inequality - Blog - Global Risk Community2024-03-28T23:23:39Zhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/feed/tag/inequalityGlobalization and Social Inequality: Obscene Wealth of Eight Mega-Billionaireshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/globalization-and-social-inequality-obscene-wealth-of-eight-mega2017-01-18T22:42:07.000Z2017-01-18T22:42:07.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028252499,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028252499,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="400" alt="8028252499?profile=original" /></a></p><h2 style="text-align:center;"></h2><h2 style="text-align:center;">Globalization and Social Inequality: Obscene Wealth of Eight Mega-Billionaires</h2><p></p><div class="post-info"><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">By <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/author/stephen-lendman" title="Posts by Stephen Lendman">Stephen Lendman</a></span></div><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Global Research, January 18, 2017</span></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:left;"><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em>The super-wealth of an elite eight equals a staggering $427 billion – as much as humanity’s 3.6 billion poorest, struggling daily to survive, many not making it.</em></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em>Oxfam highlighted unprecedented global inequality, threatening social stability. The chasm between super-rich and desperate poor is obscene. Instead of abating, wealth disparity is increasing, Oxfam explaining:</em></span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Since 2015, the richest 1% owns more than the rest of humanity. Eight mega-billionaires are as wealthy as humanity’s 3.6 poorest.</span></p><p></p><p style="padding-left:30px;"><span class="font-size-3">“Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs – a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people.”</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">From 1988 – 2011, the incomes of humanity’s poorest 10% increased by less than $3 a year – less than nothing when adjusted for inflation.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Over the same period, the incomes of humanity’s richest 1% increased 182 times as much.</span></p><p></p><blockquote><p><span class="font-size-3">“A FTSE-100 CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 people in working in garment factories in Bangladesh. A Dow CEO likely earns as much as 20,000 or 30,000 impoverished third-world workers. Over the last 30 years, income growth of the world’s bottom 50% was zero. The top 1% tripled their income over the same period.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">“In Vietnam, the country’s richest man earns more in a day than the poorest earns in 10 years.”</span></p></blockquote><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Super-wealth in the hands of a select few used to make obscene greater amounts is incompatible with peace, equity and justice – what so-called Western civilization abhors, exploiting the many by every means imaginable for greater riches, war-profiteering a favorite way.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Mass slaughter and destruction enriches them, unspeakable human misery considered a small price to pay.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Here’s the Oxfam infamous 8:</span></p><p></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253262,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253262,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="635" alt="8028253262?profile=original" /></a></span></p><p></p><ul><li><span class="font-size-3">Bill Gates: Net worth $75 billion</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3">Amancio Ortega: NW $67 billion</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3">Warren Buffet: NW $60.8 billion</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3">Carlos Slim: NW $50 billion</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3">Jeff Bezos: NW $45.2 billion</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3">Mark Zuckerberg: NW $44.6 billion</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3">Larry Ellison: NW $43.6 billion</span></li><li><span class="font-size-3">Michael Bloomberg: NW $40 billion</span></li></ul><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Beyond the infamous 8, the two Koch brothers have a net worth of nearly $80 billion. The world’s billionaire class in total has a staggering net worth of $6.5 trillion.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The above figures courtesy of Forbes, publishing a guide to the world’s billionaire class for the past 30 years – 1,810 members in the class of 2016.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Oxfam international executive director Winnie Byanyima called it “obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when one in ten people survive on less than $2 a day.”</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">If the present trend continues, one or more trillionaires may top the super-wealth list in another generation. Predatory capitalism enriches the few at the expense of most others.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Growing inequality pulls societies apart, said Oxfam. “It increases crime and insecurity, and undermines the fight to end poverty.”</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Billions of people live on the edge, impoverishment crushing them. The obscenity of today’s gilded age dwarfs the earlier one in super-wealth concentration.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Prosperity for the few at the expense of most others is a prescription for dystopian hell. There’s no good ending to this scenario if not checked and reversed.</span></p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em><strong>Stephen Lendman</strong> lives in Chicago.</em> <em>Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.</em></span></p></div></div></div>World’s Richest Increased their Wealth by $237 Billion in 2016https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/world-s-richest-increased-their-wealth-by-237-billion-in-20162016-12-29T17:45:23.000Z2016-12-29T17:45:23.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253283,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028253283,original{{/staticFileLink}}" class="align-center" width="400" alt="8028253283?profile=original" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>World’s Richest Increased their Wealth by $237 Billion in 2016</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Sources:</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Nick Beams</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><a href="http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/12/29/lead-d29.html" target="_blank">World Socialist Web Site</a> 29 December 2016</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Global Research, December 29, 2016</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em>The world’s wealthiest 200 billionaires increased their net worth by $237 billion in 2016, taking their total wealth to $4.4 trillion as of the close of trading on Tuesday, an overall increase for the year of 5.7 percent, according to calculations by Bloomberg.</em></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><em>The major factor in the wealth increase is the surge in the US stock market since the election of Donald Trump on November 8, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average heading towards 20,000, an increase of close to 9 percent in seven weeks, or 69 percent on an annualized basis.</em></span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">At the top of the rich list is Microsoft co-founder <strong>Bill Gates</strong>, whose net worth is $85.9 billion. As the Bloomberg report noted, without taking into account any interest payments or other wealth-enlarging factors, he would have to spend $2.3 million every day for the next 100 years to run down this vast fortune.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The biggest gainer for the year was <strong>Warren Buffet</strong>, whose investment firm Berkshire Hathaway saw its net worth increase by $11.8 billion, largely on the back of holdings in airlines and banks, whose stock values have soared since the election of Trump. His total wealth has risen to $74.1 billion, an increase of 19 percent for the year.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">US billionaires have increased their wealth by $77 billion since the Trump victory based on expectations that his commitment to end corporate regulations and carry out both corporate and personal income tax cuts will boost profits.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">That perception has been reinforced by Trump’s appointees to key cabinet posts, including billionaires Wilbur Ross to head the Commerce Department and former Goldman Sachs executive Steven Mnuchin as Treasury secretary. The two have a combined wealth of at least $5.6 billion, according to the Bloomberg index.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Summing up the post-election euphoria in ultra-wealthy circles, hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio, who ranks 63rd on the top 200 list, said last week that Trump had lifted the “animal spirits” of capitalism and the market could rise even further. Simon Smiles, the investment manager for ultra-high-net-worth clients at UBS Wealth Management, said, “2016 ended up being a spectacular year for risk assets.”</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Another major beneficiary was oil industry mogul Harold Hamm. His wealth more than doubled, rising by $8.4 billion to reach $15.3 billion, on the expectation that a Trump administration will slash regulations on the extraction of fossil fuels. Overall, the 49 energy, mining and metal billionaires saw the biggest increase in wealth of any category, recording an increase of $80 billion after a decline of $32 billion in 2015.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Other major beneficiaries were Amazon founder <strong>Jeff Bezos</strong> and <strong>Mark Zuckerberg,</strong> the co-founder of Facebook. Bezos, who doubled his wealth in 2015 to $60 billion, increased it by a further $7.5 billion this year, while Zuckerberg added $5.4 billion.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The accumulation of wealth at the heights of society is mirrored in income statistics. A recently completed study by economists Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman found that the share of national income received by the bottom half of the US population has been reduced from 20 percent in 1980 to 12 percent, while the income of the top 1 percent has risen from 12 percent to 20 percent. In other words, some 8 percent of national income has been transferred from the bottom half of the population to the top 1 percent.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">This trend has been accelerating not least because of the spread of part-time and contract working under the Obama administration, as revealed in a major study released this month. Conducted by Harvard economist Lawrence Katz and Princeton economist Alan Krueger, it found that 94 percent of the 10 million jobs created during the Obama administration were temporary, contractual or part-time positions. The proportion of workers engaged in such jobs increased from 10.7 percent of the population to 15.8 percent. At the same time, the study found that under Obama, there were 1 million fewer workers engaged in full-time jobs than there were at the start of the recession.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The growth of this type of contingent work provides a significant boost to profits. Employers of part-time labor are not required to provide benefits for employees. Young workers have been the hardest hit by the growth of contract labour and were the largest proportion of such employees. The study found that they generally do not receive any benefits, even when they are employed on a full time basis.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Krueger, a former chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said he was surprised by the findings of his own study, noting that the loss of full-time work has hit every demographic. “Workers seeking full-time, steady work have lost,” he said.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Together with the growth of fabulous wealth for the upper-echelons and the figures on rising income inequality, the Krueger-Katz study further punctures the hype of the outgoing Obama administration that it has organized an “economic recovery” benefiting the mass of ordinary workers and their families.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">These trends are reflected internationally. A report released by the International Labor Organization earlier this month found that wage growth world-wide has decelerated since 2012, falling from 2.5 percent to 1.7 percent. If China, where wage growth has been faster than elsewhere, is excluded, the growth in global wages drops from 1.6 percent to just 0.9 percent.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The ILO study also pointed to the rise of social inequality, noting that in Europe, the top 10 percent of employees take home 25.5 percent of total wages, while the bottom 50 percent get 29.1 percent.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">This year has been characterized economically by a further increase in wealth and income for the top layers of society, continuing the trend since the global economic crisis. This redistribution of wealth and income from the bottom to the very top has been fueled by the provision of trillions of dollars in ultra-cheap money to the banks and financial speculators.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">Politically, it has been marked by a shift in the other direction, with the growth of social opposition.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">This has taken the form of intensifying hostility to the entire official political establishment, reflected most notably in the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the US presidential election, not only in the support for Trump but more directly in the support for the self-proclaimed “socialist” Bernie Sanders.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">At present, however, the political situation is marked by a profound contradiction. While the growth of social opposition is being driven by growing anti-capitalist sentiment, so far it has resulted in political gains for right-wing political forces, a contradiction that finds its sharpest expression internationally in the election of Trump and his installation of a cabinet of billionaires, military figures and ultra-right-wing and fascistic demagogues.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">The responsibility for this situation rests entirely with the official “left” parties and the trade unions, which have functioned as the chief enforcers for all the attacks on the wages and social conditions of the working class in the US and world-wide since the crisis of 2008.</span></p><p><span class="font-size-3">But while right-wing political tendencies have been the initial beneficiaries, the social crisis will intensify and assume ever more explosive forms, posing the necessity for the resolution of the present political impasse through the development of a mass socialist movement armed with a revolutionary perspective for the conquest of political power by the working class.</span></p><p></p></div>We Need a Human Economyhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/we-need-a-human-economy2016-04-22T14:49:51.000Z2016-04-22T14:49:51.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028249475,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="750" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028249475,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028249475?profile=original" /></a></p><h2 style="text-align:center;" class="center"><strong>Let’s Ditch the Economy of the 1% and Replace it with a Human Economy</strong></h2><p style="text-align:center;"> </p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center">Written by:</p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"><strong>Winnie Byanyima</strong></p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center">Executive Director, Oxfam International</p><p style="text-align:center;" class="center"></p><p>If we want an economy of the 1%, then GDP is very useful. It tells us all we need to know. But if we want an economy that works for us all, we have to pay attention to what it is not telling us.</p><p>In the face of a growing inequality crisis, GDP tells us nothing about the distribution of growth. When just 62 people have the same wealth as half the world’s population, where a country like Zambia can grow rapidly in GDP terms and yet can see increased levels of poverty, and where the 1% own more than everyone else combined, growing GDP simply hides the poverty within.</p><p>GDP tells us nothing about the real price we are paying for such growth. Cutting down a forest for timber adds to GDP, but what we don’t record is the loss to our wealth in terms of natural resources. We treat a planet at crisis point as an externality that can be shunted into a future generation. We continue to act as if we had the natural resources of several planets, not one.</p><p>You can read the rest of this excellent article in the below link:</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/04/let-s-ditch-the-economy-of-the-1-and-replace-it-with-a-human-economy/" target="_blank">Human Economy</a></p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>“What’s More Important? The Dignity of Women or another Billion Dollars for the Banksters”?https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/what-s-more-important-the-dignity-of-women-or-another-billion2015-12-01T01:35:31.000Z2015-12-01T01:35:31.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p></p><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028240457,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="400" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028240457,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028240457?profile=original" /></a></p><p></p><h2 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>Capitalism at Work. Widespread Hardship: “What’s More Important? The Dignity of Women or another Billion Dollars for the Banksters”?</strong></h2><p class="center"> </p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>Source:</strong></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong> Dr. Paul Craig Roberts</strong></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">Global Research, November 29, 2015</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p>Zero Hedge reports a story from “Keep Talking Greece” that first appeared in The Times.</p><p>According to the story, the plummeting living standards forced on the Greek people by German chancellor Merkel and the European banks have forced large numbers of young Greek women into prostitution.</p><p>The large increase in the number of women offering sexual services has dropped the price to 4 euros an hour. According to this cynical report in The London Times, that’s $4.24, enough for a cheese pie or a sandwich, the value that bankster-imposed austerity has placed on an hour’s use of a woman’s body.</p><p>When one reads a story such as this, one hopes it is a parody or a caricature. Although the London Times has fallen a long way, it is not yet the kind of newspaper that can be purchased at grocery store checkout counters.</p><p>The story gains credence from the websites in the US on which female university students advertise their availability as mistresses to men who have the financial means to help them with their expenses. From various news reports, mistress seems to be a main occupation of female students at high-cost universities such as NYU.</p><p>The NYU girls have it far better than the Greek ones. The mistress relationship is monogamous and can be long-lasting and loving. Prudes make an issue of the disparity in ages, but disparity in age was long a feature of upper class marriages. Prostitutes have large numbers of partners, each possibly carrying disease, and they receive nothing in return except cash. In Greece, if the report is correct, the payment is so low that the women cannot survive on the money beyond lunchtime.</p><p>This is capitalism at work. In the US the hardship comes from escalating tuition costs, with 75% of the university budget spent on administration, rather than on faculty or student aid, and from the lack of jobs available to graduates that pay enough to service the student loans. These days your waiter in the restaurant might be an adjunct or part-time university professor hoping to get a full-time job as an actor. As mistresses, the NYU girls will be doing better.</p><p>In Greece the hardship is imposed from outside the country by the European Union, which Greece foolishly joined, giving away its sovereignty in exchange for austerity. The banksters and their agents in the EU and German governments claim that the Greek people benefitted from the loans and, therefore, are responsible for paying back the loans.</p><p>But the loans were not made to the Greek people. The loans were made to corrupt Greek governments who were paid bribes by the lenders to accept the loans, and the proceeds often were used for purchases from the country from which the loan originated. For example, Greek governments were paid bribes to borrow money from German or other foreign banks in order to purchase German submarines. It is through this type of corruption that the Greek debt grew.</p><p>The story told by the financial media and neoliberal economists who shill for the banksters is that the Greek people irresponsibly borrowed the money and spent it on welfare for themselves, and having enjoyed the fruits of the loans don’t want to repay them. This story is a lie. But the lie serves to ensure that the Greek people are looted in order to make good the banks’ own mistakes in overlending. The banks got both the loan fees and the kickbacks from the submarine producers. (I am using submarine producers as a generic for the range of outside goods and services on which the loans were spent.)</p><p>In Greece the loans are being paid by money “saved” by cutting Greek pensions, education and social services, and public employment, and by money raised from selling off public assets such as ports, municipal water systems and protected islands. The cutbacks in pensions, education, social services and employment drain money from the economy, and the sale of public assets drains money from the government’s budget. Michael Hudson tells the story brilliantly in his new book, Killing The Host.</p><p>The result is widespread hardship, and the result of the hardship is that young Greek women have to sell themselves.</p><p>It is just as Marx, Engels, and Lenin said.</p><p>One would think that people everywhere would be outraged. But to most of those who commented on Zero Hedge. Those who represent the vaunted “Western Values” see nothing to be outraged about.</p><p><a href="http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-28/meanwhile-greece-price-prostitute-drops-">http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-11-28/meanwhile-greece-price-prostitute-drops-</a>€4-hour</p><p>The percentage of pro-Western Russians who look to the West for leadership must be rapidly approaching zero.</p><p>What’s more important? The dignity of women or another billion dollars for the banksters?</p><p>Western “civilization” has given its answer: Another billion dollars for the banksters.</p><p>Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books areThe Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.</p><p></p></div>“Buying Countries”, No Capital Controls for Oligarchs: Billionaire Warren Buffett Buys Greek Islandhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/buying-countries-no-capital-controls-for-oligarchs-billionaire2015-07-27T01:40:47.000Z2015-07-27T01:40:47.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028235491,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="244" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028235491,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028235491?profile=original" /></a></strong></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><strong>Enrique Suarez Presenting:</strong></h3><p></p><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><em><strong>“Buying Countries”, No Capital Controls for Oligarchs: Billionaire Warren Buffett Buys Greek Island</strong></em></h3><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">Source:</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">Michael Krieger</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;">Global Research, July 22, 2015</p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2015/07/21/no-capital-controls-for-oligarchs-warren-buffet-buys-greek-island/" target="_blank">Lliberty Blitzkrieg</a></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p><em>If you want to see what unrestrained parasitic financial oligarchy ultimately looks like, look no further than the humanitarian crisis in Greece turned unprecedented billionaire opportunity. With global wealth becoming systemically concentrated in the hands of “insiders,” empty flats bought for tens of millions of dollars in London and Manhattan no longer cut it. These guys have billions of dollars to burn, which means they need to start buying countries; or at least parts of countries, once they’ve been intentionally run into the ground via vulture financial colonialism.</em></p><p>Enter Warren Buffett. Sure, he’s a harmless old grandpa, just like yours. He loves cherry coke, hamburgers, Dairy Queen, America and, you know, Greek islands.</p><p>From <a href="http://europe.newsweek.com/warren-buffett-buys-greek-island-15m-330558" target="_blank"><em>Newsweek</em></a>:</p><blockquote><p><strong><em>Billionaire investor Warren Buffett has joined up with Italian real estate agent Alessandro Proto to purchase a Greek island off the coast of Athens.</em></strong></p><p><strong><em>Consistently ranked as one of the wealthiest men in the world, Buffett and Italian millionaire Proto, acquired the island of St Thomas for €15m last Thursday, Proto Enterprises confirmed today.</em></strong></p><p><em>Buffett, 84, who has a net worth of around €62.4bn, and Proto plan to build a real estate development on the island, according to The <a href="http://www.amna.gr/article/83660/O-Gouoren-Mpafet-kai-o-Alesantro-Proto-agorazoun-to-nisi-Agios-Thomas-ston-kolpo-tis-Aiginas" target="_blank">Athens-Macedonian News Agency</a> (ANA-mpa), who broke the story on Saturday.</em></p><p><em>A Proto representative told <a href="http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/unternehmen/griechenland-warren-buffett-kauft-insel-agios-thomas-a-1044357.html" target="_blank">Spiegel Online,</a> “Greece is currently very attractive for investment in the development of real estate.”</em></p><p><em>The website Public Islands Online markets Greek islands as the “ultimate status symbol, evoking images of sunglass sporting shipping magnates sipping champagne on the deck of enormous yachts. In reality, Greek islands are relatively affordable, costing as little as $2m [€1.8m] – less than a ski chalet in Aspen or a walk up on the Upper East side.”</em></p><p><strong><em>In light of Greece’s recent economic struggles and the declining strength of the euro against the dollar and the pound, Greek real estate is being seen as an increasingly attractive investment by international investors.</em></strong></p><p><em>Representatives for Buffett were unavailable for comment.</em></p></blockquote><p>Yes, they were busy plotting how best to fleece some more serfs. I’ve made my position on “Uncle Warren” very clear over the years. Here are a couple examples:</p><p>Of course, the ultimate FU to the Greek public will be when newly minted billionaire Lloyd Blankfein buys his very own Greek island. After all, Goldman Sachs played a crucial role in the entire debacle plaguing Greece. As the <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/25/AR2010022502183.html" target="_blank">Washington Post noted</a> back in 2010:</p><blockquote><p><em>The financial tumult now unsettling Europe came to Washington on Thursday, as <strong>Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said that the federal government is looking into the role U.S. banks may have played in the Greek fiscal crisis.</strong></em></p><p><em><strong>The Federal Reserve and Securities and Exchange Commission are seeking information about whether <a href="http://financial.washingtonpost.com/custom/wpost/html-qcn.asp?dispnav=business&mwpage=qcn&symb=GS&nav=el" target="_blank">Goldman Sachs</a> and other U.S. firms helped set up financial transactions over the past decade that effectively hid the amount of debt Greece was taking on.</strong> Another potential issue is whether banks and hedge funds, by taking big bets that Greece would default, are creating a self-fulfilling downward spiral for the Mediterranean nation.</em><em>“</em></p><p><em>We are looking into a number of questions related to Goldman Sachs and other companies and their derivatives arrangements with Greece,” Bernanke said, testifying before the Senate banking committee.</em></p><p><em><strong>Addressing concerns that financial firms have been engaging in trades to bet on a Greek default,</strong> Bernanke said that “using these instruments in a way that intentionally destabilizes a company or a country is counterproductive, and I’m sure the SEC will be looking into that.”</em></p></blockquote><p>It’s not counterproductive at all you buffoon. Five years later they are buying Greek islands on the cheap. Get ready, Spain, I hear you’ve got some nice beaches.</p><p></p></div>How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerfulhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/how-the-law-is-used-to-destroy-equality-and-protect-the-powerful2015-07-01T03:30:00.000Z2015-07-01T03:30:00.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233058,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="500" height="307" class="align-center" style="width:403px;height:272px;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233058,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028233058?profile=original" /></a></p><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4" style="color:#000000;"><strong>Enrique Suarez Presenting</strong></span></h3><p></p><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4" style="color:#000000;"><strong>How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful</strong></span></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4" style="color:#000000;"><strong>With Liberty and Justice for Some</strong></span></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;">Source:</h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;">Noam Chomsky & Glenn Greenwald</h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"> </h3><h3 class="left">The basis for power elite membership is institutional power, namely an influential position within a prominent private or public organization. One study of power elites in the USA under George W. Bush identified 7,314 institutional positions of power encompassing 5,778 individuals. A later study of US society found that the demographics of this elite group broke down as follows: Age Corporate leaders average about 60 years of age. The heads of foundations, law, education, and civic organizations average around 62 years of age. Government-sector members about 56.</h3><h3 class="left">Gender Women are barely represented among corporate leadership in the institutional elite and women only contribute roughly 20 percent in the political realm. They do appear more among top positions when it comes to cultural affairs, education, and foundations. Ethnicity White Anglo-Saxons dominate in the power elite, with Protestants representing about 80 percent of the top business leaders and about 73 percent of members of Congress. Education Nearly all the leaders are college-educated with almost half having advanced degrees.</h3><h3 class="left">About 54 percent of the big-business leaders and 42 percent of the government elite are graduates of just 12 heavily endowed, prestigious universities. Social Clubs Most holders of top position in the power elite possess exclusive membership in one or more social clubs. About a third belong to a small number of especially prestigious clubs in major cities like New York, Chicago, Boston, and D.C. In the 1970s an organized set of policies promoted reduced taxes, especially for the wealthy, and a steady corrosion of the welfare safety net.</h3><h3 class="left">Starting with legislation in the 1980s, the wealthy banking community successfully lobbied for reduced regulation. The wide range of financial and social capital accessible to the power elite gives their members heavy influence in economic and political decision making, allowing them to move toward attaining desired outcomes.</h3><h3 class="left">Sociologist Christopher Doob gives a hypothetical alternative stating that these elite individuals would consider themselves the overseers of the national economy, appreciating that it is not only a moral but a practical necessity to focus beyond their group interests. Doing so would hopefully alleviate various destructive conditions affecting large numbers of less affluent citizens. Mills determined that there is an "inner core" of the power elite involving individuals that are able to move from one seat of institutional power to another. They therefore have a wide range of knowledge and interests in many influential organizations, and are, as Mills describes, "professional go-betweens of economic, political, and military affairs."</h3><h3 class="left">Relentless expansion of capitalism and the globalizing of economic and military power binds leaders of the power elite into complex relationships with nation states that generate global-scale class divisions. Sociologist, Manuel Castells, writes in The Rise of the Network Society that contemporary globalization does not mean that "everything in the global economy is global."</h3><h3 class="left">So, a global economy becomes characterized by fundamental social inequalities with respect to "the level of integration, competitive potential and share of the benefits from economic growth." Castells cites a kind of "double movement" where on one hand, "valuable segments of territories and people" become "linked in the global networks of value making and wealth appropriation," while, on the other, "everything and everyone" that is not valued by established networks gets "switched off... and ultimately discarded."</h3><h3 class="left">The wide-ranging effects of global capitalism ultimately affect everyone on the planet as economies around the world come to depend on the functioning of global financial markets, technologies, trade and labor.</h3><h3 class="left"><strong>You can watch the entire presentation at:</strong> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHkOCvykI4I" target="_blank"><strong>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHkOCvykI4I</strong></a></h3><p></p></div>Pillage and Class Polarization: The Rise of “Criminal Capitalism”https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/pillage-and-class-polarization-the-rise-of-criminal-capitalism2015-06-12T00:37:09.000Z2015-06-12T00:37:09.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233678,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="274" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233678,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028233678?profile=original" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;">Enrique Suarez Presenting:</p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Pillage and Class Polarization: The Rise of “Criminal Capitalism”</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Source:</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Prof. James Petras</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;">Global Research, June 11, 2015</div><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p></p><p><em>About 75% of US employees work 40 hours or longer, the second longest among all OECD countries, exceeded only by Poland and tied with South Korea. In contrast, only 10% of Danish workers, 15% of Norwegian, 30% of French, 43% of UK and 50% of German workers work 40 or more hours. With the longest work day, US workers score lower on the ‘living well’ scale than most western European workers. </em></p><p><em><a title="petras" class="cboxElement" href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/petras.jpg"><img width="91" height="107" title="petras" class="size-full wp-image-5383458 alignright align-right" alt="" src="http://www.globalresearch.ca/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/petras.jpg" /></a>Moreover, despite those long workdays US employees receive the shortest paid holidays or vacation time (one to two weeks compared to the average of five weeks in Western Europe). US employees pay for the costliest health plans and their children face the highest university fees among the 34 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).</em></p><p><span style="font-size:small;">James Petras (right)</span></p><p>In class terms, US employees face the greatest jump in <span style="text-decoration:underline;">income inequalities</span> over the past decade, the longest period of wage and salary decline or stagnation (1970 to 2014) and the greatest collapse of private sector union membership, from 30% in 1950 down to 8% in 2014.</p><p>On the other hand, <span style="text-decoration:underline;">profits</span>, as a percentage of national income, have increased significantly. The share of income and profits going to the financial sector, especially the banks and investment houses, has increased at a faster rate than any other sector of the US economy.</p><p>There are two <span style="text-decoration:underline;">polar opposite trends</span>: Employees working longer hours, with costlier services and declining living standards while finance capitalists enjoy rapidly rising profits and incomes.</p><p>Paradoxically, these trends are <span style="text-decoration:underline;">not directly</span> based on greater ‘<span style="text-decoration:underline;">workplace exploitation’</span> in the US.</p><p>The historic employee-finance capitalist polarization is the direct result of the grand success of the trillion dollar <span style="text-decoration:underline;">financial swindles</span>, the tax payer-funded trillion dollar Federal bailouts of the<span style="text-decoration:underline;">crooked bankers,</span> and the illegal bank manipulation of interest rates. These uncorrected and unpunished crimes have driven up the costs of living and producing for employees and their employers.</p><p>Financial ‘rents’ (the bankers and brokers are ‘rentiers’ in this economy) drive up the costs of production for non-financial capital (manufacturing). Non-financial capitalists resort to reducing wages, cutting benefits and extending working hours for their employees, in order to maintain their own profits.</p><p>In other words, pervasive, enduring and systematic large-scale financial criminality is a major reason why US employees are working longer and receiving less<span style="text-decoration:underline;"> </span>– the ‘trickle down’ effect of mega-swindles committed by finance capital.</p><p><strong>Mega-Swindles, Leading Banks and Complicit State Regulators</strong></p><p>Mega-swindles, involving <span style="text-decoration:underline;">trillions of dollars</span>, are routine practices involving the top <span style="text-decoration:underline;">fifty banks</span>, trading houses, currency speculators, management fund firms and foreign exchange traders.</p><p>These ‘white collar’ crimes have hurt <span style="text-decoration:underline;">hundreds of millions</span>of investors and credit-card holders, millions of mortgage debtors, thousands of pension funds and most industrial and service firms that depend on bank credit to meet payrolls, to finance capital expansion and technological upgrades and raw materials.</p><p>Big banks, which have been ‘convicted and fined’ for mega-swindles, include Citi Bank, Bank of America, HSBC, UBS, JP Morgan, Barclay, Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Scotland, Deutsch Bank and <span style="text-decoration:underline;">forty </span>other ‘leading’ <span style="text-decoration:underline;">financial institutions</span>.</p><p>The mega-swindlers have repeatedly engaged in a great variety of misdeeds, including accounting fraud, insider trading, fraudulent issue of mortgage based securities and the laundering of hundreds of billions of illegal dollars for Colombian, Mexican, African and Asian drug and human traffickers.</p><p>They have rigged the London Interbank Official Rate (<em>LIBOR</em>), which serves as the global interest benchmark to which hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial contracts are tied. By raising <em>LIBOR</em>, the financial swindlers have defrauded hundreds of millions of mortgage and credit-card holders, student loan recipients and pensions.</p><p><span style="text-decoration:underline;">Bloomberg News</span> (5/20/2015) reported on an ongoing swindle involving the manipulation of the multi-trillion-dollar International Swaps and Derivatives Association (<em>ISDA</em>) fix, a global interest rate benchmark used by banks, corporate treasurers and money managers to determine borrowing costs and to value much of the $381 trillion of outstanding interest rate swaps.</p><p>The <span style="text-decoration:underline;">Financial Times</span> (5/23/15, p. 10) reported how the top seven banks engaged in <span style="text-decoration:underline;">manipulating fraudulent</span> information to their clients, practiced illegal insider trading to profit in the foreign exchange market (<em>forex</em>), whose daily average turnover volume for 2013 exceeded $5 trillion dollars.</p><p>These seven convicted banks ended up paying less than $10 billion in fines, which is less than 0.05% of their daily turnover. No banker or high executive ever went to jail, despite undermining the security of millions of retail investors, pensioners and thousands of companies.</p><p><strong>The Direct Impact of Financial Swindles on Declining Living Standards</strong></p><p>Each and every major financial swindle has had a perverse <span style="text-decoration:underline;">ripple effect</span> throughout the entire economy. This is especially the case where the negative consequences have spread <span style="text-decoration:underline;">downward</span> through local banks, local manufacturing and service industries to employees, students and the self-employed.</p><p>The most obvious example of the downward ripple effect was the so-called ‘<em>sub-prime mortgage’</em> swindle. Big banks deliberately sold worthless, fraudulent <span style="text-decoration:underline;">mortgage-backed securities</span>(<em>MBS</em>) and <em>collateralized debt obligation</em> (<em>CDO</em>) to smaller banks, pension funds and local investors, which eventually foreclosed on overpriced houses causing low income mortgage holders to lose their down payments (amounting to most of their savings).</p><p>While the effects of the swindle spread outward and downward, the US Treasury <span style="text-decoration:underline;">propped up </span>the mega-swindlers with a trillion-dollar bailout in working people’s tax money. They anointed their mega-give-away as the bail out for<em> ‘banks that are just too big to fail</em>”! They transferred funds from the public treasury for social services to the swindlers.</p><p>In effect, the banks profited from their widely exposed crimes while US employees lost their jobs, homes, savings and social services. As the US Treasury pumped trillions of dollars into the coffers of the criminal banks (especially on Wall Street), the builders, major construction companies and manufacturers faced an unprecedented credit squeeze and laid off millions of workers, and reduced wages and increased the hours of un-paid work.</p><p>Service employees in consumer industries were hit hard as wages and salaries declined or remained frozen. The costs of the<span style="text-decoration:underline;">FOREX, LIBOR and ISDA</span> fix swindles’ fell heavily on big business, which passed the pain onto labor: cutting pension and health coverage, hiring millions of ‘contingent or temp’ workers at minimum wages with no benefits.</p><p>The bank bailouts forced the Treasury to shift funds from ‘job-creating’ social programs and national infrastructure investment to the <em>FIRE</em> (finance, insurance and real estate) sector with its <span style="text-decoration:underline;">highly concentrated income structure</span>.</p><p>As a result of the increasing concentration of wealth among the financial swindlers, inequalities in income grew; wages and salaries were frozen or reduced and manufacturers outsourced production, resulting in declines in production.</p><p>Employees, suffering from the loss of income brought on by the mega-swindles, found that they were working longer hours for less pay and fewer benefits. Productivity suffered. With the total breakdown of the ‘<em>capitalist rules of the game’</em>, investors lost confidence and trust in the system. Mega-swindles eroded ‘confidence’ between investors and traders, and made a mockery of any link between performance at work and rewards. This severed the <span style="text-decoration:underline;">nexus</span> between highly motivated workers, engaged in ‘<em>hard work, long hours’</em> and rising living standards, and between investment and productivity.</p><p>As a result, profits in the finance sector grew while the domestic economy floundered and living standards stagnated.</p><p><strong>Financial Impunity: Regulatees Controlling the Regulators</strong></p><p>Despite the <span style="text-decoration:underline;">proliferation</span> of mega-swindles and their pervasive ripple effects throughout the economy and society, none of the dozens of federal or state regulatory agencies <span style="text-decoration:underline;">intervened</span> to stop the swindle before it undermined the domestic economy. No CEO or banker was ever arrested <span style="text-decoration:underline;">for their part in the swindle of trillions</span>. The regulators only reacted after trillions had ‘disappeared’ and swindles were ‘a <em>done deal’</em>. The <span style="text-decoration:underline;">impunity of the swindlers</span> in planning and executing the pillage of hundreds of millions of employees, taxpayers and mortgage holders was because the federal and state regulatory agencies are populated by ‘regulatory administrators’ who <span style="text-decoration:underline;">came from</span> or <span style="text-decoration:underline;">aspired to join</span> the financial sector they were tasked with ‘regulating’.</p><p>Most of the high officials appointed to lead the regulatory agencies had been selected by the ‘Lords of Wall Street, Frankfurt, the City of London or Zurich.’ Appointees are chosen on the basis of their willingness to <span style="text-decoration:underline;">enable</span> financial swindles. It therefore came as no surprise on May 28 2015 when US President Obama approved the appointment of Andrew Donahue, Managing Director and Associate General Council for the repeatedly felonious, mega-swindling banking house of Goldman Sachs to be the ‘Chief of Staff’ of the Security and Exchange Commission. His career has been typical of the Washington-Wall Street ‘<em>Revolving Door’</em>.</p><p>Only after fraud and swindles evoked the nationwide public fury of mortgage holders, investors and finance companies did the regulators ‘<em>investigate’</em> the crimes and even then not a single major banker was <span style="text-decoration:underline;">jailed</span>, not a single major bank was closed down.</p><p>There were a few low-level bond traders and bank employees who were fired or jailed as scapegoats. The banks paid puny (for them) fines, which they passed on to their customers. Despite pledges to ‘mend their ways’ the bankers concocted <span style="text-decoration:underline;">new schemes</span> with their windfalls of billions of Federal ‘bailout’ money while the <span style="text-decoration:underline;">regulators looked on</span> or polished their CV’s for the next pass through the ‘revolving door’.</p><p>Every top official in Treasury, Commerce and Trade, and every regulator in the Security Exchange Commission (SEC) who ‘retired to the private sector’ has ended up working for the same mega-criminal banks and finance houses they had investigated, regulated and ‘slapped on the wrist’.</p><p>As one banker, who insists on anonymity, told me: ‘The most successful swindlers are those who investigated financial transgressions’.</p><p><strong>Conclusion</strong></p><p>Mega-swindles define the nature of contemporary capitalism. The profits and power of financial capital is not the outcome of ‘market forces’. They are the result of a system of criminal behavior that <span style="text-decoration:underline;">pillages</span> the Treasury, exploits the producers and consumers, evicts homeowners and robs taxpayers.</p><p>The mega swindlers represent much less than 1% of the class structure. Yet they hold over 40% of personal wealth in this country and control over 80% of <span style="text-decoration:underline;">capital liquidity</span>.</p><p>They grow inexorably rich and richer, even as the rest of the economy wallows in crisis and stagnation. Their swindles send powerful ripples across the national economy, which ultimately freeze or reduce the income of the skilled (middle class) employees and undermine the living conditions for poor working-class whites, and especially under and unemployed Afro-American and Latino American young workers.</p><p>Efforts to ‘<em>moralize’</em> capital have failed repeatedly since the regulators are controlled by those they claim to ‘regulate’.</p><p>The rare arrest and prosecution of any among the current tribe of mega-swindlers would only results in their being replaced by new swindlers. The problem is systemic and requires deep structural changes.</p><p>The only answer is to build a political movement independent of the two party system, willing to nationalize the banks and to pass legislation outlawing derivatives, forex trading and other unnatural parasitic speculative activities.</p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:left;"></p></div>Sowing the GMO Seeds of Depopulation?https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/sowing-the-gmo-seeds-of-depopulation2015-05-24T17:54:07.000Z2015-05-24T17:54:07.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028234687,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="400" height="242" class="align-center" style="width:146px;height:155px;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028234687,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028234687?profile=original" /></a>Enrique Suarez Presenting:</p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><h2 style="text-align:center;">Sowing the GMO Seeds of Depopulation?</h2><p></p><div class="meta"><div class="post-info"><div class="author" style="text-align:center;">Source: Colin Todhunter</div><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;">Global Research, May 23, 2015</div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:left;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:left;"><p></p><p id="yiv0698652450yui_3_16_0_1_1432134738978_68554"><em>If physical violence is to be used only as a final resort, a dominant class must seek to gain people’s consent if it is to govern and control a population. It must attempt to legitimize its position in the eyes of the ruled over by achieving a kind of ‘consented coercion’ that disguises the true fist of power. This can be achieved by many means and over the years commentators from Gramsci to Althusser and Chomsky have described how it may be done.</em></p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46384">However, one of the most basic and arguably effective forms of control is eugenics/ depopulation, a philosophy that includes reducing the reproductive capacity of the ‘less desirable’ sections of a population.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46376">There is a growing fear that eugenics is being used to get rid of sections of the world population that are ‘surplus to requirements’. And it is a legitimate fear, not least because there is a sordid history of forced/covert sterilizations carried out on those deemed ‘undesirable’ or ‘surplus to requirements’, which reflects the concerns of eugenicists who have operated at the highest levels of policy making. From early 20<sup><font size="2">th</font></sup> century ‘philanthropists’ and the Nazis to the nascent genetics movement and rich elites, by one means or another ridding the planet of the great unwanted masses has always been fairly high on the ‘to do’ list.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46383">Millionaire US media baron Ted Turner believes a global population of two billion would be ideal, and billionaire Bill Gates has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to improve access to contraception in the Global South.</p><p>Gates has also purchased shares in Monsanto valued at more than $23 million at the time of purchase. His agenda is to help Monsanto get their genetically modified organisms (GMOs) into Africa on a grand scale. In 2001, Monsanto and Du Pont bought a small biotech company called Epicyte that had created a gene that basically makes the male sperm sterile and the female egg unreceptive.</p><p>Bill Gates’ father has long been involved with Planned Parenthood:</p><blockquote><p>“When I was growing up, my parents were always involved in various volunteer things. My dad was head of Planned Parenthood. And it was very controversial to be involved with that.”</p></blockquote><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46393">The above quotation comes from a 2003 interview with Bill Gates.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46392">Planned Parenthood was founded on the concept that most human beings are reckless breeders. Gates senior is co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a guiding light behind the vision and direction of the Gates Foundation, which is heavily focused on promoting GMOs in Africa via its financing of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA).</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46391">The Gates Foundation has given at least $264.5 million to AGRA. According to a report published by La Via Campesina in 2010, 70 percent of AGRA’s grantees in Kenya work directly with Monsanto and nearly 80 percent of the Gates Foundation funding is devoted to biotechnology. The report also explains that the Gates Foundation has pledged $880 million to create the Global Agriculture and Food Security Program (GAFSP), which is a heavy promoter of GMOs.</p><p>The issue of genetic engineering cannot be fully understood without looking at the global spread of US power. The oil-rich Rockefeller dynasty helped promote the ‘green revolution’, which allowed the US to colonise indigenous agriculture across large parts of the planet. By projecting power through the WTO, IMF and World Bank, Washington has been able to make food and agriculture central to its geopolitical strategy of securing global dominance.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46386">As with the control of food and agriculture, the US also regards depopulation as a potential geo-strategic tool (see <a href="http://www.rense.com/general59/kissingereugenics.htm" target="_blank">this</a>) in the quest for control of global resources. What better way to achieve this via a (GM) tampered-with food system that US agribusiness has increasingly come to dominate?</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46385">What better way to achieve this than with ‘spermicidal corn’ for example? In Mexico, there is concern about biopharmaceutical corn. Some years ago, Silvia Ribeiro, of the ETC organization, stated:</p><blockquote><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46377">“The potential of spermicidal corn as a biological weapon is outrageous, since it easily interbreeds with other varieties, is capable of going undetected and could lodge itself at the very core of indigenous and farming cultures. We have witnessed the execution of repeated sterilization campaigns performed against indigenous communities. This method is certainly much more difficult to trace.”</p></blockquote><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46378">While most of the literature on GMOs is concerned with the impacts of crops that have been genetically modified to deal with pests or herbicide spraying, there are very worrying trends regarding plants being genetically modified to contain industrial pharmaceuticals or possess possible contraceptive traits.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46379">The world’s problems are not being caused by overpopulation, as Turner states, but by greed and a system of ownership and global power relations that ensures wealth flows from bottom to top. The issue at hand should not be about stopping population growth in its tracks but about changing a socially divisive global economic system and the unsustainable depletion of natural resources.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46390">Millionaires like Ted Turner believe it should be a case of carry on consuming regardless, as long as the population is cut. This is the ideology of the rich who regard the rest of humanity as a problem to be ‘dealt with.’ He says there are ”too many people using too much stuff.” He couldn’t be more wrong. For instance, developing nations account for more than 80 percent of world population, but consume only about one third of the world’s energy. US citizens constitute 5 percent of the world’s population but consume 24 percent of the world’s energy.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46380">We should be weary of a politically and militarily well-connected biotech sector which has ownership of technology that allows for the genetic engineering of food and a gene that could be used (or already is) for involuntary sterilization. From covert vaccination campaigns to germ warfare and geo-engineering, sections of the population around the world have too often been sprayed on, injected or exposed to harmful processes to induce sterility, infertility or to merely see the outcome of exposures to radiation, bacteria or some virus. It is for good reason some conflate GMOs and bio-terror.</p><p id="yui_3_16_0_1_1432128968315_46381">Herbert Marcuse once summed up the problem facing us by saying that the capabilities — both intellectual and technological — of contemporary society are immeasurably greater than before. As a result, the scope of society’s domination over the individual is also immeasurably greater than ever before. That domination comes in increasingly sinister forms.</p><p></p><p>Link: <a href="http://www.globalresearch.ca/sowing-the-gmo-seeds-of-depopulation/5450801">http://www.globalresearch.ca/sowing-the-gmo-seeds-of-depopulation/5450801</a></p><p></p><p></p></div></div></div></div>The Founding Fathers Fought Against Inequalityhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/the-founding-fathers-fought-against-inequality2015-05-18T03:43:06.000Z2015-05-18T03:43:06.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233475,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="166" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233475,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028233475?profile=original" /></a><span class="font-size-3"><strong>Enrique Suarez Presenting:</strong></span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><div class="author"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-3">George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and James Madison Slammed Runaway Inequality</span></strong></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="author" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong><font size="2">Source: Washington's Blog</font></strong></span></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"><font size="2"> </font></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;">Global Research, April 22, 2015</div></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:left;"><p></p><p><em>T</em><em>he primary author of the Constitution – and later president – James Madison wrote:</em></p><blockquote><p></p><p>The great object [of political parties] should be to combat the evil: 1. By establishing a political equality among all. 2. By <strong>withholding unnecessary opportunities from a few, to increase the inequality of property, by an immoderate, and especially an unmerited, accumulation of riches</strong>. 3. By the silent operation of laws, which, without violating the rights of property, reduce extreme wealth towards a state of mediocrity, and raise extreme indigence towards a state of comfort.</p></blockquote><p>He also said:</p><blockquote><p>Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. <strong>The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud</strong>, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.</p></blockquote><p>Nine months before his inauguration as America’s first president, George Washington wrote:</p><blockquote><p>[America] “will not be less advantageous to the happiness of the lowest class of people, because of the <strong>equal distribution of property</strong>.”</p></blockquote><p>Thomas Jefferson wrote when visiting France:</p><blockquote><p>… unequal division of property which occasions the numberless instances of wretchedness which I had observed in this country and is to be observed all over Europe. The property of this country is absolutely concentered in a very few hands, having revenues of from half a million of guineas a year downwards. These employ the flower of the country as servants, some of them having as many as 200 domestics, not labouring. They employ also a great number of manufacturers, and tradesmen, and lastly the class of labouring husbandmen. But after all these comes the most numerous of all the classes, that is, the poor who cannot find work. I asked myself what could be the reason that so many should be permitted to beg who are willing to work, in a country where there is a very considerable proportion of uncultivated lands? These lands are kept idle mostly for the aske of game. It should seem then that it must be because of the enormous wealth of the proprietors which places them above attention to the increase of their revenues by permitting these lands to be laboured.</p><p><strong>I am conscious that an equal division of property is impracticable. But the consequences of this enormous inequality producing so much misery to the bulk of mankind, legislators cannot invent too many devices for subdividing property, only taking care to let their subdivisions go hand in hand with the natural affections of the human mind.</strong>The descent of property of every kind therefore to all the children, or to all the brothers and sisters, or other relations in equal degree is a politic measure, and a practicable one.</p><p><strong>Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise.</strong> <strong>Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right.</strong> </p><p>The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on. If, for the encouragement of industry we allow it to be appropriated, we must take care that other employment be furnished to those excluded from the appropriation. If we do not the fundamental right to labour the earth returns to the unemployed. It is too soon yet in our country to say that every man who cannot find employment but who can find uncultivated land, shall be at liberty to cultivate it, paying a moderate rent. But <strong>it is not too soon to provide by every possible means that as few as possible shall be without a little portion of land.</strong> The small landholders are the most precious part of a state.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>Alexander Hamilton argued for widespread ownership of assets, warning in 1782:</p><blockquote><p>Whenever a discretionary power is lodged in any set of men over the property of their neighbors, they will abuse it.</p></blockquote><p>Hamilton argued that a strong middle class was needed to become energetic customers of businesses in the entire economy.</p><p>John Adams feared that “monopolies of land” would destroy the nation and that an oligarchy arising out of inequality would manipulate voters, creating “a system of subordination to all… The capricious will of one or a very few” dominating the rest.</p><p>Adams wrote that – unless constrained – “the rich and the proud” would deploy economic and political power that “will destroy all the equality and liberty, with the consent and acclamations of the people themselves.” He therefore favored “preserving the balance of power on the side of equal liberty and public virtue (by making) … the acquisition of land easy to every member of society.”</p><p>When he was elderly, Adams wrote that the goal of the democratic government was not to help the wealthy and powerful but to achieve “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.”</p><p>Moreover:</p><blockquote><p>It wasn’t just James Madison and John Adams. Other be-wigged early presidents of the U.S. and half the crew on Mt. Rushmore — George Washington and Thomas Jefferson — believed that <strong>U.S. democracy would work best if citizens had a broad-based ownership stake in the economy. They too feared that extreme property inequality would prevent America from fulfilling its promise</strong>.</p></blockquote><h3>Why Too Much Inequality Goes Against Conservative Values</h3><p></p><p>More than half of American conservatives think we have too much inequality. The growing disgust among conservatives towards the runaway inequality in America is rooted in history.</p><p>After all, the Founding Fathers fought for freedom from an oppressive central bank which sucked the prosperity out of the economy, but the Federal Reserve’s policies have created inequality even worse than experienced by slaves in Colonial America in 1774.</p><p>The Founding Fathers warned against standing armies, saying that they destroy freedom. And they warned against financing wars with debt. But according to Nobel prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, the U.S. debt for the Iraq war could be as high as $<strong><em>5</em></strong> trillion dollars (or <em>$<strong>6</strong> </em>trillion dollars according to a study by Brown University.)</p><p>And the Founding Fathers also launched the Revolutionary War because the British government was engaging in crony capitalism (which constituted taxation without representation), instead of letting the colonists have a shot at free market competition. The modern American authorities are doing the same thing.</p><p>Likewise, the “father of free market capitalism” – Adam Smith – railed against monopolies, supported regulation of banks and the financial sector … and said that inequality should not be a taboo subject.</p><p>The well-known Greek historian Plutarch said 1,900 years ago:</p><blockquote><p>An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.</p></blockquote><p>Libertarian champion Ron Paul says that the system is rigged for the rich and against the poor and the middle class:</p><p></p><p>In fact, there are at least 6 solid<em> conservative</em> reasons – based upon conservative <em>values</em> – for reducing runaway inequality.</p><p></p><p>We’re <em>not</em> calling for redistributing wealth from the rich. After all, Jefferson said:</p><blockquote><p>To take from one, because it is thought that his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, —the guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry, & the fruits acquired by it.’</p></blockquote><p>But we do support clawing back ill-gotten gains from criminals under well-established fraud principles:</p><blockquote><p>The government could use existing laws to force ill-gotten gains to be disgorged [and] fraudulent transfers to be voided …</p></blockquote><p>We’re mainly talking about stopping <em>further redistribution</em> from Main Street to Wall Street. As Robert Shiller said in 2009:</p><blockquote><p>And it’s not like we want to level income. I’m not saying spread the wealth around, which got Obama in trouble. But I think, I would hope that this would be a time for a national consideration about policies that would focus on restraining any possible furtherincreases in inequality.</p></blockquote><p>For example, if we stop bailing out the Wall Street welfare queens, the big banks would focus more on traditional lending and less on speculative casino gambling. Indeed, if we break up the big banks, it will increase the ability of smaller banks to make loans to Main Street, which will level the playing field.</p><p>We don’t even have to use government power to break up the banks … if the government just stops propping them up, they’ll collapse on their own. Indeed, many Republicans have pointed out that the big banks would fail on their own if the government stopped bailing them out.</p><p>And using <em>current</em> fraud laws would do the trick in prosecuting Wall Street criminality. These are all solidly conservative principles.</p><p>After all, bad government policy is responsible for the medieval, king-and-serf levels of inequality and social mobility which are destroying our economy.</p><p>It is also undermining America’s geopolitical power.</p><p>Every conservative (and liberal) should be <em>disgusted</em> by those results.</p><p>Postscript: Madison is also reputed to have said:</p><blockquote><p>We are free today substantially but <strong>the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few</strong>. A republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when that day comes, <strong>when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust</strong> the laws of the nation to the changed conditions.</p></blockquote><p></p><p>However, the quote has not been authenticated in Madison’s records.</p><p></p><p></p></div></div>World’s Richest Eighty People Own the same Amount as World’s Bottom Fifty Percenthttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/world-s-richest-eighty-people-own-the-same-amount-as-world-s2015-05-09T22:22:43.000Z2015-05-09T22:22:43.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028232268,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="88" height="125" class="align-center" style="width:177px;height:165px;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028232268,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028232268?profile=original" /></a><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028232096,original{{/staticFileLink}}"></a>Presented by Enrique Suarez</span></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3">Source: Eric Zuesse</span></p><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;">Global Research, May 09, 2015</div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:center;"></div><div class="grDate" style="text-align:left;"><p><em>Oxfam’s recent report, <a href="https://www.oxfam.org/sites/www.oxfam.org/files/file_attachments/ib-wealth-having-all-wanting-more-190115-en.pdf" target="_blank">“WEALTH: HAVING IT ALL AND WANTING MORE”</a> contains shocking figures that the press haven’t sufficiently publicized; so, the findings and the reliability of their sources will be discussed here. The results will then be related to the central political debate now going on in the U.S. Presidential contests for 2016, which is about equality and inequality.</em></p><p><strong>First, the findings:</strong></p><p>1. The richest 80 individuals own as much as do all of the poorest half of humanity.</p><p>2. During 2009-2014, the wealth of the 80 richest people doubled, yet the wealth of the bottom 50% declined slightly.</p><p><strong>Now, the sources:</strong></p><p>These data are calculated from <a href="http://www.forbes.com/billionaires/list/" target="_blank"><em>Forbes</em> magazine</a>, regarding the world’s richest individuals, and from the <a href="http://economics.uwo.ca/people/davies_docs/global-wealth-databook-2014-v2.pdf" target="_blank"><em>Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014</em></a>, regarding the global wealth-distribution.</p><p><strong>The source on the richest 80:</strong></p><p>The <em>Forbes</em> list is one of two such lists, the other being <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/" target="_blank">Bloomberg</a>. The two are generally in rather close agreement, but sometimes disagree enormously. For example, as of 8 May 2015, <em>Forbes</em> shows Sweden’s Ingvar Kamprad, the owner of Ikea, as #8 owning $43.1B, but Bloomberg shows him as #497 owning $3.5B.</p><p>Furthermore, <em>Newsweek</em> on March 2nd headlined <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/why-putin-isnt-forbes-billionaires-list-310818" target="_blank">“Why Putin Isn’t on ‘Forbes’ Billionaires List,”</a> and reported that,“<em>Forbes</em> excludes members of royal families and ‘dictators who derive their fortunes entirely as a result of their position of power.’ Although it details this caveat, the magazine offered limited insight into the exact reason Putin was left off. When asked about Putin, a spokeswoman for <em>Forbes</em> told <em>Newsweek</em>: ‘Vladimir Putin is not on the list because we have not been able to verify his ownership of assets worth $1 billion or more’ and cited the methodology. The spokeswoman and [Assistant Managing Editor Kerry] Dolan did not comment directly as to whether the magazine considered Putin a dictator, and thus exempted him from the list by this classification. A reporter who worked on the list did not reply to a request for comment.” So: royals, and “dictators,” are both left off the list. Also: Dolan said that the magazine attempts to obtain the cooperation of listees but that “some cooperate; others don’t.”</p><p><em>Forbes</em> <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2014/03/26/meet-the-richest-people-in-the-middle-east/" target="_blank">itself</a> says that,</p><blockquote><p>“We do not include royal family members or dictators who derive their fortunes entirely as a result of their position of power, nor do we include royalty who, often with large families, control the riches in trust for their nation.”</p></blockquote><p>This means the wealthy royal families of the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries are not eligible for our global wealth ranking. (These monarchs, like Khalifa bin Zayed Al-Nahyan and Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud, land on our list of The World’s Most Powerful People.)”</p><p>Consequently, the <em>Forbes</em> ranking is quite unreliable; and, on top of that, it is methodologically opaque. Leaving royalty off of their list is automatically excluding the royalty in England, Saudi Arabia, and other countries, where those people might well be the richest ones in their nation, if not the richest people in the entire world.</p><p>The <em>Forbes</em> ranking is thus untrustworthy, because it automatically excludes entire groups of people which might include many who are wealthier than any who are on their list. However, all that this means is that many people might exist who are even wealthier than the ones that show up as being among the top 80 on the <em>Forbes</em> list. Consequently, the <em>Forbes</em> list systematically <em>under-</em>states the wealth of the people who are actually the world’s 80 richest. The richest 80 could conceivably even be an entirely different list. Therefore, perhaps the richest 80 own far more than do the poor half of Mankind. But they almost certainly don’t own less than do the poor half of Mankind. In any case, they own <em>at least</em> as much as do the lower half.</p><p><strong>The source on the global wealth-distribution:</strong></p><p>The source that’s used to calculate the amount of personal wealth in the entire world and its nation-by-nation distribution, Credit Suisse, is overwhelmingly regarded as the most thorough that exists on this subject. Its research-team was selected by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Shorrocks" target="_blank">Anthony Shorrocks</a>, who had long headed the UN’s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Institute_for_Development_Economics_Research" target="_blank">World Institute for Development Economic Research</a>, which is the leading research institute on global wealth-distribution.</p><p>However, yet again, the available data exclude a lot at the very top. For example, since the Saudi and other royals and dictators are disappeared from even the pretense of being calculated for possible inclusion into world’s-richest lists, the wealth-distributions for many Arabic and other totalitarian countries — and for constitutional monarchies such as in Norway, Netherlands, UK, Morocco, and Jordan — are necessarily based on much guesswork. Consequently, global wealth-inequality is being systematically underestimated, even in the best available source. Yet, even so, what can be publicly determined about global wealth-inequality is staggering:</p><p>The <em>Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014</em> presents on its page 98, a global wealth pyramid, which indicates that the world’s richest 0.7% (35 million people) own $115.9 trillion, while the poorest 99.3% (4,665 million people) own $147.3 trillion. It also shows that the richest 8.6% own $224.5T (trillion), while the poorest 91.4% own only $38.7T. (Or, in other words: the richest 8.6% own 5.8 times as much as do the poorest 91.4%.)</p><p>Consequently, if the transfer of wealth from the many to the few is to continue, then the main way for that to happen will need to be by the super-rich receiving their added wealth from the lesser-rich, because the percentage of wealth that exists amongst the non-rich — the lower 91.4% — is only 17% of the globe’s total wealth, which isn’t much; and, even if all of that were to go to the richest 8.6%, it still would increase their current $224.5T to $263.2T, a 17% rise. However, from 2009 to now, the wealth of the richest 80 humans has actually more than doubled; so, even a 17% rise would be far less than the 80 richest are accustomed to — especially over such a multi-year time-period as was 2009-2014. Those 80 people would then be feeling shortchanged.</p><p>This is why the richest 80 people will need to be getting their increases, in the future, mainly from the richest 8.6%. Wall Street and other major financial centers are perhaps in the best position to achieve that.</p><p>The <em>Credit Suisse Global Wealth Databook 2014</em> presents, on page 124, its categorization of countries according to equality-inequality, and they apply for this purpose a methodology that minimizes the distortive influences such as have been mentioned here. Here is their resultant listing:</p><p></p><p><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028232096,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="615" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028232096,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028232096?profile=original" /></a></span></p><p>As is clear there, the United States is listed in the highest-inequality category; and, so, no reasonable question exists that inequality is even more extreme here than it is in most of the world’s countries.</p><p><a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/04/leading-economists-corrupt-just-mind-blowingly-ignorant.html" target="_blank">The way that U.S. President Barack Obama and his economic advisors have dealt with this is to say that what needs fixing in the U.S. isn’t economic inequality itself but instead inequality of economic opportunity — as if the latter doesn’t depend upon the former. It’s impossible to increase equality of economic opportunity unless economic equality is increased.</a> America’s politicians lie through their teeth, because they’re financed — in both Parties — by the super-rich. The only difference between the two Parties is that the Republicans lie by saying that America’s extreme economic inequality is okay and that government action to reduce it merely increases inequality of economic opportunity — something that presupposes what it pretends to be concluding, which is that government has no constructive role to play in this matter. They’re all hoaxters. But the American public senses this, even if only vaguely. They sense that the problem is real, but they don’t know that the Democratic Party’s approach to the problem since the time when Bill Clinton became President in 1993 is itself fraudulent and a sell-out to the super-rich.</p><p><strong>The resultant political debate in the U.S.:</strong></p><p>On May 4th, Gallup headlined <a href="http://www.gallup.com/poll/182987/americans-continue-say-wealth-distribution-unfair.aspx?version=print" target="_blank">“Americans Continue to Say U.S. Wealth Distribution Is Unfair,”</a> and reported that, in response to the question, “Do you feel that the distribution of money and wealth in this country today is fair?”</p><p>63% say no, and in 1985 it was 60% saying no to that question. The highest percentage saying no was 68% right before the 2008 crash, and the lowest was 58% immediately after that crash. By 56% to 34%, Republicans right now are saying that the wealth-distribution <em>is</em> fair. By 86% to 12%, Democrats say that it’s not. (Among the overall population, 63% say it’s <em>un</em>fair, and 31% say it’s fair. That’s a two-to-one margin.) The poorer a person was in Gallup’s study, the likelier he or she was to say it’s “unfair.” The richer he was, the likelier to say “fair.” In other words: only at the very financial top is the belief commonly held that the existing wealth-distribution is “fair.” However, Republicans, of any amount of wealth, think that it’s “fair”: virtually all Republicans agree with the very rich about the fairness of the wealth-distribution, and virtually all <em>non</em>-Republicans don’t agree with that. (The only problem for non-Republicans is how to solve it.)</p><p>The only U.S. Presidential candidate who focuses, and stands clearly, on the side of this issue that says it’s “unfair” (which, as was just pointed out, Gallup finds to be by two-to-one, the norm) is Bernie Sanders, who is running in the Democratic Party. Unlike Obama and the Clintons, he acknowledges that it’s the basic problem, and that shunting it off onto “equality of economic opportunity” is essentially fraudulent. All of the other candidates are raising their campaign-funds from the top 1% of America’s wealth-pyramid, who are the very people the likeliest to believe that the present wealth-distribution is fair. Those candidates are raising their campaign-funds from the few people who own almost everything that there is to own, and these are also the people who have the most to lose. Senator Sanders is raising his campaign-funds from the many people who own almost nothing. While other candidates need to serve the rich, Sanders needs to run an authentically grass-roots campaign, which can defeat far-better-financed opponents, or he otherwise stands no real chance of winning.</p><p>This situation is called ‘democracy’ in the United States, but other terms are used for it in other countries. <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/04/14/us-oligarchy-not-democracy-says-scientific-study" target="_blank">The only scientific study that has been done of the question of whether the U.S. is a democracy has found that it definitely is not.</a> In order to make it one, profound change would be required. However, America’s richest need to convince America’s public that the nation already is a democracy, because, otherwise, America’s public won’t continue to accept rule by the super-rich — the people who finance almost all major politicians and who benefit from the current dictatorship. And that would cause the public to vote against any candidate who is receiving most of his financial support from the super-rich, which is almost all candidates. So: the only possible way to overcome any such tendency of the public to vote against the interests of the rich is to distract the public from that entire issue, onto personalities and other such distractions.</p><p>Consequently, it is to be expected that, in the 2016 contests, the best-financed candidates will be promoted by advertisements and issues that distract and deceive, instead of inform or educate, the public. That will be a contest between well-financed lies, and poorly financed truths. Perhaps by Election Day, the poorly financed truths will have been totally drowned-out. That way would lead to hellish future for the United States.</p><p>The 2016 contests will be of major historical importance: if the movement into democracy doesn’t win in 2016, then its likelihood of succeeding in the future will be virtually nil (since <a href="http://rinf.com/alt-news/featured/how-the-media-misrepresent-fast-track/" target="_blank">the current direction is toward increased dictatorship by the super-rich</a>). The 2016 elections will be do-or-die for future democracy in the U.S. If for no other reason than this, the 2016 Presidential contests will be hugely important. If the poor come out in record numbers in the Democratic primaries and then, if Sanders wins the nomination, in the final election, then economic inequality in the U.S. will be reduced and equality of economic opportunity in the U.S. will increase, and so the future for the United States will be improvement. Otherwise, America’s future will be grim, no matter how well America’s top 0.1% will be living.</p><p>America has a huge problem; and, if it’s ignored in 2016, as it has been ignored ever since Ronald Reagan won the White House in 1980, then America will, virtually certainly, spiral down into hell.</p><p>The problem is real; it has to be grappled-with, now, or else. It’s now, or it’s never. That’s the 2016 choice, for Americans — and, then, perhaps, for the rest of the world, and for all of the human future. That’s what is at stake, in the 2016 U.S. elections. The data make this clear.</p><p></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p></div></div>Why Universal Poverty is the Only Sensible Choice for Humanityhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/why-universal-poverty-is-the-only-sensible-choice-for-humanity2015-04-20T04:03:45.000Z2015-04-20T04:03:45.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233454,original{{/staticFileLink}}"></a></span><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028232899,original{{/staticFileLink}}"></a><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233454,original{{/staticFileLink}}"></a><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233263,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="600" height="399" class="align-center" style="width:504px;height:308px;" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028233263,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028233263?profile=original" /></a><span class="font-size-3">Presented by:</span></p><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong><em>Enrique Suarez</em></strong></span></h3><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-3"><strong><em><a href="http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta" target="_blank">http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta</a></em></strong></span></p><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"></h3><h3 class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-4"><strong>Why Universal Poverty is the Only Sensible Choice for Humanity</strong></span></h3><p> </p><p class="center">Source: Kevin Karn, 2013</p><p></p><p>It's easy to show that the best course for the future of mankind is to reduce everyone in the world to poverty. To see this, examine the diagram below:</p><p> </p><p><img width="588" height="599" class="center" alt="" src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_750_750/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAJ6AAAAJGEyNjNjMmMyLTg3MzUtNGY2OC1iMzc4LTE1Y2I0OTU3MmJhZg.jpg" /></p><p></p><p>The diagram shows three possible income/wealth distribution scenarios for the world: the bottom scenario where everyone in the world is living in poverty; the middle scenario, where most of the world is living in poverty, but a small minority has a first world lifestyle; and the top scenario where everyone in the world has a first world lifestyle. Obviously, this diagram expresses a continuum, and there are lots of intermediate points which aren't illustrated. Nevertheless, we can say that, for the most part, the world is currently somewhere between the middle and top scenarios, and moving upward.</p><p></p><p>Now, first of all, we can rule out the top scenario as unacceptable. It is attractive because it eliminates poverty and inequality, but it has the major disadvantage that it will kill the earth.</p><p></p><p>Secondly, we can rule out the middle scenario because it's unequal. Any sort of structural inequality is immoral and discriminatory, and must be eliminated. Ideally, the best way to eliminate the unacceptable inequality would be to move from the middle to the top scenario (which is essentially what we are trying to do). However, as we've seen, that path is unacceptable because it is suicidal and will kill the earth.</p><p></p><p>Therefore, the only option for achieving equality without killing the earth is to reduce everyone in the world to poverty.</p><p></p><p>What really intrigues me here is the ethical reasoning. Here's another example with the same underlying structure: human life extension. I was just reading an article about Aubrey De Gray in the newspaper, and he claimed that technology will soon be developed to enable people to live to be 1000 years old. For the fun of it, let's assume that life-extension technology becomes available as an anti-aging tonic.</p><p></p><p>Now, if nobody takes the tonic, the outcome is acceptable (this corresponds to the bottom scenario – everybody living in poverty). If a small minority takes the tonic, we're still okay (i.e., the middle scenario). However, if we apply the moral principles of equality (non-discrimination) and utilitarianism, and allow everyone to use the product, the result is disaster (i.e., the top scenario).</p><p></p><p>So we end up having to choose between two alternatives: allowing a privileged minority to use the tonic, or allowing no one to use the tonic. I think a good case can be made that the middle scenario (allow only a minority to use the tonic) is better than the bottom scenario (allow no one to use it). But that's a very odd moral conclusion. (At least according to our current ethical principles.) If we allow a subset of humanity to branch off as creatures who live for 1000 years, then "Egalite!" (the cry of the French revolution) and "All men are created equal" (the cry of the American revolution) come into question.</p><p></p><p>We're instead opting for a structural system of "castes" or nobility/peasants. And if we concede that the "caste" system is better than the alternative, we're opening up a real can of worms in ethical/political theory.</p><p></p><p>On the other hand, if we reject "castes" and allow no one to use the tonic (or, in the income example, reduce everyone to poverty), then it seems we're taking refuge in Luddism and the past. It's definitely a reactionary, conservative response. And yet that too is very odd because "Egalite!" is supposed to be the revolutionary, progressive option! Here it becomes the reactionary option, while "castes" become the revolutionary and exciting new way of the future. It's very paradoxical.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p></div>Global Inequality: The World’s 400 Richest Billionaires Get Richer, Adding $92bn in 2014https://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/global-inequality-the-world-s-400-richest-billionaires-get-richer2015-03-21T14:21:53.000Z2015-03-21T14:21:53.000ZEnrique Raul Suarezhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/EnriqueRaulSuarez<div><p style="text-align:center;"><a href="{{#staticFileLink}}8028231263,original{{/staticFileLink}}"><img width="316" class="align-center" src="{{#staticFileLink}}8028231263,original{{/staticFileLink}}" alt="8028231263?profile=original" /></a></p><p style="text-align:center;"><strong><span class="font-size-3">Global Inequality: The World’s 400 Richest Billionaires Get Richer, Adding $92bn in 2014</span></strong></p><p style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-2">Presented</span></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-2">by:</span></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><span class="font-size-2"><strong>Enrique Suarez</strong></span></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"><a href="http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta" target="_blank">http://www.wix.com/suarezenrique/delta</a></p><p class="center" style="text-align:center;"></p><p class="left"><em>The 400 richest billionaires in the world added another $92 billion to their names in 2014 and now sit on assets worth $4.1 trillion, but Russia’s super-wealthy have been hit by economic problems resulting from the Ukraine crisis.</em></p><p class="left"></p><p>The biggest winner in 2014 was China’s Jack Ma, who co-founded the Alibaba Group Holding ltd, (BABA), China’s largest e-commerce company, Bloomberg reports.</p><p></p><p>Ma, who has a personal fortune of $28.7 billion, has added $25.1 billion to his wealth since the September initial public offering saw shares surge by 56 percent.</p><p></p><p>Other big winners in 2014 were Warren Buffett and Mark Zuckerberg. Buffet increased his net worth by $13.7 billion as dozens of businesses he had brought over the past five decades produced record profits.</p><p></p><p>Zuckerberg, who founded Facebook, the world’s largest social networking company, added $10.6 billion to his cash pile. Facebook has flourished this year as advertising increased and marketing initiatives expanded, and the 2012 acquisition of Instagram has also paid off; with the photo sharing app now worth $35 billion.</p><p></p><p>Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, remains the world’s richest man with an $87.6 billion personal fortune, up $9.1 billion this year.</p><p></p><p><img width="588" height="379" class="center" alt="" src="https://media.licdn.com/mpr/mpr/shrinknp_750_750/AAEAAQAAAAAAAAH8AAAAJDM5YmZkMmQxLThlNjYtNDhlOS04MDc5LWQzZjBmOGJkNDYxNQ.jpg" /></p><p></p><p><strong>Russian blues</strong></p><p>The Majority of Russia’s billionaires have seen their fortunes shrink this year, as the EU and the US imposed sanctions and limited Russian companies’ access to financing from Western banks, as a result of the crisis in Ukraine.</p><p></p><p>Vladimir Yevtushenkov, the main shareholder in the Russian conglomerate AFK Sistema, was hardest hit. Once Russia’s 14th richest man, he lost 80 percent of his wealth after a money laundering investigation into the $2.5 billion purchase of oil producer Bashneft, which saw him sentenced to house arrest.</p><p></p><p>Leonid Mikhelson, the CEO of Novatek, Russia’s second largest natural gas producer, was the biggest loser in terms of dollars. He has lost $7.8 billion since the beginning of the year and is now worth $10.1 billion.</p><p></p><p>Alisher Usmanov dropped from first place and is now Russia’s second richest person after his MegaFon mobile phone company lost almost half of its value since June. Viktor Vekselberg is currently Russia’s richest person and is worth $14.1 billion.</p><p></p><p>Oleg Deripaska, an aluminum billionaire who owns Rusal was one of a handful of Russians who saw their fortune grow in 2014, adding $1.6 billion to Rusal and increasing his worth to $8.2 billion.</p><p></p><p>Stanislav Belkovsky, a former Kremlin adviser who is a now a consultant for Moscow’s Institute for National Strategy, said that this will make it harder for Russians doing business in the West.</p><p></p><p><em>“The reputation of Russian business in the West has become worse, and will continue to get worse. That means that the capabilities for Russia’s billionaires to run businesses abroad are going to decrease,”</em> he told Bloomberg.</p><p></p><p><strong>Source:</strong> Global Research, January 20, 2015</p><p></p></div>Problems with Probabilityhttps://globalriskcommunity.com/profiles/blogs/problems-with-probability2012-03-24T04:00:00.000Z2012-03-24T04:00:00.000ZMartin Davieshttps://globalriskcommunity.com/members/MartinDavies92<div><div><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">In probability, there are orders of thinking which are wrong. Nassim Taleb ~ Should we ban the use of probability? Why we don't know what we talk about when we talk about probability has been revisited by its original author Nassim Taleb in a recent publication on his Fooled by Randomness portal. Great claims are being made in this paper that perhaps we should ban the use of probability and sometimes the best discoveries seem to occur when we explore dynamics at their extremities. This might just be the case here as well.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2">In this short post, we take a look at the recent paper "Problems with Probability" published by Nassim Taleb.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><br /></span></div><div><span style="color:#ff0000;font-family:arial, helvetica, sans-serif;" class="font-size-2"><a href="http://causalcapital.blogspot.com.au/2012/03/problems-with-probability.html" target="_blank"><font face="arial, helvetica, sans-serif"><span style="color:#ff0000;">Click here to continue reading</span></font></a></span></div></div>