Today, with increasingly rare exceptions, you only read or hear – in matters of foreign policy – what Washington wants you to read or hear. 

And what Washington wants one month may be, and often is, the exact opposite of what Washington wants the next month.  

That is why the American people are so bewildered trying to follow the contortions of a foreign policy which first disarms and then rearms the Germans; which first prohibits and then insists upon Japanese conscription; which gives tanks to the French in Algeria and then chides the French for using them; which encourages the Chinese Communists to take over the mainland but then says touch Formosa at your peril; which first arm Israel against the Arabs and then the Arabs against Israel; which denounces the Russians for refusing to disarm and then denounces them for offering to disarm.  

The net effort of these and many other contradictions is that, while we are undeniably feared, we are no longer either respected or admired abroad. And, which is more to the point, we are certainly both confused and uneasy here at home. 

The fundamental difficulty that gives rise to this painful and dangerous confusion is, I think, clear. We are trying to make a federal republic do an imperial job, without honestly confronting the fact that our traditional institutions are specifically designed to prevent centralization of power.

With this direct contradiction between the traditional form of our government and the current purposes of our government, a sort of political schizophrenia is inevitable. It is revealed in wavering, wobbling, and wasteful policies. The wealth of this country is so great, and its power so enormous, that we can stagger around for a long time, like a drunken giant, with relative immunity.  

At some time and at some point, however, this fundamental conflict between our institutions and our policies will have to be resolved. 

It Didn’t Start With Bush

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) -- The fighting that erupted in Baghdad's Sadr City last month has killed 925 people and wounded 2,605, a top government official said Wednesday.

Most of the casualties consist of civilians and "criminal elements attacked by us," said Tahseen al-Sheikhly, a spokesman for the Baghdad security crackdown called Operation Enforcing the Law.

Civilians are being caught in the crossfire because militants "use the population to cover themselves," al-Sheikhly said.

The number of Iraqi civilians killed and wounded nationwide continued to increase during April. According to Iraq's Interior Ministry, 969 civilians died and 1,750 were wounded during April. In March, the total was 923 civilians killed and 1,358 wounded -- a sharp increase over February, when 633 died and 701 were wounded.

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Gus: meanwhile, in the country full of "criminal elements hiding behind civilians", 51 US troops have lost their life this month (April 2008). The trend is not good. The equivalent would  be about 550 police officers killed, in the USA, in the line of duty in April. Unacceptable. 

From David Brooks

Hillary Clinton summarized the narrative this week: “They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything.”

The globalization paradigm has turned out to be very convenient for politicians. It allows them to blame foreigners for economic woes. It allows them to pretend that by rewriting trade deals, they can assuage economic anxiety. It allows them to treat economic and social change as a great mercantilist competition, with various teams competing for global supremacy, and with politicians starring as the commanding generals.
...
The globalization paradigm emphasizes the fact that information can now travel 15,000 miles in an instant. But the most important part of information’s journey is the last few inches — the space between a person’s eyes or ears and the various regions of the brain. Does the individual have the capacity to understand the information? Does he or she have the training to exploit it? Are there cultural assumptions that distort the way it is perceived?

The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called “the Chinese” or “the Indians,” are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy — the specific processes that foster learning. It emphasizes that different societies are being stressed in similar ways by increased demands on human capital. If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, you’re focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner.

It’s not that globalization and the skills revolution are contradictory processes. But which paradigm you embrace determines which facts and remedies you emphasize. Politicians, especially Democratic ones, have fallen in love with the globalization paradigm. It’s time to move beyond it.

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Gus: communication at speed is fantastic, but not everyone is able to make a buck out of it. And not all information is worth the electricity used to transfer it. As well transfers of money at speed may benefit a few traders but sink entire economies as we saw during the "Asian Crisis" a few years ago. Some Asian countries stopped money movements (electronic) to stop the bleed. 

It is difficult to feed one self with megabytes. One needs to eat real food. The globalisation of food markets has created benefits but also some pain in the dependence from other suppliers. If food is slight more expensive but produced locally, the advantages are enormous. Dependency can be the bane the poor. Dependency is the bane of the poor in markets that rely more and more on others to supply the necessity of life. 

And the poor are not just in Africa or India, they are in small towns America where job availability has been shrinking and dependency has grown. 

But most leader (including captains of industries) do not want to lead a flock of independent people... That would a be a contradiction in term... They want a stable staple of consumers. They want to lead a flock of people attached to regular services and credit lines that are the modern chain-n'-ball of prison gangs. Thus we are conditioned to believed this or that paradigm, which are ways not to loose — or loose — one's pants in the age of information which as we've seen under Prez Shrub can amount to lie after lie after lie... The age of deceit is thus going full bore, using the age of cognitive information for a free ride.

Nothing much changed since the days of Moses tablets... apart from our little tablets being loaded with bigger scams... to stop us from being independent. This is why most governments are doing everything they can to stop the proliferation of solar panels while claiming the contrary. For example high energy panels have been developed by "some" university in Australia, but getting little funding and no recognition... independence? Not in a a global market...

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September 11, 2001, and still goes on."

May 1, 2003, on the USS Abraham Lincoln, [Bush] announcing the end of major combat operations in Iraq

"There are some who feel like - that the conditions are such that they can attack us there [in Iraq]. My answer is, bring 'em on! We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation." July 2, 2003

"A turning point will come two weeks from today." June 16, 2004

"Tomorrow the world will witness a turning point in the history of Iraq, a milestone in the advance of freedom, and a crucial advance in the war on terror." January 29, 2005, one day before Iraq elections

"I'm absolutely confident that the actions we took in Iraq are influencing reformers and freedom lovers in the greater Middle East. And I believe that you're going to see the rise of democracy in many countries in the broader Middle East, which will lay the foundation for peace." June 2005

"2005 will be recorded as a turning point in the history of Iraq ... and the history of freedom." December 12, 2005

"I think - tide turning - see, as I remember - I was raised in the desert, but tides kind of - it's easy to see a tide turn - did I say those words?" June 14, 2006

"Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work. And I ask you to support our troops in the field, and those on their way." January 2007

"I want to say a word to our troops and civilians in Iraq. You've performed with incredible skill under demanding circumstances. The turnaround you have made possible in Iraq is a brilliant achievement in American history.

"And while this war is difficult, it is not endless." April 10, 2008

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"I don't do quagmires." July 24, 2003 Rummy Ducky

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Gus: see toon at top and the age of deceit 

At the briefing, Rumsfeld gave a progress report on the war in Iraq. Fighting continued, he said, both in the city and other parts of Iraq, but efforts were also moving ahead on forming an interim authority to govern the country. That authority, he said, would "help pave the way for a new Iraqi government, a government that will be chosen by the Iraqi people, not by anyone else."
Asked about weapons of mass destruction -- which the United States, Britain and other nations accused Saddam of harboring and developing -- Rumsfeld said he did not expect coalition forces to find the actual weapons on their own.
"We are not going to find them in my view -- just as I never believed the inspectors would -- by running around seeing if they can open a door and surprise somebody and find something," Rumsfeld said, adding that the focus was on "finding the people" who could help in that effort.

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Gus: Sometimes I go back into memory lane. Some of the stuff is beyond bullshit bluff. The US government was telling lies by the bucket loads, sometimes with an elegant delivery, like many spruikers know how to do...: The glib delivery from Rummy, the carefully choreographed bumbling "ordinary man" acts from Bushit, the Foxed disinformation channels... all pointing away from the truth: OIL... Domination... Empire...

See toon everywhere on this site...