Last month, the Trump regime designated five state-run Chinese media in the US as “foreign missions (sic).”
The hostile action requires them to register their locations, properties and staff, including US citizens if among them.
Affected media include Xinhua, China Global Television Network, China Radio International, China Daily Distribution Corporation, and Hai Tian Development USA.
The move is similar to Trump’s hostile actions against RT America in 2017, requiring the news organization to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
At the time, an FBI probe of Sputnik News was initiated to check for FARA violations.
Enacted in 1938 one year before WW II began, it requires agents representing foreign powers politically or quasi-politically to disclose their relationship with other governments, along with information about their activities and finances.
Originally administered by the State Department, FARA later came under Justice Department jurisdiction.
Since 1966, FARA focused on foreign lobbying instead of propaganda. From then to now, no one was convicted of violating the law.
Targeting Russian and now Chinese news organizations may be prelude to censoring or banning them at a future time for truth-telling journalism, notably reports that expose US imperial high crimes.
Pompeo falsely called Trump regime actions against Chinese news agencies retaliation for Beijing’s “increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment and intimidation” of US reporters (sic).
In response to hostile Trump regime actions, China’s Foreign Ministry retaliated against NYT, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal reporters in the country, revoking their press passes and expelling them, including from Hong Kong and Macau. They have 10 days to leave.
Beijing also designated the Times, WaPo, WSJ, Time magazine, and official US propaganda agency Voice of America as foreign functionaries.
Their staff is required to report their personal, financial, and property information to Chinese authorities.
A Foreign Ministry statement said the following:
“These measures are entirely necessary and reciprocal countermeasures that China is compelled to take in response to the unreasonable oppression the Chinese media organizations experienced in the US. They are legitimate and justified self-defense in every sense,” adding:
“What the US has done is exclusively targeting Chinese media organizations.”
“The US approach to the Chinese media is based on a Cold War mentality and ideological bias, which has seriously tarnished the reputation and image of Chinese media organizations.”
“The US has been massively ‘deporting’ Chinese journalists in a disguised way.”
On Tuesday, Trump falsely slammed what he called the “Chinese Virus” in the US. Pompeo called it the “Wuhan coronavirus.”
China believes a US virus was introduced in the country, likely so along with other nations, notably Iran.
Maybe major outbreaks are planned for other countries on the US target list for regime change.
Global Research editor Michel Chossudovsky explained that “the unspoken objective (of COVID-19 aims) to bring the Chinese economy to its knees,” adding:
“It was an act of ‘economic warfare,’ which has contributed to undermining both China’s economy as well as that of most Western countries (allies of the US), leading to a wave of bankruptcies, not to mention unemployment, collapse of the tourist industry, etc.”
Beginning last week, the Trump regime also launched “economic war” on Western Europe, banning air traffic from the continent, Britain, and Ireland to the US, “using COVID-19 as a justification,” said Chossudovsky.
He stressed that reverberating economic damage was “made in America,” deliberate actions “by powerful financial interests” — ones that engineered the 2008-09 financial crisis.
It’s a scheme for greater consolidation of affected business sectors, along with transferring wealth from ordinary people to privileged ones.
When crises like what’s ongoing now occur, powerful manipulative hands most often are behind them.
The US is at war on humanity at home and abroad, against allies and adversaries alike — an attempt to more greatly enhance its global power, no matter the human, economic, and financial cost.
Manipulation is behind today’s highly volatile financial, commodity, and other markets that will likely continue until dark forces behind them accomplish their objectives.
It includes greater consolidation of targeted industry sectors, along with a massive transfer of wealth from ordinary people to dark forces.
It’s about making the US and other countries ruler-serf societies, eliminating the middle class.
It’s a financial coup d’etat against the public welfare. A government/business partnership facilitates it.
Market manipulators are enriching themselves as valuations fluctuate up and down — while ordinary Americans and nations on the US target list for regime change get trampled.
Powerful ones like China and Russia are in the best position to protect themselves and retaliate.
Beijing blames US dark forces for the COVID-19 outbreak and spread. Last month, I wrote the following:
Law Professor Francis Boyle drafted the US Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989 — signed into law by GHW Bush, revoked by Bush/Cheney on the pretext of rebuilding America’s defenses at a time when the nation’s only enemies are invented. No real ones exist.
Boyle believes the potentially deadly coronavirus is a biowarfare weapon, genetically modified for this purpose.
His assessment contradicts claims about the virus originating from a Wuhan seafood market or being connected to coronaviruses found in bats.
The US has had an active biological warfare program since at least the 1940s.
The Pentagon uses chemical, biological, radiological, and other banned weapons in its wars of aggression against nonthreatening states.
Calling it “An Act of War,” Chossudovsky stressed that COVID-19 is a “pretext (for) economic and social crisis.”
Fueled by media-proliferated fear-mongering, ordinary people and vulnerable businesses are being trampled so manipulators can benefit.
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Award-winning author Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at [email protected]. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”
http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html
Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.
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