Who Shall Inherit the Earth?
24 June, 2005
By Anwaar Hussain
The present chaos in the world is painted by some as a struggle between dictatorships and democracy, yet others have termed it a war between Christianity and Islam, calling it a Crusade. There is neither any such struggle between democratic and dictatorial forces visible anywhere, nor are there are any Crusades going on. We are only witnessing a continuing saga of the Haves and the Have-nots.
Regardless of cast, color, creed national identities or isms, the world is divided into two main opposing social classes, the tiny Haves and the massive Have-nots. The main driving force of modern history is simply the struggle between these two classes. Religious polarization is merely another tool in the hands of the Haves to keep the Have-nots busy, heads down, in their myriad struggles lest they pause long enough to behold their own emaciated selves and the folds of fat around the frames of the slave masters.
The chief instruments of the Haves are state institutions, propped and funded by huge corporations, through which they keep the Have-nots in line while continuing to milk them. The teeming billions, groaning under the yoke of their own labor, are frequently given strong doses of patriotism---laced with enough religious fervor---to numb the feelings of pain and keep the mills grinding.
Just in case any one doubted that the world’s population is divided between a small fraction who own most of the wealth and the enormous bulk who must work for them in order to survive, here are some facts.
According to a UNDP report, the net wealth of the 10 richest billionaires is well above $130 billion, more than 1.5 times the total national income of the least developed countries.
The WDM (World Development Movement) says that the causes of world poverty are the policies currently pursued by governments and multinational companies. It continues
"Policies of governments and companies are keeping people poor. Policies that ensure global trade benefits the rich, not the poor - the three richest men in the world are wealthier than the 48 poorest countries combined. Policies that give increasing power to multinational companies - for every £1 of aid going into poor countries, multinationals take 66p of profits out. The powerful are exploiting the poor to make bigger and bigger profits."
To show the current extent of global poverty, following are some key quotations from the UNDP Human Development Report 2003
"More than 1.2 billion people – one in every five on Earth – survive on less than $1 a day. During the 1990s the share of people suffering from extreme income poverty fell from 30% to 23%. But with a growing world population, the number fell by just 123 million – a small fraction of the progress needed to eliminate poverty. And excluding China, the number of extremely poor people actually increased by 28 million." Hence "in Latin America and the Caribbean, the Arab States, Central and Eastern Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa the number of people surviving on less than $1 a day increased."
"Some 54 countries are poorer now than in 1990. Of the 54 countries with declining incomes, 20 are from Sub-Saharan Africa, 17 from Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), 6 from Latin America and the Caribbean, 6 from East Asia and the Pacific and 5 from the Arab States."
"Poverty has increased even in some countries that have achieved overall economic growth, and over the past two decades income inequality worsened in 33 of 66 developing countries with data."
The evidence shows that not only has global inequality not been reduced over recent years, but some recent research has argued that it has actually increased (The Economist 26/04/2001). The Economist puts it another way. It points out that, "This level of inequality is equivalent to a situation where 66% of people have zero income, and 34% divide the entire income of the world among themselves equally!"
As the earth’s resources continue to diminish fast, the greed of the Haves has now reached a feverish pitch in direct proportion. In their quest to siphon out the last of the riches from the earth’s bowels, they will travel far with their false ideologies and insidious creeds. Anyone hindering their feeding frenzy will be obliterated without a second thought.
Take the saga of a resource-rich region of the world, for example. The history of Middle East since the discovery of oil has evolved around the lengths to which the UK and USA will go to maintain control of this oil and to prevent any rival from gaining a foothold there. Mass murder of Middle Eastern people, political coups, assassinations and various stage-managed social upheavals have been but merely the cause and effect of the plan to loot and plunder. The more the media statements from politicians and their subsequent actions are analyzed, the more apparent the monumental deceit and deliberate misleading becomes.
Therefore, to think any more that the present Iraq war was foisted simply to overthrow a brutal dictator and free the Iraqis or to stop the spread of weapons of mass destruction is as naïve as it sounds. It is being fought over a key energy source, oil, of which Iraq has the second biggest reserves after Saudi Arabia. The chief aim is to secure future supplies of such energy resources, essential to the political and economic well being of the ruling elites. Period.
In other words, this war is no different from any of the wars that have taken place in modern times. It's a commerce war. The greed of a few is driven by the competitive struggle for profits between corporations and states. Conflicts over sources of raw materials, investment outlets, markets, trade routes, and strategic choke points to control and protect these are the essential manifestations of the gluttony of the few.
When the Haves judge that their "vital interest" is threatened - e.g. needing to secure access to a key raw material, trade route or military outpost - they go to war. Global greed of the Haves, therefore, breeds war. Consequently massive propaganda exercises are employed by the state to stoke the fears and anxieties of the Have-nots regarding their material poverty and physical insecurity to justify these wars.
The problem is further compounded by the fact that there are competing gangs even among the Haves because of the natural rivalry of their greed. Although secret organizations like the Bilderbergers do exist to minimize this competition and help share the loot equitably, unquenchable avarice can be a dangerous thing. The real evil in this world is thus caused by the adversarial gangs of ruling class hoodlums who control all media outlets, and the ignorance of the Have-nots who support them. The purpose-built divisiveness of class, race, nationalism and religion by the ruling elites further strengthens their cause. It is thus that the world is brought to the brink of a blood-bath for possession of its precious assets.
In one sense, though, the present conflict may be called a Crusade. Currently, the Muslims happen to be sitting on 70% of the world’s energy resources, and the Christian West’s ruling elite are rooting for the same. But if by some quirk of fate, a few alternate sources of fossil riches were found out in, let’s say, Greenland or Iceland, the Crusade would shift there faster than one can say the names of these countries.
The only counter to this onslaught of the Haves then is a united world community without frontiers based on all the Earth's resources, natural and industrial, becoming the common inheritance of all humankind and being used to satisfy people's needs rather than for cutthroat profit--all the while guarding against the rise of yet another class of Haves amongst the Have-nots. A simple human necessity, the idea needs no ism for crutches.
It is by now a given that the present ruling elites propagate wars. Therefore, to get rid of wars, the threat of wars and the constant preparation for war represented by maintaining huge armed forces - this class of blood suckers has to be got rid of. To break the yokes around their necks, the Have-nots of the world have to combine their energies. And while they are attempting that, they have to make sure not to ally themselves with even a tiniest fraction of the Haves. Carrying their swords and Crosses wrapped in national flags, the Haves tend to behave like yeast fermenting the entire milieu around them.
That voices were raised against the war, millions of voices, shows that there is hope…..the hope that the Have-nots will one day realize the potential for mutual dependence and support, the hope that this is not merely wishful thinking and has tangible basis in material reality rather than mere moral conjecturing.
The ultimate question, then, between the Haves and the Have-nots: Who shall inherit the earth?
End.
Copyrights : Anwaar Hussain
Courtesy: Fountainhead
http://malakandsky.blogspot.com/2005/06/who-shall-inherit-earth.html
|
