SERGE HALIMI—Barack Obama instigated a US foreign policy pivot to Asia and the Pacific. Trump typically formulates the new strategy with less elegance and subtlety (see Curbing China’s rise, in this issue). Trump views cooperation as a trap, a zero-sum game, so China’s economic growth automatically threatens that of the US, and vice versa: ‘We are winning against China,’ he said in August. ‘They had the worst year … in a half a century, and that’s because of me. And I’m not proud of that.’
US EXCEPTIONALISM
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ERIC ZUESSE—The Syrian and Russian Governments had planned to finish them off there in Idlib, so that none of them could escape back into their home countries to continue their jihad. However, the U.S. and its allies raised ‘humanitarian’ screams at the U.N. and other international organizations, in order to protect the ‘rebels’ against the ‘barbarous dictator’ of Syria, its President, Bashar al-Assad — just in order to create more anti-Assad (and anti-Russian, and anti-Iranian) propaganda. And, so, on 9 and 10 September 2018, Putin and Erdogan and Rouhani met in Rouhani’s Tehran to decide what to do. By that time, Erdogan was riding the fence between Washington and Moscow. On 17 September 2018, I headlined “Putin and Erdogan Plan Syria-Idlib DMZ as I Recommended” and reported that Putin and Rouhani entrusted Idlib to Erdogan, with the expectation that Erdogan would keep the jihadists penned-up there, so that Putin and Assad would be able to bomb them to hell after the ‘humanitarian crisis’ in Idlib would be no longer on front pages. As things turned out, Erdogan double-crossed Putin and Rouhani, and just grabbed the territory.
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Worries About Foreign ‘Hacking’ of Vaccine Research Place Corporate Profits Ahead of Public Health
18 minutes readJOSHUA CHO—One should expect corporate media outlets like the Times to equate corporate interests with the US national interest. By spinning the intellectual property of large US corporations as something that must be safeguarded rather than something that should be shared, US media are failing to inform their audiences about how corporations are delaying the development of a vaccine—and causing unnecessary deaths.
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Freedom Rider: Media Silent as Trump Declares Wars
10 minutes readMARGARET KIMBERLEY—Venezuela has been under constant attack from the United States and its allies for years with the Trump administration making the most blatant regime change efforts. But the media who ordinarily pillory Trump are either silent or support these attacks. Trump’s remarks should have made headlines. The president of the United States once again declared some sort of hostilities against Venezuela but his words garnered hardly any attention.
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TELESUR—Social movements have repeatedly warned that lithium and natural resources would be surrendered to foreign capital by coup authorities, in a reversal of plans by Evo Morales’ Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) administration to process the lithium within Bolivia rather than exporting the raw material to the global north. The project represented a rejection of the neocolonial relationship Latin American countries have often had with the imperialist cores.