Friday, August 23, 2019

Left behind: In search of Empire in the 21st Century America and Britain bombed themselves back to the Stone Age




“Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but to educate and liberate." ~ Edward W. Said, Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2003


Lordy, Lordy who would have thought that “not so Great Britain” and America in their quest for Empire in the 21st Century would find themselves left behind in the age of enlightenment, advancement and progress.    Their insatiable lust for money and power through illegal bombing campaigns against any nation standing up to Empire, has left Britain and America deeply in debt, with their infrastructure crumbling and unable to care for their own people. 

W. Bush’s US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage threatened to "bomb Pakistan back to the Stone Age" if it did not participate in the illegal U.S. bombing campaign in Afghanistan that kicked off the Iraq War.  Ironic isn’t it, for it is us that have been bombed back to the Stone Age. 

The W. Bush Administration along with the British Empire’s Prime Minister Tony Blair reverted the richest, most powerful nations on earth back to the Stone Age in terms of power, prestige and fortune.  With their vicious, hideous campaign of bombing using banned chemical weapons like depleted uranium, medieval torture programs, and opening up governments to rampant pillaging by Western vulture corporatists, they destroyed not only those unfortunate nations but also “not so Great Britain” and America too.  Today these two nations have become the most reviled, evil nations with no regard for human life, especially in their own countries.  Lordy, Lordy.

The illegal, unelected W. Bush Administration was installed at the helm of America after 8 years of peace and prosperity during the Clinton Administration.  Armed with a 2 billion dollar surplus in the American treasury as well as trillions in more surplus projected into the future, flush with great paying jobs with excellent health and fully funded retirement benefits, the W. Bush Administration demanded the surplus be returned to the people as it was “their money.”

However by “the people” Georgie Bush meant “rich people” who W. Bush called “my base, the haves and the have mores.”  Immediately, Bush passed the biggest tax cut in history for the benefit of the rich with no regard for the damage it would cause to the middle class and the country itself.  From Joseph Stiglitz in Vanity Fair 2007.


Excerpt:

THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF MR. BUSH
The next president will have to deal with yet another crippling legacy of George W. Bush: the economy.

When we look back someday at the catastrophe that was the Bush administration, we will think of many things: the tragedy of the Iraq war, the shame of Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib, the erosion of civil liberties. The damage done to the American economy does not make front-page headlines every day, but the repercussions will be felt beyond the lifetime of anyone reading this page.

I can hear an irritated counterthrust already. The president has not driven the United States into a recession during his almost seven years in office. Unemployment stands at a respectable 4.6 percent. Well, fine. But the other side of the ledger groans with distress: a tax code that has become hideously biased in favor of the rich; a national debt that will probably have grown 70 percent by the time this president leaves Washington; a swelling cascade of mortgage defaults; a record near-$850 billion trade deficit; oil prices that are higher than they have ever been; and a dollar so weak that for an American to buy a cup of coffee in London or Paris—or even the Yukon—becomes a venture in high finance.

And it gets worse. After almost seven years of this president, the United States is less prepared than ever to face the future. We have not been educating enough engineers and scientists, people with the skills we will need to compete with China and India. We have not been investing in the kinds of basic research that made us the technological powerhouse of the late 20th century…

Up to now, the conventional wisdom has been that Herbert Hoover, whose policies aggravated the Great Depression, is the odds-on claimant for the mantle “worst president” when it comes to stewardship of the American economy. Once Franklin Roosevelt assumed office and reversed Hoover’s policies, the country began to recover. The economic effects of Bush’s presidency are more insidious than those of Hoover, harder to reverse, and likely to be longer-lasting…

Remember the Surplus?

The world was a very different place, economically speaking, when George W. Bush took office, in January 2001. During the Roaring 90s, many had believed that the Internet would transform everything. Productivity gains, which had averaged about 1.5 percent a year from the early 1970s through the early 90s, now approached 3 percent. During Bill Clinton’s second term, gains in manufacturing productivity sometimes even surpassed 6 percent…

The Federal Reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, spoke of a New Economy marked by continued productivity gains as the Internet buried the old ways of doing business.  Others went so far as to predict an end to the business cycle. Greenspan worried aloud about how he’d ever be able to manage monetary policy once the nation’s debt was fully paid off.

This tremendous confidence took the Dow Jones index higher and higher. The rich did well, but so did the not-so-rich and even the downright poor. The Clinton years were not an economic Nirvana; as chairman of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers during part of this time, I’m all too aware of mistakes and lost opportunities. The global-trade agreements we pushed through were often unfair to developing countries. We should have invested more in infrastructure, tightened regulation of the securities markets, and taken additional steps to promote energy conservation.

We fell short because of politics and lack of money—and also, frankly, because special interests sometimes shaped the agenda more than they should have. But these boom years were the first time since Jimmy Carter that the deficit was under control. And they were the first time since the 1970s that incomes at the bottom grew faster than those at the top—a benchmark worth celebrating.

By the time George W. Bush was sworn in, parts of this bright picture had begun to dim. The tech boom was over. The Nasdaq fell 15 percent in the single month of April 2000, and no one knew for sure what effect the collapse of the Internet bubble would have on the real economy. It was a moment ripe for Keynesian economics, a time to prime the pump by spending more money on education, technology, and infrastructure—all of which America desperately needed, and still does, but which the Clinton administration had postponed in its relentless drive to eliminate the deficit.

Bill Clinton had left President Bush in an ideal position to pursue such policies. Remember the presidential debates in 2000 between Al Gore and George Bush, and how the two men argued over how to spend America’s anticipated $2.2 trillion budget surplus? The country could well have afforded to ramp up domestic investment in key areas. In fact, doing so would have staved off recession in the short run while spurring growth in the long run.

But the Bush administration had its own ideas. The first major economic initiative pursued by the president was a massive tax cut for the rich, enacted in June of 2001. Those with incomes over a million got a tax cut of $18,000—more than 30 times larger than the cut received by the average American. The inequities were compounded by a second tax cut, in 2003, this one skewed even more heavily toward the rich.

Together these tax cuts, when fully implemented and if made permanent, mean that in 2012 the average reduction for an American in the bottom 20 percent will be a scant $45, while those with incomes of more than $1 million will see their tax bills reduced by an average of $162,000.

The administration crows that the economy grew—by some 16 percent—during its first six years, but the growth helped mainly people who had no need of any help, and failed to help those who need plenty. A rising tide lifted all yachts. Inequality is now widening in America, and at a rate not seen in three-quarters of a century.

A young male in his 30s today has an income, adjusted for inflation, that is 12 percent less than what his father was making 30 years ago. Some 5.3 million more Americans are living in poverty now than were living in poverty when Bush became president. America’s class structure may not have arrived there yet, but it’s heading in the direction of Brazil’s and Mexico’s.

The Bankruptcy Boom

In breathtaking disregard for the most basic rules of fiscal propriety, the administration continued to cut taxes even as it undertook expensive new spending programs and embarked on a financially ruinous “war of choice” in Iraq.

A budget surplus of 2.4 percent of gross domestic product (G.D.P.), which greeted Bush as he took office, turned into a deficit of 3.6 percent in the space of four years. The United States had not experienced a turnaround of this magnitude since the global crisis of World War II…

Tax breaks for the president’s friends in the oil-and-gas industry increased by billions and billions of dollars. Yes, in the five years after 9/11, defense expenditures did increase (by some 70 percent), though much of the growth wasn’t helping to fight the War on Terror at all, but was being lost or outsourced in failed missions in Iraq.

Meanwhile, other funds continued to be spent on the usual high-tech gimcrackery—weapons that don’t work, for enemies we don’t have. In a nutshell, money was being spent everyplace except where it was needed. During these past seven years the percentage of G.D.P. spent on research and development outside defense and health has fallen. Little has been done about our decaying infrastructure—be it levees in New Orleans or bridges in Minneapolis. Coping with most of the damage will fall to the next occupant of the White House.

Although it railed against entitlement programs for the needy, the administration enacted the largest increase in entitlements in four decades—the poorly designed Medicare prescription-drug benefit, intended as both an election-season bribe and a sop to the pharmaceutical industry. As internal documents later revealed, the true cost of the measure was hidden from Congress. Meanwhile, the pharmaceutical companies received special favors.

To access the new benefits, elderly patients couldn’t opt to buy cheaper medications from Canada or other countries. The law also prohibited the U.S. government, the largest single buyer of prescription drugs, from negotiating with drug manufacturers to keep costs down. As a result, American consumers pay far more for medications than people elsewhere in the developed world…

You’ll still hear some—and, loudly, the president himself—argue that the administration’s tax cuts were meant to stimulate the economy, but this was never true. The bang for the buck—the amount of stimulus per dollar of deficit—was astonishingly low. Therefore, the job of economic stimulation fell to the Federal Reserve Board, which stepped on the accelerator in a historically unprecedented way, driving interest rates down to 1 percent.

In real terms, taking inflation into account, interest rates actually dropped to negative 2 percent. The predictable result was a consumer spending spree. Looked at another way, Bush’s own fiscal irresponsibility fostered irresponsibility in everyone else. Credit was shoveled out the door, and subprime mortgages were made available to anyone this side of life support. Credit-card debt mounted to a whopping $900 billion by the summer of 2007…

Between March 2006 and March 2007 personal-bankruptcy rates soared more than 60 percent. As families went into bankruptcy, more and more of them came to understand who had won and who had lost as a result of the president’s 2005 bankruptcy bill, which made it harder for individuals to discharge their debts in a reasonable way. The lenders that had pressed for “reform” had been the clear winners, gaining added leverage and protections for themselves; people facing financial distress got the shaft…

Meanwhile, we have become dependent on other nations for the financing of our own debt. Today, China alone holds more than $1 trillion in public and private American I.O.U.’s. Cumulative borrowing from abroad during the six years of the Bush administration amounts to some $5 trillion.

Most likely these creditors will not call in their loans—if they ever did, there would be a global financial crisis. But there is something bizarre and troubling about the richest country in the world not being able to live even remotely within its means. Just as Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib have eroded America’s moral authority, so the Bush administration’s fiscal housekeeping has eroded our economic authority.

The Way Forward

What is required is in some ways simple to describe: it amounts to ceasing our current behavior and doing exactly the opposite. It means not spending money that we don’t have, increasing taxes on the rich, reducing corporate welfare, strengthening the safety net for the less well off, and making greater investment in education, technology, and infrastructure.

Those proscriptions to put the economy on stable grounds were ignored by the New Democratic Party, which is the same as the Republican Party and under the Obama Administration made those tax cuts permanent.  America is now over $22 trillion in debt and embroiled in even more wars for Empire.

Republican tax cuts for the rich have been catastrophic for America every single time they have been passed.  It never changes, the Republicans are a two-trick pony, tax cuts for the rich and war for Empire.  It took FDR over a decade to undue to catastrophic Republican economics that drove America into the Great Depression.  President Carter was on target to pay off the debt when he had to battle not only Republicans, but Zionist Democrats. 

Senator Ted Kennedy, not at all like his brothers Bobby and JFK, was a corporatist.  He ran against Carter in the 1980 primaries and even though he did not stand a chance, he took his candidacy all the way to the floor at the 1980 convention doing irreparable harm to Carter. 

Carter was then embroiled in the takeover of the US Embassy in Iran and the Reagan Campaign coerced the Iranians to hold the hostages until after the election to ensure Reagan would win the election claiming Carter was weak on foreign affairs.  Reagan immediately passed the largest tax cuts for the rich in history plunging America into debt.  Reagan went on a rampage, busting unions and putting in place a healthcare system that enriched shareholders while devastating the middle class and poor.  Bush senior who followed the Reagan regime realized that the tax cuts had devastated America calling them voodoo economics.  He raised taxes and the Republicans turned on him like vipers.

President Clinton was elected after overcoming a massive campaign attacking his character and immediately faced an investigation into Hillary’s White Water land deal in which the Clinton’s had lost money.  While the investigation was ongoing, Republican Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich launched his “Contract on America”, oops, excuse me “Contract for America” and passed a massive tax cuts for the rich. 

When Clinton vetoed Gingrich’s bill and raised taxes on the rich, Gingrich shut down the government.  Not one of those half assed shutdowns you see today, but a complete and total shutdown, lights out, everyone go home, no government business shut down.  It was during this time that Clinton had an affair with Monica Lewinsky.  Since the Clintons had been exonerated in the White Water scandal, the Republicans along with their Democratic partners expanded the investigation into the Lewinsky affair.

The Clinton investigation that lead to impeachment was more about his vetoing the massive tax cuts for the rich than anything else.  After Clinton raised taxes on the rich, reined in corporate welfare, broke up the Ma Bell monopoly and almost passed universal healthcare, he produced a massive budget surplus threatening to pay off the debt owed to the foreign banks known as the Federal Reserve. 

By September of 2001 the George W. Bush tax cuts had tanked the economy turning workers 401K’s into 201K’s.  Unemployment was rising and it took two jobs to make the amount of money working people made with one job under Clinton.  Bush’s approval had tanked to 39% and plunging.  Bush needed a Pearl Harbor type event to get his war with Iraq.

Once again the Republicans and now with support of likeminded Democrats sought to use the surplus to expand American Empire along with the British Empire to the far reaches of the world.  With the massive tax cuts in place for the rich the time was right for a war with Iraq.  What was needed was an excuse for starting the war.  When the Bush Administration took office they were warned by the outgoing Clinton Administration of the greatest threat to America being terrorism.  The Bush Administration scoffed saying Saddam Hussein was the greatest threat.

Under the Clinton Administration there had been commissions that had been formed to identify the greatest threats posed by terrorists.  One was the Gore Commission headed up by Vice President Al Gore which identified airline safety as a matter of national security.  The recommendations of the Gore Commission were soundly rejected by the GOP.  From John Smith Chicago:

Excerpt:

In the years leading up to 9/11, a proposal was made by the Clinton Administration to require secure cockpit doors on all commercial aircraft. This would have prevented 9/11. The media was more interested in a sex scandal.

The rest is history. On repeat.

“The federal government should consider aviation security as a national security issue. The Commission believes that terrorist attacks on civil aviation are directed at the United States, and that there should be an ongoing federal commitment to reducing the threats that they pose.” The Gore Commission final report, February 12, 1997

In 1997, Vice President Al Gore chaired the White House Commission on Aviation Safety and Security, otherwise known as the Gore Commission, to study and recommend new safeguards to prevent future terrorist attacks.  The Gore Commission recommended all commercial aircraft install secure, un-breachable cockpit doors to stop terrorists from hijacking an aircraft while in flight. The GOP controlled Congress subsequently rejected the Gore Commission proposals as too expensive and too burdensome on the airlines.

Unbeknownst to all, also in 1997 a radical Islamic terrorist named Osama Bin Ladin was plotting an attack on the United States. This plot might have been uncovered sooner if the Republican Congress wasn’t more concerned with impeaching President Bill Clinton over lying about a blowjob…

In 2000, Al Gore ended up losing the presidency to the dumbest man in American politics after the media caricatured Gore as a boring and self aggrandizing technocrat and lauded his opponent George W. Bush as the plain spoken guy you wanted to have a beer with.

Gore narrowly lost to Bush by 500 votes in Florida after Ralph Nader, sensing a moment to make a comeback as an election spoiler, ran a negative Green Party campaign casting the devout environmentalist Gore as a corporate owned shill no different from the oil industry’s official sock puppet, George W. Bush…

Sound familiar?

George Bush also didn’t care for his daily intelligence briefings, including the one he should have received in August 2001 titled “Bin Ladin Determined to Strike on US Soil”. Bush was on a month long vacation at his Crawford, Texas ranch when this alarming report was issued, warning of threats to hijack commercial aircraft.

On 9/11, terrorists were able to breach the cockpits of multiple commercial aircraft not encumbered by Al Gore’s proposed safety regulations. 3,000 people died horribly that day and two wars were started as a result.

History repeats.

The plan all along was crashing the economy through tax cuts for the rich, plowing money into the military industrial complex by reviving Reagan’s Star Wars, destroying Social Security through privatization, deregulating the banks and launching unending wars for Empire.  When Bush was unable to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, British Prime Minister Tony Blair provided “sexed up” British intelligence.  The war based on lies was on.  From Prospect.org:

Excerpt;

Bush's Neo-Imperialist War

Our Iraqi occupation not only rejects American foreign policy since Wilson, it's a throwback to the great power imperialism that led to World War I.  In 1882 the British occupied Egypt. Although they claimed they would withdraw their troops, the British remained, they said, at the request of the khedive, the ruler they had installed…

At the outset of the occupation, the British government declared its intention to withdraw its troops as soon as possible... Without the British presence, the khedival government would probably have collapsed.  The British would remain in Egypt for 70 years until Gamel Abdel Nasser's nationalist revolt tossed them out.

They would grant Egypt nominal independence in 1922, but in order to maintain their hold over the Suez Canal, the gateway to British India and Asia, they would retain control over Egypt's finances and foreign policy.

On Sept. 13, 2007, George W. Bush issued his report to the nation on the progress of "the surge" in Iraq. Echoing the British in Egypt, he promised "a reduced American presence" in Iraq, but he added ominously that "Iraqi leaders from all communities … understand that their success will require U.S. political, economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my presidency.

These Iraqi leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America. And we are ready to begin building that relationship -- in a way that protects our interests in the region and requires many fewer American troops." (Emphasis mine.) In other words, Iraqi leaders who owe their positions to the U.S. occupation want the Americans to stay indefinitely, and Bush is ready to oblige them, albeit with a smaller force…  Bush, too, has insisted that the United States is not engaged in imperialismAmerica is not "an imperial power," but a "liberating power," he has declared.

But Bush's denial rings as hollow as Gladstone's. What Bush has done in Iraq, rather than what he says he has done, is to revive an imperialist foreign policy, reminiscent of the British and French in the Middle East, and of the kind that the United States practiced briefly under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

Bush's foreign policy has been variously described as unilateralist, militarist, and hyper-nationalist. But the term that fits it best is imperialist. That's not because it is the most incendiary term, but because it is the most historically accurate.

Bush's foreign policy was framed as an alternative to the liberal internationalist policies that Woodrow Wilson espoused and that presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt to Bill Clinton tried to put into effect as an alternative to the imperialist strategies that helped cause two world wars and even the Cold War.

Bush's foreign policy represents a return not to the simple unilateralism of 19th-century American foreign policy, but to the imperial strategy that the great powers of Europe -- and, for a brief period, America, too -- followed and that resulted in utter disaster…

Fast forward to today, what have the Bush/Blair imperialist plans wrought on the people of America, Britain and the world.  From Black Agenda Report:

Excerpt:

U.S. imperialism views the One Belt One Road as an existential threat to the domination and monopoly of the dollar.

“China is becoming deeply connected to Asia, Europe, and Africa and this spells doom for U.S. imperial hegemony.”

The U.S. is once again mired in the political circus of the presidential election cycle. Corporate Democrats have aligned themselves firmly against the social democratic aspirations of the Sandernistas…  A crisis off (sic) legitimacy has been set off by the economic condition of the U.S. imperial system where slow growth stagnation, austerity, and endless war reigns supreme.

West of the United States, a new giant is emerging. China possesses a development plan that threatens to undo U.S. hegemony for good and one which has already laid the basis for the most important global struggle of the century.  The development plan is called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI was launched in 2013 under the leadership of president Xi Jinping.

China invested an initial one trillion USD into the BRI with the hopes of connecting China to Europe by both land and sea. In 2013, BRI included 65 countries and an estimated 55 percent of global GDP. This has since increased to tentative agreements with 126 countries after the latest Belt and Road summit.

The value of current trade arrangements from the BRI is nearly eight trillion USD, which accounts for over a quarter of all Chinese trade. In other words, China is becoming deeply connected to Asia, Europe, and Africa and this spells doom for U.S. imperial hegemony…

The Belt and Road Initiative is the starkest example of how U.S. capitalist system and its current stage of imperialism has been eclipsed by China’s market-oriented socialist economy. China’s growth rate has averaged 10 percent since 1978 as compared to the sluggish 2-3 percent that the U.S. has been garnering over the same period. China is becoming the world’s leader in both technological development and poverty reduction.

Since 1978, the People’s Republic of China has accounted for the entire reduction in poverty in the world by lifting 800 million Chinese workers and peasants out of the underdevelopment that Western imperialism imposed on the nation prior to 1949. Old industries have been updated and new industries such as cloud computing and artificial intelligence account for over sixteen percent of China’s GDP.

China’s rapid industrialization and technological growth is important because technological advance under capitalism leads inevitably to a higher rate of exploitation. The capitalist system utilizes technological advances to speed up production and automate labor, which vastly increases the surplus value (profit) accumulated by capitalist enterprises. This widens inequality and raises the number of workers relegated to the reserve army of the unemployed.

In China, the opposite has occurred. China has become a technological powerhouse while decreasing unemployment and raising the standard of living for all. While inequality between the rich and the poor has widened through the implementation of market reforms, colonial underdevelopment has become a thing of the past in China…

One of the central objectives of socialism is the rapid development of the productive forces of society. Only the rapid growth of the productive forces within nations ravaged by colonial plunder and underdevelopment can ensure that the basic needs of the masses are met and that the revolution can move toward communism, or a classless society…

In a hostile global environment characterized by U.S. imperialist destruction and provocation, China has been able to bridge the gap between the city and countryside by eradicating the backwardness left by semi-colonialism and imperialism. It is China’s success in this area which led late Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro to remark that “China has become the most promising hope and the best example for all Third World countries. . .”

The Belt and Road Initiative represents the duality of China’s economic miracle. China has not required its partners to adopt a socialist command economy. Rather it has lent its technical and economic prowess to build massive railway projects in both neocolonial states, such as Indonesian and Malaysia; and socialist countries like Vietnam and the DPRK, as part of a “win-win” arrangement…

Whatever contradictions exist within the Belt and Road Initiative are to be resolved by the people of China and the nations that participate in the project. It is worth noting that critics of China’s Belt and Road Initiative have almost entirely come from the U.S. and Western imperialist orbit. Corporate outlets have described the Belt and Road as a “scheme” designed to impose debt traps on participating nations and expand Chinese “imperial” influence across the world.

Such criticisms are laughable when one takes stock of the enormous debts that the I.M.F. and the World Bank, two wholly U.S.-led institutions, have placed upon the throats of the former colonial world. U.S. and Western imperial states have left the planet in utter catastrophe and only have austerity and war to offer its inhabitants. 

That the U.S. and its Western allies opposing the Belt and Road Initiative are primarily responsible for the fact that five individuals own more wealth than half the world’s population tells us all we need to know about the legitimacy of U.S. and Western critiques of the BRI. U.S. opposition to China’s Belt and Road is evidence of a global struggle between the decline of U.S. imperialism and China’s market socialist economy.

The Trump Administration has continued Obama’s “pivot to Asia” by labeling China (and its partner Russia) the gravest threat to U.S. “national security.” Trump’s regime has engaged in a “trade war,” purged Chinese scientists in the U.S. mainland, and illegally placed the CFO of Huawei Corporation under house arrest.

Most recently, the U.S. has increased its military aid to Taiwan in a blatant violation of the One China policy. These provocations are a signal to China that its very existence as a global power is unacceptable to the U.S. imperialist albatross.  “U.S. opposition to China’s Belt and Road is evidence of a global struggle between the decline of U.S. imperialism and China’s market socialist economy.”

The One Belt One Road Initiative represents the biggest threat to U.S. imperial hegemony in this epoch. China offers the world’s nations access to what U.S. and European imperialism has historically prevented in order to extract the wealth and labor of Third World at the cheapest price: technical expertise and infrastructure development.

U.S. imperialism views the One Belt One Road’s objective of enhancing the productive forces of the poorest nations as an existential threat to the domination and monopoly of the dollar. The equation is simple. The more that China dominates trade and investment worldwide, the less likely that these nations will continue to use the U.S. dollar to conduct its economic affairs.

U.S. imperialism offers only austerity and war and is thus unable to compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative. To be more precise, U.S. imperialism is incapable of doing anything to the contrary given the current stage of the system. China doesn’t operate from the basis of unfettered capitalism where the “market” (a euphemism for private capitalists) dictates all affairs with private profit, and profit alone, in mind.

Capitalism has reached its most advanced stage of imperialist development. Monopolies and finance capitalists call the shots. True competition and investment in the form of a different economic mode of development is nothing but an impediment to the maximization of profit. And because finance capital refuses to hedge its bets on anything that doesn’t bring a maximum return on investment for its shareholders, the U.S. military has been deployed to threaten China into submission…

China’s planned economy is here to stay. Military threats and trade wars have not weakened China. On the contrary, they have brought China closer to key allies such as Russia. The question is, what can people in the U.S. learn from the One Belt One Road process? First, the BRI teaches us that the U.S., as it is currently constructed, offers no hope for humanity.

China’s plan offers more than hope; it offers an opportunity in the here and now to further erode the legitimacy of the U.S.-led austerity regime…  The One Belt One Road Initiative also urges us to defend China from U.S. imperialism. Some on the “left” in the U.S. have repeated corporate media and State Department talking points about China’s “imperialism” and other iterations of Yellow Peril critiques of China’s policies.

Yet while these “left” forces condemn China’s infrastructure projects on the African continent as exploitative, they rarely if ever mention the U.S.’ neo-colonial military presence on the continent which has contributed to chaos and carnage in nations such as Libya. They also fail to mention that the U.S. military state has as its main priority the “containment” and ultimate destruction of China’s planned economy—a mission that can only end in nuclear war…

A left that finds itself aligned with the militarist and imperialist U.S. state on the question of China is no left at all. Radicalism that searches for a “pure” socialism amid the incessant attacks from U.S. imperialism should not be labeled as such. The responsibility of an insurgent and organized left in the United States is to oppose war and develop cooperative relationships with nations around the world.

As a journalist and witness of the achievements of the Belt and Road Initiative, Andre Vltchek notes , “BRI is the exact contrast to the Western colonialism and imperialism.” Condemning China without investigation reinforces Western imperialism and failing to engage with the Belt and Road Initiative only renders the people of the U.S. irrelevant in the most significant global struggle of the 21stcentury: that between the U.S. and China.

The carnage caused by British and American imperialism goes on today.  From Africa to Asia, from the Middle East through Eastern Europe and from Central America to South America no one is safe from the British and American Empires.  From Covert Geopolitics:


Excerpt:

Britain Has As Much Blood on its Hands as the Worst Dictatorships

All Western media networks, broadcast and online, are now focusing on the China-Hong Kong oppression narrative, and purposely silent about the massive protests against the Deep State’s plan to privatize healthcare and school systems in Honduras.

Western media are now speculating that China is readying a Tienanmen Square type of operation that shamed China for decades, to deal with Hong Kong protests that really has the CIA flavor for violent occupation of vital economic infrastructures.

The US, on the other hand, is ready to use all means to remove the unwanted socialist governments of Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba from power in order to achieve full control over Latin America, the Russian GRU chief Igor Kostyukov has warned.

All of these aggressive efforts rest on controlling the narrative as one of the main pillars of Western power grab, and Western regimes have as much blood on their hands as the worst genocidal dictators that have ever lived.   An Indian politician has put Winston Churchill in the same category as some of “the worst genocidal dictators” of the 20th century because of his complicity in the Bengal Famine…

In 1943, up to four million Bengalis starved to death when Churchill diverted food to British soldiers and countries such as Greece while a deadly famine swept through Bengal.  During an appearance at the Melbourne writers’ festival broadcast by ABC, the Indian MP noted Churchill’s orders related to Australian ships carrying wheat at Indian docks.

“This is a man the British would have us hail as an apostle of freedom and democracy, when he has as much blood on his hands as some of the worst genocidal dictators of the 20th century,” he said to applause.  He added: “People started dying and Churchill said well it’s all their fault anyway for breeding like rabbits. He said ‘I hate the Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion’.”

Dr Tharoor, a former Under-Secretary of the UN, also gave an extensive description of British colonial exploitation and annihilation of traditional Indian industries such as textiles which reduced it to “a poster child of third world poverty” by the time the British left in 1947.  He said the “excuse that apologists [of British empire] like to make is, it’s not our fault, you just missed the bus for the industrial revolution. Well, we missed the bus because you threw us under its wheels…”

“This [Churchill] is the man who the British insist on hailing as some apostle of freedom and democracy,” the author told UK Asian at a launch for his book. “When to my mind he is really one of the more evil rulers of the 20th century only fit to stand in the company of the likes of Hitler, Mao and Stalin”. He added:

“Churchill has as much blood on his hands as Hitler does. Particularly the decisions that he personally signed off during the Bengal Famine when 4.3 million people died because of the decisions he took or endorsed.”  Between 12 and 29 million Indians died of starvation while it was under the control of the British Empire, as millions of tons of wheat were exported to Britain as famine raged in India…

“Not only did the British pursue its own policy of not helping the victims of this famine which was created by their policies. Churchill persisted in exporting grain to Europe, not to feed actual ‘Sturdy Tommies’, to use his phrase, but add to the buffer stocks that were being piled up in the event of a future invasion of Greece and Yugoslavia”.

“Ships laden with wheat were coming in from Australia docking in Calcutta and were instructed by Churchill not to disembark their cargo but sail on to Europe,” he added. “And when conscience-stricken British officials wrote to the Prime Minister in London pointing out that his policies were causing needless loss of life all he could do was write peevishly in the margin of the report, ‘Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?'”

What Churchill did to the people of India while under control of the British Empire Trump’s B-Team is doing to the people of South America resisting the rule of American Empire.

Venezuela:  From LaRouche.Pub

Excerpt:

Bolton Behind Embargo of Venezuela, Russia and China Tension

In an action bearing National Security Adviser John Bolton’s and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s fingerprints, President Donald Trump late last night issued an Executive Order establishing a total economic blockade of Venezuela. This will block all property of the Venezuelan government in “the jurisdiction of the United States,” and target for secondary sanctions any nation or individual “who provide material support to ... or enable the illegitimate Maduro regime and undermine the National Assembly of Venezuela and interim President Juan Guaidó.”

Aside from killing more Venezuelans, the White House action also ratchets up the geopolitical conflict with Russia and China, governments that have opposed the U.S. war party’s regime change policy for Venezuela and backed a negotiated settlement. Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry called the U.S. action “economic terrorism.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry called it illegal.

Speaking this morning in Peru at the Lima Group-sponsored “International Conference on Democracy in Venezuela,” Bolton declared that it is the “moral imperative” of the U.S. to defend Western Hemisphere “neighbors against any threat, internal or external.” He harkened back to past London-supported U.S. regime-change offensives in Ibero-America to warn that Washington won’t hesitate to repeat them. “Not since an asset freeze against the [Manuel] Noriega government in Panama in 1988, a trade embargo on Nicaragua in 1985, or the comprehensive asset freeze and trade embargo on Cuba in 1962 have we taken this action,” he boasted, the Miami Herald reported.

“In each of these instances, we used robust economic tools against dictatorships.... It worked in Panama, it worked in Nicaragua once, and it will work there again, and it will work in Venezuela and Cuba,” Bolton threatened. He went on that, outside of Cuba, “the U.S. has used similar economic sanctions on the governments of Iran, North Korea and Syria. Now, Venezuela is part of this very exclusive club of rogue states.”

As for Russia and China, Bolton warned them that “your support to the Maduro regime is intolerable, particularly to the democratic regime that will replace Maduro.”

Ah, yes the American Empire’s mission isn’t take over the largest oil reserves in the world and open their resource rich country to plunder and control by American capitalists, but its mission is to educate and liberate."  Like they have liberated and educated Honduras. 

Honduras:  From Jacobin.com

Excerpt:

The Student Movement Standing up to the Honduran Regime

It’s been ten years since a US-backed coup installed a repressive neoliberal regime in Honduras. Now, a student movement has emerged to challenge the government’s agenda of privatization and militarization.

Ten years have passed since the democratically elected center-right president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, was removed in a military coup. On the same day of a referendum to create a National Constituent Assembly that sought to rewrite the military dictatorship’s 1982 Constitution, Zelaya was whisked away to Costa Rica still in his pajamas.

Observers across Latin America, watching nervously to see how President Obama would respond to his first real foreign policy test in the region, quickly had their hopes for a shift in US policy crushed. Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were quick to legitimize the coup and call for new elections that in Clinton’s words would “render the question of Zelaya moot.”

Clinton has defended the US role in the coup by arguing that to declare it a “coup” would have forced the United States to cut off all aid to the country, ultimately hurting the Honduran people. Yet since then, Washington has found no shortage of alternative ways to hurt the Honduran people, who have watched their country turn into one of the most violent and dangerous in the world.

The current status quo in Honduras is reminiscent of the days of US-backed death squads during the 1970s and ’80s Central American civil wars. Since the coup, a right-wing dictatorship — maintained through an alliance between the military, landowning elites, and the media — has increased ties with the United States while drastically militarizing the country. In July 2013, the regime created the Intelligence Troop and Special Security Group.

The next month in August, with a quick amendment to the Constitution to avoid the prohibition on military participation in policing, the Military Police was created. Even the DEA has entered the scene, through its Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team (FAST) which is now conducting operations in the country.

After the brief scare that Zelaya’s self-declared “center-right” government might bring socialism to the country — one of the coup’s central justifications — Honduras has returned to a program of neoliberalization. But popular resistance to this agenda has been strong.

The fraudulent reelection of President Juan Orlando Hernández (JOH) in 2017 was an important moment proving the criminality and violence of the regime: Hernández brutally cracked down on protesters, killing seventeen. Since only April of this year, state security forces have killed at least eight people protesting privatization attempts to health and education…

The key battleground has been the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH) in the capital, Tegucigalpa. With a student population of over 93,000, since the coup UNAH has become both a symbol of government encroachment into Honduran society as well as popular resistance against the regime.

Bitter fights have broken out over everything from administrative changes, to attempts to criminalize student protest, to an increase of the passing grade from 60 percent to 70 percent, which would have effectively kicked 13,000 students out of the university…

The student movement is diverse, accommodating a range of ideologies and tactics. This year it has intensified as wider movements against Hernández’s attempts to privatize the health and education sectors have grown. Massive street protests have been led by La Plataforma para la Defensa de la Salud y Educación (Platform for the Defense of Health and Education), made up of various unions with more than seventy thousand combined members.

Despite attacks by the staunchly pro-regime media, La Plataforma achieved a huge victory in June when Hernández backed down and repealed the law. It was a watershed moment of popular power against a regime that needed to deploy the military, when the police alone could not repress the movement…
  
A flashpoint was reached on June 24, when the military police invaded the UNAH campus and fired live ammunition at students. Remarkably, no students lost their lives, despite a number of serious injuries. Still, the protests are refusing to stand down…

In Honduras, to oppose the government has become dangerous. The state apparatus has made it clear that any calls of “Fuera JOH!” (“Out JOH!”) will not be tolerated. The regime is protected by a national media that discredits any form of anti-government resistance and an international media whose only coverage of the country is to demonize its most vulnerable people who flee extreme violence and poverty. Under this imperial shield, Hernández is employing state violence and repression without fear of consequence.

Emboldened by Washington’s unequivocal support of the 2009 coup and the fraudulent 2017 election, as well as the 2015 constitutional change to allow presidential reelection, Hernández knows he is safe to apply a whatever-means-necessary approach to the mass protests that are now beginning to radicalize and call for his resignation.

With the recent revelation that the president has been involved in drug trafficking with his brother — who is currently under arrest in the United States — “to maintain and enhance their power,” Honduras is on the precipice of becoming a narco-state. This makes it harder for the United States to publicly support Hernández. But when push comes to shove, he remains Washington’s man.

Now more than ever, the Honduran people are in need of international solidarity. The crisis they are suffering epitomizes the very worst of imperialism and neoliberalism. Hernández, with his known links to drug trafficking and criminal gangs, employs the state apparatus against his own people while corrupting democratic institutions to further entrench himself and the oligarchy that supports him in power.

All this while unleashing a torrent of privatization attempts against the most vulnerable people. In response, students and workers are valiantly leading the fight. All who believe in anti-imperialism and power from below must show their solidarity with the Honduran people in this critical time.

Sheesh you mean Venezuela doesn’t want Imperial Washington’s nirvana that has been smashed down upon the people on Honduras.  Another South American country benefiting from American Empire’s quest to “educate and liberate” is Brazil.  Let’s check in how Brazil is doing under the Empire installed Dictator.

Brazil:  From Intrepid Report

Excerpt:

Brazil’s massive crime against humanity

The corrupt Brazilian government installed by Washington has decided to destroy the Amazon Rain Forest.  This will adversely affect the Earth’s climate by eliminating a massive carbon sink.

The beneficiaries of the destruction of the rain forest are the timber loggers who are buddies with Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, environmental minister Ricardo Salles, and farming lobbyist Tereza Cristina Dias.

One might have thought that the build-up of CO2 and the impact of carbon emissions in raising the temperature of Earth would result in more careful and responsible policies than one that destroys a unique ecological habitat that stabilizes the Earth’s climate. For no other reason than to maximize profits for timber loggers, the Amazon Rain Forest is to be destroyed. This is unregulated international gangster capitalism at work.  Destroy the planet for everyone else so that a handful of gangsters can acquire fortunes.

We cannot expect any intelligence in a government where Dias dismisses global warming as “an international Marxist plot.” Dias sounds like a parrot for the anti-global warming think tanks sponsored by the carbon energy lobby.  Anything that would constrain short-run profits regardless of their long-run costs is dismissed as a hoax or a communist plot.

President Lula de Silva and his successor Dilma Rousseff attempted to run Brazil in the interests of a broader segment of the population than the robber-baron capitalists. In its unbridled form, capitalism is an exploitative mechanism that permits a few people to grab large profits in the near term by imposing massive external costs on the broader society and the environment. 

The more responsible policies of Lula and Rousseff enraged the Brazilian robber barons and their backers in Washington.  Using the capitalist controlled press, Brazil’s gangster capitalists demonized Lula and Rousseff. They were accused of money laundering and “passive corruption.”  The most corrupt elements on the political scene framed them up on false charges. Lula was imprisoned and Rousseff was impeached and removed from office, thus turning the country back over to Washington and the corrupt Brazilian capitalists. The idiot Brazilian population accepted this.  The fools believed their enemies.

Currently, the rain forest is being destroyed at the rate of 3 football fields per minute.  The rain forest has already lost 17 percent of its tree cover.  Scientists report that when deforestation reaches 20 to 25 percent the rain forest converts to savanna and loses its ability to absorb carbon.  But the concerns expressed at Brazil’s National Institute of Amazonian Research are not as important to Bolsonaro and his cronies as the profits temporarily gained by destroying the rain forest along with the many species dependent on the habitat of the rain forest.

The policies for which a small handful of Brazilian capitalist gangsters, backed by Washington, are responsible will have massive effects and impose massive costs on the rest of mankind.  More melting of ice and release of methane, rising and more acidic oceans, drought, water stress, more intense storms all of which affect food production...

What is happening right now in Brazil is a massive crime against humanity.  It is such a massive crime that the countries on Earth should unite and give the corrupt gangster Brazilian government an ultimatum:  Stop the deforestation of the Amazon Rain Forest or be invaded and put on trial for crimes against humanity. There is no greater crime than to make the Earth uninhabitable. There is no better case for war than to protect the global climate and life on earth.

Lordy, Lordy who would have thought that “not so Great Britain” and America in their quest for Empire in the 21st Century would find themselves left behind in the age of enlightenment, advancement and progress.    As they devastate other countries leaving millions dead, maimed and starving, their own countries lie in devastation.  Both countries care not for humanity, they revile their own populous leaving them sick, homeless and ignorant.  What hath the quest done to their own countries?  It has left them rivaling third world countries in their devastation.  America and Britain have bombed themselves back to the Stone Age.




Saturday, August 10, 2019

Traitors at the helm, the neocons’ and neoliberals’ China Derangement Syndrome




"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake up homeless on the continent their Fathers conquered.... I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies.... The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs."~ Thomas Jefferson

America is in a fiscal death spiral thanks to the traitors at the helm of the government fueled by the corrupt banking system.  The traitors in the U.S. House and Senate conspired in 2000 to overthrow the American form of government of, by, and for the people on behalf of the Federal Reserve Bank.  On December 12, 2000 five corrupt Republican Supreme Court Justices overturned the will of hundreds of millions of voters and installed George W. Bush as President of the United States. 

Three days later during a last minute lame duck session the U.S. Senate passed the Commodities Futures Modernization Act, deregulating the over the counter derivative trading, banking and insurance industries.  Wall Street had been trying to overturn the Glass-Steagall Act since the Great Depression when it was installed to protect the American people from Wall Street’s inherently risky gambles.  According to the Business Insider


Excerpt:

Speculation in OTC derivatives involves no connection to an underlying asset or to a real business risk, but the liabilities and risks they create are real. Under state gaming laws the speculative use of OTC derivatives, such as naked CDS (similar to naked shorts) and synthetic CDOs, was illegal in the US until state gaming laws were preempted by the federal government's Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA).

Officially, roughly $604.6 trillion in OTC derivative contracts, more than ten times world GDP ($57.53 trillion), hang over the financial world like the sword of Damocles, but to the average investor the derivatives bubble is invisible. From the perspective of those outside the bubble, the explosion of OTC derivatives is a mania.

Anyone with a modicum of intelligence and basic understanding of banking could predict what the outcome would be, a complete collapse of the global banking system like we saw in 2008.  Senator Phil Gramm, one of the main sponsors of the CFMA left the Senate in December, 2002, after serving for 24 years in Congress and joined the Swiss based UBS Investment Bank as Vice Chairman.  His wife Wendy Gramm headed the presidential Task Force on Regulatory Relief in the Reagan administration.   Wendy also was chairwoman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 1988 until 1993. According to a NewYork Times article:

Excerpt:

In her final days with the commission she helped push through a ruling that exempted many energy futures contracts from regulation, a move that had been sought by Enron. Five weeks later, after resigning from the commission, Wendy Gramm was appointed to Enron's board of directors.

According to a report by Public Citizen, a watchdog group in Washington, ''Enron paid her between $915,000 and $1.85 million in salary, attendance fees, stock options and dividends from 1993 to 2001...''

Enron exploited the deregulation mania to the max, and the result has been economic ruin for thousands upon thousands of hard-working families. As Public Citizen put it, ''Enron developed mutually beneficial relationships with federal regulators and lawmakers to support policies that significantly curtailed government oversight of [its] operations…''

Enron’s employees’ retirement funds were in Enron stock and they were not allowed to cash out unless the Federal Trade Commission downgraded Enron’s stock by a certain percentage point basis.  Wendy Gramm and other board members cashed out just before Enron’s 2001 collapse leaving the workers holding the bag.  From Market Watch:

Excerpt:

Workers, retirees and shareholders of Enron complained Tuesday that they were left holding the bag when the company's "house of mirrors" crashed…

Vigil explained that employees' 401(k) contributions were matched dollar for dollar by Enron in company stock, with limits on swapping to more diversified investments. As the end came, employees were locked out of their accounts entirely…

"As the truth about Enron started to come to light -- and as the officers at the top cashed out -- we, the employees, had no choice but to ride the stock to the ground," Vigil said. He said employees' pensions lost an estimated $1 billion.

Enron Chairman Kenneth Lay and former Chief Executive Jeffrey Skilling each sold shares in recent months for more than $60 million, while members of Enron's board sold shares worth more than $160 million.

Phil Gramm’s UBS tenure was much like his wife’s Enron tenure, very shady.  According to The NewYork Times: 

Excerpt:

In the wake of the UBS settlement with the United States government over bank secrecy and offshore tax evasion, some questions have been raised about whether former Senator Phil Gramm, the Texas Republican who is now a vice chairman at UBS, knew about the Swiss bank’s offshore activities and whether he blocked laws meant to prevent tax evasion.

Mr. Gramm has not been involved in the Internal Revenue Service‘s tax investigation of UBS. Still, Mr. Gramm is a controversial figure in the economic debate right now, since it was under his leadership as chairman of the powerful Senate Banking Committee from 1995 to 2003 that a bevy of laws were passed that deregulated many parts of the banking sector.

For example, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act allowed commercial banks, investment banks, securities firms and insurance companies to consolidate, creating behemoths like Citigroup that later became “too big to fail.” Mr. Gramm also pushed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act, which led to a proliferation of complicated derivatives that gummed up the Wall Street money machine, sending the economic crisis into overdrive…

The reason I bring up the case of the Gramm’s is that in the American government they are not the exception they are the rule.  Since that time America has been marauding across the globe overthrowing governments and robbing their treasuries and natural resources in order to forestall America’s impending financial collapse. 

The election of Donald Trump as President had thrown a wrench into the gears that have been grinding along since the installation of George W. Bush.  President Trump had campaigned on ending the regime change wars and building better relations with Russia, however Trump’s foreign policy has been hijacked by the Bolton, Pompeo and Abrams axis of evil.

China had been working in concert with Brazil, Russia, India and South Africa to form a New Development Bank that would be a competitor to the World Bank.  From Euromoney:

Excerpt:

NDB: The Brics bank takes shape

Over the last 12 months, the New Development Bank has gone from concept to fully fledged lender. It says it wants to be differentiated by its nimbleness and focus on sustainability. Where does it fit in a changing multilateral landscape?...

There is a certain cosiness to the 36th floor of the Brics Tower, where the executives of the New Development Bank reside, and it’s not just because it’s a grim and murky day in Shanghai. “The guy who just walked in is one of the vice-presidents; his office is next to mine,” says Leslie Maasdorp, CFO of New Development Bank and a vice-president himself. “The president’s office is there. There are two more VPs there,” he says, pointing. “On this floor is the entire credit committee.”

Being small, centralized and nimble is a key differentiator for NDB, says Maasdorp: “If there’s a project, we don’t have to wait for weeks to convene the investment committee. We call a meeting, assess the project, approve it and move on with our lives…

Brics acronym of 2001 referring to Brazil, Russia, India and China. Bric became a formal institution in 2010, with South Africa added later in the year. It was never entirely clear what it meant, other than an arbitrary and conveniently pronounceable aggregation of enormous emerging market economies…

 “The creation of the bank,” he says, “is an expression of the intent of emerging markets to take their rightful role in global governance.” Also, the five Brics nations illustrated the desperate need for infrastructure development in emerging markets.

“Also, given climate change – and we are absolutely persuaded that the world is undergoing fundamental changes – these banks have a public good objective to build infrastructure in a new kind of way,” Maasdorp says. “It’s not just about building roads or ports or power plants, but looking through the lens of what damage you are doing to the environment.”

 A Brics bank, it was decided, should be all about sustainable infrastructure, climate resilient and built with proper governance. It would also need to have a long-term view and a profound understanding of technological change.  “You cannot just build a road,” Maasdorp says. “You’ve got to configure what autonomous driving will mean in five, 10, 25 years for that road.  So we weren’t just created to be another bank for emerging markets.”

With those ambitions in mind, the bank set about the practical side of formation. The idea of a Brics bank was first mooted at the fourth Brics summit, in New Delhi in 2012. The finance ministers of the five constituent nations reported back with their ideas at the next summit in Durban the following year. During the next one, in Fortaleza in Brazil in 2014, an agreement was signed to establish what was now called the New Development Bank…

“This is a major commitment by these institutions,” Maasdorp says. “Each put in $2 billion, coming in instalments; we just received the fourth instalment and are more than halfway to the $10 billion.” This is another important distinction, he says. The ratio of paid-in capital to subscribed capital at the NDB – 20%, with $10 billion paid in and $50 billion subscribed – is the highest among multilateral banks.

“It’s a much higher proportion of equity, which demonstrates the strong commitment of our shareholders to the institution,” he says. In 2016 to 2017, the bank approved loans involving financial assistance of over $3.4 billion across green and renewable energy, transportation, water sanitation and irrigation…

He says he hopes “the likes of the UK, Germany, France will join.” (This is perhaps not a good moment to ask the US to participate in globalization.) Maasdorp says there is “very strong interest” for others to join, partly because of the sheer scale of their needs. “Whether it’s Vietnam, Turkey or Mexico, they have a massive need for funding.”

“There’s a sufficient number of projects out there, and not enough capital,” says Maasdorp. Then there is the China angle. China is now the headquarters of two multilaterals, first AIIB and now NDB. “There’s no question China is playing a bigger role in the multilateral system,” says Maasdorp. But while the bank talks of expansion, it still faces a challenge in getting things done in its founder countries.

There has been a heavy focus on China and India, and far less on South Africa. “There is definitely an intention to have a properly balanced portfolio among the five countries,” he says. “It’s not surprising that China and India would be disproportionate in the initial phase.” They have larger economies and China has a very clear infrastructure rollout programme mandated by the state, he says…

NDB has a target of $1.5 billion to $2 billion to be deployed in South Africa this year, which would be a fourfold increase on the $500 million committed in 2018. “What you are going to see now is a shift in momentum towards Brazil and South Africa,” says Maasdorp. These are not always easy places to do deals on the right terms, however.

Yes, the BRICS NDB Bank is one of the reasons the government of Brazil was overthrown and the far right, military dictatorship of Jair Bolsonaro was installed by the CIA, Elliott Abrams, John Bolton and Mike Pompeo.  That is why China is now on the hot seat.  From Economic Times of India:

Excerpt:

BRICS under new Brazilian President

New Brazilian government has started a radical reorientation of strategic partners, in line with the populist winds that have shaken much of the globe.

In 2019, Brazil takes the rotating presidency of the Brics group, the club created in 2006 that also includes Russia, India, China and South Africa. But you wouldn’t know that from declarations of the new government of president Jair Bolsonaro or from the list of priorities from his Foreign Minister, Ernesto Araújo. In the new administration, the Brics have become nearly invisible…

But it is clear that, in contrast to his predecessors, Bolsonaro’s foreign policy priorities lie elsewhere.   One likely explanation is that the Brics group became heavily associated with the leftwing governments of the Workers Party (PT), specially during the presidency of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (2003-2010). The club of emerging giants was an essential part of the South-South strategy which was a trade mark of his diplomacy…

Bolsonaro’s main ally is Donald Trump, followed by Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu and the populist leaders of Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Italy’s Mateo Salvini is already considered a close friend. In Brazil’s neighborhood, he has formed solid partnerships with Chile and Colombia, also governed by conservatives.

That leaves the rest of the world in a limbo. Araújo, the new head of Itamaraty (the Foreign Ministry), has shocked the Brazilian diplomatic community by calling himself bluntly an antiglobalist.

The new government rejects multilateralism, the United Nations and global pacts. One of the first acts of the new government was to withdraw Brazil from the recently signed global pact on migration. There was also talk of Brazil following Trump’s example and leaving the Paris Agreement on Climate Change, though more pragmatic voices seem to have prevailed and the country is sticking to it for the moment.

So the new Brazilian diplomacy consists of few friends and limited goals, with no global ambitions. One of these goals is solving the crisis in Venezuela, and that, incidentally, is another factor to weaken the links with the Brics.

Bolsonaro has made it clear that toppling the government of President Nicolas Maduro is a priority, and for that he counts on political and maybe military support from the United States.

On the other hand, Venezuela’s dwindling number of friends include Russia and China, the two most powerful members of the Brics. Even the other two, India and South África, even if not staunch allies of Maduro, seem to have little stomach for regime change in Venezuela led by Trump, specially if it comes by with a military offensive.

In the last decades, Brazilian diplomacy has alternated between two poles: one, Atlanticist, privileges relations with the rich, Western world; the other, strongly embodied by President Lula, sees Brazil as a natural leader of the emerging world and emphasizes historical links with Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

None of these traditions, however, has rejected the notion of a multipolar world in which Brazil is a balancing force. But Bolsonaro has come to change that moderating streak in Brazilian diplomacy. He has clearly taken sides against countries not formed in the Jewish-Cristian tradition, as Minister Araújo remarked in his inaugural speech in office. Ironically, a president that has promised to govern without ideological bias has made ideology a central part of his priorities.

The relationship with China exemplifies this abrupt change. In the last decade, the Chinese have become the most important trade partners of Brazil, and have been treated accordingly by all Brazilian presidents.

Bolsonaro, however, has followed Trump in his criticism of Chinese imperialism and appetite for buying companies and land. In the early stages of his campaign, the president travelled to Taiwan, a sure way to irritate Beijing. A visit by some congressmen of his party to China in January caused a storm within his political coalition, specially after criticism from Olavo de Carvalho, a Brazilian philosopher who lives in the US and is considered the intelectual guru of the president. Stepping on Red China was considered akin to treason…

Foreign relations have a way of acomodating themselves, as they are subject to multiple pressures. But it is already clear that under President Bolsonaro, diplomacy, as other areas in his government, will be very different from anything we have ever seen.

You bet your ass “diplomacy will be very different from anything we have ever seen.”  From G.Q.

Excerpt:

Brazil Lost 1,330 Square Miles of Rainforest in Just the Last Six Months

Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro has set the logging industry free—single-handedly hastening climate change.

When Jair Bolsonaro became the president of Brazil late last year, it was a major victory for the country's far right, and a potentially monumental disaster for the Brazilian Amazon.

To back up a bit: It was a shock when Bolsonaro claimed victory, not because his win came from nowhere—he was leading in the polls. But because his rhetoric drew comparisons to fascism (Foreign Policy claimed his propaganda campaign took a "page straight from the Nazi playbook.") And the man originally expected to win the election, former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was jailed on corruption charges before the election.

It's since come out that Sergio Moro, the presiding judge, was secretly directing prosecutors on how to conduct their case, and Bolsonaro subsequently gave Moro the second most powerful position in the Brazilian government—raising some eyebrows about the legitimacy of the charges.

Bolsonaro started out as an army captain when Brazil was ruled by a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, and he's frequently praised the brutal regime that kidnapped, tortured, and executed suspected dissidents and communists.

He's vehemently anti-gay, saying that if he saw men kissing in public then he would assault them. He told a woman politician she was too ugly to rape. He's vowed to criminalize social movements including his political rivals, the Workers Party. And he now leads a country of almost 200 million people, the second biggest in the Americas after the U.S.

Brazil is home to one of the most valuable resources on the planet, the Amazon rainforest. For decades, preserving the rainforest had been one of the main points of the environmental movement, and for a short while Brazil's conservation efforts were surprisingly successful.

But Bolsonaro ran on a campaign that promised to free up as much of the Amazon as possible for logging and deforestation, which was an appealing promise to both Brazilian and international business interests that often butted head with environmentalists and conservation efforts. He vowed not only to put "an end to activism" in Brazil, but also swore that if he became president "not a centimeter more" of land would be protected for indigenous people.

Under Bolsonaro, the government has dramatically scaled back environmental enforcement efforts, including fines and the seizure of illegal equipment. In fact, a recent investigation by the New York Times found that over the last six months, enforcement actions by Brazil's environmental agency dropped by 20 percent compared to the year before Bolsonaro took the presidency, while deforestation of the Brazilian rain forest shot up by 39 percent. That means that so far this year, the Amazon lost 1,330 square miles of forest—an area the size Houston, Los Angeles, and Chicago combined.

This has been a huge boon for the logging industry. Ecologically though, it's a disaster. The whole process of deforestation releases a tremendous amount of carbon, and not just from the machinery for felling and processing trees or from the commercial farming and cattle raising that take the place of the forest.

The Amazon rainforest works as a massive carbon capture system, soaking up and storing carbon emissions that would otherwise clog the atmosphere and exacerbate climate change. As those trees are cut down, not only do they release carbon they've been storing for decades, but they no longer do the vital work of soaking up more than 2.4 billion tons of carbon per year.

The global environmental impact of the Amazon is so huge that the forest has long been called "the lungs of the world,". A recent study in the journal Science found that reforestation, planting up to 2 billion trees around the world, could absorb as much as two thirds of all man-made carbon emissions. Unfortunately, Brazil is doing the opposite, and the current government is openly hostile to both Brazilian and foreign environmentalists. Or, as Bolsonaro told one European reporter, "The Amazon is ours, not yours."

So the Bolton, Pompeo and Abrams axis of evil are using Brazil to try to destroy the BRICS especially China.  The axis of evil sees diplomacy as a sign of weakness.  They much prefer bombs rather than carrots.  Brazil along with Colombia, Honduras, Chile, and Guatemala are the reason America’s Southern border is being invaded by indigenous people fleeing persecution by the axis of evil’s dictators. 

While America has been destroying the world China has been building the world through their belt and road initiative.  China finds loans and infrastructure more effective than bombs and dictators.  China has been an apt pupil of the IMF.  For that China has incurred the traitors’ wrath.  From Tyler Durden at Zero Hedge:

Excerpt:

Bombs Vs Bridges: How Two Empires Are Competing For Their Version Of The New World Order

There is a crisis in the Western world. Both in terms of domestic affairs and foreign policy, Western nations are showing all signs of impending collapse. This is despite the fact that the flagship of the Western world, the United States, continues to expand its empire across the globe. At the same time, the world is witnessing the “rise of China,” an empire in its own right though no one seems to have any interest in calling it what it is.

The American empire has come to terms with itself to some extent. Through all the claims of support for “democracy” and “freedom,” the United States has transitioned to an authoritarian state at home and a rampaging military of conquest abroad.

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine, Egypt, Somalia, Niger, Cameroon, Nigeria, Venezuela, Chad and Mali all serve as hot battles for the American military (in cooperation with other Western militaries, including Australia) in service of forcing governments into accepting the rule of private central banks, big biotechnology firms, pharmaceutical and industrial corporations and forcing those nations into providing raw materials for major industry centered in the Western world.

This says nothing of the American military bases in place across the globe. The US military posture of aggression coupled with threats of invasion against sovereign nations who are not compliant is well-known the world over and only the willfully blind do not see it.

But the US is definitely not alone in this.

China is also an empire and it is also marching across the globe attempting to expand its influence and control. However, most Westerners do not recognize it as such and even those anti-imperialist journalists in the alternative media find it difficult if not impossible to call China what it is; an expanding empire. Like the United States, China’s empire is one based on authoritarianism and control, though placing the collective in an even higher priority than its American competitor. Domestically, it has surpassed America in totalitarianism though the US is running as quickly as it can to the Marxist slaughterhouse.

While the US offers sticks, China offers carrots, albeit tainted ones. The US offers threats of overthrow and chaos, China offers roads and industry. The US offers bombs, China offers bridges.  Despite the manifestations, however, both countries are offering nothing more than empire in different packaging.

The Chinese Strategy

With the exception of its domestic oppression, China’s expansion of empire has been largely bloodless. It has focused on the maintenance of its status as a “developing nation” as well as benefiting from Free Trade globalism, the intentional de-industrialization of the West (particularly the United States) and the tyrannical repression of individual rights at home.

China’s slave labor industrial model [see here also] has made it the number one dumping spot for jobs that once provided high wages and high living standards to workers in America and, though raising some Chinese out of the poverty of rural areas, has simply moved them to the poverty of the city. With its excessively long hours, authoritarian work culture, extreme pollution, and low living standards, China has made the Chinese people into the collective Mao slaughtered so many to bring about, a mass able to be molded and adapted to serve the whims of the ruling class.

China has used the designation of “developing nation” to its greatest benefit, allowing it to skirt virtually all environmental regulations, turning the country into a toxic cesspit of pollution, chemical pools, and fake food…

Likewise, China has willingly acted as a depository for the Free Trade system, allowing it to soak up jobs and industry that should have remained in the West providing high wages and high living standards for Americans. Unfortunately, however, both the left and the right, as well as the well-meaning but uninformed middle have supported this transition under the name of Free Trade. But the result is not just the weakening of American economic might, it is the growth of China’s economic and, hence, political power.

Buying up US debt as well as manufacturing material that is essential for the US economy and national security has placed China in a position where attempts by the US to regain its industry puts America in a precarious position. If China sees its current status of economic powerhouse going by the wayside, it could decide to commit suicide by dumping the dollar.

If this happens, it is highly likely that the US will be plunged into an immediate financial crisis. This time, however, the US will not be equipped with the industrial infrastructure it had before NAFTA, GATT, and the various Chinese trade agreements to survive such a destructive decision. It is obvious that mutual destruction is the only thing holding China back from pushing the button but, if it is assured of its own destruction, why wouldn’t China push it?

It is this fact, as well as the US law that allows for foreign nations to donate to political candidates and a myriad of organizations of influence throughout the country that has essentially created a system in which China is able to act as perhaps the second busiest lobbying firm in Washington after AIPAC.

Together with buying up land inside the United States (land now owned by the Chinese government) including ports and industrial facilities, the US is slowly becoming more and more dependent on China than ever, weak attempts at tariffs notwithstanding. Even critical components of the American military, national security, and economic infrastructure have now been outsourced to China, demonstrating both how well the Chinese have played the game and how intelligent American “leaders” have spiked the football.

The current situation is not an accident, it is a necessary consequence of Free Trade that was known long ago and was, in fact, one reason this disastrous policy was introduced.

The Strategy Of Bridges

While the US bombs its way across the world, threatening to overthrow uncooperative governments at the slightest sign of resistance, China has chosen to play the long game, armed with centralized economic control and captured American industry at its command, by using its economic might and promised (often real) guarantees of economic growth to the third and “developing” world. What China offers is development, infrastructure, and economic growth but what it takes in return is influence and control over sovereign affairs.

Much like its position of holding America’s debt, China holds critical infrastructure and the purse strings of investment and growth. If one decides to balk at Chinese wishes, they will not face a color revolution or bombs, they will face having the financial spigot cut off…

One such example of the rapid expansion of Chinese influence in world affairs is the One Belt One Road (OBOR) initiative. OBOR is a global “development initiative” launched publicly by the Chinese government in 152 countries and “international organizations” spanning the globe in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, and the Americas.

The “Belt” aspect of OBOR refers to overland routes as well as road and rail routes (aka “Silk Road Economic Belt”) and the “road” aspect involves the sea routes, the 21st Century “Maritime Silk Road.” Interestingly enough, the plan involves the improvement of infrastructure on land routes that equate to the old Silk Road. It is essentially the creation of a trading network controlled and owned by the Chinese government.

But the Chinese initiative is about much more than mere trade routes. It is a neo-colonial project that is using the carrots of trade and infrastructure held in front of the third world as bait, while the subservience of the recipient nations is what is paid in return...

China, of course, rejects such criticism and labels those who point out China’s “debt-trap diplomacy” as not being able to see beyond their own Western views of development as colonialism, while the Chinese have a pure, more equitable concept of it. Obviously, this is a fair response to critics from the Western world who have scarcely developed a third world country without also using it as a harvesting ground for labor or raw materials…

Djibouti is a perfect example of Chinese neo-colonialism

One may look at the case of Djibouti to see an example of Chinese neo-colonialism at work. In this small, financially disadvantaged, East Africa country, China has planted its foot via the creation of two new airports, a new port, and the Ethiopia-Djibouti railway. The very size of these projects, particularly when taken into consideration the size of Djibouti and the financial situation of the country, make China’s presence there absolutely immense.

And with such an immense presence comes immense influence and control. This is to say nothing of the fact that Djibouti is China’s first overseas military base. It thus stands as the first “pearl” in the string long desired by the Chinese government.  To be clear, Djibouti was in need of all the things China built. So why the controversy?

These projects were built and developed with Chinese investment and Chinese money but they were also funded via debt in the host countries like Djibouti. The question then becomes whether or not these countries will be able to service their debt to China and, when they inevitably cannot, what will happen?

China is simply engaging in the same practices as the International Monetary Fund, wherein target nations are promised and provided some degree of development, only to see the debt service far beyond anything they are able to repay. At that point, the IMF privatizes essential services, natural resources, and industry. This “payments in kind” model is precisely what China is betting on. In this case, China is simply stepping in to become the IMF and stepping in to suck up the resources and industry that will inevitably be sacrificed to “service” the debt.

China is going after other countries with “debt traps”

Democratic Republic of the Congo, Angola, and Zambia have already suffered such consequences from China and Sri Lanka also has a story tell… Every time Sri Lanka’s president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, turned to his Chinese allies for loans and assistance with an ambitious port project, the answer was yes.  Yes, though feasibility studies said the port wouldn’t work. Yes, though other frequent lenders like India had refused. Yes, though Sri Lanka’s debt was ballooning rapidly under Mr. Rajapaksa.

Over years of construction and renegotiation with China Harbor Engineering Company, one of Beijing’s largest state-owned enterprises, the Hambantota Port Development Project distinguished itself mostly by failing, as predicted. With tens of thousands of ships passing by along one of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, the port drew only 34 ships in 2012.

And then the port became China’s.

Mr. Rajapaksa was voted out of office in 2015, but Sri Lanka’s new government struggled to make payments on the debt he had taken on. Under heavy pressure and after months of negotiations with the Chinese, the government handed over the port and 15,000 acres of land around it for 99 years in December.  The transfer gave China control of territory just a few hundred miles off the shores of a rival, India, and a strategic foothold along a critical commercial and military waterway…

As far what lies ahead for Djibouti, ‘The debt with China increases exponentially. They are going to take this port, just like they did in Sri Lanka,’ Doualeh Egueh Ofleh, a deputy in the National Assembly with the opposition Movement for Democratic Renewal and Development told ISS Today.  This is what lies ahead for all the nations who take part in China’s OBOR initiative…

With China expected to invest around $1.3 trillion in infrastructure projects across the globe, it should be remembered that what China is promoting is not even a plan designed to protect the Chinese economy, it is a Free Trade network that will see China at the helm of the exploitation of workers, worker’s rights, and the environment.

OBOR is not about fighting against Free Trade with the cooperation of third world countries, it is about expanding exploitation to those countries with a Chinese flavor instead of the Western Anglo version.  That, in a nutshell, is what Free Trade is all about. Indeed, Free Trade and colonialism have always existed side by side. The two are virtually inseparable…

China’s Empire Uses Military Might Also

That China’s empire takes the form of economics and “debt trap” diplomacy should not discount the fact that it also intends to spread through military force. Most notable is Chinese aggression in the South China Sea… One need only look at the South China Sea to see a perfect example.

The South China Sea is perhaps the biggest and most important oceanic shipping and trade route in Asia. China, of course, has laid claim to the vast majority of the SCS. However, there are more countries than China in the South China Sea and closer to the Spratly Islands, which China also has laid claim to.

Known as the “9-Dash Line,” Chinese claims in the South China Seas encroach upon the territorial waters of Vietnam, the Phillippines, and Malaysia. So obviously overblown were the Chinese claims when the Phillippines took China to international court over its claims, the court ruled against China. Much like the empire across the ocean, China simply ignored the ruling and continued to act virtually as the sole owner of the South China Sea…

Partly in order to extend its “legitimate” claims to the sea and partly to expand its military footprint, China then began constructing man-made islands in the SCS for the purpose of deploying military forces to the islands. With the construction of the islands, China also likely believes it can argue its claims to even more of the South China Sea as a result of its placement on the islands it made as well as physically control the area where $5.3 trillion worth of trade takes place every year, $1.2 trillion of which belongs to the United States.

In addition to use as a trade route, the South China Sea also may contain around 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. SCS is also one of the most important fishing zones in the world, an industry that China is the overwhelming leader in.

Add to the aggressive military posture in the South China Sea, China’s own policy that Taiwan will one day be brought to heel under the current Chinese government (aka the “One China Policy), and the threat of Chinese military action becomes very real. Indeed, China has become more aggressive both diplomatically and militarily in its stance toward Taiwan.

Which Is The More Successful Strategy?

Although both America and China are spreading their empire across the globe, the immediate short term methods of doing so seem completely opposite to one another. But in the race to expand empire, which one is winning?

America has pushed its empire across the world by using bombs, color revolutions, invasions, sanctions, and other forms of imperialist aggression for a hundred years, most notably in the last two decades. The continuing destruction of governments, countries, and cultures has made American imperialism clear to all its victims and to all the populations watching the American war machine march forward.

The US empire has unmasked itself before the world. There is no longer any doubt as to the fact that the American military and all the power of the American government is being used to impose the Western-financier system on the rest of the world.

Decades of watching their families being murdered, their culture and countries being destroyed has resulted not in the capitulation to the whims of America’s dictates but a deep-seated simmering hatred. It has also resulted in a growing resistance and ever-unified opposition to the spread of American influence. In many cases, it has resulted in the establishment of alliances of countries that otherwise would not have had common ground, based upon the common ground of a need for defense against the United States and NATO.

The Chinese empire has also been spreading for decades but the Chinese have been playing the long game and doing so in the most covert manner possible. While America’s bombs leave a bloody trail back to Washington, China’s bridges generally leave goodwill, increased investment, and, to some degree, economic growth within third world countries that desperately need it but are unable, for various reasons, to create it for themselves.

That is, these investments bring goodwill for a short time until Chinese tentacles begin to squeeze tighter and tighter both at the economic and social levels. The Chinese version of empire is no less insidious but, over the long haul, it may be just as effective. By using the carrot instead of the stick, China is luring away countries that may have been clients or targets of the United States. It is expanding its empire by the day and doing so without firing a single shot.

The American empire is overextended and showing signs of collapse. It has repeatedly shown that it cannot be trusted to live up to even the most minor agreements it has made with its “clients,” and the threat of expressing one ounce of sovereignty by its concubines results in bombs, blood, and upheaval. China is, of course, there to pick the low hanging fruit and to capitalize on the failures of American empire and the fears of falling under its orbit. America’s clients see bombs in their future. China’s clients see bridges.

As a result, American influence in the world is waning while China’s grows by the day. America, in many respects, is spreading China’s empire itself.

How Could The US Turn It Around?

If the United States wishes to maintain its influence on the world stage, it must abandon its desires for an empire and it must cease attempting to force systems of government upon sovereign nations, particularly the Anglo-financier system. If the United States does not wish to see its influence eroded and eliminated in the coming decades, it must focus on providing tangible improvement in the lives of the citizens of the countries it wishes to influence and it must do so through an open and honest channel, unlike the Chinese debt trap and unlike and most unlike the carpet bombing American version.

America has done everything in its power to squander the enormous good will many of the world’s people had in the past and still continue to have for it today. However, that need not be the case. America could once again establish good will for generations to come if it decides to influence the world by improving the living standards of its people. America’s legacy must cease to be war and destabilization and instead must become clean water, clean air, industry, infrastructure, and freedom…

But in order to usher in a Marshall Plan for the World, America must first rebuild itself. It must boldly proclaim an end to Free Trade. America must return to a country that protects its own economic interests and national prosperity by enacting tariffs on goods coming into the country that can reasonably be produced domestically and return to a state of high wages and high employment. A 15% tariff across the board, not used as negotiating technique or a political hammer, but as a means to protect and encourage growth inside the United States that provides high wage and high skill jobs to American workers.

The creation of infrastructure and higher living standards in the third world will do more to expand American influence than all the bombs its military can drop. It is a legacy that will engender good will for generations and will improve the lives of billions of people in the process.

Conclusion

The Western world has finally routed itself into a crisis not only of culture and values but of its very existence. Decades of imperialist wars designed to force third world countries into accepting the Anglo-financier system have drained America’s resources and have set the country into upheaval at home. The American empire is primed for collapse. Only by abandoning the concept of empire at all can the United States return to a state where it is the greatest engine for wealth and freedom the world has ever known.

Abandoning the neo-liberal policies of Free Trade would not only re-industrialize the United States, it would cut the knees out from under the competing empire quickly emerging across the ocean. The United States must focus on rebuilding domestically. If America wants to spread the principles of prosperity and freedom, doing so on the basis of respect, peace, and investment will win over the ideologies of Communism, Fascism, and Authoritarianism. Instead of dropping bombs, the U.S. should invest in building bridges. But more than bridges, America should be the symbol for clean drinking water, electricity, highways, airports, jobs, clean air, and a healthy environment the world over. If America wants to continue its influence across the globe, it has no other choice.

Fat chance the Bolton/Pompeo/Abrams axis of evil will abandon neo-liberal policies of Free Trade and carpet bombing and color revolutions for clean drinking water, electricity, highways, airports and jobs.  The only chance that would happen is if Trump exterminates the vermin who have invaded his administration.  But that isn’t going to happen, especially with the complete embargo they have placed on Venezuela for refusing to remove their elected government for an American dictatorship.  From Checkpoint Asia:

Excerpt:

The Chinese Ride to the Rescue of Venezuela’s Run-Down Oil Refineries
Sanctioned country is not able to cover its own gasoline needs

A Chinese contractor has agreed to shore up Venezuela’s derelict refining network to ease fuel shortages, potentially complicating the Trump administration’s push for regime change in the oil-rich country.  Wison Engineering Services Co., a Shanghai-based chemical engineering and construction company that is using China’s ‘Belt & Road’ infrastructure program to expand overseas, agreed last month to repair Venezuela’s main refineries in exchange for oil products including diesel, according to people with knowledge of the deal.

U.S. financial sanctions aimed at starving the current regime of revenue contributed to the decision to revive a domestic refining industry crippled by years of mismanagement and under-investment, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified because the information is confidential.

The deal mirrors the OPEC producer’s other arrangements with Russian and Chinese oil majors, under which payments are made in crude by Venezuela’s cash-strapped national oil company.

Wison’s repairs are expected to last six months to a year, according to another person. The Nicolas Maduro administration was having difficulties navigating the U.S. economic blockade even before the U.S. announced additional restrictions on Aug. 5. Last month state-controlled Petroleos de Venezuela SA was importing Russian gasoline through Malta to relieve shortages, a slow and expensive route to the Caribbean nation.

Irregular Supply

Irregular fuel supplies have crippled mobility in a country where shortages of food and basic medical supplies have already caused a health crisis and led to one of the largest mass migrations of recent times.  PDVSA, as the state producer is known, has been directing most available gasoline to Caracas, where Maduro is most vulnerable to mass protests.

The Trump administration was hoping to swiftly chase Maduro out of power earlier this year and has criticized China and Russia for supporting what it considers a criminal and repressive regime.  Wison didn’t respond to an email or fax seeking comment on the refinery contract. PDVSA didn’t respond to emails and calls seeking comment.

The Chinese company hasn’t completed a contract it won in 2012 to overhaul the Puerto la Cruz refinery. Wison’s revenue from Venezuela sank 72% last year as the nation’s economic crisis deepened, according to its an annual report.  China and Russia have an interest in preventing the complete collapse of Venezuela’s oil industry because it’s the only way to recoup the tens of billions of dollars in loans and investments they have made in the past decade.

Wison’s deal also underscores how the oil-hungry Asian nation remains committed to Venezuela as a strategic location for foreign investment.

Economic Blockade

Restoring fuel production, if it happens fast enough, would weaken the U.S. economic blockade and put Maduro in a stronger negotiating position as talks with the opposition drag on without any visible progress.  Despite Venezuelans’ widespread dissatisfaction with their government, divisions within the opposition are complicating the push toward a post-Maduro administration…

Venezuela’s refining industry, once a major supplier to the U.S. with 1.3 million barrels a day of capacity, has been in gradual decline due to theft, inadequate maintenance and a brain drain of qualified staff, and was hit by a series of major power outages this year.  In recent years, PDVSA hasn’t even been able to meet domestic gasoline demand that has historically been about 250,000 barrels a day…

American officials continue to project confidence about replacing Maduro with a pro-business administration despite the lack of progress.  China rejects “foreign interventions and unilateral sanctions” in Venezuela, and supports dialogue between the government and the opposition, its embassy in Caracas said in a statement on May 12.

The embassy didn’t immediately offer additional comments when contacted by the business news agency.  China wants “to be identified with a friendly socialist government, especially in the backyard of the U.S.,” said Schreiner Parker, Rystad Energy’s vice president for Latin America.  “They have no guarantee that a regime change will necessarily mean that they’re going to be repaid.”

You can be damn sure China won’t be repaid if the elected government of Nicolas Maduro is removed.  Not only will China not be repaid but the people of Venezuela will suffer immensely just like the people of Brazil have since their elected government was removed.  America is in a fiscal death spiral thanks to the traitors at the helm of the government fueled by the corrupt banking system.  This game of chicken with China is not going to end well for anyone especially America.  The traitors at the helm and their neoconservative and neoliberal enablers in congress’ China derangement syndrome will destroy what’s left of America.