#consolidated commodore

[stone-cold-groove]

A Consolidated Commodore flying boat of the New York, Rio & Buenos Aires Line cruising over the Rio de Janeiro harbor.

[the1920sinpictures]

1930 Passenger cabin on the New York, Rio & Buenos Aires Line Consolidated Commodore Airline. Those were the days! From Golden Age Travel 1830-1955, FB.

[tortoisesshells]

3, 6, and 13 please!

3. ... that encompasses my style:

It's got marine ooze, it's got something wrong going on in the background, and it's meandering through thoughts without much dialogue. From One's A'self encounter - In lonesome place.

Maura Franklin found that she did not like the Prometheus any better on second acquaintance than she had at the first: the deck was cold underfoot – slick, too, but not only with the marine damp she had accustomed herself to. If she were to bend down, she was sure she would find some silty, primordial ooze, as though the Prometheus had been slumbering at Captain Larsen’s four thousand meters, and only lately returned to the surface. It was not only her vocational hatred of dirt that made her loathe to check her guess. That was not to say it didn’t tempt – the ragged swathes of some kind of sea-weed that almost remind her of something, the glittering of sediment within the muck. There was something terrible to it – too much discordant information, pointing to wild impossibilities. A sunken ship could not be raised four thousand meters, unless by a miracle, or something like it; it seemed impossible to her eye that the Prometheus could get into such a state without going beneath the waves, somehow. What little she understood of these matters – an item in the papers, now and again, glimpsed under a mug of coffee at her desk – an Irishman turned American named Holland, how could she forget something like that –

6. ... that I struggled with, but triumphed over:

There's a passage in Customs, ch. 25, that took three or four drafts to get the infodump-iness to a manageable size, by way of trying to weld potc into reality.

Lieutenant Gillette did not say where he expected Britain to enter such a conflict, which made Theo assume – with a kind of superiority he admitted was unwarranted – that Lieutenant Gillette was not privy to such knowledge, either. So much for Commodore Clinton’s flag lieutenant, he thought snidely. “It was this Charles who had claimed Spain’s throne in 1701,” said Norrington, by way of speculating where Gillette’s knowledge had fallen short, speaking of the war they had both been born into, “Though he driven off by his cousin, the current Philip.” “Has this Philip a claim on the Austrian throne?” “I doubt it. He was made to relinquish his claim on the French throne as a condition of the end of the late wars; I cannot imagine any power would consent to such a consolidation now. But he is still French.” Calling this the late war was eliding several smaller wars, but it was not worth belaboring the point: Britain was poised to fight Spain over several slights (imagined or otherwise), its right to sell slaves in Spanish territory, and to suit the humors of bullish braggarts in Parliament; wherever Spain went, then Britain would likely be opposite, and France and Spain had far more in common than they had with Britain, anyway. This was to be the shape of things, then – little wars strung together into a great strand of blood – Theo was conscious of wrinkling his nose at this, the wine muddling his metaphors. Thank God Norrington couldn’t hear his thoughts! The many sources of such conflict, on an imagined globe, bled outward, like wine dropped on white linen, leaving precious little space unblemished.

13. ... that helped me understand a character better:

I think she feels a little too Austen-y, but I liked writing Elizabeth in the vain title take Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war -; sorting through what she knows and what she feels, before weighing her instinct a little heavier than the incomplete evidence she has.

And what was a wife but an ornament? On the infrequent occasions he hosted gatherings, Elizabeth and all of Port Royal society could wander past the blades of vanquished opponents as regularly as the more fashionable curios and shelves; Elizabeth could not help but think of the two crossed swords of the French and Dutch garrison commanders of Saint Martin, and how six years ago her father and all of Port Royal society had fallen over their own shoes to compliment young Captain Norrington on so great an accomplishment at so young an age and with so few men under his command – and how that had mirrored so exactly what he had said to her this morning – What I have not yet achieved. As if marriage were simply one more item on a list, a hedge to be hurdled as he sprinted towards his inevitable promotion to Admiral, and very likely eventually a seat on the Board of Admiralty – Though what he needed the Swann influence for there – with his late cousin Byng for many years the senior Naval Lord – There was something in that, Elizabeth thought, though she was reluctant to pull at the loose end of thought; it seemed nearly kind to attribute Commodore Norrington’s conduct to the workings of the human heart, and – life-debt or no – Elizabeth was not feeling kindly inclined. She was feeling cornered – again, as though this had all been fore-ordained, and she was being yanked along through her paces, like a puppet. As though no matter what she said or did, she would always be returned to the same well-rutted path that wealthy, well-bred women trod between the cradle and the grave.

Send me a number and I'll share an excerpt of my writing!

[zeemczed]

Fallout but Punk, Aggressively 80's, and British.

I've had these ideas floating around for ages. I'm fairly certain I've written some of them down, but... eh. Consider this a consolidation.

-You have a choice between four Pip-boy analogues at the start of the game - based on the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64, BBC Micro, and Amstrad CPC. Each one changes gameplay a little (frozen VATS versus slo-mo versus aim assist versus no tactical mode but other bonuses, different hacking minigames, able to access different kinds of machinery with hacking).

-Zombie!Margaret Thatcher is the Queen. This is a disaster for every reason regular Margaret Thatcher was.

-Fewer regular firearms, more weird-ass contraptions that look like they'll blow you up too.

-Scottish claymores. Because.

-Several radio stations. Your "main" station is, of course, a Radio Caroline analogue playing all the rock and early punk you could want.

-The Doctor shows up in one quest, because of course he does.

-(Probably the 7th. Because Ace.)

-EVERY major faction has a mission where you have to raid the British Museum.

-Strong emphasis on crafting, because of course you have to make the tools you need to destroy the system.

[the-outer-topic]

1930 Consolidated Model 16 Commodore NYRBA Line (New York, Rio, Buenos Aires Line) - Keith Woodcock

[arc-77]

The Arc Hammer was a dreadnought-sized factory ship that would go on to serve as the primary development hub and production facility for the Dark Trooper (battle droid) Project, as well General Rom Mohc's flagship.

It is a very large ship, little under half the size of the Executor.

Being an existing ship not specifically designed for Mohc's purposes, the Arc Hammer was quickly converted in the months following the Death Star's destruction as funds were diverted toward the Dark Trooper Project. In its lean years before the Battle of Yavin, the project relied on remote stations like those on Fest and Anteevy to refine its phrik alloys and produce its components. The Arc Hammer consolidated all these efforts in-house, requiring only the raw materials from mines it could travel between in secret.

Though its processes were largely automated, the Arc Hammer's crew contained a large number of subject-matter experts in the fields of advanced robotics and phrik alloys. When the ship was destroyed, the ensuing loss of knowledge and experience was palpable.

Owing to his role as General Rom Mohc's protégé, Commodore Fordo had a suite aboard the Arc Hammer and a hangar bay spacious enough to dock his personal corvette. Ultimately, Fordo would not spend much time on the ship in in its year and a half of service under Mohc, instead chasing after rebels that threatened the project's success.

[tembusugrandsingaporeb]

Grand Hyatt New York Hotel's $130 Million Renovation

Initially opened as The Commodore Lodging in 1919 and reflagged as The Great Hyatt New York in 1980, the inn has played host to numerous dignitaries, superstars and visitors for a long time. The lodgings $130 million redesign addresses a resurrection and resurgence of this notable inn and is a significant piece of the general renaissance of the Great Focal area.

ALSO VISIT:-10 Great Reasons to Invest in Alhaurin El Grande Property

Situated in Midtown Manhattan, the amazing Excellent Hyatt New York has recently finished its $130 million redesign. Found at the intersection of Manhattan contiguous Terrific Focal Station, the lodging has had a start to finish remodel that incorporates 1,306 carefully updated guestrooms and suites including top notch craftsmanship, the acclaimed New York Focal café, a changed hall and mezzanine, numerous occasion and meeting spaces, rejuvenated assembly halls and the creative in and out food outlet, Market.

Change of the Stupendous Hyatt New York highlights abilities by universally eminent specialists Jaume Plensa and Per Fronth, and plan by Bentel and Bentel, George Wong Plan and Looney and Partners. The Midtown Manhattan lavish lodging dispatched craftsmen and architects to re-quicken and recharge the inns public spots. Works by stone carver Jaume Plensa, known for his fantastic public activities in Madison Square Park in New York, Thousand years Park in Chicago and Yorkshire Figure Park in the UK, will act as the lodging entryway's focal point; paintings addressing depictions of New York by Norwegian craftsman per Fronth are displayed in the guestrooms and in the New York Focal's Wine Exhibition; and dynamic, brilliant boards from the German craftsman Burghard Muller-Dannhausen should be visible in the New Exhibition on Lex occasion space.

The Stupendous Hyatt New York

The Anteroom - Traces of Easter Island Rejuvenated

Visitors showing up in the amazing entryway on their immediate occasions to New York will wonder about the two awesome models by Jaume Plensa, named Awilda and Chloe, which are suggestive of the Moai figures on Easter Island. Made from a similar white macael marble utilized in old Roman sections, one stands in a 'water wall' contiguous the entry, while the second sits on a white onyx stone plinth by the appearances and takeoffs region. Plensa made the figures to have all the earmarks of being in a fanciful state, wanting to urge the hurried world to pause and get some down time to join the fantasy of individuals simply attempting to be content where they are, the point at which they are at the Great Hyatt.

Guestrooms and Suites - Inspiring the Mind-set of a Manhattan Home

The 1,306 guestrooms, including 51 suites, consolidate refined colors, lavish surfaces and rich work of art inspiring the plan of a smooth, current Manhattan home. Planned by Looney and Partners of Dallas and George Wong Plan of New York, the rooms offer a quiet safe-haven, a long way from the buzzing about of the downtown area beneath. Most of the guestrooms were planned by Looney and Partners with rich woods, profoundly conditioned pinstripe covering, emotional lighting, all motivated by the idea of a 'hot Manhattan condo'. The 20 celebrity Suites were likewise planned by Looney and Partners and deal two unmistakable ideas; the possibility of a 'space' and the possibility of a cutting edge 'home'. The Space Suites are ideal for business explorers with a sensation of manliness and plan components including coffee colored pecan decorations and extravagant parlor regions, while the Home Suites offer a milder tone and a more unbiased feel.

The four Chief Suites, planned by George Won Plan, depend on the idea of the 'pied-a-terre' and include two fundamental plans; uptown and downtown. The Uptown Suites catch the tones of an exemplary Manhattan condo while the Midtown Suites are motivated by the light and breezy open lofts of TriBeCa.

The Fantastic Club and Get-together Space

The Fantastic Club, intended to look like a housetop garden, is a private style gathering place for visitors, with admittance to innovation, workspaces and food and refreshments. Planned by George Wong, this cutting edge space is loaded up with warm wood surfaces, sage shaded walls and retro-modern metalwork which reflect different components of nature. Encircled by a confidential patio with outdoor tables and curiously large parlor seats, the club includes a section hall looking like a gazebo, a lounge with different seating regions, a morning meal room with regular wood and stone surfaces and a breezy studio. The lodging has a sum of 55,000 sq ft of occasion space going from private meeting rooms to sweeping dance halls. Display On Lex is a 4,400 sq ft occasion region with a club-like feel including beautiful boards from German craftsman Burghard Muller-Dannhausen.

Food and Drink Choices

Planned by Bentel and Bentel, the 6,000 sq ft New York Focal eatery incorporates a parlor, café and wine exhibition highlighting WineStation innovation, an inventive wine apportioning framework permitting visitors to taste a wide range of wines. Gourmet expert Christian Ragano offers a different menu enlivened by the kinds of Western Europe while head cake culinary specialist Katzie Fellow Hamilton has a creative style, mixing exemplary French baking procedures with varied New York City taste.

Market is a 24-hour 'in and out' outlet situated in the primary lodging hall, offering delicious New York treats to inn visitors and the Fabulous Focal area.

[tembusugrandhere]

Grand Hyatt New York Hotel's $130 Million Renovation

Initially opened as The Commodore Lodging in 1919 and reflagged as The Great Hyatt New York in 1980, the inn has played host to numerous dignitaries, famous people and visitors for a long time. The inns $130 million remodel addresses a resurrection and resurgence of this notable inn and is a significant piece of the general renaissance of the Great Focal area.

Tembusu Grand

Situated in Midtown Manhattan, the unbelievable Great Hyatt New York has quite recently finished its $130 million redesign. Found at the intersection of Manhattan neighboring Great Focal Station, the inn has had a start to finish remodel that incorporates 1,306 fastidiously upgraded guestrooms and suites highlighting top notch work of art, the acclaimed New York Focal café, a changed entryway and mezzanine, numerous occasion and meeting spaces, rejuvenated dance halls and the imaginative in and out food outlet, Market.

Change of the Terrific Hyatt New York highlights gifts by universally famous craftsmen Jaume Plensa and Per Fronth, and plan by Bentel and Bentel, George Wong Plan and Looney and Partners. The Midtown Manhattan lavish lodging appointed specialists and fashioners to re-vitalize and recharge the inns public spots. Works by stone carver Jaume Plensa, known for his stupendous public tasks in Madison Square Park in New York, Thousand years Park in Chicago and Yorkshire Model Park in the UK, will act as the lodging anteroom's highlight; paintings addressing depictions of New York by Norwegian craftsman per Fronth are displayed in the guestrooms and in the New York Focal's Wine Exhibition; and lively, vivid boards from the German craftsman Burghard Muller-Dannhausen should be visible in the New Display on Lex occasion space.

The Excellent Hyatt New York

The Anteroom - Traces of Easter Island Rejuvenated

Visitors showing up in the excellent anteroom on their immediate occasions to New York will wonder about the two amazing figures by Jaume Plensa, named Awilda and Chloe, which are suggestive of the Moai models on Easter Island. Made from a similar white macael marble utilized in old Roman sections, one stands in a 'water wall' contiguous the entry, while the second sits on a white onyx stone plinth by the appearances and flights region. Plensa made the models to seem, by all accounts, to be in a fanciful state, expecting to urge the hurried world to pause and get some down time to join the fantasy of individuals simply attempting to be content where they are, the point at which they are at the Stupendous Hyatt.

Guestrooms and Suites - Bringing out the State of mind of a Manhattan Home

The 1,306 guestrooms, including 51 suites, consolidate refined colors, lavish surfaces and lush craftsmanship inspiring the plan of a smooth, present day Manhattan home. Planned by Looney and Partners of Dallas and George Wong Plan of New York, the rooms offer a quiet safe-haven, a long way from the hurrying around of the downtown area underneath. Most of the guestrooms were planned by Looney and Partners with rich woods, profoundly conditioned pinstripe covering, sensational lighting, all motivated by the idea of a 'provocative Manhattan loft'. The 20 celebrity Suites were likewise planned by Looney and Partners and proposition two unmistakable ideas; the possibility of a 'space' and the possibility of a cutting edge 'home'. The Space Suites are ideal for business explorers with a sensation of manliness and plan components including coffee colored pecan goods and rich parlor regions, while the Home Suites offer a milder tone and a more unbiased feel.

The four Head Suites, planned by George Won Plan, depend on the idea of the 'pied-a-terre' and include two primary plans; uptown and downtown. The Uptown Suites catch the tones of an exemplary Manhattan condo while the Midtown Suites are motivated by the light and breezy open lofts of TriBeCa.

The Fabulous Club and Get-together Space

The Fabulous Club, intended to look like a housetop garden, is a private style gathering place for visitors, with admittance to innovation, workspaces and food and refreshments. Planned by George Wong, this advanced space is loaded up with warm wood surfaces, sage hued walls and retro-modern metalwork which reflect different components of nature. Encircled by a confidential porch with outdoor tables and curiously large parlor seats, the club includes a section lobby looking like a gazebo, a lounge with numerous seating regions, a morning meal room with regular wood and stone surfaces and a breezy center. The lodging has a sum of 55,000 sq ft of occasion space going from private meeting rooms to broad dance halls. Display On Lex is a 4,400 sq ft occasion region with a club-like feel including beautiful boards from German craftsman Burghard Muller-Dannhausen.

Food and Refreshment Choices

Planned by Bentel and Bentel, the 6,000 sq ft New York Focal café incorporates a parlor, eatery and wine display highlighting WineStation innovation, an inventive wine administering framework permitting visitors to taste a wide range of wines. Culinary specialist Christian Ragano offers a different menu roused by the kinds of Western Europe while head cake gourmet expert Katzie Fellow Hamilton has an innovative style, mixing exemplary French baking methods with varied New York City taste.

Market is a 24-hour 'in and out' outlet situated in the primary inn entryway, offering scrumptious New York treats to inn visitors and the Excellent Focal area.

[hydralisk98]

Neue GeoSyndie software to manifest or implement

VeneraFS (RedSeaFS from ZealOS but implemented in Community Lisp for open source operating systems)

Maxima (Analog knowledge bank network like Memex & Mundaneum)

CLADO (Early major operating system organized like a tree of sapient nodes, think XXIIVV's Paradise/Parade systems)

DIS (Union of DOS & ITS, a simpler operating system similar to Unix/BSD)

INMOS (Shared-source Soviet-like operating system similar to PhantomOS with rudimentary CDE desktop environment support)

UTAL (A high-level "natural-ish" language for machines among a couple more in my constructed world, relatively similar to XXIIVV's Tal language)

Perseus (Consolidation of CLADO, DIS & INMOS into a shared operational basis for most computation systems, like how POSIX is the standard)

SASS 96, 98, 99, 2000 (EBM's own take on desktop environments, akin to Microsoft BOB & Windows 3.11)

Synod (ZealOS)

Nomad (Microkernel similar to a Minix3 with ZealOS flavor)

MESA / VANO (desktop environment like KDE & CDE)

4KWER (Cardfile / Hypercard like system for multimedia slideshows and games)

Fidel (Functional programming language form Macroware)

MATRA (Hypermedia content framework like OpenXanadu)

Prospero (DAO-style of decentralized open source game similar to Gmod, Quakeworld and Valve's cancelled game of the same name, engine feels like a grandiose mix of Quake's + BUILD2 at once)

Utalics (Major software developer using their very own Lisp library of Common Lisp additional utilities, and recently started making Sifteo/VMU-like computing cards for Pflaumen machines)

Pflaumen (Major hardware agency derived from Konrad Zuse's works as well as DEC, Commodore & Apple to make open source computing devices and cyberware)

OpenTurin (OpenIndiana / Haiku operating system with rich user interface customization & profound system settings)

[airmanisr]

Consolidated Commodore by Batman_60 Via Flickr: Pan American, Treasure Island, San Francisco, 1940 at the Golden Gate International Exposition. "Training Plane No.1".

[krjpalmer]

Amiga World July 1992

As “multimedia” on CD-ROM started showing up on other kinds of personal computers instead of just “set-top boxes,” an add-on CD drive for the Amiga 500 appeared at last on this issue’s cover, with an add-on keyboard and other peripherals for the CDTV also covered inside (although an “Editor’s Note” added to the article mentioned “Commodore officials were expressing some doubts” about whether the drive would show up after all...) In his editorial, Doug Barney marked the passing of .info, a particular gadfly among Commodore magazines (which I’ve looked through with interest, even if I didn’t get to the point of chronicling it here) that had long made a big deal of being desktop published using Commodore hardware. He hastened to add this only marked some necessary consolidation in the Commodore magazine market, mentioning there were only two major magazines for the Macintosh.

[ultranos]

What if instead of conquering the world because of Fire Nation's supposed superiority Sozin had decided to adopt an isolationist policy similar to Japon from Edo era (Tokugawa shogunate). Do you think the avatar and the others nations would have attempted to overthrow the Fire Lord in order to open border and "restore balance" the same way US Navy forced the opening of Japan with the Kanagawa Treaty ?

That’s an interesting question. The isolationist policies (known as sakoku) imposed initially by Tokugawa Iemitsu were at least partially to diminish the growing influence of European Christian missionaries and restricting possible-rivals’ ability to trade with foreigners.

This was also a time period where Europeans were really getting into imperialism and colonizing the hell out of everyone else. At the time, the major European players Japan had contact with were Spain and Portugal. Honestly, the Tokugawa were kind of rightfully wary of becoming just another country owned by them. So in one sense, sakoku was not just a way for the Tokugawa to consolidate their own power, but also as a way of resisting colonialism and keeping foreign powers from pillaging their natural resources. (For example, the Japanese absolutely saw what happened to China during the First Opium war, as they were not completely cut off from all outside contact. By that point in the 1840s, sakoku was probably looking really clever.)

When Commodore Perry showed up (more than once!) with fleets of US warships and threatened pretty much burn Edo to the ground (Edo/Tokyo, by the way, was mostly made of wood at this point), he pretty much forced the Japanese into the unequal Kanagawa Treaty by fear and blatant disrespect. A treaty which was pretty much to pry Japan open for US economic profit.

So knowing this, it pretty much puts the Avatar and the Fire Nation is the exact opposite places than they are in canon. As far as it would look from the outside, the Fire Nation would be a place that mostly kept to themselves and didn’t bother anyone else with their internal warring and attempting to end that isolation is questionable, especially if the citizens inside it are actually mostly fine.

It’s a fascinating idea, though, and could be interesting in a kind of mirror-AU or dark Avatar AU. It’s at least possibly less problematic than some of the less-nuanced/thoughtful “dark Water Tribe” script-flipping AUs.

[portiaadams]

Why, is that Arnold and Carolyn Rothstein at the most awkward dinner party in Atlantic City history? Yes, yes it is.

"Perhaps you should have kept tighter reigns on our colts, Nucky. What better way to consolidate power than marrying my son to your daughter?" the Commodore refused to let the matter drop.

"If you wanted us to grow up and marry, we shouldn't have been raised as siblings," Clara said softly before brightening her voice and saying loudly, "Has anyone seen The Green Goddess since it opened on Broadway? I saw it in tryouts here, but I read the staging in New York is delightful."

"Yes, Arthur and I just saw it. The Booth is the perfect theater for the sets. You really feel like you are in the Himalayas..." Carolyn Rothstein begins, seeing Clara's efforts to salvage dinner.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but let me refute Clara's point," The Commodore interrupts. "It probably was a mistake to leave James to be raised by the Thompsons."

Silence falls over the table. "Well, you know what they say about Nucky," Eddie Cantor interjects, "He hasn't an enemy in the world, but his friends all hate him." The table laughs and falls back into individual conversations. 

Read More

[antoine-roquentin]

It is hard to give up something you claim you never had. That is the difficulty Americans face with respect to their country’s empire. Since the era of Theodore Roosevelt, politicians, journalists, and even some historians have deployed euphemisms—“expansionism,” “the large policy,” “internationalism,” “global leadership”—to disguise America’s imperial ambitions. According to the exceptionalist creed embraced by both political parties and most of the press, imperialism was a European venture that involved seizing territories, extracting their resources, and dominating their (invariably dark-skinned) populations. Americans, we have been told, do things differently: they bestow self-determination on backward peoples who yearn for it. The refusal to acknowledge that Americans have pursued their own version of empire—with the same self-deceiving hubris as Europeans—makes it hard to see that the US empire might (like the others) have a limited lifespan. All empires eventually end, but maybe an exceptional force for global good could last forever—or so its champions seem to believe.

The refusal to contemplate the scaling back of empire shuts down what ought to be our most urgent foreign policy debate before it has even begun. That is why these two new books are so necessary, and so welcome: they are the most serious efforts since Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback series (2004–2010) to reopen the question of American empire by taking for granted that it exists. Victor Bulmer-Thomas’s Empire in Retreat maintains that America has harbored imperial ambitions since its founding, and argues that its focus shifted in the twentieth century, from acquiring territory to penetrating foreign countries and influencing their governments to support US strategic and economic interests. David Hendrickson’s Republic in Peril sees that shift as the result of a decisive embrace of interventionism, aimed at extending US power throughout the world.

Both authors think withdrawal from overextended military commitments could strengthen America. Bulmer-Thomas, a British diplomat and scholar, recommends it as a pragmatic adjustment to shrinking support for US empire at home and abroad. Hendrickson, a political scientist at Colorado College, provides a theoretical rationale for it, exploring the possibility of what he calls a new internationalism, based on respect for the sovereignty of other nations. Yet even as they catalog the many signs of imperial decline (economic, political, cultural), neither is sanguine that American policymakers can manage a graceful retreat.

Bulmer-Thomas begins by recounting the rise of the US territorial empire. He shows that America’s relationship with the land it acquired during westward expansion resembled the relationship between European countries and their colonies abroad. The United States, like European colonial powers, subjugated (and nearly exterminated) aboriginal populations; used military occupation as a buffer between white settlers and rebellious natives; and established only limited representative governments in their occupied territories. One resident of America’s territories complained that they were treated like “mere colonies, occupying much the same relation to the General Government as the colonies did to the British government prior to the Revolution.”

Most textbooks date the beginning of America’s overseas expansion to 1898, when it acquired sovereignty over Cuba, Guam, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines after the conclusion of its war with Spain. Yet as Bulmer-Thomas shows, the US empire went offshore much earlier. During the 1810s and 1820s, Americans carved out the state of Liberia in West Africa, allegedly as a refuge for free American blacks; the country in fact functioned as an American colony and later as a protectorate of the Firestone Rubber Company. The US established an imperial presence in East Asia as early as 1844, when the Treaty of Wanghia gave it the same privileged access to Chinese ports as the British Empire, and went on to acquire dozens of “guano islands” in the Pacific, where abundant bird droppings provided a rich source of fertilizer.

During the 1890s, the American zeal for distant acquisitions slipped into high gear, as politicians realized they were arriving late to the imperial game. Led by Theodore Roosevelt and other advocates of expansion, they sought land through annexation and collaboration with American business interests (Hawaii) as well as through war with Spain. These acquisitions began as additions to the territorial empire but gradually acquired a more ambiguous character. They came to form the foundation of what Bulmer-Thomas calls America’s “semi-global empire,” built not on territorial acquisition but on the maintenance of client states and various other forms of international interference, including military bases that supported occasional armed interventions in local conflicts and multinational corporations run mostly by Americans.

The Philippines offers a case in point of America’s nonterritorial form of empire. The US declared war on Spain in 1898 with the avowed intention of ending Spanish rule in Cuba, but even before the declaration President William McKinley had dispatched the US Asiatic Squadron under Commodore George Dewey to Hong Kong in preparation for an assault on the Spanish fleet in Manila Bay. As soon as war was declared, Dewey moved quickly and crushed the Spanish forces. Their surrender emboldened the Filipino rebels, who erroneously assumed that the US had arrived to liberate them from their Spanish oppressors. The US military quickly disabused them of that delusion by embarking on a ferocious counterinsurgency campaign, which lasted for years and included the systematic torture and slaughter of Filipinos. As many as 250,000 died, but the US imperialists never doubted the sanctity of their cause. “Nothing can be more preposterous than the proposition that these men were entitled to receive from us sovereignty over the entire country which we were invading,” Secretary of War Elihu Root said in 1900 about the Filipino rebels. “As well the friendly Indians, who have helped us in our Indian wars, might have claimed the sovereignty of the West.”

Statehood was never considered during the debate over the Philippines: the only question was whether to establish a naval base at Manila and give the islands back to the Spanish or to annex the entire archipelago. The imperialists won the argument, and after the insurgents were finally suppressed the Philippines became a colony, from which investors in sugar, hemp, tobacco, and coconut oil could gain privileged access to US markets and Filipinos could emigrate to America in search of jobs. By the 1930s, congressional opposition to cheap exports as well as to cheap (and nonwhite) labor created support for Philippine independence, which was finally achieved in 1946. But it came with so many restrictions on trade and so much preferential treatment for American investors—not to mention continued maintenance of US military bases—that “it would be more accurate to describe the Philippines as becoming a US protectorate,” Bulmer-Thomas writes. “Thus, the end of colonialism in the Philippines did not mean the end of US imperial control.”

A similar pattern of indirect imperial control also applied to Central America and the Caribbean. The US dominated that region during the twentieth century through colonies (Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, the Panama Canal Zone), but more broadly by using its economic influence to interfere in domestic politics and maintain governments that would faithfully serve American interests (as was the case in Cuba until 1959), or by establishing asymmetrical bilateral treaties and customs receiverships—the collection of customs duties by US officials, who then used the money to pay off the debt service owed on American loans. This arrangement survived in the Dominican Republic until 1942 and in Haiti until 1947.

Military interventions underwrote economic domination. Sometimes this involved sending in the US Marines and leaving them in place for decades, as in Haiti from 1915 to 1934. Sometimes it required using military force to crush a rebellion and arranging for the emergence of a cooperative dictator, such as Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, whose brutalities the Americans tolerated as long as he respected US strategic interests in the region. This he did for thirty years, until his attempt in 1960 to overthrow the Venezuelan government cost him US support. Sensing an opportunity, his opponents assassinated him. But the US was still committed to maintaining the imperial relationship, and President Lyndon Johnson sent in the Marines in 1965 to prevent the left-of-center president Juan Bosch (who had been ousted by a military coup) from returning to power.

Johnson’s intervention recalled the conflicts of the early twentieth century, but during World War II and the cold war, US imperial strategies had begun to shift. As the USSR consolidated its power, the US scaled back its pursuit of territory abroad. Instead, it extended its imperial reach through the development of international institutions that would serve its interests but could not also be used against it. At Bretton Woods in 1944, the US initiated the creation of the IMF and the World Bank. Both institutions are headquartered in Washington, and the president of the World Bank has always been an American, by custom if not fiat.

The Point Four Program, drawn from Harry Truman’s inaugural address in 1949, linked the World Bank to the struggle with the Soviet Union for influence in the developing world, where the bank would make loans, with many political conditions attached, to governments and state-owned enterprises (later privately owned ones as well). The requirement that Congress approve these loans ensured that they would reflect what the US government considered its national interest. The United Nations, too, began as an American-dominated institution, though as its membership grew it became progressively harder for the US to control. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Southeast Asia Treaty Organization, and bilateral treaties worldwide also served American policy under the guise of “collective security” against the Soviet threat.

All these arrangements were fortified by the principle articulated in the Truman Doctrine of 1947—that aggression must be stopped everywhere. Such a commitment “assumes that foreign conflicts feature evil aggressors and innocent victims,” as Hendrickson writes. This unexamined assumption was endorsed and promoted by leaders from both political parties, who helped sustain an atmosphere of perpetual moral crisis during the cold war. The US, working through the CIA, helped to overthrow elected left-leaning governments in Iran, Guatemala, Congo, Brazil, and Chile. Interventions anywhere could always be rationalized as counterinterventions against the allegedly omnipresent Soviet threat.

When the cold war ended, the US’s geopolitical rationale for military interventionism—the need to contain communism—swiftly disappeared, as the country found itself in the heady position of being the world’s sole superpower. This was what is now viewed, with some nostalgia, as the unipolar moment. And yet even in the absence of its longtime ideological rival, the United States continued to conduct foreign policy with the same moral fervor that had informed its actions in the cold war, and with the same confidence that it was a force for global good.

Under the presidency of Bill Clinton, much of official Washington began to believe “that US empire would best be served by the promotion of democracy abroad—or at least an American version of democracy—on the grounds that US security, free market economies and democracies are mutually reenforcing,” as Bulmer-Thomas writes. The rationale for democracy promotion, in the words of Clinton’s first National Security Strategy, was that “democratic states are less likely to threaten our interests and more likely to cooperate with the US to meet security threats and promote sustainable development.” This formulation could work in some circumstances, but not all. Other nations could have good reasons to see democracy promotion as a form of aggression, as Russia did when Clinton sought to expand NATO eastward despite the promises made by his predecessors in the first Bush administration and the warnings of many seasoned diplomats, led by George Kennan.

Establishing “US hegemony across the globe,” in Bulmer-Thomas’s words, was not only about promoting democracy abroad but also about maintaining military supremacy everywhere. In 2000, despite cuts in personnel and the closure of many US bases, the Defense Department committed itself to the pursuit of “full spectrum dominance.” This goal, outlined in Joint Vision 2020, the Department of Defense’s blueprint for the future, meant the worldwide control of land, sea, air, and space, including cyberspace.

The triumphalist mood following the end of the cold war also emboldened neoconservative ideologues. Two of them, William Kristol and Robert Kagan, founded the Project for the New American Century in 1997. Its “Statement of Principles” pledged to “rally support for American global leadership” through “a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity.” This was nothing if not an exceptionalist, even unilateralist creed, based on faith in the uniqueness of America’s position as a global leader. It evoked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s claim that the US was “the indispensable nation.”

The neoconservatives found their president in George W. Bush. Even before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Bush began to implement neoconservative policies, withdrawing from international organizations and agreements—including (in June 2002) the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Russia. This decision, according to Ivo Daalder of the Brookings Institution and other critics at the time, signaled a swerve in US nuclear strategy from deterrence to “war-fighting.”

The terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon provided a new enemy, international terrorism, that was even more shadowy and elusive than international communism had been. Widespread panic among Americans and their allies was taken (especially in the US) to justify a permanent state of emergency, with damaging consequences for civil liberties and public debate at home, as well as for the many thousands of civilians who would become “collateral damage” in Iraq and Afghanistan.

After September 11, new rationales for military intervention abroad emerged—not only preventative war against terror (the false justification for invading Iraq) but also R2P (the Responsibility to Protect). As Hendrickson shows, R2P originated in the recommendation of a Canadian government commission and received a modified but contested acceptance by the UN in 2005. R2P provides a virtually blank check for using force on humanitarian grounds—an idea that has little support from non-Western nations. In practice it vitiates a central assumption of international law—that each state has the right to defend itself. In his second inaugural address, Bush spelled out the vision of universal empire behind R2P: “The best hope for peace in our world is the expansion of freedom in all the world.” This was the Truman Doctrine on steroids.

Hendrickson thinks American disregard for international law helps explain the incoherence of contemporary strategic thought. According to exceptionalist ideology, the US is the primary guardian of international law, on which global stability depends. Yet Hendrickson (like Bulmer-Thomas) makes clear that more often than not, the putative rule-maker has in fact broken rules and acted in ways that it would not tolerate from any other nation.

The American exceptionalist double standard is especially apparent in its current military operations overseas. Consider the battle-ready presence of the US Navy in the South China Sea. Imagine a rival power behaving as aggressively in the Caribbean, lecturing us on our misdeeds (as we have lectured the Chinese) and appointing itself a neutral umpire for the region. A retired Chinese admiral, quoted by Hendrickson, puts the matter succinctly: the US Navy in East Asia is like “a man with a criminal record ‘wandering just outside the gates of a family home.’”

Or take the confrontation emerging on the western border of Russia. The missile defense system installed by NATO on Russia’s doorstep, combined with NATO troops conducting military exercises, could not be more provocative. No great power, least of all the United States, would allow deployments so close to its borders without protest and (probably) retaliation.

While Bulmer-Thomas treats imperial expansion as a continuous feature of American history that has run afoul of historical circumstance, Hendrickson reconstructs an anti-imperial tradition in Anglophone thought, which he calls “liberal pluralism” and recommends reviving in view of our crumbling American empire. In his view, liberal pluralism was embodied in the system of European nation-states (the “Westphalian system”) that emerged from the Thirty Years’ War. It was also the worldview of America’s founders, uniting Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Madison in their suspicion of military adventures abroad. From the liberal pluralist perspective, war is the summum malum of international affairs; respect for the sovereignty of other nations is the best way to avoid it. Sovereignty is the core of international law: every state has the right to defend itself from external attack; none has the right to interfere in the internal affairs of another.

The fact that liberal pluralism discourages interference does not, however, imply that it encourages nations to be passive bystanders in the face of immoral foreign policies, as contemporary political theorists who favor an interventionist approach like to claim. Liberal pluralism “does not,” Hendrickson insists, “dictate indifference to human rights”; it allows states to shelter dissidents and welcome refugees from oppression. “What it does not allow is coercive intervention in a foreign country to secure those rights.”

Hendrickson concentrates his criticisms on the reckless use of military force in foreign lands; he does not dismiss economic sanctions as an alternative. Nor does he rule out interference in extreme situations, such as the threat of genocide. But he insists that such interventions be—as far as possible—multilateral, peaceful, and respectful of international law. He proposes maintaining NATO, but with our nuclear guarantees to its members on a strictly “no-first-use” basis; preserving friendships with allies but also working out “rules of the road with putative adversaries.” He argues that fighting terrorism requires effective policing at home and the support of functioning governments abroad, not their overthrow. The liberal pluralist tradition, in his view, provides intellectual resources for reducing international tension and redirecting national wealth toward urgently necessary aims—rebuilding infrastructure, reviving the welfare state, and addressing the menace of climate change and oceanic catastrophe.

In recent years, popular support for imperial adventures has waned. Large majorities have opposed sending US troops to Libya, Syria, and Ukraine. The percentage of Americans who think it is “very important” that the US should “maintain superior military power worldwide” dropped from 68 percent in 2002 to 52 percent in 2014. And poll respondents ranked military supremacy sixth out of ten among foreign policy aims. The top-ranked goal was “protecting the jobs of American workers.”

The shift in public opinion is a response to a series of failed interventions: efforts at regime change in Iraq, Libya, and Syria have left behind chaos, failed states, terrorist recruits, and endless war. But whatever disagreements they may have had over policy details, all three presidents since September 11 have shared a commitment to US global military supremacy. No major policymaker wants to admit publicly what many suspect privately: that America’s imperial reach has begun to exceed its grasp. Barring a dramatic shift in public discourse, the American empire will not go gentle into that good night; more likely it will, as Dylan Thomas counseled the old, “burn and rave at close of day.”

No one burns and raves more flagrantly than Donald Trump. The failure of blank-check interventions fed the discontent he exploited in the 2016 campaign. Yet his chauvinist posturing has turned out to be little more than a belligerent, unhinged version of the militarized globalism he claimed to displace. So Trump lurches from one outrageous provocation to another while most of his critics repeat the stale formulas of global leadership. Neither side seems to notice that the rest of the world does not want to be led (though some countries may still want their security to be guaranteed by US power). More and more foreign countries are trying to go about their business on their own, even in areas once assumed to be vital to the US national interest—Latin America, the Middle East, the South China Sea, even the Korean peninsula, where the South Koreans have done what American leaders were unable or unwilling to do: initiate diplomacy with North Korea.

Other pillars of American power are also crumbling, as Bulmer-Thomas demonstrates in detail. Multinational corporations are no longer as dependent on American policies abroad for access to foreign markets; General Motors, for example, now sells more cars in China than anywhere else on earth, without benefit of a US presence there. Recent years have seen a steady fall in the US net investment ratio (gross investment less the consumption of fixed capital), both private and public. The consequence has been a decline in infrastructure (including public education), as well as a slowing of innovation and productivity. At the same time, neoliberal politicians in both parties, committed to cutting back the “entitlements” provided by the welfare state and privatizing the public sector, have underwritten the rise of inequality and social immobility. The effect has been to undermine the broad prosperity that was the domestic basis of the semi-global empire.

International institutions, rather than reinforcing American hegemony, challenge it. The UN, the IMF, and the World Bank have all proven unreliable in promoting US interests. At the UN, the US is more isolated than ever on the Security Council, as the dramatic increase in American vetoes shows. Various countries have learned to avoid borrowing from the IMF, with the onerous conditions it imposes, by building up their foreign exchange reserves and paying off existing debts. The World Bank now has two significant rivals, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank (which represents the BRICS countries: Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). The Organization of American States has been superseded, since 2011, by the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, which insisted on the inclusion of Cuba despite US opposition. China is creating its own version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership without US participation, as well as expanding into sub-Saharan Africa and cutting a deal with Nicaragua for another isthmian canal.

Yet Trump and his opponents in the Washington consensus still envision a unipolar world, where the United States can ignore the legitimate claims of rival nations and do pretty much whatever it wants, whether because of its sheer greatness (Trump) or its exceptional goodness (Clinton et al.). Obama was cautious about intervening in Syria and eager to negotiate with Iran, but his administration maintained or intensified commitments to global military supremacy, blanket surveillance, targeted drone assassinations, and modernization of nuclear weapons, as well as engagement in the Middle East and East Asia. Fundamental policies persisted despite Obama’s misgivings.

Neither Bulmer-Thomas nor Hendrickson believes these policies can continue without catastrophe. And it might, in any case, not be in the US’s interests for them to continue. As Bulmer-Thomas reminds us, “Imperial retreat is not the same as national decline, as many other countries can attest. Indeed, imperial retreat can strengthen the nation-state just as imperial expansion can weaken it.” Yet as Hendrickson concludes, “It is crystal clear that the empire is fully determined to stick around,” despite our desperate need to dismantle it. The drift of global events may eventually require the United States to acknowledge the reality of a multipolar world, but we cannot assume that the process will be peaceful. Still, Hendrickson has performed an urgently necessary service in reconstructing the liberal pluralist tradition. He reminds us that there is a humane alternative to contemporary orthodoxy, if we can only recognize it.

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[metrobusinessadvisors]

Industries and markets change, and not always for the better

Your business may need to reengineer to survive.  

By Dave Driscoll

You own a business that has thrived, survived, and prospered for years. Then something happens…consumer tastes change, innovative technologies disrupt the markets, a pandemic hits, demand shifts away from your product or service in favor of chasing what’s new and hot…  Remember Krispy Kreme Doughnuts vs. the Adkins Diet, IBM Selectric Typewriters replaced by the Apple II and the Commodore 64, receiving and paying bills through the mail and then via the internet?

When you see this potential disruption coming straight at your livelihood, what do you do? Work harder, assume more risk, and improve productivity and efficiency? Chant the phrase “hard work and risk-taking pays off… it’s the core of the American Dream?”

 Yes, you do all those things, and you may feel a bit better because you’re engaged and busy. But at the end of the day, are you really going to return to the days of prosperity without changing your business model? Probably not.

What are your options?  

1. Sell, acquire, or merge with your competitor(s). If your market or industry has excess capacity, consolidation to decrease supply could be the best solution.

2. Recognize your strategic assets and buy a business in a market /industry that has a better future. Perhaps you have the employees, in-place technology and systems, building, and fixtures. Coupling your strategic assets with those of another business in a tangent industry may provide growth and utilization to construct a profitable new path, lessening your dependence on a declining market and technology.  

3. Liquidate. Liquidation is not failure. It is a realistic analysis acknowledging your current position, the future of your industry, and/or the ability to recover an acceptable level of success. Ask yourself, are the business’ prospects for tomorrow equal to, better than, or worse than today? Your honest assessment will answer whether liquidation is your best route. Self-sacrifice is easy, making difficult decisions is hard.

 Begin your deliberation by considering your strategic assets.

Remember how hard assembling those strategic assets was?

The people - how many folks did you go through before you assembled your current team? Hundreds? Thousands? Your team was built as the result of hard work and is your strongest strategic asset. Invite those trusted employees into your vision; seeking their knowledge and assistance multiplies your brain power and may reveal an exciting new opportunity.

Technology and systems - Acquiring the right technology to run your business was likely a significant challenge. Considerable doubt and anxiety go into choosing the best systems and infrastructure while the cost escalates! Systems are predominantly an operational result of trial and error with education, research, and tribal knowledge thrown in. That amounts to an expensive learning curve that can be leveraged for a new model or a fresh direction.

Buildings and fixtures - Probably only a few of your physical assets perform a very specific task, while the majority are used by nearly every business. Office space and furniture, warehouses, pallet jacks, compressed air, tools, computers - the cost to duplicate what your business already owns would be enormous and time-consuming. Leveraging your in-place assets is strategic thinking.

Next, consider buying a business.  

Identify businesses with a market opportunity that touches that of your business and can utilize your strategic assets. A good place to begin your search for a tangent market is to analyze your customers and your suppliers. Tangent markets may not be obvious and can require some research and creative thinking to recognize.

Opportunity to slowly diverge from your current trajectory into a tangent market can be challenging and exciting, pumping fresh energy into your enthusiasm. But those potential markets do need to be analyzed carefully. You don’t want to begin moving into another market that may be heading in the same direction as your current business. Another word of caution: don’t bet the farm; move slowly, quietly, and deliberately after exhaustive investigation.

If there is one thing that my career in business has taught me, it’s that survival relies on knowing when to zig, and when to zag.  Understand your market, follow your unique (but realistic) view of the future, and take the educated risk of being proactive.

My best wishes for your success!

 Dave Driscoll is president of Metro Business Advisors, a mergers & acquisitions, valuation and exit/succession planning firm helping owners of companies with revenue up to $20 million sell their most valuable asset. Reach Dave at DDriscoll@MetroBusinessAdvisors.com or (314) 303-5600.  www.MetroBusinessAdvisors.com

https://metrobusinessadvisors.com/industries-and-markets-change-and-not-always-for-the-better/

As seen in St. Louis Small Business Monthly