(Note to myself: find the email that is referred to. Definition of corporatocracy.)
Item #1 below: a very good interview that speaks beyond what is wrong (and how to make it right) in the U.S. systems of governance and economics (Wall Street).
AND THEN (item #2) an email: I thought I should tell Bill Moyers, Simon Johnson and Marcy Kaptur of the situation here.
ONE PART of what’s happening here is that Stephen Harper is proroguing Parliament. It will kill important legislation in progress, shut down the embarrassment over the Afghanistan War, among other things.
You will be sick of hearing me say: it is necessary to consider things IN CONTEXT. The context is partially spelt out in the email to Moyers, Johnson and Kaptur (ITEM #2). We are on very shaky ground.
Strategically, to regain ground after a major set-back (proroguation in this case), I:
- focus on creating at least one new alliance (the letter to Moyers will tell you who that is).
- make a point of finding 10 new people to add to my part of our network.
- know that some others of you will do the same in your part of the network!
I believe that our best offensive is to simply increase our numbers, increase the number of informed people. We have email – it’s easy to do.
/Sandra
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(1) BILL MOYERS’ INTERVIEW
October 9, 2009
Just over a year after economic calamity brought promises of reform from Washington, has Wall Street really changed? Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson and US Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) report on the state of the economy.
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10092009/watch.html
To activate:
Click on the link. Then click on the picture of Bill Moyers in the “tv screen”. A “start arrow” will appear. Click on it and the audio/video should start.
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(2) EMAIL TO BILL MOYERS
SENT: Sun 03/01/2010 5:39 PM
Dear Bill Moyers, Simon Johnson and Marcy Kaptur,
I’ve forwarded the link to your PBS interview from October 9th into some email networks in Canada. The information is sent and re-sent.
You discussed the takeover by Wall Street. In general it is a takeover of Canada as well as the U.S. and other parts of the world. There are many quislings in Canada.
I increasingly use the word “corporatocracy” to explain our system of governance. And the need for citizens to become involved, to drive the change from corporatocracy to a form of governance that reflects our values.
I am concerned about the potential for Canadians to increasingly blame “the Americans” for worsening conditions. It is easier than getting up off our butts to set things right. But it is the road to hatred between nations, not a smart path to trod!
I recognize the potential in myself: “the Americans” becomes shorthand for American leadership. I know I am not supposed to say this, it might get me into trouble, but I have fantasized about striding into the office of Hugh Grant with a sub-machine gun (Grant is Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of American chemical/biotech Corporation, Monsanto). I need to remind myself that it is these corporations, not “the Americans”, who are the evil empire. (But we are all culprits nonetheless: Corporations are merely a construct of our laws. The laws are of our making and we have the power to change the laws.)
A young American veteran of the Iraq war said it well, the wars are not between the citizens of our nations, whatever nations those may be (an excellent youtube video – I hope you have a few minutes for it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8&feature=email ).
It is good when we go overseas and into areas that the media portray as hopeless. What we find is people who may be poor, but they put their hearts into exactly the same things as do we: safe, secure communities and education for our children. We are not different from those people; we are manipulated into believing they are different, as the young veteran explains.
When I was a teenager youth hostelling in Europe in the 1960’s, I learned the value of making my Canadian citizenship known. Numbers of people despised me if they mistook my accent as American.
Now, Canadians are in the same league as the Americans – I am sometimes hated by people from other countries because Canadian mining companies are ruthless in taking over, poisoning and depleting local water supplies. Robbery of resources. Also Canadians have joined the Americans, in the interests of the biotech corporations, in trying to impose unwanted GMO crops and the idea of corporate “ownership” of life forms (seeds) on other nations through trade organizations like the WTO. Our sins are joined to yours.
I am forever grateful to Prime Minister Jean Chretien: he kept Canada out of the war in Iraq (at least on the surface). But now we have Stephen Harper, a clone of George Bush, to collaborate with the Corporate- Big Government machine. His current abuses of democratic process in the proroguing of Parliament is beyond imagination, unless you are in a corporatocracy or plutocracy or some other form of warped and malignant governance.
In this era of rapidly depleting oil & gas reserves, and water, the American Empire, like the Nazi Empire before it, must appropriate the resources of other people to fuel its expansion and control. (I am thinking, just one example, of the Nazi’s need to take the iron ore from northern Sweden and to control Norway in order to move the ore across to shipping lanes along the Norwegian coast. The iron ore resource in Germany was used up; but they could not run their war machine without it. And so they took over other nations.)
Replace “Nazi” by “American”, “Sweden” by “Canada and “iron ore” by “oil & gas” and “water”. You have: The American Empire must appropriate Canadian oil and gas and water in order to fuel its expansion and control. The deed is almost already accomplished through the American corporate structure; the back-up military integration is in place lest difficulties be encountered. The bureaucracy here is riddled with people whose role is servitude to the corporate interests. The strategic puppet political leaders who will profit from collaboration are in place, making the sell-out quite easy. This is but one more performance of a well-rehearsed play that has taken place in the Congo (American copper interests) – the list is too long and you will know the countries and resources. Canadians have the illusion that we are somehow different. While Americans are often kept in the dark about American activities in foreign lands.
In Canada we are seeing the corporate (“Wall Street”) takeover, not only of our Government but also
- of our Universities (the knowledge base) and
- the Canadian “Defence” Department (which used to be more aligned with peace offensives).
The “Troop Exchange Agreement” (Feb 2009), the “Canada First Defence Strategy” (June 2009) are about “interoperability” and repugnant alignment with American war policy. Your military-industrial–congressional complex has almost taken over here, working with the quislings and collaborators.
Canadians are thereby actively involved in the insanity of “unmanned drones” used to drop bombs on other people. When other nations start to drop bombs from unmanned drones on us, they will be labeled “terrorist”. And we will be brainwashed through fear into hating them — when we (Americans AND Canadians through our “defence” integration) are the originators of the weaponry. “The terrorists” will only be mimicking us in self-defence.
The arms manufacturers do not care to whom they sell their weaponry. You have only to google Lockheed Martin Corporation to see the convictions against them for contravention of American laws that are supposed to prohibit weapon transfer into “the wrong” hands. French arms manufacturers are no different. Corporations are without conscience.
The weapons of Gandhi (which are the teachings of your Henry David Thoreau) are so obviously more intelligent and effective. I wonder at our gross stupidity in allowing and funding these corporations and the destruction they create, through our taxes.
I am on trial next week because I refused to fill in my 2006 Canadian Census form. I would not, because part of the work on the Canadian census was out-sourced to American arms dealer and war-monger Lockheed Martin Corporation.
Anyone familiar with the history of the draconian use of census data in Nazi Europe (“IBM and the Holocaust” by Edwin Black) would never allow even one tiny footstep of the American military into the arena of government census data on individual Canadians. The potential for abuse is magnified many times over what happened in Nazi Europe, by today’s technologies.
The situation is exacerbated by the Patriot Act which gives access, without notification to the owners, by the American military to data held by any corporation in the U.S. and its subsidiaries in other countries. (Why Americans allow Lockheed Martin to do your census indicates to me that you do not appreciate the wisdom of your own legal instruments for the protection of privacy, or of history generally. It was through the census contracts of IBM’s disguised subsidiaries in various European countries that the Nazis knew who the Jews were and where they lived, well before the Nazis actually entered the countries.)
It is also reprehensible to me that the Canadian government would out-source work to an American corporation that not only is a war profiteer, but also one that manufactures or has manufactured weapons in contravention of Canadian and International Law (land mines and cluster munitions). In these times, civil disobedience is called for (although in my case it is not really civil disobedience because the Government is the offender, not me).
I am thankful to Prime Minister Pierre Elliot Trudeau who entrenched the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms into the Constitution of Canada. I expect to be found “not guilty” because my Charter Rights override the Statistics Act under which I am being prosecuted.
Sometimes it seems that we can never overcome the evils. But in fact we can, because there are so many of us.
Canadians can be motivated and hopeful, just by knowing people in the U.S. such as yourselves are also working very hard to make things right. We join hands across the border, in defiance of the wrongs committed in our names, enabled by our money (taxes) and by our former inaction. I believe that the success of Americans is critical to our success in Canada in overcoming the corporate (“Wall Street”) agenda.
We labor alongside you in “the good fight”; we take from you (e.g. Bill Moyers’ PBS programmes, Paul Hawken’s book “Blessed Unrest”, Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience”, etc.). . . . .
Do you benefit from us? My guess is that because of the all-pervasiveness of the American media and the insulation that accompanies “Empire”, that people in America may not be too aware of the contributions that Canadians make to the overall fight. Which is okay – – I just want to ensure that we work together and that Canadians do not come to see “Americans” as “the enemy” that is responsible for creation of the havoc, and that people overseas do not come to see “Canadians” as the enemy – – – – which we are if we do not assume responsibility for our Governments.
I am reminded of Canadian Buffy St Marie’s “Universal Soldier”, also highly recommended if you have a few minutes.
(Lyrics and link to Buffy’s youtube : http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=5230 )
I wish to thank you, Bill, for the excellence and useability of your work. I periodically circulate it. One of the first pieces I used was your exposure of the chemical corporations.
My congratulations to the three of you for your efforts. We are all empowered by them.
Best wishes,
Sandra Finley
Saskatoon SK Canada S7N 0L1
(I am from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan in Canada. I’ve run an activist email network for 10 years. And was the leader of the Green Party of Saskatchewan during the last provincial election (2007). I do not currently have a web-site because of the long-pending trial; I do not wish to supply information to the prosecutors that may in some way be used against me.)
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October 9, 2009
Just over a year after economic calamity brought promises of reform from Washington, has Wall Street really changed? Former International Monetary Fund chief economist Simon Johnson and US Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) report on the state of the economy.