China Now 30-12: Chinese authorities' response to December 18 earthquake
The China Now special program informs about this country's news. This episode analyzes analyzes the effects of the earthquake that hit China on December 18 and the response of the authorities, the technological advances of that nation, Japan's increased military spending and other topics. The second segment includes an interview with Jan Oberg, political science academic and researcher, on Yugoslavia and peace. teleSUR
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00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 - Hello, Telecity English presents
00:10 a new episode of China Now.
00:12 We made this production a show cast
00:14 as a culture technology and politics of the Asian giant.
00:17 On December the 18th at 2359 local time,
00:20 a 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit Shijishan County
00:23 in Linxia, Gansu province with a depth of 10 kilometers.
00:28 Then on December 22, the earthquake has resulted
00:31 in 22 deaths and 198 injuries.
00:35 Now we step up in technologies
00:36 in a significant recognition
00:38 of China's technological advancements.
00:40 The country's space station project
00:42 and the Harmony OS have been selected
00:45 as part of the global top 10 engineering achievements
00:48 for 2023, let's see.
00:49 - China Current is a weekly news talk show
00:54 from China to the world.
00:56 We cover viral news about China every week
00:58 and also give you the newest updates
01:00 on China's cutting edge technologies.
01:03 Let's get started.
01:04 (upbeat music)
01:07 - Hi, welcome to China Current, I'm Chris.
01:15 At 1159 PM on December 18th,
01:18 a 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit Jishishan County
01:22 in Linxia, Gansu province with a depth of 10 kilometers.
01:26 The quake was distinctly felt in several parts
01:28 of the Northwestern China,
01:30 including Lanzhou in Gansu province,
01:32 Xi'an in Shaanxi province,
01:34 Wuzhong in Linxia Hui Autonomous Region
01:36 and Xining in Qinghai province.
01:39 The affected area is known for its high altitude
01:42 and the recent cold waves sweeping across Northern China
01:45 has led to nighttime temperatures
01:46 plummeting to negative 14 degrees Celsius.
01:50 Emergency response teams have been dispatched promptly.
01:53 Minister of Emergency Management, Wang Xiangxi,
01:55 Director of China Earthquake Administration, Mingyi Ren
01:59 and Director of National Fire Rescue Bureau,
02:01 Chongze rushed to the quake hit area in the early hours
02:05 to oversee and support the earthquake relief effort
02:08 in Gansu.
02:09 As of December 20th,
02:11 the earthquake has resulted in 22 deaths and 198 injuries
02:15 in Qinghai's Haidong City with 12 missing.
02:19 In Gansu, 113 deaths and 782 injuries have been reported.
02:24 A 4.1 magnitude aftershock occurred on December 21st
02:28 in Jishishan County.
02:29 As of 9 a.m. on December 20th,
02:32 the earthquake has caused the collapse of 14,939 houses
02:37 and damaged to 207,204 houses in Gansu,
02:42 affecting 37,160 households and 145,736 individuals.
02:48 As of 19th, power supply has been restored
02:51 across the earthquake affected areas
02:53 and all major highways, including expressways
02:56 and national and provincial trunk roads,
02:58 are fully accessible.
03:00 The Gansu Provincial Seismic and Disaster Relief Headquarters
03:03 announced on the 20th that the rescue operations in Gansu
03:07 have mostly concluded.
03:08 The focus will now shift towards providing medical treatment
03:11 to the injured and ensure displaced residents
03:14 are adequately accommodated.
03:16 Currently, a total of 87,076 individuals
03:19 have been temporarily relocated to safe areas in Gansu.
03:23 19 medical assistance teams,
03:25 comprising 667 personnel and 99 ambulances,
03:29 were dispatched by provincial, prefecture,
03:31 and county authorities to conduct triage
03:34 and provide medical treatment.
03:36 Furthermore, efforts have been made to swiftly relocate
03:38 and provide temporary shelter to the affected population.
03:42 To date, a total of 20,457 households
03:45 comprising 87,076 individuals
03:48 have been successfully relocated.
03:51 Emergency relief supplies, including tents, blankets,
03:54 tent lights, folding beds, and moisture-proof mats,
03:57 amounting to 128,830 items have been deployed.
04:02 Authorities continue to monitor the situation closely
04:05 and provide necessary support to the affected population.
04:09 The earthquake has brought immense hardship
04:11 to the people of Gansu and Qinghai provinces,
04:14 but a collective resilience and determined efforts
04:16 of the rescue teams and support organizations
04:19 offer a glimmer of hope in the face of adversity.
04:22 China urgently deployed various high-tech systems
04:25 to bolster emergency response operations.
04:28 State-of-the-art equipments
04:30 like domestically built Y-20 strategic airlifter,
04:33 satellite imagery, and specialized drones
04:36 rushed to the disaster zone,
04:37 showcasing nationwide coordination.
04:40 Within hours after tremors severed infrastructure links,
04:43 the hulking Y-20 took flight from an airbase
04:46 holding the Western Theater Command's frontline coordinators
04:49 along with 14 tons of vehicles and supplies.
04:53 Its spacious hold and hefty capacity
04:55 are well-suited for ferry and bulky relief goods here.
04:59 But hardware alone cannot survey the damage.
05:01 Timely eyes in the sky proved equally vital.
05:05 Once the shaking subsided,
05:06 Beijing marshaled an ensemble of civil observation satellites
05:10 to snapshot earthquake conditions,
05:12 prioritizing target areas to automated systems
05:15 flagged for their detailed potential.
05:17 Stitching visual data from various commercial,
05:20 military, and dual-use platforms
05:22 enabled quicker routing of response units
05:25 through treacherous terrain.
05:26 Officials credited space assets
05:28 for highlighting impassable roads plus displaced residents.
05:32 Specialized drones then filled blind spots
05:34 across the mountains.
05:36 An emergency variant of the medium-altitude,
05:38 long-endurance, wing-long prototype
05:40 directly flew from Sichuan to scout the epicenter.
05:44 Its versatility in bridging communication
05:46 could mean isolated villages.
05:48 Communication is available first via the robot.
05:51 They were not just for scouting,
05:52 but also served as aerial platforms,
05:55 relaying high-definition video to the affected areas
05:57 to the command center in real time.
06:00 This function was crucial for extending the reach
06:02 of the rescue efforts,
06:04 providing commanders with up-to-date visual information
06:06 from regions that the ground teams
06:08 couldn't immediately access.
06:10 Remarkably, vital infrastructure repairs
06:13 were completed rapidly,
06:15 even as technology aids continued flooding in.
06:18 Just a day after landslides obstructed roads and power lines,
06:22 state-run utilities announced a traffic restoration
06:25 and electricity revival for worst-hit counties.
06:28 The initial progress enabled more conventional assistance
06:31 to press deeper towards settlements cut off by debris.
06:34 Currently, the focus shifted from urgent rescue
06:37 to treatment and resettlement
06:39 after teams scoured the wreckage for survivors.
06:42 With transport re-established,
06:44 mobile hospitals rotated through makeshift camps
06:46 for the displaced.
06:47 Officials also assessed dangerously correct reservoirs
06:50 to avert flooding amid aftershocks.
06:53 As rehabilitation gathers momentum,
06:55 they say the high-tech edge improved response time
06:58 and effectiveness despite the deadly disaster's scale.
07:02 Next up, on December 16th,
07:05 Kyoto News Agency reported that Fumio Kishida
07:08 is seeking to raise Japan's military budget
07:10 for 2024 to 7.7 trillion yen,
07:14 marking the 10th consecutive year
07:16 of record-breaking military spending.
07:18 The allocated funds will primarily be utilized
07:20 for procuring long-range missiles
07:22 capable of targeting military installations
07:24 in foreign territories.
07:26 Additionally, Japan also intends to establish
07:28 a military research institute to develop offensive weapons,
07:32 including next-generation fighter jets.
07:34 Martin Nataligawa, former Minister of Foreign Affairs
07:37 of Indonesia, highlighted the contradiction
07:40 between the Japanese government's persistent claims
07:43 of avoiding military power status
07:45 since its defeat in World War II and its current actions.
07:49 Da Zhigang, director of China's
07:50 Northeast Asia Studies Institute,
07:52 observed that Japan's concentration
07:54 on deploying military forces to the southwestern islands,
07:58 particularly targeting China's Diaoyu Islands,
08:00 suggests an intention to involve itself
08:02 in the Taiwan question.
08:04 On December 18th, the China Coast Guard
08:07 conducted a patrol within China's territorial waters
08:09 surrounding the Diaoyu Islands.
08:11 China has maintained garrison on these islands
08:14 since as early as 1171,
08:16 historically considering the Diaoyu Islands
08:18 as its first line of defense against maritime threats.
08:22 On the other hand, according to a Kyoto News poll on Sunday,
08:25 the support rate for Fumio Kishida's cabinet
08:27 fell to a new low of 22.3%,
08:31 while that for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party
08:33 slipped below 30% for the first time
08:35 since its return to power more than a decade ago.
08:38 Next up, on technology.
08:40 In a significant recognition
08:41 of China's technological advancements,
08:43 the country's space station project and Harmony OS
08:47 have been selected as part of the global
08:49 top 10 engineering achievements for 2023.
08:52 The announcement was made by the Chinese Academy of Engineering
08:55 and other institutions in Beijing.
08:57 These achievements highlight groundbreaking projects
09:00 and technological innovations that have potential
09:02 to shape various industries and benefit society as a whole.
09:06 Among the notable engineering fits included in the list are
09:10 Chad GPT, China Space Station,
09:13 Exascos supercomputer,
09:14 Baihetan hydropower station,
09:16 dual asteroid redirection test,
09:19 the new malaria vaccine,
09:20 Harmony OS,
09:21 Spot and Atlas robots,
09:23 lithium-ion powered batteries,
09:25 unmanned aerial vehicles.
09:27 China's space station project
09:29 and the Harmony OS operating system
09:31 showcase the nation's commitment
09:32 to technological advancement and innovation.
09:35 These achievements further solidify China's presence
09:38 in the global engineering landscape,
09:40 highlighting the country's contributions
09:42 to science progress and technological breakthroughs.
09:45 As China continues to make strides
09:47 in various fields of engineering,
09:49 these accolades underscore the country's dedication
09:52 to pushing boundaries and shaping the future of technology
09:55 on a global scale.
09:57 Next up, AI.
09:58 According to official Chinese statistical data,
10:01 the market size of China's large language model sector
10:04 is anticipated to surge to 13.23 billion yuan by 2023,
10:09 with a remarkable growth rate of 110%.
10:13 The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology
10:15 reports that there are currently more than 19 LLM
10:19 research and development firms in China.
10:22 By 2023, the adoption rate
10:24 of generative artificial intelligence technologies
10:26 in Chinese enterprises is projected to hit 15%,
10:30 resulting in an estimated market scale
10:32 of around 1.44 trillion yuan.
10:35 Notably, the manufacturing, retail, telecommunications,
10:39 and healthcare sectors have witnessed rapid growth
10:41 in the utilization of generative AI.
10:44 Projections indicate that by 2035,
10:47 generative AI is poised to contribute nearly 19 trillion yuan
10:51 in economic value globally,
10:52 with China's share surpassing an impressive 30 trillion yuan.
10:57 Next up, on December 19th,
10:59 Thailand's Royal 50-hour Group filed a lawsuit
11:02 seeking 10 billion Thai baht,
11:04 or around 286 million US dollars,
11:07 in compensation from China's Luckin Coffee.
11:10 The Royal 50-hour Group claims to have registered
11:12 the Luckin trademark in Thailand in 2020
11:15 for operating coffee shops
11:16 before Luckin Coffee expanded overseas.
11:19 The court initially ruled in favor of Luckin,
11:22 considering it a case of malicious registration,
11:24 but the Royal 50-hour Group contested the ruling
11:27 and ultimately won the case.
11:28 Luckin now awaits verification of details
11:31 in its statement announced on December 20th.
11:34 Luckin Coffee's overseas expansion
11:36 reflects the rapid growth of China's coffee industry
11:38 in recent years.
11:40 In a report released in early December,
11:42 China now has the most chain coffee shops in the world
11:45 with a 58% annual growth rate,
11:47 surpassing the US among the emerging coffee chains.
11:51 Luckin contributed significantly to the growth,
11:54 opening over 5,000 shops in a year.
11:57 In August, Luckin announced its quarterly revenue
11:59 of $852 million US dollars,
12:02 overtaking Starbucks' $822 million US dollars in China.
12:07 But China's coffee chains, including Luckin,
12:09 face uphill battles from time to time
12:11 in paving their way to the markets.
12:13 Before the trademark lawsuit in Thailand,
12:15 Luckin faced allegation of financial fraud in January 2020.
12:19 Only a half a year after its NASDAQ leasing,
12:22 this leads to 85% drop in its US stock price
12:26 and its mobile app crashed temporarily
12:28 due to overwhelming demand for coupon redemption.
12:31 With changes in management and releases of new products,
12:34 Luckin overcame the obstacles over the next few years
12:37 and now seeks to expand overseas.
12:40 However, for the Chinese coffee chains,
12:41 the trademark lawsuit only marks the beginning
12:44 of the challenges they may encounter
12:45 in entering new markets.
12:47 Well, that's all for today.
12:48 Thank you for watching this episode of China Currents.
12:50 If you have any thoughts and comments about our show,
12:52 please reach us at the email address below.
12:55 I'm Chris, looking forward to hearing from you
12:56 and see you next time.
12:57 We'll go for a short break, but we'll be right back.
13:03 Stay with us.
13:03 (upbeat music)
13:09 (upbeat music)
13:12 Welcome back to China Now.
13:23 In this second segment, we have first hold
13:25 with the story of Captain Lee Semble on May 14, 2008,
13:29 the earthquake that happened in Sichuan province,
13:32 one of the deadliest earthquakes
13:33 that happened to China in decades,
13:35 where 69,000 lives were trialled.
13:38 But over in Thinker's forum,
13:40 we have Jan Orbed, a political scientific academic,
13:43 peace researcher, director of Transnational Foundation
13:47 for Peace and Future Research,
13:48 talking about his large report
13:50 of the dissolution of Yugoslavia
13:53 and why the issue has not happened that way.
13:56 Enjoy.
14:02 A military transport aircraft soared above Maoxian City
14:05 and is patiently waiting for the clouds to break.
14:09 On board is Captain Li Zhenbo,
14:11 and he is making a critical decision.
14:13 That is when he and his 14 crew members
14:17 would jump out of the plane.
14:19 Captain Lee was 48 years old,
14:21 and it has been six years since his last mission.
14:24 He was called back in in an emergency,
14:27 and he doesn't know if he can come out of this alive.
14:30 Every one of them have written down their last words,
14:33 and they are prepared to die.
14:35 Suddenly, the thick layers of clouds parted,
14:38 revealing a glimpse of the world below
14:40 for the first time in two days.
14:43 Everything was destroyed.
14:45 Houses were collapsed,
14:46 and beneath them are 100,000 people trapped.
14:50 Without any hesitation,
14:52 the 15 soldiers plunged from an altitude of 5,000 metres.
14:57 They free fell for over 1,000 metres.
14:59 They had no ground markers to guide them.
15:02 They didn't know where they were landing.
15:04 They didn't know how the weather might change.
15:06 And the only thing they could rely on is their instincts.
15:09 The parachute opened just in time,
15:11 and thankfully, only Captain Lee and one other soldier
15:14 suffered from minor injuries.
15:16 The rest touched down safely.
15:19 In 2008, China was hit
15:21 with the deadliest earthquake in decades.
15:23 It was eight in magnitude.
15:25 Nearly 69,000 lives were tragically lost.
15:29 The earthquake happened in Sichuan province,
15:31 a region with an average altitude of about 2,700 metres.
15:36 There were towering mountains to the north
15:38 and torrential rains to the south.
15:40 Raoxing City is 40 kilometres away
15:43 from the epicentre, Wenchuan.
15:45 Water supply, electricity,
15:47 roads and communication signals were all cut off.
15:50 It became an island and lost connection
15:53 to the outside world.
15:55 Life is ticking away,
15:56 and parachuting was the only way to send help.
15:59 And that was how desperate it was.
16:01 Fast forward to today, 15 years later,
16:05 another major earthquake struck China,
16:07 this time in Gansu province.
16:10 But this time, Captain Lee's successors
16:12 did not have to risk their lives
16:13 by jumping from 5,000 metres high.
16:17 At 11.59pm on December 18th, 2023,
16:21 a 6.2 magnitude earthquake hit Jishishan County.
16:25 Tragically, the earthquake resulted in at least 135 deaths,
16:29 hundreds wounded and thousands in need of relocation
16:32 in the cold that is -15 degrees Celsius.
16:36 This time, instead of relying on parachuting,
16:38 Wing Loong 2H drones was enlisted
16:41 for the detection task of disaster relief.
16:44 Its cameras detected partially collapsed homes
16:47 and buildings, damaged infrastructures
16:49 and fallen power lines in high definition footage
16:52 and revealed vital clues in the aftermath.
16:55 These real-time images are passed on directly
16:57 to command centres to ensure maximum support
17:00 for frontline rescue operations and aid distributions.
17:04 But that's not all, the Wing Loong 2H
17:06 also is an aerial communications hub.
17:09 It works to restore mobile network
17:11 for a 50 square kilometre area,
17:13 so people in need can call for assistance.
17:16 For two days straight, the drones surveyed the county,
17:18 accumulating over 20 hours of valuable data.
17:22 It overcomes two challenges.
17:24 One, it can go where rescue workers cannot physically access
17:27 and two, it allows information to flow from impacted areas.
17:32 These drones also communicated closely with the satellites.
17:36 As soon as the tremors were felt,
17:38 the country's remote sensing satellites
17:40 started to snap aerial images of the quake zone.
17:43 The detailed pictures revealed damage
17:45 across wide stretches of terrain in stunning clarity.
17:49 You could make out collapsed buildings,
17:51 landslides that cut off roads and lakes dammed by rubble.
17:55 This initial assessment from above helped response team
17:59 to understand the full scale of devastation on the ground.
18:03 For more when needed,
18:04 the Ministry of Emergency Management
18:06 activated a special emergency protocol
18:09 involving China's leading space agencies and companies.
18:13 Over a dozen civilian and commercial satellites
18:16 were enlisted for the immediate task
18:18 of imaging the affected areas.
18:21 GALFON, Environment, Jilin and other optical satellites
18:24 shifted their orbit to photograph the disaster screen
18:28 from multiple angles and high resolution.
18:31 One such satellite, GALFON-1B, continued to hoover overhead.
18:35 The images it produced are updated regularly,
18:38 allowing authorities to monitor secondary impacts
18:41 as the recovery unfolds.
18:43 Landslides remain a threat as wet season set in,
18:46 so the satellite sentinels keep careful watch from the skies.
18:50 Within hours, Y-20 took flights from an airbase
18:54 howling the Western Theater Command's frontline coordinators
18:58 along with 14 tons of vehicles and supplies.
19:01 In the aftermath of this devastating earthquake,
19:04 relief workers faced the challenging task of providing aid
19:07 in remote areas impacted by the disaster.
19:11 With infrastructure damage and darkness falling,
19:13 how can they ensure the safety and welfare of the survivors?
19:18 Conventional floodlights are bulky
19:20 and use a lot of power.
19:22 They are also difficult to transport across wrecked roads.
19:26 But the multi-rotor drones can fly freely,
19:28 dispersing bright LED beams
19:30 across entire settlement points from above.
19:34 These searchlight-equipped drones hoovered overhead
19:36 like man-made stars.
19:38 Dozens have been deployed to illuminate temporary tent cities.
19:42 They're powered by generators on the ground.
19:44 A single drone's factory lasts over eight hours,
19:47 illuminating an area the size of two football fields.
19:51 Even in harsh conditions, their powerful light stays on.
19:54 With darkness no longer being an obstacle,
19:57 recovery efforts can continue at night.
20:00 Just a day after, it was announced that traffic was restored
20:03 and electricity came back on for the worst-hit regions.
20:07 This initial progress enabled more conventional assistance
20:10 to press deeper towards the settlement
20:12 that was cut off by debris.
20:15 The focus of relief work was then shifted from urgent rescue
20:19 to treatment and resettlement of survivors.
20:22 With transport re-established,
20:24 mobile hospitals and canteens rotated through makeshift camps.
20:29 It is clear that the high-tech edge improved response time
20:32 and effectiveness despite the deadly disaster.
20:36 The earthquake has brought immense hardship
20:38 to the people of Gansu and Qinghai provinces,
20:41 but the collective resilience and determined efforts
20:43 from the rescue team and support organisations
20:46 offered a glimmer of hope in the face of adversity.
20:50 And that is all for this year's Threshold.
20:52 We will see you in 2024.
20:55 I'm a PhD in sociology from way back in time
21:02 at Lund University in South Sweden.
21:05 So I'm a social scientist
21:07 and I've specialised all my academic life on peace studies.
21:12 '74 was my first visit to Yugoslavia
21:15 and I think I've been there about 100 times since then,
21:18 back and forth doing missions, writing about it.
21:20 We produced in my foundation
21:22 the largest ever report written about Yugoslavia's dissolution
21:27 and why it should not have happened that way.
21:30 It fell apart for a lot of reasons.
21:31 If you want the 30-second short one,
21:33 this was a group marriage.
21:35 Group marriages are difficult.
21:38 The West exploited the fragmentation
21:40 that they could use in, if you will, history's traumas.
21:47 I mean, both the Croats and the Serbs
21:50 and the Bosnian Muslims have their traumas
21:53 from the Second World War
21:54 where thousands of people were killed.
21:57 So they could have been, if you will,
22:00 saved by different Western policies
22:03 if that was what the West wanted,
22:05 but the West always wanted to split.
22:08 Divide et impera, split and rule.
22:12 Divide and rule.
22:14 And so they saw the possibility
22:17 of getting all these small republics,
22:20 which they could rule and one by one
22:22 get into the European Union and then NATO.
22:26 Something that should never have been done.
22:28 It was painful for many of us who knew Yugoslavia,
22:30 loved Yugoslavia, I consider it my third country,
22:33 to see what happened without any knowledge
22:38 about the complexity because Yugoslavia is,
22:42 was probably intellectually
22:46 the most complex conflict anywhere on earth.
22:51 And it's characterized with,
22:53 if you do a little thing here,
22:56 it will have repercussions here throughout Yugoslavia.
22:59 They didn't understand that.
23:00 They didn't understand the autonomy solutions
23:04 that Kosovo was part of,
23:06 autonomous province part of Serbia,
23:08 like Vojvodina was an autonomous part of Serbia.
23:13 And so they invented the idea, for instance,
23:15 that Slobodan Milosevic, whom I met
23:17 and carried messages back and forth
23:19 to the Kosovo Albanian leadership forum,
23:23 that he had a genocide going on the Albanian people.
23:27 Clinton went up and said,
23:31 "In Milosevic, we have a new Hitler in Europe."
23:33 And in the moment you say Hitler,
23:35 you know, you can get people to believe anything
23:37 because it's so complex and nobody understands anything.
23:40 There were not five people in the Ministries of Foreign Affairs
23:43 of the European Union who knew anything substantial
23:46 about the complexities of Yugoslavia.
23:49 So everything they did was wrong.
23:51 It's as simple as that.
23:52 Everything they did was wrong.
23:54 They were ignorant.
23:54 They were totally ignorant about the complexities
23:57 of histories, the structures, the economies and all that,
24:00 and how it worked together.
24:02 It was a formidable statesmanship
24:04 to keep Yugoslavia together.
24:06 All the religions, all the nationalities,
24:09 all the histories, all the traumas.
24:12 The solution, of course, was to put in again,
24:14 at already that time, pumping weapons.
24:18 And who did the West pump in weapons to?
24:22 To those who had been with Hitler and Mussolini.
24:26 The Croats, the Bosnian Muslims, and the Kosovo Albanians.
24:33 All had good relations with the Western fascists.
24:38 Serbs were the ones who paid the price, fled to Norway.
24:43 They were the ones who were slaughtered in Jasenovac,
24:47 together with Jews and Gypsies.
24:49 And we didn't side with those because we said,
24:54 Serbs are the bad guys.
24:56 And why are the Serbs the bad guys?
25:00 Because they were the small Russians,
25:03 the wrong Christians, the Orthodox, whom we can't,
25:07 in the Protestant world, can't trust.
25:10 And then they had a dictator.
25:11 His name was Slobodan Milosevic.
25:13 And when we got rid of him, everything
25:15 will be fine in Yugoslavia.
25:16 As stupid a theory as the one says
25:19 that without Muhammad Farah Adid in Somalia,
25:21 everything will be fine in Somalia.
25:23 Without Saddam Hussein in Iraq, everything
25:25 will be fine in Iraq.
25:27 Without Gaddafi in Libya, everything
25:31 will be fine in Libya.
25:32 This obsession with focusing on the top leader
25:36 and thinking if we get rid of him, everything will be fine.
25:38 [MUSIC PLAYING]
25:40 I want to give you a personal story.
25:42 [MUSIC PLAYING]
25:51 In '99, as we know, NATO bombed the hell out of the place
25:57 in order to get a second Albanian state in Europe,
26:00 very unusual, namely Kosovo as an independent state, which,
26:04 of course, is the cradle of Serbia.
26:06 And they wouldn't accept that as an independent state.
26:11 Shortly after that bombing, I had
26:13 a meeting with the then president who
26:14 had taken over after Milosevic.
26:17 His name was Vojislav Kustunica.
26:20 I sat with him in his dark little personal flat
26:26 in Belgrade.
26:28 And he didn't live in a big posh place.
26:30 He said, Jan, I want you to know that we've just
26:33 been told by NATO, who destroyed us a few months ago
26:39 and used depleted uranium weapons,
26:42 we've just been told that we will not
26:43 be able to enter the European Union before we
26:45 become members of NATO.
26:49 Think of the arrogance that you first
26:52 destroy, pulverize a country, cut out a part of it.
26:56 It's much worse than anything Russia has ever done in Ukraine
27:01 and Crimea.
27:03 And then you say, you must become
27:06 a member of our destructive organization
27:09 before you can enter the European Union.
27:12 I think that Yugoslavia maybe could not be kept together,
27:17 but it could have been split in a much more peaceful way.
27:21 And then comes, of course, the very bizarre story,
27:26 as you mentioned, in which the corner of the Chinese embassy
27:30 is slightly outside the center was destroyed.
27:33 And my Serbian friends in Belgrade said at that time,
27:36 we have redefined what CIA is.
27:38 It now stands for Can't Identify Anything.
27:43 Because they allegedly said that it was bombed by mistake.
27:48 And when the bombing started by NATO in Kosovo and Serbia,
27:52 people ran down to Macedonia.
27:54 800,000 disappeared into that.
27:58 And the West tried to tell us--
28:00 I mean, those of us who were there knew it was one big lie--
28:03 tried to tell us that the 800,000 people had
28:06 run from Milosevic's ethnic cleansing.
28:10 Whereas it happened a few days after NATO's bombing
28:13 had started.
28:15 And asking Macedonia first to have destroyed its economy
28:18 thanks to the sanctions, and then take care of 800,000
28:22 refugees, that was enough to destroy that country's,
28:25 let's say, livelihood.
28:27 Did we ever pay compensation?
28:29 Did we ever say we apologize for what we did?
28:35 Strong people, decent people, are
28:38 able to say, I'm sorry.
28:42 But low-level people, less intelligent, less mature
28:47 people, always think that they always do everything right.
28:50 And that's a dangerous philosophy
28:51 for the rest of the world, particularly when you have
28:54 too many guns in your hands.
28:57 It gave me something to reflect about what it
28:59 means to have too much power.
29:01 The Americans have had too much power and never been humble.
29:06 And God forbid anybody of the new multipolar world leaders
29:10 will go the same strange way.
29:12 That because we have succeeded with certain things,
29:15 we are no longer humble.
29:16 The more you succeed and the more power you have,
29:18 the more humble, the more careful, the more thinking
29:23 you should do instead of getting
29:26 to the arrogance of power.
29:28 As we know, China has come into Serbia,
29:31 done very good work there.
29:33 And Serbia is basically part of the Belt and Road Initiative.
29:36 And the interesting thing is, if you look at the railway
29:39 building there, it has gone very nicely in Serbia, which is not
29:42 part of the European Union.
29:44 But the part of the railway up to Budapest
29:47 is not ready yet because of EU bureaucracy.
29:50 So I would advise Mrs. von Leyen to keep her mouth shut
29:54 about international affairs and see to it
29:56 that her own union works.
29:58 And stop talking about Europe because, dear madam,
30:01 you've never been elected.
30:03 You profess to be a leader in a democratic European Union
30:07 with 410 million people, but you've never been elected.
30:12 And many of these leaders, government leaders,
30:14 are war criminals, but they will never be convicted.
30:17 I could give you an example.
30:19 I live in Sweden.
30:19 I haven't done that for more than 50 years.
30:21 But I was born in Denmark, and I have followed Danish politics
30:24 closely all these years.
30:25 It was an extremely peaceful country
30:27 where we used to say, if we disagree about something,
30:30 let's drink a beer and talk.
30:33 In the '90s, something crept in, probably
30:36 because the Social Democratic Party,
30:39 as in all other European countries,
30:41 are no longer social democratic parties,
30:42 but right-wing, militarist-oriented countries--
30:47 powers, or, yeah, countries and governments.
30:50 And in '99, Denmark decided, with a Social Democratic
30:55 and a Liberal Party, to bomb in Yugoslavia, in Belgrade,
31:00 during the dissolution wars of Yugoslavia.
31:04 After that, Denmark has participated
31:06 in bombing in Afghanistan, in Syria, in Iraq.
31:10 It was a main destroyer, together
31:12 with Norway, of Libya, which were way outside the United
31:18 Nations mandate, which was to protect people, basically,
31:22 but they pulverized Libya.
31:24 And then Syria and Iraq again.
31:28 And now the prime minister of Denmark
31:30 is basically a megaphone for Washington.
31:35 Madame Fredriksen was, actually, for a period, a candidate--
31:40 a possible candidate to become NATO Secretary General.
31:43 And you may be aware that the Danish prime minister, Anders
31:49 Fogh Rasmussen, who is, with no doubt,
31:51 the largest Danish non-convicted war criminal,
31:57 made Denmark participate in four years of occupation
32:01 with the Americans of Iraq, against the United Nations,
32:05 against international law.
32:07 He was rewarded for that by the Americans,
32:11 and was a personal friend of the Bush family.
32:13 He was rewarded for that occupation,
32:15 illegal occupation, by becoming a Secretary General of NATO.
32:20 So my little country is among the worst in Europe.
32:24 Why do you so adamantly pursue peace,
32:28 which sounds so unreachable and so idealistic?
32:34 Why do you dedicate your life to that?
32:36 Very sweet of you to ask that question.
32:37 Of course, you may think I had a very unhappy childhood.
32:41 It's not the case.
32:42 Probably I had a very happy childhood.
32:45 No, that has very much to do with having
32:47 met people who persuaded me that this was a better thing to do.
32:51 When I became a sociologist, I thought
32:54 I would work with industrial sociology.
32:56 You know, how do workers work in factories,
32:59 and how do we make them more happy, and things like that.
33:02 But I found out that sociology could
33:04 be used at the global level.
33:07 And before that, I was at a high school in Aarhus, Denmark.
33:12 I think I mentioned that I was born in Denmark.
33:16 And there I had a headmaster of the school who
33:20 was out of the normal.
33:24 And I will always be very grateful to him.
33:27 He would come in and say, well, the teacher in mathematics
33:30 today is ill, and I will teach you this lesson here instead.
33:35 But I'm not too interested in mathematics,
33:38 but I'd like to talk with you about when I met Einstein.
33:45 And he talked about Albert Schweitzer, whom he had met,
33:48 and he was a staunch believer in nonviolence and Gandhian
33:51 thinking.
33:53 He wrote books about generals who,
33:56 at the time in the '50s and '60s, were for disarmament.
34:02 So this dear man, Oka Bertelsen, gave me,
34:05 in a very important period of my life between '16 and '18,
34:11 at high school level, some inspiration.
34:13 I can say that he and his wife were also
34:16 the main organizers of the rescuing of Jews from Denmark
34:22 to Sweden during the Second World War.
34:24 And he wrote a book called October '43.
34:28 So I got pacifism and nonviolent thinking and Gandhian
34:32 into my high school.
34:33 I mean, today, that type of school leader
34:35 would be impossible.
34:36 He would be stopped for political censorship
34:38 or something like that.
34:40 And then I ran into peace research at Lund University,
34:44 a dear friend, professor of sociology, HÃ¥kan Viberg,
34:49 who gave a little five-point course,
34:51 two months of peace studies.
34:53 And I said, wow, I'm not going to do industrial sociology.
34:57 I'm going to do peace studies and work globally.
35:01 And he took me down--
35:03 now it comes a full circle.
35:05 He took me down to Dubrovnik in 1974 and said,
35:08 Jan, something is interesting is happening down there.
35:11 At the time when Johan Galtung, the Norwegian world
35:14 leader in peace--
35:16 some call him the father of peace studies--
35:19 were the director of the center in Yugoslavia.
35:23 And I said to Johan, do you remember where we met?
35:27 And he said, no, I don't remember.
35:29 We met here in '74.
35:31 No, I said, we met in '68 at my high school in Aarhus, Denmark,
35:34 because the rector there had invited Johan Galtung
35:37 to come and speak.
35:39 And so I've been a pupil of Johan Galtung and other people,
35:43 of course, since then.
35:44 And I would like to disagree with one formulation of yours.
35:51 Peace is not unrealistic.
35:54 It's not even idealistic.
35:56 It's damn rational.
35:59 And no limits to what people can achieve together
36:03 if they could stop fighting each other, using weapons,
36:06 wasting human technological economic resources
36:11 on militarism.
36:12 There's no limits.
36:13 Humanity can do the most incredible things,
36:15 but we can't do it if we kill each other.
36:18 And if we spend all our awakened time
36:21 on finding out how to make each other's enemies
36:23 and how to speak bad about other people
36:26 and speak about enemies everywhere instead of--
36:30 why do we have enemy analysis?
36:31 We don't have friendship analysis.
36:35 So if you ask me, the totally unrealistic paths
36:41 are those who have nuclear weapons
36:42 and keep on doing militarism and armament
36:45 and produce new weapons all the time
36:47 and waste tremendous ecological, human, intellectual,
36:51 and cultural resources on such a stupid thing.
36:53 It's a disease of humanity, more or less in different parts,
36:56 but it exists everywhere.
36:58 And if we could stop that--
37:00 I know that's a big thing, and I may not see that in my lifetime.
37:02 I'm 72.
37:04 But if we could stop it, and that's the vision I have,
37:07 we do our best-- my wife and I and the 50 people at the TFF--
37:12 we do our best to prepare for the period that
37:15 comes after the warfare and after the militarism,
37:19 after the empire of the United States has gone.
37:23 Now, when that has declined like the Soviet Union has declined,
37:27 we will be able to create a much better world.
37:30 The only doubt I have is not that that is right.
37:33 The doubt I have is, will the United States empire
37:38 go down with a bang or with a whimper?
37:43 Gorbachev was a formidably visionary and peaceful person
37:49 who could have blown up the world with his nuclear weapons,
37:52 say, OK, the Soviet Union is gone.
37:53 Socialism is gone.
37:55 We have lost the game.
37:56 Boom.
37:57 Hitler could have done it if he had had nuclear weapons
37:59 in his bunker in Berlin.
38:02 We don't know who sits in the White House.
38:05 The day the Americans find out that we have no empire,
38:08 nobody's listening to us anymore.
38:09 We've got to change.
38:11 Will you go down with a bang or a whimper?
38:14 I hope it will be a whimper.
38:15 I hope the United States will go down with grace
38:18 and not go down in the sense of becoming a third world
38:22 country or something like that, but go down from its empire.
38:25 Stop imperialism.
38:27 Stop militarism.
38:28 Stop dominating.
38:31 That will make the United States a much better country,
38:33 and it will make a much better world.
38:35 The only thing you must promise me never to say
38:37 is that peace is less realistic, because the most unrealistic
38:41 is to keep on doing what we do at the moment
38:44 and hope that humanity will survive.
38:47 Either we will not survive because we blow it up
38:49 in nuclear weapons or some other kind of mass warfare,
38:53 which we are closer to now than we have ever been since 1945.
38:57 So it is realistic by any standard
39:02 to work for the reduction of violence,
39:05 and it's unrealistic to work for the increase of violence.
39:10 And that's my background, and I am stubborn enough
39:18 to keep on doing that until I can neither speak or think
39:20 or talk anymore.
39:23 And this was another episode of "Shut Up Now."
39:25 A show that opens a window to the present and the future
39:28 of the Ayusha Yayan.
39:29 Hope you enjoyed it.
39:30 See you next time.
39:32 ♪♪