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Part 2:  The crimes against the people of other countries.  

A.  Violence in pursuit of wealth.  The dehumanization of people who cannot defend themselves.  Slavery.  Lies to confuse, mislead, manipulate, disenfranchise, disarm, conquer and control.

Columbus did not discover America.  Millions of people were living here before he showed up.  World history is often taught as if history itself is just a long series of wars and worriers in pursuit of conquest.  Nothing new about that.  It's what people, and civilizations do.  They kill each other in pursuit of wealth, power, glory and security.  Why stop now.  

Once a nation acquires a certain level of wealth and power, the leaders of the ruling class say to themselves... "Hmmm, you know, we're powerful now beyond our wildest dreams.  Do you know what that means...?  Now we are within reach of the ultimate prize... we can have it all because no one can stop us now.  Maybe if we play our cards right we really can...conquer the world...."  And so an idea is born... and matures into a dream... and factories are put to work, multinational corporations line up... and the die is cast.  Inch by inch, country by country.  We take what we want.  Get used to it.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20246.htm

But war these days is a lot more sophisticated than it used to be.  I recommend to you the book, Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, by John Perkins.  Here we get an inside story of how countries come under the thumb of the US and multinational corporations.  From the preface of his enlightening book...

Economic hit men (EHMs) are highly paid professionals who cheat countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.  They funnel money from the World Bank, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), and other foreign "aid" organizations into the coffers of huge corporations and the pockets of a few wealthy families who control the planet's natural resources.  Their tools include fraudulent reports, rigged elections, payoffs, extortion, sex, and murder.  They play a game as old as empire, but one that has taken on new and terrifying dimensions during this time of globalization.  
  I should know; I was an EHM.

Perkins tells the story of his career and how he came to be an EHM and how it all works.  For example, a short version might look something like this:  consultants are called by senior level government officials of a third world country.  They are interested in some ideas on how to boost economic development.  The EHM might suggest that what they might need is a new dam.  They are commissioned to do a study.  The study is a classy presentation put together by well positioned MBAs, lawyers, PhDs, all with impressive credentials who conclude that yes indeed, a dam would be great.  It will create jobs, supply the country with needed electrical power, boost GDP, etc. all proved with fancy graphs and economic projections.  The only problem is it will cost a few Billion dollars.  But no worry, the World Bank will lend the money at favorable rates and it will all work out because the benefits of the project is a sure thing.  We begin my moving thousands of poor people off their land and a great painful migration begins .  Now all along the EHM know that the dam will never produce the benefits claimed.  When it fails to bring in the economic goods, the country ends up owing the World Bank money it will never be able to pay back.  The economy is devastated. Now the World Bank offers to lend more money until the funds can be somehow be raised perhaps by gutting the country's successful welfare program, but there are also other conditions.  What might they be... well, there's a multinational corporation that wants to build a plant and the US wants to build a base but neither has been able to get the ok from the governing body.  And on and on it goes until the country is stripped of it's sovereignty and little by little the government has no choice but to take orders from a very large creditor, for who is the enforcer here.  Well, maybe it's the US State Dept with the backing of the CIA.  Soon the people of that country are sacrificed to US interests.  The actual scenario might look a little different from what I've described, but you get the general idea.  Eventually, certain groups within the target country try to stand up for themselves and then one thing leads to another and we have a military conflict on our hands.  The public knows nothing about any of these dealings so it is easy for the US to put in place a disinformation propaganda strategy that paints the antagonists as terrorists or Marxist revolutionaries or whatever, and we're the good guys and support our troops because we're fighting for freedom and democracy. Eventually we have a client state.  We own the resources, the people suffer.

A (short) People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn

...more to come.

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