What are Biden's foreign policies?

Kush Inc. said:

Another shit shoveler.... Must be that time of year.

BYE CHUMP! IGNORE!

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Kush Inc. said:

At the very least Biden doesn't walk around with toilet paper stuck on his shoe, doesn't confuse 9/11 with 7/11 convenient stores and has enough working braincells to pronounce Yosemite.

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CCGNZ said:

After the last 4 long years I'm fine w/Joe, that the man cares is not even in question. And I know he at least loves his country as much as himself which could'nt be said of his predecessor.ccguns

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Fogdog said:

I'd hazard the guess that if you asked Trump if he loves this country, he'd say yes. As would most of Trump's supporters. The problem is, theirs is a crazy love and they would kill the object of their love to keep it from leaving them.

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DIY-HP-LED said:

These racist assholes are suckers and it is easy to gather them together by providing a "safe space" and a sense of community. With the parlor they are willing to give up their personal information for that sense of belonging, here they are just being trolled and propagandized. It must be like a lab for them to see that works and what doesn't, the truth doesn't matter, they can make up what they please or promote someone else's wing nut conspiracy. This is a social media version of the epoch times in the post Trump world. There are NGO's, as well as governments, the domestic disinformation system and foxnews now.

The parlor will be in the news soon, many of those assholes busted over the insurrection at the capital will be convicted with evidence from there. That should pretty well finish them as a social media platform for the radical right.
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MAGA voters discovered a new home online. But it isn't what it seems. - POLITICO

MAGA voters discovered a new home online. But it isn't what it seems.
The fast-growing social network SafeChat has a "Star Wars" barlike atmosphere in which white nationalists mingle with Chinese dissidents. And there's plenty of conspiracy theories, too.

As former President Donald Trump’s supporters have flocked to alternative social media networks, many are turning to SafeChat, a fast-growing platform known for its tolerance of high-octane MAGA content.

In the nine weeks since the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, SafeChat’s app has been downloaded more times than in all of 2020, quickly becoming a hotbed of conspiracy theories and disinformation that paints President Joe Biden’s new administration in the worst possible light.

But the once-obscure social network, which touts its security protections and respect for free speech, is not just MAGA-friendly. It’s also a conduit that enables fringe groups attacking the Chinese Communist Party to speak directly to — and influence — Trump supporters, creating a "Star Wars" barlike atmosphere where AR-15 enthusiasts and a growing number of white nationalists can mingle with Chinese dissidents.

According to a review of corporate records and online activity by POLITICO, SafeChat has close links to The Epoch Times, an English-language media outlet affiliated with Falun Gong, the Chinese spiritual movement known for its antagonism toward the Chinese Communist Party and described by critics as a “cult.”

The Epoch Times saw its online readership grow fivefold, to 51 million monthly visitors to its website, during Trump’s time in the White House.

It’s part of a growing network of Falun Gong-affiliated media outlets that is creating its own far-right social media pipeline — one that amplifies MAGA themes while promoting the agenda of groups dedicated to the ouster of the Chinese Communist Party.

Founded in the early 1990s, the Falun Gong movement was banned by Beijing less than a decade later. It continues to criticize the Chinese government for religious persecution and unlawful restrictions on its supporters’ human rights. When Trump won the 2016 election, it latched on to his anti-Beijing message to promote far-right conspiracy theories and increasingly partisan attacks on anyone opposing the MAGA movement.

By acting as an online conveyor belt of anti-Biden and pro-Trump disinformation, the network of Falun Gong-linked sites is playing a role in shaping the next generation of the MAGA narrative against the former president’s enemies, particularly on the issue of China.

“There’s a concerted effort by anti-Chinese Communist Party voices to move right-wing voters and QAnon followers against China,” said Elise Thomas, an open-source analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism.

“The fact that people associated with the Falun Gong are trying to use SafeChat to tap into the MAGA-sphere is definitely concerning,” said Thomas, who has charted the rise of Falun Gong-related digital activity.

SafeChat had been bubbling along in online obscurity for much of 2020. But after the November election, the platform began to gain traction with Falun Gong social media influencers who promoted it hard to their followers as an alternative to mainstream social media networks — popularity that picked up exponentially after the Capitol Hill riot.

“Many people say SafeChat is very good. I quickly got over 4K followers there,” Jennifer Zeng, a former Epoch Times journalist, told her more than 150,000 Twitter followers on Jan. 22.

The app also began to attract notice as Trump’s most ardent supporters began turning away from mainstream social media. Online users in pro-Trump Facebook groups, for instance, urged their followers to ditch the Big Tech behemoth for the upstart platform. SafeChat emerged as a welcome alternative that offered up a steady stream of conservative content featuring accusations of voter fraud, support for Trump during his recent impeachment trial and harsh criticism of the new administration.

Last month, its website received almost 900,000 visitors — a fourfold increase compared with December, according to SimilarWeb, a web traffic analytics firm. By comparison, the website for Parler, one of the most popular MAGA platforms, was getting roughly 10 million monthly visitors before it was shut down in February.

Until the January riots at Capitol Hill, the majority of the platform’s visitors came from Vietnam and Hong Kong, countries long associated with the Falun Gong movement. But now, the United States represents more than a fifth of SafeChat’s online activity — a triple-digit monthly growth spike — exceeded only by traffic originating from Vietnam, based on SimilarWeb data.

SafeChat does not publicly acknowledge any connections to the Epoch Times or Falun Gong on its app and declined to comment on a series of questions from POLITICO about its ties to them.

“SafeChat is a neutral and safe platform for people to get information so that they can make their own decisions,” the company said in a statement.

The Epoch Times also told POLITICO it had no association with the SafeChat platform, nor any involvement in how its content was promoted on the platform.

But SafeChat was originally rebranded from an older social media platform, known as DV Chat, by Trung Vu, a former chief executive at The Epoch Times’ Vietnam, which was also registered at the same California address, according to a review of the state’s corporate records. Vu registered the company, but the ownership of SafeChat is unclear.

In January 2020, DV Chat changed the company’s name to SafeChat and named a new chief executive, Matthew Tullar. Like Vu, Tullar had worked for The Epoch Times over a four-year period through 2016, based on his LinkedIn profile. Tullar later served as marketing director for another Falun Gong-affiliated media outlet, The BL, for whom he hosted an online talk show that put out a steady stream of pro-Trump opinions.

One month later, in February 2020, SafeChat got a new chief executive: Patrick Mauler, who, like Vu, worked for New Tang Dynasty — an online video outlet with close ties to Falun Gong.

Several high-profile personalities on the SafeChat platform also previously worked for The Epoch Times, which is one of the biggest and most strident pro-Trump outlets in far-right media.

Seth Holehouse, who spent seven years at The Epoch Times before leaving in late 2015, has amassed more than 18,000 followers on his SafeChat channel.

Late last year, he gained online stardom after Trump tweeted videos in which Holehouse alleged widespread voter fraud. He has used his newfound fame to pump out videos from his SafeChat account accusing Biden of being in Beijing’s pocket and promoting Trump’s exoneration at his second impeachment trial.
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DIY-HP-LED said:

These racist assholes are suckers and it is easy to gather them together by providing a "safe space" and a sense of community. With the parlor they are willing to give up their personal information for that sense of belonging, here they are just being trolled and propagandized. It must be like a lab for them to see that works and what doesn't, the truth doesn't matter, they can make up what they please or promote someone else's wing nut conspiracy. This is a social media version of the epoch times in the post Trump world. There are NGO's, as well as governments, the domestic disinformation system and foxnews now.

The parlor will be in the news soon, many of those assholes busted over the insurrection at the capital will be convicted with evidence from there. That should pretty well finish them as a social media platform for the radical right.
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MAGA voters discovered a new home online. But it isn't what it seems. - POLITICO

MAGA voters discovered a new home online. But it isn't what it seems.
The fast-growing social network SafeChat has a "Star Wars" barlike atmosphere in which white nationalists mingle with Chinese dissidents. And there's plenty of conspiracy theories, too.

As former President Donald Trump’s supporters have flocked to alternative social media networks, many are turning to SafeChat, a fast-growing platform known for its tolerance of high-octane MAGA content.

In the nine weeks since the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot, SafeChat’s app has been downloaded more times than in all of 2020, quickly becoming a hotbed of conspiracy theories and disinformation that paints President Joe Biden’s new administration in the worst possible light.

But the once-obscure social network, which touts its security protections and respect for free speech, is not just MAGA-friendly. It’s also a conduit that enables fringe groups attacking the Chinese Communist Party to speak directly to — and influence — Trump supporters, creating a "Star Wars" barlike atmosphere where AR-15 enthusiasts and a growing number of white nationalists can mingle with Chinese dissidents.

According to a review of corporate records and online activity by POLITICO, SafeChat has close links to The Epoch Times, an English-language media outlet affiliated with Falun Gong, the Chinese spiritual movement known for its antagonism toward the Chinese Communist Party and described by critics as a “cult.”

The Epoch Times saw its online readership grow fivefold, to 51 million monthly visitors to its website, during Trump’s time in the White House.

It’s part of a growing network of Falun Gong-affiliated media outlets that is creating its own far-right social media pipeline — one that amplifies MAGA themes while promoting the agenda of groups dedicated to the ouster of the Chinese Communist Party.

Founded in the early 1990s, the Falun Gong movement was banned by Beijing less than a decade later. It continues to criticize the Chinese government for religious persecution and unlawful restrictions on its supporters’ human rights. When Trump won the 2016 election, it latched on to his anti-Beijing message to promote far-right conspiracy theories and increasingly partisan attacks on anyone opposing the MAGA movement.

By acting as an online conveyor belt of anti-Biden and pro-Trump disinformation, the network of Falun Gong-linked sites is playing a role in shaping the next generation of the MAGA narrative against the former president’s enemies, particularly on the issue of China.

“There’s a concerted effort by anti-Chinese Communist Party voices to move right-wing voters and QAnon followers against China,” said Elise Thomas, an open-source analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank that tracks online extremism.

“The fact that people associated with the Falun Gong are trying to use SafeChat to tap into the MAGA-sphere is definitely concerning,” said Thomas, who has charted the rise of Falun Gong-related digital activity.

SafeChat had been bubbling along in online obscurity for much of 2020. But after the November election, the platform began to gain traction with Falun Gong social media influencers who promoted it hard to their followers as an alternative to mainstream social media networks — popularity that picked up exponentially after the Capitol Hill riot.

“Many people say SafeChat is very good. I quickly got over 4K followers there,” Jennifer Zeng, a former Epoch Times journalist, told her more than 150,000 Twitter followers on Jan. 22.

The app also began to attract notice as Trump’s most ardent supporters began turning away from mainstream social media. Online users in pro-Trump Facebook groups, for instance, urged their followers to ditch the Big Tech behemoth for the upstart platform. SafeChat emerged as a welcome alternative that offered up a steady stream of conservative content featuring accusations of voter fraud, support for Trump during his recent impeachment trial and harsh criticism of the new administration.

Last month, its website received almost 900,000 visitors — a fourfold increase compared with December, according to SimilarWeb, a web traffic analytics firm. By comparison, the website for Parler, one of the most popular MAGA platforms, was getting roughly 10 million monthly visitors before it was shut down in February.

Until the January riots at Capitol Hill, the majority of the platform’s visitors came from Vietnam and Hong Kong, countries long associated with the Falun Gong movement. But now, the United States represents more than a fifth of SafeChat’s online activity — a triple-digit monthly growth spike — exceeded only by traffic originating from Vietnam, based on SimilarWeb data.

SafeChat does not publicly acknowledge any connections to the Epoch Times or Falun Gong on its app and declined to comment on a series of questions from POLITICO about its ties to them.

“SafeChat is a neutral and safe platform for people to get information so that they can make their own decisions,” the company said in a statement.

The Epoch Times also told POLITICO it had no association with the SafeChat platform, nor any involvement in how its content was promoted on the platform.

But SafeChat was originally rebranded from an older social media platform, known as DV Chat, by Trung Vu, a former chief executive at The Epoch Times’ Vietnam, which was also registered at the same California address, according to a review of the state’s corporate records. Vu registered the company, but the ownership of SafeChat is unclear.

In January 2020, DV Chat changed the company’s name to SafeChat and named a new chief executive, Matthew Tullar. Like Vu, Tullar had worked for The Epoch Times over a four-year period through 2016, based on his LinkedIn profile. Tullar later served as marketing director for another Falun Gong-affiliated media outlet, The BL, for whom he hosted an online talk show that put out a steady stream of pro-Trump opinions.

One month later, in February 2020, SafeChat got a new chief executive: Patrick Mauler, who, like Vu, worked for New Tang Dynasty — an online video outlet with close ties to Falun Gong.

Several high-profile personalities on the SafeChat platform also previously worked for The Epoch Times, which is one of the biggest and most strident pro-Trump outlets in far-right media.

Seth Holehouse, who spent seven years at The Epoch Times before leaving in late 2015, has amassed more than 18,000 followers on his SafeChat channel.

Late last year, he gained online stardom after Trump tweeted videos in which Holehouse alleged widespread voter fraud. He has used his newfound fame to pump out videos from his SafeChat account accusing Biden of being in Beijing’s pocket and promoting Trump’s exoneration at his second impeachment trial.
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CCGNZ said:

Yeah, CHEETOMAN loves his country in his perverse form of thinking, Like I love the fact that I can screw my country out of the taxes I owe to it,I love that I can pay contractors 50 cents on the dollar and get away w/it because they can't afford the litigation,I love that through my daddies connects I can have doctors certify BS reasons why I can't serve my country, I love that I can totally FK up my finances w/poor decisions and wipe the slate clean 5times w/bankruptcy filings.Yeah I love that in this land a lying narcicistic carnival barking snake oil salesman BS artist can attain the presidency.Yeah I LOVE this country.ccguns

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Fogdog said:

Yup,

Trump and his Trumpers love this country for all the reasons you say and they are willing to take down our democracy in order to keep their privilege. MAGA.

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CCGNZ said:

MAGAT

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Fogdog said:

Trump trademarked that and would sue me if I tried to profit from your idea.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Wednesday reaffirmed a determination made last year by the Trump administration that Hong Kong is no longer autonomous and remains undeserving of special treatment by the United States.

In a notice sent to Congress, Blinken said China had continued to “dismantle” Hong Kong’s autonomy since his predecessor, Mike Pompeo, first made the determination in May 2020. As a result, Blinken said, the former British colony does not warrant U.S. trade and financial perks it had enjoyed since it reverted to Chinese rule in 1997 with a pledge from Beijing that it would enjoy significant autonomy for 50 years.

The decision is yet another indication that President Joe Biden’s administration has not strayed from the hard line that was taken by President Donald Trump on China. On Tuesday, the State Department once again repeated the Trump administration’s characterization of Chinese treatment of Uighur Muslims and other minorities in China’s western Xinjiang region as “genocide.”

“Over the past year, the People’s Republic of China has continued to dismantle Hong Kong’s high degree of autonomy, in violation of its obligations under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and Hong Kong’s Basic Law,” Blinken said. “In particular, the PRC government’s adoption and the Hong Kong government’s implementation of the National Security Law have severely undermined the rights and freedoms of people in Hong Kong.”

In an accompanying report, Blinken cited the passage of the security law as well as arbitrary arrests and detentions of pro-democracy demonstrators, opposition figures and politicians as well as a sharp reduction in the number of directly elected members of the territory’s legislature.

The certification to Congress is required by the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, which passed overwhelmingly with bipartisan support in 2019 and was signed into law by Trump.

The law requires the U.S. to impose sanctions against officials held responsible for human rights abuses in Hong Kong as well as determine whether the city continues to warrant special status. Both the Biden and the Trump administrations have imposed sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials as a result of the determinations.

Under the terms of a China-Britain agreement, Hong Kong was to have enjoyed significant autonomy from the communist government in Beijing for 50 years starting in 1997. That autonomy was to have included protections for free speech and self-rule under what China has termed a “one country, two systems” policy.

“We will continue to call on the PRC to abide by its international obligations and commitments; to cease its dismantlement of Hong Kong’s democratic institutions, autonomy, and rule of law; to release immediately and drop all charges against individuals unjustly detained in Hong Kong; and to respect the human rights of all individuals in Hong Kong,” Blinken said.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Wednesday joined calls for more sharing of the technology behind COVID-19 vaccines to help speed the end of the pandemic, a shift that puts the U.S. alongside many in the developing world who want rich countries to do more to get doses to the needy.

United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai announced the government’s position, amid World Trade Organization talks about a possible temporary waiver of its protections that would allow more manufacturers to produce the life-saving vaccines.

“The Administration believes strongly in intellectual property protections, but in service of ending this pandemic, supports the waiver of those protections for COVID-19 vaccines,” Tai said in a statement.

She cautioned that it would take time to reach the required global “consensus” to waive the protections under WTO rules, and U.S. officials said it would not have an immediate effect on the global supply of COVID-19 shots.

Tai’s announcement came hours after WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala spoke to a closed-door meeting of ambassadors from developing and developed countries that have been wrangling over the issue, but agree on the need for wider access to COVID-19 treatments.

The WTO’s General Council took up the issue of a temporary waiver for intellectual property protections on COVID-19 vaccines and other tools, which South Africa and India first proposed in October. The idea has gained support among some progressive lawmakers in the West.

More than 100 countries have come out in support of the proposal, and a group of 110 members of Congress — all fellow Democrats of Biden — sent him a letter last month that called on him to support the waiver.

Opponents — especially from industry — say a waiver would be no panacea. They insist that production of coronavirus vaccines is complex and can’t be ramped up by easing intellectual property. They also say lifting protections could hurt future innovation.

Stephen Ubl, president and CEO of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, said the U.S. decision “will sow confusion between public and private partners, further weaken already strained supply chains and foster the proliferation of counterfeit vaccines.”

Dr. Michelle McMurry-Heath, chief executive of the Biotechnology Innovation Organization trade group, said in a statement that the decision will undermine incentives to develop vaccines and treatments for future pandemics.

“Handing needy countries a recipe book without the ingredients, safeguards, and sizable workforce needed will not help people waiting for the vaccine,” she said.

Pfizer declined to comment on Biden’s announcement, as did Johnson & Johnson, which developed a one-dose vaccine meant to ease vaccination campaigns in poor and rural areas. Moderna and AstraZeneca didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The companies have made some efforts to provide vaccine doses to poor countries at prices well below what they’re charging wealthy nations.

For instance, Johnson & Johnson agreed last week to provide up to 220 million doses of its vaccine to the African Union’s 55 member states, starting in this year’s third quarter, and agreed in December to provide up to 500 million vaccines through 2022 for low-income countries via Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance.

Shares of Pfizer, AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson — huge companies with many lucrative products — fell less than 1% on the news. But Moderna, whose vaccine is the company’s only product, fell 6.2% in late-afternoon trading before gaining back two-thirds of a percent in after-hours trading.

It remained unclear how some countries in Europe, which have influential pharmaceutical industries and had previously shared U.S. reservations about the waiver, would respond.

WTO spokesman Keith Rockwell said a panel on intellectual property at the trade body was expected to take up the waiver proposal again at a “tentative” meeting later this month, before a formal meeting June 8-9. That means any final deal could be weeks away at best.

Authors of the proposal have been revising it in hopes of making it more palatable.

Okonjo-Iweala, in remarks posted on the WTO website, said it was “incumbent on us to move quickly to put the revised text on the table, but also to begin and undertake text-based negotiations.”

“I am firmly convinced that once we can sit down with an actual text in front of us, we shall find a pragmatic way forward” that is “acceptable to all sides,” she said.

Co-sponsors of the idea were shuttling between different diplomatic missions to make their case, according to a Geneva trade official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. A deadlock persists, and opposing sides remain far apart, the official said.

The argument, part of a long-running debate about intellectual property protections, centers on lifting patents, copyrights and protections for industrial design and confidential information to help expand the production and deployment of vaccines during supply shortages. The aim is to suspend the rules for several years, just long enough to beat down the pandemic.

The issue has become more pressing with a surge in cases in India, the world’s second-most populous country and a key producer of vaccines — including one for COVID-19 that relies on technology from Oxford University and British-Swedish pharmaceutical maker AstraZeneca.

Michael Yee, a Jefferies Group biotech analyst, wrote to investors that the key access issues for developing countries aren’t patents or price, but an inadequate supply of the materials needed and the know-how to produce the vaccines and keep quality high — which one of Johnson & Johnson’s contract manufacturers in the U.S. failed to do, ruining millions of doses.

“Manufacturing supplies, raw materials, vials, stoppers, and other key materials are in limited supply for 2021,” and may still be next year and beyond, Yee wrote. That’s partly because it takes time to make all those components, and Moderna and Pfizer have commitments to buy them “from major suppliers in huge bulk over the foreseeable future.”

He added that Pfizer previously sought authorization to sell its vaccine to India, which rejected its application and asked that additional studies be run. The U.S., European Union and many other countries have given that emergency authorization.

Proponents, including WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, note that such waivers are part of the WTO toolbox and insist there’s no better time to use them than during the once-in-a-century pandemic that has taken 3.2 million lives, infected more than 437 million people and devastated economies, according to Johns Hopkins University.

“This is a monumental moment in the fight against COVID-19,” Tedros said in Wednesday statement. He said the U.S. commitment “to support the waiver of IP protections on vaccines is a powerful example of American leadership to address global health challenges.”

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden’s decision to form a strategic Indo-Pacific alliance with Australia and Britain to counter China is angering France and the European Union. They’re feeling left out and seeing it as a return to the Trump era.

The security initiative, unveiled this week, appears to have brought Biden’s summer of love with Europe to an abrupt end. AUKUS, which notably excludes France and the European Union, is just the latest in a series of steps, from Afghanistan to east Asia, that have taken Europe aback.

After promising European leaders that “America is back” and that multilateral diplomacy would guide U.S. foreign policy, Biden has alienated numerous allies with a go-it-alone approach on key issues. France’s foreign minister expressed “total incomprehension” at the recent move, which he called a “stab in the back,” and the EU’s foreign policy chief complained that Europe had not been consulted.

France will lose a nearly $100 billion deal to build diesel submarines for Australia under the terms of the initiative, which will see the U.S. and Britain help Canberra construct nuclear-powered ones.

As such, French anger on a purely a commercial level would be understandable, particularly because France, since Britain’s handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997, is the only European nation to have significant territorial possessions or a permanent military presence in the Pacific.

But French and European Union officials went further, saying the agreement calls into question the entire cooperative effort to blunt China’s growing influence and underscores the importance of languishing plans to boost Europe’s own defense and security capabilities.

Some have compared Biden’s recent actions to those of his predecessor, Donald Trump, under Trump’s “America First” doctrine. That’s surprising for a president steeped in international affairs who ran for the White House vowing to mend shaken ties with allies and restore U.S. credibility on the world stage.

Although it’s impossible to predict if any damage will be lasting, the short-term impact seems to have rekindled European suspicions of American intentions — with potential implications for Biden’s broader aim to unite democracies against authoritarianism, focused primarily on China and Russia.

Just three months ago, on his first visit to the continent as president, Biden was hailed as a hero by European counterparts eager to move beyond the trans-Atlantic tensions of the Trump years. But that palpable sense of relief has now faded for many, and its one clear winner, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is on her way out.

Since June, Biden has infuriated America’s oldest ally, France, left Poland and Ukraine questioning the U.S. commitment to their security and upset the European Union more broadly with unilateral decisions ranging from Afghanistan to east Asia. And, while Europe cheered when Biden pledged to return to nuclear negotiations with Iran and revive Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, both efforts remain stalled nine months into his administration.

The seeds of discontent may have been sown in the spring but they began to bloom in July over Biden’s acquiescence to a Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline that will bypass Poland and Ukraine, and a month later in August with the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan that left Europe scrambling to keep up after it had expressed reservations about the pullout.

Then just this week, Biden enraged France and the European Union with his announcement that the U.S. would join post-Brexit Britain and Australia in a new Indo-Pacific security initiative aimed at countering China’s increasing aggressiveness in the region.

Unsurprisingly, China reacted angrily, accusing the U.S. and its English-speaking partners of embarking on a project that will destabilize the Pacific to the detriment of global security. But, the reactions from Paris and Brussels were equally severe. Both complained they were not only excluded from the deal but not consulted on it.

The White House and Secretary of State Antony Blinken say France had been informed of the decision before it was announced on Wednesday, although it was not exactly clear when. Blinken said Thursday there had been conversations with the French about it within the past 24 to 48 hours, suggesting there had not been an in-depth consultation.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, who in June extolled the “excellent news for all of us that America is back,” expressed “total incomprehension” at the announcement of the initiative. “It was really a stab in the back,” he said. “It looks a lot like what Trump did.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki dismissed the comparison. “I would say the president doesn’t think about it much,” she told reporters. “The president’s focus is on maintaining and continuing our close relationships with leaders in France, with the United Kingdom, with Australia and to achieving our global objectives, which include security in the Indo-Pacific.”

In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell echoed the French minister’s complaints. “I suppose that an agreement of this nature was not cooked up the day before yesterday. It takes a certain amount of time, and despite that, no, we were not consulted,” he said. “That obliges us, once again … to reflect on the need to put European strategic autonomy high on the agenda.”

Indeed, the 27-member European Union on Thursday unveiled a new strategy for boosting economic, political and defense ties in the Indo-Pacific, just hours after the announcement by the U.S., Britain and Australia. The EU said the aim is to strengthen and expand economic relations while reinforcing respect of international trade rules and improving maritime security. It said it hopes the strategy will result in more European naval deployments to the region.

U.S. officials brushed aside the French and EU complaints on Thursday.

“There are a range of partnerships that include the French and some partnerships that don’t, and they have partnerships with other countries that don’t include us,” Psaki said. “That is part of how global diplomacy works.”

Speaking alongside Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the Australian defense and foreign ministers, Blinken said there “is no regional divide” with Europe over Indo-Pacific strategy. “We welcome European countries playing an important role in the Indo-Pacific,” he said, calling France a “vital partner.”

But how closely they will work together remains to be seen.

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CikaBika said:

So I see its all peaches now.
So glad for you all, no More homeless poeople, no more racism, no more BLM. It must feel great to be Democrat right now in Usa

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