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New Cold War

Biden’s Pointless Asian Summit

August 22, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, Consortium News. , , , , ,
My goodness. President Joe Biden and the press serving his regime pumped so much hot air into that three-sided Asian summit at Camp David last week it is a wonder the entire occasion didn’t float away like an overfilled balloon. Here’s the thing: It will. Biden brought together the South Korean president and the Japanese premier to forge some kind of new security pact that is intended to endure, as Biden bloviated, “not just this year, not just next year, forever.” You have to love it: Rarely do we get clownish hyperbole of such high quality. But we must remind ourselves from whom this silliness issues. Then we can make some minimal sense of nonsense, if you will suffer a paradox.

Western Media Glorifies TPLF Mob Violence Against Eritrean Festivals

August 22, 2023 Ann Garrison, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , ,
For 40 years, Eritrean Festivals have been held around the world to sustain the diaspora community’s connections to their homeland and to one another. But this year, a violent, well-coordinated international campaign of sabotage left festival goers badly injured and property damaged. Major Western media reported the pogrom-style attacks as “clashes,” “riots,” “fights” and “violence” in a way that implied these had broken out between two sides, masking the reality – that hooligans had attacked peaceful festival goers. They also implied that the violence was warranted because Eritrea is run by a “repressive” government on the wrong side of the new Cold War.

Documents Show Taiwan Working With FBI To Prosecute Chinese Americans

August 19, 2023 Alan MacLeod, MintPress News. , , , ,
Vice President Lai’s journey to the United States is, officially, only a stopover on his way to Paraguay (the U.S. does not formally recognize Taiwan as an independent state). He is scheduled to make appearances in both New York and San Francisco. Lai himself is an outspoken leader of the growing movement for Taiwanese independence. Many nationalists see Taiwan as culturally different from the mainland and argue it would be better off as a fully independent state. To achieve this goal, they are attempting to gain American backing and influence American public opinion. China, however, sees the matter as purely internal, and American attempts to wrest Taiwan out of its orbit as a potential trigger for World War Three.

France Reports US Backstabbed It During Nuland’s Trip To Niger

August 17, 2023 Andrew Korybko, Orinoco Tribune. , , , , , , ,
French newspaper Le Figaro cited an unnamed diplomatic source over the weekend who alleged that the US backstabbed France during Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland’s trip to Niger. The piece is paywalled but was summarized here. France reportedly fears that the US might tacitly recognize Niger’s interim military-led government in exchange for being allowed to retain its bases. Should that happen, then the US would proactively replace France’s security role in the Sahel before Russia/Wagner has a chance to. This concern is predicated on rational calculations.

Drive To Expand NATO Into Asia May Destroy Western Military Alliance

August 5, 2023 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. , , , , ,
Today we are going to continue the discussion we started in the last Geopolitical Economy Hour, entitled “NATO Out of Bounds: War Against Russia, War Against China”. Last time we discussed where the Vilnius Summit had left NATO, and the divisions within the alliance that the summit had exposed; how the proxy war on Russia was faring; and how the Biden project of uniting so-called democracies against so-called autocracies relies so critically on the outcome of this war, which by present indications does not look good for Ukraine, and it does not look good for NATO. We then went on to discuss how much longer Europe and other US allies could sustain the appearance of NATO unity, which is cracking as we speak, and ended with a discussion of how the grain deal [the Black Sea Grain Initiative] had broken down.

Book Review: ‘The East Is Still Red: Chinese Socialism In The 21st Century’

August 1, 2023 Roger Stoll, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Western media never stop warning us of China: it menaces Taiwan, threatens its neighbors and shipping lanes in the South China Sea, and sticks military bases on Cuba. China, we are told, spies on us by the most devious means, through TikTok, Huawei 5G, and weather balloons. And China, say our media, ensnares Africa with debt traps. Meanwhile, the US government and its media-echo decry China’s abuses of its own people. China, the US says, has committed “cultural” and literal genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. As for the Covid-19 pandemic, the West with whiplash-inducing self-contradiction accuses China of mishandling the crisis by imposing both draconian lockdowns and lockdowns that were too lax, as well as premature reopenings and reopenings that were too-long delayed.

Arming Taiwan Is An Insane Provocation

July 16, 2023 John V. Walsh, Popular Resistance. , , ,
Taiwan is but one in a series of islands along the Chinese coast, often called “The First Island Chain,” which now bristles with advanced U.S. weapons. These are accompanied by tens of thousands of supporting U.S. military personnel and combat troops.  The “First Island Chain” extends from Japan in the north southward through Japan’s Ryukyu islands which include Okinawa, to Taiwan and on to the northern Philippines.  (U.S. ally, South Korea, with a military of 500,000 active duty personnel and 3 million reserves is a powerful adjunct to this chain.)  In US military doctrine the First Island Chain is a base to “project power” and restrict sea access to China.

Yellen’s Visit To China Has Failed

July 10, 2023 Moon of Alabama. , , ,
Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen visited China. There she tried to press the worlds biggest economy on several issues. Yellen's visit failed to achieve anything. She had some talks with Chinese officials but achieved nothing. She lectured and made demands that no one in China will be willing to fulfill. The Chinese side for one seems unimpressed by her performance: Yellen mentioned multiple times the US is seeking a healthy competition with China rather than a "winner-take-all" approach. While this may sound good, the key lies in how we define "healthy competition." Is it a US-style one in which the geopolitical appetite of the US is satisfied while China unconditionally cooperates? Or is it based on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, and win-win cooperation? The root cause of the challenges in the China-US relationship lies in Washington's flawed perception of China.

It’s Hard To Engage In China-Bashing Without Tripping On Contradictions

July 10, 2023 Richard D. Wolff, Naked Capitalism. , , , , ,
The contradictions of China-bashing in the United States begin with how often it is flat-out untrue. The Wall Street Journal reports that the “Chinese spy” balloon that President Joe Biden shot down with immense patriotic fanfare in February 2023 did not in fact transmit pictures or anything else to China. White House economists have been trying to excuse persistent U.S. inflation saying it is a global problem and inflation is worse elsewhere in the world. China’s inflation rate is 0.7 percent year-on-year. Financial media outlets stress how China’s GDP growth rate is lower than it used to be. China now estimates that its 2023 GDP growth will be 5 to 5.5 percent.

US Woos India’s Far-Right PM Modi To Help Wage New Cold War On China

June 24, 2023 Ben Norton, Geopolitical Economy. , , , ,
India’s far-right Prime Minister Narendra Modi took a historic trip to the United States this June. President Joe Biden rolled out the proverbial red carpet for Modi, touting a “new era” to “strengthen our partnership for decades to come”, as the US seeks to recruit India for its new cold war on China. The two leaders released a joint statement implicitly criticizing China and Russia. Reuters made it clear that “Washington wants Delhi to be a strategic counterweight to China”, and that the two leaders signed “deals on defense and commerce aimed at countering China’s global influence”.

Can The European Leg Of The Triad Break Free From The Atlantic Alliance?

June 23, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. , , , ,
It is difficult to make sense of many events these days. France’s behaviour, for instance, is hard to square. On the one hand, French President Emmanuel Macron changed his mind to support Ukraine’s entry into the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). On the other hand, he said that France would like to attend the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) summit in South Africa in August. Europe is, of course, not an entirely homogeneous continent, with problems afoot as Hungary and Turkey have refused to ratify Sweden’s desire to enter NATO at its annual summit in Vilnius (Lithuania) in July.

Chinese-American Worker And Activist Arrested For Advocating For Peace

June 23, 2023 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
Labor leaders and organizers are banding together to demand justice for Chinese-American unionized worker and activist Li Tang “Henry” Liang. Liang was indicted and then arrested in early May in Boston in retaliation for exercising his free speech rights. “The federal government has targeted Liang for advocating peaceful relations between the US and China,” say labor activists in the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance of the AFL-CIO, the largest trade union in the US. As a hotel worker, Liang was an active member in his union, UNITE HERE Local 26. He is also an activist in the Chinese-American community, rallying against the US’s propaganda war against China.

Still Nowhere With The Chinese

June 20, 2023 Patrick Lawrence, The Scrum. , , ,
It is two years now since Antony “Guardrails” Blinken and Jake Sullivan flew to Anchorage and in a matter of two days made a perfect mess of the Biden administration’s relations with China. For Joe Biden’s secretary of state and national security adviser, this was their first major outing since the new president took office two months earlier, and their first encounter with senior foreign policy people from China. A big, defining deal. And a big, defining disaster. Guardrails and his not notably imaginative sidekick are now embarked on their latest effort, of many, to repair the damage they have done.

Voices From Across The Globe Unite Against The New Cold War

June 19, 2023 People's Dispatch. , ,
Social movements and research institutions came together on Saturday, June 17, to flag the emerging Cold War narratives pushed by western imperialism and to call for a new movement for “non-alignment” in the Global South. The call was made over a webinar titled ‘The New Non-Alignment and the New Cold War’, organized by the No Cold War campaign and the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, along with ALBA Movimientos, Pan-Africanism Today, the South Korea-based International Strategy Center and the International Peoples’ Assembly. The call for a new “non-alignment” is significant considering the history of the 20th century.

Exposing The CIA Connection In The ‘Chinese Police Station’ Narrative

June 17, 2023 Kit Klarenberg, MintPress News. , , ,
For months, mainstream media across the Western world – in particular English-language outlets based in the constituent members of the ‘Five Eyes’ global spying network – have been rabidly awash with terrifying news of secret “Chinese police stations” operating the world over. It is claimed these “stations” are unofficial, covert Chinese Communist Party (CPC) security and intelligence cells concealed in private businesses run by Chinese émigrés, such as restaurants. From behind benign facades, they surveil and harass pro-democracy ex-pats, among other nefarious activities.
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