Citing a recent McCarthyite smear piece by The New York Times, Senator Marco Rubio published a letter on Wednesday that he’d sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland calling for the investigation of American leftist antiwar groups, claiming they are “tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and operating with impunity in the United States.”
We stand together against the rise of a new McCarthyism that is targeting peace activists, critics of US foreign policy, and Chinese Americans. Despite increased intimidation, we remain steadfast in our mission to foster peace and international solidarity, countering the narrative of militarism, hostility, and fear.
The Louisiana Purchase is usually presented as an incredible, inspiring moment in American history in which President Thomas Jefferson, wise, benevolent eyes twinkling under his powdery white wig, made an incredibly shrewd real estate deal with notorious, disgraced French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte and, with one stroke of his giant quill pen, doubled the size of the United States of America for the bargain price of $15 million, or just three cents an acre. What we don’t usually learn about is the negative domino effect this treaty had in terms of inspiring the concept of manifest destiny or the belief that white colonists had a God-given duty to expand across North America and redeem and remake the land in their own image.
In November 2022 The Breakthrough Institute (BTI), drawing from Academia, NGOs, and the UN, released a report, which others digested, on the supposed inextricable link between the solar industry’s supply chains and Uyghur slave prison labor in China. China deniessuchclaims. The report praises initial moves by the US and the EU to counter these allegedly ongoing human rights violations and extols countries and the solar industry to move the various parts of its manufacturing process out of China. As the fight for nuclear and responsible renewable energy development intensifies in the US, this narrative is gaining traction as another tool to counter the 100% renewable extremists. However, the US also has a prison slave labor problem, one that it does not even deny. We are also in a time of ratcheting tensions between the US and China, in which these narratives would be useful in stoking anti-China sentiments. However, bringing up these facts in a simplistic argument leads to the inevitable accusation of whataboutism and little else. As such, it is worth making a more longform argument which clearly lays out the current conditions of slave labor in both countries. Once it is shown that China has progressed further along in the abolition of slavery than the US, it will be clear how this narrative is just another in a long list of anti-Chinese propaganda.
In its coverage of the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King Charles, the New York Times has published article after article celebrating the pageantry of the British monarchy. In so doing, the newspaper responsible for publishing the 1619 Project has entangled itself in many layers of contradictions.
On April 16, 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed a bill emancipating enslaved people in Washington, the end of a long struggle. But to ease slaveowners’ pain, the District of Columbia Emancipation Act paid those loyal to the Union up to $300 for every enslaved person freed.
Lincoln wanted to end slavery—but wasn’t keen on integrating African Americans into US society. His first attempt to send them offshore proved disastrous.
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