Globalization

Our lessons in terrorism need to mirror back
 onto first world societies their moral blind spots
 and their complicity in creating the evil they seek to combat.

     Perhaps Moisés Naím captures the essence of the end result of globalization when he says, “In the early 1990s, millions around the world believed that it was just a matter of time before economic liberalization, political reforms and globalization propelled their standard of living closer to that enjoyed by Americans. Ten years later, Americans are richer while people in most transition economies and emerging markets still struggle, their frustration heightened by cheap, almost universal access to images and information about how much better Americans live.” As the Greek writer Takis Michas notes, “While anti-Americanism used to be driven mostly by what America did, now it is also motivated by what America is.”

     The subject of globalization is really about organizations like the World Trade Organization (WTO), The International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank and the people behind these organizations. And it is about the many multinational corporations who do not hesitate to shift production to low-wage countries or do anything else to make a profit. In a world just recently sprung full of billionaires, hundreds of them, the world is playing on an uneven playing field that few dreamed of until recently. It is these people who are driving the wheel of globalization and several billions of people are suffering for it. Globalization driven, as it has from the top down, is imperial in nature because when "undeveloped" nations opened their markets it was for the increased enrichment of local oligarchy and for the benefit of large multi-national corporations, and this marks the principle danger of globalization.

     It is difficult to reconcile the ideal of globalization that holds great value from the global suffering that globalization is creating. It is difficult to be clear about this vast subject exactly because part of the idea does hold merit. Globalization is said to undermine narrow-minded nationalism and create fresh opportunities for many millions of people but it also threatens the world with surpluses that perhaps will drive a world deflationary trend, and cause corruption, class conflict and social chaos. On the positive side globalization has acted like a kind of solvent, dissolving things like borders, communist central economies, and it has brought technology to many corners of the world and almost everyone enjoys the globalization effect of the Internet. Some people speak animatedly with the idealism of it all just as the early communists did with their ideas meaning they pay no attention to the hard and ugly realities of what actually is happening. Communism did have a good idea, the one that spoke about the good of the many, the good of the whole but it never worked out in practice and neither does globalization for it is not run by altruistic instincts, its hard money and lust greed all the way. Globalization is an obvious and inevitable thing when you look at the need for humanity to unite and harmonize with itself but what ruins it is the people who place profit higher than the priorities of the people. This is already clear for many millions of people but will become even clearer when the world economy flips over on its side and goes down like a torpedoed battleship.

     Behind the scenes many troubling situations are occurring which were destined to happen from the very beginning. The treaty, for example, establishing the WTO, while portrayed as a vehicle for eliminating regulation, runs to more than 22,000 pages and weighs 395 pounds. As Ralph Nader put it, these texts "formalize a world economic government dominated by giant corporations, without a correlative democratic rule of law to hold this economic government accountable." National governments have ceded much of their power to a "New Institutional Trinity," the IMF, World Bank, and GATT/WTO. These agencies increasingly set the rules within which individual nations must operate, and they increasingly cooperate in pursuit of the same objectives-objectives generally indistinguishable from the Corporate Agenda. Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa states that “The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is known to bully developing countries, imposing strong doses of "deadly economic medicine" while saddling governments with spiraling external debts. Chossudovsky draws a clear relationship between politics and economics uses as a weapon when he says that, “Political terror and "economic terror" go hand in hand. The evidence amply confirms that the IMF-World Bank's lethal economic reforms imposed in more than 150 developing countries have led to the impoverishment of millions of people.”

     Many thousands of people are trying to grasp the collective steering wheel of the world and are trying to turn it in some kind of positive and humane direction. Yet other hands, politically well-connected hands, powerful hands, hold the wheel steady, steering the world in toward a wall of suffering which they care not the least for as they ride around in their corporate jets. The policies of the IMF/World Bank are designed to make money for the already rich, which is their main motive and purpose, not to actually improve the standards of the developing countries which are now beginning to drop all over the world, even in  highly developed countries. Yet by improving those standards for a few decades they opened up wider markets for corporations and the wealthy get super wealthy. Perhaps the end result of the past few decades of globalization can be measured by the fact that only about 500 million to a maximum of 1 billion people are living in relative comfort, while too many of the remaining 4.5 to 5.5 billion are needy, jobless, landless, often hungry or starving, have no documents, and have few rights or say with what is happening in the world. It has been said that the 200 richest billionaires possess more wealth among them than the joint annual income of 45% of the world population and, even if it is only half of the truth, it is an absolute abomination to humanity and mirrors the basic reason why people around the world are waking up to resist what they consider are invasions of their freedom to live fair and equitable lives. Globalization has become synonymous with the subordination of human need to unrestrained capitalist markets and as such is not a sustainable activity. Fred Goldstein summarized the absolute effects of globalization thus:

Typically these institutions force their way into oppressed countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America or the Middle East. By financial and economic means, aided and abetted by the Pentagon and the CIA where necessary, they compel governments to remove all restrictions on the predatory operations of the transnational monopolies. The result is a skyrocketing cost of living for the masses, layoffs and unemployment accompanied by anarchic investment and speculation ending up in bankruptcy. The big banks and investors then move to protect their investment by making the masses pay even further.

     "Inequality in most Latin American countries is far worse than 10 years ago," notes Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations. In Brazil the richest 10 percent of the population now gets 48 percent of the income, while the poorest 10 percent gets 0.7 percent. In Argentina, once a first-world country, I visited a slum where doctors told me that 90 percent of the children had worms.

     It has gotten to the point where even the most powerful governments look on helplessly as economic forces and financial markets strip them of options and force them to deny what is right and fair for their people. These large organizations like the IMF often force them to dismantle welfare benefits and workers' rights so that corporations can make more profit, new loans can be received to pay unplayable international debt, and capital can be attracted to increase the wealth of industrialists. The giant multinational companies and these above organizations use their strategic economic and political power and vast resources to win the day never doubting the validity of what they are doing. Their many victories will be short lived though because their unbridled greed is leading to a global financial disaster that will make the great depression that started in 1929 look like a picnic.

     When it comes to the anti-globalization demonstrations it has been said that nobody in these movements are quite sure what they're protesting and that people are very confused about the issues. Yet this will not last much longer for the issues will become clearer and clearer as the consequences of imperial globalization explode in terms of human suffering and misery. What was a good idea in concept will become another human nightmare no less dramatic than the consequences of communist planned economies. There are people like Thomas Friedman who concluded that since “there has not been any war between countries that have McDonald's since they got McDonald's therefore the process of globalization is inevitable and mostly positive.” But even McDonalds is having its problems and such types of thinking exclude so much harm, even that companies like McDonalds has caused, promoting fast food that promotes obesity and many other diseases. 

     There have been a growing tide of protests and riots around the world having to do with the IMF/World Bank, and the WTO, but the corporate media is not lending any empathy for these causes. We all want economic development but at what price? We should be very wary of such accumulation of power and wealth held in the hands of a few people and institutions that are so blatant in their disregard for responsibility and human rights. This criminal gap between the rich and the poor is being produced, maintained and widened by the big transnational corporations, banks and stock markets, that function according to the one and only principle of maximizing profits. They are assisted in this by the International Monetary Fund, prescribing free-market economics everywhere and imposing budgetary restraints in order to repay foreign debts. They are likewise assisted by the World Bank, imposing a dependent capitalist model of “development” and at no time do they contemplate that other models are more humane and sustainable.

     These alarming trends are not just being played out in the first world. California, for instance, itself has been the victim of grand manipulations of the power and energy industry, which took advantage of deregulation and repeated billions of dollars in profits over the backs of consumers throughout the state. Fred Goldstein noted that “There is no IMF or World Trade Organization in Sacramento, but there is the same basic cast of characters and the same scenario that played out in Jakarta, Seoul, Bangkok and Moscow. Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse Boston, Chase Bank, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, BankAmerica and giant multinational energy companies like Enron, Dynergy, Reliant and a host of others are carrying out a plunder that is netting them billions. They moved into California and directed the rate rises and orchestrating what is one of the biggest bailouts since the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s.”

     The financial power of imperialist bankers is astounding and they have never hesitated to plunge millions of people into poverty and desperation with their austerity measures. They are utterly ruthless but happy with the billions of dollars that they reap over the backs of hard working people. The social disintegration that will come from severe economic collapse is not a spectator sport that we can watch happen safely from the sidelines as we have as Argentina has gone down the tubes. Perhaps they are guilty of making many mistakes as many others are still making around the world but ultimately the disease that is obvious there will ultimately spread to many other places. As the first world obsesses with Iraq, Palestine and the Bin Laden network of terrorists the entire continent of South America is thought to be going the way of Africa and this will spell big trouble for other areas around the globe just because globalization has been effective creating and interdependent world of trade and finance. The deepening of social fissures caused by economic collapse can and will harm the global community. But as we are seeing now such threats of calamity are not limited to the third world. The richest centers of civilization, places like Germany, Japan, New York and California, as well as other states in America are themselves plunging into swift fiscal crisis and the effects on local populations and consumer spending will drive the whole international system down. The rich and powerful have played a losing game even though they have collectively netted a great deal of the wealth of the world. In the end we cannot separate out globalization from exploitation, the relationship and consequences of this are obvious.  

      World Psychology’s Principle Aim is the creation of moral conditions of peaceful coexistence with the establishment of a worldwide family of nations under the umbrella of a world government that is absolutely dedicated to the totality of the human race and its condition. Such a world government would have to be free of the vested interest of any group or religion operating at an octave level above such things. It would have to be comprised of human beings who have an absolute dedication to seeking out the truth and being able to listen to all differences.