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The International Monetary Fund (IMF) warning of a possible world recession came in parallel with fears expressed at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos about the spread of protests across the world. Given that Oxford Research Group (ORG) has long argued that the widening wealth-poverty divide is both damaging to communities and a danger to peace, do the current protests, such as the "Occupy" movement, point to a larger global trend or are they isolated, short-term and probably irrelevant? To examine this, it is helpful to look at Western protests in relation to more deep-seated problems in countries, such as China and India, and to put this wider view in a broad historical perspective.

Relevant History

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