#Latin America

[xtruss]

US Clinging To Cold War Delusions: The First Time a Tragedy, The Second a Farce

— John Pang, Former Malaysian Government Official | September 03, 2023

Illustration:Xia Qing/Global Times

Editor's Note:

The China-US bilateral relationship is one of the most important in the world. The trajectory of this relationship has attracted international attention. Still, the US is stepping up its efforts to suppress China on various fronts such as politics and diplomacy, economy, trade, technology, and military security, showing the true meaning of a cold war. The Global Times invites Chinese and foreign experts to expose the US' manipulation of the new cold war and reveal the damage it may potentially cause to the world.

US President Joe Biden felt it necessary to deny that the US was waging a cold war against China at his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Bali last year. Despite this, US actions against China, in the form of strategic encirclement, military escalation, propaganda and economic warfare, and its trespass of every red line of China over the island of Taiwan, show the US is intent on a new cold war.

The historical Cold War was fought between the US and the USSR from the end of World War II to 1991. It was "cold" because its principal antagonists did not fight each other directly, not because it was not violent. Millions died in its proxy wars, coups and purges in Latin America, Africa and Asia. "Cold War" was the umbrella concept for a bipolar struggle against an ideological, political and economic enemy. While the USSR was the ultimate adversary, the Cold War was in reality waged against peoples of the Global South fighting for independence and decolonization. The Cold War turned the world, especially the developing world, into a battleground.

Is the "Cold War" a useful analogy for what is happening today? Yes and no. There is the same mobilization, the same aggressive ambition; only this time it is attended by a delusional quality, an unmistakable air of unreality. History appears, said Karl Marx, "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce."

The Cold War is back, above all, as the ritual re-enactment of the American Empire's foundational myth of heroic victory over Hitler and Communism. A gerontocratic US political class, some of whom are actually left over from the first Cold War, imagines itself in yet another apocalyptic struggle. Recycling Cold War tropes, reviving McCarthyism at home, and fighting Hitler once again, they have discovered in China a totalitarian octopus that must be defeated before it swallows Freedom and advanced semiconductors. The US has saturated the cultural space of the West with a propaganda campaign so relentless and malign that it has cretinized its pundit class. It has hammered its vassals into a set of NATO-like alliances, such as the Quad and AUKUS, in preparation for war on China. It is attempting a technological blockade to cripple China's development.

Yet this is Not the Postwar World, China is Not the USSR, and the US is Not What It Once Was.

The US economy was way larger than the Soviet economy all through the Cold War. Against China, the disparity in economic and industrial capacity that won the Cold War runs in the other direction. Indeed it is China's increasing technological prowess that the US means to knee-cap. This time the US is making an enemy of a nation with an economy that is in PPP terms larger than its own, with an industrial capacity greater than of the US, EU and Japan combined.

The US and USSR led separate economic blocs. China and the US participate in one integrated global economy. They are so interdependent that some commentators dismiss the Cold War analogy, likening the relationship instead to a bad marriage. Meanwhile, China is not carving out a separate economic sphere. It is transforming the present one by bringing development and the common good to the center of the global agenda. To "Contain China," the US is hacking at the sinews of a new globalization for all humankind. In doing so it is also attacking the developing world, impoverishing its allies and hurting itself. What it cannot do is isolate a global economic presence larger and more dynamic than its own. Not everyone in the US is excited about Washington's efforts. US CEOs have lined up to speak against the suicidal ideas of decoupling from China.

The Cold War involved an ideological conflict between rival universalisms. This time all the fanatical universalism is on one side. In a sort of dumbed-down Manichaeism, the struggle is now between "democracies and autocracies." The rest of the world asks only that different paths be respected. In President Xi's words, at the BRICS Summit in Johannesburg: "There are many civilizations and development paths in the world, and this is how the world should be. Human history will not end with a particular civilization or system."

The Cold War was fought to re-impose Western supremacy after WWII. The order it imposed continued to subjugate the nations of the developing world after they had won nominal independence. Today world order is again at stake, except these nations have risen and are acting upon their sovereignty. The world is already multipolar, post-American and post-Western.

BRICS, overshadowing the G7, has just been enlarged. A long list of countries waits to join. The US is fighting a war it has already lost. Clinging to Cold War delusions amid its collapsing domestic order, the US is pitting itself not just against China but against a second era of decolonization, with declarations of independence ringing out from Niger to Argentina to Saudi Arabia.

This Time It's Farce.

— The Author is a Former Malaysian Government Official and a Senior Research Fellow at Perak Academy, Malaysia.

[maiteo]

the idea that european teams are invincible and set the standard when it comes to football needs to die immediately

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Is North Korea actually bad

It is not what you have been told it is. There are many bad things about the government of North Korea, there are many bad things about those running it, but it is not what you have been told it is.

[zatdummesmadchen]

Hello 👋 This is Moamen and his family from Gaza. Please help us evacuate to safety, complete university studies, and find a source of income after the destruction of what we own. We live in difficult circumstances and a difficult life 🙏🏼 ❤️ Please share and spread the campaign because I urgently need help and the matter is urgent. Because the campaign is going very slowly, there is no water and little food. Please donate and share please Moamen Majed, his four brothers, and their parents ($40/$30,000) - @moamenmajed-gaza

🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉🍉

HELLO EVERYONE PLEASE DO PAY ATTENTION !

PLEASE TRY TO DONATE AND HELP THIS FAMILY GET SAFETY !

🔻🔻🔻

🕊🕊🕊

AT THE VERY LEAST CONSIDER A REBLOG TO SPREAD THE WORD!

REMEMBER EVERY LITTLE BIT COUNTS AND ADDS UP MORE!

🫒🫒🫒🫒🫒🫒🫒🫒

[candela888]

Right to change legal gender around the world (as of April 2023)

Some more information:

Gender self-determination: Started in Argentina, Gender self-identification is the concept that a person's legal sex or gender should be determined by their gender identity without any medical requirements, such as via statutory declaration. (Found in much of the Americas, Western Europe, Oceania, and Pakistan)

Prohibitive requirements: Right to change legal gender without surgery, but a court order, physician/clinical recommendation, therapy, or medical record requirements might be necessary. (Found in the Americas, most of Europe, Southern Africa, parts of Asia, and Oceania)

Sex-reassignment surgery required: Must get a sex change/surgery in order to change legal gender. (Found in Eastern Europe, Asia, Middle East, Oceania, Namibia, several US States, and Panama)

Potential legislation pending: Law currently pending to legalize gender identity change or upgrade to gender self-determination. (El Salvador, Peru, Scotland, Sweden, Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines)

No legal gender identity change: Can't change legal gender, other laws and views on transgender people vary by country. (Most of Africa, and some parts of the Caribbean, Eastern Europe, and Asia)

[layzeal]

i'd appreciate reblogs <3

[muminshoom]

Zionists saying that calling Israel an apartheid state is disrespectful to South Africans that experienced Apartheid makes no sense. South African anti-Apartheid activists themselves have been long advocated for a free Palestine. Desmond Tutu himself said that the conditions that Palestinians face is like the apartheid system in South Africa

When countries like South Africa and Ireland, have long been vocal about a free Palestine, it’s because they themselves have also experienced what’s it like to be colonized and occupied. If anything, to act like Palestine isn’t experiencing apartheid is disrespectful to South Africans who experienced apartheid.

[diaryofaphilosopher]

"Simultaneously narrated as a paradisiacal terrain of sensuality and opulent beauty, and a hellish space of hidden terrors and masked monstrosities [...], the tropics have long been employed as an expression for Western narratives of cultural fears and desires for domination. Imagines and Gothicised as the birthplace of the ultimate Other⎯one to be 'civilised' or eradicated by modern Western forces⎯tropical and sub-tropical milieux have been used as a vehicle for imperialist and colonial discourses. [....] Tropical Gothic incorporates such othering discourses, but it also subverts them by situating them alongside reimaginings of the relationship between the Western/Northern (as centre) and the Tropics (as marginal)."

— Anita Lundberg, Katarzyna Ancuta & Agnieszka Stasiewicz-Bieńkowska, "Tropical Gothic: Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences."

Follow Diary of a Philosopher for more quotes!

[faithfromanewperspective]

just wondering, for people outside of Australia because everything I’ve studied at University for both of my degrees has been, while imperfect and still stained with colonialism, regularly interspersed and applied to Indigenous inclusion and reconciliation. do you have this experience too?

and btw. as much as we SO BADLY NEED TO have conversations about the treatment of African American people that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about Indigenous peoples im asking if your University made that a focus too

[aristotels]

i was just talking about gangs of kids waging warfare between our streets when i was in elementary school (we had bunkers and everything too and would make them in bushes and have war with the kids from the street below) and then i realized it may not be a common experience lol. btw we werent playing pretend it was literal turf war

If u vote can you pls reblog with where youre from im super curious about this

[atheostic]

[no27-autonation-honda]

I Am Once Again Begging Y'all To Be Fucking Normal About People From Other Countries

[ballsalsda]

Is it wrong/blasphemous to make an oc based off of a religious symbol I'm genuinely asking

Im into object shows so i made an object character and I like the aesthetic of it so I made an oc based off of this 🧿 evil eye amulet thing and I know its like a religious thing to ward off evil

So people from cultures that have these, would it be okay to make an oc based on it? I'm not doing it to be disrespectful, but I still want to be cautious

[chemicalarospec]

.

[fuckyeahmarxismleninism]

By Nahia Sanzo

Joe Biden’s visit to Kiev yesterday, more propaganda than strategic, sought to show the importance of the Ukrainian issue for the Western alliance. The war in Ukraine has reached the pinnacle of global prominence to which Kiev has been aspiring for years. But in that global war, a large part of the globe is missing.

[dgspeaks]

Your Guide to Choosing the Perfect Airline for Your Next Trip

Are you tired of the frustration and inconvenience caused by delayed flights? We’ve all been there – standing in line, anxiously checking the departure board, only to discover that our flight is delayed. It’s not just a minor inconvenience; it can throw off your entire travel plans. From missed connections to disrupted schedules, flight delays can cause a cascade of problems. Whether you’re…