Imperial Forces


American kids are taught fuckall about US Imperialist behavior throughout history. We are taught a lot of manipulative public relations. For a fast-track lesson on current affairs and history, yesterday's video is a great place to start. It details a century of US imperial forces, banana republics set up by US corporate-state alliances (as the name comes from the United Fruit banana business interests), training generations of assassins in the School of the Americas and dozens of puppet dictators. John Pilcher's fine film, War on Democracy, which I first saw on Link TV is now available via Google.

Today, I listened to Noam Chompsky on Democracy Now with a speech titled Crisis and Hope: Theirs and Ours. A reoccurring phrase in his speech, recorded this June in New York's Riverside Church, is democratic deficit. Essentially, nothing is working or supporting the democracy, the people. It is all constructed and maintained for the entitled few and has been for since the founding.

We have more than 800 bases in something like 150 countries. That is empire building plain and simple.

Image from Inspire me, now! blog

3 comments:

Lee said...

It seems to be obvious to everyone *outside* of America. When people visit your country, we're amazed at how insular it is.

Saying that, every country has its issues. America's are to do with the government's fear of its people and its neighbours. I don't quite understand it, but the level of corruption in your government is astounding. I mean, does anyone actually believe over there that Bush *won* an election? Get real!

Loved the piccy though :-)

katecontinued said...

Doesn't it all begin with the exclusivity of American attitude? Again, I believe the sheeple of the United States have been shaped and groomed over decades.

Your comment sparked a lengthy response. I pulled it out for a possible post. I thank you for that stimulus.

And, the picture is fantastic isn't it? I love that website.

Lee said...

Every country has sheeple, it's just the Us is bigger and more influential. Maybe it has a higher percentage of sheeple, I don't know, but sheeple are certainly everywhere.

I look forward to reading the post.