Word is on the street and in the marketplace that globalisation is here.
The Australian debate surrounding S11 and the World Economic Forum reckons over the pros and cons of globalisation as if it were simply a matter of taking sides in a great sporting contest, a business Olympics, to borrow Foreign Minister Alexander Downer's phrase. On one side we have the defenders of globalisation, let's call them the globophiles, and on the other the critics or globophobes. Each side trades accusations and casts the other as the harbinger of bad tidings. The globophiles claim the high moral ground by aligning globalisation with freedom, prosperity and civilisation. Critics are dismissed as parochial or naive, ridiculed for being luddites, anarchists, hippies or socialists.