Globalisation/Multiculti and the Elites...

[Rorschach]

How the ‘golden handcuffs’ of globalisation lost their grip
The Australian
October 15, 2016
Greg Sheridan
Foreign Editor

The influx of refugees to Europe in their hundreds of thousands has sparked a reversion to nationalism.

Globalisation, the great project of every blatherskite who ever made the pilgrimage to Davos, is in crisis, if not retreat. Everywhere across the West, the peasants are revolting, and the old ideas of the free movement of people, goods, services and capital are under challenge.

Perhaps the high point for globalisation came with the 1999 book The Olive and the Lexus Tree, a celebration of globalisation by The New York Times’ Thomas Friedman. Friedman did for economics and trade what Francis Fukuyama had done a few years earlier for the globalisation of politics with his book The End of History.

At one level, the benefits of globalisation are obvious. Increased trade makes people richer. Well-run immigration programs enrich recipient nations, the immigrants themselves and the societies they leave by setting up new connections with the societies they come to.

Almost no respectable opinion contests those maxims. But, and here is an enormous but, that does not mean democratic electorates lost the right to be consulted about giant social change foisted on them, or that everything done in the name of globalisation is good, or that every international arrangement is better than a national arrangement, or that there is not a problem with nations that “free ride” by expecting others to obey rules that they themselves break.

Friedman and Fukuyama are talented writers. But both their books were shoddy and utterly inaccurate in the way they attempted to impose simplistic formulas on to the whole globe and effectively ignored the vast national differences at play.

If their simplistic hubris represented the consensus among global policymakers, it is no wonder globalisation has gone awry. One of the mistakes of the writers, important not because they are critical figures but because it was so symptomatic, was to equate globalisation with Westernisation. Neither book displayed the slightest understanding of the Asian values debate, which was all about whether, in becoming modern economies, Asian societies also had to adopt Western social values.

Friedman and Fukuyama, and many globalisation evangelists, were as deterministic as old-style Marxists, with Friedman arguing that nations had to place themselves in the “golden handcuffs” of globalisation to prosper, and Fukuyama alleging, even more absurdly, that there was no longer any source of political legitimacy beyond Western liberalism, and only a few nations “trapped in history” failed to see this.

As a result of this shoddy analysis, their predictions of how the world would develop were magnificently wrongheaded. This is important because this type of intellectual error led Western policymakers into so many of the policy mistakes that have led to the present crisis.
For if there is a crisis in globalisation, it is in large part because of policy mistakes that governments have made.

First, the evidence of crisis. Don­ald Trump, for one, completely rejects free trade, seems to reject the US alliance system and demonises immigrants. On trade, at least, Hillary Clinton is no better herself, demonising even trade agreements she negotiated and once championed.

In June, Britain voted by a decisive majority, 52 per cent to 48 per cent, to leave the EU, which was itself once the avatar of globalisation. There is much justified comment about the distance between elite and popular opinion. Think of it this way: two years ago, there would hardly have been a single European on a six-figure salary who would have imagined Britain could vote to leave the EU. But the peasants have their pikestaffs and they mean to make trouble.

In Hungary, 98 per cent of voters in a recent referendum, with an admittedly poor turnout of only 40 per cent, voted that the EU did not have the right to direct Hungary to accept refugees.

All over Europe, all over the world, a new nationalism is challenging the old doctrines of globalisation.

The inability of elite opinion to grapple meaningfully with the new politics was demonstrated in the cover story of The Economist two weeks ago. Its banner headline was “Why they’re wrong, a defence of globalisation”.

The report assembled many useful statistics that I will continuously plunder. It defined globalisation as “the free flow of trade, people and capital around the world”. It then contradicted itself by dealing only with the US and Europe, as though the rest of the world are mere spectators. And it demonstrated a sadly typical intellectual dishonesty in trying to analyse the rebellion against immigration in the West without connecting this with the rise of Islamist terrorism and the cultural and political challenge that political Islamism poses to the West.

As a great man once said, that’s a bit like reviewing Hamlet without mentioning the prince of Denmark.

Globalisation is in crisis partly because it has been messed up by national governments. You cannot defend free trade, greater international investment and large immigration programs by claiming, as The Economist and other Davos man types almost do, that any criticism of any such movements is Neanderthal racism, intolerant bigotry and a sign of poor toilet training.

There are plenty of statistics to show that during the past 15 years segments of Western societies have been left behind. In the US, almost every prime working-age man — 25 to 54 — with a four-year college degree is a member of the labour force. The ratio goes down with declining education level. The old factory jobs that provided ready, steady employment for those with only high school education have declined massively. Many unskilled jobs — at Macca’s or KFC — are casual, poorly paid and have few career prospects.

It is also clear that all across the West, many manufacturing workers have the greatest difficulty finding satisfying permanent new jobs if their factories close. They are hard to retrain and less mobile in search of work than they used to be.

It’s not really clear, however, that most, or even much, of this is a result of globalisation. There is a much cited study suggesting that US manufacturing lost one million jobs directly to China, and maybe 2.4 million jobs overall. But that’s small beer in the giant US labour market. And the US share of global manufacturing output, at 20 per cent, is roughly the same as it has been for the past 40 years.

Technological change, much more than globalisation, has led to the loss of traditional, unskilled jobs. US manufacturing produces more than ever but it is now capital intensive.

High tariffs against China would not protect US jobs that used to be done by human beings and are now done by computers or computer-driven machines. As the internet of things develops, this process will only accelerate.

Moreover, there is extensive evidence that US free trade deals enhance US exports so that they grow much more quickly than exports to nations with which the US has not done FTAs.

Every country is different. Australian manufacturing seems to be in serious, secular decline, mainly because of destructive policies we ourselves adopt — an overly regulated and excessively costly labour market, a high corporate tax rate, a lack of policy competition among states such as many federal systems enjoy and so on.

Overall, it is difficult to see the revolt against globalisation as primarily economic. The US threw up Trump and Bernie Sanders when it is enjoying reasonable economic growth and its unemployment rate is historically low. The same for Britain with Brexit. Poland and Hungary have elected stridently nationalist leaders even though their economic performance during the past decade has been good.

In many Western nations there is a certain stagnation in real incomes for the bottom two-thirds. Western electorates like and want economic growth. Some European nations, such as Spain and Greece, have condemned themselves to chronic high unemployment as a result of their own policies and EU regulation. Thus, if the EU represents globalisation, its member nations and their populations are right to try to throw it off or at least change it fundamentally.

Some of the revolt against globalisation is very specific. No Western European electorate is happy with the vast irregular influx of low-skilled Muslim immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East. Everyone in Europe wants to regain control of their borders.

Which is part of what leads to the conclusion that much of the revolt against globalisation is cultural.

An important insight into this is evident in the conservative Claremont Review of Books, which published an essay justifying support for Trump called “The Flight 93 Election”.

The conceit of the title is that the US is in as desperate a situation as the famed Flight 93 on 9/11, when the passengers stormed the cockpit in a doomed effort to retake control of the plane from the terrorists. They failed and all aboard died but it was their only chance.

The anonymous author argues that conservatives have been so unsuccessful in the US during the past several decades that their only chance now is to ride and amplify the populist revolt of Trump. This is fascinating in part because American conservatives typically believe the US has suffered a moral decline, yet obviously if the answer is Trump the question is not a moral question.

The author argues instead that Trump has three sound instincts — to halt Mexican immigration (Muslims figure much less in this essay), to manage trade directly so that American industry and jobs are protected, and to retreat from America’s global security role.

This is unintentionally enlightening in several ways. First, the author shares with the Left the demonisation of trade and the failure to understand how technology transforms jobs. Second, the author also stands with the Left in wanting a far less assertive and committed US internationally. The conservative author should really praise Barack Obama, though he doesn’t, for no modern president has overseen greater security withdrawal by the US.

That part of the US revolt against globalisation which sees US allies as free riders has a strong element of justice. But the US has provided global security not just because it is generous and decent, though that is a big part of it, but because this is eminently in America’s own interests.

Most liberal internationalists who defend the global rules-based order are themselves dishonest in acknowledging how completely this order depends on the US role in global security, and how dangerous the world would be without this US commitment.

The widespread objection to immigration in the US and Europe is an objection to illegal and uncontrolled immigration. Australia has per capita one of the largest immigration programs in the world. Once we regained control of our borders, and stopped the flow of illegal boats to our north, this has never been controversial. It is a paradigm of immigration success.

But almost all conventional analysis of globalisation leaves out the most important dynamics of globalisation as it operates today.

One is the globalisation of both Islam and Islamist extremism. Just as Friedman and Fukuyama viewed globalisation as Westernisation, though they didn’t say this, the globalisation of Islam is the Arabisation of Islam in non-Arabic Islamic countries, such as Indonesia and Malaysia, so that the conflicts of Middle East Islam are themselves globalised.

Another is the globalisation of social media. Bill Clinton sagely observed this week that the newest and most obnoxious prejudice is the prejudice against being around people we disagree with.

This is part of the globalisation of social prejudice. You can believe the Queen is a drug runner, that the Zionists control the American media, that the one-world government UN conspiracy has recruited Obama to beggar the American economy, or any other crazy thing you like, and spend your whole life in the virtual company of fellow delusionists from all over the world on social media.

There is also the globalisation of celebrity. Kim Kardashian is as famous in Albania as on the New Jersey shore, and the values she transmits infect global culture.

This is not unrelated to the globalisation of pornography. Pornography lives on the net now. It is becoming more sadistic and humiliating of women than ever . And its popularity is astonishing. According to The New Yorker, Pornhub alone has had 78 billion page views. XVideos is among the 60 most popular websites in the world. Numerous porn sites get more views than CNN.

It is not too much of a stretch to suggest that this has something to do with the willingness of large numbers of people to accept candidates such as Trump. The sustained coarsening of almost every aspect of popular culture has long-term consequences.

All these dynamics are the unanticipated and irresistible forces of globalisation as it works today. Western electorates recognise instinctively something is wrong. They are groping in the dark, searching for an answer. None of their leaders is yet talking to them honestly about the problems.

[Rorschach]

‘My friend was wed at 13, a mum at 14’: how authorities failed child brides
The Australian
October 31, 2016
Caroline Overington

An Iraqi-born Australian who ­attended Islamic schools in Sydney’s west says she tried to report multiple counts of child marriage among her school friends to the Australian Federal Police without success.

Bee al-Darraj, now 24, has a thick file of correspondence ­between her and the AFP, as well as with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the NSW Department of Family and Community Services, concerning girls she knew at school, who were taken out of Australia and married at age 12 or 13. Some of the girls were her relatives.

The Australian has declined to name them, but has seen some of Ms al-Darraj’s correspondence, in which she pleads for action to be taken, ­especially in relation to a girl who was 13 when she married and “14 when she gave birth in a public hospital, with a 28-year-old father signing the birth certificate”. “She was still in school but nothing was done until he started to beat her, and then she was put in a safe house,” Ms al-Darraj said.

NSW Family and Community Services Minister Brad Hazzard last month declared the problem of child marriage — involving girls being taken out of Australia to marry men they don’t know, or to whom they may be related — as barbaric and cruel, but also rife in certain communities. The AFP has confirmed it investigated 69 incidents of forced or underage marriage in the 2015-16 financial year, up from 33 the previous year, but there has been only a handful of successful prosecutions.

In a statement, the AFP told The Australian the girls central to Ms al-Darraj’s complaint were ­beyond the reach of Australian law because they had been married ­before 2013.

“Forced marriage was criminalised in March 2013,” the statement said. “The legislation was not retrospective so the AFP is not in a position to investigate matters where a marriage or arrangement occurred prior to March 2013.”

Ms al-Darraj said she had since contacted the AFP with more ­examples, and was told to contact 000. The AFP confirmed this: “If someone is at risk of harm due to forced marriage or any other type of family ­violence, they should contact police on 000. Members of the public who have any information about people involved in forced marriage are urged to contact Crime Stoppers.”

Ms al-Darraj was dismayed by the reaction of authorities “because it’s child trafficking, and they know it’s wrong, but it’s like they have no idea what to do, and if the girls have already left Australia, they can’t do anything”.

Ms al-Darraj’s family came to Australia from Iraq in 1995. She was then one of six children; she is now one of nine, all of whom ­attended Islamic schools, including al-Faisal College in Auburn, Rissalah College in Lakemba and the Australian Islamic College of Sydney in Mount Druitt. She said her father was “pro-education. He wanted his girls to finish school, and maybe even college. But my mother is very old-fashioned”. She said she left home when her mother chose a husband for her, “and even bought the dress”.

She is one of only two sisters in her family still living in Australia.

Ms al-Darraj said she knew of other girls at al-Faisal High School in Auburn who “were married, and they would come to school, a 15-year-old getting dropped off by her 30-year-old husband”.

“For some of them, they want freedom from all the rules at home. And their mother will say, ‘if you don’t like it, get married, and have freedom at your husband’s house’, so they do.”

The al-Faisal school was ­founded in Sydney by families linked to Saudi Arabia’s royal family. It adheres strictly to a code of modesty for girls, who cannot wear short-sleeved uniforms, even in summer. The hijab is compulsory, and skirts are to the floor.

The principal, Ghazwa Adra Khan, did not respond to questions about whether any of the ­students had, to her knowledge, left Australia to marry. The Australian is not suggesting anyone at the schools knew of wrongdoing or failed to report wrongdoing.

Ms al-Darraj said many families “try to hide what they are doing. They might bring a girl over from Iraq or Iran for marriage, and everyone knows she is the bride but if questions are asked, she is the niece, or a family friend. And if the police, or the Department (of Family Services) speak to the girl, she’s terrified. Or else, it’s normal for her”.

She told The Australian her mother wanted her to get married when she was still a schoolgirl but she refused, and fled the family home at the age of 15.

“DOCS (the former Department of Community Services, now Department of Family Services) put me in a safe house with homeless kids who were doing drugs,” she said. She eventually found work as a hairdressing apprentice, and then in an antiques shop in the Blue Mountains, where she now lives. She has no contact with her parents.

Ms al-Darraj decided several years ago to report what she had seen as a schoolgirl to the police, “and it was like a never-ending ­circle”. “Sometimes I was told, we can’t do anything because they are in Iraq. Or else they told me, they should go to the embassy. But how can they go to the embassy when they aren’t allowed out of the house?” she said.

Ms al-Darraj finally began discussing the matter openly with Australian ­author Gabrielle Lord, whose novel Dishonour features an Australian fleeing an arranged marriage. “I found a lot of resistance to my book when I wrote it,” Lord told The Australian. “We all know this is happening in certain communities, but people told me to tone it down because it’s sensitive. But it’s just so wrong. Who’s side are we on? The parents or the girls?”

At one point during her correspondence with Australian authorities, Ms al-Darraj was attempting to get new passports for family members whose husbands had confiscated old ones.

A DFAT officer referred Ms al-Darraj to officials in Iraq, adding “the current security situation in Iraq” meant that “services from the Australian embassy in Baghdad would be limited” and also that “passport applications for ­minors without their parents’ consent are complex”.

In another email, a DFAT officer also explains that “the ­commonwealth legislation which criminalises the act of causing a person to enter into marriage without their full and free consent is not retrospective”.

[Outlaw Yogi]

I reckon there'll be money to be made from jack boots and claw hammers in the near future.