China comes to the rescue of Greece

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This is a bold move by the Chinese, and is part of the tectonic shift of power away from the West to China and other new BRIC countries. Some see it as sinister - but it is really a win-win for China and Greece and a wake-up call that 'we' are no longer the only players in town anymore and that things are changing fast. I believe we should welcome China's 'peaceful rise' rather than assume aggressive intent. The West's own history of militarism and imperialism is too easily projected on the new powers in the world, who themselves have long memories of being subject to colonialism, in particular China, India and Brazil.

The recent attempt by Brazil and Turkey to break the impasse over Iran's nuclear development was another sign that its no longer a unilateral game of the West dictating terms to developing countries. On that occasion, the move was rejected by the main powers, including Russia and China. But if the West won't deal with Iran, China and Russia probably still will.

People tend to have an emotional reaction to China and focus on its human rights abuses, which there are of course many, but fail to note its achievements and the fact that unlike the USA, it is not a plutocracy run by and for millionaires pretending to be a democracy. Treating China like a uniquely evil dictatorship is wrong - all large developing countries have serious human rights issues, including India, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh etc. All have margnalised minorities too. Tibet has a very long history of being a satellite state of China, long before the 1949 revolution.

In China even rich people can go down for corruption and some of them even end up being executed. Harsh, but perhaps some exemplary punishment of the ripoff merchants would be good in the West too. Unfortunately, the foxes are inside the coop and have taken us for a ride already, and are now back to business as usual. In China, the national interest means something - eliminating poverty, building industry, even greening the economy, whereas in the US and UK, the national interest is what suits the banks and the military industrial complex and never mind the rest.

Here are some comments on a very Cold War style scaremongering article in The Guardian from security correspondent Simon Tisdall, who just spouts spook speak from the West's security agencies.

Quote:

I love the way Chinese business investment is always 'aggressive and expansionist'! As opposed to the uniformly benign American or UK business presence around the world?

"The Chinese are hard-headed realists..." says Breffni O'Rourke - as opposed to the utopian idealists of the West, who never fail to leave behind them a trail of happy, healthy, wealthy people of all creeds and colours wherever their business goes?

'Greece is probably safe for now. But it wouldn't do to be complacent.' Beware the Yellow Peril! Kaiser Bill, come back, all is forgiven, you were right all along!

I'm no fan of the Chinese regime - most of my family on my mother's side fled China during the Revolution of 1949 - but I find this kind of innuendo-laden, biased scaremongering preposterous in the extreme. The sheer hypocrisy of such a piece is breathtaking.

Second Quote:

Both the comments and the article show just how much non-Chinese do NOT know about China.

- The government today may be called communist, but it has far more in common with the traditional Chinese governments over the last 5000 years than it does with the communist image in westerner's minds. thinking the government is "communist" only helps the Chinese distract and confuse westerners.

- The government is centralized under a semi-elected group that controls many aspects of the economy and society. They are semi-elected because only a subset of the population gets a vote, although that subset is actually quite large.

- China has no intention or desire to project military power as they learned long ago (4000 years ago) that that is a waste of time and wealth. Read the Art of War (it is free on the internet at http://www.sonshi.com/index.html). China knows that entangling alliances work far, far better than military aggression (and are a lot cheaper and more profitable).

- As long as China has existed, it has been entrepreneurial. This was suppressed for a while under the British and the early Communist rulers, but it has come fully back.

- Because China has more centralized rule, it is able to better address situations that could go into the mud real quick in the west. So yes, China has some excesses in their economy, but they are well aware of them and are making changes to tamp the excesses down. Unlike the US and UK where bankers can easily pay off people to remove restrictions on their raping and pillaging, this can not happen in China where for the most part the central control tries to do what is best for society overall (doing the best for society instead of the best for the individual is deeply ingrained in their culture). Some fine examples of the value of central control are: (1) investing in rebuilding their passenger and freight rail systems so they are more energy efficient and run on non-oil energy so when Global Peak Oil happens, the trains will still be able to run, (2) Investing in the development and implementation of non-oil energy so when global Peak Oil happens, China will still have the energy it needs to function as a modern country, (3) Implementing massive roll out of high-speed broadband so the intellectual capitol of China can continue to be freely tapped.

- For all practical purposes, Taiwan is now completely integrated with China in a manner similar to Hong Kong. While both sides keep up the fiction of separation, the reality is there is next to none and a vast majority of Taiwanese have no problem with the current defacto arrangement and have no desire to go back to the bad old days when the two were separate.

- As for Tibet, a good analogy would be the old south trying to break away from the Union during the US civil war. Tibet has been controlled by China for hundreds of years and like the US does not look favorably on part of the country trying to break away, especially when the US financed the revolution. Just as the Union did in the US civil war, China is putting down a rebellion of a minority of Tibetans. To help integrate Tibet more closely with China and share China's economic success, China has invested huge sums in making transportation available to Tibet. If the people in the US didn't like the south trying to break away how can we say anything about Tibet?

The bottom line is China is NOT the west. It does NOT think like the west. China plays its own game with its own rules. China does NOT want to rule the world. but trade with it (as profitably as possible). China has enough issues ruling the people of China, it has no desire to rule anymore. Note that China's military spending is minuscule compared to the west and the spending is mostly defensive.

The bottom line is unless a westerner has studied China's 5000 years of history, culture and philosophy AND has lived and worked in China for several years, they are totally unqualified to even discuss China (most westerner are in this category which is why western governments make so many mistakes).

And yes, I have studies Chinese history, culture and philosophy and have lived and worked in China. I am now back in the US but still work closely with Chinese companies.

Most of what is written about China in the west is flat out wrong and full of misinformation. Tisdall is just as wrong as the rest.

Correction to previous post on Bush Bin Laden links

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I have corrected a previous post in response to an email from representatives of Sheikh Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi.
In the post it was claimed that there were connections between the Sheikh and The Capitol Trust Bank, which was untrue. I was happy to correct this and remove the inaccuracy from the article, which was reproduced from American Free Press.
The corrected post is now the one published.
Sheikh Al-Amoudi's representatives believe the article to be "tendentious and derives ultimately from politically motivated sources" and to be as a whole "dubious". They are of course entitled to their opinion.

And now for some deficit humour: Mark Steel

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How long will this government keep their trick going, of announcing every few days: "Oh my goodness, the books are even worse than we thought. It turns out Alistair Darling left a whole year's VAT on a bus. But he didn't put it on the accounts thingy so never mind, we'll just have to make even more cuts I suppose"? The day before the budget George Osborne will make a statement that: "This morning I had a call from Blockbusters, and they informed me that Jack Straw neglected to pay the late return fee on Call of Duty, a game he took out for use on his Xbox. As a result the Treasury owes £4m more than was previously believed to be the case, which makes it a necessity that we sell off the Post Office."

They could keep it going for years, telling us before the 2013 Budget that they've just discovered Margaret Beckett was a junkie and secretly sold off the M4 as far as Bristol to pay for her habit, so now they'll have to scrap the fire service. Or they were told there was some money in a Co-op account, but when they went to draw it out to pay the army, the lady behind the counter said John Prescott had already taken it and spent it all on crisps.

Every commentator on almost every programme informs us every day that the deficit is so awful we have to make unprecedented cuts, so it wouldn't be surprising if the World Cup panellists said: "England's back four can't be expected to keep their shape while there's a record £1.7 trillion debt on their minds, Gary. If we don't take immediate measures to get that down they're bound to get caught out of position."

For example, a poll in this week's Sunday Times asked whether you agree or disagree that the government could save money by "eliminating unnecessary non-jobs in the public sector". As if anyone would say: "No – we must keep those unnecessary non-jobs. They're vital to us all." You might as well have the headline: "Public supports austerity measures. An overwhelming majority answered 'yes' to the question, 'Do you agree people who do nothing, I mean nothing, except smoke dope and torture mice out of boredom, should be funded by you personally by having to sell your child to a cockle-picking gang'?"

But the government is obviously concerned that when the actual cuts are announced, that consensus might crack. So at the moment they're still being vague about what they're planning, and carry on telling us they're going to scrap "waste". But if there was a genuine pile of waste that could save billions if it was scrapped, they could be more specific, couldn't they? And say: "We've found a whole office in the Department of Transport dedicated to memorising the scripts of Last of the Summer Wine. They're all on fifty grand a week as well. It was set up by Harold Wilson apparently, when he was going a bit funny, so that's a start."

They seem to realise that, when they announce which areas will be cut, it doesn't sound so convincing that we're all in it together. For example they've cancelled plans to extend free school dinners for children from poorer backgrounds, which affects everyone equally, I suppose, as without studying the figures, who can say whether Cameron and Osborne's family would qualify for that payment? One group that might just escape that category are the richest 1,000 people in Britain whose wealth, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, has increased by 30 per cent in the last year. That amounts to £77bn, or half the entire annual deficit.

So they could contribute perhaps. But more likely is the government's plan to get people to accept massive cuts in public services as unavoidable, then happily watch people squabble over if it should be someone else battered rather than them. Eventually it will turn out the books are so bad they have to make each service appear on a television show and plead to be saved by public vote, with a tense announcement at the end by Graham Norton that "only one of you will be here next week and that is... disability benefit. Sorry, social services, you've got to go now, but you've been a great contestant. Byeeee".
Source: The Independent

Deficit? Solution could be a land value tax

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Filling the gaping hole in the Government’s finances is, in George Osborne’s words, the “great national challenge of our generation”. Unwise spending cuts and tax rises could sap economic growth; unfair ones provoke political unrest; inaction a market panic.

Faced with a national crisis, who better to turn to for advice than Winston Churchill? A century ago, the great man — who, like the present coalition, was both Liberal and Conservative — advocated introducing a land tax as part of a bold package of fiscal reforms. In his emergency Budget on June 22, the Chancellor should set up a commission to consider how best to implement that recommendation.

Taxing land values would be a fair way to help to plug the budget gap while stabilising — and even boosting — the economy. Land is routinely valued each year as property changes hands. With all the land in Britain worth perhaps £5 trillion, a 0.5 per cent levy could raise £25 billion a year — as much as a five-point rise in income tax.

Neither tenants nor leaseholders would pay a penny; only freeholders and landlords would, with the owner of a large estate paying a higher rate than someone who owns a small suburban semi. The proceeds could be used to cut the deficit and national insurance, creating jobs, boosting take-home pay and stimulating growth. Over time, the aim would be to shift the tax burden off hard-working families and on to idle landlords — as in Hong Kong, where revenues from land taxes keep income tax low, there is no VAT or capital gains tax, and enterprise flourishes.

When the Government taxes successful effort, people strive less — some work less, others don’t bother setting up a business, a few relocate overseas — and since hiring is more expensive, fewer jobs are created. But taxing land wouldn’t crimp economic activity, as Adam Smith explained in The Wealth of Nations. It wouldn’t reduce the supply of land, which can’t be spirited away to a tax haven. And it wouldn’t push up rents, which depend on what tenants are prepared to pay rather than landlords’ expenses.

A land tax would actually encourage development. Since it would be payable irrespective of how land is used, it would stimulate the regeneration of derelict sites — such as Battersea power station, where David Cameron launched his election campaign and which has lain idle since 1982. Infrastructure investment that raises surrounding land values, such as Crossrail or a high-speed rail network, would pay for itself and thus escape short-sighted budget cuts. And unlike property taxes, people who do up their homes would not be penalised.

Taxing land values could also limit property bubbles — and the inevitable busts — without discouraging mobility (unlike stamp duty) or business investment (unlike interest rate rises). Relaxing planning restrictions, as Policy Exchange, the Prime Minister’s favourite think-tank, has suggested, would help too. The notion that we can all get rich by swapping more or less the same stock of houses at ever more inflated prices is a dangerous delusion. Property speculation diverts funds from productive investment in promising companies — and when the bubble bursts, the economy plunges into recession, home-owners are stranded with huge debts and banks laid low by bad loans seek bailouts from taxpayers. Isn’t it time we learnt from our mistakes?

Above all, a land tax would be fair. Land in Britain is parcelled out more unequally than in Brazil: 0.3 per cent of the population owns 69 per cent of the land. The country’s biggest private landowner, the Duke of Buccleuch, owns 277,000 acres, not because of his talent or industry, but because his ancestors seized vast swaths of Scotland.

These “land monopolists” — as Churchill dubbed them — get richer not through their own efforts, but that of others. The Duke of Westminster owns 300 acres of what was once fields and is now London’s priciest real estate — Mayfair and Belgravia. And because so many people have established thriving businesses in the capital, that inheritance is now worth billions of pounds. Surely it would be better to tax that windfall gain, rather than the employees and entrepreneurs who generate it?

For sure, farmers and big landowners would kick up a mighty fuss. But since the typical family of four shells out £750 a year to farmers in higher taxes and food prices because of the Common Agricultural Policy, which also inflates land prices, it’s only fair to claw some of that back. And while landowners would point to the impact on a poor granny in a big house — a bogus argument that Churchill called the “poor widow bogey” — she wouldn’t be forced out of her home; her tax bill could be deferred, or she could even be exempted.

Source: Philippe Legrain, The Times

Gulf oil chasm - 'a cavern the size of Mount Everest'

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This is the most frightening thing I have read in a long time:

The Obama Administration and senior BP officials are frantically working not to stop the world’s worst oil disaster, but to hide the true extent of the actual ecological catastrophe. Senior researchers tell us that the BP drilling hit one of the oil migration channels and that the leakage could continue for years unless decisive steps are undertaken, something that seems far from the present strategy.

In a recent discussion, Vladimir Kutcherov, Professor at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden and the Russian State University of Oil and Gas, predicted that the present oil spill flooding the Gulf Coast shores of the United States “could go on for years and years … many years.” 1

According to Kutcherov, a leading specialist in the theory of abiogenic deep origin of petroleum, “What BP drilled into was what we call a ‘migration channel,’ a deep fault on which hydrocarbons generated in the depth of our planet migrate to the crust and are accumulated in rocks, something like Ghawar in Saudi Arabia.” Ghawar, the world’s most prolific oilfield, has been producing millions of barrels daily for almost 70 years with no end in sight. According to the abiotic science, Ghawar like all elephant and giant oil and gas deposits all over the world, is located on a migration channel similar to that in the oil-rich Gulf of Mexico.

As I wrote at the time of the January 2010 Haiti earthquake disaster, Haiti had been identified as having potentially huge hydrocasrbon reserves, as has neighboring Cuba. Kutcherov estimates that the entire Gulf of Mexico is one of the planet’s most abundant accessible locations to extract oil and gas, at least before the Deepwater Horizon event this April.

“In my view the heads of BP reacted with panic at the scale of the oil spewing out of the well,” Kutcherov adds. “What is inexplicable at this point is why they are trying one thing, failing, then trying a second, failing, then a third. Given the scale of the disaster they should try every conceivable option, even if it is ten, all at once in hope one works. Otherwise, this oil source could spew oil for years given the volumes coming to the surface already.”

He stresses, “It is difficult to estimate how big this leakage is. There is no objective information available.” But taking into consideration information about the last BP ‘giant’ discovery in the Gulf of Mexico, the Tiber field, some six miles deep, Kutcherov agrees with Ira Leifer a researcher in the Marine Science Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara who says the oil may be gushing out at a rate of more than 100,000 barrels a day.5

What the enormity of the oil spill does is to also further discredit clearly the oil companies’ myth of “peak oil” which claims that the world is at or near the “peak” of economical oil extraction. That myth, which has been propagated in recent years by circles close to former oilman and Bush Vice President, Dick Cheney, has been effectively used by the giant oil majors to justify far higher oil prices than would be politically possible otherwise, by claiming a non-existent petroleum scarcity crisis.

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Kyrgyzstan - drug money behind violence

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Kyrgyzstan is a country lacking any notable resource, living mostly on transfers from relatives who work in Russia (1 out of 5.5 million Kyrgyzs are doing unskilled jobs in the former metropolis). However since the crisis of 2008, remittances from Kyrgyz working in Russia have slowed to a trickle.
For some time the US rental payment for the base in Manas provided almost half of the national budget of the country. Ascar Akaev, the first president of Kyrgyzstan, once said: "Our mission is to survive until Russia gets richer".
Kyrgyzstan became the most notable hub for distribution of the Afghan drugs to Eurasian ‘markets’, a business that had multiplied in times under the NATO guardianship in Afghanistan since 2001. The town of Osh, the 'southern capital of Kyrgyzstan’ where the recent violence has been concentrated, has long ago become a major cross-point for the Great Heroin Way through non-controllable mountainous Tajik-Kyrgyz border and route to the north-west. Most likely the illicit profits proceeding from narco-trafficking were the main sources of spectacular enrichment of former President Bakiev’s clan during his presidency in 2005-2010. There were numerous signs that the very arrival of Kurmanbek Bakiev to power in March 2005 as a result of 'Tulip revolution’ was financed and supported by prosperous international narco-mafia. It is also notable that while in office Bakiev liquidated the Kyrgyz Anti-Drug Agency.
Rioters in Bishkek have been photographed armed with advanced US weaponry, which suggests somebody has been paying top dollar for equipment that is supposed to be for US forces in Afghanistan.
[Not sure if this is true]. It was only logical for the US establishment to use the services of narco-barons to overthrow Bakiev, who demanded from the US more and more pay-offs for his loyalty while engaging with Chinese and Russians on multimillion investments in Kyrgyz economy.
Source: Oriental Review

BBC answers my complaint

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Here is my reply from the BBC Complaints' Philip Young in relation to Today report on the massacre of nine activists on the Gaza flotila the day after the event. It does show that it is worth complaining, although by not saying when the reports he mentions were broadcast, he is not answering my specific complaint. If you do complain, use the BBC Trust guidelines.
Dear Mr Gill Reference 114615 Thank you for your e-mail. I understand you’re unhappy because you believe we didn’t feature a balanced report on BBC Radio 4 regarding the Freedom Flotilla aid convey after it was boarded by Israeli troops. The BBC strongly rejects allegations of bias for or against either Israel or the Palestinians. Impartiality is a cornerstone of our reporting and our editors and reporters are committed to achieving the highest of standards for our coverage of the Middle East. On this story we have been careful to report a range of perspectives. We have broadcast a number of interviews with both Palestinian and Israeli contributors and our correspondents have, for example, reported from Gaza and West Jerusalem as well as Istanbul. BBC News has given considerable coverage to the point of view of the activists on board the flotilla and that of Palestinians. For example, the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Mairead Corrigan was interviewed from one of the ships in the flotilla as well as relatives of people on board the ships. The founder of the Free Gaza movement, Dr Eyad Sarraj and Claudio Cordone from Amnesty International have also featured in our output. We carried an interview with Hasan Noworah, a British citizen (originally from Ramallah) and chairman of the Justice for Palestine Centre in Glasgow. He was on one of the ships in the convoy and after he returned to the UK he told us of the moment his ship was confronted by Israeli officials in international waters. Interviews with Palestinians have included the Palestinian human rights lawyer, Diana Buttu, the adviser to the Palestinian President ,Sabri Saidam; presidential aide Nabil Sha'ath; the Speaker of the Palestinian Legislative Council and senior member of Hamas, Aziz Duwaik; and Palestinian Legislative Council members Hanan Ashwarai and Mustafa Barghouti. Also to highlight the importance of the flotilla, the very departure of the aid vessels bound for Gaza was a global news story and we first covered it in the early hours of the morning on 27 May jointly on the BBC News Channel and World TV coverage. The script that morning read as follows: "The organisers of a flotilla of ships trying to deliver aid to Palestinians in the Gaza Strip say the boats have set sail from Cyprus. Between them, the boats are carrying about ten thousand tons of aid. Gaza has been under an Israeli blockade for the past three years, and Israel says it's ready to intercept the convoy and deport the activists. Jon Donnison reports from Gaza City." An hour later we interviewed our correspondent Jon Donnison live from Gaza about the flotilla. We can’t agree with your concerns of bias on this report, however I'd like to assure you that I've registered your complaint on our Audience Log. This is daily report of audience feedback which is circulated to BBC staff, including members of the BBC Executive board, channel controllers and other senior managers. The Audience Logs are seen as important documents that can help shape decisions on future BBC programmes and content. Once again, thank you for contacting us. Kind Regards Philip Young