DANGER! DANGER! Politcal rant to follow. Set memetic defenses to maximum.
On Sat, 18 Mar 2000 13:32:12 PST,
"Zero Powers" <zero_powers@hotmail.com> wrote:
>Imperialism is extending a nation's
>authority by territorial acquisition or by the establishment of economic and
>political hegemony over other nations. The US is not doing this. We are
>basically acting as the referee in the world's international wrestling
>matches, and enforcing the rules when we notice low blows. No, no one
>appointed us as the referee, but we're the biggest kid on the block and have
>assumed the role of shot caller by default. Maybe its a good thing, maybe
>its not. But it is definitely *not* imperialism.
I must respectfully disagree. Of course, if you insist on a tightly
controlled definition of imperialism, then you can dismiss anything that
differs, no matter how slightly, from your definition. Someone once said
that you can control a debate by controlling the definitions. This is what
they meant.
However,...if you're willing to be a bit looser in your definition of
imperialism...
The US sends "foreign aid" to lots of countries. Often this is in the form
of a line of credit for american infrastructure builders and armaments
manufacturers. (And you thought it was for food, clothing, medical care,
and education. Yeah, right!) (In the eighties, during a moment of economic
tightness, the Washington political insiders found themselves in a bit of a
pinch over the issue of foreign aid. The American people, mostly under the
mistaken impression that it was some kind of international charity program,
were pressuring the pols for cutbacks. The pols, however, knew that it was
really a way of controlling access to markets and resources, but they
couldn't blow the whistle on the Uncle-Sammy-the-sweetheart cover story.
Needless to say, the "foreign aid" did not stop.) The ruling elite in that
country then become the client administrators of an informal US territory.
If they do not open their markets and make their resources available to
American Interests (and why the hell would they want to do that, and throw
away everything that they spent an entire political career working to
achieve--they're not Fidel Castro for god's sake!), then the foreign aid
stops, covert economic (and sometimes military) assistance is provided to
their political rivals, and soon, one way or another, US interests have
their way.
The US elite, with the help of the CIA, dominates the world.
It may not be imperialism by some standard definition, but the result is
the same.
We're all slaves in a big slave world, but Roman slaves have it better than
the rest.
Best, Jeff Davis
"Everything's hard till you know how to do it."
Ray Charles
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