The U.S. midterm election was noteworthy for what analysts called voter "populism". It is increasingly clear to voters in the US that the promises concerning globalization made by economists, business leaders and politicians has not been kept, argues William Pfaff.
To hear some Democrats tell it, the United States is engaged in a costly, ill-advised foreign adventure that is long overdue for a change of course. But today's public anxieties are both broader and more intense, argues David J. Lynch.
Revolutionary, political and social change is clearly needed in the USA and the world. Corporate domination of the economic and political system is a huge threat to the possibilities for a decent and sustainable future for humankind, argues Ted Glick.
To create successful major social movements requires popular pressure, but also requires cooption of existing structures, even those lined up against movement in the first place. The most efficient way to do so is often to use capitalism, argues James Waters.
With Republicans fighting desperately to retain their slim control of all three branches of government, President Bush and the GOP are attempting to divert attention from a disastrous war as they tout their economic successes.
At the beginning of the 21st century, the United States is still a superpower. But it's a superpower facing competition from beyond its borders as well as internal difficulties. Its lower and middle classes are turning out to be the losers of globalization.
Kenya's Masai people, herders to the core, have found they can increase their meager income by leasing land to onion farmers. The farmers build fences, which dice up elephant migration corridors surrounding the country's famous Amboseli National Park. So wildlife groups have devised a novel system of payments to the Masai that cover the income difference between grazing and leasing.
Critics have exposed how globalization's benefits have been unequally distributed around the world. Many of the world's poorer regions have become poorer still in relation to the regions that gained. And within regions, it turns out that globalization often worsens wealth and income inequalities. However, critics admit and defenders boast that at least for some -- for example, the US -- globalization has meant higher wealth, income, or consumption levels. But a closer look raises questions about these beneficiaries of globalization.
A trademark of our times is the dominance of neoliberalism in the major economic, political, and social forums of the developed capitalist countries and in the international agencies they influence--including the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, and the technical agencies of the United Nations such as the World Health Organization, Food and Agricultural Organization, and UNICEF. Starting in the United States during the Carter administration, neoliberalism expanded its influence through the Reagan administration and, in the United Kingdom, the Thatcher administration, to become an international ideology. Neoliberalism holds to a theory (though not necessarily a practice) that posits the following:
It began on May 15 this year when teachers belonging to the 70,000 strong National Union of Education Workers in Oaxaca, Mexico took to the streets for the first time to press their demands to the state government to address their long-neglected needs, writes Stephen Lendman.
