What do you think?
Rate this book
The Face of Imperialism
The relationship between US economic and military power is not often considered within mainstream commentary. Similarly the connection between US military interventions overseas and US domestic problems is rarely considered in any detail. In this brilliant new book, Michael Parenti reveals the true face of US imperialism. He documents how it promotes unjust policies across the globe including expropriation of natural resources, privatisation, debt burdens and suppression of democratic movements. He then demonstrates how this feeds into deteriorating living standards in the US itself, leading to increased poverty, decaying infrastructure and impending ecological disaster. The Face of Imperialism redefines empire and imperialism and connects the crisis in the US with its military escapades across the world.
168 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 2011
33 people are currently reading
2874 people want to read
About the author
Michael Parenti
54 books1,520 followersMichael John Parenti, Ph.D. (Yale University) is an American political scientist, academic historian and cultural critic who writes on scholarly and popular subjects. He has taught at universities as well as run for political office. Parenti is well known for his Marxist writings and lectures. He is a notable intellectual of the American Left and he is most known for his criticism of capitalism and American foreign policy.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
August 3, 2014
This was the most important book I read this year.
I was supposed to read 3 chapters for my Sociology of Mass Media class, and I intended to highlight the important parts, but soon my highlighter was out of ink and I was turning to the other chapters for more information.
Firstly, this book should make you question your opinions. Some people will be defensive of their opinions.
Parenti addressed this and says something very, very important in the first few pages: "All opinions are not of the same value. It depends on what they are being used for, what interests they serve."
Some highlights to bum you out:
"With only 5 percent of the world's population, the United States now accounts for almost 50 percent of the world's military spending. In second place is China, with 6.6 percent of the world's expenditure on arms. In the past decade the US allocated over $6 trillion on war and preparation for war. Forty percent of the US military budget goes for overhead ... Along with immensely profitable war contracts comes increased inequality and the defunding of public services. The impoverishment of public services is not only one of the costs of empire; it is one of the goals. The imperial rulers wage war not only against people in foreign lands but against their own populace as well, diminishing their demands, expectations, and sense of entitlement ... The people who pay the costs of empire are not the same as those who reap its rewards ... The gains of empire flow into the hands of the privileged business class, the large overseas investors, while the costs are extracted from the general treasury, that is, from the 'industry of the rest of the people'" (Ch 2)
"Some of us maintain that the overriding purpose of global interventionism is to promote the interests of transnational corporations and make the world safe for global free-market capitalism and imperialism. As noted earlier, imperialism is what empires do. It is the process whereby the rules of one country use economic and military power to expropriate the land, labor, markets, and natural resources of less powerful countries on behalf of wealthy interests at home and abroad. Washington policymakers are the last to admit that they engage in such a process. They claim that their interventions abroad are propelled by an intent to defend our national security or other unspecified 'US interests,' or the intent is to fight terrorism, protect human rights, oppose tyranny, prevent genocide, bring democracy to other peoples, maintain peace ... Are we to accept these noble claims at face value? If not, how can we demonstrate that they are often false? ... First of all, we can look for patterns of intervention ... While claiming to be motivated by a dedication to human rights and democracy, US leaders have supported some of the most notorious right-wing autocracies in history--regimes that have pursued policies favoring wealth transnational corporations at the expense of local producers and working people; regimes that have tortured, killed, or otherwise maltreated large numbers of their more resistant citizens, as in (at one time or another) Chad, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Honduras, [etc. etc.] ... US rulers have targeted just about all leftist governments, parties, leaders, political movements, and popular insurgencies--that is, any political entity that attempts to initiate equitable reforms, egalitarian programs for the common people, restraints on corporate capital, and self-development for their own countries" (Ch 3)
"How is that as transnational corporate investments and trade with poor countries--and international aid and loans to these same countries--have all increased dramatically over the past half century, so has world poverty? ... Aid given [from the US] to Third World governments comes with strings attached. It often must be spent on US products. The recipient nation is required to give first preference to US companies, relying less on home produced commodities in favor of imported ones, thereby creating more dependency and debt and leaving these countries less able to feed themselves" (Ch 5)
"Only years later through my own independent study did I discover that every one of the explanations given about world poverty was false. True, the climate and topography of some parts of the Third World can be forbidding. But even in very dense jungles and frozen arctic regions, people applied themselves resourcefully in order to survive. In any case, they certainly were not lazy; they often worked just as hard or harder than people in more temperate climates. nor did they have so many more children than the rest of us ... Nor were the denizens ... 'culturally backward' (whatever that might mean). From ancient eras to more recent centuries, they had produced magnificent civilizations capable of impressive feats in architecture, horticulture, irrigation, arts, crafts, medicines, public hygiene, and the like, superior in many respects to what was found among the ill-washed, priest-ridden, diseased populations of European Christendom. Quite frequently it was the contact with the best colonizers that brought poverty and disaster to the indigenous populations of Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. Once their farmlands and crops were stolen, their resources plundered, their herds slaughtered, their townships destroyed, and their peoples enslaved, deep poverty was the inescapable outcome, leaving them to be denounced as lazy, backward, and stupid. In fact, they were not undeveloped by overexploited. Their development was never allowed to proceed in peace and self-direction ... Superior firepower, not superior culture, has brought the Europeans and Euro-North Americans to positions of supremacy that today are still maintained by force" (Ch 5)
"American agribusiness cartels, heavily subsidized by US taxpayers, dump surplus products in other countries at below cost to undersell local producers ... They expropriate the best land in these countries for cash-crop exports, usually monocultural crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed local populations and sustain the local economy. Haiti is a prime example of this displacement ... Decades of US farm imports pouring into Haiti--heavily subsidized by the US government and therefore easily sold at lower prices than local agrarian commodities--wiped out about 3 million small farmers, created more debt and hunger, and seriously damaged Haiti's ability to be self-sufficient" (Ch 5)
"In its first few years over 600,000 jobs in the [US] were eliminated under NAFTA. New jobs created in that period were mostly in the lower-paying sector of the US economy. Meanwhile, Mexico was flooded with cheap, high-tech, mass-produced corn and dairy products from giant American agribusiness firms (themselves heavily subsidized by the US government), driving small Mexican farmers and distributors into bankruptcy and displacing large numbers of poor peasants and small businesses. With the advent of NAFTA, the incomes of poor Mexicans was halved, poverty spread from 30 percent to at least 50 percent of the population, and Mexican sweatshop profits skyrocketed. Under NAFTA, wages have fallen in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and union memberships has shrunk dramatically" (Ch 6).
I don't want to end up typing up the whole book, but this book is worth your money, your time, and your investment to critical thought (even if you don't agree with everything Parenti says). It's also been updated and pretty recent, going into some aspects of the current obama administration.
Now if I could just get my hands on Parenti's Democracy for the Few...
I was supposed to read 3 chapters for my Sociology of Mass Media class, and I intended to highlight the important parts, but soon my highlighter was out of ink and I was turning to the other chapters for more information.
Firstly, this book should make you question your opinions. Some people will be defensive of their opinions.
Parenti addressed this and says something very, very important in the first few pages: "All opinions are not of the same value. It depends on what they are being used for, what interests they serve."
Some highlights to bum you out:
"With only 5 percent of the world's population, the United States now accounts for almost 50 percent of the world's military spending. In second place is China, with 6.6 percent of the world's expenditure on arms. In the past decade the US allocated over $6 trillion on war and preparation for war. Forty percent of the US military budget goes for overhead ... Along with immensely profitable war contracts comes increased inequality and the defunding of public services. The impoverishment of public services is not only one of the costs of empire; it is one of the goals. The imperial rulers wage war not only against people in foreign lands but against their own populace as well, diminishing their demands, expectations, and sense of entitlement ... The people who pay the costs of empire are not the same as those who reap its rewards ... The gains of empire flow into the hands of the privileged business class, the large overseas investors, while the costs are extracted from the general treasury, that is, from the 'industry of the rest of the people'" (Ch 2)
"Some of us maintain that the overriding purpose of global interventionism is to promote the interests of transnational corporations and make the world safe for global free-market capitalism and imperialism. As noted earlier, imperialism is what empires do. It is the process whereby the rules of one country use economic and military power to expropriate the land, labor, markets, and natural resources of less powerful countries on behalf of wealthy interests at home and abroad. Washington policymakers are the last to admit that they engage in such a process. They claim that their interventions abroad are propelled by an intent to defend our national security or other unspecified 'US interests,' or the intent is to fight terrorism, protect human rights, oppose tyranny, prevent genocide, bring democracy to other peoples, maintain peace ... Are we to accept these noble claims at face value? If not, how can we demonstrate that they are often false? ... First of all, we can look for patterns of intervention ... While claiming to be motivated by a dedication to human rights and democracy, US leaders have supported some of the most notorious right-wing autocracies in history--regimes that have pursued policies favoring wealth transnational corporations at the expense of local producers and working people; regimes that have tortured, killed, or otherwise maltreated large numbers of their more resistant citizens, as in (at one time or another) Chad, Pakistan, Turkey, Indonesia, Honduras, [etc. etc.] ... US rulers have targeted just about all leftist governments, parties, leaders, political movements, and popular insurgencies--that is, any political entity that attempts to initiate equitable reforms, egalitarian programs for the common people, restraints on corporate capital, and self-development for their own countries" (Ch 3)
"How is that as transnational corporate investments and trade with poor countries--and international aid and loans to these same countries--have all increased dramatically over the past half century, so has world poverty? ... Aid given [from the US] to Third World governments comes with strings attached. It often must be spent on US products. The recipient nation is required to give first preference to US companies, relying less on home produced commodities in favor of imported ones, thereby creating more dependency and debt and leaving these countries less able to feed themselves" (Ch 5)
"Only years later through my own independent study did I discover that every one of the explanations given about world poverty was false. True, the climate and topography of some parts of the Third World can be forbidding. But even in very dense jungles and frozen arctic regions, people applied themselves resourcefully in order to survive. In any case, they certainly were not lazy; they often worked just as hard or harder than people in more temperate climates. nor did they have so many more children than the rest of us ... Nor were the denizens ... 'culturally backward' (whatever that might mean). From ancient eras to more recent centuries, they had produced magnificent civilizations capable of impressive feats in architecture, horticulture, irrigation, arts, crafts, medicines, public hygiene, and the like, superior in many respects to what was found among the ill-washed, priest-ridden, diseased populations of European Christendom. Quite frequently it was the contact with the best colonizers that brought poverty and disaster to the indigenous populations of Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. Once their farmlands and crops were stolen, their resources plundered, their herds slaughtered, their townships destroyed, and their peoples enslaved, deep poverty was the inescapable outcome, leaving them to be denounced as lazy, backward, and stupid. In fact, they were not undeveloped by overexploited. Their development was never allowed to proceed in peace and self-direction ... Superior firepower, not superior culture, has brought the Europeans and Euro-North Americans to positions of supremacy that today are still maintained by force" (Ch 5)
"American agribusiness cartels, heavily subsidized by US taxpayers, dump surplus products in other countries at below cost to undersell local producers ... They expropriate the best land in these countries for cash-crop exports, usually monocultural crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed local populations and sustain the local economy. Haiti is a prime example of this displacement ... Decades of US farm imports pouring into Haiti--heavily subsidized by the US government and therefore easily sold at lower prices than local agrarian commodities--wiped out about 3 million small farmers, created more debt and hunger, and seriously damaged Haiti's ability to be self-sufficient" (Ch 5)
"In its first few years over 600,000 jobs in the [US] were eliminated under NAFTA. New jobs created in that period were mostly in the lower-paying sector of the US economy. Meanwhile, Mexico was flooded with cheap, high-tech, mass-produced corn and dairy products from giant American agribusiness firms (themselves heavily subsidized by the US government), driving small Mexican farmers and distributors into bankruptcy and displacing large numbers of poor peasants and small businesses. With the advent of NAFTA, the incomes of poor Mexicans was halved, poverty spread from 30 percent to at least 50 percent of the population, and Mexican sweatshop profits skyrocketed. Under NAFTA, wages have fallen in the United States, Mexico, and Canada, and union memberships has shrunk dramatically" (Ch 6).
I don't want to end up typing up the whole book, but this book is worth your money, your time, and your investment to critical thought (even if you don't agree with everything Parenti says). It's also been updated and pretty recent, going into some aspects of the current obama administration.
Now if I could just get my hands on Parenti's Democracy for the Few...
August 18, 2023
Empires are not just about power for the sake of power: Imperialism is “the process whereby the dominant investor interests of a country bring to bear military and financial power upon another country in order to expropriate the land, labor, capital, natural resources, commerce, and markets of that other country.” “The British did not just happen to find themselves in India, they pushed their way in with all deliberate force and rapacious intent.” But “the British spent more in India than they were able to extract.” US allies are countries known for not resisting our “imperial transnational investment policies of large-scale capital accumulation.” US enemies are any countries that seek to chart an independent path using their own resources to serve first their own people.
NATO: NATO is used by because it is not stymied by a UN veto and it’s a bargain because the US only pays 25% of it’s cost. When Russia and China vetoed the US wanting through the UN to rip apart Yugoslavia, the US simply activated NATO. NATO historians wonder why NATO was created, since after WWII weakened Russia was clearly in no position to invade Western Europe. The other role of NATO is to “lock the Western European countries into the US imperial system, just as it is now doing to the newly capitalized Eastern European countries.”
Italy: “In Italy, within a year after the war (WWII), almost all Italian fascists were released from prison while hundreds of communists and other leftist partisans who had valiantly fighting the Nazi occupation were incarcerated.” Page 32 and 33 names all the countries the US invaded or bombed, and all the countries where we forced their markets open and their reforms to stop. Countries that resist US capital penetration are considered unfriendly. General Douglas MacArthur eloquently said, “Our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.”
We were all taught about the war between expansionist communism and freedom, but never taught about the war between expansionist capitalism and freedom. For expansionist capitalists, finally getting rid of communism meant killing the public sector leaving only a “free market economy.” It was ignored that such a route (actually undertaken in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) ended up with high unemployment, privatization, and lessened standard of living. Privatization by Plunder. Twenty years after free market capitalism began in Eastern Europe the conditions are “as bad as ever.” Now some of these same countries have laws against criticizing capitalism, advocating for socialism, or propagating “class hatred.” Note that Belarus, under Lukashenko, kicked out the IMF only to find that “In 2001, the New York Times admitted that the CIA also was working with the Belarussian opposition.”
Free market Third Worldization in Grenada and Panama: What was the US motive to invade Grenada? What were the crimes of Grenada under its New Jewel government? The unspeakable: “Grade school and secondary education and secondary education were free for everyone for the first time. Free health clinics were opened in the countryside, thanks mostly to assistance rendered by Cuban doctors.” The status of women was improving, and agriculture was being turned away from crop-crop exports “toward self-sufficient food production.” But the US stopped all those new government programs and unemployment soared after the invasion. Mission Accomplished – Another shithole country achieved. The same thing happened in Panama, after the US removed Noriega, conditions in that country deteriorated rapidly.” In Panama, government subsidies stopped, and privatization began. “The US invaders shut down publicly owned media and jailed a number of Panamanian editors and reporters who were critical of the invasion.”
The US Social Security Trust Fund in 2010 contained a $2.6 trillion surplus. US defense contracts are risk free – no competitive bidding. “Forty percent of the US military budget goes to overhead.” “US leaders have supported some of the most notorious right-wing autocracies in history.”
Cuba: The US was a fan of the Batista dictatorship because he kept Cuba wide open to US capital penetration. Batista’s Cuba had a small rich Cuban investor class. But after Castro took power, Cuba broke away from this “free” market system that favored American corporations, and nationalized Cuba’s banks and commercial and industrial businesses. In response, Eisenhower cut Cuba’s share of the US sugar market by 95% which drove Cuba get to sell its sugar to Soviet Union. Eisenhower did covert operations in Cuba to overthrow Castro’s government for the crime of what Michael calls “self-development outside the global free market system”. Then Bobby Kennedy Sr. personally “oversaw paramilitary operations, punitive economic measures, and sabotage aimed at undoing the new (Castro) regime.”
Michael’s brilliant explanation of what the US wants Cuba to do: “When the Cuban government abolishes the social wage that serves the common populace, when it eliminates its totally free public health system, when it privatizes the factories and lands and allows the productive wealth to be pocketed by rich corporate owner and removes all labor protections for workers….” The US will only stop smearing Cuba when it sees it can be assured by the Cuban elites of their “capitalist vassal-state servitude.” The US goal is a world is filled with vassal-states a.k.a. client-states with “compliant populations completely open to transnational corporate penetration.” After the Bay of Pigs there was no public discussion of its illegality, or the fact that it failed because the Cuban people stood behind their new government. Cuba’s pre-revolutionary privileged class scions trying to get back to Cuba were comically called “freedom fighters” by US media. The revolution was done for the rest of Cuba, for “the millions who for the first time had a guaranteed right to a job, medical care, sufficient food, housing, education, and other public services”. Observers said the new Cuba was far from perfect but was clearly better than the life endured under Batista.
Later Cuba: When Soviet aid collapsed, Cuba went organic - “the largest conversion from chemicalized agriculture to organic or semi-organic farming in human history.” Oxen instead of tractors. It’s easy to point fingers at Cuba today and complain if you made zero effort to factor in the long term costs of the Cuba embargo. If anyone leaves Cuba, we are taught to think it’s only because modern Cuba sucks, and never that they left because of the hardships of living under an embargo. There are no mainstream media stories about people fleeing failing free market economies, because that story would be bad for advertisers. You aren’t supposed to know that when Cuba announced anyone could leave, “the Clinton administration reverted to a closed-door policy.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The US created Voice of America, a Spanish radio station, to propagandize the Cuban people on their airwaves. The US presently provides sanctuary to convicted terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch who “blew up a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, killing all 76 people aboard.” A War on Terrorism UNLESS we consciously harbor them. In Cuba today profits are split between hotel owners and the Cuban government, so that the Cuban people benefit from tourism directly, as they do from profits of Cuba’s sugar, coffee, tobacco, rum, seafood, honey, nickel, and marble. The US wants Cuba to be privatized and under free-market servitude as the Eastern European countries now are. Does anybody think the US EVER wanted to replace the Batista dictatorship with a democracy?
Venezuela: Chavez was yet another leader helping his people instead of focusing on the elites. He concentrated on the nation’s poorest areas and he made education free to the university level, and brought lots of free health clinics to the people reaching millions. His other crime – he kicked out the US military advisors and stopped US military overflights to Columbia. Venezuela media elite moguls hate Chavez and so Venezuelan journalists are kept from writing supportive articles. Writers who sympathize with Chavez are fired.
The Korean War: The US carpet dropped more bombs on North Korea than it dropped during the entire Pacific theater during WWII.
Iraq: Saddam Hussein was a point man for the CIA and was thus favored while committing his worst crimes. But look at him as a leader - before the US attacked it, Iraq had a literacy rate of 80%, Iraqis had free medical care and free education, and Iraq had the highest standard of living in the Middle East. Saddam’s crime was economic nationalism, putting his own country first, and so Iraq was bombed back into the third world. “In 1991, US planes destroyed more than 90 percent of Iraq’s electrical capacity” and then Michael lists a VERY long paragraph of everything we destroyed in Iraq from schools to hospitals and historic sites. And Saddam moved from the US dollar to the euro as payment for Iraq’s oil exports. The US feared such flooding the market with dollars, might make it collapse in value. And so also the US removed Saddam to say to other countries: this is what happens to leaders who fight the dollar. Cheney felt controlling Middle Eastern oil meant you could put a “stranglehold” on the world economy. If you control Iraqi oil, you release it always to your financial advantage, when the market is right. “As much as one-third to one-half of the immense funds allocated by Congress for the Iraqi war remained unaccounted for.” We were told Saddam gassed the Kurds at Halabja only to find later that a Pentagon study showed it was Iran who did that. “The last thing that US rulers want in the Middle East are independent, self-developing nations that control their own economies and natural resources.” Under the guise of fighting communism, the US historically fights nationalism – any threat of a good example - as Noam calls it.
When the US capital controls your country it will attack local environmental regulations, worker benefits, occupational safety codes, and being taxed. Then US agribusiness cartels (with massive US tax subsidies) will “expropriate the best land for cash-crop exports, usually monoculture crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed local populations and sustain the local economy.” Oh, joy. Don’t forget the flood of cheap imports that will arrive to injure your economy further. Don’t underestimate the power of oligarchs in Honduras, they can shoot an employee dead and get away with it (page 74). “Over the past two decades, Africa lost approximately $272 billion because of corporate takeover of domestic food production.” “Free trade means privatization for the few and privation for the many.” How so? “In Bangladesh, workers sew garments for Disney and Walmart, earning the princely sum of 11 to 20 cents per hour.” To live on that budget, four workers must share a single shack and the workweek is 14 hours a day, seven days a week.” Transnational corporate capitalism forced on your country is the face of imperialism.
Trade Agreements: These are where corporate property rights are elevated above all democratic rights under the banner of “free trade”. Note that one page of GATT’s 500 pages of rules and restrictions holds corporations accountable – only governments. Realize that NAFTA and GATT are both in direct violation of the US Constitution. Sovereign power clearly rests with the people – not an international trade panel. Clinton called NAFTA and GATT “agreements” not “treaties” because treaties don’t need to be voted on with the Senate. Think of structural adjustment programs also as a vehicle for the US intentionally preventing nations from “emerging as trade competitors by depriving them of normal development.” The WTO (established in 1994) can deprive your country of markets and materials if it deems it is somehow resistant. For example, the WTO forced Japan to accept greater pesticide residues in imported food, and made it so Guatemala couldn’t outlaw the deceptive advertising of baby food. The WTO will call your complaints a barrier to free trade or illegal restraint of trade. “In its first few years over 600,000 jobs in the United States were eliminated under NAFTA. New jobs created in that period were mostly in the lower-paying sector of the US economy.” NAFTA drove many small farmers in Mexico out of business with the dumping of heavily subsidized US milk and corn products. NAFTA halved the income of poor Mexicans and Mexican sweatshop profits skyrocketed. Ghana, Uganda and Mali reported sharp declines in GDP after free trade began.
In Haiti, decades of US farm imports wiped out three million small farmers. Achievement unlocked. Clinton destroyed Haiti’s rice production because US imported rice was heavily subsidized (federal refund for 72 cents on every dollar they expended to grow rice) yet forced on Haitians. The US did the same thing to Honduras shipping rice at 40% below production costs and it forced 92% of Honduran rice farmers to go out of business. Clinton apologized in 2010. The goal was to turn “relatively self-sufficient farmers into low-wage workers in assembly plants.” Capitalism can’t have people being self-sufficient; where’s the transnational profit in that?
Classified America: “An estimated 21,500 US government documents are classified every workday of the year.” Recently declassified is a 1970 cable from the Kissinger group to CIA operatives, “It is firm and continuing policy that [the democratically elected government of Salvador] Allende be overthrown by a coup. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [US Government] and American hand be well hidden.”
Michael talks about civilization history from the opposing side: a story of magnificent cultures overshadowed by the “ill-washed, priest ridden, diseased populations of European Christendom.” Superior firepower, not superior culture. We were taught the Third World is filled with culturally backward lazy people and not that western colonizers invaded then stole crops, slaughtered livestock, destroyed towns and culture, enslaved peoples, leaving only deeply impoverished individuals simply called lazy, and at best quaint, by US tourists. Who doesn’t want to see their forests clear cut, and their lands strip mined by outsiders under SAP rulings? Foreign loans don’t help the poor, they help the wealth of the transnational investor. “Foreign aid mostly aids corporate contractors and corrupt Third World vassals.” “The free market has no interest in human needs that are not backed by commercial buying power.”
Indonesia: CIA and US support for the ousting of Sukarno in Indonesia led to the death of more than 1,000,000 and replacement of Sukarno by Suharto, who became Washington’s darling. Sukarno’s crime had been “developing a viable public sector replete with social programs, public libraries, schools, and health clinics.” In addition to the million murdered, intellectuals were targeted and murdered, cultural life died, and many teachers (40% in some place of teachers) were murdered. Incoming Suharto on the other hand had fought alongside with Japanese fascist forces in WWII. A real charmer. The same Suharto in 1975 invades East Timor killing at least 100,000 after given the go ahead by President Ford and Kissinger. East Timor was then brutally occupied for twenty-five years. Suharto selling out Indonesia to privatization and capital penetration, got him personally $35 billion by the time he finally died in 2008. “Each year Indonesia destroys more forests than any other country in the world.”
Reality is radical: That is why mainstream media has to spin the news rightward for the benefit of the ruling class (media’s sponsors). That media knows there’s a limit to how many lies the public can hear, and so it must APPEAR to serve the many, while serving the few.
Obama: “After hardly two years in office, President Obama claimed the power to incarcerate individuals for life and execute US citizens without charges or due process. He contrived new ways of denying habeas corpus.” To make his reign more odious to progressives, Obama granted total legal immunity to the Bush administration for all their crimes. Obama fans knew as long as Obama and his family looked great in photos only sidelined progressives would complain about his moral lapses. Obama raised the Pentagon’s budget when in office Obama increased spending by $7 billion just for nuclear weaponry, that’s more than any president in history.
Fun facts: Not one of the 100,000+ people killed by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan “has been identified as linked to the events of 9/11”. In 1997, 122 nations signed the Treaty to Ban Land Mines but the US refused to sign. In 2001, The UN voted for the tenth straight year to end the US embargo of Cuba. That vote was 167 to 3 – the entire world against the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands. Know that even the centrist New York Times reported that people in many countries have “a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.”
this review continues in the comment section below - bravo to Michael Parenti - five stars
NATO: NATO is used by because it is not stymied by a UN veto and it’s a bargain because the US only pays 25% of it’s cost. When Russia and China vetoed the US wanting through the UN to rip apart Yugoslavia, the US simply activated NATO. NATO historians wonder why NATO was created, since after WWII weakened Russia was clearly in no position to invade Western Europe. The other role of NATO is to “lock the Western European countries into the US imperial system, just as it is now doing to the newly capitalized Eastern European countries.”
Italy: “In Italy, within a year after the war (WWII), almost all Italian fascists were released from prison while hundreds of communists and other leftist partisans who had valiantly fighting the Nazi occupation were incarcerated.” Page 32 and 33 names all the countries the US invaded or bombed, and all the countries where we forced their markets open and their reforms to stop. Countries that resist US capital penetration are considered unfriendly. General Douglas MacArthur eloquently said, “Our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.”
We were all taught about the war between expansionist communism and freedom, but never taught about the war between expansionist capitalism and freedom. For expansionist capitalists, finally getting rid of communism meant killing the public sector leaving only a “free market economy.” It was ignored that such a route (actually undertaken in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe) ended up with high unemployment, privatization, and lessened standard of living. Privatization by Plunder. Twenty years after free market capitalism began in Eastern Europe the conditions are “as bad as ever.” Now some of these same countries have laws against criticizing capitalism, advocating for socialism, or propagating “class hatred.” Note that Belarus, under Lukashenko, kicked out the IMF only to find that “In 2001, the New York Times admitted that the CIA also was working with the Belarussian opposition.”
Free market Third Worldization in Grenada and Panama: What was the US motive to invade Grenada? What were the crimes of Grenada under its New Jewel government? The unspeakable: “Grade school and secondary education and secondary education were free for everyone for the first time. Free health clinics were opened in the countryside, thanks mostly to assistance rendered by Cuban doctors.” The status of women was improving, and agriculture was being turned away from crop-crop exports “toward self-sufficient food production.” But the US stopped all those new government programs and unemployment soared after the invasion. Mission Accomplished – Another shithole country achieved. The same thing happened in Panama, after the US removed Noriega, conditions in that country deteriorated rapidly.” In Panama, government subsidies stopped, and privatization began. “The US invaders shut down publicly owned media and jailed a number of Panamanian editors and reporters who were critical of the invasion.”
The US Social Security Trust Fund in 2010 contained a $2.6 trillion surplus. US defense contracts are risk free – no competitive bidding. “Forty percent of the US military budget goes to overhead.” “US leaders have supported some of the most notorious right-wing autocracies in history.”
Cuba: The US was a fan of the Batista dictatorship because he kept Cuba wide open to US capital penetration. Batista’s Cuba had a small rich Cuban investor class. But after Castro took power, Cuba broke away from this “free” market system that favored American corporations, and nationalized Cuba’s banks and commercial and industrial businesses. In response, Eisenhower cut Cuba’s share of the US sugar market by 95% which drove Cuba get to sell its sugar to Soviet Union. Eisenhower did covert operations in Cuba to overthrow Castro’s government for the crime of what Michael calls “self-development outside the global free market system”. Then Bobby Kennedy Sr. personally “oversaw paramilitary operations, punitive economic measures, and sabotage aimed at undoing the new (Castro) regime.”
Michael’s brilliant explanation of what the US wants Cuba to do: “When the Cuban government abolishes the social wage that serves the common populace, when it eliminates its totally free public health system, when it privatizes the factories and lands and allows the productive wealth to be pocketed by rich corporate owner and removes all labor protections for workers….” The US will only stop smearing Cuba when it sees it can be assured by the Cuban elites of their “capitalist vassal-state servitude.” The US goal is a world is filled with vassal-states a.k.a. client-states with “compliant populations completely open to transnational corporate penetration.” After the Bay of Pigs there was no public discussion of its illegality, or the fact that it failed because the Cuban people stood behind their new government. Cuba’s pre-revolutionary privileged class scions trying to get back to Cuba were comically called “freedom fighters” by US media. The revolution was done for the rest of Cuba, for “the millions who for the first time had a guaranteed right to a job, medical care, sufficient food, housing, education, and other public services”. Observers said the new Cuba was far from perfect but was clearly better than the life endured under Batista.
Later Cuba: When Soviet aid collapsed, Cuba went organic - “the largest conversion from chemicalized agriculture to organic or semi-organic farming in human history.” Oxen instead of tractors. It’s easy to point fingers at Cuba today and complain if you made zero effort to factor in the long term costs of the Cuba embargo. If anyone leaves Cuba, we are taught to think it’s only because modern Cuba sucks, and never that they left because of the hardships of living under an embargo. There are no mainstream media stories about people fleeing failing free market economies, because that story would be bad for advertisers. You aren’t supposed to know that when Cuba announced anyone could leave, “the Clinton administration reverted to a closed-door policy.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. The US created Voice of America, a Spanish radio station, to propagandize the Cuban people on their airwaves. The US presently provides sanctuary to convicted terrorists Luis Posada Carriles and Orlando Bosch who “blew up a Cuban civilian airliner in 1976, killing all 76 people aboard.” A War on Terrorism UNLESS we consciously harbor them. In Cuba today profits are split between hotel owners and the Cuban government, so that the Cuban people benefit from tourism directly, as they do from profits of Cuba’s sugar, coffee, tobacco, rum, seafood, honey, nickel, and marble. The US wants Cuba to be privatized and under free-market servitude as the Eastern European countries now are. Does anybody think the US EVER wanted to replace the Batista dictatorship with a democracy?
Venezuela: Chavez was yet another leader helping his people instead of focusing on the elites. He concentrated on the nation’s poorest areas and he made education free to the university level, and brought lots of free health clinics to the people reaching millions. His other crime – he kicked out the US military advisors and stopped US military overflights to Columbia. Venezuela media elite moguls hate Chavez and so Venezuelan journalists are kept from writing supportive articles. Writers who sympathize with Chavez are fired.
The Korean War: The US carpet dropped more bombs on North Korea than it dropped during the entire Pacific theater during WWII.
Iraq: Saddam Hussein was a point man for the CIA and was thus favored while committing his worst crimes. But look at him as a leader - before the US attacked it, Iraq had a literacy rate of 80%, Iraqis had free medical care and free education, and Iraq had the highest standard of living in the Middle East. Saddam’s crime was economic nationalism, putting his own country first, and so Iraq was bombed back into the third world. “In 1991, US planes destroyed more than 90 percent of Iraq’s electrical capacity” and then Michael lists a VERY long paragraph of everything we destroyed in Iraq from schools to hospitals and historic sites. And Saddam moved from the US dollar to the euro as payment for Iraq’s oil exports. The US feared such flooding the market with dollars, might make it collapse in value. And so also the US removed Saddam to say to other countries: this is what happens to leaders who fight the dollar. Cheney felt controlling Middle Eastern oil meant you could put a “stranglehold” on the world economy. If you control Iraqi oil, you release it always to your financial advantage, when the market is right. “As much as one-third to one-half of the immense funds allocated by Congress for the Iraqi war remained unaccounted for.” We were told Saddam gassed the Kurds at Halabja only to find later that a Pentagon study showed it was Iran who did that. “The last thing that US rulers want in the Middle East are independent, self-developing nations that control their own economies and natural resources.” Under the guise of fighting communism, the US historically fights nationalism – any threat of a good example - as Noam calls it.
When the US capital controls your country it will attack local environmental regulations, worker benefits, occupational safety codes, and being taxed. Then US agribusiness cartels (with massive US tax subsidies) will “expropriate the best land for cash-crop exports, usually monoculture crops requiring large amounts of pesticides, leaving less and less acreage for the hundreds of varieties of organically grown foods that feed local populations and sustain the local economy.” Oh, joy. Don’t forget the flood of cheap imports that will arrive to injure your economy further. Don’t underestimate the power of oligarchs in Honduras, they can shoot an employee dead and get away with it (page 74). “Over the past two decades, Africa lost approximately $272 billion because of corporate takeover of domestic food production.” “Free trade means privatization for the few and privation for the many.” How so? “In Bangladesh, workers sew garments for Disney and Walmart, earning the princely sum of 11 to 20 cents per hour.” To live on that budget, four workers must share a single shack and the workweek is 14 hours a day, seven days a week.” Transnational corporate capitalism forced on your country is the face of imperialism.
Trade Agreements: These are where corporate property rights are elevated above all democratic rights under the banner of “free trade”. Note that one page of GATT’s 500 pages of rules and restrictions holds corporations accountable – only governments. Realize that NAFTA and GATT are both in direct violation of the US Constitution. Sovereign power clearly rests with the people – not an international trade panel. Clinton called NAFTA and GATT “agreements” not “treaties” because treaties don’t need to be voted on with the Senate. Think of structural adjustment programs also as a vehicle for the US intentionally preventing nations from “emerging as trade competitors by depriving them of normal development.” The WTO (established in 1994) can deprive your country of markets and materials if it deems it is somehow resistant. For example, the WTO forced Japan to accept greater pesticide residues in imported food, and made it so Guatemala couldn’t outlaw the deceptive advertising of baby food. The WTO will call your complaints a barrier to free trade or illegal restraint of trade. “In its first few years over 600,000 jobs in the United States were eliminated under NAFTA. New jobs created in that period were mostly in the lower-paying sector of the US economy.” NAFTA drove many small farmers in Mexico out of business with the dumping of heavily subsidized US milk and corn products. NAFTA halved the income of poor Mexicans and Mexican sweatshop profits skyrocketed. Ghana, Uganda and Mali reported sharp declines in GDP after free trade began.
In Haiti, decades of US farm imports wiped out three million small farmers. Achievement unlocked. Clinton destroyed Haiti’s rice production because US imported rice was heavily subsidized (federal refund for 72 cents on every dollar they expended to grow rice) yet forced on Haitians. The US did the same thing to Honduras shipping rice at 40% below production costs and it forced 92% of Honduran rice farmers to go out of business. Clinton apologized in 2010. The goal was to turn “relatively self-sufficient farmers into low-wage workers in assembly plants.” Capitalism can’t have people being self-sufficient; where’s the transnational profit in that?
Classified America: “An estimated 21,500 US government documents are classified every workday of the year.” Recently declassified is a 1970 cable from the Kissinger group to CIA operatives, “It is firm and continuing policy that [the democratically elected government of Salvador] Allende be overthrown by a coup. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [US Government] and American hand be well hidden.”
Michael talks about civilization history from the opposing side: a story of magnificent cultures overshadowed by the “ill-washed, priest ridden, diseased populations of European Christendom.” Superior firepower, not superior culture. We were taught the Third World is filled with culturally backward lazy people and not that western colonizers invaded then stole crops, slaughtered livestock, destroyed towns and culture, enslaved peoples, leaving only deeply impoverished individuals simply called lazy, and at best quaint, by US tourists. Who doesn’t want to see their forests clear cut, and their lands strip mined by outsiders under SAP rulings? Foreign loans don’t help the poor, they help the wealth of the transnational investor. “Foreign aid mostly aids corporate contractors and corrupt Third World vassals.” “The free market has no interest in human needs that are not backed by commercial buying power.”
Indonesia: CIA and US support for the ousting of Sukarno in Indonesia led to the death of more than 1,000,000 and replacement of Sukarno by Suharto, who became Washington’s darling. Sukarno’s crime had been “developing a viable public sector replete with social programs, public libraries, schools, and health clinics.” In addition to the million murdered, intellectuals were targeted and murdered, cultural life died, and many teachers (40% in some place of teachers) were murdered. Incoming Suharto on the other hand had fought alongside with Japanese fascist forces in WWII. A real charmer. The same Suharto in 1975 invades East Timor killing at least 100,000 after given the go ahead by President Ford and Kissinger. East Timor was then brutally occupied for twenty-five years. Suharto selling out Indonesia to privatization and capital penetration, got him personally $35 billion by the time he finally died in 2008. “Each year Indonesia destroys more forests than any other country in the world.”
Reality is radical: That is why mainstream media has to spin the news rightward for the benefit of the ruling class (media’s sponsors). That media knows there’s a limit to how many lies the public can hear, and so it must APPEAR to serve the many, while serving the few.
Obama: “After hardly two years in office, President Obama claimed the power to incarcerate individuals for life and execute US citizens without charges or due process. He contrived new ways of denying habeas corpus.” To make his reign more odious to progressives, Obama granted total legal immunity to the Bush administration for all their crimes. Obama fans knew as long as Obama and his family looked great in photos only sidelined progressives would complain about his moral lapses. Obama raised the Pentagon’s budget when in office Obama increased spending by $7 billion just for nuclear weaponry, that’s more than any president in history.
Fun facts: Not one of the 100,000+ people killed by the US in Iraq or Afghanistan “has been identified as linked to the events of 9/11”. In 1997, 122 nations signed the Treaty to Ban Land Mines but the US refused to sign. In 2001, The UN voted for the tenth straight year to end the US embargo of Cuba. That vote was 167 to 3 – the entire world against the US, Israel and the Marshall Islands. Know that even the centrist New York Times reported that people in many countries have “a widespread vision of America as an imperial power that has defied world opinion through unjustified and unilateral use of military force.”
this review continues in the comment section below - bravo to Michael Parenti - five stars
December 2, 2025
I, like most people, have bought into the notion that the US is the guardian of international democracy. And, indeed, it’s an opinion easily held when one has little to no historical (and even present) knowledge of the countries we call undeveloped, such as Guatemala, Iraq, Congo (the list goes on).
Undeveloped, Parenti argues, is a misleading euphemism for what we should more accurately call overexploited. The author goes even as far as to suggest that the USA is an example of modern imperialism as it enforces global dominance through military force (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq), economic control (e.g. Guatemala, Congo), and political manipulation (e.g. Chile, Iran), extracting countries’ resources and shaping their regimes.
The author argues that the USA functions as a modern empire regardless of who is in charge:
“Since World War II, US military forces have invaded or launched aerial assaults against Afghanistan, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Iraq (twice), Laos, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Panama, Somalia, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Yugoslavia—a record of military aggression unmatched by any communist or "terrorist" government in history. (All these listings are incomplete).”
“The powers of the plutocracy weigh heavily upon US foreign policy regardless of the personality or political party that occupies the White House.”
Overall, the book revealed to me, something good books do, how ignorant I still am of the world around me and showed me how there’s still so much more I must learn.
It also made me wonder whether the US intervention in the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia is driven by democratic and sovereignty principles (as advertised by some) or by strategic interests, such as countering Russian influence, strengthening NATO’s position, and gaining access to Ukraine’s critical minerals. Perhaps both?
Undeveloped, Parenti argues, is a misleading euphemism for what we should more accurately call overexploited. The author goes even as far as to suggest that the USA is an example of modern imperialism as it enforces global dominance through military force (e.g. Vietnam, Iraq), economic control (e.g. Guatemala, Congo), and political manipulation (e.g. Chile, Iran), extracting countries’ resources and shaping their regimes.
The author argues that the USA functions as a modern empire regardless of who is in charge:
“Since World War II, US military forces have invaded or launched aerial assaults against Afghanistan, Cambodia, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Iraq (twice), Laos, Lebanon, Libya, North Korea, Panama, Somalia, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Yugoslavia—a record of military aggression unmatched by any communist or "terrorist" government in history. (All these listings are incomplete).”
“The powers of the plutocracy weigh heavily upon US foreign policy regardless of the personality or political party that occupies the White House.”
Overall, the book revealed to me, something good books do, how ignorant I still am of the world around me and showed me how there’s still so much more I must learn.
It also made me wonder whether the US intervention in the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia is driven by democratic and sovereignty principles (as advertised by some) or by strategic interests, such as countering Russian influence, strengthening NATO’s position, and gaining access to Ukraine’s critical minerals. Perhaps both?
August 18, 2019
Companion to Against Empire, written to further flesh out the point that empire aren't just things that happen, and situations you find yourself in, but power relations that are created and maintained to further the interests of some at the cost of (many, many) others. And that it may well be costly, but that the point is that the costs are paid by the public, while the benefits go to the few (corporations, the rich).
While I'd certainly recommend readers also read Chomsky's (and Herman's) work, I would strongly recommend reading Parenti first, to get a much firmer grip on the theory and patterns, and to be able to fill in the gaps Chomsky leaves undiscussed, primarily the class interests, including the class pattern to destruction inflicted on countries that get attacked and/or destroyed by Western (mainly US) powers.
To give one example:
And similar patterns can be found in other places, e.g. 1991 Iraq:
While Chomsky does usually reference this general pattern (esp. in his earlier work), he never talks about it in detail, even though this is (obviously) quite relevant. As an aside, this is also true for violence inflicted by the US and its corporations on workers -- he will talk about the high-level stuff and the general patterns (including trade deals like nafta and its consequences), but he'll basically never go into detail of his own accord, only sticking to discussions of how elites justify it, using the euphemism etc. that they do, and deriding those. But he's mostly chosen not to speak about what's happening at the local/state levels inside the USA, and to only focus on its imperialist behavior.
As a result, his listeners tend to mostly end up angry at their elites and concerned with the well-being of non-nationals, but feeling little solidarity with and outrage over the treatment of their non-credentialed, non-affluent skewing fellow citizens. Not that this is Chomsky's responsibility or fault entirely, but it's something to be mindful of, and a fairly predictable consequence of his presentation style and choice of arguments.
While I'd certainly recommend readers also read Chomsky's (and Herman's) work, I would strongly recommend reading Parenti first, to get a much firmer grip on the theory and patterns, and to be able to fill in the gaps Chomsky leaves undiscussed, primarily the class interests, including the class pattern to destruction inflicted on countries that get attacked and/or destroyed by Western (mainly US) powers.
To give one example:
A striking example is Yugoslavia. Multi-ethnic Yugoslavia was once a regional industrial success, with a fairly high economic growth rate, free medical care, a literacy rate over 90 percent, and a relatively equitable and prosperous economic life for its various peoples. Despite a considerable amount of private foreign investment, the Yugoslav economy was still mostly publicly owned, with a large public sector that was out of line with the march toward free market Third Worldization.
That US leaders planned to dismember Yugoslavia is not a matter of speculation but of public record. As early as 1984, the Reagan administration issued US National Security Decision Directive 133: United States Policy Towards Yugoslavia, stamped “secret sensitive.” It followed an earlier directive that called for a “quiet revolution” to overthrow communist governments while “reintegrating the countries of Eastern Europe into the orbit of the World market” (that is, the capitalist world market). The economic “reforms” pressed upon Yugoslavia by the IMF and other foreign creditors mandated that all socially owned firms and all worker-managed production units be transformed into private corporate enterprises.1 To best accomplish this goal, Yugoslavia itself had to be dismembered.
There came years of US-led boycott, embargo, and wars of secession with US-financed secessionist forces leading various republics to break away from Yugoslavia. In February 1999, western officials made their dedication to privatization perfectly clear, issuing an ultimatum stating: “The economy of Kosovo [a major province of Serbia] shall function in accordance with free market principles.” All matters of trade and corporate ownership were to be left to the private market.2
Then in March-June 1999 came eleven weeks of round-the-clock US aerial attacks against Serbia, Kosovo, and Montenegro, leaving the Yugoslav economy in ruins. The private corporate sites within Yugoslavia were left untouched by the attackers. The bombs fell only on state-owned or worker-controlled factories, enterprises, auto plants, construction firms, municipal power stations and other public utilities, government radio and television stations, depots, ports, railroads, bridges, water supply systems, hotels, housing projects, hospitals, schools, and hundreds of other nonmilitary state-owned targetsin what amounted to privatization by bombing.
In addition, there were some 8,500 civilian casualties, and hundreds of thousands of tons of highly toxic chemicals spewed into the air, soil, and water, including depleted uranium in the Danube River, a source of drinking water for millions of people.3 The US bombing of Yugoslavia was a war crime that went unpunished and almost unnoticed. As George Kenney, a former State Department official under the elder Bush administration, commented, “Dropping cluster bombs on highly populated urban areas doesn’t result in accidental fatalities. It is purposeful terror bombing.”
And similar patterns can be found in other places, e.g. 1991 Iraq:
After the US invasion, most of that economy was destroyed, shut down, or privatized at giveaway prices. Looters were let loose on Iraq’s government ministries and headquarters; all state-owned factories, hotels, supermarkets, and many hospitals; and most public universities, including engineering and nursing colleges.21 The Iraq Federation of Trade Unions was raided and destroyed by the US military, its leaders and members arrested and imprisoned.22
The invaders also resorted to the systematic destruction of Iraqi culture, by encouraging museums to be looted of their priceless treasures, while libraries were burned, and academics were murdered.23 Poverty and underemployment climbed precipitously, so too the Iraqi national debt as international loans were floated in order to help the Iraqis pay for their own misery. At the same time, depleted uranium weaponry caused a drastic rise in cancer rates in Iraq (as in Afghanistan). The US invasion brought Iraq firmly back into the free market sphere as a destitute satellite state.24
While Chomsky does usually reference this general pattern (esp. in his earlier work), he never talks about it in detail, even though this is (obviously) quite relevant. As an aside, this is also true for violence inflicted by the US and its corporations on workers -- he will talk about the high-level stuff and the general patterns (including trade deals like nafta and its consequences), but he'll basically never go into detail of his own accord, only sticking to discussions of how elites justify it, using the euphemism etc. that they do, and deriding those. But he's mostly chosen not to speak about what's happening at the local/state levels inside the USA, and to only focus on its imperialist behavior.
As a result, his listeners tend to mostly end up angry at their elites and concerned with the well-being of non-nationals, but feeling little solidarity with and outrage over the treatment of their non-credentialed, non-affluent skewing fellow citizens. Not that this is Chomsky's responsibility or fault entirely, but it's something to be mindful of, and a fairly predictable consequence of his presentation style and choice of arguments.
December 19, 2019
An essential piece of reading for anyone wanting to understand the methods and depths of U.S. military and economic imperialism. Doubly essential for anyone who believes in the virtues of free-market capitalism.
January 30, 2021
Like all Parenti books, it is a must-read.
However, this may be my favorite so far as it is so important to understanding the current state of world affairs.
If you claim to care about humanity and the path it is going down, you have to read this book.
However, this may be my favorite so far as it is so important to understanding the current state of world affairs.
If you claim to care about humanity and the path it is going down, you have to read this book.
March 30, 2021
Ο Parenti δεν έχει τίποτα να ζηλέψει από διάσημους πολιτικούς αναλυτές/διανοητές όπως οι Chomsky, Greaber, Klein κ.α.
Αν μη τί άλλο, τό γράψιμο του είναι πιο περιεκτικό καί άμεσο.
Η ποσότητα καί τό βάθος τής γνώσης σχετικά με την ιστορία του Ιμπεριαλισμού, αλλά καί ο εύστοχος συσχετισμός τού με τόν Αμερικανικό νεοφιλελεύθερο επεκτατισμό πού παρουσιάζεται σε μόνο 160 σελίδες είναι ανεκτίμητης αξίας.
Δεν θά πώ πολλά αλλά τό κεφάλαιο για την διάλυση της Γιουγκοσλαβίας είναι πραγματικό διαμάντι.
Η εκδοχή και οι αποδείξεις πού αναφέρονται σε αυτό τό κεφάλαιο άλλαξαν τόν τρόπο πού έβλεπα τα πράγματα μέχρι χθες.
Εξαιρετικό.
5/5
Αν μη τί άλλο, τό γράψιμο του είναι πιο περιεκτικό καί άμεσο.
Η ποσότητα καί τό βάθος τής γνώσης σχετικά με την ιστορία του Ιμπεριαλισμού, αλλά καί ο εύστοχος συσχετισμός τού με τόν Αμερικανικό νεοφιλελεύθερο επεκτατισμό πού παρουσιάζεται σε μόνο 160 σελίδες είναι ανεκτίμητης αξίας.
Δεν θά πώ πολλά αλλά τό κεφάλαιο για την διάλυση της Γιουγκοσλαβίας είναι πραγματικό διαμάντι.
Η εκδοχή και οι αποδείξεις πού αναφέρονται σε αυτό τό κεφάλαιο άλλαξαν τόν τρόπο πού έβλεπα τα πράγματα μέχρι χθες.
Εξαιρετικό.
5/5
September 19, 2021
The third world must rise up and destroy the western imperialists.
April 18, 2012
I've read Parenti before and more or less know what to expect. This is not really very different. He is one of a "select" group of historians/researchers who challenge mainstream views on a regular basis. This usually relates to US geopolitics and foreign relations. In other words, much of his analysis will be lauded by those who adhere to his ideology and hated by those who would see him as "unpatriotic" or "anti-american."
This book is a good "introduction" to Parenti and a good introduction to Imperialism American Style. It doesn't add a ton to the discussion for those already versed in these realities. That being said, the first two (2) pages are an excellent overview of why the mainstream view gets overtly accepted and why those who challenge that viewpoint are often closer to the "truth." It reminded me of a (very boring) book about Scientific Revolutions I had to read in Grad School by Thomas Kuhn. Unlike Kuhn's book, Parenti's analysis was short, to the point and engaging.
The book then goes on to demonstrate how the American Imperial Model works and give examples to back up his claims. His main thesis is that American Imperialism is meticulously planned and carreid out to the benefit of an elite few, funded by the propagandized working/poor man and exploitative of the foreign repressed. It's not pretty out there, in other words.
The problem is that the examples he uses to back up his claims are often vaguely outlined and not expanded upon enough. It is almost as if he took a whole bunch of "writings" and crammed them into a short book. It's interesting, but not overly "earth-shattering" because he misses so many important details. He would have been better served taking some of the "case studies" and developing each of those into a full, well-researched book in their own right. This doesn't undermine the validity of his thesis, but only the overall quality of the book.
Regardless, Parenti is a necessity. He challenges the mainstream and forces one to open their eyes to the realities that shape American foreign policy. This is truly what it means to be a "patriot." Being a patriot means loving one's country always, and one's government when it deserves it (Mark Twain said that). Parenti epitomizes this. Americans need to wake up and see who is really making a killing and at who's expense, because it is often our own.
Recommended is: "To Kill a Nation" (Parenti) for a demonstration of the theory he outlines here. That's a 5-star. This one is a three.
This book is a good "introduction" to Parenti and a good introduction to Imperialism American Style. It doesn't add a ton to the discussion for those already versed in these realities. That being said, the first two (2) pages are an excellent overview of why the mainstream view gets overtly accepted and why those who challenge that viewpoint are often closer to the "truth." It reminded me of a (very boring) book about Scientific Revolutions I had to read in Grad School by Thomas Kuhn. Unlike Kuhn's book, Parenti's analysis was short, to the point and engaging.
The book then goes on to demonstrate how the American Imperial Model works and give examples to back up his claims. His main thesis is that American Imperialism is meticulously planned and carreid out to the benefit of an elite few, funded by the propagandized working/poor man and exploitative of the foreign repressed. It's not pretty out there, in other words.
The problem is that the examples he uses to back up his claims are often vaguely outlined and not expanded upon enough. It is almost as if he took a whole bunch of "writings" and crammed them into a short book. It's interesting, but not overly "earth-shattering" because he misses so many important details. He would have been better served taking some of the "case studies" and developing each of those into a full, well-researched book in their own right. This doesn't undermine the validity of his thesis, but only the overall quality of the book.
Regardless, Parenti is a necessity. He challenges the mainstream and forces one to open their eyes to the realities that shape American foreign policy. This is truly what it means to be a "patriot." Being a patriot means loving one's country always, and one's government when it deserves it (Mark Twain said that). Parenti epitomizes this. Americans need to wake up and see who is really making a killing and at who's expense, because it is often our own.
Recommended is: "To Kill a Nation" (Parenti) for a demonstration of the theory he outlines here. That's a 5-star. This one is a three.
September 30, 2019
Michael Parenti is undoubtly one of those political voices you really need to listen to. Nevertheless, having read a few texts and heard some of his speeches (which are on YouTube and everybody should watch) he mostly wrote about stuff you should know if you're already fairly familiar with the crimes of the so called united states.
What really gets my nerves is his (lack of) citation style. He's obviously more of a speaker, where he can just chat about the things he knows. So maybe don't always believe what he says, but do some research on your own.
In my opinion Parenti gets really strong in his arguments, rather than his actual writing about events (which you probably can find better somewhere else).
If you don't have much time you won't miss very much if you only read the last two chapters. One is about the us relation to some countries that tried to go a revolutionary or reformist way. In the other one he summarizes the findings and tries to outline possibilities of countercultures.
What really gets my nerves is his (lack of) citation style. He's obviously more of a speaker, where he can just chat about the things he knows. So maybe don't always believe what he says, but do some research on your own.
In my opinion Parenti gets really strong in his arguments, rather than his actual writing about events (which you probably can find better somewhere else).
If you don't have much time you won't miss very much if you only read the last two chapters. One is about the us relation to some countries that tried to go a revolutionary or reformist way. In the other one he summarizes the findings and tries to outline possibilities of countercultures.
December 1, 2019
An extremely informative read on the destructive forces of (especially American) Western imperialism during the past 50 years. Parenti again amazes us with his incredibly detailed analysis of how the dominant paradigm in any given capitalist state is a force that is used against a nation's own people to combat proletarian resistance. Parenti gives lists and lists of US interventionism and the detriments that it has caused "third world" countries such as the numerous coups in Latin America and larger operations like Indonesia under Suharto. Transnationals are shown to influence and at times determine foreign policy under the guise of "democracy," and spreading "freedom." Treaties and organizations like NAFTA, the EU, the UN, and NATO are not freedom fighters for the people, but rather money makers for the richest .1%.
May 2, 2025
This book is very informative and helps put the US's actions in the broader global context. It provides incredibly detailed accounts of US interference in other countries in pursuit of corporate profits and economic power, rather than the "fighting evil" propaganda the media has us believe.
I got questions answered that I've subconsciously wondered for a long time: why does communism "not work in practice," why does the world seem to be getting poorer, why is the US so involved in foreign "aid," and why is our military budget high but healthcare and education are getting defunded, etc. I've learned that the US empire suppresses, disenfranchises, and enslaves working class people in every country, consistently and ruthlessly defending profits over people. This is all by design, and not an "oversight" or "unforeseen consequence" of capitalism; governments are bought out by corporate oligarchs, who corrupt countries and enable the privatization of public services in order to maximize profits and strip people of any self-sufficiency. It is no coincidence that corporate profits are at an all-time high while extreme poverty, economic hardship, unemployment, etc. rise; we the working class are getting robbed every day by the rich, whether we realize it or not. With the rise of AI, taking agency away from people altogether, to control how we think and act, will only become easier for those who have the most to gain.
A couple critiques of the book: It is a bit redundant in its tone, and it unilaterally presents information that is oftentimes completely new to the reader. I believe in everything Parenti states, but his lack of engagement with counter-arguments (not to promote, but deconstruct them) gave me pause. I found myself having to do research on the US-presented propaganda (our literal history books lol) vs. his claims and come to my own conclusions, usually in favor of Parenti's points. It did take substantial effort to engage critically and not just take everything he said at face value, but I recognize I'm not as informed in global politics as other readers may be. I also would have appreciated a more forward-looking, encouraging perspective that provided some degree of agency to people. It is not until the last 2 pages that Parenti gives any context for how lay people can translate this barrage of disturbing evidence of US/corporate collusion into some sort of vague action. While this is likely intentional as the book is written as one giant, hard-to-swallow pill, I think it can make the reader feel helpless knowing they exist in a system controlled by the elite few, with no recourse or action to take with this new knowledge.
Over all, solid read, would recommend to people interested in understanding the global impact of capitalism. It does veer depressing and engender feelings of hopelessness and anger at points, but with the right mindset can be very illuminating to the worldwide struggle we are collectively facing.
I got questions answered that I've subconsciously wondered for a long time: why does communism "not work in practice," why does the world seem to be getting poorer, why is the US so involved in foreign "aid," and why is our military budget high but healthcare and education are getting defunded, etc. I've learned that the US empire suppresses, disenfranchises, and enslaves working class people in every country, consistently and ruthlessly defending profits over people. This is all by design, and not an "oversight" or "unforeseen consequence" of capitalism; governments are bought out by corporate oligarchs, who corrupt countries and enable the privatization of public services in order to maximize profits and strip people of any self-sufficiency. It is no coincidence that corporate profits are at an all-time high while extreme poverty, economic hardship, unemployment, etc. rise; we the working class are getting robbed every day by the rich, whether we realize it or not. With the rise of AI, taking agency away from people altogether, to control how we think and act, will only become easier for those who have the most to gain.
A couple critiques of the book: It is a bit redundant in its tone, and it unilaterally presents information that is oftentimes completely new to the reader. I believe in everything Parenti states, but his lack of engagement with counter-arguments (not to promote, but deconstruct them) gave me pause. I found myself having to do research on the US-presented propaganda (our literal history books lol) vs. his claims and come to my own conclusions, usually in favor of Parenti's points. It did take substantial effort to engage critically and not just take everything he said at face value, but I recognize I'm not as informed in global politics as other readers may be. I also would have appreciated a more forward-looking, encouraging perspective that provided some degree of agency to people. It is not until the last 2 pages that Parenti gives any context for how lay people can translate this barrage of disturbing evidence of US/corporate collusion into some sort of vague action. While this is likely intentional as the book is written as one giant, hard-to-swallow pill, I think it can make the reader feel helpless knowing they exist in a system controlled by the elite few, with no recourse or action to take with this new knowledge.
Over all, solid read, would recommend to people interested in understanding the global impact of capitalism. It does veer depressing and engender feelings of hopelessness and anger at points, but with the right mindset can be very illuminating to the worldwide struggle we are collectively facing.
February 5, 2021
Micheal Parenti takes a great radical tone with his opening pages but seemingly stays honest and true with his words. Parenti writes clearly to address imperialism in the United States. He touches on the rather poor effects capitalist imperialism has on society. He mentions the U.S military and its power, policies, free trade, globalization, transnationalism, the free market, as well as much much more.
I was especially thankful for the examples Parenti gave in his writing whether he was referencing the United States and their effort to dismantle the middle east and it's attacks and occupations on countries such as Venezuela and Iraq. He speaks on why the U.S does this to countries that have resisted the United States and have tried to stay clear of it. He ties this back to a lot of the central ideas he speaks about.
I feel like most readers would be upset about the lack of citations Parenti offers in his writing but I appreciate the speaking tone he uses towards the reader. It feels like an educational conversation rather than an essay that drains you. I appreciate his approach but I would urge readers to make their own conclusions and interpretations of his seemingly factual reasoning that he provides in this book.
Apart from that, he advocates and does a great job of connecting each chapter swiftly to reroute to one of the main ideas stating that despite the media's efforts of dumifying the United States and its leaders, the United States is well aware of its actions determining their efforts in using their imperialail power to interest the elite globally.
This is a great book to read if you are interested in learning about the United States and its imperialist power and to gain an understanding of global capital functions as well as its efforts in keeping the world orderly for corporations and continuing to keep the poor, poorer to continue to remain dominant, rich, and ruthless.
I was especially thankful for the examples Parenti gave in his writing whether he was referencing the United States and their effort to dismantle the middle east and it's attacks and occupations on countries such as Venezuela and Iraq. He speaks on why the U.S does this to countries that have resisted the United States and have tried to stay clear of it. He ties this back to a lot of the central ideas he speaks about.
I feel like most readers would be upset about the lack of citations Parenti offers in his writing but I appreciate the speaking tone he uses towards the reader. It feels like an educational conversation rather than an essay that drains you. I appreciate his approach but I would urge readers to make their own conclusions and interpretations of his seemingly factual reasoning that he provides in this book.
Apart from that, he advocates and does a great job of connecting each chapter swiftly to reroute to one of the main ideas stating that despite the media's efforts of dumifying the United States and its leaders, the United States is well aware of its actions determining their efforts in using their imperialail power to interest the elite globally.
This is a great book to read if you are interested in learning about the United States and its imperialist power and to gain an understanding of global capital functions as well as its efforts in keeping the world orderly for corporations and continuing to keep the poor, poorer to continue to remain dominant, rich, and ruthless.
September 7, 2020
The premise of the book is simple yet much needed, that the United States and its leaders, far from being the bumbling idiots that segments of the mass and mainstream media have portrayed them, in light of their "misadventures" in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US is a conscious and deliberate imperial power functioning to further its own interests and the interests of the global elite in furthering the "free market" and "globalization" agenda.
Most crucially, Parenti argues that 'empire' and consequently 'imperialism' have been devoid of their inextricable link with "transnational investment and capital accumulation" to simply denote "dominion and power, most notably military power". This view, he argues ignores the material interests at stake for the global elite. Instead he proposes the following definition of imperialism:
In what follows, Parenti charts out the various dynamics of the actors and actions involved in upholding and propagating imperialism, free market and globalization interests. From the use of foreign aid and loans, transnational institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, US soft and hard power such as the various regime-change service providing institutes such as the NED, to outright bombing campaigns and occupations. It was quite a harrowing read even though I was already aware of most of the things Parenti talked about in the book. The book concludes with examples of the constant barrage of attacks and aggression against those handful of countries that have resisted the US and sought to chart their own paths independent of the US sphere of influence and interest. Among them, you have the regulars Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea; Iraq and Belarus make cameo appearances too.
Very early on in the book, Parenti wrote about the function of opinion and what orthodox and heterodox views and opinions function as and what makes them more or less reliable. I wish he had fleshed out this line of thinking more to serve as an analytical framework and tool that would help his readers, consumers as we all are in one form or another and to an extent of the mainstream media, parse through, sort, form and discard the various opinions and views we are exposed to. Something akin to Noam Chomsky in his Manufacturing Consent.
All in all, a book worth reading especially for those unaware of and wanting to know more about how nexus of global capital functions to further a ruthless imperialism.
Most crucially, Parenti argues that 'empire' and consequently 'imperialism' have been devoid of their inextricable link with "transnational investment and capital accumulation" to simply denote "dominion and power, most notably military power". This view, he argues ignores the material interests at stake for the global elite. Instead he proposes the following definition of imperialism:
the process whereby the dominant investor interests in one country bring to bear military and financial power upon another country in order to expropriate the land, labor, capital, natural resources, commerce, and markets of that other country.
In what follows, Parenti charts out the various dynamics of the actors and actions involved in upholding and propagating imperialism, free market and globalization interests. From the use of foreign aid and loans, transnational institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF, US soft and hard power such as the various regime-change service providing institutes such as the NED, to outright bombing campaigns and occupations. It was quite a harrowing read even though I was already aware of most of the things Parenti talked about in the book. The book concludes with examples of the constant barrage of attacks and aggression against those handful of countries that have resisted the US and sought to chart their own paths independent of the US sphere of influence and interest. Among them, you have the regulars Iran, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea; Iraq and Belarus make cameo appearances too.
Very early on in the book, Parenti wrote about the function of opinion and what orthodox and heterodox views and opinions function as and what makes them more or less reliable. I wish he had fleshed out this line of thinking more to serve as an analytical framework and tool that would help his readers, consumers as we all are in one form or another and to an extent of the mainstream media, parse through, sort, form and discard the various opinions and views we are exposed to. Something akin to Noam Chomsky in his Manufacturing Consent.
First, radical views that are outside the mainstream generally (but not always) are more reliable than the dominant view because they are more regularly challenged and tested against evidence.
Second, we can value an opinion by the function(s) it serves. The heterodox view has a special task: to contest the prevailing orthodoxy, to broaden the boundaries of debate, to wake people up, to unearth suppressed data. The function of orthodox or conventional opinion is just the opposite: to keep the parameters of discourse as narrow as possible, to dismiss evidence that ill fits the dominant paradigm. Hence, all opinions are not of the same value. It depends on what they are being used for, what interests they serve.
All in all, a book worth reading especially for those unaware of and wanting to know more about how nexus of global capital functions to further a ruthless imperialism.
February 12, 2012
What to say about this book? I started out thinking I wouldn't like it very much, but quickly became absorbed. Michael Parenti writes clearly and thoroughly about issue that are impacting all of us - not just Americans, but people everywhere. I learned a lot about the motives behind what the US "empire" is doing and why they are doing it. I learned about what "free trade" and "globalization" really mean. It means that the transnational corporations now own everything throughout the world. Free trade rules manages to maintain the ability of the corporations to have more rights than "people" - and he explains "why" and "how"
He shows how U.S. foreign policy is neither inept nor confused... as they sometimes try to pretend. I especially liked the part about how Bush wasn't as stupid as he appears to be. The list of things he accomplished for the wealthy was really amazing
Throughout all the presidencies (be they Democrats or Republicans), the U.S. policy of "empire" has remained consistent and successful in serving the interests of the rich and powerful, in keeping the world safe for the transnational corporations, in making sure that most of the world remains weak, poor, compliant, so that the plutocracy remains strong, rich, and dominant.
I also found this book very helping in understanding policies toward Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. I started writing a book several years ago - that I never finished :( - where I talked about how I used to feel sorry for other countries because they did not get real and honest news, and then I learned that 'we" were the ones who were being lied to and misled. Mr. Parenti greatly elaborates on that
He shows how U.S. foreign policy is neither inept nor confused... as they sometimes try to pretend. I especially liked the part about how Bush wasn't as stupid as he appears to be. The list of things he accomplished for the wealthy was really amazing
Throughout all the presidencies (be they Democrats or Republicans), the U.S. policy of "empire" has remained consistent and successful in serving the interests of the rich and powerful, in keeping the world safe for the transnational corporations, in making sure that most of the world remains weak, poor, compliant, so that the plutocracy remains strong, rich, and dominant.
I also found this book very helping in understanding policies toward Iraq, Iran, North Korea and Venezuela. I started writing a book several years ago - that I never finished :( - where I talked about how I used to feel sorry for other countries because they did not get real and honest news, and then I learned that 'we" were the ones who were being lied to and misled. Mr. Parenti greatly elaborates on that
October 20, 2012
Thinking back on the past 50 years of US history - the many wars fought or sponsored by the US government, the growth of privatization, the increase in state surveillance and state secrecy, the decline of labor unions, the ever increasing disparity in wealth, the ongoing and escalating attacks on the social safety net - looking back on this, many liberals conclude that 'mistakes have been made'. After each war, the liberals who initially supported the war look back and say they were mistaken, not because the war itself was inherently unjust or illegal but because it was managed 'disastrously' or 'incompetently'. When social programs are cut back or eliminated liberals blame it on the misguided policies of conservatives (though, usually, you will find a significant plurality of Democrats in Congress who 'compromised' to pass the cutbacks). So, again, the policies are simply 'misguided' and a result of political accident.
Parenti puts this nonsense to bed. US policies are not a series of blunders and mismanagement, but follow a logic of late stage imperialism. He makes a strong case for the intentionality of the policies that have brought us to where we are. The end goal is concentration of all wealth in a few hands, leaving the rest of us in a state of debt peonage, with political and economic power equally concentrated.
Parenti puts this nonsense to bed. US policies are not a series of blunders and mismanagement, but follow a logic of late stage imperialism. He makes a strong case for the intentionality of the policies that have brought us to where we are. The end goal is concentration of all wealth in a few hands, leaving the rest of us in a state of debt peonage, with political and economic power equally concentrated.
March 3, 2021
The main argument that Parenti makes is that US foreign policy is always deliberate, and oftentimes has a very clearly identifiable driver behind it; I think he ends up making this point very well. However, I have found that in this book, as well as in Black Shirts and Reds, Parenti's ideology soaks through every single word of the book. This is not to say that any of the ideology is wrong (in fact, I agree with pretty much all of it, and read his works primarily TO hear this anti-imperialist ideology), but to the "uninitiated," I think that most of this rhetoric will not be internalized or believed. The fact that this book, again just like Black Shirts and Reds, never seems to have citations for the assertions that you want.
So in conclusion, Parenti makes a LOT of really prescient and (in my view) correct observations about the state of US foreign policy (read, US imperialism), but I think that it is too soaked in ideology to really get anyone on the fence on board with those observations.
So in conclusion, Parenti makes a LOT of really prescient and (in my view) correct observations about the state of US foreign policy (read, US imperialism), but I think that it is too soaked in ideology to really get anyone on the fence on board with those observations.
August 24, 2013
I've read many books Michael Parenti, so I knew exactly what to expect with this one. I would definitely recommend his books to anyone interested in expanding their mind on both past and current events.
August 3, 2018
As the wise philospher Kuato once said, "Open your mind."
October 15, 2025
Perhaps one of the most interesting books I’ve read this year. I really enjoyed Parenti’s writing style and conciseness, which paired really well with the theme of the book.
In summary, Parenti argues that American foreign diplomacy intentionally disrupts the globe in order to advance transnationalist corporate interests under the guise of democracy. He redefines empire and talks about its modus operandi, which relies on massive military funding at the expense of taxpayers. This global military arsenal is then used to coerce or outright invade foreign countries and transform them into subservient status or satellite states, with a compliant right-wing and oppressive ruling class at their behest. If any country opts out of this free market domination, it is met with international sanctions, and heavily propagandized about by the neoliberal media. In fact, many democratically elected governments are overthrown by the US for their unfriendliness towards privatization and global capitalism.
The liberal cognoscenti may not address it, but Parenti articulates the intentional design of imperialism, its purpose (vast natural resources, labor, and capital), benefactors (corporations and the wealthy elites), and victims (the people of developing nations). He also goes over a few in-depth victims of imperialism, such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, former-Yugoslavia, and the DPRK. None of these were cold-blooded and meaningless, but rather all intentional by design.
The book is very concise and well-researched, and I’d like to end on this quote: “when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter.”
In summary, Parenti argues that American foreign diplomacy intentionally disrupts the globe in order to advance transnationalist corporate interests under the guise of democracy. He redefines empire and talks about its modus operandi, which relies on massive military funding at the expense of taxpayers. This global military arsenal is then used to coerce or outright invade foreign countries and transform them into subservient status or satellite states, with a compliant right-wing and oppressive ruling class at their behest. If any country opts out of this free market domination, it is met with international sanctions, and heavily propagandized about by the neoliberal media. In fact, many democratically elected governments are overthrown by the US for their unfriendliness towards privatization and global capitalism.
The liberal cognoscenti may not address it, but Parenti articulates the intentional design of imperialism, its purpose (vast natural resources, labor, and capital), benefactors (corporations and the wealthy elites), and victims (the people of developing nations). He also goes over a few in-depth victims of imperialism, such as Cuba, Iran, Iraq, former-Yugoslavia, and the DPRK. None of these were cold-blooded and meaningless, but rather all intentional by design.
The book is very concise and well-researched, and I’d like to end on this quote: “when faced with a choice between democracy without capitalism or capitalism without democracy, Western elites unhesitatingly embrace the latter.”
February 24, 2021
brilliantly written as always but i especially admired the key point he brings up here continuously from the first chapter to the last about how liberals and "leftists" are inclined to believe that US leaders are stupid or inept at their job or misguided when in fact they are unwaveringly confident and competent at pursuing their real objectives which is to perpetuate global imperialism. insulting the intelligence of these leaders is not some strong heroic political act but instead only shows how much you are taken in by their deceit.
April 20, 2021
alongside Against Empire and To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia, this is a perfect primer for understanding contemporary imperialism. concise, easy to digest and extremely educational (do also watch his lectures!)
February 1, 2020
A succinct, bluntly honest overview of the imperialism of the USA, NATO, and transnational corporations and how they work together to create capitalist hegemony. My only complaint is that this book is too short (not that it needs to be longer, but I always enjoy Parenti's works).
July 22, 2020
Parenti ever a master at simply deconstructing the realities of Empire he is as brilliant here as any other of his works. A key text for anyone wishing to get to grips of the current age of capitalism and imperialism
August 25, 2021
Beginning my Parenti Marathon. I read , The Assassination of Julius Caesar, last year and put the rest of his books on my reading list. I’ve also watched a few of his interviews & lectures on YouTube . Back in the day, one of my Sociology professors lectures was on “Democracy For the Few” .
January 4, 2023
Nineteenth book from Parenti.
'To Kill a Nation' + 'Against Empire' + 'Inventing Reality' = 'The Face of Imperialism'
Don't get me wrong: I'm 100% with all the things Parenti says in this book, but let's be honest; there ain't anything new.
'To Kill a Nation' + 'Against Empire' + 'Inventing Reality' = 'The Face of Imperialism'
Don't get me wrong: I'm 100% with all the things Parenti says in this book, but let's be honest; there ain't anything new.
November 30, 2025
A classic Parenti. Good and easy to read. It was interesting to hear his opinion about a rising China (it was published in 2011). Im so curious what his opinion is about the world today. It warms my heart that this man is still alive today.
September 25, 2020
THE GOAT
October 17, 2020
Parenti hits it out of the park again!
March 10, 2024
A must read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews