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Globalization Goes Bankrupt
The rage of the disposed is fracturing the country, dividing it into camps that are unmoored from the political mainstream. Movements are building on the ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms of democratic change. You can't blame them. But unless we on the left move quickly this rage will be captured by a virulent and racist right wing, one that seeks a disturbing proto-fascism.
Every day counts. Every deferral of protest hurts. We should, if we have the time and the ability, make our way to Pittsburgh for the meeting of the G-20 this week rather than do what the power elite is hoping we will do-stay home. Complacency comes at a horrible price.
"The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong," said Benedicto Martinez Orozco, co-president of the Mexican Frente Autentico del Trabajo (FAT), who is in Pittsburgh for the protests. "This is what this meeting is about."
The draconian security measures put in place to silence dissent in Pittsburgh are disproportionate to any actual security concern. They are a response not to a real threat, but to the fear gripping the established centers of power. The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save a criminal class on Wall Street and international speculators of the kinds who were executed in other periods of human history. They know the awful cost this plundering of state treasuries will impose on workers, who will become a permanent underclass. And they also know that once this is clear to the rest of us, rebellion will no longer be a foreign concept.
The delegates to the G-20, the gathering of the world's wealthiest nations, will consequently be protected by a National Guard combat battalion, recently returned from Iraq. The battalion will shut down the area around the city center, man checkpoints and patrol the streets in combat gear. Pittsburgh has augmented the city's police force of 1,000 with an additional 3,000 officers. Helicopters have begun to buzz gatherings in city parks, buses driven to Pittsburgh to provide food to protesters have been impounded, activists have been detained, and permits to camp in the city parks have been denied. Web sites belonging to resistance groups have been hacked and trashed, and many groups suspect that they have been infiltrated and that their phones and e-mail accounts are being monitored.
Larry Holmes, an organizer from New York City, stood outside a tent encampment on land owned by the Monumental Baptist Church in the city's Hill District. He is one of the leaders of the Bail Out the People Movement. Holmes, a longtime labor activist, on Sunday led a march on the convention center by unemployed people calling for jobs. He will coordinate more protests during the week.
"It is de facto martial law," he said, "and the real effort to subvert the work of those protesting has yet to begin. But voting only gets you so far. There are often not many choices in an election. When you build democratic movements around the war or unemployment you get a more authentic expression of democracy. It is more organic. It makes a difference. History has taught us this."
Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations. They have pledged or raised a staggering $18 trillion, looted largely from state treasuries, to prop up banks and other financial institutions that engaged in suicidal acts of speculation and ruined the world economy. They have formulated trade deals so corporations can speculate across borders with currency, food and natural resources even as, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 1.02 billion people on the planet struggle with hunger. Globalization has obliterated the ability of many poor countries to protect food staples such as corn, rice, beans and wheat with subsidies or taxes on imported staples. The abolishment of these protections has permitted the giant mechanized farms to wipe out tens of millions of small farmers-2 million in Mexico alone-bankrupting many and driving them off their land. Those who could once feed themselves can no longer find enough food, and the wealthiest governments use institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the World Trade Organization like pit bulls to establish economic supremacy. There is little that most governments seem able to do to fight back.
But the game is up. The utopian dreams of globalization have been exposed as a sham. Force is all the elite have left. We are living through one of civilization's great seismic reversals. The ideology of globalization, like all utopias that are sold as inevitable and irreversible, has become a farce. The power elite, perplexed and confused, cling to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the political and economic vacuum before us. The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs caused the crisis. It led the G-20 to sacrifice other areas of human importance-from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution-on the altar of free trade. It left the world's poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits in human history. Globalization has become an excuse to ignore the mess. It has left a mediocre elite desperately trying to save a system that cannot be saved and, more important, trying to save itself. "Speculation," then-President Jacques Chirac of France once warned, "is the AIDS of our economies." We have reached the terminal stage.
"Each of Globalization's strengths has somehow turned out to have an opposing meaning," John Ralston Saul wrote in "The Collapse of Globalism." "The lowering of national residency requirements for corporations has morphed into a tool for massive tax evasion. The idea of a global economic system mysteriously made local poverty seem unreal, even normal. The decline of the middle class-the very basis of democracy-seemed to be just one of those things that happen, unfortunate but inevitable. That the working class and the lower middle class, even parts of the middle class, could only survive with more than one job per person seemed to be expected punishment for not keeping up. The contrast between unprecedented bonuses for mere managers at the top and the four-job families below them seemed inevitable in a globalized world. For two decades an elite consensus insisted that unsustainable third-world debts could not be put aside in a sort of bad debt reserve without betraying Globalism's essential principles and moral obligations, which included an unwavering respect for the sanctity of international contracts. It took the same people about two weeks to abandon sanctity and propose bad debt banks for their own far larger debts in 2009."
The institutions that once provided alternative sources of power, including the press, government, agencies of religion, universities and labor unions, have proved morally bankrupt. They no longer provide a space for voices of moral autonomy. No one will save us now but ourselves.
"The best thing that happened to the Establishment is the election of a black president," Holmes said. "It will contain people for a given period of time, but time is running out. Suppose something else happens? Suppose another straw breaks? What happens when there is a credit card crisis or a collapse in commercial real estate? The financial system is very, very fragile. The legs are being kicked out from underneath it."
"Obama is in trouble," Holmes went on. "The economic crisis is a structural crisis. The recovery is only a recovery for Wall Street. It can't be sustained, and Obama will be blamed for it. He is doing everything Wall Street demands. But this will be a dead end. It is a prescription for disaster, not only for Obama but the Democratic Party. It is only groups like ours that provide hope. If labor unions will get off their ass and stop focusing on narrow legislation for their members, if they will go back to being social unions that embrace broad causes, we have a chance of effecting change. If this does not happen it will be a right-wing disaster."
- Posted in
93 Comments so far
Show Allto be sure, time is slip slip slipping
partly because we have taken so long to get with the program, and many can't even see the program in the first place
let's face it we have been overwhelmed by the nwo through the use of their corporate media who keep up a 24/7 barrage on our senses determined to convince us that toothpaste makes the man and a good douche does wonders for any god fearing women worth her salt
your breath stinks, underarms reek, you are depressed, your too high, too low and on and on
that people watch way too much tv is to point out the obvious
that people don't think it isn't "all that bad" to do so is another measure of the total defeat of the working stiffs. if i hear the word "my shows" one more time i'll puke
turn off the tv - go to the rally - you may find that your life course is not reflected in this week's tv guide
and that would be a good thing
its hard to pull the jack out of your head and live outside the matrix.
ain't that the truth!
Excellent article.
We need to join and coopt the teabags so as to steer their blind rage into constructive purposes.
I really do not think the leap from the present teabag position to a position which promotes the removal of both parties and the corporate system is very large.
The real problem is the hughly powerful police state.
But with luck and wisdom police states have been known to collapse with grace.
Can anyone recall examples, of these graceful departures?
Did you know around 80% of the tea drank in the USA is "tea dust" not quality tea, but the leftover waste ?
Perhaps Quality Tea would improve the situation.
Perhaps we can take one out of the police state's playbook and infiltrate the teabags and insidiously steer them to actually struggle for what is truely their own ( which is also everyones) well being.
Aside from the problems caused by the economic collapse, the USSR collapse was fairly peaceful.
Forget the teabaggers, they're a small minority. Read the polls. It's a waste of our time to focus on these people when what we should be doing is solidifying progressives around real change, not the phony stuff that comes out of the two-party, via the MSM.
Well, Hedges certainly goes straight to the heart of the matter, doesn't he?
"The power elite grasps, even if we do not, the massive fraud and theft being undertaken to save a criminal class on Wall Street and international speculators of the kinds who were executed in other periods of human history. [...] [P]erplexed and confused, [they] cling to the disastrous principles of globalization and its outdated language to mask the political and economic vacuum before us."
The question is: how do we fill this vacuum with an equitable, tolerant vision of co-operation and honest production? How do we prevent the vacuum from being filled by authoritarian charismatics tapping the populist rage? How do we find the means to make economic production local again, and self-sufficient--that is, not dependent on centralized private authorities thousands of miles away? This, I think, is the key. Some sort of anarchist, but organized and efficient, devolution of the centralized system of the necessities of life, especially food, water, heat, and so on. When I see how many of my American friends are (unlike me) capable of, for example, building a house from scratch, or planting a thriving kitchen garden (which even I can do), I realize it might not be so difficult to loosen the vice-grip that centralized capitalism has on our lives.
I do hope people go to Pittsburgh en masse this week. (Easy for me to say, since I live abroad.) But as much as we need mass displays of discontent, we also need new ideas. I hope the debates have already begun.
the only answer is to return our focus to the natural, physical processes of life as part of a varied world...we have damaged the environment so badly that recovery might be reasonably questioned, but any future at all demands we cease the industrial and chemical destruction we are waging against our own survival at top speed, even now...foraging and encouraging local animal and vegetable life, and living in minimal shelters...entertaining ourselves with our physical and mental capabilities, as opposed to external electronics...ownership of property must go...the individual becomes resonsible for the individual, the group for the group...everyone for the planet...
we cannot stop our cycle of working and destroying if we don't revise the way we view property and housing...responsible courage should not return homelessness...the very notion of measuring success by purchasing power must fall...admiration must be given to those that work within the harmonic boundaries of the living system we all are, literally, part of, and upon which we all, ultimately, utterly depend...we may never be able to get all of the mercury out of the fish, but we could at least stop putting more out there, and start cleaning up...
GLobal Start Date: September 22, 2012...global agrarian, acoustic living...let's get those gardens growing!
Wait a minute! You are talking about a fundamental shift of lifestyle, attitude,
economics, technology, socio/political structure. And I couldn't agree more. Been there. Done that. Lived off the land for ten years. No electricity. No running water. Those were the richest, happiest days of my life. Now I am working my way back to the garden, simpling-down. With your hands in the soil and sun on your back,
priorities have a way of sorting themselves out. Humility, compassion, stewardship.
You know, salt of the earth stuff. The good life. What was your harvest this season?
Outrage and dispair? Or the hope and joy that comes from planting seeds, in the ground and in the hearts and minds of others.
Sat Chit Ananda!
How did you manage that for 10 years? Why did you give it up?
Well, Hedges certainly goes straight to the heart of the matter, doesn't he?
This what I admire so much about Hedges. It is easy to read about past cataclysms and then simply close the book, turn out the light and go to sleep. Those disasters happened to someone else. This one is happening to us. The Looting Class will not stop their looting. It may very well end in total collapse, anarchy, revolution and the use of thermonuclear weapons. I'm glad Hedges is around to talk about it straight, no chaser.
The Anarchy of Nature is awesome power and beautiful to behold. Use it for success.
"how do we fill this vacuum with an equitable, tolerant vision of co-operation and honest production?"
You build your local economy. More specifically, you startup production of your own. You explain to your neighbors why they should demand your local production instead of corporate production. They will get it, they will start up local production of their own, and everyone will sustain the new status quo, the "better interests demands" in both the economic and civic spheres. Your neighbors are just waiting for you to spearhead the local movement. Get to work!
Chris Hedges is right again. Is there anything more utopian than the belief that markets will sort everything out for us? One huge problem we have is that the roots of the idea that the market is the most efficient "decider" of where and how resources are to be utilized now has deep roots. Pari passu with this nonsense is the equally corrosive idea that the government is always the problem; private enterprise (i.e. behemoth transnational corporations) is always more efficient.
One positive aspect to the impending global economic collapse, of that the wondrous economic system that American civic religion celebrates as infallible, is that even for teabaggers it is going to be difficult to blame it on the Bolsheviks.
One fallacy is that the economy operates under a free market system.
This is a cloak.
The prevailing system is corporate welfare by and for the corporations; a free market system while vicious would be an improvement over the present corporate dictatorship.
Are all the collapses impending or are they already present?
Force is all the elite have left.
--------------------------
And the process of bringing military weapons to the homeland has begun.
Welcome the LRAD!
Coming to a peaceful protest near you!
http://crooksandliars.com/susie-madrak/
predicted-military-weapons-are-being
Don't forget about this little engineering feat....
http://www.darkgovernment.com/news/microwave-gun-tested-on-fake-protesters/
"Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations."
Chris, again, gets it wrong. "Our global economy" has never been ours. It has always belonged to the capitalist class. It is this class that created it and did so because it is the natural evolution of a capitalist system. The same goes for the political system. It was created originally by the capitalist class to work for their interests. This class didn't hijack anything as they already owned it.
It is far past time that the so-called "left" starts to appreciate that this global economy, this political system isn't our (the working class's) system. We have yet to build OUR system and that is what is on today's agenda.
Understand this simple formula:
C'=(c+v)+s
... and you'll begin to appreciate what has really been going on with the system over the last 300 years and what the solution to the problem(s) are for the 99% of the people of this world who are not members of the elites - the capitalist class.
"The economic crisis is a structural crisis. The recovery is only a recovery for Wall Street. It can't be sustained..."
No truer words spoken. The sad thing is that the current system will continue to be propped up at all costs.
A good analogy would be a snake oil salesman propping up a corpse. Over time the corpse will stink, rot, then fall apart. But he just keeps saying, "Don't believe your eyes folks, there is no problem here, everything's good. Just give me some more money and this guy will be just fine."
Today Krugman notes that Obama said last week, “Why is it that we’re going to cap executive compensation for Wall Street bankers but not Silicon Valley entrepreneurs or N.F.L. football players?” So I guess it's clear to even moderate liberals like myself that Obama is not a closet liberal, merely bidding his time to eventually work progressive magic. It will take rage on the right and left to bring about necessary change. Mere logic is of little value in American politics. Important decisions will come from emotions. It is important for the left to channel those emotions, and I do mean incredibly important.
"Mere logic is of little value in American politics." Yup. Supposedly Dick Armey said "Politics is 97% fiction and 3% imagination." I think that pretty much sums up what is going in this country now, and that's going to be hard to fight.
Globalism was never anything but the Corporations and Global elites storyline to get people to accept bad trade policies, offshoring of jobs, importation of cheap labor and decliming wages.
Hedges is quite right in saying its bamkrupt. He is also correct in his last paragraph.
"The economic crisis is a structural crisis. The recovery is only a recovery for Wall Street. It can't be sustained, and Obama will be blamed for it. He is doing everything Wall Street demands. But this will be a dead end. It is a prescription for disaster, not only for Obama but the Democratic Party"
To this I'd add the Liberal community including both Progressives and Liberals.
"If labor unions will get off their ass and stop focusing on narrow legislation for their members, if they will go back to being social unions that embrace broad causes, we have a chance of effecting change. If this does not happen it will be a right-wing disaster."
If labor unions don't rid themselves of the Andy Sterns of the world and follow their original purposes, Holmes is indeed right, it would go far in helping.
But as of now....we are heading for an old fashioned --- whupping.
The thing that is politically a riot is that if Obama gets blamed for the financial mess and looses the next election, that will mean the Republicans will be in power again, and does anybody really think they will do anything different from the Democrats to reform the current system? As far as economics go the two parties talk differently but when it comes down to the walking part I don't see much different between them at all.
Think about it for a minute, if the Republicans get the White house back in 2012, there is a very good chance that they'll even get their old Fed chairmen Bernake, and Secretary of defense Gates back! And can anyone honestly believe that Rahm Emanuel wouldn't feel right at home as a Chief of staff in a Republican administration?
Where the rubber meets the road, it's getting harder and harder to believe that there is much real difference between the two parties.
hmmmm, I noticed this way way back in 2000, that's almost 10 years ago. And many of my progressive friends wondered what took me so long?
I find it interesting that Nader got close to 10% of the California votes in 2000. By 2008, it was down to half a percent! Yet, when it comes to addressing the needs of We the People, the dem head of the two-party is just as vile if not more so - probably more so. Round and round we go and where we'll end up ........ right back to where we started unless we can learn to critically think. People are dizzy by all of this. Are they not tired of being jerked around?
It's long past time to focus on the real problem: Money is driving our politicians and our national agenda. They get richer by the day, while the rest of us are thrown under the bus.
"The leaders of the G-20 are meeting to try and salvage their power and money after everything that has gone wrong." This is only a half-truth; their money is already gone. The game is all about power, and in order to maintain power, a complete collapse must be avoided at all cost. The wealth creators can always make new money if they can retain the power. The complete collapse of the global economy can only lead to anarchy. In order to prevent anarchy in their own land, nations will revert to nationalism. In nations that can easily become totalitarian states, this nationalism may come from the right. This fear is not warranted in the US. Our government does not have the power to become a totalitarian state, thanks to the Second Amendment. We could not defeat the homies in Nam, and can not defeat the homies in Iraq or Afghanistan. The battle lines are being drawn. Which side did you fight on in the anarchy wars? The state with their well-armed right militias, or the well armed left revolutionary militias and the well-armed gangbanger militias. You anti gun people will just have to sit this one out. With that scenario facing Obama which way do you think he would jump? We need a pool so we can bet on which nation will be the first to dump the G-20, and go into self-preservation mode. That will signal the end of Globalism. In the end the self-preservation mode will be a really good thing. National self-preservation will lead to global preservation, and isn’t that what it is really all about, avoiding extinction.
Speaking as a fellow leftist gun owner, I find it hard to give your apocalyptic view any degree of likelihood in the foreseeable future. The vast majority of Americans and G-20 citizens want law and order. If necessary we will give up freedoms for law and order. We may bitch and rant n rave, but violence in the streets will not be tolerated (except probably for France).
The probability of a widening existential malaise is apparent and not just within the moribund arcana of market globalism, but among us all. The way we each are intertwined within this bankruptcy or rather economic corruption, make us all culpable and worse, punishable, even though its cause can be attributed to the outrageous greed and egoism of a very few. Eventually however, what will determine humanity's and the planet's future won't involve these unabashed choices we once had, but shall proceed in line with the limitations presented by an environment, that is itself declining in health and vitality. There is no doubt, that we are at a multivalent turning point; a nexus of uncertainty, that on many levels, threatens everything, including the sustainability of life itself on the planet. What transpires at the G20 and later at Copenhagen will therefore, go along way in alerting us, as to whether or not those very few, the globalists and corporatists, are willing to cooperate. If not, we may be forced into making them comply, but unfortunately by then it may be to late to avert the irreversible ecological disaster awaiting us.
The probability of a widening existential malaise is apparent and not just within the moribund arcana of market globalism, but among us all. The way we each are intertwined within this bankruptcy or rather economic corruption, make us all culpable and worse, punishable, even though its cause can be attributed to the outrageous greed and egoism of a very few. Eventually however, what will determine humanity's and the planet's future won't involve these unabashed choices we once had, but shall proceed in line with the limitations presented by an environment, that is itself declining in health and vitality. There is no doubt, that we are at a multivalent turning point; a nexus of uncertainty, that on many levels, threatens everything, including the sustainability of life itself on the planet. What transpires at the G20 and later at Copenhagen will therefore, go along way in alerting us, as to whether or not those very few, the globalists and corporatists, are willing to cooperate. If not, we may be forced into making them comply, but unfortunately by then it may be to late to avert the irreversible ecological disaster awaiting us.
Well the draconin police actions are already starting.
One of the two main sites for organizing, resistG20.org has been taken down, and a possible raid is currently underway at the Landslide Farm - an urban farm and anarchist community in the Hill District. Updates to come...
Keep them coming, thanks.
And stay safe.
Thanks for info, since we won't be hearing two words on this in the corporate media
"The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs caused the crisis."
But surely the power elites do not subscribe to such an idea, although they may push it for propaganda purposes. The idea itself has no substance and could not have been the cause of the crisis. CH should really think these things out a little more deeply...
For the last ten or so years of my father's working life he needed pain medication to "get through" each day. He was a hot-roofer and from my earliest memories he had problems with his back which caused him to walk with a slight limp, and tilted slightly forward. Some mornings he needed help getting out of bed but he kept going to work, it took lots of coffee and pain pills for him to get started, and at the end of the day, a few beers to ease the build-up of tension so that he could sleep. Ultimately, he had a stroke, then a few years later, when he was in his early 60s, he tried to go down a flight of stairs in his wheelchair, and while in a coma from the resulting accident, an orderly at a V.A. hospital mistakenly put a feeding tube into my father's lungs and of course this caused a type of drowning. This was not as sad as it may seem though because by this point in time, my father was severly manic/depressive and so his death was something of a relief; it was his life that was sad.
In my late teens I worked alongside my father and I can not remember a time when I was not interested in labor issues. We were in a trade union and I was active in regards to labor issues for a short time in the early 1980s(street protests and the like). And during the Sandinista Revolution I went to Nicaragua and tried to completely dedicate myself to the movement but after a few months of contaminated food and water I was forced to return to the U.S.. Not long after returning from Central America, I got married and ultimately my focus shifted to my family (2 children), but this is not to suggest that I gave up the cause, but for a 25 year period or so I did have less time for political issues and my efforts shifted inward. Then too as I got older (53) I realized that my understanding of all things socio-economic was inadequate so I applied what time I did have to more studying and none of the "other".
My point is that I agree with the thrust of the article in question, and I suppose that the author's intentions are genuine, but this article is just poorly written demagoguery. It is mostly streams of unsubstantiated claims strung together in poorly constructed paragraghs. Claiming for example, that the financial system "cannot be saved" without explaining WHY, is an embarrassment to the cause, and I just just scrolled up and chose that example randomly.
So what I am trying to convey here is that there are hard-working people who have dedicated their lives to making things better but these are very complicated issues. And when those on the Left complicate things further with loose claims and uninformed arguements it provides the opposition with examples of how invalid an otherwise valid claim might be. It is not called a struggle for no reason, do the work.
Oh yes let's do that. Let's double and triple check all statements prior to publication. Let's restrict our language to only the most non-controversial claims so that we don't "complicate things".
Meanwhile, a mob of angry neanderthals chanting: "death to the socialist fascist Obama" or some other inane bullshit are the only ones getting any coverage on the MSM. The way things look now, this minority of mouth-breathers could take power over all of us. In some ways, they already have.
Chris Hedges is riling people up with real issues and with real purpose. Your discouragement is really not necessary or beneficial. The time for perfectly rational and ethical discourse is clearly over. The left is hamstrung by its own self-centered anxiety. It's time to confront a bully with as much force as can be mustered. It might not be pretty, it might not be eloquent, it might not make perfect sense, but something must happen.
Now.
account, before you will be able to compete with the teabaggers, since they "are the only ones getting any coverage on the MSM", you will need to bring your level of thinking up to theirs. Your reply to my comment is a complete distortion of my point. It is in fact an example of my point. Nothing I said had anything to do with any of your assertions: "double and triple check"? "restrict"? "non-controversial claims" "discouragement" and where did I suggest that I don't agree that "something must happen"? Your claims are simply dishonest. This is what the "Fox news types" do. And if your aspirations are to be seen as just another fool from the fringes, you are on right track!
Wow. Looks like I struck a nerve. Let me first just call attention to the fact that I didn't personally insult you, smart guy.
Chris writes one of these every week. I have no doubt that he puts in the hard work you are talking about. His messages are at times a little less than perfectly well-reasoned, but I don't see that as a bad thing. Do you read Chomsky? Can you imagine a person with limited education (like you imagine I have) reading his stuff and feeling inspired to go out and do something? Hedges, on the other hand, can actually inspire. People like him, like Michael Moore; these are the ones we need now.
I think I understood your point completely. I just happen to think it is not important, and it is discouraging to the cause.
Hedges is claiming that globalization has been a large shell-game designed to maximize human and resource exploitation and that it has failed on almost every human dimension with the current crisis (and bailouts) being the first sign that the profits at the top are now also in danger. Sure, that's a big claim but he doesn't leave you with nothing to chew on. It's a short editorial and given the length, the factual claims can be easily be verified (or disputed), substantiated (or debated) by anyone who actually wants to do it.
Here they are:
1) Our global economy, like our political system, has been hijacked by a tiny oligarchy, composed mostly of wealthy white men who serve corporations. They have pledged or raised a staggering $18 trillion, looted largely from state treasuries, to prop up banks and other financial institutions that engaged in suicidal acts of speculation and ruined the world economy.
According to this July 20 AP story, the total cost of the US taxpayers' exposure in the financial bailout could top $24 TRILLION
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32010841/ns/business-us_business
As for speculation, that's a broad term for financial or investment activity that often generates huge risks -- to many critics, it becomes a problem when those risks become systemic such as with the real estate meltdown, currency, securities etc. Look up speculation, hedge funds, systemic risk...after that you are on your own.
here's more...
2) They have formulated trade deals so corporations can speculate across borders with currency, food and natural resources even as, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, 1.02 billion people on the planet struggle with hunger.
3) Globalization has obliterated the ability of many poor countries to protect food staples such as corn, rice, beans and wheat with subsidies or taxes on imported staples.
3b) The abolishment of these protections has permitted the giant mechanized farms to wipe out tens of millions of small farmers-2 million in Mexico alone-bankrupting many and driving them off their land.
4) The absurd idea that the marketplace alone should determine economic and political constructs caused the crisis. It led the G-20 to sacrifice other areas of human importance-from working conditions, to taxation, to child labor, to hunger, to health and pollution-on the altar of free trade. It left the world's poor worse off and the United States with the largest deficits in human history. Globalization has become an excuse to ignore the mess.
5) Lengthy quote from John Ralston Saul
gimmeshelter, sorry for not replying sooner but a tiny oligarchy consisting of wealthy white men, in tiny banker suits and ties, were trying to obliterate a poor countries ability to protect imported staples with subsidies. Then giant mechanized farms, being subsidized by poor nations wiped out millions of small farmers. (Tiny bankers and small farmers are no match for giant farmers subsidized by poor nations). But then the tiny white bankers became an excuse to ignore the mess so it seems the small farmers are allright, just ignored. So I was trying to reply sooner but I thought I should wait to see how things turned out, seems everything is better now and the poor nations are considering tarriffs from now on.
Chris Hedges is correct in his basic assertion that it well past time for progressives to get off of the sidelines and start asserting ourselves on the street level. Any student of history knows that once fascists (and that is who the corporate inspired wing nuts turned by the like of the ill-named "Freedom Works" are) have won the battle of the street, the climb to power is all but assured. If they were to triumph, it would be quite pathetic, as they are nowhere the paragons of physical conditioning that their spiritual forebears (Italy's Black Shirts, Germany's Brown Shirts, Romania's Iron Guard) were.
""Movements are building on the ends of the political spectrum that have lost faith in the mechanisms of democratic change. You can't blame them.""
******************************************************
You damn right! Ever since corporations or anypersons were able to go bribe an elected official then that was the end of any kind of democratic process and as of late it has become so blatant that anyone's head would spin when told that lobbying is a criminal act and when someone elected by the people is PAID to use the government to change laws or create new ones to further that person's agendas.
And yeah, this could be a precursor to another civil war in this country IF the disorgaized 'left' 'liberal' or 'progressives' don't pull their head out of the sand and stand up to this 'oganized and planned' mounting theat from the conservative/neocons to this country.
Chris Hedges encourages us to protest, but also notes the overkill waiting to squash any dissent. Unlike Nam, anti-establishment protests now will get a 100% negative spin in the media, as well as be divided, subverted and arrested.
So, dare we do something more severe, not easily squashed? Like stop our vehicles at once in rush hour traffic and freeze the interstates, Lincoln tunnel, LAX, the US?
Chris Hedges is our finest writer imo. "Resist or become serfs." Sadly, until the middle class feels serfdom at their door, starts losing all, protest will be sparse and easy for the system to contain.
They do it in Mexico city all the time. They walk out onto major roads in large groups.
That's an excellent idea, joe, and easy to carry out. I remember once when greater NYC-area commuters wanted to protest the reduction of speed limits on the various parkways around the city, they decided all to drive just a little under the speed limit (I don't recall how much), and it snarled up traffic for miles and miles. If the jackbooted thugs deny the right to peaceful assembly, there are other means.
Hi clovis, it was Latinos in LA a year or two ago that used this tactic when I heard about it, I read Mexico City too? Cool. I think Mexico had it's last President stolen at the polls. Funny, Yankees and victimized Mexicans will have more in common by the day until Mexico has it's 1st! and the US it's 2nd revolution! (The Civil War being numero uno).
That commuter protest is an excellent example of "malicious obedience". This is often a wonderful way to get a ponderous organization to change stupid policies. We could use a lot more of that.
I was thinking about the protesting equivalent of an army that melts back into the terrain, the tactic that has been so successful in guerrilla warfare. I am wondering if a "guerilla protest" tactic might be used. By this I mean, instead of a large group gathering together in the designated spot where the police are expecting a confrontation, what if individuals sporting pizza-box sized sandwich boards were to show up all over the place in the city streets, not accosting anyone or marching in groups, just doing normal errands and being seen by the public who are going about their business.
I think people would notice an individual wearing a small sign front and back (especially if the sign was clever or striking), it would be novel and pique curiosity, they'd go back to their office and say, "guess what I saw?" Instead of being segregated from those we are trying to reach, we'd be among them. A single person stating their opinion on a placard could not be accused of disruption. And the police would all be gathered elsewhere, they couldn't possibly be everywhere that a protester might appear. One could carry the sign folded up in a briefcase, put it on, walk around, take it off, go somewhere else, walk around a few minutes, take it off, etc. Seems to me this would get seen by the maximum number of people and provoke one-on-one conversations. The organized protest might still take place to draw off the pigs' attention. The participants in this kind of protest could simply decide by themselves when and where to appear, so that infiltrators would get no advance warning. Just throwing out an idea.
I think you're describing a flash mob.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_mob
I think what this article sums up is... fear of the right wing.
How do we handle that?
More truthful brave folks need to educate them...travel in their circles.... and when you think about it, their big power right now is the fear the left has in confronting the right.. it should be done in debates, articles, talking to people you meet, and demonstrations.... we are good at being clever so we should educate the right wing about the difference of socialism for the Power elite bankers and Socialism for the out of work Rush listener... and that it is all a mix to begin with.
If you asked the average right wing man if he wants to go in debt for fixing Afghanistan or his own country, I think he will know the problem.
This boogyman fear we have of the "right" as in this article is the same control mechanism the government tries to instill in us about "national security and the War on Terrorism".
Nader might become a Republican yet.
Jim, solid comment.
Jim, solid comment.