meted out to many, of whom bishop Oscar Romero is merely one of the more famous. Another case in point (not much reported by the media in case the people of the West might discover that a considerable proportion of Palestinians are christian), the Palestinian bishops. Bishop (patriarch) Michael Sabbah of Jerusalem has said (LaCroix-1 ‘Evenement’, 19 February, 1988) that the percentage of chris­tians among the Palestinians was being forced down drastically through emigration caused by Israeli military, political, psychological and socio-economic pressure. The same bishop’s words about Palestinian ‘terrorism’ could apply to most of the ‘terrorism’ by the weak against the strong throughout the world: it was not a desire to kill and destroy but a cry of despair. One must also not forget the great work being done against heavy odds by church-sponsored organisations such as, here in France, the dedicated and dynamic committee of the hierarchy, the CCFD (Comité Contre la Faim et Pour le Development) and by both protestant and catholic groups elsewhere.

Regret has sometimes been expressed for white men losing ‘their’ lands and positions at the hands of newly independent peoples, an argument which side-steps the question of the original expropriation, the spoliation since then and the fact that at independence many of the colonialists, previously hired by the secret service Freemasonry of their mother-countries, recruited some of the best elements from the new administrations with a view to continuing the exploitation of minerals, forests, land, fisheries and climate at the expense of the mass of the people. If, merely to indicate the general pattern, I pick one or two examples from the early days of Western exploitation of the Third World which happen to be from the British Empire, this does not mean that the other colonizers were better than the British. It is merely because, as you know, I have somewhat more experience of the English-speaking world and because you are writing for

English-speaking readers. For information on today’s situation in the French Empire you could begin with René Dumont. Everybody knows of the cruelty of the Dutch occupation in Indonesia, which lasted 350 years and left the Indonesian people in the most lamentable state of sub­servience and deprivation. Then there are the former Belgian, German, Spanish and Portuguese Empires. There have been others, such as the Turkish, but they did not retain their domination and exploitation as thoroughly as the modern capitalist empires did. In this, the Anglo-American Empire proved the most powerful.

When the corrupt Robert Clive (who later committed suicide when accused of his corruption) went into India in 1743, the country was scarcely behind England in prosperity and like England was beginning an important industrial revolution. The ancient trade routes with Europe were functioning, textile production was flourishing and a great variety of food production was feeding the people as effectively as in any country in Europe, where there was then also frequent famine. Exploitation by the conquerors, based on the now well-oiled process of enriching local Quislings, then proceeded to turn the mass of the people into a condition of slavery even worse than the nascent capitalism was doing in England. The same process was followed as in Ireland a century earlier: local initiative and industry were stifled and the best land expropriated. Indian textiles were replaced by imports from Lancashire. Lord Cornwallis’s Permanent Settlement Act made estate size unlimited and cut down native food production in favour of large plantations producing jute, indigo, tea, opium and other commodities for export to swell the bank accounts of the owners in England. The new transport system, the railway, built by slave labour, was oriented towards the ports, particularly Calcutta. Although Indian conditions are not quite comparable with those in Africa, it might