This comes from Vandana Shiva’s “Two Myths That Keep the World Poor” in Ode Magazine (Issue 28, 2005) – she is an amazing writer. Read her.
The poor are not those who have been â??left behindâ??; they are the ones who have been robbed. The wealth accumulated by Europe and North America are largely based on riches taken from Asia, Africa and Latin America. Without the destruction of Indiaâ??s rich textile industry, without the takeover of the spice trade, without the genocide of the native American tribes, without African slavery, the Industrial Revolution would not have resulted in new riches for Europe or North America. It was this violent takeover of Third World resources and markets that created wealth in the North and poverty in the South.
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If we are serious about ending poverty, we have to be serious about ending the systems that create poverty by robbing the poor of their common wealth, livelihoods and incomes. Before we can make poverty history, we need to get the history of poverty right. Itâ??s not about how much wealthy nations can give, so much as how much less they can take.