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If you feel there’s a disconnect between the kind of values we in the West espouse and the actions our agents in government take to protect and project those values it’s important you know a couple of things: First; you are not suffering cultural dissonance, and secondly; the government you see is neither yours, nor what you think it is.
Lurking below the waterline, more ominous than any iceberg, lay the real power running this country, that country, and perhaps every country.
Averse to the light, and invisible at night, it’s the Shadow Government that rules you, and it doesn’t share any of the values its daytime doppelganger maintains.
Tom Engelhardt is an educator, journalist, news and book editor, co-founder of the American Empire Project, creator of the Nation Institute’s news website, TomDispatch.com, (where his too numerous to iterate articles appear) and author whose book titles include: ‘The American Way of War,’ ‘The United States of Fear,’ ‘The End of Victory Culture,’ ‘Terminator Planet: The First History of Drone Warfare, 2001-2050,’ with Nick Turse, the novel, ‘The Last Days of Publishing,’ and his latest, ‘Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.’
Tom Engelhardt in the first half.
And; local elections are looming with contests for municipalities, city councils, mayoral and CRD board positions just a month away. Though not on anyone’s official radar screen, amalgamation so far seems to be one of the key talking points on the stump.
In Victoria, incumbents will have to face the electorate and answer for massive infrastructure project cost overruns – any buyers out there for a nearly designed blue bridge? – while the CRD and myriad municipalities try to explain why the lower island can’t get its shit together on a sewage treatment solution stagnating for years now.
Richard Atwell knows all about that debate, he’s director of STAG, or the Sewage Treatment Action Group, a collection of citizens promoting the R-I-T-E solution for our daily pollution; one that is: Respectful of communities; uses Innovative technologies; is Taxpayer friendly; and, Environmentally sound., and campaign organizer for StopABadPlan.ca, the group most responsible for the CRD’s about face last year on its plan to locate a biosolids plant in a Vic West neighbourhood. Now the software engineer and Saanich resident has entered the race to unseat Saanich’s near perennial mayor, Frank Leonard.
Richard Atwell changing gears to change the old guard in Saanich in the second half.
And; Victoria Street Newz publisher emeritus and CFUV Radio broadcaster, Janine Bandcroft will join us at the bottom of the hour to bring us news of some of the good things going on on the streets of our city and beyond there too. But first, Tom Engelhardt and lighting the corners where the Shadow Government lives.
