[Nettime-bold] Re: <nettime> Anti-globalisation movements

[jonathan jay <jonathan@speakeasy.net>]

David,  below you state:

> Critics are really good at crying foul without having the responsibility of
> trying to govern 300 million people ... without offering realistic alternatives
> to the status quo ... which, by the way, is quite stable right now ... and

-= fair enough on the former, but we shall see just how stable things really are
very soon.  These next ten years will prove a watershed as global power
resources continue to deminish and resource conlicts escalate precipitating the
calving off of entire regions from the neoliberal economic 'grid'

-= meanwhile, i take exception to the below:

> Your definiton of globalization is ok but I offer the following: Globalization
> is the export or expansion of capitalism and democracy.

-= please don't confuse capitalism's one-dollar one-vote as having *anything* to
do with democracy's one-person, one-vote.  Western Democracy (did it ever?) does
not appear to exist anywhere currently, while Western Capitalism most surely
does, and is expansionary (as are all unstable systems). After the collapse of
the former Soviet Economic Block, Western Capitalim has it's crosshairs squarly
on the remaining competing idealogy -- what is left of Democratic Republicanism.

-= The cynical notion of "Exporting Democracy" is in practice a conceptual
fulcrum, a brilliantly conceived piece of meta-propaganda, effective both
internally and externally to gain policy traction from the political classes
(who pride themselves on proper 'values' while ignoring the fact that mass
politics is a hermetically sealed spectator sport).  The true role of
'democracy' is as a trojan horse to accelerate the the scale-up of Western
Capital's (19th century Imperial fantasy) of Global Neoliberal Empire.

-= With supertankers of "egalitarian utopianism" (the ruse) to lubricate minds
and soften opposition, hallowed 'Democracy' is in actually a means of social
control, a *managment tool* where the base of society plays _no_ real
participatory role in the application of social power.  It true purpose seems to
be to confuse and immobilize people while their civil society is dismantled and
market-diktat resources are valueated & extracted.

-= Sure i am just blowing a lot of steam here, and trotting out what few
snippets of acadamese i can muster, but like you i am a human being trying to
muddle through what is going on right now, with only the limited convolutions
my meta-monkey-mind possesses.

-= what i am really trying to say, is simply this:  as the chinese curse goes
"we live in interesting times." However, things are about to get a lot more
interesting than we can ever hope to understand.  These next 50 years will be
*nothing* like the last.


from the pacific northwest sector of the freetrade area of the americas, i
remain respectfully,


jonathan jay Imperium
Seattle
Day 283, 2001 CE.
============================ 2001.10.13 67:454.XT =============================
                    don't have the time? try xtime instead!                    
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