Since the demolition of the World Trade Center in New York City in 2001, the volume written about a so-called New World Order has been enormous. For those who mark the beginning of the New World Order in progress with the spectacle of Manhattan skyscrapers collapsing, this order of things or re-ordering of things is a relatively new phenomenon. It has become an obsession among those who for the first time seem to have noticed that something was not well with the world. But isn’t this really a matter of perspective?
Who remembers the new world order that began seventy years ago when the US regime consecrated its international reign of terror by dropping two atomic bombs on defenceless Japanese cities in 1945? Who remembers the new order that began with the murder of up to a million people by Suharto to establish the New Order in Indonesia in 1966?1 Who was not confused by the economic onslaught against newly decolonised countries caused by the US in 1971 and the Anglo-American oil cartel in 1973? Who counted the six days of war that established US-Israel domination over the Middle East? Who was able to resist the euphoria of 1989 when the so-called Cold War gave way to unchallenged US imperial violence throughout the world—beginning with the plunder of Eastern Europe and Russia led by Harvard mercenaries?2
Has the order of the world actually been renewed so many times? If a prize were given to the platitude of the last century it must go to the phrase “no one wanted war?” That is what most of us learned about the beginning of the Great War in 1914. After the US ruling class savoured its first serving of superiority over its European cousins in 1918, a new world order began, too. The “war to end war” became the first part of what one German political scientist called the second Thirty Years War, lasting until 1945.3
Pre WW II: Neuville-Saint-Vaast (approx. 44,830 burials) Photo: Zinsel
Throughout this entire process the only order that has ever been of literary, scholarly or journalistic interest has been the order “white” people create—an order which objectively seen has been nothing but a collective death sentence for the non-white world. In fact, that world order could be said to have begun in 1492: along with the feast of Native American genocide celebrated every fourth Thursday of November, 12 October is one of the high holy days of the white American empire. It commemorates the year in which Europeans began enslavement and extermination, plunder and pillage in the Western hemisphere.4
Ultimately imperial order has been created throughout history by the cross (torture) and the sword (death). However, while priests and soldiers remain the central figures in conquest, the new order created and re-created since 1492 has relied upon the merchant for empire to be fruitful and multiply, to benefit the conquerors.
There are times when one has to be topical—to talk about now—and then what is really needed is some history because without grasp of the past, it is impossible to comprehend, let alone act in, the present. There are also times to reflect on the future and then it is necessary to ask what is the nature of our present. The task is to be patient, circumspect and to consider as much of the world as is humanly possible to appreciate. No matter which of these questions one attempts to answer, the answer is always a problem for the individual, the person observing and writing or speaking.
So when I write briefly today I take note that the season in which whites on both sides of the Atlantic celebrate their greatest mass murders has already begun. The ecstasy, which the glory of US-European slaughter induces in the scribes and preachers of this ruling class, must be something akin to the eponymous street drug. Already complaints have been reported that the new leader of the British Labour Party will not share in the revelry of Remembrance Day.5 Next week, 25 September to be exact, the British Army can commemorate its first use of poison gas, while German and British brass can console themselves for a mere 80,000 casualties at the Battle of Loos. It is also the centennial of the mass murder of some half a million men in the Gallipoli campaign. However, in 1915 the fun was only just getting started.
One consolation indeed was that for nearly four years whites were so preoccupied killing each other that they did not have much time to kill in the rest of the world. Most of the non-white world (even then the bulk of the world’s population) was left to die from hunger and exhaustion—like the beneficiaries of Belgian civilisation in the Congo.6
Here is not the place for a long although useful reminder of the sordid and homicidal motives for the Great War. This is only a brief note.
If one wants to get an impression of the solace that our rulers gain from every new ordering of affairs, one need only visit some of the splendid marble orchards planted in France—for those whose remains could be recovered. It expresses quite simply what our rulers mean when they pray for peace.
- See John Pilger, The New Rulers of the World (2001).
- Jeffrey Sachs, (b. 1954) graduate of Harvard College and later Harvard professor, led the crusade to plunder Eastern Europe, when he began “advising” the Solidarity movement and Polish prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki in 1989. Sachs helped Boris Yeltsin to privatise most of the Soviet economy between 1991-93, creating and enriching the billionaire oligarchy that controls most of Russian industry and banking today. In 1935, the term Blitzkrieg (lightning war) first appeared in German military literature. Jeffrey Sachs launched shock therapy, the West’s infamous economic assault on Eastern Europe after the collapse of the GDR: Poland 1989-90, Slovenia 1991, Estonia 1992 and Russia by 1993…
- Sigmund Neumann, The Future in Perspective (1946) Neumann taught at Wesleyan University from 1934 – 1960 and was also a consultant to the OSS from 1944-45. The period from 1917 until today could be considered almost a century of Anglo-American war against Russia. The Thirty Years War (1618-1648) was superficially a religious war. England waged war against France for a century, 1337-1453. The Crusades—ostensibly religious wars too—beginning in 1096 continued until the end of the 14th century to enrich the Papacy, control the Middle Eastern trade routes, and conquer Europe for the business of Catholicism. The 19th, 20th and now the 21st centuries have been the Crusades for the business of Capitalism—ostensibly wars of “civilisation” – but still to protect Christendom, of course.
- 12 October, Columbus Day; Thanksgiving, prior to the US Civil War it was celebrated as a military victory in a fashion similar to the Day of the Vow (Geloftedag) on 16 December in apartheid South Africa.
- Anthony Lane, “The Corbyn Supremacy“, The New Yorker, September 2015; and also: Martin Robinson and Tom McTague, “His lack of respect is astonishing’: Battle of Britain heroes attack Corbyn for refusing to sing national anthem at memorial service (although he did get a free lunch out of it)”, Mail on Line, September 15, 2015
- Adam Hochchild, King Leopold’s Ghost (1998) estimates the death toll alone under Leopold II’s rule at about 10 million. This death toll has continued abated only perhaps by the exceptionally brief period when Patrice Lumumba was prime minister (May – September 1960). More than 6 million (and counting) Congolese have died in the 1990s alone.