Re: Imposing the US Dollar on Canada

["Alan G. Isaac" <aisaac@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, 20 Apr 2001, Henry C.K. Liu wrote:
> As I said, Alan Isaac can be expected to defend imperialism is moral and
> just, full of freedom and liberation.

Please cite one place where I defend imperialism, Henry.
On the part of the U.S. or anyone else.
Just one, to make your point clear.
I am confident you will come up empty.

You on the other hand are quite inclined to defend
imperialist and other challenges to human liberties.
For example:

> Whatever Alan may think of
> socialist China, the term imperialism cannot be applied to China's
> relationship to Hong Kong anymore than the United States can be accused of
> having an imperialistic policy towards Massachusetts.

Just to be clear, please explain whether you would
make this same claim for Taiwan.  To get some footing
with a slippery term, let us start with a dictionary
definition:

imperialism n. The policy of extending a nation's authority by
territorial acquisition or by the establishment of of economic
and political hegemony over other nations.

I await your anxious semantic games with the term ``nation''.

> No one "invoke voluntarism as *evidence* of imperialism" as you alleged.
> William's point was that imperialism is disproved by voluntarism.  My
> point was that it does not, as evidenced by compradorism, the effectuating
> agent of imperialism.

Since William's post was short, I can quote 100% of it:
``[Henry] confuses dollarization with a treaty for a common currency
which would involve a central bank for the treaty members.
Dollarization (meaning adopting the US dollar as the official
currency) is a voluntary act of a sovereign nation.  It may or
may not be beneficial to that nation, but the assertion that it
is pure monetary imperialism is absurd.  The US monetary
authorities have not encouraged any other nation to dollarize.
They are well aware of the negative implications of
dollarization, both for the dollarizing nation and for the US.''

I think it is clear that your summary of William's argument
is incomplete and misleading.
(Just to be clear, since this has come up before, I intend this
as *descriptive* and not as *accusatory*; that is, while you
surely did not intend to misrepresent William, the language
you chose does in fact misrepresent him.)

> It is no use debating with Alan Isaac, because his use of the English
> language is hopelessly distorted by his narrow-mindedness and his
> extremist ideology.

Orwell would love the fact that you said that and then
continued as follows:

> China liberated Hong Kong in 1997 from British imperialism and colonialism
> after 150 years, and not a day too soon.

This is the perversion of language in the service of ideology.
The day I hear you offer a serious critism of China political
repressions, including the recent slaughter of thousands of
citizens who dared to suggest that China is ready for greater
individual liberties, I will start to believe otherwise.
In contrast, I will never hesitate to criticize any nation,
including the U.S. of course, for such actions.

> Words have plain meanings and facts cannot be manipulated by ideological
> fixations.

Indeed Henry.  Indeed.

Alan