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A
guy like me who comments mischievously on the affairs of this world from time
to time should be happy right now. After all, four issues have recently attracted my interest, and in
each of them, nothing seems to be moving: politics appear to have ground to a
halt, leaving me to chortle over the inadequacy of our politicians.
First, there is the farcical, snail-like process of the fatuous Brexit,
Britain’s attempt to leave the European Union, that appears to have been stuck
in the doorway for the last month or two. Mind you, when they announced in 2016
that Brexit was coming, I think Europeans must have breathed a sigh of relief,
because the islanders never really joined. That never surprised me: I remember from my first sojourn in Britain in
the 1950s, how whenever there was a heavy storm, the newspaper posters would
announce, “Europe cut off,” as if those foreigners over there were just hanging
on desperately by their thumbs. And of course in those days the islanders never
hesitated to tell you that “the foreigners begin in Calais.” After all, they
beat them all into the ground, all those foreigners, during the war (with a
little unacknowledged help from the Soviet Union and the United States.)
I remember when I worked for some months in a factory in London on a
conveyer belt sending out food to Lyons’s tea shops: I agreed politically with
my fellow workers who were all Labour supporters, but their attitudes to “those
foucking foreigners” was something else: the only two foreigners apart from me
---- oh, yuh’re one of us, n’t yuh? ---
were a Dutchman --- the only Conservative voter --- and a Greek woman, who were blamed --- it was
something completely automatic --- for anything that went wrong on the line. One
of the old dears on the line invited us to her home one evening, where she confided
to us, “Mind you, there was one thing Hitler done right,” Oh, really, What was
that? “He got rid of all them Jews.”
Second, there is the case of the arrested Chinese mogul Meng Wanzhou,
cooling her heels in Vancouver after being
seized on December 1 by Canadian police, with the full knowledge of our
“happy days” Prime Minister, at the insistence of Mr. Trump. Our defence for this ludicrous action is that
we are a nation of laws, into which politics never intrudes, which the facts in
this case do not seem to support, since only the Minister of Justice, a politician, can extradite anyone from Canada.
Third, is the astounding spectacle of the naked attempt by Mr. Trump and
his lunatic minions to simply wish the elected government of Venezuela out of
office, just by dictat, and our knee-jerk, questionable action in springing to attention at the say-so of Mr.
Trump.
And fourth, to add a bit of spice to all of these, is the strange
spectacle of our former Attorney-general, recently demoted mysteriously (since
she apparently had done nothing wrong) after having apparently refused to withdraw
her prosecutors from the proposed trial of one of Quebec’s largest multinational
companies, SNC Lavalin, on charges arising from their alleged bribery in applying
for major construction contracts, and
instead to have them follow a new law (especially written to apply to their
case) called a “remediation agreement” — which often allows a corporation to pay a fine after reaching a
plea bargain. The allegation is that she came under pressure from the Prime
Minister’s Office to take this measure, and refused, and then was demoted. The Prime Minister poured oil on this
particular troubled water by denying the report in the most legalistic language
that would convince nobody, especially after hearing him carefully repeat
exactly the same formula four times in as row in both languages.
There
are viable arguments to be made on both sides of these causes. But in all except
the first of them, Brexit, our government appears to be acting the lap-dog to
the American master. One of the first things I noticed when I arrived in Canada
in 1954 was how uncomplaining Canadians were that their economy seemed to be
mostly owned and almost totally controlled, by the United States. This was explained
at the time by a conservative philosopher George Grant, in his book Lament for a Nation, when he wrote that any move ever made by a Canadian government to
assert national control over the economy, had always been resisted by our
businessmen and entrepeneurs.
Thereafter,
in the 1970s Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau tried to slow and even to reverse
this process: I believe a reduction from somewhere in the higher 70 per cent to
something closer to 50 per cent of foreign ownership was achieved, but with the
election of Brian Mulroney the policy was reversed, and unsurprisingly this has
again led to the increasing ownership of Canada’s economy by foreigners. A
school of young nationalist economists led by Mel Watkins and James Laxer
became active politically, but were effectively sidelined by the establishment
of the New Democratic Party, whose Ontario leader, Stephen Lewis, cut them off at the base by
expelling their so-called Waffle group,
and never letting them back into the party.
With
this cautious history towards U.S. control as a background, one might have
expected a more hard-nosed attitude from the current Trudeau government towards
the American attempt to undermine Venezuela economically, as a first step, then
to openly produce their own candidate for the presidency without bothering go
worry about an election, and finally to
openly brag that the imposition of privately- owned American oil companies to
take over the publicly-owned Venezuelan oil company, would be of benefit to
everyone. Unexpectedly, no one has been
more willing to salute and shout, “Yes sir, ready and willing,” than the young
Mr Trudeau (unless it could be his Foreign Minister, Ms. Freeland.)
The
problem with Venezuela for the Americans is that for the first time in its history
some of the profits earned by sale of their oil were directed to alleviating
poverty, providing education, and health care and building houses for the poor.
A terrible sin, justifying, apparently, the imposition of crippling sanctions
on the Venezuelan economy. In vain might one ask, why Venezuela? Why not Egypt?
Saudi Arabia? Or one other of the U.S.’s
authoritarian allies?
The
U.S. ---
“making America great again” --- has been aiming to re-establish the
hegemony it once exercised unchallenged over Latin America, an authority that
was challenged by first Cuba, and secondly Venezuela, with spin-off effects from these two socialist-leaning
governments on other Latin American countries. The American economist Michael
Hudson, one of the world’s leading experts on debt, in a recent interview gave a coherent account
of the origins of the Venezuelan crisis that appears to have by-passed the
Western leaders of the international community. Hudson said as Venezuela
developed it was always in the control of a wealthy local oligarchy subservient
to American interests.
“Chavez sought to restore a mixed economy to Venezuela, using its
government revenue – mainly from oil – to develop infrastructure and domestic
social spending. What he was unable to do was to clean up the embezzlement and
built-in rake-off of income from the oil sector. And he was unable to stem the
capital flight of the oligarchy, taking its wealth and moving it abroad – while
running away themselves.
He was asked by his interviewer if Chavez and Maduro were responsible for
the current mess.? Did they make mistakes, or should U.S. sabotage, subversion
and sanctions be more to blame?
He replied: “There is no way that Chavez and Maduro could have pursued a
pro-Venezuelan policy aimed at achieving economic independence without inciting
fury, subversion and sanctions from the United States. American foreign policy
remains as focused on oil as it was when it invaded Iraq under Dick Cheney’s
regime. U.S. policy is to treat Venezuela as an extension of the U.S. economy,
running a trade surplus in oil to spend in the United States or transfer its
savings to U.S. banks.”
He said that freezing of Venezuela’s bank deposits in the U.S. is making
it impossible for Venezuela to repay its foreign debt, thus forcing it into default,
which the U.S. hopes to use as an excuse for foreclosure on the country’s oil
reserves, just as they had previously tried to do in Argentina.
“Just as U.S. policy under Kissinger was to make Chile’s economy scream," said
Hudson, “so the U.S. is following the same path against Venezuela, using it to warn other countries not to act in
their self-interest in any way that prevents their economic surplus from being
siphoned off by U.S. investors.”
He said the best Maduro could do now was demonstrate to the world the
need for an alternative international financial and economic system. “He
already has begun to do this by trying to withdraw Venezuela’s gold from the
Bank of England and Federal Reserve. Their refusal to grant an elected
government control of its foreign assets demonstrates to the entire world that
U.S. diplomats and courts alone can and will control foreign countries as an
extension of U.S. nationalism.
Over
the longer run, Maduro also must develop Venezuelan agriculture --- rural extension
services and credit, seed advice, state
marketing for crop purchase, and the same kind of price supports that the
United States has long used to subsidize domestic farm investment to increase
productivity, said Hudson. In short, he must go
along much the same line as the United States did to develop its
agriculture under the New Deal legislation of the 1930s.
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