Oh Canada, We Are Not Standing On Guard For Thee

Recently, pre-eminent Canadian constitutional lawyer Rocco Galati demonstrated that Bill C-51 -- which is now law --- transforms Canada into a fascist state, complete with a modern day Gestapo.

It takes all our private information and shares it with all government agencies, including foreign government. For some citizens that becomes an eventuality of torture and/or death when travelling abroad.

It restricts arbitrarily who can travel.

Freedom of expression and political criticism with respect to "terrorism and the government's role" (becomes) a terrorist offence in itself. So words and thoughts become an act of terrorism under this bill.

It allows CSIS to disrupt covertly constitutionally-protected rights of association, expression, and protest.

It does all of this by taking away all and any transparent judicial oversight.

He says that "We've entered into the final fascist state."[i]

Canada is not alone. Similar legislation is being passed in other "Western" countries, including France, Australia, the US, UK, Germany, and Italy. [ii] It's going global.

As freedoms are destroyed, people, including politicians, are being infantilized and de-politicized.

The "press", an appendage of the fascist state, is no longer free either. Media messaging is tightly controlled by corporate monopolies which repeat consistent "group-think" messaging that supports a supranational corporate agenda. People, including politicians, unconsciously absorb the pervasive "group-think", and alternatives are consistently rejected.

As Henry Giroux explains in "The Fascism Is An Embrace of The Profoundly Anti-Political"[iii] , there is a "separation of power, which is global, from politics, which is local."

This supranational corporate power structure, exemplified by secretive corporate sovereignty agreements, is welded to an agenda that is anti-public at every turn. Domestically and abroad, it entrenches toxic, predatory (neoliberal) economic systems that dismantle public structures,[iv] even as public monies serve as life-support systems for the apparatuses of these "privatized", bailed-out, corporate power centers.

Imagine a permanent war against the social structures of all countries, to have a sense of the "agenda". Domestically, it means health care is privatized, schools are privatized, and postal services are privatized. It means profits from the resource sector flow out of the country as subsidies from the taxpayers continue to flow in. At least $1.3 billion in federal tax dollars [v] are transferred from the public to the fossil fuel industry every year even as the manufacturing base relocates to China and elsewhere.

Externally, permanent globalized warfare slaughters multitudes in what is now an overseas holocaust. [vi] Any country that opposes the dictates of the US led supranational corporate monster becomes a target.

As Prof. John McMurtry explains in "Global Society Destruction and the Ukraine Crisis: Decoding Its Deep Structural Meaning", [vii] the "West" consistently uses ad hominen and "reverse-projection" propaganda strategies to create a domestic war-mongering group-think. NATO, for example, will first vilify a target country's leader, and then project its own attributes onto the enemy. Consider some examples of "reverse projection": the West has Weapons of Mass Destruction, but CIA asset Hussein did not, though he was accused of having them. The US has military bases throughout the world as it expands its hegemony. Russia does not, but the West accuses Russia of expanding its hegemony. The West orchestrated a coup to topple the elected government of Ukraine. Russia did not, but the West accuses Russia all the same.

The repetition of these propaganda strategies entices domestic mass-media consuming populations to turn on their "Hate switches".

How do nations qualify to become the next target for a NATO war of aggression? McMurtry explains that the target nation invariably has more advanced social structures than its neighbours, and that this contradicts the West's agenda which seeks supranational corporate control of resources and markets. The agenda, then, is to destroy these societal structures with a view to replacing them with parasitical models that enrich the oligarch classes and impoverish the masses. It's a globalized settler/colonial dynamic, where the masses, including those in the NATO aggressor nations, are impoverished, and lose their "social life bases" as the domestic and international oligarch classes enrich themselves.

Consider the examples of Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Venezuela:

Ghali Hassan reports in "Living Conditions In Iraq: A Criminal Tragedy"[viii] that, prior to 1991,Iraq had one of the best health care systems in the Middle East, and one of the best education systems, as well as modern sanitary and water infrastructure systems. He reports that Iraq ranked 50 out of 130 in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) Human Development Index.

This author reports that prior to the NATO invasion, Libya [ix] had the highest standard of living in Africa, a high Human Development Index (HDI),ranked above the regional average, free public healthcare, free public education, 89% adult literacy rate (with girls outnumbering boys by 10% in secondary and tertiary education), subsidized, affordable food, and almost no homelessness.

A similar narrative emerges with Syria. In an article by Eva Bartlett, "The real Syrian moderates: voices of reason" [x] Dr. Shaaban, a former prof. at Eastern Michigan University and now Political and Media Advisor to President al-Assad, recounts that,

"Syria was formerly one of the fastest developing countries in the world, and one of the safest. We have free education and health care. We did not know poverty; we grew our food and produced our own clothing. At universities, 55 percent of the students were women."

Though not being directly invaded at the moment, Venezuela too has a superior social development structure relative to its neighbours. In "A Coup in Venezuela Means Another Victory For Corruption"[xi] this author notes:

Between 1998 and 2011, the poverty rate dropped from 49% to 27.4%

Venezuela's extreme poverty rate dropped from 11.4% to 6.9% in ten years

Venezuela reduced its extreme poverty rate from 6.3% to 5.5% in 2013 alone

Venezuela now boasts the lowest Gini coefficient in Latin America (a measure of income inequality, lower numbers mean less inequality)

Venezuelans have access to free and universal healthcare

Access to quality education (at all levels) is guaranteed for all

Food is deemed affordable

From 2006 to 2011, Venezuela moved up 7 spots in the United Nations' Human Development Index , to 73 out of 187 countries

Clearly, then, the globalized war that is afflicting humanity is a force for death and destruction rather than a force for life and social progress. The group-think being imposed on western audiences is stopping us from slowing the destruction.

The fascism and the death spiral will continue on its current trajectories as long as we ignore reality, and continue to relinquish control to this apparatus of supranational corporate dominance.

[i] https://youtu.be/-AhhC0sngPo

[ii] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/06/12/sovereign-corporations-occupy-commons

[iii] http://whatsupic.com/special-usa/henry-giroux144482.html

[iv] http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/05/16/privatization-problem-not-solution

[v] http://commonsensecanadian.ca/petro-state-economy-costs-canada-far-jobs-creates/

[vi] http://www.opednews.com/articles/Western-Imposed-Holocaust-by-Mark-Taliano-Government_Innocent_Intervention_Propaganda-150728-765.html

[vii] http://www.globalresearch.ca/global-society-destruction-and-the-ukraine-crisis-decoding-its-deep-structural-meaning/5379275

[viii] http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/HAS506A.html

[ix] http://www.globalresearch.ca/terror-inc-and-the-war-on-libya/5426922

[x] click here

[xi] http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/mark-taliano/venezuela-politics_b_4948047.html

By Mark Taliano

First appeared on Whatsupic

Appeared at Oped News and Intrepid Report