those regions within the United States that serve as surplus labor reserves or "internal colonies," such as Appalachia, poor Black and Latino communities, Eskimo Alaska, and Native American Indian lands, manifest symptoms of Third World colonization, including chronic underemployment, hunger, inadequate income, low levels of education, inferior or nonexistent human services, absentee ownership, and extraction of profits form the indigenous community - in addition, the loss of skilled, higher-paying manufacturing jobs, traditionally held by white males, has taken its toll of working class white communities as well - so when we talk of "rich nations" and "poor nations" we must not forget that there are millions of poor in the rich nations and thousands of rich in the poor ones - as goes the verse by Bertolt Brecht: "There were conquerors and conquered - among the conquered the common people starved; among the conquerors the common people starved too" - as in Rome of old and in every empire since, the center is bled in order to fortify the periphery - the lives and treasure of the people are squandered so that patricians might pursue their far-off plunder.
[excerpts 1-10] [based on THE SWORD AND THE DOLLAR: Imperialism, Revolution, and the Arms Race, by Michael Parenti, St. Martins Press, 1989 - THE COST OF EMPIRE (pg 74-81) - Michael Parenti has been a major voice among progressives for more than 30 years - he received his Ph.D from Yale in 1964, and has since taught at several colleges and universities, including the State University of New York at Stony Brook and at Albany, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Vermont, Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, and Howard Univ. - the author of DEMOCRACY FOR THE FEW, POWER AND THE POWERLESS, and INVENTING REALITY: The Politics of the Mass Media - all published by St. Martin's Press - Parenti regularly appears on radio and television programs and lectures frequently at college campuses around the country]
The Cost of Empire - Sword and Dollar: excerpt 10
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