independence were exceptions, such as Syria and Iran.

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

Urgent End Of Year Fundraising Campaign

Online donations are back! 

Keep independent media alive. 

Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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