Facsimile edition of CCAS newsletter,no. 1 (May 1968)

Abstract

We have heard a great deal about the greening of the World Bank. The Bank now has an Environmental Department, its projects go through an environmental impact assessment, and it even finances “green” projects through the Global Environment Facility. However, the financing of nature's destruction and people's destitution and disempowerment continues unabated. It is not enough to look at projects directly funded by the World Bank to see the social and ecological disruption that it has caused over the past half a century and still continues to create. The impact of the World Bank is increasingly being felt through structural and sector adjustment loans that influence the macropolicies of entire countries. These loans have much wider influence because they make the World Bank's destructive policies more diffused and more invisible than its projects. The third and deeper level of the World Bank's responsibility in rupturing the social and environmental fabric of survival emerges from the paradigms it diffuses throughout the world through its research, publications, and advice. The social and ecological impact of the World Bank therefore needs to be assessed on the basis of its interventions at all three levels—projects, policies, and paradigms.     

Poverty Among Small Farmers Under Frei and Pinochet, 1968–1986

Abstract — This paper draws on the results of a nation-wide panel study of small farm households interviewed in 1968 and 1986 to complement accounts of Chile's economic performance under the governments of President Frei (1964–1970) and General Pinochet (1973–1989). It is shown that in contrast to macroeconomic trends of increased inequality and impoverishment after 1973, the incidence of poverty in the sample declined slightly but significantly over the period. The result is robust both to the choice of poverty index and poverty line. It is all the more striking because the sample represented the poorest group in Chile during the 1960s. Nevertheless, the incidence of poverty in the sample remained extremely high. In 1967–1968, more than three-quarters of households could not meet their basic needs, while in 1985–1986 this proportion reached nearly two thirds. The fall in poverty may be attributed to a combination of increased coverage of the rural areas by targeted welfare programmes and the effects of the life cycle in increasing the proportion of panel household members eligible for, and dependent on public transfers between 1968 and 1986.     

Winning Friends,Influencing People: Soviet Cultural Diplomacy in Australia, 1928–1968

This article draws on largely unpublished archive materials to examine the strategies employed by the USSR to manage its cultural relations with Australia as a means of extending its influence beyond its traditional supporters in trade union and socialist movements. The activities of key players like the All‐Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), the Union of Soviet Friendship Societies (SSOD) and the International Commission of the Union of Soviet Writers and their interaction with Australian organizations and individuals identified and cultivated as contacts of influence are reviewed in the context of the changing international situation and an often problematic bilateral political relationship.     

The Iraqi Coups of July 1968 and the American Connection

After the June 1967 war, Iraqi President ’Abd al-Rahman ’Arif and Prime Minister Tahir Yahya broke diplomatic relations with Washington and began signing strategic economic agreements for oil development with France and the Soviet Union. On 17 July 1968 their regime was toppled by a coup initiated by members of the Ba?th Party and a group of military officers. Just 13 days later in another coup initiated by the Ba?th, the officer leadership was deposed. This article examines Washington's reaction to the two coups and the indications of the western orientation of the short-lived regime that ended on 30 July. It also reveals findings that support the claim of American involvement in the overthrow of ’Arif.     

The May fourth movement

Abstract

Extract

The May Fourth (1919) Movement, by all accounts, is one of the watershed marks in modern Chinese history. Within the space of a few years, Chinese nationalism burst upon the scene with unprecedented force and rapidity, transforming the Chinese political landscape for the rest of the twentieth century. This surge of nationalism was accompanied by iconoclastic rejection of nearly all aspects of traditional Chinese culture. This “totalistic iconoclasm,” to use the phrase of Lin Yü-sheng, was widespread, to be sure, only among the relatively educated elite members of society. Nevertheless, coming simultaneously with the rise of nationalism, the extent of such hostility to Chinese tradition is more surprising than its limitations. As with May Fourth Chinese nationalism, May Fourth antitraditionalism was to become a dominant, perhaps even decisive, theme in the Chinese communist revolution. As Lucien Bianco has observed, the May Fourth Movement represented a spiritual revolution experienced by the future leaders of the Communist Party, who would try after 1949 to impart that same revolution to the rest of the Chinese people.     

试论北一辉法西斯主义国际战略的演变与五四运动的关联

北一辉是二战前日本民间法西斯运动的理论指导者,他的代表作<日本改造法案大纲>被称为日本法西斯主义理论的"圣经".北一辉早年曾参加辛亥革命,与宋教仁、谭人凤等中国革命领导人相交莫逆,他所撰写的<支那革命外史>在二战后被誉为描绘日本人参与辛亥革命的最佳代表作之一.本文以北一辉的两部著作--<支那革命外史>和<日本改造法案大纲>为主要研究对象,通过探讨五四运动对北一辉有关亚洲国际战略构想的影响,以期揭示五四运动期间北一辉思想的变化在他的法西斯主义国家改造论形成过程中所起的作用.