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Berzerker
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topeka, kansas,USA
May 1999
time: 23:37
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http://www.mayaparadise.com/ufc1e.htm
We were "debating" this at another forum and it dawned on me that the Cold War was a fraud sold to us by corporate America to protect stolen lands primarily in the 3rd world obtained by force or bribing dictators left over from the colonial period.
The link above is a great example of the threat land reform - "communism" - posed to western corporations.
The Domino Theory was not about the spread of communism, it was about the spread of land reform. With the possible exception of Korea, it seems most of the Cold War conflicts occured in 3rd world countries recently freed from colonial powers or their puppet dictators and their descendents.
The French in Vietnam, the Dutch in East Timor, the Spanish in Latin America, and a variety of European powers in Africa. The colonial (imperial) powers were extracting resources from 3rd world countries and didn't want land reform that sought to return some or all of the lands stolen under colonialism.
The US with its heritage of "Manifest Destiny" was primed to become the main enforcer of preserving the ill-gotten gains of the colonial period once the Europeans could no longer defend their overseas assets because of 2 world wars whereas the US, with the notable exception of the Phillipines taken from Spain following the Spanish-American War, limited itself to occasional invasions of Latin America (and Hawaii).
But having assumed overt or covert control of much of the western hemisphere, the US could not afford to let land reform spread in the old world since it would eventually spread here. So we got stuck fighting the Cold War in both hemispheres.
Is this far-fetched? Follow the money...
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:37
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quote:
Whose good? In most cases native populations were slaughtered and their lands stolen. Sounds like "we had to destroy the village to save it"... |
Generally, good. In most case native populations were slaughtered only to a slightly larger extent that they would've been slaughtered by their bretheren, and the concept of introducing many technologies, and social engineering to the native peoples, followed by rapidly expanding trade led to an enormous increase in worldwide wealth which helped usher the modern age.
For who's good? That's actually a very good question, but it has an answer. The fact that the people who gained the most of imperialism were the the children of the imperialist people, or other whities doesn't really matter - People are people.
So, to recap:
-Since the morals of most of the natives of the time didn't preclude genocide by conqueror, no actual expectation utilities existed on the issue.
-Much more people were allowed to live and flourish in the imperial era than before.
-The ethnicity of said people shouldn't have mattered.
Btw, to thwart any claims of hypocricy by my side, let me say that I support the Roman empire, Since it was a force for good, even though it was instrumental in the destruction of the ancient Israeli kingdom, and should be against "my nationality".
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Sir Og
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Lurking in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Jun 2001
time: 07:37
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So Az you'r basicaly saying that it is OK if a significantly more advanced nation conquers a less advanced one and starts exploiting it's resources and impose their values on the less advanced people.
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Az
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MACEDONIA - It's the name of the sovereign country to the north of Greece
Apr 2000
time: 07:37
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quote:
So you telling me all the Africans woudl be happy if they could only support 1/20th their current population and were living in mud huts?
They have accepted the Western standard of living, and even if they have not reached it, they are 1000 times closer to it then before we came.
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Now you see, that's the bad part of imperialism supporters -you haven't said it, so correct me if I am wrong, but I am getting this vibe from you, like they owe the west anything - This certainly isn't true, since the west was by far the biggest benefactor of imperialism. My claim is that all people gained, so it was generally a positive thing. However, the same forces can be considered negative, when after the initial progress area, they're operating to hinder the formation of people's rule and democracy in these regions. But, again, without imperialism/western influence, these places would never be able to even have a shot at modern society anyway.
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by aneeshm
Just one thing - doesn't 2 % seem a bit less , when considering that India had ( and has ) one-sixth the world's human population ? And how , exactly , are my numbers meaningless ? |
While I'm not arguing the niceness of colonialism let me ask two questions: (1) Was India likely to unite toi form one country without the intervention of the British? IMHO it was not. No state had the wherewithall to unite India. Without unity India would have been destined to continue sporadic local wars that would have sapped any hope of keeping up with the world. The condition of India would have been much like that of China between the world wars. (2)Was India likely to embrace the industrial revolution had it been left to it's own devices? If not then it's unlikely that India could have done anything more than fail to gradually lose ground.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:37
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The Dutch East Indies did not include East Timor, which was Portuguese.
Following the revolt against Dutch control of Indonesia, the Indonesians went on to occupy West Papua.
Then (coincidentally) after a visit from Henry Kissinger the Indonesians squashed East Timor's independence plans following their declaration of independence after the collapse of the Salazar regime in Portugal.
How well they learned their lessons...
Two good examples, both American I'm afraid- the Eisenhower intervention in Guatemala against a democratically elected government that was planning land reform but also offering compensation.
Arbenz was laughably described as a Communist, and unfortunately both for him and Guatemala, United Fruit who owned so much of the land (used and unused) in Guatemala happened to be well connected at the highest levels of the Eisenhower administration:
quote:
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his brother CIA Director Allen Dulles had a personal interest in protecting United Fruit's businesses. Both had investments in firms with heavy investments in United Fruit. In addition, the American ambassador at the UN was a stockholder of United Fruit and President Eisenhower's personal secretary was the wife of United Fruit's public relations director. The Dulles brothers convinced Eisenhower that Arbenz was a real threat to American national security and got his appoval to develop a plan to get rid of the Guatemalan President.
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http://www.unitedfruit.org/bitter.html
The resulting coup led to pogroms against the Guatemalan Maya and the decades long conflict with paramilitary and army death squads that did so much to make Guatemala the economic success story it isn't today. Still as long as it means that some American politicians can have cleaners, housekeepers and maids and nannies at very cheap rates, all's well.
The other of course was Chile, where again the Nixon administration spent an inordinate amount of money funding domestic unrest and opposition against another democratically elected president, in a country which just happened to have mineral and ore supplies (and phosphates) that were worked or controlled by American companies.
Of course, unlike Arbenz Allende could be described as Marxist, but it still gives one pause for thought.
It should be noted too that American media outlets friendly to the two administrations did their best to 'sell' the interventions, much like Hearst's outlets in the Spanish-American War.
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Sir Og
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Lurking in Stara Zagora, Bulgaria
Jun 2001
time: 07:37
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
While I'm not arguing the niceness of colonialism let me ask two questions: (1) Was India likely to unite toi form one country without the intervention of the British? IMHO it was not. No state had the wherewithall to unite India. Without unity India would have been destined to continue sporadic local wars that would have sapped any hope of keeping up with the world. The condition of India would have been much like that of China between the world wars. (2)Was India likely to embrace the industrial revolution had it been left to it's own devices? If not then it's unlikely that India could have done anything more than fail to gradually lose ground. |
Germany and Italy did it why not India?
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chegitz guevara
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Ft. Lauderdale, FL Communist Party of Apolyton
Jun 2000
time: 00:37
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I think some might wish to reread Diamond's GG&S before blythely declaring the 3rd world to be better off today than before colonialism. In most cases, colonialism saw a marked decrease in standard of living and life span for the colonized. Many of those former colonies have yet to recover.
That's only part of the story. In the case of India, for example, the Indian textile trade, which was once an exporter to Europe, was destroyed, physically, by the British. Indians were no longer allowed to manufacture textiles, so that Great Britain could sell India textiles instead.
In Africa, aside from the overt slaughter of natives, the worst case of which was in the Belgian Congo, several hundred years of slave trade wreaked havoc on those formerly great societies. When the Europeans finally carved up the continent, they created mass starvation and congragated the natives in areas they had previously avoided: those areas that suffered from malaria, sleeping sickness, etc. Today Africa still suffers from those diseases, living in the cities Europeans founded in pestilential areas.
On the flip side, when the Chinese Revolution occured, the average life span in China was 35 years. By 1980, Maoism, as bad as it was, had increased that life span to 65 years, nearly double in a mere 31 years. Standard of living improved dramatically. The revolution saved half a billion lives, twenty-five times the number of people who died in the Great Leap Foward.
Since the fall of Communism in the USSR, in many parts of the former country, both the standard of living and the life expectancy have fallen. Russia actually has negative population growth.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:37
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quote:
Originally posted by chegitz guevara
I think some might wish to reread Diamond's GG&S before blythely declaring the 3rd world to be better off today than before colonialism. In most cases, colonialism saw a marked decrease in standard of living and life span for the colonized. Many of those former colonies have yet to recover.
That's only part of the story. In the case of India, for example, the Indian textile trade, which was once an exporter to Europe, was destroyed, physically, by the British. Indians were no longer allowed to manufacture textiles, so that Great Britain could sell India textiles instead.
In Africa, aside from the overt slaughter of natives, the worst case of which was in the Belgian Congo, several hundred years of slave trade wreaked havoc on those formerly great societies. When the Europeans finally carved up the continent, they created mass starvation and congragated the natives in areas they had previously avoided: those areas that suffered from malaria, sleeping sickness, etc. Today Africa still suffers from those diseases, living in the cities Europeans founded in pestilential areas.
On the flip side, when the Chinese Revolution occured, the average life span in China was 35 years. By 1980, Maoism, as bad as it was, had increased that life span to 65 years, nearly double in a mere 31 years. Standard of living improved dramatically. The revolution saved half a billion lives, twenty-five times the number of people who died in the Great Leap Foward.
Since the fall of Communism in the USSR, in many parts of the former country, both the standard of living and the life expectancy have fallen. Russia actually has negative population growth. |
in the case of british India, we look at the history of the textile trade, and dont look at the pattern of death rates. We assume that whatever improvements to living conditions took place, would have anyway. On the other hand, in the case of China, we assume that the 1948 death rates would have remained the same under a non-communist regime, ergo the revolution saved half a billion lives. of course death rates declined across the less developed world in this period, for a variety of reasons. By this logic, neocolonialism ALSO saved huge numbers of lives in this same period.
And of course since the fall of Communism the decline in living standards experienced inthe FSU has not taken place in Eastern Europe, rather living standards have improved. In fact the USSR in it last years was not reinvesting in its industry and infrastructure, and so its living standards were not sustainable. and the market was handicapped there, more than in eastern europe, by the corruption of the state, and the destruction of civil society, a legacy of the previous regime.
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12-08-2005 12:06
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