Who runs the government: citizens or monied special-interests?

From: Russell McOrmond <russell _-at-_ flora.ca>
To: No DMCA in Canada <canada-dmca-opponents (at) flora.org>
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 13:51:40 -0400 (EDT)

On Tue, 28 Aug 2001, Tom A. Trottier wrote:

> Same issue. Is Parliament independent, or run by the multinationals?
> I have a somewhat pessimistic view of this....

  I have had a pessimistic view as well, but the only way to change things
is to believe that we can.  Believing that the government is corrupted and
that there is nothing we as citizens can do only ensures that this becomes
true.  Regular citizen apathy is what has been used to allow this
corruption to continue to invade our governments, and we need to fight
this apathy as much as we do the policies we disagree with.


P.S.: Being a multinational entity isn't automatically a problem.  Being a
monopoly, cartel, or other form of corrupt entity negatively affecting our
democracies and economies is what is the problem.


  It is very possible to be on the correct side of things and actually win
smaller battles towards winning the war.  A recent victory for Open
Systems/Linux/etc has come from a client of mine (which I have mentioned I
want to write about in my copyright submission) which is now bring their
case out into the "court of public opinion".

  See today's Citizen front-page story:
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/national/010828/671130.html

  Parliamentary Library defies trade tribunal

  Accused of favoring Microsoft, library won't seek new bids for news
  service; Budget blown fighting tender challenge


> An investigation should at least clarify the issues. Our greatest 
> ally in this is that these large corporations seem to be totally 
> inept technically. I guess intelligent people refuse to work for 

  An argument I have been making for a long time is that technology is not
what is at issue.  These large corporations *DO* understand politics, and
that is much more important for them to know than technology.

  We need to become politically smart in order to win - being
technologically smart is irrelevant if being technologically smart makes
you automatically a suspect of criminal activity relating to invalid laws.

---
 Russell McOrmond, Internet Consultant: <http://www.flora.ca/>
 Free Sklyarov http://www.dibona.com/dmca/ http://www.freesklyarov.org/ 
 http://www.flora.org/dmca/ Oppose DMCA in Canada! (C) reform process....
 http://russell.flora.org/drafts/copyright-2001.html My submission...

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