The Kanaks are in the same position as the native Hawai’ians. An influx of white Europeans from the U.S. mainland doomed any chance that Hawai’i would ever regain its independence, stolen by unscrupulous American colonizers and missionaries in the late 19th century.

French Polynesia has also seen its hopes for independence dashed by the interests of the white European settler community. Oscar Manutahi Temaru, the leader of the pro-independence Maohi people of French Polynesia, flew to New Caledonia in advance of its referendum, to campaign for a “yes” vote. Kanak and Maohi independence leaders were surprised to see a few Corsican Assembly members fly all the way from Ajaccio to assist their Kanak friends. Not all white Europeans in New Caledonia support the colonial status of the territory. In addition to Corsicans, Bretons, Basques, and Occitanians, mindful of French cultural and political imperialism in metropolitan France, rallied to support the “yes” vote for independence.

The Kanaks also received support from their fellow Melanesians. The West Papua National Committee, which is fighting for independence from Indonesia, urged all Kanaks to vote yes for independence. Support also came from political leaders in Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, and Papua New Guinea.

While Temaru’s “Tavini Huiraatira no Te Ao Maohi” movement and New Caledonia’s “Front de Liberation National Kanak et Socialiste” (FLNKS) are united in their desire for France to sever its colonial overseer role in the South Pacific, it may be too late. These island groups, along with the French territory of Wallis and Futuna, have seen too many white Europeans, along with their tourist-oriented businesses, take up residence on the islands.

After 165 years of being a French colony, voters in New Caledonia voted “yes” or “no” on the question: “Do you want New Caledonia to accede to full sovereignty and become independent?” Prior to the referendum, media in Australia, most notably, that owned by neo-conservative war monger Rupert Murdoch, warned that an independent New Caledonia could fall prey to Chinese domination. The anti-China meme is being hyped by Australia as China flexes its military muscle against hostile moves by the Donald Trump kleptocracy in the Asia-Pacific region. These include provocations by the U.S. Navy in the Strait of Taiwan, South China Sea, and East China Sea.

Just prior to the New Caledonian independence referendum, the United States and Australia made two significant military moves in the region. They served two purposes. The first was a signal to China that the Western powers consider the South Pacific to be in their geo-political sphere of influence. The second was to send a message to the voters in New Caledonia that independence, as far as Washington and Canberra were concerned, was not an option.

The United States dispatched the guided-missile destroyer USS Shoup (DDG-86) to its South Pacific territory of American Samoa as a show of force in the region. Although American Samoa is 1595 miles northeast of New Caledonia, it was a rare visit by a well-armed U.S. warship to the territory. At the same time of the U.S. ship visit, Australia’s neo-conservative and evangelical Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, hammered out a naval agreement in Sydney with visiting Papua New Guinea Prime Minister Peter O’Neill. Australia will redevelop the Lombrum naval base on the Papua New Guinea island of Manus. It was not a coincidence that the Australian-PNG agreement occurred while Admiral John Richardson, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, was visiting Australia. Richardson said he hoped that American Navy ships will be able to use the new naval base, alongside Australian naval vessels. The United States is currently expanding a U.S. Marine Corps training base in Darwin in northwestern Australia , as well as its presence at Tindal Royal Australian Air Force Bases in the Northern Territory.

The United States and Australia have been working to block any attempts by China to expand its influence in the Indo-Pacific region. Both countries warned that China was interested in establishing a South Pacific naval base after it agreed to invest $114 million on re-developing a World War II-era wharf in Luganville, on the Vanuatu island of Espiritu Santo. The reports of Chinese military interest in the Luganville wharf resulted in a delegation of U.S. officials, including U.S. Marines, paying a visit to the Luganville harbor master. The Americans were interested in using the deep-water wharf, redeveloped in 2016 by the Shanghai Construction Company, to accommodate a U.S. aircraft carrier.

Whereas the outcome of the New Caledonia independence referendum was never in doubt — since the territory’s European population, coupled with pressure from Paris, Canberra, and Washington — ensured a “no” vote, next year’s independence referendum in nearby Bougainville is another story. Scheduled for June 15, 2019, the referendum on independence from Papua New Guinea is expected to pass overwhelmingly. That has Australia and the United States concerned, with China being used, once again, as the “bogeyman.” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister O’Neill, in violation of the Bougainville Peace Agreement, is beginning to drag his feet on holding the referendum. Independence is strongly opposed by Rio Tinto, Inc., the foreign owner of Bougainville’s highly-productive Panguna copper mine. Rio Tinto has at its disposal an army of lobbyists in Port Moresby, Canberra, and Washington ready to indefinitely postpone the referendum.

In the 1990s, Bougainville was plagued by the presence of foreign mercenaries fighting the pro-independence rebels on the island. Some of these mercenaries are now found working for Erik Prince, the founder of the infamous Blackwater and brother of Trump’s Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos. Prince’s new firm, Reflex Responses (R2), based in Abu Dhabi, is providing mercenary support to mining and oil companies interesting in quelling local rebellions where they have installations and other vested interests.

The South Pacific has always been considered a serene zone of tranquility. World War II, followed by Cold War testing by the Americans, British, and French of atomic and hydrogen bombs in the region’s waters, served as a catastrophic change for the native islanders of the region. South Pacific islanders deserve to be left alone by European colonizers and white European settlers and squatters. France should quit Kanaky, Maohi, and Wallis and Futuna. The United States should vacate Guahan (Guam), Eastern Samoa, the Northern Marianas, and Hawai’i. Australia should return to Norfolk Island its self-governance and grant the Torres Strait Islands self-determination. New Zealand must free Niue, the Cook Islands, Tokelau, and Rēkohu (Chatham Islands). And neo-colonizers should also get the message. Indonesia should free West Papua, Papua New Guinea recognize Bougainville’s independence, and Chile grant self-determination to Rapa Nui (Easter Island).

The South Pacific should be permitted to become, as its name implies, “pacific.”

Rare earth minerals do not easily roll off one’s tongue in the same manner as gold, silver, and platinum. For example, yttrium oxide and europium, while sounding unimportant, are what provide the red hue in color televisions.

Nations around the world are scrambling to secure reserves containing rare earth minerals. China, where one-third of the planet’s rare earth minerals are currently found, has severely restricted the export of the minerals to friends and competitors. One of the largest known reserves of rare earths is the Bayan Obo deposit in China’s Inner Mongolia.

China’s export restrictions have sent nations around the world on search missions to secure both known and untapped rare earth deposits. One such mother lode of rare earth minerals has been discovered in the eastern southern Pacific Ocean. The estimates are that the deep ocean region contains twice the amount of rare earths than found in China.

Some of these deposits are in undersea geologically active zones, where deep sea floor vents spew rare earth minerals from expulsions of lava and hot gases. The discovery that the South Pacific region is rich in rare earths has led European nations, including France and Britain, which maintain colonies in the area, re-staking their colonial footprints. France, for example, is reticent to grant further autonomy or independence to New Caledonia, where an independence referendum is scheduled for November 8, French Polynesia, and Wallis and Futuna. Similarly, Britain has showed a renewed interest in the Pitcairn Islands, where a handful of descendants of the HMS Bounty mutineers continue to live.

In 2015, Australia stamped out self-government of Norfolk Island, turning the island into a hybrid municipality of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. New Zealand has vetoed ambitions by two of its elf-governing “associated states” – the Cook Islands and Niue – for full membership in the United Nations. For these colonial powers, it is not what is about what lies above the sea – island resorts – but what lies under the sea within the marine borders of the territories and that is rare earth minerals.

With the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, rare earth reserves have been discovered in Greenland, a “self-governing” territory of Denmark. Moves by the Greenland government to seek independence from Denmark and permit Chinese companies to mine rare earth minerals have met with stiff opposition from Denmark, the United States, and NATO.

Other countries possessing significant deposits of rare earths include India, Russia, Vietnam, Malaysia, South Africa, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and the United States. These nations, as well as China, all have varying degrees of the necessary political, economic, and military might to protect their rare earth resources.

However, some developing nations, where rare earths have been discovered, are candidates for ruthless exploitation by multinational firms, some under the direction of governments, to secure exclusive mining rights. In fact, Toyota, which has a tight relationship with the Japanese government, bought a rare earth mine in Vietnam to ensure such exclusivity rights.

Japan may not have to worry about Vietnam as its major source of rare earths. Earlier this year, a deposit of some 16 million tons of rare earth mineral oxides was discovered in deep sea mud located 1150 miles southeast of Tokyo. The deposit contained much of the rare earths upon which Japan’s consumer electronics industry is reliant: yttrium, dysprosium, terbium, and europium.

In countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, columbite-tantalite, a mineral used in the manufacture of semi-conductor chips, is such a hot commodity that rival warlords, some acting on behalf of outside players, including Rwanda, Uganda, Israel, Japan, China, and the United States battle one another for control of the mineral’s extraction and export.

The Rwanda Mines, Petroleum, and Gas Board signed a deal in 2017 with a major Japanese rare earth extraction firm for the exploration and mining of rare earths, as well as tungsten, in Rwanda. However, Rwandan President Paul Kagame is known to have backed fellow Tutsi rebels in the DRC, who exploit rare earth mines in South and North Kivu provinces and send the stolen minerals to Rwanda. There have been attempts to curtail the trade in “conflict minerals” in the Great Lakes region of Africa, but they have all come to no avail.

Currently, US and Chinese firms are waging a political and economic influence “war” for access to lithium, cassiterite, and cobalt reserves in the DRC.

Next door to the DRC, in civil war-ravaged Burundi, there was a discovery of exceptionally high-grade “main vein” of rare earth minerals in 2017. Burundi, which was once a German colony, saw Germany’s ThyssenKrupp move in to exploit the mineral resources. ThyssenKrupp also began building a processing plant in Burundi. The German government has come under attack from human rights groups that accuse it of backing the German mining venture, known as the Gakara Project, even though Burundi’s president, President Pierre Nkurunziza, was dubiously elected to a third term in office. German business groups have countered with the argument that if Germany was not mining Burundi’s rare earths, China would be doing so.

The French government is not only concentrating its rare earth mining activities in its traditional Francophone sphere of influence in Africa – Morocco, Burkina Faso, Niger, Madagascar, Guinea – but further afield, including the pursuit of joint venture mining activities in Kazakhstan.

In the United States, the Pentagon has recognized the military importance of rare earths. The Defense Logistic Agency's Strategic Materials department is tasked to ensure a continued supply of rare earths to US defense contractors. The US Energy Department tracks rare earth discoveries and mining operations around the world, thanks to a constant infusion of intelligence from the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency. The Trump administration has moved to open US federal wildlife areas, national parks, and other lands to exploration and mining of rare earths to private companies, much to the chagrin of environmentalists and Native American tribal governments.

In a rush to lessen dependence on Chinese exports of rare earths, which have, in any event, been restricted by Beijing, nations and companies around the world have launched a cut-throat competition to gain leverage over the rare earth market. What peaks the interest of gatherers of economic intelligence are references in email, video conferences, phone calls, faxes, and financial documents to such terms as europium, terbium, dysprosium, yttrium, samarium, and other rare earths.

As the world becomes more dependent on high-tech and an “Internet of things,” consisting of computers, mobile phones, appliances, televisions, security systems, automobiles, etc., the economic war for control of rare earth minerals will increase. There is the extreme possibility that economic warfare could turn into shooting wars, as has already been the case in the DRC.

The PLG, meeting at its 8^th summit in Tuvalu in June 2018, admitted three new members – Rapa Nui (Easter Island), Hawai’I, and New Zealand, or, as it is known in the Maori language, Aotearoa. These potential members of a future Polynesian Union joined Samoa, American Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu, the Cook Islands, Niue, French Polynesia, Tokelau, and Wallis and Futuna in the PLG.

In the latter half of the 19^th century, four Polynesian kings, wary of encroaching Western imperialist moves into the South Pacific, attempted to launch an alliance of Polynesian kingdoms to stand up to the European and American colonialist powers. The chief proponents of the alliance were King Pomare V of Tahiti, King Kamehameha V of Hawaii, King Malietoa Laupepa of Samoa, and King George Tupou II of Tonga.

The PLG leaders meeting in Tuvalu left open the possibility of other Polynesian states joining their alliance. These could include Norfolk Island, which saw its self-governing status unilaterally abolished by Australia in 2016; Pitcairn Islands, an overseas territory of the United Kingdom; Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Palmyra Atoll, Howland, Jarvis, and Baker islands, unincorporated territories of the United States, and Rotuma, a dependency of Fiji.

Polynesian-inhabited islands of majority Melanesian and Micronesian Pacific states could also be invited to join a Polynesian Union. These include Anuta, a densely-populated island of 300 in the Solomon Islands; Bellona, Ontong Java, Pileni, Sikaiana, Tikopia, and Rennell islands in the Solomons; Mele and Emae islands in Vanuatu; Nukumanu and Takuu in Papua New Guinea; and Kapingamarangi and Nukuoro in the Federated States of Micronesia.

The Polynesian people are growing weary of being treated as second- and third-class citizens on their own ancestral islands. They are growing more concerned about their collective future as they witness island after island being swallowed up by rising sea levels brought about by global climate change. Their ability to govern themselves is stymied by unfair political relationships with metropolitan powers hammered out by colonial overseers. Niue and the Cook Islands are subject to “associated state” status with New Zealand. Micronesia has a “Compact of Free Association” with the United States. French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna are territories of France. Norfolk Island has been administratively and politically absorbed into the Australian state of New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory.

In extending an open invitation to join the Polynesian Leaders Group, Prime Minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga of Tuvalu, said, “In accordance with the MOU [memorandum of understanding] which we signed, we welcome other Polynesian communities in other places and locations to join the PLG as brothers.”

In a recent interview with the Associated Press, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said that an effort for New Zealand to become a republic and sever its ties with the British monarch, who remains New Zealand’s head of state, is not a current priority. Recognizing past injustices against the Polynesian Maori people, the original inhabitants of New Zealand, Ardern said redressing the wrongs committed against the Maori if of a greater priority to her government than seeking republic status.

Ardern could start to redress the wrongs committed by New Zealand against Polynesians by instructing her father, Ross Ardern, the present Administrator of Tokelau and past High Commissioner to Niue, to begin the process of full decolonization of these territories with the goal of full membership in the United Nations.

New Zealand has warned the Cook Islands that if it seeks UN membership, Cook Islanders will lose their New Zealand citizenship. The Cook Islands government has responded to the threat by presenting a proposal for Cook Islanders to have dual status – both Cook Islands and New Zealand citizenship. Niue has also sought full membership in the UN and dual Niuean-New Zealand citizenship. The requests from the Cook Islands and Niue have fallen on deaf ears. That may change of New Zealand or Aotearoa comes to terms with its Maori and Polynesian character.

In a 2007 referendum, Tokelau’s desire for associated status with New Zealand failed by 16 votes. A two-thirds vote was required for Tokelau to achieve the same self-government status as the Cook Islands and Niue, however the bid failed with 64.4, just short of two-thirds of the electorate, voting yes. Had the measure passed, Tokelau would likely be striving for UN membership, along with its sister Polynesian states of the Cook Islands and Niue.

In return for signing Compacts of Free Association (COFAs) with the United States, three former UN Trust Territories in Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau, agreed to allow the United States to maintain military bases on their territory in return for unfettered rights to live and work in the United States, as well as cash handouts in the form of economic assistance. So far, Washington has only exercised its military base option in the Marshall Islands, where it maintains the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site in Kwajalein Atoll. With the Donald Trump administration ratcheting up tensions with China, insisting the Pacific is an “American lake,” the other Micronesian states may see new US military bases.

If Micronesia opted to join a Polynesian-Micronesian Union of states, the semi-colonized Federated States of Micronesia, consisting of Pohnpei, Chuuk, Yap, and Kosrae; the US territories of Guahan (Guam) and Northern Marianas; the semi-colonized Republic of Palau; the Republic of Nauru, and the Republic of Marshall Islands could find political and economic power as part of a trans-Pacific entity.

The Melanesian states of Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon Islands, and Kanaky New Caledonia have formed the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG), a nascent political and economic union that may, eventually, include West Papua, currently occupied by Indonesia; the Republic of Timor-Leste, and East Nusa Tenggara and the South and North Moluccas, currently a part of Indonesia; and Bougainville, if it decides to opt in a 2019 referendum on independence from Papua New Guinea.

Western colonialists and neo-colonialists have managed to stifle trans-Pacific unity by creating artificial barriers to cooperation and unity between island peoples. One egregious example is the regime of requiring travel permits and visas for visits between Samoa, an independent nation, and American Samoa, a US territory whose residents do not enjoy full US citizenship unless one of their parents is a US citizen. Relations between Samoans living in two different jurisdictions are relegated by bureaucrats in far-away Washington, DC and by government officials in Samoa, a former New Zealand territory, but where the government is usually influenced by dictates from New Zealand.

Across the Pacific and Polynesia, the heavy-handed presence of colonial and neo-colonial powers is reflected in a paucity of approved direct air routes between islands, visa requirements, availability of Internet connections and a variety of satellite-transmitted television news channels (not merely Fox News, CNN, or the BBC), attempting to freeze out Chinese economic development, and lack of overall free trade between islands. The Polynesian Leaders Group is a step in the direction of unity for Pacific peoples. The only barrier to it and the Melanesian Spearhead Group is interference from the politico-military viceroys in Canberra, Wellington, Washington, London, and Paris.

The chief political party backing independence, the “Front de Libération Nationale Kanak et Socialiste (FLNKS),” finds itself battling a perception management campaign, largely being waged in France and Australia, that independence will bring New Caledonia into the orbit of an expanding sphere of influence of China. The canard of Chinese influence has recently been advanced by Australia to call for an abatement of ties between Vanuatu, the former Anglo-French colony of New Hebrides, and China. Vanuatu, which has accepted financial assistance from China, is being used as a bogeyman by Canberra, backed by U.S. military interests in Hawaii, to argue against independence for New Caledonia.

The battle for independence of New Caledonia is opposed by 60 percent of the 270,000 eligible voters of the island group, who represent French white transplants to the colony. Some 40 percent of the population, largely the indigenous Kanaks, favor independence. Current polling indicates that the independence option will go down to defeat.

In the world’s current race to gain control over natural resources important to high-tech supremacy, New Caledonia possesses one-quarter of the world’s known nickel resources. In addition to the racist attitudes of metropolitan French migrants who moved to New Caledonia and who do not want to share political and economic power with the indigenous Kanaks, control of the nickel industry, important in the production of batteries, means the pro-independence forces in New Caledonia have an uphill battle.

French mining companies have ensured that the Kanaks, who work in the mines, do not have the opportunity to advance up the economic ladder to ownership positions in the mining industry. France has ensured that an all-too-typical colonialist system lives on in New Caledonia with the native subjugated population serving the interest of the French state and a mercantilism-based inequitable economic system.

Anti-independence propaganda being distributed to the world’s media largely emanates from the neo-conservative and pro-Zionist Lowy Institute based in Sydney, Australia and the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency-funded East-West Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. Such propaganda warns that an independent New Caledonia will be subject to Chinese and even “Islamist” influence. These propaganda mills are nothing more than fronts for Western mining companies. The same arguments being used against New Caledonia’s independence in the November 2018 referendum are also being used to disparage independence in the referendum scheduled for Bougainville, an island of Papua New Guinea, in 2019. In New Caledonia, it is the nickel exploiters who dominate the debate on independence, in Bougainville it is the copper companies who have long exploited the Panguna copper mine.

French President Emmanuel Macron, a product of the Rothschild Bank, an enterprise that wrote the book on exploitation of native peoples by unscrupulous European colonialists for well over two centuries, said, during a May 2018 visit to New Caledonia, that, “after 164 years of colonization I recognize New Caledonia is a jewel.” Macron showed his cards when he called for a “sovereignty in partnership” between New Caledonia and France. Macron, playing to the music of big power politics, said that New Caledonia’s future is inextricably linked to a French “Indo-Pacific axis” that must not “fall under a new hegemony.”

Macron’s visit was accompanied by a 4,000-strong “March for France” in Noumea, the capital city. Macron might as well have said that he sees New Caledonia as nothing more than a jewel in the French colonial crown. Macron also said he wanted to preserve the status quo in New Caledonia with the assistance of the two regional colonial powers, Australia and New Zealand.

The French “Caldoches” – migrant colonialists and their offspring in New Caledonia — are led by the Caledonia Together Party. Its leader, Philippe Gomes, was born in Algeria during the French colonial rule of that country. Gomes is one of the “pied-noirs,” or “black feet,” the term used by French Europeans who enjoyed special privileges in Algeria and were firmly opposed to Algerian independence. It is particularly galling for the Kanaks to see a pied-noir from Algeria, with all the social baggage of brutal French colonialism in that country, now leading the political force in New Caledonia who wants the territory to remain French. Gomes is more at home with multi-millionaires from the French mainland, who have built massive holiday homes and berthed expensive yachts in New Caledonia, than with the native Kanaks.

Kanaks, who live only a short walk from Noumea’s European cafés and boutiques, live in squalor. Many do not have access to the water, sewage, or electrical systems. In 1988, many Kanaks lost their lives in anti-French demonstrations on the island of Ouvéa, protests that were brutally suppressed by French military force in “Operation Victor.” Pro-independence sentiment in New Caledonia is generally found in certain geographic areas. For example, the pro-independence Melanesian Progressive Union, which joins the FLNKS is supporting total independence for New Caledonia, finds most of its support in the North Province. Pro-independence sentiment is also strong in the largely underdeveloped Loyalty Islands.

In 1980, the pro-independence Caledonian Union (UC), a Kanak-European mixed party, stated that it planned to unilaterally declare independence in 1982. Prior to the declaration, the UC Secretary-General, Pierre Declercq, a native of metropolitan France, was assassinated in his home in Noumea. The killers were never found but native Kanaks believed the assassination was carried out by agents of the French intelligence service, the “Service de Documentation Extérieure et de Contre-Espionnage” (SDECE). The successor of the SDECE, the “Direction générale de la sécurité extérieure”  (DGSE), had no problem bombing the Greenpeace ship “Rainbow Warrior” in Auckland harbor in New Zealand in 1985. The action, “Operation Satanique,” resulted in the death of one of the crewmen.

Pro-independence parties called for a boycott of a 1987 independence referendum. A mere 59 percent of eligible voters participated, resulting in a lop-sided anti-independence result of 98.3 percent. The Noumea Accord of 1998 paved the way for this year’s independence referendum. So far, only one pro-independence party, the Labor Party, said it will not participate in the November referendum. Its leader, Louis Kotra Uregei, has called the vote an “electoral farce,” with France and its well-off transplants on the islands holding all the cards.

The Labor Party’s reasoning is a sound one. It argues that France has stacked the deck against independence by permitting the electoral roll for the plebiscite to discriminate against native Kanaks who have no fixed address. The French authorities and the non-Kanak majority in the territory have refused the franchise to 12,000 Kanaks. The Kanaks put much of the blame on French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, who showed an unusual interest in determining who is and who is not eligible to vote. The Kanaks object to Caldoches who are recent arrivals in New Caledonia voting in the referendum. The 1988 Noumea Agreement specifies that only Caldoches who arrived prior to 1994 may vote, but the Kanaks believe there has been a manipulation of the electoral rolls to favor the Europeans.

By all rights, Kanaky should be an independent country. However, the machinations of Macron, Philippe, Gomes, and others seem intent on preventing a new country from joining the international parade of nations.

Ever since Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia 25 years ago, Greece insisted that the United Nations call the country the “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” which became an acronym known as FYROM. Some nations recognized the country as the Republic of Macedonia, while others opted for FYROM.

The Macedonians also claimed Alexander the Great, a Greek national hero, as one of their own and named their international airport after the ancient conqueror. As part of Macedonia’s name change, Alexander the Great International Airport has been changed to Skopje International Airport. Macedonian history books are to be altered to reflect that Northern Macedonians are not ancient Macedonians. Actual Macedonians, claims Athens, are northern Greeks or “Aegean Macedonians.”

Macedonians, who are now governed by a George Soros implant named Zoran Zaev, are undergoing the type of cultural change that was externally visited upon the nation of Rwanda after General Paul Kagame, a Rwandan expatriate from Uganda, seized power after a very bloody genocide in 1994. Rwanda forced Rwandans to scrap their native French for English, the French-like national tricolor was replaced with a new flag, and Rwanda joined the Commonwealth of Nations, which is led by the British queen. The only thing that did not change in Rwanda was the name of the country, although one could not put it past Kagame to revert back to the colonial name of “Ruanda.”

Northern Macedonia was agreed upon by Macedonia and Greece after several other options were discussed. The Greeks favored the name “Republic of Vardar Macedonia,” but that was rejected by the Macedonians, who preferred “Republic of New Macedonia.” The United Nations mediator said there were other candidates for the name, including the Republic of Upper Macedonia and Republic of Macedonia (Skopje).

Greece suggested many other names for their northern neighbor, including “Dardania and Paeonia,” the ancient names for the region; South Slavia, the Vardar Republic, the Central Balkan Republic, and the Republic of Skopje. The Macedonians offered up the Constitutional Republic of Macedonia, the Democratic Republic of Macedonia, the Independent Republic of Macedonia, and the New Republic of Macedonia.

Names now mean everything in an era of “new nationalism.” The U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, a former hack attorney for Donald Trump, has referred to the illegally-occupied West Bank as “Judea and Samaria,” a hat-tip to the Jewish illegal settlers who want Israel to annex the West Bank and have Israel become a full-blown apartheid state, with Palestinians treated as inferior “untermenschen.” There are reports that after having moved the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the Trump administration is a hair-trigger away from recognizing all of Jerusalem, including illegally-occupied East Jerusalem, as the capital of Israel and recognizing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights from Syria. That would leave the open-air Palestinians ghetto of Gaza as a target for Israeli re-annexation. Menacingly, the Trump administration is already calling Gaza “southern Israel.”

There are other proposals afoot for name changes. In 2017, South African Minister of Arts and Culture Nathi Mthethwa sparked a fierce debate when he suggested that South Africa should become "Azania," a name with Greek origins. That proposal was tabled quickly by a government that did not want self-engineered headaches to be piled on all of its other problems. Likewise, there is little interest in the Central African Republic to revert to the country's French colonial name of Ubangi-Shari, two rivers that converge in the country.

The South Africans may want to think twice about Azania. South Sudan considered using that same name upon independence from Sudan in 2011. Could the world survive with two Azanias? Why not? There have been two independent Congos since the 1960s — the former French Republic of Congo and the former Belgian Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The DRC did change its name to Zaire during the dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko, but changed it back again after his ouster in a popular rebellion. The South Sudanese apparently liked the name South Sudan, after rejecting, along with Azania, the names Nile Republic, Kush Republic, and Juwama. Some South Sudanese still want a name change, favoring Tochland or Savannah.

If pro-independence activists get their way in civil war-ravaged Yemen, South Yemen will re-emerge as an independent nation and that might provide some solace to South Sudan and South Africa, but not South Korea, which, after Trump's recognition of the north as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, will now insist on being called the Republic of Korea or "ROK."

On the occasion of his 50th birthday, Swaziland's King Mswati III — who has 15 wives, 12 less than Trump's known number of ex-wives — proclaimed that the name of his country would henceforth be known as eSwatini.

Kazakhstan is no longer Kazakhstan. The nation's president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, has decreed that the Kazakh language will no longer be written in the Cyrillic alphabet but Latin. "Qazaqstan" will now be joining Qatar as the only two countries in the UN General Assembly's "Q" section. Nazarbayev also dislikes the appendage "stan" on the name of his country, He is on record in favor of dropping "stan" and calling his country Qazaq Yeli, or "Land of the Kazakhs."

Some politicians in Kyrgyzstan also want to drop the "stan" part of their country's name and have it officially be known as Kyrgyz Land or Kyrgyz Zher, the name in the Kyrgyz language. These politicians bemoan the fact that their nation is often confused with Kurdistan, which, thanks to Turkish and Iraqi pressure, is not an independent country represented at the UN. The Kyrgyz have a point. The Czechs, in pushing the name Czechia, did not seem to mind that some people confused the name with Chechnia, a Russian autonomous republic.

In 2013, the small half-island nation of East Timor announced it was changing its name to Timor-Leste, a hat-tip to its history as a Portuguese colony. Not to be left out of the Portuguese nostalgia, Cape Verde changed its name to Cabo Verde that same year.

The President of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte has entertained the possibility of changing the name of the country to something that no longer honors Spanish colonialists and their colonizing monarch, King Philip II. There have been moves in the Philippines Congress to establish a geographical renaming commission to come up with a new name. One idea floated is the Tagalog name, Haring Bayan.

Country name changes are tough on some merchandise retailers. In 1997, the American Safety Razor Company reintroduced the Burma-Shave brand of shaving soap. But Burma had become Myanmar nine years earlier and "Myanmar-Shave" lacked a certain appeal. All the marketers of Ceylon tea were aghast in 1971 when the island nation changed its name to Sri Lanka.

If the independence referendum in New Caledonia in November of this year results in a majority vote for breaking colonial ties with France and going it alone, the country's name will be Kanaky. The name is an homage to the native Kanak people. If Greenland opts for independence from Denmark, it's goodbye Greenland and hello Kalaallit Nunaat, the Inuit name for the country.

Resurgent nationalism across the globe are keeping mapmakers and diplomats busy. Country name changing is the current vogue and there are no signs that it will end anytime soon.

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The continued presence of French, British, Dutch, Danish, and American colonies around the world extends what is officially called the “North Atlantic Treaty Organization” to the South Atlantic, the Caribbean Sea, the Pacific Ocean, and the Indian Ocean. If there was ever an organization guilty of blatantly deceptive advertising practices, it is NATO.

Recent attempts to secure more political autonomy in the French Caribbean territories of Guadeloupe, Martinique, and French Guiana, the latter the home of a French space launch facility having strategic importance, have been met with everything from indifference in Paris or extreme hostility. A January 26, 1968 SECRET Central Intelligence Agency report warned against Soviet attempts to establish space tracking facilities in French Guiana. That same year, the Guiana Space Center was established at Korou in the French colony. NATO ordered the suppression of independence moves by the people of Guiana to keep the center solely in the hands of France and the European Space Agency. In March and April 2017, populist tempers flared when Guianese protesters took over the Korou space facility over charges that France was ignoring the people of the colony. Youth unemployment, for example, is at a staggering 55 percent.

Moves by Britain to curb the financial independence of its Caribbean-Atlantic territories of the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Bermuda, Anguilla, and the British Virgin Islands (BVI) have faced charges in those territories of Britain’s re-imposition of colonialism on the self-governing territories. The Dutch have been the most blatantly neo-colonialist in rolling back self-government in St. Maarten, Bonaire, St. Eustatius, and Saba. The Dutch totally ignored the results of a 2015 referendum in Bonaire that rejected the island’s incorporation into the Netherlands by 65 percent. A 2014 referendum in St. Eustatius also rejected incorporation into the Netherlands. The Dutch colonizers have moved to impose direct rule on both islands with a wink and a nod from NATO.

NATO treats its member states’ Caribbean and Atlantic territories as military “terra firma,” where air and naval bases either currently exist or could be ramped up for military actions. Attempts at independence or a strong degree of autonomy are not in NATO’s interests. NATO, through its surrogates in Copenhagen, has deterred any move toward independence by the Faroes and Greenland, both Danish territories that, on paper, enjoy self-government. NATO wants to ensure its continued presence at the U.S. airbase in Thule and deter China from mining operations in rapidly-warming Greenland that target known major deposits of rare earth minerals. Recent elections in Greenland resulted in a victory for Prime Minister Kim Kielsen and his four-party coalition that favors independence from Denmark. One of the parties, Nunatta Qitornai, favors immediate independence from Denmark. A scheduled referendum on a new constitution in the Faroes was postponed for six months. The referendum, which could lead to independence from Denmark, may have been delayed as a result of NATO interference directed through surrogates in Copenhagen and the Faroese capital of Torshavn.

The Dutch have ignored requests for more autonomy in the Caribbean territories of Aruba and Curacao, both sites of U.S. and NATO military and intelligence aerial and naval assets targeting the government of Venezuela and leftist groups in Colombia. The U.S. 12th Air Force, based at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, operates two “Cooperative Security Locations” at Hato International Airport in Curacao and Reina Beatrix International Airport in Aruba.

A 2012 Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the United States and the Netherlands grants access until 2021 to U.S. military forces for “training” and other purposes to Bonaire, Saba, St. Eustatius, and Saint Maarten. It was after this agreement was signed that the special autonomy enjoyed by these territories began to be rolled back by the governing cliques in The Hague and Amsterdam.

Recent moves by the British government to require its Caribbean and other territories to adopt public ownership registers prior to the end of 2020 or risk having their financial affairs taken over directly from London has resulted in a revolt among the British colonies, especially those in the Caribbean. London maintains that the public ownership registers are necessary to stem the flow of “dirty money” and secret corporate ownership in the wake of the “Panama and Paradise Papers” offshore tax haven financial records’ disclosures. The British territories argued that after the imposition of public ownership records, offshore firms and their money will simply move to other locations where corporate secrecy will continue to be maintained.

Of course, to avoid dictates from London, some British territories are already floating the idea of independence. BVI Premier Orlando Smith said London’s move to infringe on BVI’s self-government calls into question the constitutional relationship between the United Kingdom and the people of the BVI. BVI has moved to establish direct links with the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) of independent nations, without the interference of the London colonial authorities. BVI is now represented at CARICOM and Association of Caribbean States meetings by its own External Affairs Secretary. Likewise, Cayman Islands Premier Alden McLaughlin has demanded more control over his islands’ affairs, including national security and membership in the World Trade Organization. British authorities have not only refused but are making moves to impose British financial regulations on the popular offshore business haven.

Caribbean territorial leaders point out that the requirements imposed on them do not apply to the Isle of Man or the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey, which, as crown dependencies of Queen Elizabeth, are not subject to the whims of the British Parliament. If London attempts to impose its will on the crown dependencies, they have let it be known that they will move to cut their links with the British Crown and opt for independence.

NATO, of course, does not want to see any moves toward independence from islands within the Irish Sea, English Channel, or Caribbean. The Trump administration has re-established the U.S. Navy’s Second Fleet, which was disbanded by President Obama in 2011 and will have responsibility for the North Atlantic, including Bermuda and Greenland, the latter also seeking independence from its Danish colonial masters. The U.S. Navy’s Fourth Fleet continues to dominate the American Caribbean territories of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico; the British territories of the Caymans, Turks and Caicos, Anguilla, BVI, and Montserrat; the Dutch territories of Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Saint Maarten, Saba, and St. Eustatius; and the French territories of Guadeloupe and St. Barthelemy, Martinique, and French Guiana. U.S. Southern Command, based in Miami, exercises an almost viceroy-like political domination over the entire Caribbean region.

NATO is also keeping a wary eye on the French colony of New Caledonia in the Pacific. Neither NATO nor Australia want New Caledonia voters to opt for independence in the upcoming referendum in November of this year. French mainlanders who colonized the island territory are pushing for a “no” vote and French President Emmanuel Macron recently visited the colony to emphasize the importance of retaining the colonial link with France. A major psychological operations campaign is being waged to convince the indigenous Kanaky people that the French colonialists already have the votes to defeat independence. Another psychological campaign is being waged that falsely claims that China is moving in to establish a naval base in nearby Vanuatu.

NATO, while still using the “North Atlantic” designator, does not want to lose its colonial footprints around the world, from Mayotte in the Indian Ocean and Wallis and Futuna in the South Pacific to St. Helena in the South Atlantic and Guam in the West Pacific. NATO has long been accused of waging neo-colonial wars in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. However, when it comes to basic garden-variety colonialism, NATO is intent on maintaining control over of its member states’ territorial toeholds in the seven seas.

Crafty world leaders are using the dysfunctionality of US foreign policy to push the envelope, while America is pre-occupied with what Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called a moron, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Senator Bob Corker called a child in need of adult day care, and the North Korean government called a senile “dotard” in the Oval Office. The final chapter of the American Century has given problematic leaders like Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, Saudi King Salman, and Moroccan King Mohammed VI encouragement to carry out their own agendas in the absence of America’s past framing of the geo-political map.

Trump has outsourced American policy in the Middle East primarily to Israel, with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates acting as cheerleaders for the Israelis. The first clue that Trump would hand Middle East policy to Israel came with his nomination of the anti-Palestinian Zionist David Friedman as US ambassador to Israel. That was followed by Trump’s appointment of his pro-Likud son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a special envoy to the Middle East. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, a friend of the Trump family since the 1980s, has taken advantage of a powerless State Department to annex more Israeli-occupied lands in the West Bank in violation of multiple UN Security Council resolutions. Netanyahu is also a close friend of Kushner and his father, Charles Kushner.

In just a few days, Trump carried out two act that were not in America’s interest but had been pushed by Netanyahu. These were the withdrawal of the United States from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), because Trump viewed it as overly anti-Israeli, and Trump’s official denouncement of the P5+1’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on the Iranian nuclear program. Previously, Trump scrapped America’s participation in the Paris Climate Accord, making the United States the world’s only outlier in rejecting the accord.

The eclipse of US influence on the world stage has seen several world leaders begin to push the envelope against Washington either by directly confronting the United States or by reneging on international treaties and agreements. Trump, who has made scrapping international treaties his stock-in-trade, sets a bad example for other leaders to pull out of long-honored agreements and pacts. 

Perhaps no leader has taken advantage of American foreign policy and military turmoil more than Turkey’s Erdogan. Last year, Erdogan's dictatorial government arrested American Protestant pastor Andrew Brunson on charges that he was involved in the so-called "Fethullah Terrorist Organization" coup attempt against Erdogan’s government in 2016. Erdogan attempted to swap Brunson for Gulen, a billionaire businessman and cleric now living under official political asylum in Pennsylvania. Erdogan's request was not acted upon, so, as is the case with bullies, he grabbed another hostage, Metin Topuz, a Turkish employee of the US Consulate-General in Istanbul. Erdogan’s government unsatisfied with America’s inaction on Gulen, arrested a second employee of the US Consulate-General, along with his wife and child.

The US retaliated by suspending the processing of all non-immigrant visas for Turks wishing to enter the United States. Erdogan ordered the Turkish visa offices in the United States to do the same with US visa applications for travel to Turkey. Erdogan has reportedly ordered the arrest of a half-dozen Turkish-American citizens on similar trumped up charges of aiding in the 2016 coup and of being connected to Gulen's organization.

The Kim Jong Un government in North Korea has engaged in a war of words with Trump after the US President resorted to calling the North Korean leader "rocket man" in tweets and before the United Nations General Assembly. North Korea, sizing up Trump's attacks on the JCPOA nuclear weapons agreement with Iran, has no desire to reach a nuclear deal with anyone after witnessing that anything the United States signs is not worth the paper it's printed on. It is also noteworthy that North Korea signed the Paris Climate Accord, an agreement Trump has renounced.

Similar breakdowns in international law are popping up all over the world with Washington's preoccupation with a president considered even by his closest military and national security aides to be too mentally unbalanced to be trusted with the nuclear launch codes. Ukraine, which has been encouraged by promises from some parties in the Trump administration of receiving US lethal weaponry, has walked away from the Normandy Quartet and Minsk Agreements between Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany on cessation of hostilities in eastern Ukraine. After witnessing Trump turn international agreements into toilet paper, Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko, who presides over a kleptocracy that includes rich Ukrainians linked to the Trump and Kushner criminal organizations, sees no reason to abide by agreements with Russia worked out through the diplomatic offices of France, Germany, and Belarus.

Even though the European Court of Justice ruled last year that Morocco could not claim the disputed territory of Western Sahara, which is recognized as an independent state by 40 nations, Morocco is now reneging on an agreement to hold a referendum in Western Sahara on independence. With Trump referring to the UN as an exercise in mismanagement, Morocco's King Mohammed feels emboldened to ignore repeated UN resolutions on Western Sahara.

Taking a page from King Mohammed, Papua New Guinea's scandal-plagued prime minister, Peter O'Neill, is reneging on carrying out a Bougainville independence referendum prior to 2020. A referendum is guaranteed by the UN-endorsed Bougainville Peace Accord of 2001. The referendum, if passed, would require Papua New Guinea to grant independence to Bougainville.

French President Emmanuel Macron has also shown signs of wanting to violate the 1998 Noumea Accord, which requires a referendum on independence for its South Pacific colony of New Caledonia to be held prior to November 2018. France appears inclined to see more French mainland citizens move to New Caledonia in advance of the poll to ensure a "no" vote wins in the referendum.

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a political heir of Spanish fascist dictator Francisco Franco, is threatening to impose direct rule on secession-minded Catalonia, with the nodding approval of the European Union. Such a move would terminate Catalonia's self-government institutions, a return to Franco’s policy toward Catalonia.

Saudi Arabia, with Trump's encouragement, led an economic and transportation boycott of Qatar, which violates several international agreements, including the UN Charter. The Saudis even contemplated shooting down a Qatar Airways passenger jumbo jet, claiming it violated Saudi airspace. The United Arab Emirates apparently triggered the Qatar crisis by hacking the Qatar News Agency and inserting a story that quoted Qatar's emir of being critical of the Saudi king. It was later revealed that Israel was involved in the hacking through one of its lobbying organizations in Washington, the neo-con Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The Saudis also pressured tiny Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa, to expel 500 Qatari peacekeeping troops monitoring the Djibouti-Eritrean border. The Saudis have also ignored a recent UN report on genocide committed by its coalition forces against children in Yemen.

The scrapping of international agreements around the world has followed America's preoccupation with an unstable president and his disdain for international accords. Trump’s unilateral actions against the JCPOA, UNESCO, and the Paris Climate Accord are likely to be followed by other brusque actions on the international stage.

Norway, perhaps emboldened by the anti-Russia saber rattling of its former prime minister-turned-NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg, is violating the terms of the 1920 Svalbard Agreement. The agreement guarantees free international access to the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Norway has started to illegally impose Norwegian visa regulations for the islands, which, the most part, are designed to keep out Russian nationals.

The minute Trump was sworn in as president, new and long-dormant flashpoints began lighting up around the world, from the Rock of Gibraltar and Africa's Caprivi Strip to the Sikkim-Tibet border and the Arabian Sea’s island of Socotra. As Trump descends into further madness, many of these flashpoints will ignite into conflict. The Trump era will be known in future history books as not only the end of the “American Century” but as a time when America's lack of leadership and international engagement plunged the world into violence-ridden nihilism.