The bilingual site devoted to the cultural life in Sri Lanka and in France                                                         Le site bilingue consacré à la vie culturelle au Sri Lanka et en France H O M E   /   I N  B R I E F CONTACT US TOPICALITY Sri Lanka / France CULTURE Cinema Dance Exhibition Heritage Literature Music Photography Poetry Spirituality Travellers DOSSIERS Fascination of the body Paul Cézanne In the Light of Gauguin Jean de La Fontaine Malraux / Segalen Picasso-Rodin Pigeon houses in Quercy Raphael Saint-Exupéry SOCIETY Abortion AIDS Death Penalty Mental Health GALLERY Raphael Miniatures of Kangra, India ARCHIVES Globalization DO YOU KNOW THAT... ...in 1999, more than 50% of the world population has never got or given a phone call? Manuel Castells LA GALAXIE INTERNET Translated by Paul Chemla Fayard 2002 What did you say? "Globalization" ! UNO has conducted a worldwide survey including the following question : "Please, let us know your opinion about the lack of food in the rest of the world?" This survey has been a failure, since : - in Africa, nobody knew what was "food" ; - in Western Europe, nobody knew what was "lack" ; - in Eastern Europe, everybody had forgotten what is the meaning of "please" ; - in South America, nobody had learnt what is an "opinion" ; - in United States, nobody knew what is "the rest of the world". A "story" related by Ivan A. Alexandre, in Diapason, May 2001. Christians and Globalization "Globalization, shock of cultures, weight of the neo-liberalism and of inequalities... The question haunts our actuality. What is the position of Christians in this debate? "Les chrétiens et la mondialisation" Pierre Vilain Desclée de Brouwer ISBN : 2220051536 (August 2002) Globalization and Its discontents JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ GLOBALIZATION AND ITS DISCONTENTS Publisher : W.W. Norton & Company, 2002. To day, globalization, it is not working... it's not working for the poor of the world... it's not working for the stability of the world economy... Joseph Stiglitz has been recruited, in 1993, by the President Clinton as a member of the Council of Economic Advisers. In 1997, he became Vice-President of the World Bank. He resigned at the beginning of the year 2000. He got the Nobel Prize of Economy in 2001. We pretend to help developing countries while we force them to open their markets to the products of insdustrialized nations, which themselves continue to protect their own markets. Such politics are making rich people still richer, and poor people still poorer, and more angry. LONDON 30 May 2001 Amnesty International denounces the consequences of globalization "In more than 80 countries, the per capita income in 2000 is lesser than in 1990, at least 1.3 billion of humans beings do an attempt to survive with less than 1 US$ a day". "An impoverishment and an increase of inequality" have been the consequences of the globalization. Amnesty International (AI) Annual Report 2001. "Globalization has resulted an enrichment of a minority and a decline and despair for the majority"(...) Amnesty endeavours from now on to act more directly in favour of economic, social and cultural rights. Its objectives are no more limited to the defense of the only civil and political rights, but concern the whole fundamental human rights (...) It is impossible for the governments to clear themselves of responsibility in front of the globalization. They can and must look at the welfare of workers. The Secretary General of Amnesty, Pierre Sané (Senegal) "Amnesty International, 40 ans d'affiches pour la liberté" ("Amnesty International, 40 years of posters for liberty") Created by many famous artists such as Bilal, Picasso, Cartier-Bresson, Miro, Topor, Plantu or Botero, these black and white or color posters decline the "disaster of humanity" (Bilal). Edited at the occasion of a campaign against "disappearances" and political murders, a photograph of an apple-tree, full of flowers in the middle of a nice prairie, highlights that "this charming place of paradise is the ideal location for dissimulating a mass grave". "All men are born free ... and with equal rights".   See our page "Languages".