George Monbiot (London Guardian): The Worst of Times

[Jack Rabbit]

From the of London
Dated Tuesday September 2

The worst of times
In the first of a three-part series on trade, George Monbiot argues that the rich world's brutal diplomacy is worsening the plight of poor nations
By George Monbiot

The world is beginning to look like France, a few years before the Revolution. There are no reliable wealth statistics from that time, but the disparities are unlikely to have been greater than they are today. The wealthiest 5% of the world's people now earn 114 times as much as the poorest 5%. The 500 richest people on earth now own $1.54 trillion - more than the entire gross domestic product of Africa, or the combined annual incomes of the poorest half of humanity.
Now, just as then, the desperation of the poor counterpoises the obscene consumption of the rich. Now, just as then, the sages employed by the global aristocrats - in the universities, the thinktanks, the newspapers and magazines - contrive to prove that we possess the best of all possible systems in the best of all possible worlds. In the fortress of Camp Delta in Guantanamo Bay we have our Bastille, in which men are imprisoned without charge or trial.
Like the court at Versailles, the wealth and splendour of the nouveau-ancien regime will be on display, not far from the stinking slums in which hunger reigns, at next week's world trade summit in Cancun in Mexico. Between banquets and champagne receptions, men like the European trade commissioner Pascal Lamy and the US trade representative Robert Zoellick will dismiss with their customary arrogance the needs of the hungry majority. There we will witness the same corruption, of both purpose and execution, the same conflation of the private good with the public good: le monde, c'est nous. As Charles Dickens wrote of the ruling class of that earlier time: "the leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance."
The unreality begins in Mexico with the World Trade Organisation's statement of intent. It will, its director general says, ensure that "development issues lie at the heart" of the negotiations. The new talks, in other words, are designed to help the people of the poor nations to escape from poverty. In almost every respect they are destined to do the opposite. Every promise the rich world has made the poor world is being broken. Every demand for the further expropriation of the wealth of the poor is being pursued with ruthless persistence.

Read more.

Next week: How do we best support the demands of the poor world?

[Divernan]

1. The leprosy of unreality disfigured every human creature in attendance.

A great quote from Dickens. The multinational corporate CEOs, CFOs and Board Members may be impeccably groomed and coifed on the outside, but their greedy souls are are rotting with moral leprosy.

[Karmadillo]

2. At least one free kick for any article predicting revolution.

n/t

[berry]

3. Very thought-provoking, and worthy of discussion.

I agree completely with Monbiot. But I think neither political party in the US can go the whole road--not yet anyway. The GOP is a lost cause of course. But the Democrats are pressured by the workers losing jobs to outsourcing, and farmers in trouble. The support for tariffs, etc. comes not only from the multinat'l companies that profit from the present WTO power imbalance, but from the workers they would threaten to fire if they lose their advantage. The ones with real power have managed to shift the struggle to one between the world's poor and the workers in the developed world. It's an ugly mess. Clearly, one priority has to be addressing the wealth and power imbalances within developed countries, especially ours. But unfortunately, that will take time, and there isn't any. There is a crisis looming in the whole world. Debt forgiveness is one way, but countries will only get in debt again unless more structural changes are made. The pressures on the 3rd world nations to open up to the predations of international corporations are truly ugly.

I am going to need to read a lot more about these issues. (Suggestions are welcome!) It's strange. For so long we've been distracted by Bush* and war that we (I, at least--and even here on DU) have neglected this root of so many of the world's ills....

So, thanks, Jack Rabbit, for posting this!

edited to add totally irrelevant question--is the Guardian published in London now? I always thought it was the Manchester Guardian....