Do Not Look Away

The Canadian military is guilty of handing detainees over to the Afghan military or police to be tortured or killed. The Afghan military and police admit that they torture them. This means, necessarily, that Canada is guilty of war crimes. Prime Minister Harper and the Minister of Defence, Gordon O'Connor, are taking the political lead and are leading by example when they implicitly green light torture. Canada has handed over scores of prisoners that have 'disappeared'. We all know what 'disappeared' means.

It is impossible for O'Connor and Harper to not know about what happens when Canada hands prisoners over to the Afghan military. They know and they don't care. What's worse is that they want us to know that they know and don't care. It's part of a cowardly new world. It is what their masters and Washington demand.

Amir Attaran

The Globe and Mail reported on March 9 of this year, "Even the Afghan government's own human-rights watchdog concedes that torture is 'a routine part of police procedures.' The techniques, according to the U.S. State Department, include 'pulling out fingernails and toenails, burning with hot oil, beatings, sexual humiliation, and sodomy.'

"Thus, when Canadian soldiers follow standing orders and transfer men to self-confessed torturers, they could be — through no fault of their own — aiding and abetting that offence, which makes them prosecutable for war crimes. Willful blindness has trumped caution and responsibility." This is according to Amir Attaran who is a "biologist and lawyer, and is currently Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Law, Population Health and Global Development Policy, of the Faculties of Law and Medicine at the University of Ottawa".

O'Connor and Harper admit that they lied to Parliament about prisoners being monitored by The International Red Cross and The Red Crescent Society. The Canadian Conservative government, we would hope, would be embarrassed. But no, they shrug a smirk and a slimy 'whoops' to the Canadian public.

O'Conner also refused Professor Attaran's invitation to discuss these matters. He also refused to meet with human rights groups.

Canadian Politicians in American Sewage

A profound shift occurred in the accepted ethic of western nations acceptance of torture camps, kidnapping and torturing perceived state enemies with no trial, the grim acceptance of massacres of civilians and so on. And this shift happened since 9-11; we all felt it whether we are aware of it or not.

Canadians have always taken great pride in being perceived in the world as essentially sane, decent, and perhaps a little innocent. This shift in the public relations spin that advanced capitalistic states is having a tremendous impact on the image Canada is promoting. The politicians are suggesting to Canadians that the Canadian State is getting its hands dirty and that Canadians should look away. That is exactly what Canadian politicians are doing. The implicit message is to allow the state to do its dirty work and not ask questions.

This was and is the political ethic of quasi fascist states and it is the ethic of states evolving toward fascism. Proper fascist states are explicit in their demands to look away. Failing to do so will result in imprisonment or death. But we are not there yet and now is the time to look directly at it and to do something about it. Canadians as well as Brits, Americans, Australians and all citizens in nations marching down this path toward hell must use whatever political power we still have to usurp this conspiracy of ugly silence.

There is a fable about two frogs. Both are killed in boiling water. The first frog is abruptly plunged into the hot water and before he dies, he panics and kicks, aware of what is happening to him. The second frog is sitting in the water as the heat is gradually turned up. Eventually he dies as the water gets too hot for his body to survive.

Hitler plunged the frogs into boiling water. There was a lot of panic and awareness of what was happening. Today, if you can't feel the water to be getting unbearably hot, consider those that disappeared or those that have been thrown into Guantanimo or some other, less known prison. Some of us are the second frog but there are many that are the first frog. We can't afford to look away.

For Sale: Britain's NHS

That is, once the Conservative government is elected.

David Cameron, the leader of the British Tory part, is aiming to scuttle the NHS. The Tories are aiming to Americanize health care but they won't say that to your face. Britain should learn from the folly of being led down the neo-con path to misery and destruction. Brits should learn from the experience of Canada. The system in Canada isn't dead yet, but it has taken quite a beating.

The closer we reside, politically, geographically, and economically to the center of the American Empire, the more likely we are liable to be influenced by their ideological and financial pressures. Canadians for instance, understand what it means to have their governments policies dictated by the likes of Moody's of New York bond rating institution or similar and disparate influential capitalistic organizations. Canadians have been cut to the bone. In Europe, the people have so far been spared. Europeans appear to be more politically sophisticated than North Americans. Witness the trashing George Galloway handed his American accusers a year ago. The Americans were caught of guard. They were used to bullying Americans. Face with this fiery Scot, they were dumbfounded.

Oh Canada

Canadians know what it is like to have vultures circling high overhead waiting for the death rattles of the socialized medical care system. In Canada there was Albera's Premier, Ralph Klein, leading the charge against public health care in his efforts to sink the privatization wedge deep into the heart of the system. There were others, not least of which was the national Liberal government that, in the mid 1990s, axed, slashed, burned and cut about half the revenue to the system leaving it in shreds.

After that, the right wingers began to scream that the socialist medical system isn't adequate, that there are waiting lines for patients and service is horrible. Bear in mind, the so-called Liberal Party of Canada is top heavy with right wingers including the likes of Paul Martin, the man responsible for callously slashing the system to a dangerous level. The same man who is responsible for sinking the Canada Assistance Act, a structure that ensured no Canadian would slip through the social safety net. A structure placed beneath every Canadian by Paul Martin's father; a man who was not influenced by neo-liberal savages.

Canadians have been told, over and over and over again that social spending isn't affordable. Social spending in Canada has been cut and social programs have been gutted. Canada isn't as bad as the USA but it is getting there.

Next in queue: the UK.

Step up David Cameron and the Tories; perched to win the next national election. Already Cameron and the Tories are preparing the ground for widespread cuts to social programs and especially cuts to health care. Privatization is their business and they aim to see it happen.
Reading into the messages the Tories are putting out today will forecast when they will do tomorrow. What's important is to decipher their political code. They don't come out and say 'we are going to privatized health care so our rich friends can make a killing selling services to people'. Instead they speak in coded language.

At the Conservative spring conference in Noddingham, David Cameron said that he is making NHS (Britain's health care system) "a priority". Coming from a Conservative, these are ominous words indeed. According to Labour's Health Secretary, Patricia Hewitt, the Tories spending plans would cut £28 billion from services annually. That's a lot of pounds. For instance, there are 14 billion inches to the moon.

Brace yourself Britain. Tory times are tough times.

When David Cameron says that he is making health care system a priority, watch out. That is code for, 'we are going to slash it. We are going to burn it'.

George Osborne, the Tory health care hatchet man said that a Conservative government would "get a grip" on public spending. He said that he wants to show that the Tories are "disciplined, serious and responsible". If you are a Canadian you have heard this language before and you know that it is code for gutting programs to the commons in favour of the rich. It's been done, literally to death in Canada and many Canadians have died as a result of cutting spending to health care.

Mr. Osborne also said that a Tory government would cut red tape by simplifying the tax business code and ridding Britain of a complex system of tax relief. This would pave the way to deliver on the Tory aim to cut the corporate tax to make the UK, as they say, more competitive, and deliver on the party's publicised commitment "to shift from a tax as you earn to tax as you burn" way of doing it.

Speaking at the convention, David Cameron called for a "social responsibility" revolution. He envisions private firms, voluntary bodies and citizens taking control of the delivery of public services. Labour, as odious as they may be in some respects, maintains a belief in an elemental cover of socialism to protect the average Brit from possible financial devastation, worry, or unnecessary death. Tony Blair is advocating for better state supplied services to the commons. He's not all bad. It's too bad the man has been sleeping with the likes of George W. Bush.

The Tories are all bad though - bad to the bone. The Tories want to make the world safe for capitalism. They want to make the climate as friendly as possible for investors and privateers. The less social spending the better - less of a tax burden for investors. If they can provide tax breaks for the rich and heap the burden onto workers, the better the privateers like it. If they have the public purse spent on infrastructure to support private business, the more happy the speculators, gamblers, and privateers will be. Scrapping the health care system is especially delicious because there are billions to be made selling health to the sick, the dying, and the disabled. If they can't afford it, they can sell their houses. Again, another bonus for the privateers. They have swallowed the neo-conservative ideology hook, line, and deadly sinker.
So now in the UK, private business interests are drooling over the prospect of a Tory government cutting the system and privatizing it, one piece at a time. There is a bonanza on the horizon. A fortune to be made on the backs of the sick and the elderly.

Canadians remember a nightmare. And that nightmare has a name. His name is Brian Mulroney, clearly the most hated man in the history of the nation. If you look at David Cameron you will notice an uncanny resemblance, especially when he speaks. Has anyone ever seen those two in the same room?

The King of America Part 2: The Antichrist

The most bizarre tales we may have had the pleasure of reading may be found in the Bible and particularly the apparent hallucinogenic inspired tales revealed in the Book of Revelations. But as far fetched as it may seem, the prophecies are coming to pass. We are living in the days of the Antichrist. What is worse, the Antichrist is not only King of America, it is King period.

We generally think of feudal societies when we think of kings or monarchs. But there is an effective king and it rules America as surely as Henry the 8th ruled England hundreds of years ago. This king that has taken on the role of our overlord is no ordinary king however. It is as phantomological as a ghost, yet it is in real terms, a person with all the legal rights as you or I. But unlike you or I, it has immense power. It has the power to rule the USA, Canada, the UK and almost all nations. It controls and moves armies and it dictates whether we work or are unemployed. It is a king that impacts all of us very directly. No king of feudal times had such power. And no king of feudal times was as ruthless.

Money

Before we fill out the character of this King of America further, we may consider some of the curious characteristics of its father; capital or, money.

Money is completely useless in direct reality; that is, in the world that beasts and children live in. Money is just paper and metal and may useful in the toilet or in a slingshot. But it has no specific purpose in direct reality. It is certainly the single most useful commodity however in the world of the abstract. It's the means to freedom in capitalist society and its absence results in no freedom whatsoever. Its absence means, in strictly socialist-less and purely capitalistic societies that we cannot access medical care, housing, or food. We need money to talk on a telephone, to transport ourselves, or to do pretty much anything. If the King has his way, all societies activities, even drinking water or eating will require money.

And yet money is a phantom born of the real and energetic work and sweat of human beings. It is more than a means to exchange value however. Money's power and ghostlike qualities emerge from the moment it takes on excess value. The moment a larger price is demanded from the previous value of something a small demon is born. The aggregate of these demons is profit and this is the driving force and power of the King of America.

It is in the interests of capitalists and capitalism to be able to charge for every and all objects and activities that human beings want and need. The past few decades witnessed an explosion in information technology. People want and some need internet access, access to cable television, and access to the information and software to use this technology. Rather than it being a matter of simply setting up a dish to pull in the signals that exist in the space around us, the state has laws that require us to pay out money to look into this dimension of reality that exists in the space around us. If we are caught accessing this dimension without paying the legitimized providers, we will be stung and called thieves. The sting will require us to pay the state a sum of money. The state protects profit and the privateers run the state.

Capitalist society is a free society as long you have the means to pay. If you can pay, you are free. If you cannot, you are not.

The King

The King of America has taken on the role of the corporation. It could have just as easily been a private company or partnerships, but it is the corporation that has grown into the ruler of the planet. Like money itself, the corporation is well removed from existing in direct reality and from humanity. It is farther removed than a company. A company may have a human face and it may make decisions based on human sentiment. The same is true with a private business partnership. But the same is not true for the corporation. A corporation is far more like a virus; the kind of virus that may attack your computer. This virus however is a virus that is attacking humanity and it is programmed to kill the natural ecosystems that we are part of. It is programmed to kill us all.

Initially, corporations were formed to serve public interests. But capitalism, being what it is, discovered that the form of 'corporation' was far more useful and efficient than the private company at generating profit. A few adjustments would have to be made and they were. The most significant adjustment was that corporations were given the same rights as persons and were granted personhood by the courts. At that point we have generated very real phantoms in our midst. Phantoms far more terrifying than anything Stephen King could invent. Phantoms hell bent on controlling and destroying all of humanity. This may sound like hyperbole but if you examine it, you will see that it isn't the slightest of an exaggeration.

As a legal person, the corporation can buy things, sell things, it can sue and be sued. But is has limited liability. It is a very real member of society and a very powerful one.

Unlike flesh and blood human beings, the corporation cannot love and it has no conscience. It will operate only on the basis of maximizing profit for its shareholders. The individual shareholders may not want to kill or harm people in the name of profit, but what they care about doesn't influence the decisions made by the corporation. Like a virus, it is programmed to do one thing and everything else is subservient to that function. It will maximize profit and will make decisions to that end, it will destroy obstacles to that end and it will seduce facilitators to that end.

This King of America has no body, no fear, no soul, no brain. It is nothing but a virus, an abstract illusion. Like money, it has no substance in reality. It is as clever as the most clever lawyers on the planet. As its guiding hand, it extracts the most cold and calculating aspects of the minds of these lawyers and through this process, its power over societies is on the way to becoming total. It will dictate the policies and laws that politicians put in place because politicians are under the rule of this all powerful king. To this end, it will use us and it will use society to clean up its own mess and to pay its costs.

The corporation will use the state as its own private gopher. It will use the state to pay for structures and programs to facilitate optimizing its own profit. It has control of the powerful and potent American state as well as other weaker colonies of America. The American State will provide aid, for instance, to smaller colonies and the aid will be used to build infrastructure such a bridges and roads to facilitate the corporate theft of the colony's natural resources.

The corporation will also force the state to fight wars to ensure a profitable and brighter future for the shareholders. At the moment, a number of oil corporations as well as weapons manufacturers have dictated to the American State demands to wage war for oil in Iraq and take control of the oil resources there. On February 26 of this year, the American controlled and corporate controlled Iraqi cabinet of Prime Minister Nouri al-Malaki has adopted a bill to ensure that American oil corporations have free reign over Iraqi oil. The draft law aims to cut out French, Russian, and Chinese oil interests. The bill restores a colonial framework known as a production-sharing agreement. This allows foreign companies to have first dibs on the oil they help the nationalized industry extract of the massive sea of oil beneath the desert sand.

This is not completely detached from human involvement. If we look at Halliburton, for instance, we see that they have their Management Oversight Committee which meets in executive sessions to evaluate the performance of the Chief Executive Officer each December. The CEO may be fired if he is not up to snuff. They examine performance in such areas as "total stockholder return" and "development and implementation of initiatives to provide long-term economic benefit to Halliburton". Their "initiatives" have taken them, Dick Cheney, and America deep into the bowels of Iraq.

That's Halliburton. There are other corporate interests that salivate at the many billions waiting for them in the Middle East. Aside from oil, there are substantial weapons sales to consider. Weapons sellers and the American State are enjoying passionate bedtime relations that are almost as incestuous as the GOP and Halliburton. Lockheed Martin is the number one defense contractor on the planet. And Lockheed Martin spends millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress. Aside from that, the American State and these mammoth corporations have a myriad of disturbing and perverse relationships.

The Anti Christ

If we look at the morality side of corporations, what we see is the opposite of good. What we see is pure and unabashed evil.

If we are so inclined, we may use Jesus as a moral compass. Jesus isn't an unusual moral compass. He cursed those that are objectively harmful to other human beings and praised those that cared for other human beings. His morality was, and is, universal and elemental.
If we examine the King of America in this light, we will see that it is a particularly malevolent virus.

As a legal person, it has no morality whatsoever. It will kill and harm human beings in the interests of profit making. The bottom line is all that matters. There is no such thing as satisfaction. The King of America must grow and its hunger is insatiable. They must put profit above the public good.

Corporations have been likened to a psychopath in book form, "The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power" by Joel Bakan and in DVD form, "The Corporation", by the same author. They have no concern for the well being of others, they have no emotional affect, they will cause death and ill health in order to make money for the shareholders, they are deceitful and they have no capacity to experience guilt or any other human emotion. Even if the individuals, the shareholders, care about the plight of humans, the decisions are out of their hands. The virus runs pretty much on its own.

The disturbing truth is that what is good for the King is bad for the rest of us and vice versa. The privatization of water, electricity, education, health care, social assistance and so on is good for the King but it is detrimental to individuals, especially the poor and people that are disabled or otherwise disadvantaged. It is good for the rich and powerful and it is bad for the poor and those of us that are vulnerable (which is pretty much all of us). It is exactly the opposite of what Jesus preached and it boldly espouses these doctrines and ideological beliefs through corporate propaganda institutions such as the Canadian Fraser Institute, The American Enterprise Institute, The Heritage Foundation and so on.

When we examine this King, it propensities and its power in the world, we may be well advised to ask ourselves what the natural extension of this could mean for us.

The prognosis is dire. If corporation 'A' contains within it some shred of humanity, some sense of elemental morality, then corporation 'B', the more efficient and cost effective organization, will simply eat corporation A. In other words, the most fit, and that means the least humane, will survive. The tendency is to make things worse because the more wealth that is accumulated in the hands of the few, the worse off the rest of us are.

There is ample evidence to deem the King of America the Anti Christ. There is also logic and intelligence that cannot be refuted. The King has embraced and it promotes neo liberal and neo conservative ideology and it will kill and make war in order to feed shareholders.

The Anti Christ is most potent force on the planet but, at the end of the day, it is nothing more than a virus. A sociological and economic virus eating its way through societies. It operates in ways not much different than a computer virus. It is ethereal and it does not exist in direct reality. But then, neither does money.

We are in a bit of a mess.

The King of America

America, in many ways, is unique and increasingly separate from the rest of the world. Perhaps its political climate separates America from the rest of the world more than anything else. And more than anywhere else, its policies are dictated by a monarch rather than by elected representatives.

If we consider the differences between the Democrats and the Republicans, we can see that their differences are only superficial. One is well to the right within the context of world politics; the other, further to the right. If this was the case with any other nation, we may be forgiven if we ignored it. But this is America. The modern day version of the Roman or British Empires. They are Rome and Britain within a context of latter day capitalism, or, imperialism. It is capitalism addicted to crack. It is extremely dangerous and it aims to exploit the rest of us.

Not so long ago, America had a left consciousness. But today, even leftists in America seem to reflect an insular and arrogant world view. I recently read an article posted on usenet (Neil Kennedy) reflecting on "the religion" that is modern America. And when we think about it, it is a religion. It is a religion of greed, war, hedonism and selfishness that is a direct refutation of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism and all other religions. It espouses the goodness in all those things Jesus preached against. And Ironically, it is the religious Christian zealots that are a vital driving force within the cult of America.

Potent Potential

The strain that is building between America and its colonies is growing and correspondingly and naturally, the strain between the classes in America grows. The latter is more latent then manifest due to the artificial dumbing down of the American population by the mainstream media, popular culture, and religious patriotism. On the one hand, we have a pull in the direction of increased profits for those with power and wealth. On the other hand, we have a growing awareness that this is unacceptable, especially in light of the fact that this addiction to wealth and power grows ever more hungry and prominent. People all over the world are becoming more intolerant of injustice and oppression and more aware of the nature of the addicts and addictions that have control of most societies. The trick is, connecting Americans class-wise to the rest of us. That will require them, naturally, to question their patriotism. And it will require he rest of us to befriend them.

A strong progressive political movement rests there, just beneath the surface. We need solidarity with the workers, the poor, and all the oppressed people in the USA. While that may seem far fetched while Jerry Springer and trash magazines enjoy their heyday, we must remember that there is a lot of tension within American society as a result of its homogeneous religious patriotism. The potential for revolution exists in America like nowhere else. It is a powder-keg. If you can remember the contrast between 1966 and 1967 in America, you will know that this is a nation where the climate can change very abruptly. What is needed is deprogramming from the indoctrination that has hypnotized them.

Progressive politics in the United States have been pushed to the margins to the point of irrelevance as the ruling class has increased its dominance over the will and the minds of the people. But latent energy is there as latent and dormant as it may be. Prior to 9-11 young people were collectively resisting global capitalism on the ground. For the first time since the 1930s, there was a significant movement against capitalism itself. The 60's also exposed a wealth of popular resistance against numerous specific issues of oppression. It will happen again and when it does, we, that is, non Americans, must be ready to exploit this energy and help them drive a dagger into the heart of the beast.

Contential Drift

In the 1930s the pain of starvation and oppression gave rise to a popular mass movement against capitalism.That class struggle was co opted by Roosevelt, who granted workers a law that made it illegal for employers to refuse to bargain with unions (the Wagner Act) and he passed the Social Security Act. Doing so placed the USA under the slippery dealings orchestrated by John Maynard Keynes. In other words - 'give the peasants scraps and crumbs or they will revolt'. It was a great pressure relief valve. A pressure relief valve that many European nations have apparently taken on as a permanent fixture. But the nature of capitalism is to plug up or remove altogether that pressure relief and it will tend toward a more fascistic modus operandi as capitalism becomes ever more mature and starved for capital.

The New Deal was not an appeasement brought on by the unions or working class movements. Instead, it was the capitalists themselves that dictated Roosevelt's benevolence. Historians Joel Roberts and Thomas Ferguson observed:

"At the center of [the New Deal Coalition] were not millions of farmers, Blacks and poor that have preoccupied liberal commentators, nor even the masses of employed or striking workers who pressured the government from below (and later helped implement some of the New Deal’s achievements) but something else—a new power bloc of capital-intensive industries, investment banks, and internationally oriented commercial banks." - Thomas Ferguson and Joel Rogers, Right Turn: The Decline of the Democrats and the Future of American Politics

The next four decades would see increased prosperity in the USA and throughout the industrialised world. The Fabian formula: the more the working classes have to spend, the more they will buy, proved to be a powerful impetus for liberalism and Fabian socialism. But the beast was growing large, hungry, and powerful. By the 1980's it became obvious that the party was over. The cry in the USA and in all modern capitalist nations was 'tighten your belts, we can't afford health care, social services, and opulent education for the masses'. The spending spree is over. The neo-liberalism of the Chicago School of was to take centre stage. And it did. It especially took centre stage in Latin America and as a result, the blowback is already being felt. The hypnosis of the neon lights of capitalism has turned to a nightmare, as it did in Argentina:

Grand Theft Argentina

Introducing: The King of America

America is ruled less by politics and more by economics. Whether democrats or the GOP are in power doesn't matter. The face of the President may change, but the King is always the same. And it is the King of America that calls the shots.

As a result of the maturation of capitalism, the dictator of American politics turned away from the slick wisdom of Keynes in the mid-seventies. That is, capital was becoming increasingly difficult to accumulate and there was a decline in profit taking. The sense that things will keep getting better was lost in the boardrooms and a bitter new deal would have to be forged. The expectation that prosperity would continue would have to give way to a newer and meaner future. Since that time, real wages have fallen steadily.

Welfare to citizens would have to be cut and so would corporate welfare. The arrangement where employers were subsidized for paying wages had to give way. Since then, unions cozy relationship with employers was poisoned and unions have been under siege ever since.

Fiscally, Jimmy Carter was more right wing than his Republican predecessors and Bill Clinton was more right wing than his. That is because it is not the president, but the King in American that calls the shots. Clinton ratified the NAFTA, a move that has neo-liberalized policy not only in the USA, but in Canada as well. NAFTA was aimed at radically altering the terms of exploitation that the monarch demanded of Roosevelt five decades prior. Clinton also forced welfare reliant parents to work for wages by passing regressive bills aimed at curbing welfare expenditures.

The King of America, or perhaps better, the dictator, has no problem with military expenditures. The sky's the limit. And his right minions march in step, hypocritically screaming bloody murder when five dollars is paid out to poor people but happy as a clam when many billions are paid out to the military machine to slaughter foreigners for control of oil.

And the next President, a Democrat, will continue to slaughter those unfortunate enough to be born on a sea of oil whether she wants to or not.