EARLIER this week French aircraft bombed the positions of the anti-imperialist forces in the Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast) led by Laurent Gbagbo, while French special forces stormed Gbagbo’s headquarters arresting him, and slapping him in the face to teach the black African leader that the traditional masters were back!
At the same time, the French imperialist Foreign Minister, Juppe, spoke out about NATO’s alleged lack of enthusiasm for destroying all of Colonel Gadaffi’s armoured forces, and demanded much more intensive action.
France’s partner in imperialist crime, the UK imperialists also spoke up and acted, with Hague dismissing the Libyan acceptance of the OAU peace proposals out of hand, declaring that it was unacceptable that Gadaffi would remain to see in any changes.
At the same time, the British military gloated over the fact that the government is now prepared to find unlimited funding to finance the Libyan war, starting with £200m to bring back Typhoon and Harrier jets, Naval frigates, Nimrod aircraft, and most probably the Ark Royal aircraft carrier. This is to be able to match the French, bomb for bomb, troop for troop and ship for ship in the new Grab for Africa.
French and British imperialism are being driven by the world crisis of the capitalist system to launch a truly desperate effort to recolonise Africa through the most cynically ruthless military operations, masked by an alleged devotion to securing human rights for all.
The obscene propaganda is no different from that put out at the 1885 Berlin Conference that organised the original ‘Grab for Africa’.
Then, the would-be imperialists vowed to ‘bind themselves to watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material well-being . . . instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilisation.’
Thus were born the colonial regimes that would enslave a whole continent and annihilate tens of millions of Africans.
With the US busy at home, and also in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Anglo-French think that they have been handed a chance to rebuild themselves as great powers by seizing back the territories from which they were driven out after the Second World War, at a very heavy cost to the African people.
The reality is that they are prepared to murder just as many millions as they did post-1885 to get their hands on Libyan oil once again, as well as on the Cote d’Ivoire’s diamonds and cocoa, and the diamonds, uranium, oil, gas, wood, coal and other riches that are there for the taking, as far as the imperialists are concerned, in Northern, Western and Central Africa.
The Ivory Coast is the largest economy of the eight-country western franc zone, whose CFA franc currency was pegged to the French franc, and latterly, the euro.
However, the UK-French imperialists will never be able to restore their power in Africa and turn it into one big slave camp as the Belgians did to the Congo.
They will be defeated in Libya and Central and Western Africa by millions of fighters who are determined never to be slaves again.
They will also be opposed by their working classes at home who will have to pay the very heavy costs of this attempt to restore imperialism, and will very quickly learn the truth of Lenin’s great slogan ‘the enemy is at home’.
The News Line declares that the French and UK working class are in the same trench as the Ivory Coast and Libyan workers. Their victory is our victory and vice versa.
In that spirit, the UK working class must advance to bring down the coalition and bring in a workers government that will carry out socialist policies at home and abroad.
