tomsthoughtstoday

[tomsthoughtstoday]

This I totally agree with. People are pushing the agenda of that it is the individual’s living habits that are causing the climate change, not the large corporations backed by government corruption that is really doing the damage. ‘By not unsubscribing from junk emails you are negatively contributing to climate change’ wrote Impact on Instagram, or, if you take long showers you are a bad person for the environment. Attacking people through the emotional stimulation of guilt and fear is driving individual habits to change, however, we need to really focus our collective efforts to continue some meaningful and positively impactful individual change, but pressure governments and large corporations for them to change!

[tomsthoughtstoday]

Have a read of these awesome headlines!

The World Is Not All Bad!

Every Sunday I post my favorite headlines from my favorite good news websites. These are some of the things that were reported on in the last week, July 4 to 10, 2021.

And as usual, Tumblr can’t handle all the positivity, so this is in two parts!

Part One (you are here) Part Two

For sources, please click here.

Keep reading for more stories

Keep reading

[tomsthoughtstoday]

China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) - what we can learn and some of the implications on a new world order

(Do you want to learn about China’s current strategy to further their economic and political goals? Read on with a short description of this enormous project.

The Belt and Road initiative is a project under development by China that is incentivising many European, Asian and African countries to accept Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) opportunities from China. Coined ‘debt financing’ by some critics of China’s BRI (debt financing is when a country coils another country into accepting deals with payments beyond the scope of the country’s ability to pay that back thereby acquiring the land, capital or patent etc.) encompasses most of the modern world but is targeting largely underdeveloped nations. Underdeveloped nations are ripe with uncertainty and politicians that are constantly seeking to improve the welfare of their citizens - many of their policies suffocated by short-term achievements lenses. These seemingly solutions in the immediate term (providing jobs and short term economic growth) can lead to significant problems in the future (debt financing). Aside from the negatives of FDI (Income repatriation, foreign ownership of land or companies, and a general disregard for the environmental/local impacts on communities) FDI is, statistically speaking, beneficial for countries which is why it has been taken up by most countries. The BRI’s main objective is to root out resource insecurity - a major barrier which is wedging the ability for China to develop. China requires large quantities of steel for the production of the many large infrastructure projects (which inherently improves productivity and the ability for an economy to produce more - improved quality of resources) which with Chinese companies backed by the government are currently infiltrating the Australian soil. Currently, it is a loss-loss situation for the Australian government. The Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) is denying many Chinese companies the right to export iron ore back to China (solving their resource scarcity needs) politically with Chinese sanctions on Australian trade - and China seeking other iron ore exporters like Brazil. A major project for the BRI was a China-Pakistan economic corridor facilitating China’s access to the Arabian Sea, bypassing tension in the South China Sea and gaining greater access to quicker and cheaper trade. Ultimately, the BRI, from a United States perspective, is observed as a threat to the current world order - one which the USA might not dominate through the rise of Asia (its attempt to have an improved relationship with Korea, Japan, India, and Taiwan to maintain its foothold in the region is evident) but will ultimately bring about beneficial development for countries that need it the most - even if it means the loss of liberal democratic values for some of these countries influenced largely by the CCP. 

The QUAD (USA, Australia, Japan, India) have instigated the Blue Dot Network to combat and rival the BRI, however, nowhere near to the scale of the BRI. Australia is concerned about the rapid growth of China, and its threat to invade Taiwan as part of its ‘One China’ Policy. Moreover, Australia is recent years has been relatively unsubmissive to China and is generally backed by the Australian people so as not to be the victim of economic and political bullying by China. However, I personally don’t think that the Australian people are willing to suffer lower standards of living if we are willing to combat Chinese trade restrictions and a possible total social and economic exclusion. Nonetheless, there is most definitely a shifting rhetoric in our dealings with China - even with us ordinary citizens, not just the politicians - that is shifting the way China is dealing with us Australians. We have called out the human rights violations of their ‘re-education camps’, the stealing of intellectual data, called for an independent investigation into the origin of COVID-19 ultimately seeking more transparency (ironic I know - Witness K and many closed tribunals, attempting to pass laws to ban satirical media against Commonwealth officials, covering the real truth behind a ‘gas lead recovery’ through GISERA, Timor Leste, Indigenous peoples, Religious freedoms Bill, no independent corruption investigation committee - the list goes on however it is a subject for another post here down the line) it is evident that Australia is standing up to China.