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Where There’s No Will, There’s No Way: State of the Union Ignores the World’s Poor
In Tuesday's State of the Union speech, we were presented with President Obama’s attempts to assuage our fears about the economy, about health care, about the state of public education, about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Rather than try to reassure us, we want the president to refocus attention on human rights emergencies that pre-date the financial crisis and that have been left to fester by world leaders. President Obama gave a nod to this principle when he said, “To win the future, we will need to take on challenges that have been decades in the making.”
But it’s not about “winning the future” or any other competitive impulse that leaves the majority of humanity behind. It is about recognizing that the challenges we face are the direct result of policies crafted to benefit the few at the expense of the many.
Two of the greatest threats to women in the communities where MADRE works are the resurgence of the AIDS pandemic and climate change. These are human rights crises that disproportionately affect the world’s poor, most of whom are women. The AIDS pandemic has been drastically exacerbated by policies that privilege corporations’ patent protections over people’s right to health and access to medicines. Climate change has been fueled by profit-driven energy policies that turn a blind eye to the impacts of unchecked carbon emissions on poor communities.
Yet, as daunting as AIDS and climate change may be, the biggest obstacles to combating these threats are not financial or technical. The biggest challenge is getting the world’s powerful people to be accountable to crises that mainly affect the poor.
We know what needs to be done, and so does President Obama. What’s missing is the political will from world leaders. As one of the most powerful world leaders, Obama has the capacity to generate that political will, and he needs to act now.
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9 Comments so far
Show AllThe state of the union hinges on human rights, world-wide. It has been well known for quite a long time that a sustainable human culture requires liberty and justice for all, justice for the future, and justice with nature. There will be no humans alive after environmental collapse caused by corporate consumerism attempting to grow faster and faster to infinity on one little planet. The one percent Obama works for cannot buy their way out of environmental collapse caused by their own greed.
there is no way barry and hillory are ignoring the world's poor these days - as they watch the poor folks in tunisia and egypt exercise some democracy they are shitting their fascist pants
all of their puppets may fall from office (and into the noose) in short order and that would screw up amerika and of course the zionist mini-me state to boot
as we all watch freedom and democracy break out over there we may be inspired to re-engage our own self respect and do the same here
i suspect amerika - Barry and the other clowns - will do anything to help their diktator puppets desparately cling to their 30 sheckels because as we used to psyop about vietnam
"if we don't fight them, over there we will have to fight them over here"
those democatic bastards......
can't have that shit over here - it would screw up the bankers and the mic
and that would be un-amerikan
The world's leaders, the world's rich cannot relate to the condition of poverty. Even if they were poor when they were younger, they remember poverty as something everybody must go thorough, like puberty; even something they romanticize, like an initiation ritual to their life of privilege.
When something akin to the French revolution comes along their feelings are hurt; what has happened? Surely the world has gone mad; indeed God is dead.
Elena Ceausescu, wife of the late Romanian dictator, as the crowd prepared to shoot her, exclaimed "How could you do this to me? I have been like a mother to you." These people are indeed sick enough to believe their own lies. Wealth and power are dangerous addictions, not easily dismissed. Conservatism, the addictive belief system of wealth and power, is similar, and more virulent, since it can spread to people without wealth and power, and bind them to its service.
Mommie Dearest!
I'd enjoy hearing that a certain former national mother figure had her "beautiful mind" separated from her pearl necklace, Marie Antoinette style.
Oh-bummer serves the massers on wall street only.
nice try, Mr. Susskind, to put the blame on the messenger boy.
Somehow every country seems to have enough money for weapons while the needy starve. America should set the example for other nations. But no, the goodies go to the generals while the haves in America scream socialism if the poor receive government assistance. Maybe if the Americans who resent their taxes helping the poor were told that feeding the poor would prevent the terrorist from taking away their freedom then they would support social justice programs not only for America but the world because it is true: If you want peace work for justice.
Of course we know that the terrorist are not concerned with taking away our freedom except our freedom to oppress and kill people in third world countries. It is a vicious cycle violence. Denying social justice for the poor is a form of violence against them.