Manchurian

That's who the United States' new allies are.

If this man was a traitor, literally raised from the ground up as the Manchurian candidate, he couldn't do more than what he's doing right now.

But I don't believe that.

I've written four books about Trump and his relationship with Russian intelligence.

They would get what they want.

They could easily manipulate them too.

So Donald Trump is not a Manchurian candidate.

I have never said that he is an agent of Russia.

Vinita Shinde once sold Chinese food from a makeshift stall in Dadar in central Mumbai, working from morning till 11 at night.

On a single stove, she prepared noodles, Manchurian, and fried rice, tossing vegetables and turning out orders.

She was the only earning member in her family.

Her routine has changed over the last few weeks.

Great Britain annexed Burma.

Russia built a railway through Siberia and began to covet China's northern Manchurian provinces.

And Japan, taking a leaf from Europe's book, marked Korea for her spoil.

Japan's intervention in Korea in 1894 was at once the natural result of the events and the prelude to a fierce outburst of international imperialist rivalry.

After a visit to Russia, Li Hongzhang was persuaded to authorize in 1896 a Russian-Chinese bank with largely French capital to aid the Chinese government in arranging the payments on the Japanese indemnity and to acquire concessions for the construction of railways and telegraphs.

In September of the same year, the Russian-Chinese bank obtained an extremely important railway concession.

The Chinese Eastern Railway was to be built straight across the Manchurian provinces of China, connecting with the Russian Trans-Siberian.

As a glance at the map will show, this meant that instead of constructing the eastern section of the Trans-Siberian by a circuitous route through Russian territory, Russia would build it by a shorter, direct route through Chinese territory to the Vladivostok terminus.

The Japanese do something to themselves, essentially.

They go, look what the Chinese Manchurian terrorists have done.

We have to go to war to protect ourselves and our interests.

Some people say that, some scholars argue, that's the beginning of World War II.

But we have some Indo-Chinese item, actually, as well.

Like noodles, spring roll and what do you call the Manchurian actually, chili chicken, all those actually.

We have, I will say, three different kind of menus actually.

We have Southern, Northern and Indo-Chinese as well.

This seemingly irresistible push towards the creation of a Japanese empire perhaps inevitably resulted in the country turning its attention to its neighbour China, or rather the Manchuria region, that Japan had been leased portions of after the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.

This included the rights to the operation of the South Manchurian branch of the Chinese Eastern Railway that extended over the border of the Japanese-held territory into China itself.

This, in short, meant that Japanese troops were policing sections of the railway network within Eastern China, and during this time, there were numerous reports of Japanese troops conducting raids on Chinese villages in the area, a practice becoming widespread within the Japanese army.

An invasion of Manchuria was deemed desirable as soon as possible, especially as there were fears that Soviet Russia could annex the northern Chinese territory instead.

In the meantime, Tojo, whose star was rising swiftly, was recalled to Japan in the May of 1938, where he was promoted to Vice Minister of War as well as Inspector General of Army Aviation, and in 1940, when Tojo's political ally, Koichi Kido was appointed to be Lord Keeper of the Privy Seal, a position that essentially controlled what information the Emperor was given and also who could obtain an audience with the Emperor.

Tojo was promoted to become Minister of War, effectively placing him in charge of the Japanese Army and Navy.

Despite Tojo's rise to power, all was not well with the Japanese war effort, as during the summer of 1939, the country had been defeated in a large border skirmish against the Soviets along their northern Manchurian border.

This caused the Japanese cabinet and war ministry to rethink their aggressive stance against the Soviets.

Yeah.

It's very Manchurian Candidate.

Yeah.

That's kind of cool.