on Oct 3 you wrote: >To listen to the propaganda, one would think that the international >efforts to make things better caused all the misery in the world. > >Yet, nothing could be further from the truth. Misery and deprivation were >rampant long before the acronyms. They were part of the economic picture >of every third world country. > >As was political corruption, which inevitability is well fueled by the >billions of dollars we send rather than allow the competition of their >products to lower prices for Americans.
Lots of high-level generalisations and inaccuracies here Harry; don`t know where you obtain the information upon which you base your assertions, but there is abundant research evidence to demonstrate that prior to the imperialist expansionism of Western European states such as England, France, Italy, Germany, Holland, Spain and Portugal from the sixteenth century onwards in search of new sources of foodstuffs, slaves, precious metals and new colonies, the great majority of peoples of Pre-Capitalist societies throughout the so-called "New World" (the Americas, the "Dark Continent" (Africa), the "Far East" (China and Japan eg), the "Spice Islands" (modern Indonesia) and Australasia, enjoyed a wide range of lifestyles and in many cases quite sophisticated social structures and institutions based upon non-expolitative modes of ecologically sustainable social production and re-production. Sure they may not have been as "civilised" as their genocidal conquerers...sorry, "saviours" from ' Catholic/Christian ' Europe, but there is ample anthropological evidence to prove that these peoples were far less "primitive" - a derogatory epithet that sat well with "heathen/pagan" and used to justify appalling acts of barbarism, theft, exploitation and enslavement - than the vast majority of Westerners have been led to believe! >Blaming the acronyms - particularly the WTO - is an exercise in ignorance. >But, it goes down well with the equally ignorant mob. Even as the Seattle >bunch were protesting Free Trade outside the WTO meeting - inside, >representatives of third world countries were protesting because the WTO >had failed to get them Free Trade. Wrong Harry! Like the "mob" demonstrating their protest outside (at great personal risk from para-military-style police brutality), the representatives from so-called "third world" countries were inside calling for FAIR trade! >As you might expect, I am not much attracted to the acronyms anyway - >though I have hopes that the WTO can get past some of the self-seeking >corporate protectionism that inflicts the USA, Europe, and many other >countries. > >The most protectionist entities in every country are corporate businesses. >They know that Free Trade will cut into their profits. They simply love to >sell in a restricted market. > >And their allies are the equally restrictive trade unions, and the >anti-globalization advocates who unfortunately here have had an American >education and are therefore ill-equipped to think through things for >themselves. What you are suggesting here Harry is self-contradicting, although I could`nt agree with you more on the latter observation re an American education, AND the preceding one - that the most protectionist entities in every country are corporate businesses. Indeed, to suggest that 'workers' about to lose their only source of income (their jobs) and the anti-(Corporate) globalisation advocates are allies of corporate busines executives is fanciful in the extreme! It is corporate "executives" who have exported Western jobs to "cheap labor" Third World countries, in order to make even MORE profits!!!!!...at the same time throwing their own fellow Americans, Britons etc on the scrapheap of involuntary unemployment. With respect, if you got out and actually mixed with just some of the protesting "mob" ( "radical" i.e.informed and concerned-about- their-future students...(the "sensible" students are out there doing some form of work experience whilst aiming towards their MBA or ' Management By Acronym ' !); ' workers ' trying to protect the only source of income for their families - their ' jobs' and working conditions in the "race to the bottom" against grossly exploited, near-slave-labour(ers) in the Third World; citizens with concern for the natural environment; people from various religious and social justice organisations and so on, you might acquire a different understanding and perspective. >The opposite of alienation is cooperation - the coming together of people. >And the principal agent of cooperation is trade. To oppose trade is >stupid. To demonstrate, propagandize, and support legislation that >restricts trade and erects barriers between people is criminal. Again, Harry, a great many of those protesting are well-educated and informed citizens, who are neither anti-trade nor anti-globalisation: what they ARE against is so-called "Free" Trade (free that is of any social, governmental or any other form of regulation aimed at curbing the excesses of the anarchic "free market" that is Capitalism!) and ' Corporate-controlled ' globalisation, which mostly benefits the obscenely over-paid CEOs and wealthy owners or majority shareholders of the giant trans-national corporations which dominate the whole system of global "trade"!
