Look At The Globe And Mail. Look! Look!

The result – added to the already predominant Rightest press and media in Canada - is a huge monster that delivers Right Wing “news” and “opinion,” often the only source of information about key matters at home and abroad for Canadians, whether they are reading newspapers, magazines, or watching television. We get a single, shrill, anti-democratic voice carrying “news” to us. We have lost a free press in Canada. When a free press in a country is destroyed, what happens? In countries with dictatorships the press and media parrot what they are told to say, in order to reinforce the power of corporations, the very wealthy, and those who support them. How about Canada? Precisely the same thing happens but by subtler propaganda, subtler tactics, subtler indoctrination. The goal is the indoctrination of a single message. The goal in Canada is now – by slow, biased, unrelenting indoctrination – to convince Canadians to assent to the power of corporations, the very wealthy, and those who support them. The owners, after all, ARE the corporations and the very wealthy. Occasionally, the bias is so dramatic it shows for anyone who wants to look. Let’s look. Let’s look at two or three pages of The Globe and Mail for June 1, 2005. Start with The Globe’s editorial on the “shoddy trial and conviction of former Russian oil baron (41-year-old) Mikhail Khodorkovsky” who had become Russia’s richest person. (At 41 that’s not bad, especially since he’s been in jail awhile already.) The Globe editorial tells us – as we are told over and over and over by the Right press and media – that the trial wasn’t “a fair and transparent application of the law, the value of contracts and other essential components of a modern legal system.” Just by coincidence, a few pages away (A12), in a news story, The Globe tells us that U.S. president George W. Bush is deeply concerned about the trial and its outcome. He is reported there to have said to the Russian president that “here (in the U.S.A.) you’re innocent until proven guilty, and it appeared to us … that it looked like he had been adjudged guilty prior to a fair trial.” That ringing statement was uttered by a president whose government denies fair trials daily, has broken international law repeatedly, and has prisoners (often maltreated) in the hundreds in and out of the U.S.A. – prisoners who “have been adjudged guilty prior to having a fair trial.” Where is the evidence The Globe is horrified at those facts and taking the U.S. president seriously to task? Its editorial goes on to say the Russian trial is really the result of a political vendetta between Khodorkovsky and Russian president Putin. It says Khodorkovsky may be guilty of fraud, embezzlement, and tax evasion from work in an atmosphere where “bribery was a growth industry,” etc. But, says The Globe, Khodorkovsky‘s real crime “was daring to oppose Mr. Putin publicly and to fund opposition parties.” If I rob a bank and also oppose the present government, and if I’m caught for the bank robbery and tried, will The Globe and Mail say I’m really being tried because I oppose the present government? Even if I oppose the present government, and even if the present government is glad to see me being tried, does it mean my bank robbery doesn’t matter? When former B.C. premier Glen Clark underwent what I have repeatedly alleged was a baseless trial for political reasons – and was destroyed politically – (for which I repeatedly call for an independent commission of inquiry), why didn’t The Globe and Mail weigh in and ask for an investigation that uses a “fair and transparent application of the law”? I believe the answer is that Khodorkovsky is a neo-liberal, market economy supporter of western-style capitalism. Glen Clark, as we know, was a leader of a British Columbia NDP government, called “Left” by The Globe and Mail. And he was wanted out of power by the Canadian Khodorkovskys and their supporters who operate the largest portion of the press and media in Canada. The Globe editorial claims the trial of Khodorkovsky was conducted “to dismantle any serious political opposition.” What about the Glen Clark trial (which didn’t even have the thinnest shadow of allegation that Glen Clark was enriching himself fraudulently)? The story gets worse. The Globe doesn’t remind readers that (with U.S. assistance) the collapse of the Russian Empire was accompanied by dirty, fraudulent private grabbing of huge wealth owned by the people of Russia through their state. The wealth was passed by every dishonest means from the Russian people to friends, associates, supporters, etc., permitting people like Mikhail Khodorkovsky to become enormously wealthy in their thirties (while many ordinary Russians lived, and continue to live, in almost desperate circumstances). The Globe and Mail has never, in my observation, devoted itself to suggesting Russia review all the shady, opportunistic, fraudulent, and outright criminal transfers of state property to private corporations and by “a fair and transparent application of the law” return all that property to the Russian people. If The Globe and Mail even hinted at a balanced presentation of the Khodorkovsky trial and its causes, Canadians might gain a reasonable sense of the evils of a neo-liberal, market economy. On the page facing the editorials, two columnists plug the unrelieved right-wing line fed Canadians. Marcus Gee begins his column about the French rejection of the proposed European constitution by writing: “As usual, Tony Blair is right.” (The man who fraudulently took Britain into the Iraq War, is right, as usual?) If Gee had written, “As usual, Tony Blair is Right,” he would have been closer to the truth. Blair wants European “living standards” to rise, Gee quotes Blair as saying. But the changes proposed by the makers of the proposed EU constitution and their backers (especially Tony Blair) have been to degrade living standards. Citing unemployment and sluggish economies in Europe, Gee writes that every “leader with his head screwed on knows Europe has to change.” No one disagrees. The question is: Change how? Marcus Gee takes for granted that “change” can only be globalization, privatization, neo-liberalism, with the degrading of living standards for the largest portion of the population. Marcus Gee offers – as if it were the only possible remedy – a market economy, Rightest solution. He doesn’t even admit there might be other solutions. He doesn’t mention how wealth is distributed in Europe. He doesn’t mention a problem of diminishing profits – for the reason that the wealthy in Europe are doing very well, thank you. He makes no mention of non neo-liberal solutions in which ALL Europeans truly participate in a move to greater efficiency and full employment (which might force corporations to register slightly lower profits on behalf of the common good, on behalf of “the union”). Neither Marcus Gee nor Jeffrey Simpson (on the same page) tells readers ANYTHING about the rejected constitution. (That is the same as the editorial which tells nothing significant about the reason for the Khodorkovksy trial.) They don’t tell that the so-called constitution is over 600 pages long, written in purposefully murky language, almost impossible for well-meaning, ordinary people to get through, and written as a tract of - what Jeffrey Simpson scoffingly scorns the French for calling - “le liberalisme” (neo-liberalism). More important, they don’t point out what should be screamingly obvious, something “every schoolboy ought to know” (as people used to say). They don’t point out that a so-called constitution of over 600 pages – with a special, ornate third section dealing with trade, competition, and the market economy – must (and is intended to) severely limit the democratic freedom of decision making possible to any European parliament and any of the sub-parliaments in Europe. Just imagine a Canadian constitution of 625 pages, saying that if “competition” between corporations is challenged by people being forced into starvation for the sake of “competition” (read: profit and power for corporations), then no one may interfere with competition. Just imagine a Canadian constitution saying public money may not be used to level the living standards of areas in deep poverty, but those areas must dig out of poverty by free market means and foreign investment. Marcus Gee suggests the French are afraid of low-wage earners threatening their livelihood. He doesn’t say the proposed constitution almost guarantees a continuing body of low-wage workers not only to attract industry but also to force the wages of all the rest of Europeans down. Elsewhere in the right-wing press, grand statements have been made that the French (and now the Dutch) rejected a European Parliament. There is no mention that the new European Parliament was going to wear neo-liberal shackles that would force it to serve neo-liberal, market economy, privatization values – whatever else a majority of Europeans wanted. Jeffrey Simpson’s column is less informative (if that is possible) than Marcus Gee’s. Simpson even makes the empty-headed statement that the French rejected the proposed constitution “even though a Frenchman, former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing, had presided over the commission that negotiated the deal.” First. Why should a Frenchman who helps create a dangerous constitution get Frenchmen to vote for it simply because he is French? Second. Simpson slips out the fact that a “commission” negotiated a “deal.” Which is to say, men (and women) in suits. And which is to say, people totally committed to corporate domination of European society. These people, ensconced in Brussels, did everything they could to shape a constitution guaranteeing corporate domination of the European population. You will not see that written anywhere in Canada’s Right-monopolized press – or in the privately controlled other media. Elsewhere in right-wing publications, Chinese wage standards are waved threateningly before the eyes of Europeans (and Canadians). Some things have to be done to meet Chinese low-wage, high-pollution competition, most agree. But neo-liberal answers aren’t the only answers. Even Toxic Right George Bush is violating – at least the spirit of - the neo-liberal World Trade Organization laws by putting tariffs on Chinese textiles so that U.S. people can work and eat. The French and the Dutch have put the brakes on a neo-liberal European Union. That is a victory, not a catastrophe. Jeffrey Simpson, however, compares France’s “No” to the Canadian Charlottetown Accord “No.” He is wrong. France’s “No” is like the Meech Lake Accord “No” when Canadians said ten men in suits sitting down behind closed doors are not going to write us a constitution. By the time of Charlottetown, remember, Brian Mulroney was so distrusted and loathed that Canadians wouldn’t have given a “Yes” to anything he put forward. That can happen in Europe, too, if the people there are not convinced a real, visible, understandable constitution built for everyone in the union has been constructed. Considerations of that kind don’t make their way into The Globe and Mail or into the almost unbroken, anti-democratic, Rightest press and media in Canada. What a pity we get a thin, high shriek from The Globe and Mail (and the farther Right press and media) instead of real news, real information, real diversity, real debate and discussion. The Right press in Canada pushes and pushes Canadians away from democratic society. Learning that profit comes from an unfree press and media, The Globe and Mail and its Right monopoly fellows now seem to want to try for an unfree society as well. The “press” of Canada is shackled. A shackled press is the first step to a shackled society. [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on June 7, 2005]