From
http://www.newsscan.com/newsscan/newscup.html
WORTH THINKING ABOUT: GLOBAL DOWNSIDE
Poet and social commentator Robert Bly's perspective on business
globalization is a dark view indeed:
"Many columnists recently have detailed the rapid decline in citizen
participation, in fraternal orders, church sodalities, precinct caucuses,
parent-teacher associations, and so on. The heat for public welfare is
cooling.
"Some of the feeling of abandonment goes back to the economic fact
that the transnational corporations are abandoning the United States. A
vice-president of Colgate-Palmolive observed: 'The United States does not
have an automatic call on our resources. There is no mindset that puts this
country first.'
"Multinational executives work to enhance the company, not the
country. The market in which the new elites operate is now international in
scope. Their fortunes are tied to enterprises that operate across national
boundaries. Their loyalties are international rather than regional,
national or local. They have more in common with their counterparts in
Brussels or Hong Kong than with the masses of Americans not yet plugged
into the network of global communications...
"The transnational executives don't feel responsibility either, to
any country -- Mexico, for example -- currently being 'developed.' On the
contrary, if wages rise in Mexico, thousands of factories will move
elsewhere. During the last thirty years an industrial force made of more
than thirteen hundred plants has grown all along the Mexican border,
encouraged by low wages and freedom from any social obligations such as
health care or prevention of environmental pollution. Mexico will be
abandoned when cheaper labor turns up elsewhere. Free trade actually means
that the transnational corporations have won their battle to make working
people all over the globe interchangeable. It is no surprise to anyone to
say that business has effectively become our government, and now rules
American life on all levels."
See
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0679781285/newsscancom/ref=nos
im
for Bly's book "The Sibling Society" -- or look for it in your favorite
library. (We donate all revenue from our book or other recommendations to
adult literacy programs.)
