Nailed to the Door of Our Planet PART 2

“The paradox of McWorld (corporate ideal) Benjamin Barber writes in Jihad vs. McWorld, “is that it destroys the financial base of the consumers it needs on the way to selling them products. It overproduces goods and underproduces employment, unable to see the connection between them. While democracy cultivates free markets, markets fail to cultivate democracy.”

The ideology promoting McWorld’s global success calls for “gutting regulation, transparency, and governmental oversight.” That is, where instead of goods, needs are produced; instead of treating people as citizens, they are but shoppers. Any realistic independent nation must first regulate and control markets, “assuring a balance between liberty and equality, competition and justice, goods and jobs.” Without these checks and balances, all of the above is sacrificed.

We don’t need to list the ills that unregulated corporations have unleashed on the world, but when fracking is permitted to continue against the will of the people (local farmers), when massive oil pipelines are laid through private property against the will and safety of the people, when multi-national trade deals are entered into that profit global corporations at the expense of local jobs and the welfare of millions, it doesn’t take an Einstein to see that the good of the many has been sacrificed to the good of the few.

And sacrificing the good of the many for the benefit of the few is not restricted in its global spread. This isn’t just wealthy nations stealing the natural resources of poor countries, after paying off corrupt leaders with alluring bribes. In “The Sport & Prey of Capitalists” prominent author Lind McQuaig describes the horror story that unfolded in Alberta, Canada over the extraction of the half a trillion dollars from their oil sands by US Big Oil. They claimed they would invest in and develop the oil fields so the oil and billions of dollars would freely flow, but in truth the local taxpayers paid for it all. And what started out as a 25% royalty paid back to the province, soon dropped to but 1% under a new very friendly conservative party arrangement. And the $260 billion cleanup bill to offset the vast destruction of the ecology? – so far the companies have contributed but $1.6 billion. The rape not just of the land but of the people!

When democracy has lost its grip on capitalism, the door is opened wide to fascism. All it takes then is for a demagogue, a true psychopath at heart, to take up the cause of the poor and disenfranchised and promise to wipe the slate clean and bring back the fantasied ‘golden age’ of their dreams. His outrageous lies gets him elected, but not without hefty financial backing from wealthy elites who know deep down that he will institute anti-liberal, anti-equality, anti-leveling of the playing field laws that will put the icing on the cake of their absolute control. For their massive financial support they believe they have bought control of him. But history tells us that this is not the way of fascism, as shocked aristocracies have learned the world over.

What is currently taking over our world is not an aberration of our time, Naomi Klein insists in her new book No is Not Enough, “but the product of our time – reality TV branding, celebrity obsession and CEO-worship, Vegas and Guantanamo, fake news and vulture bankers all rolled into one.” The formula is being followed step by step, as unfolded in earlier times.

And here’s what COP26 has to say about all this.

Good luck with that, world!

Gerard Fournier