Failed State

Mass Migration And The Echoes Of Late Rome

April 10, 2025 John Wight, Consortium News. Educate! Failed State, History, Mass Migration, US Empire, Western Hegemony

The ancient world can teach us much, if we only let it. One of its key lessons is that mass migration is capable of destroying even the mightiest of empires. At the height of its power, the Roman Empire was so vast and so omnipotent that it was run on the basis of the dictum: “Roma locuta est. Causa finita est!” (Rome has spoken. The cause has finished). The names of its most powerful figures have been so heralded through the ages, they remain almost as familiar to us today as if they’d only passed from the stage yesterday. Pompey, Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Hadrian, Vespasian, Constantine; these were men whose rule over the ancient world was so dominant that the only real threat they faced came from within Rome itself.

The Decline Of The US Empire: Where Is It Taking Us All?

September 9, 2024 Richard D. Wolff, Counter Punch. Educate! Failed State, Finance and the Economy, US Empire, US Imperialism, Wars and Militarism

The evidence suggests that empires often react to periods of their own decline by over-extending their coping mechanisms. Military actions, infrastructure problems, and social welfare demands may then combine or clash, accumulating costs and backlash effects that the declining empire cannot manage. Policies aimed to strengthen empire—and that once did—now undermine it. Contemporary social changes inside and outside the empire can reinforce, slow, or reverse the decline. However, when decline leads leaders to deny its existence, it can become self-accelerating.

The Country Of The Rust Belt And The Broken Road

July 26, 2024 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Austerity, Economic collapse, Failed State, United States

In his inaugural presidential address on 20 January 2017, Donald Trump used a powerful phrase to describe the situation in the United States: ‘American carnage’. In 1941, seventy-six years before this speech, Henry Luce wrote an article in Life magazine about the ‘American century’ and the promise of US leadership to be ‘the dynamic centre of ever-widening spheres of enterprise’. During the period between these two proclamations, the United States went through an immense expansion known as the ‘Golden Age’ and then a remarkable decline. That theme of decline has returned in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Contrasting US’ Urban Decay With China’s Extraordinary Infrastructure

June 5, 2024 Roger McKenzie, Friends of Socialist China. Strategize! China, Failed State, Infrastructure, Socialism, United States

Empires always end. All of them. The only question is about the nature of that end. We can see this before our eyes as the United States empire reaches its inevitable end, internationally and domestically. We can see it happening in front of our eyes if we choose to look. One of the advantages of travelling by train instead of flying is you get to see much more of the reality of a country. The Acela Express train ride of 230 miles or so for three hours from New York City to the US capital, Washington DC, was depressing in so many ways. The train itself was better and more comfortable than many I have travelled on in Britain, but the journey revealed a picture of severe urban decay in supposedly the world’s most important and richest nation.

The State Of The Union Is ‘Failed’

March 16, 2024 Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Failed State, Joe Biden, Russia, State Of The Union

If there were any question that this nation is a failed state, the recent State of the Union (SOTU) address makes the case and removes any doubt about the depth of decline. The constitutional requirement that the president, “... from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union…” is now an extravagant combination of nonsense, mendacity, and war propaganda that reveals the depth of rot in the U.S. body politic. The SOTU address is an opportunity for serious issues to be addressed but which are instead discussed as sophomoric saber rattling as members of congress jump up and down clapping like trained seals as the president pledges to stop Putin, stand up to Putin and not back down to Putin who we are told is on the march and sowing chaos throughout all of Europe.

Old Man Shouting, ‘The American Empire Is Doing Great!’

March 11, 2024 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Educate! Failed State, Joe Biden, State Of The Union, US Empire

Democratic elites and the reporters who clerk for them were effusively approving of Joe Biden’s State of the Union speech last Thursday evening—not so much for what he said, which came nothing new, as for the demeanor of our enfeebled president. Never mind that Biden reduced an occasion intended to address all Americans as to the condition of their nation to a cheap stump speech. He avoided falling down for his hour at the podium while stringing coherent sentences (mostly) together in the cause of his political survival. That is what counted.

Casualties Of A Failed Health Care System

February 6, 2024 Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect. Educate! Capitalism, Failed State, Health Care, Hospitals, Massachusetts

A couple of weeks ago, a good friend found herself in the emergency room at one of our world-class hospitals, the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. After emergency surgery, the medical team decided to admit her for at least another day to monitor her recovery. What she encountered next was something out of a makeshift battlefield hospital, as rendered by Hieronymus Bosch. There were no beds available in the patient rooms, so “admitted” patients were being stashed in beds laid end to end in the emergency area. A bit of delay getting a bed is not unusual. But in this case, there were seriously ill admitted patients in 73 beds crammed into the emergency area.

The End Of Global Leadership

January 15, 2024 Patrick Lawrence, Scheer Post. Strategize! Elections, Failed State, Joe Biden, US Imperialism

There are many photographs of President Biden floating around these days. Maybe it is because, even allowing for his physical decline and his mental incompetence, his minders can no longer keep him so thoroughly out of sight as this, an election year, begins. The picture I am thinking of, carried by the BBC, is a video frame shot at Biden’s Valley Forge speech last week. That was his first outing as he seeks reelection next November. And there are Joe Biden and First Lady Jill—excuse me, Dr. Jill—standing before the usual prop on such occasions, an immense American flag. Joe smiles out from a mask-like face, blank with what looks like bewilderment. Dr. Jill smiles, too—a frozen smile, but one that suggests she is at least aware of what is going on.

Ideas For Living Through The Great Unraveling

December 24, 2023 Rob Dietz, Resilience. Strategize! climate crisis, Failed State, Overshoot, Transformation

This year Post Carbon Institute has leaned into the “Great Unraveling” as a label for framing what’s happening in modern society and the natural world. In short, the Great Unraveling represents humanity’s comeuppance from overshoot, a time when debts are coming due and the promise of everlasting growth is fading. Since the Industrial Revolution, we’ve experienced an unprecedented expansion of the human footprint, mostly driven by fossil fuel consumption and marked by inequality, that has put us in a precarious position. Humanity’s use of energy and materials, as well as the scale of our polluting emissions, have surpassed what the Earth’s biosphere can sustain.

NATO Destroyed Libya In 2011; Storm Daniel Came To Sweep Up The Remains

September 22, 2023 Vijay Prashad, Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. Educate! Extreme weather, Failed State, Foreign Intervention, Libya, NATO, Wars and Militarism

Three days before the Abu Mansur and Al Bilad dams collapsed in Wadi Derna, Libya, on the night of September 10, the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi participated in a discussion at the Derna House of Culture about the neglect of basic infrastructure in his city. At the meeting, al-Trabelsi warned about the poor condition of the dams. As he wrote on Facebook that same day, over the past decade his beloved city has been ‘exposed to whipping and bombing, and then it was enclosed by a wall that had no door, leaving it shrouded in fear and depression’. Then, Storm Daniel picked up off the Mediterranean coast, dragged itself into Libya, and broke the dams. CCTV camera footage in the city’s Maghar neighbourhood showed the rapid advance of the floodwaters, powerful enough to destroy buildings and crush lives. A reported 70% of infrastructure and 95% of educational institutions have been damaged in the flood-affected areas. As of Wednesday 20 September, an estimated 4,000 to 11,000 people have died in the flood – among them the poet Mustafa al-Trabelsi, whose warnings over the years went unheeded – and another 10,000 are missing.

Humanitarian Imperialism Created The Libyan Nightmare

September 19, 2023 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Failed State, Gaddafi, Hillary Clinton, Libya, NATO, US Imperialism

"We came, we saw, he died,” Hillary Clinton famously quipped when Muammar Gaddafi, after seven months of U.S. and NATO bombing, was overthrown in 2011 and killed by a mob who sodomized him with a bayonet. But Gaddafi would not be the only one to die. Libya, once the most prosperous and one of the most stable countries in Africa, a country with free healthcare and education, the right for all citizens to a home, subsidized electricity, water and gasoline, along with the lowest infant mortality rate and highest life expectancy on the continent, along with one of the highest literacy rates, swiftly fragmented into warring factions.

Public Need Versus The Business Of War

September 16, 2023 Christian Sorenson, Substack. Educate! Austerity, Failed State, Pentagon Budget, Wars and Militarism

The American public is hurting. The bare necessities—clean water, nutritious food, and affordable housing—are hard to come by. Tap water is contaminated with lead, PFAS, and other pollutants. The water systems that serve cities and towns suffer additional stressors, including drought, overuse, and a failure to incorporate greywater systems. And, like many necessities, you have to pay for it in the United States: Water utility prices continue to go up and up. Hunger is a severe problem. Insufficient money and/or access means that millions of families regularly go hungry. Massive corporations dominate what is available in a grocery store, and much of what they produce is innutritious.

Imperialism: How The Struggle Of Classes And Nations Creates Our World

August 30, 2023 Radhika Desai and Michael Hudson, Geopolitical Economy. Resistance Report Class Struggle, Failed State, Imperialism, Nations

It’s quite possible that the BRICS may well become the institutional foundation of the world majority, as the global South and Russia are increasingly being called. They have done more things. The Western press has also sought to portray these countries, the BRICS countries, as little more than a bunch of autocracies or very iffy democracies. But in fact, despite such propaganda, what we’ve seen in the BRICS summit is that they have been focused on presenting a very different vision of the world order, one based on development, on people-centered development. And this has been expressed in a direct confrontation with the Western conception of the world order, which has, of course, been dressed up in the garb of human rights and democracy, but for decades has brought only poverty and exploitation to much of the world.

Chris Hedges Report: America’s Trauma Epidemic And Its Broken Politics

July 30, 2023 Chris Hedges, The Real News Network. Resistance Report Chris Hedges, Failed State, mental health, Trauma, Violence

Violence is ubiquitous in American life, and so is the trauma that follows in its wake. From the domestic sphere to the public sphere, interpersonal violence, particularly of a sexual nature, is all-too-common in the US. How does the resulting trauma manifest, and how does this trauma shape everything from our personal relationships to our politics? Specialist Dr. Judith Lewis Herman joins The Chris Hedges Report for an in-depth discussion on how trauma distorts the mind and the body politic alike. Dr. Judith Lewis Herman is a psychiatrist who studies trauma and developed the diagnosis for Complex PTSD. She is the author of several books, including her most recent, Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice.

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