Non-mainstream media rattles my cage. So here!

Frank Touby –

I’m not a conspiracy theorist. At least I try not to be. But some things have me wondering what’s really up.

frank1The concerted “mainstream” Canadian media demonization of Vladimir Putin goes almost to the point of renaming him Vlad The Impaler after the bloodthirsty 15th-Century Romanian prince who was immortalized in the vampire tale of Count Dracula.

Following instantly along with the kneejerk response of Barrack Obama and Stephen Harper, all the Toronto dailies blamed Putin for the second well-publicized mystery mishap of a Malaysian Airlines jet since March. Howcum Malaysian Airlines?

The Russians quickly released their satellite images of the area but the Americans also had a satellite there at the same time and held off release until 10 days later.

Plenty of time to “cook” the images (as was sloppily done when a crudely Photoshopped version of Obama’s purported Hawaii birth certificate was released by the government.) Obama’s place of birth is an issue because if he wasn’t born on U.S. soil after 1986, he’s not legally native born and can’t be president.

Shortly after Hawaii state official Loretta Fuddy verified the obviously phony Obama birth certificate as real, she was the only victim of a watery small-plane crash off Maui, reportedly of a heart attack though she had no diagnosed heart problem.

Anyone who questions the validity of the birth certificate, including those who use Photoshop and detected the layers, are called “birthers.”

The Aug. 4 & 11 edition of Macleans, not normally a mouthpiece for the Harperites and “exceptional” Americans, features Putin as the unstoppable evil force who threatens world peace.

Yet all he’s trying to do, say his supporters, is to keep the Americans and their allies from taking over his west flank. The U.S. did, after all, overthrow a corrupt but legitimately elected Ukrainian ruler and install a corrupt but illegitimate puppet.

Insofar as Crimea is concerned, history is on Putin’s side. It’s Russian, always was, and there’s no way Russia will abandon its all-seasons seaport. Besides, if the U.S. can claim the Monroe Doctrine (no European powers in “their” hemisphere), isn’t Putin allowed to mark out his hemisphere?

So. Are the Americans and their allies, including Canada, willing to risk nuclear war to let the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund sell Ukraine’s oilfields to Chevron and sell off Ukraine’s treasures and livelihoods as they do in Greece and elsewhere? Let’s hope and pray not.

On certain issues you can’t really trust major North American media. Nor liberal-talking politicians. Take free trade, for example.

It’s presented as a beautiful thing to enrich all participants. In reality it’s a curse upon you and your kids.

It’s why you or your university educated offspring can’t find decent jobs. The only ones who regularly reap any rewards are huge corporations—many of which take their profits overseas—and impoverished workers in foreign lands.

NAFTA. Remember that? You should: it’s what Brian Mulroney cursed our nation and Ontario with. Our factories were hollowed out. They went the way of our steel industry. Free trade deals will always do that. If you want a welfare program for the superrich and the superpoor, it’s free trade.

Yet Harper is secretly negotiating such a deal (they’re always done in secret) with Europe which has a number of economic basket-case nations to offer cheap-labour competition to Canadians.

If you have hopes for a middle-class life doing rewarding work, the outlook isn’t favourable.

On the immediate horizon are a new invasion of foreign workers. No, I’m not talking about from Latin America. Those are real human beings, many of whom are smart, honourable people living in hellholes and willing to work.

That we have no jobs for them, of course, isn’t any way to welcome ones who might slip across the border unless it’s to pick fruit or become involved in criminal enterprises.

But the real threat isn’t people, it’s non-people. Robots, in a word. Always eager to spend less and charge more, huge corporations are glomming on to using un-humans for every possible task.

Like taxis. You think you’re going to make a good living driving a cab? Of course in Toronto’s dysfunctional traffic that is a monumental challenge. But that job is going to virtually disappear. The new thing coming down the pike will be robotic cars that drive themselves. Fleets of robot-driven vehicles. No tipping.

Remember the automats from the 1940s and ‘50s in big cities like New York and Chicago? Expect those to re-emerge in your local junkfood joint. Counter staff will go the way of the chef in such places: unemployed. Pizzas will be punched out, topped and cooked without human intervention. No tipping.

In a decent society, the state would establish a guaranteed annual income for all but the wealthy. But we don’t have any liberals I can spot. And those oligarchs and their bootlickers who call themselves “conservative” will likely present a militarized police force just to keep impoverished masses in line; much the way U.S. military veterans are mistreated when they’ve finished enriching the “military-industrial complex” President Dwight Eisenhower warned against.

Keep in mind that the U.S. has lost every one of the numerous wars it has started since World War II.

frankPrime Minister Jean Chretien wisely refused to join George “Mad-Dog” Bush The Younger in the destruction of Mesopotamia. Now the once-thriving, civilized place where women were free from Islamist dictates and suppression is turned into a hellhole.

Control-freak Harper had no such compunction against killing Libyans. He bombed them. And how has Libya benefited from the military-industrial intervention? How will you benefit from Harper’s chronic hands-on meddling?

At right: “Fighting with the Allies” board game, 1915; Toronto Public Library