LOOTING PRINCELINGS: THE ROT AT THE TOP OF CHINA

[jakaswanga]

THE PEOPLES REPUBLIC OF CHINA AS A PLAYGROUND OF THE ARISTOCRATS OF THE RED DYSNASTY.

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/jan/21/china-british-virgin-islands-wealth-offshore-havens

LOOTING PRINCELINGS: THE ROT AT THE TOP OF CHINA

I was first minded to write this as a continuation of my warning series to the Red ViceRoy Liu Guangyuan, the Chinese prefect awarded the province of Kenya for the moment, but on second thoughts I reckoned this one has now gone above his station and head. The names and families involved are too big. Red Gods. We are talking the families of Xi Jinpin, Hu Jin Tao and Wen Jianbao siphoning off great sums of money from China, and offshoring the booty in various tax havens in the Western Hemisphere! --That, is a radio ;)active subject.

If a simple mortal soul like Liu Guangyuan touches that story, his career if of course finished in an instant; and possibly his life too. So with Liu I will only give tabloid warnings! Kindergarten stuff like the SGR/EXIM bank tender/contract.

NB: there is a total black out of this offshore story in China, in all media. And as a precautionary measure, suspected trouble-makers like those of ‘’transparency China’’ [they want all Chinese leaders to declare their wealth and those of their families] have been arrested and incarcerated. Yes, the red aristocracy fears the spotlight turned on their wheeling and dealing.
MY concern, is the implications of this axis of graft, comprising the Chinese red princelings in control of the Chinese state, the Western Financial Oligarchy who have the politicians of the Democratic powers in their pockets, and the tropical gangsters running Africa, aka Their excellency’s our presidents.
What does this internationalist Triumvirate of Evil hold in store for the aspirations of the majority of African people? hold for the struggles of the African people who, forlon and spectators in the grand game of geo-political Chess, stay marooned in pre-historic poverty like, in the words of a Tuareg rebel fighting French neo-colonialism in Niger, obsolete fossils buried deep under the sand, --far down after layer after layer of rock.

WHAT OPTIONS THEN, THAT AFRICA EMERGE, from the bottom of the sand heap?

The Tuaregs call themselves the orphans of the Sahara.A must watch documentary recently revisited by AlJazeera TV.
Are we in Africa the orphans of this civilisation? Outcasts of humanity?

I make it clear I am only concerned with the fate of China in so far as I think it is interlinked with the struggle for African emancipation. China is the most influential power in Africa now; even as the Western alliance under Obama’s USA fights a rearguard battle –(see their latest Africa conference call to Washington, to which Uhuru Kenyatta flies in February, rehabilitated ).
I think the corruption at the top of China, where the red dynasty made up of spoilt princelings swim in power and money, and, unchecked by their people nor bothered by dissent at home, assumes an aura of historical invincibility, is of grave consequences to the future of Africa. This impunity is the rot China is exporting in her business model, and is the image they seek to shape, or maintain lesser countries beholden to them –like our Kenya.
The [dark] circumstances surrounding the tendering of our Standard Railway Gauge as part of the pillars of the LAPSSET corridor, is an example. The paper work is all a mystery, but one thing is clear: it is a massive looting exercise, the Kenyan (and possibly the small time Chinese) taxpayer paying. [NB: For other African countries we will study mining contracts in DRC, uranium in Niger, Oil in Angola, Copper in Zambia, and compare this ''greater friend to Africa (William Ruto speak) with our experience with Western companies in earlier extraction models)

And, talking about censorship in China, Uhuru Kenyatta, a princeling too, has already signed new media laws which, down the line, will lead to pen-dead, only court journalists. And Jukwaa? --long yanked off Kenyan cyberspace and a certain Onyango Oloo cooling his heels again at certain Kamiti Maximum Hotel!

I have visions of apocalypse later!

www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2014/jan/21/china-british-virgin-islands-wealth-offshore-havens

China's princelings storing riches in Caribbean offshore haven

Relatives of political leaders including China's current president and former premier named in trove of leaked documents from the British Virgin Islands -----By James Ball and Guardian US Interactive Team

More than a dozen family members of China's top political and military leaders are making use of offshore companies based in the British Virgin Islands, leaked financial documents reveal. The brother-in-law of China's current president, Xi Jinping, as well as the son and son-in-law of former premier Wen Jiabao are among the political relations making use of the offshore havens, financial records show.

One of the Communist Party's "Eight Elders's" son Fu Liang is the son of Peng Zhen, former mayor of Beijing and one of China's "eight elders". After a career in the rail industry, he shifted to a role in the leisure sector, as an investor in yacht clubs and golf courses.
Graphic shows senior Chinese figures and their relatives with offshore connections. There is no indication the leadership figures had any involvement in or awareness of the family members' financial activities.

The documents also disclose the central role of major Western banks and accountancy firms, including PricewaterhouseCoopers, Credit Suisse and UBS in the offshore world, acting as middlemen in the establishing of companies.
The Hong Kong office of Credit Suisse, for example, established the BVI company Trend Gold Consultants for Wen Yunsong, the son of Wen Jiabao, during his father's premiership — while PwC and UBS performed similar services for hundreds of other wealthy Chinese individuals.
The disclosure of China's use of secretive financial structures is the latest revelation from "Offshore Secrets", a two-year reporting effort led by theInternational Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which obtained more than 200 gigabytes of leaked financial data from two companies in the British Virgin Islands, and shared the information with the Guardian and other international news outlets.

NB: I magnify those accounting firms, because as Uhuru Kenyatta orders the treasury of Rotich to use external auditors to clean up Kenya's civil service payrolls, these accounting firms [who specialise in tax-evasion advice] under their local subsidiaries, are the same ones angling for the contract.
It is a tandem of corruption surrounding the taxpayer anywhere. Shaka's impi formation. ---I will post links of how all the international acounting firms you have heard about --Deloitte $ Touche,PWC, KPMG, Ernst $ Young et al, have had to pay fines and sign deals with both the internal revenue departments of the EU and the USA, to prevent long jail terms for their bosses who in America certainly would have their arses ripped apart in ritual homosexual rape behind bars. These creme de le creme of the financial world, tuned out to be mere whizzkids at cooking books, as they engaged in swindling practices in the wake of major financial scandals. They falsified the returns of big banks and big companies, thereby helped manipulate the financial markets with faulty data. And Wall-Street had to be bailed out. ----So when Uhuru Kenyatta employs them, or their local subsidiaries who have been presiding over Kenya's own version of market graft, I will wink at Rotich. We get the joke. Can not stop digging when in a hole.

www.cbc.ca/news/world/offshore-assets-of-china-s-elite-revealed-in-leaked-records-1.2504987

21-01-2014: Close relatives of China's top leaders have used secretive offshore companies in tax havens that helped shroud the Communist elite's wealth, according to a massive cache of leaked financial records, posing a formidable challenge for President Xi Jinping, the country's avowed anti-corruption leader.
The confidential files include details of a real estate company co-owned by Xi's brother-in-law, as well as British Virgin Islands corporations set up by former premier Wen Jiabao's son and son-in-law, plus dozens of more cases of people tied to high-level officials.

Ambassador Liu Guangyuan, we have a situation. Our emperor, the exalted Xi Jinpin, has a bluff which is being called. He said, ‘’we will slay them all gathered at the table of corruption, the tigers and the flies!’’
But has he bitten more than he can possibly chew? Or was he an outright fake from the beginning??
No, of course you can not possibly even think to answer that!

But first a story.
TO BE CONTINEUD.

[jakaswanga]

It does not take much to point to the nakedness of an emperor, even as his whole court and the world toasts his divine mandate and invincibility.



''You are tough on corruption, Xi Jinpin? Tell us how much you and your family are worth and how they made it!'' ---Immediately the guy who said that, Xu Zhiyong, gets a 5 year jail term; and from the unending charge sheet, 3 more 5 year jail terms are in the pipeline for him and his ilk!

So the theatrical charade called the war on corruption declared by secretary general Xi Jinpin, is the great show running in Beijin today. Come one come all! Some dragons we will spear for the form, some flies we will swat for laughs, but all is business as usual!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-china-25900272

BBC's Celia Hatton: "Some say that dozens have been arrested in connection with Mr Xu Zhiyong's movement"
A Chinese court has sentenced prominent human rights activist Xu Zhiyong to four years in prison.
He was also previously under house arrest, is a leading member of a group calling for officials to reveal their wealth.

[jakaswanga]

OF SUPER OLIGARCHS AND NATIONALIST LEADERS, AND WESTERN SANCTIONS

President Xi Jinpin of the peoples republc of China surely has a headache. Between the red princelings looting China and stashing their spoils in Western safes, and the communist party hierarchy banging the drum of nationalism in Beijin, who will be the tail who will be the dog when the crunch comes? and who will be wagging who?

This headache has been brought about by the current confrontation between Putin’s Russia and the West, over the Ukraine, and specifically the Crimean Peninsular. Sanctions have come to pass, assets frozen, travel bans imposed, bank accounts impounded. We could use the words of the then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Medvedev, describing the situation in Cyprus at the height of the financial crisis engulfing the EU.

According to this “urgent bulletin,” this warning is being made at the behest of Prime Minister Medvedev who earlier today warned against the Western banking systems actions against EU Member Cyprus by stating:
“All possible mistakes that could be made have been made by them, the measure that was proposed is of a confiscation nature, and unprecedented in its character. I can’t compare it with anything but … decisions made by Soviet authorities … when they didn’t think much about the savings of their population. But we are living in the 21st century, under market economic conditions. Everybody has been insisting that ownership rights should be respected.”
Medvedev’s statements echo those of President Putin who, likewise, warned about the EU’s unprecedented private asset grab in Cyprus calling it “unjust, unprofessional, and dangerous.” ---@euronews

That was a long time ago. And I made mention of it in the Eurozone death watch thread.
That was the famous T word which did not mean the B word, as the then chairman of the Euro-group, dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Graveflowers, so strenuously sought to nuance. T = Template, B = blueprint. Well, It now turns out that unprecedented private asset grab, was just a dry run foreshadowing the real thing. Today, 17-03-2014, the USA and the EU have imposed sanctions on Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, confiscating monies and properties worth quite a tidy fortune. And that is just the beginning. If Russia 'annexes' the Crimea in the wake of the 'illegal referendum' whose result was a walkover , then we will witness a grab of national assets unprecedented since the West froze Iranian goods and accounts, following the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Foreseeing that possibility several years back, Putin had ordered his oligarchs to station the greater part of their wealth in Russia, and, in the last few weeks, there has been a capital flight both ways ---Western businesses fleeing from the Rouble and Russia, and Russia and allies evacuating from the dollar and USA treasury bonds. Here is a hint from the FT:

Europe Last updated: March 14, 2014 7:57 pm

Russian companies withdraw billions from west, say Moscow bankers

By Patrick Jenkins and Daniel Schäfer in London and Courtney Weaver and Jack Farchy in Moscow

Russian companies are pulling billions out of western banks, fearful that any US sanctions over the Crimean crisis could lead to an asset freeze, according to bankers in Moscow.
Sberbank and VTB, Russia’s giant partly state-owned banks, as well as industrial companies, such as energy group Lukoil, are among those repatriating cash from western lenders with operations in the US. VTB has also cancelled a planned US investor summit next month, according to bankers.
The flight comes as last-ditch diplomatic talks between Russia’s foreign minister and the US secretary of state to resolve the tensions in Ukraine ended without an agreement.
Markets were nervous before Sunday’s Crimea referendum on secession from Ukraine. Traders and businesspeople fear this could spark western sanctions against Russia as early as Monday.
Yields on Russia’s 10-year government bonds rose close to 9.7 per cent on Friday, compared with less than 8 per cent in January. The rouble hit 36.7 to the dollar, near to its weakest rate on record.

It also emerged on Friday that Russia’s top 10 billionaires, led by Alisher Usmanov, had lost a combined $6.6bn of their net worth over the past week, according to research firm Wealth-X. Russian equities, which showed more weakness on Friday, have lost 20 per cent of their value since the start of the year.
“You don’t need to have sanctions in place to cause economic turmoil,” said Christopher Granville, managing director of Trusted Sources, an emerging markets research firm. “The expectation is enough.”
Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution, who served in the State Department under Bill Clinton, said: “The irony is that the Russian banking sector has made quite a lot of progress in plugging into the global system. That means it is vulnerable, and a good lever for applying pressure.”

Data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sparked speculation that the Russian central bank was also reducing its vulnerability to potential sanctions. The data showed a drop of $105bn in Treasuries held by foreign institutions for the week ending March 12.
•
“We can only speculate about who might have decided to move their securities out of the Fed and into a third-party custodian, but one obvious candidate is Russia,” said Lou Crandall at Wrightson Icap.
•
Russia held $138.6bn in US government debt at the end of December, according to the US Treasury.

One senior Moscow banker said 90 per cent of investors were already behaving as if sanctions were in place, adding that this was “prudent exposure management”.
These moves represent the flipside of the more obvious withdrawal of western money from Russian markets that has been evident over the past fortnight.
Traders and bankers said US banks had been particularly heavy sellers of Russian bonds. According to data from the Bank for International Settlements, US banks and asset managers between them have about $75bn of exposure to Russia.
Joseph Dayan, head of markets at BCS, one of Russia’s largest brokers said: “It’s been quite an ugly picture in Russian bonds the last few days and some of it has to do with international banks reducing exposure.”
Although foreign banks have not yet begun cutting credit to Russian companies en masse, bankers said half a dozen live deals to fund some of Russia’s biggest companies were in limbo as lenders waited to see how punitive western sanctions would be.

Bankers said Barclays of the UK had withdrawn from a plan with Russia’s VTB jointly to fund an Essar Energy deal. Barclays declined to comment.
Alexei Kudrin, a former Russian finance minister and a member of Vladimir Putin’s economic council, warned on Thursday that sanctions could drive an extra $50bn ofcapital outflows from the Russian economy per quarter.
The New York Fed and Russia’s central bank declined to comment, as did Sberbank, VTB and Lukoil.

Meanwhile, in a sign of the EU’s continuing economic ties to Russia, South Stream*, the gas pipeline project backed by Gazprom of Russia, Eni of Italy, EDF of France and BASF of Germany, announced that it had signed a contract worth about €2bn with Saipem of Italy to build the offshore stretch of the route under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. Construction is scheduled to start in June.
Additional reporting by Michael Mackenzie and Camilla Hall in New York
*This has been amended from an earlier version of the story

HERE IS SOME PROPGANDA TO STEEL THE MARKET. ---http://insight.rbs.com/articles/ukraine-crisis.html

THE Bottom line is there is a TRADE WAR ON. And if you have your money at the enemy’s bank etc, you are not exactly smart.

Now, Putin is not having it his way with all his oligarchs. Trade wars, sanctions, asset freezes, visa bans, confiscated secret accounts, billions wiped off stock markets in days, all these things are bad for their way of life. London is their big brothel### and they want to keep it so. So SOME HAVE BEEN VERY ANGRY WITH THE PRIMITIVE PUTIN. They would rather he complied speedily with western demands, capitulated on every point, and let them get on with their jet set high flying lives. If they had their way, there would not single Russian foot soldier in the Krim, no referendum, and no funny business in the Duma [Russian Knesset] about laws to enable Crimea joining mother Russia. --That placenta of a peninsular is better buried in the outskirts of the Ukraine where mad Nikita Kruschev shoved it in 1954! the oligarchs think, as they sip 3-centuries old cognac vintage, costing $1000/tot in London.

For the moment Putin seems to have them where he wants them. He runs Russia, and the oligarchs are a tail that wageth not the dog.

Xi Jinpin of China, flexing his imperial muscles in the South China sea and inviting the wrath of the American pacific fleet and Okinawa bomber bases in Japan, having his domestic troubles with Tibet and Xinjiang –of the Muslim Uygurs blamed for the recent knife attack on railway passengers in the Chinese town of Kunming — must wonder what an escalation of confrontation with the United States could lead to.

www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/world/asia/han-uighur-relations-china.html?_r=0

If further tensions (or some other unforeseen events) led to the possibility of sanctions from the West, and the Princelings stood to loose their whole fortunes stashed in secret accounts which no doubt Western Intelligence Services know all about, would these powerful looters not strive to have China bow down and kiss American feet? Would they not seek to impose their self-interest as the interest of the PRC? And would Xijinpin be in a position to checkmate them, or would he be the dog that the tail wagged?

----When the Chinese Emperor capitulated to the British to have them sell opium unchecked to the Chinese, a Hunan poet said:
The emperor’s back is bent,
and forever it shall be,
licking the barbarian’s feet!
China is a four legged creature, whose eyes never leave the ground!

XiJinpin knows that poem. This is the poem why, when Chairman Mao stood up at Tianamin to proclaim the peoples republic in 1949, his words were:
THE CHINESE PEOPLE STAND UP!
That is, the era of bent backs licking the barbarian feet, was over.
The four legged creature whose eyes never left the ground, now rose
and gazed sky wards, with steel in the eye.

Well, with the Chinese princelings stashing all their loot in the West, in effect mortgaging themselves, willing hostages with nooses around their necks, who knows what the future holds? Bent backs, straight backs? Xi Jinpin has a headache.
China back to the four legged hunchback whose eyes never left the ground?

And so Xinjinpin will study Putin and his western-lifestyle addicted oligarchs, learn his lessons and draw his conlusions.

We watch ---coz China is building just about everything in Afrika. Her future is our future, definitely in the short-run anyway.
Got to know, if she is a rat that shall scamper away at the first hint an American miaw.

[omundu]

Mar 17, 2014 20:18:40 GMT 3 jakaswanga said:

OF SUPER OLIGARCHS AND NATIONALIST LEADERS, AND WESTERN SANCTIONS

President Xi Jinpin of the peoples republc of China surely has a headache. Between the red princelings looting China and stashing their spoils in Western safes, and the communist party hierarchy banging the drum of nationalism in Beijin, who will be the tail who will be the dog when the crunch comes? and who will be wagging who?

This headache has been brought about by the current confrontation between Putin’s Russia and the West, over the Ukraine, and specifically the Crimean Peninsular. Sanctions have come to pass, assets frozen, travel bans imposed, bank accounts impounded. We could use the words of the then Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Medvedev, describing the situation in Cyprus at the height of the financial crisis engulfing the EU.

According to this “urgent bulletin,” this warning is being made at the behest of Prime Minister Medvedev who earlier today warned against the Western banking systems actions against EU Member Cyprus by stating:
“All possible mistakes that could be made have been made by them, the measure that was proposed is of a confiscation nature, and unprecedented in its character. I can’t compare it with anything but … decisions made by Soviet authorities … when they didn’t think much about the savings of their population. But we are living in the 21st century, under market economic conditions. Everybody has been insisting that ownership rights should be respected.”
Medvedev’s statements echo those of President Putin who, likewise, warned about the EU’s unprecedented private asset grab in Cyprus calling it “unjust, unprofessional, and dangerous.” ---@euronews

That was a long time ago. And I made mention of it in the Eurozone death watch thread.
That was the famous T word which did not mean the B word, as the then chairman of the Euro-group, dutch Finance Minister Jeroen Graveflowers, so strenuously sought to nuance. T = Template, B = blueprint. Well, It now turns out that unprecedented private asset grab, was just a dry run foreshadowing the real thing. Today, 17-03-2014, the USA and the EU have imposed sanctions on Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs, confiscating monies and properties worth quite a tidy fortune. And that is just the beginning. If Russia 'annexes' the Crimea in the wake of the 'illegal referendum' whose result was a walkover , then we will witness a grab of national assets unprecedented since the West froze Iranian goods and accounts, following the Islamic revolution of Ayatollah Khomeini.

Foreseeing that possibility several years back, Putin had ordered his oligarchs to station the greater part of their wealth in Russia, and, in the last few weeks, there has been a capital flight both ways ---Western businesses fleeing from the Rouble and Russia, and Russia and allies evacuating from the dollar and USA treasury bonds. Here is a hint from the FT:

Europe Last updated: March 14, 2014 7:57 pm

Russian companies withdraw billions from west, say Moscow bankers

By Patrick Jenkins and Daniel Schäfer in London and Courtney Weaver and Jack Farchy in Moscow

Russian companies are pulling billions out of western banks, fearful that any US sanctions over the Crimean crisis could lead to an asset freeze, according to bankers in Moscow.
Sberbank and VTB, Russia’s giant partly state-owned banks, as well as industrial companies, such as energy group Lukoil, are among those repatriating cash from western lenders with operations in the US. VTB has also cancelled a planned US investor summit next month, according to bankers.
The flight comes as last-ditch diplomatic talks between Russia’s foreign minister and the US secretary of state to resolve the tensions in Ukraine ended without an agreement.
Markets were nervous before Sunday’s Crimea referendum on secession from Ukraine. Traders and businesspeople fear this could spark western sanctions against Russia as early as Monday.
Yields on Russia’s 10-year government bonds rose close to 9.7 per cent on Friday, compared with less than 8 per cent in January. The rouble hit 36.7 to the dollar, near to its weakest rate on record.

It also emerged on Friday that Russia’s top 10 billionaires, led by Alisher Usmanov, had lost a combined $6.6bn of their net worth over the past week, according to research firm Wealth-X. Russian equities, which showed more weakness on Friday, have lost 20 per cent of their value since the start of the year.
“You don’t need to have sanctions in place to cause economic turmoil,” said Christopher Granville, managing director of Trusted Sources, an emerging markets research firm. “The expectation is enough.”
Strobe Talbott, president of the Brookings Institution, who served in the State Department under Bill Clinton, said: “The irony is that the Russian banking sector has made quite a lot of progress in plugging into the global system. That means it is vulnerable, and a good lever for applying pressure.”

Data published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York sparked speculation that the Russian central bank was also reducing its vulnerability to potential sanctions. The data showed a drop of $105bn in Treasuries held by foreign institutions for the week ending March 12.
•
“We can only speculate about who might have decided to move their securities out of the Fed and into a third-party custodian, but one obvious candidate is Russia,” said Lou Crandall at Wrightson Icap.
•
Russia held $138.6bn in US government debt at the end of December, according to the US Treasury.

One senior Moscow banker said 90 per cent of investors were already behaving as if sanctions were in place, adding that this was “prudent exposure management”.
These moves represent the flipside of the more obvious withdrawal of western money from Russian markets that has been evident over the past fortnight.
Traders and bankers said US banks had been particularly heavy sellers of Russian bonds. According to data from the Bank for International Settlements, US banks and asset managers between them have about $75bn of exposure to Russia.
Joseph Dayan, head of markets at BCS, one of Russia’s largest brokers said: “It’s been quite an ugly picture in Russian bonds the last few days and some of it has to do with international banks reducing exposure.”
Although foreign banks have not yet begun cutting credit to Russian companies en masse, bankers said half a dozen live deals to fund some of Russia’s biggest companies were in limbo as lenders waited to see how punitive western sanctions would be.

Bankers said Barclays of the UK had withdrawn from a plan with Russia’s VTB jointly to fund an Essar Energy deal. Barclays declined to comment.
Alexei Kudrin, a former Russian finance minister and a member of Vladimir Putin’s economic council, warned on Thursday that sanctions could drive an extra $50bn ofcapital outflows from the Russian economy per quarter.
The New York Fed and Russia’s central bank declined to comment, as did Sberbank, VTB and Lukoil.

Meanwhile, in a sign of the EU’s continuing economic ties to Russia, South Stream*, the gas pipeline project backed by Gazprom of Russia, Eni of Italy, EDF of France and BASF of Germany, announced that it had signed a contract worth about €2bn with Saipem of Italy to build the offshore stretch of the route under the Black Sea from Russia to Bulgaria. Construction is scheduled to start in June.
Additional reporting by Michael Mackenzie and Camilla Hall in New York
*This has been amended from an earlier version of the story

HERE IS SOME PROPGANDA TO STEEL THE MARKET. ---http://insight.rbs.com/articles/ukraine-crisis.html

THE Bottom line is there is a TRADE WAR ON. And if you have your money at the enemy’s bank etc, you are not exactly smart.

Now, Putin is not having it his way with all his oligarchs. Trade wars, sanctions, asset freezes, visa bans, confiscated secret accounts, billions wiped off stock markets in days, all these things are bad for their way of life. London is their big brothel### and they want to keep it so. So SOME HAVE BEEN VERY ANGRY WITH THE PRIMITIVE PUTIN. They would rather he complied speedily with western demands, capitulated on every point, and let them get on with their jet set high flying lives. If they had their way, there would not single Russian foot soldier in the Krim, no referendum, and no funny business in the Duma [Russian Knesset] about laws to enable Crimea joining mother Russia. --That placenta of a peninsular is better buried in the outskirts of the Ukraine where mad Nikita Kruschev shoved it in 1954! the oligarchs think, as they sip 3-centuries old cognac vintage, costing $1000/tot in London.

For the moment Putin seems to have them where he wants them. He runs Russia, and the oligarchs are a tail that wageth not the dog.

Xi Jinpin of China, flexing his imperial muscles in the South China sea and inviting the wrath of the American pacific fleet and Okinawa bomber bases in Japan, having his domestic troubles with Tibet and Xinjiang –of the Muslim Uygurs blamed for the recent knife attack on railway passengers in the Chinese town of Kunming — must wonder what an escalation of confrontation with the United States could lead to.

www.nytimes.com/2014/03/04/world/asia/han-uighur-relations-china.html?_r=0

If further tensions (or some other unforeseen events) led to the possibility of sanctions from the West, and the Princelings stood to loose their whole fortunes stashed in secret accounts which no doubt Western Intelligence Services know all about, would these powerful looters not strive to have China bow down and kiss American feet? Would they not seek to impose their self-interest as the interest of the PRC? And would Xijinpin be in a position to checkmate them, or would he be the dog that the tail wagged?

----When the Chinese Emperor capitulated to the British to have them sell opium unchecked to the Chinese, a Hunan poet said:
The emperor’s back is bent,
and forever it shall be,
licking the barbarian’s feet!
China is a four legged creature, whose eyes never leave the ground!

XiJinpin knows that poem. This is the poem why, when Chairman Mao stood up at Tianamin to proclaim the peoples republic in 1949, his words were:
THE CHINESE PEOPLE STAND UP!
That is, the era of bent backs licking the barbarian feet, was over.
The four legged creature whose eyes never left the ground, now rose
and gazed sky wards, with steel in the eye.

Well, with the Chinese princelings stashing all their loot in the West, in effect mortgaging themselves, willing hostages with nooses around their necks, who knows what the future holds? Bent backs, straight backs? Xi Jinpin has a headache.
China back to the four legged hunchback whose eyes never left the ground?

And so Xinjinpin will study Putin and his western-lifestyle addicted oligarchs, learn his lessons and draw his conlusions.

We watch ---coz China is building just about everything in Afrika. Her future is our future, definitely in the short-run anyway.
Got to know, if she is a rat that shall scamper away at the first hint an American miaw.

Good read Jakaswanga.

The sanctions begin. Sometimes I wonder what Putin's end game is in this. Crimea is a backwater that offers no real economic or geopolitical gain for Putin. On the contrary, Crimea even gets most of its key services from mainland Ukraine. It is actually more of a drain to mother Russia. Russia's naval fleet in Crimea consists of Soviet era equipment. It doesn't make sense. Putin is actually losing in the gobal geo-political scene. The steady and slow work done in readmiting and gaining economic and political clout in the world stage since the fall of the berlin wall vanish faster than he can pronounce Crimea.

An interesting point to note is that China abstained from the recent UNSC vote on the crisis. Could that be saying a lot about your points above ?

[jakaswanga]

WE ARE NOT THE ONLY LIMPING SHIP, WEIGHED DOWN BY CORRUPTION!

How indebted is the USA by the way? But Chinese blues first!

The following post is a joke of course. But bear with me. It has its non hilarious elements once in a while.


Now, China's debt is nearing 300% of her GDP. Let us call that a small problem for a big man. But some small problems hint at big problems coming. A tough man, small or big, concedes facts and makes contingency plans. A tough and historic man, they say, goes ahead and puts them corrective plans in motion, starting the realisation of the hint. The Navigator Xi JinPing is a tough man who wants to be historically big. Xi is the current red emperor of mixed-economy capitalist China. Before him was Big man Deng and Big man Mao! So he got recent competition. (Deng, for those who know not, is the Hsiao Ping of 20% economic growth rates every year for 20 years! That is of course stuff outside the scope of economic texbooks and ivy league carriculum)

NB: by Navigator I do not mean Xi Jinping's plans to build an underwater Great wall of China around the South China Sea to thwart the American Asia (war) pivot. In those war-games they call exercises, the Americans have bullied many a China neighbour into participating in the simulated blocking of Chinese naval and commercial ports. Then there is lame duck Obama quacking misechief in Vietnam this week. He lifted the long-standing weapons embargo. He is okay to sell them any China-killing stuff they might need, much to the heart of his prefered successor Hilary! R.C. ---Carte blanche like Israel! A VietCong editorial scoffed: 'the nice Mr. Obama means, yes we can! We can lay the Far East to waste like we have done the middle east! Let us use the gooky Vietnamese against China the way we used the foolish South Vietnamese as a pawn against Soviet red advance in the 60s!'

Xi Jinpin is a man riding a wild dragon. He has reason to worry. But not if you ask the passionate court poet Pu Liye. Officially this Pu is the deputy director at China’s official Xinhua news agency, but his passions are elsewhere. Here is a version of his poem, an ode to Xi, which went sweetly viral but also evoked savage mockery in parody retorts.

THE SIGHT OF YOUR STRONG BACK AND THE LOOK IN MY EYES

Mr. General Secretary,
The sight of your strong back transfixes my gaze
The look in my eyes gives birth to this poem
My burning fingers heat the keypads of my cellphone.

I think hard for this poem
I search almost every part of my body
It blocks my blood vessels and nerves
It fluctuates in the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers

It’s running on the Great Wall, percolating every single crevice
It follows the camel bell on “One Belt, One Road”
And the warm bliss from mighty ships and high-speed trains @ FEBRUARY 19 2016.

But words are a dangerous thing to play with.
Suppose the subject is punned to corruption –---- and it has been, such that a lot of Chinese jocker wits working at parody are now in jail,---- a horror show of hidden meanings then unfold.

Many top cadres who had worked with the state-owned oil sector have been sacked for corruption in President Xi Jinping’s massive anti-graft drive. The highest-ranking official in the faction, known as the Petroleum Gang, was former security tsar Zhou Yongkang.
Another handful of senior officials fired for graft were part of the Secretary Gang. Among them were Ling Jihua, former top aide to ex-president Hu Jintao, and Zhou Benshun, former Hebei party boss who had served as Zhou Yongkang’s secretary.
Besides taking bribes – a criminal offence – they formed factions within the party, which is a violation of party rule. @asia times

Corruption blocks the blood vessels and nerves of China. Corruption percolates every single crevice of the Chinese political body (communist party). Corruption rides every mighty ship and high-speed train to wherever! (a great export product).

Exactly!

Now you catch the joke! China is building apart from other huge stuff, railway networks all over Africa. Kenya is represented by the SGR. Elsewhere TAZARA is in for Rehab, and from Angola to Congo, Egypt to Sudan, mighty ships are arriving full of locomotives!

Locomotives of corruption head to Africa with bliss! (warns Chinese jokers!)
And the African receives them with even more bliss,
albeit excusable by the innocent bliss of ignorance! (another version of humour asserts!)


Xi Jin Pin is not amused. The mandate of heaven is a delicate act.

China's Xi Jinping denies House of Cards power struggle but attacks 'conspirators'

Chinese president warns of ‘cabals and cliques’ within Communist party and promises ‘resolute response to eliminate the problem’

www.theguardian.com/world/2016/may/04/china-xi-jinping-house-of-cards-attacks-conspirators

Xi Jinping has rejected claims that a “House of Cards power struggle” is raging at the pinnacle of Chinese politics, but claimed “conspirators” were attempting to undermine the Communist party from within.
In a speech published in Beijing’s official newspaper this week, the Chinese president warned that the presence of “cabals and cliques” inside the party risked “compromising the political security of the party and the country”.

“There are careerists and conspirators existing in our party and undermining the party’s governance,” Xi said, according to the People’s Daily transcript of his comments.
“We should not bury our heads in the sand and spare these members but must make a resolute response to eliminate the problem and deter further violations.”
The speech comes at a time of growing speculation over possible factional struggles within the 88 million-member Communist party that Xi has led since late 2012.

But there is more fire in the heart of the dragon, and the rider is feeling the heat under the saddle.

[jakaswanga]

how do you unload, manage bad debt? THE FRENCH AFRIKA CONNECTION!

Mon May 9, 2016 1:07am EDT
China debt-fueled stimulus may lead to recession - People's Daily

www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-trend-idUSKCN0Y003W

China may suffer from a financial crisis and economic recession if the government relies too much on debt-fuelled stimulus, the official People's Daily quoted an "authoritative person" on Monday as saying.
The People's Daily, official paper of the ruling Communist party, in a question and answer interview quoted the person as saying excessive credit growth could heighten risks and trigger a financial crisis if not controlled properly.
"Trees cannot grow to the sky. High leverage will inevitably bring about high risks, which could lead to a systemic financial crisis, negative economic growth and even wipe out ordinary people's savings," the person, who was not named, said in response to a question on whether stimulus should be used in future economic policy.

the identity of the 'authoritative person' has now been revealed!
Now, let us complete the strands of the joke. For we started this post citing it would be jocular.

Zimbabwe: U.S$15 Billion Diamonds Looting - Was Mugabe in a Coma?

column By Muckraker
PRESIDENT Robert Mugabe's remarks that more than US$15 billion worth of diamonds were produced but little accounted for is the clearest indication yet that he is now a national liability beyond measure and his continued stay in office is of great harm to the country's interests and prospects of economic recovery.

Now
Suppose you are a go-getting Chinaman in Africa. Such as a Chinese African expert and investments champion. A kind of modern day Asiatic Cecil Rhodes and Tiny Rowland, and Joseph Conrad rolled into one. Your name is Chip Chop and you come from Ping Pong, the once mighty wh-ore of the orient. You deliver modernity to Africa, facilitate relations with the stupid dictators there, and, reminiscent of the FRANCAFRIQUE, the moribund treasuries there ooze supplication. While it is their natural resources which finance opulence in Paris as we saw in the Elf-Aquataine scandal.

For his part, Dioncounda Traore, the interim Malian president, expressed his gratitude, calling Hollande a "brother to the Malian people" and a "true friend of the whole of Africa".

But is France pursuing a neo-colonial policy in Africa? Is it continuing Francafrique , the term coined to describe the country's relationship with its former African colonies, in which it supported unpopular African politicians in order to advance and protect its economic interests?

In a recent visit to Dakar, Hollande declared the end of the Francafrique era, but is it really over?
This three-part series tells the story of 'France Afrique': a brutal and nefarious tale of corruption, massacres, dictators supported and progressive leaders murdered, weapon-smuggling, cloak-and-dagger secret services, and spectacular military operations.

You, new kid on the block from the advancing Eastern dragon, ChipChop, like a predator parasite, messages Africa's lazy, auto-cannibalistic and graft-worshipping bureaucracies into resource-locked massive infrastructure projects with massive kick-back false bottoms, –--Railways, ports, airports, hydropower (dams), supra telecommunications (satellites), oil-rigs and you name it. On the sidelines your ilk's, ChipChop Cecil Rhodes clones, become billionares … well... kind of like deals in the above Zimbabwe which can not account for 15bn worth diamonds; or Angola's Sonangol oil company which can not present a single page of book keeping which could testify to literacy; or Kenya's SGR with comes with ivory tonnage as a bonus on the single-sourcing; and etc and etc..

Mar 14, 2016. Growing Chinese debt leaves Angola with little spare oil

By Libby George

LONDON, March 14 Angola has found itself with a dwindling amount of crude to sell as more of its oil flows to China for debt repayment, leaving little revenue for anything from oil sector development to health care in one of Africa's largest oil exporting nations.
Following a trend also seen in Iraq, Kazakhstan, Russia and Venezuela, Angola has tied up more of its output in pre-financed deals to bridge a drop in income due to the 70 percent fall in oil prices in the past 18 months.

And stuff like we will have to spend time going through each and every single African country. Probably on the long march thread, here.
And here is a quick reminder of how little things change, or how quickly history repeats itself.

Congo’s Oil Quagmire

Have French oil-backed loans been stunting Congo’s progress and fostering corruption?

By Cassie Knight, April 19, 2008

Le Floch-Prigent was chief executive of Elf Aquitaine from 1989 to 1993. In July 1996, he went to prison for bribery. He and 30 others were found guilty of having stolen and mismanaged about $350 million of the then state-owned company’s funds

He said that the Elf scandal was a national scandal and that the scale of the implications for France had been overlooked. But the Elf scandal was not only a national scandal — it was an international scandal, and one that caused decades of suffering, dictatorship and corruption in Congo-Brazzaville, Gabon and Angola. Elf was the major oil operator in Congo from the drilling of the first offshore oil rig in 1972.

www.theglobalist.com/congos-oil-quagmire/

In the early 1980s Congo received over a billion dollars a year in oil revenue. And yet there was no corresponding economic development during the same period.

But meanwhile ..

Azelik is operated by a joint partnership called Somina, with ownership split between the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), which owns 37%, the Niger government, which owns 33%, and a second Chinese investor. A Korean investor holds a 5% stake as well.

In 2009, Reuters reported that China had committed to investing $300 million in the project. Even so, no uranium has been extracted from the mine since early 2015 and the mine is effectively shuttered.
In addition to cheap uranium prices, turmoil in the Chinese economy resulted in an 84% plunge in Chinese investment in Africa in the first half of 2015, according to the Financial Times. China has little appetite for starting capital-heavy natural resources projects from scratch during a period of economic uncertainty, and the Azelik mine's future is currently unclear.
Nevertheless, the Chinese-operated uranium mine is one of the most opaque business endeavours in Niger...

Sometimes there is something called a 'resource curse', but mostly it is plane stupidity.

Those mines are operated by Areva, a nuclear-energy-services company that is 70% owned by France, the colonial power that ruled Niger between the 1890s and 1960.
Those two mines have been in operation since the late 1960s and are collectively the largest employer in the country other than the Nigerien government.
On their own, the mines account for nearly one-third of Niger’s exports. Nigerien uranium is thought to provide for approximately one-third of France's domestic consumer electricity needs.
Both of the mines are nearing the end of their operational lifespan — one is expected to only last another 10 to 15 years.

[/quote] Plane stupidity is, while 30% of French domestic electricity is supplied by Nigerian uranium the last half a century, Niger itself lives in total darkness, poisoning her Tuareg areas with radiation, degrading their environment and forcing them into mercenary millitancy around the Sahel, if not local, genuine historical recalcitrance.

And on energy, given the advances in solar technology, I would say enough sun during the day to do industrial solar power plants, if nuclear reactors are a rocket science in Africa. Think of the 3000 hectares in Morocco.


Noor Ouarzazate, the first solar power project run by the Moroccan Solar Energy Agency (MASEN), is the world’s largest solar power complex with an overall capacity of 580MW.



But now you catch the drift. You are Mr. ChipChop from PingPong and you know dark Africa. You studied the French, the most reactionary and predatory colonial power ever on the continent. The new emperor with the strong and sightly back has some misgivings –-corruption at home and (networks of CABALS and CLIQUES) abroad being one of them. He also has deep worries, like the costs of modernising and nuclearising all submarines forever to thwart Obama's crazy pivot; and of course the bad debts both at home and abroad. These are toxic stuff which can melt a whole financial sector, leading to a market Armageddon if left unchecked.

This is the background in which this tough and ruthless man wants to make sense of China's African debts, and he is told you, ChipChop, are the Nestor –-the wisest, most knowledgeable Oriental on Africa. He wants advise, insider advise on which to base the next step of the dragon! (No more far-sighted Chou en Lais?)
And so there you find yourself at the hall of the great peoples of China. The Chairman of everything calls you to audience, and with the weight of history in his eye, he leans to listen: 'This African swamp of resource-cast loans', he says, 'can China swim it and break even?'

Next after you is the colonel who will give new thinking into thwarting the event of an American-led blockade of the South China sea, which could kill off all Chinese merchant shipping, including oil tankers. That one is not a swamp China can ask itself whether it can swim and break even, that one it must swim, and not break even, but win. If she does not, there ceases to be a China. The man whose back is a strong sight knows this. And accepts his fate. It gives him a placid, godly calm. But Obama is jabbing, and HRC will poke!

BEIJING, May 19 (Xinhua) -- A U.S. military aircraft carried out reconnaissance close to China's island of Hainan Tuesday, in the country's most recent provocation against China's legitimate rights and interests.
In total disregard of China's call not to disturb peace in the South China Sea, Washington recently has been busy flexing its military muscle at China's doormat.
Last week, the U.S. warship, USS William P. Lawrence, intruded into Chinese waters near the Nansha Islands without the permission of the Chinese government.

But the real scares are kilometers below the sea surface!

But first, Africa.

Mr. ChipChop has noticed Patrick Njoroge is re-structuring Kenya's banks and has won prices –-for what that is worth though, given Waiguru and Njugunah Ndung'u won similar continental prices and have since been proven fairy tales. Can the Kenyan debt management under the tough Nairobi man be studied by the Chinese to be imposed on their other worrying debt colonies around the dark continent?

Sudoku time! what to do with debt and theft in backwardness?

Only artists have time for LES MISERABLES! even God wont bother!

Out there, there are drums beating. Don't know whether that is a party or funeral beat. We will find out as we draw near and read the talk in the drum!







There are CABALS AND CLIQUES, networks of graft, debt and theft infesting Africa's parties in power. For China in a similar problem, the ruler, the man with the strong and sightly back has a solution: 'we must ruthlessly weed them out and be fully determined to keep them away forever!'

Rise the African strong-back who will PUT THAT IN PRACTICE, and I will be your lyricist court poet ala PU! In the absence of such calibre, I call every African His Excellency a goat! A Zamunda goat!.

Zamunda goat Buhari, Zamunda goat Zuma, Zamunda goat Al-Sisi! and charity begins at home of course!