waton :
NK, like East Germany before, operates on the claim that they are the only legitimate rulers on the peninsula.
In 1950, both sides made that claim, but the fact remains that the west had given little thought to the important question of what to do with Korea after WW2. It is claimed that F. Roosevelt thought that it may be 50 years before they could rule themselves. By the time that Japan surrendered Russian (as the USSR) troops were inside this former part of the Japanese Empire, an well down the peninsula. The American command made a belated offer to the Russians to divide Korea into two. During the one year I spent studying Korean hiistory, I never found a satisfactory answer to the question of why the Russians agreed to the American proposal. Anyway, the Russians set up the DPRK under Kim Il sung, supposedly a former guerilla fighter against the 35 year long Japanese occupation.
The Americans set up the Republic of Korea, parachuting in a staunch anti-communist named Syngman Rhee, At the time that the Korean war commenced both sides were marching battalions of soldiers up and down the border. Who jumped first is not clear, but of course, most western sources claim the north did.
By the time the Americans got themselves a bit organised the DPRK, had pushed the ROK/American army into a corner around Busan. Macarthur's (quite brilliant) counter attack with an amphibious landing at Inchon, well behind the front line nearly brought about the rout of the north. Macarthur failed because he decided to ignore the Chinese warning not to drive through to the border area. When Macarthur ordered his forces to do just that, the Chinese entered the war, moving at night they took the Western forces by surprise and soon the American/western forces were fleeing south.
There is a reasonable description of the war in Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War.
There are some differences in that account and my own, but essentially both tell a similar story.
Waton: They never formally surrendered to the overwhelming looming western might.
"overwhelming looming western might." Is that why there was a truce, rather than a ROK/USA victory that steamrollered over the whole peninsula? Many observers think that it's the USA that has been slow to keep a final peace treaty from being signed.
How would the view you espoused fit in with ...
"The Agreed Framework between the United States of America and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was signed on October 21, 1994 between North Korea (DPRK) and the United States. The objective of the agreement was the freezing and replacement of North Korea's indigenous nuclear power plant program with more nuclear proliferation resistant light water reactor power plants, and the step-by-step normalization of relations between the U.S. and the DPRK. Implementation of the agreement was troubled from the start, but its key elements were being implemented until it effectively broke down in 2003"
Why did this agreement break down? Who obstructed it?
Soon after the agreement was signed, U.S. Congress control changed to the Republican Party, who did not support the agreement.[16][17] Some Republican Senators were strongly against the agreement, regarding it as appeasement.[18][19] ... From 1996 Congress provided funding, though not always sufficient amounts.[11][21] Consequently, some of the agreed transitional oil supplies were delivered late.[22] KEDO's first director, Stephen Bosworth, later commented "The Agreed Framework was a political orphan within two weeks after its signature".[23]
Some analysts believe North Korea agreed to the freeze primarily because of the U.S. agreement to phase out economic sanctions that had been in place since the Korean War. But because of congressional opposition, the U.S. failed to deliver on this part of the agreement.[24] "
In other words the American side, (not the DPRK) could not fulfill its part of the agreement.
waton: Think of a united Korea with the aspiring North's military and the South's economic clout.
I doubt that will happen, there are too many historical and ideological differences. But the over-riding reason is the cost of such a move. Some calculate the cost to be as much as three trillion dollars.
The correct solution is to give the DPRK a reason to believe that they have some security of tenure, and support the current DPRK trend toward developing a market economy. As a middle class grows (who have an incentive to support a peaceful future) the problem will be solved.
fulltimestudent
JoinedPosts by fulltimestudent
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FWIW -- Anonymous suggests North Korea will start WWIII before the end of this year
by kpop ini know most of you don't know what anonymous is or what the real 4chan is, but both are saying that their global meta data is pointing that now with south korean elections going to a pro war candidate (moon, who is a psycho) and china saying there may be no other solution, north korea will strike first before the end of this year.
japan has called up reserves.
take it with a grain of salt.
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fulltimestudent
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A gay JWs experience - How he escaped his spiritual prison and built a better life
by fulltimestudent inmy gay xjw friend tells me this story is doing the rounds among the gay community.its josh gutteridge's story:.
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/secrets-of-a-gay-jehovahs-witness-how-i-escaped-the-religion-and-rebuilt-my-life/#gs.egioclu.
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fulltimestudent
I put together the two scraps of information (The Jonathon/David Love story and Jesus heals the centurion's young male lover for another friend (also gay) who thought he was going to debate with a JW pioneer on some aspect of being gay versus the YHWH/JESUS imagined deity...
There was no debate, the pioneer JW, flatly said, the Bible says you'll get destroyed, so I have nothing further to say. Anyway, as to Jonathon and David, there absolutely were no homosexuals in ancient Israel.
Can we fact check that last statement? Yes, we can! So how and where?
On this subject the Bible does give an answer. Open you're Bibles now ... to 1 Kings 14:23,24, which reads:
(its discussing what the Jews were doing during the reign of Rehoboam).
"And they too kept building for themselves high places and sacred pillars and sacred poles upon every high hill and under every luxuriant tree. And even the male temple prostitute proved to be in the land. ..." (NWT-Large print edition)
The JW publication "Insight" suggests that the 'sacred poles' were ... "It has been suggested that the poles represented the female principle, whereas the pillars represented the male principle. These appendages of idolatry, likely phallic symbols, were associated with grossly immoral sex orgies, as is indicated by the reference to male prostitutes being in the land as early as Rehoboam’s reign. (1Ki 14:22-24; 2Ki 17:10) Ref: https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1200003789#h=4
So, in the view of the author of 1 Kings, wherever you went in Judah, you would see these shrines with their representations of a penis and inside you could find a guy who'd have sex with you for fee. Did male Jews have sex with the 'male temple prostitute?' Its implicit in the text of the story that they would be likely to do that. Who screwed who? No clues about that, so we may just assume that some swung one way and some swung the other way.
The English language, for over 120 years has used the term 'homosexual' to describe, men who have sex with men.
So was the JW pioneer who told my friend, "there absolutely were no homosexuals in ancient Israel." right?
Wrong, wrong, wrong!!!!!! There were homosexuals in Israel, at leasst in the time Rehoboam, and probably always were.
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FWIW -- Anonymous suggests North Korea will start WWIII before the end of this year
by kpop ini know most of you don't know what anonymous is or what the real 4chan is, but both are saying that their global meta data is pointing that now with south korean elections going to a pro war candidate (moon, who is a psycho) and china saying there may be no other solution, north korea will strike first before the end of this year.
japan has called up reserves.
take it with a grain of salt.
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fulltimestudent
This may be helpful to some:
Anchoring Effect. (Reference: https://www.pon.harvard.edu/tag/anchoring-effect/)
Anchoring is a cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision making, anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias toward interpreting other information around the anchor.
Whether or not that fragment of information helps anyone is not useful to the thread in general.
Cofty is correct in the information he presented about Moon. Reading across a spectrum of media commentary about the new ROK President, nowhere is he presented as described by the initial poster.
I think its quite possible that the I.P. (or his information source) confused Moon Jae-In (the new President) with Moon Myung-sun (founder of the Family Federation for World Peace, lateer re-named as the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity, and generally referred to as the "Moonies."). This is a pik of that Moon.
Here's an image of the new President, as the I.P. may note, they are quite different.
As a final comment, both The Republic of Korea (i.e. South Korea) and China (and, I think we should include Russia) have a vested interest in attempting to maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula.
China (if not the ROK) have a long tradition of East Asia wisdom writings that often make more sense that west Asian wisdom writings. Pertinent to the problem of war, is the ancient book written by 孙子 (Sun Zi), the title of which is often translated as "The Art of War."
Two of his 'sayings,' may illuminate this discussion,
1. The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
I don't think I need to expand that statement. But I will expand the other saying.
2. Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.
That's precisely what the Korean Workers Party (the governing party of North Korea) has been doing ever since they (in effect) lost the Korean War. In the last stage of the war American saturation bombing pulverised the North.
Kim Jong-un did not need a bomb with the silly name of M.O.A.B. to know what will happen to the North in a real war. They know only too well, that a real war will mean their end.
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P.S. 1. Did you know: The nearest East Asia came to a nuclear holocaust was when the USA's commander in the Korean War, the almost insane Douglas Macarthur, frustrated by the Chinese entry into the war, wanted to drop atomic bombs at intervals along the North Korean/China border, in order to stop Chinese troops from entering North Korea.
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A gay JWs experience - How he escaped his spiritual prison and built a better life
by fulltimestudent inmy gay xjw friend tells me this story is doing the rounds among the gay community.its josh gutteridge's story:.
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/secrets-of-a-gay-jehovahs-witness-how-i-escaped-the-religion-and-rebuilt-my-life/#gs.egioclu.
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fulltimestudent
Now let's take an incident in the NT, where if Jesus was opposed to a man having sex with another man, he had an opportunity to condemn the practice.
So, If Male to male love is so wrong, WHY did Jesus heal the young male lover of the Centurion (Refer Luke ch. 7, verses 1 to 10).
It was common in the Greek and Roman times in which Jesus lived, for men to have a male lover. It was an even more common practice in the Roman Army.
Let's look a probable example, in the above text:
7 When Jesus had finished saying all this to the people who were listening, he entered Capernaum. 2 There a centurion’s servant, whom his master valued highly, was sick and about to die. 3 The centurion heard of Jesus and sent some elders of the Jews to him, asking him to come and heal his servant. 4 When they came to Jesus, they pleaded earnestly with him, “This man deserves to have you do this, 5 because he loves our nation and has built our synagogue.” 6 So Jesus went with them.
He was not far from the house when the centurion sent friends to say to him: “Lord, don’t trouble yourself, for I do not deserve to have you come under my roof. 7 That is why I did not even consider myself worthy to come to you. But say the word, and my servant will be healed. 8 For I myself am a man under authority, with soldiers under me. I tell this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and that one, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.”
9 When Jesus heard this, he was amazed at him, and turning to the crowd following him, he said, “I tell you, I have not found such great faith even in Israel.” 10 Then the men who had been sent returned to the house and found the servant well.:The word used in the Greek language to describe the young servant is ‘pais.’ According to the following Wikipedia entry that word was often used in Greek-Roman times to describe a younger slave or servant that was in a sexual relationship with his owner.
Homo-erotic connotations (from a Wikipedia entry)
According to James Neill, the Greek term "pais" used for the servant in Matthew's account almost always had a sexual connotation.[9]
In support of this view, he remarks that the word 'pais', along with the word "erasthai" (to love) is the root of the English word "pederasty".[9] He sees in the fact that, in Luke's parallel account, the centurion's servant is described as "valued highly"[10] by the centurion an indication of a homosexual relationship between the two, and says that the Greek word "doulos" used of him in Luke's account suggests he may even have been a sex slave.[9]
Daniel A. Helminiak agrees that the word pais could have a sexual meaning.[11]
Theodore W. Jennings Jr. and Tat-Siong Benny Liew further write that Roman historical data about patron-client relationships and about same-sex relations among soldiers support the view that the 'pais' in Matthew's account is the centurion's "boy-lover", and that the centurion therefore did not want Jesus to enter his house for fear perhaps that the boy would be enamoured of Jesus instead.Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healing_the_centurion%27s_servant
BTW, you can find a prior discussion on this in the JW-D files, with a comment by Leolaia on the Jennings, Liew extract above. https://www.jehovahs-witness.com/topic/129703/greek-word-pais
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A gay JWs experience - How he escaped his spiritual prison and built a better life
by fulltimestudent inmy gay xjw friend tells me this story is doing the rounds among the gay community.its josh gutteridge's story:.
http://www.gaystarnews.com/article/secrets-of-a-gay-jehovahs-witness-how-i-escaped-the-religion-and-rebuilt-my-life/#gs.egioclu.
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fulltimestudent
Thanks for posting these links, darkspilver.
Watching the video, I started thinking how little some of these people know about their own religions.
Let's start with the fake Christians:
Here are two Bible stories that seem to indicate, that when first written (or, perhaps a later redaction) offer a different view of same sex attraction.
1. David and Jonathon.
I guess most anti-gay Christians would refuse to accept that these two men are an example of same sex attraction. They would want to argue that the story is talking about a divine type of love between the two men. But let's take a look at the whole story.
David and Jonathon’s Love story.
The Bible tells the story of David and Jonathon falling in love.
In 1 Samuel 17:42, David is described as being of beautiful appearance. He kills an enemy of the Jewish people and comes to the notice of King Saul and his son Prince Jonathon.
Saul makes David move to the palace, because Jonathon had fallen in love with David, as 1 Samuel 18 verse 1 and 3 and 4.
“Jonathon’s very soul became bound up with the soul of David, and Jonathon began to love him as his own soul.”
And then … they have a ceremony like a wedding ceremony, Jonathon takes all his clothes off and dresses David in his clothes (verse 4)
And then they exchange vows. (Verse 3).
“And Jonathon and David proceeded to conclude a covenant (an agreement), because of his loving him as his own soul.” (NWT-Large Print edition)
Later King Saul became jealous of David and tried to kill him, and Jonathon told David to run away. But David never forgot the love that he and Jonathon had for each other, and many years later when Jonathon was killed in a war, David remembered their love ( 2 Samuel 1:26):
“I am distressed over you my bother Jonathon, very pleasant you were to me. More wonderful was your love to me than the love from women.”
Most biblical translations say something similar.
Here’s another three.
New International Version
I grieve for you, Jonathan my brother; you were very dear to me. Your love for me was wonderful, more wonderful than that of women.
New Living Translation
How I weep for you, my brother Jonathan! Oh, how much I loved you! And your love for me was deep, deeper than the love of women!
English Standard Version
I am distressed for you, my brother Jonathan; very pleasant have you been to me; your love to me was extraordinary, surpassing the love of women.So when we read those words, what can we conclude?"
Yes! Some people say that the Bible was not talking about romantic love, but if that was the sort of love that was being discussed, why say that it was better than loving a woman, because any love for a woman surely includes a sexual passion.
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A Kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (stealing Christianity)
by TerryWalstrom injehovah's witnesses took mainstream christianity and replaced each part of it, one item, one term, one definition at a time, into its contrary.. holy spirit (capital letters) became a tholy spirit (lower case letters) = from a person into a mere forceful gesture.. cross became torture stake.
(eradication of the essential symbol of historical christianity).
soul went from ethereal spirit to a mere hunk of flesh and bone.. salvation by grace became earning your salvation one door-knock at a time.
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fulltimestudent
Grin!!!
OK Terry, sounds convincing, until you start to think a little deeper. I think you'll appreciate that "ALL" religious thought can be based on previous thinking and myths. In that sense, All religion can be based on "stolen ideas.'
But first:
1. Christianity (as distinct from Judaism) is rooted in the Greek language, all the terms you discussed are English terms translating the original Greek terms. To do what you do in your original post, is biased away from possible understandings of the original Greek.
But the original Greek had to translate the Hebrew concepts. In translation, too often there are no words that convey the precise meaning of the word you wish to translate.
But moving on to my main point:
2. It would be quite easy to construct an argument that the gentile converts stole the original Jewish Christianity and replaced it with a new construct based on Plato's thinking. All educated people that converted to the new Christian concept, were educated in Graeco-Roman thought. They attempted to discuss their religious ideas with words and concepts that made sense to them,
3. But we can go back further than that. What was the original Jewish (Israelite) religion like? Again, it would be easy to construct an argument that the original (native) Hebrew concepts were based first on Egyptian thought. Why? Because for some hundreds of years, Egyptian armies occupied the land of Israel. The creation story in Genesis 1 is quite similar to Egyptian creation stories. After the Egyptians, came Semitic influence, also affecting Hebrew thought as evident in the concept of a global flood. To save writing time, I'll post part of a Wikipedia entry on 'Global Flood:'
" Mythologies: The Mesopotamian flood stories concern the epics of Ziusudra, Gilgamesh, and Atrahasis. In the Sumerian King List, it relies on the flood motif to divide its history into preflood (antediluvian) and postflood periods. The preflood kings had enormous lifespans, whereas postflood lifespans were much reduced. The Sumerian flood myth found in the Deluge tablet was the epic of Ziusudra, who heard the Divine Counsel plan to destroy humanity, in response to which he constructed a vessel that delivered him from great waters.[2] In the Atrahasis version, the flood is a river flood.[3]
In the Genesis mythology of the Hebrew Bible, Yahweh (God) decides to flood the earth because of the depth of the sinful state of mankind. Righteous Noah is given instructions to build an ark. When the ark is completed, Noah, his family, and representatives of all the animals of the earth are called upon to enter the ark. When the destructive flood begins, all life outside of the ark perishes. After the waters recede, all those aboard the ark disembark and have God's promise that he will never judge the earth with a flood again. He gives the rainbow as the sign of this promise.[4]
In the 19th century, Assyriologist George Smith translated the Babylonian account of a great flood. Further discoveries produced several versions of the Mesopotamian flood myth, with the account closest to that in Genesis found in a 700 BCE Babylonian copy of the Epic of Gilgamesh.[5]:20 In this work, the hero Gilgamesh meets the immortal man Utnapishtim, and the latter describes how the god Ea instructed him to build a huge vessel in anticipation of a deity-created flood that would destroy the world. The vessel would save Utnapishtim, his family, his friends, and the animals.[6]
In Hindu mythology, texts such as the Satapatha Brahmana and the Puranas contain the story of a great flood,[7] wherein the Matsya Avatar of Vishnu warns the first man, Manu, of the impending flood, and also advises him to build a giant boat.[8][9][10]
In Plato's Timaeus, Timaeus says that because the Bronze race of Humans had been making wars constantly Zeus was angered and decided to punish humanity by a flood. Prometheus the Titan knew of this and told the secret to Deucalion, advising him to build an ark in order to be saved. After 9 nights and days, the water started receding and the ark was landed at Mount Parnassus.[11]"Its easy to see how the flood story spread into other cultures as organised groups of humans developed their own myths based on the original myth.
When (eventually) the Jewish people were exposed to new religious thinking (during the Babylonian captivity) the most influential religion was Zoroastrianism. The result was the infiltration of 'dualism" into Jewish thought.
Sometimes, (it can be speculated) original Jewish writings were redacted to fit their new understandings. And, that is how we got to the point where what you call 'mainstream Christianity" could call orthodoxy. Even so, we can still find differences, between the main streams of Christian thought.
Actually, in my JW experience, most of the distinctions that the witnesses have made, already had some prior group who also differentiated themselves from the mainstream,
Footnote:
Maybe I should post some thoughts on Platonism, from key Christian thinkers after the first century.
1. Augustine:
“The utterance of Plato, the most pure and bright in all philosophy, scattering the clouds of error . . .”
“I found that whatever truth I had read [in the Platonists] was [in the writings of Paul] combined with the exaltation of thy grace.”2. Eusebius of Caesarea:
“[Plato is] the only Greek who has attained the porch of (Christian) truth.”
3. Clement of Alexandria, (not the Clement who was the first Pope of late first century):
“. . . before the advent of the Lord, philosophy was necessary to the Greeks for righteousness. And now it becomes conducive to piety; being a kind of preparatory training to those who attain to faith . . . . For God is the cause of all good things, but of some primarily, as of the Old and New Testaments; and of others by consequence, as philosophy. Perchance, too, philosophy was given to the Greeks directly and primarily . . . . For [philosophy] was a schoolmaster to bring ‘the Hellenic mind . . . to Christ.’ Philosophy, therefore, was a preparation, paving the way for him who is perfected in Christ.”
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Sorry for being so serious in what was likely a 'tongue in cheek' post
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Would You EVER Go Back To Being A Jehovah's Witness?
by minimus ini could never understand why some people who know the truth about the "truth" ever go back.
once you understand all the hypocrisy and negatives, i would think it's almost impossible to go back!.
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fulltimestudent
No!
It would be like a dog turning back and eating its own vomit, to use a colourful biblical term
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Soon will be no choice but to invade North Korea.
by Witness 007 inthere is no way in hell that these brainwashed fools will cease making nukes.
their doctrines are based on "death to america"..."never surrender" they are much more messed up then iran!
war will be the final solution..
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fulltimestudent
Anony mous: but in reality, you have to look at the first part of the sentence - "I'm sure China can take care of the problem",
Yup, and yesterday China 'fixed' the problem by declaring:
"China will not allow chaos and war to break out on the Korean peninsula ..."
to a group of Asian foreign ministers.
Reference: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-northkorea-xi-idUSKCN0XP05P
There is no other answer to the problem.
Besides that (and maybe something that Trump had not even considered when he started talking nonsense), in a few days the ROK (South Korea) will elect a new President, to replace Park who was impeached for corruption, and removed from office.
The likely winner of the election is thought to be Moon Jae-in, who is expected to have a much more friendlier attitude to the DPRK than the impeached Park. Moon has criticised the recent deployment of the THAAD system by the USA, as this article in USA Today indicates:
Moon argued that the U.S. should have waited for a new president to make the final decision to install the $1 billion system, which the Pentagon apparently rushed to make operational for fear Moon might block it if elected.
"We express strong regret over the THAAD (installation) taking place in disregard of the people's will and procedures," Park Kwang-on, public relations chief of Moon's election campaign, said at a news briefing on April 26.Reference: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2017/05/05/us-relationship-risk-south-koreas-presidential-election/101330018/ -
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The number of extremely poor people in the world, reduced by more than half between 1981 and 2013, mainly in China
by fulltimestudent ina review of global poverty in the economist makes the claim:.
quote: "the world bank, which tracks poverty, estimates that 1.9bn people were extremely poor in 1981. in that year, the poor accounted for 42% of the world’s population.
in 2013, by contrast, only 767m people were poor.
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fulltimestudent
So, even though we once taught people that the world was getting worse (and worser, grin), the reality is that humans struggle on and eventually make the world better.
The YHWH/JESUS mob can piss-off - they are not required, because they've actually done nothing to make the world a better place.
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The number of extremely poor people in the world, reduced by more than half between 1981 and 2013, mainly in China
by fulltimestudent ina review of global poverty in the economist makes the claim:.
quote: "the world bank, which tracks poverty, estimates that 1.9bn people were extremely poor in 1981. in that year, the poor accounted for 42% of the world’s population.
in 2013, by contrast, only 767m people were poor.
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fulltimestudent
A review of global poverty in The Economist makes the claim:
Quote: "The World Bank, which tracks poverty, estimates that 1.9bn people were extremely poor in 1981. In that year, the poor accounted for 42% of the world’s population. In 2013, by contrast, only 767m people were poor. Because the world’s population has grown so much in the interim, the share of poor people in the population has fallen even faster, to just below 11%. The single biggest reason for this delightful trend is China. In 1981, almost unbelievably, 88% of Chinese (and 96% of rural Chinese) seem to have lived below the poverty line. In 2013 only 2% of Chinese were extremely poor."
However, The Economist predicts that it will be more difficult to make further reductions in the number of people living in extreme poverty.
Quote: "That leaves a rump of poverty in South Asia and, especially, sub-Saharan Africa. In 2013, for the first time, more than half of the paupers in the world were African. Poverty will be much harder to root out in those places. South Asian countries like Bangladesh and India have decent economic growth but feeble welfare systems. Africa doesn’t even have the former, especially considering how quickly its population is increasing. Besides, poor Africans often live on much less than $1.90 a day. It is hard to pull exceptionally poor people (sometimes called the “ultra-poor”) over the line. Even African countries that are growing fairly well, like Ethiopia and Rwanda, will have huge poor populations for many years even if incomes rise across the board."
Poverty reduction in India:
We could think that India would be able to quickly make quick progress in poverty reduction. But a closer examination makes this doubtful, the illustration below shows a scene that is all too common in India.
As this attempt at mapping Indian poverty seems to indicate:
and its in some of the areas mapped as suffering from extreme poverty that the long-running naxalite rebellion continues.
Why is it that India has this persistent problem? The answer seems to be rooted in the political and social problems which the Indian ruling elite have not been interested in solving.