Group 1 Criticism of Globalization: Positive and Negative Aspects Prof.

Abdelhadi Boutaleb (Member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco.) Before defining globalization, it might be useful to start with defining a concept that was used before globalization. This concept is still used nowadays to denote a meaning different from that of modern globalization, which has special dimensions. It was well known to ancient Greek logicians that defining concepts or terms with their synonyms or antonyms is an approach that is confirmed and recognized by the rules of science and of logic. This is a scientific method to understand the opposite or approximate concept. It helps fathom the concept through comparing the points of divergence and similitude. The concept that I will deal with very briefly is Universality. Universality means belonging to the world and opening it to humans, their ideas and information and transferring their practices, ideas and trends from their limited space (the homeland, the birthplace or the place of residence) to a wider space throughout which human-beings all human-beings as well as all ideas, information, currents and creeds - move without restrictions or borders whatsoever so that the human thought becomes a factor that influences and is influenced by the universal environment as a whole. Longing for universality grows into a dream of seeing this very universality substitute citizenship, the single homeland, the nation-state and the borders, a dream wherein the world becomes a large homeland for human beings and an extended space for their work and movement. This trend is now known as Universality.

The tendency to generalize identification to the whole world is called universalism. This concept has existed since the dawn of time, as it emerged since the very beginning of the existence of man, as humans were possessed by an instinct to fathom the secrets of the world. This instinct was general amongst all human-beings to such an extent that man can be described as a globe-trotter by nature, who hates to be confined in one homeland without being able to move around the world to discover it and draw lessons from this experience. However, the longer man lives in his homeland, the more attached to this homeland he grows and, hence, to himself in view of the benefits that the homeland brings him and the memories man gathers in this homeland with the passing of time. Numerous are the phenomena that can be described as universal, including trends, creeds and theories that were designed to be spread and belong to the world as a whole. Capitalism joins its former enemy communism in their shared universal trend. Communism endeavored to spread its dominion over the world. And now capitalism is poised to be the sole world order However, universalism did not often stem from mans ambitions of forcible expansion on others land, as was the case of ancient emperors or modern colonizers, nor from mans tyrannical use of indigenous populations to serve his own interests. Universalism rather sought essentially to secure benefits and foster exchange as changing environment entails more diversified and larger prospects to achieve individual and collective purposes in wider and more favorable horizons. In this open world, shared values were spread amongst humankind, without being impeded by borders or stalled by any

authority, blockade or restriction. These ideas, ethics, values, principles, religions and theories were described as universal. This universalism marked the religions that came to educate man and enable him to spread good on earth. This is the origin of the principle of Gods assigning humankind, all humankind, to act on His behalf on earth to build and wisely manage Gods creatures on earth. This principle matches the human instinct, which is marked by and built on universalism. The Holy Koran incited human-beings to enlarge their knowledge and thoughts through exploring earth without restrictions: Go ye through the earth and see (Holy Koran, surate Annaml, Al-Ankabout and Arroum). The message of Islam is universal. God addressed Prophet Mohammed saying in the Holy Koran: We sent thee but as a mercy for all creatures (Holy Koran, Surate Al-Anbiaa 21, Verse 107). God also said in Surate Sabaa 24, Verse 28 We have not sent thee but as a universal (Messenger) to men. Therefore, the Holy Koran addressed the entire humanity using the expression O people, because the call of Islam is for all, i.e. universal. And God in Islam is the Lord of Alamine (humanity) and not only the Lord of the people of the Arabian Peninsula, where Islam was revealed. This idea was embodied in what can be considered as Islams first call ever for universal co-existence, well before the calls made by nations and by international organizations. This came in Surate Al-Imrane 3, Verse 64: Say: O People of the Scripture! Come to an agreement between us and you: that we shall worship none but Allah, and that we shall ascribe no partner unto Him, and that none of us shall take others for lords beside Allah.

This universal call was consecrated when Islam abolished discrimination based on race, colour and sex, a custom that was known to all pre-Islamic communities not only in the Arabian Peninsula alone but in the world at large. God told humankind: O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other. Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you. (Surate AlHujurate 49, Verse 13). This verse brought in three principles whereupon the universalism of Islam is founded: equality among people, their inalienable right to difference as peoples and tribes (this points out to the types of legitimate differences), preserving the existence of the other embodied in the difference of peculiarities so that each race knows its sisterly race and, therefore, promoting exchanges (to know one another, as seen in the aforementioned verse of the holy Koran). Equality in universalism, abolishing differences without however canceling peculiarities and urging mankind to fathom the secrets of these peculiarities as a means to better know each other is a triangular relationship whereupon Islam founded its universal call and message to achieve mutual respect among humankind. Without this respect, no understanding nor cooperation is possible among people. Nevertheless, Islam did not impose this universalism (welded around a unique universal community based on piety) by means of force, occupation or tyranny. Islam rather disseminated its message with wisdom, good advice and argumentation, far from any constraints or any hegemonic ambition and without exclusion of the Other. Moreover, Islam upheld its call in a harmonious co-existence with the messages of the previous

monotheist religions and on the basis of faith in their messengers and revealed books. In the light of universalism, refined by religion, piety and virtue, the Arab and Muslim wise men were the first to lift barriers hampering knowledge and wisdom. They promoted the motto knowledge without borders and urged for the quest of knowledge and science from the cradle to the grave and everywhere in the world. They effected this motto in the realms of scientific research and in exchanging wisdom. Some of them achieved the miracle of the greatest journeys around the globe at a time when it was difficult to cross the world by land or sea. They made discoveries, interacted culturally with the others and contributed, hence, to the heritage of the universal civilization. These globe trotters, including historians and geographers, conveyed a clear, thorough and genuine image of the worlds large nature, diversified environments, different races, and remote areas with their human, architectural and cultural peculiarities. Civilizations, therefore, belong to all humankind or to the world as a whole and in this global sense a universal content. These civilizations are the product of distinguished ways of thinking and practice and were shaped by a shared creativity that can be described, without being mistaken, as universal. The civilization that isolates itself is doomed to fall in decline and oblivion, while open and inter-penetrated civilizations flourish, develop and diversify their creativities and hence live longer and spread all over the world. Which civilization can rightfully claim to be the fruit of its own sons and people alone? Werent the spiritual civilizations

influenced by the materialism of the other civilizations? Werent the civilization of materialistic societies influenced by the spirituality of other civilizations? The western materialistic civilization today says it is originally a Jewish-Christian civilization. Reference: Retrieved from http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/publications/islamtoday/20/P1.p hp Retrieved on 23/12/10

Group 2 Criticism of Globalization: Positive and Negative Aspects Prof. Abdelhadi Boutaleb (Member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco.)

What is Globalization? Today and more than ever before, the world has become a global village with the expansion of the communication networks, the rapid information exchange, the gradual shrink of borders and of attachment to identities and citizenship, the lifting of the barriers of visas and passports, the consecration of a new era when national sovereignty and the authority of the nationstate is fading away in favor of regional groupings, international organizations and international legality and law. This means the beginning of the return to the universal trend which is imposed by human instinct, but in a broader environment and in an evident endeavor to dominate the world. Todays universalism is marked by its reliance on sophisticated and highly performing technology that was not available for the old form of universalism. The fact that the verb globalize and the noun globalization -both require a subject and an object in the other languages from which the world Awlama was translated into the Arabic language- implies that the globalization process is not spontaneous as it is implied by the word universalism.

Globalization is an act by the subject, a globalizer, on an object that has to accept the act thoroughly and in detail, willingly or unwillingly. Globalization is also an act and a practice. It is equally an integrated system wherein the subject leaves no choice to the object destined to be shaped up. That is why globalization advocates describe it as inevitable for humanity, sooner or later. The subject of this globalization is the United States regime embodying the uni-polar system and seeking to spread this system so that the world adopts the American system in politics, economy, sociology, culture, way of thinking, behavior and lifestyle. This will make the American system the unique universal system. Such a situation prompted some circles to describe globalization as Americanization. The American globalization discourse was preceded by a call to building a new world order made by former US President George Bush after the Gulf world War. George Bush himself was behind the holding of a summit of the United Nations Security Council on January 3, 1992 to debate the foundations of the new order. However, the final communiqu of this summit did not clearly lay out the traits of this order nor did it define its objectives and limits nor the means to build it. The communiqu only spoke in the customary way used by the international political community which proclaims at the end of each world war the birth of a new world order. It was quite normal that the World Gulf War should be no exception to the pattern that marked the end of the two world wars. The First World War led to a new world order based on consecrating the legitimacy of the occupation of the South by the North, and dividing areas of dominion in the world by consensus among the allies, winners of the war. This trend was reflected in the Versailles Convention, which can be considered as a

convention for the distribution of booty, and the Charter of the League of Nations. Likewise, the Second World War yielded the distribution of dominion, decided at Yalta in 1945 between the United States of America and the Soviet Union in a consecration of bipolarisation between them, which made the Yalta Agreement, an agreement for the distribution of booty among the winners of the war. After the Gulf War, the world experienced several events that reshaped the political map, drawn by the two poles after the Second World War, and replaced with a new map, where the United States of America emerged as the single power that takes hold of the booty, by controlling the oil-exporting Arab region and deciding for its destiny and maps. Globalization, which is designed to be the major trait of the new World Order - that is poised to be an old one - has spread since the beginning like an octopus in all fields. It uses its gains through being attached to them and through consolidating them as well as through enlarging its networks around the world to take more. This globalization octopus risks to go beyond all obstacles and restrictions to swallow everything. Since the 1980s, there was a succession of events that deeply influenced the world, and contributed to reshaping the systems of the world and unifying them in a new World order or a new world. This situation heralded the fall of the Soviet Union pole and the start of a uni-polar order, embodied in the United States of America. In 1985, the former Soviet President Michael Gorbatchev declared a peaceful revolution to build a new order in the Soviet Union, based on reform, or Perestroika, and transparency, or Glasnost.

In 1987, the World population increased strongly to stand at more than five billion souls. In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Berlin Wall fell. In the Same year, Germany was reunified to become a capitalist democratic state. In 1991, Iraq invaded Kuwait, and the United States of America drummed up the support of its Western allies to the Desert Storm war. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union stood as a sheer spectator, signaling thus its withdrawal from the competition for polarization. Former President Bush called, after victory, for establishing a new world order. On 3 January 1992, the Security Council positively responded to the call of the President of the United States of America to convene a summit that was crowned with a declaration that served as the first international document that paved the way for the specialized international organizations to devise regulations and technology to come up with what it is today called the strategy of globalization. The present study will deal with the concept of globalization and its evolution towards full domination of the world, as it has become omnipresent in all fields. We will tackle the relationship between economic globalization and capitalist liberalism in the world, and survey the fields that are being globalized. We will equally address the various types of discourse of globalization and of anti-globalization as well as the movements of resistance, that oppose globalization in a bid to safeguard their threatened peculiarities. We will highlight the positive aspects of globalization and its negative consequences. We will conclude with the following question: What kind of world do we wish to build in the 21st century? We will try to

answer in conclusion that we aspire to a globalized world, but within some limits, a kind of fair globalization that rejects opportunist gluttony. We dream of a world able to preserve the diversified peculiarities and identities of its inhabitants, a unified and diversified world at the same time.

What is the Fields of Action of Globalization? Some claim that beginning with economic globalization was meant to fulfill a universal comprehensive development and reflect the world cooperation in economic fields as a starting point for a global cooperation in all other realms. Economic globalization appeared as an extension of the world capitalist liberalization which seeks to enable strong capital to achieve utmost benefits through liberalizing trade and establishing free competition in trade exchanges. This is the system of free economy which is based on opening markets to capital able to conquer them. In other words this is the market economy. Economic globalization thrived with the beginning of the 1990s as a result of a well-organized interdependence between the world capital and the goods and services markets, and also thanks to the rush of countries which had not joined the GATT at that time, to adhere to the World Trade Organization after the Second Uruguay Round and committing themselves to its world conventions. The provisions and covenants of the World Trade Organization (WTO) came to confirm the principles of free competition of

capital and the gradual lowering of barriers hampering the free movement of capital and their flow onto markets. The WTO principles and covenants also confirmed the freedom of movement of national products in the world markets. Goods and services, made in a local or national market, are distributed and consumed in an international space, regardless of their origin. In this way national economies are gradually integrated into the world market part of what is called global economic openness. No need to say that economic globalization requires states (or the public sector) to give up their role in favor of the national or foreign private sector. It equally requires the nation-state to implement a policy of the public sector privatization, to lift hurdles on this privatization policy until the public sector is deprived of all its previous prerogatives that used to entitle the nation-state to playing the leading and major role in running the national economy. All this is done in favor of the private sector which has become an actor in the fields of employment, health, education, environment protection, the management of some utilities like water and electricity distribution and national firms. Globalization assigns these fields to the private sector and to multinational companies. According to statistics, the number of these companies in the world rose from 100 in 1970 to nearly 50,000 now. Some 200 of these companies were categorized as nation-states and multinationals given their importance. More than 100 of these companies were multinationals, while the nation-states accounted for less than 100. This clearly indicates the rapid evolution of world economy as a result of economic globalization, privatization and the reduction of the role of the state. Moreover, this shows the long way that economic globalization has covered in the process, as it outclassed the liberal capitalism market, which progressed slowly and timidly.

Other telling figures show that multinational companies contribute only 7 percent to employment in the world and pay only 9 percent of taxes at the world scale, while controlling 80 percent of the world trade.

Reference: Retrieved from http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/publications/islamtoday/20/P1.p hp Retrieved on 23/12/10

Group 3 Criticism of Globalization: Positive and Negative Aspects Prof. Abdelhadi Boutaleb (Member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco.)

The Expansion of Globalization: Globalization has gone beyond the economy to affect all walks of human life, defying their national and individual peculiarities and challenging their own immunity. Likewise, as the world stood by watching and as the marginalized groups stood unaware, information, science, technology, culture and intellectual property were globalized, combined to the globalization of values, ethics, ways of life and of thinking. Part of the all-out globalization, identities and specificities are also set to be globalized, the objective being to reach a single standardized humankind. Globalization has political, economic, cultural and ideological dimensions. The political dimension started when the world adhered to the Western democratic system, whose implementation became inevitable, leading to a globalization of the system of government and of the ways of participation in government. The mechanisms leading to the holding of sound popular elections were also globalized. International organizations took care of globalizing international law, international legitimacy and human rights, their charters globalized the rules of war and peace and the patterns of

international cooperation. Therefore, politics was globalized in the largest sense of the term, including the systems of government and the conditions of international cooperation and of international relations. The international community started to perfectly command the details and the smallest components of this globalization up until the United Nations Organization and its agencies and bodies, especially the Security Council. In economic fields, economic globalization which we mentioned earlier affected all aspects of humankinds living, from production to consumption, going by distribution and exchange. In the cultural field, globalization started to affect culture in its general meaning, i.e. humankinds imagination, theories and practices and even their feelings, freedom of thinking, of enjoying specificity and inner dialogue as well as dialogue with the Other. Let us take a rapid look at the impact of globalization on the fields to which we have just pointed out: 1- Globalization of Information: Globalization of information is materialized through the globalization of telecommunications and communication, i.e. new information technologies, which are the communication networks and satellite TV channels which convey information across the planet, making the world a small village, as put by Mac Luhan. Humankind now lives in a world without borders where humans share each others happiness and sadness in real time and have a clear image everyday of their fellow human-beings everywhere. The Internet today plays a key role within this globalization or this universal revolution, led by multinational communication companies within the framework of free competition.

Most satellite TV channels - supported with multinational advertising companies while backing and consecrating economic globalization - at the same time strive to globalize thought and standardize the way of life, using covert or overt, direct or indirect advertisement as well as influential psychological styles through inciting people to adhere to massive consumption and to prefer western products, particularly American ones, be they materials, thought or style. It would be enough to know that the predominant language is English which globalization seems to impose as the language of the world. Some 88 percent of data available on the Internet is in the English language, against 9 percent in German, 2 percent in French and 1 percent in the other languages. The globalization of information is embodied in the shrink of written literature and of the end of the civilization of paper with the expansion of the new information technology and the civilization of technological development. Today, only four international news agencies monopolise information and shape it in total freedom, namely the Associated Press (USA)- the most important news agency, the United Press (USA), Reuters (Great Britain) followed by Agence France Presse (France). Knowing that more than one fifth of the world population are illiterate and the overwhelming majority are civilizationilliterate, meaning that they know nothing of the evolution of the technological and information civilization, either because they do not use it or because they use it to the minimum- shows that the globalization of information benefits only a minority of people who are able to acquire this technology. This is no source of concern for globalization which is based on free competition

and enabling the strongest and the fittest to win its challenge. This is why some are calling globalization social Darwinism. 2- The Globalization of Science: The greatness of nations is no longer measured by their geographical size, their military influence, nor their possession of advanced armament. It is rather evaluated by these very nations ability to control and draw benefits from economic networks, monitor information and communication channels and possess scientific research and invention capabilities. These capabilities are available to three groups of nations: North America, and on top of it the United States of America, the European Union and Japan. According to statistics, research and development (R and D) expenditure in the world stood at 25 billion US dollars in 1992. These three groups accounted for 82.6 percent of this amount, distributed as follows: the United States of America 38.5 percent, the European Union 28.3 percent, Japan 15.8 percent, Asia 9.5 percent, Russia (former Soviet Union) 4 percent, Latin America less than 1 percent and Africa 0.2 percent. Technological development was instrumental in the globalization of science, resulting in the unification of scientific data and rules. However, the above-mentioned figures are clear indications of who monitors the evolution of the globalization of science, who benefits from it and who is leading the world today. 3- Globalization of Culture: The globalization of economy, politics, the systems of government, information and technology inevitably leads to the globalization of culture, as a unified pattern of thinking

enshrined in the minds by TV channels, movies and ads which are presented as a means of modern education. Most of this globalization message is conveyed in the English language. Most of todays culture consists of contents broadcast by these information networks, including values and ethics, which are the mere values and ethics of those controlling and monopolizing these networks. It is common knowledge that the predominant type of culture is the American one. For instance, 80 percent of ticket sales in British cinema are paid for US movies. The rate stands at 60 percent in France and 90 percent in three east European countries: the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary. Figures also show that the US motion picture production accounted for 60 percent of the world production in 1944 and 80 percent in 2000. 4- The Globalization of intellectual property: The quest to globalize culture is also evident in the debates held at the World Intellectual Property Organization. The Americans submitted for discussion a request that the holder of books, songs and all types of intellectual production copyrights should relinquish their rights in favor of large private groups. The European Union countries opposed this type of globalization, while Britain alone accepted it, creating a breach within the Union. The firms meant by this request are only the strong American enterprises, which are, alone, able to win the stake of competition in this field too. Europe, led by France, waged a campaign within international specialized organizations, to grant (cultural exception) to the audio-visual field and to cinematographic production. France believes it invented cinema before Hollywood, and,

consequently, has the right to request for its cinematographic production in particular and culture, in general, an exceptional treatment rather than dealing with it as a mere economic commodity that the World Trade Convention no longer protects. 5- Globalization of Values and Ethics: A heated debate is taking place on the globalization of values and ethics, especially when new assessment elements are integrated, challenging the universally-recognized and accepted ethics and religions. When I led the Moroccan delegation to the Beijing Conference on Women, we were faced with difficulties resulting from the attempt of some non-governmental organizations to integrate the right of what they called a third gender within human rights. It is claimed that this third gender refuses to be a male or female. The majority of delegations opposed this abnormal trend. There was a heated debate between protagonists and antagonists of this trend. Among the opponents, there were the Muslim world and the Vatican. The defenders of this third genders rights to marriage, to inherit and to enjoy a separate identity failed to snatch a decision from the Beijing Conference entitling them to rights different from those of the two genders. They justified their standpoint by arguing human rights should go global and divide human beings into males and females and a third gender in between. They argued that this third gender should be given equal rights as the other two genders. The management of Globalization : Globalization is endowed with universal mechanisms that manage it firmly and with scientific techniques. These mechanisms are embodied in international specialized

institutions that theorize and translate globalization into tangible reality. The most important of these institutions are the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Cooperation and Economic Development, called the club of the rich. All these institutions adopt the American logic and draw their theories from the successful American economic system that enjoys large capital able to win international competition. This is the administration that guides the globalization policy and puts pressure on states to act according to their guidelines. This leads us to the conclusion that the United States is well qualified for taking the lead in the globalization system that the world currently experiences. Only Canada in North America, the European Union, the region of East and South-East Asia, which includes Japan, China and the emerging dragons inspired by the Japanese model, are the ones relatively able to compete with the United States within this system.

Reference: Retrieved from http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/publications/islamtoday/20/P1.p hp Retrieved on 23/12/10

Group 4 Criticism of Globalization: Positive and Negative Aspects Prof. Abdelhadi Boutaleb (Member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco.)

The Discourse of Globalization : After the decline of the ideologies opposing economic liberalism, globalization addressed its discourse to the whole world. According to the American perspective, globalization is not a mere choice that can be accepted or rejected. It is rather an inevitability of the new world order and the developing world is only left with one alternative: to stay confined in its backwardness. According to the same discourse, globalization is the shortest and most viable way for the developing world to achieve political, social and intellectual modernity. Globalization is said to be the best and most effective means for the developing world

to achieve comprehensive development, because it is the sole way to progress for this world economically, and therefore, intellectually and socially. The same discourse even argues that changing the world to the better is through applying globalization. In this way, the American discourse becomes a type of aggression and sounds like a threat to gag the freedom of choice. Globalization by virtue of this discourse, is the sole way to develop a world without borders, a world where only the law of the market prevails. According to the same standpoint, globalization is the means to bridge the gap between the rich and the poor and between economically developed communities and those aspiring to development. In its bid to prove the inevitability of globalization, the American discourse says small states are no longer able to exploit the divergences between the superpowers, as they used to do during the cold war and that political openness the world has reached is intrinsically linked to economic openness. They are both essential for globalization . That is why the United States established a close link between them and ties its cooperation with other countries to the compliance with and commitment to economic and political openness. The Action of the Globalization Administration: This methodological discourse is coupled with a technical campaign conducted by international economic institutions representing the administration of globalization , such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. These institutions back the American discourse with reports supported with statistics on means to pull national economies out of their stagnation and on the mechanisms that developing countries should use to reach economic growth on the path towards a comprehensive development. These means include structural adjustment programs, an all-out privatization, restricting the role

of the nation-state and relinquishing its financing of burdening social services such as education, health, information, environment and employment. They equally include relieving the State from subsidizing prices through liberalizing them and the laws of market supply and demand, reducing investment costs and adopting flexibility in matters of employment. Therefore, globalization is, according to this discourse, a dynamic promising a more prosperous future in which all parts of the world will fulfil the long-cherished dream of change, whose means were lacking before globalization. The addressees of this globalization theory are the whole world, with special emphasis on the peoples of its architects, in a bid to convince them of the positive aspects of globalization. Former US President Bill Clinton had said in a speech to the American people: globalization will be Americas promising chance. It will not be an obstacle to its development. Globalization will build a world with new borders that should be expanded. Globalization will be no threat to us -we Americans. On the contrary, we will be among the first to reap its fruits. Anti-Globalization Discourse and Efforts to Preserve Identity: Many are concerned over threats posed by sweeping globalization to identity and peculiarity. They face the American pro-globalization discourse by another, attacking the United States and arguing that through the globalization of the world, Washington only seeks to Americanize the globe and reshape it according to its whims and wishes. French intellectuals are at the forefront of the Europeans reservations against rushed globalization and urge for protecting peoples identity against the dangers of savage globalization. Even French high-ranking government officials and decisionmakers share this view.

Some of these personalities describe the American intellectual invasion as a new empire expanding worldwide as a space without borders. France uses various approaches in its resistance to this invasion. The French government requires French TV channels to allocate 60 percent of their programs to European production to avert American dominion. The French government also issued instructions to stop financial and material assistance to French cultural events that do not adopt the French language as the official language. A growing trend in France calls for devising a law compelling officials to use only French in public events. Recently, France insisted that the new Secretary General of the United Nations, after Boutros Boutros Ghali, should have full command of the French language. Frances defense of its identity and linguistic and cultural specificity against rampant globalization has grown to become an obsession and a concern of all intellectuals, thinkers and politicians alike. The mobilization is so intense that one can say that France is facing an identity crisis that some writers described as a collective hysteria resulting from the domination of the English-speaking American culture at the expense of the French culture which is losing ground in the world. The rich and the decision-makers in France now speak only English, while French has become the language of the poor and the common people, Michel Sires once wrote. At the last French-Speaking Summit he attended, former French President Francois Mitterrand called on the summiteers to help France defend its language and identity against the US intellectual invasion. However, the French-speaking countries from which the former President sought help accounted only for 3 percent of the world population.

The French Culture Minister, who represented his country at a meeting of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Mexico, waged a campaign against the United States of America. I am amazed that the very countries that taught the world a considerable amount of freedom and triggered revolution against tyrants, are now the ones that seek to impose a totalitarian culture on the whole world, he said. This is a type of financial and intellectual imperialism that does not go through the occupation of land, but rather through the confiscation of consciousness, the way of thinking and of life, he added. In his attempts to defend the French way of life, President Jacques Chirac opposed the opening of a Macdonalds restaurant in the Tour Eiffel, so that this monument remains one of the embodiments of the French way of life. An undeclared war is currently waged worldwide for the protection of national identity. The pro-globalization circles are dealing blows to identity. Though not deadly, these blows remain painful. When it opposed the Maastricht Treaty, Norway was defending its own identity against being integrated in the European identity, although this Nordic country belongs to the European space. Singapore, a liberal and advanced nation, deals with reservation with the Internet and fears that its Confucius values would fade away and its specificity would be swept away. In January 1997, South Korea was the scene of strikes and upheavals to defend workers rights which were violated because of economic globalization. Until then, South Korea was a model of a great liberal capitalist country, open onto the world market and a disciple of globalization. The January strikes were

the first protest movement staged by a banned trade union to demand social rights, whose preservation and defence seemed at logger heads with the very principles of globalization. The strikes in South Korea was described as a revolution against liberal globalization. Even in the United States, an intellectually-organized and popular trend is growing, calling for the safeguard of the American identity that has become under the threat of the influx of immigrants from the whole world.

Reference: Retrieved from http://www.isesco.org.ma/english/publications/islamtoday/20/P1.p hp Retrieved on 23/12/10

Group 5 Criticism of Globalization: Positive and Negative Aspects Prof. Abdelhadi Boutaleb (Member of the Academy of the Kingdom of Morocco.)

Globalizations Positive and Negative Aspects: Globalization has positive and negative aspects. On top of its positive aspects comes the tremendous development of new information and communication technology. This progress helped bring the various parts of the world closer and disseminate knowledge particularly through the Internet which created a new and open world, a world with unified feelings and with increasingly closer cultures and interacting civilizations. However, globalization was planned in a rush. It is a momentous phenomenon indeed. Was it acceptable to leave its handling to large capital and international financial organizations, created to serve capitalism and provide conditions for its limitless movement around the world? This has become a reality in which the shaping of globalization is being dominated by the financial dimension. Even the economic dimension was less important than the financial one. Political, cultural and intellectual considerations are subordinate elements that will eventually melt down into the financial and economic dimensions.

All this raises fears that other decisive mutations will take place, change the face of the world and severe all links with the past. Modern states that have no ancient civilization, do not fear for their identity nor for their civilization, because they are new ones with no legacy, no heritage and no prosperous history to be proud of and to build on to engage in the future. These fears are not specific to the South. Some countries of the North, are also aware of such threats, based on their attachment to the principles of homeland, borders, nationalism, the flag, the national anthem, history and national sovereignty. These countries fear is also nurtured by their pride of their nations role and concern to see them swallowed by globalization, a globalization whereby the strong dominates the weak. Globalization might appear as premature for a majority of countries, in the North and in the South, particularly in countries where the Nation-State still plays the leadership in societies and that are not up to the level of societies for which globalization was tailor-made. The societies that rightfully fear the negative aspects of globalization are those where national capitalism is unable to spread its hegemony for the simple reason that either it does not exist at all or that it is too weak. Such societies also cannot relinquish their Nation-State that has not yet fulfilled its objectives, and where civil society and the private sector are still unable to take over the States authority and leading role, particularly in social areas. Moreover, in those societies, privatization is impossible because the private sector is unable to replace the public sector, i.e. the societies where privatization is a squandering of the States wealth and resources in favor of foreign companies. The fear of globalization goes as far as considering it as a system that sweeps all the principles known to the civilized world,

including the protection of the weak by a strong Nation-State from exclusion, unemployment and poverty and the provision of social security to its weakest citizens. Some opponents of globalization see in its system a mere reflection of the dominion of the social aspects by the financial ones. They even consider it as a new form of occupation, not a political or a military one, but rather a financial occupation that imposes a uniform type of thinking and erases all national historical heritage. The opponents of globalization adopt various forms of opposition. They did not restrict themselves to staging demonstrations and other movements of protest, similar to the first one held in Seattle. Experts and thinkers amongst these opponents are now devising a social and economic counterproject to outline new foundations for a fair, egalitarian and human globalization based on a balanced world economy and catering for the interests of developing countries. This new type of globalization builds a new unified world where the plurality of concepts, values, culture and specificities is not excluded. This project adopts the positive aspects of globalization and dismisses the negative ones. The theoreticians of the alternative globalization have already started to declare the fundamental principles of this system that they will present in the form of a charter to the United Nations to give it an international legitimacy after being submitted for debate at the world level. Globalization that was imposed on the world as a fait accompli never proceeded in this way. Nevertheless, globalization remains a complex and ambiguous phenomenon for which analysts give different analyses. Globalization architects say it means the generalization of wealth and prosperity, as it targets the promotion of economic

exchanges, the increase of foreign investments and the development of modern technology that secures the advancement of information and communication means. Other analysts and experts among opponents believe globalization is an excessive hegemony of capitalism, as it enriches the rich and impoverishes the poor countries that are called by euphemism developing nations, while some of them head steadily towards more backwardness. Such a situation only plunges the majority of the worlds population into yet more exclusion and marginalization. Therefore, globalization appears as a dual phenomenon with two antagonistic dimensions. Seen from one perspective, it looks like a system of wealth, prosperity or even the promised heaven. From another, it appears as a system of exclusion and marginalization. For some, it is a merciful angel, while for others, it is Satan. Looking at globalization from one single perspective is shortsighted, because it has both positive and negative aspects. In a speech to the General Conference of UNESCO on October 15, 2001, President Jacques Chirac of France said globalization can be described neither as positive nor negative, for such a judgment gives it a moral dimension that it does not have and intentions that it does not pursue. Making a judgment of globalization will ascribe to it unspecified and unclear social projects, while globalization deals with material objects only. It is these objects that we should judge as positive or negative and not globalization itself. We believe that the French Presidents statement is different only in terms of methodology that does not rid globalization of its negative aspects.

We believe that attachment to identities and specificities cannot be eliminated overnight from the consciousness of peoples and nations. Moreover, globalization cannot conquer the impenetrable fortresses of these identities and specificities through mere adventurous and non-pondered practices. The approach of the new American Republican Administration under President George W. Bush regarding international issues and its deviant and abnormal practices in matters of international cooperation as well as its attempt to put its national law above the international law and its rejection of the Kyoto Protocol on the environment and of the constituent charter of the International Criminal Court, specializing in war crimes, are a clear indication that attachment to specificity is for the United States itself stronger than an all-out globalization. The United States of America is globalizing the world and refuses to go global. The world that the peoples aspire to is a world wherein globalization would not swallow identities and specificities and make it a world with mechanical traits and trends, wherein the individual becomes a sheer photocopy and humanity is denied the right to diversity and difference in color and in the way of thinking and life style. In short, the features associated with a distinctive identity and the enriching diversity of the human communities. The positive aspects of globalization need to complement the peoples identities and specificities in order to make of the world of tomorrow both a unified and diversified place to live.

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