Post by lo yeeOnPost by lo yeeOnMcCain ignored the people in 2012. Trump continues to be in touch
with the people, even after he won the election.
lo yeeOn
http://thehill.com/policy/international/320290-rand-paul-were-very-lucky-john-mccains-not-in-charge
Post by lo yeeOnSen. Rand Paul (Ky.) ripped fellow Republican Sen. John McCain (Ariz.)
on Sunday after McCain criticized President Trumpâs
escalating war of words with the media.
He argued that the nation is "very lucky" that Trump is president and
not McCain, who won the 2008 GOP nomination but lost to Barack Obama
in the general election.
Paul said that McCain's recent criticisms of Trump are driven by his
"personal dispute" with the president over foreign policy.
He added that McCain and Trump are at odds because McCain supports the
wide deployment of U.S. troops to protect and promote American
interests abroad while he characterized Trumpâs views as
closer to a realpolitik approach to foreign policy.
"Everything that he says about the president is colored by his own
personal dispute he's got running with President Trump, and it should
be taken with a grain of salt, because John McCain's the guy who's
advocated for war everywhere," Paul said on ABC's "This Week".
"He would bankrupt the nation. We're very lucky John McCain's not in
charge, because I think we'd be in perpetual war," Paul added.
. . .
Paul said there has [been] no effort by the Trump administration to
suppress the media, noting that no legislation has been offered to
curb press freedoms.
Paul argued that McCain has a history of being wrong [about] major
foreign policy questions.
"I would say John McCain's been wrong on just about everything over
the last four decades. He advocated for the Iraq War, which I think
destabilized the Middle East," he said.
"If you look at the map, there's probably at least six different
countries where John McCain has advocated for us having boots on the
ground," he added.
US has sent a carrier battle group to patrol SCS. Is this not an act of
hegemonic domination?
Dear ltlee1, your concern for China is suitably appreciated.
However, the PRC is now a grown up.
She knows how to take care of herself. She needs to in order to
survive, anyway.
Trump wrote a nice letter to Xi, his counterpart in China. And then
they had a cordial phone call before Trump embarked on a lavish
reception for Shinzo Abe, head of the US's eternal vassal state since
WWII.
What Trump did was to suitably reassure the PRC that he wasn't
thinking of regime change for China. And so China should be
reassured.
As for the trade issues. China needs to build the best of electronic
miniaturizing infrastructure, in the same way that she has built its
space exploration industry. China needs to educate her young so that
they know that they have great responsibility on their shoulders: To
innovate and to create to ensure China's long term survival. We know
that the neocons have had big designs on Russia and China for decades
and the wars in the Middle East are just projects (as delineated in
the Project for the New American Century or PNAC), preparing for the
big ones, the ultimate assaults.
(See John Pilger's detailed account for that design.
@10:00 -
The West claims that it's struggling to understand China. John
Pilger says: The West struggles to understand China because the West
doesn't, in a nutshell, have a free media.
Or see this:
John Pilger talks on RT about Trump, Very Interesting Interview by
Rattansi.
)
China can't survive indefinitely the way the US has been plotting
against her, if her young are just getting fat for getting good food
and good care (because their parents have been making good incomes
from selling products they made for Walmart) and are free to study
anything like clothing managgement or to not even study at all.
I hope the US posture in the South China Sea does not lead to a war
and I honestly don't expect it to, other than a few skirmishes.
The US has been a world hegemon for at least the past several decades
and so in that context, the SCS naval patrol was just par for the
course. I don't think that China's Xi fails to see that.
lo yeeOn
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5 mind-boggling things about 'The Coming War on China': Pilger's
documentary airs on RTD Published time: 10 Dec, 2016 21:10
https://www.rt.com/news/369904-china-us-war-pilger/
With dozens of US military bases encircling China with a "giant
noose," and America's historic nuclear presence in the Pacific region,
a war between the greatest military power and the world's second
largest economy "is no longer unthinkable," journalist John Pilger
says.
In his documentary, 'The Coming War on China,' which is being aired on
RT's documentary channel RTD this weekend, the multi-award winning
journalist and filmmaker claims he aims "to break the silence." Pilger
sets out several remarkable historic facts which bear testament to
America's "sabre-rattling" in the Asia Pacific.
WATCH 'THE COMING WAR ON CHINA' ON RTD
In the West, "the threat of China is becoming big news, the media is
beating the drums of war as the world is being primed to regard China
as a new enemy," the UK-based Australian journalist says. The
mainstream media such as CNN get exclusive access to classified US
surveillance flights over disputed islands in the South China Sea,
which "have become a flashpoint for war between China and America."
But "what is not in the news is that China itself is under threat."
"American bases form a giant noose encircling China with missiles,
bombers, warships all the way from Australia through the Pacific to
Asia and beyond," Pilger's documentary states. As one of the film's
contributors, author of 'The China Mirage' book, James Bradley put it,
"if you were in Beijing and stood on the tallest building and looked
out at the Pacific Ocean, you would see American warships, you would
see Guam is about to sink because there are so many missiles pointed
at China."
`The Secret of the Bikini Islands'
The site of US atomic bomb testing for many years, which notoriously
lent its name to the swimsuit design, the Bikini Atoll within the
Marshall Islands is "America's strategic secret." Lying in the vast
Pacific Ocean between the US and Asia, the "once bountiful" atoll is a
"stepping stone to Asia and China" for the US.
In 1946 the US took over the Marshall Islands as a trust territory,
but turned it into a "laboratory for the testing of nuclear weapons,
and its people into guinea pigs," the film says, adding that effects
of the atomic bomb were also tested on animals.
While the revealing swimsuit was named after US H-bomb detonations in
Bikini Atoll, the bodies of the people on the islands were less
celebrated than its wearers. They were among "the most radiated in the
world."
With test sites at sea, in the air, on reefs and underwater, the total
yield of the nuclear experiments on and around the Marshall Islands
was equal to 7,200 Hiroshima bombs, meaning the equivalent of more
than one Hiroshima bomb was exploded in the area every day for 12
years, Pilger says. Bikini Island is till nowadays unfit for human
life, he adds.
The area surrounding the crater of one of the greatest man-made
explosions, from a hydrogen bomb called 'Bravo', is "by far the most
contaminated place on Earth," the film cites a US atomic energy
official as saying. "It will be interesting to get a measure of human
uptake when people live in a contaminated environment," the official
added, while the film explores the sufferings of the atoll locals,
many of whom died of cancer.
What the Americans did was no accident. They came here and destroyed
our land. They came to test the effects of a nuclear bomb on us," a
local woman told the filmmaker.
'Apartheid in the Pacific'
Moving to another American base in the region, cited as "one of its
most important and secretive" locations, known as the Ronald Reagan
Test Site, the journalist explores the US missile launch pad that,
according to him, "commands the Pacific Ocean all the way to Asia and
China."
With weapons of mass destruction being "designed for a coming war,"
the base is part of a "remarkable" US Space Command plan known as
Vision 2020. Devised in the 1990s, it's aim is officially described as
"full spectrum" dominance, the film says.
But while Washington spends huge amounts of money on military
ambitions, with the US Air Force testing its intercontinental missiles
by firing them at the Marshall Islands from California almost 5,000
miles away, locals have been subjected to poverty.
America's treatment of people living across the bay from the US base
is called the "Apartheid of the Pacific" by Pilger, and their native
island "the slum of the Pacific." More than 12,000 people, most of
whom are refugees from what is now a US missile base, and from islands
poisoned by nuclear testing, are brought to work on that very base
site to water golf courses for the Americans. After a whole day of
work, they are "ferried back to their poverty." 'Island people
against the greatest military power on Earth'
Japan's island of Okinawa has become the "frontline of a beckoning war
with China," while the outstanding non-violent resistance of the local
people challenges US' pivot to Asia.
The documentary reveals that in 1962 America's atomic weapons were
almost launched from the island, when a military base there allegedly
received an order to prepare an attack on China, but then was abruptly
ordered to stop. One of the American servicemen whose job was to fire
Mace cruise missiles told Pilger that China was Washington's nuclear
target during the Cuban missile crisis.
"We must not have the misery of war ever again," one of the leaders of
the protest movement on Okinawa told the journalist, adding that her
"duty" as a survivor of World War II is to see the US military bases
leave the Japanese island.
READ MORE: Stationing American troops in Japan will lead to bloody
tragedy Yet, American aircraft are constantly flying low on Okinawa,
the film shows, with its author saying that "the threat is a constant
presence."
Teachers often can't teach because of the noise and the fear, with a
memory of a US fighter crashing into Miyamori Elementary School and
surrounding houses still vivid for many. Back in 1959, the pilot
ejected to safety, but the plane caused carnage, with over 200 people,
mostly children, having been killed and injured in the accident.
"Another tragedy waits to happen on Okinawa, with US military aircraft
having been involved in 44 accidents on the island," Pilger says,
while also recalling cases of violence and sexual assault against
local women, allegedly committed by American servicemen.
One more outstanding "US war station" is located on the South Korean
island of Jeju, where a resistance movement has also been persistent
against America's naval base. "One of the most provocative military
bases in the world" has been built on the world heritage site land,
less than 400 miles from Shanghai.
According to the film, it's aimed at China's lifelines to the world in
oil trade and resources.
There are also numerous secret bases constructed by Washington within
a hosting country base to disguise the US presence, with such
locations generally not referred to as "bases," the film claims. Many
have been "set up to combat China's worldwide economic influence,"
while bases on China's doorstep are "a provocation of war."
'Gold mine of drugs' and Mao 'paranoia'
Starting from the 19th century, an anti-Chinese "racial stereotype"
has been spread across the United States.
According to the film, such a policy concealed a deeper agenda -
Warren Delano, the grandfather of America's 32nd president Franklin
D. Roosevelt, "was the American opium king of China," author James
Bradley says. "Much of the east coast of America - Columbia, Harvard,
Yale, Princeton were born from opium money. The American industrial
revolution was funded by huge pools of money which came from illegal
drugs [from] the biggest market in the world - China," he says, adding
that of course it wasn't talked about, but called it "the China
trade."
Later in the 20th century, a new way to present China as a threat was
invented, with Mao's revolution having ignited paranoia in Washington.
With Richard Nixon proclaiming China "the basic cause of all of our
trouble in Asia" in 1953, the father of the H-bomb, Edward Teller over
a decade later claimed a defense was needed against the eastern power.
"I believe that for the sake of our safety it is necessary to be
prepared for the possibility of a Chinese missile attack on the United
States," the film quotes him as saying.
"China ... matched America at its own great game of capitalism, and
that is unforgivable," Pilger says. The journalist uncovers a secret
message that was sent by Mao Zedong to Washington five years before
the communist revolution of 1949. "China must industrialize right now,
this can only be done by free enterprise. Chinese and American
interests fit together economically and politically. America need not
fear that we will not be cooperative - we cannot risk crossing
America, we cannot risk any conflict," Pilger cites Mao's message as
saying.
But the Chinese leader got no reply, and his "reaching hand was tossed
away," as Bradley put it.
'Smartest weapons need enemies, money is the prize'
The film suggests that a "stereotype of communist dictatorship" is
widely spread by the US, preventing from understanding "China as it
is."
"In America you can change political parties but you cannot change the
policies. In China you cannot change the party, but you can change
policies ... China is a vibrant market economy, but it is not a
capitalist country," entrepreneur and social scientist, Eric Li
says. He adds that in China, "capital does not rise above political
authority," and there is no way a group of super rich people can
control the politburo, "as billionaires control America's policy
making."
The Chinese government is "not trying to run the world, they are not
even trying to run Asia Pacific. I think they want to keep America
from dominating [the region], so they have what they believe is their
rightful place because of the long history of civilization," Li says,
adding that Chinese "objectives are really modest compared with their
capacity."
As the world's economic power moves rapidly towards Asia, the response
of the United States is to deploy the majority of its naval forces to
the region, according to Pilger. "This massive military build-up is
known in Washington as the pivot to Asia. The target is China," he
says, also citing president Barack Obama, who in 2011 said that
creating an American presence in the Asia Pacific was his "top
priority."
"For America's unchallenged arms industry, the annual prize is huge
profits from almost $600 billion of military spending," the journalist
suggests, adding that "the smartest weapons need enemies."
READ MORE: Trump vows to end overseas `intervention & chaos', rebuild
`depleted' US military
With the current situation in the South China Sea, "the danger of
confrontation grows by the day."