By Joan Coxsedge
October 03, 2019 "Information
Clearing House" - Once upon a time I felt
OK in saying I was an Australian. But that was back
in the era when Australia was one of the most
egalitarian nations in the world, when there was
vigorous debate about important issues and when our
basic commodities were in public hands and jobs gave
security and even some satisfaction. My grandfather
worked all his life as a train driver (steam) and my
father followed him into the railways, a solid
career move back then, which was why I was born in
Ballarat. What a different story today.
Counted as full-time even if you only work for a few
hours a week, with no sick leave, holiday pay,
security, or the other basics unions fought so hard
for - when bang, you’re on the scrap heap and have
to fight like buggery to get a lousy payout, leaving
you to subsist below the poverty line, with no hope
of redress. The corporates love our system because
they can screw workers into the ground. The crooks
and rorters love it because no-one stops their
rorting.
Capitalism’s terrific if you’re rich and crooked and
stupid, but it needs growth and growth is killing
our world and killing our animals and birds and
trees and flowers that make it so special. We should
all be shouting from the rooftops like gutsy 16-year
old Greta Thunberg who told the UN with passion and
integrity: ‘People are suffering, people are dying,
entire ecosystems are collapsing and all you can
talk about is money and fairytales of eternal
economic growth…I want you to act as if the house is
on fire’. And our house is on fire. But miserable
sods like our Pentecostal PM didn’t speak at the UN
forum because he had nothing to say, preferring to
hob-nob with slimy Uncle Sam, a war-mongering dud on
the cusp of impeachment. When Morrieson spoke at a
lesser gathering he made a gig of himself, pushing
us even further down the plughole.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
In Hong Kong the protests are getting
nastier and more violent. A slice of
history might help. Hong Kong was part
of China since the Qin Dynasty in about
220 BC before morphing into an
international financial centre. Trade
kicked in with the arrival of the
ruthless East India Tea Company in 1711,
when the Brits refused to pay for tea in
silver, smuggling in opium as a means of
exchange. By 1787, the Company was
illegally sending in 4.000 chests of
opium every year, causing massive
addiction and corruption. Back in 1820,
China’s economy was still the largest in
the world, that is, until the Opium
Wars, but by the end of the second war,
its share of global GDP had halved, and
sovereignty over its territory had been
seriously compromised. In 1841 a
defeated China was forced to cede Hong
Kong Island to the British as part of
the Treaty of Nanjing, to lease the
Kowloon Peninsula in 1860 in perpetuity
and the New Territories in 1898 for 99
years, areas that make up present-day
Hong Kong. At the end of Japan’s
occupation during WW2, HK reverted back
to Britain, which was then forced to
transfer sovereignty back to China after
the lease expired in 1997 when they
negotiated a transition period called
the Sino-British Joint Declaration
designating Hong Kong as a ‘special
administrative region’. China
reluctantly agreed to extend
semi-autonomy until 2047. This is the
genesis of the ‘One Country, Two
Systems’ rule at the heart of today’s
conflict, highlighting that China and
Hong Kong have been on two quite
distinct and intersecting paths of
development.
It is now 22 years since the British
left after an agreement stipulating that
all interventions and colonial claims
would end with full sovereignty
returning to China. Calling for
secession from China would be like
calling for Manhattan to secede from the
US. Can you imagine Washington ever
agreeing to that? Hardly. And times have
changed. In 1997, HK’s domestic product
was 27% of China’s GDP. Today it’s 3%.
Shenzhen and other major cities are now
China’s financial hub and threaten
Western hegemony. China, Russia, India
and Pakistan, plus a few others, are
members of the Shanghai Co-operation
Organisation (SCO) comprising about half
the world’s population and controlling
about one-third of its economic output,
and are moving out of the dollar
economy.
And what do you reckon western reaction
would be if it was confronted by
marauding gangs of protesters dressed in
ninja outfits holding metal bars, with
black scarves covering their faces and
backpacks churning out the Star Spangled
Banner, smashing up Heathrow, JFK or
Melbourne Airports? You’d be beaten up
and thrown into gaol. The gangs also
smashed up HK’s MTR, its public Mass
Transit Railway and attacked passengers.
Fighting for democracy? My foot.
Leaderless? Not. There’s tycoon Jimmy
Lai, who owns a local tabloid and who’s
met US Vice President Mike Pence at the
White House, and politician/barrister
Martin Lee, founding chair of the local
Democratic Party. ‘Protest organiser’,
politician-in-waiting, Joshua Wong flies
around the world, hobnobbing with
far-right US Congressmen like Marco
Rubio and the head of the notorious
White Helmets outfit, Raed Al Saleh.
What, I ask, would a ‘grassroots leader’
in China have in common with a
belligerent Syrian propaganda war mob?
Because both have links to the CIA’s
National Endowment for Democracy,
infamous for subverting and manipulating
democratically-elected governments,
which has admitted funding HK dissidents
for more than two decades in the name of
‘Freedom’.
In Washington, Trump and Co.have just
announced sanctions against Raul Castro
and his four children for ‘gross
violations of human rights in support of
the Venezuelan government’ - for
‘freedom’, of course. In today’s
society, tell the truth if you dare,
like Julian Assange who, with Edward
Snowden (exiled in Russia) and Chelsea
Manning (detained indefinitely), exposed
massive crimes and corruption by the US
government and its allies, and remains
locked up in Belmarsh Maximum Security
Prison in appalling conditions.
‘Wherever America goes, terror follows’.
Viva Cuba!
Joan Coxsedge, artist, writer, political
activist, former Member of Parliament -
Melbourne, Australia
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