{"id":224751,"date":"2022-12-05T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2022-12-05T12:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=224751"},"modified":"2022-11-29T04:37:45","modified_gmt":"2022-11-29T04:37:45","slug":"china-keeps-aggressively-surrounding-itself-with-u-s-bases","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/12\/china-keeps-aggressively-surrounding-itself-with-u-s-bases\/","title":{"rendered":"China Keeps Aggressively Surrounding Itself with U.S. Bases"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/china-pacific.jpeg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-224755\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/china-pacific.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" height=\"342\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/china-pacific.jpeg 1024w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/china-pacific-300x205.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/china-pacific-768x525.jpeg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><em>29 Nov 2022 &#8211; <\/em>Facts:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There are Chinese people with real grievances against their government.<\/li>\n<li>The US empire\u2019s propaganda machine will spin current protests in China to advance imperial agendas.<\/li>\n<li>Western intelligence agencies will become more and more involved in these protests the longer they go on.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>It still amazes me how many people who fancy themselves anti-establishment critical thinkers will spend all day mindlessly regurgitating mainstream media lines about China.<\/p>\n<p>I cannot emphasize enough how little respect I have for anyone who parrots US empire narratives about China and how completely dismissive I am of all their attempts to explain to me that it\u2019s actually right and good to do this. Literally all of our major problems are because of the people who rule over us; if you\u2019re buying into the narrative that who we should really be mad at right now is a government on the other side of the planet with no power over us, you\u2019re a fucking loser. You\u2019re a boot-licking empire wimp. You\u2019re worthless, bleating human livestock.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>Why does China keep aggressively surrounding itself with US military bases?<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">US Military Set to Return to Subic Bay, Philippines to Counter China<br \/>The US closed its military base in Subic Bay 30 years ago<br \/>by Dave DeCamp<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/DecampDave?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >@DecampDave<\/a> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/6gmTbebKc3\" >https:\/\/t.co\/6gmTbebKc3<\/a> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/1jniZiFr9q\" >pic.twitter.com\/1jniZiFr9q<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Antiwar.com (@Antiwarcom) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Antiwarcom\/status\/1595937298910449664?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >November 25, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>Everyone knows the US has invaded countries completely unprovoked very recently and will definitely do so again, but we still have to pretend that Putin is the worst thing since Hitler.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s disturbing how many people I encounter who claim Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine is worse than America\u2019s invasion of Iraq because Ukraine is a \u201cdemocracy\u201d. How fucked up do you have to be inside to believe human lives are worth less because of their nation\u2019s political system?<\/p>\n<p>Leaving aside the fact that a nation which bans political parties, shuts down opposition media, imprisons opposition leaders, and is vastly more accountable to Washington than to its own people is in no way a \u201cdemocracy\u201d, that\u2019s just a profoundly disturbed way of looking at life.\u00a0A mother holding the remains of a child whose body has been ripped apart by military explosives does not care whether her country is considered a \u201cdemocracy\u201d by the western governments who are invested in that country\u2019s military outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>Rightists correctly believe that liberals subscribe to an artificially constructed worldview designed by the powerful in the service of the powerful, but incorrectly believe that they themselves do not.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>Common debates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Which status quo party is best<\/li>\n<li>Which side of the culture war is correct<\/li>\n<li>How the western empire should act<\/li>\n<li>What capitalism should look like<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Uncommon debates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Should status quo politics exist<\/li>\n<li>Should the western empire exist<\/li>\n<li>Should capitalism exist<\/li>\n<li>Should class war replace culture war<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And it is of course entirely by design that the former are common and the latter are uncommon. Keeping everyone debating <em><strong>how<\/strong><\/em> establishment power structures should exist, rather than <em><strong>if<\/strong><\/em> they should, ensures the survival of those power structures.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s actually a really big problem that the most visible \u201cleft\u201d in the US is completely worthless on war and militarism. When Americans who are critical of those things look right and see people like Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson doing something then look left and see AOC and Bernie doing nothing, which side do you think they\u2019ll choose?<\/p>\n<p>And of course this is because the so-called progressive Democrats are not \u201cleft\u201d in any meaningful way, but your average mainstream American doesn\u2019t know that, and perception is reality. The US is the nation where antiwar sentiment is most important and the most urgently needed, and it\u2019s been buried on the left. Americans are trained that Clintonites are \u201ccenter-left\u201d and AOC\/Bernie are \u201cfar left\u201d, and anyone further to the left than them on foreign policy is demonized by these progressives as a Russian agent. This creates the very understandable impression that the entire left is pro-war.<\/p>\n<p>When you\u2019ve got <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/IlhanMN\/status\/1585829601003327488\" >Ilhan Omar<\/a>\u00a0and <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/kthalps\/status\/1582133778067369984?lang=en\" >AOC<\/a> calling people who protest US proxy warfare at their rallies Russian operatives and antiwar leftists like Jill Stein branded as Kremlin agents, the message mainstream Americans come away with is that antiwar sentiment is only welcome on the right.<\/p>\n<p>Again, I get this isn\u2019t true and there\u2019s lots of antiwar sentiment on the true left in the US, but nobody sees that left. It\u2019s denied any media presence or political validity; mainstream Americans don\u2019t know the difference between an anti-imperialist socialist and a Berner.\u00a0This causes antiwar Americans to drift to the right; I\u2019ve watched it happen in real time with some of my US followers. I do my best to make the case for the left, but I\u2019m just one voice amid a surging deluge of messaging they\u2019re getting that the real opposition is on the right.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>Naming your war machinery after the Indigenous tribes your government genocided is the modern-day equivalent of wearing the skulls of your enemies on your war horse.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>A lot of acceptance of the status quo worldview boils down to a failure of imagination. People literally can\u2019t imagine the possibility that reality is as different as it is from what they\u2019ve been told by their teachers, parents, pundits and politicians. It\u2019s actually unfathomable to them, and that is <em>because<\/em> it\u2019s so different. The world we\u2019re trained to see by establishment perception managers is as different from the real world as any fictional world is.<\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">The incremental normalization of police murderbots is probably nothing to worry about. <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/N97S6Rm0tk\" >https:\/\/t.co\/N97S6Rm0tk<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/caitoz\/status\/1596320956515241984?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" >November 26, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>\u2756<\/p>\n<p>The claim that capitalism is the best system for generating profits is basically correct; it\u2019s hard to beat greed and starvation as a carrot and stick to get the gears of industry whirring. The issue here is that merely generating profits won\u2019t solve most of the world\u2019s problems, and in fact many of our problems come from the fact that capitalism is <em><strong>too<\/strong><\/em> effective at turning the gears of industry. Our biosphere is dying largely because capitalism values making lots of things but not un-making things; we\u2019re choking our ecosystem to death because it\u2019s profitable.<\/p>\n<p>Capitalism has no real answers for problems like ecocide, inequality, exploitation and caring for the needful. Yes \u201clet the markets decide\u201d will generate lots of profits for those set up to harvest them, but profit-seeking cannot address those very serious problems.\u00a0The \u201cinvisible hand of the market\u201d gets treated as an actual deity that actually exists, with all the wisdom necessary to solve the world\u2019s problems, but in reality the pursuit of money lacks any wisdom. It can\u2019t solve our major problems, it can only make more stuff and generate more profit.<\/p>\n<p>Find me a capitalist business plan for leaving a forest untouched. Find me a capitalist business plan for keeping someone free of illness, for ensuring that someone with nothing gets what they need, for giving resources to a struggling parent. You can\u2019t. Capitalism can\u2019t do this.\u00a0These are the most important things in the world, and no possible iteration of capitalism has any solutions for any of them whatsoever, apart from \u201cWell hopefully rich people will feel very charitable and fix those problems.\u201d And how is that solution working out? It\u2019s a joke.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201cMaybe the very rich will feel charitable and fix our problems for us\u201d solution assumes that the very same people who are wired to do whatever it takes to claw their way to the top of the ladder will suddenly start caring deeply about everyone they stepped on to get there.\u00a0Capitalism elevates sociopaths, because profit-seeking competition-based systems reward those who are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. That\u2019s why we are ruled by sociopaths, and it\u2019s why looking to \u201cphilanthropy\u201d as a solution to our problems is a ridiculous joke.<\/p>\n<p>When capitalism proponents tell socialists and communists \u201cYou don\u2019t understand economics,\u201d what they really mean is \u201cYou don\u2019t understand that capitalism is the best system for generating profits.\u201d But socialists and communists <em>do<\/em> understand this; it\u2019s just that generating profits, in and of itself, is not sufficient.<\/p>\n<p>If lack of wealth is your major problem, then capitalism can be a tool to address it; that\u2019s what China is temporarily doing to keep up economically with the western forces who wish to enslave it. But such measures won\u2019t solve ecocide, inequality, exploitation, and caring for the needful. For that other measures are needed.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to make more of something (money, material goods), then capitalism can be a good way to do that. But if you need to make less of something (pollution, inequality, exploitation, sickness, homelessness, etc) it\u2019s worthless, and other systems must be looked to.<\/p>\n<p>You can say \u201cBut communist regimes are authoritarian blah blah\u201d all you want, but that doesn\u2019t change the fact that capitalism has zero answers for the most important problems facing our species. This still needs to be addressed, and moaning about Mao and Stalin isn\u2019t an answer.\u00a0Don\u2019t like the iterations of socialism we\u2019ve seen so far? Okay. Then find another answer, and remember we\u2019ve already established that capitalism is not an answer; it cannot address the problems we\u2019ve discussed here. So we need to find an actual answer that does actually work.<\/p>\n<p>Dismantling capitalism, if we ever achieve it, will be the most difficult thing that humanity has ever accomplished. As hard as everyone becoming a buddha, and essentially not much different. But that doesn\u2019t change the fact that it is existentially necessary for us to do so.<\/p>\n<p>We\u2019ll either move from competition-based systems to collaboration-based ones, eliminating all the obstacles necessary for us to do so, or we will go extinct. We are at our adapt-or-die juncture as a species.<\/p>\n<p>_________________________________________________<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 40px;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Caitlin-Johnstone.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-180156\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/Caitlin-Johnstone.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"100\" height=\"100\" \/><\/a> <em>Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly\u00a0<a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@caityjohnstone\" >at <\/a><\/em><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/medium.com\/@caityjohnstone\" >Medium<\/a>. <em>Contact: <a href=\"admin@caitlinjohnstone.com\">admin@caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/caitlinjohnstone.com\/2022\/11\/29\/china-keeps-aggressively-surrounding-itself-with-us-bases-notes-from-the-edge-of-the-narrative-matrix\/\" >Go to Original \u2013 caitlinjohnstone.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>29 Nov 2022 &#8211; Everyone knows the US has invaded countries completely unprovoked very recently and will definitely do so again, but we still have to pretend that Putin is the worst thing since Hitler. I cannot emphasize enough how little respect I have for anyone who parrots US empire narratives about China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":224755,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[180],"tags":[867,244,1126,1050,950,86,2571,112,253,278,95,1969,70,1594,481,1038],"class_list":["post-224751","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-brics","tag-anglo-america","tag-china","tag-hegemony","tag-imperialism","tag-invasion","tag-occupation","tag-official-lies-and-narratives","tag-pentagon","tag-putin","tag-russia","tag-us-military","tag-us-wars","tag-usa","tag-war-economy","tag-warfare","tag-xi-jinping"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224751","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}