#wealth_disparity

[clubofinfo]

Steve Topple on UK dark money

The Blog

Contributing an article to Common Space on 8 February, journalist Steve Topple criticized the relations between leading UK politicians, corporations, and tax havens.

Particular focus is on Bermuda as a tax haven in the article, with its role in protecting the wealth of unscrupulous corporations and British political campaign donors explained. Offering a list of the worst offenders, which includes Google shareholders and Conservative donors "Lord Green (serial HSBC wrong-un and Tory crony), Lord Lloyd-Webber (all-round bad-egg and party cheerleader), and Lord Glendonbrook (donated £700,000 to the Conservatives in the past 18 months)", Topple noted that the Labour Party is also blackened by the same financial dependence on tax havens. Exposing the unethical dark money obtained by Labour Party-affiliated think tank the Fabian Society, Topple wrote:

I wonder why beacons of social democracy the Fabians, then, have accepted £60,000 in donations from Cuadrilla (them of nefarious fracking ventures) – which is registered in Bermuda? Or £13,500 from corporate banking degenerates HSBC – who have eight subsidiaries on the island? Or £26,000 from Iglo Group (Birds Eye, Findus) - which at the time was dodging tax via Luxembourg and the Channel Islands?

Topple additionally criticized civil society organizations for talking about global wealth inequality while using investment over the stock market as a means of combating it, despite the stock market arguably being to blame for such inequality (if we ask the Occupy movement, for example). In addition, the article mocked people's faith in the corrupt political system in the UK, arguing as follows:

Politicians can wring their silver-crossed palms, bestow us with platitudes, and give rhetorical diatribes about the scourge of inequality all they want, but the truth of the matter is that corporations are now the organ-grinders running the planet – we merely vote for performing monkeys.

The Mont Order, which Steve Topple is a listed member of, holds the same skepticism towards present forms of democracy in the UK and the US, viewing these as shallow performances to keep corrupt elites in power with false appearances of legitimacy.

US-paid rebel thugs in #Syria talk "peace" to escape punishment by #Putin and #Assad https://t.co/X9aeOyt4Uf pic.twitter.com/qoSB1lfuZZ

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) February 10, 2016

The clubof.info Blog

[clubofinfo]

Wallerstein: Lat America creeps right

The Blog

The Latin American left may be in a state of self-destruction, social scientist Immanuel Wallerstein has explained in a recent analysis.

The problem originates in the fact that there are actually two "lefts" in Latin America:

... those persons and movements that wish to overcome the lower standards of living in the countries of the South by using state power to “modernize” the economy and thereby “catch up” with the countries of the North ... the modernizing left

... those underclasses who fear that such “modernization” will make things not better but worse for them, increasing the internal gaps between the better-off and the poorest strata of the country... the indigenista populations, that is, those whose presence dates from before the time that various European powers sent their troops and settlers into the Western Hemisphere. It also includes the afrodescendentes, that is, those who were brought in from Africa by the Europeans as slaves... These groups began to speak of promoting a civilizational change based on buen vivir – a translation from Incan languages meaning “living well.” They argued for a maintenance of traditional modes of living under the control of local populations

Wallerstein sees this rift as a terrible one for the peoples of Latin America. He laments that "Those persons and groups that have tried to encourage a meaningful dialogue between the two lefts have been seen as very unwelcome by both sides" but encourages that "it may not be too late for both sides to engage in intelligent reassessment of the situation and to rescue the Latin American left from self-destruction".

The problem is that many the poorer "underclasses" seem to be creeping towards rightist causes and groups who ultimately have contempt for them and no desire to safeguard their lifestyles, while the incumbent regimes of Latin America are pursuing increasingly rightist-type policies of repression and ecology-threatening modernization.

Dying, #EricHarris yelled he was losing breath. An officer responded, “F*ck your breath.” http://t.co/h68DMCqiit pic.twitter.com/jfJPFKWOLX

— The clubof.info Blog (@ClubOfInfo) July 1, 2015

The Blog

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