On Thu, 19 Aug 1999 23:25 +0100, M.Blackmore wrote:
> I think where this original comment was going was something along the
> lines of the political struggle against global corporatism (etc.) being
> essentially a political struggle that has to be engaged with upon American
> territory - cultural, political, and also in terms of corporate laws.
...
> Are we Europeans and Asians and Africans wasting our time when it is
> really you Yanks who need to get it together to stop this thing?
It takes both -- resistance from within and from without.
Resistance from within (Yanks) is a bit more difficult, because the
influence of media/gov't misinformation and lack of different perspectives
is of course stronger "within", and because the U.S. is the country that
profits the most from globalization (at least in the PR version). I think
the key is to make the Yanks see that even if the U.S. profits as a whole,
the majority within the U.S. is *losing*, and only a small minority has a
net benefit from globalization (the "trickle-down effect" is a PR myth).
Resistance from without already exists to some extent, for various reasons
(protectionism etc.). The key here is that both the total benefit and the
individual benefits of the majority are *negative* (i.e. net damage). It
will take international solidarity to oppose this, possibly the *reversal*
of the U.S. policy of trade sanctions against anyone who doesn't "obey".
A semantic side-note:
The term "anti-Americanism" is somewhat ironic because it applies one of the
very concepts that "anti-Americanism" criticises: To say "American" when one
means "U.S.". The semantically correct term would be "anti-U.S.ism".
( Btw, the EU propaganda has copied this concept, talking of "Europe" when
they mean "EU". This is pretty misleading because Europe consists of
>30 countries of which only 15 are EU members. This leads to idiotic
EUphoric claims such as "Switzerland is not yet part of Europe" or that
those who oppose the political structure of the EU are "anti-Europeans"
(in general, quite the contrary is true). )
One may even say that the term "Americans" is reserved for the Native peoples
of the American continent (North and South). Then, the term "anti-
Americanism" is practically reversed to its contrary. Btw, this idea is not
as far-fetched as it may seem, since Nelson Mandela's successor Mbeki (the
President of South Africa) denies to the white South Africans the right to
call themselves Africans -- Mbeki says the term "Africans" is reserved for
Blacks. Talk about ending Apartheid...
Greetings,
Chris
