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Ayoka Chenzira, artist and filmmaker, Atlanta, GA

For press inquiries, please contact feministdelegation@gmail.com.

The last three years of global recession have dealt a major blow to American capitalist ideas trumpeted throughout the world on the value of “free markets.” Wall St has been revealed as a form of casino economy, with the bankster insiders gambling with other people’s, and eventually, the government’s money in the form of bailouts. As the Republicans in Congress, scenting victory in the 2012 presidential elections, hold a gun to the Obama administration’s head and rating agencies consider downgrading U.S. government bonds in light of Washington’s possible defaulting, many ideas around the world that previously seemed implausible because of the dominance of the U.S. economy are garnering renewed interest.

By John Daly

19 July, 2011

Oilprice.com

© 2010 OilPrice.com

How is it that our nation is awash in money, but too broke to provide jobs and services? David Korten introduces a landmark new report, “How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule.”

The dominant story of the current political debate is that the government is broke. We can’t afford to pay for public services, put people to work, or service the public debt. Yet as a nation, we are awash in money. A defective system of money, banking, and finance just puts it in the wrong places.

Raising taxes on the rich and implementing financial reforms are essential elements of the solution to our seemingly intractable fiscal and economic crisis. Yet proposals currently on the table fall far short of the need.

A newly released report of the New Economy Working Group, coordinated by the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, DC, goes beyond the current debate to call for a deep restructuring of the institutions to which we as a society give the power to create and allocate money. How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule spells out the steps required to rebuild a system of community-based and accountable institutions devoted to financing productive activities that create good jobs for Americans and generate real community wealth.

Over the past 30 years, virtually all the benefit of U.S. economic growth has gone to the richest 1 percent of Americans. Effective tax rates for the very rich are at historic lows and many of the most profitable corporations pay no taxes at all.

Despite the financial crash of 2008, the financial assets of America’s billionaires and the idle cash of the most profitable corporations are now at historic highs. Their biggest challenge is figuring out where to park all their cash.

Unfortunately, most of those who hold the cash and the corporations they control have lost interest in long-term investments that build and expand strong enterprises. The substantial majority of trades in financial markets are made by high-speed computers in securities held for fractions of a second. Business pundits still refer to this trading as investment. It bears no resemblance, however, to the investment required to put people to work rebuilding a strong America.

Corporations are using their stores of cash primarily to buy back their own stock, acquire control of other companies, invest in off-shoring yet more American jobs, and pay generous dividends to shareholders and outsized bonuses to management.

It was not always so. In response to the Great Depression, our country enacted financial reforms that put in place a system of money, banking, and investment based on community banks, mutual savings and loans, and credit unions. These institutions provided financial services to local Main Street economies that employed Americans to produce and trade real goods and services in response to community needs and opportunities.

This system, which Wall Street interests dismiss as quaint and antiquated, financed the U.S. victory in World War II, the creation of a strong American middle class, an unprecedented period of economic stability and prosperity, and the investments that made America the world’s undisputed industrial and technological leader.

In the 1970’s Wall Street interests began pushing a deregulation agenda that led to a transfer of financial power from Main Street to Wall Street. Wall Street’s mega-banks lost interest in real investment and developed a new business model. They now specialize in charging excessive fees and usurious interest rates, providing leverage to speculators, speculating for their own accounts, luring the unwary into mortgages they cannot afford, bundling junk mortgages to sell them as triple-A securities, betting against the clients to whom they sell the overrated securities, extracting subsidies and bailouts from government, laundering money from drug and arms traders, and offshoring their profits to avoid taxes.

The consequences include the erosion of the middle class, an extreme concentration of wealth and power, a costly financial collapse, persistent high unemployment, housing foreclosures, collapsing environmental systems, the hollowing out of U.S. industrial, technological, and research capacity, huge public and international trade deficits, and the corruption of our political institutions.

Wall Street profited at every step and declared its experiment with deregulation and tax cuts for the wealthy a great success. It now argues for extending the same measures even further.

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule spells out details of a six-part policy agenda to rebuild a sensible system of community-based and accountable financial services institutions.

1. Break up the mega-banks and implement tax and regulatory policies that favor community financial institutions, with a preference for those organized as cooperatives or as for-profits owned by nonprofit foundations.

2. Establish state-owned partnership banks in each of the 50 states, patterned after the Bank of North Dakota. These would serve as depositories for state financial assets to use in partnership with community financial institutions to fund local farms and businesses.

3. Restructure the Federal Reserve to function under strict standards of transparency and public scrutiny, with General Accounting Office audits and Congressional oversight.

4. Direct all new money created by the Federal Reserve to a Federal Recovery and Reconstruction Bank rather than the current practice of directing it as a subsidy to Wall Street banks. The FRRB would have a mandate to fund essential green infrastructure projects as designated by Congress.

5. Rewrite international trade and investment rules to support national ownership, economic self-reliance, and economic self-determination.

6. Implement appropriate regulatory and fiscal measures to secure the integrity of financial markets and the money/banking system.

How to Liberate America from Wall Street Rule is the product of extended discussions among representatives of a diverse group of organizations committed to deepening and reframing the conversation on financial reform to focus attention on the serious financial system restructuring required to build a strong new American economy adequate to the social and environmental challenges of the 21st century. It may be freely shared, reproduced and distributed with appropriate citations.

By David Korten

19 July, 2011

YES! Magazine

David Korten is co-founder and board chair of YES! Magazine and co-chair of the New Economy Working Group.

Shortly after news came that the US aid ship “The Audacity of Hope” had departed from port and was attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the vessel was attacked by heavily armed Greek commandos and forced to return to port.

The activists on board the ship have been forced into a military dockyard surrounded with barbed wire, and report that after expelling the journalists who were on the ship, they have so far not let anyone else leave.

The move was quickly followed with an announcement from the Greek government that all ships hoping to deliver aid to Gaza have been banned from leaving port to “prevent breach of Israel’s naval blockade.” This has a number of aid vessels from myriad countries stuck in Greece for the foreseeable future. The Greek Hellenic Coast Guard is also said to be monitoring the sea to track other ships potentially trying to deliver goods to Gaza.

The move was condemned by aid workers, but loudly cheered by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who termed his Greek counterpart George Papandreou “my friend” and lauded his action against what he termed “the provocation flotilla.”

Ironically, while “The Audacity of Hope” is named for a book by President Barack Obama, the Obama Administration has loudly decried efforts to deliver aid to the Gaza Strip, and has threatened to imprison Americans who take part in such deliveries.

By Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is news editor of Antiwar.com.

NAIROBI, Kenya — East Africa’s worst drought in 60 years is putting 11 million lives at risk, many of them in war-torn Somalia, where thousands of hungry families are making the dangerous trek across parched, violent territory to the promise of safety and food in Kenya.

Aid agencies warn the drought is regional — affecting Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia — and the hunger that now stalks the land may become famine.

Most of the Somali refugees arrive at Dadaab, a sprawling complex of overcrowded camps in northeastern Kenya built in 1991 for 90,000 people. Today it is home to more than four times that number. It is the world’s largest refugee camp and one of the fastest growing human settlements on the planet.

But it is not large enough for the new refugees, who are currently arriving at a rate as high as 1,000 per day.

Bowing to international pressure, Kenya’s government has agreed to open a new refugee camp to house some of those thousands of hungry, desperate and bedraggled victims of Somalia’s decades-long war who cross into Kenya. The exodus has accelerated because of the drought that is pushing their already marginal existence to the edge of oblivion.

A few miles away from Dadaab’s dusty squalor is Ifo-II, a new $20 million facility for refugees built by the U.N. in 2010. But a year later the gleaming new camp remains empty. The lines of brick houses with tin roofs, deep wells for fresh water, latrines and health facilities are all empty and unused.

Kenya blocked opening the camp, complaining that the new facility would encourage more refugees whose arrival could provide cover for Somalia’s Islamist militants who have threatened Kenya in the past, such as the Al Shabaab insurgents. Kenya has suffered several terrorist bombings.

“We have security concerns that Al Shabaab could be coming into our country under the guise of refugees,” said Kenya’s security minister George Saitoti earlier this week.

But on Thursday Prime Minister Raila Odinga caved into the pressure from aid agencies and the U.N. to open Ifo-II. “Although we consider our own security, we cannot turn away refugees,” he said.

The new camp will help to decongest Dadaab, but it amounts to little more than a sticking a bandaid on a gaping wound as refugees continue to flood across the border joining communities that are themselves suffering from drought-created food shortages.

Two consecutive poor rainy seasons has resulted in “one of the driest years since 1950/51 in many pastoral zones,” according to the U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System Network (Fewsnet). The drought has compounded the problems created by more than 20 years of war in Somalia.

“More than 11 million people need urgent assistance to stay alive, as they face their worst drought in decades,” said U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

“The human cost of this crisis is catastrophic. U.N. agencies have asked for $1.6 billion dollars to pay for essential life-saving programs in the region, but have only received half that amount,” Ban said. “Our priority is to stop the suffering now.”

Civilians fleeing conflict and drought have made long, often deadly, walks southwards from Somalia in search of food and safety.

“Women and children have made the most incredible journeys, walking for weeks through the desert and braving hunger and attacks by armed robbers and wild animals, to get to the camps in Kenya,” said Joost van de Lest, head of Oxfam in Kenya.

“The numbers arriving are overwhelming and basic services are insufficient,” warned Nick Guttman, head of the humanitarian division at charity Christian Aid.

“Most people have been walking for weeks on end and are in a very poor state of health. Many only make the very difficult and arduous journey to Dadaab when their last animals have died and they have no other choice,” Guttman said after visiting the area this week.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, called the conflict and drought “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today.”

In Somalia itself the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) says malnutrition levels are currently the highest in the world.

“The population is no longer able to cope with harsh climate conditions, such as the current drought, while at the same time struggling to survive armed conflict and other violence,” said Andrea Heath, ICRC economic security coordinator.

The combination of conflict forcing people from their homes while drought kills off livestock and dries up the land has caused suffering for thousands. To make matters worse, Al Shabaab, Somalia’s ruthless Al Qaeda-linked rebel group, has restricted Western humanitarian access in recent years and food prices have shot up.

In Somalia the cost of sorghum, a staple grain, has risen by 240 percent over the last year.

So dire is the situation that Al Shabaab said it will lift restrictions imposed on humanitarian activities in areas it controls, although aid agencies are wary of returning. The UN’s World Food Programme is considering a return to Al Shabaab-controlled territory after an 18-month absence.

“WFP withdrew from areas under Al Shabaab control … because of threats to the lives of our staff and the imposition of unacceptable operating conditions, including the imposition of informal taxes, and a demand that no female staff work for us there,” the agency said in a statement.

WFP added that it would “explore every possibility to return” with the necessary security guarantees.

This week the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF, airlifted 5 tons of food and medicine into the Al Shabaab-controlled town of Baidoa. “We are ready to work anywhere in Somalia,” said UNICEF Somalia head Rozanne Chorlton, “provided we get unhindered access to reach the most vulnerable children in need.”

By Tristan McConnell

© 2011 Global Post

The four BRIC countries – Brazil, Russia, India and China – are posting spectacular growth rates. Credit Suisse analyst Pascal Rohner tell us more about the reasons behind their success and why it is the right time to invest in these markets.

Pascal, you are an emerging market strategist. How large is the combined GDP of the BRIC economies as a proportion of global GDP today?

Pascal Rohner: Ten years ago it was still pretty small, just accounting for around 8 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP). Now, after the strong growth posted in recent years, it accounts for 10 trillion US dollars, which is around 17 percent of global GDP.

Do you expect their combined GDP to overtake the G7’s in the longer term?

Yes. Even though at the moment, their combined GDP is still around three times smaller than the G7’s, we believe it will take less than 25 years before the BRIC economies will be larger than the G7’s.

What are the main drivers behind their growth?

Well, the main drivers are the same as in the last years. We have infrastructure, urbanization, global trade and commodity exports, but increasingly also consumption.

You just mentioned infrastructure. Could you extrapolate?

Even though the BRIC countries have invested a lot in their infrastructure over the last years, there is still a big need for further investments. The OECD actually expects that they will need to invest about 5 percent of their GDP annually, just to achieve the targeted growth numbers.

Do you mean roads, bridges?

Mainly cities, the power plants, roads, railroads, ports etc.

How about the role of consumption?

As I said before, consumption is really becoming a driving force for future economic growth. The main driver is the massive expansion of the global middle class. We believe that the global middle class will more than double in the next 20 years, to more than 3.4 billion people, driven by Asia, mainly China and India.

Are these rising consumption and infrastructure needs driving the demand for commodities?

Yes, absolutely. The huge infrastructure projects, as well as the changing life styles will create a big demand for base metals, for oil, but also for soft commodities in the future. This is obviously positive for commodity exporters, such as Russia and Brazil.

Is it a good time to invest in the BRIC economies right now, or are they overvalued?

We believe it is a good time to invest in the BRICs, even though the story is not new.

It is more or less a consensus call. If you look at the valuations, after the underperformance of last year, the price-to-earnings multiples (P/E) are now more or less in line with historical averages. This basically means there is no bubble at all at the moment.

Can you specify?

If we look at Russia and China we see that their P/E ratios are now below historical averages. In India and Brazil, the picture is slightly different, as we see slight valuation premiums, but these still have not reached bubble territory.

Which risks should investors be aware of?

If we look at the current situation, the main risks are food inflation and political uncertainty. We however believe that the risks in the BRIC economies are manageable. When it comes to equity investments, it is also very important to look at the global risk appetite. If we see a drop in the global risk appetite, we obviously see a correction in these types of risky assets.

For more research information, please visit our Web site:

www.credit-suisse.com/markets

Global Trends

18 July 2011

As more Chinese turn to Christianity, the state is torn between embracing its benefits and the desire to assert control.

There are more than 55,000 churches in China, with more being built to accommodate the growing number of churchgoers [EPA]

Every night, when Yang prays with her seven-year-old daughter, she knows that she is doing something illegal. Like millions of other Chinese Christians, Yang refuses to be a member of one of the official state-sanctioned churches. Instead, she gathers twice a week with two dozen other Protestants in a private living room to pray and sing – far away from the gaze of the Communist Party.

She says she is not opposed to the Chinese government at all, but just wants the freedom of religion that is guaranteed in the Chinese constitution. And she wants her daughter to grow up as a Christian. In China’s state-sanctioned churches it is prohibited to share faith with anyone younger than 18.

“Our life has become so hectic, there is so much pressure. When my husband left me, I was devastated. But one of my friends took me to one of their gatherings and I realised that someone loves me. I want my daughter to grow up knowing that there is more in life than just money. I want her to care more about other people,” Yang says.

China is witnessing a renaissance of faith, especially Christianity [EPA]

Officially atheist, Communist China is witnessing a massive rise in religiosity. Recent surveys have found that one in every three Chinese consider themselves to be religious.

“All Chinese religions have been growing, especially popular or ‘folk religion’,” explains Daniel Bays, a professor of history and the director of the Asian Studies programme at Calvin College in Michigan.

“Protestant Christianity seems to be growing fastest, because it is congregational, providing a social-belonging aspect, leaders can be self-proclaimed, not needing formal credentials.”

Historically, China’s policies on religion have veered between approval, bloody repression and grudging tolerance.

After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, the new regime was largely tolerant of religion, believing it to be a backward vestige of the country’s imperial past and thus doomed to extinction. But, like other religions, Christianity suffered during the mass nationalism and atheism of the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, it was viewed as a foreign doctrine that served the interests of capitalist imperialism – an ideology that led to decades of bloody persecution.

A ‘thirst for spirituality’

But economic reforms, changing attitudes towards Communism and the liberalisation of religious policies during the 1980s have led to a dramatic growth in Christianity.

According to China Aid, a US-based human rights group, the number of Christians in China has increased 100-fold since the PRC was founded. Current estimates range from 80 million to 130 million active Christians, including members of so-called house churches. In a country of 1.3 billion that figure may not seem too high, but its significance becomes more apparent when compared to the 78 million Chinese that China Daily reports were members of the Communist Party as of June 2010.

“The Cultural Revolution disillusioned Chinese people and the brainwashing atheist education made people thirsty [for] spirituality,” says Mark Shan, the spokesperson for China Aid.

Over the past 30 years, Christianity has gradually adapted to local realities and is no longer seen as a faith imported from the West. And while in the West, Christianity may be widely associated with tradition, in China it is increasingly identified with modernity, business and science.

“We should view Christianity as a Chinese religion, not a Western one any longer,” says Bays. “There is very little left of viewing Christianity as the religion of the West as it was in the 1950s.”

Some experts believe that China could soon be home to the largest Christian population in the world. And the Chinese government has been surprisingly open towards Protestantism – funding the construction of churches and providing seminaries for the training of new church leaders – at least until recently.

But, Carsten Vala, an assistant professor and expert on Chinese Christianity at Loyola University Maryland, believes the Chinese government’s position may have been more tactical and pragmatic than reflective of a genuine step towards religious freedom.

“It’s good public relations to build churches. Overseas, they get good press, such as when they built the first church in Beijing in more than 50 years for the Olympics in 2008. It immediately was overflowing with Protestants,” Vala says.

“But Beijing had more than 60 churches prior to 1949; in the early 1980s that number had dwindled to less than 10.”

China’s ‘lost soul’

There are thought to be between 80 million to 130 million active Christians in China [EPA]

Some believe that Christianity could help fill a moral void in an increasingly self-centred, materialistic and corrupt society, as well as helping to meet the demand for social services.

“Immorality, especially sexual immorality, greed and corruption are soaring in China,” says William Jeynes, a professor of education at California State University and a non-resident scholar at Baylor University. “The government acknowledges this. One Chinese government leader was even quoted as saying ‘China has lost its soul.’ Immorality in China is out of control and many in the government believe that Christianity might be the nation’s best hope to establish morality.”

Jeynes suggests the Chinese government may be adhering to the perspective of German sociologist and political economist Max Weber who believed that a strong work ethic, love for one’s neighbour, self-discipline and trust often accompanies Protestantism and can be essential to keeping a nation’s economic machine in working order.

China’s government must ensure that the country’s economy keeps booming to feed its 1.3 billion people in order to prevent social and political unrest. And it may just see Christianity as beneficial to the maintenance of social stability and economic growth.

“They believe that Christianity is responsible for much of the historic success of Western Europe and the US,” says Jeynes.

“Similarly, many Chinese believers see the current economic decline of the US and Europe, as a direct result of the decline of serious adherence to the Christian faith in these countries. The Chinese believe that as a result what arose was greed on Wall Street, government corruption, and greed among many people causing them to buy homes that they could not afford. China hopes that by embracing Christianity and learning from both the past success and the present failures of the US and Europe, it will be able to prosper rather than fall as a result of immorality produced by secularism.”

But, Jeynes stresses, the attitude of Chinese leaders towards the growing number of Christians can be best described as a “confluence of seemingly contradictory attitudes”.

Means of control

While embracing Christianity for its supposed economic and social benefits, the Communist Party still wants to assert control over the country’s Christians – dictating where they worship and what is preached there.

“By building churches and requiring Protestants to worship inside registered churches, they can exert some control over the training and appointment of church staff, where churches are established, how many services are held, and in some cases even try to pressure church pastors in the content of their preaching,” Vala says.

In 1978 and 1979, party and state leaders re-established an apparatus for monitoring religion and implementing religious policy that had originally existed in the 1950s. All Protestants whose churches were reopened after the Cultural Revolution were expected to register their congregations with the government.

But many Chinese are members of unregistered churches, small congregations who meet privately, usually in apartments and houses. Some say that the registered churches do not include all sects of Christianity, particularly in rural areas where there may not be enough registered churches to meet believers’ needs.

“Among these unregistered groups, some consciously avoid association with the three-self [official church] structure because of memories of radical politics and persecution in the church in the 1950s. Some refuse to register out of theological principle. And some have strong leaders who do not want to be in a system where they would be accountable to anyone, especially not to a government or party body,” says Bays.

As long as they avoid confrontation and keep their congregations small – 25 is the maximum gathering allowed by law without official permission – the Protestant house churches are mostly tolerated by the government. Catholic ones are kept under closer scrutiny because of China’s tense relationship with the Vatican over its continued diplomatic recognition of the government of Taiwan and disagreement over who has the final say on the consecration of Chinese bishops.

By keeping house churches small, the Communist Party may be attempting to ensure that no church becomes large enough to threaten the power of the local party chief. But, paradoxically, this policy also helps to ensure the spread of Christianity, for as congregations grow they are forced to split up and create new branches.

“The state fears religion, the more organised the more it fears it,” says Bays. “There have been several successful religion-led rebellions in Chinese history. You could say the state and party are paranoid; after failure to eliminate religion at times of extreme Maoist radicalism, the recent leaders have resigned themselves to religion remaining a social feature for a long time. So they try to control it through bureaucratic means.”

Chinese authorities fear that massive oppression could lead to organised resistance, while too much freedom could also impact their leadership. It is conscious of the fact that the church played an important role in the events that led to the fall of the Berlin Wall and in advancing democracy in Eastern Europe.

“They want to learn from the lessons of the former Soviet Union in this regard. The effort to overthrow Communism was largely a Christian-based effort,” Jeynes says. “China’s government leaders are also well aware that it is estimated that Christians constituted about 30 per cent of those who protested in the Tiananmen Square uprising of 1989. Therefore, these facts have caused China’s leaders to be concerned about Christianity and persecute Christians.”

Jeynes says that the ‘Arab Spring’ coupled with the Nobel Prize being awarded to Liu Xiaobo, a major critic of the Chinese government, in December 2010 has also caused China to become more cautious about Christianity.

“With the spawning of these events government crackdowns against Christians and other people of faith have increased substantially. The Chinese are especially nervous because they believe that the ‘Arab Spring’ … could easily make its way into China,” Jeynes says.

Increasing pressure

Underground churches were the only place to worship during the repression of the Cultural Revolution [EPA]

The result has been an increase in the amount of pressure exerted on members of unregistered churches and unofficial groups.

One of them is Shouwang Church, Beijing’s biggest house church with more than 1,000 members. Shouwang means “to keep watch” in Chinese, and its members refuse to let themselves be absorbed into the official churches.

Over the past 12 weeks, Shouwang has become a major annoyance for Beijing’s authorities because it insists on trying to hold outdoor services.

According to China Aid, 15 church members were detained for showing up at Shouwang’s designated outdoor worship site on Sunday, June 26. Some Shouwang members claimed they were detained in hotels to prevent them from going to the site and several Shouwang leaders are under house arrest.

But despite repression, house churches seem to be retaining their popularity among the Chinese. Vala believes that the main reason for this is that there are too few registered churches and that those that do exist may be too formal for some.

“Unregistered churches offer frequent services every week, including prayer, Bible study, and worship services. They also offer an intimacy among members who meet often and get to know each other much better than when hundreds gather in large registered churches,” says Vala, adding: “There is also a population that attends both registered church services on Sundays and then attends unregistered churches for Bible studies, too.”

China Aid’s Mark Shan stresses that many Chinese Christians actively choose to join house churches because of the freedom of speech they allow.

“It is safer for those social professions who are forbidden to be religious: such as government-paid jobs, students, teachers, anyone under 18 years old. Three-self [official] churches have many spies to watch people, and their sermons have limited freedom. For example you cannot mention anything about social injustice, political corruption, and mass abortions driven by Chinese birth-control policy brutally enforced in the last 30 years, even from a perspective of Christian ethics,” says Shan.

Huang Jianbo, an anthropologist at Beijing’s Renmin University, says migrant workers in particular seem to be attracted to Christianity and often join house churches.

“Migrant workers are regularly victims of discrimination. Despite the fact that China’s cities are being built by them, they are just treated as second-class citizens,” he says, adding that most migrant workers tend to prefer house churches because they often feel unwelcome in urban church communities.

“Churches in China generally have no interest [in] involving [themselves] in social changes or revolutions because they focus on spiritual matters …. However, such a spiritual … focus will accelerate a cultural or even a social change unconsciously and naturally,” says Shan.

“Yet if persecution [by] the government [does] not leave room for churches to survive, churches may become more like a catalyst [for] social change through exercising non-violent civil disobedience, as [the] Beijing Shouwang Church [has] in the past 12 weeks.”

By Donata Hardenberg

01 July 2011

Source: Al Jazeera

Tehran and Beijing are in talks about using a barter system to exchange Iranian oil for Chinese goods and services, as US financial sanctions have blocked China from paying at least $20bn for oil imports.

The US sanctions against Iran, which make it extremely difficult to conduct dollar-denominated business, mean that China could owe the oil-rich nation as much as $30bn, according to people familiar with the problem.

They said the unpaid oil bills had built up over the past two years and the governments, which are in early-stage talks, were looking at how to “offset” the debt.

Some Iranian officials are growing increasingly angry about the inability of the country’s largest oil customers to pay cash, a problem that has contributed to a shortage of hard currency and has hindered the central bank from defending the Iranian rial, which has been sharply devalued over the past month.

China and India together buy about one-third of Iran’s oil, the country’s economic lifeblood. China’s oil imports from Iran have risen 49 per cent this year, according to Reuters.

Iran last week threatened to cut off oil exports to India, which owes $5bn for oil but has not been able to move the money out of an escrow account to Tehran.

Unlike India, which exports almost nothing to Iran, China is dominant in Iranian business and could use a barter system to balance trade between the two countries. Beijing is involved in everything from building tunnels to exporting toys and has been expanding into Iran’s oil sector, where European companies such as Shell and Total have been deterred by the difficulties of operating without contravening sanctions.

China and Iran’s bilateral trade totalled $29.3bn last year, up almost 40 per cent from 2009. The two countries this month signed several infrastructure and trade collaboration agreements that would see Chinese companies invest in big infrastructure projects in Iran, while Iran would export large quantities of chrome ore to China, according to local reports.

“Both China and India are happy to keep Iran’s money in their banks and try to get Iran involved in barter deals to sell their junk, or give yuan and rupees instead of hard currencies,” said one Iranian former official, on condition of anonymity. Iran had not yet accepted the alternatives, he added.

Repeated sets of US financial sanctions, imposed in response to Iran’s continued defiance over its nuclear programme, have had a crippling effect on the country’s banking sector, limiting its ability to do business with other banks around the world. Another former official said that Iran was holding up adequately, thanks in no small part to high oil prices.

By Najmeh Bozorgmehr in Tehran, Anna Fifield in Washington and Leslie Hook in Beijing

July 24, 2011

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011.

NEW DELHI, July 25, 2011 (AFP) – Rich Indians and companies hold about $2.5 billion in Swiss accounts, according to a report quoting the Swiss central bank, amid anger in India about the stashing of

Illicit funds abroad.

Walter Meier, spokesman for the Swiss National Bank, said Indian deposits stood at 1.95 billion Swiss

francs ($2.5 billion) at the end of 2010, according to the Press Trust of India news agency in a Sunday

dispatch from Geneva.

The sum included $2.1 billion in savings and deposits by individuals, financial institutions and companies.

The remaining $400 million represented deposits in Swiss accounts held by wealth managers on behalf of

Indian clients.

India’s Supreme Court earlier this month ordered a probe into undeclared money in foreign bank accounts, while accusing the government of “serious lapses” in handling the issue.

Opposition parties have been quick to pick up on public anger over the so-called “black money” issue,

accusing the Congress-led government of seeking to cover up the scale of the problem.

The issue of so-called “black money” — funds not reported to the government for tax purposes or parked

abroad to avoid tax — is one of the latest problems to engulf Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s

administration.

Indians had moved out some $500 million from Swiss banks since 2008, according to the Swiss central

bank’s figures, While the Swiss bank did not reveal the reasons behind the flight of money, Indian

regulatory officials believe Indians may be moving funds to harder-to-trace accounts in places such as

Singapore and Dubai.

Meier was quoted as saying the vast majority of deposits from India were held in two of Switzerland’s

biggest banks, UBS and Credit Suisse.

The US-based think-tank Global Financial Integrity last November estimated that from 2004 to 2008, India

lost $19 billion per year in illicit financial flows out of the country.

Last year, India said a tax pact signed with Switzerland should help the government track illicit Indian

funds in Swiss bank accounts but Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee said the measure would not be

retroactive.

AFP (Agence France Presse)

25 July 2011

The indignant global response to the phone hacking and police bribery by UK employees of Rupert Murdoch’s Media Empire obscures the awful major crimes of this Evil Empire: (a) promotion of the War on Terror and genocide-ignoring  non-reportage of the  12 million deaths associated with US and US Alliance wars in Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan and (b) anti-science non-reportage and false reporting about the worsening Climate Crisis that if unaddressed will kill an estimated 10 billion non-Europeans in a 21st century Climate Genocide. Accordingly, all decent people must boycott Murdoch media to save the Planet.

Rational risk management vital for the safety of society successively involves (a) accurate information, (b) scientific analysis (this involving the critical testing of potentially falsifiable hypotheses) and (c) informed systemic change  to minimize risk. However this is typically perverted by (a) lies, non-reportage and censorship, (b) anti-science spin involving the selective use of asserted facts to support a partisan position and (c) blame and shame, with the ultimate obscenity being war. The Murdoch Media pervert rational risk management in this fashion, mist notably by (1) promoting the Iraq War and the Afghan War and non-reportage of the  resultant carnage (violent deaths and avoidable deaths from war-imposed carnage now totaling 4.6 million and 5.0 million, respectively) (see “Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ and “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ ) and (2) irresponsible climate change denialism, noting that  unaddressed man-made climate change is set to kill 10 billion people this century (see “Climate Genocide”:   https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ). Decent people must Boycott Murdoch Media as a danger to Humanity but we should also hold other Mainstream media accountable as illustrated below.

The pro-coal, pro-gas, pro-war, pro-US, pro-Zionist, neoconservative Australian Gillard Labor Government has proposed a Carbon Tax-ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) -Ignore Agriculture (CTETSIA) plan that has produced heated public debate and overwhelming, mainly greed-based opposition. Careful analysis of this Carbon Price plan provided by the Australian Government Treasury reveals that, contrary to Labor Government propaganda, it will only reduce (relative to Business As Usual) Australia’s disproportionately huge annual Domestic  greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution rate by 8.5% by 2020 and by 53.2% by 2050. Labor’s plan must be exposed as deceitfully entrenching climate change inaction that will actually increase Domestic and Exported GHG pollution by 2020 – and all this while pretending to “tackle climate change” (see “ Analysis: Australian Labor Government Carbon Price-ETS scheme fails & entrenches climate change inaction ”, Bellaciao, 15 July 2011 : http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article20957 ) .

Nevertheless the extreme right wing, pro-coal pro-gas, pro-war, pro-US, pro-Zionist Gillard Labor Government is apparently unfazed by its slump to 26% of the primary vote in the polls (as of 18 July 2011). A recent poll (13 July 2011) has found that 60 percent of voters are opposed the tax, 29 per cent were in favour and 11 per were cent undecided (see: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/tony-abbott-julia-gillard-dig-in-on-carbon-tax-package/story-e6frf7jo-1226092715231 ) . The Gillard Labor Government has just  launched a $10 million , taxpayer-funded TV propaganda campaign to convince Australians otherwise, no doubt buoyed by the reality that the level of public education and debate on climate change is utterly woeful.

Thus I recently sent Australian mainstream media and all Australian Federal MPs a detailed and documented  account of 25 huge climate change matters that are essentially ignored in the current huge Carbon Tax debate in Australia )(see “Look-the-other-way, climate criminal Australia ignores 25 Elephant in the Room climate change realities”, Bellaciao, 6 July 2011: http://bellaciao.org/en/spip.php?article20957 ). However the silence is deafening in science-ignoring, look-the-other-way Australia . The  extreme right wing Coalition Opposition campaign against the Government’s Carbon Tax is based on personal greed and takes advantage of immense ignorance about the seriousness  of the worsening climate emergency due in large measure to the appalling climate change denialist Murdoch media (70% of city daily newspapers in Australia ).

People should boycott the climate denialist Murdoch media for the sake of their children, grandchildren and the Planet. It would be useful if the UK and Australia followed the lead of remote Fiji that recently prohibited foreign ownership of Mainstream media (this necessitating the sale of Murdoch’ Fiji Times to  local Indo-Fijian, Mahendra Patel). However, as the example below illustrates, it is not just the Murdoch-owned Mainstream media that cripple the climate change debate.

On Friday 15 July 2011 The Age (Melbourne, Fairfax-owned)  published an article in its On-line National Times section by Tim Dixon (former speechwriter and economic adviser to prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and now working in the US) and  Matt Browne (a senior fellow at the Centre for American Progress in Washington, and leads the Global Progress network of progressive parties and think tanks) on debate on issues such as climate change policy  and entitled “Mature debate on our future needed, not Tea Party–style militancy” (see: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politics/mature-debate-on-our-future-needed-not-tea-partystyle-militancy-20110714-1hfra.html ).

These evidently Labor- and Democrat-oriented analysts stated in part: “ A wealth fund set up with oil revenues two decades ago by Norway – a much smaller economy than Australia – now exceeds $500 billion, a magnificent endowment that gives Norwegians a ”Plan B” if the nation’s fortunes suddenly change. Australia could also tackle growing social disadvantage at its roots, with large-scale investment in schools and infrastructure across its city fringes. Each of those steps requires deliberate choices and a sensible national debate… The Tea Party militancy of states such as Kansas is now infecting Australia ‘s Coalition parties and many opinion makers – parochial, inward-looking and uninterested in the economics of the future. Will Australia follow the road to California or to Kansas ? Sometimes we make the best choices by pressing the fast-forward button and imagining ourselves looking back, years from now. The course of events that takes us to 2030 is unknown. But there’s little doubt that the countries best placed will be those who are open, tolerant, diverse, highly skilled and less dependent on carbon fuels. Australia can be all those things – and become the country everyone else wants to be.”

I made 2 unsuccessful attempts at expressing an informed, science-based opinion on the article via its on-line Comment thread. However The Age (which regularly censors my carefully researched, science-based  opinions offered under my professional name, Dr Gideon Polya, a 5-decade career scientists teaching at a major university for 4 decades) evidently again found my credentialled, science-informed opinions unfit to be read by its readers, even if buried in a comment thread of 240 mostly anonymous and accordingly uncredentialled comments. Below is my second unsuccessful attempt (a slightly edited version of the first) and further evidence of what The Age evidently does not want its readers to read or to know (for further details of this censorship see: http://gpolya.newsvine.com/_news/2011/07/14/7085459-oz-mature-debate-on-our-future-needed-not-tea-party-style-militancy ) :

“ For mature debate: the $500 billion wealth fund of Norway (cited in article) is of relevance to Australia and its urgent need to convert to 100% renewable energy ASAP as demanded by top climate scientists.

The Australian Climate Commission’s “The Critical Decade” (launched by PM Gillard) concluded that for a 70% chance of avoiding a disastrous 2C temperature rise (EU and Australian policy) the World has a terminal “carbon budget” in which it can emit no more than 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 before final zero emissions in 2050. Australia ‘s huge Domestic plus Exported greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution is such (1,415 Mt CO2-e pa in 2009) that it will exceed its “share” in 1.9 years!!

In contrast, Labor and Coalition policy is for a Domestic GHG target of “5% off 2000 level by 2020” and massive expansion of coal and liquid natural gas (LNG) Exports (increasing annually at 2.4% and 9%, respectively, according to ABARE) so that Australia’s 2020 Domestic plus Exported GHG pollution will be DOUBLE that in 2000.

$370 billion/10 years for 100% Renewable Energy for Australia   (BZE), $253 billion/20 years (Professor Peter Seligman). and $144 billion (260,000 GWh/year wind by 2020).”

For more details of censorship of informed, credentialed, non-anonymous, professional  comment by The Age see “Mainstream media censorship”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/ , and “Censorship by The Age”: https://sites.google.com/site/mainstreammediacensorship/censorship-by-the-age and http://agecensors.blogspot.com/ .

Decent people around the World will be considering a boycott of pro-war, climate change denialist, US Alliance genocide- and war crimes-ignoring, phone hacking and police bribing News Corp media (if they don’t already boycott Murdoch media). But non-reportage and censorship of science-informed opinion is not confined to the appalling Murdoch media. Thus  the example above and numerous other instances of egregious censorship of science-informed opinion by the Australian Fairfax Media Empire newspaper The Age (arguably Australia ‘s most respectable  Mainstream medium, although that is not saying much) illustrates why there is very little science-informed “mature debate” on climate change action in Australia .

Decent people surely must “Boycott Murdoch Media” for the sake of  the women and children in particular of the war- and occupation-devastated Muslim World (12 million dead so far in Murdoch media-promoted wars in Iraq, Somali and Afghanistan) and indeed for the Planet itself that is facing climate catastrophe and a 10 billion-victim climate genocide from man-made global warming. However the genocide complicity, holocaust complicity, genocide ignoring, holocaust ignoring,  genocide denial,  holocaust denial and climate change denial  of  the pro-war, pro-Zionist, pro-fossil fuel, Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI)-beholden Murdoch media is also found in  the remaining  Mainstream media.

The World is facing an unprecedented climate disaster that top climate scientist predict is set to kill about 10 billion people this century (see “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ ). Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity. We can no longer afford lies, spin, non-reportage and censorship over man-made climate change and other huge threats to Humanity. Decent people should boycott Murdoch media (that are evidently  beyond redemption)  thereby helping a transition back to Democracy from Murdochracy and Lobbyocracy in the English-speaking World. However we must also resolutely expose such perversions in the remaining  Mainstream media.so that our societies can apply rational risk management to major  threats to Humanity.

By Dr Gideon Polya

Dr Gideon Polya currently teaches science students at a major Australian university. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has recently published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007): http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/ockham/stories/s1445960.htm ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has just published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot..com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot/ bengalfamine_programme.html ). When words fail one can say it in pictures – for images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/ .