News — At The Edge — 4/27
Seems increasingly clear that the U.S. has lost its moral compass — sexual violence and racism — and civilization is paying the price.
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UN passes sexual violence resolution after reported US veto threat
“[UN] resolution to combat the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war…[after] U.S. had threatened to veto an earlier…[version] based on language regarding reproductive and sexual health…[and] a provision to create a mechanism to monitor and report sexual violence in conflicts….
[Trump] opposes U.N. documents that mention sexual or reproductive health, saying that it implies support for abortion…despite the resolution having copied language from previous Security Council resolutions on sexual and reproductive rights.” https://thehill.com/policy/international/un-treaties/440256-un-passes-watered-down-resolution-on-rape-as-weapon-of-war
The rules of the Game Of Oligarchs —
“[Technology] makes geography less relevant…and sometimes even languages….[Internet] was anticipated with great hope and excitement…[but] has come with a slew of unexpected emergent properties…some of which probably already need to be mitigated — fast….
[W]e increasingly see three worlds…intersecting, but…separating a little further every year: the ultra-rich, the rich, and the poor. The 1%, the 19%, and the 80%….Inequality has fallen between countries, which is good…while simultaneously rising within most countries, which is not.
As nations grow ever more alike, it gets easier for groups to forge common cause across nations. A virtuous cycle…except when bigots, xenophobes, and white supremacists join together…into an internationalist network.
But behind that loose-knit network of hate…ultra-rich have long tried to maintain their positions by dividing the masses, via stoking hate against The Other.
They have manipulated democracy in part by…regulatory capture at scale…[and] turning people against taxing oligarchs…[for] the poor, by promoting the fear that this money will go to The Wrong Sort Of People Who Don’t Deserve It. By which is always tacitly meant: immigrants and visible minorities. Oligarchy implicitly monetizes racism.
So is it any real surprise if amoral American oligarchs look at Russia’s racist oligarchy and think, ‘Hey, those are my kind of people…[and] kind of government seems pretty good to me’ To an oligarch, Russia isn’t an enemy of America; it’s a model….
None of this is all that new. The last time inequality was at these levels, aristocrats across Europe who had more in common with each other than with their own ‘common people’…..And obviously organized racism is as old as humanity….
What is new is how tightly our societies are bound together across nations…[and] how quickly new movements flare up, promulgate, evolve, and transform…[bringing] both dangers and opportunities — depending on whether, and/or how fast, players accustomed to the existing world order notice that the rules of the game are changing.” https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/21/the-rules-of-the-game-of-oligarchs/
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Doc Huston
