[OnTPath]

Colonialism was a logical effect of the Bourgeoise mind setting. With greetings from Freud and Kant the uber Poppy-Father was constituted as a parallelism to the abstract value circle of Production. The Unconscious was fixated to the Conscious (Freud's Oedipus Operette), because if not, the Bourgeosie would have died a premature death, the supreme subject therefore created and postulated. Wrapped in this almost indestructable armor the world was to be conquered and integrated. You either belonged to this elite or you were their slaves (poor, uneducated, woman, children, nature, anything not (yet) fully integrateable). The great force came from the fact that everybody could potentially become part of it (channelling of desire or libido).
The final form was found in the Extermination Camp; the machinisation of this specific machine, a complex which used the otherness (perceived non integrateable) to generate surplus value in the simple formula: extractable life - death = value. Fascism and Liberalism are Bourgeoise twins, one can be transformed into the other almost seamless.

[Suska]

Wut?

When white men came to the West some of them recognized it was teeming with furry creatures. There became such a scramble for the valuable fur that the natives got into it too. The difference is stark in this example. The whites understood the tragedy of the commons to begin with and were determined to come out on the advantaged end. The virtue of retaining a future source of fur was not just discarded, it was flouted and the Northern wilderness was ransacked so much so that it never recovered.

I don't think anyone, liberal capitalists, or anyone, can call this the deliberate result of an ideology. People have systematically attacked every ecosystem and traditional way of life as if it had a creamy chocolate center, this is not sensible predatory behavior - no predator on Earth but people wipes out its source of food, predators are balanced against their source, they are by mass drastically smaller than their prey, they take the hind most. they tax the margins.

Colonialism has to be reckoned in this way. There was a perceived value in attacking foreigners and even people who didn't really know why or how to get the most of it got into that act. Imperialism isn't discredited because it's wrong to beat your neighbors up - it is discredited because it was taken too far by too many and didn't leave anything nice lying around for the future. This is the main criticism of capitalism too. It's not profit that's the problem. Our population size represents this problem just as well. It's not people having children that's the problem.

If you don't care about the future and loot the sources of the supply of necessities to the bone you are an absurdity in the natural world and you've fucked us all.

Why does this happen?

Why do people cultivate their own extinction?

Words like 'power' and 'wealth' and 'resources' don't cut it - you really have to wonder about godlessness and insanity to even approach the situation with some workable respect.

People who consider themselves a part of the natural world never get very strong (in the modern sense). While it's fair to say that people are the omni-animal, this has been interpreted in the last centuries to mean that people don't NEED anything, it's assumed we could adapt even to a vacume, and this is the test we are running, like it or not. I think it's safe to say that we CAN adapt to a vacume (by dying), the real question is why are people so rude and tedious that they think they don't in fact need things like a natural world or amiable neighbors or a future that is fairly certain..?

This is what we call progress, a big chunk of which is buried in the sweetened tomes of liberalism. First you don't regard yourself as part of a tradition. Nature is a tradition. I don't call this the abolition of man (that was appropriate though in Lewis' time), we are on our own voyage - the abolition of life. Second, unrooted in nature you feel your hungers as desperations, unable to put it in a context of a natural world, you refuse to die, you refuse to go hungry even for a day, you refuse think of life as an aesthetic project, but as a mechanical system. From that vantage point humans... The masters of the world... Are drastically stupider than any random animal.

That is our ideology, eat the future by looting the past - do it quickly, there won't be much left tomorrow.

[OnTPath]

I don't think anyone, liberal capitalists, or anyone, can call this the deliberate result of an ideology

Very true, BUT ideology gave it the power through all levels of society. Conquer new land/territory in a much broader sense not only material bu also sublime in the supreme subject. It operates like a machine all which cannot be internalized is beyond the border which is yet to be explored conquered and processed.
It is then also clear why out of this formation Fascism evolved after WWI, because there this machine turned against itself or more precise as Ernst Jünger remarked: We wanted to prove ourselves as warriors vs. other warriors, but what we all did was a fight against a machine (machinized killing) and we lost. The individual self was so tiny in comparison that it needed to be reintegrated and become part of the supreme subject, the volk, the nation, the Leader. Fascism is the logical endpoint and formally superior to liberalism because it gives the individual self direct immediate power (and protection) to act on behalf of all others. For the prize to become identical with the supreme subject and suppress all non-integratable parts. Oneself becomes supreme and subjugated at the same time become the Mass, the Leader, the Executioner all at the same time.
Whereas in Liberalism the individual self stands against all others AND the whole (supreme subject) alone and serves foremost the few winners, a Master - Slave dichotomy, the Driver, the Driven, the Consumer, the Producer, a broken subject, the Schizo.

[Suska]

Fascism and Liberalism have become inkblots, the only thing I hold to be clear any more is what is natural and what is not, and in nature there is no way to give your individual sovereignty away - so too in the human world, it doesn't happen. What happens in fact, which we call fascism, that is just a choice between gangs to be feared. What we call liberalism, that learned to shit in its own mouth and still thinks itself attractive.

[Political Interest]

It is interesting that some people like to say that colonialism brought wealth to Europeans and the British but would it have been possible just to trade and not colonise? There were early European settlements throughout the world and they did bring benefits. Why did they not stay at this level?

[ThirdTerm]

Initially, the East India Company was only interested in trading with India in the early 18th century but Britain and France started engaging in frequent skirmishes in India for control of colonial possessions with the Mughal empire's disintegration by the 1740s. Both colonial powers tried to weaken the position of their opponents and the British succeeded in capturing very large parts of India by forging alliances with local rulers who accepted the authority of the British. The colonisation of India was a by-product of the great-power rivalry between the British and the French and it was necessary to drive the French out of the Indian subcontinent and monopolise the Indian economy.

In the process of trying to make a profit and exploiting India, the British did of course benefit India. They built railways throughout India in order to make everything readily accessible. They established Law Courts, civil services and transport systems. They also established factories, schools and universities to introduce western ideas and to incorporate the idea of democracy. Missionaries came to India and spread Christianity. This was all done in the name of Britain’s economy.
http://library.thinkquest.org/17282/history.html