-

2026-01-28 13:46:05

Krugor

krugor@diaspora.psyco.fr

kuchinster wrote the following Beitrag Wed, 28 Jan 2026 11:31:53 +0100

harryhaller schrieb den folgenden Beitrag Tue, 27 Jan 2026 12:46:56 +0100

Against Empire by Michael Parenti

Richly informed and written in an engaging style, Against Empire exposes the ruthless agenda and hidden costs of the U.S. empire today. Documenting the pretexts and lies used to justify violent intervention and maldevelopment abroad, Parenti shows how the conversion to a global economy is a victory of finance capital over democracy.

As much of the world suffers unspeakable misery and the Third-Worldization of the United States accelerates, civil society is impoverished by policies that benefit rich and powerful transnational corporations and the national security state. Hard-won gains made by ordinary people are swept away. https://archive.org/details/against-empire_202601 #book #parenti #imperialism

In 1907, Woodrow Wilson recognized the support role played by the capitalist state on behalf of private capital:

Since trade ignores national boundaries and the manufacturer insists on having the world as a market, the flag of his nation must follow him, and the doors of the nations which are closed against him must be battered down. Concessions obtained by financiers must be safeguarded by ministers of state, even if the sovereignty of unwilling nations be outraged in the process. Colonies must be obtained or planted, in order that no useful corner of the world may be overlooked or left unused.

Later, as president of the United States, Wilson noted that the United States was involved in a struggle to "command the economic fortunes of the world."

...

As Thorstein Veblen pointed out in The Theory of the Business Enterprise (1904), the gains of empire flow into the hands of the privileged business class while the costs are extracted from "the industry of the rest of the people." The transnationals monopolize the private returns of empire while carrying little, if any, of the public cost. The expenditures needed in the way of armaments and aid to make the world safe for General Motors, General Dynamics, General Electric, and all the other generals are paid by the U.S. government, that is, by the taxpayers.

So it was with the British Empire in India, the costs of which, Marx noted a half-century before Veblen, were "paid out of the pockets of the people of England," and far exceeded what came back into the British treasury. He concluded that the advantage to Great Britain from her Indian Empire was limited to the "very considerable" profits which accrued to select individuals, mostly a coterie of stockholders and officers in the East India Company and the Bank of England.

...

What alarmed leaders like Kissinger was not that Allende's social democratic reforms were failing but that they were succeeding. The trend toward politico-economic equality had to be stopped. So Kissinger, the CIA, the White House, and the U.S. media went after the Popular Unity government tooth and nail. In the name of saving Chile's democracy, they destroyed it, instituting a fascist dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet, one that tortured and executed thousands, disappeared thousands more, and suppressed all opposition media, political parties, labor unions, and peasant organizations.

Immediately after the military coup, General Motors, which had closed its plants when Allende was elected, resumed operations, demonstrating how capitalism is much more comfortable with fascism than with social democracy. Far from rescuing the economy, the CIA-sponsored coup ushered in an era of skyrocketing inflation and national debt, with drastic increases in unemployment, poverty, and hunger.

...

The demonized adversaries are often accused of terrorism. For years, the Reagan administration denounced the Soviets for running a worldwide terrorism network. Major news organizations like the Washington Post (January 27, 1981) concurred, accusing the Soviets and their allies of being the "principle source of terror in the world." The Wall Street Journal (October 23, 1981) editorialized that the Soviets and Cubans had a "deep involvement in American terrorism." Books written by right-wing flacks like Claire Sterling asserted that Arab, Irish, Basque, Japanese, West German, and Italian terror groups were linked to Moscow. What was missing from all these charges was any shred of supporting evidence. (Nor was any corroboration forthcoming after the Soviet Union collapsed and KGB files were opened.)

...

By portraying itself as a champion against terror, the U.S. national security state deflects attention from its own international terror network, including the ex-Nazis who were sheltered in the United States and enlisted in terror campaigns in Latin America and elsewhere, and the military and paramilitary forces and death squads in dozens of countries — trained, equipped, and funded by the CIA and the Pentagon — that terrorize their own populations on a grand scale. In countries like Guatemala, Mozambique, and Haiti they killed more people in one week than Arab, Basque, and Northern Ireland "terrorist" groups killed in ten years.

#USEmpire #USA #US #us #american #government #oligachy #politics #MIC #Pentagon #CIA #FBI #japan #uk #britain #british #france #europe #anglo-saxons #european #warmongers #banksters #imperialism #militarycapitalism #capitalism #corporatecrime #finance #money #economy #deepstate #power #colonialaism #neocolonialism #fascism #anticommunism #mccarthyism #terror #terrorism #oppression #intervention #violence #violencesystem #murders #deaths #sadism #wars #IMF #imf #debt #poverty #vassalage #slavery #western #media #lie #deception #fraud #propaganda against #social-justice #democracy #workersrights #humanrights #asia #africa #middleEast #latinamerica #socialism #USSR #history

Additionally:
A COMPLETE LIST OF WARS AND ARMED CONFLICTS INITIATED BY THE UNITED STATES THROUGHOUT ITS HISTORY