Brian Berletic
21st Century Wire

Tensions between Washington and Beijing are not merely the recent results of former US President Donald Trump’s time in office – but rather just the latest chapter in US efforts to contain China that stretch back decades. 

Indeed, US foreign policy has for decades admittedly aimed at encircling and containing China’s rise and maintaining primacy over the Indo-Pacific region.

The “Pentagon Papers” leaked in 1969 would admit in regards to the ongoing US war against Vietnam that:

…the February decision to bomb North Vietnam and the July approval of Phase I deployments make sense only if they are in support of a long-run United States policy to contain China.

The papers also admitted that China, “looms as a major power threatening to undercut [American] importance and effectiveness in the world and, more remotely but more menacingly, to organize all of Asia against [America].

The papers also made it clear that there were (and still are), “three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China: (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India-Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front.”

Since then, it is clear that from the continued US military presence in both Japan and South Korea, the now two decades-long US occupation of Afghanistan on both Pakistan’s and China’s borders, and the emergence of the so-called “Milk Tea Alliance” aimed at overthrowing Southeast Asian governments friendly with China and replacing them with US-backed client regimes – this policy to contain China endures up to today.

Assessing US activity along these three fronts reveals the progress and setbacks Washington faces – and various dangers to global peace and stability Washington’s continued belligerence pose.

The Japan-Korea Front

Military.com in their article, “Here’s What It Costs to Keep US Troops in Japan and South Korea,” reports:

In all, more than 80,000 U.S. troops are deployed to Japan and South Korea. In Japan alone, the U.S. maintains more than 55,000 deployed troops — the largest forward-deployed U.S. force anywhere in the world.

The article notes that according to the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), the US spent “$34 billion to maintain military presences in Japan and South Korea between 2016 and 2019.”

The article cites the GAO providing an explanation as to why this massive US military presence is maintained in East Asia:

“…U.S. forces help strengthen alliances, promote a free and open Indo-Pacific region, provide quick response to emergencies and are essential for U.S. national security.”

“Alliances” that are “strengthened” by the physical presence of what are essentially occupying US forces suggests the “alliance” is hardly voluntary and claims of promoting a “free and open Indo-Pacific region” is highly subjective – begging the question of to whom the Indo-Pacific is “free and open” to.

And as US power wanes both regionally in the Indo-Pacific as well as globally, Washington has placed increasing pressure on both Japan and South Korea to not only help shoulder this financial burden, but to also become more proactive within Washington’s containment strategy toward China.

Japan is one of three other nations (the US itself, Australia, and India) drafted into the US-led Quadrilateral Security Dialogue – also know as the “Quad.”

Rather than the US solely depending on its own military forces based within Japanese territory or supported by its Japan-based forces, Japan’s military along with India’s and Australia’s are also being recruited to take part in military exercises and operations in and around the South China Sea.

India’s inclusion in the Quad also fits well into the US 3-front strategy that made up Washington’s containment policy toward China as early as the 1960s.

The India-Pakistan Front

In addition to recruiting India into the Quad alliance, the US helps encourage escalation through political support and media campaigning of India’s various territorial disputes with China.

The US also targets Pakistan’s close and ongoing relationship with China – including the support of armed insurgents in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

Recently, a bombing at a hotel in Quetta, Baluchistan appears to have targeted China’s ambassador to Pakistan, Ambassador Nong Rong.

The BBC in its article, “Pakistan hotel bomb: Deadly blast hits luxury venue in Quetta,” would claim:

Initial reports had suggested the target was China’s ambassador. Ambassador Nong Rong is understood to be in Quetta but was not present at the hotel at the time of the attack on Wednesday.

The article also noted:

Balochistan province, near the Afghan border, is home to several armed groups, including separatists. Separatists in the region want independence from the rest of Pakistan and accuse the government and China of exploiting Balochistan, one of Pakistan’s poorest provinces, for its gas and mineral wealth.

Absent from the BBC’s reporting is the extensive and open support the US government has provided these separatists over the years and how – clearly – this is more than just a local uprising against perceived injustice, but yet another example of armed conflict-by-proxy waged by Washington against China.

As far back as 2011 publications like The National Interest in articles like, “Free Baluchistan” would openly advocate expanding US support for separatism in Pakistan’s Baluchistan province.

The article was written by the late Selig  Harrison – who was a senior fellow at the US-based corporate-financier funded Center for International Policy – and would claim:

Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baluch territory. So an independent Baluchistan would serve U.S. strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.

Of course, “Islamist forces” is a euphemism for US-Persian Gulf state sponsored militants used to both fight Western proxy wars as well as serve as a pretext for Western intervention. Citing “Islamist forces” in Baluchistan, Pakistan clearly serves as an example of the latter.

In addition to op-eds published by influential policy think tanks, US legislators like US Representative Dana Rohrabacher had proposed resolutions such as (emphasis added), “US House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 104 (112th): Expressing the sense of Congress that the people of Baluchistan, currently divided between Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan, have the right to self-determination and to their own sovereign country.”

There is also funding provided to adjacent, political groups supporting separatism in Baluchistan, Pakistan as listed by the US government’s own National Endowment for Democracy (NED) website under “Pakistan.” Organizations like the “Association for Integrated Development Balochistan” are funded by the US government and used to mobilize people politically, constituting clear interference by the US in Pakistan’s internal political affairs.

The Gwadar Port project is a key juncture within China’s growing global network of infrastructure projects as part of its One Belt, One Road initiative. The US clearly opposes China’s rise and has articulated robust strategies to counter it; everything up to and including open war as seen in the Pentagon Papers regarding the Vietnam War.

The recent bombing in Baluchistan, Pakistan demonstrates that this strategy continues in regards to utilizing local militants to target Chinese-Pakistani cooperation and is one part of the much wider, region-wide strategy of encircling and containing China.

The Southeast Asia Front

Of course the US war against Vietnam was part of a wider effort to reassert Western primacy over Southeast Asia and deny the region from fueling China’s inevitable rise.

The US having lost the war and almost completely retreating from the Southeast Asia region saw Southeast Asia itself repair relations amongst themselves and with China.

Today, the nations of Southeast Asia count China as their largest trade partner, investor, a key partner in infrastructure development, a key supplier for the region’s armed forces, as well as providing the majority of tourism arrivals throughout the region. For countries like Thailand, more tourists arrive from China than from all Western nations combined.

Because existing governments in Southeast Asia have nothing to benefit from by participating in American belligerence toward China, the US has found it necessary to cultivate and attempt to install into power various client regimes. This has been an ongoing process since the Vietnam War.

The US has targeted each nation individually for years. In 2009 and 2010, US-backed opposition leader-in-exile Thaksin Shinawatra deployed his “red shirt” protesters in back-to-back riots – the latter of which included some 300 armed militants and culminated in city-wide arson across Bangkok and the death of over 90 police, soldiers, protesters, and bystanders.

In 2018, US-backed opposition groups took power in Malaysia after the US poured millions of dollars for over a decade in building up the opposition.

I visited and I was sitting there with many of the leaders the new leaders of this government, many of whom were just our partners we had been working with for 15 years and one of the most senior of them who’s now one of the people running the government said to me, ‘gosh IRI you never gave up on us even when we were ready to give up on ourselves.’

…guess what one of the first steps the new government took? It froze Chinese infrastructure investments.

A US-Engineered “Asia Spring” 

Just as the US did during the 2011 “Arab Spring” – the US State Department, in a bid to create synergies across various regime change campaigns in Asia, has introduced the “Milk Tea Alliance” to transform individual US-backed regime change efforts in Asia into a region-wide crisis.

The BBC itself admits in articles like, “Milk Tea Alliance: Twitter creates emoji for pro-democracy activists,” that:

The alliance has brought together anti-Beijing protesters in Hong Kong and Taiwan with pro-democracy campaigners in Thailand and Myanmar.

Omitted from the BBC’s coverage of the “Milk Tea Alliance” (intentionally) is the actual common denominators that unite it – US funding through fronts like the National Endowment for Democracy and a unifying hatred of China based exclusively on talking points pushed by the US State Department itself.

Circling back to the Pentagon Papers and recalling the coordinated, regional campaign the US sought to encircle China with – we can then look at more recent US government policy papers like the “Indo-Pacific Framework” published in the White House archives from the Trump administration.

The policy paper’s first bullet point asks:

How to maintain US strategic primacy in the Indo-Pacific region and promote a liberal economic order while preventing China from establishing new, illiberal spheres of influence, and cultivating areas of cooperation to promote regional peace and prosperity?

The paper also discusses information campaigns designed to “educate” the world about “China’s coercive behaviour and influence operations around the globe.” These campaigns have materialized in a propaganda war fabricating accusations of “Chinese genocide” in Xinjiang, China, claims that Chinese telecom company Huawei is a global security threat, and that China – not the US – is the single largest threat to global peace and stability today.

In reality US policy aimed at encircling China is predicated upon Washington’s desire to continue its own decades-long impunity upon the global stage and the continuation of all the wars, humanitarian crises, and abuses that have stemmed from it.

Understanding the full scope of Washington’s “competition” with China helps unlock the confusion surrounding unfolding individual crises like the trade war, the ongoing violence and turmoil in Myanmar, bombings in southwest Pakistan, students mobs in Thailand, riots in Hong Kong, and attempts by the US to transform the South China Sea into an international conflict.

Understanding that these events are all connected – then assessing the success or failure of US efforts gives us a clearer picture of the overall success Washington in encircling China.  It also gives governments and regional blocs a clearer picture of how to manage policy in protecting against US subversion that threatens national, regional, and global peace and stability.

***
Author Brian Berletic, formerly known under his pen name “Tony Cartalucci,” is Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher, writer and special contributor to 21st Century Wire. See more of his previous work at Tony’s archive. Over the last decade, his work has been published on a number of popular news and analysis websites, and also on the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”. Also, you can follow him on VK here.

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This week, Japanese health officials and the Olympic Committee have suddenly succumbed to pressure by the media and medical industrial complex, as they reverse course on policy of allowing spectators to watch the Olympic events. Government advisors claim that Delta Variant (formerly known as the Indian Variant) ‘cases’ are on the move, unleashing a new wave of official hysteria. This latest ‘state of emergency’ scare is a direct result of an increase in PCR testing and computer-modeled predictions about the ‘possible spread’ of an alleged ‘Delta Variant’ which health experts claim is surging through the Tokyo metropolitan area.

The Establishment media is attempting to blame this alleged ‘surge in cases’ on the Japanese government’s supposed “failure to get its covid vaccination program underway early enough,” claiming that the Games are not ‘safe’ for fans.

Currently, Japan has only vaccinated 20% of its population, but the media and global ‘public health’ experts believe this is not enough and are pressuring the government to push the experimental gene-jab on more of its healthy citizens to supposedly ‘push back’ the illusive Delta Variant.

Washington Post reports…

TOKYO — Japan will bar spectators from all Olympic events held in and around Tokyo, organizers announced on Thursday, as the government imposed a fresh state of emergency to cover the capital during the Games.

Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced Tokyo’s fourth state of emergency would begin on July 12 and last until August 22, citing rising infections in the capital and the spread of the contagious delta variant. He asked bars and restaurants not to serve alcohol during that period – although the city’s streets are likely to remain packed during the daytime, as they have been during previous states of emergency this year.

In light of the announcement, the organizers of the Games held a meeting Thursday evening to discuss whether to implement further restrictions on spectators, or whether to ban them entirely. They announced their decision at a news conference, just two weeks before the Games are due to be opened on July 23.

“A very heavy judgement was made,” Seiko Hashimoto, the president of the organizing committee said, saying it was regrettable the Games were being held in a “very limited format.”

“I am sorry to those who purchased tickets and everyone in local areas,” she said.

Olympic organizers, working closely with the government, had announced two weeks ago that they would allow some domestic spectators to attend events. They capped attendance at 10,000 or 50 percent of a venue’s capacity, but warned at the time they might change course if infections rose again.

The government’s own scientific advisers warned last month that allowing even limited numbers of fans would raise risks of increased rates of coronavirus infections. Public opposition to proceeding with the Games had waned in recent weeks, but most people still believed the Games should be canceled, postponed or go ahead without spectators, surveys showed.

The ban will affect almost all sporting events being held in the capital, including the Opening and Closing Ceremonies, and in three neighboring prefectures of Kanagawa, Saitama and Chiba, public broadcaster NHK reported. Events held in more distant prefectures, including cycling and earlier rounds of the soccer, baseball and softball competitions in Miyagi, Fukushima, Shizuoka prefectures will be subject to the 10,000 or 50 percent cap, NHK reported.

It means Tokyo’s newly rebuilt 68,000-capacity National Stadium, which was not completed in time for the 2019 Rugby World Cup as initially hoped, will be empty throughout the tournament, symbolizing the vast sums of money invested in these Olympics with little reward for the people of Japan or the country’s economy.

The stadium cost around 157 billion yen ($1.4 billion) to rebuild, according to official figures. The total cost of the Games is officially estimated at $15.4 billion, but government audits suggest the real cost was twice as high. All but $6.7 billion is public money, with the International Olympic Committee contributing only about $1.5 billion…

Continue this story at the Washington Post

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Summary:

• Japan has taken steps to warn its citizens about serious side effects linked to COVID-19 injections
• They’ve added a warning label to the jabs, warning about the risk of myocarditis — inflammation of the heart muscle
• Japan is also taking strict measures to monitor and report all side effects to the unprecedented jabs
• Hospitals must report, in detail, any adverse effects that occur within 28 days of receiving a COVID-19 injection
• Japan’s Ministry of Health includes a “consent to vaccination” section on its website, which states mandatory vaccination and discrimination against those who choose not to be vaccinated are not advised; this includes at workplaces, which are told not to force anyone to get injected
• Japan is standing out as a protector of informed consent and medical freedom, during a time in history when many other countries are opting for totalitarian control

Analysis by Dr Joseph Mercola

Japan has taken steps to warn its citizens about serious side effects linked to COVID-19 injections.¹ They’ve added a label to the jabs, warning about the risk of myocarditis — inflammation² of the heart muscle that can cause symptoms similar to a heart attack, including chest pain, shortness of breath, abnormal heartbeat and fatigue.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on their website, “Myocarditis and pericarditis have rarely been reported, especially in adolescents and young adult males within several days after COVID-19 vaccination.”³

Further, in June 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration added a warning to patient and provider fact sheets for the Pfizer and Moderna jabs about the “suggested increased risks of myocarditis (inflammation of the heart muscle) and pericarditis (inflammation of the tissue surrounding the heart) following vaccination.”⁴

Unlike in the U.S., however, Japan is taking measures to monitor and report all side effects to the unprecedented jabs.

Japan Has Strict Reporting Requirements for Jab Side Effects

In Japan, strict legal reporting requirements are in effect for side effects that occur within 28 days of receiving a COVID-19 injection. Hospitals must report, in detail, any adverse effects that occur within that time period.

Japan’s Ministry of Health reported that, as of November 14, 2021, for every 1 million males who received the Moderna COVID-19 injection, 81.79 youths between the ages of 10 and 19 developed myocarditis or pericarditis, as did 48.76 men in their 20s.⁵

For Pfizer’s COVID-19 jab, 15.66 out of every 1 million 10- to 19-year-old males who received the jab suffered from myocarditis or pericarditis, along with 13.32 of males in their 20s.⁶ Due to the risk of myocarditis, Britain’s Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunization (JCVI) recommended against COVID-9 injections for healthy 12- to 15-year-olds. JCVI member Adam Finn told Reuters:⁷

“… the number of serious cases that we see of COVID in children this age are really very small. There are uncertainties about the long-term implications of (myocarditis), and that makes the risk-benefit balance for these children really quite tight and much tighter than we would be comfortable to make the recommendation.”

In the U.S., where COVID-19 injections are recommended for ages 5 and up, the CDC stated it is “conducting surveys of patients (or their parents or guardians) and health care providers to gather information about myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccination” and “contacting people who meet the case definition for myocarditis following mRNA COVID-19 vaccination.”⁸

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As of December 8, 2021, 1,908 reports of myocarditis or pericarditis had been reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) following COVID-19 jabs, typically among male adolescents and young adults.⁹ December 17, 2021, just 51 days after approving the shots for children ages 5 to 11, the CDC reported¹⁰ that it had so far received reports of eight cases of myocarditis in that age group.

Past investigations have shown only between 1%¹¹ and 10%¹² of adverse reactions are ever reported to VAERS, which is a passive, voluntary reporting system, so the actual number could be much higher.

In its approval letter for Comirnaty (Pfizer’s COVID-19 injection), the FDA ordered Pfizer to conduct research to investigate the risk of inflammation in and around the heart, as voluntary reporting mechanisms are insufficient.¹³

The FDA accepted Pfizer’s suggested timetable for the post-approval study to evaluate incidence of heart and heart sack inflammation, which includes the submission of an interim report at the end of October 2023, a study completion date of June 30, 2025, and submission of a final report October 31, 2025.

Japan Says No to Vaccine Mandates, Discrimination

In stark contrast to much of the rest of the globe, Japan stands against compulsory vaccination. Japan’s Ministry of Health includes a “consent to vaccination” section on its website, which states mandatory vaccination and discrimination against those who choose not to be vaccinated are not advised. This includes at workplaces, which are told not to force anyone to get injected:^14,15

“Although we encourage all citizens to receive the COVID-19 vaccination, it is not compulsory or mandatory. Vaccination will be given only with the consent of the person to be vaccinated after the information provided.

Please get vaccinated of your own decision, understanding both the effectiveness in preventing infectious diseases and the risk of side effects. No vaccination will be given without consent. Please do not force anyone in your workplace or those who around you to be vaccinated, and do not discriminate against those who have not been vaccinated.”

The page even links to “human rights counseling in foreign languages,” which details what to do if faced with vaccine discrimination in the workplace.¹⁶ Japan is standing out as a protector of informed consent and medical freedom, during a time in history when many other countries are opting for totalitarian control. Rair Foundation explained:¹⁷

“Doctors worldwide have echoed Japan’s health authority warnings about the gene-therapies side effects. However, this kind of proper informed consent has cost many doctors in western nations their licenses to practice medicine. The government has accused these doctors of spreading ‘vaccine hesitancy.’

Furthermore, while Japan allows its citizens to choose whether to be injected with the experimental gene-therapies, other countries are forcing citizens to receive the jab. For example, in February 2022, Austria will mandate the injections. Citizens who refuse will face heavy fines and up to one year in prison.”

Japanese Researchers Warn of Blood Clots, Death After Jabs

Reports of both cerebral venous sinus thrombosis and intracranial hemorrhage (ICH) have been reported following COVID-19 shots, including both fatal and nonfatal cases. In a commentary published in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice,¹⁸ Japanese researchers revealed that, as of May 2021, 10 deaths were reported following the shots — and the manner of deaths raised a red flag.

Among the five men who died, it was from causes other than stroke, but four of the five women who passed away died from ICH. “This imbalance is incompatible with the mortality data on cardiovascular diseases in the National Statistics, which show no apparent disparity between sexes or between hemorrhagic and ischemic stroke,” they wrote.¹⁹

Their analysis revealed “a disproportionately high incidence of death by ICH in Japanese women who received tozinameran [Pfizer’s COVID0-19 shot], suggesting a potential association of ICH with the vaccine.”²⁰ They also believe that a causal link between the deaths from ICH and the shot is possible and warrants further study. Others have also warned that blood clot formation with mRNA vaccines is inevitable.

The mRNA COVID-19 injections affect your body at the cellular level.²¹ In each dose of the Moderna COVID-19 shot are 40 trillion mRNA — or messenger RNA — molecules. Each mRNA “package” is designed to be absorbed into your cell, but only 25% stay in your arm at the site of the injection. The other 75%, is collected by your lymphatic system and fed into your circulation, Dr. Charles Hoffe, a family physician from Lytton, British Columbia, said.

The cells where mRNA is absorbed are those around your blood vessels — the capillary network, which are the tiniest blood vessels in your body. When the mRNA is absorbed into your vascular endothelium — the inner lining of your capillaries — the “packages” open and genes are released. Each gene can produce many COVID-19 spike proteins, and your body gets to work manufacturing these spike proteins, numbering in the trillions.

Your body recognizes the spike protein as foreign, so it begins to manufacture antibodies to protect you against COVID-19, or so the theory goes. But there’s a problem. In a coronavirus, the spike protein becomes part of the viral capsule, Hoffe says, but when you get the shot, “it’s not in a virus, it’s in your cells.” The spike protein, in turn, can lead to the development of blood clots:²²

“So it therefore becomes part of the cell wall of your vascular endothelium, which means that these cells, which line your blood vessels, which are supposed to be smooth so that your blood flows smoothly now have these little spiky bits sticking out.

So it is absolutely inevitable that blood clots will form, because your blood platelets circulate around in your vessels and the purpose of blood platelets is to detect a damaged vessel and block that damage when it starts bleeding. So when a platelet comes through a capillary and suddenly hits all these covid spikes that are jutting into the inside vessel … blood clots will form to block that vessel. That’s how platelets work.”

Japanese Study Reveals Adverse Events Following Jabs

In a preprint study released in October 2021, researchers from Nagasaki International University, Japan, studied adverse events that occur in young Japanese people following Moderna’s COVID-19 shot.²³

Using data from 7,965 individuals, they found that 83% experienced local adverse events while 65% experienced systemic adverse events. Those particularly at risk included women, youth under the age of 20 — who often experienced adverse events after the first dose — and those who experienced adverse events after the first dose.

Such information is crucial to proper informed consent, something that not only has been lacking during the pandemic, but actively censored. It’s encouraging to see countries like Japan standing out in their efforts to get a true picture of how dangerous COVID-19 jabs may be. As Health Thoroughfare noted:²⁴

“According to the latest reports, the country is reaffirming its commitment to adverse event reporting requirements to ensure all possible side effects are documented. These efforts from Japan’s health authority are in stark contrast to the measures taken by other countries to coerce citizens into taking the injection, downplaying side effects, and discouraging proper adverse event reporting.”

• ^1, 5, 6 NHK World-Japan December 4, 2021
• ² Mayo Clinic, Myocarditis
• ³ U.S. CDC November 12, 2021
• ⁴ U.S. FDA June 25, 2021
• ⁷ Reuters September 3, 2021
• ⁸ U.S. CDC August 20, 2021
• ⁹ U.S. CDC December 16, 2021
• ¹⁰ Reuters December 17, 2021
• ¹¹ The Vaccine Reaction January 9, 2020
• ¹² BMJ 2005;330:433
• ¹³ FDA.gov BLA Approval Pfizer/BioNTech August 23, 2021
• ¹⁴ Japan Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, COVID-19 Vaccines
• ^15, 16, 17 Rair Foundation USA December 10, 2021
• ^18, 19, 20 Journal of Pharmaceutical Policy and Practice volume 14, Article number: 46 (2021)
• ^21, 22 Bitchute July 22, 2021
• ²³ medRxiv October 5, 2021
• ²⁴ Health Thoroughfare December 12, 2021

***
This article was originally published at Mercola.com.

Author Dr. Joseph Mercola is the founder of Mercola.com. An osteopathic physician, best-selling author and recipient of multiple awards in the field of natural health, his primary vision is to change the modern health paradigm by providing people with a valuable resource to help them take control of their health. Among his qualifications, he is a licensed physician and surgeon in State of Illinois.

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Since the war in Ukraine began, rhetoric from the West about NATO expanding to the Pacific region has gotten progressively louder.

Not surprisingly, US war hawks love the idea, as it will allow Washington to further impose its military might and carry out its unilateral political projects under the cover of a multilateral institution.

China is not taking NATO’s threats casually. Back in May, tensions began to ramp up to the highest level ever, and it did not take long before words were transformed into hardening policy. The Financial Times reported then:

For weeks Chinese officials and analysts have endorsed Russia’s claims that Nato’s expansion in Europe triggered its invasion of Ukraine. Now they are pointing to a new spectre to justify their support of Russia’s war: an “Indo-Pacific Nato” that could ultimately force China to decouple from the west and achieve self-sufficiency in everything from food to semiconductors.

Ever since Xi Jinping and Joe Biden refused to budge from their opposing assessments of the conflict during a two-hour phone call on March 18, Chinese diplomats have gone on a rhetorical offensive, arguing that US-led alliances are as much a threat to Beijing as they are to Moscow. Most of their ire is directed at the “free and open Indo-Pacific” strategy Biden inherited from Donald Trump, which seeks to bind the US, Japan, Australia and India in a united front against China.

“Nato has kept strengthening and expanding, and intervened militarily in countries like Yugoslavia, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan,” Le Yucheng, vice-foreign minister, said a day after the presidents’ call. “The Indo-Pacific strategy is as dangerous as the Nato strategy of eastward expansion in Europe,” he added.

“If allowed to go unchecked, it would bring unimaginable consequences and ultimately push the Asia-Pacific [region] over the edge of an abyss.”

NATO, which has now become the world’s largest international protection racket, is now in the process of aggressively co-opting Japan into its ‘Article 5 trap’. Like Germany, Japan has been militarily occupied by the United States since the end of WWII, and its supine government will have an extremely hard time pursuing its own independent foreign policy.

Once Japan is absorbed into NATO’s entangling alliance, all it would take is a series of engineered provocations against China in order to push the region – and the world, even closer to WWIII. Make no mistake, that is their ultimate objective.

The Blaze reports…

Fumio Kishida, the Prime Minister of Japan, is considering attending a summit of leaders from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to discuss the potential of Japanese collaboration with Western leaders over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

The Strait Times, a daily English language newspaper published in Singapore, reported that Kishida’s move marks an “unusually aggressive stance for a Japanese leader.” The Times also noted that Kishida has repeatedly condemned the Russian military and the country’s leadership over perpetrating what he has described as a “war crime” against Ukraine.

The leadership of Japan has a long-standing practice of carefully maintaining their country’s relationship with Russia as the two countries have a long history of territorial disputes.

A spokesperson for the Japanese government said that officials will be unable to offer comment on the Kishida’s discussions with NATO allies. Kishida’s attendance of the upcoming NATO summit was first reported by Japanese media outlets this past Saturday.

The NATO summit will take place on June 29 and 30 in the Spanish capital city of Madrid. The meeting is expected to overlap with the Kishida and other Japanese politicians campaign efforts as the meeting will overlap with the upcoming Japanese election cycle.

Kishida is expected to make a final decision as to whether or not he will attend the summit in the coming days as he must take into account the rapidly approaching elections.

NATO leaders have invited officials from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea to attend the summit as its partners in the Asia-Pacific region.

Should Kishida attend the summit, it is expected that his presence will be welcomed and send a strong message of international solidarity during a period of heightened geopolitical tension.

The potential of an increasing Japanese presence among NATO allies could also be a result of China’s potential invasion of Taiwan.

According to leaked audio from a top-secret meeting of Chinese officials, China may soon launch an extremely aggressive invasion of its island neighbor.

Voices on the leaked audio recording discuss the need to secure strategic entry points to crucial economic hubs in mainland China and how many pieces of military equipment and personnel will be required to pull off the invasion.

This past May, it was reported that China’s economic regulators held emergency meetings in April to discuss how to insulate the Chinese economy from Western sanctions should the West use economic isolation to discourage and punish China in the wake of a Taiwanese invasion…

Continue this story at The Blaze

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This week, in its bid to stem the tide of inflation, the US Federal Reserve Bank announced its biggest interest rate hike in 25 years, raising the rate three quarters of a percent. Relatively speaking, this is like throwing a glass of water on a forest fire, but in the short term it will certainly tighten-up the economy which will trigger that bona fide recession everyone was fearing. In truth, the real economy has been in recession for years. As our globalized economy continues its tailspin due to the suicidal economic policies implemented by leading western countries – like the United States, United Kingdom and the European Union, the original ‘Asian Tiger’ economy, Japan, is now on the verge of systemic collapse with “dramatic, unpredictable non-linearities” manifesting themselves in already over-stretched financial markets, warns Bloomberg, Deutsche Bank and others. 

It’s no secret that Japan’s economy is massively over-leveraged and may very well see a repeat of its epic ‘lost decade’ from the infamous economic crash of the 1990s.

The tea leaves are alarming…

Zero Hedge reports…

Less than a week ago, we wrote that “As Yen Crash Accelerates, It Puts Catastrophic End Of MMT Experiment In The Spotlight” a less than cheerful assessment echoed this morning by Bloomberg, which writes that “Japan Starting to Crack as Yen Tumbles With Stocks and Bonds“ noting that despite the yen crashing to a 24-year low (for the same reasons we have repeated again and again, namely you can’t keep your 10Y yield at 0.25% and avoid a currency collapse in a scorching inflationary environment), Tokyo stocks were down the most since March.

But there was another major development, and one which suggests that days of fiat, and MMT are numbered: with Japanese yields surging, the Bank of Japan today bought more than 1.5 trillion yen of government bonds to defend its yield curve control target as the 10Y JGB rose above 0.25%, the upper end of the BOJ’s YCC corridor.

As Deutsche Bank’s George Saravelos shockingly calculates in a post this morning titled “The printer is on overdrive“, and available to professional ZH subscribers, if the current pace of buying persists, the bank will have bought approximately 10 trillion yen in June. To put that number in context, it is roughly equivalent to the Fed doing more than $300bn of QE per month when adjusting for GDP!

This is a “truly extreme” level of money printing given that every other central bank in the world is tightening policy. It is one of the reasons why we have been bearish on the yen. And as so many have argued, currency intervention in this environment is simply not credible given it is the BoJ itself that is the cause of yen weakness.

More broadly, Saravelos echoes what we said in our preview of the end of MMT, writing that he worries that “the currency and Japanese financial markets are in the process of losing any sort of fundamental-based valuation anchor.”

The more global inflation picks up, the more the BoJ prints. But the more easing accelerates, the higher the need to press hard on the brake when the (inflation) cliff approaches and the more dangerous it becomes. As a result, we will soon enter a phase where dramatic and unpredictable non-linearities in Japanese financial markets would kick in, according to the DB strategist, who also notes that “if it becomes obvious to the market that the clearing level of JGB yields is above the BoJ’s 25 basis point target, what is the incentive to hold bonds any more?”

This leave us with a few exploding questions:

• Is the BoJ willing to absorb the entirety of the Japanese government bond stock?
• Where is the fair value of the yen on this scenario and what happens if the BoJ changes its mind?
• The BoJ may want to generate inflation, but how does it get there with triggering a complete systemic collapse?

Finally, what happens if and when the yen careens off the fiat cliff, and domestic holders of yen-denominated savings flee into either dollars or cryptos? We will find out very soon.

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The former prime minister of Japan was assassinated on Friday in the city of Nara, while delivering a campaign speech. He served in the office longer than anyone before stepping down in 2020. The assassination has rattled Japan and its sense of identity as a peaceful country where violent crime, and political assassinations, are very rare.

Is this a prelude to more geopolitical strife in the Pacific region? 

New York Times reports…

Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, died on Friday at 67, after being shot while campaigning for a candidate ahead of national elections.

The police arrested a suspect, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, on an initial charge of attempted murder before Mr. Abe’s death was announced.

(…) The graphic videos and photographs of Mr. Abe being gunned down during a lunchtime campaign rally in western Japan had stunned the nation on Friday. Shock turned to grief when the former prime minister was declared dead in the early evening…

“When Shinzo Abe was prime minister of Japan, he worked assiduously to bring the historically strained relationship between Beijing and Tokyo to a more even keel. But in recent months, Mr. Abe had become increasingly vocal in his criticism of Beijing and support for Taiwan, a self-governed island claimed by Beijing.

His hard line stance had drawn Beijing’s ire. In December of last year, Mr. Abe told a forum that “a Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency,” and that Japan and the United States could not stand by if China attacked Taiwan.”

See more live updates on this story at NY Times

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Brian Bertetic from The New Atlas writes…

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was assassinated in Nara, Japan while giving a speech. A suspect, a local resident allegedly a former member of Japan’s military, was detained.

While the motives are still being investigated, anti-China circles are already leveraging the event to direct anger and suspicion toward Beijing.

Blaming China for it & thus escalating tensions in Asia – a region in which the US finds its power and influence waning – only benefits the US.

Watch this brief summary of this recent event by journalist Brian Berletic: 

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In this recent episode of the Patrick Henningsen Show on TNT Radio which aired on August 2nd, 2022, Patrick talks with political analyst Daniel Spaulding to discuss House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s errant trip to Taiwan where she managed to inflame US relations with China. What would a Taiwan vs China war look like? What do the other Asia Pacific countries think, and is Washington losing its touch in the region? Watch: 

TUNE-IN LIVE with Patrick on TNT every TUES & THURS at: 8AM-11AM (NEW YORK) | 1PM-4PM (LONDON) | 10PM-1AM (BRISBANE): https://tntradio.live

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RT International reports…

Japan is considering several options aimed at beefing up its defenses, including the establishment of “counterattack capabilities,” the country’s Defense Minister Yasukazu Hamada has revealed. He cited recent missile launches by North Korea as the reason for this major departure from Tokyo’s long-standing pacifist policy.

Speaking during a briefing on Tuesday, Hamada said Japan “will continue to examine all options – including so-called ‘counterattack capabilities’.” The minister stressed that the Land of the Rising Sun would not “rule out anything as we continue to work to fundamentally strengthen our defense abilities.”

Hamada explained that the need for this major change to the country’s defense doctrine had arisen from North Korea’s threatening behavior in the region, not least its latest launches of ballistic missiles.

On Saturday, Pyongyang fired two rockets of this type shortly after a US-led joint anti-submarine drill took place in South Korea.

According to Seoul and Tokyo, it was the fourth such launch in just one week.

This was followed by another launch of a North Korean intermediate-range ballistic missile on Tuesday. The rocket traveled over Japan for the first time in five years.

Tokyo, Seoul and Washington have condemned the DPRK’s show of force.

Following its defeat in World War II, Japan officially renounced its right to have a military and wage wars. The pacifist policies are even enshrined in Article 9 of the country’s constitution.

However, the nation does have an army, known as the Japan Self-Defense Force. In recent years, there have also been calls in the country to do away with the existing constraints on its military capabilities.

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The COVID-19 narrative is running out of fresh material, so they are starting to do re-runs. And just like “The Love Boat”, the stories aboard the Princess Cruise ships are simply pure fiction. So what’s driving all of this virus mania? The answer is simple: fraudulent Covid testing – both PCR and lateral flow/antigen tests. When you deconstruct the shoddy science, the mass-hysteria narrative quickly comes unraveled.

Dr. Sam Bailey takes a look at the latest episode! Watch: 

References

1. “Cruise ship Majestic Princess docks in Sydney with 800 Covid cases on board“, The Guardian, 12 Nov 2022.
2. “COVID-19 pandemic on Diamond Princess”, Wikipedia.
3. “COVID-19: Behind The PCR Curtain”, Dr Sam Bailey.
4. “A Farewell to Virology (Expert Edition)”, Dr Mark Bailey.
5. “The COVID-19 Fraud & War on Humanity”, Dr Mark Bailey & Dr John Bevan-Smith.
6. “Two coronavirus-infected passengers die”, NHK (archived).
7. “The Lancet Commission on lessons for the future from the COVID-19 pandemic”
8. “Virologie Nights”, Dr Sam Bailey.
9. “Gain of Fiction – Webinar from 11/11/22”, Dr Tom Cowan.

Get a copy of Sam’s best-selling book, Virus Mania 3rd Edition. 

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