July 17, 2003
Dominion #3

Issue #3 of the Dominion has been up for a while.

I'm particularly happy with the National Missile Defence readings. They reveal some aspects of NMD that simply aren't discussed in mainstream debate (in Canada, the debate is almost entirely how much we need to placate the Bush administration). Those aspects are Canada's fast-growing defense industry, which stands to profit from projects like NMD, and the reasons for the existence of missile "defense" in the first place. Take this startling analysis from the Project for the New American Century, for example:

Effective ballistic missile defenses will be the central element in the exercise of American power and the projection of U.S. military forces abroad. Without it, weak states operating small arsenals of crude ballistic missiles, armed with basic nuclear warheads or other weapons of mass destruction, will be a in a strong position to deter the United States from using conventional force, no matter the technological or other advantages we may enjoy. Even if such enemies are merely able to threaten American allies rather than the United States homeland itself, America's ability to project power will be deeply compromised.
In other words, NMD is about being able to negate the ability of smaller states from deterring an American invasion, so as to attack with impunity. This is quite literally the position of the Bush administration.

We also published a series of excerpts from Social Torment: Globalization in Atlantic Canada, a book-length study of neoliberal policies by Dr. Thom Workman. Workman has some provocative things to say about both mainstream politics and the left in Canada. For example:

The social equation of neoliberal policy reforms is clear: social austerity equals low wages.
Or:
Capital is not antidemocratic; it is antiworker. If throwing a democratic bone or two to "citizens" would do it any good, transnational capital would embrace any element of democracy in an instant. Discussions that centre around the notion of "democracy" are likely to miss the crucial and most important point about the evolving globalist agenda, namely, that the purportedly democratic institutions of the state are being attacked and usurped to undermine the relative power of working people. Almost invariably, these overworked dramatizations about the erosion of democracy give themselves over to genteel concerns about the importance of salvaging great nations such as Canada. Analysts must do more than chase the shadows of a world that emits such cruelty and suffering.

posted by dru in blog
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