Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
Recently, the issue was raised regarding
the profits that would flow to international corporations by Obama’s
proposed trade-deals encouraging the privatizatilon of existing
government-run social services, and the break-up of their labor unions.
It was unfortunately mentioned only in passing by Guardian columnist Polly Toynbee. But that’s better than nothing.
She is a granddaughter of the famous British historian Arnold Toynbee.
Her perspective on this matter seems to be in accord with that of
Britain’s major corporations — they strongly favor both TTIP (the
Obama-proposed trade-deal with the EU), and also Britain’s being a part
of the EU (and of that proposed trade-deal). In Britain, the number of
families in the aristocracy, and that serve the aristocracy (the people
who control the international corporations, and who serve those
families), are few enough in number so that the individuals who can win a
public voice such as becoming a columnist in the Guardian, tend to be well-vetted by the aristocracy, not favorable towards democracy.
Toynbee’s latest column criticizes
opponents of TTIP and of Britain’s membership in the EU, as being
populists (“Europhobes”), people who “shamelessly” oppose the EU and the
TTIP. Her article presents the public as the problem — basically as
mobs controlled by demagogues — and the aristocracy as the solution. Her
attitude toward democracy (the public) is rather similar to Barack
Obama’s as expressed privately on 27 March 2009 to the CEOs of Wall
Street assembled together in the White House: “My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. … I want to help. … I’m protecting you,”
from those “pitchforks” — people who, to him, were much like Toynbee’s
“shameless … Europhobes.” In both versions, the international-corporate
financial operators are the real heroes, and the public who oppose what
they’re doing are just bigots who need to be controlled.
Toynbee’s recent article, October 12th, about the interplay between pro-EU-integrationist Europeans and pro-mega-corporate Europeans,
discusses the public’s resistance to the latest effort by the pro-EU
British Parliamentarian Alan Johnson to present his case to the public,
both for the EU and for the proposed TTIP:
“The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership,
TTIP, is another red line for some on the left. Johnson has just
visited Brussels, and is convinced there will not be secret trade courts
and nor will other countries, with bigger public sectors [e.g., France,
Denmark, Sweden] than ours, allow Europe’s public services to be
captured by US companies.”
Johnson is a former Cabinet Member in
Prime Minister Tony Blair’s government — in fact, a former Health
Secretary and a former Education Secretary, and so someone who would
know a lot about the assets that are to be privatized if and when, say, Britain’s National Health Service gets stripped down and then sold off
to international corporations — and now is trying to make the case that
somehow U.S. President Barack Obama would sign his TTIP after its heart and brain (its freezing in place and then gutting of democratically imposed regulations of international corporations) has been ripped out, and only its arms and its legs (the associated legal blather) remain. Toynbee says:
“But alarm is in the air among
pro-Europeans of every sort. Long gone are complacent assumptions that
the status quo always wins referendums, that fear of the unknown beats
novelty or the pay packet always trumps ideals. The wind seems in the
sails of the outs, as opinion shifts their way.
Try as they might to hide this handicap, today’s launch [of a new
conservative movement that’s both anti-TTIP and anti-EU] was a portrait
of an establishment arguing for no change. Big business was there, the
high street stores, easyJet, the universities and the police. The
prospect of Scotland gone or Northern Ireland peace unravelling
certainly makes leaving the high-risk choice. What of Russia? Surely
self-preservation and economic common sense will see the establishment
prevail?”
If her verbiage is so loaded with assumptions, so that there’s no space for documenting any of them (such as her assumptions that TTIP is basically benign, and that the EU wasn’t originated by fascists),
that’s because her assumptions are false, and because competency is not
a requirement for success in her culture. In Britain, the number of
families in the aristocracy, and that serve the aristocracy, are small
enough so that the individuals who can win a public voice such as being a
columnist in Britain’s major media tend to be well-vetted by the
aristocracy, and all that aristocrats demand is for the person to
support the aristocracy’s agenda. Polly Toynbee is a granddaughter of
the famous British historian Arnold Toynbee. Her perspective in this
matter seems to be in accord with that of Britain’s major corporations.
That’s enough for her to be able to be published in the Guardian.
Every British nationwide newspaper is actually likewise a guardian of
the very same national aristocracy — of one of its factions at least,
each of which is united with all of the others against the public, and
is protecting that aristocracy from the public (by deceiving the public,
like such writers do).
So, she deals only in passing with the
objections, “secret trade courts and nor will other countries, with
bigger public sectors than ours, allow Europe’s public services to be
captured by US companies.” How does she know? She doesn’t. Nor does she
care to. Those real problems are simply wished away, and so she
expresses hope that “fire may burn within parties [such as Alan Johnson]
battling to persuade their own sides.”
After all, the public must be ruled. They are so unruly! Tut-tut!!
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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
