Globalization versus anti-globalization

POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, September 18, 2025 16:02
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SIGNYM

Sunday, July 3, 2016 10:26 PM

Hubby and I were talking about Brexit the other day, and he said something that I recognized- with a little shock- as being true. In essence, he said that the globalists have been working on destroying nations for over 50 years. The push for globalism isn't about multicultural acceptance or "helping" the poor, the real driver of globalism is -of course- profit: creating the ability of transnational corporations to relocate their production lines to cheap labor nations and sell into other nations without fear of tariff. Centralizing banking into a few transnational entities, enforcing neoliberal "austerity" as economic policy. Allowing international currency speculation. Slopping people back and forth across the globe, creating chaos everywhere.

How to go about destroying a nation? By moving its financial decision-making processes to private central banks and the IMF. By requiring trade decisions to be made by secret arbitration panels which rule according to trade deals negotiated in secret. Allowing foreign speculation in national assets. Buying off the top politicians of each nation. Bombing the snot out of some, if necessary, and destabilizing others which resist being incorporated. By creating "refugee" crises and immigration crises which create masses desperate for jobs at any wage.

For those of you who think that I'm a dyed-in-the-wool (fill in the blank) I'd like you to realize that my thinking has evolved over time. Years earlier, I shared the liberal POV on illegal immigrants. I wanted to "help" them. Then, at some point, and with a little reflection, I realized that the liberal POV of "helping" illegal immigrants wasn't really helpful at all. That if we REALLY wanted to help immigrants, and bring them into our nation on helpful basis, we would be doing far, far more than what we're currently doing. In my mind, I generated a whole program of things that we should be doing ... and then quickly realized that (1) We would be treating immigrants better than citizens and (2) Our economy couldn't accommodate the millions of people who would be accessing those programs, and we would sooner rather than later kill the goose that was laying that golden egg.

Here is one of my first posts on illegal immigration (2006), where I am truly mulling over the affect of illegal immigration.

http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=19153

So, what is the cause of such high immigration into the USA? Well, proximately, it was NAFTA, which drove small Mexican farmers off their land by flooding Mexico with cheap, subsidized American corn. But more generally, one the of reasons why liberals feel they should allow illegal immigration - especially from nations south of our border - is the guilt that comes from having our military and intelligence entities support every dictator, landowner, and bankster that we could get our hooks into; and crush every democratic land reform, educational, and social justice movement that tried to change that dynamic. A study of our Central and South American "interventions" is a study of "how to destroy nations". The same could be said of our interventions in the Middle East, starting in 1950.

In another thread which- I unfortunately can't find- FREMDFIRMA and BYTMITE and I were having a conversation about nationalism versus internationalism.

Now I have heard for many years that Marx predicted that capitalism would one day rule the world, destroying every distinction by language, sex, age, custom, nation, or religion; grinding everyone into the same pulp via the grist mill of production, consumption, and profit. Ultimately, he predicted, there would only be one distinction: between the owners of the means of production, and the workers. At that point socialism could arise (note, he didn't say communism) which can only truly exist in international form.

Therefore, any step towards universal international capital is a step closer towards socialism. Globalization should be

SIGNYM

Monday, July 4, 2016 9:22 AM

To give you an idea of the kinds of matter that trade arbitration courts decide, and on what grounds, here is a real example of what the TTIP/ TTP has in store:

Australia found that smoking was creating a huge toll in health care costs and illnesses. They found that if tobacco products are marketed in plain paper packaging, sales reduce significantly. So the Parliament passed a law requiring that tobacco products be sold in plain packaging.

PHILIP MORRIS SUED AUSTRALIA IN 2010, on the grounds that banning trademarks violated Australia’s 1993 Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement with Hong Kong bilateral trade agreement.

The case would not be decided in Australian courts, of course, (What IS the appropriate venue for globe-straddling Philip Morris anyway?) but by a "tribunal" who would decide the case on the basis of its conformance with the trade agreement. In this case, the tribunal (thanks to significant political pressure) decided they didn't have jurisdiction. Philip Morris is still whining about the procedural decision.

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/dec/18/australia-wins-
international-legal-battle-with-philip-morris-over-plain-packaging

Now imagine that this was filed under the TPP, which - according to leaked documents- seeks to protect "expected future profits" for transnational corporations. (The reason why the documents are leaked is because not even your Congressperson gets to look at them, pencil and paper in-hand, until negotiations are done).

Quote:
Now we know why the corporations and the Obama administration want TPP, a huge “trade” agreement being negotiated between the United States and 11 other countries, kept secret from the public until it’s too late to stop it.

The section of TPP that has leaked is the “Investment” chapter that includes Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) clauses. WikiLeaks has the text and analysis, and the Times has the story, in “Trans-Pacific Partnership Seen as Door for Foreign Suits Against U.S.“:

An ambitious 12-nation trade accord pushed by President Obama would allow foreign corporations to sue the United States government for actions that undermine their investment “expectations” and hurt their business, according to a classified document.

The Trans-Pacific Partnership — a cornerstone of Mr. Obama’s remaining economic agenda — would grant broad powers to multinational companies operating in North America, South America and Asia. Under the accord, still under negotiation but nearing completion, companies and investors would be empowered to challenge regulations, rules, government actions and court rulings — federal, state or local — before tribunals organized under the World Bank or the United Nations.

https://ourfuture.org/20150327/now-we-know-why-huge-tpp-trade-deal-is-
kept-secret-from-the-public?PageSpeed=noscript

Seriously, are we expected to sign on to this?

I wanted you to understand that this is just a theoretical discussion, but an immediate and very practical one.

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

SIGNYM

Wednesday, July 6, 2016 3:44 PM

What, no accusations of "comrade troll"?

THUGR, KRAPO, GSTRING: nothing to say?

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

OONJERAH

Thursday, July 7, 2016 4:16 AM

Rollerball: "Corporate society was an inevitable destiny."

It's been so long since I've read or even watched any thoughtful
Science-fiction, I don't recall the other literature that predicted
this outcome.

And ... Is Corporate Society very much different from Feudalism ?
when it comes to human rights: it is to laugh.

... oooOO}{OOooo ...

I've given up looking for the meaning of life. Now all I want is a cookie.

THGRRI

Thursday, July 7, 2016 5:40 AM

Globalization is necessary and desirable. Its how it presents itself in the future and how we get there that's important. Right now I think the powers to be i.e. governments have made a mess of it.

____________________________________________

SIGNYM

Thursday, July 7, 2016 3:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
Globalization is necessary and desirable.

Uh oh.

WHY?

WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"?

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

THGRRI

Thursday, July 7, 2016 8:24 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by THGRRI:
Globalization is necessary and desirable.

Uh oh.

WHY?

WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"?

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This planet needs to become one.

____________________________________________

SIGNYM

Thursday, July 7, 2016 8:36 PM

Quote:
Globalization is necessary and desirable.-THUGR

Uh oh. WHY? WHY is "globalization is necessary and desirable"? - SIGNY

This planet needs to become one.- THUGR

Ok, I'll bite: WHY does "This planet need[s] to become one"? To prevent war? To solve global problems? To improve trade and the standard of living? What goals do you think that "becoming one" would accomplish?

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I think it's time you disabused yourself of that pleasant little fairy tale about our fearless leaders being some sort of surrogate daddy or mommy, laying awake at night thinking about how to protect the kids. HA! In reality, they're thinking about who to sell them to so that can get a few more shekels in their pockets.

THGRRI

Thursday, July 7, 2016 9:08 PM

Yes

____________________________________________

SECOND

Friday, July 8, 2016 2:03 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Ok, I'll bite: WHY does "This planet need[s] to become one"? To prevent war? To solve global problems? To improve trade and the standard of living? What goals do you think that "becoming one" would accomplish?

Why We Need to Pick Up Alvin Toffler’s Torch
by Farhad Manjoo, JULY 6, 2016
www.nytimes.com/2016/07/07/technology/why-we-need-to-pick-up-alvin-tof
flers-torch.html

In “Future Shock,” Alvin Toffler used the term to describe a real psychological malady stemming from too-rapid change.

More than 40 years ago, Alvin Toffler, a writer who had fashioned himself into one of the first futurists, warned that the accelerating pace of technological change would soon make us all sick. He called the sickness “future shock,” which he described in his totemic book of the same name, published in 1970.

In Mr. Toffler’s coinage, future shock wasn’t simply a metaphor for our difficulties in dealing with new things. It was a real psychological malady, the “dizzying disorientation brought on by the premature arrival of the future.” And “unless intelligent steps are taken to combat it,” he warned, “millions of human beings will find themselves increasingly disoriented, progressively incompetent to deal rationally with their environments.”

Mr. Toffler, who collaborated on “Future Shock” and many of his other books with his wife, Heidi, died last week at 87. It is fitting that his death occurred in a period of weeks characterized by one example of madness after another— a geopolitical paroxysm marked by ISIS bombings, “Brexit,” rumors of Mike Tyson taking the stage at a national political convention and a computer-piloted Tesla crashing into an old-fashioned tractor-trailer. It would be facile to attribute any one of these events to future shock.

Yet in rereading Mr. Toffler’s book, as I did last week, it seems clear that his diagnosis has largely panned out, with local and global crises arising daily from our collective inability to deal with ever-faster change.

All around, technology is altering the world: Social media is subsuming journalism, politics and even terrorist organizations. Inequality, driven in part by techno-abetted globalization, has created economic panic across much of the Western world. National governments are in a slow-moving war for dominance with a handful of the most powerful corporations the world has ever seen — all of which happen to be tech companies.

But even though these and bigger changes are just getting started — here come artificial intelligence, gene editing, drones, better virtual reality and a battery-powered transportation system — futurism has fallen out of favor. Even as the pace of technology keeps increasing, we haven’t developed many good ways, as a society, to think about long-term change.

Look at the news: Politics has become frustratingly small-minded and shortsighted. We aren’t any better at recognizing threats and opportunities that we see emerging beyond the horizon of the next election. While roads, bridges, broadband networks and other vital pieces of infrastructure are breaking down, governments, especially ours, have become derelict at rebuilding things — “a near-total failure of our political institutions to invest for the future,” as the writer Elizabeth Drew put it recently.

In many large ways, it’s almost as if we have collectively stopped planning for the future. Instead, we all just sort of bounce along in the present, caught in the headlights of a tomorrow pushed by a few large corporations and shaped by the inescapable logic of hyper-efficiency — a future heading straight for us. It’s not just future shock; we now have future blindness.

“I don’t know of many people anymore whose day-to-day pursuit is the academic study of the future,” said Amy Webb, a futurist who founded the Future Today Institute.
Stuart Goldenberg Stuart Goldenberg

It didn’t have to come to this. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, as the American government began to spend huge sums in the Cold War, f

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