Ex-SCMP, ex-Far Eastern Economic Review, ex-Reader’s Digest, ex-op-ed writer for NYT, etc, author of 40+ books; now running Hong Kong’s ‘Friday’ news project
Hong Kong
Joined August 2012
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Nury Vittachi retweeted
the world should reciprocate - citing US policy itself- and ban/uproot all US government-funded activities within their borders including US National Endowment for Democracy-funded opposition groups, media platforms, fake NGOs - all of which are as guilty in reality of what Hegseth accuses China of in fiction...
Nury Vittachi retweeted
Since the Stone Age ended, human governance has veered between 'res publica' (for the public) & the mafia model.
The West is presently quite far down the mafia end of the spectrum.
How to fix?
Our usual response is activism—an attempt to make change via the political system.
But our system's 'mafia-ization' isn’t ‘political’—it’s structural.
The system 𝘪𝘴 the problem.
The war on Iran—in the face of massive opposition from Left & Right: & the ongoing arming of the Gaza genocide—tell us our elites are unmoored from their democratic roots.
Autonomous.
The remaining choice for those who favor human survival appears to be neither leftwing nor rightwing—but a new democratic system:
Architecture that dissolves the corporate capture of both government & information.
At the root of our military, fiscal, social & environmental problems is a democracy problem.
Nury Vittachi retweeted
HONG KONG people are hiring boats to catch their dinners in the central harbor—the once dead piece of water is now WRITHING with fish.
It’s a Chinese miracle -- I’ve lived on the waterfront for years, and I’ve never seen anything like this before.
A decent-sized fish can easily cost the equivalent of a hundred US dollars—and some of shoals of fish in the harbour are so large they’re worth a fortune.
You can see how the surface of the water is affected by the sheer volume of fish below it.
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OUT ON BOATS
Now, many residents are hiring proper fishing boats to go out on the water. Look at this scene -- there’s one there, another one there, a third one over there and more over to the left.
For many years, waterfront dwellers like me would only see the occasional old rowing boat with one or two people with rods—people like this. [image]
But it’s very different now. Public fishing boats in the harbor are suddenly commonplace.
Or you can just fish from the promenade. Entire schools of fish can be seen just under the surface. And sometimes they leap right out.
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WATER FILLED WITH HUGE FISH
Check this out. I walked down to North Point and there was this huge shoal of large fish. You can imagine the value of this lot.
This is remarkable given that the harbor used to be famously filthy. In the past, people who fell into the water were taken away for medical check-ups.
I filmed THIS part in the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter, which used to be even dirtier than the rest of the harbor. Now look at it!
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THE STATISTICS
In 1997, when Hong Kong passed to Chinese sovereignty, only 26 of Hong Kong’s 41 beaches met cleanliness targets.
By 2010, all 41 passed the test.
How did the Chinese manage to clean the harbor? At the turn of the century, engineers dug the world’s deepest sewage tunnels, as deep as a 50-storey building.
The tunnel transfers waste water from Hong Kong island and Kowloon to a hi-tech treatment plant on Stonecutters Island for disinfection.
To be scrupulously fair, the project was built this century but some of the planning started in the British colonial era.
The clean water makes a very nice result for human beings and for the fish – except of course the ones which are caught for dinner. Bon appetit!
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Nury Vittachi retweeted
BREAKING: The US says it is number one, but in clean energy, it’s not even on the battlefield, former US presidential candidate John Kerry said at a Bloomberg conference.
“If we learned a lesson from China, we have to just watch what they did in 2019. What did they do? They decided: ‘Oh, we're dependent on oil and gas. That's not a good thing strategically.’
“And guess what? Between 2019 and today, China has manufactured and deployed more renewables than all of the rest of the world put together.
“Oh, come on, folks!
"And yet we hear politicians in Washington pontificating say, we've got to beat China. We're going to be number one.
“Well, you're not number one. If you pull out of the battlefield - you're not number one if you're not there competing. And we're not competing in those things.
“The fact is that wind, offshore wind, can provide a stable source of energy for the ability to be able to run data centers or do other things in combination with storage and with solar and, in emergency if you need it, some gas, but not as the main dependent entity, to be able to allow you to build those centers.”
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Nury Vittachi retweeted
BREAKING: U.S. WEAPONIZES SPACE - BUT NYT BLAMED CHINA, RUSSIA
Here’s an shocking new example of the New York Times fooling the world.
The US today revealed that it has weapons in space—and reports are highlighting that this may lead to China and Russia taking action that area.
Okay, get that?
The US has weapons in space.
China and Russia do NOT.
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TWO YEARS AGO
Now let’s look back two years to a report on this subject in the New York Times—which I covered at the time (here’s my video from 2024).
The newspaper said in 2024 that the Pentagon was being forced to weaponize space.
“Pentagon Rushes to Counter Threats in Orbit” says the headline.
The second headline says it is countering “rapid advances by China and Russia”.
Now the opening paragraph of the NYT article by Eric Lipton continues the theme: “rapid advances by China and Russia in space-based operations pose a growing threat to U.S. troops and other military assets on the ground”.
“Maneuverable satellites” and “space-based nuclear weapons” are mentioned.
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‘IT’S REAL. IT’S DEPLOYED’
“It is now not theoretical,” says a US general quoted by the New York Times.
“It’s real. It’s deployed, out in the environment.” China has “a kill web over the Pacific Ocean”, readers are told.
Now in my report at the time, I said this New York Times report was clearly deceptive—the US was using China and Russia as an excuse so that they could weaponize space.
Now, two years later, it’s clear that I was right: the US has weaponized space, not China or Russia.
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DEFEATED UNITED NATIONS AMENDMENT
I want to show you one more thing.
In April 2024, the United Nations discussed the topic that it would be good to prevent an arms race in space.
It was an oddly bland resolution, so two countries, China and Russia, added an amendment, saying the council should “prevent for all time the placement of weapons in outer space and the threat or use of force in outer space”.
That amendment was defeated.
So now, with all the facts before, you, YOU decide.
Which countries are opposed to weaponizing space? And who just went ahead and put weapons above our heads?
Does the New York Times report honestly?
Don’t be fooled. Whatever you read about China and Russia, the opposite may well be true – as it was in this case.
Peace.
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Nury Vittachi retweeted
Don’t defend Taiwan, dump Asian alliances, pull US forces back 😱
This is a textbook declaratory-policy feint and narrative shaping: days before the Xi-Trump summit, a Washington think-tank proposes abandoning Taiwan and scrapping four Asian defence treaties — while the Pentagon's actual, budgeted, weapons, steel-and-concrete posture moves in exactly the opposite direction
Infrastructure doesn't lie; op-eds do. The physical record — bombers, submarine rotations, war stockpiles — is multi-year, sunk-cost, treaty-grade commitment. It is the opposite of packing up!
B-52s just landed at RAAF Tindal — a $1.1B upgrade, 3,000km south of China's main missile envelope.
The Navy stood up NSA Stirling in May; attack subs rotate there from 2027. Command nodes dispersing to Darwin. War stockpiles going to rural Victoria — tender documents literally cite "beyond the range of most Chinese missiles"
The 7th fleet isn't planning to be in the firing line either, staying by large out of range
Meanwhile the U.S. plans that it's regional proxies, Taipei, Manila, Tokyo etc bear the main brunt of any war fighting along the first island chain forward positioning of weapons and ammunition is in full swing
The US itself stands off preserving its main fire power — while shipping weapons, feeding targeting data, running the whole C2 sh*tshow from over the horizon
Ukraine was the proof of concept. The entire posture shift exists so the U.S. won't be in main firing line "Fight to the last Ukrainian" soon has a Pacific edition...
Read the tender docs, not the Op-eds 🎬
straitstimes.com/world/unite…
Nury Vittachi retweeted
THE U.S. MUST be prepared to BOMB China’s AI development centers, a new US security report says.
But first, America can try stealing their work. “Prepare to reverse engineer or steal AGI technology if China gets it first,” says the report from the Centre for a New American Security.
If that doesn’t work, cyberattacks or just raining missiles down is an option to be considered, the report says.
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CHINESE MUST BE STOPPED
Chinese are good at AI so must be stopped from getting to the next level, which is AGI, artificial general intelligence, the report warns.
The US should “conduct a scenario exercise to test when and how the United States might intervene to stop China from developing AGI”, said the report, written by Jacob Stokes.
“The final option would be the most dangerous and carry the most escalation risk: kinetic attacks, meaning destroying things with missiles and bombs. Bombing would cross a major threshold that heretofore has not been crossed in U.S.-China relations,” he writes.
That’s rather an understatement.
“Howdy, guys, we decided to make a bit of an adjustment to U.S.-China relations by attacking your country with missiles and bombs. That’s the way we roll!”
I am not making this up. I’ll give you a link to the document.
Peace.
Nury Vittachi retweeted
The HSR bridge is not expensive, just 6.9 billion RMB, roughly 1.5 days of US military spending on Iran war.
Without war, the world would be much, much better.
Nury Vittachi retweeted
You know the fake campaign pretending that China is oppressing the Uyghurs? It crashed and burned in a hilarious way this week after one of the many fake Uyghur campaign groups published a video they said showed China demolishing a mosque.
But it actually showed Indonesians demolishing a theme park building – nothing to do with China, Uyghurs, or Islam.
The demonize China team had arranged for lots of fake accounts to follow-up the fake video with supportive comments—but they forgot to tell them to use different words.
So as you can see here, it looked like lots of people on social media were commenting on it—but they all said almost exactly the same thing, showing that they weren’t real people at all. This also got a lot of laughs.
The Uyghur campaign group’s website uses a lot of fake AI pictures, and if you press on the tag that says “Our Team” you just get a blank page!
There were more than 12 hundred posts on X dotcom poking fun at the flop of the campaign to demonize China.
But not on the other social media channels – so please steal this video and share the story on Facebook and Instagram and Tiktok and Youtube or anywhere else. Thank you!
Nury Vittachi retweeted
🇺🇸🇷🇺🇨🇳NEW ARTICLE: US War on Multipolarism: Turning the Gameboard Over
"At stake is either a world in which nations accelerate into the future under a balance of power between nations or stagnate under the domination of a single nation willing to obstruct or even destroy human progress in order to maintain dominance over whatever remains."
(NOTE: X censors many links previously banned by Twitter & the US State Department including NEO articles, so I am posting the WHOLE article below).
The US has pursued a policy of global primacy spanning the 20th and 21st centuries, enduring regardless of presidential administration or the balance between Democratic and Republican parties in Congress, carving out what is a modern day American empire.
The US controls not only the entirety of the Western world (Europe, Australia, and New Zealand), but also proxies in South America, Africa, and all across Asia from east to west. It seeks to maintain - even expand its domination further through military and economic power, as well as through political subversion, infiltration and capture as well as through information dominance.
Conversely - there emerges a multipolar world which favors a balance of power between nations rather than subordination to a single nation.
Centered on the BRICS organization led by the rise of China and the re-emergence of Russia, the multipolar world is not only creating the means by which to defend against US encroachment, encirclement, and eventual capture - it is creating an alternative global system holding the potential to entirely displace the toxic US unipolar system.
Multipolar Ships Rise on China’s Tide
China’s rise alone in terms of economic, industrial, and military power - has by nearly every metric matched or is now exceeding that of US power.
China’s rise has created the opportunity for other nations targeted by US domination to trade with and benefit from a growing center of global power on par with the US and its proxies - allowing nations like North Korea, Russia, and Iran to sustain viable economies despite being cut off from US-dominated “global” economic systems, institutions, and services.
China, together with a growing number of partner nations, are creating alternatives to these economic systems, institutions, and services long-since monopolized and perpetually abused by the US.
Despite this, the US remains a powerful and dangerous global power - but a global power whose limits are increasingly exposed by the equally powerful and growing multipolar world.
What has resulted is no longer a contest between two global players - but a player who inevitably faces defeat seeking to topple the gameboard altogether before that defeat fully materializes.
Toppling the Global Gameboard
The US finds itself an aggressive global hegemon with a system built upon the perpetual pursuit of power and profit in a finite world where its means to do so are in decline relative to China’s rise alone - saying nothing of the multipolar world China is helping take shape.
This can be defined in real-world metrics.
In global trade, 70% of the world’s nations count China as their largest trade partner - with China dominating global manufacturing, critical mineral and other raw material refining and processing, shipbuilding (200 ships built for every 1 ship built by the US), industrial robotics and other industrial machinery, supply chains, mining, smelting, steel production, and virtually every other modern industrial input, process, and output.
China commands this industrial supremacy with a population 4-5 times greater than the US - a population larger than the US and its European, Japanese, South Korean, and Philippine proxies combined - and through the creation of millions more STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) graduates than the US, each and every year for the past two decades.
These human resources are combined with China’s unprecedented infrastructure expansion in areas such as power generation (leading the world in renewables as well as in nuclear power plant construction) and power grids, mass transportation (possessing the largest high-speed railway in human history together with the world’s fastest passenger trains and most powerful freight locomotives), industrial clusters, and telecommunications (5G networks).
Much of this infrastructure not only exists all across China but is now expanding globally through China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).
The gaps emerging between China’s rise and existing US power are so large - in many cases the US has given up on even attempting to match China and is instead openly discussing containing, disrupting, and otherwise undermining it.
It does this through physically encircling China with its military and the military of its politically captured proxies in South Korea, Japan, and the Philippines as well as through the Chinese island province of Taiwan.
The US uses its still potent domination over information space through US-based social media platforms and organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy - China and the rest of the multipolar world have still failed to challenge let alone displace - to infiltrate, interfere in, and threaten to politically capture or destabilize nations along China’s periphery. Examples include the ongoing war raging inside Myanmar, US-sponsored regime change in Nepal, and ongoing terrorism in Pakistan targeting Chinese BRI projects - 3 nations along China’s own borders.
Further abroad, the US has systematically targeted China’s closest allies and energy partners - seizing control of Venezuela earlier this year in Latin America then halting energy exports to China, waging war on Iran and disrupting energy exports from the entirety of West Asia, and overseeing a proxy war on Russia through Ukraine including attacks on Russian energy production, storage, and export infrastructure - again - China being Russia’s largest energy importer.
This constitutes what is a growing “distant blockade” strategy in which the US is attempting to strangle China through energy and raw material imports beyond the reach of China’s military capabilities to counter it.
The US is using its remaining military, economic, and political power to coerce the nations of the world to “decouple” from China economically and industrially or face military, economic, and/or political isolation themselves. In some cases this is incrementally working - especially among nations already politically captured by the US (like Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines), but who have still built up close economic relations with (and dependencies on) China.
The end result for the US and its proxies is not their own rise, but rather a world where the emerging multipolar powers are dragged down to the current level of remaining US power.
Together - this represents not a policy of competing with China - but one of destabilizing and destroying the world China’s rise is taking place within.
Carefully Managing the End Game
It is incumbent upon China and the multipolar world to build faster than the US can destabilize and destroy it. Because it is always easier to destroy than to create - the US possesses an inherent advantage especially when coupled with the US’ still potent military, economic, and political means.
But because of the sheer scale of China’s rise and the exponential manner in which it continues to expand, multipolarism may not only succeed despite US efforts to disrupt it - US efforts to disrupt it may even be further accelerating its rise.
It is imperative that the multipolar world manages this transition carefully - avoiding the wider destructive conflict the US seeks to provoke to demolish global progress with, all while ensuring resilience against Washington and Wall Street’s continuous attempts to topple the gameboard before the game’s conclusion.
At stake is either a world in which nations accelerate into the future under a balance of power between nations, or stagnate under the domination of a single nation willing to obstruct or even destroy human progress in order to maintain dominance over whatever remains.
It would be a mistake to underestimate the US and its desire to maintain primacy over the world - or overestimate any desire in Washington or on Wall Street to acknowledge the failure of Western hegemony and voluntarily work along with the rest of the world rather than insist on dominating it.
From the highest levels of multipolarism - the governments, industries, and institutions of the multipolar world - to the ordinary people aspiring to live in that multipolar world - greater efforts must be made to improve the military, economic, and political resilience against what remains of US power.
Beyond just military and economic power which the multipolar world excels at expanding - there must be a unified effort to expose and displace US information dominance around the globe - through the creation of alternative social media platforms and content not only within individual nations of the world – but platforms for use between the multipolar nations of the world beyond the reach of US censorship, manipulation, and control. .
Instead of an algorithm encouraging social division, weakening nations from within, while encouraging pro-US public perception to enable US political capture of these nations, multipolar social media platforms could encourage social cohesion within nations and positive cooperation between nations.
Through media like movies and music - rather than aping Western media designed specifically to encourage the worst of human nature, the preservation of local culture and values can be ensured while encouraging curiosity and respect for those of partner nations across multipolarism.
The US is waging a multidomain war on multipolarism - stretching far beyond just military and economic power - meaning for multipolarism to prevail - it must mount a multidomain defense likewise extending far beyond just military and economic alternatives.
Only time will tell whether multipolarism possesses the ability to foster such close and multidomain cooperation between the many nations of the world to prevail against US primacy which has - for decades - excelled at dividing and dominating the world precisely because of a global inability to do so until now.
Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer.
Nury Vittachi retweeted
Today I’m going to tell you the strange story about how the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association went over to the dark side.
The HKJA is in the news at the moment—for NOT telling its own members who’s running it.
It’s pretty weird. If you go to their website and click to find out the names of the executive committee, you get this:
“The Executive Committee has earlier decided not to publicise the list of Executive Committee members.”
Odd, no? If there is ONE just one defining characteristic of journalists, it is that we love to see our names in print! So how can we be represented by a mystery group of people who are too shy to share their names?!
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LOUD MEMBERS
So who are they? Well, officially, no one knows.
But Hong Kong does have a lively journalistic community, and they have worked out who are the dominant voices are in the organization.
- There’s Selina Cheng who was famously sacked by the Wall Street Journal, which is not a Hong Kong newspaper.
- There’s Danny Vincent who used to work for the BBC, which is not a Hong Kong news outlet.
- There’s Mak Yin-Ting, freelance reporter for Radio France Internationale, which is not a Hong Kong radio station.
- Then there is a Swiss photographer named Marc Progin, who achieved notoriety as the person who thoughtlessly shut a door, halting an innocent bank staff member’s journey, just before a violent protester who savagely attacked him. [vid clip provided]
- The other person named is So Chun-yeung, a photographer for Channel WE, a new blog set up on the bones of Channel C, an online media outlet which collapsed in April, owing lots of unpaid salaries.
These individuals may be very nice people.
But do they epitomize the Hong Kong journalism community? These people who work for the infamous western mainstream media on the other side of the planet?
Knowing the history of the HKJA is helpful.
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1. NO POLITICS
The HKJA was founded in 1968 – by an Australian named Jack Spackman, who mainly worked for a Hong Kong newspaper called the China Mail.
I knew him in the 1980s. The founder of the HKJA used to remind young journalists like me that we should report on political groups but never join them. (Yes, I was young once -- pic in the video.)
The tall, thin, friendly Australian would say: “Leave politics to the politicians. But don’t let them get away with anything.”
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2. CIA ARRIVES
Jack left Hong Kong in 1987.
In 1989, various CIA and NED agents started long-term major operations in Hong Kong, with their usual modus operandi: setting up trade unions and groups to feed the media with the CIA's Three Weaponized Terms: freedom, democracy and human rights.
In 1990, the NED started funding a new group called the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions.
In 1994, the NED started funding another new group: the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor.
And in the same period, the HKJA became a political body. I stopped going to the meetings when they were chaired by Emily Lau, tireless critic of China.
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3. TEAMING UP WITH THE N.E.D.
In 2002, the two NED-financed groups in Hong Kong met with the Hong Kong Journalists Association and other groups to create a joint operation called the Civil Human Rights Front, to organize anti-China street protests and criticize the government.
How did that fit with Spackman’s vision of “leaving politics to the politicians”?
Another group joined the cluster – the Civic Party, which also went through a period of getting funding directly from the NED.
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4. TEAMING UP WITH THE UK
By the early 2000s, the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association had got into the habit of producing an annual report saying that press freedom in Hong Kong was dead or dying – but it was produced in partnership with Article19, a UK-based political body.
The HKJA did this every year until 2006. Why was a Hong Kong body working with the west to demonize its own community? Bit odd.
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5. QUOTING THE INFAMOUS RSF
On similar lines, HKJA leaders started to quote the RSF press freedom index.
But real journalists never quote that index because it had already been exposed as a CIA-NED scam.
Originally RSF told people they were not US-financed, and got their money by book sales. Then real journalists discovered that they didn’t sell books! And RSF was forced to reveal their funding had really been from the CIA and later, the NED.
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6. MILLIONS IN MYSTERY FUNDING
In 2014, an over-staffed HK blog called House News closed down. This was no surprise. Few people read it, no one advertised in it, and it was reportedly losing HK$600,000 a month.
But what happened next WAS a surprise.
It was relaunched a few months later as wealthy anti-China website called Stand News, anonymously financed.
On its board was Denise Ho, associated with the Oslo Freedom Forum, later revealed by the BBC to be secret US-based organizer of protests in Hong Kong. [clip provided]
Stand News overseas director was a man named Evan Fowler, who had co-founded a China-hostile website called the Hong Kong Free Press, home of the notorious yellowface hoaxer named Brian P. Kern.
A Stand News reporter, Ronson Chan, became chairman of the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association from June 2021.
After the bosses of Stand News closed it down, investigators found the website had a reserve cash account containing $8 million US dollars. Lot of spare cash for a blog with no functioning business model!
Later, at a court hearing, financial investigators revealed that they had found millions of dollars had been delivered to Stand News quote "in a clandestine manner" before the 2019 riots broke out.
You decide who was really behind Stand News.
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7. THE $2.50 INSTANT JOURNALISTS
During the violent insurgency of 2019, all pretense of professionalism at the HKJA was killed stone dead.
It seemed like anybody could get an official HKJA membership, and it was just HK$20 if you said you were a student – that’s about US$2.50.
I was teaching a screenwriting program at university and some of my students were reinventing themselves as journalists. No accreditation, no training course, no professional standards, no exams, nothing.
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8. SERVING THE WEST
Today, it may seem obvious that the Hong Kong Journalists Association does not represent Hong Kong journalists.
It comes across as a western political body with a relentlessly anti-China stance.
Its job is to push the western media narrative. When the western media say Hong Kong is dead, China killed Hong Kong, there’s no freedom in Hong Kong, all the freedoms have been lost – the HKJA’s job is to say YES.
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A NEW CHAPTER?
Good stories have Epilogues, so let’s have one
Journalism is an important part of a community’s civic services.
For too long, Hong Kong's civic sector has been dominated by people paid, often secretly, by the west, to drive the west’s political anti-China narrative.
It’s time to recapture the original spirit of the HKJA. Real journalists, citizen journalists, young journalists, who’s with me?
I can still hear the voice of Jack Spackman, the Australian founder of HKJA. “Leave politics to the politicians. But don’t let them get away with anything.”
Peace.
Nury Vittachi retweeted
STOP BEING MEAN TO THE CHINESE! Young Americans oppose a new cold war with China, says a report published yesterday.
There’s a huge gulf between the mega-hostile attitudes of Washington’s old men, and the open-mindedness of the new generation in the country, said Ali Wyne, senior research and advocacy adviser for US-China relations at the International Crisis Group, in an essay for the Financial Times, published yesterday.
“Though many China experts in Washington think Beijing’s mounting power and widespread congressional anxiety will eventually compel the US to resume a more confrontational posture, for now the public does not seem inclined to support a ‘new cold war’,” he wrote.
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POISONING MINDS
This is interesting. As well pushing the “China threat” theme in media across the country, Washington funds or co-funds multiple organizations around the world to poison minds against the Asian country, including the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, Radio Free Asia, and literally scores of media outlets, including many in Asian countries and in Europe, we note.
But despite the billion-dollar budget to demonize China, the process is failing around the world, including with young adults and youth in the U.S., multiple surveys show.
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'CHINA THREAT' NARRATIVE FAILING
The standard “China threat” fearmongering technique favored by Joe Biden and others may never come back, Wyne said.
After the Trump presidency ends, US policymakers “should not assume that the country’s allies will support a renewed effort to counterbalance China nor expect that invoking the ‘China threat’ will imbue younger Americans with a nationalist sense of shared purpose,” he wrote.
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HOSTILITY EFFORTS FAILING
A host of surveys show the failure of efforts to create hostility. The new generation in the U.S., in particular, show a positive attitude to China, Wyne said.
- The number of people in the U.S. who call China an “enemy” fell from 42% in March 2024 to just 28% in a January 2026 Pew Research survey.
- Only 27% of 18- to 29-year-olds think that their lives would become “worse” were China’s power to overtake America’s, according to a Carnegie Endowment survey in November 2025.
- A solid 62% of those aged 18-34 want the U.S. to “co-operate with China and improve U.S.-China relations”, while just 29 per cent want it to “stand up to China”.
- 82% of Gen Z respondents say that the bilateral economic relationship has been good for the U.S. over the past quarter-century, and 68% want to encourage Chinese investment, said a May 2026 American Compass survey.
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BUT WAR DANGER REMAINS
But there’s one angle to Wyne’s report in the Financial Times that many people may disagree with. He quotes positive things that Donald Trump has said about Chinese leader Xi Jinping, indicating that the US President and the new generation in the US think alike.
Two caveats should be highlighted here.
First, taken as a whole, Trump’s statements about Xi and China are so plentiful and self-contradictory that one can cherry-pick them to make a positive or negative impression.
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SERIOUSLY BAD IDEAS
Second, the US military media industrial complex is clearly pressing ahead with plans for a war on China – the recent RIMPAC exercise, involving some 30 nations, barely bothered to hide this.
As part of this plan, we see the continuing recycling of the "China is just about to invade Taiwan" narrative, which has been wrong annually for at least forty years.
A US war on China would be a terribly bad idea.
But that’s the problem.
As we can all see with Iran, the system shows that extremely bad ideas end up on desks in Washington DC, where, scarily often, they get an instant green light.
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Nury Vittachi retweeted
Who Opposed Nuking Japan?
“The Japanese were ready to surrender and it wasn’t necessary to hit them with that awful thing.” —Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
“In 1945 Secretary of War Stimson, visiting my headquarters in Germany, informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act. … The Secretary, upon giving me the news of the successful bomb test in New Mexico, and of the plan for using it, asked for my reaction, apparently expecting a vigorous assent. During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and secondly because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of ‘face.’ The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude.” —Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower
“The use of the atomic bomb, with its indiscriminate killing of women and children, revolts my soul.” —Herbert Hoover
“[T]he Japanese were prepared to negotiate all the way from February 1945 … up to and before the time the atomic bombs were dropped; … [I]f such leads had been followed up, there would have been no occasion to drop the bombs.” —Herber Hoover
“I told [Gen. Douglas] MacArthur of my memorandum of mid-May 1945 to Truman, that peace could be had with Japan by which our major objectives would be accomplished. MacArthur said that was correct and that we would have avoided all of the losses, the Atomic bomb, and the entry of Russia into Manchuria.” —Herbert Hoover
“MacArthur’s views about the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were starkly different from what the general public supposed. When I asked General MacArthur about the decision to drop the bomb, I was surprised to learn he had not even been consulted. What, I asked, would his advice have been? He replied that he saw no military justification for the dropping of the bomb. The war might have ended weeks earlier, he said, if the United States had agreed, as it later did anyway, to the retention of the institution of the emperor.” — Norman Cousins
“General MacArthur definitely is appalled and depressed by this Frankenstein monster. I had a long talk with him today, necessitated by the impending trip to Okinawa. He wants time to think the thing out, so he has postponed the trip to some future date to be decided later.” — Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s pilot, Weldon E. Rhoades
“[General Douglas] MacArthur once spoke to me very eloquently about it, pacing the floor of his apartment in the Waldorf. He thought it a tragedy that the bomb was ever exploded. MacArthur believed that the same restrictions ought to apply to atomic weapons as to conventional weapons, that the military objective should always be limited damage to noncombatants…MacArthur, you see, was a soldier. He believed in using force only against military targets, and that is why the nuclear thing turned him off…” — Richard Nixon
“The Japanese were ready for peace, and they already had approached the Russians and the Swiss. And that suggestion of giving a warning of the atomic bomb was a face-saving proposition for them, and one that they could have readily accepted. In my opinion, the Japanese war was really won before we ever used the atom bomb.” —Under Secretary of the Navy, Ralph Bird
“The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell, because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.” — General “Hap” Arnold
“[Gen.] Arnold’s view was that the dropping of the atomic bomb was totally unnecessary. He said he knew the Japanese wanted peace. There were political implications in the decision, and Arnold did not feel it was the military’s job to question them. … [Arnold’s view was]: when the question comes up of whether we use the atomic bomb or not, my view is that the Air Force will not oppose the use of the bomb, and they will deliver it effectively if the Commander-in-Chief decides to use it. But it is not necessary to use it in order to conquer the Japanese without the necessity of a land invasion.” — General Ira Eaker, Deputy Commander of U.S. Army Air Forces
“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace. The atomic bomb played no decisive part, from a purely military point of view, in the defeat of Japan.” — Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet
“The Japanese had, in fact, already sued for peace before the atomic age was announced to the world with the destruction of Hiroshima and before the Russian entry into the war.” — Adm. Nimitz
“The use of this barbarous weapon at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was of no material assistance in our war against Japan. The Japanese were already defeated and ready to surrender because of the effective sea blockade and the successful bombing with conventional weapons … The lethal possibilities of atomic warfare in the future are frightening. My own feeling was that in being the first to use it, we had adopted an ethical standard common to the barbarians of the Dark Ages. I was not taught to make war in that fashion, and wars cannot be won by destroying women and children.” —Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy, Chief of Staff to President Truman
“Truman told me it was agreed they would use it, after military men’s statements that it would save many, many American lives, by shortening the war, only to hit military objectives. Of course, then they went ahead and killed as many women and children as they could, which was just what they wanted all the time.” —Adm. Leahy
“The war would have been over in two weeks without the Russians entering and without the atomic bomb. … The atomic bomb had nothing to do with the end of the war at all.” — Major General Curtis LeMay, XXI Bomber Command
“[LeMay said] if we’d lost the war, we’d all have been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he’s right. He, and I’d say I, were behaving as war criminals. LeMay recognized that what he was doing would be thought immoral if his side had lost. But what makes it immoral if you lose and not immoral if you win?” —Robert MacNamara
“The first atomic bomb was an unnecessary experiment … It was a mistake to ever drop it … [the scientists] had this toy and they wanted to try it out, so they dropped it.” — Fleet Admiral William Halsey Jr.
“I concluded that even without the atomic bomb, Japan was likely to surrender in a matter of months. My own view was that Japan would capitulate by November 1945. Even without the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it seemed highly unlikely, given what we found to have been the mood of the Japanese government, that a U.S. invasion of the islands scheduled for 1 November 1945 would have been necessary.” — Paul Nitze, director and then Vice Chairman of the Strategic Bombing Survey
“[E]ven without the atomic bombing attacks, air supremacy over Japan could have exerted sufficient pressure to bring about unconditional surrender and obviate the need for invasion. Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey’s opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.” — U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, 1946
“Just when the Japanese were ready to capitulate, we went ahead and introduced to the world the most devastating weapon it had ever seen and, in effect, gave the go-ahead to Russia to swarm over Eastern Asia. Washington decided it was time to use the A-bomb. I submit that it was the wrong decision. It was wrong on strategic grounds. And it was wrong on humanitarian grounds.” — Ellis Zacharias Deputy Director of the Office of Naval Intelligence
“When we didn’t need to do it, and we knew we didn’t need to do it, and they knew that we knew we didn’t need to do it, we used them as an experiment for two atomic bombs. Many other high-level military officers concurred.” — Brigadier General Carter Clarke, the Military Intelligence officer in charge of preparing summaries of intercepted Japanese cables for President Truman and his advisors
“The commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations, Ernest J. King, stated that the naval blockade and prior bombing of Japan in March of 1945, had rendered the Japanese helpless and that the use of the atomic bomb was both unnecessary and immoral. — Carter Clarke
“I proposed to Secretary Forrestal that the weapon should be demonstrated before it was used… the war was very nearly over. The Japanese were nearly ready to capitulate… My proposal… was that the weapon should be demonstrated over… a large forest of cryptomeria trees not far from Tokyo… Would lay the trees out in windrows from the center of the explosion in all directions as though they were matchsticks, and, of course, set them afire in the center. It seemed to me that a demonstration of this sort would prove to the Japanese that we could destroy any of their cities at will… Secretary Forrestal agreed wholeheartedly with the recommendation… It seemed to me that such a weapon was not necessary to bring the war to a successful conclusion, that once used it would find its way into the armaments of the world.” — Special Assistant to the Secretary of the Navy Lewis Strauss
“In the light of available evidence I myself and others felt that if such a categorical statement about the retention of the dynasty had been issued in May 1945, the surrender-minded elements in the Japanese government might well have been afforded by such a statement a valid reason and the necessary strength to come to an early clear cut decision. If surrender could have been brought about in May 1945, or even in June, or July, before the entrance of Soviet Russia into the Pacific war and the use of the atomic bomb, the world would have been the gainer.” — Under Secretary of State Joseph Grew
And for what it’s worth, then-Army Chief George Marshall wanted only to hit military facilities with it, not cities.
“It will not be long before we are reduced to savagery. We are the barbarians within our own empire.” — Russell Kirk, author of The Conservative Mind
“This doctrine of progress is a most interesting instance of the blind and foolish confidence of Americans in the God Progress. … Thus far, apparently, it has been progress toward annihilation, an end to be accomplished, perhaps, by the improved atomic bomb? We have dealt more death and destruction in the space of ten years than the men of the Middle Ages, with their Devil, were able to accomplish in a thousand.” —Russell Kirk
“The atomic bomb was a final blow to the code of humanity. I cannot help thinking that we will suffer retribution for this. For a long time to come I believe my chief interest is going to be the restoration of civilization, of the distinctions that make life intelligible.” — Richard Weaver, author of Ideas Have Consequences
Nury Vittachi retweeted
What breaking out of underdevelopment actually looks like
Earlier this year, Zimbabwe did something that developing countries are usually punished for: it banned the export of raw minerals and lithium concentrates outright, and told the mining companies operating there that if they wanted Zimbabwean lithium they would have to process it in Zimbabwe.
The economics driving that decision aren’t difficult to understand. Raw lithium concentrate fetches somewhere around $570 a ton. Battery-grade lithium carbonate sells for roughly $7,000, meaning that the refined product is worth 12 times the value of the unrefined rock.
Africa holds an enormous share of the minerals on which the global energy transition depends, but in the prevailing imperialist system it has been assigned the role of digging them up and shipping them out, while the value is captured elsewhere. This is a colonial division of labour, still running, with lithium substituted for copper and rubber. Zimbabwe refuses to play along.
Historically, “resource nationalism” in the Global South has been punished with coups, sanctions and structural adjustment. Iran nationalised its oil and Mossadegh was overthrown. Chile nationalised copper and Allende was overthrown. Indeed Zimbabwe, let’s not forget, has been under Western sanctions for decades on account of its unwillingness to play along with the global extractive order.
How are China’s companies responding to the new policy? By investing in Zimbabwe, building refineries and processing plants, and complying with the government’s requirement that they add value locally.
Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt, through its subsidiary Prospect Lithium Zimbabwe, has constructed the country’s first lithium sulphate plant at Goromonzi in Mashonaland East. In April it shipped Zimbabwe’s first-ever export of domestically produced lithium sulphate. Sinomine’s Bikita Minerals is building a second plant in Masvingo. Once both are running, as President Mnangagwa noted this week, Zimbabwe will be the only country in Africa hosting multiple lithium-processing operations.
Instead of Zimbabwean rock being shipped to a refinery in China, the refinery is being built in Zimbabwe – with the jobs, the skills, the tax base and the higher-value export revenue staying in the country. Huayou paid $422 million for the Arcadia project in 2021; it is now investing further to comply with a policy that reduces its own margins in favour of its host.
By contrast, the US Minerals Security Partnership exists to secure supply chains for US industry, not to build African ones. Washington’s recent minerals dealmaking in the DRC is about access, not beneficiation. Nobody in Brussels or Washington is financing lithium refineries in Masvingo.
The West is trying to keep Africa at the bottom of the value chain. China is helping it move up.
Nury Vittachi retweeted
It's actually shocking to hear one of the nation's most bloodthirsty neocons -- Robert Kagan, the husband of Victoria Nuland and partner of Bill Kristol in pushing the Iraq War long before 9/11 -- admit not only that the US is often attacked as "blowback" from its own aggression, but that both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 are examples of it.
This has long been one of the most taboo truths when it comes to US war propaganda, and still is:👇
Astounding and must-read all the way through. responsiblestatecraft.org/ro…
Nury Vittachi retweeted
Today, we #Uyghurs are facing unemployment again, all because of your so-called the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List. You keep repeating this lie with the aim of committing genocide against the Uyghurs.
Today we are adding 43 Chinese companies to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act Entity List, and @DHSgov will ensure their products do not enter our country. ⬇️
Nury Vittachi retweeted
IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN CEUTA, read the timeline of events, and then decide for yourself
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PART ONE: 2020 – 2021 TRUMP, NETANYAHU AND THE LEADERS OF MOROCCO
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2020 December 10
To the dismay of much of the public of Morocco, US President Donald Trump announces that Morocco’s leaders have agreed to recognize Israel.
- In accordance with this, the United States says it officially recognizes Morocco's claims over the Western Sahara.
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2020 December 11
The Trump administration sells US$1 billion worth of weapons to Morocco, again to the dismay of many Moroccans.
They express concern about Trump and Netanyahu as ruthless, unprincipled leaders with expansionist intentions.
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2021 January 15
- King Mohammed VI of Morocco visits the White House and awards President Trump the Order of Muhammad.
- In return, Trump awards the King with the Legion of Merit, degree of Chief Commander.
- The US says a consulate will be set up in Dakhla in the Western Sahara, to strengthen Morocco’s claims on that land.
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2021 May 17
- Moroccans reduce their border security to punish the Spanish, after they allow the sick leader of a Saharan independence group to be treated in a hospital in Spain.
- About 8,000 migrants suddenly pour into Ceuta.
- The images of dark-skinned men pouring into Spanish territory are carried by the media, and help to amplify a huge wave of anti-migrant, anti-Muslim feeling across Europe and UK.
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2021 November 24
Morocco and Israel sign a defense agreement. IDF personnel in uniform visit Morocco for the first time.
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PART TWO: 2023 TO 2025: ISRAEL BECOMES AN EVEN BIGGER ISSUE IN MOROCCO
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2023 July 17
Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu recognizes Morocco's sovereignty over the Western Sahara in a letter to King Mohammed VI.
- Netanyahu says he also plans to open a consulate in the city of Dakhla, Western Sahara, to strengthen Morocco's claims in that area.
- The deals cement unity between Trump, Netanyahu and the Moroccan leadership – although not the North African country’s public.
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2025 April 5
Tens of thousands of Moroccans take to the streets in a large protest demonstration against the IDF .
Marchers say that Israel’s massive assault on Gaza is disproportionate, they express sympathy for the huge number of civilian casualties, and call for an end to the violence.
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2025 April 8
The US State Department releases a statement reiterating the United States’ recognition of Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara.
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2025 October 9
Spain says it will not spend excessive cash on weapons and military (5% of GDP) as “required” in targets set by US-dominated NATO. Trump threatens to throw the country out of NATO.
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PART THREE: 2026: SPAIN’S OPPOSITION TO IRAN ATTACK INFURIATES TRUMP, NETANYAHU
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2026 April 3
Thousands of Moroccan people march to denounce a new Israeli law that would allow the execution of Palestinians.
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2026 March 2
Spain refuses to allow the United States access to its Rota and Morón military bases, pointing out that the unilateral US-Israel attack on Iran clearly violates United Nations' principles on conflict.
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2026 March 3
US President Donald Trump announces that the United States will cut off all trade with Spain because of its refusal to help in the attack on Iran and its refusal to double the spending of public money on weapons and the military.
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2026 April 24
A leaked Pentagon email reveals that the United States is holding internal discussions to suspend Spain from NATO over its refusal to play any role in the attack on Iran.
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2026 July 27
As US and Israel anger against Spain mounts, Moroccan border controls mysteriously relax.
- An estimated 50,000 to 60,000 illegal would-be migrants cross into Ceuta.
- News media across the world are again filled with images of dark-skinned young men pouring across a border.
- The incident, historians note, is an uncanny echo of the 2021 May 17 event.
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2026 August 1
Most of the people who crossed have been quickly returned to Morocco.
– But Spain’s leadership is considered to be badly harmed;
– Anti-migrant sentiment in Spain and across Europe and UK has been inflamed;
– Anti-Muslim passions in the same areas have also been stepped up;
– Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, accused Madrid of hypocrisy; and
– Trump has blamed Spain for the problem.
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Those are the facts, not in dispute. You decide the underlying story behind what you see in the media.
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Nury Vittachi retweeted
On the UK's new secret propaganda cell the Hybrid Threats Directorate
Do you think the poor old British media can come up with all these lies about Iran, the IRGC, Russia and China all by themselves?
