[ExI] America: Home of All Evil

[Tom Nowell]

 Kevin Freels <kevinfreels at insightbb.com> wrote

"Everyone likes to bash the US - until they want
something. I'd love to 
see your specific explanation of how the US spreads
dictatorship and 
economic slavery. Can you please give some specific
examples?"
 While I didn't write the original post, as someone
living in the UK I can see how much US-bashing there
is over here.
 There's a moderate media industry based on this -
under the wikipedia category on US foreign policy,
most of the 44 books listed gived detailed
explanations of US wrongdoing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Books_about_United_States_foreign_relations

In terms of economic slavery, the book "confessions of
an economic hit man" claims that big US consulting
firms made deliberately inflated plans for development
aid to encourage countries to borrow more than they
needed - in effect, doing on a national scale what
credit card companies try to do to you. 
 When you see pictures of famine-struck countries, and
food arriving from the US - that food probably wasn't
given away. USAID will have arranged a loan with the
nation and then sold them the food at an agreed price,
in effect acting as a credit export guarantee company
for the US agricultural industry. It helps subsidise
US agriculture, but doesn't really aid developing
countries.
 As for spreading dictatorship - it depends on how
efficient you believe the CIA is at toppling
governments, and whether dictators would have come to
the top however the US intervened. The CIA did attempt
to remove Salvador Allende of Chile, but the Chilean
military could well have had the idea to execute the
democratically elected leader by themselves. The Shah
of Iran and the Saudi Royal family are absolute
monarchs who've been on the receiving end of US aid -
one fell to revolution, one is still with us. The US
involvement here has cost a lot of money and lives,
but has bought a degree of oil security.
 A lot of the US-bashing comes from either people
attacking the biggest targets first (so major powers
like the US and China will be treated more harshly
than whether or not the Swiss banking system helps
african dictators launder money, or whether Yemen's
human rights violations are horrific), or general envy
of the US's success. Don't worry - this year's
Olympics will get the world media concentrating on
Beijing's mistakes, and the US election gives
pro-Americans the chance to persuade people there'll
be change. If current economic projections are vaguely
correct, come 2040 everyone will be moaning about them
damn Chinese and by 2060 it'll be those stupid voters
in Delhi voting someone more unpopular than George
Bush.

Tom


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