3/1/09

British PM Brown: "Globalization is Not an Option"

BY Grant Lawrence

"Globalization has brought great advances, lifting millions out of poverty as they reap the benefits of economic growth and trade. But it has also brought new insecurities, as this – the first truly global financial crisis – underlines. Globalization is not an option, it is a fact, so the question is whether we manage it well or badly."
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown on his call for a"Global New Deal."

So Prime Minister Gordon Brown is calling for a global new deal because Americans and the rest of the world have no choice when it comes to globalization. Globalism, corporate and financial control of the world, is a fact. Nothing you and I and the rest of the world can do about it, according to Brown.

Maybe the world can never turn back from corporate globalization because it has been such a success.

The trickle down Reagan/Thatcher economics of globalization made the super richer even super richer. Sure it meant a drop in real family incomes here in the United States and a credit economy because consumers weren't making enough to actually buy things without borrowing. Sure globalization meant the collapse of the American housing market because people could no longer cope with the ever increasing debt and the ever decreasing income. Sure this global financial corporate control has meant exploitation of the poor (child and sweat shop labor for little pay) by the money changers and the transnational corporations. Sure globalization has meant the displacement of millions of people off their lands in developing countries. Sure there have been tens of thousands of suicides in India because the small farmers can't keep up with the loans to purchase the costly genetically modified Monsanto seeds. Sure globalization has also meant fantastic environmental degradation in developing countries.

But, as Prime Minister Brown informs us, globalization is not an option. I guess we can't turn our backs on the success of a global economic collapse caused by globalization. Humanity doesn't have an option on whether they want their governments, science, and technology to work for them or to work for the global elite that presently run globalization. The fix is in and the best we can do now, according to Brown, is tweak it a little and accept it.

In Brown's Global New Deal he says that all countries must renounce protectionism. All countries have no right to determine what is best for their citizens and what is best for their economy. They have no right to regulate their economy and to implement tariffs. Instead, international corporations and the money men are the ones to dictate what is best for the people of each country. They do this by the power of their money to buy off governments and control markets. So, as we have seen, globalization really means not what is best for the people of the world but what is best for the few financial elite. But there is nothing you and I can do about it.

But you might be thinking that governments should be responsible to the people and that they should serve the people. You might think it should be the people, through their governments, to decide on what they want for their economies and for themselves. You might think that in democratic countries, the people are supposed to have the power by electing their leaders.

Well, as Mr. Brown has informed us, you are wrong.

We have no options when it comes to globalization (corporate and financial control of markets, governments, and people) or at least that is what the British Prime Minister tells us.

Perhaps Mr. Brown is right and the best we can do is accept this Global New Deal. But if that is true then I wish we would do away with these phony national elections every couple of years here in the United States. I find them irritating, stupid, and a waste of energy and time.

Source: Bodhi Thunder

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