crap like this I'm reminded of this DU thread. What do you guys think?
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=110&topic_id=378DU poster
DagmarK Corporate Takeover of US Govt: Mirrors the Kiwis from late 80s***I ran across an interesting few posts in a Guardian talk group in the international forum under a thread entitled Calling All Americans VIII.
There is a chap (or lassie?) named mmuskin who is posting some important notes from a thread on DU from mid-October. I think we ALL need to read it. So I copy it here. (or the parts that mmuskin has already posted thus far).
This info is written by a New Zealander, and I wonder if that person is still posting here? I would SURE like to talk to him/her! The similarities in NZ’s handling of the corporate takeover of THEIR govt in the late 80s and what we see here are ASTOUNDING! And, to be fair to the dems (esp GBNC!) who say they will NOT vote for any bushlite dem even if that bushlite got the nomination, well……after reading about how NZ eradicated their cancerous corporate takeover, I tend to agree. It’s time we got radical and cleaned house in our govt and do it NOW. Not just elect some dems to do it for us sometime after Nov 2004!
To be fair, mmuskin lists some of the responders as: in a thread started by hedda_foil. Other posters' names included Mr_SmokesTooMuch, NewYorkerFromMass, jiacinto, ithacan, nothingshocksmeanymore, charlie, KoKo01, NYC, TahitiNut, bornskeptic, StlMo, Armstead, Classical_Liberal, Tinoire, WhoDoYouTrust, Merlin, TheSocialist2002, Tigermoose, LiberalLibra, BeHereNow, Pocho, Tigerlily, David Zephyr, and bpilgrim. I wish I knew who the (New Zealander) author was but I saved the entire thread and am only now attempting to render it readable from the saved HTML.
The most chilling quote in the WHOLE thing is this one, which I excerpted:
“So my only connection to the US is the knowledge that the US is the most powerful nation on the planet, and if these corporates get control of its military then we will ALL be screwed.”
BY MMUSKIN on Guardian Talk:
The preceeding four posts are quotes from the talkboards of DemocraticUnderground.com (DU, not to be confused with Depleted Uranium) posted late last year. Many people found them interesting, as did I. I will post more from my collection of those posts as I get time.
Notes from the (Democratic) Underground, Part 1
Sit back, and really think about it; and while you're at it, think about the Clinton presidency too (i.e. Welfare "Reform", NAFTA, WTO, for starters). Here in New Zealand in the late eighties, our left-wing party, Labour, underwent the same right-wing transformation that has taken a hold in the US and the UK. Privatisation, union busting and all the rest of the typically right-wing policies subtly became the policies of Labour and much damage was done because of it.
Most of our national industries that provided tens of thousands of jobs, and much needed revenue for the government, were mismanaged and run into the ground, before being sold off at fire-sale prices to overseas corporations.
We were told that by selling these loss-making enterprises, the government would be able to reduce our national debt considerably, and that they would be run better and be cheaper for the public. What we got, was basically enough money to cover a few years interest repayments on the debt, and huge amounts of revenue lost overseas, revenue that could not only have covered those few years of interest payments, but many more years, and we would still own our assets.
Legislation was also brought in that basically killed the unions. It gave far too much power to the corporate employers, while taking power away from their employees. Unemployment skyrocketed, and although it eventually stabilised, it still remains relatively high, and real wages came down significantly, so much so, that people earning over US $16,000 per year are considered wealthy.
Now comes the part that most of the pro-Dem posters would probably NOT like to hear: The people in our Labour party who brought about these changes, have since admitted that they were basically right-wing plants all along. As far as we can tell, those people in the Labour party were matched by similar people in the National party (the right-wing party) so that at that time, no matter who we voted for, these changes would have occured.
Those crypto-rightists in the Labour party eventually broke away to form a new party called the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT) which is a misnomer. They are in fact the most right-wing pro-Corporate party in New Zealand, they are in fact more right-wing than the right-wing National party of today. </snip>
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