Category: Political Bullshit
American Imperialism
Looking for “American imperialism” on Youtube, I was surprised by the large number of videos. Where to begin? What to choose? Well, lets start with trying to understand what is meant by the word “imperialism” (Wikipedia). Imperialism involves rule by a foreign government with or without colonization. The point of ruling a land area is to extract from it some advantage, as through taxation or through some business operation. A notorious example of such a business operation was that of Leopold II of Belgium: “Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo; initially by the collection of ivory and after a rise in the price of rubber in the 1890s, by forced labour from the native population to harvest and process rubber. Under his regime millions of the Congolese people died. Modern estimates range from one million to fifteen million, with a consensus growing around 10 million.”
Imperialism can proceed by incorporating adjacent or non-adjacent territory under the rule of a State. In the case of the United States, though there were objections to the land-grabs from the Mexicans in the Mexican- American War (1846-1848). [“Acting on his convictions, Henry David Thoreau was jailed for his refusal to pay taxes to support the war, and penned his famous essay Civil Disobedience.”]
This business of expanding the territory of the United States through the acquisition of adjacent territory was not called “imperialism,” until the U.S. got into the business of acquiring rule over non-adjacent territories through the Spanish-American War in 1898. This war started as a war for the liberation of Cuba and the Philippines from Spanish imperialism, but the United States refused to give either Cuba (and Puerto Rico) or the Philippines independence. This led to the Philippine-American War (1899-1902), resulting in 1/4 million dead Filipinos.
In 1898, in opposition to the annexation of the Philippines, there was formed in the United States the American Anti-Imperialist League (Wikipedia), of which Mark Twain, from 1901, was vice-president.
Stephen Kinzer just published a book about the start of American imperialism: THE TRUE FLAG: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire, 2017. Below is a talk which Kinzer gave on the book:
Tariq Ali talks to Seymour Hersh about the assassination of Osama bin Laden
Paul Jay: Climate change is the most important threat facing humanity
The Dangers of Capitalism — Analyses of Paul Craig Roberts, “We have a republican party that is a Gestapo party”
Paul Craig Roberts (born April 3, 1939) is an American economist, journalist, blogger, conspiracy theorist, and former civil servant. He was the United States Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy under President Reagan in 1981. He has an internet site at: Institute for Political Economy. Some of his books:
— How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds (AK Press, 2010)
— The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West (Clarity Press, 2013)
— How America was Lost. From 9/11 to the Police/Warfare State (Clarity Press, 2014)
— The Neoconservative Threat to World Order: Washington’s Perilous War for Hegemony (Clarity Press, 2015)
Paul Craig Roberts-Neoconservatives Driving World to War
Rosa Luxemburg: Reform or Revolution?
Rosa Luxemburg at Wikipedia
The text of Reform or Revolution (1900)
Panel at the Left Forum 2016:
Laura Flanders introduces Sandra Rein on Rosa Luxemburg
Chris Hedges on Rosa Luxemburg
Richard Wolff on Rosa Luxemburg
Peter Joseph exposes the roots of market-driven economics (capitalism)
Primitive Accumulation of Capital (Dispossession of peasant land)
Primitive accumulation of capital (Wikipedia)
A great book about the history of land rights is:
George Cadbury and Tom Bryan, The Land and the Landless, London, 1908.
Escaping from the State
James Scott, “The Art of Not Being Governed”
Books by James Scott:
- The Moral Economy of the Peasant. Rebellion and Subsistence in Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, 1976.
- Weapons of the Weak. Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance, Yale University Press, 1985.
- Domination and the Arts of Resistance. Hidden Transcripts, Yale University Press, 1990.
- Seeing like a State. How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, Yale University Press, 1998.
- The Art of Not Being Governed. An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, Yale University Press, 2009.
- Two Cheers for Anarchism. Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play, Princeton University Press, 2012.
Pierre Clastres, “Society Against the State,” 1989. [Originally in French, 1974]
Albert J. Nock, “Our Enemy, the State,” 1935.
Franz Oppenheimer, “The State,” 1914.
World Population and Immigration to the U.S.
Does immigration to the U.S. help the poor of the world?
Does immigration to the U.S. help the people living in the U.S.?