title:the lexus and the olive tree. It is about globalization and its worldly views.

Don't get me wrong, I liked the essay, it was well-written and presented. But it was biased towards favouring American policy, and that religion and nationalist countries are the cause of anti-globalist movements. How do you define anti-globalist movements? Tarrifs and trade-barrier, as correctly mentioned in the essay. But the true anti-globaliser recently seems to be the USA herself! Steel-tarrifs, farm-subsidies, all these give inefficient industries an unfair advantage, rather than letting other countries, that could provide the service much better. There is a lot of sceptism towards globalisation in third world and US's recent moves might lead those countries to put up trade-barriers as well, and it is a step back! Furthermore, the Islam-religion states "accept all people of all religion and live in peace." Terrorism has recently been provoked by 1. the US putting a military base down in Saudi-Arabia without the consent of the people, and 2. Israel enslaving the Palestinian people, as they have done for the last 20 years or so, but this has been ignored by the western world. In addition when the author writes: The level of such struggle is highly present in all countries worldwide (except the States), I think there is a fair amount of examples that state the opposite. Take Bush's last election-fiasco for example.

I don't necessarily agree that the paper is all that well written--it is missing that 'flow' that usually (don't take it personally if its not the case) means the passages presented are 'summarized' comments (borderline plagarism if not cited) and then the connecting sentences between these summarized thoughts are missing. This is especially alarming when a Bibliography is so long but the actual paper contains so few citings.


As far as cenzo's comment: it is not that Islam is a heathen religion that causes anti-globalization, but unfortunately too many Middle East countries hide their true intentins and hatred for the "blue-eyed devils" of the West behind the religion of Islam--obviously warping the Western views of that religion. But who's to blame for that? It is human nature to fear the unknown--and Islam is a very big unknown to the western world. Then to have it presented as the religion that the fanatical terrorists claim? They bring the heat upon themselves!


As far as Palestinians---hit the books. first, it has been over 20 years since that region has been fighting---try since the Philistines (the forefathers of Palestine) encroached and then dominated the Israelites (who just escaped Egyptian slavery) for over 50 years starting with their victory over King Saul in 1050 BC.


Of course, the fighting hasn't been constant since then, but it is the foundation of a hatred that has existed. Further, the establishment of a Jewish state after WWII can not be blamed either--as Israel threw off the chains of the colonizing power (Britain) to finally acheive full recognition. Arafat brought his fanaticsm to the Palestinian people and has actually been the greater cause of 'his' people's suffering. For more history and my narrow-mindedness :) read the Beyond the Storm essay posted on this site!