2016-06-29 Post-Brexit results: Is governing by referendum democratic? Reply to CBC The Current. (Corporatocracy, Linguistics.)

The European Union is part of a structure of governance.

Media coverage of Brexit hardly mentions the question of governance.

And yet it is there in the interviews of UK citizens who voted “leave”.

We don’t have a word for the problem that exists in governance.

 

The Governance question does not emerge clearly because citizens do not have a commonly understood word to capture what they are experiencing.

 

ONE   Try this:   I describe what I experience.  The only word I have for it, is “it”.

• “It” has different smells
• “It” has different feels
• “It” has different strengths
• I am sometimes very aware of it, and sometimes not at all

What am I talking about?  Can you create in your mind an understanding if we don’t have a common word?    Can we have a discussion about “it”?

(“It”  is the wind.  . . .  Now, our discussion can soar!)

TWO   Try this:

• “It”  means we will have to pay multiple-millions of dollars to corporations if they don’t like laws we pass to protect our resources.
• “It”  means to Europeans that they will have to open their fields and markets to gmo foods that their laws and wishes prohibit.
• “It”  feels as though we citizens are powerless.

Is there a common word that describes “it”?    Are there discussions about “it”?   . . .  what is the one word we can all use to immediately conjure what it is you or I are talking about?

Not many media people have adopted the word “Corporatocracy“.  The majority of citizens do not know the word.  Yet it has been in the vernacular for more than a decade.

I just found this excellent article on CounterPunch.

Bernie Sanders vs. the Corporatocracy    by Richard W. Behan

EXCERPT:

Corporatocracy is the power to which Mr. Sanders is speaking. It is defined in the New Oxford American Dictionary as “a society…that is governed or controlled by corporations.”  In such a society public policy is crafted not to advance the general well being of the people, but to protect, enhance, or create profit opportunities for hegemonic corporations.

This is America today: our democracy has been supplanted, transformed by the engines of corporate lobbying and the influence of corporate campaign contributions.

(A backup copy of the full article is at  http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=16837)

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MY NOTE TO CBC, THE CURRENT (June 29, 2016)

RE:   Post-Brexit results: Is governing by referendum democratic?

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thecurrent/the-current-for-june-29-2016-1.3657498/post-brexit-results-is-governing-by-referendum-democratic-1.3657625  )

 

I read in The Guardian a page of reasons given by brexiters on why they voted “leave”.   I am not hearing their views reflected by the pundits.

The 20-minute discussion among your experts, “Is governing by referendum democratic?” omitted a crucial factor.

CBC listeners to the rescue!   The lady from Gabriola Island whose letter was read on The Current, immediately following your Panel was dead on. She gave eloquent voice to many brexiters (trade deals that give corporations rights that over-ride citizen rights, governance structures that remove the ability to hold decision-makers to account (NO,  that reason is in The Guardian list – – any chance I could obtain a copy of The Lady from Gabriola’s list?)

It becomes apparent that the question to be answered is:

If democracy has been usurped by some other form of government,

how do citizens go about getting rid of the usurpers?

How do they get some semblance of democracy back?

Brexiters saw an opportunity and they used it.

(UPDATE:  see   2016-07-07 Maude Barlow: Brexit, CETA and the right way to create trade agreements.   Corporatocracy.)

For that the pundits label them as being poorly-informed, guided by their emotions (irrational) and thus incapable.

Defense of Democracy does not carry obvious economic benefits; it does require some kind of intuitive knowledge that democracy is on its way down the drain.

I recommend that the pundits learn and use the word “corporatocracy” which has been in the vernacular at least since 2004.

 

Some may be further interested:

CONTRAST

• coup d’etat   (by corporate interests) and
• revolution   (citizens taking back their power).

see   http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=634    

 

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EXCERPT FROM the preceding URL, CONTRAST which is:   2010-09-13 RCMP identify coup d’etat as threat to Canada, Ottawa Citizen. Never Never Land.

 

RE:   The RCMP have put the risk of a coup d’état on the list of four threats to Canada. OTTAWA CITIZEN, © The Montreal Gazette.

“Military historian Edward Luttwak says, “A coup consists of the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder”, thus, armed force (either military or paramilitary) is not a defining feature of a coup d’état.” (wikipedia)

I’d say that coup d’états happen when the powers-that-be want more power and control than they already have.  Or, they feel a threat to their power and agenda.

What would threaten them, in today’s world?  . . .  Why did the RCMP list coup état?  . . . Answer one of the questions, you’ve answered both.

Growing dissatisfaction among growing numbers of “peasants” would be a threat to the powers-that-be.   Sufficient dissatisfaction, large enough numbers, intention . . . but that would be called a “revolution”, not a coup d’état.

So let’s see.  The RCMP say the threat of a coup d’état exists.  Earlier,  I and others have said that we have corporatocracy, not democracy in Canada.   Which means that the coup d’état has ALREADY TAKEN PLACE   (“the infiltration of a small, but critical, segment of the state apparatus, which is then used to displace the government from its control of the remainder”).

What does the RCMP statement mean then?  Does it mean that there is a threat of EVEN MORE coup d’état-ing?

To answer that, put yourself into the shoes of the powers-that-be (the ones doing the coups).  What do THEY see?  . . .   I see coup d’état . . .  they see revolution.   We are viewing the same world, but through a different set of eyes.   A power struggle between us and them.

I was astounded to hear “coup d’etat” used in the media, from the RCMP.  . . .  But why the surprise?  I have been saying that the success of the opposition to the tar sands, the success in protection of water,  etc., threatens the corporate agenda.  That “revolution” threatens the corporate agenda.  When I stop to think, as a population moves toward revolution, yes, that is when coup d’états happen.   The population wakes up to what has been happening, they stop being sheeple, the powers whose interests are threatened must resort to military/police (violence) to impose their will.

In this network we have documented the growing military/police state in Canada.   What is that other than the signs of a coup d’état?   But is that the coup d’état that the RCMP are thinking of?

So is there evidence of dissatisfaction and unrest,  IN LARGE ENOUGH NUMBERS to trigger pre-emptive (that’s what it would be), MORE coup état-ing by large corporations working with their quislings?

Another question:  if the RCMP see potential coup d’état, where does that leave THEM?

We’re all in this together.  I think we need to understand the situation and share it.  Otherwise we, as Canadians,  can’t solve it.

Back to Coup d’état / Revolution: LARGE ENOUGH NUMBERS?   .. . .  don’t need to address that one.  “They” would see large enough numbers, enabled, empowered and connected by the ability to exchange information by email, the net, and cheap phone technology.

DISSATISFACTION?  . . . .  try George Monbiot’s September 20^th article, “THE PROCESS IS DEAD” (below)

This is part of a short series of postings, one of which talks about the movie “Sounds like a Revolution” http://www.soundslikearevolution.com/ .  I recommend the movie.  It is very helpful to understanding today’s political affairs.

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(2)    RCMP LIST COUP D’ETAT AS THREAT, OTTAWA CITIZEN, September 13, 2010

Ottawa Citizen, Montreal Gazette, etc.

RCMP identify coup d’etat as threat 

Considered operational priority. First time such language in planning report, signals emphasis on national security 

By IAN MACLEOD, Postmedia News; Ottawa Citizen September 13, 2010

RCMP officials have identified a new threat to national security: a coup d’etat.

The reference to a violent overthrow of the federal government is contained in the RCMP’s plans and priorities report to government for 2010-11. It lists national security as one of five operational priorities for the year.

The document then cites four specific security concerns:

– ¦Espionage and sabotage.

– ¦Foreign-influenced criminal activities detrimental to the interests of Canada.

– ¦Terrorism.

– ¦ “Activities aimed at over-throwing, by violence, the Government of Canada.”

RCMP officials were not immediately available Friday to explain the reference, but such language has not appeared in previous RCMP reports.

Over the past year, the Mounties have signalled a renewed emphasis on national security issues that have been pushed aside by law enforcement’s preoccupation with global terrorism since 9/11.

In a major speech last fall, for example, RCMP Commissioner William Elliott said while transnational terrorism and “homegrown” radicalization remain big threats, so too are economic espionage by foreign states, transnational organized crime, proliferation issues, illegal migration and other border-security issues.

While hyperbolic, the mention of a coup threat appears to reflect the force’s return to a broader operational approach to guarding national security.

It’s also not the first talk of a government overthrow.

The 1999 book Agent of Influence alleged the U.S. CIA plotted a de facto coup of Lester B. Pearson’s government in the early 1960s.

Canadian author Ian Adams claimed that after the 1963 assassination of U.S. president John F. Kennedy, CIA counter-intelligence branch head James Jesus Angleton became convinced Pearson was an agent for Russian intelligence and supposedly had information from a Soviet defector backing him up.

“The CIA took great personal offence at Pearson’s independent stands in foreign policy, his grain trades with the Soviet Union, his antiwar positions on Vietnam, and especially his friendly stance on Cuba,” wrote Adams.

To get at Pearson, the CIA set its sights first on Canadian diplomat James Watkins, Canada’s ambassador to Russia in the mid-1950s and a friend of the prime minister.

After 27 days of interrogation by the Mounties, the 62-year-old Watkins’s troubled heart gave out and he died, apparently without supplying the confession the spymasters hoped could bring down the government.

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