This section of the website includes diverse themes which come together under the anti-globalization category.
Globalization? What is that?
If you've recently worried about losing your job, the most likely culprit is globalization.
If you've read a news item about corporations polluting the environment, a possible motivation is globalization pressure.
Anti-globalization activists once found it necessary to teach globalization issues using a wide range of theories and anecdotes from scattered third world nations about the effects. That is no longer necessary. The failures of globalization have been so spectacular that even some reporters in the corporate media have learned the lessons.
Bolivia is but the latest example.
Here is an analysis of globalization. Before it veers into discussion of the special case of modern Europe, Neoliberalism -- UTOPIA OF ENDLESS EXPLOITATION makes the point that even our family relationships are undermined by the globalization process.
We learned a lot about the business world from Enron, Global Crossing, WorldCom, etc. Unfortunately we as a society failed to become adequately outraged, failed to act on the information available, became distracted by dramatic subsequent events.
Yet in the long term a more significant event may have occurred in Seattle in 1999. The opposition to globalization represented by the notorious World Trade Organization coalesced into a movement witnessed by the entire world.
A number of new elements were set into motion. Indymedia was born. The convergence of labor interests, environmental concerns, and social activism marked a new impetus for world change using the Internet as an organizing and communications tool.
An under-appreciated factor was the participation of activists and delegates from third world countries. Long abused by entities such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank, delegates from these countries determined that it was an appropriate time to demand change.
The response was worthy of a police state. Massive police retaliation against dissent was employed in Seattle and other major cities. Use of pain compliance, clubbings, tear gas, pepper spray were caught on video. Completely ignored by the corporate media, this side of the story is nonetheless well documented through alternative media sources.
Within two years after Seattle there was a new and diverse, decentralized movement that made opposition to the war in Iraq such a potent global force. Major newspapers opined that there were suddenly two superpowers-- the United States, and world opinion.
We have seen that world opinion won't by itself stop a war conducted by a determined capitalist state. But it can raise the cost and shift the terms of debate.
Let the organizing continue. We haven't seen the end yet.
Do you have the right to dissent from the views expressed on this website?
Globalization
