Such US provocations against China include so-called “freedom of navigation” operations in and around Chinese controlled islands, where the US sends naval ships into these waters claimed by Beijing. At the same time, however, Washington and Tokyo both denounce China for sailing in or flying over international waters near Japanese controlled islands, or those with ties like Taiwan.
Tokyo hopes to use claims of “Chinese aggression” against Taiwan to also further its own imperialist interests.
After The Grayzone’s Max Blumenthal reported on newly leaked documents exposing a massive UK government propaganda campaign against Russia, Twitter added an unprecedented warning label that the material “may have been obtained through hacking.” Although Twitter may have intended to restrict the article, the warning had the opposite effect: it quickly went viral. Max Blumenthal and Aaron Maté discuss the suppression effort and the damning UK government leaks at the heart of it. After years of fear-mongering about Russian interference in Western democracies, these UK government files expose a sprawling propaganda effort that explicitly aims to “weaken” Russia. The documents reveal that this propaganda campaign has also enlisted major media outlets Reuters and the BBC, as well as the NATO member state-funded website Bellingcat. Guest: Max Blumenthal, editor of The Grayzone and author of “The Management of Savagery.”
CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—This is Defense Department stenography. The US military is an invading force in both Syria and Iraq; it is impossible for its actions in either of those countries to be defensive. It is always necessarily the aggressor. It’s the people trying to eject them who are acting defensively. The deaths of US troops and contractors in those countries can only be blamed on the powerful people who sent them there.
KIM PETERSEN—I learned a while back to be especially skeptical of western mass media and their governments. [1] My experience of life in China is nothing like how western demonization portrays it to be. Therefore, I looked forward to the chance to experience North Korea first hand. I traveled there with a Chinese group departing China. Starting out from Dandong, China, we crossed the Yalu River to Sinuiju, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). From Sinuiji we took a train to Pyongyang and explored other areas of the DPRK in 2017. I wrote about this in “There Are Human Beings in North Korea. Neither Wealthy Nor Poor.” My impression of North Korea was extremely positive, and I look very forward to returning there one day.
ERIC ZUESSE–iden’s foreign policies are putting Democratic Party lipstick onto the Republican Party’s pig. That’s his ‘change’, on US foreign policies. Though President Joe Biden is publicly critical of Trump’s foreign policies, he’s continuing almost all of them and is changing only minor ones. The changes are almost entirely in rhetoric, not in actual policies, as will be documented here.
A good example of this entirely rhetorical ‘difference’ is described in a February 19th article from Reuters, Drawing contrast with Trump, Biden promises US allies a partnership that’s not transactional. Biden’s policy, to “promote democracy over autocracies,” condemns Trump’s polices as having been “transactional” instead of based on “values.” But, actually, America’s invasions, and coups, and economic sanctions, during the past few decades, have been ‘justified’ by condemning the US regime’s target-nations (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine before America’s 2014 coup there — and now Ukraine is ‘our ally‘) as not being “democratic,” and as not adhering to ‘human rights’, as if the US regime itself were an authentic democracy, or were unquestionably better on human rights than the targets against which its aggressions are directed — none of which is true.