From football to property and beyond, inequality is the mother of all crises

Inequality does indeed affect us all, both physically & mentally. It's foolish to say that the poor people are happier than wealthy people. No, poor people are not happy because they have to work that much more to earn just enough to fill theirs & their children's stomachs. Then, there are education costs, housing costs, utilities, healthcare costs, & now, even the clean, drinking water costs money. Add the social exclusivity of poor people & their families due to their poverty & the life of the poor person is just hellish.

To develop & provide sustainable resources to everyone equally, the wealthy & the poor, every country needs to invest in its infrastructure & economic policies. Although, the writer of this opinion post takes a simplistic view that if Netherlands can increase taxes, & also spread its tax net, to help out the vulnerable sections of its own populations, then everyone else can, it is pretty much impossible to do that without proper practice of faith & religion.

How will religion help in alleviating poverty & instituting equality among the populace? Netherlands is a small Scandinavian country with a much smaller population than many developing countries, like Pakistan, India, Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria, Kenya, Thailand etc. It is also a pretty much a homogeneous population, very much unlike many other developing countries around the world. Still, it's impossible to eradicate inequality because the rich control the political policy-making machine.

This eradication, or at least, alleviation of inequality, can only happen through ethical people in governments & policy-making area. Increasing taxes or spreading the tax net far & wide may help in increasing the government coffers but won't help much if that money is once again ends up in the pockets of rich executives & wealthy citizens of the country, or politicians loot that money. So, how does the general public ensure that government is full of good, ethical people? And even after identifying such honest people, can the general public act rationally enough to bring them to power & stick by them, while, they increase taxes on rich people, & use those taxes to upgrade the horrible situation the general public is living in? Remember, all this will take time, whereas, the general public will want to see substantial major changes as soon as possible.

Only ethics can help there, & ethics comes through religion. Ethical & religious people will need to become leaders & consider government coffers public money & hence, need to be spent on them.

Besides ethics & religion, huge changes in electoral policies need to be implemented. These kind of substantial changes to alleviate poverty & inequality need a good & long time frame, like a decade or more, easily. But, in most democracies, even when they are stable, a government & leader has about a few years, anywhere from 8 to 10 years to finish his / her work. Of course, that has to be done, if & when, opposition parties are silent & happy with what the government is doing (then, what's the point of the opposition party?). But, these fundamental economic & social changes can easily take couple of decades to meaningfully show any changes in the system.

So, inequality indeed adversely affects a major portion of the general populace, but alleviating or eradicating inequality requires a lot more work than simply changing the tax system (even that is huge work in itself).

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https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/feb/08/football-property-prices-beyond-inequality-mother-of-all-crises-tax-lilianne-ploumen

Inequality affects all of us. I live in Amsterdam, where house prices are now rising so sharply that ordinary, hard-working people don’t get a look-in. In London, it’s been like that for years. Whole neighbourhoods are unaffordable. Century-old football clubs have become the playthings of billionaires.

And the trend continues. More and more of the world’s wealth is in the hands of fewer and fewer people. I believe that tolerating this growing inequality will go down in history as humanity’s biggest mistake since communism.

People are essentially social animals. They can inspire each other, but they can also frustrate and discourage each other. And that’s what gross inequality does. It unravels the very fabric of our societies. It robs people of decent jobs and decent pay. And it robs them of their sense of purpose and self-worth.

In developing countries, the gap between rich and poor is far bigger. And it isn’t merely a technical issue, it is the result of political choices. Inequality is truly the mother of all crises. Whether it is conflict, climate change, economic stagnation or migration flows, inequality is always a major underlying cause.

Last autumn, the UN adopted new global goals. One of the main targets is to eradicate extreme poverty by 2030. To achieve that, economic growth must stay at the level it had for the past 10 years and its benefits must be far bigger than average for the poorest 40%.

The challenge we face is summed up in the slogan: “Leave no one behind”. The smartest policy here is to invest in the poorest of the poor. If we don’t, there is no way we will defeat extreme poverty by 2030. Which means we won’t generate the economic growth needed to achieve the other global goals. And we won’t reach our climate goals either.

“Leave no one behind” is also a moral imperative. In the past 25 years, globalisation has helped the world make spectacular progress on poverty. But at the same time we’ve allowed large groups to lag behind, and an even larger group to fall by the wayside completely. One of the main causes is exclusion. Whether it is on the basis of gender, religion, disability or sexual orientation, entire groups are being left out.

The mantra that no one should be left behind offers hope of a much-needed correction. It means managing globalisation properly. It means ending the unbridled power of elites. If realised, it would mean everyone could finally benefit from – and participate in – global development.

We know how to make this happen. Last year, we analysed Dutch policy to see how we could contribute more to inclusive development. It resulted in a plan of action worth €350m (£269m) that we are now putting into practice.

The plan consists of 20 measures across two areas. The first involves generating work and income for African women and young people with poor future prospects. The second consists of 10 measures to prompt robust political dialogue with developing countries on inclusive growth and development.

That dialogue is crucial, because resistance to change is often strongest precisely where change is needed most. In many poor countries, elites cling stubbornly to wealth and power until conflict, death and destruction are inevitable.

But the most powerful weapon against inequality is tax. Governments have to fight tax avoidance and tax evasion. My country has initiated the renegotiation of 23 tax treaties. We’ve proposed anti-abuse provisions to ensure that the Netherlands is no longer an attractive option for companies that want to avoid taxes. And we now forgo tax exemptions on goods and services provided under official development assistance.

At the same time, we need to broaden the tax base in the developing countries, which often rely on consumption taxes that make the poor pay a higher proportion of their income in tax than the rich. These countries need a progressive tax regime. And for that they need assistance in administering and collecting more complex forms of taxation, such as income and wealth taxes.

Taxation is not a popular subject for politicians. But it deserves far more attention. A recent study, by Jan-Emmanuel De Neve and Nattavudh Powdthavee, brings further proof that higher taxation equals more happiness.

For many developing countries, the tax burden is still 10-15% of gross domestic product. According to the UN, they’ll have to raise collection to about 20% just to be able to finance their share of the global goals. In Scandinavia, the average tax burden is more than 45%. I wish the same for every country! Provided the money is spent well, of course.

So we have our work cut out. To the super rich, I say: trickle-down is dead. To the elites and the kleptocrats in poor countries, I say: there’s a limit to how high you can build the gates around your communities. The time has come to pay. Make sure the payment is in taxes.

How The Military Fails US Veterans

People, all over the world, will fight with their lives on the line, when there's a worthy cause to fight for. Those people who win that fight or battle or war will also be able to survive better, knowing full well that they fought for a solid purpose & achieved that worthy purpose. Besides, the biggest judge of all our actions is our own conscience, which will also be at peace, even though, there were deaths & destruction in that battle or war.

What American veterans are going through, currently, mentally & physically, is more of a matter of how their own conscience is restless & making them relive that nightmare of killing or injuring thousands upon thousands of innocent people, including senior people, women, & children. Heck, even hospitals & UN-recognized shelters were not spared from these vets' actions.

Coupled that mental anguish & physical suffering with the knowledge that all these wars & invasions were not for wiping out terrorism from the face of the Earth. These wars were pure & simple genocidal actions against innocent people of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria, & several other countries, & their only purpose was for military-industrial complex to keep earning its blood-soaked profits.

So, regardless of how many Presidents come & go, these veterans & their PTSD-fuelled actions, & suicides, are simply "chickens coming home to roost" for America.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA2QSlYZ9Jk

COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, FMR. CHIEF OF STAFF TO COLIN POWELL: I got a book from a gentleman who started a project called [Waking Up from War]. And what he's done is assess the programs that the DA and the DOD and those two in combination, though they rarely are in sync, offer for veterans coming home primarily from Afghanistan and Iraq and the bloody wars there. And the manuscript not only describes the Coming Home Project and how successful and effective it has been, but it also describes why other programs run by the services, run by DOD in general, run by the VA are not working or are causing more problems than they're helping to solve. And in a very comprehensive sense, he comments on the backdrop of all of this, which is a nation, supposedly a democratic federal republic, interminably at war and how that exacerbates all of this.

And, of course, it's a positive manuscript, in terms of he wants to say how we get out of this, both the larger problem, interminable war, and the problem it breeds, which is a lot of Americans, millions of Americans, who were sent off to do their nation's business and who are now back seriously harmed, seriously injured psychologically and physically, sometimes both. And we're not doing a very good job of taking care of them.

JESSICA DESVARIEUX, TRNN PRODUCER: So what are some of his suggestions? How do we kind of get out of this vicious cycle of failing our veterans and our soldiers once they come home from serving?

WILKERSON: I think the first thing we have to do--and I agree with him 100% on this--is we have to take a long-term approach to it. You cannot cure these veterans by giving them the magic elixir, the antidepressant or the cocktail of drugs that the military sometimes would like to give them to get them off its books and out of its hair. What this is doing in many cases is giving them situations, depression and so forth, that leads to suicide. As you probably know, the suicide rate is off the charts in all the military services. So this is an ancillary problem connected with this, though.

The most important thing you have to do in that sustained approach is give the veteran a sense of community. You have to give them a sense of coming home to something that really cares for them, that wants to deal with their problems, that will deal with their problems, that doesn't accuse them in any way, that is not something that is a handshake in the Atlanta airport, for example, and a trite welcome home, thank you for your service, but is a serious effort to deal with their problems, physical and psychological, that will last over time and not quit until they're back being meaningful members of their community again.

And I'll give you an anecdote of my own experience that sort of demonstrates this in crushing detail. I was at Walter Reed National Medical Center recently and met a triple amputee, and older young man, about 32. He was an EOD, an ordinance disposal technician, and he'd been disposing of IEDs in both Iraq and Afghanistan when one of them went off and took off both his legs below the knees and his right arm. And this was a young man who was being visited by a congressional delegation that morning, and I was visiting with him around lunchtime after that. And he told me, he said the delegation came in--dog and pony show, he called it--and he said they thanked him for his service. And that was the first thing they said, almost in unison. And he cut them off and he said, don't thank me for my service; thank me for my sacrifice, which you can clearly see. My service I'm conflicted over.

And this takes us into the second dimension of this manuscript, which is so eloquent and so well written in terms of this, and that is a nation that is interminably at war, and arguably at war that many of these veterans don't understand the purpose of. They don't understand what their sacrifice was for. The Iraq War comes to mind immediately as an illegal war, a war we should never have participated in. Many of these veterans feel that way about it. And this makes their healing burden, if you will, all the more challenging, makes the problem, the challenge that we have to welcome them home and to deal with their problems, their challenges, all the more difficult, because they don't feel like the sacrifice that they made--in many cases catastrophic sacrifices--was for anything meaningful, for anything worthwhile. So we have to cure that problem too. And the first thing, of course, we have to do is stop this business of interminable war.

One of the quotations in the book that just grabbed me by my heart was from a Marine, active-duty Marine general, two-star general. He was speaking over the 30,000-plus graves in the San Francisco national Cemetery on the northern slope of the Presidio--beautiful place in California. And he said, ... the costs of war are so great that we just have to find a better way to resolve our problems and our disputes than killing one another.

And, now, that's a truism of the very first order. We have to start doing things through political, diplomatic, and other means, other parts of our national power, than through the military means. It simply is not a sustainable way to do things. And these veterans are testimony to that.

DESVARIEUX: And how do these veterans feel about lawmakers? Some people kind of make this criticism that they don't even have skin in the game, they don't have their kids serving, things of that nature. What's their take on that? What's been the book's perspective on that?

WILKERSON: That's a precise point, Jessica. It's a very important point. If you don't have skin in the game, if you don't have your family members under duress, in harm's way, if you don't go there yourself--one of the vets, for example, says something to this effect: when the king led his forces into battle, there was less battle. Well, just think about that for a moment. When is Lindsey Graham and John McCain going to mount their Charger and go out and get in front of the forces fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and in Syria? And you say, well, John McCain's a veteran, he's done his service, and so forth. Well, shut up, then. We don't need people mongering for war. We don't need people asking the president and others to lead this nation into yet more conflicts, for example a war with Iran ... . We need less war. And we need less veterans.

DESVARIEUX: Larry, remind our viewers: what is the name of that manuscript and the author?

WILKERSON: [Waking Up from War], and the author is Joseph Bobrow.

Money from thin air: British breezes sells for £80 a pop in China

There was a time when basic necessities of life were free for all, Then, healthy food became something to be purchased. Then, rather recently, clean drinking water became the next necessity of life to be sold & purchased, & now, bottled Air from UK & Canada going to cities that are suffering from pollution & smog.

Result of this: cheap food lacks proper nutrients & hence, increases the likelihood of illnesses like obesity, diabetes, heart problems, etc.; polluted & dirty water is available for free, but full of pollutants & harmful carcinogens in some cases, & now, poor people who lack enough money to buy bottled air, will be inhaling polluted air full of carcinogenic materials.

Next thing up for sale: life. If you want more life, buy more life.

Essentially, poor people will keep fighting for the mere scraps -- the necessary scraps to live -- while, the wealthy people will be able to buy everything to live; food, water, air, life ...

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https://www.rt.com/uk/331438-bottled-british-air-china/

A UK businessman is making a fortune selling British air to wealthy Chinese buyers for £80 ($115) a bottle.

Leo De Watts, 27, harvests fresh air from rural locations across the UK, including Dorset, Somerset, Wales, Wiltshire and Yorkshire.

His team use specially adapted fishing nets and run through fields to collect the breeze. The nets are left for 10 minutes to absorb the local aroma, before being bottled in 580 ml containers.

De Watts, who is from Dorset but now lives in Hong Kong, described his product as the “Louis Vuitton or Gucci” of fresh air.

Commenting on the difference between the areas where English air is harvested, he said: “I would say on the whole that Dorset air seems to pick up a few more scents of the ocean, as the breeze flows up the Jurassic Coast and over the lush pastures.

“Whereas air from the Yorkshire dales tends to filter its way through much more flora, so the scent captures the subtle tones of the surrounding fields, giving different qualities to the collection. We go up to a hilltop, for example, and collect all the products there which are all packaged and bottled up, sent to Dorset and then directly to China.”

De Watts said the Chinese demand for Great British gusts stems from the country’s terrible pollution problem, especially in urban areas.

“Our customers all have high disposal incomes and want to buy gifts for someone or someone wants to use it,” he said.

“There is a serious point to this though as Beijing, Zhuhai, and Shanghai are the major places where pollution is quite bad, whether it is the fault of the rest of the world or its China’s responsibility, we have a case of people living in smog.”

De Watts’ company Aethaer – the Greek word for pure fresh air – is one of at least two companies selling bottled air to China. A company from Canada is already selling bottled Rocky Mountain air to smog sufferers in Beijing and elsewhere.

De Watts admits he originally dismissed the idea as ridiculous.

“I saw a few reports of people importing bottles of air and thought it was a bit ridiculous myself, and then I thought about it,” he said.

“When someone bottled water everyone thought it was ridiculous, now you have Evian and Volvic – why not bottle air?”

Are we liberated by tech or does it enslave us?

I don't think anyone would disagree with the notion that all technology, be it digital, is bad. As we say, any thing in the world is not bad, if you use it right. Heck, as National Rifle Association (NRA) of America says, "guns don't kill people, people kill people." Undoubtedly, they are correct to an extent. After all people were being killed before the invention of gun powder or guns.

Any technology, be it the phone in your hand, or that tablet in your lap, or that laptop on your desk, or those video game boxes attached to your giant TV, or the latest gadgets in your car, or even those kitchen & household machines, are not bad, in themselves, but ultimately their usage defines their "villainous" ability. Their "unintended consequences" are ultimately dependent on the user.

For instance, a common complaint from parents, & healthcare professionals, is that childhood diabetes is increasing all over the world, because children are not spending time outdoors, but are always engrossed in their smartphones & video game boxes. True. But the problem is not to ban that tech, but to take children out to park & spend time with them outside of the house. That's the responsibility of the parents. However, parents themselves are busy spending time on those tech marvels, like sticking their smartphones on their faces 20 hours a day. Due to spending so much time engrossed in their phones, they don't have any time left for their loved ones, to enjoy life (instead of watching & showing off how their lives are, to others), or to do healthy activities themselves, like sleeping 6-8 hours at night.

That's the problem at a micro level. Let's take an example at a macro level; digital technology creating (or will be creating) mass unemployment at a national, or even an international, level. People study & spend a significant portion of their lives in a specific profession or industry. Then, they get the shock of their lives when they are laid off because their skills are not in demand anymore, because digital tech is replacing their skills. In these kinds of situations, governments & industry need to step in & jointly take control.

It's true that nobody can control the march of technology but the damaging effects, or the "unintended consequences" can be controlled, or perhaps, mitigated to some extent. For example, all those people who are laid off should be retrained at the expense of the government, & those companies, which have disrupted the industry through their technology, should also financially contribute in the retraining of those people. Those people can also be hired by those same companies, after their retraining. Because, those people are a financial, economic, & social burden on the governments and society, but they can be tax-paying, productive part of the citizenry, who would pay back the cost of their retraining, to the government, in the form of taxes. Governments can also look ahead in the future & see what professions should be promoted through educational institutes & the educational pipeline (schools, colleges, & universities) & connect the educational side (the supply of labour) with the industry (the demand of labour), so the public has an idea as to what should be studied now to earn its fruits later on.

Technology, in itself, is never bad. As the author says in the opinion piece that its "unintended consequences" can also never be predicted beforehand. But technology's bad consequences are often the bad practices of users. Users need to keep in mind how to properly use that technology, & how that technology is affecting others; be it their loved ones, their social circle, their professional circle, or their community at large, or even themselves.

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https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/09/are-we-liberated-by-tech-or-does-it-enslave-us

Technology is unruly. New innovations bring with them a host of unintended consequences, ranging from the troubling to the downright depressing. Social media makes us lonely. Too much screen-time makes teenagers fall behind their peers. And at the more feeble end of the spectrum, many of us have walked into an obstacle while texting. Whatever glorious vision animates the moguls of Silicon Valley, it surely can’t be this.

We’re much better at designing complex systems than we are at predicting their behaviour, argues the writer Edward Tenner. Even though unintended consequences are inevitable, Tenner thinks they can be powerful catalysts for progress. But even the notion of an “intended consequence” is problematic when it comes to tech. Evgeny Morazov points out that we tend to confuse the positive consequences of information technology with intended ones, downplaying the significance of other natural, but rather less noble, upshots like pornography, surveillance and authoritarian control.

Free time is a case in point. Technology makes us more productive, but it’s also accused of unreasonably extending the domain of work. So does tech liberate us, or enslave us? And what does it really “intend” to do?

Tech and ‘free time’: a confusing picture

In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that the most pressing concern of the man of the future would be “how to occupy the leisure, which science and compound interest will have won for him.” It hasn’t quite turned out that way - but Keynes wasn’t entirely off the mark. When we consider the lot of the average labourer of the past, our complaints about work-life balance start to sound pretty peevish. And the rise of technology really has, it seems, given us more free time than ever. So why do we still feel harried?

It’s worth noting that modern leisure is just as tech-saturated as work. Americans who subscribe to Netflix spend more time on the site than they do eating and having sex combined, TDG research found. The average Briton spends 1 hour 20 minutes every day monitoring four social media accounts, according to research from the Global Web Index. But all this screen-time makes us uneasy. To co-opt David Foster Wallace’s description of attitudes to television in the 1990s, there’s a “weird hate-need-fear-6-hrs-daily gestalt” about the whole thing.

But technology doesn’t just offer us escape. It promises to transfigure our bodies, our minds and our very souls by making us fitter, happier, and more productive - but it does it by insinuating that we’re, well, a bit suboptimal as we are. “There’s an app for that” comes with a whispered aside: “You know you’re doing it wrong, right?”

Everyone’s a bit of a Luddite

Criticisms of tech can sound shrill, but it’s not antediluvian to notice the impossible desires technology breeds. Our devices present us with simulacra of beautiful, fit, fulfilled people pursuing their dreams and falling in love, and none of them are browsing the web at 11pm on a Saturday night - unlike us. We click and swipe our woebegone way through a vibrant world where nobody who is anybody spends their free time in front of a glowing screen, painfully aware that our only access to that world is through that very glowing screen.

But we’re no fools. We know that nothing on the web as it seems. We long to detach ourselves from the whole circus for once and for all - and so we turn once again to the internet to research digital detoxes and vent our tech-related spleen. The web has a way of dancing around us, knowingly and self-referentially and maddeningly deflecting every attempt we make to express our unease.

Is ‘free time’ a misnomer?

But prying our free time from the clutches of technology isn’t necessarily the answer. The German philosopher Theodor Adorno argued that “free time” is an artificial concept – and it’s anything but free. For Adorno, free time is the very propogation of work: it is “nothing more than a shadowy continuation of labour”.

Today’s tech-saturated leisure trade – to say nothing of the trillion-dollar behemoth that is the “wellness industry” – is an integral part of a world in which we are treated as consumers first and citizens second. Talk of reclaiming free time is missing the point. What we need is control of the time we already have.

But in yet another twist, this is just what Paul Mason thinks information technology might allow us to do. For Mason, the “sharing economy” contains within it the glimmer of a genuine alternative – a post-capitalist society structured around liberty instead of economics. If Mason is right, tech might free us from the need for “free time” entirely. But how does this complex narrative fit into the storybook of “unintended consequences”?

The myth of ‘unintended consequences’

Well, it doesn’t. Unintended consequences are a myth, because anticipating the effects of even the simplest innovation is a fool’s errand. Forget about information technology, or calculus, or Linear B: even the toaster would be a challenge.

Tech innovators frequently profess aspirations to improve the lot of mankind. Such aspirations are admirable, but we shouldn’t forget that there’s one rather more concrete intention they share: to make money. They’re vendors, we’re consumers: it’s as simple as that. Still, it’s a huge leap from there to the claim that tech is, in Foster Wallace’s words, a “diabolical corrupter of personal agency and community gumption”.

But even if tech companies aren’t really trying to enslave us, or to make us feel inadequate, that doesn’t mean that the current situation is a case of good intentions gone awry. There’s no more reason to think that tech is intrinsically good, but occasionally getting it wrong, than there is to think that it’s a remarkably successful villain.

We love to praise tech, and we love to condemn it. We equate it with chaos, power, love, hate; with democracy, with tyranny, with progress and regress - we laud it as our salvation, while lamenting it as our scourge. Like any technology that has come before it, digital technology is all of these things. But it’s essentially none of them.

World Bank & IMF Polices Behind the Inadequate Health Infrastructure to Quell Ebola

Another interview where it is being reiterated that IMF & World Bank, the international financial institutions, are essentially, tools of the developed countries to keep the developing countries from ever developing. I have blogged about this several times before this post.

IMF & the World Bank are the instruments of the West, to keep the development goal, out of reach, from developing countries in Latin America, Asia, & Africa. These institutions provide billions in loans to countries with known corrupt leaders & then impose harsh restrictions, like austerity measures, to recover those loans. The corruption of the political leaders are well known. Those austerity measures tie the hands of the successive governments, regardless of how much they are well-intentioned, behind their backs, & the developing countries fail to develop.

These countries are instructed to privatize everything, increase prices & taxes for the local citizenry, but decrease their taxes & royalties from natural wealth, & let the international corporations loot the developing countries of their natural wealth. Of course, then, is it any wonder that developed countries keep developing further & amassing huge wealth, whereas, the developing countries stay at the bottom of the pile. If, by any chance, the leaders of the developing countries resist following the demands of the IMF, World Bank, of the political leaders of the developed countries, then political assassinations & interference, & ultimately, war, is imposed on those developing countries.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nghGovphphw

SHARMINI PERIES, EXEC. PRODUCER, TRNN: … do you think this is an adequate response on the part of the World Bank?

NII AKUETTEH, FMR. DIRECTOR AT AFRICA ACTION: I don't think so … the World Bank and the IMF have contributed to the weak health systems in Africa … . So, therefore, so to speak, they contributed to the problem; therefore they need to own up to their mistakes and they need to do more to help rescue these countries.

PERIES: What do you mean by that? What role has IMF and the World Bank played in West Africa in the past?

AKUETTEH: Oh, well, you know, two phrases. One is structural adjustment programs. Anybody who's been studying Africa since independence knows that especially since the '80s, when Ronald Reagan got into power in the United States and the World Bank and the IMF actually made themselves the economic stewards of economic policy in Africa, structural adjustment, otherwise called austerity measures, they have imposed these policies on the African countries regardless of what the people want, regardless of what the leaders wanted. So structural adjustment is one of those phrases. And the governments were told, were forced, that in order to get a good mark from the World Bank and the IMF, you have to keep government small, you have to slash government officials' pay; after you have slashed the number of government officials, you have to privatize everything and you have to force people to pay, and especially to pay for health care and to pay out of pocket for education.

So I think, though structural adjustment went on for decades and they devastated the African economies, the other phrase that I wanted to throw in is IMF riots. This actually came from Africa, where every time the IMF would impose economic conditions, ordinary people in the street were so hit hard that they would riot. And so it actually created a new phrase in the English language and in economic writing: IMF riots.

PERIES: So, Nii, explain more, in the sense that, yes, of course the IMF would have these horrendous austerity policies and neoliberal economic policies and force governments to shrink their bureaucratic and civil service, all these things in the past were set up in order to service their people. But why are they forced to come to these kinds of agreements with the World Bank and the IMF?

AKUETTEH: I think that's a great question, because on the surface of it, a government, a country can simply say, sorry, your conditions are too harsh, we don't have to deal with you. After all, the United States doesn't take the advice of the World Bank and the IMF. A number of big countries don't. But for African countries, number one, they are economically small and weak. Secondly, having just gotten out of colonialism--I know this is about 50 years ago, but when you are trying to restructure economic systems that was built over more than a century, it is not easy. And so they are tied into the global economy. They are tied into their former colonial masters. That is especially France and the U.K. And they are tied to the United States.

Now, those three countries, the United States, the U.K., and France, play a major role in the World Bank and the IMF. And therefore the World Bank and the IMF actually act as policeman and gatekeepers for the entire global economy if you are an African country, because the rest of the global economy says to you, we will deal with you only if the World Bank and the IMF says you are well behaved. And the World Bank and the IMF will say you are well behaved only if you agree to their conditions. And therefore it's almost impossible for an African country to say, listen, I don't want to do this anymore.

You know, everybody who reads the news, Africa news, and especially U.S.-Africa, will know that the West doesn't much care for Robert Mugabe. Usually you will be told that it's because he is internally repressive and other things. But I happen to think that one major factor also is that for about ten years after Zimbabwe became independent, Robert Mugabe followed the dictates of the World Bank and the IMF very closely. And after about ten years he said, no, this is not working no more. For instance, they made Zimbabwe sell its stock of maize, and say it's uneconomical to hold it; sell it, buy it when you need it. But that was bad economic advice, because when they wanted to buy it, they had to pay more. And so I am saying that countries that defy the IMF and the World Bank get punished by the larger global economy, and therefore it's not been very easy for those countries to reject what the World Bank and the IMF recommend, because they were doing it on behalf of the global economy.

PERIES: But these economies are very resource-rich. I mean, places like Sierra Leone have diamonds and gold, and West Africa is considered one of the natural resource rich regions of the world. The World Bank adopting these policies is really opening the doors and the gates to a flood of corporations coming in to do business in the region and reap the resources out of the region and leave very little behind. Can you sort of describe those complex relationships between the World Bank, the IMF, the local governments, the corporations that have left--the conditions that they have left in the region that is now unable to cope with … a grave epidemic of Ebola in the region?

AKUETTEH: I think that question is fantastic. I mean, because the reason that the World Bank and the IMF do what they do, the reason that they squeeze the African countries and say to them, you do what we tell you, never mind what your own people might want, never mind what your own leaders might want, the IMF and the World Bank, there's a method to their madness. And I believe said the method, the reason they do what they do, is actually to make it safe and hospitable for international corporations to go in and plunder Africa's wealth. It is as simple as that.

Now, it's been going on for years. The IMF and the World Bank are creatures created after the Second World War. They're Bretton Woods institutions. So, after the Second World War, with the U.K. and Western Europe being weakened, they were created to help stand up again in the global economy. So they took over what has been done, which is plundering Africa's wealth, leaving very little for the Africans … . That question goes to why this is done. The World Bank and the IMF would tell the African countries, keep governments small; you can't afford--. I mean, when I was in school, our governments were being told, listen--I'm from Ghana--you are a small country, the United States doesn't invest this much into education, so why should you? You shouldn't invest in education; let parents pay for it, when most parents are poor and when education is an investment. So they want to keep governments small. They want the people of the country to get as little as possible from the wealth--the bottom line is because they want the Western corporations to continue taking the wealth from out of Africa.

This is precisely why they do it. Even as recently as in Liberia, when Ms. Johnson Sirleaf--whom I know well because she was my boss at a certain point-- when she became president, she got a lot of kudos from the West because she is well known in the West and it was great that a woman had been in elected president in Africa. But behind the scenes, she was told that, listen, you will get a lot of corporations investing if you don't insist that they clean up the environment, if you don't push hard for labor protections, if you don't insist on high taxes, so all the things that the World Bank and the IMF says.

I'm saying your question is great because it goes to the heart of it: it's designed to make it easier for Western corporations to plunder Africa. It's as simple as that.

"How Drug and Driving Addicts Talk" by Andy Singer

 

"How Drug and Driving Addicts Talk" - Andy Singer, US

South Korea: Suicide Nation

A good short piece to think about, accompanied by a 25-mins long video.

Second last paragraph goes into a little more detail about suicides & some causes of it, & they all paint a picture of any so-called modern country. Modern, Westernized countries from North America (US & Canada) to Western Europe (Germany, France, UK etc.) to Asia (Japan & South Korea) might have achieved economic successes but they have come at a great social cost of hyper-competition, isolation, & mental illnesses.

Most people in these countries are busy in the rat race. There's hyper-competition at every level of school & career, & at every age group. Every parent is running from one task to another to make themselves & their children look "successful" in the eyes of the society. Children are enrolled in all kinds of extra-curricular activities & parents are trampling over anyone who come in their way to achieve their own economic / career successes. Of course, with such busy lives, who can have any time to take a peaceful time when one can sit down to reflect upon life in general, talk to each other among family members (including elderly family members), talk to neighbours (to actually know them & not merely talk to them to boast of one's own successes), & ultimately, self-reflect & take a breather.

All this hyper-competition & this worldly race to be better than that another guy leads one to nowhere. This "pursuit of happiness" actually leads one to chronic mental illness & other side effects of it; stress, fatal diseases, anger issues, loneliness, marriage breakdowns etc.

Now, this problem of hyper-competition is quickly creeping into developing countries of Latin America (Brazil, Argentina, Chile etc.), Africa (Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa etc.), South Asia (India, Sri Lanka etc.), China, & Vietnam etc. They are developing fast & their populace wants to emulate the Western countries, unfortunately, right down to the horrible side effects of development; mental illnesses, loneliness, marriage breakdown, suicides etc.

Although, the piece ends with a question that we may never know the real reasons of why South Koreans are committing more suicides than say, people of Namibia or Iceland, I can offer my opinion, here. The comparative countries stated in that statement are the wrong countries to compare to, in the first place. Anyway, there are several other factors at play, here. Iceland is not considered as much of a developed country as, even, South Korea or Japan. Iceland is not even a G20 country. Plus, it's much smaller in size in terms of population (329,000) compared to South Korea's 51 million (both 2015 stats). Of course, population size has a direct relationship with that society's level of competition. Mix in the level of economic development & you get a potent environment for mental illnesses. Similarly with Namibia, economic & population size (2 million as of 2011) play a huge part why South Korea is more susceptible to mental illnesses.

Besides the level of economic development & population size, religious affiliation of that country's population also affects how much hyper-competitiveness leads one to commit suicide. Religious people often ask for divine help when they are in problems. But religion is on the decline in industrialized world, & as such, people of the modern, industrialized, Westernized countries are far more prone to suicides than say, Uganda or Panama or Hungary or even Saudi Arabia.

There's one more problem with people around the world. Most of the people want to compare their lives against their colleagues, neighbours, or extended family members. But they forget to look & see how great their lives are compared to their own compatriots, & even people in other countries, who are living in worse conditions than them. South Koreans, in general, are in much better condition than millions in South Asia, Africa, & in Latin America. Heck, even in industrialized countries of US, Canada, UK, Australia etc., millions are homeless & live way below the poverty line. We humans are forgetting to count our blessings, whatever & however many / little they are, & prefer short-term successes over long-term consequences. If we start to take a long-term view & always look to the person who is less fortunate than us, then we wouldn't be having these mental illnesses, since we will always know that we are in better condition than that other person.

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http://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/peopleandpower/2015/08/south-korea-suicide-nation-150827070904874.html

Loneliness, poverty, chronic illness, losing one's job, the death of a loved one or the breakdown of a marriage - there are many reasons why people fall prey to heartbreak & despair, but most of us, thankfully, will find a route out of that unhappiness or at least develop ways of dealing with it.

Even for those who can not, whose sadness turns into the 'black dog' of overwhelming clinical depression, the right help can still make a crucial difference to being able to cope - be it medical care, the understanding of therapists or the love & support of family & friends. Eventually some sort of recovery takes place, some balance & perspective is restored.

Yet for some the experience of depression can be so profound that none of this works, that all remedies & assistance seem valueless & there appears to be only one way out - to end it all & takes one's own life. Such a step is, of course, a mark of absolute & final desperation, a tragic, wasteful act that can often be cruelly devastating for the people left behind. But people still do it, many thousands around the world every year; lost souls whose mental health has been damaged & stretched beyond breaking point.

Curiously though, some societies & cultures seem more prone to suicide than others. Take South Korea, for example, where suicide has become the fourth most common cause of death, with up to 40 of its citizens taking their own lives every day. For the last eight years it has had the highest suicide rates in the industrialised world (and the second highest in the whole world behind Guyana) & it is now, astonishingly the number one cause of death for its citizens between the ages of 10 & 30.

Delve a little deeper into these statistics (gathered as the nation has become more concerned about the phenomenon) & you will find that men commit suicide twice as often as women; that children & young adults will cite the stress of living in a hyper-competitive society or pressure over exam results & college entrance as the main reason for contemplating suicide; that middle-aged South Koreans most often turn to it through concern over personal economic problems; & that the elderly will kill themselves (or consider doing so) because of isolation as a result of the breakdown of the traditional family unit.

Each of these facts & figures, so easy to write out, conceals a sad personal story, a life that has somehow lost its purpose & meaning or an unbearable anguish that has been crying out for relief. And they still do not explain why South Koreans are more susceptible to suicide than, let's say, the people of Namibia or Iceland.

Just growing more food won't help to feed the world

I liked this article because of couple of reasons:

1. As it states in its first paragraph that "we already grow enough food for 10 billion people." Now, I don't know where this author got this number of 10 billion, but the fact it is stating is definitely true. Many people commonly comment after hearing that billions are malnourished in the world & the world needs more resources to cope with increasing population that the world needs less people & hence, the public around the world needs to reduce their birth rate.

Problem is not high or low birth rate. Problem of how the world is going to sustain 9 billion people in the next 35 years is not going to be resolved by reproducing less. Problem lies with inefficiency & unequal distribution of existing resources. Our world is more than capable of producing more than enough resources to sustain billions more, but nothing is sustainable when those resources are tightly controlled by a few rich elites, at the individual level & the national level.

As per latest Oxfam report, the world has 62 billionaires who have as much wealth as half of the world's population (that's 3.5 billion). Do these billionaires need all that wealth to comfortably live in this world? Of course not. A human's wish to comfortably live in this world can be fulfilled with a very few needs. But hoarding cash, or resources, only makes the world more unequal, & hence, unsustainable for billions of poor around the world.

Then, we got inequality at the national level. As the article also suggests, the global north, or economically rich countries, not only overconsume, but also waste a lot of food, & in general, resources. Lots of African & Middle Eastern countries are thirsty for water & wasting water to make swimming pools & lush green lawns are a "necessity" in US & Canada. Obesity is a major health problem in the global north because people cannot stop stuffing their faces, while malnourishment, or even famine, is rampant in the global south.

2. Control of agricultural practices by a few giant industrial companies, e.g. Monsanto. People readily say that GMO seeds & chemicals (i.e. fertilizers, pesticides etc.) are required to grow more food in fewer areas, since, we need to grow more food to feed the increasing population.

As the article once again stresses the point that these giant agricultural companies don't help the environment & the agricultural practices by forcing small-scale farmers to buy special seeds from them only & grow specific crops. I am not against GMO seeds since I don't even know if they do cause cancer or not. But I do know that forcing farmers to grow specific crops, which are more of money makers (cash crops) than letting them diversify which crops are grown (which helps in keeping the soil nourished in the natural way, instead of through chemicals) destroy the soil longevity.

Now, the article also provides a few recommendations to improve agricultural practices to increase efficiency & reduce unnecessary losses in losing vital crops. I, on the other hand, am less optimistic that these recommendations will ever be implemented by international organizations & companies, because giant agricultural companies, like Monsanto, heavily lobby organizations, at national & international levels, to help extend their own agendas (increase profitability & share prices) at the expense of environment & people's lives & health.

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http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2015/jul/29/growing-more-food-wont-help-feed-world-agriculture-climate-resilient 

The World Bank’s view that we need to grow 50% more food by 2050 to feed 9 billion people, while finding ways to reduce carbon emissions from agriculture at the same time, ignores one very simple fact – we already grow enough food for 10 billion people.

But a combination of storage losses after harvest, overconsumption & waste mean that some 800 million people in developing countries are malnourished.

The storage losses mainly affect the global south ... Overconsumption & waste mainly affect the global north.

The challenge of feeding the world is not simply met through increases in production – this is precisely how the so-called green revolution created our current problems.

The answer lies in increasing the climate resilience of agriculture in ways that reverse the catastrophic environmental degradation of the last 50 years while also making production more efficient.

The green revolution that took place in the 1960s, increasing cereal production in developing countries, is credited with saving a billion lives. But today the environmental toll from this boom is all too evident.

The statistics tell the story – 38% of the planet’s cropland is degraded, 11% of the irrigated area is salt contaminated, 90% of the biodiversity of the 20 main staple crops has been lost, nitrogen fertiliser produces 6% of greenhouse gases & its runoff creates 400 marine “dead zones” (areas where oxygen concentration is so low that animal life suffocates), & more than 350,000 people die every year from pesticide toxicity.

Research on planetary boundaries estimates that nitrogen fertiliser use needs to decline by 75% to avoid large-scale environmental impact of this kind. The focus on productivity over efficiency has meant that the amount of energy needed to grow the same quantity of food has increased by between one-quarter & one-third over the last 25 years. Even without climate change, conventional chemical agriculture is driving humanity towards a food-security cliff.

A Christian Aid briefing paper argues that if we are to reverse this situation in the face of climate change, agriculture needs a transformative change in the way it addresses climate resilience.

Small-scale farmers & pastoralists, who manage 60% of agricultural land & produce 50% of the planet’s food, should be central to this agenda. Research to solve their problems should be guided by their priorities, & take place largely on their farms.

The kind of support farmers want often includes advice on soil management & testing, reliable climate forecasts, & development of their own seed & livestock breeding processes. The advice they get usually revolves around unaffordable chemical fertilisers & pesticides, while their ability to exchange & sell locally adapted crop seeds is threatened by corporate-inspired legislation promoting crop varieties developed in distant biotech labs.
...

For farmers to invest in resilience, they need secure land tenure, especially when they participate in communal land-tenure systems. Land deals with largely foreign buyers have increased to 55 million hectares. This not only dispossesses farmers but also undermines the confidence that others need to invest in measures to control land erosion, in trees & in other adaptations that pay off over several years.

Activities that degrade soils, forests & other vital catchment protection resources inevitably result in greater vulnerability downstream – through flood damage, increased exposure to cyclones & more intense drought, all of which affect food production.

The good news is that by empowering farmers to develop climate resilient agriculture, it is possible to envisage the elimination of extreme hunger in 15 years. The conservation of resources & use of environment-enhancing approaches, such as conservation agriculture, agroforestry & integrated pest management, have been shown to yield more & deliver significantly better resilience to climate extremes than conventional, chemical agriculture. Such practices also reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition, increasing access to markets can turn agriculture into an engine that drives diversified, sustainable rural economies.

The World Bank’s call for climate-smart agriculture includes focusing on sustainable water use, countering gender inequality, & increased research.

It should also acknowledge the need for a truly three-dimensional approach to reversing the environmental degradation & climate change that “20th-century technology” has caused. Such an approach would include plans to strengthen the review of World Bank Environmental & Social Safeguards to ensure lending enables, rather than undermines, climate resilience for small-scale farmers & pastoralists in developing countries.


Richard Ewbank is climate advisor for Christian Aid