BREAKING NEWS: Pfizer Covid Vaccine vial contents exposed by WHO whistleblower. It contains graphene oxide, parasites, RFID, metals and nano circuitry. DARPA and Bill Gates developed these non biological synthetic injections to control the minds and pic.twitter.com/hDCOaEIIoM…

— Erin Elizabeth Health Nut News 🙌 (@unhealthytruth) March 14, 2023

by Caitlin Johnstone

The US has been increasingly treating Taiwan like a sovereign nation with whom diplomatic relationships and alliances can be formed, in violation of its longstanding One-China policy that has kept the peace for decades. And I just think it’s worth noting that the western media who’ve lately been condoning these moves became outraged at Donald Trump just a few years ago for doing the same thing to a far lesser degree.

After his victory in the 2016 presidential election but before taking office, Trump received a phone call from Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen, in transgression of Washington’s longstanding policy of declining to acknowledge the sovereignty of Taiwan’s government. This position was enshrined back in the seventies during Washington’s efforts to normalize relations with Beijing in order to pull it away from Moscow during the last cold war, reversing its previous Guaido coup-like policy of insisting that China’s true government was in Taiwan.

The reaction from the mass media was adversarial and immediate. “Donald Trump insults China with Taiwan phone call,” said a headline from CNBC. “Trump’s phone call with Taiwan president risks China’s wrath,” warned The Guardian. “This Is Why Trump’s Taiwan Call Was Truly Bizarre,” said Vanity Fair. “Trump may have just thrown decades of US-China relations into disarray,” exclaimed Vox. “Trump-Taiwan call breaks US policy stance,” said the BBC.”We have what’s called a One-China policy, where we recognize there’s only one Chinese government,” MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow told her audience after the news of Trump’s phone call broke. “And it took us a long time to get there. It sounds rational now, but it took us a long time — it took us decades to get there — and that’s where we are. And Donald Trump apparently took that silverware drawer out of the kitchen cabinet today and turned it upside down over his head and just started shaking the silverware to see what happens. It took decades to develop the ground on which we talk to China, and Donald Trump tore it up today.”

Trump's Taiwan call: "We don't know if he did it on purpose… this, conceivably, is the way wars start" @maddow pic.twitter.com/uWukClkhiy

— The Daily Edge (@TheDailyEdge) December 3, 2016

And yet now we’re seeing dramatically more aggressive erosion of Washington’s One-China policy than a president-elect answering a phone call, all without the mass media blinking an eye. Two successive House speakers have now had physical visits with Tsai Ing-wen, with Nancy Pelosi visiting Taiwan last August and Kevin McCarthy meeting with Tsai in Washington a few weeks ago.

President Biden has unequivocally stated that the US would go to war against China to defend Taiwan from an attack by the PRC, and his Director of National Intelligence later confirmed that this is indeed the new position of the US government.

Escalations involving Taiwan are developing on a near-daily basis now. In a new article titled “Taiwan Now Has ‘Real Time’ Intelligence Sharing Link With Five Eyes,” Antiwar’s Dave DeCamp discusses the revelation that Taiwan is being integrated into the Five Eyes intelligence alliance of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Taiwan becoming a de facto sixth eye in the alliance would surely be seen as a major provocation by the PRC, who sees Taiwan as a rebel province. And it should here be noted that Russia invaded Ukraine largely because it saw it as gradually being made into a de facto member of the NATO alliance. In another recent article titled “House China Committee Prepares Proposals to Rapidly Arm Taiwan,” DeCamp reports on the latest efforts to ramp up the deluge of military weaponry being sent to the island, again a move which echoes the lead-up to the war in Ukraine. One of the silliest things the US empire asks us to believe is that the act of amassing large proxy arsenals on the borders of its enemies is something that should be regarded as a defensive action, rather than the incendiary provocation of extreme aggression that it self-evidently is.

In another recent article titled “China says Taiwan inviting ‘wolves’ with US defence industry forum,” Reuters reports that Beijing is “extremely concerned” about a US military-industrial complex forum that will be hosted in Taipei next week.This is just in the last few days; reports about these escalations are coming out all the time. And yet the mass media have little or nothing critical to say about any of this.

So what changed since late 2016? Well for one thing Trump is no longer in office, and the imperial narrative managers who hated him because they saw him as an untrustworthy steward of the empire don’t have the same commitment to sowing distrust of the current US president.

More importantly, the agendas of the US empire changed. Ramping up aggressions against China were a back-burner issue back then, and the idea of a military confrontation between the world’s two most powerful countries seemed an unthinkable impossibility. Now the US is rapidly ramping up its military encirclement of China and pouring weapons into Taiwan at a time that just so happens to coincide with China beginning to become the exact sort of rival superpower that the US empire has long had a standing policy of preventing. As the agendas of the empire have changed, so too have the positions of the imperial media. We’re now seeing more and more promotion of anti-China hysteria in the media, and the continuing erosion of the One-China policy is now being overlooked at best and overtly endorsed at worst. While China is being given more and more reasons to see US involvement in Taiwan as an unacceptable threat, the mainstream press are for the most part refusing to apply an appropriate level of scrutiny to the consequences which could begin erupting from this at any time.

Now we’re getting reports that President Xi Jinping directly threatened Biden about Washington’s meddling this past November, saying he will not be the Chinese leader who goes down in history as having lost Taiwan and that there will be war if his hand is forced.

So the worst thing that could happen if we keep going along this trajectory is pretty much as bad as anything you could possibly imagine. The MSM’s negligence on this front is horrifying.

One of the places where there are mini rapids.

You may think, “Who gives a Stuff? She’ll get back into Parliament on the party list anyway.” Except that it excited the Leftist TV1 News enough for them to make it the lead item in their bulletin last night! The reason — the Leftists don’t like sitting National MP Simon O’Connor’s anti-abortion stance, and they like Brook van Velden’s libertarian pro-choice stance. But are NZ’s current unrestrictive laws likely to be challenged in Parliament? No.

Yep, that was it as far as TV1 is concerned. Last year TV1 commented on Simon O’Connor’s FB happy post at the time the US Supreme Court decided that the US Constitution makes no mention of abortion and thus wasn’t a contitutional right. TV1 was delighted that National’s Wokeist leader Mr Luxon made Simon O’Connor delete the post, despite National long having let its MPs decide this issue on an individual conscience basis (as has the Labour Party.)

Brook van Velden has little chance of taking the seat off National — Simon O’Connor is a good MP — although she will probably beat the Labour candidate into third place. As a political commentator on the TV1 item said, this is probably to do with boosting ACT’s party vote in the seat.

The overall point is that this just demonstates the trivial nature of TV1 when it comes to politics and political issues. TV1 staff may all be pro-choice on the abortion issue, but they are and certainly were not on Comrade Jacinda’s mandates for that substance. Leftists are hypocrites.

The number of banned books has been increasing across the United States in the recent years, much to the horror of readers and librarians.

Worryingly, the highest number of bans was called in 2022, and the trend continues into 2023 with the hysteria beginning to reach other art forms such as paintings and sculpture. Only recently, the famous Michelangelo’s David was declared ‘pornography’ by parents at a Christian school, prompting the head teacher’s resignation after students had been shown the statue in an art class.

This type of outcry is based on ignorant black-and-white thinking, and gets in the way of children’s education, limiting the access they get a full range of literature and art. If you believe young people deserve to read and learn about complex and sometimes difficult subjects that reflect the real issues they may face in life, then consider joining other like-minded people in fighting to unite against book bans.

According to the Unite Against Book Bans organization, there were 1,269  attempts to ban books in 2022. This censorship has affected school libraries and public libraries alike.

As well as covering complex subjects, books can also give kids and teens the opportunity to learn about people and cultures different to their own, taking the mystery away and, in turn, any fear. As the old saying goes: knowledge is power!

A large majority of poll voters actually oppose book bans, but it seems the very vocal minority keep pushing for banning or censoring books and content they dislike or disagree with. If you are outraged by book bans, you can join the fight by visiting Unite Against Book Bans and signing the petition, donating to the cause, or buying their merch in support.

“If you believe…

• Books are tools for understanding complex issues.
• Young people deserve to see themselves reflected in a library’s books.
• Parents should not be making decisions for other parents’ children.
• Individuals should be trusted to make their own decisions about what to read.
• Limiting young people’s access to books does not protect them from life’s complex and challenging issues. “

Unite Against Book Bans

from KC News

A KiwiRail equipment failure in Auckland is forcing Metlink to run fewer passenger rail services across the Wellington region during May.

KiwiRail’s one-and-only specialist rail track evaluation car, which measures tracks so trains can operate safely, is broken and inspections due on the Kāpiti, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa lines are overdue – making them non-compliant. Without compliance, KiwiRail has introduced temporary speed restrictions. Greater Wellington Chair Daran Ponter says KiwiRail’s safety equipment failure shows an abysmal lack of accountability and management. “To be clear, this is a monumental failure by KiwiRail. The poor maintenance of this essential piece of equipment is holding the entire North Island’s rail network hostage. If ever there was a perfect example of a lack of prudent management and accountability for critical rail infrastructure in this country, here is exhibit A.”

Apparently these were brought to California from Moreton bay in Queensland in the 19th century.