Tag Archives: politics

A day without an American gun

Uncategorized,

Originally posted here.

Latin America, which consists of all of the former American colonies of Spain, France (sans Quebec and the Mississippi Basin), and Portugal, is a region which is steeped in history and tradition, alot of which extends beyond the reach of Columbus and his “discovery” of the Americas.

However, ever since most of these countries gained their political independence back during the 1800’s, this region has also been steeped in a mire of political and military tradition and intrigue. Guns and armaments of all possible kinds have been in almost perpetually-abundant supply and distribution for almost 2 centuries in this geopolitical region. Battles, skirmishes, crackdowns, massacres, and bloodbaths all form an integral and permanent part of this region’s historical and political constitution.

Thus, it comes as no surprise to many of us when the United States becomes involved. American arms, American training, American funding, American support, American everything-that-has-anything-to-deal-with-the-military: its all too commonplace in this region. Sure, the degree of U.S. involvement in any Latin American conflict may vary, depending of the size of that nation’s (or, for that matter, that insurgency’s) military. And usually, the side that is taken by the U.S. and its agents in that particular nation is usually avowedly politically conservative, economically bourgeois, and socially elitist.

In the midst of this perennial conflict, of course, the lives of innocent men, women, and children are bloodily sacrificed. People who wish that their livelihoods, families, and communities had no part, or played no role, in this conflict are among the first ones who are maimed, scarred, robbed, or murdered….

All for the sake of politics, economics, and history, three things over which these people have no control, three things by which these people are taken over.

Haiti can serve as a prime example of this: the coup which toppled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide and his government was backed/operated/conducted by the Miami-based Group of 184, a coalition of archconservative bourgeoisie of Haitian ancestry which had explicitly strong ties to both the Duvalier dictatorship and the former Haitian Army, which had been abolished by Aristide. Furthermore, it was supported by former members of the Tonton Macoutes and attaches who had overthrown Aristide back in 1991, the leaders of which received their military training at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, near Columbus, GA.

In fact, let’s go further on Haiti: the leader of the Group of 184, Andre Apaid Jr., is a U.S.-born businessman who owns several sweatshops in Haiti; is a longtime opponent to Aristide; had ties to the Duvalier dictatorship and the former Haitian Army; and is known for stepping up his own personal vendetta against Aristide and his Fanmi Lavalas Party after Aristide not only imposed a national income tax, but also raised the minimum wage to US$1.50.

“It all begins with HDP’s director James Morrell, who was asked to leave the Center for International Policy (CIP), a “liberal” think-tank founded by former US Ambassador to El Salvador Robert White. The rumor on the Hill was that Morrell was forced out because of his open flirtations with Haitian right-wingers. This seems to be supported by HDP’s partnering with the right-wing Boulos family and the most reactionary elements of Haiti’s Chamber of Commerce. The pedigree of this pack of interventionists can be gleaned from its guest list the night it was founded in Washington D.C.

There were notable Haitians in attendance at the Haiti Democracy Project’s grand opening held in the Brookings Institute on November 19, 2002. Among them was founding member Rudolph Boulos. Boulos is infamous for once being summoned for questioning in February 2002 concerning the assassination of one of Haiti’s most popular journalists, Jean Dominique. Dominique publicly lambasted Boulos for having sold poisoned children’s cough syrup through his company Pharval Pharmaceuticals. Over sixty children died from diethyl alcohol contamination of “Afrebril and Valodon” syrups, the deadly concoction brewed in Boulos private laboratories.”

(Quotation from The Bush Administration’s Endgame for Haiti: Part 3 of a Series by Kevin Pina, The Black Commentator, Dec. 4, 2003, Issue 67)

Thus, Haiti’s is, for lack of a better description, a case of jumping from a frying pan under Jean-Bertrand Aristide into the fire itself under the Group of 184.

Sadly, this has been the case throughout Latin America for over 100 years since the U.S. began to expand its military muscles in Latin America, particularly during the Spanish-American War.

So what, exactly, is to be done to ameliorate this utter contradiction of U.S. “values” in foreign policy?

Well, the beginning of such seems to be easy: just take the militaries of Latin America out of the picture.

The U.S., since the Civil War, has shown an inclination toward perpetually-bellicose tendencies and language (especially with the Bush administration’s rhetoric), something which has only exacerbated most political conflicts on an international scale. No wonder the U.S. had 9/11!

One of those tendencies of the U.S. foreign policy is to make the military the primary (and, too often, the predominant) factor in dealing with any country or anti-government movement whatsoever. This involved the U.S. in Afghanistan back in 1980 (with the deja vu in 2001-02); in Iraq back in the 1960’s and 1980’s (and again in the 1990’s and 2000’s); in Iran during the Iran-contra affair of the Reagan administration; in Cuba during the Bay of Pigs fiasco and the Missile Crisis; in the Philippines during the Marcos dictatorship; in Vietnam, which is self-explanatory; in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic back in 1915; in China during the Boxer Rebellion (China, today, seems to still be pissed about that sting in its ass); in Uzbekistan in the midst of the developing opposition against the post-Soviet dictatorship there; in Angola during its civil war (which pulled in several characters, such as South Africa (apartheid-era), Cuba, the USSR, Zaire (now the DRC), and present-day Namibia); and various other, innumerable conflicts.

Its amazing, though, that the U.S. government, throughout all of that time, can still manage to talk through its teeth and still condone/support this behavior.

Now let’s see what happens to U.S. influence when these same countries abolish their own armies.

Let’s see what happens to the U.S. hand in Haitian affairs when the country has finally rid itself of its army and strong millitary tradition.

Let’s see what happens when we all realize that Lady Liberty is simply a gold digging broad who is out for the blood and money, and that the U.S. is only out for all the arms in the world.

The Anti-empire

Uncategorized,

Originally posted here.

“What would happen now? The great imperial system had been completed, Black unity had been achieved among numerous language groups on one of the widest scales in history, from Zambia down to South Africa. cities of stone dotted the land, the Zimbabwe cities north and south were the deathless symbols of a people’s greatness….

….The Emperor Matope also left the country with a great organized religion with a powerful and formally organized priesthood, something unusual in Africa outside of ancient Egypt, Ethiopia, and Abyssinia….

But would there be unity now that the last of the two great personalities around whom unity revolved had silently stolen away in the shadows of the Great Zimbabwe, gone forever? The question arises whenever a great leader passes; political psychology and mass psychology are crucially combined….

There were unifying factors which Matope left behind in his great empire. one was that same organized religion led by a highly advanced and literate priesthood…. The other important factor that should have made unity imperative was the greater prosperity that would flow from economic interdependence and close commercial relations between the constituent states and provinces. The great system of roads and highways, instead of being recaptured by the bush and forests after serving their initial military purpose, could have been converted into permanent national highways, crisscrossing the Empire, and thus serving as the indispensable communication links for administration, trade, travels by the people and, in short, unification. Other factors that should have been a solid foundation for black unity were the similarity of their social institutions and the absolute sameness of their constitutional system.

Yet, with Matope’s death the Empire began to break up. Why? Notwithstanding all the forces mentioned above that should have made for unity and stability, the actual fact is that the traditional African political system was fundamentally and structurally anti-empire. The very circumstances of the endless process of segmentation, of forever splintering off to form little independent mini-states, developed a built-in disunity, reinforced by the attending growth of different languages. But self-gevernment or chiefdom was a way of life, not a theory. Chiefs and Elders, as we have seen, were leaders, advisors and representatives of the people, and not their rulers. The same operating principle prevailed when a group of states united to form a kingdom and kingdoms united to form an empire, but with a disturbing difference: Centralization tended to erode local authority, transferring chiefs from the control of their people to the control of the central government. In the case of conquered territories this change was abrupt and painful. And it was one of the principal resons for later rebellions and the break-up of kingdoms and empires. Therefore, let us say it again, to say that Arabs and Europeans were solely or even mainly responsible for the destruction of all great African states would be glossing over or attempting to ignore the principal internal factor: disunity. What the whites did, Asians and Europeans, was to appraise this continent-wide disunity and “cash in” on it to the fullest extent possible. They did not have to divide and conquer even, for the Blacks were already divided, just as though they were waiting for the foreign conquerors to come.”

Chancellor Williams, The Destruction of Black Civilization: “Great Issues of a Race from 4500 B.C. to 2000 A.D., Third World Press, 1987

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From what I’ve noticed so far, such a situation can be related to today’s Africa and how it is constituted.

Considering that sub-Saharan Africa’s traditional political outlook has always been “every chiefdom for himself”, I wonder if that’s one of the major reasons for why human rights are not regarded by most regimes down there. I mean, first off, these countries were former European colonies who were then given their “independence”, but did you ever notice that, except for Eritrea, Namibia and Sudan, there has never been a country in Africa that gained independence from a neighboring African nation?

Eastern Nigeria, a.k.a. Biafra, is an oil-rich area, with so much petroleum-based potential that the region, by itself, should have the same standard of living as Singapore. However, when this area, which is predominately Igbo, decided to secede from Nigeria in reaction to the pogroms against other Igbos who were living in other cities throughout Nigeria by members of the Hausa ethnicity, which resides mostly in northern Nigeria, which is known for being a stronghold of Muslim fundamentalists who have installed sharia law in most of the northern states’ governments, they were, after three years (1967-1970), forced back into the Nigerian fold, at the cost of well over a million lives, and billions of US dollars in property damage.

Also, when copper-rich Katanga province decided to secede from the recently-made-“independent” DRC within the first 5 years of independence (1960-65), that region also was forced back into line by both Congolese and UN troops, after one of the absolute worst examples of general UN incompetency in Third World conflicts.

When Eritrea made a bid for independence in the 1960’s, it took them over 30 long, torturous, bloody years before that bid was granted by the government in Addis Ababa (in 1993). When Namibia made a similar bid for independence from apartheid-era South Africa, not only did it take decades for that bid to finally be recognized (in 1990), but that bid was also tied inextricably with the civil war in neighboring Angola, a civil war that involved the intrigues of the Cold War in the strangest manners (the USSR sending aid to the Angolans and, by turn, the SWAPO independence fighters in Namibia; Cuba sending its own troops to help fight UNITA and the South African Army in the Angolan hinterland; South Africa helping UNITA in Angola while fighting SWAPO in Namibia; and it goes on).

Sudan and its southern rebels have finally signed a peace deal with each other, ending, hopefully and thankfully, 21 years of conflict. The South had sought secession from Sudan because of the domineering ways of the autocrats in Khartoum, and the long-sought-after deal has made a particular provision that may give ultimate credence to the bid (The South has the right to secede from Sudan if conditions do not improve within the next 6 years between the government and the region).

So, why is it that it takes the loss of human life to keep these nations together? Why is it that these nations, on a general scale, have not exercised a deep respect for human rights (despite the constant berations by the heads of state of these nations upon the West for colonization and slavery), and have violated such rights NUMEROUS times in order to keep their national institutions or personalities intact from infracture by the masses? And why is it that secessionist movements have never been allowed to develop in sub-Saharan Africa, even though the act of secession would actually be better for that region?

Is it because of the transplanted European mentality that empires are meant to last as long as they can be preserved (combined with “the end justifies the means”)? Is it because the regions where secession is beginning to be seen as a good idea are economically viable (even potential-wise), and thus would be enough to fight for, on the central government’s part?

And if that is the case, then are such mentalities as the aforementioned the kinds of things that the traditional African political outlook was actually AIMING TO AVOID?

I mean, if the chiefs were tending toward so-called “balkanization”, then consider that it wasn’t necessarily for the sake of the chief, but rather for the people themselves (and then I begin to see the light). If a nation has to preserve its institutions or borders or personalities with the sacrifice of human life, rights, or property, then such things are erroneous and worthless. National unity is bullshit if ordinary citizens who seek for some form of self-determination are jailed, tortured, or murdered. National unity is hogwash if private interests are put up at the forefront of priority rather than public need. Empires are not worth the preservation if humanity and human need is actively spurned by the government.

So basically, the African people are basically anti-empire, quite the oppposite of their European counterparts. To the traditional approach, unity is needed in time of common distress, interest, or cause, but otherwise, tiny sovereignties in Africa would actually do better by themselves, if allowed to go their own ways. So, really, the European approach toward things like politics isn’t necessarily the greatest thing after all.

And the more that such is realized, the better off that Africa will be with itself and, hopefully, the world.