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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
Australian News Article

For those of you who think democratic power is overrated...

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I don't think anyone here thinks democratic power is "overrated". The disagreement is about what "democratic power" means.

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
The last time a recession hit Ontario, the voters elected the NDP.

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
The last time a recession hit Ontario, the voters elected the NDP. There is some choice, still. And the threat of change keeps the powers in check.

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No you were speaking specifically about federal power, where the big decisions are made and purse strings are in Beijing, Ottawa and Warshington. Provincial and territorial governments don't have any real power to affect the national economy. They can tweak taxes a bit, and the Liberals and Cons can protest over large cuts to transfer payments and downloading to the provinces, but that's about all.

In fact, the NDP has nothing to do with the creation of "FOCAL", a Canadian "pro-democracy" organization which is basically an arm of the CIA front agency, National Endowment for Democracy. The CIA was developing a very bad name for itself in the 1970's being accused of political interference around the world and within the United States itself. So what they did was try to legitimize CIA covert operations by creating quasi-governmental agencies like NED and USAID to basically interfere with democracy in other countries and promote U.S. big business interests. For example, Canadian officials have conspired with Haiti's elites on how best to run a dictatorship of the few over the majority since 2004 when the CIA and U.S. military interfered directly in Haitian democracy for about the 22nd or 23rd time between last century and this decade.

In case you wondering what any of that has to do with our two party plutocracy in Ottawa and the promotion of democracy in this hemisphere, many leftists have asked the same question. And it's not just the left, because Beijing knows what our stoogeocrats and Uncle Sam lapdogs have been pulling too.

ps: I am no admirer of our autocratic governments in Ottawa and Warshington

[ 25 October 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Second, public decision-making and administration become more sporadic and unpredictable as the disconnect between the central leadership and the majority of its population becomes more pronounced. This is occurring for several reasons. First, senior CCP members are increasingly becoming part of the new wealthy elites as a result of their privileged position within a China growing richer. Moreover, as part of the tactic to co-opt the new and emerging urban elites, the senior leadership has neglected the poor and especially rural populations, to their detriment. It is easy to forget that there are still about 900 million rural inhabitants in China (and only 100 million to 150 million in the middle and upper classes).

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There has always been a disconnect between the central leadership and the majority of Chinese before and after 1949. There has always been wealthy élites who neglected the majority. There is nothing new in 2007.

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That the reported instances of unrest are rising exponentially obviously suggests a rising tide of discontent.

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There has always been discontent. I refer to the Boxers, Taipings, and Lotus as obvious examples. Other examples are found in the early twentieth century with female workers, feminists, and other groups who were also unafraid of the central government but were crushed.

I will stop here. This man has not convinced me that the CCP, its government, and its armed forces feel challenged by Chinese. A meaningful challenge will come from reformers in the CCP and in the armed forces.

I forgot to add: the question should be Will Deng Xiaoping's China fail? Present-day China is a product of very recent reforms.

[ 25 October 2007: Message edited by: Liang Jiajie ]

[ 25 October 2007: Message edited by: Liang Jiajie ]

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Most commentators outside China agree that the possibility of co-ordinated and widespread social unrest is low and does not pose any foreseeable threat to the regime.

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
The last time a recession hit Ontario, the voters elected the NDP. There is some choice, still. And the threat of change keeps the powers in check.

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:

He indicates that the party takes the threat more seriously than outsiders.

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The CCP has taken threats seriously since it took power but it does not mean that its position has ever been viably challenged by those threats whether the latter were from individual party members or mass movements within China. Party leaders have known, and continue to know, the lessons of history very well so that student, worker, and politico-religious movements are interpreted as potential Taiping or Boxer rebellions. No entity in Chinese society can challenge the CCP except the military, but the military has always been loyal the CCP, which is why it cannot be challenged. So all threats, significant or not, are taken seriously before they grow beyond control.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
In fact, the NDP has nothing to do with the creation of "FOCAL", a Canadian "pro-democracy" organization which is basically an arm of the CIA front agency, National Endowment for Democracy.

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Originally posted by Fidel:
That's right, the NDP are deep-deep-deep undercover CIA spooks when working abroad.

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Come on, Fidel, can't we agree that Audrey is no longer NDP and that she played a filthy pro-U.S. role in Iraq in 2003? Or does "NDP" excuse every crime?

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Originally posted by unionist:

Come on, Fidel, can't we agree that Audrey is no longer NDP and that she played a filthy pro-U.S. role in Iraq in 2003? Or does "NDP" excuse every crime?

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She still opposed the U.S. invasion of Iraq and any Canadian military participation at the same time. Audrey was also a member of the Queen's Privy Council, so I guess that automatically makes her an official lackey of MI6/SAS at the same time she showed solidarity with the Kanesatake Mohawks at Oka. This is really becoming complicated, unionist. But I think participating in government-funded agencies like FOCAL is an excellent way for any federal party member to keep abreast of foreign affairs. It's very democratic to want to be a part of these things, whatever their intentions are. If a critic for foreign affairs is given the opportunity to be a fly on the wall, I think it's necessary for all political parties to participate, and especially if certain goals of the agency are not what they seem. ie. acting as an extended arm of one of several known CIA front agencies for "democracy"

And yes, FOCAL was purported by our government to have been invited by USian pro-democracy agencies to go to Haiti and "help out." In fact, reports which were obtained from Canadian Investment Development Agency through FOI reveal our government was deeply involved in Haiti before there were any official invitations by the Yanks to assist in Haiti. Our "pro-democracy" people were actually funding political and not-so political anti-Aristide groups on the island leading up to the CIA-US military orchestrated coup in 2004, about the 25th time that our neighbors have intervened in that country's democratic affairs.

[ 25 October 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:

For those of you who think democratic power is overrated...

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It's a very scathing condemnation of China, Michael. The CIS web site also has a very scathing critique of Noam Chomsky and his anti-Americanism. hmmmm? Here's what I think:

China has become a major player in the game of securing oil supplies, especially in Africa. And Warshington and big energy companies go hand in hand. Everybody knows that. China is using its vast U.S. dollar holdings to gain access to Africa's sea of raw materials. No doubt Warshington is concerned, because that leaves Warshington's usual levers of control over third world developing countries, ie. the World Bank and IMF, on the sidelines. What developing country would want imperialist medicine of the IMF when China provides a way around those imperialist funding agencies and builds roads and schools and even hospitals as enticements for doing business with Beijing? China is doing these same things in South America where U.S.-based capital is no longer dominant in that region. Everybody wants to do business with China because they are so much better business partners than you know who, and that's what these scathing news reports are all about. Take'm with a grain of salt.

Here, this article isn't so Warshington-centric on China and their developing trade relations with other poor countries.

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“China is the most self-conscious rising power in history and is desperate to be seen as a benign force as well as to learn from the mistakes of the existing major powers and previous rising powers,” says Andrew Small, a Brussels-based China expert at the German Marshall Fund, a public policy think tank. “It sees its modern national story as anticolonial – about surpassing the “century of humiliation” at the hands of the colonial powers – and still thinks of itself, in many ways, as a part of the developing world.”

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[ 26 October 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]

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What developing country would want imperialist medicine of the IMF when China provides a way around those imperialist funding agencies and builds roads and schools and even hospitals as enticements for doing business with Beijing? China is doing these same things in South America where U.S.-based capital is no longer dominant in that region. Everybody wants to do business with China because they are so much better business partners than you know who, and that's what these scathing news reports are all about. Take'm with a grain of salt.

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Is China encouraging self sufficiancy?

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

Is China encouraging self sufficiancy?

It strikes me that China is perpetuating the same system that the West has been

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But that's the difference. The IMF and World Bank, which are short and long term loan agencies based in Warshington, have attached stipulations to these loans that say those countries shall not invest in social programs ie. schools, health care and basic infrastructure.

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Originally posted by CMOT Dibbler:

Are you sure Chinese captains of industry have not placed any conditions on the loans they give to other majority world states?

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Sure they do. Right now China receives about 8 percent of Africa's oil exports as an example. The Yanks take somewhere around 24% and the EU some percentage I don't know off top of my head. After reading the article I posted above, it becomes clear that China has been building, or paying for the building of malaria hospitals, schools and basic infrastructure projects in Africa and extending development loans to those countries to the tune of twice the amount that the World Bank coughed up in 2006 according to the author. So yes, it's a diabolical plot by the Chinese to horn in on our western transnational's free hand in Africa and Latin America. The difference is that IMF/WB loans and strings attached to poor countries amount to ideology - iow's neo-colonialism and not even disguised very well at all.

And we certainly don't want to see it happen.

The US backed themselves into a pretty tight spot. They expected the Chinese to work the same way as everyone else, meaning, the US buys cheap goods from them in their dollars, and then the customer returns the favour by buying some high priced ticket items over in the US, which helps to keep the trade balance even and keeps the US dollar high. In the case of most other countries, when that trade balance starts to get out of hand, the dollars would correct themselves against each other and create a balance point for it.

The chinese didn't play that way though, they tied their dollar to the US (the more recent floating is only a small percentage) and they didn't come buying high priced US items, in fact all they did was steal the technologies and copy them to build them at home. This has created such a massive imbalance for the USians as their dollar tanks against the rest of the world, the Yuan is still on a very close par to the US.

So now the US risks pissing off the Chinese and having them do a two fold decoupling of the currencies and dumping of the funds onto the world market, which would tank the US dollar more and pretty much collapse the US ability to purchase anything offshore.

I've been watching this to for about 7 years now to see what the US would do about it but I still haven't seen any real action. I'm wondering if this is gioing to be eventually called the Jiang Zemin or Hu Juntao communism, where you work with the capitalists on a very tightly controlled basis only to over throw their flawed system.

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
Most of what you said holds, but I think that people often think that China is somehow outsmarting the US with the trade imbalance. A lot of it is jobs that American companies themselves outsourced.

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And technology too. The Chinese have leased American technology, and that has some people in the U.S. worried about losing even more jobs to China. China is developing its own capabilities for high tech r&d. INTEL, IBM and more western companies are now doing basic research in China because of a growing talent base of highly educated and skilled workers in that country. Any country's workers can do low skill repetitive tasks, especially where wages are kept low. But China is not your typical Hong Kong model for capitalism where money was made with banking and sweatshop textiles existing side by side with a large number of workers living in abject poverty. China is also diversifying its economy. Singapore was another thirdworld basket case in 1960. China was fourth world in 1950 and behind even India at the time on several economic levels. They've really come ahead like few developing countries under tutelage of the west have been able to dream of doing.

"Never let them make so much as a hairpin" -- Ben Disraeli on maintaining low technological dependence in British colonies

[ 26 October 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]