FTR#‘s 1351 & 1352 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 25 & 26

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams con­tin­ue (from FTR#‘s 1349 & 1350)  explo­ration of the his­to­ry of U.S. involve­ment with Asian fas­cism from the pre-World War II peri­od until the present.

Crit­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on U.S. cap­i­tal sup­port for Japan­ese fas­cism and Japan’s cen­turies-long sub­ju­ga­tion of Korea may be found in FTR#‘s 905 and 1141.

FTR#‘s 1349 & 1350 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 23 & 24

Intro­duc­tion: These pro­grams con­tin­ue (from FTR#‘s 1345 & 1346)  explo­ration of the his­to­ry of U.S. involve­ment with Asian fas­cism from the pre-World War II peri­od until the present.

Crit­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on U.S. cap­i­tal sup­port for Japan­ese fas­cism and Japan’s cen­turies-long sub­ju­ga­tion of Korea may be found in FTR#‘s 905 and 1141.

1. It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tain­ly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Com­mu­nist League) were involved.

The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Dick Rus­sell; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 684.

 . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . .I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Naz­i’s [sic], and that is who is in pow­er in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­i­ca is also full of these Naz­i’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­ri­or motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .

2. While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam.

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

 . . . . I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States. His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .

3a. The shoot­ing war in Asia did not end with V‑J Day.

The Night­mare Decade: The Life and Times of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy by Fred J. Cook; Copy­right 1971 by Fred J. Cook; Ran­dom House [HC]; ISBN 0–394-46270‑x; p. 219.

. . . . 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.” . . . .

3b. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Machii Hisayu­ki (head of the Kore­an Yakuza in Japan) in Seoul South Korea on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . 

3c. Japan’s loot­ing of Korea took place over cen­turies. In Gold War­riors, the Sea­graves present the his­to­ry of Japan’s rape of Korea, begin­ning with their account of the gris­ly mur­der of Kore­an Queen Min in 1894. (For more about the Japan­ese con­quest, sub­ju­ga­tion and loot­ing of Korea, see FTR#1141.) ” . . . . the defense­less queen was stabbed and slashed repeat­ed­ly, and car­ried wail­ing out to the palace gar­den where she was thrown onto a pile of fire­wood, drenched with kerosene, and set aflame. An Amer­i­can mil­i­tary advi­sor, Gen­er­al William Dye, was one of sev­er­al for­eign­ers who heard and saw the killers milling around in the palace com­pound with dawn swords while the queen was burned alive. . . .”

A snap­shot of the Japan­ese colo­nial occu­pa­tion of Korea, a focal point of crit­i­cism of the late Park Won-soon:” . . . . [Gen­er­al] Ter­auchi was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly bru­tal, set­ting a prece­dent for Japan­ese behav­ior in all the coun­tries, it would occu­py over com­ing decades. Deter­mined to crush all resis­tance, he told Kore­ans, ‘I will whip you with scor­pi­ons!’ He set up a sadis­tic police force of Kore­an yakuza, order­ing it to use tor­ture as a mat­ter of course, for ‘no Ori­en­tal can be expect­ed to tell the truth except under tor­ture’. These police were close­ly super­vised by Japan’s gestapo, the kem­peitai. . . . ‘Japan’s aim,’ said Kore­an his­to­ri­an Yi Kibeck, ‘was to erad­i­cate con­scious­ness of Kore­an nation­al iden­ti­ty, roots and all, and thus to oblit­er­ate the very exis­tence of the Kore­an peo­ple from the face of the earth.’ . . . the penin­su­la was stripped of every­thing from art­works to root veg­eta­bles. As Korea now belonged to Japan, the trans­fer of cul­tur­al property—looting—was not theft. How can you steal some­thing that already belongs to you? . . .”

4. Top­ics and Points of Dis­cus­sion For Inclu­sion in this series: The Cab­i­net Research Offi­cer next to Ruby at the press con­fer­ence; Gen­er­al Arisue and his myr­i­ad con­nec­tions; Tsu­ji Masanobu and his links to Arisue, the Bataan Death March and also high­light­ing the death of Iris Chang in this dis­cus­sion; Both Syn­g­man Rhee’s and Ngo Dinh Diem’s work for the Japan­ese; The use of the Uighurs by the Japan­ese and their imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors; The divid­ing of Korea at the 38th par­al­lel by Col’s David Dean Rusk and Bon­es­teel; Rusk’s work for Admi­ral Hil­lenkoet­ter at CIA, as well as any oth­er intel­li­gence links you have for him (There was at least anoth­er, but I can’t remem­ber if off the top of my head); Colonel Bonesteel’s lat­er work in Viet­nam as a Gen­er­al and for CIA; Gen­er­al Kim Sook Won and his work as a “Ban­dit Hunter;” Kim Sook Won’s role as com­man­der of Syn­g­man Rhee’s bor­der forces; We will dis­cuss I.F. Stone’s Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kore­an War, not­ing that it appears that South Korea attacked first, bat­ing the North to coun­ter­at­tack; What the Kore­an War did strate­gi­cal­ly for MacArthur & Company—precluding an attack by Mao’s forces on Formosa/Taiwan, as well as solid­i­fy­ing Rhee’s posi­tion in South Korea (which might have been end­ed by a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum); JFK’s cut­ting loose of Syn­g­man Rhee and his White Terror—undoubtedly anoth­er major rea­son for his assas­si­na­tion; Willough­by, of course; Jim Wilcott and the Japan­ese fas­cists with whom he worked; Oswald in Japan and E. Howard Hunt’s role in covert oper­a­tions in Japan; Review of JFK’s attempts to extri­cate us from Viet­nam; Eisuke Ono’s role as a Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence pay­mas­ter in the U.S. in1933; Fred­er­ick Rutland’s work for Mit­subishi and the oper­a­tional links to Kodama Yoshio and Arisue (Rut­land was the guy Ono was pay­ing); The posi­tion of Ono in the post-WWII bank­ing milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Gold­en Lily—The links to Tiarks, Nor­bert Bog­dan and the role of the Bank of Tokyo as the suc­ces­sor to the Yoko­hama Specie Bank.

FTR#‘s 1345 & 1346 Conversations with Monte: Conversations #‘s 19 and 20

These pro­grams begin an explo­ration of the his­to­ry of U.S. involve­ment with Asian fas­cism from the pre-World War II peri­od until the present.

Crit­i­cal back­ground infor­ma­tion on U.S. cap­i­tal sup­port for Japan­ese fas­cism and Japan’s cen­turies-long sub­ju­ga­tion of Korea may be found in FTR#‘s 905 and 1141.

1. It is inter­est­ing to con­tem­plate the text of a let­ter that Jack Ruby smug­gled out of prison. In the let­ter, Ruby hints that Japan­ese fas­cists par­tic­i­pat­ed in the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy. Cer­tain­ly, ele­ments of what were to become the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (includ­ing the Asian Peo­ples Anti-Com­mu­nist League) were involved.

 . . . Don’t believe the War­ren [Com­mis­sion] Report, that was only put out to make me look inno­cent. . . .I’m going to die a hor­ri­ble death any­way, so what would I have to gain by writ­ing all this. So you must believe me. . . . that [sic] is only one kind of peo­ple that would do such a thing, that would have to be the Naz­i’s [sic], and that is who is in pow­er in this coun­try right now. . . . Japan is also in on the deal, but the old war lords are going to come back. South Amer­i­ca is also full of these Naz­i’s [sic]. . . . if those peo­ple were so deter­mined to frame me then you must be con­vinced that they had an ulte­ri­or motive for doing same. There is only one kind of peo­ple that would go to such extremes, and that would be the Mas­ter Race. . . .

The Man Who Knew Too Much; Dick Rus­sell; Car­roll & Graf [HC]; Copy­right 1992 by Dick Rus­sell; ISBN 0–88184-900–6; p. 684.

2. While in Oki­nawa dur­ing Japan’s sur­ren­der in World War II, Colonel L. Fletch­er Prouty was wit­ness to the ear­ly com­mit­ment of deci­sive mil­i­tary resources to the wars that were to take place in Korea and Indochina/Vietnam.

 . . . . I was on Oki­nawa at that time, and dur­ing some busi­ness in the har­bor area I asked the har­bor­mas­ter if all that new mate­r­i­al was being returned to the States. His response was direct and sur­pris­ing: ‘Hell, no! They ain’t nev­er goin’ to see it again. One-half of this stuff, enough to equip and sup­ply at least a hun­dred and fifty thou­sand men, is going to Korea, and the oth­er half is going to Indochi­na.’ In 1945, none of us had any idea that the first bat­tles of the Cold War were going to be fought by U.S. mil­i­tary units in those two regions begin­ning in 1950 and 1965–yet that is pre­cise­ly what had been planned, and it is pre­cise­ly what hap­pened. Who made that deci­sion back in 1943–45? . . . .

JFK: The CIA, Viet­nam, and the Plot to Assas­si­nate John F. Kennedy by Col. [Ret.] L. Fletch­er Prouty; Sky­horse Pub­lish­ing [HC]; Copy­right 2011 by L. Fletch­er Prouty; ISBN 978–1‑51073–876‑8; pp. 17–18.

3a. The shoot­ing war in Asia did not end with V‑J Day.

. . . . 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.” . . . .

The Night­mare Decade: The Life and Times of Sen­a­tor Joe McCarthy by Fred J. Cook; Copy­right 1971 by Fred J. Cook; Ran­dom House [HC]; ISBN 0–394-46270‑x; p. 219.

3b. Of great sig­nif­i­cance is the pres­ence of John Fos­ter Dulles, Kodama Yoshio and Machii Hisayu­ki (head of the Kore­an Yakuza in Japan) in Seoul South Korea on the eve of the out­break of the Kore­an War.

Gold War­riors by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; Ver­so [SC]; Copy­right 2003, 2005 by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave; ISBN 1–84467-531–9; p. 115.

 . . . . In Octo­ber of 1949, the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na came into being. Eight months lat­er, in June of 1950, the Kore­an War broke out. Just before the war began, Kodama [Yoshio] accom­pa­nied John Fos­ter Dulles to nego­ti­a­tions in Seoul. The Dulles par­ty also includ­ed Kodama’s pro­tege Machii Hisayu­ki, boss of the Kore­an yakuza in Japan. Efforts to dis­cov­er under Free­dom of Infor­ma­tion what Kodama and Machii did dur­ing the trip with Dulles have run into a stone wall. In the MacArthur Memo­r­i­al archive we dis­cov­ered a per­son­al let­ter from Kodama to Gen­er­al MacArthur offer­ing to pro­vide thou­sands of yakuza and for­mer Japan­ese Army sol­diers to fight along­side Amer­i­can sol­diers in Korea. Accord­ing to sources in Korea and Japan, the offer was accept­ed and these men joined the Allied force on the Penin­su­la, pos­ing as Kore­an sol­diers. . . . 

4. Top­ics and Points of Dis­cus­sion For Inclu­sion in this series: The Cab­i­net Research Offi­cer next to Ruby at the press con­fer­ence; Gen­er­al Arisue and his myr­i­ad con­nec­tions; Tsu­ji Masanobu and his links to Arisue, the Bataan Death March and also high­light­ing the death of Iris Chang in this dis­cus­sion; Both Syn­g­man Rhee’s and Ngo Dinh Diem’s work for the Japan­ese; The use of the Uighurs by the Japan­ese and their imme­di­ate suc­ces­sors; The divid­ing of Korea at the 38th par­al­lel by Col’s David Dean Rusk and Bon­es­teel; Rusk’s work for Admi­ral Hil­lenkoet­ter at CIA, as well as any oth­er intel­li­gence links you have for him (There was at least anoth­er, but I can’t remem­ber if off the top of my head); Colonel Bonesteel’s lat­er work in Viet­nam as a Gen­er­al and for CIA; Gen­er­al Kim Sook Won and his work as a “Ban­dit Hunter;” Kim Sook Won’s role as com­man­der of Syn­g­man Rhee’s bor­der forces; We will dis­cuss I.F. Stone’s Hid­den His­to­ry of the Kore­an War, not­ing that it appears that South Korea attacked first, bat­ing the North to coun­ter­at­tack; What the Kore­an War did strate­gi­cal­ly for MacArthur & Company—precluding an attack by Mao’s forces on Formosa/Taiwan, as well as solid­i­fy­ing Rhee’s posi­tion in South Korea (which might have been end­ed by a pop­u­lar ref­er­en­dum); JFK’s cut­ting loose of Syn­g­man Rhee and his White Terror—undoubtedly anoth­er major rea­son for his assas­si­na­tion; Willough­by, of course; Jim Wilcott and the Japan­ese fas­cists with whom he worked; Oswald in Japan and E. Howard Hunt’s role in covert oper­a­tions in Japan; Review of JFK’s attempts to extri­cate us from Viet­nam; Eisuke Ono’s role as a Japan­ese Naval Intel­li­gence pay­mas­ter in the U.S. in1933; Fred­er­ick Rutland’s work for Mit­subishi and the oper­a­tional links to Kodama Yoshio and Arisue (Rut­land was the guy Ono was pay­ing); The posi­tion of Ono in the post-WWII bank­ing milieu inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Gold­en Lily—The links to Tiarks, Nor­bert Bog­dan and the role of the Bank of Tokyo as the suc­ces­sor to the Yoko­hama Specie Bank.

FTR#‘s 1309 and 1310 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Parts 3 and 4

These broad­casts sup­ple­ment FTR#‘s 509, 1107 and 1108.

Sig­nif­i­cant sec­tions of the lat­ter two broad­casts are recapped in these pro­grams and this descrip­tion.

Key Points of Dis­cus­sion and Analy­sis Include:

1.–Iris Chang’s moth­er, Ying-Ying Chang, could not rule out the “dark con­spir­a­cy” that Iris was fac­ing. Ying-Ying’s point of view was shaped, in part, by Steven Clemons’ obser­va­tions.
2.–In an appen­dix titled “Requiem for Iris Chang,” Steven Clemons not­ed the alleged “sui­cide” of his asso­ciate Juzo Ita­mi, who was bat­tling the same forces as Iris Chang. “I have nev­er bought the sto­ry about Juzo Ita­mi, who was at war in his films with the Japan­ese right-wing crowd and yakuza.”
3.–Iris’ best-known work, “The Rape of Nanking”, inspired a con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion sup­port­ing Japan­ese com­pen­sa­tion for those who had been com­pelled to labor as slaves and slave pros­ti­tutes or “com­fort women.”
4.–Iris was work­ing on a book and doc­u­men­tary film project about the sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March. Some of those vet­er­ans had been used as slave labor­ers by Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions dur­ing the war. The Bataan Death March vet­er­ans were among those who sued the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions that had enslaved them.
5.–The pre­sid­ing judge ruled against the vet­er­ans and for the Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions. On the day of Iris’ “sui­cide” Gov­er­nor Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger was meet­ing with Japan­ese busi­ness­men to pro­mote Cal­i­for­nia-Japan­ese trade.
6.–In ear­ly Sep­tem­ber of 2001, Iris spoke at a con­fer­ence assem­bled to protest the cel­e­bra­tion of the 50th anniver­sary of the U.S./Japanese treaty of 1951 (nego­ti­at­ed by John Fos­ter Dulles). Iris called “the San Fran­cis­co Peace Treaty a trav­es­ty of jus­tice, a betray­al of our own Amer­i­can vet­er­ans.” Recall the con­gres­sion­al res­o­lu­tion passed in the after­math of, and because of The Rape of Nanking.
7.–After watch­ing a spir­it­ed dis­cus­sion between Iris and the Japan­ese ambas­sador to the U.S., a friend of Iris’ father advised her to hire a body­guard.
8.–As will be not­ed at greater length below, Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion and had writ­ten sev­er­al arti­cles crit­i­cal of his poli­cies.
9.–Iris was very crit­i­cal of the George W. Bush admin­is­tra­tion, and had tak­en stances against many fea­tures of his for­eign pol­i­cy, Bush’s inva­sion of Iraq in par­tic­u­lar. Iris had long opposed all forms of racism in this coun­try.
10.–Sadly, many of those close to Iris dis­missed her fears con­cern­ing the government’s tar­get­ing of her and the over­lap­ping ide­o­log­i­cal ani­mos­i­ty and tar­get­ing of her by the Japan­ese right-wing. The his­tor­i­cal and oper­a­tional over­lap between the two is fun­da­men­tal and is explored in some of the mate­r­i­al below.
11.–When she trav­eled to Louisville, Ken­tucky to inter­view sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March, she felt she was under phys­i­cal sur­veil­lance and harass­ment. We note below that Ken­tucky was a place where Bush con­fi­dant William Stamps Far­ish III had pow­er­ful con­nec­tions.
12.–During her book tour for The Rape of Nanking, Iris was approached by some­one she felt was recruit­ing her. He said “You will be safer to join us.” Was this and attempt at recruit­ment by the CIA?
13.–We repeat the infor­ma­tion in #11, for pur­pos­es of empha­sis.
14.–Iris was con­vinced to her dying day that she was the focal point of hos­til­i­ty from the Bush admin­is­tra­tion. A remake of the movie The Manchuri­an Can­di­date height­ened her anx­i­ety. Her arti­cles crit­i­cal of the Bush admin­is­tra­tion and, as we have and shall see, the over­lap­ping dynam­ics of her work on The Rape of Nanking and Gold War­riors fur­ther deep­ened her per­il. She first pur­chased a firearm for pro­tec­tion and was hop­ing that John Ker­ry would defeat Bush in 2004.
15.–Despite the fact that Iris’ corpse was found in her car in the ear­ly morn­ing, her par­ents weren’t noti­fied of her death until almost mid­night. Why?
16.–Iris’ corpse was dis­cov­ered ear­ly in the morn­ing with her head against the driver’s side win­dow, her hands crossed in her lap and the gun on her left leg. While not phys­i­cal­ly impos­si­ble, this is alto­geth­er unlike­ly for some­one who had alleged­ly com­mit­ted sui­cide by fir­ing a pow­er­ful hand gun into her mouth. She felt that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” while those around her thought they were “inter­nal,” i.e. “all in her head.”
17.–Same as 16.
18.–Iris’ ordeal was remark­ably sim­i­lar to what Rita Katz endured fol­low­ing her work on Oper­a­tion Green Quest and the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tion.
19.–George W. Bush was pur­su­ing Philip­pine Gold­en Lily loot in order to increase U.S. gold reserves and, per­haps more impor­tant­ly, to for­ti­fy his blind trust. That trust was over­seen by William Stamps Far­ish III, who had con­sid­er­able polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic grav­i­tas in the state of Ken­tucky.
20.–Bush’s Harken Ener­gy may well have served as a mon­ey laun­der­ing front, per­haps for some of the gold recov­ered in the Philip­pines. We note that a direc­tor of Harken, Talat Oth­man, inter­ced­ed direct­ly with then Trea­sury Sec­re­tary Paul O’Neill on behalf of the tar­gets of the 3/20/2002 raids. The SAAR net­work was a pri­ma­ry tar­get of those raids: we have seen how Rita Katz and her fel­low inves­ti­ga­tors came under sur­veil­lance and harass­ment for dig­ging into that case.
21.–We revis­it the deep pol­i­tics of the Bush fam­i­ly, the fam­i­ly of Dou­glas MacArthur and William and Alan Quasha.
22.–More about the deep pol­i­tics of the Philip­pines, the Bush fam­i­ly, father and son Quasha, and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Alan Quasha’s dom­i­nant pres­ence in Harken Ener­gy may be deriv­a­tive of the clan­des­tine acqui­si­tion of Gold­en Lily loot.
23.–The pro­gram con­cludes with review of the oper­a­tions of Gold­en Lily and their involve­ment with things Iris was inves­ti­gat­ing. The Rape of Nanking marked the for­mal begin­ning of Gold­en Lily.
24.–Colonel Tsu­ji Masanobu was heav­i­ly involved with Gold­en Lily and the Bataan Death March, the sur­vivors of which were a focal point of Iris Chang’s research at the time of her death.

Rare Journalistic Glimpse of Japanese Political and Historical Revisionism

In numer­ous pro­grams, we have cov­ered the re-insti­tu­tion of Impe­r­i­al Japan­ese fas­cism in the after­math of World War II. That re-con­sti­tu­tion embraced the polit­i­cal, finan­cial and indus­tri­al ele­ments of the Japan­ese pow­er elite pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Review­ing a recent film set against the back­ground of Unit 731 (a rel­a­tive rar­i­ty in, and of, itself), “The New York Times” not­ed the insti­tu­tion­al­ized his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism that is part of con­tem­po­rary Japan­ese life. ” . . . . In Tokyo, black vans often prowl the streets spout­ing pro­pa­gan­da that rewrites the country’s role in the war. And pub­lish­ers churn out books dis­put­ing the most basic facts about atroc­i­ties. . . .” WFMU-FM is pod­cast­ing For The Record–You can sub­scribe to the pod­cast HERE.

FTR#1196 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 3

The pro­gram begins with dis­cus­sion of two arti­cles that frame the analy­sis of the New Cold War with Chi­na.

” . . . . ‘the polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic sys­tem of the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic is pre­cise­ly that what no one expects, in the West — where agi­ta­tion­al report­ing usu­al­ly only con­firms resent­ful clichés about Chi­na. . . .”

Much jour­nal­is­tic blovi­at­ing and diplo­mat­ic and mil­i­tary pos­tur­ing in the U.S. has been devot­ed to Chi­na’s occu­pa­tion of unin­hab­it­ed atolls in the South Chi­na Sea and waters around Chi­na.

In addi­tion to fail­ure to under­stand this in the his­tor­i­cal con­text of Chi­na’s expe­ri­ence dur­ing the Opi­um Wars and the con­flict with the Japan­ese dur­ing World War II, the cov­er­age in the West has omit­ted dis­cus­sion of sim­i­lar occu­pa­tion and (in some cas­es) mil­i­ta­riza­tion of such islands in those waters by oth­er coun­tries in the region: ” . . . . Offi­cial­ly, Berlin jus­ti­fies the frigate Bay­ern’s deploy­ment to East Asia with its inten­tion to pro­mote the imple­men­ta­tion of inter­na­tion­al law. This per­tains par­tic­u­lar­ly to con­flicts over numer­ous islands and atolls in the South Chi­na Sea that are con­test­ed by the ripar­i­ans and where Chi­na claims 28 of them and uses some mil­i­tar­i­ly, accord­ing to the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies (CSIS). Accord­ing to CSIS, the Philip­pines con­trol nine, Malaysia, five and Tai­wan, one island, where­as Viet­nam has estab­lished around 50 out­posts of var­i­ous sorts. All four coun­tries also have a mil­i­tary pres­ence on some of the islands and atolls they are occu­py­ing. . . .”

As not­ed in the Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy arti­cle, the Ger­man (and U.S. and U.K.) posi­tion is bla­tant­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal: ” . . . . The frigate Bay­ern, which set sail for East Asia yes­ter­day, will soon make a port call at Diego Gar­cia, an island under occu­pa­tion, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, and serv­ing mil­i­tary pur­pos­es. It is the main island of the Cha­gos Arch­i­pel­ago in the mid­dle of the Indi­an Ocean and the site of a strate­gi­cal­ly impor­tant US mil­i­tary base. The Cha­gos Arch­i­pel­ago is an old British colo­nial pos­ses­sion that had once belonged to Mau­ri­tius. It was detached, in vio­la­tion of inter­na­tion­al law, dur­ing the decol­o­niza­tion of Mau­ri­tius, to allow the Unit­ed States to con­struct a mil­i­tary base. The pop­u­la­tion was deport­ed to impov­er­ished regions on Mau­ri­tius. In the mean­time, sev­er­al inter­na­tion­al court rul­ings have been hand­ed down and a UN Gen­er­al Assem­bly res­o­lu­tion has been passed on this issue — all con­clud­ing that Mau­ri­tius has sov­er­eign­ty over Diego Gar­cia and call­ing on the Unit­ed King­dom to hand back the ille­gal­ly occu­pied Cha­gos Arch­i­pel­ago. To this day, Lon­don and Wash­ing­ton refuse to com­ply. . . .”

Anoth­er Ger­man For­eign Pol­i­cy arti­cle sets forth many of Mr. Emory’s fears and obser­va­tions con­cern­ing con­tem­po­rary Chi­na and the U.S.

Among those con­cerns and fears:

1.–” . . . . the major shift in the glob­al bal­ance of pow­er, shap­ing our present, with Chi­na’s rise and the USA seek­ing to hold the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na down, to pre­serve its glob­al dom­i­nance. The con­se­quences are a dan­ger­ous esca­la­tion of the con­flict, which could lead to a Third World War. . . .”
2.–” . . . . At the begin­ning of the 19th cen­tu­ry, the Mid­dle King­dom (Chi­na) — which had one-third of the world’s pop­u­la­tion — was still gen­er­at­ing a third of the world’s eco­nom­ic out­put. There­fore, it was the world’s great­est eco­nom­ic pow­er — as it had already been for many cen­turies. . . .”
3.–” . . . . Chi­na’s resur­gence, fol­low­ing the dev­as­ta­tion brought on par­tic­u­lar­ly by the west­ern colo­nial pow­ers was pos­si­ble, Baron explains, not least because ‘the polit­i­cal-eco­nom­ic sys­tem of the Peo­ple’s Repub­lic is pre­cise­ly that what no one expects, in the West — where agi­ta­tion­al report­ing usu­al­ly only con­firms resent­ful clichés about Chi­na. It is ‘high­ly flex­i­ble, adven­tur­ous, and adapt­able.’ Baron quotes Sebas­t­ian Heil­mann and Eliz­a­beth Per­ry, both experts on Chi­na, say­ing pol­i­tics is explic­it­ly under­stood as a ‘process of con­stant trans­for­ma­tions and con­flict man­age­ment, with tri­al runs and ad hoc adap­ta­tions.’ The Chi­nese sys­tem is a far cry from being a rigid, inflex­i­ble author­i­tar­i­an­ism. . . .”
4.–” . . . . Baron depicts the for­eign pol­i­cy the USA — at home increas­ing­ly decay­ing — has been indulging in since the end of the cold war: an extreme­ly aggres­sive approach toward Rus­sia, gru­el­ing wars — such as in Iraq — in addi­tion to ‘regime change oper­a­tions’ and unscrupu­lous extra-ter­ri­to­r­i­al sanc­tions. ‘The mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al-com­plex and the intel­li­gence ser­vices (...) have seized an enor­mous amount of pow­er,’ notes the pub­li­cist, and warns that only exter­nal aggres­sion can hold the coun­try togeth­er: ‘The con­vic­tion that Amer­i­ca must be at the top in the world,’ is, at the moment, ‘almost the only thing that the deeply antag­o­nis­tic Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans can still agree on.’ Baron speaks of ‘impe­r­i­al arro­gance.’ . . .”
5.–” . . . . ‘To defend its lost hege­mon­ic posi­tion’ the Unit­ed States ‘is not pri­mar­i­ly seek­ing to regain its com­pet­i­tive­ness,’ Baron observes, but rather it is striv­ing ‘by any means and on all fronts, to pre­vent — or at least restrain — Chi­na’s progress.’ . . . . Ulti­mate­ly, ‘the threat of a Third World War’ looms large. . . .”

One can­not under­stand con­tem­po­rary Chi­na and the polit­i­cal his­to­ry of that coun­try over the last cou­ple of cen­turies with­out a com­pre­hen­sive grasp of the effect of the Opi­um Wars on that nation and its peo­ple.

Indeed, one can­not grasp Chi­nese his­to­ry and pol­i­tics with­out an under­stand­ing of the nar­cotics trade’s cen­tral posi­tion in that country’s pol­i­tics.

A viable under­stand­ing of Chi­na’s past yields under­stand­ing of its present. 

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion of the Opi­um Wars include:

1.–The eco­nom­ic imper­a­tive for the con­flicts were the trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain: “ . . . . In the 18th cen­tu­ry the demand for Chi­nese lux­u­ry goods (par­tic­u­lar­ly silk, porce­lain, and tea) cre­at­ed a trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain. Euro­pean sil­ver flowed into Chi­na through the Can­ton Sys­tem, which con­fined incom­ing for­eign trade to the south­ern port city of Can­ton. . . .”
2.–To alter that dynam­ic, the British East India Com­pa­ny turned to the opi­um trade: “ . . . . To counter this imbal­ance, the British East India Com­pa­ny began to grow opi­um in Ben­gal and allowed pri­vate British mer­chants to sell opi­um to Chi­nese smug­glers for ille­gal sale in Chi­na. The influx of nar­cotics reversed the Chi­nese trade sur­plus, drained the econ­o­my of sil­ver, and increased the num­bers of opi­um addicts inside the coun­try, out­comes that seri­ous­ly wor­ried Chi­nese offi­cials. . . .”
3.–The Chi­nese attempt at inter­dict­ing the opi­um trade was coun­tered with force of arms: “ . . . . In 1839, the Daoguang Emper­or, reject­ing pro­pos­als to legal­ize and tax opi­um, appoint­ed ViceroyLin Zexu to go to Can­ton to halt the opi­um trade completely.[8] Lin wrote an open let­ter to Queen Vic­to­ria, which she nev­er saw, appeal­ing to her moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to stop the opi­um trade.[9] Lin then resort­ed to using force in the west­ern mer­chants’ enclave. He con­fis­cat­ed all sup­plies and ordered a block­ade of for­eign ships on the Pearl Riv­er. Lin also con­fis­cat­ed and destroyed a sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ty of Euro­pean opium.[10] The British gov­ern­ment respond­ed by dis­patch­ing a mil­i­tary force to Chi­na and in the ensu­ing con­flict, the Roy­al Navy used its naval and gun­nery pow­er to inflict a series of deci­sive defeats on the Chi­nese Empire,[11] a tac­tic lat­er referred to as gun­boat diplo­ma­cy.  . . .”
4.–Forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, Chi­na expe­ri­enced: “ . . . . In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chi­nese lat­er called the unequal treaties—which grant­ed an indem­ni­ty  and extrater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty to British sub­jects in Chi­na . . . . The 1842 Treaty of Nanking not only opened the way for fur­ther opi­um trade, but ced­ed the ter­ri­to­ry of Hong Kong . . . . ”
5.–The trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain wors­ened, and the expense of main­tain new colo­nial territories—including Hong Kong (appro­pri­at­ed through the first Opi­um War)—led to the sec­ond Opi­um War. Note that the “extrater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty” grant­ed to British sub­jects exempt­ed them from Chi­nese law, includ­ing the offi­cial pro­hi­bi­tion against opi­um traf­fick­ing: “ . . . . Despite the new ports avail­able for trade under the Treaty of Nanking, by 1854 Britain’s imports from Chi­na had reached nine times their exports to the coun­try. At the same time British impe­r­i­al finances came under fur­ther pres­sure from the expense of admin­is­ter­ing the bur­geon­ing colonies of Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore in addi­tion to India. Only the lat­ter’s opi­um could bal­ance the deficit. [30]Along with var­i­ous com­plaints about the treat­ment of British mer­chants in Chi­nese ports and the Qing gov­ern­men­t’s refusal to accept fur­ther for­eign ambas­sadors, the rel­a­tive­ly minor ‘Arrow Inci­dent’ pro­vid­ed the pre­text the British need­ed to once more resort to mil­i­tary force to ensure the opi­um kept flow­ing. . . . Mat­ters quick­ly esca­lat­ed and led to the Sec­ond Opi­um War . . . .”
6.–As a result of the Sec­ond Opi­um War, Chi­na was oblig­ed to Cede No.1 Dis­trict of Kowloon (south of present-day Bound­ary Street) to Britain; grant “free­dom of reli­gion,” which led to an influx of West­ern Mis­sion­ar­ies, U.S. in par­tic­u­lar; British ships were allowed to car­ry inden­tured Chi­nese to the Amer­i­c­as; legal­iza­tion of the opi­um trade.”
7.–Fierce, elo­quent con­dem­na­tion of the Opi­um Wars was voiced by British Prime Min­is­ter Glad­stone: “ . . . . The opi­um trade incurred intense enmi­ty from the lat­er British Prime Min­is­ter William Ewart Gladstone.[34] As a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Glad­stone called it ‘most infa­mous and atro­cious’, refer­ring to the opi­um trade between Chi­na and British India in particular.[35] Glad­stone was fierce­ly against both of the Opi­um Wars, was ardent­ly opposed to the British trade in opi­um to Chi­na, and denounced British vio­lence against Chinese.[36] Glad­stone lam­bast­ed it as ‘Palmer­ston’s Opi­um War’ and said that he felt ‘in dread of the judg­ments of God upon Eng­land for our nation­al iniq­ui­ty towards Chi­na’ in May 1840.[37] A famous speech was made by Glad­stone in Par­lia­ment against the First Opi­um War.[38][39] Glad­stone crit­i­cized it as ‘a war more unjust in its ori­gin, a war more cal­cu­lat­ed in its progress to cov­er this coun­try with per­ma­nent dis­grace’. . . .”

FTR#1195 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang, Part 2

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

” . . . .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. . . .”

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.

” . . . . 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. . . .”

One can­not under­stand con­tem­po­rary Chi­na and the polit­i­cal his­to­ry of that coun­try over the last cou­ple of cen­turies with­out a com­pre­hen­sive grasp of the effect of the Opi­um Wars on that nation and its peo­ple.

Indeed, one can­not grasp Chi­nese his­to­ry and pol­i­tics with­out an under­stand­ing of the nar­cotics trade’s cen­tral posi­tion in that country’s pol­i­tics.

A viable under­stand­ing of Chi­na’s past yields under­stand­ing of its present. 

Aware­ness of key dynam­ics of Chi­nese his­to­ry includes:

1.–The deci­sive role of Euro­pean and Amer­i­can mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic exploita­tion of Chi­na.
2.–The role of the nar­cotics traf­fic in the ero­sion of Chi­nese soci­ety in the 19th cen­tu­ry.
3.–The British-led “Opi­um Wars,” which were the foun­da­tion of the destruc­tion wrought by dope addic­tion in Chi­na.
4.–The Opi­um Wars and their imple­men­ta­tion by “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” of British and Euro­pean ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion in Chi­na.
5.–The piv­otal role of that “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” in the British acqui­si­tion of Hong Kong.
6.–Contemporary Chi­nese con­cern with the mil­i­tary safe­ty of their ports, ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters, adja­cent seas and oceans, ship­ping lanes, mer­chant marine traf­fic. This stems in large mea­sure from China’s expe­ri­ence with “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” and the rav­aging of Chi­na by Impe­r­i­al Japan dur­ing the 1930’s and 1940’s.
7.–The intro­duc­tion of West­ern mis­sion­ar­ies into China–American mis­sion­ar­ies, in par­tic­u­lar.
8.–The fos­ter­ing of the “Mis­sion­ary posi­tion” toward Chi­na on the part of the U.S.
9.–American mis­sion­ar­ies’ use of mor­phine to cure Chi­nese opi­um addicts, a prac­tice so preva­lent that the Chi­nese referred to mor­phine as “Jesus opi­um.”
10.–The enor­mous opi­um trade in Chi­na as the foun­da­tion for the coa­les­cence and ascent of Shang­hai’s Green Gang and Tu Yueh-Shen: “Big Eared Tu.”
11.–The dom­i­nance of the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-Shek by the Green Gang and Big-Eared Tu.
12.–The fun­da­men­tal reliance of Chi­ang’s gov­ern­ment on the nar­cotics trade.
13.–The dom­i­nant role of Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s regime in the U.S. nar­cotics trade.
14.–The doc­tri­naire fas­cism of Chi­ang Kai-Shek and his oper­a­tional rela­tion­ships with Nazi Ger­many, Mus­solin­i’s Italy and Impe­r­i­al Japan.
15.–The cen­tral role of the Soong fam­i­ly in Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s Kuom­intang; T.V. Soong, his sis­ters Mae-ling (mar­ried to Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-Shek), Ai-ling (mar­ried to H.H. Kung, a key finance min­is­ter of the Kuom­intang), and sev­er­al of T. V.‘s broth­ers, who also shared in the slic­ing of the pie under Chi­ang.
16.–The piv­otal role of Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing giant Hen­ry Luce, whose mis­sion­ary back­ground in Chi­na informed and ani­mat­ed his ado­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-Shek and Mme. Chi­ang.
17.–The role of the Luce pub­lish­ing empire and the enor­mous finan­cial influ­ence of the con­sum­mate­ly cor­rupt Soong fam­i­ly in spawn­ing “The Chi­na Lob­by.”
18.–The deci­sive role of the Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s refusal to fight the Japan­ese invaders, com­bined with the bru­tal repres­sion and civic inep­ti­tude in dri­ving the Chi­nese peo­ple into the arms of Mao Tse-Tung and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

Key points of analy­sis and dis­cus­sion of the Opi­um Wars include:

1.–The eco­nom­ic imper­a­tive for the con­flicts were the trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain: “ . . . . In the 18th cen­tu­ry the demand for Chi­nese lux­u­ry goods (par­tic­u­lar­ly silk, porce­lain, and tea) cre­at­ed a trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain. Euro­pean sil­ver flowed into Chi­nathrough the Can­ton Sys­tem, which con­fined incom­ing for­eign trade to the south­ern port city of Can­ton. . . .”
2.–To alter that dynam­ic, the British East India Com­pa­ny turned to the opi­um trade: “ . . . . To counter this imbal­ance, the British East India Com­pa­ny began to grow opi­um in Ben­gal and allowed pri­vate British mer­chants to sell opi­um to Chi­nese smug­glers for ille­gal sale in Chi­na. The influx of nar­cotics reversed the Chi­nese trade sur­plus, drained the econ­o­my of sil­ver, and increased the num­bers of opi­um addicts inside the coun­try, out­comes that seri­ous­ly wor­ried Chi­nese offi­cials. . . .”
3.–The Chi­nese attempt at inter­dict­ing the opi­um trade was coun­tered with force of arms: “ . . . . In 1839, the Daoguang Emper­or, reject­ing pro­pos­als to legal­ize and tax opi­um, appoint­ed ViceroyLin Zexu to go to Can­ton to halt the opi­um trade completely.[8] Lin wrote an open let­ter to Queen Vic­to­ria, which she nev­er saw, appeal­ing to her moral respon­si­bil­i­ty to stop the opi­um trade.[9] Lin then resort­ed to using force in the west­ern mer­chants’ enclave. He con­fis­cat­ed all sup­plies and ordered a block­ade of for­eign ships on the Pearl Riv­er. Lin also con­fis­cat­ed and destroyed a sig­nif­i­cant quan­ti­ty of Euro­pean opium.[10] The British gov­ern­ment respond­ed by dis­patch­ing a mil­i­tary force to Chi­na and in the ensu­ing con­flict, the Roy­al Navy used its naval and gun­nery pow­er to inflict a series of deci­sive defeats on the Chi­nese Empire,[11] a tac­tic lat­er referred to as gun­boat diplo­ma­cy.  . . .”
4.–Forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking, Chi­na expe­ri­enced: “ . . . . In 1842, the Qing dynasty was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanking—the first of what the Chi­nese lat­er called the unequal treaties—which grant­ed an indem­ni­ty  and extrater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty to British sub­jects in Chi­na . . . . The 1842 Treaty of Nanking not only opened the way for fur­ther opi­um trade, but ced­ed the ter­ri­to­ry of Hong Kong . . . . ”
5.–The trade imbal­ance between Chi­na and Britain wors­ened, and the expense of main­tain new colo­nial territories—including Hong Kong (appro­pri­at­ed through the first Opi­um War)—led to the sec­ond Opi­um War. Note that the “extrater­ri­to­ri­al­i­ty” grant­ed to British sub­jects exempt­ed them from Chi­nese law, includ­ing the offi­cial pro­hi­bi­tion against opi­um traf­fick­ing: “ . . . . Despite the new ports avail­able for trade under the Treaty of Nanking, by 1854 Britain’s imports from Chi­na had reached nine times their exports to the coun­try. At the same time British impe­r­i­al finances came under fur­ther pres­sure from the expense of admin­is­ter­ing the bur­geon­ing colonies of Hong Kong and Sin­ga­pore in addi­tion to India. Only the lat­ter’s opi­um could bal­ance the deficit. [30]Along with var­i­ous com­plaints about the treat­ment of British mer­chants in Chi­nese ports and the Qing gov­ern­men­t’s refusal to accept fur­ther for­eign ambas­sadors, the rel­a­tive­ly minor ‘Arrow Inci­dent’ pro­vid­ed the pre­text the British need­ed to once more resort to mil­i­tary force to ensure the opi­um kept flow­ing. . . . Mat­ters quick­ly esca­lat­ed and led to the Sec­ond Opi­um War . . . .”
6.–As a result of the Sec­ond Opi­um War, Chi­na was oblig­ed to Cede No.1 Dis­trict of Kowloon (south of present-day Bound­ary Street) to Britain; grant “free­dom of reli­gion,” which led to an influx of West­ern Mis­sion­ar­ies, U.S. in par­tic­u­lar; British ships were allowed to car­ry inden­tured Chi­nese to the Amer­i­c­as; legal­iza­tion of the opi­um trade.”
7.–Fierce, elo­quent con­dem­na­tion of the Opi­um Wars was voiced by British Prime Min­is­ter Glad­stone: “ . . . . The opi­um trade incurred intense enmi­ty from the lat­er British Prime Min­is­ter William Ewart Gladstone.[34] As a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment, Glad­stone called it ‘most infa­mous and atro­cious’, refer­ring to the opi­um trade between Chi­na and British India in particular.[35] Glad­stone was fierce­ly against both of the Opi­um Wars, was ardent­ly opposed to the British trade in opi­um to Chi­na, and denounced British vio­lence against Chinese.[36] Glad­stone lam­bast­ed it as ‘Palmer­ston’s Opi­um War’ and said that he felt ‘in dread of the judg­ments of God upon Eng­land for our nation­al iniq­ui­ty towards Chi­na’ in May 1840.[37] A famous speech was made by Glad­stone in Par­lia­ment against the First Opi­um War.[38][39] Glad­stone crit­i­cized it as ‘a war more unjust in its ori­gin, a war more cal­cu­lat­ed in its progress to cov­er this coun­try with per­ma­nent dis­grace’. . . .”

The pro­gram con­cludes with two key excerpts from The Soong Dynasty.

After detail­ing Tu Yueh-Sheng’s ascent to the pin­na­cle of Chi­nese pow­er through his reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Chi­na’s opi­um trade into a car­tel, the pro­gram sets forth Chi­ang Kai-shek and the Green Gang’s con­trol of the Wham­poa Mil­i­tary Acad­e­my, which spawned con­trol of the Kuom­intang Army by the Green Gang.

FTR#1194 The Narco-Fascism of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Kuomintang, Part 1

With vir­u­lent anti-Chi­nese ide­ol­o­gy dri­ving Amer­i­can for­eign, domes­tic and nati0nal secu­ri­ty pol­i­cy, we begin a long series of pro­grams set­ting forth the his­to­ry of Chi­na dur­ing the last cou­ple of cen­turies.

The anti-Chi­na pathol­o­gy grip­ping the U.S. was con­cise­ly expressed in a New York Times arti­cle a cou­ple of years ago. The Steve Ban­non-led anti-Chi­na effort has now become U.S. doc­trine: ” . . . . Fear of Chi­na has spread across the gov­ern­ment, from the White House to Con­gress to fed­er­al agen­cies, where Beijing’s rise is unques­tion­ing­ly viewed as an eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty threat and the defin­ing chal­lenge of the 21st cen­tu­ry. . . .” 

A viable under­stand­ing of Chi­na’s past yields under­stand­ing of its present. 

Aware­ness of key dynam­ics of Chi­nese history–the Opi­um Wars in particular–includes:

1.–The deci­sive role of Euro­pean and Amer­i­can mil­i­tary dom­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic exploita­tion of Chi­na.
2.–The role of the nar­cotics traf­fic in the ero­sion of Chi­nese soci­ety in the 19th cen­tu­ry.
3.–The British-led “Opi­um Wars,” which were the foun­da­tion of the destruc­tion wrought by dope addic­tion in Chi­na.
4.–The Opi­um Wars and their imple­men­ta­tion by “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” of British and Euro­pean ter­ri­to­r­i­al expan­sion in Chi­na.
5.–The piv­otal role of that “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” in the British acqui­si­tion of Hong Kong.
6.–Contemporary Chi­nese con­cern with the mil­i­tary safe­ty of their ports, ter­ri­to­r­i­al waters, adja­cent seas and oceans, ship­ping lanes, mer­chant marine traf­fic. This stems in large mea­sure from China’s expe­ri­ence with “Gun­boat Diplo­ma­cy” and the rav­aging of Chi­na by Impe­r­i­al Japan dur­ing the 1930’s and 1940’s.
7.–The intro­duc­tion of West­ern mis­sion­ar­ies into China–American mis­sion­ar­ies, in par­tic­u­lar.
8.–The fos­ter­ing of the “Mis­sion­ary posi­tion” toward Chi­na on the part of the U.S.
9.–American mis­sion­ar­ies’ use of mor­phine to cure Chi­nese opi­um addicts, a prac­tice so preva­lent that the Chi­nese referred to mor­phine as “Jesus opi­um.”
10.–The import­ing of Chi­nese labor­ers to the U.S., and the resul­tant, dead­ly anti-Chi­nese reac­tion by White Amer­i­ca.
11.–The enor­mous opi­um trade in Chi­na as the foun­da­tion for the coa­les­cence and ascent of Shang­hai’s Green Gang and Tu Yueh-Shen: “Big Eared Tu.”
12.–The dom­i­nance of the Kuom­intang of Chi­ang Kai-Shek by the Green Gang and Big-Eared Tu.
13.–The fun­da­men­tal reliance of Chi­ang’s gov­ern­ment on the nar­cotics trade.
14.–The dom­i­nant role of Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s regime in the U.S. nar­cotics trade.
15.–The doc­tri­naire fas­cism of Chi­ang Kai-Shek and his oper­a­tional rela­tion­ships with Nazi Ger­many, Mus­solin­i’s Italy and Impe­r­i­al Japan.
16.–The cen­tral role of the Soong fam­i­ly in Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s Kuom­intang; T.V. Soong, his sis­ters Mae-ling (mar­ried to Gen­er­alis­si­mo Chi­ang Kai-Shek), Ai-ling (mar­ried to H.H. Kung, a key finance min­is­ter of the Kuo­moin­tang), and sev­er­al of T. V.‘s broth­ers, who also shared in the slic­ing of the pie under Chi­ang.
17.–The piv­otal role of Amer­i­can pub­lish­ing giant Hen­ry Luce, whose mis­sion­ary back­ground in Chi­na informed and ani­mat­ed his ado­ra­tion of Chi­ang Kai-Shek and Mme. Chi­ang.
18.–The role of the Luce pub­lish­ing empire and the enor­mous finan­cial influ­ence of the con­sum­mate­ly cor­rupt Soong fam­i­ly in spawn­ing “The Chi­na Lob­by.”
19.–The deci­sive role of the Chi­ang Kai-Shek’s refusal to fight the Japan­ese invaders, com­bined with the bru­tal repres­sion and civic inep­ti­tude in dri­ving the Chi­nese peo­ple into the arms of Mao Tse-Tung and the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.

NB: More detailed dis­cus­sion of the Opi­um Wars is pre­sent­ed in the two pro­grams fol­low­ing this one.

The pro­gram sets forth anti-Chi­nese racism past and present.

Peter Thiel–lynchpin of pow­er in the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, the top dog in Palan­tir (the alpha preda­tor of the elec­tron­ic sur­veil­lance milieu), a key play­er in Facebook–has dis­sem­i­nat­ed anti-Chi­nese vit­ri­ol about the “yel­low per­il” in Sil­i­con Val­ley.

He has been joined in that effort by Steve Ban­non, a coor­di­na­tor of anti-Chi­na activ­i­ty in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

” . . . . The bil­lion­aire investor Peter Thiel has accused Google of “trea­son” and called for a law enforce­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of the search engine’s par­ent com­pa­ny. He spec­u­lat­ed that the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment has invad­ed its employ­ee ranks. A Ger­man immi­grant via South Africa, Thiel is not alone; his remarks echo the repeat­ed asser­tions of the rab­ble rouser Steve Ban­non that there are too many Asian CEOs in Sil­i­con Val­ley. These claims, com­bined with sim­i­lar charges of wrong­do­ing against stu­dents and pro­fes­sors of Chi­nese ori­gin on cam­pus­es across the coun­try, are as omi­nous as they are lurid. While Thiel presents no evi­dence, Ban­non dis­plays ample prej­u­dice. They are inspir­ing para­noia about every­one of Chi­nese her­itage. . . .”

Among the out­growths of the Opi­um Wars was an end to the Qing dynasty’s ban on Chi­nese emi­gra­tion and the resul­tant “coolie trade.” 

The Chi­nese have a long-stand­ing and deserved rep­u­ta­tion as good work­ers. The U.S. and British embrace of the “coolie trade” per­mit­ted large num­bers of Chi­nese labor­ers to be import­ed into the U.S., where they were wide­ly employed in the sil­ver min­ing indus­try and the rail­roads.

This led to wide­spread, dead­ly retal­i­a­tion by the white estab­lish­ment against Chi­nese work­ers, encour­aged by the media and polit­i­cal estab­lish­ments.

Behead­ings, scalp­ing, cas­tra­tion and can­ni­bal­ism were among the dead­ly out­growths of the White Ter­ror against Chi­nese.

The vio­lence was accom­pa­nied by legal restric­tions on the immi­gra­tion by Chi­nese into the U.S.

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

” . . . .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. . . .”

“Cain, Where Is Thy Brother Abel? (Or Thy Sister Iris?)”

In “The Death of A Sales­man” Arthur Miller (speak­ing through Mrs. Loman, Willy’s wid­ow) said “Atten­tion must be paid to such a per­son! You can’t eat the orange and throw the peel away!” Before mov­ing on from FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, an aspect of the sus­pi­cious death of author Iris Chang bears empha­sis: The peo­ple around her, friends, hus­band and fam­i­ly, attrib­uted her “sui­cide” to psy­cho­log­i­cal dis­tur­bances, despite evi­dence that she was the focal point of hos­tile action by intel­li­gence agents and fas­cists, as well as sub­ject­ed to forms of mind con­trol. Ms. Chang said her prob­lems were “external”–those around her felt they were “inter­nal.” Her friend since col­lege, writer Paula Kamen felt that Iris’ fer­til­i­ty treat­ments may have lay at the core of her prob­lems. In FTR #‘s 1107 and 1108, we com­pared Iris’ expe­ri­ences with those of Rita Katz, who helped inves­ti­gate the 9/11 mon­ey trail that led to the Oper­a­tion Green Quest SAAR net­work raids. When the Agents of Dark­ness gath­er to vis­it ret­ri­bu­tion on some­one seen as a trans­gres­sor, it is, in effect, col­lab­o­ra­tive to increase the tar­get’s iso­la­tion and con­se­quent vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty by see­ing them as “sick.” Rita Katz was­n’t expe­ri­enc­ing what she did because of “fer­til­i­ty treat­ments.”

FTR #1107 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 1 and FTR #1108 Deep Politics and the Death of Iris Chang, Part 2

“The Sea­graves have uncov­ered one of the Biggest Secrets of the Twen­ti­eth Century”–Iris Chang, quot­ed on the front cov­er of Gold War­riors.

Late last year (2019), the city of San Jose (Cal­i­for­nia) opened a park ded­i­cat­ed to the mem­o­ry of the late author Iris Chang.

These broad­casts update and sup­ple­ment dis­cus­sion of Iris Chang’s alleged “sui­cide,” high­light­ed in FTR #509. Of par­tic­u­lar sig­nif­i­cance is the fact that the Gold­en Lily loot and the deci­sive polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic fac­tors stem­ming from the mate­r­i­al cov­ered in Gold War­riors, the oth­er books by Ster­ling and Peg­gy Sea­grave, and Ms. Chang’s “The Rape of Nanking” have enor­mous and ongo­ing sig­nif­i­cance.

(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. That loot was merged with Nazi gold, became the Black Eagle Trust, which not only financed Cold War covert oper­a­tions but under­wrote much of the post-war glob­al econ­o­my. Philip­pine dic­ta­tor Fer­di­nand Mar­cos recov­ered a tremen­dous amount of the Gold­en Lily loot, some of which was shared with  the Japan­ese, some with  the U.S. and much of it kept by Mar­cos. The Mar­cos “Black Gold” fig­ures promi­nent­ly in the deep pol­i­tics sur­round­ing the death of Ms. Chang.)

In Novem­ber of 2004, author and inves­ti­ga­tor Iris Chang was found dead of an alleged­ly self-inflict­ed gun­shot wound. This pro­gram exam­ines the cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing her death.

In her land­mark book “The Rape of Nanking,” Ms. Chang doc­u­ment­ed the Japan­ese atroc­i­ties which gave that occu­pa­tion its name. The rape of Nanking saw the begin­ning of the Japan­ese Gold­en Lily pro­gram, which yield­ed the spec­tac­u­lar loot­ed wealth and post­war eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal intrigue doc­u­ment­ed in the Sea­graves’ inci­sive text “Gold War­riors.”

The “Rape of Nanking” drew much hos­tile reac­tion from the Japan­ese right and relat­ed forces:  . . . . At the same time, tor­rents of hate mail came in, Brett [her hus­band] said. ‘Iris is sen­si­tive, but she got charged up,’ he recalled. ‘When any­body ques­tioned the valid­i­ty of what she wrote, she would respond with over­whelm­ing evi­dence to back it up. She’s very much a per­fec­tion­ist. It was hard for her not to react every sin­gle time.’ Most of the attacks came from Japan­ese ultra­na­tion­al­ists. ‘We saw car­toons where she was por­trayed as this woman with a great big mouth,‘Brett said. ‘She got used to the fact that there is a Web site called ‘Iris Chang and Her Lies.’ She would just laugh.’ But friends say Iris began to voice con­cerns for her safe­ty. She believed her phone was tapped. She described find­ing threat­en­ing notes on her car. She said she was con­front­ed by a man who said, ‘You will NOT con­tin­ue writ­ing this.’ She used a post office box, nev­er her home address, for mail. ‘There are a fair num­ber of peo­ple who don’t take kind­ly to what she wrote in The Rape of Nanking.’ Brett said, ‘so she’s always been very, very pri­vate about our fam­i­ly life.’ . . . .”

(As we have seen in–among oth­er programs–FTR #‘s 813, 905, 969, 970, the Japan­ese “ultra­na­tion­al­ists” were put right back in pow­er by the Amer­i­can occu­pa­tion forces, as the Sea­graves doc­u­ment in Gold War­riors, as well as The Yam­a­to Dynasty.)

At the time of her death, Ms. Chang was research­ing a book chron­i­cling the expe­ri­ences of sur­vivors of the Bataan Death March—the bru­tal per­se­cu­tion of Amer­i­can POW’s cap­tured in the siege of Bataan in the Philip­pines dur­ing World War II. Many of the sur­vivors were shipped to Japan to work as slave labor­ers for major Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions.

Many of these cor­po­ra­tions have had pro­found con­nec­tions with their Amer­i­can transna­tion­al coun­ter­parts, and were the ben­e­fi­cia­ries of Amer­i­can invest­ment cap­i­tal in the run-up to World War II. More impor­tant­ly, many of these cor­po­ra­tions are a prin­ci­pal ele­ment of the US/Japanese com­mer­cial rela­tion­ship today.

Law­suits in Cal­i­for­nia tar­get­ed those Japan­ese cor­po­ra­tions for com­pen­sa­tion for the slave labor wrung from the Bat­taan POWs. The State Depart­ment sided with the Japan­ese and Judge Vaughn Walk­er ruled against the Bataan sur­vivors.

Per­haps most impor­tant­ly, in-depth cov­er­age of the Bataan Death March would uncov­er the Black Eagle Trust and the fun­da­men­tal role in post-World War II Amer­i­can and Japan­ese pol­i­tics of the vast wealth loot­ed by Japan dur­ing World War II. That pur­loined “black gold” is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with U.S. covert oper­a­tions and is at the epi­cen­ter of post­war Japan­ese pow­er pol­i­tics and econ­o­my.

In addi­tion to the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March sur­vivors, Ms. Chang’s research cut across some deep polit­i­cal dynam­ics con­nect­ed to then-Pres­i­dent George W. Bush’s admin­is­tra­tion and his busi­ness deal­ings.

George W. Bush:

1.–Was using U.S. Naval forces to secure Japan­ese war gold from the Philip­pines for his per­son­al blind trust, as well as shoring up Amer­i­can reserves.
2.–Was deeply involved with Harken Ener­gy, which may well have been a cor­po­rate front for the acqui­si­tion and recy­cling of Gold­en Lily loot and Bor­mann mon­ey.
3.–Was heir to a deep polit­i­cal her­itage involv­ing, among oth­ers, the fam­i­ly of William Stamps Far­ish, the head of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey dur­ing the time it man­i­fest­ed its car­tel agree­ments with I.G. Far­ben. Dubya ben­e­fit­ed from his father’s lega­cy of involve­ment with the milieu of Dou­glas MacArthur. George H.W. Bush’s deep polit­i­cal con­nec­tions in the Philip­pines include the involve­ment of both Trump cam­paign man­ag­er Paul Man­afort and Trump and GOP trick­ster Roger Stone with Fer­di­nand Mar­cos while the dic­ta­tor was involved with the recov­ery of Gold­en Lily loot.
4. Served as a direc­tor of Harken when the head of the firm was Alan Quasha, son of William Quasha, an attor­ney for the CIA-linked Nugan Hand Bank, a focal point of AFA #25. William had been Alien Prop­er­ty cus­to­di­an in the Philip­pines under Dou­glas MacArthur, which placed him in a posi­tion to great­ly influ­ence the “Alien Prop­er­ty” placed there by the Japan­ese under Gold­en Lily.

There is evi­dence to sug­gest that Ms. Chang’s death may have result­ed from mind con­trol, admin­is­tered to neu­tral­ize her as a threat to those clan­des­tine eco­nom­ic and nation­al secu­ri­ty rela­tion­ships that have gov­erned US/Japanese affairs in the post­war peri­od. Ms. Chang had received threats ever since the pub­li­ca­tion of her land­mark text The Rape of Nanking.

(For more about the gov­ern­men­t’s mind con­trol pro­grams, see, among oth­er broad­casts, AFA #‘s 5–7.)

She appears to have been under sur­veil­lance, and her “sui­cide” note alleged that a sus­pi­cious intern­ment in a psy­chi­atric hos­pi­tal may have been ini­ti­at­ed at the insti­ga­tion of the ele­ments opposed to a ruf­fling of the Japanese/US feath­ers. In addi­tion to threat­en­ing to expose a dom­i­nant fac­tor in U.S. covert oper­a­tions, a key ele­ment in the post­war Amer­i­can and glob­al econ­o­my, Ms. Chang’s inves­ti­ga­tion of Japan­ese war crimes was an irri­tant to the Japan­ese estab­lish­ment that had thrived on the gold and oth­er wealth loot­ed from occu­pied coun­tries since World War II.

Ms. Chang’s “sui­cide” note read, in part: “. . . .There are aspects of my expe­ri­ence in Louisville that I will nev­er under­stand. . . . . I can nev­er shake my belief that I was being recruit­ed, and lat­er per­se­cut­ed, by forces more pow­er­ful than I could have imag­ined. Whether it was the CIA or some oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I will nev­er know. As long as I am alive, these forces will nev­er stop hound­ing me. Days before I left for Louisville I had a deep fore­bod­ing about my safe­ty. I sensed sud­den­ly threats to my own life: an eerie feel­ing that I was being fol­lowed in the streets, the white van parked out­side my house, dam­aged mail arriv­ing at my P.O. Box. I believe my deten­tion at Nor­ton Hos­pi­tal was the gov­ern­men­t’s attempt to dis­cred­it me. . . .”

At the con­clu­sion of the pro­gram, we review Rita Katz’s expe­ri­ences after she helped break the inves­ti­ga­tion into the SAAR net­work that became known  as Oper­a­tion Green Quest. That inves­ti­ga­tion over­lapped George W. Bush’s firm Harken Ener­gy. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty between Iris Chang’s expe­ri­ences and those  of Rita  Katz. ” . . . . White vans and SUV’s with dark win­dows appeared near all the homes of the SAAR inves­ti­ga­tors. All agents, some of whom were very expe­ri­enced with sur­veil­lance, knew they were being fol­lowed. So was I. I felt that I was being fol­lowed every­where and watched at home, in the super­mar­ket, on the way to work . . . and for what? . Now—I was being watched 24/7. It’s a ter­ri­ble sen­sa­tion to know that you have no pri­va­cy. . . . and no secu­ri­ty. That strange click­ing of the phones that wasn’t there before. . . the oh-so-crude­ly opened mail at home in the office. . . and the same man I spied in my neigh­bor­hood super­mar­ket, who was also on the train I took to Wash­ing­ton a week ago. . . Life can be mis­er­able when you know that someone’s always breath­ing down your neck. . . .”

In con­ver­sa­tions with friends, Ms. Chang not­ed that her prob­lems were “exter­nal,” not in her head. She also felt she was being “recruit­ed” to become a “Manchuri­an Can­di­date” for the CIA–i.e. being sub­ject­ed to mind con­trol. ” . . . . in her last year she became para­noid about every­thing from virus­es attack­ing her com­put­er to attempts by the gov­ern­ment to “recruit” her, a la The Manchuri­an Can­di­date. . . .

Pro­gram High­lights Include: The alleged role of Japan­ese war crim­i­nal Tsu­ji Masanobu in aid­ing the Mar­cos gold recov­er­ies in the Philip­pines; the role of Tsu­ji Masanobu in imple­ment­ing the Bataan Death March; William Stamps Far­ish III’s stew­ard­ship of Dubya’s blind trust, for which Philip­pines war gold was appar­ent­ly being sought; William Stamps Far­ish (II) and his stew­ard­ship of Stan­dard Oil of New Jer­sey, when it col­lab­o­rat­ed with I.G. Far­ben; George H.W. Bush’s asso­ci­a­tion with the descen­dants of Amer­i­can cor­po­rate fig­ures who col­lab­o­rat­ed with the Third Reich.