MEDIA_ACTIVIST JAY BAKER

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Ibama & Obama's Backyard

I recently took a trip with my girlfriend into the area of Algaida here on the island of Mallorca. That's right: Algaida. My first instinct was to think I was going to be killed by terrorists - but I got it wrong; it wasn't Al Qaeda we were facing, but some strange characters from Algaida. Easy mistake to make.

It's funny. The Spanish haven't had to worry about Al Qaeda ever since Madrid was bombed and they promptly elected a socialist government who pulled their troops from the illegal occupation of Iraq.

But Mallorca's had its share of other terrorist attacks anyway, from Basque separatists. And last week I was concerned from my girlfriend's family in Moscow when that city, too, suffered terrorism from the Chechen separatists (thankfully they were okay, which is more than can be said for the dozens killed and hundreds injured).

Being British, I grew up with terrorism - we were still feeling the repercussions from British conquering of Ireland and deep-rooted retention of the north there, with the stubborn Irish Republican Army still attacking us, killing numerous innocent civilians while high-ranking Conservative Party members escaped the Brighton hotel attack.

The idea of being able to "prevent" terrorism was never an issue that occurred to us back then. No one mentioned CCTV cameras, DNA databases, ID cards, or even tighter border controls. As we saw with the Northern Ireland peace process and diplomatic democratic engagement with Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein, the only possible solution to the problem was - yet again - to look at the cause, not the cure that was impossible anyway. You can't stop people killing people if they're adamant about it. You just can't - not without eroding civil liberties that go way beyond mere sensible gun control.

Nonetheless, after 9/11, the U.S. premise of "fighting terror" against an "Axis of Evil" gained momentum. Bush Jr deemed entire peoples "evil" as God supposedly spoke to him: North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria...y'know, the usual suspects.

Wait a minute...Venezuela?

Yep, interestingly, Venezuela's "Bolivarian Revolution" that used oil resources to bring in medical services and even welfare to its shanty towns was just the start of a wave of populism sweeping across South America, in Argentina with Kirchner, Brazil with Lula, and even Bolivia, whose people elected the first-ever indigenous leader in Evo Morales. Oh yeah: while oilman Bush Jr was obsessed with the Middle East and failing to "accomplish" his "mission" there, the sleeping giant in the United States' backyard had awoken and risen.

With Bush and his gang gone, it would be Barack Obama inheriting the turmoil in the Middle East. Cleverly keeping his promise to pull troops from Iraq, he appeased the big-money military industrial complex by then sending thousands more of them into Afghanistan. But what of what was now Obama's backyard?

Well, Obama didn't call democratically-elected Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez "evil" - he simply did what diplomats are supposed to do: he met with him, and offered his hand (into which Chavez cleverly placed the book "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Eduardo Galeano.)

What next for South America? Well, the "Bolivarian Revolution" struggles on, with critics blasting Chavez for shutting down the private TV station criticising his regime (omitting the fact that the station called for him to be violently overthrown). And in Chile, Michelle Bachelet, a former torture victim of dictator General Pinochet that the U.S. and U.K. installed and supported, was replaced by Sebastián Piñera, who has links with Pinochet, in a tale of twisted tragic irony. The recent earthquake there has offered the neo-Pinochet regime an opportunity for what Naomi Klein calls "disaster capitalism" - corporate interests profiting from tragedy and devastation.

Meanwhile, with our own political landscape in turmoil, how do we British treat Obama's Backyard? Well, we treat it like we treat any friend's backyard: like a garbage dump. Yep, the Brazilian environment agency Ibama found that over 1,400 tonnes of trash from the U.K. was dumped all the way over at their coast.

As the people of South America try and fight their way through the lies, corruption, and even the garbage, they at least enjoy the few fruits brought to them by the advance of progressive politics in the region the last several years. Let's hope this revolution doesn't end like all the other revolutions seem to have: with another set of elite interests in power.

- Jay Baker; Mallorca, Spain

Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here.

Labels: Barack Obama, Evo Morales, Hugo Chavez, Kirchner, Lula, Michelle Bachelet, Naomi Klein

Monday, March 1, 2010

Overthrowing the Underclass

As you may know, not long ago I was living in Canada, the second-largest country in the world. But long before I moved to Canada from Britain, the UK had sent its colonialism there, where it was embraced; cherished. It was with angst that I arrived there, then - carrying the same angst that all Anglos do when recent history reminds us of the atrocities of our ancestors. But it's true that the colonialism was taken to heart - not overseas, but at home; internally. And yet this is rarely realised.

Often largely due to Canada's favourite historical figure, groundbreaking socialist Tommy Douglas, the nation's international image seems to have become one of a "classless" and/or socialist society while defining its identity by simply reinforcing its differences from its notorious neighbours to the south. This all came about while millions of Canadians grew up in fear of conflict between the United States itself and the Soviet Union, with terrifying Cold War visions of nuclear missiles flying back and forth overhead. The world, in turn, had nothing but affection for Canada.

It was in the United States that I lived briefly following my engagement to a nurse there who, funnily enough, I met in Toronto, Ontario. The accents and highways and suburban sprawl were similar, but these were just superficialities, with a gulf separating Canadian and American fundamental ideals.

However, the trip that cemented my own affection for the country of Canada came after that, when I was earning almost $100,000 a year, and paid for myself and my girlfriend at the time to go on vacation in Vancouver, British Columbia. I'd never seen such an amazing place: in a single day, you can go from walking a suspension bridge over the Capilano, amongst the rainforests, along snow-covered mountains, on a ferry, across sandy beaches, to walking between skyscrapers en route to bustling cafes - making the city one of the most desirable destinations in the world for those who can afford it. Of course, this comes at a cost; you can't have rich without poor.

But I wanted to go there again; my girlfriend didn't. It was representative of the growing differences between us as she attended university and I craved other outlets beyond Britain. After an amicable parting, I went back again, and my life was changed, meeting the Ontarian woman who would become my wife.

When you arrive in Southern Ontario, you find yourself in the most Anglocised area of the entire country, with town names like London, Windsor, and Scarborough. In Brantford, you may catch a glimpse into the secret shame of the country by discovering the appalling living conditions of the Six Nations people there, on the Grand River. It was an eye-opener for me, for sure. To find somewhere more relatable, this Sheffield lad headed to the steel city of Hamilton, only to find that it, too, had seen its workers laid-off and the industrial jobs few and far between. If you travel along Highway 6, you'll see many weird and wonderful sights, from giant model dinosaurs to fences made from bicycles to abandoned tractors and other things seemingly sprung from a Tim Burton film. My then-wife vowed to make a photographic exhibition project about it - it really does have to be seen to be believed.

But that's not the only part of the country that's like something from Bizarro World; I've said before that all those smiles and reassurances of socialism conceal something sinister, and the unease I felt on Highway 6 was warranted. Moving to Canada is fine if you have money - and without a visa, mine had soon run out. My wife and I would soon separate, and only hours later it was further up Highway 6, in Guelph, that my dear close personal friend Lenna Titizian and I would see Naomi Klein speak about Canada's worrying trends, at a New Democratic Party rally, and have her sign her book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (the kind of capitalism that was, in fact, taking over Canada, too). I had worked with Klein's colleagues in Toronto, such as those from Ontario's Coalition for Social Justice.

And such movements were needed. Canada, too, was becoming post-industrial, thanks to the North American Free Trade Agreement actually opening the gates for a flow of labour trickling down all the way to the sweatshops of Mexico. This was something I actively opposed whilst living in the city of Kitchener, in the region of Waterloo. It was there I conceived SilenceBreaker Media - though (fortunately) its limited success there allowed it to grow into something much more innovative and feasibly sustainable back in Britain. Despite claims to the contrary, I held several workshops, events, and successfully won funding for the proposed company in Kitchener, in spite of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his minority yet militant right-wing government slashing funding for the creative industries, too. It was ol' Steve that offered a lame apology to the Natives after it emerged there had been genocide committed against them on Canadian soil via "residential schools" throughout most of the 20th century.

Funnily enough, while Harper's government were tightening belts and cutting arts funding, they were able to find money for the Winter Olympics, sweeping the disgusting mistreatment of native people under the rug, just as Australia did when they too played host to the International Olympic Committee (while China used the Olympics to mask its attack on civil liberties).

I flew back to the Old World by plane with an empty seat beside me, having been asked by airline staff why my traveling partner - my wife - wasn't with me as booked. I didn't know the reason, and still don't know to this day. We'd been put through a lot of pressure by people determined to see us fail: bitter obsessives who stuck the knife in my back as soon as I turned around to leave Britain for a while (as I was no longer a meal-ticket for many, they influenced a shut-down of my UK company in order to seize its assets). We were to fly back there together, to develop collaboration on a documentary I'd been asked to make, titled Overthrowing the Underclass, and begin a reconciliation; a reconciliation inexplicably abandoned by my wife, and a collaboration killed.

But it was on that long flight that I also had time to reflect on my time there, in a country where its natives - be they First Nations or otherwise - are each systematically overthrown by avarice and exploitation, chewed up and spat out to make way for the next economic policy in the interests of the elite few represented by Stephen Harper.

I had discovered Canada as another kind of pioneer, finding an uglier layer beneath the progressive front: a Canada of unemployment, poverty, prejudice, and of peoples in need of unity to fight for the land they all share.

What happened next? Well, Kitchener was finding itself the destination dumping ground for homeless people being sent there to cleanse neighbouring up-market Waterloo, a city which - like Canada as a whole - was continuing its crucial branding, in its own case as "Top Intelligent Community" and home of the Blackberry loved by right-wingers. Meanwhile, the wife I was sadly divorcing thrived on that prestige - running high-brow amateur events, sending a clear message to the government that they apparently didn't require funding, while calling herself "working class," daughter of a school principal who grew up in one of the largest domestic houses I have ever been in. My current partner, who was born and bred in the Soviet Union, the first largest country in the world, shakes her head at these pampered people supporting separatism and internal issues when there are "bigger, more important problems" they should be united on.

Obviously, the Canadians don't truly know the class system. But at this rate, they will. Sadly, they will know it all too well. Their country isn't quite what they like to think it is.

As John Lennon sang, "You think you're so clever and classless and free, but you're still f*cking peasants as far as I can see."

- Jay Baker; South Yorkshire, England

Jay Baker's brand-new book is Pissing in the Mainstream. You can read a compilation of his best blogs from the past several years, and a few exclusives, in the book Soon To Be Banned: Musings of a Media Activist, available here.

Labels: Canada, intellectual capitalism, Naomi Klein, Olympics, Soviet Union, Stephen Harper

Friday, February 27, 2009

The Winter of Discontent

Ah, it's good to be back in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire. The miners' strike is still news, HSBC are pretending they create jobs in the area instead of take them away, and politicians are still getting put behind bars - except in Rotherham now, instead of Doncaster!

I was at a coffee stand at the train station the other day ordering my usual soya mocha, and the "barista" serving it up was eager to warn me of the beggars wandering the platforms and other on-site areas. I said, "Aww, well, I think given the economic situation, that'll be far more frequent." "That's not the issue," she claimed, in response - no doubt having been reading the right-wing tabloids - "I've been unemployed and broke, and never begged - I'd never beg; I'd rather starve." "Well," I replied, "It's easy for us to say."

And it is.

We may not realise it, but there are only a few steps to go until any of us working class folk reach utter poverty - now, more than ever, thanks to the current economic situation of financial struggle and widespread layoffs. And why's it happening? Well, the capitalist brand of globalisation has now seen years of shipping jobs overseas to make even more profit, rendering our Western communities poor yet offered debt to keep them afloat; to keep the people consuming in accordance with the collapse of family values now replaced with the value of products, all as part of advertising-driven commercialism and superficial lifestyles of celebrity worship.

So, naturally, there have been masses of underemployed or unemployed people dependent on debt, without seeing any sign of improvement of their lives or livelihoods in order to grow prosperous and pay back those debts. It's not a good situation, and it didn't bode well for quite some time; something had to give, and it wouldn't be the poor giving back to the rich who live for today's profit margins.

The corporations' debt collection agencies are run by what are essentially legalised mafia, who intimidate people into paying back more than they can possibly afford, even when legally they're only obliged to pay back literally any amount. And of course, the many being laid-off these days are going to find it hard to pay back a penny.

If they lose their home, and don't have family or friends ready to take them in, then they're in serious trouble. Without an abode, they can't claim welfare. And even if they do have an address, they'd better have access to a phone, because seeing a real human being in order to make a claim is highly unlikely these days, with only tie-wearing bouncers present at most job centres - and it can take weeks for benefit to arrive, anyway. Better have plenty of freebie supplies and an understanding landlord or landlady!

Follow-up calls to chase-up your bureaucracy-suffering benefit will invariably consume phone credit while the claimant is on hold for many minutes, left loopy listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons on a continuous loop instead of something a bit more fun and appropriate - like, say, Blondie's "Hanging on the Telephone," perhaps "Tired of Waiting" by The Kinks, or, since some busy lines just expire and cut off after long periods of waiting, 10CC's "Don't Hang Up." Though I'd personally recommend "Running the World" by Jarvis Cocker, which contains the lyrics "the working classes are obsolete, surplus to society's needs, so let 'em all kill each other, and get it made overseas - that's the word, don't you know, from the guys running the show."

Oh, yeah. There are few actual benefits to be found by being on benefit. When people like that barista I spoke with suggest being rock-bottom is a choice, I can only remind them that if welfare was so appealing, we'd all be on it! Of course, the way things are going, there's time for that yet, too. A picture is worth a thousand words, as is shown by my cellphone snapshots of the Job Centre computers that replaced humans (except the security guarding the machines from poor, desperate welfare recipients under constant suspicion).

That's a typical sight for those people who have suddenly found themselves unemployed and struggling to make ends meet, desperately searching for employment while the fat cats complain about only having, like, a few million.

Of course, technology can't always be trusted! There's a chance people can find employment by other means, such as word-of-mouth, stopping by businesses, or just taking note of the job centre's hard copy notices, with this one telling us about the "Job of the Week!" (So-called, presumably, because it actually was the only job of the week).

With this disgusting system, and even for those who manage to claim anything at all still being barely able to survive given the insulting welfare on offer, it's no surprise there are people begging on the streets. But when we see someone beg, it's an indictment of our collective failures; we are all responsible for that act - it's on the conscience of the privileged among us in society, not the desperate individual begging. It represents a breakdown in society, a flaw, a failure. And, ironically, the ones receiving the welfare now seem to be the most privileged of all of us: the bankers being bailed-out as a result of this economic crisis. But, let's be honest here, the politicians from all parties knew it was coming too, all along, and the right-wing capitalists, far from taking evasive action, approved every single move towards the crisis as it was coming.

And, hey, it's been a long time coming. Karl Marx said this economic system was designed to compete with itself, to greedily consume until capitalism eats itself. That's what we're witnessing now: the results of blind avarice, with no care for the future of the people or the planet, just the elite who flee with the takings. Just years ago, Noam Chomsky warned that the United States, in particular, was headed for an economic crisis, and we knew that if the U.S. caught a cold, the rest of the world would sneeze. Naomi Klein's examination of "disaster capitalism" suggested that the crisis in question would provide just another opportunity for the rich, saying "the next frontier of disaster capitalism is: cleaning up after capitalism."

Yep, sure enough, the rich are the ones getting welfare - corporate welfare, with billions in bank bail-out money, bonuses as big as ever, and no sign yet of rich men in suits begging at train stations. (Hey, if you see any, please let me know!)

Suddenly, the privileged like welfare. Suddenly, the privileged like government intervention. Suddenly, the privileged like socialism! So long as it's one-way. But this has to apply to the majority of people, not that right-wing minority.

Minorities have been cast aside and pushed back and held down by the right wing for centuries. For the first time ever, I'm liking the idea of putting the minority - in this case, the privileged themselves - at the back of the line. Let's do it, because right now the mass majority are the ones suffering, waiting in the cold and "on hold" to Four Seasons in this coldest of seasons, while the minority of fat cats are at the front of the queue, instead.

Now is the winter of our discontent.

- Jay Baker; Doncaster, England

Labels: globalisation, Karl Marx, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky

Sunday, November 2, 2008

Four Million Americans Over The Top

"Here we go again," you're probably saying. "Another American election; the more things change, the more they stay the same." It's no surprise so many people are cynical. But people are also hopeful - it's just that they've had their hopes dashed so many times they don't like to build them up too much anymore.

Well, this election really does matter, more than any other in American history. Here, I'll explain why. But first, we have to go back to the beginning, to the demise of the left, and to a place at the other side of the Atlantic...

In 1990s Britain, Bill Clinton was seen as an inspiration by Tony Blair, and there's a reason for that: the party of the progressive movement couldn't get elected in the system ruled by money, until the leader used his charm and smarm to trick the left into supporting him while selling-out his party to the same business interests his opponents courted - the Rupert Murdochs of the world that influenced the information people received, as well as the economy. The cynical sell-out strategy worked in the United States, and it worked in the United Kingdom, too.

Bill Clinton said he smoked marijuana but "didn't inhale," still getting into power with the backing of the corporations, the media and its moguls, pushing some progressive policies but also rewarding private interests by throwing ten million people off welfare, bombing Sudanese aspirin factories, and supporting sanctions that led to the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, his Democratic colleague Madeleine Albright explaining that "we think the price is worth it." The seeds had been sown in the Middle East; forget the CIA-funded Ba'ath Party led by Saddam Hussein - it was the CIA training given to the Taliban's Osama bin Laden that was really being used now to plot against America through Al Qaeda. We knew who really had the Weapons of Mass Destruction - those we sold them to!

Al Gore was set to take Clinton's place, which the Democrats welcomed since, despite economic growth, he experienced growth of another kind during his sex scandal with intern Monica Lewinski - over $6,000,000 of taxpayers' money being spent on investigating the affair. However, we all know the next part of the story: Florida's Secretary of State in charge of elections, Katherine Harris, paid $10,000,000 to Database Technologies to remove specific kinds of people from voter rolls, who just happened to be Democrat voters, while she just happened to be co-chairperson for the Republican campaign as well! Technically, the Republicans had fewer votes and lost the election, but the scam worked, and with a media portraying Gore as a sore loser, he stopped protesting to save his party's public image, and the rest is history. Cocaine-user George W Bush Jr was the first man to be sworn-in amongst riots, not allowed to walk the last block to the white house, in a break from tradition. Heck, the whole thing was a break from tradition - back when I was a lad, it used to be that the candidate that got the most votes became President. Not anymore! I feel so old-fashioned now, believing in that "democracy" stuff.

Then came September 11th, 2001 - the day the Middle East struck back at Western aggression with mostly Saudi Arabians hijacking planes and flying them into the World Trade Center's twin towers in suicide attacks. $3,000,000 was spent investigating the 9/11 atrocities, half the amount spent on the Lewinski affair, leaving all kinds of discrepancies unexplained, and suggesting that the deaths of three thousand people was less important than a stain on a dress. The important thing was that Bush's lack of popularity was turned around when he suddenly became a "war president," saying "I go to work with war on my mind," meaning, conveniently, that he didn't have time to pay much mind to social programs - slashing them because his big government needed the funds to build up arms to attack terrorists...wherever they may be.

Bush used the Al Qaeda terrorist attack on 9/11 and the nation's grief and fear to justify passing the Patriot Act - legislation that eroded civil liberties and meant he could control and keep tabs on his own population to check for dissidents. He then ignored international law and, based on inconsistent intelligence, sent poor kids into harm's way in, of all places, Iraq - having them shoot anything that moved, blowing everything to smithereens, and seizing the oil fields, before "liberating" anyone. The "War President" gave Vice-President Dick Cheney's company, Halliburton, a big fat uncontested contract to "rebuild" Iraq - in the midst of 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and rising insurgency movements opposed to their country being occupied. But the paranoia, combined with millions more votes lost (not just in Florida, but also Ohio and New Mexico), put Bush Jr back into the White House for a second term, shocking the world, with most peoples citing not terrorists but the United States government itself as the greatest threat to peace on earth. The international community's hatred towards America only grew.

Bush continued with making loose and outlandish connections between Al Qaeda and oil-rich Iraq, in spite of the fact that "Islamic" extremist Osama bin Laden and secular dictator Saddam Hussein hated each other's guts. Presumably the fact that both Al Qaeda and Iraq had the letter Q in their names was enough for Bush's so-called intelligence. The Bush-Blair "Downing Street Minutes" showed that the U.S. and U.K. had almost everything they needed to conquer Iraq: aircraft, tanks, bombs, guns - the only thing missing was an actual legitimate reason. So they did what most war criminals would do, and made up a story about Weapons of Mass Destruction being left lying around there for terrorists to pick up and play with, like kids left with matches.

After entering office with a substantial treasury surplus left by Clinton, War President Bush put the country trillions of dollars into debt, exacerbating extremism and terrorism worldwide - with everyone and their cleric arming themselves to the teeth! Meanwhile, the American people were more over-worked and underpaid than they'd ever been, getting poorer and lacking in welfare and health care, kept afloat by a short-term, unsustainable credit card system. America had caught a cold, and the world was hoping it wouldn't sneeze.

Eventually, though, the American people were starting to spot the incredible illusion of coincidence - the illegal invasion of Iraq, the lack of WMDs there, the oil money, troops dying in huge numbers, people in poverty...and New Orleans, a city full of African-Americans, left to rot with the government ignoring the threat of Hurricane Katrina and the armed forces too busy in the Middle East to fully attend to the clean-up - another city destroyed, another big contract for corporations to "rebuild" and essentially cleanse the place of "undesirables" (what Naomi Klein called Disaster Capitalism). While the media provided us with some disturbingly racist portrayals of "black looters" in New Orleans, the real looting of the devastated Iraq was carried out not by the Iraqi people themselves, but Western corporations. However, even they were realizing that it wasn't going to be easy to set-up shop in Iraq. The popularity of the War President waned when what he'd called a "mission accomplished" became, in essence, another Vietnam, a war of attrition with young troops fighting for years, put to battle against angry Iraqis wanting their country back.

While New Orleans drowned, Bush's approval ratings sank to record levels, eventually hitting 23%, surpassing even those of Richard Nixon at the time of his resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal (26%), and making him the second most unpopular president in American history, just ahead of Harry Truman's 1952 rating (22%). The American people had finally had enough, along with the rest of the world. America's economic collapse - predicted by Noam Chomsky and echoed in my article 'A Waterfall into the Mainstream' - finally began; it sneezed, and the rest of the world caught that darned cold.

On February 12th, 2007, I wrote that the tide was turning, that things were about to change for the better. I claimed that without Chuck Hagel leading the Republicans, they really didn't have any chance of legitimately winning the next election. I also suggested that Barack Obama might be a good choice to become Democratic leader, citing his ability to resemble wrestler-turned-actor Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, joking that he might ask "Do you smell what Barack is cookin'?" Maybe someone saw my blog and told him - because, lo and behold, what does he do? He goes on top professional wrestling show Monday Night Raw itself to parody The Rock and actually asks "Do you smell what Barack is cookin'?" Sometimes the accuracy of my predictions scares even me. I'll have to be more careful in future!

On April 22nd, 2008, I blogged about the Democrats needing to choose Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton not just because of his different approach, but because he represents a change in Washington - not the rhetoric he speaks, but real change from a potential Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton twenty year monarchy of the elite. The Democrats chose him, the most progressive of all the candidates. For the first time in a long time, there was a chance for real change in American politics.

As it happened, Barack Obama - who had massive grassroots support and garnered a staggering estimate of 88% of his campaign funds from ordinary people giving small donations - gave his Democratic leadership acceptance speech on the 45th anniversary of another famous speech; the one by Martin Luther King when he told the world of his "dream."

So many struggles had taken place over the last century, and this was to be another. The civil rights movement gained rights for African-Americans. The suffragettes died to gain women the right to vote. The allies fought fascism in the Second World War, defeating the Nazis who had risen in poverty-stricken Germany after the country was brought to its knees by the First World War. It was in that war that so much human life was sacrificed in record numbers. The soldiers dreaded the moment they were told to go "over the top" - to leave the trenches and head onto the fields, often doomed to be mowed-down by heavy artillery.

The facts suggest as many as four and a half million Democratic votes will be lost in this election. As Greg Palast told buzzflash.com, "four and a half million votes are going to be shoplifted." Palast, the investigative journalist who via the BBC exposed the Florida scam in 2000, and the voter fraud in 2004, went on to explain that "that doesn’t mean that they will own the White House, it just means that they start with a big old thumb on the electoral scale." That gives John McCain a head-start of at least four million votes already. I've always said that there can be no Ralph Nader excuses - Jesse Ventura is right; America needs more than just two capitalist choices. Two choices is not a true democracy. But there can be no excuses about lost votes, either. The American people have to give Barack Obama so much of an overwhelming majority that those four million votes don't even matter, so that four million people go "over the top" first, are sacrificed, and then the other brave troops of democracy stand up and be counted, achieving victory for the Democrats.

Then there are hoax stories of extremists from the Barack Obama camp, and talk of a possible "Bradley-Wilder Effect," where the polls are showing people are voting for the black man, but will do the opposite when in the privacy of the voting booth. I'm not sure about that - while Britain is full of racist media right now and "there ain't no black in the Union Jack," I think Americans are ready to have black represent their flag, and put a black man in the White House.

But ultimately, as Shami Chakrabarti said in the closing scenes of my film Escape from Doncatraz, "people aren't any less political than they've ever been, they're just less party political." In some cases giving him a ten-point lead, it's not just the polls that show Barack Obama with a lead over John McCain, it's the streets - where, for example, in Fort Wayne, Indiana, a friend of mine walked around this traditionally Republican territory and saw nothing but Barack Obama yard signs. There are some stating "Republicans for Obama." Even Republican Colin Powell recently endorsed Barack Obama. Colin freakin' Powell! This is incredible. How did this happen?!

For starters, John McCain insulted the people, his own people, when - in the absence of Hillary Clinton from the election race - he cynically "chose a vagina" (to quote suicidegirls.com) as his running mate in hopes he'd garner some female voters. Alaska governor Sarah Palin, a supposed "soccer mom" who had charged the state for her kids' travel expenses, claimed she had foreign policy experience "because Alaska shares its borders with Russia and Canada," became a complete liability, and had even less major political experience than Barack Obama - who himself chose as his running mate one Joe Biden, one of the least wealthy men in Washington, a man who commutes to work every day.

The Republican voters - even those in the south - have switched sides, fearing "more of the same" from the GOP (even while Bush is essentially kept off TV to distance the campaign from his legacy), fearing 72 year-old John McCain's demise during office, and thus fearing Sarah Palin left in charge of the country. Yep, in Fort Wayne and cities like it all over the United States, people are switching sides.

This is the ultimate slap in the face of the corrupt capitalist mob in the GOP who claimed there was a link between Iraq and Osama, who lied to them for so long, who took their hard-earned money and spent it on war, who drove the country into a financial crisis. These ordinary people slapped those bastards in the face by instead supporting a candidate who opposed the invasion and massive military spending from the start, who wants to open diplomatic dialogue with the Middle East, supports a social safety net and universal health care and investment in education, a man who not only smoked pot but inhaled as well, in addition to sucking up cocaine in school too...and, yes, a man whose name rhymes with "Iraq" and "Osama" and has Hussein as his middle name! Haha! This is a message from the American people that they've had enough of living in fear and paranoia and propaganda, and of being broke. They've had enough of the status quo and the predicament they've been put in.

Republicans are crying about the Democrats' campaign funds being spent on TV commercials when they "could be used to fix the economy." What? The campaign funds are for, um, campaigning, duh; so when he is President, he can fix the economy. What a stupid, imbecilic and idiotic thing to say (though to be fair it did come from Arnold Schwarzenegger). So, when that argument fails - despite the fact that the Republicans control leading network Fox News - they complain about "media bias." Well, the fact is that John McCain's been flying by military jet, while Barack Obama's invited the press on his planes with him. Besides, the media haven't been able to control this machine - and everyone knows they like to back a winner. Nope, not even those stupid voting machines could stop the real machine.

There's still a lot of right-wing media in America, though; almost all of it, and the attacks on Barack Obama have been significant, even at risk of turn-off from American viewers sick of cynicism. They call him a "socialist," as though the existence of their libraries, schools, fire service and police force is not through socialist policy, when in fact it is; those are socialist principles. Obama's said he's a capitalist, a "free marketeer," and it's true; he's about as much of a socialist as John F Kennedy, a man who also faced such accusations when in fact he was a major capitalist himself. However, Barack Obama speaks of Franklin D Roosevelt's "New Deal" policies with admiration, and like JFK knows that all the clever capitalists in the last century have only prevented total socialist revolution by "tweaking the valve" - giving the people just enough to keep them from revolting. That's not such a bad thing, considering that in the United States you only have two capitalist choices, anyway.

Barack Obama and the Democrats answer to different groups than the Republicans. If, like JFK, he is assassinated, Barack Obama will be martyred and the LA riots of 1992 would look like a mere playground fight, so he's untouchable. If, however, he sells-out and betrays the grassroots groups that put him in power, he won't be in power for long. He has to deliver, and he will - just don't expect anything socialist, as the right-wingers are screaming. The capitalists in congress and the media would unanimously assault him, then, for sure.

We already know who the majority of people will be voting for: the Democrats - just like in the last two elections! My predictions may have a good track record, dear readers, but I don't know what the result of this election will be; none of us do. But the change has already begun, regardless of the outcome. If Democratic voters send more than four million of themselves "over the top," then Barack Obama will certainly be the next leader of the most powerful, most influential nation on the planet. But even if that doesn't happen, and the GOP steal yet another election, that nation has already embraced change. The system may be broken, but the power is coming back to the people.

Leave the lights on. As Leonard Cohen once sang, "democracy is coming to the USA."

- Jay Baker; Palma, Mallorca

Labels: Bill Clinton, George W Bush, Naomi Klein, Osama bin Laden, Rupert Murdoch, Saddam Hussein, Shami Chakrabarti, Tony Blair

Monday, October 13, 2008

Crapping on the Canadian Flag

White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant Pansexual Male WLTM Canadian to shack up with me and sponsor me so I can get my visa faster. Clean. Tidy. Vegan. Uncut. D&D-free. No money left, but have good SOH.

I can't even get a visa let alone vote, but I'm still excited for Canada's 40th federal election that's already upon us. 40th! Wow. It doesn't sound like many, but you have to consider that it feels like they've had about twenty of those things in the last few years alone. Heck, Canadians really love elections, eh? It's probably because they get to show off to their drunken, rowdy next-door neighbours that they can actually do one properly - y'know, the kind where the one who actually wins ends up in power.

The Canadians recently participated in a much-publicized Greatest Canadian vote via CBC. They chose as the Greatest Canadian of all-time none other than Tommy Douglas, the "Father of Medicare" and staunch socialist who spearheaded the New Democratic Party. 1.2 million votes were cast. This is a staggering amount, considering that - as the rest of the world will tell you - the majority of the remaining population probably live in mountain shacks or something, surrounded by snow with no access to media. So, with all that in mind, you'd think it's a given that Canadians today would put the NDP into power by a landslide.

Nope.

Across the border, in the United States, they like to show off their "democracy" by offering two Presidential candidates to choose from. That's right: two - hey, it's one more than Cuba! Two.

You'd think it was the same in Canada, though, because it's Liberal/Tory, Same Old Story, even though there are several parties to choose from - from such characters as the Christian Heritage Party, to the Animal Alliance Environment Voters Party, to the Bloc Quebecois, to the Marijuana Party (wow, that sounds like a real party to me!) Sadly, though, when the Conservatives mess up, the people put the Liberals in power; then, the Liberals get caught doing dirty tricks, so they put the Conservatives in for a while - and then the Tories start wrecking the country.

Personally, given the nature of the House of Commons in Canada, and the popular sport of ice hockey, if they're going to play with two parties only, I don't know why they don't just put them both into teams, on the ice, and have them smack the crap out of each other; the winning team becomes the government! Why not? They might as well, if you think about it.

So, why aren't the Canadians practicing what they preach? Have they perhaps forgotten that the NDP is Tommy Douglas's party, thanks to a media that shortens their memories as well as their attention spans? In fact, that may be part of the reason too: the NDP don't get much coverage in the press! It makes sense, really, considering the media is for the most part owned by the same gang that needs capitalism - not socialism - perpetuated. And only the Liberal/Tory, Same Old Story will do just that.

With the NDP, you have a party that's all for protecting human beings in the workplace through strong trade unions, in favour of ecosocialist alternatives for the environment, against having Canadian troops doing Anglo-American bidding in the Middle East, totally for the rights of First Nations people, and wants to stop the bloodletting of industry all the way down to Mexico through the North American Free Trade Agreement. All Canadian values, we're told. Right? Maybe, but the Canadians aren't voting for them - in fact many of them, when they're not voting for one of the two hockey teams there, are voting for the Green Party, that bunch of wishy-washy middle class ethical consumers and capitalists who don't care whether you've got a good job or not, as long as you're buying the more expensive and "environmentally-friendly" light-bulbs. And they're not likely to even win a single seat in the Commons, so, Green-voters, "Green" might sound nice and politically correct, but a vote for them from you and your mates will only increase the chance of a Conservative majority, giving the Tories the green light - no pun intended - to show their own true colours. Scary thought, eh?

So, with all this confusion - this blindness to the only party that actually has any interest in Canadian values at all - we're left back with Liberal/Tory, Same Old Story. But that's a game far more dangerous than hockey, my seal-clubbing friends, because if the Tories get their majority, that'll be their permission to complete their campaign to wreck the entire country.

Remember the good old days, you Canucks? It wasn't so long ago when you had Bush steal another election across the border, and you all had to deal with all these bloody apologetic Americans showing up on your doorstep all looking like some sorry bastard who just left their partner and needed somewhere to stay for a while. Heck, how do you think you got Naomi Klein? Her folks even made that move back in the day, back when Tommy Douglas was leading the NDP. Well, that's all over now, if you vote the wrong way. Because now, if Barack Obama can somehow steal back the votes for his party, and becomes President of the United States while Prime Minister Stephen Harper enjoys a majority in Canada, you will all become the ones looking for somewhere to stay, and you'll be hoping the Americans finally return the favour. Because you can forget about everything you hold dear.

Yep, if Mr Roboto gets full control, he's going to start rampaging across the country, province to province, and wreck it - you know, kind of like that evil robot from RoboCop 2. Maybe that mass majority who didn't vote in CBC's Greatest Canadian poll - being stuck in their log cabins, and all - will play a part in it. But, when you're dealing with a party that makes it harder for refugees to come into the country, wants to send their troops overseas to get killed for no clear reason, thinks it's against God for people to marry if they happen to be of the same gender, cuts $45 million from the arts, pulls from the Kyoto treaty, tries to bribe people, and cut-and-paste speeches from Mike Harris and even the Prime Minister of Australia (yep, you read it right), you can't afford to be as ignorant.

A vote for the Tories is like following the ignorant voters not into log cabins, but instead, an outhouse, which is what might as well replace the voting booth for all those intending to vote Conservative. Because instead of marking a voting card for the Tories, you might as well drop your britches, squat, and take a nice, big fat shit all over the Maple Leaf flag - as well as the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. That's what a Conservative vote is: bye, bye, Canada - and all the values that your Greatest Canadian had.

I already showed the Canadians what happens when you vote the wrong way - by showing them Blair's Britain in my film Escape from Doncatraz. And they loved it, giving it a standing ovation in their hundreds. I was blown away - they totally got it! What happened there, though, could happen to Canada, too. The Tories are just waiting to do it.

So, what will it be? A wise decision in the voting booth as you do your dirty yet dutiful business? Or a trip to the outhouse? Because if it's the latter, and you thought the United States was shaped like a giant toilet, you'll be surprised to find that, suddenly, it's your country that's full of shit.

It's up to you.

- Jay Baker; Doncaster, England

Labels: Barack Obama, Naomi Klein, NDP, Stephen Harper, Tony Blair

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