Tag: politics of World War II

East Asia
South China Sea

Brink looms closer in East Asia maritime theaters

Japan has activated its first amphibious marine unit since World War II, which conducted practice drills to defend the disputed Senkaku Islands from an anticipated Chinese military seizure. Meanwhile, the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier, with a group of Philippine generals onboard, entered disputed waters in the South China Sea, where China is building military defenses on islands claimed by the Philippines and Vietnam. Another carrier, the USS Carl Vinson, patrolled the contested waters last month, taking part in anti-submarine drills with Japanese forces and visiting Vietnam with its 5,000-strong crew—the largest such US military presence there since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. (Map via IDSA)

Europe

Moscow stonewalls on fate of Holocaust hero

A Moscow district court rejected a lawsuit by relatives of Raoul Wallenberg, seeking to access uncensored documents concerning his death in Soviet captivity. Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who rescued thousands of Hungarian Jews during World War II. Soviet forces detained Wallenberg in 1945, supposedly for espionage. He was reported to have died two years later in Moscow's notorious Lubyanka Prison.

East Asia

Hokkaido: flashpoint for world war?

Japan's northernmost main island of Hokkaido seems, unfortunately, poised to jump into the headlines as East Asia's next flashpoint for Great Power confrontation. When North Korea fired a missile over the island last month, it was during unprecedented joint US-Japan military exercises on Hokkaido. Now Russia is conducting its own exercises in the Kuril Islands immediately to the north—including territory that Japan has claimed since the end of World War II.

Oceania

Korea nuclear crisis spurs Guam independence bid

Amid all the hype over North Korea’s threats to fire a nuclear missile at Guam, just a few media accounts have made note of how Guamians themselves are reacting. Guam is usually seen in the US only as a strategic Pentagon outpost. But with a referendum on independence in the offing, growing sentiment on the island holds that the only thing Guamians are getting out of their current US territorial status is being made a nuclear target.

North America

Nazis in the streets: how do we react?

The violence in Berkeley has sparked divisions over how to confront the fast-rising radical right. One danger of advocating nonviolence is playing into the hands of the equivalists who blame both sides (or “many sides”) for the violence. On the other hand, the fact that equivalist propaganda will be used doesn’t give us a blank check to dismiss the whole discussion of astute tactics.

Syria

Syria: Trump approves plan to arm Rojava Kurds

TheĀ Rojava Kurds, caught in a pincer between Turkey and ISIS, are being forced to accept superpower aidā€”but with costs for Syrian revolutionary unity against ISIS and Assad.

Palestine

No, Guterres. Anti-Zionism is not anti-Semitism

UN chief Antonio Guterres' assertion that "denial of the right of the State of Israel to exist" is "the modern form of anti-Semitism" is an insult to anti-Zionist Jews worldwide.

North America

Trump admin’s Hungarian fascist connection?

Trump assistant Sebastian Gorka wears the medal of the Hungarian Order of Heroes, listed by the State Department as having collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.