‘How to Hide an Empire’ Shines Light on America’s Expansionist Side Jennifer Szalai New York Times February 13, 2019
Cover of How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr Credit: Macmillian
Two interesting pieces on whiteness. The first in the New York Times describes how thousands of white enclaves across the country provided President Trump with his margin of victory, discussing why this might be so. The second, an opinion piece in The Guardian, describes how an ideology of white supremacy to other ‘races’ drove imperialism in European nations and elsewhere, and argues that this was a cause of WWI.
White-on-white voting Thomas B. Edsall New York Times November 16, 2017
The election of Donald Trump revealed that in some of the nation’s whitest municipalities and counties — the communities arguably most insulated from urban crime, immigration and gangs — Trump did far better than Romney had done four years earlier. Read full story.
How colonial violence came home: The ugly truth of the First World War Pankaj Mishra The Guardian November 10, 2017
The great war is often depicted as an unexpected catastrophe. But for millions who had been living under colonial rule, terror and degradation were nothing new. Read full story.
Also see Understanding harmful economic systems., especially the section on barriers to entry.
Editorial Board New York Times October 22, 2017
The United States has been at war continuously since the attacks of 9/11 and now has just over 240,000 active-duty and reserve troops in at least 172 countries and territories. American forces are actively engaged not only in the conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Yemen that have dominated the news, but also in Niger and Somalia, both recently the scene of deadly attacks, as well as Jordan, Thailand and elsewhere. An additional 37,813 troops serve on presumably secret assignment in places listed simply as “unknown.” The Pentagon provided no further explanation. Read full story.
Photo caption: Air Force officers walk toward an MQ-9 Reaper at Nigerien Air Base 101 in Niger. Credit: Staff Sgt. Joshua R. M. Dewberry/Air Force
Two recently published New York Times stories about the U.S. role in oppression.
U.S stood by as Indonesia killed a half-million people, papers show
Hanna Beech New York Times October 18, 2017
Documenting U.S. role in democracy’s fall and dictator’s rise in Chile
Pascale Bonnefoy New York Times October 14, 2017
Photo caption: A phone in the exhibition “Secrets of State: The Declassified History of the Chilean Dictatorship” at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago, Chile. Visitors can pick up the receiver to hear a recreation of a conversation between former President Richard M. Nixon and his national security Adviser, Henry Kissinger. (Credit: Tomas Munita for The New York Times)
Jayati Ghosh, Dollars and Sense, March/April 2017. Twenty-first century imperialism has changed its form. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, it was explicitly related to colonial control; in the second half of the 20th century it relied on a combination of geopolitical and economic control deriving also from the clear dominance of the United States as the global hegemon and leader of the capitalist world (dealing with the potential threat from the Communist world). It now relies more and more on an international legal and regulatory architecture—fortified by various multilateral and bilateral agreements—to establish the power of capital over labor. See full article.