Globalization

[jatx]

Originally Posted by Roguish Lawyer

learn to exploit the invisible hand

Ooh, now that would be an appropriate screen name for an economist! Can I change mine, can I, can I?

[Roguish Lawyer]

Originally Posted by jatx

Ooh, now that would be an appropriate screen name for an economist! Can I change mine, can I, can I?

Probably. PM an admin.

[Bill Harsey]

Originally Posted by jatx

Ooh, now that would be an appropriate screen name for an economist! Can I change mine, can I, can I?

Let me have some beer, I can help with this one.

[jatx]

Originally Posted by Bill Harsey

Let me have some beer, I can help with this one.

What kind and how much, Blade Master?

[Huey14]

My feeling regarding free trade, is that while it benefits importers it would seem to kill the export industry, unless both countries are about equal.

If one huge country and flood a smaller country, I wouldn't call this a good thing.

Of course, there's the possibility I have the wrong end of the stick. I'm quite used to that end.

Originally Posted by The Reaper

My concern is that the pace is not being managed, and it should be. It looks more like a stampede than orderly change to me.

It's called free trade for a reason. People are welcome to cope with change as they see fit. Some companies provide assistance to those who want it, some do not. Their choice.

I am not in favor of the pace being managed because that means the government, and by and large, the government is not good at managing the like and managing to keep competitive.

Harsh? So is life.

[The Reaper]

Originally Posted by Greenhat

It's called free trade for a reason. People are welcome to cope with change as they see fit. Some companies provide assistance to those who want it, some do not. Their choice.

I am not in favor of the pace being managed because that means the government, and by and large, the government is not good at managing the like and managing to keep competitive.

Harsh? So is life.

What was the obligation of the U.S. to help people in other countries hit by the recent tsunami with U.S. taxpayer dollars and man-hours?

TR

[dennisw]

It seems in our discussion that we are cross threading some business principals. For instance, we dicuss "the invisible hand" and capitalism etc. But are these terms related to business inside a nation and to globization also? How does the invisible hand relate to the item below:


"In that regard, the February 2003 issue of Business Week informs us that Microsoft's "Bill Gates was in Beijing recently meeting with President Jiang Zemin and other government officials and promising to give the Chinese access to one of the most zealously guarded industrial secrets in Corporate America: the Windows source code. That's a big step for Microsoft in any country. In China, where piracy is rampant, it's a huge leap.” (BW Online, 2/10/03)

Microsoft is spending $750 million on Research and Development in China, and $400 million in India in the next three years. At Microsoft's Beijing research lab, one-third of the 180 programmers have Ph.D.s from U.S. universities."

Should we say, "it looks like Microsoft is going to begin selling software to a billion chinease. Ok, all you blue collar workers, quit working and invest your large nest eggs in Microsoft stock and wait for the dividends to roll in. Is that realistic?

Wait a second, before you do we need to consider: In china, 94% of software is not purchased but pirated. Those are dollars that will never come back and will never improve any bottom lines or create any dividends. We just subsidized a population. How can we make a dent in the trade deficit when these countries do not recognize technological patents, etc.

The invisible hand deals somewhat with resources and labor readjusting to changes in economic conditions. An example in my mind was when folks left detroit to move to houston when the auto industry hit a glitch and the oil industry was strong. How does labor make adjustments in globilization where there are impediments to movement, both cultural and legal?

How does the invisible hand deal with multi national corporations that serve no master, but only a bottom line? And where is that bottom line located?

Nike did just that. So did Adidas. So did Toyota (and some of that overseas production is in the US). So have most of the Pharmaceutical Companies. So has ExxonMobil, Unocal... (I'm including designers, engineers, geologists and a lot of other highly talented and educated people in the white collar description although they usually do not supervise others).

I think the above is a bit simplistic. Were there any layoffs involved? If what you say is accurate, those companies domestically employ the same number folks now as they did ten years ago? I'm not sure about that. I don't think shifting blue collar jobs to white collar jobs is going employ a nation. Sounds more like "I got mine, if you didn't get yours, your screwed."

If these concepts truly do relate to international capitalism, what about their impact on our national security? Shifting manufacturing to third world countries like china and india, may make sense from a bottom line perspective for Dell or Microsoft, because it increases their current profits. But is that the threshold criteria? What about Uncle Sam?

For example, lets say that little bit of technology we just gave to the Microsoft divison in China will allow then to tract unit sales but oopps... it will also allow their Intelligence agencies to track our troop movements. Is that a security issue? You bet your ass. Where do Microsoft, Dell etc. loyalties reside? I don't know about you, but I wouldn't trust todays Corporate leadership to safeguard security technology(I'm still pissed that Toshiba sold our stealth propeller technology to the Russians).

If the balloon goes up do you think American soldiers will put their lives on the line to protect Microsoft? What happens to the 2000 Wal Marts they expect to build in China? When Washington kicked Cornwallis's ass, a lot of British exporters took a haircut on that deal.

The link below presents some interesting discussion on these issues.

http://www.garnertedarmstrong.ws/Mar...hina1-29.shtml

One last item and I will shut up. A friend of mine is fairly high up in fortune 500 company and they just had some hackers spend a long weekend in their computers. The hackers derived from China. I wonder where they got the skill to do that? Let's assume my friends company has a data base with all our financial information in it. Scary stuff. Like the Rigteous Bros. say " I've lost that warm and fuzzy feeling" Alright, I took literary license.

Blue collar jobs are also threatened by increasingly capable and cheaper robotic technology.

[lrd]

Originally Posted by Bill Harsey

What happens to a country when they no longer provide their own natural resources or do their own manufacturing?

I caught part of an interview the other night with the president of caterpillar. He was discussing their new holistic approach (his term) to emerging markets in China, India, and Russia. They are building product support centers, establishing financing departments, etc. He was commenting on the abundance of raw materials in these countries and the lack of a modern infrastructure to harvest them. Cataerpillar had a record sales year in China.

I'm not an economist. It makes me wonder what return we get on this. And I don't just mean financial return.

[NousDefionsDoc]

PolicyWatch #949
Hizballah and the Anitglobalization Movement: A New Coalition?
By Ely Karmon
January 27, 2005

The World Social Forum (WSF) is currently (January 26–31) convening a Global Anti-War Assembly in Porto Alegre, Brazil, building on its previous conferences attended by thousands of antiglobalization activists from around the globe. Among the issues to be addressed are coordinating actions across borders, determining which tactics to use, finding ways of penalizing countries that act as U.S. allies in conflicts like the Iraq war, and building stronger links between the antiglobalization movement and movements in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The Beirut Assembly, the most recent of these gatherings, committed to struggling against what it termed “the occupation of Iraq, Palestine, corporate-led globalization, and dictatorships.” It also provided some interesting indications that certain elements in the antiglobalization movement are prepared to work with Hizballah.

The September Beirut Assembly

On September 17-19, 2004, activists held an “International Strategy Meeting” in Beirut under the title “Where Next for the Global Anti-War and Anti-Globalization Movements?” The Beirut conference emerged from a process that began at a May 2003 antiwar conference in Jakarta and continued at an antiwar assembly at the Mumbai World Social Forum in January 2004. The main conveners included Focus on the Global South (Thailand), a “key player in the global movement,” and the Civilian Campaign for Protection of Palestinian People (France). The rest of the working group that organized the conference hailed from Argentina, South Africa, Japan, France, Nicaragua, India, the Philippines, Italy, Brazil, Greece, the United Kingdom, and the United States, reflecting the broadly international and south-weighted character of the initiative. The meeting was endorsed by 262 organizations and movements from 53 countries. Moreover, some 300 individuals from 50 countries participated in the conference, representing various antiwar coalitions, social movements, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and other groups. Participation from Africa and North America was generally weak, however.

The Arab sponsors (the Lebanese Welcoming Committee) included “progressives, seculars, and Islamists” such as Hizballah, the Lebanese Communist Party, and the Progressive Socialist Party of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt. Joining them were activists from Syria, Egypt, and Morocco, and Palestinian areas as well as a delegation of Iraqis. The decision to hold the meeting in the Middle East was part of a conscious effort to build closer links with antiwar and anti–corporate globalization activists in the region.

Hizballah’s Role in the Conference

Hizballah was described at the conference as “one of the leading welcoming organizations [and] an example of successful, targeted, and organized resistance.” Ali Fayad, member of Hizballah’s Central Council and chairman of the Academic Center for Documentation, stressed that Islam’s message is one of unity and collaboration, not division, and that the conference was held in Beirut because Lebanon’s resistance “defeated the Reagan project for the Middle East in the 1980s . . . [and] liberated the land from occupation.”

Hizballah is not known for its antiwar or antiglobalization stance and had never before participated in such a conference. It was invited because a group of radical Italian leftists insisted on it. Entreaties of this sort were not without precedent: in March 2003, Nadia Desdemona Lioce, a leading member of the new Italian Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse), invited the “Arab and Islamic masses, . . . natural allies of the metropolitan proletarian,” to “take up arms at the heart of a unique and international axis at the side of the anti-imperialist Front Combattant in the face of a new offensive by bourgeois governments.” She saw in the “Zionist-American aggression against Iraq . . . an imperialist will to cut down the principal obstacle to the Zionist hegemony” and “to annihilate the Palestinian resistance.”

Lebanese NGOs and grassroots organizers in Beirut raised concerns about the potential negative impact of the conference on their work for local social justice. In particular, many Lebanese antiglobalization organizations were irritated about the decision to invite Hizballah, which they deemed a military organization that represented neither the antiwar nor the antiglobalization movement in Lebanon. Indeed, Hizballah’s politics and ideology harm Palestinian workers’ rights in Lebanon, suppress women, persecute homosexuals, and impede democratic freedoms.

Results of the Beirut Conference

In pursuing its goal of developing new links with antiwar and antiglobalization forces in the Middle East, the conference hosted some interesting debates about suicide bombing and the relative importance of local versus Middle Eastern struggles.

Suicide bombing. Intellectual and activist Walden Bello, executive director of Focus on the Global South and one of the leading critics of the current model of economic globalization, remarked in his keynote speech that the high proportion of Islamic (rather than secular) elements in the Iraqi resistance continues to bother many peace activists. According to him, these are the same activists who are “repelled” whenever Palestinian leaders have “proudly asserted that suicide bombers were the oppressed people’s equivalent of the F-16.” In offering these characterizations, Bello practically supported the use of suicide as a political weapon, arguing for broad support for resistance in Iraq and Palestinian areas without interference in the outcome of national liberation struggles. He asked the audience to keep in mind that, historically, “many progressives were also repelled by some of the methods of the ‘Mau Mau’ movement in Kenya, the FLN in Algeria, or the NLF in Vietnam.”

His position was reinforced by other delegates who argued that it was up to the people of Iraq to choose, according to the limited means available to them in their tremendously difficult situation, how they should fight the occupation of their country. As they put it, the role of solidarity is to lend support, not offer critiques. The debate involved an exchange on who could be considered legitimate targets in the struggle against occupation. It was remarked that, as a result of privatization, military functions are now often in the hands of apparent civilians within the fields of combat, security, intelligence, supply, and public relations. According to this view, even clearly civilian roles, such as construction work for civilian purposes, often reinforce the occupation or further the aims of the invasion by other means.

Local struggles, global movement. Those involved in frontline struggles for the basic rights of refugees, women, migrant workers, detainees, and homosexuals in the Middle East expressed their frustration at having been told, for years, that their efforts must take second place to the movement against U.S. imperialism and Israel. Yet, delegates from other parts of the world called for an approach of “localising the struggle, globalising the intifada.” The baseline assumption of the conference was the need to give global priority to the struggles in Iraq and by the Palestinians in international solidarity work. Many delegates agreed that the resistance in Iraq and the Palestinian areas are, as one delegate put it, “fighting for the rest of us on the frontline of the global war; thus they should be garnering our priority support as a matter of strategy.” Other delegates (from Africa in particular) raised questions about this Middle East focus, however.

The final declaration of the conference stressed the need to “support the right of the people of Iraq and the Palestinian terrirtories to resist the occupations,” called for the unconditional withdrawal of coalition forces from Iraq, and demanded an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, “the dismantlement of the Apartheid Wall and all settlements,” and the release of all Palestinian and Iraqi political prisoners. It even saluted “the Lebanese resistance (Hizbullah) that inspires us the world over.” The statement also promised to build solidarity through common campaigns and a “positive dynamic of dialogue.”

Conclusion

It seems that Hizballah has decided to jump on the antiglobalization bandwagon at a sensitive moment in the war on terror and the situation in Iraq—both fragile, explosive situations that could decide the course of future events in the Middle East. At least some important elements of the antiglobalization movement now seem willing to seek solidarity and cooperation with radical Islamist organizations and to accept their use of suicide terrorism.

Ely Karmon is a senior research scholar with the International Policy Institute for Counter-Terrorism.

Originally Posted by The Reaper

What was the obligation of the U.S. to help people in other countries hit by the recent tsunami with U.S. taxpayer dollars and man-hours?

TR

Obligation? None. It was a choice.

Originally Posted by dennisw

I think the above is a bit simplistic. Were there any layoffs involved? If what you say is accurate, those companies domestically employ the same number folks now as they did ten years ago? I'm not sure about that. I don't think shifting blue collar jobs to white collar jobs is going employ a nation. Sounds more like "I got mine, if you didn't get yours, your screwed."

If these concepts truly do relate to international capitalism, what about their impact on our national security? Shifting manufacturing to third world countries like china and india, may make sense from a bottom line perspective for Dell or Microsoft, because it increases their current profits. But is that the threshold criteria? What about Uncle Sam?

...

One last item and I will shut up. A friend of mine is fairly high up in fortune 500 company and they just had some hackers spend a long weekend in their computers. The hackers derived from China. I wonder where they got the skill to do that? Let's assume my friends company has a data base with all our financial information in it. Scary stuff. Like the Rigteous Bros. say " I've lost that warm and fuzzy feeling" Alright, I took literary license.

There isn't any choice. Businesses either make the decisions and moves to stay competitive or they go out of business. Then you don't have to worry about the US having the capability at all. Someone else will though, because they will be competitive. Are you under the impression that Microsoft, Dell, IBM, etc. should be charities (although in Microsoft's case, I could make a pretty good argument that 5 years of being a charity would be good for them. Their profit % is obscene)?

Oh, and as to where those hackers learned that skill?

Might remember that China invented the first computers. And that the Chinese historically are a smart and industrious people. We didn't need to teach them anything. They were going to learn anyway.

There are no secrets when it comes to technology. Not in the long-term. Once people know it can be done, they can and will figure out how to do it.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Getting lonely GH?

Globalization is a condition defined by mutually assured dependence. To globalize your economy and your society, you must accept that the world will reshape your future far more than you can possibly hope to influence the world in return. The continuity of the past, where son followed father in occupation for generations, will in most cases end with callaous disregard for tradition. Moreover, if you globalize you will import from that world outside far more than you can possibly offer in return. While your culture will be added to globalization's ever-evolving mosaic, your society will - in return - be challenged to adapt to an amazing array of content flows (e.g., ideas about the role of women, free speech, "proper" education) that come with globalization's connectivity. The same will hold true for the goods and services you can offer the world, which will pale in comparison with all the products that will flood your markets, challenging your producers and firms to adapt to a new competitive landscape or die.

(Barnett)

The down side.

The upside is we've already done most of it. We are the prime example of globalization. We've had our civil war, our civil rights conflicts, our women's rights problems - and we've come through it all.

We need to export it now or we will be putting out these fires for the rest of time. That is what we are really talking about when we say, "Spreading democracy". It is as social and economic as political. In fact, I would say the political is the least important of the three.

Mexico is a democracy - and they are sucking the life blood out of the US one dollar at a time.

We've been at war for four years because the politicians ignored AQ as a nusiance when he was manageable.

We have to engage. We have to drag them out of the dark. And we have to accept some compromise.

[NousDefionsDoc]

Worried about the Elephant that is China and the mice that are Africa, the ME, parts of SA and Asia will gnaw us to death.