World Affairs: United We Fall

Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the Nov. '97 issue of my old 'zine The Silicon Valley Review. I decided to reprint it because it's Nov. 30, 1999 as I put this issue you're reading together and I'm hearing about the protests at the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.

A couple of years ago, China, in addition to conducting routine military maneuvers, began to fire milliles close to Taiwan in an effort to scare the smaller nation's government from being too autonomous. The U.S. sent a warship close by as a half-hearted warning to the People's Liberation Army to watch itself. As it turned out, China ended their maneuvers on schedule and nothing came of it. The U.S. warship may have been sent as a message, but no one really expected Uncle Sam to go to war over little Taiwan. Granted, a stray Chinese missile could have accidentally hit the American ship, but even that scenario probably would have ended in apologies, not fighting. Oddly, what struck me as comforting about the whole affair was its newsworthiness, or should I say, lack of it. Not too long ago, if there had been a similar showdown between us and the Soviet Union, the world would be holding its breath, imagining a nuclear holocaust.
This story had to fight for the front page with the latest tips for lowering cholesterol. Why didn't anyone think this would lead to military hostilites? Did people realize that we live in a new age of enlightenment, where governments value human life and avoid war at any cost? No, because we don't. It was because of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pepsi, McDonald's, and almost every other gaudy aspect of American culture foreigners publicly deride but secretly desire. We're sending stuff over there and China's sending stuff over here (though I wouldn't look for any union label). Thank heaven for the GE (global economy), right? Wrong, says a new book entitled, appropriately enough, The Case Against a Global Economy, and a Turn Toward the Local, edited by Jerry Mander (no, I don't know if that's his real name) and Edward Goldsmith. I went to see Mander speak at Booksmith in Haight Ashbury recently and found his arguments rather interesting. The global economy's origins go back after World War II, he says. It was started by a bunch of do-gooders who wanted to avoid World War III. Unfortunately, they put all the power in the hands of greedy corporations.
As a result, we've become a society of unrestrained consumerism where we're told to buy, buy, buy and then quickly throw out. throw out, throw out. This incessant purchasing and disposing of is an environmental nightmare. Landfills rise, and food, grown by poor farmers, is transported (usually 1500 miles away) by airplane to feed the already well-fed. Indigenous peoples, despite defending themselves with spears and arrows, are being uprooted from their land by corporate invaders. With all the travel and exploration, viruses hitch rides and enter communities they normally wouldn't go to. These new disease are reported with ghoulish delight by the news media, yet they never tell you why they're getting around. Many corporations are now larger than entire countries. Mitsubishi, for example, is bigger than South Africa, Indonesia, Turkey, and a host of other nations. Never before has so much of the media been owned by so few. It seems they've all gotten together to be cheerleaders for this new world order. Magazines like The New Yorker andVanity Fair feature articles about Donald Trump and other captains of industry as though they were movie stars. Critics of the GE (i.e. Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, Jerry Brown, Ralph Nader) are lumped together as being oddballs who just aren't with it, despite the vast differences in their ideology. "Protectionist" has become a McCarthy-like slur, when in fact it's perfectly natural for citizens to want to protect their livelihoods.
News analysts expressed their astonishment that Tony Blair's New Labour party solidly defeated John Major's Tory party in the recent U.K. elections, despite the "fact" Britain has recaptured its glory days by toppling Germany and France as Europe's number one economic power. What voting Brits may have noticed that Beltway pundits didn't is that England now has the lowest wages in western Europe... to attract more jobs from global corporations. Mander also wants you to imagine the unrest there will be among Germans when they see their livelihoods lost to lower-paid Portugese workers. That's a pretty good counter argument to the China story mentioned earlier. And speaking of China, no other country comes close to giving corporations a collective orgasm (over one billion served, so never mind the abhorrent human rights abuses). Mander admits he really doesn't have an alternative. He just knows the GE is a disaster waiting to happen. Is it too late to stop it? No, he says. We can vote ourselves out of the GATT and NAFTA treaties and... well... go to bookstores and talk about it. Maybe we ought to shuttup while we're ahead. If they do end up finding life on Mars and Martians work even cheaper than Indonesians, this global economy thing is going to look pretty good in retrospect.

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