THE RECORD

October 20, 1999

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

The main pillar that supports the power of rulers has always been faith in their right to rule. Ruling classes have always had to control information for public consumption, because knowledge and the real facts could undermine the faith in their powers.

Regardless of race, colour or creed, the ruling classes of history have always came from three groups: The military, the religious clergy and the merchants. All dictatorships and empires of the past and present came from combinations of these three groups.

I grew up under the dictatorship of the military and the clergy. What we are witnessing now is the growing dictatorship of the merchants, in our case multinational corporations, enforced by the military. The only difference is that today the role of the religious clergy has been taken over by so called economists. This is the class who now interpret the orders of the Money God the same way as the shamans of old interpreted the guts of white goats to persuade their followers to raid and murder their neighbours.

In spite of the alleged freedom of the press, the manipulation of the news is no better today than what I have witnessed under fascism, nazism and communism. Thanks to the control of the media by a few billionaires the news is censored and selected to ensure ideological purity and the continued profitability of their reign.

Let me quote three examples of media manipulation of the past and present:

On August 31, 1939 an armed gang attacked and occupied the German radio station at Gleiwitz in Prussia and broadcast anti-German propaganda in Polish. The commander of the SS security forces, Reinhard Heidrich, accused the Polish government with complicity and on the following day, the 1st of September 1939, World War Two started with Hitler's invasion of Poland.

The man who led the attack was a 26 year old SS officer by the name of Alfred Naujocks. The provocation was planned and executed by the nazis to create an excuse for the attack on Poland. The purpose of the invasion was to gain Lebensraum, or "room to live," in short the colonization of "subhumans" for the benefit of Hitler's new, invincible empire.

History is always repeating itself, as new, invincible empires jump on the stage and claim divine rights for conquest, exploitation and colonization. Yesterday it was called "room to live", or the "protectorates" of the mighty powers, the God given rights to spread the faith and steal the gold of the barbarians. Now it is called "economic globalization" , but the intents remain the same.

Six months ago NATO planes were dropping bombs on Serbia in retaliation of the alleged ethnic cleansing and massacres of indigenous Albanians in Kosovo. Our TV and other media were full of the glorious deeds of our pilots, claiming they have destroyed a large number of tanks, killed thousands of Serb soldiers, more thousands deserted and so on.

Now, months after the occupation of Kosovo, the truth is coming out, still unreported by our media: The ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of Albanians started after the first air raids. There are no mass graves of victims. The forensic teams who were sent to exhume the victims came back empty handed. Atrocities have been committed by hothead Serbs, mostly in retaliation to KLA attacks, but the numbers are in the dozens, not in thousands.

Virtually no Serb tanks were demolished, a few soldiers were killed and virtually none deserted. There was no great NATO victory, because the final peace terms have been accepted by the Serbs months before and it was NATO that backed off from the total occupation of Serbia and from Kosovo independence.

The NATO attack was not sanctioned by the UN and its only achievement was the poisoning of the lives of millions of innocent Serbs, Romanians and Bulgarians who have to live and die with the ecological disaster caused by the bombing.

Now let's look at East Timor. The Indonesian invasion of East Timor in the '70s was sanctioned by the USA, Britain, Australia et al. During their rule an estimated quarter of a million East Timorese were killed by the Indonesian military, trained by US, Australian and British experts, with weapons still being supplied by the same nations. When the East Timorese voted for independence from their occupiers the militias and the military went into a frenzy of well documented killing. Yet, no bombs were dropped on Jakarta or on the Indonesian army. General Wiranto, the officer responsible for the massacres has not been declared a war criminal like Saddam Hussein or Milosevic, but may be running for Presidency and we may yet see him walking on the red carpet visiting Ottawa to talk trade with Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

Serbia had to be destroyed so that our multinationals could go in to rebuild it while taking control of their economy under the cloud of a perennial, irrepayable debt. Indonesia on the other hand is a fellow member of APEC and the WTO, a preferred trading partner. Our multinationals already control it's economy. The demands for profits always overrule mass murder.

Copyright (c) 1999, West's International