China’s fake Paris: the mystery of the ghost towns

FOR RATHER inexplicable reasons the Chinese have built enormous residential complexes and cities that remain uninhabited and sometimes incomplete.

The above material was produced by VICE, an HBO documentary series founded by Shane Smith, a Canadian.

The show’s politics are difficult to pigeonhole. In some aspects Smith and his team reflect the confusing left-liberal politics of Bill Maher, who serves as Executive Producer. Many segments are however far superior to standard US television fare in terms of a reportorial approach which is not afraid of including people of radical and revolutionary persuasion. These are permitted to tell their side of the story without malicious “contextualizing”. That’s refreshing, to say the least.

For example, a recent episode on the Egyptian situation (Egypt On the Brink) presented members of the government party—the Muslim Brotherhood—along with youths struggling to topple them, including Black Bloc anarchists and anti capitalists. That notwithstanding, VICE has also done a number of episodes on Libya, for example, which tended to present the US-sponsored rebels as the white hats.

The information below, from Wikipedia, clarifies the topic somewhat. His criticism of “socialism” derived from his experience in Canada sounds a bit simplistic, shopworn and petty (there’s no socialism in Canada, only a mild form of social democracy, as in Scandinavia, which looks like socialism to those soaked in the savage libertarian ways of American capitalism). The idea that socialism kills “creativity” inherently is unprovable and nonsensical. Our guess is that Smith is mostly at home in the anti-communist “left”, and that while the VICE footage does present anticapitalist voices, it also presents many who facilitate the propaganda work of warmongers and imperialists. The VICE series comprises compelling programs, but keep your antenna up.—Eds.

History of VICE

Founded by Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith, and Gavin McInnes, the magazine was launched in 1994 as the Voice of Montreal with government funding, and the intention of the founders was to provide work and a community service.^[5] When the editors later sought to dissolve their commitments with the original publisher Alix Laurent, they bought him out and changed the name to Vice in 1996.

New York City, U.S. in 1999. Smith has stated: “I grew up being a socialist and I have problems with it because I grew up in Canada [and] I’ve spent a lot of time in Scandinavia, where I believe countries legislate out creativity. They cut off the tall trees. Everyone’s a C-minus. I came to America from Canada because Canada is stultifyingly boring and incredibly hypocritical. Thanks, Canada.”^[6] In 2008, the magazine was read by over 900,000 people across twenty-two countries.^[7]

SEE MORE AT VICE: http://www.vice.com/author/shane-smith

Chinese defence paper warns of US “hegemonism”

By John Chan, wsws.org

The Chinese defence ministry issued a major white paper on Tuesday, in what amounts to a response to the aggressive US “pivot” to Asia. Entitled, “The Diversified Employment of China’s Armed Forces,” the document warns of the danger of US “hegemonism.”

Confronted by the Obama administration’s efforts to undermine China strategically, as well as diplomatically and economically, Beijing is being forced to rethink its military doctrine, and prepare for a potential nuclear war instigated by Washington.

As part of the “pivot,” the Pentagon’s Air/Sea Battle strategy envisages a massive bombardment using conventional weapons of China’s basic command and communications infrastructure and missile forces to cripple the Chinese military. Aided by key allies such as Japan and Australia, the US would blockade the Chinese mainland by cutting key shipping routes through South East Asia for energy and raw materials from Africa and the Middle East.

For the first time, Beijing’s latest white paper stresses the protection of China’s maritime territories, overseas investments and shipping routes. “With the gradual integration of China’s economy into the world economic system, overseas interests have become an integral component of China’s national interests,” it states. “Security issues are increasingly prominent, involving overseas energy and resources, strategic sea lines of communication (SLOCs), and Chinese nationals and legal persons overseas.”

Without naming the US, the paper refers to a country that “has strengthened its Asia-Pacific military alliances, expanded its military presence in the region, and frequently makes the situation tenser.” Japan, the principal US Asian ally, is specifically accused of “making trouble” over the disputed Diaoyu/Senkakus islands in the East China Sea.

The paper points to “signs of increasing hegemonism… and neo-interventionism.” This is a reference to the repeated military interventions led by the US, in particular since the late 1990s, from the bombing of Serbia to the invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003, the violent toppling of the Libyan regime in 2011, and the mounting intervention in Syria.

The paper also nominates threats to China’s “national unification.” Among them are “terrorism, separatism and extremism”—that is, separatist movements among national minorities such as Tibetans and Xinjiang’s Uyghur Muslims that could be exploited by the US and other imperialist powers. At the same time, the paper warns that “Taiwan independence” forces and their activities are still “the biggest threat to the peaceful development of cross-Straits relations.”

China continues to maintain a large military presence along its coastline facing Taiwan, including hundreds of thousands of Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) troops and an estimated 1,000 tactical ballistic missiles. The Obama administration, although aware of the extreme sensitivity of China’s claims over Taiwan as its integral territory, has begun selling billions of dollars of weapons to Taiwan. The US is also including Taiwan in its Asia-Pacific anti-ballistic missile network, which is part of the Pentagon’s preparations for a potential nuclear war against China.

The white paper refers to the first ever large-scale overseas evacuation mounted by China. During the Libyan war in 2011, some 35,860 Chinese nationals were pulled out with the assistance of Chinese warships and air force transport planes. As a result of the US- and European-led “regime change” operation, billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese investments were lost in Libya.

Yue Gang, a former officer in the PLA General Staff, noted on Sina.com that China has huge economic interests at stake. Total Chinese investment overseas has reached $US500 billion, and is projected to reach $1 trillion by 2020. He said 81 million Chinese travelled overseas each year, half a million seamen were working around the world, and China operated a merchant fleet of 3,300 ships—the fourth largest in the world. As 55 percent of China’s energy production depended on imports and 93 percent of its exports relied on sea shipment, protecting China’s maritime routes was a vital question.

Yue noted that China’s military had only begun to face these tasks and lacked sufficient aircraft carriers or amphibious assault ships, as well as large transport planes capable of the “strategic lifting” of forces to distant regions.

In an effort to counter the mounting US threat, China’s military spending has steadily risen during the past decade, from $20 billion in 2002 to $114 billion this year. China has made some breakthroughs in military equipment. It is testing two prototype stealth fighters, the only nation to do so, apart from the US.

However, the US military budget of more than $680 billion dwarfs China’s. Moreover, the US possesses more than 5,100 nuclear warheads, compared to China’s estimated 240-400. The US has 11 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, while the Chinese navy has just one conventionally-powered carrier, and will take years to form a functional battle group with warplanes and escort warships. The US also has military bases and alliances throughout Asia and around the world.

The US media has focused on the fact that the white paper makes no mention of China’s long-standing “no first use” nuclear warfare policy. Beijing’s longstanding pledge not to launch a first nuclear strike has been reiterated in all previous defence white papers. Its omission from the latest indicates deep concerns that the US is developing the capacity to knock out China’s entire nuclear arsenal.

The US has never relinquished its “first strike” nuclear war doctrine. Moreover, it is clearly constructing the anti-ballistic missile systems to enable it to invoke that doctrine with impunity, by neutralising any Chinese counter-attack with nuclear weapons.

The Chinese white paper is another sign that Beijing is being compelled to respond to the Obama administration’s “pivot” that is aimed at preventing China from becoming a future threat to American global domination. Washington’s aggressive policies have dangerously inflamed flashpoints in Asia such as the Korean Peninsula and are fuelling an arms race throughout the region that can only lead to conflict and war.

The High Cost of Cheap Meat

What DNA Tests on Lasagne Can’t Reveal

When you count just the physical/economic costs without their pervasive and ugly externalities, let alone the moral costs, the price paid by humanity for meat today is an illusion.

A chunk of clean-looking meat denie sthe connection with its source, and gives no idea about its real cost to the planet.

A chunk of sanitized-looking meat denies the connection with its once living source, and gives no idea about its real cost to the planet.

by AGNES STIENNE / Monde Diplomatique/Counterpunch

Nothing changes — whatever familiar measures are announced after every food scandal, once the politicians, manufacturers and retailers have made their claims and counterclaims, and after we’ve gone through the ritual demands for transparency, traceability and labelling. What we really need to do is widen our focus from the contents of “beef” lasagne to the intersecting routes of the current global agricultural system.

It has been developed with the single goal of large-scale production for export, with centres of specialisation to maximise profits. In emerging countries, greater wealth has led to an increase in demand for meat, and therefore a need for agricultural land to feed livestock. In China, meat consumption per person has increased 55% in 10 years (1). To feed its battery hens, China has to import soya grown in Latin America; to grow food for human and animal consumption, it has started to grab land in Africa. Raw ingredients are grown in one continent, bought by another, and exported to a third, just like the global supply chains of manufacturing industry.

For several decades, the food industry has persisted with an approach that has damaged small farmers, biodiversity, soil, water resources, and the health of producers and sometimes consumers, without managing to feed the planet — in 2011 a billion people did not have enough to eat. The meat industry exemplifies the problem. It accounts for less than 2% of global GDP but produces 18% of greenhouse gas emissions and uses huge amounts of natural resources, land and agricultural produce. Should cereals be grown to feed people or to fatten livestock? It takes at least seven kilograms of grain to produce one kilogram of beef, four for a kilogram of pork and two for a kilogram of chicken.

Pasture takes up 68% of all agricultural land (and 25% of it is already exhausted and infertile), while growing fodder takes up 35% of arable land: so in all, livestock requires 78% of all agricultural land. This dedication of land to the production of poor quality meat (plus further land demands for biofuels) directly affects the poorest. The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation’s 2006 annual report says: “Feed production as well as imports have increased. Total feed imports have surged … giving rise to fears that the expansion of China’s livestock industry could lead to price hikes and global shortages of grains, as has been predicted many times in the past.” We know what happened next: food riots in 2008 in Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Indonesia and the Philippines, caused by the unprecedented rise in the cost of raw materials on the international market.

Pushing millions into poverty

Early in the financial crisis, political leaders should have banned speculation on basic foodstuffs, but didn’t. Despite a reduction in the real cost of cereal production, prices kept going up (2). In February 2011 The World Bank warned: “Global food prices are rising to dangerous levels and threaten tens of millions … The price hike is already pushing millions of people into poverty, and putting stress on the most vulnerable, who spend more than half of their income on food” (3).

Most cattle are grazed, and while a small herd of black and white Pie Noir cows chewing the cud in the shade of cider apple trees in the Breton countryside might not be a problem, environmental damage increases as herd density rises. In South America over the past few years, overgrazing has left the soil sterile and saturated with animal manure. Producers easily resort to illegal logging to clear fresh land, especially in Brazil, which is the world’s biggest producer and exporter of beef and leather, supplying 30% of the global market. It exports primarily to Russia and the EU. A 2009 Greenpeace report revealed that Brazil’s 200 million head of cattle were responsible for 80% of the deforestation of the Amazon (4) — 10m hectares of forest destroyed in 10 years, to the detriment of small farmers and native peoples. For 40 years Survival International has condemned the killing of indigenous people by ranchers in Brazil’s forests.

The Amazonian rainforest is being destroyed primarily to produce biofuel and cattle feed. According to the peasant movement Via Campesina: “Soybean monocultures … now occupy a quarter of all agricultural lands in Paraguay and … have grown at a rate of 320,000 hectares a year in Brazil since 1995. In Argentina, where soybeans occupy around half the agricultural land … 5.6 million hectares of non-agricultural land was converted to soya production between 1996-2006. The devastating impacts that such farms have had on people and the environment in Latin America are well documented and acknowledged” (5).

Cereals and oil-producing plants, cultivated and harvested in Latin America with the help of chemicals, are transported across the Atlantic to the huge silos of agribusiness multinationals in Europe, ready to be turned into concentrated feed for millions of battery-farmed pigs and chickens around the world — in 2005 they consumed 1,250m tons.

Factory farms supply processors and supermarkets internationally. The industry tries to minimise costs by “rationalising” the production and distribution chain, reducing the workforce, automating tasks, standardising products and mechanically recovering meat slurry for cheap processed meals. The system is there to meet the demands of agribusiness and the big supermarkets.

Assembly-line animals

Processed food makers produce sausages as if they were assembling a car from components; and in a way, the animals they use have become artificial, the product of agricultural research, selectively bred to accelerate muscle development and boost reproductive performance, their vital organs reduced to the point where they are not able to function properly. They are extremely vulnerable to illness, and producers try to remedy this by heating the buildings in which they are raised, although this is often not enough to avoid infections, so they are given antibiotics. The liquid manure they produce, a dangerous mix of nitrogen and phosphorus, is disposed of by spreading on land that is already oversaturated. In Brittany, cyanobacteria pollution of groundwater, rivers and shores caused by the pig industry, is now endemic.

Traditional farming takes account of how much feed is available locally. Pastureland is nurtured, grass regrowth protected from too many hooves, and animal waste prevented from affecting soil and water quality. Animals are reared in symbiosis with cereal and vegetable crops: green waste with peas, lupins and field beans makes a balanced and healthy fodder, straw provides bedding for the animals, and manure fertilises the soil, completing the cycle. A new generation of farmers who want to produce local healthy food that does not damage the planet have been inspired by traditional practices; they have studied, tested, improved and modernised them, and some have moved into agroforestry, as recommended by the Food and Agriculture Organisation, in which trees shelter crops from the wind and sun and contribute to soil fertility, while tree roots keep water at the base of the plants.

Translated by Stephanie Irvine.

Agnès Stienne is a graphic designer.

Notes.

(1) “The State of Food and Agriculture”, FAO, Rome, 2009.

(2) See Jean Ziegler, “Speculating on hunger”, Le Monde diplomatique, English edition, February 2012.

(3) “Rising food prices have driven an estimated 44 million people into poverty”, The World Bank press release, Washington, 15 February 2011.

(4) “Slaughtering the Amazon”, Greenpeace International, 1 June 2009.

(5) “The World Bank funding land grabbing in South America”, open letter from Via Campesina, 7 July 2011.

This article appears in the excellent Le Monde Diplomatique, whose English language edition can be found at mondediplo.com. This full text appears by agreement with Le Monde Diplomatique. CounterPunch features two or three articles from LMD every month.

Throwing BRICS at the U.S. Empire

by BAR executive editor Glen Ford
History has placed the BRICS nations on the path of confrontation with a superpower in decline. Washington is prepared to strangle the world into submission, or drown it in chaos. “Objectively, the United States has positioned itself as the great and implacable impediment to global development.”

“They have no choice but to resist Washington’s policies of coercion and the threat of strangulation.”

The meteoric rise of the BRICS nations – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – now concluding their fifth annual summit meeting in Durban, became inevitable once the imperial powers began moving the world’s industrial production to the Global South, decades ago. From that point on, the options available to the “West” began to shrink, leading inexorably to the current historical juncture, in which U.S.-led imperialism relies almost entirely on its overwhelming military superiority to maintain itself.

“By 2020,” according to United Nations Development Program, “the combined economic output of three leading developing countries alone — Brazil, China and India — will surpass the aggregate production of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the U.K. and the United States.” The Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, comprised of the world’s richest countries, predicts that China will surpass the United States as the world’s biggest economy by the end of 2016. By some measures, China actually overtook the U.S. back in 2010.

“The essential question facing the Global South, is to what extent, and how long, will they shore up the crumbling old Euro-American edifices.”

Brazil’s economic development bank is bigger than the World Bank. Last year, BRICS nations sent $75 billion to the IMF [21] to help bail out European financial institutions – so, these countries can well afford to capitalize a BRICS development bank, as they agreed to do, in principle, this week in Durban. It is a question of political will.

U.S. and western European economic decline is an irreversible fact. The essential question facing the Global South, with the BRICS in the lead, is to what extent, and how long, will they shore up the crumbling old Euro-American edifices – in which they also have huge investments and which are backed by a war machine that strives for full spectrum dominance of the planet.

We are living at a crossroads of history. The productive center of the world is shifting back to where it was before western Europe began its 500-year war against the rest of humankind: to China and India, the economic powerhouses of the pre-colonial planet. Europe used force to organize the world to its own, absolute advantage, depopulating a whole hemisphere and much of Africa in the process. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, which was fueled by colonization and slavery, most of the world’s people enjoyed similar living standards. The great global imbalance in the human condition, largely along lines of color, is the product of half a millennium of predation.

The gory enterprise could not, however, forever contain the human impulse toward self-determination, or escape the laws of political economy. Unable to export the contradictions of dwindling rates of profit in a decolonizing world, western financial capitalists exported their industrial capacity, instead. Power must shift, as well. This is the central quandary of the BRICS, and of U.S. imperialism.

“Washington is betting its global hegemony on military coercion, pure and simple.”

The United States, firmly in the grip of hyperactive finance capital, has acquiesced to its diminishing role in world trade. It doesn’t seriously attempt to directly compete with the core BRICS countries in Africa and Latin America. Washington is betting its global hegemony on military coercion, pure and simple. The U.S. is now the “indispensable nation” only in the sense that it refuses to tolerate a world in which it is not treated as such. Under Presidents Clinton, Bush and, especially, Obama, the U.S. has waged an escalating war against international legal order, largely under the pernicious doctrine of “humanitarian” military intervention. National sovereignty is treated as a dead letter, and trade sanctions are quickly followed by armed, barely covert assaults on unoffending governments. The U.S. publicly announces possession of new systems of warfare that can annihilate targets with a conventional weapon anywhere on the globe in half an hour [22]. The message is clear, repetitive and meant to be terrifying: No nation, or combination of nations, will be allowed to challenge U.S. dominance in the world, as defined by Washington.

“The U.S. swarms over Africa, to secure political obedience despite its economic eclipse on the continent.”

The superpower in decline is not only willing to throw the world into chaos to preserve its artificial position at the top, it is actively doing so in Syria, following up its decapitation of Libya. It swarms over Africa, to secure political obedience despite its economic eclipse on the continent. Objectively, the United States has positioned itself as the great and implacable impediment to global development.

Therefore, when the BRICS say that their summit is motivated by “a shared desire for peace, security, development, cooperation, respect for international law and sovereignty,” as was announced [23] at the 5th BRICS Academic Forum, earlier this month, they are placing themselves in opposition to the U.S. juggernaut. It is not a place that these nation’s governments want to be. But, if they are to continue on the road to self-determination and achievement of their own national goals – including their capitalistic aspirations – they have no choice but to resist Washington’s policies of coercion and the threat of strangulation.

It is not up to the BRICS to save the world. But, in order to save their own parts of the planet, they will be forced to confront U.S. imperialism. The monster must be removed from humanity’s path. Only then can we truly begin to clear out the rubble of the 500-year war, and build a new global society.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com [24].

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New BRICS Development Bank Announced

by Stephen Lendman

In September 2006, four original BRIC nations met in New York. On May 16, 2008, Yekaterinburg, Russia hosted a full-scale diplomatic meeting. In June 2009, Brazil, Russia, India and China again met in Yekaterinburg. Early steps were taken to end dollar supremacy. Eventual plans may replace it with a global currency or basket of major ones.

In 2010, South Africa joined the BRIC alliance. It was formally invited to do so. The group was renamed BRICS. Annual summits are held. On March 26 and 27, Durban, South Africa hosted the group’s fifth one. More on that below.

Their “mechanism aims to achieve peace, security, development and cooperation. It also seeks to contribute significantly to the development of humanity and establish a more equitable and fair world.”

America’s economic supremacy is declining. BRICS countries are some of the world’s fastest growing. They comprise a significant economic and political block. They account for over 20% of world GDP.

They’re on three continents. They cover more than one-fourth of the world’s land mass. Their population exceeds 2.8 billion. It’s 40% of the world total. By 2020 or earlier, China may become the world’s largest economy.

By mid-century or sooner, India’s predicted to be number three, Brazil number five and Russia number six. Between 2000 and 2008, BRICS contributed about half of global growth. In the late 1990s, Russia’s debt default and Brazil’s currency crisis rocked world economies. Today they have vast foreign exchange reserves.

BRICS have more global trade than America. China’s the world’s largest exporter. India’s an information technology powerhouse. Brazil’s a dominant agricultural exporter. It’s highly competitive. It has vast amounts of fertile land. It’s known as “the world’s biggest farm.” Russia is oil and gas rich.

South Africa holds resources worth an estimated $2.5 trillion. It’s rich in gold, platinum, uranium, chrome and manganese ore, zirconium, vanadium, and titanium. Two key institutions emerged from Durban’s summit. A BRICS Joint Business Council (JBC) and Development Bank were announced.

JBC formerly functioned as a forum. It encourages free trade and investment. Two meetings will be held annually. Rotating chairmen will head them.

Each BRICS country chose five top business executives to represent them. They’ll coordinate relations between member states and private sector players.

Separately, China and Brazil agreed to a bilateral currency swap line. It permits them to trade up to $30 billion annually in their own currencies. Doing so moves almost half their trade out of US dollars. It suggests other BRICS partners will make similar moves. They endorsed plans to create a joint foreign exchange reserves pool. Initially it’ll include $100 billion. It’s called a self-managed contingent reserve arrangement (CRA).

It’s a safety net precaution. It’s to strengthen financial stability. It’s an additional line of defense. They agreed to establish a new Development Bank. The idea was proposed last year in New Delhi.

“It’s done,” said South African Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan. BRICS leaders “will announce the details,” he added. South African President Jacob Zuma said:

Ahead of the summit, officials said each country may contribute $10 billion for starters. It’s aim is to fund infrastructure and other development projects. It’ll operate separately from Western international lending agencies. It’ll challenge their global dominance. It’ll test how they do business. They prioritize neoliberal harshness.

It includes privatizing state enterprises, selling them at a fraction of their worth, mass layoffs, deregulation, deep social spending cuts, wage freezes or cuts, unrestricted market access for Western corporations, business-friendly tax cuts, trade unionism marginalized or crushed, and harsh recrimination against non-believers.

It strip mines nations for profit. It shifts wealth from public to private hands. It destroys middle class societies. It turns workers into serfs. It substitutes debt peonage for freedom. A race to the bottom follows. An elite few benefit at the expense of most others. It sacrifices economic growth for private gain. It’s the worst of all possible worlds. Nations are transformed into dystopian backwaters.

BRICS have other ideas in mind. They seek a multipolar world. Much work remains to be done. Agreement on details must be finalized. It’ll take time to begin operations. It’ll be a second alternative to Western debt bondage. In December 2006, Hugo Chavez proposed a Bank of the South (Banco del Sur).

A November 2007 summit launched it. In September 2009, it was established. Its members include Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay and Paraguay. Plans are to increase initial capitalization. Member countries pledge to contribute. Full operations are expected to begin later this year. At issue is representing the needs of the South. It’ll contribute to its development. It’ll do so free from debt bondage.

BRICS Development Bank intends no one country to dominate. Voting rights will reflect equality. Economic growth matters most. India’s Minister of Commerce, Industry and Textiles, Anand Sharma, said:

“We are creating new axis of global development. The global economic order created several decades ago is now undergoing change and we believe for the better to make it more representative.”

BRICS trade today exceeds $360 billion. By 2015, it should reach $500 billion. Continued longterm growth is expected. Mutual cooperation helps sustain it. Each member country benefits. It remains to be seen how plans unfold. Hopefully global changes for the better will follow. They’re long overdue. Dominant emerging economies will play leading roles. They’re laying the groundwork to do so.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. His new book is titled “Banker Occupation: Waging Financial War on Humanity.” http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanII.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com. Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs Fridays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour

http://www.dailycensored.com/new-brics-development-bank-announced/