Should Jamaica become a Republic of Reparations?

If the Jamaican people vote to become a republic, this is their right and cannot be denied. These people deserve to be a fully independent nation if it is their desire, established in a referendum.

Jamaica ‘doesn't want’ Prince William amid slavery protests. However, does pleading for reparations really begin a country on a path to greatness and independence. Others would think self-sufficiency is a better path than such dependency and the request for financial lifelines from the colonial power.

Britain can afford to pay reparations to Jamaica, and such a gift would be good for relations between the countries. However, the idea can be quite easily disputed by those of us inclined, perhaps, to overthink things.

Everyone is an injured party

Reparations for historical injustices of this type are hard to justify, and the arguments for such a thing expose themselves to compelling counterarguments. Does Jamaica want all of Britain's actions to be undone, which would include the territory's creation and population in the first place? Will Spain pay its share of reparations for the period 1509–1655 when slaves were moved there and exploited by them? The UK could argue that removing Spanish rule helped to pave the way for getting rid of slavery eventually, and can try to assign a value to this action as part of the reparations that should be deducted.

What of the indigenous people, the Arawak? Are they not a wronged party, and will they not receive their own reparations from the current majority of the population for being usurped by them? The Jamaican population were victims of history and didn't have any choice but to usurp these people, but then neither did people in the UK have any choice about being citizens of an imperial power. The indigenous people may deserve an autonomous region in a federated state, so they can properly assert any demands they might have.

The Scots make the case that they were colonised, and many Irish in Northern Ireland still consider themselves colonised by Britain. Should their taxes also help compensate Jamaica? What if the United Kingdom eventually dissolves or parts break away? If we break up as a country, is there any party left to pay the reparations? Should we all hunt down descendants of the Norman colonisers who started the pattern of conquest and exploitation back in 1066, to demand reparations from whatever personal estate they own?

Many British people are Black, and the identity of the British has profoundly changed over the centuries. Are their taxes equally going to go on reparations? If not, can others be exempt on the basis of genetics test results? Or will someone have to judge each person in some sort of test, and decide if they look or sound enough like an imperialist?

Jamaica should choose greatness

If Jamaica becomes independent, it should set itself on the path of greatness, not the path of begging. They should ask for nothing from the British, because asking just reaffirms their place as the colonised and sets them up for greater dependency. A financial lifeline to a population of victims can be cut off at any moment, and is hardly a blessing. Does Jamaica want to be vulnerable to British sanctions in the event that we decide to meddle, and does it want to rely on us and our own American masters for defence and security too?

Perhaps there is an irreconcilable contradiction between being a country created and populated by Britain as a political entity, and then accusing Britain of being at fault for woes it needs to compensate for. We are talking about a country that's value arose during British rule, and trying to ascertain what part of it was stolen by not repaying people for their labour. But if you calculate that value, is it not offset by the rest of the value (buildings, infrastructure, the financial value of having links to the British Empire, et cetera)? Much of what the British government has already given could be considered invaluable reparations already. The immeasurable value of letting the country exist at all goes beyond the value of any possible reparations. There are infinite numbers of nations that cannot gain any reparations simply because Britain did not allow them to exist, for example, all the countries the UK could have created in India rather than leaving it as one territory.

One could divide almost all of Britain's imperial wealth and splendour and all things that were derived from ill-gotten gains, and give it to every nation wronged by Britain, and every country could be accused similarly and ordered to compensate this or that country, and we would tie ourselves in knots. It is easier to have a fresh start on the basis that what is done is done, and cannot be undone.

A newly formed nation makes a clean break with the past, entering the world as a new player with a world to win, like so many others. The United States, for example, received no compensation from the British whatsoever, and yet we ended up being indebted to them for the abundance of help the United States gave us. If the United States is the master of slave Britain today, should not Jamaica approach them rather than us?

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Globalist condescension and localist resistance in Belize

Belize is a thrall of the United Kingdom and the United States, which comes at a price to the interests of the local people. We will see local interests disregarded and the government avoiding strong action to protect them.

The anti-colonial People's United Party (PUP) ruling Belize is acquiescent, presiding over a country caught in the slavery of dependencia, being only a source of cheap exports to colonial masters and a paradise to foreign exploiters.

Eco-imperialism

There has long been sufficient cause to suspect that patronising, moralising Western-led approaches to ecology and the environment would produce new tensions along the familiar lines of class and nation. There is no doubt that such a trend was already in motion. Too many an environmentalist simply assumes that the indigenous people are inherently on their side, and that the only conflict is with the proponents of some polluting industry. This simplistic view is false.

Eco-imperialists may be as much, nay perhaps more, of a long-term hindrance to the independence and dignity of colonised people than polluting industrialists.

We see this tension illustrated in the protest over the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's quickly cancelled visit to the village of Indian Creek, addressed in the last post. That originated in the royal-backed global conservation organisation Flora and Fauna International barring villagers from subsisting on their own land.

Globalist-localist tension

Despite the environmentalist slogan to "think globally, act locally", there is an inherent conflict between these two. The international elite primarily think globally, and they purposefully obfuscate or dismiss the interests of the locals in almost every case. The local is always subordinate to the global, for them, and even the formulation of the above slogan reveals this - the global comes before the local.

It is perhaps a sense of the above problem that accounts for why the pejorative "globalist" has come into increased use by those who reject what they see as an international elite. Most of us will not think global and act local but think local and act either local or global, depending on what we can do. Whether or not noble ends can be achieved in a globalist sense should depend entirely on the consent of the local people, not on the fiat of preachy and condescending globetrotting elites.

The silencing of the local

There is a pejorative for those who put their local interests first, too: "NIMBY" (Not In My Back Yard). This term is typical of modern liberal expression, with its willingness to assault, denigrate, and try to eliminate the people and their sensibilities rather than seeking to represent or placate them.

Arrogant liberalism in its present form is directly contributing to an emerging eco-imperialism, by creating a sense of moral certitude and impunity that gives rise to the inconsiderate actions of organisations like the prestigious FFI. For all the talk of decolonisation in the US and the UK, the victims of colonial injustice, such as those villagers in Indian Creek, are still marginalised and it is almost impossible for us to hear their voices. A prejudiced Western-centric megaphone is now the sum of the international media, and it cares nothing for reality, only for perception.

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Did Belize have an eco-imperialist encounter?

The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were forced to change their plan to visit Belize, in response to a protest at the village of Indian Creek.

While those in the UK may prefer to read the story as a refutation of the monarchy, it wasn't. Villagers were more upset by the lack of coordination of the visit with their community than the idea of royals being present. What the people of the village seem to have a problem with is actually the ongoing inconsiderate and imperialistic approach taken to their land in the name of conservation - an issue the international media and liberal greenwash ministers everywhere would prefer to sidestep.

A fine example of eco-imperialism

According to a local report, the prestigious Flora and Fauna International (FFI, of which the Duke of Cambridge is a patron), "barred the villagers from using the land surrounding Indian Creek for their subsistence".

Based on the same report, Oscar Requena, Area Representative for Toledo West, seems to have responded with a pragmatic call for the villagers and the international conservation organisation to "come together", and acknowledged villagers are "in need of additional land to be able to expand and I believe the only way to work it out is that the company or the private owners that own those lands have to take those things into account."

Weak or no government intervention

Consider the difference in power between a large international organisation, of which the Duke of Cambridge is a patron (he apparently intended to pass their village on that very visit, yet kept villagers in the dark about it, hence the protest), and the villagers, whose exact views or demands have not even been published clearly anywhere. Requena undoubtedly means well, but leaving villagers to fight it out with a large international organisation and its British patrons, perhaps in a court, is unfair and can only end unfavourably for the villagers.

What is most suitable in comparable situations is the intervention of a strong and independent national government, but is that what Belize has?

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With NATO or against NATO, no neutrality allowed?

Former Bolivian president Evo Morales described NATO as something that should be eliminated, linking the alliance to imperialistic wars and the plundering of natural resources.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation is popular, out of habit, among the more cohesive mass of simpletons whose votes settle the outcomes of elections in countries such as my own Great Britain. However, in fact, the US-led bloc is detrimental to the national interests of any country whose obligations lie elsewhere abroad and not in propping up America-centric strategies.

The Bushism and Neoconservatism of NATO

An increasingly immature and intellectually bankrupt attitude is guiding Western foreign policy, with leaders seemingly less and less familiar with the normal behaviour expected in diplomacy. There seems to be absolutely no appreciation of the complexity of other countries' foreign policy, as Western governments think in black and white terms. You are with them, or you are against them.

You are either supporting democracy, in which case you support all countries joining NATO or being forced to comply with the US government's policies (what Pakistan's Imran Khan called being their slaves), or you are siding with the dictators and the terrorists. One must collude with and enchain their nation to the American master, or they are to be condemned and their legitimacy somehow questioned.

The reign of the neoconservatives, who gave rise to George W. Bush's maxim, "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists", overrides all Western foreign policy thought, rather than being rejected as it should have been when it led to the terrorist blowback problems in Afghanistan and Iraq. The NATO powers are increasingly obsessed by the idea that everyone must join them, and that there can be no neutrality anymore. Even Switzerland seems to have somehow been pressured into aborting its neutral status.

What is happening now poses an existential threat to the Global South. The US will demand that they all join NATO, whether officially or unofficially, aligning with the West. Those who do not ally with them will be deemed to be authoritarian despots - a qualification that is met solely if you do not support American military deployment on your territory.

The NATO of the South

The 120 countries of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) are all perpetual candidates for violent regime-change and chaos, as the US supported in Ukraine in 2014 in an action that ultimately led to the current conflict underway in that country. What the assassinated former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi called a "NATO of the South" was and is a necessity, because the non-aligned countries remain the most vulnerable to wars of aggression and regime-change attempts by the West.

Both Muammar Gaddafi and Hugo Chavez, the latter also being an advocate of South-South cooperation and mutual defence, perished under conditions that suggest the United States gave the orders for their deaths. If true, it is because, even without Russia and China, a cooperative Global South represents a potentially insurmountable military obstacle to the Western imperialism and parasitism against the sovereign natural resources of the colonised nations.

Yes, without being able to, metaphorically, suck the blood of the people of the Global South, the Global North and NATO are deprived of the raw materials that provide for their supreme military strength. They cannot have these countries outside their control and, in future, even nonalignment and pacifism in the oppressed South will be increasingly seen by NATO as hostile as the Western powers seek to enslave them as servants.

Pacifism is not the way. A good course for non-aligned countries is to build an intimidating network of defences to repel NATO attack, develop economic self-sufficiency to resist sanctions, and nationalise so as to return control of natural resources to the people.

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Decolonisation should mean decolonisation

The word decolonisation is often thrown around by highbrow people. As if without realising that actual decolonisation (as in, dismantling the actual colonies) is far from complete, it is applied instead to things as innocuous as language.

The Western lifestyle, including the phone you may be using right now, is still dependent on exploiting colonised nations and preventing their development. Right now.

Child labour is still rampant in many parts of the world. Countries are still prey to exploitative Western multinational corporations that extract their rich mineral resources, returning very little to the people of the land. Despite this being a familiar trope in movies such as Avatar, it is very much a reality and those who tout their progressive leanings when they take power are doing nothing about it.

Hyper-aggressions of global exploitation

Western governments place sanctions on uncompetitive countries - a clear exercise of the vestiges of their colonial might when it comes to trade. Far from doing anything about this racism, self-styled liberals and prominent proponents of inclusivity who reach positions of power in government become complicit in the oppression.

While racial "micro-aggressions" are complained about in Western workplaces, the racial hyper-aggressions of those who exploit the African continent are what make those privileged workplaces possible at all. To strip countries of their mineral wealth is to steal from under the feet of colonised peoples, inflicting grave hardships upon them for the sake of our own comfort.

Ongoing struggles

Let us focus on the French, since they are probably the most blatant of the Europeans in their neocolonialism and seek to aggressively assimilate those who belong to other cultures.

In the Pacific overseas collectivity of New Caledonia, the French viciously hold the whole territory against the wishes of the indigenous Kanak people, as the local colonial French population serves to counter their repeated referendums for national independence. The desire to be a recognised sovereign nation was expressed by the Kanaks in a 2020 referendum, followed by another marred referendum in 2021 that was boycotted by many of them. France keeps the territory so its companies can rob the abundant nickel available there, ten percent of the world's total, with the mineral having electronic and military applications that serve to bolster France's retained imperial military might.

America is equally at fault. Elon Musk covets the nickel in New Caledonia for the production of electric cars. The same Elon Musk who openly expressed smug approval of the American-backed coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so as to reach the country's rich lithium deposits. Like nickel, lithium is key to the batteries that make electric cars viable. Such interference at the expense of colonised people suggests a pattern of behaviour that could end up washing Western environmentalists eventually in neocolonial bloodshed.

In Mali, the the French showed an eagerness to maintain a military presence ostensibly to fight against terrorism, and later issued harsh criticisms of the government, but many suspect their real motives lie in their desire to control its rich uranium. A country where that is certainly the case is Niger, where, despite continued poverty, the country's uranium is shipped to France.

The UK's neocolonialism is not quite so blatant, as the UK is invested in the United States as a successor to the British Empire and consequently tends to just interfere wherever the United States interferes and join it as its lackey. While it is rarely talked about in any formal sense, this is understood to include secretly undermining certain fellow Commonwealth countries where the US has an interest in destabilisation and disorder, and this includes Pakistan.

Unequal exchange

As well as plundering lands of the resources that are the God-given property of the colonised people, the economic core located in Western countries and societies prospers at the expense of poorer nations through unequal exchange. Expensive products are created in the economic core in Western countries and societies, whereas the mineral resources that go into them are merely extracted in the impoverished periphery or Global South.

The maintenance of the economic core at the expense of the economic periphery is the very reason we have the lifestyle we maintain, so there is no incentive to change it. And it is directly the result of colonialism, which turned these nations in Africa into mere mines and sources of raw materials that often offer little of any competitive nature compared with the finished products created in the West. The resulting trade, in which undeveloped countries merely produce coffee beans, fruit or raw materials and ship them off to the West, while the developed core is able to sell cars and electronic goods, is unfair and perpetually sustains the place of one side as exploited while the other is the exploiter.

Western leaders are unable to extend condemnation of racism or colonialism to include the injustice on the international and economic levels today, because the very prominence and strategic military advantage that allows them to exercise dominance over other states is derived from it. Even as they speak of aiding other nations selflessly from their podiums, they are nothing without this vestige of racist exploitation and slavery.

If we are to be opposed to racism, this cannot be separated from supporting all those who resist Western government and corporate theft of other countries' resources. It cannot be separated from resistance to the warmongers and interventionists, who have the same moral character as racists.

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