Category: international affairs

It’s Complicated

“You are living proof of this nation’s democracy,” former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo recently told his hosts in Taipei, Taiwan, accepting an award honoring his work to strengthen relations between our two countries. He was referring to a small group of protesters outside his hotel.

“And,” Pompeo added, “you remind me of home.”

The Republican was making a simple but pertinent point. In a world of growing authoritarianism, genocide and war, Taiwan and America share very essential political values: Freedom, democracy, respect for human rights.

The visit irked China, of course, which claims Taiwan as a province and doesn’t like Americans stopping by, especially meeting with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen … whom the Butchers of Beijing refuse to refer to as “president.”

Totalitarians often seem especially displeased with the words people utter. Upon his arrival, Pompeo spoke of the beautiful island nation as — get this! — a “great nation,” further traumatizing the Chinese.

In bigger news, however, Pompeo urged the United States to recognize Taiwan as a free and independent nation. It is, indeed. And I applaud the Trump Administration for opening up all manner of nation-to-nation dialogue and cooperation, and the Biden Administration for continuing that policy.

But it’s complicated.

The Chinese have long threatened to launch a bloody invasion in order to “reunite” Taiwan’s territory with the repressive People’s Republic of China (PRC) against the will of the Taiwanese. The PRC claims that any official announcement of “independence” by Taiwan or similar recognition by the U.S. is provocation for war.

Rather than fretting about the “independence” label, let’s concern ourselves with the strategic and tactical military means for Taiwan to resist the embrace the Chinazis have already clamped upon Tibet, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Tags China, Mike Pompeo, Taiwan, war

general freedom international affairs national politics & policies

How to Avoid World War III

Post author By Redactor
Post date March 11, 2022
No Comments on How to Avoid World War III

Last week, when I heard about a power outage across Taiwan, my first thought was the possibility of a Chinese cyberattack which might precede a military attack.

It was not that. Thank goodness.

But what if it had been? Many have speculated that the Russian invasion of Ukraine might distract the U.S. and thereby encourage Xi Jinping and his People’s Liberation Army to launch an assault against Taiwan.

How should the U.S. react to a Chinese invasion? Even with our silly policy of “strategic ambiguity,” most in Asia expect the U.S. to defend the island nation. The Washington Post and others argue the U.S. has committed to fight with Taiwan.*

That’s not the case with Ukraine.

Like Ukraine, Taiwan will defend itself, but is over-matched. Geographically important as part of the first island chain, Taiwan is, as former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo points out, “right in the middle of our defensive parameters, from Japan to Korea to the Philippines in the South China Sea.”

And the island is economically nearly essential. “Ninety percent of the most advanced [computer] chips are made in Taiwan,” reports The New York Times.

The United States should not be the world’s policeman, which dilutes our strength, needed not only for our own defense and the defense of navigable trade routes but also the defense of hundreds of millions of currently free people with whom we are allied — especially in Asia.

Most urgently in Taiwan.

As a country, it’s time to start doing some homework, and push-ups. Economically. Militarily. Being weak doesn’t help anyone. Being strong is our best chance to avoid World War III.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* The USA has pledged military assistance to 67 countries in all, including the Republic of China (Taiwan), but not Ukraine. It’s a list the American people have every right to re-configure. But until then, one Pentagon planners should get busy with.

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international affairs media and media people

Gain of Dysfunction

Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland

Early in Putin’s war, rumors and assertions and “memes” about Russian forces attacking U.S. bioweapons labs in Ukraine quickly spread online.

The corporate press’s “official” “fact” “checkers” mocked the idea, of course.

But then something … inconvenient … happened. Senator Marco Rubio asked Under-Secretary of State Victoria Nuland point blank: “Does Ukraine have chemical and biological weapons?”

Her response was not, as Glenn Greenwald notes, what he was expecting. “Ukraine has biological research facilities,” she answered,* “which, we are now in fact quite concerned that Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.”

It turns out that the United States has long been working with Ukraine “to consolidate and secure pathogens and toxins of security concern and to continue to ensure Ukraine can detect and report outbreaks caused by dangerous pathogens before they pose security or stability threats.” And the relationship between defensive biological research and offensive is quite close, Greenwald suggests: “research that is classified as ‘defensive’ can easily be converted, deliberately or otherwise, into extremely destructive biological weapons.”

If this is at all puzzling, note those fact-checkers, again. These “defensive” warriors in the memetic arena are supposed to serve as antibodies to “misinformation” in the realm of spreadable ideas. By reflexively debunking any new attack on accepted government-approved opinion, they serve as spreaders of their own misinformation.

As in the war of ideas, so in the war of biological contagions.

The next question is: Does it make sense to place our labs on the border of our enemy?

But then, I thought it was a bad idea to subsidize biological research laboratories in Wuhan, China.

Our leaders think they know better.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

* Greenwald leaves in Nuland’s uh-stutters and the like. I’ve cut them.

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Tags bioweapon, Marco Rubio, Russia, Ukraine, Vladimir Putin

government transparency international affairs

U.S. Patent 9,587,003 B2

“Study finds genetic code in Covid’s spike protein linked to Moderna patent,” reads the headline in the Daily Mail. The story is another in a long chain of revelations linking American researchers and funding to the laboratory in Wuhan, China, that likely created the novel coronavirus.

But wait! some readers will shout. Isn’t the big COVID Origin story right now the new studies strongly pushing the Bat Soup (wet market) origin?

No. Those studies are slapdash — perhaps designed to balance against the continuing scientific revelations pointing to SARS-CoV‑2 as a gain-of-function job funded in part by American taxpayers.

The far more important story tells us that an “international team of researchers” discovered a tell-tale string of genetic code “in SARS-CoV‑2’s unique furin cleavage site, the part that makes it so good at infecting people and separates it from other coronaviruses.” It’s a key part of the infamous “spiked protein.” The Daily Mail piece by Connor Boyd explains that this “structure has been one of the focal points of debate about the virus’s origin, with some scientists claiming it could not have been acquired naturally.”

The research team claims that “there is a one-in-three-trillion chance Moderna’s sequence randomly appeared through natural evolution.”

And by “Moderna’s sequence” the scientists mean a genetic product that the company patented in its cancer research projects.

This is all still controversial, of course, but it is worth noting that much of past controversy consisted of desperate attempts by the Dr. Fauci/Peter Daszak faction to avoid any responsibility for what may be history’s greatest medical malpractice case.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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A Naïve Victory

The warning was loud and clear. It came from China’s government and was echoed by Nancy Pelosi: during the Beijing Olympics, don’t dare protest the brutal policies of China’s government lest it come down upon you like a ton of bricks.

An Olympic athlete has found a way to both heed and spurn this counsel.

In what the New York Times calls a “rare rebuke,” Swedish speedskater Nils van der Poel has given one of his gold medals to the daughter of a Chinese-born Swedish publisher being imprisoned by the Chinese government.

Last November, Nils saw a production by Civil Rights Defenders that told of how Gui Minhai, a publisher of works criticizing the Chinazi regime, is now incarcerated in China. He had been abducted by Chinese operatives while vacationing in Thailand.

The skater felt obliged to do something in protest “since I had the opportunity that very few people have.”

Gui’s daughter, Angela, shrugs off any suggestion that the skater’s gesture, lacking immediate power to free her father, must be naïve.

“A little bit of naïveté is important to try to effect change,” she says. “I think it’s very important that Nils giving me his medal to honor my father is understood as honoring political prisoners like him, many of whom are increasingly Hong Kongers and Uyghurs.”

What about it, fellow Olympic winners? If you follow Nils’s example, you’ll no longer have your medal. But you’ll still have your victory.

And a little more.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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international affairs Internet controversy social media

Starlink to Ukraine

Twitter’s policy of spasmodically censoring tweets and banning accounts, often without pausing to ponder what they are doing, has had at least one baleful effect in Ukraine.

Last Wednesday, Twitter said it had “erred when it deleted about a dozen accounts that were posting information about Russian troop movements.” Obviously, the Russian invaders already know about their own troop movements. Losing this info could only hurt the people in Ukraine trying to defend themselves or run for their lives.

Innocent error? Anyway, Twitter said, in effect, “Our bad” and that it was now “proactively reinstating” affected accounts.

On the plus side, though, Ukraine official Mykhailo Federov was able to use Twitter to ask Elon Musk for help when the Russian assault knocked out the Internet in parts of the country.

“@elonmusk, while you try to colonize Mars,” Federov tweeted, “Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space — Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people! We ask you to provide Ukraine with Starlink stations. . . .”

That’s one way to get around the secretary barrier. And it worked.

“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” was Musk’s tweet-response last Saturday.

Starlink satellites provides Internet access from space. No cables or optic fiber needed. Nothing for saboteurs to snip.

Good thinking, Mr. Federov. Thank you for the unreliably available platform, Twitter. Thank you, Elon Musk, for answering Ukraine’s cry for help and doing so as swiftly as possible.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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