Globalisation is not Globalism
Globalisation is not globalism. Globalism is the Olympics; globalisation is the IMF. Globalism is the Aussie athletes setting up Olympic Aid where, using funds from the auction of HG Nelson & Roy Slavin's Fatso the Fat-Assed Wombat ($80K+ from Ch7's Kerry Stokes), the athletes can offer no-strings help to others around the world.
Globalisation is the IMF/World Bank controlling national economies against their citizens' wishes in Indonesia, Thailand, Korea, Chile and many more countries.
Globalism is the positive competitive spirit of the smiling Cathy Freeman hugging the smiling Marion Jones after their Olympic race, regardless of who won. Globalisation is the negative competitive spirit of multinationals like Monsanto, Rio Tinto, Pangea etc, who believe they have inalienable rights to make profit by controlling agricultural economies through GM seeds, or mine in protected ecosystems, or dump nuclear waste - all against the wishes of the people who live there.
Globalism is caring about all people's rights to have a say in their nation's destiny. Globalisation is believing, as we still hear it in the media, that the protesters against the IMF are a bunch of extremists, losers, ratbags, misguided youth, or organised troublemakers.
The online New York Times (24.9.00 item by Roger Cohen) identifies a different, seriously committed, protestor against the globalisation violation of human rights.
Meet Annie-Christine Habbard: "with her Danish mother, her Syrian father, her French passport and her Oxford education, Annie-Christine Habbard, 31, seems every inch the global citizen equipped to succeed in a shrinking world. Yet here she is, chic in black, articulate in several tongues, at the annual meeting of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (in Prague), protesting the state of the globe. What she wants is more social justice, respect for human rights, a "counterpower" to high finance and, for good measure, a more equitable distribution of the spoils from a new Chad-Cameroon oil pipeline."
Ms Habbard is a very pragmatic lawyer and senior officer of the Paris-based International Federation of Human Rights. She is meeting with the President of the World Bank to prove that, according to international law, the World Bank may not provide loans to any project that mnight compromise human rights.
With a battery of lawyers behind her from over 350 groups worldwide also determined to compel the World Bank to change it's practices, Ms Habbard is already preparing her next post-World Bank challenge - to take on the more difficult to control multinational corporations.
While media continues to show protests through the sensationalised spectre of violence, Ms Habbard and her peers are corporate boadroom operators, representing what the NY Times identifies as an "increasingly sophisticated, intellectucally robust protest movement mixing idealism with pragmatism, that is fast playing catch-up with the forces of multinational capital."
Business News 21 December 2000
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