The globalization hysteria started with a few billionaires, who decided in the early '70s that people had too much freedom. Democracy had to be crushed. In North America, living standards have increased 47% between 1945 and '75. This has cut into their insatiable profit demands and they wanted to put an end to it. The Bilderberger Conferences,planning world control, between the world's richest people, representing the largest corporations, have been going on every year since 1954. In 1973 David Rockefeller funded Zbigniew Brzesinski to plan and organize the Trialteral Commission, involving the biggest names in industry and banking in North America, Western Europe and Japan, to take over and control the world's economic development. This has been followed by a number of similar organizations, like the World's Economic Forum et al, and the setting up over 100 of so called "conservative economic think tanks" across North America alone, including the Fraser Institute, basically advertising agencies for enslavement by a global market economy. They also embarked on the acquisition control of all levels of media to support and sell the idea of the inevitablity of globalization. We now have the full effect of this in our daily lives, spewing distorted propaganda messages at us from every angle, every minute.

Their first step was to discredit all levels of government and taxation, the glorification of corporate profits, and the elimination of public control and the forced privatization of all public services. This is continuing under the covers right now, all over the world, with the resulting misery, destruction and mass murder.

To give philosophical credibility to their plans, this conspiracy also started the buying up of university departments to serve corporate agendas. Virtually all economics departments are now under the control of corporately funded faculties amd professors, teaching almost exclusively the Friedmanite neoclassical market theory, based on the fraudulent sytems of the GDP, Growth and Productivity figures. The world is now covered with the brainwashed graduates of this criminal scheme. Only last year I saw a petition signed by 1500 science professors, complaining against the corporate influence and control of fund starved science departments, where only profit oriented research is now permitted.

Many of us have fought against this, the biggest crime wave in human history, for many years, for 20 years in my case. Now, we can see the gradual awakening of peoples that something is very badly wrong, shown in the recent rejection of the EU Constitution by French and Dutch voters. The best thing that has happened in recent history, giving hope for the future. So, not everything is lost yet and I hope sincerely, for the benefit of future generations that this is only the beginning and that globalization under neoclassical market economics will soon join nazism and communism in history's garbage can. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Is he making this up? We've had a global economy for at least several centuries, thanks to the British and other Great Powers. Some would argue that a global economy emerged earlier than this, with the mercantilists. In any event, since the advent of the Global economy there have been several periods of expansion and contraction of trade -- world wars, cyclical depressions/recessions and the rise of nationalism among the colonized world have influenced the global economy's power and reach.

I think a more appropriate way to study the global economy today would be to put it into historical context & compare and contrast conditions today with other periods of cyclical growth & decline of the global economy. It would at least give us some perspective & help us understand what is happening.

Without understanding context, I think we are more vulnerable to propaganda and demagoguery.

International trade is the only issue that puts me on the right side of the political spectrum. I suspect that several decades from now, we will see greater equalization of wealth between the first and third world. While I am sure that there will remain exceptions to this, I have little doubt that a number of countries that are presently considered members of the third world will eventually enjoy a level of wealth much closer to our own. Furthermore, I suspect that trade will be the vehicle for this shift.

Today, I earn in a day or two what a Chinese or Mexican worker earns in a month. If the guy in China has a chance to double his income by taking a textile job at the new factory, he takes it. The Mexican woman sees a job making radiators at the GM plant for $2.25 per hour as a chance for a better life. Some guy in Vancouver spots a golf shirt at Zellers on sale for $8.97. His sister leases a new Chevy Aveo for $199 per month. Are Zellers and GM evil for putting these people together?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that corporate objectives were altruistic at any point in the process; they remain self-interested agents in the big game. But telling the Chinese guy that he can't make that shirt, or telling the Mexican that she can't make the car is unlikely to make their world any better.

Does globalization mean job losses in many economic sectors of the first world? Of course. Is that a sound moral basis for restricting trade? I don't think so.

There are all sorts of aspects of globalization that continue to make me puke, and we need to struggle to ensure that narrow corporate interests are not permitted to trump the democratic interests of any group. (Are you reading this, Sir John?) Moreover, the environmental implications of globalization matter more than any arguments about wealth.

Occasionally, ideas on the right have some merit. LOL. Trade is one area where this may be the case.

PS: Sir John, do you ever engage in the debate? You never posted back on the provincial exam discussion. Are you in favour of having the new exams marked centrally, despite the obvious increase in cost?

Having only read this excerpt it would appear that this is another one of John's books (some that I have read) that offers a smorgasbord of thoughts and questions, but in the end one finishes unsatisfied and with as many questions as one went in with.

Even though I am sure John will make the Globalization issue writ large, it is only one of many important issues facing our economies today.

To read about such issues I would recommend: "Icarus Fallen: The Search for Meaning in a Uncertain World" (Crosscurrents) by Chantal Delsol to capture the associated cultural zeitgeist.

And books such as "Powerdown: Options and Actions for a Post-Carbon World" by Richard Heinberg or "The Long Emergency" by James Howard Kunstler for concrete explanations of the problems and possible outcomes.

Fiat Lux cuts to it the best here, in my view. (Hopefully I will have more time to get back to this article later.)

For as Fiat Lux alludes to here, Globalization did NOT emerge from nowhere, but from out of the same global corporate boardrooms that brought us Ronals Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and the neo-liberal, become Neoconazi School of capitalist economic theory, which in turn provided the ideological text for the Bill Bennett Jr. restraint programme, and the attempted Solidarity response of the later 70s to early 80s. It was their "corporatist" reaction to the "levelling" influences of previous liberal John Kenneth Galbraithian capitalist economic theory, which had held sway in the post ww22 prosperity capitalism period.

It's spawn? Look about you at the de-unionization, the obvious poverty of the streets, and that more hidden in the hidey holes of other poor people's lives, the attempt at escape from reality that is addiction, the hospital closures and cut-backs that have driven Neocon Liberal and NDP policy, however rationalized, ever since.

And maybe you might want to check out those raw logs, water and power, going south to provided jobs and capitalist riches to The Empire Heartland, again which ALL the above have effectively served to continue and rationalize.

It is this ideological creation of Global corporate capitalism that is the great resident Evil of our time.

Nice post, Davey-boy.

I think the cure to corporations taking advantage of low labour cost and low environmental protection regimes is to create better international trade institutions that function under international labour and environmental standards. Admittedly, we are far from achieving this vision, but I think it is a less nationalist/parochial, more just and more prosperous vision than drastically reducing global trade. I think we need more global vision, global institutions and global trade, rather than less. Higher energy costs will dramatically influence what we consider worth trading (i.e. we may substitute more imports with local production), but global trade will (hopefully) still be with us in a post-fossil fuel age.

"Globalization" does not equal "global trade".

Global trade didn't start in the 70's, we're only talking about the form that falls under the "globalization" banner.

But we have moved from an economy that was increasing the spending power of the lower classes to one that marginalizes them. That globalization is doing the same in other countries such as India where Bangalore is doing very well and the rest of the poor are left to sell oranges to each other is not a good thing. We shouldn't applaud what is happening to a few million in the 3rd World when everyone else over there is finding it harder and harder to maintain any semblance of a standard of living.

Fortunately I think Saul is right, globalization's momentum is waning.

Just finished reading an article on the resurgance of The Wobblies:

http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&call_pageid=971358637177&c=Article&cid=1119649813326

I think the end of the model which currently goes under the name "globalization" is part of a similar trend towards readjustment. The current bluster towards changing the marker for Chinese currency is another. What is missing from this understanding is that the super-wealthy have no nationality, and so it is irrelevant to their plans and purposes what happens to individual countries, even formerly "blessed" ones like the US and Canada. A return to late 19th / early 20th century nationalism is inappropriate, and the current agitation towards it is reactionary, no doubt part of a wake-up call, that realization about the lack of patriotic loyalty on the part of the superwealthy. A bit simple, maybe, but why is anyone surprised?

Yes, they do bite the hands that feed them.

His Excellency may very well have a point with respect to some parts of the West. There is very little demand for French cars or German radios in either North America or Asia.

But where his Excellency's arrogance shines through his $2000.00 bespoke suit is that he seems to assume that the end of globalization will give the West the choice as to "what next". You can be pretty damn sure the new class Chinese and the barons of Bangalore are not about to trade in their achievements to make a better world for North American handicrafts and artisanal foods.

The choices will be global choices and the industrialists of Shanghi and San Paulo are going to be at the table and they are not going to be arguing for a return to the good old days when there was no work at all for the Third World.

Which will mean that His Excellency's flatulations will, I fear, fall on ears less deferential than he is used to in this the most European of North American states. Indeed, some of us find it nearly impossible not to laugh out loud.

Up yours Jay Currie - your're the one thats' arrogant with your stupid insults!

Yeah, the third world is really benefiting by IMF requirements that they privatize everything, including education, so that formally free schools HAVE to charge fees, resulting in fewer girls receiving an education and untold sacrifice for people to send their children to school. And, the farmers are really benefiting from HAVING to plant Monsanto crops in order for their country to receive foreign aid.

Please.

In the 3rd world, as elsewhere, when the plight of ordinary girls, mothers and grandmothers is eased, a community fares better. Forget about this 'spread of democracy and freedom' which is code for enslavement by a few multi-nationals in the name of the free market.

This wave of globalization, as they want it, is ending. It had to when critical mass was reached by people understanding that they've traded 'the new deal for a "raw deal".

Global trade didn't start in the 70's, we're only talking about the form that falls under the "globalization" banner.

Ok Frank --

Could you help me out here? What is the difference between widespread global trade/economic development and globalization? Your post suggested that I misunderstand the words, but didn't spell out where I went wrong.

I could use a few examples to back up Mr. Saul's statements here.
"That very clear idea of Globalization is now slipping away." - How? When? Why?

Come on! Gregg Palast would have given us some examples!!
....guess I'll have to go to the library.

I'm not saying Saul is wrong or anything, but I would like to see some proof.

Moderate Man, I just meant that foreign trade, which as you pointed out has been with us since Ur and Ninevah, is not what I think of as "globalization".

To me its the ability of firms to have their cake and eat it too. Meaning that the bonds to the nation are gone and the firm can escape laws and taxes by going "international". It can retain its markets without having to be a citizen of the nations those markets exist within and of course no longer subject to its regulations.

But Wikipedia.org explains it better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globalization#Meanings_of_Globalization

Note that they suggest there was a period of "globalization" in the 19th century too. Not what I would call it but they are the encyclopedia.

Anyway, no offence meant although I realize its hard to disagree with someone's point without coming across as a jerk.

The best examples are the "no" votes by the French and Dutch on the EU Constitution, which is nothing more, or less, than a thinly disguised "free market economy" treaty, where the word "competition" appears a few dozen times, stripping people of their decision making rights. The people caught on, while the rest of the countries never gave their citizens a chance to vote. By the way, the EU is in big trouble, with sinking standards and people beginning to ask questions. I have this from a very reliable diplomatic source. It is good to have connections.

Then we have the political turnaround in Venezuela, the recent uprisings in Bolivia against multinational oil companies stripping them bare with the consent of their governments. 2 Presidents kicked out, repeating the Argentinian turmoil a few years back. This is only the beginning of the beginning.

Here at home, living standards have been going down in all 3 countries since NAFTA. The biggest winners were the small Mexican ruling sector, the biggest losers in all 3 countries the Mexican public, now 70% below poverty levels. Wages in the Maquiladores have not been going up, as expected, but down, growing violence against workers, jobs disappearing further South and to Asia. The same story in every country hooked to the WTO and globalized market economy.

In Asia, wages and working conditions are going down everywhere. Mass suicides in India and Korea. Taiwan has been supplying "cheap goods" to North America for 30 years, yet the average yearly earnings are still below $8000., while a ruling class strips the benefits. In China working conditions are worsening by the day, free unions are outlawed by the communists, etc. The country is a virtual slave labour camp. In Canada, to reach the earnings and living standards of the '60s the average hourly wages should be around $50.

This list could go on and on. In any case, there's no need for anybody to go to any library, just go to Google and type in any question and you'll get thousands of hits representing a variety of angles and sides. For example, try "Trilateral Commission", or "Bilderberger Conferences" for starters and read how and why they have been established, right from the mouths and pens of the organizers. E.g. For a number of years, Conrad Black was the Canadian head of the Bilderbergers. This should give a good idea of what they are about. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Jay Curry, you missed by a mile with that fear mongering.

Oh I'm sure the Chinese, the Indians and every other emerging third world county will be playing hardball.

So where's the surprise in that. They have a lot of experience dealing in hardball negotiations with westerners going back centuries so being a little astute at bargaining will likey be seen as normal once they have the chips to stay in any game.

What I'm missing from your analysis is how globilization is going to stop China, India or any other of the new superpowers from doing business as they want.

Is a declining America going to have the engine to force the brakes on in either country without resorting to their now infamous Iraq approach to economic issues?

The best I'd be willing to predict from here are interesting times ahead and that unless there is a sudden and profound enlightenment across the entire globe, greed will again enjoy the spoils.

Let's remember that globalization covers far more than the bilderbergers, and is a term that loses it's meaning through commonality. For instance, Amnesty International, and every labour union, is also a globalizing force countering the power of money, corporations and corporate nations. Earth First is, by it's very name, a global organization as much as Walmart. We have a global war on terra, as well as a global climate agreement, and both are a bit pitiful, to say the least.Perhaps it's better to recognize that this planet is shrinking fast under 7 billion monkeys, and if we retreat from the necessity of global consciousness now, abandon the globalization of the human spirit, the free internet etc, the gig's up.

Some good insightful analysis there Fiat.
I tend to agree with much of what you said,
except for..."there's no need for anybody to go to the library..." just go to a website. etc.

Anyone can make a website, which is good, and rant on and on about stuff they know nothing about. To be published in a book that a library will carry, you need to have at least some rudimentary credibility.

Anyway, good discussion. Perhaps some of that social movement energy in S. America will spread to N. America.

There's been farming for 5000 years before the first drop of oil was used. Yes, it is more convenient to use oil driven engines and there will some always be around. Even after the oil shortage gets critical, as it was during and after WW2. But most of the oil used in farming today is not for food production, but for agribiz, as opposed to farming, operations to make needless and excess profits. As a matter of fact, much of the foods produced with corporate agrib saturated with stinking chemicals, carted around the world to destroy the family farms, filling the hospitals with cancer patients. In other words, the wasteful use of oil is also the biggest cause of a large variety of illnesses.

Of course, I've been in farming on and off for only 57 years, since 1948 to be exact, and had my own organic ranch here in the Cariboo for the past 30, so what do I know ?

There's a tremendous difference in the use of oil and high tech for necessary and enhancing purposes, versus making waste because it is more profitable.

Ed Deak, Big Lake.

I love what the controversial and compassionate, physicist and activist Vandana Shiva has to say about globalization...which she says is really market totalitarianism.... recoiling as it does from diversity of culture and from the bio-diversity of nature itself towards the agro-industrial ideal of a global mono-culture.

Under globalization the work of peasants and especially of women (work that co-operates with nature's processes) in feeding local economies has now been devalued and made invisible, indeed the work of human hands, (all that is fresh, local and handmade) has been denigrated and portrayed as an obstacle to market succcess... at odds with the ultra-clean, sterile, chemically treated and genetically engineered superiority of agri-business.

By creating the illusion that our water, our natural resources, are created by markets, not by nature, global law now arrogantly creates property rights to life forms, and exploits and mutates these as their own creations, pirating and patenting the wealth of the poor..which is their indigenous knowledge...creating scarcity where previously there was none, eg. where they must now pay for seeds and medicine which previously had been communally shared among them. Both culture and local economy now left devastated.

Shiva goes on to say that when a corporation proudly proclaims that "our smart technologies prevent bees from usurping the pollen" and that when Monsanto defended its herbicide spraying of rice fields as "preventing weeds from stealing the sunshine"...that when this same giant corporate world view sees bio-diversity, peasants, and even bees "as thieves... and through trade rules and new technologies seeks the right to exterminate them, humanity has reached a dangerous threshold. The imperative to stamp out the smallest insect, the smallest plant, the smallest peasant comes from a deep fear - the fear of everything that is alive and free. And this deep insecurity and fear is unleashing violence against all people and all species"

Ghostsmachine.....I don't get your point. Are you for, or against oil based agriculture ? Schmeisser should be given the Order of Canada and a Nobel Prize for having pointed out the madness of agribiz and the total corruption of economics by governments in the pay of multinational crooks.

My point is that the family farm is the most energy, health and economically efficient method of food production. The majority of damage caused by oil based agribiz operations is caused by monoculture, because, according to our pointed headed economists and governments, it is the "cheapest", while destroying the world. I worked in agribiz for 7 years in my young days and have seen what's going on. It is far worse now, with fields and animals doped to the eyeballs for profits.

All human activities cause some forms of environmental damage and reactions. The main trust of economics and governments should be the reduction of ecological damage and the establishment of a monetary system that rewards the supply of the needs of the greatest number of sectors with the least energy/resource inputs. Emphasis on "needs".

It is quite obvious that this irresponsible use of oil to keep producing junk and moving people unnecessarily will have top stop. It is also obvious that these schemes of *thanol products are nothing more than playing stupid games with the inevitable that energy can not be created.

Our oil based economy is glorifying waste and both environmental, and human destruction, so it will come to a crushing end. Ed Deak, Big Lake,

Which sums it up just about as thoroughly as I've ever come across.

And an excellent piece of writing again, Lynn, with which I am in complete agreement. Always fresh.

By the way, our federal Liberal government just announced its plans for "deep integration" with the USA and Mexico to please multinationals, under the guise of "market economy". Of course, we the unwashed people, won't be permitted to vote on it, as such things are above our heads.
Ed Deak, Big Lake.

Well put Lynn. Unfortunately we humans are the only species who routinely kills off our competitors. This "character trait" of ours, ironically, reared its ugly head around the time of the agricultural revolution. Cheers!

Since Mr. Saul never defines "globalization", just about everything that follows is fuzzy. But then again, he was never one for clarity, when a handful of incomprehsible po-mo would suffice.

Globalization is defined in Saul's essay by the following descriptors: An economic model which pushes free markets, privatization, and transnationality of companies. It's pretty simple to find out what he means by reading his essay.

Here's an interesting take on the misinterpretation of Adam Smith:

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/24/a-restraint-of-liberty/

I agree with both ghostmachine and fiat lux, though yes the family farm is preferred over agribusiness, both require oil, and I think that without the foundation of fossil fuels (peak oil and ever increasing energy costs-see $60/barrel oil post carbon uinstitute, etc.) globalization will come to an end-at least in the physical movement of materials.

Lor fiat: How does the produce the family farm creates get to market?, how far is the farm form the city? how much food is grown in close proximity to where people live?, how is the produce harvested-pedal power? (though a ream of mine-a combine that has 10-20 "labourers pedaling in concert to move and run the machine-or perhaps harvested by hand a large numbers of 'farm hands").

Everting we have and do right now depends on oil. Of course no one wants to hear this or acknowledge it. Oil company execs have said that they know its running out but to say so would cause upheaval in the stock markets and people would panic.

Anyone want to take a bet that oil will soon reach $100/barrel?

Apologies for my typos!

Why do I get the impression that when oil hits $120 a barrel I won't be able to buy pineapples but all the cola syrup I would ever need will be easily attainable...

Is it possible to unpave Richmond and the Fraser valley and get all that land back?

Much of this discussion here presumes existing or greater population levels into the future, oil or sans oil.

My own view is that current population levels, assuming the need and desirablity of, for example, ongoing extensive wild areas as lungs and aesthetic values etc for the planet into the future, that current human populations are already greater than optimum desirability. (The problems, "the other aspect" of globalization, is its driving dynamic of encouragement for exponential "free" market and "cheap" labour supply, and production growth into perpetuity, without limits. And then connected to that, policies outside "technical" education which encourage religious based resistance to 1. women securing control of their fertility rates, and as part of that, 2. having access to the knowledge, morality consent and technologies that will help them to achieve #1.)

Trade and other issues of the global economic inter-relationship of humans are central to the
of global corporatist view of the universe, of course, but is not the totality the rest of us need or should want to be restricted to, or allow to drive our "human family" agenda. It is this global corporatist view of the universe that is the problem, and which needs to be brought under control through extensive "popular" democratization. It is the problem, not the solution, as they would have us believe.

In this "alternative" view of the universe, with its reduced population pressures take on things, over time, the family farm, or whatever cooperative forms that might take in the future, with or without "oil", works quite satisfactorily. It is the "never ending growth" view of the planet that is driving corporatism, corporatist globalization, and the corporatist view of agricultural imperatives at all levels. Again, this latter view needs to be rejected for its harm reduction value, if no other reason.

The point is not to do without any oil, but to restrict its use to a minimum and make it certain that it isn't going into the production of wasteful products and unnecessary travel either by people, i.e "our best growing industry is tourism" and Chinese imports.

Stop the unquestioned teaching of neoclassical economics in our universities. Get 90% of the airliners and commuting eliminated, rebuilt the railways and the ocean liners. Eliminate the long distance transport of farm and maunfactured products. The vast majority of the industrial products we use can be produced by small, local manufacturers. The transport of raw materials is a fraction of the energy needs of the transport of manufactured goods. The same goes for foods in season. People don't have to eat New Zealand produce in the winter, or import Australian meats into Canada and vice versa.

On the subject of Adam Smith. The neoclassical theory is built on the fraudulent, partial interpretation of Smith's "self interest" and "invisible hand" theories, both of which appear in a single short paragraph in his Wealth of Nations and say nothing about the justification unlimited profits and greed. Smith wrote under a strict gold backed monetary system, therefore virtually all his ideas are outdated and useless under our present, deregulated money creation system. Ed Deak, Big Lake.

The point of Monbiot's article, Ed, was that the neoclassical theory is based on a misinterpretation of Smith who called for market restraints when the security of a society is threatened by injustice and oppression, so that a nation's law is not hampered by corporate interference as so often happens today.

Yes, I realize this. Incidentally, Saul wrote an excellent book, based on his Massey Hall lectures, titled "Unconscious Civilization", cutting to pieces the neoclassical misinterpretation of Smith's writings, with accurate quotations. The whole neoclassical theory is based on series of such falsehoods. Ed Deak. Big Lake.

Very important and critical point you are making about population growth, the philosophy of "never ending growth" in general, Coyote. Shiva advances when you depend on the land you instinctively know how many people it will support...you work your society out that way, just as those who live in desert regions adapt their communal ways to live there...natural adaptation, an awareness of ourselves as part of, "in" nature, creates stability, diversity in communities...and sustenance...real wealth.

Centuries before the entrenchment of colonial regimes (pre-1800) India's population was stable. In England the highest population growth rates came after the enclosures of the commons, when peasants were uprooted from the land and had to depend on selling their labour.

This dispossession from the land and nature, the uncertainty it creates, when human beings become mere commodities (labour) to sell, leads in the end, as we now see with globalization, to more instability, population growth and scarcity.

To once again find our place in nature, as diverse people and communities, and to make democratic decisions that reflect this, as always, is the challenge.

redrivergirl:

You've nailed it here, rrg. I was listening to CBC (what else?) about the current "situation" in Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe. The interviewee(?) represented an NGO that worked "under the radar" in Zimbabwe (in other words quietly and without the government's notice), and, among other things, provided schooling and micro-financing to the women of the various villages (not however, in the cities, as Mr. Mugabe seems to be intent on pursuing urban renewal by driving bulldozers over the "less desireable" real estate, ie. where the poor people live)
Davey-boy:

There seems to be a certain 'disconnect' here, D-b. Equalization of wealth means the guy and his sister won't be able to afford the shirt or the car.

Rick,

“disconnect” is the word, and I don’t think it will take a few decades for the current situation to end.

At this point the only thing keeping the world economy in a relatively stable state is the American willingness to borrow massively (to keep consuming) and the Chinese, Korean and Japanese governments willingness to lend (to keep producing).

Now the Chinese are attempting to buy Unocal – promising to leave all the American oil assets in America, but not that the Asian oil assets would continue to flow to America. China is attempting to buy back Asian oil with a sliver of the credit it’s accumulated with its industrialization.

This is disconnect on a global level – if the Americans, in the name of national security, block the sale, they are telling the Chinese that “you can’t spend the credit we’ve given you.”

To all:

Very interesting thread – much of it better written than Saul’s contribution – I find it interesting that no one picked up on his idea that this is a particular point of change (which is the idea he needs to sell his book).

Friedman in the nyt today on globalization in Ireland:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/29/opinion/29friedman.html?th&emc=th

No unemployment in Ireland? I have to check that out.

Ireland has become an incredibly expensive Country in which to live. They also are losing a lot of their rural land. Terrible for a culture like that of Ireland. It always had a literate population. Freidman etal want that 'free' education to be in the service of industry.

Here's what Krugman says about Unocal.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/062705C.shtml

http://www.ireland.com/explore/about/economy.htm

" Big Mo" will be hard to slow down. With emerging Eastern hunger for growth and the Western addiction thrown in, that's a big wheel turnin.
Is it even possible to stop that "Momentum" with in a resonable period of time. Who here is ready to abandon our way of life? How do you even convince people that we have to do it now? I was called a zealot 20 years ago, so ever since it's been gentle persuasion applied relentlessly. I don't see much success in that plan. Pass the rocket launcher please.

http://www.eurofound.eu.int/emire/IRELAND/UNEMPLOYMENT-IR.html

How about those who have "dropped out of the employment market"?

http://www.careerframes.com/guides/irelandguide.htm

http://www.indexmundi.com/ireland/unemployment_rate.html

clubofrome:

Perhaps it might be asked: "Who here feels surfeited?"

redrivergirl:

Interesting that China may be in a position to cause a massive run on US dollar - to, in effect, cause a depression in the US to rival the 1930's.

Is it possible that the US, rather than "dance to China's tune" would push the button.......?

Interesting links, Rick. Some bloggers are saying that Washington is dropping hints about a "limited" nuclear strike on Iran. I dont' know if this has any credibility. It is what is raised when considering the fact that the administration doesn't have enough troops to go into Iran.

Unfortunately, I wouldn't put anything past this administration. I do think the American people would rise on mass against the administration if they did something like that.

The PNAC's 'perpetual war' doctrine would suffer, I guess, so maybe they wouldn't.

It's just wickedness, beyond reason, beyond belief.

ghostmachine:

......we'd pick straws to see which of us gets to stayon planet earth, ans which of us gets to "feed the fishes"...........

RRG: I am convinced the US will "do something" with Syria before Iran..........

Friedman is as bad as Mikey Campbell sometimes for pushing his pet theories.

He sure glossed over the EU subsidies that allowed Ireland to provide free education, national health care etc while at the same time lowering taxes.

I have an idea, how about the US gives Canada 100 billion a year for 10 years so we can lower our taxes but still have our cake.

Then Friedman can come back in 20 years and talk about how Canada is proving to the world that his market theories about globalization really do work.

...not to mention what globlization does to the culture of countries as we all become assimilated into sameness...to fit the customized molds of techno-corporate demands.

ghostmachine: Interesting link. There was a children's story that I read oooh...a number of years ago now about a little girl who bought too many dresses, so many that her house was filled to the brim and there was no room left for her to actually fit into it anymore...not recognizing that some things are finite...will prove once again the real wisdom of George Carlin in your quote above.

Now that this thread has been moved off down the list, the discussion seems to be dying.

Frank, I don't get what the problem is with the EU subsidies working so well for Ireland. Their improved economy is a good thing, no? If there are any positive side-effects of globalization, that would appear to be one of them, wouldn't it? Sharing the wealth so that a country can pull itself out of an economic quagmire seems like a very good idea to me ....

Don't think the Irish experience is a particularly good example of the success of globalization, given the fact that the EU subsidies are and were the real magic in that equation. As a matter of fact, one needs to look more closely at the IMF and World Bank regulations that impose so-called 'market discipline' on debtor nations in order to understand the problematic impact of globalization. From that point of view Argentina and several other Latin American countries are better examples of how globalization has failed to live up to its promise. The current situation in Ireland is nowhere nearly as rosy as the disciples of global markets would have us believe.

I couldn't be happier for the Irish that their country is enjoying some prosperity to push it out of that Magdalene Sisters past. I always thought that the European Union was an example of globalization ...

Fiat Lux' first comments were right on target. Easy to see for anyone who wants to open their eyes and their minds.

Crass' remark "Perhaps some of that social movement energy in S. America will spread to N. America." seems to me to be our best hope, but it doesn't look likely to happen here.

How often do we ever hear anything from South America except about drug cartels and guerillas?

Something interesting is happening in SA, but our media seem uninterested in telling us much. Perhaps the corporations that control the media don't want us getting ideas.

Te,you misunderstand me, not surprising, my writing is a stream of conciousness and about as clear.

My point is that that transfer of wealth from Germany and France into Ireland is the real story. What if Germany had instead offered the Irish free food and a refinancing of their debt and in return Ireland agreed to purchase German search and rescue equipment and give the contract for a new convention centre in Dublin to a German company?

Would Ireland be a success story now? I would say no. Ireland was given a hand up by large infusions of cash with no strings attached and the Irish spent that money wisely. Good for them, I'm happy it wasn't spent on new equipment for the police and army like many governments would have done.

But Friedman wants to overlook that and say its tax cuts. Even though those tax cuts were made possible by the EU cash. I was simply pointing out his ideology is interfering with his analysis, probably because he saw a chance to back up the position he took in his book.

To paraphrase my favourite line from the Princess Bride : I just don't think the Irish story means what Friedman thinks it means.

Globalization is based on the myth that the material dead world is better than the alive, free and unpredictable natural world.... perpetuating this grand lie and this state of falsity about what is happiness and what is success...dangling these new age trinkets before us in our endless need, it seems, for more and more consumption.

I agree with ghostmachine that it is very likely now that change will be forced upon us, though it would have been much better to have pulled this whole false frame down... creating a space for a new foundation... than to have this dead one collapse on top of us... creating much better odds as well for escaping George Carlin's dire prediction...well, dire for us, that is..."choose your straw" time as RickW suggests...

just to echo ghost's comment regarding "perpetuating a myth"

NYT reviews Three Billion New Capitalists: The Great Shift of Wealth and Power to the East by

The review is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/books/review/03BLODGET.html?pagewanted=1&8bu&emc=bu

The first chapter of the book is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/books/chapters/0703-1st-prest.html?8bu&emc=bu

The general thrust of the book supports the bleakest views of the future of the American economy that have been presented here.

Two quotes from the review:

Americans “suffer from a misguided sense of superiority, profligate spending habits, a weak education system, mammoth debts, a ballooning trade deficit and a religious devotion to free-trade theories developed before the Industrial Revolution.”

American “12th-graders rank only in the 10th percentile in math (that's 10th percentile, not 10th). Our students also rank first in their assessment of their own performance: we're not only poorly prepared, we have delusions of grandeur”

Disaster is just around the corner; you can almost see it from here.

by Clyde Prestowitz, a US trade negotiator from the Reagan era

I see what you mean, Frank. Essentially, the tax burden for Ireland's economic progress fell upon the Germans and the French. Now, as a country in the midst of a boom, Ireland is in the position of assisting other countries with no-strings economic support. This makes a great deal of sense on a global level.

I remember there was quite an uproar over the NEPAD agreement about monies sent to Africa not making it to projects with long-lasting impact like providing clean water to the Johannesburg shanty-towns.

Thank God the problematic clutch mechanisms on the ferry that ran aground were recently overhauled/serviced by union approved people, as opposed to the horrid devils that don't belong to big local unions or we would all have to endure the usual shrill hysteric rant about how the ferry would never have run aground if it had been serviced by the all knowing/ all seeing union workers.

not to mention that it will take them twice as long to fix their screw-up, what with all the 30 minute coffee breaks and 90 minute lunches.

Actually, in response to Sparkyboy, Premier Campbell was a guest on the Bill Good Show recently and he began a shrill attack upon the NDP and he suggested that the ferry misshap was a direct result of NDP policies. Yikes! I thought he gave up alcohol.

eddy
the media in BC can't be trusted to report the truth about BC Libs even as they are charged and arraigned...Campbell was supposed to be restricted from driving but I saw him twice in Victoria approx. 2-3 years ago driving himself around in a silver C230

The issue is not globalization of poverty, the issue is more:
Why have we allowed globalization of ignorance?
In NA through most of the mass media apparatus and in other countries to TV and no free education at any level.
How many times have I heard talk show hosts telling a caller "school is boring". or "I am sure you can't wait to get out of school!" The culture encourage sports, fox rock station can west drivel. School is not cool. As I travelled around the world a couple of times, I didn't see the same rethoric, but in Canada and the USA talk shows.
Recently I read a report that watching TV
for long periods creates low achievement.

Here is the article:
TV linked to lower achievement
http://www.world-science.net/othernews/050713_tvfrm.htm

July 13, 2005
Special to World Science

From toddlerhood to adulthood, watching television is associated with lower educational achievement, three new studies suggest.

The studies found that three- to five-year-olds who watched more television performed worse on reading and math tests three years later; that third graders with televisions in the bedrooms performed worse than others on standardized tests; and that children who watched more TV from ages five to 15 were less likely to finish school or go to college.

All three were published in the July issue of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, a research journal.

In one bright spot in the picture, researchers with the University of Washington, Seattle, found that TV watching between ages 3 and 5 could also have positive effects. Some programs, such as Sesame Street, have been found to have educational value for young children.

The University of Washington researchers found higher scores in working memory and reading recognition—the ability to read individual words correctly—among watchers of more TV in this age group.

But otherwise, the findings about TV watching were almost uniformly bad in the studies, conducted in the United States and New Zealand.

Although many people suspect TV may make you “dumber,” these studies, according to the authors, are among the first research to show clear-cut relationship between the tube and lower academic achievement.

Past studies, however, have shown people who watch more TV are at greater risk for obesity and aggressive behavior, according to the authors of one of the studies, with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, and Stanford University, Stanford, Calif.

Simply finding TV is associated with lower achievement doesn’t necessarily prove TV causes the poor achievement, researchers acknowledged. But the University of Washington group said that various details in their data suggested the relationship is indeed one of cause and effect.

"The inclusion of extensive controls for parental preferences, ability, and investment in their children's cognitive development suggests that these associations may in some direct or indirect way be causal," they wrote.

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