The Coming War on China

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Has anyone seen the new John Pilger documentary film about the US's strategy to contain China militarily? It gets a paragraph at 5.7 of the Wikipedia entry on Pilger here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Pilger#The_Coming_War_on_China_.282016.29

I recorded it when it was broadcast on ITV on 1 December and have only just started to watch the recording (only had time tonight to see the first 10 or 15 mins). Scary stuff, even allowing for Pilger's being very far from objective. Interesting that stuff like this still gets broadcast on mainstream UK television.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

The Coming War on China

I'm guessing from the lack of response to this that nobody did catch the documentary.

I've now seen just over half of it. It's obviously a bit unbalanced, in giving 40 to 45 minutes to the Marshall Islands issues in a 2 hour documentary ostensibly about global US vs China issues, but that first third, about the horribly inhumane crimes inflicted by the US army and government on the people of the Marshall Islands, would be a fine documentary in its own right. The behaviour of the US in the islands since 1946 has just been jaw-droppingly heinous - knowingly and deliberately treating thousands of people as human guinea pigs exposed to environmental radiation over decades (principally via the food chain on very heavily contaminated islands), resulting in predictable mass cancers, birth defects and other unspeakable suffering. And the current US authorities are a very long way indeed from being willing to offer anything remotely approaching justice. Rather, they continue to take up some of the best land for military bases, and operate an effective system of apartheid with islanders (many of them refugees from the islands rendered uninhabitable by US nuclear testing) living in abject slum poverty on adjacent islands and ferried over daily to do menial work on plush US living zones (golf courses, swimming pools) next to the military base.

[ad hoc]

The Coming War on China

It's on my to-watch list. Now I know that there's a lengthy section on the Marshall's I'm even more inclined to move it to the top of the list. I've actually been to Kwajalein (which is the US run island you are describing I am sure). The weirdest place I've ever been. Like a sort of identikit US suburb, that is so fake looking even Tim Burton would have rejected it, run by a military dictatorship. And yes, next door is an island that is so overcrowded and slummy that it makes Gaza look like the Scottish Highlands.

[Hot Pepsi]

The Coming War on China

I can't imagine that changing any time soon, but more publicity would help. I was unaware that we had a base on the Marshall Islands. And I didn't know that many people lived there.

Not surprising that they built a creepy faux suburb. Since service people and their families move around a lot, they like to keep all the bases kind of the same to minimize disruption and they want to make it pleasant so that contractors and officers who have a choice will want to go there. But, you know, colonialism and what not.

And it's going to disappear beneath the waves.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/12/02/world/The-Marshall-Islands-Are-Disappearing.html?_r=0

I'm not sure how many people there are entitled to move to the US.

I remember studying atolls and Pacific atoll culture in elementary school. For some reason, our teacher was way into it. We learned a lot about breadfruit. I've never had it, though.