You know, I recently read the book by Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile about Nicaragua under Ortega’s rule and the American hypocrisy which surrounded their planned invasion of it. In layman’s terms, the bandit was playing the sheriff- I was pretty apalled when I read that Reagan had his ambassador tell the Nicaraguan president to ‘just do what we say’. Plus, the elections were the fairest in all Central America at the time and America violated international law by funding rebels from Honduras and killing thousands of innocent civilians for voting for a leftist party during the Cold War. The Peruvian Poet Mario Vargas Llosa said he’d rather have ‘ballots than bullets’. The US is a superpower, sure. And any tiger will roar occasionally. But compared to Britain, France, or the USSR, the USA doesn’t have any tact when it roars. This is quite the problem. Colonialism is never good, but if it is ever done, such a process ought to be administered by a pipe-smoking, moustachioed, monocled gentleman in Pith Helmet rather than a loudmouthed, tactless bible-basher. American Imperialism. Quite an odd thing from the nation of liberty, isn’t it? Guam, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Hawaii, all were forcibly seized by the US at some point.
Oh, or should I instead call this United States Imperialism. As I dare say all the Bolivians, Canadians, Venezuelans, Peruvians, Paraguayans, Surinamese, Guyanese, Ecuadorians, Colombians, Brazilians, Chileans, Panamanians, Nicaraguans, Costa Ricans, Belizeans, Salvadoreans, Guatemalans, Hondurans and Uraguayans would certainly agree. All too often, I believe, do we forget that the USA is not America. If it was, we wouldn’t need to use the genitive case for the United States of America now, would we?
As for imperialism? Pah! Last thing I noticed in the Serb-Kosovo affair was that the EU offered to speed up the application process of Serbia into the Union if it didn’t make a fuss over Kosovo. Ha! That’s not the EU’s place now, is it? Surely the men and women in Brussels beneath their spiffy blue and yellow starry flag should be worrying about Belgium, and whether they’ll be Walloons or Flemings, rather than something which is frankly for the Serbs and Albanians to sort out.
The Balkans becoming Balkanized? Whatever next? Sliced bread?
No. What we need is an independent Cornwall and Wessex. Celtic Power!
Mehmet ap 12
