Now, they're a big power. They are probably, as I said, the biggest economic power in the world now. So they're going to expand. But no one wants expansion in military terms, because it's dangerous. And that's what US expansion is. Unless the world is run the way the US wants it run, they get the US Navy. That used to be known as gunboats. And people used to wear pith helmets. They don't need more. They wear rather more frightening uniforms and they have rather more frightening weapons.
Thom Hartmann: Indeed. I, in fact I was recently in Kenya and South Sudan and up on the border with Darfur. I was amazed, the Chinese economic presence in that part of Africa.
There, you mentioned in the last block, we both mentioned that we both remember the Cold War. I remember the "duck and cover" in the 1950s in elementary school here in the United States. At that time I don't think we knew about nuclear winter. You can correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think that the knowledge of that came along more like in the sixties or seventies. But you reference this in your film. There's something here in your film that I just found shocking. I'd like to play this clip.
"The scientific studies that I teach by the scientists that predict that the earth can be made essentially uninhabitable for nuclear war. The scientists have been begging the Obama administration, well, they wouldn't say begging, but they've made multiple requests to meet with him and discuss these predictions because they're peer-reviewed studies and they've been turned down over and over again."
Thom Hartmann: Now, was that because it's just conventional wisdom already or is there some denial here? What's going on?
John Pilger: That's a denial. That's a denial. That's Steven Starr who is an expert on this field. He is not giving an opinion, he's stating what everybody knows would happen. He says that, you know, smoke would cover the earth with one exchange between China and the US and it will be too cold for 10 years to grow food crops. Now, this information, this information has been known for a very long time but there is a denial. You're right. And, you know, if that denial is admitted, an entire industry then is threatened. What was it, in 2014 there were federal grants of 444 billion dollars to arms manufacturers. The complex, the great complex, whatever it's called, national security, military-industrial, but this great landscape of armaments and war-making and intelligence that really runs the United States and especially now with the Pentagon long in the ascendancy. And look at Donald Trump's cabinet, looks like a cabinet of generals to me.
You know, that inherent part of the US, the reality of the US, is threatened by this, because without a threat I think as James Bradley says at the beginning of the film, 'without a threat, what does it do?'
Thom Hartmann: Yeah. It's a remarkable, an absolutely remarkable piece of filmmaking that you have done here, John. In, we just have 10 seconds. Are you optimistic or concerned?
John Pilger: Oh, I'm optimistic, because the film shows a fantastic resistance in Okinawa, in Korea, in the Marshall Islands. You know, we have so much, these are island people who are resisting this.
Thom Hartmann: Yeah.
John Pilger: It's actually quite an optimistic film.
Thom Hartmann: That's great. That's great. John Pilger, thank you so much.
John Pilger: Thank you.
Thom Hartmann: "The Coming War On China" premieres tomorrow night at 9pm Eastern exclusively here in the United States on RT America.
And that's the way it is tonight. Don't forget, democracy is not a spectator sport. Get out there, get active. Tag, you're it!
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