Ursula Franklin wrote a parallel piece:
CANADA UNDER OCCUPATION ... by an army of marketeers
Occupations and puppet governments are not only the stuff of wartime -
they exist right now under the subjugation of free market supremacy
By Dr. Ursula Franklin
Life means people, and people mean friendship, support, sustenance and
love. Life is justice - the striving for justice.
For some in Canada, however, life means profits, and profits mean
pitting people against one another. They suffer from what I can only
call moral dyslexia. Unfortunately, unlike children with learning
disabilities, those afflicted with moral dyslexia don't come to us for
help, don't seek a clearer vision. They are morally disabled by their
own choice.
I find the current situation bearable with the help of two things. One
is a concept of the reality in which we live, and the second is a look
back at history.
I picture the reality in which we live in terms of military occupation.
We are occupied the way the French and Norwegians were occupied by the
Nazis during World War II, but this time by an army of marketeers. We
have, as the occupied nations of Europe had, puppet governments who run
the country for the benefit of the occupier. We have, as they did,
collaborators.
We, like the French and Norwegians at the time, have to protect our
families and so are forced on occasion to work with the occupiers to
survive. Like the citizens of Nazi-occupied Europe, however, we must
also develop strategies for building a resistance movement. We have to
reclaim our country from those who occupy it on behalf of their global
masters, who have only contempt for those whose territory they now rule.
Privatization the goal
The goal of the occupiers is privatization, which, in its most brutal
terms, means to provide investment and profit opportunities in all
those areas that people previously had set aside as common holdings -
culture, health care, education, publishing, housing, nature, sports,
prisons. Once dismantled, the "public sphere" can be more easily
"occupied" - turned over to what I call the Empire of the Marketeers.
These warlords will convert the ill-health and misery and basic needs
of our neighbours into investment opportunities for the next round of
global capitalism.
Regrettably, our occupiers, unlike their German military predecessors,
do not wear uniforms, and so we can't identify them as easily as
military occupiers could in the past. But this in fact is more of a
technicality than a matter of substance. There are other and equally
effective ways of identifying our corporate overseers and their agents.
***
She went on to say (in what I consider to be the more important part of
the speech, not quoted by thus source) that we must refuse to
collaborate by shunning their language. I will try to get and post the
whole speech if anyone's interested.
Caspar
**************************
At 3:14 PM -0500 11/27/98, Brian McAndrews wrote:
> Casper,
> Marshall McLuhan said that the third world war would not be miltary war;
>it would be an information war. I think it has started; who do you
>think is
>winning.
> Orwell called it the Ministry of Truth.
>
> Brian McAndrews
>
>**************************************************
>* Brian McAndrews, Practicum Coordinator *
>* Faculty of Education, Queen's University *
>* Kingston, Ontario K7L 3N6 *
>* FAX:(613) 545-6307 Phone (613) 545-6000x4937 *
>* e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
>* "Ethics and aesthetics are one" *
>* Wittgenstein *
>* *
>* *
>**************************************************
