THE RECORD
December 15, 1999

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Well, the troubles caused by the demonstrations in Seattle may be over, but the real troubles are only beginning. The Chief of Police has already resigned, some of the cops have been suspended, the Mayor is under fire for allowing things to get out of hand. There are all kinds of investigations under way. The city and the police are facing hundreds of lawsuits from the demonstrators who were arrested, gassed and shot with rubber bullets and mistreated in jail for nothing. Out of the 586 arrested only a few were charged with crimes.

The great coup of President Clinton of having the Millennium Round of the WTO starting on US soil backfired in a big way. Ol' Bill tried to make it a showcase event to improve his tarnished image in the last year of his lame duck presidency. At the same time he and his wrecking crew of economists were planning to blackmail the world into accepting so called "American values", which means total submission to the controllers of manmade, fiduciary capital. We have been on the receiving end of this gracious wealth creating scheme for many years, our fate sealed with Mulroney's FTA and then with Chrétien's NAFTA. The next step was to be the whole world dancing to the same tune, but then something went very badly wrong our rulers haven't counted on: Like all past aristocracies they went that last fatal step too far.

The events at Seattle really started in Sept. 1995 in Paris when the 29 countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD, sat down to work out the details of the Multinational Agreement on Investments, the MAI. Negotiations went on smoothly and the OECD were ready sign and seal the MAI in April of 1997. Then, a copy of the Agreement was leaked to the US consumer activist Ralph Nader's Public Citizen organization and the proverbial cow pie hit the fan.

When people found out that the Agreement virtually stripped all decision making powers from all levels of government, from national down to the last village council, they woke up. They questioned these governments, including Canada's, why they were ready to sign away basic democratic and human rights to permit a few multinationals to strip everything for increased profits. Why indeed? Nobody even came close to explain this. The only platitudes we ever got from people, like former Trade Minister Sergio Marchi and Finance Minister Paul Martin, plus their assorted packs of economic masterminds was that: "The free and unimpeded movement of capital is necessary to create wealth all over the world." "We have to give up some of our sovereignty to attract wealth creating capital" "Money is now a commodity and the more freedom of movement it has for investment the better off everybody will be."

Judging from the statements by politicians in Parties owned and controlled by big business, many people have believed this nonsense, just as people in the past believed the propaganda coming from Nazis and Stalinists. Suckers are born by the thousand every minute. But then the reactions to the MAI started to come in all over the world. One after the other city and community councils, states, districts and provinces declared themselves "MAI free areas." This included every major Canadian city, most of the US cities, including Seattle, where the police went berserk to protect the rights of the MAI.

Now we know that the MAI that was stopped by democratic citizen action in 1998, without any violence, has now reappeared in the plans of the WTO. This was expected. The people behind the MAI and the WTO are far too powerful to permit public opinion and democracy get into the way of their monetary pyramid scam of globalized servitude to feed the top layers. They were far too close to success with the MAI to give up that easy.

The problem with ruling classes is the same as with pure bred Afghan dogs: Their rarefied existence and inbreeding makes them more stupid by the minute. This happened to all aristocracies, the cadres of communist and other dictatorships and now to the lords of capitalism. All of these were and are competitive, warlike societies, always fighting to gain the upper hand and to enslave more. Ultimately they all self destruct. No competitive society can survive. The so called "growth" they preach is their constantly growing energy demand that ultimately always makes them so inefficient that they implode. All past and present economic systems were built on some form of competition and they all self destructed.

In the case of capitalism the first step too far was the MAI. They called attention to themselves and now that people have realized their intentions there's no return. Had it not been for the warning given by the MAI, the Seattle WTO shindig would have attracted no attention and would have been greeted with a yawn.

Globalized exploitation has been dealt a mortal blow in Seattle and although it is still strong enough to cause a lot of destruction, suffering and trouble, it's days are counted.

Copyright (c) 1999, West's International