citizens".

Nor is the transformation merely economic. Increasingly, globalization
assumes political, social and cultural dimensions. It has become clear
that the powers of the institution of the nation-state, once the arbiter
and protector of humanity's fortunes, have been drastically eroded. While
national governments continue to play a crucial role, they must now make
room for such rising centres of power as multinational corporations,
United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations of every kind, and
huge media conglomerates, the cooperation of all of which is vital to the
success of most programmes aimed at achieving significant economic or
social ends. Just as the migration of money or corporations encounters
little hindrance from national borders, neither can the latter any longer
exercise effective control over the dissemination of knowledge. Internet
communication, which has the ability to transmit in seconds the entire
contents of libraries that took centuries of study to amass, vastly
enriches the intellectual life of anyone able to use it, as well as
providing sophisticated training in a broad range of professional fields.
The system, so prophetically foreseen sixty years ago by Shoghi Effendi,
builds a sense of shared community among its users that is impatient of
either geographic or cultural distances.

The benefits to many millions of persons are obvious and impressive. Cost
effectiveness resulting from the coordination of formerly competing
operations tends to bring goods and services within the reach of
populations who could not previously have hoped to enjoy them. Enormous
increases in the funds available for research and development expand the
variety and quality of such benefits. Something of a levelling effect in
the distribution of employment opportunities can be seen in the ease with
which business operations can shift their base from one part of the world
to another. The abandonment of barriers to transnational trade reduces
still further the cost of goods to consumers. It is not difficult to
appreciate, from a Baha'i perspective, the potentiality of such
transformations for laying the foundations of the global society
envisioned in Baha'u'llah's Writings.

Far from inspiring optimism about the future, however, globalization is
seen by large and growing numbers of people around the world as the
principal threat to that future. The violence of the riots set off by the
meetings of the Wo