US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a hawkish speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue 2025 summit, demonizing China as a “threat”, saying, “We are preparing for war” in the Asia-Pacific region.
Thank you Ben Norton for your always well written and researched rtitcles. The fallacy inherent in Hegseth's and others approach to China is blatantly obvious. Arming yourself for peace is stupid. Dialogue and diplomacy is what is needed. China wants to expand its trade, and does not seek hegemonic powers. It is important that you point that out so well.
China is not a threat to the American people. It is perceived as a threat by the corporations and weapons manufacturers because it is so far advanced ahead of the de-industrialized U.S. China has thousands of miles of high-speed rail and the U.S. cannot even manage one line from San Francisco to Los Angeles after 14 years of delays. The U.S. is industrially incompetent.
USA will lose, why are they doing this??? We have shit going on in our country… is this an attempt to distract us from the incredible levels of corruption like the bank rolling the state of Israel to the point of our own country’s demise, and so they can install Chinese like surveillance in our country while we are at it”war” … what the hell is going on!?
Heggie is an unqualified clown. The US military hasn't defended the nation since 1812. In every war since it was all about profit. We don't have a powerful military. We have a weak expensive overextended military on over 800 foreign bases.
Our arms makers are running a racket. They design weapons to line pockets instead of winning.
Hate for China is one of the few traditional biPartisan policies in the US.
It is not new.
It predates all Communist States.
The Federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 underlines the general bigotry in the US against China, although travelers and diplomats were still allowed in the country.
And the country, The People's Republic of China, has an economic system that is NOT Communist, no matter how many times the Ignorant or the propagandists call it "Communist China".
The USA out-competed the USSR and was able to waste more money on the military (and its adventures) than the Soviets. The US system won over the inefficiency of a collectivist economy.
Now, the USA has been out-competed by the government-assisted Capitalist system, the aggregate brain power and productivity, of China, despite recent US Federal schemes to goose the tech sector, reduce corporate taxes, and subsidize consumers other industries and hype the economy with outrageously huge deficit spending programs the did the average person very little good
Has the US learned to pursue self-defeating policies like Germany (which closed perfectly safe nuclear power plants and celebrated the destruction of the Norstream 2 Gas pipeline, by flirting with huge tariffs (and other sanctions) on the countries (Russia and China) that can supply resources and tech that the US cannot obtain elsewhere and cannot manage for itself (like fast trains, ceramic magnets, and rare metals). It is intelligent or downright stupid for US politicians to routinely directly threaten the China and Russia ( whose exports are necessary to support military strength) with frequent verbal and physical threats and actions?
Is this smart?
Are they expected to "cry Uncle (Sam)" out of fear, and ruin their countries because the US wants to be #1?
Has the USA given up competing economically and intelligently? Certainly the Biden Administration did. At least some in the Trump administration talk WITH those they compete with, while the Neocons talk AT them and talk ABOUT them to demonize them.
Meanwhile, the US literacy rate is declining and poverty and homelessness seems to have increased. Doesn't it seem like the US needs to fix itself and stop the spending on things that do not help Americans, and mind its own business so it can fix itself?
This feels less like strategy and more like inertia. Both parties keep repeating the same lines about “deterrence” and “peace through strength,” but no one seems willing to ask whether permanent U.S. military presence in Asia is sustainable,or even useful long-term.
Framing economic ties with China as a threat just pushes countries into a false binary. Most governments in the region aren’t looking for a protector or a fight,they’re trying to survive between two superpowers that both want loyalty without offering real space for independence.
If everything is reduced to “preparing for war,” then diplomacy becomes theater, and countries lose the ability to shape their own futures.
What? So, what China and the Chinese say, that matters to the Snakes of AmeriKKKa? This is a dead country led by the various Minions. Interesting Rotten Ratner and Zyklon Blinken, Jewish Democrats, are straight on in agreement with the Rapist in Chief Trump's Minyan.
Wars? Interventions?
Ben really plays so much of this Pete Semen Drip, it's tough not to shuttle through.
While scholars have made many claims about US military interventions, they have not
come to a consensus on main trends and consequences. This article introduces a new,
comprehensive dataset of all US military interventions since the country’s founding,
alongside over 200 variables that allow scholars to evaluate theoretical propositions on
drivers and outcomes of intervention. It compares the new Military Intervention
Project (MIP) dataset to the current leading dataset, the Militarized Interstate Disputes
(MID). In sum, MIP doubles the universe of cases, integrates a range of military intervention definitions and sources, expands the timeline of analysis, and offers more
transparency of sourcing through historically-documented case narratives of every US
military intervention included in the dataset. According to MIP, the US has undertaken
almost 400 military interventions since 1776, with half of these operations undertaken
between 1950 and 2019. Over 25% of them have occurred in the post-Cold War
That, right there, is the key to all of this: normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.
In the 18 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.
The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.
The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.
The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.
This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.
Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.
The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).
In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.
The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.
In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.
We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.
Thank you Ben Norton for your always well written and researched rtitcles. The fallacy inherent in Hegseth's and others approach to China is blatantly obvious. Arming yourself for peace is stupid. Dialogue and diplomacy is what is needed. China wants to expand its trade, and does not seek hegemonic powers. It is important that you point that out so well.
When oh when will the USA stop interfering and making wars? This one they will not win.
The last war the US won was Grenada!
China is not a threat to the American people. It is perceived as a threat by the corporations and weapons manufacturers because it is so far advanced ahead of the de-industrialized U.S. China has thousands of miles of high-speed rail and the U.S. cannot even manage one line from San Francisco to Los Angeles after 14 years of delays. The U.S. is industrially incompetent.
Pete and many other members of the Trump administration are suffering from paranoid delusions.
USA will lose, why are they doing this??? We have shit going on in our country… is this an attempt to distract us from the incredible levels of corruption like the bank rolling the state of Israel to the point of our own country’s demise, and so they can install Chinese like surveillance in our country while we are at it”war” … what the hell is going on!?
Heggie is an unqualified clown. The US military hasn't defended the nation since 1812. In every war since it was all about profit. We don't have a powerful military. We have a weak expensive overextended military on over 800 foreign bases.
Our arms makers are running a racket. They design weapons to line pockets instead of winning.
Hope China wins😆
Hate for China is one of the few traditional biPartisan policies in the US.
It is not new.
It predates all Communist States.
The Federal Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 underlines the general bigotry in the US against China, although travelers and diplomats were still allowed in the country.
And the country, The People's Republic of China, has an economic system that is NOT Communist, no matter how many times the Ignorant or the propagandists call it "Communist China".
The USA out-competed the USSR and was able to waste more money on the military (and its adventures) than the Soviets. The US system won over the inefficiency of a collectivist economy.
Now, the USA has been out-competed by the government-assisted Capitalist system, the aggregate brain power and productivity, of China, despite recent US Federal schemes to goose the tech sector, reduce corporate taxes, and subsidize consumers other industries and hype the economy with outrageously huge deficit spending programs the did the average person very little good
Has the US learned to pursue self-defeating policies like Germany (which closed perfectly safe nuclear power plants and celebrated the destruction of the Norstream 2 Gas pipeline, by flirting with huge tariffs (and other sanctions) on the countries (Russia and China) that can supply resources and tech that the US cannot obtain elsewhere and cannot manage for itself (like fast trains, ceramic magnets, and rare metals). It is intelligent or downright stupid for US politicians to routinely directly threaten the China and Russia ( whose exports are necessary to support military strength) with frequent verbal and physical threats and actions?
Is this smart?
Are they expected to "cry Uncle (Sam)" out of fear, and ruin their countries because the US wants to be #1?
Has the USA given up competing economically and intelligently? Certainly the Biden Administration did. At least some in the Trump administration talk WITH those they compete with, while the Neocons talk AT them and talk ABOUT them to demonize them.
Meanwhile, the US literacy rate is declining and poverty and homelessness seems to have increased. Doesn't it seem like the US needs to fix itself and stop the spending on things that do not help Americans, and mind its own business so it can fix itself?
This feels less like strategy and more like inertia. Both parties keep repeating the same lines about “deterrence” and “peace through strength,” but no one seems willing to ask whether permanent U.S. military presence in Asia is sustainable,or even useful long-term.
Framing economic ties with China as a threat just pushes countries into a false binary. Most governments in the region aren’t looking for a protector or a fight,they’re trying to survive between two superpowers that both want loyalty without offering real space for independence.
If everything is reduced to “preparing for war,” then diplomacy becomes theater, and countries lose the ability to shape their own futures.
Trump/Hegseth are a clear and present danger to humanity!
Hegseth's stridency betrays his wistful thinking and utter crassness.
What? So, what China and the Chinese say, that matters to the Snakes of AmeriKKKa? This is a dead country led by the various Minions. Interesting Rotten Ratner and Zyklon Blinken, Jewish Democrats, are straight on in agreement with the Rapist in Chief Trump's Minyan.
Wars? Interventions?
Ben really plays so much of this Pete Semen Drip, it's tough not to shuttle through.
While scholars have made many claims about US military interventions, they have not
come to a consensus on main trends and consequences. This article introduces a new,
comprehensive dataset of all US military interventions since the country’s founding,
alongside over 200 variables that allow scholars to evaluate theoretical propositions on
drivers and outcomes of intervention. It compares the new Military Intervention
Project (MIP) dataset to the current leading dataset, the Militarized Interstate Disputes
(MID). In sum, MIP doubles the universe of cases, integrates a range of military intervention definitions and sources, expands the timeline of analysis, and offers more
transparency of sourcing through historically-documented case narratives of every US
military intervention included in the dataset. According to MIP, the US has undertaken
almost 400 military interventions since 1776, with half of these operations undertaken
between 1950 and 2019. Over 25% of them have occurred in the post-Cold War
period.
https://davidswanson.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/MIP.pdf
+--+
https://paulokirk.substack.com/p/the-sub-humans-in-the-goy-ionist
That, right there, is the key to all of this: normalizing the U.S. government’s mass surveillance powers.
In the 18 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.
The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.
The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.
The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.
This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.
Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.
The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).
In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.
The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.
In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.
We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.
It’s only getting worse, folks.
Interesting analysis.
The only threat that China poses is the threat of a good example.
No brainwashing for presidents!
https://open.substack.com/pub/juli2a5i4/p/no-brainwashing-for-presidents?r=1pk0jl&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
... he is also Zionist moron