[Drlee]

You know Tainari88 you are displaying the exact behavior that can make people who could help you turn off.

Take your colonial sellout governor. Y'all elected him. When the laws that attracted business by destroying your tax base were passed by YOUR legislature, where was the opposition?

Your numbers posted earlier to justify a positive cash flow from the US to Puerto Rico are naive. They do not make economic sense. You are comparing numbers that do not equate. You wish to equate direct cash aid with merchandise purchased. That won't work. The two do not equate.

I am going to put on my rich white guy hat and speak for people who DO NOT have my political views. Just the same vote as I do.

OK Puerto Rico. You want help. We'll give you help. Your want reparations? Get bent. That is not going to happen. Call Castro or Putin and see how that works out for you. You want to give up your Americans citizenship? I am fine with that. We have far to many "immigrants" as it is. We'll even be nice and let the Puerto Ricans who are already here for over 10 years decide which they want. US or Puerto Rico.

IT is about time that you take responsibility for your independent government and not rely on daddy US to fix your problems. You say you are a country of geniuses. Ok. Figure shit out. We can fix your unfavorable tax laws. What are YOU going to fix. Frankly young woman, your country is in a shambles. Your government is broken perhaps beyond repair. Only 43% of your workforce is working compared to 63% of we mainlanders. Your economy is twice the size of Cuba and your debt over four times as high. Less than 1/2 of working age males are employed and that was before the storm. 35% of your population is on food stamps.

But it is ALL our fault. No homegrown responsibility at all. Damn Colonizers. News flash. You were colonized by Spain not the US. Your fate was sealed then. You got a much better deal from the US than you would have gotten from Franco I am certain.

So suck it up Puerto Rico. We are ready, willing and able to help you rebuild and fix your economic problems. But if you think we are going to do this because of some threats let me remind you that you are not holding the cards to do that. We will also not rally behind you while you are calling us pricks to our face.

That is life in the real world Tainari88. It sucks but that how how the situation is right now. If you want the US to help, and particularly this administration, you need to eat some crow for awhile. Chose your battles well. There are no do-overs in revolution.

[Rancid]

Lol. Sometimes, the only appropriate response is one of indifference, Tainari. The Americans like to think of themselves as the centre of the world, a shining light on a hill illuminating a benighted world.

DOn't most nations seem themselves this way?

[Potemkin]

DOn't most nations seem themselves this way?

They do indeed. Every nation has a myth of its own exceptionalism. Ironically, this makes them unexceptional. Lol. A truly exceptional nation would be one which does not lie to itself about its own 'Manifest Destiny' and which does not try to dominate and oppress others, as Tainari pointed out. Nations, like individual people, always tend to value themselves rather too highly and value others rather too little.

[foxdemon]

They do indeed. Every nation has a myth of its own exceptionalism. Ironically, this makes them unexceptional. Lol. A truly exceptional nation would be one which does not lie to itself about its own 'Manifest Destiny' and which does not try to dominate and oppress others, as Tainari pointed out. Nations, like individual people, always tend to value themselves rather too highly and value others rather too little.

Such a nation would indeed be truely exceptional. Saintly even.

I must wonder about how successful such a nation would be. If it was alone, it might do OK. But if there were neighbouring not such saintly nations, the saintly nation might find the neighbours keep defaulting on mutually beneficial behaviour in favour of self interested behaviour.

This is an exercise in games theory.

The doves engage in win/win when they meet each other and both benefit. But doves lose to hawks every time and the hawk gets to benefit, eventually wiping out the doves. Hawks lose to other hawks every time and both suffer, eventually wiping out each other. A hawk/dove combo wins with doves and loses with hawks. A population with doves and hawk/doves tends to exclude hawks and is a mathematically stable strategy.

So what would be best is if a number of nations are aggressive if threatened but inclined to cooperate by default. Your saintly nation would do well in such a world order.

However....

History shows that the hawks are common amongst nations. Probably due to ‘prisoners dilemma’. They don’t trust each other enough to engage in mutually beneficial behaviour and the apparent rewards of defaulting are too tempting. Or a better way to look at it, they don’t trust each other so they pump resources into aggressive development (like the military) and then it seems less risky to default, while much is apparently to gain for those nations with greater resources.

So what do we get? Nations with myths of their own expectionalism and an attitude of entitlement which permits them to go out and get whatever they have the power to grab. At least when they think they are strong enough to get away with it.

As Thucydides put it “the strong do what they will and the weak suffer what they must”.

But technology offers a solution. Nukes make even the mightiest vulnerable. Everyone is weak when nukes are involved. Perhaps these ghastly weapons are creating the conditions for the ‘dove world’ where the risks of default outway the benefits of militarism for the mighty?

[Rancid]

They do indeed. Every nation has a myth of its own exceptionalism. Ironically, this makes them unexceptional. Lol. A truly exceptional nation would be one which does not lie to itself about its own 'Manifest Destiny' and which does not try to dominate and oppress others, as Tainari pointed out. Nations, like individual people, always tend to value themselves rather too highly and value others rather too little.

I value myself perfectly and accurately above all others.


You crazy....

[Potemkin]

I value myself perfectly and accurately above all others.

And so you should, Rancito. As foxdemon pointed out, living in human society is an exercise in games theory. What strategy should I adopt to maximise my personal outcomes? If you seek to maximise the well-being of the other party or of society as a whole rather than your own well-being - in other words, if you're a dove - then the hawks will defeat you almost every time, and only they will benefit rather than you or society as a whole. Of course, this means that society as a whole will go to shit and even the hawks will ultimately lose out as their social environment degrades. But isn't that what has happened and is happening in reality? Isn't that why Gringolandian social culture is shit? Lol.

You crazy....

I'm a Commie; of course I'm crazy Rancito.

[Rich]

It was Columbus, peace be upon his name and his lieutenant de Leon that brought superior European culture to Puerto Rico. European culture allowed PR to support far more people than the indigenous Taino culture. However northern European culture as seen in the United States and Canada has proved superior to Latin American culture. This and climate is why Peuto Rico is poorer than the rest of the United States. The United States became powerful and dominant over Latin America because it had a superior culture. It didn't become rich by exploiting Latin America. Its power in the word is the result of being rich not its cause.

This idea that Europeans became rich by exploiting non White people is absurd Marxist nonsense. The richest places of the new world had few Black slaves and few remaining indigenous people. Look at the New York (or any of the other big stock exchangess) and you will see the great success stories of recent decades have not been primary resource extraction.

Third world shit holes produce very little wealth, there may be various reasons why we intervene in third world shit holes, but making money from them is not one of them.

[Drlee]

It didn't become rich by exploiting Latin America. Its power in the word is the result of being rich not its cause.

Boy is that not PC. But it is correct.

Fortunes were made in the US by buying additional wealth-producing stuff from other nations.

We did not "take" PR and the PI from Spain because we stood to gain economically. Not much anyway. We "took" them because we wanted to keep other powers off of our doorstep and have a place from which to maintain sea lanes respectively.

The US is rich in natural resources and possesses a government that for a long time allowed and even encouraged innovation and wealth building while actually believing in the real value of the worker class. Through guile or dumb luck, in our first 100 years, we secured our interior supply lines and assiduously avoided (save one skirmish) involvement in the petty wars and squabbles in Europe. We built a military capable of defending our country without making it so strong that we threatened other countries unnecessarily. Until WWII we were designed and managed for interior growth and desired to stay off of everyone's radar unless it was in the service of free trade. The Treaty of Ghent expressly outlined our national desire to consolidate our interior supply lines.

The United States, while intending never to acquire lands from the Indians otherwise than peaceably, and with their free consent, are fully determined, in that manner, progressively, and in proportion as their growing population may require, to reclaim from the state of nature, and to bring into cultivation every portion of the territory contained within their acknowledged boundaries. In thus providing for the support of millions of civilized beings, they will not violate any dictate of justice or of humanity; for they will not only give to the few thousand savages scattered over that territory an ample equivalent for any right they may surrender, but will always leave them the possession of lands more than they can cultivate, and more than adequate to their subsistence, comfort, and enjoyment, by cultivation.

Anyway. The US made PR an independent commonwealth. Not a territory. Guam is an unincorporated territory. There is a difference. Precedent shows that the US is quick to let these hangers-on go. Look at the PI and Canal Zone.

Though it is not incorrect to say that the US exploits, to the extent possible, business opportunities in PR it is not correct to suggest that we keep it as some kind of slave state. The fact is that it is a money looser.

[Tainari88]

Third world shit holes produce very little wealth, there may be various reasons why we intervene in third world shit holes, but making money from them is not one of them.

There is a solution to your point of view Rich. Just have the USA withdraw all their economic interests, military interests and any interests in the Third World Shit holes. But they must pay back first all the profits they have made off of them for years. Then we will see if your 'theory' is correct or not.

And racists like you can go to restaurants without bus boys and bus girls, and without cooks, and drive on roads with potholes, and have to get out of your cars to go and pick fruit and vegetables in the hot sun for your fruits and vegetables. And make up your own hotel rooms and basically if one removed all the 'Third World' shit inferior stupid people out of your life? I think you will wind up spending most of it scrounging around for survival.

Good luck.

Anyway. The US made PR an independent commonwealth. Not a territory. Guam is an unincorporated territory. There is a difference. Precedent shows that the US is quick to let these hangers-on go. Look at the PI and Canal Zone.

Though it is not incorrect to say that the US exploits, to the extent possible, business opportunities in PR it is not correct to suggest that we keep it as some kind of slave state. The fact is that it is a money looser.

May the ears of Mt Olympus hear you for once Dr. Lee. I really believe letting us go is the best strategy. For all involved. But it also needs to be clear that trying to influence from afar is not a good thing. For anyone involved.

Dr. Lee the slave state already happened in the New World. In the USA, and in Puerto Rico. And it was replaced with wage labor. That is the way of the world. One system gets replaced by another one. Time marches on. I happen to think that interdependent cooperative systems that are not about screwing each other over is the only way we can survive Climate Change Issues that are going to plague us for a long long time. If we all engage in cut throat competition while Mother Nature creates havoc against all nations? We won't survive at all. The Hubris bullshit of 'the superior vs the inferior' is going to condemn us to mass extinction. And then what I wrote to Rich will be the deal for ALL people. The ones living off of exploitation and the ones being exploited. All will be scrounging for survival because no one understood how to stop the "hawk/dove" paradigm. It is very simple. Do unto others as you would do unto you. If you can't accept that? It is like a bible verse, "Those who live by the sword die by the sword". And you got a headless world.

That is life in the real world Tainari88. It sucks but that how how the situation is right now. If you want the US to help, and particularly this administration, you need to eat some crow for awhile. Chose your battles well. There are no do-overs in revolution.

No, Dr. Lee. The time for eating crow will be your rich, white elitist overt and not overt Racist men who think the world revolves around you. You already got enough problems that you created. You think those freaking psycho terrorists like Osama and their ilk just 'crop' up out of the blue? None of it does. It is blow back for all the interfering the UK, the USA and many other Imperial powers have done in the Middle East.

You even have domestic white alienated relatively rich men like that psycho from Mesquite Nevada killing people at random. That is what your society produces. It will continue to produce them because your value system is not correct. It places all emphasis on rich, and powerful and x and y hubris filled crap values. I don't have to eat crow and beg for help. You think you guys have helped us? No you have not. You have taken advantage of us for more than a century trying to use as military guinea pigs. Sterilizing en masse Puerto Rican women to population control us. You even injected us with cancer. All provable. And you take from us our mothers (like my mother) because you have to use our beautiful tropical land that mother nature has worked on perfecting for thousands upon thousands of years so you can throw chemicals on it and get us all sick and dead. Yet you have the GALL to want us to eat crow? What kind of a man are you Dr. Lee?

I don't respect racists and elitists. I never will. I never have to. No one is ever going to make me respect racist, elitist, warmongering old men. I won't ever do it. Whether they hold a gun to my head and the last Puerto Rican in going to be buried in the ground. I won't do it. My mother told me long ago when we watched "Sophie's Choice" together in 1982 and we left the theater together she said to me, "Daughter, it is better to die in dignity than to live with your indignity stripped away from you and have to live a hell on earth knowing that you let some oppressive institution reduce you to a non human. Some things in this world are worth dying for. Being a human living in dignity is one of them."

You have shown your true colors in this thread Dr. Lee. I think I did an effective job in showing you yours.

[Drlee]

You have shown your true colors in this thread Dr. Lee. I think I did an effective job in showing you yours.

Be very careful not to confuse what I posted when I spoke about the majority American response with my opinion. You know my opinion from the PM.

You have defended your position well. You can choose a path that forces the issue if you like. You will either be joined and supported by your countrymen or not. You (all) will either succeed in independence or go down in flames. The thing is that there is a third option. That is to work for incremental change in your country. That worked for us. We have a ways to go but we are getting along with it.

That is the thing about idealism. It is a journey with no destination. A moveable feast if you like. Real change happens. Lord willing and Jesus tarries we (society) will continue to evolve. But don't expect all evolution to be some natural progression toward "better". It frequently is not. Sometimes holding on to what you have is a great victory.

We appear to be on the brink of a nuclear war. And even if it does not go nuclear, a war that will cost millions of lives. It seems inevitable because our ruling party is in total disarray. And this from what most thought to be one of the most stable democracies in the world.

All I am saying is that in my lifetime I have met a great many people who simply surrender to their urge to be "mad and just break something". It never works out.

For God doth know how many now in health
Shall drop their blood in approbation
Of what your reverence shall incite us to.
Therefore take heed how you impawn our person,
How you awake our sleeping sword of war:
We charge you, in the name of God, take heed;
For never two such kingdoms did contend
Without much fall of blood; whose guiltless drops
Are every one a woe,

[Rancid]

@Drlee

PI?

[Pants-of-dog]

I am awlays a bit shocked at how many US citizens have no idea how the US has profited from Latin America.

The US did not prop up right wing dictators for fun and ideology. They did it to make money.

We already showed that billions of dollars flow from the PR to US annually, and this is after subtracting all the money that flows the other way.

[Tainari88]

Pants said:I am awlays a bit shocked at how many US citizens have no idea how the US has profited from Latin America.

The US did not prop up right wing dictators for fun and ideology. They did it to make money.

We already showed that billions of dollars flow from the PR to US annually, and this is after subtracting all the money that flows the other way.

Well Pants it is called the Power of Myth. The Myth of magical wealth produced by themselves for themselves. It is like this: We have mass wealth that we created without the help of the supposed inferior class, race, people, etc. This wealth was there for the taking without coercion. We did them a favor. They should thank us. We 'civilized' them. Civilizing them is enslaving them during the 16-19th centuries and never paying them for their labor and using them and then abusing them and then discarding them like old nags after a lifetime of service with nary a thank you for your service.

Why do they think this way? Because they have to. If they had to face the full reality of their crimes and their callousness and their blatant disregard for morality, justice and even betrayal of true Christian principles it is enough to drive them insane. Many war criminals can't really face the crimes they commit. They got to justify it somehow. Otherwise their entire acts are really unforgivable and they (if they are sensitive human beings cognizant of their actions and effects upon others?). That is some heavy shit right there. They are the true failures at life and at lack of taking personal responsibility and lack of integrity.

Trump is one of the many from their ranks that are not even true ideologues. Hitler was an ideologue. Trump is more unpredictable than that man. He is just an unpredictable dude without much intelligence. Like that latest debacle about claiming the Obama and Bush Jr, Clinton, etc never called the families of the fallen soldiers. Easily disprovable. Why even get into that? Because the man doesn't have self control. He is the spoilt brat rich kid of a wealthy white man with money used to not having to be held accountable for lack of integrity. At least Bush Jr was the son of a politician who schooled him on protocol. This Guy prez 45 doesn't even have that. It is sad.

[Rancid]

I am awlays a bit shocked at how many US citizens have no idea how the US has profited from Latin America.

The US did not prop up right wing dictators for fun and ideology. They did it to make money.

We already showed that billions of dollars flow from the PR to US annually, and this is after subtracting all the money that flows the other way.

Indeed, the US profited a shit ton from the DR. If I recall correctly, the US supported Dictator in the DR fell out of favor with the US once he decided to kick out American sugar interests.

[Tainari88]

Indeed, the US profited a shit ton from the DR. If I recall correctly, the US supported Dictator in the DR fell out of favor with the US once he decided to kick out American sugar interests.

They profited from many many places. The way they do it is well documented in John Perkins book "Confessions of a Hitman". He worked for the CIA for years to run black ops and he discussed Latin America in depth. He started out thinking he was doing a good thing for his nation (the USA) and he wound up concluding that the USA was immoral and would ultimately destroy themselves because they were burning allies and bridges by being so hawkish and not being able to allow other less powerful nations develop and resolve their own needs.

You can't run nations from afar forever. You are not from their culture. You don't have their history. You don't speak their native language and more importantly you (the Imperialists) won't be able to care about their communities like they do. So why even expect them to bend to your will. Don't you know? Human beings love freedom. That is our nature. We also believe our reality culturally and linguistically and socially is something natural and universal. An Arab finds meaning in his own culture, so does a Frenchman or a Chinese national. We all do. Yet where we fail is NOT seeing ourselves reflected in those most unlike us. That is where we miss the forest for the trees.

Perkins worked for being an 'economic hitman' for corporate greed. He outlines it in his book.

Here is a wikipedia link for him...it debunks Rich's preposterous claim about the European what? He doesn't even define who are the superior folk well....It is nutty. Anyway. Here it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessio ... ic_Hit_Man

[Drlee]

PI = Philippine Islands

[Pants-of-dog]

A great way to begin learning how the US profited from Latin America at gunpoint, look up how the term “banana republic” came about, specifically in relation to the United Fruit Company.

[Potemkin]

That is to work for incremental change in your country. That worked for us.

Actually, it didn't. The Founding Fathers had to start a blood-soaked revolution to gain their independence and freedom from the British Empire. The American Republic was born in fire and blood, sustained itself in fire and blood, and will some day die in fire and blood. Haven't you read a history book?

[59 More]

@Potemkin

The american revolution was the worse thing that could have happen in human history. So many natives/Blacks, hell nature could have been spared; If those bastard founding devils got lynched.

[Tainari88]

Pants said: A great way to begin learning how the US profited from Latin America at gunpoint, look up how the term “banana republic” came about, specifically in relation to the United Fruit Company.

Again Pants, one has to be diligent in studying each nation's history in depth to understand the inner workings of each nation. Latin America is composed of these nations:

Approximately 21 nations. You systemically go through every one and find out how many have had American corporations profiting from either the national resources, trading heavily with those nations for advantages for US trade, having convenient wars and propping up dictatorships to avoid Left leaning governments who want to take control of their own economies and who don't favor the elite from the right who sell everything out and give over control to outside authorities because they live well off of that arrangement. If you are systemic there is a pattern. Send in the corporations from the USA and other powerful nations who are usually ex Empires, and then control the internal resistance to that because it is not working for the locals. You send in the military or you do what Perkins describes. You buy out the ones in charge. Get everyone in that nation in massive debt with high rates of interest that makes it hard for the nation to make payments of the debt without finally just allowing complete privatization of industries and infrastructure that used to be steady revenue streams for the local government. Give that over to the private multinationals. It happened in Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico used to have Puerto Rico Telephone Company, used to have AAA, used to have some good reliable revenue streams for the government to be able to pay pensions and etc. When the terms and loan pressure parameters were changed? The little that was keeping it going decayed.

Why? Because what is sold as 'sound' finances is really cannabalizing the future of the nation's youth to be able to live and meet the obligations of the now. It effectively keeps people in debt servitude to private corporations without nationalistic interests living off of the many in the Third World forever. It keeps everyone in debt servitude. Forever. It is unsustainable. Especially if natural disaster strikes. You are not going to get your inflated profit margin from people who can barely survive. They need to realize? What you are going to get is creating conditions in which the most desperate have nothing to lose and can wind up becoming violent and or unstable and having revolutionary conditions. And the people who are going to pay in that war? Are the ones who are the poorest and the most vulnerable and then you get people pissed off enough to blow themselves up and blow up the 'enemy' who did this to them.

It is why these arrogant types need to be told to their faces....it is not going to work. Hawk predatory shit doesn't work in the long run. You are gonna get people who have nothing to lose by killing your ass dead. Don't go there.