`Biggest Bubble of Them All' Is Globalization

The Baltic Dry Index closed down -47 points at 1102 today. That's down from 12,000 in May. The US has been funding unregulated global growth and a good portion of what was marketed as the global economy in the past 10 years or so was smoke and mirrors.

National borders have a purpose. Different wage levels are like different water levels. You can't remove barriers between them without a race to the bottom. Letting capital follow that freely is a global disaster as we see.

The obvious biggest loser in that would be the world's best economy... ours, once upon a time.

Globalization is the biggest criminal theft in history, which will not be prosecuted.

cs-gassing half the city, brutally jailing thousands, and staging a police riot--while even some leftist publications mocked us for being leftist loonies, and the Corpo/Fascist 'news' monopolies, after their many lies about us, went ve-e-e-ery quiet--our country would be in a whole lot better shape today.

This goddamned financial disaster comes from NOT LISTENING TO THE PEOPLE. The unions were there. They knew what was happening to jobs and the "race to the bottom." Environmentalists were there. They knew what global traffic was doing to planet's weather system and to sensitive ecosystems around the world. Human rights groups were there. They knew about sweatshops and slave labor. Lawyers and political analysts were there. They knew about the assault on our Constitution and our sovereignty from anti-democratic, secretive entities like the WTO. Third world advocates were there. They knew about the devastation to third world economies that was already occurring from neoliberal policies (deregulation; gutting of social programs; ruinous World Bank/IMF debt; Corpo/Fascist privatization of basic services; Big Corpo Ag driving peasant farmers off the land, and introducing GMO seeds and toxic pesticides). All sorts of smart people were there, holding teach-in's on every aspect of globalization, and its impacts on us and on others.

We held the most awesome, well-organized, effective protest action I have even been part of, or heard of. First, 50,000 people marched through the streets of Seattle--a huge protest in that quietest era. Then 10,000 to 15,000 of us sat down in city intersections and refused to move, in order to obstruct the WTO delegates' entry to the meeting. The WTO was effectively shut down. The reason we did this was that the people in our country, and every country involved, were not permitted into the meetings, where our fates were being decided! This was truly a "shot heard round the world." After this, the third world countries themselves became encouraged, and led by Brazil walked out en masse from the next WTO meeting (in Cancun). The WTO has never recovered, and country after country has since rejected neoliberal policies and fought back, for their own sovereignty, for social justice and for FAIR trade. South America is a transformed continent today--with its newly formed South American "Common Market" and the most important and successful leftist democracy movement on earth--in part because of the Seattle protest.

The Clinton administration acquiesced to the brutal response to our protest in Seattle--and possibly ordered it. There was no disorder in our protest--it was absolutely peaceful, amazingly so--until after about six hours of heavy brutality by Darth Vader cops, at which point what were probably agents provocateur began burning trash cans and smashing windows downtown. Frankly, after what I saw the cops do, burning a few trash cans and breaking windows was an understandable reaction, although it was mostly just a few youngsters, some from the "black mask" anarchist group, who were engaged in vandalism. Instead of going after the vandals and stopping them, the police let it happen, and continued brutalizing the thousands of peaceful protesters well into the night, and even went tear gassing and invading uninvolved neighborhoods. They even beat up a City Councilman. To Seattle's credit, there WAS a political reaction in Seattle--and lengthy hearings and reports, where the truth came out. But the Corpo/Fascist media, of course, never followed up on that expose, and the Clintonites hated us, because we had TOLD THE TRUTH ABOUT THEIR DANGEROUS ECONOMIC POLICIES. Clintonism led to Bushwhackism. That is a fact. Bushwhackism is the extreme form of neoliberalism--fascism!

I remember the one episode of "West Wing" that stank to high heaven was the episode on global justice protesters, who were portrayed as a bunch of irrelevant, squabbling whiners. Alan Sorkin's blatant manipulation and LIES in that episode were a shock to me. I felt bad for him--a highly intelligent, well-informed writer of the highest caliber reducing himself to a whore for Clinton and the global corporate predators who were raping one country after another--and now have raped ours. I later found out that Clinton's White House spokeswoman was the adviser on that show. She must have hated us with a passion. That episode just drips with seething anger and bile.

Suppressing the global justice movement that protested in Seattle was one of the biggest mistakes that our government has ever made. When you stifle democracy like that, you court disaster. 50,000 people do not put themselves in the way of police batons and cs gas out of oneriness, or petty complaints. We had SERIOUS criticism to bring to the attention of the people and the leaders of this country. And the leaders were deaf to us, and the people were propagandized into thinking that we were just troublemakers and hooligans. That was a sad, sad week for our democracy. But it was also a magnificent eruption OF democracy. If only the Clintons had listened. They are not stupid like Bush. They are not insatiably powermad like Cheney. They are not bloodthirsty and treasonous like these Bushwhacks and NeoCons. They were following the WRONG POLICIES. They needed to change course. And they did not and apparently could not. And that failure led inexorably to Bush and this financial 9/11 that the Bushwhacks have just pulled. The neoliberal chickens have come home to roost!

Alas.

:patriot:

Thanks you for the background, as you said, it was not reported in the media with any detail. I do remember the filibusters as a few members of Congress pleaded for sanity about it, to no avail.

You're right, that there's a direct connection between neoliberalism and fascism. I don't understand either, why Clinton made some of these glaring mistakes. It goes beyond money - he seemed to have a few blind spots. For instance, I told my husband the first day Clinton was elected, that the Rethugs would try to set him up in some scandal. Why didn't he know his enemies better than that?

Anyway, thank you! Both for your post, and for your action.

The anti-globalization movement was 100% correct.

Bunker Ajustment Factor (ie fuel surcharge) is charged on every container and is currently over double the freight rates offered by the shipping lines. And if OPEC are goping to cut production then BAF could get even more pricey

And then there's Currency Ajustment Factor over here as well (which I hope stops as soon as the currency markets stop being so voliatile). Indeed over here importers are being wacked hard by the falling Pound, which will soon mean more expensive goods in our shops.

The shipping lines are currenly very scared of a slump in global demand, hence the fall on freight rates, but demand will rise again. How long that will take we cannot be sure though.