International Forum on Globilization--"Techno-Utopianism & The Fate of The Earth"
Published on
Saturday, October 25, 2014
by Ralph Nader
Common Dreams
International Forum on Globilization--Techno-Utopianism--Teach In
http://ifg.org/techno-utopia/
This weekend, October 25 and 26, I will be joining leading critics, from the United States and abroad, of corporate-controlled technologies, who are also proponents of appropriate technologies for the people (Vandana Shiva, Anuradha Mittal, Helen Caldicott, Wes Jackson, Bill McKibben), convening at the historic Cooper Union Great Hall on “Techno-Utopianism and the Fate of the Earth”.
The speakers are highly knowledgeable. Some of their prior warnings were ignored by policy makers. Unfortunately, many of these warnings were, in retrospect, understatements. The chief organizer of this gathering is Jerry Mander who heads the International Forum on Globalization (see IFG.org for the entire list of programs).
In 1996, Mander and Edward Goldsmith brought together several prominent writers to contribute essays to the book titled The Case Against the Global Economy. These analysts made predictions about the damaging effects of relentlessly single-minded corporate power and their corporate-managed trade agreements like the WTO (World Trade Organization) under President Bill Clinton and the newly ratified NAFTA.
Eighteen years ago, these chapters seemed provocative and extreme to knee-jerk “free traders.” Reading these essays now, with knowledge of the subsequent effects of these agreements on workers, education, culture, energy, environment, media, food supply, pharmaceuticals, land use, the patenting of life forms, developmental colonialism and democratic processes, makes the book prophetic. Eighteen years ago, many wrote off this book as an exaggeration, when in fact it underestimated the damage to people of various economic statuses from both developing and developed countries caused by unbridled corporatism.
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The corporate giants intent on domination through governmental proxies, shared monopoly power and propaganda, are not what the philosopher/mathematician Alfred North Whitehead had in mind when he said that a great society is one in which “its men of business think greatly of their functions.” For the corporate bosses, no matter how evident the stunning unintended consequences of their dominion, still march to the imperatives of quarterly earnings, stock prices and executive bonuses.
With such narrowly based yardsticks to measure their success, it is no wonder that the global corporations today, such as energy, drugs, “defense,” banking, mining etc. – are power-concentrating machines driven to defeat, diminish or co-opt any forces advancing contrary civic, political or economic values.
Continued At......
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/10/25/piercing-technology-bubble