On Sunday, 5/29, from 7 until 10pm and Monday, 5/30, from 6 until 7pm, KFJC-FM observes Memorial Day Weekend by featuring Dave Emory’s research on the fundamental interrelationship of fascism, money, war and murder. Ukrainian television anchor quotes Adolf Eichmann verbatim in this video from UKRAINE 24. 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.
We suspect that a dynamic in the controversy over China’s claim of sovereignty over the South China Sea has little or nothing to do with “Freedom of Navigation” or any other pretensions by the U.S. and its allies. An aspect of the postwar global economy that has largely eluded public awareness concerns the Japanese looting of the liquid wealth of Asia during the Second World War. Interested researchers are emphatically encouraged to read “Gold Warriors” by Sterling and Peggy Seagrave. 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. In addition to treasure deliberately and masterfully secreted in elaborately disguised and booby-trapped sites all over Japanese-occupied Asia, much of the loot was scuttled at sea and also lost when ships carrying the treasure were sunk. It may well be that some of the inhabited islands in the South China Sea are sites for Golden Lily ships deliberately scuttled for later salvage and recovery. ” . . . . In the last year of the war, Japan also hid large quantities of bullion at sea, deliberately scuttling ships including the cruiser Nachii, sunk with all hands in Manila Bay by a Japanese submarine that then machine-gunned all the Japanese crew members who came to the surface. The gold aboard the Nachii was recovered from its hulk in the late 1970s by President Marcos. . . .” 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.
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we draw still more on a magnificent book–The Soong Dynasty by Sterling Seagrave. Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it.
Several listeners have said that they were able to obtain the book because it is still in print! I hope so! PLEASE buy it, read it, and tell others about it, either through conventional means and/or through social media. (Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
We also draw on another, altogether remarkable work by Peggy and Sterling Seagrave–Gold Warriors.
The Rape of Nanking–the subject of Iris Chang’s best-selling, nonfiction book, saw the beginning of the Golden Lily operation. The looting of China (as well as the rest of Asia) by Japan and the subsequent American fusing of the Japanese war loot into the clandestine U.S. economy is undoubtedly a major irritant to the Chinese.
The looting of China by Japan–and by extension the U.S.–manifests on top of the centuries’ old looting of that country by Britain and the rest of the European colonial powers, the U.S. as a whole, the Chiang Kai-shek/Green Gang alliance and the overlapping Soong clan.
Chinese insistence on access to technologies developed by firms establishing manufacturing concerns on their soil may be seen as an historical reaction to what the country was subjected to at the hands of the above interests.
In the passage below, note the intellectual and cultural plundering of China by Japan, as well as the looting of their economic wealth–a phenomenon of which the American occupation forces were aware and with which they ultimately colluded.
Looting of China was compounded by joint U.S. and Kuomintang secreting of gold from soon to be Communist-occupied China in the post-World War II period (overlapping the Chinese civil war.) This episode could be seen as an extension of Chiang’s looting of the gold of private investors from the Bank of China (with the active collaboration of the Green Gang) just before the Generalissimo decamped for Taiwan.
” . . . . As Chairman Mao’s forces advanced through China in 1948 . . . Britain and the U.S. dreaded the prospect that one of the world’s largest stocks of gold–worth $83-billion at current prices–would fall into communist hands. So it was decided to extract the gold reserves from China before the communists could seize them. The CIA provided the means for this bullion rescue mission . . . .”
Note that the joint U.S./Kuomintang looting of gold from postwar China was done with the collaboration of elements of CIA, as well as the Strategic Air Command.
The Federal Reserve Notes and Federal Reserve Bonds were to be given to Chinese financial interests holding the gold in order to convince them to part with the bullion.
” . . . . These two CAT [Civil Air Transport–a CIA airline later renamed Air America] B‑29s, loaded billions of dollars’ worth of FRNs and FRBs, were on their way to Malaysia on a roundabout route to Southwestern China by way of Thailand and Burma. . . .”
Note, also, that one of the aircraft in a U.S. flight that was downed in the Philippines by a typhoon was carrying uranium for possible use in a “dirty bomb” attack on China.
” . . . . The B‑50, which had recently been built by Boeing to carry nuclear weapons for the Strategic Air Command (SAC), had a cargo of 117 canisters of Uranium. At this time, Washington was seriously considering dropping “dirty bombs” on Red China and North Korea. . . .”
As noted above, Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek (nee Mae-ling Soong) were aware of the operation and profited from it: ” . . . . He [CAT and former Flying Tiger pilot Eric Shilling] gold us Generalissimo and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek were fully informed of the flights . . . . Shilling was invited to the presidential palace where Mme. Chiang praised him, telling hi: ‘I did not go to bed until i knew that you had landed safely. . . .”
One can but guess if Mme. Chiang’s concern for Shilling’s well being was grounded in the fact that she and Chiang benefited greatly from the FRNs that were involved in the operation: ” . . . . A CIA friend told me that these FRNs were all over the world, not only in the Philippines. He said Chiang Kai-shek’s family owned large quantities. . . .”
Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger brother: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease during World II, and whose American roots were in New York City, became something of an enigma. Sources in Washington said T.L. worked as a secret consultant to the Treasury Department in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Treasury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong whatever. . . .”
Was T.L. Soong’s Treasury consultancy executed in conjunction with the CAT gold extraction mission described above?
The program concludes with examination of the results of an investigation ordered by President Truman into the affairs of the Soong family and their kleptocratic associates in what became known as the “China Lobby.”
An FBI probe into the family’s doings (and, by extension, those of the Kuomintang) yielded a report that was still heavily redacted in 1983 when the Seagraves obtained a copy of it.
President Truman summed up the findings of the investigation into the Soongs, the Kungs and their associates: “ . . . . ‘They’re all thieves, every damn one of them. . . . They stole seven hundred and fifty million dollars out of the [$3.8] billion that we sent to Chiang. They stole it, and it’s invested in real estate down in Sao Paulo and some right here in New York. . . . And that’s the money that was used and is still being used for the so-called China Lobby.’ . . . .”
Truman’s gauging of the Soong family’s ill-gotten gains was underestimation: “ . . . . In May of 1949, a few months after May-ling’s visit [May-ling Soong, aka Mme. Chiang Kai-shek], Truman heard of allegations made by banking sources to members of Congress that the Soongs and Kungs actually had $2 billion salted away in Manhattan. . . .”
We note that even the FBI was dealt with in a less than candid fashion by some of the banks that held Soong and Kung family deposits: “ . . . . ‘It would appear,’ an FBI agent noted laconically, ‘that high bank officials had prepared a flat statement for issuance to the Bureau in this matter.’. . .”
Even Federal government agencies were also less than enthusiastic about cooperating with the FBI investigation: “ . . . . The FBI was reluctant to ask Treasury for a copy [of bureaucratic forms submitted by the Soong family] because it believed that senior Treasury officials were close to T.V. and might reveal the investigation to him. [Recall that his brother T.L. may well have been a consultant to the Treasury Department—D.E] . . .”
The FBI also ran across evidentiary tributaries that may well have run from the clandestine looting of Chinese gold reserves described in the second major element of this program. “ . . . . On the West Coast, other agents discovered the cold trail of a Chinese plot to fly huge quantities of gold from China to an out-of-the-way private airport in the Los Angeles suburb of Van Nuys. . . .”
Investigation of the digs of H.H. Kung’s family yielded some of the most sordid information. [H.H. was married to Ai-ling Soong, elder sister of Mme. Chiang Kai-shek and sister to the Soong brothers—T.V., T.L. and T.A.]. “ . . . . According to the newspapers, several Chinese servants in the summer had been brought from Hong Kong ostensibly to work in the Chinese Embassy found themselves virtual prisoners of the Kungs in Riverdale. [At that point in time, the Chinese Embassy would have been that of the Taiwan-based Kuomintang.] . . . . In desperation, they escaped together, but were captured and brought back. . . . the hapless servants were taught a lesson when they were hung from the ceiling and whipped. . . H.H. Kung . . . did not deny any of his servants’ . . . charges. . . .”
Continuing our series on the regime of Chiang Kai-shek–all but beatified during the Cold War–we draw still more on a magnificent book–“The Soong Dynasty” by Sterling Seagrave. Although sadly out of print, the book is still available through used book services, and we emphatically encourage listeners to take advantage of those and obtain it.
(Mr. Emory gets no money from said purchases of the book.)
We begin by resuming analysis of the political and professional destruction of U.S. military and State Department elements that correctly gauged Chiang Kai-shek and the [inevitable, downward] trajectory of his regime.
Just as General Stillwell was removed as top military officer in the China/Burma theater because of his appropriate, accurate, vehement criticism of Chiang Kai-shek’s prioritization of fighting the Communists over fighting the Japanese, State Department officers who accurately forecast the decisive ascent of the Chinese Communist Party over the KMT were punished for their stance.
(Stilwell’s replacement by General Wedemeyer was noteworthy—particularly in light of the background and behavior of Wedemeyer.
In addition to being part of a political and military milieu that infused isolationist orientation toward involvement in World War II with pro-fascist sentiment, Wedemeyer appears to have presided over an act of consummate treason—the leak of the Rainbow Five American mobilization plan for World War II to anti-FDR publisher Robert J. McCormick, of the Chicago Tribune.)
The China watchers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “subversive” during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy period.
“ . . . . The eyes and ears of the U.S. Government in Chunking were a handful of old China hands . . . . The China watchers’ message essentially was that no matter how much Washington wanted Chiang Kai-shek to ‘run’ China, he was about to lose it to the Communists. . . . The observers in Chungking were accused of being in favor of what they predicted—in favor of communism. In fact, they were only warning their government of a course of events that now seemed certain. . . . Washington reacted with deep suspicion and hostility and insisted on nailing the American flag the more tightly to the mast of Chiang’s sinking ship . . . .”
As we shall further explore, the cognitive perception of China in this country was shaped by the Soong family.
The China watchers’ advice was not only ignored, but cast as “subversive” during the anti-Communist witch hunts of the McCarthy period.
“ . . . . American policy was thus based upon the personalities of the Chiangs, the Soongs and the Kungs, rather than upon the events, the nation or the people. This was a tribute to the Soongs’ extraordinary stagecraft. . . .”
Sterling Seagrave filed a Freedom of Information Act request, which obtained an FBI report on the Soongs. Heavily redacted—even in 1985—it revealed the Soongs machinations on both sides of the Pacific.
“ . . . . The Soong family . . . . ‘practically had a death grip.’ The Soongs ‘have always been money mad and every move they made was prompted by their desire to secure funds.’ . . . . ‘there was a gigantic conspiracy to defraud the Chinese from materials they would ordinarily receive through [Lend-Lease] and to divert considerable of this money to the Soong family.’. . .”
After discussing the extreme marital difficulties of Chiang Kai-shek and Mme. Chiang Kai-shek (the former Mae-ling Soong, whose marriage to Chiang had been arranged by H. H. Kung and his Machiavellian wife Ai-ling—the former Ai-ling Soong), the informant identifies Mrs. Kung as the sinister, deadly and manipulative figure that she was.
Exemplifying the scale of the treacherous, corrupt practices of the clan was a diversion of Lend-Lease aid: “ . . . . The informant then told the FBI that one of the ways T.V. diverted Lend-Lease funds into his own pocket was illustrated by reports reaching Chunking that a freighter carrying sixty new American battle tanks and other very expensive war materiel furnished by Lend-Lease had been sunk. As a matter of fact this ‘freighter never left the West Coast with any tanks; the tanks were never made . . . . this is a positive illustration of the manner in which the Soongs have been diverting funds from Lend-Lease inasmuch as the money was allocated for the 60 tanks. . . .”
Again, a key factor in the political clout wielded by the Soongs was their extreme wealth, greatly augmented by institutionalized corruption, including (and especially) T.V. Soong’s appropriation of much of the Lend-Lease material designated for China.
In addition to the outright theft of Lend-Lease material by Chiang Kai-shek’s Green Gang general staff and their sale of much of that to the Japanese enemy they were supposedly fighting, T.V. Soong—using his brother T.L Soong’s administrative control of the Lend-Lease program for China—maneuvered hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of U.S. aid into the private coffers of the Soong family.
As the KMT regime decayed and relations between the Soongs and Chiang followed suit, T. V. increasingly turned his energies to the American side of the Pacific, and appointed T.L. to oversee the American side of Lend-Lease! “ . . . . T.V. used his position as Foreign Minister to issue his brother T.L. Soong a special diplomatic passport, and sent him hurriedly to New York. T. L. was actually being whisked out of China to take over as chief purchasing agent and administrator of all U.S. Lend-Lease supplies before they left for China. Since the very beginning, T.L. had been in charge of Lend-Lease at the Chinese end. . . .”
Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger brother: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease during World II, and whose American roots were in New York City, became something of an enigma. Sources in Washington said T.L. worked as a secret consultant to the Treasury Department in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Treasury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong whatever. . . .”
Next, we review the fact that T.L. Soong—T.V.’s younger brother: “ . . . . who had been in charge of Lend Lease during World II, and whose American roots were in New York City, became something of an enigma. Sources in Washington said T.L. worked as a secret consultant to the Treasury Department in the 1950’s, engaged in what they would not say. Treasury claims it has no record of a T.L. Soong whatever. . . .”
The concluding segments of the program are drawn on another magnificent work by the Seagraves: Gold Warriors.
Before winding up the broadcast, we “dolly out” to synopsize the relationship between the Japanese invaders of China, the Green Gang gangsters, the Kuomintang regime of Chiang Kai-shek which fronted for the Green Gang and collaborated with the Japanese, Japanese corporations and Japanese colonial interests in Korea and Taiwan.
This overview foreshadows the political consortium that—in the postwar period, became the Asian Peoples’ Anti-Communist League, a key component of what was to become the World Anti-Communist League.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Green Gang boss Tu Yueh-sheng’s control of Shanghai’s booming gambling and overlapping brothel businesses; synoptic review of the relationship between Tu Yueh-sheng and the Green Gang and Chiang Kai-shek; Chiang’s sanctioning of Tu to control the KMT’s drug trafficking; the symbiotic, cooperative relationship between the invading Japanese and the Green Gang, cemented by General Doihara and Kodama Yoshio on the side of the invaders and Green Gang/KMT operatives the Ku brothers (one of whom was Tu’s harbor boss in Shanghai and the other of whom was a top KMT general); review of the Japanese development of the narcotics business in Manchuria; the Japanese use of their Manchurian narcotics enterprise to subvert China by increasing the population’s addiction rate; review of Chiang Kai-shek’s collaboration with the Manchurian/Japanese narcotics enterprise; the role of Japanese zaibatsu and other colonized areas in the Japanese narcotics business.
“ . . . . The [opium] was converted into morphine and heroin at factories in Manchuria, Korea and Taiwan, then smuggled directly across the strait on motorized junks, to mainland warehouses owned by Mitsui, Mitsubishi and other conglomerates. An army factory in Seoul that produced over 2,600 kilos of heroin in 1938–1939 was only one of several hundred factories in Manchuria, Korea, Taiwan, and in Japanese concessions in mainland cities like Hankow. . . .”
We conclude the program with analysis of power broker–Kodama Yoshio who helped institutionalize the collaboration between Chinese KMT, Korean and Japanese fascists. Noteworthy, as well is Kodama’s close relationship between with the CIA and the Japanese Imperial family in the postwar/Cold War period.
Kodama Yoshio epitomizes and embodies the operational and ideological structure of the Asian People’s Anti-Communist League, the Asian branch of what was to become the World Anti-Communist League.
Key Points of Discussion and Analysis Include: Kodama’s accumulated fortune of 13 billion dollars in World War II dollars; Kodama’s close relationship with Japanese Emperor Hirohito, who allowed him to stash some of his wealth in the Imperial Palace; Kodama’s dominant position in the narcotics traffic, during and after World War II; Kodama’s donation of 100 million dollars to the CIA (equivalent to 1 billion dollars in today’s currency); Kodama’s continued dominance in the global narcotics traffic, during the time he was on the CIA’s payroll; Kodama’s cozy relationship with Prince Higashikuni, Emperor Hirohito’s uncle, who facilitated Kodama’s operations, including his close relationship with the U.S.
Now that West’s regime change campaign against China is now playing out in the middle of a global COVID-19 pandemic that threatens to strangle virtually all major economies at the same time far right governments are in power across the globe, perhaps it’s time to ask an unsettling question: Is collapsing the global economy and bankrupting major world powers for the purpose of pushing the world to the gold standard on the agenda on top of collapsing China? That’s what we’re going to explore in this post. It’s a highly speculative and we better hope it’s very wrong. But if it’s correct you better hope you have to gold. And guns. And whatever else is required to survive a social collapse because social collapse is what the far right has been hoping to see for decades and with far right governments in control around the globe in the middle of a global pandemic that is strangling the every economy we are now closer than ever to ‘achieving’ that nightmarish far right dream.
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