Taiwan

East Asia

China: death penalty for advocating ‘Taiwan independence’

China instated the death penalty for “particularly serious” cases involving supporters of Taiwanese independence. New judicial guidelines, entitled “Opinions on Punishing the Crimes of Splitting the Country & Inciting Splitting the Country by ‘Taiwan Independence’ Diehards,” were jointly issued by the Supreme People’s Court, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of State Security and the Ministry of Justice. The new standards stipulate severe punishments for those identified as leaders or significant participants in secessionist activities, and classify actions causing “significant harm to the state and its people” as offenses that may result in the death penalty. (Photo: shutterbean/Pixabay via Jurist)

Southeast Asia

Maritime collision escalates South China Sea tensions

Manila accused Chinese military vessles of engaging in “dangerous manoeuvres, including ramming and towing” a Philippine ship in an effort to disrupt a “routine” resupply mission to an outpost on Second Thomas Shoal (known to the Philippines as Ayungin Shoal) in the the disputed Spratly Islands (known to the Philippines as the Kalayaan Islands). By Philippine media accounts, the craft was fired upon with water cannon and boarded by Chinese troops, with several Filipino soldiers injured in the ensuing confrontation. The skirmish came amid escalating tensions over the South China Sea—much of which Manila calls the West Philippine Sea, but nearly all of which is claimed by Beijing. The chief of staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, Romeo Brawner Jr., stated that the military and other maritime law enforcement agencies are prepared to defend Filipino fishermen from China’s newly announced “anti-trespassing policy.” (Map via IDSA)

East Asia

Protesters surround Taiwan parliament

Some 30,000 Taiwanese demonstrators surrounded the Legislative Yuan, the island’s parliament, one day after Lai Ching-te of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was sworn in as president. They were protesting against the legislative majority’s attempts to enact new laws they say would unconstitutionally limit the power of the executive. Three days before the inauguration, physical conflict broke out among lawmakers on floor of the Legislative Yuan, with five briefly hospitalized. The DPP, while winning the presidency, failed to maintain a legislative majority in the January election, leaving the opposition Kuomintang to form a majority coalition. The Kuomintang favors closer ties with China, while the DPP upholds Taiwan’s de facto independence. Beijing responded to Lai’s inauguration with menacing naval maneuvers, completely surrounding Taiwan with warships. The protest at the Legislative Yuan evokes memories of the 2014 Sunflower Movement, when activists occupied the parliament chamber for 24 days to oppose a free trade agreement with China being pushed by the then-Kuomintang government. (Photo: Kanshui0943 via WikimediaCommons)

Oceania

Tuvalu regains full sovereignty over security relations

Australia and Tuvalu released a joint statement announcing new commitments to improve security relations, and remove the veto power Australia previously had over the small island nation’s security relations with other countries. The announcement concerned implementation and interpretation of the Falepili Union, a bilateral treaty entered into last November, which expands upon the Australia-Tuvalu Security Partnership of 2017. However, it eliminates the 2017 provision that limited Tuvalu’s sovereignty in foreign affairs—a sensitive matter given Australia’s growing regional rivalry with China. (Image via Pixabay)

Southeast Asia

Podcast: geopolitics of the Barbie affair

In Episode 181 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the strange reality that the Barbie move has been banned in Vietnam over a brief image of a world map appearing to show the “nine-dash line” demarcating China’s unilaterally claimed territory in the South China Sea. While US-China brinkmanship over Taiwan wins headlines, Beijing’s maritime dispute with Hanoi holds unsettling potential for escalation. In a surreal paradox (for those who remember their history) Vietnam has actually been tilting to the US in the new cold war with China. It has also been increasingly resorting to internal police-state measures to protect the interests of foreign capital in the country. All of this constitutes a rebuke both to the neoliberals, who cling to the discredited dogma that “free markets” inevitably lead to peace and democracy, and to the tankies, who rally around both the regimes in Beijing and Hanoi, in defiance of political reality. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Map via IDSA)

Africa

Oil contracts at issue in Somaliland conflict?

Fighting continues in Somalia’s northern breakaway state of Somaliland, where three administrative regions—Sool, Sanaag, and Aynaba—have taken up arms in a bid to rejoin the internationally recognized Mogadishu government. Somaliland accuses the government of Ethiopia (which is officially attempting to broker a dialogue in the conflict) of intervening on the side of the re-integrationist rebels, headquartered in the town of Las Anod, Sool region. Somaliland has been effectively independent since 1991, and has seen a more stable and secular social order than the regions controlled by the Mogadishu government. But now Mogadishu is asserting its right to grant oil contracts to foreign companies within Somaliland’s territory. Local media note that the new conflict erupted just after Mogadishu announced the issuing of an exploration lease to Turkish Genel Energy in Somaliland—indeed, within Aynaba, one of the contested regions. The move was protested as “illegal” by the Somaliland government, based in the city of Hargeisa. (Map: Siirski via Ethiopia Insight)

East Asia

Taiwan extends military conscription period

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen announced a plan to strengthen and restructure the nation’s defense strategies, including extending the mandatory conscription period from four months to one year. Beginning in 2024, all males turning 19 will need to undergo a year-long period of military service—for the first time since 2008. In light of China’s expansionist military activities in the South China Sea and the firing of ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan this year, Tsai stressed the need for Taiwan to be well-prepared for war. “The decision is a difficult one, but as the head of the military and for the continued survival of Taiwan, this is an inevitable responsibility,” Tsai said. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Watching the Shadows

Roger Waters: another brick in the war propaganda

In Episode 140 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls out former Pink Floyd creative genius Roger Waters as a propaganda agent for the criminal regimes of Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping and Bashar Assad. In his recent CNN interview, Waters blames Ukraine for getting invaded, falsely states that “Taiwan is part of China,” and dismisses as “bollocks” that there are human rights abuses in China. He has the unmitigated chutzpah to send an open letter on social media to Ukrainian First Lady Elena Zelenska urging her to influence her husband to “end the war”—to which she rightly responds: “If we give up, we will not exist tomorrow. If Russia gives up, war will be over.” We’ve noted before Roger’s spewing of genocide-abetting denialism about the Syria chemical attacks. And he disses his own fans who don’t go along with his war propaganda. Roger Waters has become the fascist rock starhe once satirized in The Wall. The public acrimony between Waters and his ex-bandmate David Gilmour has now become political, with Gimour’s release (under the banner of Pink Floyd) of the song “Hey Hey, Rise Up,” explicitly in support of Ukraine. David Gilmour is right, while Roger Waters is now just another brick in the wall. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Image via Wikipedia)

East Asia

Taiwan expands rights for indigenous peoples

Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, speaking at an Indigenous Rights Forum in Taipei held to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day, pledged new measures to protect and promote the languages, cultures and territorial rights of the island nation’s Aboriginal communities. Tsai noted that the new Indigenous Peoples Basic Act seeks to bring Taiwanese law and policy into conformity with the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP), and calls for re-assigning the country’s place names to reflect Aboriginal languages. Her office has established a Transitional Justice Committee to oversee implementation of the law in collaboration with Aboriginal communities. (Photo: President Tsai on visit to harvest festival of the Paiwan and Rukai peoples, Sandimen township, Pingtung county, via Wikipedia)

Central America

Honduras transition in the New Cold War

Hondurans elected self-proclaimed “democratic socialist” Xiomara Castro to be the country’s first woman president. The wife of Manuel Zelaya, the populist president who was removed in a coup in 2009, Castro pledges to revive his program—and take it much further, instating far-reaching reforms. Castro also announced that she will “open diplomatic and commercial relations with continental China,” which was widely taken as meaning a switch of diplomatic recognition. Honduras is currently one of only 14 countries that recognize Taipei rather than Beijing. It is tragic to see the Central American republics, in their struggle to break free of Washington’s orbit, acquiesce in Beijing’s design to incorporate Taiwan into its own orbit—or, more ambitiously, its national territory. (Map: Perry-Castañeda Library)

Planet Watch

Rapid nuclear escalation, East and West

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov warned that Moscow will deploy intermediate-range nuclear weapons if NATO does not accede to demands to stop arming Ukraine and guarantee an end to eastward expansion of the alliance. His remarks come amid tensions over Russian military movements near Ukraine’s borders, where the Kremlin is estimated to have amassed some 100,000 troops. Amid similar tensions over Chinese incursions into the Taiwan Strait, a Pentagon report warns that the People’s Republic is undertaking an expansion and “modernization” of its nuclear arsenal to “provide Beijing with more credible military options in a Taiwan contingency.” And the US is meanwhile replacing gravity bombs with digitally guided nuclear missiles on its new design of the F-35A fighter jet. (Photo of F-35A via Air Force Times)

Planet Watch

Podcast: R2P in the 21st Century

In Episode 101 of the CounterVortex podcast, we present the audio from a panel at the Ninth International Herbert Marcuse Society Conference, held in October at Arizona State University in Tempe. The panel, “The Responsibility to Protect in the Twenty-First Century,” features two presentations. Javier Sethness speaks on “Realism, Egalitarianism, and Internationalism,” providing a theoretical and historical framework, including a discussion of Herbert Marcuse‘s work with US intelligence in World War II. Bill Weinberg, speaking from New York, follows with “For Solidarity; Against Dictators and Campism,” discussing contemporary examples, including Syria, Libya, Burma and Taiwan. A third presentation was to have been offered by Anner G. in Ethiopia, on “The Responsibility to Protect in Tigray,” but she was unable to join. The work of her group, Horn Anarchists, is discussed in Weinberg’s presentation. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: Destruction of Aleppo, via 7ee6an)