By Henry McRandall
WRISEUP.COM
The national elections held yesterday in three so-called Old World countries — Egypt, Greece and France — prove that this quaint little notion of “democracy” that western powers are attempting to foist upon the rest of the world today retains little relevance or relationship to the real world. It turns out that almost wherever so-called “democracy” is in vogue, it is nothing more and nothing less than a massive fraud.
In Egypt, the thoroughly corrupt U.S.-financed military usurped total control of the entire election process a few weeks ago and rigged the first round of presidential elections to ensure that the two candidates on yesterday’s final ballot would be candidates whose victory would be an unmitigated disaster, especially for women. In essence, that U.S.-financed Egyptian military employed the very device championed by the west — so-called “democratic” elections — to defeat the original Arab Spring and the Other 99 Percent of Egyptians and make sure the horrific status quo would be maintained.
In Greece, a complaisant corporate mass media echoed the stern warnings of a wide range of western so-called “leaders” in terrifying the masses into electing a motley crew of bought-and-paid-for politicians determined to keep the criminal vested interest of the international gangster banksters front and centre, and to keep any effort to redress the terrorism inflicted on the suffering masses on the back burner.
And, in France, the same corporate mass media and the same cacophony of interested voices diminished public support for the Leftist Front to the point where the “safe” so-called “Socialists” won enough seats to govern without the Leftist Front’s support. Whereas the Leftist Front would not have backed down from its promise to transfer a lot of wealth, income and power from the Top One Percent to the Other 99 Percent, the so-called “Socialists” will inevitably cave to the immoral demands of the Top One Percent.
That’s because while several political parties in western and central Europe continue to call themselves “Socialist” — just as Canada’s NDP continues to call itself “social democratic” — the reality is that none of them is any longer really socialist — or “social democratic”, and that is an enormous tragedy. On the contrary, they have all made their peace with corporate capitalism — with Neoliberalism/Neoconservatism — with Reaganomics — with Thatchernomics — with so-called “supply-side” economics — with so-called “trickle-down” economics — and none any longer has any desire to slay the corporate capitalist beast. They just want to go along, in order to get along, with the gangster banksters and the criminal corporate robber barons.
They continue, of course, to spout a very different rhetoric from the hardcore right-wingers who actually crow about the evils they would like to commit if given the chance. Actions, however, speak louder than words. As soon as they get elected, the so-called “centrists” — the Democrats in the U.S. and the Liberals in Canada — and the so-called “leftists” — the Socialists in Greece (PASOK) and France, Labour in the United Kingdom and the NDP in Canada — suddenly forget most of the rhetoric they have been spouting and start singing a different tune.
Invariably, the copout is that “the cupboard is bare.” But why is it that the cupboard cupboard is never “bare” whenever the super-rich — the Top One Percent — the gangster banksters and corporate robber barons — the millionaires, mega-millionaires, billionaires and mega-billionaires — come a-callin’?
Until such time as governments in supposedly “democratic” nations establish a truly leftist public alternative to the invariably right-wing corporate mass media, for the simple and noble virtue of providing some semblance of balance in the marketplace of ideas and ideals; and until such time as all private funding of elections and political parties — whether by banks or corporations or labour unions or individuals — is banned and full and equal funding of genuinely “leftist,” genuinely “centrist,” and genuinely “rightist” alternatives is financed out of general tax revenues, there will not be — and cannot possibly be — real democracy anywhere in the world.