Better beware the ‘sickly, sleeping giant’
CUE theme music: ‘Colonel Bogey March’. Fade out. Announcer: “Presenting episode one thousand nine hundred and one of ‘Who’s holding the fort’, dedicated to all those who’ve served and all those who care.
“As our last episode concluded, catatonic US president for life Franklin D Roosevelt died suddenly while sitting for a hagiographic portrait to mark the start of his unprecedented fourth term.
“The scheming to replace him had already preceded his mysterious demise as we pick up the story …”
History has a strange way of repeating itself.
On September 1, 1939 Hitler ordered a retaliatory invasion in response to the “provocation” of a false flag attack on a German border radio station by Nazi troops disguised as Poles.
Russian troops, responding to a recently signed mutual defence pact with Germany joined the invasion.
On September 3 Britain declared war on Germany and the second global war in 20 years began, with Australia immediately joining the fray.
The US, observing its isolationist policies, declined to commit to the war.
The western allies were totally unprepared for war with a resurgent Germany, which had secretly rearmed in defiance of restrictions imposed on it after World War I.
In the background a peeved and humiliated Japan, already waging war in Manchuria and Korea, was scheming to impose a co-prosperity sphere over greater southeast Asia while the Allies were distracted in Europe and North Africa.
Ultimately Japan raised the ante with a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, failing in its immediate objective to destroy the US Pacific Fleet and, as Admiral “Hollywood” Yamamoto was credited with saying, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
The quote was more correctly
Napoleon’s in 1803, when he said “China is a sickly, sleeping giant. But when she awakes the world will tremble”.
Fast forward and Russian president for life Putin’s attempts to instigate false flag attacks to drag NATO into his disastrous Ukrainian adventures appear not to be proceeding according to plan.
He’s bought the Central African Republic’s national debt to provide a bolthole where he hopes he can be president for life.
US catatonic president Joe struggles to understand what day it is while his predecessor has a terrible resolve to be president for life.
China’s president for life Xi has demonstrated the tiger is awake.
Cue closing theme: “As the world turns….”