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“Together with innovations in chemistry and industrial engineering, the U.S. mastery of logistics would diminish the value of colonies and inaugurate a new pattern of global power, based less on claiming large deaths of land and more on controlling small points. (Page 216)”
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
“In other words, if you looked up at the end of 1945 and saw a U.S. flag overhead, odds are that you weren’t seeing it because you lived in a state. You were more likely colonized or living in occupied territory.”
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
“This was the start, the chemist Jacob Rosin predicted, of the “synthetic age.â€� It would bring “freedom from the plantâ€� and “freedom from the mine.â€� In other words, as the laboratory replaced the land as the source of materials, the United States would liberate itself from natural resource constraints.”
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
“Oscar Villadolid, a boy at the time, remembers a familiar scene from the aftermath of Manila’s “liberation.â€� A GI came down his street handing out cigarettes and Hershey bars. Speaking slowly, he asked Villadolid’s name. When Villadolid replied easily in English, the soldier was startled. “How’d ya learn American?â€� he asked.
Villadolid explained that when the United States colonized the Philippines, it had instituted English in the schools. This only compounded the GI’s confusion. “He did not even know that America had a colony here in the Philippines!� Villadolid marveled.
Take a moment to let that sink in. This was a soldier who had taken a long journey across the Pacific. He’d been briefed on his mission, shown maps, told where to go and whom to shoot. Yet at no point had it dawned on him that he was preparing to save a U.S. colony and that the people he would encounter there were, just like him, U.S. nationals.
He thought he was invading a foreign country.”
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Villadolid explained that when the United States colonized the Philippines, it had instituted English in the schools. This only compounded the GI’s confusion. “He did not even know that America had a colony here in the Philippines!� Villadolid marveled.
Take a moment to let that sink in. This was a soldier who had taken a long journey across the Pacific. He’d been briefed on his mission, shown maps, told where to go and whom to shoot. Yet at no point had it dawned on him that he was preparing to save a U.S. colony and that the people he would encounter there were, just like him, U.S. nationals.
He thought he was invading a foreign country.”
― How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
Marx's Capital Volumes I, II, III (Study Group - 2020 and beyond)
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We see symptoms of crises all around us, from the immediate "public health" pandemic of COVID19 to repeated "financial" crises to escalating "environm ...more
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