Last weekend was marked by new anti-globalization campaigns, this time in Perth, Australia, where a Commonwealth’s summit had kicked off.According to Alex Bainbridge, one of the campaign’s initiators, they are advocating for observation of human rights, protection of the environment, protesting against nuclear weapons and corruption. The Australian protesters condemned the war in Afghanistan, which has been on for more than 10 years, “the greed of corporations” and the growing gap between the poor and the rich.[1] Also last weekend, new protest campaigns under “Occupy Wall Street” motto, which had become a worldwide slogan, took place in Oregon and Texas.
It is generally accepted that the history of the anti-globalization movement began in December 1999, when first properly organized campaigns against the new global financial order were held during the WTO summit in Seattle. In January 2001, the World Social Forum was held in the Brazilian city of Porto-Alegre which gathered more than 11,000 delegates from 122 countries and laid down the foundations of the anti-globalization movement. Since then the scale of the campaigns have been growing. The recent mass riots in London, has shown that anarchists, nationalists, leader of ethnic groups, members of criminal gangs also gather under the banners of the anti-globalization movement. The current global financial crisis has added “Occupy Wall Street” slogan to a wide assortment of tools used by anti-globalists. This slogan is understood and accepted by common people in the US and Europe, who suffered from social-economic unrest. The main slogans are usual: fighting unfair “new world order”, unlimited power of transcontinental corporations and financial institutions.
The growing influence of anti-globalists as a channel of expression of public discontent is directly linked with the global crisis. Everything is developing almost exactly as it was predicted in early 2009 in the report by the US’ National Intelligence Council. Predicting fragmentation and deformation of the global order into regional and other blocs in the coming 15-20 years, the authors of the report promised the coming of slowdown in economic development and globalization, less efficient steps aimed at the settlement of international issues, such as climate change and energy efficiency, as well as potential growth of political instability.
Some experts draw the main dividing line in the global community between the US and Europe. A well-known American political analyst Robert Kagan claims that “in Europe, this paranoid, conspiratorial anti-Americanism is not a far-left or far-right phenomenon. It’s the mainstream view”. [2]
The remarks of the American experts are partially right but they don’t reflect the true picture on the whole. The matter is, that it was the US and its close allies, which in the last ten years were bringing nearer “the collapse of the world order” boosting anti-globalization movement. At the threshold of the centuries NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, invasion of Afghanistan by the US and their allies and finally the aggression against Iraq switched the stresses in the global politics and gave birth to the opposition in different social classes.
In 2003, at the world economic forum in Davos, then US Secretary of State Colin Powell openly proclaimed the main principle of the US policy: the sovereign right to use military force in time and place where the US finds it relevant. [3]. The opinion poll conducted by the Time magazine showed that 80% of respondents in Europe see the US as the main peace-breaker. Even in neighboring Canada more than 36% of respondents said the US was the source of the strongest threat to peace. For reference – 21% named Al Qaeda, 17% – Iraq, 14% – North Korea. In 2003, a week before the forum in Davos, the Davos Sociological Service conducted its own survey, which revealed that absolute majority of respondents trusted only the heads of non-governmental organizations. In descending order they were followed by the UN officials, representatives of religious organizations, and only then leaders of West European countries and heads of business corporations. The US government happened to be at the bottom of the list [4]. Since then the protests sentiments in the world have been growing.
The anti-globalism movement has not only “American” but also “European” roots. The European community is getting more and more tired of the existing political models with same political parties (slightly differ from each other) changing each other in power. All this is topped by the EU machine which is incapable of preventing conflicts and financial-economic crises, while regularly pumping billions of Euros from tax payers’ pockets.
Such a fortress of the “new world order” as NATO does not look much better. On October 27, NATO’s Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen confirmed that his organization would continue to achieve its goals by using hard force, and the issues linked with the use of force will prevail on the agenda of NATO’s summit in Chicago in May 2012.
Thus, NATO plans to continue the list of military operations it opened in the early 1990-s in Yugoslavia. It is in Yugoslavia where the foundations of systematic undermining of the international law and the spread of fake information were laid.
Speaking at the presentation of the historical project “Srebrenica” in Belgrade, Edward Herman, an American expert and co-author (with Noam Chomsky) of the study on the role of propaganda model in mass media said that the massacre in Srebrenica had become the propaganda trick which enabled the US and its allies in NATO to demonize Serbs and to pave the way to humanitarian interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya and in future – in other countries. Inevitably, stronger protests under anti-globalization and anti-Americanism slogans will be response to this.
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[1] AFP 280720 GMT OCT 11
[2] The Washington Post Weekly, 10.02.2003
[3] The New York Times, 27.01.2003
[4] The Financial Times, 15.01.2003
Source: Strategic Culture Foundation
Great article… Could I also add that the anti globalist movement is also very stong in Australia.