Americans Turn Against Childhood Vaccines. Will Politicians End the Mandates?
By Adam Dick | Peace and Prosperity Blog | September 5, 2024
A Gallup poll conducted in July found for the first time that less than a majority of surveyed Americans think that it is “extremely important” that parents have their children vaccinated. Only 40 percent of polled individuals agreed with this assessment compared to the 64 percent high point of agreement expressed when the question was first asked in 2001.
In an August article detailing the poll results, Jeffrey M. Jones of Gallup pointed out that the decline in support for vaccinations of children comes almost entirely from Republicans and Republican-leaning independents:
The declining belief in the importance of vaccines is essentially confined to Republicans and Republican-leaning independents, as the views of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents have changed little over the past 24 years. Twenty-six percent of Republicans and Republican leaners — half as many as in 2019 — believe it is extremely important for parents to get their children vaccinated. In the initial Gallup poll on vaccinations, Republicans and Republican leaners (62%) held similar views to Democrats and Democratic leaners (66%); the two groups now differ by 37 percentage points.
Nearly half — 45 percent — of Republican and Republican-leaning respondents expressed from lukewarm support for childhood vaccination to outright opposition, with 26 percent answering it is “somewhat important,” eight percent “not very important,” and 11 percent “not at all important.” Among Democrat and Democrat-leaning respondents these answers totaled just seven percent.
A potential policy result of the change in opinion regarding childhood vaccines is an easing or even elimination of states’ and schools’ vaccination mandates, especially where the population is made up largely of Republican and Republican-leaning individuals. The poll results indicate plummeting support for the position that “the government should require all parents to have their children vaccinated against contagious diseases such as measles.” Support for this position dropped from 62 percent in 2019 to 51 percent in the new poll. Among Republican and Republican-leaning respondents support for such government shots mandates for children declined form 53 percent in 2019 to just 36 percent in the new poll, while support among Democrat and Democrat-leaning respondents has remained rather steady at around 70 percent.
The polling data is in. Will politicians heed their constituents’ views and curtail and even eliminate childhood vaccine mandates?
Lockheed Martin Develops System to Identify and Counter Online “Disinformation,” Prototyped by DARPA
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | September 6, 2024
Various military units around the world (notably in the UK during the pandemic) have been getting involved in what are ultimately, due to the goal (censorship) and participants (military) destined to become controversial, if not unlawful efforts.
But there doesn’t seem to be a lot of desire to learn from others’ mistakes. The temptation to bring the defense system into the political “war on disinformation” arena seems to be too strong to resist.
Right now in the US, Lockheed Martin is close to completing a prototype that will analyze media to “detect and defeat disinformation.”
And by media, those commissioning the tool – called the Semantic Forensics (SemaFor) program – mean everything: news, the internet, and even entertainment media. Text, audio, images, and video that are part of what’s considered “large-scale automated disinformation attacks” are supposed to be detected and labeled as false by the tool.
The development process is almost over, and the prototype is used by the US Defense Department’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
The total value of the program, awarded by the Air Force Research Laboratory Information Directorate (acting for DARPA) to Lockheed Martin comes to $37.2 million, Military and Aerospace Electronics reported.
Reports note that while past statistical detection methods have been “successful” they are now seen as “insufficient” for media disinformation detection. This is why looking into “semantic inconsistency” is preferred.
There is a rather curious example given of how “mismatched earrings” can be a giveaway that a face is not real but generated via a GAN – a generative adversarial network.
(GANs are a machine learning method.)
And SemaFor’s purpose is to analyze media with semantic tech algorithms, to hand down the verdict of whether the content is authentic or false.
There’s more: proving such activities come from a specific actor has been near impossible so far, but there’s a “mental workaround” that those behind the project seem happy with: infer, rather than identify. So – just like before?
“Attribution algorithms” are what’s needed for this, and there’s more guesswork presented as reliable tech – namely, “characterization algorithms” to decide not only if media is manipulated or generated, but also if the purpose is malicious.
Now, the only thing left to find out – how the algorithms are written.
Sanctions Against Russian Media Aimed at Discrediting Potential Trump Victory – Expert
Sputnik – 07.09.2024
The recent US sanctions against Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group and the RT broadcaster is an effort by Democrat-leaning federal government to contest a potential win by former President Donald Trump in the upcoming presidential election by rehashing anti-Russia narratives, historian and political analyst Paul Gottfried, told Sputnik.
“It is clear why the departments of our federal government, which are now subsidiaries of the Democratic Party, are screaming ‘Russia, Russia, Russia’ for the umpteenth time. They are being mobilized to contest the presidential election if they can’t prevent Trump from winning. Unfortunately [for them], the same actors were involved in the same farce throughout the Trump presidency and may be losing credibility,” Gottfried, who is the editor-in-chief of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture and Raffensperger professor of humanities emeritus at Elizabethtown College, said.
On September 4, the US Department of the Treasury announced sanctions against the editor-in-chief of Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya international media group and the RT broadcaster, Margarita Simonyan, and her deputies Anton Anisimov and Elizaveta Brodskaia. Deputy Director of the RT English-Language Information Broadcasting Andrey Kiyashko, RT’s Digital Media Projects Manager Konstantin Kalashnikov and a number of other employees of the broadcaster were also added to the sanctions list.
The US State Department, in a parallel move, tightened the operating conditions for Rossiya Segodnya and its subsidiaries, designating them as “foreign missions.” Under the Foreign Missions Act, they will be required to notify the department of all personnel working in the United States and disclose all real estate they own.
US authorities also announced restrictions on the issuance of visas to individuals they allege are “acting on behalf of Kremlin-supported media organizations.” However, the Department of State refused to disclose the names of those subject to the new visa restrictions. Commenting on the new sanctions, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller claimed the measures did not target any particular individual Russian journalists, but rather the employees of the targeted companies who were involved in “covert activities.”
Meanwhile, US authorities have charged Kalashnikov and another RT employee, Elena Afanasyeva, with money laundering conspiracy and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
$10 mln is serious money – What’s lacking? Serious evidence of crime
By Joaquin Flores | Strategic Culture Foundation | September 7, 2024
The entrenched authorities are bent on inserting Kamala Harris into office using lawfare, despite her resounding unpopularity and anti-populism. On September 4th, 2024, the United States Department of Justice issued a press release from its Office of Public Affairs, detailing and making public a sealed indictment (it can be read here) against two Russian nationals, who are said to be employees of RT, for ‘funneling’ US $10mln to various high-profile social media content creators. What strikes us immediately is that this is not a crime, even though the word ‘funneling’ is a strongly loaded term in the sense of neuro-linguistic programming, and so the DOJ’s approach to geopolitical lawfare as an extended form of political warfare in the information sphere, has been to find a legal theory that would support ‘finding’ and ‘creating’ charges on the basis of the two accused having conspired to fail to register as foreign agents.
The opening paragraphs of the DOJ press release read:
<<An indictment charging Russian nationals Kostiantyn [for some reason DOJ uses the Ukrainian version of the Russian name Konstantin – SCF] Kalashnikov, 31, also known as Kostya, and Elena Afanasyeva, 27, also known as Lena, with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and conspiracy to commit money laundering was unsealed today in the Southern District of New York. Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva are at large.
“The Justice Department has charged two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, in a $10 million scheme to create and distribute content to U.S. audiences with hidden Russian government messaging,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department will not tolerate attempts by an authoritarian regime to exploit our country’s free exchange of ideas in order to covertly further its own propaganda efforts, and our investigation into this matter remains ongoing.”
“Our approach to combating foreign malign influence is actor-driven, exposing the hidden hand of adversaries pulling strings of influence from behind the curtain,” said Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. “As alleged in today’s indictment, Russian state broadcaster RT and its employees, including the charged defendants, co-opted online commentators by funneling them nearly $10 million to pump pro-Russia propaganda and disinformation across social media to U.S. audiences. The Department will not tolerate foreign efforts to illegally manipulate American public opinion by sowing discord and division.”>>
Based on the language of the charges, it would appear that the foreign nationals were physically in the United States for the duration, or at least the initiation, of the project. That they are ‘at large’ and have not been taken into custody would seem to imply that this arrest will happen imminently, or that the two accused are no longer in the US.
It is important to keep in mind that it is not illegal for Russians to spend money in the US, and it is not illegal for Russians or any other foreign nationals to start a business, or engage in protected 1st Amendment activities such as blogging and news or opinion writing or broadcasting.
Assuming that some parts of the described predicate are true, (that a Russian citizen’s money was spent in the US), provided that the individual is not an a US Treasury Department sanctions list, the relevant Executive Order, or legislation, has not obviously been violated. There are some limitations to speech in the US for foreign nationals, and while there is some nuance here, generally 1st Amendment activities are protected unless there is either a reasonable or articulable risk (which standard may depend on the circumstances) to national security that could reasonably lead to a grand jury indictment – think insider whistle-blowing or releasing government/corporate secrets.
‘Funneling’ moneys to individual content creators – YouTuber Tim Pool is believed to be prominent among these – may or may not have influenced the content they were creating – another important part of the nuanced questions that arise. And if the opinions of said content creators (on the subjects they are known for) had not changed after the influx of private party backing, it is more difficult to make the whole claim that the DOJ is now making. Garland, for his part, also adds a proviso – the messages are “hidden”. At face value, this would seem to give the accuseds’ lawyers an additional challenge.
To the contrary, the opposite would be true: making a charge in which no method of falsifiability can be established, is a baseless charge. It is not a ‘hidden crime’, but an activity indistinguishable from lawful behavior.
More to the point, the subjects being discussed, whether influenced by the alleged money or not, were matters already in the public domain, expressing views and sharing information which is already readily available everywhere, and which were commonplace beliefs among an already significant part of the American population. We are not talking state or corporate secrets, calls for violence or other seditious activity, which rise to the level of a national security risk.
The subject of ‘foreign agent registration’ touches on a different, but related matter. Here again, the DOJ appears to be reaching by conflating that (ostensibly) because the two accused were employees of RT, that any or all other conceivable activities they undertook were performed under the auspices of that employer/employee relationship. Granted, that employment may have been the foundation for their visa to be in the US, but this does not mean that all activities done in the US were done on the basis of that relationship. This much is far from obvious and that case would need to be made, as well.
Yet another conundrum in the USA’s case against the accused arises therefore: they cannot easily make the alleged activity a crime unless they connect it to a more obvious and recognized state-backed sponsor (RT). But this further problematizes the prosecution’s case.
Even though the DOJ cites the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), under FARA, it is the organization itself that must register, not each individual employee.
For RT and similar entities, the requirement is that the organization, as a whole, must register as a foreign agent as they are believed to be acting on behalf of a foreign government or entity and is engaged in political activities or disseminating information in the U.S. The registration process involves disclosing details about the organization’s activities, funding sources, and relationships with foreign principals. RT did indeed register as a foreign agent in the United States to be in compliance with FARA in 2017. This registration was prompted by pressure from the U.S. government, which cited concerns over RT’s role as a state-controlled media outlet spreading Russian government messaging. By registering as a foreign agent, RT was required to disclose its funding sources, activities, and affiliations with the Russian government, in compliance with FARA’s requirements for organizations engaged in political activities on behalf of foreign principals.
To make matters worse, the USA’s case faces another logical fallacy: if the accusation is that the two accused conspired to get around foreign agent registration, it would seem to mean that their work was in fact not connected to their employment with RT. If it was through RT, then they did not violate avoidance of registration. If it was not through RT, the clear case of state-backed involvement evaporates.
Individual employees of such organizations, like Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, are not required to register as foreign agents unless they are specifically engaged in activities that meet the criteria set out by FARA, such as acting as representatives or lobbyists, including the influence of media, for a foreign government or other “foreign principal”. While “foreign principal” can be construed to include private individuals, if those private individuals are without readily identifiable close connections to foreign politics or foreign geostrategic interests (skin in game), the case becomes much weaker. There are other signs that the DOJ has a considerably weak case.
Take particular notice that the charges are ‘conspiracy’ charges, not the commission of the crime. The charges are ‘conspiracy’ to subvert or ‘get around’ FARA, and ‘conspiracy’ to launder money.
While this is a much lower legal standard, because the predicate of having actually committed the crime need not be at the foundation of a conspiracy charge. On the face of it, this would seem to make the DOJ’s case easier to make.
But not so fast: the successful prosecution of a conspiracy charge only really works in two scenarios. In the first case, the accused must be charged with both committing the crime, and the related conspiracy (communications and agreements involving one or more other persons) charge. In this case, establishing the foundation for, and charging the accused with an actual crime itself, is a necessary predicate for a conspiracy charge to be included.
In the second case, the conspiracy charge is meant to prevent the crime itself from being committed. Yet, in the charges against Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, their alleged activities are past tense.
Here, the DOJ implicitly admits that they had neither prevented the crime, nor was there sufficient evidence of an actual crime having taken place to serve as the predicate. This type of lawfare seems more like a ‘weapon of mass confusion’ in the interest of one candidate (Harris) and aimed at undermining real and actual domestic US political processes, working against the interests of the other of the candidate, (Trump), in the upcoming November presidential election.
We can therefore see immediately that the DOJ is playing fast and loose with these legal distinctions, and is a sign that at the very least an individual judge was either incompetent or influenced against proper judicial oversight, re the prosecutor’s advisement of the grand jury on how to proceed and what constitutes elements of the crime, leading to these flawed sealed indictments.
Indeed, the recent and highly visible DOJ escalation of the investigation into American affiliations with Russian state television networks has ignited considerable concerns over the weaponization (and definition) of American institutions.
Officially aimed at countering Kremlin influence operations in advance of the forthcoming presidential election, the heinously broad scope and the underlying investigations, including the potential shut-down of content producers like Tim Pool, has sparked concerns about the politicization of the DOJ and other governmental entities. The aggressive actions have led to allegations that these efforts are more politically motivated than grounded in genuine national security concerns.
The DOJ’s actions, part of a broader strategy ostensibly to neutralize Russia’s state-run media operations, have featured dramatic high-profile interventions, including searches and involuntary detentions executed by FBI agents, at citizens’ homes and ports of entry. These other actions, while not yet leading to the charges we see in the September 4th charges, signal an expansive scope that will no doubt involve additional individuals and potential criminal repercussions. Such measures have led to significant skepticism and condemnation, even from former government officials, like former US State Department official Mike Benz, meaning that the investigations and detentions are more about a form of full-spectrum domination than safeguarding genuine national interests. For what is in the national interest beyond what is the interest of the country’s population?
Certainly, the notion that national interest is synonymous with the agendas of a small, ideologically driven clique, who happen to hold considerable sway within a specific historical timeline, seems rather contrary to a broad, long-term, and societal view, or rather definition, of the national interest. These individuals – Trans-Atlantic neoliberal neoconservatives, occupying cabinet and permanent administration positions, and in the military – primarily serve the narrow interests of a select group of Americans (themselves) who are more invested in perpetuating a Cold War-style Russophobia and Sinophobia than a genuine advancement of the broader national interest. Their approach is driven by the inertia of think tanks, financial interests, and the ever-churning machinery of the Military-Industrial Complex (MIC), which ties back into an ecosystem that thrives on maintaining the status quo.
The DOJ’s actions are a brazen example of politicized lawfare masquerading as national security. By wielding the Foreign Agents Registration Act as a blunt instrument against “RT employees”, they are not just reaching but overreaching—attempting to equate the legitimate financial support of independent content creators with nefarious foreign influence.
The targets are not simply the accused, nor are they simply a few content creators that have been named in related journalism, like Mr. Pool. These charges are meant to having a chilling and silencing effect on all Americans, on all citizens engaged in social media at every level. These grand jury charges are undemocratic and deplorable to their core.
The flimsy indictment rests on the nebulous charges of conspiracy rather than actual criminal acts, exposing the DOJ’s desperation to manufacture threats where none exist. This reckless use of federal power to stifle dissenting voices and disrupt political narratives serves not the American people, but a narrow band of entrenched interests hell-bent on perpetuating outdated Cold War paranoias.
It is an audacious assault on free speech and a stark reminder of the lengths to which those in power will go to preserve their status quo, even if it means trampling on the foundational principles of justice and democracy. This is not a defense of national interest but an egregious abuse of authority that threatens the very fabric of the republic. If this is how they intend to install Kamala Harris, they will prove that they are hypocritically the source of the very undermining of confidence in American institutions which they accuse others of. So be it.
Ukraine’s top spy declares Telegram a ‘threat to national security’
Chief of the Military Intelligence of Ukraine Kirill Budanov. © Maxym Marusenko/Getty Images
RT | September 7, 2024
Telegram poses a real threat to Ukraine’s national security, the chief of that country’s Main Directorate of Military Intelligence, Kirill Budanov, has stated. The official acknowledged that the encrypted instant-messaging platform has become the prime source of information in the country, “outperforming everything else.”
Telegram was created by Russian tech entrepreneurs Pavel and Nikolay Durov back in 2013. One of its unique features is that it allows users to create public broadcast channels and discussion groups.
In an interview with Charter Radio station on Saturday, Budanov said that he does not advocate “simply shutting down” the messaging app. According to the intelligence chief, while quite difficult to implement, such a ban is doable, though.
“I call for all Telegram channels” to be obliged to establish a physical presence in Ukraine, Budanov declared.
“If you want to, so to speak, disseminate some news, please register, so that everyone understands that this channel is registered by Ivanov Ivan Ivanovich, a Russian citizen, who resides in Moscow,” the Ukrainian official explained.
He argued that this way Telegram channel administrators would bear responsibility for the content posted on it.
According to Budanov, some channels publish “not really printable materials,” and not only with respect to the ongoing military conflict with Russia.
He made similar remarks in late March, noting at the same time that Telegram is a useful tool for Ukrainian secret services in spreading their narratives in Russian-controlled territories.
Around the same time, a group of Ukrainian lawmakers proposed a bill to “regulate” Telegram. It included, among other things, a requirement for any messaging apps operating in Ukraine to set up a registered office in the country – unless they are headquartered in the EU – and to disclose their ownership structure and funding to the government.
The founder and CEO of Telegram, Pavel Durov, was detained after landing at Paris-Le Bourget Airport on August 24 and released on bail several days later. The Russian-born entrepreneur, who is also a citizen of France, the UAE, and the Caribbean nation of St. Kitts and Nevis, was charged on 12 counts, including complicity in distributing child porn, drug dealing and money laundering. The charges cite Telegram’s lax moderation rules that presumably allow for the widespread use of the platform by criminals.
Telegram is no stranger to legal problems, with authorities in numerous countries, including Russia, having taken issue with its policies. It has been banned in several jurisdictions over its refusal to cooperate with local governments.
Durov Bombshell: Archaic Crypto Law Charges Reveal French Intel’s Access to Private Communications
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 06.09.2024
The Durov saga in France and the continued efforts by countries around the world to crack down on his popular cloud-based, end-to-end encrypted private messenger and social media software has divulged a string of embarrassing details about the sorry state of internet privacy and freedom of information.
Two of the six charges facing Telegram CEO Pavel Durov in France are grounded an obscure, never-used twenty-year-old law obliging companies providing cryptography tools to inform the French Cybersecurity Agency (French acronym ANSSI) and grant it access to the software’s source code and “a description of [its] technical characteristics.”
The 2004 law – uniquely blunt in its demand that companies divulge info about the tech tools used for private communications, is being used against Durov by accusing him of providing encrypted communications services “without certified declaration.”
The legal requirement also means, if it is applied evenly across the board, that the array of instant messengers available to French users, from WhatsApp and Signal to iMessage and the French-made Olvid ‘secure’ messenger used by the French government, do comply with ANSSI regulations, meaning French intelligence can potentially spy on any or all French users at any time.
Adding credence to this idea is the fact that Pavel Durov is reportedly the first-ever tech mogul to be charged under the 2004 law, and the fact that many big-name tech companies have been silent on the Durov case, with the exception of Proton CEO Andy Yen, who characterized the charges against the Russian-born tech mogul as “economic suicide” that’s “rapidly and permanently changing the perception of founders and investors” toward France.
“If sustained, I don’t see how tech founders could possibly travel to France, much less hire in France,” Yen wrote last week.
The law is also reminiscent of the case against WikiLeaks cofounder Julian Assange, who was threatened with decades of jail time by the US under the obscure Espionage Act of 1917, even though that he was not an American citizen, and a publisher, not a spy. Former president Donald Trump was charged under the same act in his classified documents case, which got thrown out by a judge in July.
US War on China is a War on the Entire World
By Brian Berletic – New Eastern Outlook – 07.09.2024
US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan has recently claimed the US is not “looking for a crisis.” This is said, of course, with an important caveat – no crisis is sought as long as China subordinates itself to the United States.
Because China, like any other sovereign nation, based on international law, is obligated to resist foreign subordination, the US continues speeding toward inevitable war with China. Although China has formidable military capabilities, causing doubt among many that the US will actually ever trigger war with China, the US has spent decades attempting to create and exploit a potential weakness China’s current military might may be incapable of defending against.
Washington’s Long-Running Policy of Containing China
Far from a recent policy shift by the Biden Administration, US ambitions to encircle and contain China stretch back to the end of World War 2. Even as far back as 1965 as the US waged war against Vietnam, US documents referred to a policy “to contain Communist China,” as “long-running,” and identified the fighting in Southeast Asia as necessary toward achieving this policy.
For decades the US has waged wars of aggression along China’s periphery, engaged in political interference to destabilize China’s partners as well as attempt to destabilize China itself, as well as pursued likewise long-running policies to undermine China’s economic growth and its trade with the rest of the world.
More recently, the US has begun reorganizing its entire military for inevitable war with China.
Cutting Chinese Economic Lines of Communication
In addition to fighting Chinese forces in the Asia-Pacific region, the US also has long-running plans to cut off Chinese trade around the globe.
In 2006, the US Army War College’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) published “String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power Across the Asia Littoral,” identifying China’s essential “sea lines of communication” (SLOC) from the Middle East to the Strait of Malacca as particularly vulnerable and subject to US primacy over Asia.
The paper argues that US primacy, and in particular, its military presence across the region, could be used as leverage for “drawing China into the community of nations as a responsible stakeholder,” a euphemism for subordinating China to US primacy. This, in turn, is in line with a wider global policy seeking to “deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy.”
Under a section titled, “Leveraging U.S. Military Power,” the paper argues for an expanded US military presence across the entire region, including along China’s SLOC, augmenting its existing presence in East Asia (South Korea and Japan), but also extending it to Southeast Asia and South Asia, recruiting nations like Indonesia and Bangladesh to bolster US military power over the region and thus over China.
It notes Chinese efforts to secure its SLOC, including with a mutually beneficial port project in Pakistan’s Baluchistan region, part of the larger China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and the construction of a port in Sittwe, Myanmar, part of the larger China-Myanmar Economic Corridor (CMEC). Both projects seek to create alternative economic lines of communication for China, circumventing the long and vulnerable sea route through the Malacca Strait and the South China Sea.
Both projects have since come under attack by US-backed militancy with regular attacks still taking place against Chinese engineers across Pakistan and a large-scale armed conflict backed by the US currently unfolding in Myanmar which regularly sees opposition forces target Chinese-built infrastructure.
Thus, US policy has sought and has since achieved the region-wide disruption of China’s SLOC as well as efforts to circumvent choke points (CPEC/CMEC). Other potential corridors, including through the heart of Southeast Asia, have also been targeted by US interference. The Thai section of China’s high-speed railway to connect Southeast Asia to China has been significantly delayed by the US-backed political opposition openly trying to cancel the project.
In many ways, the US has already created a crisis for China, albeit through proxies.
Targeting Chinese Maritime Shipping
Under the guise of protecting “freedom of navigation,” the US Navy has positioned its warships and military aviation around the world’s most important maritime passages including the Strait of Hormuz in the Middle East and the South China Sea – the east approach to the Strait of Malacca – along with plans to establish a significant naval presence on the Strait’s west approach.
The US realizes that Chinese military power is extensive enough to significantly complicate, if not outright defeat, US military aggression along Chinese coasts. The US instead imagines targeting China far beyond the reach of its warplanes and missile forces.
The US Naval Institute published, “Prize Law Can Help the United States Win the War of 2026,” the third place entry in the “Future of Naval Warfare Essay Contest.” It warns that a “close naval blockage” is infeasible due to China’s formidable anti-access area-denial (A2AD) capabilities.
It instead argues for:
… a distant blockade—“intercept[ing] Chinese merchant shipping at key maritime chokepoints” outside China’s A2/AD reach—would be generally sustainable; flexible in tempo and location; pose manageable risks of escalation; and impede China’s resource-hungry, import-dependent war effort.
Part of this “distant blockade” would be a campaign of targeting, seizing, and repurposing Chinese shipping vessels to augment the US’ lagging shipbuilding capabilities and the dearth of maritime resources it has created.
Far from a random essay representing a purely speculative strategy, the US has already taken steps to implement its “distant blockade.” The entire US Marine Corps has been tailored solely to wage war against Chinese shipping across the Asia-Pacific and beyond.
The BBC in its 2023 article, “How US Marines are being reshaped for China threat,” would report:
The new plan sees the Marines as fighting dispersed operations across chains of islands. Units will be smaller, more spread out, but packing a much bigger punch through a variety of new weapons systems.
The “new weapons systems” are primarily anti-shipping missiles. Operating on islands and in littoral regions, the US Marines have been transformed into a force almost solely for disrupting Chinese shipping.
Together with plans to seize Chinese vessels, the US has positioned itself not as a global protector of “freedom of navigation,” but the greatest threat to it. Considering China’s status as the largest trade partner of nations around the globe, US plans to target Chinese shipping isn’t a threat to only China, but to global economic prosperity as a whole.
US War with China is War with the World
The danger of Washington’s desire for war with China and implementing its “distant blockade” to strangle China’s economy into ruins is a danger for the entire world. While preventing the global economic damage this strategy will cause after it is put into motion may be impossible, targeting the various components the US is using to encircle and contain China ahead of this conflict is possible.
US political interference and the political as well as armed opposition it has created and is using to cut China’s various economic lines of communication, can be exposed and uprooted by national and regional security initiatives.
Securing national and regional information space is the simplest and most effective way to cut the US off from the populations it seeks to influence and turn against targeted nations to achieve the political and security crises it uses to threaten trade between China and its partners. Passing and enforcing laws targeting, exposing, and uprooting US interference, including the funding of opposition parties, organizations, and media platforms by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is also essential.
Recent moves by the US to target foreign media organizations and their alleged cooperation with American citizens has created a convenient pretext for other nations to cite when targeting and uprooting NED-funded activity.
While taking these steps will have their own consequences, including retaliation from the US itself, the alternative – allowing the US to prepare and eventually carry out its “distant blockade” against China and its global trade partners – will be even more consequential.
Only time will tell if the emerging multipolar world is capable of seeing and solving this future crisis the US has spent decades preparing to create, or if the political leadership in Southeast and South Asia will fear short-term consequences at the expense of allowing and thus suffering catastrophic consequences in the intermediate future.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
US Seizes Venezuelan Jet Plane Confirming who is the Rogue Nation
By Rick Sterling | Dissident Voice | September 7, 2024
The Biden/Harris administration is renewing its attacks on Venezuela. On Monday, September 2, US officials seized a jet plane belonging to the Venezuelan government when it was in the Dominican Republic for servicing, then flew it to Florida.
Contrary to a false report in the NY Times, the plane was not “owned by Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro”. It is owned by the Venezuelan government and used for travel by various Venezuelan officials in addition to the president.
The NYT article claims, “The Biden administration is trying to put more pressure on Mr. Maduro because of his attempts to undermine the results of the recent presidential election.” This is another inversion of reality. The US government is trying to undermine the results determined by the Venezuelan National Election Council (CNE) and ratified by their Supreme Court.
Contrary to Western claims, the Supreme Court and Election Council are not synonymous with the government. They are approved by Venezuela’s elected national assembly. While one opposition member of the Election Council criticized the results, he did not attend the count or meetings. He does not ordinarily live in Venezuela and has returned to his home in the USA. Meanwhile, another opposition member of the Election Council, Aime Nogal, participated and approved the council’s decision.
Before the election, polls showed vastly different predictions. The US-funded polling company, Edison Research, showed the Gonzalez/ Machado opposition winning. Other polls showed the opposite. Polls are notoriously unreliable, especially when the poll is funded by an interested party. A better indication was the street demonstrations where the crowd in support of the coalition led by Maduro was near one million people. In contrast, the crowd for Gonzalez was a small fraction of that.
Increasingly, countries throughout the Global South are rejecting and criticizing Washington’s intervention in other nations’ internal affairs. On August 28, the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro Zelaya, terminated the long standing extradition treaty with the United States and denounced US meddling after the US Ambassador commented negatively on Honduran – Venezuelan discussions. Along with many other Latin American countries but to the dismay of the US, Honduras recognized the results of the Venezuelan election.
For over twenty years, the US has been trying to overturn the Bolivarian revolution. In 2002, the US government and elite media supported a coup attempt against President Hugo Chavez. To their chagrin, the attempt collapsed due to popular outrage. Since then, there have been repeated efforts with the US supporting street violence, assassination attempts, and invasions. Under Obama, Venezuela was absurdly declared to be a “threat to US national security”. This was the bogus rationale for the economic warfare which the US has waged ever since. Multiple reports confirm that tens of thousands of Venezuelans have died as a result of hunger and sickness due to US strangulation of the economy. Again, the truth is the opposite of what Washington claims: the US is a threat to Venezuela’s national security.
Unknown to most U.S. residents, in December 2020 the U.N. General Assembly declared US unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) are “contrary to international law, international humanitarian law, the Charter of the United Nations and the norms and principles governing peaceful relations among States.”
Illegal U.S. measures were used to justify the kidnapping and imprisonment of Venezuelan diplomat, Alex Saab. They have now been used to justify the theft of a jet plane needed by Venezuelan officials.
Previously, sanctions were used to justify the seizure of Venezuela’s CITGO gas stations and freezing gold reserves in London. It comes after the U.S. and allies pretended for several years that an almost unknown politician, Juan Guaido, was the president of Venezuela.
The reasons for Washington’s repeated efforts to overturn the Bolivarian revolution are clear: Venezuela has huge oil reserves and insists on its sovereignty. Under Chavez and Maduro, the Bolivarian revolution has sought to benefit the vast majority of Venezuela’s people instead of a small elite of Venezuelans and foreigners. Washington cannot tolerate the idea that those resources are used to benefit the Venezuelan people instead of billionaires like the Rockefeller clan, which made much of its wealth from Venezuela.
Under the Bolivarian revolution, Venezuela insists on having its own foreign policy. In 2006, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez denounced the U.S. invasion of Iraq and compared U.S. President Bush to the devil. In May this year, Venezuelan President Maduro denounced Israel’s genocide in Gaza and accused the West of being “accomplices.”
The cost of seizing Venezuela’s plane on foreign soil was probably greater than the $13 million value of the plane. So why did the Biden administration do this now? Perhaps it is to garner the votes of right-wing Cubans and Venezuelans in Florida. Perhaps it is to distract from their foreign policy failures in Gaza and Ukraine.
Whatever the reason, the theft of the Venezuelan jet plane is an example of U.S. foreign policy based on self-serving “rules” in violation of international law. It shows who is the rogue state.
President Xiomara Castro of Honduras is representative of the wave of disgust with US interference, crimes, and arrogance. In the past, Honduras was called a “banana republic” and known as “USS Honduras”. Now its president says, “The interference and interventionism of the United States … is intolerable. They attack, disregard and violate with impunity the principles and practices of international law, which promote respect for the sovereignty and self-determination of peoples, non-intervention and universal peace. Enough.”
Iran’s UN mission rejects Western allegations of supplying ballistic missiles to Russia
Press TV – September 7, 2024
Iran has rejected allegations of supplying ballistic missiles to Russia as baseless and misleading. The allegations are leveled against Tehran by the US and its Western allies.
The mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations said on Friday that the country regards as inhuman any military assistance to parties of the Ukraine conflict that would increase damage to lives and infrastructure in Ukraine.
Therefore, not only does it not do so, but also invites other countries to stop sending weapons to the parties involved in the conflict, the mission said.
“The position of the Islamic Republic of Iran regarding the conflict in Ukraine has not changed,” the mission said after American, British and French envoys leveled coordinated accusations at Tehran concerning the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict during a UN Security Council meeting on August 30
The mission also called on other countries to follow suit and end the supply of weapons to the warring sides.
Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations Amir Saeid Iravani previously also rejected the “baseless and misleading” accusations of the United States, England and France regarding Tehran’s role in Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine.
“The United States and its allies cannot deny the undeniable fact that sending advanced Western weapons, especially from the United States, has prolonged the war in Ukraine and harmed civilians and civilian infrastructure,” Iravani said.
He made the remarks in a letter sent to the UN chief and the Security Council’s president on Wednesday.
He said Iran “categorically rejects” any allegations suggesting its involvement in the sale, export, or transfer of arms in violation of its international commitments to Russia as “misleading, completely unfounded.”
Tehran has repeatedly dismissed Western allegations of its involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war.
Iran has called for a ceasefire, blaming the lingering conflict on Western arms supplies to Kiev.
Russia launched what it called a special military operation in Ukraine in February 2022 partly to prevent NATO’s eastward expansion after warning that the US-led military alliance was following an “aggressive line” against Moscow.
Russia has repeatedly warned against the flow of Western weapons to Ukraine, saying it prolongs the conflict.