Right Politics And The Decay Of Canada, Part Two (2 Of 4)

Those three terms simply stand for ways obscene wealth is placed in fewer and fewer criminal hands. Neo-liberalism is the process by which all human activities are undertaken for profit only. Privatization is the process of seizing everything national populations own -- forests, water, energy, health care, education, parks -- seizing them by government working with the obscenely wealthy, privatizing them, and turning them into "profit engines". Globalization is placing the profit engines in the hands of more and more U.S. criminals or criminal people with whom the U.S. has made deals.

The reasons Right Politics is prevailing in our time are two only. The first is the gigantic power of the U.S., centre of Right Politics. The second is more painful because disguised. Right Politics has no conscience, employs a "free" press and "democratic" processes in order to destroy both. Right Politics only values human life as a profit-generating source. If more profit can be made by torturing or oppressing or destroying human life than fostering it, Right Politics will assent to torture, oppression, and the destruction of human life.

Opposition forces are weak against Right Politics because they attempt to oppose with the means provided by decent practice, fair-mindedness, conventions of trust, traditions of just behaviour -- none of which are employed by those who operate Right Politics. Right Politics intends a totalitarian regime and works toward it -- even though many who support Right Politics are unaware of the totalitarian goal. We need only think of the brazen fraudulence of Peter McKay (former Progressive Conservative leader) signing a paper to assure David Orchard's support for his leadership without the slightest intention of honouring the agreement to which he put his signature.

In a not-so-bland suggestion of the worst of those things, the Gordon Campbell government in B.C. refused the two-person NDP Opposition party status. That denied the two the funds to do thorough research and review of government activity. Campbell did not win the last election in order to operate democratic government, but to snuff it out as far as he is able to do so.

For that reason none of his cabinet will attend public events that may contain criticism of cabinet actions. In mid-February B.C. Citizens for Public Power held a public forum, leaving (empty) chairs for the premier, for the minister of energy and mines, and for the constituency MLA. None would attend, though the minister of energy and mines as well as 23 other Campbell MLAs have publicly (and in the legislature) attacked the B.C. Citizens for Public Power. TheGordon Campbell government, moreover, like Peter Mckay, has made a joke of contract and honourable agreement, breaking them as a general mode of procedure.

Right Politics is the story of Iraq. Criminally invaded by the U.S., it has been devastated to privatize everything possible into U.S. hands, to corner oil resources, to coerce Iran, to build a cordon around China.

Right Politics closes democracy down, I have said. In Spain, in early March, a major guerilla attack was made in Madrid. The Spanish government blamed ETA (an internal Basque independence movement). The Spanish government was lying. All evidence points to the Al Qaeda network. Why the attack? Why Spain?

Iraq is about democracy closed down. A completely fraudulent war -- vicious and hugely destructive -- is being conducted by the U.S. government (and its obscenely wealthy corporations) on the basis of a tower of lies. Democracy is closed down when leaders use the trust placed in them by the electorate to defraud that electorate. Democracy is closed down by what is, in effect, legalized criminality, by grossly immoral acts claimed to be "legally" permissible.

The U.S. government wanted allies in the crime of invading Iraq. The Spanish people -- in a huge majority -- did not want Spain an accessory to the U.S. crime. But carrots and sticks were offered to Spanish leaders by the U.S. Flagrantly defrauding the Spanish people of democratic participation in the policy of Spain, Spanish leaders took Spain to war in Iraq. And when a few Spaniards were killed in Iraq a little while ago, Spanish leaders declared their determination to go on supporting U.S. crime.

Then Spain had an election, an expression of democratic will. The Spanish people removed the lying government. Right Politics is seriously challenged where democratic process still has life.

On As It Happens, on March 16, CBC's Chief Advocate for the Far Right in Canada, Mary Lou Findlay, negatively interviewed a representative of the new Spanish government. Negatively, because his government disapproves of the U.S. criminal war in Iraq. To balance her negative interview with the Spaniard, Ms. Findlay interviewed the publisher of the revived Ted Byfield, rancid, Right, Western/Alberta Report. In a country overweight with monopoly Right press and media, Ms. Findlay gave the publisher what was plainly extended free advertising time, leading him to name his politically verminous contributors as well as other information. Pretending to be objective, she carried on her part in Right Politics.

The victory in Spain is important to democracy. But that shouldn't blind us, as Ms. Findlay makes clear to the general drift. Consider the following quotation.

"In 700 days of power what a record! Retreat on pension rights. Tightening of repressive laws. [When the Social State retreats; the Penal State advances.] Lowering of unemployment benefits; higher exemption for large income earners; reduction in care benefits; cutting research credits in education; "reform" of Social Security to fit all those changes; dismantling of labour codes. The brutality of those decisions makes us remember that one of the characteristics of the elite is contempt for ordinary citizens".[While all that was happening] In the 40 largest enterprises, between 2000 and 2002, the managers were granted salary increases of 84%.

Canada? British Columbia? No. The France of Jacques Chirac, today. [Le monde diplomatique, March, 2004, 3]

That is a France following the recommendations of the European Union bureaucracy and the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) to which Canada also belongs and receives the same recommendations to slash salaries, benefits, pensions, health care, education, unemployment insurance, etc.

The recommendations are not made for the overall health of the society. They are necessary only to increase the wealth of the already obscenely wealthy, to strip ordinary people of secure livelihoods and make their lives savagely precarious. They are necessary to create the triumph of U.S. capitalist imperialism anchored in a police state.

We must come back to the word "criminal", and we must realize -- we must repeat over and over -- OECD, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the World Trade Organization, for instance, are criminal organizations. Stop. Think. Jacques Chirac is avoiding legal cases against him for serious wrong-doing only because he is "protected" while president of the French Republic. Exactly the same with Italy's Berlusconi. George Bush is a war criminal only protected by the biggest military machine in the world. Tony Blair is not blocking legal trials against him, but he is floating on a sea of falsehoods, having used legalized criminality to join the U.S. in the war against Iraq.

Paul Martin's "team" has almost certainly been engaged in criminal fraud in Party membership acquisition, a huge attack on the integrity of democratic process. The fact is talked about openly. Nothing is done. A complaint by people from ten B.C. communities requesting an Elections Canada investigation into repeated allegations of criminal fraud in membership gathering in B.C. has gone unreported in press and media, their monopoly owners apparently dedicated to the criminal oppression of ordinary Canadians on behalf of the obscenely wealthy.

The case of Haiti would be comic if it wasn't so heart-wrenching. The U.S. became dissatisfied with Jean Bertrand Aristide's progressivism (more schools operating than ever before in Haitian history, etc.). And so the U.S. kidnapped Aristide, took him to Africa where he insisted he was kidnapped. He continues to say that though he is back in the West Indies in "sanctuary".

Meanwhile France, the U.S., and Canada are shipping troops to Haiti to "pacify" the people. For the most part, the Canadian press and media report the U.S. overthrow of the elected leader of Haiti as a fine "democratic" move. In Haiti, once again, the people, unable to employ democratic means of dissent, are being taught to employ the only instrument of resistance left to them: violence.

Right Politics means the death of democracy -- everywhere. We are watching the battle being fought out before our eyes. It is being won by the Right now, despite a few victories like the one in Spain, because the Right owns the OECD, the World bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization. The Right is winning, too, because it owns most of the major press and media in theWest. It is winning, however, principally because the population of the West believes in the democratically representative nature of those organizations, and of Right Politics. The war will trun decisively the other way on the day the population of the West really knows all those organizations are criminal organizations and that Right Politics is, at base, the politics of criminal takeover.

[The next column, Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Three, will focus on Canada and the criminal institutions destroying Canadian democracy.]

Other articles in this series:
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part One
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Three
Right Politics and the Decay of Canada, Part Four

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Robin Mathews publishes on culture, politics, the arts, and Canadian Intellectual history. He lives in Vancouver with his wife, a potter. His column appears regularly on Vive le Canada.

Comments: rmathews@sfu.ca

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