Is There an American Empire, Yes or No.

[bomberfox]

You believe declaring a country an empire today based on history is legitimate?

It's not. It could be done to every country. That renders your claim meaningless.

Umm you do realize empires take decades at least to build? Our entire record is relevant to judging the attitudes our leaders quite often have.

 

[ecofarm]

Umm you do realize empires take decades at least to build? Our entire record is relevant to judging the attitudes our leaders quite often have.

Germany is a genocidal dictatorship?

So lame. You just wanna **** talk America. It's not an empire.

 

[ecofarm]

People are going by what you post here. If you dont include any ecofeminist perspective in these posts its very dishonest to suddenly pop it up out of the blue. Your argument so far in here is without nuance at all.

You prefer strawmen.

 

[ecofarm]

Thats not what was said. The thing people are trying to get across to you is the truth is far more ugly and the costs of our actions should never just be hand waved away.

Thread title isn't "whine about America", or maybe it is.

 

[Fledermaus]

This is a pretty good post.

Heartfelt thanks.

 

[bomberfox]

Germany is a genocidal dictatorship?

So lame. You just wanna **** talk America. It's not an empire.

Umm what? Do you have trouble reading? You are just stumbling all over yourself in your response to everyone in this thread who is doing a better job than i. If you are stumbling this badly against me, that is pretty sad.

 

[bomberfox]

Thread title isn't "whine about America", or maybe it is.

Jingoism is your forte it seems.

 

[bomberfox]

You prefer strawmen.

Just keep stumbling just keep stumbling

 

[cpwill]

cpwill:

Well the Iraqi democracy is working out well these days. They're gunning down protesters who have had it up to here with the kleptocracy of the Iraqi regime. Hundreds killed in a few days. Afghanistan as a killing zone is doing well too. Guatemala, Columbia, Ecuador, Honduras, Africa under AFRICOM's tender administrations, Indonesia, all shining examples of the enlightenment pollinated by the American commercial empire and benign US foreign policy.

The American republic does encapsulate great ideals of enlightenment and humanism, but alas those ideals are abstract and dying on the twin altars of unenlightened greed and and insatiable power lust which have captured the American State and gestalt. Empire is draining your public coffers dry and the imperialists, their manipulative skills, their militarism and their mercenaries are coming home to roost as the American people are about to be forcefully colonised by their own militarised police, surveillance and security state to shore up the crumbling buttresses of contracting empire. Real democracy and empire can seldom coexist.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

If you think AFRICOM is running Africa, you aren't paying attention to anything except occasional news headlines about U.S. deployments, while ignoring the numbers. Putting (making up a number) 40 advisers into Niger to help train their CT forces isn't "running Niger" any more than the U.K. sending military students to our academies means they are running the U.S.

I also note that not a single thing you mention actually addresses the point. Complaints that Afghan or Iraqi self-governance is problematic or corrupt still grants that they have self-governance. If you want to claim that people often make mistakes when they are free to choose their own path, I will agree wholeheartedly! Heck, my own country has chosen two feckless fools for it's senior executive in the past decade, both of which were mistakes. That doesn't mean that somehow they aren't able to make their own decisions.

So, if you want to complain that the U.S. only liberates fallible, broken, imperfect humans, well, alright. Until the Eschaton, the only kind available to liberate.

 

[cpwill]

Well, I’m in the unenviable position of having this debate with someone who is a member of the United States military, you were in Iraq and I’m sure you don’t want to think you’re a cog in the wheel of an imperial machine, but know this much, I do not approach this through a “rah rah I hate America lens”.

What I want is irrelevant. The U.S. is "Imperial", it is also plain that it does not meet the definition set out in the OP. I think the U.S. heads (headed? you can't lead something if you lack the will to) a Soft Empire with hard edges which, understandably, get disproportionate shares of the press, and am fine with having served as a functionary in it. Being an Empire in that role, however, is not contradictory with being a Liberator, any more than opposing an Empire makes you one. Mao Zedong was "anti-Imperialist", and certainly had zero interest whatsoever in human liberty, except to crush it.

It is merely what I believe I understand about the way the geo-politics game is played, the history of nations and the actions America takes and has taken in the past.

So, this is an aside, but, it's a rabbit-hole rant of mine. Geo-Politics is the impact of geography on human relations. The strategic nature of the Hormuz Strait and the conflicts it engenders is an example of Geo Politics. You mean "the way the Foreign Relations game is played".

(and, I know, I'm being a pedantic asshat on that one, and I'm sorry, but it's a tic, I can't walk past it, I apologize ).

While yes, hypotheticals can be an issue, what do you think is more important to the United States, the development of women’s rights in Afghanistan, or regional stability and security as well as US alignment?

Hypotheticals do not counter reality. In reality, we have improved women's rights (and men's rights. and religious and ethnic minority rights) in Afghanistan. Regardless of prioritization (and, I would quibble a bit with that latter description - China is stable, which doesn't make it congruent with our interests), the things that have happened have happened. You (and I) are entitled to our own opinion about what future U.S. policymakers might do, but we are not entitled to our own facts.

If tomorrow someone could come in and just sort the nation out, regardless of the tactics used, what do you think the US would do?

Pakistan has been offering that for a decade or so now.

You and I both know the Afghan central government is a corrupt ****show and few Afghans really believe in it, who really holds the power in Afghanistan?

Depends on where exactly we’re talking about doesn’t it, because it doesn’t really control a lot of the country.

Yup. That, also, does not change the fact that we have, indeed, improved women and minority rights in that country. That GIRoA - for all it's many, many, many failures - is still an improvement over the Taliban.

The United States supports, arms and has just recently politically covered that exact character recently in Saudi Arabia and I was one of those to state that Trumps overall government stance and basically brushing it aside, would have happened under any administration, it’s just that the way he handled it from a personal perspective was about as bad as you would want, at least other Presidents would have done a better song and dance about being “deeply concerned” about the murder of Kashogi.

Yup. Foreign Policy doesn't always let you choose between the devil and an angel, but rather generally forces you to choose between options all of which have downsides. In the case of Saudi Arabia (shrug) it's the case of the lesser evil. I don't like it, either.

That choice, however, doesn't mean others haven't been made. I don't get to point to an incident where you flew on a plane and therefore insist that you do not drive a car.

But that’s all I’m saying, under some circumstances has America had a positive impact, of course and when there is significant domestic pressure on certain regimes such as South Africa who the US supported for awhile before it became politically untenable because we were fighting the Cubans/Soviets in Angola, but it has been party to some pretty bad stuff, the Vietnam and Iraq wars in my opinion being disasters and I mean for god sake just to spite Vietnam it supported the Khmer Rouge, one of the worst regimes in the history of the world, that was awhile ago sure, but the thing is strategic and geopolitical circumstances come first, before consideration of human rights, America and other powers have proved that time and time again.

Heck, that's nothing. The U.S. entered into an alliance with Stalin.

After all, if we're going to strip every action of context, that one comes out looking pretty bad, no?

 

[ecofarm]

If you are stumbling this badly against me, that is pretty sad.

Don't put yourself down, but I've no against. You've not a point in contention.

 

[bomberfox]

Don't put yourself down, but I've no against. You've not a point in contention.

You are contending points then pretending you arent.... smurt.

 

[ecofarm]

You are contending points then pretending you arent.... smurt.

Aren't

 

[Mircea]

As to Allende working with the KGB or not, that doesn't justify a coup of a peaceful, democratically elected government; it doesn't even really rationalize it (by the way, we work with the intel agencies of horrid state actors all the time, as do most countries in the world).

The US feared Allende would nationalize the nickel and other mines. The great irony is the puppet the US installed nationalized the mines anyway.

The deals the US rammed down the throats of other countries were 92-8, meaning the US gets 92% of the profits, and the host country gets a measly 8%.

Except what US companies did was commit fraud by devaluing their assets to show a loss, so that they didn't have to pay the measly 8% profit to the host country and the US kept 100% of the profits.

That happened in Mexico.

President Cardenas discovered the fraud and sued US oil companies. The case went before the Mexican Supreme Court who ordered US oil companies to pay all back-taxes and all back-profits owed.

Cardenas gave the US oil companies 1 year to pony up the money, but they refused, so Cardenas nationalized the oil and natural gas in Mexico.

Cardenas offered the US $24 Million which was the blue-book value as stated by the US oil companies.

FDR wanted to invade Mexico, overthrow the government and seize the oil and natural gas fields, but at a cabinet meeting, his generals and admirals said they could not afford to have 3-5 army divisions, a marine division and the US 2nd Fleet tied up in a war with Mexico with WW II looming on the horizon.

Those documents were declassified a few years ago.

Britain did the same thing, which is why PM Mossadeq nationalized the Iranian oil and natural gas industry and he offered the Brits $46 Million, which was the stated value by British Petroleum which ironically was nationalized and owned by the British government, just like everything in Britain except the pubs, kabob stands and Sainsbury's (a grocery store like Krogers) was nationalized.

Britain, like the US, talks out of both sides of its neck.

Same-same in Iraq. King Faisal II sees the US screwing Iraq so he wants to nationalize the oil and natural gas industry. The US gets General Qasim to overthrow Faisal, but Qasim didn't understand why and he made the same mistake as Faisal trying to nationalize the oil and natural gas industry so the US murdered him.

I forgot Somalia.

President Schemarke refused to sign off on a deal that would give Conoco, Phillips, Texaco and Standard Oil (I can't remember if it was Standard Oil of Ohio or Standard Oil of New Jersey) total control of the oil fields.

The US murdered Schemarke and installed a puppet named Mohammed Barre who fleeced the US and strung the US along for a few years before he was overthrown and then that government was overthrown and there's chaos and Mohammed Adid and we get a cool movie: Black Hawk Down.

 

[Mircea]

Same-same in Cuba.

Castro is imprisoned for fire-bombing an army barracks. The US Snake Department pressures Batista to release Castro and then the US invites Castro to the US Embassy in Mexico City.

CIA agent Frank Sturgis is assigned to Castro and functions as his S-2/S-3/S-4 coordinating US air-drops to Castro's army flown by CIA-trained pilots in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Castro is hailed as a hero and given a tour of US cities....read the newspapers if you don't believe it. Look at the photos of Castro in Times Square.

US National Sugar operates sugar cane fields and processing facilities in Cuba, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Factor workers are paid $4.50/day and sugar cane field workers are paid $0.90/day except in Cuba where they are paid $0.30/day.

Cuban sugar cane field workers had been getting paid $0.30/day since 1898 when the US rousted the Spanish from Cuba. Can you imagine going 50 years without a pay raise?
Castro demands National Sugar pay Cuban sugar cane field workers the same as in Honduras et al. National Sugar refuses, so Castro starts investigating and finds out National Sugar has never paid any taxes or profits to Cuba. Castro sues National Sugar and National Sugar refuses to pay up, and then Castro finds out no US companies have ever paid any taxes or profits.

Castro seized all US company assets for non-payment of taxes and enforcement of a contract. That was Castro's right under Cuban law, US law and International law.

Castro did nothing wrong, but the US will spend the next 50 years trying to overthrow his government.

United Fruit -- Chiquita -- was given control of the only port in Guatemala by a previous US puppet and control of the only electrical power generation plant. All import/export tariffs, taxes and duties were paid to Chiquita, not Guatemala. Chiquita charged monopoly rates for electricity.

To right that wrong, President Arbenz started building a port on the west coast of Guatemala and an electrical power plant that would provide market rate fees to customers instead of Chiquita's price-gouging monopoly rates.

Truwoman panicked because ships docking on a west coast port would not need to go through the Panama Canal and the US would lose revenues. Truwoman authorized the murder of Arbenz, but before it could be carried out, Eisencoward became President and commuted Arbenz' sentence to just overthrow and his government was overthrown.

Colombia came up with the idea of the Panama Canal, not the US.

Panama was a province of Colombia.

Colombia needed financial support and engineering support and unwisely chose the US as a partner to build the Panama Canal.

The US murdered several government officials in Panama, then used that as an excuse to justify sending in mercenaries who fomented revolution then came the Marines and Panama came under US control.

That's just a sampling.

Of all the countries on Earth, the US is the least christian and the most maniacal.

 

[Mircea]

Same-same in Cuba.

Castro is imprisoned for fire-bombing an army barracks. The US Snake Department pressures Batista to release Castro and then the US invites Castro to the US Embassy in Mexico City.

CIA agent Frank Sturgis is assigned to Castro and functions as his S-2/S-3/S-4 coordinating US air-drops to Castro's army flown by CIA-trained pilots in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Castro is hailed as a hero and given a tour of US cities....read the newspapers if you don't believe it. Look at the photos of Castro in Times Square.

US National Sugar operates sugar cane fields and processing facilities in Cuba, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Factor workers are paid $4.50/day and sugar cane field workers are paid $0.90/day except in Cuba where they are paid $0.30/day.

Cuban sugar cane field workers had been getting paid $0.30/day since 1898 when the US rousted the Spanish from Cuba. Can you imagine going 50 years without a pay raise?
Castro demands National Sugar pay Cuban sugar cane field workers the same as in Honduras et al. National Sugar refuses, so Castro starts investigating and finds out National Sugar has never paid any taxes or profits to Cuba. Castro sues National Sugar and National Sugar refuses to pay up, and then Castro finds out no US companies have ever paid any taxes or profits.

Castro seized all US company assets for non-payment of taxes and enforcement of a contract. That was Castro's right under Cuban law, US law and International law.

Castro did nothing wrong, but the US will spend the next 50 years trying to overthrow his government.

United Fruit -- Chiquita -- was given control of the only port in Guatemala by a previous US puppet and control of the only electrical power generation plant. All import/export tariffs, taxes and duties were paid to Chiquita, not Guatemala. Chiquita charged monopoly rates for electricity.

To right that wrong, President Arbenz started building a port on the west coast of Guatemala and an electrical power plant that would provide market rate fees to customers instead of Chiquita's price-gouging monopoly rates.

Truwoman panicked because ships docking on a west coast port would not need to go through the Panama Canal and the US would lose revenues. Truwoman authorized the murder of Arbenz, but before it could be carried out, Eisencoward became President and commuted Arbenz' sentence to just overthrow and his government was overthrown.

Colombia came up with the idea of the Panama Canal, not the US.

Panama was a province of Colombia.

Colombia needed financial support and engineering support and unwisely chose the US as a partner to build the Panama Canal.

The US murdered several government officials in Panama, then used that as an excuse to justify sending in mercenaries who fomented revolution then came the Marines and Panama came under US control.

That's just a sampling.

Of all the countries on Earth, the US is the least christian and the most maniacal.

 

[Evilroddy]

If you think AFRICOM is running Africa, you aren't paying attention to anything except occasional news headlines about U.S. deployments, while ignoring the numbers. Putting (making up a number) 40 advisers into Niger to help train their CT forces isn't "running Niger" any more than the U.K. sending military students to our academies means they are running the U.S.

I also note that not a single thing you mention actually addresses the point. Complaints that Afghan or Iraqi self-governance is problematic or corrupt still grants that they have self-governance. If you want to claim that people often make mistakes when they are free to choose their own path, I will agree wholeheartedly! Heck, my own country has chosen two feckless fools for it's senior executive in the past decade, both of which were mistakes. That doesn't mean that somehow they aren't able to make their own decisions.

So, if you want to complain that the U.S. only liberates fallible, broken, imperfect humans, well, alright. Until the Eschaton, the only kind available to liberate.

cpwill:

For a better understanding of what AFRICOM is up to in Africa read the books and articles of Nick Turse. You can find some of his work at TomDispatches.com or at The Intercept online news service. It's not what it seems and terrorism has actually increased since the command was set up in the region. Regarding Niger, examine the process by which the very large drone base 201 which is under construction there was established near Agadez in contravention of Niger's own laws.

The situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and my other listed countries is that US sponsored governments are acting against their own peoples' interests in order to better serve pro-US interests and this service of foreign interests is causing tensions, violence and brutal reprisals by the government's of most of those states on their own populations. The same thing is happening in Honduras and El Salvador right now in Latin America, in Columbia and Brazil in South America, in Indonesia and in Australia in Australasia and on the Korean Peninsula and in Pakistan in Asia. That's the imperialism of buying the cooperation of local elites to serve foreign interests rather than local national interests.

My complaint is that the US does not often liberate foreign states but rather more frequently infiltrates into foreign states and buys or entices local elites in order to serve its own interests at the expence of the interests of the peoples of the infiltrated states. If the infiltration proves difficult then unconventional warfare in the grey zone areas of interference in foreign state affairs is the next step (Ukraine, Montenegro, Nicaragua, Columbia, Venezuela, are examples from the last two decades and Cuba will soon be one once again too). If that fails then regime change by proxy forces or by direct US military intervention is the next step. All of this occurs in the unsaid name of imperial interests of the American Empire.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

 

[cpwill]

cpwill:

For a better understanding of what AFRICOM is up to in Africa read the books and articles of Nick Turse. You can find some of his work at TomDispatches.com or at The Intercept online news service. It's not what it seems and terrorism has actually increased since the command was set up in the region. Regarding Niger, examine the process by which the very large drone base 201 which is under construction there was established near Agadez in contravention of Niger's own laws.

Hi Evilroddy

When those folks are writing those articles, they are getting much of their information by interviewing and reporting on people like me. My friends have been all over North and East Africa in the WoT.... so, thanks for the advice, but, you are incorrect in your characterization of U.S. efforts, and your claim about the CT problem is.... problematic.

The situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and my other listed countries is that US sponsored governments are acting against their own peoples' interests in order to better serve pro-US interests and this service of foreign interests is causing tensions, violence and brutal reprisals by the government's of most of those states on their own populations

:shrug: this is also flatly inaccurate. In many cases, from a U.S. perspective, frustratingly so. Iraq is markedly unhelpful, for all that helped pull them from the ISIS fire.

The same thing is happening in Honduras and El Salvador right now in Latin America, in Columbia and Brazil in South America, in Indonesia and in Australia in Australasia and on the Korean Peninsula and in Pakistan in Asia

:lamo if you think Pakistan, if Honduras is sacrificing their own preferences to serve American interests, I don't know what to tell you. That's so disconnected from reality it belongs next to "because the shape-shifting aliens who are posing as the British royal family are secretly...."

 

[Evilroddy]

Hi Evilroddy

When those folks are writing those articles, they are getting much of their information by interviewing and reporting on people like me. My friends have been all over North and East Africa in the WoT.... so, thanks for the advice, but, you are incorrect in your characterization of U.S. efforts, and your claim about the CT problem is.... problematic.



:shrug: this is also flatly inaccurate. In many cases, from a U.S. perspective, frustratingly so. Iraq is markedly unhelpful, for all that helped pull them from the ISIS fire.



:lamo if you think Pakistan, if Honduras is sacrificing their own preferences to serve American interests, I don't know what to tell you. That's so disconnected from reality it belongs next to "because the shape-shifting aliens who are posing as the British royal family are secretly...."

Hello cpwill:

I noticed you had nothing to say about the circumstances surrounding the breach of Niger's national laws regarding the very large and busy drone base under construction there.

Pakistan allows US military and intelligence agents to target its own citizens with drone and missile strikes in the tribal areas along the northern frontier. How long do you think an American government would last if it allowed an inexplicably muscular Canada to drone strike armed right-wing militias and gun-runner-headquarters in America which are providing training and arms to our local yahoos?

The Honduran Government has been repeatedly ousted with the help of the US Government and the present, fraudulently elected government is using US trained special police (paramilitary police) and US-trained special forces to kidnap and kill protesting Hondurans who want the election fraud corrected. The US Government recognised the fraudulent election, even though the opposition had won so many votes before the real-time and transparent vote counting process was suspended by the incumbent government, that it was mathematically impossible for the Honduran fraudsters to win legally. The world and impartial election monitors condemned the election as a giant fraud but nothing has happened because US imperial interests trump the Rule of Law and a people's right to free and fair elections (local interests).

Equador is squeezing its poor with higher expenses and lower transfers because the US controlled IMF lent the crimminal Lenin Moreno Government $4.2 (?) billion dollars for development which has all but disappeared into crooked pockets and contracts benefiting US development firms. That's why the Equadorian people, led by their indigenous peoples are in open revolt against Moreno and that's why somewhere between 2000 and 4000 Equadoran protesters have been at least temporarily disappeared to local military bases where the Rule of Law is being ignored.

Don't get me started on Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria since 2011 and Iran in the near future. They're certainly not nice regimes, but they were or will be attacked not for humanitarian reasons but for imperial reasons centred around finance, oil-currency petro dollar disputes, pipelines, resources (exploitation or denial) and stamping out local economic nationalism.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

 

[cpwill]

Hello cpwill:

I noticed you had nothing to say about the circumstances surrounding the breach of Niger's national laws regarding the very large and busy drone base under construction there.

Pakistan allows US military and intelligence agents to target its own citizens with drone and missile strikes in the tribal areas along the northern frontier. How long do you think an American government would last if it allowed an inexplicably muscular Canada to drone strike armed right-wing militias and gun-runner-headquarters in America which are providing training and arms to our local yahoos?

The Honduran Government has been repeatedly ousted with the help of the US Government and the present, fraudulently elected government is using US trained special police (paramilitary police) and US-trained special forces to kidnap and kill protesting Hondurans who want the election fraud corrected. The US Government recognised the fraudulent election, even though the opposition had won so many votes before the real-time and transparent vote counting process was suspended by the incumbent government, that it was mathematically impossible for the Honduran fraudsters to win legally. The world and impartial election monitors condemned the election as a giant fraud but nothing has happened because US imperial interests trump the Rule of Law and a people's right to free and fair elections (local interests).

Equador is squeezing its poor with higher expenses and lower transfers because the US controlled IMF lent the crimminal Lenin Moreno Government $4.2 (?) billion dollars for development which has all but disappeared into crooked pockets and contracts benefiting US development firms. That's why the Equadorian people, led by their indigenous peoples are in open revolt against Moreno and that's why somewhere between 2000 and 4000 Equadoran protesters have been at least temporarily disappeared to local military bases where the Rule of Law is being ignored.

Don't get me started on Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, Syria since 2011 and Iran in the near future. They're certainly not nice regimes, but they were or will be attacked not for humanitarian reasons but for imperial reasons centred around finance, oil-currency petro dollar disputes, pipelines, resources (exploitation or denial) and stamping out local economic nationalism.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Hello Evilroddy,

1. if you think our ISR operations in Northern Africa are "very busy", I'm assuming you haven't seen the numbers, nor is the base in Agadez illegal. It is not part of a defense treaty (a SOFA is not a treaty, and is part of pretty much every deployment of troops to work with those of other governments, to include the U.K., Canada, Japan, Australia, Thailand, etc.), nor are advise and assist missions replacement operations.

2. Pakistan has armed, equipped, trained, advised, assisted, and accompanied the Taliban in their fight against the U.S. and other Coalition forces in Afghanistan for over a decade. The Pakistani government is the reason that the Taliban survived and have been able to take back as much territory as they have. They allowed us to target people they wanted removed as much as we did (mostly AQ and TTP types, who also occasionally target Pakistan, as, for example, AQIS did when they attempted to seize the Zulfiqar, back in 2014)... and no one else. We don't get to target HQN or TB, because Pakistan is using us to serve their interests as much as they are serving what they see as their interests by opposing us in Afghanistan.

3. You are complaining about the U.S. not overriding the results of an election in Honduras through force, in the same breath that you are accusing the U.S. of overriding local governments for its own interests. I suppose we should take from that the presumption that you would happily accept a U.S. forcible overthrow of the current government as somehow Liberating? Unlikely.

4. You are accusing the U.S. of being responsible for Ecuador's corruption. Which, again, we could solve through an invasion and overthrow of that government, which you are hardly likely to support. So, again, your argument here is hypocritical.

But, as the wise man said, where double standards are appear, really, there is a single, hidden, standard.


The U.S. debate in Iraq heavily featured humanitarian concerns, and Saddam's historic abuse of the Iraqi (and other) people was a major part of our calculus in going to war. Our intervention in Libya was totally motivated by humanitarian concerns (though CT concerns have since kept us there) - it wasn't anger at Qaddafi's green book that caused us to start striking his conventional forces, but rather Samantha Power's "Responsibility to Protect" in response to his intent to flatten entire cities where opponents lived. Our intervention in Syria was more sparked by ISIS' decision to begin supporting attacks in the West.

 

[Fledermaus]

The US feared Allende would nationalize the nickel and other mines. The great irony is the puppet the US installed nationalized the mines anyway.

The deals the US rammed down the throats of other countries were 92-8, meaning the US gets 92% of the profits, and the host country gets a measly 8%.

Except what US companies did was commit fraud by devaluing their assets to show a loss, so that they didn't have to pay the measly 8% profit to the host country and the US kept 100% of the profits.

That happened in Mexico.

President Cardenas discovered the fraud and sued US oil companies. The case went before the Mexican Supreme Court who ordered US oil companies to pay all back-taxes and all back-profits owed.

Cardenas gave the US oil companies 1 year to pony up the money, but they refused, so Cardenas nationalized the oil and natural gas in Mexico.

Cardenas offered the US $24 Million which was the blue-book value as stated by the US oil companies.

FDR wanted to invade Mexico, overthrow the government and seize the oil and natural gas fields, but at a cabinet meeting, his generals and admirals said they could not afford to have 3-5 army divisions, a marine division and the US 2nd Fleet tied up in a war with Mexico with WW II looming on the horizon.

Those documents were declassified a few years ago.

Britain did the same thing, which is why PM Mossadeq nationalized the Iranian oil and natural gas industry and he offered the Brits $46 Million, which was the stated value by British Petroleum which ironically was nationalized and owned by the British government, just like everything in Britain except the pubs, kabob stands and Sainsbury's (a grocery store like Krogers) was nationalized.

Britain, like the US, talks out of both sides of its neck.

Same-same in Iraq. King Faisal II sees the US screwing Iraq so he wants to nationalize the oil and natural gas industry. The US gets General Qasim to overthrow Faisal, but Qasim didn't understand why and he made the same mistake as Faisal trying to nationalize the oil and natural gas industry so the US murdered him.

I forgot Somalia.

President Schemarke refused to sign off on a deal that would give Conoco, Phillips, Texaco and Standard Oil (I can't remember if it was Standard Oil of Ohio or Standard Oil of New Jersey) total control of the oil fields.

The US murdered Schemarke and installed a puppet named Mohammed Barre who fleeced the US and strung the US along for a few years before he was overthrown and then that government was overthrown and there's chaos and Mohammed Adid and we get a cool movie: Black Hawk Down.

The US murdered Schemarke ? According to whom?

Jaalle Mohamed Siad Barre turned Somalia into a one-party Marxist–Leninist communist state with support from the Soviet Union.

How is that a "puppet" of the US?

 

[Fledermaus]

Same-same in Cuba.

Castro is imprisoned for fire-bombing an army barracks. The US Snake Department pressures Batista to release Castro and then the US invites Castro to the US Embassy in Mexico City.

CIA agent Frank Sturgis is assigned to Castro and functions as his S-2/S-3/S-4 coordinating US air-drops to Castro's army flown by CIA-trained pilots in Honduras, Guatemala and Nicaragua.

Castro is hailed as a hero and given a tour of US cities....read the newspapers if you don't believe it. Look at the photos of Castro in Times Square.

US National Sugar operates sugar cane fields and processing facilities in Cuba, Belize, Honduras, Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Factor workers are paid $4.50/day and sugar cane field workers are paid $0.90/day except in Cuba where they are paid $0.30/day.

Cuban sugar cane field workers had been getting paid $0.30/day since 1898 when the US rousted the Spanish from Cuba. Can you imagine going 50 years without a pay raise?
Castro demands National Sugar pay Cuban sugar cane field workers the same as in Honduras et al. National Sugar refuses, so Castro starts investigating and finds out National Sugar has never paid any taxes or profits to Cuba. Castro sues National Sugar and National Sugar refuses to pay up, and then Castro finds out no US companies have ever paid any taxes or profits.

Castro seized all US company assets for non-payment of taxes and enforcement of a contract. That was Castro's right under Cuban law, US law and International law.

Castro did nothing wrong, but the US will spend the next 50 years trying to overthrow his government.

United Fruit -- Chiquita -- was given control of the only port in Guatemala by a previous US puppet and control of the only electrical power generation plant. All import/export tariffs, taxes and duties were paid to Chiquita, not Guatemala. Chiquita charged monopoly rates for electricity.

To right that wrong, President Arbenz started building a port on the west coast of Guatemala and an electrical power plant that would provide market rate fees to customers instead of Chiquita's price-gouging monopoly rates.

Truwoman panicked because ships docking on a west coast port would not need to go through the Panama Canal and the US would lose revenues. Truwoman authorized the murder of Arbenz, but before it could be carried out, Eisencoward became President and commuted Arbenz' sentence to just overthrow and his government was overthrown.

Colombia came up with the idea of the Panama Canal, not the US.

Panama was a province of Colombia.

Colombia needed financial support and engineering support and unwisely chose the US as a partner to build the Panama Canal.

The US murdered several government officials in Panama, then used that as an excuse to justify sending in mercenaries who fomented revolution then came the Marines and Panama came under US control.

That's just a sampling.

Of all the countries on Earth, the US is the least christian and the most maniacal.

The idea of a canal goes back to Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain.

Hundreds of years later (1780s) it was discussed by Thomas Jefferson with Spain. (decades before there was a Colombia)

Colombia first chose France who failed.

 

[Evilroddy]

Hello Evilroddy,

1. if you think our ISR operations in Northern Africa are "very busy", I'm assuming you haven't seen the numbers, nor is the base in Agadez illegal. It is not part of a defense treaty (a SOFA is not a treaty, and is part of pretty much every deployment of troops to work with those of other governments, to include the U.K., Canada, Japan, Australia, Thailand, etc.), nor are advise and assist missions replacement operations.

2. Pakistan has armed, equipped, trained, advised, assisted, and accompanied the Taliban in their fight against the U.S. and other Coalition forces in Afghanistan for over a decade. The Pakistani government is the reason that the Taliban survived and have been able to take back as much territory as they have. They allowed us to target people they wanted removed as much as we did (mostly AQ and TTP types, who also occasionally target Pakistan, as, for example, AQIS did when they attempted to seize the Zulfiqar, back in 2014)... and no one else. We don't get to target HQN or TB, because Pakistan is using us to serve their interests as much as they are serving what they see as their interests by opposing us in Afghanistan.

3. You are complaining about the U.S. not overriding the results of an election in Honduras through force, in the same breath that you are accusing the U.S. of overriding local governments for its own interests. I suppose we should take from that the presumption that you would happily accept a U.S. forcible overthrow of the current government as somehow Liberating? Unlikely.

4. You are accusing the U.S. of being responsible for Ecuador's corruption. Which, again, we could solve through an invasion and overthrow of that government, which you are hardly likely to support. So, again, your argument here is hypocritical.

But, as the wise man said, where double standards are appear, really, there is a single, hidden, standard.


The U.S. debate in Iraq heavily featured humanitarian concerns, and Saddam's historic abuse of the Iraqi (and other) people was a major part of our calculus in going to war. Our intervention in Libya was totally motivated by humanitarian concerns (though CT concerns have since kept us there) - it wasn't anger at Qaddafi's green book that caused us to start striking his conventional forces, but rather Samantha Power's "Responsibility to Protect" in response to his intent to flatten entire cities where opponents lived. Our intervention in Syria was more sparked by ISIS' decision to begin supporting attacks in the West.

Hi cpwill:

1) See: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/18/niger-air-base-201-africom-drones/

2) My point still stands. Letting a foreign state kill your own citizens is intolerable.

3) and 4) No. I am complaining that US-trained paramilitary and military personnel are stopping Equadoreans and Hondurans, and Guatamalans, etc from overthrowing their own corrupt governments which won power through election fraud or outright violence through coup d'etat. A good example of this is the atrocities conducted in Columbia by US-trained Columbian soldiers over the last 25 years an estimated 28,000 innocent civilian Columbians killed summarily, dressed post mortem as guerrillas and buried in hidden mass graves in order to inflate body count quotas set by the Columbian government. You folks trained these maniacs and thus you folks own part of the civil and criminal liability for these atrocities.

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

 

[cpwill]

Hi cpwill:

hello Roddy.

1) See: https://theintercept.com/2018/02/18/niger-air-base-201-africom-drones/

I've read it. The suggestion of illegality is dependent on A) a SOFA being a Treaty - which it isn't and B) no Nigerien troops being involved -but they are.

Which is what I said to you in the post you quoted

2) My point still stands. Letting a foreign state kill your own citizens is intolerable.

Not at all. For example, we had no problem with Iraqi Security Forces killing any Americans who went to join ISIS, nor did Canada, or the U.K., or any other nation (in fact, frankly, everyone hoped that is precisely what would happen, as those bastards dying on the battlefield was much simpler than trying to figure out what to do with them if they surrendered). Pakistan uses us to achieve it's own ends where our ends overlap with theirs, and has American blood on its hands elsewhere, where it's ends contradict our own, both of which give the lie to the claim that we are somehow secretly controlling the Pakistani government to achieve our ends against their own interests.

3) and 4) No. I am complaining that US-trained paramilitary and military personnel are stopping Equadoreans and Hondurans, and Guatamalans, etc from overthrowing their own corrupt governments which won power through election fraud or outright violence through coup d'etat. A good example of this is the atrocities conducted in Columbia by US-trained Columbian soldiers over the last 25 years an estimated 28,000 innocent civilian Columbians killed summarily, dressed post mortem as guerrillas and buried in hidden mass graves in order to inflate body count quotas set by the Columbian government. You folks trained these maniacs and thus you folks own part of the civil and criminal liability for these atrocities.

No. We have responsibility for what we do, not for what others do; and those Colombian military forces fought the FARC standstill, pushed them back, and have largely ended a reign of terror that swept that nation. Complaining both that the United States opposes corrupt and wicked governments, overriding national sovereignty, and that the United States does not oppose corrupt and wicked governments, is hypocritical. The only consistent thread is that, whatever the United States has decided to do, you seek to criticize it by blaming it for whatever negative consequences occur :shrug:

 

[jet57]

Is Modern-Day America an empire or not? I say yes. Others say adamantly no. Let's hash this out.

The definitions of empire according to the Oxford English Dictionary are:



Given those definitions and providing supporting proof can you answer the question to the satisfaction of others here?

Cheers.
Evilroddy.

Not yet, but the far right: the political and soldier force of the corporate agenda is still trying to achieve economic hegemony.