China announces retaliatory sanctions against US officials
Beijing has decided to sanction individuals in the US as retaliation for Washington's recent measures against six Chinese officials in Hong Kong.
China is targeting members of the US Congress, government officials, and NGO leaders 'who have acted egregiously regarding Hong Kong-related issues,' Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun announced during a regular briefing on Monday. He described the move as a rebuke to American 'interference' in the affairs of the autonomous city.
In late March, the US State Department accused Beijing of using its laws to 'intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists' in Hong Kong, forcing them to leave the territory. The US imposed sanctions on those it deems responsible, including Hong Kong Secretary of Justice Paul Lam and five security-related officials.
The Chinese government has yet to disclose the specific persons targeted by the new restrictions.
Hong Kong operates under a legal and political framework shaped by its 156 years of British rule, which concluded in 1997. Throughout the 2010s, the city experienced multiple waves of violent protests, which activists claimed were a response to Beijing's encroachments on traditional freedoms, culminating in the unrest of 2019.
Beijing alleges that those events were orchestrated by Western powers seeking to undermine Chinese sovereignty. In response, the national government passed a new security law in 2020, granting local authorities more power to address security threats. The legislation drew condemnation from the US and other Western nations, which claim it violates the terms of Hong Kong's handover to China.
Tensions between the US and China are currently high in the face of new tariffs introduced by the Trump administration on imported goods from a variety of countries. China, widely seen as the primary target of the measures, has refused to make concessions and has urged other nations to resist US pressure.
In addition to commercial disputes, Washington and Beijing are at odds over Taiwan, a self-governing Chinese island that relies on the US for its defense. While China advocates peaceful reunification, it has warned that any attempt to declare formal independence could trigger armed conflict. China contends that certain elements within the US government are pushing Taiwan toward this outcome.
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Russia Today
5 hours ago
- Russia Today
Kiev sends the living to die, but won't accept its dead
It is sad, but peace remains elusive in the war between, on one side, Ukraine and – through Ukraine – the West and, on the other, Russia. Recently, the US has at least admitted that Moscow has plausible and important interests at stake and that the West has been using Ukraine to fight a proxy war against Russia. While very late and still incomplete, such truthfulness could help fashion the kind of realistic compromise needed to end this war. Yet Washington's European vassals have chosen this moment to discover their usually terminally atrophied capacity for talking back to the US: They clearly want the war to continue, even though that means Ukraine – about which they pretend to care – will lose even more people and territory. Against this backdrop, it was no wonder that the latest round of the renewed Istanbul talks between Russia and Ukraine produced no breakthrough, little progress, and only very modest concrete results. Also, on the eve of the talks, the Zelensky regime launched terror attacks on civilian trains in western Russia and a series of sneak drone strikes throughout the country that – in the most generous reading – involved the war crime of perfidy: That, obviously, did not help find a way forward either. Indeed, by now it is clear that Kiev's sneak drone attacks in particular have only further undermined the Zelensky regime's already fragile standing in Washington: US President Donald Trump has been explicit that he accepts Russia's right to massively retaliate, or, in the original Trumpese, 'bomb the hell' out of Ukraine. Luckily for Ukraine, Moscow is generally more restrained than America would be in a similar situation, and it should stay so. Yet the fact remains, Kiev's sneak drones have made no substantial military difference in its favor, but they have done significant political damage – to Kiev, that is. Regarding the Istanbul talks, it is likely that these assaults were meant to torpedo them. Yet Moscow did not fall for that rather transparent play. Its delegation turned up; so the Ukrainian one had to do the same. In addition, Russia ended this round of the negotiations with several good-will gestures, including an agreement to exchange POWs who are particularly young or in bad health and the offer to hand over the frozen (a common practice in war) bodies of 6,000 fallen Ukrainians. Both initiatives have run into trouble. To be precise, both are being impeded by the Ukrainian leadership. The POW swap has been delayed, and Ukrainian officials have failed to show up at the border to receive the first 1,212 of their deceased soldiers. Regarding both, Kiev has blamed Russia. Yet, remarkably, the Ukrainian statements, in reality, prove that it is indeed Kiev that is – at the very least – slowing these processes down. For what Ukrainian officials are really accusing Russia of is moving faster. The reasons for this obstructionism are unclear. The Ukrainian authorities have not shared them with the public. But there are some plausible guesses. One very likely reason why Kiev is reluctant to accept the 6,000 bodies of its own fallen soldiers is that the 'preponderant majority' of them, according to a Ukrainian member of parliament, were killed specifically during Ukraine's insane and predictably catastrophic incursion into Russia's Kursk region. Started on August 6 of last year, the operation was initially hyped by Ukrainian propagandists and their accomplices and useful idiots in the West. For the clear-eyed, it was obvious from the beginning that this was a mass kamikaze mission, wasting Ukrainian lives for no military or political advantage. Was the Zelensky regime trying to create a territorial 'bargaining chip'? Or once more 'shift the narrative,' as if wars are won by rewriting a movie script? Influence last year's US elections? Prepare for a possible victory by then presidential candidate Donald Trump? All of the above? We don't know. What we do know is that nothing Kiev may have fantasized about has worked. Indeed, by now the Kursk fiasco has only made Kiev's situation worse. Russia has retaken the territory in Kursk Region that Ukraine had seized and is advancing on the Ukrainian side of the border, taking settlements at an accelerating pace and getting close to the major regional city of Sumy. Clearly, those fallen during that particular suicide mission are evidence of Kiev's recklessness, hypocrisy, and incompetence. No wonder they seem to be less than welcome at home. A second reason for Kiev's reluctance may be even more sordid. There is speculation, for instance on social media, that it is financial. More importantly, a Russian diplomat, Sergei Ordzhonikidze, has made the same claim on the Telegram channel of the Izvestiia newspaper. For according to Ukrainian legislation, the families of the fallen soldiers are entitled to substantial compensation. Painful as it may be to acknowledge it, the Zelensky regime is not incapable of such a massive lack of piety. Whatever the precise reasons for Kiev's odd refusal to take back its prisoners and dead, they are certain to be base. This may jar with the West's well-organized and stubbornly delusional Zelensky fan club. But the best they could do for 'ordinary' Ukrainians is to put pressure on their worn-out idol to accept the prisoners and the fallen. And, of course to finally end the war.
Russia Today
a day ago
- Russia Today
Trump-Musk Big Bro bust-up: Ignore the noise, focus on the signal
Two very rich and very powerful and very big American egos have had a very public and very loud cat fight. US President Donald Trump, arguably the single most powerful politician in the world, and his now former 'buddy-in-chief' Elon Musk, certifiably the single richest oligarch on (for now) this planet, have 'torched' (Wall Street Journal) their occasionally exuberant bromance of almost a year in a 'stunning' (Bloomberg) and 'spectacular' (New York Times) finale of fiery mutual recrimination. Say what you will about oligarchic techno-capitalism, but it can be entertaining. Using their own social media platforms, Musk and Trump have gone after each other with brutal reputational attacks, griping of the 'You owe me!' – 'No, you me!' variant, and high-value threats to do each other economic and political damage. The key trigger for the blow-up was what Trump calls his 'Big Beautiful Bill,' which is currently making its way through Congress. For, Musk – despite his lucrative government contracts a deficit hawk, whose own DOGE cost-cutting effort has just frustratingly failed – the same tax bill is a 'disgusting abomination.' Musk claims that he is greatly concerned over America's exploding and unsustainable national debt. Since Trump's Republican majority in the Senate is small, Musk's open support for the bill's vocal opponents there is a real political embarrassment for the White House at least, if not even a serious threat. US sovereign debt, moreover, is a real and very serious problem with dire economic and geopolitical implications; and estimates put the costs of Trump's bill at 3.3 trillion additional debt over the next ten years: Musk has a factual point. Yet there also is the fact that Trump's Big Beautiful Bill foresees cutting subsidies for buying Musk's Tesla cars (among other EVs), amounting to an estimated loss of $1.2 billion for Tesla. It can be complicated in that place between conservative ideology, pure and simple, and the unrelenting will to milk the public for yourself and your shareholders. Musk also 'revealed' – if that is the word – that Donald Trump features on the client list of the sinister financier, pedophile, mass sex criminal, and most likely intelligence-connected elite blackmailer Jeffrey Epstein, who conveniently committed suicide in a Manhattan jail in 2019. To make it count, Musk, as if returning to his former Centrist political self, suggested impeaching Trump and founding a new party to contest the great blusterer's grip on 'the 80% in the middle.' Liberal Tesla drivers: Maybe you can love your car again. Even if the share prices of its manufacturer are tanking. Trump shot back by warning Musk that his 'billions' in government contracts could melt away like the snows of yesteryear, which made Musk threaten to stop carrying US astronauts into orbit, that is, in effect – since the volatile oligarch is America's de facto monopolist – shut down space for the US. That, according to the Washington Post, constituted a 'serious threat to NASA and Pentagon programs.' Slow claps, Washington, for letting 'the Market' handle national security. All in all, quite a reality show: noisy, no holds barred, and pretty indecorous. A dignified display of manly self-control and mature gravity at the empire's top this was not. But, then again, it's the US late-imperial 'elite,' so the bar of the truly sensational is really high – or low, depending on how you look at it. The whole battle-not-so-royal may or may not blow over. Both Trump and Musk clearly have much to lose from a prolonged war against each other, financially and politically, and both are not only card-carrying egomaniacs but also ruthless, selfish pragmatists. There are already signals that Musk, for one, may want to wind down the confrontation again: he has relented regarding the astronauts and made some semi-conciliatory noises. Between the president's growing reputation for 'TACO' (Trump always chickens out) and Musk's proven ability to knuckle under when the price is right (in Brazil and toward Israel-while-committing-genocide, for instance), the two would-be alpha males might still find a way to share. Yet things will never be as before. For one thing, by losing their cool, Musk and Trump have ended up showing each other three things that neither of them will forget: Just how volatile they both are (I know: surprise, surprise…); that Elon is no sacrosanct exception for Donald and Donald isn't one for Elon either: everyone can always end up on the menu; and, finally, that both can think quickly – really as if they had been doing so for quite a while already – of the nastiest way to hurt the other. If Musk and Trump do make up, think of it as a movie star marriage sticking together after both spouses have badly, publicly cheated and also tried to ruin each other, financially, career-wise, and reputationally. And now let's take a step back. For, ultimately, the Big Bro Bust-Up is most interesting if we look at it as if we were historians a few hundred years from now in the future: What does this quarrel tell us more generally about America at this stage? First of all, it simply confirms what we all know already: The US is not a democracy by any stretch of the (reasonable) imagination but an oligarchy and plutocracy. Votes count much less than money because money produces the votes. Musk has been commendably explicit about his belief that it was his massive financial support that made Trump win; and one of Trump's worries in the whole rumble is that Musk might not only withdraw future funds from his camp – already promised but not yet paid out – but also invest them elsewhere. Second, as of now at least, the American oligarchy/plutocracy is not under pressure 'from below.' Objectively – to use a term long beloved by Marxists – Americans have every reason to rebel and shake off both Trump and Musk and then some. But, sadly, tension and conflict are generated inside the elite, not by 'the masses.' And third, the US elite is and remains absolutely, ruthlessly amoral and immoral, indeed quite evil: Here is a major falling out between the biggest oligarch and the president, and it's about taxes, the deficit, profits, ego, and personal advantages. Not about, for instance, the fact that the US has, according to Israel, by now delivered 90,000 tons of arms and ammunitions to the Israeli apartheid state while the latter has been committing the Gaza genocide. Indeed, Musk has never withdrawn his support for Israel, while Trump has reached the same level of complicit depravity as his predecessor Joe Biden. America: The world sees your priorities. And it won't forget.
Russia Today
2 days ago
- Russia Today
NATO aspirant reining in pro-bloc propaganda
The Georgian government is set to fold a media center promoting Western integration into the Foreign Ministry, according to its director. The Information Center on NATO and EU, based in Tbilisi, was launched in 2005 under then-President Mikhail Saakashvili to build public support for Georgia's membership in both blocs. An employee at the Center said in a social media post on Wednesday that he had received formal notification indicating the outlet would be closed by July 1. Director Tamara Tsuleiskiri later clarified that the NGO's functions would continue under the Foreign Ministry but that the current legal structure would be dissolved. Georgian officials confirmed the restructuring to the news agency Interpress. In 2008, NATO designated Georgia and Ukraine as potential future members, despite objections from several European leaders over concerns that the move would antagonize Moscow, which perceives the US-led military bloc as expansionist and hostile. Months later, Saakashvili launched a military operation against the then-breakaway Georgian region of South Ossetia, during which Russian peacekeepers stationed in the area were killed. Moscow responded swiftly, leading to a military defeat for Georgia, and shortly after recognized the region's independence. The failed gamble damaged Saakashvili's popularity and paved the way for the rise of the Georgian Dream party, which has taken a more skeptical view of the West. Last August, on the anniversary of the conflict, the party's ruling council issued a statement alleging that Saakashvili's actions 'were not a result of his mental instability, but a result of instructions from the outside and a well-planned betrayal.' Georgian Dream secured a sweeping victory in parliamentary elections last October. A coalition of pro-Western parties claimed the vote was rigged and launched street protests aimed at forcing the new government to step down. The EU and the US expressed support for the opposition's tactics — actions the Georgian government described as foreign interference. Georgian officials have accused the opposition of mimicking the strategy used in Ukraine in 2014 during the Western-backed Maidan coup. They have also alleged they are facing foreign pressure for not aligning with Kiev in its conflict with Moscow. Western nations, meanwhile, have accused the current government of 'undermining democracy' by passing legislation that mandates disclosure of foreign grants by domestic political organizations. Georgia has suspended accession talks with Brussels due to the tensions, but says it still seeks eventual membership in both the EU and NATO.
