"The rich get richer and the poor get poorer" is an aphorism due to Percy Bysshe Shelley. In A Defence of Poetry (1821, not published until 1840) Shelley remarked that the promoters of utility had exemplified the saying, "To him that hath, more shall be given; and from him that hath not, the little that he hath shall be taken away. The rich have become richer, and the poor have become poorer; and the vessel of the State is driven between the Scylla and Charybdis of anarchy and despotism."[1]

"To him that hath" etc. is a reference to Matthew 25:29 (the parable of the talents, see also Matthew effect). The aphorism is commonly evoked, with variations in wording, as a synopsis of the effect of free market capitalism producing excessive inequality.

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BY Hiroyuki Hamada

I remember chatting with a man from Iraq in 2016. He was driving a taxi in Germany. I wrote about him in one of my essays[1]:

Last month, I was chatting with an Iraqi taxi driver in Berlin. My 12 year old son and I took a cab from the Museum for Contemporary Art to our hotel. I couldn’t help but ask the cab driver why he ended up in Berlin. He said it was something to do with the availability of the visa. He stressed that he had to leave because he didn’t like Islam. He said Muslims were killing each other.

I felt very slightly sad because he sounded like he had to say that to prove that he wasn’t a “terrorist”. I told him that it was the US that supported Saddam when it was convenient. Then, the US flipped, changing its policy, as doing so became more convenient. I asked him, Taliban, al Qaeda, ISIS, same old story, no?

Then he said something unexpected. He said it was a “people’s revolution”. “We stood against Saddam”. He was referring to the first gulf war in 1991. He went on to describe how it didn’t go as people wished, and it brought about the devastating trade embargo, more war, ISIS and so on. His voice was passionate. I felt the anger and frustration against war and imperialism that I also feel myself, in his voice.

The imperial war against countries that defy the US hegemonic imperatives involves a few steps. The target population is deprived of their basic necessities by economic embargo, trade sanctions, travel restrictions and demonization of its leader. 

The society is destabilized by the lack of resources and economic activities. The opposing forces in the country are generously funded by the empire to build a momentum against the defying “regime” in the name of “revolution,” “democracy,” “freedom” and etc.

The communities are divided. The institutions are compromised to serve capital, adding more confusions and predicaments to the population. 

Quite often this is sufficient enough to silence those who defy such interventions and it results in an overthrow of the existing order. The society is transformed to suit the colonial policies concocted by western industries, which result in resource extraction, privatization, financialization, exploitation of cheap labor, construction of US military bases and so on. 

Quite a few middle eastern countries have defied such interventions resulting in proxy wars and western military interventions. 

That was the “war on terror” which continues to this day as the US forces are freely employed against the world according to its “war on terror legal framework,” while its measures are still in place as restrictions against our legal rights as well as restrictions at airports and so on. 

Many of us raised our voices against the obvious crime of invading other countries, colonizing them and subjugating them. To my surprise there were people who objected to our assertion saying that if we didn’t invade them, they would have invaded us, they were “terrorists,” and so on.

Enormous profits were generated by this huge public project, war, at the expense of the people in the war torn countries as well as oppressed people in some of the richest countries of the world. No one was held accountable for deaths and destruction. The war to save people from terrorists was a huge capitalist project to expand the power and wealth of hardened criminals who call themselves politicians, philanthropists, businessmen, intellectuals, patriots, academics, and so on. 

The underlining mentality of neocolonial violence is based on prejudice against the peoples of the targeted countries.

Those peoples, who reside within countries governed by “leaders” who have sworn to obey imperial policies, are subjected to tighter measures of exploitation and subjugation in order to serve the interests of the imperial institutions. The predicaments of the subject population—poverty, social unrest, and corruption, which stem from the economic subjugation, justify the mental superiority among westerners, falsely proving the inferiority of the “barbaric” population which must be “assisted” by westerners.

If the leader of a colonized country attempts to amend the unfair situation by implementing policies that serve that country’s own people, the western authority would mobilize policies to remove such an element. The policies are firmly backed by the prejudice amongst the imperial population.

Simple slogans and key words such as “he is killing his own people,” “save the children,” “regime,” “dictatorship” and “genocide” can trigger the colonial mentality as well as the white savior mentality in the imperial population.

Fast forward to 2021–the era of war on virus. We are experiencing a massive wealth transfer to the rich and powerful, which can be best described by Jeff Bezos thanking his workers and customers for his rocket ride[2].

The cynical exploitative violence inflicted against workers is found in all sectors across the country, creating destruction of small community businesses, massive homelessness, suicide surge, a spike in drug-related deaths. Lockdown measures are wreaking havoc in vital social relations, which must now be reorganized.

The virus event has turned the dwindling healthcare system into mask-wearing, social distancing and getting injected with extremely lucrative experimental GMO drugs — which are surrounded by unprecedented numbers of injuries and deaths, far surpassing all combined prior vaccine injury and death reports to the CDC reporting system VAERS. 

The lockdown measures and profit-oriented measures against the virus further narrowed the capacity of the general healthcare system, resolution in huge numbers of patients without vital care for their urgent conditions. Destroying the healthcare system (as it quietly transitions to telehealth with zero dissent) for the sake of saving lives is only an aspect of the current mobilization. 

The education system, which has been under attack for generations by corporate forces, has received a blank check to fire faculties, turn classes into online tutorials, and pursue a new mission to create obedient workers for the Forth Industrial Revolution.

The financial institution has accelerated its herding of the population into the digital realm where people are conditioned, commodified, and exploited as data. In every industry, a massive restructuring process for profit is occurring in the name of Covid measures. 

Now, I understand that respiratory illnesses can be very dangerous. If you look up articles from pre-Covid time, you find desperate calls from healthcare professionals screaming about the risk of flu epidemics due to the lack of facilities and resources. This has become reality after Covid, as massive death tolls have resulted from nursing home lockdowns. Profit oriented treatment options have been promoted while effective options were restricted, resulting in yet even more deaths and hospitalizations.

But statistically, all these deaths in the US had not exceeded the range of year to year variation in death rate. This crucial fact has been observed in various countries. 

The Covid situation, if anything, is very much a manmade event. It can not be described as a deadly pandemic comparable to the bubonic plague. This should shatter virus event narratives propped up by “cases“ concocted by unreliable PCR tests—its inaccuracy has been highly criticized by many scientists—including the inventor of the PCR test himself–due to its arbitrary results depending on the degree of amplification in search of the targeted DNA fragments[3][4].

The above observation is strictly based on the opinions of numerous healthcare professionals, doctors, and scientists across the globe. At the very least, it must be recognized that there are significant disagreements within the field of science on every aspect of Covid-19, its treatments, and lockdown measures.[5][6]

However, none of those are examined in a serious manner by the establishment. In fact there are many instances of healthcare professionals being disciplined for reporting cases of vaccine injury, speaking against the treatment policies, and questioning the prevelant assumptions regarding the virus. Healthcare professionals are actively forced to play along with the official Covid narrative. 

For the general public the mixed emotions over the contradictions have turned to frustration, and the frustration has turned anger as if we are stuck in a pressure cooker made with official narratives and structural impediments of lockdowns and forced vaccine injection. The heat and pressure have broken down the social fabric as our daily routines are dictated by “new normal.”

So many things have happened since last year. But somehow things don’t seem to fit in right places in our heads. 

We mark our sense of time and space with traditional events, daily routines and our common knowledge. When we lose those, we are left with a series of elements and dynamics without those markers. 

But alternate markers have been provided by those who have deprived us of the markers. Our lives are marked with lockdowns, masks and social distancing–the “new normal”. 

Now we mark our lives with it. 

We are told that there is a deadly disease out there and the only solution is to vaccinate. Our life and death are determined by one of the largest corporate entities, the medical-industrial complex. 

Just as the war on terror was described as a “crusade”—legitimizing the twisted religious and cultural superiority of the colonizers, disguising white man’s burden as humanitarian obligation — the war on virus crowns “science” as its guiding force. However, needless to say, the credibility of the “science” is proportional to the accompanying might of wealth and power — just as the facts of war are bought and sold as “journalism”. 

Propaganda lies fill the air as those who oppose are marked as “others” who deserve to be castigated as being outside of the protection of the gated community. 

This way of framing — the medical-industrial complex — is useful in understanding the dynamics within the capitalist hegemony. However, such an entity is also a part of the media industrial complex, non-profit industrial complex, political industrial complex, and of course military-industrial complex. 

In short, our lives are dictated by multiple dynamic forces of oligarchs, orchestrating a “reality” which firmly manifests as a capitalist framework—a cage to condition our lives based on its imperatives.

As the current virus mobilization reframes our society, obliterating existing values, norms and beliefs, the corporate institutions and their owners are consecrated as absolute beings which determine our life and death. This is why decrees legitimated by the “emergency” are acceptable political means now. This is why large corporations have gained enormous wealth. This is why our lives are herded into the digital realm where we are commodified, conditioned to be exploited, and truncated to be stripped of the mystery of life and the unknown. 

But where do the anger and frustration go? 

The US establishment is well aware of the boiling anger and frustration over the situation. The momentum of anger is cultivated and it is being shaped to put the people against each other—an old corporate duopoly trick, which has grown steadily as a dynamic tool of social engineering in the US. The ghosts of the Civil War still determine the means of enslavement, while allowing the ruling class to preside over the theater of “democracy,” “freedom” and “humanity”—a manufactured “reality.” 

Individualism, self-determination and a sense of freedom based on the sacrifices of many oppressed people are a privilege only allowed to people with economic security. This is a part of the reason why the resistance against the Covid lockdown measures encompasses a reactionary element. In particular, erroneously defining the trajectory as “socialism” or “communism”.

This ironic twist, the capitalist oppression being blamed on the enemy of capitalists, once again reveals the mechanism of the imperial duopoly as well as the expansion of the exploitive violence against a formerly economically secure segment of the population, which will require tighter measures of draconian restrictions.

It is not a coincidence that the red states have embraced the opposing positions while the blue states firmly adhere to the official narratives on vaccines and lockdown measures. The subject populations are allowed to choose the mode of enslavement, but the slight differences in the choice are big enough to activate colonial hatred toward each other. The unresolved historical pain, emotion and grudge have found urgent expression against “enemies” among us. 

A fight between teeth-baring wolves and cunning foxes, as Malcolm X would call it, channels the anger and frustration safely within the capitalist framework. The media, politicians and major institutions carefully instigate conflicts among the people by demonizing opponents over vaccines and lockdown measures, while protecting “pandemic” narratives one way or the other. 

Some people might think that things must get worse before it gets better. Things can certainly get worse but it looks like it only means more fragmentation of communities and destabilization of institutions, which allows further erosion of people’s interests by the capitalist domination along with justifications for its draconian measures. This probably gives a comfortable feeling for those privileged ones in gated communities.

This also accompanies the exacerbation of fascist momentum, which always justifies the forces of western imperial hegemony—remember how the Trump phenomenon pushed neoliberal policies, which are embraced by the both corporate parties, while justifying anything else to oppose Donald Trump, who was largely perceived as an obvious caricature of the narcissistic failing empire? The US capitalism moves forward while oscillating left and right within the acceptable spectrum of imperialism. 

In short, everything is under control according to those who destroyed the middle eastern countries. The only difference is that now the target is us. We are under attack. Some of us are demonized by the establishment to play the role of scapegoats. Some of us are praised as heroes saving lives and sacrificing themselves. Our communities are being destroyed to be further consumed by the colonizers of humanity and nature. 

The war on the virus is meant as a crucial background of destabilization and fear which helps extract huge amounts of public spending in the name of saving lives, saving the environment and saving people’s livelihoods—which are all under attack by the savagery of the very capitalist domination. Since the war on the virus is largely targeting public money, we are bombarded with an unprecedented amount of wholesale propaganda narratives, as if we are thrown into the process of corporate electoral process — we are supposed to vote yes to those lucrative capitalist fixes for the capitalist problems by going along with the narratives.

Public outcries against the policies are safely consumed among the populations as people are forced to fight among themselves. 

Moreover, the war on the virus is meant to be a perpetual war. Inconceivable “mistakes” will be made, victories would be declared here and there, facts will be revealed when convenient, while much of the facts are distorted to prop up the pretence of this vast protection racket scheme by the oligarchs. One step forward, and one step backward, our lives swirl within the torturous theater of the “medical crisis,” but the real solution is never to be found within it. 

The empire can not lose the war but the empire has no intention of winning the war either, for the winning can destroy the domesticated momentum of the in-fighting among the people, as well as an assortment of “activism” backed by the Non-Profit Industrial Complex, which effectively drives capitalist agendas in the name of “our democracy”.

After all, we are many. The oppressors are not.

The mechanism of domestication must be kept in place to tame the masses within the feudal hierarchy of money and violence. Meanwhile, fear, doubt and real threat against our livelihood in the form of economic strangulation continue to force us to swallow the protection racket deal with the criminal enterprise. 

Ultimately, the trajectory points to a complete domestication of our species through management of all means of production, its products, and the distribution system. As the peoples become products themselves with biotech procedures, the social relations within the digital realm seamlessly merge with the fabricated reality, virtually cementing the feudal hierarchy of the absolute power. 

As we operate within social media outlets, as we present our identities within their frameworks, and as we are injected with GMO drugs to modify our physical response to the natural world, we have already stepped into a dangerous stage that might very well spell the end of our species as we know it. 

What could Iraqis do as they suffered the deadly embargo and invasions? The question is ours now. Unfortunately, many of those who stood with the empire are still insisting on fighting the imperial war as we have become the targets of the war, demonizing our community members as enemies, repeating slogans and talking points to justify the imperial restructuring, as our communities fall apart to be devoured by the colonizers. 

It is no coincidence that those who oppose the current mobilization are accused of being racists, conspiracy theorists, or fascist worshippers—just as not agreeing with bombing brown people would be accused of letting brown children die by the hand of a “dictator.”

Our real enemy is not the “antivaxxers,” or the gullible people swallowing the corporate propaganda. The real enemy is the imperial oligarchs who are shaping our society in order to continue their ways of exploitation and subjugation. They are shaping the capitalist cage to squeeze the last remnants of our imagination and our connection to humanity and nature. How can we defy the colonization of humanity and nature? 

How can we be a part of the resistance against the criminal pyramid scheme which is bound to implode with its destructive nature? How can we build our ways to be in harmony with ourselves, with each other and with nature? We are a part of the countless people who have held the dream of such harmony. We stand strong with them in solidarity. 

We are many. The oppressors are not.

READ MORE: https://off-guardian.org/2021/08/05/we-are-many-the-oppressors-are-not/

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Unfortunately, many people choose either to ignore the drama or will align themselves to the bullies (the "oppressors") a) to avoid feeling being oppressed and b) to collect some crumbs that fall off from the table of the rich.

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by Shirley Killen

07 September 2021

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Australian media and politicians have told us over and over that “we’re all in this together”. The virus, they explain, is a great equaliser, a crisis that has brought together the nation in a shared experience of hardship. But recent data reveals what we could all see from the beginning—that while the pandemic has been a difficult time for workers and the poor, the capitalist class have had a very different experience.

The latest figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics show that in the last year the rate of wage growth slowed to its lowest level since 2001. Meanwhile, a list of Australia’s richest 250 people, published earlier this year in the Australian, showed that their combined wealth increased by 25 percent in 2020. The country’s richest collectively raked in $93 billion during the first year of the pandemic, taking their total wealth to $470 billion.

Those in the software, mining and property sectors in particular saw their share of the wealth rise, with Australia’s richest person, Gina Rinehart, more than doubling her fortune, from $16.21 billion to $36.28 billion. Others in the mining industry, including Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer, have enjoyed comparable wealth increases, and CEOs of technology companies have also profited.

In some cases the wealth increases were boosted by the pocketing of JobKeeper subsidies. Around 20 percent of JobKeeper money went to companies that were already experiencing increased profits during the pandemic, and more often than not the owners of these companies simply kept it for themselves. The government’s refusal to provide financial support directly to workers and instead to allow bosses to manage the process left the door wide open to misappropriation of this money by the capitalist class.

One example is Gerry Harvey, founder of furniture and technology retailer Harvey Norman, who recently bowed to public pressure and returned $6 million of the JobKeeper money his company received. But Harvey is no hero—this is less than a third of the estimated $22 million given to him by the government, and a drop in the ocean compared to the staggering $1.18 billion in profits made by Harvey Norman in the past year.

But the rorting of JobKeeper is only a minor factor in the accelerating wealth disparity in Australia. Wage growth has been sluggish for years. The relentless privatisation, deregulation, attacks on unions and cuts to social services that have been a mainstay of the neoliberal era have resulted in an unprecedented transfer of wealth from the bottom of society to the top. It’s no surprise that the government resorted to the same playbook during the pandemic—directing stimulus spending at the rich and leaving workers further behind than ever. 

It’s especially galling to see that, despite all the talk of valuing essential workers, it has been those on the front lines of the COVID crisis in sectors like health, transport and the postal service who have had the lowest wage growth of all—just 0.1 percent in the three months to the end of June. The very people who have endured backbreaking shifts staffing our overburdened hospitals and risked infection while delivering the necessities that have kept society running through lockdown have received nothing but empty words as compensation. Over the same period, corporate profits rose by a massive 7.1 percent.

During 2020 the share of national income going towards wages dropped sharply, from 53 to 49 percent. Wage growth has lagged behind inflation, meaning that, in real terms, wages fell by 2.1 percent on average in the year to June. These figures make it clear: the gains made by Australia’s wealthy few during the pandemic have come at the cost of workers and the poor. 

In the face of this wages crisis, the priorities of the capitalist class and their allies in the government are clear. The money that Gina Rinehart accrued in 2020 alone could pay the salaries of 250,000 nurses—something that is desperately needed as Australia’s healthcare system buckles under the strain of the Delta variant. The estimated $10 to $20 billion in JobKeeper money that went straight into the bosses’ pockets could have been used to extend the scheme for another six months. 

Read more:

https://redflag.org.au/article/how-australias-richest-have-profited-pandemic

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Global Citizen Live’s message to society from mega-rich celebs is ‘make do with less.’ And that really sticks in my throat

By Rob Lyons
Rob Lyons is a UK journalist specialising in science, environmental and health issues. He is the author of 'Panic on a Plate: How Society Developed an Eating Disorder'.

On Saturday night, the BBC devoted hours of programming to Global Citizen Live: Music Festival for the Planet – a collection of pop concerts and performances from London, New York, Paris, Lagos, Mumbai, Seoul and Sydney in support of the Global Citizen movement. 

Up to a billion people around the globe were expected to tune into a 24-hour broadcast, one way or another. But are wealthy pop stars really the best ambassadors for the cause?

According to its website, “Global Citizen is a movement of engaged citizens who are using their collective voice to end extreme poverty by 2030. Through our mix of content and events, grassroots organizing, and our action platform, we are building a movement to end poverty. We organize massive global campaigns to amplify the actions of Global Citizens from around the world.”

No one could disagree that ending extreme poverty is a worthy cause. But watching the opening few minutes of the show, featuring K-pop superstars BTS and Kiwi singer-songwriter Lorde, this was virtue-signalling gone mad. Moreover, while Global Citizen was asking for donations to provide school meals, plant trees and deliver vaccines, this was ultimately an advocacy campaign getting free airtime on the supposedly politically neutral BBC. 

For starters, many of the performers are mega-wealthy themselves. At the Paris gig, for example, the headliners were Ed Sheeran (reported net worth £200 million) and Elton John (worth a cool £350 million). 

Given that a stated aim of Global Citizen is “tackling inequality”, are these stars suggesting everyone should get the same? Will they be giving up their fortunes to make the world more equal? I don’t think they should – they’ve made their money by providing millions of people with entertainment. But it sticks in the throat for the rest of us to be lectured to about the evils of inequality by people who live in such luxury.

While Elton and Ed have made a great play of the tax they pay, pop stars don’t exactly have a great track record on paying their dues the way the little people have to. As the so-called Paradise Papers revealed in 2017, some stars have gone to great lengths to find legal ways to be ‘tax efficient’ with their cash. 

Admittedly, as George Harrison wrote in the Beatles song ‘Taxman’, eye-watering tax rates – “one for you, 19 for me”, as the song says – only encourage tax avoidance. But maybe musicians and other celebrities could be a little more circumspect in telling us about global poverty while ensuring their ‘fair share’ of tax is as small as possible.

As for saving the planet, these are people who feel that flying round the world in private jets is the hallmark of having made it. At the very least, they are well versed in turning left when they get on a jet, lapping it up in the most expensive seats at the front. Whizzing between continents and living in mansions, their carbon footprints must be enormous, compared to those of the rest of us. The epitome of useless celebs, Harry and Meghan, even rocked up at the New York concert to lecture the world about vaccines.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are here to talk to you about making sure getting vaccinated is a human right. #GlobalCitizenLive#GlobalCitizen#PowerTheMovement ⭕️ #HarryAndMeghanInNYC@GlblCtznpic.twitter.com/xmplOMEGVI

According to Global Citizen, climate change is “an existential threat to people and nature worldwide”, so it’s up to us to “urge world leaders, corporate executives and people everywhere to take action”. But what would that “action” look like? Most likely it means clamping down on greenhouse-gas emissions, and the upshot is policies that make people worse off, both in the developed world and in poorer nations. 

In richer countries, it means making energy much more expensive, leaving many people on low incomes to choose between eating and heating. In poorer countries that want access to reliable sources of electricity, it means that big international funders are refusing loans to build coal-fired power stations: just the kind of cheap, easy-to-use networked electricity supply that has lifted billions of people out of poverty in the past.

What poorer countries need is economic development and access to international markets so they can create the jobs needed to provide their citizens with better incomes. But what Global Citizen offers is cheap talk about development while interfering in the democratic debate that tries to balance all these competing concerns about the environment, living standards, freedom and more. It’s poverty and underdevelopment, not climate change, that is the real existential threat to the poorest people in the world.

Global Citizen Live will no doubt have made a few wealthy people feel good about themselves by doing their bit for a worthy cause. Their virtue was on display to millions around the world. But the campaign – at least, when it comes to climate change – is bizarre, because politicians are already falling over themselves to show how much they care about the planet. So, the movers and shakers behind Global Citizen get to hob-nob with the great and the good, the famous and the powerful, to decide how we should all be forced to live our lives, and the message to society from these pampered billionaires is ‘make do with less’. 

Meanwhile, the rest of us are reduced, at best, to the role of a stage army to demonstrate that civil society supports ‘taking action’. Thanks, but I’d prefer to be able to heat my home, drive my car and have a holiday abroad once or twice a year. Until we have a serious and honest political debate about these issues, we’ll all be worse off.

Read more:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/535868-global-citizen-inequality-celebs-live/

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