Miles Report No. 65 - Monument to Capitalism - attention Melanie Joly

D’abord, felicitations pour le debut des ‘manieres ensoleilees.’ Ca marche bien pour le monde domestique - en particulier pour engager une action commune vers les autochtones. Si on ne peut pas s’ameloire les conditions chez nous, c’est pas possible de faire la meme chose d’ailleurs. Aussi, la crise des refugiees marche bien, et ca vaut mieux a cause du ralentissement du processus.

Et avant de faire mon critique au sujet ci-dessus, je vous envoie mes pensees distinguees pour un Joyeux Noel et une Bonne Annee. J’espere que l’annee nouvelle se trouvera comme une annee de paix ce que s’epandra partout au monde.

Monument to capitalism

I watched the announcement from our Minister of Canadian Heritage, Melanie Joly, announce that their would be changes to the “monument to the victims of communism.” I was truly disappointed to learn that the project was not simply scrapped, as it demonstrates both the hypocrisy of our society and the obvious political manipulations of fear and hatred (now aimed at Russia).

Okay, communism did not work out the way it was idealized, and became simply another form of dictatorship. However to truly see the hypocrisy, consider why we do or do not build a monument to the victims of capitalism.

Victims of capitalism?

They are legion, and they go unrecognized.

The First World War (WW I) at its base was a war between capitalist empires fighting for control of the world’s resources, fighting in order to better divide the world into spheres of control - called empires. All the empirical participants at the time - Great Britain, France, Germany, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Ottomans - were all capitalist societies wanting to spread their domination of more and more people and resources for the enrichment of the homeland. It was not about ”our way of life”, or freedom or democracy and god was claimed to be on everybody's’ side, it was not about “civilization” - quite the hypocrisy to use war and occupation/invasion as a “civilizing” construct - it was pure and simple about power and money, the two dominant factors in capitalism.

The Second World War was really the last battle of the First World War, as the Versailles Peace agreement generally satisfied no one - except perhaps the emerging American empire which benefited financially the most from it - and certainly did not live up to the Wilsonian ideals of all peoples being able to decide democratically their national identity.

20 million is the accepted number for deaths during WW I, not including those that perished from the flu that followed in the rubble of this capitalist disaster. WW II deaths amounted to at least 60 million by best estimates, rising to 80 million if war related starvation and disease are accounted for. Of those, 27 million were Russian, the communists/Soviets/Russians without whom WW II would have had a very different outcome.

So far, a total of 100 million from two capitalist wars. But there are many more, and most are associated with the empires of Great Britain-United States.

The U.S. inherited the global imperial title from Great Britain, and along with other children of the empire, has destroyed millions of lives around the world, maybe not in as great a number as during the world wars, but very significant numbers.

First off, were the wars of genocide and ethnic cleansing against the native populations of the Americas. Later during the 20th Century, the many smaller wars around the world were mostly incidents of protection of corporate interests under the guise first of wall as a struggle against communism, morphing at the end of the century into a war on ‘terror’ that knows no bounds.

Millions were killed in Vietnam/Laos/Cambodia. An estimated one million “communists” were killed in the Philippines and Indonesia, mostly peasants simply wanting some land to live on and farm. Thousands have been killed in South America, the ‘disappeared’ of Argentina, and the killings by Pinochet - both CIA sponsored - being the prime examples.

Millions have died in Africa, mainly in central Africa - the Congo/Zaire, Rwanda, Burundi, Katanga province, Namibia, Angola - before and after decolonization. Most of these are a result of capitalists wanting to extract resources of all kinds with the former Belgian Congo being the ‘poster child’ of unfettered capitalist control of the region.

Currently these wars in Africa continue almost unnoticed by western media. Many Canadian companies operate in these areas of Africa - mostly in the mining sector - supported by mercenaries and corrupted governments.

Alongside Africa, the Middle East has been torn apart by the imperial interests of the United States. These interests involve oil and gas, but more importantly they involve the supremacy of the U.S.petro-dollar and the containment-deconstruction of Russia and China as geopolitical competitors/opponents in the world.

The millions killed as a result of capitalist wars are accompanied by the many millions of displaced persons, internal to their countries or external as refugees/immigrants to other countries.

The details are readily available, but presented in terms of glorious wars and soldiers ‘sacrificing’ themselves for peace and freedom. I leave you with these comments from Major General Smedley Darlington Butler (1881-1940, U.S. Marine Corp):

"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."

So yes, go ahead and erect a memorial to the victims of communism, but at the same time erect a memorial to the victims of capitalism as well.

Perhaps Yoko Ono and John Lennon are a better way to part:

And so this is Christmas
For weak and for strong
For rich and the poor ones
The road is so long.
And so happy Christmas
For black and for white
For yellow and red ones
Let's stop all the fight.
A very merry Christmas
And a happy New Year
Let's hope it's a good one
Without any fear.