National Public Radio once called The Phoenix Foundation a shadowy
and sinister organization. It is not entirely clear if they are still
active. We do know that their founder, Michael Oliver, tried on
three separate occaisions to start his own nation based on
libertarian ideology. His methods involved stirring up troubles in
small island nations with a potential for starting violent
independence movements. Michael Oliver and the Phoenix Foundation
were, at best, on a quixotic quest without any realistic chance of
success.
The sixties were a time when national independence movements
were thriving. The post-colonial era was at its peak and anti-Soviet
rebellions were breaking out in Eastern Europe. Some of that spirit
spread to the first world and Michael Oliver, a real estate developer
who had made it big in Las Vegas, caught a bit of that wind. Oliver
was a Lithuanian immigrant, a far-right anarcho-libertarian in
ideology, an anti-communist, anti-tax activist, and advocate of
strict adherence to the gold standard. In 1971, he began pitching
dreams of a libertarian utopia where no government would interfere
with anybody and no taxes would be paid. He attracted a sleazy group
of intelligence agents, laissez faire capitalist extremists, pimps,
drug traffickers and mafiosi who poured $200.000 into his scheme to
build his island paradise in the South Pacific.
The Minerva Reefs, somewhat near Tonga, were uninhabited by
anything other than sea creatures; this was due to their location
underwater. Michael Oliver hired a team of barges to haul sand from
Australia to the reef and dump it there to make an island rising
above sea level. When the waves no longer covered the newly-made
land, Oliver and his appointed president of the Republic of Minerva,
Morris Davis, arrived with flags and freshly minted coins made of
gold on one side and silver on the other. They built one tower on the
island. The other governments of the region were suspicious, so they
held a meeting and agreed that something needed to be done. The King
of Tonga sent a small band of troops to occupy the island; they
seized Minerva’s one tower, planted the Tongan flag in the sand,
and chased Oliver and his goofy friends away. The island of Minerva
has been a part of Tonga ever since.
Never one to kknow when to quit, Oliver saw the Republic of
Minerva as a learning experience rather than a defeat. His next
venture into nation building involved ex-OSS intelligence agent
Mitchell Werbell and a large supply of military-grade weaponry to be
used for defense and armed rebellion. 1973 was the year when Great
Britain decided to set the Bahamas free and end colonial rule in that
Caribbean group of islands. The white inhabitants of Bahamian Abaco
wanted to remain a part of the U.K. since they feared being a
marginalized minority population under a government made up of
Afro-Caribbean politicians. Oliver saw his opportunity. He made
contact with the people of Abaco and offered them financial and
military aid in exchange for letting him build his libertarian
fantasy on their land. He soon brought Werbell in a helicopter with a
large collection of heavy weaponry and a newly-penned constitution
guaranteeing extremely limited government and establishing Abaco as a
tax-haven nation.
Mitchell Werbell attempted to build a militia by training the
residents of Abaco in warfare techniques. Initially, the machine guns
and hand grenades looked like fun but soon the peoples’ interest
waned. They had little interest in being a utopian country where rich
people could hide their money in banks to avoid taxation; they did
not want their island to turn into a seedy enclave of drug runners
and whorehouses. Ultimately they wanted to remain a part of the U.K.
but that dream died when the British officials flat-out told them
they were not interested in keeping Abaco as a British possession.
Oliver began to look like a meddler and a crank. The Bahamian
government easily put down the rebellion; Michael Oliver got deported
and Werbell got arrested for illegal weapons trafficking. They
sentenced him to prison in the United States.
The Phoenix Foundation officially started in 1975. The three
trustees of the group were Michael Oliver, his friend James McKeever,
and Harry Schulz, the world’s highest paid investment banker at the
time. Their aim was to turn their anarcho-capitalist, laissez faire
ideology into a tax-free banking nation ; their motivation was that
something had to be done soon since America was losing the Cold War
and the age-old right wing trope that a communist totalitarian
dictatorship would soon engulf the freest nation in the world was
imminent. Either that or society was about to collapse because the
government makes people pay taxes. After scheming in secret for five
years, the Phoenix Foundation moved its headquarters to Amsterdam to
escape the prying eyes of the IRS and other government snoops. In
1980 they put their plans into action.
The New Hebrides were never officially a colony. The French
and British governments came to a unique agreement to jointly
administer the South Pacific island chain without actually claiming
possession of it. The colonial era was winding down and both
countries agreed to allow the New Hebrides to become an independent
nation, soon to be named Vanuatu. The transition was to be a peaceful
one and a cause for the Melanesian inhabitants to celebrate. The
biggest obstacle came from a remote island called Espiritu Santo.
Jimmy Stevens, a half-caucasian and half-Melanesian leader of a
cargo cult called Nagriamel, had campaigned in Vanuatu’s first
presidential election and lost by a landslide. Disgruntled, he
returned to Espiritu Santo and declared the island to be a separate
nation named Vemerana. The people in his cult rose up in rebellion,
armed only with fists and bows and arrows. They seized all government
property and the radio station, rioted, burned and looted buildings
and blockaded the air strip to prevent any planes from landing.
Soon after that, a boat full of Vietnamese refugees got
intercepted by the military. Upon inspection, they uncovered a large
cache of guns and radio equipment. The boat was headed for Espiritu
Santo and the ownership was registered as the Phoenix Foundation. The
Vietnamese boat-people were being brought along to bulk-up the
population of Espiritu Santo, although what they would do once they
got there has never been fully explained.
For the Phoenix Foundation, this proved to be a minor
deterrence. They flew Jimmy Stevens to the United States to petition
the United Nations for statehood recognition. He returned with boxes
of Vemerana flags, passports, and freshly minted coins. The Phoenix
Foundation clandestinely brought in a new supply of war materiel from
Fiji. Spies alerted the government in the capital of Vanuatu. The
conflict known as the Coconut War had begun. Three years after the
murder-suicides of the People’s Temple cult in Jonestown, Guyana, a
group of white men supplying natives of a remote jungle island with
rifles made the Phoenix Foundation look scary and suspicious. The
Vanuatuans asked Britain and France for help. The British thought it
was more trouble than it was worth but France still had troops in New
Caledonia. They were transported to Espiritu Santo, albeit with no
mandate to engage in any military action. When the followers of
Nagriamel saw the unwillingness of the soldiers to fight, they went
on a rampage and destroyed all the stores and buildings on the
island. In an act of desperation, Papua New Guinea sent in a band of
soldiers to quell the violence. In the end, the Papuans were welcomed
as guests and fellow Melanesians; they quickly made friends with the
Nagriamel fighters and the Coconut War ended without any combat.
Jimmy Stevens was arrested and imprisoned. During the trial, it
became obvious that the Phoenix Foundation was manipulating him and
trying to orchestrate the uprising behing the scenes. Michael Oliver
and his gang of loony libertarians were deported and permanently
banned from Vanuatu.
Despite being a successful businessman, Michael Oliver was a
three-time loser nonetheless, and the Phoenix Foundation turned out
to be nothing more than a clique of dopey rich kids who could not see
farther then they could reach. This is sad because they obviously
could not see very far. Maybe this is what millionaires do when they
have too much time on their hands, too much imagination, too little
purpose in life and only a tenuous connection to life in the real
world. Wealth does not automatically breed wisdom. A nation can not
be built with an excess of ideology and no pragmatic or practical
plan of action.
Strauss, Erwin S. How to Start Your Own Country. Paladin
Press, 1999.
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