In his famous novel, 1984, George Orwell warns us of a (then futuristic) world of the "Big Brother" with news flashes and constant monitoring of the population where the citizenry have lost all decision-making power.

The novel does not sound so futuristic today. Spy cameras in many cities facilitate monitoring of the populace. In Florida - home of the counter-revolutionary Cuban Mafia - where the rigging of the presidential election was made possible, cameras linked to police databases scan crowds on the streets in search of "criminals". Internet service providers are obligated by the Federal government to monitor the contents of all email messages using the software "Carnivore". Newsflashes containing empty and often meaningless sound bytes bring the "news" (as they see fit to present) to the public.

And now, through a process that has come to be known as globalization, the owning classes are taking away the last decision-making powers fought for and gained by the people of the world.

Globalization has no respect for peoples' elected representatives; the decision-making process, as they see it has to be relegated to selected presidents and CEO's of transnational corporations and their selected officers.

The globalized model entails austerity plans for the general public (as presented by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and other global institutions) and total freedom of movement for corporations. That is the precise meaning of "free trade".

In this model, the environment, social welfare, public education, public health (as a right of all human beings) and all laws and regulations protecting the above are subject to the austerity plan and have to be sacrificed at the altar of capitalism. In other words, corporations rule and the people are subjects and slaves.

Globalization has no respect for democracy and the hard-won liberties of the people anywhere, including in the so-called Western democracies. Peaceful demonstrators are shot in Sweden and Italy, beaten up in Canada, and kidnapped or pepper-sprayed in the US. While the police inflict violence upon demonstrators exercising their constitutional right to free speech, prostitute corporate media lament the violence of the mobs of protesters. As Orwell depicted it, war is presented as peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength.