Iconos

Iconos
Zapata

miércoles, 29 de abril de 2015

Where do we draw the line on balancing China?
Foreign Policy
The United States needs to think carefully about how far it wants to commit to limiting Beijing’s rising power.

Is it time for the United States to get serious about balancing China? According to Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis, the answer is an emphatic yes. In a new Council on Foreign Relations report, they portray China as steadily seeking to increase its national power, reduce the U.S. security role in Asia, and eventually dominate the international system. To deal with this clear challenge to U.S. primacy, they call for “a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy.”
In their view, success in this endeavor will require the United States to revitalize its economy, build preferential trading arrangements with Asian partners (such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership), deny critical technology to Beijing, and shore up U.S. and allied military capabilities in Asia. They also recommend that Washington strive to manage Sino-American relations through sustained high-level engagement with Beijing, and good things like that. But their overriding goal is to “limit China’s capacity to misuse its growing power.”
Needless to say, it is hard for a realist like me to find much fault with these prescriptions (and other prominent realists have been sounding similar warnings for some time now). But recognizing the need to balance a rising power just gets us started: The critical question is how one goes about it — and where one draws the line. And though Blackwill and Tellis’s report does offer an imposing array of steps to be taken, it doesn’t answer that crucial question directly.
Here’s the core of the problem. In international politics, the capacity to shape existing norms, institutions, and political arrangements — aka the “status quo” — depends primarily on relative power.
As the balance of power shifts, rising states invariably try to revise the status quo in ways that benefit their interests.
As the balance of power shifts, rising states invariably try to revise the status quo in ways that benefit their interests. This tendency makes perfect sense. Why would any country want to tolerate arrangements that were not to its advantage?
If China’s power continues to grow, therefore, it will inevitably seek further adjustments to the current international order. It would be naive indeed to expect Beijing to passively accept institutional and territorial arrangements created by others and especially those features of the existing order that were put in place while China was weak. It is all well and good to advise China to become a “responsible stakeholder,” as former World Bank President Robert Zoellick once did, but having a bigger stake in the system doesn’t preclude trying to revise certain parts of it as well. Beijing won’t seek to overturn features of the existing order that it likes, of course, only those it regards as inimical to its own security or long-term prosperity.
But how far should this process of adjustment proceed? Even if we recognize that a rising China will inevitably enjoy greater influence and might even have legitimate reasons to adjust the status quo in some areas (such as voting shares within the International Monetary Fund), that admission hardly implies allowing Beijing to have anything its leaders might want. The crucial question is easy to ask but hard to answer: Where should the United States (and others) draw the line?
What makes this issue especially tricky is the importance of preserving some degree of Sino-American amity. Taken together, China and the United States amount to a third of the world’s economy and about 25 percent of the world’s population. If Washington and Beijing maintain constructive relations over the next several decades, it will be easier to address critical global issues such as climate change, global health, macroeconomic management, and even some tricky regional conflicts. As former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd put it in a recent Financial Times op-ed:
The future of the US-China relationship is not predetermined.… [The two states] have more common interests than may meet the eye. The world faces a growing list of challenges that are too big for even the strongest countries to solve alone. International institutions are often not up to the task, either. This is an opportunity to make common cause.
Rudd’s position is cogent, and his recommendation that the United States and China develop a “strategic framework” to manage areas of contention is appealing. But the greater the value the United States places on these broad elements of cooperation, the less inclined it will be to resist China’s efforts to revise other elements of the status quo, especially when the issues in dispute at any point in time seem relatively modest.
A perfect illustration is China’s current effort to “create facts” in the South China Sea. This campaign began with the invocation of the infamous “nine-dashed line,” a transparent attempt to lay claim to a maritime area that existing law of the sea would apportion among all of the littoral states. Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, and others have protested China’s claims vigorously and favor a diplomatic solution, but in the meantime Beijing is building up disputed reefs, shoals, and islets and is increasing its physical presence.
Here’s the rub: Compared with the need to maintain global economic growth or prevent irreversible and potentially catastrophic damage to the Earth’s atmosphere, going to the brink over some piles of sand around Mischief Reef doesn’t seem all that significant. It’s a classic use of “salami tactics,” where a revisionist power seeks to alter the status quo through a series of small steps, each of them seemingly innocuous but whose cumulative impact could be enormous.
Does anyone in the United States want to blow up relations with Beijing over this issue or invite a direct clash of arms? I rather doubt it. But if that’s the case, then I repeat: Where do you draw the line? What risks should the United States be willing to run, and what costs should it be willing to pay to prevent the gradual Chinese assertion of de facto (and conceivably de jure) control over this region? To believe that one can balance Chinese power and run no risks at all is just as naive as believing one can avoid all trouble by persuading Beijing to embrace liberal institutions that were mostly made-in-America.
At this point it is useful to remind ourselves (and others) that the United States is not a “pitiful, helpless giant.” China’s economy may overtake America’s in absolute terms in the next few years, but U.S. per capita income is far higher and China still has to devote a greater share of national income to meeting basic needs. America’s military capabilities still dwarf China’s by a considerable margin, and its geopolitical environment is much more favorable. The United States has two friendly countries on its borders (Canada and Mexico), and no powerful enemies or nuclear-armed states nearby. By contrast, China has 14 countries on its borders, four of them with nuclear weapons, and relations with several of these neighboring countries are — to put it mildly — delicate.
Moreover, the United States has formal alliance treaties with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, and it engages in significant security cooperation with several of China’s other neighbors. Beijing, by contrast, has no treaty ties or security relations of any consequence with any countries in the Western Hemisphere. And the stronger and more assertive China becomes, the more that its neighbors are likely to welcome U.S. backing. America’s favorable geography gives it easy access to the world’s oceans, whereas Chinese shipping must pass through a series of straits and passageways that would be easy to blockade in time of war.
From Beijing’s perspective, in short, a deteriorating relationship with Washington is something to be avoided, especially when Chinese exports to the United States are about twice as large (as a percentage of GDP) as U.S. exports to China. Both countries have an interest in maintaining mutually beneficial economic ties, but China needs them even more than the United States does.
America’s many advantages do not mean that Washington can simply dictate to Beijing or prevent any and all changes to the existing status quo.
America’s many advantages do not mean that Washington can simply dictate to Beijing or prevent any and all changes to the existing status quo. But it does mean U.S. leaders do not need to be too skittish about drawing lines and setting limits, especially when they think critical U.S. interests are involved and when its regional allies agree.
But the question remains: Where should we draw the line? Blackwill and Tellis don’t say (though they do call for more proactive and vigorous responses, especially in the cyberspace realm). To be honest, I’m not entirely sure myself, but here are two principles to keep in mind.
First, as Blackwell and Tellis note (and as I’ve emphasized in the past), any effort to balance China more energetically will require a lot of buy-in from Asian states that have the most to fear from Chinese dominance. Managing these alliance relations will not be easy, however, for three reasons: 1) some of these states remain wary of each other; 2) none of them will want to disrupt their own economic ties with China; and 3) the distances involved are vast and tend to magnify the usual collective-action problems.
The United States also has to walk a fine line in managing these relations: doing enough to help protect key allies but not so much that they free-ride excessively or engage in overly provocative actions of their own (such as a Taiwanese bid for independence). Getting Asia right going forward will also require a cadre of smart, tough-minded, and well-trained officials who understand the region as well as their Chinese counterparts. Effective balancing behavior doesn’t just occur automatically; it needs to be facilitated by sustained, shrewd, and sympathetic diplomacy.

Second, though Blackwill and Tellis do not address it, making China the centerpiece of U.S. grand strategy will require Washington to set priorities more carefully than it has in the past two decades and avoid costly quagmires in other places. The era when the United States could dominate most of the world’s regions simultaneously is over; today U.S. leaders have to concentrate more on vital interests and steer clear of quixotic crusades. The neoconservatives’ disastrous Middle East adventures were the greatest gift Beijing could have wished for, and pushing Moscow into Beijing’s arms makes little sense if China is the real long-term peer competitor. Yet the current field of Republican presidential candidates seems to have learned nothing from these past errors and seems all too willing to repeat them. As a respected member of the Republican Party’s vanishing realist wing, Blackwill could do the nation a great service by bringing some much-needed sanity back to the party’s foreign-policy discussions.
El Factor López Obrador

¿Por qué la derecha, los oligarcas depredadores y los medios de comunicación manejados por ellos, así como la subclase política priísta siguen con tanto interés y tan detalladamente cada paso, dicho o propuesta que hace el dos veces candidato presidencial por el Partido de la Revolución Democrática (PRD) y ahora fundador del nuevo partido de izquierda Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena)?
Un día sí y otro también, los “francotiradores” de los grupos empresariales y de la subclase política del país se lanzan contra Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), por cualquier cosa que diga o haga. Ahí está por ejemplo Ricardo Alemán en El Universal, vinculando la posible desaparición del diario La Jornada (por problemas económicos, debido al retiro de publicidad de parte de empresas y gobierno, como castigo por su postura crítica al modelo económico y político actual), a su apoyo a López Obrador en las campañas presidenciales del 2006 y el 2012. O Ciro Gómez Leyva en el mismo periódico, señalando que en la entrevista que dio López Obrador a Jacobo Zabludovski, se denota su verdadero talante, pues se compara con Gandhi, Mandela o Luther King. Ambos periodistas están vinculados a Televisa, la principal detractora de la Izquierda mexicana en general.
Así también, el supuesto politólogo José Antonio Crespo no pierde oportunidad para criticar a AMLO y a su nuevo partido, calificándolo como “mesiánico” y alejado de la realidad (Crespo ha hecho su carrera de “analista independiente”, cobrando desde posiciones que dependen del gobierno federal).
Después de que una vez más, como en 2006, AMLO fue derrotado con una serie de prácticas fraudulentas en las elecciones presidenciales del 2012, la mayoría de sus críticos lo dieron “por muerto”, y casi se cumplió su profecía, pues al siguiente año López Obrador sufrió un infarto, con lo que sus detractores consideraron que ya no jugaría más un papel protagónico en la vida política nacional.
Sin embargo, el año pasado el Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional salió a flote, y logró su registro como partido político, con el liderazgo de López Obrador. Los oligarcas, sus medios de comunicación, el PRI, PAN, PVEM y el mismo PRD vaticinaron que Morena sería un fracaso y sólo reflejaría la caída de López Obrador en las preferencias del electorado.
Si tal fuera el caso, no se entiende porqué todos los partidos tradicionales y los medios de comunicación de la oligarquía le ponen tanta atención a un partido político que no tiene posibilidades de permanecer y eventualmente de crecer en el escenario político del país.
La realidad es que le tienen un enorme temor a AMLO y a su partido, porque este político ha sido el único que desde hace 25 años ha señalado que la actual política económica neoliberal y la corrupción e impunidad que pudren al sistema político mexicano, llevarían al país a una situación de crisis.
Obviamente los grupos económicos y políticos que se han enriquecido obscenamente con este sistema económico depredador y con la corrupción política, no están dispuestos a permitir que llegue a la presidencia de la República alguien que pretenda cambiar, así sea mínimamente, esta situación de privilegio para ellos.
De ahí que, como lo hicieron en su momento contra Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas, fundador del PRD y tres veces candidato presidencial por la izquierda mexicana, la derecha política, los oligarcas, los grupos del crimen organizado asociados a ellos y las empresas trasnacionales (así como el gobierno de Estados Unidos), se han dedicado a acorralar y demonizar mediática y políticamente a AMLO, con objeto de evitar que ponga en peligro el proyecto de depredación-explotación “ad infinitum” que las “élites” económicas y políticas tienen planteado para México.
Pero un momento, los críticos de López Obrador afirman que no es un político distinto, que es como todos los demás: corrupto, ineficiente, mentiroso.
Ponen como ejemplo que en su paso por el gobierno del Distrito Federal (2000-2005), fue encarcelado su Secretario de Finanzas por desvío de recursos públicos y su entonces secretario particular fue captado en videos recibiendo dinero de un empresario argentino. Así también, se señala que López Obrador fue el principal apoyo de Lázaro Mazón para llegar a la Secretaría de Salud del gobierno de Guerrero, desde donde este político apoyó la llegada como alcalde de Iguala a José Luis Abarca, principal responsable de la desaparición de los 43 normalistas de Ayotzinapa.
Y todo ello es cierto. Entonces, si AMLO es tan corrupto como los políticos del Partido Verde (que son considerados los más corruptos de todos, y eso ya es decir), o del PRI, PAN o PRD, ¿por qué se considera desde las cúpulas políticas y económicas que es “un peligro para México”, como lo calificaron en la elección presidencial del 2006? ¿Qué no a esas cúpulas les convienen esos políticos corruptos, abusivos e ineficientes, pues así pueden ser manejados y comprados como mejor les convenga? ¿Si AMLO es “igual a los demás”, entonces cuál es el temor?
¿No será que una parte no despreciable del electorado, después de ver el desastre que han ocasionado al país el PAN (doce años nefastos en la presidencia, del 2000 al 2012), y ahora el PRI nuevamente, con Peña Nieto, está pensando que AMLO podría ser una alternativa, si no la mejor, sí la menos mala para el 2018? Sobre todo ante el derrumbe que ha experimentado el PRD, precisamente por haber decidido apoyar varias de las reformas impulsadas por Peña Nieto, que han puesto al país de rodillas ante el capital trasnacional y la oligarquía local, lo cual provocó la salida de dirigentes históricos de ese partido, como Cuauhtémoc Cárdenas y el propio López Obrador.
Así, el objetivo es destruir cualquier tipo de resistencia social (maestros disidentes, estudiantes normalistas), política (Morena) o mediática (periódico La Jornada; despido de la periodista Carmen Aristegui de MVS Radio, a raíz del reportaje sobre la “casa blanca” de 7 millones de dólares, de la esposa de Peña Nieto) al modelo económico depredador que ha sido impuesto en el país desde hace 30 años y que se encuentra en su etapa de consolidación.
Pero el gobierno federal, los oligarcas y el gobierno de Estados Unidos saben que la población mexicana puede llegar a reaccionar violentamente cuando se vea despojada de sus tierras y aguas para la explotación indiscriminada de hidrocarburos (reforma energética de Peña), por parte de las trasnacionales; o cuando se contaminen miles de hectáreas del país debido a la técnica del fracking (ya 20 estados de Estados Unidos han prohibido esta técnica, mientras que aquí se le ha dado vía libre en todo el territorio nacional); o cuando se privatice la explotación y distribución de agua para consumo humano (nueva Ley de Aguas que está “en estudio” en la Cámara de Diputados); o se disparen los precios de la electricidad, cuando entren las empresas trasnacionales a abastecer de fluido eléctrico a los hogares mexicanos; etc.
De ahí que se ha fortalecido el aparato represivo con la compra de vehículos y armamento a Estados Unidos por casi 1200 millones de dólares (vehículos y helicópteros de transporte de tropas y de combate), y se van a comprar aviones y helicópteros para la Fuerza Aérea Mexicana y la Marina.
En suma, el gobierno mexicano se prepara ya para una guerra, y no precisamente contra los miembros del crimen organizado, que en la realidad son sus socios -ahí están las pruebas en video, de que el hijo del ex gobernador de Michoacán hacía tratos cotidianos con el jefe del cártel de “Los Caballeros Templarios”, Servando Gómez; está el caso de Guerrero en donde el exgobernador Angel Aguirre protegió al cártel de “Guerreros Unidos”, junto con el presidente municipal de Iguala, José Luis Abarca: ahí está el caso del cartel de los Beltrán Leyva que fue protegido por el ex secretario de Seguridad Pública Genaro García Luna, quien estalló en ira cuando los marinos mataron a Arturo Beltrán Leyva en Cuernavaca; ahí está el caso de Tamaulipas en donde el gobernador Egidio Torre Cantú es un cero a la izquierda, pues son los cárteles del Golfo y los Zetas y el gobierno federal los que se pelean la plaza; etc.
La guerra es contra aquellos sectores de la sociedad mexicana que estén en contra del modelo depredador y corruptor establecido en México. Y uno de esos opositores a dicho modelo es AMLO, por lo que los ataques contra él y su partido no sólo continuarán, sino que se intensificarán en los próximos meses; sobre todo si Morena logra un posicionamiento político importante en las elecciones intermedias del próximo 7 de junio.


domingo, 26 de abril de 2015

MINERAS Y SAQUEO
EDITORIAL DE LA JORNADA
26 de Abril, 2015

Además del costo enorme en términos de injusticia social, crecimiento de la pobreza y pérdida de la paz pública, la imposición y consolidación del modelo económico neoliberal en nuestro país convirtió algunos de los principales ramos de la economía nacional en auténticos polos de saqueo de los recursos monetarios o naturales de la nación, con el consecuente crecimiento del poder fáctico de las empresas foráneas que controlan esos ramos.
Tal es el caso de la minería, una actividad que en México es dominada por empresas trasnacionales –la mayoría de origen canadiense–, que se ha caracterizado por arrojar grandes ganancias a los principales accionistas de éstas, a costa de una profunda devastación económica y social.
De acuerdo con datos de la Cámara Minera de México, 70 por ciento de las concesiones –unos 92 millones de hectáreas– están en manos de trasnacionales. Al control que ejercen las empresas mineras sobre extensas zonas del territorio nacional, se suman las deplorables condiciones de trabajo que suelen imponer a sus empleados –equiparables a la esclavitud y carentes de mínimas medidas de seguridad–, que es un factor estrechamente relacionado con el desproporcionado margen de ganancias que obtienen de la explotación de yacimientos; la pobreza, el deterioro ambiental y la descomposición social que provocan en los entornos en que se desarrolla esa actividad, y el ínfimo aporte que realizan al país por la vía fiscal.
Tales consideraciones desmienten uno de los principales argumentos con que los gobiernos de las tres décadas recientes han defendido las directrices económicas neoliberales: que la conversión del país en un destino atractivo para los capitales foráneos –mediante acciones como la privatización de la propiedad nacional, la apertura indiscriminada de mercados, la desregulación económica y el aniquilamiento de derechos sociales y laborales– derivaría en una importante captación de divisas que permitirían financiar el desarrollo.
La realidad, en cambio, es que la razón principal por la que los capitales foráneos invierten en nuestro país es porque aquí encuentran condiciones mucho más ventajosas que las que tienen en sus entornos de origen; porque se ven favorecidos por regulaciones exageradamente flexibles que se complementan con los márgenes de impunidad que prevalecen en el país, y les permite a esas empresas violentar el estado de derecho sin el temor de ser sancionadas por ello.
En la hora presente, para colmo, esas condiciones confluyen con la posibilidad de un ensanchamiento del saqueo económico a raíz de las modificaciones constitucionales de los últimos dos años que permiten la inversión privada en las distintas ramas que integran el sector energético, empezando por la industria petrolera y la generación y distribución de electricidad.
La conclusión obligada e inevitable, a la luz de la bonanza económica que han alcanzado las empresas mineras en el país, de la precariedad e incertidumbre que origina entre trabajadores, campesinos, pueblos originarios y población en general, y del persistente saqueo de recursos que representa esa actividad, es que la agenda pública en México es determinada por los intereses privados y trasnacionales, no por la población. Tal es, en suma, el rasgo característico de un orden institucional que se reclama democrático, pero que en la realidad obedece a un puñado de potentados y poderes fácticos, la mayoría extranjeros.

sábado, 25 de abril de 2015

Preempting Government Sovereignty

The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the Death of the Republic

by ELLEN BROWN
“The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government.”
— Article IV, Section 4, US Constitution
A republican form of government is one in which power resides in elected officials representing the citizens, and government leaders exercise power according to the rule of law. In The Federalist Papers, James Madison defined a republic as “a government which derives all its powers directly or indirectly from the great body of the people . . . .”
On April 22, 2015, the Senate Finance Committee approved a bill to fast-track the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a massive trade agreement that would override our republican form of government and hand judicial and legislative authority to a foreign three-person panel of corporate lawyers.
The secretive TPP is an agreement with Mexico, Canada, Japan, Singapore and seven other countries that affects 40% of global markets. Fast-track authority could now go to the full Senate for a vote as early as next week. Fast-track means Congress will be prohibited from amending the trade deal, which will be put to a simple up or down majority vote. Negotiating the TPP in secret and fast-tracking it through Congress is considered necessary to secure its passage, since if the public had time to review its onerous provisions, opposition would mount and defeat it.
Abdicating the Judicial Function to Corporate Lawyers
James Madison wrote in The Federalist Papers:
The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny. . . . “Were the power of judging joined with the legislative, the life and liberty of the subject would be exposed to arbitrary control, for the judge would then be the legislator. . . .”
And that, from what we now know of the TPP’s secret provisions, will be its dire effect.
The most controversial provision of the TPP is the Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) section, which strengthens existing ISDS procedures. ISDS first appeared in a bilateral trade agreement in 1959. According to The Economist, ISDS gives foreign firms a special right to apply to a secretive tribunal of highly paid corporate lawyers for compensation whenever the government passes a law to do things that hurt corporate profits — such things as discouraging smoking, protecting the environment or preventing a nuclear catastrophe.
Arbitrators are paid $600-700 an hour, giving them little incentive to dismiss cases; and the secretive nature of the arbitration process and the lack of any requirement to consider precedent gives wide scope for creative judgments.
To date, the highest ISDS award has been for $2.3 billion to Occidental Oil Company against the government of Ecuador over its termination of an oil-concession contract, this although the termination was apparently legal. Still in arbitration is a demand by Vattenfall, a Swedish utility that operates two nuclear plants in Germany, for compensation of €3.7 billion ($4.7 billion) under the ISDS clause of a treaty on energy investments, after the German government decided to shut down its nuclear power industry following the Fukushima disaster in Japan in 2011.
Under the TPP, however, even larger judgments can be anticipated, since the sort of “investment” it protects includes not just “the commitment of capital or other resources” but “the expectation of gain or profit.” That means the rights of corporations in other countries extend not just to their factories and other “capital” but to the profits they expect to receive there.
In an article posted by Yves Smith, Joe Firestone poses some interesting hypotheticals:
Under the TPP, could the US government be sued and be held liable if it decided to stop issuing Treasury debt and financed deficit spending in some other way (perhaps by quantitative easing or by issuing trillion dollar coins)? Why not, since some private companies would lose profits as a result?
Under the TPP or the TTIP (the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership under negotiation with the European Union), would the Federal Reserve be sued if it failed to bail out banks that were too big to fail?
Firestone notes that under the Netherlands-Czech trade agreement, the Czech Republic was sued in an investor-state dispute for failing to bail out an insolvent bank in which the complainant had an interest. The investor company was awarded $236 million in the dispute settlement. What might the damages be, asks Firestone, if the Fed decided to let the Bank of America fail, and a Saudi-based investment company decided to sue?
Abdicating the Legislative Function to Multinational Corporations
Just the threat of this sort of massive damage award could be enough to block prospective legislation. But the TPP goes further and takes on the legislative function directly, by forbidding specific forms of regulation.
Public Citizen observes that the TPP would provide big banks with a backdoor means of watering down efforts to re-regulate Wall Street, after deregulation triggered the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression:
The TPP would forbid countries from banning particularly risky financial products, such as the toxic derivatives that led to the $183 billion government bailout of AIG. It would prohibit policies to prevent banks from becoming “too big to fail,” and threaten the use of “firewalls” to prevent banks that keep our savings accounts from taking hedge-fund-style bets.
The TPP would also restrict capital controls, an essential policy tool to counter destabilizing flows of speculative money. . . . And the deal would prohibit taxes on Wall Street speculation, such as the proposed Robin Hood Tax that would generate billions of dollars’ worth of revenue for social, health, or environmental causes.
Clauses on dispute settlement in earlier free trade agreements have been invoked to challenge efforts to regulate big business. The fossil fuel industry is seeking to overturn Quebec’s ban on the ecologically destructive practice of fracking. Veolia, the French behemoth known for building a tram network to serve Israeli settlements in occupied East Jerusalem, is contesting increases in Egypt’s minimum wage. The tobacco maker Philip Morris is suing against anti-smoking initiatives in Uruguay and Australia.
The TPP would empower not just foreign manufacturers but foreign financial firms to attack financial policies in foreign tribunals, demanding taxpayer compensation for regulations that they claim frustrate their expectations and inhibit their profits.

Preempting Government Sovereignty
What is the justification for this encroachment on the sovereign rights of government? Allegedly, ISDS is necessary in order to increase foreign investment. But as noted in The Economist, investors can protect themselves by purchasing political-risk insurance. Moreover, Brazil continues to receive sizable foreign investment despite its long-standing refusal to sign any treaty with an ISDS mechanism. Other countries are beginning to follow Brazil’s lead.
In an April 22nd report from the Center for Economic and Policy Research, gains from multilateral trade liberalization were shown to be very small, equal to only about 0.014% of consumption, or about $.43 per person per month. And that assumes that any benefits are distributed uniformly across the economic spectrum. In fact, transnational corporations get the bulk of the benefits, at the expense of most of the world’s population.
Something else besides attracting investment money and encouraging foreign trade seems to be going on. The TPP would destroy our republican form of government under the rule of law, by elevating the rights of investors – also called the rights of “capital” – above the rights of the citizens.
That means that TPP is blatantly unconstitutional. But as Joe Firestone observes, neo-liberalism and corporate contributions seem to have blinded the deal’s proponents so much that they cannot see they are selling out the sovereignty of the United States to foreign and multinational corporations.
For more information and to get involved, visit:
Flush the TPP
The Citizens Trade Campaign
Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch
Eyes on Trade
Ellen Brown is an attorney, founder of the Public Banking Institute, and author of twelve books including the best-selling Web of Debt. Her latest book, The Public Bank Solution, explores successful public banking models historically and globally. Her 300+ blog articles are at EllenBrown.com. Listen to “It’s Our Money with Ellen Brown” on PRN.fm.

jueves, 23 de abril de 2015

BM: en México la pobreza no ha disminuido en los últimos 20 años

Roberto González Amador

Periódico La Jornada
Jueves 23 de abril de 2015, p. 24

México padece un estancamiento de 20 años en reducir los niveles de pobreza. Es una mala noticia, asegura el Banco Mundial en un estudio publicado esta semana. En América Latina todavía viven 75 millones de personas en extrema pobreza, la mitad de ellas en Brasil y México, de acuerdo con un informe publicado esta semana por el organismo.
La pobreza no ha disminuido en los últimos 20 años. Una medición basada en el ingreso muestra que la tasa de pobreza en México es la misma que en 1992, aseguró el Banco Mundial en el reporte Prosperidad compartida y erradicación de la pobreza en América Latina y el Caribe.
Medidos a partir de su ingreso, el número de mexicanos en extrema pobreza –con un ingreso diario que es insuficiente para adquirir una canasta básica alimentaria– se ubicó en 23.1 millones de personas, la cifra más elevada desde 1988. Mientras, en la clasificación de pobreza moderada se encuentra un universo de 61.4 millones de mexicanos, la mayor cantidad desde 1996.
El estudio del Banco Mundial recurre a dos mediciones diferentes de pobreza: la primera, que era la más utilizada hasta hace algunos años, que sólo consideraba el ingreso de la población; una segunda, que comenzó a utilizarse en México desde la creación de la Ley General de Desarrollo Social en 2004, es la llamada multidimensional, que además del ingreso toma en cuenta el acceso de la población a servicios como salud, seguridad social o educación, áreas atendidas por los programas sociales de transferencia focalizada.
La medición de la pobreza por ingreso sí puede ser calculada para los 20 años precedentes; en cambio, la medición oficial que enfoca la medición en un plano multidimensional sólo puede hacerse de 2008 a la fecha, comenta el Banco Mundial.
El hecho de que la pobreza por ingreso no haya mejorado respecto de hace dos décadas, plantea el organismo, no significa que ese nivel se haya mantenido inalterado en ese lapso; ha sido volátil, apunta. Como resultado de la crisis de 1994, la pobreza total –extrema y moderada– creció de 52 por ciento de la población a un pico de 69 por ciento en 1996. Esto fue seguido de diez años de una disminución sostenida, que la redujo a 46 por ciento de la población en 2006. Comenzó a subir después de la crisis de 2008-2009, hasta llegar a 52.3 por ciento de la población en 2012, último año para el que hay una medición.
En términos absolutos, la población en pobreza moderada creció de 47 millones de personas en 1994 a 64 millones en 1996; 46.5 millones en 2006 y 61.4 millones en 2012, de acuerdo con los datos contenidos en el estudio del Banco Mundial.
Particularmente la población considerada en extrema pobreza aumentó de 19 millones en 1994 a 34.7 millones de personas en 1996; bajó a 15.1 millones en 2006 y, nuevamente, subió a 23.1 millones en 2012.
A diferencia de lo ocurrido en el periodo poscrisis de la década de los 1900, todavía las tasas de pobreza y el número de personas que viven en esta condición no han regresado a los niveles previos a la crisis de 2008-2009.
No sólo el crecimiento ha sido débil en los años recientes en México, sino que también ha habido una desconexión entre crecimiento y reducción de la pobreza, apunta.
Así, el crecimiento del ingreso entre el 40 por ciento de la población de menores recursos económicos, lo que el Banco Mundial llama compartir la prosperidad, mostró un modesto incremento en México, aunque es desfavorable en comparación con lo ocurrido en otros países.
Entre 2004 y 2012 el ingreso de 40 por ciento de la población de menos recursos creció 1.2 por ciento anual. Es una tasa que, si bien duplica el promedio nacional para ese periodo, que fue de 0.6 por ciento, ubica a México en el sitio 16 de 17 países latinoamericanos en este renglón. La mayoría de países sudamericanos, ejemplifica, lograron beneficios para el ingreso de su población durante el auge de precios de las materias primas en el periodo, lo que no ocurrió con México.


miércoles, 22 de abril de 2015

What does Putin want? A major analysis by Rostislav Ishchenko

The Vineyard of the Saker

It's gratifying that "patriots" did not instantly blame Putin for the failure to achieve a full scale rout of Ukrainian troops in Donbass in January and February, or for Moscow's consultations with Merkel and Hollande.
Even so, they are still impatient for a victory. The most radical are convinced that Putin will “surrender Novorossiya” just the same. And the moderates are afraid that he will as soon as the next truce is signed (if that happens) out of the need to regroup and replenish Novorossiya’s army (which actually could have been done without disengagement from military operations), to come to terms with the new circumstances on the international front, and to get ready for new diplomatic battles.
In fact, despite all the attention that political and/or military dilettantes (the Talleyrands and the Bonapartes of the Internet) are paying to the situation in Donbass and the Ukraine in general, it is only one point on a global front: the outcome of the war is being decided not at the Donetsk airport or in the hills outside Debaltsevo, but at offices on Staraya Square1 and Smolenskaya Square,2 at offices in Paris, Brussels and Berlin. Because military action is only one of the many components of the political quarrel.
It is the harshest and the final component, which carries great risk, but the matter doesn’t start with war and it doesn’t end with war. War is only an intermediate step signifying the impossibility of compromise. Its purpose is to create new conditions whereby compromise is possible or to show that there is no longer any need for it, with the disappearance of one side of the conflict. When it is time for compromise, when the fighting is over and the troops go back to their barracks and the generals begin writing their memoirs and preparing for the next war, that is when the real outcome of the confrontation is determined by politicians and diplomats at the negotiating table.
Political decisions are not often understood by the general population or the military. For example, during the Austro-Prussian war of 1866, Prussian chancellor Otto Von Bismarck (later chancellor of the German Empire) disregarded the persistent requests of King Wilhelm I (the future German Emperor) and the demands of the Prussian generals to take Vienna, and he was absolutely correct to do so. In that way he accelerated peace on Prussia’s terms and also ensured that Austro-Hungary forever (well, until its dismemberment in 1918) became a junior partner for Prussia and later the German Empire.
To understand how, when and on what conditions military activity can end, we need to know what the politicians want and how they see the conditions of the postwar compromise. Then it will become clear why military action turned into a low-intensity civil war with occasional truces, not only in the Ukraine but also in Syria.
Obviously, the views of Kiev politicians are of no interest to us because they don’t decide anything. The fact that outsiders govern the Ukraine is no longer concealed. It doesn’t matter whether the cabinet ministers are Estonian or Georgian; they are Americans just the same. It would also be a big mistake to take an interest in how the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Lugansk People’s Republic (LNR) see the future. The republics exist only with Russian support, and as long as Russia supports them, Russia’s interests have to be protected, even from independent decisions and initiatives. There is too much at stake to allow [Alexander] Zakharchenko or [Igor] Plotnitzky, or anyone else for that matter, to make independent decisions.
Nor are we interested in the European Union’s position. Much depended on the EU until the summer of last year, when the war could have been prevented or stopped at the outset. A tough, principled antiwar stance by the EU was needed. It could have blocked U.S. initiatives to start the war and would have turned the EU into a significant independent geopolitical player. The EU passed on that opportunity and instead behaved like a faithful vassal of the United States.
As a result, Europe stands on the brink of frightful internal upheaval. In the coming years, it has every chance of suffering the same fate as the Ukraine, only with a great roar, great bloodshed and less chance that in the near future things will settle down – in other words, that someone will show up and put things in order.
In fact, today the EU can choose whether to remain a tool of the United States or to move closer to Russia. Depending on its choice, Europe can get off with a slight scare, such as a breakup of parts of its periphery and possible fragmentation of some countries, or it could collapse completely. Judging by the European elites’ reluctance to break openly with the United States, collapse is almost inevitable.
What should interest us is the opinions of the two main players that determine the configuration of the geopolitical front and in fact are fighting for victory in the new generation of war – the network-centric Third World War. These players are the United States and Russia.
The U.S. position is clear and transparent. In the second half of the 1990s, Washington missed its only opportunity to reform the Cold War economy without any obstacles and thereby avoid the looming crisis in a system whose development is limited by the finite nature of planet Earth and its resources, including human ones, which conflicts with the need to endlessly print dollars.
After that, the United States could prolong the death throes of the system only by plundering the rest of the world. At first, it went after Third World countries. Then it went for potential competitors. Then for allies and even close friends. Such plundering could continue only as long as the United States remained the world’s undisputed hegemon.
Thus when Russia asserted its right to make independent political decisions – decisions of not global but regional import – , a clash with the United States became inevitable. This clash cannot end in a compromise peace.
For the United States, a compromise with Russia would mean a voluntary renunciation of its hegemony, leading to a quick, systemic catastrophe – not only a political and economic crisis but also a paralysis of state institutions and the inability of the government to function. In other words, its inevitable disintegration.
But if the United States wins, then it is Russia that will experience systemic catastrophe. After a certain type of “rebellion,” Russia’s ruling classes would be punished with asset liquidation and confiscation as well as imprisonment. The state would be fragmented, substantial territories would be annexed, and the country’s military might would be destroyed.
So the war will last until one side wins. Any interim agreement should be viewed only as a temporary truce – a needed respite to regroup, to mobilize new resources and to find (i.e., to poach) additional allies.
To complete the picture of the situation, we only need Russia’s position. It is essential to understand what the Russian leadership wants to achieve, particularly the president, Vladimir Putin. We are talking about the key role that Putin plays in the organization of the Russian power structure. This system is not authoritarian, as many assert, but rather authoritative – meaning it is based not on legislative consolidation of autocracy but on the authority of the person who created the system and, as the head of it, makes it work effectively.
During Putin’s 15 years in power, despite the difficult internal and external situation, he has tried to maximize the role of the government, the legislative assembly, and even the local authorities. These are entirely logical steps that should have given the system completeness, stability, and continuity. Because no politician can rule forever, political continuity, regardless of who comes to power, is the key to a stable system.
Unfortunately, fully autonomous control, namely the ability to function without the president’s oversight, hasn’t been achieved. Putin remains the key component of the system because the people put their trust in him personally. They have far less trust in the system, as represented by public authorities and individual agencies.
Thus Putin’s opinions and political plans become the decisive factor in areas such as Russia’s foreign policy. If the phrase “without Putin, there is no Russia” is an exaggeration, then the phrase “what Putin wants, Russia also wants” reflects the situation quite accurately in my opinion.
First, let’s note that the man who for 15 years has carefully guided Russia to its revival has done so in conditions of U.S. hegemony in world politics along with significant opportunities for Washington to influence Russia’s internal politics. He had to understand the nature of the fight and his opponent. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have lasted so long.
The level of confrontation that Russia allowed itself to get into with the United States grew very slowly and up to a certain point went unnoticed. For example, Russia did not react at all to the first attempt at a color revolution in the Ukraine in 2000-2002 (the Gongadze case,3 the Cassette Scandal,4 and the Ukraine without Kuchma protest5).
Russia took an opposing position but did not actively intervene in the coups that took place from November 2003 to January 2004 in Georgia and from November 2004 to January 2005 in the Ukraine. In 2008, in Ossetia and Abkhazia, Russia used its troops against Georgia, a U.S. ally. In 2012, in Syria, the Russian fleet demonstrated its readiness to confront the United States and its NATO allies.
In 2013, Russia began taking economic measures against [Victor] Yanukovych’s regime, which contributed to his realization of the harmfulness of signing an association agreement [with the EU].
Moscow could not have saved the Ukraine from the coup because of the baseness, cowardice, and stupidity of the Ukraine’s leaders – not only Yanukovych but all of them without exception. After the armed coup in Kiev in February 2014, Russia entered into open confrontation with Washington. Before that, the conflicts were interspersed with improved relations, but at the beginning of 2014 relations between Russia and the United States deteriorated swiftly and almost immediately reached the point where war would have been declared automatically in the prenuclear era.
Thus at any given time Putin engaged in precisely the level of confrontation with the United States that Russia could handle. If Russia isn’t limiting the level of confrontation now, it means Putin believes that, in the war of sanctions, the war of nerves, the information war, the civil war in the Ukraine, and the economic war, Russia can win.
This is the first important conclusion about what Putin wants and what he expects. He expects to win. And considering that he takes a meticulous approach and strives to anticipate any surprises, you can be sure that when the decision was made not to back down under pressure from the United States, but to respond, the Russian leadership had a double, if not a triple, guarantee of victory.
I would like to point out that the decision to enter into a conflict with Washington was not made in 2014, nor was it made in 2013. The war of August 8, 2008, was a challenge that the United States could not leave unpunished. After that, every further stage of the confrontation only raised the stakes. From 2008 to 2010, the United States’ capability – not just military or economic but its overall capability – has declined, whereas Russia’s has improved significantly. So the main objective was to raise the stakes slowly rather than in explosive fashion. In other words, an open confrontation in which all pretences are dropped and everyone understands that a war is going on had to be delayed as long as possible. But it would have been even better to avoid it altogether.
With every passing year, the United States became weaker while Russia became stronger. This process was natural and impossible to arrest, and we could have projected with a high degree of certainty that by 2020 to 2025, without any confrontation, the period of U.S. hegemony would have ended, and the United States would then be best advised to think about not how to rule the world, but how to stave off its own precipitous internal decline.
Thus Putin’s second desire is clear: to keep the peace or the appearance of peace as long as possible. Peace is advantageous for Russia because in conditions of peace, without enormous expense, it obtains the same political result but in a much better geopolitical situation. That is why Russia continually extends the olive branch. Just as the Kiev junta will collapse in conditions of peace in Donbass, in conditions of world peace, the military-industrial complex and the global financial system created by the United States are doomed to self-destruct. In this way, Russia’s actions are aptly described by Sun Tzu’s maxim “The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”
It is clear that Washington is not run by idiots, no matter what is said on Russian talk shows or written on blogs. The United States understands precisely the situation it is in. Moreover, they also understand that Russia has no plans to destroy them and is really prepared to cooperate as an equal. Even so, because of the political and socioeconomic situation in the United States, such cooperation is not acceptable to them. An economic collapse and a social explosion are likely to occur before Washington (even with the support of Moscow and Beijing) has time to introduce the necessary reforms, especially when we consider that the EU will have to undergo reform at the same time. Moreover, the political elite who have emerged in the United States in the past 25 years have become accustomed to their status as the owners of the world. They sincerely don’t understand how anyone can challenge them.
For the ruling elite in the United States (not so much the business class but the government bureaucracy), to go from being a country that decides of the fate of inferior peoples to one that negotiates with them on an equal footing is intolerable. It is probably tantamount to offering Gladstone or Disraeli the post of prime minister of the Zulu Kingdom under Cetshwayo kaMpande. And so, unlike Russia, which needs peace to develop, the United States regards war as vital.
In principle, any war is a struggle for resources. Typically, the winner is the one that has more resources and can ultimately mobilize more troops and build more tanks, ships, and planes. Even so, sometimes those who are strategically disadvantaged can turn the situation around with a tactical victory on the battlefield. Examples include the wars of Alexander the Great and Frederick the Great, as well as Hitler’s campaign of 1939-1940.
Nuclear powers cannot confront each other directly. Therefore, their resource base is of paramount importance. That is exactly why Russia and the United States have been in a desperate competition for allies over the past year. Russia has won this competition. The United States can count only the EU, Canada, Australia, and Japan as allies (and not always unconditionally so), but Russia has managed to mobilize support from the BRICS, to gain a firm foothold in Latin America, and to begin displacing the United States in Asia and North Africa.
Of course, it’s not patently obvious, but if we consider the results of votes at the UN, assuming that a lack of official support for the United States means dissent and thus support for Russia, it turns out that the countries aligned with Russia together control about 60% of the world’s GDP, have more than two-thirds of its population, and cover more than three-quarters of its surface. Thus Russia has been able to mobilize more resources.
In this regard, the United States had two tactical options. The first seemed to have great potential and was employed by it from the early days of the Ukrainian crisis.
It was an attempt to force Russia to choose between a bad situation and an even worse one. Russia would be compelled to accept a Nazi state on its borders and therefore a dramatic loss of international authority and of the trust and support of its allies, and after a short time would become vulnerable to internal and external pro-U.S. forces, with no chance of survival. Or else it could send its army into the Ukraine, sweep out the junta before it got organized, and restore the legitimate government of Yanukovych. That, however, would have brought an accusation of aggression against an independent state and of suppression of the people’s revolution. Such a situation would have resulted in a high degree of disapproval on the part of Ukrainians and the need to constantly expend significant military, political, economic, and diplomatic resources to maintain a puppet regime in Kiev, because no other government would have been possible under such conditions.
Russia avoided that dilemma. There was no direct invasion. It is Donbass that is fighting Kiev. It is the Americans who have to devote scarce resources to the doomed puppet regime in Kiev, while Russia can remain on the sidelines making peace proposals.
So now the United States is employing the second option. It’s as old as the hills. That which cannot be held, and will be taken by the enemy, must be damaged as much as possible so that the enemy’s victory is more costly than defeat, as all its resources are used to reconstruct the destroyed territory. The United States has therefore ceased to assist the Ukraine with anything more than political rhetoric while encouraging Kiev to spread civil war throughout the country.
The Ukrainian land must burn, not only in Donetsk and Lugansk but also in Kiev and Lvov. The task is simple: to destroy the social infrastructure as much as possible and to leave the population at the very edge of survival. Then the population of the Ukraine will consist of millions of starving, desperate and heavily armed people who will kill one another for food. The only way to stop this bloodbath would be massive international military intervention in the Ukraine (the militia on its own will not be sufficient) and massive injections of funds to feed the population and to reconstruct the economy until the Ukraine can begin to feed itself.
It is clear that all these costs would fall on Russia. Putin correctly believes that not only the budget, but also public resources in general, including the military, would in this case be overstretched and possibly insufficient. Therefore, the objective is not to allow the Ukraine to explode before the militia can bring the situation under control. It is crucial to minimize casualties and destruction and to salvage as much of the economy as possible and the infrastructure of the large cities so that the population somehow survives and then the Ukrainians themselves will take care of the Nazi thugs.
At this point an ally appears for Putin in the form of the EU. Because the United States always tried to use European resources in its struggle with Russia, the EU, which was already weakened, reaches the point of exhaustion and has to deal with its own long-festering problems.
If Europe now has on its eastern border a completely destroyed Ukraine, from which millions of armed people will flee not only to Russia but also to the EU, taking with them delightful pastimes such as drug trafficking, gunrunning, and terrorism, the EU will not survive. The people’s republics of Novorossiya will serve as a buffer for Russia, however.
Europe cannot confront the United States, but it is deathly afraid of a destroyed Ukraine. Therefore, for the first time in the conflict, Hollande and Merkel are not just trying to sabotage the U.S. demands (by imposing sanctions but not going too far), but they are also undertaking limited independent action with the aim of achieving a compromise – maybe not peace but at least a truce in the Ukraine.
If the Ukraine catches fire, it will burn quickly, and if the EU has become an unreliable partner that is ready if not to move into Russia’s camp then at least to take a neutral position, Washington, faithful to its strategy, would be obliged to set fire to Europe.
It is clear that a series of civil and interstate wars on a continent packed with all sorts of weapons, where more than half a billion people live, is far worse than a civil war in the Ukraine. The Atlantic separates the United States from Europe. Even Britain could hope to sit it out across the Channel. But Russia and the EU share a very long [sic] border.
It is not at all in Russia’s interests to have a conflagration stretching from the Atlantic to the Carpathian Mountains when the territory from the Carpathians to the Dnieper is still smoldering. Therefore, Putin’s other objective is, to the extent possible, to prevent the most negative effects of a conflagration in the Ukraine and a conflagration in Europe. Because it is impossible to completely prevent such an outcome (if the United States wants to ignite the fire, it will), it is necessary to be able to extinguish it quickly to save what is most valuable.
Thus, to protect Russia’s legitimate interests, Putin considers peace to be of vital importance, because it is peace that will make it possible to achieve this goal with maximum effect at minimum cost. But because peace is no longer possible, and the truces are becoming more theoretical and fragile, Putin needs the war to end as quickly as possible.
But I do want to stress that if a compromise could have been reached a year ago on the most favorable terms for the West (Russia would have still obtained its goals, but later – a minor concession), it is no longer possible, and the conditions are progressively worsening. Ostensibly, the situation remains the same; peace on almost any conditions is still beneficial for Russia. Only one thing has changed, but it is of the utmost importance: public opinion. Russian society longs for victory and retribution. As I pointed out above, Russian power is authoritative, rather than authoritarian; therefore, public opinion matters in Russia, in contrast to the “traditional democracies.”
Putin can maintain his role as the linchpin of the system only as long as he has the support of the majority of the population. If he loses this support, because no figures of his stature have emerged from Russia’s political elite, the system will lose its stability. But power can maintain its authority only as long as it successfully embodies the wishes of the masses. Thus the defeat of Nazism in the Ukraine, even if it is diplomatic, must be clear and indisputable – only under such conditions is a Russian compromise possible.
Thus, regardless of Putin’s wishes and Russia’s interests, given the overall balance of power, as well as the protagonists’ priorities and capabilities, a war that should have ended last year within the borders of the Ukraine will almost certainly spill over into Europe. One can only guess who will be more effective – the Americans with their gas can or the Russians with their fire extinguisher? But one thing is absolutely clear: the peace initiatives of the Russian leaders will be limited not by their wishes but their actual capabilities. It is futile to fight either the wishes of the people or the course of history; but when they coincide, the only thing a wise politician can do is to understand the wishes of the people and the direction of the historical process and try to support it at all costs.
The circumstances described above make it extremely unlikely that the proponents of an independent state of Novorossiya will see their wishes fulfilled. Given the scale of the coming conflagration, determining the fate of the Ukraine as a whole is not excessively complicated but, at the same time, it will not come cheap.
It is only logical that the Russian people should ask: if Russians, whom we rescued from the Nazis, live in Novorossiya, why do they have to live in a separate state? If they want to live in a separate state, why should Russia rebuild their cities and factories? To these questions there is only one reasonable answer: Novorossiya should become part of Russia (especially since it has enough fighters, although the governing class is problematic). Well, if part of the Ukraine can join Russia, why not all of it? Especially as in all likelihood by the time this question is on the agenda, the European Union will no longer be an alternative to the Eurasian Union [for the Ukraine].
Consequently, the decision to rejoin Russia will be made by a united federated Ukraine and not by some entity without a clear status. I think that it is premature to redraw the political map. Most likely the conflict in the Ukraine will be concluded by the end of the year. But if the United States manages to extend the conflict to the EU (and it will try), the final resolution of territorial issues will take at least a couple of years and maybe more.
In any situation we benefit from peace. In conditions of peace, as Russia’s resource base grows, as new allies (former partners of the United States) go over to its side, and as Washington becomes progressively marginalized, territorial restructuring will become far simpler and temporarily less significant, especially for those being restructured.
Notes:
1 Moscow street where the headquarters of the Presidential Administration of Russia is located.
2 Moscow square where Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is located.
3 Georgiy Gongadze was a Georgian-born Ukrainian journalist and film director who was kidnapped and murdered in 2000.
4 The Cassette Scandal erupted in 2000 with the release of audiotapes on which Leonid Kuchma allegedly discussed the need to silence Gongadze for reporting on high-level corruption.
5 As a result of the Cassette Scandal, a mass anti-Kuchma protest took place in the Ukraine in 2000-2001.

martes, 21 de abril de 2015

MÉXICO SE ALEJA DE CHINA


A raíz de la cancelación del proyecto de tren rápido entre la ciudad de México y Querétaro, que había ganado en la licitación pública China Railway Construction Corporation junto con la empresa constructora consentida de Peña Nieto y familia, HIGA por el evidente conflicto de interés (la “casa blanca de Las Lomas” financiada por HIGA a la esposa de Peña); y la cancelación del proyecto Dragon Mart en Cancún, el gobierno chino ha decidido congelar nuevos proyectos de inversión en México (La Jornada y El Financiero 21 de abril, 2015), mientras Peña Nieto permanezca en la presidencia.
Cabe recordar que las cancelaciones de ambos proyectos se realizaron poco después de que se dieran a conocer los escándalos de “la casa blanca de Las Lomas” y de la residencia de descanso del secretario de Hacienda Luis Videgaray en Malinalco, Estado de México (también financiada por HIGA). Esto sucedió en el último trimestre del 2014.

Por ejemplo CNN México dio a conocer el 15 de diciembre del 2014 la siguiente información en su portal de internet:

De los 25 integrantes del gabinete presidencial, 21 tienen en conjunto 102 propiedades, incluyendo la casa en Malinalco, Estado de México, que Luis Videgaray compró a una compañía del empresario y contratista del gobierno federal Juan Armando Hinojosa Cantú, propietario de Grupo Higa.
De los cuatro miembros del gabinete restantes, uno decidió —como se los permite la ley— no hacer públicos sus datos patrimoniales —Jesús Murillo Karam de la Procuraduría General de la República (PGR)— y tres no reportaron información de inmuebles a su nombre –Aurelio Nuño Mayer, jefe de la Oficina de la Presidencia; Rosario Robles Berlanga, de la Secretaría de Desarrollo Social (Sedesol), y Juan José Guerra Abud de la Secretaría del Medio Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Semarnat)—, según una revisión que CNNMéxico hizo de las declaraciones patrimoniales del equipo del presidente Enrique Peña Nieto.
De entre los 24 miembros del gabinete legal y ampliado que sí difundieron sus datos patrimoniales, el titular de la Secretaría de Agricultura, Ganadería, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca y Alimentación (Sagarpa), Enrique Martínez y Martínez, es el que cuenta con más inmuebles, con 18: 16 terrenos, un edificio y una casa.
El titular de la Secretaría de Energía (Sener), Pedro Joaquín Coldwell, cuenta con 12 inmuebles; Alfonso Navarrete de la Secretaría del Trabajo y Previsión Social (STPS) tiene 11; Julián Olivas de la Función Pública (SFP), ocho; José Antonio González Anaya, del IMSS, tiene siete; y Gerardo Ruiz Esparza de Comunicaciones y Transportes (SCT), seis.
Por su parte, Ildefonso Guajardo, de Economía, Humberto Castillejos, consejero jurídico, y Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong, de Gobernación (Segob), cuentan con cinco inmuebles cada uno. Mientras que los restantes secretarios de Estado cuentan con entre uno y cuatro bienes inmuebles.

Pues bien, el 6 de enero del 2015 llegó Peña Nieto a Washington para reunirse con Obama; el 26 de enero la Procuraduría Federal del Medio Ambiente (Profepa), cancelaba en definitiva el proyecto de construcción del denominado Dragon Mart[1] en Can Cún que sería construido por un grupo de empresarios chinos; y para el 30 de enero el secretario de Hacienda Luis Videgaray  anunciaba la cancelación definitiva del proyecto del tren rápido a Querétaro.
¿Coincidencia que el Washington Post, el New York Times, el Wall Street Journal y CNN investigaran y difundieran profusamente las propiedades de la subclase política priísta, a pesar de todas las alabanzas y parabienes que se le habían hecho a Peña desde Estados Unidos por sus “valientes reformas”?
Yo no lo creo. Me parece que gracias al acceso irrestricto que las agencias de seguridad de Estados Unidos tienen a toda la información del gobierno y de los grandes empresarios mexicanos (mediante los centros de “fusión de información” y a través de la NSA y de internet con la colaboración de Google, Yahoo y Microsoft) los dirigentes políticos de Estados Unidos decidieron enviarle un mensaje muy claro a Peña y al priísmo (hoy en el poder, mañana quién sabe) de que se estaban acercando en exceso a China y la estrategia debía ser la contraria, es decir alejarse de China y bloquearla, pues es la principal competidora económica de Estados Unidos.
De ahí los esfuerzos estadounidenses por que se apruebe el Tratado Trans Pacífico de Comercio e Inversión (TPP), al cual no está invitada China, y que tiene el objetivo de brindarle todas las ventajas a las grandes corporaciones transnacionales para que sin interferencia alguna de gobiernos o sociedades de los países que integren ese acuerdo, puedan aprovechar a placer los recursos naturales y la mano de obra casi regalada, con la mira puesta en competir con China.
Así también, Washington intentó boicotear la propuesta china del Asian Infraestructure Investment Bank (AIIB), que tiene por objetivo convertirse en el principal financiador de las ingentes necesidades de infraestructura del continente asiático, siendo la primera propuesta de organismo financiero internacional (desde la II Guerra Mundial) no surgida de Washington o Londres, y por lo tanto representando un signo de independencia económica de China, a la cual se le ha bloqueado para tener un mayor peso en el FMI y en el Banco Mundial. 
Pues bien, Estados Unidos (junto con Japón) se han quedado solos en su intento de boicotear al banco, pues incluso aliados tan cercanos a Washington como Israel, Gran Bretaña, Francia, Corea del Sur y Alemania, se han unido como miembros fundadores del banco.  Por supuesto México siguió obedientemente las indicaciones de Washington y no se unió al AIIB; en cambio Brasil sí será miembro fundador.
Todo esto nos revela una vez más la subordinación completa de la subclase política mexicana (no se puede pensar que los panistas o perredistas pudieran ser diferentes, manchados como están con la corrupción que enloda a todo el sistema político mexicano) ante Estados Unidos, que así puede ordenar (no pedir, proponer, menos negociar), las medidas que le sean convenientes en materia económica o de seguridad; ahí está la aprobación de la Ley de Armas de Fuego y Explosivos, en donde se permite que agentes estadounidenses porten sus armas de cargo en todo el territorio mexicano, sólo un par de días antes de que Peña fuera a la VII Cumbre de las Américas y en donde Obama lo felicitó, como si fuera su mejor alumno.
México tiene un déficit comercial brutal con China, pues de 1994 a 2013, le ha exportado productos por valor de 42,167 millones de dólares; mientras que China ha exportado a México en ese lapso 499,659 millones de dólares (datos de la Secretaría de Economía), lo que implica un desbalance del orden de 12 a 1 favorable a los chinos.
De ahí que México tiene una urgente necesidad de mejorar su balanza comercial con dicho país y aprovechar los capitales chinos para el desarrollo de infraestructura, pero Estados Unidos no lo va a permitir, y para ello cuenta con una palanca formidable: la corrupción de los gobernantes mexicanos, que pueden ser exhibidos fácilmente y con ello obligados a alinearse a los dictados de Washington.




[1] El proyecto contemplaba 722 viviendas, 20 naves comerciales y un total de tres mil locales en una superficie de 561 hectáreas, de las cuales en 203 se iba a llevar a cabo el proyecto y 357 hectáreas iban a ser de conservación.