INTERNATIONAL: News briefs


South Asia, on the verge of a crisis

The rise in food and fuel prices coupled with the economic downturn has resulted in hunger at the highest rate in 40 years in South Asia. A report presented by Unicef, the UN's children fund, shows that 100 million more are going hungry as compared to two years ago, with the worst affected areas named as Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. The report further gives that the South Asian governments should increase social spending if they wish to counter this threat.

The World Bank says that three quarters of South Asia's population, up to 1.2 billion people - live on less than US$2 a day and also that more than 400 million people are now chronically hungry. The report focused mostly on the impact on women and children as it was found that they were the more vulnerable during an economic downturn.

Some of the problems as highlighted by the report include all of a family's income being spent on food but not other essentials, borrowing money at high interest rates, and children being pulled out of school and being sent for work. Even India shows signs of suffering due to job losses and lower remittances from Indians abroad.

The report claims that Pakistan and India need to reduce their defense budget and increase expenditure on food, health care and education. It also advices governments of the region to use fiscal stimulus programs and aid from foreign countries so as to make social spending possible, which should include expenditure on training programs. (Main source: Aniruddha Bonnerjee, Unicef Consultant).



Dollar or Yuan?

As of March 2009, the United States owed China up to $1.3 million. Beijing has taken to diversifying its investments abroad while pushing US officials for an 'exit strategy' from the policies that could cost it the value of its US bond holdings. However, China's policymakers are well aware that there is no pragmatic alternative to the dollar as the world's main currency -any talk at the BRICs summit in Russia of the need for the US to relinquish power in global financial institutions does not in turn mean that the Yuan is to challenge the dollar's supremacy.

Charles Dallara, the managing director of the Institute of International Finance (IIF) says that over time there will be a gradual enhancement of the role of renminibi, though it may not replace the dollar -according to him, whether Chinese officials themselves would want it to be so seems doubtful. A stir was caused in March by Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the People's Bank of China, with an essay that said the International Monetary Fund's unit of account, the Special Drawing Right, may displace the dollar one day. However, diplomats and bankers who conversed with Zhou say that he admits that this maybe unrealistic, and his intention was to draw attention to concerns expressed by Premier Wen Jiabao as to the safety of China's vast dollar holdings.

According to Zhou Xiaochuan, the Triffin-dilemma - ie, the inability of the United States to supply enough dollars to satisfy the global appetite for reserves without triggering inflation - still exists. Beijing is acting on its concerns and is urging the US government to issue more Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, which would shield their owners in the event of a rise in inflation. In diversifying its international investment portfolio, Beijing has said it would buy up to $50 billion worth of SDR-denominated bonds to be issued by the IMF and is encouraging Chinese firms to invest overseas (mainly in the natural resources sector) by extending $45 billion in credit to Russia, Brazil, Venezuela and Angola in return for long-term oil supplies. The PBOC has also arranged currency swap deals totaling 650 billion Yuan so that trade and investment can be conducted in Yuan.

"As China's trade and investment has spread all over the world, it is practically impossible to keep our financial system closed as well as the currency permanently non-convertible. If anything, our trading partners will not allow us to do so." says Fang Xinghai, director-general of the Shanghai municipal government's Office of Financial Services. He hopes that Shanghai will become an international financial center by 2020 - a convertible Yuan would likely result in keen demand from global investors for Chinese financial assets listed and traded in Shanghai.


Supermarkets sans cash

The Financieele Dagblad reported in mid June that Dutch supermarkets hope to phase out the use of cash by 2014, in order to make supermarkets less vulnerable to armed robberies. Supermarkets had to deal with up to 200 'incidents' in the last year- ranging from grabbing money from the cash register to armed robbery.
According to CBL research results, nearly 90 percent of the customers prefer the move to use direct debit cards. Other methods will be found for those who do not wish to use direct debit credit, said a CBL spokesperson. The methods in trial at the moment are finger print or iris scans and payment by mobile phone.

The Dutch Consumers Association said the move was going too far.


Slaying of native people for resources

In the jungles of Peru, several thousand Awajun and Wambis natives in war paint, armed with bows and arrows and spears fight armed policemen, gunships and armored cars in over six million barrels of oil and forest timber. In a fight that followed in the removal of a road block near Bagua Grande, nine police officers and around 50 Indians were killed with hundreds left wounded or arrested. "For thousands of years, we've run the Amazon forests," said a protest leader, Servando Puerta. "This is genocide. They're killing us for defending our lives, our sovereignty, human dignity."

Meanwhile, military forces raided communities in the Niger delta which are opposed to the oil companies' presence in their lands. The delta provides up to 90 percent of Nigeria's foreign earnings but is also a place of violence. In May, helicopter gunships shelled villages which were suspected of harboring militia.
While many fled, activists of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta killed 12 soldiers and in mid June, set fire to a Chevron oil facility.

In West Papua, accusations of human rights violations have been aimed at Indonesian forces protecting mines. In the last few years, hundreds of tribesmen have been killed in clashes with the army. "An aggressive drive is taking place to extract the last remaining resources from indigenous territories," says Victoria Tauli-Corpus, an indigenous Filipino and chair of the UN permanent forum on indigenous issues. "There is a crisis of human rights. There are more and more arrests, killings and abuses." "This is happening in Russia, Canada, the Philippines, Cambodia, Mongolia, Nigeria, the Amazon, all over Latin America, Papua New Guinea and Africa. It's global. We are seeing a human rights emergency. A battle is taking place for natural resources everywhere. Much of the world's natural capital - oil, gas, timber, minerals - lies on or beneath lands occupied by indigenous people." Tauli-Corpus said.

As government-backed companies move in deeper on to previously ignored lands, and as countries and the World Bank increase spending on major infrastructure projects, conflicts will, without doubt, continue to grow. For example, the Dongria Kondh in Orissa, eastern India are unhappy about the British Company, Vedanta, exploiting their sacred Nyamgiri mountain for bauxite. Bauxite, is a raw material necessary in the production of aluminum. The open cast mine will lay the untouched forest area to barren wasteland and will affect more than 60 villages in the area.

However, indigenous people are more aware of their rights and appear to be challenging both governments and companies whenever possible. Ecuadorian courts have set damages at US$27 billion, to be paid by Chevron. In the Niger Delta, Shell is to pay US$1.5 billion to the Ijaw people and faces a further law suits brought by Niger Delta villagers working with Dutch groups.

Yet, Larry Birns, Director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs in Washington, says that there is still the fact that courts will ignore land rights where they are in conflict with economic opportunity.


President Obama's Far East nuclear issue

North Korea has declared that it has nuclear weapons, but has not been subject to 'regime change' as Washington fears for its 35,000 odd troops stationed in South Korea. Though China could easily bring Pyongyang to an agreement by simply withholding aid and trade, Beijing has said on many occasions quite openly that it would do no such thing. "The Chinese are not particularly worried whether north Korea has an atomic bomb. They don't believe Pyongyang would be stupid enough to drop one on them. Historically, China has not been concerned about nuclear non-proliferation."

Tokyo, being a victim of nuclear weapons, upholds the 'three non-nuclear principles" - non-production, non-possession and non-introduction - as well as a "peace constitution". However, the agreement is that "any enemy attacking or threatening it with nuclear weapons would be obliterated by a US nuclear counter-attack" and still, Japan has the resources and enough Plutonium to make up to 5000 Nagasaki-type nuclear bombs. According to a recent Cabinet Office survey, up to half of Japan's population fears being caught up in war again in the face of north Korea's nuclear program and China's massive military build-up. It seems a tense situation and how Japan will react -whether it will honor its code or leave nothing to chance - remains to be seen.

In October 2006, North Korea claimed that it had conducted underground tests of nuclear weapons and the Security Council of the UN passed Resolution 1718 which condemned North Korean nuclear weapons test and called for an imposition of economic sanctions until the nuclear weapons program was completely ended. There was also a demand that North Korea's ballistic missiles program be abandoned. Therefore, when North Korea launched a rocket this April, both the United States and Japan had much to say. Whilst President Barack Obama claimed it was a violation of the Security Council's resolutions both Russia and China noted that North Korea had every right to launch satellites.

President Obama fears that the North Korean, and last year's Iranian satellite launches are merely covers for technology development of military ballistics programs. However, neither country has breached any international law in acting so. While the White House calls for a nuclear-free world and condemns North Korea for their acts, we can note that this April, Russia tested an SS-25 intercontinental missile which flew 6,000 miles before hitting its target. In February, the US Navy D-5 ballistic missile, equipped with multiple warheads, flew 4,000 miles in a test launch. India, Pakistan and Israel have also conducted similar tests. So, if there is going to be a nuclear-free world, then their transport vessels should also be dismantled, abandoned and destroyed.


$2,000 blood money for an Afghan, $100,000 for the killer


After Obama apologized for the strike which the Afghan government claimed killed well over a hundred ordinary country folk, came the report that the families of those killed, and subsequent Afghani dead falling in harms way of the US military, continuing as before, can apply to receive up to $2,000 compensation. This is the price the great United States of American puts on an Afghan or Pakistan human being, while awarding $100,000 to families of Americans who die while fighting and killing wherever.

Shocking? Shame provoking? Embarrassing that no Afghani or Pakistani child or parent has any human right at all, including the right not to be blown to pieces in a US drone air strike? - the final insult being the value of their lives put at a mere $2,000 by the wealthiest nation in history?

In imperialist America, there is not even any interest in such 'war casualties,' considered 'inevitable' by the U.S. government, now led by the Obama administration, as it continues to react worldwide to the Saudi Arabians (and one Algerian and one Yemenite) who suicided themselves into the walls of the Pentagon and World Trade Center in 2001.

Why bother to continue amplifying the point of this article? Why bother to remind people that the Prime Minister of Pakistan has demanded that US stop killing its citizens from the air? The U.S. installed President Karzai of Afghanistan has pleaded for a bombing halt for years to no avail. His legislature has long called for negotiations with the former governing Taliban, amnesty for all, and the removal of U.S. and other foreign armed forces. Why bother to remind people that the Iraq legislature asked for the same, years ago? Who remembers? All this was reported by the Associate Press but appeared only on the Internet. (In Iraq, a 'Sympathy Payment' - as reported in 2005 - could be as high as $6,000. Maybe it is higher in Iraq because Iraq has a lot of oil.)

But, in any case, who cares? Only the exceptional so called 'bleeding hearts', 'oversensitive' progressives, communists, socialists and overseas anti-imperialists like Presidents Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Evo Morales, Rafael Correa, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Daniel Ortega and some others, like Lula of Brazil, who are aware that it is healthier for their country to keep their reaction to themselves.

Words, words, words, as drones continue to fire missiles on orders from the popular highest elected official in America.

Yours truly will never forget being taken aback by Barak Obama's hand shooting up in the air in answer to Wolf Blitzer, monitoring a Democratic Candidates Debate, 'Raise your hand, if you would give the go ahead for a missile strike to take out an important al Qaida leader, if you knew there would be civilian casualties.' (Blitzer emphasized the last phrase.)

Would that Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel were president today. They did not raise their hands. All the more puzzling is this observation in context of the fact that President Obama is the loving father of two young children. Too bad Blitzer didn't ask, 'Raise your hand if you would give the go ahead for a missile strike to take out an important al Qaida leader, if you knew YOUR OWN CHILDREN would be casualties.'

Still more puzzling because the children of nations under US militarily occupation are Obama's and America's responsibility, as Jesus, Obama's Savior, taught, as even more basic than the Geneva Convention's civilian protection signed agreements.