But the public will keep digging into the realities of Iraq
and we will not rest until the truth comes out from all these pundits,
who undoubtedly should be facing trial for crimes against humanity. The
problem is that while we dig into Iraq they will be playing the same
game in other areas of social interest. The lies they fabricated to
unleash that war, they are fabricating right now to make us feel our
economies are solid and we should be consuming, having fun, keeping
calm, as Bush put it in a press conference on December 20th, 2006; " I
encourage you all to go shopping more."
Yet yesterday in
Crain's New York business this could be read; "Only weeks after
financial-sector employment in the city hit levels not seen since the
technology-stock bubble, investment banks have switched into firing
mode and halted most job searchesŠ As a result, at least 10,000 Wall
Streeters of all stripes could lose their jobs by year's end, according
to estimates from Manhattan recruiting and consulting firm Options
Group."
The same story is apparent in England, where yesterday
the UK prime minister and chancellor met with US Treasury Secretary
Hank Paulson to discuss the growing turmoil in world financial markets
and after the meeting the chancellor insisted that the UK economy
remained strong and that it would weather the current storm. Yet as the
government promised depositors of Northern Rock they would not loose a
penny as the bank's share price plunged, thousands queued to withdraw
their savings.
In this chaotic world of war and recession,
which has Iraqis running for cover and Westerners heading to the bank,
the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. According
to the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago, just in Britain "the wealth gap
is at its widest for more than 40 years, creating ghettoes of the
richest and the poorest that have virtually nothing to do with each
other."
But as Westerners we don't seem to react too vividly,
the poor according to Professor Ruth Lister, a social-policy researcher
at Loughborough University, because "people at the very bottom tend not
to have the energy for rioting because they are too busy trying to
survive," the middle-classes because the credit market has not yet
fully collapsed and is still sustaining their unsustainable lifestyles
and the rich because this is the perfect atmosphere for their wealth
build up and accumulation.
However other countries are being
warned and are moving away, a week ago a United Nations agency report
said that China, India and other developing countries needed to take
steps to protect themselves against a possible recession in the United
States by lifting domestic demand.
Then the China Daily ran a
piece by Lau Nai-keung a member of the National Committee of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which advised the
following; "There are growing concerns that the US financial meltdown
will lead to a global recession, and this in turn will hit China badlyŠ
It is therefore not too early to kick-start internal consumption."
Finally Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez warned this Sunday in his
program "Aló Presidente", of the danger of a world financial crisis due
to the problems presented by the high-risk mortgage business in the
United States, saying that the authorities are studying a combination
of measures "to protect us from a large financial earthquake" that
would affect the entire world.
So while as westerners we
remain hoping that this time our leaders will not be lying to us as the
recession term lingers and is masterfully pushed away and hidden under
the carpet, all I can do is wonder whether this silenced recession is a
lot more than that, just like Iraq's 'little' war is rapidly becoming
the biggest genocide since the Nazi concentration camps.
Maybe
Chavez was right in his interview with John Pilger, for the documentary
film The War on Democracy, when he said; "The American Empire has
reached its end, the world must now be governed by the rule of law, of
equality, of justice and of fraternity." If Chavez is right, maybe we
should all buckle up for a global economic collapse and begin to plan
for a new world order.
-Pablo Ouziel is an activist and a free
lance writer based in Spain. His work has appeared in many progressive
media including Znet, Palestine Chronicle, Thomas Paine¹s Corner and
Atlantic Free Press.
Writings 
Except for a select group of corrupt politicians, powerful businessmen, media barons and pundits of the law, the rest of the world was fooled into the Iraq war. Granted not everybody believed it¹s declared motives and a few tried to stop it, but in the end we are all paying the price, notwithstanding the Iraqi people. Donald Rumsfeld said at the beginning of the war, "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today will last five days, five weeks or five months, but it won't last any longer than that." We are now in the fifth year of what I dare term Œgenocide¹.
Subscribe to this comment's feed
