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As a young whipper-snapper growing up in Melbourne, Australia in the 1960's, I still remember in a different century and time, a small framed quote hanging up on the walls of the local newsagency and bookshop. Dominated over by the 60 year old bespectacled owner - a Mr Robinson - this was a bookshop far removed from the clinical aircon Kinokuniyas and Borders you see in Singapore and beyond today. And it existed in a world where terms like "information revolution" and "globalization" were unknown - where the global world still was a long way from our secure local villages. It was a traditional bookshop, full of second hand books piled over the floor when the creaking old wooden bookshelves refused to give up more space. Yet in the chaos and mess of printed matter that small message always seemed to get pride of place. I don't know who to attribute the original quote to, hence the laboured introduction, but it stated simply, and to the best of my recollection: "The Lord provided enough food for all, but not enough for everyone's greed" It was a message I have never forgotten as I left my local village and got to know the other cultures of other local villages in Australia from the East to the West coast, and then to the burgeoning cities of Asia from the 1980's. My own journey mirrored to a modest extent, the world's own journey from the local to the global villages of this century. Enough of history however. Let's focus on today. Today, the world, fueled by the US-dominated mass media, marks the first anniversary of the attacks on the US's major sacred site reflecting the ideals of free enterprise and globalization in the most established new city in the world. As well as the New York Twin Towers attack, suicide bombers borrowing one of the developed world's most prized inventions, turned them into missiles, and delivered a monstrous attack on the US's centre of military power and just failed to hit the building representing and sheltering American government and political power. In that hour, America, the most powerful, yet still young, nation in the world today in all three areas - commerce, military and government, could well have lost most of it's innocence. The listing of the names of the innocent victims of an attack by a group of deluded revolutionaries centered in one of the poorest countries of the world, delivered a message that needed no spelling out for it's significance - citizens and ethnics of 90 countries, and European, Latin American, Chinese, Japanese and Islamic names. To America it was shock from which it has not yet recovered one year on. America. and to a lesser extent the rest of the world is still in denial and strike back mode, and has failed to grasp the significant message, and build on it positively. While contemporary history has seen mass atrocities brought to the world in such far away areas as Vietnam, Afghanistan, Serbia and Croatia, Ireland, China, Indonesia, and Cambodia to name just a very few, the USA has always seemed untouchable - a place of security - a new world for many of the immigrants that have made America great. America has assisted wholeheartedly nations and individuals, when the cause has synegies with their own, but never before had America faces such an attack on it's own territory. The attraction of the new world is still very little different from that which drew mass immigration to Ellis Island so many years ago. A place where opportunities abounded for those with the willingness to work hard. Where individual initiative and talent was rewarded in comparison to "connections" and pedigree in other older nations with much richer and longer heritages in Europe and Asia. America is a land where being born in poverty or with no family or political influence, has less impact than personal qualities. While many conservatives decry to extent of immigration in such countries as the US, England, and Australia, and maintain that new immigrants are "lucky", the fact is that this "sharing" has forestalled any more violent revolution of the poor against the rich countries. Family in other countries can increase understanding. It has been a hard road, but the new America can be proud of a country where leading politicians like Powell and Rice, and members of a wide smattering of international ethnic groups can reach the very top levels of power. Think of it for a while. In what other countries is the ruling elite composed of so many born in poverty or modest circumstances? To my mind, there are very few that come even close. America's founders picked the right cards 200 years back, and their successors have stuck to these nation state's "mission statements" as well as the finest corporate CEO. Back then it was a mission statement based on respect for the individual and free competition. It has brought problems along the way, but it has resulted in the most powerful country in the world, with a paltry 200 years of history behind it compared to 1,000's in European and Asian civilizations. In contemporary history, the other great powers of Russia, China and some in Europe chose the wrong cards, opting for a political theory based on central planning dreamt up by a bearded economist in a stuffy London library. As the communist states fell and became beset with poverty in the latter quarter of the last century, America reinforced its position as the most powerful nation on earth, following its successes in industrialism by exploiting the new wealth driver of the information age through mass media and IT to become even more powerful. Yet those first attacks at the heart of American commerce, military and government territory one year ago must have caused many immigrants to examine their popular assumptions. ...That wealth cannot always buy security. ...And that the world you left, will inevitably catch up with you. America, in a most cruel manner, felt the first major negative effect of globalization that the world outside it's borders have been experiencing for many years. So far globalization had only delivered power and riches to America. But the discontents of globalization and current global economics hit back at America in the only way it could. Terrorism, which the great majority of thinking individuals abhor, is nevertheless one of the few remaining options to the poor and dispossessed. That terrorism is so, is a black mark on the achievements of the world as a whole. It is not so much the day that changed the world, as several US networks are spinning it. It may well have changed America. At least in my part of the work little of significance has changed. Yes, there are increases in security and reductions in "freedoms" but we always had those anyway. We are more aware of the real threat from religious fundamentalists, educated in nothing but historic Islamic fundamentalism, but again we knew that already. Our people throughout Asia have already suffered violently because of it, yet the global media had only limited interest in escalating violence in small kampungs in Indonesia over the past 15 years, in Afgahnistan, and the great West of China and other nations. These people died and suffered through the actions of the same network, yet Western developed countries saw the problem as "too far away". It was a costly oversight. Since the attack on America itself, there is now interest, but it is belated and the problem has grown to be close on insurmountable by traditional means. Since 9/11, official US government responses, apart from vague, but mostly un-enacted appeals to multiculturalism, has mainly been to protect US sovereignty and power. That they should do is unquestioned. Every nation on the earth would defend their own as the number one priority. On this anniversary the key ongoing issue, reduced to the inner pages for just a day, is the growing possibility of a US attack on Iraq. Since 9/11 2001, Bush has talked of the "axis of evil", and shows an ever increasing proclivity to label all his enemies as "terrorists". The recent Earth summit saw the USA continuing it's seemingly arrogant dismissal of the problems that are unsettling world economies, declining to increase foreign aid until developing nations become more transparent in their governance. The US withdrew from the Kyoto protocol, citing that it was too biased to developing countries, ignoring again the blatant fact that America polluted it's way to current economic dominance while the world wasn't looking. Americans are still the highest polluters in the world on a per capita basis. And like the terrorist/s fallout - that pollution is not confined to their own boundaries but exported to the rest of the world, in true global fashion. The perception of the official US response to the attacks on the 9/11 is that the main thrust has not been to counter terrorism per se but to defend it's pride, extend it's cultural imperialism and look after number one. That's understandable. The US should expect sympathy, but cannot expect the rest of the world to help fight America's own battles on their domestic and national front. They can expect to be part of a worldwide fight against terrorism - but creating an artificial schism between those who "are with us or with the terrorists" is hardly useful in reducing a complex problem to banal and illogical simplicity. It may work in Hollywood films, but it does not work with many thinking people. While the US is respected for it's ideals of freedom, it does not have a monopoly on the ideal, and in some countries it is practiced differently. In the rush to repair the damage to American pride and prove it's own power, the US, and to some extent the world, has missed the main message. The 9/11 attacks were not the cause, but a symptom of the globalization malaise. Like any good "real" (medical) doctor such as Malaysia's Dr Mahathir knows, one must treat the cause and not the symptom. In fact treating the symptom can actually make things worse by covering up signs of the underlying malaise. No matter how much one may detest the vile look, smell, or discomfort of a symptom, it is only by eliminating the often more subtle cause that the symptom and its return, can be removed. And so at last to return to the quote at the start of this modest tome. And in case you have forgotten it in maybe your righteous indignation to my statements in-between here it is again... "The Lord provided enough food for all, but not enough for everyone's greed" The world is indeed changing. 9/11 was a symptom rather than a cause of a world, which while ridden of faulted economic theories, continues to drive a gulf between the poor and the rich. Islam, or fundamentalist Islam is not the cause - it is a symptom. It does indeed cover up the cause that the gulf between rich and poor is growing and becoming increasingly segmented. While the global media broadcasts images of US and Western country wealth, greed, violence and extravagent lifestyles in Hollywood films worldwide, it is not hard to see why those who view it are becoming less aspirational (as was the trend in the past) but becoming more likely to ask why such ineuqities in living standards exist. The export of US films puts into evem more grim relief that the gap between rich and poor has become clearly unsustainable. The world can no longer afford such disparities in income, both within nations (as is the case in many Asian and Western nations of differing political colors) and between. While Islam may be one of the world's most subscribed religions, it's adherents are by far the poorest. As Mahathir himself suggests, this may well be that Muslims tend to be more spiritual than pragmatic, and have been slower to grasp economic realities and modernisation. It also just happens that a small number of Islamic revolutionaries brainwashed a small unconventional army of either deluded or un-educated troops to further their cause, similar to any failed revolutionaries of recent times. Accepting the cause is not to glorify those who took the wrong and cruel road to it's extinction. It is the far more noble cause of attacking a problem in the correct way. It is something that we should expect from the most powerful nation on earth which takes pride in it's similar stated values. No developed nation leader yet has the guts to stand up and tell their constituencies that to create a harmonious and safe world, each and every person must expect their wealth to decrease. Its far easier to appeal to dangerous sentiments of nationalism. Conventional political suicide it may well be, but to the first one who does, I will award a lifetime achievement award in the Chao Phraya River Rat Hall of Fame. The time of spiraling consumption has to come to an end. It can not create a sustainable world economy and environment. The amount of developed country citizens who make income from simply shuffling other people's money, and not in any way contributing to real achievements, products or services is way out of proportion to those who make things with the sweat of their own hands. "Real work" is consistently contracted out and devalued, from giant US footwear manufacturing in Asian and poor countries at per hour rates 10 times less than their own countries, to richer Asian country nationals who contract out their domestic chores to foreign maids. The wonder drug of the last century has not been, as in previous decades, one which relieves the suffering of millions world wide. While cures for AIDS and cancer remain unattainable, the wonder drug for the last decade has been one which helps aging men who can afford it the ability to maintain erections for longer. Well may Wall Street have convinced many that Greed is Good. The reality is that it only works for a short time, not a long time.... Today my thoughts are with those personally affected by the 9/11 attacks ...and also to that yellowing framed quote on the wall of Mr Robinson's bookshop of circa 1965. We owe it to the former to turn this tragedy into triumph. Email the Chao Phraya River Rat
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© Asian Business Strategy & Street Intelligence Ezine 2002
The views expressed here may not necessarily reflect those of partners, publishers, editorial board nor sponsors of the Asia Pacific Management Forum
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