Southern Uganda is in the grips of a terrible drought and the report dealt with a family whose children were eating goat hide cut from their tent because food aid had been stopped - not cut down- but stopped dead last November 2010 and they had nothing left to eat.
The top UN food aid official, a fat man dressed in a suit complete with waistcoat and tie (apologises to chubby people who wear suits) had come from Rome to oversee the end of the food aid policy. The reason given for the policy change and the presence of this apparatchik sweating in the middle of a desert; it was the fault of the people who had not used the food they had been given responsibly. I was stunned, no mention of corrupt government creaming off the majority of the aid given their countries, no mention of binding receiving food into buying arms, or any of the other filthy deals done over the years - no folks- this drought and food aid maladministration since the 60s, was all the fault of this tiny shrivelled up woman and her sickly, malnourished children chewing goat hide. She hadn't used the food she had been allocated properly. I mean they had eaten it! (well thank heavens we had cleared that up and know who to blame, it's the ordinary people, especially this woman sitting in the dirt, not corrupt officials, warlords, IMF deals or greedy bankers).
As I watched this huge policy change at 4:30am I felt I understood something really profound, it wasn't just this destitute family in Uganda being destroyed it was all of us, the huge majority of ordinary people, the ones who are not part of the plutocracy and we are coming to a gigantic turning point in world history.
In the dictionary "plutocracy" is defined as government by the wealthy. The plutocracy exercises the preponderance of political power, whether directly or indirectly, (look at our Parliament, especially the Cabinet, how many millionaires sit in the House of Commons?).
Plutocracy also has a cultural and social aspect that benefits the rich. If you start to think about society and what it is made up of - universities and colleges, publishing houses, mass circulation magazines, newspapers, television and radio stations, professional sports teams, foundations, churches, private museums, charity organizations are organized as corporations, ruled by boards of trustees (or directors or regents) composed overwhelmingly of very wealthy people often called in Britain "The Great and Good" as compared to the rest of us "The Great Unwashed".
Considering America and as the only super power you do have to consider America very carefully, I found this quote in "Who Rules America", by sociologist G. William Domhoff. "The idea that a relatively fixed group of privileged people might shape the economy and government for their own benefit goes against the American grain. Nevertheless . . . the owners and top-level managers in large income-producing properties are far and away the dominant power figures in the United States. Their corporations, banks, and agribusinesses come together as a corporate community that dominates the federal government in Washington. Their real estate, construction, and land development companies form growth coalitions that dominate most local governments. In the US, plutocratic governance is abetted by mass media owned by the hyperwealthy and operated in their own economic self-interest".
If you ally plutocracy with a very destructive but powerful theory called "The Lifeboat Theory" and link that to a world which we all know is running out of conventional resources - well I'll try to explain my thinking.
A man called Garrett Hardin developed a theory and wrote "Lifeboat Ethics: the Case Against Helping the Poor". He wrote "Environmentalists use the metaphor of the earth as a "spaceship" in trying to persuade countries, industries and people to stop wasting and polluting our natural resources. Since we all share life on this planet, they argue, no single person or institution has the right to destroy, waste, or use more than a fair share of its resources".
Hardin disagreed profoundly with the idea of sharing and mutual responsibility and argued that all the rich countries and rich people are in a lifeboat, not a spaceship, and all the poor countries and poor people are in the water trying to get into the lifeboat to escape drowning. His question was "does everyone on earth have an equal right to an equal share of its resources?". It's a fair question but when it's premise is put into action you end up with the BBC showing real, poor people chewing goat hide.
There are lots of reports showing how earth's resources are dwindling and the alternatives offered by "green technology" aren't being taken up fast enough or promoted widely enough to make a difference. I'm sure that if I have read some of those reports and I'm not an economist, scientist or politician then the people in power, our plutocracy, have read them too and been briefed by the best minds available.
What are these plutocrats to do?
The resources like oil and gas which make their corporations multi-billions and enable them to have the power to speculate in commodities and food unchecked (remember "Glencore") are dwindling, even if at the moment it doesn't seem like that.
Money and power, the only important things in life ( that is what families like the Bush clan believe) must be preserved and because they cannot face the fact that it is their morally bereft beliefs and actions; their capitalism red in tooth and claw which has created the situation of pollution and dwindling resources they are looking for a scapegoat which at the same time will make money. So the IMF impose even more draconian measures on countries whch have taken loans and then bailouts to cover the loans and then further bailouts (Greece anyone?) to cover the bailouts.
We, the people must be made to work longer, have smaller or no pensions at all, have our rights whittled away and be brainwashed by the mainstream media into accepting this because acording to the favourite lie our country has huge debts which we, the "Great Unwashed" not the "Great and Good" must be made to pay off.
But a problem has arisen for the plutocracy that it did not foresee: us ordinary people, and it seems to me, people all around the world (praises be to the internet, twitter, social networking, mobiles with cameras and the brave individuals who use the technology, write the blogs and post the pictures) aren't buying into having no rights or their rights taken away, we don't want to lose our pensions, work until we die with no relief or have the NHS privatised or pay more for food or be banned from driving a car, or denied a free education just so that incredibly rich people can make even more money.
The "Arab Spring" is saying what more and more of us want to say; we are going to try and base our societies on social justice, a fairer distribution of resources which Huey Long dreamed of giving everyone the rights enshrined in the American Bill of Rights (how ironic seeing how America has turned out) ratified in 1781 protecting the natural rights of liberty and property including freedom of religion, freedom of speech, a free press, free assembly, and free association.
What I have written is only a tiny part of the real politik we all face, the turmoil of the secret wars for resources being fought in the Arctic and Antarctic, the economic war between the USA, Russia and China, the cyber wars, the still unresolved Middle East, the problems the EU face, the wars in Africa these are partly the plutocracy fighting for supremacy and sometimes it seems there are only terrible things to think about but I truly believe at the end of the day we will all be in the lifeboat and there will be deckchairs for everyone.
