Print, Benny, print!

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Back to the future?

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It’s bailout time again!

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A tale of two teens

Back to the future?

…and one was made to believe that the ideology of communism and state ownership of enterprises had (deservedly) ended with the fall of the Iron Curtain!

Related posts:

Detroit versus Wall Street

It’s bailout time again!

Detroit versus Wall Street

It’s bailout time again!

Who will bail him out???

(Image: An alien Earthling with the help of www.toondoo.com)

The Great American Home Robbery!

Okay, now that the people of the world in general and Americans in particular, have witnessed the greatest robbery in the history of the world, let us get to know something about how all this happened:

And what does the government (of Wall Street, by Wall Street and for Wall Street) do? It prepares a whopping seven hundred billion dollar (700,000,000,000 USD / 507,520,000,000 EUR / 397,366,000,000 GBP / 73,664,760,000,000 JPY / 33 lakh crore INR) bailout package. With tax payers’ money, of course! When the people protest against this shocking plan and get it defeated in the House of Representatives, it becomes a revised plan by adding some pork. It gets passed by the “people’s representatives” and gets the signature of the President. The amount? A trillion:

Does it have any provision for those who were robbed of their homes and hard-earned money? Of course not! They are always at the receiving end:

What do those unfortunate people do? Left with no choice, they are forced to leave their homes:

But not before expressing some of their anger:

Where can they go? Some of them are forced to live in their vehicles:

While others are forced to live in tents and depend on handouts:

This is the sad fate of those who were hit the hardest by the sub-prime mortgage crisis. This is the shocking reality that they have to face:

There are no guarantees for them in the bailout plan. Their taxes are being taken away from them to reward those who pushed them into the present situation. While they lose their homes and live in their cars and in tents, the corrupt, greedy Wall Street bankers are given a massive bonanza with their taxes so that they can continue to purchase villas on the Spanish coast and châteaux in the French countryside and luxury homes in Monaco. Let’s not forget the secret Swiss bank accounts. Or the luxury yachts, the private jets and the helicopters!

Related post:

Robbing the poor to pay the filthy rich?

Africa, awake, arise and act! (Part 1)

African leaders have warned that the lingering global financial crisis coupled with the collapse of talks on a world trade agreement could hinder the United Nations’ campaign to improve life for hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest.

Africa, despite being rich in natural resources, is the least developed continent in the world . . .

Africa is believed to be the place where modern humans originated from. The continent was home to the ancient Egyptian civilisation along the banks of the Nile as well as prosperous kingdoms and city-states later on. The decline of these African states coincided with the rise of the Arab empire. Africa has suffered ever since.

Africa was exploited and its people were sold as slaves by the local chieftains, first to the Arabs and later to the European powers, led by Portugal, who transported them across the Atlantic to the New World. After slavery was abolished in the Americas, the mad scramble for Africa’s natural resources led to the colonisation of almost the entire continent by the European powers – France, Britain, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Spain and Italy. They required raw materials for their industries as well as markets for their finished products. The continent became a colony of Europe and boundaries were decided by the foreigners. The disastrous effects of political colonisation can be felt to this day. Many of Africa’s civil wars can be traced to the redrawing of boundaries by the colonisers.

After the Second World War, African countries gradually became independent. The initial hope that Africa would get out of the mess with political independence was short lived as the continent was affected by civil wars, droughts, famines and disease.

Africa became dependent on external borrowings and foreign aid. The economic colonisation of Africa began. Organisations like the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank that were controlled solely by the developed countries led by the United States imposed economic measures as conditions for the delivery of loans and aid. These measures are nothing but plans of the multinational corporations headquartered in the developed countries to exploit the natural resources of Africa. The exploitation of Africa’s mineral wealth by foreign corporations has completely ravaged Africa. Aided by corrupt dictators and inefficient leaders who stash away their ill-gotten wealth in secret foreign (especially Swiss) bank acounts, the people of Africa are being robbed of their natural resources. In 1970, one in ten of the world’s poor lived in Africa. That figure has now risen to 50%.

60% of Africans work in the agricultural sector with a majority of them being subsistence farmers. Globalisation has pushed Africa to the brink of disaster. The loathsome policies of the WTO have increased the misery in Africa. While the African countries have opened up their markets as well as mining and petroleum sectors to foreign corporations, the U.S., the E.U. and Japan protect their farmers with massive agricultural subsidies and high import tariffs. This keeps the price of farm produce artificially low in the developed countries making African exports uncompetitive. Thus, African farmers are forced to grow cash crops for export instead of food crops. Combined with the vagaries of the climate as well as desertification of vast tracts of land bordering the Sahara desert, starvation and severe malnutrition are common in Africa, especially countries in sub-Saharan Africa and the Horn of Africa.

While farmers in a country like India are also at the receiving end of the vile policies of organisations like the IMF that are stridently supported by their shameless stooges within the country (read this post about farmers’ suicides), India’s service sector and to a lesser extent, the manufacturing sector have managed to take globalisation in their stride and have even managed to emerge stronger. As a result, India’s growing economic clout has enabled it to successfully oppose moves by the developed countries to suggest outrageously unfair trade practices at the WTO in the name of “free trade”. India must not sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of millions of its farmers as well as its food security for the sake of a few tuxedoed thugs who belong to predatory multinational corporations!

What about the Dragon? China has taken full advantage of globalisation and has virtually become “the factory of the world”. Cheap Chinese products have wiped out the few manufacturing industries in the African countries. China has also begun to take part in the economic exploitation of Africa. The Dragon wants to import raw materials from Africa, turn them into cheap manufactured goods and dump them back on the African countries. The low quality Chinese goods are suspected throughout the world and the poor standards in China have even led to the deaths of infants due to contaminated dairy products.

Promises of aid are not going to develop Africa. Certainly not! Africans should not trust the rich countries (as well as countries like China and India) as the vile policies of organisations like the IMF, World Bank and WTO will drive Africa to complete destitution. Even if Africa gets some paltry aid, the strings attached to it are meant to favour the economic terrorists who seek to exploit Africa’s natural resources with the help of Africa’s corrupt dictators.

(To be continued)

Brazil looks set to fuel a war on poverty with newly discovered oil reserves

The President of Brazil, Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva, inaugurated the country’s new deepwater oil field on Tuesday. Trial extraction of oil by Petrobras began in the Jubarte oil field 77 kilometers off the coast of the state of Espirito Santo. The discovery of massive oil reserves has triggered a debate in Brazil on how to use the country’s newly discovered oil wealth to fight poverty and transform the South American giant into a developed country.

Brazil . . . will oil lead to progress? . . .

Image: www.newspapercountry.com

President Lula, who grew up in extreme poverty (he was a shoeshine boy and a street vendor when he was a child), called the reserves a gift from God that should be used primarily to benefit the country by using it to lift people out of poverty and investing in education and health. Brazil may change its laws dealing with oil exploration and may create a new corporation to manage the oil reserves or increase its stake in Petrobras, the state-owned oil production company. Read more about the debate in this link.

Brazil also looks set to enhance its military capabilities to safeguard the country’s newly discovered wealth. The Brazilians are looking to develop the capability to build nuclear submarines with help from France or as a joint project with neighbour Argentina. A good move, as the notorious international killer corporate oil mafia may try filthy tricks to lay their dirty hands on the oil wealth that belongs to the people of the Latin American country.

Accelerated efforts to build Brazil’s first nuclear submarine are under way . . .

Image: www.globalsecurity.org

An alien Earthling wishes Brazilians good luck in their endeavours to utilise the newly discovered oil reserves to eradicate poverty in Brazil and to transform the country into a developed one!