nino_savatte
No pasaran!
Quite and it's so easy to trick the people into believing that they will benefit from the American Dream.
The end of the American Dream?
- Thread starter soulman
- Start date
Quite and it's so easy to trick the people into believing that they will benefit from the American Dream.
Fela, have you read Samuel Huntingdon's 'The Clash of Civilisations'? It goes into great detail on this very topic.
Gavin Bl
terrible awful baaad
that, or the country is so unstoppably dominant and powerful that it doesn't matter who runs it, it just rumbles on...
Jesus...that's quite some fucked up mental image...This shit is going to get really bad aint it?
I think so. The current US government have been trying to hide the state of the economy since they got in. The US economy was fucked when they got in, and it's now even more fucked. They've all made some profit out of it so who cares...
I guess those cunts all have a safe bolthole somewhere while their average city citizen is still looking to the shopping centre/mall as the arse drops out of their world.
No, but i think i've heard of it. Is it a huge book? But anyhow, it sounds interesting, even though i don't like reading politics any more. I might look for it in my bookshop.
But i have thought for some time the main objective for human evolution is to achieve perpetual peace rather than the perpetual war we stupidly continue to operate under. And empires naturally enough propagate this state of being. Without war of course the empire cannot exist.
For me evolution is just that, albeit the nature of its grindingly slow pace. And if we are to get peace, then we need opposing yet interacting blocks. No-one can get the better of the other.
Bertrand russell's answer was a world government. But he wrote in other times. For me, the various blocks seem both attractive and inevitable.
Well, it would be the first one in history to do that, and that is as good as any reason to say it will crumble.
It's simply built into the human psyche. The balancing mechanism is already at work, and i just hope that i see the bastards come falling down in my lifetime.
It seems pertinent to come back to this comment. Can i ask you to think about this again DC?
Two things i see driving this popular line of thought. Firstly there's always been empires, and therefore china seem as good a guess as anybody to replace the inevitable collapse of american empire. Secondly i think this thought has been subtly inserted into western media and thinking as propaganda in the name of trying to stop the swap over.
For me china are simply nowhere near becoming the dominant force in our world. And that even presupposes they would want to be. I don't believe they would. I think too much wisdom has come out of that country over the last couple of millenia. War is primarily the plaything of the stupid. I just think china are too intelligent for all that empire stuff.
I think they're far more concerned with being respected for who they are, on their own merits. I cannot see that they are expansionist for empire reasons in any way.
But either way, what it takes for an empire to be in place is something that china just don't have, nor will do.
I don't think there is any empire waiting to take over once the US collapses. Hence some of my reasoning that we will get a few blocs that act as policemen to each other. Humans are slowly getting more intelligent, or perhaps i should say the intelligent among us are beginning to finally overcome the stupid, and the result can only be peace through a network of blocs.
Idris2002
Stay Alive in '25
Given that Huntington makes a startling and easily avoidable error of fact concerning a country I have some first hand knowledge of (he claims that Eritrea is a Muslim country, which is why it split from Ethiopia - Eritrea is 50/50 Muslim/Christian and both communities share a commitment to national independence from their larger neighbour to the south) I find it hard to take him seriously.
frogwoman
Let them eat newts
Added to the fact that he's a racist cunt who came pretty close to explicitly advocating ethnic cleansing in one of his books ... (i havent read it, but i'm going by what i was told by one of my lecturers, who is pretty right wing himself, but still thought his comments disgusting)
Well, to read the book or not?!
No-one should be judged on the basis of one error, or we'd have a world where you could never accept anybody.
As for what your lecturer said frogw, be careful! The only word you can truly take is your own. The amount of times i've listened to university teachers putting their own spin on things, yet supposedly being objective... too many times. It's worse, because they walk with a cloak of objectivity.
I think i'm even more minded to search this book out to read what the man says.
And idris, gaining first hand knowledge of other countries simply opens up our eyes to just how much bullshit is being spun by western commentators in the name of being an expert on what they write.
No-one should be judged on the basis of one error, or we'd have a world where you could never accept anybody.
As for what your lecturer said frogw, be careful! The only word you can truly take is your own. The amount of times i've listened to university teachers putting their own spin on things, yet supposedly being objective... too many times. It's worse, because they walk with a cloak of objectivity.
I think i'm even more minded to search this book out to read what the man says.
And idris, gaining first hand knowledge of other countries simply opens up our eyes to just how much bullshit is being spun by western commentators in the name of being an expert on what they write.
http://www.amazon.com/Clash-Civilizations-Remaking-World-Order/dp/0684844419
Some reviews of the book there. Interesting, but i still think politics is the wrong default in life...
Some reviews of the book there. Interesting, but i still think politics is the wrong default in life...
Thinking further, huntingdon does what most political commentators do, naturally enough, and that is view the world through just political eyes. He reports on the clashes he sees looming, but these are the clashes between leaders of nations, not the peoples between nations. The former's ranks are inevitably populated by fairly stupid people, whereas real intelligence is to be found in the ranks of the peoples of the world.
What they seem blind to is the bottom-up, non-political revolution that is bubbling away, and will erupt pretty soon i feel, and that will shock many in political leadership, mainly because of their arrogance and stupidity. Because of technology primarily, people from all kinds of nations are beginning to discover the lie that our leaders have perpetuated for so long, that we are all different and we must fight each other.
I will say it again, i have far more in common with the iraqi taxi driver, the burmese shopkeeper, the thai farmer, the french artist, the chinese teacher than i will ever have with british leaders. The british leaders may have the same blood as me in terms of the lump of earth we were born on, but they're criminals, and all the people i've just give examples of, are not.
Our turn will come!
What they seem blind to is the bottom-up, non-political revolution that is bubbling away, and will erupt pretty soon i feel, and that will shock many in political leadership, mainly because of their arrogance and stupidity. Because of technology primarily, people from all kinds of nations are beginning to discover the lie that our leaders have perpetuated for so long, that we are all different and we must fight each other.
I will say it again, i have far more in common with the iraqi taxi driver, the burmese shopkeeper, the thai farmer, the french artist, the chinese teacher than i will ever have with british leaders. The british leaders may have the same blood as me in terms of the lump of earth we were born on, but they're criminals, and all the people i've just give examples of, are not.
Our turn will come!
I don't think it'd take too long before this arrangement echoed previous human history and some of the blocs got together to oppose another one - power blocs kept Europe pretty stable for much of the 19th century but that got very messy indeed when it fell apart in 1914.
gentlegreen
I hummus, therefore I am ...
Especially with all the coverage of the bizarre process of choosing the leader in the USA - no wonder that once they get there they get to wreak so much havoc.
China's activities in Xinjiang and Tibet are classic colonialism, and the country, needing resources for its economy, has been busy expanding its power and influence in Africa - Chinese history is full of as much war and expansionism as any other country's and the current leadership definitely don't seem unwilling to act ruthlessly to protect Chinese interests if necessary.
So much for the 'the poor of the USA live better than the rich of europe' B.S Americans love to parrot.
Doesn't change my opinion that china are not interested in empire building. Their african sojourn is economical. Tibet they will simply see as being part of china, same as taiwan.
And taiwan, tiny taiwan would i believe beat china in a military confrontation.
And if chinese history is so full of all that how come they have never been an empire?
david dissadent
New Member
I dont think America is going anywhere just yet. A recession, even one dragging on for 5 years will not end American power, or even change it in any meaningfull way. It will also harm the rest of the world, perhaps more than the US.
Were I to guess I would go for a double dip recession, with the stimulus package giving consumers a slight lift in the late summer\ early autumn. I also suspect the calls for the end of the recession will go on about every two weeks until it is over..... thats not a hard one, there were already a few articles saying the worst was behind us this week: then GE published its results and the markets took another shit. There is alot of capital (money) floating around the world looking for somewhere to be put to work. And I mean ALOT. Perhaps enough to cover for the losses in housing and investment instraments. Probibly not though. But at some point people will start looking for things to invest in and the US and world economy will lift up.
There are quite a number of longterm problems that will palgue the US for the next couple of decades, some like retirement of the largest section of there population will be problems every country faces, however it will hurt the US more than others due to the crazy cost of US health care which the state only has to cover once a person goes over a certain age (by and large there are exceptions). Europe Japan and China all face variations of this problem. Other problems like deficit spending are more unevenly spread, Japan being a significantly worse culprit that than the US in terms of the ratio between GDP and borrowing. And of course balance of trade where Germany is the worlds star, only last year did China finaly exceed the German balance of trade surplus in numbers, given the disparity between there populations it's a stunning insight into what a western economy can do if it is well managed.
America has alot of problems but so does everyone. The US still has the capacity to turn it around and use a big recession and a weak dollar to get back into manufacturing. It has the capital and the infrastructure to stay in the high end innovative manufacturing sector. A weak dollar may actualy kill Arianespace, Airbus and EADS.
But if we are looking at long term (decade and more) global power then there are two variables that are basicaly 90% of the game. Global warming and rescourse depletion. They are highly variable, high probability high impact variables.
India is rapidly running out of water. It relies heavily on water drawn from the water table and that is shrinking at an unsustainable speed. China and India also rely heavily on water from glacier melt for there great rivers, these glaceirs are slowly dissapearing. Over the next twenty years first India, then China are likely to run out of water and face famines. But before China faces famine it will hit problems keeping many of its factories and industries running due to water constraints. The increased likelyhood of droughts and other severe weather events are liable to create internal disturbances and even refeul civil violence and perhaps revolutionary armed struggle in both countries. I really cant see the Chindia phenomonem displacing the US as the worlds leading power.
In terms of resource depletion, my conservative estimate is that the world hits peak oil in 2011. There is so much obstification and outright lying about how much oil is available, but there are a host of new field (the socalled megaprojects) comming online between now and 2011 that they might be able to lift us above the 74.2 million barrels a day we achieved back in 2005.
This is recent world oil production (from Graphoilogy)
We have platued and the price of oil has shot through the roof
Now the growth in consumption in China and the asian tigers is burning out the ability of countries like Pakistan and Burma to buy oil, but once the oil starts depleating (as I and a number of other suggest it will; the big boys the governments and world energy bodies laugh of this suggestion) then the worlds power distribution will be by who can get enough oil to keep there economy going.
The US has 140 000 troops stood on Iraqi soil. China and the EU does not. The US has giant permenant bases in the UAE and Kuwait, China and the EU does not. I honestly believe the US wanted to turn Iraq into a stable liberal democracy (soft power is cheaper than hard power). I wholeheartedly believe that they were not out for plunder but to create a country that would gratefully allow them to remain (like Germany) and be an inspiration to the overthrow of the governments of Syria and Iran, that the spread of its values would cement the world together in a bond of shared love of freedom and liberal values. They just fucked up on a scale unseen since Barbarossa. But that aside they have the troops on the ground near the oil producers. No one else does.
America has its hands very firmly round the windpipe of every significant economy in the world. (except Russias).
Life for Joe 6 Pack may not be about to get better and even deteriorate over the next twenty years.
I just dont think the US's loss of influence will be to great over the next 5 years and I think that they will be back and growing as a power over the next ten to twenty years.
Were I to guess I would go for a double dip recession, with the stimulus package giving consumers a slight lift in the late summer\ early autumn. I also suspect the calls for the end of the recession will go on about every two weeks until it is over..... thats not a hard one, there were already a few articles saying the worst was behind us this week: then GE published its results and the markets took another shit. There is alot of capital (money) floating around the world looking for somewhere to be put to work. And I mean ALOT. Perhaps enough to cover for the losses in housing and investment instraments. Probibly not though. But at some point people will start looking for things to invest in and the US and world economy will lift up.
There are quite a number of longterm problems that will palgue the US for the next couple of decades, some like retirement of the largest section of there population will be problems every country faces, however it will hurt the US more than others due to the crazy cost of US health care which the state only has to cover once a person goes over a certain age (by and large there are exceptions). Europe Japan and China all face variations of this problem. Other problems like deficit spending are more unevenly spread, Japan being a significantly worse culprit that than the US in terms of the ratio between GDP and borrowing. And of course balance of trade where Germany is the worlds star, only last year did China finaly exceed the German balance of trade surplus in numbers, given the disparity between there populations it's a stunning insight into what a western economy can do if it is well managed.
America has alot of problems but so does everyone. The US still has the capacity to turn it around and use a big recession and a weak dollar to get back into manufacturing. It has the capital and the infrastructure to stay in the high end innovative manufacturing sector. A weak dollar may actualy kill Arianespace, Airbus and EADS.
But if we are looking at long term (decade and more) global power then there are two variables that are basicaly 90% of the game. Global warming and rescourse depletion. They are highly variable, high probability high impact variables.
India is rapidly running out of water. It relies heavily on water drawn from the water table and that is shrinking at an unsustainable speed. China and India also rely heavily on water from glacier melt for there great rivers, these glaceirs are slowly dissapearing. Over the next twenty years first India, then China are likely to run out of water and face famines. But before China faces famine it will hit problems keeping many of its factories and industries running due to water constraints. The increased likelyhood of droughts and other severe weather events are liable to create internal disturbances and even refeul civil violence and perhaps revolutionary armed struggle in both countries. I really cant see the Chindia phenomonem displacing the US as the worlds leading power.
In terms of resource depletion, my conservative estimate is that the world hits peak oil in 2011. There is so much obstification and outright lying about how much oil is available, but there are a host of new field (the socalled megaprojects) comming online between now and 2011 that they might be able to lift us above the 74.2 million barrels a day we achieved back in 2005.
This is recent world oil production (from Graphoilogy)
We have platued and the price of oil has shot through the roof
Now the growth in consumption in China and the asian tigers is burning out the ability of countries like Pakistan and Burma to buy oil, but once the oil starts depleating (as I and a number of other suggest it will; the big boys the governments and world energy bodies laugh of this suggestion) then the worlds power distribution will be by who can get enough oil to keep there economy going.
The US has 140 000 troops stood on Iraqi soil. China and the EU does not. The US has giant permenant bases in the UAE and Kuwait, China and the EU does not. I honestly believe the US wanted to turn Iraq into a stable liberal democracy (soft power is cheaper than hard power). I wholeheartedly believe that they were not out for plunder but to create a country that would gratefully allow them to remain (like Germany) and be an inspiration to the overthrow of the governments of Syria and Iran, that the spread of its values would cement the world together in a bond of shared love of freedom and liberal values. They just fucked up on a scale unseen since Barbarossa. But that aside they have the troops on the ground near the oil producers. No one else does.
America has its hands very firmly round the windpipe of every significant economy in the world. (except Russias).
Life for Joe 6 Pack may not be about to get better and even deteriorate over the next twenty years.
I just dont think the US's loss of influence will be to great over the next 5 years and I think that they will be back and growing as a power over the next ten to twenty years.
Wasn't the British Empire established for economic reasons?
They have! Why do you think Chinese Emperors were called 'Emperors'? They extended domination from a central state over other peoples and that's an empire by any definition.
david dissadent
New Member
Yes after the failure of the private market to effectivly manage the UKs imperial possesions in India the conservatives nationalised the Empire and brought it under more efficient state control (1857).
The single greatest nationalisation in human history, why do the tories not boast about it?
Hi Fela, actually Huntingdon's argument, while resting on a substantial amount of 'realpolitik' is actually based more on distinguishing cultures ("peoples") than anything else.
The thoughts people have already given on his book on this thread are no reason not to read it. I disagreed with many things that Huntingdon said, nevertheless I'm glad I read the book. It was very influential in Anglo-American foreign policy circles, so if nothing else it is an important book to read. And besides, only reading books by people you already agree with is the fast track to stupidity, dogma and bigotry.
By the way, for those who have not already done so, I *highly* recommend you read the Harper's piece I linked to earlier. It provides much food for thought in the context of this thread's discussion.
Yes after the failure of the private market to effectivly manage the UKs imperial possesions in India the conservatives nationalised the Empire and brought it under more efficient state control (1857).
The single greatest nationalisation in human history, why do the tories not boast about it?
david dissadent
New Member
I strongly doubt that many of those regions will form the basis of coherant regional power blocks. The world is far more likely to reflect the current situation in the central asian 'stans', where regional and global actors vie for control with allegencies shifting on the basis of real politik and domestic politics. Another good guide would be South America at the moment where regionalists and Bolivarians compete for influence with those aligning behind the US. South America has many reasons for closer co-operation between itself but changes in governments and priorities mean that China and the US currently vie for influence to a degree. It is not a coherent power block by any stretch.
The EU and NAFTA are somewhat exceptions where there is a reasonable common voice.
Areas that could produce reasonably coheret groups would include, the Arab world (Arabia and Arab North Africa), Southern Africa south of the Zambizi (under defacto South African leadership/ hegmony, SE Asia as a counter to Chinese dominance, plausibly west Africa under Nigerian leadership, South America operating as a free trade zone (although they will have alot to pull them apart so its pluasible not likely).
As I have said these will likely be much weaker than the EU and often be at each others throats as much as pulling together.
It would perhaps be better to imagine the state of the world like a dark ages proto-fuedal kingdom. America is the chief of chiefs and defacto king, but the loyalty of each of the barrons (nations) to that king is very variable, everything from North Koreas open hostility to the UK acting as the most trusted lieutenant. China as the new rising earl on the make and the EU as a strong bond of barrons and earls able to resist the US as much as possible. Each of the rest making and breaking treaties with each other and involving themselves in skullduggery and self interest.
david dissadent
New Member
Well that is crystal clear then.
The bit i meant about politics underscoring the book is that i guessed huntingdon based his thesis on existing conditions and relations. I also thought that he wrote his ideas based on the leadership of nations rather than the peoples themselves. Is this the case?
Either way, a few years ago i might have already bought the book after the brief debate about it on this thread. Once you're agreed with someone, you're a closed book, right! Thing is, i'm not minded to spend too much time on politics any more. It's ugly, and i feel that the fight is on to find an alternative way of organising relations between people. That said, if we're to overcome the criminals running our countries, then we need to know as much as possible about them.
If i see it in my bookshop i'll buy it, if i don't, i'll probably forget about it. How's that?!
I looked at your links and saw the name of chalmers johnson, a voice well worth listening to.
The real fight is not between nations, it's between the peoples and the leaders. That's my way.
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