Posts Tagged ‘South China Sea’

Steve Bannon Forecasts War with China in ‘Five to Ten Years’

February 4, 2017

Here’s another example of American militarism and belligerence to frighten you. In this clip from Majority Report, the host, Sam Seder, and his team discuss Steve Bannon’s prediction in March last year that in five years’ to a decades’ time, America would be at war with China. Bannon is a notorious alleged anti-Semite and White supremacist, who is now an important adviser to Trump. In March last year, he was talking to Lee Edwards of the right-wing Heritage Foundation on Breitbart Radio. The two were discussing the Fall of Communism before moving on to China’s increasingly aggressive stance regarding the islands in the South China Sea. The two stated that the 89 million members of the Chinese Communist party still adhered to Mao’s belief that power grows out of the barrel of a gun. This is why they were occupying and fortifying the islands under the pretext that these were ancient Chinese territories, actions Bannon considered to be a direct, ‘throw-down’ challenge to the US, when the Chinese come over here. It was then that Bannon predicted that war would break out within the next decade.

Unfortunately, this belligerence really isn’t confined to Trump and the Republicans. Counterpunch also published several articles about the way Hillary Clinton also seemed determined to start some kind of conflict with China over the same disputed territories. I don’t believe, however, that you have to go back to Chairman Mao or Communism to find the causes of China’s aggressive pursuit of its territorial claims to these islands. I gather that China still feels bitter resentment and humiliation, after all well over a century, to Britain and the West for our acquisition of Hong Kong during the Opium War, and the western conquest and domination of the country in the late 19th century. No matter what the ruling ideology is, China as a country is more or less a capitalist economy, and it’s determined to play a major role as a world power. This might be based partly on Mao’s ideas, but Maoism as an economic movement is highly respected, but more or less obsolete.

This is a terrifying prediction, as China also has nuclear arms, and any armed conflict with America could easily escalate into nuclear Armageddon. Let’s hope this prediction is utterly false, and that a more peaceful approach to solving these issues prevails.


Another Fascinating Video from Ha-Joon Chang

August 17, 2016

I put up a piece yesterday about an interview Owen Jones made with Ha-Joon Chang, a South Korean lecturer in economics at Cambridge. Mr Chang’s the author of 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism. He makes it clear in his book that he is not opposed to capitalism, but is very definitely opposed to neoliberal economics, the free market rubbish that has dominated global economic policies at the expense of the poor since Thatcher and Reagan. The book’s well worth reading, if you can find a copy. It’s written for the general reader, and so is written in clear, simple language to make a devastating critique of current economic dogma. He shows how states can make good economic decisions, constructing and managing efficient industries and planning the general economy. The welfare state does not make people lazy, but actually makes them willing to accept change. And western, developed nations are hypocritical and destructive in demanding that the developing world should open their countries up to free trade. He shows very clearly on this point that both Britain, America and the other industrialised nations actually industrialised under a system of very strict protectionism to keep foreign competition out and protect their nascent industries. He also goes on to disprove some of the twaddle that’s been talked about the difficulties Africa faces in industrialisation, such as tribal conflict and the supposed racial or national character of its peoples. He points out that there were also vast ethnic or regional friction in the developed countries of Britain, France, and even Korea, for example, until very recently. As for the supposed laziness of Africans, this was also said in the 19th century of a people, who now have a colossal reputation for hard work: the Japanese. It was also said of the Germans even further back in the 16th century.

Michelle also commented on the piece, and enclosed a link to another of Mr Chang’s videos. She wrote



I haven’t seen the video, but anything by Chang is bound to be great. And I entirely agree with her last comment. Neoliberal has caused mass suffering across the globe. It is responsible not just for a growing number of impoverished people, both unemployed and in work, in this country, but also for wrecking the economies of whole nations in the Developing World. People are dying of starvation in this country. It’s contributed to mass starvation there. And this has also fuelled political and social unrest, from militant Islamism, to Marxist uprisings and piracy off Somalia and the South China Sea and Indian Ocean. In terms of the magnitude of the suffering it’s caused, it is indeed almost literally a crime against humanity.