Ignacio Ramonet will teach the seminar: The world in 2023: Anatomy of a polycrisis.

The Covid-19 pandemic terrorised the planet for almost three years (2020 to 2022). With a staggering human toll of nine million dead, more than a billion sick people, when a way out of the pandemic tunnel was beginning to be seen, in February 2022, the war in Ukraine broke out… A conflict of global dimensions because of its global economic consequences, its planetary geopolitical effects, its unprecedented military dimensions… And it is not over. No one can rule out an escalation. Or that the belligerents will finally resort to nuclear weapons… In addition to these two central shocks, there are five other impetuous shocks that are no less worrying:

1) Those that bring about, in the economic sphere, the end of globalisation, without capitalism having a proposal to replace it…

2) Those that bring with them the decay and decomposition of the international system, starting with the United Nations Organisation (UNO) and the Security Council… A system created in 1945, after the Second World War, that does not work. But nothing replaces it…

3) Those which, at all latitudes of the planet, cause the accelerated effects of climate change: droughts, fires, floods, frosts, cyclones, storms…

4) Those that cause massive human migrations of a biblical dimension which, for the first time, affect all regions of the Earth…

5) Those generated in all societies by the unexpected impacts of rapid technological innovations in the field of mass communication, social networks, artificial intelligence, quantum computation and generalised surveillance…

All these crises are occurring simultaneously. They are interlinked. They intersect. One sustains the others. And, between them all, they paint a complex picture of astonishment and shock. No one can understand what is happening. No one is safe. In the behaviour of citizens, this polycrisis is producing impacts and traumas that disconcert, stupefy and depress. The Governments – in any country – find themselves disoriented. Unable to understand the new challenges and the new challenges that are happening on a global scale. And yet, most Governments are proving to be incapable and incompetent when it comes to setting perspectives and proposing solutions.

This Seminar aims to explain and clarify the current global geopolitical equation in its various aspects. And it will set out a documented reading grid of current events. In order for each citizen to clearly understand what is happening in the world.

Dr. Ignacio Ramonet

PhD in Social Sciences from l’ École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociais, Paris (France). Director of Le Monde diplomatique in Spanish. Professor of Communication Theory at the University of Paris VII. Doctor Honoris Causa from five international universities. Specialist in Geopolitics and International Strategy. Consultant to the UN. Founder of the World Social Forum and creator of its slogan “Another World is Possible”. Founder of the NGO Media Watch Global. Founder and Honorary President of Attac. Recipient of countless awards, distinctions and recognitions, including several journalism prizes (the Rodolfo Walsh, Argentina; the Antonio Asensio, Spain; the Feliz Elmuza, Cuba); the Gold Medal of the French Senate; and the recognition (Proclamation) of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States “for his extraordinary contributions as a writer, professor, journalist and critic”. He has lectured and conducted seminars at distinguished universities around the world. He is the author of some thirty books, all translated into several languages. Among them: Como nos venden la moto (with Noam Chomsky); Un Mundo sin rumbo; La tiranía de la comunicación; Propagandas silenciosas; Guerras del Siglo XXI; La crisis del siglo; La explosión del perodismo; El Imperio de la vigilancia; La era del conspiracionismo, and two worldwide best-sellers: Fidel Castro, biografía a dos voces and Hugo Chávez: Mi primera vida.