THE RECORD
June 12, 2002

Fiat Lux

by Ed Deak

One of the most amazing aspects of history is that people keep falling for the same worthless, completely unrealistic promises by hucksters and then repeat the same mistakes time after time. This makes no sense now, when we're in this so called "information age" where virtually everybody has access to just about any kind of information. Yet, this is also the age when the biggest con job in history is being pulled on the whole human race. It is called and taught at our universities as neo classical, globalized, market driven economics.

The whole theory is an obvious pyramid scam, yet people still fall for it, even with all the evidence showing that it is based on fraudulent accounting and impossible promises. I just came off a World Bank forum on the causes of poverty and was glad to see that some politicians in so called Third World countries are finally beginning to show signs of awakening. Yet, here in Canada the con is still moving on, counting on people reading and watching only the strictly censored news from Izzy Asper's propaganda empire.

Anybody who hasn't caught on the con job Gordon Campbell pulled on this province must be either one of the few beneficiaries, or blinded by desperate faith and hope. The whole Liberal campaign and policy package was based on the age old propaganda premise that people want to believe in something and as long as they are being fed with the right buzzwords, their brains will remain captivated. It worked once again, probably the ten thousandth time in history, and now we are reaping the consequences.

Propaganda is the art of telling people what they want to hear and through the use of the same buzzwords time after time they become conditioned to react in a calculated and expected way. The fact that the Alliance swept BC in the federal elections and the BC Liberals in the provincial shows the power of brainwash by the constant repetition of the same sugar coated lies.

I grew up on fascist and Nazi propaganda and later fought Soviet propaganda for many years. Now I'm astonished to see that the same tricks used by the Nazis and the commies, now used by the capitalists, are still working in this allegedly enlightened age.

Few people know, or want to remember that Hitler's Wehrmacht carried the slogan "Gott mit Uns" on their belt buckles and that they fought for "Christianity, Freedom and Western Civilization" against the hordes of infidels.
The Soviets and their satellites called their bloody dictatorships "peoples democracies" where people were freed from having to make up their minds which party to vote for.

Now we have a similar corporate dictatorship system forced on us by our economists and the money and stockmarkets. They also call themselves democrats, while promoting the lies of "free markets", "free to choose", while the whole system is being planned around the replacement of democratic rights with corporate dictatorships.

The most misused words in all languages are "free", or "freedom", when the only freedoms we have left are the choice of the colour and material of the rope to hang ourselves with.

Apart from collecting 65 percent of their some $18 million in campaign donations from corporations, the Liberals also received umpteen millions worth of advice and unpaid propaganda services from the controlled media.

Apart from the blatantly partizan policies of Pacific Press, our most visible propaganda outlet is BCTV. I often wondered whether one of the conditions for employment in their News Room is membership in the BC Liberal Party? Now that conditions are turning from bad to worse the station can no longer keep the stories completely off the screen, but the buzz is still going on to sell privatization and hate for all kinds of government.

According to neo classical theory the only role for government should be the enforcement of the free movement and profitability of capital, regardless of costs and damages to society and the environment. It teaches that government is not supposed to supply any services, such as health, education, water, sewer, road maintenance, etc. as any publicly owned and controlled services are socialist conspiracies against the competitive equilibrium of the marketplace.

This is why our federal government is now negotiating the GATS treaty, that will overrule all national and sub national decision making processes, down to local business hours. The word "tax" is a dirty word to them, even when it is not really a tax in the traditional sense, but a low cost and efficient provision of some needed service. Like our Medicare was once upon a time.

Even now, when BCTV anchors refer to any kind of service provided from taxes, they never fail to emphasize "YOUR taxes!" They must be acting under orders, because they all are using the same tired gimmick. Now that many services are being discontinued, hospitals and schools are being closed, obviously with the intention of forcing communities into privatized systems, the station is singing their praises of how they can cope with the situation, even when the costs will be several times that of the original service paid from "YOUR taxes!"

As with all propaganda and advertising systems, the purpose is to sell dreams and to build up word association and reaction mindsets and brainwash people into believing that "Taxes are bad, profits are good!", without mentioning that profits are not earnings but also a form of taxation.

Has anybody ever heard of any of our major media outlets complaining that certain businesses, banks, or individuals are making too much profit? Even when those profits come out of the pockets of minimum wage part timers and raise the prices of necessary survival items out of the reach of large sectors? Never.

Wages and publicly owned services are being knocked all the time, but profits and criminal behaviour by corporations are sacrosanct even as the queues at the food banks are growing every day.

Neo classical theory considers unions "trade distortions" and so one of the main tasks of the Campbell crew is the destruction of the union movement to make BC more competitive on the downhill road of self destruction. Here comes the word association gimmick once again to picture unions as bad and corrupt organizations who featherbed workers and raise costs. Of course, Chambers of Commerce and business groups lobbying for more profits and privileges are OK.

The media mindbenders always refer to union officials as "union bosses", while the heads and executives of corporations are called "business leaders." The funny thing is that although I was an employer for 22 years I can't remember any of my guys ever calling me "Hey Leader"!

The next time we see one of our sanctimonious billionaires going by on his tax deductible yacht, or private jet, to make a few extra bucks by replacing full time staff with minimum wage part timers, we'll have to remember that according to our business friendly government he's not a boss, but a leader.

The Alliance and its BC Liberal branch always refers to unions, environmentalists and poverty advocates as "special interest groups", but business organizations are pictured as wealth creating saints whose actions are designed to serve the public.

In my next column I intend to list more of these word associated propaganda techniques used by mind benders for the promotion of the real special interests.

Copyright (c) 2002, West's International