I would like to commend Rick Salutin for including the world “Globalisation” in his analysis of the current financial crisis (It’s the uneconomy, stupid!-Comment, Nov. 28). http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20081128.COSALUTIN28/TPStory/specialComment/columnists
Despite the media’s intense focus on the crisis, I have yet to see another mainstream journalist use this term, despite the central role of the schemes collectively referred to as “Globalisation” in creating the crisis we now face.
The media has done a dismal job of explaining what caused the crisis, often appearing to go out of its way to AVOID talking about its root causes. Perhaps this can be partially attributed to the fact that, aside from a handful of standouts, the entire media threw its support behind these schemes, and went to great lengths to ignore the message of the so-called ‘Anti-Globalisation Movement’, often demonizing it in the process. Another reason is that the criticism highlighted the deep-rooted corruption inherent throughout the political systems of most capitalist nation-states, an issue the media simply is not prepared to deal with or even acknowledge.
I thought that when the organizations responsible for "Globalisation" (The G8, G20, IMF, and World Bank) laughably claimed that the problem demanded that they be allowed to "reorganize the Global economy", surely the media would respond with some skepticism. Shamefully, they did not, and instead, repeated the rhetoric originating with these institutions and politicians/corporate lackies.
Like the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan, which vindicated the massive anti-war movement (which the media treated as it had the "anti-Globalisation Movement"), the "global financial meltdown” proved that those concerned citizens around the world that warned about these policies - and faced all forms of government repression in the process - were on the right track fifteen years ago. I had hoped that the media, whose stance was inversely proven wrong by these events, would begin to include the viewpoints of these groups in their coverage of the disasters. Sadly, I was wrong on both counts, and when the public started abandoning the traditional media for the “blogs”, which did include these opinions (or are written by the activists themselves), I believed that the bottom line would force the media to change course. Sadly, much of the media responded to this loss of revenue with layoffs and “downsizing”, which only further degrades their product. (But as Ruppert Murdoch, owner of Faux News famously said “The newsmedia's job is to sell soap”. Sadly, it would appear that many of those currently in control of our media share his views.) I still hope this will change, as the crisis predictably deepens, and its effects become more pronounced.
But I'm not holding my breath.
Nonetheless, the few broken windows and exaggerated ‘violent clashes with police’ that the media focused on, while busy ignoring the prudent warnings of the protesters, pale in comparison to the failure of the global economic system, which these groups predicted so long ago. Jordan Thornton
