This text is strongly based on "The Finance Curse" article, published by Tax Justice Network. The original article shows that countries hosting oversized financial services can suffer big damages on their economic growth and development like oil-rich nations (the well-known resource curse), and often for similar reasons.

Our goal here is to illustrate another similar fate for countries relying upon imperialist ideology.

The most relevant part is the way citizens in UK have organized themselves into lobbying groups for better understanding the underlying problems around tax evasion, oversized financial services in their own country, and have sustained since years the debate on deep political reforms (in UK and elsewhere), with more and more success. 

It is my hope that U.S. citizens will continue to organize themselves into lobbying groups for understanding the underlying problem around the real current state of civil liberties, oversized military and intelligence services in their own country, and will be able to grow successfully the debate on deep political reforms. 

This counter-revolution in ideas will not save everybody but it could save the most, and that's why the quicker is the better.

The Imperium Curse

A "resource curse" affects certain mineral- and oil-rich nations damaging their economic growth and development. Many countries receiving large windfalls from their mineral resources fail to harness them for national development - and it can be even worse than that: many countries seem to be 'cursed' by their minerals in the form of higher poverty, more conflict, greater corruption, steeper inequality, greater authoritarianism and slower economic growth than their resource-poor peers.

The Finance Curse, a May 2013 e-book by Nicholas Shaxson, author of Treasure Islands, and John Christensen, Director of the Tax Justice Network, shows that countries hosting oversized financial services can suffer similar fates, and often for similar reasons. 

We have discussed in this text that an "Imperium Curse" is also existing for the U.S., and shown that a country hosting oversized military and intelligence services is suffering similar fates, and for similar reasons. 

Our work, complementing a number of other studies, argues that oversized military and intelligence sectors harm their host countries by, among other things:

• weakening long term growth and social development;
• acting like cuckoos crowding out productive, sustainable industrial sectors;
• exaggerating and routinely overstating their social contribution to gain distorting government subsidies (a.k.a. military Keynesianism), lax democratic regulation and influence crucial political decisions;
• playing a key role in creating a “spider's web” of (para-)military groups and secret prisons;
• capturing whole political systems, leading to authoritarianism; and
• generating and extracting unproductive and harmful economic ‘rents’ (the business sector collusion with powers known as a typical figure of fascism).

Every economy needs its defense forces, and for decades (neo-)conservative ideology generally held that bigger is better. But since the recent global war to terror emerged new research from Pr. Chalmers Johnson, Pr. Peter Scott Dale, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts or leaks from Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and many others, has shown that defense sector development is healthy only up to a point, after which it starts to turn bad and harm growth and democracy.

The Imperium Curse is summarised in the term "Country Capture" which involves both the political capture of military-dependent economies by military and intelligence services interests, plus the economic capture of whole economies as the defense sector crowds out other sectors. The studies shows not only that the gross 'contribution' of military and intelligence services that is widely reported in media articles (i.e. the 'national security' argument) is usually much smaller than advertised: but once the range of harms flowing from having oversized military and intelligence sectors is taken into account, the net 'contribution' is strongly negative.

The inevitable counter-revolution of the American people (The U.S. in 20th/21st c., Part 2)

Here is the introduction of my article published this month in the Magazine of Political Anticipation (M.A.P.) number 8, which is freely available in several translations: french, english, german, spanish.

Please note that another version of this article, longer than the one published in the M.A.P., is also available but only in french for the moment. This one represents the part 2 in this serie 'The U.S. in 20th/21st c.'.
Part 1 is here.

Updated 05/2014: Part 3 is now available.

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The inevitable counter-revolution of the American people

(translation : Ian Shaw)

The American Republic has seen extraordinary and continuous changes since September 2001. We must call these changes a revolution, or a permanent coup, which has gradually rolled back the US Republic’s institutions to the level of simple charades. This revolution is a Great Decline, i.e. a movement which will only be reversed with the victory of a counter-revolution led by the American people, the first signs of existence of which are seeing the light of day. At the end of this long fight, none of the current federal institutions will survive without being, at best, deeply changed.

The global systemic crisis is, above all, reflected as a crisis of the status quo, which characterizes an era when changes, although present and deep-seated, are very few and far from perceptible on the surface or in the mainstream media. The crisis therefore acts as an unmasking, together with acceleration in the dynamics of change, while preserving the major trends. This is why it’s essential to examine the American Republic’s progression from a dynamic angle, instead of a frozen image usually limited to a snapshot of the situation. 

We identify four principal forces, often opposing, of time-varying intensity and the result of which at each instant explains the situation in the past, present and future: 

• the dynamic of morals, which produces ideologies at the core of society ;
• the social dynamic of exchanges between individuals, produced by the dominant ideology (which includes, amongst others, all the elements of classic economic analysis) ;
• the external dynamic, that put to work by other countries through relations (trade, financial, monetary, military, political etc.) between governments and organizations; foreign policy aiming at influencing these relations to obtain effects favourable to the country ; 
• the internal political dynamic, produced by the relationship between citizens, organizations and the federal government, and of which justice is an essential part.

A thought unsuited to the 21st century

The dynamic of morals is that which evolves the slowest. The creation and especially the airing of ideology in society require decades. Neoliberalism is dominant, and an environmental policy is still in its infancy in the US. In the corridors of power, the ideology of a strong executive has obliterated any other idea.

The progressive forces are disorganized and in the babble major media is reduced to only produce individual resistance strategies at best, otherwise warnings or wake-up calls for comfortably numb minds, but not political organizations to spread fundamentally new ideas of social justice. Religion only has a role as custodian, unlike what occurred in South Africa. Citizens are reduced to accumulating rations and ammunition whilst waiting for worst, and that’s why it’s what will happen.

[...]

After this introduction you can read the remaining part and the references used for this article by downloading the free and newly released Magazine of Political Anticipation number 8. The article is page 11 to 17. 

The 9/11 attacks in historical perspective

On September 8, 2012 President Obama marks the eleventh anniversary of the September 11th with asserting that America’s questions about 9/11 have been answered.

Still, the unanswered questions of 9/11 are numerous and of critical importance. As a keystone, the whole U.S. society needs to know the truth about 9/11. 

In memory of the U.S. democratic Republic, I publish today a compilation of historical facts and famous texts over one century, with a focus on the last 11 years. We must remember that each path is a sum of steps.

• The military Keynesianism of the U.S. and the Road to Tyranny - The U.S. in 20th/21st century, Part1 (online with all the links to sources I used, 40 pages you can comment but not edit)

I also used the term "deep state capitalism" in reference to Pr. Peter Dale Scott's books about deep politics.

'The U.S. in 20th/21st century, Part 2' will be published in the next few weeks, including a political anticipation about the US.
(04/02/2013: done, see the update below!)

Update 09/19/2012 :
I love the "release soon, release often" principle. To publish an early draft allowed me to bring my attention on P.D. Scott's last books, and I found that my small contribution is like a very short summary of his "Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America" published in 2007, sharing the exact same spirit up to the choice of words in titles :)
My contribution is complementary, covering military budgets and events since 2007 or during the first part of XXth century, and is free, but I strongly recommend to buy his book for much much more details about  historical and political facts and references since the 60's.

Update 02/25/2013 :

Even closer in the transdisciplinary approach I'm using, my small compilation is also a relevant introduction to Chalmers Johnson's prominent "Blowback" trilogy, and specially the last volume: Nemesis - The last days of the American Republic. Do not miss it !

Update 04/02/2013 :

'The U.S. in 20th/21st century, Part 2' has been published in the Magazine of Political Anticipation in français, deutsch, english, español.