alanjjohnstone
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George Monbiot’s ominous warning
The old assumption that the Earth’s tipping points are a long way off is beginning to look unsafe.
Tibet by invasion would be an example of China’s expansionism.
The Chinese loans and business investment have propped up many African dictators.
China’s military presence in Africa, however, pales in comparison to that of the US or the French but it not negligible. It has been engaged in a number of missions across the continent, with troop contributions to peacekeeping operations in Sudan, South Sudan, Liberia, Mali and the Democratic Republic of Congo. It has also contributed millions of dollars of equipment to the African Union, And a military base was opened in Djibouti. It like many others make a healthy trade in armaments to the continent. It is not philanthropy. It is the same old scramble for Africa for geo-politics, only difference is China is the new boy on the block.
Where have I denied that there is a rivalry between the USA and its allies against China, to contain it. Australia has adopted a very bellicose strategy
Many smaller nations SE Asian countries seek the rights to the resources in the South China Sea. Unable to stand up to the potential power of China, they seek the aid of the USA who are only too happy to oblige for their own mercenary purposes.
One country, in particular, Vietnam, may well recall actual Chinese aggression and its invasion after it had expelled the Americans. Another example of China’s expansionist policy, you have ignored.
I have written of the inhumanity of sanctions as a form of siege warfare that kills civilians.
As for being against the development of Myanmar, I am reminded that when I criticise sweat-shop factories and exploitation by foreign corporations, I’m accused of resisting the industrialisation and future prosperity of the country. You use the same argument.
What is the point in countering your assertions with my own?
You simply refer to the sources such as the China Labor Bulletin as biased Washington puppets
https://clb.org.hk/And if I use the China Worker website, I am resorting to sectarian Trotskyists
Whereas your own authority in the Chinese state is unimpeachable.
“The existence of the state and the existence of slavery are inseparable” – Marx
“In reality, however, the state is nothing but a machine for the oppression of one class by another” – Engels
As you now acknowledge
“China’s is a mixed economy like every other nation on earth. They have capitalist enterprises and nationalised enterprises”China is little different from any other capitalist country in the world. But you choose to defend it when its corporations operating in Africa has been guilty of anti-worker practices but you won’t recognise it as imperialism or neo-colonialism but instead pure humanitarian altruism.
As for “building socialism”, there is very little sign of that. Certainly no more so than any other nation on earth.
Yes, we are a small socialist party and have never hidden that fact, but bigger than half a dozen and clearly possessing of some importance that you have deemed it necessary to enter into a dialogue with ourselves, (which probably reflects your own political isolation.)
I have heard this argument that because we remain committed to the traditional understanding of socialism, one that even pre-dates Marx, and promote it as the accurate interpretation, we are somehow committing the true Scotsman fallacy.
When we use tools of the materialist conception of history to predict the course of events that is not the True Scotsman fallacy. We said the Russian Revolution would fail to accomplish its aims. We said the reformists wouldn’t bring socialism any closer by gradual step by step legislation.
Shall I suggest that 1 billion Hindus are correct? 1 billion Muslims? 1 billion Catholics? The 60 million Americans who voted for Trump or the 80 million that voted for the lesser evil Biden…do you see where I am going.
For decades in their lives, Marx and Engels had only a few close correspondents sharing their socialist ideas. No mass socialist party.
Numbers mean nothing when it comes to ideas. You are appealing to might is right.
So we are gradually getting to the root of your own particular ideology.
You are certainly not expressing the ideas of Marx nor depicting the role of the State as defined by him.
This Party has been dealing with your mistaken beliefs since it was founded in 1904.
Have you not read “Socialism, Utopian, and Scientific” where Engels showed that the nationalisation of industries does not lessen their capitalist nature?
Xi Jinping of China intends to start regulating excessive wealth to ensure “common prosperity” within the country. But so has Biden stated the very similar intentions.
The statistics of the wealth inequality in both countries are stark.
In 2020, China claimed it lifted nearly 100 million people out of extreme poverty. But the truth is questionable, given that China’s definition of the poverty line is $1.69, compared to the World Bank’s $1.90.
Are you defending the expansionist policy of China which has shown itself equally as willing as the USA to cooperate with despots and dictatorships?
Do the interests of the Chinese state over-ride solidarity with Myanmar’s working people?
Does the development of a new trade route to service China’s growing industry take precedence over the civil and human rights of the Myanmar people?
Real Politik is already asserting itself. Regardless of the token sanctions being imposed upon certain individual Myanmar officials, every nation is eager to come to a working accommodation with the Tatmadaw. ASEAN has a pragmatic relationship with the Tatmadaw government.
In this thread, I already mentioned that the UK has defacto recognised the regime.
The way to understand the coup is simply to follow the money – Myanmar Economic Holdings Ltd (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) – through which the military and their families possess monopolistic control over core sectors of the economy and the country’s most lucrative industries.
The military detected a loosening of their hold over the NLD and pre-empted future reforms with a coup.
I apologise if I gave the impression that there are no real conspiracies.
However, I was simply trying to infer that they can be a myriad of motivations in politics and cherry-picking supposed connections gives the impression that there is one grand plot in the great scheme of things.
Remember, it was the American oligarchs that chose China to partner. It is their rival protectionists,”America First” who are calling for a trade war.
The capitalist class has never been united except in the class war against the workers.
I find it somewhat surprising that someone purporting to be a socialist should be such an apologist for a state-capitalist regime and its economic exploitation of fellow workers.
A geopolitical struggle among states for regional and global military and political supremacy occurs during times when one or more formerly dominant powers are in decline and one or more rising powers are challenging their dominance. United States dominance and global hegemony have come to be challenged by China.
China’s ruling elite concentrated on accumulating its power potential and abstained from active self-assertion in world affairs. Xi considers that the time has now come to exercise that potential. China is accordingly expanding its presence commercially, diplomatically and militarily. America is trying to encircle it with its allies to curtail that growth of power.
Socialists have witnessed all this before and to adapt an earlier slogan,
Neither Washington nor Beijing but World Socialism
A plague on both
This topic thread certainly appears to be very much a false start
But here goes another speculative post
Chinese property giant Evergrande may default on its massive $300bn debt.
No expert but this development in El Salvador that approved bitcoin as legal tender may be of interest to others
This Party has never been sympathetic to Aung Sang Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and it was never duped by claims that the military had yielded political control.
You can speculate on the motives for the coup but Occam’s Razor applies to your conspiracy theory.
The easiest explanation is that the Tatmadaw feared that their extensive corrupt business interests were potentially being threatened.
Can we rely on either the BBC or CGTN?
You may include this as part of the anti-China media bias but I thought the article was informative
We can always expect rival great powers to take advantage of any internal dissent. It would be extremely naive to think such things did not happen.
However, to dismiss the Hong Kong unrest as having been manipulated by anti-China interests is not the same as suggesting they were engineered by them.
We cannot ignore that it was a continuance of the 2014 Umbrella protests
“People will come back again, and they will come back with stronger force.” Alex Chow said back then.
Genuine grievances exist and China’s government response is to suppress opposition.
The fact that such protests were not repeated on the Mainland is not due to no discontent but that it is expressed in many different manners such as factory strikes or local community protests.
I have heard many US right-wingers simplistically accuse “globalists” such as George Soros as creating Black Lives Matter.
It is standard procedure for any authoritarian regime to divert attention away from discontent by blaming foreign interference.
How often is it said that Russia influenced the 2016 and 2020 American elections?
And at the same time, Putin decries foreign incitement in Russia.
Our sympathies have to go out to our fellow workers in Afghanistan who already were suffering and will now not only find their misery continuing but very likely increasing without what miserly aid the previous regime received as the puppet government and client state of the USA.
Those who succeed in escaping the Taliban repression will also face the misfortune of being unwelcomed refugees.
It is a tragedy but if we are to be seen as callous, only one among many inhumanities inflicted by the nature of the capitalist system.
Since victims of incest and rape will also be denied abortions, when asked about that, Texas governor Abbot, said he will make such crimes disappear from being committed.
A Texas website used to report violators of the state’s extreme anti-abortion legislation after the site was forced offline by two different web hosting platforms.
The site ProLifeWhistleblower.com was removed from its original web host by the provider GoDaddy on Friday before being suspended by its new host, an agency known for providing services to far-right groups.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/sep/07/texas-abortion-whistleblower-website-forced-offline
BBC bias reporting
This is from RT, a main rival to the BBC and the voice of Putin’s Russia, but even so, its claims of the BBC distorting the news is valid.
Again personally, when the 1.25% tax on income is fully in force will I find my pensions taxed to support the NHS which as a non-UK resident I no longer have free access to.
How many Brit ex-pats will be paying for a service they are denied?
As I’m already excluded from the annual rise in pensions so the suspension of the triple-locked pension leaves me unaffected
