Bastille Day - from French heroism (1789) to Sarkozy France-complicit, US-imposed Afghan Genocide (2009)

By Dr Gideon Polya

On 14th July 2009 the French celebrated Bastille Day 220 years after the storming of the Bastille on 14th July 1789 by the heroic French people in the French Revolution.

However what is forgotten is that while the French gained their freedom from oppressive aristocratic rule in the French Revolution, the economic Establishment of France continued its policies of denying non-Europeans their freedom throughout the world.

“Liberté, égalité, fraternité” did not apply to the hundreds of millions of people subject to rapacious French colonialism and slavery from the 17th century to the present day in France- and US Alliance-occupied Occupied Afghanistan that is currently still being devastated by the New Vichy France under pro-Zionist, neo-Bush-ite, neo-con Nicolas Sarkozy and his US Alliance collaborators.

For a summary of France’s inglorious history of racism, slavery, wars, occupations, theft and genocide see “Bastille Day 1789-2009, France, Occupation and Indigenous Genocide” on MWC News: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/318... . For a summary history of all the countries invaded, occupied and devastated by France in Europe, the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific over recent centuries see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: (see: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ).

For a brilliant analysis of the “intellectual” basis for French and European racism, colonialism and genocide up to and including the Nazi era see Sven Lindqvist’s “Exterminate All the Brutes” (Granta Books, London, 2002).

The carnage from French imperialism is best adjudged by “avoidable mortality” (excess mortality, excess deaths, avoidable deaths), the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected for a decently-run, peaceful country with the same demographics. The excess deaths associated with French imperialism ran to hundreds of millions over the centuries. However a more precise estimate can be obtained for the period after 1950 from demographic data of the UN Population Division (see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ and http://mwcnews.net/Gideon-Polya ).

Summarized below is 1950-2005 excess mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%) for each country occupied by France as a Major Occupier in the post-1945 era and for France itself. The asterisk (*) below indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era (e.g. France is involved in the genocidal occupation of Occupied Afghanistan but is a minor player in the US-led US Alliance; the UK and Apartheid Israel joined in the invasion of Egypt by France in 1956). Note that excess death doesn’t stop when the colonial power leaves the devastated country. In Africa, the only formerly French-occupied countries or territories with Western-style excess mortality rates are Mauritius (French colonized but ruled by UK from 1810-1968) and Réunion (an overseas Department of France). The following data (and related data for other imperialist countries) is available here in the detailed notes for a 2008 lecture on Global Avoidable Mortality: http://globalavoidablemortality.blo... .

France [3.275m/60.711m = 5.4%], Algeria [7.167m/32.877m =21.8%], Benin [3.267m/7.103m = 46.0%], Burkina Faso [6.810m/13.798m = 49.4%], Cambodia* [5.852m/14.825m = 39.5%], Cameroon* [6.669m/16.564m = 40.3%], Central African Republic [2.274m/3.962m =57.4%], Chad [5.085m/9.117m = 55.8%], Comoros [0.204m/0.812m =25.1%], Congo (Brazzaville) [1.085m/3.921m = 27.7%], Côte d’Ivoire [6.953m/17.165m = 40.5%], Djibouti [0.265m/0.721m = 36.8%], Egypt* [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], French Guiana [0.010m/0.187m = 5.3%], French Polynesia [0.018m/0.252m = 7.1%], Gabon [0.504m/1.375m = 36.7%], Guadeloupe [0.025m/0.446m = 5.6%], Guinea [5.185m/8.788m = 59.0%], Haiti* [4.089m/8.549m = 47.9%], Laos* [2.653m/5.918m = 44.8%], Madagascar [7.098m/18.409m = 38.6%], Mali [6.808m/13.829m = 49.2%], Martinique [0.022m/0.397m = 5.5%], Mauritania [1.294m/3.069m = 42.2%], Mauritius [0.064m/1.244m = 5.18], Morocco* [8.202m/31.564m = 26.0%], New Caledonia [0.017m/0.237m = 7.2%], Niger [6.558m/12.873m = 50.9%], Réunion [0.047m/0.777m = 6.0%], Senegal [4.457m/9.393m = 47.5%], Syria* [2.198m/18.650m = 11.8%], Togo [1.950m/5.129m = 38.0%], Tunisia [1.582m/10.042m =15.8%], Vanuatu* [0.037m/0.222m = 16.7%], Vietnam* [24.015m/83.585m = 28.7%], total = 142.291m/430.678m = 33.0%.

Unfortunately, the New Vichy France continues to subjugate, disempower, dispossess and ethnically cleanse Indigenous People through neo-colonialism in Africa; continued .occupation of a swathe of countries around the World (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Réunion, French Guiana, New Caledonia and Tahiti are overseas Departments of France); and its obscene participation in the continuing US-imposed Afghan Genocide.

Pro-Zionist, war criminal French President Nicolas Sarkozy is an undignified, craven puppet of US imperialism and has committed French forces to the continuing Afghan Genocide (post-invasion excess deaths 3-7 million) as well as diplomatically and financially supporting the ongoing Western occupations of Palestine and Occupied Iraq (post-invasion excess deaths 0.3 million and 2.3 million, respectively).

As of 2009, in the Occupied Palestinian, Iraqi and Afghan Territories post-invasion non-violent excess deaths total 0.3 million, 1.0 million and 3.2 million, respectively; post-invasion violent deaths total about 10,000, 1.3 million and up to 4 million, respectively; post-invasion under-5 infant deaths total 0.2 million, 0.6 million and 2.3 million, respectively; and refugees total 7 million, 6 million and 4 million, respectively (with a further 2.5 million Pashtun refugees from NW Pakistan generated under Obama) – this constituting a Palestinian Holocaust, an Iraqi Holocaust and an Afghan Holocaust and a Palestinian Genocide, Iraqi Genocide and Afghan Genocide as defined by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention and egregious war crimes due in part to Occupier war criminal non-supply of life-sustaining food and medical requisites demanded unequivocally by Articles 55 and 56 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War (for detailed documentation of sources see the MWC News articles “Iraq invasion 6th anniversary. 2.3 million excess deaths”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/293... and “Obama’s Afghan War – who is the worse terrorist, Obama or Osama?”: http://mwcnews.net/content/view/295... ).

What can decent people do in the face of this continuing, anti-Arab anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, pro-Zionist, New Vichy French neo-con perversion of the French Revolutionary “Liberté, égalité, fraternité” ? Decent anti-racist folk must (a) inform others and (b) have no avoidable business dealings with any countries such as New Vichy France and the racist US Alliance (US, UK, NATO, Apartheid Israel, and Apartheid Australia) who are involved in the invasion, occupation and ethnic cleansing of other countries.

Outstanding Jewish American scholar Professor Jared Diamond (author of “Guns , Germs and Steel” put it very succinctly in his book “Collapse” (Prologue, p10, Penguin edition) when he enunciated the "moral principle, namely that it is morally wrong for one people to dispossess, subjugate, or exterminate another people" – a profound injunction being grossly violated by New Vichy France and its genocidal US Alliance allies in Occupied Afghanistan and by Sarkozy-supported Apartheid Israel in Occupied Palestine. The “annual death rate” is 7% for Occupied Afghan under-5 year old infants as compared to 3% for the Nazi Buchenwald Concentration Camp and 10% for Australian prisoners of war of the Japanese in World War 2 (see “Afghan Genocide: an Open Letter”: http://www.countercurrents.org/poly... ) .