Andrea Soros Colombel, daughter of George Soros and his first wife, Annaliese Soros (née Witschak), is a founding partner and board director of the Acumen Fund. In 1993, she established the Trace Foundation, an organization dedicated to preserving and advancing Tibetan culture, economy, and environment. The foundation’s initial efforts included emergency grants to aid groups responding to severe snowstorms in Tibet. Over time, its major initiatives included funding scholarships for Tibetans pursuing overseas education with the goal of teaching at secondary and university levels. Additionally, the foundation significantly supported Latse, a New York City-based library and nonprofit that houses a collection of Tibetan cultural works and hosts public programs on Tibetan culture. In 2000, Soros Colombel co-founded the Tsadra Foundation, which provides grants to Tibetan Buddhist organizations.
A Chinese naval task force, consisting of the Type 055 guided-missile destroyer Type 055, a Type 054A frigate, and a Type 903A replenishment ship, has been spotted operating approximately 124 miles [200 kilometers] east of Sydney, Australia.
The People’s Liberation Army Navy Z-9 utility helicopter that intercepted the Philippine Cessna. Photo Courtesy of Camille Elemia.
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A People’s Liberation Army Navy Z-9 utility helicopter intercepted the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources Cessna 208B Grand Caravan during a routine patrol mission over Scarborough Shoal today at 8:39 a.m. local time, according to Philippine officials. A number of Philippine journalists [embedded journalists] were on board the Cessna during the encounter, which saw the Chinese helicopter fly as close as three meters from the turboprop aircraft. Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson Commodore Jay Tarriela described China’s actions as “dangerous flight maneuvers” and blasted the conduct as a disregard to international aviation regulations.
In defiance of UN resolutions and international law, he recognised Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, recognised the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel, and now wants to turn Gaza into a US real estate development, reconquer Panama, turn Canada into the 51st State of the USA, rename the Gulf of Mexico and seize Greenland, if necessary by force. And it’s only February. The US spent blood, treasure and decades building the Rules-Based International Order. Biden and Trump have left it in tatters.
“Keep calm. Hasty emotions are unnecessary today,” wrote yesterday Mykhailo Podolyak, one of the most belligerent members of the Ukrainian government, reacting to the wave of pessimism and, at times, hysteria that spread across the European continent throughout the day yesterday, focusing on analyzing the implications of the telephone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump and the subsequent statements by the president of the United States. “The Trump-Putin conversation reduces tension, but at the expense of Ukraine,” stated the British BBC before the political spin managed to create a continental crisis from an initial conversation whose only agreement is to continue talking. Because despite the adjectives that are being used to describe the contact between the two presidents or the way in which it occurred, the result of the call was the mutual reaffirmation of the importance of peace and the implementation of the mechanisms to schedule a meeting between the two leaders, which will presumably be in Saudi Arabia, and begin a negotiation process.
The Pentagon official tasked with overseeing U.S. defense policy toward Southeast Asia recently advised against pursuing hawkish defense policies and a major trade war against China, a marked contrast with top Trump appointees.
John Andrew Byers, a longtime history professor who oversaw the Charles Koch philanthropic network’s grants promoting libertarian foreign policy stances at universities, was sworn in this week as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for South and Southeast Asia — a role that immediately thrusts him to the center of America’s response to China’s ongoing military pressure campaign targeting the Philippines, with which Washington holds a mutual defense treaty.
Pascal did it again! He keeps bringing on David Pyne, without disclosing that he’s a member of the hawkish group, Committee on the Present Danger: China. Pyne is far from neutral on the issue of China!
Decades of drug war tactics have failed, merely shifting production of fentanyl precursors from China to India, Myanmar, other parts of Southeast Asia, and even Canada. Canadian authorities report “superlabs” are shipping fentanyl to drug dealers in Australia and New Zealand and, to a lesser amount, to the US.
The question of women’s liberation is central to any revolutionary project, and thus so is the question of “sex work.” Esperanza Fonseca’s contribution, although coming from a Maoist political orientation with which we often have differences, [1] makes the stakes of this debate crystal clear, as she combines personal experience, public policy research, and historical materialism to argue that Marxists cannot uphold what she calls “sex-trade-expansionary feminism.”
Content Warning: Descriptions of rape.
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The right of the subordinated classes of men to buy access to women’s bodies has been used historically to break class solidarity in order to maintain the dominant social relations of the time. This was true in feudal Europe and remains true today: when proletarian and petit bourgeois men get to buy women too, they develop a false consciousness and build solidarity with bourgeois men of their own gender rather than aligning with women of their own class. And because the overthrow of capitalism is only possible by the overthrowing of the bourgeoisie, prostitution serves two great purposes: (1) allows bourgeois men access to a reserve army of women for their pleasure, and (2) prevent class consciousness and thus helps stop the proletariat from organizing as a class.
The vote in favour of the second reading of the Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill on 29th November, proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, was welcomed with unalloyed enthusiasm by the bourgeois media. Photos featuring jubilant campaigners for voluntary euthanasia were plastered across web front pages. The real promise of this Bill is far from joyful for many. The Bill, which will now go to parliamentary committee with the opportunity for amendment, if finally passed into law, would represent a major political attack at a time of huge inequality and significant shortages in access to health care, social care, support for independent living, and end of life care, including adequate, high quality palliative care. Despite all this – and the loud opposition of disabled people’s organisations in particular – this measure is still mistakenly understood by some on the left as merely a matter of personal choice: an enabler rather than a threat.
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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