Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 01, 2010 Editorial
We now embark on the last year of the first decade of the second millennium. Some call it the “noughties”: “eighties”…”nineties”…”noughties”…get it? Well for the young ones, “zeroes” and also “noughts”. Don’t we all remember how grand it all sounded back then? The second millennium! How lucky we were. At the most banal level, there was the wonder of “experiencing” an event that would not recur for another thousand years. At the most exalted, many believed it would be the beginning of the long sought for, Brave New World.
And why not? In the last half a century or so of the previous millennium, mankind had seemingly conquered most of the plagues and pestilences and famines that had bedevilled us for so long and made our lives so brutish and short. Food shortages?
The green revolution of the 1960’s had transformed the old agricultural practices and brought food surpluses to areas of the world such as India and China that had been synonymous with famine and hunger.
Diseases? The miracle of modern medicine had lifted life expectancies to levels never though possible.
And for good measure the more fortunate countries of the world, working with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) had established the Millennium Development Goals for those nations that might not have been doing so well. Like us, for instance.
The goals were to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger; achieve universal primary education; promote gender equality and empower women; reduce child mortality; improve maternal health; combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases; achieve environmental sustainability and develop a global partnership for development. Happy days were here for all, it would seem
But it did not last long, did it? The first big change was brought about by one of the least technologically advanced modern tools – the ordinary box-cutter. On September 11, 2001, using those box-cutters, operatives from Al Qaida hijacked three planes and flew them into the US Pentagon – the headquarters of the US military and into the iconic Twin Towers of NYC – bringing them down.
A new paradigm for dividing the world into two mutually hostile camps had been given life – the Clash of Civilisations, and a new strategy – terrorism – would ensure that the clashes would be frequent and ubiquitous. Wars, we could now see, would be around for a bit longer that we may have expected after the fall of the Iron Curtain.
The second big shakeup came directly out of the seismic events of 9/11. The US was determined to show the world that America may have been bloodied by the sneaky terrorist attack on its “homeland” but it was not down for any count.
The administration strategized fuelling a housing boom through low interest rates that would target the poor. The Ninja (no income no job or assets) mortgages opened up the floodgates to a whole new stratified world of derivatives and profits as the US financial sector – and its interlinked partners in Europe – spun gold out of equations embedded in computer chips.
Or so it seemed until the bubbles burst – bringing the world to the brink of a cataclysmic depression by 2008.
We have not heard much about the fate of the Millennium Goals since the great crash. It is not that the poorer countries have been reticent about their predicament – but rather than just blaming the precarious state of their economies, the rich countries have decided that there is a more pressing matter that should occupy our collective attention in the present and the foreseeable future: climate change.
Having spent the last two hundred years pumping global warming gases into the atmosphere in their headlong rush towards “development” the rich countries insist that we must all act “responsibly” for the good of the planet.
So as we embark on the second decade of this millennium let us not be too chastened or down heartened. The lesson for us, we suspect, is that countries will always act to protect their own interest Let us not expect too much altruism. We simply have to work as one people to protect and augment our interests.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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