30/01/2018
By Johan Galtung*
19 January 2018 – TRANSCEND Media Service — Nobody less than Lawrence Summers writes (WP 11 Dec 2017): “Don’t Expect the Economy’s Sugar High to Last” in spite of economic growth of 2.3% and stock market rise by more than 25% after election and the tax cuts. Where workers’ take home pay is concerned, there are two missing measures: raising productivity and raising equality.
Johan Galtung
David Leonhardt (NYT 8 Sep 2017) “A Broken US Economy in One Simple Chart”: the poor and middle class annual income growth dropping from 3.5 to 1.2%, with the “very affluent” (0.001%) rising from 0 to 5.5%.
One thing is wealth, another is life expectancy: Japan and Spain are Nos. 1 and 2, Norway No. 14, USA No. 25. No doubt the Japanese diet based on le cru, not le cuit, and the Spanish Mediterranean diet, also based on the sea, the plains and the mountains, play major roles.
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09/01/2018
By Roberto Savio*
ROME, Jan 8 2018 – This year, we will have 3 million tourists each day wandering the world. This massive phenomenon is without precedent in human history and is happening (as usual), with only one consideration in mind: money.
Roberto Savio
We should pause and take a look at its social, cultural and environmental impact and take remedial measures, because they are becoming seriously negative if things are left as they are.
Sameer Kapoor listed for Triphobo Trip Planner a list of 20 places that have been ruined, due to excess of tourism. Antarctica is getting an alarming level of pollution.
The famous Taj Mahal, a monument of love from the Mughal emperor Shah Jahan to the memory of his wife, Mumtaz, has changed its shining milky white marble into a yellow shade.
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02/01/2018
By Roberto Savio*
2 January 2018 — Among Bloomberg’s many profitable activities there is a convenient Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which has just published its findings for 2017.
Roberto Savio
It covers only the 500 richest people, and it proudly announces that they have increased their wealth by 1 trillion dollars in just one year.
Their fortunes went up by 23 per cent to top comfortable 5 trillion dollars (to put this in perspective, the US budget is now at 3.7 trillion).
That obviously means an equivalent reduction for the rest of the population, which has lost those trillion dollars.
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27/12/2017
Rome, Dec (Other News) – On 20 December, Europe’s 28 Ministers of Environment met in Brussels, to discuss the plan for reducing emissions prepared by the Commission, to comply with the Paris Agreement on climate change. Well, it is now clear that we have lost the battle in keeping the planet as we have known it. Now, of course, this can be considered a personal opinion of mine, devoid of objectivity.
Roberto Savio
Therefore, I will bring a lot of data, history and facts, to make it concrete. Data and facts have good value: they focus any debate, while ideas do not.
So those who do not like facts, please stop reading here. You will escape a boring article, as probably all of mine are, because I am not looking to entertain, but to create awareness. If you stop reading, you will also lose a chance to know our sad destiny.
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22/12/2017
By Roberto Savio*
21 December 2017 — First of all, as we focus on the future, it is essential to look at the past. As Paul Raskin eloquently notes, we are united by a shared future, but we are united by a shared past as well. This shared past had two phases, both of which had major impacts on society.
Roberto Savio
The first is era of the Washington Consensus and the neoliberal creed, which became la pensée unique as of 1989, the year the Berlin Wall fell. History was at its end, or so the acolytes of this newly dominant creed hoped.
This, in turn, created an unprecedented counter-mobilization, with the World Social Forum as a prime example.
Nearly 100,000 people paid the costs of travels and hotels to be together, to share the same identity of resistant to the pensée unique, and declare that another world was possible.
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14/12/2017
This op-ed by Roberto Savio, IPS founder and President Emeritus is adapted from a statement he made as a panelist on Migration and Human Solidarity, A Challenge and an Opportunity for Europe and the MENA region held on 14 December at the Geneva Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue.
Roberto Savio
ROME, Dec 14 2017 (IPS) – At the outset my thanks to Dr Hanif Hassan Ali Al Kassim, and Ambassador Idriss Jazairy who lead the Centre for Human Rights Advancement and Global Dialogue for organizing this panel discussion at a critical moment in history.
The Centre is one of the few actors for peace and cooperation between the Arab world and Europe. As a representative of global civil society, I think it will be more meaningful if I speak without the constraints of diplomacy, and I make frank and unfettered reflections.
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22/10/2017
By Uri Avnery*
21/10/17
ONE DAY the Israeli Labor Party felt that it needed a new leader.
Uri Avnery
That happens to this party every couple of years. The party is in bad shape. It looks more like a political corpse than a living organism. Wanted: a new leader, charismatic, energetic, enthusiastic.
So they found Avi Gabbay.
Why him? Nobody is really sure.
Avi Gabbay has no visible qualities of political leadership. No charisma at all. No special energy. No enthusiasm himself and no ability to inspire enthusiasm in others.
After serving as a government employee dealing with the mobile phone industry, he himself became the successful director of the largest mobile phone concern.
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22/10/2017
ROME, 21 October 2017 (IPS) – The Austrian elections show clearly that media have given up on contextualising events.
To do that, calls for a warning about Europe’s future, as a vehicle of European values is required.
Europe has been weakened by all the recent elections, with the notable exception of France.
Common to all, France included, were some clear trends, that we will hastily, and therefore maybe imperfectly, examine.
The decline of the traditional parties.
In every election, since the financial crisis of 2009, the parties we have known to run their country since the end of the Second World War, are on the wane ( or practically disappearing, like in the last French elections).
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30/09/2017
ROME, Sep 29 2017 (IPS) – Generally, media have failed to analyse why the result of German elections is the worst possible. Merkel is not a winner, but a leader now in a very fragile position, who will have to make many compromises and pay now for her mistakes.
Roberto Savio
Let us make at least the most important four points of analysis.
Point One: the decline of traditional parties
Now for some years, the traditional parties who have run their countries since the end of the Second World War are becoming irrelevant.
The last French elections saw the practical collapse of the Socialist and Gaullist parties, with the arrival of a totally unknown candidate, Macron, who has now 60% of the seats in the Parliament.
The same happened earlier in the Austrian presidential elections.
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