The Coming War on China by John Pilger - Nuclear war is no longer unthinkable

[SL_Fan]

Watched the doco The Coming War on China by John Pilger the other day. Now imo it's a bit of a one sided look at things. I think it either glosses over or sometimes even fails to mention the shortcomings of China. Having said that tho tough to argue against what's actually presented. Given what is going on these days and what has gone on in recent times it's a definite eye-opener. Any one else seen it? A must watch for mine.


The Coming War on China: John Pilger asks is Beijing really the enemy?

It’s no secret that Beijing has been building up its military might in the South China Sea. But there’s another superpower making an even bigger play to stay top dog and many of us wouldn’t event realise. The United States has surrounded China with 400 military bases in an almost perfect “noose”.

US military bases around the world

Filmed over two years in the Marshall Islands, Japan, Korea, China and the US, Pilger highlights America’s secret history in the region. The eye-opening documentary reveals some surprising findings including that the people of the Marshall Islands were used as nuclear guinea pigs under the top secret “Project 4.1”.

In an interview with news.com.au ahead of the film going to air, Pilger said he wanted to “help people make sense of a critical subject that is seldom more than a series of sound-bites. I say critical, because a strange and dangerous atmosphere currently separates the world’s greatest military power, the United States, and a country that will almost certainly become the world’s greatest economic power, China,” he said.

“In the past few years, the provocations, threats, contradictions and confusion have caused the kind of mistrust that make war by misunderstanding or by mistake or accident a real possibility. And both the US and China are nuclear-armed.”

Pilger also raises questions over whether it’s Beijing we should really be worried about. “China is surrounded by 400 US military bases in what one strategist describes as a ‘noose’,” he said. “Many of these bases are on China’s doorstep, armed with missiles, naval battle groups, nuclear bombers, drones. US naval warships patrol just outside Chinese waters.” While the US has almost 1000 foreign bases, China has just one which Pilger said was smaller and did not threaten California.

Acknowledging Beijing was building provocative airstrips on disputed islets and reefs in the South China Sea, Pilger said the US not only surrounded the country, but was also establishing new bases aimed at China. He also makes the point that it was Barack Obama and not Donald Trump who turned a “regional dispute in the South China Sea into a major flashpoint between nuclear powers.”

“In 2011, Obama came to Canberra and announced the ‘pivot to Asia’ — an innocuous term for the greatest build-up of US naval and air forces in the Asia Pacific since World War Two, aimed at China,” he said. “Trump is cartoon-like and slightly unpredictable; otherwise his foreign policy, such as it is, is consistent with US designs for dominance since the Korean War in the 1950s.”

Pilger, who returned to China for the first time in decades, said he was surprised at the transformation of impoverished, dark cities to modern, booming international centres as well as the optimism of the Chinese. However he said many people remained fearful of what the US would do to maintain its position as the world’s top dog. “One strategist said to me, ‘We don’t want to be your enemy [in the West]. But if we are constantly described as such, we have to prepare,’” he said. “Accordingly, China has been rapidly increasing the size of its military; and specialist literature in the US says that China has upgraded its nuclear weapons posture from low alert to high alert.”

 

[JaDed]

A mild China is in India's interest but God these Ameicans and their western white friends can get away with anything.

Refuse to believe their media anymore nytimes to guardian just propaganda machines that are creative.

 

[PakLFC]

America wants war with China, there is no doubt about this. This will be the mother of all battles because no country will be able to remain mutual in such a scenario.

 

[SL_Fan]

For those in Oz looks like it's available on SBS on Demand for the next few weeks.

The Coming War On China


For those who might find it difficult to find a way of watching it here's a brief summary of some of the key issues most would not be aware of - The Coming War On China


Giant US noose around China

In the West, the threat of China is becoming big news, the media is beating the drums of war as the world is being primed to regard China as a new enemy, the UK-based Australian journalist says.

The mainstream media such as CNN get exclusive access to classified US surveillance flights over disputed islands in the South China Sea, which have become a flashpoint for war between China and America.

But what is not in the news is that China itself is under threat. American bases form a giant noose encircling China with missiles, bombers, warships all the way from Australia through the Pacific to Asia and beyond, Pilger's documentary states.


The secret of the Bikini Islands

In 1946, the US took over the Marshall Islands as a trust territory, but turned it into a laboratory for the testing of nuclear weapons, and its people into guinea pigs, the film says, adding that effects of the atomic bomb were also tested on animals.

With test sites at sea, in the air, on reefs and underwater, the total yield of the nuclear experiments on and around the Marshall Islands was equal to 7200 Hiroshima bombs, meaning the equivalent of more than one Hiroshima bomb was exploded in the area every day for 12 years, Pilger says.

What the Americans did was no accident. They came here and destroyed our land. They came to test the effects of a nuclear bomb on us, a local woman told the filmmaker. Pilger also talked about US research on the impact of nuclear radiation on Marshall Islands guinea pigs, notably on Rongelap Atoll just 120km from Bikini where the islanders were encouraged to return to live. Bikini Island is till nowadays unfit for human life, he adds, while the film explores the sufferings of the atoll locals, many of whom died of cancer.


Apartheid in the Pacific

Moving to another American base in the region, cited as one of its most important and secretive locations, known as the Ronald Reagan Test Site, the journalist explores the US missile launch pad that, according to him, commands the Pacific Ocean all the way to Asia and China.

With weapons of mass destruction being designed for a coming war, the base is part of a remarkable US Space Command plan known as Vision 2020. Devised in the 1990s, its aim is officially described as full spectrum dominance, the film says.

But while Washington spends huge amounts of money on military ambitions, with the US Air Force testing its intercontinental missiles by firing them at the Marshall Islands from California almost 5000 miles away, locals have been subjected to poverty.

America's treatment of people living across the bay from the US base Kwajalein is called the Apartheid of the Pacific by Pilger, and their native island Ebeye the slum of the Pacific.
More than 12,000 people, most of whom are refugees from what is now a US missile base, and from islands poisoned by nuclear testing, are brought to work on that very base site to water golf courses for the Americans. After a whole day of work, they are ferried back to their poverty.


Island people against the greatest military power on Earth

Japan's island of Okinawa has become the frontline of a beckoning war with China, while the outstanding non-violent resistance of the local people challenges US pivot to Asia. One more outstanding US war station is located on the South Korean island of Jeju, where a resistance movement has also been persistent against America's naval base.

One of the most provocative military bases in the world has been built on the world heritage site land, less than 400 miles from Shanghai. According to the film, it's aimed at China's lifelines to the world in oil trade and resources.

The documentary also reveals that in 1962 America's atomic weapons were almost launched from the island, when a military base there allegedly received an order to prepare an attack on China, but then was abruptly ordered to stop. One of the American servicemen whose job was to fire Mace cruise missiles told Pilger that China was Washington's nuclear target during the Cuban missile crisis.


Gold mine of drugs and Mao paranoia

Warren Delano, the grandfather of America's 32nd president Franklin D. Roosevelt, was the American opium king of China, author James Bradley says. Much of the east coast of America, Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton were born from opium money. The American industrial revolution was funded by huge pools of money which came from illegal drugs [from] the biggest market in the world China, he says, adding that of course it wasn't talked about, but called it the China trade.

Later in the 20th century, a new way to present China as a threat was invented, with Mao's revolution having ignited paranoia in Washington. With Richard Nixon proclaiming China the basic cause of all of our trouble in Asia in 1953, the father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller over a decade later claimed a defence was needed against the eastern power.

The journalist also uncovers a secret message that was sent by Mao Zedong to Washington five years before the communist revolution of 1949. China must industrialise right now, this can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American interests fit together economically and politically. America need not fear that we will not be cooperative, we cannot risk crossing America, we cannot risk any conflict, Pilger cites Mao's message as saying. But the Chinese leader got no reply, and his reaching hand was tossed away, as Bradley put it.


Smartest weapons need enemies, money is the prize

In America you can change political parties but you cannot change the policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change policies. China is a vibrant market economy, but it is not a capitalist country, entrepreneur and social scientist, Eric Li says. He adds that in China, capital does not rise above political authority, and there is no way a group of super rich people can control the politburo, as billionaires control America's policy making.

The Chinese government is not trying to run the world, they are not even trying to run Asia Pacific. I think they want to keep America from dominating [the region], so they have what they believe is their rightful place because of the long history of civilisation, Li says, adding that Chinese objectives are really modest compared with their capacity.

As the world's economic power moves rapidly towards Asia, the response of the United States is to deploy the majority of its naval forces to the region, according to Pilger. This massive military build-up is known in Washington as the pivot to Asia. The target is China, he says, also citing president Barack Obama, who in 2011 said that creating an American presence in the Asia Pacific was his top priority. For America's unchallenged arms industry, the annual prize is huge profits from almost $600 billion of military spending, the journalist suggests, adding that the smartest weapons need enemies.

 

[Cracket]

Pilger is probably the best journalist on the planet right now.