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CounterPunch
February
19, 2003
Storm Warning!
Imperialist
Gangs Stalk the Planet
by GLORIA BERGEN
Talk about the insanity of our ruling class--and
no, I'm not talking about their joint war meetings on whether
to slaughter 100,000 innocent people in Iraq. I'm talking about
the British Columbia government's threat to charge a woman $100,000
for patting a whale! "The behaviour of humans is getting
dangerous for the whale," said RCMP Cpl. Jackie Olsen after
her arrest.
Let's get this straight. It's okay that
the brutal whaling industry has slaughtered whales to near extinction.
And, it's not a big offence for a profitable industry to hunt
the mammals down with spear and rifles until the seas churn red
with blood? And then, when the whales are no longer viable as
a commodity, it becomes a crime to befriend and stroke a whale
in Nootka Sound, Gold River, B.C.
Where were the bloody cops when the whales
were being hunted down to extinction? Out of nine countries that
passed a moratorium banning the whaling industry in 1990, two
continue to whale commercially. And you bet your anti-war button
that if whales suddenly came back in the millions, that cute
little whale that the woman patted might be the first one speared
in a government backed revival of commercial whaling.
What's really dangerous is the behaviour
of the global ruling class towards our entire planet.
Imperialism, the highest level of capitalism
has ravaged our oceans, polluted our atmosphere, raped and plundered
our planet. They have laid waste our forests, our mountains,
our streams, atmosphere and our lands.
With economic crisis facing Europe in
the late 1400's gangs of thieves headed by the monarchs of France
and Spain sent their murderous bandits out to scout for new sources
of wealth.
Not satiated by the enormous booty of
gold, jewels and silver they wretched from the earth and the
peoples who owned it the profligates slaughtered the citizens
of the Caribbean who rebelled against the imperialist's mad lust
for wealth. If swords alone could not bring the natives to supplicate
themselves at their new masters feet, the imperialist force's
biological weapons in the guise of viruses and bacterial agents
carried on their filthy bodies did the trick. The vagabonds unleashed
a wave of terror: millions succumbed to influenza, small pox
and measles, thereby weakening resistance to the Ravishers.
Across the entire Caribbean, the locals
who survived their weapons of mass destruction fought to the
death against their oppressors. On the peaceful Island of the
Dominica Republic, the gentle Tainos committed suicide rather
than live under the debauchers who enslaved and humiliated them.
In less than the lifetime of one person, an entire people were
extinct--gone forever.
With no global protests, no international
outcry--the imperialist gangs claimed as their right the authority
to burglarize and plunder the entire planet for the next 600
years.
By 1505, only thirteen years after the
great imperialist scout Columbus had spotted the opportunities
in the new world, the imperialist gangs realized that they had
pilfered all that the earth had hidden for millennia in the Caribbean.
They then tore open the fabric of humanity by hunting down, capturing
and creating slaves of humans from Africa. Transported to the
New World millions of men, women and children died on the brutal
ocean voyages. Those who lived may have wished they had died.
But, like common street gangs who eventually
fight one another over the booty--turf wars arise. The gangs
fighting for Isabella of Spain didn't just make out like bandits
with all of the Caribbean's gold, silver and precious stones.
When the French imperialist thugs, headed by Louis XII got wind
of the incredible racket opening up in the New World, his gang
arrived enmasse and tried to wrestle control over the region.
Fighting one another in bloodthirsty battles, they both continued
to pillage, rape and destroy civilizations, cultures and societies
of the Caribbean. Soon, other thugs from Portugal and the United
States began to seek out their piece of the pie. They too joined
in raping and pillaging the land and the people, while fighting
each other for their ill-gotten gains.
The imperialist thugs in their bloodthirsty
quest for wealth continue to debase our earth, and the people
that share it. With their gangs now in the form of corporations
and protected by a small group of leaders with military forces
beyond Columbus's wildest dream, they roam the planet and our
atmosphere in a never-ending quest to dominate all that they
see. Using technology unheard of in the 1500's each imperialist
gang-leader--Blair, Bush, Chretien, Chirac, Putin etc., marks
and protects their own turf--with boundaries they as a class
have created.
With the wealth of the planet nearly
exhausted, there is still the promise of black liquid gold in
the Middle East to grab. The United States, not content to equally
share the bounty with the imperialist gangs of Europe or the
rest of the world, is on the warpath for control of that oil.
To totally control the vast oil fields of the Middle East requires
global domination. The thugs with their leader Bush know they
must strategically transform the Middle East--with its enormous
supply of black gold--into turf that they and they alone control.
Splits and turf-wars within the imperialist gangs in Europe and
across the world are once again coming to the forefront of history.
NATO and the The UN Security Council are split--for now--each
gang reluctant to give up any forseeable economic gains in IRAQ.
But unlike in the 1500's in the Caribbean,
today there is a growing global movement of resistance to imperialism.
We are no longer ill informed, all trusting dubes for any stranger
that walks up to us and offers us a trinket or glass bead for
our wealth. Communication between citizens of the world is at
an all-time level with millions upon millions of people around
the world using the Internet and our voices to build bridges
between people and nations. We have a highly educated and technologically
literate global working class with the power to withhold the
ultimate source of all wealth of the imperialist gangs--labour
power. We are the source of their greatest fear. We must use
that fear against them--demonstrate against war, rally against
imperialism, act against oppression, strike for humanity's sake.
600 years of tyranny is too long to be ruled by gangs. Their
turf wars must end--imperialism must be destroyed--by destroying
their gangs and the power they have over the global citizenry.
In the end, our whales will thank us
by letting us pet them anytime we want.
Gloria Bergen
is an environmental health and safety writer and presenter. She
lives in Toronto, Ontario and can be reached at bergengloria@hotmail.com
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February 15
/ 16, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
Colin
Powell and the Great "Intelligence Fraud"
Rep. Dennis
Kucinich
The Whole World is Watching
Edward Said
A Monumental Hypocrisy
Wouter Hijink
Report from Amsterdam
"War: Do Not Feed!"
Linda Heard
At Last! Proud to be British
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Taking a Stand on Iraq
Robert Fisk
The Case Against War
Lev Grinberg
Lessons from Israel
A War Without Legitimacy
Chris Floyd
Cold Fronts:
Bush War Profits
Ahmad Faruqui
Stepping Back from the Brink of War
Norman Madarasz
French Kisses from the Citizens of France
Adam Lebowitz
Scott Ritter in Tokyo
Kurt Nimmo
Bring Us the Head of Osama bin Laden
Forrest Hylton
The Revolt in Bolivia
Col. Dan Smith
Irrelevance and Credibility:
Bush, NATO and the UN
Wayne Madsen
The Lies of Tom Lantos
Ranjit Hoskote
The Invisible Modernities of the Islamic World
Emily Zitter-Smith
Who's Safe Now?
An American in Cairo
Rich Procter
Anybody Remember the Powell Doctrine?
Poets Basement:
Eliot
Katz, Scott Handleman, and Bruce Tomczak
Website of the Weekend
Anti-War
Posters
Read
Whiteout and Find Out
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
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by Alexander
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