> Deals Help China Expand Its Sway in Latin America
> By Simon Romero and Alexei Barrionuevo
> The New York Times
> April 15, 2009
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/16/world/16chinaloan.html?_r=1&hp
[Cackle]. Got to love the NY Times. When US firms invest in other countries, it's a business transaction, and only those wingnut carping Leftie critics would dare to suggest politics is involved. But when non-American countries invest in other non-American countries, it's always a singular agent ("the Chinese", "the Russians", etc.) extending its "sway", "reach", or "influence" (always a bad thing -- the US Empire never "influences", it "supports" or "encourages" or "leads").
One of the difficulties of resisting the Empire isn't just grappling with the sheer scale of the mass murder of Iraqis and Afghans, which is enough to drive any sane person screaming mad. It's the pernicious, subtle and relentless dehumanization of anyone or anything the Powers That Be define as non-American. And it can infect progressives, too, and not just of the liberal bombster type -- anger at the Empire can recoil all too quickly into fantasies of heroic non-US nation-states, the transnational version of Rousseau's noble savage. These days, I try to keep faith with the ideal of transnational solidarity, wherever or whenever it is.
-- DRR