In 2007, the globally renowned author Nassim Nicholas Taleb coined “The Black Swan Theory” and changed the world of risk analysis forever. Taleb argued that any system that is not prepared for a surprise, difficult-to-predict or Black Swan events is a fragile system and there he called for building antifragility, resilience systems.
Examples of such Black Swan events that changed our world include how the world wide web changed how we communicate, and how the fall of Soviet Union (the USSR) changed the world’s geopolitics.
On October 7, 2023, we witnessed our lifetime Black Swan event, when a few hundred Palestinians broke through the Occupied Palestinian Territory of Gaza, which has been blockaded for the past 17 years, and carried out military operations targeting the Israeli army inside what is one of the most funded, superpower-backed military-industrial-technology complex regimes in our world - Israel.
While I strongly condemn the ongoing tragic cycle of violence and loss of life and destruction it will fall on all of us that this war is different. Generations will feel the global effects of this work on three levels, economy, social progress, and geopolitics.
This surprise war is a setback for the economic recovery we have been making around the world after Covid-19. The billions of dollars paid to finance the continuous Israeli occupation and attacks against Palestinians means that taxpayers around the world will witness increasing fees and taxes.
Moreover, that global powers financing the said violence will increase pressure on the resource rich Global South nations to extract more natural resources and trade costs, to compensate for billions to finance the cost of munitions sent to Israel to forcibly subjugate Palestinians. This previously difficult-to-predict situation will deepen economic inequality in such a way it’ll be harder for present and future generation to live in decent socio-economic conditions all over the world.
Racial supremacy ideology has been defeated since WWII. Today, we face the risk of Israeli religious and racial supremacy-based violence to a globally accepted ideology due to its embrace by the current US administration and European Union leadership. Racial supremacy is an uncontrollable beast that leads to genocide and ethnic cleansing, the most recent example being the despicable WWII Holocaust. We have learned the hard way that when bigotry and prejudice thrive in Western world the whole world suffers, as in the death of almost 100 million people in WWI and WWII.
The success of superpower leaders is measured by the extent of peace and prosperity they can bring and maintain around the world. The UN criminalised white phosphorous bombs supplied by the American defence industry to the Israeli army lead to the opposite - a never ending cycle of extreme instability and poverty.
Israel is known globally for its technological advancement, mainly in the surveillance industry. Now, because new generations are more knowledgeable of current events, unlike generations that lived during the two world wars and 1948 ethnic cleansing generations there can be no sustainability for a nation that takes bride in building the most technologically advance economy on top of the white phosphorous ridden bodies of Palestinian men, women and children.
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