In 1856 the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law
abolished piracy.
The United States was never party to the declaration.
In the golden age of piracy
American ports
were safe haven for pirates,
just as they are now,
those pirates now comfortably installed
in the White House,
Trump, a modern-day Henry Morgan,
responsible for death and destruction, yet
rewarded with political power,
his salivating lieutenant Miller,
as savage as Blackbeard,
proclaiming “We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power, these are the iron laws of the world”
That is, a world in which Americans can do as they like,
can openly be what they always have been,
violent bullies who
dictate, threaten, kill and steal,
take what they want
when they want it.
Where Representative Michael Lee
can introduce the “Cartel Marque and Reprisal Authorization Act of 2025“
with the proclamation that they would be
“Patriots of the Caribbean”
to allow the American pirate in chief
to legally authorise privateers and corsairs and pirates
to do what the pirate in chief uses the American military to do,
to kills and steal and kidnap,
For, after all, American wealth has always been built
on theft
slavery
colonialism
and exploitation.
And invasions and American led coups are nothing new:
Cuba 1898 and beyond
Panama 1903 and 1989
Syria in 1948
Egypt in 1952
Iran in 1953
Guatemala 1954
Iraq in 1959 and 1963
Cambodia in 1959
Ecuador 1961 and 1963
Dominican Republic 1961
Bolivia 1971
Brazil 1964
Chile 1973
Ethiopia 1974
Afghanistan 1979
the Contras, the death squads, Ollie North,
each intervention leading to death and ongoing turmoil, and
American enrichment
(though often the installed regime turned on their master)
making a perverse, predictive truth
of Bragg’s lyrics
“Here we come with our candy and our guns
and our corporate muscle marches in behind us…
making the world safe for capitalism”
For American exceptionalism
permits any crime
And in response?
a “new world order” is proclaimed
one in which the rule of law
is no long universal,
first requiring a consideration of whether the act
will benefit the actor
where the only fetter
is the pirate in chief’s “morality”
where “bad guys”
(as defined by the American gangsters)
are not protected by basic laws and freedoms
whilst corrupt, genocidal leaders
are greeted and banqueted
at Mar-a-Lago
where the real motive
the motive that has always applied
is revealed off handedly as
“A lot of money is going to be made”
