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
