The Attack on the Global South
As we saw last week, the US has seen an increase in zero-tolerance policing, repressive tactics, exclusion from the population tactics and the militarization of its police force. In the article, “Neoliberal Globalization and the War on drugs” , we learn that since 1973 violent crime rates (in the US) have remained stable and property crime rates have fallen. What, then, is to account for the explosion in the prison population?… The Geographer Ruth Gilmore states, “it is the greater propensity to lock people up as opposed to peoples greater propensity to do old or new illegal things that accounts for 90% of US prison growth since 1980”. It is the idea that we have to look like we are doing something! In addition the article faults the media with “social spectacle for media profit” practices that have contributed to this war-on-crime attitude embraced by the government, local and federal. And who is targeted..of course it is the minorities and the poor. Thomas Friedman is quoted for his “hidden fist” metaphor as being a necessary part of the free markets hidden hand. Well the same militarized tactic used in the US against the poor is being implemented against the Global South. Just as in the US where the marginalized are often reduced to relying on an informal economy and are targeted because “we have to look like we are doing something”, the Global South, which is being exploited by globalization, and does not benefit from globalization, instead must rely on its own informal economy (at times, the drug world) and thus is targeted. This is yet another example of the powerful few wanting to maintain their stronghold at the expense of the disposable poor. If it weren’t for jihadist anti-globalizers ( I include anti- WTO organizers in this description), who would defend these tactics?
Question: What do anti-globalists need to do in order to bring attention to the targeting of poor countries for their involvement in the world wide drug trade? Does this include halting the engine of globalization? Do you support anti-globalizers if that includes jihadists?
beth
