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Julian Kunnie Part 1-- The Dangers of Globalization-- Time to End Capitalism Or WIll Capitalism End Us?


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Broadcast 1/15/2016 at 21:16:23 (0 Listens, 0 Downloads, 0 Itunes)
The Rob Kall Bottom Up Radio Show Podcast

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This is the first of a two part interview. Click on the series link to access the second half of the audio and, when they become available, the transcripts.

Julian E. Kunnie is a professor of religious, Latin American Middle Eastern and North African studies at the University of Arizona. he is the author of The Cost of Globalization: Dangers to the earth and it's people.

Rob; Let's get started with definitions. How do you define globalization.

people talk about global vision, global village, ways people have been connected like never before.

This has been a process that has been generated in the past 30 years. But the particular dimension that I discuss in my book -- the effects of globalization-- on

on ecology, extinction, erosion of indigenous people's lands and sacred sites, intensification of prison industrial complex, escalation of the national security state, the war against terrorism, war on drugs.

Globalization is essentially a re-colonization of the world, a realignment of the word by a tiny elite oligarchy, who control the wealth of the world.

You have definitions of globalizations from the ruling classes-- from the perspective of those who benefit-- opening to markets, reduction of trade barriers, expansion of the free market, elimination of regulations"

it is essentially a deceptive ideology that has entrapped the vast majority of people and creatures of the world into these tight, constricted structures of poverty, ecologically destruction

Rob: an you write in your book that most of what is written on globalization is written by the people who benefit from globalization and their academics.

The top 80 people own 3.5 billion people.

Rob: What do you mean "own?"

People say that globalization is inevitable.

People benefit from this-- academics, politicians, corporations" You have t his eruption of millionaires and billionaires"

We are now faced with the reality, with the possibility of human beings becoming extinct, with life as we know it becoming obsolete.

Rob: How do you see globalization-- how do indigenous, aboriginal people see it

We all are indigenous by virtue of being children of the earth. The question is those who are aware of it and embrace it, like the Masai, the Native Americans, the people of Papua Guinea, who refuse to assimilate into this modern , dominant, capitalist western oriented culture, and who are determined to revere and retain their original ways of being and knowing, holding onto languages, ceremonies"

Rob: You talk in your book about hundreds of millions of indigenous people

I work with the UN forum on indigenous peoples"

That org is a formal recognition that there are indigenous peoples that had a right to live in the world as they understand the world to be.

There are millions in Mexico, US, South America, Africa, Asia, in Russia, India, in the South Pacific" and I have visited, done research with various indigenous peoples around the world. When you talk about hundreds of millions of indigenous peoples, that's the low end.

Indigenous peoples are in fact now asserting their rights for autonomy, self government".

European (Celtic, Sammi?)

You see election of an indigenous presidents Morales in Bolivia, Chavez in Venezuela and Maduro.

Rob: Why don't you give us a definition of indigenous people

These are people who are those who have never surrendered their birthright, land right, their ancestral ways, people who understand their reality and way of being, who, having continuities with pre-invasion, pre-colonial societies, consider themselves separate from the current societies.

Those are the indigenous peoples from who we all come.

Indigenous peoples say "we all received the same instructions on how to live."

Those who refuse to accept their indigeneity-- if we refuse to do that. we do that with legal consequences.

Rob: You go beyond listening to indigenous voices-- you say that we need to seek indigenous solutions

We need to return to who we really are.

Rob: I mention Robert Wolff's book-- What It is To Be Human

Leon Shenandoah tadadaho faithkeeper

Book-- To Become a Human Being-- he's talking about the native tradition and how

Indigenous peoples say there is no progress because the earth does not make progress. The earth continues relentlessly and we are reflections of that. With progress we don't evolve, we devolve.

People like Kramer have worked on human devolution

We move further and further away from who we are. We take on these false identities.

We' weren't meant to sit in front of the screen 10 hours a day. We were n't meant to be sedentary. This is because we have moved away from our humanity as being an intrinsic part of the natural world. We are nature, We can't get away from that.

The indigenous people of Australia say

we are here in this time, in this place to learn, to love and to grow and then we return home.

Rob: When You talk about globalization, you're talking about globalized capitalism.

It's like raping a woman for immediate gratification-- capitalism operates with the same principle" let's get as much as we can, by any means possible, in the shortest time possible, where everyone is expendable, everything is a commodity, nothing is sacred except for the accumulation of profit. To use that as a religious principle. And globalization has given this aura of greed respectability, has sacralized it and made the pursuit of unbridled greed a principle for people to live by. It is now endemic, essential to everything we do" look at religious institutions, at government, at corporations, at the medical situations,

Rob: I bring up bottom-up and connection consciousness.

When I sit with my students we sit in a culture. We don't have a square culture

interdependence, interwovenness, about integration and sociality that underscores the fact that we are all related

Lakota principle ". Mitakuye oyasin all our relations

This is a sacred canonical principle from timeless generations that we understand ourselves to be connected not" so called privatized individuality-- this right to accumulate as much as I want to because that's my right". and if you don't have the same it's because you're a fool and deserve to be on the street.

When you talk about bottom-up, I walk a lot and run and bike a lot, I begin to see the world from the perspective of the rabbit, the bird, the snake, and you begin to see the world from the bottom-side up.

Upside Down by Eduardo Galeano

Talks about how we are messed up because the world is upside down-- we are heavily confused.

When you talk about bottom-up ". you are talking about the voiceless, the ones who have been oppressed, marginalized, ". about bringing the perspectives and cultures of those who are at the bottom.

Bottom-up is really a powerful concept to underscore that we need to begin to now return to the circle-- all of us. And the rich" human beings who have a lot of money are not powerful. Power resides in the earth and this universe..

This bottom up notion of reality is where we need to return. And that means dumping our egos.

We need to stop being selfish. Bottom-up is about returning to the places we were meant to be"

In the eyes of the earth, she doesn't recognize it.

It's in our best interest to come back to our roots and to realize that the time is running out for us to back up and to re-do things in the way that we were meant to be doing them.

In china I was at Yulong snow mountain, in yulongxueshan

Islands of Kiribakti Tuvalu Kosrae

Rob: What you are saying in your book is that globalization, global capitalism are directly causing global warming.

And that's because we are still dependent on fossil fuels-- get 40% of energy in the US from coal.

The tangibles are seeing the destruction of the islands-- in the south Pacific, in Greenland" If you have all these polar caps melting you're going to have the situation where people living on coastal areas are going to be flooded.

As long as we pursue a path of industrial progress based on automation, on fossil fuels, that employ water irresponsibly and pollute water and air" we will never see the light of day, so to speak. So, industrialism, which we are seeing as the crystallization of human ingenuity, is now, ironically, the same ingredient that is undoing our existence.

E. O. Wilson" said the same thing. That's why he said he would spend of the rest of his life studying the ants. ". because the ants understand the earth. They work with the earth and the work with each other.

Summers quote P24

The Memo

DATE: December 12, 1991
TO: Distribution
FR: Lawrence H. Summers
Subject: GEP






Rob: And this could apply to rural America, anywhere where there are poor people.

Iowa has highest rate of pesticides". GMOs"The same companies are pro

80% of coy, cotton and corn are now genetically modified, which means they have pesticide residues in them.

Rob: you talk about how, especially in Africa, how the WTO and WB forces nations to buy GMO food from the US, instead of growing their own.

Earl Buttz, talked about food being a weapon in this kit of US aid.

Rob: You talk about countries that refuse to cooperate with the US, the WTO, WB

Any company " becomes subject to regime change, subject to infiltration by the CIA, MIA,

when you have people like Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso they are immediately overthrown in a military coup, or they disappear or are in a plane crash.

Examples of Zimbabwe and Venezuela" Libya is an example of a country that attempted to create a non-aligned approach to form a Pan-African unity and a national currency to be used by the billion people in Africa" Those who attempt to do this are immediately subject to sanctions or there are attempts to bribe them to force them into retirement, or they are assassinated.

Mobutu Seseseko

The response to to any African country towards being independent-- feeding ourselves, political sovereignty, economic independence"

Like the Congo". lists long list of resources-- it's one of the most impoverished countries in the world. Same thing with Angola. People living in dire poverty. That's because the corporations, from the time of colonization list of corporations feel that it is their inalienable right to own the resources-- to own the resources, own the oil. So, in the case of Libya, which was trying to own its oil, it was o overthrown.

Rob: Where does Hillary Clinton fit in with Libya.

She said, about Kaddhafi "We came, we saw, he died,"

For somebody in the United States govt, to make a statement like that about another leader, to talk about the killing people, including a head of state is just outrageous.

To look at the dirty money, the blood money, that goes with Hillary Clinton-- these kinds of things really accentuate the role of globalization-- the unconscionable culture of globalization, in which killing is given respect and credence-- extermination of people/ The destruction of Libya has affected 60 million people in Mali, Chad, Senegal, Mauritania"

Overthrow of Libyan govt was an imperialist intervention...

Rob: The country Obama and the neocons have targeted now is Syria and Assad.

This has to do with Israel and the Palestinians

The situation in Syria is about re-drawing the map. It's about Kurdistan and Turkey.

Wesley Clark, when he was running for president, how these ten countries had to experience regime change

Iraq, Libya, Iran

It is part of globalization. The neocons are an integral part of globalization. John Pilger makes this point in his book and film The New Rulers of The World. They want to redraw the borders and boundaries of these countries.

put in a regime that's more favorable to so-called western strategic interests"

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