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A Decade of Evidence Demonstrates The Dramatic Failure Of Globalisation

by Graham Vanbergen, TruePublica

According to wikipedia, globalisation is the process of international integration arising from the interchange of world views, products, ideas and other aspects of culture.  However, over the last ten years there has been a sea change decline in all the indicators that would measure the success of this model.  Democracy, economic growth, freedom and an interchange of world views and culture has all but been abandoned to a vice like grip of globalisation driven more  by the corporate principles of power and greed resulting in war, terrorism, a biblical refugee crisis, fear and a fully co-opted media.
The Economist has just published its annual index on democracy.  They found that out of 167 countries, only twenty are “full democracie s”. Less than 13 per cent of the world’s countries can now claim to be a democracy.  Given that America has graciously forced so much democracy on the world, one could be forgiven for thinking all is not well.
In the meantime, Freedom House have published their annual Freedom Index that makes for just as sobering reading. It found that the number of countries showing a decline in freedom for the year, 72 to be precise, was the largest since the 10-year slide began.  Over the past 10 years, 105 countries have seen a net decline.  Think about that fact for a moment.
Unsurprisingly, ratings for the Middle East and North Africa region were the worst in the world during the course of 2015, followed closely by Eurasia.  It also found that over the last decade, the most significant global reversals have been in the rule of law.
Not to be outdone, the World Press Freedom Index published recently found that most of the movement in the world press was indicative of a climate of fear and tension combined with increasing control over newsrooms by governments and private-sector interests.  The Index asserts that leaders across the world are now paranoid about journalists. And they don’t just mean the dictators and despots of countries many people have never heard of.
To make matters worse, the UNHCR Global Trends report finds 65.3 million people, or one person in 113, were displaced from their homes by conflict and persecution during last year alone.  There are now more people displaced from their homes by force than there was from the last cataclysmic episode in human history than at the end of the second world war.
The UNHCR report also finds that the wave of global displacements is now four times greater than it was just ten years ago.
In an environment or war and fear other distasteful acts of human depravity unfolds.  The 2016 Global Slavery Index estimates that 45.8 million people are now subject to some form of modern slavery in the world today.  This number is greater than at any time in history, let alone the last decade.
There are now many more slaves in the world than at the height of the slave trade in the 1800’s.  Back then, the world only required eleven million slaves, today it’s over four times that number.  Those countries with the highest absolute numbers of people in modern slavery are India, China, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Uzbekistan.  It should not be forgotten that these countries provide the low-cost labour that produces consumer goods for markets in Western Europe, Japan and North America.
Emergent in this new global climate are rival factions, belligerents, radical groups, extremists and governments behaving in an extreme fashion who are often highly adept at their own terror strategies. Amongst all this, innocent people are trapped in their millions.
Last year the Global Terrorism Index reported that “in 2014 the total number of deaths from terrorism increased by 80 per cent when compared to the prior year.  This is the largest yearly increase in the last 15 years.  In fact, since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been over a nine-fold increase in the number of deaths from terrorism, rising from 3,329 in 2000 to 32,685.  Terrorism is spreading to more countries, with the number of countries experiencing more than 500 deaths increasing 120 per cent from the previous year with a 172 per cent increase in the deaths of private citizens.”  The 2016 report will surely make depressing reading.
Across the West we are seeing counter-espionage and counter-terrorist measures being misused in the guise of security.  Laws are being passed year after year allowing mass surveillance, previously considered illegal until Edward Snowden blew the whistle on this shadowy world.  Civil liberties and civil rights are being dismantled all over the globe.  In Britain, the most surveilled country in the world, the government even wants to discard the Human Rights Act.
Conflicts of interest have massively increased in the last decade.  The West is now experiencing the vice like grip of increasing corporate power in the shape of trade agreements such as TTIP, TPP and CETA which have little to do with free trade and much more to do with profit leading to widespread corruption.  Just 147 transnationals out of a total of 43,000 corporations operating worldwide now controls an eye-watering 40 per cent of global trade.  In America, just ten companies control almost all manufactured food.
trade-globalization1
Transnational organisations, huge as they are, employ less than 20 million people worldwide, less than one half of one per cent of the world population, whilst 1.8 billion adults remain unemployed.
Even the United Nations has been highjacked by a slow motion corporate coup d’état that over the last ten years has seen the needs of people replaced by the demands of corporations.
The Panama Papers, Swiss leaks and Lux leaks have all combined to graphically demonstrate that what we have now is nothing more than anarchy by the rich and powerful. Social democracy is being dismembered by a surge of austerity where corporate power is usurping political power as revolving doors and lucrative contracts bribe politicians. At the same time we see unimaginable wealth being hidden in tax havens that is literally starving entire nations and depriving people of basics. It is estimated that well over $30 trillion of illegal cash is hidden from tax authorities, mostly by corporations who do not wish to contribute to the societies that raise, educate and provide healthcare for their own workers.
Authorities have tightened their grip on state media and in many cases privately-owned networks have swallowed up so much competition that they now drive national narratives, mainly for corporate interests. In the last ten years there has been a significant decline in media competition. Just one company, Google has an unassailable grip on what we see and hear. Combined with Facebook, we are now hearing of scientific evidence that these huge corporations can determine the outcome of elections. Governments are now fearful of their ability to silently swing opinion, hence both enjoy very low taxes and any form of real governance as their reward.
The world is being battered by wave after wave of crisis that has taken the form of aggression and fear resulting in a battle of states and corporations dependent on the acquisition and sale of natural resources. The principle of globalisation is now a win-at-all-costs scenario. This is globalisation at its shiniest.
The result of the sheer scale of conflict of interest, a piratical banking system, a fully controlled media and the creeping colonisation of nations by corporate domination is that over 70 per cent of the entire adult population of continental Europe now believes corruption by their government is endemic not just to their own country but that of the entire European Union.
And yet, one index, largely ignored by the global establishment press in this context is the Happy Planet Index.  he HPI is the leading measure of sustainable wellbeing.  It combines four elements – wellbeing, life expectancy, inequality of outcomes, and ecological footprint.  It aims to show how efficiently residents of different countries are using environmental resources to lead long, happy lives.
No G8 country appears in the top 30.  The UK ranks 34th but it still comes out ahead of France (44th) and Germany (49th).  For all of its grand-standing of exceptionalism and global lecturing, America limps in at a thoroughly miserable 108th.
The overall results highlight success stories in Latin America and Asia Pacific, where residents enjoy relatively high and equally distributed life expectancy and wellbeing, while leaving a smaller ecological footprint than other more advanced economies.
It might surprise you to now that the tiny tropical nation of Costa Rica made it to the number one position – for the third time in a row.
In Costa Rica, people are living longer, and are more satisfied with life than people living in all western societies. What really sets the country apart is that it has managed to combine long, happy lives with an environmental impact that’s little more than one third (per capita) of the USA’s.
You might ask how it has achieved such wellbeing. For a start, it abolished its army in 1949. Costa Rica then reallocated its entire defence budget to funding better quality education, health and pensions. In Britain, that would equate to about £55 billion every year, in the USA about $600 billion.
There has been a culture of forming solid social networks of friends, families and neighbourhoods and this has proved to be an invaluable factor contributing to Costa Rican’s high levels of overall wellbeing.
Costa Rica also stands out as a world leader when it comes to environmental protection. It has just managed to achieve over 95% of electricity from renewable sources and the government is way ahead of all other wealthier nations, having committed the country to becoming completely carbon neutral by 2021.
For so-called world leaders, surely, here lies a model that requires little explanation of a route to success whilst proving what a total disaster globalisation has been to billions of people across the world so far.


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maatheru
maatheru
Aug 25, 2016 5:47 PM

Reblogged this on maatheru and commented:
Costa Rica shows the world the real meaning of “wealth”

tutisicecream
tutisicecream
Aug 24, 2016 11:28 AM

Interesting analysis of the current state of the world.
Globalisation was always a cipher for Financial Imperialism.
In reality it enabled the bankers’ financialised ponzi schemes to carry on unabated for decades longer. Unfortunately this return to orthodox feudalism hidden by the failure of economist to understand the classical economic model of debt outstripping production led us to the financial crisis of 2008. A crisis which is still unwinding. So now with waged labour declining and debt increasing a total collapse of the current system is inevitable unless the system is rebalanced.
Read Dirk Bezemer and Michael Hudson’s latest analysis:
http://michael-hudson.com/2016/08/finance-is-not-the-economy/

John
John
Aug 24, 2016 3:41 PM
Reply to  tutisicecream

Thank you for the link to the article, which I found most interesting.
I have passed the link on to others I know who I believe will also find it of interest.

rtj1211
rtj1211
Aug 24, 2016 8:02 AM

Costa Rica has a number of factors behind its ability to be almost entirely fuelled by sustainable energy:
An equatorial climate meaning that heating homes at night is less necessary than at higher latitudes.
A lack of heavy industry requiring major energy inputs.
A large number of volcanoes to provide geothermic energy.
Recent high rainfalls allowing generation of a lot of hydroelectric power.
The green nutters say that ‘climate change’ caused recent droughts in Costa Rica (which reduces the chance for hydroelectric power), providing no data as to whether Costa Rica had miraculously never suffered analogous droughts before 1950 (when climate change must have started since before then we humans didn’t defile the earth enough). I remain 100% convinced that the reason for this is that they haven’t looked for any data in case it shattered their carefully created narrative……
I admire what Costa Rica has done, but you couldn’t do what they do in Britain. We’ve already got lots and lots of hydropower. We don’t have any volcanoes. We’re doing our best to shut down all our heavy industry (aluminium smelting, steel production etc). But we still need plenty of other power stations because wind and solar aren’t going to do it.

John
John
Aug 24, 2016 8:30 AM
Reply to  rtj1211

Some years ago, I seem to recall there being talk about something called hot rocks technology.
This involved pumping water down deep bore holes to where the temperature would be hot enough to heat the water and turn it into steam, which would then be used to generate electrical power.
This was supposed to take place in the west country, where the underlying rock structures are mainly granite.
Rather like fracking but without the attendant pollution.
Over the last few years, I have heard nothing further about this proposal.
Did anything come of this idea?
If “No”, I can only assume a cost-benefit analysis showed that it would take more energy to pump the water down and the steam up from the hot rocks to a generator and thus the idea was infeasible and unviable.
Is that the case? Does anyone know?

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Aug 24, 2016 10:24 PM
Reply to  John

Hot rocks technology works in Australia, unfortunately you need customers for the power and in central Australia customers are few and far between, but, ‘hope springs eternal’
http://reneweconomy.com.au/2014/geodynamics-sees-hope-for-hot-rocks-in-supporting-gas-development-48852

Jen
Jen
Aug 24, 2016 1:35 PM
Reply to  rtj1211

I suppose Britain has missed an opportunity to negotiate with Iceland to build an undersea pipeline that could tap some of that country’s geothermal energy?

John
John
Aug 24, 2016 4:34 PM
Reply to  Jen

They are just too sensible in Iceland.
They let their banks fail, while Britain bailed them out.
Iceland also has had the wisdom to stay outside the EU.
I believe their social welfare and education system is superior to Britain.
We could learn a lot from Iceland – if only we had learning politicians.
Maybe Jeremy Corbyn will be more of a listening Prime Minister.

Brian Harry, Australia
Brian Harry, Australia
Aug 24, 2016 10:32 PM
Reply to  John

Icelanders are tough people. They’re ‘Vikings’ who take shit from no one. They stood up to the International Banksters and kicked them out(and jailed some at the top).
If only Britain and America had had the ‘balls’ to do the same.

Secret Agent
Secret Agent
Aug 24, 2016 7:06 AM

Globalization was only ever about making the world safe for oligarchs. It’s really imperialism 2.0 only this time everybody is colonized and exploited.
Makes me wonder , where are the left wingers when you need them?

John
John
Aug 24, 2016 7:37 AM
Reply to  Secret Agent

Recently, we had Bernie Sanders in the US but he was outmanoeuvred by the Clinton Gang.
In the UK, we have Jeremy Corbyn but he has come under ferocious attack from the entire mass media proprietor class.
From the Thatcher/Reagan era onwards, all the money, power and influence has been behind the neo-cons.
That is why so-called globalisation has become largely unchallenged over the last 35 years or so.
The next phase of development is the development of a counter-reactionary force called neo-feudalism.
We already have a new class of people – the precariat – who try to exist on zero hours contracts and food banks.
Eventually, all forms of welfare benefits will be cut completely and people will have to give up their freedoms.
Eventually, people will have to subsist as members of a servant class, relying on their employers for food and lodging.
This feudalist form of society existed before. Who – or what – is to say it cannot return again in some slightly new form?
It is seemingly true that the next generation – or 99.9% of it – will not enjoy the same quality of life as their parents.
This seems to be a widely “received” “wisdom” of today.
Neo-feudalism is just a matter of time.
It is a matter of when – not if – it happens at this rate of development.

John
John
Aug 24, 2016 6:46 AM

Fascinating, understandable analysis.
My one query is over the financial/economic state of Costa Rica.
My understanding is that they are bankrupt. Is that not the case?
Otherwise, the scenario being projected here is somewhere between Orwell’s “1984” and the film “Rollerball”.
We must all attend to this if people are to lead free lives in the future.
The march of the machines (robots) is making human lives redundant and expendable.
Is that why new robots are being programmed to eliminate human life in future?
Will – in future – humans be hunted down like foxes in a fox hunt for “sport” and recreation of the wealthy?

joekano76
joekano76
Aug 24, 2016 3:54 AM

Reblogged this on TheFlippinTruth.