Excerpts from Global Brain Digest No. 62 (see below for subscription
details):
(Nanaimo) THE MYTH OF THE GOOD CORPORATE CITIZEN
Murray Dobbin, author of the above-titled book, spoke recently in
Nanaimo. After noting that corporations were persons under the law before
women and aboriginal people, he discussed the "casino economy" and the
corporate agenda.
Marketing sells U.S. consumer culture to the top 10 or 15% of
consumers around the world - it no longer matters if Canadians can't afford
the product. Local culture is an enemy to investment and trade; the
corporate agenda wants citizens who are passive and deferential. He quoted
economic guru Milton Friedman as saying that social justice would ruin the
world.
Mr. Dobbin's recommendation is that we become, in large numbers,
*intentional citizens*. We can't inspire hope by defending social programs
that we don't fully like - nobody quite thinks the public schools are
succeeding; health care is really just sickness care; welfare is
"warehousing the poor." We must put together a vision of the communities
that we really want, and we must make the elite respond to *our* agenda.
FMI: See Mr. Dobbin's book.
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(Global) WHO PAYS THE PRICE?
Violent weather has cost the world a record $130 billion this year
-- more money than was lost from weather-related disasters in all of the
1980s ($120 billion when adjusted for inflation) -- and researchers blame
human meddling for much of the loss. In addition to the material losses,
the disasters have killed an estimated 32,000 people and displaced 300
million -- more than the population of the United States -- the report
says.
The study is based on estimates from Worldwatch, an environmental
research group, and Munich Re, a German-based reinsurer, which writes
policies that protect insurance companies from the risk of massive claims
that might put them out of business.
The report says a combination of deforestation and climate change
has caused this year's most severe disasters, among them Hurricane Mitch,
the flooding of China's Yangtze River and Bangladesh's most extensive flood
of the century. . . . "In a sense, we're turning up the faucets . . . and
throwing away the sponges, like the forests and the wetlands," said Seth
Dunn, research associate and climate change expert at the Institute.
Source: Globe and Mail, Sat. Nov. 28, 1998, p. A25; "Natural disaster
costs
soar to world record" by Donna Abu-Nasr, Associated Press
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