The fight against inequality starts from the streets, not Davos

The fight against inequality starts from the streets, not Davos

The 1 percent does not have solutions for our system of inequality because they are its primary beneficiaries.

Jenny Ricksby Jenny Ricks: Let us be blunt, the World Economic Forum (WEF) happening in Davos this month will not solve the inequality crisis because its participants - the ultra-rich and powerful 1 percent - are the primary beneficiaries of the system that ravages the planet and discards the 99 percent.

We do not need to look far to know how inequality hurts us all. Globally, inequality blights the lives of the majority of the world's population, while the wealth of the richest people continues to soar. We are truly living in an inequality crisis.


 Inequality, Social Dysfunction and Misery
 In the US, while the world's richest man Jeff Bezos moans that he does not know how to spend his vast wealth and talks of colonising the moon, his company Amazon had a tax rebate of $129m on top of paying zero federal income tax in 2019. With the majority of Americans struggling from paycheque to paycheque, this drains money that could have been spent on social services, healthcare and education. And this tax rebate is certainly not ensuring Amazon employees have decent pay and conditions.

The climate emergency shows us the issue of inequality writ large - we are sacrificing the lives of millions of people, mostly the poorest and those living in developing countries, in order for big polluting companies to continue their plunder of our planet. As Australia burns and Indonesia struggles with historic floods, their governments scramble to deny the science and defend the fossil fuel industry.

Our societies are rooted in patriarchy, racism and many other forms of discrimination. Women, especially women of colour, are the hardest hit by rising inequality: They are the workers in the most precarious employment, they suffer the most from cuts in public services, and much of their work, paid and unpaid, is not recognised and rewarded. Our democracies are corroding as power and wealth concentrate in fewer and fewer hands.

While it is easier to think that the soaring wealth of the elites, patriarchy, racism and the climate emergency are separate problems that we should solve independently, the truth is they all stem from the neoliberal economic system that is rigged by and for the 1 percent. Inequality is not just a flaw in the system, it is the core of its design.

The elite's unlimited greed for wealth and power is taking its toll on the planet and on humanity itself. Human rights will not survive if inequality continues unabated.

Many journalists and commentators dubbed 2019 the "year of protest". We saw a surge of protest action from people most affected by inequality on a daily basis, as well as a growing climate justice movement.

Collectively, people are protesting and writing a new story where our future will not be up for grabs. Different issues provided a tipping point. In Chile, the massive protests were sparked by a hike in metro fare prices. In France, it was rising fuel prices. In Lebanon, it was a new WhatsApp tax.

Across the globe, youth took to the streets to save the planet from catastrophic climate change because older generations failed to do so. But these protests also spread across society as people connected their grievances to the fact that change needs to be systemic, not just minor reforms.

And if anyone thought the energy and demands of 2019 would be over in this new decade, they were wrong. This January, as the champagne bottles pop in Davos, expect massive street mobilisation to take place in more than 30 countries, including the United Kingdom, the Philippines, Zambia, Kenya, India, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, South Africa, and Mexico. The coordinated global protest will see diverse movements rising up against the root causes of inequality.

The solutions to inequality and the other crises it breeds will not come from the icy mountains of Davos, but the hot, crowded streets of Santiago, Beirut and Manilla. We will take to the street with our demands for better social services, climate justice, minimum living wages, protection of our democracy, LGBTQIA+ rights, gender equality and economic justice. And yes, we are calling for more taxes for the likes of Jeff Bezos. It is time to bill the billionaires for all the chaos and destruction their quest for endless wealth has caused.

When the rich, at least some of them, are calling for their wealth to be taxed more, we know that inequality is out of control. Goodwill from the ultra-rich may seem like good news, but inequality will not be solved by the richest and most powerful people. And it would be naive to think that promises by governments and global institutions and charitable pledges from the ultra-rich will take us out of this crisis. And that is what the WEF is about. In fact, in its 50th year, the WEF is the epitome of duplicity. Its time is over.

Change will be won on the streets. We are now seeing a rebalancing of power initiated by the people. The big protests of 2019 provided an inspiration and a backdrop for the actions we will take for this new year and the rest of the decade.

People are coming together and acting with haste and urgency, putting forward their solutions to the crisis. We now understand that the problems we face in our societies around the world are rooted in the same problem that we face globally - inequality. We are linking arms to create a progressive future where our lives will not be discarded for the benefit of those in power.

The era of faux solutions to inequality is over. Now we tell our leaders: listen to the demands from the streets, not the elites.

Latin America's need to break free from the north

Latin America's need to break free from the north

Our Latin American continent demonstrates more sharply the economic crisis and social chaos. We have lost the great economic activities and the violence is increasing in our society, mainly against the native, afro-descendant and miserable peoples. The public administration, in neoliberal governments, aims to guarantee the advantages of a wealthy class that, in constant myopia, who sees itself as European, in a latent answer to the question of who owns this state: the whites , the rentiers and the international bourgeoisie.
Latin America's need to break free from the north

In this model induced from the north, national companies cannot control natural resources or the industrialization process that would multiply the profit margin and the accumulation of foreign exchange reserves for development. Among the tools used by the capital funds and their governments, they have certain volumes of loans under conditions that in practice stifle the economies of our America, which is in a growing and recurring indebtedness since the independence processes of the 19th century.

On the other hand, we see a growing presence of financial capital in the economy as opposed to labor activities. With each crisis of capitalism and liquidity, it is a great capital that buys national companies at low prices, in this cycle we become smaller in our continent and the neocolonizers continue to grow, absorbing the infrastructure sector of the nations.
 
Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage.

Abandoning control of resources such as oil, gas, minerals, gold, water, transport, communications, electricity and banking, one cannot speak of sovereignty, even if it is the opposite. Even a superficial analysis of our economies concludes that the US The US, Israel and the EU have transformed our markets into extensions of their accumulation machine, where it would be we Latinos who should benefit from our development. They imposed an anchor for debt, underdevelopment and dependence.

In this model, social policies are prohibited because the function of governments is to generate money to pay the unpaid loans that never end. The Aryans leave entire families of almost alive beggar bodies on our streets. A surplus of work to taste what capital wants to pay. Instead of more work and freedom, we see unemployment, discouragement, fear and abandonment.

When we tour our Latin America, similar stories of neoliberal practices and tyranny are present in the phrases, far from being a coincidence, it only makes a global introduction, a manual of domination in letters built in banks or institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank, the OAS and the UN, largely secured by the dominant governments. There is no coincidence but evidence of the role of neoliberal presidents in the continent.

In this set of contradictions, northern allied countries such as Colombia with a GDP growth rate of 1.4% in 2019, Chile with 0.8% face great social turmoil in the streets and Brazil with 0 , 4% generated 13 million unemployed and 25 million underemployed. Ecuador is broken with the people on one side and the repression led by the government on the other. Argentina, a former example of quality of life, ended the neoliberal government last year, leading 35% of the population to poverty where more than half of the children (up to 14 years) in extreme poverty. Whether it is growth or not, it does not serve distribution, but the financial services of internal and external debt to hit sovereignty, which means a loss paradigm for the majority of the population.

It is not necessary to rely on utopia, the first nationalist governments undertook nationalist policies of inclusion, integration among our peoples that allowed a period of sustainable development, which led the United States to wage its hybrid war using the media, the judiciary and large sums of money to buy public figures and attack national governments.
 
Latin America: Operation Condor

We need to think big and have the strategy and intelligence to defeat the fascist wave that has settled in our continent. Argentina, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua and Cuba are some of the pillars to take the road back to power the needy.

There are no roads that we cannot follow together, we face the same problems, and if the north threatens us, we must act together without borders. We were forged in the work of the native peoples, of the blacks and the Creoles who stood firm in the same clay, a dream of living with dignity in the land that is ours: Latin America. Together we can overcome the last five centuries of inequality.

The ‘Lying’ Mainstream Press and Media in Canada

The ‘Lying’ Mainstream Press and Media in Canada

More and more… reasonably informed Canadians believe ‘the Main Stream Press and Media’ constitutes a ‘lie factory’, a ‘manipulator of public response’ in the service of real power in the country. Canada’s MSPM, that is, exists to help ‘the Deep State’. To help the Corporatocracy. To help the Imperial Master. To help the people Stephen Harper’s group governed for … and the same people the Justin Trudeau group governs for with, perhaps, a little more ‘panache’... and cover-up.

Stark proof of Canadians’ dark and suspicious belief about the MSPM was provided in the first election Justin Trudeau won ... and after. The Globe and Mail beat the drums to keep the corrupt Conservative Party of Stephen Harper in power … fighting up to the last hour.  And … now … that one of Harper’s worst, rabbit-skinned hatchet-men, makers of ugly, anti-democracy legislation is running for leader, you may be sure no one in the Mainstream Press and Media (MSPM) will review his ugly past doings. Not even Andrew Coyne, star commentator for the Globe and Mail who – in a large recent advertisement tells readers “I can just write what I really think”.

What Canadians face with the likes of Andrew Coyne … and all the rest, I allege … is not only (as we will see) ‘fudging’ of stories to protect the Corporate Rich, but outright failure to surface and deal with “facts”, “news”, “information” Canadians have a right to have (and need to have) in order to act positively for the country.

How is it (for instance) that (unreported/uncommented upon) Canadian publishing that flowered in the post 1968 period to become a major economic and cultural activity (as it should be) in Canada ….  is now DESTROYED, without as much as a mournful sigh from the (sold out) representatives of the MSPM, let alone full dress reporting to Canadians of the facts.

Today, fewer than 5% of non-fiction books that Canadians buy are produced by Canadian publishers! Canada’s whole book trade is – for all intents and purposes – a branch activity of foreign (mostly Imperial U.S.) publishers.  “We will tell Canadians what they may read.” (and who will profit from it.) Think about that ….  (Where is Andrew Coyne?)
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WHY, for instance, is there no genuinely fact-informed argument for Canada to get out of NATO.  NATO is an arm of U.S. Imperial Policy: period.  Why… in addition … do we hear nothing – ever - about Canada’s despicable and repressive role (over decades) in Haiti?  Silence.  Why does no reasonably intelligent and informed commentator cut through the wholesale truckload of lies about the voracious, calculated, perverse U.S. assault on Venezuela [and any other Central and South American country that seeks real democracy and independence]. And especially … why is there no attack on Canada’s sad and shameful backing of the U.S. in every vicious act against those countries? Why does no “mainstream” Canadian newsdealer ever even mention that the extermination of Palestinians is being pursued … a slow and steady program is being pursued…?



Andrew Coyne writes (“what (he) really thinks”) – a column in support of NATO, (Jan 11, 2020, p.02) ringing all the False Bells, accepting U.S. hegemony, liking it, taking for granted an unbrokenly divided world. He chooses, of course, to forget the ‘non U.N.- approved’ murderous “NATO” actions in the old Yugoslavia; to forget Canada’s shameful part in the wholesale murder and relentless destruction of the country with the highest standard of living in Africa, Libya … in the erasure and gruesome murder of the leader of that country moving his people to decent life.  Twelve hundred Libyan students were studying in Canada when Muammar Gaddafi was murdered … to the public gloating joy of Hilary Clinton and (may we assume?) Andrew Coyne …?

Why is there never news about the failure of the Bank of Canada to restore its special lending powers to make possible necessary infrastructure, low-cost housing, hospital and educational building … and more? That policy paid for the Second World War, the building, after it, in Canada … and much more… without significant debt! !  It was trashed by Pierre Elliot Trudeau in 1974 at the instancing of the Bank of International Settlements. (For the meaning of that name read: the U.S. hegemony over all Western nations/NATO nations after the 1944 meetings to lay out power distribution in the after-war-world, held at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire.)

Why is there almost never informed, inclusive, critical comment about ANY of the shared (or unshared) Defence, Policing, Private Corporation Activities, Environmental Actions, Foreign Aid, and Military Hardware sales where Canada and the U.S.A. impinge on one another?  Canadians

Why is there almost never informed, inclusive, critical comment about ANY of the shared (or unshared) Defence, Policing, Private Corporation Activities, Environmental Actions, Foreign Aid, and Military Hardware sales where Canada and the U.S.A. impinge on one another?  Canadians are kept almost completely ignorant of major matters concerning … Canada.

Especially … why are Canadians kept in the dark (purposefully) about the gigantic subject of large Canadian corporations acting abroad … and, indeed, about any profit-seeking activity … whether the Pirate-Looting by cell-phone-plus suppliers in Canada or the untenable treatment of workers and the bribery of corrupt others in foreign locations around the globe…?  Where is the MSPM??

Andrew Coyne writes about a foreign-acting Canadian corporation, SNC Lavelin (Dec. 21, 2019, p. 02,”SNC’s GUILTY PLEA…”) on tip-toe (so-to-speak), missing, many would say, the point absolutely.  But why not? As he says in the his big ad: “I can just write what I really think….” Or, perhaps, it would be better to say “I can just write what the wealthy owners of my job really think….”

We will look at Andrew Coyne’s efforts to “think” (in Part Two of The Lying Mainstream Press and Media in Canada) and see if we can show the strange, guileful, warm, charming, slippery, open-hearted process of completely misleading Canadians … by its Mainstream Press and Media (which includes the Castrated Broadcasting Corporation).

Before leaving Part One… think about the fact that the Castrated Broadcasting Corporation NEVER touches Palestinian Extermination; Haiti; Sell-out of Canadian publishing; “the NATO Question”; the “takeover” (by the Bank of International Settlements) of the Bank of Canada; Canada’s shameful me-too foreign policy in the suppression and devastation by the U.S.A. of Central and South American countries and people; or the behaviour of Canadian Corporations overseas …. Think about ... that… and add your own contribution to the list of endless failures “achieved” by Canada’s Mainstream Press and Media.

 
In Canada, the kidnapping of children for profit by Children Aid Societies workers are crimes against humanity. (Bloodlust and money as terrorists ISIS)

Some children are attacked because their parents are social activists, others because they belong to the dispossessed class. Within this Nazi-style system, children do not have the slightest chance of surviving the carnage exposed by the staff of the societies, nor the parents of the massacres committed by the justice system, heinous crimes that are carried out to closed door in the courtrooms. But now let's ask the hundreds of thousands of victims, the Societies for Child Aid and the Judicial System are concerned about: In the best interest of children?

Megxit schmexit – there’s no bigger waste of time, space and money than the UK’s royal family

Yonden Lhatoo rubbishes the latest news cycle concerning the British royal family and questions the justification for maintaining a useless monarchy at the expense of taxpayers

Yonden Lhatoo: I recently found the time to watch The King on Netflix and loved it, finding it to be a cut above previous big-screen adaptations of the story of Henry V, one of England’s greatest monarchs.

It’s an engaging biopic loosely based on William Shakespeare’s series of plays known as the Henriad, starring the young royal who started as something of a juvenile delinquent, “an assiduous cultivator of lasciviousness” as one historical description goes, and went on to become a heroic warrior king.

Of course, this is modern-day cinema, and artistic licence takes its usual toll on historical accuracy. But the movie does make you think about the nature of kingship in the context of both hereditary monarchy and divine-right theory.

Beyond that, it’s also a reminder that kings in those days must have been the real deal – giants among men who led armies into battle and inspired awe as protectors of the realm. Unlike the sad-sack inheritors of the current British throne who regularly embarrass their country with their ignoble antics and cringe-inducing faux pas.

Probably the most disgraceful episode in the recent history of this House of Windsor has to be the downfall of Prince Andrew, who is accused of rape and abuse by a teenage victim of his good pal, the late American financier and pervert Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has retired from his “royal duties”, whatever they might be for someone who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and hasn’t had to do an honest day’s work, but many are questioning why he should enjoy immunity from investigation.


Epstein 'slave' claims she was 'graded' after sex with Prince Andrew

 The Queen & The Kamloops Kidnapping 1964

Now we have this whole kerfuffle over “Megxit” – the withdrawal of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from their “senior royal duties”, whatever they may be, apart from cutting ribbons at department store openings and visiting charities for appearances that end up costing more than the donations they raise.

To listen to the hysterical chatter in Britain, you would think a calamity has befallen the country, when it’s just a conniption over a privileged young couple escaping the fetters of stuffy palace life while still holding on to lifelong perks such as the “royal” title that reserves their right to be bowed to and fawned upon at cocktail parties.

And when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex tug at your heartstrings with talk about becoming “financially independent”, don’t forget they’re already filthy rich. Now, as celebrities no longer bound by palace protocol, the world is their oyster.

While the very concept of monarchy, which Mark Twain once described as “the grotesquest of all the swindles ever invented by man”, in this day and age is ridiculously outdated, the existence of Britain’s royal family in particular is like a broken pencil – pointless. They’re a complete waste of time, space and, above all, taxpayers’ hard-earned money. According to anti-royal campaign group Republic, British taxpayers lose about US$468 million a year just to keep these caterpillars of the commonwealth well fed in the garden of England.



CANADA LAND OF HOMELESS

The inferiority complex-ridden types who adore them in the imbecilic belief that one human is superior to another by virtue of birth and bloodline will argue that the royals are not only metahuman, they also bring “value to the economy”, which is a load of unmitigated tosh. As Republic puts it, “Research shows that tourists come here for our world class museums, beautiful scenery, fantastic shopping and captivating history – not because they might catch a glimpse of Prince Andrew.”

I’m glad I’ve never had the privilege of meeting any member of Britain’s royal family, being of low birth and having neither the means nor desire to hobnob with nobility, because I seriously can’t see myself as addressing any of them as “your majesty” or “your royal highness”.

Forget this Harry, but his 15th-century namesake, I might have asked for an autograph.

Yonden Lhatoo is the chief news editor at the Post