"I have long been an admirer of Joyce Nelson's work... Nelson, always independent, has no fetters." -- Herschel Hardin
Born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1945, Joyce Nelson is a critic who was profiled and interviewed in the WINTER 1996 edition of BC BookWorld. In her fifties she turned increasingly towards expressing herself as a visual artist. She relocated to Toronto in 2018 while continuing to publish with Comox-based Watershed Sentinel.
In her follow-up to Beyond Bankers in 2016, in her role as social critic, Joyce Nelson not only exposes the fallacies of the neoliberal economy, she highlights the inspirational efforts of those who are rallying against it. For instance, in Bypassing Dystopia: Hope-Filled Challenges to Corporate Rule (Watershed Sentinel $20), she cites analyst Wendy Holm who decries how NAFTA has already erased sovereignty issues around water exports. "With respect to trans-boundary movement of water, there are no real 'decisions' to be made." says Holm. "The ship has already sailed." In essence, if Canada tried to stop bulk water export, it would be subject to an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) lawsuit. Both Holm and Maude Barlow are urging that water "as a good, service or investment" be removed from both NAFTA and the FTA. 978-0-9953286-3-1
BOOKS:
The Canadian Film Reader (1977). Co-editor
The Perfect Machine: TV in the Nuclear Age (1987)
The Colonized Eye: Rethinking the Grierson Legend (1988)
Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and the Media (1989)
Sign Crimes/Road Kill: From Mediascape to Landscape (Between the Lines, 1992).
Seeing in the Dark (Ekstasis, 1996). Poetry.
Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism (Watershed Sentinel Books, 2016)
Bypassing Dystopia: Hope-Filled Challenges to Corporate Rule
(Comox: Watershed Sentinel Books, 2018) 978-0-9953286-3-1 $20
[BCBW 2018]
Born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1945, Joyce Nelson is a critic who was profiled and interviewed in the WINTER 1996 edition of BC BookWorld. In her fifties she turned increasingly towards expressing herself as a visual artist. She relocated to Toronto in 2018 while continuing to publish with Comox-based Watershed Sentinel.
In her follow-up to Beyond Bankers in 2016, in her role as social critic, Joyce Nelson not only exposes the fallacies of the neoliberal economy, she highlights the inspirational efforts of those who are rallying against it. For instance, in Bypassing Dystopia: Hope-Filled Challenges to Corporate Rule (Watershed Sentinel $20), she cites analyst Wendy Holm who decries how NAFTA has already erased sovereignty issues around water exports. "With respect to trans-boundary movement of water, there are no real 'decisions' to be made." says Holm. "The ship has already sailed." In essence, if Canada tried to stop bulk water export, it would be subject to an investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) lawsuit. Both Holm and Maude Barlow are urging that water "as a good, service or investment" be removed from both NAFTA and the FTA. 978-0-9953286-3-1
BOOKS:
The Canadian Film Reader (1977). Co-editor
The Perfect Machine: TV in the Nuclear Age (1987)
The Colonized Eye: Rethinking the Grierson Legend (1988)
Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and the Media (1989)
Sign Crimes/Road Kill: From Mediascape to Landscape (Between the Lines, 1992).
Seeing in the Dark (Ekstasis, 1996). Poetry.
Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism (Watershed Sentinel Books, 2016)
Bypassing Dystopia: Hope-Filled Challenges to Corporate Rule
(Comox: Watershed Sentinel Books, 2018) 978-0-9953286-3-1 $20
[BCBW 2018]
Articles: 3 Articles for this author
Sign Crimes/Road Kill (Between the Lines $16.95)
Article
THUS FAR THE DOMINANT IMAGE OF the US. presidential 'race' has been a pudgy Bill Clinton, in shorts and a t-shirt, waddling through each city he visits, jogging towards the White House. The message is, heck, if America is going to be revitalized, America will need a saxophone-playing womanizer who wears Reeboks. George Bush, by comparison, is an old fart who throws up on the Japanese prime minister. (A man who cannot control his bodily functions, after all, is not fit to be president.) So Bush and running-mate Dan Quayle are desperately re-asserting the President's masculinity by casting him as the military mastermind who pulverized Iraq. All of which begins to look fairly obvious after reading Joyce Nelsons 'Real Men on the Campaign Trail' in Sign Crimes/Road Kill (Between the Lines $16.95). In her newest collection of essays, Nelson asserts that in 1988, "Masculinity emerged as the real subtext of both the U.S. and Canadian federal elections.";In the final months of the campaign, the U.S. candidates tried to look like posers at Muscle Beach, sprinkling their rhetoric with repudiation of anything feminine." Brian Mulroney has adopted the U.S. Macho Mouth style, according to Nelson, asserting that opponents of Free Trade are "selling timidity and the concept of a little Canada." Nelson, who lives in Victoria, has been dubbed by a Books In Canada reviewer as 'the most astute cultural critic in Canada.' Not above referring to presidential hopefuls as venal pigs, Nelson is an ecofeminist who specializes in media and politics. Her earlier books are The Perfect Machine: TV in the Nuclear Age (1987), The Colonized Eye: Rethinking the Grierson Legend (1988) and Sultans of Sleaze: Public Relations and Media (1989). 0-921284-54-3
[BCBW, Autumn, 1992]
Beyond Banksters
News Release 2017
After twenty-six years of publishing an environment news magazine, the Comox-based Watershed Sentinel has released its inaugural book, Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism (WS Books 2016) by Joyce Nelson. WS Books is the fledgling book-publishing imprint of the non-profit Watershed Sentinel Education Society which began on Cortes Island. After fifteen years on Cortes, the magazine initiative was transferred to Comox.
Nelson has been writing investigative articles for the Watershed Sentinel since 2009 and writes regularly for Counterpunch, Economic Reform, and other publications. Beyond Banksters is her sixth book.
"The author wanted a fast turnaround and we're a really small operation," says WS editor Delores Broten, "so we can do things much faster than a larger company could.";
Two of the book's chapters appeared first as articles in the magazine; and one, "Bank of Canada Lawsuit,"; has been viewed at least 143,000 times online.
Many of Nelson's topics like the trade deal with the European Union - CETA - or the Canada Infrastructure Bank that Justin Trudeau is starting up, are time-sensitive subjects. "She wanted to get that information out there," says Broten, "how the trade deals, the banking institutions and the big financial investment companies all interact to remove the public interest from what government is doing with our property.";
There is an in-depth review of the book in the latest issue of the CCPA Monitor (policyalternatives.ca/monitor).
Broten says the new Watershed Sentinel Books will consider other manuscripts.
Press Release (2007)
Beyond Banksters goes beyond BC
Comox, B.C., February 13, 2017:
Watershed Sentinel Books is pleased to report that an Ontario financial adviser, Dr. Jerry Ackerman, is this week mailing copies of Beyond Banksters: Resisting the New Feudalism to every Member of Parliament in Ottawa. Last week Dr. Ackerman mailed copies of the book to every Senator.
Dr. Ackerman, a financial adviser who has decades of experience in the financial industry, is taking this action to provide a "toolkit"; for legislators in advance of Finance Minister Bill Morneau's Spring Budget, expected in late February. Morneau is expected to announce the creation of a Canada Infrastructure Bank (designed by an adviser from Bank of America Merrill Lynch) to bypass the functions of the Bank of Canada in funding infrastructure.
Beyond Banksters, written by Joyce Nelson and published by Watershed Sentinel Books in November 2016, provides an incisive critique of the financial players involved in such a move, which will increase the debt and deficits by many billions of dollars annually through borrowing from the private sector, while contributing to the privatization of public assets. Instead, the publicly-owned Bank of Canada could provide infrastructure funding interest-free, as it did from 1938 to 1974.
In his cover-letter to Parliamentarians, Dr. Ackerman quotes from a speech by Canadian Victoria Grant given at the Public Banking Conference in Philadelphia four years ago. Merely 12 years old at the time, Ms. Grant said: "If the government wants to spend money, it should borrow it from its own bank, and not have to pay interest.";
In addition to Beyond Banksters, every Senator and MP is receiving several inserts: 1) an excerpt from the Hon. Paul T. Hellyer's book The Money Mafia: A World In Crisis; 2) two excerpts from Dr. Ackerman's financial blog: "Interesting Times"; and "Calling Canada's Minister of Finance;"; 3) an excerpt from Ellen Brown's book The Public Bank Solution; and 4) background information on the history of the Bank of Canada.
By sending this "toolkit,"; Dr. Ackerman is intent on educating Parliamentarians about the Bank of Canada before they consider Morneau's budget and controversial infrastructure bank plans. Reminding Parliamentarians that Canada's national debt is "now $630 billion"; and "increasing with every deficit,"; Dr. Ackerman adds: "For our country's 150th year and going forward, we insist that you act on behalf of every Canadian's future.";
Beyond Banksters is already in its second printing. Author Joyce Nelson says, "I am thrilled that Beyond Banksters is going to Parliamentarians. I hope they read it, and read the other materials too, before they vote on the Spring Budget. This action by Dr. Jerry Ackerman is just amazing.";