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Continued from page 8! provide important rallying points for citizens’ self-defence against tyranny in its most modern, invisible, effective and even democracy, community and ecological oe seductive forms. oo sustainability—will require new About the Author: Richard Heinberg is a journalist, educator, editor, lecturer and musician. He has lectured widely and appeared on national radio and TV in five countries. He is a core faculty member of New College of California, where he teaches courses on Culture, Ecology and Sustainable Community. He is the author of: Memories and Visions of Paradise; Celebrate the Solstice; A New Covenant with Nature; and Cloning the Buddha: the Moral Impact of Biotechnology. His next book, The Party's Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, is to be published by New Society in March 2003. His essays have been featured in The Futurist, Intuition, Brain/Mind Bulletin, Magical Blend, New Dawn and elsewhere. Richard is also author/editor/publisher of MuseLetter, a highly regarded monthly, sub- scription-only, alternative newsletter which is now in its tenth year of publication. MuseLetter's purpose is "to offer a continuing critique of corporate-capitalist industrial civi- lization and a re-visioning of humanity's prospects for the next millennium". His article, "A History of Corporate Rule and Popular Protest", was originally published in MuseLetter in 1996 as "The New Populism", and was revised in August 2002. Visit the MuseLetter website at http://www.museletter.com. democracy, community and ecological sustainability—will require new international agreements that place the needs of people, local economies and the natural world ahead of the interests of corporations..." Leaders of the new populism appear to realise that anti-corporatism is not a complete solution to the world's problems; that the necessary initial focus on corporate power must eventually be supplemented by a more general critique of centralising and unsustainable technologies, money-based economics and current nation-state governmental structures, by efforts to protect traditional cultures and ecosystems, and by a renewal of culture and spirituality. It would be foolish to underestimate the immense challenges to the new populism from the current US administration and from the jingoistic, —bellicose post-September 11 public sentiment fostered by the corporate media. Nevertheless, POCLAD, the Alliance for Democracy and the IFG (along with dozens of human rights, environmental and anti- war organisations around the world) Endnotes 1. Grossman, Richard and Frank Adams, Taking Care of Business: Citizenship and the Charter of Incorporation, pamphlet, 1993, available at http://www. poclad.org/resources.html. 2. Zinn, Howard, A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present, Harper Perennial, 2001. 3. Brecher, Jeremy and Tim Costello, Global Village or Global Pillage: Economic Reconstruction from the Bottom Up, South End Press, 1998. 4. Zinn, op. cit. 5. Gross, Bertram, Friendly Fascism: The New Face of Power in America, South End Press, 1998. 6. Goodwyn, Lawrence, The Populist Moment: A Short History of the Agrarian Revolt in America, Oxford University Press, 1978. 7. The Alliance for Democracy website, http://www. thealliancefordemocracy.org/. 8. POCLAD website, http://www.poclad.org. 9. IFG pamphlet, 1995; revised position statement at IFG website, http://www.ifg.org. NEXUS = 81 A History of Corporate Rule and Popular Protest OCTOBER — NOVEMBER 2002 www.nexusmagazine.com