January 18, 2022
Please read this carefully because it is essentially important and not on the front page of all media – while Djokovic, Britney Spears, Epstein/Maxwell and the latest Netflix series you just must see all are:
“UNITED NATIONS, Jan 17 2022 (IPS) The numbers are unbelievably staggering: the world’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion —at a rate of $15,000 per second or $1.3 billion a day, according to a new study from Oxfam International.
These phenomenal changes in fortunes took place during the first two years of a Covid-19 pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99 percent of humanity fall, and over 160 million more people forced into poverty—60 million more than the figures released by the World Bank in 2020.
“If these ten men were to lose 99.999 percent of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99 percent of all the people on this planet,” said Oxfam International’s Executive Director Gabriela Bucher. “They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people.”
It’s written by Thalif Deen at the International Press Service, IPS, and he presents many more terrible facts here. Download the whole report here.
When people ask me why I am so critical of the US/NATO/EU/Western world, such facts are what shapes my attitude also because this system has not been willing – while perfectly able – to solve this problem of fundamental, ever-growing global inequality, maldevelopment. Call it raw capitalism, the neo-liberal in particular.
The Chinese have seen it and now operate a policy called “Common Prosperity.” They learn from others and think differently.
My criticism is also related to the ongoing fundamental and never-changing militarism of that US/NATO/EU/Western world and to nuclearism.
The world’s combined military expenditures are now US $ 2000 billion – actually much larger since a series of de facto costs are not included in various countries’ ministry of defence budgets.
The US alone accounts for 778 of these billions; it’s in a class of its own. And it still insists to be seen as the world’s leader, spending ever more while declining more rapidly on all dimensions!
And here, third, is how SIPRI, Stockholm’s International Peace Research Institute, presents the world‘s nuclear weapons situation – and here is how I do it.
In short,
1) perverse globalised maldvelopment,
2) militarism and
3) nuclearism – combined with
4) no real US/NATO/EU/Western world will or capacity to shape a cooperative change strategy towards their solution – but instead only seek militarised confrontation with China, Russia, Iran, etc
– and you face a doom-proof recipe for doom.
The power the West has had for centuries over the rest of the world has led to unspeakable arrogance, insensitivity, lack of humility – hubris.
Such a system cannot survive in the long run. Doesn’t deserve to either.
We should remember what M K Gandhi said when asked what he thought about Western civilisation. He paused for a few seconds and then smiled – “I think that would be a good idea!” Or as a pupil of his, Johan Galtung, once quipped: “Perhaps the Occident is an Accident?”
Jan Oberg: A system – or “civilisation” – like this does not deserve to survive added by JO on
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