Two years ago when Trump was defeated by Biden in the election, many people thought the worst was over. Many naively predicted Biden would take a peaceful and progressive approach in relations with other countries, rebuild the U.S. economy and, under his leadership, the “Black Lives Matter” movement would transform the country into a better society, and the COVID pandemic would be over by the summer of 2021. Sadly this wishful thinking was all wrong!
In my opinion, Biden has been worse than Trump! Now we’re facing super inflation and an upcoming economic crash; more people have died from COVID in 2021 during the Biden administration then in 2020 during Trump, with one million people having now died from COVID in the U.S. And Biden is now spreading the false “endemic” claim: that COVID-19 has become an endemic disease and people will just have to learn to live with it (just like Trump’s famous COVID lie on March 2020, saying it will be “over” by Easter).
With almost all pandemic restrictions lifted, and the more dangerous Omicron BA.2 sub-variant spreading like wild fire again across the U.S., we’ll face another total disaster from COVID later this year.
Furthermore, under the Biden administration the conditions for immigrants are getting worse – there is more detention and deportation of immigrants at the southern border and the administration’s anti-China rhetoric has been leading to more anti-Chinese American and anti-Asian American violence. Under Biden even the conditions of the LGBTQ+ rights are getting worse! Last year there was more anti-LGBTQ+ legislation proposed (mostly by Republicans) and more homophobic violence than in any other recent year.
Many thought that the Trump regime’s extreme-reactionary threats against China, Russia and Iran were bad enough but Biden is taking this a step further, using neocon hawks to launch even worse full-scale economic and political Sinophobic assaults against China. They are using NATO and Ukraine proxies to escalate threats against Russia that have led to the Russian-Ukrainian war, with full scale racist Russophobia. Instead of pushing peaceful negotiation, the Biden regime is fanning the fires of the conflict by sending more military “aid” to Ukraine to prolong the war!
In the end the biggest winners will be the U.S. military industrial complex and the super wealthy rich; the losers will be the poor people of color, Europe (who follows the U.S. lead to fight against Russia) and the Global South.
By March 24th, COVID deaths in the United States had exceeded one million.
In early March the U.S. approved billions more to support the war in Ukraine, but slashed the $15.6 billion in funding for COVID prevention and treatment, a national tragedy and disgrace!
The reason why I needed to return to China last fall was to continue our China-U.S. activist solidarity work. From China we can clearly see what’s wrong in the U.S. – and how we can learn from China and the Global South. By returning to China this year, I will be meeting with broad-based activist communities, building solidarity, discussing and organizing international actions about what we should do and how to stop the conflict in Ukraine and how to end U.S. Sinophobic and racist policies.
China vs the U.S. – what I saw
The purpose of my latest trip is to continue my fact finding mission to understand life in post-pandemic socialist China:
- To witness everyday life to see what the United States can learn from China
- To promote our newly released Chinese edition of “Capitalism on a Ventilator”
- To build China-U.S. bi-national activist solidarity – URL: www.ChinaSolidarity.org
- To visit Xinjiang, China, to debunk the Western “Uighur genocide” myth, and to show the real Xinjiang
- Based on our Xinjiang visit, to produce a documentary: Voice of Xinjiang – VoiceXJ
The Chinese fight against COVID has clearly shown how people can unite and work together. It’s not only the continued cultural spirit of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization but also the effective implementation of the socialist system that enable the people’s movement to support each other to overcome selfishness, follow the government anti-pandemic guidelines, overcome individualism by sacrificing for everyone’s good, and trust the science not Western religious–cult rhetoric from the anti-mask/anti-vaxx movement.
It’s important to point out that unlike U.S. politics, which are controlled by small circles of old power broker dynasties making the society more and more conservative and selfish, in China youth (under age of 30) take the leading role in society, playing positive roles to help others and to build a better country; the society in general trusts their positive responsible energy and have high hopes and confidence in a better future for China.
This is what I saw across China, a positive, optimistic energy to move forward, and it’s not a utopian fantasy, it’s a reality.
The Global Times (GT), one of the China’s biggest newspapers, conducted a poll on March 1st, 2022, about China-U.S. relations. It polled 4,774 people from across China, 52 percent of who were aged 18-30. Over 92 percent of the participants believed that the root problem is that “the U.S. would never accept a great power emerging in the Eurasian continent, and China's development and national rejuvenation is a structural contradiction to the U.S. desire to maintain its own hegemony,” according to the GT.
Furthermore, 87 percent believed “intractable internal problems in the U.S. mean that the two parties in America need to have an external threat. By hyping negative sentiment against the Chinese, they can ease internal pressures and have a target to blame.”
Meanwhile, 82 percent consider that “fixing China-U.S. ties is good for China, but if the U.S. refuses to correct its mistakes due to its hegemonic and Cold War thinking, it’s fine to leave China-U.S. ties unrepaired” and “China should not go against its principles and fundamental beliefs to fix these ties."
Furthermore according to an earlier April 19, 2021, Global Times’ poll, approximately 90 percent of young Chinese polled believed that China should not “look up to the West” anymore; in the past five years more people in China “look down on the West” due to China’s achievements in development and the West’s disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This is in comparison with the United States where more social chaos, selfishness and extreme racism have emerged over the past five years throughout the pandemic and the Trump and Biden administrations: young people are willing to sacrifice the lives of the older people through accepting COVID-19 as “endemic,” just so they can get back to their normal lives of partying and drinking. Extreme racism: Sinophobia, Russophobia, Islamophobia and homophobia have rapidly increased during the past several years under Trump and Biden. The U.S. economy is certainly headed in the wrong direction, with pandemic grabs for huge profits by the hyper-rich and serious inflation affecting the poor.
The anxiety and anger against China is shown by their making up bogus accusations to justify their violent war porn revenge against China: the “lab-leak” theory, cyber espionage, Chinese spies in the U.S., Xinjiang Uighur “genocide” by which they try to paint life as a totaling living hell in China, with elite Chinese psychopaths bent on destroying the world. Western white people must quickly organize crusades to liberate China from communism.
The West’s anxiety is clearly reflected in the circle of Chinese right-wingers: Their hopes for a color revolution in China have never been realized, and their utopia, the U.S. – has suffered a fall from grace. Their imaginary desperation has made them see everything in China in a negative light.
For the past several years, the influence of the right-wing in China has been slowly declining, but many of them are middle or upper-class businesspeople with Western financial or social connections; they run many for-profit or NGO projects in China advancing culture, literature, environmental concerns, business training, corporate social responsibilities, pro-LGBTQ groups, independent movie production and showing, yoga or handicraft classes.
In Shanghai, I am meeting many such highly nervous Chinese right-wingers. Some have set up “independent” bookstores or cultural stores (galleries, coffeehouses), often organizing “salons” (a self-proclaimed social elite intellectual Meetup event) in their spaces.
Usually these are disguised as a cultural event, a book club meeting, a Western philosophy study class, an independent film showing or an exotic coffee tasting event attracting young affluent Chinese who pay to join. Discussions usually will lead to highlighting the superiority of Western society and the moral decline of today’s socialist Chinese society, and to suggesting how Chinese right-wing intellectuals can be the leading force using their knowledge to regain the moral high ground in China over socialism.
At one such event, organized at a right-wing private library not very far from where I live in Shanghai, the topic of the discussion was so comical that I can’t believe anyone would take this title seriously in 2022:
“Theme of the event: The future is not nice: from post-criticism to post-contemporary art
Highlights of the event: The criticality of social ties today is comparable to the decline of public morale, and the discourse and sociality cannot respond to more stable social norms. In this sense, contemporary art has reversed the hidden domination of the liberal paradigm and has made a great story.
However, does it end here when we arrive at ‘contemporary art’? This lecture will lead you to sort out the post-contemporary art theories that have emerged in the past ten years, which takes activism art and realist materialism art as the main paths.”
(Yes! that’s the EXACT promotional text for the event translated from Chinese into English.)
The organizers are a group of upper middle-class, anti-Communist, pro-U.S./Western Chinese intellectuals, including evangelical Christians. They’re a self-identified elite class that loves to look down on “backward” Chinese, and their ultimate goal is to move to the West to enjoy their freedom of life (but they can’t do it because they lack the survival skills necessary to live in the West, which makes them feel more anxious and more like failures).
That’s typical of a color revolution, an example of the war for Western mind control taking place around the world. The recent U.S. Solidarity Center’s 2022 action plan for the Asia Pacific region includes campaigns targeting China, such as supporting the labor movement in Hong Kong, China, by building a “rapid response” team.
One of the largest funders of the Solidarity Center is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which uses the “labor movement” as a cover to create worker uprisings to subvert other countries and to serve as part of the U.S. anti-communist Cold War color revolution campaign.
It always makes me wonder why I expend so much effort, take such political risks and financially bankrupt myself to work on China-U.S. international solidarity work.
It is because as people of color in the U.S., we all have witnessed racist violence against us. I personally have received credible threats against me because of my immigrant work, my anti-war work and my fight against Sinophobic hawks in the U.S. I know they’re armed to the teeth and want to harm the world with their evil, selfish goals. We all need to stand up to fight against their covert plan.
Many people thought I was too alarmist, but U.S./NATO years of pushing Russia in regards to a proxy Ukraine has finally led to the Russian-Ukrainian war of 2022. I don’t want to wait until the U.S. begins a proxy war in China. According to the latest report from the Chinese think tank South China Sea Strategic Situation Probing Initiative (SCSPI), on March 25th, 2022, the U.S. military had conducted over a hundred military activities across the South China Sea in 2021 under President Biden. That is much higher than the 85 activities in 2019 when Trump was in office. Even during the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the U.S. continues to send its navy to the region against China.
The Surge of COVID in the U.S.
While Biden further escalated the cynical cold war drumbeat against China and Russia, he has been escalating the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the economic crisis and inflation had begun pushing the U.S. to the edge of total disaster.
The racist anti-China rhetoric begun by Trump had continuously whipped up a massive Sinophobia campaign and anti-Asian American violence across the country. Biden continued Trump’s racist anti-immigrant policies: immigrants were blocked at the borders; hundreds of thousands were threatened with separation while thousands of migrant children were kidnapped from their parents by ICE agents. Yes, these policies continue to this day.
On the other hand, Biden’s anti-COVID policy has been a total failure! As of March 26th, 2022, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) there have been 79,766,087 confirmed cases and 974,277 deaths in the U.S. Continuing at this rate of speed, by early April there’ll be 80 million cases and one million deaths (some other analysis estimated that U.S. had already reached one million COVID death in March). As G. Dunkel from Workers World pointed out, “if the U.S. had the same death rate as China – in other words, if it had the same social system and approach to COVID-19 as China – fewer than 2,000 people would have died in the U.S. in the course of the pandemic.”
To make the situation even worse, a new Omicron subvariant call “BA.2” is spreading rapidly across the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times. By late February BA.2 cases have more than tripled since last fall when first identified by scientists; with a rate of nearly 1,200 cases a week for every 100,000 residents, according to Johns Hopkins University.
More recent national estimates have suggested BA.2 will quickly become the dominant subvariant in the U.S.; it comprised an estimated 35% of analyzed samples between March 13 and March 19, according to the CDC.
According to many medical experts, COVID won’t be over for a few years, and there’s a 20% chance that a more dangerous variant will appear in the near future, a variant that will be more toxic and deadly!
However with one million deaths, the U.S. chooses to make a policy decision to classify COVID-19 as “endemic” and to smear China’s COVID-19 policy.
People are no longer taking the pandemic very seriously – from the U.K. “Freedom Day” lifting all pandemic restrictions in February to dropping of the federal and local government restrictions across the U.S. (by both Democratic and Republican local and state governments) that had been in effect since last winter. I saw that many people in my Los Angeles community have completely dropped masks in very packed places (compared to no indoor public events without everyone fully masked last year). The quick COVID resurgence in the U.K., Europe and the U.S. is clearly visible.
The irresponsible and failed U.S./West COVID policy is also affecting China. After almost zero COVID for a while, beginning last winter Delta and Omicron variants have entered China brought by foreign travelers or from imported commercial goods/frozen items containing the virus. (Completely covered up by the Western media is that COVID strains have traveled on the surfaces of frozen packages around the world – Chinese customs inspectors have frequently detected the virus on imported frozen foods including fruits.)
As of March 29th, 2022, China had had 103,965 cases for the month of March, mostly asymptomatic. Most cases are in the northeastern city of Changchun and the major eastern coastal city of Shanghai. This is the most serious outbreak since the Wuhan outbreak in January 2020.
Instead of giving up fighting the pandemic like the U.S. and the West, China has firmly upheld the dynamic Zero-COVID-19 strategy facing the current complex and severe situation, which the country’s top health official firmly believes is still an achievable goal. A national mobilization involving millions of people is underway to stop the spread of COVID. Shanghai with 16 million people has been under total or semi-total lockdown since early March to contain the spread of the virus. While it’s highly inconvenient and causing much public anger, the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people support the government measures.
The end result is remarkable. So far only two people have died in all of China; compare that with the U.S. with only one-fourth the Chinese population where during the same period of between March 1st to 31st, 1.07 million people infected and 29,760 died, according to Worldometer count.
China’s success is not an accident. The Chinese are collectively making an effort to build a better future by respecting the science in the fight against COVID. As of March 29th, 2022, over 1.24 billion people have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in China, accounting for 88 percent of the total population. Among vaccinated residents, over 212 million people above 60 years old have completed their full vaccination.
Compare this with U.S. where only 65.5% are fully vaccinated due to the anti-vaxx movement.
The latest December-January COVID upsurge in the U.S. had affected far more people than any previous wave. I know more people who have been infected and passed away than at any other time in the past two years. Because the hospitals are swamped by massive numbers of COVID patients, many people who suffered from non-COVID related illnesses were not able to see their doctors.
Remembering Chuck
I always wanted to show my good friend Chuck, who helped with the fiscal sponsorship of our organization and activism work, that we finally won our struggle.
But I was terribly saddened to hear Chuck Kaufman passed away in the middle of my China-U.S. solidarity working trip last December. My last email correspondence with him was December 2, 2021, regarding an important issue about our China solidarity work.
His work fighting for social justice, supporting our work and saving my life, had meant so much to me.
I first heard his name from the Nicaragua solidarity movement back in the early 1990s. Since then we met many times at different events and protests, but I didn’t formally work with him until after September 11.
Chuck invited our organization, the National Immigrant Solidarity Network (NISN), to become a “fiscal sponsor” (help us mange our non-profit account, it’s a very skillful job) at his Alliance for Global Justice (AFGJ), and we closely cooperated for the past 20 years. He helped us manage several dozen protests, political events and international delegations, and also protected my safety.
On July 2017, Chuck joined our historical delegation to China, visiting Beijing and Shanghai and meeting with many Chinese activists. He helped us create the China-U.S. Solidarity Network. The network sponsored five delegations between China and the U.S. until 2020 as well as the book project “Capitalism on a Ventilator” in 2020, and the documentary “Voice of Xinjiang (Voice XJ)” in 2021.
We had many great memories together.
In late December we were busy producing the documentary which previewed in January. Our book’s Chinese edition was officially released in China. We need to work on promotion and book events but we have been distracted by many other issues.
By mid-February, I was preparing to return to U.S., then the Russian-Ukrainian war was started and we just worked non-stop to fight against U.S./NATO proxy involvement in the conflict.
But I have decided I need to finish the projects soon out of respect to Chuck who had been helping us.
We’ll miss him forever, and we’ll continue to carry on in his spirit to build international, multi-ethnic and community solidarity, to fight for social and economic justice for our community, and to continue our anti-imperialist work to fight against the U.S. empire-building around the world! The publication of the Chinese edition of “Capitalism on a Ventilator” is a good way to memorialize him.
“Capitalism on a Ventilator” Chinese edition
After two years of hard work, a great 2022 Chinese New Year gift for us – the Chinese edition of “Capitalism on a Ventilator” is finally on sale in China! Last March when the news that our book was banned by Amazon was reported by Chinese media, Amazon quickly backed-off and put our book online again. This was a total victory for us! And Chinese book publishers began approaching us about printing it in China.
Within a week after its release, our book was being carried by over a hundred bookstores and online booksellers in China. The first 3,000 copies have been shipped or sold and we need to quickly reprint the second 3,000 copies. Many predict our book could be a “bestseller” in China – an honor for us and for an American publication largely ignored in the U.S.
Within just a week, our book was listed as one of the top ten “World's politics” titles at China’s JD.com online bookstore.
The media has also picked-up our book release. Beijing Daily, one of the major newspapers in China, has published a detailed special using our articles to analyze the latest U.S. disastrous failure on COVID response.
We were invited to speak at several events, and were featured in Beijing Daily.
The book project was started in January 2020, when several cases of unexplained pneumonia were found in Wuhan, a city in central China. It was vaguely called “coronavirus,” no one knew what it was, even though the name COVID-19 is now widely known. In the United States, thousands of miles away from China, before people felt that the virus had landed on American soil, American right-wing elites, the media, and politicians began to mock China as much as possible, calling the virus “China’s Chernobyl” saying that it would only affect “bat-eating” Chinese. U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, known for his ultra-anti-China stand, joined the right-wing media and the “liberal” media Washington Post to spread the conspiracy theory of “Wuhan military laboratory made virus.”
I was in China at that time to organize the December 2019 to January 2020 Western activist’s delegation to visit China’s Xinjiang region. We started from Beijing and followed the Silk Road to Urumqi, the capital of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region in China.
Our main purpose was to conduct an on-site investigation of the U.S.-Western anti-China propaganda about Xinjiang. We met many people and chatted with Muslims and Uighurs about the real situation in Xinjiang.
After the New Year in 2020, on the tourist bus to Dunhuang, China, we learned that the U.S.
had assassinated the Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, and we also learned that a mysterious virus had suddenly appeared in Wuhan, China. The situation at the time was not particularly serious but the situation was constantly changing. On January 7th, 2020, when our trip ended and we returned to Beijing, the Wuhan situation seemed to be becoming more and more serious with more and more local news reports about the virus and public health warnings.
I was in China until Jan 20, 2020, and then flew back to the U.S. Three days later, the Chinese government ordered the Wuhan lockdown. Thousands of medical workers were sent to the city. This became the largest medical emergency undertaking in human history.
It seems that as time went by people knew more and more about COVID yet it remained uncontrolled. But then China miraculously controlled the virus completely within three months. On April 8th, 2020, Wuhan City officially ended the lockdown, which marked the official end of China’s COVID outbreak crisis. However, no one could predict that this pandemic would quickly spread to Europe, or that the United States would become the most severely COVID-affected area where the world’s cases and deaths would be concentrated.
China’s fight against COVID has succeeded but the United States fight has failed. This demonstrates the success of China’s socialist system and the failure and malfunction of the American capitalist system. It also reflects the arrogance of the left and the right of the United States formed by the endless anti-communist cold war against China. This meant that the United States could not set aside the differences between China and the United States in order to learn from China’s successful experience.
This arrogance has pushed the United States into the abyss of the COVID disaster – hundreds of thousands of people dead from the COVID, tens of millions of people infected, and trillions of economic losses – and such casualties have no end in sight.
But the United States, still choosing to circulate bogus “China virus” lies against China, manufactured the so-called “Wuhan virus lab-leak” conspiracy theory.
In Xinjiang, the United States conspired to spread rumors against China’s policy on Xinjiang as “genocide” in order to carry out a new Cold War against China.
It’s what happened in 2003, when the U.S. government and the corporate media spread baseless rumors against Iraq saying that it had a large number of weapons of mass destruction – biological, chemical, and even nuclear weapons – prohibited by the United Nations.
The U.S. successfully spread their so-called “washing powder” scam, forcing the U.N. Security Council to accept (without ever authorizing) the invasion of Iraq by NATO, the United States and other countries. It led to the destruction of one of the most wealthy and secular countries in the Middle East, to a large-scale humanitarian crisis and to the emergence of more terrorist organizations (including ISIS terrorist organizations that support Xinjiang independence).
The media and reporters such as the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal who created the Iraqi deceptions 20 years ago are also the same media and journalists who are behind the spread of the “Wuhan virus” hoax and the so-called “genocide” deceptions in Xinjiang today.
It was the main motivation behind our decision to publish this book quickly.
Our original plan was to publish a myth-buster book about Xinxiang, but when the COVID pandemic started in January 2020 and the Western “Wuhan virus” myth against China was circulated, we quickly decided to put our Xinjiang topic on hold and publish a myth-busting book about COVID in China, and how China beat the pandemic when the U.S./West quickly failed.
We finished and published the book “Capitalism on a Ventilator” in September 2020. We listed it on Amazon.com, but the book was quickly censored by the online store and they took it down within two weeks! We appealed multiple times to Amazon but without success – until March 2021 when major Chinese media The Global Times and China Daily published our story. Then Amazon quickly backed down within 24 hours, and re-allowed our book to sell on their site again.
With this publicity in China we were able to attract a Chinese publisher to translate and publish our book.
Finally, after eight months of work, the Chinese edition was released by Contemporary China Publishing House in January 2022.
With the success of our book in China, we’re pleased to see more community-activist collaborations between China and U.S.
The book project helped us attract many like-minded people to work together for China-U.S. solidarity, included Sara Flounders from International Action Center. With their help we were able to begin our next project in 2021 – the fact finding mission to Xinjiang, and the production of the documentary Voice of Xinjiang (Voice XJ).
Voice XJ documentary filming and my fact-finding trip to Xinjiang Region
Besides promoting our book project in China, we’re also working to produce a documentary to counter U.S./Western anti-China/Xinjiang propaganda designed to derail the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics that began on February 5th. There were “First Cut” premiers of “Voice of Xinjiang” VoiceXJ on January 24th online in the U.S. and on the 27th in Shanghai, China. There were a few more showings in February across the China and U.S. with positive reviews.
Website: http://www.VoiceXJ.net
This is the community-based progressive activist production from China and the United States, including people from different ethnic groups from both countries who have jointly voiced their opposition to U.S. interference in Xinjiang, China’s internal affairs, lies and smears.
The so-called U.S. Democracy Summit in December 2021 used Xinjiang as an issue to call for a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games – but it failed. The U.S. is still spreading the myth of “forced labor” as a basis for boycotting Xinjiang cotton and any other products made in Xinjiang.
It is easy to fool Western people with these claims because very few people have visited the region to see for themselves.
Therefore, we made our film through the eyes of two activists from the U.S. and China, I on my recent trip to China’s Xinjiang, and Sara Flounders from NYC, using Internet video chat to communicate and exchange what we saw and heard from the United States and China’s Xinjiang, and through interviews with ordinary people in China and the United States comparing issues of concern between the two countries.
In this way we discussed ethnic issues, racism, imperialism, social and economic justice, etc. Based on the interviews and the visit to Xinjiang, China, and including investigative facts and historical analysis, we concluded that there’s no evidence to support the so-called Xinjiang “genocide” claim of the U.S. and we see that life in Xinjiang is better than for many oppressed people of color in the U.S. and U.S.-occupied Afghanistan nearby. These are the topics that we discussed:
- U.S.-organized lies on Xinjiang
- Facts on Xinjiang
- U.S. racism, imperialism, anti-immigrant policies, political prisoners
- U.S. media bias
- U.S. invasion, sanctions and destruction of Afghanistan vs Xinjiang
- U.S. invasion, sanctions and covert actions on Syria, Iraq as well as Nicaragua and Venezuela.
- China vs U.S. on COVID responses to compare who really cares for their people (especially with regards to ethnic minorities). This led to a comparison between China’s policies in Xinjiang vs U.S. treatment of people of color communities.
To link all these issues we’ll use my fact finding trip to Xinjiang, local interviews, and Sara’s interviews in the U.S., and investigations with comparison (Xinjiang vs U.S.).
This is a self-organized and funded voluntary project. Everyone has their own paid jobs. Except for some stipends offered for those who are helping with filming and editing – most of them only can work in their spare time. We “pass the hat” to raise funds to pay for production. And of course the COVID pandemic makes everything even more complicated.
Sara Flounders, the co-producer of the documentary, tested positive for COVID in late December 2021. She had to take time off to rest for a month so we needed to slow down production.
At our preview film showings in January, we emphasized in our statement: the purpose of this documentary is to stop the war before it starts. Some in the audience said we’re too “alarmist” to worry that the U.S. will use the Xinjiang issue to start a war with China.
I wish they were correct, but they’re dead wrong. For eight years after the Ukrainian military, following their 2014 color revolution (the coup) supported by NATO and the U.S., assaulted their eastern Russian-speaking Donbas region killing at least 12,000 people it lead to February, 2022 the full scale Russian-Ukrainian military conflict finally broke out. The West (and many peace activists) acted as if nothing had happened in the region over the previous eight years. The West also demanded China take responsibility in this, because China had refused to condemn and sanction Russia.
The U.S./NATO-Made Russia-Ukraine Conflict
While we’ve been bombarded with U.S. anti-Russia rhetoric, headlines such as from New York Times: “‘I Make No Apologies,’ Biden Says of Condemning Putin” (3/29/2022) or “Blinken to Exhort Middle Eastern Allies to Join West’s Rebuke of Russia” (3/28/2022).These make it sound like the U.S. is on the side of the just cause and the world has to listen to them completely.
With the U.S. shutting down the so-called “pro-Russian propaganda” from the U.S. media and censoring the Internet (such as Russia Today TV station), many people are finding that it is harder to find news from Russian sources. It’s also important for me that I travel to China and read sources from Russia, as well as analysis from China that I am not able to get here in the U.S.
The Chinese video news blog sites, such as “Mars Phalanx” or “The Observer Network” have over tens of millions subscribers, while considered medium-sized online influencer in China, their analysis can be considered as representing a large sector of Chinese public opinion.
The Russian-Ukrainian war has been going on for more than a month, triggering a series of changes in the global landscape. Ukraine is already a loser from the crisis and the United States has already grabbed a lot of political and economic benefits from the crisis.
However, Europe wasn’t able to pick up anything; by following behind the U.S. sanctions and military threats against Russia, Europe’s economy has almost collapsed from the latest crisis, and now Europe wants quickly to call it quits.
On March 14th, 2022, European Council (EU) President Charles Michel said in an interview with several media that “the greatest effort should be made not to escalate the conflict,” and he also pointed out that Russia is a nuclear power. If this conflict evolves into a conflict between Russia and NATO, then Europe will face World War III. In fact, Michel’s words have made it clear that this war is only a matter between Russia and Ukraine, and that NATO and Europe must not be involved in it so directly that they send troops, just covert military supports.
Europe has been following the United States demand for continually supplying Ukraine with weapons. Recently, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a warning that convoys transporting foreign weapons would become a legitimate target of the Russian military. In a nutshell: Whoever “hands a knife” to Ukraine will be hit. This also means that now, it’s not only sending fighter jets, but also providing general weapons and ammunition from Europe, that will fan the flames and may cause war to spread across Europe.
Michel’s remarks are not only for the United States, but also for NATO and Ukrainian President Zelensky. In particular, Zelensky should be clear-headed about Europe’s warning: they may withdraw support for Ukraine at any time and Ukraine must be prepared for it. One such example: that the much-hyped U.S./NATO will send fighter jets to Ukraine or establish a No-Fly Zone, but that has never happened.
The so-called “joining NATO and the EU” is nothing but a trick to fool the Ukrainians into fighting with Russia. Even the matter of begging for “warplanes support” has been pushed back and forth between the United States and Europe.
To a larger extent, the sanctions against Russia cannot be claimed as an action to support Ukraine, but it is a kind of Western effort to fuel the fire into a crisis, which will stimulate Russia to increase its offensive to resolve the battle as soon as possible.
The U.S. and Europe have betrayed Ukraine. Previously, they were lying to dupe Ukraine, but now they are straight up telling them the cruel truth.
Europe may betray Ukraine for two main reasons. One of them, Michel has already said – that he’s afraid of facing “World War III” and Russia’s “Big Ivan,” the nickname of the Russian nuclear bomb, the most powerful in the world.
Another reason is that European countries are already feeling it: Europe can’t withstand any more crises. The first is energy, such as natural gas – Europe is too dependent on Russia. Germany, Italy and other countries are about 50% dependent on Russia for fuel; Bulgaria, Slovakia, etc. are more than 70% dependent. The scary thing is that gas prices in Europe are already skyrocketing.
Recently, the price of natural gas in Europe has soared to more than US$3,500 per thousand cubic meters, an increase of more than 2.7 times since the beginning of the year and more than 10 times what it was at the same time last year, according to Chinese media.
These price increases are followed by increases in oil prices, electricity, and the consumer price index. Energy is directly related to people’s livelihood in Europe. On the other hand, the U.S. has enough of its own natural resources that it is not heavily dependent on Russia’s oil and gas, so the impact of the gas/oil embargo against Russia is minimal compared with Europe in the short run (although the price of gas in the U.S. has already skyrocketed, and U.S. has quietly buying large amount of Russian oil after their own embargo).
Another equally significant worry is grain production, with Ukraine and Russia on both sides of the war being the main suppliers of grain to Europe and to the Global South. As the war continues, the price of wheat in Europe alone has risen by about 40%. If the fight goes on, what will Europeans use to make bread or pasta? It could even lead to famine across the world.
According to Piero Messina on South Front, famine will come because of the current conflict; about 100 million tons of wheat will be missing from the world food market. 26 are those produced by Ukraine, the remainder from Russia, plus the sanctions and the conflict have blocked export of Russian-produced fertilizer (important for many developing countries). This risk could lead to thousands of deaths in Africa and the Middle East from hunger, the upcoming collateral damage of the conflict. “The specter of famine emerges from the stop to grain production in Ukraine,” Piero Messina worries.
The refugee issue could become a ticking time bomb for European countries. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in March, there were already an estimated five million Ukrainian refugees who had poured into Europe, a figure expected to reach ten million. Don't expect that the United States will accept a large number of refugees.
Ridiculous and nervous laughter but no answer from U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris in Poland not long ago when she was asked by a reporter if the U.S. would accept a large number of Ukrainian refugees – that was enough to point out the hypocrisy. The U.S. just wants Europe to take care of all the Ukrainian refugees even though the mess was created by the U.S.
The latest Ukrainian refugee crisis has also shown the hypocrisy of Europe when for the last several years Europe has blocked millions of refugees from Syria, Libya and other countries who escaped from the U.S./Europe-made wars, resulting in thousands of deaths at sea or along borders.
Now the situation is quite clear: If Europe doesn’t want to continue to be involved in the conflict, it must solve their three major crises as soon as possible – energy, food and refugees. It has to stop taking the lead in the war as soon as possible. Simply said, Europe can no longer provide Ukraine with military assistance to continue its conflict. It’s clear that Europe and the U.S. are afraid of getting directly involved in the war with Russia.
This type of “America first” chauvinism starts from far-right fascist pro-war hawks and goes to the left “peace” activists.
The West wants to eliminate Russia and will do everything possible to hinder the current Russia-Ukraine peace talks and use different lies and military means to continue the war indefinitely. This time they’re targeting Russia, maybe next time it will be China.
The U.S. elites, the liberal-democrats and the right wing will oppose Russia in different ways (false peace activists or pro-war hawks). Unfortunately that includes the majority of U.S. society. There are still a large number of progressive activists but working class opinion about the war has been silenced and discriminated against.
Since the war began, everyone has been taking sides for a variety of reasons – but they unite in their stand opposing the capitalist elites against the U.S. and NATO’s military provocation against Russia as well as the resulting military conflict today. However, many of these organizations have their own political interpretation on the degree to which Russia/Putin should be condemned on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict.
But the line could be clearly drawn if one refuses to admit Ukraine has a fascist problem, or denies that there have been eight years with the fascist forces attacking the Russian-speaking region of Donbas where they have already killed 12,000 people, or that the U.S. has a dozen secret biological labs in Ukraine that have been developing internationally prohibited biological weapons – and red-baiting anyone who disagrees with them as “Putin’s propagandist” – in my opinion they’re a fake peace activist.
After joining a dozen antiwar meetings online for the past several weeks across the U.S. and Canada, here is my initial analysis about who are the real anti-imperialist/anti-war activists vs fake left liberal/real right warmongers; they can be categorized in the following different classifications of groups (and here is my estimated percentage share of the overall U.S. population):
GROUP ONE: Antiwar against NATO – blaming the pro-U.S./Ukrainian fascists, not Russia for the conflict:
- Progressive activists, people of color, working class
Total: representing approximately 15% of the total U.S. population
GROUP TWO: Anti-war and against Russia (it’s all Putin’s fault)
- Liberal “fake left” (10%, they control most grassroots progressive media)
- Biden democrats (they support the Biden proxy war against Russia in Ukraine; based on the last elections, they are about 25% of the U.S. population and control most of the mainstream liberal media)
Total: 35%
GROUP THREE: Traditional Republican pro-war right-wingers (20%, mostly Fox News fans)
Total: 20%
GROUP FOUR: Against Russia for the war, but more against Biden and NATO’s leadership failure for letting the war started. (They believe that Ukraine is none of our business, we don't care, don't send troops/weapons to Ukraine at all.)
- Far right Trump supporters, Libertarians (30% U.S. population according to the last election breakdown, Fox and QAnon supporters)
Total: 30%
What do these numbers mean?
1) It’s clear that the anti-imperialist/anti-war left represents too small a number (15%) to be able to organize a large scale grassroots anti-war movement against the U.S./NATO proxy war to change public opinion.
2) Although a majority in the U.S. is blaming Russia for the conflict (85%), they’re too fragmented to organize a massive movement together against Russia (it’s impossible for “progressive” left activists to work with far right Ukrainians/Trump supporters under one banner).
That’s the reason all anti-Russia protests have been generally small (a few hundred to a thousand) and mostly organized by right-wing Ukrainian-Americans.
While progressive anti-imperialist, anti-NATO, anti-war activists are outnumbered and their media outreached, right-wing anti-Russia/fake peace activists are clearly not unifying because each of them have their own selfish agendas. Any fragile alliance built between them will easily fall very soon.
As Chinese activists say, China has its own ideas on supporting Russia, and will not be pushed around and threatened by the United States.
By American logic, if you are not with us, you are our enemy, and there is no third way.
The United States has pieced together an anti-Russian alliance, and apart from the European Union and Japan, South Korea and Singapore in Asia – it is mostly wealthy Western countries, but they’re not representative of the world.
While approximately 80% of countries in the United Nations had participated in the voting on the recent Western-drafted non-binding resolution against Russia, (in fact, so far U.S. and Israel had the most number of non-binding resolutions against them in the past at meetings of the U.N.), very few other nations, China or the Global South had joined their call for sanctions against Russia and for military aid to Ukraine. The country count is only approximately 20% in support of the U.S./Western sanctions.
If we’re counting population breakdowns from each country that supported the sanctions against Russia and those that didn’t, only approximately 13-15% of the global population is in support. U.S./NATO are clearly outnumbered and not on the winning side.
China, the traditional ally of Russia, can play a critical role in the outcome. If the Western nations can convince China, with approximately 20% of the global population and the second largest economy in the world, to join the Western camp against Russia, it will easily defeat Russia.
Instead of nicely asking China, the U.S. has arrogantly tried to use the Russian-Ukrainian war to humiliate China with all kinds of threats and lies; of course, if the West could defeat Russia, they’ll turn their guns on China.
According to a report by “Russia Today” on March 15th, 2022, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters that if China provides Russia with “military or other assistance, it will face significant consequences.”
The United States threatens not only China, but any country that does not side with the U.S. According to media reports, India, which relies heavily on imports for 80% of its oil, is ready to buy more oil from Russia. The United States threatened that “if India buys Russian crude oil, India will be sanctioned by the United States,” “you are either with America or against us.”
These actions by the U.S. show that Washington is quite anxious about the Ukraine issue. It hopes that China will follow U.S. orders. What the U.S. hopes is to create a global network to economically stifle Russia and make all countries a part of this network without any “loopholes” for not evading U.S. hegemony.
From the point of view of Russia, the United States is very disappointed. The most sensitive issue in Sino-U.S. relations is the Taiwan issue. The United States keeps hollowing out the cornerstone of the establishment of diplomatic relations with China, and the United States keeps sending the wrong signals to Taiwan’s independence movement. This is a serious provocation to China’s territorial integrity and national security.
The United States also used Hong Kong, the South China Sea, the Xinjiang issue, and the trade issue to attack China.
There’s a long list of U.S. sanctions against Chinese companies and individuals, and it is still growing. Even if there were no Ukraine issue, would the U.S. not sanction China? The answer is NO.
As the spokesperson from the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said, “China and Russia will continue to carry out normal economic and trade cooperation in the spirit of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.” Chen Weihua, head of China Daily’s EU bureau, commented that “international rules mean whatever the United Nations Charter and the U.N. decide, not what Washington decides; if the White House thinks that the U.S. should be allowed to dominate and hijack the world with its economic, military and financial power, that’s political hegemony.”
On March 28th, 2022, Biden’s $773 billion request for the Pentagon budget stays focused on China; and labeling China is the No. 1 priority in the new National Defense Strategy, according to an unclassified fact sheet released by the Defense Department.
It makes clear that China is “our most consequential strategic competitor and the pacing challenge for the department” according to the fact sheet. “Defending the homeland, paced to the growing multi-domain threat posed by the [People’s Republic of China],” is the top defense priority. The third priority is also aimed at China, saying that the department will focus on “deterring aggression, while being prepared to prevail in conflict when necessary,” with an emphasis placed on the potential for conflict with Beijing.
China has no incentive to help the West’s sanctions against Russia, invade other countries or become a global military superpower. If Russia falls, China will lose a strategic ally.
The Chinese believe they’re not a puppet of the U.S. like Japan, South Korea and Australia, etc.; China won’t improve relations with the U.S. at the expense of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership or their national sovereignty.
But the U.S. will keep trying hard to push war rhetoric and anxiety to make everyone crazy, and sell more weapons at the expense of human needs and COVID treatment.
Corporate/War Monger Greed Not Human Needs
It’s completely outrageous that while both of the U.S. parties never agree on passing social and human needs budget bills, the Congress easily passed a sprawling federal spending bill including billions for military “aid” for Ukraine after Democrats took out the $15.6 billion pandemic aid including money to fight COVID. This occurred at light-speed process and with bipartisan support, approved by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Biden signed it without giving it a second thought.
It came almost at the same time that the Biden administration announced the plan to steal U.S. $7 billion from the frozen Afghan foreign reserve; after the Taliban re-captured Afghanistan the U.S. military was forced to make a chaotic and hasty retreat from Kabul last August.
Half would go to the September 11 victims’ families and half for the U.S. appointed humanitarian organizations to “help” Afghanistan; this is money for the Afghan people; they desperately need it to buy food and medicine, and the U.S. message is clear: we destroy your country, we steal your money, we starve you and your children to death because you do not obey us.
The U.S. has billions to spend on weapons, invasions and bombing destruction around the world, yet it is extremely stingy when it comes to spending on food, housing and medical care for the poor. It will even shamefully steal money from the absolute poorest.
As the Black Alliance for Peace statement says:
“Afghanistan has joined the ever growing ranks of countries forcibly thrown into desperate humanitarian crises following U.S./NATO wars. These countries are now relegated to the sidelines as the latest crisis instigated by the West’s imperial aggression takes the spotlight.” Images of Ukrainian people fleeing violence are now “forefronted to manipulate the public into supporting another war,” yet another massive infusion to the arms industry, “a welcomed windfall for both U.S. and European corporations following the loss of their trillion-dollar Afghanistan trough.”
According to the healthcare think-tank Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) report on March 28th, 2022, many uninsured people could lose access to free COVID-19 testing, treatment, and vaccines as federal funding runs out within the next few months due to U.S. cutting the billions COVID funding to Ukraine military aid. “Many uninsured individuals would likely need to pay out of pocket for testing and some treatment services or rely on safety-net providers absorbing those additional costs without any way to get reimbursed.”
KFF worries that vaccine providers would not get paid for administering vaccines (vaccine provided free from the government but need to pay someone for giving the shots to people) to uninsured people could lead to restricted access. “This could exacerbate existing racial and ethnic disparities, as people of color are more likely than their White counterparts to be uninsured and face other potential barriers to accessing care,” the KFF report concludes.
While KFF made a good point in explaining how the federal COVID budget cut will affect the poor, they’re not speaking for the low-income people of color. Instead KFF has been historically linked to the mega-Kaiser Permanente insurance company. They’re speaking about the medical-insurance industrial complex’s financial bottom line, where they rely on government reimbursement for administrating the jabs, and don’t want to do it cheaply, or as socially responsible pro bono work.
The United States is supposed to be the most developed country in the world with the greatest amount of medical resources of any country. However, when capitalists and private medical groups come together, health becomes profit driven, medical expenses have risen to an unbelievable level, and the COVID crisis makes the situation even worse.
When my good friend and “Capitalism on a Ventilator” co-publisher Sara Founders and her husband Michael were infected with the COVID last December, there was no effective medical support for them; at first Sara couldn’t find a place to get tested. While they’re over 70 years old, considered to be the high-risk group, the doctor said their cases were not serious enough to get the COVID-treatment drugs, and told them to self-quarantine and recover at home.
Because the medicine is in very short supply, it can only be given to the most seriously ill people so the doctor told them to take vitamins at home, which is very sad because vitamins are not a treatment drug and don’t help recovery at all. It shows that the government anti-COVID funding is not enough, and this minimal funding is not even used effectively.
The COVID peak of December 2021-January 2022 resulted in tens of millions of people being infected and tens of thousands of people died, yet U.S. government officials declared COVID will be “over” soon, enabling it to slash the “expensive” government COVID budget.
Meanwhile, on March 28th, 2022, Biden proposed a $5.8 trillion budget that increases military and police spending, while calling for raising taxes on the rich in order to offset the extra big spending on weapons and to reduce the nation’s budget deficit by $1 trillion over the next decade. History tells us that “tax the rich” never happens but what does always happen is “spend more on weapons” and “cut the money going to the needs of the poor.”
There is money for war, but you can’t feed the poor – the U.S. spends billions on war in Ukraine and the working class pays the price! U.S. legislators, regardless of whether they are Democrats or Republicans, prove that they are willing to fund war, but unwilling to fund human needs.
In order to justify their prioritizing of mega military spending over healthcare and social services and to cover-up Biden’s disastrous COVID response, they quickly spread a myth that the pandemic is over; to sell this myth effectively, they created a phony feel-good marketing term: endemic.
The Bogus Endemic
From the beginning of the pandemic, the U.S. response has been a completely disaster. For the past two years regardless of whether Trump or Biden was in the White House, the measures taken by the U.S. government to prevent and control COVID have been highly politicized, chaotic, ineffectual, anti-science and a complete failure.
The mass confusion combined with the anti-communist motivated anti-vaxx/anti-lockdown movement (these are communist plots to take away our liberty!) caused a strange rationalization that a person may be afraid of death from COVID, but on the other hand, covering your face will make you lose face, or obeying lockdown rules will be seen as submitting to communism.
Trump exploited these far-right cult-type conspiracies for his own gain, and Biden didn’t do anything about them. Then he adopted the term endemic, but no longer treating COVID as a pandemic caused it to spread like wild fire last winter. Everyone acted as though COVID was over since there were now vaccines but instead the situation became more and more serious, more people died causing further chaos and division in society.
Nor would the U.S. work with China on vaccines because business an dpolitical competition at all cost is the deeply ingrained, systemic response of the capitalist market system, a system which remains ineffective and continues to put millions of lives in jeopardy.
Instead, from Trump to Biden, QAnon to the New York Times, they desperately work hard to spread the racist unfounded so-called “China virus” “Wuhan virus” “CCP virus” hoax, blaming China for everything – and causing the U.S. and the West to miss “golden time” opportunities to stop the pandemic, again and again.
Whether it is the upper-level ruling elite or the lower-level common people, whether it is “left” or right, there is a consensus to remain hostile towards China.
Throughout the racist history of the U.S., whenever a group threatened the vital interests of whites, it was met with fierce resistance. If minorities in the U.S. only do low paid jobs like cleaning toilets, mowing grass, and cooking meals, everything will be OK – they won't be strongly suppressed, but if they “dare” to put pressure on the American elite in higher-skilled jobs, affect their status quo, it is “evil” and the elite will fight you to the death. In U.S. history this has happened to Indigenous Americans, Mexicans, African Americans, and Chinese Americans.
That’s the reason the U.S. and the West refuse to work with China to learn from their successful experiences combating the virus. It would show them that the Chinese are right and we’re wrong. It’s completely acceptable for U.S. imperialism armed to the teeth to fight with China and Russia – regardless the cost and casualties (a million COVID deaths as of April 2022), the white U.S. cannot be “defeated” by yellow-skinned Chinese – this is the cornerstone of U.S. white supremacy andexceptionalism.
Recently, Europe, the U.S. and Canada are all lifted their lockdowns, stopped releasing daily statistics on new cases, and canceled social distancing and mask requirements, and even canceling the vaccine passport; they call it “Freedom Day.” Their lives quickly returned to the way they were before the pandemic, people started going out and partying without masks; under this whitewashed peace, the new COVID Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants are quietly evolving and spreading. Finally, the deadly fifth wave began last winter.
In the U.K. their right-wing anti-communist, anti-Russia/China pro-U.S. prime minister Boris Johnson led his country into a COVID disaster again and again!
To whitewash his “Partygate” he called for “Freedom Day” on February 24th lifted almost all COVID restrictions. It’s also the same day when the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out. Johnson exploited the opportunity to make himself like a “tough” guy by going against Russia; he “successfully” diverted public attention from his corruption charges. The end result was that in the UK, the first to lift the lockdown, the number of cases rebounded by 30%, from the pre-“Freedom Day” of approximately 38,000 cases to a daily increase of more than 225,000 on March 21st, an over fivefold increase!
The World Health Organization (WHO) European Director Hans Kluge blames Europe for their premature lifting of the lockdown, which has led to a sharp rise in the number of infections.
Europe has seen more than 5 million new cases in March, almost all of them Omicron’s sister variant – the invisible BA.2 – and has reported 12,496 deaths over seven days in late March.
In addition, since the beginning of March, five U.S. states, including New York and California, have seen cases of the BA.2 variant rise. New York saw a 21% increase in the number of confirmed cases, the first state to see a big jump in nearly two months.
While more corporate media begin to believe their reporting about unblocking, removing masks, and returning to pre-pandemic life, the “endemic” myth may be a “gentle trap.” But they still choose to viciously attack China’s anti-pandemic “Zero-COVID” policies – when China is also facing a serious Omicron outbreak recently which has spread from the U.S. and Europe. They still have only experienced 1/10 of the current U.S. number of cases. The government quickly launched nationwide strict person-to-person tracing and lockdown in many cities, over the past several months. The strict “Zero-COVID” policy saved many people from infection, and only two people have died so far.
Certainly, the West won’t like China’s successful achievements.
Today, by acting as childish China haters, the West continues to refuse peaceful cooperation; the U.S. and the West lifted restrictions too early and took off masks, pretending lockdowns were a thing of the past, but COVID-19 didn’t take a rest.
Though the new Omicron BA.2 has been bad enough already (the new subvariant from the original Omicron BA.1 with a much higher transmission rate), by the end of the March 2022, when BA.2 had been quickly spreading across the Europe and beginning to spread in the U.S., another new COVID variant is emerging, the so-called “XE” first discovered in the U.K after their “Freedom Day”. It is a BA.1/BA.2 recombinant with a transmission rate 10% higher than BA.2. Which means if BA.2 and XE spread like the original Omicron BA.1 last winter, we’ll see another widespread deadly outbreak again soon later this year.
We have just experienced the bloody fifth COVID wave of December 2021 through February 2022; with the lies of “Freedom Day” and “endemic,” the sixth COVID waves are coming this spring from Europe to the U.S.
Ignoring the pandemic has once again put us in the middle of a bloody storm, not only the storm of COVID, but also the storm caused by ignoring human needs in the face of warfare.
Our Judgment Day
Truth shall make us strong: what kind of world do we want?
A world with no hunger, no oppression – a world where we can enjoy love, education and clean air?
Or are we to be dumped into an endless war of hate and killing, where only billion-trillionaires will enjoy their wealth while the rest will be dying of hunger and exploitation breathing dirty air?
Which one do you want to choose?
Unfortunately many people in the West, include many “progressives,” will choose hate over a better future.
As I witnessed the achievement, prosperity and overall social harmony in China, the racist China bashing is completely nonsense.
As for the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict, even many “progressives” side with the U.S. imperialist agenda; even though they clearly know this is a U.S./NATO plot, they decide to support sending billions of dollar worth of weapons to Ukraine to prolong the conflict, even ignoring that the end result is a record breaking U.S. military budget, stealing money from human needs, COVID needs and the fight against hunger.
As Sara Flounders pointed out, why can’t the U.S. control COVID? Let’s talk about why the hunger problem is widespread in the United States and around the world.
The biggest killer today in the world is not COVID, but hunger. More than 7 million people die of hunger every year around the world. But hunger is actually a “disease” that everyone knows how to “cure,” even babies. No special vaccine is needed to “cure” hunger, but the capitalist system just cannot “cure” hunger.
In the U.S., you can easily see queues for food stretching a few blocks. Even in New York City, the most economically developed city in the United States, more than a million people, or 12 % of the population, are food insecure.
Yet, people are excited about the “issue” thousands of miles away with the wrong solution, while they don’t care about a real issue downstairs from their home.
As Chinese Tiktok blogger “October 1st is Mine” explained in his video blog on March 16th, 2022, why he said the true face of the Western world is finally exposed in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and why he will support Russia. His opinion represents the majority of today’s Chinese voices. Originally in Chinese in his video, I extracted the text and translated it into English:
“In this Russian-Ukrainian conflict, I chose to support Russia from the beginning. The reason why I support Russia is because I am afraid, I am afraid that my country, China, will suffer the same destiny in the near future.
I also thank Russia for offering us lessons in dealing with the U.S., to see what Russia is facing today: a technology blockade, foreign companies boycotting Russia, the freezing of the Russian central bank’s huge foreign exchange reserves of US$300 billion by Western countries. In other words, all of them have been confiscated; a large number of overseas assets also have been seized by Western powers.
Even the personal property of Russian citizens in Europe and the United States has become the possession of these countries, arbitrarily frozen, confiscated and seized. Russia's richest man, Gnady Timchenko, lost nearly half of his fortune, shrinking by more than US$10 billion.
This Russian-Ukrainian conflict has made everyone see the true face of Western countries: eating people without spitting out the bones. The human rights, freedoms, and the inviolability of private property claimed by Western countries are all deceitful and just a farce of capitalism.
The laws of Western countries only protect themselves, and they’ll always just see us as a yellow-skinned, black-haired race from Asia, even if we become Western citizens. If our country and the U.S. have a conflict, why should Western people protect the naturalized Chinese citizens?
Some people will say that if we don't ask for trouble with the United States, we will live quietly and develop quickly. I would like to say that this is impossible. The rapid development of our country has created a sense of anxiety in the U.S. In order to maintain its world dominance; it is inevitable that the U.S. will have economic and political conflicts with China. It is only a matter of the size of the conflict.
When the U.S. declares a country guilty, even the cats of this country will become sinful cats that must be sanctioned (I am referring to U.S./Western governments’ racist Russophobia sanctions campaigns on sports, Tchaikovsky’s music, Turgenev’s work to Russian-bred cats). At that time, no Western countries will recognize you have the right to exercise the law, nor will they acknowledge your right to own your private property. How they treat Russia is just shameful, bottomless Russophobia. This is also the main reason why (pro-Western) Chinese tycoon Li Ka-shing sold his British assets and resolutely returned to China.
Today, the United States threatens China, demanding that we turn our backs on our friends (Russia) and follow U.S. orders to join in sanctioning Russia. Can we do it? No! Russia’s today is our tomorrow. If we abandon Russia today, then we will face the world on our own in the future! China has worked hard to win peace and stability today, let’s be smart and makes our moves wisely.”
Challenge us can make us strong
Another benefit from my fact-finding mission to China is that it challenges our arrogant U.S. mind-set. Most U.S. media from mainstream corporate to “progressive” media DO censor information when it doesn’t feel politically “correct” to publish it; therefore, they’re completely ignorant about what most of the world is thinking, only coming up with incorrect U.S./Western White Anglo-Saxon Protestant Male-centric conclusions.
Think about the latest Russian-Ukrainian conflict where grassroots even major Chinese media voices have been actively ignored, red-baited (“Putin propagandists”) or censored–just treat them like “quiet” Asians – they never needed to exist.
China’s Global Times said in their March 31st, 2022 editorial that the U.S. is the biggest spoiler of Ukraine’s situation and European security; while pouring cold water on the Russia-Ukraine peace talks, “the U.S. is stepping up its efforts to stir up the conflict. This is in line with U.S. strategic needs.” If Ukraine's appeal for a security guarantee is met, a new model of guaranteeing international security will be opened up, which will mean weakening the role of the U.S. and NATO. “The U.S. clearly doesn't want to see this result. It can be said that the U.S. is the biggest spoiler of security in all Europe.” The U.S. is the most reluctant to see a cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine, the Global Times concluded.
This is such a simple conclusion every normal human being can figure it out; yet many seemingly “smart” European bureaucrats and “peace” activists are not able to understand.
To clearly explain this, I found another Chinese Tiktok video blogger “Tsikowski” (not Tchaikovsky) who has 4.3 million Tiktok subscribers; he received 660K likes for the following posting at the Tiktok China site. (Due to the China-U.S. information war caused by the Trump regime a few years ago, the Tiktok global site that has been set up is not related to the Tiktok China parent site – the video sites are not related and videos are not shared). His popularity is considered just “medium” size in China. This is what he says in his March 18th, 2022, video, “Pay attention to what you say online, be careful of being used!” – This can be representative of a majority of the Chinese public opinion from left to center-right (originally from the video in Chinese so I put a special effort into extracting the text and translating it into English):
“Why did the entire Western world follow the United States and put sanctions on Russia (without even thinking), as if the U.S. magically controlled their minds. Don't they know that sanctions against Russia will cause many countries in the European Union to have problems with food, heating, and gas to drive?
But even so, they automatically follow the United States to impose sanctions. These people seem to have a switch installed in their minds. As long as the Americans press it lightly, they are like marionettes and act according to the ideas of the United States.
Why is that?
You might not know, for decades, whether it’s Japan, South Korea or European countries, they have long been infiltrated by American culture. It doesn’t matter what nationality they are, let alone which country they belong to. Under the brainwashing of the powerful economy, culture and technology of the United States, they have long become “true” Americans.
Many people don’t believe it. What trick does the U.S. have that they can control the minds of billions of people?
Why, don’t you know? They’ve resorted to all kinds of bad tactics in order to cultivate “spiritual Americans” in countries all over the world. The most venomous of these is the identification with U.S. values.
What is U.S. value recognition? We often hear the Western world claim that they respect the principles of science that knowledge no borders, and that freedom of the press, freedom of speech, the sacrosanct nature of private property, etc., all belong to this category of values. Relying on this series of combined ideologies, the United States not only firmly united 330 million people of all races in their country, but also successfully pushed these values to the world.
Have you ever wondered why the U.S. has sponsored many foreign experts, scholars, artists, scientists, and international students from all over the world to study in the United States, giving them generous scholarships and funds to support them? Do you think they want you to learn the real thing?
The U.S. does not intend (them to learn the real skills)! That’s all part of the U.S. ideological penetration!
They will tell these elites who’re studying abroad in the U.S., do you know why the United States is so powerful? It’s because America lives up to their liberal and democratic values. If you want your country to become prosperous and strong, then you have to listen to us and follow our path. If anyone stops you from taking this path, it is because they don’t want you to become rich, and they don’t want to make you stronger.
At this point, everyone, who can stand against it?
No matter if you are an international student, a university professor, an artist or a scientist, who doesn’t want to make their country prosper, and who doesn’t want to make their country strong. Under such strong U.S. cultural brainwashing, generations of “spiritual Americans” have taken root and thrived in various countries around the world.
Thank you, Russia! If it wasn't for the Russia-Ukraine conflict, these “values” Europe and the United States have worked hard to promote for decades would have almost succeeded throughout the world.
When they indiscriminately sanction Russian artists and athletes and force them to condemn their own country, it turns out that sports without borders and art without borders are all fake. They blocked Russian media accounts in front of 5 billion users worldwide on Google, Facebook, YouTube. It turns out that freedom of the press and freedom of speech are all fake.
In the public opinion war you think, according to Western values, each should have their chance to express their own opinions, argue with each other, and convince people with evidence. In the real Western-led public opinion war, if Western countries let you speak then the West will already have lost this fight; therefore, (the West will just tell you) shut up and only listen to me.
The most surprising thing is the Western claims of respecting “sanctity of private property.” The United States seized yachts, villas and jets of Russian billionaires after the Russian-Ukrainian conflict broke out. Britain froze the assets of three Russian billionaires; the permanently neutral state of Switzerland chose to freeze the bank deposits of all Russian clients.
Do you understand? Western countries have shouted slogans for decades in the past, and a Russian-Ukrainian conflict completely tore off their hypocritical masks.
Remember this, only small countries start wars, and big countries destroy human minds. As long as you can mentally lead a country and a nation in the wrong direction, you can win without a fight. No matter how strong your Iron Great Wall (national defense) is, it cannot resist ideological corruption.
Don’t think I’m being alarmist. The disintegration of the Soviet Union is the greatest achievement of the Western ideological war.
A vigorous online public opinion war (against China and Russia) has already started all over the world. Although you can’t see the smoke of gunpowder, every word you say on the Internet is part of the public opinion war. Please be sure to be careful what you say online, and don’t send ideological bullets to your opponents.”
The term “peace” movement has become meaningless racist U.S.-centric pastime entertainment; many people of color who are activists have pointed out that many antiwar liberals (from “left” to right) in this country are not against war because they’re against anti-imperialist war, but because the war is costing the U.S. too much financially, in human casualties and in loss of face against elite’s status quo, and it’s no longer worth continuing to fight.
As long as it is an easy U.S. war with minimal casualties (on our side, no one cares how many people die on the other side) and with big profits (stealing another country’s natural resources) – politically (American Exceptionalism) and economically (everyone gets a raise in pay), it’ll be quite OK with us.
It’s clear that after the U.S./West disastrously pulled out of Afghanistan, no one in the West cares about the current desperate humanitarian crisis caused by a hard embargo against the country, or cares when Biden shamefully steals the $7 billion of Afghan money for his own use. It was a completely different picture 21 years ago right after September 11, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and we protested against the war in the streets of Los Angeles. I remember a group of angry white customers from an outdoor café yelling at us: “Go back to Afghanistan!”
As the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict shows, the West includes many “activists” who are against Russia because of the historical, default racist anti-Soviet Union/communism mind-set. Their support of Ukraine is another form of racism: as long as Russia loses the war, everything else is OK, even if many anti-Russian Ukrainians are anti-Semitic neo-Nazi fascists – “peace” activists can choose not to care.
Eventually when Ukrainians as the West’s “asset” and “card” to play against Russia, China and the Global South become too costly, and when the sanctions are too painful costly to the West, the U.S. from right-wing hawk to liberal “peace” activists will abandon the Ukrainians, discarding them like a piece of garbage without looking back.
Just like the Syrian refugees, the Ukrainian refugees will become unwanted in the future. It’s the same old pattern as in Somalia, Syria, Libya, Sudan, and many other countries destroyed by the U.S./NATO.
It’s like what the U.S./West did when they fled Afghanistan last August – they dropped desperately fleeing refugees to their death from their airplanes, or “mistakenly” bombed and killed 10 civilians, including up to 7 children, in a Kabul drone strike. No U.S. soldiers faced charges for war crimes.
As activist Bruce K. Gagnon said: “If we are honest with ourselves we will recognize that the US-NATO have been in the regime change business ever since the end of WW II. For example, the secret Operation Gladio was used by Washington-Brussels to create terrorism to ensure that no Communists came to power in Italy when polls showed they were likely to win. The US-NATO in 1999 (again during Bill Clinton’s time in office) broke Yugoslavia into pieces and Washington opened up a large military base called Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo.
Then there was the US-NATO take down of Iraq and Afghanistan followed by Libya – which today has open slave markets. No ‘democracy’ in any of those nations.
The ‘North Atlantic Alliance’ is still trying to destroy Syria, but Russia was asked by the Syrian government for help – which is legal under international law.
The same treatment was slated for Russia but Putin and the Russian people understood the score and refused to cave in to Western pressures. Now out of desperation the US-NATO has pushed this war in Ukraine (actually under way since before 2014) onto the world stage and made a hero out of the T-shirt wearing Zelensky – who is nothing more than an actor reading a script handed to him by his public-relations handlers.
Zelensky is presently calling on the world to ban the letter ‘Z’ that Russia paints on its military equipment. I guess we’ll have to call him ‘elensky’ from now on....
Sadly few (even many so-called ‘progressives’) pay enough attention to events around the world to really know what has been actually happening in Ukraine during the past eight years. Some who are out on the streets waving the blue and yellow flag because they feel the pain of war, also feel the need to join the accepted crowd. Most people don't have the gumption to go against the prevailing corporate media hype and regime change agenda.
The big difference between Russia and most of the rest of the other nations that were regime-changed in recent years is that Moscow has the ability to stand their ground and fight back. And they will – the Russians know that the Western resource extraction corporations want to bust their country into smaller bits so their vast natural resource base can be stolen. One could say, it is an old story for the proud Russian people.
In the past 500 years, Russia has been invaded several times from the west. The Poles came across the European Plain in 1605, followed by the Swedes under Charles XII in 1707, the French under Napoleon in 1812, and the Germans – twice, in both world wars, in 1914 and 1941. Every 100 years the west makes its move and fails.”
Guns over COVID treatment, racism over peaceful cooperation, Biden just announced a whopping $813.3 military budget, another historic high.
A considerable part of U.S. military spending is used to support the country’s overseas military operations. The high cost of the U.S. military is largely due to the “military-industrial complex” formed by the military, arms dealers and politicians.
Chinese analysts believe that during the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the United States had sent a large amount of weapons to Ukraine and some surrounding countries, but did not actively promote peace talks. This is because the longer the war lasts, the more profits the U.S. arms dealers will make.
On the surface, the increase in the U.S. military budget is related to factors such as the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and inflation, but the root cause lies in the U.S. belligerent habits and outdated Cold War mentality. If the United States does not get rid of its “hegemonic obsession,” no matter how huge its military budget is, it will feel “stretched,” which will not only disrupt the world, but also push itself into a dangerous abyss and go to the opposite side of world peace and development, the China Central TV (CCTV) News concluded.
“Progressives” must overcome such ignorance. They must understand that “never again” means you should never again be fooled by the biggest war profiteer’s pseudo-anti-war messages, according to the Global Times:
1. Six of the world’s 10 largest defense contractors come from the U.S.
Lockheed Martin
Boeing
Raytheon Technologies
Northrop Grumman
General Dynamics
L3Harris Technologies
2. Since 2001, the U.S. has spent $6.4 trillion in wars, and U.S. military operations in 85 countries killed 801,000 people including 335,000 civilians and caused 37 million people to become refugees.
3. $6.4 trillion has been spent on post-9/11 wars and conflicts in more than 80 countries, and most of the budgets were transferred to the top five contractors. From 2001 to 2021, the stocks of these top five contractors outperformed the stock market overall by 58%.
This is at the time when China hosted a regional meeting on Afghanistan for donors to make pledges for aid, a constructive role that brings hope to the world. The joint statement from the neighboring countries urged those countries (the U.S. and Europe) primarily responsible for Afghanistan’s current plight to fulfill their commitments to the country’s economic reconstruction and development.
It also called for the improvement of people’s livelihood and the protection of the basic rights of all Afghans, including all ethnic groups, women and children. According to the Global Times reports, the statement is “Calling on international financial institutions to actively inject liquidity (money) into Afghanistan and urging the U.S. and the West to unfreeze Afghan assets, and strengthen counter-terrorism and security cooperation.”
Why does the U.S. have hundreds of billions of dollars to buy weapons and start wars, but no money for human needs, even stealing Afghans desperately needed money?
The journey of 2022
After returning to the U.S. from China early this year, I had many mixed feelings about how much had changed within just a few months since summer 2021. It’s surreal: inflation causing everything to become very expensive within a few months; people becoming more selfish and less tolerant. It can be seen in the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict: Sinophobia, Russophobia had been rising to a horrible level; seeing a spike in hate crimes and random street violence.
When Russian military discovered the U.S.-funded secret bio labs in Ukraine, during the latest Russian-Ukrainian conflict, it shed light on the U.S. spending more than $200 million on biological laboratories in Ukraine, which were part of the American military biological program and dealt, in particular, with plague and anthrax pathogens – banned by the international community.
Russia had documents showing that Biden’s son Hunter Biden played a key role in funding pathogen research in Ukraine. Not only the U.S. media denies this, but also many “progressive” antiwar activists attack anyone who talks about it, red-baiting them that they are “Putin’s propagandists.”
While it’s not too surprising to see that our book “Capitalism on a Ventilator” was banned by the corporate media, it is a little sad to see that a majority of U.S. “progressives” don’t care about COVID justice or how the U.S. could learn from China’s successful experience. Instead they are choosing to self-censor and not talk about our book and related issues and to follow Biden’s myth that the COVID pandemic is over and is now in the endemic stage.
During my stay in China, many Chinese political observers (who share the same views with many others from the Global South) told me that U.S./Westren liberals/progressives and right-wingers are all the same racist imperialists, the only difference being that one group will use the “political correctness” motto to rationalize what they do, and the other side will waive the “American Exceptionalism” banner to cover-up their bad deed.
Many in China argue about who in the U.S. should be blamed for the Ukraine crisis which is just a “pseudo-issue” since it’s no more than a nasty partisan fight. When Obama was in office, he screwed Bush Jr.’s war legacy in Afghanistan/Iraq then focused on war in Syria/Ukraine and worked on “successful” nuclear deals with Iran/North Korea; when Trump was in office, he screwed Obama’s legacy on Iran/North Korea/Syria and made peace with Russia on Ukraine; then when Biden became president, he screwed Trump’s legacy on Ukraine and revised Obama’s legacy on Iran. But they’re all the same when it comes to being pro-Israel/anti-Palestine and anti-China.
Not long ago progressives fought against Trump’s criminal negligence on the COVID response in 2020 and his family’s corruption; the same “progressives” are now soft on Biden’s total failure in responding to the current COVID crisis, accepting his “endemic” lies, ignoring his family’s corruption charges, even silent on Democrats cutting the pandemic budget for more guns for Ukraine; in the end it doesn’t matter how many people die, as long as it’s politically “correct,” many Chinese told me. “Look, it’s politically correct to be Sinophobic in the U.S., that’s the reason liberals are no longer calling for justice for thousands of Asian-American violence victims!”
At this critical moment, I am again planning to fly back to China, to continue my China-U.S. solidarity work.
According to the current 14+7 days quarantine requirements of China’s COVID prevention regulations, I should spend 21 days in quarantine before I am free to go anywhere.
My return to China this time will be a month-long stressful quarantine journey, before I can set free to go anywhere in China.
My original plan was fly back to China from Los Angeles with China Xiamen Airlines, but cancelled due to the Biden administration’s anti-China policy of Chinese-airline’s ban to U.S.. Currently there are no flights on Chinese airlines between China-U.S.until summer – Biden currently only allows U.S. airlines to fly to China! I was forced to pay more to buy another ticket from San Francisco, operated by United Airlines to fly to China this spring.
Since Europe and the U.S. have chosen to give up fighting COVID, the global outbreak of the Omicron variant has also affected China seriously, and China is now adopting an even stricter policy for testing in-bound passengers to prevent the spread of the virus.
The pre-flight COVID testing to China, required by Chinese consulate has increased from one (on 2020) to four tests (beginning April, 2022) at an appointed lab over a seven-day period before the flight. And we must stay in the departure city for the last seven days before our flight for the testing and self-health monitoring; therefore, I need to leave my home in Los Angeles one-week before the flight to go to San Francisco, stay in a hotel and go to a particular lab there for the testings.
From the time I leave my home in L.A., fly back to China and finally finish my quarantine and begin my work in China, the whole process will take me a month with expensive costs: the expensive testing fees, an expensive ticket, the costs of seven days stay in San Francisco, and 21 days of quarantine accommodation after arriving in Shanghai, China.
I hope on this trip we will finish the filming of our documentary VoiceXJ, and officially release it before the autumn; we will also promote our book “Capitalism on a Ventilator” and plan to publish our sequels.
The journey will be difficult and we will face many uncertainties, but to build solidarity for peace and justice, to expend activist friendships between China and U.S., and to tell everyone in the U.S. what I saw in China, it will be hard work that I feel is important and worth doing.
My journey continues..
Lee Siu Hin, a Chinese-American immigrant activist from Los Angeles, CA, is the founder and national coordinator of the China-U.S. Solidarity Network (CUSN) and the National Immigrant Solidarity Network (NISN). He is a long-time community, labor, antiwar and immigrant rights activist for grassroots struggle. He's also a long-time Pacifica Radio KPFK Los Angeles unpaid reporter and producer and war correspondent who has worked in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa.
NISN, a grassroots-based national immigrant activist network; and CUSN, a network of academia and community activists in both countries committed to building a China-U.S. grassroots activist dialogue.
Lee holds a Masters of Public Administration (MPA) and a Masters of Engineering (Aerospace) from California State Polytechnic University at Pomona, loated in Pomona, CA.
He is currently working on community medical big data technology and a COVID-19 AI medical analytic platform for the inner-city community and the global south.
His latest book “Capitalism on a Ventilator” co-published with Sara Flounders in September, 2020; Chinese edition will be coming later in 2021.
National Immigrant Solidarity Network http://www.ImmigrantSolidarity.org
ActionLA Network http://www.ActionLA.org
Activist Video Service http://www.ActivistVideo.org
China-U.S. Solidarity Network http://www.ChinaSolidarity.org
China Delegation Project http://www.ChinaDelegation.org
e-mail: ActivistWeb@gmail.com
Lee Siu Hin: 8/19/2021: Chinese and U.S. Activists Say NO to the Biden's Virus Origin Investigation! To read the full report: https://www.immigrantsolidarity.org/ChinaSolidarity/COVID/index.html
The book “Capitalism on a Ventilator”, a book comparing COVID responses by capitalist and socialist governments, co-published by Lee Siu Hin and Sara Flounders, can be found online at these locations:
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/capitalism-on-a-ventilator
https://world-view-forum.myshopify.com/products/capitalism-on-a-ventilator
https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Ventilator-Impact-COVID-19-China/dp/0895671964
Lee lives and works between Los Angeles, California, and Shanghai, China. e-mail: ActivistWeb@gmail.com WeChat: 16266953405
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