The most important force in recent world history is not recognized in the US corporate media or in academia as existing. That force is imperialism. One can discuss 19th century British imperialism or Soviet imperialism, but not US or Western imperialism. That is a stunning achievement of the propaganda system in the United States.

Naturally, this requires a rewriting of history, emphasizing certain things and ignoring others. Columbus is treated as a great explorer, but little or nothing is said about the enslavement of Native Americans or the torture and deaths that occurred if they didn't bring back enough gold to the Spaniards. The horrible mistreatment of Native Americans was documented in the writings of a Spanish monk named Bartolomeo de Las Casas. The Native Americans were decimated by disease and military action. Whole tribes were made extinct. Then, there occurred the enslavement of Africans and the millions of slaves who suffered and died in the holds of ships or in mines and on plantations.

Fast forward to the present day. Indigenous people are still under attack. Shell Oil Company and Chevron-Texaco have caused great environmental damage to the land of the Ogoni people in Nigeria. Unocal is using forced labor from indigenous people on its pipeline in Burma. Freeport McMoran is using its own police and Indonesian troops to take land from indigenous people in New Guinea. The Uwa people in Colombia have threatened mass suicide in an attempt to protect their land from Occidental Petroleum. The United Fruit Company was deeply involved along with the CIA in the 1954 coup in Guatemala that led to the torture and deaths of tens of thousands of Mayan Indians.

At the present time there exists deplorable conditions, child labor and starvation wages in sweatshops used by multinational corporations in Third World countries. There are the death squads that kill union organizers, peasant leaders, human rights workers, intellectuals, priests, progressive students and anyone else who advocates better conditions for the poor. Many of these death squad leaders are trained at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Georgia. Massacres of peasants occur in Mexico, Colombia and other countries as part of the strategy of low-intensity warfare, promulgated by the United States throughout the Third World after Vietnam.

The American people are horribly shocked to learn of these things, but they shouldn't be. It is a continuation of over 500 years of imperialism. It is not the fault of the Cold War or of anticommunism. The exploitative economic systems haven't changed, so why should the results? It would be illogical to think so.

The US corporate media treat sweatshops, police and military repression, death squads, torture, etc. as aberrations with no historical context or precedents. In other words, it is not imperialism, but a few misguided or evil people to blame. That is very functional. Either force or deception must be used so the multinational corporations can continue to profit at the expense of the majority of the world's population.