India: Imagines Revolution?

While lobotomized IT workers fall in line with the India Shining propaganda, there's a din churning from throngs of empty stomachs. Will this be the tipping point for the vast majority of India's poor that make up 80% of India's population?

Will they properly place the NeoColonialism and NeoLiberalism idealisms down into the gutter where they belong? Will the IT workers, finance, politicians, businessmen wake up one day to find their false wealth tumble alongside a stock market crash? What will it take for the majority of the population to say enough is enough?

[Youtube] Is India Shining imagining a Revolution?

Hunger: A Man Made Disaster

DECENTRALIZE

As I've been saying, hunger and poverty are man made phenomena, designed behind closed doors. The economy the way it is now, funnels wealth from the poor to a handful of rich. Profits have nothing to do with risk, investment, or benefit for society. It's a rigged market. Opportunity has opened up for these rats.

But we do not have to put up with this. How? The answer is to buy local and small. Then these middlemen cannot be involved. The product moves through more honest hands from the producer to the consumer.

[Youtube] Hunger - an unnatural manmade phenomena

Donate a better economic system

ECONOMIC SYSTEM WITH DIGNITY

Instead of donating money, why not donate a better economic system to a poor person? They are, after all, poor because of a faulty system that unfairly distributes income and neglects providing a livelihood for everyone. Imagine designing a system that doesn't include everyone in the design! Then one wonders why things are the way they are.

The design for the system is concocted behind closed doors somewhere in an ivory tower. THEY ARE NOT MAKING AND PASSING OUT COTTON CANDY IN THERE. Poverty is designed by purpose.

So, if you can donate money, donate a better economic system. Even if you can't donate money you can still try to donate a better economic system!

[Youtube] Egypt's poor and donations

Jessica Jackley: The Story of Kiva

Here is an inspiration. A leader. And what makes for a successful and happy career? When you do something with great intention, motivation, and passion. Money? That'll come along. Don't work for money. Work to make a difference. Leave behind a legacy. An ideal business doesn't make profit its bottom line, but looks at how it makes a positive impact to those it effects.

Imagine having a honest leader with integrity in their character. Trust is a bond that open doors. And you need it because you need the gears to work together. An individual can only do so much. A dedicated team can go much further.

School gets in the way. It limits the limitless imagination, possibilities, and desires of a person. I think a person should be home schooled with a really good mentor. The student should be the one doing the discovering while the mentor helps with the possibilities. Self learning is the best learning of all. Don't be a generalist. Be a specialist. Most of the classes in school are junk. Why do I need to know calculus? Why do I need to calculate a mole in calculus? Just tell me what a mole is and I can conceptualize it. I don't need to spending the whole week doing calculations on moles.

Here's my take on the speech in the classroom: In the video, I fast forwarded the teacher and students questions to when Jessica was speaking again. I was annoyed by it. They didn't have much to add to the conversation. And the teacher threw out thes buzz words and terminology to describe things that already happened in the past. I say, look ahead not what's in the rearview mirror!

Good news! Now at Groupon.com, buy $15 towards a loan at Kiva.org, and Groupon.com will add $10 credit to your purchase so you can provide a $25 loan for only $15! Hurry, it expires end of 11-30-2010!

Steps for purchase:
1) If you haven't signed up to Groupon.com yet, use this link as my referral (I get $10):
http://www.groupon.com/r/uu6760943

2) The pay only $15 for $25 credit towards a Kiva loan is here:
http://www.groupon.com/deals/kiva-national

Reminder: The deal expires end of 11-30-2010 (in 2.5 days) so do it now!


[Youtube] Jessica Jackley and The Story of Kiva


[Youtube] Jessica Jackley at Ted Global 2010: Poverty, Money and LOVE

UN Report: Global poverty doubled since 1970s

Just as I have suspected. The economic system has left out the majority of the people of the world out of the focus of the picture. This proves it. The economic system is for the rich, (built) by the rich, from the rich. If you're poor you don't count. And if you're middle class, you're always being pushed into the direction of poverty by the invisible hand.

So much for a vibrant, prosperous 21st century. Brought to you by the small handful of self focused people at the top. Can you blame the pyschopaths for devising and implementing such a economic system, if no one is going to stop them?

[Article] Poverty around the world doubled since 1970s

A look at harsh life in the Ukraine

With no other source of income, these miners in the Ukraine eek out an existence on coal dug out from previously closed mines.

I got claustrophobic just from watching the video. That's due to me imagining that there is no air. I would be flopping around out of my mind trying to get back out!

Let's try to have a more equitable distribution of income shall we?

Anyways, you and I live like royalty compared to this. Remember, everything is relative. After watching this, you will be thankful and appreciative for what you have and you will even settle for a lot less than what you have now.

[Liveleak] Ukrainian coal miners make a living

Manfred Max-Neef on Democracy Now! 09-22-2010

Knowledge vs. Understanding

Here's Manfred Max-Neef, a Chilean economist, on understanding economics and how the majority of people fail in this aspect. Knowing something and understanding something are two different concepts.

I think what's also key is intent of a person. Have we passed that critical mass where people value material consumption over human relations and life? The knowledge is there. People can't be that dumb to not know what's going on. War is supported because it props up the dollar and keeps oil out of the hands of the Chinese. Why are the current politicians and business leaders still supported? It's not because of ignorance. And why is when people point out that Bush lied, the bailout was a scam, the corporations are the puppetmasters, that the people pointing it out are treated as heretics?

[Video] Manfred Max-Neef on Democracy Now! talking lack of economic understanding 09-22-2010

Thom Hartmann interviews Frederick Kaufman: How speculators starve the world Part 2

LET'S PLAY POKER WITH FOOD

This blog dares to ask why is there hunger in the world? It is not a natural state of affairs for human beings to be in a condition of starvation. In a world of plenty, where food grows by itself or with minimal effort, why is there starvation and misery? Could it be political and financial forces create these situations? Nature certainly wouldn't chart this course.

This is a followup to the earlier How speculators starve the world blog entry.

[Youtube] Frederick Kaufman: Wall Street speculators starve billions

How speculators starve the world

GOD MADE US IN HIS IMAGE. MAN MADE HUNGER

Here's an article by Johann Hari of The Independant that describes the mechanism that causes human generated starvation> It is caused by speculators bidding up prices of food commodities so that the poor of the world have to go to sleep empty stomach having not enough pennies in income for the day to afford adequate nutrition. This amongst plenty.



[Article] 100% Man Made Disaster: Starvation in the 21st Century

Muhammad Yunus: Social Business

Most of it has been heard in his previous speeches. There's some new information such as more European and US companies joining in social businesses in Bangladesh. Dr. Muhammad Yunus also states that it is the system that creates and maintains poverty. There's also a few jabs at New York banks and mention of Grameen America

[Youtube] Muhammad Yunus's latest speech during the Spring Public Affairs Convocation Lecture at Missouri State University

Anuradha Mittal: The impact of free trade on 3rd world farmers

World Bank and IMF imposing upon a nation rules that favor multinational corporations. Deregulation of necessary laws. Superceding trade rules of a nation. US Subsidies to undermine farmers of poor nations. Biofuels. GM crops. Source of hunger and poverty.

These are some of the topics covered by Anuradha Mittal, Founder of the Oakland Institute, OaklandInstitute.org, on "The Global Justice Movement and the Meltdown of Neoliberalism". The speech is given on October 16, 2009 at the National Lawyers Guild Law for the People 2009 Convention in Seattle.

Anuradha Mittal goes a good job putting all the topics together in one neat package. It's clear to see the problem of hunger isn't supply, but the lack of money to buy that food. It's also easy to see that throwing people off their land destroys more jobs and livelihoods than it creates. But maybe it's all planned that way for control?

[Youtube] Anuradha Mittal on in the impact of managed "free" trade

500 Years of Globalisation created the 3rd world

FILM: Challenging 500 Years of Globalisation by French Filmmaker Philippe Diaz

Neocolonialism, using debt to keep the 3rd world impoverished, keeps coveted
natural resources cheap. Unfair trade rules foisted upon these weak nations prop up monopolies and the keep poverty cycle turning.

I stand that these nations were not poor before the arrival of colonies. Poverty is not a natural state of being. Something must constantly upkeep and maintain it.

"To end poverty, you have to know how it began - with globalisation. No, not the 20th century variety engendered by multinationals and their friends at the IMF, World Bank and WTO. They just codified practices that kept developing countries poor.

French Filmmaker Philippe Diaz, in an illuminating documentary opening in New York Friday, traces globalisation back 500 years to the Spanish and Portuguese conquests of the Americas. Diaz shows how the colonial North used the South's resources to build its industrial base and how its continued control over resources, global trade and debt rules prevents developing countries from ending poverty.

For example, Diaz is incredulous that Sachs's book ascribes Bolivia's economic failure to high altitude. He points out that 30 years ago, Sachs advised the Bolivian government to privatise everything, and today the country is essentially owned by foreign corporations.

Abel Mamani, Bolivia's water minister, says in the film, "In the case of railroads, they have practically disappeared since they were privatised. In the east we don't have trains anymore. They have been entirely dismantled."

The filmmaker says that the year "1500 is when everything started, the time where Europe expands outside its borders and takes everything it can from Latin America, Africa, Asia - the land and all the other resources. The moment you take the land away, the only way people can survive is to sell their work for food. You take resources away, you create slavery, poverty."

The film shows how European industrial development was not, as widely asserted, based on the Protestant ethic but on riches accumulated via colonialism.

"How do you think countries [like] Belgium, small countries with no resources, built empires? Existing industries were destroyed, even those of better quality, and colonies were forced to buy manufactured goods and equipment from colonial masters," Diaz told IPS.

Eric Toussaint, head of the Committee for Cancellation of Third World Debt in Belgium, describes in the film how "The Dutch destroyed the Indonesian textile industry and built a textile industry in Holland. Same for ceramics. The textiles and ceramics that we are told are Dutch are in fact made with techniques they took from Indonesia and specifically from Java, brought them back to Holland and built a wealthy industry."

He adds, "In the 18th century the Indian textiles were of a much better quality than those of the British. The British destroyed the Indian textile industry and prevented merchants within the British Empire from importing fabrics and other manufactured products from the colonies."

"Sixty to 80 million still live in slave-like conditions all over the world on plantations and in mines," he explains. "It was the same system, we just changed the tools. We don't have the guns to keep slavery; we have the programmes of the IMF and World Bank, the unfair trade system."

He says ex-colonial powers assured the new countries would be weak and forced to heed the North's demands by saddling them with debt. When countries won independence, debts of colonial powers used to exploit stolen resources were transferred to new governments - though they had never incurred or benefitted from them. This was enforced by the North via the IMF and World Bank.

Toussaint says that the World Bank, in the guise of helping, increased the debt: "Take more loans to build big infrastructure to export your riches." Weakened, countries couldn't escape the colonial trading system.

Take Kenyan coffee. Diaz points out, "The minister of agriculture, Kipruto Arap Kirwa, says in the film that Kenya doesn't have the right to roast its coffee. They are forced to sell their coffee to the North which refines and packages it. It's in the trade agreement with the former colonial power. Today, Germany is the biggest coffee exporter, and it doesn't have a single bush of coffee."

Diaz says, "People never got their land and resources back. We interviewed a general of the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya that threw the British out. He said, 'We were naïve. We thought we would get our land back. The British were better organised, they transferred the land from a white minority to a black minority.'" Liberation leader Jomo Kenyatta became the biggest landowner in Kenya.

Kenyan villagers tell how the Dominion Group of Companies in the U.S., which exports vegetables to the United States, destroyed their livelihoods and health. The company built a dam that overflowed and flooded homes and farms."

[Article] How 500 Years of Globalisation created the 3rd world

Ramakrishna N.K. interviews Rangde.org MFI's Ram and Smita 10/2009

Here's an insightful interview that gives us a taste of some of what goes on behind the scenes of the microfinance institution, Rangde.org, which is based out of Chennai, India.

[Youtube Playlist] Ramakrishna N.K. interview with Rangde.org's founders Ram and Smita 10/2009

Muhammad Yunus on his Loans to Beggers project

Here's a funny but insightful segment on banking from Muhammad Yunus on his experiment to loan beggers without collateral.

[Youtube] Muhammad Yunus experiments with loans to beggers

Max Keiser: Radio Show 07-11-2009

Good stuff! This one of Max Keiser's best radio shows in terms of explaining the world.

Max Keiser explains how the rich countries systematically uses financial warfare to keep world's poor poor, and how careless he consumers are. Also covered: Goldman Sachs market maker manipulation, bankers rob the system and then hand out some money to charity, tinsel brain money making machines, 2000 dead taliban, Robert McNamera, centralized bank sellouts, 2/9 Americans on food stamps, California IOUs level 3, savers vs. speculators, and AAA CDO securities once again and the second wave of retirement investment raids!

[MP3] Max Keiser Radio Show 07-11-2009

The Bicycle Project - Mumbai, India

The Bicycle Project

In villages located a around big cities, there are several children aged 6-16 years, walking an average of 2-7 kms a day, one way, to get an education. This is the generation that will bring about a change for the better – for their families, their villages, and who knows, maybe even their country and some day, the world!

Going to school is the most important thing for these kids – and they know that.

Which is why no distance is too long – and walking for hours is normal because missing school is not an option. These children’s families can’t even afford to send them by the local bus yet, whether rain or shine, blistering heat or freezing cold, these children do their best to get to school on time, every day.

What is The Bicycle Project?

We’re collecting your old bicycles, which are probably of little use to their owners and lie rusting on a terrace, or in a stairwell or garage. After
giving these bikes a new lease of life, we deliver them to tribal / village kids in and around Mumbai / Pune, in Maharashtra.

For Phase I of this project in Mumbai, we have identified 137 students from Sri Binoi Gharde Vidhalaya in Alone, Vikramgarh Taluka, District Thane, Mumbai. We have already delivered 68 bicycles to the students of this school. Once the target of 137 bicycles is over, we will move to the next village and its school.

For Phase I of this project in Pune, we have identified few schools around Pune District and plan to replicate Phase I in Mumbai.

How can you be a part of this project?

a) Open up a Collection Center – If you have space for storing 10-15 bicycles for a period of 4-6 weeks, you can open up the Collection Center of
the bicycles where the donors can drop their bicycles.
You will have to ensure that each donor fills out a form to accompany every bicycle, for our records.

b) Donate Bicycles – You can donate your old bicycles for this cause by dropping them at a conveniently located Collection Centre.

c) Donate Money – You can pay to fix up the old bicycles (1 or more, each costs Rs 500 to fix on an average )

d) Talk about The Bicycle Project – tell everyone you know about this project, put up the posters in your building society, school, office and in your friend’s buildings, talk to society secretaries and get permission to clear their old bikes, ask people if they have space to set up Collection Centres, offer to help us repair the bikes, etc.

Please find attached the poster with our contact details. You can call me on +91 99207 69666 (before 9 am or after 8 pm on weekdays and anytime on Sunday & holidays ). Alternatively you can send me SMS & will revert back to you. You can also drop me a mail as to how you want to get associated with this project.

Looking forward to your participation.

Kiran S. Deolalkar
E mail - kiran@thebicycleproject.in or kiran.deolalkar@gmail.com
Blog - www.thebicycleproject.blogspot.com
Website - www.thebicycleproject.in

Hyderabad India - Some pics from my trip - Summer of 2006

In the Summer of 2006, I took a 6 month trip to Hyderabad, India (and Bangalore) to take a boat load of IT courses. Out of this trip was born a flourishing career in the Cisco Voice field.

What is empire about? It's great for the select few who benefit from the loot. Who are the poor subjects who take the brunt impact of abject poverty? The majority of the world lives in squalor while a few party away. All around the world the rich subjugate poor.

I'm going to show some photos which I took in Hyderabad right here and contrast riches and poverty, both within a few yards of each other. The pictures create a linear panorama, starting with the southeast face and going around to the northeast side, thus creating a 300 degree view.

Who else thinks about this stuff on their trips?

They call this building the White House:

These 'bungalows are 3 stories high and worth about 3 crores rupees or $1 million each:

This is a picture of the empty lot directly below the white building pictured above:




Some empty areas are taken up by the poor who build temporary slum shelter. These get removed by the whim of the government when the local residents or businesses decide they want to pretty up the place, or if the land gets bought by a private party for development. If the land is already owned by a private party they may decide on removing the 'pests' This is pic 61:

View of the mosquito infested Taj Banjara hotel lake:


Here is a closeup of pic 61 (2nd one up from here) These are people living in abject poverty earning less than a dollar a day. One can imagine what would happen if a few pennies extra per day (in a form of higher wages) flow from the haves to the have nots?:



SUPER ZOOM near the Taj Banjara lake. The first pic shows a temple and a guy who bathes his buffalos in the lake everyday. The second pic shows Road 1, a main road full of shops in Banjara Hills:



[Pictures] More pics available on my flickr page.

IMF and P Sainath on Farmer Suicides and the connection

Today we get news that the G20 nations are loaning $1 trillion to the IMF to 'loan' back to themselves and the thrid world. Does it make to loan yourself money? I'll tell you why it's setup this way. It's that the IMF private owners can control and blackmail countries around the world, and not be subject to any country's laws.

We need less IMF and World Bank not more. We need less poverty, less privatization and monopolization, less corruption, and less totalitarianism, less representation for corporations. Instead we get the direct opposite. The IMF and the World Bank are the enemies of civilization.

Let me outline the web of control, corruption, and domination of the whole world:
Banks like Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan => FED => Bank of International Settlements => Nations => Corruption and funding of 'friendly' politicians => control of economic and social policies => poverty, slavery, despotism

[Article] on $1 Trillion IMF loan

Today, I present to you, P Sainath, a journalist who has been covering the Indian countryside and reporting on farmer suicides caused by Monsanto and and other MNCs. And we will leave into the glimpse of Indian poverty in the middle of the richest city in India.

P Sainath on Inequality:


P Sainath on mainstream media:


P Sainath on Western Democracy:


P Sainath at University of Texas, Austin:


Bombay Slums. Thanks corruption and despotism!: