I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

This morning I listened to a French commentator on the recent student riots on NPR. After spending a little time listening, I realized that the French were being rigid in resisting globalization, and I understood why. You know, I'd always seen globalization as somewhat inevitable, part of economic theory that sees goods and services being provided by the nations most able to. Now, in the past that ability came from a fair amount of war and colonial efforts. I.e, those most martially able are those who end up being most economically able because a fair amout of war precedes colonialization and economic boon. France, over some decades, had written into their laws hard-won statutes to protect their labor and their economy.

Now, in France, some neo-liberals touting the benefits of globalization want to overturn or ignore those laws, but without keeping the hard won benefits for their people. In other words, to improve corporate profitability and therefore (hopefully, in the long run, under a trickle-down approach) improve France's job markets, the neoliberals advocate that France should give away those benefits now and let the globalization approach win out.

Globalization makes for a nice ideal wherein one day prosperity swings round the world as nations come on line, first provide cheap labor and natural resources, and then improve their abilities in manufacturing and services, thus rendering them more able to purchase more goods and services and so on. However, what we have seen in action has been quite different. Globalization now means that producing nations ship jobs overseas with nary a thought on what will replace them. If one country resists handing over access to its natural resources, the task becomes to find another country that will sell it at a reasonable price. 'Reasonable' might border on 'exploitable', but why worry? They need the money. We need the resource. If you can't find another country willing or able to provide what you need at the cost you want, just persuade the government of your home country to invade the non-cooperative country and take over. Call it liberation, establish a democray that is staffed with people under your control, and then proceed to 'business as usual'.

And who is the beneficiary of globalization?

Contrary to what you might think, it's hardly indigenous peoples or underdeveloped nations. They provide cheap labor, cheap resources, and receive some economic benefit, of course.  But they also get a host of new problems, such as pollution, modern psychological issues, too-rapid development, etc.

And the beneficiaries also don't necessarily include existing world powers like America or Germany or France. They do get some benefit, since they often employ people at higher levels who manage outsourcing, offshore manufacturing, and foreign resource extraction, but they (and their people) are not the intended recipients.

The real beneficiaries of globalization are those fairly insidious multinational corporations that cross borders and set up offices wherever they need to. They have little issue committing actions in underdeveloped countries that are heinous crimes in the more industrialized ones. For that matter, thinking of exploding gas tanks, Three Mile Island, and drug recalls, they're not too worried about their actions in the industrialized ones either. And what worldwide body regulates the raging multinational, currently answerable only to its own desires and limitations? Who reigns in the renegade multinational? The WTO? With its toothless gums and feeble reach?

Hardly.

The next time we start talking about how inevitable and progressive globalization is, spend some time meditating on Iraq and who's behind that war. Who benefited? Certainly not Americans by looking at the gas prices. But I think Shell, Haliburton, and Exxon pulled in quite the record profits. Spend a moment on the way the world continually rapes Africa, and on what slaves we have become in our drive to buy anything made in China. Think of the girls being murdered in Ciudad Juarez under the shadow of factories with Sony, HP, and Ford nameplates. Think for a moment of smoke-choked skies in central Europe, and on disappearing rainforests in the Amazon.

Ask yourself.... just who is the beneficiary of a world paved over for profit?

And how do we stop them?