If transparency is a cornerstone of democracy why is China meeting our leaders in secret?
We investigate in “The Transparency Trap.” Dr. David O’Brien helps us pull back the curtain on China’s hidden diplomacy.
Listen here 👉
https://on.soundcloud.com/WhXgCsx2ekboTah1TS
#humanrights #uyghur #Chinainfluence #CCP #Geopolitics #Xinjiang #transparency #UnitedFront
Even if your spouse is wrong, you don't side with your parents in front of them.
You handle it in the car on the way home. In front of the in-laws? You are a united front. Breaking that unity invites chaos into your home.
Agree or disagree? Is "blind loyalty" necessary in marriage?
▶ Watch the full EP #42/25: https://youtu.be/VHo68VKMdoA
#InLaws #MarriageAdvice #UnitedFront #FamilyDynamics #CoupleGoals
CW: Occasional Foul Language. Always Political.
It’s time to build our #UnitedFront. 🤝
We are fighting for ALL people, regardless of who they voted for.
Many more will be joining our resistance as MAGA’s victims multiply. It’s up to all of us to welcome them into the movement and get them plugged in.
https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/doral-mayor-speaks-on-venezuelan-residents-deportation-fears-40500654/
https://bsky.app/profile/50501movement.bsky.social/post/3m53ff2oqzc2a
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#Coup #Activism #FederalGovernment #USpol #Trump #NoKings #elections #50501Movement #WeAreTheResistance #WeHaveFriendsEverywhere #FDT #PeoplesMovement #FiftyFiftyOne #StopICE #protest #organize
Finally united by their quest for moar treats!
Dexter: ohhai.
Manneke: we see you are eating something tasty.
Dexter: we too like the tasty things.
Manneke and Dexter: *cutie face* .. *hongry eyes*
WaPo: 🇨🇳 Chinese organized crime front serves Beijing's interests, investigation shows
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/interactive/2025/china-hongmen-organized-crime-geopolitics/
The Internationalist Alliance (InterBündnis) is part of the International Antiimperialist United Front against Fascism, War and Environmental Destruction (UnitedFront). Representatives of our alliance take part in the regular webinars of the #UnitedFront, in which several dozen representatives from as many countries regularly participate for international exchange.
We document our articles and contributions in German and English on our website: https://www.inter-buendnis.de/img/250427_United_Front_Webinar_EN_plus_DE_Internationalist_Alliance_Inter_Buendnis_Statement_4b4e853bbf.pdf
#international #internationalism #UkraineWar #may9 #may8th #victoryineuropeday #ussr #sovietunion
Das InterBündnis ist Teil der internationalen antiimperialistischen Einheitsfront gegen Faschismus, Krieg und Umweltzerstörung (International Antiimperialist United Front against Fascism, War and Environmental Destruction; UnitedFront). Vertreter unseres Bündnisses nehmen bei den regelmäßig stattfindenden Webinaren der #UnitedFront teil, an denen sich regelmäßig mehrere Dutzend Vertreter aus ebenso vielen Ländern für den Internationalen Austausch beteiligen.
Hier findet Ihr den Redebeitrag zum letzten Seminar am 27. April 2025: https://www.inter-buendnis.de/blog/neuer-beitrag-zum-webinar-der-antiimperialistischen-und-antifaschistischen-einheitsfront/
@VOANews And only in Taiwan, right?
Nowhere else?
Not everywhere else....?
#Taiwan #CCP #china #MSS #UnitedFront #UFWD #sabotage #espionage #helloWorld
@kravietz ☝️ One thing that needs to be mentioned along with "wartime mindset" is that #russia isn't acting alone or in a vacuum to bring back the age of imperialism. While russia targets its immediate "liberal and democratic" enemies, #china is targetting those very enemies globally.
Too many European leaders are now "talking the talk" what comes to russian open warfare against the continent, *BUT* vehemently insist that business with china must continue unhindered. 🤷🏻♂️
If you still haven't yet, look up Chinese Communist Party's #UnitedFrontWorkDepartment... They've been at war with democracies since Lenin inspired the party's founding.
When you need a break from all the Christmas telly, enjoy our 2024 Review featuring a Professor, a Priest, a Politician and a Journalist ▶️
Spotify
https://spoti.fi/4gRzfZD
SoundCloud
https://on.soundcloud.com/JWh2JzVr6WoCqjDx6
#china #Taiwan #ireland #eeas #beijingrules #shanghai #prague #confucius #ccp #unitedfront
Join us for our review of 2024 with acclaimed journalist Bethany Allen, missionary priest Fr Sean O'Leary, Ireland South MEP Billy Kelleher and UCD Professor Alexander Dukalskis.
Spotify
https://spoti.fi/4gRzfZD
SoundCloud
https://on.soundcloud.com/JWh2JzVr6WoCqjDx6
#Taiwan #ireland #LeoVaradkar #FiannaFail #MEP #EEAS #CCP #China #ConfuciusInstitutes #DefendDemocracy #HumanRights #Huawei #Tiktok #Zoom #Prague #Shanghai #UnitedFront
📜 A really gentle and diplomatic (re-)introduction to CCP's United Front Work Department (UFWD) by the BBC. Still, better than nothing.
Media coverage of UFWD and its work esp. in foreign countries can be seen as a useful barometer of media's appeasement level wrt. PRC China / CCP; the treatment of Tibet (even mentioning its very name which the CCP is trying to eradicate) is another.
To understand all this, one first needs to understand something about human nature. Trusting people and societies tend to, by default, consider other people and societies having some level of trustworthiness as well.
Likewise societies were people can't generally trust one another adopt that modus operandi themselves and don't easily believe anyone to be trustworthy. Global corruption indices act as a rough guideline here.
Now, the CCP is an extremely and inherently #paranoid organization that sees enemies everywhere. They are particularly paranoid about existential threats and after seizing power in China in 1949 they psyched and propagandized themselves as the only and irreplaceable organization (read: dictatorship) that can not only keep the old imperial state forcefully together but also to restore the "Middle Kingdom" to its rightful historical (mythical) position as the greatest power under heaven.
When the Chinese communists realized that actual communism (under dictatorship) was fucking useless after Mao Zedong's decades of nominal communist "internationalism" (where the empire's "ethnic peoples" had nominal rights or even nominal "autonomy"! Repression, massacres and famines were simply written out of history), the CCP was in desperate need for a "raison d'etre" or a reason to justify its very existence.
Enter national-socialism, a form of ethno-centric nationalism under dictatorship. Party cadres who could access foreign books learnt how a relatively small Nazi-Germany managed to mobilize the entire state to defeat the gigantic and communist Soviet Union with relative ease...!
(Of course what really happened was that after December 1941 (Pearl Harbour) when the USA was pulled into WWII it was only America's absolutely mindblowing amount of "Lend-Lease" military aid to Soviets (look it up!) that turned the tide against the nazis... but the points about "effectiveness" of nazism vs communism couldn't be ignored.)
CCP cadres also learned how the German nazis had used "legalism" devised by Carl Schmitt to justify *everything* the State would do as "legal". Absolutely everything. What's not to love! Ethnic supremacism? Check!
After 1989 (Tiananmen) and then the 1991 crumbling of the Soviet-russia empire the new war front that emerged was based on acquitition of technology and money as essential ingredients. No longer a hermetically sealed dictatorship, the CCP would pull in foreign industrialists and financiers to engage and entangle in "win-win" projects while starting to send its loyalty-checked subjects overseas by the million to study and bring about technological revolution in the PRC.
This is where the UFWD begins to emerge as *the* key department for the CCP. Its tentacles would not only keep the expatriate Chinese students (and increasingly businessmen; and they are invariably men) in line politically, but the UFWD would facilitate and focus their tasking and the transfer of data where they really wanted it. With increased foreign exposure came opportunities to influence and corrupt any and all useful foreign idiots in politics, science, business, finance...
With the newly re-adopted ethno-centrism ("Han chauvinism") another key target for UFWD was the large diaspora of ethnic Chinese emigre settlers in foreign countries. There are particularly large Chinese "communities" in most South-East Asian countries where, ironically, they are sometimes viewed similarly as the Jews ahd been at the other end of the continent; a society within society, depending on murky ancestral networks and controlling business and finance well beyond their numbers...
(NB. After playing friend and extracting all technology and science it could from Israel, CCP easily threw them under the Arab islamic bus because the latter are, for now, far more useful allies in CCP's wider war against democracy worldwide, an existential threat...)
The UFWD would effectively take over these old ethnic networks and harness them to serve business and industry of their "motherland" turned CCP Party-State.
This is just the mere rough outline of United Front's responsibilities, but it's not hard to see why CCP really considered it a "magic weapon".
⚠️ The best published research on this massive organization with global reach is done by #ASPI and #Merics.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c878evdp758o
#CCP #china #PRC #UnitedFront #UFWD #carlschmitt #nazism #BBC
Activists from the Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement (HBDH) called for the freedom of Ecevit Piroğlu in front of the Serbian consulate in Zurich. The internationalist from Turkey fled to Serbia in June 2021 due to political persecution and applied for asylum. He was arrested immediately upon arrival at Belgrade airport at the request of the Turkish state and has been detained ever since, while his asylum application was rejected. According to the HBDH, Piroğlu has been on hunger strike for 68 days and his life is in danger.
“We know Ecevit Piroğlu from the Gezi uprising and from the internationalist struggle against ISIS in Rojava. As revolutionaries, socialists and patriots, we do not accept that he is being held hostage by the partnership between Turkey and Serbia,” said the Zurich activists demonstrating in front of the Serbian consulate. “Turkey is sticking to its extradition request, even though it has been rejected at international level and by the Serbian judiciary. His extradition has been prevented in 2022 by a 136-day hunger strike and international support. At the moment, Ecevit Piroğlu is being held hostage by the Serbian government without an arrest warrant under pressure from Turkey.”
The activists called for public support for Piroğlu and for pressure to be exerted on the Serbian government, demanding: “Freedom for Ecevit Piroğlu, Serbia must end this lawlessness!”
Ecevit Piroğlu
Ecevit Piroğlu was born in 1974 in the central Anatolian city of Kırşehir, originally from Erzincan. Politicised in the student movement of the 1990s, he later worked as a board member of the internationally renowned Human Rights Association (IHD), which has been denouncing torture in detention, police violence at demonstrations and the “disappearances” of left-wing and Kurdish people in Turkey for decades. Piroğlu was imprisoned several times for his political work.
As an active participant in the 2013 Gezi uprising and leader of the Socialist Democracy Party (SDP), he was increasingly targeted by the government. In June 2013, a state “revenge operation” was carried out against the SDP for its leading role in Gezi, and its headquarters in Istanbul were raided by special paramilitary police units. Piroğlu was among the 74 people who were brutally arrested at the time. Many of those detained at the time were later sentenced to long prison terms in the so-called “Revolutionary Headquarters” trial.
In view of the arrests and massive persecution of its leaders, the SDP was forced to disband in 2015. That same year, Piroğlu decided to leave Turkey to escape a decade-long prison sentence. He travelled to northern Syria and joined the fight against the ISIS terrorist militia. In June 2021, he travelled to Serbia to apply for political asylum and was arrested at Belgrade airport via the Interpol system, which Turkey systematically misuses as an instrument to punish its political opponents abroad. Ankara has Piroğlu on its “red list” of most wanted “terrorists”, and a bounty of ten million TL has been placed on his head.
In October 2022, the Court of Appeal in Belgrade overturned the decision of a lower court to extradite Ecevit Piroğlu to Turkey. The activist remains in custody in violation of the guidelines of the UN Committee against Torture, Serbian law and previous court judgements. He faces at least thirty years in prison in Turkey.
I don't use the term #leftunity because there's a lot of discourse around it, but I do believe that on the ground, in the streets, and on many particular issues, #communist and #anarchist people can work together (and must). I think that better terms might be #unitedfront or #leftalliance, as unity as a term papers over meaningful differences in the two political ideologies.
I think that #anarchists as a whole, could stand to be more critically supportive of past and current socialist experiments around the world, while #communists (#marxistleninists and #maoists) should accept that there is sound anarchist theory that might not be reflected in many self-identified anarchists. After all, how many Leninists can honestly claim to have done their own reading?
Not really a fan of the #AFP but they're correct that it was a cowardly act by the #Islamists. Carrying out offensives during #Ramadan... Just yet another proof that these bandits are not really Muslim and are hijacking the name of #Islam. :seija_coffee:
We need a #unitedfront against Saudi-funded #Islamism.
RE: https://mastodon.social/users/TheManilaTimes/statuses/112113987545329126
Any military action on behalf of #China's #PLA before the #elections to be held in #Taiwan on January 13th is highly unlikely anyway. #XiJinping may get to negotiate with folks from the #KMT and #TPP who are much more likely to concede to him after that date - at least that's what he, the #CCP and its #UnitedFront minions are trying to achieve in the month ahead by massively interfering in Taiwan's internal affairs. #TaiwanisnotChina #fucktheCCP #FarEast
@taiwanreporter
Ko's pick for running mate goes to show that he has zero interest for folks who are not rich.
Insurance companies are part of the driving forces of rising rents - which in turn puts pressure on young people in #Taiwan.
I consider the #TPP as highly untrustworthy in terms of #China-related issues. I have heard too much #UnitedFront babble from Ko about "one family on two sides of the straight". And yes: #KoWenje is a massive narcissist.
#elections #democracy
🇺🇸💥🇨🇳☭ 📜 China-Watching Committee Warns US Congress About Beijing's 'Magic Weapon'
「The United Front Work Department, which answers to the Communist Party's Central Committee, oversees the broad spectrum of the party's institutionalized influence operations and intelligence activities targeting groups inside and outside of China.
Known collectively as united front work, its task is to coordinate favorable narratives and organize events to promote them; identify and nullify challenges to the CCP's rules; and ultimately advance the party's ideological, political, economic and security interests globally.
"Through its united front work strategy, which Xi Jinping has called a 'magic weapon,' the Chinese Communist Party uses every tool at its disposal, whether legal or illicit, to influence the American people and interfere in democratic societies," Gallagher, the committee chair, told Newsweek.」
「The committee's memo will inform members of Congress, their staff and their constituents to help them understand the CCP's targeting of Chinese nationals, overseas Chinese, as well as ethnic Chinese who are not Chinese citizens, according to Cheryl Yu, a senior researcher at the Common Sense Society, a Washington, D.C., nonprofit.
"They need to be aware of how the CCP operates and the risks that come from engaging the party's proxies," Yu told Newsweek.」
「"The CCP deliberately tries to mobilize overseas Chinese groups—and many others—to support Beijing's goals and to pressure their governments. Because the CCP singles out Chinese people for influence, any response needs to address overseas Chinese organizations," Yu said.
"Calling out united front groups, unfortunately usually overseas Chinese organizations, has nothing to do with racial discrimination. Overseas Chinese a lot of times are victims of the CCP's propaganda without knowing themselves," she said.」
https://www.newsweek.com/united-front-select-committee-us-congress-memo-1846974
