Taiwan Province Diplomatic disputes with China hide pettiness and savagery – Despite some similarities has been used by US & Britain – don’t expect them to come to the rescue. 台灣省與中國的外交爭端隱藏著小氣和野蠻 – 這是美國和英國經常使用手段相似之處, 不要希望他們能來救援.
Taiwan’s dispute with mainland China and Nicaragua over its former assets is a storm in teacup, whereas the case of the Venezuelan state-owned gold in Britain cuts to the heart of the US-led sanctions that have caused untold sufferings for ordinary people in that country
For once, Taiwan stands alone against Washington’s favourite bêtes noires, China and Nicaragua, without Uncle Sam coming to its aid. The island has accused Nicaragua of defying international laws and protocols by confiscating its former embassy compound and other assets, and then handing them over to mainland China after switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Ordinarily, you can expect the United States and its faithful allies such as Britain to join the fray and denounce the “theft”. However, Britain has been using the same playbook as Managua, except on a much grander scale. To come to Taipei’s rescue now would invite international ridicule.
The British Supreme Court has just ruled that its government can continue to freeze 31 tons of gold worth about US$1.7 billion that Venezuela has deposited with the Bank of England.
The British government wants to hand over the state assets to Juan Guaido, whom London and Washington continue to recognise as the true head of state of Venezuela against current socialist President Nicolas Maduro following an election and its disputed results in 2018-19. This is despite the dwindling number of countries that still recognise Guaido. Since the start of this year, the European Union no longer recognises him.
Britain’s highest court ruled that it was bound by the “one voice principle”, according to which the executive branch has sole prerogative to recognise foreign heads of state.
Of course, Managua could argue the same based on the one-China principle by which it has switched recognition to the central government in Beijing. By right and law then, the former assets of Taiwan in Nicaragua now belong to mainland China, regardless of Taipei’s previous arrangement to donate them to the Catholic Church in the country. But the Nicaraguan dispute is a diplomatic storm in a teacup, which is down to sheer pettiness among antagonistic governments. The Venezuelan gold case cuts to the heart of the merciless Western sanctions led by Washington that have led to terrible sufferings for ordinary people in Venezuela, made worse by the Covid-19 pandemic.
The United Nations and various human rights groups have repeatedly criticised the US-led sanctions and their inhumane effects on the general Venezuelan populace. Washington, however, is determined to toughen the stranglehold, including extraditing Maduro’s go-to troubleshooter Alex Saab, who had been working around the sanctions to supply food, fuel and medicine to the country.
The sanctions have been sheer vindictive savagery.
Alex Lo has been a Post columnist since 2012, covering major issues affecting Hong Kong and the rest of China. A journalist for 25 years, he has worked for various publications in Hong Kong and Toronto as a news reporter and editor. He has also lectured in journalism at the University of Hong Kong.
How China & US fighting COVID19? China: lives matter, money secondary (least death); US: money matters, lives secondary (most death). How can a dead person enjoy freedom democracy and human rights? 中美如何抗擊新冠病毒? 中國:生命重要，金錢次要（最少死亡); 美國:錢很重要，生命是次要的（最多死亡, 全球#1) . 一個死去的人如何享受自由民主和人權?
People tends to joke about seeing these headlines news daily, stop laughing, it could be you or your family members next time, rich or poor, you have one life, absolutely not safe in US! 每天看到這些頭條新聞，人們往往會開玩笑，不要再笑了，下一次可能是你或你的家人，無論貧富，你祇有一條命! 在美國絕對不安全！
In God’s name? In God we trust? Why we lied about Xinjiang slave labors? Why we kept refugees created by Western Empires away? Why do we lied to our children? Why no Medicare for all? 以上帝的名義？ 我們信靠上帝嗎？ 為什麼我們對新疆的奴工撒謊？ 為什麼我們要把西方帝國製造的難民拒之門外？ 我們為什麼要對孩子撒謊？ 為什麼沒有全民醫療?
The U.S. signed a “Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act,” but what’s the U.S. record concerning modern slavery? What’s wrong with its policies? There’s still rampant human trafficking and violation of rights in the U.S. Is it the “messiah state” or the “modern slavery state”? And does it have the right to bully others when it has failed to ratify most international labor conventions? 美國簽署了《維吾爾強迫勞動預防法》，但美國在現代奴隸制方面的記錄如何？ 它的政策有什麼問題？ 美國人口販賣和侵權依然猖獗，是“彌賽亞國家”還是“現代奴隸制國家”？ 當它未能批准大多數國際勞工公約時，它是否有權欺負他人？
Guests: Max Blumenthal Editor, The Grayzone Victor Gao Chair Professor, Soochow University
US Navy is putting 800,000 Honolulu residents lives at risk! ‘We Can Take On This Goliath’: Oahu Water Chief Ready To Fight Navy Over Red Hill, the water utility is prepared to fight to protect the aquifer underneath it. 美國海軍正在將 800,000 名檀香山居民置於危險之中！ “我們可以對付這個巨人”：瓦胡島水務主管準備在紅山上與海軍作戰，自來水公司準備戰鬥以保護其下方的含水層.
The Honolulu Board of Water Supply’s manager and chief engineer said on Tuesday that if the Navy refuses to drain its Red Hill fuel facility, the water utility is prepared to fight to protect the aquifer underneath it.
Ernie Lau, whose longtime warnings about the fuel facility’s threat to drinking water were realized this year, said at a press conference that the Navy should follow an order from the Hawaii Department of Health to empty its fuel tanks.
“The Board of Water Supply will not give up,” Lau said
The Guardian: The US is “closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe”, a member of a key CIA advisory panel has said. 衛報：美國中央情報局一個關鍵顧問小組的成員表示，美國“比我們任何人都願意相信的更接近內戰”。
US ‘closer to civil war’ than most would like to believe, new book says. Academic and member of CIA advisory panel says analysis applied to other countries shows US has ‘entered very dangerous territory’
Robert Reich: Beware the big lie, big anger and big money. Rioters try to break through a police barrier at the Capitol in Washington on 6 January. Martin Pengelly in New York
Mon 20 Dec 2021
President Trump Holds Departure Ceremony Before Florida Travel, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, USA – 20 Jan 2021 Mandatory Credit: Photo by REX/Shutterstock (11718428f) U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a farewell ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, U.S.,. Trump departs Washington with Americans more politically divided and more likely to be out of work than when he arrived, while awaiting trial for his second impeachment – an ignominious end to one of the most turbulent presidencies in American history. President Trump Holds Departure Ceremony Before Florida Travel, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, USA – 20 Jan 2021
Why Trump appears deeply unnerved as Capitol attack investigation closes in
The analysis by Barbara F Walter, a political science professor at the University of California at San Diego who sits on the Political Instability Task Force, is contained in a book due out next year and first reported by the Washington Post.
At the same time, three retired generals wrote in the Post that they were “increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military”.
Such concerns are growing around jagged political divisions deepened by former president Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat in the 2020 election.
Trump’s lie that his defeat by Joe Biden was caused by electoral fraud stoked the deadly attack on the US Capitol on 6 January, over which Trump was impeached and acquitted a second time, leaving him free to run for office.
The “big lie” is also fueling moves among Republicans to restrict voting by groups that lean Democratic and to make it easier to overturn elections.
Such moves remain without counter from Democrats stymied by the filibuster, the Senate rule that demands supermajorities for most legislation.
In addition, though Republican presidential nominees have won the popular vote only once since 1988, the GOP has by playing political hardball stocked the supreme court with conservatives, who outnumber liberals 6-3.
All such factors and more, including a pandemic which has stoked resistance to government, have contributed to Walter’s analysis.
Last month, she tweeted: “The CIA actually has a taskforce designed to try to predict where and when political instability and conflict is likely to break out around the world. It’s just not legally allowed to look at the US. That means we are blind to the risk factors that are rapidly emerging here.”
The book in which Walter looks at those risk factors in the US, How Civil Wars Start, will be published in January. According to the Post, she writes: “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war.”
But “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America – the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or Ivory Coast or Venezuela – you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely.
“And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”
Walter, the Post said, concludes that the US has passed through stages of “pre-insurgency” and “incipient conflict” and may now be in “open conflict”, beginning with the Capitol riot.
Citing analytics used by the Center for Systemic Peace, Walter also says the US has become an “anocracy” – “somewhere between a democracy and an autocratic state”.
The US has fought a civil war, from 1861 to 1865 and against states which seceded in an attempt to maintain slavery.
Estimates of the death toll vary. The American Battlefield Trust puts it at 620,000 and says: “Taken as a percentage of today’s population, the toll would have risen as high as 6 million souls.”
Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton adviser turned biographer of Abraham Lincoln and Guardian contributor, said: “The secessionists in 1861 accepted Lincoln’s election as fair and legitimate.”
The current situation, he said, “is the opposite. Trump’s questioning of the election … has led to a genuine crisis of legitimacy.”
With Republicans’ hold on the levers of power while in the electoral minority a contributing factor, Blumenthal said, “This crisis metastasises, throughout the system over time, so that it’s possible any close election will be claimed to be false and fraudulent.”
Blumenthal said he did not expect the US to pitch into outright civil war, “section against section” and involving the fielding of armies.
If rightwing militia groups were to seek to mimic the secessionists of the 1860s and attempt to “seize federal forts and offices by force”, he said, “I think you’d have quite a confidence it would be over very, very quickly [given] a very strong and firm sense at the top of the US military of its constitutional, non-political role.
“… But given the proliferation of guns, there could be any number of seemingly random acts of violence that come from these organised militias, which are really vigilantes and with partisan agendas, and we haven’t entered that phase.
“The real nightmare would be that kind of low-intensity conflict.”
The retired generals who warned of conflict around the next election – Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba and Steven Anderson – were less sanguine about the army.
“As we approach the first anniversary of the deadly insurrection at the US Capitol,” they wrote, “we … are increasingly concerned about the aftermath of the 2024 presidential election and the potential for lethal chaos inside our military, which would put all Americans at severe risk.
“In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time.”
Citing the presence at the Capitol riot of “a disturbing number of veterans and active-duty members of the military”, they pointed out that “more than one in 10 of those charged in the attacks had a service record”.
Polling has revealed similar worries – and warnings. In November, the Public Religion Research Institute asked voters if they agreed with a statement: “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
The poll found that 18% of respondents agreed. Among Republicans, however, the figure was 30%.
On Twitter, Walter thanked the Post for covering her book. She also said: “I wish I had better news for the world but I couldn’t stay silent knowing what I know.”
The Table is set for the economic collapse of the US. [1] US has no REAL democracy; [2] US Believes that it owns 1/3 of the world; [3] US is a Military Empire where war is an every-day event; … [5] The wealthy has sucked America bone dry. 該表是為美國的經濟崩潰而設置的。 [1] 美國沒有真正的民主； [2] 美國認為它擁有世界的1/3； [3] 美國是一個軍事帝國，戰爭是家常便飯； … [5] 富人已經把美國吸乾了
US has 25% of World’s prison population / Using forced US prisons labor in 110 factories getting paid as little as 23 cents per hour. 美國擁有世界 25% 的監獄人口/在美國 110 家工廠使用強迫美國監獄勞工，每小時工資低至 23 美分. by Daryl Guppy
The U.S. Capitol building sits in the background of a traffic sign in Washington, D.C., the United States, May 28, 2021.
Editor’s note: Daryl Guppy is an international financial technical analysis expert. He has provided a weekly Shanghai Index analysis for Chinese media for more than a decade. Guppy appears regularly on CNBC Asia and is known as “The Chart Man.” He is a national board member of the Australia China Business Council. The article reflects the author’s opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.
U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law a ban on imports from Xinjiang over Washington’s concerns about forced labor. This is a fine example of the U.S. imposing dual standards purely for political purposes. It’s also an example of the U.S. leadership believing its own propaganda generated by U.S. State-funded bodies that have relentlessly painted a negative picture of Xinjiang.
Targeting Xinjiang ignores the widespread use of forced prison labor within the U.S. prison system. The U.S. imprisons more people per capita than any country in the world. With less than 5 percent of the world population, U.S. imprisons house more than 25 percent of all people imprisoned in the world, and thousands of prisoners are deployed in forced labor.
U.S. government-owned UNICOR, previously known as Federal Prison Industries (FPI), has 110 factories in at least 79 federal prisons across the country. This for-profit corporation is run by the Bureau of Prisons and is now the U.S. government’s 39th largest contractor.
Raytheon, Boeing and Lockheed Martin directly benefit from prison labor, which produces electronic components, including Patriot surface-to-air missile parts. Prisoners work for as little as 23 cents per hour. The factories’ operator discloses on its website that prison authorities can withhold some, or even all, of those wages from prisoners to pay fines and other debts.
UNICOR supplies advanced electro-optical equipment for the BAE Systems Bradley Fighting Vehicle. Cisco Systems and Microsoft used prisoner-staffed marketing call centers.
U.S. federal convict labor is not voluntary. Inmates are compelled to work on factory production lines. A U.S. Federal Government report on prison labor states “all able-bodied sentenced prisoners” are required to work.
In a number of U.S. States, prisoners who refuse to work are put in solitary confinement. This practice also extends to some immigration detention centers where detainees are placed in solitary confinement for refusing to participate in forced work programs.
State prisons using forced prison labor on plantations, in laundries and on highway chain gangs increasingly seek to sell this cheap prison labor to corporations. In several U.S. States, up to a third of the fresh fruit and vegetables available in local supermarkets are harvested by forced prison labor.
Activists calling for jail and prison reforms rally outside the Brooklyn Criminal Court in New York City, December 10, 2021.
The Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) is an independent research organization based in Montreal. Their research reports document systematic abuse, beatings, prolonged isolation and sensory deprivation, and lack of medical care which they say make U.S. prison conditions among the worst in the world.
They write that the prison work is often dangerous, toxic and unprotected. At a federal prison on an old U.S. airbase, prisoners clean, overhaul and reassemble tanks and military vehicles returned from combat which were coated in toxic spent ammunition, depleted uranium dust and chemicals.
In a CRG report, Sara Flounders notes major corporations profiting from the forced labor of prisoners, include Motorola, Compaq, Honeywell, Revlon, Chevron, Trans World Airlines, Victoria’s Secret and Eddie Bauer. International Business Machine, Texas Instruments and Dell get circuit boards made by Texas prisoners.
Tennessee inmates sew jeans for Kmart and JCPenney. Tens of thousands of young people working for minimum wage at McDonald’s wear uniforms sewn by prison workers, who are forced to work for a few cents in the hour.
In California, as in many states, prisoners who refuse to work are moved to disciplinary housing and lose canteen privileges as well as “good time” credit, which slices time off their sentences.
A 2012 federal lawsuit by prisoners, food service workers and family members at a minimum security women’s prison in Florida, cited that toxic dust containing lead, cadmium, mercury and arsenic poisoned those who worked at UNICOR’s computer and electronic recycling factory. Prisoners there worked covered in dust, without safety equipment, protective gear, air filtration or masks.
Georgia inmates went on strike in 2010 and refused to leave their cells at six prisons for more than a week. This was one of the largest prison protests in U.S. history. Prisoners spoke of being forced to work seven days a week for no pay. Prisoners were beaten if they refused to work.
This American use and commercialization of forced labor is not enough to prevent the U.S. initiating a forced labor boycott of China. U.S. allies, often with their own versions of forced labor and exploitative conditions in relation to agricultural workers and indentured labor are quick to join the U.S.
Dual standards were a feature of 19th century colonialism, and this has not changed. When the United States, and its allies talk of boycotts against the use of forced labor, they should first start by applying those sanctions to companies in their own backyards.
(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com.)
Hawaii Supreme Court say no to lawmakers cater to special interests fooling voters / Hawaii Lawmakers Grapple With Ruling That Bars Last-Minute Bill Changes By Kevin Dayton
A state Supreme Court ruling last month has upended a longtime legislative tactic known as “gut-and-replace.”
For decades, the Legislature has swapped out the entire contents of bills almost at the last minute.
But that’s now prohibited after the state Supreme Court’s rejection.
Ahead of the upcoming legislative session, lawmakers are trying to determine what changes they must make in the flow of legislation to comply with the court decision.
The court ruling apparently reaches beyond that narrow gut-and-replace tactic and potentially affects any bill that lawmakers amend late in the session to include material that is “non-germane” to the content of the earlier drafts of the bill.
Find out more about the implications of the ruling in this story by reporter Kevin Dayton.
Johnson Choi Biz 