March, 20 2009, 02:56pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
John Parker, Media Coordinator
231-313-1612,
press@thepeacealliance.org
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Harmony Bell for Peace to Open 2009 Department of Peace Conference
Sixth Anniversary of Iraq War Sees Call to Make Reducing and Preventing Violence a National Priority
WASHINGTON
500-plus activists will mark the start of "Peace Within Reach:
People and Politics Partnering for our Common Security," with the
ringing of the World Harmony Bell at 6:30 p.m. Friday night at the
Hyatt Regency Crystal City.
The national conference, organized by The Peace Alliance in conjunction
with the Student Peace Alliance, will convene and train youth and adult
activists in civics and peacebuilding. Monday, citizens will go to
Capitol Hill and meet with their members of Congress to discuss H.R.
808, the bill that establishes a US Department of Peace.
- H.R. 808 currently has 66 co-sponsors, including chair of the House Judiciary Committee John Conyers (D-MI).
- The
Department of Peace beat out 7,874 ideas to win second place in
Change.org's "Ideas for Change in America," this past January. - H.R.
808 unites practical solutions including (but not limited to):
restorative justice, nonviolent conflict management and education,
sustainable economics, and national/international security policy.
The World Harmony Bell was specially designed from ammunition casings
donated by the Chinese military and combined with recycled scrap metal
collected and donated by Students.
The bell is inscribed with the word "Harmony" in the six official
languages of the United Nations and was first rung in October 2005 at
the United Nations in New York for the UN 60th General Assembly. The
Harmony Bell is being made available through the generosity of Mr.
Frank Liu, Founder and President of the World Harmony Foundation .
The Peace Alliance is a nonpartisan citizen action organization representing a growing constituency for peace. A 501(c)4 organization established in March 2004, our mission is to empower civic activism for a culture of peace. Our vision is a future in which the practical programs and principles of peacebuilding are the bedrock of our personal, national and global interest and investment.
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Gilded Age for Billionaire Offspring as $5.2 Trillion Wealth Transfer Accelerates
"Without robust wealth and inheritance taxes," said one analyst, "the children and grandchildren of today's billionaires will dominate our future politics, economy, culture, and philanthropy."
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The Swiss bank UBS released a report Thursday showing that a massive transfer of wealth from billionaire business founders to their heirs is underway and accelerating, with trillions of dollars in assets moving from those who accumulated fortunes through entrepreneurship to family members whose vast riches are owed to the simple accident of birth.
In the 12-month period between April 2022 and April 2023, newly created billionaires acquired more wealth through inheritance than entrepreneurship for the first time since UBS began studying billionaire wealth trends in 2015. The bank, a friend of the super-rich, said that 53 heirs inherited nearly $151 billion in wealth during the study period, exceeding the $140.7 billion amassed by billionaire entrepreneurs.
"This year's report found that the majority of billionaires that accumulated wealth in the last year did so through inheritance as opposed to entrepreneurship," Benjamin Cavalli, head of strategic clients at UBS Global Wealth Management, said in a statement. "This is a theme we expect to see more of over the next 20 years."
The latest edition of the Billionaire Ambitions Report estimates that the number of global billionaires rose by 7% during the one-year period analyzed by UBS, up from 2,376 to 2,544. The U.S. alone had 751 billionaires as of April 2023, 20 more than it had in 2022.
After falling in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic—during which billionaire wealth soared as millions died across the globe—billionaires' collective net worth "recovered by 9% in nominal terms from USD 11.0 trillion to USD 12.0 trillion," UBS found.
UBS estimates that more than 1,000 billionaires are over the age of 70 and poised to hand a combined $5.2 trillion down to their heirs over the next several decades, perpetuating inequality that is eroding democracies and fueling social uprisings worldwide.
"While this great wealth handover has long been anticipated," UBS said, "data suggests that it is now gathering momentum."
"A new, powerful, and unaccountable aristocracy is being created in front of our eyes."
Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS), told Common Dreams that "this is how wealth dynasties are formed."
"The so-called 'self-made' billionaires invest in 'wealth defense' to pass as much wealth to future generations within their families," he said.
Collins argued that this ongoing wealth transfer "should be an occasion for substantial inheritance taxes, but given the porous and weak state of such taxes, we're seeing dynastic oligarchies grow."
"Without robust wealth and inheritance taxes, these intergenerational concentrations of wealth and power will grow," said Collins. "The children and grandchildren of today’s billionaires will dominate our future politics, economy, culture, and philanthropy—with huge billion-dollar legacy foundations. It is true that a small segment of the next generation will redeploy and redistribute some of this wealth to more socially positive ventures and organizations. But at this point, this is a tiny percent and not a substitute for a progressive tax system where the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes."
The UBS report notes that billionaires with inherited wealth "seem more reticent" than first-generation billionaires to pledge their fortunes to philanthropy, which the ultra-rich often use to avoid taxes.
According to UBS, just under a quarter of first- and later-generation billionaires said they are concerned about "developments in taxation," an indication that they don't believe world leaders will heed growing global calls for new taxes targeting the fortunes of the mega-rich and their offspring.
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Henry Kissinger, the former diplomat whose efforts to prolong and expand the U.S. war on Southeast Asia and undermine democracy in Latin America and elsewhere took millions of lives, died Wednesday at 100 years old.
Treated like royalty in elite U.S. political circles until his death at his home in Connecticut, Kissinger—who served as secretary of state and national security adviser under Nixon and Ford—never faced justice for the secretive carpet bombing of Cambodia that he helped orchestrate, the overthrow of Chile's democratically elected president, or the murderous "dirty war" in Argentina that killed tens of thousands.
The scope of his crimes was so vast that he had to watch where he traveled, lest he be detained to face questioning for his role in assassinations, massacres, and violent military coups whose reverberations are still felt in the present.
"The covert justifications for illegally bombing Cambodia became the framework for the justifications of drone strikes and forever war. It's a perfect expression of American militarism's unbroken circle," historian Greg Grandin, author of "Kissinger's Shadow," toldThe Intercept earlier this year. Grandin has estimated that Kissinger was responsible for at least 3 million deaths.
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Youth advocates with the Green New Deal for Schools campaign notched up their first victory on Tuesday when Colorado's Boulder Valley School District Board of Trustees unanimously approved a resolution drafted by students at Fairview High School.
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Resolutions on the environment go back to 1978. In 2009, BVSD created a sustainability action plan, with updates in later years with a long-term goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 80% and also committed to a goal of zero net energy by 2050. It was one of the first school districts in the nation to make such a commitment.
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Spearheaded by U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a former educator and principal, the legislation would invest $1.6 trillion to transform the country's education system while "creating 1.3 million jobs and eliminating 78 million metric tons of carbon emissions" over a decade.
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