It is not our role to take power. It is our role to make the powerful frightened of us. And that's what we've forgotten. Give up that dream! Chris Hedges talks neoliberalism and neofeudalism, the civil rights movement, Camden, Obama, Clinton, Tea Parties, moral nihilism, inverted totalitarianism and corpocracy, NAFTA, welfare reform, health care, labor, poverty, Yugoslavia, post-industrial capitalism, economic crisis, imperial collapse, socialism, and democracy, among other things.
[more inside]
posted by gerryblog
on Apr 24, 2010 -
51 comments
A coworker hipped me to
this, and I found it quite astonishing that I'd heard nothing about it.
It's a great irony that, while the United States has probably never been less popular among Canadians than in the era of George W Bush, plans to integrate Canada more deeply into the US have been proceeding at a brisk clip.
The threat of Canada being absorbed into the US has traditionally provoked strong reactions here, as the pitched electoral battles over the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1980s and '90s attest.
But the issue seems to have largely disappeared in recent years, leaving the impression that the push for deeper integration has stopped or that Canadians no longer care about it. Neither is true.
It seems that a
goodly number of politically
active groups are aware, however, and are
organizing protests. How effective will those protests be when they won't be able to get within
several kilometers of the site?
Has anyone got any thoughts about this?
How will they fit 52 stars on the Star-Spangled Banner?
Should I don my tinfoil hat?
Is the protest even relevant, given that most of the news reports I can find are calling it a
fait accompli?
posted by I, Credulous
on Jul 23, 2007 -
91 comments
"Toronto flings garbage at Michigan" no no!... - US Courts Canadian Crud! ...Eh?, well, OK: Toronto
trucks it's tons 'o trash across the border to dump in Michigan landfills, and some Yanks are
eager to buy, although others...
"It's so disgusting we don't even talk about it...Why can't they keep their garbage over there?" .....[''We need to put an end to this desecration of our beautiful state,'' fumed Representative Candice S. Miller, Republican of Michigan who also warned that terrorists or weapons of mass destruction could be concealed
amidst the rotting food and used diapers.]
......"Relations between the United States and Canada have been souring for two years....Canada's wishy-washy stance on the Iraq crisis...has irked Washington" chides the Boston Globe, clearly piqued that Boston is not in a position to
catapult cannisters of it's garbage and toxic waste northward at Canada, towards the "Great Concavity" of David Foster Wallace's
"Infinite
Jest". [other shades of "....Jest" loom as "...a reputed haven for terror groups." whispers the Globe...just like in Wallace's book!]
.....Toronto can't find any Canadian communities willing to furnish an immense garbage pit, while "
Michigan's underused landfills are famous for courting crud from outside the state's borders.": They approached Toronto with the deal.
["Ontario, meanwhile, accepts imports of toxic industrial sludge, low-level radioactive waste, and other dangerous refuse from Michigan and other US states."] Garbage is a protected "free trade" commodity under NAFTA and Michigan may need the 'trash jobs':
NAFTA has spurred automakers to
shift production away from the US and build new factories in Canada and Mexico. Canada's auto
factories are
7%
more productive than US ones and have lower health care costs. [
"The growth of imports to the
U.S. from these factories has contributed substantially to the growing U.S. trade deficit and
the related job losses."]. So: Canada sends garbage and shiny new autos south: the US sends radioactive sludge, spittle, jobs and curses north.
Meanwhile, walk across the border and the
murder rate per 100,000 (per year) drops from
42.6 (Detroit, USA) to
2.2 (Windsor, Canada):
"Are
Canadians somehow flinging all their fear and murderous rage into the US along with the garbage?" (asks the Daily Tabloid)
posted by troutfishing
on Mar 10, 2003 -
42 comments
Last week, the WTO
ruled against a corporate welfare program for US exporters (
again). This week, a Canadian hemp company
claims the US owes them US$20m under NAFTA for harrassment and impinging on future returns.
posted by raaka
on Jan 23, 2002 -
10 comments
Talk about a Trojan Horse! The legal concept of "regulatory takings" has slowly been gaining ground in right wing circles, and is embedded in trade agreements such as NAFTA and FTAA. The idea represents nothing less than a complete subversion of democracy. (It's a longish article, but an extremely alarming one.)
posted by Ty Webb
on Oct 22, 2001 -
18 comments
Rise of the "Investor-State"? I was reading
The Nation online, and came across this article. William Greider has written a piece detailing how many conservatives in this country think that the Constitution's Fifth Amendment protections against private property being taken from individuals should apply to EVERYTHING, including government regulations. Taken to extremes, if a city want to pass an ordinance banning strip clubs from school zones, any club with even an inkling that they were going to build a club in those zones could sue the city against future POTENTIAL earnings.
Seems silly to me. What about you?
TOO LATE: IT'S ALREADY IN NAFTA. It's called Chapter 11, and it protects foreign investors/foreign companies from regulatory actions. So, for example, when California passed a bill to remove the carcinogen MTBE from gasoline in order to halt its spread into drinking water, Methanex Corporation, from Canada, sued for $970 MILLION. These lawsuits are popping up all over the place, and it's only going to get worse once the
FTAA is passed.
posted by taumeson
on Oct 10, 2001 -
7 comments
