THE RECORD
April 11, 2001

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Our media is full of stories on how the recently expired Softwood Lumber Agreement will hurt BC with huge numbers of unemployed and communities destroyed. The tenor of this propaganda is that the only way we can save our lumber industry jobs is through NAFTA and WTO rules forcing the Americans to accept unlimited amounts of our lumber.

The reality is that the collapse of the Agreement is the result of planned collusion between the Canadian and US governments and multinational business. This overlapping web of big money that owns our governing parties controls our economies and is all set to rule the human race. Very similar of the hopes and plans of Stalinist internationalism and Mao's Cultural Revolution, always under the guise of democracy and freedom.

Big business was getting increasingly worried about the growth of democracy, wages and human rights in the early '70s when they discovered the racist, sexist, elitist ideas of Friedrich von Hayek of the so called Austrian School, adapted by the Chicago School of Economics and Milton Friedman. The creation of a new form of feudalism, now called neo-liberalism, claiming to represent the "discipline of the marketplace", or neo-classical theory, fitted well into their plans.

Their first major step for ultimate control began in 1973 when David Rockefeller engaged Zbigniew Brzezinski to organize the Trilateral Commission, involving big business from the USA, Germany and Japan. They even commissioned a book The Crisis of Democracy by Crozier, Huntington and Watanuki, (New York University Press, 1975,) to show that public ownership, democratic freedoms and human rights cause governing problems and are bad for business.

During the mid '70s they set up over 100 so called "conservative economic think tanks" across North America, the Fraser Institute being one of them. These are supported by, phony citizens' groups, like the Taxpayers' Federation and the Citizen's Coalition. Their main task is to propagandize against all forms of government, all public control and for the deregulation and privatization of everything. In their view the only purpose of government is the aiding of profit making and subservience to legalized theft by "competition" where the biggest thieves are the most efficient.

Their big break came with the elections of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, of Ronald Reagan in the USA and later of Brian Mulroney in Canada and their introduction of so called "free trade" policies, which have nothing to do with either freedom or trade, but the neo-colonization of the world by the uncontrolled movement of worthless, fiduciary capital.

Mulroney fought the 1984 election on an anti-free trade platform. Two days after taking office he was in Washington to receive his orders and came back as a free trader. In 1988 the pro-FTA faction of the Liberal Party attempted to replace their anti-FTA leader John Turner in the middle of the campaign, handing power to Mulroney, with only 43 percent of the votes. In 1993 Chrétien fought on a NAFTA re-negotiation platform. When he was elected he signed the Treaty without any public consultation, sealing Canada's fate. NDP Premiers Harcourt and Rae threatened to sue, but chickened out.

In 1995 the negotiations of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment, the MAI, started in secret among the 29 nations of the OECD, supported by Canadian Trade Minister John Manley, now promoted to the Foreign Ministry to push the FTAA and the GATS. When the text of the papers was leaked the resulting public uproar forced the French government to pull out and the deal collapsed, only to reappear in the still secret FTAA and GATS papers.

The FTAA talks started in 1994 with 900 officials from the 34 participating countries meeting regularly in Miami, planning to complete and sign the deal either by 2004 or 2005. Parallel to these talks, the WTO's General Agreement on Trade in Services, or GATS, are also being conducted in secret in Geneva under the Chairmanship of Sergio Marchi. According to what we know, everything is on the table for takeover by multinational service providers, including water, sewers, electricity, energy, education. health, government procurements, postal services, etc. etc. In short, if multinational corporations set their eyes on school boards, they must be given opportunity to buy the system. BC Hydro, ICBC and Canada Post would be first to go as " trade distorting subsidies". The public ownership of Canada's forests and resources could be challenged and taken over.

Canada will take the softwood dispute to the NAFTA and WTO, who will rule against the USA. This will release the US government from any responsibility from throwing their lumber sector to the dogs. The Canadian government will sing the praises of the WTO and NAFTA, showing how beneficial free trade is for the country. The next day the doors will be opened for the unlimited exploitation of our resources without any safeguards, protection, or decision making by the public.

The water services will be sold to French companies. The schools to multinationals from the USA, who already are rubbing their hands in anticipation, with their trade publications predicting huge profits. The postal services will be privatized and rural deliveries cut off as not profitable. The Fraser Institute already has scores of publications praising all this by those like Norman Block on the privatization of all forests, and the sale of lakes, rivers and creeks for export and plans to prevent the public from knowing what goes on behind the gates.

Had the MAI gone through in 1997-98, there wouldn't be any major mills left in BC, just the raw logs exported. If either the FTAA or GATS will pass the same will happen because our laws on processing are against the principles of free trade. The governments know this, and also the corporations who urge them to take the dispute to the NAFTA or WTO, while crying crocodile tears over the destruction of our communities. Can anybody name one single example where a corporation bent a single finger to save jobs and communities?
The sordid fact is that the more people they can put out of work and the more communities they destroy the bigger their profit margins. And, according to neo-classical theory taught in all universities as good economics, that's all that counts.

Copyright (c) 2001, West's International