Re: rush to the middle

George McKinlay (mckinlay who-is-at unr.edu)
Thu, 13 May 1999 08:47:45 -0700

> Maybe its the Y2K thing, but it seems the clocks are being turned
> back a hundred years or so.

nate wrote:

I'd look less at a ticking clock for cause and instead posit the winding
down of the Cold War. The neo-liberal agenda not only dismantles the
ameliorative aspects of "social welfare" but also serves to remove the
government (and thus public impact on the economic sphere if we still
believe in "a government of the people by the people") from any real
impact on the economic sphere. Michael Apple I think refers to this as
the privatizing of profit while making costs public.

We don't see much mentioned in the media here, but the educator-student
strike at one of the largest universities in the world UNAM* (+250,000
students I think) is as much a product of the IMF-World Bank dictates as
local issues. The same goes for the educator strikes in Argentina where
the government has effectively abdicated its social responsibility
through selling off state owned utilities... Now the Argentine
government claims it can no longer afford to rub two cents together for
social needs--talk about self fulfilling prophecies...

Look to the less powerful nations to see what is coming to the US. GM or
Ford have no more of an allegiance to the US as they did to the
residents of Flint Michigan.

At the Mexico-US border goods have greater freedom of movement than
people--it really sums up the sorts of "freedom" that neo-liberalism
champions...

'nuf said....

*National Autonomous University of Mexico

> Nate Schmolze
> http://www.geocities.com/~nschmolze/
> schmolze who-is-at students.wisc.edu People with great passions, people who
> accomplish great deeds,
> People who possess strong feelings even people with great minds
> and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and
> girls
> L.S. Vygotsky