Economics, Politics and Human Rights

I just can't seem to help myself when it comes to juxtaposing seemingly disconnected news stories. Each story relates to an important, and/or passionately held, aspects of certain events, but we don't always get the bigger picture context that these events play out in. Especially as it relates to the complicated nature of how things can interact in both cause and effect.

Another case in point. Three stories concerning world events:

1: Wall Street is freaking out about China’s economic slowdown: Here’s why humanity should cheer

2: Springtime for America’s Enemies

3: Japan-China Spat: Beijing Plans To Tap Oil Field Near Disputed Waters, Tokyo Says

The first deals with the environmental upside hoped for in China'a economic slowdown. Brief mention is made, of course, to how Wall Street isn't too happy about it, but it does go into the environmental challenges China faces in some detail; as well as the amazing public outcry from a much abused populace (the death rate from particulates alone is astonishing).

The second is a passionate plea from a former Russian chess grand master that America is playing a foolish game of "make peace" with evil governments that cannot be justified by either the long term goals of these regiems (as in Russia, Iran, and Cuba), or their current humanitarian records.

And lastly is another aspect of geopolitics as it relates to the oceans around China, Indonesia, Laos, Vietnam and China (to just name a few).

The bigger picture can become obscured in each of these precisely because there is usually one group or another who benefits from portraying (whether justly or not) particular players as either monolithic evil, greed masters, the enemy de jour, or the patsy de jour. And, as with all good propaganda, there is always an element of truth to any of the claims to make them have feet, if not legs, to stand for a while in the media.

My bias, of course, is the questionable status of the current predominant economic operating system in place across the world; whether governments be supposedly democratic, socialist, communist or a monarchy of whatever sort, they are all capitalist to varying degrees. As such it is my contension that none of the players will be able to successfully coexist with the others until the profit element inherent in commodities, and the resources underlying their production, as well as production itself; with the way we go about it and the connection it has to individual material well begin, are addressed.

How can we ever talk intelligently about peace, or war, when so many either profit, or starve no matter which path we take? How can we know truth in any set of circumstances, so as to negotiate knowledgably, and apply engagement, or isolation effectively, when information itself is a commodity. And if peace or war discussions cannot be initiated as a trust based dialogue, what chance will environmental discussions have?

Profit is power. Profit is permanent war economies. Profit is a permanent class of poor and the unrepresented. Profit is poision in the air, in the ground and in the oceans. Even peace is profit, along with all of the poisons, if you define peace as only the absence of armed conflict. The truly astonishing part of that kind of peace is how the elites are so surprised at how unpeaceful not only the poor and unrepresented become, but how the earh itself responds in kind.