“If Trump is a symptom, what is the disease?” One often encounters this interesting question in alternative media articles. I think that at least part of the answer is “Excessive economic inequality”.
Johan Scales Avery
Hobson’s Explanation of Imperialism
The English economist and Fabian, John Atkinson Hobson (1858-1940), offered a famous explanation of the colonial era in his book, Imperialism: AStudy, (1902).
According to Hobson, the basic problem that led to colonial expansion was an excessively unequal distribution of incomes in the industrialized countries.
The result of this unequal distribution was that neither the rich nor the poor could buy back the total output of their society.
The Trump administration is already campaigning for the upcoming elections and its main target is an easy fragile one – migration and how to put the brakes on it. Turning Guatemala into a temporary prison has been its latest achievement. Español
August 2, 2019, Guatemala City, Guatemala, Guatemala: Women wait for relatives just deported from the USA arriving at Guatemala City International Airport Friday on a flight filled with deportees. | Miguel Juarez Lugo/Zuma Press/PA Images
12 August 2019 (openDemocracy)* — The issue of migration allows Trump to show off his imperial power in front of the cameras, and to cover up with much fuss a series of failures.
Numerous science, engineering, architecture, aviation, military and intelligence experts conclude that the US Government was responsible for the 9-11 atrocity (3,000 people killed) with some asserting Israeli and Saudi involvement, but US-beholden Western Mainstream media are united in blind belief in the official version of mendacious George Bush.
12 August 2019 (FAO)* — It is often said that young people are the future. However, when we talk about rural youth, the reality is that not many see a future in agriculture or in their places of origin. Lack of access to land, technology, credit or productive resources push many rural youth to consider migration, often to urban areas, as their only option to achieve a better future.
10 August 2019 (FAO)* — There are currently 1.8 billion people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world, the largest young population ever.
Students drawing during a JFFLS session in Samba, Central African Republic. | Photo from FAO.
On the occasion of International Youth Day (12 August), have a look at FAO’s selection of publications relating to youth and their role as agents of change.
12 August 2019 (United Nations)* — There are currently 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24 in the world. This is the largest youth population ever.
Indigenous peoples in the Philippines are increasingly involved in the national conversation about protecting and conserving the South East Asian country’s key biodiversity areas, thanks to support from the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
UNDP Philippines/Orange Omengan | An Egongot indigenous man balances on a yantok vine as he crosses from one tree to another in Dipaculao, Aurora, in the Philippines. (23 March 2019)
It is estimated that some 85 per cent of these areas are home to indigenous communities, who live in direct contact with nature and who have the traditional knowledge and skills to protect the environment.
The black guy in Louisiana exclaimed, as we helped ourselves to a rather good meal from his buffet, eating to our heart’s delight.
However, we have had equally good meals elsewhere, even better–certainly more sophisticated, refined, not so sweet, not so salty.
But, for US $5? Maybe not.
Accessible to most people in such a big population? Maybe not.
What did that black guy know about meals around the world?
Probably not much.
But his “only in America” truth was of a deeper kind, transcending all the prejudice, discrimination, killing even lynching, he and his kind had been exposed to.
Keeping the climate at a sustainable level is not prohibitive if we act now.
Keeping the climate at a sustainable level is not prohibitive if we act now | Image from Wall Street International.
10 August 2019 (Wall Street International)* — In 2007 a MIT survey revealed that nearly 60% of Americans feel that “until we are sure that global warming is really a problem, we should not take any steps that would have economic costs” or “its effects will be gradual, so we can deal with the problem gradually” (Sherman, 2007).
8 August 2019 (UN Environment)* — As scorching temperatures continue to break records across Europe, unprecedented wildfires break out in the Arctic, and polar sea ice cover drops—again—to an all-time low, never before has the climate crisis been so palpable, for so many people.
HUMAN WRONGS WATCH 