THE RECORD
November 21, 2001

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

Show me a politician, economist, or anybody for that matter who keeps on saying that economic competition free trade and globalization will create wealth, jobs and prosperity and I'll show you an ignorant fool, or a crook. In the case of our politicians it is a toss up, so we can pick our choices what to call them.

Basically all Western governments are now controlled by multinational corporations with the strings being pulled by a series of so called "prestigious economic think tanks" set up in the mid seventies to spread the neo-liberal philosophy to the public. Thanks to these, with the strictly controlled North American media outlets owned by the same major corporations, one can almost receive no independent news from anywhere without interference by the ugly fingers of censorship and planned misinformation.

In our case the messenger of the gods is the Fraser Institute, billed as a "tax deductible charitable organization", with the usual claim of being an economic think tank. The problem is that neither the Fraser, or it's affiliated organizations in the USA have anything to do with economics. They are advertising agencies for the coming new world order under total corporate dictatorship. When I was a kid, rule by self appointed ruling classes used to be called fascism. Then the communists invented the lie of calling their vicious dictatorships "democratic people's republics." Capitalism jumped on the bandwagon and now our media is pushing this daily growing fascist dictatorship to the public as "democratic, wealth creating global competition."

A very good example of this propaganda barrage are the kid gloves the media is treating the Campbell government with . After all they were mainly responsible for their election, so they can't just make a U turn in condemning their own baby. Especially when the big bosses are standing behind them with the guns of instant firing pointed at their heads. It is not too long ago when almost every newscast by BCTV started with "The ENNDEEPEE government...." gloating over some alleged screw up of something or another.

We never heard the end of the so called "fudgit budget" which has repeatedly been cleared by the courts, but not by the media. The $640. million wasted on the fast ferries. The horrors of the publicly owned health care system. They even blamed the NDP for the collapse of the Asian economies and the resulting market losses for BC resources. It was all the fault of the government and the sooner we got rid of them, the sooner Gordon Campbell could start turning the economy around, by the prescriptions dished out by the prestigious Fraser Institute.

The war cry of the Campbell entourage was that we need less government and less taxes for the lowest income groups and things will start flying like in the good old Socred days. Well, in the first week in office Campbell threw an estimated $2.1 billion out of the window, to please his big business supporters. Not a single job has been created, thousands fired, with more on the way. So where are the complaints?

Apart from a few window dressing efforts to show media impartiality and integrity, the usual journalistic table thumping is barely audible. Our investigative media are following their orders and remain silent to give their rulers the best of chances to fill their vaults with ill gained gold while there is still an opportunity.

In my first column after the BC elections I predicted that Gordon Campbell will survive as Premier for two years before either his own party gets rid of him, or the whole government collapses under public pressure. I stand by this prediction.

If Campbell and his crew had the faintest idea, or the brains to understand with what is going on around the world they might have had the chance of a snowflake in hell. By listening to Fraser Institute propaganda they blew even that before they started. Like the system of laissez faire capitalism they are promoting, they can only go down in flames. Unfortunately, before they do, they will ruin the lives of hundreds of thousands of British Columbians.

It was a well know fact long before the elections that the world was heading into a recession that could become a depression, and economic collapse, thanks to globalization. When one link of the chain breaks the who thing falls. For the past ten years the so called economic boom was created by the USA and it's citizens buying on credit and printing money to colonize the world with. The Japanese economy is on the verge of collapse that could happen at any time. Germany and Europe are in deep doldrums with 60 million people around the EU living under the poverty line. The Agreement the member states of the WTO signed at Doha last week isn't worth the paper is written on. The so called poor nations have long realized that they are being taken to the cleaners .

So, where is that promised turnaround going to come from in a false economy built around the creation of worthless money and the export of resources? From China? What our economic masterminds never consider is that export based manufacturing industries use huge amounts of water. Water that China doesn't have, even to provide enough to quench the thirst of it's own population. And this is the name of the capitalist game: Impoverish BC with the silly actions of a compliant government so we'll be forced to open the taps in the pursuit of more and more insane economic theories.

Copyright (c) 2001, West's International