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11/14/2004:

"Cote D’Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea"

Same old story, same old song and dance

by Rootsie

100 years ago, Britain and France were the great imperialist powers on the globe. They controlled most of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, in addition to the Caribbean and South Pacific.

Even though it granted independence to Cote D’Ivoire in 1960, and to its other colonies around the same time, so-called ‘Francophone’ countries in Africa remained tied to France economically and politically, which is a nice way of saying that France in effect has the last word in those places, realizes enormous profit from their resources, and intervenes whenever it feels like it ‘to protect French interests.’ (Imperialist France Destroys an African Air Force)

This week shows once again that France has always been a unilateral imperialist. Did it check with the UN before invading Cote D’Ivoire?

Did France not actually obstruct UN forces trying to intervene in the Rwandan genocide in 1994, carried out by the Hutu government it had installed? Did it not carry on atmospheric nuclear testing in French Polynesia, ignoring the fact that the people there were having fallout rained on them, blowing up the Greenpeace Rainbow Warrior when it went to investigate? Did it not collaborate with the US to destabilize the Aristide government in Haiti and forcefully remove Aristide from the country?

The laughable idea that France was nobly opposed to the US invasion of Iraq only has play with people who are woefully naïve and ignorant of history: the US peace movement for example. France is always watching out for its own interests, and the prospect of “full spectrum dominance” by the US could not go unopposed, not as long as France couldn’t get a piece of the action. As Haiti and the Balkans demonstrate, France has no problem working side-by-side with the United States for motives far from moral. France has been a rogue state for 200 years now.

And now we hear from Jack Straw that Britain knew of the coup plot in Equatorial Guinea weeks before the attempt was carried out. (guardian.co.uk) Poor EG finds itself with the third largest oil reserve in Africa, and can look forward to years of instability. Of course Britain’s knowledge of the plan, orchestrated in part by Sir Mark Thatcher, raises the question as to its involvement. Spain made a stab at a coup there a few months ago too. Imperialist is as imperialist does. Whether a European government is liberal, conservative, or leftist, all factions are united in what they see as the defense of Western Civilization, which translates on the ground to illegal invasions and interventions wherever they perceive economic and political interest, which is practically everywhere dark-skinned people live. Noblesse oblige, you know.

The EU announced that it is seeking normalized relations with Cuba. (nytimes.com) I wonder if this is a symbolic gesture of its intentions to throw monkey-wrenches into US machinations wherever it can. No doubt the old-world imperialists’ sense of decorum is insulted by the United States’ savage displays of brawn in Iraq. But really, it’s a question of style over substance. In the end, the effects of either US or European imperialism will be the same for the victims.