Complex tragedies of wealth and want presage latest tragedy but latest not cause of crisis
Editing and Commentary by Carolyn LaDelle Bennett
The current Deutsche Welle documentary of human trafficking
and refugee death (“Asphyxiated on the Highway: The End of a
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| Deutsche Welle Documentary “Asphyxiated on the Highway: The End of a Desperate Journey” |
Desperate Journey”)
is horrific. But the blame and indeed the solutions neither begin nor end solely with
trafficking, traffickers and deaths of refugees. Arrests, trials and imprisonment,
though required by law (except for the well-heeled), fail to solve underlying structural
problems. War and unrest and want create refugees and asylum seekers, and also
create those who exploit and profit from forced migration and the misery of displaced
peoples across the world. The DW documentary reports that on a highway in Austria on
August 27, 2015, police found “71 corpses [suffocated refugees] in a small
truck, some already in a state of advanced decomposition.” The refugees were
finally identified as having come from the countries where Western wars are being waged and have been for years—“Afghanistan, Syria, Iran and Iraq.”
Investigative journalists researched the network of human traffickers,
interviewed lawyers and investigators for a film that reconstructs the flight of the
refugees.
T
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his tragedy of human trafficking and death, happening again
and again beyond and occasionally in the news, such as this compelling
Deutsche Welle documentary, rests with leaders of world powers, West and East,
nuclear powers' leaders’ wars and their domestic and international priorities and policies; it rests with plunderers, robbers, the super rich, and
countries’ leadership, officials whose corruption lets stand the oppressive status
quo.
Almost half of the world’s wealth is now owned by just one
percent of the world’s population. $110 trillion—65 times the total wealth of
the bottom half of the world’s population—constitutes the wealth of the one
percent richest people in the world. The richest 85 people in the world hold all
of what equals to the wealth-holding of all people in the bottom half of the
world’s population. Seven out of ten people live in countries where economic
inequality increased in 30 years preceding a 2013 Credit Suisse Research Global Wealth Report. Since 2009, the United
States’ wealthiest one percent captured 95 percent of post-financial crisis growth
while the bottom 90 percent became poorer.
W
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e can feign outrage or actually be outraged by the current state of
affairs but real or pretended outrage doesn’t amount to a hill of beans when
common sense tells us that poverty need not “always be with us”—that was peddled
propaganda and otherwise expedient, flawed reasoning. Anyone with common sense
knows that when ordinate power, their interminable wars, dominance and plunder,
their criminal impunity create and sustain poverty—when this critical causation is pervasive and persistent—the consequence is inevitable, interminable poverty. And from conditions
of interminable want, poverty, conflict, destabilization, victimization—looking
up from scrubbing the floors and toilets of inordinate wealth—rise desperate
acts (piracy, smuggling in people, animals, and in inanimate objects of all
kinds) to get out from under the arm of oppression, to gain some measure
of self-respect and not opulence but the basics of a decent livelihood and living.
In the United States and across the world, Oxfam warns,
“When wealth captures government policy making, the rules bend to favor the
rich, often to the detriment of everyone else. The consequences include the erosion of
democratic governance, the pulling apart of social cohesion, and the vanishing
of equal opportunities for all.
“Unless bold political solutions are instituted
to curb the influence of wealth on politics, governments will work for the
interests of the rich, while economic and political inequalities continue to
rise.”
Sources and notes
DW documentary “Asphyxiated on the Highway - The End of a
Desperate Journey” August 25, 2016, broadcast dates August 26-27; September 8-9,
2016 and archived. http://www.dw.com/en/documentaries-asphyxiated-on-the-highway-2016-08-25/e-19457567-9798
OXFAM Briefing
Paper 178 Working for the Few: Political capture and economic inequality, a paper
written by Ricardo Fuentes-Nieva and Nick Galasso, production assistance by
Natalia Alonso, Ana Arendar, Teresa Cavero, Anna Coryndon, Kimberly Pfeifer and
Max Lawson; part of a series of papers written to inform public debate on
development and humanitarian policy issues. Oxfam International January 2014 copyrighted
publication “but the text may be used free of charge for the purposes of
advocacy, campaigning, education, and research, provided that the source is
acknowledged in full.” policyandpractice@oxfam.org.uk
information correct at the time publication goes to press; published by Oxfam
GB for Oxfam International under ISBN 978-1-78077-540-1 in January 2014. Oxfam
GB, Oxfam House, John Smith Drive, Cowley, Oxford, OX4 2JY, UK, www.oxfam.org
Research Institute: Thought leadership from Credit Suisse
Research and the world’s foremost experts October 2013 Global Wealth Global
Wealth Report:
“…Global household wealth equates to USD 51,600 per adult, a new all-time high for average net worth [but] this average global value masks considerable variation across countries and regions. The richest nations, with wealth per adult over USD 100,000, are found in North America, Western Europe, and among the rich Asia-Pacific and Middle Eastern countries.… Wealth varies greatly across individuals” but this reports estimates that “the lower half of the global population possesses barely 1 percent of global wealth… The richest 10 percent of adults own 86 percent of all wealth….The top 1 percent account for 46 percent of the total wealth.”
Wealthy nations [though within these nations there is dire want]: USA, Japan, China, India, France, United Kingdom, Switzerland, Russia, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Chile, Brazil, and Canada
https://publications.credit-suisse.com/tasks/render/file/?fileID=BCDB1364-A105-0560-1332EC9100FF5C83
Blog Author
A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora
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