The World Going Forward:   The Confusion Of   Free- Market Believer

Yes, that's right: Thomas Friedman got pied.

(looks like the YouTube video got yanked. It's available here on Google Video, for now at least...)

It's long overdue that this guy get exposure to the taste of sweet, goopy justice, and I think lots of public figures -- on the left and the right -- could use a good pieing every so often. After he was cleaned up, he did go on to deliver his speech (at Brown University), which focused on market-based and techno "fixes" to the environment.

As it becomes more and more clear that the problems we're facing are rooted in the very foundations of market economics, we can see capitalism's apologists, like Friedman, offering more and more incredulous "solutions" to those problems (something tells me that putting price tags on even MORE things isn't a good solution to the problem created by pricing things in the first place). But one thing is painfully clear: lefties need to learn better aim!

From the so called great scramble to the new scramble, I believe that there never really is any difference or change in scrambling. The imperialist tendencies and actions towards Africa have been concentrated in one continuous scramble - for resources: land, people, minerals, diamonds, timber, markets, etc. A continuous scramble and a systematic exploitation and looting of the African continent. Globalization and the global political economy are generally not looked at through the African perspective. While I can hardly offer that perspective, I work to understand.

From the When not in Africa. . . blog.

Crunch, Mmm, the peanut chunks trapped in delicious caramel tastes oh so good. You bite and are rewarded with a mouthful of inticing caramel and nut flavors - all of a sudden that deliciousness is tainted by an odd sourish, crunchy, mushy apple flavor. What? Where did this apple come from, I like the outside best. This is the caramel apple of globalization - the outside is so delicious and appealing, but once you hit the apple and core, the fun has ended. Granted this all matters if you run with the majority and toss aside the age-old wives tale of eating an apple a day to keep the doctor away. Too many of us see this doctor everyday - there is no escaping this doctor because all too often globalization is used for ill, just to get the caramel and nuts, not the healthy fruit of the free market, fair trade, and multi-lateral agreements.

There is a great class war in our society. Globalization, capitalism and other forces have managed to further the gap between the rich and the poor.

458 Billionaires control over half the world's wealth. 3 trillion people earn less than $3 a day. The abject conditions of the working poor continue to disintegrate each day around the world and in our own country.

A man once wrote about this class struggle. His name is Karl Marx. His teachings and communism have been dragged through the dirt by many intent on making sure the current system is eternal.

Please take a minute and watch the video in this entry. Listen to the words and enjoy the cartoons :-)

Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no "Third Worlds." There is no "West." There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immense, interwoven, interacting, multi-variate, multi-national dominion of dollars! Petro-dollars. Electro-dollars. Multi dollars. Reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds and shekels! It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic, and subatomic and galactic structure of things today. Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon—those are the nations of the world today.
-quote from the 1976 movie Network

Alright, so I'm about 30 years late with this movie review, but given how long ago Network came out, I'm guessing that a lot of people my age and younger haven't seen this movie, just as I hadn't until this weekend. The messages in this movie are even more relevant today than when it was first released.