injustice – Page 2 – From my brain to yours

April 23, 2011February 10, 2026

Israel’s Brightest Back Palestine

(The sign makes a point, but rarely does violence solve anything.)

Dozens of Israeli intellectuals and artists have signed a petition calling for a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders and an end to the occupation. Included are 16 winners of the nation’s highest civilian honor – the Israel Prize.

This handful of influential thinkers are the latest to join a movement that’s been growing within the Jewish community and across the world, as the atrocities caused by the State of Israel come to light.

Israel’s continued human rights violation are outlined by Al J’s Marwan Bishara in his piece describing The Middle East’s oldest dictatorship.

Bishara starts with a brief history of the Israel-Palestine debacle:

Since its inception at the end of the 19th century, Zionism preached self-determination for the Jewish people in “their” homeland. In reality, Israel has directly or indirectly driven Palestinians out of their homeland, confiscated their properties, rejected their right to return to their homeland despite UN resolutions, and occupied and colonised the rest of their homeland for the last four decades.

Throughout, Israeli military and security services ruled over another people against their will. They oppressed, tortured, exploited and robbed the Palestinians of their land, water and most importantly, their freedom.

He goes on to describe the Apartheid type conditions within Israel and occupied Palestine:

The settlements, the bypass roads and the industrial zones it built, are exclusively for Jews. Israel and its various Zionist organisations have built over 600 towns, villages and other form of settlements for the Jews, but none for the Palestinians – not even those it considers part of its own citizens, who make up almost one-fifth of its population.

Bishara concludes with the following thoughts:

Peace is possible between Palestinians and Israelis on the basis of one state, or two independent states divided by the 1967 borders. It’s however not tenable nor moral, let alone revolutionary, for the Palestinians to be forced into accommodation or peace with Israel’s occupation or its colonial dictatorship.

Our planet is waking up, growing interconnected, and exposing the suffering which has prevailed for too long. The Israeli oppression of the Palestinian people is just one of these injustices to be resolved as we usher in a new age for humanity.

April 2, 2011February 10, 2026

The Internet: We’re Here for You!

(Oh intermittent wireless signal, why hast thou forsaken me?)

Abuse, exploitation or oppression got you feeling down? Don’t suffer in silence anymore! A whole world, full of eager individuals, is standing by to lend a hand. All you have to do is get your message out.

Grab a camera and start shooting. Spearhead a blog and let words be your weapon. Ignite a movement through Twitter and Facebook. Do whatever you can to make some noise.

With a compelling story that resonates with others, the global hivemind is sure to echo your cries. Then, as word spreads to someone in a position to provide assistance, there’s a good chance you’ll get all the help you need.

Whenever you experience injustice in your own life, or if you see it happening to someone else, the best thing you can do is muster up enough courage and speak out against it. Drag your woes out from the secrecy of the shadows where they draw their strength, and expose them to the truth.

Your problems may appear permanent right now, but they’ll crumble away underneath the might of a cooperating human race.

January 18, 2011February 10, 2026

Visualizing the World’s Injustice

What does injustice look like?

Does it look like the trillions squandered on senseless wars that kill innocents by the hundreds of thousands?

Can it be seen on the face of any of the millions of humans who starve to death annually while a handful of individuals are wealthy enough to feed the world countless times over?

Yes.

To help visualize this injustice, we could look at graphic images of human suffering. But rather than do this and get all depressed, we’ll instead look to some colored graphs and visual representations of statistics… yay!

This will help us get a broader picture of the world’s injustice, which may, in turn, help expose us to the root factors perpetuating injustices in the world.

(click on any image for a larger version)

The Distribution of Wealth

To start, here is a lovely picture of a Champagne-Glass portraying the distribution of wealth:

As you can see, most of the wealth (and therefore power) concentrates with earth’s top tier. The third, forth, and fifth tiers, while forming 60% of the world’s people, have to survive on about 6% of the world’s wealth. From these bottom tiers comes the millions who die every year from starvation or easily treatable diseases.

Wealth within a nation is divided much like it is for the world: most of it concentrates into the hands of those at the top. To see how the internal distribution of wealth compares between nations, we can look to the Gini Coefficient which highlights the gap between the rich and the poor. The greater the Gini value, the greater the economic inequality.

Here’s a graph showing the change over a 50 year period for the world’s wealthiest nations:

Note how the Gini for several of the wealthiest countries, like US, China, India and the UK, have been on the rise, supporting the reality that the rich are indeed growing richer.

The Global View

There’s nothing like side-by-side comparisons of brightly colored maps to help us spot the big trends.

First up is a 2009 map of the various Gini Coefficients from around the world:

Here’s a 2010 map of the Human Development Index, which represents general well-being based on education, life expectancy and income:

This is a 2010 map showing the world’s Democratic Index measuring the state of democracy around the world:

Here’s the 2008 Global Peace Index map, indicating how peaceful a nation is based on crime and violence statistics plus military spending and war-mongering:

For this last map, we see the 2007 Happy Planet Index, which gauges a nation’s human well-being and environmental impact:

Studying these maps it’s possible to see a running theme: nations where the citizens are free, enjoy a higher quality of life and receive a bigger piece of the economic pie tend have a happier, more peaceful population.

A Gloomy Picture

This next graph isn’t bright or colored, but it’s somber appearance is fitting for what it represents: America’s war budget for the past 50 years.

It’s such a bloody tragedy that one of our world’s foremost superpowers chooses to invest large amounts of taxpayer dollars into armed conflict. On top of all the lives ruined and treasure squandered, war – by taking away precious resources that could be used to improve the world – remains an injustice of the highest degree.

Best World Ever!

We will go out on a positive note, with what is one of the most optimism-inspiring image of all time. It shows the world’s human development, education and health indicators over the past 40 years.

Note consistent upward trend. Isn’t it beautiful?

This means that, despite the glaring inequalities of wealth distribution, despite the fact that the richer have been getting richer, the world’s people are still better off than ever before!

This shows us how much we are improving as a species and how we grow more empowered everyday, and this only just the beginning. New technologies, discoveries and developments will mean that, even though most of the world may have to contend with sharing the same small slice, the size of the entire pie has been growing.

Soon, if we aren’t already, we’ll be in a position to meet the basic needs of all the world’s people. When no one is starving, dreams of world peace be much easier to believe possible. A more just human civilization is well within our reach.

January 7, 2011February 10, 2026

Israel is in the News, Again

Yes, it’s yet another blog post lambasting Israel. No, I’m not antisemitic. I’m just anti-injustice, and what I see going on in the Middle East is an atrocity of the greatest magnitude. So to help end it I’m doing what I can to increase awareness about it.

What is it this time, you ask. Well, there’s two negative stories making rounds and they both highlight the injustices being perpetuated by the corrupt Israeli government.

The first bit stems from a leaked cable claiming Israeli border guards would block shipments from US corporations unless they offered up a bribe. News of guards looking for kickbacks seems a bit trivial, especially when compared to the second story below, but it still exposes an inherent corruption nonetheless.

The second bit of news: Israeli soldiers broke into a Palestinian home last night, killing a 66 year old man as he slept in bed. He was shot at close range multiple times in the head and body.

The Palestinian man – Suliman al-Qawasmeh – was the unintended target of the raid, as the soldiers had mistakenly entered the wrong home. The Israeli forces were supposed to find a suspected militant who had been released from a Palestinian prison earlier that day.

Well, mistakes happen. No one is perfect, right? I mean, come on… don’t tell me you’ve never been a well-armed pawn, serving some corrupt government’s ideological agenda, when you accidentally assassinated the wrong target.

No? Well, if you say so.

Clearly what transpired is an injustice to the widowed family, to the Palestinian community, even to the soldiers who now have to live with innocent blood on their hands.

All of these tragedies, of which more are coming to light every day, are happening under the umbrella of a giant pile of wrongdoings: Israel’s occupation of Palestine and the continued oppression of millions of people based solely on their heritage.

Will the dead man’s family be compensated for their loss? Will these errant soldiers be held accountable for their actions? The answer to both of these questions will likely turn out to be negative.

If the Palestinians can be held prisoner in their own homes and kept on the brink of economic collapse, what possible hope could they have to personally hold Israel forces accountable for what amounts to just another transgression?

This means it is up to us – the rest of the world with a voice – to rise up and be heard, not just for the subjugated people of Palestine, but for all of the world’s voiceless.

We must let it be known – to our governments, to the media, to anyone who will listen – that we can see these injustices as they happen, and we won’t be quiet about it anymore.

—————–

If we’re to gain a positive from this tragedy, it can serve as another reminder of how the war on terror is inherently flawed. Rather than deepening the cesspool of extremism with the blood of more innocents, we ought to rethink the logic behind using a militarized approach in a battle of ideas.

don’t tell me you’ve never been a well-armed pawn serving, some corrupt government’s ideological agenda, when you accidentally assassinate the wrong target.