On
the morning of October 3, I read the following banner headline in the
Philadelphia Inquirer: Massacre—Gunman
kills 59 in worst U.S. mass shooting in modern times. Clearly the murder of
59 people was an unimaginably horrific event. People who were no doubt,
enjoying themselves, suddenly became targets of a mass murder.
However,
we can question why the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Associated Press framed
their story as, “worst U.S. mass shooting in modern times”? The answer is
clear. There was a mass murder in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1920. There was another
mass murder in Rosewood, Florida that was made into a Hollywood movie. These
and other mass murders were racist invasions of the Black communities. The
perpetrators were not arrested or prosecuted by the government.
Then,
we can look at the massacres at Wounded Knee and Sand Creek that were carried
out by U.S. government armed forces. These massacres reflected one more chapter
in the 100 year war against the original inhabitants of the nation that calls
itself the United States of America. So, the government of this country did not
consider the worst shootings in our history to be crimes.
However,
when we talk about unnecessary deaths, we need to take a look at what happens
in the world every day. According to a United Nations report issued in the year
2005, 30,000 children die of preventable diseases every day. Why are so many
children dying?
Many
of these children have no shoes. Parasites enter the feet of these children and
they develop bloated stomachs and diarrhea. If these children do not receive
simple antibiotics, they can die of dehydration. We should also consider that a
child’s immunological system is not fully developed until the age of five.
Children
also die because there are hundreds of millions of people in the world that
don’t have enough food to eat. When mothers are malnourished they aren’t able
to supply their children with a sufficient amount of breast milk. Since one out
of every four people in the world don’t have direct access to electricity,
there is no way to refrigerate milk.
The
television news commentary 60 minutes
reported that a peanut butter supplement called Plumpynut has been used to begin to deal with this problem.
Plumpynut is highly nutritious but needs no refrigeration. While plumpynut may
aid many children as well as adults, no one is arguing that this supplement
will solve the enormous problem of unnecessary deaths of children.
They say there is no money
Those
people who have political power in the capitalist world argue that there are no
funds to deal with this enormous problem. In the United States, Democratic and
Republican politicians are agreed that funding the military to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars is
perfectly acceptable.
However,
the funding of the military is small potatoes compared to the financial
speculation that is a routine part of the system. Anyone who reads this blog
can Google the question: How much money is invested in derivatives? The answer
to this question is $1.2 quadrillion.
That is one-thousand-two-hundred trillion dollars.
We
should keep in mind another number that might give us some perspective. The
Gross National Product is the total value of goods and services of a nation in
a given year. If we add the GNP of all the nations in the world, we come up
with a number of about $60 trillion. So, the value of the amount of money
invested in derivatives is equivalent to the international GNP for about 20
years.
What
are derivatives? These are extremely complex bets that the future of the
economy will be all right. As we might imagine, sooner or later this bubble of
derivatives will break, and the world will be plunged into an international
depression.
Bernie
Madoff and others have gone to prison for violating laws regulating the sales
of bonds. Derivatives are unregulated by the government.
Understanding
this reality, we can state clearly that the resources are available to
eliminate poverty in the world. Yes, resources do exist to save the lives of the
30,000 children who die unnecessarily every day.
So
when the press reports on the mass murders in Las Vegas as well as on September
11, 2001, we should not forget about those 30,000 children who perished on
those same days. While the press talks endlessly about how to prevent these
mass murders, we need to understand that the resources have been available to
save the lives of the 30,000 dying children for the last 100 years.
Instead
of investing in saving the lives of these children, massive amounts of money
have been invested in killing machines, as well as financial derivatives that
in reality have no value at all.
Cuba
For
more than half a century the United States government has a trade embargo
against Cuba. While Cuba has a tiny fraction of the wealth of the United
States, their priorities are completely different.
After
the Cuban Revolution the new government organized to bring electricity to every
part of the island. This is just one reason why Cuba was able to respond to
hurricanes that we have seen recently.
Every
Cuban goes through training, so they will be prepared for what needs to be done
before and after a hurricane strikes. The Cuban people understand that this
might mean that one million or more people might be evacuated to avoid a hurricane.
Every Cuban knows where they will stay if they need to be evacuated.
These
measures have meant that there have been only about 45 deaths due to about
seventeen hurricanes that struck Cuba. I believe about 1,833 people died in the
single hurricane Katrina in the United States.
The
Cuban Constitution says that all children on the island have a right to milk.
Every Cuban also has the right to health care and education.
One
of the most important ways of dealing with poverty is to provide education to
women. So, when there are problems in Cuba, the Cuban people find creative ways
of dealing with them.
In
my opinion, the lesson here is that humanity has the potential to eliminate
poverty. In Cuba people mobilize to deal with their problems. In the United
States politics and economics are organized on the capitalist model. This means
that while one out of every six people in this country doesn’t have enough food
to eat, the number one priority is to maximize profits for the most affluent
people in the world.
Great article, Steve. I'm a childhood friend of Judy's. We met at Mountain Spring Camp. Thanks for writing this. It puts everything in perspective.
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