Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release Wednesday, 19 November 2014

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 1800 636 432
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au

CEC takes ‘peace through development’ message to Modi event

Representatives of the Citizens Electoral Council joined 20,000 people at the 17 November speech by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Sydney.

The CEC attended to share the message that Modi’s visit offers Australia an opportunity to break from its present strategic policies that are leading to war, and collaborate with India and its economic partners, the BRICS, in a program of peace through economic development.

Click here to view a 3min 40sec video report of the CEC’s intervention by the on-line publication Indian Monitor.

Click here to view it on YouTube.

Following is the text of the flyer that the CEC distributed to thousands of people at the event.

Australia must join with Modi and BRICS for peace through economic development

The welcome visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi is an opportunity for Australia to break from the strategic policies of London and Washington that are pushing the world to war, and to join with India and its BRICS partners in their game-changing commitment to economic development.

Behind the excitement of this visit, and the concurrent visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping, is a deadly serious strategic struggle. Prime Minister Modi’s defining intention to raise the living standards of hundreds of millions of Indian citizens, has impelled him to consolidate India’s involvement in the emerging global partnership called the BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. This alliance is based on a shared commitment to real economic development, in the form of visionary, nation-building infrastructure and expanded industrial production, but in a way that actually benefits ordinary people, by lifting millions out of poverty; Modi’s personal commitment to improved sanitation and a toilet for every Indian home is an example of this intention to benefit the people.

To that end, Modi has signed historic deals with China to build high-speed rail systems and nuclear power plants, and with Russia to boost strategic ties. He has also involved India in: the BRICS’ $100 billion New Development Bank, an alternative to the World Bank; the BRICS’ $50 billion Contingent Reserve Fund, and alternative to the IMF; and the $50 billion China-initiated Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

The BRICS shared commitment to economic development is behind their rapid rise in economic power. Their combined productive output is about to overtake that of the formerly dominant trans-Atlantic powers, the US and Europe.

War danger

Tragically for the world, London and Washington and their allies such as Australia are under the control of neo-conservative political and financial interests whose reaction to the economic rise of Asia and the formation of the BRICS is pushing the world towards war.

These same neo-conservatives were the conspirators behind the lies that started the criminal Iraq war.

The Citizens Electoral Council has for three years warned Australians of this danger of war. Other notable Australians, such as former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser, have made similar warnings. Essentially, Australia’s strategic allies, the US and the UK/EU, are determined to maintain their economic and military dominance (commonly called hegemony) over the world. This has been the strategic policy since 1992 when notorious former US Vice President, then Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney declared in a memo that US foreign policy must focus on stopping the rise of any possible military or economic rival. The Bush administration with the encouragement of Tony Blair pursued this strategy, and Barack Obama, with Tony Blair as his foreign policy adviser, has continued it. Australia has also supported it every step of the way, styling ourselves, under John Howard, as the “deputy sheriff” in the Asia-Pacific. Australia is turning into a military outpost for Obama’s “Asia Pivot” of shifting America’s foreign policy focus to Asia, which is aimed not at engaging Asia, but at militarily “containing” China, and any nation that collaborates with China. However, China will not, and should not have to, back down and submit to Anglo-American hegemony, and neither will Russia. This is inflaming tensions that could spiral into a nuclear war in which Australia is a major target.

Solution: Peace through economic development

The only solution to this danger is for the world to move to a new, just economic order based on nations collaborating on economic development. Practically, this means the nations of the world should welcome the rise of China, India, and their BRICS partners, and accept their offer of economic cooperation around great infrastructure projects. In greetings to the 30th anniversary conference of the Schiller Institute in Germany in October, Malcolm Fraser proposed, “There is an option and that is for the most powerful Western nations to realise that there have been great changes in the world, that the strategic context has altered, that other powers such as the BRICS are emerging and that the West should collaborate with them as partners to establish a more equal and a more just world.”

Peace through economic development is the only solution because the cause of the crisis is economic collapse. London and Washington are frantic because, unlike the BRICS economies, the trans-Atlantic economies are dying. For decades City of London and Wall Street banks have engaged in unbridled financial looting through such incomprehensible scams as derivatives speculation, which has smashed much of the once-great productive manufacturing capacity of the US and Europe and drowned their economies in hundreds of trillions of dollars of unpayable derivatives obligations.

Because of this collapse, the financial oligarchy of the City of London and Wall Street, which control Europe and Washington, view the BRICS as a threat to their money-based power over the world economy. Theirs is a system of financial imperialism: they demand indebted nations change their laws to remove all obstacles for multinational banks and corporations to profiteer through deregulation and privatisation. These demands are enforced by the IMF and World Bank—both under the political control of the so-called “Washington consensus”, which is a shared governing arrangement between the US and Europe. The governments of the BRICS nations are fiercely sovereign, and as they have grown in economic strength they have become increasingly unwilling to bow to financial diktats; moreover, by establishing alternatives to the IMF and World Bank the BRICS now offer other, smaller nations the chance to also break free of London and Wall Street interests behind the Washington Consensus.

For instance, the BRICS all support Argentina in its fight against the Wall Street “vulture funds” which buy government bonds for cents on the dollar and then get US courts to rule they must be paid in full, bankrupting the issuing government and denying their people essential services but gifting to the vulture funds profits of thousands of per cent. The BRICS are also collaborating with Egypt in its amazing New Suez Canal project which is funded entirely by ordinary Egyptians and is offering a job to every Egyptian under the age of 45.

Australia’s choice

It is clearly in Australia’s independent national interest to join in with the BRICS agenda for economic development. China is already our biggest trading partner, and India is also one of the biggest. Australia is an empty continent in desperate need of economic development, with which it could easily become a food bowl for our Asian neighbours, connected by high-speed shipping to all of the major Asian ports. However, this will require a break with our strategic dependence on the US and UK, which is stopping our collaboration. This was evident in October when Obama directly pressured Prime Minister Tony Abbott to not join with China and India in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and Abbott complied.

The Citizens Electoral Council is an independent political party which is dedicated to the ideal of peace through economic development. The CEC is leading the fight to get Australia to break from its subservience to London and Washington, and assert itself as a sovereign nation committed to economic cooperation with its neighbours.

As part of its campaign to inform the people of Australia of the economic opportunities that the BRICS alliance offers to Australia and the world, the CEC has just published an exciting pamphlet entitled: Do You Want to Defeat Terrorism? Establish a New, Just World Economic Order. We urge you the reader to join the CEC’s campaign. Click here to order a free copy, or call or email the CEC.

SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT: The ALP, Liberals and Greens are ganging up to make it harder for other parties to contest elections, by tripling the membership requirement. If you support the CEC’s ideas, it is time to act by joining as an Associate Member for one year, so the CEC can remain registered. Click here to join the CEC as a member.

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