#1
To be fair, I should note that if the praise for the leader of North Korea seems a little effusive, it could be because someone could be imprisoned or executed if they say anything that displeases Kim Jong Il. I dont know what the American medias excuse is.
Well, I certainly know who gets more goods and cash for his people.
Posted by: Bobby ||
04/09/2009 13:18 Comments ||
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In 1970, General Motors was the largest and most profitable company in America. Today, of course, GM is neither. Instead, in 2009 Americas largest company is Wal-Mart, which was still only a regional, privately-held retailer in 1970. Wal-Marts rapid rise is not unique, however. Among the 100 largest firms today, a numberincluding FedEx, Microsoft, Cisco, and Home Depot--didnt even exist in 1970. So profoundly has the landscape changed that 80 percent of the Fortune 100 companies today are different from 1970.
All of this is the result of an entrepreneurial revolution spurred by everything from intensifying international competition starting in the late 1950s, to the lowering of confiscatory tax rates starting in the 1960s, to a series of technological revolutions that gathered momentum in the 1970s, to the taming of inflation in the early 1980s. During that time the corporate team player, the quintessential organizational man, slowly gave way to the dazzling but disruptive entrepreneur whose innovations rapidly reshaped the economyand the ranks of corporate Americaseveral times over.
But we are entering quite a different age right now, one in which the President of the United States and his hand-selected industrial overseers fire the chief executive of General Motors and chart the companys next moves in order to preserve it. Conservative critics of the president have said that the governments GM strategy is one of many examples of an America drifting toward socialism. But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution. . . .
Corporatism is especially attractive to politicians, public intellectuals who serve as policy makers, and Nobel Laureates because it is ultimately a world managed by the few, the elect, through the state. If we are told enough times that nothing, even technological innovation, is possible anymore without significant contributions and directions from the state, maybe well eventually come to believe it, although the inventors of the printing press, the steam engine, the light bulb, the telephone, and internal combustion engine and other game-changing technologies might wonder how they accomplished what they did without government.
Corporatism is not about regulating capitalism better as markets evolve. It is several steps beyond. It is instead about those who believe in the beauty of pushing a button to solve problems, as the economist Paul Krugman recently described his attraction to the social sciences. Some people worry about what happens when the regulators take charge of our economy. But the real concern is what happens when the button pushers take charge, for the button pushers are the corporatists.
Posted by: Mike ||
04/09/2009 15:24 ||
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#1
But President Obama is not a socialist. If his agenda harks back to anything, it is to corporatism, the notion that elite groups of individuals molded together into committees or public-private boards can guide society and coordinate the economy from the top town and manage change by evolution, not revolution. . . .
#2
Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.
Adults under 30 are essentially evenly divided: 37% prefer capitalism, 33% socialism, and 30% are undecided. Thirty-somethings are a bit more supportive of the free-enterprise approach with 49% for capitalism and 26% for socialism. Adults over 40 strongly favor capitalism, and just 13% of those older Americans believe socialism is better.
Investors by a 5-to-1 margin choose capitalism. As for those who do not invest, 40% say capitalism is better while 25% prefer socialism.
There is a partisan gap as well. Republicans - by an 11-to-1 margin - favor capitalism. Democrats are much more closely divided: Just 39% say capitalism is better while 30% prefer socialism. As for those not affiliated with either major political party, 48% say capitalism is best, and 21% opt for socialism.
National Security: Russia tells the U.S. not to worry about a nuclear Iran and not to punish nuclear North Korea. Fidel Castro wants to help the president, Russia's "new comrade." Are we being set up?
Some of the most obvious threats to life and liberty in the historical record were, at the time they were happening, vehemently denied by those in positions of decision-making.
Isolationists and pacifists believed that Hitler's imperialism could be appeased by territorial gains. During the early Cold War, American Soviet spy Alger Hiss' integrity was vouched for by U.S. officials reaching a level as high as future Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson and Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter.
Those, such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy, suggesting that Hiss was only one of a massive group of Communist spies within the U.S. government were targeted (in McCarthy's case literally targeted for elimination by the CIA, as noted in Pulitzer-winning journalist Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes"), marginalized, even ruined.
M. Stanton Evans' 2007 book "Blacklisted by History" convincingly and meticulously exonerated McCarthy on most counts, but in other such episodes scholarly review has been unnecessary. Three decades of the ugly reality of Islamist revolution in Iran, for instance, have indelibly discredited the belief in 1979 by Andrew Young, the Carter administration's United Nations ambassador, that the Ayatollah Khomeini was "some kind of a saint."
Today, it takes willful blindness not to recognize Iran as the greatest threat to life and freedom in the world. Tehran is apparently now on the verge of announcing that it has mastered the final, most technically challenging stage of nuclear fuel production: the industrial-scale enrichment of uranium, which allows nuclear fuel to be generated in large quantities.
The Islamofascist regime in Iran has denied inspectors from the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency access to its Arak heavy water reactor, which could be geared to produce plutonium from spent uranium fuel rods.
Yet we heard soothing words this week from Russia's ambassador to the U.S., Sergei Kislyak. "I don't see any threat to the United States coming from Iran anytime soon," he told the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace ironically, the organization Hiss was president of when Whittaker Chambers testified in 1948 that he and Hiss committed espionage together.
In a similar vein, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that "any threat of sanction" against North Korea in response to its Sunday launch of a multistage rocket over Japan, a violation of a U.N. Security Council resolution, "would be counterproductive."
More talk for a regime possessing as many as eight nuclear warheads after it sends up a missile reaching twice as far as anything it has launched previously?
Clearly, Russia wants to lull us into complacency regarding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction among hostile regimes. Do Moscow and other adversaries of the free world sense an uncommon opportunity in the year 2009?
With an unprecedented financial crisis battering the West's economic system, and a man of the left in the White House, is Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's description of Barack Obama as "my new comrade" more than a clever sound bite? Ailing Cuban dictator Castro, having granted an audience to members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Tuesday, seemed to share Medvedev's sentiment, asking, "How can we help President Obama?"
When longtime foes of the world's lone superpower behave in such fashion, it isn't because they've been converted to the cause of world peace; it is because they see a chance to change the dangerous global power game in their favor and at our expense.
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, always unguarded in expressing himself, claimed this week on a visit to Beijing that "the power of the U.S. empire has collapsed. Every day, the new poles of world power are becoming stronger: Beijing, Tokyo, Tehran," he said. "It's moving toward the East and toward the South."
Toward danger and away from security would be a more accurate description.
In Havana, the seven Democrats visited the families of the prisoners and came away inspired. The members of Congress raised concerns about human rights, lengthy prison sentences and the suffering on both sides of the Florida Straits.
One vowed to write a letter to first lady Michelle Obama, pleading to her sensibilities as a mother, wife and lawyer. Another called on compassion. This is the time, the members of the Congressional Black Caucus proclaimed.
If only the group had met with even one prisoner of conscience or one of the wives, mothers, daughters or sisters of the 75 independent journalists, librarians and human-rights advocates imprisoned in Cuba's ''Black Spring'' of 2003. They would have easily spotted the Ladies in White in Havana on Palm Sunday, walking in protest to raise awareness about their men's harsh sentences for daring to think outside the communist box of limitations.
Or the seven could have traveled three hours from Havana to see the hunger-striking dissidents led by Jorge Luis ''Antúnez'' Garcia in Placetas. Or they could have asked to see Oscar Elias Biscet, a doctor serving 25 years in prison for following the peaceful resistance of Martin Luther King Jr.
Or what of the mothers of three young men who were tried in a day and killed the next by firing squad in 2003 for trying to hijack a ferry from Havana Harbor? No passenger was hurt, but that didn't stop the Cuban government from sending a swift and terrifying message to the country's Afro-Cuban masses.
But no.
The black U.S. lawmakers' concerns weren't for the 300-plus Cuban prisoners of conscience listed by Amnesty International or the hundreds of dissidents working from their homes under the watch of a totalitarian regime. Or the lack of civil rights in a country with a majority black and mixed-race population ruled by an overwhelmingly white gerontocracy.
Their angst was for the ''Five Heroes,'' as Cuba's controlled media calls the Cuban government spies captured in Miami, including one sentenced for conspiracy to murder the four Brothers to the Rescue pilots killed by Cuban fighter planes in 1996.
Let's agree that basic human rights have to be upheld for enemies -- that's the very definition of justice.
Where's the justice in Cuba?
Certainly the Clueless Seven, led by Rep. Barbara Lee of California, didn't make a fuss about 50 years of the Castro brothers' rule, the human rights violations or the escalating and disproportionate number of black Cubans held behind bars. Indeed, Rep. Bobby Rush, a former Black Panther, could only show his empathy ''for the suffering of political prisoners,'' as he referred to the five spies.
Just once, I'd like to see a delegation of muckety-mucks see the real Cuba. Sure, talk with Tío Fidel, as three of the Clueless reportedly did during their trip that ended Tuesday. But also go see opposition members, feel their pain.
Rep. Kendrick Meek, who was traveling the Panhandle Tuesday in his U.S. Senate bid, offered this wise analysis of his Black Caucus colleagues' ''fact-finding'' mission:
''Political prisoners jailed in Cuba are held for peacefully expressing their rights and freedoms, like Dr. Oscar Biscet and Antúnez,'' he said. ``The Cuban spies held in the U.S. federal prisons were a threat to our national security. That's the difference between night and day.''
Had the Clueless Seven removed the blinders they would have known it.
Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi has spoken of trust gap between Washington and Islamabad. But more exactly, it is the drought of sincerity on the Americans' part. They have been using our military bases, facilities and land supply routes for their campaign in Afghanistan. Even they are believably operating their drones from our own soil to slaughter our own women, children and civilians. Yet, they are returning us the compliment by way of deceit, deception, fraud and wickedness alone. Neither are they in acknowledgement of the tremendous sacrifices this country had to make on account of the cowardly way they have waged their Afghanistan campaign.
Nor are they any mindful of Pakistan's security concerns in Afghanistan. Instead, they have helped India in every manner to entrench strategically in Afghanistan and work from there against Pakistan. Already, India's paramilitary Indo-Tibetan Border Police is embedded there in strength in our close proximity. The paramilitary, raised by the Indians in the wake of their debacle in 1962 war with China, is trained in infiltration and subversion. The Americans are not unknown, too, of mulling even Indian military presence in Afghanistan. Their top soldier, Admiral Mike Mullen, has gone on record that India does have a military role there. And he has many a backer in India's military establishment too, its army chief, as for one. Mullen indeed is so enamoured of India that after the Mumbai strike he rushed to Islamabad with the demand that Pakistan must let the Indians conduct a surgical strike or two at some specified targets to pacify their enraged public, showing least concern about Pakistani public backlash to this.
By every consideration, the Americans are playing a dirty double game on us. Wilfully, they are demonising the Pakistan army and the ISI, with the Afghans and the Indians in league. Some 2,000 of our troops have died and thousands of them disabled in coping with the terrible fallout of the Americans' poorly-fought war in Afghanistan. Yet instead of a word of appreciation, they have only censure for the Pakistan army. And even as the ISI has nabbed hundreds of al-Qaeda activists, who too had sneaked into our territory because of American commanders' culpable failure to mop them up, they have only opprobrium for it. The Americans, as indeed the Indians and the Afghans, are being very coy here. They are misleadingly parading the ruse that elements in the ISI are keeping their "ties intact" they had with Taliban when they were in rule in Afghanistan.
But all the while they are conveniently forgetting the permanent deployment of Indian air force engineers and technicians in the Northern Alliance-controlled territory to keep its two or odd planes in service for fighting against the Taliban. And the alliance is now paying back the Indians richly, with Americans' blessings, in promoting their interests in Afghanistan and beyond. The Indians, believably at the American's behest, are implicating the ISI even in the recent revolt of Bangladesh's paramilitary border force, as had their national security advisor publicly called for the ISI's disbandment not long ago.
There indeed is too much odious with the Americans' act. It is stenches all over. Their very ruse of our tribal areas being Taliban's and al-Qaeda's sanctuary is too stinking, given the fact that Afghanistan's almost entire south and east are under the Taliban's sway where no Afghan or coalition troops dare walk in, and where Taliban and their allies live, recruit, train and from where they launch attacks on Afghan and coalition forces. Those make potential targets for American drones but do not. It is only Pakistan's tribal region they target. And only a dimwit would think if the Americans would ever stop, if not stopped otherwise, their drone attacks in our tribal areas and now possibly our settled areas and Balochistan as well, when this is serving their purpose so well.
Apart from destabilising our tribal region and enraging their residents against Islamabad, their attacks are turning pro-government people against it in anger. Just recently, Maulvi Nazir and Mullah Gul Bahadur, two pro-government commanders have walked over to Baitullah Mehsud's camp for American drone attacks on their areas and the government's failure to stop these incursions. So how many times has the Islamabad establishment to be bitten by the American poisonous teeth to feel twice shy? Isn't it the time it must rethink its role in the spurious war on terror? Surly it is. Tomorrow will be too late.
Posted by: john frum ||
04/09/2009 11:42 ||
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Evil bad Americans, evil bad Indians. I'll bet the Joooos feel left out...
Israel knows it must do take out the nuclear weapons capability of Iran. And yet, Israel will not be able to do it. Not because it doesn't have the military might to do so. And not because it lacks the will. But because Barack Obama will order the United States Air Force to stand in its way if it tries. Between the airfields of Israel and the reactors and research labs and storage facilities of Iran sit the armed forces of the United States and its hundreds of planes, missiles and radar. With our bases in Iraq and those floating in the Persian Gulf, the United States separates Israel and Iran. Obama would have to give his okay for Israel to pass. Obama will not.
In fact, he will have the United States erect an armed barrier to Israel.
I don't know that Bambi would do that; I don't know that he would get the chance if the Israelis decided not to pre-clear the raid with us. He could order it as a standing policy but odds are good such an order would leak.
Another interesting point:
The minute Iran has the bomb, Israel will begin to shrink. Jews in Israel will start to pack up and leave. Some at first, but more and more over time, Israelis will leave. Panic will begin to set in after the first 100,000 Jews or so have left their homes vacant. Businesses will be unable to fill job openings. The armed forces will find themselves combining brigades and companies.
Iran won't even have to fire a nuclear warhead at Israel to destroy it. The certainty that Iran can incinerate Israel, and the certainty that Iran will shortly do so, will be enough to convince enough of the six million Jews living in Israel today that they either must leave or be turned to ash that the economy and polity will lose viability.
#2
Israel just needs to get a nuke in a truck near one of the Iranian nuke bases. PLan the nuke to be a similar yield as an Iranian nuke. Bam, destroy the iranian nuke program so that it looks like an accident. Even Iranians sychophants will have trouble defending their nuke program then.
#4
It's a gloomy analysis, it's possible, but it's probably not what will happen nor how.
If anything, what's more likely is the effect on the arab world before the effect on Israel.
There's already an islamic bomb, and this would be a persian bomb, but where is the arab bomb?
Worse yet, what happens to the oil supply while the US, arab world and interested others react to Iran? What does Iraq do?
Again, will Iran go straight at Israel, or will it elect another "reform" leader to cover a period of misdirection and alternative acts, whatever and wherever they may be?
How will Ethiopia mind be surrounded by islamic "allies" of nuclear powers? Kuwait, Bahrain, etc?
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
