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Empire

Standing On The Edge Of Next American Revolution

January 6, 2015 The Amendment Gazette, www.amendmentgazette.com , ,
This revolution has already begun for many, not most, people. The Next American Revolution will not be a solitary journey; far from it. Demonstrations, protests, marches and disruption of business as usual have already shaken the nation, but the movement for racial justice has not yet reached the momentum and visibility of either Occupy Wall Street or the tea party in their heydays. The list of critical issues above strongly suggests that the United States is sliding toward fascism. Genuine democrats and republicans who believe in self-government in a democratic republic must support a revolutionary movement and come to distrust the elites in both major parties who back the corporate interests (profit and survival) over the public interests (peace, democratic policy making, keeping the Earth habitable, etc).

US Dramatically Escalates Military Attacks Since End Of Cold War

December 17, 2014 Staff, http://comw.org/pda/ , ,
From time to time the Congressional Research Service publishes a report listing "notable deployments of U.S. military forces overseas." CRS updates this list "as circumstance warrant." The latest report covers 216 years, 1798 through August of 2014. It does not include the new bombing campaigns in Syia and Iraq. Dividing this data by 'eras' we find: Post Cold War (August 1990 - 14 August 2014): 146 deployments (averaging 6.1 per year.) Bush 1: 9, Clinton: 65, Bush 2: 39, and Obama: 33. Cold War (24 June 1948 - August 1990): 47 deployments (averaging 1.5 per year) Interwar and World War II (1918 - 1948): 34 deployments (averaging 1.1 per year) Imperial Era and World War I (1866 - 1917): 69 deployments (averaging 1.4 per year) Nation's Founding through Civil War (1798 to 1865): 65 deployments (averaging 1.0 per year)

Ferguson: Revolution, Democracy, and Empire

December 14, 2014 Dustin Axe, www.commondreams.org , , , , ,
Berkman says social revolutions do not happen by accident, but the same can be said of empires. They are forged out of the deliberate use of greed, theft, deceit, imperialism, and ruthless terror. The American Empire is no different. Yet the vast majority of Americans prefer to ignore it; foreign affairs are not something most people pay attention to. However, if you pay attention to the weapons and tactics being used by the American Empire for social control at home, you are seeing exactly what it does abroad, as well. This is a sign that our empire is imploding. We do not know for sure if the death of Michael Brown is the event that will ignited a social revolution, but we do know it started a considerable amount of unrest and dissent. I believe many people wonder how one event could do such a thing because they are not fully aware or sensitive to the amount of oppression black people experience. We should not be surprised when victims of The New Jim Crow spill into the streets full of anger. And if proper channels for peaceful change do not exist, we should not be surprise if that anger becomes violent. When inequality, unjust laws, mass incarceration, racism and police brutality among other things, are not addressed then the result is insurrection. Some may see rioting in Ferguson as just that, rioting. I see an empire in decline, seeds of revolution, and a struggle to preserve democracy.

America’s Rotting Empire

September 20, 2014 CJ Werleman, www.salon.com ,
“The game is rigged,” writes Senator Elizabeth Warren in her new book A Fighting Chance. It’s rigged because the rich and their lobbyists have rigged the rules of the game to their favor. The rules are reflected in a tax code and bankruptcy laws that have seen the greatest transfer of wealth from the middle class to the rich in U.S. history. The result? America has the most billionaires in the world, but not a single U.S. city ranks among the world’s most livable cities. Not a single U.S. airport is among the top 100 airports in the world.

Join ‘For Earth, Against Empire’ Campaign

August 22, 2014 Alliance For Global Justice, www.afgj.org , , ,
Earth is dying. Earth is not just coming down with a cold. Earth is not just suffering a nightmare from which we all can and will suddenly wake up. Our planet is dying. Nothing short of drastic and fundamental change can save her. 2015—Our last chance? The Alliance for Global Justice believes that it is the US Empire and transnational global capitalism that has brought our Mother Earth to the brink of ecological collapse. Sure, there have been other stressors in human history, but nothing in our past compares with the wholesale threats that have emerged as a result of this most powerful and destructive of empires. Resource wars are fought to open up land, minerals, oil and water to private access and development with little if any concern for ecosystems or the communities that live in them. The one-two punch of global capitalism and the war machine that protects and advances it are killing us all. While we support all meaningful reforms and broad demands for climate justice, we believe that no solution will be durable that does not include a worldwide effort to dismantle Empire. We also believe that we are running out of time by the seconds. It’s not just wild eyed radicals and religious fundamentalists that are saying “the end is coming soon”. Some of the most sobering pronouncements and predictions are coming from quite mainstream voices.

The Empire Economy Does Not Serve The Economy Or People

July 26, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org , ,
World history is filled with empires, e.g. the Roman and Byzantine empires, the European colonial empires, various ancient Iranian empires, the Arab Caliphate and Ottoman Empire, the Soviet Union to name a few. These historic empires have one thing in common: they no longer exist. As the lifecycle of empire wanes, rather than being a benefit to the home country, sustaining empire becomes more expensive than it is worth. While the US economy and military remain the largest in the world, the economy is faltering and losing its vitality. Chalmers Johnson, a CIA analyst who became a critic of the agency and author of a series on US Empire, writes: “Thirty-five years from now, America's official century of being top dog (1945-2045) will have come to an end; its time may, in fact, be running out right now."

US Empire Reaches Breaking Point – Time To End It

July 20, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org ,
The US is involved in military disputes around the globe, conflicts which could lead to a much broader war. The US role seems to encourage violence, rather than minimize it; to intervene, rather than allow people in the country or region resolve disputes. The breadth of Empire is costly in financial and human terms as well as to the respect of the United States and its people. Is the US Empire spread so thin at a time of a struggling economy that this is a moment where people can come together and build a movement to end Empire? There are multiple hot spots where US Empire is participating, supporting and approving of escalating violence.

The Anti-Empire Report #130

July 14, 2014 William Blum, www.williamblum.org , , ,
The question is not what pacifism has achieved throughout history, but what has war achieved? Remark made to a pacifist: “If only everyone else would live in the way you recommend, I would gladly live that way as well – but not until everyone else does.” The Pacifist’s reply: “Why then, sir, you would be the last man on earth to do good. I would rather be one of the first.” Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, 1947, words long cherished by a large majority of the Japanese people: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. “In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”

Mapping Militarism

July 6, 2014 David Swanson, www.opednews.com ,
World Beyond War has created a set of online interactive maps to help us all see where and how war and preparations for war exist in the world today. You can find the maps we've created thus far at http://bit.ly/mappingmilitarism and send us your ideas for more maps here. We'll be updating some of these maps with new data every year and displaying animation of the progress away from war or the regress toward more war as the case may be. Also available is a map of which nations are party to the long-forgotten treaty that bans war, known as the Kellogg-Briand Pact. That membership ought to be very surprising. There's also a map of which nations have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions banning the horrendously awful and murderous cluster bombs, a.k.a. flying landmines. See if you find these maps useful, and let us know what you think is missing.

Popular Resistance Newsletter – Celebrating Our Rebellious Roots

July 4, 2014 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org , ,
As we celebrate the nostalgia of Independence Day, let’s resolve to actually become independent from our Empire economy that never fails to fund wars while our domestic infrastructure and economy falter. Let’s resolve to become independent of oligarchic rule that puts the rights and interests of large corporations before the needs of the public, and that finds it acceptable to pollute or to cut off water to hundreds of thousands while corporations escape accountability. When the Occupy Movement joined the global uprising, the encampments gave us a taste of what caring communities looked like, of what participatory democracy felt like and how to create new sustainable systems. Since then, as occupy chronicler Nathan Schneider writes, activists are engaged in all sorts of efforts to protest injustice and build alternatives.

Stop Persecuting Bowe Bergdahl

July 4, 2014 Matthew Hoh, www.politico.com , , , ,
When you go through the military’s Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape (SERE) School there are a number of things that are literally beaten into you. You are hit in the face and slammed against walls. Rifle butts and barrels strike you in the head. You are placed in small wooden boxes and deprived of food and sleep, and some of you are water-boarded (yes, it is torture). But the most important and beneficial aspects of the training are the psychological pressures and forces you are subjected to. You are taught what you should expect and what it is you should do to mentally survive captivity as a prisoner of war. You learn through practice to depend on your fellow prisoners and, most importantly, to hold fast in your faith and the knowledge your country will never forget you and the United States will always come for you.

Video: Imperial Decay

July 3, 2014 The Vineyard Of The Saker, www.vineyardsaker.blogspot.com , , ,
There is a lot of excellent stuff in this video, but one point I came to fully endorse after a lot of research, soul searching and after having to comprehensively reject one of the key elements of my family's education, is that all empires are bad, all empires end up hurting the nations which produce them, and all empires end more or less along a few basic models. When the authors of the video ask whether this empire will end with a bang or a whimper they ask the single most important question facing humanity today: can we, the world's 99% (including the American people), bring down this AngloZionist empire without having it destroy our planet a hateful and rage-filled Götterdämmerung? When I was still studying in college (getting an MA from one of the most Neocon-linked schools in the USA: SAIS, Johns Hopkins U. in Washington) I remember spending many hours with some very sharp students from all over the world discussing whether the US empire would collapse from internal tensions or as a result from of external factors. At that time, the Soviet Union was collapsing and even to ask that question seemed crazy to most people. I am proud to say that the students at SAIS knew better. What we could not foresee is such watershed events like 9/11, the crazy war on terror, then Obama and his mega-betrayal of all his promises.

Activists’ Quick Opposition To War In Iraq

June 22, 2014 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.alternet.org , ,
Perhaps this is the President’s desired purpose. The goal of having US military bases in Iraq to control the region, which is the center of the Middle East at a time when oil is desperately needed, has not been achieved. A justification for intervention would provide an excuse to re-occupy those bases. If we re-occupy Iraq, we can expect a long-term presence. The (currently) most likely next president, Hillary Clinton, has a track record as a hawk. She has already signaled to the military-industrial complex that she is open to more war. Clinton recently said she was even open to staying in Afghanistan beyond President Obama’s already-too-slow exit from that country. Opponents of war organized opposition quickly.

The US Empire Is In Decline

May 29, 2014 Dave Lindorff, www.thiscantbehappening.net , , ,
I was shocked to find myself in almost perfect agreement today with a recent column by the neoconservative pundit Charles Krauthammer. Usually Krauthammer has me groaning, but yesterday his column nailed it. He was writing about what he correctly observes as the end of “American hegemony” in the global political sphere. As Krauthammer lays this “grim” picture out, six years of President Obama’s weak-kneed foreign policy, “compounded by” his “proposed massive cuts in defense spending, down (sic) to pre-Pearl Harbor levels,” have allowed a revanchist Russia and a newly aggressive China to make “an open challenge to the post-Cold War, US-dominated world that Obama inherited and then weakened beyond imagining.” Krauthammer cites as his main evidence of this “major alternation in the global balance of power” the deal just struck between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, who, during a visit to Shanghai last week by the Russian leader, inked an agreement for Russia to sell some $400 billion worth of its natural gas to China over the next 30 years.

An Update On American Empire: “America Unhinged”

January 18, 2014 Alan Gilbert, www.democratic-individuality.blogspot.com ,
Updating the status of U.S. Empire by reviewing the latest article by John Mearsheimer, America Unhinged. Too often the reality of U.S. Empire is kept a secret in the United States, never discussed in the corporate media or by elected officials. It is almost like the powers-that-be do not want Americans to know they live in the largest empire in world history. It is important to recognize that reality so we understand why the country is under attack by people all over the globe and why the U.S. has military forces active in every corner of the Earth. In addition, we much better understand our economy if we realize it is an "Empire Economy" with client states the U.S. needs to please (especially wealthy oligarchs around the world) and transnational corporations that expect to profit from the U.S. being the largest empire in world history. Without understanding this context it is easy for Americans to be fooled by absurd comments like President George W. Bush after the 9-11 attack: "Why do they hate us? They hate us for our freedoms." Of course, "they" hate us because U.S. foreign policy is one of dominance by military, economic and political means
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