OMNI
CHINA NEWSLETTER #2,
MAY 30, 2020
COMPILED BY DICK BENNETT FOR A CULTURE OF PEACE, JUSTICE, AND ECOLOGY
CONTENTS
Is This Our Leaders’ Anti-China Problem? China’s Success Toward an Ecological Civilization.
VIOLENT WAR
UN vs. Threat or Use of Armed Force (see the final selection below).
Immense Gap Between US and Chinese Military in Africa.
ECONOMIC WAR
Shubert, Blaming China.
NATO and Neoliberalism.
TECH WAR
Huawei.
Artificial Intelligence.
Chinese Aerospace Development.
PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR
Pentagon Success.
POLITICAL WAR: COVID-19
US Conspiracy Mongering.
China’s Successful Campaign for the World.
Early Weeks of Pandemic: China Warns World.
US v UN Effort for Global Ceasefire.
MEDIA WAR
Shupak, US Corporate Media Spreads Cold War.
Parodies by Dick
NADG Reports Reframed.
China in Gulf of Mexico.
China in Caribbean.
US Nationalism, Covid-19, China, and the ADG by DB.
Memory: 1999 US Bombs Chinese Embassy by William Blum.
US has been at war against the Reds a long time.
TOPICS AND TEXTS
CHINA’S SUCCESS TOWARD ITS GOAL: ECOLOGICAL CIVILIZATION
China’s Determined March Towards The Ecological Civilization. ![https://ci4.googleusercontent.com/proxy/bS19ZhI201M5zV6ORseLDNYrtp3w4h5Vq9O3HjX7eDQLhI0PtE_H7fCq-SF9xC2MTWMOwI8w60lWI_JlK0-yJuJl_Up8McuSVFdiVm0AYe36VdApL7VVjIt2Z3h_2Jps-MmnqgaFlMf3wNXFPSe_3lnl6JlFM_UKHAbVUPc=s0-d-e1-ft#https://gallery.mailchimp.com/33602bebba8fb7dd6e71fb413/images/3ee34e04-83fa-4bc3-8c67-7cb5f7f70805.jpg]()
By Andre Vltchek, Information Clearinghouse. May 09, 2018. Popular Resistance.org, 5-15-18. China’s successful attention to the well-being of its natural environment and needy citizens.
By Andre Vltchek, Information Clearinghouse. May 09, 2018. Popular Resistance.org, 5-15-18. China’s successful attention to the well-being of its natural environment and needy citizens. There is no time for long introductions. The world is, possibly heading for yet another catastrophe. This one, if we, human beings will not manage to prevent it, could become our final. The West is flexing its muscle, antagonizing every single country that stands on its way to total domination of the Planet. Some countries, including Syria, are attacked directly and mercilessly. As a result, hundreds of thousands of people are dying. -more-
WAR: THREAT OR USE OF ARMED FORCE
“The U.S. Military is hell-bent on trying to overpower China.” Mronline.org (5-14-20).
The absence of a strong world peace movement with the capacity to prevent this buildup by the United States is of considerable concern for the planet. The need for such a movement could not be greater. | more…
Saving Contrast, FOUNDATION FOR PEACE: THE UN CHARTER “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state. . . . “ (UN Charter, Article 2, Section 4).US Confronts the China Threat in Africa
CHINA
“China Plans to Establish Military Outpost in Africa” by Jane Perlez and Chris Buckley, The New York Times in Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (Nov. 27, 2015). “China announced Thursday that it would establish its first overseas military outpost” in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa. China describes it as a fueling station, but whatever its function it goes beyond “its historical focus on protecting the nation’s borders.” According to the authors, President Xi Jinping is leading China’s navy “to live up to…the Communist Party’s ambitions to become a global maritime power.”
US
David Vine, Base Nation: How U.S. Military Bases Abroad Harm America and the World. Chap. 16, “The Lily Pad Strategy.” In 2001 the US began its Camp Lemonnier base in Djibouti at an initial cost of $30 million and a Voice of America radio transmitter. “Within a few years, there were more than four thousand troops at the six-hundred acre base and hundreds of billions of dollars in construction and annual spending.” But US military presence in Africa really got going in 2007 when President George W. Bush established Africa Command (Africom) “to bring peace and security to the people of Africa.” Some 17 African countries demurred, seeing it as a continuation of Western colonialism. Never mind, “since late 2001, the military has spent around $30 billion or more on a growing military infrastructure,” and has stationed, “on any day, likely between seven thousand and eleven thousand U.S. troops.” “The military is now operating in at least forty-nine of the fifty-four African countries. It may be operating in every single one” (313)
[Why are US leaders encircling China with military bases, fear-mongering that nation to the US people, and denouncing China’s expansion in Africa when the ratio there is 49 to 1 military bases? What’s the name for that? And see item below on China’s first aircraft carrier compared to US’s 10 aircraft carrier strike groups.]
ECONOMIC WAR
Benjamin Shobert. Blaming China: It Might Feel Good but It Won’t Fix America’s Economy. Nebraska P, 2018. Why trying to divert attention away from our problems by directing blame at a foreign “foe” can be harmful.
NATO’s China Double-Think by Finian Cunningham + Neoliberalism Has Met Its Match in China by Ellen Brown. mronline.org(8-13-19).
We cannot win a currency war by competitive currency devaluations that trigger a “race to the bottom,” and we cannot win a trade war by competitive trade barriers that simply cut us off from the benefits of cooperative trade. More favorable to our interests and values than warring with our trading partners would be to […] Source
Huawei ban drags China, U.S. into tech cold war. Mronline.org (5-29-20)
Industries prepare for decoupling as worst scenario, accelerating homegrown technologies as Washington hawks destroy global supply chain. | more…
In The Big Nine by Amy Webb demonstrates her extensive knowledge of the science driving Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the geopolitical tensions that could result between the US and China in particular. She offers deep insights into how AI could reshape our economies and the current world order, and she details a plan to help humanity chart a better course."―Anja Manuel, Stanford University, cofounder and partner RiceHadleyGates
China Airborne by James Fallows. Pantheon, 2012.
In China Airborne, James Fallows documents the extraordinary scale of China’s aerospace plans and explains how it stands to catalyze the nation’s hyper-growth and hyper- urbanization, revolutionizing China in ways analogous to the building of America’s transcontinental railroad in the nineteenth century. He concludes by examining what this latest demonstration of Chinese ambition means for the United States and the rest of the world—and the right ways to understand it.
PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR
U.S. Military planners advise expanded online psychological warfare against China. Mronline.org (5-21-20)
Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of China (and nine years ago it was strongly favorable). Today, the same polls show that 66 percent of Americans dislike the country. | more…
POLITICAL WAR: WHO’S TO BLAME FOR THE VIRUS
“It is not just propaganda: What the U.S. anti-China campaign is looking for. “ Mronline.org (4-28-20)
The Trump Administration has spread the conspiracy theory that the new coronavirus came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This accusation, which seeks to transfer responsibility for the pandemic to the Asian giant, has been rejected by the Chinese authorities for being without foundation. | more…
As information about coronavirus emerged, the Chinese government and Chinese society began to organize an immense campaign against its spread. To blame China is slander.| more…
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“U.S. blocks vote on UN’s bid for global ceasefire amid COVID-19.”
Posted May 16, 2020 by teleSUR Desk
Empire , Imperialism , Inequality , War Global , United States Newswire coronavirus , COVID-19 , pandemic
Originally published: Black Agenda Report (May 13, 2020)
The U.S. veto trashes the UN’s efforts to convince armed factions in more than a dozen countries to call for temporary truces as the world battles the pandemic.
International diplomats were stunned and frustrated Friday after the United States again blocked a United Nations resolution to call for a global ceasefire during the COVID-19 pandemic, only because the Trump administration objected to an indirect reference to the World Health Organization (WHO), which the US condemns for failing to condemn China for starting the pandemic..
MEDIA WAR
MAY 15, 2020
“Corporate Media Setting Stage for New Cold War With China” by GREGORY SHUPAK. FAIR, Extra!
Corporate media are laying the ideological groundwork for a new cold war with China, presenting the nation as a hostile power that needs to be kept in check.
WaPo: America is awakening to China. This is a clarion call to seize the moment.
Mitt Romney (Washington Post, 4/23/20) says “Covid-19 has exposed China’s dishonesty for all to see.”
The Washington Post (4/23/20) ran an article by Republican Sen. Mitt Romney, the second sentence of which said, “The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed that, to a great degree, our very health is in Chinese hands; from medicines to masks, we are at Beijing’s mercy.” America, in this conception, is under Chinese domination, a tyranny that’s evidently imposed not only by the Chinese government, but by Chinese people generally.
Details like the US having more than 21 times as many nuclear warheads as China, or the fact that it’s the US dollar and not the Chinese yuan that underpins the global financial system, do not enter into consideration. Instead, because the US imports a great many goods made in China, Romney urged readers to understand China as Americans’ oppressors, who implicitly must be resisted. MORE https://fair.org/home/corporate-media-setting-stage-for-new-cold-war-with-china/
Corporate media distortions and bombast are priming the American public to see China as a treacherous villain that has to be forcefully confronted, perhaps with violence. Presenting China—and Chinese people—as a threat to the United States and its people is that much more reckless at a moment when there is an “alarming surge in anti-Asian racism related to Covid-19” (NBC, 4/16/20). But such considerations don’t trouble those who are in the business of ginning up the hatred necessary for a new cold war.
Gregory Shupak teaches media studies at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto. His book, The Wrong Story: Palestine, Israel and the Media, is published by OR Books.
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US in the China Sea Well-defended by NADG; China in the US Sea Hasn’t Happened: US Tests Chinese Sphere of Influence, China Respects US Sphere
“U.S. Staying the Course in the China Sea.” NADG (3-19-19).
How it looks reversed. China Staying the Course in the Gulf of Mexico.
China’s Navy won’t alter its so-called freedom-of-navigation sail-bys in the disputed Gulf of Mexico between Galveston and Panama City and has pressed ahead with such operations despite a dangerous maneuver by a U.S. navy ship against a Chinese destroyer, a senior Chinese commander said.
“Chinese Navy Announces Caribbean Sea Patrols.” Barbados Times, 10-30-18.
The Chinese People’s Navy will continue patrolling the Caribbean Sea, a top Navy official said Monday, after a US destroyer came dangerously close to a Chinese Navy ship during a Chinese “freedom of navigation” sail-by near Doral, FL, United States Southern Command Headquarters. (The Fourth Fleet is headquartered on Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, Florida and is responsible for U.S. Navy ships, aircraft and submarines operating in the Caribbean, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans around Central and South America.)
Adm. Gung Ho, who heads China’s naval operations, said in a news conference that such patrols highlight the Chinese position against “illegitimate maritime claims.”
“We will continue to progress this program of freedom of navigation operations,” Ho said. “We do dozens of these operations around the world to indicate our position regarding illegitimate clams, maritime claims.”
While Beijing has no claims to the Caribbean, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans around Central and South America, it has declared that freedom of navigation and the peaceful resolution of the disputes are in China’s national interest. China has also questioned the US’s expansive claims.
A US destroyer came close to the Chinese ship Luoyang in September in an “unsafe and unprofessional maneuver” near Doral, Fl, forcing it to maneuver to prevent a collision, according to the Chinese Atlantic and Caribbean Fleet.
China’s Atlantic and Caribbean Fleet spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Chong Gum said the US destroyer approached within 45 yards of the Luoyang. US said the Decatur, a US missile destroyer, was deployed to identify the Chinese warship and drive it away from US territory.
Neither ship, both China and the US declared, was nuclear armed.
(“Navy Announces South China Sea Patrols.” NADG 10-30-18. A few words have been reversed.)
US CARRIER in South China Sea OK/China in Caribbean NO; US Carrier Battle Group Necessary for US and World Peace and Security; China’s Single Carrier a Security Threat to US and World. US Media Reporting US vs. Chinese Imperialism
(China had one newly-built carrier in 2016 performing sea trials in its waters. The US had ten Carrier Strike Groups, each one including a cruiser, at least two destroyers, and half-dozen support ships. –D)
Esmeralda Dame. United Press. “Oh Jung No Visits Carrier in Caribbean, Threatens US Mainland and Mexico. “ NW Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (4-20-16).
Aboard the People’s Republic Mao Tse-tung Victory.
For the second time in five months, People’s Republic Defense Minister Oh Jung No landed aboard China’s aircraft carrier in the Caribbean, where in several countries Chinese citizens and businesses are threatened by US military activity, a continuation of the long history of US meddling in Latin America.
Jung No stood alongside Venezuelan, Bolivian, Cuban, and Nicaraguan Defense Ministers as they watched Chinese Navy fighter jets launch into vivid blue skies about 70 nautical miles east of the Panama Canal.
Later in the massive, gray ship’s hangar bay, Jung No said his
message in making the trip is that China “intends to continue to play a role in keeping peace and stability in this region” where it has invested so much and intends major future investments. The
He said the only reason China’s presence comes up as an issue is because of the behavior of the US over the last year. “What’s new is not a Chinese carrier in this region, although it is. What’s new is the context of tension which exists, which we want to reduce.”message in making the trip is that China “intends to continue to play a role in keeping peace and stability in this region” where it has invested so much and intends major future investments. The
Jung No’s visit aboard the People’s Republic Mao Victory underscores complaints from China and its allies in the region about US military build-up in the Caribbean. The US has bases throughout the Caribbean, Central America, and Latin America and has been increasing them in some areas.
The visit to the Mao Victory came a day after Jung No announced new aid to Jamaica that spurred protests from the US.
Further Reading:
Source of above parody: Lolita C. Baldor. The Associated Press. “Carter Visits Carrier in South China Sea.” NWAD-G (4-16-16).
Google: China in the Caribbean—for example in The New York Times: U.S. Alert as China's Cash Buys Inroads in Caribbean.
Google: U.S Military Build-up in Caribbean—for example:United States Military Bases in the Caribbean, Central and ...www.codepink.org/united_states_military_bases_cuba
Google:US military bases around the world. Latest book: David Vine, Base Nation.
US Nationalism, the Coronavirus, and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette by Dick Bennett
The Democrats’ 2020 presidential primary focused on beating Trump, partly because his campaign slogan flaunted an iron-fisted “America First.” But demagogs are made, not born, nationalistically bigoted, as the Covid-19 pandemic reveals.
Look at the headlines in Arkansas’ major newspaper in March 2020, the Democrat-Gazette: “Trump Defends His Role, Differs with Health Expert,” “OK Near on $1 Trillion Relief Deal.” The Me-Generation reflects the National Me: for us there’s no pandemic but only our epidemic. That’s what you learn from the White House and Congress; that’s what you learn from the mainstream media--in Arkansas from the state’s major newspaper the Democrat-Gazette.
Except on the one day it offered a peep-hole into our national omphaloskepsis epidemic by a glimpse of pandemic world sorrow.
Except on the one day it offered a peep-hole into our national omphaloskepsis epidemic by a glimpse of pandemic world sorrow.
“Fragile Targets Brace for the Virus” by Carley Petesch (AP, with six other AP reporters contributing) appeared on March 21, 2020, p. 6A. As though the writers knew they had only this one shot to report the pandemic, the article wastes no time announcing alarming statistics of Mali’s ”roughly one ventilator per 1 million people,” and of Peru’s “350 beds in intensive care units” for its 32 million people. And even if the countries least prepared like Liberia and Burkina Faso had the equipment, they lack trained health workers to use them, and equipment and trained medical personnel are expensive. Senegal is “helping to develop a fast covid-19 test that is expected in June.” The continent’s countries seem to be largely on their own, as the dominant US neocon orthodoxy prescribes.
Where is the United Nations? The article makes no mention of UN aid, except for one reference to WHO. We saw the UN progressively weakened all during the Cold War as the US and the USSR used it for their own interests. And the Republican Party has increasingly opposed “big government” particularly since the Reagan administration. (Though the last few days of covid-19 panic, that Party has sounded like the New Deal of Roosevelt’s second term.)
In the apparent absence of the UN, where is generosity and cooperation from individual countries? The US as part of the problem is exhibited in the ADG. On March 19 the newspaper editorialized baldly in its old Cold War, country hick, bigotry mode, “Consulting with Beijing Isn’t Likely”:“Americans can be forgiven if they’re not taking a heaping load of advice from the Red Chinese just now. At least when it comes to the covid-19 virus. Americans will take any lessons about how to limit the virus’ impact, and from anywhere, but having the ChiComs talk down to us is unseemly.”
Despite Trump’s repeated slanders against the bogeyman of US “enemy” propaganda, China is paying no attention and is displaying extraordinary generosity to the world, against the pandemic, as reported in the ADG: “China Recovering, Offering Others Aid” by Steven Myers and Alissa Rubin (The New York Times). “China’s leader, Xi Jimping, pledged to send more medical experts to Italy this week, on the same day Beijing sent 2,000 rapid diagnostic tests to the Philippines.” “From Japan to Iraq, Spain to Peru, it has provided or pledged humanitarian assistance in the form of donations or medical expertise.”
And the US? Only a few years ago the US “led the fight against Ebola.” But Anti-Red prejudice still infects our leaders’ gray cells, and the chief newspaper of Arkansas. Nevertheless, China welcomes the opportunity to “build partnerships around the world.” But isn’t, sneers our leaders, China’s international assistance as much self-interest as humanitarian concern? After all, China is “the world’s largest maker of medicines and protective masks.” In response, Italy’s former undersecretary in its development ministry said: “I don’t know and now I don’t care. The urgent issue was to provide aid to save lives.” The day before, China offered “2 million surgical masks, 200,000 advanced masks and 50,000 testing kits to Europe,” for which the president of the European Commission declared, “’We’re grateful for China’s support. We need each other’s support in times of need.’”
But in its editorial “Consulting with Beijing Isn’t Likely,” the ADG editorial writer urges us to take reports from China “with a truckload of salt.”
MEMORY: AN EARLY US EFFORT TO DEMONSTRATE ITS DOMINANCE IN ASIA TO CHINA . (I have read all of Blum’s book-length Anti-Empire Reports, a powerful inoculation against US anti-communist virus.)
The American Mainstream Media – A Classic Tale Of Propaganda by William Blum, The Anti-Empire Report, #139, May 23, 2015.
“When an American warplane accidentally struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999 during the Kosovo campaign …”
These words appeared in the Washington Post on April 24, 2015 as part of a story about US drone warfare and how an American drone attack in Pakistan in January had accidentally killed two Western aid workers. The Post felt no need to document the Belgrade incident, or explain it any further. Almost anyone who follows international news halfway seriously knows about this famous “accident” of May 7, 1999. The only problem is that the story is pure propaganda.
Three people inside the Chinese embassy were killed and Washington apologized profusely to Beijing, blaming outdated maps among other problems. However, two well-documented and very convincing reports in The Observer of London in October and November of that year, based on NATO and US military and intelligence sources, revealed that the embassy had been purposely targeted after NATO discovered that it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. The Chinese were doing this after NATO planes had successfully silenced the Yugoslav government’s own transmitters. The story of how the US mainstream media covered up the real story behind the embassy bombing is absolutely embarrassing.
Over and above the military need, there may have been a political purpose served. China, then as now, was clearly the principal barrier to US hegemony in Asia, if not elsewhere. The bombing of the embassy was perhaps Washington’s charming way of telling Beijing that this is only a small sample of what can happen to you if you have any ideas of resisting or competing with the American juggernaut. Since an American bombing campaign over Belgrade was already being carried out, Washington was able to have a much better than usual “plausible denial” for the embassy bombing. The opportunity may have been irresistible to American leaders. The chance might never come again.
All of US/NATO’s other bombing “mistakes” in Yugoslavia were typically followed by their spokesman telling the world: “We regret the loss of life.” These same words were used by the IRA in Northern Ireland on a number of occasions over the years following one of their bombings which appeared to have struck the wrong target. But their actions were invariably called “terrorist”.
Undoubtedly, the US media will be writing of the “accidental” American bombing of the Chinese embassy as long as the empire exists and China does not become a member of NATO.
END CHINA NEWSLETTER #2