Oh say, can you see
By the dawn's early light,
What so proudly we hailed
At the twilight's last gleaming
Whose broad stripes and bright stars,
Through the perilous fight
Over the ramparts we watched,
Were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets red glare,
The bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night
That our flag was still there.
Oh, say, does--
- I pity a country that
would come up against us.
The synergy with air, land, and sea forces
and our ability to
control the battle space
and seize the high ground is devastating.
All countries respect the
power of the United States
and they respect how dominant
we are in this region.
And we get better and better and better.
(drums pounding)
- Tonight to ten,
a rare glimpse of China's
ambitious expansion
in one of the world's
most contested regions.
We report from the South China Sea,
where the Chinese are warning off anyone
who comes too close to
their building program.
- We continue our look this morning
at what China does not want you to see.
The United States says the superpower
is reclaiming land in the South China Sea.
- The fact that we're dealing
with a situation right now
where we, the US, has to
be much more aggressive
in dealing with the Chinese government.
- CNN has learned that the US Navy
is about to send a destroyer there.
Let's go to our CNN chief--
- [Announcer] CNN got
exclusive access to classified
US surveillance flights over the islands.
- [John Narrating] The threat
of China is becoming big news.
The media is beating the drums of war
as the world is being
primed to regard China
as a new enemy.
- [Announcer] China's alarming creation of
entirely new territory
in the South China Sea
is one part of a broader military push
that some fear is to challenge
US dominance in the region.
- [John Narrating] China
is building airstrips
in the South China Sea on disputed islands
condemned by an international tribunal.
This is now a flashpoint for war
between China and America.
What is not news is that
China itself is under threat.
These American bases form a giant noose,
encircling China with
missiles, bombers, warships.
All the way from Australia
through the Pacific,
to Asia, and beyond.
- If you were in Beijing looking out,
you stood on the tallest
building in Beijing
and looked out at the Pacific Ocean,
you'd see American warships.
You'd see Guam is about to sink
because there's so many
missiles pointed at China.
You'd look up at Korea and see
American armaments pointing at China.
You'd see Japan, which is basically,
Japan's a glove over the American fist.
I think if I was Chinese, I'd
have a little to worry about
about American aggressiveness.
- And we have China surrounded
and we're doing more
all the time to try and
keep it surrounded and deepen
that containment of China.
But China presents a fascinating case
of a country that is independent,
doesn't have foreign
bases on its territory,
growing very rapidly,
not as rapidly now as it did for 30 years,
but still the second-ranking
economy in the world.
- We have an adversary
and that adversary is
China and that adversary,
unless there is dramatic
reform inside China,
will be our enemy someday.
- One myth I think really
needs to be dispelled
is that somehow China's
aiming to replace America
and gonna run the world. (laughs)
First of all, the Chinese
are not that stupid.
The West, with its Christian roots,
are about converting other
people into their beliefs.
The Chinese are not about that.
Again, I'm not degrading
the Western culture.
I'm just pointing out the inherent nature,
the DNA's of two different cultures.
The Chinese 2000 years
ago built the Great Wall
to keep the barbarians
out, not to invade them.
- [John Narrating] As the
world's economic power
moves rapidly to Asia, the
response of the Untied States
is to deploy the majority
of its naval forces to Asia
and the Pacific.
This massive military buildup
is known in Washington as
the "Pivot to Asia."
The target is China.
The great power game in the 21st century
is called perpetual war.
For America's unchallenged arms industry,
the annual prize is huge profits
from almost 600 billion
dollars of military spending.
- [Announcer] Once an
imaginary weapon on Star Wars,
the electromagnetic gun is now reality.
- You're sitting here thinking about these
next-generation and futuristic ideas
and we've got scientists
who have designed these
and it's coming to life.
- [John Narrating] And the
smartest weapons need enemies.
- As a Pacific nation, the United States
will play a larger and long-term role
in shaping this region and its future.
I have directed my national security team
to make our presence and
mission in the Asian-Pacific
a top priority.
- In one sense, is the US
already at war with China?
- Yes.
On the ground and in the air.
The winner of the Nobel Peace
Prize, President Barack Obama,
has committed to trillions
of dollars to our nuclear arsenal.
He's committing trillions
of future dollars
to war in space and we need
an enemy for all this money
and China's the perfect enemy.
- The aim of this film
is to break a silence.
The United States and China
may well be on a path to war
and nuclear war is no longer unthinkable.
In a few years, China
has become the world's
second biggest economic power.
The United States is the
world's biggest military power,
with bases and missiles and ships
covering every continent, every ocean.
China is a threat to this
dominance, says Washington,
but who is the threat?
This film is about shifting
power and great danger.
It's also a film about the human spirit
and the rise of an extraordinary
resistance among people
on the front line of a coming war
where the words "never
again" have an urgent meaning
for all of us.
(somber music)
- [John Narrating] This is Bikini,
the rim of an ancient underwater volcano
in the Marshall Islands.
With its necklace of 23 islands,
Bikini is a place of beauty
and silence and menace.
Look closely where the Emerald Lagoon
suddenly falls into a vast black hole.
This is the crater of one of
the greatest manmade explosions,
the hydrogen bomb they call Bravo.
It vaporized an entire island
and poisoned almost
everything and everyone.
As our plane flew low, we seemed
to touch its deathly void.
The Marshall Islands lie
in the vast Pacific Ocean
between the United States and Asia.
Captured from the
Japanese in World War Two,
they've long been
America's strategic secret,
it's stepping stone to Asia and China.
(guitar music)
People here sustain themselves
for thousands of years
with abundant fish,
breadfruit, and coconuts.
They were skilled navigators
who sailed by the stars.
Westerners might call this paradise.
All that changed in 1946
when the United States took
over the Marshall Islands
as a Trust Territory with an obligation
to protect the health and
wellbeing of the people.
A nightmare began.
The islands were turned into a laboratory
for the testing of nuclear weapons
and the people into guinea pigs.
- Crossroads, scene 24, take two.
(clicks)
- [John Narrating] In
this propaganda film,
the Bikini islanders are being deceived.
Unknown to them, plans
were already underway
to destroy their paradise forever.
- Will you ask King Judah that
the United States government
now wants to attempt to turn this great,
destructive force into
something good for mankind
and that these experiments here at Bikini
are the first step in that direction.
(speaks foreign language)
Tell them that's fine,
everything being in God's
hands, it must be good.
(speaks foreign language)
- [Announcer] 87 ships
take position three miles
off Bikini to suffer the shattering impact
of the fifth atomic bomb.
- [John Narrating] An armada of warships
was assembled in Bikini Lagoon
in order to blow them to bits.
(chain clanking)
- [Announcer] The decks
of the 73 test ships
anchored in Bikini Lagoon
are scenes of feverish activity
as scientists plot experimental programs
designed to furnish data on blast effects
of the mighty atom bomb.
Animals of many kinds--
- [John Narrating] Animals
were strapped to the decks
like a perverse Noah's Ark.
The experiment was to see how they died,
how they burned.
- [Announcer] Special
ointments are applied
to determine their protective quality.
Other parts of the exposed areas
are being left bare to the atom blasts.
- [Soldier] Three, two, one.
(eerie music)
- [John Narrating] Being on Bikini today
is disturbing ghosts.
I struggle through the
jungle to the bunker
where they pressed the
button at 6:45 on the morning
of the H-Bomb test.
Now claimed by the undergrowth,
it's like a subterranean
temple to modern times.
They drank Milk Maid Powdered Milk,
smoked Lucky Strike Cigarettes,
and later this sign was
erected that's beyond irony.
It says,
"Please leave this
property as you find it,
"thank you for your
kindness and understanding."
(water drips)
(jovial music)
- [Announcer] The Momselles
give their all for their art
and you can just bet
that audience is giving
with the wolf calls.
- [Male Announcer] The bikini, named after
the atomic explosion in the Pacific.
The bikini was an explosion everywhere.
- [John Narrating] In 1946, the
bikini swimsuit was launched
to celebrate the nuclear explosions
that had destroyed life on Bikini Island.
The inventor of the bikini, a Frenchman,
made his fortune.
Today a bikini body is
promoted in magazines
as an object of desire and good health.
The bodies of the people
of Bikini and other islands
are the most irradiated in the world.
All these women have had thyroid cancer.
Today, Bikini is unfit for human life.
Radiation poisons the food and water,
and issues registered
unsafe on a Geiger Counter.
The abandoned cemetery looks out to where
the sun rose one morning, then rose again
as apocalypse.
The equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb
was exploded in these islands
everyday for 12 years.
A scarred beauty has
returned to the island
but the people haven't.
Exiled to barren islands,
many of them starved.
In 1968, President
Lyndon Johnson told them
it was safe to go home.
(Geiger Counter clicks)
But it wasn't safe.
And the US authorities
knew it wasn't safe.
- What happened as a
result of the Bravo test
was that a cover-up was launched
very shortly after March one.
There's such a history
of wrong information,
outright lies, deception.
There was no attempt to take
the most conservative approach
and make sure that everybody was okay.
- They knew the way the
fallout was going to go.
And they took that risk and went ahead
and detonated the bomb, knowing full well
which way it was going to go.
They still had an opportunity to evacuate,
even on the day of the shot.
But these people were not evacuated,
we were not evacuated,
and the people in the
path were not evacuated.
So that only leaves one to believe that
number one, the United States
needed some guinea pigs
to study what the effects
of radiation would do.
And that's a pretty strong indication
that the United States knew that.
- It seems extraordinary, here we are,
this far into the 21st century,
talking to people still frightened
of all that nuclear
fallout, all those tests,
all those years ago.
The impression I get is that
there's so little trust among people.
- The US is trying to provide as much
information, as much good
information as we can.
And so I wouldn't accept
the characterization that
there've been lies and cover-ups.
- The word guinea pigs comes
up a lot from these survivors.
- I would refer you to our
embassy website on that.
- I've read it.
- And that question was looked at
during the Clinton administration
and that was not the
conclusion they came to.
- [John Narrating] The secret
of the Marshall Islands
is Project 4.1.
Declassified documents
reveal a scientific program
that began as a study of mice
and became a study of human
beings exposed to radiation.
- [Radio Announcer] Chicago
is where it all began.
And to the AEC Argonnne
Labs in Chicago last week
came seven men, natives
of the Marshall Islands.
Levin is from Omelek.
He and the rest were irradiated by our
March 19th '54 hydrogen bomb test.
John is mayor of Rongelap,
which is 100 miles from Bikini.
John, as we said, is a savage,
but a happy, amenable savage.
His grandfather ran almost
naked on his small atoll.
The white man brought money and religion
and a market for his copa.
John Reeds knows about God
and is a pretty good mayor.
The iron room is a radiation
detector for human beings.
Inside John the mayor,
whose first visit to
the white man's country
meant San Francisco cable
cars and Chicago skyscrapers
and streamlined trains,
whose first visit to
the white man's country
meant the iron room.
A savage governs his life by ritual
and he understands this because
he thinks of it as a new ritual.
Sitting alone inside the room,
outside, a strange kind of
priest in a long, white coat.
When the ritual of the iron
room was over for John,
it began for the others.
As each finished, he was told it was over
and he was given apples and
other good things to eat.
Then he took off the ritual clothing
and the seven men put on
the suits and top coats
they had been lent in Hawaii
which they would return in
Hawaii on their way back
in the Marshall Islands in the
middle of the Pacific Ocean.
- The United States government documents
clearly demonstrate that its scientists
conducted human radiation experiments
with Marshallese citizens.
Some of our people were injected with
or coerced to drink fluids
laced with radiation.
Other experimentation
involved the impurposeful
and premature resettlement of people
on islands highly
contaminated by weapons tests
to study how human beings absorb radiation
from their foods and environment.
(guitar music)
- [John Narrating] These
people are guinea pigs.
They are part of the
experiment Project 4.1.
They're being returned to Rongelap,
an island 100 miles from
Bikini by the US Navy.
They were told repeatedly,
it was safe to go home.
This happy couple believed
they were going home to safety.
The man is John Anjain,
the mayor of Rongelap.
The "happy savage" from
the iron room in Chicago.
His wife is Madura, and this
is their baby son Lekage.
They had no idea of the
horror that lay ahead.
They are being returned to an island
described by a US atomic energy official
"as by far the most
contaminated place on earth."
He added, "it will be
interesting to get a measure
"of human uptake when people
"live in a contaminated environment."
The people of Rongelap
remained on their poison island
for 28 years as guinea pigs.
The objects of regular,
scientific examination.
(bell rings)
The islanders pleaded
with the US authorities
to move them to safety as evidence emerged
of the second generation,
the children were also poisoned.
Desperate to leave, the islanders
called on Greenpeace to rescue them.
This ship, the Rainbow Warrior,
moved the entire population
to an uncontaminated island.
They called it Operation Exodus.
(native music)
(eerie music)
This is Doctor Robert Conard,
a leading medical scientist
of Brookhaven National Laboratories.
Conard devoted his distinguished career
to examining the islanders.
He wrote, "the habitation of
these people on the island
"will afford the most valuable
ecological radiation data
"on human beings.
"The various radio isotopes present
"can be traced from the
soil to the food chain
"and into human beings."
Doctor Conard gained the
trust of whole communities
when he brought the islanders
to New York to be examined,
he showed them the sights
and had them over for a barbecue.
When John Anjain's son
Lekage died aged 18,
Doctor Conard sent the
man they called a savage
a sympathy card.
From your friend, Bob.
In 1957, Madura Anjain was
the smiling young woman
seen here on her way back to Rongelap,
unaware of the danger
she and her family faced.
This is Madura 28 years later,
grieving the death of her son
Lekage from radiation poisoning.
Like her son and her husband,
Madura died from a virulent cancer.
- I don't see any great
clinics that have been
established by, if not
the Department of Energy,
certainly not by the US government.
- There's a clinic downtown in Majuro.
There's also a Whole Body Counter.
You can have the plutonium in
your body measured as well.
Anyone can, for free.
- [John Narrating] This is
the plutonium measuring shop
where they'll tell you
how radioactive you are.
People waiting to be tested
are welcomed with a video
showing their islands being blown up.
And this reassuring commentary.
(speaks foreign language)
This is Rinok, a refugee from
the poisoned island of Rongelap,
whose family owned land and
lived a secure, prosperous life.
Now she lives in a shack
in the capital, Majuro,
with her children and grandchildren.
She has no water, no sanitation.
- [John] And power, she has electricity?
- [John Narrating] In
1986, the United States
granted limited independence
to the Marshall Islanders
on condition that they accepted a mere
150 million dollars compensation
for the damage caused by nuclear testing.
A claims tribunal was set up
and soon ran out of money
and appealed to the US Congress
more than a decade ago,
still awaits a reply.
Darlene Keju-Johnson was
a young health worker
who became the champion of her people
after she discovered the full
extent of their suffering
caused by nuclear testing that
many more islands were poisoned
than the Americans claimed.
(applause)
This remarkable speech in
1983 broke the silence.
- I bring greetings from
the Marshall Islands
and throughout Micronesia.
We have hundreds of women
who have miscarriages.
We have leukemia cancers.
We have thyroid cancers.
We have stillborn babies.
We have nowadays, I
just got back from home
and I've talked to many women
and men in the population,
is that we have babies
we call jellyfish babies.
A baby is born on a labor table
and it moves up and down like this.
It's a colorful, ugly thing
and it is not shaped like a human being.
It moves up and down like
this on a labor table
because that thing is breathing.
That is a baby.
- [John Narrating] In 1982,
Darlene married Giff Johnson,
the author of this tribute to his wife.
- Darlene was one of the liveliest,
most entertaining individuals that
I have ever had the pleasure of knowing.
She was a voice for the voiceless.
- [John Narrating] Like so
many Marshall Islanders,
Darlene died of cancer, age 45.
This is the largest of
the islands, Kwajalein,
occupied by one of
America's most important
and secretive bases.
Known as the Ronald Reagan Test Site,
it's a missile launch pad that commands
the Pacific Ocean all the
way to Asia and China.
(waves crash)
Here, the people of the Marshall Islands
are once again being
subjected to the testing
of weapons of mass destruction
designed for a coming war.
The base is part of a remarkable plan
known as Vision 2020.
Devised in the 1990's,
its aim is described
officially as full-spectrum dominance.
This means control of all land, sea, air,
cyberspace, and space.
- [Radio] Five, four, three, two, one,
ignition.
- [John Narrating] From
California, almost 5000 miles away,
the US Air Force tests it's
intercontinental missiles
by firing them at the Marshall Islands.
- Imagine a missile coming
screaming out of the sky.
It's absolutely terrifying.
I think that there's really
nothing that I can imagine
that would be more terrifying than this.
And we're talking about devices that
any one of them could go off course.
- [John Narrating] None of
this disturbs life on the base,
where small town America
has been recreated,
a wonderland of the suburban good life.
- Thank you.
(upbeat music)
- Fabulous.
There's nothing better than
living on a tropical island.
- I pretty much have
beachfront property, you know?
It's great, I love it here.
- [John Narrating] Just across
the bay is Ebeye Island.
Known as the slum of the Pacific,
more than 12,000 people live here
on a strip of land less than a mile long.
Many of them refugees from
what is now the missile base
and from islands poisoned
by nuclear testing.
Every day, people from Ebeye are
brought to work on the missile base
to water the gardens and the golf course
then they are ferried
back to their poverty.
This is apartheid in the Pacific.
(flies buzz)
- Ebeye needs a lot of things.
Medicine, education, and jobs.
Vegetables and fruits.
- Vegetables and fruits.
- Yes.
- Here we are, it's a tropical island,
and you need vegetables and fruits.
- Yes.
- [John Narrating] Fish,
vegetables and fruit
were once abundant on Ebeye.
Today, fish is contaminated
by toxic pollutants
says the Environmental Protection Agency.
Now the only food most people can afford
is processed and imported.
They have the highest rate
of diabetes in the world.
- When someone gets really ill,
do they go to the
hospital over on the base
because they've got a pretty
modern clinic over there.
- They don't treat them with medicine.
They just go there for taking
the plug and then x-ray.
- So what happens when
somebody is seriously ill?
- They cannot do anything.
- The most consistent example given
is the example of the
Ronald Reagan Missile Site
and Ebeye next to it.
On the Ronald Reagan Missile Site
is a vivid example of the United States,
golf courses and swimming pools
and all kinds of amenities.
Right next to it is what is
called the slum of the Pacific.
- It's a challenge.
Ebeye is in great need right now.
We've talked about infrastructure.
One of the projects the US is working with
our Australian colleagues and
with the Asia Development Bank
is a sewer and water project
desperately needed for Ebeye.
Ebeye's overcrowded,
the schools need repair.
- Actually, the US military
did a survey back in the 70's
and found that the sewers didn't work
and the water didn't run and
the electricity wasn't there.
It only happened not all that long ago
they found almost exactly the same thing.
Why hasn't that been fixed?
- There's complete agreement
that Ebeye should be a priority
and not only because of
the current activities
of the Ronald Reagan Space
and Missile Defense Site,
but there's also now
an additional component
that is providing for global security
and that's the Space Fence
Project by the Air Force.
- [John Narrating] Every missile fired
on the Marshall Islands by the US military
costs 100 million dollars each.
This derelict school bus
is the only one on Ebeye.
They can't afford to replace it.
- The base is not good for us,
the people of Marshall Islands,
we have no need for it.
- [John] It's been used to test missiles
to fire at countries like China.
- Yes, and anywhere else if they want to.
- [John] What would you
like to see happen there?
- I want our land back.
(violin music)
- [John Narrating] This is Shanghai,
the historic port on the Yangtze River,
China's greatest city.
I have arranged to meet
the American author
James Bradley, whose
latest best-selling book
The China Mirage, reveals an
extraordinary hidden history
of American power and modern China.
- It was almost illegal
for someone like me
to know of Chinese for almost
all of American history.
The Chinese came to America to mine gold
and build the railroads
and Americans decided
we didn't like the competition,
so in 1882 we had the
Chinese Exclusion Acts
which kept the Chinese
out of the United States
for about 100 years.
So you have the largest
population in the world
that can't come to the United States,
so at just the point we're putting up
the Statue of Liberty
saying, we welcome everybody,
we were erecting a wall saying,
we welcome everybody except those Chinese.
- [John Narrating] Fear
of a rising China today
is the latest chapter in
a history of propaganda
that presented the Chinese
as uncouth and infantile.
To western popular and political culture,
the Chinese became the Yellow Peril.
(piano music)
And racial stereotypes
bore the constant theme
of fear and threat.
- [Announcer] Boris Karloff
as the evil Fu Manchu.
His passion for power
twisting his brilliant mind
as he revels in the horrors of
human sacrifice and torture.
Behind the mask of Fu Manchu.
- [John Narrating] This
caricature of an entire people
concealed another agenda: opium.
For the American elite
in the 19th century,
China was a goal mine of drugs.
- Warren Delano,
the grandfather of
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
was the American opium king of China.
He was the biggest American opium dealer
second to the British.
He welcomed the first
American ship into China
to help out with the opium wars.
Much of the east coast of America,
Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton,
were born from opium money.
The American Industrial Revolution
was funded by huge pools of money.
Where did this come from?
It came from illegal drugs
in the biggest market in the world: China.
- Let me get this right.
The grandfather of arguably
the most liberal president,
Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
was a drug runner.
- Yes sir.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt never
made much money in his life.
He had public service jobs
that were very lowly paid,
but he had yachts, he had summer homes,
he had mansions in New York City.
The kids went to private schools.
He inherited a fortune from
Warren Delano, his father,
who was the American opium king of China.
If you scratch anyone with
the name Forbes in their name,
John Forbes Kerry, Secretary
of State John Forbes Kerry--
- That's the present Secretary of State.
- Yes sir.
You'll find opium money.
His great-grandfather was an opium dealer.
How big was opium money?
Opium money built the
first industrial city
in the United States,
Lowell, Massachusetts.
It built the first five
railroads in the United States.
Opium money all over the east coast,
but it wasn't talked about.
It was called the China Trade.
And if you go to various museums,
you can see teas and silks exhibited
and they keep quiet about
all that big opium money.
- [John Narrating] In the
scramble to get opium money,
China was invaded and colonized
by Britain and the other imperial powers.
Foreign armies grabbed
whole swaths of China.
This is the American
army in Tiananmen Square,
Peking, in 1900.
Great cities like Shanghai were taken over
and declared concessions
and foreigners lived a life
of privilege and luxury
amidst terrible poverty
imposed on the Chinese.
A resistance known as the Boxer Rebellion
was put down with a savagery.
This rape of China set the tone
for how China was perceived in the West
well into the 20th century.
This is the distinguished historian
Theodore H. White, an
advisor to the White House,
speaking in the 1960's.
- Perhaps China is too vast
to be governed by mercy.
Yet if Chinese mind craves order,
they must be brought to recognize
they are the biggest factor
in the world's disorder.
And we must untangle the
madness of their mind.
The most difficult task in the world
is to reach the minds of men who hate you.
- [John Narrating] What White
was really complaining about
was the loss of a China that
the imperial West could dominate
and the defeat of General Chiang Kai-Shek,
who with his famously
powerful Christian wife,
Mei-ling Soong, guarded
America's interests in China.
That is, until they
were thrown out in 1949
by a communist revolution
led by Mao Zedong.
- Mao had beaten Chiang
Kai-Shek three times
in huge battles involving
millions of combatants.
Mao was a winner in this contest from
the early 1930's on, but we
knew very little about it
and people don't
understand that even today.
- [Announcer] Shanghai
hears the message clearly
as foreign businessmen
board up their shops.
Go now, go quickly, for communism marches.
Take what you can, but flee.
In pell-mell haste, the Western powers
evacuate the city they have built,
for good and bad alike must leave.
The businessmen come for profit
as well as missionaries come to heal
must say goodbye as out the Yancy
steams the last of Western influence
and farewell to a century.
(shouting)
- [John Narrating] Even today,
it's difficult to understand
the paranoia ignited by Mao's revolution.
- As we look at China on the map,
we can see that China is the basic cause
of all of our troubles in Asia.
- I believe that for
the sake of our safety,
it is necessary to be
prepared for the possibility
of a Chinese missile attack
on the United States.
- [John Narrating] One
of the myths about Mao
is that he was an implacable
enemy of the capitalist West.
(chorus singing)
Shanghai today is a
prosperous international city
still run by the communists,
at least in name.
- When I was last in China
more than a generation ago,
the loudest noise was the
tinkling of bicycle bells.
Mao had just died, the streets were dark,
the universities were closed.
The chaos of the cultural revolution
had given way to a great silence.
"We're exhausted," was the
freest comment I heard.
Coming back, the change
is barely comprehensible.
Here in Shanghai, the
freedom bears no comparison.
Yes, there are issues with human rights,
especially the right to
speak against the state
and challenge its power.
Since I was last here, millions of people
have been lifted out of poverty,
many of them into an
entirely new middle class.
This epic is still barely
understood in the West,
or should that be willfully misunderstood?
The truth is that China
has matched America
at its own great game of capitalism
and that is unforgivable.
- [John Narrating] One measure
of China's new capitalism
is the Hurun Rich List.
This league table of China's mega-rich
is published by Rupert Hoogewerf,
an old Etonian whose
Chinese name is Hu Run.
He's received many awards,
including China's Man of the Year.
- This year, 2015, has probably been
the most extraordinary
year of wealth creation
in the history of China again.
I've been doing this
list for 15, 16 years.
I've never seen a year like 2015.
Normally for 200 million
pounds or 300 million dollars,
we find say about 800,000 people.
This year, 2015, it's doubled.
There'll be more dollar
billionaires known about in China
than in the US.
So the US, up until now,
has been the leader in terms of
the most successful business
tycoons in the world.
China 2015, will have overtaken the US.
So, amazing.
- [John Narrating] Modern China
is full of telling ironies,
not least this museum
that was once the house
where Mao and his
comrades secretly founded
the communist party of China in 1921.
Today it stands in the
heart of an exclusive,
very capitalist shopping district.
- When you leave this shrine
to China's great revolution,
you're confronted by a surreal spectacle.
For right outside where the
Chinese communist party was born,
are the very symbols of capitalism.
Starbucks, Apple, Cartier,
Dolce and Gabbana,
and down there perhaps the
free market's greatest triumph:
bottled water that insures you live young,
costing six pounds for a
small bottle in my hotel.
Would Mao spin in his tomb if he was here?
I'm not so sure.
Hidden history is always
the key to the truth.
Five years before his great
communist revolution in 1949,
Mao sent this secret
message to Washington.
"China must industrialize," wrote Mao,
"this can only be done by free enterprise.
"Chinese and American
interests fit together
"economically and politically.
"America need not fear that
we will not be cooperative.
"We cannot risk crossing America.
"We cannot risk any conflict."
Mao received no reply.
Nothing has changed.
- Mao Zedong was looking to be a friend
with the United States from the beginning.
Mao says, I will go meet
Franklin Roosevelt in the White House.
Mao reaches out in 1950 to Harry Truman.
He reaches out to Dwight Eisenhower.
His hand was tossed away.
- [John Narrating] This opportunity that
might have changed history,
prevented wars, saved countless lives,
was lost because the
truth of Mao's overtures
was denied in the
Washington of the 1950's.
State Department officials
who had carried Mao's messages
were condemned unjustly
as communist traitors.
- Everybody who knew Mao,
who spoke Chinese, was gone.
In the 1950's, the State Department
had no employees who spoke Chinese.
It's resulted in us not having relations
with the number one, most
populous country in the world.
- [John Narrating] In 1979, this man,
Deng Xaoping, became
China's paramount leader.
He said, "Socialism does
not mean shared poverty."
This was code for the most radical reform
since Mao's revolution, the
return of capitalism to China,
but this time controlled
by the communist party.
"To be rich is glorious,"
Deng was reported as saying.
America was now threatened
by the emergence
of a vast image of itself.
This is one of the many very exclusive
gated communities in Shanghai
where an apartment is one of the prizes
of the new communism.
I'd arranged to see
Professor Zhang Weiwei,
a close aide to the late Deng Xiaoping,
the man who changed China.
- Deng is really, extremely
long-term visionary leader
with an exceedingly
long-term at strategic vision
for his country and for his people.
China is still following that path.
Actually, this is really a tradition
from China's long history.
You look at even like Mao.
He said we should surpass UK,
by which we should
surpass the United States,
so these tradition continues to this day.
Even Xi Jinping to this day
is also doing this idea.
Actually, what many Chinese have problem
with the Western media is
the stereotypes about China.
If you contend with stereotypes,
you miss so many things.
If BBC broadcast something,
they are happy to always mention
the communist dictatorship,
this autocracy.
Actually, with this kind of label
you cannot understand this China as it is.
But if you watch BBC or
CNN or read Economist
and try to understand
China, it will be a failure.
It's impossible.
- Multiple parties fight
for political power
and everyone holding on to them
as the only path to salvation
to the long-suffering, developing world.
- [John Narrating] This is Eric Li,
a Shanghai entrepreneur
educated in America
and typical of a new, confident,
outspoken political class.
- In China, there are a lot of problems.
But at the moment, the
Chinese, the party state,
has proven an extraordinary
ability to change.
I make the joke:
in America you can
change political parties
but you can't change the policies.
In China you cannot change the party
but you can change policies.
In 65 or 66 years, China has
been run by one single party
yet the political changes
that have taken place
in China these past 66
years have been wider
and broader and greater than probably
any other major country in modern memory.
- So in that time, China
ceased to be communist.
Is that what you're saying?
- Well, China is a market economy.
It's a vibrant market economy
but it is not a capitalist country.
Here's why.
There's no way a group of billionaires
could control the party bureau
as billionaires control
American policy making.
So in China, you have a
vibrant market economy
but capital does not rise
above political authority.
Capital does not have enshrined rights.
In America, capital,
the interest of capital and capital itself
has risen above the American nation.
The political authority cannot
check the power of capital.
That's why America is a capitalist country
but China's not.
- [John Narrating] This
is the ironic title
of a best-selling book by Zhang Lijia,
a journalist and critic
who lives in Beijing.
- Many Americans imagine
that the Chinese people
live a miserable, repressed
life with no freedom whatsoever.
That's not quite true.
If you speak to many
ordinary Chinese people,
they will tell you they feel
their lives are quite free.
Some 500 million people
have been lifted off poverty
and some would say probably
600 million people.
That's a great achievement.
For many Americans, the Yellow
Peril has never left them.
I think there's a fear about China.
There's a fear of China's rapid rise,
but it also has a lot to do with China's
label as a communist state.
- China's objectives are modest
compared with their weight.
They're not trying to run the world.
They're not even trying
to run the Asian-Pacific.
I think they want to keep America
from dominating the Asian-Pacific.
So they have what they believe
is their rightful place
in the Asian-Pacific,
because of all civilizations
and all the history on their side,
so their objectives are really modest
compared with their capacity.
- The new wealth in China,
they often say this is the product of
self-made entrepreneurial skill but
is it not also the product of
the exploitation of people at the bottom,
what are known in China as migrants.
But they're not really
migrants, they're Chinese.
- (laughs) If you really go to
talk to these migrant workers,
you will find quite surprisingly,
over the past five to seven years,
they have experienced a
greater income increase
than any other social groups.
China is not a class society.
- [John Narrating] But
China is a class society.
These are the homes of migrant workers,
people who build and
service the new China.
Here it's not uncommon for three families
to share one tiny flat.
- You know, you associate a
socialist country with equality
but unfortunately it seems
the reform has started.
China has become one of the
most unequal societies in the world.
The income gap is widening.
Governments, I feel,
have retreated some of
the responsibilities, left
the markets to take over,
but the market does not
always treat women kindly.
Some private companies
that would just refuse
to hire child-bearing aged women.
And sometimes when women became pregnant,
they would sack them.
Because they don't want to
pay their maternity leave.
And in fact, the income
gap has grown much bigger
between men and women.
- Your old boss, Deng Xaoping,
presided over the bloodshed
in Tiananmen Square.
What would you say to the
survivors of Tiananmen Square,
because so many of those did fight
for what they saw as
democratic change in China?
- In 1989, there were
two political forces.
One of those were presented
by the Chinese students.
Their hero was Mikhail Gorbachev,
who happened to be in Beijing.
Their slogan was,
"Soviet Union's Today
is China's Tomorrow."
So the idea was political reform first,
other reform second.
Otherwise, China would be hopeless.
Deng's message was the opposite.
He thought Gorbachev was an idiot.
He thought China must have
economic reform first,
other reform second.
This priority must be set clear.
Unfortunately, at that
particular moment in 1989,
the two political forces
could not reach a compromise.
That's when the tragedy occurred.
- [John Narrating] It
was more than a tragedy.
It was a massacre
of which the memory remains a
raw presence in modern China.
- Why does the Chinese
state still fear the few?
The few who speak out,
and I'm thinking of--
- Liu Xiaobo? (laughs)
- [John] Exactly.
This man won the Nobel Peace
Prize and he's in prison.
- He violated Chinese law by a big margin.
So actually the freedom of expression,
similar views are aired by many people
but he really going to the extreme.
- [John Narrating] Liu Xiaobo
challenged the government
to implement democratic reforms
and he spent a total
of 13 years in prison.
- Why can't a confident China
accept a criticism like that?
- Nobel peace committee
makes huge mistake.
They owe the Chinese an explanation.
If you cross a line, you
violate the constitution,
you violate so many laws,
you should be punished.
(somber music)
- [John Narrating] And yet in China today,
the spirit of protest and dissent
lives on in different forms.
In 2015, strikes and community protests
and activism reach record levels.
This resistance is seldom
reported in the West.
- So there are lots of protests in China.
Typical for example, land being grabbed by
officials for commercial development
and the farmers are not
being compensated properly.
But the farmers now know,
are more aware of their
rights so they protest.
Or young workers from the factory,
they demand a better wage and
a better working condition,
but many of the protests
they are economic driven,
not political driven.
They are regional, not nation-wide.
So this kind of thing is unlikely
to develop into real movement
or so-called, you call that revolution.
- [John] So the Mao's revolution
was the last revolution?
- (laughs) Well, never say never.
(helicopter whirs)
- [John Narrating] The
Japanese island of Okinawa
is occupied by 32 military installations.
From here, the United
States has attacked Korea,
Vietnam, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Iraq.
The sky is full of planes and helicopters.
(helicopter whirs)
Wherever people go, they are fenced in
and told to keep out.
Okinawa is the front
line of a beckoning war
with China.
(people shouting)
Aged 87, Fumiko Shimabukuro
is one of the leaders of
a non-violent resistance
that's challenging
Washington's "Pivot to Asia."
(people shouting)
- [John Narrating] Fumiko is a survivor.
A quarter of the civilians on the island
were killed in the
American invasion in 1945
and a fear of war has been
passed through the generations.
(gentle music)
Today, those who witnessed these horrors
live in a place of extraordinary beauty
surrounded by coral reefs
and a unique marine life.
It was here in Henoko Bay
that the survivors of
World War Two sought refuge
and it's this they're
now fighting to save.
It's an epic struggle that
pits these island people
against the greatest
military power on Earth.
- This is the office of a
former governor of Okinawa,
Ota Masahide.
What is done is create
not so much a museum,
but an appeal to the outside world
to understand the resistance in Okinawa,
to understand the suffering,
to read its hidden history.
It begins in 1945 when
the Americans invaded.
Here's General MacArthur
arriving in Okinawa.
A second invasion happened 10 years later
in what became known as
the Bulldozer's and Bayonets campaign.
American forces seized
prime agricultural land,
burned farm houses, and killed livestock.
The dispossessed people of Okinawa
march the length of
Japan, appealing for help.
- This wall is devoted to
a resistance in Okinawa
that never ceases.
Everywhere people go on the island,
they are confronted by this sign.
It tells them they must not go past
this fence topped with barbed wire.
These fences run like great
ribbons across the island
and the bases themselves
cut swaths across Okinawa.
But all around them are people
with this continuing demonstration,
this continuing resistance.
And they have a message.
It's: "People of the World,
"Watch what Japan and the US are doing.
"Don't let them force
the bases on Okinawa."
- [John Narrating] All this will be lost
when much of the bay becomes
concrete runways for
bombers at Camp Schwab,
the huge US Marine base behind this fence.
(applause)
In 2014, Okinawa elected a new governor,
Takeshi Onaga, who won by
a landslide on one issue.
Stopping the new base at Henoko.
This was election night
outside the American base
at Camp Schwab.
(cheering)
We shall overcome
We shall overcome someday
Oh, deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome someday
The New Year's celebration
of their victory
was bittersweet.
The government in Tokyo resented this
unprecedented challenge to its authority.
The issue is now in the Japanese courts.
Japan's prime minister, Shinzo Abe,
has also made clear that with the backing
of his powerful patron America,
he wants to reawaken Japanese nationalism
and reclaim it's military power.
(helicopter whirs)
(drum pounds)
(singing)
While we were filming this
ceremony outside the base,
on a day when people paid respect
to their departed loved ones,
giant American helicopters
circled above us,
intimidating as always.
The threat of these low-flying aircraft
is a constant presence in Okinawa.
Teachers often can't
teach because of the noise
and the fear.
(somber music)
This was the carnage
when an American fighter
crashed into a primary school
after the pilot had ejected to safety.
Haru Akira, aged seven,
was terribly burned.
Akira suffered throughout his youth
and died from his injuries age 21.
Another tragedy waits
to happen on Okinawa.
US military aircraft have been involved
in 44 accidents on the island.
The latest threat is this
hybrid plane, the Osprey,
notorious for its safety issues.
(dance music)
Wherever the military is based in Asia,
there is a relationship with local people,
especially women, that
often breeds resentment.
In Okinawa, this resentment
ignited a riot in 1970.
Scores of American GI's
were pulled from their cars
which were set alight.
For Washington and it's
compliant ally in Tokyo,
it's this kind of
insurrection that they fear.
During the making of this film,
a young woman was raped and murdered,
allegedly by an American
military contractor
from one of the bases.
(chanting)
It was the latest of
thousands of cases of violence
and it brought massive
crowds into the streets,
demanding an end to the
military occupation of their country.
(aircraft rumbles)
This is a Mace missile,
designed to carry a nuclear warhead.
During the Cold War, the United States
secretly installed nuclear weapons
at this launch pad in Okinawa.
Most of them were aimed at China.
Today, the nuclear missile site
is run by a Buddhist organization,
the Soka Gakkai, as a peace museum.
- In 1962, the atomic weapons,
that were on the missile,
was almost launched.
- They were almost launched?
- Yeah, according to the
spokesman of this military base,
said they were ordered to prepare.
Then we received second order to stop it.
- [John Narrating] One of
the American servicemen
whose job was to fire the Mace missiles
has since revealed that
China was a nuclear target
during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.
- We were told that we had
to launch all the missiles.
But we only had one missile
headed towards Russia
and we did not see why we
should have to involve
the other countries.
The captain suggested that
everybody crack the doors open
so it would take less
time to launch the missile
if the doors were cracked open.
(beeping)
- [John Narrating] One of the launch crews
was on the point of firing their missiles
when a duty officer suspected
the order was false.
- The officer that was on the B side
was told to send two
men over there with 45's
and to shoot anybody that tried to launch
until the situation was resolved.
And it would only take like 15, 20 seconds
to run the distance between
the two command centers.
So those two men kept
that whole crew at bay
while we made a decision as what to do.
And it wasn't very long, maybe
two or three seconds later
where a very nervous major
came over the intercom
issuing the stand down order.
And then we just kind of
looked at each other, like
we could have exterminated
the whole planet.
The major who had given the launch order
was quietly court-martialed
and dismissed from the Air Force.
- That morning is just as familiar to me
and as clear as yesterday morning is.
And this is 53 years later
and how clear blue the sky was
and there was just some very light clouds
and there was a perfect breeze blowing
at the perfect temperature.
I did not know what the temperature was,
but it just felt perfect.
And we were all just kind of taking it in
and taking in the smell of the air
and the sea and the land mixture together
and everything smelled so beautiful.
- This is very interesting
because it shows
the cities in China where these
Mace missiles were aimed at.
Which ones do we have here?
- This Okinawa Island.
So within 2000 kilometers
you find Peking, or Beijing,
Xi'an, Jiuzhaigou, Hong Kong, Shanghai,
Taiwan and Taipei, and
Pyongyang, North Korea.
Within the range of missile.
(aircraft rumbles)
(somber music)
- [John Narrating] This is the work of
the Okinawan sculptor, Kinjo Minoru.
It's a tribute to the
suffering and resistance
of the people of this island.
More than 1000 miles away on
the Korean island of Jeju,
these symbols of struggle
are hauntingly similar.
The work of Korean sculptor Koh Gil-chun,
represents another fight of
island people for freedom.
(gentle music)
A semi-tropical sanctuary
of unusual beauty,
Jeju Island is a world heritage site.
The government of South Korea declared it
an island of world peace.
But on this island of peace has been built
one of the most provocative
military bases in the world,
less than 400 miles from Shanghai.
Like Okinawa and the Marshall Islands,
this is America's
frontline in it's so-called
"Pivot to Asia."
Here in once unspoiled Gangjeong Village,
the South Korean Navy has built a base
for American aircraft carriers,
nuclear submarines, and destroyers
equipped with the Aegis ballistic missile
aimed at China's defenses.
China's lifelines to the world
in oil, trade, resources,
depend on shipping that comes through
chokepoints like this.
- The US pivot into the Asian-Pacific
is really intended to create the ability
to put a loaded gun to the head of China
and say, you will do as we say
otherwise we will be able to restrict.
We'll be able to shut down, choke off
your importation of oil
and other resources.
(chanting)
- [John Narrating] For
nine years, every day,
often twice a day, these Catholic priests
have staged a mass that blocked the gates
of the new military base on Jeju Island.
(singing)
In a country where
political demonstrations
can be easily banned,
unlike powerful religions,
the tactic has produced this
spectacle of resistance.
(man speaking on loudspeaker)
(speaks foreign language)
Father Mun Jeong-hyeon has led the fight
to stop the base being built
and several times
suffered serious injuries.
(singing)
- I sing four songs everyday.
Before the Mass, during the
Mass, at the end of the Mass
and the end of the rosary.
The content of song is very beautiful.
The writer and composer is the musician
from this island.
I love him very much and
he gave me their song
which I practiced and I became a master
to sing that song because I
practice everyday. (laughs)
- [John] You sing it with such passion.
(singing)
- Sometimes we just wait.
Typhoon, typhoon strike!
- [John] Do you sing then?
Do you have a Mass when
the typhoons strike?
- Oh yes.
No exceptions.
- [John] What will happen
if this base becomes operational?
- They have destroyed the environment,
they destroy the life of all of us.
We should be witness of their
oppression and violence.
- [John] Why do they do it?
- They'd like to rule the
Pacific area, the whole area.
They'd like to make China
isolated in this globe.
The US government want to
be in power of this world.
(laughs)
- [John Narrating] Meanwhile,
a Quaker called Mr. Oh
joins them with his own ritual of protest,
accompanied by an artist
called Wild Flower.
- [John Narrating] This
is the center of an empire
that never speaks its name,
whose power is represented in
this extraordinary world map
of American military bases.
4000 bases in the United States,
almost 1000 bases spread
across every continent.
- The archipelago of empire,
the bases that we have around the world
hidden in plain sight are the
real territory of our empire
but at the same time we
maintain independent governments
in Japan or South Korea or Germany.
They don't have autonomy when
it comes to foreign policy.
So it's a very sophisticated
and effective system
whereby we pat ourselves on the back for
helping to midwife democracy in Japan
and Germany and South Korea
and various other places
while keeping the lid
on in that we don't know
what these countries would do if they were
fully independent.
And the beauty of this system is that
most people pay no attention to it at all.
They think it's just a natural occurrence
to have 50,000 American troops in Japan.
- There's no country that has
better anti-imperial credit--
(laughs) cred, then the United States.
And we are not trying to recreate
the glories of the British Empire.
We're arguing that the world is round.
We have a global policy
and all nations have global rights.
- No ocean has ever been dominated
the way the US dominates the
Pacific, Navy and Air Force.
They claim that in the
Pearl Harbor headquarters
of the Pacific Command,
they claim to be responsible
for 52 percent of the Earth's surface.
And when you look at their logo,
it shows an eagle over
the Aleutian Islands
with one tail coming down
somewhere near Seattle
and the other coming
down right over Beijing.
So Beijing looks at a network of bases,
a real archipelago of empire
that's been built up since the Korean War.
- You have had and still have
an arc of bases that start in Australia
and go through the Pacific--
- No.
We have no bases in Australia.
- You have Pine Gap, you have Darwin--
- No.
- And you have a new facility
in Western Australia.
- No, to speak precisely,
we have no military bases in Australia.
What we do is is operate
with and in Australian bases.
But we're not in the
basing business nowadays.
- There's a growing collection
of what are referred to as
"lilypad bases."
These are bases that have
typically two, 300 troops,
no family members, very few amenities,
and they are often quite secretive.
They are bases that are
frequently constructed
within a foreign country's
base to disguise it
and generally are not
referred to as bases.
- [John Narrating] Many of
these bases have been set up
to combat China's worldwide
economic influence.
From these bases, the United
States operates a secret army
in 147 countries.
- If you're gonna be a free country
rather than give in to every
gangster regime in the world,
you're gonna have to take a risk.
'Cause the gangsters,
they want to eliminate
good people in the world so they can--
and in China, they want to
dominate all of the Far East,
they want to dominate.
Just like Japan wanted
to before World War Two.
Their goal was to dominate
that part of the world.
Today, because there's been no
political reform in Beijing,
these guys want to dominate
a huge chunk of the planet.
(mumbles)
- [John Narrating] Andrew
Krepinevich served on
America's National Defense Panel.
He's a military strategist
and war planner.
- You've written that
airstrikes and naval blockades
have a role to play in punishing China.
You've described the need for sea mines.
You've described the
need for special forces,
US Special Forces, and
missiles placed on islands.
This sounds like a preparation for war.
- Our first president, George Washington,
said that if you want
peace, prepare for war.
And essentially what the
United States is doing again
is responding to provocative
behavior on the part of China.
And just as we did in the Cold War,
the idea was to have a
position of military strength
such that your adversaries
were not tempted
to act in aggressive ways or
try and employ coercion to get their way.
- Just last week the US Navy
sent a guided missile destroyer
into the Spratly Islands,
the South China Sea.
And what was different
about this, I think,
was that Chinese fighters scrambled.
That sounds like an escalator.
- Well again, from an
American prospective,
the escalation was that the Chinese
beginning to militarize these
islands in the first place,
moving its military capabilities
down into that region,
engaging in provocative behavior against
the commercial activities
and military forces of
other minor countries in the region
that have claim to those islands.
So it's a response to
Chinese intimidation rather--
- Excuse me, how is
commerce being intimidated
in the South China Sea?
- There have been no military forces,
no military bases there.
The Chinese--
- Except the United States military base.
- Not in the South China Sea.
Not even in the Philippines because
the United States withdrew
its forces in the Philippines.
- But the United States is
back in the Philippines.
- The Philippines and the
United States have announced
five different locations
scattered all throughout
the Philippines where US troops will
be stationed on a rotational basis.
- [John Narrating] This
threat to China from yet more
US bases on its doorstep was not an issue
when an arbitration tribunal
ruled against China's claims
to the strategic Spratly
Islands in the South China Sea.
In 2015, the US Navy rehearsed a blockade
that would cut China's lifelines of oil
and trade and raw materials.
The danger of confrontation
grows by the day.
- The US Navy is on the doorstep of China
regardless of disputed islands
and is there with low-draft ships,
planes, battle groups.
It's right on the doorsteps.
What of Chinese ships?
What if the equivalent was off California?
- Well John, we ask ourselves
that question regularly.
And it's important to put
yourself in the other guy's shoes.
So look.
We don't operate in the
Pacific in an effort
to scare China, to contain
China, to backfoot China.
Our operations and our presence,
first of all, is warmly
welcomed by the vast majority
of the coastal states, but secondly,
is fully accepted by the Chinese.
Time after time--
- Excuse me, is it fully accepted?
- Yes, by their words.
The Chinese leaders--
- [John] My impression
is that they're scared.
- [John Narrating] And this
is what they're scared of.
A noose of bases right around China.
Missiles, bombers, drones, warships.
A provocation of war.
- Today, I state clearly
and with conviction.
America's commitment to
seek the peace and security
of a world without nuclear weapons.
(cheering)
- [John Narrating] Under Obama,
nuclear warhead spending has risen higher
than under any president
since the end of the Cold War.
- It's all a magician's show because
at the same time that Obama
is talking about that,
not only is he spending a trillion dollars
to modernize US nuclear forces,
but he's deploying these
missile defense systems
to encircle Russia and China,
which makes it impossible to
get rid of nuclear
weapons in that climate.
- Everybody wants to
look like they're tough.
See, I gotta be tough.
I'm not afraid of doing anything military.
I'm not afraid of threatening.
I'm a hairy-chested gorilla.
And you don't want to
look like you're weak,
so what you do is you talk
more and more aggressively
and if you don't want to do it yourself,
because you maybe think it
doesn't look very presidential,
you let somebody under you do the talking.
And the United States has
gotten into a situation
where there's a lot of
military saber-rattling
and it's really being
orchestrated from the top.
- Yeah, that seems incredibly
dangerous, all of this.
- That's an understatement,
I think, but I agree.
- When you routinely plan for mass murder,
you become conditioned to it.
That's what this is.
We accept it.
Oh yeah, we have nuclear weapons.
- The Defense Secretary has just announced
that there will be
warships and special forces
and planes sent to the Philippines
and the Wall Street Journal
has described this as
"the vanguard of a major US
presence in Southeast Asia."
That sounds like--
- Where does this end?
What's the purpose?
I mean, where are we
going to stop this process
before it starts a war?
And then if the war starts,
where does that end?
America, America
God shed his grace on me
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea
(wind howls)
The scientific studies that
I teach by the scientists
that predict that the Earth can be made
essentially uninhabitable
from nuclear war,
the scientists have been begging
the Obama administration--
well, they wouldn't say begging.
But they have made multiple requests
to meet with them and
discuss these predictions
because they're peer-reviewed studies
and they've been turned
down over and over again.
They've been peripherally told that,
well we don't think the long-term
environmental consequences of nuclear war
are all that important
if the immediate effects
of nuclear war don't stop it.
That the long-term environmental
consequences of nuclear war
are liable to wipe out the human race.
- [John] In one exchange,
nuclear exchange between the US and China,
what could be the consequences?
- Well let me just give you an example
of what one Chinese four
or five megaton warhead
would do to a city in the
United States if it got through.
The detonation of that weapon over a city
would instantly ignite about
six or 700 square miles on fire.
And within 20 to 30 minutes,
all of those fires would coalesce
into a single gigantic firestorm.
There would be no escape from it.
So all the people there would perish.
So the US, with say,
hundreds of nuclear
weapons on Chinese cities.
When you combine all the smoke
from these nuclear weapons detonating,
it actually creates
millions of tons of smoke.
Black carbon smoke that'll
rise above cloud level
into the stratosphere,
it's heated by the sun,
it acts like a solar collector.
And that smoke, because of that,
will stay there for 10 years or longer.
And what the smoke does is it blocks
warming sunlight from reaching
the surface of the earth
and it becomes so cold in a
matter of just a couple of weeks
that the temperature
will fall below freezing
every day for one to three years.
And it will become too
cold to grow food crops
for at least 10 years or longer.
(wind howls)
- I mean, there's a total disconnect
with the changing world.
You have a giant rising
power, in this case, China.
Why would you expect a giant rising power
to not want to have more
control over its destiny?
What we should be doing in my view
is trying to cultivate a sense
of friendship and cooperation
and we can have our differences with them.
If we think they're
doing something in trade
that we don't like, let's
have it out with them.
But this saber-rattling is
the worst thing we can possibly do.
(cheering)
- It is time to show the whole world
that America is back.
Bigger, and better, and
stronger than ever before.
We don't have victories anymore.
We used to have victories,
but we don't have 'em.
When was the last time
anybody saw us beating,
let's say China?
In a trade deal, they kill us.
We can't continue to allow China
to rape our country, and
that's what they're doing.
It's the greatest theft in
the history of the world.
(audience cheers)
- [John Narrating] The new
president, Donald Trump,
has a problem with China.
The urgent question now is,
will Trump continue with the provocations
revealed in this film and take
us all to the edge of war?
- There never have been two countries
more interdependent on each other
than China and the US in history.
And China is the largest trading nation
in the world and in history.
So China's economy and their
societies, their lives,
are linked to the entire world.
Including America and the West
and all the other countries.
So I think interdependence
between these two countries
and among all the nations of the world,
speak to peace.
(gentle music)
- [John Narrating] We don't
have to accept the word
of those who conjure up
threats and false enemies
to justify the business and profit of war
if we recognize there
is another superpower,
and that's us.
Ordinary people everywhere,
like the people of Okinawa,
Jeju Island, the Marshall Islands,
China, the United States.
By speaking out, they deliver
a warning to all of us.
Can we really afford to be silent?
We'll meet again
Don't know where, don't know when
But I know we'll meet again
Some sunny day
Keep smiling through
Just like you always do
'Til the blue skies
drive the dark clouds
Far away
So will you please say hello
To the folks that I know
Tell them I won't be long
They'll be happy to know
That as you saw me go
I was singing this song
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again
Some sunny day
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again
Some sunny day
Keep smiling through
Just like you always do
'Til the blue skies drive
the dark clouds far away
So will you please say hello
To the folks that I know
Tell them I won't be long
They'll be happy to know
That as you saw me go
I was singing this song
We'll meet again
Don't know where
Don't know when
But I know we'll meet again
Some sunny day