Southeast Asia Ignores US War on Huawei

September 7, 2019 (Joseph Thomas – NEO) – The Western media has begun complaining about Southeast Asia’s collective decision to move forward with 5G network technology from Chinese telecom giant Huawei despite US demands that nations ban all Huawei products.

These demands are predicated on clearly fabricated security threats surrounding Huawei technology. The US itself is a global leader of producing hardware with hidden backdoors and other security flaws for the purpose of spying worldwide.

Instead, the US is clearly targeting the telecom giant as part of a wider campaign to cripple China economically and contain its ability to contest US global hegemony.

Media Disinformation Serves the War on Huawei 

Articles like Reuters’ “Thailand launches Huawei 5G test bed, even as U.S. urges allies to bar Chinese gear,” in title alone confounds informed readers.

The article’s author, Patpicha Tanakasempipat, fails to explain in which ways the US is “allies” with any of the nations of Southeast Asia, including Thailand. The history of US activity in Southeast Asia has been one of coercion, interference, intervention, colonisation and protracted war.

As US power has faded, it has resorted to “soft power,” with its most recent “pivot to Asia” being accompanied by several failed attempts to overthrow regional governments and replace them with suitable proxies.

Considering this, and a complete lack of suitable US alternatives to Huawei’s products, there is little mystery as to why the region as a whole has ignored US demands regarding Huawei.

The article claims:

Thailand launched a Huawei Technologies 5G test bed on Friday, even as the United States urges its allies to bar the Chinese telecoms giant from building next-generation mobile networks.

Huawei, the world’s top producer of telecoms equipment and second-biggest maker of smartphones, has been facing mounting international scrutiny amid fears China could use its equipment for espionage, a concern the company says is unfounded.

Patpicha fails categorically to cite any evidence substantiating US claims. She also fails categorically to point out that there is in fact a glaring lack of evidence behind US claims, just as many other articles across the Western media have predictably and purposefully done.

Vietnam, the Outlier 

The one exception in Southeast Asia is Vietnam. It has sidestepped considering Huawei in favour of US-based Qualcomm and Scandinavian companies Nokia and Ericsson. While the Vietnamese government said its decision was based on technical concerns rather than geopolitics, a Bloomberg article quoted the CEO of state-owned telecom concern, Viettel Group, who claimed:

We are not going to work with Huawei right now. It’s a bit sensitive with Huawei now. There were reports that it’s not safe to use Huawei. So Viettel’s stance is that, given all this information, we should just go with the safer ones. So we choose Nokia and Ericsson from Europe.

The same article would also cite supposed experts who claim Vietnam seeks closer ties with the US in countering China’s growing stature upon the global stage, and ultimately folded to US demands because of this.

This however is unlikely. Vietnam – among all of Southeast Asia’s nations – is not an “ally” of Washington.

The US waged a bloody war against Vietnam at the cost of 4 million lives. The nation still bears the burden of chemical warfare through persistent birth defects as well as swaths of land covered in unexploded ordnance. To this day the US maintains a stable of opposition groups it funds to pressure and coerce the Vietnamese government. The US also invests in groups fanning anti-Chinese sentiment inside Vietnam.

Considering this, Vietnam, by spurning Huawei at the moment, is more likely cynically playing the US and China off one another with this particular move aimed at currying leverage over Beijing and favour with Washington, while at other junctures, Vietnam has made moves to gain leverage over Washington while cultivating closer ties with Beijing.

Not Just Thailand

The same Bloomberg article would note:

Vietnam’s decision to shun Huawei appears to make it an outlier in Southeast Asia, where other countries such as the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia are open to deploying Huawei’s technology.

The irony of this is that the Philippines in particular has been touted by Washington as one of its key partners in provoking China over its claims in the South China Sea. Not only has Manila repeatedly sabotaged or undermined Washington’s efforts in the South China Sea deciding to bilaterally deal with Beijing instead and without US help, it is now openly ignoring US demands to dump Huawei technology.

Malaysia has been another target of US political interference. There were hopes in Washington that after the last Malaysian elections, victorious parties backed by Washington would cut growing ties with Beijing. This did not happen. While some Malaysian-Chinese deals were renegotiated, they continued to move forward nonetheless.

By ignoring US demands that Huawei products be banned and by moving forward with Huawei technology for national 5G infrastructure, Malaysia affirms again that Asia’s future will be determined in Asia by the nations residing there, not by Washington thousands of miles away.

While the US remains a potent geopolitical hegemon with a powerful military and economy, and the means to inflict punishment on nations opposing its agenda across the globe, it is still a hegemon in decline.

The US is not losing to China because it hasn’t been ruthless enough or because its “allies” are not cooperating. It is not losing to China because of anything in particular China is doing to the US. The US is losing because of fundamental flaws in what is an entirely unsustainable and indefensible foreign policy.

Until it fixes those fundamental flaws and adopts a more appropriate foreign policy, it will continue to lose out to competitors like China. Its tech giants like Apple and Qualcomm will continue to lose out to competitors like Huawei. No amount of coercion, threats or acts of malice can change the fact that at a fundamental level, the US has no competitive edge and its power stems more from momentum than from any remaining driving strength.

While nations bide their time for this momentum to diminish, Beijing, Moscow and the capitals of other developing and emerging global powers continue building an alternative global order based on a multipolar balance of power and the primacy of national sovereignty… a global order where, for example, one nation does not get to decide who the rest of the world works with to build their respective telecom infrastructure.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

تجدّد الفشل الأميركي في مواجهة التنين الصيني وقنابله الدخانية في الخليج تذروها الرياح

أغسطس 10, 2019

محمد صادق الحسيني

بداية لا بدّ من القول إنه يجب على كلّ متابع للشأن الصيني، وبالتالي لجهود الصين المشتركة مع روسيا وإيران وغيرهما من الدول لإنهاء سيطرة القطب الأميركي الواحد على العالم، ان يتذكر أنّ ما ينفذه الرئيس الأميركي ترامب ضدّ الصين، من إجراءات اقتصادية/ مالية وسياسية وعسكرية، ليست بالإجراءات الأميركية الجديدة إطلاقاً.

اذ انّ العداء الأميركي لجمهورية الصين الشعبية قد بدأ منذ نشأة هذه الدولة، سنة 1949، ومنذ أن قام الجنرال تشين كاي تشيك، زعيم ما كان يُعرف بالكومينتانغ واثر هزيمة قواته امام قوات التحرير الشعبيه الصينية، بقيادة الزعيم الصيني ماوتسي تونغ في نهاية الحرب الأهلية الصينية، التي استمرت من سنة 1945 حتى 1949، نقول حيث قام زعيم الكومينتانغ، مع فلول قواته، بالهرب من البر الصيني المحرر الى جزيرة فورموزا تايوان وسيطر عليها، من خلال وحدات الكومينتانغ العميلة للولايات المتحدة، والتي تمكنت من ذلك بمساعدة عسكرية أميركية مباشرة.

وقد تمادت الولايات المتحدة في عدوانها على جمهورية الصين الشعبية بدعمها هذا الكيان اللقيط، الذي أطلقت عليه اسم تايوان، ومنحته ليس فقط عضوية الأمم المتحدة، وإنما عضوية دائمة في مجلس الأمن الدولي. أيّ انها أصبحت دولة تتمتع بحق الفيتو في ما كانت جمهورية الصين الشعبية محرومة من حق العضوية في منظمة الامم المتحدة بالمطلق، وذلك حتى سنة 1971 عندما بدأت الولايات المتحدة بتطبيق سياسة انفتاح مبرمج على الصين.

ولكن المخططات الأميركية، المعادية لاستقلالية القرار الصيني والهادفة الى وقف التطور الاقتصادي الصيني، لم تتغيّر مطلقاً، طوال سبعينيات وثمانينيات القرن الماضي التي شهدت إقامة علاقات دبلوماسية بين الدولتين. وقد وصلت مؤامرات الولايات المتحدة، ضدّ الصين، قمتها في ربيع سنة 1989، عندما أطلقت واشنطن حملة سياسية وإعلامية دولية ضدّ جمهورية الصين الشعبية، تحت حجة دعم مطالب شعبية صينية، كان قد طرحها محتجون صينيون عبر تظاهرات في عدة مدن صينية، خاصة في ميدان تيان ان مين، الذي شهد احتجاجات وصدامات، منذ أوائل شهر نيسان وحتى أواسط حزيران سنة 1989، بين المحتجين وقوات الأمن الصينية. تلك الصدامات التي انتهت بإعادة فرض النظام في كلّ مكان والقضاء على ظاهرة الثوره الملوّنة في مهدها.

وها هي الولايات المتحدة، ومعها بقايا ما كان يطلق عليه مسمّى بريطانيا العظمى، تحاول إثارة المتاعب أمام الحكومة الصينية المركزية، وذلك عبر إثارة الشغب وحالات الفوضى في جزيرة هونغ كونغ، التي اضطرت بريطانيا الى إعادتها الى الوطن الأمّ، الصين الشعبية، عام 1997، مستخدمة مجموعات محلية مرتبطة بمخططات خارجية، يتمّ تسييرها وتوجيهها من قبل أجهزة مخابرات أميركية وبريطانيا منذ ما يقارب الشهرين، دون أن تقوم قوات الأمن الصينية بأكثر من الحدّ الأدنى لحفظ النظام.

ولكن استمرار هذه السياسة الانجلوأميركية وتزامنها مع استمرار التحشيد العسكري الأميركي، في البحار القريبة من الصين كشرق المحيط الهندي وبحر الصين الجنوبي وخليج البنغال وبحر اليابان وغيرها من البحار، وصولاً الى إرسال حاملة الطائرات الأميركية رونالد ريغان الى بحر الصين الجنوبي، في خطوة استفزازية للصين، نقول انّ استمرار هذه السياسة الأميركية، الى جانب العقوبات الاقتصادية والمالية التي فرضت على الصين، وفِي ظلّ قدسية الحفاظ على وحدة وسيادة جمهورية الصين الشعبية على كافة أراضيها، فقد أصدر المتحدث باسم مكتب شؤون هونغ كونغ وماكاو تصريحاً شديد اللهجة قال فيه: بودّنا التوضيح لمجموعة صغيرة من المجرمين العنيفين عديمي الضمير ومن يقف وراءهم انّ من يلعب بالنار سيُقتل بها.لا ترتكبوا خطأ في تقييم الوضع. ولا تعتبروا ممارستنا لضبط النفس ضعفاً .

إذن… هذه رسالة صينية نارية واضحة وصريحة، لا بل أمر عمليات، موجّه لليانكي الأميركي، وليس فقط لبعض أذناب الاستعمار في هونغ كونغ، من سواحل بحر الصين الجنوبي، مفادها: لا تلعبوا بالنار…

وما يزيد أمر العمليات الصيني هذا زخماً وقوة، هو صدوره بعد الجولة الفاشلة، التي قام بها وزيرا الحرب والخارجية الأميركيان، في استراليا وعدد من دول المحيط الهادئ، في محاولة منهما لإقناع تلك الدول بالموافقة على نشر صواريخ أميركية، موجهة الى الصين، على أراضيها ورفض جميع الدول المعنية لهذه الفكرة الأميركية الهدامة. كما انّ أمر العمليات هذا قد تزامن مع وصول حاملة الطائرات الأميركية، رونالد ريغان، الى بحر الصين الجنوبي كما أسلفنا.

إذن وكما جرت العادة فإنّ الولايات المتحدة، ممثلة برئيسها ورئيس دبلوماسيتها، تمارس الكذب والتضليل بشكل فاضح وخطير. ففي الوقت الذي تشنّ فيه إدارة الرئيس ترامب حملتها التضليلية الكاذبة، حول ضرورة الحفاظ على أمن الخليج ومضيق هرمز، وحماية السفن التجارية التي تبحر فيهما فإنها تطلق قنابل دخانية للتغطية على خطواتها الأكثر خطورة على الأمن الدولي، المتمثلة في تعزيز الحشد العسكري الاستراتيجي ضدّ كلّ من روسيا والصين الشعبية، وذلك من خلال:

1 ـ مواصلة إرسال حاملات الطائرات، ابراهام لينكولن ورونالد ريغان، ومجموعتيهما البحريتين الى مناطق عمليات أكثر قرباً من الصين.

2 ـ سحب قاذفات القنابل الأميركية الاستراتيجية، من طراز /B 52/ التي كانت ترابط في قاعدة العيديد القطرية ونقلها الى قاعدة دييغو غارسيا في المحيط الهندي، غرب المحيط الهندي.

3 ـ مواصلة الولايات المتحدة لمناوراتها المشتركة مع كوريا الجنوبية والتي لا تشكل استفزازاً لكوريا الشمالية فحسب، وإنما لجمهورية الصين الشعبية أيضاً، وذلك لأنها تفضي إلى مزيد من الحضور العسكري الأميركي في المحيط القريب من الصين.

وفي إطار قنابل الدخان هذه، فإنّ القنبلة الأكثر إثارة للسخرية هي الهراء الذي أطلقه وزير خارجية نتن ياهو، ايسرائيل كاتس، يوم امس الأول حول احتمال مشاركة إسرائيل في التحالف البحري الذي دعت الولايات المتحدة لإقامته في الخليج.

ولكن هذا الوزير نسي انّ دولته لا تعتبر دولة تملك قوة بحرية ذات قيمة على الصعيد الدولي، على الرغم من امتلاكها غواصات دولفين، الألمانية الصنع، والقادرة على حمل رؤوس نووية، والخاضعة لمراقبة سلاح البحرية الإيراني على مدار الساعه والعديمة القدرة على المناورة ضدّ إيران في أيّ من بحار المنطقة، لأسباب لا مجال للتوسع في شرحها.

اذن هذه التصريحات الإسرائيلية لا يمكن اعتبارها أكثر من قنبلة دخان انتخابية لصالح نتن ياهو ليس إلا. ولا تدخل حتى في استراتيجية الولايات المتحدة الأكثر شمولية. ولمزيد من التوضيح فانّ هذا الوزير، كاتس، كان كمن أراد الاستجارة من الرمضاء بالنار، أيّ أنه أراد أن يغطي على فشل كيانه في مواجهة حلف المقاومة وعلى رأسه إيران بحشر أنف إسرائيل في وضع الخليج، مستنداً الى الوجود الأمني الإسرائيلي الواسع في السعودية ودول الخليج العربية الأخرى.

هذا الوجود الذي تعود جذوره إلى أكثر من عشرين عاماً، أيّ إلى نهاية تسعينيات القرن الماضي، حيث بدأت السعودية والإمارات بإبرام عقود حماية أمنية، للمنشآت النفطية في البلدين، مع شركات أمن إسرائيلية، وهو الأمر الذي مكَّن هذه الشركات الإسرائيلية، وهي في الحقيقة أذرع لجهاز الموساد الإسرائيلي، من إقامة بنية تحتية استخبارية كاملة تخدم الأهداف الإسرائيلية. علماً أنّ هذا الوجود الاستخباري الإسرائيلي الكثيف لا يمثل أيّ قيمة لها تأثير على موازين القوى في ميادين القتال. حيث انّ مناطق هذا الوجود، أيّ السعودية ودوّل الخليج، لم يكن يوماً جزءاً من ميادين القتال ضدّ الجيش الإسرائيلي ، وعليه فإنه وجود لا يختلف عن وجود العصافير في القفص، لا قيمة له ميدانية أو عملية إطلاقاً.

لكلّ نبأ مستقرّ.

بعدنا طيبين قولوا الله…

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US Global Power: The Trump Period, The End of Unipolarity

By Prof. James Petras

Global Research, May 02, 2019

Introduction

US global power in the Trump period reflects the continuities and changes which are unfolding rapidly and deeply throughout the world and which are affecting the position of Washington.

Assessing the dynamics of US global power is a complex problem which requires examining multiple dimensions.

We will proceed by:

• Conceptualizing the principles which dictate empire building, specifically the power bases and the dynamic changes in relations and structures which shape the present and future position of the US.
• Identifying the spheres of influence and power and their growth and decline.
• Examining the regionsof conflict and contestation.
• The major and secondary rivalries.
• The stable and shifting relationsbetween existing and rising power centers.
• The internal dynamics shaping the relative strength of competing centers of global power.
• The instability of the regimes and states seeking to retain and expand global power.

Conceptualization of Global Power

US global power is built on several significant facts.  These include:  the US victory in World War II, its subsequent advanced economy and dominant military position throughout five continents.

The US advanced its dominance through a series of alliances in Europe via NATO; Asia via its hegemonic relationship with Japan, South Korea, Philippines and Taiwan as well as Australia and New Zealand in Oceana; Latin America via traditional client regimes; Africa via neo-colonial rulers imposed following independence.

US global power was built around encircling the USSR and China, undermining their economies and defeating their allies militarily via regional wars.

Post WWII global economic and military superiority created subordinated allies and established US global power, but it created the bases for gradual shifts in relations of dominance.

US global power was formidable but subject to economic and military changes over time and in space.

US Spheres of Power:  Then and Now

US global power exploited opportunities but also suffered military setbacks early on, particularly in Korea, Indo-China and Cuba. The US spheres of power were clearly in place in Western Europe and Latin America but was contested in Eastern Europe and Asia.

The most significant advance of US global power took place with the demise and disintegration of the USSR, the client states in Eastern Europe, as well as the transformation of China and Indo-China to capitalism during the 1980’s.

US ideologues declared the coming of a unipolar empire free of restraints and challenges to its global and regional power. The US turned to conquering peripheral adversaries.  Washington destroyed Yugoslavia and then Iraq – fragmenting them into mini-states. Wall Street promoted a multitude of multi-national corporations to invade China and Indo-China who reaped billions of profits exploiting cheap labor.

The believers of the enduring rule of US global power envisioned a century of US imperial rule.

In reality this was a short-sighted vision of a brief interlude.

The End of Unipolarity: New Rivalries and Global and Regional Centers of Power: An Overview

US global power led Washington into  ‘overreach’, in several crucial areas:  it launched a series of costly prolonged wars, specifically in Iraq and Afghanistan, which had three negative consequences:  the destruction of the Iraq armed forces and economy led to the rise of the Islamic State which overtook most of the country; the occupation in Afghanistan which led to the emergence of the Taliban and an ongoing twenty year war which cost hundreds of billions of dollars and several thousand wounded and dead US soldiers; as a result the majority of the US public turned negative toward wars and empire building

The US pillage and dominance of Russia ended, when President Putin replaced Yeltsin’s vassal state.  Russia rebuilt its industry, science, technology and military power.  Russia’s population recovered its living standards.

With Russian independence and advanced military weaponry, the US lost its unipolar  military power.  Nevertheless, Washington financed a coup which virtually annexed two thirds of the Ukraine.  The US incorporated the fragmented Yugoslavian ‘statelets’ into NATO.  Russia countered by annexing the Crimea and secured a mini-state adjacent Georgia.

China converted the economic invasion of US multi-national corporations into learning experiences for building its national economy and export platforms which contributed which led to its becoming an economic competitor and rival to the US.

US global empire building suffered important setbacks in Latin America resulting

from the  the so-called Washington Consensus.  The imposition of neo-liberal policies privatized and plundered their economies, impoverished the working and middle class, and provoked a series of popular uprising and the rise of radical social movements and center-left governments.

Reasons Trump Breaks Nuclear-Sanction Agreement with Iran, Declares Trade War with China and Meets with North Korea

The US empire lost spheres of influence in some regions (China, Russia, Latin America, Middle East) though it retained influence among elites in contested regions and even launched new imperial wars in contested terrain.  Most notably the US attacked independent regimes in Libya, Syria, Venezuela, Somalia and Sudan via armed proxies.

The change from a unipolar to a multi polar world and the gradual emergence of regional rivals led US global strategists to rethink their strategy.  The Trump regime’s aggressive policies set the stage for political division within the regime and among allies.

The Obama – Trump Convergence and Differences on Empire Building

By the second decade of the 21^stcentury several new global power alignments emerged:  China had become the main economic competitor for world power and Russia was the major military challenger to US military supremacy at the regional level.  The US replaced the former European colonial empire in Africa.  Washington’s sphere of influence extended especially in North and Sub Sahara Africa:  Kenya, Libya, Somalia and Ethiopia.  Trump gained leverage in the Middle East namely in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Jordan.

Israel retained its peculiar role, converting the US as its sphere of influence.

But the US  faced regional rivals for sphere of influence in Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Algeria.

In South Asia US faced competition for spheres of influence from China, India, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

In Latin America sharp and abrupt shifts in spheres of influence were the norm.  US influence declined between 2000 – 2015 and recovered from 2015 to the  present.

Imperial Power Alignments Under President Trump

President Trump faced complex global, regional and local political and economic challenges.

Trump followed and deepened many of the policies launched by the Obama- Hillary Clinton policies with regard to other countries and regions . However Trump also radicalized and/or reversed policies of his predecessors. He combined flattery and aggression at the same time.

At no time did Trump recognize the limits of US global power.  Like the previous three presidents he persisted in the belief that the transitory period of a unipolar global empire could be re-imposed.

Toward Russia, a global competitor, Trump adopted a policy of ‘rollback’.  Trump imposed economic sanctions, with the strategic ‘hope’ that  by impoverishing Russia, degrading its financial and industrial sectors that he could force a regime change which would convert Moscow into a vassal state.

At the beginning of his Presidential campaign Trump flirted with the notion of a business accommodation with Putin. However, Trump’s ultra-belligerent appointments and domestic opposition soon turned him toward a highly militarized strategy, rejecting military – including nuclear – agreements, in favor of military escalation.

Toward China, Trump faced a dynamic and advancing technological competitor. Trump resorted to a ‘trade war’ that went far beyond ‘trade’ to encompass a war against Beijing’s economic structure and social relations.  The Trump regime-imposed sanctions and threatened a total boycott of Chinese exports.

Trump and his economic team demanded China privatize and denationalize its entire state backed industry.  They demanded the power to unilaterally decide when violations of US rules occurred and to be able to re-introduce sanctions without consultations.  Trump demanded all Chinese technological agreements, economic sectors and innovations were subject and open to US business interests.  In other words, Trump demanded the end of Chinese sovereignty and the reversal of the structural base for its global power.  The US was not interested in mere ‘trade’ – it wanted a return to imperial rule over a colonized China.

The Trump regime rejected negotiations and recognition of a shared power relation: it viewed its global rivals as potential clients.

Inevitably the Trump regime’s strategy would never reach any enduring agreements on any substantial issues under negotiations.  China has a successful strategy for global power built on a 6 trillion-dollar world-wide Road and Belt (R and B) development policy, which links 60 countries and several regions. R and B is building seaports, rail and air systems linking industries financed by development banks.

In contrast, the US banks exploits industry, speculates and operates within closed financial circuits.  The US spends trillions on wars, coups, sanctions and other parasitical activities which have nothing to do with economic competitiveness.

The Trump regime’s ‘allies’ in the Middle East namely Saudi Arabia and Israel, are parasitic allies who buy protection and provoke costly wars.

Europe complains about China’s increase in industrial exports and overlook imports of consumer goods.  Yet the EU plans to resist Trump’s sanctions which lead to a blind alley of stagnation!

Conclusion

The most recent period of the  peak of US global power, the decade between 1989-99 contained the seeds of its decline and the current resort to trade wars, sanctions and nuclear threats.

The structure of US global power changed over the past seven decades.  The US global empire building began with the US command over the rebuilding of Western European economies and the displacement of England, France, Portugal and Belgium from Asia and Africa.

The Empire spread and penetrated  South America via US multi-national corporations. However, US empire building was not a linear process as witness  its unsuccessful confrontation with national liberation movements in Korea, Indo China, Southern Africa (Angola, Congo, etc.) and the Caribbean (Cuba).  By the early 1960’s the US had displaced its European rivals and successfully incorporated them as subordinate allies.

Washington’s main rivals for spheres of influence was Communist China and the USSR with their allies among client state and overseas revolutionaries.

The US empire builders’ successes led to the transformation of their Communist and nationalist rivals into emergent capitalist competitors.

In a word US dominance led to the construction of capitalist rivals, especially China and Russia.

Subsequently, following US military defeats and prolonged wars, regional powers proliferated in the Middle East, North Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Regional blocs competed with US clients for power.

The diversification of power centers led to new and costly wars.  Washington lost exclusive control of markets, resources and alliances.  Competition reduced the spheres of US power.

In the face of these constraints on US global power the Trump regime envisioned a strategy to  recover  US dominance – ignoring the limited capacity and structure of US political , economic and class relations.

China absorbed US technology and went on to create new advances without following each previous stage.

Russia’s recovered from its losses and sanctions  and secured alternative trade relations to counter the new challenges to the US global empire.  Trump’s regime launched a ‘permanent trade war’ without stable allies. Moreover, he failed  to undermine China’s global infrastructure network; Europe demanded and secured autonomy to enter into trade deals with China, Iran and Russia.

Trump has pressured many regional powers who have ignored his threats.

The US still remains a global power.  But unlike the past, the US lacks the industrial base to ‘make America strong’.  Industry is subordinated to finance; technological innovations are not linked to skilled labor  to increase productivity.

Trump relies on sanctions and they have failed to undermine regional influentials.  Sanctions may temporarily reduce access to US markets’ but we have observed that new trade partners take their place.

Trump has gained client regimes in Latin America, but the gains are precarious and subject to reversal.

Under the Trump regime, big business and bankers have increased prices in the stock market and even the rate of growth of the  GDP, but he confronts severe domestic political instability, and high levels of turmoil among the branches of government.  In pursuit of loyalty over competence, Trump’s appointments have led to the ascendancy of cabinet officials who seek to wield unilateral power which the US no longer possesses.

Elliot Abrams can massacre a quarter-million Central Americans with impunity, but he has failed to impose US power over Venezuela and Cuba.  Pompeo can threaten North Kore, Iran and China but these countries fortify alliances with US rivals and competitors.  Bolton can advance the interests of Israel but their conversations take place in a telephone booth – it lacks resonance with any major powers.

Trump has won a presidential election, he has secured concessions from some countries but he has alienated regional and diplomatic allies.  Trump claims he is making America strong, but he has undermined lucrative strategic multi-lateral trade agreements.

US ‘Global Power’ does not prosper with bully-tactics.  Projections of power alone, have failed – they require recognition of realistic economic limitations and the losses from regional wars.

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Award winning author Prof. James Petras is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Prof. James Petras, Global Research, 2019

Russia Officially Returns to South Asia by Offering to Host Indo-Pak Peace Talks

By Andrew Korybko

Global Research, March 01, 2019

Russia’s 21^st-century grand strategy of becoming the supreme “balancing” force in Afro-Eurasia is one major step closer to fruition after Foreign Minister Lavrov offered to host peace talks between India and Pakistan, proving that Russia’s refusal to take sides between its decades-long and newfound partners is part and parcel of President Putin’s pragmatic approach to regional affairs.

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov sent shockwaves through South Asia on Thursday by announcing his country’s intent to host peace talks between India and Pakistan if they wish for it to do so, thereby heralding Russia’s return to the region and putting it one major step closer towards fulfilling its 21^st-century grand strategy of becoming the supreme “balancing” force in Afro-Eurasia. This brief article will mostly serve as a collection of the author’s relevant pieces about the larger concepts that will be concisely touched upon on a point-by-point basis and should therefore be seen as a resource to rely on for better understanding Russia’s envisaged role in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Towards a Russia-Pakistan Railway Corridor?

All told, it’s nothing short of a game-changing geopolitical development that Russia would offer to host peace talks between India and Pakistan because it proves just how wildly successful President Putin’s “balancing” strategy has been thus far, considering how confident Moscow is that it can constructively apply this model to the two nuclear-armed Great Powers in South Asia. Russia has truly returned to the region and is poised to play an even larger role in it over the coming years, which will enable Moscow to more assertively counter the US’ plans to destabilize South Asia and therefore ensure the success of the emerging Multipolar World Order.

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This article was originally published on Eurasia Future.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

After Trump’s tirade, Pentagon says Pakistan critical partner in US South Asia strategy

By Aisha Mahmood
Source

In an apparent damage control after US President Donald Trump’s accusations that Pakistan ‘does not do a damn thing’ for the US, the Pentagon has said that Pakistan remains a critical partner to America’s South Asia strategy.

During an off-camera news conference, US Colonel Rob Manning, Director of Defense Press Operations, contended that there was no change in US’s military-to-military relationship with Pakistan. He said that Pakistan continues to be a part of South Asia strategy, local media reported.

Manning continued, “The US and Pakistan have strong mutual interests in the region. As you know, they are critical (and) vital to the South Asia strategy and including the facilitation of a peace process that would lead to a stable and peaceful Afghanistan.”

In his latest tirade, the US president targeted Pakistan in a series of tweets and blamed it for receiving billions of dollars’ and ‘not doing a damn thing’ for the US. Prime Minister Imran Khan slammed Trump and said that instead of making Pakistan ‘a scapegoat for their failures’ in Afghanistan, the US should assess their strategies. The PM continued in a series of tweets and listed down the sacrifices made by Pakistan after participating in the US War on Terror.

The Pentagon Realised What It Has Done – the Chinese Put the US Army on Its Knees

November 04, 2018

By Ivan Danilov
Translated by Ollie Richardson & Angelina Siard
cross posted with http://www.stalkerzone.org/ivan-danilov-the-pentagon-realised-what-it-has-done-the-chinese-put-the-us-army-on-its-knees/
source: https://ria.ru/analytics/20181104/1532106144.html

In the system of national defense of the US a gaping vulnerability was found that is very difficult to close. The reaction of the Pentagon is reminiscent of badly hidden panic, and journalists who examined the results of the research of American experts, who thoroughly studied the condition of the American army and defensive industry, admit that there is iron logic in the recent “strange” actions of president Trump — he wants to save America from transforming into a cardboard tiger with paper claws.

The essence of the problem, according to the retelling of the columnist of the Reuters agency Andy Home, who obtained a copy of the September report of the US Department of Defence on the situation concerning key deliveries necessary for the American army, is reduced to one important figure. More than 300 (!) key elements necessary for the normal functioning of the US Armed Forces and defensive industry are under threat: American producers are either on the verge of bankruptcy or were already replaced by suppliers from China or other countries because of the deindustrialisation of national economy and the relocation of production to the countries of Southeast Asia.

Mr. Home gives as a striking and clear example the amusing (of course, if you are not a US military man) fact from the report: it turns out that the last American producer of the synthetic threads necessary for the production of army tents “died” quite recently. This means that in the event that the US will fall under such a “textile embargo”, for some American soldiers they will seriously face the prospect of sleeping in the open-air. It is difficult not to notice that such a prospect looks slightly humiliating for an army that claims to be the most hi-tech on the planet.

The situation could be considered as funny if it didn’t affect such a wide range of requirements of the American army and military-industrial complex. In the declassified part of the research of the American Department of Defence it is mentioned that in the US there are difficulties with future deliveries of the power switches that nearly all American missiles are equipped with. As officials of the Pentagon report, the producer of these switches was closed down, but the highest military ranks learned about it only after it became clear that the power switches ended. And there is nowhere to take new ones from, because the producer disappeared into thin air a whole 2 years ago. One more striking example: the country’s only producer of solid rocket motors for “air-to-air” missiles, as the American officials write, “encountered technical production issues”, the reasons for which couldn’t be found even after government and military experts were involved. Attempts to restart production failed, and the Pentagon was obliged to employ a Norwegian company to ensure uninterrupted deliveries. Obviously, this indicates a certain technical degradation of the entire American system, because only the loss of some key competencies can explain a situation in which production cannot be restored and the problem cannot even be determined.

Whilst becoming acquainted with the complaints of the leadership of the American army it is difficult to rid oneself of the impression that it isn’t a document of the US Department of Defence dated September, 2018 that is in front of your eyes, but a description of the problems of the Russian army from the era of the dashing 90’s. Literally there is no direction in which there would be no serious or very serious problems, and often they even can’t be solved at the expense of the bottomless military budget.

In the section on nuclear weapon problems the Pentagon complains that in the US there isn’t the necessary number of engineers and technicians who would have the corresponding education, training, and US citizenship that are necessary for working with army nuclear objects. The mention of nationality is of importance, because American higher education institutions produce enough engineers, physicists, and representatives of other technical specialties and exact sciences, however a disproportionately large number of these graduates are foreigners, most often from the People’s Republic of China.

Americans can’t find not only the necessary engineers, but also the necessary microelectronics for nuclear weapons. And they complain that they no longer have the right to trust suppliers of electronic components – after all,

“the supply chain is globalised”. In translation from American bureaucratese into colloquial Russian it means: “the microelectronics for our nuclear missiles are made in China, and we don’t know what the Chinese have stuffed in it”.

There are serious difficulties even concerning issues that should be solved very easily in the conditions of hi-tech American economy. For example, the Pentagon complains about a lack of tools for the development of software, as well as the management of data and production, that could be trusted. The situation is exacerbated by “poor cybersecurity practices by many key software vendors”. This, when translated from American bureaucratese into colloquial Russian, means: “concerning cybersecurity, our vendors are so bad that we don’t know what the Chinese and Russian hackers cram into the software that our military use”.

Main conclusion of the report:

“China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security. <…> Areas of concern to America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base include a growing number of both widely used and specialized metals, alloys and other materials, including rare earths and permanent magnets”.

In general everything is bad, starting with aluminium and ending with cybersecurity, from power switches for missiles to engineers and drill operators, and from computer numerical control machines to synthetic fabric for military tents. The greed of American business, the ideology of globalisation, and the iron belief that history, as Fukuyama predicted, is about to end collectively caused such damage to the defense capability of the US that the geopolitical opponents couldn’t even dream of. It is precisely by understanding this fact that explains Donald Trump’s attempts to carry out the reindustrialisation of America almost by force.

However, there is every reason to believe that, taking into account the present economic difficulties, it’s unlikely that Trump’s administration will be able to fix what its predecessors broke 20 years. And we [Russians – ed] and our Chinese partners need, on the one hand, not to repeat the mistakes of Americans, and on the other hand — to make the most of these mistakes. Judging by what is happening now on the world stage, this is exactly what Moscow and Beijing are doing.

Russia clearing up the USA’s pollution of Laos

Russian Sappers Departing for Laos to Clear Country of US Bombs – Reports

Sputnik – 10.10.2018

MOSCOW – The bomb squad of the Russian Armed Forces’ International Mine Action Center will depart for Laos to help the country clear out remaining unexploded US bombs from the Vietnam War later on Wednesday, local media reported.

The squad consists of 36 people, according to the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper. The mission will last until March 2019, and will focus on clearing myriads of hard-to-find US bombs that pose a threat to local residents from the Laotian jungle, as chief of the engineer troops of the Russian Armed Forces Lt. Gen. Yury Stavitsky said last week.

The United States dropped some 260 million bombs on Laos between 1964 and 1973, according to experts. The Vietnam war, which began in 1964 and ended in 1975, killed about 3 million Vietnamese and over 58,000 US nationals, as well as many people in adjacent countries, including Cambodia and Laos.

US Army investigators secretly confirmed over 300 war crimes committed by the US military, including murder, torture, rape, corpse mutilation and indiscriminate fire in civilian areas, according to the Crimes of War Education Project.

حكاية إيران وكوريا مع أميركا وأوروبا: الجغرافيا السياسية تغيّرت مع الحرب السورية

مايو 29, 2018

ناصر قنديل

– كشفت العنتريات الأميركية في الملف النووي لكوريا الشمالية هزال السياسة الخارجية والأمنية لإدارة الرئيس دونالد ترامب، التي تلاقى مستشار أمنها القومي جون بولتون ونائب الرئيس مايكل بنس، على تبشيرها بالخيار الليبي، واضطر رئيسها ترامب نفسه لنفي التشبيه وثم الإصرار على بقاء التفاوض رغم الإعلان الكوري عن التشكيك في جدواه. وعاد فأعلن إلغاء القمة مع الزعيم الكوري بسبب الصدّ والممانعة الكوريين، ليعود فيوسّط رئيس كوريا الجنوبية ويرسل وفداً إلى كوريا الشمالية يتبعه وصول وزير الخارجية مايك بومبيو لتقديم ضمانات رسمية طلبتها كوريا للإبقاء على القمة، ويعلن ترامب مجدداً أنه يتطلّع لعقد القمة ويعد كوريا بالمَنّ والسلوى.

– بالمقابل بدت أميركا متشدّدة ومتصلّبة وفي منحى تصعيدي تجاه الملف النووي الإيراني، وصولاً لعدم سماع أصوات الاستغاثة الأوروبية بعدم تطبيق العقوبات على شركاتها ومصارفها التي ستبقى ضمن خط التعامل التجاري مع إيران من ضمن التزام الحكومات الأوروبية بالتفاهم الموقع والمصدّق عليه من مجلس الأمن الدولي برضا وقبول واشنطن نفسها، حتى عندما بلغت الأصوات الأوروبية حدّ التحذير من أنها ستنفرد عن أميركا وتصون التفاهم لم تلقَ إصغاء واشنطن، وترافق التصعيد الأميركي مع تهديد إسرائيلي متواصل وتصعيد محسوب ومتقطع على الجبهة السورية تحت عنوان الدعوة لانسحاب إيران وحزب الله، يرافقها طلب أميركي مشابه، وظهرت إلى العلن حملة عقوبات أميركية وخليجية ذات مغزى سياسي تستهدف حزب الله، رغم عدم قيمتها العملية.

– أمران جديدان على حسابات المحلّلين والسياسيين أظهرتهما الأيام، الأول لهاث أميركي نحو القمة مع زعيم كوريا الشمالية رغم فقدان المهابة بعد كل ما تعرّضت له القمة، وتمسّك أوروبي بالتفاهم النووي مع إيران والالتزام بتخطّي عقدة العقوبات الأميركية بما يُطمئن إيران لمصالحها بعدما حسمت أنّها تلتزم بالتفاهم بقدر ما يلبّي هذه المصالح. فهل هذه بدايات لتبلور مشهد دولي جديد، وهل بدأ زمن تفكّك الغرب الذي عرفناه تقليدياً بقيادة أميركية؟ وهل تلعب الجغرافيا السياسية التي جذبت روسيا كلاعب إقليمي لعبتها الآن مع أوروبا بعدما صارت أميركا لاعباً إقليمياً في شرق آسيا بقوة الجغرافيا السياسية ومفاعيلها ذاتها؟

– الأكيد أن زلزالاً شهدته العلاقات الدولية لا زال في بداياته، والأكيد أن الأحكام المسبقة أو التقليدية لا تصلح لفهم تداعيات هذا الزلزال، والأكيد أن تيويم الاستنتاجات والخلاصات يحتاج لمرونة في التفكير وتلقي المواقف وقياسها ومحاولة فهمها. ومَن يراقب التحوّل الذي شهدته التصرفات الروسية خلال ثلاثة أعوام منذ قرار التموضع العسكري في سورية وتحمّل تبعاته كقرار استراتيجي يحمل تحدياً واضحاً وعلنياً لما كان سائداً من قواعد رسمتها أميركا على الساحة الدولية عموماً، وساحة المنطقة خصوصاً، ويراقب تدريجياً ما أصاب الاتحاد الأوروبي من ملامح تفكك بدأت طلائعها مع الانسحاب البريطاني، وما لحق الاتحاد الأوروبي من ارتباك تجاه كيفية التأقلم مع العالم الجديد الذي يبدو قيد الولادة، سواء لجهة كيفية التعامل مع الحرب في سورية وعليها، أو في التعامل مع إيران، أو في التعامل مع روسيا، وما في كل ذلك من ارتباك وتذبذب، ومقابله العلاقات الأوروبية الأميركية، وكذلك مَن يراقب الانكفاء الأميركي العملي من ملفات المنطقة رغم بقاء ملامح انتشار عسكري وسياسي، انكفاء عبر عنه الانسحاب السلبي من التفاهم النووي الإيراني دون السعي لإسقاط التفاهم ولا الذهاب لحرب يفرضها أي مؤشر لعودة إيران لتخصيب اليورانيوم، وكذلك الانسحاب الأميركي من ملف تسوية القضية الفلسطينية، والاكتفاء بإعلان القدس عاصمة لكيان الاحتلال ولو كانت النتيجة تفجير مشاريع التفاوض ونقل الشارع الفلسطيني وقواه السياسية إلى حالة مواجهة بذلت واشنطن الكثير لتفاديها.. مَن يراقب كل ذلك لا بد أن يكتشف أن قواعد السياسة الدولية تتغيّر نوعياً، وأن ما جعل روسيا تترجم عالميتها بالتحوّل لقوة إقليمية في المنطقة، هو ذاته يجعل أوروبا كذلك، ويدفع أميركا بقوة الجغرافيا إلى خارج المنطقة، ويجذبها نحو التحوّل قوة إقليمية في منطقة أخرى يمسّها كل تحوّل فيها في الأمن والاقتصاد، هي شرق آسيا وليس ما عُرف بالشرق الأوسط، الذي بيقيها على صلة به التزامها بأمن «إسرائيل» وأمن النفط باتصاله بالحكم السعودي.

– عندما تقرّر واشنطن الانسحاب من اتفاقية المناخ والتخلّي بموجب ذلك عن دورها كقوة عظمى قيادية للعالم، فهي تقرّر العودة للمنافسة التي حرمها الغرب نفسه بقيادة أميركية في مرحلة الرهان على رفع أكلاف الإنتاج من بوابة منع تدمير البيئة، وفرض بقيادة أميركية شروطاً على الصناعات تزيد كلفتها تحت شعار حماية البيئة، وتمنح الغرب وصناعاته قدرة تنافسية أعلى، لتأتي واشنطن معلنة بانسحابها أنها عاجزة عن المنافسة بهذه الشروط وأن اقتصادها لا يحتملها، والمنافس هنا هو باقي دول الغرب في أوروبا وكل من الصين واليابان وكوريا الجنوبية في الشرق. وعندما تلحق واشنطن ذلك بقرارات متتابعة برفع الرسوم الجمركية على الحديد والصلب، وصناعة السيارات، وتليها بإعلان الخروج من اتفاقية «نفتا» التي تربطها بدول أميركا الجنوبية للأسباب ذاتها، فهي تقرّر الاحتماء وراء الجدران، جدران السياسة بالانسحاب من قيادة التسويات حيث لا جدوى من الحروب ولا قدرة على خوضها، وجدران الاقتصاد، بالانسحاب من التفاهمات التي شكلت اتفاقية المناخ وتشكيل منظمة التجارة العالمية، لضمان حرية انتقال البضائع، ذروة الحركة الأميركية فيها نحو العولمة.

– سقوط العولمة هو الاستنتاج الأهم الذي يحكم العالم اليوم في ضوء الزلزال الذي مثّلته الحرب السورية، وفشل السيطرة الأميركية عليها، وتبلور معادلات دولية جديدة بضوئها، تُعيد رسم مفاهيم الأمن القومي والاقتصادي للدول الغربية بصورة لا تتيح بقاء أميركا وأوروبا في ضفة واحدة، بل ربّما تؤسس لتقارب روسي أوروبي، وتنافس ومساكنة أميركية صينية، من موقع دور وفعل الجغرافيا السياسية والاقتصادية، في زمن باتت ترسم فيه البحار مناطق الأقاليم الجديدة، وفقاً لما تميّز بكشفه الرئيس السوري بشار الأسد بنظريته عن البحار الخمسة، التي تجعل روسيا وأوروبا وما عُرفَ تقليدياً بالشرق الأوسط وإيران وتركيا والخليج ضمناً، منطقة إقليمية واحدة، فالقضيتان الجوهريتان لأمن أوروبا هما النازحون والإرهاب، ومصدرهما زعزعة الاستقرار في الشرق الأوسط التقليدي. وهي زعزعة لا تزعج أميركا، وتضاف إليهما مخاطر مواجهة مع إيران التي تملك ترسانة صاروخية تقع أوروبا في مداها، وتتحمّل أوروبا لتفادي المواجهة فاتورة الانكفاء الأميركي لإدارة ملف إيران النووي بما لا يزيد درجة الخطر بذهاب إيران للتخصيب الخطير، بينما أولويات أميركا كورية وصينية، أمنياً واقتصادياً، فواشنطن في مدى صواريخ نووية كورية جاهزة، وتحت تأثير ديون تملكها الصين، وفي مواجهة منافسة اقتصادية قوتها المحورية تمثلها الصين وبنسب أقل اليابان وكوريا الجنوبية وأوروبا.

– هذا ما يفسّر الموقف الأوروبي المخالف لواشنطن في قضية القدس، وفي الملف النووي الإيراني، وفي ملفات ستتبلور أوضح تباعاً، كالحرب السورية والحرب في اليمن، وبالتالي تغليب أوروبا للغة التسويات على العنتريات والمواجهات، عنتريات يقودها كيان الاحتلال والكيان السعودي، ككيانين هيجينين لا تقرّر السياسة فيهما لغة المصالح، واحد لكونه مصطنعاً سكانياً بقوة الاستيطان، وآخر لأنه مصطنع اقتصادياً بقوة النفط، بينما ولاعتبارات الجغرافيا السياسية نفسها بدأ التحوّل التركي، ولو سار بطيئاً، فهو لن يعود إلى الوراء.

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North Korea wising up, Trump/USA cannot be trusted

North Korea Cancels Talks With South – Threatens to Cancel Talks With US

Reports just in from South Korea confirm that Pyongyang has pulled out of bilateral talks that were scheduled to begin in a matter of hours between officials of both Korean states. The report further indicates that the DPRK has threatened to cancel June’s Kim Jong-un/Donald Trump summit in Singapore due to the continuation of US led military drills on the Korean peninsula.

The DPRK has grown increasingly angry with US attempts to polarise the current peace process. Today’s announcement came after US National Security Adviser John Bolton said that in order to complete a peace agreement with the DPRK, the US would demand that Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons be shipped to the United States.

According to Pyongyang,

“This exercise targeting us, which is being carried out across South Korea, is a flagrant challenge to the Panmunjom Declaration and an intentional military provocation running counter to the positive political development on the Korean Peninsula. The United States will also have to undertake careful deliberations about the fate of the planned North Korea-US summit in light of this provocative military ruckus jointly conducted with the South Korean authorities”.

In continually interfering with an Asian authored and owned peace process, the US now risks upsetting the entire dynamic of the peace talks. The DPRK issued a strongly worded statement of condemnation against US provocations in the midst of the peace process shortly after Kim Jong-un’s second meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Days after North Korea rebuked American arrogance regarding the peace process in an official statement that was highly critical of the US taking credit for the rapidly advancing peace process, Kim Jong-un took a rare flight to the Chinese port city of Dalian for his second ever one-on-one meeting with President Xi Jinping.

While Kim Jong-un’s first meeting with any foreign head of state was his formal visit to Beijing, his second visit was far more low key with photos of Kim sharing a beach front walk with Xi indicating that there was a deeply personal and personable element to this meeting.

It is abundantly clear that meeting was motivated by Pyongyang and Beijing’s mutual position to send a clear message to the United States: ‘Do not undermine the Asian authored, Asian owned and Asian style peace process by making unrealistic demands and making arrogant, provocative and insulting public statements’.

Kim Jong-un later issued an official statement regarding the meeting where he further stated that US aggression is the only thing that could prohibit Korean de-nuclearisation. Kim stated,

“Denuclearisation on the Korean Peninsula is the clear position North Korea has always adhered to. As long as relevant sides remove hostile policies and security threats toward North Korea, it’s not necessary for the nation to have nuclear weapons. Denuclearisation is achievable. I hope North Korea and the United States can build mutual trust through dialogue. All sides need to take phased and synchronised measures to push forward the peaceful solution to the issues on the Korean Peninsula, to realise denuclearisation and long-lasting peace on the peninsula”.

While Kim issued the statement, the time and place off its issuing makes it clear that Kim is speaking not only from the DPRK’s perspective but that he is echoing the anger and frustrations of the Chinese leadership at the way that the US has thus far handled the preliminary steps of the peace process.

North Korea has rightly emphasised that its position in the forthcoming negotiations with the US are based on a position of strength. This is of course consistent with the DPRK’s statements throughout 2017 where Kim and his ministers stated that Pyongyang will be willing to negotiate with the United States only after nuclear parity was reached. By this, North Korea meant that it needed to fully develop an effective nuclear deterrent that could strike US soil, just as US nuclear weapons can strike the DPRK’s soil.

The DPRK also stated when such a time would arise that de-nuclearisation would be on the table, that it would require security guarantees from the US that for its part, it would de-weaponsie its assets in South Korea. This was a position shared by China and Russia who argued for a “double-freeze” to weapons tests and military drills on both sides of the 38th parallel.

Far from accepting American arrogance and threats, which included a recent statement from the permanently unhinged US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley who refused to take the threat of war off the table even as North and South Korea are on the verge of singing a historic peace treaty to formally end the Korean War/Fatherland Liberation War, the DPRK has made it clear that peace negotiations are a two-way street.

While Washington has already got much of what it has admittedly desired from the DPRK including a commitment to unconditional de-nuclearisation, a cessation of all nuclear and missile tests during the negotiating period, the dismantling of the DPRK’s nuclear testing facilities and the recent release of US prisoners held by the DPRK authorities, if the US continues to make further excessive demands of North Korea while moving the proverbial goal posts throughout the course of the negotiations, Pyongyang has made it clear that it is not negotiating from a position of weakness and will therefore act accordingly if its own interests are threatened

On the contrary, as North Korea’s nuclear weapons remain ready in the event of a dangerous provocation and as the DPRK’s economy continues to grow, the fact of the matter is that unlike Libyain 2003, the DPRK is negotiating from a position of strength. This position of internal strength is further bolstered by support from both China and Russia, the wider world and perhaps most importantly a friendly Moon Jae-in administration that would not want its US ally to spoil the fraternal atmosphere which is flowering between the two Korean states.

Furthermore, when it comes to diplomatic considerations, the DPRK which is interested in open its economic and cultural doors to fellow Asian nations, feels diplomatically insulted by a US government keen on essentially perverting the pan-Asian characteristics from the peace process and turning it into a geopolitical victory lap for the US. While Asian leaders maintain appropriate sensitives towards both Korean states, for the US, there is a danger of neo-colonial chauvinism soiling an otherwise effective and productive peace process.

While the Asia of the mid 20th century was rife with anti-colonial struggle, foreign invasion and civil wars which largely stemmed from colonial legacies, direct neo-colonial provocations or a combination of all of the above as was the case in the disputes between Malaysia and Indonesia and also Singapore and Malaysia in the 1960s, today’s Asia is vastly different.

Taken collectively, today’s Asia is the world’s centre for both innovation and production. While European living standards fall, Middle East living standards (with the big exception of Turkey) stagnate and African living standards continued to be pulled in a variety of directions, Asia is a place where on the whole, people are now more prosperous, healthy, secure and optimistic than at any time in recent memory. Thus, it is fitting that in such an age, the leaders of an artificially divided Korea should embrace each other at a time when both Korean states have a lot to be optimistic about in spite of lingering uncertainties.

Today, it would be largely unthinkable for the states of ASEAN to fight among each other as they did during the middle of the 20th century. Likewise, Japan and China are making progress on economic reconciliation while the prospect for war remains entirely remote if not non-extant. In South Asia, Pakistan is escaping the shadow of US dominance and is asserting itself as a productive member of the multiploar world whose economic future will be positively shaped by One Belt–One Road via the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. While India’s ruling BJP remains at odds with a pan-Asian attitude, the ongoing meetings between Indian Premier Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping gives at least a glimmer of hope that both India and China will be able to embrace positive elements of a relationship whose strains derive from the ‘divide and rule’ legacy of British colonial rule over South Asia. Russia’s healthy partnership with China is complimented by a Eurasian Russia’s ability to embrace new partners in places like The Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand and Turkey in western Eurasia, while retaining good relations with Vietnam and also India.

Throughout Asia, it can safely be said that the present is better than the recent past and the long term future will be far better than the lingering 19th and 20th century legacies of colonial humiliation. As Asia embraces the future, it has also learned to gradually embrace itself. The symbolism of Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in holding one another’s hands during a musical/multimedia performance at the end of their summit is emblematic of an entire continent that is learning to hold hands and walk together into a brighter future.

While the Korean peace process is and remains a pan-Asian triumph and cannot be ignored that as a superpower that will soon eclipse the US in terms of wealth and geopolitical influence, China has been the quiet but consistent mover and shaker when it comes to pushing forward the peace process.

Because of this, the recent meeting between Kim and Xi sends a clear message that the relationships which count when it comes to peace in Korea are those between the leaders of both Korean states and the Chinese President, as well as the young but healthy relationship between Kim Jong-un and his South Korean counterpart Moon Jae-in

Not good for arms sales: Despite all Efforts by Warmongers in Washington, Peace has Broken out on the Korean Peninsula

Despite all Efforts by Warmongers in Washington, Peace has Broken out on the Korean Peninsula – Robert Bridge

The leaders of North and South Korea stunned the world on Friday by declaring a new age of peace between their long-divided states. But to credit Washington for this remarkable turnaround would be sending a dangerous message.

To say that the situation on the Korean peninsula has been moving ahead at breakneck, roller-coaster speed would be a great understatement. Just a few months ago, the world held its breath as Pyongyang slammed yet another round of US-backed sanctions as an “act of war.” In the background of the breakdown was Donald Trump, armed with an insurmountable ego and a very active Twitter account, helping to drive up tensions to the boiling point.

This week, the mood could not have been any more different had white doves and rainbow-colored unicorns descended upon the Korean peninsula from the heavens and broke out in song and dance.

Few could have imagined the historic event that was playing out before them: Kim Jong-un strolled hand-in-hand with South Korean President Moon Jae-in across the forbidden Militarized Zone, thus becoming the first North Korean leader in 65 years to enter South Korean territory. But that was just the beginning of April’s shower of political surprises. Kim and Moon went on to commit themselves to eliminating nuclear weapons on the peninsula, and pledging to sign a formal peace treaty later this year.

The two Koreas have essentially been at war for the last 68 years, since a formal peace treaty was never signed following the cessation of hostilities during the Korean War (1950-1953).

So, now that peace has swept the Korean peninsula, any guesses as to who may get the credit for this historic breakthrough?

Yes, you guessed right, the very same global superpower that until recently was acting like a schoolyard bully with Kim Jung-un, forcing him to choose between going head-to-head against overwhelming US military might, or battening down the hatches and getting to work building up its national defenses.

Kim Jong-un gambled with the latter approach. And it would appear that he has won. At least for now.

Nevertheless, at least one Western publication, The Telegraph, has come out and declared its support for Donald Trump as their candidate to win a Nobel Peace Prize for “defusing” the Korean crisis.

“This year’s prize should go to an American leader who for once has earned it: Donald Trump,” the British tabloid declared, in a thinly veiled swipe at Barack Obama, the last American to seize the tarnished trophy. “If President Trump succeeds… he will have defused the most dangerous crisis the world faces at present.”

Can it really be argued that the Trump administration – which has been playing a nerve-wracking game of nuclear chicken with Pyongyang for over a year – deserves credit for detonating the Korean peninsula time bomb? Personally, I believe that historical rendering of events is not only categorically wrong, it is simply dangerous because it condones the utterly reckless behavior displayed by the Trump administration as a method for solving crisis.

Let’s face it: nobody could have predicted what sort of response the North Korean leader – who seems every bit as egoistical and unpredictable as Donald Trump – would have made as he faced not only regular US-led naval “decapitation” drills off the coast, but the occasional verbal barrage from the US commander-in-chief. Like this beauty, for example, from the torrid month of August, 2017: “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States… they will be met with fire and the fury like the world has never seen.”

North Korea may be accused of being many things, but slow to learn is not one of them. After observing what happens to countries that lack the military power to defend themselves – not least of all Iraq in 2003, followed by Libya in 2011 – Pyongyang set out to bolster its defenses without delay. And this was happening long before either Kim Jong-un or Donald Trump were rumbling on the political scene.

Since 2006, North Korea has conducted six nuclear tests, with the latest and most powerful detonation coming in September of last year. Thus, it was not the Trump administration’s aggressive approach that brought Pyongyang to the negotiating table. North Korea has long been preparing for the moment when it could feel secure enough to enter negotiations from a position of strength.

That golden moment was sealed in November when Kim Jong-un’s government claimed that it had launched an upscale intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) – a Hwasong-15 – capable of “carrying a super-heavy warhead and hitting the whole mainland of the US.” That launch sent an unmistakable message to Washington, not to mention America’s Pacific allies, like Seoul and Tokyo, who were growing very weary of the fireworks display.

Yet it was not Kim Jung-un who they blamed the most for the outbursts, but rather Donald Trump and his administration’s reliance on a “big stick” policy. That approach had simply become untenable since the prospect of a nuclear war in the Asian Pacific had become too catastrophic to even consider.

In other words, it had become clear that the only way forward was to sit down and hammer out a deal with Pyongyang.

At this point, Kim appears satisfied that his country is capable of defending itself against any would-be aggressor that may attempt to relieve his country of its sovereignty. Far from the same tragic fate that greeted Iraq or Libya, Pyongyang is negotiating from a position of strength, as well as sovereignty.

All things considered, it seems to be a very unfortunate lesson, which places so much emphasis on military power and readiness, but it is one that the United States has forced weaker nations of the world to learn. In a hurry.

CHINA AND U.S. SHOWCASE FORCES IN SOUTH CHINA SEA. TAIWAN PREPARES TO REPEL “CHINESE INVASION”

South Front

24.04.2018

A Chinese frigate launches a missile during a naval drill in the East China Sea. Photo: Weibo

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy conducted a series of live-fire drills and formation maneuvers in a large show of force off Hainan Island in the South China Sea and nearby areas in the period between March 24 and April 11. The drills involved the Liaoning aircraft carrier and more than 40 vessels from China’s North, East and South Sea fleets.

Following the exercises, on April 12, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Xi Jinping reviewed the PLA Navy in the South China Sea, saying that the need to build a strong navy “has never been more urgent than today”, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua. More than 10,000 service personnel, 48 vessels and 76 aircraft took part in the review.

On April 10, the USS Theodore Roosevelt conducted aircraft operations as it was passing the South China Sea on its way to Manila, the US newspaper Navy Times reported. In turn, the US Navy regularly patrols the South China Sea in an attempt to limit the Chinese influence in this vital region.

As always, China condemned the US navy operations. Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying accused Washington of having “violated the Chinese law and relevant international law” and “put[ting] in jeopardy the facilities and personnel on the Chinese islands”, according to the official statement on March 24.

On April 24, Xinhua news agency said the vessels, led by China’s sole aircraft carrier the Liaoning, “took part in anti-aircraft and anti-submarine warfare training” with a simulated “opposing force” in the Taiwan Strait.

Furthermore, China’s first indigenously constructed aircraft carrier is poised to begin sea trials this week.

The Type 001A is quite similar to China’s Liaoning aircraft carrier, a Soviet-built hull that Beijing purchased from Kiev in 1998. Beijing modernized the ship and commissioned it with the PLA-Navy in 2012.

Taiwan blamed the Chinese operations for “sabre rattling” and preparing for invasion to Taiwan. The Taiwan Defense Ministry stated that it would simulate repelling an invading force, emergency repairs of a major airbase and using civilian operated drones as part of military exercises starting next week, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on April 24. The major part will be a live-fire field training exercise from June 4 to June 8, including “enemy elimination on beaches”, the ministry said.

The recent military developments fueled military hysteria in some mainstream media outlets and think tanks.

For example, Taipei Times newspaper reported on April 20 that Taiwan Foundation for Democracy had released a poll asking what “if China invades Taiwan?”. According to the released poll, nearly 70 percent of Taiwanese “are willing to go to war if China were to attempt to annex Taiwan by force”.

All the events of the escalating tensions are conducted amid the shifting balance of power in the region, especially in the South China Sea. China’s construction of artificial islands with military facilities in the South China Sea, has sparked concern that it is establish its de-facto control over the entire sea.

The US, a powerful supporter of Taiwan and other regional competitors of China, is concerned about the Chinese capability of controlling the strategic waterway. Washington has repeatedly slammed the militarization of the Chinese artificial islands.

Commander of the US Fleet Forces Command Philip Davidson told the Senate Armed Services Committee in a written statement that the military urgently needs hypersonic and other advanced weaponry to defeat China’s People’s Liberation Army in a future conflict.

“In the future, hypersonic and directed energy weapons, resilient space, cyber and network-capabilities, and well-trained soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and coastguardsmen will be crucial to our ability to fight and win,” the four-star admiral said in written answers to questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee. “In the South China Sea, the PLA has constructed a variety of radar, electronic attack, and defense capabilities on the disputed Spratly Islands, to include: Cuarteron Reef, Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef, Hughes Reef, Johnson Reef, Mischief Reef and Subi Reef.”

“These facilities significantly expand the real-time domain awareness, and jamming capabilities of the PLA over a large portion of the South China Sea, presenting a substantial challenge to U.S. military operations in this region.”

The Chinese jamming technology has already been used against the US military in the region, according to some sources.

“The mere fact that some of your equipment is not working is already an indication that someone is trying to jam you,” an EA-18G Growler pilot told GMA News on April 14, adding that “we [the US] have an answer to that.”

The military and diplomatic conflict is developing in the South Chinese Sea amid the worsening relations between the USA and China. The US imposed tariffs on certain Chinese goods. Beijing responded by imposing sanctions on 106 US products.  Both Beijing and Washington don’t seem to be willing to step back in the erupted trade war. The same attitude the powers have towards the South China Sea standoff.

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The prospect of peace in Korea worries the Americans the most, there’s no money to be made from it

Sum of all American Fears in Korea: Peace
By Tony Cartalucci

North Korea has been depicted by the Western media as a dangerous rogue state, plotting the nuclear holocaust of America and holding global peace and stability hostage with its irrational aggression. It is the supposed threat North Korea poses to the world that the United States uses to justify its enduring decades-long military presence on the Korean Peninsula. In the recently released 2018 US Department of Defense Nation Defense Strategy, it claims:  North Korea seeks to guarantee regime survival and increased leverage by seeking a mixture of nuclear, biological, chemical, conventional, and unconventional weapons and a growing ballistic missile capability to gain coercive influence over South Korea, Japan, and the United States.

Yet North Korea’s immediate neighbor – South Korea – felt comfortable enough with this “rogue regime” that it not only invited high level diplomats to the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games, it had its own athletes compete side-by-side with their North Korean counterparts as a unified team.

The opening ceremony included a unified parade, song, and chorus group. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s sister publicly greeted South Korean President Moon Jae-in. Other senior North Korean leaders and diplomats were present and interacted with their South Korean counterparts.

ABC News would report in their article, “Kim Jong Un’s sister shakes hands with South Korea’s president at Olympics opening ceremony,” that:
After arriving in South Korea with a high-level delegation, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un publicly shook hands with the neighboring nation’s president during tonight’s opening ceremony of the 2018 Winter Olympics.CNN would report that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un would go as far as inviting South Korean President Moon Jae-in to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Evident is the absurdity of Western political and media claims about the danger North Korea presents to the world, when the very nation it is allegedly still technically at war with – South Korea – invites its leadership to a sporting event their athletes compete as a team together in and whose leaders watch, sitting side-by-side.

However, CNN’s article, “Kim Jong Un invites South Korean President Moon to Pyongyang,” would reveal:
Moon responded to the invitation by suggesting the two countries “should accomplish this by creating the right conditions,” adding that talks between North Korea and the United States were also needed, and requested that North Korea be more active in talking with the US, according to Kim Eui-kyeom.In essence, the president of South Korea requires US permission to conduct what should be South Korea’s own bilateral talks with its immediate neighbor to the north. And here is revealed both the root of tensions on the Korean Peninsula – America’s involvement – and the sum of all American fears – peace between North and South – especially on their own terms.

For the United States, North Korea has been a convenient pretext to remain deeply embedded on the Korean Peninsula, admittedly part of Washington’s strategy – not to deal with a rogue state – but to further encircle and contain China’s rise in Asia. The US maintains a significant military presence in Japan for similar purposes and has attempted to reestablish a significant military presence in the Philippines toward this end as well.

Pretext For Permanent US Occupation 

It has been the United States pressuring South Korea to maintain a heavily militarized and belligerent posture versus North Korea, conducting annual military exercises with the United States aimed at provoking North Korea’s leadership. 

This article was originally published by “Land Destroyer”

Video: Korean War: 600,000 Tons of American Bombs on the North. Every City was Destroyed

Source

By mlovmo,

This episode details the UN bombing campaign over North Korea and the results for the people on the ground.

The majority of civilians killed in the Korean War were killed in North Korea by air attack. (This segment on the bombing of North Korea was censored from the US version of this documentary.).

Extensive war crimes committed by the United States. 

.

The original source of this article is mlovmo

Crimes Against Humanity: The British Empire

Source

By Paul Gregoire,

First published by Sydney Criminal Lawyers and Global Research in July 2017.

It was the largest empire ever to have existed. And as the saying used to go, the sun never sets on the British Empire. At its height in 1922, the colonial power was lording it over a fifth of the world’s population and for many of them, the sun never rose again.

Under the policies of British colonialism, people around the globe were subjected to mass famines, atrocious conditions in concentration camps, and brutal massacres at the hands of imperialist troops. The Brits also played an integral role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Although the atrocities of the British Empire are well documented, the myth of the noble colonising power continued into recent decades.

The Migrated Archives

During proceedings in the British High Court in 2010, University of Warwick historian David M Anderson submitted a statement referring to 1,500 files that went missing from Kenya as British rule in the region was coming to an end.

This led the British government to concede that they had hidden or disposed of those files, and many others at a high-security facility north of London. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office was hiding around 600,000 historical documents in breach of the 1958 UK Public Records Act.

The stash included around 20,000 undisclosed files from 37 former British colonies. Indeed, it’s common knowledge that as the British colonial edifice was disintegrating, administrators of the colonies were told to either burn their documents or try and smuggle them out.

The legal proceedings where Mr Anderson made his revelations related to a case brought against the British government by three elderly Kenyans who claimed they’d been tortured and abused by the colonial authorities during the British occupation of their country.

The British gulag in Kenya

The British first moved into East Africa in the late 19^th century, and Kenya was declared a Crown colony in 1920. In the 1940s, after half a century of British occupation, a small group of Kikuyu people – the country’s largest ethnic group – formed the Mau Mau movement and vowed to oppose colonial rule.

As word spread, Mau Mau resistance grew and they began knocking off colonial officers and local loyalists. In October 1952, Governor Evelyn Baring declared a state of emergency, which held until 1960.

In 1964, the colonial army began erecting a network of concentration camps. Historians estimate that 150,000 to 1.5 million Kikuyu people were detained. Conditions within the camps were atrocious, and people were systematically beaten and sexually assaulted during questioning.

The grandfather of Barack Obama, Hussein Onyango Obama suffered severe mistreatment in the camp where he was held, which included having pins forced under his fingernails.

The British government, after being continually defeated in the High Court, agreed to settle the Mau Mau case in 2013.

On June 6 that year, then UK foreign secretary William Hague announced 5,000 survivors would each receive £3,800 payment, and he also expressed the nation’s sincere regrets to Kenyans who were subjected to “torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration.”

The desecration in India

It’s said that India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. The British East India Company began making avenues into the subcontinent in the 17^th century, and India was established as a Crown colony in 1858.

The British Raj systematically transferred the wealth of the region into their own coffers. In the north eastern region of Bengal, “the first great deindustrialisation of the modern world” occurred.

The prosperous two centuries-old weaving industry was shut down after the British flooded the local market with cheap fabric from northern England. India still grew the cotton, but the Bengali population no longer spun it, and the weavers became beggars.

India suffered around a dozen major famines under British rule, with an estimated 12 to 29 million Indians starving to death.

The Orissa famine occurred in north eastern India in 1866. Over one million – or one in three local people – perished. As the region’s textile industry was destroyed, more people were pushed into agriculture, and were dependent on the monsoon.

That year, the monsoon was weak. Crops didn’t grow and many starved to death. The colonial administration didn’t intervene as the popular economic theory of the time reasoned that the market would restore proper balance, and the famine was nature’s way of responding to overpopulation.

When the British finally got out of India, they simply drew a line down the map and partitioned the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. The move led to the mass migration of around 10 million people, and when it escalated into sectarian violence an estimated one million lost their lives.

A southern invasion

The British began invading Australia in 1788, under the pretext that it was terra nullis: a land with no owners. The High Court of Australia abolished the legal fiction of terra nullius in its 1992 Mabo versus Queensland (No 2) ruling.

It was a landmark decision, but not everyone was surprised that the court found that there were actually sovereign people living on the land prior to the arrival of the British. At that time, there were an estimated 750,000 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living across the continent.

The First Fleet arrived in the vicinity of what is now the city of Sydney in 1788. Around 15 months later, at least 50 percent of the local Aboriginal population was dying due to a smallpox epidemic.

Some historians put the outbreak down to contact with the Macassans from Sulawesi in the far north of the continent. However, others argue that bottles of smallpox were brought across on First Fleet ships, and the disease was then released, either accidentally or with clear intent.

Dozens of massacres of Indigenous people were carried out by the British right up until the 1920s. On June 10 1838, the Myall Creek massacre occurred near Inverell in NSW. This tragedy is well-known as it was the first time Europeans were brought to justice for such an atrocity in Australia.

At the time about 50 Aboriginal men were working for stockmen in the area. One evening the stockmen rode into the local people’s camp, tied up 29 men, women and children, and beheaded them. Seven of the perpetrators were eventually brought to trial and hanged.

Today, in Australia, the colonial legacy continues. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are the most incarcerated population on earth.

As of March this year, there were 11,288 Indigenous adults detained in the Australian prison system. First Nations peoples account for only 2.5 percent of the overall Australian adult population, yet they represent 28 percent of the adult prisoner population.

A bloody trail

But these are only some of the crimes perpetrated by the British as they carried the greatest land grab the world has ever seen.

There were the concentration camps in South Africa, where tens of thousands of the Boer population were detained in the first years of the 20^th century. The Irish potato famine occurred in the 1840s, leading to the deaths of well over a million people.

There were the torture centres in Aden in the 1960s, where nationalists were kept naked in refrigerated cells. When the Empire was facing communist insurgents during the Malaya Emergency of the 1950s, they simply decided to imprison the entire peasant population in detention camps.

And the list goes on…

Featured image from Sydney Criminal Lawyers

The original source of this article is Sydney Criminal Lawyers

US Meddling Across Southeast Asia

Source

At a time when US political leaders decry with little evidence what they claim is a pandemic of “Russian interference” in Western political affairs from Western Europe to North America, years of documented evidence exist of this very same interference in the domestic affairs of other nations around the world, funded and directed not by Moscow, but by Washington D.C.

Across Southeast Asia alone is an interlocked, deeply rooted and heavily financed network of American-backed agitators and propagandists, operating behind the cloaks of journalism and rights advocacy, working to upend local, independent political institutions and replace them with a system created by and serving exclusively the interests in Washington that created them.

Shedding Light on US Interference in the Philippines

The Manila Times in a recent article titled, “CIA conduit funding anti-Duterte media outfits,” would shed light on US government money being channelled into the Philippines for the explicit purpose of manipulating public perception, particularly regarding politics.

The article cites the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), and its grantees, the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism (PCIJ), the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility (CMFR), and the Vera Files.

The article outlines the funding, stating:

NED documents show that for 2015—the earliest year for which data is available—2016 and 2017, it gave the PCIJ $106,900; Vera Files $70,000, and CMFR, $278,000. (Another funder of Vera Files is Reporters without Borders, which is also recipient of NED funds.)

Even if NED wasn’t a CIA conduit, it is an institution funded by the US government, and therefore advances US interests. Shouldn’t we be outraged that the US government is funding anti-Duterte media outfits here?

It also points out that this US interference in Filipino politics fits into a much larger, global pattern of political interference engaged in by the US government. The article cites US interference in Ukraine in particular, noting that it was US backing that eventually led to the overthrow of the elected government there between 2013 and 2014.

The article’s author, Rigoberto Tiglao, attempted to contact several of the Filipino US NED grantees, only to be confronted or evaded, a response typical of US NED grantees worldwide when questioned about their foreign funding, the dangerous conflicts of interests they are indulging in and the contradictions of posing as independent media organisations entirely dependent on foreign government funding.

Pressure on the Philippines through US-funded media is only one of several fronts the US is using to transform, direct and determine the future of the Philippines as a nation. It has placed direct political pressure on Manila to cooperate in confronting Beijing over the South China Sea. It has also attempted to use Saudi-funded terrorism in the Philippines’ south as a vector to reintroduce a significant and expanding US military presence across the archipelago nation.

The use of terrorism as both a pressure point against Southeast Asian states and as a pretext for a US military presence is a tactic the US is attempting to reuse everywhere from Indonesia and Malaysia, to southern Thailand and neighbouring Myanmar. So is the use of US NED-funded organisations operating under the guise of independent journalism or rights advocacy.

 Beyond the Philippines: Thailand and Cambodia 

Thailand faces a similar landscape of compromised opposition organisations posing as independent, yet entirely funded by the US government and US-based corporate foundations. These include Prachatai, Thai Netizens, the New Democracy Movement, the Isaan Record, Thai Lawyers for Human Rights and even the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand (FCCT).

Like their Filipino counterparts, they pose as proponents of democracy and as human rights advocates, but cover current events in a transparently one-sided manner, excusing or omitting abuse and corruption among the opposition and targeting only Thailand’s independent institutions, particularly the military and the monarchy.

In Cambodia, US government funding goes one step further, funding the entire opposition, hosting them in Washington D.C. and creating an entire media network to skew public perception in favour of this foreign enterprise and the interests that propel it.
Recently arrested opposition leader, Kem Sokha, got his start at the US State Department and Open Society-funded organisation, the Cambodian Center for Human Rights (CCHR). He would later enter politics, but would continue collaborating directly with the US government, travelling to the United States annually to conspire openly with US representatives to overthrow the Cambodian government.

An article published in the Phnom Post titled, “Kem Sokha video producer closes Phnom Penh office in fear,” would quote Kem Sokha, reporting:

And, the USA that has assisted me, they asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they can changed the dictator Slobodan Milosevic,” he continues, referring to the former Serbian and Yugoslavian leader who resigned amid popular protests following disputed elections, and died while on trial for war crimes.

“You know Milosevic had a huge numbers of tanks. But they changed things by using this strategy, and they take this experience for me to implement in Cambodia. But no one knew about this.”

In essence, while the US tenuously accuses Russia of buying Facebook and Google ads, it is openly engaged in overthrowing nations around the world. In Southeast Asia, these efforts are often interlinked, with US-funded organisations in one country supporting and helping to amplify the activities of another next door.

An American Empire’s Success Story: Myanmar 

Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) political party’s ascension into power is an example of where exactly US ambitions will lead if unchecked. With the current government in Myanmar quite clearly disinterested in either democracy or human rights, considering the burgeoning Rohingya crisis, it is proof positive that US-funded interference merely operates behind the façade of such principles, and in no way actually seeks to uphold them.

Many NLD party members are former heads of organisations funded by the US government, while others are the recipients of US NED-funded training programmes.

The current Minister of Information, Pe Myint, received NED and Open Society-funded training at the above mentioned FCCT in Bangkok.

Myanmar is being run by a government handcrafted by US money and interference. It is a government being pressured to turn its back on neighbouring China in favour of US plans, particularly those of its industry and financial institutions. It is also a government currently creating a humanitarian crisis that has opened the door to US-Saudi funded terrorism, a potentially larger conflict featuring brutal violence, all leading to a potential opportunity for a US military presence in a nation that directly borders China.

If allowed to, the US will transform the rest of Southeast Asia into either cooperative client states, or divided and failed states. In either scenario, it will create a united front across Southeast Asia vis-à-vis Beijing that will complicate China’s rise both in the Asia Pacific region and upon the global stage, buying time for the current ruling hegemon to consolidate its position or even reassert itself.

Pushing Back

In many ways, America’s own imagined war against Russian influence gives governments across Southeast Asia the perfect precedent and pretext to push back. Cambodia has already expelled the National Democratic Institute (NDI), a subsidiary of the US NED. It has also tightened laws regarding foreign-owned and foreign-funded media organisations. Opposition members who have openly and for years flaunted their foreign sponsorship are now being arrested and tried while their political parties are being disbanded.

As governments expose and uproot foreign influence from the region, it is equally important for Southeast Asia to fill sociopolitical game board with its own pieces regarding social networks, charity organisations, media (both domestic and international) as well as rights advocates. The price for genuinely putting government corruption in the spotlight and in relative check is easily offset by eliminating the shadows foreign-backed opposition parties have used to systematically undermine regional interests for decades from.

Russia and China, the two primary targets of US interference both directly and by disrupting their peripheries in regions like Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, have implemented a wide array of countermeasures. Governments in Southeast Asia should consider them each in turn and how they could be adapted best to protect sovereignty and stability at home and across the region.

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
https://journal-neo.org/2017/10/16/us-meddling-across-southeast-asia/

How to End the Korea Crisis

Source

By Ron Paul | September 25, 2017

The descent of US/North Korea “crisis” to the level of schoolyard taunts should be remembered as one of the most bizarre, dangerous, and disgraceful chapters in US foreign policy history.

President Trump, who holds the lives of millions of Koreans and Americans in his hands, has taken to calling the North Korean dictator “rocket man on a suicide mission.” Why? To goad him into launching some sort of action to provoke an American response? Maybe the US president is not even going to wait for that. We remember from the Tonkin Gulf false flag that the provocation doesn’t even need to be real. We are in extremely dangerous territory and Congress for the most part either remains asleep or is cheering on the sabre-rattling.

Now we have North Korean threats to detonate hydrogen bombs over the Pacific Ocean and US threats to “totally destroy” the country.

We are told that North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un is a “madman.” That’s just what they said about Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, and everyone else the neocons target for US military action. We don’t need to be fans of North Korea to be skeptical of the war propaganda delivered by the mainstream media to the benefit of the neocons and the military industrial complex.

Where are the cooler heads in Washington to tone down this war footing?

Making matters worse, there is very little understanding of the history of the conflict. The US spends more on its military than the next ten or so countries combined, with thousands of nuclear weapons that can destroy the world many times over. Nearly 70 years ago a US-led attack on Korea led to mass destruction and the death of nearly 30 percent of the North Korean population. That war has not yet ended.

Why hasn’t a peace treaty been signed? Newly-elected South Korean president Moon Jae-in has proposed direct negotiations with North Korea leading to a peace treaty. The US does not favor such a bilateral process. In fact, the US laughed off a perfectly sensible offer made by the Russians and Chinese, with the agreement of the North Koreans, for a “double freeze” – the North Koreans would suspend missile launches if the US and South Korea suspend military exercises aimed at the overthrow of the North Korean government.

So where are there cooler heads? Encouragingly, they are to be found in South Korea, which would surely suffer massively should a war break out. While US Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, was bragging that the new UN sanctions against North Korea would result in a near-complete blockade of the country (an act of war), the South Korean government did something last week that shocked the world: it announced an eight million dollar humanitarian aid package for pregnant mothers and infant children in North Korea. The US and its allies are furious over the move, but how could anyone claim the mantle of “humanitarianism” while imposing sanctions that aim at starving civilians until they attempt an overthrow of their government?

Here’s how to solve the seven-decade old crisis: pull all US troops out of [South] Korea; end all military exercises on the North Korean border; encourage direct talks between the North and South and offer to host or observe them with an international delegation including the Russians and Chinese, which are after all Korea’s neighbors.

The schoolyard insults back and forth between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un are not funny. They are in fact an insult to all of the rest of us

Two crazy leaders, Kim Jong-un & Trump, two rogue nations, USA & N.Korea. The world edges closer to nuclear war

Trump Threatens North Korea with “Effective and Overwhelming” Military Force

By Peter Symonds

In the wake of North Korea’s missile launch, US President Trump and his top officials have once again threatened to use military force to end the supposed threat posed by the small, economically backward country and its limited nuclear arsenal.

Speaking at an Air Force installation outside Washington, Trump condemned North Korea and declared that the US would “defend our people, our nations, and our civilization, from all who dare to threaten our way of life.”

Against the backdrop of a nuclear-capable B-2 stealth bomber, Trump told the assembled Air Force personnel:

“After seeing your capabilities and commitment here today, I am more confident than ever that our options in addressing this threat are both effective and overwhelming.”

Trump and his top officials have repeatedly stressed that “all options are on the table” and hinted the US would use its vast nuclear capability against North Korea.

The UN Security Council has issued a statement after its emergency session on Friday condemning North Korea’s latest test of an intermediate range missile that flew over Japan and into the Pacific Ocean as “highly provocative.”

Under pressure from Washington, the UN Security Council on Monday imposed its harshest sanctions yet on North Korea over its sixth nuclear test on September 3. The latest resolution banned the purchase of North Korean textile exports, restricted the hire of its guest workers and capped its oil imports.

Yesterday’s statement called on all UN member states to “fully, comprehensively and immediately” implement all the sanctions. At the same time, it stressed the need to “reduce tension in the Korean Peninsula” and to promote “a peaceful and comprehensive solution.”

Trump, however, has already dismissed the latest UN sanctions. Speaking on Tuesday, he declared that the UN vote was “just another very small step, not a big deal,” adding that he did not know “if it has any impact.” He said that the sanctions would pale in comparison to “what ultimately will have to happen” to North Korea.

Yesterday, senior Trump officials warned that time was running out for any diplomatic solution.

At a White House briefing yesterday, national security adviser H.R. McMaster underscored the willingness of the US to use military force.

“For those who have said, and been commenting about a lack of a military option, there is a military option.”

While saying that “now it [military force] is not what we would prefer to do,” McMaster warned that time was short.

“We’ve been kicking the can down the road, and we’re out of road,” he said.

Speaking at the same briefing, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley suggested that the UN had run out of options and she would support the use of the military against North Korea.

“There is not a whole lot the Security Council is going to be able to do from here when you have cut 90 percent of the trade and 30 percent of the oil to [North Korea],” Haley said. “So, having said that, I have no problem with kicking it to [US Defense Secretary James] Mattis because I think he has plenty of options.”

The provocative US threats of war are also directed at putting even more pressure on China and also Russia to strong-arm the Pyongyang regime into capitulating to US demands to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called on Beijing and Moscow to take “direct actions of their own.” He called on all countries to implement UN sanctions but singled out China saying that it supplied North Korea with “most of its oil” and Russia as the “largest employer of North Korean forced labour.”

“China and Russia must indicate their intolerance for these reckless missile launches by taking direct actions of their own,” Tillerson declared.

Earlier this week, US Assistant Treasury Secretary Marshall Billingslea accused China of circumventing UN sanctions and assisting in the trade of banned goods with North Korea. He claimed to have evidence of Chinese and Russian collusion in the smuggling of coal out of North Korea.

Billingslea said that the Trump administration had told China that if it wished to avoid further sanctions, the United States needs to “urgently” see action. The US has already imposed bans on a number of Chinese individuals and entities, including the Bank of Dandong, over their alleged business dealings with North Korea.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told CNBC on that the US has “sent a message that anybody that wanted to trade with North Korea, we consider them not trading with us. We can put economic sanctions to stop people trading.”

Mnuchin’s comments echo those of Trump who threatened to cut off trade with China if it did not end all business dealings with North Korea. The threats make clear that the Trump administration’s reckless escalation of the confrontation with North Korea is part of a broader strategy aimed at undermining China, which is regarded by the US as the main obstacle to its regional and global hegemony.

China and Russia are caught in a bind. Both countries have opposed North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs because the US has exploited them to justify its military build-up throughout Asia.

Beijing is also concerned that South Korea and Japan will use North Korea as a pretext to develop their own nuclear arsenal. South Korea’s defence minister has already suggested that the US return tactical nuclear weapons to his country.

At the same time, China and Russia do not want to see either a war in their backyard on the Korean Peninsula or a political crisis in Pyongyang that could be exploited by Washington to install a pro-US regime.

The Russian foreign ministry yesterday joined with China in condemning North Korea’s latest missile test over mainland Japan, but at the same time criticised the US for its “aggressive” role in the crisis.

“Regrettably, aggressive rhetoric is the only thing coming from Washington,” a spokesman said.

China and Russia are continuing to push for a resumption of negotiations based on a halt by the US and South Korea on large joint military exercises, in return for North Korea suspending further nuclear and missile tests. The US has repeatedly dismissed any pause in its war games with South Korea.

In response to the latest North Korean missile test, the South Korean military fired a short-range ballistic missile into waters 250 kilometres off its east coast. The South Korean President Moon Jae-in bluntly warned North Korea that “we have the power to destroy North Korea and make it unable to recover.”

The original source of this article is World Socialist Web Site

Agent Orange: 17 Chilling Photos of the Vietnam War Crimes the US Got Away With

Agent Orange: 17 Chilling Photos of the Vietnam War Crimes the US Got Away With

By Amanda Froelich

For ten years during the Vietnam War, the United States used a toxic concoction of two herbicides, labeled ‘Agent Orange,’ to wipe out large areas of Vietnam which were covered by thick jungle. The aim was to enable easier and more effective bombing of enemy bases. The issue was, Agent Orange wasn’t just an herbicide — it was also a deadly weapon, as it contains large amounts of dioxin.

Agent Orange was discovered in the year 1943 by American botanist Arthur Galston. Between the years of 1962 and 1971, the US army “showered” the deadly chemical over Southern Vietnam as part of the military operation “Ranch Hand”, or “Trail Dust.” In total, more than 20 million gallons of Agent Orange was used. Sadly, Agent Orange did more than contribute to the deforestation of vast areas of land. It also contaminated air, water, and food sources

History Rundown reports that in high concentrations, dioxin can trigger severe inflammation of the skin, lungs and mucous tissues. Sometimes, the toxicity can result in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, pulmonary edema, and even death. The highly effective carcinogen is also known to affect the eyes, liver, and kidneys, and to cause laryngeal and lung cancer.

As a result of using Agent Orange during the Vietnam War, more than 400,000 people were killed or maimed, and at least 500,000 children were born with mild to severe birth defects. Additionally, 5 million acres of forests and millions more of farmland were destroyed. Agent Orange is said to have killed 10 times more people than all chemical weapons combined.

Because the United States didn’t “technically” violate international laws, as it signed defense treaties with Southern Vietnam’s government and its actions (for the most part) were in line with the defense treaties, there was no reprimand for using Agent Orange as a chemical weapon during the war. That doesn’t mean hundreds of thousands didn’t suffer — or continue to today.

Today, many Agent Orange victims live in Peace Villages, communities where workers care for them and try to give them a normal life. However, “normal” will never truly be possible for most, as mutations caused by Agent Orange still affect the people and the children of Vietnam. As AllThatIsInteresting reports, those who can live in Peace Village are luckier than some of their siblings. Reportedly, some victims of the chemical agent are too deformed to even survive childbirth.

“There is a room at the hospital which contains the preserved bodies of about 150 hideously deformed babies, born dead to their mothers,” one charity worker said. “Some have two heads; some have unbelievably deformed bodies and twisted limbs. They are kept as a record of the terrible consequences of chemical weaponry.”

Veterans who served in the Vietnam war, as well, returned to US soil reporting unusually high rates of lymphoma, leukemia, and cancer. The rates were highest among those who worked with Agent Orange directly.

Following are haunting images from the war crime the US got away with:

1) Three planes fly over Vietnam releasing chemicals.

Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

 

2) An aerial photograph showing the effects of Agent Orange. The land on the left hasn’t been sprayed while the land on the right has.

Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. Collection: Agent Orange Subject Files/The Vietnam Center and Archive/Texas Tech University

3) Not all of the chemicals were sprayed from above. These soldiers are spraying crops from atop a vehicle, getting up close and personal with the dangerous chemicals.

Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. Collection: Agent Orange Subject Files/The Vietnam Center and Archive/Texas Tech University

4) A ten-year-old girl born without arms writes in her schoolbook.

Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam. December 2004. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

5) Soldiers down below help spray Agent Orange on the jungle, getting a dangerous dose of the chemicals all over their skins in the process.

Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. Collection: Agent Orange Subject Files/The Vietnam Center and Archive/Texas Tech University

6) 55-year-old Kan Lay holds her 14-year-old son, born with severe physical disabilities because of Agent Orange.

A Lưới, Vietnam. August 6, 2013. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

 

 

7) A soldier, after spraying the land with Agent Orange, tries to wash himself clean in some of the very waters that he had helped pollute.

Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. Collection: Agent Orange Subject Files/The Vietnam Center and Archive/Texas Tech University

8) A helicopter sprays Agent Orange.

Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. Collection: Agent Orange Subject Files/The Vietnam Center and Archive/Texas Tech University

9) Lt. Kathleen Glover comforts an orphaned Vietnamese child.

After the war, Lt. Glover would come home and find out that she had contracted Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma from her exposure to Agent Orange. Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: RADM Frances Shea Buckley Collection/The Vietnam Center and Archive/Texas Tech University

10) A man begs for money outside of a cathedral. He was born with a deformed arm because of Agent Orange, and it makes it nearly impossible for him to find work.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. June 1, 2009. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

11) A group of American planes fly over top of the jungles and release chemicals meant to kill the trees underneath

Vietnam. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

13) A helicopter sprays Agent Orange on Vietnamese farmland.

Mekong River, Vietnam. July 26, 1969. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

14) A massive stack of 55-gallon drums full of Agent Orange waits to be poured over the people of Vietnam.

Location unspecified. Circa 1961-1971. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

15) Military personnel demonstrate how to handle an Agent Orange leak, apparently growing increasingly aware of how dangerous the chemical they’d been using really is.

Okinawa, Japan. May 11, 1971. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

16) Professor Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong poses for a photo with the handicapped children under her care. Every one of them was born with a defect caused by Agent Orange.

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. December 2004. Credit: Wikimedia Commons

17) The third-generation child of an Agent Orange victim. Despite the generations between him and the Vietnam War, this boy still feels the effects and lives in a special village for Agent Orange victims.

Hanoi, Vietnam. November 10, 2007. Credit: A. Strakey/Flickr

The original source of this article is The Mind Unleashed

The Sea of China…. The problematic of the new world system بحر الصين… إشكالية النظام العالمي الجديد

The Sea of China…. The problematic of the new world system

Written by Nasser Kandil,

سبتمبر 20, 2017

Any reader cannot comment on this title and why we concern about the Sea of China, knowing that what we have is enough to concern about. The major country which leads the wars against us is the United States, and it is normal to care about confronting it with at least three things, its opponents, their suitability to be taken as allies, its plans, and its priorities in order to know the effectiveness of our confrontations and victories in the field in producing stable political equations, and how to change the world system and its new balances by all the surrounding variables. In the three points we will see China in front of us, it is the first opponent of the American hegemony, an active partner in any new or old world system, and today it is the priority of America, so how to pay attention that the politics in its different aspects is an outcome of economy which China is preceding to occupy the first global world ranking, as a consumer of the energy which forms one of the most important resources of our region,  as a producer of the goods which our countries form a vital market for them, and as an inspiring to enter the old world in which our geography locates.

The Sea of China forms the confused geographical area which seems the first appropriate region for the solutions instead of our region which is full of disputes and the conflicts. On its shores a high tense confrontation is taking place in which the American wants to have control on it and wants to prevent China from making it a regional lake, which its balances will be determined by equations of the forces which surround it. The Americans locate on the shores of this sea from the South Korea, Japan, Indonesia, Philippines, and Vietnam, they bet on hindering the Chinese project which based originally on the concept of the regional lake which is directed by the partners that share the same geography, through internationalizing the Sea of China and its crises. This requires igniting the crises between the neighborhoods and raising the tension towards justifying the military internationalization of these crises. Burma’s problem which bothers China does not stem from the fact that it is the concerned country of persecuting the Muslims there, but because China is aware that the American provocation of the issue stems from the attempt of internationalizing in order to deploy foreign troops on the borders of China, under the framework of Chinese-American conflict between the regions and the internationalization as the Korean cause, and as the Chinese industrial islands in the Sea of China. So the deployment of the US missile systems which threaten the Chinese security as the modern Thad system becomes a justification that has a cover made by the countries which the Americans try to put it under the threat of China and its allies in order to seek for the US protection, exactly as how America does in the Gulf by spreading panic from Iran.

China is the partner of the Arabs, the Muslims, and the other nations of the region in confronting the projects of the American hegemony, and the rising power in the world economically. In Asia which constitutes two-thirds of population and distance, China constitutes one third of its population, while Russia constitutes one third of its area. As the understanding with Russia has led to an equation that started changing the world, the completion of the birth of new world system is waiting for the future of the balances in the Sea of China to become clear. What should be concerned regarding the issues of the freedom and independence in our country is not to take one of the two extreme positions towards the issue of the Muslims of Burma whether through ignoring the issue, denying its existence and considering it mere US fabrication or ISIS movement as what was repeated by some people thinking that they serve China by repeating what is being spread on its media, or through participating in arousing the issue, because America can invest it in order to internationalize its security and to be positioned under this pretext on the borders of China. Iran seems the first concerned to have a dialogue with China and to reach to an understanding for a regional solution sponsored by the neighboring countries of Burma as China, India, Bangladesh, and Thailand  that ensures its security and the security of the Muslims in it , and stops the malicious game of America under its pretext.

North Korea’s missiles remain the indispensable deterrence till the Americans recognize the choice of negotiation for a political solution and till Japan and South Korea understand that the solution must be regional or there is no solution.

Translated by Lina Shehadeh,

بحر الصين… إشكالية النظام العالمي الجديد

ناصر قنديل

سبتمبر 16, 2017

– لا يستطيع عاقل أن يعلق على العنوان وما علاقتنا ببحر الصين، فما عندنا كافٍ ليشغل اهتمامنا وأكثر، فالدولة العظمى التي تقود الحروب علينا هي أميركا، والطبيعي أن نهتمّ لمواجهتنا معها بثلاثة أشياء على الأقلّ، خصومها ومدى صلاحيتهم كحلفاء لنا، وخططها ونسبة الأولويات فيها لإدراك مدى فعالية مواجهتنا وانتصاراتنا في الميدان في إنتاج معادلات سياسية مستقرة، وكيفية تغيّر النظام العالمي وتوازناته الجديدة بفعل كلّ المتغيّرات المحيطة به. وفي الثلاثة سنجد الصين أمامنا، فهي خصم أول للهيمنة الأميركية وشريك فاعل في أيّ نظام عالمي قديم وجديد، وهي اليوم أولوية أميركا، فكيف إنْ كان لعقلنا أن ينتبه أنّ السياسة في كثير من وجوهها مولود للاقتصاد، الذي تتقدّم الصين لاحتلال مرتبة عالمية أولى فيه، كمستهلك للطاقة التي تشكل أحد أهمّ موارد منطقتنا، وكمنتج للسلع التي تشكل بلادنا سوقاً حيوية لها، وكطامح لدخول العالم القديم الذي تتوضّع جغرافيتنا في قلبه؟

– يشكل بحر الصين المنطقة الجغرافية المضطربة التي تبدو المرشح الأول للحلول مكان منطقتنا في تصدّر الأحداث والنزاعات، فعلى شواطئه تدور مواجهة عالية التوتر، يريد الأميركي عبرها الإمساك بمفاتيحه، ومنع الصين من جعله بحيرة إقليمية، تقرّر توازناتها معادلات القوى المتشاطئة عليه، والأميركيون موجودون على ضفاف هذا البحر من كوريا الجنوبية واليابان، وأندونيسيا والفيلبين، وفيتنام، ويراهنون على عرقلة المشروع الصيني القائم أصلاً على مفهوم البحيرة الإقليمية التي يديرها الشركاء الطبيعيون جغرافياً، بتدويل بحر الصين وأزماته. وهذا يستدعي تصعيد الأزمات بين الجيران ورفع منسوب التوتر وصولاً لتبرير التدويل العسكري لهذه الأزمات. ومشكلة بورما التي تزعج الصين، ليس لأنها هي الطرف المعني باضطهاد المسلمين هناك، بل لأنها تدرك أنّ الإثارة الأميركية للقضية نابعة من مسعى للتدويل وزرع قوات أجنبية على حدود الصين، تندرج في إطار الصراع الصيني الأميركي بين الأقلمة والتدويل، ومثلها القضية الكورية، ومثلهما الجزر الصناعية الصينية في بحر الصين، ليصير نشر المنظومات الصاروخية الأميركية التي تهدّد الأمن الصيني، كمنظومة ثاد الحديثة، مبرّراً ويملك غطاء تصنعه مخاوف وهواجس دول يشتغل الأميركيون على جعلها تحت تهديد الصين وحلفائها، لتطلب الحماية الأميركية، تماماً كما هو حال التعامل الأميركي في الخليج بقوة إنتاج الذعر من إيران.

– الصين شريك العرب والمسلمين وسائر شعوب المنطقة في مواجهة مشاريع الهمينة الأميركية، وقائدة العالم الصاعدة اقتصادياً، وفي آسيا التي تشكل ثلثي العالم سكاناً ومساحة تشكل الصين ثلث سكانها، وتشكل روسيا ثلث مساحتها، ومثلما أنتج التفاهم مع روسيا معادلة بدأت تغيّر العالم، فإنّ اكتمال ولادة نظام عالمي جديد ينتظر تبلور مستقبل التوازنات في بحر الصين، وما يجب أن يهتمّ به المعنيون بقضايا الحرية والاستقلال في بلادنا، هو أن لا يتخذوا أحد الموقفين المتطرفين من قضية مسلمي بورما، فيصبّون الماء في الطاحونة الأميركية، إما بتجاهل القضية وإنكار وجودها، واعتبارها مجرد فبركة أميركية، أو حركة داعشية، كما يتحدّث البعض ظناً منهم أنهم يخدمون الصين بتكرار ما تقوله وسائل إعلامها، أو بالمشاركة في إثارة صاخبة للقضية ينجح الأميركي بتوظيفها لتدويل أمنها والتموضع بذريعتها على حدود الصين، إن إيران تبدو المعني الأول بحوار مع الصين يخرج بتفاهم على الدعوة لحلّ إقليمي ترعاه دول الجوار لبورما، وهي الصين والهند وبنغلادش وتايلاند، يضمن أمنها ومن ضمنه أمن المسلمين فيها، ويقطع الطريق على اللعبة الأميركية الخبيثة بذريعتها.

– تبقى صواريخ كوريا الشمالية رادع لا غنى عنه، حتى يستسلم الأميركيون لخيار التفاوض لحلّ سياسي، ويفهم اليابان وكوريا الجنوبية أنّ الحلّ يكون إقليمياً أو لا يكون.

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Deplorable Ignorance and Indifference of Most Americans

Source

Stephen LENDMAN

Americans are the most over-entertained, uninformed people on the planet – mostly know-nothings about domestic and geopolitical issues mattering most.

A new Gallup poll provides more evidence – 58% of respondents supporting war if peaceful methods with North Korea fail.

Americans are so out-of-touch with reality they have no idea that the Trump administration ruled out dialogue with Pyongyang or why.

They have no understanding of what nuclear war means, endangering the lives and welfare millions of people in North and South Korea, others potentially in Japan and cross-border in China.

They fail to grasp the possibility that war on the DPRK could invite China’s intervention to protect its security, Russia possibly getting involved for the same reason.

They can’t comprehend the legitimate threat North Korea faces. Lacking powerful weapons invites hostile US intervention, all sovereign independent countries threatened by Washington’s rage for dominance, vulnerable to mass slaughter and destruction like other nations America attacked.

Nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities aren’t a protective shield from US aggression, but they greatly diminish the odds of a preemptive attack – the sole reason Pyongyang wants them, for defense, not offense, their right under international law.

Scoundrel media mind manipulation has most Americans fooled most of the time – why Washington gets away with ravaging and destroying one country after another with shamefully little public opposition.

Most Americans are ignorant about what’s going on or indifferent to oppose publicly it like during the Vietnam era.

Anti-war fervor made a difference. Americas took to the streets nationwide. University faculty members across the country held “teach-ins,” instructing students about the immorality of US war and the political background of its involvement.

Thousands attended rallies in Washington and elsewhere. In November 1969, half a million massed in the nation’s capital against Southeast Asia war. Resistance leaders urged young men to burn their draft cards.

On April 4, 1967, one year to the day before his state-sponsored assassination, Martin Luther King delivered his powerful anti-war “Beyond Vietnam” address in New York’s Riverside Church – calling America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.”

Now it’s much worse than then, America at war in multiple theaters directly and with proxy terrorist fighters, threatening war on other nations, risking nuclear war on the Korean peninsula – besides possible confrontation with Russia and/or China.

Gallup showed most Americans prefer war to anti-war resistance, the earlier spirit against US aggression gone.

Only 39% of respondents oppose attacking North Korea. Would they send loved ones to fight? Would they go themselves? Gallup didn’t ask to find out.