There has been a massive four-day Peace conference in Sana'a, Yemen, conducted by Houthis of the Ansar Allah Government of Yemen, with delegates from numerous countries, including China and South Africa.
You know those big infrastructure projects, and activity centres, that the Victorian government is ramming down our throats, telling us it will bring 'jobs' and 'affordable' housing? Well, Australian industry is being sidelined on these projects. Weld Australia—which represents thousands of local welders and fabricators—is calling for immediate action against the Victorian Government’s offshoring of steel for major infrastructure projects.
Claims by the Australian Government that the Navy was enforcing sanctions against North Korea have been heavily refuted; Australian Navy spying on Chinese Coastal defence and military exercises occurred at the behest of the USA’s Seventh Fleet; IPAN calls for the cancellation of hostile spying activities in the South China Sea
New National Security Act should include a “NO FIRST USE” declaration on nuclear weapons. Beijing has it. I am sure Moscow would join us. As President I will invite all nuclear armed powers to agree to a NO FIRST USE policy. #Kennedy24
In a media release on 17 July 2023, Annette Brownlie of the Independent and Peaceful Australia Network (IPAN) welcomed the decision by India not to particpate in the 'Talisman Sabre military exercises which were scheduled to be held from 22 July in Queensland's Shoalwater Bay. Other participants are New Zealand, Australia and the United States.
With the atrocious China-bashing going on in Australia at the moment, mirroring US policy, we decided to republish the concisely expressed views of an American living in China. The comments under the video indicate a general approval of his appraisal by people who are familiar with Chinese life. His main criticism of China is the media censorship, which commenters suggest has worsened along with US China-bashing.
One of the many, many signs that Australia is nothing more than a US military and intelligence asset is the way its government has consistently refused to intervene to protect Australian citizen Julian Assange from political persecution at the hands of the US empire.
Video of speakers and informed discussion from a large Australian audience of activists re Australia's mounting involvement in US-NATO warmongering and costly and inappropriate weapons purchase. The Stop Aukus movement came out of a coalition of anti-war movements, notably IPAN, and features Australians who have never stopped being involved in our anti-war movement, and who have rich experience and knowledge to offer other Australians whose education, via media or schools, has been lacking.
Melbourne State Library 1 pm Saturday 18 March against AUKUS US $170b nuclear sub purchase and alliance No AUKUS Coalition, Solidarity Melbourne and Melbourne 4 Assange.
IPAN denounces recent rabid media war propaganda. Call for all people who want peace to mobilise and force the Australian Government off path to war.
Australia's high density buildings are not designed to mitigate the spread of a virus as they have poor air circulation, insufficient balconies, and are usually designed for people who are away all day and only home to sleep. Our cities do not have enough open space areas for residents in high density apartments to escape to, yet we are still inundated with business and media statements extolling the benefits of population growth that can be accommodated in ever higher densitie
The US is establishing Australia as a proxy in a war against China; Prime Minister Albanese must stand up to the US and say NO to nuclear-capable B-52 bombers stationed on our territory; Australia must stay out of any US plans for a war against China. As revealed by the ABC in an investigative report on 31 October 2022, the United States has been secretly planning to station six, B-52 long range bombers in the NT, each capable of carrying conventional or nuclear payloads.
This article elaborates 8 reasons why Australia should not hitch its wagon to the US war-machine. The author, John Menadue, has a multi-author website called Pearls and Irritations, which contains many excellent articles on public policy. Menadue has a long political history and was private secretary to Whitlam.
The Defence Strategic Review must warn Minister Marles about the dangerous path he is committing Australia to. Does he understand the risks?
The public health measures that have worked so well in China should not be lightly dismissed.
In May and June of 2022 two milestones were passed in the world’s battle with Covid and were widely noted in the press, one in the U.S. and one in China. They invite a comparison between the two countries and their approach to combatting Covid-19.
U.S. government strategists are using sanctions as a wrecking ball to demolish the globalized economy. It is a desperate struggle to preserve their global hegemony and a unipolar world. The policy of consciously demolishing supply chains of essential products amounts to a reckless war on defenseless civilian populations. Sanctions disrupt trade worldwide and send shockwaves far beyond the countries directly targeted. This is well understood by financial planners.
1.The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs published a document on the history of U. S. genocide against Native Americans on their official website. Currently trending on Weibo, and being promoted by People’s Daily and other major media accounts. Yesterday, a recent documentary about U. S. military experiments on Danish children during the 1960s was one of the major trending items.
Bizarrely, this has hardly been reported anywhere! It was Putin's initiative and Biden has signed up to it along with the other countries, excepting Israel, India, and Pakistan and North Korea.
Australia cannot become a staging point for the U.S. military, we cannot abrogate our sovereignty to the U.S., we cannot encourage nuclear proliferation and risk environmental catastrophe.
Australian peace, environmental and other activists and organisations are opposed to the Morrison Government decision to join the trilateral security agreement between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States (AUKUS) and the development of nuclear submarines.
This authoritarian decision, taken without consultation or engagement of the Australian public, undermines Australian sovereignty, wastes taxpayers money, damages the environment and poses a threat to peace in the region and to global peace.
With this agreement, the Australian Government can no longer claim it is remaining neutral between Beijing and Washington. Now Australia is ‘all in’ with America, regardless of the public.
This agreement also cements military dependence on the U.S. as Australia becomes unable to operate without Washington’s approval. Furthermore, the Morrison Government has also committed to allowing further U.S. military forces into Australia.
This will not only deny Australia the ability to act independently but will also make it complicit in dangerous regional tensions and conflict, undermining global cooperation to address the COVID-19 pandemic.
AUKUS is a step backwards for diplomacy, deepening a Cold War mentality, which has alienated Australia not only from France but our neighbours such as Malaysia and Indonesia.
Building nuclear submarines will impose an extraordinary economic burden on the Australian people. Funding for welfare, education, the environment and healthcare will be raided. These resources should be directed to the health, social and economic needs of workers and the Australian people.
There will also be a significant environmental cost as the presence of these vessels in our cities and harbours is a clear and present danger. There are already nine nuclear reactors on the seafloor from sunken nuclear submarines.
For these reasons and many more, we are calling on the Australian Government to fully withdraw from AUKUS and the development of nuclear submarines.
This statement was issued following an emergency meeting of over one hundred activists from around Australia.
- Monumental foreign policy decisions cannot be made without any public engagement behind closed doors.
- A nuclear-powered submarine fleet will represent a fundamental threat to global peace.
- Aukus cements Australia as a subordinate of the U.S. (Independent Peaceful Australia Network - IPAN)
"The shocking announcement of a trilateral security partnership between the U.S., U.K. and Australia (Aukus), which will be tied to Australia receiving nuclear submarines, is a blow to Australia’s independence and peace in the region.
The security partnership, Aukus, was announced without any public scrutiny or engagement.
While China was not mentioned in the announcement it is clear that this partnership is designed to confront and contain China, in a belligerent and dangerous manner." (IPAN)
A Global Times article by Yang Sheng, entitled “Nuke sub deal could make Australia ‘potential nuclear war target,’ reports Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a press briefing that "China will pay close attention to the development of the AUKUS deal. Relevant countries should abandon their Cold War and zero-sum game mentality; otherwise, they will lift a rock that drops on their own feet." (https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234460.shtml)
Zhao also said that the 'AUKUS' alliance “seriously damages regional peace and stability, intensifies the arms race, and undermines the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.” And that, “Countries should not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties. In particular, they should shake off their Cold-War mentality and ideological prejudice.”
IPAN stated, "Australia’s receiving of a nuclear submarine fleet as part of Aukus will only cement Canberra’s subordination to Washington.
There are also serious practical considerations to having nuclear submarines that received no public consideration.
Australia will be the only country that has nuclear submarines without nuclear weapons and domestic nuclear industry. While Prime Minister Morrison has said the submarines will not necessitate the development of said industries - despite the Government's close relationship to the pro-nuclear lobby - this only highlights our further dependence on, and integration into, the U.S.
Furthermore, this deal will likely see an end to the $90 billion contracts with the French company Naval Group, which marks one of the most egregious wastes of public funds.
During an economic downturn and a pandemic spending on public healthcare, education and public services should be the priority, sinking billions into submarines that will only put Australia in danger is irresponsible."
IPAN spokesperson, Dr Vince Scappatura, said:
"Embracing Aukus means undermining Australia's sovereign defence capabilities and contributing to further militarisation of the region. Australia should be working to reduce tensions and promote peaceful relations. Never has such a monumental decision been made with such little consultation and public engagement.""We have only just withdrawn from Afghanistan, a generation-long invasion that is still causing untold devastation. Without taking a breath we have gone from following the U.S. into one catastrophe to committing ourselves to another."
Mike Pezzullo, Federal Government Home Affairs Department Secretary, a public servant, talked up war in an Anzac Day speech on 26 April 2021.
He was referring to China's ambitions to integrate Taiwan as a federation within mainland China government, by force or persuasion.
He cited Australia's 70 year old ANZUS alliance with the United States and New Zealand as a.
Finally, obscenely, he spoke of sending off, "yet again, our warriors to fight."
What kind of fight do a few Australian 17 or 18 year olds have with nuclear weapons and a Chinese army more than 2 million strong? What kind of war can you have to save "our precious liberty" from 'communism' [last I saw, China was a capitalist dictatorship] without simultaneously incinerating the rest of the planet, these days?
[Look up New Zealand's ideas on this]
One of Australia’s most powerful national security figures says free nations “again hear the beating drums” of war, as military tensions in the Indo-Pacific rise.
In an Anzac Day message to staff, Home Affairs Department Secretary Mike Pezzullo said Australia must strive to reduce the likelihood of war “but not at the cost of our precious liberty”.
Mr Pezzullo also invoked the memory of two United States war generals and warned this nation must be prepared “to send off, yet again, our warriors to fight”.
Amid growing military tensions between China and the US over Taiwan, the powerful bureaucrat also highlighted the “protection afforded to Australia” by its 70-year-old ANZUS military alliance with the US and New Zealand.
“Today, as free nations again hear the beating drums and watch worryingly the militarisation of issues that we had, until recent years, thought unlikely to be catalysts for war, let us continue to search unceasingly for the chance for peace while bracing again, yet again, for the curse of war,” Mr Pezzullo said on Monday.
“War might well be folly, but the greater folly is to wish away the curse by refusing to give it thought and attention, as if in so doing, war might leave us be, forgetting us perhaps.”
He drew on an address given by US Army General Douglas MacArthur at the West Point Military academy in 1962, where he reminded cadets “their mission was to train to fight and, when called upon, to win their nation’s wars – all else is entrusted to others”.
Similarly, Mr Pezzullo also invoked former Army General and US President Dwight D. Eisenhower who, he said, in 1953 “rallied his fellow Americans and its allies to the danger posed by the amassing of Soviet military power, and the new risk of militaristic aggression”.
“Throughout his presidency, Eisenhower instilled in the free nations the conviction that as long as there persists tyranny’s threat to freedom they must remain armed, strong and ready for war, even as they lament the curse of war,” he said.
“Today, free nations continue still to face this sorrowful challenge.
“In a world of perpetual tension and dread, the drums of war beat – sometimes faintly and distantly, and at other times more loudly and ever closer.”
"Key bureaucrat warns ‘drums of war are beating’ as China flexes its muscles over Taiwan," The New China Daily, , 27 April 2021. https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2021/04/27/australia-china-drums-war/?fbclid=IwAR3XSL4LRGmj_pOG5nFT5JkNLjPhrVVbaX1kmTMylQDO5uy1urwP6YE5gL4a.
In China's 'smart cities' there are video cameras spying everywhere. Paul Joseph Watson points out how tech giants in the West are bringing the same kind of thing to internet media platforms, from which you may be banned if you stray outside the prescribed norms.
The U.S. credit card system siphons off excessive amounts of money from merchants. In a typical $100 credit card purchase, only $97.25 goes to the seller. The rest goes to banks and processors. But who can compete with Visa and MasterCard? It seems China’s new mobile payment ecosystems can. According to a May 2018 article in Bloomberg titled “Why China’s Payment Apps Give U.S. Bankers Nightmares”:
[Article first published at Truthdig on August 22, 2018]
The future of consumer payments may not be designed in New York or London but in China. There, money flows mainly through a pair of digital ecosystems that blend social media, commerce and banking—all run by two of the world’s most valuable companies. That contrasts with the U.S., where numerous firms feast on fees from handling and processing payments. Western bankers and credit-card executives who travel to China keep returning with the same anxiety: Payments can happen cheaply and easily without them.
The nightmare for the U.S. financial industry is that a major technology company—whether one from China or a U.S. giant such as Amazon or Facebook—might replicate the success of the Chinese mobile payment systems, cutting banks out.
According to John Engen, writing in American Banker in May 2018, “China processed a whopping $12.8 trillion in mobile payments” in the first ten months of 2017. Today even China’s street merchants don’t want cash. Payment for everything is handled with a phone and a QR code (a type of barcode). More than 90 percent of Chinese mobile payments are run through Alipay and WeChat Pay, rival platforms backed by the country’s two largest internet conglomerates, Alibaba and Tencent Holdings. Alibaba is the Amazon of China, while Tencent Holdings is the owner of WeChat, a messaging and social media app with more than a billion users.
Alibaba created Alipay in 2004 to let millions of potential customers who lacked credit and debit cards shop on its giant online marketplace. Alipay is free for smaller users of its platform. As total monthly transactions rise, so does the charge; but even at its maximum, it’s less than half what PayPal charges: around 1.2 percent. Tencent Holdings similarly introduced its payments function in 2005 in order to keep users inside its messaging system longer. The American equivalent would be Amazon and Facebook serving as the major conduits for U.S. payments.
WeChat and Alibaba have grown into full-blown digital ecosystems—around-the-clock hubs for managing the details of daily life. WeChat users can schedule doctor appointments, order food, hail rides and much more through “mini-apps” on the core app. Alipay calls itself a “global lifestyle super-app” and has similar functions.
Both have flourished by making mobile payments cheap and easy to use. Consumers can pay for everything with their mobile apps and can make person-to-person payments. Everyone has a unique QR code and transfers are free. Users don’t need to sign into a bank or payments app when transacting. They simply press the “pay” button on the ecosystem’s main app and their unique QR code appears for the merchant to scan. Engen writes:
A growing number of retailers, including McDonald’s and Starbucks, have self-scanning devices near the cash register to read QR codes. The process takes seconds, moving customers along so quickly that anyone using cash gets eye-rolls for slowing things down.
Merchants that lack a point-of-sale device can simply post a piece of paper with their QR code near the register for customers to point their phones’ cameras at and execute payments in reverse.
A system built on QR codes might not be as secure as the near-field communication technology used by ApplePay and other apps in the U.S. market. But it’s cheaper for merchants, who don’t have to buy a piece of technology to accept a payment.
The mobile payment systems are a boon to merchants and their customers, but local bankers complain that they are slowly being driven out of business. Alipay and WeChat have become a duopoly that is impossible to fight. Engen writes that banks are often reduced to “dumb pipes”—silent funders whose accounts are used to top up customers’ digital wallets. The bank bears the compliance and other account-related expenses, and it does not get the fees and branding opportunities typical of cards and other bank-run options. The bank is seen as a place to deposit money and link it to WeChat or Alipay. Bankers are being “disintermediated”—cut out of the loop as middlemen.
If Amazon, Facebook or one of their Chinese counterparts duplicated the success of China’s mobile ecosystems in the U.S., they could take $43 billion in merchant fees from credit card companies, processors and banks, along with about $3 billion in bank fees for checking accounts. In addition, there is the potential loss of money market deposits, which are also migrating to the mobile ecosystem duopoly in China. In 2017, Alipay’s affiliate Yu’e Bao surpassed JPMorgan Chase’s Government Money Market Fund as the world’s largest money market fund, with more than $200 billion in assets. Engen quotes one financial services leader who observes, “The speed of migration to their wealth-management and money-market funds has been tremendous. That’s bad news for traditional banks, where deposits are the foundation of the business.”
An Amazon-style mobile ecosystem could challenge not only the payments system but the lending business of banks. Amazon is already making small-business loans, finding ways to cut into banks’ swipe-fee revenue and competing against prepaid card issuers; and it evidently has broader ambitions. Checking accounts, small business credit cards and even mortgages appear to be in the company’s sights.
In an October 2017 article titled “The Future of Banks Is Probably Not Banks,” tech innovator Andy O’Sullivan observed that Amazon has a relatively new service called “Amazon Cash,” where consumers can use a barcode to load cash into their Amazon accounts through physical retailers. The service is intended for consumers who don’t have bank cards, but O’Sullivan notes that it raises some interesting possibilities. Amazon could do a deal with retailers to allow consumers to use their Amazon accounts in stores, or it could offer credit to buy particular items. No bank would be involved, just a tech giant that already has a relationship with the consumer, offering him or her additional services. Phone payment systems are already training customers to go without bank cards, which means edging out banks.
Taking those concepts even further, Amazon (or eBay or Craigslist) could set up a digital credit system that bypassed bank-created money altogether. Users could sell goods and services online for credits, which they could then spend online for other goods and services. The credits of this online ecosystem would constitute its own user-generated currency. Credits could trade in a digital credit clearing system similar to the digital community currencies used worldwide, systems in which “money” is effectively generated by users themselves.
Like community currencies, an Amazon-style credit clearing system would be independent of both banks and government; but Amazon itself is a private for-profit megalithic system. Like its Wall Street counterparts, it has a shady reputation, having been variously charged with worker exploitation, unfair trade practices, environmental degradation and extracting outsize profits from trades. However, both President Trump on the right and Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the left are now threatening to turn Amazon, Facebook and other tech giants into public utilities.
This opens some interesting theoretical possibilities. We could one day have a national nonprofit digital ecosystem operated as a cooperative, a public utility in which profits are returned to the users in the form of reduced prices. Users could create their own money by “monetizing” their own credit, in a community currency system in which the “community” is the nation—or even the world.
Chinese investors are often blamed for Australia’s escalating house prices but a number of factors might mean the demand will drop off in coming years. A recently released report found investment in residential real estate by the Chinese is slowing. As the gap in rental yields between the two countries closes and house prices increase, Australian residential real estate is beginning to look less attractive. The lifting of restrictions on Chinese urban residential property ownership and personal investment monetary restrictions may also play a part. [Article first published on The Conversation, May 1, 2017]
China has A$1.34 million high net worth individuals and 568 billionaires. Their combined net worth is equivalent to Australia’s GDP.
Many Chinese investors have access to both legitimate and hidden income and wealth and seek to invest both in overseas real estate. This is at a time when China is in the grip of its own housing affordability crisis.
In 2015, Chinese investors ploughed approximately A$6.8 billion into Australian commercial and residential real estate. Current Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) policies channel incoming real estate investment funding into new dwellings, creating additional jobs in construction and supporting economic growth.
Though temporary Australian residents may be required to sell older residential property when they leave Australia, many foreign nationals are able to retain, rent out, sell or live in newly constructed dwellings. This is a major draw card for Chinese investment in new residential buildings.
Other pull factors include Australia’s stable financial institutions, compared to China,, well regulated land title system, buoyant real estate market, high capital gains rates in major cities and lower deposit requirements.
Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) may keep an eye on these factors when considering new foreign investment in the housing market, but it struggles to counteract the push effect of Chinese property law restrictions and investor needs.
Conditions in China’s economy and regulatory environment also push Chinese investors to focus on overseas markets. The depreciation of the Chinese currency is a significant force. As this currency is devalued, Chinese investors reconsider what and where they can afford to purchase.
Australia’s rental yields of 2-3% in major cities are twice that of China’s. Legislative changes to residential property investment in China also makes Australia look appealing.
China has a dual property ownership system that segregates rural and urban land ownership systems. Rural cooperatives own the rural land ownership rights. Cooperative members can only sell to other members of the same rural cooperative.
This limits competition for rural land and keeps rural land prices low. But it also means rural land is an unattractive investment choice for Chinese.
Urban land, on the other hand, remains state owned with a 70 year lease system to housing owners. The system limits ownership of urban residential buildings to people with urban registration or those that have lived in and paid taxes in the same urban area for five consecutive years. This situation stops many Chinese from being able to purchase urban residential property.
Between 2011 and 2015, those who did have the appropriate registration were limited to a maximum purchase of two residential properties within their urban area – one property to live in and one as an investment. This limitation still applies in Beijing.
The limitation was put in place to counteract major housing affordability discontent as an increasing number of people were locked out of the housing market. This problem is exacerbated by the 30% deposit requirement on residential real estate purchases. This combination of factors forces many Chinese investors into purchasing properties on China’s black market where ownership is uncertain or seek investment opportunities outside China.
The Chinese State Administration of Foreign Exchange introduced new regulations to tighten the flow of capital from China in November 2016. This agency is tasked with the approval of outgoing overseas payments of more than US$5 million. However, most housing acquisitions in Australia fall below this limit.
From 2017, a new rule was introduced to limit the yearly foreign currency holding to US$50,000 for individual investors..
Larger Chinese development companies operating in Australia are known to sell individual residential units “off the plan” directly to Chinese property investors. Where this is the case, the developer has a vested interest in finding ways to circumvent the new limits on foreign currency holding in order to settle a contract. However, it will take time for developers to adjust their methods.
As house prices increase, rental yields generally fall. This is due to the large amount borrowed by investors compared to what they receive in rental income.
Though rent prices have increased significantly in Melbourne and Sydney, they have not kept pace with house prices. Rental yields have fallen in major cities.
In China, where the rental yield is 1-1.5%, some investors reconsider whether it is worth the effort of renting out their properties. Instead, they rely on the capital gain to create a profit while leaving the property vacant, preventing wear and tear to it. This practice has serious implications for the supply of rental properties in China.
As Australia continues to struggle with escalating house prices and decreasing rental yields, residential real estate investment becomes less attractive as a long term investment for Chinese investors. The reliance on capital gains may result in higher numbers of vacant properties in Australia, counteracting the FIRB’s intentions.
The restrictions enacted by Chinese regulators may slow the flow of money out of China in the short term. However, Chinese investors are likely to find ways to circumvent these restrictions. The lifting of restrictions on Chinese residential property ownership may refocus investment choice location to within China.
Brilliant Iranian interviewer Kaveh Taghvai's questions on the subject are inspired in this debate - more of a discussion - between J. Michael Springmann, a former US diplomat, and Michael Lane, the founder of American Institute for Foreign Policy, both from Washington. The two guests and the interviewer all have an unusually deep grasp of the drivers of turmoil in the region and of the foreign players involved. We get some very interesting new perspectives and interpretations of the latest moves around Syria. For instance, Turkey's position is often hard to fathom. We know it wants to take land from the north of Syria, whilst pretending to be maintaining safe zones. We know it wants to drive the Kurds back, but the usefulness of the refugee camps for Turkey as a military buffer may not have occurred to everyone. And, why did the United States bother to try to get votes on a draft UNSC resolution to sanction Syria for alleged poison gas incidents, when it would know that Russia would veto these highly dubious allegations? And China! We hear some new ideas on the motive, in terms of bargaining chips. In this episode of The Debate, Press TV has brought out layered and thoughtful explanations and comment on the foreign-backed war on Syria, particularly a Western-proposed UNSC draft resolution against the Syrian government that was vetoed by Russia and China.
Previously published 20/5/16 on PravdaReport.
A serious political crisis has paralyzed Brazil. Argentina has changed its president. Venezuela is standing on the brink of violent clashes and a military coup. In Peru, Alberto Fujimori's heiress is coming to power. Why do progressive left-wing parties lose ground in Latin America rapidly?
Of course, Nicolas Maduro's remarks about the external factor - the support of the opposition for the United States - are partially true. No external factor can shake up an economically stable and prosperous country. You may say, dear reader, that there is no such country in the world at the moment, as we all still feel the effects of the global financial crisis. This is true, too. However, there are countries in Latin America that have been developing steadily, even if they change governments. It goes about such countries as Chile, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Uruguay. What is the matter then? The matter is about the very basis of everything - economy.
In Brazil, Dilma Rousseff (Workers' Party, PT) has not done anything that her predecessors have not done. She has manipulated the budget, borrowed money from private banks to pay social benefits, etc. Yet, the economy of Brazil has been experiencing an unprecedented economic downturn. The opposition of Brazil used the discontent of the middle classes, whose real salaries have been declining from year to year. Therefore, a major corruption scandal that has been raging since 2014 has led to the impeachment procedure and temporary removal of President Rousseff from power. As we all know, the more things change, the more they stay the same. It is hard to believe that Dilma Rousseff will return to her office.
In Argentina, it was a strong economic crisis that contributed to the defeat of Kirchnerism (Peronism). In November 2015, pro-American liberal politician Mauricio Macri took office as Argentina's new president. Macri has conducted radical economic reforms, agreed with vulture funds and started borrowing on the international market. At the same time, though, he canceled social benefits, export duties and cut the education system.
In Venezuela, President Nicolas Maduro is still clinging to power. He became the leader of Venezuela in 2013, after the death of his predecessor Hugo Chavez. His party lost last year's parliamentary elections, and it is his opponents, the liberals, who hold power in their hands now. Nicolas Maduro also remains under the pressure of the economic factor - low oil prices.
A few weeks ago, the first round of the presidential election in Peru ended with the victory of the right-wing candidate Keiko Fujimori, a daughter of dictator Alberto Fujimori. The neoliberal politician may thus replace left-wing forces in Peru as well.
The state of affairs was absolutely different ten years ago. Leftist forces were on the rise after Hugo Chavez won the 1998 presidential vote in Venezuela, Lula da Silva - in Brazil in 2002, Nestor Kirchner - in Argentina in 2003, Tabaré Vázquez - in Uruguay in 2004 and Evo Morales - in Bolivia in 2005. During the period from 2006 to 2011, the left won the elections in Nicaragua, Ecuador, Paraguay and Peru. Those victories became possible because of catastrophic consequences of the neoliberal economy in the late 1990s: the deregulation of the economy and the opening of the privatized market to foreign companies. The events resulted in considerable wealth disparity that the local elites paid no attention to at first.
The left took advantage of social movements of landless peasants in Brazil, Indians in Bolivia, the urban poor in Argentina, etc. PT or the Bolivian Movement to Socialism (MAS) arose directly from those protests. In 2003, those progressive governments saw high demands for natural resources. Bolivia increased its budget six times from 2005 to 2013. Investments from the dynamically developing Chinese economy flowed to Latin America. Those revenues allowed to establish a system of social support for the poorest layers of the population.
The results were overwhelming: the eradication of poverty, the rise of education and the formation of the middle class everywhere. However, after the crisis of 2008-2009, global economy has not recovered. In developed countries, including the USA, real wages have not increased over the past eight years. China, the main driving force, stopped buying raw materials from Latin America. GDP in Latin America dropped by 0.1 percent in 2015 for the first time since 2009. Noteworthy, China is the second largest trading partner in the region after the United States, but the main partner for Brazil, Chile and Peru and the second one for Mexico, Venezuela and Argentina. To crown it all, prices on raw materials, especially oil, have declined everywhere.
It was then revealed that during the well-to-do years, the left-wing governments have not created a base to switch to nationally-oriented economy. They have turned into the countries of one export culture. For example, 2/3 of 33 million hectares of arable land in the Argentine pampas that have been cultivated over the past 15 years, were attributed for sowing Monsanto's genetically modified soybeans. 1 This soy goes to China as fodder for beef cattle. In Brazil, GM crops produced modified mosquitoes that carry Zika virus. Venezuela became a hostage to oil supplies. The changes were accompanied with the aging of the population, rapid urbanization and the growth of street crime. Corruption has skyrocketed everywhere as a consequence of both local mentality and oligarchic structure of the state.
Against this background, the personal enrichment of politicians (the Kirchners have increased their assets seven times) started annoying people. The result of the story is sad. State coffers are empty, the society is divided: the middle classes are dissatisfied and the poor threaten to take to the streets for protests should austerity measures are enacted.
Mauricio Macri's first six months in the office show that there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Steel production and construction sector collapsed by 16-20 percent, the public debt associated with the release of short government bonds grows, inflation is rising. Retail prices and the growth of utility bills have tripped the inflation rate from January to April of the current year.
In addition, the questionable legitimacy of the change of power in Brazil has politically split the continent. Argentina has recognized the new government of Michel Temer, but Uruguay, Venezuela and El Salvador have not. Who benefits from the turn to liberalism? Transnational companies will improve their businesses with the help of new privatizations of de-privatized assets. The neoliberal offensive may bring fascist regimes to power, such as in Ukraine. In Latin America, this is a tradition. Wolfgang Schäuble, German Finance Minister and Chief Treasurer of the EU, said once: "Elections change nothing. There are rules." This phrase was the motto for the operation conducted by the European Commission to sober up the Greek SYRIZA government in the first half of 2015.
Many in Brazil pin hopes to the reaction from BRICS for the non-recognition of the new government of Michel Temer, especially on the part of Russia and China. However, where was Dilma Rousseff during the UN vote on the legitimacy of the Russian reunification with Crimea? She abstained.
Lyuba Lulko
Pravda.Ru
Read article on the Russian version of Pravda.Ru
1. ⇑ One of a number of articles about GMO, and the fight against GMO, is: The March Against Monsanto is On: The Non-GMO Revolution and the Battle against the "Big 6" GMO Corporations (20/5/16) by Timothy Alexander Guzman | Global Research.
Previously published (14/3/96) by the University of Chicago Chronicle.
As a child growing up in rural China, Dali Yang, Assistant Professor in Political Science, heard the stories of his parents and others about the horrors of the Great Leap Forward, a time of suffering for China that came soon after the Communist revolution in 1949.
"My parents were peasants who worked in the field. We grew wheat in the area where I lived, and they were part of a production team," said Yang, who was born in 1964, three years after the Great Leap Forward had ended. "They would often bring up the topic of the Great Leap famine and tell how bad things were during that time."
Yang's curiosity about the period led him to write the book Calamity and Reform in China: State, Rural Society and Institutional Change Since the Great Leap Famine, to be published this spring by Stanford University Press. The book, one of the first major works to analyze the period, relates how the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent famine still influence China today.
Unlike the later Cultural Revolution, which is well known in the West, the Great Leap Forward has been less of a focus for research by Western scholars -- yet, according to Yang, it was one of the most influential periods of Chinese history. It was the pivotal event that led China to adopt reforms in rural areas after Mao's death in 1976, resulting in the dismantlement of the people's communes that the Chinese government had fervently advocated during the Great Leap Forward.
Communist dream leads to mass death
The Great Leap Forward was begun in 1957 by Chairman Mao Zedong to bring the nation quickly into the forefront of economic development. Mao wanted China to become a leading industrial power, and to accomplish his goals he and his colleagues pushed for the construction of steel plants across the country.
The rural society was to keep pace with the dream by producing enough food to feed the country plus enough for export to help pay for industrialization. As a result of the Communist revolution, landowners had been stripped of their property, and by 1957 peasants already were forced to work in agricultural cooperatives.
These changes were intended to improve conditions for everyone by collectivizing agriculture and establishing communal eating facilities where peasants could eat all they wanted free of charge. This utopian dream turned into a nightmare as the central leadership grew increasingly out of touch with reality, Yang found through his study of government records and personal accounts.
At the beginning of the Great Leap Forward, Mao proclaimed that China would overtake Britain in production of steel and other products within 15 years. Other Chinese leaders, including Deng Xiaoping, supported Mao's enthusiasm, according to documents Yang studied in China.
A year later, Mao radically revised the timeline for catching up to Britain -- what was to be accomplished in 15 years now had to be done in just one more year, he said.
"Frequent changes in the timetable were symptomatic of the Great Leap, which, in retrospect, was fantasy incarnate. Even more exaggerated targets were subsequently presented, and then frequently revised upward, for steel, grain, cotton and other products. Any semblance of serious planning was abandoned," Yang said.
In pursuit of its goals, the government executed people who did not agree with the pace of radical change. The crackdown led to the deaths of 550,000 people by 1958.
The government also plunged the country into a deep debt by increasing spending on the development of heavy industry. Government spending on heavy industry grew in 1958 to represent 56 percent of state capital investment, an increase from 38 percent in 1956.
People were mobilized to accomplish the goals of industrialization. They built backyard furnaces for iron and steel and worked together on massive building projects, including one undertaken during the winter of 1957-58 in which more than 100 million peasants were mobilized to build large-scale water-conservation works.
Local leaders competed with one another to see who could create the most activity. In the rush to recruit labor, agricultural tasks were neglected, sometimes leaving the grain harvest to rot in the fields, Yang said. In the frenzy of competition, the leaders over-reported their harvests to their superiors in Beijing, and what was thought to be surplus grain was sold abroad.
Although in theory the country was awash in grain, in reality it was not. Rural communal mess halls were encouraged to supply food for free, but by the spring of 1959, the grain reserves were exhausted and the famine had begun.
No one is sure exactly how many people perished as a result of the spreading hunger. By comparing the number of deaths that could be expected under normal conditions with the number that occurred during the period of the Great Leap famine, scholars have estimated that somewhere between 16.5 million and 40 million people died before the experiment came to an end in 1961, making the Great Leap famine the largest in world history.
People abandoned their homes in search of food. Families suffered immensely, and reports of that suffering reached the members of the army, whose homes were primarily in rural areas. As soldiers received letters describing the suffering and the deaths, it became harder for leaders to maintain ideological discipline. Chaos developed in the countryside as rural militias became predatory, seizing grain, beating people and raping women. From famine to reform
During the struggle for survival, farmers in nearly one-third of the rural communities took matters into their own hands, abandoning the people's commune in favor of individual farming. Heavy central control was reduced, and the country's agricultural production improved.
Following Mao's death in 1976, central leaders disagreed over rural policies. Taking advantage of this policy paralysis, peasants and local cadres made alliances in those areas that had suffered severely from the Great Leap Famine and contracted land to the farm household. In just a few years' time, the people's communes were dismantled. Agricultural performance improved dramatically and gave momentum to the reforms under Deng.
The memory of the famine reinforced the important role peasants play in China's development, Yang said. That memory also has undermined the appeal of central planning in rural policy-making.
"Historical developments during more than four decades of Communist rule in China have again and again shown us how the unanticipated consequences of elite policies subverted their attempts at fundamental social engineering," Yang writes in Calamity and Reform in China. Institutional changes in China are the result of a contest between the elite and the masses, between the state and the society, he said.
"This study thus points to the crucial importance of guarding against those who claim to know some magic route to the radiant future, be they politicians like Mao or party intellectuals who supported Mao or the new technocrats who claim to have found a scientific way to make China rich and powerful and who happily clamor for more power for themselves."
The best way to prevent the country from following another movement like the Great Leap Forward is to create mechanisms that check those in power, Yang said.
"Had there been a free press and other institutions of oversight that are commonly found in open political systems, the Great Leap famine would certainly not have attained the magnitude it did," said Yang, who continues to follow events in China through visits there as he develops his academic career in the United States.
Yang became interested in the social sciences as a college student in Beijing, where he studied engineering. He received his B.S. in industrial engineering in 1983 from Beijing University of Science and Technology and developed an interest in English, which led him to receive his diploma for advanced studies in English in 1984 from Beijing Foreign Studies University.
He came to the United States to pursue graduate studies in political science in 1986 and received his Ph.D. from Princeton in 1993, the same year he joined the Chicago faculty.
Although he does not see rapid democratization coming to China, he has noticed some indications of ways in which the system there is beginning to rein in the excess power of overzealous leaders. "To some extent the trend toward decentralization, market-based competition and legal rule has spread decision-making power throughout the system," he said.
The new leadership is, however, "tentative, reactive and at times schizophrenic," Yang said. "They are less driven by firm ideological convictions than by sheer desire to remain in power.
"The balance between the state and society thus appears precarious, but it is also less susceptible to elite manipulations and more likely to produce policies dealing with the concrete problems that crop up in a state that is undergoing rapid economic development and social change."
-- William Harms
The Vietnam War led by the US spanned most of the 1960s through to 1975. The famous motto “All the way with LBJ” developed as a result of Australian PM Harold Holt’s commitment to military support of the US led War in collaboration with Lyndon Baines Johnson, the US President.
The conventional political wisdom at the time was that the North Vietnamese “Commos” were simply part of a larger Communist “Empire” led by Mao Tse Tung; the Chinese Communist revolutionary and founding father of the People's Republic of China, which he governed as Chairman of the Communist Party of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.
The War was controversial and based partly on something called the “Domino Theory”, which meant that Australia was exposed to the threat of invasion by the Communist Chinese. Once the Commos took South Vietnam we were done for.
Today Australia faces the irony of an “invasion” by the Capitalist Chinese. Their money is invading Australia.
They are buying houses and farms in order to exploit opportunities for profit, including removal of food from Australia. We have empty houses throughout the suburbs of capital cities that may have been purchased to diversify some foreigner's asset portfolio.
Australia’s politicians, supported by the ABC, provide the Australian people with no reasonable option by way of public policy debate. The ABC just reports what is happening instead of challenging the logic.
It’s all about the wealthiest lobbying for “growth”. People like Paul Keating were praised for “deregulating” the Australian economy in the early 90s and cutting down tariff barriers. The Liberals fully supported these theories.
In 2000, with the Australian Dollar at around 50 US cents, the import duty on foreign cars was around 5%. By 2008 the Australian dollar had risen to around 95 US cents. Similar rises had also occurred against all major currencies. In order to maintain the competitiveness of the Australian car industry at a level comparable to year 2000, the tariff would have needed to rise to 78%, because US Dollar priced cars had become so much more competitive.
This was free trade (?) combined with a rigid tariff structure that ignored the integral part that the exchange rate played in defining competitiveness. What drove the Australian dollar so high? Surely this was a combination of factors driven by Government policies including:
So what is driving extreme population growth? It’s really quite simple. Politicians are addicted to dumb GDP growth and fail to perform the due diligence analysis of the facts that might lead to a better understanding of the extreme population growth problem in Australia.
The ABC fully supports this failure by claiming the issue is “not newsworthy”.
Big business loves it because it drives short term profits. No other criterion is substantially or actively used to drive the decision-making of big business.
If the Government can neither evaluate nor comprehend what is in the national interest; what hope is there for Australia's future?
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