My Testimonials
Awakened to Tomorrow’s Future
Humbling and foreboding, “Awakened” challenges all to think deeply about good and evil; it looks back on horrific tragedies and looks forward to an unknown future. As today’s society contemplates human rights – past and present – abuses, kidnappings, torture, and genocide exist in real time for the victims and in the forefront of our consciousness for the rest of us.
“Awakened” calls out the failure of the species homo sapiens to honor its most basic obligations as human beings individually and collectively to live peacefully and respectfully under the same sun. The contents also speak to despotic and tyrannical personalities that vociferate dogmatic ideologies alongside humanistic leaders who empower and cajole us to be our better selves.
‘Human Rights’ in its vague description describes rights we wish for ourselves and families. In this context, Dr. Winston contributes a nuanced sense of good and evil, power and subjugation, intention and action to help us consider and appreciate our basic human rights. Abundant violations force us to consider and reconsider our duty as a community, as a nation, and as global citizens.
Can a country ‘re-educate’ people to be slaves and, in doing so, declare its humanitarianism through rape, torture, and genocide? The world has a dark side that we, as free people, often forget. The spores are grown within societies as some people learn to hate while others find great difficulty in accepting those who stand starkly different in society.
We are not condemned to live out tragedy. We can become Awakened to our own personal humanity and all that it means to us and those we love. We may one day look back on our existences as lives honorably lived. Awakened, makes clear that this is the time to take a stand. Perhaps there is little time left. The abuse of humans and denial of the rights of beings must be powerfully addressed in the now of our days while we are still free. The awareness, consciousness, and action steps are up to us. This active engagement must also include the impending catastrophe of our Earth’s atmosphere, summed up as “global warming.”
Freedom allows each of us to stand in awe of every new day. Freedom allows us to live based upon our chosen needs and preferences. Freedom is a precious right, which stands in contrast to the totalitarian control of a single dictator – Communist or Fascist, backed by an amoral, powerful, and self-selected few who impose their will on all. The gauntlet laid within their territorial boundaries is merely a first step before coming for everyone everywhere. History provides no exceptions to these outcomes. We are in danger. Dr. Winston’s voice is the voice of us all if we were to speak it aloud.
Today, the media silences the masses, while our culture cancels history and tradition. Our going-along-with-the-crowd social media frenzy has created a mentality where ‘influencers’, irrespective of their wisdom, drive culture. History tells the predictable story of the downfall of civilizations, including those who perpetrate the violence. Historical analogies are recorded in lives lived both long ago and in the not-so-long ago.
“Awakened,” long overdue, is an introduction to the horrific practices that lead, inevitably, to cultural erosion and societal disintegration. Wherever history is recorded, there is a prophet, someone not unlike Zephaniah of old, who warned of the dangers of a culture unhinged from its moral moorings. “Awakened” reminds us and informs us, often shockingly, that the rampage and violence contained within our heritage is also within our capacity to end.
Raging Waters in the South China Sea
Winston and Sachdeva sounded the alarm. On the rise, once again, is a state bent on dominating the world. As was the case in former failed empires, modern technologies, a well-oiled propaganda machine, and the cruelest and most heartless of strategies have been employed. As a former long-term member of the international staff associated with the United Nations, whose central aim is peace between and among nations, I find the silence of UN member nations deafening. Must we, again, mark this new century with another powerful and unyielding tyrannical nation whose aim is to systematically crush the remaining freedoms of those who live on planet Earth?
This quest starts with one’s neighbors. The South China Sea is a proxy test for every nation in the world, reminding each of the encroachments made by former tyrant nations. In 2020, concerns became heightened with the illegal seizure of sovereignty from nearby weaker nations as aptly described in the expose provided in “Raging Waters in the South China Sea” and the other books in this series. By hook, crook, or salami slicing, inch-by-inch of sovereignty is being clawed away from states through any means possible to ensure domination.
As a concerned U.S. citizen, I fear that the sleeping dragon may already have compromised the capacity of free nations to control their own destiny. Captivated by the lure of capital and seduced by the sublime rhetoric that vaguely resembles past authoritarian calls for unity, this episode is repeating a refrain of concentration camps and torture that the UN’s charter sought to never hear again. Yet, nations are silent, accepting contracts now in lieu of a dark future of totalitarianism.
The horrors of human rights, torture, and abuse alone should shock and move any of us who value our own physical and mental well-being. The message that comes over to me is that we, all of us, who say we care, can make a difference. We can stop supporting the hungry dragon. We know how. The agenda of passionate environmentalists is surely empty of moral authority if it cannot actively address the ravage and rape of the remaining precious coral; if it cares not for the destruction of the seabed and the overfishing that ultimately will deplete many species of fish to their extinction. Among probable consequences is malnutrition, if not outright hunger of tens of millions – first of Southeast Asians and then the rest of the human race.
This is a must-read, a wakeup call. The book itself is clear, understandable, and in readable English. The text of this series of books is unique in its presentation of charts, graphs, maps, and pictorial representations of the South China Sea, Asia, and the extent of surveillance, control, and reach of China and its expansive, global claims.
China’s Power Grab and Expanding Claims
“China’s Power Grab and Expanding Claims” is the second in a series of serious glimpses into the heart of China – a heart that has hardened into the autocratic power of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). As the authors contend, nothing happens in China without the sanction of the CCP and that includes the activities of the everyday lives of all who reside within the borders of China, including those who do business there. The implication is clear: do not cross swords with the CCP. You will lose. This book tells the story of the century – the unraveling of the world’s progressive sanctuary for the human species. Heretofore untold in this clear and visual way are Beijing’s unsettling implications, even for the near term. Easy to read, each point is made succinctly and clearly, inviting one to develop a clearer understanding of the probabilities for a hospitable future.
The first book in the series, “Raging Waters in the South China Sea”, took a close look at developments in this vitally and increasingly important part of the world. In the South China Sea, honor for rules of conduct, such as they are, should be a matter of priority and morality – and should be mutually respected. This is not the case presently, and perhaps never was fully respected by many of the regional countries, each having a competitive interest in the wealth of the waters and the land beneath. However, a newly powerful nation, China, with overwhelming resources both economically and militarily, dwarfs the capacities of its neighbors to wage war or to otherwise protect their lawful areas of jurisdiction. “Raging Waters” addresses the many givens and contradictions about relationships between nations of the South China Sea.
China’s rapacious reach, as the authors inform in their new book, is far from being limited to the South China Sea. “China’s Power Grab and Expanding Claims” expounds on Beijing’s reach, encompassing Asia and, as such, impacting the entire globe as each state considers intra-national and extra-national strategic implications. This second book takes on China’s aims for Asian dominance, regional hegemony, and infusion worldwide through its strategic and focused capture of sovereignty, be it a port, an island, an enclave, a military base, or other presence on the soil of another sovereign nation.
Beijing has taken a whole-of-world approach, as reported, with calculated intent to commit victims inside and outside of its states and ‘autonomous regions’ to capitulate. In some instances, as in the historical nationalities of China, it is an outright loss of identity and enslavement. In others, as in “development aid”, the proof may be found in the fine print in the legal documents to which they often unwittingly agreed. Parading initially as a generous contribution to a nation’s economic health and prosperity, the trap closes. Sadly, in some instances, bribery, corruption of leaders, and unrelenting insistence on repayment of development loans on time, and in full, lead to unbelievably disastrous consequences. In my experience, development aid, nation to nation, or loans through international financial institutions, rarely, if ever, implied or resulted in loss of assets, resources, or sovereignty. This awakening dilemma and more is the contribution Winston and Sachdeva make in their second book.
Belts and Roads Under Beijing’s Thumb
This decade will be like no other as Winston points out in Belts and Roads. China’s reach has planted seeds in every continent and well over half of the nations around the planet. Beijing has invested in its global initiative to advance its soft and hard power strategically in an ingenious, provocative plan to have other countries pay for infrastructure to increase access for its commercial ventures while adding military units at ports and railroad access areas to “protect” its investment – all paid by other countries through their opaque loans.
These changes are not all subtle. Beijing diplomats have inserted themselves strategically into many of the United Nations committees, including Human Rights, while placing its Muslim population in forced labor concentration camps to supply manufactured products around the world. At the same time, China ramped up advanced robotic technologies that can obliterate cities and target areas overtly using drone bombing technologies and covertly using broad, insidious surveillance methods that can control and subdue whole populations.
The CCP’s Belt and Road Initiative is not an entirely new strategy. Following WWII, Kennan’s ‘long telegram’ proposed a model for a U.S. containment strategy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, which was implemented assiduously. Yet, today, neither the United States, European Union, nor the Russian Federation have limited China’s growth and, rather, complicity aided in its expansionist agenda. Political bodies – large and small – are significantly contributing to China’s ballooning balance of payments in abundant surplus. China’s economic and military growth is upon us now and world-domination grows near as most countries are subjugated through loans, strapping them to its territorial orbit.
Overwhelming debt, particularly in underdeveloped countries whose prospect of repayment is unlikely, has saddled states, doomed with economic woes that demand payment by surrendering territory and natural resources. This, too, is not new. During the 1970s
and 1980s debt crisis, while oil-producing nations were awash with money, many South American and African countries desperately needed capital. Anxious to put their resources to work, international banks loaned huge sums, much later wiped clear via loan forgiveness to prevent widespread national financial insolvency. This time, though, the world has a new banker, one without moral restraint.
Winston lays out the plan, execution, and consequences of China’s expansive economic choke-hold, threatening the sovereignty of these nations. Belts and Roads, a euphemism for widespread infrastructure investment, has the veneer of massive ‘win-win’ opportunities with friends, the Chinese, whose rhetoric belies the underbelly of a pervasive global threat on an order of magnitude unseen before. It is absolutely dissimilar to, though possibly inspired by, the paid-for Marshall Plan, now reframed to construct the world in its image of ‘Socialism with Chinese Characteristics’. These loans are not designed to create free and equal trading partners.
Winston’s refreshing and authoritative command of knowledge, combined with impressive credentials, gives voice to the overarching threat of our time. This is the 21st-century story of a rags-to-riches renegade nation, subordinating one nation after another, without the force of any serious external threat. Wielding its political power, while blatantly violating rule-of-law, Beijing no longer feels compelled to conform to international standards of morality codified by the United Nations, religious principles, or pleas for basic human rights.
Dr. David Waugh 