Don't Cry for Me Alvaro Garcia Linera

I'm just an old-fashioned guy, with the milk of human kindness flowing through my body, although sometimes in undetectable amounts given the quantity of wine that said body regards as its mothers milk (no, this is not going to be a commentary on Angelina Jolie's double mastectomy).  But old-fashioned nonetheless.  So when some organization anoints itself as a "left forum" or the left forum, and then sponsors, advertises, promotes and otherwise sells the views of officials of governments busy renting its military to some capitalist organization, say the United Nations, or some mission of the United Nations, like...oh, pick one at random, MINUSTAH... well, that makes me angry.

Pissed.  Pissed enough, to stop getting pissed, to put down the Bandol, temporarily, push away the pissaladiere, boot-up the old lap top, and really have at it, as I am having at it right now.

The so-called Left Forum will be having its annual left forum next weekend (June 7-9) at Pace University in New York.  It will be attended by thousands, I'm sure.  Academics, book vendors, Marxists of all stripes from humanists to non-species specifics, professional self-aggrandizing interventionist twerps sensitive to heckling (you know who you are, Proyect), socialists, ecologists, blahblahblahblah, ad infinitum.

Atop this pyramid of composting table scraps from the all you can grab buffet of left capitalism is a featured speaker, one Alvaro Garcia Linera, vice-president of Morales' administration in Bolivia.

Tres charmant, non?  A real representative of a real leftist government that really proclaims their protection of mother earth.

Real indeed.  One can only imagine the deafening ovation, the stamping feet, the shouts of hurray that will greet Alvaro and interrupt his presentation.  ("Stormy applause. Cheering from the delegates" is what the record would show, if the record was being kept in Bolshevik form).

And the fact the Alvaro represents a government that rents its military to the United States/United Nations for its occupation of Haiti?  Mere technicality?  Not at all.  As we all know, objecting to a poor dark-hued 3rd world developing nation pimping out its military for the occupation of an even poorer more third world darker-hued less developing nation is but another manifestation of the eurocentrism of white first world ossified orthodox Marxists (and some of their anarchist friends).

Self-determination of nations demands that we defend such occupation from those arguing for self-determination of nations.  Just remember, Haiti is too black to qualify for self-determination.

To be sure, the government of Bolivia is not alone in this exercise of nation-building.  The "global south" has undertaken this almost as a group project.  The official contributors to the occupying forces are:

Military personnel

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Guatemala, Indonesia, Jordan, Nepal, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Republic of Korea, Sri Lanka, United States and Uruguay.

Police personnel

Argentina, Bangladesh, Benin, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cameroon, Canada, Central African Republic, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Côte d'Ivoire, Croatia, Egypt, El Salvador, France, Guinea, India, Indonesia, Jordan, Mali, Nepal, Niger, Nigeria, Norway, Pakistan, Philippines, Romania, Russian Federation, Rwanda, Senegal, Serbia, Sierra Leone, Spain, Sri Lanka, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, United States, Uruguay and Yemen.

I won't be at the left forum, and for good reason; I'll be spending the weekend eating and drinking, conversing, conferring, and otherwise hobnobbing with my friends in Paris.  I am a self-indulgent, self-centered, petty-bourgeois who could never tolerate the discipline and commitment required by official Marxist parties; who never could subordinate myself to the sectarian and non-sectarian activities of the real Marxists, the real socialists, the real revolutionists, the real vanguard--like those who will be attending and participating in a conference that finds its keynote in the speech of the  representative of the ecologically sensitive occupying government of Bolivia.

So it is with great pleasure that I recommend to my brother and sister self-centered, dilettantish, individualists that they not ask Alvaro why Bolivia has troops in Haiti.  We know the answer to that-- money.  Rather, ask the left forum why it has Alvaro speaking?  And we know that the answer to that will be exactly the same.  Money.  That's what the left is all about.  Same-same.  Money.

S. Artesian
June 2, 2013