Archive for Globalization
Police State 2.0
Naomi Klein’s most recent article, appearing in Rolling Stone.
Remember how we’ve always been told that free markets and free people go hand in hand? That was a lie. It turns out that the most efficient delivery system for capitalism is actually a communist-style police state, fortressed with American “homeland security” technologies, pumped up with “war on terror” rhetoric. And the global corporations currently earning superprofits from this social experiment are unlikely to be content if the lucrative new market remains confined to cities such as Shenzhen. Like everything else assembled in China with American parts, Police State 2.0 is ready for export to a neighborhood near you.
Unions Gone Global
“The business press has barely noticed and the usual champions of globalization have been mute, but an announcement last week in Ottawa signaled a radical new direction for the globalized economy. The United Steelworkers — that venerable, Depression-era creation of John L. Lewis and New Deal labor policy — entered into merger negotiations with two of Britain’s largest unions (which are merging with each other next month) to create not only the first transatlantic but the first genuinely multinational trade union.”