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Few years ago, when I first dealt with the term 'globalization' I had no knowledge of its economic and political effects around the globe. I must say that my understanding of economics was traditional and synonymous of rationalizing the available resources. As the social movements of 'globalization' and 'antiglobalization' began to be part of our daily discourse I didn't side with either movement as I didn't know what kind of explanations people would attach to these movements. My position was that conceptually international trade and free movement of goods and services are good for anybody and any country, but as I would write and make references to globalization and the related side effects I would define the term 'globalization' as 'globalization within the present international legal framework."

Yesterday, we debunked the Free Market and we labeled it as a conspiracy of our big corporations and fortunate sons. The Free Market has been an abstract theory of our hegemonic neoclassical (neoliberal) leadership and its fundamentalism has been preached by the Chicago School of Economics.

In principle, I have learnt to debunk any theory which is preached fundamentally right, but we cannot debunk globalization as globalization is the opportunity for people of different countries to exchange ideas, to learn more from each other, to trade goods and services and to become more complementary for the common good. However, the present 'corporate globalization' is the direct creation of the Free Market and therefore we must replace this 'corporate globalization' in favour of common sense globalization as understood by common living people rather than as understood by inanimate big corporations.

Therefore, readers, don't get confused about the preaching of globalization as our corporate media is more resonant with the corporate agenda of the Free Market than with the predicament of people. The American Prospect has a special segment on globalization, so next time you are confused about globalization go to this site and read the related excellent articles. I have read some of these articles and at this time of war against the global evildoers I found the article "How to Judge Globalism" by Amartya Sen very revealing as for example I didn't know that the first book to be printed occurred in China in 868 a.d. and it was a globalized effort of China, Turkey and India. We appreciated 'globalization' in the past and we must learn to reform our current 'corporate globalization' so that we can appreciate 'globalization' again in the future.

Reference

How to Judge Globalism, by Amartya Sen, The American Prospect, January 1-14, 2002 http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/1/sen-a.html

Globalization Special Segment, The American Prospect http://www.prospect.org/issue_pages/globalization/index.html

Credits: Today's picture is a combination of two images from NASA, the earth and moon and the other, the background is the actual centre of the Universe as seen by the Chandra telescope.