golden phoenix

i spent the last week thinking about how similar globalism rhetoric is to the rhetoric of the british empire in its heyday, and then i came across an article that made the connection explicitly, and positively. i.e. globalism is great, it is doing just what the british empire did. gosh.

the british empire, in the 1800s, began to relax somewhat in creating a formal empire in favour of an 'informal' empire, where all of the benefits in trading rights and market access are accrued without any of the expenditure in military force and local administration. smart business, that. bush has taken clinton's informal empire and made it explicit and overt. while 'no one is in charge of globalization' was once a central tenet of globalism, the us has become explicit about its mission and leadership role. btw, how much longer can we continue to suggest that a smaller gov't is a goal of globalism when it is only state power that keeps it going? it is a shift in the focus of state 'intrusion', not a general reduction in its activities. oh, and the complicating factor of democratic states electing leaders that don't like globalism? what happens then? if democracy = liberalism, then hamas wouldn't win elections. no wonder peter mackay tripped on that one. this is all making me nostalgic! i read about these things between 2000-2003.

i said on friday that dubai seems taken straight from a don delillo novel. i want to know what he thinks of it all. the biggest mall in the world. a gigantic island, just because. see, the seven emirs of the UAE only got together to keep up with the game. 'hey, nation-states seem to be the hot new thing. let's make one of our own!' ergo, UAE. dubai has been characterized as a city state. perhaps it is just ahead of the curve this time? i think about dubai a lot.

why does everybody need a job? because we cannot sustain ourselves by our own means without over-producing something to trade with someone else? the answer is in economies of scale. what will we do if our supply chains are interrupted?

although i've diagnosed myself with a combination of acute sleep deprivation and a mild form of general anxiety disorder, i'm still awake at 3.30am. i am rapidly accruing comfortable domestic trappings without either the stable income or relatively defined career path. career paths are terrifying me lately. we look at the employment histories of people applying for positions at the university and judge their career paths. i expect to get just under 4 hrs. of sleep tonight.