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exporting cold war mentality and replicating NorthAtlanticTO's confrontation in the pacific.....Nato is reportedly planning to open a liaison office in Japan to coordinate with close partners across the Indo-Pacific region including Australia, South Korea and New Zealand. The plans are likely to attract criticism from the Chinese government, which has previously warned the western alliance against extending “its tentacles to the Asia-Pacific”. BY Daniel Hurst
Nikkei Asia reported on Wednesday that Nato and Japan plan to upgrade their cooperation on tackling cyber threats, disinformation and emerging and disruptive technologies. Nato’s planned new liaison office in Tokyo – to open next year – will be the first of its kind in Asia and will allow the military alliance to conduct periodic consultations with Japan and key partners such as Australia, according to Nikkei Asia. The publication said the plans were confirmed by Japanese and Natoofficials. A spokesperson for Nato, Oana Lungescu, declined to give details of the “ongoing deliberations” when contacted by the Guardian on Wednesday. But Lungescu said liaison arrangements were regularly reviewed “to ensure that they best serve the needs of both Nato and our partners”. “As the secretary general said in Tokyo in February, among Nato’s partners, none is closer or more capable than Japan”. She added: “We share the same values, interests and concerns, including supporting Ukraine and addressing the security challenges posed by authoritarian regimes, and our partnership is getting stronger.” In its “strategic concept”, unveiled last year, Nato argued that China posed “systemic challenges” to Euro-Atlantic security even though Russia remained “the most significant and direct threat to allies’ security”. Nato vowed to “strengthen dialogue and cooperation with new and existing partners in the Indo-Pacific to tackle cross-regional challenges and shared security interests”. Nato accused China of carrying out “malicious hybrid and cyber operations” and “remaining opaque about its strategy, intentions and military build-up”. China responded to the Nato assessment by urging the alliance “stop provoking confrontation by drawing ideological lines”. A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, said last year that Nato had “extended its tentacles to the Asia-Pacific and sought to export the cold war mentality and replicate bloc confrontation”. Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, attended the Nato summit in Madrid last year. The leaders of the Asia Pacific Partners (AP4) grouping – Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand – met on the sidelines. Albanese has accepted an invitation to travel to the next Nato summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July. “Australia shares with Nato members a commitment to supporting democracy, peace, and security and upholding the rule of law,” a spokesperson for Albanese said last month. The Danish ambassador to Japan, Peter Taksoe-Jensen, told Nikkei Asia concerns about China’s impact on trans-European security meant it was “important for Nato to keep up relations with our partners in this region”. He said the proposed new Nato liaison office “would be a very visible, real way to strengthen the relations between Japan and Nato”. Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, who will host the G7 summit in Hiroshima this month, has said he views the security environment within east Asia with a “strong sense of crisis”. In a reference to concerns about China’s intentions towards self-governed Taiwan, Kishida has repeatedly argued that “Ukraine today may be East Asia tomorrow”. After the G7 summit – which Albanese has been invited to attend – Kishida will travel to Sydney for the Quad leaders’ summit. Albanese will host Kishida, US president Joe Biden and Indian prime minister Narendra Modi for the talks at the Sydney Opera House on 24 May.
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sinking into a black hole......
BY Phil Butler
Slowly, surely, almost systematically, the United States and its allies edge into a geostrategic sinkhole from which there can be no return. The spotlight for most observers is on the Ukraine situation, but natural signs of the decline of the Western hegemony lie elsewhere.
In the most recent news, Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu, Shanghai Cooperation Organization met his counterpart Rajnath Singh Shanghai Cooperation Organization. According to Shoigu, the U.S. and the rest of the Western allies aim to strategically defeat Russia and become a threat to China to maintain a decades-old hegemony (empire). This was before the two defense ministers agreed to deepen longstanding defense ties. Since the West’s proxy war on Russia began, India has become a mainstay of Russian exports, not just weapons.
Russia’s arms industry supplies almost half India’s military’s arms and material needs. Furthermore, India has become the top importer of Russian seaborne oil since the U.S. economic and proxy military attack on Russia. And India is paying for this oil in currencies other than the dollar. This is where the American hegemony hits the most bottomless quicksand. Now, the BRICS are calling for a new international currency backed by gold and other commodities, not simply banking elite promises. China’s yuan has already replaced the dollar as the most traded currency in the Russian market. It’s important to note that the BRICS countries now surpass the United States and the entire G7 group of wealthiest countries in GDP.
On the home front, Western nations led by the United States have dived into an ultra-liberal quagmire, dragging tradition, culture, and the legacy of hundreds of millions into what will undoubtedly be a dystopian nightmare. So, when I read that the U.S. state of Florida had banned books like author John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men,” I was astonished. This and other bans of timeless classics reminded me of the German Student Union (Deutsche Studentenschaft, DSt) ceremonially burning books in Nazi Germany and Austria in the 1930s. Other authors banned from school libraries include Margaret Atwood, Aldous Huxley, and children’s book author Jewell Parker Rhodes.
Digging deeper, I discovered the situation in traditionally conservative Texas is even words. In the past year, more than 800 books have been banned, including titles by Theodore Geisel (Dr. Seuss), J.K. Rowling, Tom Clancy, Harper Lee, William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, and many more. It seems as if the elite liberal order running things in the so-called “West” is determined to reshape history and the young minds who will fashion the America of tomorrow—speaking of mind-bending.
U.S. President Joe Biden is on the record saying that laws restricting LGBTQ rights are “cruel” and “close to sinful.” His statements came as Florida legislators enacted laws that ban classroom discussions of sexual orientation and gender identity in primary schools. The same lawmakers trying to dial back the brainwashing are also considering bills to block medical care, including puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and surgery, for transgender youths. The conservatives in Florida and other states are also moving to grant courts emergency jurisdiction over children who might receive gender-affirming care. For those of us so-called “Baby Boomers,” the fact such laws are even needed is right out of the worst parts of the Holy Bible. Morality is but one huge problem, however.
Finally, over in Babylon (formerly NYC), the heads of major western oil concerns, corporations, and private funds are raking in profits as never before. At this exact moment, the U.S. middle class is set to collapse over fiscal skullduggery and bad geopolicy; ExxonMobile, Shell, Chevron, and other big oil companies won big on the Ukraine crisis. Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell, BP, and TotalEnergies made $134 billion in excess profits in U.S. debt; everyday people from Atlanta to Edinburgh, U.K., are set to fall into poverty. 2022. Meanwhile, Everyday people see spending on the military-industrial complex rather than on American infrastructure as the big “sin” and not keeping kids from maiming themselves irreversibly. Here in Greece, some of the country’s most successful businesses are being boarded up, even as top politicians are caught spying on their opposition, and worse. Biden talking about “sin” as if he even understands what the Sunday school teacher taught. It’s lunacy to watch. All we know is people like Tucker Carlson get the axe for calling out the pharmaceutical companies. Truth is a sin these days.
The West’s Russophobic policies aimed at destroying the world’s biggest country are the catalyst for what is sure to become a far more devastating cataclysm. Few, if any, analysts have speculated what Russia would look like carved up like Yugoslavia. If you can imagine what happened after Rome fell, it shouldn’t be hard to envision dozens of power-hungry local oligarchs shooting up neighbors like some 21st-century St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. Has anyone thought of what the fallout from two dozen nuclear-armed sub-states might be? What would take the place of modern Russia? I leave that to your imagination. The problem in focus is the United States of America and its allies flying at warp speed into a black hole nobody’s explored. And we are all along for the ride.
Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
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https://journal-neo.org/2023/05/08/a-peek-into-the-gaping-black-hole-of-u-s-policy-under-biden/
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