Reginald Hall traveled nearly six hours from the quiet of his home in Sapelo Island to Atlanta to hear a landmark case that could shape the future of his historic community in Georgia. Last year, Sapelo Island residents sued county officials for blocking them from holding a crucial vote that could determine whether they would be displaced from the last Gullah Geechee community on the Georgia…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
On 2 April 2025 AFP reported that language used by President Donald Trump and his government to slash US-funded foreign aid is being adopted by other governments to attack NGOs and independent media.
Civil society groups in parts of Eastern Europe and beyond — long targeted by discredit-and-defund campaigns because of the light they shone on corruption and lack of transparency — are now also dealing with Trumpian rhetoric, human rights groups said.
Trump administration statements “are being weaponised in real-time by autocrats and dictators across Eastern and Southeastern Europe to justify and deepen their crackdown on independent media, NGOs, and human rights defenders,” Dave Elseroad, of the Human Rights House Foundation, told AFP.
From Hungary to Serbia, to Georgia and Bosnia, non-governmental organisations and independent media outlets working to bolster democratic norms are hearing officials borrow White House phrases to justify officials’ stances against them.
It includes Trump’s claim that the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was “run by radical lunatics”, and his billionaire advisor Elon Musk’s calling the agency a “criminal organisation” that needed to be put “through the woodchipper”.
Such terms are “seriously encouraging language used in Budapest or in Belgrade or in Bratislava or Banja Luka,” said Miklos Ligeti, head of legal affairs at Transparency International’s Hungary chapter.
In some countries, the verbal ammunition comes on top of a sudden funding gap wrought by the dismantling of USAID, which is hitting the NGO sector hard. USAID had been providing funding to a vast array of independent organisations in countries like Hungary where such groups have been “financially suffocated domestically,” Ligeti told AFP.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has hailed the crackdown on USAID by his ally Trump as a “cleansing wind”. Orban has vowed to “eliminate the entire shadow army” he says is made up of his political enemies, judges, the media and NGOs.
The UN rights office in Geneva slammed “escalating attempts worldwide to weaken and harm domestic and international human rights systems, including defunding and delegitimising civil society”. It said that “it is all the more worrying to see these trends also emerging in established democracies”.
In some countries there is a direct line between utterances in Washington and action to undermine civil society. In Georgia, for example, the ruling Georgian Dream party last month called for the country to adopt its own version of the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) — which observers warn could be turned against NGOs receiving foreign funding.
And in Serbia, which has been rocked by months of protests over government corruption, authorities referred to statements made by Trump and other top US officials to justify raiding a number of NGOs. The Serbian government saw the Trump administration’s labelling of USAID as a “criminal organisation” as “a fantastic opportunity to basically punish civil society”, said Rasa Nedeljkov, programme director at the Center for Research, Transparency and Accountability (CRTA).
CRTA’s offices were raided in February by heavily armed police. The operation took 28 hours because prosecutors had CRTA staff manually copy documents related to USAID-funded projects to hand to them, rather than accepting digital versions.
Serbian authorities have explicitly referred to statements by Trump and other US officials to justify raids on a number of NGOs.
Pavol Szalai, head of the EU-Balkans desk at Reporters Without Borders (RSF), said leaders in a string of countries were using “the suspension of USAID by Trump to attack media which had received USAID funds”. He said such groups were being doubly punished: they “lost their funding from one day to the next” while also increasingly being “targeted by intimidation”…
He warned that, “as these media retreat.. they will be replaced by propaganda”.
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
The court condemned Ukrainian authorities for failing to prevent a fiery 2014 massacre in which dozens of anti-Nazi activists were burned alive – but the judges’ political bias meant victims were implicitly blamed for their fate, and their families received a paltry 15,000 euro payout.
The European Court of Human Rights has found the Ukrainian government guilty of committing human rights violations during the May 2, 2014 Odessa massacre, in which dozens of Russian-speaking demonstrators were forced into the city’s Trade Unions House and burned alive by ultranationalist thugs.
This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Citing the “relevant authorities’ failure to do everything that could reasonably be expected of them to prevent the violence in Odessa,” the court ruled unanimously that Ukraine violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life. The judges also condemned the Ukrainian government’s failure “to stop that violence after its outbreak, to ensure timely rescue measures for people trapped in the fire, and to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events.”
42 people were killed as a result of the fire, a bloody bookend to the so-called “Maidan revolution” that saw Ukraine’s democratically-elected president deposed in a Western-backed coup in 2014. Ukrainian officials and legacy media outlets have consistently framed the deaths as a tragic accident, with some figures even blaming anti-Maidan protesters themselves for starting the blaze. That notion is thoroughly discredited by the verdict, which was delivered by a team of seven judges including a Ukrainian justice.
As dozens of anti-Maidan activists burned to death, the ECHR found deployment of fire engines to the site was “deliberately delayed for 40 minutes,” even though the local fire station was just one kilometer away.
In the end, the judicial body determined there was nothing which indicated Ukrainian authorities “had done everything that could reasonably be expected of them to avert” the violence. Officials in Kiev, they said, made “no efforts whatsoever” to prevent skirmishes between pro- and anti-Maidan activists that led to the deadly inferno, despite knowing in advance such clashes were likely to break out. Their “negligence… went beyond an error of judgment or carelessness.”
The case was brought by 25 people who lost family members in the Neo-Nazi arson attack and clashes that preceded it, and three who survived the fire with various injuries. Though the ECHR found Ukraine violated their human rights, the court demanded Ukraine pay them just 15,000 euros each in damages.
The ruling also stopped short of acknowledging the full reality of the Odessa slaughter, as it largely overlooked the role played by Western-supported neo-Nazi elements and their intimate ties to the sniper massacre in February 2014 in Maidan Square which has been conclusively determined to have been a false flag. In the judges’ decision, they downplayed or justified violence by the violent Ukrainian football fans and skinheads, charitably describing them as “pro-unity activists.”
Russians burned alive while Ukrainian officials looked away
Ukraine’s Maidan protests commenced in November 2013 after President Yanukovych declined to form a trade agreement with Europe and renewed dialogue with Russia, and tensions quickly began to escalate between Odessa’s sizable Russian-speaking population and Ukrainian nationalists. As the ECHR ruling noted, “while violent incidents had overall remained rare… the situation was volatile and implied a constant risk of escalation.” In March 2014, anti-Maidan activists set up a tent camp in Kulykove Pole Square, and began calling for a referendum on the establishment of an “Odessa Autonomous Republic.”
The next month, supporters of Odesa Chornomorets and Kharkiv Metalist football clubs announced a rally “For a United Ukraine” on May 2. According to the ECHR, that’s when “anti-Maidan posts began to appear on social media describing the event as a Nazi march and calling for people to prevent it.” Though the European court branded the description Russian “disinformation,” there’s extensive evidence that hooligans associated with both clubs had overt Neo-Nazi sympathies and associations, and well-established reputations for violence. The football clubs involved later went on to form the notorious Azov Battalion.
Fearing their tent encampment would be attacked, anti-Maidan activists resolved to disrupt the “pro-unity” march before it reached them. The ECHR revealed Ukraine’s security services and cybercrime unit had substantive intelligence indicating “violence, clashes and disorder” were certain on the day. However, authorities “ignored the available intelligence and the relevant warning signs,” and failed to take the “proper measures” to “stamp out any provocation.”
On May 2, 2014, anti-Nazi activists confronted the demonstrators as the march began, and violent clashes immediately erupted. At roughly 5:45 PM, in the precise manner of the Maidan Square sniper false flag massacre three months earlier, multiple anti-Maidan activists were fatally shot “by someone standing on a nearby balcony” using “a hunting gun,” the ruling states. Subsequently, “pro-unity protesters… gained the upper hand in the clashes,” and charged towards Kulykove Pole square.
Anti-Maidan activists took refuge in the Trade Unions House, a five-story building overlooking the square, while their ultranationalist adversaries “started setting fire to the tents,” according to the ruling. Gunfire and Molotov cocktails were exchanged by both sides, and before long, the building was ablaze. “Numerous calls” were made to the local fire brigade, including by police, “to no avail.” The court noted that the fire chief had “instructed his staff not to send any fire engines to Kulykove Pole without his explicit order,” so none were dispatched.
Many of those trapped in the building died when attempting to escape by jumping from its upper windows, and those that survived were treated to more ‘unity’ by the violent demonstrators outside. “Video footage shows pro-unity protesters attacking people who had jumped or had fallen,” the ECHR notes. It was not until 8:30 PM that firefighters finally entered the building and extinguished the blaze. Police then arrested 63 surviving activists they found remaining in the building or on the roof. Those detained weren’t released until two days later, when a several hundred-strong group of anti-Maidan protesters stormed the police station holding them.
The litany of security failures and industrial scale negligence by authorities that day was greatly aggravated by “local prosecutors, law enforcement, and military officers” not being “contactable for a large part or all of [the] time,” as they were coincidentally attending a meeting with Ukraine’s Deputy Prosecutor General. The ECHR “found the attitude and passivity of those officials inexplicable” – apparently unwilling to consider the obvious possibility that Ukrainian authorities purposefully made themselves incommunicado to ensure maximum mayhem and bloodshed, while insulating themselves from legal repercussions.
Because Ukrainian authorities “had not done everything they reasonably could to prevent the violence,” nor even “what could reasonably be expected of them to save people’s lives,” the ECHR found Kiev violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court also concluded authorities “failed to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events in Odessa,” a violation of the “procedural aspect” of Article 2.
Anatomy of a Kiev coverup
Though left unstated, the ECHR’s appraisal of the Odessa massacre, and the officials who failed in their most basic duties points to a deliberate state-level coverup.
For example, no effort was made to seal off “affected areas of the city centre” in the event’s aftermath. Instead, “the first thing” local authorities did “was to send cleaning and maintenance services to those areas,” meaning invaluable evidence was almost inevitably eradicated.
Unsurprisingly, when on-site inspections were finally carried out two weeks later, the probes “produced no meaningful results,” the ECHR noted. The Trade Unions House likewise “remained freely accessible to the public for 17 days after the events,” giving malicious actors plentiful time to manipulate, remove, or plant incriminating evidence at the site. Meanwhile, “many of the suspects absconded,” the court noted. Several criminal investigations were opened, only to go nowhere, left to expire under Ukraine’s statute of limitations.
Other cases that reached trial “remained pending for years,” before being dropped, despite “extensive photographic and video evidence regarding both the clashes in the city centre and the fire,” from which culprits’ identities could be easily discerned. The ECHR expressed no confidence that Ukrainian authorities “made genuine efforts to identify all the perpetrators,” and several forensic reports weren’t released for many years, in breach of basic protocols. Elsewhere, the Court noted a criminal investigation of an individual suspected of having shot at anti-Maidan activists was inexplicably discontinued on four separate occasions, on identical grounds.
The court also noted “serious defects” in investigations into Ukrainian officials’ role in the massacre. Primarily, this took the form of “prohibitive delays” and “significant periods of unexplained inactivity and stagnation” in opening cases. For instance, “although it had never been disputed that the fire service regional head had been responsible for the delayed deployment of fire engines to Kulykove Pole,” it took nearly two years for the Ukrainian government to officially investigate.
Similarly, Odessa’s regional police chief not only failed to implement any “contingency plan in the event of mass disorder,” as required, but internal documents claiming that security measures had in fact been undertaken were found to have been forged. A criminal investigation into the chief took nearly a year to materialize, then remained pending “for about eight years,” when it was closed after the statute of limitations expired.
The Georgian connection
The notion that the incineration of anti-Maidan activists in May 2014 was an intentional and premeditated act of mass murder, conceived and directed by Kiev’s US-installed far-right government, was apparently not considered by the ECHR. But testimonies from a Ukrainian parliamentary commission which was instituted in the massacre’s immediate aftermath indicate the violence was not a freak twist of fate spontaneously produced by two hostile factions clashing in Odessa, as the ruling suggests.
That parliamentary commission found Ukrainian national and regional officials explicitly planned to use far-right activists drawn from the fascist Maidan Self-Defence to violently suppress Odessa’s would-be separatists, and disperse all those camped by the Trade Unions House. Moreover, the notorious ultra-nationalist Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy and 500 of its armed members of Maidan Self-Defense were dispatched to the city from Kiev on the eve of the massacre.
From 1998 – 2004, Parubiy served as founder and leader of Neo-Nazi paramilitary faction Patriot of Ukraine. He also headed Kiev’s National Security and Defence Council at the time of the Odessa massacre. Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations immediately began scrutinizing Parubiy’s role in the May 2014 events after he was replaced as lead parliamentary speaker, following the country’s 2019 general election. This probe has seemingly come to nothing since, although a year prior a Georgian militant testified to Israeli documentarians that he engaged in “provocations” in the Odessa massacre under the command of Parubiy, who told him to attack anti-Maidan activists and “burn everything.”
That militant was one of several Georgian fighters who has admitted they were personally responsible for the February 2014 Maidan Square false flag sniper massacre, under the command of ultranationalist Ukrainian figures like Parubiy, and Mikhael Saakashvili, the founder of infamous mercenary brigade Georgian Legion. The slaughter in Maidan brought about the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s government, and sent Ukraine hurtling towards war with Russia.
The Odessa massacre was another chapter in that morbid saga – and Europe’s foremost human rights court has now formally laid responsibility for the horror at Kiev’s feet.
The post Ukraine Guilty of Human Rights Violations in Trade Union Massacre, Top European Court Finds first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
New York, March 5, 2025—The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns a Georgian court decision to proceed with the trial of media manager Mzia Amaghlobeli and keep her in detention, following an altercation with a local police chief.
In a March 4 pretrial hearing, Georgia’s western Batumi City Court rejected motions to release Amaghlobeli, director of independent news outlets Netgazeti and Batumelebi, and to dismiss the charge against her of assaulting a police officer. If convicted, Amaghlobeli faces a minimum four-year prison sentence, in a case that is widely seen as disproportionate and in retaliation for her journalism.
“Georgian authorities’ prosecution of media manager Mzia Amaghlobeli is clearly punitive and is all the more jarring given rampant impunity for brutal police attacks on journalists,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Authorities should release Amaghlobeli immediately.”
The trial is due to begin on March 18, local journalist Irma Dimitradze told CPJ.
Amaghlobeli has been behind bars since her January 11 arrest, when she began a hunger strike that lasted 38 days.
Amaghlobeli was not covering the protests when she was arrested, but human rights groups calling for her release believe she is being punished for her outlets’ reporting on alleged abuses by authorities, including the police.
The journalist’s lawyer Juba Katamadze told CPJ that Amaghlobeli had been unlawfully detained earlier that evening for putting up a poster on a police station wall to protest her friend’s detention, and that her slapping of Batumi police chief Irakli Dgebuadze did not warrant prosecution under the serious charge of assaulting an officer.
Amaghlobeli’s case comes amid a sharp decline in press freedom in Georgia. Dozens of journalists covering anti-government protests have been violently obstructed or beaten by police. Last week, the government proposed to introduce prison terms for non-compliance with an amended “foreign agent” law and to tighten control over broadcasters.
This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by CPJ Staff.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Atlanta, Georgia – On Saturday, February 22, over 40 organizations and vendors came together for Community Connect Fest in the West End. Hundreds of community members kept the venue full throughout the time of the event. Attendees got to meet and learn about dozens of the organizations working to make a difference around Atlanta.
The event, organized by the Atlanta Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, aimed to connect fighting organizations to people who want to get involved.
The post Festival Brings Atlanta’s Community And Organizations Together appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Natika Kantaria is a human rights advocate with nearly a decade of experience planning and implementing advocacy campaigns in human rights. She has worked with international organizations and watchdog NGOs and collaborated with the public and private sectors. For the ISHR she wrote a piece on 26 February 2025 about a worrying trend: ‘Foreign agent’ laws have been introduced in various countries, violating international human rights law and threatening to silence human rights defenders. This pattern is particularly evident in Eastern Europe, where NGOs courageously resist and need the support of the international community. See e.g. my earlier posts:
Societies thrive when everyone can work, speak out, and organise freely and safely to ensure justice and equality for all. Legislation requiring NGOs to register as ‘foreign agents’ is a barrier to this virtuous cycle. Despite the European Court of Human Rights’ 2022 ruling that Russia’s 2012 foreign agent law violated freedom of expression and association, the governments of Hungary, Georgia, Slovakia, Serbia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina have proceeded undeterred to introduce similar laws.
These laws specifically target NGOs and not-for-profits that receive foreign funds and require them to register as foreign agents, organisations serving the interests of a foreign power, or agents of foreign influence. By doing so, they restrict the capacity of human rights defenders to organise, participate and exercise their right to defend rights by:
Furthermore, such laws contradict the commitments of these countries under international human rights law. Article 13 of the 1998 UN Declaration on human rights defenders recognises the right of defenders to solicit, receive and utilise resources.
Article 10 of the Declaration +25, a supplement to the UN Declaration put forward in 2024 by civil society, human rights defenders and legal experts, addresses States’ attempts to prohibit foreign contributions or impose unjustified national security limitations. It stipulates that States should not hinder financial resources for human rights defenders and outlines measures to prevent retaliation based on the source of their funding. These laws violate rights related to freedom of expression, association, and privacy, as outlined in the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Foreign agent laws also run counter to commitments made by countries at the regional level as members of the Council of Europe (CoE) and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), including recommendation CM/Rec(2018)11, which emphasizes the protection and promotion of civil society space and OSCE guidelines for protecting human rights defenders.
NGOs are increasingly becoming a primary target for repressive governments. According to the CIVICUS Monitor 2024 report, the countries mentioned above that have introduced ‘foreign agent’ laws have either ‘closed’ or ‘obstructed’ civil society space. In addition, the Trump administration’s rhetoric and its decision to freeze foreign aid have contributed to strengthening hostile narratives already present in ‘foreign agent laws’ in Eastern Europe and have emboldened governments in their efforts to publicly undermine these organisations.
While the silencing of NGOs has become part of the agenda for many governments, and the rise of ‘foreign agent’ laws serves as a step towards establishing authoritarian regimes, civil society actors continue to mobilise in response. Strengthening engagement with international human rights mechanisms, fostering joint global advocacy, and providing support to targeted organisations and groups are essential steps that international NGOs and the international community should take to build resistance, reinforce coalition efforts, and protect the work of human rights defenders.
International and regional human rights mechanisms have called for governments to either repeal these laws, or not to adopt them in their current forms. On 7 February 2025, three UN independent experts issued a statement in relation to Bosnia and Herzegovina, where the government reintroduced the ‘Law on the Special Registry and Publicity of the Work of Non-Profit Organisations’ after its initial withdrawal in May 2024. The statement stressed that creating a register of non-profit organisations receiving foreign funding in one of the entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina will impose severe restrictions on NGOs and would grant government control over their operation, including the introduction of an annual inspection, with further reviews of legality of CSOs receiving foreign funding possible upon requests from citizens or relevant authorities.
In this unsupportive environment, donors have a fundamental role to play. ‘As civil society actors devise strategies to push back against these repressive tactics, private philanthropy and bilateral and multilateral donors have vital support roles to play,’ writes James Savage, who leads the Fund for Global Human Rights’ (FGHR) programme on the Enabling Environment for Human Rights Defenders. ‘They can help civil society prepare for future challenges, so that it is organised not only to respond to evolving forms of repression but also to get ahead of them by tackling their root causes,’ Savage concludes.
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
The loss of land for Black Americans started with the government’s betrayal of its “40 acres” promise to formerly enslaved people—and it has continued over decades.
Today, researchers are unearthing the details of Black land loss long after emancipation.
“They lost land due to racial intimidation, where they were forced off their land (to) take flight in the middle of the night and resettle someplace else,” said Karcheik Sims-Alvarado, an assistant professor of Africana studies at Morehouse College. “They lost it through overtaxation. They lost it through eminent domain…There’s all these different ways that African Americans acquired and lost land.”
It’s an examination of American history happening at the state, city, even county level as local government task forces are on truth-finding missions. Across the country, government officials ask: Can we repair a wealth gap for Black Americans that is rooted in slavery? And how?
This week on Reveal, in honor of Black History Month, we explore the long-delayed fight for reparations.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.
Connect with us onBluesky, Facebook and Instagram
Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choicesThis post was originally published on Reveal.
In January, standing before a cluster of television cameras on the steps of the state Capitol, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp promoted his experiment in Medicaid reform as a showcase for fellow conservatives seeking to overhaul safety net benefits around the country. “What we are doing is working,” Kemp boasted about Georgia Pathways to Coverage. The federally subsidized health insurance program is…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
China went from one of the poorest countries in the world to global economic powerhouse in a mere four decades. Currently featured in the news is DeepSeek, the free, open source A.I. built by innovative Chinese entrepreneurs which just pricked the massive U.S. A.I. bubble.
Even more impressive, however, is the infrastructure China has built, including 26,000 miles of high speed rail, the world’s largest hydroelectric power station, the longest sea-crossing bridge in the world, 100,000 miles of expressway, the world’s first commercial magnetic levitation train, the world’s largest urban metro network, seven of the world’s 10 busiest ports, and solar and wind power generation accounting for over 35% of global renewable energy capacity. Topping the list is the Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure development program involving 140 countries, through which China has invested in ports, railways, highways and energy projects worldwide.
All that takes money. Where did it come from? Numerous funding sources are named in mainstream references, but the one explored here is a rarely mentioned form of quantitative easing — the central bank just “prints the money.” (That’s the term often used, though printing presses aren’t necessarily involved.)
From 1996 to 2024, the Chinese national money supply increased by a factor of more than 53 or 5300% — from 5.84 billion to 314 billion Chinese yuan (CNY) [see charts below]. How did that happen? Exporters brought the foreign currencies (largely U.S. dollars) they received for their goods to their local banks and traded them for the CNY needed to pay their workers and suppliers. The central bank —the Public Bank of China or PBOC — printed CNY and traded them for the foreign currencies, then kept the foreign currencies as reserves, effectively doubling the national export revenue.
Investopedia confirms that policy, stating:
One major task of the Chinese central bank, the PBOC, is to absorb the large inflows of foreign capital from China’s trade surplus. The PBOC purchases foreign currency from exporters and issues that currency in local yuan. The PBOC is free to publish any amount of local currency and have it exchanged for forex. … The PBOC can print yuan as needed …. [Emphasis added.]
Interestingly, that huge 5300% explosion in local CNY did not trigger runaway inflation. In fact China’s consumer inflation rate, which was as high as 24% in 1994, leveled out after that and averaged 2.5% per year from 1996 to 2023.
https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/CHN/china/inflation-rate-cpi?form=MG0AV3
How was that achieved? As in the U.S., the central bank engages in “open market operations” (selling federal securities into the open market, withdrawing excess cash). It also imposes price controls on certain essential commodities. According to a report by Nasdaq, China has implemented price controls on iron ore, copper, corn, grain, meat, eggs and vegetables as part of its 14th five-year plan (2021-2025), to ensure food security for the population. Particularly important in maintaining price stability, however, is that the money has gone into manufacturing, production and infrastructure. GDP (supply) has gone up with demand (money), keeping prices stable. [See charts below.]
Gross Domestic Product for China (MKTGDPCNA646NWDB) | FRED | St. Louis Fed
The U.S., too, has serious funding problems today, and we have engaged in quantitative easing (QE) before. Could our central bank also issue the dollars we need without triggering the dreaded scourge of hyperinflation? This article will argue that we can. But first some Chinese economic history.
From Rags to Riches in Four Decades
China’s rise from poverty began in 1978, when Deng Xiaoping introduced market-oriented reforms. Farmers were allowed to sell their surplus produce in the market, doors were opened to foreign investors and private businesses and foreign companies were encouraged to grow. By the 1990s, China had become a major exporter of low-cost manufactured goods. Key factors included cheap labor, infrastructure development and World Trade Organization membership in 2001.
Chinese labor is cheaper than in the U.S. largely because the government funds or subsidizes social needs, reducing the operational costs of Chinese companies and improving workforce productivity. The government invests heavily in public transportation infrastructure, including metros, buses and high-speed rail, making them affordable for workers and reducing the costs of getting manufacturers’ products to market.
The government funds education and vocational training programs, ensuring a steady supply of skilled workers, with government-funded technical schools and universities producing millions of graduates annually. Affordable housing programs are provided for workers, particularly in urban areas.
China’s public health care system, while not free, is heavily subsidized by the government. And a public pension system reduces the need for companies to offer private retirement plans. The Chinese government also provides direct subsidies and incentives to key industries, such as technology, renewable energy and manufacturing.
After it joined the WTO, China’s exports grew rapidly, generating large trade surpluses and an influx of foreign currency, allowing the country to accumulate massive foreign exchange reserves. In 2010, China surpassed the U.S. as the world’s largest exporter. In the following decade, it shifted its focus to high-tech industries, and in 2013 the Belt and Road Initiative was launched. The government directed funds through state-owned banks and enterprises, with an emphasis on infrastructure and industrial development.
Funding Exponential Growth
In the early stages of reform, foreign investment was a key source of capital. Export earnings then generated significant foreign exchange reserves. China’s high savings rate provided a pool of liquidity for investment, and domestic consumption grew. Decentralizing the banking system was also key. According to a lecture by U.K. Prof. Richard Werner:
Deng Xiaoping started with one mono bank. He realized quickly, scrap that; we’re going to have a lot of banks. He created small banks, community banks, savings banks, credit unions, regional banks, provincial banks. Now China has 4,500 banks. That’s the secret to success. That’s what we have to aim for. Then we can have prosperity for the whole world. Developing countries don’t need foreign money. They just need community banks supporting [local business] to have the money to get the latest technology.
China managed to avoid the worst impacts of the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. It did not devalue its currency; it maintained strict control over capital flows and the PBOC acted as a lender of last resort, providing liquidity to state-controlled banks when needed.
In the 1990s, however, its four major state banks did suffer massive losses, with non-performing loans totaling more than 20% of their assets. Technically, the banks were bankrupt, but the government did not let them go bust. The non-performing loans were moved on to the balance sheets of four major asset management companies (“bad banks”), and the PBOC injected new capital into the “good banks.”
In a January 2024 article titled “The Chinese Economy Is Due a Round of Quantitative Easing,” Prof. Li Wei, Director of the China Economy and Sustainable Development Center, wrote of this policy, “The central bank directly intervened in the economy by creating money. Seen this way, unconventional financing is nothing less than Chinese-style quantitative easing.”
In an August 2024 article titled “China’s 100-billion-yuan Question: Does Rare Government Bond Purchase Alter Policy Course?,” Sylvia Ma wrote of China’s forays into QE:
Purchasing government bonds in the secondary market is allowed under Chinese law, but the central bank is forbidden to subscribe to bonds directly issued by the finance ministry. [Note that this is also true of the U.S. Fed.] Such purchases from traders were tried on a small scale 20 years ago.
However, the monetary authority resorted more to printing money equivalent to soaring foreign exchange reserves from 2001, as the country saw a robust increase in trade surplus following its accession to the World Trade Organization. [Emphasis added.]
This is the covert policy of printing CNY and trading this national currency for the foreign currencies (mostly U.S. dollars) received from exporters.
What does the PBOC do with the dollars? It holds a significant portion as foreign exchange reserves, to stabilize the CNY and manage currency fluctuations; it invests in U.S. Treasury bonds and other dollar-denominated assets to earn a return; and it uses U.S. dollars to facilitate international trade deals, many of which are conducted in dollars.
The PBOC also periodically injects capital into the three “policy banks” through which the federal government implements its five-year plans. These are China Development Bank, the Export-Import Bank of China, and the Agricultural Development Bank of China, which provide loans and financing for domestic infrastructure and services as well as for the Belt and Road Initiative. A January 2024 Bloomberg article titled “China Injects $50 Billion Into Policy Banks in Financing Push” notes that the policy banks “are driven by government priorities more than profits,” and that some economists have called the PBOC funding injections “helicopter money” or “Chinese-style quantitative easing.”
Prof. Li argues that with the current insolvency of major real estate developers and the rise in local government debt, China should engage in this overt form of QE today. Other commentators agree, and the government appears to be moving in that direction. Prof. Li writes:
As long as it does not trigger inflation, quantitative easing can quickly and without limit generate sufficient liquidity to resolve debt issues and pump confidence into the market.…
Quantitative easing should be the core of China’s macroeconomic policy, with more than 80% of funds coming from QE…
As the central bank is the only institution in China with the power to create money, it has the ability to create a stable environment for economic growth. [Emphasis added.]
Eighty-percent funding just from money-printing sounds pretty radical, but China’s macroeconomic policy is determined by five-year plans designed to serve the public and the economy, and the policy banks funding the plans are publicly-owned. That means profits are returned to the public purse, avoiding the sort of private financialization and speculative exploitation resulting when the U.S. Fed engaged in QE to bail out the banks after the 2007-08 banking crisis.
The U.S. Too Could Use Another Round of QE — and Some Public Policy Banks
There is no law against governments or their central banks just printing the national currency without borrowing it first. The U.S. Federal Reserve has done it, Abraham Lincoln’s Treasury did it, and it is probably the only way out of our current federal debt crisis. As Prof. Li observes, we can do it “without limit” so long as it does not trigger inflation.
Financial commentator Alex Krainer observes that the total U.S. debt, public and private, comes to more than $101 trillion (citing the St. Louis Fed’s graph titled “All Sectors; Debt Securities and Loans”). But the monetary base — the reserves available to pay that debt — is only $5.6 trillion. That means the debt is 18 times the monetary base. The U.S. economy holds far fewer dollars than we need for economic stability.
The dollar shortfall can be filled debt- and interest-free by the U.S. Treasury, just by printing dollars as Lincoln’s Treasury did (or by issuing them digitally). It can also be done by the Fed, which “monetizes” federal securities by buying them with reserves it issues on its books, then returns the interest to the Treasury and after deducting its costs. If the newly-issued dollars are used for productive purposes, supply will go up with demand, and prices should remain stable.
Note that even social services, which don’t directly produce revenue, can be considered “productive” in that they support the “human capital” necessary for production. Workers need to be healthy and well educated in order to build competitively and well, and the government needs to supplement the social costs borne by companies if they are to compete with China’s subsidized businesses.
Parameters would obviously need to be imposed to circumscribe Congress’s ability to spend “without limit,” backed by a compliant Treasury or Fed. An immediate need is for full transparency in budgeted expenditures. The Pentagon, for example, spends nearly $1 trillion of our taxpayer money annually and has never passed a clean audit, as required by law.
We Sorely Need an Infrastructure Bank
The U.S. is one of the few developed countries without an infrastructure bank. Ironically, it was Alexander Hamilton, the first U.S. Treasury secretary, who developed the model. Winning freedom from Great Britain left the young country with what appeared to be an unpayable debt. Hamilton traded the debt and a percentage of gold for non-voting shares in the First U.S. Bank, paying a 6% dividend. This capital was then leveraged many times over into credit to be used specifically for infrastructure and development. Based on the same model, the Second U.S. Bank funded the vibrant economic activity of the first decades of the United States.
In the 1930s, Roosevelt’s government pulled the country out of the Great Depression by repurposing a federal agency called the Reconstruction Finance Corporation (RFC) into a lending machine for development on the Hamiltonian model. Formed under the Hoover administration, the RFC was not actually an infrastructure bank but it acted like one. Like China Development Bank, it obtained its liquidity by issuing bonds.
The primary purchaser of RFC bonds was the federal government, driving up the federal debt; but the debt to GDP ratio evened out over the next four decades, due to the dramatic increase in productivity generated by the RFC’s funding of the New Deal and World War II. That was also true of the federal debt after the American Revolution and the Civil War.
One chart that tells the story of US debt from 1790 to 2011
A pending bill for an infrastructure bank on the Hamiltonian model is HR 4052, The National Infrastructure Bank Act of 2023, which ended 2024 with 48 sponsors and was endorsed by dozens of legislatures, local councils, and organizations. Like the First and Second U.S. Banks, it is intended to be a depository bank capitalized with existing federal securities held by the private sector, for which the bank will pay an additional 2% over the interest paid by the government. The bank will then leverage this capital into roughly 10 times its value in loans, as all depository banks are entitled to do. The bill proposes to fund $5 trillion in infrastructure capitalized over a 10-year period with $500 billion in federal securities exchanged for preferred (non-voting) stock in the bank. Like the RFC, the bank will be a source of off-budget financing, adding no new costs to the federal budget. (For more information, see https://www.nibcoalition.com/.)
Growing Our Way Out of Debt
Rather than trying to kneecap our competitors with sanctions and tariffs, we can grow our way to prosperity by turning on the engines of production. Far more can be achieved through cooperation than through economic warfare. DeepSeek set the tone with its free, open source model. Rather than a heavily guarded secret, its source code is freely available to be shared and built upon by entrepreneurs around the world.
We can pull off our own economic miracle, funded with newly issued dollars backed by the full faith and credit of the government and the people. Contrary to popular belief, “full faith and credit” is valuable collateral, something even Bitcoin and gold do not have. It means the currency will be accepted everywhere – not just at the bank or the coin dealer’s but at the grocer’s and the gas station. If the government directs newly created dollars into new goods and services, supply will grow along with demand and the currency should retain its value. The government can print, pay for workers and materials, and produce its way into an economic renaissance.
The post “Quantitative Easing with Chinese Characteristics” first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Our historical investigation found 1,250 formerly enslaved Black Americans who were given land—only to see it returned to their enslavers.
This is an update of an episode that originally aired in June 2024.
This post was originally published on Reveal.
Immigrants and their communities are leading the fight against the Trump administration’s attacks on democratic rights. Since Trump unleashed a series of ICE raids in his first days in office — ordering ICE and the police to arrest over 1000 people per day — thousands of people in the cities most targeted by the anti-immigrant offensive are taking to the streets, walking out of their schools, and shuttering businesses to show that immigrants won’t be criminalized and made to live in constant fear of deportation.
The raids come on top of a barrage of anti-immigrant attacks launched by Trump on his very first day in office.
The post Thousands Take To The Streets In Defense Of Immigrants Rights appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani has reached a settlement agreement with two Georgia election workers, allowing him to keep many of his assets and properties in exchange for him never again engaging in the defamation that led to a judgment against him nearly two years ago. In addition to that stipulation, Giuliani must provide unspecified compensation to Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
Inspired by the success of the Big 3 strike, United Auto Workers members at Daimler Truck North America ran a very different kind of contract campaign this year than we ever had before.
The 7,300 members at DTNA’s four North Carolina plants and parts distribution centers in Atlanta and Memphis were very active, informed, and involved in the bargaining process. This is not how the union had done things in the past.
Here’s what we did differently, and some ideas on how to keep members in the loop and in motion for an effective contract campaign.
The post Members In Motion Changed The Game In Daimler Contract Campaign appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
This content originally appeared on Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes and was authored by Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
After years of intense opposition that left one protester riddled by police bullets, Atlanta’s so-called Cop City is set to begin operations in the next few weeks. The city’s police chief hosted a tour of the campus last week and training programs are expected to start during the first quarter of 2025.
The Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, as it is officially known, is an 85-acre campus with a price tag of at least $110 million and another $1.7 million recently approved by Atlanta’s City Council for its security.
Most infamously, it includes a mock city, for which the site gained its Cop City nickname, for “real-world” training that includes a convenience store, two-story house, apartment and commercial-style building.
The post ‘Cop City’ Leads US Buildup In Police-Training Bases appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Thousands of workers at Amazon are threatening to strike at the company after giving the company a deadline of 15 December to agree to begin negotiating a first contract with the union representing employees.
The strike threats, which started in New York, have now spread to Chicago and Atlanta. They come during Amazon’s peak holiday season and after the company experienced record sales during its 2024 Black Friday and Cyber Monday events.
The workers at the company’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island became the first Amazon warehouse in the US to win a union election in March 2022.
The post Threat Of Amazon Workers’ Strike Spreads During Peak Holiday Season appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
This content originally appeared on Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes and was authored by Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes and was authored by Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes and was authored by Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes and was authored by Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes and was authored by Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Human Rights Watch and was authored by Human Rights Watch.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A commission of health experts in Georgia was disbanded earlier this month following national reporting on its findings that two state residents died because they were denied access to an abortion. Kathleen Toomey, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Health, dismissed every member of the Maternal Mortality Review Committee, which is charged with examining and determining the causes of…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes and was authored by Vincent Moon / Petites Planètes.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
