Oxfam: 85 richest people as wealthy as poorest half of the world.
The extent to which so much global wealth has become corralled by a virtual handful of the so-called 'global elite' is exposed in a new report from Oxfam.
The world's wealthiest people aren't known for travelling by bus, but if they fancied a change of scene then the richest 85 people on the globe – who between them control as much wealth as the poorest half of the global population put together – could squeeze onto a single double-decker(bus).3 comments from the many beneath the article - these I particularly noted:
This is the world devised by neoliberalism. Everything in this Oxfam report is evidence of the devastation that global neoliberalism has been causing for the last 34 years. And unless something is done about it, it will continue towards its final goal, which is to extend markets into every sphere of life, from state institutions to the biological makeup of human beings. Its ultimate aim is the privatization of everything including life itself.
According to neoliberalism, the planet and all life must be owned by private interests and used solely for profit. It recognizes no morality outside of the market: the questions of right and wrong are eliminated in favour of cost-benefit calculations.
Neoliberalism is the antithesis of democracy: it's against political rights, civil rights, social rights, individual rights, human rights (i.e. right to education, right to water, etc.)- according to neoliberalism, they all have to become goods on the market for people who can buy them. (Josh Bern)
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Their crimes are overshadowed by our acquiescence of those crimes.
(Ted Reading Reading)
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In order for any democracy to be faithful to its concepts it requires an engaged and well educated population that participates in the political process and is part of governmental decision making. It requires an independent media that is apolitical, a fearless seeker of truth that is dedicated to holding all governing powers to account and informing the public so they can in turn make wise decisions. Democracy requires a fully independent judiciary dedicated to the principles of human justice.
The elites hijacked our democracies a long time ago, for nearly a half century now. They buy politicians with trinkets and beads, a seat on the board of some corporation, a book deal or an advisory position in a large company on retirement. Book deals are sometimes give when they are still in power, a nice little earner.
An oligarchy carefully controls our medias peddling all sorts of BS as 'truth'.
Even the subversion of the aforementioned is not enough for these monsters, as this article states, they subvert the law for their own benefit whilst throwing the rest of humanity on a scrap heap. There is no equality under the law.
If it is not a democracy than it is a dictatorship. A media that only serves its masters is a propaganda outlet. Laws that extinguish the liberties of the many to serve the few can not be just.
When liberty, fraternity and equality are put asunder and the law no longer serves justice and morality then the people are no longer under any obligation to obey the government or the law. (LegranderoidelasPrusse)
From one of the last Sections, Section 104, of the book-length poem by Carl Sandburg, published in 1936: The People, Yes.
When was it long ago the murmurings began
and the joined murmurings
became a moving wall
moving with the authority of a great sea,
whose Yes and No
stood in an awful script
in a new unheard-of handwriting?
"No longer", began the murmurings............................
"What about the munitions and money kings,
the war lords and international bankers?
the transportation and credit kings?
the coal, the oil and the mining kings?
the price-fixing monopoly and control kings?
Why are they so far from us?
why do they hold their counsels
without men from the people given a word?
Shall we keep these kings and let their sons
in time become the same manner of kings?
Are their results equal to their authority?
Why are these interests too sacred for discussion?
What documents now call for holy daylight?
what costs, prices, values, are we forbidden to ask?
Are we slowly coming to understand
the distinction between a demagogue squawking
and the presentation of tragic plainspoken fact?
Shall a robber be named a robber when he is one
even though bespoken and anointed he is?
Shall a shame and a crime be mentioned
when it is so plainly there,
when day by day it draws toil, blood, and hunger,
enough of slow death and personal tragedy to certify
the kings who sit today as entrenched kings
are far too far from their people?"
What does justice say?
or if justice is become an abstraction or a harlot
what does her harder sister, necessity, say?
Their ears are so far from us,
so far from our wants and small belongings
we must trim these kings of our time
into something less than kings.
Of these too it will be written:
these kings shrank.
What is it now
the people are beginning
to say - is it this?
and if so
whither away and
where do we go from here?
If it's a repeating pattern, there has to be some subsiding of the worst, most intense parts of the pattern, in order for them to repeat - otherwise it'd be a constant. It's hard to say exactly where we're at currently in the pattern's formation. At a guess I'd say we, or at least we in the USA and Europe, are approaching, but not yet quite at the crescendo, when things will be at their worst, from the point of view of ordinary people. Other parts of the world have endured a constant "worst point" for decades or even centuries; the pattern must repeat at different rates.
