As we previewed below, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that the US will withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty immediately, prompting threats of a Russian "response" from Moscow.

According to RT, Pompeo said the US could return to compliance with the treaty if Moscow meets Washington's demands within the next 180 days. To convince the US to back down, Washington has insisted that Russia cease development of a new cruise missile. Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it's in violation of the treaty.

The withdrawal, which has been expected for months, will formally take place on Saturday.

The US’ seeming unwillingness to turn a sympathetic ear to Russia's reasoning with regard to the 1987 INF Treaty could be not connected with Moscow's alleged violations of the pact, scholars told Sputnik, commenting on the Russian Ministry of Defence's presentation of the 9M729 missile, which was snubbed by NATO officials.

The primary motivation behind Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty is that China is not a participant of the pact, says Rajeswari Pillai, senior fellow? and head of the Nuclear and Space Policy Initiative? Observer Research Foundation.

Speaking to Sputnik, Pillai pointed out that both Russia and the US have repeatedly accused each other of violating the treaty. However, "the real problem with the INF is not so much about the violations by Russia and the US, but that China is outside the treaty", he suggested.

China’s state-run Global Times on Friday applauded the launch of a European system to evade U.S. sanctions on Iran, pleased by the damage it could inflict upon U.S. sanctions against China, Venezuela, North Korea, and other countries.

The Chinese saluted France, Germany, and Britain for moving toward a day when the U.S. dollar is no longer the world’s dominant currency and perhaps Chinese money will take its place.

The Global Times gave the French, Germans, and British a pat on the back for exercising “economic sovereignty” against “Washington’s imposition of its foreign policy on other countries,” noting that Chinese interests have also felt American pressure.

Pakistan is making important strides in its military and naval capacities with the help of China, relying less on US-made weaponry. Despite accepting money from all sides, Pakistan’s relationship with China continues to be strong.
After the Trump administration decided to suspend $3 billion in security assistance to Pakistan, complaining that Islamabad fails to do enough to combat terrorism, Washington has risked pushing Pakistan into the open arms of a number of other notable nations.

China-Pakistan relationship continues to strengthen
China has been a key ally for Pakistan in recent times and is almost certainly the reason why the US has taken a sharp turn in its approach to dealing with the country. (Considering that the Bush administration was caught red-handed funding Pakistani terrorist groups, Washington’s recent disdain for Islamabad makes little sense in the context of wider US imperialism).

China won't give up on embattled Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro anytime soon even as the US-led international noose of "delegitimizing" hangs around the socialist strongman, according to government statements released on Friday. Beijing reaffirmed it maintains “normal state-to-state relations” and cooperation between the two sides “shouldn’t be undermined no matter how the situation evolves,” according to press briefing by the Chinese Foreign Ministry. Or rather, we could more simply translate: with billions of dollars in credit on the line, "non-interference" is simply not an option for China.

“China has maintained close communication with all parties through different ways,” a ministry spokesperson said in response to question about whether China has had contact with National Assembly leader Juan Guaido. “We are ready to work with all parties to promote peace talks, and create favorable conditions for the proper settlement of the Venezuelan issue,” the ministry added.

A Hong Kong-Based training company launched by Blackwater founder Erik Prince is reportedly building a training center in the controversial Western Chinese region of Xinjiang according to Reuters, citing a company statement from Prince's Frontier Services Group (FSG).

While the exact details of the $600,000 (4 million yuan) project weren't disclosed, a state media report said that the facility will be able to train 8,000 people a year.

Despite being the founder, Executive Director and Deputy Chairman of FSG, Prince says he had "no knowledge or involvement" in the preliminary memorandum for the base, according to Reuters.

US Senate Armed Services Committee chief Jim Inhore says Washington is losing its military superiority over rivals and now needs significant investments to catch up.

In his article published in the Tulsa World newspaper, the senator notes that the US has lost an advantage in both conventional and advanced weapons, including artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons and even the use of “directed energy” technology.

Inhore points out that the US “won two world wars” because of its military superiority, adding that the Pentagon had as many aircraft at the end of the Cold War as Russia and China combined. However, in the last ten years military supremacy has degraded.

This is not the first time President Trump has torn up an international agreement.

But his decision to withdraw from the long-standing Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Russia is a milestone – and a disturbing one. After all, this is the treaty that helped bring the Cold War to a close.

It was signed in 1987 by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev to ban a dangerous new generation of intermediate and short-range weapons with a range of between 300 and 3,400 miles.

Launched from trucks on either side of the Iron Curtain, these weapons were hard for the enemy to find and destroy. More to the point, they introduced the terrifying idea of 'small' and more frequent nuclear conflicts.

the ongoing "soft coup" is also playing out within the halls of the central bank, where in addition to a lot of currency printing in recent years, Bloomberg reports that staffers are waging a small mutiny and refusing to sign-off on key bank transactions.

According to "four people with direct knowledge of the matter", some central bank employees received "early retirement offers" Friday after disregarding orders from upper management. The mini mutiny took place as staffers fret about potential consequences and repercussions of signing off on financial operations that have been barred by US sanctions, and as discontent bubbles over as Venezuela’s economic and political outlook deteriorates.

The real reason for the US withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) is China deploying 1,000 medium and short-range missiles preventing a US presence in neighbouring seas, former Russian Security Council Secretary Andrey Kokoshin told Sputnik in an interview Friday.

"Evidently, the main target of the United States in connection with their withdrawal from this treaty is China. China, according to US estimates, set up a system of medium and short-range missiles of more than a thousand units aimed at the waters of the South China Sea and the East China Sea. It does not allow the United States to enter these waters with impunity using aircraft-carrier strike groups… Accordingly, the Chinese army set up a significant group of high-precision weapons, primarily ballistic missiles, which are capable of hitting US aircraft carriers and US military bases in the region", Kokoshin said.

Europe needs Russia's potential and most importantly the country's market and natural resources in order to withstand such superpowers as China and the United States, former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told the Spiegel outlet.

"If we, as Europeans, want to survive politically and economically between [such] superpowers [as] the United States and China, we cannot do this without Russia's potential. We need the country's market and, first of all, its resources", Schroeder told the outlet in an interview released on Friday.

According to the former German chancellor, Russian President Vladimir Putin has been trying to build the kind of relations with Western countries that would be based on equality and respect, but he has been repeatedly rejected when trying to reach out to Europe.

A Hong Kong-listed security firm founded by Erik Prince has signed a preliminary deal with authorities in China to build a training centre in Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims have experienced a huge security crackdown.

Frontier Services Group, which specialises in providing security and logistics for businesses operating in risky regions, said it had signed a deal to run a training base in the city of Kashgar, according to a statement posted on its Chinese website.

The firm was founded by Erik Prince, a former US Navy Seal and the brother of the US education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

The meetings in Beijing during January 30-31 between Washington, Russia, China, France and the UK apparently failed to preserve the commitment to prohibit intermediate range nuclear weapons. Washington stuck to its determination to withdraw from the historic agreement of Reagan and Gorbachev to destroy all land-based intermediate range nuclear missiles. This US withdrawal from a nuclear weapons reduction agreement follows the George W. Bush/Cheney regime’s withdrawal from the anti-ballistic missile treaty. Indeed, since the Clinton regime, every US president has produced worsening trust between the two major nuclear powers.

No good can come of this as Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the Beijing meeting.

WE ALREADY KNOW it’s chilly on the moon. A lunar night lasts 14 Earth days, and its temperatures can dip into a cold so punishing it makes the polar vortex look like a hot tub. But yesterday, China’s space agency announced that the frigidity of the lunar night is even more intense than we’d thought: The country’s Chang’e 4 spacecraft recorded an icy low of –310 degrees Fahrenheit (–190 degrees Celsius).

Consisting of a stationary lander and a six-wheeled rover named Yutu-2, Chang’e 4 landed on the far side of the moon earlier this month—a first for any spacecraft. During its first lunar night, Chang’e 4 went into hibernation, relying on internal heat sources to survive.

Update: As we previewed below, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has announced that the US will withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces treaty immediately, prompting threats of a Russian "response" from Moscow.

According to RT, Pompeo said the US could return to compliance with the treaty if Moscow meets Washington's demands within the next 180 days. To convince the US to back down, Washington has insisted that Russia cease development of a new cruise missile. Moscow has repeatedly denied claims that it's in violation of the treaty.

There is a widespread concern in the world regarding China’s decelerating economic growth. The slowdown, if it continues, threatens economic activity almost everywhere. Growth in Germany, for example, has already cooled due to its exports of high-quality machinery to China dropping precipitously.

Those in the oil market also worry about China. The country’s economic growth has been a key driver of global crude oil consumption. Indeed, China accounts for one-third of the International Energy Agency’s projected 2019 increase in world oil use.

The latest US Treasury Department data shows that foreign investors slashed their holdings of American debt in November by $105 billion, from a year earlier, to $6.2 trillion.

China, the largest foreign holder of US debt, slashed its holdings for a sixth straight month in November. Beijing had $1.12 trillion in US Treasuries, down from $1.138 trillion in October. The decline brought China’s Treasury holdings to the lowest level since May 2017, the data showed.

A Hong Kong-listed security firm founded by Erik Prince has signed a preliminary deal with authorities in China to build a training centre in Xinjiang, where Uighur Muslims have experienced a huge security crackdown.

Frontier Services Group, which specialises in providing security and logistics for businesses operating in risky regions, said it had signed a deal to run a training base in the city of Kashgar, according to a statement posted on its Chinese website.

The firm was founded by Erik Prince, a former US Navy Seal and the brother of the US education secretary, Betsy DeVos.

Given that China's President Xi Jinping started the year by obliquely warning the US to stay out of Taiwan's business, perhaps it's not surprising that Senators are starting to join US military commanders in warning Americans not to underestimate the threat posed by China's unprecedented military buildup in the Pacific.

In the latest - and perhaps the most stark - warning to date, Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma - who recently took over as the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee - warned during a hearing about the challenges posed by China and Russia on Tuesday that people need to better understand the threats both countries pose to the international world order that America helped create, according to the Military Times.

According to allegations by the US intelligence director, Russia will implement more tools and methods to interfere in upcoming elections, but this time, it will have friends: China and, possibly, Iran.

Russia will seek to meddle in the US presidential election again — this time, with China, claims Dan Coats, the US Director of National Intelligence. According to the director's allegations, Russia has "learned from its operation in 2016," and will use a wider array of methods in the upcoming 2020 elections.

"We assess that foreign actors will view the 2020 US elections as an opportunity to advance their interests", Coats told the Senate intelligence committee, according to NBC News.

The Chinese government defended relations with Russia and stressed that they do not target third countries.

“[China and Russia] stick to a new kind of interstate relations… that are not directed against third countries,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Gen Shuang.

Beijing’s official statement comes a day after US intelligence director Daniel Coats claimed that China and Russia are collaborating to confront Washington’s policy.

Geng stressed that Sino-Russian relations are at their best in their history.

Russia, China and several other nations are developing powerful high-altitude nuclear bombs that can produce super-electromagnetic pulse (EMP) waves capable of knocking out critical electronic infrastructure, according to several declassified 2017 reports from the now-defunct Commission to Assess the Threat to the United States from EMP Attack (see below).

"Foreign adversaries may aptly consider nuclear EMP attack a weapon that can gravely damage the U.S. by striking at its technological Achilles Heel, without having to confront the U.S. military," reads the report, which notes how foreign actors could use EMP attacks virtually anywhere in the world.

China is the most “concerning” counterintelligence threat against the United States, says FBI Director Christopher Wray.

“As I look at the landscape today and over the course of my career... the Chinese counterintelligence threat is more deep, more diverse, more vexing, more challenging, more comprehensive and more concerning than any counterintelligence threat I can think of,” he told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.

The intelligence community also released a threat assessment, which claimed that China “presents a persistent cyber espionage threat and a growing attack threat to our core military and critical infrastructure systems.”

Beijing has test-fired its Dong-Feng 26 (DF-26) so-called "Guam killer" missile which can reportedly reach targets up to 3,500 miles away. While no specific threat has been made against Guam, experts cited by Chinese state media say the missiles can reach the Micronesian US island territory which houses several US military bases.

The sweeping indictment against Huawei and its CFO Meng Wanzhou unveiled by Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker on Monday has elevated the feud between the US and the world's largest telecoms equipment provider (and second largest maker of smartphones) to absurd new heights.

And while officials from Huawei and Beijing have denounced the charges as anti-competitive and "politically motivated", Huawei is apparently already bracing for the other shoe to drop: According to a report by Nikkei, the tech giant has asked suppliers to consider moving some of their production outside the US in case the Congress of the DOJ adopt a ban on American-made parts being sold to the chipmaker. With the memory of the near-demise of ZTE still fresh in its memory, the company has made the request based on the expectation that an order of a full-scale ban on semiconductors and other critical equipment by President Trump is imminent.

President Trump started a Tuesday morning twitter storm with a tweet warning that Maduro will be "willing to negotiate" after the US starves his teetering regime of badly needed funding via the sanctions that were levied earlier this week.

Donald J. Trump
?
@realDonaldTrump

"Maduro willing to negotiate with opposition in Venezuela following U.S. sanctions and the cutting off of oil revenues. Guaido is being targeted by Venezuelan Supreme Court. Massive protest expected today. Americans should not travel to Venezuela until further notice.

But tweeting isn't all the president did. According to Press Secretary Sarah Sanders, Trump spoke with Guaido for what appears to be the first time on Wednesday. A readout of the call revealed that Trump "congratulated" Guaido on his "historic assumption of the presidency of Venezuela," and promised to keep in regular contact to "support Venezuela's path back to stability."

Nothing puts a damper on trade talks like another indictment accusing a Chinese national of doing the exact thing (corporate espionage and stealing US trade secrets) that senior Trump Administration officials have been warning would be a deal-breaking for future negotiations.

Days after the US filed a sweeping indictment against Huawei that included charges its engineers stole trade secrets from T-Mobile (allegations that were also the subject of a civil suit) and mere hours after the beginning of high level trade talks in Washington, NBC Bay Area reported that the FBI has arrested another Chinese national working for Apple's secretive self-driving car project - code-named "Project Titan" - for stealing trade secrets. That's the second such arrest in six months (readers can find our report on the earlier arrest, which happened in July, here).

I have warned repeatedly that currency wars and trade wars can lead to shooting wars. Both history and analysis support this thesis.

Currency wars do not exist all the time; they arise under certain conditions and persist until there is either systemic reform or systemic collapse. The conditions that give rise to currency wars are too much debt and too little growth.

In those circumstances, countries try to steal growth from trading partners by cheapening their currencies to promote exports and create export-related jobs.

The problem with currency wars is that they are zero-sum or negative-sum games. It is true that countries can obtain short-term relief by cheapening their currencies, but sooner than later, their trading partners also cheapen their currencies to regain the export advantage.

This process of tit-for-tat devaluations feeds on itself with the pendulum of short-term trade advantage swinging back and forth and no one getting any further ahead.

The United States announced criminal charges against China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, escalating a fight with the world’s biggest telecommunications equipment maker just days before trade talks take place between Washington and Beijing.

The Justice Department charged Huawei and its chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou on Monday with conspiring to violate US sanctions on Iran by doing business with Tehran through a subsidiary it tried to hide, which Reuters first reported on in 2012.

Huawei is the world’s largest manufacturer of cellular-tower electronics and the third-biggest smartphone producer.

In a separate case, the Justice department said Huawei stole robotic technology from carrier T-Mobile US Inc. Huawei has said that the two companies settled their disputes in 2017.

Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Bank Fraud, and Theft of Trade Secrets Among Nearly Two Dozen Charges Announced Against Huawei

This week will mark another round of talks between the United States and China in an attempt to resolve the ongoing trade war, after President Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping ordered their officials to hammer out a deal by March 1 on "structural changes" to China's economic model.

Failure to reach an agreement will result in Trump raising the tariff rate on $200 billion in Chinese imports from 10 percent to 25 percent, and would "dash hopes of a lasting truce that would remove one of the darkest clouds hanging over the world economy," reports Bloomberg.

Starting Wednesday, US Trade Representative Robert Lightnizer will meet with Vice Premier Liu He in Washington for two days, building on negotiations ranging from soy beans to subsidies Beijing provides to various state-owned companies.

Canada’s ambassador to China was fired after saying that Huawei’s CFO has a “strong case” against being extradited to the US, and that Ottawa would be better off releasing the Chinese national.

“Last night I asked for and accepted John McCallum’s resignation as Canada’s Ambassador to China,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Saturday, without providing the reason behind the dismissal of the diplomat. The deputy head of the diplomatic mission in Beijing will take over until a new ambassador is appointed.

Since the decision of the Trump administration on Wednesday to recognize a member of the Venezuelan opposition, Juan Guaidó, as an unelected “interim president,” the situation in the South American country has become increasingly tense, with efforts to force the current government of Venezuela — led by Nicolás Maduro — out of power having grown in intensity over the past few days.

Despite the enormous pressure his government faces from both local and international sources, Maduro has managed to maintain his position thanks to a combination of factors. These include the loyalty of the country’s well-armed military, in addition to popular support from Venezuelans who recently voted for Maduro, as well as Venezuelans who may not like Maduro but prefer him to a politician hand-picked and foisted upon them by the United States.

"The U.S. had been planning this coup in Venezuela. It was the Trump administration that told the little-known opposition leader Juan Guaidó to declare himself (unelected) 'president.'"

As U.S. lawmakers, civil society leaders, and Latin America experts continue to warn against American intervention in Venezuela's internal political affairs, the Wall Street Journal on Friday confirmed suspicions that opposition leader Juan Guaido's move to declare himself "interim president" of Venezuela this week was highly coordinated with the Trump White House and Republican lawmakers.

"The U.S. is not just 'behind' this coup; the U.S. is openly leading the coup."
—Ben Norton, The Real News

Washington should focus on actually fixing its domestic problems instead of searching for external enemies to blame them on, Russia's Minister for Economic Development Maksim Oreshkin said.

The remarks were in response to the words of liberal billionaire George Soros, who lashed out at China speaking at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland.

“China is not the only authoritarian regime in the world but it is the wealthiest, strongest and technologically most advanced,” Soros said. “This makes Xi Jinping the most dangerous opponent of open societies.”

COSCO Shipping Ports Ltd has reached an investment agreement with a Peruvian polymetallic miner to acquire 60 percent of its stake in a terminal project for 225 million U.S. dollars, China Daily reported Friday.

With an initial payment of 56 million U.S. dollars, the deal was sealed in Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday, according to the company.

After the acquisition, Terminales Portuarios Chancay SA will become the first terminal project controlled by China COSCO Shipping Corp -- the parent company of Hong Kong-headquartered COSCO Shipping Ports -- in South America, as well as the group's second greenfield port project invested overseas, the newspaper reported.

Iranian Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh has told the media that the national oil company NIOC struck light sweet oil in a hitherto untapped oil region.
“This is the first time we’ve reached oil in the Abadan region,” Zanganeh said, adding that the grade was very light and sweet, but giving no details regarding the amount of reserves contained in the reservoir.

Iran has continued to pursue new oil production opportunities despite US sanctions that have reduced its crude oil exports significantly although probably not as significantly, to date, as planned. As of December, Iran was shipping some 1.3 million bpd abroad, the International Energy Agency said in its latest Oil Market Report.

Liberal billionaire and renowned political meddler George Soros has labeled Chinese leader Xi Jinping ‘the most dangerous opponent of open societies.’ China says it’s a gross distortion not even worthy of a rebuttal.
Speaking at the Davos economic forum in Switzerland, Soros attacked China’s “social credit” system and technological advances, saying artificial intelligence and machine learning, put “in the hands of repressive regimes,” are a “mortal danger facing open societies.”

“China isn’t the only authoritarian regime in the world, but it’s undoubtedly the wealthiest, strongest and most-developed in machine learning and artificial intelligence,” said Soros, known for using his money to organize and support movements against the governments he deems oppressive.

The “main source of hope” against Xi are the Chinese people, whose aspirations, according to Soros, are sharply distinct from the regime’s.

Beijing brushed off Soros’ attack.

Chinese investments in North America and Europe fell by 73 percent last year as a result of tightened US scrutiny of foreign takeover deals and Beijing’s restrictions on outbound investments.

Data from law firm Baker & McKenzie showed that Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) flows into the United States have also turned negative, falling to the lowest in seven years. Chinese investments in the US fell by 83 percent, while growing by 80 percent in Canada.

Last year, Chinese companies completed just $4.8 billion in new business acquisitions and investments in the US, down 84 percent from $29 billion in 2017 and 90 percent from $46 billion in 2016.

Despite efforts by the Trump administration to pressure Beijing into reducing the US-China trade deficit, the trade surplus with the US still reached $323.32 billion last year – the highest level since 2006.

The trade surplus grew 17 percent from around $275 billion a year ago, China’s General Administration of Customs announced on Monday. The figure is the highest on record since 2006, according to government-affiliated Global Times newspaper.

Exports to the US surged 11.3 percent year-on-year in 2018 to $478.4 billion, while imports from the US to China rose a scanty 0.7 percent over the same period.

Retail sales in China are poised to surge this year and exceed US retail by more than $100 billion, bringing it the crown as the top global retail market, according to a forecast by research firm eMarketer.

The total sales to consumers of world’s most populous country and second-largest economy are expected to hit around $5.64 trillion in 2019, an increase of 7.5 percent since last year, the US-based research company concluded in a report published on Wednesday. Meanwhile, retail sales of its trade-war rival, the US, are projected to surge 3.3 percent to reach nearly $5.53 trillion.

Beijing may cut off all investment to Silicon Valley over Western pressure on China-based Huawei, the former deputy governor of the People’s Bank of China has warned as business leaders gathered in Davos.

“I can tell you, after the Huawei events, all the Chinese money into Silicon Valley stops. And no US money will want to invest into China either,” Zhu Min told CNBC on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) on Tuesday. He did not elaborate on what should happen to bring about such an outcome.

The Chinese telecoms giant, which last year even beat US-based rival Apple to become the world’s second-largest smartphone maker, has recently been targeted in the West over alleged spying and claims that it poses a security threat.

Billionaire and Democratic Party donor warned on Thursday that the US and China, the world's two largest economies, are locked in a "cold war that could soon turn into a hot one."

Soros, a well-known critic of the Trump administration, said during a private dinner at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland that Trump’s decision to call China a “strategic” competitor in 2017 was “too simplistic”, according to CNBC.

“An effective policy towards China can't be reduced to a slogan. It needs to be far more sophisticated, detailed and practical; and it must include an American economic response to the Belt and Road Initiative,” he said.

Artificial intelligence and machine learning pose a grave threat when they are controlled by authoritarian states, according to billionaire George Soros. He has called for a crackdown on Chinese tech companies.

Talking to journalists and executives attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, he said on Thursday the use of such technologies by the Chinese government is a “mortal danger.”

The businessman said that the United States should apply more pressure to Chinese tech companies Huawei and ZTE, which have been labeled national security threats by some US officials.

On January 10—Nicolas Maduro was sworn in for his second term as president of Venezuela. “I tell the people,” Maduro said, “this presidential sash is yours. The power of this sash is yours. It does not belong to the oligarchy or to imperialism. It belongs to the sovereign people of Venezuela.”

These two terms—oligarchy and imperialism—define the problems faced by Maduro’s new government.

Pressure on Venezuela has been intense. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called for the overthrow of the Bolivarian government, led by Maduro. Sanctions have been ratcheted up. Economic warfare has become normal. Threats of a military invasion are in the air.

Lima Group

Venezuela is a prime target because of its world’s largest oil reserves. US dark forces want Big Oil controlling them.

They want fascist tyranny replacing Bolivarian social democracy. They’re waging longstanding political, economic, financial, and sanctions war on the country – military intervention an option if current tactics fail.

Previous US coup d’etat attempts failed. Another slow-motion one is underway. On Tuesday, Mike Pence encouraged the toppling of democratically reelected Maduro.

He turned truth on its head calling him a “usurper,” a “dictator with no legitimate claim to power,” falsely adding “(h)e has never won the presidency in a free and fair election, and has maintained his grip of power by imprisoning anyone who dares to oppose him.”

Back in March, we asked a simple question: Can Russia & China Rescue Venezuela?

Realistically, and in retrospect, the answer was always no, but the reason we asked the question was simple: both China and Russia have extended massive credits to Caracas, and Maduro's regime in particular. As such, letting the country “die” was never an option that either Beijing or Moscow would gladly accept; neither was it an option to allow a transition in Venezuela's top power echelons, one which replaces the pro-Russia and China Maduro regime, with another regime which would, supposedly, be supported and endorsed by the US, and thus jeopardize Venezuela's obligations to the two nations.

And, as we also said last March, "chances are that Washington is aware of the role that China and Russia play there. Otherwise [Washington] would have already gone ahead with the broad oil sanctions, despite potential headaches for U.S. refineries."

The US Navy sailed two of its vessels through the Taiwan Strait on Thursday, the US Pacific Fleet, which oversees operations in the area, and Taiwan's Ministry of Defense both confirmed.

After the confirming that the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell and the Henry J.Kaiser-class fleet replenishment oiler USNS Walter S. Diehl traveled through the strait, the ministry noted that Taiwan's military is in full control of the situation, Focus Taiwan reported.

US Pacific Fleet spokesperson Lt. Cmdr. Tim Gorman told CNN that the American vessels "conducted a routine Taiwan Strait transit" that was in complete "accordance with international law."

"The ships' transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the US commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The US Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows," he added.

I do not for one second doubt that Americans are feeling more stressed and suffering more health-degrading symptoms as a result than they were prior to Trump’s election. But Pacific Standard and its “growing body of research” ignore the most obvious and significant culprit behind this phenomenon which is tearing people’s health to shreds: the mass media which has been deliberately fanning the flames of Trump panic.

The always excellent Moon of Alabama blog has just published a sarcasm-laden piece documenting the many, many aggressive maneuvers that this administration has made against the interests of Russia, from pushing for more NATO funding to undermining Russia’s natural gas interests to bombing Syria to sanctioning Russian oligarchs to dangerous military posturing.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying has spoken out against the publication of the new US National Intelligence Strategy, in which China and Russia are referred to as “adversary” countries against the US.

“We have taken note of the wording that [the United States] mentioned in the updated version of the US National Intelligence Strategy, which has just been published in the United States. The United States has issued a series of reports, which present unfounded accusations against Russia and China,” said Hua Chunying, a ministry spokesman in a statement.

Chunying urged the United States to make further efforts to strengthen mutual trust between the two countries and maintain international peace and stability, as well as urging Washington to abandon the Cold War mentality.

Chinese military forces have deployed multiple units armed with anti-satellite (ASAT) missiles that can destroy scores of American satellites, according to a Pentagon intelligence report.

The new report by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center, known as NASIC, revealed that People's Liberation Army units have begun training with the satellite-killing missiles.

The report warns that China, along with Russia, has developed an array of space arms designed to challenge U.S. space superiority. The report was made public last month.

The report for first time reveals that Chinese military units already are conducting training for space attacks with anti-satellites missiles. Russia also is developing a new anti-satellite missile the report said.

The “People’s Court” of China’s Hebei province has introduced a new app which identifies and even maps the location of people dodging their debts to help create a “socially credible environment,” state media reports.
The program has been described as “a map of deadbeat debtors,” revealing their financial information and exact location to nearby peers. The app brings snitching on your neighbors into the 21st century, making it simple and convenient to report those with outstanding financial obligations to the authorities.

According to ChinaDaily, a news service run by the Communist Party of China, the app will show if someone with bad credit is within 500 meters, making it easier for citizens to “whistle-blow on debtors capable of paying their debts.”

The CEO of a U.S.-based global investment firm said Tuesday that POTUS Donald Trump’s tariff regime against China is having the desired effect of both slowing Beijing’s economy while “holding a gun to the head” of a county that is used to enormous economic growth.

On Monday, the Chinese government announced in response to its slowest economic growth since 1990 that it was willing to spend as much as $1 trillion to close the yawning trade deficit with the United States, something that provides the Trump administration with a huge amount of new leverage with which to win concessions with Beijing over the imbalance, Fox Business reported.

China's state-run energy giant Sinopec offered a three-billion-dollar deal to further develop an Iranian oilfield the two countries are already working on, media reports said.

The offer made by the China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) is part of an existing contract to operate the Yadavaran oilfield in Southwest Iran on the Iraqi border, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Despite China's demands that the US government use the shutdown as an excuse not to make a formal extradition request for Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, DOJ officials have reportedly told a Canadian diplomat that the DOJ will submit its formal extradition request by the Jan. 30 deadline (the US has 60 days from the day of Meng's arrest in Vancouver to formally ask for extradition).

The news, which was first published Tuesday by Canadian newspaper Globe and Mail, sent the offshore yuan lower as Chinese officials accused the US of "abusing" the extradition system in the Meng case. According to the report, David MacNaughton, Canada's ambassador to the US, met with senior White House and State Department officials about the Meng case.

The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has constructed a new, underground facility (UGF) about 31 miles from the India-China border, and 37 miles from the Indian Army’s forward posts at Demchok in Ladakh.

According to The Print, satellite imagery identified a deeply buried hardened target (DBHT) under construction outside the town of Ngari, also known as Shiquanhe in Mandarin.

Construction started in December 2016, about six months before the 2017 China–India border standoff near the India-China-Bhutan tri-junction in the east.

The Print, specified that special personnel are being used instead of locals, to maintain secrecy and security of the project.

The UGF appears to have four large tunnel entrances and three small ones; all have hardened entrances with reinforced concrete. Judging by the images, the openings would soon be covered with other material to withstand a direct military strike.

In the media frenzy surrounding Special Counsel Mueller rare statement slamming Buzzfeed's "report" that Trump had instructed his former lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, an important development in the US-China saga quietly snuck under the radar. Because one day after the WSJ reported a since denied story that the US, or rather Steven Mnuchin, is seeking to lift China tariffs (to boost the market), and on the same day that Bloomberg reported China had offered a path to slash its US trade surplus by importing up to $1 trillion more in US goods, Bloomberg also reported late in the day, that the Trump administration is preparing an executive order that would "significantly restrict Chinese state-owned telecom companies from operating in the U.S. over national security concerns", the latest escalation at the heart of the ongoing US-China feud, namely China's ongoing technological theft, pardon, "transfer."

The U.S. Navy has not ruled out sending an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait, despite military technology advances by China that pose a greater threat to U.S. warships than ever before, the chief of U.S. naval operations said on Friday.

Washington sent ships through the strategic waterway three times last year as it makes more frequent transits of the strait that separates Taiwan from the Chinese mainland, but it has not dispatched a carrier in more than 10 years.

During that time, China has modernized its forces with missiles designed to strike enemy ships.

“We don’t really see any kind of limitation on whatever type of ship could pass through those waters,” Admiral John Richardson told reporters in the Japanese capital, when asked if more advanced Chinese weapons posed too big a risk.

“We see the Taiwan Strait as another (stretch of) international waters, so that’s why we do the transits.”

A trade pact, if it happens, may soothe investors, and perhaps even juice economic growth—at least temporarily. But it won’t bring an end to China’s woes. While tariffs are a nuisance, the real problems run deeper, embedded in China’s financial structure.

What goes widely unnoticed is that China is already in crisis. No, it’s not the sort of hold-on-for-dear-life collapse the U.S. had in 2008 or the surprising, ferocious meltdowns the Asian Tiger economies experienced in 1997. Nonetheless, it’s a crisis, complete with gutted banks, bankrupt companies, and state bailouts. Since the Chinese distinguish their model of state capitalism as “socialism with Chinese characteristics,” let’s call this a “financial crisis with Chinese attributes.”