Dr. Michael Parenti: "Terrorism, Globalism and Conspiracy"

"OCTOBER 9, 2002, VANCOUVER: Dr. Michael Parenti, one of North America's leading radical writers on U.S. imperialism and interventionism, fascism, democracy and the media, spoke to several hundred people at St. Andrews Wesley Church in Vancouver."

"Dr. Parenti has taught political science at a number of colleges and universities in the United States and other countries. He was written 250 majro magazine articles and 15 books and is frequently heard on public and alternative radio."

This is a flash video that as of this writing, isn't available. However, the page does have download links for the audio presentation in RM and MP3 formats.

I've never heard of this guy before, and because there's no printed transcript on the page, was about to pass it up. I'm really glad I didn't. I think it was the word "Conspiracy" in the title that made it sound like it was going to be one of those wild irrational theories that are more entertaining, than having anything to do with reality. The trouble with exposing/promoting conspiracies is that skeptics give these people the name of "conspiracy theorists", and laugh them off by lumping them all into the same barrel, with believers in secret government UFO connections, the moon landing hoax, Bigfoot having been created by aliens, Elvis sightings, etc, etc, thus effectively ridiculing them in the eyes of the general public who are told it's all a bunch of sillyness. Remember Bush speaking at the rubble of the WTC towers right after 9/11, warning us not to believe in "conspiracy theories" that will arise in the coming days? That was a pre-emptive strike against anyone not going along with the "official" story of what had happened.

The thing is, conspiracies take place all the time. The word does not equate to "wildly improbable nonsense". Any two people getting together and discussing a plan that they don't want the general public to know about, is a conspiracy. People are conspiring all the time, to commit murder, robbery, political corruption, adultry, and so on. So my point is that even if you've been conditioned to flinch whenever you hear the "C" word, don't immediately dismiss it, thinking it's something from the paranoid "aliens are among us" crowd.

With all that said, I believe you'll find this speech worth hearing because what's being said are not wild theories, but the way things are actually happening, and any doubters can easily jump on a search engine and check on some of the things he says. Any regular readers of this blog will recognize many of the things the speaker says, as I've covered them in previous posts. He talks about globalization in a way as to make you understand why I've blasted the behavior of multi-national corporations, particularly in poor countries. Like me, he doesn't have an inherent problem with basic capitalism, but we both can't ignore the blatant abusiveness of mega-corps once they embed themselves in countries that are to weak and poor to fight for basic economic, environmental, and workers rights. He explains what capitalism is doing around the world.

Like I said, I've never heard of him before, so I'm not too sure about where he stands on solutions. My latent "anti-commie" indoctrination kicked in a couple of times when he seemed to be favoring socialist economies. Anyway, he does remind you of the reasons we have it so good hear in American. As a history buff, I've mentioned it myself. Over the last hundred years we've fought (and died) against unrestrained capitalism, and forced it to conceed to our demands for a living wage, decent working hours, worker safety, child labor laws, environmental protections, equal opportunity, pension plans, etc, but since the Reagan era, all those advances have been slowly erroding. Poorer countries, many still living with the corrupting legacy of colonialism, haven't been able to successfully restrain capitalist domination of their countries by creating and enforcing the laws that we have, because everytime they try, we send in the marines, or subvert their political process, to make the world safe for corporations. They're erroding here at home now, because those same companies are crying broke, and need relief from the oppressive wage, economic, and environmental retrictions we've placed on them, to protect ourselves from being abused. And they're getting their way. Meanwhile, our standard of living is steadily going down, yet we're told the enonomy is doing great. Great for whom?

The one clear message from this is that we have to correct things ourselves. We can't count on politicians, even the Democrats. No one is going to put things right, unless we force them. And that won't happen without knowledge of what's wrong, plus a little anger.