Showing posts with label deprivation in the midst of wealth. Show all posts
Showing posts with label deprivation in the midst of wealth. Show all posts

Wednesday 22 May 2019

We Tolerate Avoidable Mass Death And Deprivation.

         I wrote the following piece about 9 years ago, and I doubt if anyone can see any difference to this world 9 years on. Perhaps the figures have changed a percentage point here and there, but the overall picture is still the same, avoidable gross misery, injustice, and death for vast swaths of the world's population. How long will we not only tolerate, but continue to be party to the system that is the root cause of all that misery, deprivation and death?
        The system will not correct itself and become a benevolent system of justice and equality. No amount of petitioning the Czars of the corporate juggernaut, or their minders, state governments, will change the unchangeable. The entire system is built on greed, exploitation and plundering of natural resources, for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. The system has to be destroyed and a new way of thinking developed that creates a system that sees to the needs of all our people, in one simple word, the answer is anarchism, think about it.
 
 
I Want to Believe!

I want to believe
All that is good is out there
Sleeping in hearts that live in dark valleys,
About to blossom like some magic woodland,
In spite of war, in spite of greed
The essence that is humanity struggling to be free.
All around death arrives in many guises,
Silent as the frost poverty kills,
The ruthless march of war
With every drum beat seeks God’s blessing,
While the God fearing kill the God fearing,
Slaughter in the name of the greater good.
I want to believe
All that is good is out there
Sleeping in the hearts that live in dark valleys
About to blossom like some magic woodland,
Not just as the dream of poets.

A blast from the past, 9 years ago:


         It is difficult to grasp the state of the world that we have created. A world where there is an abundance of almost everything conceivable and yet to the vast majority of the world’s population it is all out of reach. A world where a small elite live a life of obscene and wasteful wealth while millions die of starvation and millions of children die from the lack of clean drinking water. In this capitalist made world there are small enclaves where the rich, in safety, play games with their expensive toys, private jets, luxury cars, yachts and several holiday homes in “exotic” locations. While just over that financial apartheid wall there is the stench of squalor and death for countless millions living in total deprivation and endless wars,
         In this capitalist created world, 8 million people die every year from poverty, One billion children live in abject poverty, 640 million do not have access to appropriate shelter, 140 million have never attended school, 400 million do not have access to clean uncontaminated water, 500 million do not have basic sanitation, 270 million have no access to health care, and 90 million are severely food deprived. Approximately 12.3 million people worldwide live in conditions of “modern slavery,”while over one billion people live on less than one dollar of income per day and over three billion live on less than two dollars per day. Then there is the strata in between that manage to scrape a reasonable existence that seems to keep them from revolt.
        All this misery in spite of the fact that the world economy actually produces one and a half times the amount of food necessary to provide the entire human population with adequate and nutritious meals. The fact that the capitalist system will not allow this to be shared out to those in need tells us that it is not a natural problem but a political problem. Perhaps the words of Derrick Jensen come close to capturing something of that world.
         “We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means—all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity ... What this means is that corporations and those who run them cannot stop exploiting resources and amassing wealth until they have...I cannot finish this sentence, because the truth is that they can never stop; like cancer, they can only continue to expand until they kill the host ... For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other and especially to ourselves. The lies are necessary because, without them, many deplorable acts would become impossibilities.”
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