The 1% owns half of World's wealth

Several recent reports by Oxfam reveal the brutal inequality of our global society (also at local level, although a few states like Finland redistribute a lot via taxes, dissimulating the problem). 

→ Even it up!

→ An economy for the 1%

→ Wealth: Having It and Wanting It More

The 1% owns already (projected) half of the so-called wealth. Of course it's just accounts and property deeds that can be disowned democratically at any time: money and property are just social functions, but social functions that allow to accrue real power in terms of media, lobbies, corrupt politicians and private armies of gangsters. 

As you can see in the graph above, almost all of the income is concentrated in the top 10%. I conventionally equalize the top 10% with the bourgeoisie and the lower 90% with the working class and the reality of income seems to support this notion at least to a very large extent. While the figure here is global, the pattern is reproduced all across the globe: some states do redistribute some or even a lot but the overall class structure is not altered, just the benefits associated to belonging to each segment. 

In the USA for example, income inequality has been growing absurdly since 1988, grabbing most of the benefits that are not direct investor profits of the economic growth. It is quite difficult to spot the average salary growth in the following figure, so I'll give you a hint: it's painted in green and it's almost zero.

This lack of growth in salaries is not at all related to "productivity" as is sometimes claimed but just to the the ability of the triumphant bourgeoisie to collect growing surplus value from the work of their slaves employees, seemingly unable to defend themselves (ourselves) from those arbitrary and most painful impositions.

Just 80 individuals control as much wealth as the poorest 50%. 

The names of the top 10 parasites in some key economic sectors are listed. The lead clearly corresponds to those speculating in finance: Warren Buffet (USA), Michael Bloomberg (USA), Carl Icahn (USA), Alaweed Bin Talal Al-Saud (Saudi Arabia), George Soros (USA), Joseph Safra (Brazil), Luis Carlos Sarmiento (Colombia), Mikhail Prokhorov (Russia), Alexei Mordashov (Russia) and Abigail Johnson (USA). 

Quoting Buffet: there is indeed a class war and my class [the bourgeoisie] is winning.

Or better, translating a punk song from the 90s (La Polla):

Ferocious Misery has taken the streets,

Greed is raping Liberty, 

the weak whimper while they are squeezed

their complaints are forgotten.

[Politician:]

"We are familiar with the situation

and we're going to solve it soon.

Now I turn around 

and when you leave please close the door".

[Workers:]

"What can we do?", asks the majority.

"What can be done if there's no solution.

We don't want to know: there is no exit.

Let's see what say those above".

[Trade Unionist:]

"Keep calm, it's not so serious,

make another effort till the end of the month.

Meanwhile I am happy

suckling from the budget".

[Capitalist:]

"Fuck off and shut up!

That's how life is!

I don't know what you're crying about.

That's how life is!

What the fuck do you want?!

That's how life is!

You're dirtying my carpet!"

[Publicist:]

"Tough uncivilized nonconformist:

come to our arms, let yourself be tamed.

If you're young and rebel,

Coca-Cola understands you!"

And the rich join forces in the final fight 
as they march singing their 'International',
they pay their tithes to God
and the World is a time bomb!

That's how life is!
That's how life is!
That's how life is:
you can get a cough.

Original Spanish-language track follows:

Time to wake up, guys. Even The Matrix is not what it used to be...

EU diplomats attacked by Zionist troops

Marion Castaing under Zionist guns

A EU aid caravan with diplomatic immunity was attacked by Zionist troops when they tried to deliver tents and other aid to Palestinians whose homes had been demolished by the Genocidal Apartheid Regime at Khirbet al-Makhul (West Bank).

According to Reuters:

Israeli soldiers manhandled European diplomats on Friday and seized a truck full of tents and emergency aid they had been trying to deliver to Palestinians whose homes were demolished this week.

A Reuters reporter saw soldiers throw sound grenades at a group of diplomats, aid workers and locals in the occupied West Bank, and yank a French diplomat out of the truck before driving it away.

“They dragged me out of the truck and forced me to the ground with no regard for my diplomatic immunity,” French diplomat Marion Castaing said.

“This is how international law is being respected here,” she said, covered with dust.

Where is NATO when you really need it?

Video of the destruction of the tents at Khirbet al-Makhul by the Apartheid Regime's forces:

By the way, did you see these news anywhere on TV. I did not. So good for the "free western media".

Source: Electronic Intifada.

Labor rights do not have room among the bourgeois rights' "watchdogs"

Naked Capitalism has a quite interesting entry today where it shows how the main internationally acknowledged human rights' watchdogs totally disdain labor rights. 

Instead they have full sections in their websites about "business rights", showing who is their real master. 

We are talking here about Human Rights' Watch (HRW), Amnesty International (AI) and US-restricted Union for Civil Liberties of America (UCLA). 

Incidentally all the three are located in Anglo-Saxon countries. I am not really too knowledgeable about UCLA for its US-only dimensions but HRW has been often accused of being a CIA cover up, just like USAID. But Amnesty is generally much more respected. 

But how can we respect an organization that has just appointed as its new US head someone, Suzanne Nossel, who supports the genocide in Gaza?! She is a former US Department of State high officer and also a former HRW chief operating officer, a total CIA dog!

Whatever the case it is worth noticing that in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights there are articles that read:

Article 23

(1) Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment. 

(2) Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work. 

(3) Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection. 

(4) Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.

Article 24

Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.

Article 25

(1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. 

(...)

Article 26

(1) Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.

(...)

These do not seem important in the work of the so-called human rights' watchdogs, unlike "business rights".