History is filled with struggles for global domination. Even in the days when it took several months to travel seas and deserts, the intrepid human spirit was ever ready to dominate and exterminate.

In today’s world of globalisation, have imperialist ambitions been relegated to the history books? It would be extremely naïve to think so. Like a virus, imperialism has simply mutated. Fascism and Bolshevism were new forms of it. Neo-liberalism based upon surreptitious global exploitation and neo-colonialism is another. Tragically, struggle for domination has always led to global conflicts.

In a post-World War II context, heralded by the UN charter, the right to self-determination of peoples and the march of democracy, any empire today is, by definition, a rogue one. It goes counter to all the principles we hold dear, entrenched in our constitutions and bills of rights.

Empires however no longer boast physical borders. Neither are they led by nations’ leaders, elected or otherwise. They tend to have many centres of operations, in major cities, but also in transnational corporate board rooms.

It is incorrect to point fingers of blame at any nation or its people. In a sense, empire and imperialism have moved underground, as has fascism. They operate in the shadows.

They have come to be called the shadow governments and the power elite. They pull strings and conduct orchestras from afar, bringing governmental institutions and the electorate in line, singing from  given hymn sheets.

It is a very clever stratagem really. But it is also the greatest threat to democracy.

In religious lore, it is often said that the devil’s greatest accomplishment is to convince people that he does not exist. The same can be said of the power elite, the new aristocracy.

They hide their billions in tax havens, creating so-called philanthropic masquerades and think tanks to push power agendas. They finance multi-million euro lobbies, to elect anointed political candidates, and “persuade” policymakers to do their bidding.

That, my friends, is the empire of today; greedy, far reaching, surreptitious, relentless, and ruthless in its implacable drive for power, wealth and domination.

The word “empire” may be anachronistic. But the garments it dons can easily be detected. Some talk of the billionaires’ club; others of institutions like the Freemasons, the Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberg Group, Skull and Bones, the Tavistock Institute, the Rockefellers, the Morgans and the Rothschilds, the global bankers, the city of London. The list goes on.

In reality these are all limbs and organs of a general body of power-seeking family dynasties positioning themselves as the new aristocracy. They rule behind a “democratically” elected throne of government. Empires never died, and neither did the notion of aristocracy.

We should be screaming out for governments in the West to return to the international rule of law

So where does that leave us, the so-called sovereign people?

I daresay, in the midst of a global struggle for our hearts and minds. As long as we play along and follow the pied piper’s tune, dictated by the power elite in the shadows, we will remain pawns in their ravenous, global power games.

The movie trilogy Hunger Games is precisely about this. It is a critique of the power between rulers and ruled, and the need to realise it, as the basis to start fighting back and defending our freedoms.

 It is no different to what our forefathers did in 1688, 1776, 1789 and 1979, in England, the American colonies, France and Iran.

Oh and did I mention 1999, and the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, with its new Fifth Republic?

Simon Bolivar was the George Washington of Latin America, a hero of the Hispanic Independence movement. As president of the second Republic of Venezuela, Bolivar’s influence stretched from Argentina all the way to the Caribbean.

In recent years Venezuela has been at the forefront of a push for Latin American self-determination. It has used its oil muscle to help neighbouring nations. It was instrumental in setting up a new Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, by virtue of the 2011 Declaration of Caracas.

 This organisation has 33 member states, with a total population of 600 million.  It has excluded North America and the British, French and Dutch overseas territories. It rivals the Organisation of American States, traditionally controlled by Washington.

By golly did that cause a geopolitical earthquake that threatens to shatter the Monroe Doctrine of US sphere of influence south of the border!

It is never my intention to defend the likes of the Saddam Husseins, the Muammar Gaddafis, the Bashar Assads and other such leaders of nations that have been destroyed by illegal foreign interference.

As a writer versed in international and constitutional law, the language I speak and write in is that of governance in the international rule of law.

The late US President George Bush used to speak about a new world order at every opportunity, around the time when Communism was coming to an end in Europe and Russia. Was he a mouthpiece of global democratic elements, or rather of imperialistic ones, that sought to project a new aristocracy under the umbrella of a transnational superpower?

In retrospect, 30 years on, the world order that started to grow from the ashes of 1945 and the seeds of the UN Charter, seems to be falling apart at the seams. What we have in its place is a world order in shambles.

People are constantly bombarded by the power elite’s latest diatribes against yet another leader who is demonised. If it is not Hussein, it is Gaddafi. If it is not Putin, it is Syria’s Assad. Now the guns have been turned on Venezuela’s Maduro.

Here we go again, led round the same merry-go-round, in an effort to get people on board to support, or at least acquiesce to, yet more foreign intervention and regime change. But we need to remember that this is in direct contravention of our world order based on international law and the UN Charter.

Even all these economic sanctions are illegal. The US is illegally crippling Venezuela with sanctions, while laying the blame for poverty and hyper-inflation at Maduro’s door. Yet media mouthpieces across the globe fail to mention this.

It is a scary new world, where global conflict is taking the shape of media and economic warfare as a prelude to military intervention.

Maduro is no saint. He may well be taken to task for various failings in good governance. Certainly, as Javier Corrales, author of The Legacy of Hugo Chavez, points out, there are several hybrid regimes today that are in part democratic, in part authoritarian. But that is not the issue here.

The issue has always been about trying to break away from exploitation, and about destroying leaders and governments attempting to do so. These may try to push new international organisations, like Venezuela did in Latin America, a competing gas pipeline, like Syria and Iran, a new reserve currency for Africa, like Gaddafi’s proposal for an African gold dinar, or an attempt to break away from the petrodollar, like Russia, Iran and Hussein’s Iraq.

People of goodwill may not be able to fix this broken world order, and ever-growing threat of global conflict. But a good place to start is to break free from propaganda and misinformation peddled by the power elite, operating from the safety of their tax havens like gutter rats, and out of their think tanks and institutions.

We must stop following the piper’s tune in condemning other nations’ governments and their demonised leaders. Instead, we should be screaming out for governments in the West to return to the international rule of law. We ought to demand that our leaders denounce foreign interference and regime change in countries trying to forge their own way, or face serious consequences.

If we fail to do so, we would not only be their pawns, but also complicit in their insidious, imperialist games.

And in accordance with the universal law of action and reaction, the suffering and conflict brought upon other nations and peoples as a result, will find their way inexorably to our own doorstep. 

Rodolfo Ragonesi is a lawyer and researcher in history and international affairs.

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