Aired on June 4, 2007
On the Map.
For the next month, your daily, half-hour dose of anything-but-sober opinion on the news of the world.
Our beat -- the entire planet.
Our policy -- question the official story, and the officials who tell it.
This is a point of view show, where you'll be subjected to a full-spectrum assault of perspectives...including mine.
to kick things off, we'd like to give you a quick State of the World - the world that WE see On the Map.
Let's start with borders. Berlin, November 1989. Here's the official story --- The wall between freedom and tyranny falls... Setting off a chain reaction around the world. Millions will get a taste of freedom and immediately demand a side of democracy.
Here's the problem... 30 years later, what we're actually seeing is a whole lot of walls going UP. First of all, Fortress America is no longer a metaphor.
And you thought YOU had to jump through hoops for YOUR crappy job. How about the world's longest undefended border? It's the future site of a "virtual" fence, Complete with look-out towers, thermal imaging, and spy planes.
Helping the U.S. with all these toys, is an Israeli company that made its name on this wall. The one that redraws one of the world's most CONTENTIOUS borders. And walls beget walls, beget walls. That barrier inspired these. Six-tonne concrete slabs fencing in rebellious neighborhoods in Baghdad.
We've come a long way since Berlin, baby. Walls are going up everywhere. So it's become a time of climbers and tunnellers.
This is a world of people on the move... Some are simply looking for a better life. But many are fleeing war, famine, environmental collapse. The latest estimate? Almost two-hundred million migrants worldwide. And by the year 2050, there could be a billion MORE.
In many cases, the cause is not conflict, or climate change, but massive development projects. The ones that are supposed to be lifting people out of poverty.
Gold mine in Africa. Twenty thousand people soon to be homeless there. A World Bank sponsored roadway in Indonesia--- forty to fifty thousand. The Three Gorges Dam in China -- more than a million displaced.
In fact, resources like water, gold, oil aren't just causing migration. They're at the heart of war. In the business news, you hear endlessly about the importance of a stable investment climate. On the ground, you see conflict and profits getting along just fine.
Take Africa. Four million people killed in the Democratic Republic of Congo... But oil, diamonds and cocoa continue to be trucked away.
In Darfur, genocide. But global condemnation hasn't touched the bottom-line. Sudan has never stopped selling oil to the highest bidder. The fact is, around the world... poor people are still waiting to share in the wealth being sucked out of their lands.
G8 leaders are meeting, once again --- and I quote the official website--- "to help Africa develop". When you hear the earnest promises of more aid, debt relief, help. You assume there's a transfer of wealth from rich countries to poor countries. The official story is that money flows from north to south. Except it's not true.
When you add up all the cash that wealthy nations send south and you compare it to the amount going in the opposite direction, you find that MORE money is leaving poor countries than arriving. According to the UN, at last count, the difference was more than 780-billion dollars in one year.
It's a mind-blowing statistic: Over the past decade, the poor have actually paid the rich more than TWO TRILLION dollars... For the privilege of staying poor.
Over the next few weeks, we'll talk a lot more about borders, conflicts, migration and money. But tonight, we start at the intersection of them all. The battle for control of Iraq's oil.
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zjubenko 4 years ago
Excellent!
Straight to my blog.
DannyOKC 4 years ago
very nicely done
especially good job of showing the relationship between "development" and displacement/disruption/destruction of communities, as well as the economic analysis --"the poor have paid the rich two trillion dollars"
pennilesscripple 4 years ago