{"id":128764,"date":"2019-03-04T12:00:26","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T12:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=128764"},"modified":"2019-03-02T11:22:22","modified_gmt":"2019-03-02T11:22:22","slug":"lost-in-globalisation-a-chaotic-tale-of-a-process-now-being-dismantled-apparently","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2019\/03\/lost-in-globalisation-a-chaotic-tale-of-a-process-now-being-dismantled-apparently\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost in Globalisation \u2013 A Chaotic Tale of a Process Now Being Dismantled (Apparently)"},"content":{"rendered":"

28 Feb 2019<\/em> \u2014 Do not panic! This is not about telling you how bank accounts and pension funds have been used to finance the production of nuclear bombs (they call it \u2018investment\u2019).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Lost in Globalisation | Photo from Wall Street International.<\/p><\/div>\n

Nor it is about the four dozens of major and minor wars that the so-called \u201ctraditional weapons,\u201d which are being manufactured and exported by civilised, democratic countries, continue to systematically fuel.<\/p>\n

It is not about the irrational depletion of natural resources, the destruction of forests, the massive provision of arms to \u201crebel groups\u2019 to burn entire villages, rape girls and women, and recruit child soldiers in more than one African country, for the sake of \u2018cleaning\u2019 the mines area for big multinationals to continue extracting precious minerals which serve to produce more (and more expensive) smartphones.<\/p>\n

Not even it is about how today\u2019s youth will see more plastic than fish in all seas.<\/p>\n

More: this article will not focus on the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of so many mediocre apprentices of self-called \u2018politicians\u2019, who embrace dangerous fanaticisms while, in some \u2018very democratic\u2019 countries, calling their own selves \u201ccentre-right\u201d (some dare saying they are simply \u201ccentre\u201d), slipping further into \u2018dictato-cracy.\u2019<\/p>\n

Nor it is about those so many States which were once net exporters of emigrants (Italy, Spain, Greece, etc), but which now stand as die-hard enemies of immigrants\u2026 all under the pretext of the \u201ccrisis\u201d they have created and the resulting high unemployment rates, and \u201cnational security,\u201d post-truth arguments.<\/p>\n

Let alone big powers such as the United States, which have been entirely built up by migrants at the easy cost of exterminating the original, native populations. What to say about Canada? And Australia\u2026?<\/p>\n

Now those migrants who are forced to flee created armed conflicts, impoverishment, climate change (which they did not contribute to generate), are easy prey to arbitrary measures \u2013 walls, fences, and shame pacts to send them to detention centres and slavery markets in countries like Libya.<\/p>\n

So What?<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

So, what the hell is this article all about? Well, it is about a scarce handful of examples on the biggest damages the so-called globalisation has caused to human species.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s begin with the term globalisation itself, a process that was somehow formalised in the beginning of the 80\u2019s with the performance on power stage of British \u201cIron Lady\u201d Margaret Thatcher and US actor who became President, Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n

The Iron Lady-Premier and the Actor-President represented the visible face of the also so-called \u2018neo-liberalism\u2019, which in poor, simple words has led to the steady dismantlement of all aspects of painfully gained social welfare services \u2013 from public healthcare, to retirement pensions, through the suppression of workers rights, labour unions, public education and a very long etcetera.<\/p>\n

Instead, neo-liberalism rapidly paved the way to a wild wave of privatisation, the supremacy of the uncontrolled marked rules, record-high youth unemployment rates, abysmal inequalities\u2026<\/p>\n

Let alone infinite greed, including the unleashing of endless wars, for the sake of keeping happy gigantic weapons industry and the business of \u2018reconstruction\u2019 of destroyed countries, all in exchange of their generous funding for electoral campaigns.<\/p>\n

This Anglo-saxon neo-liberal hegemony soon contagioned European States, which rapidly adapted their \u2018values\u2019 to those new ones coming from Washington and London. Business as usual for Europeans, some would say.<\/p>\n

Rather than providing a longish list of documented, figure-supported examples of what such process has meant at the macro and micro-economic levels, this quick, chaotic tale modestly pretends to focus on some of its biggest impacts on human beings. Human beings that are now considered as mere numbers of \u2018voters\u2019 (mind you not any more \u2018electors\u2019).<\/p>\n

Voracity<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One point is that the term globalisation has consistently been systematically given positive connotations, while it could be rightfully interpreted as a process of gradual \u201cmonetisation\u201d and even \u201cdollaristaion\u201d of livelihoods, and soon became an aggressive \u2018massification\u2019 of imported habits, blind consumption, hysterical greed, irrational imitation, the death of what used to be considered \u2018truth\u2019 (the post-truth era), the dominance of disinformation and misinformation (the \u2018fake news\u2019).<\/p>\n

In the course of this process, the so-called \u201clow classes\u201d have been provided with easy bank credits to purchase houses, last model of cars, travel across the world\u2026 Psychologically, this led them to believe that they had become \u201cmiddle class\u201d and later on \u201chigh middle class\u201d, thus approaching the enviable status of \u201chigh class.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then came the crisis. With it, the most vulnerable groups, falsely transformed in privileged groups, lost everything\u2014the loans, the houses, the cars, travelling, etc.<\/p>\n

The result<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

One of the most dramatic consequences is the loss of identity\u2014both individual and collective identity. Simply, identity has become \u2018virtual.\u2019<\/p>\n

Such a dangerous consequence is now being rapidly aggravated by the arrival of hi-tech products\u2014robots replacing humans.<\/p>\n

Sorry for this quick, chaotic tale about some of the most perilous impacts of the globalisation process that, according to some interpretations, would be now dismantled. The fact is such massification appears to have no end.<\/p>\n

In exchange, the \u2018voters\u2019 hare now being told that they will receive, sooner or later, a basic income (also called unconditional basic income, citizen\u2019s income, basic income guarantee, universal basic income or universal demo-grant), which implies that all citizens or residents of a country will regularly receive an unconditional sum of money, in addition to any income received from elsewhere.<\/p>\n

According to its defenders, this would be financed by the profits of publicly owned enterprises. A difficult exercise given that the private sector has been taking over the roles of the states, which have been gradually dismantled.<\/p>\n

This way, the citizens will be kept alive, will complain less about the evident failure of governments to create job opportunities, while doing what they are expected to do: that\u2019s to consume all what industries produce and, by the way, continue playing their role as \u2018voters\u2019 (not electors, mind you again!).<\/p>\n

_____________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/em>Baher Kamal, a member of the <\/em>TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment<\/a>, <\/em>is an Egyptian-born, Spanish national, secular journalist, with over 45 years of professional experience \u2014 from reporter to special envoy to chief editor of national dailies and an international news agency. Baher is former Senior Advisor<\/a> to the Director General of the international news agency IPS (Inter Press Service)<\/a> and he also contributed to prestigious magazines such as <\/em>TRANSCEND Media Service<\/a>, GEO, Muy Interesante, and<\/em> Natura, Spain<\/em>. He is also publisher and editor of<\/em> Human Wrongs Watch.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 human-wrongs-watch.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

28 Feb 2019 \u2014 Do not panic! This is not about telling you how bank accounts and pension funds have been used to finance the production of nuclear bombs (they call it \u2018investment\u2019). Nor it is about the four dozens of major and minor wars that the so-called \u201ctraditional weapons,\u201d which are being manufactured and exported by civilised, democratic countries, continue to systematically fuel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":100598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-128764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}