Category Archives: Germ Warfare

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Monday, 24 April 2017 10:25

The best thing that South Koreans could ever do, both for themselves and for the American people, as well as the Japanese citizenry, is boot all U.S. troops out of their country.

Isnt the reason obvious?

If President Trump, the Pentagon, and the CIA succeed in instigating a war with North Korea, guess who is going to pay the biggest price for such a war.

No, not the United States. At the end of such a war, the continental United States will remain untouched, just like it was after World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and all the other foreign wars in which the U.S. government has become embroiled.

The same cannot be said about South Korea and Japan. While North Korea would undoubtedly end up losing a war against the United States (assuming that China doesnt enter the fray), South Korea will end up as a devastated wasteland. Thats because as it is going down to defeat, North Korea can be expected to cause as much death and destruction as it can.

That means that South Korea will be buried under a barrage of missiles and artillery shells, not to mention invading North Korean troops. This is especially true for the capital, Seoul, which is located just a few miles south of the border that separates North and South. As Ted Galen Carpenter, senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, put it in a recent article,

Yet if North Korea retaliates for a U.S. attack, South Korea would be the primary victim. Pyongyang has no capability to strike the American homeland, but Seoul, South Koreas largest city and its economic heart, is located barely 30 miles south of the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas, and it is highly vulnerable to a North Korean artillery barrage. Civilian fatalities would number in the thousands or tens of thousands.

The likelihood is that North Korea would also do whatever it could to hit Japanese cities with missiles, given that Japan is a treaty ally of the United States.

There is also the distinct probability that North Korea will explode a few nuclear bombs in South Korea. Of course, only one would do the trick, by bringing deadly radiation to most of the country for a long time to come. The same holds true for Japan. If North Korea can do it, it will almost certainly lash out with nuclear missiles fired at Japan.

There are those who maintain that North Korea would never resort to nuclear weapons because it knows that the United States would respond with a carpet nuclear-bombing of the entire country. But the problem is that one never knows what a ruler is going to do when faced with total defeat, death, capture, trial, or incarceration. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cubas communist ruler Fidel Castro was willing to fire nuclear missiles at invading U.S. troops, knowing full well that it would destroy Cuba forever and most likely result in an all-out nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

Sure, the United States will win such a war. But can the same be said for Koreans and Japanese?

The fact is that North Korea absolutely hates the United States and, more specifically, the U.S. government. It is impossible to overstate the depth of the enmity that the North Korean regime and the North Korean people have for the Pentagon and the CIA.

For one thing, North Koreans understand that it was none of the U.S. governments business to embroil itself in Koreas civil war in the first place. The war was between two halves of one country, no different in principle from the civil war that took place in Vietnam several years later another civil war that was none of the U.S. governments business.

Moreover, the North Koreans have never forgotten the manner in which the U.S. government waged the Korean War by massive bombing of Korean towns and cities and also by germ warfare against the North Korean populace. The anti-Asian mindset within the U.S. national-security establishment was the same mindset that guided the waging of the U.S. war in Vietnam, a mindset that held that the North Korean populace consisted of nothing but communist gooks who were hell-bent on conquering the world and taking over the United States, a mindset that held that the only good communist is a dead communist.

Additionally, the North Korean regime fully understands that for the U.S. national-security establishment, the Cold War never really ended. Thats why the embargo against Cuba continues. Thats why NATO still exists. Thats why the hostility toward Russia has never ended. And its why U.S. troops have never come home from Korea.

What that means is regime change one of the core missions of the U.S. national-security establishment ever since it came into existence after World War II. The Pentagon and the CIA still want what they have always wanted for North Korearegime change. Thats why they intervened in the Korean War, not to save America from the communist hordes they said were coming to get us but rather to bring North Korea under U.S. rule, thereby enabling the Pentagon and the CIA to station U.S. troops on Chinas border, the same thing they are determined to do in Ukraine on Russias border.

The North Koreans (and the Chinese) are fully aware of all this. Thats why they have developed a nuclear program to deter a U.S. regime-change operation. They know that nuclear weapons are the only thing that will deter the Pentagon and the CIA from instigating one. Dont forget, after all, that Iraq fell to a U.S. regime-change operation because Saddam Hussein did not have nuclear weapons. Cuba, by comparison, was able to resist a U.S. regime-change operation in 1962 with the help of nuclear missiles from the Soviet Union.

Booting U.S. troops out of Korea would be the best thing that could have happen to the South Korean people and the Japanese people. For one thing, it is highly unlikely that North Korea would resume the civil war, given that South Korea has a much more powerful military and a prosperous society to fund such a war. But if such a war were to break out, it would likely remain conventional, rather than go nuclear, given that Koreans would be fighting Koreans rather than North Koreans fighting Americans.

Finally, with the U.S. government out of the picture, the chances of a diplomatic resolution between the two halves of Korea would be much higher, if for no other reason than that both societies would undoubtedly prefer to avoid the death and destruction the resumption of their civil war would produce.

South Koreans should do themselves, Japan, and the United States a tremendous favor by kicking U.S. troops out of their country. It would also be a favor to those U.S. troops, given that they are nothing but a sacrificial tripwire to guarantee U.S. involvement in another Korean war.

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South Korea Should Give U.S. Troops the Boot - MWC News (satire) (registration) (blog)

To the Editor:

James Madison published the following in his Political Observations on April 20, 1795, Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

Madison, author of our Constitution, warned us about war and liberty. Despite attacks by the press and protesters of the War of 1812, he never suspended constitutional rights. He was the only war-time President to do that.

The United States has been in continual warfare since the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution passed Congress in 1964. Our children are growing up in a constant state of war. Many people have never experienced peace. We have seen our liberty slowly eroded away in the name of national security and our resources wasted on bombs and bullets. In one week, our president authorized the use of a super bomb ($16 million) and 59 Tomahawk missiles ($100 million). He is now considered presidential.

Why arent we heeding Madisons words?

Steven J. Doelder

Bloomfield Township

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Reader's View: 'Continual warfare' needs to end - Lake Geneva Regional News

At noon on April 18, 1942, the citizens of Tokyo looked up into the sky and saw the impossible.

At noon on April 18, 1942, the citizens of Tokyo looked up into the sky and saw the impossible.

Zooming low over the imperial capital was a flight of twin-engined bombers. Nothing surprising about that in wartime Japan. Except that these aircraft were painted olive-drab, with red-white-and-blue stars on their wings and fuselage.

This story was originally published by The National Interest

They were American planes dropping bombs on the sacred soil of Japan. As the crump of explosions and the drone of aircraft motors faded, and the air raid sirens belatedly wailed, Tokyoites asked themselves a fateful question:

What just happened?

The Doolittle Raid seventy-five years ago was more than one of historys most momentous air attacks. It was also one of the most economical. The Allies dropped 2.7 million tons of bombs on Germany, and the United States dropped seven million tons on Vietnam. And still the Nazis and the Communists continued to fight. Yet sixteen B-25 bombers carrying perhaps sixteen tons of bombs managed to change the course of history.

It was a stunning reversal. In war, momentum is everything, and Japan was the one that had it in the early spring of 1942. Within four months, they had decimated the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor, conquered Southeast Asia, the oil-rich Dutch East Indies and the islands of the Central Pacific, and were about to compel the last battered U.S. defenders in the Philippines to surrender.

America needed to reverse the momentum with a victoryanykind of victoryto bolster morale and take back the initiative. President Roosevelt had the right idea: days after Pearl Harbor, he called for the Japanese homeland to be bombed in retaliation. But how? Not with heavy bombers like the B-17, because with the air bases in the Philippines gone, land-based planes were out of range. Carrier-based aircraft? U.S. Navy carrier planes had a combat range of perhaps 250 miles, and the Navy didnt dare sail its handful of precious carriers that close to Japan.

Then a Navy officer had a bright idea: was it possible for U.S. Army Air Force land-based bombers, with much longer range than carrier planes, to be launched off an aircraft carrier sailing near Japan? It turned out that the new twin-engined B-25B Mitchell medium bomber could perform the mission.

The problem was that while the B-25s could take off from a carrier, they couldnt land. Which meant that they had return to an airfield on the ground. In effect, these bombers would be a sort of manned cruise missile launched on a one-way mission.

By stripping them down and overloading them with fuel, America could fly the B-25s from a carrier several hundred miles off Japan, bomb their targets, and then continue on to land on airfields in China. Again consider the audacity of the concept. Its as if a U.S. aircraft carrier sailed into the Baltic, and launched F-15E strike jets for a strike on Moscow, after which the Eagles would have to fly across Russia to land in Turkey.

Onto the carrierUSSHornetwere loaded sixteen B-25s under the command of Lt. Col. James Doolittle. TheHornetwas accompanied by the carrierEnterprise, four cruisers and eight destroyers under the command of the legendary Admiral Bull Halsey. The small force sailed from Hawaii and then west across the Central Pacific toward Japan. With theHornets flight deck packed with B-25s, that left only theEnterprises fighters and bombers to provide air cover. Had the task force run into Japans Combined Fleetespecially the six carriers that attacked Pearl Harborthe battle would have been short rather than merciful.

Luck was with the Americansat firstas they sailed from Hawaii. The intrepid force remained undiscovered until April 18, when it was about 650 miles from Japan. Then it ran into theNitto Maru, one of the little fishing boats that Japan had stationed as cheap picket ships. The boat was quickly sunk by gunfire (its captain committed suicide, though five of the eleven crew were rescued), but not before getting off a signal. Japanese naval forces immediately sortied from Japan, while the carriers from the Pearl Harbor raidalready en route from the Indian Ocean to Japanese watersheaded toward the area.

But knowing the short range of American carrier aircraft, the Japanese assumed that the U.S. task force would not be within range of Japan until the following day, April 19, which would allow ample time for interception. Aware from radio monitoring that their presence had been discovered, the Americans decided to launch the raid from nearly two hundred miles further out than planned. Between eight and nine a.m. on April 18, sixteen Mitchells lurched off theHornets deck.

They arrived at about noon over Tokyo, Kobe, Nagoya, Osaka, Yokohama and Yokosuka. Had they run into real fighter opposition, the bombers would have been wiped out. But Japanese air defenses that day were astoundingly lethargic; antiaircraft fire was negligible, and the few lightly armed Ki-27 Nate fighters that did manage to take off either failed to intercept or did little damage (the bombers actually shot down three fighters). Tokyos air-raid sirens didnt even blare until after the attack was over.

Bombs fell on ten targets. By the standards of the thousand-bomber raids over Germany, the later fire raids on Tokyo, and the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Doolittle Raid barely qualified as a nuisance. A few industrial sites were lightly damaged, as were a few schools and a hospital, killing or injuring about 450 people. Militarily, the most damage was inflicted by a B-25 damaged the carrierRyuhounder construction at Yokosuka, delaying its launch.

One bomber landed in the Soviet Unionwhich was at war with Germany but had a nonaggression pact with Japanand was interned. The remaining fifteen turned southeast toward eastern China, where the Chinese were supposed to activate homing beacons to guide them to the airfields. But the U.S. Navy failed to signal the Chinese to turn on the beacons. Low on fuel, with darkness approaching and the weather worsening, the crews either crash-landed their aircraft or bailed out.

Most were saved by Chinese soldiers or civilians. But three crewmen died bailing out, and eight were captured by the Japanese, of whom three were executed by firing squad (for a fictionalized version of the executions, see the 1944 movieThe Purple Heart[3]).

There were two major consequences of the Doolittle Raid, one gruesome and one strategic. President Roosevelt declared three days after the raid that the bombers had been launched from a secretand fictionalbase in Shangri-La rather than aircraft carriers. But when the Japanese discovered that the Chinese had helped the Doolittle fliers, the Japanese wreaked a savage vengeance. The Japanese Army launched an offensive to capture Chinese airfields along the coast: in the process, they unleashed germ warfare and other atrocities, massacring as many as 250,000 civilians, according to Chinese estimates at the time.

It was a horrific price that the Chinese paid, but their sacrifice was not in vain. The humiliation felt by the Japanese was immense: why, the emperor himself could have been killed by those bombs!

What really shamed the Japanese military was the failure to prevent an American carrier task force from sailing close to the homeland. Such an error could not be tolerated. Japans original plan for winning the Pacific War had been to seize a huge swath of territory, which would be fortified into a defensive perimeter against which America would futilely butt its head before suing for peace. Yet the threat of bomber attack convinced the Japanese high command to expand the empires perimeter by launching an amphibious invasion of the Central Pacific island of Midway. Fearing the loss of Midway and the subsequent threat to Hawaii, the U.S. Navy would then feel compelled to send its aircraft carriers to defend Midway, where they would be destroyed by Japans Combined Fleet.

In the event, five aircraft carriers were destroyed at the Battle of Midway. All but one of them belonged to Japan. Loss of their elite and irreplaceable carriers marked the end of Japans offensive capability, as well as the turning point of the Pacific War.

In 2016, the U.S. Air Force announced that the B-21the new long-range bomber under developmentwould be named the Raider in honor of the Doolittle Raid. Ironically, the B-21 might be used someday to strike China, many of whose people were killed for helping the Doolittle crews.

The real recompense for the Doolittle flyers and the murdered Chinese civilians came on September 2, 1945, when Japan formally surrendered.

This story was originally published by The National Interest

Michael Peck is a contributing writer for theNational Interest. He can be found onTwitter[4]andFacebook[5].

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WWII: Doolittle Raid Doomed Japanese Empire - Scout

ANALYSIS/OPINION:

Donald Trump promised us prosperity and security, but now has us on the brink of war with Russia, China, North Korea and Iran. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson claims that the United States is ready to use its military to punish any massacre of civilians anywhere in the world. The U.S. military recently killed more than 200 civilians in a bombing raid on Iraq March 17, which is approximately twice the number of people killed by the April 4 Syrian airstrike. President Trump suspects the attack in Syria was chemical, but it may have been a toxic gas cloud created by the destruction of a chemical-weapons manufacturing facility controlled by rebel forces. There is no hard proof that Syrian leader Bashar Assad is responsible for using chemical weapons.

The United States bombed civilians en masse during World War II using both conventional and nuclear weapons. We napalmed villages in Vietnam, and North Korea has claimed that we used germ warfare agents against them during the Korean War. That charge is not proven, but the United States certainly did use chemical weapons during World War I.

The United States is historically a war-loving country, and the Democratic Party is just as hypocritical and insane as the Republican Party in this regard. Many Americans voted for President Trump because they thought he would bring us better relations with Russia and an America-first foreign policy. By his own actions, Mr. Trump now declares we are still the policeman of the world, and our economy, our childrens future and our very lives are insignificant. The only thing that seems to matter is for politicians and generals to prove their bravery by getting us into one counterproductive war after another.

CHRISTOPHER CALDER

Eugene, Ore.

Presidents change and lawmakers come and go, but The Washington Times is always here, and FREE online. Please support our efforts.

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Trump like all the rest - Washington Times

Still not as gross as actually eating at Mar-a-lago

Near the end of a long week like this, its tempting to wish we could be like Donald Trump and just hop on Air Force One to take off for Mar-a-Lago and a weekend of relaxing golf and rage-Tweeting. But then we read this fine Miami Herald report on Palm Beach County health inspectors latest visit to the resorts restaurant, and yecch, we sure are glad we get to stay home in Boise and have coffee and a bagel right here in our apartment. The inspection took place just before the state visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in late January, and the deets are not pretty:

Inspectors found 13 violations at the fancy clubs kitchen, according to recently published reports a record for an institution that charges $200,000 in initiation fees.

Three of the violations were deemed high priority, meaning that they could allow the presence of illness-causing bacteria on plates served in the dining room.

Heres the part we dont get, although as Carl Hiaasen fans, we probably shouldnt be surprised: Despite the nasties the inspectors found, they nonetheless determined the kitchen met minimum standards and would not have to be shut down. So the place passed, even with all the grotty conditions. Guess Florida is a lot more lax than other places, maybe?

OK, detail time. Youve been warned. If yucky grody food stuff is not your bag, please go read about something more cheerful, OK? Heres what inspectors found at the resort owned by the most powerful guy in what we used to call the Free World (costs have gone up):

Fish designed to be served raw or undercooked, the inspection report reads, had not undergone proper parasite destruction. Kitchen staffers were ordered to cook the fish immediately or throw it out.

In two of the clubs coolers, inspectors found that raw meats that should be stored at 41 degrees were much too warm and potentially dangerous: chicken was 49 degrees, duck clocked in at 50 degrees and raw beef was 50 degrees. The winner? Ham at 57 degrees.

The club was cited for not maintaining the coolers in proper working order and was ordered to have them emptied immediately and repaired.

50-degree beef? Are they certain that wasnt just a really, really slow cooker?

Among less-serious violations, inspectors found water temperatures in kitchen sinks that werent hot enough for ideal hand-washing, and rusty shelves in walk-in coolers. But no rat droppings, so theres that.

The Herald notes that when Donald Trump spent more time at the resort micromanaging things, Mar-a-lago had very few health violations, but that after he began running for president and wasnt around much, the health violations began rising. In 2015, the place had just two violations; in 2016, inspectors found 11.

While ready-to-eat food can be stored for up to seven days, inspectors at DJT reported finding the old caviar and yogurt, duck that dated back to June, veal stock and tomato sauce that was almost two weeks old, and expired peanut dressing and black bean chili.

Inspectors found no measures to destroy parasites in undercooked halibut and salmon, and noted that raw tuna was being improperly thawed. Icicles were found in a faulty freezer.

On reinspection, Trumps Vegas steakhouse managed a grade of A and was allowed to reopen.

So theres maybe some insight into why Trump ruins his steak by ordering it well-done. He has no reason to trust his own kitchens. Yecch.

Yr Wonkette is supported by reader donations, so to help us keep the Sekrit Chatcave from being overwhelmed by roaches, please click the Donate clicky!

[Miami Herald]

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Mar-a-Lago Kitchen Doubles As Germ Warfare Research Lab, Say Big Gubmint 'Health Inspectors' - Wonkette (blog)

By C.J. Mittica Published in Web Exclusive

Wednesday, April 12, 2017

SnugZ USA (asi/88060) claimed the first Advantages Product Video Contest with Germ Warfare," a video that touts the benefits of the companys hand sanitizer products in killing off bad nasties the germs that exist in our everyday life. Catchy and well shot, the video is not an exception for the West Jordan, UT-based supplier; SnugZ has produced dozens of creative videos, shot in-house on little budget. The SnugZ marketing team shares the secrets (and some fun making-of photos) behind the winning video.

Q: How did SnugZ come up with the idea for the video?

SnugZ: Video is an essential component of our marketing strategy here at SnugZ USA. In the case of Germ Warfare, [SnugZ Senior Content Strategist] Jeff Andertons daughter was part of the inspiration when she came home sick from school. From there the creative process took over, and we began piecing together what would become a funny and educational video about sanitizer.

Q: Your company has produced a lot of creative videos whats the idea generation process?

SnugZ: As a marketing team, we hold ourselves to a very high personal standard. We set our creative bar at whatever is currently moving the social zeitgeist meter in the video realm. We are constantly noting the work that moves us, makes us laugh and gets us thinking. We find that over the years we have built such a library of ideas that it becomes a relatively straightforward process to collaborate, brainstorm, and finally concept several ideas based on our objectives.(You can do this while watching a movie in the middle of the day. Did I say that out loud?)

Our brainstorm sessions typically begin with identifying the root of the problem or need that can be fulfilled with a SnugZ promotional product. Consumers buy through emotion, so we ask ourselves, How do we create that connection? At that point were then able to develop a creative way to tell that story through video, ads, social media, sales sheets and more.

Keep in mind there is always a dual purpose behind the campaign: convey a message that resonates with our distributor customer while also providing them with a marketing tool to help them do their job of selling to the end-user. Therein lies the challenge.Most commercials and branded content do not require this next-level creative step.

Q: Was the video produced in-house? Are the people in the video employees or actors?

SnugZ: The Germ Warfare video was 100% shot and produced right here at SnugZ USA with our own actors who double as employees. I played Bad, Chris Duncan (our senior graphic designer) played Nasty, and Mickey Peterson (who works in sales support) was our sanitizer model (and on-set makeup artist). We had fun playing up the big personalities of the Bad Nasties. And youll be surprised at the talent you can discover right within your own company!

Q: There are lots of fun creative elements, especially the Bad Nasties. How did you create them and where did you get the costumes?

SnugZ: First off, you cant find these costumes at the store. Trust us, we looked for them.Our idea of the Bad Nasties started out as an animation, but as it evolved we thought having real characters would contribute a life-like element to the story.

Once we had determined to shoot everything practically, the first question was: Uhhh how are we going to make germs out of people? After several failed attempts (which we should have gotten on film for future generations), Jeff was at Home Depot one night looking at sprinkler supplies for his yard, when it hit him: Well use sprinkler piping. Twenty bucks of extruded plastic later, we were in business, and our videographer Wendy Gregory used other materials to handmake the rest.

Time after time weve found that you dont need a million-dollar budget to create high-quality video. It requires a vision, passion, and creative elbow grease up the wazoo. Anyone telling you they need a six-figure budget hasnt put themselves into their creative box. Once you set limits, it gives your team the freedom to dream up solutions you never would have thought of in a million years!

Q: Why are videos important for your company?

SnugZ: Video is the most consumed media there is. Period. By the end of 2018, 80% of all internet traffic will be video. Ninety percent of users say that seeing a video about a product is helpful in the decision process, and 46% take some sort of action after viewing a video ad. Stories are becoming more important than ever and its evident with Snapchat, Instagram Stories and now Facebook Stories.Thats why it is important to us, because thats how the world wants to consume and share content.

SnugZ Senior Content Strategist Jeff Anderton and Director Tanner Shinnick frame up the hand sanitizer bottles.

Mickey Peterson (who works in sales support for the company) pulls double duty, serving as the on-set makeup artist and star of the video.

Bad Nasties Chris Duncan (SnugZ senior graphic designer) and Cody Belnap (digital marketing coordinator) cheesin before the shoot for the companys Germ Warfare video.

Videographer Wendy Gregory (who made the costumes) and Anderton fit Duncan with his Bad Nasty costume.

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Creative Secrets From The Advantages Product Video Winner - Advertising Specialty Institute (press release)

This year marks the centennial of the 1917 Immigration Act, which specified several categories of undesirables barred from entering the United States (such as idiots, epileptics, and anyone mentally or physically defective). Its most striking provision, however, was a total ban on immigration from a geographic area designated the Asiatic Barred Zone. Whereas European migrants were welcome if they did not tick any of the undesirable boxes and could pass a literacy test, no one from the Asia-Pacific zone, regardless of education or class, was permitted. The act expanded the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to counter immigration from the Orient comprehensively.

Since President Trump announced Executive Order 13769 on January 27, barring nationals of seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the United States, critics have outlined the parallels between Trumps order and a trajectory of previous legislation aimed at curtailing the presence of various racial, ethnic, and religious groups in the United States. Although the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the 1924 Johnson-Reed Immigration Act, Executive Order 9066 (sanctioning Japanese internment), and, more recently, NSEERS (a variant of a Muslim registry) are key laws, the advent of the Asiatic Barred Zone is particularly relevant for our contemporary moment.

Whereas the nineteenth century was characterized by attempts to curtail the yellow peril of China, the 1917 law was a response to demographic shifts at home. The Pacific Northwest, in particular, had seen outbreaks of antiSouth Asian violence. As the historian Erika Lee explained in the Pacific Historical Review, South Asian migrants first came to Canada as part of a complex migration pattern that crossed imperial and continental lines, but later moved to the United States, attracted by higher wages.

Their reception was not kind. Newspapers reported in sensationalist fashion that these dusky Asiatics and Hindu hordes posed a bigger threat to job security and the cultural fabric than Japanese or Chinese laborers. It wasnt long before national security became the proxy for discussing the issue, a compound of racism and economic anxiety. A 1906 letter writer to the Puget Sound American suggested that the Hindus were very well-versed in firearms. This, combined with their bad code of morals, would inevitably lead to innocent people getting butchered. Hindus, however, was an erroneous designation, as most South Asian migrants were Sikh. The firearms were the result of these particular migrants roles as police officers, as many initially came to Canada from Hong Kong after having served in the British imperial forces.

However, the U.S. is not the only country with a long history of exclusionary policies. American concerns about the rise of Asian immigration, eventually resulting in the 1917 act, were linked to measures taken across the continent. As Lee notes, Canadas 1908 Continuous Journey Law marked a significant shift; as its title suggests, the law only allowed entry to individuals coming directly from their homeland. With no direct steamboat service between India and Canada, the law in effect prohibited all immigration from India. Instead, South Asians chose Seattle and San Francisco as their destinations.

Trumps executive orderalsoconjures the ghost of the1908 Canadian Continuous Journey Law.

Trumps executive order conjures the ghost of this Canadian law. It targets Muslims without explicitly stating sothough the White Houses definition has been muddyusing the guise of national security to explain why the seven countries were selected.

The Canadian parliaments linguistic acrobatics in excluding South Asian British subjects, the manufactured principle of continuous journey, allowed it to avoid accusations of overt discrimination, but the measure did not fool anyone. Whereas boats from Europe made the trip across the Atlantic directly, the journey from the British Raj was so long that it could not be completed without a stopover in Hawaii or Japan. In the most notorious, heartbreaking example of the regulations consequences, 356 passengers of the steamship Komagata Maru, sailing from Hong Kong, were refused entry and eventually escorted out of Vancouvers harbor. After the ship returned to Calcutta, riots and subsequent violence claimed the lives of many passengers. This past May, the Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau formally apologized in the House of Commons for the prejudice faced by the passengers and by South Asian communities as a whole.

The same prejudice awaited in the United States. With the increased arrival of migrants from all over Asiaand, after the Canadian ban, of South Asians in particularconcerns over national security and racial purity ensured that the Chinese Exclusion Act no longer sufficed in the eyes of many Americans. On the West Coast especially, people demanded immigration reform.

Producing urgency for such measures, and further fanning the flames of xenophobia, were cultural texts that vilified Asians and cautioned against their economic voraciousness. Author Jack London, in a series of science fiction stories, warned that China was to be feared not in war, but in commerce, and that its population was increasing so quickly that there would soon be more Chinese in existence than white-skinned people. As the literary scholar John N. Swift notes, Londons writing is reflective of anxiety about the precarity of white racial supremacy, articulated particularly through fear of Asian sexual reproduction. Racialized subjects were seen as predatory, spreading disease, and as reproducing at an alarming rate, thereby threatening the racial status and purity of whites.

With advances in genetic science, fears about public hygiene and the risk that foreigners posed intensified. In The Unparalleled Invasion (1910), London wove all these strands together by writing about a China unprecedented in its birth rate, its inhabitants carriers of a fatal plague germ. In the story, the West resorts to biological warfare to halt Asian expansion. In reality, the United States closed its doors.

Asians were imagined as aliens, perpetually foreign to the United States.

As the literary scholar Stephen Hong Sohn argues, these yellow-peril fictions, such as Londons, did not emerge in a vacuum. After Japan became the first Asian nation to defeat a Western power in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War, Asia increasingly was seen as a threat. Asians were imagined as aliens, spatially and temporally removed, perpetually foreign to the United States. Sohn suggests that this view remains a force to draw upon to allegorize racial tension and exclusion, resulting either in movies like Blade Runner and The Matrix that depict orientalized futures, or in more subversive or complex articulations by Asian-American authors like Karen Tei Yamashita or Larissa Lai.

In 1917, such othering provided the impetus for overhauling immigration policy. Rather than regulating immigration, the Asiatic Barred Zone catapulted the restriction of immigration to the top of the national agenda. To say that there are echoes of that law in the current moment would be an understatement. Even though anti-Asian racism is at the margins of narratives about the Trump administration, his myriad statements on China most notably his assertion that the country is ripping off the United States and stealing jobsare well known. Trump also zeroed in on Japan as an economic threat. Most tellingly, at a rally in Tampa, Florida, Trump accused India, China, Singapore, and Mexico of the greatest jobs theft in the history of the world. This rhetoric, combined with his America First policy, invokes the specter of Asian aggression and dominance once again.

The Asiatic Barred Zone legislation shaped national attitudes on race. The barred zone remained in effect until 1952, and restrictions on migration from Asia were not lifted until 1965, when Lyndon B. Johnson called race-based immigration policies a cruel and enduring wrong in the conduct of the American nation. Asian-exclusion laws were a transnational reality; Canada and Latin American countries also adopted such policies.

The effects are still felt today. The startling reality is that, in 2017, debates over who belongs and does not belong, and who is worthy of admission, still employ ethnic, racial, and religious terms. These debates have not only remained unresolved, but also reasserted themselves with even greater force, both domestically and internationally. We question the humanity of millions, both explicitly and implicitly, by challenging rights or withholding aid.

By: Erika Lee

Pacific Historical Review, Vol. 76, No. 4 (November 2007), pp. 537-562

University of California Press

By: John N. Swift

American Literary Realism, Vol. 35, No. 1 (Fall, 2002), pp. 59-71

University of Illinois Press

By: Stephen Hong Sohn

MELUS, Vol. 33, No. 4, Alien/Asian (Winter, 2008), pp. 5-22

Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

By: Aimee Bahng

MELUS, Vol. 33, No. 4, Alien/Asian (Winter, 2008), pp. 123-144

Oxford University Press on behalf of Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

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The 1917 Immigration Act That Presaged Trump's Muslim Ban - JSTOR Daily

Today is the 101st day of 2017. There are 264 days left in the year.

TODAYS HIGHLIGHT

2002: Police fight pitched battles with protesters after more than 150,000 people march on the presidential palace demanding President Hugo Chavezs ouster as a general strike grips the country. Nineteen people are killed and 350 injured.

OTHER EVENTS

1689: William III and Mary II were crowned as joint sovereigns of Britain.

1713: The Treaty of Utrecht was signed, ending the War of the Spanish Succession.

1814: Napoleon Bonaparte abdicates unconditionally as emperor of France and is banished to Elba by the Treaty of Fontainebleau.

1899: The treaty ending the Spanish-American War is declared in effect; the Philippines are transferred from Spain to the United States.

1913: Postmaster General Albert S Burleson, during a meeting of President Woodrow Wilsons Cabinet, proposed gradually segregating whites and blacks who worked for the Railway Mail Service, a policy which went into effect and spread to other agencies.

1919: New Zealanders vote in a referendum against prohibition.

1921: Iowa becomes the first US state to impose a cigarette tax.

1945: During World War II, American soldiers liberated the notorious Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald in Germany.

1951: President Harry S Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of his commands in the Far East.

1953: Oveta Culp Hobby became the first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare.

1961: Nigeria imposes total boycott on trade with South Africa.

1963: Pope John XXIII issued his final encyclical Pacem in Terris Peace on Earth.

1970:

Apollo 13 blasts off on a mission to the moon that is disrupted when an explosion cripples the spacecraft; the astronauts manage to return safely.

1979: Idi Amin is deposed as president of Uganda as rebels and exiles backed by Tanzanian forces seize control.

1980: US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issues regulations specifically prohibiting sexual harassment of workers by supervisors.

1981: US President Ronald Reagan returns to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after he was wounded in an assassination attempt.

1986: Washington state employees win a lawsuit requiring the state to pay women as much as men for comparable work.

1991: UN Security Council announces a formal end to the Gulf War, accepting Iraqs pledge that it will pay for war damages and scrap its weapons of mass destruction.

1993: Despite appeals for calm, two whites are burned to death in South Africa by a black crowd, a day after the assassination of black leader Chris Hani.

1994: US President Bill Clinton orders trade sanctions against Taiwan for trafficking in endangered tiger and rhinoceros parts.

1999: India tests an improved medium-range missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead more than 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles). Pakistan tests a similar missile two days later.

2001: Israeli tanks and bulldozers rumble into the Khan Yunis refugee camp in Palestinian-controlled territory in the Gaza Strip, damaging 30 homes and triggering fighting that kills two Palestinians and wounds more than two dozen.

2002: Wouter Basson, a scientist who headed South Africas covert chemical- and germ-warfare operations during the apartheid era, is acquitted on 46 charges of murder, conspiracy, drug possession and fraud.

2003: Hong Kong bans quarantined residents from leaving the city as the deadly SARS virus turns up in Indonesia and the Philippines, in both cases among foreigners who had recently been to Hong Kong.

2008: French troops capture six pirates after they released 30 hostages who were aboard a tourist yacht off Somalias coast.

2009: Protesters in Bangkok storm a summit of Asian leader, breaking through glass doors to demand the resignation of Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.

2012: George Zimmerman, the Florida neighbourhood watch volunteer who fatally shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. A California prison panel denied parole to mass murderer Charles Manson in his 12th and probably final bid for freedom.

2013: A US intelligence report concludes that North Korea has advanced its nuclear know-how to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead.

TODAYS BIRTHDAYS

John I, King of Portugal (1385-1433); George Canning, English statesman (1770-1827); Manuel Quintana, Spanish poet (1772-1857); John Davidson, Scottish poet/playwright (1857-1909); Gustav Vigeland, Norwegian sculptor (1869-1943); Bill Irwin, US actor (1950- ); Joss Stone, British singer (1987- ); Ethel Kennedy (1928- ) American human-rights campaigner and widow of Senator Robert F Kennedy; Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Ellen Goodman (1928-); Actor Meshach Taylor (1947-2014); Songwriter-producer Daryl Simmons (1957-); Singer Lisa Stansfield (1966-); Rapper David Banner (1974- )

AP

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This Day in History - Jamaica Observer

Editorial

The superpowers dilemma

In December 2016 Donald Trump called Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen to discuss the close economic, political, and security ties that exist between Taiwan and the United States, as a statement from the White House put it. Trump also congratulated President Tsai on becoming president of Taiwan earlier this year.

This is a reflection of the history of the US approach to China. After Chinas revolution in 1949 Washington supported the nationalist remnant under Chiang Kai-shek after it fled to the island of Taiwan, claiming to be the entire countrys legitimate government.

While much of the world recognised the mainlands Peoples Republic of China, the US only talked to the Republic of China on Taiwan. In 1979 president Jimmy Carter formally shifted diplomatic recognition to the PRC, which also now filled Chinas Security Council seat at the United Nations. However, US Congress then passed the Taiwan Relations Act, which institutionalised unofficial relations with Taipei, while acknowledging that there is only one China and top US officials avoided contact with Taiwanese leaders.

In 1997 the return of Hong Kong was a further step in the long struggle of the Chinese people in their liberation from imperialist domination. It was a step towards the reunification of all parts of China which had become separated from China in the colonial era.

During WW2 Taiwan was seized by Japan, but its return has been complicated because the remnants of the reactionary Kuomintang armies retreated to Taiwan and set up their headquarters under the protection of the US.

Such is the stuff of unfinished business.

Hong Kong was not willingly handed back by Britain. If British governments had sincerely repudiated colonialism they could have taken that step a long time before. It was the decline of the British empire and the emergent strength of a liberated socialist China which forced British governments to bow to the inevitable.

Nonetheless, Britain and the US continue to play games with One China. They have not for a moment given up the objective of overthrowing socialism in China and reimposing their modern form of colonialism.

During its imperialist occupation, Hong Kong was always controlled by British-appointed governors. There were no elections for this or any other role. For years after the revolution the US waged the Cold War, blocking Chinas application as Most Favoured Nation trade status and blocked its membership not only of bodies such as the World Trade Organisation but also the United Nations.

China has adopted a one nation, two systems relationship: the Chinese mainland with a socialist system while Hong Kong retains a capitalist system, a new experience for any nation.

Part of the US spin on China is the DPRK (North Korea), with the USs empty gesture of recognition of Chinas key role in relation to one of Washingtons perennial rogue states.

From the day of its foundation, the DPRK has not had a moments rest from outside interference. Sabotage, invasion, mass destruction, germ warfare, nuclear threat, encirclement and crippling economic blockade have all been used in the US-led attempt to remove this impediment to its regional domination. All of these efforts have failed. Naturally, the major capitalist powers subject such rogue states to an unrelenting campaign of vilification in order to enlist public opinion.

The DPRK is not just a thorn in the side of a declining superpower seeking to shore up its position in the Asia Pacific. Its territory, which borders the Peoples Republic of China, is eyed off by the US military for the location of its troops and nuclear weapons. China has stressed that resolving human rights differences should be through constructive dialogue and cooperation based on equality and mutual respect. That wont happen unless world opinion insists upon it and demands that the US halts its aggression towards the DPRK and China.

Excerpt from:

The superpower's dilemma - The Guardian (Australia)

What Next? After the strike in Syria

The missile attack against Syria was in retaliation for well, just what, exactly? The straight up answer is simple enough. The Syrian government had indulged in gas warfare against its own citizens. The Syrian government has, of course, been killing Syrians for a long time now. The father of the countrys current dictator once leveled an entire city with artillery in a campaign against the Muslim Brotherhood. He then ordered the rubble bulldozed and the bodies entombed in the concrete of the village square.

The number of people killed in the recent gas attack is a fraction of the body count from that action. And the gas killed nowhere nearly so many people as the routine dropping of barrel bombs on civilian targets by the regimes helicopters. The barrels bombs are ordinary 55 gallon fuel drums, filled with explosives and scrap metal. They are anti-personnel weapons in the the truest sense. And no less indiscriminate than gas.

But the world is uniquely appalled by the use of poison gas in war. It was a routine part of the horrors of World War One, which the United States entered one hundred years ago this month. The fighting had been going on for almost three years by then. Stalemate, futility, and butchery characterized the fighting. The goggled eyed, gas masked soldier was its inhuman face.

So when the war ended, at last, the world outlawed the use of poison gas. But what the world could legislate, it was incapable of enforcing. Italy, under the rule of Benito Mussolinis fascists, attempted to re-establish a Roman empire of sorts and went to war in northern Africa. When its Ethiopian campaign stalled, it dropped mustard gas from the air, killing both soldiers and civilians. The world was both appalled and impotent.

As World War Two began, it was widely assumed that the use of gas would be a routine feature of the fighting. The British government expected gas attacks from the air. Citizens of London carried gas masks as they went about their business.

There were no gas attacks on London. Or on soldiers in the field. The Nazis confined their use of gas to the camps where they did the industrialized killing of their political enemies and those they considered their racial inferiors. Especially the Jews.

The Japanese did some tentative work with gas and even with germ warfare. But its use never became what you would call widespread. During the Cold War, both the Soviet Union and the United States accumulated huge stockpiles of gas and trained their troops in its use and in how to defend themselves against it.

And, now, there is the mid-East where the Saddam Hussein attacked his own citizens and his Iranian enemies with gas and where the United States went to war to eliminate the threat posed by his weapons on mass destruction. These included, especially, gas, of which none was found or used, though invading American troops were trained and equipped to deal with the gas attacks anticipated by their commanders.

In 2012, President Barack Obama warned that if the Syrian dictator, Assad, were to use weapons of mass destruction against his enemies, it would constitute the crossing of a red line. This, of course, threatened some sort of retaliation. There were gas attacks but no retaliation. A deal was made, in which the Soviet Union, Assads ally, would get the stockpiled gas out of Syria and see to its destruction.

The recent attacks prove, of course, that this didnt happen.

So President Trump has now made good on President Obamas threat. And the question is what next?

If the American action is strictly about gas warfare and enforcing the ban against it, then perhaps it will be successful. Assad may look at the destruction inflicted by American Tomahawk missiles and decide that further gas attacks are not worth such a heavy price. So he will stick to barrel bombs. The killing will go on. No great geopolitical changes will have come about as a result of the American strikes.

But perhaps these strikes are about more than gas. One would hope so, anyway. Perhaps these strikes are a meant to show our enemies to include Russia and Iran that we are serious and that we will use force when it is called for.

Well, when some vital national interest or, even, our survival is at stake. Those are the reasons for going to war and they had best be clear cut. Going to war to make others fight like gentlemen is as foolish as going to war to make the world safe for democracy.

Which is what we did 100 years ago.

And we know how well that worked out.

The rest is here:

Geoffrey Norman: What Next? After The Syrian Strike - Caledonian Record