[Plantagenet]

As more and more areas and colonies became better armed and challenged the British...

Actually, there were very few successful armed rebellions against the British empire.

The Americans got free in the 18th century, but that is about the only major case of a successful armed rebellion. India, Britain's largest and richest possession, DID NOT mount a successful rebellion. In Africa, the Mau Mau group and those attempting similar uprisings were small and unsuccessful.

The collapse of the British empire in the mid-20th century was not caused by "better armed" colonies.

[Nickel]

Actually, there were very few successful armed rebellions against the British empire.

He's right. The only other country that ever unilaterally declared independence from Britain was Rhodesia, and that was only so the place wouldn't be granted independence with the blacks having the vote; a very cynical exercise. Even the Irish, for all the struggling, ultimately negotiated their way out of the UK (well, for 26 of 32 counties, anyway).

The collapse of the British empire in the mid-20th century was not caused by "better armed" colonies.

Well, Moley's got a point too; it was a factor. The British people didn't have a stomach for sitting on people who were trying to take charge of their own affairs; not after six years of fighting the Germans to maintain theirs. They didn't have the will, and they didn't have the money. But if those colonies had been content to just sit back and let rich WASPs in/from London run the show and take the cream, I don't imagine the British would have been in any big hurry to start manumitting colonies, either. It was a mixed bag.

[deMolay]

Plantagnet those conflicts that the British had, were the high points yes. But it was the thousands of small wounds that weakened her. Every read anything by William Playfair. He was a Scottish engineer, political economist writer, he invented the bar graph, round graph, basically the whole world of communicating about business etc by using graphs. He wrote some very insightful work about the decline of empires. For example the cost of fitting out a highly trained knight in armour and maintaining him in the field versus the advent of gunpowder and how it changed fuedal society because now, an uneducated peasant with a primitive musket could kill this expensive war machine with a little bit of gunpowder and a ball. So the dynamics of european society was changed forever with this technological change. Or how the invention of the stirrup allowed Ghengis Khan's archer's to ride their horse's without holding onto the reins and they were now free to fire their arrows at will. This technological change created an empire, they swept away everything in their path. The cost of projecting power changed. A very interesting man. In the beginning the British were the undisputed rulers of the seas, but as better cannon etc, firearms, became widely available, every tinpot could intimidate the British traders and merchants at will. This then caused a huge Naval build up by the British to protect their sealanes and ports for trade and access to raw materials etc. Eventually it became a huge drain on their treasury, which resulted very high taxes at home to sustain the level and number of ships and men always at the ready in every area of the Empire to deal with the brigands. This eventually caused the British merchants to move business offshore and seek other solutions to escape the high taxation at home. Beginning to sound a bit familiar now. This resulted in heavy unemployment in England heavy welfare rolls, and very high taxation. That heavy taxation resulted in the rebellion by the Americans, which further weakened the Empire and this weakening continued until the ww1, which really crippled them. Which planted the seeds of the ww2 and their collapse as an Empire.

[Carlhole]

The Big Stimulus: Get rid of the empire

Putting aside Bizarro economics, for now, and my wholesale rejection of same, there is one way we can stimulate the economy with a mighty injection of cash into the hands of one and all. No, not another government subsidy, but the cutting of the single largest federal expenditure down to a manageable size: the U.S. military budget.

Larger than all the other "defense" budgets in the world combined, this unimaginable sum is not even known, for sure, but of one thing we can be certain: the hidden costs are much more than anyone suspects. Covert "black operations" are run on an off-the-books budget that we peons are not entitled to see.

Consuming nearly half of all government spending, the military budget maintains an overseas empire unrivaled in the history of the world. The U.S. operates a network of bases in dozens of countries, on every continent. The Pentagon is the biggest landowner on earth. This is not only tremendously expensive, but also completely unnecessary and even harmful to our national interests.

Yes. This has been Ron Paul's incessant chant, too. Something to do with his being a Libertarian Republican, I believe.

At the rate the US is losing it, how long will it be before Obama is FORCED to close bases in Korea, and Germany, and 700 other locations around the world?

No? They never will close them? Because they are all part of the New World Order plan? Hmm... I dunno about that. I think the US will fight tooth-and-nail to keep military personnel in the Gulf but will begin to shrink other outposts around the globe. As Ron Paul keeps saying, "We just can't afford it anymore".

[mos6507]

Want to change the world? Ride a scooter.

[3aidlillahi]

Want to change the world? Ride a scooter.

You look cute Mos.

Ride a bike!

[mos6507]

better?

[evilgenius]

Yes, get rid of the empire. The only thing is that would be harder than one might think, for the empire goes largely unacknowledged. Look how deeply it penetrates the rest of the world. The financial crisis is a direct result of the world economy patterning itself after the machinations of the empire. So many feedback systems have been put in place that ensure localized failure without connection to the empire (ie sweatshops that exist sans any kind of local infrastructure to keep them in the empire's absence, etc.). The empire is so much more than military genius, in other words.

That being said, if a country (and it would have to be a country, not a terrorist organization) sought to take down the empire it looks like the coming years would be their best opportunity. Never mind that the consequences would probably just create a far less benevolent monstrosity, the opportunity is there. I think there are many in positions of power outside of the empire that must realize this, Tsar Putin, for one.

[Heineken]

For the tenth time I will recommend "The Sorrows of Empire," written by a brilliant ex-CIA analyst named Chalmers Johnson.

It's all in there. The revelations blow you away. The mind-blowing financial waste and the ruin of our reputation.

It's obvious Obama has no intention of dismantling or even seriously scaling back the empire. Witness the escalation in Afghanistan.

Change? I think not.

Empires never scale back voluntarily. Instead, because of overreach, they collapse from within (slowly, as with the British Empire, or rapidly, as with Hitler's). They become their own worst enemy. We're following the classic pattern of collapse right now.

[Gobsmack]

Obama: Regime Rotation

Obama and National Security: "It's the Oil, Stupid!"

This became increasingly clear as Barack Obama's administration appointees became known – individuals whose political and ideological positions are largely commensurate with neoconservative ideals particularly on security matters, and whose social and intellectual connections link them to neo-conservative think-tanks and policy-makers.

A glance through Obama's national security team also raises eyebrows, but we should focus on his selection of former Marine General Jim Jones as his National Security Advisor. Jones was previously appointed to the NATO post of Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and Commander of the US European Command (COMUSEUCOM) under the Bush administration. The thrust of Jones imperial vision can be seen in a UPI article describing his work in 2005:

"NATO's top military commander is seeking an important new security role for private industry and business leaders as part of a new security strategy that will focus on the economic vulnerabilities of the 26-country alliance. Two immediate and priority projects for NATO officials to develop with private industry are to secure the pipelines bringing Russian oil and gas to Europe… to secure ports and merchant shipping, the alliance Supreme Commander, Gen. James Jones of the USMarine Corps said Wednesday… A further area of NATO interest to secure energy supplies could be the Gulf of Guinea off the West African coast, Jones noted... Oil companies were already spending more than a billion dollars a year on security in the region, he noted, pointing to the need for NATO and business to confer on the common security concern."

In summary, Jones' national security strategy privileges US military control over regions containing substantial underexploited oil and natural gas reserves, in Africa's Gulf of Guinea, the Black and Caspian Seas, and the Persian Gulf. This drive also allows the US to consolidate European dependence for its energy security on NATO, thus solidifying EU support of the wider US geostrategy to control global energy resources and transportation routes.

[Sixstrings]

The collapse of the dollar will drive up the prices of imports and offshored goods on which Americans are dependent. Wal-Mart shoppers will think they have mistakenly gone into Neiman Marcus.

Domestic prices will also explode as a growing money supply chases the supply of goods and services still made in America by Americans.
The dollar as reserve currency cannot survive the conflagration. When the dollar goes the US cannot finance its trade deficit. Therefore, imports will fall sharply, thus adding to domestic inflation and, as the US is energy import-dependent, there will be transportation disruptions that will disrupt work and grocery store deliveries.

Panic will be the order of the day.

Will farms will be raided? Will those trapped in cities resort to riots and looting?

Is this the likely future that “our” government and “our patriotic” corporations have created for us?
To borrow from Lenin, “What can be done?”

Here is what can be done. The wars, which benefit no one but the military-security complex and Israel’s territorial expansion, can be immediately ended.

(snip)

The only way that the US will again have an economy is by bringing back the offshored jobs. The loss of these jobs impoverished Americans while producing oversized gains for Wall Street, shareholders, and corporate executives. These jobs can be brought home where they belong by taxing corporations according to where value is added to their product. If value is added to their goods and services in China, corporations would have a high tax rate. If value is added to their goods and services in the US, corporations would have a low tax rate.

This change in corporate taxation would offset the cheap foreign labor that has sucked jobs out of America, and it would rebuild the ladders of upward mobility that made America an opportunity society.
If the wars are not immediately stopped and the jobs brought back to America, the US is relegated to the trash bin of history.

(snip)

Without a revolution, Americans are history.
http://www.infowars.com/the-ecstasy-of-empire/

Man, I love this guy. I agree with every thing he comes out with.. this line sums it up:

If the wars are not immediately stopped and the jobs brought back to America, the US is relegated to the trash bin of history.

Paul Craig Roberts has been getting a lot of exposure lately. He's been featured twice now on the front page of the Drudgereport, which is interesting because Drudge usually only puts things up that push the standard Republican party line.

The Drudge links go to Alex Jones Infowars, where it appears Roberts is going to have a regular column now. His last big internet splash was that "end of America" bit of fiction. All his columns are great though and have been for years, so I'm really glad he's getting such exposure now. Even Zerohedge reprinted this latest column of his.

Tens of millions read Drudge. And if they start reading Paul Craig Roberts' columns, then I have to think there's a little bit of hope with all those millions becoming aware of the REAL 100% truth about the mess this country is in, what caused it, and what the solutions are.

[hillsidedigger]

So is the rest of the world.

[hillsidedigger]

So is the rest of the world's peoples.

Did I do that?

[Sixstrings]

Just a note.. I changed the thread title from "US is headed for the trash bin of history" to Roberts' own column title "The Ecstasy of Empire."

Drudge's title used the "Without a revolution, Americans are history" blurb and I didn't like that so I picked another. But really the "trash bin" line is too sensational as well.

I need to check myself and not be so darn depressing with my posts. It's true that the US is on a third world trajectory, with all the chaos and suffering that implies. But it's also true that being a third world nation isn't necessarily the end of the world. There are some happy people in third world countries. Happiness is where you find it and what you make of your situation. And there are still some opportunities for upward mobility in third world nations, it's just for a much smaller slice of the population than what we've come to expect from first world life.

In any event, the point of Roberts' column and this thread remains the same: we've got some real problems in this country that aren't being addressed. It would be good for Americans to at least KNOW why the country is going to hell in a handbasket, even if there's nothing to be done about it, rather than be jerked around from one broken promise of false hope to another.

[Pops]

Here you go six, you'll like this one,

10 Signs The U.S. is Becoming a Third World Country
Activist Post
The United States by every measure is hanging on by a thread to its First World status. Saddled by debt, engaged in wars on multiple fronts with a rising police state at home, declining economic productivity, and wild currency fluctuations all threaten America's future.

Don't feel bad, Six, I see lots of stuff in Reader I could post but after a while I even bum myself out.

[Keith_McClary]

American Empire and the Future
by PAUL L. ATWOOD

...
Since at least the turn of the 19th Century, when the emergence of modern capitalism fostered the Industrial Revolution, military and economic advantage has required access to ever greater quantities of energy. To a significant extent both World Wars were global imperial competitions for the control of oil. Until 1945 the US was self-sufficient in energy but used so much petroleum supplying its war machine and those of the United Kingdom and Soviet Union, that in order to maintain our enormously bloated way of life we became dependent on oil in other nations.
...
Our swollen way life is inconceivable without oil, and other hydrocarbons. Yet, the absolute reliance on the substances is slowly but indisputably poisoning and suffocating the very systems they enabled to arise, and the day draws near when the Age of Oil will end because of declining reserves and increasing costs.

Consider Peak Oil. A concerned geologist at Columbia named Hubbert began to worry about how long oil would last and he predicted that American production would peak about 1973. He was correct. Since 1859 the US has used half of its oil and now the other half will be consumed in the next 50 years, though it will undoubtedly be so expensive well before that many will have to choose between heat and food. He also predicted global oil production to peak about now and most analysts agree that his prediction is correct.

Americans have always relied upon ingenuity and technological fixes to solve problems but in this case the likelihood that hydrogen, biofuels, solar or cold fusion will ever replace petroleum and natural gas is slim. The U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal but reverting to that fuel will entail other collateral damage. Some, like James Lovelock, argue that nuclear power could save the advanced nations from total collapse but opposition to that is widespread especially after the events in Japan last spring.

Thus, intensifying competition for access to fossil energy reserves is inexorably leading to increasing armed conflict, and, ironically, the armies in conflict will not be capable of combat without the very energy they are fighting to protect, thereby hastening the disappearance of this energy source, and therefore exacerbating the very problems that in truth cannot be resolved by war. A case in point is the fact that American and NATO forces in Afghanistan now consume a million gallons of fuel per day!
...
One of the first measures undertaken by the Bush Administration was to create a National Energy Policy Development Group headed by the chief spokesman of the oil industry, one Richard Cheney. No access to their records or discussions has ever been allowed but their actions surely indicate that the energy chief executives are mightily aware of Peak Oil. Their policy? Not conservation; no crash program of alternative energy sources, no commitment to work with the international community for peaceful solution. NO! The policy is clearly to invade other countries and seize their energy reserves and/or the means to transport them. For all President Obama’s rhetoric there really is no Plan B.
...
As South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham put it nakedly “Let’s get in on the ground. There is a lot of money to be made in the future in Libya. Lot of oil to be produced. Let’s get on the ground and help the Libyan people establish a democracy and a functioning economy based on free market principles.”
...
The real issue facing the so-called “advanced” nations and now China, India and the Asian tigers is that cheap oil is running out. Extracting oil will become ever more difficult and expensive and at some future point will be so costly that it will cause essentially a collapse of globalism with real depression here in the US. The fact that oil commerce is denominated in dollars while the value of the dollar steadily declines also presages a future in which the dollar may be toppled as the world currency, thus leading to widespread inflation and certain critical shortages of basics.
...
American foreign policy is premised today on garnering as much control over shrinking energy resources as possible…and to protect this access strategically. The various military commands are deployed primarily for this reason. Note that a new military command with responsibility for Africa has been created. The opportunity to create new military bases for AFRICOM is one of the prime reasons the U.S. is now in Libya. Note the recent incursion of American “advisors’ into Uganda and Sudan. Nigeria now provides a third of American needs, and Angola and other smaller nations have reservoirs that are targets for U.S. control. Obviously our attempt to gain control of the lion’s share of Middle East oil and especially of oil and natural gas in the Caspian and Central Asian regions will bring us into serious conflict with those nations that see these as their back yard – namely China and Russia and India and Pakistan.
...
Alternatives can occur ONLY if the public awakens to the coming storm. We cannot depend on the corporate media to educate us; they are allied with their major clients, not the public, and they are deliberately withholding bad news for fear of stampeding the stock markets into panic. We must get the word out ourselves and make it clear that we will not accept or cooperate with business as usual from Congress or the presidency. That will have to mean more militancy throughout this nation than seen since the 1960s, or really even the 1930s. Unfortunately I fear this will require even deeper crisis before we begin to awaken to the danger ahead.

[SeaGypsy]

What do you think Kieth? (ur supposed to comment/ not just cut/ paste) Refreshing article. It's nice to read someone I am unfamiliar with, who is very familiar with the topics we are on here. I can't pick a fault with this article.

[Timo]

This piece, combined with Krugman's recent thinking that" this may be the time 'everything' collapses," does give cause for concern. It seems that a perfect storm is brewing all across the globe, with resource constraints fueling political extremism to maintain BAU, religious fervor, honest political differences in addressing very real concerns about the future of a dozen different countries, none of which are even approaching solution, magnified exponentially by 7 billion people, 90% of whom have access to social media that only serves to fuel their dissatisfaction with "the other side", and their determination to eradicate those "threats" to our way of life.......

Wait! What am i thinking?!?! Nothing will ever change in my lifetime!!! Any significant change in anything is at least 100 or so Friedman Units in the future! Don't worry! Be happy!

[Pops]

Any significant change in anything is at least 100 or so Friedman Units in the future!

Good one!


The deal with "American Empire" (and the bush league invasions are the perfect example) is that we conquer but then we let our corporations colonize. That way the USofA can beat her chest (?) as the epitome of moral superiority while at the same time the owners still reap the reward. The conquered natives feel "liberated" the US natives feel superior and the owners get just as rich, great system.

Unfortunately, our corp.s are no longer the strongest because other nations want some of the action and in fact are going head to head with our corps, taking advantage of our "moral Superiority" (and trillions in war dollars and lives) by backing their corporate persons and even investing as a government – witness the Chinese investment in Iraq.

Post Marshal plan US sent out the army to protect "our" corporate interests. Now that our Corporate Persons have applied for foreign citizenship – supranational citizenship, actually. Our interest is no longer in making them profitable any more than theirs is in keeping jobs and profits at "home".

Although, on second thought, perhaps the plan of the corporate persons is to elect a POTUS, they've done a pretty good job of installing their majority in the House and the SCOTUS...

[SeaGypsy]

Yeah Obama is a hole in the story (???) Mr anti corp? (Barf)