We Are in the Middle of a Global Civil War

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/we-are-middle-global-civil-war



How cozy it would be to summon the retro-spirit of Burt Bacharach to define our geopolitical future and start singing, "What the world needs now / is love, sweet love".

Sorry to scratch the vinyl. We interrupt this lovey-dovey to bring you breaking news. You have been catapulted to the age of the new Hobbesian "hero" - digital and virtual as well as physical.

Casino capitalism - aka turbocharged neoliberalism - is ruthlessly destroying the last vestiges of the welfare state and the egalitarian consensus in the industrialized West, possibly with the odd Scandinavian exception. It has established a "New Normal" consensus, intruding into private lives, dominating the political debate and institutionalizing for good the marketization of life itself - the final act of fierce corporate exploitation of natural resources, land and cheap labor.

Integration, socialization and multiculturalism are being corroded by disintegration, segregation, and widespread de-socialization - a direct consequence of the David Harvey-coined notion of "dis-accumulation" (society devouring its own).

[backscatter712]

1. Don't you love that term, "civil war."

"Oh, pardon me..." *BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*BLAM!*

"I'm terribly sorry..." *FWACKOOM!!!*

With apologies to George Carlin...

[Laelth]

2. Long piece, but well worth reading. k&r n/t

-Laelth

[Berlum]

3. "...the Mad Max phase of globalization..."

Thanks for posting. K & R.

[ucrdem]

4. It sounds like scaremongering but I think he's right.

Big ups for posting this and to Pepe Escobar for saying it. This new crowd isn't just looking for cheap labor and unregulated markets, they want to destroy any state that doesn't fully commodify itself and wreck every safety net everywhere. The way they targeted Spain and Greece, formerly prosperous states with socialist governments and generous welfare systems, was kind of frightening.

And then there was Libya, which used oil revenues to buy citizens cars and houses, and Iraq, which had a publicly financed system of state-sponsored health and higher education. Can't have that, so kaboom, the public works were bombed into atoms and the heads of state were decapitated and publicly sodomized with a hot sword.

And look what they did to Dominique Strauss-Kahn in NYC: not just a take out, but a career-smashing history-making marriage-wrecking royal wipeout. Lot of good it Sarkozy, who lost to a socialist anyway, but yeah, in the last decade or so there's been a determination to destroy or steal the common wealth of nations that I personally haven't witnessed before.