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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment.
Introduction: In this program we present some of the deep political Asian history that bears on Chinese history and politics. In particular, the harm done to China by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek’s drug-dealing Kuomintang government, its collaboration with the brutal Japanese occupiers of Manchuria, as well as the United States is important in understanding the Chinese political and historical outlook.
In turn, the deep economic, political and military relationship between the Japanese fascists and the U.S. is to be factored in to any understanding of how the Chinese view this country and the West.
In that context, we do NOT think China’s present government will go down easily in the face of an obvious destabilization effort by the U.S. and the West.
In addition to the European colonization of China and Britain’s violent imposition of the opium drug trade through the Opium Wars, China’s political and historical memory is vividly animated by the drug-financed fascist dictatorship of Nationalist Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Dubbed “the Peanut” by General Joseph Stilwell during World War II, Chiang was compared by Stilwell (the chief American military adviser and liaison to the Kuomintang forces during World War II) to Mussolini.
Chiang’s entire government and brutal national security apparatus rested on the foundation of the narcotics traffic, as was well known by the US Commissioner Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger.
Key points of discussion and analysis of this relationship include: The decisive role of the Green Gang of Shanghai crime lord Du (sometimes ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financing Chiang’s forces and supplying muscle and intelligence to Tai Li, Chiang’s intelligence chief and interior minister, nicknamed “The Himmler of China;” the important role of Chiang’s drug traffic in supplying American t’ongs who, in turned, supplied the Mafia with their narcotics; the role of Chiang’s finance minister as Du Yue-sheng’s protector; the collaboration of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuomintang apparatus with the Japanese occupation government of Manchuria in the narcotics traffic; the role of Chaing’s head of Narcotics Control in supplying Chinese officials with drugs; the role of the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai in supervising the trafficking of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; Du’s collaboration with Hong Kong-based British financiers in selling drugs to the Chinese population; the deliberate deception on the part of Anslinger and kingpins in the US China Lobby, who knowingly misled the American public by blaming the U.S. drug traffic on the Communist Chinese; the narcotics kickbacks to U.S. China Lobby figures by Chiang’s dope trafficking infrastructure; the overlap of the Kuomintang dope trade with arms sales by China Lobby luminaries; the support of the CIA for Chiang’s narcotics traffic; the destruction of the career of Foreign Service officer John Service, who noted that “the Nationalists were totally dependent on opium and ‘incapable of solving China’s problems;’ ” the central role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in framing John Service.
Supplemental information about these topics is contained in AFA #11 and AFA #24.
It is impossible to understand World War II and the global and economic political landscape that emerged from it without digesting the vitally important book Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave.
Covering the Japanese equivalent of the Bormann flight capital network, the volume is a heroic, masterful analysis and penetration of the Asian wing of the cartel system that spawned fascism, as well as the realities of the post-World War II economic landscape. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the subject of the Golden Lily program successfully implemented by the Japanese to loot Asia.)
An incisive, eloquent review and encapsulation of the book is provided by Doug Valentine, providing further insight into the political and historical memory of the Chinese government and resulting stance toward any pressure to be mounted against that nation by the U.S. and the West.
Of particular note is the detailed analysis of the Japanese development of occupied Manchuria as an epicenter of the opium traffic with which to enrich their operations and to help subjugate the Chinese. Chinese sensitivity to the Japanese, Kuomintang, American and British roles in using drugs to enslave the Chinese people is very much in the forefront of Japanese political consciousness.
” . . . . .They [the Japanese] build roads and create industries and, more importantly, they work with corrupt warlords and Chinese gangsters associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party to transform Manchuria into a vast poppy field. By 1937 the Japanese and their gangster and Kuomintang associates are responsible for 90% of the world’s illicit narcotics. They turn Manchu emperor Pu Yi into an addict, and open thousands of opium dens as a way of suppressing the Chinese. . . .”
Far from being a peripheral political and economic consideration; the Golden Lily plunder is fundamental to postwar Western reality.
” . . . . The Seagraves conclude their exciting and excellent book by taking us down the Money Trail, and explaining, in layman’s terms, how the Gold Warriors have been able to cover their tracks. Emperor Hirohito, for example, worked directly with Pope Pius XII to launder money through the Vatican bank. In another instance, Japan’s Ministry of Finance produced gold certificates that were slightly different than ordinary Japanese bonds. The Seagraves interview persons defrauded in this scam, and other scams involving the Union Bank of Switzerland and Citibank. . . . ”
” . . . . the banks that maintain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, anyone trying to sue them will eventually fade away. The Seagraves asked the Treasury Department, Defense Department, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. During the 1990s, the records mysteriously went missing. Other records were destroyed in what the Seagraves caustically call ‘history laundering.’ . . . . .”
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include: Discussion of the war crimes committed by the Japanese against the Chinese; the roles of the Japanese army, the Japanese royal family and yakuza gangster Kodama Yoshio (later the CIA’s top contact in Japan and a key official with the Unification Church) in extracting the liquid wealth of China; the restoration of the Japanese fascists in the “new,” postwar Japanese government by Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces; the fusion of the Golden Lily loot with Nazi World War II plunder to form the Black Eagle Trust; the use of the Golden Lily plunder to finance funds to reinforce the renascent fascists in Japan, to finance U.S. covert operations in the postwar period and to suppress political dissidence in Japan; the use of the M‑Fund to finance the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and Richard Nixon’s transfer of control of that fund to the Japanese government in exchange for clandestine financial help in his 1960 election campaign; the use of Golden Lily loot by the U.S. to purchase the support of Pacific ally nations for the Vietnam War; the use of Golden Lily treasure by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos; the suppression and criminal prosecution of individuals attempting to penetrate the elite, selective use of Golden Lily gold by the world’s large banks.
We conclude by highlighting Fred J. Cook’s analytical account of the McCarthy period, The Nightmare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Department [Communist] treachery had “lost” China to Mao and his forces.
Exploiting the meme that “pinko” State Department officials were responsible for Mao’s ascendance, McCarthy and his team successfully purged the State Department of officials whose outlook on Chiang Kai-shek was realistic.
The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Organized Crime–illustrates this kind of activity.
In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among other programs), we noted the pivotal influence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the professional development of Donald Trump. We wonder what influence Cohn and the McCarthy legacy may have had on Trump’s policy toward China.
Aside from the airy presumption that China was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s thesis ignored the effects of U.S. policy in that country before, during and after, World War II. (This transgression is, of course, supplemental to Tailgunner Joe’s fabrication of evidence against those he targeted.)
In addition to support for Chiang Kai-Shek, whom General Joseph Stilwell compared to Mussolini, U.S. policy of using scores of thousands of Japanese soldiers as anti-Communist combatants was loathsome to the Chinese population, who had felt the full measure of Japanese atrocity during years of warfare.
Leafing through Nightmare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a passage read into the record in AFA #11.
More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the official conclusion of the hostilities of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was countenancing the use of 80,000 Japanese troops (roughly eight divisions) as anti-Communist combatants in eastern and northwestern Manchuria alone!
Having been raised on Victory at Sea and similar fare, this passage is yet another reminder that–70 + years or so after V‑J Day–“we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”
In retrospect, we never were.
For more on the subject of the Japanese fascism, see–among other programs–FTR #‘s 905, 969, 970.
Program Highlights Include: Brief discussion and overview of an article read in our previous program concerning HSBC and the bank’s historical links to laundering narcotics money and jihadist financing; the use of the racist term “shina” by the Hong Kong protesters–a term that had its genesis in the Sino-Japanese war.
1. In addition to the European colonization of China and Britain’s violent imposition of the opium drug trade through the Opium Wars, China’s political and historical memory is vividly animated by the drug-financed fascist dictatorship of Nationalist Chinese Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Dubbed “the Peanut” by General Joseph Stilwell during World War II, Chiang was compared by Stilwell (the chief American military adviser and liaison to the Kuomintang forces during World War II) to Mussolini.
Chiang’s entire government and brutal national security apparatus rested on the foundation of the narcotics traffic, as was well known by the US Commissioner Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger.
Key points of discussion and analysis of this relationship include: The decisive role of the Green Gang of Shanghai crime lord Du (sometimes ‘Tu”) Yue-sheng in both financing Chiang’s forces and supplying muscle and intelligence to Tai Li, Chiang’s intelligence chief and interior minister, nicknamed “The Himmler of China;” the important role of Chiang’s drug traffic in supplying American t’ongs who, in turned, supplied the Mafia with their narcotics; the role of Chiang’s finance minister as Du Yue-sheng’s protector; the collaboration of Du and Chaing Kai-shek’s Kuomintang apparatus with the Japanese occupation government of Manchuria in the narcotics traffic; the role of Chaing’s head of Narcotics Control in supplying Chinese officials with drugs; the role of the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai in supervising the trafficking of drugs to the U.S.; Du Yueh-sheng’s flight to Hong Kong after the Japanese occupation of Shanghai; Du’s collaboration with Hong Kong-based British financiers in selling drugs to the Chinese population; the deliberate deception on the part of Anslinger and kingpins in the US China Lobby, who knowingly misled the American public by blaming the U.S. drug traffic on the Communist Chinese; the narcotics kickbacks to U.S. China Lobby figures by Chiang’s dope trafficking infrastructure; the overlap of the Kuomintang dope trade with arms sales by China Lobby luminaries; the support of the CIA for Chiang’s narcotics traffic; the destruction of the career of Foreign Service officer John Service, who noted that “the Nationalists were totally dependent on opium and ‘incapable of solving China’s problems;’ ” the central role of Tai Li’s agents in the U.S. in framing John Service.
Supplemental information about these topics is contained in AFA #11 and AFA #24.
The CIA as Organized Crime by Douglas Valentine; Clarity Press [SC]; Copyright 2017 by Douglas Valentine; ISBN 978–0‑9972870–2‑8; pp. 222–224.
In the 1920s, the US threw its weight behind Chiang Kai-shek, whose Kuomintang Party was fighting the Communists and several other warlords for control of China. The US was competing with the other colonial nations for control of China, which hd a cheap labor force and represented billions in profits for US corporations and investors.The problem was that the Kuomintang supported itself through the opium trade. It’s well documented in the dipomatic cables between the US government and its representatives in China. Historians Kinder and Walker said the Commissioner of the Bureau of Narcotics, Harry Anslinger, “clearly knew about the ties between Chiang and opium dealers.”
Anslinger knew that Shanghai was “the prime producer and exporter to the illicit world drug markets,” through a syndicate controlled by Du Yue-sheng, a crime lord who facilitated Chiang’s bloody ascent to power in 1927. As early as 1932, Anslinger knew that Chiang’s finance minister was Du’s protector. He’d had evidence since 1929 that American t’ongs were receiving Kuomintang narcotics and distributing it to the Mafia. Middlemen worked with opium merchants, gangsers like Du, Japanese occupation forces in Manchuria, and Dr. Lansing Ling, “who supplied narcotics to Chinese officials traveling abroad.” In 1938, Chiang Kai-shek appointed Dr. Ling head of his Narcotic Control Department.
In October 1934, the Treasury attache in Shanghai “submitted reports implicating Chiang Kai-shek in the heroin trade to North America.” In 1935, the attache reported that the Superintendent of Maritime Customs in Shanghai was “acting as agent for Chiang Kai-shek in arranging for the preparation and shipment of the stuff to the United States.”
These reports reached Anslinger’s desk, so he knew which KMT officials and trade missions were delivering dope to American t’ongs and which American mafia drug rings were buying it. He knew the t’ongs were kicking back a percentage of the profits to finance Chiang’s regime.
After Japanese forces Shanghai in August 1937, Anslinger was even less willing to deal honestly with the situation. By then, Du was sitting on Shanghai’s Municipal Board with William J. Keswick. Du found sanctuary in Hong Kong, where he was welcomed by a cabal of free-trading British colonialists whose shipping and banking companies earned huge revenues by allowing Du to push his drugs on the hapless Chinese.The revenues were truly immense: according to Colonel Joseph Stilwell, the US military attache in China, in 1935 there were “eight million chinese heroin and morphine addicts and another 72 million Chinese opium addicts.”
Anslinger tried to minimize the problem by lying and saying that Americans were not affected. But the final decisions were made by his bosses in Washington, and from their national security perspective, the profits enabled the Kuomintang to purchase $31 million worth of fighter planes from arms dealer William Pawley to fight the Communiss, and that trumped any moral dilemmas about trading with the Japanese or getting Americans addicted.
It’s all documented. Check the sources I cite in my books. Plus, US Congressmen and Senators in the China Lobby were profiting from the guns for drugs business too. They got kickbacks in the form of campaign funds and in exchange, they looked away as long as Anslinger told them the dope stayed overseas. After 1949, the China Lobby manipulated public hearings and Anslinger cooked the books to make sure that the Peoples Republic was blamed for all narcotics coming out of the Far East. Everyone made money and after 1947 the operation was run out of Taiwan, with CIA assistance.
The US goverrnment’s involvement in the illicit drug business was institutionalized during World War Two. While serving on General Joseph Stilwell’s staff in 1944, Foreign Service officer John Service reported from Kunming, the city where the Flying Tigers and OSS were headquartered, that the Nationalists were totally dependent on opium and “incapable of solving China’s problems.”
Service’s reports conributed to the Truman Administration’s decision not to come to Chiang’s rescue at the end of the war. In retaliation, Chaing’s intelligence chief, Tai Li, had his agents in America accuse Service of leaking the Kuomintang’s battle plans to a leftist newsletter. Service was arrested. After Service was cleared of any wrongdoing, the China Lobby persisted in attacking his character for the next six years. He was subjected to eight loyalty hearings, and dismissed from the State Department in 1951.
Service’s persecution was fair warning that anyone linking the Nationalist Chinese to drug smuggling would, at a minimum, be branded a Communist sympathizer and his reputation ruined. That is how the US drug operation is still protected today, although security for the operation has improved and whistleblowers are smeared in other ways.
After World War Two, the business of managing the government’s involvement in the illicit narcotics trade was given to the CIA, because it could covertly conduct support operations for, among others, the Nationalist Chinese in Taiwan. The CIA also relocated and supplied one of Chiang’s armies to Burma. This KMT army supported itself through the opium trade and the CIA flew the opium to places where it was converted to heroin and sold to the Mafa. The other bureaucracies—the military and the Departments of State, Justice and Treasury—provided protection along with the China Lobby congressmen and senators who controlled the little information that was made public. . . .
2. It is impossible to understand World War II and the global and economic political landscape that emerged from it without digesting the vitally important book Gold Warriors by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave.
Covering the Japanese equivalent of the Bormann flight capital network, the volume is a heroic, masterful analysis and penetration of the Asian wing of the cartel system that spawned fascism, as well as the realities of the post-World War II economic landscape. (FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 509, 688, 689 deal with the subject of the Golden Lily program successfully implemented by the Japanese to loot Asia.)
An incisive, eloquent review and encapsulation of the book is provided by Doug Valentine, providing further insight into the political and historical memory of the Chinese government and resulting stance toward any pressure to be mounted against that nation by the U.S. and the West.
Of particular note is the detailed analysis of the Japanese development of occupied Manchuria as an epicenter of the opium traffic with which to enrich their operations and to help subjugate the Chinese. Chinese sensitivity to the Japanese, Kuomintang, American and British roles in using drugs to enslave the Chinese people is very much in the forefront of Japanese political consciousness.
” . . . . .They [the Japanese] build roads and create industries and, more importantly, they work with corrupt warlords and Chinese gangsters associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party to transform Manchuria into a vast poppy field. By 1937 the Japanese and their gangster and Kuomintang associates are responsible for 90% of the world’s illicit narcotics. They turn Manchu emperor Pu Yi into an addict, and open thousands of opium dens as a way of suppressing the Chinese. . . .”
Far from being a peripheral political and economic consideration; the Golden Lily plunder is fundamental to postwar Western reality.
” . . . . The Seagraves conclude their exciting and excellent book by taking us down the Money Trail, and explaining, in layman’s terms, how the Gold Warriors have been able to cover their tracks. Emperor Hirohito, for example, worked directly with Pope Pius XII to launder money through the Vatican bank. In another instance, Japan’s Ministry of Finance produced gold certificates that were slightly different than ordinary Japanese bonds. The Seagraves interview persons defrauded in this scam, and other scams involving the Union Bank of Switzerland and Citibank. . . . ”
” . . . . the banks that maintain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, anyone trying to sue them will eventually fade away. The Seagraves asked the Treasury Department, Defense Department, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. During the 1990s, the records mysteriously went missing. Other records were destroyed in what the Seagraves caustically call ‘history laundering.’ . . . . .”
Key Points of Analysis and Discussion Include: Discussion of the war crimes committed by the Japanese against the Chinese; the roles of the Japanese army, the Japanese royal family and yakuza gangster Kodama Yoshio (later the CIA’s top contact in Japan and a key official with the Unification Church) in extracting the liquid wealth of China; the restoration of the Japanese fascists in the “new,” postwar Japanese government by Douglas MacArthur’s occupation forces; the fusion of the Golden Lily loot with Nazi World War II plunder to form the Black Eagle Trust; the use of the Golden Lily plunder to finance funds to reinforce the renascent fascists in Japan, to finance U.S. covert operations in the postwar period and to suppress political dissidence in Japan; the use of the M‑Fund to finance the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party and Richard Nixon’s transfer of control of that fund to the Japanese government in exchange for clandestine financial help in his 1960 election campaign; the use of Golden Lily loot by the U.S. to purchase the support of Pacific ally nations for the Vietnam War; the use of Golden Lily treasure by Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos; the suppression and criminal prosecution of individuals attempting to penetrate the elite, selective use of Golden Lily gold by the world’s large banks.
“Gold Warriors” by Douglas Valentine; Counterpunch; 9/25/2003.
Gold Warriors is more than a book about Japan’s “serious, sober and deliberate” plundering of Asia’s treasure from 1895 until 1945, and its collusion after the war with American officials to recover and use the loot as a secret political action slush fund to promote right wing regimes: Gold Warriors:America’s Secret Recovery of Yamashita’s Gold is a journey into the darkest recesses of history and the human soul. Authors Peggy and Sterling Seagrave not only unravel one of the greatest crimes and cover-ups ever, they reveal something new and startling about the depths of human depravity and barbarity, and the human capacity for deceit.
The book begins in 1895 with a fascinating account of the grisly assassination of Korea’s Queen Min by terrorists posing as business agents of Japanese companies. The clever coup d’etat provides Japan with official deniability, and the confusion that follows provides the Japanese with a pretext for its military occupation and plundering of Korea. Japan’s brutal conquest of Korea foretells how it will achieve one victory after another in Far East Asia over the ensuing 45 years.
The next victory occurs in 1904, when tiny Japan defeats Russia and annexes Southern Manchuria. Manchuria, unlike Korea, has little gold worth stealing. But it is rich in natural resources, so the Japanese settle in for the long haul, and slowly develop Manchuria over several decades. They build roads and create industries and, more importantly, they work with corrupt warlords and Chinese gangsters associated with Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang Party to transform Manchuria into a vast poppy field. By 1937 the Japanese and their gangster and Kuomintang associates are responsible for 90% of the world’s illicit narcotics. They turn Manchu emperor Pu Yi into an addict, and open thousands of opium dens as a way of suppressing the Chinese. When subversion and propaganda don’t get the job done they commit unspeakable atrocities. In late 1937 and early 1938 the Japanese slaughter an estimated 350,000 Chinese civilians and prisoners of war in Nanking. Tens of thousands of women and girls are raped, and many are mutilated or murdered. Nanking foretells what will happen as Japan expands its empire to include Indochina, Malaysia, Taiwan, and the Philippines.
It’s also with the Rape of Nanking that the authors introduce the main characters in the book; the Japanese soldiers, crime lords, and officials who, by the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, realize they have bitten off more than they chew, and begin their retreat to Japan. A small inner circle becomes responsible for securing billions of dollars worth of gold, platinum, cultural artifacts and precious gems stolen over the previous 45 years. The Japanese call this operation Golden Lily, and the Seagraves do not shy away from naming those involved. They finger General Doihara, and Japan’s top yakuza gangster, Kodama Yoshio, both of whom worked closely with Chinese drug smugglers in Manchuria and Shanghai. Golden Lily’s overall boss is Prince Chichibu, one of Emperor Hirohito’s three brothers. The Kempeitai were Golden Lily’s first agents, moving 6000 metric tons of gold from Nanking to Japan in 1938. But most of the Golden Lily treasure was buried in the Philippines by General Yamashita, and it is in the Philippines that most of the action in the book takes place.
When the Seagraves claim that their lives are in danger for having written this book, they aren’t kidding. This is explosive material, for they not only name the Japanese involved in Golden Lily, they name the Japanese corporations, including Nissan, Mitsui (which processed Manchurian opium into heroin in the 1930s), Mitsubishi and Sumitomo as having used American POWs as slave laborers during the war. They also name the Americans who worked with the Japanese to recover the buried loot after World War II. The Japanese had no monopoly on deceit or disregard for human suffering, and some of these Americans conspired with the Japanese to deny reparations to the POWs, sex slaves and forced laborers that survived.
The reader will learn how, in order to share in the plunder, members of General Douglas MacArthur’s occupation army, along with US government officials and banks, connived to absolve Japanese corporations, war criminals and drug smugglers many prominent officials in the Post War government of responsibility for these ghastly crimes. How the Americans went about this is very interesting. To ensure his silence, General Yamashita was hanged by a military tribunal in February 1946, while his right hand man, Kojima, was tortured by a Filipino, Santa Romana, into revealing where the treasure vaults were buried in the Philippines. Romana then guided CIA officer Edward Lansdale to the loot. Lansdale did a quick inventory, and for the next 20 years supervised Romana, the unlikely front man for a number of slush funds. Thereafter the purloined gold was moved through 176 accounts in 42 banks in several countries, to people and organizations the CIA wanted to secretly support.
The Americans viewed this money as a War prize, and every American president from Harry Truman to George W. Bush has used the slush funds for various purposes. Truman, through a number of his top aides close to the Harrimans and the Rockefellers, set up the Black Eagle Trust Fund to fight communism. General MacArthur set up the Yotsuya Fund to finance Japan’s yakuza underworld, and one of his aides set up the M‑Fund to help reconstruct Japan and turn it into an economic powerhouse. Eisenhower used the M‑Fund to help create Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party in 1956, and in 1960, Vice President Richard Nixon turned over M‑Fund over to Japan’s Prime Minister, Kishi Nobosuke, in return for kickbacks Nixon used to help finance his presidential campaign. Carter, Reagan, Clinton and both Bushes were complicit, using Golden Lily slush fund money to buy elections in nations all around the world. George W. got into the act in March 2001, sending Navy SEAL commandos to the Philippines to recover a portion of General Yamashita’s gold. Bush was privately in the market to buy some of the bullion that was being recovered. His representative was William S. Parish, his nominee as ambassador to Great Britain, and the manager of his blind trust
Most of the action in the book takes place in the Philippines, where the Japanese buried much of the Golden Lily loot in 175 vaults in and around Manila. Prince Takeda Tsuneyoshi (using the nomme de guerre, Kimsu) was in charge in Northern Luzon and gave maps to his Filipino aid, Ben, indicating where the vaults were located. Kimsu swore Ben to secrecy, but gradually the maps slipped out and in 1971, a treasure hunter named Roxas unearthed several gold bars and a Golden Buddha that, amazingly, weighed a ton. Word of the discovery reached Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos and soon thereafter Roxas was arrested, tortured, and imprisoned, and Marcos acquired the Golden Buddha. Marcos, notably, had been working with the CIA for years using Golden Lily assets to bribe nations to support the Vietnam War. In return for services rendered, Marcos was allowed to sell over $1 trillion in gold through Australian brokers.
By the 1970s, rumors about General Yamashita’s gold had grabbed the imagination of a number on treasure hunters and in 1975, Robert Curtis acquired copies of Kimsu’s maps. Financed by far right wing John Birch Society, and working with cutthroat Ferdinand Marcos, Curtis joined with Ben and Japan’s Lord Ichiwara to find the remainder of the loot. Alas, the partners were mutually untrustworthy and Curtis, like Roxas, ran into trouble. But the dangers of hunting for buried Japanese gold in the Philippines did not dissuade others, and in the mid-1980s a group of disgruntled former CIA officers and military men, including Generals John Singlaub and Robert Schweitzer, organized an expedition using former Navy SEALs and Army Special Forces personnel. One member of the team, Charles McDougald, actually recovered 325 metric tons of gold in 1987, although, as one might suspect, he found himself in trouble too.
The Seagraves conclude their exciting and excellent book by taking us down the Money Trail, and explaining, in layman’s terms, how the Gold Warriors have been able to cover their tracks. Emperor Hirohito, for example, worked directly with Pope Pius XII to launder money through the Vatican bank. In another instance, Japan’s Ministry of Finance produced gold certificates that were slightly different than ordinary Japanese bonds. The Seagraves interview persons defrauded in this scam, and other scams involving the Union Bank of Switzerland and Citibank.
Without descending into convoluted legalese, the Seagraves describe the devious means bankers have used to conceal the vast hordes of Nazi and Japanese gold in their possession. The Seagraves do this primarily by examining multi-million-dollar lawsuits filed by Roxas, Curtis, and Santa Romana’s heirs against Citibank, the US government, and Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. In this way the Seagraves reveal how the banks use complex accounting methods, or claim that gold certificates are fake, or simply move gold to offshore accounts to conceal it. In every case the US government assists the banks by stonewalling, refusing to investigate, or ignoring Freedom of Information Act requests.
In one noteworthy case, attorney W.R. “Cotton” Jones walked into the Swiss Bank Corporation in New York City and asked the bank to authenticate a $25 million certificate of deposit issued by the Bank and bearing the Federal Reserve seal. Cotton was quickly arrested by the Secret Service and his certificates were confiscated. As Cotton rhetorically asks, how can a Swiss bank have a federal agency intervene on its behalf and confiscate personal possessions? What right does the Secret Service have to arrest, interrogate, intimidate, and threaten anyone on a Swiss bank’s behalf, without due process of law?
The answer is obvious: the banks that maintain the US government’s stolen gold are above the law, and if they stonewall long enough, anyone trying to sue them will eventually fade away. The Seagraves asked the Treasury Department, Defense Department, and the CIA for records on Yamashita’s gold in 1987, but were told the records were exempt from release. During the 1990s, the records mysteriously went missing. Other records were destroyed in what the Seagraves caustically call “history laundering.”
Throughout the book, the writing is descriptive and engaging. Having authored several books about the Far East, the Seagraves are experts in their field and their arguments are convincing. In fact, they have compiled so much supporting evidence that many of the documents are contained on companion CDs the reader can buy separately at the Seagraves’ web site. There are two CDs, the first containing eleven files. This writer examined three of them on Lansdale, Kodama, and Golden Lily and found them utterly fascinating. The second CD contains 19 files, many concerning the various lawsuits the Seagraves have used as evidence to prove their case.
And they do more than prove their case. In the end, Gold Warriors transcends its subject matter, and its great triumph is that it tells us something new about the savage and avaricious side of human nature. The reader will walk away from this book astounded and outraged at the immensity of the fraudulent activities that the world’s governments, banks, and spies are engaged in. Gold Warriors is chilling in its accumulation.
4a.We briefly highlight the use by the Hong Kong protesters of the racist term “shina”–a word whose English equivalent is “chink.” It has its genesis during the Sino-Japanese war.
“US Backs Xenophobia, Mob Violence in Hong Kong” by Dan Cohen [The Gray Zone]; Consortium News, 8/19/2019.
. . . . In July, protesters vandalized the Hong Kong Liaison Office, spray-painting the word, “Shina” on its facade. This term is a xenophobic slur some in Hong Kong and Taiwan use to refer to mainland China. The anti-Chinese phenomenon was visible during the 2014 Umbrella movement protests as well, with signs plastered around the city reading, “Hong Kong for Hong Kongers.” . . . .
4b. We conclude by highlighting Fred J. Cook’s analytical account of the McCarthy period, The Nightmare Decade. One of the focal points of Cook’s book is McCarthy’s theme that State Department [Communist] treachery had “lost” China to Mao and his forces.
Exploiting the meme that “pinko” State Department officials were responsible for Mao’s ascendance, McCarthy and his team successfully purged the State Department of officials whose outlook on Chiang Kai-shek was realistic.
The fate of John Service–described in the excerpt of The CIA as Organized Crime–illustrates this kind of activity.
In FTR #s 932 and 933 (among other programs), we noted the pivotal influence of Joe McCarthy’s right-hand man Roy Cohn on the professional development of Donald Trump. We wonder what influence Cohn and the McCarthy legacy may have had on Trump’s policy toward China.
Aside from the airy presumption that China was “ours” to “lose,” McCarthy’s thesis ignored the effects of U.S. policy in that country before, during and after, World War II. (This transgression is, of course, supplemental to Tailgunner Joe’s fabrication of evidence against those he targeted.)
In addition to support for Chiang Kai-Shek, whom General Joseph Stilwell compared to Mussolini, U.S. policy of using scores of thousands of Japanese soldiers as anti-Communist combatants was loathsome to the Chinese population, who had felt the full measure of Japanese atrocity during years of warfare.
Leafing through Nightmare Decade for the first time in years, we came across a passage read into the record in AFA #11.
More than 16 months after V‑J Day (the official conclusion of the hostilities of World War II in Asia) the U.S. was countenancing the use of 80,000 Japanese troops (roughly eight divisions) as anti-Communist combatants in eastern and northwestern Manchuria alone!
Having been raised on Victory at Sea and similar fare, this passage is yet another reminder that–70 + years or so after V‑J Day–“we’re not in Kansas any more, Toto.”
In retrospect, we never were.
For more on the subject of the Japanese fascism, see–among other programs–FTR #‘s 905, 969, 970.
. . . . When the war ended, China was in utter chaos. Thousands of Japanese troops wandered around the countryside, fully armed, with no one accepting their surrender. John F. Melby [a State Department officer], in a day-by-day diary he kept at the time, reflected in bewilderment upon this anomaly. On December 27, 1945, he noted: “I still don’t understand about the Japanese. Officially they are being disarmed, but the fact is they never seem to be. In Shanghai, fifteen thousand still walk the streets with full equipment. In Nanking, the high Japanese generals are bosom buddies of the Chinese. In the north, tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers are used to guard railroads and warehouses and to fight the Communists. If you ask what this is all about, the answer is either a denial or in more candid moments a ‘Shh, we don’t talk about that.’ ” In another entry on January 30, 1947, a good sixteen months after V‑J Day, Melby noted that, though it was being kept “very quiet,” there were “eighty thousand holdout Japanese troops in eastern and northwestern Manchuria, who are fully equipped, fighting the Communists.” . . . .
Program Highlights Include: Review of the Hong Kong protesters’ use of the racist term “Shina”–which had its genesis during the Sino-Japanese war; Review of HSBC’s relationship to jihadism and opium traffic, going back to the Opium Wars.
A listener posted the material below as an addendum to the Food For Thought post about Iris Chang.
I think it is more relevant to the destabilization of China.
That the corona virus outbreak might be a biological warfare “psy-op” is a question I have had.
The timing of the outbreak is “interesting.”
The material below might be relevant to the genesis of the virus, IF, in fact, my question is substantively accurate.
“Here, we report the design, synthesis, and recovery of the largest synthetic replicating life form, a 29.7‑kb bat severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)-like coronavirus (Bat-SCoV), a likely progenitor to the SARS-CoV epidemic.
Synthetic recombinant bat SARS-like coronavirus is infectious in cultured cells and in mice
Michelle M. Becker, Rachel L. Graham, […], and Mark R. Denison
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2588415/”
Best,
Dave Emory
A listener posted this and I am re-posting it to a different show:
“US military researchers call for use of privateers against China
Magazine published by US Naval Institute features articles titled ‘Unleash the Privateers!’ and ‘US Privateering Is Legal’
But any such move would provoke a retaliation from China, military watchers say
SCMP
Liu Zhen in Beijing and Kristin Huang
Published: 7:00am, 10 Apr, 2020
The United States should encourage the use of privateers to fight Chinese aggression at sea, according to a pair of articles in magazine produced by the US Naval Institute.
The reports – titled “Unleash the Privateers!” and “US Privateering Is Legal”, and published in the April issue of Proceedings – suggest the US government issue letters of marque – a commission authorising privately owned ships (privateers) to capture enemy merchant ships.
The authors – Mark Cancian, a retired US Marine Corps colonel and senior adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), and Brandon Schwartz, a former CSIS media relations manager – said that China’s larger merchant fleet represented an asymmetric vulnerability with the US, and an attack on China’s global trade would undermine its entire economy and threaten its stability.
Such a campaign would be a legal and low-cost way to contain China’s power rise on the sea, they said, adding that it could prevent, rather than provoke, a war.
Collin Koh, a research fellow from the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, said the idea was “politically unsound”.
“That would be regarded as an outright provocation which would invite retaliation from China,” he said.
“And going by the UN Charter, it might even be construed as a use of force, and would invite international condemnation too.”
Privateering with a letter of marque dates back to a period from the mid-16th to the 18th century known as the Age of Sail, but was outlawed with the introduction of various treaties in the 19th and 20th centuries.
However, the authors of the Proceedings reports said that the US government never formally signed any agreements, and argued that the US Constitution gave Congress the power to “grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal”.
Although no such letters had been issued since 1907, that was due to “strategic and policy considerations rather than legal ones”, they said.
The authors did not say if China’s trillions of dollars worth of trade with the US should be exempted from attacks by pirates, but that probably was because it would no longer exist in a hypothetical scenario of the two nations already having decoupled.
Privateering with a letter of marque dates back to a period from the mid-16th to the 18th century known as the Age of Sail. Photo: EPA-EFE
Hong Kong-based military commentator Song Zhongping said that such decoupling, as advocated by American conservatives and far-rights, was a dangerous sign that it would place two nuclear powers in confrontation and even conflict.
“When the Americans decide to act tough against a so-called adversary or enemy, they will spare no effort and limit no means,” he said.
“Privateering on Chinese merchant ships may also be possible.”
Republican congressman Ron Paul raised the issue of using letters of marque against Osama bin Laden and Somalian pirates in 2007 and 2009, but did not succeed.
Julia Xue, chair professor of International Law at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, said the researchers argument was not valid.
“It has been customary international law, and the US is also bonded by it,” she said. “It was an incorrect interpretation of international law.”
Koh said the current policy elites were unlikely to seriously consider such a recommendation, but such articles represented the think tankers who advocated a much harder policy stance against China.
“If anything, it does reflect the growing schism between China and the US, as both countries see their ties sliding downhill under the cloud of strategic lack of trust,” Koh said.
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3079303/us-military-researchers-call-use-privateers-against-china
People in this country wonder why the U.S. inspires so much hatred abroad. It isn’t our culture—-blue jeans, rock ‘n roll and jazz are beloved the world over. War-mongering like this exemplifies the behavior that inspires such enmity and it is utterly disgraceful. More disgraceful still is that it doesn’t inspire disgust and alarm in all strata of American society.
It provides political, historical and cultural context to the Covid-19 outbreak.
Thanks, Ovid-19!
Dave Emory
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/april/unleash-privateers
Unleash the Privateers!
The United States should issue letters of marque to fight Chinese aggression at sea.
By Colonel Mark Cancian, U.S. Marine Corps (Retired) and Brandon Schwartz
April 2020 Proceedings Vol. 146/2/1,406
For a discussion of the law regarding letters of marque, see: U.S. Privateering Is Legal
Naval strategists are struggling to find ways to counter a rising Chinese Navy. The easiest and most comfortable course is to ask for more ships and aircraft, but with a defense budget that may have reached its peak, that may not be a viable strategy. <b?Privateering, authorized by letters of marque, could offer a low-cost tool to enhance deterrence in peacetime and gain advantage in wartime. It would attack an asymmetric vulnerability of China, which has a much larger merchant fleet than the United States. Indeed, an attack on Chinese global trade would undermine China’s entire economy and threaten the regime’s stability. Finally, despite pervasive myths to the contrary, U.S. privateering is not prohibited by U.S. or international law.
What are Letters of Marque?
Privateering is not piracy—there are rules and commissions, called letters of marque, that governments issue to civilians, allowing them to capture or destroy enemy ships.1 The U.S. Constitution expressly grants Congress the power to issue them (Article I, section 8, clause 11). Captured vessels and goods are called prizes, and prize law is set out in the U.S. Code. In the United States, prize claims are adjudicated by U.S. district courts, with proceeds traditionally paid to the privateers.2 (“Privateer” can refer to the crew of a privateering ship or to the ship itself, which also can be referred to as a letter of marque).
Congress would likely set policy—for example, specifying privateer targets, procedures, and qualifications—then authorize the President to oversee the privateering regime.3 Congress also could indemnify privateers from certain liabilities and curb the potential for abuse and violations of international law through surety bonds and updated regulations on conduct.
Letters of marque could be issued quickly, with privateers on the hunt within weeks of the start of a conflict. By contrast, it would take four years to build a single new combatant for the Navy. During the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, privateers vastly outnumbered Navy ships, with one U.S. official calling privateers “our cheapest and best navy.”4 Though many were lost, thousands sailed and disrupted British trade.5 British officials complained they could not guarantee the safety of civilian trade.
Privateering constitutes a once universally accepted but now thoroughly unconventional way of harnessing the private sector in war.
A Rising Chinese Navy
The rise of the Chinese military has been well documented, but a few points highlight why privateering would be a useful element of U.S. naval strategy.
China has built a powerful defensive network around its homeland, sometimes called an antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) envelope. As one element of this strategy, China has expanded its navy from a modest coastal force in the 1980s to an oceangoing force of at least 200 ships, with sophisticated air defenses, antiship missiles, and even aircraft carriers. Backing up the navy are land-based missiles and bombers.
Cracking open such a defense would require a naval campaign more demanding than anything the U.S. Navy has done in the past 70 years, leaving little capability for other tasks, such as hunting down China’s global merchant fleet. Whatever limited naval forces might be left over from a campaign in the Pacific would be needed to keep an eye on other potential adversaries, such as Russia, Iran, or North Korea.
Asymmetric Vulnerabilities
China has aggressively expanded its global economic and diplomatic influence through its Belt and Road Initiative, but this expansion creates a vulnerability, as these investments must be protected. Chinese vulnerability goes deeper. China’s economy has doubled in the past 15 years, driven by exports carried in Chinese hulls. Thirty-eight percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) comes from trade, against only 9 percent of U.S. GDP.6 Chinese social stability is built on a trade-off: The Chinese Communist Party has told the people they will not have democratic institutions, but they will receive economic prosperity.
China’s merchant fleet is large, because the cost to China of building and operating merchant ships is low, and its export-driven economy creates a huge demand. In 2018, China had 2,112 ships in its global merchant fleet and Hong Kong had another 2,185.7 In addition, China has a massive long-distance fishing fleet, estimated at 2,500 vessels.8
By contrast, the United States has only 246 ships in its merchant fleet. That fleet—expensive to build and operate—is sustained mainly by the Jones Act, which mandates that ships conveying cargo between U.S. ports must be U.S.-flagged.
This asymmetric vulnerability gives the United States a major strategic advantage. The threat privateering poses to the Chinese economy—and hence the Communist Party—could provide the United States with a major wartime advantage and enhance peacetime deterrence, thus making war less likely. Even if China threatens to dispatch its own privateers, U.S. vulnerability is comparatively small.
Size of the Dog in the Fight
The ordinary course of action would be to have U.S. Navy warships drive China’s merchant fleet from the seas. However, the U.S. Navy would have its hands full taking on the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The U.S. fleet is down to about 295 ships, and though it may reach and surpass 340 in the early 2040s before declining again, the goal of 355 ships is probably out of reach.9 A conflict with China would likely require this entire fleet; indeed, against a capable PLAN adversary defending its home waters, even 355 ships might be too few.
By contrast, in World War II, the U.S. Navy grew to 6,700 ships, counting neither Great Britain’s huge fleet nor contributions from other allies.10 And the allies, Britain and France particularly, had a global network of colonies that denied adversaries sanctuary and provided bases for operations against enemy ships. Comparable assets will not be available in a future conflict. Indeed, some former allies and colonies might even give sanctuary to Chinese vessels.11
Cruise the Seas for Chinese Gold
Capitalizing on Chinese vulnerabilities requires large numbers of ships, and the private sector could provide them. The ocean is large, and there are thousands of ports to hide in or dash between. While the Navy could not afford to have a multibillion-dollar destroyer sitting outside Rio de Janeiro for weeks waiting for Chinese vessels to leave, a privateer could patiently wait nearby as U.S. diplomats put pressure on (presumably neutral) Brazil.
Neither recruiting crews nor the need to arm ships would constitute a major obstacle. Privateers do not need to be heavily armed, because they would be taking on lightly (or un-) armed merchant vessels, choosing vulnerable targets, or acting cooperatively with other privateers. Since the goal is to capture the hulls and cargo, privateers do not want to sink the vessel, just convince the crew to surrender. How many merchant crews would be inclined to fight rather than surrender and spend the war in comfortable internment?12
The existing private military industry would doubtless jump at the chance to privateer. Dozens of companies currently provide security services, from the equivalent of mall guards to armed antipiracy contingents on ships. A large pool of potential recruits has shown willingness to work for private contractors. At the height of the Iraq War, for example, the United States employed 20,000 armed contractors in security jobs.
In fact, private security vessels already have been created, demonstrating the concept’s viability. The private security firm Blackwater outfitted an armed patrol craft to defend commercial shipping from Somali pirates.13 At the height of Somali piracy, there were some 2,700 armed contractors on ships and 40 private armed patrol boats operating in the Indian Ocean region.14
Just as the prospect of prize money induced thousands of seamen to sign on with privateers during the Revolution and the War of 1812, similar inducements—such as the prospect of earning millions of dollars from a single capture—would attract the needed personnel in a future conflict.
New Approaches Required
The notion of privateering makes naval strategists uncomfortable because it is an approach to war that does not conform to the way the U.S. Navy has fought since 1815. There is no modern experience of their use, and there are legitimate concerns about legal foundations and international opinion. But strategists cannot argue for out-of-the-box thinking to face the rising challenge of China and then revert to conventional solutions because out-of-the-box thinking makes them uncomfortable.
As the strategic situation is new, so must our thinking be new. In wartime, privateers could swarm the oceans and destroy the maritime industry on which China’s economy—and the stability of its regime—depend. The mere threat of such a campaign might strengthen deterrence and thereby prevent a war from happening at all. In strategy, as elsewhere, everything old shall be new again.
1. Department of Defense (DoD), Law of War Manual (2016), § 13.5.2; Louise Doswald-Beck, ed., San Remo Manual on International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea (International Institute of Humanitarian Law, 1995), Rules 13(i), 40–41, 59–60, 135, 138–39.
2. 10 USC § 8852. For prize law, see 10 USC §§ 8851–81, and 10 USC § 7668 (allowing courts to only pay net proceeds into the Treasury).
3. U.S. Congress, An Act Concerning Letters of Marque, and Prizes, chapter 102, 26 June 1812.
4. Donald R. Hickey, The War of 1812: A Forgotten Conflict (Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 96
5. Edgar Stanton Maclay, A History of American Privateers (London: Sampson, Low, Marston, and Co., 1900), 506; George F. Emmons, The Navy of the United States: from the Commencement, 1775, to 1853 (Washington, DC: 1853), 170–203.
6. World Bank Trade Database, data.worldbank.org.
7. “Merchant Marine” in CIA Factbook 2018 (Washington, DC: 2018).
8. Gary Doyle, “Chinese Trawlers Travel Farthest and Fish the Most: Study,” Reuters, 22 February 2018.
9. Congressional Budget Office, An Analysis of the Navy’s Fiscal Year 2019 Shipbuilding Plan (19 October 2018).
10. Naval History and Heritage Command, “U.S. Ship Force Levels 1886–Present,” http://www.history.navy.mil.
11. MAJ Nicholas R. Nappi, USMC, “But Will They Fight China?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 144, no. 5 (May 2018).
12. DoD, Law of War Manual, note 1 at §13.5.3.
13. Kim Sangupta, “Blackwater Gunboats Will Protect Ships,” The Independent, 19 November 2008.
14. Sean McFate, The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 142.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
U.S. Privateering Is Legal
By Brandon Schwartz
April 2020 Proceedings Vol. 146/2/1,406
(See also: Unleash the Privateers!)
Issuing letters of marque presents international legal risks—some real, others imagined—but these are manageable. Further, since a conflict with China might, to paraphrase Dean Acheson, threaten the power, position, and even the existence of the United States, the demands of the conflict would limit the salience of law.1 Such a conflict would result in thousands of U.S. service member deaths and the nearly certain loss of dozens of U.S. Navy ships. The proper frame of reference is spring 1942, when the United States was reeling from the harsh realities of war with Imperial Japan, and not the regional conflicts of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, in which the United States had overwhelming military superiority. A conflict with China would be World War III, not Gulf War III. Military and civilian leaders, as well as the public at large, should judge risks in those terms.
The first risks affect privateers themselves. Under the laws of war and neutrality, warships have rights against arrest and proscription by neutrals. Neutrals might choose not to extend those rights to privateers that want to enter their national waters, for example, to refuel. The United States could mitigate this by using friendly ports, negotiating understandings with neutrals, or pacifying them with other elements of U.S. power.
Critics will call privateers mercenaries, but that would hold no water, legally speaking. [ed. note: interesting the way the author shifts between disregard for, and reliance upon “the law”] The 1977 Additional Protocol I (AP I) of the Geneva Conventions deprived mercenaries of combatant and prisoner-of-war rights, but even under AP I (which the United States has not adopted), privateers cannot be labeled “mercenaries” so long as they are a national of a party to the conflict or a resident of territory controlled by a party to the conflict. [ed. note: It’s perhaps useful to compare/contrast this attitude with the claims advanced by the Pentagoons in Afghanistan re: so called “illegal combatants” who were by all appearances “residents of the territory controlled by a party to the contract.”]
Under both the Second (sick and shipwrecked members of the armed forces at sea) and Third (prisoners of war) Geneva Conventions, privateers are entitled to significant protections. They would be regarded as “members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps” so long as they (1) are commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates, (2) bear fixed distinctive signs recognizable at a distance, (3) carry arms openly, and (4) conduct their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.2 These requirements can easily be accommodated. [or overlooked as appears to have been the case with the French Maquis — ed]
The other legal hurdle is the myth that the law of naval warfare prohibits U.S. privateering. This confusion arises because some scholars assert that the 1856 Paris Declaration—whose first article banned privateering between the treaty parties—somehow established a customary international prohibition on privateering.3 However, the United States refused to sign the Declaration because it was a bad deal in light of the comparatively small U.S. Navy of the day.4
Some arguments about a customary prohibition are based on the mistaken belief that U.S. acquiescence to the Declaration can be discerned from the United States having contemplated accession during the Civil War or President William McKinley’s 1898 <a href=“https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/proclamation-413-standards-conduct-and-respect-neutral-rights-the-war-with-spain“Proclamation 413 during the Spanish-American War.5 However, the United States ultimately chose not to accede.6 Moreover, in an introductory paragraph, Proclamation 413 merely provided that it would be U.S. policy “not to resort to privateering”—implying in this one conflict—“but to adhere to the rules of the [Declaration].” That paragraph also referenced a prior announcement by Secretary of State John Sherman that contemporaneous scholars clearly understood to state that the United States felt legally obligated by the Declaration’s last three articles, but not by the ban on privateering.7
[It would be interesting perhaps to see how this plays out in the ICL given the doctrine of Universal Jurisdiction — ed]
China, and likely other maritime nations, nonetheless will argue that customary international law prohibits privateering. To this, the United States can respond by noting that historical U.S. rejection of the prohibition blocked a general customary prohibition from forming under the doctrine of specially affected states.8 That doctrine assigns greater weight to the practice of states that have a distinctive history of participating in, for example, naval warfare and allows their dissent to block custom formation.9
Even if a general custom has formed, the United States can argue that it has reserved a dormant right to privateer through the persistent objector rule.10 Under this rule, a state is not bound by a custom that it objected to while the custom was emerging. U.S. objection can be found in presidential messages; diplomatic correspondence between 1854 and 1907; and even U.S. law.11
[It could be reasonably argued that the US lost this status when McKinley issued Proclamation 413, in which the US both acknowledged the validity of, and agreed to adhere to, the international agreement and its “rules” — ed]
Privateering was again on the chopping block at the Second Hague Conference in 1907. The United States rejected Hague Convention VII (Conversion of Merchant Ships into War-Ships) because, as a U.S. delegate noted, “The United States has not renounced the right to resort to privateering.”12 The formation of customary international law requires relatively consistent state practice done out of a sense of legal obligation, but the absence of U.S. privateering since 1907 has resulted from strategic and policy considerations rather than legal ones.13
[because nothing says “consistent state practice” quite like honoring a treaty when convenient and disregarding it when inconvenient — ed]
Finally, China’s largest shipping company, COSCO, and most of China’s merchant shipping companies are state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The U.S. and foreign publics would likely be more accepting of action against them than privately owned merchant ships. The public also might warm to the idea of privateering if they were to become more aware of China’s maritime militia (see “The South China Sea Needs a COIN Toss,” May 2019, pp. 16–21), which comprises thousands of commercial fishing vessels under the command and control of the Central Military Commission.
But that is all public relations; there is no legally significant difference between an SOE merchant ship and a privately owned merchant ship, so far as privateering would be concerned. All enemy merchant ships—SOE or otherwise—may be captured, and in some cases destroyed, if located outside neutral territory. Further, for the purpose of determining whether any given vessel is a lawful object of attack, both privately owned merchant vessels and SOE vessels are fair game if they constitute a military objective.14
1. Dean Acheson, “Remarks on the Cuba Quarantine,” Proceedings of the American Society of International Law, 57th Annual Meeting (1963), 14.
2. Jean Pictet, ed., Commentary on the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, vol. 2: Geneva Convention for the Amelioration of the Condition of Wounded, Sick and Shipwrecked Members of Armed Forces at Sea (Geneva, Switzerland: International Committee of the Red Cross, 1960); Second Geneva Convention, article 13(2); Third Geneva Convention, article 4(2).
3. Lassa Oppenheim, International Law: A Treatise, 8th ed., H. Lauterpacht ed., vol. II: Disputes, War & Neutrality, 461; James Kraska and Raul Pedrozo, International Maritime Security Law (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Nijhoff, 2013), 867; Hisakazu Fujita, The Law of Naval Warfare, Natalino Ronzitti ed. (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill | Nijhoff, 1988), 68, 70.
4. Sir Francis Taylor Piggott, The Declaration of Paris, 1856: A Study, Documented (London: University of London Press ltd., 1919), 142–49; Carlton Savage, Policy of the United States toward Maritime Commerce in War, vol. I: 1776–1914 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1935), 76–81, 89–90.
5. “The Marie Glaeser,” Times Legal Reports 31 (1914), 1, 10; William McKinley, “Proclamation 413—Standards of Conduct and Respect of Neutral Rights in the War with Spain.”
6. Piggott, The Declaration of Paris, note 4 at 154–61, 206–13.
7. U.S. House of Representatives, 55th Congress, 3rd Session, Papers Related to the Foreign Relations of the United States (Serial Set 3743) (Washington, DC: GPO, 1901), 1170–71; J. B. Moore, A Digest of International Law, vol. 7 (Washington, DC: 1906), 541–42; Charles H. Stockton, The Declaration of Paris, 14; American Society of International Law, American Journal of International Law 14 (1920), 356, 362, 367.
8. President Franklin Pierce, Second Annual Message to Congress, 4 December 1854.
9. See John B. Bellinger III and William J. Haynes II, “A U.S. Government Response to the International Committee of the Red Cross Study Customary International Humanitarian Law,” International Review of the Red Cross 89 (2007): 443 at n. 4; “Principles Applicable to the Formation of General Customary International Law,” International Law Association (ILA), Report of the Sixty-Ninth Conference (London: 2000), Principle 14, Commentary, paragraph (e), 26.
10. ILA, note 9 at Principle 15, 27–29.
11. “Letter of Mr. Marcy, Sec. of State, to Mr. Sartiges,” 28 July 1856, in Miscellaneous Documents of the U.S. Senate (Washington, DC: GPO, 1886); U.S. Congress, An Act Concerning Letters of Marque, Prizes, and Prize Goods, chapter 85 (3 March 1863).
12. James Brown Scott, The Hague Peace Conferences of 1899 and 1907: A Series of Lectures Delivered before the Johns Hopkins University in the Year 1908, vol. 2 (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1909), 222–23.
13. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Message to Congress on the Arming of Merchant Ships, 9 October 1941.
14. DoD, Law of War Manual, note 1 at §5.7 and §13.5.2.
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2020/april/us-privateering-legal
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03068374.2019.1636515
Coronavirus ends China’s honeymoon in Africa
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/04/16/coronavirus-china-africa-191444
Beijing has spent billions to win friends and influence politics in Africa. But the virus is threatening to upend years of careful work.
By SIMON MARKS
04/16/2020 04:52 PM EDT
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — Africa was supposed to be China’s new stomping grounds. Instead, the novel coronavirus has spawned a growing backlash that threatens to unwind the ties Beijing has carefully cultivated over decades.
The trigger for the burgeoning diplomatic crisis: Anger over the treatment of African citizens living in China and frustration at Beijing’s position on granting debt relief to fight against the outbreak.
China has spent untold billions in Africa since its emergence as a global power, investing in its natural resources, underwriting massive infrastructure projects and wooing its leaders. The campaign has bought China friends and allies in multilateral institutions such as the United Nations and the World Health Organization, undermining the West’s once-reliable lock on the postwar world order while fueling its economy back home.
But that decades long quest for influence in Africa was gravely challenged last week when a group of disgruntled African ambassadors in Beijing wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi to complain that citizens from Togo, Nigeria and Benin living in Guangzhou, southern China, were evicted from their homes and made to undergo obligatory testing for Covid-19.
[NB: “Ethiopia” is conspicuously absent from this list. Could it have been used in the byline as a subtle propaganda tool intended to draw reader attention away from the oil aspect of this story? — ed]
“In some cases, the men were pulled out of their families and quarantined in hotels alone,” the note, seen by POLITICO, said.
The incident, which caused widespread discontent both within Africa and among the diaspora after videos posted on social media showed people of African descent being evicted from their homes, resulting in a rare diplomatic showdown between Chinese and African officials.
It also broke a long-standing tradition of Africa voicing its problems with China — the continent’s biggest trade partner — behind closed doors.
In one incident, Nigeria’s speaker of the House of Representatives, Femi Gbajabiamila, posted a video of himself summoning Chinese Ambassador Zhou Pingjian to his office where he expressed his displeasure about a Nigerian man being evicted from his home.
[NB: Nigeria is heavily influenced by the Petroleum Cartels led by Shell and Standard Oil’s successor corporations — this corruption may include the speaker of Nigeria’s parliament who, according to some reports, has been implicated at least circumstantially, to bribe-taking. This may be something worth looking into further — ed.]
While nobody expects China to lose its place as Africa’s biggest bilateral lender and trade partner, analysts and African diplomats say there is a distinct possibility of lasting damage. Reluctance from China to endorse a G‑20 decision to suspend Africa’s debt payments until the end of the year has exacerbated the sense of frustration, they said.
“There is a lot of tension within the relationship. I think both of these issues are the newest manifestations of long-term problems,” said Cobus van Staden, a senior researcher at the South African Institute of International Affairs. “Africa’s official response [to its citizens in China] took into account popular sentiment a lot more than it usually would have.”
Some scholars have documented how politicians in Africa have boosted their electoral base by mobilizing anti-Chinese sentiment, while many ordinary people perceive China’s success in the region as a threat to their own well-being.
Although China’s government and the billionaire founder of the Alibaba Group, Jack Ma, have been among the most generous and eager members of the international community to assist Africa in fighting Covid-19, Beijing’s overtaking of the World Bank as the biggest single lender to Africa has made it less inclined to write off the money it is owed. The Chinese government and the China Development Bank lent more than $150 billion to Africa between 2000 and 2018, according to the China Africa Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.
U.S. officials, including Tibor Nagy, assistant secretary for the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, have strongly condemned the treatment of Africans in China, resulting in China snapping back at Washington by accusing it of sowing unnecessary discord between the pair.
Chinese officials have moved quickly to seal the emerging rift. Ambassador Liu Yuxi, Beijing’s head of mission to the African Union, released a photo of himself giving a socially distanced elbow bump to his African counterpart — while distancing the Beijing government from the authorities in Guangzhou.
At the same time, Zhang Minjing, political counselor at the mission, downplayed the controversy in comments to POLITICO. Beijing had “championed” a debt initiative agreed upon by the G‑20, he said, and is “committed to taking all possible steps to support the poor.” As for the recent tumult in Guangzhou, he said, “the rock-solid China-Africa Friendship will not be affected by isolated incidents.”
Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala
AFRICA
Africa to G‑20: Debt relief deal to ease coronavirus crisis not enough
BY SIMON MARKS
“China is against any differential treatment targeting any specific group of people. China and Africa are good brothers and comrades-in-arms. We are always there for each other come rain or shine,” he added.
But there are also growing concerns in Beijing that its multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects in places such as Zimbabwe have now ground to a halt because of the coronavirus. Not only are engineering personnel unable to travel to the continent, but construction materials are running low as supply chains dry up.
Africans are going to need all the help they can get. After years of rapid growth, the International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said sub-Saharan Africa’s gross domestic product would shrink this year by 1.6 percent due to the effects of the coronavirus, low oil prices and poor commodity prices. In Ethiopia alone, the government has estimated that 1.4 million jobs will be lost over the next three months, according to a document seen by POLITICO, roughly 3 percent of the workforce. Africa has recorded 17,701 coronavirus cases and 915 deaths — a toll that will likely climb rapidly, and likely underestimates the scale of the continent’s predicament.
So far, the rest of the world has done little to help. On Monday, the IMF granted $215 million in initial debt relief to 25 African countries — a relative pittance compared with the vast sums those countries owe. On Wednesday, G‑20 nations, which include China, the U.S., India and others, did offer to suspend debt payments until the end of 2020 despite calls from French President Emmanuel Macron to help African countries by “massively canceling their debt.”
But Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, one of four special envoys to the African Union to solicit G‑20 support in dealing with the coronavirus, said Africa was still “pushing for more.” In an interview, Okonjo-Iweala said she believed “China is coming along” to provide Africa with debt relief across the board and not simply on a case-by-case basis. “I don’t believe it’s against supporting African countries on this. I’ve heard actually to the contrary,” she said. “What we need from China is not a case-by-case examination, but an across-the-board agreement.”
Stephen Karingi, director of the trade division at the U.N.’s Economic Commission for Africa, said support from the international community should be “weighed against the damage Covid-19 will cause” in Africa. “We think that 2020 and 2021 will be difficult and support should have that in mind or such a horizon,” Karingi said.
How damaging the latest events will be to the political and commercial ties that have made China Africa’s largest trading partner are unclear.
On the official level, there are signs that all will soon be forgotten. A senior African diplomat to the African Union, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the issue, said, “When it comes to China, I doubt we will see long-term problems.”
“They’ve got a lot invested on the continent, in the AU, in this city,” the official added.
“They’re everywhere. Realistically, I think it’s important both sides understand why this is happening and try and resolve this mutually.”
Still, a host of African officials have made sure China does not get away lightly with its treatment of Africans living in China. Over the weekend, Moussa Faki, chairman of the African Union Commission, said he had “invited” the Chinese ambassador to the AU to express his “extreme concern” for the situation, while Chinese ambassadors in Nigeria and Ghana were summoned to give an explanation.
President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa said the ill treatment of African nationals in China was “inconsistent with the excellent relations that exist between China and Africa, dating back to China’s support during the decolonization struggle in Africa.”
A senior AU official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the matter, said Chinese officials were particularly alarmed by the public dimension of the incident that exploded on social media. But, the official said, many African nations were pleased by remarks delivered by Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian on Sunday in which he underlined “the African side’s reasonable concerns and legitimate appeals.”
Whether the people living on the continent forget so easily is another matter altogether.
“It’s going to be contentious among those communities for a lot longer,” said van Staden of the South African Institute of International Affairs.
[in re: McDonalds role in the current accusations of racism being leveled against “China” — and not, you know, whoever owned this franchise — it should be noted, perhaps, that McDonalds China was recently (2017) sold to....(wait for it!)....the Cheney-Rumsfeld-NEOCON-connected Carlyle Group.]
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mcdonalds-china/golden-arches-mcdonalds-gets-naew-china-name-following-unit-sale-idUSKBN1CV0FB
BUSINESS NEWSOCTOBER 25, 2017 / 10:30 PM / 2 YEARS AGO
‘Golden Arches’: McDonald’s gets new China name following unit sale
SHANGHAI (Reuters) — U.S. fast food giant McDonald’s Corp (MCD.N) is getting a name change in China — at least on paper.
The firm will change its registered business name to “Golden Arches (China) Co Ltd”, a spokeswoman confirmed to Reuters on Thursday, adding though that its brand name in China — a transliteration of McDonald’s — would be unchanged.
The shift comes after the chain agreed earlier in the year to sell most of its China and Hong Kong business to CITIC Ltd (0267.HK) and Carlyle Group (CG.O). The business plans to nearly double the number of its outlets in mainland China to 4,500 by 2022.
“It will still be clearly ‘McDonald’s’ when diners come to our stores,” the chain said on its official China microblog.
“Our restaurant name will remain the same, the change is only at business license level,” spokeswoman Regina Hui added in emailed comments to Reuters. She declined to comment further on the reason for the change.
McDonald’s in China and Hong Kong is 52 percent owned by CITIC, while Carlyle has a 28 percent stake. McDonald’s itself retains a 20 percent interest in the business.
The structure is aimed at improving sales at existing stores and expanding outlets. Fast-food firms including McDonald’s and rival Yum China’s (YUMC.N) KFC are bouncing back from a series of food-supply scandals in China that had dented performance.
McDonald’s reported robust sales on Tuesday, including better-than-expected growth in the United States and strong performances in Canada, Britain and China.
Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Christopher Cushing
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