The American system, still the most powerful in the world today, has decided to reward the work of a single entrepreneur (Musk) with $1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion dollars) for one year’s work. Furthermore, it allows a single person (Trump) to demolish all the founding principles of human coexistence at will and without limits.
Musk has been rewarded (in advance( !) for committing to mass-producing robot taxis, driverless cars, the conquest of Mars and other revolutionary AI machines (will there also be robot soldiers?). This is while around 5 billion people on Earth suffer and die because they have no basic health coverage. Moreover, the American system has never wanted to spend a penny to eradicate poverty, except to do charity work around the world, even with millions and millions of dollars to “help” the poor to “survive” so that they sing the praises of Uncle Sam and show him their gratitude for eternity.
Trump, supreme leader of the strongest army in the world, has shaken the world by launching a trade war against all countries, individually, including allied/subject countries; he has publicly threatened the security of Greenland-DK, Canada, Panama, Mexico and has now relaunched the old US colonialist gunboat policy towards Venezuela and Colombia; He stubbornly continues to expel thousands of immigrants who have been living in the US for years. With Musk’s help, he has dismantled the US state apparatus and reduced the main measures of the US social welfare system. In the US, the real war of the rich against the poor is by far the most advanced in the world; it has established a system of terror against judges who oppose its abuses of the law; the same applies to the academic world and the media; he persists with arrogance and recklessness in endangering the life of the planet by continuing to finance fossil fuels and boycotting other countries’ measures against climate change and the serious chemical contamination of the planet; finally, he treats the rights of all the inhabitants of the Earth with contempt. We are in the presence of a conscious, convinced autocrat. As president of the most powerful country, he believes he is the person who can do whatever he wants, including changing the facts, lying, making false accusations, and making and breaking rules and relations between countries according to his interests. He is an “outlaw”, a global predator, a force of maximum violence who finds his legitimacy in the strength of his violence.
Life on Earth as we know it is senselessly being destroyed by two forms of violence based on the planetary hegemony acquired respectively by money (the financial system) and weapons (the autocratic military system). Our planet is like a pressure cooker under the force of these two forms of violence.
Of the two, the one represented by Trump is the most perverse. The absolute violence of the money system represented by Musk may seem less catastrophic because, it is said, “at least it produces goods and technology”. This is an illusion because the two forms of violence are closely linked and necessarily intertwined. The power of money unleashes unspeakable passions and violence everywhere, in all countries, in all fields, in all classes and in all ages. Some figures:
- Only 19 out of 200 countries in the world have an annual GDP of more than $1 trillion. Countries such as Switzerland, Argentina, Singapore, South Africa, Belgium, Norway, and all the others are below that.
- With a trillion dollars, you can buy 50,000 fighter jets (each costing 20 million)! Yes, a trillion is a huge sum, representing more than a third of global military spending in 2024.
- UNICEF reports that in 2024 it was able to allocate £1.2 billion to the WASH (Water, Sanitation, Hygiene) sector, resulting in 31 million children having access to safe drinking water on a secure basis. 450 million children (out of 2.3 billion children, almost a third of the world’s population) are deprived of drinking water. One hundredth of what Musk was offered could eliminate the number of children without drinking water. But children’s lives do not seem to be worth that much… so the violence of money will continue to kill millions of children in the coming years.
- the average gross annual salary of a worker in France in 2024 is just over €30,000. To reach Musk’s salary, a French worker would have to work for more than 30 million years! And what about Pakistani workers? Perhaps they will have time to go to Mars in Musk’s spacecraft… and never return;
The fact that this is happening is in itself an absolute nonsense, of immeasurable and indescribable violence.
What can be done? Revolt. How?
Firstly, by fighting with every means possible to delegitimise and demonstrate the total absence of rationality, wisdom and relevance of the forms taken by the hegemony of the current financial system and militaristic autocracy. We must strongly demystify their aims , cynically imposed in the name of the nation, the people, wealth , efficiency, competitiveness, scientific progress and life-saving technology, insisting on the fact that they systematically act in favour of the few and not everyone, the most powerful and not those who need other goods, other services, other horizons (of life, freedom, emancipation); the richest and not the poor, the “left behind”, as has been amply demonstrated over the last forty years. And as will happen with the 800 billion euros decided by the EU for the rearmament of Europe. The beneficiaries will be only those whose economies are linked to the arms industry (what an honour!). In the meantime, they will contribute to the destruction of millions of human beings, nature and human societies! In the name of a false “European security”!
Secondly, to increasingly promote the world of laws, the justiciability of the constitutional principles of the 20th century and their reinforcement and extension. In other words, to renew resistance through the mobilisation of citizens in favour of respect for the law. Abandon petitions addressed to those in power and multiply those addressed to citizens and, above all, multiply recourse to the courts, intensifying “class actions” (including transnational ones), initiatives that bring together dozens and dozens of groups, associations, different parties and different local communities.
Thirdly, in these times, compromises that fall short are not possible. Do not accord any seriousness, validity or justification to anything in the world that is Trump-equivalent. The strength of those in power often lies in the tendency of their subjects to compromise in the name of efficiency and “saving what can be saved”. It was very painful to see how the majority of European governments went to meet with the President of the United States to “negotiate” new trade agreements, instead of consistently and collectively rejecting the senseless trade war. The same applies to the duty of public authorities to enforce the collective objectives decided upon in the fight against climate change. Here too, citizens must express more forcefully and consistently their rejection of the shameful submission of so many governments to the corporate and private interests of the business and financial world. Their current interests are not good for the future of humanity and the Earth.
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