uawchild
uawchild's JournalChina warns U.S. on sovereignty ahead of South China Sea ruling: Xinhua
Source: Reuters
China's foreign minister spoke with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry by telephone on Wednesday ahead of a key international court ruling on China's South China Sea claims and warned Washington against moves that infringe on China's sovereignty, Beijing's official Xinhua news agency reported.
Xinhua said Wang Yi repeated China's rejection of the jurisdiction of the International Court of Arbitration in a case the Philippines has brought against China's claims to nearly all of the South China Sea, calling it a "farce" that should come to an end.
The court, based in The Hague, is due to give its ruling on Tuesday, raising fears of confrontation in the region. U.S. officials say the U.S. response should China stick to its vow to ignore the ruling could include stepped up freedom-of-navigation patrols close to Chinese claimed islands in what is one of the world's business trade routes.
In his call with Kerry, Wang "urged the United States to honor its commitment to not to take sides on issues related to sovereign disputes, to be prudent with its actions and words, and not to take any actions that infringe upon the sovereignty and security interests of China," Xinhua said.
Wang said that regardless of the tribunal's ruling, China would "firmly safeguard its own territorial sovereignty and legitimate maritime rights and firmly safeguard the peace and stability," Xinhua said.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-kerry-idUSKCN0ZM2GU
Is there an anti-war wing left?
Is there an anti-war wing left in the Democratic Party?
Do so few people care anymore about the wars, military interventions and funding of armed groups that we Democrats just stay silent or worse approve these actions?
Seems that way to me.
Senator McCain, visiting Pakistan, seeks better ties in Islamist fight
Source: Reuters
U.S. Senator John McCain said on Sunday he would like relations between United States and Pakistan to improve as they have a common enemy in the Islamic State and other radical Islamist groups.
Relations between Pakistan and United States have been frayed over the past decade, with U.S. officials frustrated by what they term Islamabad's unwillingness to act against Islamist groups such as the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network.
Pakistan rejects harboring militants but says there are limits to how much it can do as it is already fighting multiple Islamist groups and is wary of "blowback" in the form of more terror attacks on its soil.
McCain, visiting Pakistan as part of a U.S. delegation, said he had an "excellent meeting" with Pakistani foreign ministry officials.
"We come back with a message that we have a common enemy in ISIS, radical Islam and terrorism, and we look forward to closer relations and resolving the differences we have," McCain told Pakistan's national PTV channel.
Relations between United States and Pakistan were tested again in May by a U.S. drone strike that killed Afghan Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour on Pakistani soil.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-pakistan-usa-idUSKCN0ZJ0OL
China to hold drills in South China Sea ahead of court ruling
Source: Reuters
China will hold military drills around the disputed Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, the maritime safety administration said on Sunday, ahead of a decision by an international court in a dispute between China and the Philippines.
China routinely carries out exercises in the South China Sea, where its territorial claims overlap in parts with Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.
Tensions have been rising ahead of a July 12 ruling by an arbitration court hearing the dispute between China and the Philippines over the South China Sea in the Dutch city of The Hague.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-china-idUSKCN0ZJ02C
How many deaths caused by the US since WWII?
The question came up, in another thread about the current war mongering in the media, about how many people the US or Russia has killed or caused the death of since WWII. I asked it. Honestly, considering its treatment of German prisoners shortly after WWII, I suspect Russia has killed more, but I asked this question to get people here on DU to just think about what our country, our military has been responsible for in our lifetimes.
I did not get a straight answer, probably because Russia was thrown in and so many people here see Russia as being nothing but a pariah state. One person tried to extend the timeline further back to make Russia be more blood thirsty, but failed to include deaths caused against American Indians or enslaved Africans in the US total. I never got a straight or accurate answer.
So, OK, FORGET Russia. Just lets consider our own actions -- how many people has the USA killed or caused the death of since WWII?
Sadly, I think its telling that some posters here won't give a straight answer but instead fall back on moral relativism saying other countries are worse. And, please, I am not anti-American, I am though strongly anti-war.
So -- How many people has the US killed or caused the death of since WWII?
Just STOP the war mongering -- Russia is a very weak nation
Endless media stories about Russian aggression and Russia's sinister resurgence, many of which get linked to here on DU as "Late Breaking News", bombard us non-stop -- trying desperately, it seems, to increase military spending at best or possibly start a shooting war at worst.
It is all just INSANE. Here's a graphic of NATO versus Russia's military spending:
How on God's green earth could anyone look at these numbers and not think calls for MORE military spending is nuts?
In terms of invasions by conventional forces Russia is simply no threat at all and is totally outclassed by the US and NATO. Urging even more spending on the military by the US and NATO is wasting money that could be better used elsewhere solving a whole host of social issues.
The only arena militarily where Russia can hold its own is in nuclear weapons, and lets all hope that circumstance don't conspire that nuclear weapons ever actually get used again. Any first use of nukes by Russia outside of Russian territory itself would just be a death warrant for the entire Russian nation. They know that, and we know that.
"My Polish father-in-law did more for Britain than any graffiti-spraying racist"
by David Taylor
"He fought the Nazis, liked a lunchtime pint and enjoyed the roses in his garden. I’m sickened at the reports of abusive graffiti at the London club he attended."
"My father-in-law died at the Polish club that was reportedly targeted this weekend by Brexit-inspired racists creeping around in the night to daub “Go home” graffiti on its glass doors.
Zygmunt Nowicki, a second world war hero, shot down by the Germans, survivor of a terrifying air crash in an Italian vineyard after his crew’s B-24 Liberator had completed a mercy drop of supplies on blockaded Warsaw.
Zygmunt Nowicki, who fought for freedom and then lived a long and purposeful life as a proud Londoner after escaping across war-torn continental Europe to survive and thrive, marry, and have three English children.
He was awarded the Cross of Virtuti Militari – the Polish equivalent of the Victoria Cross
Zygmunt Nowicki, who had an allotment in Hounslow and a job as an engineer at Heathrow airport (for British Airways).
Who liked nothing better on a Friday night than to play bridge and smoke a cigar with a drink at that club in Hammersmith, a place that spoke of common humanity, built by people celebrating life’s small pleasures after risking their lives during their 20s, fighting for big ideas.
One Friday night, he sat back in his chair at the card table and died mid-game. Quite the scripted ending.
I don’t know if I ever met a more contented man – richly continental in his habits (my own mother still speaks of the time he kissed her hand when they first met) – deeply English when it came to the pleasures of a lunchtime pint and the roses that grew in his garden.
He was awarded the Cross of Virtuti Militari – the Polish equivalent of the Victoria Cross – shortly after that mission in August 1944, which almost took his life before it had even really started. It is framed on the wall of the apartment in New York which I share with his youngest daughter, who I have been married to for 21 years. She still proudly retains her Polish surname, Nowicka, the feminised version of her father’s Nowicki. It is from New York that two Brits living abroad (immigrants, you should call us) look back at a country revealing its worst instincts to the world, and shudder.
This weekend brought the return of racists standing in the centre of my hometown of Newcastle with banners bearing a message so sour and pitiful I won’t repeat it. Now we hear of an attack on a place which should be venerated. It was built by people who were here before those miserable vandals were born. Its members did more to preserve all that Britons should hold dear – freedom from fascism, for instance – than feckless, poisonous graffiti-mongers ever will."
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jun/27/polish-father-in-law-racist-graffiti-war-hero-london-club
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An interesting story about some of the Brexit aftermath that I thought worth posting in light of the surge in anti-Polish xenophobia in England.
Taliban leader says foreigners must quit Afghanistan for peace
Source: Reuters
The new leader of the Taliban called for an end to foreign forces' "occupation" of Afghanistan as a preliminary step to a settlement based on Islamic law that he said would bring unity to a country riven by decades of war.
In one of his first public statements, Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, who was named leader of the movement after the death of his predecessor Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour in a U.S. drone strike in May, said agreement was possible if the government in Kabul renounced its foreign allies.
"Your support and siding with invaders is like the work of those abhorrent faces who in our past history supported the Britons and the Soviets," he said in a message ahead of next week's celebration of Eid, one of the major festivals in the Islamic calendar.
He said the Taliban had a program aimed at creating an independent and united country under Islamic law and told the Western-backed government in Kabul that "the doors of forgiveness and tolerance are open".
"Our clear message is that we do not want a monopoly of power," he said "All Afghan tribes and races need each other."
The statement came two days after a suicide attack that killed more than 30 newly graduated police cadets and wounded dozens more and less than two weeks after more than 20 people were killed in separate attacks in Kabul and the northern province of Badakhshan.
NATO leaders meet at a summit in Warsaw on July 8-9 where they are expected to approve maintaining support for the Kabul government up to 2020.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-afghanistan-taliban-idUSKCN0ZI0AR
Revealed: the toxic trail of e-waste that leads from the US to Hong Kong
Source: South China Morning Post (Hong Kong)
The acrid stench of overheating plastic fills the air as a grime-covered worker perched on a bench surrounded by old printers nonchalantly tosses a cigarette to the ground. It’s dirty work disembowelling the detritus of the digital economy.
Welcome to the New Territories district of Yuen Long, which if environmental campaigners are to be believed, threatens to become ground-zero for the world’s electronic waste.
In recent years a cluster of legally questionable work sites have sprung up to store and dismantle the disgorged contents of the growing number of shipping containers arriving in Hong Kong from the planet’s biggest producer of e-waste – the United States.
Monitors pile up, circuit boards are separated from smartphone cases and LCD screens are smashed to smithereens in scenes that are more Mad Max than Silicon Valley.
In partnership with a Seattle-based environmental group that has monitored the flow of hazardous electronic waste out of the US for two decades, the Sunday Morning Post visited 10 such sites identified by the group using tracking devices planted inside waste products.
Read more: http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/health-environment/article/1984534/revealed-toxic-trail-e-waste-leads-us-hong-kong
Is rampant Globalization pushing Right Wingers and Progressives together on trade issues?
It seems that working class people on both sides of the political spectrum are starting to voice the same fears over globalization and the resultant economic insecurity it is causing in their lives. I really wish we democrats as a party would do more to address these issues and not let right wing demagogues like Trump steal and pervert this issue with racism and xenophobia.
Here is an article by Pat Buchanan, and god knows he is a right wing nut bag, that confirms my fears that the right wing is trying to take ownership of this issue. Thank god Bernie Sanders fought the good fight for we democrats in bringing this economic injustice and job insecurity to the fore, and I hope that our presumptive nominee Hillary makes it a major part of her general election campaign going forward.
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Why Trump Challenges Free Trade
By PATRICK J. BUCHANAN • July 1, 2016
In Tuesday’s indictment of free trade as virtual economic treason, The Donald has really set the cat down among the pigeons.
For, in denouncing NAFTA, the WTO, MFN for China and the Trans-Pacific Partnership, all backed by Bush I and II, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, Trump is all but calling his own party leaders dunderheads and losers.
And he seems to be winning the argument.
As he calls for the repudiation of “globalism” and a return to “Americanism,” a Republican Congress renders itself mute on whether it will even vote on the TPP this year.
On trade, Bernie Sanders is closer to Trump. Even Hillary Clinton has begun to renounce a TPP she once called the “gold standard” of trade deals.
Where have all the troubadours of free trade gone? Why do economic patriots seem ascendant? Is this like the Cold War, where the other side gets up and goes home?
Answer. As Trump pointed out in Monessen in the Mon Valley of Pennsylvania, the returns from free trade are in, and the results are rotten.
Since Bush I, we have run $12 trillion in trade deficits, $4 trillion with China. Once a Maoist dump, China has become the greatest manufacturing power on earth. Meanwhile, the U.S. has lost 50,000 factories and a third of its manufacturing jobs.
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/buchanan/why-trump-challenges-free-trade/
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