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Say what you like about America, it knows how to produce good TV drama.

Last weeks blockbuster show lets call it Insurrection was the first in a six-part mini-series brought to you live by the House of Representatives panel investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

Having spent a year picking through evidence and interviewing more than 1,000 people, the committee on Thursday laid out its findings in a compelling prime-time hearing.

Over two hours, we heard how former president Donald Trump, knowing he had lost the election, orchestrated nothing less than an attempted coup to try to block the peaceful transfer of power.

For a political hearing at least, it was gripping stuff. The carefully scripted, fast-moving drama kept millions of Americans glued to their televisions.

A former president at ABC News advised the panel of nine congressmen and women on how best to present their findings and boost viewership numbers, leading to a slick presentation.

Harrowing, tearful witness accounts were punctuated with footage of the deadly violence on the day thousands of Trump loyalists raided the Capitol.

Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney recounted how Mr Trump told his aides that protesters, who literally wanted to hang then-vice president Mike Pence for certifying Joe Biden's 2020 election win, maybe had the right idea.

The departing presidents enraged cry of We fight like hell during a speech outside the White House was shown along with footage of protesters closing in on the seat of American democracy.

Yet the question that came to mind as I watched Insurrection was this: Does any of it matter?

The hearing was a must-see for at least 20 million Americans who tuned in, but for millions more it was must-miss.

Fox News, Americas most popular cable network and the go-to for right-wing-slanted information, was the only major news channel that did not air the hearing live.

Instead, two of its favourite agents provocateurs Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity hosted their shows without any commercial breaks.

Presumably, this was to prevent channel hoppers from stumbling across Insurrection and watching Ms Cheney describe how the committee would detail plots to commit seditious conspiracy on January 6".

Hannity described the panels findings as a made-for-TV smear campaign against President Trump and lambasted the committee, comprising seven Democrats and two Republicans, for a partisan witch hunt.

He then turned to the headline issues facing America today and the perceived failings of the Biden administration.

Record inflation, rising crime, a shortage of baby formula, sky-high petrol prices and what some Fox commentators describe as an open border with Mexico.

These are the real problems we should be focusing on, the argument seemed to be, not the the Capitol being attacked by scores of militiamen in combat fatigues.

For many Americans, it is a fair point. After all, people here are in a foul mood, with three quarters of those recently surveyed saying the country is headed in the wrong direction.

You can hear it at the supermarket and at petrol station: gasps of horror at the checkout or as a family car gobbles up $100 and is still hungry.

But by studiously avoiding the elephant in the room the fact that January 6 was almost an American coup Fox News is doing the country and its viewers a disservice.

It seems obvious that less than five months from now, barring some unforeseen turnaround, the Democrats will forfeit control of the House and probably the Senate too.

At that point the January 6 committee will either be disbanded or taken in an entirely new direction with Republicans at the helm.

Instead of hearing about Mr Trumps plans to subvert democracy, the panel would focus on security and police failings at the Capitol building, and Speaker Nancy Pelosis actions around that.

We also will be hearing a lot more about Hunter Biden's laptop, Mr Biden's atrocious handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal, and Covid vaccine "misinformation" from the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr Antony Fauci.

Season 2 of Insurrection, if it is renewed, will probably look very different.

Published: June 13, 2022, 6:18 AM

See more here:
Tuning into 'Insurrection': a vivid vision of democracy in trouble - The National

Its not really a coincidence that, the morning after the first, explosive public hearing by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman the man appointed by Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos to lead the partisan probe of the 2020 election in Wisconsin was held in contempt of court.

Gablemans contempt for the rule of law and the institutions of our democracy, which he demonstrated in his bombastic, sarcastic performance in Dane County circuit court on Friday, is the same style of demagoguery practiced by Donald Trump.

Like Trump, Gableman is a narcissist and a bully whose taboo-breaking nastiness posturing as an injured hero of a popular movement who is somehow standing up for the little guy by displaying sneering disrespect for public officials and the courts is part of a more general, dangerous trend.

Trump, according to House investigators, encouraged a murderous mob to attack the U.S. Capitol to try to prevent the certification of the 2020 presidential election. Gableman has furthered Trumps efforts with his baseless investigation, pushing the discredited idea that there was massive voter fraud in Wisconsin. While leading his publicly funded probe that has cost Wisconsin taxpayers almost a million dollars, he has refused to turn over records the issue for which Judge Frank Remington held him in contempt.

Even aside from the mounting evidence that Wisconsin Republicans played a major role in the conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020 election, the coarsening of civic dialogue that Gableman represents is, in itself, a threat. That threat was already evident long before Trump was elected, when Gableman, the most overturned judge in the state, was elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court after a scandalous, racist campaign and brought his disdainful, know-nothing style to an institution led by the late Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson, one of the most respected jurists in the nation. Gablemans rude treatment of Abrahamson was stomach-turning, as was his successful drive to erect a veil of secrecy around court business which conveniently cloaked discussions of his conflicts in not recusing himself from cases involving his donors. Gablemans only defense of the policy change was to say the open meetings were an experiment whose time has passed. Things have gone downhill ever since.

The footage of mayhem at the Capitol aired Thursday night during prime time by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6th attack is a natural outgrowth of the dangerous demagoguery practiced by Trump and Gableman.

Contempt is the right word for it: Contempt for the truth, contempt for democracy, contempt for due process, and, finally, contempt for civility and common decency and even the physical safety of citizens, legislators and public servants, including the Capitol police who were attacked and killed.

House investigators are seeking to show that Trump was at the center of a far-reaching conspiracy to overturn election results. Wisconsins fake electors and the fake Gableman investigation are an important part of that conspiracy.

Its a short road from the assault on civil society launched by Gableman and Trump to mayhem. Their rhetoric encourages the destruction of peaceful civic life.

Consider Gablemans appearance Friday, when, after 45 minutes of argument by his lawyers that he should not have to testify at all, he finally took the stand. He proceeded to deliver a bombastic speech, refused to answer questions and denounced the judge, who, he declared, without evidence, has abandoned his role as a neutral magistrate and is acting as an advocate.

Dane County Circuit Court Judge Frank Remington directed Gableman to stop his filibuster. Youve had a long and storied career, serving the public as let me finish please, he said, as Gableman interrupted him.

Sure, if youll let me finish, Gableman shot back.

Thats not how it works. Remington reminded him, I do not need to tell you how I expect you to control yourself and the behavior that I expect of a witness on this stand.

After a brief further exchange, Gableman said, You have a right to conduct and control your courtroom, judge, but you dont have a right to act as an advocate for one party over the other. I want a personal counsel if you are putting jail on the table. I want a personal attorney to represent me personally. I will not answer any more questions. I see you have a jail officer here. You want to put me in jail, Judge Remington, Im not going to be railroaded.

All of this talk of putting Gableman in jail was precipitated by Remingtons instruction in an earlier hearing about the legal consequences of willfully withholding evidence in contempt of court, which includes, he explained Friday, reading from the Wisconsin Judicial Bench Book, imprisonment six months or as long as contempt continues, whichever is shorter in addition to payment to compensate loss or injury suffered by a party not to exceed $2,000 per day for each day a contempt continues.

Despite Gablemans histrionics, At no time did I suggest that that was a sanction that I intended to impose, Remington added.

The irony, of course, is that Gableman himself filed a petition in the Waukesha County court asking that city staff, election workers and the mayors of Green Bay Madison and Racine be thrown in jail if they dont comply with his subpoenas, including demands that they give testimony in secret, closed-door sessions the mayors said were improper.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that the city administrator of Kenosha, upon answering Gablemans subpoena, appeared only to find that he was to be deposed by a lawyer who was not licensed to practice in Wisconsin, upon which he left.

This kind of bumbling is par for the course in Gablemans Office of Special Counsel.

As the Examiners Henry Redman reports, Gableman has repeatedly disregarded open records requests and his lawyer has said that he regularly deletes records he deems irrelevant to his review which so far has turned up nothing more than baseless accusations of election fraud.

In a separate lawsuit seeking records he has so far refused to release, Dane County Judge Valerie Bailey-Rihn said he had run amok and gone rogue as he continued to disregard the states open records laws.

What is Gableman hiding? Keystone Kops-style incompetence, wasting money and coming up with nothing are the hallmarks of his ridiculous probe, which he and Vos justify as an effort to increase transparency and public confidence in Wisconsin elections. We already know Gableman used the taxpayers funds to attend a conspiracy theory conference hosted by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and to visit Arizona to inspect its discredited audit.

After throwing his tantrum on the stand Friday Gableman invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself and swept out of the courtroom. No one arrested him. His gambit worked he was able to continue withholding information. Later, Remington issued an order holding him in contempt.

American Oversight, the group that has been suing Gableman for information, issued a statement: Mr. Gablemans outrageous and disrespectful conduct in court today removed any last shred of credibility from this partisan charade. Far from increasing transparency and instilling greater confidence in the 2020 elections, by repeatedly flouting Wisconsin transparency laws, Mr. Gableman and Speaker Vos have shamed their offices and undermined their own investigation.

Undermining public trust in democratic institutions and sowing chaos and distrust is actually what the investigation is all about. And thats a growing problem for all of us.

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Gableman's contempt and the destruction of democracy - Wisconsin Examiner

Monday, June 13th 2022 - 10:45 UTC General Jeremy Moore take the surrender of Brigadier General Mario Benjamin Menendez

On 02nd April 1982 Argentine Forces invaded the Falkland Islands. Patrick Watts, who was Head of Falklands Radio, broadcast a marathon 11 hours non-stop description of the events as they unfolded. He maintained a British presence in the Radio Station for most of the 74 days of Argentine occupation. In this article, he provides a personal account of his recollections of the day that British Forces liberated the Falklands.

At around 1100 on the morning of 14th June 1982 the Falklands War unofficially ended. Argentine guns which had been inflicting considerable casualties on British Troops on Mount Longdon ceased firing while British artillery which for the previous 3 days and nights had incessantly bombarded the outskirts of Stanley in their attempts to silence the Argentine weaponry suddenly closed down as well. It was as if someone somewhere had flicked a switch at a pre-appointed time!

Snowflakes were gently falling; the roads were icy and it was bitterly cold as thousands of young Argentine soldiers abandoned the mountains, ridges, hills and valleys which they had occupied for the preceding 73 days, and walked disconsolately and dispiritedly into Stanley, resigned to their defeat and looking for shelter, warmth and food. Still fully armed they proceeded to occupy public buildings such as the Town Hall, Post Office and Gymnasium and commercial warehouses in an effort to escape from the cold. They were all very hungry despite the fact that many food containers, brought to the Islands by Argentine freighters, were languishing fully laden on grass verges and in paddocks and gardens. For some inexplicable reason there appeared to have been no attempts made to distribute the food to the hungry troops.

I climbed onto the roof of my house at the Police Cottages and saw the blue and white Argentine flag still flying on the 3 primary flag poles at Government House, Secretariat and Falkland Islands Defence Force Head Quarters. There were no white flags anywhere, despite the announcement made by the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in Parliament later in the day that white flags were flying over Stanley. She had been misled by the inappropriate words of a British Military Officer Major Bill Dawson of the Gurkha Regiment who at the time was stationed some 10 miles west of Stanley on Two Sisters mountain. He was filmed emerging from a bivouac uttering the infamous words: bloody marvellous white flags are flying over Stanley. 25 years later in 2007 Major Dawson returned to the Falklands and openly admitted to me that he did not see 1 white flag anywhere but that he had been encouraged, by a television crew, to exaggerate a report by a soldier who was positioned further forward on Mount William, and who had radioed him to say that he thought that there could be a white flag flying as he saw something fluttering in the wind. It was most probably a piece of ladys white underwear on a clothes line suggested Major Dawson. He was later reprimanded by General Moore for his indiscretion. But the myth of white flags flying over Stanley lingers on to this day.

At 3:00 in the afternoon I walked to the Government Secretariat/Treasury building and spoke with Air Commodore Carlos Bloomer-Reeve who had been brought back from Bonn where he was Military Attach and installed as Chief of Civil Affairs. He had previously spent 2 years in the Islands in charge of the state airline L.A.D.E. which since 1971 had operated a weekly service between Comodoro Rivadavia and the Falklands. Bloomer-Reeve was respected by all who knew him and he was most attentive to the concerns of the civilian population despite the belligerent attitude of an Argentine Intelligence Officer the feared Major Patrico Dowling. Bloomer-Reeve conveniently told me that there was a cease fire and took me to a window from where I could see the dark outline of British Paratroopers standing next to the 1914 War Memorial and just 400 yards distant. I knew then, as the British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had promised, that the British were back in my beloved Islands. It was an emotional moment for me.

At 8:00 in the evening I returned to the Secretariat building as I had been advised that Major General Jeremy Moore who commanded the British Land Forces would be arriving to take the surrender of Brigadier General Mario Benjamin Menendez who in early April had been sworn-in as Governor of the Islands. It was a short reign. In the passage way on the top floor stood Menendez looking resplendent and immaculate in his dress uniform complete with medals and decorations. His shoes shone so brightly that I could almost see my reflection in the polished toe-caps. Flanking him I recognized Commodore Bloomer-Reeve and Captain Melbourne Hussey, an Argentine Naval officer who was the official translator and had been appointed Head of Education during his short stay in the Falklands. The 4th person was Vice-Commodore Eugenio J. Miari of the Argentine Air Force who was their Senior Legal Advisor.

Major General Moore and his considerable entourage arrived a little later than expected. He was much shorter than I had imagined a slight figure compared to Menendez - wearing combat type green clothing and a peaked desert type hat while his face was covered with camouflage. He looked more the vanquished than the victor! After the surrender had been signed the Argentine delegation departed and as he walked past General Menendez looked directly at me and uttered one solitary word sorry. Perhaps he recognized my face from the official tour of Government Departments which he undertook in early April?

The document that he had signed ended: The surrender to be effective from 2359 GMT (2059 local time) on 14th June and include those Argentine Forces presently deployed in and around Port Stanley and those others on East Falklands, West Falklands and outlying Islands.

General Moore later sent a telegram to London which concluded with the words: The Falkland Islands are once more under the Government desired by their inhabitants. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN. The General asked: where are the locals? and as I looked around I proudly realized that I was the only civilian inhabitant of the Falklands actually present at this historic and memorable occasion.

I profusely thanked him, on behalf of the population of the Falklands, for the swift and decisive liberation from unwanted Argentine Military occupation. He wanted to know where the civilians were and I quickly replied that I was aware that more than 120 inhabitants were sheltering within the safety of the stone-walled West Store building. He demanded to visit them and seemed totally oblivious to the possible danger posed by the thousands of armed Argentines who still occupied the dark and snow-covered town. Shells had earlier knocked out a power generator and most of the town was without electricity or street lighting. They know its all over so lets go was his blithe response. In the dimly lit store-room, where people had laid out their mattresses between the cheeses and hams, he was cheered with much acclaim, lifted onto shoulders and paraded between the sleeping bags, photographed shaking hands with a young child and congratulated on the success of the land forces. The West Store Manager David Castle gallantly invited the incarcerated civilians to help themselves from the liquor shelves and bottles of alcohol were soon being consumed in the appropriate celebratory manner. Many toasts were proposed, firstly to the General himself, then to the Task Force and finally to Mrs. Thatcher.

Typical of an Englishman Major General Moore later asked me where could he get a good cup of tea so I took him to my home at the Police Cottages, along with his fellow senior Officers, his bodyguard, a few journalists and a photographer, and he ate cakes and scones that my mother had made. Coincidentally she was celebrating her 66th birthday on that very day. At that moment I struggled to comprehend the total significance of this momentous occasion. The leader of the British Land Forces was sitting in my small kitchen drinking tea and we had been liberated. Was it just a dream or was it reality I asked myself. As he departed for Government House he profusely thanked my mother and added the immortal words: Best damned cuppa Ive had since we sat out.

Later that night the defeated Argentines sought revenge and we became aware that private dwellings, public buildings and a sports hall which had all been previously occupied by Argentine soldiers and contained considerable amounts of ammunition had been set on fire. The local Fire Brigade assisted by many volunteers and some Argentine Military Police provided by Captain Romero prevented the fires from spreading and destroying the town. Romero, a decent man, was a reservist who had been sent across by the Junta to supervise the Military Police during the 74 days of occupation. He took appropriate action against conscripts caught stealing from unoccupied dwellings and tried to help the civilian community as far as his rank would allow. Thankfully the fires were eventually contained and the small town survived. The disarming of Argentine soldiers and their repatriation back to Argentina on British Merchant ships began on the following day. DEMOCRACY had returned to the Falklands.

By Patrick Watts - Stanley

Read the original:
Timeline: 14th June 1982 Democracy restored to the Falkland Islands - MercoPress

The next morning the penny dropped. When Dutt Saab said he would allow the bulldozers only over his dead body, he really meant it. He lay down in its path and soon there was high drama in progress. Naturally, the municipal authorities were frazzled by that action, word went up to the municipal commissioner, then the collector, eventually the chief minister and perhaps even the prime minister. Soon there was a crowd of officials, big and small, begging Sunil Dutt to vacate the bulldozer's path but he did hot relent. He continued to lie on the road through the beating sun, sitting up only to sip water, eating nothing until the authorities called off the bulldozing for the day.

You try this again tomorrow, I will be here again," he warned them. I will not allow the poor to be bulldozed out of their homes.

The action earned Dutt Saab much criticism that he was standing in way of much needed development, that he was benefitting only a few to the detriment of the larger population of commuters, even that he was merely safeguarding his vote bank. But Dutt Saab was unfazed. He took all the criticism in his stride, insisted that people whose houses were being demolished had to be rehabilitated first and only then the railway terminus could come up.

It did - after the government had taken the measures demanded by Sunil Dutt. It may be noted that much of the houses in the slums were illegal constructions, if not the entire slums and the government was well within its rights to demolish them.

But Dutt Saab's argument was that it was government's failure to begin with the failure to provide the poor with adequate housing - that had compelled them to encroach upon the railway land, so now the government could not wash its hands off and simply abdicate its responsibility to the poor.

Now Sunil Dutt was no politician. He was a film star, a friend of the Nehru-Gandhi family and member of parliament only because of that friendship with Rajiv Gandhi. But his instincts towards the poor were the right ones and he reacted against his own government, in the manner that opposition politicians of the 1960s and 1970s would - something those in the current century have failed to live up to.

Even when the Delhi municipal authorities were bulldozing the homes of poor Muslims and Hindus in Jahangirpuri some weeks ago, only one politician showed the courage to stand before those monstrous machines and stop the razing. I am greatly disappointed that in Uttar Pradesh, the newly elected legislators were conspicuous by their absence when the home of a Muslim activist was being razed on extra-Constitutional grounds.

If that home was illegal, there should have been resort to the courts but the silence of the judiciary in matters of human rights in this country these days has been greatly disappointing. Bulldozers cannot be allowed to crush our democracy in the arbitrary manner being resorted to by the BJP-ruled states and if politicians and judges will not speak up for the people, the people themselves must.

It is a frightening prospect but when the state pushes people to the wall, we could be soon faced with a revolution in the manner of the French and Russian revolutions which were, after all, reactions to the complete disregard by the respective rulers of the poor and the deprived.

After all, the Khodynka tragedy of Russia during the last Tsar's coronation wherein people were crushed in a stampede - after which he attended a ball - and the Paris street tragedy wherein children were crushed under the carriage wheels of a French aristocrat with no remorse expressed by the king, were the triggers for those revolutions.

Those tragedies were accidents that enraged the people in the face of indifferent rulers. We are faced with deliberate crushing by those ruling in the name of democracy in a manner worse than the French or Russian kings. They were self-absorbed but not deliberately cruel as here today. There is always a price to pay for people's anguish can never be bottled up for too long. Unless another Sunil Dutt can lie down on the ground and stop the bulldozers from razing people to the ground, the tragic outcome of such deliberate cruelty is inevitable.

The only question is when.

( The writer is Consulting Editor, National Herald, Mumbai. Views are personal)

Link:
Bulldozer justice does no good to a democracy or rule of the law and Sunil Dutt knew it - National Herald

Holidaying on the island of Arran, off the west coast of Scotland, we came upon a geological site known as Huttons Unconformity. James Hutton, an 18th-century geologist, became curious about junctions between different types of rock formation, created at different times and by different processes, as if manifestations of a collision between mighty opposing forces.

At the time, people thought that rocks were either created by volcanic activity or they were laid down by oceans. Hutton realised that both processes had shaped what he was seeing neither of the simple explanations could resolve what was going on. His unconformity struck me as a good metaphor for collisions, contradictions, and disconnections which I have been thinking about.

The first collision is between peoples expressed values and the actions they take. According to statistics presented in a recent paper, racial inequality cost the United States economy $16 trillion in lost gross domestic product over the last two decades. Meanwhile, the gender pay gap holds back the global economy by about $160 trillion. Yet people in positions of privilege continue to tolerate inequality and fail to support policies which would lead to greater equality despite generally claiming to have egalitarian values.

The gender pay gap holds back the global economy by about $160 trillion.

The authors of the paper, American social psychologists, argue that this contradiction arises because the privileged and those in positions of power believe that policies which increase equality will necessarily harm them and undermine their status. In a series of experiments, they showed that members of advantaged groups consistently believed that policies which would actually benefit everyone would harm them, while policies that increased inequalities between groups would always be good for them. The researchers conclude that these misperceptions may explain why inequality prevails even as it incurs societal costs that harm everyone.

But the participants in the experiments may not have been misperceiving anything at all. The equality-enhancing scenarios they were presented with all focused on increasing material assets. For example, they were asked to consider increases in the amount of mortgage loans to disadvantaged groups with no changes for the advantaged group, or increases in pay for women with no changes in pay for men. Clearly the respondents did not like these proposals, even though the scenarios they were presented with would not decrease their own material assets and would reduce absolute differences between groups.

Perhaps they were instinctively or should I say unconsciously recognising another, second, collision, between material and relative status, and understanding the importance of relative status. What one has matters less than how much one has relative to others.

Karl Marx understood this, pointing out: A house may be large or small; as long as the neighbouring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut the occupant of the relatively little house will always find himself more uncomfortable, more dissatisfied, more cramped within his four walls.

And indeed this is backed by modern research. A study found that people were satisfied with the size of their house only until someone came along and built a bigger house on the same block.

So it is not really a misperception to think that others obtaining more material assets does not hurt as long as ones own assets remain unchanged; if they now have relatively more, ones relative status has actually declined. And relative status matters enormously: research suggests it is more important for health and wellbeing than absolute income or wealth.

Capitalism its neoliberal variant in particular has trained us to desire ever bigger incomes and ever more stuff, despite this being a zero-sum game. If we all receive the same increments in absolute terms, none of us gains relatively, one against another. And having more things does not buy happiness, or at least it does so only transiently.

Advertising plays on everyones desire to have more, implying that having more will fulfil us. But that is another collision, this time with the truth: we are being offered false promises. True wellbeing emanates from things which do not have a price tag a sense of purpose, agency, social connection.

Of course the pursuit of more income and possessions would not matter that much if it only gave rise to broken dreams and lack of fulfilment. But consumerism and over-consumption are not just pointless they are harmful.

We live on a finite planet with finite resources and here lies the final and most important disconnect. There is a fundamental collision between what we need to do to address climate change and other environmental problems and the neoliberal ideology of economic growth. We cannot have both, and our politics and policies have not yet grappled with that contradiction.

But just as Hutton was forced to come up with new ideas about geological processes by pondering his unconformity, taking a clear look at the clashes between neoliberalisms pursuit of economic growth and sustainable wellbeing can lead us to focus on solutions.

Greater equality is an essential and powerful enabler of a transformation to a sustainable economy.

Tackling inequality, happily, offers a pathway out of all of these conflicts, collisions and clashes of social forces. Greater equality helps resolve the paradox between people saying they prefer equality yet acting in favour of maintaining inequality, because in more equal societies people trust one another more and act more collectively, for the common good.

Equality also helps reduce the conflict between wanting more and that not bringing us happiness. In a more equal society the hierarchy is flatter, our relative status is more similar and greater social capital enhances our flourishing and wellbeing.

Finally, greater equality is an essential and powerful enabler of a transformation to a sustainable economy. It can help create the shared spirit of collectivism needed if we are to tackle this great challenge, simultaneously reducing our competitive desires to consume ever more while enhancing public health and happiness.

Greater equality is thus a triple win: good policies, greater wellbeing and a society flourishing within planetary boundaries.

This is a joint publication by Social EuropeandIPS-Journal.

Continue reading here:
The most privileged value relative wealth over absolute wealth Democracy and society - IPS Journal