Globalization

(First of two parts). Globalism is one of those notions much kicked around and little understood, shrouded in hysteria and knee-jerk cant. People with a host of grievances against technology, multinational corporations and capitalist democracies have made globalism a dirty word, at the same time that many social scientists and economists argue that the equitable spread of technology and a free-market economy is the planet's best hope. Either way, September 11 makes it clear that globalization - pitting fundamentalism against cosmopolitan tolerance - is one of the most important issues in our lifetimes.

In fact, as British political scientist Anthony Giddens writes in his eerily prescient book Runaway World: How Globalism is Reshaping Our Lives, the conflict now underway between the United States and some extremist fundamentalists was inevitable. Cosmopolitans welcome technology and cultural diversity, while fundamentalists find it disturbing and dangerous.

In a globalizing world -- one of its cornerstones being the Net -- technology, information, culture, money, business and imagery are routinely transmitted across the world. Boundaries mean different things now, including the inescapable fact that they are highly porous. This enrages political, social and religious fundamentalists, as we are hurriedly learning. They turn to religion, ethnic identity and nationalism to build "purer" traditions -- and a few turn to violence.

So despite the fact that there's no consensus on exactly what globalism is (my dictionary defines it as the process by which social institutions become adopted on a worldwide scale), the questions torment us: is globalism a force to ease poverty and inequality, by bringing higher standards of living and new technologies to poor and distant regions? Or merely an unprecedented vehicle for promoting the greed, conformity, environmental destruction and profit-at-all-cost ethos of multinational corporations? Perhaps it's both.

Giddens' predictions are coming true before our eyes. The conflict is here, and we seem to be unwilling and unknowing combatants. We, along with our leaders, are astonished at just how much we seem to be hated out there. We see our popular and technological culture despised in much of the world. Fundamentalist extremists have declared a holy war against it, one that may continue for years with bloody and uncertain consequences.

It's not an oversimplification to say that technology is the prime battleground. Technologies from movie cameras to TV sets to the Net are the means by which culture and wealth travel from one part of the world to the other. Fundamentalists have declared war on technology as much as on anything. And from anthrax to passenger jets as missiles, they've shown a sophisticated grasp of how technology can be used to devastating effect against its creators, who revel in making it but not thinking much about it.

In this conflict what Giddens calls "the cosmopolitan approach" is the choice of the people who are reading this column and working in the tech universe. We value free speech, religious freedom, scientific exploration, open communications, cultural choice and diversity. Such tolerance is closely conected to democracy.

Yet democracy and fundamentalism are both spreading world-wide, two seemingly irreconcilable ideologies colliding head-on. As Giddens points out, globalism creates a paradox: democratic cultures are its most enthusiastic proponents, yet globalism doesn't seem to promote democracy so much as corporate profits and practices. In fact, you could argue that globalism seems to expose the limits of democratic structures: Can governments preserve the environment, keep work secure and equitable, ensure fair wages, control capitalism, distribute new technologies equitably, respect diverse cultural values, contain greed and restrict the imagery that Americans love but that frightens and offends large segments of the world population?

In Part Two: Have multinationals hijacked globalism? (Yes.)

Comments

The Lexus and the Olive Tree

[Paradox !-)]

This thesis has also been bandied about by Thomas Friedman in The Lexus and the Olive Tree.

[Warning, liberal rant below]
I believe that the forces of integration are long-term stronger and more stable than the forces of disintegration. I believe that the reason that the fringes of cultures are radicalizing is because the centers of cultures are drawing together.

I am a giant proponent of the theory that ideas clash in a marketplace of public discourse and I believe that globalization is merely expanding that marketplace, and that the discourse that results will be beneficial. We're bound to have some bumps along the road. Heck, we're probably bound to go down some blind alleys, but in the end, increased communications and integration will help us all respect each other individually and discover what makes us all human.
[End of Liberal Rant]

Of course, I also believe that the free market is best in 90% of circumstances because it forces individuals to evolve and have goals. My biggest worry is that the concept of individual freedom will be found wanting in the global discussion.

IMHO. HAND.

anthrax--careful, John

[regexp]

It hasn't been shown to any degree of conclusiveness that the anthrax attacks were perpetrated by Islamic fundamentalists or fundamentalists of any sort. For all we know so far, it could have been some disgruntled biotech industry worker.

Re:anthrax--careful, John

[Elvis Maximus]

I actually strongly suspect the anthrax attacks are not originating with al-Qaeda.

For one thing, the letters strike me as funny:

The date at the top is in the format "9/11/01". Only Americans write dates this way (everyone else writes "11/9/01"). Someone who lived here for a while would know we do that, but wouldn't they be more inclined to write "September 11, 2001" or some variation to avoid confusion? Why would they bother to do it our way?
The letters clearly imply they are from Islamic fundamentalists, but do not begin "bismillah al-rahman al-rahim (in the name of God, the compassionate, the merciful)". Pious Muslims, fundamentalists and otherwise, begin every document, from class notes to business correspondence, this way.
How come the writer can keep his lines nice and straight on the letter but not on the envelopes?
The language seems kind of stilted, like what an American would suppose a foreign terrorist would say. "We have this anthrax. You die now." An Arabic-speaker would be likely to say, "we have the anthrax" as that is how you would say it in Arabic. "You will die now" is a construction that exists in Arabic, so it is an error an Arabic speaker is less likely to make.
"Allah is great" is kind of an awkward construct. A Muslim might write "Allahu akbar" without translation, or "Allah is greatest," which is a better translation. The point of the phrase "Allahu akbar" is that God is greater than anything else, and this is not a distinction that would be lost on a dedicated Muslim whose English is good enough to write these letters.
al-Qaeda never warned anyone about the embassies, the Cole, the WTC, or any of the failed attacks on other targets. So why do the letters announce they have anthrax in them and advise the recipients to "take penacilin now?"
Not only does the author know what a 4th grade is (i.e., that we call it 4th grade and not 4th form, 4th year, etc.), but he/she realizes that it is a usual practice for a 4th grade class to write a Senator's office. A recent immigrant from an Arab country might come to know these things, but they would not come naturally to him/her. I would think the author would pick something he/she could feel more sure of.

Also, some of the targets seem strange to me. A tabloid newspaper? That appeared to be, if not the first target, an early target, and is not exactly a symbol of America to people around the world. If I were an investigator, this is the one I would be looking at most closely. If I were a terrorist wanted to sow fear and confusion, I would send anthrax to random people's homes, or I would steal a load of Publishers' Clearinghouse sweepstakes applications and load them with the bacteria before returning them to the mails.

It's all circumstantial, of course, but the al-Qaeda angle doesn't seem right to me. I'm betting it's some American guy or guys with a B.Sc. in microbiology.

Contrast: The Economist

[RobertGraham]

The Economist recently had an entire issue devoted to globalism. Some of these articles are at http://www.economist.com. The Economist is a weekly news magazine, much like Time/Newsweek/USNews, though it appeals to more educated people.

JonKatz has an axe to grind; The Economist doesn't. JonKatz will certainly feed your paranoia that the big bad multinationals are out to get you, The Economist will provide a fairer, ballanced set of information.

Re:Actually...

[bribecka]

That, in a nutshell, is what the problem is. If people knew -why- we were hated, if they took the time to learn about the past instead of repeating it, maybe we could find a way out of this that doesn't involve a billion dollars worth of explosions.

Unfortunately, no amount of understanding of *why* on our part will ever convince the people who destroyed the WTC to stop doing it. They don't care if we understand--they want us destroyed.

Bin Laden actually doesn't care about the Palestinians or Iraq or any of that. He wants the world remade in his view--he points to the Taliban as the ultimate form of society. In an interview a few years ago, he said his ultimate goals were not to get the US out of the mideast, but to have a jihad in Egypt, a jihad in Israel, a jihad in Bosnia--basically a Jihad everywhere that will replace all governments with a fundamentalist Muslim one such as the Taliban. It's a different kind of globalization, really.

Again, no amount of understanding the root of the problem will make that go away. The only thing that these people (the terrorists) understand is having a bomb dropped on them so they can't do anything anymore. It's a sad commentary on humans, but its the truth--do you think enough understanding would have prevented Hitler from attempting world domination? I doubt it--ask Neville Chamberlain.

Timothy McVeigh was a fundamentalist...

[MosesJones]

You don't have to be a religious nut harbored by a goverment abroad to be a fundamentalist. In all this hype against Islamic terrorists there appears to have been a careful glossing over of the 2nd worst act of terrorism on US soil.

Why wasn't a war declared on the sort of organisations that McVeigh belonged to, and the sort of anti-goverment far right views that are regularly expressed on right wing talk shows ?

Right now I'd say the smart money is on the anthrax being produced in the US, not in another country. And on the US most wanted terrorists one of them was born in Indiana. If this is truly a war on terrorism then we can look forward to seeing the CIA, MI5, French Secret Service and several others all being labelled as such.

After all what would you call someone who bombed a Red Cross depot ?

You miss the point

[BeBoxer]

You miss the point that even if we 'kill all the terrorists', more of them are created every day. You say they hate us because we're powerful, wealthy, intelligent etc. If that is the case, then there are only a few future paths for the U.S. 1) Continue business as usual, and be prepared to deal with the fact that we will always be hated, and will always be the target of violence. 2) Give up our power, wealth, education, etc and turn ourselves into a third world country. 3) Try to spread our wealth and success to the rest of the world.

Most of the brainwashed American masses think that option (1) is the patriotic option, despite the fact that it puts us in the losing situation of trying to fight the whole world and will probably end up in option (2) in the long run. A true patriot would realize that the only long-term path with any semblance of national security is (3). Note that (3) is not what most corporations think about when they are going overseas. They are most certainly not interested in exporting any of the things which make America a very livable place, such as environmental protections, labor laws, etc. Rather they are looking to avoid all of the pesky government 'intrusions' that try to make them act the least bit responsible or decent. They want the 'right' to pollute as much as they want, pay the lowest possible wages, and run like hell taking all of their capitol as soon as the next country looks like it will accept more pollution and even lower wages. Or as soon as they have extracted all the natural resources. Then people like you wonder why the masses in these countries aren't grateful that we gave them our pollution and paid them slave labor wages and strip mined their country.

That's why 'globalization' is such a hot topic. Corporations talk about a level playing field, but what they are really looking for is a way out of the basic regulations that keep America from being a 3rd world country. The Blame America First Club, as you like to call it, wants globalization to mean exporting our labor and environmental laws, our democratic government, as well as capital investment. Corporations are interested in maximizing profits by avoiding labor and environmental regulations. Usually this means avoiding any true democracy as well, since most people actually like things like being paid a decent wage and having clean water to drink and vote accordingly.

When

Re:Actually...

[AugstWest]

Well, more information has surfaced recently, as more documents become declassified.

There was a good bit on it at newsday.com, but they pulled it. Here's google's cache of it.

This one's a bit extreme:

In a civilized world, Mr. Negroponte would not be a candidate for high public office; he would be on trial for crimes against humanity. As U.S. ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, he oversaw the supply mission for U.S.-trained "Contra" terrorists, based in Honduras, who waged war against the people and government of Nicaragua. Part of that campaign involved ensuring that the regime in Honduras received hundreds of millions of dollars in U.S. military and economic aid, despite its dismal human-rights record. Thus, when Battalion 316, a CIA-trained body of the Honduran army, slaughtered hundreds of alleged dissidents and kidnapped and tortured hundreds of others, Mr. Negroponte turned a blind eye. In reports to his government, he consistently claimed that the Honduran regime bore no responsibility for the wave of atrocities unleashed in that country. This week, Mr. Negroponte, an architect of terror and the illegal violation of state sovereignty, will be confirmed as the U.S. representative to a forum - the United Nations - whose Charter is based on respect for the sovereignty of all countries, whether rich or poor, and which claims to safeguard the rights of all human beings, whether powerful or powerless.

Hell, it's not even a complete sentence, but it gets the point across.

Hmmm.... that's a nice quote... but....

[kaladorn]

violence begets more violence - he who lives by the sword shall die by the sword

John, did you notice that a lot of people who don't live by the sword get killed by those with swords? I hate to suggest you might be a bit naive, because I suspect that perhaps you understand this truth but if all of us sheep were to disarm, you think the wolves would disarm too? Sorry, but I have to think not.

I am in agreement that we must understand the nature of the problem on a deeper level than most people seem interested in thinking about it. Only then can we address some of the issues that give the bin Laden's of the world a fertile ground to recruit terrorists from - the dispossessed, the downtrodden, the hopeless. I also agree that certain parts of this 'war on terrorism' could lead to a widening of the conflict... up to and including a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan.

But to suggest that we can allow 6000 murders to go unpunished or unprosecuted is equally reprehensible. I don't (frankly) care what excuse bin Laden has (or the hijackers) - 6000 murders is still 6000 people slaughtered with malice of forethought. The kind of individuals that could do this won't hesitate to do it again and they're far enough gone that attempts at "understanding" will only give them time to work more of their evil. Similarly, waiting for the UN to accomplish anything (ha ha, World Court, good joke...) is pretty utopian and also allows these villains to work their evils.

It boils down to this: If you are a human being, you have some right to life. Those who would abbrogate your right to life for whatever cause are probably evil. They need to be brought to account. Is that all that needs done? Not by half. Afghanistan and a few other places need rebuilt. They need rebuilt not to make them anti-Islamic or to make them capitalist, but rather to make them a place where the women are not oppressed and where reasonless fundamentalism doesn't reign and where terrorists are made unwelcome. That is why we must dismantle their government and their terrorist networks and seek to bag bin Laden.

Innocents will get killed. Some new bad feelings will be created. But appeasement or ignoring the problem because the solution might be costly (as we saw clearly in several historical periods) has lead to more death and destruction than a lot of forthright actions. The horror of war is a universal constant, but the horror of the Taliban and Al-Queda is greater.

And instead of focusing on the few civilian deaths (yes, they are rotten...), try to focus on this: This is probably one of the few wars in history where anyone has TRIED to distinguish between civilian and military targets. No firebombings of Hamburg/Mecca. No Nuclear bombings of Hiroshima/Kabul. There is a conscious effort NOT to hurt those already brutalized by war. Will some be hurt or killed? Probably. But not all that many and the Americans should be lauded (along with their allies) for at least making a firm attempt not to kill those who aren't involved. Ask the Taliban to stop parking military vehicles and HQ inside of civilian neighbourhoods if they value their people. And if they don't, this is further evidence they need removing. I notice Al-Queda and the hijackers don't distinguish between civilian and non-civilian targets. Bin Laden himself said all Americans (and by extension, the rest of us in the civilized capitalist democracies) are his enemies, whether we carry a gun or pay taxes.

I don't know about you... but when a man declares me his enemy without ever meeting me just based on his assumptions about me, and is willing to kill me for that, I'm more than willing to see him prevented (permanently) from doing harm to me or others like me. He is willing to assign my life and the lives of those he uses as pawns a value of zero or less... so I am forced to consider him a fundamentally broken mind and an evil the world can do without.

Thomas B. Canada

What Bin Laden said

[jdfox]

Bin Laden actually doesn't care about the Palestinians or Iraq or any of that. He wants the world remade in his view--he points to the Taliban as the ultimate form of society. In an interview a few years ago, he said his ultimate goals were not to get the US out of the mideast, but to have a jihad in Egypt, a jihad in Israel, a jihad in Bosnia--basically a Jihad everywhere that will replace all governments with a fundamentalist Muslim one such as the Taliban. It's a different kind of globalization, really.

That's not globalization. He doesn't want to remake the world in his view, and he doesn't want to take over the world. He wants Muslims to retake the Muslim world, which he sees as having been colonized by the West. He really doesn't care what happens to us in the West, so long as we leave Muslims alone.

Again, no amount of understanding the root of the problem will make that go away. The only thing that these people (the terrorists) understand is having a bomb dropped on them so they can't do anything anymore.

But you're saying this on the basis of your own understanding of the problem. If that understanding was proven incorrect, then I presume you would revise it. So crack open a book, and maybe you'll learn that your CNN black-hats-white-hats view of the world doesn't stand up to critical scrutiny.

It's a sad commentary on humans, but its the truth--do you think enough understanding would have prevented Hitler from attempting world domination? I doubt it--ask Neville Chamberlain.

You're talking about "understanding" after the fact, but you're neglecting the understanding of bad situations before they turn into wars. A better understanding of Germany after WWI would have meant a less onerous Treaty of Versailles being imposed, preventing the perfect conditions for an extremist nationalist rising like the Nazis.

Similarly, better understanding of what a pile of shit the US has made of its foreign policy in the Muslim world will prevent future Bin Ladens from rising. It's called "fixing the roof while the sun is shining". No-one is asking you to understand the rain in your living room better, only to understand that if you had fixed the roof last week when the hole was pointed out to you, it wouldn't be there now.

Of course Bin Laden would still exist, even if we had understood the problem better. But he would not have had the army of supporters, both passive and active, that he now commands. Further use of your "bombs are the only language these people understand" analysis will lead to an unending stream of them, more than you and your gov't will ever be able to find, let alone bomb.

Re:Actually...

[Zeinfeld]

And neither is Arafat. He is directly responsible for what is going on right now. This second Intifada was started by his failure to negotiate with Barak when a deal was on the table which would have brought peace and Palestinian statehood. The deal was rejected, the violence started, then Sharon was elected.

You miss out one important step. The violence started the day that Sharon forced his way into the Mosque on the temple mount.

Sharon's behaviour was a deliberate attempt to incite a violent reaction which he calculated would be to his personal political advantage.

Sharon's strategy worked, he became Prime Minister before Netanyahu managed to complete his political comeback from the corruption allegations that had caused him to loose office.

As for the settlements, I don't believe that they are being extended, nor is any land being taken to make room for them (certainly not now),

According to Haaretz the number of settlements has doubled since the Oslo accords were signed. Confiscations of land to build settlements have taken place without any pause since the Sharon government came to power.

The US has repeatedly demanded that Israel stop building settlements and withdraw from those built since Oslo. As always these demands have been ignored, the Israeli right being confident that they can get the Congress to vote them whatever subsidies Israel demands.

but it's not particularly more right to suggest the Israelis living there should be kicked out than anybody else at this point.

So if you come and take my house the fact you have taken it from me means that I have no rights whatsoever to demand its return?

The Israelis occupying the West Bank and Gaza know that they are living on stolen land, in many cases they stole the land themselves at the point of a gun. What possible objection can there be to demanding that the land be returned to the people it was stolen from? Why should the US subsidize the settlers occupation? In Bosnia the settler's type of behavior was called 'ethnic cleansing'.

The Barak peace plan was never a possibility, you only need to look at a map to see why. Israel would keep practically all the settlements and control all the borders of the Palestinian state.

Re:Actually...

[rkent]

[ warning: this posts actually attempts to reason about the conflict between Israel and Palestine - it could get long! ]

But to the peaceniks who really do think that dropping support for Israel will end the violence in the Middle East,

I'm not a "peacenik," and I don't think that leaving Israel high and dry would solve everything, but I do think that America should use its sway to seriously pressure Sharon to change some Israeli policies. Having only been alive since 1978, I won't pretend to know everything about the Israel/Palestine conflict, but it seems like one reasonable demand on Israel is that they withdraw from the occupied territories in Palestine, immediately and completely.

I don't say this because I think it'll get Osama Bin Laden out of his cave proclaiming a deep and abiding love for America, but rather because it's just The Right Thing To Do. The lands are internationally recognized as belonging to Palestine, and the preponderance of the world urges this withdrawal every single year, but America and Israel basically give them the finger in the name of "maintaining security for the Israeli state." Well, that's about as acceptable as it would be for the US to go occupy BC, Sonora, and Chihuahua because we didn't like Mexican immigration policy or something. It's just not the way you deal with issues.

That said, if we insisted on the withdrawal from gaza and the west bank, it would obviously have to be accompanied by a strong security force to defend Israel proper to avoid genuinely giving in to Islamic extremists. Israeli security MUST be maintained, that is true. But not by occupying parts of Palestine in a campaign of attrition.

I don't think this argument is ignorant or antisemitic, but some people attribute both of those modifiers to any argument except total, unwavering support for every action by the Israeli government. But this is a state that occupies other nations' internationally recognized territories, and is willing to summarily execute foreign nationals without providing evidence of guilt of any crime, let alone a trial. If we are going to use US resources to defend a country, it should be one which adheres to values that we as Americans ostensibly hold.