Reading Stabbings: Deliberate Product of UK Foreign Policy

July 12, 2020 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - It should surprise no one paying attention that the suspect in the recent stabbing spree in Reading, UK was not only known to British security agencies as an extremist and security threat, but that he comes from the pool of extremists the British aided Washington in funding, arming, training, and providing air support for during the 2011 overthrow of the Libyan government and have harbored before and ever since.

The London Guardian in its article, "Libyan held over Reading multiple stabbing 'known to security services'," would admit:

The suspect in an alleged terror attack that left a teacher and two others dead was known to security services and other authorities, it emerged on Sunday.

Khairi Saadallah, the 25-year-old Libyan refugee held over the stabbings in a Reading park, was on the radar of MI5 in the middle of last year, sources told the Guardian.

Saadallah joins a long and growing list of extremists - and in the UK's case, Libyans specifically - who have carried out attacks in the UK after receiving political and material support from Western governments in proxy wars waged across the globe.

The 2017 Manchester Arena bombing killing 23 and injuring over 800 was also carried out by Libyans Salman and Hashem Abedi, also extremists long known to British security agencies.

The London Guardian in its article on the Manchester bombing titled, "Salman Abedi: from hot-headed party lover to suicide bomber," would report:

Quite when Abedi’s aggressive tendencies acquired an ideological bent is difficult to establish, but it has emerged that he travelled to Libya as a 16-year-old in 2011 to join the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and fight alongside his father in the battle to oust Gaddafi.

His father was a prominent member of the militia, which was banned in the UK because of its jihadi links.

Despite terrorists from LIFG still carrying out terrorism to this day the US and UK have both removed the group from their lists of terrorist organizations.

The Western media admits that LIFG was involved in fighting and toppling the Libyan government in 2011 and admits they provided weapons to fighters in Libya as well as granted them asylum after Libya collapsed into disarray in the wake of US-led regime change.

US Senators would even shower awards and support on senior LIFG leaders after the fall of the Libyan government - including Abdelhakim Belhaj who served as "emir" of LIFG and who would at one point lead what was left of Libya after 2011.

Western newspapers regularly admit that Western security services are fully aware of LIFG members living within the borders of their respective nations - having deliberately provided them asylum there.

It takes little imagination to predict tragedies resulting from the West's policy of creating extremists, deploying them in proxy wars abroad, and then placing them amongst their own populations at home.

Washington's War on Huawei Continues

In America's war on Chinese telecom, instead of promoting and showcasing American ingenuity, Washington opts to announcing its latest substitution for it.

July 9, 2020 (Gunnar Ulson - NEO) - For Washington, Chinese telecommunication giant Huawei presents a nearly unsolvable problem. We can draw this conclusion by looking at how the US has chosen to compete, or rather, what it is substituting instead for what should be competition. 

CNET in an article titled, "White House reportedly considering federal intervention in 5G," would explain:

5G networks across the US could get a boost from the federal government, according to a report Thursday by The Wall Street Journal. Trump administration officials are considering the move so they can compete better against Huawei globally, the report says.

The Trump administration has reportedly met with US networking companies including Cisco to discuss the acquisition of Western European networking giants Ericsson and Nokia. It's also looking into giving tax breaks and financing to Ericsson and Nokia, the Journal reported, citing unnamed sources.

The article notes that the US government also sought to organize a meeting with other tech giants in addition to Nokia and Ericsson including Dell, Intel, Microsoft and Samsung to discuss "combatting" Huawei.

It is unclear how acquiring foreign networking companies already being outcompeted by Huawei would tip the balance in Washington's favor or how companies like Ericsson and Nokia with respectable market shares would benefit from being drawn into economic warfare between the US and China, two nations both companies currently enjoy doing business in.

Even in the best-case scenario it is unlikely US efforts would materialize and begin showing results fast enough to significantly or permanently set Huawei back.

A Need for Competition, Not Coercion 

The US appears to have done everything in its power to fight Huawei besides actually competing against it.

Competition would involve the creation of technology similar or superior to Huawei's either in terms of performance or cost, or both.

The US is unable to do this as even its own largest smartphone manufacturer, Apple, has all of its phones made in China. The fact that the US' most recently announced and perhaps most drastic measures so far against Huawei involve "investments," "equity firms," "acquisitions" and "holding companies" rather than improving education in relevant fields, domestic manufacturing and technical expertise, reflects a fundamental inability for the US to compete against China on equal terms.

As long as the US insists on facing its growing problems by moving numbers around on financial ledgers rather than picking and placing components on circuit boards inside the US, it may temporarily delay Huawei's rise but in no way stop it.

If anything, these roadblocks force Huawei and others to restructure themselves in more resilient ways that will make it even more difficult in the future when and if the US ever decides to take on China through actual competition.

Another note; Huawei's 5G technology will undoubtedly do more than merely build Huawei up as a telecommunications company. It will give nations deploying Huawei's 5G infrastructure an edge across a multitude of IT-related economic activities, giving them an advantage over other nations forced to settle on alternatives because of US pressure to do so.

If these alternatives truly suit a nation's telecommunications infrastructure and serve its economic potential that is one thing, but if these alternatives were picked because of political reasons it will cost these nations not only politically with China, but also economically.

US vs. Huawei: Real Security Concerns or a Smear Campaign? 

The CNET article would also repeat the justification for Washington's growing hostility and aggressive tactics turned toward Huawei, claiming:

Huawei was blacklisted last year by the US when it was added to the United States' "entity list". In addition, President Donald Trump at the same time signed an executive order essentially banning the company in light of national security concerns that Huawei had close ties with the Chinese government. Huawei has repeatedly denied that charge.  

These "national security concerns" have been expressed now for years by the US yet no evidence has been presented.

It is interesting that even attempts across the US-European and even Australian media to explain Washington's growing obsession with Huawei generally admit these concerns are just an excuse and that protecting US dominance over global technology and the economic power and influence it provides, is the real goal.

ABC (Australia) in its article, "Huawei and Apple smartphones are both made in China, so what is the difference?," would note:

Professor Clive Williams from the Australian National University's Centre for Military and Security Law told the ABC that to his knowledge, no evidence has yet been provided of Huawei conducting espionage.

"Huawei is ahead of the field in 5G research so it could be an uncheckable way of reining it in and limiting its market share.

Uncheckable accusations (or later, proven-to-be-false accusations) have become the bread and butter of US foreign policy helping to grease the wheels of everything from economic warfare to literal wars.

"Woke" America is More Asleep to Injustice Than Ever

While America's "Woke" revolution topples statues and hunts down fictional characters at home, corporate America continues to engage in the mass murder and enslavement of blacks abroad. 

July 7, 2020 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - To drive home just how superficial and empty recent protests in America are and how little besides further division and destruction will become of them - take the fate of two fictional characters recently put in the spotlight by baying activists - PepsiCo's "Aunt Jemima" breakfast food brand and Mars Incorporated's "Uncle Ben's" rice products.

Both came into the crosshairs of "woke" America. Both fictional characters will now no longer be used.

It might appear like a huge victory for "woke" America.

CNN in their article, "The Aunt Jemima brand, acknowledging its racist past, will be retired," would claim:

Quaker Oats is retiring the more than 130-year-old Aunt Jemima brand and logo, acknowledging its origins are based on a racial stereotype.

"As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers' expectations," the Pepsi-owned company said in a statement provided to CNN Business.  

And the London Guardian in their article, "Uncle Ben's rice firm to scrap brand image of black farmer," would claim:

The rice company Uncle Ben’s is to scrap the image of a black farmer the brand has used since the 1940s and could change its name, as companies react to growing concerns over racial bias and injustice.

The parent company, Mars, said Uncle Ben was a fictional character whose name was first used in 1946 as a reference to an African American Texan rice farmer.

While there is no doubt that both fictional characters represented stereotypes and are rooted in America's racist past - "woke" America's belief that somehow this was a priority or some form of victory begs belief. So does the fact that those opposed to expanding mobs and their "cancel culture" have crafted the most anemic counterpoints.

Some claim that the fictional characters were either inspired or portrayed by real African Americans who profited from the branding.

What neither side mentioned was the very real abuses both companies are guilty of - abuses that are both inhumane and rooted in extraordinary, inexcusable, and thus far utterly unaddressed racism.

PepsiCo and Mars Sponsor/Profit From Slavery and Mass Murder 

Both "woke" America as well as those trying to form opposition to it have entirely missed the fact that PepsiCo and Mars Inc. - two multi-billion dollar businesses - are literally engaged in modern day slavery to create their products while sponsoring policy think-tanks that have engineered wars targeting African nations, leading to the deaths of tens of thousands and open-air slave markets where black people - today - are sold into bondage.

This would seem to be a much greater transgression against black people than their crude depictions in company branding and demand much more serious action than merely adjusting marketing strategies - such as demanding boards of directors to resign or full-spectrum, permanent boycotts for these businesses and their many subsidiaries and brands.

Unfortunately for "woke" America, fictional characters are a priority taken head-on all while activists blissfully munch on chocolate bars made by cocoa harvested by African slave labor and sip on drinks made by a corporation who sponsors US wars abroad in which blacks are mass murdered and enslaved.

Your Mars Inc. Chocolate Comes from Slave Labor

If you enjoy chocolate snacks like 3 Musketeers, Snickers, Mars, and Milky Way bars, the chocolate you ate most likely came from a developing nation with dismal working conditions and in many cases, child and slave labor.

Mars Inc. along with Nestle, Hersey, and many other chocolate companies, source cocoa from Africa and specically the nations of Cote d'Ivoire and Ghana.

Is Washington Provoking India to a War With China?

F. William Engdahl breaks down the Anglo-colonial history behind China-India-Pakistan border disputes and how they fit into modern geopolitics.

July 4, 2020 (F. William Engdahl - NEO) - US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a recent video conference suggested that the US might move some of its troops from Germany to the region around India, citing growing US security concerns in the Asian region. Given the dramatic rise in tensions between India and China over disputed borders in the region of Nepal and Bhutan where several soldiers from both sides reportedly died in hand-to-hand combat, the question is whether Washington is deliberately trying to fan fires of war between the two Asian giant powers. As unlikely as that might be at present, it indicates how unstable our world is becoming amid the ‘coronavirus economic depression’, and the perceived power vacuum of a US in retreat.

Speaking to a virtual Brussels German Marshall Fund Forum on June 25,Secretary of State Pompeo was asked about recent statements that the US military planned withdrawing a contingent of its forces from Germany. He replied that the Chinese threat to India and Southeast Asian nations was one of the reasons America was reducing its troop presence in Europe and deploying them to other places. He cited unspecified recent Chinese actions as “threats to India, threats to Vietnam, threats to Malaysia, Indonesia and the South China Sea challenge,” adding, “We are going to make sure the US military is postured appropriately to meet the challenges.”

The Radcliffe Line
The borders between China and India and Pakistan are one of the most complex and arguably most sensitive regions for potential conflict ever since in 1947 British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten partitioned the British Indian Empire into a dominantly Muslim Pakistan and a dominantly Hindu but secular India.

That partition was opposed by Gandhi and other political leaders in India, who argued instead for a unified federal India with majority Muslim states or Hindu states retaining significant autonomy within a unified India. Mountbatten instead unveiled the secretly-drawn borders of a new Pakistan and India in a manner that fed a devastating slaughter between Hindu and Muslim as 14 million people were suddenly displaced based along the so-named Radcliffe Line that arbitrarily split the Punjab and Bengal provinces of British India between the new Pakistan and India. At the same time, as Mountbatten went back to England, he deliberately left the status of Jammu and Kashmir unresolved. That insured a permanent tension and potential war trigger between the two former parts of British India. Radcliffe, who had never before been in India, was made a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire in 1948 for his service.

Now we turn today to the unresolved region which has been a constant point of friction since the British partition, namely Kashmir.

US Loses Myanmar to China

June 29, 2020 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - For the Southeast Asian state of Myanmar, the decision to expand ties with China despite Western pressure was a no-brainer. Significant economic ties have been expanded and the prospect for several large-scale infrastructure projects have been firmed up.

Chinese President Xi Jinping's recent visit to Myanmar could be considered a victory lap of sorts; the cementing of long-standing and ever-expanding ties between Myanmar and China and the final displacement of significant US and British influence in the former British colony. 

An op-ed on China's CGTN website titled, "Xi's New Year visit to Myanmar: A milestone in bilateral relations," would help frame the significance of President Xi's visit while comparing and contrasting Myanmar's ties with China and the US.

The op-ed would note that President Xi's trip to Myanmar was his first major trip abroad made during 2020. It is also the first major visit by a Chinese leader to Myanmar in nearly 20 years.

Even US Proxies Can't Deny America's Decline 

The op-ed also noted that Myanmar's State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi, picked China for her first major visit abroad after her National League for Democracy party came to power in 2016.

To understand the significance of this it is important to understand that Suu Kyi and her rise to power was primarily driven by support from Washington.

She and her political party along with a large army of US government-funded fronts posing as nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) and US-funded media networks were selected and groomed for decades by Washington to seize power and serve as a vector for US special interests both in Myanmar itself and as a point of leverage versus Beijing.

However, despite America's expertise in political meddling, what it lacks is, as the op-ed calls it, any concrete economic pillars; something China does have on offer.

No matter how much covert or overt financial and political support any client regime in Myanmar may receive from Washington it does not address the genuine need for real development within Myanmar itself. Without such development and the financial and economic incentives it brings with it, enemies and allies of the client regime alike will turn towards those who can offer such incentives.

Xi's Visit Focused on Pragmatism, Not Politics 

The CGTN op-ed noted the focus of President Xi's visit which centred around major political issues plaguing Myanmar including the ongoing Rohingya crisis and border conflicts with neighbouring Bangladesh resulting from the crisis.

The focus was not on feigned concerns for human rights however, but rather on establishing stability since Myanmar and Bangladesh are both partners with Beijing and its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

The visit also focused on pushing forward stalled infrastructure projects that have been held up by US-funded fronts hiding behind human rights and environmental concerns.