All over the world, there are signs of revolution. Tony Burman writes:
In the Middle East, Lebanon has been paralyzed for two weeks by protests over government corruption, and its prime minister has resigned.
In Iraq, its prime minister agreed Thursday to resign after weeks of anti-government protests and hundreds of casualties.
In the Americas, Chile has experienced its worst unrest in decades — including a march of more than a million people — with nearly 12 days of mass protests and street violence.
There were also mass protests in Ecuador and in Bolivia against government austerity. And in Argentina, a centre-left candidate defeated the incumbent conservative president in elections last weekend.
There have also been recent street protests in Pakistan, Haiti, Ethiopia and Honduras. And of course, the protests in Hong Kong over the perilous state of democracy there have continued.
But by far, the biggest demonstration in recent weeks was in September with the global strike over the looming environmental catastrophe. It was a series of strikes and protests before the UN Climate Summit in New York, demanding that action be taken to address the climate crisis. The Guardian newspaper reported that roughly six million people took part.
Who are the folks in the streets? They are primarily young and it is they who have been burdened by the past follies of global elites:
The annual report by Oxfam issued in January on the state of the world’s wealth confirmed that the rich indeed are getting richer. It reported that the world’s top 26 billionaires now own as much as the world’s poorest 3.8 billion people.
Take the U.S., for example. It was announced last Friday that the U.S. government’s budget deficit with Donald Trump as president ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019 — a jump of nearly 50 per cent since he became president. This largely comes from increased military spending and unfunded tax cuts that have overwhelmingly benefited the wealthy.
As a consequence, America’s national debt is now hitting levels not seen since the end of the Second World War, and this makes it inevitable that political pressure will build in the years ahead to drastically cut social assistance programs and Medicare to pay for it.
If you think the 1960's was disruptive, wait 'til you see what awaits us in the 2020's.
Image: ODT
10 comments:
"It was announced last Friday that the U.S. government’s budget deficit with Donald Trump as president ballooned to nearly $1 trillion in 2019 — a jump of nearly 50 per cent since he became president."
Trump declared bankruptcy four or six times....., nothing more needs to be said Owen!
Precisely, Rural. There is a huge swath of the American public who are simply too stupid to do the math.
Gwynne Dyer has a column on this subject at the Hamilton Spectator.
You can hear the sharpening of the Guillotines.
It's interesting, rumley, that Dyer sees something of a silver lining in this:
"There are millions of angry dissenters from this evolving consensus, but for the first time ever we really are becoming one people. That is a comforting thought as we head into the millennial storm of climate change. It couldn’t have come at a better time."
Let's hope his observation is right.
This could all end very badly, zoombats. Let's hope, as Dyer suggests, that things could get better.
Is it approaching "Off-with-their-Heads" time? I won't know which list of names to pick until I check to see which ones mine's on. Who'll be the first guy to attempt to run the Committee of Public Safety? It'll be particularly difficult for Americans to address these concerns at the same time that they have to continue protecting Trump from the Deep State.
If a Robespierre emerges, John, lots of heads will roll.
it could be very dangerous times. The billionaires and corporate elite and their puppets the politicians aren't going to hand over the money and they will kill their young. I still remember Kent State as if it were yesterday. the way trump and his gang have treated children in the u.s.a. reminds me of the African dictator who went out and personally shot and killed children who were protesting the increased cost of school uniforms (in many countries if the child can not afford the uniform they can not go to school). I remember in Chile, during protests the armed forces burnt a 15 year old girl, who then came to Canada for medical treatment. Some in Chile didn't think it was a big deal, the burning of the child.
Some of the big American tech corporations see the writing on the wall and are "giving" a billion here and there for affordable housing. when people have no place to live but on the streets, they are much more likely to riot and keep in touch with each other and organize.
In the U.S.A. the politicians have always been able to gain the support of poor southerners and then others to support the corporate elite by the politics of division. We're seeing a lot of it again, with the trump version of the Southern Strategy which was used by bush to win in 1988
That "southern strategy" has been the source of much pain and suffering, e.a.f.
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