Dear Friend,
A super-rich one percent of the world’s population has accumulated twice as much wealth as the remaining 90 percent, said a new report by Oxfam, a global charity. The report has been released on January 20, 2020 on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
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Voice of the world capitalist system from Davos
by Farooque Chowdhury
The World Economic Forum (WEF) Switzerland meeting beginning from
January 21 has become one of the voices of the world capitalist system as it considers itself “the foremost creative force for engaging the world’s top leaders […] to shape global, regional and industry agendas […].” But, with capitalism as the dominating force in the world, what can be shaped other than destruction of lives on this planet? Shall the Davos elites question capitalism?
- INTRODUCTION
With usual high hope and promise, the Davos annual ritual is on the stage. But, the promise and hope appear false.
The World Economic Forum (WEF) Switzerland meeting beginning from January 21 has become one of the voices of the world capitalist system as it considers itself “the foremost creative force for engaging the world’s top leaders […] to shape global, regional and industry agendas […].” But, with capitalism as the dominating force in the world, what can be shaped other than destruction of lives on this planet? Shall the Davos elites question capitalism?
The meet and the WEF’s Global Risk Report are two of the significant weather-meters to gauge the weather the system is bumping into. Many capitans of the capitalist system express their perception about the situation they are facing – “the most pressing issues on the global agenda”. These are actually the fear and the uncertainty the system is failing to get rid of. The participants include the world’s top politicians, academics, and business and NGO leaders.
The 2020 meeting theme is “Stakeholders for a Cohesive and Sustainable World”. Its cherished commitment is “to improve the state of the world”. A capitalist world system can never be cohesive and sustainable and it can’t improve the world as the system breeds incoherence and chaos. The system itself is the evidence.
- THE HOPELESS CONDITION
The Davos Report – Global Risks Report 2020 (GRR 2020) – fails to hide the hopeless condition the world capitalist system is experiencing. The report’s “The Fraying Fundamentals” chapter cites the facts:
Stagnation
Downward pressure on the global economy from macroeconomic fragilities and financial inequality continued to intensify in 2019. The global economy is at increasing risk of stagnation. Tense geo-economic and geopolitical landscape, and domestic challenges have exacerbated uncertainty. There’s, according to the IMF-speak, “synchronized slowdown” – weakened growth among the world’s economies. A gradual deceleration was already underway. The slowdown of the world economy has further materialized. By the third quarter of 2019, six of the world’s largest seven economies (Japan is the exception), which together represent more than half of global production, had decelerated. The outlook is also precarious for other G20 economies. Most of these economies are growing at a rate below 2%. There’s risk of a prolonged slowdown of the world economy. The IMF has lowered its last five estimates of world output for 2019 and expected a growth rate of 3.0% – a sharp decline from 3.6% in 2018 and the slowest since the 1.7% contraction in 2009. For 2020, the IMF had also downgraded its forecast from 3.7% to 3.4% [The figure 2.1].
Source: IMF, 2018 and 2019, World Economic Outlooks and quarterly updates, cited in the GRR 2020
Slowing trade
“Nationalist” policies are challenging low trade barriers, fiscal prudence and strong global investment. Rising trade barriers, lower investment and high debt are straining economies around the world. Global trade is slowing down. World Trade Organization (WTO) data for the first three quarters of 2019 show that total world merchandise trade decreased 2.9% from the previous year. It decreased in the world’s top ten traders. [The figure 2.2] Reduced trade volumes are largely the result of what the WTO has called “historically high levels of trade restrictions”. Turning trade to a weapon of rivalry may persist.
Source: WEF estimates from WTO data, https://data.wto.org/, accessed on January 8, 2020, cited in the GRR 2020
Decreased FDI
Globally, investment has been affected by low expected returns, uncertainty about economic policy in major economies, and ongoing and emerging geopolitical tensions. Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) remains lower than it was before the 2008-’09 crisis. It has decreased for the last three years. In 2018, net FDI inflows were down 38% compared to 2017, and less than half of the level, they were in 2015. The sharpest decline has been in the euro area [the figure 2.3], where less appealing yields, lower production and uncertainty surrounding Brexit have led net FDI inflows to the region to fall to a record low since the euro was adopted in 1999.
Source: World Bank OpenData, “Foreign direct investment, net inflows (BoP, current US$) – Euro area, World, United States, China, Japan”, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/BX.KLT.DINV.CD.WD?end=2018&locations=CN-XC-US&start=2009&view=chart, accessed on December 15, 2019, cited in the GRR 2020
High debt
Private and public debt has been accumulating since the crisis. According to the IMF, the global ratio of debt-to-GDP increased by 11 percentage points between 2009 and 2017. Across G20 economies, public debt is expected to reach 90% of GDP in 2019 – the highest level on record – and to grow even more, to 95% in 2024 [the figure 2.5]. Private debt has built up on the basis of lower interest rates – particularly in China and the US, where more than 40% of total private debt is located. In the second quarter of 2019, non-financial corporate debt reached 156% of GDP in China. In the US, non-financial corporate debt reached 47% of GDP in the third quarter – the highest level ever recorded – according to Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis data. The IMF has listed “rising corporate debt burdens” as a key vulnerability in the global financial system.
Source: WEF estimates with data from IMF DataMapper, https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/GGXWDG_NGDP@WEO/OEMDC/ADVEC/WEOWORLD, accessed on December 15, 2019, cited in the GRR 2020
Tools unavailable
There’s a risk that the tools previously used to brake economic slides may no longer be available. Financial market stress and strained public finances are creating uncertainty as to whether conventional monetary and fiscal policy instruments could be as effective in the future.
Monetary constraints
Interest rate cuts have fostered higher debt and riskier rent-seeking, which affect financial market stability. In 2019, most central banks persistently cut interest rates to very, sometimes historically, low levels. In the US, the Fed lowered its target interest rate from 2.50% in December 2018 to 1.75% currently. The European Central Bank (ECB) cut its deposit rate to a historic low of -0.50% in September 2019. The Bank of Japan’s deposit rate has remained at -0.10% since February 2016. Such low rates raise concerns about the soundness of banking systems. The ECB has warned that decreasing profits are challenging Europe’s banking sector; in the second quarter of 2019, European banks yielded an average return-to-equity of 7.0%, compared to 12.1% in the US.
The role and reach of monetary policies are also challenged by wider factors such as technological change, climate change and rising inequality.
Fiscal constraints
The margin for fiscal stimulus in most of the world’s main economies has narrowed. Public debt in 15 of the 20 largest economies has increased every year since the 2008–’09 crisis.
Deteriorated business confidence
Business confidence has deteriorated during 2019. The Business confidence index – constructed by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) using production data and business sentiment to anticipate future performance – signals that the state of the global economy is expected to worsen in the short term. At the time of writing the GRR 2020, the index had declined for 14 consecutive months, dropping below the no-change threshold for the first time since 2016 and reaching a 10-year low in October of last year [the figure 2.4].
Source: OECD Data, Business confidence index, https://data.oecd.org/leadind/ business-confidence-index-bci.htm, accessed on January 3, 2020, cited in the GRR 2020
Note: Numbers above 100 suggest an increased confidence in near future business performance, and numbers below 100 indicate pessimism towards future performance.
Inequality
Concern about inequality underlies recent social unrest on almost every continent. Domestic income inequality has risen in many countries, particularly in advanced economies, and reached historical highs in some. The OECD reports “income inequality in OECD countries is at its highest level for the past half century.” Many of those protesting have long been excluded from their country’s wealth and share frustration that the elite have captured gains at the expense of others.
Inequality hinders growth and damages macroeconomic fundamentals, as the IMF has pointed out: it slows down economic activities and casts doubt on a country’s stability. This damages investor confidence and undermines political capital – both fundamental conditions for prosperity, especially in times of economic volatility. In France, for example, the persistence of the “gilets jaunes” movement had caused businesses more than US$11.4 billion in losses by December 2019. The protests in Chile cost businesses over US$1.4 billion. “[S]ocial incidents dealt [Hong Kong] a very severe blow”.
The profound political consequences of inequality can also undermine economic growth by making a country harder to govern – in ways ranging from legislative impasses to complete government paralysis. This risk is accentuated by the decentralized and spontaneous nature of recent demonstrations: with pop-up protests, it is difficult for governments to negotiate with demonstrators and develop concrete measures to meet their demands.
Weak public finances could aggravate already hard-felt social tensions. The European sovereign debt crisis has shown that drastic fiscal corrections and public austerity measures can shrink the welfare state with political and social consequences that many governments would be neither willing nor able to incur.
Failed systems
Systems have failed to promote economic advancement for all. Profound citizen discontent – born of disapproval of the way governments are addressing economic and social challenges – has sparked protests throughout the world. There’s a widespread domestic discontent with current economic systems, perceived to be rigged and unfair.
Polarization and confrontation
The Global Risks Perception Survey finds “economic confrontations” and “domestic political polarization” as the top risks in 2020. “Economic confrontations between major powers” is the most concerning risk for 2020.
According to the survey participants, “recession in a major economy” most likely to increase in 2020.
The survey finds, “protectionism regarding trade and investment” and “populist and nativist agendas” most likely to increase through 2020.
The WEF’s Executive Opinion Survey finds, “fiscal crises” are the top-rated risk for businesses globally over the next 10 years.
The WEF’s expert community perceives, “domestic political polarization” most likely to increase in 2020.
Prolonged slowdown
With this background, the GRR 2020 said:
“Unless the global economic system is reformed to be more socially conscious, the twin risks of prolonged slowdown and stronger defiance towards the current economic model will continue to exacerbate each other.”
- POINTS MISSED
In today’s capitalist world system, there’ll be slowdowns, and these will be prolonged. The factors behind these slowdowns are within the system. The system breeds the factors. The GRR 2020 talks about stagnation, slowing of trade, etc. The point the elite-minds miss is: “mature monopoly capitalist economy as one that is subject to, and indeed dominated by, a basic contradiction: the very growth of its productive potential puts insuperable obstacles in the way of making full use of available human and material resources for the satisfaction of the needs of the great mass of the population. What this means is (1) that in the absence of sufficiently powerful counteracting forces, the normal state of the system in its monopoly capitalist phase is determined by the interaction of the tendency to stagnation and the forces acting counter to this tendency.” (Paul M Sweezy and Harry Magdoff, The Irreversible Crisis, “”Stagnation and the financial explosion”, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1988)
And, the elites aspire for, as the report said, “a prompt and smooth transition to a more cohesive and sustainable model of ‘stakeholder capitalism’.”
The issue of public debt demands a brief observation made more than 150 years ago: “The public debt becomes one of the most powerful levers of primitive accumulation. As with the stroke of an enchanter’s wand, it endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital, without the necessity of its exposing itself to the troubles and risks inseparable from its employment in industry or even in usury.” (Marx, Capital, vol. I, Progress Publishers, Moscow, erstwhile USSR, 1977)
With contradiction within, contradiction with the labor, contradiction with the great masses of people, the capitalist system can never turn cohesive and sustainable. Similarly, its transition will never be smooth as the system itself continues creating hurdles on the path of its transition, which is nothing but the system’s dissolution. Moreover, the term “stakeholder capitalism” needs no elaboration as capitalists and their retinues are its primary stakeholders. Other than this parasitic group, none, the people, the labor has any stake in the system. The latest Oxfam report – Time to care, Unpaid and underpaid care work and the global inequality crisis – narrates a small fragment about the nature of this parasitic group. It’s horrible, it’s shameful, it’s beyond all ethical standards of all ages!
With this “holy” aspiration – “stakeholder capitalism” – the Davos elites are getting engaged with seven key themes that include “Healthy Futures”, “How to Save the Planet”, “Better Business”, “Beyond Geopolitics” and “Tech for Good”. Their discussions include “Averting a Climate Apocalypse” and “How to Turn Protest into Progress”.
With capitalism dominating the planet, there’s no healthy future of this planet. This planet’s only future that looms over the horizon is apocalypse as long as capitalism is the world system as the system’s only survival mode is destroy everything around. The system can’t survive without ever expansion, and it can’t expand without destroying all around. As long as there’s imperialism, there’s imperialism’s never-ending hunger for survival, there’s no scope for going beyond geopolitics. But, the GRR 2020 doesn’t look into that fact. It’s identifying risks partially, but declining to look at roots of the risks – a real dream in a real world. The elites like to dwell within this dream.
Mainstream likes to play with words, and dislikes to dig truths. That’s to hoodwink the commoners. So, one of the foremost tasks is to tear down covers of mystery the mainstream puts on facts concerning life, on issues in economy and politics. Its play with terms like public debt, cohesion, sustainable, interest is to be exposed. The brutal facts with the terms are to be discussed among the commoners. These discussions will help expose hollowness of the mainstream.
Despite use of tricky terms, the GRR 2020 fails to hide the reality as it admits failure to promote economic advancement for all, citizens’ profound discontent with current economic systems perceived to be rigged and unfair. The mainstream-mouth is uttering the facts. That’s the “beauty” of the GRR 2020. The reality doesn’t allow the elites to hide all facts. However, it “beautifies” itself by hiding its ugly class character, notorious class partisanship and political power.
Note: All statements not cited are quoted from the GRR 2020.
Farooque Chowdhury writes from Dhaka.
Richest 1% own more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people, says report
by Countercurrents Collective
A super-rich one percent of the world’s population has accumulated twice as much wealth as the remaining 90 percent, said a new report by Oxfam, a global charity. The report has been released on January 20, 2020 on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
A super-rich one percent of the world’s population has accumulated twice as much wealth as the remaining 90 percent, said a new report by Oxfam, a global charity. The report has been released on January 20, 2020 on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The gap between the filthy rich and the rest of humanity has reached grotesque proportions, according to the report.
The report, Time to Care, focuses on the largely unpaid care work many women and girls take upon themselves.
The report said: The world’s top 22 richest men have now more wealth than all the women in Africa.
It added: At the bottom of the economy, women and girls, especially women and girls living in poverty and from marginalized groups, are putting in 12.5 billion hours every day of care work for free, and countless more for poverty wages. Their work is essential to our communities. It underpins thriving families and a healthy and productive workforce.
The report said: This great divide is based on a flawed and sexist economic system that values the wealth of the privileged few, mostly men, more than the billions of hours of the most essential work – the unpaid and underpaid care work done primarily by women and girls around the world. Tending to others, cooking, cleaning and fetching water and firewood are essential daily tasks for the wellbeing of societies, communities and the functioning of the economy. The heavy and unequal responsibility of care work perpetuates gender and economic inequalities.
It said: This broken economic model has accumulated vast wealth and power into the hands of a rich few, in part by exploiting the labor of women and girls, and systematically violating their rights.
Only 2,153
There are only 2,153 billionaires in the world, according to the report, but their wealth matches that of more than 4.6 billion people, or about 62 percent of the world’s population, estimated to stand at 7.7 billion.
The gap between the wealthy and all those who fare less well looks even more prominent if to compare the combined income of the richest of the rich – the top one percent – to that of some 6.9 billion people.
According to the report, the one-percenters boast more twice as much wealth as nearly 90 percent of the global population.
It said: At the top of the global economy a small elite are unimaginably rich. Their wealth grows exponentially over time, with little effort, and regardless of whether they add value to society.
Tax the rich
Oxfam said: The only way to tackle inequality is to raise taxes. Taxing additional 0.5 percent of wealth of the top 1 percent over the next decade will provide governments with enough funds to create 117 million of jobs in health, education, elderly care and other sectors.
It said: Governments must act now to build a human economy that is feminist and values what truly matters to society, rather than fuelling an endless pursuit of profit and wealth. Investing in national care systems to address the disproportionate responsibility for care work done by women and girls and introducing progressive taxation, including taxing wealth and legislating in favor of carers, are possible and crucial first steps
It added: One reason for these outsized returns is a collapse in taxation of the super-rich and the biggest corporations because of falling tax rates and deliberate tax dodging. At the same time, only 4% of global tax comes from taxation of wealth, and studies show that the super-rich avoid as much as 30% of their tax liability. Extremely low corporate taxation helps them cream the profits from companies where they are the main shareholders; between 2011 and 2017 average wages in G7 countries increased by 3%, while dividends to wealthy shareholders grew by 31%.
While Oxfam did not call any names in its report, it appeared to have taken a thinly-veiled jab at Amazon CEO and founder of Blue Origin space company Jeff Bezos, the on-and-off planet’s richest man, who, however, slipped to the second place this week, behind the chairman and CEO of French luxury giant LVMH Bernard Arnault.
Less than $5.50 a day
The report cited World Bank estimates: Almost half of the world’s population lives on less than $5.50 a day, and the rate of poverty reduction has halved since 2013.
The Oxfam report said: Many people are just one hospital bill or failed harvest away from destitution. Inequality is one of the major reasons for this; a huge share of global income growth consistently accrues to those at the top, leaving those at the bottom further and further behind.
The report cites Thomas Piketty and his team: Between 1980 and 2016, the richest 1% received 27 cents of each dollar of global income growth. This was more than twice the share of the bottom 50%, who secured only 12 cents of every dollar.
The report said:
- If you saved $10,000 a day since the building of the pyramids in Egypt, you would have one-fifth the average fortune of the 5 richest billionaires.
- If everyone were to sit on their wealth piled up in $100 bills, most of humanity would be sitting on the floor. A middle-class person in a rich country would be sitting at the height of a chair. The world’s two richest men would be sitting in outer space.
- The monetary value of women’s unpaid care work globally for women aged 15 and over is at least $10.8 trillion annually – three times the size of the world’s tech industry.
- The very top of the economic pyramid sees trillions of dollars of wealth in the hands of a very small group of people, predominantly men. Their wealth is already extreme, and our broken economy concentrates more and more wealth into these few hands.
- Recently some commentators have asked whether it would be better for the world to ‘abolish billionaires’, suggesting that they are a sign of economic sickness rather than economic health.
- It has been estimated that one-third of billionaire wealth exists because of inheritance. Such levels of inheritance have created a new aristocracy that undermines democracy. Once secured, the fortunes of the super-rich take on a momentum of their own; the wealthiest people can simply sit back and watch their wealth grow, with the help of highly paid accountants who have delivered them an average annual return of 7.4% on their wealth over the last ten years. Despite admirably committing to give his money away, Bill Gates is still worth nearly $100bn, which is twice what he had when he stood down as head of Microsoft.
- As well as doing care work for free at home, many poor women also work providing care for others, for example as domestic workers, who are among the most exploited workers in the world. Just 10% of domestic workers are covered by general labor laws to the same extent as other workers, and only around half enjoy equal minimum wage protection. More than half of all domestic workers have no limits on work hours under national law. In the most extreme cases of forced labor and trafficking, domestic workers find themselves trapped in people’s homes with every aspect of their lives controlled, rendering them invisible and unprotected. It is estimated that globally, the 3.4 million domestic workers in forced labor are being robbed of $8bn every year, equating to 60% of their due wages.
- Recognize unpaid and poorly paid care work, which is done primarily by women and girls, as a type of work or production that has real value.
- Reduce the total number of hours spent on unpaid care tasks through better access to affordable and quality timesaving devices and care-supporting infrastructure.
- Redistribute unpaid care work more fairly within the household and simultaneously shift the responsibility of unpaid care work to the state and the private sector.
- Represent the most marginalized caregivers and ensure that they have a voice in the design and delivery of policies, services and systems that affect their lives. Change is possible. From Engna Legna Besdet bringing together Ethiopian domestic workers in Lebanon, to the Domestic Workers Rising campaign in South Africa, women are demanding change and claiming their rights. And governments are starting to listen. Uruguay’s groundbreaking national integrated care enshrines the right to care and be cared for, as well as care workers’ rights, and New Zealand introduced a celebrated wellbeing budget in 2019. But more action is needed.
- Over the past decade leading academics, and even mainstream economic institutions such as the IMF, have produced robust evidence of the corrosive effects of inequality. Affected communities, activists, women’s rights organizations and faith leaders have spoken out and have campaigned for change around the world. Recent protests, for example against inequality and climate chaos, from Chile to Germany, are huge.
- Mainstream economic meetings, such as those of the IMF and the World Economic Forum, have placed economic inequality on their agendas time and again. However, the inequality crisis remains fundamentally unaddressed. The reality is that most world leaders are still pursuing policy agendas that drive greater gaps between the haves and the havenots. Leaders like President Trump in the USA and President Bolsonaro in Brazil are exemplars of this trend, offering regressive policy menus like tax cuts for billionaires, obstructing measures to tackle the climate emergency or turbo charging racism, sexism and hatred of minorities. Crucially, today’s economic system is built on sexism.
Recommendations
Oxfam has proposed the following six actions to help realize the rights of carers and to start closing the gap between unpaid and underpaid care workers and the wealthy elite who have profited most from their labor.
The report’s recommendations are:
1)Invest in national care systems to address the disproportionate responsibility for care work done by women and girls:
Governments must invest in cross-governmental national care systems, in addition to investing in and transforming existing public services and infrastructure. National care systems must include the provision of universal access to safe water, sanitation and domestic energy systems, and investments to deliver universal childcare, eldercare and care for people with disabilities. These should also include access to quality healthcare and education, as well as the provision of universal social protection, such as pensions and child benefits. As part of national care systems governments must ensure a minimum of 14 weeks of paid maternity leave and the progressive realization of one year of paid parental leave, including a phase of use-it-or-lose-it paternity leave.
2)End extreme wealth to end extreme poverty: Extreme wealth is a sign of a failing economic system. Governments must take steps to radically reduce the gap between the rich and the rest of society and prioritize the wellbeing of all citizens over unsustainable growth and profit, to avoid a world that caters only to a privileged few and consigns millions of people to poverty. Governments must take bold and decisive steps by taxing wealth and high incomes and cracking down on loopholes and the inadequate global tax rules that allow rich corporations and individuals to escape their tax responsibilities.
3)Legislate to protect the rights of all carers and secure living wages for paid care workers:
As part of their national care systems, governments must ensure legal, economic and labor market policies are in place to protect the rights of all carers and paid care workers, in both formal and informal sectors and monitor their implementation. This must include ratifying ILO Convention 189 on the protection of domestic workers and policy to ensure that all care workers are paid a living wage and working towards the elimination of gender wage gaps.
4) Ensure that carers have influence on decision-making processes:
Governments must facilitate the participation of unpaid carers and care workers in policy-making fora and processes at all levels, and invest resources into collecting comprehensive data that can better inform policymaking and evaluate the impact of policies on carers. This should be alongside consulting women’s rights actors, feminist economists and civil society experts on care issues, and increased funding for women’s organizations and movements working to enable their participation in decision-making processes. These measures are important building blocks of national care systems.
5) Challenge harmful norms and sexist beliefs:
Harmful norms and sexist beliefs that see care work as the responsibility of women and girls lead to an unequal gendered distribution of care work, and perpetuate economic and gender inequality. As part of their national care systems governments need to invest resources to challenge these harmful norms and sexist beliefs, including through advertising, public communication and legislation. Further, men need to step up to equally fulfill their responsibilities on care work to address the disproportionate amount of care done by women within households and communities.
6) Value care in business policies and practices: Businesses must recognize the value of care work and sustain the wellbeing of workers. Further, they should support the redistribution of care through the provision of benefits and services such as crèches and childcare vouchers and ensure living wages for care providers. Companies and business should assume their responsibility for contributing to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals by paying their fair share of taxes, implementing family-friendly employment practices such as flexible working hours and paid leave, and using progressive advertising and public communication to challenge the gendered distribution of care work.
A broken economy
The report said:
“If the economic system is left to distribute the fruits of growth so unevenly, we will never eliminate poverty.”
“Unequal and unbridled growth is also unsustainable and makes it impossible to live within the environmental boundaries of our planet.”
“Economic inequality is also built on gender inequality, and the majority of those at the bottom of the economic pyramid are women. Women and girls are more likely to be found in poorly paid and precarious employment, and they do the bulk of unpaid and underpaid care work.”
“The dominant model of capitalism actively exploits and drives traditional sexist beliefs that disempower women and girls, counting on them to do this work, but refusing to value them for it.”
Commenting on the findings, Oxfam India CEO Amitabh Behar said that while unpaid or poorly paid care work mostly done by women serves as the “hidden engine” that fuels the global economy, “broken economies are lining the pockets of billionaires and big business at the expense of ordinary men and women.”
Break The Silence And Speak Up For The People Of Palestine
by Jafar M Ramini
We try, Dr King. We Palestinians try our very best to forgive the cruelty and trespasses of our Zionist enemy against us. But, unfortunately the more we forgive and the more we accommodate the more we are crushed and denied even the air we breathe. This suffocation of human life was recognised clearly by Dr King when he said: “The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.” In the memory of this icon of civil liberty I beseech all the good people of the world to break that silence and speak up for the people of Palestine.
The third Monday of January every year has been designated a national holiday in the USA to honour the memory of slain civil rights leader, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. — who was assassinated April 4, 1968 in Memphis. This honour was proposed during the Reagan era in 1986 but it was not recognised nationally until the year 2000. Even now there is still resistance in a few southern states of the USA.
The injustice and cruelty that was meted out to the black Americans for generations was nothing short of inhuman. Let us call it by what it actually was. Abject slavery. But, when you look at the short history of the USA, the blacks in America fared much better than the indigenous tribes who were slaughtered en masse. Some estimates put the numbers at between 10 – 15 million. From the one million remaining, at least 80 tribes disappeared between 1900 and 1957, and 80% of all remaining people had been killed through total wiping out of their culture ,habitat, disease, or murder.
So much for the Land of The Free and Home of the Brave.
Dr King’s intellect, his fight for the right of his people to live a dignified, free life and his capacity to forgive was legendary.
As he so memorably said, “He who is devoid of the power to forgive is devoid of the power to love.”
We try, Dr King. We Palestinians try our very best to forgive the cruelty and trespasses of our Zionist enemy against us. But, unfortunately the more we forgive and the more we accommodate the more we are crushed and denied even the air we breathe. This suffocation of human life was recognised clearly by Dr King when he said:
“The ultimate tragedy is not the oppression and cruelty by the bad people but the silence over that by the good people.”
In the memory of this icon of civil liberty I beseech all the good people of the world to break that silence and speak up for the people of Palestine.
Jafar M Ramini is a Palestinian writer and political analyst, based in London, presently in Perth, Western Australia. He was born in Jenin in 1943 and was five years old when he and his family had to flee the terror of the Urgun and Stern gangs. Justice for the people of Palestine is a life-long commitment.
Watching Mississippi Masala on the eve of Martin Luther King Day
by Zeenat Khan
https://countercurrents.org/2020/01/watching-mississippi-masala-on-the-eve-of-martin-luther-king-day
In contemplating his words against the backdrop of this historic day — on the eve of Martin Luther King Day,
the movie Mississippi Masala came to mind. I remembered how unfairly Demetrius was treated in the 1991 film for the color of his skin. The points about racism Dr. King so movingly espoused motivated me to watch it again after many years.
‘Success’ as Trickster: Sweden as Cautionary Tale
by Robert Snefjella
In the curious case of Sweden, by ditching free speech and honest discussion, and elevating intellectual deformity, and becoming vassal to and closely allied with international depravity, the centuries-long Swedish capacity for independent sensible innovation and pragmatism, sometimes ingenious, sometimes verging into wisdom, has been disabled. And common sense, that indispensable multifaceted individual and group potential capacity, is severely handicapped within the context of inadequate discussion and absurdities promoted and critical information withheld.
Guantánamo’s Indelible
Legacy
Co-Written by Karen J. Greenberg & Joshua L. Dratel
Instead of remaining an offshore anomaly, Guantánamo has moved incrementally onshore and that is undeniably its indelible legacy.
Western ‘Political Correctness’ Does Not Make All People Equal
by Andre Vltchek
In the West, there is a new wave of political correctness at work: it is all about one’s sexual orientation; who has sex with whom, and how.Suddenly, the mass media in London, Paris and New York is greatly concerned about who has the right to change his or her sex, and who does not want to belong to any ‘traditional’ gender bracket.
RSS Seeks Madras High Court Help For Erasing Its Violent Anti-Muslim Heritage: A Fit Case For Perjury
by Shamsul Islam
The Madras High Court, presently, is seized of an interesting matter. RSS needs its help to hide its criminal attitude towards Indian Muslims such as calling for ethnic cleansing of Indian Muslims. According to the press reports, “P. Chandrasekaran, secretary of the Chennai chapter of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a writ petition has been filed in the Madras High Court by objecting to a sentence in the latest Class X social science textbook of State board schools (published by the government of Tamil Nadu) that the Hindu Mahasabha as well as the RSS had taken a “pronounced anti-Muslim stance during the days that led to partition of the country on religious lines in the pre-Independence era"
Hindutva: Get Egg on Your Face and Say ‘I am Loving it’
by Subhash Gatade
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt to further his deeply-sectarian and divisive agenda at Belur Math, global headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission founded by Swami Vivekananda, has backfired. His controversial defence of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) 2019 at the historic math in which he invoked Vivekananda himself has enraged a broad spectrum of people and formations. The CAA is, of course, the most contentious piece of legislation independent India has ever had, and it has sparked protests across the country.
Ramchandra Guha’s history of balancing facts only help the Hindutva forces
by Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Ramchandra Guha is quite dangerous and ‘expert’ in balancing thing. His problems with Congress are manifold but many ‘experts’ feel that if they
criticise the Sangh Parivar, it is their duty to criticise Congress more than them. Ram Chandra Guha has done that in past. I dont know why Rahul Gandhi should come in the picture.
“Don’t fund our eviction”: honey-collecting tribe pleads with US government
Press Release
Two tribal communities famed for their honey-gathering skills have written to the US authorities urging them to scrap support for a conservation project that could lead to the tribe’s eviction from their ancestral forests.
Two tribal communities famed for their honey-gathering skills have written to the US authorities urging them to scrap support for a conservation project that could lead to the tribe’s eviction from their ancestral forests.
The villagers, members of India’s Jenu Kuruba (“honey collectors”) tribe, object to the US Fish and Wildlife Service funding a project in Karnataka state, home to the Nagarhole Tiger Reserve, which was created on their tribal lands.
The project is a partnership with Wildlife Conservation Society-India. Its first objective is to “facilitate government-sponsored, voluntary relocation of forest-interior families to new sites outside the forest.” But the Jenu Kuruba are determined to stay in their forests, and view U.S. government money being used in this way as “Aiding and abetting the government and WCS’s plans to evict us from our forests.”
Other Jenu Kuruba people were previously evicted from Nagarhole, where WCS-India has worked for decades. They told Survival that they were pressured to “voluntarily relocate” after their lives in the forest were rendered impossible, and they were left with no choice. One described it as “a kind of torture.”
Gurumala, a Jenu Kuruba man who was evicted from Bandipur Tiger Reserve around 30 years ago.
© F Longo/ Survival 2019
Gurumala, a Jenu Kuruba man who was evicted from a nearby tiger reserve 30 years ago, told Survival: “Our children were once independent and free; the whole community was their teacher. After the government came, we lost so much, they moved us out of the forest and restricted our lives. Now our children who grow up here have no freedom. I’m sad that our children have to live like this. I feel very sad that I have to tell our children and grandchildren about our way of life as if it were just a story from the past.”
The WCS is the parent organization of the Bronx Zoo. One of its founders, Madison Grant, was a notorious eugenicist and author of “The Passing of the Great Race”, a book Hitler referred to as his “bible.”
Survival’s research into Indian government-sponsored “voluntary relocations” of tribal people from tiger reserves has found them to be forced evictions, and so illegal under Indian and international law.
The letter comes just weeks after members of the US government’s House Committee on Natural Resources started to investigate WCS’s role in conservation grants tied to human rights abuses. In December the committee wrote to WCS President and CEO, Christián Samper requesting information “related to WCS’s awareness of the occurrence of human rights abuses, funding for eco-guards or law-enforcement that committed human rights abuses, and policies addressing the rights of indigenous and local peoples.”
A member of the US Congress has also submitted a law that would prohibit the government from funding international conservation groups that fund or support human rights violations.
Survival International Director Stephen Corry said today: “Tribal people have long been considered disposable and just “in the way” by big conservation NGOs who want to kick them off their land. But now at least some of them are able to lobby the government funders behind the schemes, which usually do a worse job of conservation than the original inhabitants themselves. Governments shouldn’t fund illegal land grabs and conservation NGOs must learn to treat people with respect. Times are changing.”
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