J is for Jubilee, K for Kleptocrats by Michael Hudson

Image by Leo Reynolds via Flickr

by Michael Hudson
Writer, Dandelion Salad
michael-hudson.com
December 6, 2013

Parts J & K in the Insider’s Economic Dictionary.

Jubilee Year: In Judaic Law (Leviticus 25) a Clean Slate to be proclaimed every 50 years annulling personal and agrarian debts, liberating bond-servants to rejoin their families, and returning lands that had been alienated under economic duress. Long thought to have been merely a literary religious ideal, the policy has now been traced back to royal proclamations issued as a matter of course in Sumer and Babylonia in the third and second millennia BC. (See Bronze Age.)

Killed Beaten Raped: Migrant Workers are Slaves by Graham Peebles

by Graham Peebles
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London
December 6, 2013

With few opportunities at home, millions of poor, desperate men and women from South East Asia and the horn of Africa migrate annually to Saudi Arabia. Vulnerable at home and vulnerable abroad where many are enslaved and badly abused, some killed. Slavery is woven into the fabric of the psyche of the kingdom; according to Saudi scholar Ali al-Ahmed, a “culture of slavery pervades the country”[The Guardian[i]], and although banned in 1964 (when it is thought there were 30,000 slaves in the country) the barbaric practice of owning a fellow human being still exists in the form of the internationally condemned kafala sponsorship system. By tying the residency status of migrant workers to their employers, the system grants the latter total control, amounting to ownership.

Nelson Mandela: Obama, Clinton, Cameron, Blair: Tributes of Shameful Hypocrisy by Felicity Arbuthnot

by Felicity Arbuthnot
Writer, Dandelion Salad
London, England
December 6, 2013

Accusing politicians or former politicians of “breathtaking hypocrisy” is not just over used, it is inadequacy of spectacular proportions. Sadly, searches in various thesaurus’ fail in meaningful improvement.

The death of Nelson Mandela, however, provides tributes resembling duplicity on a mind altering substance.