This all happened after Dominique de Villepin had convened a committee to consider Haiti’s request for return of a small fraction of the billions they had agreed to pay France, under force of cannon in Port-au-Prince, in 1825, for the loss of their plantations, slaves, and prize colony to the Haitian slave rebellion which had established the Independent Republic of Haiti in 1804.

The French committee, headed by Régis Debray, met, deliberated, and even summoned Dr. Paul Farmer to testify before deciding not to pay reparations to Haiti because that all happened a long time ago, and France then decided to invade and back a violent coup d’état instead.

But now France complains that the U.S. is occupying Haiti, i.e., occupying what was once their prize colony, which they now think should be their prize de facto colony, full of their mineral wealth.

Which is not to denigrate the efforts of Medecins San Frontieres and other no doubt sincere aid workers, who should be getting into the country unhindered by U.S. troops because, for one, like Haitians, they speak French.

French-Anglo imperial competition continues all over Africa, and is especially notable in Rwanda and Congo, where again, French/English language stress results, and raises the question of whether to speak French or English, as the nations’ business language with the world.

French/English competition was central to what we know as the Rwanda Genocide of 1994, and thus, the Congo War. In 2009, Sarkozy proposed that Europe share in Congo’s riches, much as, in his final stump speech in 2004, John Kerry said that, “Iraq is of great importance to all the world, and we are going to share the prize.”

I should add that “Anglo” in this context means an Anglo alliance which includes the U.S., Canada, Australia, Germany, and even French-speaking Belgium, Congo’s last imperial ruler and the U.S.A.’s partner in assassinating Patrice Lumumba in 1961.

I’m going to try to make time to mention this at a forum on the future of KPFA that I’m going to speak at, with Jack Heyman, ILWU Local 10, Riva Enteen, Past Chair KPFA Local Station Board, and Dennis Bernstein, Producer, KPFA Flashpoints, next Wednesday, February 3, 2010, 7:00 PM
522 Valencia St.@16th St., San Francisco Steve Zeltzer organized this, but as I understand it, there’ll be an open-mike speak out afterwards.

I’ve got one more thing to say, about ongoing French/Anglo imperial competition in Haiti, ongoing now as vultures close in on catastrophe, but first I’m going to go post this to Facebook and send it to the Fulcrums of Change KPFA list. I’ll try to get back about that later; it’s much on my mind because former French Foreign Minister Dominique De Villepin was just aquitted of relatively trivial political dirty tricks in France, and his political star is rising again. De Villepin idealizes Napoleon, wrote a prizewinning work of “Napoleonology,” and was in charge when France joined the U.S. in that 2004 coup d’état and dragged Aristide out of Haiti to the Central African Republic.

I really feel that I could fill a desperate need.