Slaves to a world dominated by money

Last Sunday morning a report appeared on the net quoting the newly crowned British Prime Minster David Cameron uttering the following partial truth, “BP wants to cap the well, it wants to clear up the mess, it wants to pay compensation, it wants to compensate, particularly the fisherman, the hotel owners and the people who suffered.”
One third of his statement we can take as true. British Petroleum does want the oil well capped but it does not want to clear up the mess and it most certainly does not want to compensate anyone for what has happened.
Politicians dressing up fiction in the swaddling clothes of comforting truth is not new to us but is it not a valid query to ask why a prime minister is issuing a statement on behalf of a private company? He has done it for a number of reasons.
One, he is the new boy and doesn’t want to upset Obama, who is being royally spanked over this oil spill at home in the US. Two, and far more importantly, he is issuing it because it will appease the markets.
He made his ‘statement’ at the meeting of the G20 in Toronto, Canada. The G20 includes 19 countries as well as the European Union.
Together, its members ­account for two-thirds of the world’s population, 80% of world trade and 90% of the world’s GDP.
The meeting of the richest and ‘emerging’ nations in the world to discuss how they will rule the world is generally noted more in the media for the protests that greet it than the decisions taken.
A more clear and blatant example of hiding in plain sight would be difficult to name. This is the world’s elite coming together to tell us how they will rule us in the glaring spotlight of the world’s media.
A glare actually so ­illuminating that any surgeon or dentist working under it would risk a career ending malpractice suit with every blind action.
Of course, it sounds paranoid and ridiculous to say that the world is run by a cabal of world leaders with their own self-interest at heart, and it is. The world is, in fact, run by men and women enslaved by capitalism. The world leaders meeting in Canada are actually answering to the markets.
The website of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation carries some interesting details regarding the actual actions of the G20. “With the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, the G20 took on a new role. The 2008 leaders’ summit produced a plan to stabilise the global economy. The leaders pledged to lower trade barriers and fight protectionism.”
There was little coverage of the utter insanity of this decision at the time. The quote above translates as following the implosion of the world economy due to rampant capitalism, the leaders of the world’s richest nations decided to address the problem by further expanding capitalism.
Us ordinary citizens of the world have no say in this decision but it will have a massive effect on our daily lives for as long as we live. We are the fuel in the capitalist machine and cannot escape because we are trapped in economies that force us to work all our lives and live enslaved in debt.
This ugly reality has not gone entirely unnoticed. Every time one of these meetings takes place, they are marked by destruction, violence and sometimes even death.
The governments involved in the discussions will blame a small bunch of “extremists” but, in fact, it generally appears to be the police forces in the various host countries who are to blame for as much of the violence as the radicals. Canada estimates its bill for security at this latest meeting at $1 billion.
Amnesty International issued a statement regarding the latest meeting, saying, “We’re concerned that both the extensive lead-up to the summit – the heavy, heavy police presence  – [and] all of the talk of new weapons and unclear laws really led to quite a considerable chill.”
The response of police forces all over the world to the opinion of ordinary people regarding their enslavement to free market tyranny speaks volumes. Resistance will be greeted with violent suppression.
The people of Ireland are no strangers to this kind of tactic. Those who dare to oppose the construction underway in Rossport, County Mayo, to allow the Shell to extract millions from Ireland’s former gas reserves have met with the full force of An Garda Siochána.
In the context of the Gulf of Mexico incident, can we take the assurances of oil companies regarding their attention to safety? Can we be sure that they care enough to put safety before extraordinary profit? I propose that we cannot.
If Shell is allowed to go ahead and build its plant and a tragedy occurs, will it be a future Dutch prime minister who addresses the world’s media to appease the markets as an Irish taoiseach demands recompense for Irish deaths and the destruction of our natural environment?
It was very interesting to note that after the recent British elections, when a coalition was being negotiated, nobody really spoke about the way the public would react.
All that was worrying the commentators was how the markets would react. If the markets were not pleased with the formation of the coalition some hotheaded commentators suggested that the Pound would fail and the country would be plunged into chaos.
So at the end of the day we can ask very reasonably, who does run the world? Who runs any country? Is it the people we select during our democratic elections or is it the unelected, profit-motivated money-men?
I think the answer is clear to all who work, sometimes in jobs we hate, who cannot get a job without having a bank account and watch anxiously as inflation rises and interest rates fluctuate.
The awful truth will be even more obvious to those who languish in unemployment and poverty. But employed or not, wealthy or poor, it there is anything any of us can actually do?