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Thank you..
The topic for tonight is..
Terrorism, Globalization and Conspiracy
..is that the title?
Am I in the right town..? The right title?
I'd like to start with the most important of those three..
This is a trick stand..
Most important of those three is Globalization..
Globalization is an attempt..
..to extend corporate monopoly and control..
..over the entire globe
..over every national economy
..over every local economy
..over every life
It does this by treating international corporate property rights..
..and international corporate investment rights..
..as supreme
..as taking precedence over all other rights
..including our democratic sovereignty
Globalization is being treated by its proponents as a..
.."natural", "inevitable" process
First we had local economies..
..then they, "naturally," became..
..regional economies..
..and then national..
..and then international..
..and now
One Big Global Economy
It just "happens" that way..
In fact, there is nothing "inevitable" about it..
..and there is certainly nothing "natural" about it
Globalization is being forced upon us..
..through a series of secretive international trade agreements
Globalization, really, when you look at it..
..in its centuries old context..
..is a future variant of Imperialism
Imperialism is that system in which the leading, dominant elements in one country..
..expropriate the land, the labour, the resources, the capital..
..of other peoples, other countries
And Imperialism itself is an expansion in its form of..
..Capitalism
Now, I want to make some critical comments about Capitalism..
..even though we're in a Presbyterian church
Any mention of Capitalism immediately evokes..
..or induces some people to lapse into sentimentality
All our lives we've heard about the valiant little entrepreneur..
..who markets a new idea..
..who creates jobs..
It usually gets into that sentimental singsong voice..
..performs a valuable service..
The moms and paps stores that contribute to the community..
..and the economy
Okay, I am not talking about them..
I am talking about the other 90% of the wealth in this world..
I am talking about the giant financial institutions..
The giant transnational corporations..
..that control the lion's share of the world's worth
..that control the populations and the power of nations
You can't talk about Globalization and Imperialism without..
..talking about Capitalism
..although some people manage to do that all the time
We are taught a few things about Capitalism..
We're taught that it's a system that works..
It's a system that has brought us prosperity..
We've heard that all our lives..
I going to try to convince you otherwise..
..and I am going to do it in two minutes
Okay?
Actually, I think some of you already have some suspicions about that system..
It's very simple:
Almost the entire world is Capitalist..
And almost the entire world is poor...
Capitalist Indonesia is miserably poor and getting poorer..
Capitalist India is miserably poor and getting poorer..
So, with Capitalist Thailand..
..and Capitalist Nigeria..
..and Capitalist El Salvador..
..and Haiti and Mexico and Brazil and Argentina..
And Capitalist Russia..
..and Poland..
..and Bulgaria..
..with all the privatization and deregulation..
..and free market coming in
Poverty, increase in crime..
..increase in desperation, increase in misery..
..increase in homelessness..
..increase in suicides
It's Capitalism at work - moving in..
Now, not everyone suffers..
The Capitalists in these countries are doing quite well..
These countries are getting poorer as the giant corporations move in..
..and get richer
These countries are getting poorer as there is more and more deregulation..
..more and more so-called free market - which is really a monopoly market..
It's a free market if you got money..
It's a market that works for those that have money
These countries are getting poorer because the people are being driven off the lands..
..by the giant corporations
And they create business zones..
You can go to places - like the islands on the Phillipines..
..where people had beautiful communities since time immemorial..
They fish..
They have their houses..
In their communities they have their orchards..
They have their vineyards and whatever..
..farms
And the giant companies come in with some bogus claim to the land..
..drive them all off
..and clear-cut the woods there and turn it into a waste-land
It's tropical so it can't survive clear-cutting..
These people are driven off into the shanty-towns
..and you got a record
In the Phillipines..
The gross national product is gone up..
..because these companies have come in and made all these sales on the timber
Meanwhile, thousands and thousands of lives are utterly destroyed
And the people fight, going to the cities..
And they find new work opportunities under the "Free Market" Capitalism..
Prostitution..
Drugs..
Beggary..
..all sorts of new things
..that didn't exist in their lives before
Those business zones..
..make people poorer
The corporations go in and they displace..
..and they wipe out domestic production
..and the domestic businesses by dumping and under-selling
That makes people poorer
The corporations go in and they force cut-backs..
..in human services
..education
..health and housing
..as the country develops a heavier and heavier debt-structure
..as the IMF does it's "structural adjustment" programs
..and proposing conditions of lower spending
..and lower consumption
They consume less - they've got to produce more..
..to help pay this debt
A debt that becomes soon unpayable because it accumulates..
..and compounds
That makes people poorer
The corporations force down prices of non-renewable resources..
..go in and plunder they land and the earth
..to get those natural resources out
..under pain of whatever production people do produce
..or whatever they put on the international market
..is under-paid through monopoly control of those markets
That makes people poorer
We've solved the mystery..
Look, I did it in a little bit more than two minutes..
But we've solved the mystery..
..of why over the past half-century financial investment has increased
..profits have increased
..wealth has increased
..but so has poverty
Because wealth and poverty don't just live together in unfortunate juxta-position..
..we always hear that too, don't we?
"Isn't it terrible: so much wealth next to so much poverty.."
"What a shame.."
"Wouldn't it be nice if these people gave a little bit more to these people?"
Well, they are just not there..