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Globalization: A Threat To Democracy Essay

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Corporate globalization is a coordinated, coherent suite of initiatives -- and it is unfolding on a canvas much broader than is generally appreciated. Tight budgets, competitive markets, downsized companies -- these aspects of globalization are known to nearly everyone. Those who inform themselves learn that globalization also brings accelerating environmental damage, increased poverty, destabilized societies, a house-of-cards global financial system, and a severe threat to democracy.

But even that does not adequately capture the scope of the globalization project. I hope it will become clear, as this investigation unfolds, that globalization amounts to an overall restructuring of the world order, a political rebuilding project that …show more content…

And again the once-sovereign citizens of republics are being reduced to consuming bread and circuses -- and to unquestioned obedience to arbitrary imperial pronouncements, as
Korea recently learned at the hands of the IMF (International Monetary
Fund), and as Iraq learned under the barrage of Desert Storm.

Globalization also takes us forward in time, to the worst nightmares of science-fiction lore. ID-card technology, already being tested around the world, and the rapidly developing global digital network, are ushering in an era when every person can be tracked from birth, and every activity can be monitored in real time. Meanwhile, thousands of genetic experiments are being unleashed on the world, with utter disdain for the awesome risks involved, and with complete disregard for the ethical and spiritual questions raised by playing God with the very fabric of life. Technology, under globalization, is being developed systematically and recklessly, with the dual aims of defending corporate power and enhancing corporate profits.

US President Bill Clinton opened a recent speech to the UN in Geneva, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of GATT, the first of the global free-trade agreements, with the statement "Globalization is not a policy choice; it is a fact." He is well aware that it is a policy choice, but in the broader sense is he right? Is globalization politically

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