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FULL TRANSCRIPT
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
Welcome to the Connecting the Dots podcast with Dr. Wilmer Leon. I am Wilmer Leon. Here's the point. We have a tendency to view current events as though they occur in a vacuum, failing to understand the broader historical context in which most events take place. During each episode, my guests and I have probing, provocative, and in-depth discussions that connect the dots between current events and the broader historic context in which these events occur. This enables you to better understand and analyze these events that impact the global village in which we live. On today's episode. The issues before us are, what are the three steps leading to war, and what's the real story behind the so-called Uyghur genocide or oppression in China? My guest today is a peace activist, a writer, a teacher, a political analyst, KJ Noh. KJ, welcome to the show.
Thank you. Pleasure to be with you.
So in talking with you yesterday, you had expressed this concept that there are three steps leading to war. You talked about an information war, you talked about shaping of the environment and provocation. As we look at what's transpiring between the United States and Russia, as we look at what's transpiring more specifically between the United States and China over Taiwan, walk us through these steps and how these steps apply to where we are today.
Yes, this is exactly what is going on. So the first thing to understand is that before the US goes to war, there is an information campaign, which we can understand as both manufacturing consent and stirring up people's emotions to demonize and to other the opponent. And so we see that very, very clearly in China. That's been ongoing for many years now. But if you look at all the polls, everybody is convinced that China is a threat. So the first step is information warfare, which is the pre kinetic sube dimension of war. The second dimension is shaping the environment. The US never likes to go to war without shaping the environment first. So in order to do that, it wants to weaken the adversary and it wants to bring as much force to bear as possible against its opponents. So we see that right now with the United States.
(03:08)
It's created a vast set of alliances against China, Aus Jaas, JAAS, the Quad, NATO plus, and then you can see that there is the first island chain, which it has completely militarized, and it is prepositioning supplies, materials, troops, all along it, including troops, right on Gman Island of Taiwan, which is less than three miles from the mainland. So you see the constant shaping of the environment. Also, you will see preparations for war in terms of massive military exercises. You see this in Korea, which spent 200 days out of the past year in constant military exercises. You see the military exercises all over the Pacific, which are essentially nonstop. And then the last step is the provocation. That is you want to provoke the other side to fire the first shot. You want to wrong foot them so that then you can build on all the demonization and the ally building that you've created and then use that as a ally to start the war.
(04:25)
And we see these provocations happening more and more frequently. We see the provocations by the Philippines against the Chinese overtaking their boats, trying to cut them off and seeing if they'll get rammed. You see the provocations on the Korean peninsula where there's this constant in your face provocation against North Korea, threatening to decapitate, sending the message to Korean troops to shoot first and report later, shoot, first report later. And you see the provocation, as I just mentioned, in Jinman Island where you have US special forces troops parked permanently three miles away from the Chinese mainland. Imagine if the PLA stationed Chinese troops on Key West or Galveston Island or the Farone Island just right up against the nose of right up against the US coast. Would that be considered provocative? I would think so. And so essentially we see all these three steps happening, the information warfare, the hatemongering, the shaping of the environment, the very, very deliberate shaping of the environment for war, and then the constant provocation. So this is why I think that we have to be very, very careful that it will just take one small misstep in this minefield for something to go off, and that will create a chain reaction that will affect the entire Pacific.
So we saw in the seventies, we saw Nixon go to China. Henry Kissinger helped to orchestrate that entire process and a development of a reproach mon with China. And one of the objectives of that was to be sure that China stayed on our side of the equation as the United States was still involved in the Cold War against the Soviet Union. When we got to, I think it was the Obama administration, that's where this whole idea of the pivot towards China started to manifest itself. What, first of all, do I have my history? And then secondly, if so, what is it that or who was in the American foreign policy elite that decided that this pivot needed to take place?
Yeah, that's a really, really good question. I have to go back to a little bit of the history. You absolutely are about Nixon. Nixon tried to peel China off away from the Soviet Union as part of their Cold War strategy, and then they engaged with China, and then they dumped Taiwan, which previous to that had been considered the legitimate China, but they were always hedging, so they always kind of had their foot partially on Taiwan because they didn't want to give it up completely.
They who
The US establishment didn't want to give it up completely as a US outpost. And so they always kept a little foot in there. And so this is what they call strategic ambiguity. But the official line was the one China policy. The Shanghai communicates essentially there's only one China. The PRC is the legitimate government of China. Taiwan Island is a part of China, and any issues between Taiwan province and China are to be resolved amongst themselves. The US is going to withdraw troops, it's going to withdraw arms, and it's not going to be involved. That was the agreement, and that was the foundation of the relationship between the US and China. All of that is now completely dissolved. It's gone. There is no defacto one China policy anymore. But who started this war? That is the $64,000 question. In 1992, Paul Wolfowitz, the NeoCon Mino, Greece, he wrote a document called the Defense Planning Guidance Document, and essentially it was declaration that the United States would be the uni polo global hegemon, regardless, and at any measure, uni polo global hegemon simply means that it would be the boss of the world and it would take any measure, it would go to war, et cetera, as necessary.
(09:12)
This document, the defense planning guidance document, became the project for a new American century. The project for a new American century was unquote disavowed, but it's simply mutated, and then it was picked up again by a group of people at Center for a New American Security. And those two words, new American, they are not a coincidence. The CNA or Center for New American Security is a kind of a reestablishment of the neocons who started pen A. And so you see this entire chain of ideology continuing from Wolfowitz and the people around him, the neocons around him, the Cheney,
Dick Cheney,
Yes,
Richard Pearl,
Richard Pearl, all of these neocons, they simply bequeathed their legacy onto a younger group of neocons, the neocons who are associated with the Center for New American Security.
In fact, let me jump in. I'm sorry. Just really quickly on the pen side with Wolfowitz and Pearl, I think Scooter Libby, when George HW Bush was in the White House, that crew came to him and wanted to promote all of this rhetoric. He referred to them as the crazies and said, and this is from Ray McGovern who was in the White House at the time with the CIA said, get these crazies out of here and keep them away from me. And I think it was George HW that by pushing them out, that moved them to Form P NAC and all of that.
Absolutely. And remember, these crazies also wanted to go to war against China in the early two thousands. So it was actually, and
They also wanted Bill Clinton to overthrow Saddam Hussein. They sent, and folks, you can go and look on the, you can Google this and you can pull up the letter and see all the signatories to the letter. They sent a letter to Bill Clinton when he was president, asking him to invade Iraq. And he said, no,
Exactly. And then nine 11 happened, and the Pen Act document actually said, we need something like a Pearl Harbor in order to be able to trigger our plans. And so then conveniently, nine 11 happened, and then Iraq was invaded. But anyway, these crazies never went away. They went into various think tanks, but one of the key think tanks is CNAs, which is an outcome. It's a kind of an annex of CSIS itself, one of the deep state think tanks. And starting 2008, they drew up a plan for War against China specifically. There's an organization called CSBA, which is, it's a kind of a think tank. It's a procurement and strategy think tank associated with the Pentagon. And it was once again, related to another deep state think tank inside the Pentagon that does long-term strategic planning. And they came up with something called Air Sea Battle, which is the doctrine of war against China.
(12:48)
So since then with Air Sea Battle, air Sea Battle is actually, it's derived from Air land battle, which was the doctrine of war against the Soviet Union, which is why it has a similar resonance to it. And that itself was derived from the Israeli doctrine of war from the Yom Kippur war where they did massive aggressive strikes deep inside their opponents infrastructure. And that became Airland battle. Airland battle was never used against the Soviet Union, but it was used in Iraq, in Kosovo, et cetera. Colloquially, it's known as shock and awe. And they created a shock and awe version for China called Air Sea Battle. And that was developed in earnest starting around 2009. And then remember 2012, the US declared the pivot to Asia. So this is the Obama administration. They essentially declared in so many terms that we are going to make sure that China does not develop any further.
(14:06)
We're going to encircle China, we're going to station troops in Australia. It was declared in Adelaide. We're going to encircle the entire, essentially it was a plan to encircle China all along the first island chain from the corals to Japan, to Okinawa to Taiwan Island along the Philippine Archipelago, and then all the way to Indonesia. This very, very deliberate plan to encircle and to escalate to war against China. 2008 and 2009 was really the turning point, because it was the time of the change. It was the global financial crash, and the people who engaged with China, they engaged with China under the conceit that China would essentially be absorbed into the US capitalist system. That is, it would become a tenant farmer on the US capitalist plantation.
That's what they tried to do with the Soviet Union.
Exactly, exactly.
Under Gorbachev,
Exactly right. Yes. So we would become a tenant under the global US capitalist plantation, or it would collapse. That was what they believed. And then in 2008, the Western Catalyst financial system collapsed on itself, and it turned out that China was not going to collapse. It was actually incredibly strong, incredibly resilient, and they actually had to go hat in hand to China to beg for support, in order to prop up the system and then to do a controlled demolition on the backs of the working class here. And so when that became clear that China was not going to collapse and it was not going to be subordinated, then the DCAS came out and explicit doctrine of war started to be prepared. This is what I referred to as Air Sea baffle. So that doctrine of war was created inside various think tanks, CSBA, and then supported by css, CNAs, et cetera.
(16:18)
And then when the Obama administration transition, those plans were simply kept alive with CNAS, and some of it was incorporated into Trump's strategy, but Trump had neo mercantile tendencies, so he was not as aggressive as they would like him to be. And then when Biden came back, the pivot to Asia was rebranded as the Indo-Pacific Strategy, and it's gone full tilt since then. So we see this constant escalation, as I said, the information warfare, the shaping, the environment, the exercises, the alliances, the prepositioning, and then we see the constant provocation. So we are well on the way to war. Henry Kissinger said that we were in the foothills of a cold war. No, we are high up in high altitude and very, very close to kinetic war.
I think I said when I made the reference to Russia that that's what they try to do with Gorbachev, but I think it was Yeltsin to Gorbachev is where all of that financial intrigue was taking place. And I think it was Gorbachev who realized the danger on the horizon and shifted the game plan on the United States, which is why one of the reasons why Gorbachev Gorbachev had to go leading us into where we are now with President Putin. But that's another, I hope I have again, that history, right? Yes,
(17:50)
Absolutely. So with all that you've just laid out, and before we get into some of the specifics about the info war, as all of this is going on, what we also have is the de-industrialization of the United States and the offshoring or outsourcing of American manufacturing to China. So how do you, on the one hand, offshore or outsource your manufacturing, particularly as a capitalist economy, going to China in search of cheaper labor to make more profit, but then at the same time, you're planning to go to war with the people that are manufacturing a whole lot of the stuff that your country consumes? Is that a good question?
Yeah, no, it's absolutely valid. I mean, it's a very, very good point. That's the core contradiction. The US has outsourced
Needs, and by the way, the country that you go to buy your bonds so that your economy can stay afloat.
Absolutely. Absolutely. Right. So not only has China financed the United States and supported or propped up the US dollar as the global reserve currency, but also the US exported its industrial base to China because it thought that it could simply exploit the hell out of the Chinese worker at the cost of the US worker,
The sick man of Asia mentality, and we can just play these Chinese people for fools.
Exactly. Exactly. So exploit the hell out of them, make a killing, and then eventually China would be completely absorbed into the US capitalist system, or it would collapse, right? It was either collapse or be absorbed. This is what Bill Clinton believed. So that was the plan, except that China developed on its own terms, and it showed that not only is it possible to develop that it doesn't have to become subjugated to the west, to the western institutions, that's when the daggers came out. But now there is the contradiction that on the one hand, the US wants to go to war against China. On the other hand, it's significantly, it's so deeply enmeshed with Chinese industry and the Chinese economy that it is not easy. And so it's trying this very delicate operation of what they refer to as de-risking, but it's really decoupling, and they're trying to separate themselves from China as you would try to separate conjoined twins.
(20:43)
Except the problem is that China has the beating heart, the beating heart of the industry. So if you separate that out, then you're going to give yourself a lot of problems. And so they have not thought this through, but these are people who are not known for their clear thinking. As I said, they're neocons, they're neo neocons, they're crazies. They are drunk with power. They do not want to give up their power and their dominance over the planet, certainly not to China, and they would rather end the planet than see the end of their hegemony, of their dominance. And that's the really dangerous moment that we're in. I've referred to it as a drunk who as the bar is closing and your credit cards are being rejected, you've struck out with everybody. You're just spoiling for a fight, a fight. You're not going to go home without a fight. And that's currently what it looks like right now.
So the first element of the three that you mentioned is the info war. So we're being told that President Xi is an authoritarian. We're being told that China has stolen American manufacturing secrets and has exploited American manufacturing processes. We're being told that China is trying to take over Africa. There are a number of stories that get repeated ATD nauseum, very little if any evidence to support them. But this is the info drumbeat that you keep hearing on M-S-N-B-C and CNN and Fox News. So let's start with the G is a authoritarian, and he's the dictator of China. China is a communist country, and therefore everything is evil that comes from China.
Yeah, I mean, this is warmed over Cold War rhetoric. It's essentially a red scare plus yellow peril, right? I mean, we've heard this stuff before. I mean, if you go to China, you realize that there's nothing authoritarian about it. Actually. You feel much freer and much more at liberty to do what you want and to be who you are than you do here. It's not at all an authoritarian state. It's simply the US plasters, the label authoritarian against any country that it doesn't like and where it's usually planning to go to war against. So that is a very, very clear signal. I mean, just from a kind of statistical polling standpoint, the Chinese government is the most popular government on the planet. It ranks in the 90th percentile, and this is
High 90, I think 96 was the last number I saw,
Something like that. Yes, certainly in above 90 percentile. And this is from Harvard University, correct? With longitudinal studies. So clearly they have the trust and the full faith of its people.
Repeat that, because most people, when they hear, I know this, when I say that to listeners or if I'm in conversation and I say, well, when you poll the Chinese people, they back their government at around 96%. And of course, the response I get is, well, of course they would, because that's Chinese polling, and that's Xi telling them what to think. And if they don't do what Xi tells them to do, then they wind up missing.
No, no, no, that's sorry. Yeah, I mean, it's good. It's what people think, but first it is not Chinese polling. It is US polling, it's Harvard University doing this over a longitudinal study, I think over 10. It's over a decade, maybe 15 years long. And so it's us polling, not Chinese polling. The second thing is that over 150 million Chinese travel abroad every year, they travel all over the world. They go as tourists, they go as students, et cetera, and then almost every single one of them goes back home. You would not get that in an authoritarian state. You think that if you live in a prison or a concentration cab that you go free and then you come back of your own volition? No, that's not possible. It's absurd. So as I said, the Chinese travel all over the world, and then they simply come back because that's where they want to be.
(25:34)
So this notion that Chinese are authoritarian, that it's an authoritarian state, nobody's allowed to do anything that's completely fault. It does contrast, for example, with the east block where it was very, very difficult to travel abroad, and once when people did travel abroad, they did defect. That much is true. That is certainly not the case with China. As I said, 150 million people travel abroad and then go back home. So that is a lie from top to bottom. I mean, of course you have a few people who defect. I think the defection rate from China is about the same number of people who defect from the United States. So if you want to, oh, really?
Yes.
Okay,
I didn't know that.
Yes. So it's about the same. So it's a kind of a net zero. So anything that says otherwise is usually an exaggeration or a misconstrue of the actual numbers
To this idea of authoritarian, and I was just thinking about this as you were talking. I think one of the great misnomers is the conflation of a planned economy versus an authoritarian government. I don't think I'm off base to say that China is very, very focused on planning its economy, and that makes it very nimble. That makes it, in my opinion, easier for the government to shift as world economic dynamics shift. Also, because it doesn't have predatory capitalism in China, corporations in China and the Chinese government that owns corporations, they reinvest their money into their economy as opposed to into stock buyback programs and high executive compensation packages. Hence, we wind up with a lot of technological advancements coming out of China, which to a great degree is what is scaring the hell out of the United States government. Yeah,
You're absolutely right. Yeah. So the Chinese system is planned, but it's planned in a very rational way. Most of the leaders are unlike the United States, most of the leaders in the US are lawyers or failed business people in China. Most of the leadership are scientists and engineers, and they go through an incredibly complex vetting process where they have to show their capacity and show their ability over and over again before they even reach to the level of becoming a city or a province governor. And then from there, it just gets harder and harder. So you really make sure that the top people are leading. And then there's a system where there's a constant process of feedback and consultation with the people. So the government makes sure that it's doing what the people wants. And so it's planned
In political science. That's the Easton model, I think James Easton model of the feedback loop, how effective governments are supposed to function. They implement policy, they get feedback from the populace on how that policy is being implemented. They then translate that into better policy. That's the eastern model of called the policy feedback loop.
Yes, exactly. There's this policy feedback loop, and once again, as I said, the Chinese leadership are scientists, so they do this thing called a trial spot. What is when they have a policy, they try it out in one city or one area, and if it works, then they scale it up and they try it again in a larger province on a larger scale. And if it works, they scale it up even further, et cetera. So it's a very kind of scientific method that they use called trial spots where they're essentially using the scientific method and a vast system of feedback and consultation in order to see if something works or not. That's why they're, for example, creating sustainable cities, sustainable energy generation, mass transit, et cetera, all sorts of public goods. But the problem with this is that the Western concede is that if it's not liberal capitalists, that is if you don't let the capitalists do whatever they want to, this is an infringement on freedom, and that's the framing that they use.
(30:23)
If you don't let the predatory capitalists do anything and everything, they want to, you have infringed upon their freedom. And so that's where this authoritarian trope comes from. The thing to notice once again is as you do this extensive planning, what you get to do is you build out the foundations, and those foundations are in public health and in public housing and infrastructure and transportation and education. Once you build out all of those foundations, then you can build up real human capacity, and then you build up a real powerful economy. And so for example, if you look at the 20 largest corporations on the planet, the majority of them are Chinese. But the other thing about those large corporations is the majority of them are state owned corporations. That is to say they're owned by the people. For example, the largest banks in the world are Chinese banks.
(31:25)
How much do the leaders of these banks make? Well, they make probably they wouldn't make enough to rent an apartment in San Francisco, maybe two times, three times max, what their average income of their average worker is, as opposed to Jamie Diamond, who makes 18,000 times what his lowest workers make. And so it's a very, very different system where you bring up the highest most qualified people. At the same time, you do not reward them for greed. You do not reward them for, with exorbitant pay, essentially, you give them a decent salary, not an exorbitant salary, but a salary, which is good enough for a decent level of standard of living in China. You may give them an apartment and you may give them, there may be a canteen where they can get discount meals, but that's about it. But it's understood that you are going to really work to improve your country, serve the people, serve your countrymen, and then make a better society.
(32:39)
And you see this real kind of whole society effort to improve the country, which is why over the last 30, 40 years, wages have flatlined in the United States, but wages in China have gone up anywhere five to 10 to 15 times for your average worker, for your average blue collar worker. I mean, they see their lives improving, and also you see the bottom being lifted up where they essentially ended poverty. You go to China, you will not see any slums. I mean, it's kind of astonishing. You go to almost any city in the world, you will see homeless. Or if you don't see homeless, you will see slums in China, you will see neither. And in the past few decades, they brought 850 million people out of poverty. 850 million people were brought out of poverty. This is the world's greatest economic accomplishment in the history of the world.
(33:43)
And essentially, they show that poverty is a policy choice. You don't have to have poor people. The Bible says the poor will always be with us. No, it's not true. It's an ideological choice, and you can end poverty in a country, and for all of these reasons, by showing that a planned economy where there's reasonable and systematic feedback can have deliver better results. This is why this example is why the western liberal elite class feels the need to destroy China because it cannot have that example, cannot have an example, which puts the lie to the massive exploitation and mystification and deceit that this system is built on. The suffering that we undergo on a daily basis is not necessary.
I want to go back to the point. China has brought 800 million people out of abject poverty over about what? The last 10 to 15 years
Over the last, I would say over the past 40 years. Okay, 40 years ago, China was poorer per capita than Haiti.
That's poor.
And now there's no comparison, right?
The United States has on the upper end, in terms of what the government numbers are, not 800 million unhoused, 800,000,
Yeah. Somewhere in that range.
And so me being from Sacramento, California, you go to north side of Sacramento near the American River near the Sacramento River, people living under bridges, you go to Oakland, people living under overpasses, you go to San Francisco, people living under overpasses, people can't even afford the middle class in San Francisco, can't even afford to rent an apartment that people that work in San Francisco can't afford to live in San Francisco. Okay, pick a city, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia. Pick one. You see people standing in the medians of intersections with signs and cups begging for money. 800,000 people homeless in the United States. We can't fix it, but China brings 800 million people out of poverty. Folks do the math.
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty astounding. I mean, the 800,000 homeless is probably an under count because it's hard to count.
Sure. That's why I said it's a government number.
Yes, it's a government number. But even without looking at the homeless, think about the fact that 60% of the people in the United States do not have $500 to their name. That means if they get a flat tire, if they need to change their tires, fix their car, or get a parking ticket, they are in real trouble, right? I mean, there's just no margins. And so the vast majority of working people in the United States are struggling, and they see no light at the end of the tunnel at the same time that they expect their children to have even worse conditions. No longer housing is no longer, nobody can think of housing anymore. Now its cars are no longer affordable. Right? When I taught in community college, I was told that 80% of the students were housing insecure. When I taught, most of the students would come to class and they couldn't focus because they were hungry.
(37:52)
I mean, you have adjunct professors living out of cars. So this is the level of ridiculous, absurd maldistribution of wealth that you can do everything right, work your rear off, and still end up with nothing, just barely be treading water if even that. And on the other hand, you have a country like China where if you work, you will see your life constantly improving from year to year. On average, your worker has been seeing their wages increase 8% every year for the past 20, 30, 40 years. I mean, that's astounding. Wilma, have you had an 8% increase in your salary for the past 30 years?
Can't say that I have.
You must be doing something wrong then.
I can't say that I have. Let's move to element number two, shaping the environment. What are the techniques and what are some of the tangible elements that we can point to in terms of shaping the environment?
Okay, the first thing about shaping the environment is creating alliances. So the US is creating multiple alliances. That's alliance between the United States, Korea, and Japan. I refer to it as jackass or jackass. You see the alliance between Australia, the United States, uk, to prepare for war, nuclear war against China, Aus. You see the Japan, Philippines, US Alliance, and the South China Sea jaas, which is once again unthinkable as it is with Korea, that the colonial dominator, Japan would be creating a military alliance with the colonized. But all of this is mediated and midwife by the United States. And then you see NATO coming into Asia. So already when the US does military exercise in the Pacific, you see the LFA flying over. You see NATO exercises. You see that Korea is linking up to the NATO intelligence system, B-I-C-E-S, bcs. And that Taiwan is getting the link 16 tactical data link, which allows the US to create a common tactical and operational picture of the Warfield in order to create what they refer to as a transnational kill chain.
(40:29)
That is, you're using all of these countries for combined joint all domain command and control. It's simply one large military machine, all of these different countries together. So that's one part of shaping the environment. Another part of shaping the environment is pre-positioning troops, pre-positioning material, and also doing these constant military exercises and escalating to industrial war footing, which is what they are talking about. They're saying the US has to shift immediately to an industrial war footing. Certainly South Korea and Japan are already expected to do this. The plans to use shipyards in Korea for to repair us battle damage, and then the constant escalation into what I refer to as the third offset. The third offset is that China has the capacity to respond. If the US and the US has over 300, probably close to 400 bases right around China, China has the capacity to fire missiles and keep the United States at bay.
(41:50)
It has the Don Feng missiles that are very, very precise. And the US offset to that has been to disperse its troops all around the first island chain, prepare for island hopping, prepare for Ace agile deployment, and essentially to attack China through diffused, distributed, dispersed warfare. All of this is preparation. And then the other way, which is traditionally the environment is shaped, is through information warfare and economic warfare, trade warfare, tech warfare. The idea is that you are going to try and try to create as much disruption inside China itself, create as much descent inside China itself, and also try and degrade its economy before you go into war. Ideally, you want to level sanctions on it before you go in, but in the case of Russia, for example, they will level sanctions after the war starts. But the idea is to degrade the economy and the will to fight, and the capacity to fight as much as possible so that you enter into the battle with an unfair advantage, an overmatch.
(43:12)
The analogy that I sometimes think of is that when a matador goes into the ring to fight a bull, what they've done is they've drug the bull, they've starved it, they've beaten it, they've dehydrated it, et cetera. And then you go to war, and then you have this theatrical presentation of how you've dominated the bull. In the bull fight, usually the US tries to do this kind of degrading before it enters into war. So for example, it sanctioned Iraq for a decade before it blew it up into smithereens, et cetera. So you see all of these things happening in terms of the hybrid war, the preparations, the alliances, the exercises, the prepositioning and the military preparation.
In fact, the sanctions regime that you've just talked about as it relates to Iraq is exactly what the United States has been trying to do with Russia, has been trying to do with Iran has tried to do with China. And what the reality that the United States now finds itself dealing with is that sanctions regime has forced those sanctioned countries to establish relationships amongst themselves and relationships amongst themselves. So they've entered into trade agreements. They've entered into the bricks, for example, the Chinese development Bank. There are a number of elements now where China and Russia have developed trade agreements, have developed defense cooperation agreements. So really what the United States has done through this sanctions regime is really shot itself in the foot because what it thought it could do with economic pressure and other types of sanctions has actually created a much bigger problem than the United States ever could have imagined.
Well, I mean, the US has sanctioned what something close to one third of the countries on the planet or something approaching that. I mean, the idea is that it's simple. A sanction is like a siege. It's like you're building a wall around a country. The problem is if you build a wall around a country, you're also building a wall around yourself, and eventually you're walling yourself in, which is what the United States is doing here. And so with the financial sanctions, with the trade sanctions and economic sanctions, essentially it's strengthening China, Russia, Iran, and the countries of the global south, and it's weakening itself. And so that is the contradiction there. But they don't understand that, and they think that they're still capable of destroying, for example, Russia. I mean, they still believe that they almost brought Russia to its knees, and it's just a matter of applying a little bit more pressure. They're not reading the situation directly. But yes, this is what they want to do, and they consider this to be part of shaping the environment.
And one quick example of that is the whole chip sanction where the United States figured that it could cripple the Chinese economy from a technology side by prohibiting China's access to high processing chips. What did China do? They figured it out. They make their own and better than the ones that they were getting from Taiwan. And an example of that is the Huawei made 60 telephone. A lot of people in the West think that the iPhone is the greatest phone on the planet. No folks, it's a phone that we can't get in the United States. It's the Huawei mate, 60 plus, which not only is a cell phone, but is a satellite phone as well.
Yes, it's an extraordinary piece of technology, incredible engineering, and it just goes to show that when the US tries to sanction China or even a single Chinese company by putting it in a choke hold, and its CFO, China just responds with even greater strength and better technology. So it's not happening. It's not happening to an individual corporation, and it's not going to happen to China in general, which is why the US wants to pull the trigger on war. I think there's a part of the NeoCon elite that are so desperate, they see that kinetic war is the only thing that it's the only Trump card that they have left.
And I've been saying for a while to Jake Sullivan and to the Secretary of State, to the President, be careful what you pray for because you might get it even with the hypersonic missile technology. I want to say that, what was it last year or about a year and a half ago, the United States War gamed against China 25 times and lost 25 times.
Yes, each time it lost and it lost faster, and then eventually they had to deposit all kinds of hypotheticals that didn't exist in order to give themselves some kind of pretext of winning. Clearly, if they do the math and if they do the simulations, it's not going to work out for them. But the really dangerous thing here, and I'll be very, very honest here, the dangers is that because the US no longer has overmatch and none of these offsets work, it's going to go back to the final first offset, which is mass a bigger bomb, which is to say that they're going to go nuclear on this war and going nuclear against another nuclear power is a very, very bad idea. The US is doctrine of counterforce, which essentially argues that in order for us to prevail, we have to strike first with nuclear weapons.
(49:30)
That's the idea. It's not counter value. Counterforce. We strike with nuclear weapons first. We knock out as many nuclear targets as possible, and that way we come out ahead and we can shoot down anything that's left. This is the US nuclear position, the nuclear posture. And this is very, very dangerous because it's clearly an act of madness. But as I said before, the ruling, ruling elite, the imperial elite believes that they signal that they would rather see the end of the world than the less than the end of their power, than the end of their domination. Because for them, the end of their domination is the end of their world, not the end of their world, but the end of their world, and they're very happy to bring down the rest of the world with them.
Provocation is the third. We've talked about the info war. We've talked about shaping the environment. And now the third element is the provocation. And we are seeing this play itself out damn near daily, right before our very eyes. And thank God that President Rai in Iran, that President Xi, that Kim Jong-un in North Korea and President Putin, thank God that these are sensible, sensible people that are not reactionary and engage in knee jerk responses to provocation. Because if they weren't as thoughtful as they are, we'd be in a much, much different world circumstance than we are right now.
I agree with you. I mean, I think it's the sober sanity of US opponents, which is keeping the world from exploding into war. Just as during the Cold War, it was Russian officers who understood US culture and for example, understood that when there were signals of a nuclear attack being launched, they also understood that the World Series was happening at the same time, and they thought it was unlikely the US would launch a nuclear attack during the World Series. But this is predicated on the idea that you have cultured intelligent, calm people who are able to make clear distinctions. And we see that in RACI and President Xi and President Putin, who are very, very measured in their responses. And they're not seeking war. They're seeking diplomacy and peace. And you can see that there is a constant attempt to provoke them and to demonize them and to trigger war, but they understand that time is on their side, and these are the mad thrashings of a dying empire, and their approach is not to engage.
(52:34)
The problem is that the provocations become even more extreme, more and more extreme as they become more and more desperate. And there's another piece of the information war that I didn't touch on, but I think it's worthwhile touching on, is one of the key tropes of information warfare is that the other country is a threat to the people of your country. Not simply a threat, but an existential threat, A WMD type of threat, a genocidal threat. We saw that WMD type of language when it was alleged that Covid was a Chinese bio weapon, which somehow was being paid for by the United States. So that doesn't make any sense that research was being funded by the United States. So how is the US funding that research for China to attack us? Nobody seems to be able to explain that piece, but so they're WMD type allegations, and then the China is genocidal in intent, and this is most commonly demonstrated by the allegations of a genocide happening in Xinjiang. Now, just to go over the facts, there
Is, wait, wait a minute. Before we get to that, I want to touch on one thing you mentioned not firing the missile. And I want to say that that was a Russian technician, Vasili arch, about what, 65 years ago, who was looking at his radar screen, saw what most would've perceived to be an incoming nuclear missile from the United States on his screen. And the protocol was you got to push the button. And he, to your point, said, wait a minute. This doesn't make sense right now. This might be a mistake, and thank God he was right. It was a mistake. I wanted to make that point because you kind of glossed over that point. But it's very important for people to understand how perilous the circumstances are that we're in today.
Absolutely. I mean, there were so many close shaves during the Cold War, and they're even more now, and the world owes a debt of gratitude to vestly ov. I think he's one of the unsung heroes of world history, but we can't rely on the fact that there will always be a vasili arch of a patient measured, well-informed, educated person on the other side who exercises prudent caution. There's no guarantee of that. And everything that we are doing on our side is simply escalating the danger that that will not happen and that this could end in a nuclear conflagration.
Final point on that, then we'll go to the Uyghur issue. And that is, that's one of the points that President Putin was making about NATO and why his perception was a uk, a Ukraine in NATO means NATO missiles in Ukraine, which means his response time to a message of incoming would be cut more than in half. And he was saying, we can't do that. You can't put these missiles on my border and cut my response time from 16 or 17 minutes down to seven minutes. That means if my system say incoming, I got a button to push. I don't have a phone to pick up. I don't have questions to ask. I got a fire on receipt.
Absolutely, yes. Launch on warning,
Launch on warning.
Yes. And that's exactly the danger. And this is why this was so important that by bringing NATO right up into Ukraine, the Soviet Union, well, Russia lost all of its strategic debt that it had no cushion with which to make a rational decision. And that is a very, very dangerous thing to do against a nuclear superpower that you have designated as an official enemy. So yes, it's absolutely correct, and this is both the danger and what we are seeing replicated in against China. Once again, the US used to have nuclear weapons in Taiwan Island. Right now, they're probably preparing more nuclear weapons, certainly the tomahawks that are being prepared for Japan or nuclear capable, they can carry nuclear warheads. And if you take US troops and place them right three miles from China's mainland, I mean, you've essentially said that you either have to preempt the attack or you are going to be annihilated. So that is the danger here.
The other great myth, one of the other great myths is the genocide of the Uyghurs and the oppression of the Uyghurs who are a group of Chinese Muslims in a region of China. And also if they're not being genocided, then they're being put into reeducation and concentration camps. Where did this myth come from?
It was started by a guy called Adrian Zant, working for the victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, which is extreme far right organization, fascists, Nazis, anti-communist, who essentially have it on their banner head to destroy communism. Adrian ZZ himself believes that it is God's mission, his mission from God to destroy Chinese communism. And he essentially pulled those figures and those facts out of, pardon my French, his rear end. And so initially, so
Actually French kg would be ass, he pulled those data, excuse my French, out of his ass.
I think the French word is true or football.
But
Yes, the BBC asked him to do the research. He said, I can't do it. And then they offered him more money, and then suddenly all of a sudden he was pulling numbers out of his rear end. Apparently there were perhaps a few dozen people that were interviewed. A small percentage of them said that certain things happened to us, and then they extrapolated that, and all of a sudden we have 1 million, 2 million, 3 million, 5 million, 7 million uighurs either in concentration camps or being genocided. Okay,
So how does that jive with the population of Xinjiang, which I think is the western part of China, which is where these folks are supposed to be.
There are about 12 million Uyghurs. And so if you had even a million that had been disappeared or in concentration camps, you wouldn't have a functioning society. You would have almost every adult male in prison. And that's certainly not the case. 200, 250 million people visited Xinjiang last year, and it was fine. The people in Xinjiang were doing fine. It's a vibrant, multicultural society that is thriving and happy, and anybody can go there. You and I could go there. Anybody listening to this podcast could go there tomorrow. You don't even have to. A visa. China allows Americans to go to China without a visa now for a short period of time, and you could go immediately to Xinjiang and see for yourself. But essentially the fact is there is no Chinese genocide happening in Xinjiang because there's not a single shred of credible evidence. Let me emphasize that. Not a single shred of credible evidence. This is the only genocide in history that one has no deaths. Nobody can point to a body, no refugees.
Well, that's, they've been disappeared. They've been taken up by the mothership, and I guess they're floating around in the nuclear. I mean the, what do you call this? The nebula
In the fifth?
Yeah, they're in the nebula somewhere,
Right? Right in the fifth space, time war somewhere. But look, there are five Muslim majority countries. China has borders with 14 countries, and Xinjiang itself has borders with five Muslim majority countries, very porous borders. If there were any credible oppression, you would see massive refugees going to all these countries right next to it. But it's not. Instead, what you see is preferential treatment of the Uyghurs. For example, they were exempt from the one child policy. They had two, three, sometimes more children. They received preferential treatment in school, admissions and employment. The population has increased sixfold since the start of the PRC, and the life expectancy has increased 150%, and you can look high and low and you will see no hate speech and no tolerance of hate speech against Muslims, and no messages or rhetoric targeting the group whatsoever. In fact, the organization of Islamic Corporation, which represents the rights of 2 billion Muslims in 56 countries, commended China for its exemplary treatment of Muslim minorities.
(01:03:00)
So this is completely and totally fraudulent. There are 24,000 mosques in the region. People live their own lives, they speak their own language. And then here's the contrast, or here's the test case, because when you want to make a proposition, you also want to make a test group against that. Okay? In Gaza, there is a real genocide happening, either sheer unspeakable, barity and atrocity, the daily massacre of men, women, children, infants, starved to death, unimaginable privation and starvation and suffering, and compare that. And nobody can get into Gaza, right? Nobody can get into Gaza. Anybody can get into Xinjiang any day of the day or night. So really this fraud about Xinjiang being some kind of genocide, this is as much a signal of the dying empire as the real genocide in Palestine, it's foundationally mating, and it's a foundationally violent lie, but it's the other side of the same coin that is you are enabling and covering up a real genocide while you were fraudulently concocting a non-existent one. But the thing we have to understand is the invention of a false genocide cannot cover up a real one. Those of us on the right side of history, we know what to believe and we know how to act, and we know who's responsible, who's covering up what and why they're doing it.
And the United States is also trying to foment another genocide in Haiti. So there's a false one in Xinjiang. There's a real one in Gaza, and there's another one on the horizon in Haiti, and thank you United States because it's our tax dollars that are fanning the flames and funding all three kj. No, my brother. Thank you, man. I really, really, really appreciate the time that you gave this evening and for you coming on connecting the dots, because as always, kj, you connected the dots, man. Thank you for joining me today.
Thank you. Always a pleasure and an honor to be with you.
And folks, I want to thank you all so much for listening to the Connecting the Dots podcast with me, Dr. Wiler Leon. Stay tuned for new episodes every week. Also, please follow and subscribe, leave a review, share the show, follow us on social media. You can find all the links below. Go to Patreon. Please contribute. Please, please contribute because this is not an inexpensive venture to engage in. And remember, this is where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge, talk without analysis is just chatter, and we don't chatter on connecting the dots. See you again next time. Until then, I'm Dr. Woman Leon. Have a great one, peace and blessings to y'all.
Connecting the dots with Dr. Wilmer Leon, where the analysis of politics, culture, and history converge.
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