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2006 -
March 2006
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Written by Kaia Lai
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Saturday, 25 March 2006 18:26 |
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In the face of mounting pressures to develop an alternative option to globalization - one that emerges from a developing world perspective and prioritizes egalitarian advancement, technological cooperation, and an end to global marginalization of the poor nations - there has been a new push to redefine political and economic arrangements springing from Bretton Woods.
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Any one of them on their own could and should be formidable contender in the world's economy. Joined together even in a loose association they could rival the US, China or Europe.
But it won't happen, and for tragic reasons. Two words: intractable favelization. Each of the three has made fatal compromises for the short term and nearsighted benefit of the rich, who need for their to be poor people in order for them to enjoy being rich (in each of these cultures having poor people as servants in an essential component, if not defining factor, in the definition of wealth).
In short, their fatal weakness is their permanent caste system, one which not only have they failed to eliminate (though each takes pride in their laws that claim to have accomplished this but which are meaningless compared to the reality), but each dollar that goes to the rich only makes the caste system more entrenched and more hopeless.
More and more the poor will be physically separated into semi-autonomous hellish favelas, de facto bantustans, and those on the other side of the gate will become also more and more isolated, trapped in their own prisons behind the gates that are there to protect them.
The situation is hopeless.