Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.
The tag 'China Lobby' is associated with 18 posts.

FTR#1261 Bong-Bong and the Marcos Continuum

Explor­ing a deep polit­i­cal, his­tor­i­cal and eco­nom­ic dynam­ic, this pro­gram sets forth fun­da­men­tal aspects of what the late, bril­liant Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave called “The Mar­cos Dynasty.”

This pro­gram excerpts two of their excel­lent books–which Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends. There are links pro­vid­ed with each text excerpt to facil­i­tate the acqui­si­tion of the books, which, again, Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends.

Recent­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent of the Philip­pines (with close rel­a­tives of for­mer pres­i­dent Duterte as aides), Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Jr.—nicknamed Bong-Bong—has net­worked with U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Antony Blinken and renewed an invig­o­rat­ed, anti-Chi­na alliance.

Essen­tial for an under­stand­ing of the Bong-Bong/Blinken liai­son is aware­ness of Mar­cos, Jr.’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in his dic­ta­tor father’s phe­nom­e­nal­ly lucra­tive recov­er­ies of Gold­en Lily war gold secret­ed in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. 

This sub­ject is cov­ered in the land­mark text Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave.

(FTR #‘s 427, 428, 446, 451, 501, 688, 689, 1106, 1107 & 1108 deal with the sub­ject mate­r­i­al of that con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant book.)

Fer­di­nand, Sr.’s rise was aid­ed by his “god­fa­ther,” Judge Chua, who was his bio­log­i­cal father in an out-of-wed­lock liai­son. This was rel­a­tive­ly com­mon in the Philip­pines and not stig­ma­tized as in many oth­er soci­eties.

Judge Chua’s posi­tion in the Chua fam­i­ly gave him great influ­ence. In turn, the clan asso­ci­a­tions of Chi­nese in the Philip­pines were fun­da­men­tal to the pro­fes­sion­al and social under­tak­ings of mem­bers of that com­mu­ni­ty.

Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the strong affil­i­a­tion of the clans with the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-shek, impart­ing a fas­cist ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion to them. This was a major deep polit­i­cal influ­ence on Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr., the out-of-wed­lock son of the influ­en­tial Judge Chua.

Next, we present the deep polit­i­cal back­ground that shaped Fer­di­nand Mar­cos and an explo­ration of the man­ner in which eco­nom­ic class con­sid­er­a­tions shaped alliances dur­ing the Japan­ese fas­cist occu­pa­tion of the Philip­pines and its after­math.

In FTR#‘s 905, 970, among oth­er pro­grams, we explored how the U.S. reha­bil­i­tat­ed and resus­ci­tat­ed the Japan­ese fas­cist infra­struc­ture from that nation’s World War II impe­r­i­al state.

We have spo­ken of promi­nent Japan­ese fas­cists Sasakawa Ryoichi and Kodama Yoshio in numer­ous pro­grams.

Com­bined with Chi­ang Kai-shek’s reac­tionary stance, those reha­bil­i­tat­ed Japan­ese fas­cists con­sti­tut­ed the crit­i­cal foun­da­tion of America’s Cold War in Asia.

The MacArthur team in the Philip­pines dur­ing the Cold War was culled from the col­lab­o­ra­tionist milieu who worked with the Japan­ese dur­ing the occu­pa­tion. This includ­ed the head of the Japan­ese occu­pa­tion gov­ern­ment, Jose Lau­rel, as well as Benig­no Aquino Sr. and Manuel Rox­as.

Fol­low­ing the ouster of Fer­di­nand Mar­cos, Sr. the Philip­pine gov­ern­ment was head­ed by Cory Aquino, the wid­ow of slain CIA agent Benig­no Aquino, Jr. and Sal­vador Lau­rel, the son of Jose Lau­rel.

Col­lab­o­ra­tor Manuel Rox­as was MacArthur’s “favorite son” to man­age post­war Philip­pine gov­ern­ment.


Patreon Update: Latest Talks Plus First Zoom Q & A Scheduled for June 5

The Patre­on site con­tin­ues to devel­op and take form: The first Zoom Q & A Ses­sion is sched­uled for 6/5 in the late afternoon/early evening. In addi­tion, the lat­est talks devel­op both recent polit­i­cal events and his­tor­i­cal trends. Top­ics of dis­cus­sion include: the mass shoot­ings in Uvalde Texas and Buf­fa­lo, NY; Don­ald Trump’s suc­cess­ful use of polit­i­cal mythol­o­gy to devel­op his cam­paign and Pres­i­den­cy; the unsa­vory polit­i­cal con­nec­tions of Bernie Sanders and Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez; the late Sen­a­tor Eugene McCarthy’s so-called “Peace Can­di­da­cy” in 1968; Mr. Emory’s own expe­ri­ence com­ing of age dur­ing the Viet­nam War. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


New on Patreon: Series of Talks on #MeToo Movement, Weaponized Feminism, Peng Shuai “Psy-Op”

A more com­pact, less pedan­tic for­mat than the mas­sive For The Record series, the lat­est Patre­on talks focus on “Weaponized Feminism”–the #MeToo polit­i­cal destruc­tion of key Democ­rats, eclips­ing Don­ald Trump’s explic­it sex­u­al pre­da­tion and misog­y­nism in the wake of Hillary Clin­ton’s defeat. Dis­cus­sion of #MeToo man­i­fes­ta­tions relat­ed to the Covid “op” and the full court press against Chi­na include a detailed dis­cus­sion of the Peng Shuai “Psy-Op.” These pre­sen­ta­tions effec­tive­ly chal­lenge the con­ven­tion­al wis­dom. Ukrain­ian tele­vi­sion anchor quotes Adolf Eich­mann ver­ba­tim in this video from UKRAINE 24. This video of Ukraine’s top mil­i­tary med­ical offi­cer dis­cussing an order to cas­trate Russ­ian males is an eye-open­er. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE. Mr. Emory emphat­i­cal­ly rec­om­mends that listeners/readers get the 32GB flash dri­ve con­tain­ing all of Mr. Emory’s 43 years on the air, plus a library of old anti-fas­cist books on easy-to-down­load PDF files.


Peng Shuai Psy-Op, Part 2: 1936 Redux?

In FTR#801, we not­ed that Inter­na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tee head Thomas Bach owed much of his ascent to that posi­tion from his long, close asso­ci­a­tion with Adi­das. WTA head Steve Simon also has a long asso­ci­a­tion with Adi­das. Adi­das’ founder was an enthu­si­as­tic Nazi, as was his broth­er and alleged Gestapo agent Rudolf, founder of Puma. Both com­pa­nies may well be com­po­nents of the remark­able and dead­ly Bor­mann orga­ni­za­tion. The upcom­ing Win­ter Games is being com­pared to the 1936 Sum­mer Games in Ger­many. The alle­ga­tion is more than a lit­tle iron­ic in view of the devel­op­ment of Adi­das and the role of the firm in those Olympics. The alle­ga­tion is also spec­tac­u­lar­ly iron­ic in that the media flak for the “Uighur Geno­cide” meme is Adri­an Zenz, whose polit­i­cal her­itage is dis­played in the pic­ture above, right. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


Peng Shuai “Psy-Op,” Part 1 UPDATED ON 12/17/2021

George Orwell observed that: “Polit­i­cal language…is designed to make lies sound truth­ful and mur­der respectable, and to give an appear­ance of solid­i­ty to pure wind.” We present the first of a series of posts and pro­grams set against the back­ground of Orwell’s obser­va­tion and the con­nec­tions high­light­ed in FTR#801. In that pro­gram, we set forth the involve­ment and close prox­im­i­ty of key play­ers in the Peng Shuai gam­bit to the forces of inter­na­tion­al fas­cism and orga­nized crime. As a “Moon of Alaba­ma” post makes unde­ni­ably clear, Peng Shuai did NOT charge Zhang Ghaoli with sex­u­al assault. Her e‑mail to WTA stat­ed exact­ly that. A sim­ple check of the tran­script of Ms. Shuai’s remarks under­scores the accu­ra­cy of MOA’s break­down of the event. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


Supplement to the Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek Series

As William Faulkn­er not­ed: “The past is nev­er dead and buried. It isn’t even past.” In FTR#1209–part of the recent­ly con­clud­ed series on “The Nar­co-Fas­cism of Chi­ang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang”–we wrapped up the broad­cast with dis­cus­sion of the sem­i­nal influ­ence of Chi­ang’s drug-deal­ing regime on asso­ci­at­ed Amer­i­can nation­al secu­ri­ty ele­ments that con­tin­ued and expand­ed that nar­cotics traf­fick­ing. A char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly inci­sive, infor­ma­tive foot­note in Peter Dale Scot­t’s “Amer­i­can War Machine” fur­ther devel­ops the pro­found oper­a­tional imprint that the KMT had on post World War II U.S. intel­li­gence net­works. Exem­pli­fy­ing the Kuom­intang fas­cist her­itage of this milieu is Gen­er­al George Olm­stead, in charge of covert “ops” for Albert Wede­mey­er, who leaked FDR’s Rain­bow Five mobi­liza­tion plan, as dis­cussed in, among oth­er pro­grams, FTR#1202. This was a con­sum­mate act of trea­son. WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.


FTR#1214 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 21

This pro­gram con­cludes the series.

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

Next, the pro­gram high­lights key aspects of the career of Ching-Ling Soong, aka Mme. Sun Yat-sen.

Sis­ter of Ai-Ling (aka Mme. H.H. Kung), Mae-ling (aka Mme. Chi­ang Kai-shek) and T.V., T.A. and T.L. Soong, she had a long and remark­able career. 

For the pur­pos­es of this descrip­tion, we re-print mate­r­i­al from FTR#1202.

The fate of the Third Force or Third Option formed by Mme. Sun Yat-sen (nee Ching-ling Soong) and Teng Yen-ta, a per­sis­tent crit­ic of Chi­ang Kai-shek, was pre­dictable.

Dis­il­lu­sioned with Com­mu­nism after a sojourn in Moscow, Mme. Sun Yat-sen part­nered with Teng Yen-ta, who rec­og­nized Chi­ang’s fas­cism and, yet, felt that the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty (at that point in time) was over­ly loy­al to Moscow and was­n’t doing enough for the Chi­nese peas­antry.

Both Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta sought an alter­na­tive to both Kuom­intang fas­cism and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

Find­ing the demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism pro­posed by Ching-ling and Teng Yen-ta unac­cept­able, Chi­ang had the British and Amer­i­can police author­i­ties arrest him in the Inter­na­tion­al Con­ces­sion in Shang­hai, after which he was tor­tured for many months.

Ching-ling was report­ed to have vis­it­ed Chi­ang to plead for Teng Yen-ta’s release. Chi­ang had  already dealt with him in char­ac­ter­is­tic fash­ion: “ . . . . Days ear­li­er, on Novem­ber 29, 1931, near­ly a year after his arrest, Ten Yen-ta had been tak­en from his cell at Chiang’s com­mand and was slow­ly stran­gled with a wire. The exe­cu­tion­er was said to be famous for keep­ing vic­tims alive for half an hour while he tight­ened his grip. In his office, Chi­ang had remained silent while Ching-ling plead­ed for a man already dead, enjoy­ing the spec­ta­cle of her momen­tary vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty. . . .”

Next, we recount Mme. Sun’s encounter with a Kuomintang/Green Gang agent.

After rebuff­ing his polit­i­cal approach, Mme. Sun Yat-sen demol­ished his  polit­i­cal per­sona.

. . . . “Soong: ‘There is only one way to silence me, Mr. Tai. Shoot me or imprison me. If you don’t then it sim­ply means that you admit you are not wrong­ly accused. But what­ev­er you do, do it open­ly like me, don’t . . . sur­round me with spies.’

Tai: ‘I shall call again upon my return from Nanking.

Soong: ‘Fur­ther con­ver­sa­tions would be useless—the gulf between us is too wide.’

As Tai Ch’i‑tao and his wife left, the old man turned and—his tongue flick­ing over dry lips (he was a very ner­vous man)—hissed out a part­ing bit of ven­om: ‘If you were any­one but Madame Sun, we would cut your head off.’

Ching-ling smiled. ‘If you were the rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies you pre­tend to be, you’d cut it off any­way.’. . .”

Infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by Ster­ling Seagrave–of which Mr. Emory was not pre­vi­ous­ly aware–indicates that the CCP is more nuanced than Amer­i­cans have been led to believe.

Although resist­ing mem­ber­ship in the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and attempt­ing to re-start the Third Option on the eve of Chi­ang’s capit­u­la­tion and flight to Tai­wan, Mme. Sun Yat-sen was installed as one of three Vice-Chair­men of the gov­ern­ment.

Again, this is not some­thing of which Mr. Emory was aware until read­ing this book.

“ . . . . Ching-ling sold many of her remain­ing pos­ses­sions to sup­port pro­grams of the Chi­na Wel­fare League she had found­ed. In 1948, with the Chi­ang regime ready to flee and the Com­mu­nists on their way to vic­to­ry, she took part in a last attempt to orga­nize an alter­na­tive to both com­mu­nism and fascism—a new ver­sion of the Third Force. It was called the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Com­mit­tee, and Ching-ling was named its hon­orary chair­man. Its con­stituen­cy was the pow­er­less. . . .”

“ . . . . When the People’s Repub­lic came into exis­tence, Ching-ling became one of the three non-Com­mu­nist polit­i­cal lead­ers cho­sen as Vice-Chair­men of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in Peking. . . .”

Mme. Sun (Ching-ling Soong) man­i­fest­ed a strong­ly inde­pen­dent ide­o­log­i­cal stance, which, while anti-fas­cist and anti-impe­ri­al­ist, sought (as we have seen) a “Third Force” or “Third Option” between Com­mu­nism and Chi­ang’s nar­co-fas­cism.

That inde­pen­dence of mind, demon­strat­ed through decades of social strug­gle, plus out­right jeal­ousy on the part of Madame Mao led to defama­tion and per­se­cu­tion dur­ing the dis­as­trous Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, with Mme. Sun nar­row­ly escap­ing the rav­ages of the Red Guard.

“ . . . . Dur­ing the Red Guard ram­pages of the 1960’s, the job of pro­tect­ing Madame Sun became nerve-rack­ing. Posters appeared denounc­ing her, and it was not safe for her to go any­where. . . .”

“ . . . . In the sum­mer of 1966, Pre­mier Chou En-lai was forced to warn the Red Guards to cease their ver­bal attacks on Madame Sun, and to stop putting up posters accus­ing her of being a bour­geois reac­tionary. On Sep­tem­ber 21, 1966, in Shang­hai where the Red Guard move­ment fre­quent­ly got out of con­trol, a mob stormed Ching-ling’s house on the Avenue Jof­fre and loot­ed it. Ching-ling was not in Shang­hai at the time. She let the inci­dent pass with­out com­ment. Her chief adver­sary was the wife of Chair­man Mao, who appar­ent­ly resent­ed the fact that Ching-ling was always men­tioned as the woman of high­est rank in Chi­na.

“ . . . . When the Red Guard move­ment abat­ed, and Madame Mao and the cel­e­brat­ed Gang of Four were tried in a people’s court as coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies, Ching-ling’s life set­tled back into a tran­quil twi­light. . . .”

“ . . . . On May 16, 1981, Soong Ching-ling was named hon­orary Pres­i­dent of Chi­na. . . . She suc­cumbed to leukemia on May 29, 1981, in her Peking home. . . . But, in an inter­view once with writer Han Suyin, Ching-ling put into words the lega­cy she had learned most bit­ter­ly from the time of the Soongs:

The Soong Dynasty con­cludes with an epi­logue which is note­wor­thy in sev­er­al respects. The prose is of a char­ac­ter that one does not see any­more. Elo­quent, poignant, pas­sion­ate and yet, at the same time, bit­ing­ly, iron­i­cal­ly humor­ous, Seagrave’s writ­ing is remark­able in, and of, itself.

Beyond the prose, the epi­logue is remark­able for the elab­o­rate his­tor­i­cal metaphor that it presents: dis­cus­sion of the cor­rup­tion and bru­tal­i­ty of the late Manchu Dynasty and the Dowa­ger Empress, whom Sea­grave refers to as “The Old Bud­dha.” (He lat­er pub­lished a vol­ume about her reign titled The Drag­on Lady.)

Seagrave’s dis­cus­sion of the Dowa­ger Empress’s intrigues and bru­tal mur­der of the Pearl Con­cu­bine con­sti­tutes a metaphor for the lethal, con­sum­mate­ly cor­rupt gov­ern­ment of Chi­ang Kai-shek and his pup­pet mas­ters, the Soongs.

As for­eign armies were approach­ing Peking dur­ing the Box­er Rebel­lion, “The Old Bud­dha” made arrange­ments to flee the palace known as The For­bid­den City, don­ning a dis­guise and tak­ing the Emper­or with her.

When the Emper­or sought to remain in Peking to nego­ti­ate with the for­eign armies and enlist­ed the assis­tance of his favorite consort—the Pearl Concubine—in order to per­suade the Dowa­ger Empress.

The Pearl Con­cu­bine had resist­ed con­form­ing to the will of the Dowa­ger Empress, and “The Old Bud­dha” took this occa­sion to elim­i­nate this ele­ment of resis­tance to her palace intrigues, a long­time obsta­cle to her polit­i­cal orders.

“ . . . . The Pearl Con­cu­bine had been a thorn in the Dowager’s side, inter­fer­ing with palace intrigues by giv­ing inde­pen­dent advice to the Emper­or. It was time to dis­pose of her. The Dowa­ger bel­lowed orders. Two eunuchs seized the Pearl Con­cu­bine. In ter­ror, the Emper­or went to his knees and begged for her life. But the eunuchs car­ried the strug­gling girl to the nar­row well by the Palace of Peace and Longevi­ty, turned her upside down in her shim­mer­ing cocoon of silks, and flung her shriek­ing into its maw. Because the well was so nar­row, the eunuchs jumped on her to force her down. . . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then sets forth the mur­der­ous nature of the late Manchu rule of the Dowa­ger Empress—a metaphor for the bloody cor­rup­tion of Chiang’s fas­cist gov­ern­ment.

“ . . . . The For­bid­den City is a grave­yard of souls, drowned, behead­ed, throt­tled, flayed alive, to silence them in the inter­ests of state. Here, mur­der was not an act of pas­sion but an instru­ment of rule. Judi­cial mur­der. Impe­r­i­al mur­der. Silence by assas­si­na­tion. To sti­fle those who would inter­fere, who would object, who would ques­tion, who would say no. . . .”

Ster­ling Sea­grave then piv­ots to the Soong fam­i­ly: “ . . . . The oth­ers passed through life like a team of pick­pock­ets through a car­ni­val crowd, doing what they did best, while the rubes watched geeks bite heads off live chick­ens. There are those who insist that May-ling remained inno­cent through­out by virtue of her tun­nel vision. It is not for me to say, except that these peo­ple also believe in vir­gin birth.

“They were a fam­i­ly that could stand togeth­er in front of a mir­ror (Ching-ling miss­ing from the group by choice), all cast­ing reflec­tions except Ai-ling. She cast no reflec­tion at all. What medieval con­clu­sion can we draw? . . . .”

Sea­grave con­cludes with a ref­er­ence to Har­ry Truman’s launch­ing of an FBI inves­ti­ga­tion of the Soong fam­i­ly. (We dis­cussed this in FTR#1205 .)

“ . . . . Of all the peo­ple who might have act­ed, I won­dered why Har­ry Tru­man did noth­ing. . . . . Per­haps he con­clud­ed that so many promi­nent peo­ple were involved it would not be good for the nation as they say. So near­ly every­one stayed silent. Nobody spoke for the vic­tims. Who, then, will speak for the con­cu­bine in the well? . . .”

The pro­gram reviews the death threats and intim­i­da­tion that the authors of Gold War­riors received over the pub­li­ca­tion of this and oth­er books.

“. . . . Many peo­ple told us this book was his­tor­i­cal­ly impor­tant and must be published—then warned us that if it were pub­lished, we would be mur­dered. An Aus­tralian econ­o­mist who read it said, ” I hope they let you live.” He did not have to explain who “they” were. . . .

“. . . .

We have been threat­ened with mur­der before. When we pub­lished The Soong Dynasty we were warned by a senior CIA offi­cial that a hit team was being assem­bled in Tai­wan to come mur­der us. He said, ‘I would take this very seri­ous­ly, if I were you.’ We van­ished for a year to an island off the coast of British Colum­bia. While we were gone, a Tai­wan hit team arrived in San Fran­cis­co and shot dead the Chi­nese-Amer­i­can jour­nal­ist Hen­ry Liu.

When we pub­lished The Mar­cos Dynasty we expect­ed trou­ble from the Mar­cos fam­i­ly and its cronies, but instead we were harassed by Wash­ing­ton. Oth­ers had inves­ti­gat­ed Mar­cos, but we were the first to show how the U.S. Gov­ern­ment was secret­ly involved with Mar­cos gold deals. We came under attack from the U.S. Trea­sury Depart­ment and its Inter­nal Rev­enue Ser­vice, whose agents made threat­en­ing mid­night phone calls to our elder­ly par­ents. Arriv­ing in New York for an author tour, one of us was inter­cept­ed at JFK air­port, pass­port seized, and held incom­mu­ni­ca­do for three hours. Even­tu­al­ly the pass­port was returned, with­out a word of expla­na­tion. When we ran Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion queries to see what was behind it, we were grudg­ing­ly sent a copy of a telex mes­sage, on which every word was blacked out, includ­ing the date. The jus­ti­fi­ca­tion giv­en for this cen­sor­ship was the need to pro­tect gov­ern­ment sources, which are above the law.

Dur­ing one harass­ing phone call from a U.S. Trea­sury agent, he said he was sit­ting in his office watch­ing an inter­view we had done for a Japan­ese TV network—an inter­view broad­cast only in Japan­ese, which we had nev­er seen. After pub­lish­ing The Yam­a­to Dynasty, which briefly men­tioned the dis­cov­ery that is the basis for Gold War­riors, our phones and email were tapped. We know this because when one of us was in a Euro­pean clin­ic briefly for a med­ical pro­ce­dure, the head nurse report­ed that “some­one pos­ing as your Amer­i­can doc­tor” had been on the phone ask­ing ques­tions.

When a brief extract of this book was pub­lished in the South Chi­na Morn­ing Post in August 2001, sev­er­al phone calls from the edi­tors were cut off sud­den­ly. Emails from the news­pa­per took 72 hours to reach us, while copies sent to an asso­ciate near­by arrived instant­ly. In recent months, we began to receive veiled death threats.

What have we done to pro­voke mur­der? To bor­row a phrase from Jean Ziegler, we are “com­bat­ing offi­cial amne­sia.” We live in dan­ger­ous times, like Ger­many in the 1930’s when any­one who makes incon­ve­nient dis­clo­sures about hid­den assets can be brand­ed a “ter­ror­ist” or a “trai­tor. . . .”

Despite the best efforts of the Amer­i­can and Japan­ese gov­ern­ments to destroy, with­hold, or lose doc­u­men­ta­tion relat­ed to Gold­en Lily, we have accu­mu­lat­ed thou­sands of doc­u­ments, con­duct­ed thou­sands of hours of inter­views, and we make all of these avail­able to read­ers of this book on two com­pact discs, avail­able from our web­site www.bowstring.net [no longer online–D.E.] so they can make up their own minds. We encour­age oth­ers with knowl­edge of these events to come for­ward. When the top is cor­rupt, the truth will not come from the top. It will emerge in bits and pieces from peo­ple like Jean Ziegler and Christophe Meili, who decid­ed they had to ‘do some­thing.’ As a pre­cau­tion, should any­thing odd hap­pen, we have arranged for this book and all its doc­u­men­ta­tion to be put up on the Inter­net at a num­ber of sites. If we are mur­dered, read­ers will have no dif­fi­cul­ty fig­ur­ing out who ‘they’ are. . . .”

Ster­ling’s fears about Opus Dei and his and Peg­gy’s prox­im­i­ty to Spain–the seat of that orga­ni­za­tion’s pow­er  turned out to be pre­scient. On Christ­mas Day of 2011, he nar­row­ly escaped assas­si­na­tion while return­ing home. He felt that the attempt on his life may well have been moti­vat­ed by the pub­li­ca­tion of the Span­ish lan­guage edi­tion of Gold War­riors.

. . . . Sea­grave will be remem­bered warm­ly by Ver­so staff for his live­ly cor­re­spon­dence. In a 2011 email, he described an attempt on his life that fol­lowed the Span­ish pub­li­ca­tion of Gold War­riors: 

“A hired thug tried to mur­der me on the ser­pen­tine road lead­ing up to our iso­lat­ed house on the ridge over­look­ing Banyuls-sur-Mer, and near­ly suc­ceed­ed.  (We’ve had sev­er­al seri­ous death threats because of our books.) The road was very nar­row in places, with tar­mac bare­ly the width of my tires. At 10 pm Christ­mas night, in 2011, after vis­it­ing Peg­gy at a clin­ic in Per­pig­nan, as I turned the final hair­pin, I clear­ly saw a guy sit­ting on a cement block path lead­ing up to a shed for the uphill vine­yard. He was obvi­ous­ly wait­ing for me because we were the only peo­ple liv­ing up there on that moun­tain shoul­der.  He jumped up, raised a long pole, and unfurled a black fab­ric that total­ly blocked the nar­row­est turn ahead of me. I tried to swerve to avoid him (not know­ing whether he also had a gun), and my right front dri­ve wheel went off the tar­mac and lost trac­tion in the rub­ble.

The car teetered and then plunged down through a steep vine­yard on my right side, rolling and bounc­ing front and rear, 100 meters into a ravine where it final­ly came to rest against a tree. Thanks to my seat­belt and air bag, I sur­vived. I don’t know how many con­cus­sions I got on the way down, but I man­aged to squeeze out the driver’s door and fell onto the rub­ble. I got up on my left hand and knees, but my right shoul­der caved in. (Turned out lat­er that I had frac­tured my right shoul­der, and all the lig­a­ments there had torn loose.) I passed out and remained uncon­scious for 14 hours.  After 12 hours, a vigneron dri­ving up the next morn­ing saw my wrecked car and body.

 He called the Gen­darmerie on his portable, and I was hoist­ed out uncon­scious by a chop­per and flown to an old Vic­to­ri­an-era hos­pi­tal in Per­pig­nan where they did noth­ing but keep me doped on mor­phine for two weeks — no X‑rays or seri­ous med­ical care.  Final­ly, friends in Banyuls got me (and Peg­gy) trans­ferred to a clin­ic on the beach there, where Peg­gy and I shared a room while we both recov­ered. I got my right shoul­der lig­a­ments fixed by an excel­lent sur­geon in Per­pig­nan.  (Peg­gy did not know it then but she had an ear­ly stage of can­cer.) I still have a hair­line frac­ture in my right shoul­der.

I attribute the event to stay­ing too long in one place, so the spooks even­tu­al­ly tracked me down.  We had been liv­ing for years on a sail­boat, mov­ing from Hol­land to Britain to Por­tu­gal to Spain and final­ly to France, where we found — in Cat­alo­nia — an ide­al vil­lage at the Mediter­ranean end of the Pyre­nees. In ret­ro­spect, I’m sor­ry I agreed to move ashore for Peggy’s sake, and sold the beau­ti­ful 43-foot boat I had  built from a bare hull. It was very com­fort­able, but Peg­gy want­ed a house. We nev­er did find the right house in Banyuls — so we spent 18 years restor­ing a 13th cen­tu­ry Tem­plar ruin on the shoul­der of the moun­tain.  Made me an easy tar­get. Def­i­nite­ly a bad deci­sion. I think it was the Span­ish edi­tion of Gold War­riors that made me the easy tar­get. 

In FTR#‘s 1107, 1108 and 1111, we set forth the high­ly sus­pi­cious cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the death (and prob­a­ble mur­der) of author Iris Chang. A ring­ing endorse­ment by Ms. Chang graces the cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Ms. Chang’s sig­na­ture work–The Rape of Nanking–detailed one of the ini­tial events in Japan’s loot­ing of Chi­na dur­ing World War II, an act which the U.S. signed off on and prof­it­ed from in the post­war years.

At the time of her alto­geth­er sus­pi­cious death, she was work­ing on a book about the Bataan Death March, at the very time that sur­vivors of that event and oth­er Japan­ese World War II atroc­i­ties were suing Japan­ese zaibat­sus that had employed U.S. POW’s as slave labor.

The suit was rebuffed by U.S. courts.

When Mr. Emory inter­viewed Ster­ling Sea­grave in 2009, he declined to dis­cuss Ms. Chang’s death, which he, too, believed to be mur­der.


FTR#1213 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 20

This pro­gram under­takes a spec­u­la­tive look at the life and fam­i­ly his­to­ry of Barack Oba­ma, ana­lyzed in the con­text of the Amer­i­can Deep State.

It was under Oba­ma that the “piv­ot to Asia” took place, with his then Vice-Pres­i­dent Joe Biden now pur­su­ing the anti-Chi­na pol­i­cy with a con­sum­ing vig­or.

(We note, also, Avril Haines, who was Oba­ma’s Deputy Direc­tor of Cen­tral Intel­li­gence, then worked as a paid con­sul­tant for Peter Thiel’s Palan­tir firm, was a key par­tic­i­pant in Event 201, served as a key mem­ber of Biden’s tran­si­tion team and, ulti­mate­ly, became Direc­tor of Nation­al Intel­li­gence, a posi­tion from which she helped ini­ti­ate the momen­tum to legit­imize the “Lab-Leak The­o­ry” of the ori­gin of Covid.)

The cen­tral ele­ment in our analy­sis is the pro­fes­sion­al and polit­i­cal cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the Oba­ma fam­i­ly’s involve­ment in Indone­sia in the imme­di­ate after­math of the slaugh­ter.

The avail­able infor­ma­tion sug­gests that the benign inter­pre­ta­tion of the Oba­ma fam­i­ly’s cir­cum­stances is not accu­rate. 

Those cir­cum­stances are encap­su­lat­ed: Key Points of Dis­cus­sion nd Analy­sis Include: Lolo Soe­toro’s work as a civil­ian employ­ee of the Indone­sian Army at the East-West Insti­tute in Hawaii (head­ed up at the time by Howard Jones, for years U.S. Ambas­sador to Indone­sia); Soe­toro’s meet­ing of (Stan­ley) Ann Dun­ham at the East-West Insti­tute; Soe­toro’s return to Indone­sia in 1966; Soe­toro’s work for the Indone­sian army fol­low­ing the coup; Soe­toro’s work for Uno­cal and Mobil, two of the key oil com­pa­nies in Indone­sia that faced pos­si­ble nation­al­iza­tion by Sukarno; Ann Dun­ham’s work for USAID and Ford Foun­da­tion in Indone­sia (both com­mon cov­ers for CIA work abroad); Soe­toro’s account of hav­ing seen a man killed in “bloody” fash­ion; the dubi­ous nature of claims by the Oba­ma clan that Ms. Dun­ham learned of the slaugh­ter that had just tak­en place through qui­et asides and innu­en­do (numer­ous press accounts avail­able through U.S. media out­lets had report­ed the mas­sacre); Ann Dun­ham’s sub­se­quent work for the Ford Foun­da­tion in Indone­sia, under Peter Gei­th­n­er (whose son Tim­o­thy Gei­th­n­er became Oba­ma’s Sec­re­tary of the Trea­sury); Barack Oba­ma’s work for the Busi­ness Inter­na­tion­al Cor­po­ra­tion between col­lege and grad­u­ate school (the com­pa­ny has, in the past, served as a “cor­po­rate cov­er” for CIA employ­ees); Oba­ma’s bio­log­i­cal father’s meet­ing of Ann Dun­ham in a Russ­ian lan­guage class at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Hawaii in 1960, after enter­ing the U.S. under a joint CIA-State Depart­ment pro­gram ini­ti­at­ed under the aus­pices of Tom Mboya in Kenya (lat­er assas­si­nat­ed because of his perceived/alleged links to CIA).

We are of the opin­ion that Oba­ma is part of a Deep State, trans-gen­er­a­tional intel­li­gence net­work and his stew­ard­ship of the “piv­ot to Asia,” Avril Haines key posi­tion in the events sur­round­ing the full-court press against Chi­na, and “Delaware Joe” [Biden]‘s pur­suit of a vig­or­ous anti-Chi­na pol­i­cy are part of the straight rail­way line of Asian pol­i­cy described by Stan­ley Horn­beck: “.  . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . . [Horn­beck] had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of the for­ma­tion of the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League in Tai­wan under Chi­ang Kai-shek.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang and their sup­port for the Indone­sian coup, includ­ing stag­ing attacks on the Chi­nese embassy in Jakar­ta; Tai­wan as the site for the merg­ing of the Asian Peo­ple’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations to form the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League; the role of Adri­an Zenz in the fab­ri­ca­tion of the Uighur geno­cide meme; Zen­z’s asso­ci­a­tion with the Vic­tims of Com­mu­nism Memo­r­i­al Foun­da­tion, a deriv­a­tive of the Cap­tive Nations Com­mit­tee, a sub­sidiary of the OUN/B and deeply involved with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations; the role of ele­ments of the Azov Bat­tal­ion and Pravy Sek­tor in the “pro-democ­ra­cy” move­ment in Hong Kong; the adop­tion by the “pro-Democ­ra­cy move­ment” of a per­mu­ta­tion of the “Glo­ry to Ukraine, Glo­ry to The Heroes” salute of the OUN/B; review of the net­work­ing between Ruzy Nazar and the Pan-Turk­ist and Nazi deep polit­i­cal forces at work in Xin­jiang province; review of Nazar’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the ABN at WACL’s con­fer­ence in Dal­las, Texas.

Fol­low­ing dis­cus­sion of the for­ma­tion of WACL, the pro­gram high­lights the impor­tance of the Indone­sian oil com­pa­nies to the U.S. and their Indone­sian satraps. 


FTR#1212 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 19

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

This pro­gram chron­i­cles the U.S. coup in Indone­sia. In our land­mark series of inter­views with Jim DiEu­ge­nio, we not­ed that Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s assas­si­na­tion put the rail­way described by Stan­ley Horn­beck back on sched­ule in Indone­sia, as it had been put back on sched­ule in Viet­nam. 

“ . . . . The Unit­ed States was part and par­cel of the oper­a­tion at every stage, start­ing well before the killings start­ed, until the last body dropped and the last polit­i­cal pris­on­er emerged from jail, decades lat­er, tor­tured, scarred, and bewil­dered. . . . the U.S. gov­ern­ment helped spread the pro­pa­gan­da that made the killing pos­si­ble, and engaged in con­stant con­ver­sa­tions with the Army to make sure the mil­i­tary offi­cers had every­thing they need­ed, from weapons to kill lists. . . . know­ing full well that the method being employed to make this pos­si­ble was to round up hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple around the coun­try, stab or stran­gle them, and throw their corpses into rivers. . . . Up to a mil­lion Indone­sians, maybe more, were killed as part of Washington’s glob­al anti­com­mu­nist cru­sade. The U. S. gov­ern­ment expend­ed sig­nif­i­cant resources over years engi­neer­ing the con­di­tions for a vio­lent clash, and then, when the vio­lence broke out, assist­ed and guid­ed its long­time part­ners to car­ry out the mass mur­der of civil­ians as a means of achiev­ing US geopo­lit­i­cal goals. . . .”

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include: The John­son Administration’s deter­mi­na­tion to wage a “major war against Indone­sia; the inabil­i­ty of U.S. strate­gic plan­ners to com­pre­hend  Indonesia’s sta­tus of non-align­ment in the Cold War out­side of the “either with us or against us” oper­a­tional par­a­digm that was insti­tu­tion­al­ized in U.S. for­eign and nation­al secu­ri­ty under the Dulles broth­ers dur­ing the Eisen­how­er admin­is­tra­tion; Pakistan’s ambas­sador to Paris sent a let­ter to for­eign min­is­ter Zul­fikar Ali Bhut­to: “ . . . . West­ern intel­li­gence agen­cies were orga­niz­ing a ‘pre­ma­ture com­mu­nist coup.’ Indone­sia, the NATO offi­cer told him, ‘was ready to fall into the West­ern lap like a rot­ten apple.’. . .” The enthu­si­as­tic cov­er­age of the Indone­sian slaugh­ter in the West­ern press, exem­pli­fied by The New York Times’ C.L. Sulzberg­er, who penned the piece “When a Nation Runs Amok”; the cul­tur­al chau­vin­ism tinged with racism of the West­ern press cov­er­age, embod­ied by Sulzberger’s piece: “ . . . . the killings occurred in ‘vio­lent Asia, where life is cheap . . . . hid­den behind their [Indone­sians] smile is that strange Malay streak, that inner, fren­zied blood-lust which has giv­en to oth­er lan­guages one of their few Malay words: amok . . . .”; The fact that the main point of irri­ta­tion in the U.S. about the PKI (Indonesia’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty) was not that they were unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic or try­ing to seize pow­er through sub­ver­sion, but that they “were pop­u­lar;” the role of U.S. plan­ta­tion man­agers and cor­po­rate per­son­nel in sub­mit­ting names to the Indone­sian army and its allies for liq­ui­da­tion; His­to­ri­an John Roosa’s encap­su­la­tion of the results of the slaugh­ter: “ . . . . Almost overnight the Indone­sian gov­ern­ment went from being a fierce voice for cold war neu­tral­i­ty and anti-impe­ri­al­ism to a qui­et, com­pli­ant part­ner of the US world order. . . .”; New York Times colum­nist James Reston’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of the coup and result­ing slaugh­ter as “A Gleam of Light in Asia” that out­weighed U.S. set­backs in Viet­nam; he—by now—longstanding and well-rec­og­nized Amer­i­can tac­tic of “mak­ing the econ­o­my scream;” Suharto’s delib­er­ate engi­neer­ing of hyper­in­fla­tion in order to restrict the sup­ply of fun­da­men­tals need­ed by peo­ple to sus­tain their lives; “The U.S. gov­ern­ment was inten­tion­al­ly desta­bi­liz­ing the econ­o­my;” Robert Kennedy’s crit­i­cism of the Indone­sian coup; U.S. cor­po­ra­tions find­ing Indone­sia “open for busi­ness”; a busi­ness con­fer­ence spon­sored by James Linen, Pres­i­dent of Time-Life (it was Time-Life that was–to a con­sid­er­able extent–the eyes and ears of the U.S. on both Chi­ang Kai-shek and the assas­si­na­tion of J.F.K.; The slaugh­ter that took place on the island of Bali, some­thing of an icon­ic trop­i­cal par­adise; analy­sis of the sig­nif­i­cance of machetes being used in the slaugh­ter of scores of thou­sands on the beau­ti­ful Bali beaches–the machete is not a blade used by the Bali­nese, who use a thin­ner, domes­tic cut­ting tool caused the kle­wang; Chi­ang Kai-shek’s Kuom­intang and their sup­port for the Indone­sian coup, includ­ing stag­ing attacks on the Chi­nese embassy in Jakar­ta; Tai­wan as the site for the merg­ing of the Asian Peo­ple’s Anti-Com­mu­nist League with the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations to form the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League.

Epit­o­miz­ing and encap­su­lat­ing the coup was the butch­ery that tran­spired on the Island of Bali and its after­math in the con­tem­po­rary lux­u­ry resort econ­o­my that pre­vails there:

” . . . . Then he [Wayan Badra] heard what was hap­pen­ing on the beach­es. They were bring­ing peo­ple from the city to the east to kill them on the sand. It was pub­lic prop­er­ty there, and emp­ty at night. The bod­ies were aban­doned there. . . . they found a field of bod­ies. . . .They began look­ing through bones, pick­ing up skulls. . . . There were just ‘too many skulls, too many skele­tons. . . . In total, at least 5 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion of Bali was killed—that is, eighty thou­sand peo­ple . . . .”

” . . . . Wayan Ban­dra, the Hin­du priest, lives on the street where he grew up, in Semi­nyak, South­west Bali. But the neigh­bor­hood has changed dras­ti­cal­ly. The same beach he used to walk on for forty min­utes every morn­ing, as he head­ed to school down in Kuta, is cer­tain­ly not emp­ty. It’s packed wall to wall with lux­u­ry resorts and ‘beach clubs,’ a very com­mon type of busi­ness on the island, where for­eign­ers can sip cock­tails all day, and take a dip in a pool, right on the sand. It’s the same sand, of course, where the mil­i­tary brought peo­ple from Ker­obokan, a few miles east, to kill them at night. . . .”

” . . . . . . . . Over the years, Wayan Badra and his neigh­bors have found bones and skulls in the sand . . . . As the elder priest for this vil­lage, he takes it upon him­self to give the bod­ies a prop­er Hin­du funer­al. . . .”


FTR#1211 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 18

Intro­duc­ing the expan­sion of Amer­i­can expe­ri­ence with Chi­ang and his Kuom­intang fas­cists into U.S. Cold War pol­i­cy in Asia, we present Ster­ling Seagrave’s rumi­na­tion about Stan­ley Horn­beck, a State Depart­ment flack who became: “. . . . the doyen of State’s Far East­ern Divi­sion. . . .”

Horn­beck “ . . . . had only the most abbre­vi­at­ed and stilt­ed knowl­edge of Chi­na, and had been out of touch per­son­al­ly for many years. . . . He with­held cables from the Sec­re­tary of State that were crit­i­cal of Chi­ang, and once stat­ed that ‘the Unit­ed States Far East­ern pol­i­cy is like a train run­ning on a rail­road track.  It has been clear­ly laid out and where it is going is plain to all.’ It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

Next, we vis­it one of the stops on Horn­beck­’s straight rail­way line:

A con­sum­mate­ly impor­tant study of Viet­nam War crimes was authored by Nick Turse. A review by the U.S. Naval Insti­tute can be tak­en as an advi­so­ry in this regard.

Mr. Turse per­forms the remark­able feat of unspar­ing­ly sear­ing pre­sen­ta­tion of the war crimes that were stan­dard oper­at­ing pro­ce­dure for much of the Amer­i­can (and allied) forces in Viet­nam by trac­ing the foun­da­tion of those crimes from the tech­no­crat­ic approach to mil­i­tary strat­e­gy pur­sued by the Pen­ta­gon and Robert McNa­ma­ra, through the re-social­iza­tion and re-pro­gram­ming of young, often teen-aged, recruits to turn them into reflex­ive killers, chron­i­cling the mas­sive fire­pow­er avail­able to U.S. forces, and doc­u­ment­ing the recal­ci­trant atti­tude of the offi­cer corps and Gen­er­al Staff, who were unwill­ing to coun­te­nance the pro­fes­sion­al and ide­o­log­i­cal dam­age that would result from pre­sen­ta­tion and adju­di­ca­tion of the truth.

In addi­tion, Mr. Turse–while avoid­ing self-right­eous posturing–highlights the doc­tri­naire racism of many U.S. com­bat­ants, who com­mit­ted war crimes behind the “MGR”–the “Mere Gook Rule.”

“ ‘An impor­tant addi­tion to Viet­nam war stud­ies . . . . Turse’s study is not anti-vet­er­an, anti-mil­i­tary, or anti-Amer­i­can. It does not allege that the major­i­ty of U.S. mil­i­tary per­son­nel in South Viet­nam com­mit­ted crimes. . . .” Pro­ceed­ings (U.S. Naval Insti­tute).

Nick Turse traces the strate­gic use of over­whelm­ing fire­pow­er and de fac­to coun­te­nanc­ing of civil­ian casu­al­ties owes much to the tac­ti­cal approach of Japan­ese forces dur­ing World War II in Chi­na: “ . . . . These efforts were com­mon­ly known as ‘paci­fi­ca­tion,’ but their true aim was to depop­u­late the con­test­ed coun­try­side. ‘The peo­ple are like water and the army is like fish.’ Mao Zedong, the leader of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist rev­o­lu­tion, had famous­ly writ­ten. Amer­i­can plan­ners grasped his dic­tum, and also stud­ied the ‘kill-all, burn-all, loot-all’ scorched earth cam­paigns that the Japan­ese army launched in rur­al Chi­na dur­ing the 1930s and ear­ly 1940s for lessons on how to drain the ‘sea.’ Not sur­pris­ing­ly the idea of forc­ing peas­ants out of their vil­lages was embraced by civil­ian paci­fi­ca­tion offi­cials and mil­i­tary offi­cers alike. . . .”

The accounts of many G.I.’s about war crimes appear to be large­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the con­duct of U.S. forces: “ . . . . While we have only frag­men­tary evi­dence about the full extent of civil­ian suf­fer­ing in South Viet­nam, enough sim­i­lar accounts exist so that rough­ly the same sto­ry could have been told in a chap­ter about Binh Dinh Province in the mid-1960’s, or Quang Tri Province in the ear­ly 1970s, among oth­ers. The inci­dents in this chap­ter were unbear­ably com­mon­place through­out the con­flict and are unusu­al only in that they were report­ed in some form or recount­ed by wit­ness­es instead of van­ish­ing entire­ly from the his­tor­i­cal record.” 

Turse notes that racism–embodied in the “MGR” (Mere Gook Rule)—contributed fun­da­men­tal­ly to the slaugh­ter per­pe­trat­ed by the U.S. in Viet­nam. “ . . . . In 1971, Major Gor­don Liv­ingston, a West Point grad­u­ate who served as reg­i­men­tal sur­geon with the 11th Armored Cav­al­ry Reg­i­ment, tes­ti­fied before mem­bers of Con­gress about the ease with which Amer­i­cans killed Viet­namese. ‘Above 90 per­cent of the Amer­i­cans with whom I had con­tact in Viet­nam,’ said Dr. Liv­ingston, treat­ed the Viet­namese as sub­hu­man snd with ‘near­ly uni­ver­sal con­tempt.’ . . . .”

Turse’s very impor­tant and pro­found­ly dis­turb­ing book encap­su­lates the Amer­i­can pol­i­cy in Viet­nam. Speak­ing of the Phoenix assas­si­na­tion pro­gram: “ . . . . Phoenix was a pro­gram run amok, but it was also the log­i­cal result of a mil­i­tary cam­paign dri­ven by the body count and run under the pre­cept of the mere-gook rule. For the Viet­namese the Amer­i­can war was an end­less gaunt­let of poten­tial calami­ties . . . . the range of dis­as­ters was near­ly end­less.

While no exact fig­ures are avail­able, there can be lit­tle ques­tion that such events occurred in shock­ing num­bers. They were the very essence of the war: crimes that went on all the time, all over South Viet­nam, for years and years. When you con­sid­er this along with the tal­lies of dead, wound­ed, and dis­placed, the scale of the suf­fer­ing becomes almost unimaginable—almost as unimag­in­able as the fact that some­how, in the Unit­ed States all that suf­fer­ing was more or less ignored as it hap­pened and then writ­ten out of his­to­ry even more thor­ough­ly in the decades since. . . .”

Stan­ley Horn­beck referred to U.S. Far East­ern pol­i­cy as a rail­road track, pro­ceed­ing on a straight line. Ster­ling Sea­grave not­ed that ” . . . . It was in fact bound for Saigon in 1975, with whis­tle stops along the way at Peking, Que­moy, Mat­su, and the Yalu Riv­er. . . .”

The ref­er­ence to the Yalu Riv­er is in con­sid­er­a­tion of a key inci­dent in the Kore­an War. Gen­er­al Dou­glas MacArthur was warned by mil­i­tary intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als not to approach the Yalu Riv­er dur­ing his advance through North Korea, lest the Chi­nese enter the con­flict.

MacArthur ignored the warn­ing of the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence pro­fes­sion­als with the ulti­mate result that they fore­cast: Chi­nese forces entered the con­flict and rout­ed the forces under MacArthur’s com­mand.

Dur­ing the pre­cip­i­tous retreat of the Amer­i­can and U.N. forces, it appears that the U.S. used bio­log­i­cal war­fare against the Chi­nese and North Korea.

In numer­ous pro­grams and lec­tures, we have dis­cussed the impor­tant, dev­as­tat­ing­ly suc­ces­sive­ly mind con­trol pro­grams engaged in by the mil­i­tary and CIA. Those pro­grams were devel­oped in reac­tion to downed Amer­i­can air­men who–after captivity–gave tes­ti­mo­ny that they had been involved in bio­log­i­cal war­fare attacks against Chi­na and North Korea dur­ing the war.

A superb book about Unit 731–the Japan­ese bio­log­i­cal war­fare unit dur­ing World War II–had a chap­ter in the British edi­tion that was omit­ted in the Amer­i­can edi­tion. (Sad­ly, the books are out of print, although both the British and Amer­i­can edi­tions are avail­able through used-book ser­vices. Mr. Emory hearti­ly encour­ages lis­ten­ers to obtain the book. Even the Amer­i­can edition–missing this key chapter–is worth­while. Hope­ful­ly, a pub­lish­er will obtain the rights to the book and re-issue it. If so, we will enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly pro­mote the work.)

The chap­ter in the UK edi­tion chron­i­cles the inves­ti­ga­tion into the alle­ga­tions of Amer­i­can BW use dur­ing the Kore­an War, includ­ing cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence that Unit 731 vet­er­ans and method­ol­o­gy may well have been used in the alleged cam­paign. That chap­ter is alto­geth­er objec­tive, avoid­ing ide­o­log­i­cal bias toward either side in the con­flict.

Because of that, we found the omis­sion of this chap­ter from the U.S. edi­tion to be sig­nif­i­cant. As the bril­liant Peter Dale Scott not­ed: “The cov­er-up obvi­ates the con­spir­a­cy.” It is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Unit 731’s files were incor­po­rat­ed into the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, and vet­er­ans of the Unit bequeathed their exper­tise to the Amer­i­cans in exchange from immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion for war crimes.

It is a mat­ter of pub­lic record that Unit 731’s files were incor­po­rat­ed into the U.S. bio­log­i­cal war­fare pro­gram, and vet­er­ans of the Unit bequeathed their exper­tise to the Amer­i­cans in exchange from immu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion for war crimes.

FTR#1172 presents the sci­en­tif­ic cre­den­tials of the Inter­na­tion­al Sci­en­tif­ic Com­mis­sion inves­ti­gat­ing the alle­ga­tions of bio­log­i­cal war­fare, which are impres­sive and their con­clu­sions are cred­i­ble.

The intro­duc­tion of FTR#1173 con­sists of read­ing and analy­sis of Tom O’Neil­l’s pre­sen­ta­tion of the career of one of the CIA’s most impor­tant MK-Ultra mind con­trol oper­a­tives, which occurred in the imme­di­ate after­math of the Kore­an War–1954.

Note that Jim­mie Shaver was serv­ing in the Air Force. Per­son­nel from that branch were involved in the alle­ga­tions of BW waged by the U.S. Those alle­ga­tions were the ratio­nale for the U.S. mind con­trol pro­grams, devel­oped to com­bat Chi­nese “brain­wash­ing” which was alleged to have pre­cip­i­tat­ed the basis for the tes­ti­mo­ny by USAF.

Louis Joly­on West was Jack Ruby’s psy­chi­a­trist, and pre­sent­ed the unten­able hypoth­e­sis that Ruby killed Oswald because he had a brief psy­chomo­tor epilep­tic event in the base­ment of the Dal­las jail. In fact, the evi­dence sug­gests strong­ly that West had helped to erase Ruby’s mem­o­ry of hav­ing killed Oswald.

West­’s work with Ruby helped to keep the train of U.S. Far East­ern pol­i­cy run­ning on track.

The broad­cast sets forth the mur­der of Chere Jo Hor­ton, a three-year-old girl whose muti­la­tion, rape and mur­der were pinned on 29-year-old Jim­mie Shaver.

An obvi­ous vic­tim of mind con­trol, appar­ent­ly imple­ment­ed in con­sid­er­able mea­sure by Louis Joly­on West, Shaver was pro­grammed to take respon­si­bil­i­ty for the killing, despite enor­mous con­tra­dic­tions in the evi­dence.

O’Neil­l’s dis­cus­sion of West, Shaver, the mind con­trol pro­grams and the Man­son Fam­i­ly “op” is part of what appears to be a domes­tic Phoenix Pro­gram, designed to win “hearts and minds” in the U.S. dur­ing the Viet­nam War.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and analy­sis include:

1.–Shaver’s unusu­al behav­ior and demeanor at the ini­tial scene of the crime: ” . . . . He was shirt­less, cov­ered in blood and scratch­es. Mak­ing no attempt to escape, he let the search par­ty walk him to the edge of the high­way. Bystanders described him as ‘dazed’ and ‘trance-like’ . . . .”
2.–Shaver’s appar­ent lack of aware­ness of the imme­di­ate cir­cum­stances of the crime: ” ‘What’s going on here?’ he asked. He did­n’t seem drunk, but he could­n’t say where he was, how he’d got­ten there, or whose blood was all over him. Mean­while, the search par­ty found Hor­ton’s body in the grav­el pit. Her neck was bro­ken, her legs had been torn open, and she’s been raped. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Around four that morn­ing, an Air Force mar­shal ques­tioned Shaver and two doc­tors exam­ined him, agree­ing he was­n’t drunk. One lat­er tes­ti­fied that he ‘was not nor­mal . . . . he was very com­posed out­side, which I did not expect him to be under these cir­cum­stances.’ . . .”
4.–Shaver did­n’t rec­og­nize his own wife when she came to vis­it him. ” . . . . When his wife came to vis­it, he did­n’t rec­og­nize her. . . .”
5.–Initially, he believed some­one else com­mit­ted the crime. ” . . . . He gave his first state­ment at 10:30 a.m., adamant that anoth­er man was respon­si­ble: he could sum­mon an image of a stranger with blond hair and tat­toos. . . .”
6.–Eventually, he signed a state­ment tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty: ” . . . . After the Air Force mar­shal returned to the jail­house, how­ev­er, Shaver signed a sec­ond state­ment tak­ing full respon­si­bil­i­ty. Though he still did­n’t remem­ber any­thing, he rea­soned that he must have done it. . . .”
7.–Enter Jol­ly West: ” . . . . Two months lat­er, in Sep­tem­ber, Shaver’s mem­o­ries still had­n’t returned. The base hos­pi­tal com­man­der told Jol­ly West to per­form an eval­u­a­tion: was he legal­ly sane at the time of the mur­der? Shaver spent the next two weeks under West­’s super­vi­sion . . . While Shaver was under–with West inject­ing more truth serum to ‘deep­en the trance’–Shaver recalled the events of that night. He con­fessed to killing Hor­ton. . . .”
8.–West was a defense wit­ness who, instead, appears to have aid­ed the pros­e­cu­tion: ” . . . . At the tri­al, West argued that Shaver’s truth-serum con­fes­sion was more valid than any oth­er. And West was tes­ti­fy­ing for the defense . . . .”
9.–Shaver’s behav­ior at the tri­al is fur­ther sug­ges­tive of mind con­trol: ” . . . . One news­pa­per account said he ‘sat through the stren­u­ous ses­sions like a man in a trance,’ say­ing noth­ing, nev­er ris­ing to stretch or smoke, though he was a known chain-smok­er. ‘Some believe it’s an act,’ the paper said, ‘oth­ers believe his demeanor is real. . . .”
10.–Shaver’s med­ical records at Lack­land Air Force base had van­ished. ” . . . . But, curi­ous­ly, all the records for patients in 1954 had been main­tained, with one excep­tion: the file for last names begin­ning with ‘Sa’ through ‘St’ had van­ished. . . .”
11.–West posed lead­ing ques­tions to Shaver, who denied hav­ing ever tak­en the vic­tim’s clothes off. ” . . . . West had used lead­ing ques­tions to walk the entranced Shaver through the crime. ‘Tell me about when you took your clothes off, Jim­my,’ he said. And try­ing to prove that Shaver had repressed mem­o­ries: ‘Jim­my, do you remem­ber when some­thing like this hap­pened before?’ Or: ‘After you took her clothes off, what did you do?’ ‘I nev­er did take her clothes off,’ Shaver said. . . .”
12.–The inter­view was divid­ed into thirds, the mid­dle third of which was not record­ed! ” . . . . The inter­view [with Shaver] was divid­ed into thirds. The mid­dle third, for some rea­son, was­n’t record­ed. When the record picked up, the man­u­script said, ‘Shaver is cry­ing. He has been con­front­ed with all the facts repeat­ed­ly.’ . . .”

Next, we review Luce’s beat­i­fi­ca­tion of Chi­ang Kai-shek in Life mag­a­zine, por­tray­ing the Gen­er­alis­si­mo as a Chris­t­ian mar­tyr: “ . . . . Chi­ang Kai-shek has hereto­fore shown him­self a man of remark­able courage and res­o­lu­tion. . . . He is a con­vert­ed Methodist who has now for solace the exam­ples of tribu­la­tion in the Chris­t­ian bible. . . .”

Adding fur­ther depth to the Luce/Time Inc. meme of Chi­ang Kai-shek as an icon­ic Chris­t­ian is his “broth­el-hop­ping” behav­ior with his fel­low Chris­t­ian con­vert, Tu Yueh-sheng.

“ . . . . At the oppo­site end of the Shang­hai social scale, Big-eared Tu enjoyed vis­it­ing the famous Blue Vil­la and cruis­ing the oth­er Green Gang broth­els in the Blue Cham­ber Dis­trict with a young, ill-tem­pered bra­vo by the name of Chi­ang Kai-shek. . . .”

he pros­ti­tutes in the broth­els were sub­jects of the bru­tal prac­tice of foot­bind­ing;

“ . . . . Since this nether­world con­sumed so much of Chiang’s and Tu’s atten­tion, it requires a clos­er look. The Chi­nese broth­els, almost with­out excep­tion, were staffed by girls with bound feet—the ide­al being less than three inch­es long. These were objects of extra­or­di­nary sex­u­al excite­ment, and enjoyed a cen­tral role in any noisy evening. . . .”

More about the prac­tice of foot­bind­ing, long-since for­bid­den in Chi­na.

“ . . . . Foot­bind­ing usu­al­ly began at age four. A ten-foot long two-inch ban­dage was wrapped around the toes to force them in against the sole. Each day the ban­dage was tight­ened until the foot was fold­ed under with only the big toe stick­ing out, a shape called the ‘Gold­en Lotus’ because it resem­bled a lotus pod with the petals removed. Flesh rot­ted and fell off, some­times a toe or two, and the foot oozed pus, until the process of defor­ma­tion was com­plete after two years, at which point the feet were prac­ti­cal­ly dead. . . .”