Tag: Chemical Weapons

Australia is playing in the international greyzone: it is time to get out of our unthinking alliance with the US

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

The current animosity between the United States-led western world and strategic partners Russia and China is all about power. It is not about human rights, democracy, trade, intellectual property, the ‘rules-based international order’ or any of the other canards used by politicians, commentators and the media to describe current events.

The United States had for a historically brief period, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, a unipolar moment where it could largely do as it pleased in international affairs. That period of global hegemony is now history but the myth of US exceptionalism within the minds of its elites, and their acolytes, persists.

China and Russia on the other hand, both having learned the folly of empire, have rather more limited goals. But in a case of projection, Western powers assume Russia and China seek global domination. This is based on the fallacious logic, as argued by former US ambassador and Assistant Secretary of Defense Chas Freeman, that because the United States had the Monroe Doctrine and Manifest Destiny these countries must too.

At this point, it is highly unlikely that the United States along with any grouping of its allies can militarily defeat China and Russia in any plausible scenario. Thus, the conflict between these two poles is primarily informational and to a lesser extent economic (e.g. sanctions). In other words, this is a grey-zone conflict, otherwise known as political warfare.

Australia is playing in the international greyzone: it is time to get out of our unthinking alliance with the US

Anti-Asian Violence in America Is Rooted in US Empire

Tina Marie (Ms. Cat)

Anti-Asian Violence in America Is Rooted in US Empire

Related:

Now is the perfect time for US to reflect on how anti-China outlook is fuelling hatred against all Asians across America

There’s little sign of significant change under Joe Biden. The White House continues to politicize the virus and place accountability on Beijing, albeit in a more refined manner, and has accepted Trump’s new anti-China consensus.

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Yet focusing only on the virus limits the scope of what they did. Yes, the virus was part of the problem, but it was a medium to greater, more sinister things. The administration and its lackeys in the media also whipped up extreme paranoia pertaining to all things China in the process. This included relentless accusations of espionage, which targeted Chinese academics and overseas students. Pompeo even stated that Chinese students who studied in the US were sent by the communist party. At every level, the White House promulgated hatred, and despite the focus on racial injustices thanks to the Black Lives Matter protests, received very little scrutiny for it.

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Last week, in his address to the nation, Biden condemned the “vicious hate crimes against Asian-Americans who have been attacked, harassed, blamed and scapegoated.” But at the same time, members of the administration continue to politicise the virus. They do not use explicitly racist language such as “China virus” or “Kung-Flu”, yet Secretary of State Antony Blinken, for example, continues to follow essentially the same messaging of Pompeo by prolonging the idea that China is responsible for the situation in the US. This becomes a venting point for public anger, and continues to put Asian people in the firing line. The language may be a bit softer, a bit more polite, but they have not changed.

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The pace of America’s vaccination roll-out may finally help society move on from the flames of hatred that Trump poured petrol over, but we have to be honest in accepting that anti-Asian sentiment has been fuelled by government policy as a whole, rather than just a pandemic.