Note before starting: Hats off to CGTN for its excellent video, “The Untold Story of Meng Wanzhou.” I referred to it extensively to expand my research. The prosecution of telecommunications giant Huawei’s CFO Meng Wanzhou on charges of violating U.S. sanctions policies with Iran has been very politicized from the...
Unknown for decades, declassified documents show that FDR’s mail was deliberately diverted and falsified to prevent a historic meeting with Mao Zedong that might have shortened the war, changed history, and reshaped the modern world. Historians cite the 1972 meeting between Mao Zedong and Richard Nixon as the original spark...
On July 4, 2020, the U.S. Navy dispatched an unprecedented two aircraft carriers and four other warships to the South China Sea for naval maneuvers in waters claimed by China. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo subsequently broke with the official U.S. policy of neutrality in territorial conflicts in the...
A recent Pentagon conference on psychological warfare noted that the forces of indoctrination “cannot wait until a crisis begins.” A high-ranking chief at the Department of Defense suggested a model for propaganda, in no way new: “Look at marketing…What makes people drink Coke, what makes people drink Pepsi?” In...
China’s future looks increasingly bleak, but it has great counter-cyclical expansion potential via domestic and international rebalancing In a daring thought experiment, imagine just for a moment that you are the powerful president of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). You are sitting next to a cozy fireplace in a...
Of course, police brutality against peaceful protesters in China and elsewhere is reprehensible and condemnable. When it happens in China, it is particularly heinous—at least from the point of view of Western mainstream media and politicians who are particularly concerned about human rights in China. Only exceptionally does a Western...
Following up on last week's show where we discussed the quickly-changing dynamics of U.S.-European relationships under Donald Trump, we look at the “peace deal” Trump has penned with Ukraine that reportedly includes significant mineral rights for the U.S...
As a progressive socialist country whose economic rise is helping to put an end to 500 years of Western imperialism, or as a capitalist-imperial rival to the U.S.? The Biden administration has disappointed many of its supporters by adopting policies and rhetoric with regards to the People’s Republic of China...
Allegations and accusations that China is trapping Africa into unsustainable debt agreements have dominated the conversation around Africa-China relations in Western media, but what does the data tell us? The reality is that China is canceling 23 loans to African countries amid this 'Debt Trap' debate. We look at the international implications of this claim, what debt trap diplomacy is, and who owns most of Africa's external debts. Featuring Sri Lanka, the African Development Bank, and the “secret” lenders they don’t tell us about, with Mikaela Nhondo Erskog researcher at TriContinental Institute for Social Research and one of the hosts of the new podcast The Crane, an African China podcast by the Dongsheng Collective. Plus: We discuss Mikhail Gorbachev’s legacy, what to make of Biden’s student loan debt moves, Lindsey Graham’s threats of “riots in the streets” if Trump is prosecuted, and more...
We begin today’s show with a remembrance of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who passed on June 16 at the age of 92...Then, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his recent trip to China with a 35-minute meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on June 19th. Blinken had also met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi over the weekend. ...