The U.S. Directed Rebellion in Kazakhstan May Well Strengthen Russia

In early 2019 the Pentagon financed think tank RAND published an extensive plan for soft attacks on Russia.

Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.

The 350 pages long report recommended certain steps to be taken by the U.S. to contain Russia. As its summary says:

Recognizing that some level of competition with Russia is inevitable, this report seeks to define areas where the United States can do so to its advantage. We examine a range of nonviolent measures that could exploit Russia’s actual vulnerabilities and anxieties as a way of stressing Russia’s military and economy and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad. The steps we examine would not have either defense or deterrence as their prime purpose, although they might contribute to both. Rather, these steps are conceived of as elements in a campaign designed to unbalance the adversary, leading Russia to compete in domains or regions where the United States has a competitive advantage, and causing Russia to overextend itself militarily or economically or causing the regime to lose domestic and/or international prestige and influence.

RAND lists economical, geopolitical, ideological and informational as well as military measures the U.S. should take to weaken Russia.

Since the report came out the first four of the six 'geopolitical measures' listed in chapter 4 of the report have been implemented.

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The U.S. delivered lethal weapons to Ukraine, it increased its support for 'rebels' in Syria. It attempted a regime change in Belarus and instigated a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The U.S. is now implementing measure 5 which aims to 'reduce Russia's influence in Central Asia'.

Kazakhstan, Russia's southern neighbor, was part of the Soviet Union. It is a mineral rich, landlocked country three times the size of Texas but with less than 20 million inhabitants. A significant part of its people are Russians and the Russian language is in common use. The country is an important link in the strategic Belt and Road Initiative between China and Europe.

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Since the demise of the Soviet Union the country has been ruled by oligarchic family clans - foremost the Nazarbayevs. As the CIA Worldfactbook notes:

Executive branch

chief of state: President Kasym-Zhomart TOKAYEV (since 20 March 2019); note - Nursultan NAZARBAYEV, who was president since 24 April 1990 (and in power since 22 June 1989 under the Soviet period), resigned on 20 March 2019; NAZARBAYEV retained the title and powers of "First President"; TOKAYEV completed NAZARBAYEV's term, which was shortened due to the early election of 9 June 2019, and then continued as president following his election victory

Over the last decade there have been several uprisings (2011, 2016 and 2019) in Kazakhstan. These were mostly caused by uneven distribution of income from its minerals including oil and gas. The oligarchs in the capital of Astana / Nur-Sultan live well while the provinces which produce the minerals, like Mangistauskaya in the south-west, have seen few developments.

Recently the price for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), used by many cars in Kazakhstan, went up after the government had liberalized the market. This caused another round of country wide protests:

The string of rallies that has torn through Kazakhstan since January 2 began in the western oil town of Zhanaozen, ostensibly triggered by anger over a sudden spike in the price of car fuel. Similar impromptu gatherings then quickly spread to nearby villages in the Mangystau region and then in multiple other locations in the west, in cities like Aktau, Atyrau and Aktobe. By January 4, people had come out onto the streets in numbers in locations many hundreds of kilometers away, in the southern towns of Taraz, Shymkent and Kyzyl-Orda, in the north, in the cities of Uralsk and Kostanai, as well as in Almaty and Nur-Sultan, the capital, among other places.

Few saw scenes as fiery as those in Almaty, though.

Clashes in Almaty continued throughout the night into January 5. After being dispersed by police from Republic Square, part of the crowd headed around two kilometers downhill, to another historic location in the city, Astana Square, where the seat of government used to be located in Soviet times.

While there is little reliable way to gauge the scale of the demonstrations, a combination of on-the-ground reporting and video footage appears to indicate that these protests may be even larger than those that brought the country to a near-standstill in 2016.

While the grievances that sparked the first rallies in Zhanaozen were to do with fuel prices, the sometimes rowdy demonstrations that have followed appear to be of a more general nature. Chants of “shal ket!” (“old man go!”), usually understood as a reference to former President Nursultan Nazarbayev, who continues to wield significant sway from behind the scenes, have been heard at many of the demos.

The protests escalated soon with gangs of armed protesters taking control of government buildings and setting them on fire. There were also attempts to take control of radio and TV stations as well as the airport. Police, which generally did little to intervene, were gunned down.

The actions in Almaty, the country's largest city and former capital, are certainly not spontaneous reactions by a crowd of poor laborers but controlled actions by well trained groups of armed 'rebels'.

Peter Leonard @Peter__Leonard - 9:18 UTC · 6 Jan 2022
Kazakhstan: Very important and intriguing detail with strong shades of Kyrgyzstan 2020. Peaceful people initiate rallies, but shady and violent individuals turn up to sow trouble, and it is never remotely clear who they are or where they came from /1 https://t.co/qYSlUUrMVx

From one account I heard, a similar dynamic played out in Almaty on Wednesday morning. A relatively small and mild gathering formed on Republic Square, opposite city hall. All of a sudden hundreds of extremely aggressive men turned up, threatening all and sundry #Kazakhstan /2

They threatened and attacked journalists standing nearby, ordering anybody who took photographs to delete the images. It was clearly this cohort that was responsible for much of the destruction. And it is a mystery (to me) who they were /3

We have seen similar formations during the U.S. instigated uprisings in Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Belarus.

NEXTA, the U.S. financed regime change media network in Poland which last year directed the failed color revolution attempt in Belarus, announced the U.S. demands:

NEXTA @nexta_tv - 13:52 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
Demands of the Protesters in #Kazakhstan
1. Immediate release of all political prisoners
2. Full resignation of president and government
3. Political reforms:
Creation of a Provisional Government of reputable and public citizens. Withdrawal from all alliances with #Russia

A more reliable source confirms these:

Maxim A. Suchkov @m_suchkov - 14:43 UST · Jan 5, 2022
The list of demands of protestors in #Kazakhstan that's been circulating is interesting, to put it mildly.
While most demands focus on bolstering social & economic support & countering corruption points #1, 7, 10, 13, 16 expose the roots of protest & who's driving them

#1 demands that #Kazakhstan should leave Eurasian Economic union.
#7 demands legalization of polygamy "for certain groups of the population" & prohibition on marriage with foreigners
#10 demands independence for Mangystau region &^that revenues of oil companies remain in Mangystau

Caveat: this list been circulating a lot on telegram - could be fake or not representative of what protestors want, thou it appears protestors are a diverse group that includes genuinely disgruntled people, political manipulators, "prof revolutionaries" (that were in UKR & BEL), etc

The government of Kazakhstan has since lowered the LPG prices. On January 5 President Tokayev relived the 'First President' Nazarbayev of his position as chairman of the Security Council and promised to act tough on armed protesters.

Kazakhstan is part of the Russian led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) as well as the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). On the morning of January 5 Tokayev had a phone call with the presidents of Russia and Belarus. He has mobilized airborne units of the armed forces of Kazakhstan. On the evening of January 5 he requested support from the CSTO against the 'foreign directed terrorists' which are fighting the security forces.

Russia, Belarus and other CSTO members have dedicated quick reaction forces reserved for such interventions. These will now be mobilized to regain government control in Kazakhstan. Russian CSTO forces are currently on their way to Kazakhstan. Belorussian and Armenian troops will follow soon.

They are in for some tough time:

Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ ❄ @CalibreObscura - 19:50 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
#Kazakhstan: Captured arms from the National Security Committee (equivalent to Russian FSB) building by protestors in #Almaty: At least 2 PG-7V projectiles, possible boxed Glock pistol & (possibly) more in numerous scattered crates, various kit.
Anti-Armour capability in 48hrs...
Image

During the last decades the U.S. and its allies had been relatively quiet about the dictatorial leadership in Kazakhstan.

Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled - 14:18 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
NATO's cheerleading corner of FSU "experts" already working hard to spin Kazakhstan uprisings as somehow Putin's fault or indictment of Putin—but note how quiet our media-NGO complex has been the past 20 years re: the regime's human rights abuses, corruption & "authoritarianism"

Chevron is the largest oil producer in Kazakhstan and the former British prime minister Tony Blair has previously been giving advice to then President Nursultan Nazarbayev on how to avoid an uproar over dead protesters:

In a letter to Nursultan Nazarbayev, obtained by The Telegraph, Mr Blair told the Kazakh president that the deaths of 14 protesters “tragic though they were, should not obscure the enormous progress” his country had made.

Mr Blair, who is paid millions of pounds a year to give advice to Mr Nazarbayev, goes on to suggest key passages to insert into a speech the president was giving at the University of Cambridge, to defend the action.

Times however are different now as Kazakhstan has continued to strengthen its relations with Russia and China.

The CIA offshoot National Endowment for Democracy is financing some 20 'civil society' regime change programs in Kazakhstan with about $50,000 per annum each. The involved organizations  currently seem to be mostly quiet but are a sure sign that the U.S. is playing a role behind the scenes. On December 16 details of upcoming demonstrations were announced by the U.S. embassy in Kazakhstan.

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It is likely that this pre-planned Central Asia part of the 'Extending Russia' program has been implemented prematurely as a response to Russia's recent ultimatum with regards to Ukraine and NATO. Its sole purpose is to unbalance the Russian leadership in Moscow by diverting its attention towards the south.

I however believe that Russia has prepared for such eventualities. They will not affect its plans and demands.

What is difficult to discern though is what is really happening behind the scenes in Astana/Nur-Sultan. Has Tokayev, who was previously seen as a mere puppet of Nazarbayev, really replaced him? His control of the security forces is somewhat in doubt:

Liveuamap @Liveuamap - 19:18 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
Tokayev dismissed the head of his security guard Saken Isabekov. Also, the President dismissed the Deputy Head of the State Security Service of the Republic of Kazakhstan from his post

But the outcome of the whole game is quite predictable:

Mark Ames @MarkAmesExiled - 14:31 UTC · Jan 5, 2022
The grim likelihood, given all the various "revolutions" in the FSU the past 20 years, is that Kazakhstan's street protests [will be] instrumentalized by a powerful clan to replace the ruling oligarchy with a new oligarchy.

The CSTO troops which are now landing in Almaty will take a few days to end the rebellion. The outcome is not in doubt.

Moscow, not Washington DC, will have a big say in who will come out at the top.

It is quite possible that the results of the whole affair will, like the failed U.S. regime change attempts in Belarus, not weaken but strengthen Russia:

Dmitri Trenin @DmitriTrenin - 7:57 UTC · 6 Jan 2022
#Kazakhstan is another test, after #Belarus, of RUS ability to help stabilize its formal allies w/o alienating their populations. As 1st action by CSTO since founding in 1999, it is major test for bloc. Lots of potential pitfalls around, but can be big boon if Moscow succeeds.

Posted by b on January 6, 2022 at 9:19 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/

EXPLAINER: Why didn’t China send troops to aid Kazakhstan?

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A police car on fire as riot police prepare to stop protesters in the center of Almaty, Kazakhstan, on Jan. 5, 2022. China gave strong verbal backing to Kazakhstan’s leader for his deadly crackdown to quell violent unrest, but stood aside as Russia sent in special forces troops. 

(AP Photo/Vladimir Tretyakov, File)

BEIJING (AP) — China gave strong verbal backing to Kazakhstan’s leader for his deadly crackdown to quell violent unrest, but stood aside as Russia sent in special forces troops.

Resource-rich Kazakhstan, on China’s western border, has economic and strategic importance for Beijing and is an important link in its “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative to expand its global trade and political influence in rivalry with the U.S. and its allies.

China’s response to the crisis underscores how it prefers to influence outcomes with verbal assurances and offers of assistance, without committing troops.

“The growing closeness between Russia and China means we can expect more rhetorical support for Moscow’s overseas ventures, particularly when they go up against Western geostrategic aims,” said Rana Mitter, an Oxford University China expert.

“However, China remains extremely reluctant to deploy People’s Liberation Army troops outside its own territory, except in areas such as U.N. peacekeeping operations, as it would contradict its constant statements that unlike the U.S., China does not intervene in other countries’ conflicts,” Mitter said.

WHAT ARE CHINA’S GOALS IN CENTRAL ASIA?

Since the demise of the Soviet Union, China has steadily expanded its economic and political influence in a region that Russia considers its own backyard. As the largest and by far the wealthiest Central Asian state, Kazakhstan is key, acting as the buckle in China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, and its authoritarian politics act as a bulwark against democratic movements in Ukraine and elsewhere that China derides as Western-engineered “color revolutions.”

China’s ruling Communist Party, which violently repressed its own pro-democracy challenge in 1989, views such movements, whether in Georgia or Hong Kong, as a threat to its own stability. In a message to Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev amid the unrest, Chinese leader Xi Jinping said his country would “resolutely oppose external forces deliberately creating turmoil and instigating a ‘color revolution’ in Kazakhstan.”

China’s position dovetails with its strident opposition to outside criticism of its policies, whether its human rights record or its expansive territorial claims in the South China Sea, as meddling in its internal affairs.

China’s influence in Central Asia still has limits, however, and Kazakhstan may feel uneasy about inviting in Chinese troops, given China’s harsh treatment of ethnic Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities within its borders, said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

“An important element of China’s foreign policy under Xi is to make the world safe for authoritarian states and stop color revolutions from spreading,” Tsang said.

WHEN DOES CHINA INTERVENE?

China frequently vows retaliation for any criticism of its policies, especially when the offenders are the U.S. and its allies. It is far friendlier with autocrats, pledging non-interference and cooperation with whomever is in power, regardless of their records on human rights and corruption.

That’s evidenced in its dealings with regimes that others criticize, from Myanmar’s military leaders to Hungary’s Viktor Orban. While not recognizing the Taliban, it is hedging its bets in Afghanistan by working with the country’s current rulers, despite their espousal of the form of radical Islam that Beijing has sought to keep from infiltrating its restive, largely Muslim region of Xinjiang, which shares a narrow border with Afghanistan and a much larger one with Kazakhstan.

China generally reserves action, military and otherwise, for cases in which its own security is perceived as threatened, as in the 1950-53 Korean War, or more recently, in violent incidents along its disputed border with India, and especially with Taiwan, which China threatens to invade if it doesn’t agree to unite. Beijing responded with ruthless trade and diplomatic retaliation against Lithuania when the tiny Baltic nation broke with diplomatic convention by allowing Taiwan to open a representative office in Vilnius under the name “Taiwan” instead of “Chinese Taipei.”

HOW DOES CHINA VIEW MILITARY ALLIANCES?

Troops, mostly from Russia, were deployed to Kazakhstan last week by the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a grouping of six former Soviet states, at the president’s request amid unprecedented violence. China officially eschews such security alliances, although The Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which Beijing dominates along with Moscow, has a security component, currently limited to joint training and other non-combat missions.

Unlike the CSTO, there is “no agreement about sending troops from member countries of the SCO,” Chinese international security expert Li Wei said. “In addition, China sticks to the fundamental principle of not using force in other countries.”

U.N. Peacekeeping Operations remain the rare exception, and China is quick to point out that it is the largest contributor of forces to such missions among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

Given the growing might of China’s military, some experts expect Beijing to become more amenable to military interventions in the future. Oxford’s Mitter also points to a growing “grey zone” of Chinese private security enterprises that can be used to protect Chinese interests “without any formal government intervention.”

The failure of the Kazakhstan experience

January 13, 2022 

This general view shows a vehicle in front of a burnt-out administrative building in central Almaty on January 7, 2022, after violence that erupted following protests over hikes in fuel prices [ALEXANDR BOGDANOV/AFP via Getty Images]

Hamada Fara'na
January 13, 2022 

Russia thwarted an American-Israeli plan to bomb Kazakhstan the way they did with Afghanistan, which was what happened in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen, benefiting from the experience of its late intervention in Syria. It quickly responded to the request of Kazakh President, Kassym-Jomart Tokayev, and moved rapid intervention forces under the cover of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation formed in 2002 after the American invasion of Afghanistan. It consists of six countries that were former members of the Soviet group – Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. They sent their forces to achieve two purposes: first, to protect the facilities of the Kazakh state and, second, to support the Kazakh forces to confront the invasion and intervention of armed jihadist factions.

Kazakhstan's borders with China extend 1,460 km, and with Russia 6,467 km, with an area of ​​more than 2.5 million square km. it is rich in minerals such as oil, gas, manganese, iron, chromium and coal, and it is the largest producer of uranium in the world. Therefore, it constitutes a rich productive lever for China and Russia's mineral needs. It has a population of less than 20 million, although it is the ninth largest country in the world, and it has the Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is still the most important and largest space rocket launcher in the world.

Kazakhstan is a centre of international attention, as a strategic location in Central Asia, affecting the security of China and Russia, the two rival countries of the US, which moved its focus from the Arab region to focus on East and Central Asia. This American shift is what prompted Washington to withdraw suddenly from Afghanistan and hand it over to the Taliban, with the aim of creating a circle of tension, friction and clash with China in the east, Iran in the west, and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan in the north. This aims to ignite the Central Asian region and drain China, Russia and Iran, with guarantees that US interests will not be exposed by the Taliban and its hands.

READ: Head of Russia 'peacekeeping' mission in Kazakhstan is same general who led operations in Ukraine, Syria

The plot to bomb Kazakhstan took place in two stages:

The first was through popular protests that erupted on 2 January 2022, led by civil society organisations funded by the West, motivated by the absence of democracy and pluralism, the increase in the prices of fuel and basic commodities and the difficult economic conditions.

The second stage is the transfer of armed jihadist factions belonging to political Islam, Al-Qaeda and Daesh, equipped with combat experience that they have accumulated through their participation in jihad work in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. They are funded by an oil state and have American, Israeli and European planning.

The rapid Russian intervention on Thursday 6 January 2022, with the countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation thwarted the project to make Kazakhstan the second centre of tension and attrition after Afghanistan, and to create a rear border front that drains the opponents of the US and pushing them towards instability in the Central Asian region. This is what happened in our Arab region, and they succeeded in doing so, as they destroyed Syria, Iraq, Libya and Yemen and weakened the rest of the Arab countries by draining their financial resources and capabilities, for the benefit of the Israeli colony and domination.

The Kazakhstan conspiracy failed. Will Washington, Tel Aviv, Europe and the financiers push to stop their plans, or will they move to plan in other countries? Which countries will those be?

READ: Kazakhstan plays Iran's anthem for Syria basketball team before World Cup qualifier

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Welcome to the New Cold War in Asia

by Michael Klare and Tom Engelhardt Posted onJanuary 14, 2022

Originally posted at TomDispatch.

For a moment, imagine an upside-down military world. Instead of U.S. guided-missile destroyers and other ships regularly carrying out “freedom of navigation operations” near Chinese-claimed islands in the South China Sea and such destroyers no less regularly passing through the Strait of Taiwan between that disputed island and the People’s Republic of China, consider how any administration would react if Chinese naval vessels were ever more provocatively patrolling off the coast of California. You know that official Washington would quite literally go nuts and we’d find ourselves at the edge of war almost instantly.

Or, in a similar fashion, imagine that Russia had moved nuclear weapons close to the southern Mexican border, was selling advanced weaponry and offering other military aid to Mexico, and acting as we’ve been doing in relation to Ukraine. Washington would be up in arms, again all too literally. Don’t misunderstand me: I hold no torch for either Chinese President Xi Jinping or Russian President Vladimir Putin. (And I suspect, by the way, that if Putin were foolish enough to invade Ukraine he might find himself involved in an updated version of the Soviet Union’s disastrous Afghan War of the 1980s in a far more explosive part of the world.) I’m merely pointing out that the American urge to be militarily anywhere it wants to be on this planet in any fashion it chooses might not be quite what’s needed these days. A new Cold War on an ever hotter and more pandemic planet? Just what we really (don’t) need.

And by the way, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, author most recently of All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change, points out, one of the other wonders of our moment is that, in a country where Republicans and Democrats can essentially agree on nothing – certainly not on spending money on the American people – the subject never in question is what’s still called “defense” policy. Unfortunately, globally speaking, such spending of your tax dollars couldn’t be more offensive in every sense of the word. In this, fierce as the Biden administration has proved in Cold War terms, Klare makes it clear today that Congress is proving even fiercer.

I mean honestly, on a planet in deep doo-doo, where the major powers should be cooperating big time, having a post-Trump administration (with, admittedly, an old cold warrior as president) so ready to return us to a Cold War-style world seems, to say the least, both a tad out of date and a bit reckless as well. Tom

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None Dare Call It “Encirclement”: Washington Tightens the Noose Around China

By Michael Klare

The word “encirclement” does not appear in the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), signed into law by President Joe Biden on December 27th, or in other recent administration statements about its foreign and military policies. Nor does that classic Cold War era term “containment” ever come up. Still, America’s top leaders have reached a consensus on a strategy to encircle and contain the latest great power, China, with hostile military alliances, thereby thwarting its rise to full superpower status.

The gigantic 2022 defense bill – passed with overwhelming support from both parties – provides a detailed blueprint for surrounding China with a potentially suffocating network of U.S. bases, military forces, and increasingly militarized partner states. The goal is to enable Washington to barricade that country’s military inside its own territory and potentially cripple its economy in any future crisis. For China’s leaders, who surely can’t tolerate being encircled in such a fashion, it’s an open invitation to… well, there’s no point in not being blunt… fight their way out of confinement.

Like every “defense” bill before it, the $768 billion 2022 NDAA is replete with all-too-generous handouts to military contractors for favored Pentagon weaponry. That would include F-35 jet fighters, Virginia-class submarines, Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and a wide assortment of guided missiles. But as the Senate Armed Services Committee noted in a summary of the bill, it also incorporates an array of targeted appropriations and policy initiatives aimed at encircling, containing, and someday potentially overpowering China. Among these are an extra $7.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, or PDI, a program initiated last year with the aim of bolstering U.S. and allied forces in the Pacific.

Nor are these just isolated items in that 2,186-page bill. The authorization act includes a “sense of Congress” measure focused on “defense alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific Region,” providing a conceptual blueprint for such an encirclement strategy. Under it, the secretary of defense is enjoined to “strengthen United States defense alliances and partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region so as to further the comparative advantage of the United States in strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China,” or PRC.

That the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act passed with no significant opposition in the House or Senate suggests that support for these and similar measures is strong in both parties. Some progressive Democrats had indeed sought to reduce the size of military spending, but their colleagues on the House and Senate Armed Services Committees instead voted to increase this year’s already staggering allotment for the Pentagon by another $24 billion – specifically to better contain (or fight) China. Most of those added taxpayer dollars will go toward the creation of hypersonic missiles and other advanced weaponry aimed at the PRC, and increased military exercises and security cooperation with U.S. allies in the region.

For Chinese leaders, there can be no doubt about the meaning of all this: whatever Washington might say about peaceful competition, the Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has no intention of allowing the PRC to achieve parity with the United States on the world stage. In fact, it is prepared to employ every means, including military force, to prevent that from happening. This leaves Beijing with two choices: succumb to U.S. pressure and accept second-class status in world affairs or challenge Washington’s strategy of containment. It’s hard to imagine that country’s current leadership accepting the first choice, while the second, were it adopted, would surely lead, sooner or later, to armed conflict.

The Enduring Lure of Encirclement

The notion of surrounding China with a chain of hostile powers was, in fact, first promoted as official policy in the early months of President George W. Bush’s administration. At that time, Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice went to work establishing an anti-China alliance system in Asia, following guidelines laid out by Rice in a January 2000 article in Foreign Affairs. There, she warned of Beijing’s efforts to “alter Asia’s balance of power in its own favor” – a drive the U.S. must respond to by deepening “its cooperation with Japan and South Korea” and by “maintain[ing] its commitment to a robust military presence in the region.” It should, she further indicated, “pay closer attention to India’s role in the regional balance.”

This has, in fact, remained part of the governing U.S. global playbook ever since, even if, for the Bush team, its implementation came to an abrupt halt on September 11, 2001, when Islamic militants attacked the Twin Towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., leading the administration to declare a “global war on terror.”

Only a decade later, in 2011, did official Washington return to the Rice-Cheney strategy of encircling China and blunting or suppressing its growing power. That November, in an address to the Australian Parliament, President Obama announced an American “pivot to Asia” – a drive to restore Washington’s dominance in the region, while enlisting its allies there in an intensifying effort to contain China. “As president, I have… made a deliberate and strategic decision,” Obama declared in Canberra. “As a Pacific nation, the United States will play a larger and long-term role in shaping this region and its future… As we end today’s wars [in the Middle East], I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority.”

Like the Bush team before it, however, the Obama administration was blindsided by events in the Middle East, specifically the 2014 takeover of significant parts of Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, and so was forced to suspend its focus on the Pacific. Only in the final years of the Trump administration did the idea of encircling China once again achieve preeminence in U.S. strategic thinking.

Led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Trump effort proved far more substantial, involving as it did the beefing-up of U.S. forces in the Pacific; closer military ties with Australia, Japan, and South Korea; and an intensified outreach to India. Pompeo also added several new features to the mix: a “quadrilateral” alliance between Australia, India, Japan, and the U.S. (dubbed the “Quad,” for short); increased diplomatic ties with Taiwan; and the explicit demonization of China as an enemy of Western values.

In a July 2020 speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, Pompeo laid out the new China policy vividly. To prevent the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) from demolishing “the rules-based order that our societies have worked so hard to build,” he declared, we must “draw common lines in the sand that cannot be washed away by the CCP’s bargains or their blandishments.” This required not only bolstering U.S. forces in Asia but also creating a NATO-like alliance system to curb China’s further growth.

Pompeo also launched two key anti-China initiatives: the institutionalization of the Quad and the expansion of diplomatic and military relations with Taiwan. The Quad, or Quadrilateral Security Dialogue as it’s formally known, had initially been formed in 2007 by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (with the support of Vice President Dick Cheney and the leaders of Australia and India), but fell into abeyance for years. It was revived, however, in 2017 when Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull joined Abe, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and Donald Trump in promoting a stepped-up effort to contain China.

As for Taiwan, Pompeo upped the ante there by approving diplomatic missions to its capital, Taipei, by senior officials, including Health Secretary Alex Azar and Undersecretary of State Keith Krach, the highest-ranking members of any administration to visit the island since 1979, when Washington severed formal relations with its government. Both visits were roundly criticized by Chinese officials as serious violations of the commitments Washington had made to Beijing under the agreement establishing ties with the PRC.

Biden Adopts the Encirclement Agenda

On entering the White House, President Biden promised to reverse many of the unpopular policies of his predecessor, but strategy towards China was not among them. Indeed, his administration has embraced the Pompeo encirclement agenda with a vengeance. As a result, ominously enough, preparations for a possible war with China are now the Pentagon’s top priority as, for the State Department, is the further isolation of Beijing diplomatically.

In line with that outlook, the Defense Department’s 2022 budget request asserted that “China poses the greatest long-term challenge to the United States” and, accordingly, that “the Department will prioritize China as our number one pacing challenge and develop the right operational concepts, capabilities, and plans to bolster deterrence and maintain our competitive advantage.”

In the meantime, as its key instrument for bolstering ties with allies in the Asia-Pacific region, the Biden administration endorsed Trump’s Pacific Deterrence Initiative. Proposed PDI spending was increased by 132% in the Pentagon’s 2022 budget request, rising to $5.1 billion from the $2.2 billion in 2021. And if you want a measure of this moment in relation to China, consider this: even that increase was deemed insufficient by congressional Democrats and Republicans who added another $2 billion to the PDI allocation for 2022.

To further demonstrate Washington’s commitment to an anti-China alliance in Asia, the first two heads of state invited to the White House to meet President Biden were Japanese Prime Minister Yoshi Suga and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. In talks with them, Biden emphasized the importance of joint efforts to counter Beijing. Following his meeting with Suga, for instance, Biden publicly insisted that his administration was “committed to working together to take on the challenges from China… to ensure a future of a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

On September 24th, in a first, leaders of the Quad all met with Biden at a White House “summit.” Although the administration emphasized non-military initiatives in its post-summit official report, the main order of business was clearly to strengthen military cooperation in the region. As if to underscore this, Biden used the occasion to highlight an agreement he’d just signed with Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia to provide that country with the propulsion technology for a new fleet of nuclear-powered submarines – a move obviously aimed at China. And note as well that, just days before the summit, the administration formed a new alliance with Australia and the United Kingdom, called AUKUS, and again aimed at China.

Finally, Biden has continued to increase diplomatic and military contacts with Taiwan, beginning on his first day in office when Hsiao Bi-khim, Taipei’s de facto ambassador to Washington, attended his inauguration. “President Biden will stand with friends and allies to advance our shared prosperity, security, and values in the Asia-Pacific region – and that includes Taiwan,” a top administration official said at the time. Other high-level contacts with Taiwanese officials, including military personnel, soon followed.

A “Grand Strategy” for Containment

What all these initiatives have lacked, until now, is an overarching plan for curbing China’s rise and so ensuring America’s permanent supremacy in the Indo-Pacific region. The authors of this year’s NDAA were remarkably focused on this deficiency and several provisions of the bill are designed to provide just such a master plan. These include a series of measures intended to incorporate Taiwan into the U.S. defense system surrounding China and a requirement for the drafting of a comprehensive “grand strategy” for containing that country on every front.

A “sense of Congress” measure in that bill provides overarching guidance on these disparate initiatives, stipulating an unbroken chain of U.S.-armed sentinel states – stretching from Japan and South Korea in the northern Pacific to Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore in the south and India on China’s eastern flank – meant to encircle and contain the People’s Republic. Ominously enough, Taiwan, too, is included in the projected anti-China network.

That island’s imagined future role in such an emerging strategic plan was further spelled out in a provision entitled “Sense of Congress on Taiwan Defense Relations.” Essentially, this measure insists that Washington’s 1978 pledge to terminate its military ties with Taipei and a subsequent 1982 U.S.-China agreement committing this country to reduce the quality and quantity of its arms transfers to Taiwan are no longer valid due to China’s “increasingly coercive and aggressive behavior” toward the island. Accordingly, the measure advocates closer military coordination between the two countries and the sale of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems to Taiwan, along with the technology to manufacture some of them.

Add all this up and here’s the new reality of the Biden years: the disputed island of Taiwan, just off the Chinese mainland and claimed as a province by the PRC, is now being converted into a de facto military ally of the United States. There could hardly be a more direct assault on China’s bottom line: that, sooner or later, the island must agree to peacefully reunite with the mainland or face military action.

Recognizing that the policies spelled out in the 2022 NDAA represent a fundamental threat to China’s security and its desire for a greater international role, Congress also directed the president to come up with a “grand strategy” on U.S.-China relations in the next nine months. This should include an assessment of that country’s global objectives and an inventory of the economic, diplomatic, and military capabilities the U.S. will require to blunt its rise. In addition, it calls on the Biden administration to examine “the assumptions and end-state or end states of the strategy of the United States globally and in the Indo-Pacific region with respect to the People’s Republic of China.” No explanation is given for the meaning of “end-state or end states,” but it’s easy to imagine that the authors of that measure had in mind the potential collapse of the Chinese Communist government or some form of war between the two countries.

How will Chinese leaders react to all this? No one yet knows, but President Xi Jinping provided at least a glimpse of what that response might be in a July 1st address marking the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. “We will never allow any foreign force to bully, oppress, or subjugate us,” he declared, as China’s newest tanks, rockets, and missiles rolled by. “Anyone who would attempt to do so will find themselves on a collision course with a great wall of steel forged by over 1.4 billion Chinese people.”

Welcome to the new twenty-first-century Cold War on a planet desperately in need of something else.

Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands (the final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s novel Every Body Has a Story, and Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War, as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power and John Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II.

Michael T. Klare, a TomDispatch regular, is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate Change. He is a founder of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy.

Copyright 2022 Michael T. Klare

Following NRC Denial, Oklo Says It Plans to Promptly Resubmit Its Advanced Reactor Application

Nuclear company’s co-founders tell Morning Consult that they anticipate little time will be lost as they restart the application process

In an interview with Morning Consult, Oklo co-founders said they plan to re-submit a plan with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build an advanced nuclear reactor, a week after the NRC rejected the company's application. (Getty Images)

BY LISA MARTINE JENKINS
January 14, 2022

On Jan. 6, the NRC determined that Oklo failed to provide sufficient information on topics such as potential accidents and certain safety systems, a decision that came as a surprise to the compact fast micro-reactor developer.

But Oklo does not expect the denial to set back its progress more than a few months: “In terms of first operations date, it’s not necessarily likely to be that noticeable,” per co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte.

One week after the Nuclear Regulatory Commission denied Oklo Power LLC’s application to construct and operate one of the first advanced nuclear reactors in the United States, the nuclear developer said in an interview that it is already in talks with the agency about prompt resubmission and expects its operation timeline to stay roughly on track.

“It sounds like they’re ready to work with us,” co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Caroline Cochran told Morning Consult, referencing Oklo’s conversations with the NRC since the Jan. 6 decision. “The time we spent already doesn’t get lost and we don’t have to start at square zero.”

The agency’s decision, which both Cochran and Oklo co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jacob DeWitte said came as a surprise, concerned the company’s application to build and operate its Aurora compact fast micro-reactor in Idaho, which is projected to produce 1.5 megawatts of electric power. The NRC determined that Oklo failed to provide sufficient information on topics such as “its description of Aurora’s potential accidents as well as its classification of safety systems and components.”

That information, the NRC said in its letter to Oklo, is needed for the agency to “establish a schedule and complete its technical review.”

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The delay caused by the application denial — issued “without prejudice,” meaning Oklo is welcome to reapply — is not anticipated to be a big one, in any case. The NRC confirmed to Morning Consult that it will provide Oklo with another review schedule after checking the updated application “to determine whether it’s complete enough to warrant the full technical review necessary for the agency to make a final licensing decision.”

DeWitte said that “even with the contingencies that we budget for the application, we don’t think this is going to be too major of a schedule setback.” The delay might set Oklo back by a few months in getting the license issued, “but in terms of first operations date, it’s not necessarily likely to be that noticeable.”

Oklo still plans to turn on Aurora’s operations by 2025, he added.

DeWitte said that Oklo is disappointed in the NRC’s communication process when it came to the denial, given that the company has been in close touch with the agency since submitting the application in March 2020. At Oklo’s last meeting with the NRC in November, he added, the agency signaled enthusiasm about both the topical reports and the general application review. However, this purported enthusiasm is contradicted by the NRC’s articulation of the information gaps in letters addressing both.

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The NRC contends that the deficits were identified and communicated to Oklo several times in writing — in June 2020, November 2020 and August 2021 — as well as in public meetings over the course of the past nearly two years.

Cochran raised that some of the communication issues could be a function of the timing of this application vis-å-vis the coronavirus pandemic: The application was submitted March 11, 2020, mere days before the country went into lockdown.

“We were planning to have a lot of face-to-face interactions with them and have their engineers sit down with our engineers and just go through simulations and talk through the data and so forth,” Cochran said, noting that all the information instead had to be curated for how it could be best shared via Zoom. But now that vaccines are widespread, she said Oklo sees a pathway for holding subsequent meetings in person, and improving communication accordingly.

While the details of the Aurora application’s path through the NRC are specific to Oklo, the company is getting a glimpse of how fraught the nuclear regulatory landscape is more broadly. Another recent high-profile nuclear license, for Southern Company’s Vogtle plant in Georgia, took roughly four years to review, and its construction has been plagued with delays since the NRC gave it the green light. Vogtle’s units 3 and 4 are set to be the country’s first new nuclear units built in over 30 years.

RELATED: Solar and Wind Are the Public’s Most Favored Energy Sources

Aurora was the first advanced fission combined license application to be accepted for review and docketed by the NRC. The agency is in what it dubs “pre-application activities” with vendors of both advanced reactors and of small modular designs (like Oklo’s), and the agency is in the process of reviewing the construction permit application for a test version of a Kairos Power design.

So while DeWitte is optimistic about Oklo’s prospects in the short term, he is hopeful that the review process continues to evolve as nuclear does.

“I would love to see Congress move the NRC forward in terms of realizing and giving them more ability to leverage the benefit that nuclear affords in their reviews,” he said, pointing out the relative greenhouse gas emission savings of nuclear versus the alternatives in a quickly warming world. “If you don’t build this plant, what happens?”

The NRC is in the process of developing a new set of regulations aimed specifically at advanced reactors, with the proposed rule package due February 2023.

Lisa Martine Jenkins is a senior reporter at Morning Consult covering energy.

Congressional Democrats maintain pretense as Biden concedes defeat on voting rights bill

Patrick Martin
WSWS.ORG

The Democratic Party pretense that it is engaged in a fight over voting rights entered its final stage Thursday, with two right-wing Senate Democrats reaffirming their opposition to any significant change in the filibuster rule.

The rule empowers the Senate minority to block legislation unless 60 out of 100 senators support it. The Democrats hold a narrow one-vote majority, from the tie-breaking vote of Vice President Kamala Harris, and all 50 Republicans are united in opposition to any federal action on voting rights. As a result, the two bills which have passed the Democratic-controlled House are now dead in the Senate unless the filibuster rule is changed.

The filibuster is found neither in the Constitution nor in any legislation. It is merely a custom of the Senate, adopted as a rule by a simple majority at each new session. It was notoriously used by segregationist Southern Democrats in the 1950s and 1960s to block the passage of civil rights legislation.

Vice President Kamala Harris speaks to reporters outside the Senate Chamber after a voting rights bill failed to pass the Senate on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)

President Joe Biden visited the Capitol Thursday to meet with Democratic senators and urge them to carve out an exception in the filibuster rule for legislation dealing with basic constitutional rights such as the right to vote. But even before he even arrived, Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona announced in a speech on the Senate floor that she was adamant in her support for the filibuster.

After Biden’s hour-long meeting, the other leading right-winger in the Democratic caucus, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, announced that he too would oppose any significant curb on the “right” of the Republican minority to block the voting rights legislation, saying, “I cannot support such a perilous course of action.”

Biden himself seemed to admit the futility of the congressional exercise which is now under way. “The honest to God answer is I don’t know whether we can get this done,” he told reporters. “As long as I’m in the White House, as long as I’m engaged at all, I’m going to be fighting.”

Biden’s “fight” has been long on rhetoric and short on action. In his speech Tuesday in Georgia, he compared the Republican state legislators pushing through restrictions on voting and provisions for state governments to override local election officials to the defenders of Jim Crow segregation and the slave owners of the Confederacy. “Do you want to be on the side of Abraham Lincoln or Jefferson Davis?” he asked.

But where Lincoln mobilized vast armies and ultimately gave his own life to the struggle for emancipation, Biden has mobilized no one and sacrificed nothing. Nor have the congressional Democrats, who stalled the voting rights question for nearly a year after they unexpectedly won control of the Senate in a Georgia runoff election.

The latest congressional maneuver is only an empty pretense. On Thursday morning, the House of Representatives voted on a party line 220–203 to take an unrelated bill, previously approved by both House and Senate, strip out the previous text and substitute the provisions of the two voting rights bills for the previous text, the Freedom to Vote Act, introduced to the Senate, and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, passed by the House. The resulting amalgam will then be sent as a “letter” to the Senate.

This arcane procedure means that the Senate can take up the “letter” and begin a debate on voting rights by a simple majority, bypassing the filibuster at that stage. But proceeding to a vote still requires 60 votes. The result is that there will be a debate on voting rights, at which the Democrats can posture and proclaim their undying devotion to democracy, a charade in which Manchin and Sinema may well participate, since they both claim to support the voting rights provisions.

Then the bills will die, denied a final floor vote by the Republican filibuster. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer claimed that this would be followed by a vote on a rules change to limit filibusters, to be held by January 17, the federal holiday marking the birthday of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. In the face of the flat declarations of opposition by Sinema and Manchin, however, this deadline could well be put back further.

Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have carried out the parliamentary maneuver forcing debate on the voting rights bills any time in the past year, but they had other priorities, including the American Recovery Act and a bipartisan infrastructure bill, as well as the failed effort to enact Biden’s “Build Back Better” legislation, ultimately blocked by Manchin and Sinema.

In a memo to his Democratic colleagues, Schumer admitted the emptiness of the effort. “To ultimately end debate and pass the voting rights legislation, we will need 10 Republicans to join us—which we know from past experience will not happen—or we will need to change the Senate rules,” he wrote. He did not add that a change in the rules was being blocked, not by Republicans, but by Democrats.

Senator Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, conceded that Biden’s trip to Capitol Hill was purely for show. “The president is not only demonstrating to the United States Democratic senators but to the American people that he is all-in on this,” he said. “But there is certainly no expectation that he is going to win tomorrow.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell praised Democrat Sinema’s declaration that she would vote to maintain the filibuster, calling her remarks an act “conspicuous of political courage,” adding, “She saved the Senate as an institution.” In a future Republican-controlled Senate, however, there is little doubt that McConnell, or an even more right-wing replacement, would swiftly overturn the filibuster if it suited the reactionary purposes of a Republican president.

Despite the parliamentary infighting and the rhetorical claims by Biden, the two pieces of voting rights legislation are relatively modest and do not even address many of the measures passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures at the urging of Trump supporters seeking to set a precedent for the overturning of a presidential election defeat.

The Freedom to Vote Act would make Election Day a national holiday, mandate 15 days of early voting and require all states to allow mail-in voting, among other changes. The John Lewis bill would restore sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act gutted by a Supreme Court ruling. Both bills would empower the federal Department of Justice to monitor and in some cases overturn the actions of state governments if they would have a discriminatory effect on the rights of minorities to cast ballots.

Neither bill would forbid state legislatures from defying the popular vote result in their state and submitting their own slate of electors to the Electoral College. Nor would they impede a future effort by Congress to use the January 6 certification of Electoral College results—originally intended as a purely ceremonial act—to overturn the result of a presidential election.

US education authorities defends elementary school for setting up after-school Satan club

Friday, 14 Jan 2022 02:15 PM MYT
BY SYLVIA LOOI

Parents in Illinois, United States are up in arms after an elementary school is setting up an after- school Satan Club. — Picture via Facebook

KUALA LUMPUR, Jan 14 — Education authorities in Illinois, United States, are defending an elementary school after flyers promoting an after-school Satan club surfaced.

In a statement, the Moline-Coal Valley School District No 40 superintendent Dr Rachel Savage said the club does not involve any teachers from the school where the club is being held.

The flyers “were not distributed to all students” and facility rental for the club was not and “is not affiliated with the school or the district”, Newsweek reported.

Savage added that the idea for the club originally came from a parent within the district and the parent took it upon themselves and reached out to the national organisation behind the club.

The parent mentioned to the organisation that they were looking to bring other viewpoints to the school.

Additionally, the superintendent cited that it would have been illegal to reject the organisation “to pay to rent their publicly funded institution” after-school, as it would have subjected the school district to a discrimination lawsuit.

The district said other religious entities have used its facilities in the past.

Savage also pointed out the district also has a Good News Christian Club, among other after- school clubs that require parent permission before participation.

Her response came after a flyer about the club at Jane Addams Elementary went viral on social media.

According to the flyer, the club aims to teach children “benevolence and empathy, critical thinking, problem solving, creative expression and personal sovereignty”.

The handout also said that “the after-school Satan Club does not attempt to convert children to any religious ideology. Instead, The Satanic Temple supports children to think for themselves”.

According to the flyer, the club is scheduled to meet at the school for an hour once a month.

On its website, the Satanic Temple said the After-School Satan Clubs “meet at select public schools where Good News Clubs also operate” and is an open environment where parents are welcomed.

Illinois district defends offering ‘After School Satan Club’ at elementary school
By Patrick Reilly
January 14, 2022 

Rachel Savage, Moline-Coal Valley Schools Superintendent, says the flyer prompted a response from district leadership, who emphatically assured parents that "No teachers from Jane Addams is involved."

Moline Schools

An Illinois school district is defending an elementary school offering “After School Satan Club,” an extracurricular educational program sponsored by the Satanic Temple of the United States.

The program, for children in grades first through fifth, will be taught by volunteers at The Jane Addams Elementary School in Moline, and will meet five times this year beginning Thursday, flyers circulating on social media claim.

According to the flyer, the club will consist of science projects, puzzles, games, arts and crafts and outdoor nature activities. The club says it will help children learn benevolence and empathy, critical thinking, problem solving, creative expression and personal sovereignty.

The Satanic Temple – essentially an activist group and think tank more than a religious institution – said the program is available at select public schools where Good News programs exist, and is meant to be educationally enriching. Members have no intention of converting children to Satanism.

“Proselytization is not our goal, and we’re not interested in converting children to Satanism,” the temple says about the program on its website. “After School Satan Clubs will focus on free inquiry and rationalism, the scientific basis for which we know what we know about the world around us.

An Illinois school district is defending an elementary school providing an “After School Satan Club,” an extracurricular educational program.Jane Adams Elementary School/Fac

“We prefer to give children an appreciation of the natural wonders surrounding them, not a fear of everlasting other-worldly horrors.”

The flyer prompted a response from district leadership, who emphatically assured parents that “No teachers from Jane Addams, or any other district teacher, is involved” and “Flyers were not distributed to all students,” according to a letter from Rachel Savage, Moline-Coal Valley Schools Superintendent, to district families.

She said that the space rental was “not generated by the district and is not affiliated with Jane Addams or the district.”

A district parent had reached out to the Satanic Temple’s after school club, and told the group that the elementary school already offered a “child evangelism fellowship club” and wanted to bring their program to the school “to offer parents a choice of different viewpoints,” the superintendent said.

Thirty flyers were sent to the school from the Satanic Temple and were placed in the school lobbies, as are all flyers for organizations and events at the school that are “religious in nature.”

She further noted that the board of education permits community usage of its facilities, and approves several agreements with local churches.

The flyer says the club will consist of science projects, puzzles, and more

 — as it aims to help children learn critical thinking and problem-solving.

Patrick Deaton/Facebook

“To illegally deny their organization (viewpoint) to pay to rent our publicly funded institution, after school hours, subjects the district to a discrimination lawsuit, which we will not win, likely taking thousands upon thousands of tax-payer dollars away from our teachers, staff, and classrooms,” Savage wrote.

The Satanic Temple says it views Satan as a “mythical figure representing individual freedom,” according to its website.

“Satanists should actively work to hone critical thinking and exercise reasonable agnosticism in all things,” the temple says. “Our beliefs must be malleable to the best current scientific understandings of the material world — never the reverse.”

Chinese state media Facebook ads are linked to changes in news coverage of China worldwide


We studied the relationship between Facebook advertisements from Chinese state media on the global media environment by examining the link between advertisements and online news coverage of China by other countries. We found that countries that see a large increase in views of Facebook advertisement from Chinese state media also see news coverage of China become more positive. News coverage also becomes more likely to use keywords that suggest a point of view favorable to China. One possible explanation is that by drawing greater attention to the issues emphasized by Chinese state media, the advertisements help Chinese state media set the news agenda covered by other media sources.

ARJUN M. TAMBE
Hoover Institution, Stanford University, USA
TONI FRIEDMAN
International Policy Department, Stanford University, USA

JANUARY 14, 2022
DOWNLOAD PDF

PEER REVIEWED

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Is increased exposure to Chinese state media Facebook ads within a country associated with changes in the tone of news coverage of China?
Is increased exposure to Chinese state media Facebook ads within a country associated with changes in the content of news coverage of China?
Do the changes linked to exposure to Chinese state media ads decrease after Facebook’s adoption of labels indicating that an advertisement is from state-controlled media?

ESSAY SUMMARY
We analyzed the relationship between Chinese state media Facebook advertisements and coverage of China in news articles from around the world published between 2018 and 2020.
We measured the number of times all Facebook advertisements from Chinese state media Facebook pages were shown on screens in over 100 countries from 2018 to 2020.
We collected news articles about China published online in each country from 2018 to 2020, and found the average tone of the news articles became more favorable, and the number of articles containing keywords that suggested a stance favorable to China increased.
We found that after countries were exposed to Chinese state media advertisements, news articles on China had a more positive tone, and were more likely to contain keywords suggesting a stance favorable to China.
The link between impressions and the tone of coverage of China weakened after Facebook’s adoption of state-funding labels in June 2020.
The findings suggest that social media platforms should take steps to limit the dissemination of state propaganda via paid advertisements, such as applying state-funding labels more consistently and prominently.

READ ON:
Chinese state media Facebook ads are linked to changes in news coverage of China worldwide | HKS Misinformation Review (harvard.edu)

Fans Encourage Donations to Local Shelters in Betty White’s Name to Honor Her Legacy as an Animal Advocate

By Alyssa ShotwellJan 13th, 2022


In honor of the late-great Betty White’s upcoming 100th birthday, thousands (if not millions) of people on and offline are participating in the Betty White Challenge by donating to their local animal rescue/shelter in her name. This initiative, dubbed the “Betty White Challenge,” asks people to donate five dollars, but more if they can, because shelters are always in need, and they’re important community resources.

The person who created this challenge remains a mystery. However, the donations to national and regional animal welfare groups picked up quickly after Betty White’s passing on December 31. That afternoon, some of the earliest advocacy to donate to pay homage to her legacy (more generally and not associated with the challenge) appeared online.

After January 2, the trend took off on many social media platforms when Nicole Maria Eldred made the graphic to help spread the word. Two of my local shelters even made their own graphics capitalizing off the trend because they, too, are in desperate need of food and supplies.
Betty White’s animal advocacy

As much as White was loved for her talent, wit, and social awareness of her status, she was also loved for her commitment to social issues. White wielded her limited privilege in the entertainment industry to make space for Black voices in the 1950s and queer characters in the 1980s—both at times that could’ve been a career-ender. Also, White used her money and influence to advocate for animals in need for decades.

White told the Associated Press that her love for animals came from childhood. She explained that her family took care of as many as 15 dogs during the Great Depression. Since then, she donated to, serves on the board of, and/or started several animal foundations and wildlife protection organizations over the years.

Most well known for her work with the Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association, they also addressed her passing, saying, “She was a long-time champion and friend of the L.A. Zoo who advocated for us and helped to amplify the work we are doing to conserve wildlife. She cared deeply for all living creatures – including us… The L.A. Zoo cannot thank Betty enough for her decades of support, and we share in this grief with all of you.”


Yes, she had a whole tv pet show, too

Her advocacy was not separate from her life as an actress. In the 1970s, White began a one-year syndicated show called Pet Set in which she talked to others in Hollywood about their pets and highlighted the animal coworkers that would star in major movies. We don’t need to show wild animals on set anymore with CGI tech, but it’s still interesting to slice film history.

Pet Set became available online in 2021, introducing the show to younger generations. Fair warning, even in the promo parts of this didn’t age well.

Where to donate

If you haven’t adopted a pet in the last five years by looking online first or have somehow missed the screenshots from the site (see fellow TMS writer Briana Lawerence’s discovery of @petfindernames Twitter account), Petfinder is a tool shelters and future pet parents use to find and care for sheltered animals. Used by many shelters across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, Petfinder.com can also help users find local shelters in their area.

Many cities have a city-run or non-profit shelters. For those that avoid phone calls, another option is to email or ask online which ones are in most need, especially regarding medical costs (including spay/neutering services), staffing (many are volunteers, but not all), food, and space. Please, please don’t pick based on which ones claim to be “no-kill” shelters. These shelters select animals they allow in, whereas most city shelters pick up all animals regardless of health, age, or breed.

On top of animal-related philanthropy being the lowest type of giving, there have been surges in animal surrenders as people returned to work/school. Also, with many struggling to pay their bills, pet owners are making hard choices to give up pets whose food and surprise vet bills they can’t afford. This is a vital time for giving to your local community (if finances allow), and in honor of her legacy, please donate today.

(via Instagram, image: Greater Los Angeles Zoo Association.)

Manatee feeding experiment starts slowly as cold looms

By CURT ANDERS

FILE - Manatees crowd together near the warm-water outflows from Florida Power & Light's plant in Riviera Beach, Fla., on Friday, Feb. 5, 2021. An unprecedented, experimental attempt to feed manatees facing starvation in Florida has started slowly but wildlife officials expressed optimism it will work as cold weather drives the marine mammals toward warmer waters. Officials said Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022, that a feeding station established along the state’s east coast has yet to entice manatees with romaine lettuce even though the animals will eat it in captivity. (Greg Lovett/The Palm Beach Post via AP, File)


TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — An unprecedented, experimental attempt to feed manatees facing starvation in Florida has started slowly but wildlife officials expressed optimism Thursday that it will work as cold weather drives the marine mammals toward warmer waters.

A feeding station established along the state’s east coast has yet to entice wild manatees with romaine lettuce even though the animals will eat it in captivity, officials said on a news conference held remotely.

Water pollution from agricultural, urban and other sources has triggered algae blooms that have decimated seagrass beds on which manatees depend, leading to a record 1,101 manatee deaths largely from starvation in 2021. The typical five-year average is about 625 deaths.

That brought about the lettuce feeding program, part of a joint manatee death response group led by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It remains a violation of state and federal law for people to feed manatees on their own.

“We have not documented animals foraging on the lettuce,” said Ron Mezich, chief of the joint effort’s provisioning branch. “We know manatees will eat lettuce.”

During winter months, hundreds of manatees tend to congregate in warmer waters from natural springs and power plant discharges. Because this winter has been unusually mild in Florida so far, the animals have been more dispersed.

“They’re moving, but they are not being pressed by cold temperatures yet,” said Tom Reinert, south regional director for the FWC. “We expect that to happen.”

In addition to the feeding experiment, officials are working with a number of facilities to rehabilitate distressed manatees that are found alive. These include Florida zoos, the SeaWorld theme park and marine aquariums. There were 159 rescued manatees in 2021, some of which require lengthy care and some that have been returned to the wild, officials said.

“Our facilities are at or near capacity,” said Andy Garrett, chief of rescue and recovery. “These animals need long-term care. It’s been a huge amount of work to date.”

There are a minimum of 7,520 manatees in Florida waters currently, according to state statistics. The slow-moving, round-tailed mammals have rebounded enough to list them as a threatened species rather than endangered, although a push is on to restore the endangered tag given the starvation deaths.

Officials are also using $8 million in state money on several projects aimed at restoring manatee habitat and planting new seagrass beds, but that is a slow process and won’t ultimately solve the problem until the polluted waters are improved.

People can report any manatee they see that might be distressed by calling a wildlife hotline at 888-404-FWCC (3922). Other ways to help are donating money through a state-sponsored fund or purchasing a Save the Manatee vehicle license plate.

That’s better than feeding manatees personally, which does more harm than good because the animals will associate humans with food, according to officials. People and manatees have struggled to coexist for decades.

“This is a very serious situation,” Reinert said. “Use your dollars and not heads of lettuce.”