Thursday, April 14, 2016

Sleazy Sell-Out. “Sunny Days”. The Bank of Canada



Sleazy Sell-Out. “Sunny Days”. Part II


                 The Bank of Canada

 Written by Robin Mathews   April 2016


We have come upon a brilliant example, here in Canada, of what Anthony Hall calls “imperial globalization” and “the terror economy” (Earth Into Property, McGill-Queen’s, 2011.) Those are terms which describe the move to ‘world government’ by increasingly unregulated (and increasingly criminal) global Capitalism backed by U.S. imperial military might.

The example is The Bank of Canada.  The alleged stripping of essential sovereign powers from it on behalf of “international” organizations and private banks has led to a (now four year long) case being conducted in the Federal Court of Canada. Spice is added to the mix by the reported behaviour of prime minister Justin Trudeau in the context, and by the apparently shifting position of Federal Court judge, the honourable Justice James Russell. ....

Of Justice Russell’s latest decision Rocco Galati, lawyer for COMER in the case, expresses surprise – saying the judge has “inexplicably reversed himself from the earlier decision” and that “he blatantly erred…”, and more.  (All Quotes from Rocco Galati are from Page 1, COMER, Jan/Feb 2016).
[Readers who refer to the Wikipedia entry for the Committee on Monetary and Economic Reform will read that “COMER’s claims have been struck four times by the courts” and that in his February 8, 2016 ruling Justice James Russell concluded of the COMER plaintiffs that “they have no scintilla of a cause of action that this Court can or should hear”.  Plainly Rocco Galati is of a different mind – making the case one of especial interest.

The document filed by the plaintiffs (COMER, William Krehm, Ann Emmett) to begin the case, in 2011, is at once courageous and definitive of the present “dissolving sovereign condition” among many national communities falling victim to the  de facto government of globalizing private Capital. 
Since the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau (in 1974) the quiet, (secret?), apparently collegial, apparently acceptable transfer of power over The Bank of Canada has gone, apparently, to foreign entities (that meet in secrecy) and to private banks. The discontinuance of interest-free loans to Canadian governments is, apparently, an expression of that shift in power. That process of change has been conducted by officers of The Bank of Canada and the Canadian cabinet “responsible” to the Members of Parliament representing the people of Canada. 

Until the beginning of the COMER case, most Canadians knew nothing of the change. (How many MPs had been informed?) Canadians knew nothing about Cabinet members and officers of The Bank of Canada silently, knowingly or unknowingly, being  (the COMER case suggests) complicit in the alienation of Canadian sovereignty in the working of The Bank of Canada.  In essence, the change has removed a fundamental function – the Bank of Canada as an interest-free lender to the federal, provincial, and municipal governments for “infrastructure” and “human capital expenditures” (hospitals, etc.).

Put in the very simplest terms – there is no reason whatsoever that the Bank of Canada’s power to make interest-free loans to Canadian governments for infrastructure and human capital spending should be in any way curtailed or ended.  And so the whole process has to be highly suspect -involving international entities, gigantic profits for private banks, and a huge unnecessary, increasingly high national debt forced on the Canadian taxpayer.

The COMER case against Her Majesty the Queen, the Minister of Finance, the Minister of National Revenue, The Bank of Canada, and the Attorney General of Canada is intended to restore full Canadian authority to The Bank of Canada and – by doing so – to liberate its powers as a significant servant of governments in Canada (federal, provincial, and municipal) to satisfy needs,  interests, and rights of Canadians as meaningful citizens of Canada.

The brilliance of the COMER move has been matched by what one might call the concerted effort by Canadian governments (Conservative – led by Stephen Harper, and, now, Liberal – led by Justin Trudeau) to erase the case.  It has been matched, too, by the apparent determination of the Conventional Press and Media to prevent Canadians from knowing about the court action.
Rocco Galati suggested (when the Conservative government led by Stephen Harper was in power) that he believed government was influencing press and media to keep knowledge of the case from the Canadian public. And now what - under a Liberal government? No change apparently.  As late as April 2, 2016, for instance, The National Post (and many other Post Media publications) published Andrew Coyne’s piece of some thirty-five column inches on the question of Deficit Spending – “The risky business of deficits”, (p. A4).  That is a subject directly related to the COMER case and to the use of The Bank of Canada’s power to lend at no interest for infrastructure projects.
Andrew Coyne writes as if The Bank of Canada and the COMER case don’t exist.

Coyne’s behaviour, seems to be matched by the reported behaviour of prime minister Justin Trudeau.  My informant assures me that film footage exists of a few questioners trying to ask Justin Trudeau about the Bank of Canada matter.  I am told that Trudeau moves out of reach, ignores the questioners, and moves away to avoid facing the questions and the questioners.  I have not seen the footage.
Whatever the truth of that matter, since the transfer of power from the Conservatives to the Liberals on October 19, 2015, “government” lawyers have continued fighting the Bank of Canada case … and …  have not slackened in their determination to quell any attempt to return the Bank to its independent, interest-free loaning policy. 

When the Conservative government was in power, Justice James Russell considered whether the COMER complaint might be heard – and sent it away to be amended, having struck parts of it.
Rocco Galati suggests in his statement about the subsequent decision of Justice James Russell on February 8, 2016 [the Liberal government having gained power] that Justice Russell “inexplicably reversed himself from the earlier decision”.  Mr. Galati reports that “In his earlier decision he [Justice Russell] had refused to strike large portions of the claim” and was upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal.  Mr. Galati claims Justice Russell “effectively overturned the Court of Appeal decision …contrary to law” and “blatantly erred” in regard to the nature of Declaratory relief.
Mr. Galati has already filed an appeal (March 3, 2016) to the Federal Court of Appeal concerning the COMER case, and he is prepared to take the matter to the Supreme Court of Canada.  We are about to see (but not hastily!) how Justice James Russell’s actions hold up under further scrutiny. Clearly a very sharp difference exists about the “justiciability” of the wrong alleged in the COMER action … about, that is, its very legitimacy as a matter to be considered by the courts. [The fact that the Bank of Canada did provide interest free loans to governments in Canada over many years, and then stopped without any public discussion is not in question.]


When a claim is “struck” by a judge, he or she is not saying that no wrong has been committed.  Rather, it is a statement that the court is an institution whose abilities, powers, and processes prevent it from confronting and providing a remedy for the alleged wrong brought before it – which may be obvious and egregious (as in The Bank of Canada matter).

In the meantime, the ultimate remedy may be political. Already the Canadian Action Party (and I believe others) has declared for political action to return full lending power to The Bank of Canada. That determination must be made known so widely that a government not willing to act to restore full powers to The Bank of Canada will lose its majority and be banished to the shadowy, impotent sidelines … where it clearly belongs.

Written by Robin Mathews


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The Straight Goods

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Sunday, April 3, 2016

"Sunny Days”. Sleazy Sell-Out.



"Sunny Days”.  Sleazy Sell-Out.  ...........part I
                           
                        
     Written by Robin  Mathews  April  2016


  
Anthony Hall writes about “ballot-box colonialism”,imperial globalization” and its “licence for lawlessness” – as well as the present “terror economy” - in Earth Into Property  (McGill-Queen’s, 2011). Hall focuses attention on the relentless and brutal shapes of U.S. imperialism growing since 1492 and now expressed in almost every form of international finance, banking, trade organization, military initiative, and almost every cultural and informational/technological process seemingly ‘independent’ of imperial influence.


In a compelling Book of (satanic) Revelations Hall points to an obvious fact – almost completely obscured from our view.  In the taking of millions of Black slaves, in the planned extermination of the native peoples of the U.S.A., in the complex and violent suppression globally of socialist policies and socialist governments over nearly a hundred years – and, now, in the desiccation of organized society in the Middle East as part of ‘fossil fuel imperialism’, the U.S. has been and is – it claims – fulfilling Christian values, serving the Christian God.  In the face, now, (in an endlessly repeated propaganda script) of the savage, uncivilized, terrorist Muslim Hordes determined to drown the West, to erase Christians and the Christian faith … the U.S.A. is – once again – claiming to be the champion of Christian faith, belief, and sanctity, fighting “a War On Terrorism”. In God We Trust.
In the U.S. ‘Declaration of Independence’ of 1776, the native peoples having their land wrested from them by stealth and violence – and having their communities erased before their eyes – are described as “the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and conditions”.  To add salt, the Declaration suggests that (evil) King George, the Third (attempting to introduce the rule of law into the killing grounds) is urging those “merciless savages” to attack the peace-loving (U.S.) settlers. 


The imperial targets change.  The claim to U.S. Exceptionalism and Purity never does.  Nor does the brutality of its imperializing process.


Canada accepts, humbly, that condition, digging itself deeper and deeper into colonial powerlessness and subjection.  The recent Conservative government headed by Stephen Harper adopted the U.S. imperial program’s warlike aspects.  He flaunted a child-like aggressiveness as if to assume “leadership” in the imperial war program.  The present Liberal government led by Justin Trudeau has returned to the junior partner, cheer-leader, thoughtful-forelock-tugging servant role.  But Canadian colonialism is deepening … and the times are changing.


Elsewhere in the world U.S. imperial violence is forcing the (slow, but real) development of organized, ‘conventional’ political organizations to respond.  It is also spawning what are apparently insane explosions of random, seemingly pointless public violence involving death and destruction among innocent people, by, we are told ISIS, ISIL, etc.  That may continue [where it is not False Flag fraudulence] … and it may ‘mature’. 
If it ‘matures’, the practitioners of public violence in Europe (and elsewhere) will turn their attention to the top actors and top offices connected to the European Union and “international” organizations like the IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, etc.  That would be a brilliant-though-terrible tactic, for it would place the “terrorists” in silent alliance with a growing population in Europe slowly realizing that the “union” and the “internationalizing” of their communities is simply a part of the U.S. “imperial globalization” process converting Europe’s people into increasingly poorer pawns in Global Capitalism’s seizure of power.


The sad picture in Canada is of a smiling new government made up of boy-men and girl-women devoted to the continuing sell-out of Canada and Canadians.   The sell-out is being disguised by using the very limited colonial powers the government possesses to spend and go into debt, placing Canada in deeper hock to its imperial masters – U.S. controlled Global Capitalism.

The irony couldn’t be more galling than in the “grandest” initiative of the new government – its dedication to huge deficit spending “to get Canada moving again”.  Of its failures of policy on the TPP, Syria, NAFTA, Israel, internal taxation, the erasure of huge Tax Haven operations, Canadian offshore mining brutalities and homeland shenanigans, fudgingly slow environmental oversight and regulation, and the almost total absence of oversight of foreign-based corporations in Canada … the worst failure may be its complete collapse and sell-out in relation to the role of the Bank of Canada as a credit servant for almost interest-free central spending in the Canadian economy.  Especially since government intends huge infrastructure spending where the role of the Bank of Canada could be key … and liberating.


That story appears to involve not only the open cowardice of the present Canadian cabinet but - as hard to believe as it may be – a strange and  dangerous use of the Federal Court of Canada as a political instrument (abandoning its judicial role)... to secure Liberal colonial banking policy. That amazing story will be the first in the “Sleazy Sell-Out” series about Liberal government policy … to come next.

Written by Robin Mathews


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The Straight Goods

Cheers Eyes Wide OPen