The USA’s decades long war against China: Part I

The iconic photo of the "tank man", taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, which consecrated the account of the Tiananmen events peddled by the Western media, portraying them as a massacre of peaceful demonstrators.

Fast forward to 1989 and Tiananmen Square

In one of those fortuitous discoveries of the time I happened on a small sideline article buried on page A20 of The Vancouver Sun dated September 17, 1992 and attributed to the Associated Press. It was a one and only printing which obviously escaped the Gatekeepers that offer us "the only news fit to print." The article was titled: "TIANANMEN - CIA man misread reaction, sources say." [1]

Forget the title. All titles are created by someone other than the writer and often have little connection to the content of the story. In this case the story was extremely indispensable to truth, and this AP story was a real eye-opener, so far as truth is concerned. The article starts like this:

"The CIA STATION chief in China left the country two days before Chinese troops attacked demonstrators in the capital Beijing in 1989, after predicting the military would not act, U.S. officials said...The Central Intelligence Agency had sources among protestors, as well as within China’s intelligence services with which it enjoyed a close relationship since the 1970s, said the officials, who spoke this week on condition of anonymity."

Much more than "sources" however, were the methods being implemented to cause overthrow of the country’s communist leadership, continuing a decades long history.

Is this what a peaceful protestor looks like...? Jeff Widener / Associated Press / June 3, 1989

The article continues:

"For months before the June 3 attack on the demonstrators, the CIA had been helping student activists form the anti-government movement, providing typewriters, facsimile machines and other equipment to help them spread their message, said one official. (Emphasis added) The CIA declined all comment."

A further article in The Vancouver Sun dated May 31, 1999 and attributed to the Washington Post [2] came shortly after US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. It was an official response to constant US anti-China commentary surrounding the western version of events in Tiananmen. The article starts as follows:

"China accused the United States Sunday of inciting the massive democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which rocked Beijing a decade ago, as part of a strategy to promote political chaos in China". (Emphasis added)

The Washington Post indicates what it thinks of such a statement, telling us that it had been made by China’s "rubber-stamp parliament." Naturally we all accept that anything printed by the Post originating from China surely must be delusional, while anything originating from Washington must be beyond doubt. The Post article continues with this statement from the Chinese parliamentary source:

"The United States ’played an inglorious role’ in the 1989 protests by ’directly master-minding schemes and giving money and goods to support those making the disturbance’ the statement said...America also spread ’horrifying rumours by using their media to cheat and hoodwink the international community’ it said.

The Post article seems to deplore any and every bit of information emanating from China, closing by saying,

"The government has continued unrelenting criticism of the United States for the May 7 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which it said was intended to destabilize China". [3]

Imagine that. The Chinese protesting merely because the US bombed its embassy and killed a number of its agents. Imagine a reversal of the situation with China bombing a US embassy somewhere in the world. How long do you think before the B2 bombers would be launched.

Burning vehicles in Beijing

Burned out Armored Personnel Carriers.

Chinese student protestors swarm over a captured PLA tank.

Which brings me to another amazing discovery, actual photos of the CIA’s "students" in their "democracy protest" activities, again disappeared from reality content and shortly thereafter the magazine that printed the photos, China Review, vanishing from the print world altogether. The July 1989 issue contained a number of photographs of violent activity undertaken by the "peaceful" participants - Tanks, personnel carriers, and army trucks demolished and lying in ruins; "students" carrying assault rifles etc. Apparently their CIA training involved more than facsimile machines. [4]

Outside a bus, the body of a soldier burned to death by the rioters.

Body of lynched and burned Chinese soldier hanged from a building by Tiananmen Square.

Burnt down bus and burned to a crisp Chinese soldier.

It so happens that I watched a PBS FRONTLINE documentary in 2006 titled "Tank Man."

Among its participants was Professor Timothy Brook, professor of Chinese History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Professor Brook might as well have worked for the CIA since he was a stalwart promoter of China’s despicable (to him) malfeasance in that docudrama. I managed to reach professor Brook by telephone, certify that I was speaking to the right man, and asked if he knew of the CIA’s involvement in the whole woeful affair, and the destruction of a large part of the PLA’s forces. Professor Brook asserted that no such incident took place. I responded by saying I would mail him copies of my material, which I did. That was the last I would hear from the head of UBC’s China department, demonstrating that the disseminators of information in the university system are very often little but propagandists for western imperialism.

Bombing China’s Embassy

May 7, 1999: the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is bombed ; 3 persons are killed and 20 injured.

Two injured Chinese men sit in an ambulance outside the Chinese embassy after NATO air strikes. Photo by Reuters

On the night of May 7, 1999, three NATO-launched missiles struck a critical corner of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Yugoslavia which contained the intelligence gathering chamber dedicated to electronic eavesdropping. At first the atrocity was attributed by the US to faulty, outdated maps, which didn’t place the embassy in its proper location. That pathetic offering didn’t convince a single person, least of all the Chinese, who exploded in furious reaction over the 26 wounded and three killed in the deliberate attack. Turns out that the CIA had specifically chosen the target which, they claim, was purely accidental due to the outdated maps. It was a "pure coincidence" said an unnamed Pentagon official.

"The mistake here was the original data base. It was outdated. I believe it was a 1992 map when it should have been an up-to-date map." [5]

In Washington, Defense Secretary William Cohen and CIA Director George Tenet issued a joint statement saying that NATO believed the building housed a Yugoslav military facility, not the Chinese Embassy.

In further explanation of this obviously fraudulent story the reader is offered the following: "Only after the disaster did the C.I.A. turn up in its files two maps that accurately placed the embassy...A final backup also failed when several computerized databases of sites that were off-limits to bombing, including embassies, hospitals and churches, did not have the current location of the Chinese Embassy." [6] And if you believe any of that come see me. I’ve got a bridge to sell.

Commentary took a different track later in the same year, in October 1999, when The Observer of London challenged the official US account under the heading: Nato Bombed Chinese Deliberately. The article states, inter alia, the following info:

"Nato deliberately bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war in Kosovo after discovering it was being used to transmit Yugoslav army communications. According to senior military and intelligence sources in Europe and the US the Chinese embassy was removed from a prohibited targets list after Nato electronic intelligence (Elint) detected it sending army signals to Milosevic’s forces. A NATO flight control officer in Naples also confirmed to us that a map of ‘non-targets’: churches, hospitals and embassies, including the Chinese, did exist. On this ‘don’t hit’ map, the Chinese embassy was correctly located at its current site, and not where it had been until 1996 - as claimed by the US and NATO." [7]

If, however, the NATO gang does have such a "non-target" list as earlier cited, then why did they bomb so many hospitals, rest homes, churches, schools and other civilian sites? A historic study of NATO-inflicted terror establishes beyond doubt its criminal contempt for civilians wherever its military apparatus is unleashed against the world. On the same day that the Chinese embassy was struck NATO bombers also struck Nis, the third largest city in Yugoslavia, bombing a hospital and an outdoor market filled with civilians, "killing 15 people and wounding 70."

The magnitude of a cluster bomb by the city of Nis, 1999

Journalists were taken to Nis, an industrial city 195 kilometres southeast of Belgrade, to view the devastation from the cluster-bomb attack, which hit a market and a hospital complex...Buildings were pockmarked from the bombs, which release explosives that then explode again [releasing smaller bomblets that fan out to kill over a wide radius, scattering the explosives indiscriminately and turning the bombing ground into a monstrous killing field]. [8]

After a lengthy study of the embassy bombing, I find the Observer account of why NATO struck the embassy to be lacking in authenticity. Why would the Chinese pass communications from the capital to Yugoslav troops in the field? What would they gain from so doing? I believe there is a more credible explanation.

The actual reason for the bombing was meant to cover-up NATO war crimes that were taking place almost daily, and the Chinese listening post located in the corner of the embassy that was bombed were intercepting orders issued by NATO which clearly revealed those crimes. The Chinese needed to be silenced and their operations ended, no matter the fallout. Take, for instance, that refugee column of Kosovo Albanians exiting the region on tractors and horse-carriages. The column that the US and NATO bombed, killing dozens. As the Toronto Globe and Mail reports:

Last Wednesday, Yugoslav authorities said NATO planes had killed more than 60 Kosovo Albanians in an attack on a refugee column. A road strewn with refugee bodies was shown on Serbian television and foreign journalists were escorted to the site to film the carnage. Serb television last night revealed extracts of what it called a taped conversation of a NATO pilot being ordered to attack a civilian convoy in Kosovo last week despite seeing only cars and tractors. It said the conversation was between the pilot and an early warning radar plane [AWACS]. The extract covered the critical moment when the pilot identified the convoy. Asked if there were any tanks in the convoy, he said he could see only cars and tractors. But the other plane responds "This is a military target, a completely legitimate military target. Destroy the target..." [9].

That, I believe, is why the listening post was destroyed. The ability to intercept NATO communications was far more damaging to NATO’s credibility than any other purported reason. AWACS radar planes guide all NATO bombing runs and the ability to record those communications presents a serious predicament to the war criminals busily attacking those non-targets: hospitals, churches, markets, bridges, industry, TV stations, and virtually every target imaginable.

The Chinese, humbled due to their inability to respond, would pay attention and realize that the US and its satrap partners were giving notice that China was a paper tiger without substance, and that they were on the future chopping block of the imperialist aggressors. This, I believe, is when they began to seriously devote larger portions of the budget to develop their military forces. It was, Chinese analysts decided, a wake-up call whereby they realized the need for a far greater responsiveness, surely understanding that without a more effective military, their economy and sovereignty would suffer an attack that might even include nuclear weapons.

With Obama’s shift to the Pacific, I believe it’s only a matter of time!