Globalization and democracy

"Democracy is the only game in town" claims author Jorge Heine, but juxtapose that claim with this one:

"Capitalism is the only game in town".

If by capitalism we mean the regulated, post-1945 version, in West Germany - Ordoliberalism - then perhaps that was as good as it gets.

But globalization was the work of the US right, the neocons, and 'thinkers' like Leo Strauss, who saw democracy as a deliberate con, a means of winning acceptance of the fact that a group of Plato's 'Guardians' would run the world, acknowledging that Plato had it right when he wrote:

"The wise shall lead and rule, and the ignorant shall follow".

That's the democracy we have currently, and it can be seen in the European bailouts, and the policy of the UK coalition, in which the weak and the marginalsed are to make the sacrifices necessary to propitiate those gods of corporate capital: the bankers.

The one's who caused the crisis with their greed and hubris.

openDemocracy  11 May 2011

The global food crisis:
ABCD of food – how the multinationals dominate trade

This extraordinary concentration of power and money in the global food trade has been identified by Oxfam in a new report this week as one of the structural flaws of the system.

At each stage a handful of players dominate, not just in primary agriculture but in food manufacturing and retailing.

The result, according to Oxfam, is that "they extract much of the value along the chain, while costs and risks cascade down on to the weakest participants, generally the farmers and labourers at the bottom".

Oxfam is the latest in a long line of critics to highlight this corporate concentration as a root cause of hunger and poverty ... Gdn  02 June 2011  

Food Crunch