Members of Kibbutz Hanita near Israel’s northern border are demanding $11 million from Ballet Vision, the Chinese fund that controls 80% of the Hanita Lenses plant, accusing it of refusing to exercise an option to purchase the kibbutz’s remaining shares, according to a lawsuit filed in Tel Aviv District Court.
In a response letter attached to the lawsuit, the Chinese fund said that since the outbreak of the war in Israel, Beijing has classified Israel as a “high-risk area” and imposed a ban on any new Chinese investments in the country, making it impossible to carry out the option.
According to the lawsuit, in 2021 the kibbutz sold 74% of Hanita Lenses, which manufactures intraocular lenses for medical use, to Ballet Vision for $35 million. Of that sum, $25 million was paid to kibbutz members, with an additional $10 million injected into the company.
Nothing says socialism like international investors owning 99 year leases on factories producing every piece of electronic junk sold in the west! /s Wait a minute, that’s called capitalism.
Are you saying the PRC isn’t socialist because it allows foreign investment in secondary and small-medium industries? These international investment deals are done for knowledge and technology transfer, as well as to expedite development of underdeveloped industry. The basis of socialized production is in large-scale, mass industry, so socializing production through market mechanisms is done in a controlled manner, where the CPC gradually folds these industries into the public sector as they grow.
Public ownership usually works better with higher levels of development, private at lower levels. Keeping the large firms and key industries in the public sector while allowing private capital in a controlled manner to help develop the productive forces is the secret to the PRC’s skyrocketing development. This development is why they have far surpassed the west in production of solar, high speed rail, infrastructural development, poverty alleviation, etc, without this form of economy they would not be as developed as they are today.
The chinese are doing what they can to get the west’s technology, and get their factories built for free, and in doing so getting a veritable veto on western leaders as they could nationalize any or all of those factories at any moment, a drastic move that would upend financial markets but still a powerful bargaining chip, no matter what western leaders say, they aren’t crossing China for real because of that, and the US president is Wall Street’s Bitch make no mistake. Also Israel’s and Russia’s Bitch. Israel first obviously, the Saudis, American oligarchs’ bitch, it’s a long list and idk the pecking order after Israel First that is undisputable, the guy and his party are compromized 7 ways from sunday. (7 ways from saudis too.)
So they are using the greed of the ruling class in the west against it. You can see where they are coming from, they are smart, and play the long game. Not a very good game for the workers of those factories, or people living next to the pollution however. But that is the cost they figure. The problems from all of that are as much, or more, of the fault of the industrialists and wall street that sold out their own countries to make an extra dollar on labor and environmental protections, undercutting unions and liberal democracies that since the great war had taken actual control over much of their governments and achieved a higher standard of living than any working people in the history of the world.
Now eroded, by cheatery. By this so called free trade, eroded most by cheating at the numbers however, changing the consumer price index calculations several times since the 1970s to understate it, 5-8% by the old standard, 2-3 by the new, just by 2008. Compound pay cuts. 1 minimum wage job used to support a family, buy a house, a used car, go out for a burger. Now you can’t do that with 4 minimum wage jobs, you would have shitty to non existant health insurance while doing it, no dentist. Certainly not buying a house. One missed check or two from homelessness. But I digress.
Whatever China is doing now, it’s part of a long game, what the US and west is doing, is short term chiseling of working people, and extracting borrowed money from the government.
I understand how the PRC is playing the west, but this is a good thing for China, and a sign of socialism. Air pollution is going down dramatically as they invest in solar and nuclear, the working classes have seen steady large real wage increases, and the west hollowed out their own industry to their own detriment.
The West is just beyond dumb, handing their governments to a far right in league with the US and Russia that have every intention of helping them fix themselves in power permanently, and they still see their reason for being as preventing popular reform and playing good cop to conservative bad cop like it’s 1990 and they are plutocracizing the country. The countries are already plutocratized, there isn’t much left to chisel down, not without sparking such a backlash that the far right running as reform backed by the US and Russia behind the scenes will get in for sure.
Just fucking hopeless, and anyone thinking that it’s good for the US to suffer what their government has done to other people, is a short sighted dumbshit argument that blames the wrong people as much as any western voter. The ones that will suffer in the US are principally the ones trying to stop the government from their bullshit, the ones gaining absolute power, and politicians from both sides here they join the side that can win, are the same ones causing those problems in the first place. Putting the principal authors of villainy in absolute power of a super power and an aggressive military is a betrayal of this global south anyone might claim to want to help and that’s the fucking truth.
And they will do those things exponentially more, and to their own citizens that have been trying to stop them. The military coup in Venezuela is just a start, where they seduced Venezuela’s military leaders to give up Maduro and his loyalists to the US and stand down and allow the grab operation, meaning they are now the de facto leaders of the US puppet regime ala cold war, right from the template.
Just wait for the resistance to stealing the oil, the army will try to crush it, to do the dirty work they will form paramilitary groups to do death squads in collective punishments of restive areas funded by black market cia drug and weapons markets. As sure as Spring following Winter.
It’s as ignorant as those that want all russians to be harmed because of their government, or blame a person for their country, when they have little to no control over it. I know you didn’t say that just answering that point which comes up, it’s doing a disservice to the world, and anyone wishing for that to happen has little idea how this dumpster fire will spread and burn the entire world, and it’s already out of control.
Ultimately, what the US Empire needs is revolution. The west isn’t doing what it’s doing out of a lack of intelligence, but instead a rational following of a fundamentally unsustainable economic system. Capital is what drives the Empire.
It just remains to be seen what type of revolution but you are right, there will be one, it’s just a question of if the left can overcome the democrats and give it to them, or if we will allow the far right to give it to them. And that answer is almost certainly the far right, which will call for another revolution at a minimum.
Problem is the technology is so advanced, previous despots couldn’t dream of this level of total information on their people, autonomous forces, and enough polarization to get weird fast. It’s really not a revolution here with the far right though, it’s increased Oligarchic Repression. Every representative government goes through the same stages, as remarked by Plato observing countless Greek City States, often on expedited revolutions through the formula, but Rome followed it over 500 years as well, the UK is just now sliding into the same oligarchic repression, as is france, etc.
But a tyrant/king/autocrat, becomes bad enough there is a revolution and they institutes a representative government, usually sort of an aristocracy doing most of the office holding but it all depends. Then through time that degenerates as the powerful become rich then more powerful and start abusing their fellow citizens, and it goes through several stages of what amounts to oligarchic repression but he lays out several -ocracies. Eventually the oligarchic repression becomes bad enough a strong man comes along, unites the population, and lays waste to the oligarchy, setting himself us as tyrant/king/autocrat, what they called democracy, which has since become a liberal buzz word in the late 19th century and changed meanings from what it was. And the cycle starts again as the tyrant becomes corrupt and capricious in time and is overthrown again.
By the time of the tyrant overthrowing the oligarchy is more important than saving the system of government. Worth every cost to get rid of the aristocracy causing the problems.
To be clear, the US president, and the far right menacing western europe and the west, are not that autocrat, they are an increasing stage of oligarchic repression. So while they give reform, we should not call that a revolution, it’s just a quicker descent into the abyss. Which will in time queue up a real leader, to fulfill the destiny of our republics, to kill them as they are terminal and put them out of their misery. Which will be a good thing by the time it gets there, it’s just with the tech it’s different this time in some ways. Very much the same in much of what Plato described however.
The important factor is that the driver of revolution is the revolutionary class, and in the US Empire that will be the working classes, along with resolving the question of settler-colonialism. Decolonization and socialism are both necessities, driven by imperialist decay.