The Wisdom Of Protectionism. The Madness Of Free Trade.

The Wisdom of Protectionism.  The Madness of Free Trade.

                               Part One

The over-populous of the globe, like herds of driven lemmings, hurtle towards the edge.  

Uncontrolled greed exhausts the world’s foodstuffs.  Uncontrolled greed exhausts the world’s raw materials and wastes them in destruction of the environment.  Uncontrolled greed pollutes the financial system, the economies of the world and legal structures everywhere. And all over the world starvation, deprivation, and war are the only constant facts. The most greedy people form ‘reconstruction’ committees - to invent new disguises for their acts of looting. 

Penitent bankers, investment moguls – what have been called “the American Oligarchs”, a small group with too much power and too much money and tireless greed, gather with co-operating politicians around tables to apologize and to make sure no serious change takes place in the way the human community lives and uses and destroys the globe.

In all the places where the world most needs law the greedy make sure no law exists. For fifty years, and more, the greedy of the world have been destroying law.  In those years – with a huge campaign of lies and seductive propaganda – the greedy have been unpicking any restraint upon the criminal pursuit of personal wealth. In a hundred ways they have been telling populations they are better off to lose control of the production of food, of sustained manufacturing, and of sound and whole local economies – AND of the financial and credit machinery the country uses.

They have been preaching those things – from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, corporate headquarters, from economic think-tanks, from universities, and from the political parties the greedy have created and financed.

Deep, now, is the sickness. And greed so solidly holds positions of power that the U.S. is locked into suicidal “recovery” programs. Looted populations (outside the USA) are making their first open rebellions in an attempt to begin a genuine New Way – so far without significant success.

If it didn’t begin in Venezuela in the 1990s with the coming to power of Hugo Chavez, maybe the Argentinians began it in 2002, marching in the streets, chanting “they all have to go”, forcing out four presidents in three weeks.  More recently, Icelanders have driven out their government (literally), rejecting it, their own banks privatized and turned ‘pirate’, the International Monetary Fund, and the political parties in existence. The beginning of real change is uncoordinated, without unifying political philosophy, so far.  But it is beginning.

The task can’t be underestimated.  Not only do governments in power have to be replaced and many, many of the top bankers and financiers.  The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank have to be destroyed.  They provide, presently, the only recourse some bankrupt countries have – and the two organizations guarantee further impoverishment of the populations they pretend to “serve” (on behalf of the present criminals of the banking and financial systems). That the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are, presently, “advising” reformers in the U.S. and elsewhere is proof positive that nothing will change, unless forced.

  Repeated in Latvia, riots have not gained significant change, yet.  Nor have they in Greece where the foolish police killing of a fifteen year old was followed by days of rioting – excuse to rail against the rape of the country by the wealthy looters.

Nor has the inaudible revolution in Canada, yet, achieved any visible change.  In early December 2008, the ugly Harper sleaze briefly awakened the other parties. The Harperites pretended no economic problems existed – all was as it should be as greed raped the ordinary population. For the first time in Canadian history real movement towards a left-centrist coalition was formed, forcing the Harperites to a pretense of change, a pretense at a shift of loyalties.

Betrayed by the wealthy looters who support the Liberal Party, the coalition fell apart, its next emergence guaranteed to happen under conditions (certain to come) made tellingly more dire because failure happened in the first attempt.

The “people”, so far, don’t see the picture clearly.  And they can’t, yet, because the lie machine is so successful. The rebuilding that has to come about requires central banks to become the sole creators of money, assisted by secure, stable, and carefully regulated private banks.  The rebuilding requires that the corrupt banks and other financial institutions be permitted to go bankrupt (with protection for the innocent).  It requires a whole operation to employ local populations – and, where necessary – to restrain the flood of imports (called Protectionism by opponents of the idea).

What is required is a return to the full utilization of natural resources at home and the development of food resources that have been abandoned over decades. Canada’s present “Free Trade” (?) agreements must be erased. I watched, over decades – for instance - canneries in British Columbia taken over, their feeder orchards and farms destroyed, the canneries closed – and the local food operations replaced by imports from large foreign corporations.

Before the collapse of economies, people were becoming aware of the waste and stupidity in such so-called ‘globalization’.  People began pushing, especially, for the consumption of food stuffs grown and prepared locally – to end huge transportation costs, waste of energy, slave economy production, corporate irresponsibility, and contamination from abroad.  Before the crash, people were becoming aware.  The crash has simply increased the number of people informed.

It seems strange, perhaps, that the little, local, “grow our own food” movements should be directly connected to the huge financial and economic crash we are experiencing.  But it isn’t strange at all – everything links in the new, corrupted social system.

Everything links, because the fifty years of destroying laws that protect civil society, and the movement into place (globally) of organizations that serve “crimes without laws”, and the internationally linked political structures erected to de-rail democratic responsibility have been – and are still at the present – powerfully effective.

The “people”, so far, don’t see what’s been going on, because the slow ascendancy to power of unrestrained, private, corporate greed has been so smooth and so favourably propagandized that it has seemed almost invisible.  Besides, people cannot believe greed can be so intense - that the greedy don’t care if the very planet is destroyed in their lunge for personal wealth. Even the terms people  have been given to use have fake meanings – protectionism, free trade, free markets, free enterprise, nationalism – and many more. 

The over-populous of the globe, like herds of driven lemmings, hurtle towards the edge.  But they aren’t lemmings. They are human beings. And as they realize what is driving them towards destruction they will demand change.  They have already begun demanding. That’s why this is called “Part One”, because unpicking the lies and showing what has really been going on will take a column or two more after this one.