Tuesday, June 14, 2011
THE GLOBAL ELITE AND THE SUPPRESSION OF DISSENT
In 2005, 47% of the world's population was living on less than $2.50 per day.
To remove these poor people from poverty would cost $507 billion per year.
(Thomas Pogge on Global Poverty)
The US military spends much more than $507 billion per year.
Around the world, the military is often used to help the rich elite to increase their wealth.
Around the world, the military is often used to prevent the poor from increasing their wealth.
In January 2001, The Atlantic had an article by Chrystia Freeland on 'The Rise Of The New Global Elite'
Among the points made:
1. In a 2005 report, analysts at Citigroup reported that the World is dividing into two blocs - (1)the rich elite and (2) the rest.
2. The rich elite have homes in places such as Mumbai, Moscow, Hong Kong, and New York.
3. Factors that have helped create certain billionaires include:
1. The revolution in information technology.
2. The liberalization of global trade.
3. Financial deregulation.
4. Tax cuts for the super-rich.
5. Insider privatization.
6. Monopolies given to certain individuals (eg rent-seeking in regulated industries in India and Mexico.)
4. In India and China, between 1820 and 1950, per capita income was basically flat.
Between 1950 and 1973, it increased by 68 percent.
Between 1973 and 2002, it grew by 245 percent.
China's and India's super-elite have grown richer.
5. Worldwide, executive pay has skyrocketed.
Hege fund manager John Paulson profited almost as much from the crisis of 2008 as Goldman Sachs did.
Meanwhile, the vast majority of U.S. workers have missed out.
Between 2002 and 2007, 65 percent of all income growth in the United States went to the top 1 percent of the population.
6. Mohamed El-Erian has an Egyptian father and French mother.
Mohamed El-Erian is the CEO of Pimco, the world’s largest bond manager, which is based in the USA but owned by Germany's Allianz SE.
Stephen Jennings is a New Zealander.
He co-founded the investment bank Renaissance Capital which has its roots are in Moscow.
In 2009 Jennings said: "The largest metals group in the world is Indian. The largest aluminum group in the world is Russian … The fastest-growing and largest banks in China, Russia, and Nigeria are all domestic."
7. A top man at one of the world’s largest hedge funds said that if changes in the world economy lift a large number of people in China and India into the middle class and and a smaller number of people in America out of the middle class, that's not such a bad trade.
A Taiwanese-born executive of a U.S. Internet company says the American middle class demands a higher paycheck than the rest of the world. He suggests that middle class Americans maybe "need to decide to take a pay cut."
Michael Splinter, CEO of the Silicon Valley green-tech firm Applied Materials, said that if he was starting from scratch, only 20 percent of his workforce would be Americans.
Thomas Wilson, CEO of Allstate, has said: "I can get (workers) anywhere in the world. It is a problem for America, but it is not necessarily a problem for American business."
8. The Russian tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky has admitted that he had "treated business exclusively as a game" and "did not care much about social responsibility."
9. "The lesson of history is that, in the long run, super-elites have two ways to survive: by suppressing dissent or by sharing their wealth."
- Chrystia Freeland on 'The Rise Of The New Global Elite'
China in the 1940s (multipletext.com/2009/9_china_1940s.htm) had a huge gap between rich and poor.
How do you explain the economic situation?
Parts of Detroit are like parts of Jakarta.
Here in Jakarta there is a large posh shopping mall.
But most of the visitors to the mall do not have the money to buy the goods on display.
For most people, whether in Detroit or in Jakarta, incomes are too low.
On 23 June 2010, in the Financial Times, Douglas Bruce explained that without some trickle-down effect, any recovery will be stillborn
Douglas Bruce explains that "over the past few decades, the top earners in banking and other sectors have been increasing their share of a finite cake...
"Going back a generation or two... it was still possible for a middle-class father to support a family of four, but it now takes two earners to maintain most families, and that at a lower standard of living..."
Poverty in India
On 23 June 2010, Li Onesto wrote about: "Dying Detroit" - The Impacts of Globalization. Social Decay and Destruction of an Entire Urban Area
Almost half of the children live in poverty.
The illiteracy rate is close to 50%.
Michigan state spends more on prisons than it does on higher education.
Many of Detroit's jobs have moved abroad, to where the wages are even lower.
India has palaces and paupers.
On 24 June 2010, at Global Research, Andrew Gavin Marshall wrote about: The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order
He points out:
1.2 billion people in the world live on less than $1 per day.
Nearly 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day.
The richest 2% of adults in the world own more than half of global household wealth.
The richest 1% of adults own around 40% of global assets.
The richest 10% of adults own around for 85% of the global assets.
The bottom half of the world adult population own around 1% of global wealth.
The top 6,000 people in the world own 40% of the world’s assets.
The top 600,000 people in the world control 85% of the world’s wealth.
The bottom 3.4 billion own 1% of world wealth.
Zbigniew Brzezinski explains that increased literacy means greater political awareness, increased use of TV means greater awareness of global disparities, and greater use of the Internet means more instant communications.
Brzezinski sees an increase in anti-Americanism and anti-globalization.
"From the point of view of the global oligarchy, the only method of imposing order and control ...is through the organized chaos of economic crises, war, and the rapid expansion and institutionalization of a global scientific dictatorship."
A London mansion worth over £100 million.
In the USA, roughly 40% of the population fall below the poverty line at some point within a 10 year time span. (Poverty in the United States - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Israel has many millionaires and many hungry children.
"Once idealized as a socialist paradise, the Jewish state is increasingly becoming a country of two classes...
"35% of children are living in poverty, leaving Israel with this unhappy distinction: It ranks among Western countries with the greatest percentage of poor children, according to the Insurance Institute." (Poverty in Israel: The divide deepens between the haves and have .../ Israel will join OECD as its poorest member )
In 2006 it was reported that in the Calton area of Glasgow the average life expectancy of a male is just 53.9 years.
This is lower than in Bangladesh or North Korea or Iraq. (In Iraq, life expectancy is 67. Minutes from Glasgow city centre ...)
In January 2010, a report by the UK government's National Equality Panel pointed out that the gulf between rich and poor in the UK grew wider under Tony Blair's Labour Party than at any time since the Second World War.
In the UK, the richest 10 per cent of families have assets worth an average £853,000 - almost 100 times the £8,800 average wealth of the poorest 10 per cent. (Gulf between rich and poor grown under Labour and now widest since WWII - Daily Mail )
Our leaders would appear to be in favour of a feudal system where the upper class become very rich and the lower class become very poor.
Joe Stiglitz, formerly chief economist at the World Bank, told CNBC that "Market fundamentalism has eroded any sense of community and has led to rampant exploitation." (Stiglitz: America's Ersatz Capitalism Is A Joke )
The rich-poor gap has a lot to do with rotten leaders. (afrogeekchic.wordpress.com/.../)
According to the economists Howell and Diallo (2007), neoliberal policies have contributed to a US economy in which 30% of workers earn "low wages", and 35% of the labour force is "underemployed". (Neoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
According to John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006), "The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of income inequality, high relative and absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration." (Neoliberalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Jews helped run the Moslem Ottoman Empire.
Who has gained from the policies of our rotten leaders?
"Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade's corporate mergers and reorganizations.
"Today, though barely 2% of the nation's population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews." (NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS)
The use by feudal rulers of Jewish financiers has a long history.
In the Middle Ages in Europe, many kings depended upon Jews as financiers.
Royal power worked alongside Jewish money. (NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS )
"1922: King Abdulla Ibn Hussein of Transjordan sits under the watchful eyes of his Jewish bodyguards, Habanni Yemenite brothers Sayeed, Salaah, and Saadia Sofer." (mochajuden.com/?tag=ruth)
Jews also played a major role in the medieval Muslim world.
Jews played a major role in the running of the Ottoman Empire. (NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS)
"In late 19th-century Britain, the Jewish-dominated press championed imperialism, which benefited Jewish finance.
"And during the early stages of the Soviet regime, Jews were numerous in leadership positions, especially in the secret police...
"It was with Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that Jews gained long-term power in the United States...
(Benjamin Ginsberg's The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State. NEOCON FINANCIERS / BANKERS )
Some people believe that Masonic Jewish bankers pull the strings.
In his book, "Under the Sign of the Scorpion" (2002), the Estonian Juri Lina says about 150 million people died as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution, subsidized by the Masonic Jewish banking cartel. "The West pretended to oppose the Bolsheviks but in fact defended them." (savethemales.ca - USSR - Experiment Was "Social ...)
Jewish folks have been important in Latin America.
Around 300,000 Jews live in Argentina, mostly in Buenos Aires. (Argentine Jews Struggling with Money Problems and Security Fears)
In 2001, the economy of Argentina collapsed due to neo-liberal policies.
The feudal system, with its gap between rich and poor, is not unique to any one country or any one religion.
India has many millionaires.
But in 2006 it was reported that 35% of Indians live on less than $1 a day, which is much worse than Pakistan’s figure of 17%. (India - Rich and Poor)
Is the situation today to be compared to that in France in 1789?
Norman Gash, at the National Review, 14 July 1989, wrote: Reflections on the revolution - French Revolution
(Norman Gash was a former Professor of Modern History at the University of St Andrews)
1. According to Norman Gash, in 1789 France was the largest, wealthiest, and most powerful state in Western Europe.
In 2010, the USA is said to be the most powerful state in the world.
2. Norman Gash asks: What reason was there for revolution in France in 1789?
Gash relates that, according to Napoleon, there was revolution because the middle class wanted more power for themselves and less power for the aristocrats.
It could be argued that, in the USA, the middle classes are getting restless. They see a corrupt elite enjoying too many privileges.
3. Gash points out that in France, in 1789, "the climate of opinion was rational, liberal, and optimistic, the monarchy not averse to reform, the aristocracy itself permeated by ideas of the Enlightenment."
Why then was there a bloody revolution?
Gash explains that the 'system' appeared to make reform difficult.
Edmund Burke said that "a state without the means of some change is without the means of its own conservation."
In the USA in 2010, the constitution appears not to be protecting the USA from disaster.
America's institutions seem incapable of preventing wars, discontent and hunger.
4. Gash points out that the French revolution was a long sequence of events, stretching from 1789 until 1799.
There was "an extraordinary series of political improvisations:
dictatorship of the proletariat,
and finally military despotism."
If there are to be dramatic changes in the USA, the end result might be military despotism under an American Napoleon.
Napoleon was a fascist.
He attempted the total military domination of continental Europe.
He tried to have a New World Order, or as Gash writes "a new international order".
5. According to Gash, the French Revolution, Napoleon's Empire and the 1815 Congress of Vienna "foreshadowed the Europe of the future."
That means both good things and bad things.
Americans seeking revolution should study Europe's history.
6. Gash implies that bloody revolution was not necessary to bring about change in Europe.
Even if the French Revolution had not taken place, "common sense suggests that the main lines of European evolution would have been much the same, though perhaps the pace might have been slower."
Gash lists the products of European society which would have come about either by gradual evolution or by fast and bloody revolution:
A. Liberalism based on representative institutions.
B. Nationalism based on linguistic unity.
C. The rise of the sovereign state.
D. The centralization of administrative power at the expense of provincial.
E. The increasing responsibility of government for the welfare of its subjects.
F. The ability to mobilize a whole society for war.
G. military defeats in consequence giving rise to revolution and revolution to tyranny.
H. International conflicts followed by international institutions to preserve harmony.
America is changing.
The changes will be a mixture of good and bad.
The changes will happen, even without a revolution.
French Empire 1811
7. According to Gash, the French Revolution helped to shape European society in two notable ways.
A. Force was used to bring about change. "Liberalism and reform marched behind French bayonets."
The ideas of liberalism and reform had many of their origins in England.
B. The awakening of nationalism.
Gash writes that: "ideas that march behind bayonets are rarely popular; reform at the hands of a conqueror earns little gratitude. French rule brought not only enlightenment but hardship."
It was not long before there were nationalistic revolts against the French.
In Germany, later in the century, "Bismarck exploited the German national feeling first evoked by Napoleon I."
Any attempt by an American dictator to bring about a New World Order would result in nationalist revolts.