Kerry Cautions China on Developing Reefs it Claims- China Tells Him to Shove Off

U.S. Secretary of State John “Skull and Bones” Kerry is going to caution the Chinese rulers about their seizures and development of scraps of land and coral reefs in the oceans bordering their country, which they claim as their territories. And a Pentagon apparatchik tried to sound menacing towards China while testifying in the Senate. The Chinese responded in advance with the back of their hand, throwing the word “hypocrisy” in the U.S.’ face for good measure. 

Gee, whatever might they have had in mind?

Well, how about Guantanamo Bay? The U.S. doesn’t even pretend that is U.S. territory. It is occupied Cuban land on which the U.S. keeps a military base and torture center. Cuba has been demanding the U.S. pack up and leave for 55 years now.  (And all the while the U.S. has been trying to assassinate Cuba’s president, launching terrorist attacks on Cuba, murdering Cuban and foreign citizens, striving mightily to wreck Cuba’s economy, assassinating a Cuban diplomat in New York City, and on and on.)

But just to show the Chinese that the U.S. means business, the Obama regime threatened to make a threat, planting a reminder to China of the iron fist inside the U.S. velvet glove, in the New York Times, a U.S. ruling class bulletin board. Here’s what the Times said the Pentagon apparatchik, David Shear, told the august Senators:

“A senior Pentagon official said this week that the United States might consider sending ships and aircraft to within 12 nautical miles of built-up reefs near the Philippines, an American ally, to demonstrate its commitment to freedom of navigation in one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes.”  (My emphases.)[1]

Right. As usual, U.S. military muscle-flexing (which is a threat) and intimidation is altruistic. In fact, even when the U.S. slaughters hundreds of thousands (or millions, as in Indochina) of civilians, it’s altruistic. Everything the U.S. does is in Defense of Freedom. Who could criticize that? (Oh, and by the way, the Philippines is more of a U.S. protectorate than an “ally,” contrary to the Great Euphemiser, the NY Times.)

Or was that threatening to threaten to threaten? They didn’t say “consider sending” combat forces to menace the Chinese, they said they might consider sending them. Can you hedge it with any more qualifiers than that? Seems kind of wimpy. Hell, you didn’t even get around to considering doing it yet! No wonder the Chinese aren’t intimidated.

Here’s the exact quote the NY Times was paraphrasing, uttered by the aforementioned assistant Secretary of “Defense,” David Shear, “We are actively assessing the military implications of land reclamation and are committed to taking effective and appropriate action.” 

Well good for you, David!

However, the NY Times portrays U.S. jawboning as quite stern. “State Department officials [NAMELESS AND FACELESS ONES] said Mr. Kerry arrived in Beijing with a similarly tough [sic!] message: China’s intensified island-building campaign threatens relations as both countries are seeking to cooperate on several issues, including military ties, bilateral investment and climate change.

“In a background briefing on Wednesday, a senior State Department official [LACKING A NAME OR A FACE] said Mr. Kerry would leave Chinese leaders with ‘absolutely no doubt’ where the United States stood on the issue of China’s territorial claims. [2]

“’He is going to reinforce to them the very negative consequences on China’s image, on China’s relationship with its neighbors, on regional stability, and potentially on the U.S.-China relationship,’ the [FACELESS AND NAMELESS] official said.” 

Ah, POTENTIALLY on U.S.-China relations. Maybe the U.S. will stop having its consumer goods manufactured in low-wage China! Or stop letting China fund U.S. government deficits by buying Treasury bonds! Or kick China out of the anti-Iran coalition that is strangling Iran’s economy! Or…what, exactly?

But Kerry’s gonna TELL THEM! Kerry’s Tough Talk^TM worked wonders on the Israelis, and on blood-drenched Syrian dictator Assad. Oh, and on Vladimir Putin too. So you better WATCH OUT, CHINA! You are gonna get a tongue-lashing like you wouldn’t believe!

In other words, Kerry’s image-meisters were applying make-up to Kerry, and the NY Times, acting like a mirror, reflected the pretty picture of the tough Kerry taking it to the Chinese. This the NYT pretends is “news,” not State Department public relations imagery laundered through a “news”paper.

Speaking of Putin, the U.S. sabotaged its own encirclement-of-China strategy by ignoring core Russian geostrategic interests in Ukraine and brazenly seizing control of the country, causing it to split in two. Since then, they have been punishing and demonizing Russia and driving it into the arms of China. (Russia is already doing energy deals with China as a result of U.S.-EU sanctions and attacks.) Smart, U.S.

Arrogance makes people dumb. 

The same article contained evidence of the futility of U.S. verbiage. The Chinese ambassador to the U.S. had some choice words, bouncing the blame for tension back on the U.S. And the Chinese rulers did some ventriloquism in the Global Times, “a reliably nationalist newspaper in China,” which fulminated in an editorial that “If U.S. warplanes fly over China’s islands, and if its warships enter the waters 12 nautical miles from China’s islands, then we believe the Chinese military would prove that America’s pirate-style actions picked the wrong place and wrong people.”

Ooh, pirate-style! Harsh! Careful, you might hurt somebody’s feelings! Doesn’t sound like someone is ready to back off from gobbling up those islands, either! I hope this doesn’t all end up in tears.

May you live in interesting times.

1] “Kerry Expected to Bring Up China’s Sea Claims During Visit,” New York Times, May 15, 2015.

2] Ibid. Another euphemism for what the Times calls a “background briefing” is the word “guidance,” which perhaps tells too much. It’s feeding the corporate propagandists the government line. The media organs then transmit that line, sometimes with a little skepticism, rarely with a lot of skepticism, but in any event with top-line promotion. Usually the majority of the sourcing in such “important” articles is anonymous, which any reader of the NYT knows, or should know if they’re paying attention to what they’re reading. That doesn’t stop the Times and other power establishment media from attacking reporting they don’t like by sneering that it is based on anonymous sources, as the NY Times and others just did with Seymour Hersh’s article in the London Review of Books on the assassination of Osama bin Laden. Interesting how the U.S. media immediately went on the attack against Hersh, rather than investigating his claims first. That’s a dead giveaway that they aren’t journalists, but rather propagandists.

 

Oh, gee, that word “hypocrisy” is coming up again! I better look that up in my thesaurus before I start sounding like a broken record!