"By now there are few who deny that democratic regimes are going through an unprecedented crisis, or are at least exposed to very difficult challenges to overcome."
This is the incipit of "THE RETURN OF PLUTOCRATICE" by Enrico Melchionda, unforgettable professor of political science at the University of Salerno. It seems to be written today, while it is one of his last writings from 2008, the year of his untimely death.
We are in the midst of a global economic crisis, comparable to that of 1929; in America, the shadowy Paper Money Club, the architect of the immense real estate bubble and its junk derivatives, finds a way to save itself by bankrupting Lehman Brothers, one of the most important U.S. banks founded in 1850.
Oil rises from $40/60 per barrel to $120/140. Putin is perceived as the new Sun King by all European rulers who run to him to snatch lucrative deals for gas, oil and grain supplies, intensifying manufacturing trade agreements. The generous Russian president grows richer by transiting money to his trusted oligarchs scattered around the world, divided into areas of geopolitical focus.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)
@cryptowendyo The worst day in American history, September 15, 2008 #Lehman Brothers collapsed #crypto #finance #bitcoin #recession #inflation #house #money #cryptowendyo #finance #bank ♬ original sound - Wendy O✨
Crimea (2014) and Ukraine (2022) are yet to come.
The Hamas terrorist group creates a political front as an alternative to Abu Mazen's Palestinian National Authority, wins elections in 2006 and installs its military headquarters in Gaza, while political leaders "winter" in luxury villas and hotels in friendly countries. Geopolitics advises the European Union to send billions of euros to Gaza in support of the Palestinian population; a flood of money that will be used by Hamas to arm itself and build underground tunnels all along the Gaza Strip, leaving much of the population confined to refugee camps. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu himself, in the name of geopolitics, will open secret diplomatic channels with Hamas so much so that over time he will cause it to demobilize its surveillance along the Gaza Strip to focus on southern Lebanon.
Meanwhile, October 7th, 2023 is still a long way off.
These are just a few prodromes that have brought us to the current international geopolitical situation, and if we stick to the theory of Halford Mackinder, the first geopolitical scholar of the early twentieth century, it all revolves around the "heartland," the "heartland," that is, the gigantic Central Asian continental mass between the Black Sea and the Pamirs. Indeed, even today, the mantra of all geopolitical scholars is, "He who dominates Eastern Europe commands the heartland; he who dominates the heartland commands the Island-world."
And here we come to plutocracy, or the enormous wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals or financial groups capable of decisively influencing the policy directions of their respective governments. Can one really think that the world's largest democracy cannot express two more representative presidential candidates than Biden and Trump?
@comedy_castle_ Hilarious Trump vs Biden Debate 2024 😂 #comedy #trumpvsbiden #hilarious #funny #memes #laughoutloud #fyp ♬ original sound - COMEDY_ CASTLE_
It goes without saying that the UBS report is misleading, especially when it emphasizes that there are 1.2 million million millionaires in Italy.
First of all, those who own 1 million are not wealthy at all: in a range from 1 to 5 million one goes from wealthy to very wealthy. Moving up the scale from 10 to 300 million, one goes from more than well-off to moderately wealthy, where one can afford the luxury of an Alighiero Boetti tapestry to, with much effort, a Magritte masterpiece, sacrificing a third of one's wealth.
Keep in mind that on the upper side of Manhattan anyone with a $50 million estate is considered a pauper!
From the billion and up we begin to reason about real wealth, so of those 58 million mentioned in the report it will be about a dozen people who count for something. More interesting is the figure on the 14 super-wealthy, and even more pertinent to the term plutocracy that 12 of these have assets ranging from $50 billion to $100 billion.
Clearly this is not an empirical truth, we are talking about 58 million privileged compared to the rest of the world's population, but it is just a logical scale in consideration to purchasing power today. Then again, the same million in the 1920s as Mr. Bonaventure, by Sergio Tofano, became a billion in the 1950s.
@riccardosegna Berlusconi 100 MLN 😱 #imprenditore #soldi #money #lavoro #azienda #patrimonio #domande #risposte ♬ RUSPANDO LA PALUDE - Eva Stella
The UBS report is deficient if not omertous on an unquantifiable mass of money: the assets of the mafias, such as to make the GDP of many industrialized countries pale, but even more so on the billions of drug cartels that added to those of the jhadists, suppliers of the same cartels, far exceed the assets of the 12 super paperons, mentioned above. This avalanche of money is capable of generating so much firepower that it is worrying U.S. intelligence, which recently convinced the U.S. military leadership to take to Charlie Alert.
As the line in an old movie goes, "I don't care who smuggles 10 atomic bombs, I fear who buys one."
If in 2008 it was unprecedented crisis today we are in globalized chaos, piloted to subvert the current world order, and the point of no return will be Ukraine's membership within NATO.
Illustration by Gloria Dozio - Acrimònia Studios