COVID-19 Has Blown Away the Myth About ‘First’ and ‘Third’ World Competence

JOHANNESBURG, May 15 2020 (IPS) - One of the planet’s – and Africa’s – deepest prejudices is being demolished by the way countries handle COVID-19. 

For as long as any of us remember, everyone “knew” that “First World” countries – in effect, Western Europe and North America – were much better at providing their citizens with a good life than the poor and incapable states of the “Third World”. “First World” has become shorthand for competence, sophistication and the highest political and economic standards.

So deep-rooted is this that even critics of the “First World” usually accept it. They might argue that it became that way by exploiting the rest of the world or that it is not morally or culturally superior. But they never question that it knows how to offer (some) people a better material life. Africans and others in the “Third World” often aspire to become like the “First World” – and to live in it, because that means living better.

By Gregory Jaczko

The danger from climate change no longer outweighs the risks of nuclear accidents. Gregory Jaczko served on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission from 2005 to 2009, and as its chairman from 2009 to 2012. The author of "Confessions of a Rogue Nuclear Regulator," he is the founder of Wind Future LLC and teaches at Georgetown University and Princeton University.

Nuclear power was supposed to save the planet. The plants that used this technology could produce enormous amounts of electricity without the pollution caused by burning coal, oil or natural gas, which would help slow the catastrophic changes humans have forced on the Earth’s climate. As a physicist who studied esoteric properties of subatomic particles, I admired the science and the technological innovation behind the industry. And by the time I started working on nuclear issues on Capitol Hill in 1999 as an aide to Democratic lawmakers, the risks from human-caused global warming seemed to outweigh the dangers of nuclear power, which hadn’t had an accident since Chernobyl, 13 years earlier.

By 2005, my views had begun to shift.

By Joan Russow PhD

Global Compliance Research Project

(OUTLINE FROM A LARGER DOCUMENT)

(RE POSTED  2020-09-17) LEST WE FORGET  INCREASED MILITARISM AND DEFIANCE OF THE RULE OF INTERNATIONAL LAW)

DISARMAMENT POSTER - NORTHERN fRIENDS' pEACE BOARD 1935

UPDATE IN 2020

In December 2016, Canada along with US allies  gave the reason for not adopting the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapon, that US nuclear weapons are necessary for the security of Canada  and that Canada would never agree that nuclear weapons would never be used

And in july2017 Canada refused to sign and ratify a Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons which undertakes never under any circumstances to:

(a) Develop, test, produce, manufacture, otherwise acquire, possess or stockpile nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

 (b) Transfer to any recipient whatsoever nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices or control over such weapons or explosive devices directly or indirectly;

 (c) Receive the transfer of or control over nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices directly or indirectly;

 (d) Use or threaten to use nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices;

 (e) Assist, encourage or induce, in any way, anyone to engage in any activity prohibited to a State Party under this Treaty;

(g) Allow any stationing, installation or deployment of any nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices in its territory or at any place under its jurisdiction or control.

And  instead Canada  had  agreed, at a NATO Conference, to the following;

1) Nuclear weapons must be maintained indefinitely.

2) we will improve their use and accuracy (modernize them).

3  wecan use them first.

4) we can target non-nuclear weapons states.

5) We can threaten to use them.

6) We can keep them in Europe, as we are now doing.

7)  We can launch some on 15 minutes warning.

8) We say “they are essential for peace."

And We will never agree that they should never be used.

A.

PEACE PROMOTION

*COMMON SECURITY

1. We must reappropriate the word “security” and not allow it to be distorted by the military. (Dr. Ursula Franklin, internationally renowned scientist and pacifist (1984 at the lead up conference to Nairobi Conference on Women, 1985)

 2. “True security exists when all are secure, through “common security” (Olof Palme, 1982) whose objectives could be extended to include but not limited to the following:

(a) to achieve a state of peace, and disarmament; through  reallocation of military expenses and delegitimization of war;

(b) to promote and fully guarantee respect for human rights including  labour rights, civil and political rights, indigenous rights, social and cultural rights – right to food, to housing, to safe drinking water and sanitation , right to education and right to universally accessible not for profit health care system; right to water and sanitation

(c) to ensure the preservation, conservation and protection of the environment, the respect for the inherent worth of nature beyond human purpose, to reduce the ecological footprint and to move away from the current model of unsustainable and excessive overconsumption

(d) To enable socially equitable and environmentally sound employment, energy and transportation,

(e)  to fully implement the UN Declaration the Rights of Indigenous Peoples