PLA officials say troops are to prepare for war amid territorial disputes with Japan

'Hard and rigorous' training planned amid territorial tension with Japan, officials declare, but observers rubbish 'loud propaganda'

South China Morning Post
Choi Chi-yuk

Sino-Russian amphibious tanks and marines storm a
beachhead in a 2005 assault drill.

The PLA aims to beef up its troops' combat readiness and prepare for actual war situations through exercises this year, according to the latest annual training directive, amid escalating tensions between China and Japan over territorial disputes in the East China Sea.

"In 2013, the goal set for the entire army and the People's Armed Police force is to bolster their capabilities to fight and their ability to win a war … to be well-prepared for a war by subjecting the army to hard and rigorous training on an actual combat basis," according to yesterday's People's Liberation Army Daily, which referred to a training blueprint issued by the PLA's Department of the General Staff for the entire force.

The directive came in stark contrast to that of its predecessor. In last year's directive, more emphasis was placed on joint military trainings and co-ordination among different PLA services.

This year's statement stresses the urgency of real combat abilities in all military training by repeating the phrase "fighting wars", or dazhang, as many as 10 times in the article, which was no more than 1,000 words. The phrase did not appear in last year's directive.

The changes could be a result of the rising tensions in waters between China and Japan, while they might also indicate that there is a different focus for the PLA, since the Central Military Commission's chairman Hu Jintao was succeeded by Xi Jinping , the new PLA commander-in-chief since November.

Separately, state broadcast media reported in the past week that the PLA's naval air force kicked off the open-sea training portion of its annual exercise programme. No details were given on the specific dates or duration.

The General Staff department's training directive came a day after Japan's Self-Defence Forces conducted a massive military exercise on training grounds in Narashino, on the outskirts of Tokyo, on Sunday, in which 20 aircraft, 300 personnel and 33 vehicles participated.

Japanese Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera issued a statement after the drill insisting that Chinese ships had trespassed in "Japanese waters" near the Senkaku Islands, which are known in China as the Diaoyus, and that the security surrounding Japan was therefore being tightened.

The disputed chain of islands in the East China Sea has been claimed by both China and Japan since the early 1970s.

Andrei Chang, editor-in-chief of the Canada-based Kanwa Defence Review, said, "The PLA is making its propaganda voice louder this year, aside from shifting their target to Japan instead of the Philippines last year," adding the statement was more or less the same as last year's.

Fall 1941: Pearl Harbor and The Wars of Corporate America

Global Research
Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels

Myth: The US was forced to declare war on Japan after a totally unexpected Japanese attack on the American naval base in Hawaii on December 7, 1941. On account of Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany, this aggression automatically brought the US into the war against Germany.

Reality: The Roosevelt administration had been eager for some time to wage war against Japan and sought to unleash such a war by means of the institution of an oil embargo and other provocations. Having deciphered Japanese codes, Washington knew a Japanese fleet was on its way to Pearl Harbor, but welcomed the attack since a Japanese aggression would make it possible to “sell” the war to the overwhelmingly anti-war American public.

An attack by Japan, as opposed to an American attack on Japan, was also supposed to avoid a declaration of war by Japan’s ally, Germany, which was treaty-bound to help only if Japan was attacked. However, for reasons which have nothing to do with Japan or the US but everything with the failure of Germany’s “lightning war” against the Soviet Union, Hitler himself declared war on the US a few days after Pearl Harbor, on December 11, 1941.

Fall 1941. The US, then as now, was ruled by a “Power Elite” of industrialists, owners and managers of the country’s leading corporations and banks, constituting only a tiny fraction of its population. Then as now, these industrialists and financiers – “Corporate America” – had close connections with the highest ranks of the army, “the warlords,” as Columbia University sociologist C. Wright Mills, who coined the term “power elite,”[1] has called them, and for whom a few years later a big HQ, known as the Pentagon, would be erected on the banks of the Potomac River.

Indeed, the “military-industrial complex” had already existed for many decades when, at the end of his career as President, and having served it most assiduously, Eisenhower gave it that name. Talking about presidents: in the 1930s and 1940s, again then as now, the Power Elite kindly allowed the American people every four years to choose between two of the elite’s own members – one labelled “Republican,” the other “Democrat,” but few people know the difference – to reside in the White House in order to formulate and administer national and international policies. These policies invariably served – and still serve – the Power Elite’s interests, in other words, they consistently aimed to promote “business” – a code word for the maximization of profits by the big corporations and banks that are members of the Power Elite.

As President Calvin Coolidge candidly put it on one occasion during the 1920s, “the business of America [meaning of the American government] is business.” In 1941, then, the tenant of the White House was a bona fide member of the Power Elite, a scion of a rich, privileged, and powerful family: Franklin D. Roosevelt, often referred to as “FDR”. (Incidentally, the Roosevelt family’s wealth had been built at least partly in the opium trade with China; as Balzac once wrote, “behind every great fortune there lurks a crime.”)

Roosevelt appears to have served the Power Elite rather well, for he already managed to be nominated (difficult!) and elected (relatively easy!) in 1932, 1936, and again in 1940. That was a remarkable achievement, since the “dirty thirties” were hard times, marked by the “Great Depression” as well as great international tensions, leading to the eruption of war in Europe in 1939. Roosevelt’s job – serving the interests of the Power Elite – was far from easy, because within the ranks of that elite opinions differed about how corporate interests could best be served by the President. With respect to the economic crisis, some industrialists and bankers were pretty happy with the President’s Keynesian approach, known as the “New Deal” and involving much state intervention in the economy, while others were vehemently opposed to it and loudly demanded a return to laissez-faire orthodoxy. The Power Elite was also divided with respect to the handling of foreign affairs.

The owners and top managers of many American corporations – including Ford, General Motors, IBM, ITT, and Rockefeller’s Standard Oil of New Jersey, now known as Exxon – liked Hitler a lot; one of them – William Knudsen of General Motors – even glorified the German Führer as “the miracle of the 20th century.”[2] The reason: in preparation for war, the Führer had been arming Germany to the teeth, and the numerous German branch plants of US corporations had profited handsomely from that country’s “armament boom” by producing trucks, tanks and planes in sites such as GM’s Opel factory in Rüsselsheim and Ford’s big plant in Cologne, the Ford-Werke; and the likes of Exxon and Texaco had been making plenty of money by supplying the fuel Hitler’s panzers would need to roll all the way to Warsaw in 1939, to Paris in 1940, and (almost) to Moscow in 1941. No wonder the managers and owners of these corporations helped to celebrate Germany’s victories against Poland and France at a big party in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York on June 26, 1940!

American “captains of industry” like Henry Ford also liked the way Hitler had shut down the German unions, outlawed all labour parties, and thrown the communists and many socialists into concentration camps; they wished Roosevelt would mete out the same kind of treatment to America’s own pesky union leaders and “reds,” the latter still numerous in the 1930s and early 1940s. The last thing those men wanted, was for Roosevelt to involve the US in the war on the side of Germany’s enemies, they were “isolationists” (or “non-interventionists”) and so, in the summer of 1940, was the majority of the American public: a Gallup Poll, taken in September 1940, showed that 88 percent of Americans wanted to stay out of the war that was raging in Europe.[3] Not surprisingly, then, there was no sign whatsoever that Roosevelt might want to restrict trade with Germany, let alone embark on an anti-Hitler crusade. In fact, during the presidential election campaign in the fall 1940, he solemnly promised that “[our] boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.”[4]

That Hitler has crushed France and other democratic countries, was of no concern to the US corporate types who did business with Hitler, in fact, they felt that Europe’s future belonged to fascism, especially Germany’s variety of fascism, Nazism, rather than to democracy. (Typically, the chairman of General Motors, Alfred P. Sloan, declared at that time that it was a good thing that in Europe the democracies were giving way “to an alternative [i.e. fascist] system with strong, intelligent, and aggressive leaders who made the people work longer and harder and who had the instinct of gangsters – all of them good qualities”!)[5] And, since they certainly did not want Europe’s future to belong to socialism in its evolutionary, let alone revolutionary (i.e. communist) variety, the US industrialists would be particularly happy when, about one year later, Hitler would finally do what they have long hoped he would do, namely, to attack the Soviet Union in order to destroy the homeland of communism and source of inspiration and support of “reds” all over the world, also in the US.

While many big corporations were engaged in profitable business with Nazi Germany, others now happened to be making plenty of money by doing business with Great Britain. That country – in addition to Canada and other member countries of the British Empire, of course – was Germany’s only remaining enemy from the fall of 1940 until June 1941, when Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union caused Britain and the Soviet Union to become allies. Britain was desperately in need of all sorts of equipment to continue its struggle against Nazi Germany, wanted to purchase much of it in the US, but was unable to make the cash payments required by America’s existing “Cash-and-Carry” legislation. However, Roosevelt made it possible for US corporations to take advantage of this enormous “window of opportunity” when, on March 11, 1941, he introduced his famous Lend-Lease program, providing Britain with virtually unlimited credit to purchase trucks, planes, and other martial hardware in the US. The Lend-Lease exports to Britain were to generate windfall profits, not only on account of the huge volume of business involved but also because these exports featured inflated prices and fraudulent practices such as double billing.

A segment of Corporate America thus began to sympathize with Great Britain, a less “natural” phenomenon than we would now tend to believe. (Indeed, after American independence the ex-motherland had long remained Uncle Sam’s archenemy; and as late the 1930s, the US military still had plans for war against Britain and an invasion of the Canadian Dominion, the latter including plans for the bombing of cities and the use of poison gas.)[6] Some mouthpieces of this corporate constituency, though not very many, even started to favour a US entry into the war on the side of the British; they became known as the “interventionists.” Of course, many if not most big American corporations made money through business with both Nazi Germany and Britain and, as the Roosevelt administration itself was henceforth preparing for possible war, multiplying military expenditures and ordering all sorts of equipment, they also started to make more and more money by supplying America’s own armed forces with all sorts of martial material.[7]

Threat of a Complete Financial Meltdown: IMF Report Points to Growing Instability

World Socialist Website
Nick Beams

Four years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the latest Global Financial Stability Report published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) makes clear that the threat of a complete meltdown of the international financial system remains. And the dangers of such an event are increasing.

The report, issued earlier this week, began by noting that risks to financial instability had increased since the previous report last April and that “confidence in the global financial system has become very fragile.”

The main risk to financial stability was a further deterioration in the euro area crisis, but “rising imbalances elsewhere are also a cause for concern.”

The report pointed to the increasing fragmentation of the euro zone, which could set off a massive withdrawal of capital from the weaker economies, as well as from central and eastern Europe. Such a withdrawal would push record unemployment levels even higher. There was now a “wedge” between the euro zone periphery and the core.

The crisis arises from the imbalances that were built into the euro zone from the outset. For the so-called periphery economies, adopting the euro as the common currency meant that they could no longer rely on a fall in the value of their national currencies to maintain their export markets. Hence, they increasingly suffered from a balance of payments deficit.

However, this was covered by an influx of capital from the stronger economies, in particular Germany. The inflow of capital boosted demand and provided valuable markets for German exports, setting up a virtuous circle. Now a vicious circle has replaced it, as capital flows in the other direction. “Liquidity in the core economy banks,” the report noted, “is not being recycled to the periphery but is instead being deposited at core central banks or in relatively safe government bonds.”

Bank bailouts have been accompanied by the imposition of austerity programs and recession, leading to a further withdrawal of funds.

The IMF report also warned that the corporate sector could become “an additional force in this pernicious feedback loop” as sovereign downgrades pulled investment grade corporate debt toward junk status.

The report’s forecasts were made on the basis of what the authors called a baseline scenario. This assumed that European policymakers would move to closer economic and political integration, establish a single supervisory mechanism for the financial system and take action to close the gap between the high interest rates in the periphery and the very low rates in core countries, such as Germany.

Unless these measures were carried out—and that is far from likely, given the growing conflicts among the European powers—then the eurozone would slide into a “weak policies scenario”.

That scenario would bring a rapid worsening of the financial crisis. The forces of fragmentation would become “entrenched” and the capital problems of banks would increase, posing a “far-reaching threat to the global financial system and the global economic outlook.”

So far as policy prescriptions were concerned, the IMF demanded an intensification of the attacks on the working class. One of the key elements of any recovery program had to be the implementation of “growth-friendly fiscal consolidation”.

Such a thing does not exist. “Fiscal consolidation” is a euphemism for budget cuts, the impact of which is to reduce demand—either through cuts in social services or by the cutting of public sector jobs—leading to a further economic contraction, followed by demands for more cuts.

At the same time, finance capital demands that real wages be reduced and the exploitation of workers intensified. Accordingly, the IMF called for “wide-ranging … structural and institutional reforms” in order to “strengthen competitiveness and narrow external imbalance.”

What this means is that, given that the countries running a balance of payments deficit cannot devalue their currency, they must carry out what is termed an “internal devaluation” in order to lower their costs, above all wages, and thereby become competitive on international markets.

The history of such “internal devaluation” was the subject of a comment by Financial Timescolumnist Martin Wolf, published on Wednesday. He pointed out that when the UK carried out such a regime between the wars, economic output in 1938 was barely above what it had been in 1918. “High unemployment,” he noted, “was the mechanism for driving nominal and real wages down.”

This is the program to be now applied across Europe.

While focusing attention on Europe, the IMF report also commented on the worsening situation in both Japan and the United States, two of the major pillars of the world economy.

Sovereign credit risk was an important “challenge” to stability in the US, with an already weak economy facing slow growth and inadequate demand. In addition, a “fiscal cliff” posed “near-term risks.” That is, the series of tax increases and spending cuts due to come into effect at the end of the year could, if implemented, cut US economic growth by as much as 2 percentage points.

The report warned that the present problems in the euro region were a “cautionary tale” for Japan, given its high public debt and the heavy investment by banks in government bonds.

The crisis has had contradictory effects. On the one hand, Japan has become a beneficiary of “safe-haven” inflows as a result of the crisis in Europe. These inflows have pushed the yields on government bonds to near-record lows, facilitating easy financing of the national public debt.

On the other hand, the foreign capital inflow has pushed up the value of the yen, thereby weakening Japanese exports and impacting on domestic production.

The increasing investment by domestic Japanese banks in government bonds could be sowing the seeds for future problems. If, for any reason, the yields on Japanese bonds started to rise (that is, there was a fall in bond prices) then the banks would incur a capital loss on their assets. And as the experience of Europe has shown, this can rapidly lead to the onset of a full-blown financial crisis.

The China Japan Dispute Over Diaoyu Islands: Historical Analysis

Global Research
Chandra Muzaffar

Tensions are rising in the dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu Islands —- 5 tiny islands and 3 rocks covering a mere 7 square kilometres in the East China Sea. It is unfortunate that this is happening especially when Chinese-Japanese economic ties have reached a new level since the end of last year with the two countries agreeing to use their respective currencies in their bilateral trade, instead of the US dollar.

To de-escalate tensions, Japan should make the first move. It was the Japanese government’s purchase of three of the islands from the Kurihara family on 11 September 2012 that ignited the present crisis. That decision should be rescinded immediately.

In fact, Japan has been upping the ante on Diaoyu — which Japan calls the Senkaku Islands — for some time now. It will be recalled that on 7 September 2010 when a Chinese fishing boat collided accidentally with a Japanese patrol vessel near Diaoyu, the captain and the crew of the Chinese boat were detained by the Japanese Coast Guard for a few days. Though they were all released in the end, the incident revealed a new toughness on the part of the Japanese. The Chinese have been reacting to this and other such incidents.

What explains this new toughness? Some analysts attribute it partly to the growth of the Political Right in Japanese politics. Japanese economic stagnation for more than two decades and China’s success in replacing Japan as the world’s second most important economy have increased the influence of conservative nationalist forces in the country who are now targeting China. Impending elections within the ruling Democratic Party and the forthcoming General Election have also widened the berth for conservative politics.

It is also not a coincidence that the Japanese Right has become more vocal— especially vis-a-vis China— at a time when the United States is seeking to re-assert its presence and its power in the Asia-Pacific region. In the last couple of years, US political and military officials have on a number of occasions underscored the significance of US-Japan security ties. Even on the Diaoyu dispute, the US government, while professing to remain neutral, has through the Pentagon made it clear that the Japan-US Security Treaty would come into force in the event of a military conflict between Japan and China.

This stance has to be viewed in the larger context of the US’s active military alignment with the Philippines in its recent clash with China over the HuangyanIsland in the South China Sea and its support for Vietnam in its longstanding tiff with China over parts of the Spratly Islands and the Paracels. For both Japan and the US there may also be other reasons why the Diaoyu Islands are important. In 1968-9, a United Nations agency, it is reported, had discovered potential oil and gas reserves near Diaoyu. The US military, it is not widely known, also uses one of the five islands — Kuba— as a practice range for aircraft bombing.

Whatever the reasons for holding on to Diaoyu, Japan’s claim to ownership is weak. There are books, reports and maps from the 15th century, during the period of the Ming Dynasty, that establish in no uncertain terms that Diaoyuis Chinese territory. The book Voyage with a Tail Wind and the Record of the Imperial Envoy’s Visit to Ryukyu bear testimony to this. Even writings by Japanese scholars in the late 19th century acknowledged this fact.

The challenge to Chinese ownership of Diaoyu came from Japanese annexation of the Islands in 1894-5 following the first Sino-Japanese War. China under the Ching Dynasty was too weak to fight back and regain lost territory. But annexation through military force does not confer legitimacy upon the act of conquest. This is why when Japan was defeated in the Second World War the victors who included China and the US recognised that Diaoyu was Chinese territory. Both the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Declaration acknowledged this though for administrative purposes Diaoyu was placed under US control as part of its governance over the Ryukyu Islands. The US was then the occupying power in Japan following the latter’s surrender.

However, when China was taken over by the Chinese Communist Party in 1949, the US changed its position and began to treat the Islands as part of Japan. The Chinese communist leadership protested vehemently. In 1971, the US Senate returned the Diaoyu Islands, together with Okinawa, to Japan under the Okinawa Reversion Treaty. Again, the Chinese government in Beijing objected, as did the Taiwan government which also regards the Islands as part of China. Since the normalisation of relations between China and Japan in 1972, both sides have agreed to allow their fisher folk to operate in the waters surrounding the Islands without resolving the issue of ownership. Of course, neither China nor Japan has relinquished even an iota of its claim in the last 40 years. Recent incidents have however forced this unresolved issue into the open.

Apart from taking the first step by abrogating its purchase of the Islands, as we have proposed, Japan should also come to terms with undeniable historical, legal and ethical facts. It must accept the irrefutable reality that the Diaoyu Islands belong to China. We realise that there are powerful vested interests that will not allow Japan to embrace this truth. Nonetheless, we should all try to persuade the Japanese government and the Japanese people that it would be in their best interest to do so. Governments in Asia should convey this message to Japanese elites through quiet diplomacy. Citizen groups throughout the continent should speak up in a firm and courteous manner. The media should play its role by laying out the arguments for an amicable resolution of the dispute which respects truth and justice.

Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia,

Stronger Chinese Navy Worries Neighbors and US

Der Spiegel
Bernhard Zand

China and the US seem to be on a collision course in the Pacific. Beijing is significantly bolstering its navy, and Washington is shifting its military focus to the Asia-Pacific Region. Many fear it could alter the balance of power in a region rich in oil and crucial for global trade.

The best view of China's new flagship, which inspires fear in its enemies, could recently be had from a window on the fourth floor of an IKEA store in Dalian, a port city in northeastern China. Here, someone had scratched out a viewing hole in the opaque film masking the window, providing a view of the pier across the way -- and of theVaryag.

This ship, whose keel was originally built by the Soviets, is now being put into service by the China's People's Liberation Army Navy. Shipyard employees spent years working on the colossal ship, drilling and welding. Then the Varyag disappeared a total of 10 times for sea trials, leaving geostrategists and naval experts from Tokyo to Washington endlessly speculating about where the ship might be at any given moment and with what kinds of weapons and airplanes China would decide to outfit it.

Since late August, the ship has once again been docked in Dalian. On the morning of September 2, observers noticed a team of painters at work and, by the afternoon of the next day, the result of their work could be seen: an enormous number "16" emblazoned on the gray hull of the ship. This, it seems, will be the identification number of the first aircraft carrier put into service by China's naval forces, a number said to have been chosen in honor of Admiral Liu Huaqing, father of the modern Chinese navy, who was born in 1916.

One day later, on Tuesday of last week, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton paid a visit to Beijing. This was the third stop on Clinton's trip, which began in the Cook Islands, in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean, and would then take her to Indonesia, China, East Timor and Brunei along the way to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Vladivostok, Russia. Clinton represents a government that is paying particular attention to the actions of the Chinese navy. One of the main reasons for Clinton's trip was to remind the US' allies in the region that America is the hegemonic force in the West Pacific -- and intends to remain so.

Chinese Muscle-Flexing

Right at the start of her trip, in the Cook Islands, Clinton met with representatives from allies, including Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the Philippines, as well as ones from Vietnam, America's former enemy. "The Pacific is big enough for all of us," Clinton told them. However, some have reasons to doubt that statement because they know the US and its allies have rivals in the region, as well: North Korea and China.

North Korea, under the command of a dictator not yet 30 years old, may appear to be the more dangerous opponent. But China is the weightier one by far, challenging the US not only in industry, trade and outer space, but also in the arena where the world's major powers have played out their conflicts since as long ago as the 16th century: at sea.

Here in the West Pacific, tensions have been rising for months between China and America's partners. Beijing is in a dispute with Manila over the Scarborough Shoal, an uninhabited rocky atoll, most of which is only above sea level at low tide. This May, Washington quietly negotiated a compromise in which ships from both China and the Philippines would withdraw from the region. Since then, however, the Chinese navy has blocked off the lagoon and its excellent fishing waters and once again sent ships to patrol the area.

At the same time, China is at odds with Japan over another uninhabited island group -- known as Diaoyu in Chinese and Senkaku in Japanese -- located near a key shipping lane between Taiwan and Okinawa. In August, activists from Hong Kong hoisted a Chinese flag on one of the islands, triggering a wave of patriotic enthusiasm on the mainland.

Tension over these islands flared up once again this week after it was announced Tuesday that the government in Tokyo had purchased the islands from a Japanese family. On Friday, six Chinese maritime patrol vessels reportedly entered into Japanese-controlled waters around the islands and remained there for two hours despite warnings from a Japanese vessel. The Associated Press quotes Japan's coast guard as saying the Chinese vessel radioed: "Diaoyu is China's territory. This ship is carrying out lawful operations. We urge you to leave the waters immediately."

China also snubbed its socialist neighbor Vietnam this June by establishing a city on the Paracel Islands, which are also claimed by Hanoi, as are the Spratly Islands further to the south. At the same time, Beijing began building a military garrison on the Paracel Islands. This latest step makes it clear that China is laying claim to nearly the entire South China Sea, an area of nearly 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) that American strategists refer to as the "cow's tongue" owing to its peculiar shape.

Obama's Pacific 'Pivot'

It is difficult to overstate the economic and military importance of the South China Sea, which connects the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Over half the annual tonnage of all the world's merchant navies is shipped through adjacent sea routes here, and the region sees a third of the world's maritime traffic. Eighty percent of China's crude oil imports pass through here, and the seafloor holds an estimated 130 billion barrels of crude oil and 9.3 trillion cubic meters (328 trillion cubic feet) of natural gas.

"All of the trends, demographic trends, geopolitical trends, economic trends and military trends, are shifting toward the Pacific. So our strategic challenges in the future will largely emanate out of the Pacific region," said Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey when laying out the US' new defense strategy together with President Barack Obama this January.

Obama, who was born in Hawaii and raised in Indonesia, has declared a strategic "pivot" of US military strategy to the Asia-Pacific region. Indeed, the Pacific is more important to the US' future than Europe or the NATO territory along the coasts of the Atlantic. Obama traveled to Australia last year to personally announce plans for a new US Marine base there, and his administration has plans for conducting joint maneuvers with Vietnam as well as for setting up ultra-modern equipment in Japan as part of a missile defense system for Asia.

The 7th Fleet, established in 1943 and now stationed in Japan and Guam, is already the US Navy's largest and strongest force, with more than 60 warships and around 40,000 personnel. In the coming years, it will be expanded even further so that, by 2020, some 60 percent of all American warships will be stationed in the Pacific -- more than in the Atlantic and also more than in the Persian Gulf, which has been considered the US Navy's main focus in recent decades.

Playing Catch-Up

One of the primary reasons for this fundamental shift on the part of Obama's administration is China's build-up of its military forces, especially its navy. A congressional study published on August 10 suggests that the United States considers the modernization of China's navy an aggressive act. According to the study, Beijing is by no means simply trying to protect its trade routes and its citizens abroad but, rather, is determined to assert its territorial claims, push back the US' influence in the Pacific and underline its status as a global military power.

To these ends, the study continues, China has, among other things, developed ballistic anti-ship missiles that are the first capable of striking aircraft carriers that were previously considered more or less unassailable. In military jargon, these missiles are known as "carrier killers." The congressional study goes on to state that China has also launched three nuclear submarines of its own design that are capable of firing nuclear-armed intercontinental missiles, that the country also wants at least two aircraft carriers of its own construction, and that it plans to undertake "reforms and improvements in maintenance and logistics, naval doctrine, personnel quality, education, training and exercises."

Some observers consider a military conflict between China and the US "very unlikely," the study states, in part given the "significant US-Chinese economic linkages and the tremendous damage that such a conflict could cause on both sides." Yet, even in the absence of such a conflict, the balance of military power between the two nations "could nevertheless influence day-to-day choices made by other Pacific countries," including "the political evolution of the Pacific."

"It seems to me the West is simply faint-hearted," says Xu Guangyu, 78, a retired People's Liberation Army general and current senior analyst with the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association. China, he says, wants to "build up a navy that is strong enough to keep an adversary from attacking, strong enough to defend itself and strong enough to strike back."

The ascetic officer, who served in the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 and in the Sino-Vietnamese War in 1979, considers his country's military situation fundamentally misunderstood. "We're decades behind in our development," he says. "Even India is 60 years ahead of us."

Reducing Army While Expanding Navy

Over 30 percent of American military personnel serve in the US Navy, Xu claims, compared to only 15 percent for China. But these figures aren't quite accurate: The percentage for the US is actually about 20 percent. Xu also states that the Pentagon has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, while Beijing only has one, which is diesel-powered and "requires maintenance every couple weeks besides." His statements continue on is the same vein: "China has 17 soldiers for every 10,000 people, while the US has 43. We spend just $14,000 (€11,000) per year per soldier. Do you know how much Germany pays each year for each of its soldiers? $200,000."

China's navy, Xu says, has a great deal of catching up to do. The Varyag will be put into service this year, he adds, but Beijing will need at least six to eight more "proper" aircraft carriers, while the navy's importance within China's forces as a whole needs to be considerably enhanced. Currently, Xu explains, the personnel ratio between China's army and navy is 7 to 1.5, while the desired ratio is 5 to 2.5 -- which would still be more sparing than in the US armed forces.

If the desired ratio were indeed established, China, with its enormous number of troops as a whole, would field the world's largest navy, with nearly 500,000 sailors -- although Xu Guangyu says the country's total number of soldiers will soon be reduced from its current level of 2.3 million to 2 million and, later, to 1.5 million. 

"Eventually, we also want to spend around $100,000 per soldier," Xu explains. "When it comes to ships and equipment, though, we will continue to rank third, behind the US and Russia."

Regardless of how China's strategic position may change in the coming years, Xu says, the importance of its navy will increase: "We have a couple of conflicts along our land borders, but the greatest dangers for China have always come from the sea." The "Eight-Nation Alliance" that put down the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 and laid waste to Beijing approached from the sea, he points out, as did Japan when it subjugated parts of China in the 1930s and 1940s. "And I have the impression that the Americans aren't going to come out of the skies either," Xu adds.

Ominous Precedents

Seven years ago, when the US military was still mired in Iraq's civil war, American journalist and policy thinker Robert D. Kaplan predicted that the US would eventually turn its attention from the Middle East to the Asia-Pacific Region. Now, history has proven Kaplan right as global power relations are developing in just that direction.

President Obama has clearly shifted the US military's strategic focus from CENTCOM, the command center responsible for the Middle East, to PACOM, which is responsible for the Pacific.

Kaplan also described China's desire, as an up-and-coming nation, to secure its sphere of influence beyond its own coasts as "fully legitimate." Zhu Feng, a Chinese security expert at Beijing University, further suggests that America will only "accelerate" the arms race by implementing measures such as the planned missile defense shield.

One country that could give China good advice, a country whose historians are well versed in naval policies and in arms races on the high seas, is Germany. A century ago, Berlin stood where Beijing is now, as an emerging economic power that was admired, envied and feared. At the time, Germany wanted a navy that would broadcast its self-confidence to the world, one that could rival the world's greatest naval force of the era, the British Navy.

That plan almost succeeded. But it didn't end well.

Translated from the German by Ella Ornstein

Chinese ships breach Japan’s naval border

Russia Today

Chinese patrol ship

Six Chinese ships entered Japanese waters near a group of disputed islets claimed by both Beijing and Tokyo early on Friday, ignoring the Japanese coast guard's orders to vacate its territorial waters.

The first two ships in the battalion entered the disputed waters at around 21:20 GMT on Thursday. After a few hours of “patrolling,” three of the ships have left the disputed waters, while another three stayed, local media reported.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry confirmed that six of its surveillance ships had entered the waters near the islands.

So far, Japanese border patrol ships have not taken any active measures against the Chinese vessels.

“The patrol activity is intended to demonstrate the jurisdiction of the Chinese government over the Diaoyu Islands and the adjacent islands, and also to protect the country’s naval interests,” the statement reads.

Japan has created a crisis headquarters in response to the incident. The country's officials urgently summoned the Chinese Ambassador to a meeting with the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

This is the latest in a series of diplomatic rows between China and Japan centered on control of the Senkaku, or Diaoyu in Mandarin, islands.

On Tuesday, Japan announced it had purchased the islands from a private owner, ignoring Chinese territorial claims. Following the announcement, two ships from the China Marine Surveillance were dispatched to the tiny archipelago in the South China Sea “to assert the country’s sovereignty.” 

At that time, however, the vessels did not come within 12 nautical miles of the islands, an area Japan considers its territorial waters.

Chinese smash Japanese cars in protest

Meanwhile, the nationalistic spirit has taken a hold in China. Blogs and forums have been throbbing with discussion over various protests against the Japanese repatriation of the disputed islands.

In Shanghai, an angry man was said to have driven his Honda Civic to a local dealership and set the vehicle ablaze. In Shenzhen, several Japanese-made cars have been smashed.

The tourist industry is reacting as well by canceling plans to visit Japan in early October, when China celebrates its National Day. A couple in Kunming told the state-run Xinhua news agency that they had canceled a wedding photo shoot because the studio couldn’t meet their demand to take their pictures with cameras not made by Japanese companies, reports the Los Angeles Times. Many Chinese celebrities and politicians are refusing to travel to Japan.

On Wednesday, a crowd of people demonstrated outside the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai; and about 60 people rallied outside Japan's Interchange Association, Japan's de facto embassy in Taipei, to protest the nationalization move, as Taiwan also lays claim to the islands.

Recently, Chinese state media began broadcasting weather reports for the islands for the first time.

Fukushima plant “to keep contaminating the Pacific Ocean for the rest of time” if fuel can’t be removed — No good solution, must constantly pump out water from under buildings

ENENews

Title: Arnold Gundersen with another update on the unfolding effects of the Fukushima disaster
Source: KPFT Houston, If You Love This Planet Radio
Date: Aug 31, 2012
Description: This week, Dr. Caldicott brings on nuclear engineer Arnold Gundersen  [...]

At 19:00 in

Caldicott: If you put concrete on it, you know it’s going to keep going down into the water table. 

Gundersen: Right. 

Caldicott: And you know it’s going to keep contaminating the Pacific Ocean for the rest of time. 

Gundersen: Right. So the solution — there is no good solution — but the solution would be to bore holes underneath and constantly pull water out from under the buildings.

[...]

At 23:00 in

Caldicott: You are sacrificing the Pacific by leaving this stuff there for the rest of time, which will leak and drain consistently into the Pacific. 

Gundersen: You’re right. It needs to be constantly pumped out

[...]

Nearly 70% of Japanese who wanted to attend hearings on nuclear power hoped to discuss its complete abolition

Japan Times
Kyoda

FUKUOKA — Around 70 percent of citizens who wished to air their views on the future of nuclear power at public hearings held by the government wanted to discuss its complete elimination, officials said Saturday.

A series of 11 hearings, each in a different city, have been staged all around the country since July 14 to give the public an opportunity to express their opinions about the government's three options regarding the role nuclear power should play in Japan's new energy policy. The final forums held Saturday in Fukuoka and Takamatsu, Kagawa Prefecture.

Under the three options, the percentage of electricity to be generated through nuclear power by 2030 was set at zero, 15 percent, and 20 to 25 percent.

The government said Saturday that of the 1,542 citizens who wanted to take part in the hearings after being contacted by its officials, some 1,447 hoped to voice their thoughts about atomic energy.

Of the 1,447, some 983 people, or 68 percent, wanted to speak either for or against the complete abolition of nuclear power by 2030, according to the organizer of the hearings, the industry ministry's Agency for Natural Resources and Energy.

The majority wished to speak in support of scrapping all atomic energy generation, while 11 percent wanted to talk about the 15 percent option and 16 percent of them about the 20 to 25 percent option, the agency said. Five percent wanted to challenge all three options.

The 1,447 did not include anyone from the city of Fukushima, even though it was one of the 11 venues selected for the hearings. The prefecture hosts the crippled Fukushima No. 1 power plant, which suffered three catastrophic reactor meltdowns in March 2011.

Meanwhile, the government on Saturday began a two-day public survey in Tokyo on the country's new nuclear energy policy.

The government said it will take into account the results of both the public hearings and the Tokyo survey while formulating its energy and environmental policies, although it has yet to explain exactly how it intends to incorporate the findings.

Genetic mutations from radiation exposure are up to 100 times higher than anything we have encountered in the animal kingdom -Dr. Fernex, Former WHO Consultant

EneNews

Dr. Michel Fernex

• Emeritus Professor, Basel Faculty of Medecine
• Former Consultant, World Health Organization

“What should WHO have done after Chernobyl ?” asked Dr Nabarro in 2002 when he was Acting Director-General of the World Health Organization. I replied immediately, and then confirmed it in writing: “Convene a Scientific Working Group on Ionising Radiation and Genetics” like the one in 1956, and add the words “and Genomic Instability”.

[...] 

Since 1959, an agreement signed between WHO and the International Atomic Energy Agency, and then a number of additional legal texts, prohibit WHO from intervening in nuclear accidents.

[...] 

What genetic damage has been done to the population following the accident at Fukushima? Are the alterations already recorded in the cells of those workers who have exhausted themselves, over the last year, in an effort to reduce the dissemination of radionuclides into the environment. What about people who inhaled radioactive material and ate contaminated food ? Has this induced genomic instability? And the children that have been born since, or who will be born to fathers or mothers who have been irradiated. Have they inherited the fragile genomes of their parents? Are they, perhaps, going to be even worse affected than their parents ? 

In fact, researchers have been surprised to find that genetic damage, and above all perigenetic damage, which is responsible for genomic instability, to descendants is far worse than to parents; and this risk increases from one generation to the next. R.J.Baker and his colleagues, studying the DNA of genes transmitted from mother voles to their babies, found levels of mutation, from generation to generation, reaching 100 times higher than anything we have previously encountered up to now in the animal kingdom. The area in which these rodents live has seen its level of radioactivity decrease, because Caesium 137 is carried in rainwater and infiltrates deep into the soil, where it can be recycled by plants.

One might think that in forests far away from Chernobyl that these rodents would react positively to these improved radiological conditions. But the mutations and the genome fragility have increased over 22 generations in populations of voles studied by Goncharova and Ryabokon in Belarus. These geneticists have observed the opposite of an adaptation to radioactivity: an increase in genomic instability in all populations studied, from 30 to 300 kilometres away from the stricken reactor. In the least contaminated zones, near Minsk, the genomic instability is slow, but it will persist and worsen up to 22 generations later.

The genetic effects observed in both humans and rodents has led Professor Hillis, at the University of Texas, to conclude in his editorial in the review Nature, 25th April 1996: « We know today that the mutagenic effect of a nuclear accident can be far more serious than we ever suspected, and the eucaryotic genome can present levels of mutation that, up to now, would not have been considered possible. » 

At Fukushima, genomic instability needs to be followed up over generations, starting with grandparents and parents, then the children and grand children. After a year, the damage caused by the mixture of internal and external radiation to children should be measured, by comparison with data from before 2011 in the same areas, or by comparing data with communities further away, that were spared the radioactive fallout. Birthweight, incidence of stillbirth, perinatal mortality up to 28 days, birth deformities (heart problems should be investigated later), and among the genetic diseases, Down’s syndrome, should all be studied. Brain damage with tumours, and developmental retardation which, like decreases in IQ, will become evident at school age.

[...] 

In order to achieve its objectives, the IAEA cannot admit that these serious and common illnesses were caused by ionising radiation, because once known, it would prevent the development of the nuclear industry throughout the world.

[...] 

It was almost incomprehensible that at Fukushima there was no distribution of stable iodine to the population that would soon be under threat. Such a preventive measure would have been welcomed, as Keith Baverstock showed in Poland after Chernobyl.

The first victims of a serious nuclear accident are and will be children, with an increase in allergies and an aggravation of infectious diseases, which become chronic and involve serious complications.

[...] 

In equal doses, external radiation is ten to a hundred times less damaging than chronic internal radiation, which essentially results from the oral absorption of radionuclides. These concentrate in organs like the thymus, the endocrine glands, the spleen, the bone surfaces and the heart.

[...]

Nearly 36pc of Fukushima children diagnosed with abnormal thyroid growths

The Telegraph
Julian Ryall

The Sixth Report of Fukushima Prefecture Health Management Survey, released in April, included examinations of 38,114 children, of whom 35.3 percent - some 13,460 children - were found to have cysts or nodules of up to 5 mm (0.197 inches) on their thyroids.

A further 0.5 percent, totalling 186 youngsters, had nodules larger than 5.1 mm (0.2 inches).

A study by the Japan Thyroid Association in 2001 found that zero percent of children in the city of Nagasaki had nodules and only 0.8 percent had cysts on their thyroids.

"Yes, 35.8 percent of children in the study have lumps or cysts, but this is not the same as cancer," said Naomi Takagi, an associate professor at Fukushima University Medical School Hospital, which administered the tests.

"We do not know that cause of this, but it is hard to believe that is due to the effects of radiation," she said. "This is an early test and we will only see the effects of radiation exposure after four or five years."

The local authority is carrying out long-term testing of children who were under the age of 18 on March 11 last year, the day on which the magnitude-9 Great East Japan struck off the coast of north-east Japan, triggering the massive tsunami that crippled the Fukushima nuclear plant.

Thyroid examinations were first conducted in October last year and will be carried out every two years up to the age of 20 and every five years for the rest of the children's lives.

A second report has been issued by Japan's Institute of Radiological Sciences in which it found that some children living close to the plant were exposed to "lifetime" doses of radiation to their thyroid glands.

Financial Collapse At Hand: When is "Sooner or Later"?

Global Research
Paul Craig Roberts

Ever since the beginning of the financial crisis and Quantitative Easing, the question has been before us:  How can the Federal Reserve maintain zero interest rates for banks and negative real interest rates for savers and bond holders when the US government is adding $1.5 trillion to the national debt every year via its budget deficits?  Not long ago the Fed announced that it was going to continue this policy for another 2 or 3 years. Indeed, the Fed is locked into the policy. Without the artificially low interest rates, the debt service on the national debt would be so large that it would raise questions about the US Treasury’s credit rating and the viability of the dollar, and the trillions of dollars in Interest Rate Swaps and other derivatives would come unglued.  In other words, financial deregulation leading to Wall Street’s gambles, the US government’s decision to bail out the banks and to keep them afloat, and the Federal Reserve’s zero interest rate policy have put the economic future of the US and its currency in an untenable and dangerous position.  It will not be possible to continue to flood the bond markets with $1.5 trillion in new issues each year when the interest rate on the bonds is less than the rate of inflation. Everyone who purchases a Treasury bond is purchasing a depreciating asset. Moreover, the capital risk of investing in Treasuries is very high. The low interest rate means that the price paid for the bond is very high. A rise in interest rates, which must come sooner or later, will collapse the price of the bonds and inflict capital losses on bond holders, both domestic and foreign. The question is: when is sooner or later?  The purpose of this article is to examine that question. Let us begin by answering the question: how has such an untenable policy managed to last this long?   A number of factors are contributing to the stability of the dollar and the bond market. A very important factor is the situation in Europe.  There are real problems there as well, and the financial press keeps our focus on Greece, Europe, and the euro. Will Greece exit the European Union or be kicked out?  Will the sovereign debt problem spread to Spain, Italy, and essentially everywhere except for Germany and the Netherlands? Will it be the end of the EU and the euro?  These are all very dramatic questions that keep focus off the American situation, which is probably even worse. The Treasury bond market is also helped by the fear individual investors have of the equity market, which has been turned into a gambling casino by high-frequency trading.  High-frequency trading is electronic trading based on mathematical models that make the decisions. Investment firms compete on the basis of speed, capturing gains on a fraction of a penny, and perhaps holding positions for only a few seconds.  These are not long-term investors. Content with their daily earnings, they close out all positions at the end of each day.  High-frequency trades now account for 70-80% of all equity trades. The result is major heartburn for traditional investors, who are leaving the equity market. They end up in Treasuries, because they are unsure of the solvency of banks who pay next to nothing for deposits, whereas 10-year Treasuries will pay about 2% nominal, which means, using the official Consumer Price Index, that they are losing 1% of their capital each year.  Using John Williams’ (shadowstats.com) correct measure of inflation, they are losing far more.  Still, the loss is about 2 percentage points less than being in a bank, and unlike banks, the Treasury can have the Federal Reserve print the money to pay off its bonds.  Therefore, bond investment at least returns the nominal amount of the investment, even if its real value is much lower. ( For a description of High-frequency trading, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency_trading ) The presstitute financial media tells us that flight from European sovereign debt, from the doomed euro, and from the continuing real estate disaster into US Treasuries provides funding for Washington’s $1.5 trillion annual deficits. Investors influenced by the financial press might be responding in this way.  Another explanation for the stability of the Fed’s untenable policy is collusion between Washington, the Fed, and Wall Street. We will be looking at this as we progress. Unlike Japan, whose national debt is the largest of all, Americans do not own their own public debt.  Much of US debt is owned abroad, especially by China, Japan, and OPEC, the oil exporting countries. This places the US economy in foreign hands.  If China, for example, were to find itself unduly provoked by Washington, China could dump up to $2 trillion in US dollar-dominated assets on world markets. All sorts of prices would collapse, and the Fed would have to rapidly create the money to buy up the Chinese dumping of dollar-denominated financial instruments. The dollars printed to purchase the dumped Chinese holdings of US dollar assets  would expand the supply of dollars in currency markets and drive down the dollar exchange rate. The Fed, lacking foreign currencies with which to buy up the dollars would have to appeal for currency swaps to sovereign debt troubled Europe for euros, to Russia, surrounded by the US missile system, for rubles, to Japan, a country over its head in American commitment, for yen, in order to buy up the dollars with euros, rubles, and yen.  These currency swaps would be on the books, unredeemable and  making additional use of such swaps problematical.  In other words, even if the US government can pressure its allies and puppets to swap their harder currencies for a depreciating US currency, it would not be a repeatable process.  The components of the American Empire don’t want to be in dollars any more than do the BRICS. However, for China, for example, to dump its dollar holdings all at once would be costly as the value of the dollar-denominated assets would decline as they dumped them. Unless China is faced with US military attack and needs to defang the aggressor, China as a rational economic actor would prefer to slowly exit the US dollar.  Neither do Japan, Europe, nor OPEC wish to destroy their own accumulated wealth from America’s trade deficits by dumping dollars, but the indications are that they all wish to exit their dollar holdings. Unlike the US financial press, the foreigners who hold dollar assets look at the annual US budget and trade deficits, look at the sinking US economy, look at Wall Street’s uncovered gambling bets, look at the war plans of the delusional hegemon and conclude: “I’ve got to carefully get out of this.” US banks also have a strong interest in preserving the status quo. They are holders of US Treasuries and potentially even larger holders. They can borrow from the Federal Reserve at zero interest rates and purchase 10-year Treasuries at 2%, thus earning a nominal profit of 2% to offset derivative losses. The banks can borrow dollars from the Fed for free and leverage them in derivative transactions. As Nomi Prins puts it, the US banks don’t want to trade against themselves and their free source of funding by selling their bond holdings.  Moreover, in the event of foreign flight from dollars, the Fed could boost the foreign demand for dollars by requiring foreign banks that want to operate in the US to increase their reserve amounts, which are dollar based.  I could go on, but I believe this is enough to show that even actors in the process who could terminate it have themselves a big stake in not rocking the boat and prefer to quietly and slowly sneak out of dollars before the crisis hits.  This is not possible indefinitely as the process of gradual withdrawal from the dollar would result in continuous small declines in dollar values that would end in a rush to exit, but Americans are not the only delusional people. The very process of slowly getting out can bring the American house down. The BRICS--Brazil, the largest economy in South America, Russia, the nuclear armed and  energy independent economy on which Western Europe ( Washington’s NATO puppets) are dependent for energy, India, nuclear armed and one of Asia’s two rising giants, China, nuclear armed, Washington’s largest creditor (except for the Fed), supplier of America’s manufactured and advanced technology products, and the new bogyman for the military-security complex’s next profitable cold war, and South Africa, the largest economy in Africa--are in the process of forming a new bank. The new bank will permit the five large economies to conduct their trade without use of the US dollar. In addition, Japan, an American puppet state since WW II, is on the verge of entering into an agreement with China in which the Japanese yen and the Chinese yuan will be directly exchanged.  The trade between the two Asian countries would be conducted in their own currencies without the use of the US dollar. This reduces the cost of foreign trade between the two countries, because it eliminates payments for foreign exchange commissions to convert from yen and yuan into dollars and back into yen and yuan.   Moreover, this official explanation for the new direct relationship avoiding the US dollar is simply diplomacy speaking.  The Japanese are hoping, like the Chinese, to get out of the practice of accumulating ever more dollars by having to park their trade surpluses in US Treasuries. The Japanese US puppet government hopes that the Washington hegemon does not require the Japanese government to nix the deal with China. Now we have arrived at the nitty and gritty.  The small percentage of Americans who are aware and informed are puzzled why the banksters have escaped with their financial crimes without prosecution. The answer might be that the banks “too big to fail” are adjuncts of Washington and the Federal Reserve in maintaining the stability of the dollar and Treasury bond markets in the face of an untenable Fed policy. Let us first look at how the big banks can keep the interest rates on Treasuries low, below the rate of inflation, despite the constant increase in US debt as a percent of GDP--thus preserving the Treasury’s ability to service the debt.   The imperiled banks too big to fail have a huge stake in low interest rates and the success of the Fed’s policy. The big banks are positioned to make the Fed’s policy a success.  JPMorganChase and other giant-sized banks can drive down Treasury interest rates and, thereby, drive up the prices of bonds, producing a rally, by selling Interest Rate Swaps (IRSwaps).   A financial company that sells IRSwaps is selling an agreement to pay floating interest rates for fixed interest rates. The buyer is purchasing an agreement that requires him to pay a fixed rate of interest in exchange for receiving a floating rate.