First breath analysis on the implications of US & French co-operation in the recent US-backed coup in Haiti.
[I don't wanna holiday in the sun...]
[Suggested picture: stock pic from BBC or other news website of (NB
must be white faces for suggested caption to work!) US or French
troops invading Haiti - suggested caption "Forces of Darkness invade
Haiti]
[Western Imperialism Finally Re-united in Haiti? Lessons from the
US-backed coup in Haiti]
With the addition of French troops to the US and Canadian contingent
already dispatched to restore the capitalist order in Haiti the forces
of Western Imperialism are trying to heal the rifts created by Bush
Jr.'s unilateral invasion of Iraq in face of united opposition from
the strategic Continental Franco-Germano-Russo axis.
The creation of this latter strategic axis has been the classical goal
of all European warfare and geo-political manoeuvring since the rise
of Christendom right through to the end of WW2 when the re-composition
of the global system into the bi-polar USSR-USA structure finally
ended the multi-polar Western European Empires system ruined by two
successive imperialist world wars.
Yet all previous attempts to unite, by conquest or alliance, the
continental Eurasian land-mass from the Atlantic to the Pacific all
ultimately ended in failure. Only the overwhelming threat of a common
enemy could force the creation of such a world-historically
significant unity by consensus. It is a testament to the monumental
stupidity of the Chicken hawks of the Bush Jr. cabinet and the Project
for a New American Century cabal, that the USA decided to provide that
common enemy.
The vision of the never-before achieved strategic pan-Eurasian
alliance created by Bush-baby's cretinous Iraqi blunder has terrified
that increasingly rare creature, the US imperialist with a brain, with
the vision of the spectre that has been haunting the rest of us for
some years now.
[A Spectre is haunting the world...]
A spectre is haunting the world. The spectre of World War 3. A global
armageddon pitting "The Last Superpower" against a Global Un-American
Imperialist Alliance a.k.a. "Empire"[1] or, after the Nazi Francis
Parker-Yockey's prophetic dream of doom, "The Imperium".
The outcome of such a world war is not only the inevitable total
destruction of the USA, but global carnage on such a scale as to make
the horrors of the first two imperialist world wars look like the
proverbial walk in the park, possible including the long-dreaded final
nuclear holocaust itself. Humanity itself will probably survive but
whether the eventual survivors will consider themselves blessed or
cursed is an open question.
[Project for a New American Nightmare]
It was the threat of any challenge to global US hegemony that
initially inspired the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
think-tank to propose an aggressive "pro-active" US foreign policy
dedicated to seizing the necessary international bases and control of
the world's strategic oil reserves in order to ensure continual global
domination. It is a measure of the extent to which even the most
delusional of these "chicken hawks" have begun to realise, with a
sinking feeling, that with just Afghanistan and Iraq alone (and
including a division still committed in South Korea) between 7 and 8
of the US Army's effective 10 Divisions are already deployed in
theatre on active service - from any military perspective you care to
name that already adds up to overstretch.
Fond dreams that an easy victory in Iraq would lead to a "domino
effect" style collapse of authoritarian anti-US regimes in the Middle
East (i.e. neighbouring Syria and Iran) are now well and truly over.
As are any wild adventurist notions that the 5 US Divisions now in
Iraq could, after a short breather and re-supply (with Iraqi fuel,
naturally), simply proceed to roll over the Syrian and Iranian borders
to be greeting by flag-waving civilians rushing to welcome their
liberators. And then the White House dreamers woke up from their
coke-dreams in a cold sweat to the crack of gunfire and the subsonic
thumps of explosions and realised with horror that the "happy
liberated civilians" were shooting at them...
Worse still the creation of the United Un-American
Franco-Germano-Russo continental axis has finally alerted the
minoritarian non-brain dead wing of US Imperialism that the PNAC
cabal's little shenanigans may well be in danger of creating the very
challenge to global US hegemony they are supposed to be forestalling.
Consequently the chicken hawks have been muzzled. Perle is sacked,
Cheney is invisible and even the pint-sized pit bull Don Rumsfeld has
gone uncharacteristically quiet.
Perhaps the invitation of the old colonial masters and fellow western
imperialists, those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" the French to
send in their paras and imperial legionnaires to join the capitalist
carnival[4] of global reaction, is a recognition that the "Last
Superpower" is not strong enough to militarily dominate the global
south alone. If so it is an attempt to heal the centuries long
imperialist rivalry between english and french speaking empires. A
rivalry that reached its appalling genocidal nadir in the
French-backed Interahamwe Genocide in Rwanda and the subsequent
"African World War" still being bloodily fought in the vast interior
of the Congo.
[Meanwhile back in Haiti...]
When Bush-baby's lynch mob entered the White House in the beginning of
2001, Iraq was not the only score they intended to settle. Much to the
enragement of the Contra-loving, liberation theology-hating Reaganite
cold warriors, Clinton had aided the overturn of the (CIA-backed)
military coup that booted out Haiti's first ever elected civilian
government and replaced it by the vile death squads of Haiti's tiny
but immensely wealthy rich elite.
By backing the restoration of the Aristide presidency against the old
Tontons Macoute, Clinton had, of course, not succumbed to some
romantic whim to see social progress in the Caribbean. He had made
sure to get a promise from Aristide that the wealth of Haiti's rich
elite would remain untouched. Given without any access to Haiti's land
or resources (exclusively owned by the rich) Aristide had nothing to
offer the starving masses of Haiti but fine words and sentiments,
Clinton offered to sweeten the pill with US aid for social programmes
for the poor.
On entering power in 2001 the first thing Bush-baby's scaly cabal did
was to cancel all US aid programmes to Haiti. The did so on the
pretext of "election irregularities" in Haiti's 2000 election despite
the fact that the international observers of these elections all agreed
that the only possible ambiguity was over the size of Aristide's
victory rather than who had won[2].
Lacking either the political vision or the personal courage to provoke
immediate US intervention by calling for the expropriation of Haiti's
ruling class and deprived of the US aid that could have reconciled the
needs of Haiti's poor with the status quo, Aristide was faced with the
choice of resigning or becoming another in the long list and grotesque
list of petty despots ruling Haiti by corrupt patronage and
"magouillage". To his eternal discredit Aristide chose the
latter. Thus with his forced removal/kidnap by the US military [3]
Haiti's poor have lost not a champion but just one more reactionary
parasite. His passing shall not be mourned even though his
replacements, two of the worst killers and butchers of Papa and Baby
Doc Duvalier's ancien regime, will no doubt come to be as feared and
hated as they were previously.
Yet today we learn that the 15 nation strong Caribbean Community have
announced that, disgusted as they are by Aristide's kidnap, they will
not provide troops for the nominally UN force in Haiti [5]. They are
not fools, they do not wish to be seen siding with the old white
imperialist masters and their brand new coup-imposed regime of
blood-thirsty butchers. Already the US marines are scrambling around in
an attempt to stop the "victorious" Guy Phillipe's gang of hired
killers slaughtering all and sundry in Port-au-Prince.
Our Haitian brothers and sisters are only being spared appalling
slaughter now because the eyes of the world's media are temporarily on
them. If we anarchists and global solidarity activists allow the
goldfish-minded global media to look away again in a few days time, we
will have condemned the Haitian people to a bloody slaughter by our
complacency and inaction. We must act now to save lives and to protest
this blatant US coup.
[Bush Wars burn in Caracas --or-- Bush proxies go crackers in Caracas]
Meanwhile, virtually un-noticed by the world, the Non-Islamic Front in
George Jr.'s global War For Oil continues in Venezuela.
Un-deterred by their failed coup in 2002, the Venezuelan bourgeoisie
and their reactionary "white" (i.e. of "pure" European-descent) middle
class supporters are still waging war to unseat the Chavez
regime.
Despite its non-revolutionary nature, the Chavez regime relies almost
totally on the support of Venezuela's poor, dispossessed, mestizo and
indigenous population. In return for this support they are only
willing to offer a rather tatty social-democratic programme based on
using Venezuela's petro-dollars for social programmes. In order to
maximise the income for Venezuela's oil, Chavez has agitated within
OPEC to restrict supply in order to raise oil prices and effect a
transfer of wealth from the US to the Third World producers of
OPEC. His campaign was having some considerable success in the pre-911
world. Naturally this has made him the public enemy number 1 of the
Bush Jr. Oil-men cabinet.
Further, as the USA's number 1 supplier of oil outside of the Middle
East, this has made the toppling of the Chavez regime one of the main
priorities of the US Oil-men's foreign policy. However it is one of
the least publicised of their foreign policy objectives given that
Venezuela's primarily Catholic denomination makes incorporating its
re-conquest into Bush's War on (Islamic) Terrorism a pretty hard
sell. Nonetheless, buoyed as they now are by the initial appearance of
success in a blatant "regime-change" military coup in Haiti, it cannot
be long before the Chavez regime will be facing a second attempted
coup in the Chile 1973 model. Unless, of course, the anti-capitalist
and antagonist movement of Europe and the USA manages to extricate
it's head from its backside and realise that this rampant phase of
Western Imperialist aggression must be met with not apathy, silence
and complacency but with rage, protest direct action. Solidarity with
our brothers and sisters in Haiti, Venezuela and the Global South in
general demand our action now!
US Out of Haiti!
Hands Off Venezuela!
Death to the Western Empire!
For the globalisation of liberation not capitalist slavery!
Paul Bowman. 4 March 2004.
----
Notes:
[1] Those of you who pay attention to these details will note that I
am directly contradicting the Hardt-Negri thesis that the transition
from the old order of nation-state imperialism to the new order of
multi-national, de-centred "Empire" will take place as peacefully as
their own personal transatlantic collaboration has formed and that the
world's last Superpower will willingly give up its military monopoly
without a fight. This is, IMHO, an overly optimistic scenario that I,
for one, wish were true. Sadly I think they have forgotten the
principal slogan of the revolutionary: "Optimism of the Will,
Pessimism of the Intellect".
[2] Independent 2 March 2004, Andrew Buncombe and Andrew Gumbel,
"Aristide: 'Marines forced me to leave'"
[3] Independent, op cit.
[4] By coincidence it is in fact Carnival time in the Caribbean and
Latin America as we are approaching Lent. For the revolutionary this
grim coincidence inevitably brings James Connelly's famous phrase "a
Carnival of Reaction" to mind...
[5] Independent, 4 March 2004, Phil Davison, "Marines tighten security
as Haiti rebel leader claims control"
[Suggested picture: stock pic from BBC or other news website of (NB
must be white faces for suggested caption to work!) US or French
troops invading Haiti - suggested caption "Forces of Darkness invade
Haiti]
[Western Imperialism Finally Re-united in Haiti? Lessons from the
US-backed coup in Haiti]
With the addition of French troops to the US and Canadian contingent
already dispatched to restore the capitalist order in Haiti the forces
of Western Imperialism are trying to heal the rifts created by Bush
Jr.'s unilateral invasion of Iraq in face of united opposition from
the strategic Continental Franco-Germano-Russo axis.
The creation of this latter strategic axis has been the classical goal
of all European warfare and geo-political manoeuvring since the rise
of Christendom right through to the end of WW2 when the re-composition
of the global system into the bi-polar USSR-USA structure finally
ended the multi-polar Western European Empires system ruined by two
successive imperialist world wars.
Yet all previous attempts to unite, by conquest or alliance, the
continental Eurasian land-mass from the Atlantic to the Pacific all
ultimately ended in failure. Only the overwhelming threat of a common
enemy could force the creation of such a world-historically
significant unity by consensus. It is a testament to the monumental
stupidity of the Chicken hawks of the Bush Jr. cabinet and the Project
for a New American Century cabal, that the USA decided to provide that
common enemy.
The vision of the never-before achieved strategic pan-Eurasian
alliance created by Bush-baby's cretinous Iraqi blunder has terrified
that increasingly rare creature, the US imperialist with a brain, with
the vision of the spectre that has been haunting the rest of us for
some years now.
[A Spectre is haunting the world...]
A spectre is haunting the world. The spectre of World War 3. A global
armageddon pitting "The Last Superpower" against a Global Un-American
Imperialist Alliance a.k.a. "Empire"[1] or, after the Nazi Francis
Parker-Yockey's prophetic dream of doom, "The Imperium".
The outcome of such a world war is not only the inevitable total
destruction of the USA, but global carnage on such a scale as to make
the horrors of the first two imperialist world wars look like the
proverbial walk in the park, possible including the long-dreaded final
nuclear holocaust itself. Humanity itself will probably survive but
whether the eventual survivors will consider themselves blessed or
cursed is an open question.
[Project for a New American Nightmare]
It was the threat of any challenge to global US hegemony that
initially inspired the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)
think-tank to propose an aggressive "pro-active" US foreign policy
dedicated to seizing the necessary international bases and control of
the world's strategic oil reserves in order to ensure continual global
domination. It is a measure of the extent to which even the most
delusional of these "chicken hawks" have begun to realise, with a
sinking feeling, that with just Afghanistan and Iraq alone (and
including a division still committed in South Korea) between 7 and 8
of the US Army's effective 10 Divisions are already deployed in
theatre on active service - from any military perspective you care to
name that already adds up to overstretch.
Fond dreams that an easy victory in Iraq would lead to a "domino
effect" style collapse of authoritarian anti-US regimes in the Middle
East (i.e. neighbouring Syria and Iran) are now well and truly over.
As are any wild adventurist notions that the 5 US Divisions now in
Iraq could, after a short breather and re-supply (with Iraqi fuel,
naturally), simply proceed to roll over the Syrian and Iranian borders
to be greeting by flag-waving civilians rushing to welcome their
liberators. And then the White House dreamers woke up from their
coke-dreams in a cold sweat to the crack of gunfire and the subsonic
thumps of explosions and realised with horror that the "happy
liberated civilians" were shooting at them...
Worse still the creation of the United Un-American
Franco-Germano-Russo continental axis has finally alerted the
minoritarian non-brain dead wing of US Imperialism that the PNAC
cabal's little shenanigans may well be in danger of creating the very
challenge to global US hegemony they are supposed to be forestalling.
Consequently the chicken hawks have been muzzled. Perle is sacked,
Cheney is invisible and even the pint-sized pit bull Don Rumsfeld has
gone uncharacteristically quiet.
Perhaps the invitation of the old colonial masters and fellow western
imperialists, those "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" the French to
send in their paras and imperial legionnaires to join the capitalist
carnival[4] of global reaction, is a recognition that the "Last
Superpower" is not strong enough to militarily dominate the global
south alone. If so it is an attempt to heal the centuries long
imperialist rivalry between english and french speaking empires. A
rivalry that reached its appalling genocidal nadir in the
French-backed Interahamwe Genocide in Rwanda and the subsequent
"African World War" still being bloodily fought in the vast interior
of the Congo.
[Meanwhile back in Haiti...]
When Bush-baby's lynch mob entered the White House in the beginning of
2001, Iraq was not the only score they intended to settle. Much to the
enragement of the Contra-loving, liberation theology-hating Reaganite
cold warriors, Clinton had aided the overturn of the (CIA-backed)
military coup that booted out Haiti's first ever elected civilian
government and replaced it by the vile death squads of Haiti's tiny
but immensely wealthy rich elite.
By backing the restoration of the Aristide presidency against the old
Tontons Macoute, Clinton had, of course, not succumbed to some
romantic whim to see social progress in the Caribbean. He had made
sure to get a promise from Aristide that the wealth of Haiti's rich
elite would remain untouched. Given without any access to Haiti's land
or resources (exclusively owned by the rich) Aristide had nothing to
offer the starving masses of Haiti but fine words and sentiments,
Clinton offered to sweeten the pill with US aid for social programmes
for the poor.
On entering power in 2001 the first thing Bush-baby's scaly cabal did
was to cancel all US aid programmes to Haiti. The did so on the
pretext of "election irregularities" in Haiti's 2000 election despite
the fact that the international observers of these elections all agreed
that the only possible ambiguity was over the size of Aristide's
victory rather than who had won[2].
Lacking either the political vision or the personal courage to provoke
immediate US intervention by calling for the expropriation of Haiti's
ruling class and deprived of the US aid that could have reconciled the
needs of Haiti's poor with the status quo, Aristide was faced with the
choice of resigning or becoming another in the long list and grotesque
list of petty despots ruling Haiti by corrupt patronage and
"magouillage". To his eternal discredit Aristide chose the
latter. Thus with his forced removal/kidnap by the US military [3]
Haiti's poor have lost not a champion but just one more reactionary
parasite. His passing shall not be mourned even though his
replacements, two of the worst killers and butchers of Papa and Baby
Doc Duvalier's ancien regime, will no doubt come to be as feared and
hated as they were previously.
Yet today we learn that the 15 nation strong Caribbean Community have
announced that, disgusted as they are by Aristide's kidnap, they will
not provide troops for the nominally UN force in Haiti [5]. They are
not fools, they do not wish to be seen siding with the old white
imperialist masters and their brand new coup-imposed regime of
blood-thirsty butchers. Already the US marines are scrambling around in
an attempt to stop the "victorious" Guy Phillipe's gang of hired
killers slaughtering all and sundry in Port-au-Prince.
Our Haitian brothers and sisters are only being spared appalling
slaughter now because the eyes of the world's media are temporarily on
them. If we anarchists and global solidarity activists allow the
goldfish-minded global media to look away again in a few days time, we
will have condemned the Haitian people to a bloody slaughter by our
complacency and inaction. We must act now to save lives and to protest
this blatant US coup.
[Bush Wars burn in Caracas --or-- Bush proxies go crackers in Caracas]
Meanwhile, virtually un-noticed by the world, the Non-Islamic Front in
George Jr.'s global War For Oil continues in Venezuela.
Un-deterred by their failed coup in 2002, the Venezuelan bourgeoisie
and their reactionary "white" (i.e. of "pure" European-descent) middle
class supporters are still waging war to unseat the Chavez
regime.
Despite its non-revolutionary nature, the Chavez regime relies almost
totally on the support of Venezuela's poor, dispossessed, mestizo and
indigenous population. In return for this support they are only
willing to offer a rather tatty social-democratic programme based on
using Venezuela's petro-dollars for social programmes. In order to
maximise the income for Venezuela's oil, Chavez has agitated within
OPEC to restrict supply in order to raise oil prices and effect a
transfer of wealth from the US to the Third World producers of
OPEC. His campaign was having some considerable success in the pre-911
world. Naturally this has made him the public enemy number 1 of the
Bush Jr. Oil-men cabinet.
Further, as the USA's number 1 supplier of oil outside of the Middle
East, this has made the toppling of the Chavez regime one of the main
priorities of the US Oil-men's foreign policy. However it is one of
the least publicised of their foreign policy objectives given that
Venezuela's primarily Catholic denomination makes incorporating its
re-conquest into Bush's War on (Islamic) Terrorism a pretty hard
sell. Nonetheless, buoyed as they now are by the initial appearance of
success in a blatant "regime-change" military coup in Haiti, it cannot
be long before the Chavez regime will be facing a second attempted
coup in the Chile 1973 model. Unless, of course, the anti-capitalist
and antagonist movement of Europe and the USA manages to extricate
it's head from its backside and realise that this rampant phase of
Western Imperialist aggression must be met with not apathy, silence
and complacency but with rage, protest direct action. Solidarity with
our brothers and sisters in Haiti, Venezuela and the Global South in
general demand our action now!
US Out of Haiti!
Hands Off Venezuela!
Death to the Western Empire!
For the globalisation of liberation not capitalist slavery!
Paul Bowman. 4 March 2004.
----
Notes:
[1] Those of you who pay attention to these details will note that I
am directly contradicting the Hardt-Negri thesis that the transition
from the old order of nation-state imperialism to the new order of
multi-national, de-centred "Empire" will take place as peacefully as
their own personal transatlantic collaboration has formed and that the
world's last Superpower will willingly give up its military monopoly
without a fight. This is, IMHO, an overly optimistic scenario that I,
for one, wish were true. Sadly I think they have forgotten the
principal slogan of the revolutionary: "Optimism of the Will,
Pessimism of the Intellect".
[2] Independent 2 March 2004, Andrew Buncombe and Andrew Gumbel,
"Aristide: 'Marines forced me to leave'"
[3] Independent, op cit.
[4] By coincidence it is in fact Carnival time in the Caribbean and
Latin America as we are approaching Lent. For the revolutionary this
grim coincidence inevitably brings James Connelly's famous phrase "a
Carnival of Reaction" to mind...
[5] Independent, 4 March 2004, Phil Davison, "Marines tighten security
as Haiti rebel leader claims control"
