Author’s Note: If you are 72 as I am, you have stood witness to countless global conflicts and several times have stood sentinel while global forces stood eye to eye threatening total annihilation. And here we are again.

Corporations have hovered over the global landscape for centuries, dropping down from time to time to plunder the land for its resources. Sometimes it was done under cover of sovereign imperialism, as did the Company of Gentlemen Trading into Hudson’s Bay when they colonized what would become Canada in the 17th century. Described as a noble claim in loyal support of the King and the greatness of the British Empire, it was little more than a cynical cover for what was the slaughter of tens of millions of beavers, the source of beaver felt which was in such high demand in the upper class salons of European society.

After all, beaver made such a good hat!

In the desolate hinterland of what would become South Africa, De Beers, a Dutch corporation and at the time the world’s greatest diamond company sought to exert monopoly control over the world’s known supply of diamonds. The Dutch and British fought for years over control of this wasteland, committing sovereign armies to the issue in the Boer War. There was no imperial imperative to justify that war but it is undeniable that diamonds do look good on a ring.

Vast unseen propaganda machines are set to task persuading us that war is justified in support of an ideological conviction and a way of life. Of some wars that has been true. Our own families have sacrificed sons and daughters in such conflict. But overwhelmingly most wars have been fought in pursuit of wealth and profit, even financed by the world’s lenders.

Trillions were spent and thousands died in the Gulf Wars in Iraq, ostensibly in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait. We were persuaded it was a noble and justified response by what they cleverly called The Coalition of the Willing, convinced as we were by US Secretary of State Colin Powell when he spoke to the United Nations in 2003. It was a speech which will be forever remembered as a flagrant lie, delivered as the solemn justification for war. We were told that it was a war with noble purpose, if to control Middle Eastern oil fields is noble in purpose. It was a disgrace and once again we were complicit. As with generations before we had allowed ourselves to be fooled by the incendiary incitement of nationalism and patriotism that is so essential, that is the permission slip for war.

Throughout my life I have watched as nations and corporations plundered the environment, for the most part held to no account. On the odd occasion when a catastrophic industrial accident occurred like the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska and the 2010 British Petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, a great convulsive public fury would erupt and then die down again. For corporations these are simply factored in as a cost of sales.

I can remember the march on the Victoria legislature in 1967, a protest against nuclear testing on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian chain. I can remember Patrick Watson and Greenpeace, a BC based environmental activist group which drew global attention to whaling in the 1970’s and 80’s with their dangerous and brave interventions on the high seas. I can remember the anti old growth logging protests in Clayoquot Sound on Vancouver Island in 1993 when hundreds of environmental activists spent months in the rain forest trying to prevent old growth logging. I can remember the Sierra Club and the Sierra Defence Fund and most recently in 2019 – 2020 I watched as ordinary citizens protested the twinning of a natural gas pipeline from Alberta to the port in Burnaby.

Through it all, history simply repeats, with corporations now controlling every aspect of our lives, birth to death. Corporations hover over the world and drop down to plunder our resources in pursuit of profit, persuading us all the while, that is good for us. Today as the spectre of global conflict hovers over the war in Ukraine corporations are taking unconscionable record profits, deaf to any pressure other than their shareholders. As it has always been for them, war is good. Oil, water, gas, gold, precious metals it matters not, what matters is that we have lost control of it all, of our own world.  We of course dutifully do our part and buy everything they sell.  It is slow, it is relentless, it is insidious but it always happens. Again and again. But now this time it is on your watch. Let us hope you can do better.

Any student of history will tell you that corporations have been the driving forces behind most foreign policy and global conflict. World War 1 was financed in part by the Rothschild’s, at one time the world’s wealthiest private bank. The Rothschild’s famously were equal opportunity lenders, lending money to both sides. The Rothschild’s earned generational wealth. The world lost a generation.

Vietnam, Iraq, name one and you will see huge corporations hiding in plain view, driving nationalist fervour and making billions of dollars for their shareholders. Iraq and Afghanistan were prosecuted by US corporations, not by sovereign military forces, providing trillions of dollars in sales of weapons and mercenary corporate private armies.  The names and places will change in your time but this won’t.

Dwight D. ‘Ike’ Eisenhower, was the 34th President of the United States (1953-1961), the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary during WW2, a five star General of the Army and a Republican. In his farewell address to the nation in 1961 he warned us to beware of what he called ‘the military-industrial complex’, a formidable union of defense contractors and the armed forces. He knew of what he spoke. Some 60+ years later the US annual defence budget is closing in on $1,000,000,000,OO0T. That is more than the combined defence budgets of the next ten countries. It is indeed formidable, undeniably critical to the growth of the US economy and no doubt giving us a sense of security but like the plants in The Little Shop of Horrors it is insatiable, needing more and more blood to quench its appetite. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and dozens of other lesser conflicts have satisfied that appetite. Never enough but good in the moment. ‘Ike’ was right. And once again we find ourselves staring at the abyss, wondering what manner of depravity could be unleashed on our world. We are left to do what those who came before us did; we’ll hold our breath and trust that those who govern us will have a steady hand and sound judgement. Just as we did with Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. What could possibly go wrong?

We will never be free of this. History confirms that humans have always turned to armed conflict to resolve differences. It mattered not I suppose when the long bow or short range cannons were the battlefield advantage but that is no longer the case. Drones, hypersonic missiles and remote battle stations, a never ending supply of next generation weaponry the real horror of it distorted on gaming consoles and driven by nationalist fervour. Russia, China and the United States may have become our enemies. Not the Russian people, not the Chinese, not the American people, not us; we will do what we have always done. We will follow our leaders, it’s what humans do. No, it is the corporations and military-industrial complex in these incredibly powerful countries which hold our futures in their hands.

It is on all of us to stand up and be heard, to protest and question, to challenge and reject, to do whatever we can to force our voice to their table.