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November 28, 2011

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Trans-Pacific Partnership Destroys National Economies

November 28, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) is a “free trade” currently under negotiation between NZ and 8 other countries, the U.S., Australia, Brunei, Chile, Malaysia, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam.

Trade is only a minor part of the agreement. That’s just a clever branding exercise. A TPPA would be an agreement that guarantees special rights to foreign investors, and large Corporations. If these negotiations succeed they will create a mega-treaty across 9 countries that will put a straight-jacket around what policies and laws our governments can adopt for the next century — think GM labelling, foreign investment laws, price of medicines, regulating dodgy finance firms, NZ content on TV and so forth.

After the treaty is signed, if a new New Zealand sovereign law is deemed unsuitable by one of those Corporations, they will be able to SUE New Zealand in an International Court.

Basically we’ll totally lose our sovereignty. CORPORATOCRACY will reign supreme.

In the video here, Japanese journalist and author Gemki Fujii puts the case against TPP from his perspective in Japan:

Filed Under: Asia-Pacific, Corporations, Justice and Fairness, Law, Politics, Rights Tagged With: ,

War Games Spotlight China-Pakistan Hype

November 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Paratroopers hurtling head first out of planes, attack helicopters strafing a terror training centre and shacks blown to bits were this week’s latest embodiment of China-Pakistan friendship.

The war games conducted by 540 Chinese and Pakistani soldiers running around scrubland — the fourth joint exercises since 2006 — were ostensibly a chance for China to benefit from Pakistan’s counter-terrorism experience.

There was disappointment that fighter jets were unable to carry out a bombing raid, with visibility apparently poor, but the exercises were declared a success in terms of deepening friendship and improving military cooperation.

But behind the pomp rolled out for the Chinese, complete with slap-up marquee lunch and bags of presents, the relationship is as transactional as any other, as China competes with Pakistan’s arch-rival India for Asian dominance.

And it is far from easy to decipher. “They operate silently so as not to make any statements in public apart from cliches. So one doesn’t know what’s happening,” said retired Pakistani general Talat Masood.

China is Pakistan’s main arms supplier, while Beijing has built two nuclear power plants in Pakistan and is contracted to construct two more reactors.

But the alliance has been knocked by Chinese accusations that the separatist East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), which wants an independent homeland for Xinjiang’s Muslim Uighurs, is training “terrorists” in Pakistani camps.

Those accusations mirror long-standing concerns from the United States that Taliban and Al-Qaeda bases are funnelling recruits to fight in Afghanistan and hatch terror plots against the West.

During the exercises outside Jhelum, 85 kilometres (50 miles) southeast of Islamabad, generals watched troops attack, clear and destroy a mocked-up training camp, while smoking and sipping cups of tea under a giant tent to keep off winter rays.

Chinese deputy chief of staff Hou Shusen and Pakistan’s army chief Ashfaq Kayani sat together in the front row, guests of honour incapable of talking to each other without the help of an interpreter.

“We have done our utmost to eliminate this threat of ETIM and other extremists for China because we consider honestly that China’s security is very dear to Pakistan,” Kayani told a news conference after the war games.

He said that Pakistan had provided intelligence during the 2008 Beijing Olympics and the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and reiterated demands for closer military cooperation and larger imports of military hardware from China.

Beijing was instrumental in getting the United Nations and United States to blacklist ETIM as a terrorist organisation in 2002, but experts have questioned how much of a threat such a small group of people really poses.

Pakistani analysts believe members number no more than hundreds and are fairly dispersed in the remote mountains on the Pakistan-China border.

Despite that issue, if the language used to describe Pakistan’s febrile relationship with the United States is that of an unhappy couple wishing but unable to divorce, then the hyperbole used to describe China is that of an ecstatic lover.

“Higher than mountains” and “sweeter than honey” were phrases used by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani when Chinese Public Security Minister Meng Jianzhu came to town in September, at a time when relations with the US were at their most difficult in years.

The top US military officer, Admiral Mike Mullen, had just accused Pakistan of colluding with Afghan militants in besieging the US embassy in Kabul as ties plummeted further after the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

But independent China analyst Michael Dillon says that without any real ideological links, China’s relationship with Pakistan is primarily strategic, designed to offset its rivalry with India.

“There is a feeling that cooperation with Pakistan on counter-terrorism might be in China’s interests,” he told AFP.

“They’ve got economic domination over Southeast Asia. But South Asia is another matter. The big rival is India. If they can get close diplomatically to Pakistan then it can balance the power of India in the subcontinent,” he said.

Neither can China present an alternative to the US alliance.

But Kayani described China as “very important” to regional stability, perhaps best seen against a backdrop of Pakistan’s own rivalry with India.

“It’s not a zero-sum game. You further strengthen your relations with China, then you increase your importance. You use this as a leverage to improve your relationship with the US,” said Masood.

 

Source: https://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/11/26/war-games-spotlight-china-pakistan-hype/

Filed Under: Asia-Pacific, China, Imperialism, Weaponry

The Corporate Destruction of Australia - 1/4

November 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Filed Under: Asia-Pacific, Corporations, Corruption

Thai Facebookers Warned Not To ‘like’ Anti-Monarchy Groups

November 26, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Country’s strict laws against insulting the monarch have been used to jail a man for 20 years for sending text messages

A government minister in Thailand has warned Facebook users that anyone pressing the “like” button on posts that might be offensive to the monarchy could be prosecuted under the country’s strict lèse-majesté laws.

The warning was given two days after a Thai criminal court sentenced Amphon Tangnoppaku, 61, to 20 years in prison for sending text messages deemed insulting to the country’s queen.

Amphon was found guilty on four counts and sentenced to five years’ consecutive jail on each charge.

Thailand’s laws against lèse-majesté (insulting a monarch) are the most severe in the world. Even repeating the details of an alleged offence is illegal.

A report in the Bangkok Post quoted the information technology minister, Anudith Nakornthap, saying that anyone who had pressed “like” on items related to lèse-majesté on Facebook should go back and delete all their reactions and comments. Such material could end up being copied by people who set up fake pages to insult the monarchy, he said.

“If they don’t delete them, they can end up violating the computer crime act for indirectly distributing inappropriate content,” Anudith said.

The court heard Amphon sent offensive text messages in May 2010 to a personal secretary of Abhisit Vejjajiva, who was prime minister. Amphon denied the charges, saying he was unfamiliar with the text message function on mobile phones and did not know the recipient of the message.

Thailand’s government has been forced to take a tough line on lèse-majesté after being portrayed by the opposition as soft on those who break the law.

Arrests and convictions spike during times of instability, when the law is used by political rivals to harass opponents. That has been the case since a 2006 military coup ushered in political upheaval and sporadic street violence.

Statistics obtained by the Associated Press from Thailand’s office of the attorney general show 36 cases were sent for prosecution in 2010, compared with 18 in 2005 and one in 2000.

The US state department has said it respects the Thai monarchy and judicial system but “people around the world should be afforded freedom of expression”.

Benjamin Zawacki of Amnesty International condemned Wednesday’s verdict, accusing the government of suppressing freedom of expression.

“Thailand has every right to have a [lèse-majesté] law but its current form and usage place the country in contravention of its international legal obligations,” Zawacki told the Associated Press. “Repression remains the order of the day in Thailand on freedom of expression and Amphon is a political prisoner.”

Before his arrest, Amphon had lived with his wife, daughter-in-law and three grandchildren in a rented room in Samut Prakan province, on the outskirts of Bangkok. He is retired and received a 3,000-baht (£62) monthly allowance from his children. He has mouth cancer and has required regular medical care since 2007.

 

Source: https://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/25/thai-facebookers-warned-like-button

Filed Under: Asia-Pacific, Censorship, Crime, Royal Family, Sanctions

China-USA: Who Will Own The “Pacific Century”?

November 25, 2011 By Leave a Comment

A Chinese commentator notes a disturbing up-tick in U.S. drumbeating in the Pacific region. But China’s response, he warns, should be diplomatic pragmatism not more nationalistic posturing.

BEIJING - In early 1941, when America was still standing by as a neutral observer of the European battlefield, Time Magazine founder Henry Luce wrote an essay calling on his countrymen to abandon isolationism, assume the role of democratic missionary and establish “the first great American century.”

Fast forward to another American essay, delivered last month by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on the eve of the 19th gathering of leaders of the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum. Clinton described how America’s strategic focus over the next decade will shift to the Asia-Pacific region. This, she declared, will establish “America’s Pacific Century.”

Seventy years separate these two expressions, and yet the ambition of the United States to attempt to dominate the world remains the same.

However, unlike 70 years ago, with wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the worst economic recession since 1929, and its government facing a severe debt crisis, America’s strength has been largely reduced.

Even more important, 70 years ago China was poor, backward and struggling to push back the Japanese invasion. It has now grown into the most influential country of the Pacific’s western rim, and plays an increasingly important role in international affairs.

At the start of the 21st Century, many believed it would be “China’s Century.” So Clinton’s words beg the question: is this going to be “America’s Pacific Century” or “China’s Century” ?

Most Americans see China’s rise as some kind of threat to vital U.S. interests. In the just concluded APEC summit, President Obama pushed the idea of a Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP), though it was not on the official agenda.

Yet China, as the biggest economic entity in the western Pacific, and the world’s No. 2 economy, was not invited to participate.

Following the summit, President Obama made a visit to Australia and signed an agreement establishing a permanent Marine base.

For many, including the Chinese government, these US measures are designed to check China’s rise, and to fulfill an “American Pacific Century” agenda.

All of a sudden, the Pacific is becoming the center of the two countries’ competition. The Pacific no longer seems so pacific.

Facing this series of U.S initiatives, China’s policymakers ought to worry and reflect. Since the “peaceful rise” in 2005, documented in the recently published white paper China’s peaceful development, we are stressing repeatedly that a powerful China will not be a threat to any country.

Yet, the vast majority of Americans do not believe it. Worse still, many of China’s neighboring countries also regard China as a threat.

Because of this generally shared perception of threat, America needs no excuses to intervene on a series of fronts, notably the South China Sea conflicts. It also gives America the opportunity to establish new strategic relationships with China’s neighbors, or to reinforce its existing ones.

Some might say that a strong China is bound to arouse concern and suspicion in certain countries. But why can other nations be strong without intimidating their neighbors?

China’s situation today is related to its foreign policy. And the year 2010 is a testament of that. China’s hard-line stance in its dealing with the disputes over the Diaoyu Islands and the South China Sea prompted skepticism from many countries in the region towards China’s peaceful rise statement. In turn, they move closer to the US in order to contain China.

Feeding foreign distrust

Not hanging tough does not imply compromising on territorial disputes. But displaying toughness often has a negative effect. A foreign policy not only matters in its objectives, but also in its methods. As long as it helps to resolve arguments, it’s worth trying reconciliation whether multilateral or bilateral. Didn’t China emphasize the multilateral mechanism in the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula?

China’s domestic press has also played its part in raising other countries’ distrust of China. Undoubtedly, every media has its own freedom of press. But an irrational advocating of hard-line “deterrent” and “countering” initiatives will mislead public and policy makers abroad – and feed the “China threat” theory. Moreover, such statements mislead the Chinese public, stirring up nationalism and forcing China’s policymakers into an ever tougher stance.

The US strategic presence in Asia can actually ease some countries’ concerns, and promotes an overall regional security and stability. China should thus regard the “return” of America to Asia calmly. It is in fact an opportunity to reflect and readjust China’s diplomatic strategy to prepare for the potential negative effects on its economy and security that America’s return might bring.

Nothing should prevent peaceful coexistence between the two countries. The future Pacific Century belongs to neither America nor China, but to the whole world.

 

Source: https://www.worldcrunch.com/china-usa-who-will-own-pacific-century/4142

 

 

 

Filed Under: America, Asia-Pacific, China, Imperialism, New World Order

China building electromagnetic pulse weapons

November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

‘China’s military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.

Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Centerstudy on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China’s so-called “assassin’s mace” arsenal - weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.

EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an aboveground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii.’

Source:

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/21/beijing-develops-radiation-weapons/

Filed Under: Asia-Pacific, Banks, China, Corporations, Corruption, Imperialism, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Rights, The Hidden Empire, War, Wealthy Elite, Weaponry

Hillary Clinton and the new American (Pacific) Century

November 18, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recently published in Foreign Policy magazine, “America’s Pacific Century,” a Hitlerian declaration of imperial intent for American “leadership” in Asia for the next 100 years. The piece, which could just as easily been penned by Neo-Con policy makers begins with, “the future of politics will be decided in Asia, not Afghanistan or Iraq, and the United States will be right at the center of the action.”

Of course, America’s presence throughout the Middle East and the control it exercises over the region’s oil resources, as well as over the region as a logistical hub, is essential in tempering the rise of Asiaand ultimately hemming in the rise of China and Central Asia. The “Arab Spring” which Secretary Clinton and the US State Department had been a part of preparing, equipping, training, and even arming for at least 2 years prior, is the coup de grâce meant to completely overturn the multi-polar nature of the Middle East and ultimately the world.

Upon reading Clinton’s declaration of intent for American leadership into the next century, readers may recall the similarly named, ranting “Project for a New American Century” signed off on by some of America’s most notorious Neo-Conservatives, which almost verbatim made the same case now made by Clinton. In fact, America’s evolving confrontation with China, marked acutely by Obama’s announcement of a permanent US military presence in Australia just this week, is torn directly from the pages of decades-old blueprints drawn up by corporate-financier funded think-tanks that truly rule America and its destiny.

As reported in June, 2011′s “Collapsing China,” as far back as 1997 there was talk about developing an effective containment strategy coupled with the baited hook of luring China into its place amongst the “international order.” Just as in these 1997 talking-points where author and notorious Neo-Con policy maker Robert Kagan described the necessity of using America’s Asian “allies” as part of this containment strategy, Clinton goes through a list of regional relationships the US is trying to cultivate to maintain “American leadership” in Asia.

For example, the recently reinstalled Wall Street proxy regime in Thailand led by Thaksin Shinawatra and his sister Yingluck, has received reassurances by Clinton herself just this week stating that, “it is in the national security and political interest of the United States to have this government succeed.” As reported in-depth in “CONFIRMED: Thailand’s “Pro-Democracy” Movement Working for US,” Thaksin Shinawatra and his political regime have had long-standing, well-documented ties to Wall Street and London. The US backing of puppet-regimes like Thaksin, installing them into power, and keeping them there is central to projecting power throughout Asia and keeping China subordinate, or as Kagan put it in his 1997 report, these proxy regimes will have China “play Gulliver to Southeast Asia’s Lilliputians, with the United States supplying the rope and stakes.”

It is essential to look past the empty rhetoric of “democracy,” “human rights,” and “progress” used to justify foreign-funding and meddling to install servile autocrats like Thailand’s Thaksin orMalaysia’s stooge dictator-in-waiting Anwar Ibrahim and see the greater geopolitical game at play and the disastrous conclusion it is leading us all toward. It is also essential to expose the disingenuous organizations, institutions, and media personalities helping promote this global corporate-fascist agenda.

Above all, it is important not to allow ourselves and our countrymen to be manipulated and their lives wasted in the inevitable conflicts that are sure to arise as Wall Street and London struggle to maintain, or even expand their global financial, economic, and military hegemony.

Source: https://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/hillary-clinton-and-new-american.html

Filed Under: America, Asia-Pacific, Banks, Capitalism, China, Corporations, Corruption, CYBER WARFARE, Economy, Fascism, Federal Reserve, Globalists, Imperialism, Lobbying, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Revolution, Rights, Surveillance, The Hidden Empire, War, Wealthy Elite

Asia-Pacific: US ramps up global war agenda

November 17, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Like a schoolyard bully, President Barack Obama is flexing American military muscle as he currently sweeps through the Asia-Pacific region. The nominal impetus for the tour was the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit held in Hawaii last week. But rather than discussing “economics” (the E in APEC), the salient focus for Obama and his entourage appears to be “war” – and in particular laying down battle lines to China.

Testy relations with China is nothing new for Washington given recent months of US haranguing over trade and finance, but what Obama’s bombast signals is a sinister ramping up of the militarist agenda towards Beijing.

As if bouncing underlings and lackeys into his gang, the American president has moved on from Honolulu with stopovers in Australia, Indonesia and elsewhere. Given the primary economic power of China in the hemisphere, it might be thought appropriate for Obama to make a cordial visit to Beijing to discuss partnerships and policies to revive the global economy. But no. The omission of China on this major US tour seems to be a deliberate snub to Beijing and a message to the region: that China is to be isolated and ringfenced. This is the stuff of warmongering writ large.

The blatant aggression is naturally smoothed over and made palatable by the Western mainstream media. Reporting on Obama’s unilateral belligerence at the APEC, the Washington Post bemoans: “Try as he might to focus Asian and Pacific leaders on forging new economic partnerships during a regional summit here, President Obama has spent much of his time in private meetings with his counterparts discussing another pressing concern: national security [that is, US military power].”

The Financial Times reports breathlessly: “Barack Obama will not set foot in China during his swing through the Asia-Pacific region… yet the country’s rapid economic ascent and military advances will provide the backdrop for almost everything he does on the trip.”

Note the assertion that it is China’s “military advances” that are prompting US concerns, not the more reasonable and realistic observation that Washington is the one beating the war drums.

The FT goes on to say: “The Pentagon is quietly working on a new strategy dubbed the AirSea Battle concept, which is designed to find ways to counter Chinese military plans to deny access to US forces in the seas surrounding China.”

In “seas surrounding China” it may be thought by some as entirely acceptable for Beijing to “deny access to US forces”. But not, it seems, for the scribes at the FT and other Western mainstream media, who transform US offence/Chinese defence into Chinese offence/US defence. One can only imagine how that same media would report it if China announced that it was intending to patrol nuclear warships off California.

As previously noted by Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research, the South China Sea’s untapped reserves of oil and other minerals are a major driver in US maneouvring. China stands to have natural territorial rights to these deposits and has much more valid claim to the wealth than the US, whose counter-claims on the matter seem at best arrogant and at worst provocative. Again, one can imagine the US and mainstream media reaction if China was eyeing oil and gas fields off Alaska.

But there is a bigger geopolitical agenda here, as Global Research has consistently analysed. The increasing US militarism in Asia-Pacific is apiece with the globalization of war by the US/NATO and its allies. The shift in policy is, as the Washington Post lamely tells us, “the US reasserting itself as a leader in the Asia-Pacific after years of focusing on [illegal] wars in the Middle East.”

However, this is not a dynamic that should be viewed as somehow normal and acceptable. This is, as we have stated, an escalation of global aggression by powers that are “addicted to war” as a matter of policy.

Top of the US hit list is China. Washington’s criminal wars in Iraq and Libya have in particular been aimed at cutting China out of legitimate energy investments in the Middle and East and North Africa (and Africa generally). That in itself must be seen by Beijing as a flagrant assault on its overseas’ assets. Not content, it seems, with achieving that dispossession of vital Chinese energy interests, Washington is now pushing its insatiable appetite all the way into China’s domain. But such unprecedented aggression is made to appear by the US government and the dutiful mainstream media as a natural entitlement where refusal by the other party is perversely presented as “military plans to deny access”.

Obama’s visit to Australia this week is undoubtedly aimed at further twisting the threat to China. In Darwin, the US president is overseeing the opening of a base that will see for the first time US Marines being able to conduct war games on Australian soil. Thousands of kilometers from China, this development may at first seem inconsequential. But then we are told that the move is designed to station US military “out of the reach of Chinese ballistic missiles”. The insinuation is unmistakable and menacing: China is an imminent threat. Somehow, without issuing any such aggressive moves, Beijing is suddenly made to look as if it is prepared to launch ballistic missiles at US installations.

It is tempting to call this US-led dynamic of global war “dysfunctional”. But, disturbingly, it is not merely dysfunctional. The global war dynamic is a function of the collapse of capitalism and democracy in the US and Europe (the brutal police crackdown on Occupy protesters across the US is evidence of the latter). War on the world is the logical outcome of this failed system, as history has already shown us with the horrors of World War One and Two.

Karl Marx once noted: “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce”.

To avert another “farce” in which the horrors of history are repeated, we need to once and for all challenge the root cause: capitalism.

Source: https://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=27709

Filed Under: America, Asia-Pacific, China, Corporations, Corruption, Economy, Imperialism, Lobbying, Media, Military Industrial Complex, Money, New World Order, Politicians, Politics, Propaganda, Protests, Rights, Surveillance, The Hidden Empire, War, Wealthy Elite, Weaponry