Probably the first U.S.-plotted “colour revolution” was the overthrow of the Kingdom of Hawaii in 1893. The Hawaiian Islands had been united in the early 1800s and were internationally recognised as an independent country, but the native Polynesians had been outnumbered by outsiders who had acquired a good deal of the land and devoted it to growing sugar. The USA was the principal market for the sugar but, when domestic sugar producers prevailed upon Washington to impose a tariff, the producers in Hawaii saw their wealth threatened. The coup overthrew the Queen, proclaimed a republic and a few years later Hawaii became a U.S. territory and the sugar market was saved. None of this was overtly stated in justification, of course: the coup, like later “colour revolutions”, was carried out for more highfalutin reasons than mere greed. A threat was “discovered”, “public safety is menaced, lives and property are in peril”, a committee of safety formed, simulated mass meetings were held. Conveniently a U.S. Navy ship was in harbour and troops came ashore “to secure the safety” etc etc. The Navy’s presence was not a coincidence because the U.S. President and Secretary of State were in agreement with the conspiracy and the U.S. diplomatic representative, while pretending neutrality, was an active participant. All done quickly and the coup leaders proclaimed themselves to be the new provisional government. Wholly and obviously fake – there was no disorder at all and the “committee of public safety” was made up of sugar barons and their flunkeys – but it stands as a historically significant event because it was the first crude attempt at something to be perfected in later years.

A Congressional report in 1894 decided that everything was perfectly perfect but a century later the U.S. Congress passed the “apology resolution” for the coup. Who can say that the Rules-Based International Order is not real after that? Has Putin or Xi ever apologised for anything he didn’t apologise for earlier?

The most recent successful “colour revolution” occurred in Ukraine in 2013-2014. Enter the “Non-Government” Organisations – the nёon-government part is a lie but they are certainly well organised; they prepare the way. Victoria Nuland, then Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, admitted to spending five billion dollars to “ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine”: an enormous sum for a poor country. (One learns here what has changed since the Hawaiian “colour revolution” 120 years before: 1) the rhetoric is more syrupy 2) it costs more.) She was the John Stevens of the Ukrainian “colour revolution” – sent by the U.S. State Department to hand out the money, make the decisions and direct the performance. And, as the phone intercept proves, to block others from involvement – “fuck the EU”.) I recommend taking the time to listen to some of Nuland’s speech here to see just how sugary the cover talk for these “colour revolutions” has become – democracy, human rights, freedom, reforms, Europe; the caravan of “Western values” is chained to the juggernaut of greed and power. None of these formerly estimable values are visible in today’s Ukraine; but the interests of Ukrainians (or Hawaiians) were never the point of “colour revolutions”: the sugar barons wanted to keep their entry into the U.S. market, Washington wanted to make trouble for Russia and the U.S. Navy wanted a base in Crimea.

But the day of “colour revolution” seems to be running out. The mechanics are noticed and countered. Observe, for example, the moment in this video of a protest in Sevastopol when the commenter – who had seen it before on the Maidan – points out the carefully spaced people, wearing red so they can recognise each other, directing the supposedly genuine and spontaneous protest. The organisers were trying to make the Crimean Tatar issue a fighting cause. (I wonder, by the way, how many consumers of the Western “news” media think the Tatars are autochthonous?) I well remember this documentary because it was the first time I saw the people on the receiving end of a “colour revolution” getting ahead of the organisers; up to this moment they had been reacting, always wrongly and too late. But many of the security forces in Crimea in 2014 had been on the Maidan and had ample opportunity to observe how “spontaneity” is organised.

The authorities and their security services are becoming proactive and are using social media – a good example was the recording of the organisers of the Hong Kong protests meeting with a U.S. Embassy official. And we have the recording of one of Navalny’s associates asking for money from a UK Embassy official; not, he assured the official, “a big amount of money for people who have billions at stake”. Sometimes it’s fortuitous and not the result of planning by the target’s security services. A civil airliner receives a (fake) bomb threat, it lands according to the rules, one of the passengers is a “colour revolution” operative, they arrest him, he sings. There is still some mystery in the Protasevich story, but the Western version is certainly not true.

And when it’s over and failed, Washington casually dismisses its tools. Where is Yushchenko today? Once the darling of the “Orange Revolution” in Kiev, today he is a non-person. Saakashvili, re-used and failed again in Ukraine, is in prison in Tbilisi today. No fuss is made about him. Áñez is in jail, Protasevich forgotten. We’ve seen many West-leaning democratic saviours come and go in Russia – Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot are in the past; today it’s Navalny but he’s probably passed his best-before date. Just props in the “colour revolution” theatre.

And we come to another secret of beating the “colour revolution” – tough it out. The Emperor Alexander told the French Ambassador that Napoleon’s enemies had given up too soon, he, on the other hand, would go to Kamchatka if need be. He went to Paris instead. Maduro still sits in the presidential office in Caracas, Guaidó is reduced to begging; Brussels has stopped pretending but Washington holds fast to the delusion. Lukashenka remains. Beijing toughed it out in Hong Kong. On the contrary, in Georgia (“Rose Revolution“) Shevardnadze was unwilling to use force and in Kiev (“Orange Revolution” and Maidan) Yanukovych was unwilling to use force. Not, of course that they weren’t blamed anyway by the Western propaganda apparatus (which was unashamed to call these scenes in Kiev and Hong Kong “peaceful” and never wondered where all the orange tents came from). All designed of course, to incite a violent reaction by the authorities which would be packaged by the complaisant Western media as violence against peaceful protesters. Not at all the same thing, of course, in the Western “human rights” Rules-Based International Order construction, as anything going on in Melbourne, or Paris, or London. To a degree, “colour revolutions” are waiting games and the incumbent, if he keeps his nerve, has certain advantages.

But probably the strongest prophylactic against a “colour revolution” is to prevent it from starting. And here it is necessary to drive out the foreign “Non Government” Organisations before they get established. There will, of course, be much protest from the West but it is important for the targets to understand that their press coverage in the West is and always will be negative, no matter what they do, say or argue. It’s propaganda, it’s not supposed to be fact-based. And it’s often amusingly repetitive – the Western propagandists are too lazy and too contemptuous of their audience not to recycle yesterday’s panics. For example: remember when Russia hacked the Vermont power grid in 2016? this time it’s “an angry Chinese President Xi Jinping” shutting down Canadian power plants. Sometimes it’s sloppily idiotic: CNN tells us that Russia, China and Iran are all hacking away at the U.S. election system; it then goes on to say that Russia likes Trump and China likes Biden; Therefore, as Sherlock Holmes would conclude, CNN must believe that that Iran decided the outcome. The target should not worry about Western coverage – if you’re today’s target, all coverage will negative. Vide contemporary excitement over “violations of Taiwan’s airspace” without mentioning this simultaneous event. Facts don’t matter: the Panama Papers were about Putin except that they didn’t mention him and therefore they must have been by Putin. The Pandora Papers give us the re-run.

Former successes – in recent times, Ukraine twice, Georgia – are becoming failures: Hong Kong, Venezuela and Belarus. The targets have learned how to counter the attacks. The essential rules for defeating “colour revolutions” are:

1. They come from outside. So cut out the outsiders and get rid of the foreign “Non-Government” Organisations. This is probably the most important preventative: the “colour revolution” operators were quite unhindered in, for example, Ukraine.
2. Remember Alexander’s advice: don’t give up too soon. Maduro and Lukashenka are still there. To say nothing of Russia, China and Iran.
3. Don’t be afraid that you’ll be blamed: you will be anyway. The Western propaganda machine is not interested in facts.
4. Be tough. There’s a rhythm to these things; if you interrupt them, it’s hard for them to get back on track.
5. Be patient, as we saw in Hong Kong, the outrage is mostly artificial and will run out of steam.
6. Learn the techniques of how they’re done, watch for them and counter them.
7. And finally: time is on your side. The West is not getting stronger. What the neocons call “the axis of revisionists” is.

With America withdrawing from Afghanistan abruptly after some 20 years, one big question is being discussed throughout the strategic sphere by those both in big institutions and laying on their couches – is the American loss in Afghanistan the first domino to fall in the eventual collapse of the Global Hegemon? After all, Afghanistan is the “graveyard of empires” probably because it is an expression that sounds nice and because the Soviets fell apart a few years after losing to the locals. So this must be the “beginning of the end” right?

Well, we should never be so quick as to jump onto narrow narratives without looking at the big picture. Side-by-side images of the Americans and their allies fleeing Vietnam and Afghanistan by helicopter are flooding Facebook, posted by those in the Alternative Media who take great joy in any loss by the 21st century’s “Evil Empire” but they seem to forget that just a few decades after losing in Vietnam the United States won the Cold War and took dominance over the planet.

Image: Strategic meme-of-the-year material for 2021.

No single event no matter how photogenic it is, is not going to be a sign of the grand demise of the “Sole Hyperpower”. It really took from the beginning of WWI till the end of WWII for the British to truly fall apart as a geopolitical force. The Soviet Union fell much quicker, but it is very widely believed that Perestroika (or the The Reykjavik Summit) was the real first white flag that devolved into the breakup of the union years later. The Roman Empire was a vastly slower burn than either of these two modern behemoths.

This means we should not be debating if Afghanistan is the first “domino” to fall, but instead we should really take a look at what the rest of the dominos falling would look like. At this point we can surely put together a rough picture of what the next tiles to fall would look like, i.e. what other major failures/events would really be signs of the Monopolar World meeting its demise? The following are a few humble offerings as to what these dominos could be…

Abandoning the Maidan Regime in the Ukraine

The unexpected surrender and soon to be total fall of Kabul has certainly resonated in another city that starts with the letter K. If Washington is finding it necessary to abandon a twenty-year Nation-Building project that they have invested vast sums of money and manpower into, that means that back-burner Kiev could be cut loose in the near future, putting the fate of the region in the hands of the Russians.

Image: We all know who secures Ukrainian “independence”.

The Maidan has been a major roadblock for Russia. As Brzeziński wrote, “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire” and Washington has done an absolutely fantastic job of turning the region into an “anti-Russia” as Putin recently called it.

If the Maidan project were to be abandoned, it would become another quite massive domino. Washington giving up on Kiev, resulting in that current political entity probably being divided up, mostly going to Moscow, would symbolize either the USA’s inability to stop the rise of the Russians or their begrudging acceptance of it.

Taiwan, Hong Kong and/or South Korea

The Trump-era State Department Democracy storm that was inflicted on Hong Kong has seemed to fade away, but a total abandonment of the thorns in the side of the Chinese Dragon would also result in another domino being placed into position.

Image: Not State Department = No Professional Protest Organizers in China.

Bailing on Hong Kong activists or failing to maintain Taiwan’s independence would certainly present a strong sign of weakness and inability from the standpoint of Washington. Furthermore, although China has never had a passionate love for the North Koreans, having South Korea as essentially an American beachhead right next door has been a cause of concern for decades for Beijing. The South Korean economy on paper looks amazing and their cities dazzle with progress but what would be the effects of Ameria giving up on them? Is South Korea able to stand as a great nation, or is it really only successful thanks to the American umbrella? The answer to that would reveal itself within two weeks of an America-free Korean Peninsula.

Simply put, if Washington gives up on Hong Kong, Taiwan and/or South Korea it is another sign of the end for sure as China would be more or less rid of these weak points that have been exploited against it for decades.

A Loss of Control Over the “Bigs”

Big Tech, Big Pharma, Big Agro and so on, have dutifully served Washington’s interests despite their theoretically international nature. But we should never forget that large for-profit entities are quite “whoreish” and will serve whichever master they need to. If Washington cannot control the Bigs as it used to, this would be another domino.

To a small extent this is happening in Hollywood where the Chinese market’s (and its official and unofficial) demands are having a major impact. But if it comes to a point that Hollywood is only making a chunk of the world’s blockbusters rather than nearly all of them it would be the end of the total unobstructed Soft Power dominance of this American institution. Or even worse, if Hollywood can be bought out from under America then a new global narrative could be spun quite quickly.

If the Hegemon fades, the leadership of the Bigs will feel increasing pressure from the Russians, Chinese and Arabs to give up the whole “gay thing” and portray these societies in a positive light whether through bribery or threats of force. Apple may be “designed in California” but if need be they would surely bail for greener pastures rather than living a life of poverty loyal to a failed America.

Mexico, Lakotastan and African-America

The United States has done a fantastic job of fostering independence movements within its rivals while making diverse masses “American” at home. However, as with the Soviets and the British, waves of breakaway republics and successful secessionist movements would be a very big domino indeed.

The Soviets tried to create an African workers uprising in America in the 60’s and failed miserably, but BLM could get out of control, or in the case of a dying USA, could become used by foreign powers. An Afro-American Maidan would certainly be another sign of doom.

The rise of an independent Native-American state like the Lakota Indians’ lands would be yet another tile being stood into place, opening the door for further break-away attempts.

When the Mexicans lost the Mexican-American war they lost the chance to become the dominant power on the continent. Few remember, but the destiny of this New World was not just given to the Americans wrapped in a box. If the Mexicans had won the war they would be the ones with access to the Atlantic (via the Gulf of Mexico) and the Pacific simultaneously, not Washington. It would have been very possible for them to secure the entire West Coast. A Mexico that would begin to take action as an independent actor would certainly be another sign of serious trouble for Washington. Thus far, on the North American continent “there can be only one” but perhaps that isn’t necessarily going to always remain the same “one”.

The death of the Dollar or collapse of the Federal Reserve

If the dollar were to collapse, or there were serious problems at the Federal Reserve, as have been predicted for many years due to insane national debt, this would of course be the biggest domino of all. The West has been able to accumulate bafflingly massive debt with no consequences because of the dominance of Washington. It is very hard to call in a debt from the toughest kid school surrounded by his henchmen. But when the big bully stops growing, and loses his buddies, all of a sudden getting your $5 back with a few whacks from a baseball bat becomes viable.

Image: If you are powerful enough no one can call in your debts.

No one can call in the debt of a Global Hegemon, but Regional Powers have to balance their checkbook. A decrease in power could lead to the national debt prophecy coming true in our lifetimes which would be probably the largest domino of all.

In conclusion

Is Afghanistan “the first domino to fall” in the death of the American Empire? This cannot be proven, but it certainly looks like a domino that has been put in position poised to fall waiting for others to take their places in the line. Other major defeats would be required to say for sure that this “New American Century” is over, not even making it to the one-fourth mark. It is really the other potential signs of the end that are of most concern not squabbling over Afghanistan’s domino status. So the big question is, if Washington is losing its Monopolar World Order, then where will be the next grand retreats?

There’s a good viral thread being shared around Twitter right now by China Daily’s Ian Goodrum compiling a small selection of anti-China mainstream media headlines in answer to the New York Times question “Why has there been a spike in anti-Asian hate”?

Goodrum confronts one with the possibility that the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans cannot be comfortably filed away as merely the result of Donald Trump’s racist rhetoric while in office, but arises at least partially from a virulent propaganda campaign against the US empire’s leading opponent of which the liberal media have been enthusiastic participants.

“We are being bombarded with anti-China hate for a reason and it has nothing to do with human rights,” journalist Rania Khalek commented while sharing Goodrum’s thread. “This is just a tiny fraction of it. At the same time anyone who questions the state department narrative is being accused of loving tyrants and defending genocide. Sound familiar?”

We’re being constantly smashed in the face with anti-China narratives from the western media, and it’s important to think critically about why we are seeing these narratives as much as we think about whether those narratives are true. Why are we being told that China is dangerous over and over again day in and day out all of a sudden, while, for example, Israel’s constant bombing of Syria gets nary a mention?

The quantity of the reporting tells you as much as the quality. Even if a foreign nation actually is doing something bad, is it really something we need to be told about over and over again while far worse acts are perpetrated by our own government and its allies with scarcely any mention? Who benefits from this arrangement? We need to think about these questions.

Negative mass media coverage of empire-targeted governments always far exceeds negative coverage of empire-aligned governments on the same issues, like nonstop coverage of protests in Hong Kong while ignoring protests in France, Gaza, Chile, Haiti, Ecuador etc which were occurring at the same time.

The repetition of these negative stories has more of an effect than the contents of the stories themselves because of something called the illusory truth effect, an odd glitch in human cognition which leads our minds to mistake info we’ve heard repeatedly for fact. Just by repeating something over and over again, our minds can be tricked into believing that what we have heard is a verified fact and not a completely unconfirmed assertion.

This is due to the fact that the familiar feeling we experience when hearing something we’ve heard before feels very similar to our experience of knowing that something is true. When we hear a familiar idea, its familiarity provides us with something called cognitive ease, which is the relaxed, unlabored state we experience when our minds aren’t working hard at something. We also experience cognitive ease when we are presented with a statement that we know to be true. We have a tendency to select for cognitive ease, which is also why confirmation bias is a thing; believing ideas which don’t cause cognitive strain or dissonance gives us more cognitive ease than doing otherwise.

This is why more and more people are accepting the narrative that China is a “genocidal regime”, for example. There’s no more proof of the claim that China is committing genocide than there was a year ago (in fact the claim is far more discredited now), but because the mass media have been repeating it endlessly you’re hearing far more people bleating that claim.

Not only does the US empire have every motive in the world to lie about China as it prepares to surpass the American economy in a few years, it has every motive in the world to lie about Xinjiang specifically due to its unique role in China’s rise and the easily exploited divisions there. It is not a coincidence that the US removed the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a Uyghur group that’s been doing horrific things in Syria, from its designated terrorist group list just as it’s ramping up its campaign against China. This will be used to advance imperialist agendas.

After the fall of the USSR the neoconservative notion that the US must maintain unipolar planetary hegemony at all cost became the prevailing mainstream orthodoxy at the heart of the empire. China is the ultimate threat to this hegemony. As Michael Parenti has written:

The PNAC plan envisions a strategic confrontation with China, and a still greater permanent military presence in every corner of the world. The objective is not just power for its own sake but power to control the world’s natural resources and markets, power to privatize and deregulate the economies of every nation in the world, and power to hoist upon the backs of peoples everywhere-including North America-the blessings of an untrammeled global “free market.” The end goal is to ensure not merely the supremacy of global capitalism as such, but the supremacy of American global capitalism by preventing the emergence of any other potentially competing superpower.

Because hot conflict is taken off the table in cold war confrontations between nuclear powers, planetary-scale propaganda campaigns take on a much more prominent role to pave the way for each new escalation. That’s what we’re seeing in all this recent promotion of anti-China hysteria.

You can understand the establishment China narratives by grasping just two points:

1) We are in a slow-motion third world war between the US and its allies and the nations which have resisted absorption into this alliance.

2) Propaganda is used to move this slow-motion war along.

Understand these two points and you can understand the entirety of why the western political/media class is behaving in the way that it is when it comes to international news. With China, and with all nations which have resisted absorption into the imperial blob.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

Alan MACLEOD

A new report from Washington D.C.-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) concludes that the U.S. government should work closely with social media companies to ensure that protest movements around the world result in an outcome more conducive to American interests. Along with intern Riley McCabe, the organization’s senior fellow, Samuel Brannen, argued that the White House, State Department, and intelligence community must explore deeper coordination with major tech companies that provide global media platforms:

The U.S. government should think creatively about public-private partnerships that can expand its toolkit to defend the legitimate rights of political protestors globally, including preserving the digital rights of peaceful democratic activists while muting harmful mis- and disinformation from violent state and nonstate actors seeking to tip the balance in various countries.”

While the language used couches the potential move as defending democracy, the rest of the article makes clear that the fight of the future lies between the democratic U.S. and other “like-minded governments” versus “authoritarian states — especially China and Russia.”

Widespread protests were a feature of 2020, engulfing 68 nations, according to the CSIS. However, they appear to be most preoccupied with those in China and Russia. The CSIS applauded American sanctions on Russia that followed the imprisonment of anti-Putin politician Alexei Navalny, calling them “a step in the right direction” — phrasing which suggests they want to see far more aggressive action taken against Moscow. Beijing’s moves against the Hong Kong protests, meanwhile, amounted to the “totalitarian conclusion” and the destruction of democracy in the city-state.

The U.S. has been intimately involved in protest movements against its enemies. In 2014, then-vice-president Joe Biden traveled to Ukraine to gin up the protagonists of the anti-Moscow Maidan Revolution, with senior U.S. official Victoria Nuland even photographed handing out cookies to protestors. Washington was also a major actor in the Hong Kong protests, funding and training many of its leaders, and spending at least $29 million on “pro-democracy” projects in the region.

More Americans were arrested after barely a week of protests following the killing of George Floyd than in over one year of demonstrations in Hong Kong, and protest organizers and journalists alike are still facing lengthy sentences for their roles in them. Yet, the CSIS presents the U.S. response to internal strife as exemplary, stating that “the United States is uniquely positioned to make its own handling of political dissent and protest a centerpiece of U.S. outreach to the world,” claiming that it can “lead not only by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.”

A bastion of neocon thought

The CSIS is one of the most influential and well-connected think tanks in Washington. War planners like Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski, military commanders like Brent Scowcroft and James L. Jones, and former Secretaries of Defense such as William S. Cohen and Harold Brown occupy key positions on its advisory board.

The organization is also funded by virtually every Western government, major weapons contractors including Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Boeing, as well as the foundations of notable billionaires like Pierre Omidyar, Bill Gates, and Charles Koch. It can also boast current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken as a former senior fellow at the think tank. It is, therefore, reasonable to assume that its output represents a dominant strain of thinking within the foreign policy establishment.

“The CSIS masquerades as an independent, objective think tank, but has historically close ties to U.S. intelligence and the military industrial complex,” Tim Shorrock of The Nation told MintPress News in 2019, “it’s abundantly clear that everything it does reflects the interests of its government and corporate donors, which include every major U.S. defense contractor.”

The think tank has also supported regime change through protest movements before. In Bolivia, for example, it applauded the far-right takeover of the country in November 2019, falsely suggesting that the previous month’s elections were fraudulent while presenting the military handpicking obscure senator Jeanine Añez to be president as “according to the Bolivian constitution,” which it certainly was not.

A few months earlier, it went past just promoting protest movements in Venezuela to hosting a secret conference exploring the feasibility of a U.S. invasion of the country in order to finally overthrow the ruling United Socialist Party.

Cyber wars

The United States is already engaged in online warfare against its enemies and long ago enlisted the support of Silicon Valley corporations. On the advice of similarly hawkish think tanks, Twitter and other social media platforms have taken action against what they claim were foreign government attempts to game their services, deleting hundreds of thousands of accounts supposedly linked to enemy regimes, be they Russian, Chinese, Iranian, Cuban or Venezuelan. Yet they appear to never be able to find the American government or its allies doing the same thing, despite the fact that it was revealed 10 years ago that the U.S. has similar influence projects.

In their book titled, “The New Digital Age: Reshaping the Future of People, Nations and Business,” Eric Schmidt and fellow Google executive Jared Cohen wrote, “What Lockheed Martin was to the twentieth century, technology and cyber-security companies will be to the twenty-first,” suggesting that the new battleground is virtual, and that big tech companies are willing to be the U.S.’ top weapon in maintaining global supremacy.

While that prediction might have seemed surprising eight years ago when the book was first published, a number of moves in recent years suggest that Schmidt and Cohen will be proven correct. In 2018, Facebook announced it was partnering with a NATO cutout organization, the Atlantic Council, to root out disinformation and promote accurate data. Last month, it went further, hiring a former NATO press officer as its new intelligence chief. Meanwhile, Jessica Ashooh left her job as a Deputy Director of Middle Eastern Strategy for the Atlantic Council to join Reddit as its Director of Policy.

One notable case of the U.S. government directly working with social media to inflame protests was in Iran, where the Obama administration convinced Twitter to delay a temporary maintenance shutdown of its operations in order to aid the coordination efforts of anti-government demonstrations. Last year, the Trump administration ordered Facebook to suppress any positive mention of Qassem Soleimani on its platforms. Trump had recently given the order to assassinate the statesman, sparking global indignation. Facebook complied with the request, stating that, “We operate under U.S. sanctions laws, including those related to the U.S. government’s designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and its leadership.” Soleimani was widely beloved in the country (a U.S. poll found over 80% of the public held a positive opinion of him). This meant that Facebook was suppressing the speech of Iranians talking to other Iranians in Farsi, sharing a majority opinion, all at the behest of the American president.

It is a standard response of authoritarian governments the world over to claim that protests against them are illegitimate, and spurred on by outside enemies intent on seeing them destroyed. This even happens in the U.S., where senior politicians have suggested that political strife of all sorts, from Colin Kaepernick’s kneeling to the George Floyd protests, to the storming of the Capitol Building on January 6, had been amplified by Russia. This latest CSIS offering will only add weight to those governments who see an American hand behind domestic dissent.

mintpressnews.com

Hong Kong used to be a British colony and was returned to China in 1997. Since then there have been disagreements between Britain and China concerning governance of the region, and the British government has poked its nose where it has no right to dictate the conduct of affairs. It claims to have a “moral commitment” regarding a security law applicable to Hong Kong, and in a speech about the region on January 29 the British prime minister, the egregious Boris Johnson, declared that he and his country “stand up for freedom and autonomy.”

It so happens that on the same day as Johnson was preaching about his love of freedom the United Nation’s maritime court in Hamburg announced that Britain has no sovereignty over the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. As the UK Guardian reported, the Court “criticised London for its failure to hand the territory back to Mauritius and follows the international court of justice announcement last year that the UK’s ongoing administration of the islands was ‘unlawful’.”

Britain’s treatment of the former inhabitants of the Chagos Islands has been outrageous and entirely at variance with its self-righteous criticism of other countries for supposedly denying the human rights of citizens.

The Chagos chain of some sixty islets is in the middle of the Indian Ocean and used to be a paradise for the inhabitants but, as noted by the BBC, “Between 1968 and 1974, Britain forcibly removed thousands of Chagossians from their homelands and sent them more than 1,000 miles away to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they faced extreme poverty and discrimination.” There are some 3,000 reluctantly resident in Britain and many of the younger ones, born in exile, have been denied British citizenship and live in fear of being expelled. As one elderly deportee said in a BBC interview, “The young deserve to have British nationality. The Chagos Islands were colonized by the British so it’s their responsibility.”

As I have written several times in the past, the Chagos Archipelago was “depopulated” in the 1960s and 70s because Britain had agreed that there should be a U.S. military airfield on the main island, Diego Garcia. As revealed in 2004, the bureaucrats of Britain’s Colonial Office had written that “The object of the exercise is to get some rocks which will remain ours; there will be no indigenous population except seagulls who have not yet got a committee. Unfortunately along with the Birds go some few Tarzans or Men Fridays whose origins are obscure, and who are being hopefully wished on to Mauritius etc.”

The sneering condescension of that racist bigotry is repulsive, but the attitude remains, and the Chagos Islanders will continue to be victims of that mentality. By various subterfuges, the people of the Archipelago were expelled, in the course of which the colonial governor Sir Bruce Greatbatch “ordered all pet dogs on Diego Garcia to be killed. Almost 1,000 pets were rounded up and gassed, using the exhaust fumes from American military vehicles.” As one evicted Islander, Lizette Tallatte, said in a 2004 documentary, “when their dogs were taken away in front of them, our children screamed and cried,” and then the remaining islanders “were loaded on to ships, allowed to take only one suitcase. They left behind their homes and furniture, and their lives.”

The islands had been a French colony and were handed over to Britain in 1814 by the Treaty of Paris which officially ended the Napoleonic Wars. They formed part of the colony of Mauritius, a much larger island group some 2000 kilometres to the south east of Chagos.

Then, as Law World records, “In 1965, the UK and Mauritius signed the Lancaster House Agreement, whereby the Chagos Islands were detached from Mauritius and included in a new territory called the British Indian Ocean Territory. Mauritius later alleged that this detachment was forced, especially due to its vulnerable position as a former British colony. Due to the geographically strategic position of Chagos – equally situated between Indonesia, Australia, Iraq and eastern Africa – the UK and the United States had long been considering it for the installation of a military base. In 1966, the UK and the U.S. signed a deal for the implementation of such a base on the island of Diego Garcia for an indefinite period…”

So the “Tarzans and Man Fridays”, as the inhabitants were regarded by the bigoted smirking Brits, were sacrificed on the Washington’s altar of domination which added another military base to the 800 around the globe. In 2016, the lease for the base was extended until 2036. No mention was made of the islanders who had been forcibly evicted from their home.

On 22 May 2019, the UN General Assembly voted 116 to 6 in favour of a resolution demanding that the United Kingdom withdraw “its colonial administration unconditionally from the Chagos Archipelago” within six months. Only the U.S., Hungary, Israel, Australia and the Maldives backed the UK, but although the result was indicative of world opinion and deeply condemnatory of the U.S. and Britain, the resolution is non-binding and will be ignored by those most directly involved — and the islanders will stay poverty-ridden in exile. They are, after all, mere “Tarzans and Man Fridays” and it is no doubt hoped that soon they will all die off and cease to be a problem.

The people who deny the Islanders their human rights are poisonous filth, as made clear in a British 2009 diplomatic cable revealed by Wikileaks (no wonder the Brit establishment detests Julian Assange and has treated him so disgustingly) which stated that the government “would like to establish a ‘marine park’ or ‘reserve’ providing comprehensive environmental protection to the reefs and waters of the British Indian Ocean Territory [BIOT]… [which] would in no way impinge on U.S. use of the BIOT, including Diego Garcia, for military purposes… [and ensure] that former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve.”

The inhabitants of Hong Kong, on the other hand, are more highly regarded in London, and on 29 January the British government announced its satisfaction about “the UK’s historic and moral commitment to the people of Hong Kong who have had their rights and freedoms restricted.” The UK has, after all, declared it wishes to “defend human rights across the globe.”

In November 2016 the Financial Times reported extension of the lease for the U.S. base on Diego Garcia for another twenty years and noted that “the Foreign and Commonwealth Office said that the Chagossians would not be allowed to return “on the grounds of feasibility, defence and security interests, and cost to the British taxpayer”. It was also announced that the evicted Islanders would receive 40 million pounds in compensation.

But on 31 January it was revealed that less than £12,000 of that forty million has been directed to helping the exiled islanders and their families. Henry Smith, the UK Member of Parliament in whose constituency many Chagossians now exist, stated bluntly that “it’s outrageous that next to none of this funding has actually been utilised… [it is] another failure of Foreign Office promises over half a century to the Chagossian community.”

The “defence of human rights” by the government of Boris Johnson is a charade, and the treatment of the Chagos Islanders is indefensibly cruel and loathsome. But the government and their little helpers in London think it’s such an unimportant matter that it will simply fade away. Like the islanders.

Alas, they are probably right. And the globe will see yet another victory for duplicity over morality.

Tony KEVIN

Since then, the relationship has gone downhill — first slowly and haltingly, but over the past two years with sickening acceleration. Now the relationship seems irretrievable. For educated Chinese, Australia is now an object lesson in Western arrogance, hypocrisy and betrayal of friendship.  The dinner party has ended in upended chairs, shouts and bitter accusations as both sides angrily walk away.

After the high symbolism of the Xi speech, all seemed well. In 2015 the Darwin Port was leased to a Chinese company for 99 years.  Growing numbers of Chinese students and tourist visitors to Australia were becoming mainstays of Australia’s thriving higher education, tourism and property sectors. China as an Australian export market grew steadily in significance: last year it represented nearly 50 percent of Australian commodity export earnings. Victoria in 2018 signed a memorandum of understanding with China to work with China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

From the beginning, there were signs that powerful forces were determined to cripple Australian-Chinese engagement: and they have now seemingly won.  The present breakdown is tragic for Australian economic and political interests. Many innocent Australians’ livelihoods are being harmed by our own government’s and political class’ stupidity.  It is hard to see now how the damage done to Australia-China relations may be healed anytime soon.

Covert Interference

“Perhaps Hamilton’s book is a useful reminder that we must not be naïve about our relationship with China. But his prescription, premised on China being our enemy and determined to achieve world domination, is precisely the wrong direction for addressing the genuine issues he raises. We should engage more, not less.”

Meanwhile, negative views of China’s agenda, supported by well-funded Canberra think-tanks like Australian Strategic Policy Institute and Lowy Institute, were quietly gaining influence in strategic areas of Australian governance.  Attorney-General Christian Porter, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, backbencher Andrew Hastie and Senator Eric Abetz emerged as vocal critics of China. On the Labor side, Penny Wong and Kimberley Kitching seemed ready to join the pile-on. Others were silent, anxious not to be tagged as “panda-huggers.”

In 2018, the influential and U.S.-sympathetic Joint Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs Defence and Trade supported Malcolm Turnbull’s Foreign Interference Legislation, pressed by Australian security agencies and aimed principally at China. The law was passed in 2019.

Apparently this cartoon is “insulting” (Daily Mail). Not sure whether more or less so than the depiction of Australian war crimes carried out (on behalf of the US) in Afghanistan. pic.twitter.com/8Gj3NRF3Ew

— Bean (@SomersetBean) December 7, 2020

Chinese academics and journalists, even a senior NSW parliamentarian, have been harassed and vilified under its powers.  Now, a further bill will strengthen Commonwealth control over state and university links to foreign governments: again, the prime target is China, and any Australian premiers who may dare to enmesh their states economically with her. Victoria’s and Western Australia’s Labor premiers are particular targets.

Hong Kong Critic 

On the foreign policy front, Australia, misled by obviously foreign-encouraged street violence against the Hong Kong government, became a vocal critic of China on democracy issues there. Australia criticized alleged human rights abuses against the Uighur ethnic group in Xinjiang Province. But we do not criticize human rights abuses in India and Palestine.

Australia conducts repeated naval freedom of navigation exercises in the South China Sea, in protest against Chinese consolidation of its military control over islands there. Australia supported a bogus U.S.-influenced South China Sea case against China in the International Court of Arbitration, a case bitterly condemned and rejected from the outset by China.

Since 2018, Australia responding to American pressure has banned Huawei from telecom operations here, causing a major rift. The philosophy of economic engagement expounded by Abbott and Xi in 2014 is since 2018 under direct frontal attack. In August 2020, a non-strategic Chinese purchase of a large Australian dairy company was vetoed.

The message had now become, Australia wants to go on profitably exporting minerals and foodstuffs to China but to have as little to do with China as possible at the human level. Chinese students here have been accused of doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party, and concerns raised about Chinese influence in our universities.  Chauvinism and Sinophobia in Australia have grown.

Covid-19 caused further major rifts in 2020. Prime Minister Scott Morrison clumsily mishandled a peremptory Australian demand to WHO  – reportedly originating in a request to him from U.S. President Donald Trump – to mount an intrusive international investigation in Wuhan into the origins of the “Chinese virus.” China saw that act in particular as a gross act of treachery by a friend.  Morrison never apologized.

The tone of Australian mainstream media commentary on China has by now changed utterly to hostility.  Establishment commentators and leader writers compete on who can season their journalism with the strongest anti-Chinese language. All pretence of objectivity or straight reporting of tensions is gone: this is now advocacy journalism.  Dissenting opinions are discouraged. As media increasingly runs with the ball of Sinophobia, Morrison has began to try to step back.

He and Turnbull having started the hares running, now call unconvincingly for moderation.  Not just the Murdoch Press but the Australian Financial Review is full of anti-Chinese polemic. China is bitterly criticized as seeking to dictate terms to the world. The Western media outside Australia are picking up the cue.  The campaign has taken on McCarthyist, even racist-tinged tones: how dare these Chinese presume to stand up to our Western “universal values?”

Every Chinese effort to rebut the growing abuse is taken as sign of further Chinese bullying. Their Canberra embassy’s circulated “fourteen grievances”  – an effort to list the problem China  has with Australian behavior towards them as a basis for public discussion –  were  mocked. China is falsely stereotyped as the provocateur and Australia the victim.

Around a few weeks ago, China would have finally decided that Australia could no longer be regarded as a trustworthy and decent partner in dialogue.  They would have given up on Australia. The Brereton Report with its reported SAS murders in Afghanistan was an irresistible opportunity for what the West has offensively labelled “wolf warrior” Chinese diplomacy.  The photoshopped image of an SAS baby murder, illustrating a tweet by a senior Chinese foreign ministry official criticizing Australian hypocrisy,  was emphatically condemned by Morrison, who demanded a Chinese apology. China refused. 

La commedia e finita.  Australian politicians have swung in behind Morrison, while our traders and growers look on with helpless horror. How can what was a good relationship in 2015 have degenerated to this in just five years? Senior people in industry and trade – like Morrison’s own Covid recovery adviser Nev Power pleaded on Dec. 2 for a diplomatic solution to ease tensions between Beijing and Canberra.

But those who want to see Australia decoupled from China in as many ways as possible stay contentedly silent, looking back with satisfaction on their hidden work of destruction. Australia is safely back in the Five Eyes laager, and those who hoped economic rationality would triumph over global geopolitical exclusion games have been defeated.

Australia’s all-important Asia-Pacific region quietly draws a different lesson from this sad story: the lesson is, do not behave as Australia has done in dealing with China. Treat China with normal diplomatic respect and courtesy, as befits friendly neighbors. Even regional countries that have clashed militarily with China know not to provoke her needlessly, as Australia has done.

Morrison probably sees stoking up anti-Chinese prejudices as a useful distraction from his many governance failures at home: on Robodebt, on Covid-19 preparedness, on bushfires and climate change. Sock the Chinese as if there are no consequences for us.

But the consequences will be great. Australia will be needlessly poorer, more isolated from our region, and more dependent on the uncertain protection of faraway Five Eyes friends. Without a dialogue with China, our necessary engagement with our region will be handicapped. Lee Kuan Yew’s friendly warning — “be careful or you will be the poor white trash of Asia” — comes back now to haunt us.

consortiumnews.com

Max BLUMENTHAL

An American man with ties to Amnesty International and key Hong Kong separatist figures has been posing online as a Hong Kong native named Kong Tsung-gan. Routinely cited as a grassroots activist and writer by major media organizations and published in English-language media, the fictitious character Kong appears to have been concocted to disseminate anti-China propaganda behind the cover of yellowface.

Through Kong Tsung-gan’s prolific digital presence and uninterrogated reputation in mainstream Western media, he disseminates a constant stream of content hyping up the Hong Kong “freedom struggle” while clamoring for the US to turn up the heat on China.

Whispers about Kong’s true identity have been circulating on social media among Hong Kong residents, and was even mentioned in a brief account last December by The Standard.

The Grayzone spoke to several locals outraged by a deceptive stunt they considered not only unethical, but racist. They said they have kept their views to themselves due to the atmosphere of intimidation looming over the city, where self-styled “freedom fighters” harass and target seemingly anyone who speaks out publicly against them.

In this investigation, The Grayzone connected the dots between Kong and an American man who has become a major presence in Western media and at protests around Hong Kong. Our research indicates that Kong’s editors and prominent protest cheerleaders were likely aware of the deceptive ploy.

Kong Tsung-gan bursts onto Hong Kong Twitter scene, becomes go-to source for anti-China content

The Twitter user Kong Tsung-gan (@KongTsungGan) first appeared in March 2015. Kong Tsung-gan’s earliest tweets featured commentary about Tibet and the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement.

At some point, Kong changed his Twitter avatar to a black-and-white headshot of an unknown Asian person. A search of the Wayback Machine internet archive shows that this photo remained up until sometime in late 2019.

Later, Kong changed his Twitter avatar to an image depicting Liu Xia, the wife of the late Nobel Prize-winning dissident Liu Xiaobo. Liu Xiaobo was a right-wing ideologue who celebrated the US wars on Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq, and was rewarded with the 2014 Democracy Award by the National Endowment for Democracy – the favorite meddling machine of the US government.

As of August 2020, Kong Tsung-gan’s Twitter account boasts more than 32,000 followers. He live-tweets during protests, posts incendiary commentary about the Communist Party of China (CPC), likens the Hong Kong “struggle” to Tibet and Xinjiang, begs the United States to ram through sanction bills like the Hong Kong Safe Harbor and Hong Kong People’s Freedom and Choice Acts, urges NBA star Lebron James to “find out about our freedom struggle,” retweets Nancy Pelosi and other US politicians, promotes his books, maintains an ongoing tally of arrests in his regular “#HK CRACKDOWN WATCH UPDATE,” and disseminates images of protest posters.

At around the time he created his Twitter account, Kong Tsung-gan published his first Medium post. He has since filled his Medium feed with protest timelines, lists of recommended human rights books and journalism (including a link to the questionable China “expert” Adrian Zenz), and “first-hand accounts” of his protest experiences on the ground. In one account, Kong Tsung-gan claimed he attended a Band 1 government school, implying he was a native Hong Kong resident.

Kong’s work has been amplified by Joshua Wong, the Hong Kong protest poster-boy who has enjoyed photo-ops with neoconservative Republican senators like Marco Rubio and Tom Cotton.

Thanks to his continual stream of content on Twitter and Medium, and his platform on the website Hong Kong Free Press, Kong Tsung-gan has become one of mainstream Western media’s go-to sources for soundbites.

Kong Tsung-gan: Darling of the Western press

Since bursting onto the Hong Kong Twitter scene, Kong Tsung-gan has been quoted by a who’s who of Western corporate media outlets. He has been described as an “author” (CNN, Globe and Mail, Time), “writer and activist” (New York Times, Washington Post), “activist and author” (LA Times),“activist” (AFP, Al Jazeera), “writer, educator and activist” (Guardian), “political writer” (Foreign Policy), “writer” (Vice), and “Hong Kong writer and activist” in an op-ed posted by the Nikkei Asian Review.

Kong has also been cited as a “Hong Kong journalist and rights activist” by Radio Free Asia and as a “rights activist and author” by Voice of America, two subsidiaries of the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). Tasked with a mission to “be consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States,” the USAGM budgeted around $2 million to support protests in Hong Kong in 2020.

When he is not churning out commentary on Twitter and Medium accounts, Kong Tsung-gan is a columnist at Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) and publishes books about the Hong Kong “freedom struggle,” whose proceeds go directly to HKFP.

Hong Kong Free Press describes itself as an “impartial non-profit media outlet” and “completely independent.” The outlet also boasted that it “gets full marks” from a supposed journalism ethics verification initiative called News Guard, which happens to be overseen by a collection of former US government national security and law enforcement officials.

HKFP editor-in-chief Tom Grundy has boasted of rejecting article pitches from deceptive figures operating behind false identities. At the same time, Grundy has provided a regular home for Kong’s commentary.

The Grayzone emailed HKFP to request a comment on Kong’s identity, but received no reply.

The distinctly American voice of Kong Tsung-gan

To burnish his reputation as a reliable source, Kong Tsung-gan has furnished audio interviews to Western outlets. In July 2019, Kong Tsung-gan was featured on Louisa Lim’s Little Red Podcast alongside National Endowment for Democracy fellow Johnson Yeung, lawmaker Eddie Chu Hoi-Dick, and former Hong Kong Chief Secretary Anson Chan.

Around the same time, an American man in Hong Kong named Brian Kern spoke to RTHK at a march commemorating the Tiananmen anniversary.

A close listen to both audio clips, along with an interview Kong furnished to an Italian interviewer, demonstrates that Kong Tsung-gan and Brian Kern are the same person.

Listen for yourself here, or in the video embedded at the top of this article:

• Hong Kong’s Dirty Little Secret: Is One Country Two Systems Dead?, Little Red Podcast (Kong speaks at 33:00) 
  
• Hundreds join march ahead of Tiananmen anniversary, RTHK (Kern speaks at 00:13)
• LIVE Liberate Hong Kong, Una Montagna di Libri Cortina d’Ampezzo (Kong speaks at 19:00)

Indeed, the distinctively American voices of Kong Tsung-gan and Brian Kern are the same.

So why have news outlets like Hong Kong Free Press failed to disclose that Kong Tsung-gan is a pen name for an American man? Who is Brian Kern? And why is he yellowfacing as Kong Tsung-gan?

In plain sight: American teacher coordinating with Hong Kong protesters

Brian Patrick Kern has been a fixture at the Hong Kong protests since they erupted in 2019. He has been profiled by the Chinese press, photographed cleaning egg stains off the walls of the police headquarters and escorting his children to demonstrations.

Kern has even been filmed coordinating with protesters and rioters in videos circulating on social media.

In another video that went viral on social media, Kern was filmed screaming at the police: “You’re a communist puppet! … Kill us all!… With your bug gun, shoot me! I’m so violent! I’m a violent rioter! Shoot me! Your communist masters will love you!”

Brian Kern also writes for the HKFP as a guest contributor under his own name.

Clearly, Kern enjoys the spotlight, and has no apparent fear of local authorities.

But few people know that Brian Kern also hides behind the persona of Kong Tsung-gan, furnishing quotes to media outlets across the West as an expert native source on the Hong Kong “freedom struggle.”

Brian Kern publishes anti-China books under at least two pseudonyms

Not only does Brian Patrick Kern write as Kong Tsung-gan, which he romanized to seem like a Hong Kong native; he also writes under the pen name Xun Yuezang, romanized to appear as a Chinese mainlander. Writings under both aliases are filled with warnings of the “creeping control of the Chinese Communist Party.”

As Kong Tsung-gan, Brian Kern has published three books: Umbrella: A Political Tale from Hong Kong (Pema Press), As long as there is resistance, there is hope: Essays on the Hong Kong freedom struggle in the post-Umbrella Movement era, 2014-2018 (Pema Press), and Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the Freedom Struggle (Mekong Review).

As Xun Yuezang, Brian Kern has published Liberationists (Pema Press), which “tells the story of a human rights worker who disappears while crossing the border between Hong Kong and mainland China.” One reviewer wrote, “like many debut novels, [Liberationists] a work weighed down by its own good intentions.” In the book, “Xun Yuezang” discloses that it was published under a pseudonym.

No matter which alias he is employing, Brian Kern’s mission is clear: To portray the CPC as one of the world’s most dangerous evildoers.

Kern’s books also are filled with clues exposing him as the man behind both Xun Yuezang and Kong Tsung-gan. Xun Yuezang dedicated the book Liberationists to Mayren “who struggled so long to be free.” Brian Kern’s mother is named Mayren.

Liberationists was also dedicated to someone referred to simply as “Y.” Similarly, Kong Tsung-gan dedicated Liberate Hong Kong: Stories from the Freedom Struggle to “Y, for the shared struggle.” The name of Brian Kern’s wife, Yatman, begins with the letter “Y.”

Pema Press is the publisher for the work by Xun and Kong. Brian Kern’s daughter happens to be named Pema – the same name as the publisher. (It is possible Kern named both his publishing house and his daughter after Jetsun Pema, sister of the Dalai Lama, with whom he and his wife worked in the Tibetan Children’s Villages charity.)

Kern’s Orientalist stunt could be compared to that of Michael Derrick Hudson, a white middle-aged poet from Indiana who struggled to get his work published until he began submitting it to journals under the pseudonym Yi-Fen Chou.

Unlike Hudson’s fake Chinese persona, however, Kern is a political actor posing as a native grassroots activist to spread propaganda. His ploy is therefore more reminiscent of the “Gay Girl in Damascus” hoax, in which Tom MacMaster, a 40-year-old American graduate student at the University of Edinburgh, posed as a Damascus-based lesbian activist named “Amina Arraf” to gin up left-liberal support for regime change in Syria throughout 2011.

Kern’s personal profile is similar to MacMaster’s as well. Both are activist-minded liberal internationalist types with PhDs in literature. But unlike MacMaster, who forged a career in academia, Kern also has a record of work in the human rights industry.

Amnesty and US regime change links

Brain Kern grew up in Minnesota and completed his PhD in Comparative Literature at Brown University in 1996. In 1998, he began teaching at the Red Cross Nordic United World College (UWCRCN) in Norway, where he met his wife, Yatman Cheng.

Cheng graduated from UWCRCN in 2002 and received a Jardine Foundation scholarship to attend Oxford. In 2003 or 2004, as a university student, she volunteered with the Tibetan Children’s Villages in India on a trip organized by her college and led by Brian Kern.

In 2004, Cheng became a summer intern at the Hong Kong think tank Civic Exchange, which has received funding from the National Democratic Institute, a subsidiary of the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy. Cheng and Kern lived in London in 2007, where Kern worked for Amnesty International as a member of their education team.

In 2008, they moved to Hong Kong, where Kern began teaching at the Chinese International School and established its human rights club.

A few of Kern’s former students appear to work with him behind the cover of his false Asian identity. Several have translated work by Joshua Wong for Kong Tsung-gan’s Medium blog, and one designed the cover for one of Kong Tsung-gan’s books.

Where is Brian Kern now?

Brian Patrick Kern was last seen in public on May 24, 2020, marching with lawmaker Eddie Chu Hoi-Dick in a demonstration against China’s National Security Law.

Weeks later, Kong Tsung-gan published his next book, Liberate Hong Kong: Stories From The Freedom Struggle. Hong Kong’s last British colonial governor Chris Patten praised the tract as “a fascinating insider’s look at what has happened, which will be a defining issue for China’s place in the twenty-first century.”

Did Chris Patten know Kong Tsung-gan was a made-up person?

And how about Tom Grundy, the editor-in-chief of Hong Kong Free Press? Did he know that his columnist, Kong, was actually an American named Brian Kern?

Below, Kern can be seen warmly greeting Grundy during the June 2019 Wan Chai Police station siege:

This August, Kong Tsung-gan published a long-winded diatribe against China’s National Security Law in the Mekong Review, clamoring for harsh US sanctions on Beijing. While acknowledging in small print at the end of the essay that Kong was a pen name, Kern continued to insinuate that he was a Hong Kong native.

“An indication of just how draconian the CCP edict is, is that I could be arrested, charged with ‘colluding with foreign forces’, and face up to life in prison just for calling for sanctions on CCP and HK officials,” he wrote.

In reality, the author was not colluding with foreign forces. He was the foreign force.

According to Hong Kong locals contacted by The Grayzone, Kern is rumored to have left the city.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab made a much anticipated annoucement in the House of Commons this week that London was suspending an extradition treaty with its former colony Hong Kong in protest over Beijing implementing new security laws on the territory.

The United Kingdom is following the United States, Canada and Australia which have also ended extradition treaties with Hong Kong. They accuse Beijing of undermining political freedoms bequeathed to the island territory as part of a handover deal by Britain in 1997. China maintains new security laws are required to quell Western-backed unrest in the special administrative region which is ultimately under Chinese sovereignty.

However, in the end, Raab’s much-vaunted punitive measures did not go far enough for more hardline Tory parliamentarians and other opposition lawmakers who were disgruntled that the government did not initiate sanctions against Chinese officials. In short, it was a climbdown.

Indeed, the London government appeared to be tamping down a political firestorm it had ignited in recent days with China. The decision last week to axe Chinese tech company Huawei from Britain’s telecoms network, as well as reports of a British aircraft carrier being dispatched to the South China Sea, had been met with a furious response from Beijing which accused London of hostility and starting a new Cold War.

China’s ambassador to the Britain mockingly told the BBC that Britain was “dancing to the tune” of Washington. Beijing also vowed to hit back with reciprocal economic and diplomatic measures.

On the day that Foreign Secretary Raab unveiled Britain’s response to the Hong Kong issue, it was notable how he toned down his erstwhile gung-ho rhetoric. In a statement to the House of Commons, Raab surprised some observers by saying Britain wanted a “positive relationship” with China.

He said: “There is a huge amount to be gained for both countries, there are many areas where we can work productively, constructively to mutual benefit together.”

On the same day, too, Prime Minister Boris Johnson also signaled a climbdown from the high-horse attitude towards Beijing.

Johnson said there was a need for “balance” to be struck in the UK’s relationship with Beijing.

“I’m not going to be pushed into a position of becoming a knee-jerk Sinophobe on every issue, somebody who is automatically anti-China,” he said.

Johnson said he would not “completely abandon our policy of engagement” with Beijing, adding: “China is a giant factor of geopolitics… You have got to have a calibrated response and we are going to be tough on some things but also going to continue to engage.”

What this suggests is the British authorities had belatedly incurred a rude awakening from their delusions of post-colonial grandeur with regard to relations with China.

In the 21st century, Britain is no match for China, economically or militarily. China’s economy – the second biggest in the world after the U.S. – is six times that of Britain, while China spends fivefold more on its annual military budget.

The British economy is heavily dependent on Chinese foreign direct investment. There is far greater Chinese capital investment in Britain than elsewhere in Europe or North America. After the setback to Huawei, China could hurt the British economy severely if its companies redirected capital to other Western destinations. The relocation being prompted by a loss of confidence by Chinese firms in Britain.

For example, TikTok, the Chinese social media company, is reportedly retreating from its plans to make Britain its global overseas headquarters following London’s U-turn on Huawei. Some 3,000 British jobs are at stake if TikTok cancels its plans.

Another illustration of British dependency on China is the reliance of universities on Chinese students for their income. A recent report shows that many of Britain’s most prestigious universities are reliant on Chinese funds for up to one-third of their earned tuition fees.

Such cold economic realities seem to have given Johnson’s government pause for thought in its dalliance with Cold War posturing towards China. It’s as if British ministers had momentarily forgotten that their nation is a shadow of its former imperial power. They giddily joined in Washington’s policy of ratcheting up hostility towards Beijing, only to realize that Britain is way out of its depth.

Hence the discernible attempt to soften the “punitive measures” that London was threatening against Beijing. Cancelling an extradition treaty is more symbolic than having any practical impact while balking at imposing sanctions on China indicates that British ministers received a briefing from Whitehall mandarins telling them to dial down the hostile rhetoric or else be prepared to face eye-watering economic repercussions.

It seems significant that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew into London within hours of Johnson and Raab expressing reticence about going down the Cold War route with China. Pompeo reportedly held talks with the British premier and his foreign minister to urge them to take a harder line on China.

This is the dilemma for Britain as a vassal of Washington. It is being pushed to do Washington’s bidding in riling up Beijing, but the British know full well that they can’t afford to incite China’s anger. Johnson’s kowtowing balancing act between the United States and China is one of embarrassing weakness.