THE RECORD

May 05, 1999

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

The foundation of all of history's ruling systems has always been faith, propaganda and promises. The main message always is: "Obey your betters, sacrifice yourselves in their service and you'll reach Nirvana!"

Propaganda is always based on three points: 1) People want to believe in something. 2) The constant repetition of the message people want to believe in to maintain their faith in the system. 3) Never engage in debate or answer criticism.

Most propaganda has no substance. This why we are getting the constant, repetitious messages from various political parties promising wealth and prosperity without any details on how such miracles could be fulfilled? Yet, some suckers always believe it in large enough numbers to put the new masters into power.

Over the last few weeks we have had several full page ads in our local papers by the provincial Liberals promising that they would turn the economy around and create jobs. We also had a four page, very fancy, high quality sendout by our local Reform MP promising huge taxcuts, large inputs into medical services and job creation, but no details on how? Somebody has to pay for all this and it is obvious that it is big business at work to destabilize governments and set up themselves as dictators.

How can one reduce taxes, increase spending and balance budgets at the same time? The only way I know is Ralph Klein's way of selling the province to multinationals, squandering the birthrights of future generations.

The biggest and most repeated propaganda buzz is that a so called "competitive global economy" would bring on more foreign investment, wealth and jobs. Complete nonsense.

The purpose of monetary competition is to eliminate competition and take over the resource supply of the vanquished. It used to be called colonization, now it is called "globalization." We can see this in our daily lives as local industries are being gobbled up, workers fired by the thousands and whole communities are devastated.

Of the approximately $20 billion yearly foreign investment to Canada about 97 percent goes into the acquisition of existing businesses and to control the resource reserves of the country. The first thing the new owners do is to fire, or cut back the workforce, then sell the resources, pocketing the benefits. Foreign investment has not created a single net job in Canada since the '70s.

Yet, when our politicians and economists are questioned their standard answer is: "30 percent of our labour force is employed by multinationals, so we must hang on to them!" So what? It makes no difference how many people are employed by them, but how many net jobs have they created, have they fired, and how many they could be employing through the efficient use of the resources? Our best example is the BC forest industry which has invested $1 billion a year for 20 years, yet have not created a single job, but fired people and contractors by the thousands, while taking money out of BC by the truckload.

Anybody who knows the stockmarkets also knows that when a country or corporation announces any job increases it's currency and stock values drop. When they fire people the stocks jump.

Last year, when MacBlo announced the firing of 1,600 "to meet global competition," their stocks jumped overnight by $1.20. When Prime Minister Chretien chided corporations on TV why they don't create jobs with all the tax cuts and benefits they receive, their answer was: "We can't afford to create jobs without our stock values collapsing!" and "We're not here to create jobs, but to provide profits to our shareholders!" Yet, their propaganda promises wealth and job creation?

When the target is to convert resurces to feed the top of the pyramid with cash the first losers are always the workers. Years ago human labour was the only way these resources could be exploited, but with overcapitalized automation the human element can be bypassed and the incomes diverted into corporate profits, while the real owners of the resources go hungry.

With all the precedents pointing to these inevitable facts it is very difficult to understand how some people can still be fooled with empty propaganda promising the impossible. Adding insult to injury, the perpetrators of this fraud can even reclaim the money they put into these lies as tax deductible business enhancement expenses.

Copyright (c) 1999, West's International