We begin today’s show with a remembrance of whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who passed on June 16 at the age of 92.

Then, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken ended his recent trip to China with a 35-minute meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on June 19th. Blinken had also met with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang and top diplomat Wang Yi over the weekend. 

Despite the State Department and the media talking about opportunities for peace, the actions of the US show that peace is the last thing it wants.

The trip comes just a few weeks after the US military tried to stoke the flames of war against China once again by misrepresenting situations in which US and Canadian war ships came into close contact with Chinese military ships in the Taiwan Strait. And it had originally been scheduled for February, but was delayed after the Pentagon and US media claimed that Chinese weather balloons were spying on the US.

To talk more about recent developments with China, we’re joined by Mika Nhondo Erskog, researcher at TriContinental Institute for Social Research and one of the hosts of The Crane, an Africa-China podcast by the Dongsheng Collective.

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