Nury Vittachi

OOPS, SORRY, WASHINGTON POST This is funny – I made an interesting discovery while trawling through US tax records looking for something else. I found the cash backer of the Hong Kong Democracy Council. What is that? The Washington Post says it is a group that "aims to promote Hong Kong’s democratic ambitions”. No it isn't! It’s a US initiative to disrupt the government of China! Sadly for me, other sources agree with the Washington Post. NPR says it is “a lobbyist group that raises issues like the plight of the city's political prisoners etc” Wikipedia tells the world it is “a non-governmental organization advocating for Hong Kong's autonomy”. It is an “advocacy organization,” says Voice of America. NO! I have always been QUITE SURE that it is a US initiative to disrupt the government of China. Anyway, I found the tax papers of its funding group Human Rights Foundation Inc, and guess what? They list it as, quote: “CCP Disruption Initiative”. Case closed. Sorry, Washington Post.

ALL COUNTRIES NEED to follow China’s transition to clean energy, John Kerry said yesterday. And that includes the US, the former presidential candidate said. His assertion was a challenge to the US President. On soaring pump prices and fossil fuel company profits, Trump said recently: “I don’t give a damn. I’m going to say it. We’re making a freaking fortune.” . 'WORLD'S BIGGEST EMITTER' Kerry is representing the US in Turkey at COP31, the annual meeting to review progress to fight the harm being done to the Earth’s environment. He spoke about the need for the world to follow China to reporters from the UK Guardian—which is ironic, since the “Fiona Harvey Fallacy” is named after that newspaper’s environment editor. The FHF says that China must always be described as “the world’s biggest emitter” while hiding the per capita figures, which show western consumers are a much bigger problem than the Chinese. While China tends to focus on its own people’s needs, it has several times said it is happy with its role as climate leader. The latest five-year plan says China would “actively participate in and lead global climate governance”. . ASTONISHING FIGURES China's energy products are already the main tool being used to enable other nations achieve their transition targets, with astonishing data points from the International Energy Agency. - The Chinese now make 95 per cent of the global supply of photovoltaic wafers, the super-thin ultra-flat slices of crystalline silicon that enable solar cells to function. - As a result, high-efficiency solar panels are almost as cheap as roofing tiles. These have proved popular globally, with 85 per cent of solar cells around the world originating in China. - The Chinese make 97 per cent of the world’s supply of anode materials, the electrochemically active substances that form the negative electrode in batteries. China is thus leading the world in battery technology. . SPOILER ATTEMPTS It is worth noting that it would have been much easier for the world’s rich countries to research, develop and produce these products—but they simply had no interest in doing so, leaving the job to a developing country fighting poverty in Asia. It is also worth noting that the US tried to spoil the distribution of affordable solar cells by arguing that people in the Xinjiang area were in the supply chain. However, the US’s “Uyghur genocide” narrative has been widely debunked. The number of Chinese Uyghurs in Xinjiang has grown faster in real terms and in proportional terms than the number of Chinese Han in the area. The same is true of Chinese Tibetans.) . CAR WARS - On the same lines, the Chinese developed a way to make electric cars as cheap and convenient (meaning fast-charging/ high range) as petrol ones. These are also proving popular globally, with the latest figures indicating that 75 per cent of the world’s electric cars now having Chinese origins. The US has banned Chinese electric cars and put pressure on Mexico to also take a hostile attitude to them. . MID-TERMS CHANGE OF POLICY? Of course, the beating that Trump’s administration took at the mid-terms has been interpreted by some people that this hostility could change in two years. Unlikely. People have forgotten that it was actually Joe Biden who put up tariff barriers to keep Chinese cars out of the US. It was the US Democratic Party which violated World Trade Organization rules to order the world to stop selling technology to China, in a bid to slow the country's development. It was Barack Obama who sent the US military to infest East Asia and push a war-mongering narrative. Whatever weasel words are used – “contain”, “deter”, “constrain”, "defend" – it is a bipartisan policy to use dirty tricks to slow the peaceful rise of China. But younger people in the US have proved less susceptible to the brainwashing of the older generation -- and thus provide a glimmer of hope. . .

Movie star and newly convicted rapist Russell Brand was introduced to the dark side of sex as a schoolboy when his father hired prostitutes for him in Hong Kong, it was revealed yesterday. Ex-fans of the jailed celebrity uncovered a show the UK comedian made almost 25 years ago when he described a trip he and his father made to Bangkok and Hong Kong. In the interview, he described going to Hong Kong and interacting with women in swimsuits at a bar. “All them women in swimsuits! I can't wait to get back to my school tell my mates,” was his first thought. But then they come over to him and started flirting with him, leaving him stunned. The father and son arranged to take them back to their hotel. Brand said that what he “actually ended up telling my mates was about three prostitutes in the, in the back of a taxi, with the click-clack of their high heels on a marble hotel lobby floor going up to that beautiful room and, like, of you [Dad] being there with that woman who came back for nothing, didn't she? The, the manager of the, of the brothel, the madam, didn't she?" This is clearly a description of a visit to a bar in Wan Chai—in which men meet scantily clad women and then take them (for a fee) back to their hotels. In the interview, Brand mentions “the Mandarin Palace Hotel”—although this may be the result of confusion, and may be a reference to the Mandarin Oriental hotel in Hong Kong. The clip came from the first episode of Brand’s documentary series “RE: Brand”, broadcast in 2002. This clearly happened several times. Russell: “Then I had that lovely young Filipino one, didn't I?” Dad: “You fell in love every time.” On social media, many people have criticized Brand’s father Ron, whose notoriously bad behaviour in regards to sex likely influenced his son—who will now be spending years in jail after being found guilty in a rape case. Most of the examples of “that sort” of bar in Wan Chai have now closed, although there is still a vice trade in the city. . .

FIVE THINGS THEY'RE NOT TELLING YOU ABOUT JOSHUA WONG NUMBER FIVE: REJECTED The US is saying loudly and frequently that his detention is political. But here’s what the US is NOT saying: In 2020, Joshua Wong applied to the US and made the argument that his detention was political, that he worked with their guys and deserved immediate political asylum. The US rejected him. They said er… no thank you. Nope. Don’t think so. Bye bye. So that makes their criticisms of Hong Kong right now look rather hollow. . ‘CITY HE LOVES’! On a related note, the Guardian today writes that Joshua Wong should be free quote “to walk the streets of the city he loves”. Guardian writers, please note – Joshua Wong spent his days calling for harm to come to Hong Kong, applauding when it did, and then tried very hard to move to the US. His family sold their Hong Kong apartment for a fat profit, took the money, and moved to Australia. Now, if this was a clickbait video, we’d saying: “Item number one will shock you.” Well, this is NOT a clickbait video, everything in it is factual—but item number one is pretty … interesting… we are going share some genuinely startling information about the groups with which he worked. . COUNTDOWN: NUMBER 4. TRUTH ABOUT ‘DRACONIAN’ LAW Western mainstream media is saying that Joshua Wong was locked up under Hong Kong’s quote “draconian” security law. But you can literally print it out and compare it with the security laws of the US, UK and Australia. All the western ones are significantly harsher. Try it yourself. For example, they all say it bans dissent. Except it doesn’t mention dissent. When I have a minute, I’ll do it as a diagram, to make it really easy. Why are western journalists lying about this? I think mostly due to laziness and confirmation bias, plus a little bit of racism. . 3. WONG CHANGED Joshua Wong changed. He started off as a nice young man quoting the Bible, and declaring that our real enemy was “capitalist hegemony”—remember that? It was a bit of an odd thing to say in Hong Kong, the stock market king of the world. But he mysteriously changed, fell in with bad company from the other side of the Pacific, and he soon turned into a little Chinese MAGA. When the pandemic swept the planet, Wong distributed this meme – it shows the Batman sign in the sky with the phrase “this is how they call people for dinner in Wuhan.” When violent protests in Hong Kong meant that the number of mainland Chinese tourists visiting the city would fall, Joshua Wong tweeted: “And they call that a punishment?” Hong Kong’s economy depends on Chinese tourists, so he was wishing harm on his own community – and on that theme, we come to… . 2. THE VICTIMS None of the news reports about his sentencing explain who his victims were. When someone commits any crime, a key part of the story, surely, is the victim or victims and the harm suffered. We need to look at that—it totally changes the story. Joshua Wong asked for the world (meaning the US and its vassals) to sanction Hong Kong—a hardworking, peaceful city, which has done him no harm at all. - In March of 2019, when the US government sent a delegation to Hong Kong, he talked to them about hitting Hong Kong with sanctions. - On 6 August 2019, Joshua Wong and his buddy Nathan Law asked US government officials to adopt the “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” and impose sanctions on Hong Kong as soon as possible. - In September of that year, he flew to America to demand sanctions on Hong Kong. . MISSION SUCCESSFUL He got what he wanted. - On 27 November 2019, the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act was signed into law in the United States. It had the effect of levying sanctions which changed the position of the Hong Kong people with regards to the US. Hong Kong was one of the few places in the world with a positive trade balance with the US – we were fixing the US deficit, we were fixing the US debt problem, we were the good guys, until then. But the Act that Joshua Wong worked so hard to introduce changed this. From then on, we were a community treated with deep suspicion and subjected to constant hostile inspections and reviews. The Hong Kong people were the victims—entrepreneurial businesses were hit, jobs were lost, sales were cancelled, economic growth was damaged. . MORE SANCTIONS There was more. This was followed by the amending of sections 205 and 206 of the US Hong Kong Policy Act. This meant the US would constantly reexamine the question of whether Hong Kong continues to warrant treatment under United States law in the same manner as when British people were in charge. I know, right? White folks in charge. Fine. Non-whites in charge? Gotta check what they’re up to. Again, the Hong Kong people as a whole were the victims—making a living became harder. . INDIVIDUAL SANCTIONS The US government then hammered individual sanctions at Hong Kong people – our civil servants, our police force, our ministers, our judiciary. Many of them lost their bank accounts, lost their credit cards, lost their ability to travel – they could not even buy food for their children. None of them deserved what happened to them. . MORE RESTRICTIVE TRADING LAWS In July of 2020, the US announced a new sanction – all Hong Kong businesses would now be classified under the same restrictive trading laws as those of mainland China. So, for example, the city would no longer be allowed import/ export of listed technology items. This was a massive blow to the city, a small coastal community that depended almost entirely on import and export of goods. . ILLEGAL TO SAY ‘MADE IN HONG KONG’ And that wasn’t all. On August 11, 2020, the US said that all “made in Hong Kong” products must henceforth be labeled as "Made in China". Make no mistake – this was a long list of sanctions that hurt the Hong Kong people. It hurt enterprises, it hurt employees, it hurt young people wanting jobs, it hurt the community as a whole. I could go on, but you get the picture. Joshua Wong and his colleagues did massive harm to the people of Hong Kong—and planned to do more. . 1. SHADOWY ORGANIZATIONS Now we get to number one. Who were the organizations standing behind Joshua Wong? As soon as I mention foreign groups involved in organizing the Hong Kong protests, people tell me that that’s just a conspiracy theory. You find that position taken by numerous western mainstream journalists. I’d been writing op-eds for the New York Times in those early days of the protests, but that paper was harsh on that particular issue, saying that accusations of foreign interference were a "shopworn canard". That’s an archaic phrase meaning a "stale untrue myth". . CHECK THEIR EVIDENCE Here’s another example. “THERE WAS NO FOREIGN INTERFERENCE BEHIND THE PROTESTS,” according to this book by western mainstream journalists Shabani Mahtani and Timothy McLaughlin. “They were locally driven, planned, and organized.” What’s their evidence for this? Quote: “We covered the protests every weekend and never saw American men in sunglasses hand over wads of cash to demonstrators, contrary to the caricature put out by Beijing.” So that’s it? That’s their investigation?! Hmm, we can’t see American men in sunglasses handing out cash so that means there is no foreign interference! I know, right? . CLEARLY ORGANIZED Contrary to what these people say, the truth is that the protests were clearly organized, meticulously, but covertly, by western anti-China groups. Joshua Wong was strongly associated with several of these western anti-China groups. To avoid this report being too long, I will just highlight a couple of them. He was regularly associated with the Oslo Freedom Forum. That sounds like a peacenik group from Norway, right? Let’s not accept that, let’s act like proper journalists and dig further. We find that it is not in Norway at all, but in the US. Here it is on a maps app. It’s on 5th avenue in New York – one of the swankiest streets in the world. It’s in the Empire State Building. Now we look into its financials and we find it is funded by a large and clearly wealthy group called the Human Rights Foundation Inc, also from the United States. . WE FOUND THEIR TAX RECORDS Now, let’s go to the trouble of investigating the finances of that group. Here are the tax records (see video). We discover some curious things. First, the salaries seem generous for a registered charity, with senior staff getting upwards of a quarter of a million US dollars each, some significantly more. Second, on the contributors list we see just one word “restricted”. No names. So the funding is one or more anonymous rich organizations or individuals. Third, we see an unexpected focus on cryptocurrency, specifically bitcoin. These guys love bitcoin. Reading through it, it appears that their main interests are bitcoin and doing harm to the government of a certain country on the other side of the world. I mean, look at this page. It’s all bitcoin plus “CCP disruption initiative”, to use their own words. Whatever this is, this is clearly your cosy little humanitarian charity. This is a seriously wealthy highly political organization. . EINSTEIN WOULD HATE THIS That’s not all. Who else is associated with Joshua Wong and his colleagues and their protests? There’s the Albert Einstein Institute. Dig into that and we find it has literally nothing to do with the scientist of that name, or physics, or even science. It was founded in 1983 as a US operation collecting and generating strategies to destabilize foreign governments through street protests. The man who ran it, Dr Gene Sharp, had his specialty listed on documents: "coup d'etats" – which is French for "overthrowing governments". Or, to put it into modern American, regime change. . PROTEST ORGANIZERS Here’s Laura Kuenssberg’s BBC Newsnight report on the Oslo Freedom Forum and the Albert Einstein Institute organizing the Hong Kong protests. Kuenssberg: “But the teaching here is to be successful, to topple a government for good. 
You have to be organized, and to plan meticulously. And activists here have been involved in helping to organize the current protests in Hong Kong. Their plan to put thousands of people on the streets of the territory was, in fact, hatched nearly two years ago.” “And Joshua Wong... he's talking to the Hong Kong students now, on a daily, almost hourly basis, and has brought this message to the conference from the streets.” . REGIME CHANGE As you can see, they are in a very nice hotel, eating canapes and drinking champagne. Now here’s a quote from the Albert Einstein Institute. INSTITUTE PROTEST ORGANIZER: “Protesters were taught how to behave during a protest, so how to keep ranks, how to speak to police, how to manage their own movement, how to use marshals within their movement. So these are people who are specially trained. It's also, you know, how to behave when arrested….” REPORTER: “It’s meticulous.” ORGANIZER: “Absolutely.” . ADMISSION The fact is, western protest organizers fully admitted that they spent two years organizing protests in Hong Kong. There’s no reason not to believe them. Now I could go on, I have tons of evidence. But let’s stop here and circle back to Joshua Wong and the recent trial. Some people have done comparisons, and those are interesting. His sentence is rather mild compared to sentences for similar crimes in other nations—although you wouldn’t know it by the media write-ups. Anyway, I want to finish by saying that I am still not happy about this, for two reasons. First, it’s always sad when young people end up in jail. And second, I think the real villains got away scot-free. And those are the mysterious, anonymous super-wealthy funders of western groups that interfere in politics, not just in Hong Kong, but around the world. They are the real problem. They harm everyone. They harm the west and they harm the east. Their activities are enabled, sadly, by the western mainstream media. Be smart. Read widely. Be sceptical. Peace.

CHAPTER 1: “WE FOUND ONE WHO SPEAKS ENGLISH” After the defeat of Japan in 1945, the US was scrambling to place leaders they could control across Asia—and especially around China. So they were pleased to find a Korean independence activist who spoke English. That made Syngman Rhee “the best man for the job” said Lieutenant General John R. Hodge. The icing on the cake was that Syngman Rhee was an American patriot. He had spent almost 40 years in the US hoping for the independence of Korea, which had long been occupied by Japan. “Americans have always liked the idea of dealing with a foreign leader who can be identified as 'their man',” said British diplomat Roger Makins. “They are much less comfortable with movements.” . CHAPTER 2: DELIVERED AND INSTALLED US intelligence agent Preston Goodfellow got Rhee a passport so he could travel back to Asia. Rhee was flown to Tokyo on a US military aircraft. He had a secret meeting with American general Douglas MacArthur, who then flew him to Seoul in mid-October 1945 on his personal aircraft. By 1948, Rhee was the first President of South Korea. His wife was a Caucasian woman, Francesca Donner. Puppet delivered and installed. Tick box. . CHAPTER 3: “MAYBE WE SCREWED UP” But US diplomats and CIA agents were soon wondering if they had screwed up. Koreans were puzzled as to why a western couple was ruling them. Worse still, Rhee was astonishingly uncooperative with his backers. He wanted the US to just keep providing cash while he alone decided how to spend it. He totally rejected the plan (eventually agreed between China, US and others) to keep the country peaceful by dividing it indefinitely into “North Korea” and “South Korea”. Rhee maintained that they must turn Koreans back into one big happy family by taking control of the people in the north with a massive attack from the South, using guns and bombs from the US. Where are they? We’re waiting. The CIA in Seoul wrote a top-secret report to Washington: “Although he wants as little interference with his plans as possible, he undoubtedly recognizes that his government's very existence depends upon aid from the US and that the US cannot be expected to grant that aid without a considerable voice in how it shall be used.” . CHAPTER 4: ASIANS RULING ASIA From the East Asian point of view, what was happening in Korea was very different. Asians should rule Asia, they believed, but here was a nation occupied by a dangerous western colonizer known for its addiction to interfering with sovereign countries. Chinese and Koreans quietly banded together to discuss what to do about Rhee, who they saw, correctly, as a US puppet addicted to corruption and violence. But their strongest skills were patience and strategy, so they kept silent. In contrast, Syngman Rhee couldn’t stop talking, and his slogan became "March North and unify Korea". He agreed with MacArthur that China should be attacked, too. Violence was always the best answer, in his view. . CHAPTER 5: ‘CHINA WILL STAY OUT’ In 1950, individual CIA agents in East Asia discovered that the Chinese were preparing to actively defend the Koreans against western colonizers. But CIA senior staffer Allen Dulles in Washington was skeptical, preferring US-based analysts to active sources on the ground. In October, 1950, the agency assured US leaders that that it saw “no convincing indications of an actual Chinese Communist intention to resort to full-scale intervention in Korea”. This was followed up in the first week of November by a CIA report confirming that the Chinese would definitely NOT get involved in north-south skirmishes. Just 48 hours later, 300,000 Chinese troops entered South Korea. The Americans retreated. They were soon just a thin line of resistors on the south coast of the Korean peninsula. Rhee was furious—and so was the US government. . CHAPTER 6: OUTFOXED The Americans had to work hard to regain their lost territory. They provided a small fortune to clothe and feed an army, the National Defense Corp. Following Rhee’s example, the commander stole the US dollars intended to feed and clothe the men, and in the winter of 1950-51, tens of thousands of the soldiers died of starvation or froze to death in thin summer clothing in unheated barracks. The good news was that the US wouldn’t need to switch puppets, as Rhee had become highly unpopular with South Korea’s National Assembly, who ultimately appointed the President. But Rhee outfoxed everyone. In 1952, he ordered the arrest of opposition figures and changed the constitution so that the election would be decided by popular vote rather than the National Assembly—so he won again. Rhee changed the constitution to allow an incumbent president to run for an unlimited number of terms, instead of the specified “two consecutive terms only”. The US — and the long-suffering peoples of the two Koreas — were stuck with him. . CHAPTER 7: POORER THAN NORTH KOREA After the fighting ended in July 1953, South Korea's economy was in tatters. It lagged behind that of North Korea. Without US aid, the people would have nothing to eat. The country was poorly managed, and diplomats said Rhee was more focused on extracting US cash for himself than developing the nation. How to get rid of him? The preferred US way of puppet-switching was covert manipulation by the CIA, making regime change look like a democratic decision by the people. . CHAPTER 8: THE YACHT PARTY Oblivious to the CIA’s wish to switch him out of his job, Syngman Rhee decided to celebrate the end of the Korean war with a party in the late summer of 1953. He invited his powerful friends to join him on his yacht: the finest food and drink in a luxury setting. They decided to sail in the waters near Yong-do, an island on the south coast. But they had forgotten that the island was used by the paramilitary arm of the CIA for training. Spotting a vessel in waters nearby, CIA fighters scrambled into action. They launched an assault, shooting at the figures they saw on the boat. Rhee and his guests dived for cover and the vessel rapidly sailed away. By remarkable luck, neither the President nor any of his guests were killed—but he was horrified at their near brush with death. “He called in the American ambassador and informed him that the CIA’s paramilitary group had seventy-two hours to leave the country,” reported CIA historian Tim Weiner. The expulsion was a disaster for the CIA’s covert operations in South Korea, North Korea and China. . CHAPTER 9: EXECUTION In 1956, Rhee won his third election—but was dismayed to see that his rival, Cho Bong-am, had won 30 per cent of the vote. Cho had campaigned for a positive relationship between north and south, leading to a peaceful reunification. Peace? PEACE?! Rhee hated that idea, which sounded like China’s strategy for the nationalists on Taiwan island. In 1959, Rhee’s government charged Cho with spying, accusing him of receiving funds from a foreign power. (Ironic, given Rhee’s constant requests for US funds.) Cho was acquitted—so the trial was re-run and he was found guilty. He was hanged at a prison on 31 July 1959. . CHAPTER 10: CALLING IN THE TANKS The Rhee nightmare would not end. US hopes for a farewell were stymied as he stood for a fourth term in March of 1960. The opposition candidate died shortly before the election, and Rhee, now 84, was declared winner with 100 per cent of the vote. But then came an unexpected problem. Rhee wanted his protégé elected as Vice President. The younger man’s election was clearly rigged, other politicians said. Street protests sprang up. Rhee’s police force, which was now basically his private army, turned up with guns and shot protesters. That was a step too far. It led to the student-led April Revolution, with the streets filled with angry young voices. Rhee called out the tanks and had them point their barrels at the street along which the young people were approaching. . CHAPTER 11: BACK ON A U.S. AIRCRAFT But everyone had had enough. As the streets filled with protesters, the US embassy sent Ambassador Walter McConaughy to politely give Rhee the sack. “When the critical moment came, Rhee heeded their advice about resigning,” said Marshall Green, a US diplomat in Seoul at the time. The CIA flew Rhee out of South Korea on Civil Air Transport, an airline the agency covertly owned and managed through offices in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Rhee flew to Hawaii in the United States, where he settled with his wife and son. US President Eisenhower wrote a public letter to him: “Your tenacity and indomitable courage… won the admiration of the entire Free World as well as the gratitude of all Koreans.” But in private, the US leader was truthful. “Rhee has been such an unsatisfactory ally that it is difficult indeed to avoid excoriating him in the strongest of terms,” he wrote. . EPILOGUE Syngman Rhee died five years later in Hawaii at the age of 90. The CIA returned to conduct covert operations out of South Korea. The US armed forces remain a dominant presence in the country today. Cho Bong-am, who had been executed in 1959 for calling for a positive relationship between north and south, had his case reviewed in 2011, half a century after he was hanged. The South Korean Supreme Court posthumously cleared him of all espionage charges in a unanimous retrial ruling. He had been guilty of nothing except preferring peace to war, they said. The records show that as he was taken to the gallows, he shared a couple of final thoughts: “If I have done any wrong, it was choosing to enter politics. I need a drink.” . . [Sources: Legacy of Ashes by Tim Weiner, The Korean War by Max Hastings, declassified CIA documents, TheAsanforum. org, writings of Marshall Green, others.]

YES, THE REPUBLICANS LOST control of the House and the Senate. But the real story of US politics this week is the defeat of the Democratic Party’s old guard and the first large-scale failure of AIPAC. Voters wanted a genuine anti-war stance, NOT the horrific Joe Biden/ Kamila Harris pro-Israel line. - Both those stale Democrats pledged undying loyalty to Israel, endless funds for Netanyahu, and a bottomless supply of "special price for you" bombs with which Tel Aviv could blow up surrounding communities ("defend Israel"). - The old Democrats were loudly pro-war – we can’t forget Kamila Harris’s insistence that the US would have “the most lethal force on Earth”, and her party’s insistence that not enough taxpayer cash was being diverted to the military. - The Democrats were also heavily into global dominance. Biden arranged “Democracy Summits” which excluded actual democratic countries, because the gatherings were really just thinly disguised sales meetings of pro-Washington agents from around the world. (Asia’s oldest democracy, Sri Lanka, was excluded for not hating China enough, and Taiwan, which isn’t even a country by the US’s own definition, was included.) - Biden’s foreign secretary Tony Blinken endlessly peddled the absurd lie that the US underpinned the “rules-based order”, when the country refused to sign or ratify more than 40 of the international conventions that kept the world safe. (In contrast, China DID sign most of them.) . GLOBAL INTERFERENCE The old Democrats, the public realized, were worse than the Republicans on the issue of US interference around the world. And Trump exploited that. Trump defeated the Democrats in 2024 by simply realizing that the US public was opposed to overseas wars. Their leader said he would stop wars “on his first day”. It won him power. Then he did the opposite, starting the most ill-considered war for decades, attacking Iran on Israel’s behalf, and he also threatened war on Panama, Canada, Greenland—anyone who opposed the old US habit of global military expansionism. . WHO ATTACKED INTERNATIONAL LAW? Most of the world is saying that Donald Trump’s administration repeatedly violates international law. This criticism is clearly valid. But we mustn’t forget that Joe Biden did the exact same thing earlier. “Biden showed that international law is little more than a cudgel to be used against our enemies while being treated as optional for our friends,” wrote foreign policy advisor Matt Duss in a January 2025 review of how Biden lost to Trump. . ISRAEL CONSENSUS IS OVER So let’s be clear about who was really defeated this week. It was the militarist status quo favored by the terrifying Israeli lobby. Pro-Palestinian candidates won many races, and Michigan’s Abdul El-Sayed became the first Muslim in the US Senate, despite (and this is the key) AIPAC spending more than US$40m to defeat him. “The old bipartisan consensus on Israel is over,” Beth Miller, political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, told the press. What does that mean? America could stop its terrible behaviour in West Asia, and decline to send more bombs to Netanyahu. It could actually take action against the expansionist “settlers” in the West Bank. (Let’s be realistic—we’ll believe it when we see it, but at least it is now a possibility.) Let’s recall that just a few weeks ago, AIPAC owned up to the fact that it was now harming candidates by showering them with millions of dollars and boasting that every candidate it backed got elected. It then said it was backing off—which was not actually true. The money will just be steered to their candidates in sneakier ways. . HOPE FOR LESS INTERFERENCE IN ASIA From the point of view of Asia—which, in human terms, is larger than all the other regions of the world put together—the results are mixed, but can be seen as hopeful. Asia wants peace and freedom from US interference. The old United States, both parties, endlessly used their proxy forces in the Philippines and Taiwan and Hong Kong to create friction. Both Biden and Trump worked hard to turn Asia (Australia, Japan, Taiwan, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, others) into a network of proxy forces with which to threaten or attack China, which had committed the grave sin, in US eyes, of developing peacefully, without invading the rest of Asia. It would be naïve to assume that a major move towards peace is coming. But looking at the number of non-white, pro-peace faces among the mid-term winners yesterday, one can at least hope for a safer, fairer world. . .