[kj] back to oil!!!

B. Oliver Sheppard bigblackhair at sbcglobal.net
Sat Jul 21 09:58:42 EDT 2007


Yes, I have a lot of friends from places like East Asia, Latin America,
etc., who are into black metal and punk, and that's great. (And a lot of
those bands kick Americans' bands asses!) Folks should be allowed to
choose that if they want.

But when much-more powerful Western entities come in, drive local
produce growers out of business because of all the cash power on their
side, for example, and gradually you see indigenous types of cultural
staples disappearing in other countries, one has a right to wonder
what's going on. Americans have a lot of power in the world.
Traditionally, some Mid Eastern heads of state would wear gowns, robes,
when dealing with US diplomats and statesmen, who were wearing 3 piece
suits. Gradually the foreign diplomats realized Americans distrusted
foreign representatives who showed up to meetings in turbans, so they
began to wear Western style business suits, to look better to Americans,
whose opinion matter more than other folks. This is just one small
example of how Western and American culture seeps into other cultures
globally and slowly transforming the world into its image. Brute-force
occupation a la going into Iraq, the rest of the world's wishes be
damned, expedites these kinds of cultural influxes.

William James had a great quote about this:

"Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to
plunder."(1907) And if I can quote Marx without being reflexively
dismissed because of who he happen to be (hey, he can be right SOME
times, it's not impossible), he did write: "The cheap prices of
commodities are the heavy artillery with which it [Western society]
forces the barbarians' [third world nations] intensely obstinate hatred
of foreigners to capitulate. Western capitalist trade compels all
nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the capitalist mode of
production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into
their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it
creates a world after its own image." Bingo.

Folks in other countries know that to be "taken seriously" they need to
look as much like the West as possible, and that's important for staying
economically afloat for them. They have to learn our culture and
hopefully adopt aspects of, on pain of economic irrelevance, while we
feel no similar compulsion. (Yes, there are some anomalous exceptions,
but I'm speaking of norms, not exceptions.)

-Oliver




Mister Black wrote:

>

>

> Do you speak from experience B? Have you visited all these Countries

> that you talk about? It also isn't *U.S Cultural imperialism* that is

> being forced upon people , its what the people want .

>

> I do have a Burka wearing extremist friend in Syria and she

> complains that the young Syrians are embracing Western culture

> themselves , they want to listen to Western music and dress in a

> western style , its their choice and its not being forced upon them .

> Allied forces have not entered Syria , yet the young locals have

> embraced Western ideals.

>

> You seem to be saying that non Western Countries should not have

> access to the latest computers ,gadgets and Movies , I believe that

> these people should be able to make up their own minds , if Middle

> Easterners want to dress in a Western way and use computers and watch

> Western films...................then we should not stop them from

> doing this

>




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