Welcome to history week, 101. It kicked off Monday, Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts, a commemoration of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, moved to the nearest Monday. One of our sharp-eyed correspondents spotted Paul Revere trotting along Mass Ave. in Boston at noon with a police cruiser in front, two mounted state troopers and backed-up traffic creeping behind. It was a hat trick – wrong hour, wrong day, wrong place. “Listen my children and you shall hear of the daylight ride of Paul Revere?”
Other commemorations this week include the actual anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Branch Davidian-ATF shootout at Waco, Texas, the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado and Adolph Hitler’s birthday. Friday is 4:20, and if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, it doesn’t apply to you.
All of the above, with the exception of Mr. Hitler, are American history, but American history is passe. Nation-states themselves are passing into history, and we are entering into a multinational era. Every year, Europe acts more as a continent and less as a collection of states. It wasn’t NATO that brought Europe together, but the Common Market. National boundaries, drawn by politics, are being erased by economics.
This weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Quebec is to the new era what Philadelphia’s Continental Congress was to the old – the shape of things to come. The old city of Quebec, fortified by steel and concrete and ringed with 5,000 police officers will host the leaders of every nation in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, with the exception of Cuba.
The Canadian government, which is well advised in matters of image and public relations, has established a “designated protest area” a mile from the summit fortress, a veritable children’s table where obedient dissidents may be safely ignored.
Meanwhile, inside the summit, corporations have been invited to “sponsor” the event with donations of 75,000-500,000 Canadian dollars. In return for their cash contribution, corporate sponsors get to set up booths in a “designated sponsorship area” a mile away from the summit proceedings, where they will be ignored. That’s fair, isn’t it? It would be fair, but it isn’t true. The corporate sponsors are inside the wall, behind the lines of police in riot gear, rubbing shoulders with the national leaders and summit negotiators.
The message couldn’t be clearer: If you represent workers, or the environment or the poor, you stay outside and the police in riot gear will let loose with the clubs and pepper spray if you get too close. If you represent the moneyed interests, come on inside and we’ll do some business with a wink and nod.
The people who are really caught are the negotiators from the small nations. The U.S. bulldozer is pushing the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement and the small nations feel compelled to go along, trying to plead for a few favors here and there. The alternative is to be thrown outside the summit fortress with the environmentalists and the labor activists.
Once again, the message couldn’t be clearer: The Summit of the Americas is the place where two continents come to negotiate the terms of their surrender to North American corporations.
A few months ago, the Canadian Democracy and Corporate Accountability Commission sent letters to 1,000 Canadian corporations, asking how those corporations will balance profits and responsibilities in this new era. Not one company responded. The message couldn’t be clearer. Remember this is the economic era, the multinational era. Multinational corporations, that is.
If you don’t like this era, if you don’t like this next phase of history the corporations are making, go out and make your own.
Couldn’t Be Clearer
Welcome to history week, 101. It kicked off Monday, Patriot’s Day in Massachusetts, a commemoration of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, moved to the nearest Monday. One of our sharp-eyed correspondents spotted Paul Revere trotting along Mass Ave. in Boston at noon with a police cruiser in front, two mounted state troopers and backed-up traffic creeping behind. It was a hat trick – wrong hour, wrong day, wrong place. “Listen my children and you shall hear of the daylight ride of Paul Revere?”
Other commemorations this week include the actual anniversary of the Battle of Lexington and Concord, the Branch Davidian-ATF shootout at Waco, Texas, the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City, the shooting at Columbine High School in Colorado and Adolph Hitler’s birthday. Friday is 4:20, and if you don’t know what that means, don’t worry, it doesn’t apply to you.
All of the above, with the exception of Mr. Hitler, are American history, but American history is passe. Nation-states themselves are passing into history, and we are entering into a multinational era. Every year, Europe acts more as a continent and less as a collection of states. It wasn’t NATO that brought Europe together, but the Common Market. National boundaries, drawn by politics, are being erased by economics.
This weekend’s Summit of the Americas in Quebec is to the new era what Philadelphia’s Continental Congress was to the old – the shape of things to come. The old city of Quebec, fortified by steel and concrete and ringed with 5,000 police officers will host the leaders of every nation in North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, with the exception of Cuba.
The Canadian government, which is well advised in matters of image and public relations, has established a “designated protest area” a mile from the summit fortress, a veritable children’s table where obedient dissidents may be safely ignored.
Meanwhile, inside the summit, corporations have been invited to “sponsor” the event with donations of 75,000-500,000 Canadian dollars. In return for their cash contribution, corporate sponsors get to set up booths in a “designated sponsorship area” a mile away from the summit proceedings, where they will be ignored. That’s fair, isn’t it? It would be fair, but it isn’t true. The corporate sponsors are inside the wall, behind the lines of police in riot gear, rubbing shoulders with the national leaders and summit negotiators.
The message couldn’t be clearer: If you represent workers, or the environment or the poor, you stay outside and the police in riot gear will let loose with the clubs and pepper spray if you get too close. If you represent the moneyed interests, come on inside and we’ll do some business with a wink and nod.
The people who are really caught are the negotiators from the small nations. The U.S. bulldozer is pushing the Free Trade Area of the Americas agreement and the small nations feel compelled to go along, trying to plead for a few favors here and there. The alternative is to be thrown outside the summit fortress with the environmentalists and the labor activists.
Once again, the message couldn’t be clearer: The Summit of the Americas is the place where two continents come to negotiate the terms of their surrender to North American corporations.
A few months ago, the Canadian Democracy and Corporate Accountability Commission sent letters to 1,000 Canadian corporations, asking how those corporations will balance profits and responsibilities in this new era. Not one company responded. The message couldn’t be clearer. Remember this is the economic era, the multinational era. Multinational corporations, that is.
If you don’t like this era, if you don’t like this next phase of history the corporations are making, go out and make your own.