Merril Stevenson is also a bint

Her drivelling endorsement of globalisation is thoroughly one-sided and lacks any sort of objective analysis of its costs to the peasants being paid 80c a day by Nike in The Philippines. It also ignores the cost to future generations who will have to deal with the peasant's irate descendants who have fought their way out of poverty and into semi-industrialisation and can suddenly learn how to make use of such primitive tools as economics, politics and resource management to exact revenge upon their former repressors. Only a crass ignoramus of a Briton can go raving about the wonders of imperialism when our own nation's bloody history in the field is detailed down to the last child-slave, forced-concubine, razed village and stolen natural resource.

Worse still is her gushing enthusiasm for the state of the British Economy:

"Britain got its economic act together just as globalisation was accelerating, in the late 1980s. It has managed to catch and ride the current wave successfully, selling the world financial and business services where once it sold cotton textiles and machines."

I believe that a more accurate statement would be "selling brutal dictatorships advanced jet fighters, military trucks and stun batons to be used on defenceless civilians whilst paying the customer's representatives fat bribes for the privilege".

Please do not get me confused with some balaclava'd anti-globalisation thug smashing the window of a McDonalds. I am very aware that seedy capitalism is the dominant economic paradigm in the Western world and there is little chance to change this with 75% of the money inthe world in the hands of those who profit from such a situation. However democracy is still the dominant political paradigm and it has the power to bring such corrupt and nefarious dealings to account. See my links to voting reform, compulsory voting, Fair Trade and environmental economics. Only Tony stands in the way.

I find it frustrating to have to awake every day to a nation dominated by people who either aren't aware of their own potential to change the world, or- worse still- don't care.


Additional

This article in the Economist gets it right. Merril Stevenson actually links to it in her article as if, in associating herself with a well balanced and written article, her own waffle might somehow be better received. Flippin' scoggin.