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Excerpts: Chris Hedges on Bill C-51 and the corporate state
In terms of this particular bill, do you think that this fits into a wider trend of similar legislation in the western world?
Of course it fits into a wider trend -- not only into the western world but in Canada. Canadians are monitored as closely as U.S. citizens are as closely as British citizens or any other. This is a global phenomenon and the corporate state -- and Harper is representative of the corporate power and the corporate state -- seeks this kind of control because they know what is coming with climate change and the inevitable financial collapse that is looming now that global speculators are back on a spree as they were before 2008. With a flick of a switch essentially we have both the legal and physical mechanisms through the creation of massive security forces -- militarized police forces -- to in essence declare a militarized state both in Canada and the United States. Or should we have another catastrophic act of domestic terrorism anything like that, all the mechanisms are there... we have to fight it now.
So do you think that this bill will actually will do anything towards its stated goal of combatting terrorism?
None of these bills are about terrorism. Terrorism is the excuse. That's what 9/11 was and that's what this gunman who carried out this attack on Parliament Hill -- they seize on that the same way, for instance, the Nazi party seized on the Reichstag fire to strip away civil liberties in Germany. What people forget is that the next day, after the Nazis essentially eviscerated all civil liberties for the German population, everything appeared normal. Everyone went to work; came home; had dinner. They had ceded to themselves this kind of power in the name of fighting terrorism.
But for most people there's a kind of normalcy and they don't quite yet understand what a sea change this has been, and how dramatic this change is, and of course how terrifying it is. Totalitarian systems, they creep forward because they have to break any kind of obstacles or opposition that lie in their path. By the time people grasp what has happened to them, its kind of too late. There are no mechanisms left by which they can fight back. That's kind of where we're headed; that's what is going on.
Of course it fits into a wider trend -- not only into the western world but in Canada. Canadians are monitored as closely as U.S. citizens are as closely as British citizens or any other. This is a global phenomenon and the corporate state -- and Harper is representative of the corporate power and the corporate state -- seeks this kind of control because they know what is coming with climate change and the inevitable financial collapse that is looming now that global speculators are back on a spree as they were before 2008. With a flick of a switch essentially we have both the legal and physical mechanisms through the creation of massive security forces -- militarized police forces -- to in essence declare a militarized state both in Canada and the United States. Or should we have another catastrophic act of domestic terrorism anything like that, all the mechanisms are there... we have to fight it now.
So do you think that this bill will actually will do anything towards its stated goal of combatting terrorism?
None of these bills are about terrorism. Terrorism is the excuse. That's what 9/11 was and that's what this gunman who carried out this attack on Parliament Hill -- they seize on that the same way, for instance, the Nazi party seized on the Reichstag fire to strip away civil liberties in Germany. What people forget is that the next day, after the Nazis essentially eviscerated all civil liberties for the German population, everything appeared normal. Everyone went to work; came home; had dinner. They had ceded to themselves this kind of power in the name of fighting terrorism.
But for most people there's a kind of normalcy and they don't quite yet understand what a sea change this has been, and how dramatic this change is, and of course how terrifying it is. Totalitarian systems, they creep forward because they have to break any kind of obstacles or opposition that lie in their path. By the time people grasp what has happened to them, its kind of too late. There are no mechanisms left by which they can fight back. That's kind of where we're headed; that's what is going on.
...You know, if we don't win this fight, then we are going to cement into place a species of corporate totalitarianism which will usher in a dystopia of terrifying proportions.
More at: http://rabble.ca/news/2015/03/exclusive-chris-hedges-on-bill-c-51-and-corporate-state
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