dependency – ZERO ANTHROPOLOGY

Better Off Without NAFTA, Part 3: Mexico—Armed Rebellion, Mass Migration, Flat GDP

Getting Past the Propaganda We are routinely told that Mexico has grown into the “one of the more robust emerging economies with exports of about $1 billion a day”, more than 10 times what they were in 1994. CBC News, like Trump, thinks Mexico is “the big winner” of NAFTA. If it sounds improbable that […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Better Off Without NAFTA, Part 2: Canada—Localized Profit, but a Net Outflow of Capital

In Part 1, details on trade and investment between Canada and the US were presented that showed the US has run surpluses in the trade in goods and services, and more investment came into the US from Canada than the other way around. Both of these have the effect of draining capital away from Canada. […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Bare Feet

Encoding Poverty, Backwardness, and Dependency in US Military Imagery Bare feet. Ever since I was a small child, I have been made aware of how not wearing shoes was symbolically loaded with ideas of poverty, backwardness, primitiveness, or being low class. Images of barefoot people in newspapers and magazines almost always showed villagers in Africa […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Empire’s “Mimic Men”

Imperialism by Invitation or Imitation? US efforts in remaking the international system according to an image reflecting the US are not usually in complete vain since the track has already has already been cut. To continue with the analogy, US policy planners and military analysts are concerned about widening and then paving the track so […]

by Maximilian C. Forte

Independence, Nationalism, Indigeneity: Pride in Patrimony or Prostrate before Princes?

A few “random” thoughts for today, August 31, 2008, Independence Day in Trinidad and Tobago, some of which revolve around the symbolized, emblematic figure of the Amerindian in the development of a national sense of identity (something that I wrote a lot about in Ruins of Absence, Presence of Caribs. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, […]