Telling half-truths, shrouding decisions in secrecy, privatizing military development and production, and purposefully
misleading Canadians are all, apparently, parts of Canadian government strategy
– a strategy receiving increased impetus with the birth of the reactionary
Stephen Harper minority government.
Before getting to the falsely named “Missile
Defense Shield” of which Canada is an embedded part, we should look at the
history that has brought Canada, against the obvious wishes of the Canadian
people, to that ugly position.
It could begin on April 4, 1949 when fifteen
nations signed the treaty creating NATO – the U.S. dominated North Atlantic
Treaty Organization. NATO was, in fact, the military arm of the Cold War against
Russia. On June 26, 1945, fifty nations had signed the United Nations Charter,
but Winston Churchill had already sent a telegram to U.S. president Truman on
May 12, 1945, referring to an “iron curtain” coming down across Europe.
And in
Fulton, Missouri in March 1946 he made his famous “iron curtain” speech,
recognized as announcing the Cold War. He was not, at the time, prime minister
of Britain, having been defeated by Labour on July 25, 1945.
Nonetheless, as
Opposition leader and hero of the Second World War Churchill continued as
spokesman for the capitalist Right. As such, he challenged every move of the
British Labour government to take actions that might lead to a rapprochement
with Russia.
For Churchill and those he represented, the Second World War had
been an interlude in the conflict with Socialist ideas. So it was fitting
Churchill gave the Fulton, Missouri speech. The Cold War, in fact, had begun
with the Russian Revolution in 1917 and lasted until the break-up of the Russian
empire in the late 1980s.
It was, quite simply – and globally – a conflict
between capitalist ideology and socialist ideology. After the Second World War a
great political tug-o-war went on for power over countries liberated from Nazi
domination. In most books published in the West, like the book called NATO,
Facts and Figures (Brussels, NATO, 1976) the Soviet Union is identified as the
creator of all tensions and conflicts. Of course, such a claim is false – as we
will see. But we all need to shrug off the indoctrination of the past fifty
years and see that the Cold War began in 1917 and did not stop – even during the
Second World War.
Churchill’s Fulton Missouri speech did not launch the Cold
War; it re-launched that War. Before the outbreak of the Second World War strong
forces in the U.S. and Britain preferred Hitler and Mussolini to any Left
leaning leadership.
When Oswald Mosley and his English ‘blackshirts’ (the
British Union of Fascists), for instance, marched in London through the 1930s
and attacked leftish groups - whom young sculptor Henry Moore, for instance,
supported - British police stood by unconcerned and British judges very rarely
found the Mosley’ites guilty.
The U.S.A. and Britain gave up Spain to fascist
government at the end of the 1930s in the so-called Spanish Civil War in order
to destroy a leftish but not extreme, democratically elected government. Far
from being a civil war in fact, it was described later by one of the leading
Nazi generals of the time as the only war the Nazis ever won.
Canada’a famous
surgeon, Norman Bethune, and the equally celebrated volunteers of the Canadian
Mackenzie Papineau regiment, went to Spain to support the legitimate government
against Franco’s fascist assault. Bethune then went to China to assist the Mao
revolutionary forces against Japanese aggression against China.
As Mao began to
win, the reactionary leader Chiang Kai Shek fled to Taiwan where the U.S. set
about making it a fortress – the “real” China which it “recognized” as “China”
until doing so became ridiculous.
But that is the U.S. in Asia.
We are concerned
with Canada and the Western world. Even before the Second World War, the famous
Englishmen who spied for Russia – Burgess, Maclean, Philby, and Blunt - all
became supporters of the Soviet Union from seeing the rot in British democracy.
In a statement which may parallel Canada now, Kim Philby wrote … “the real
turning point in my thinking came with the demoralization and rout of the Labour
Party in 1931. It seemed incredible that the party should be so helpless against
the reserve of strength which reaction could mobilize in a time of crisis”. (Kim
Philby, My Silent War, NY, 2002, p.xxx) Whatever the case then and now, a strong
segment of Conservative Britain preferred the governments of both Mussolini and
Hitler to any form of socialist or other kind of Left government.
Not
surprisingly, therefore, but falsified now, Russia was treated badly throughout
the Second World War. The Russian contribution to victory in the Second World
War was immense – much larger than the contribution of the USA which joined the
war effort two years after it had begun.
In Western countries the population,
however, is invited to believe the USA, in fact, “won” the war.
Paranoid in many
ways, Stalin insisted the Allies refused to open a Second Front so that Russian
strength would drain away in endless, destructive battles against the Nazis.
In
truth, Russia carried the burden of the war, lost something like 25 million
lives, and suffered enormous destruction. It was – constantly – a betrayed ally
whose demands after the war were resisted strongly, whatever we may think of
Soviet Communism, especially under Stalin.
Staggering as it may seem now, while
Russia alone was the major fighting front against the Nazis, the British broke
the key Nazi military secret code (as early as 1941) and kept the fact from the
Russians. As Miranda Carter reports in her book about Anthony Blunt: “For the
rest of the war, information relevant to the Soviets – particularly on German
troop manoeuvres … was disguised, or even withheld….” One of Blunt’s leaks to
the Soviets was to inform them of an intended German assault upon Kurst
(information being kept from the Russians by the British).
Blunt’s spy
information saved thousands of lives of our “Russian allies”. Miranda Carter
admits that some of the English believed “we ought to be giving much more to
Russia”. (Anthony Blunt, London, MacMillan, 2001, p.276)
Then, of course, the
whole development of the atomic bomb was kept secret from the major ally taking
the brunt of the Second World War. The “spies” who were feeding atomic
information to Russia were, in fact, feeding information to a major ally
suffering enormous military and civilian losses.
Rare are the writers who will
grant the ambiguity and contradiction of having a major ally denied the
fundamental support an alliance is meant to provide. Perhaps a little of
Stalin’s paranoia may have had a sound basis.
Churchill worked unstintingly on
“the Grand Alliance” between the United States and Great Britain, helping to
shape the relation that now sees Tony Blair as an office boy and toady to George
W. Bush and U.S. policy.
Canada joined NATO in 1949. In fact, strong
anti-Communist Louis St. Laurent, later prime minister, urged the organization
forward and Lester Pearson became one of its “three wise men” who recommended
spreading NATO influence into politics and non-military matters.
Indeed, a North
Atlantic Assembly of parliamentarians was set up in 1954 to meet annually so
governments could know – (and follow?) – NATO-made policies. In international
affairs Canada was trapped into a U.S.-dominated, NATO-constructed set of
foreign policies.
At home, the same process of entrapment occurred. Claiming a
constant threat from the Soviet Union, the U.S. chipped away at Canadian
sovereignty.
During the time of Pauline Jewett’s position as Foreign Affairs
critic for the NDP (the 1980s), the NDP argued strongly for Canada’s withdrawal
from NATO, with very good reason. The Party does not follow that policy today.
When John Diefenbaker became prime minister in 1957, it is said that the St.
Laurent Liberals had prepared but not finalized NORAD (the North American
Defense Agreement), which, in effect, tied Canada to the U.S. and made this
country subservient to the U.S. in Air Defense.
The story (never clear) is that
civil servants pushed the treaty at Diefenbaker to sign, saying it was a done
deal, only needing his signature. It was announced less than six weeks after he
became PM, and was haggled over until May, 1958.
The two air defense forces are
under a falsely named “joint command” which always has a U.S. senior officer.
“Joint” indeed.
The destruction of Canadian military sovereignty as a result is
probably best suggested by the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, the first hard test of
NORAD’s meaning.
The agreement of both governments was theoretically necessary
before formal alerts or actions could be taken.
But the U.S. (John F. Kennedy)
was furious Diefenbaker would not go on high alert immediately when the U.S.
did.
The divided Canadian cabinet argued and held apart from the U.S. decision
for some days. But, secretly, Minister of Defense Douglas Harkness gave the
order to the Canadian military to follow U.S. policy.
That (alleged) act of
treason was never confronted and Harkness left political life unscathed. The
downhill path continued.
When the Soviet empire fell to pieces, NATO,
ostensibly, had no reason to continue. But since it was, in fact, a
front-organization to disguise U.S. military policy and activity, it was
redesigned to fight “rogue states” and “terrorists” and “insurgency” anywhere in
the world.
It is now, in fact, the latest extension of the U.S. Monroe Doctrine
which states the U.S. has direct interest and the right to intervene.
First
articulated in 1823 about Central and South America, the doctrine has been
continually expanded until with the newly-born NATO after the fall of the
Russian empire, the “doctrine” now covers the planet, and the U.S. has dragged
all the countries it can into the NATO “family”.
That is one strong reason among
a number that the European Union countries seem incapable of making an
independent Middle East policy or to demand an immediate cease-fire in Lebanon.
Two other highly visible effects of the collapse of the Soviet empire unfold
before our eyes. No longer needing to focus on what the private corporate class
and its Right governments in the West saw as the dangers of international
Socialism, they can now pit themselves against what they call “socialist”
qualities inside Western nations.
And so we live amid constant attacks upon
publicly-owned corporations, social services, workplace and safety regulations,
universal education, healthcare based upon equality, and progressive tax systems
that require private corporate wealth to contribute to general well-being.
In
fact, the private corporate class across the Western world has turned from the
attack against Socialist states to class war within individual countries.
Gaining in confidence, the private corporate class and its Right governments now
attack the basis of democratic election and democratic process, as I have
already argued in an earlier column.
In the U.S. allegations of corrupt
balloting to elect George W. Bush are maintained by serious observers. We may
expect to see Right forces both in the U.S. and Canada increasingly involved in
ballot tampering and other forms of election fraud in the future.
In Canada,
moreover, the Stephen Harper minority government refuses to call Israel to
account for the deaths of Canadians in Lebanon and for its attack upon a U.N.
post.
The latter may be an attempt to discredit the United Nations and to drive
it out, assuring dominance of U.S./Israeli policy for the region.
The U.S. and
NATO have long been in covert and overt competition with the U.N. for the role
of “peace keepers” (?) in the world.
Stephen Harper’s refusal to condemn Israel
for the (calculated?) attack on a longtime U.N post testifies to the fact that
he is part of the reactionary group for which international law and convention
are sentimental nuisances to be ignored or brushed aside as a part of the larger
plan being acted upon by “The New Fascism” in the West.
In Great Britain the
Labour Party has been slowly turned into a reactionary party supporting the
worst U.S/private corporate policies of war and domination.
In Canada the
distinct “Red Tory” Canadian conservatism often mirrored in the Progressive
Conservative Party has been slowly marginalized, and the “Conservative Party”
has been turned into a reactionary party of the private corporations, mimicing
and supporting the worst aspects of U.S. Republicanism.
In Italy, through the
recent terms of Berlusconi, Italy threw itself at the feet of George Bush.
In
France, the Right forces of the Chirac government tried to bully a pro-private
corporation, European Union constitution upon the French population – and
failed.
It tried to force destructive legislation upon labour, and was forced to
withdraw it.
In that country the class war is open and being fought in the
streets.
Germany has gone Right, and its new leader is happy to be photographed
in smiling relation to George W. Bush, though the corporate attack upon labour
in that country has been muted to avoid the defeat of present government.
“The
New Fascism” has been emboldened by forms of economic takeover and integration
in which large private corporations exist in several countries at once (or in
cooperative relation) and have significant power over governments, journalistic
freedom, and – increasingly – curriculum in education.
A part of that
integration is built upon treaties and agreements and shared “defense”
production involving gigantic military expenditures.
Unknown to most Canadians,
for instance, Canadian military products are in active use in the war being
conducted by Israel against Lebanon. The Canadian government allows the
completely unrestricted delivery of Canadian-produced military materials to the
U.S.
The U.S. considers Canada a part of its “national” sourcing.
Where Canadian
war products end up is, apparently, none of Canada’s business.
And so Canada is
part of U.S. lawless and brutal aggressive policy everywhere on the globe.
“The
New Fascism”, demonstrably, in its military activity, is an operational fact
often kept secret from the population by corporations and governments involved
You need to be a member of 12160 Social Network to add comments!
Join 12160 Social Network