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.
PHILIP A. FARRUGGIO—The real Skinny is how much money the owners of these teams and the media companies that televise their games are earning. If the owner can afford to pay one guy $50 million per annum, just one guy from a roster of 25 to 50, imagine how the money flows in. They got deals for licensed products, contracts from the media giants, ticket sales and other income from food, refreshments and programs. Of course, the media giants who pay them for the right to televise, they get their money from the corporations via advertisements and other charges. Who pays for all this? You and me. Nothing is free, especially our cable bills. Imagine the bullshit by this Two Party/One Party system years ago when the passed the Communications Act of 1996. Oh, it was going to make things better. Well, my cable television bill then was like $35 bucks for a great package. Now I fork out over $200 a month! Progress, right?
A mordant comedy take on Biden’s attack on Syria and the underlining imperial hypocrisy.
ERIC ZUESSE—And then there’s Julian Assange, who has never been convicted of anything but is being drugged and held in a British maximum-security prison as the latest stage in his decade-long imprisonment-without-conviction for anything. A British judge dropped all charges against him and was keeping him in prison pending a decision by Joe Biden (via Merrick Garland) on whether or not to re-assert Donald Trump’s re-assertion of Barack Obama’s assertion that Assange had stolen (though he never stole) and made public U.S. Government secrets and should be extradited to the U.S. for what everyone expects to be a kangaroo court trial that would end in his execution for having done what Daniel Ellsberg had done in the Pentagon Papers case about the Vietnam War. The international hero, Assange, is to be ‘tried’ in a U.S. court. On February 12th, the New York Times bannered, “Biden Justice Dept. Asks British Court to Approve Extradition of Julian Assange”. Biden continues Trump’s continuation of Obama’s attempt to murder Julian Assange.
PHILIP GIRALDI—he new White House Team has been in place for more than a month and it is perhaps time to consider where it is going with America’s fractured foreign policy. To be sure, when a new administration brings in a bunch of “old hands” who made their bones by attacking Syria and Libya while also assassinating American citizens by drone one might hope that those mistakes might have served as valuable “lessons learned.” Or maybe not, since no one in the Democratic Party ever mentions the Libya fiasco and President Joe Biden has already made it clear that Syria will continue to be targeted with sanctions as well as with American soldiers based on its soil. And no one will be leaving Afghanistan any time soon. The Biden team will only let up when Afghanistan is “secure” and there is regime change in Damascus.