China’s Brutal Debt Trap - Kenya

                (Brahma Chellaney’s article from the STRATEGIST on 24 November 2022.)

Kenya revelations shine a light on China’s predatory lending practices: Recently released details of Kenya’s 2014 loan agreement with China to finance a controversial railway project have once again highlighted the predatory nature of Chinese lending in developing countries.

The contract not only imposed virtually all risk on the borrower (including requiring binding arbitration in China to settle any dispute), but also raised those risks to unmanageable levels (such as by setting an unusually high interest rate). With terms like that, it’s no wonder that multiple countries around the world have become ensnared in sovereignty-eroding Chinese debt traps.

Over the past decade, China has become the world’s largest single creditor, with loans to low- and middle-income countries tripling in this period, to US$170 billion at the end of 2020. Its outstanding foreign loans now exceed 6% of global GDP, making China competitive with the International Monetary Fund as a global creditor. And through loans extended under its US$838-billion Belt and Road Initiative, China has overtaken the World Bank as the world’s largest funder of infrastructure projects.

Animal Farm By George Orwell – Chapter 2

                  (Chapter-2 from the Project Gutenberg Australia on 8 March 2008.)

Three nights later old Major died peacefully in his sleep. His body was buried at the foot of the orchard. This was early in March. During the next three months there was much secret activity. Major's speech had given to the more intelligent animals on the farm a completely new outlook on life.

They did not know when the Rebellion predicted by Major would take place, they had no reason for thinking that it would be within their own lifetime, but they saw clearly that it was their duty to prepare for it. The work of teaching and organising the others fell naturally upon the pigs, who were generally recognised as being the cleverest of the animals.

Pre-eminent among the pigs were two young boars named Snowball and Napoleon, whom Mr. Jones was breeding up for sale. Napoleon was a large, rather fierce-looking Berkshire boar, the only Berkshire on the farm, not much of a talker, but with a reputation for getting his own way. Snowball was a more vivacious pig than Napoleon, quicker in speech and more inventive, but was not considered to have the same depth of character.

RBA’s Independence Inflating Housing Bubbles

                   (Staff article from the ABC NEWS Australia on 05 November 2022.)

Most cash RBA has printed last 30 yrs went to houses.

The Australian Greens say the Reserve Bank needs to be more democratically accountable: Senator Nick McKim, the Greens' treasury spokesman, says the RBA must become more accountable for the consequences of its policies, and it should accept some responsibility for making inequality worse since the 1990s.

He says current monetary policy arrangements also need to be re-imagined to help Australia confront the climate emergency. That would include getting the RBA and government to play a more active role in directing the flow of credit to productive ends, particularly the transition to a low-emission economy, and to discourage the flow of credit to speculative ends, particularly highly leveraged property investment, he says.

"This policy would be given effect through prudential regulation and the RBA's use of its own balance sheet," he said. Senator McKim has used his submission to the RBA review to call for a number of changes to the way in which monetary policy is conducted in Australia. He said under central bank "independence", which has existed in Australia since the 1990s, monetary policy had become disconnected from democratic processes.

Hu Jintao Forcefully Removed from Party Congress

                     (Staff article from the BBC NEWS UK on 22 October 2022.)

Hu Jintao the ex-president escorted out of China party congress: Chinese former leader Hu Jintao has been led out of the closing ceremony of the Communist Party Congress. The frail-looking 79-year-old was sitting beside President Xi Jinping when he was escorted away by officials.

There has been no official statement by the Chinese government concerning the incident, but state news agency Xinhua said Mr Hu had not been feeling well. After the week-long congress, the party is expected to confirm Mr Xi, 69, for a historic third term.

The event, held in Beijing every five years, cemented his position as China's most powerful leader since Mao Zedong. Hu Jintao, who held the presidency between 2003 and 2013, was on stage when two officials approached him. He said something to Xi Jinping, who nodded back.

Animal Farm By George Orwell – Chapter 1

                    (Chapter-1 from the Project Gutenberg Australia on 8 March 2008.)

Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes. With the ring of light from his lantern dancing from side to side, he lurched across the yard, kicked off his boots at the back door, drew himself a last glass of beer from the barrel in the scullery, and made his way up to bed, where Mrs. Jones was already snoring.

As soon as the light in the bedroom went out there was a stirring and a fluttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals.

It had been agreed that they should all meet in the big barn as soon as Mr. Jones was safely out of the way. Old Major (so he was always called, though the name under which he had been exhibited was Willingdon Beauty) was so highly regarded on the farm that everyone was quite ready to lose an hour's sleep in order to hear what he had to say.

At one end of the big barn, on a sort of raised platform, Major was already ensconced on his bed of straw, under a lantern which hung from a beam. He was twelve years old and had lately grown rather stout, but he was still a majestic-looking pig, with a wise and benevolent appearance in spite of the fact that his tushes had never been cut.

Socialists Bringing ISIS Wives and Children Home

                   (Staff article from the ABC NEWS Australia on 28 October 2022.)

Will they be allowed to bring their AK-47s.

The first group of Australian women and children held in a detention camp in north-east Syria since the fall of the Islamic State (IS) group in 2019 is en route to Sydney. It is likely to be the first step in repatriating the entire cohort of Australian citizens detained in the war-torn country.

France last week removed 40 women and 15 children from the camps, joining more than 25 countries that had repatriated their citizens since the fall of the IS in early 2019.

The Australian government, which was involved in the extraction, confirmed the group's return. Those removed were assessed by Australian officials as being the most vulnerable of the 60 Australian women and children held in Roj.

The Darién Gap: A deadly extension of US border

                (Belen Fernandez’s article from The ALAZEERA on 27 October 2022.)

The Darién Gap: A deadly extension of the US border. As the US maniacally fortifies its borders, that sociopathic policy plays out over migrant bodies a thousand miles away.

This year, a record number of United States-bound migrants and refugees have risked their lives to cross the Darién Gap, the 66-mile mountainous stretch of spectacularly inhospitable jungle between Colombia and Panama.

According to Panama’s National Migration Service, more than 151,000 people, including at least 21,000 minors, made the crossing between January and September.

Sanctioned Tycoon Tay Za Hiding in Singapore

           (Bloomberg article from the BANGKOK POST on 18 October 2022.)

Sanctioned Myanmar tycoons find shelter in Singapore: Frangipani plants and coconut trees front the three-story villa on Sentosa Island where Myanmar tycoon Tay Za stays when he’s in Singapore.

It’s one of two houses his family owns in a development overlooking the South China Sea known as a playground for the wealthy. A short drive away is the Marina Bay Sands casino, where he would often show up carrying a duffel bag stuffed with cash. On a sunny day in June, a yellow Ferrari F8 Spider and a Mercedes were parked outside one of the villas.

Singapore has long been a haven for sanctioned Myanmar businessmen, including Tay Za, who has been accused by the US and others of supplying arms and equipment to the military. He has maintained the right to live and work in Singapore despite sanctions first imposed by the US in 2007 and has incorporated about 10 companies there with operations in palm oil, teak and aviation.

Exiled Dissident Fuelling the Hijab Protests in Iran

                    (Dexter Filkins’s article from the NEW YORKER on 24 September 2022.)

Since 2014, Masih Alinejad has published videos of Iranian women removing their head scarves. When a twenty-two-year-old died last week in the morality police’s custody, the country exploded.

Women from across Iran are pulling off their hijabs and lighting them on fire, flouting the country’s gray-bearded theocrats in dramatic scenes of a population struggling to set itself free. Of all the astonishments pouring forth from the Islamic Republic, perhaps the most remarkable is the fact that Iran was brought to this point, at least in part, by an unpaid forty-six-year-old mother working from an F.B.I. safehouse in New York City.

Masih Alinejad, an Iranian journalist who was driven into exile thirteen years ago, has helped galvanize the country’s women, amassing some ten million followers on her social-media sites and spurring them to trash the most potent symbol of the regime’s legalized gender-apartheid: the hijab, the hair covering mandated for every adult woman.