Chris Hedges: The Collapse of Globalization

[marmar]

from truthdig:




The Collapse of Globalization
Posted on Mar 27, 2011



AP / Jacques Brinon
Demonstrators carry an effigy of Ronald McDonald.


By Chris Hedges


The uprisings in the Middle East, the unrest that is tearing apart nations such as the Ivory Coast, the bubbling discontent in Greece, Ireland and Britain and the labor disputes in states such as Wisconsin and Ohio presage the collapse of globalization. They presage a world where vital resources, including food and water, jobs and security, are becoming scarcer and harder to obtain. They presage growing misery for hundreds of millions of people who find themselves trapped in failed states, suffering escalating violence and crippling poverty. They presage increasingly draconian controls and force—take a look at what is being done to Pfc. Bradley Manning—used to protect the corporate elite who are orchestrating our demise.

We must embrace, and embrace rapidly, a radical new ethic of simplicity and rigorous protection of our ecosystem—especially the climate—or we will all be holding on to life by our fingertips. We must rebuild radical socialist movements that demand that the resources of the state and the nation provide for the welfare of all citizens and the heavy hand of state power be employed to prohibit the plunder by the corporate power elite. We must view the corporate capitalists who have seized control of our money, our food, our energy, our education, our press, our health care system and our governance as mortal enemies to be vanquished.

Adequate food, clean water and basic security are already beyond the reach of perhaps half the world’s population. Food prices have risen 61 percent globally since December 2008, according to the International Monetary Fund. The price of wheat has exploded, more than doubling in the last eight months to $8.56 a bushel. When half of your income is spent on food, as it is in countries such as Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia and the Ivory Coast, price increases of this magnitude bring with them malnutrition and starvation. Food prices in the United States have risen over the past three months at an annualized rate of 5 percent. There are some 40 million poor in the United States who devote 35 percent of their after-tax incomes to pay for food. As the cost of fossil fuel climbs, as climate change continues to disrupt agricultural production and as populations and unemployment swell, we will find ourselves convulsed in more global and domestic unrest. Food riots and political protests will be inevitable. But it will not necessarily mean more democracy.

The refusal by all of our liberal institutions, including the press, universities, labor and the Democratic Party, to challenge the utopian assumptions that the marketplace should determine human behavior permits corporations and investment firms to continue their assault, including speculating on commodities to drive up food prices. It permits coal, oil and natural gas corporations to stymie alternative energy and emit deadly levels of greenhouse gases. It permits agribusinesses to divert corn and soybeans to ethanol production and crush systems of local, sustainable agriculture. It permits the war industry to drain half of all state expenditures, generate trillions in deficits, and profit from conflicts in the Middle East we have no chance of winning. It permits corporations to evade the most basic controls and regulations to cement into place a global neo-feudalism. The last people who should be in charge of our food supply or our social and political life, not to mention the welfare of sick children, are corporate capitalists and Wall Street speculators. But none of this is going to change until we turn our backs on the Democratic Party, denounce the orthodoxies peddled in our universities and in the press by corporate apologists and construct our opposition to the corporate state from the ground up. It will not be easy. It will take time. And it will require us to accept the status of social and political pariahs, especially as the lunatic fringe of our political establishment steadily gains power. The corporate state has nothing to offer the left or the right but fear. It uses fear—fear of secular humanism or fear of Christian fascists—to turn the population into passive accomplices. As long as we remain afraid nothing will change. ................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_collapse_of_globalization_20110328/

[xchrom]

1. from his lips to god's ears. nt

[leveymg]

2. What I'm not seeing here are the specifics of a workable alternative, or how we get from A to B.

We all know about what the problems are. Doing the work to dig out of the grave that Wall Street and Wal*Mart have dug for us is the really hard part - just knowing which way to dig in a world where the laws of nature, themselves, have been commodified is going to be difficult . . .

[Donnachaidh]

3. I don't think the complicit media would publish a workable alternative, if there was one

That's going to have to come from the bottom, because the ones at the top benefit from globalization.

[leveymg]

6. The compicit media doesn't even publish the critiques. They own the airwaves - corps paid good $$$s

for all those networks and newspapers. Pretty soon they'll own the internet, too, or a find a way to block, slow-down, or further isolate content they don't like - they pretty much do that, already.

I don't think lack of access to media is really the source of the problem. It's that no one can envision a real alternative, because we're ALL invested in the status quo, and are part of it. That includes us, the dissenters, rabble-rousers, and radicals -- that's a point I've been trying to make since college.

Even Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky didn't have a real answer to that when we discussed it - Howard was my PoliSci professor for six semesters, and Noam was a frequent visitor to seminars at BU - the point I made was that they too, I too, you too are part of the system. The system can't really sustain itself without rebels, mavericks, and "outside" critics. We may disagree around the edges, but when you get down to it, nobody can envision a fundamentally changed society that feeds, clothes, and houses everyone, except, maybe, a return to small-scale village life. Even that has its inevitable problems.

[olegramps]

22. UNIONS!!!! THE ONLY HOPE TO STAND UP TO CORPS.

[ellenrr]

5. People often make this criticism of Chris Hedges but I think it is unwarranted

We need people to look at the big picture, he ties things together, not focusing on "the environment" or "the wars" or poverty.

He shows how it is all connected. And I think in doing so he performs a great service.
WE should come up with solutions/alternatives.

He is not responsible to do it all.

[leveymg]

7. I didn't mean that as criticism of Chris Hedges. He's brilliant and I agree with him. But,

he and most intelligent people recognize that putting forward "a grand plan" for change is likely to sound familiar, if not banal, because most of us have heard it before and really believe that fundamental change is impossible or improbable in our lifetime. It's running up against that wall of cynicism and caution that keeps us from discussing really radical transformation of how people live, work, communicate and educate themselves.

Hell, I don't know. Here's the shovel. Which way do you think we should dig?

[ellenrr]

8. I have no clue--

I don't think fundamental change is going to happen in my lifetime. (not in this country)

But younger people continue to fight, and that is good. I would never try to convince someone else of my view.

I also think that we don't know what will happen. Did anybody foretell Tunsia, Egypt et al?
I sure didn't anticipate that.

[Citizen Worker]

16. Yes, ellenrr, you have nailed it, WE, is the answer. The way in which I have interpreted Chomsky,

Hedges, Zinn, Ehrenreich and many, many others is that they have connected the dots for us and layed out for the rest of us a very large canvass on which we need to paint the art. Has anyone read the Port Huron Statement? That would be a very good place to start and from there...to action? The principles of organizing very much apply, Agitate, Educate and Organize. It is up to US, all of US, together in collaboration and cooperation.

[Paka]

17. Can't agree more!

:thumbsup:

[azul]

11. I think that the specifics will fall into place

once the mad-monkey is off all of our backs. And we cannot settle for less.

The shedder is a constitutional amendment that says, corporations have no rights as persons under the 14th amendment, period.

[Iterate]

12. Yes, simply yes.

Or not so simply.

Re-establish nation sovereignty over the corporate charter, akin to banning slavery. More than just the "rights as persons" issue, but expiration dates, limits on size, etc.

And if we can't get it all at once, get the best part asap.

[Demeter]

4. USA Is the biggest Failed State: We're #1! We're #1!

It's relatively easy to take down failed states--building successful ones takes work, and a kind of altruism that Capitalism cannot understand or abide.

[dotymed]

20. "It's easy to take down failed states", usually I would

agree with that statement. When "the filed state" has been spending more on weapons, than all other countries combined, for many decades, is it still that easy?
America is definitely a "failed state" or the most dysfunctional civilized one in history. Amazingly, a large part of the reason is because of it's spending on weapons.
Are we going to invade another country to "stay afloat" for our corporate masters?

[raouldukelives]

9. It has to start as individuals

Riding ourselves of the burden of debt. Shopping locally. Getting out of the stock market and putting your money where you know it isn't going to oil companies or the MIC. Stop participating and become part of the cure.

[yurbud]

15. the real deal breaker is home ownership. Unless you get your mortgage through a credit union

you're making a major contribution to the people who want to grind up you and your kids and feed you to their purse dogs.

I have been leery of that purchase even before the housing crash, and I'm not sure if enough people got the message to be willing to change their behavior--maybe young people did. Case in point, when I was a little kid, my parents had a Ford Pinto, and even at eight years old, the backseat was too small and cramped for me, and the car broke down often enough for me to notice. Consequently, I have been unwilling to buy an American car my whole adult life (though if I had enough money I'd get a Volt).

Similarly,maybe kids who saw their parents lose their home or agonize over being underwater in their mortgage, or sacrifice everything else to hold onto that house won't buy the same BS about home ownership their parents did. Debt is not financial freedom.

[Paka]

18. Debt is the worst form of slavery.

I want to scream every time I see some article about not paying down credit cards too fast and the crock of BS that "a little bit of debt is good." In my world, there is no such thing as "good debt." I learned at my grandma's knee not to fall for that line.
:freak:

[yurbud]

23. I wish I figured that out a lot sooner. Unfortunately, that was how I went to college & grad school

So 18 years later, my students loans are bigger than when I graduated because of interest.

[MuseRider]

10. K&R

bookmarked to read later and commented on so I can come back and read the comments.

I like Chris Hedges. He is usually very thoughtful in his approach to things and helpful when one does not always understand the intricacies of an issue.

Thank you.

[Catherina]

13. Rec'd. At this point only a total system breakdown will save the people of this country n/t

[yurbud]

14. ''fear of Christian fascists'' that sums up the corporate Dems way of herding progressives

''You'd better shut up and vote for us because the GOP will be worse.''

While it's certainly true, it does not excuse them from being barely perceptibly different from the GOP on many issues.

[defendandprotect]

19. kr -- back to read all of it tomorrow -- !!

[bertman]

21. Excellent commentary. REC. Two points: the ELEPHANT in the room is

the human drive to reproduce. Population Population Population. Too many people vying for too few resources fosters a 'Survival for my group, screw yours' mentality. We don't need population stabilization or zero population growth. We need a LOT FEWER humans consuming the vitals of the planet. That should be an interesting proposal to sell.

Everybody wants everybody else to make the sacrifice. Especially us Americans, who already consume multiple times more than other nations.

I love Chris Hedges, but he's going to go down in history as one of the thinkers we SHOULD have listened to before the biosphere sloughed off us humanoids (along with a lot of other creatures, unfortunately).