Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Bush and depth Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 9:05:38 PM     Further on Bush out of his depth. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI NEW AMERICAN STRATEGIES FOR SECURITY AND PEACE OCTOBER 28-29, 2003 - WASHINGTON, D.C. whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety? ********

Leaving the market world to enter the culture world.. Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 5:05:54 PM       I am thinking about the equivalent of people coming to America before 1776, to escape, to create better… but now, a choice to leave market space and enter culture space. Could it be done? ********

Method of unpacking cultural events, and events that at first glance are not cultural. Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 3:59:21 PM     I highly recommend this chapter (hard to read in its PDF format) on a new methodology for unpacking social events. Taking "trauma" it shows how a trauma is not a human reaction to a natural event, but a highly culture dependent interpretation into daily life. http://research.yale.edu/ccs/wpapers/trauma.pdf   and his manifesto paper on cultural sociology http://research.yale.edu/ccs/strong.html To believe in the possibility of a “cultural sociology” is to subscribe to the idea that every action, no matter how instrumental, reflexive or coerced vis-a-vis its external environments (Alexander 1988), is embedded to some extent in a horizon of affect and meaning. Culturally unmusical scholars have depicted human action as insipidly or brutally instrumental, as if it were constructed without reference to the internal environments of actions that are established by the moral structures of sacred-good and profane-evil. the usefulness for today of Wendy Griswold (1983), for example, shows how the trickster figure was transformed with the emergence of Restoration drama. In the medieval morality play, the figure of “vice” was evil. He was later to morph into the attractive, quick thinking “gallant”. The new character was one that could appeal to an audience of young, disinherited men who had migrated to the city and had to depend on their wits for social advancement.   ********

Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 3:35:15 PM     A very distressing review sjowing how mere calculational analysis supports a theory that people are merely calculational. Lots of hard work, all advancing the emerging mechanization of ssocial thinking. In this case, that the sighners of the Constitituion were motivated by financial personal interests. TO FORM A MORE PERFECT UNION: A NEW ECONOMIC INTERPRETATION OF THE UNITED STATES CONSTITUTION, by Robert A. McGuire. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. Hardback. 416 pp. $24.95. £25.00. ISBN: 0195139704. Reviewed by Irwin L. Morris, Department of Government & Politics, University of Maryland. Email: imorris@gvpt.umd.edu . http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/lpbr/subpages/reviews/McGuire304.htm ********

Tom Peters narrow vision. Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 3:15:52 PM     Business people often just put together the pieces that lead to a conclusion. Tom Peters TOM PETERS - HARD TRUTHS ABOUT GLOBALIZATION I met Tom Peters some 20 years ago, when we were both panelists at an industry conference. His enthusiasm and motivating style were infectious. He gave me a personal copy of his first book, "In search of Excellence" which turned out to be a best-seller, and catapulted him into the top ranks of motivational speakers, gurus of greatness, champions of change. With all the recent noise about globalization and the migration of manufacturing to China and software to India, Tom Peters has come up with some "Hard Truths". I am summarizing some of them here. Please read them all (weblink below). Tom Peters' hard truths: 1. "Off-shoring" will continue; the tide cannot be reversed. 2. Service jobs are a bigger issue than manufacturing jobs, by an order of magnitude. 3. The automation of business processes is as big a contributor to job shrinkage as off-shoring. 4. We are in the middle of a productivity burst which happens every hundred years' (or so). This is good for us - in the long haul. 5. Job churn is normal and necessary: The more the better - in the long haul. 6. Americans' "unearned wage advantage" (Born in the U.S.A.) could be erased, permanently. 7. The impact of the wholesale entry of 2.5 billion people (China & India) into the global economy is unpredictable. It will bring big challenges and amazing opportunities. 8. Free trade works. Period. It makes the world a safer place - in the long haul. The process is not pretty at times. 9. Big Companies are off-shoring/automating almost exclusively in pursuit of efficiency and increased shareholder value. This is not new news. 10. Big companies do not create jobs, and historically have not created jobs. Big companies are not built to last; they are built to decline. http://www.tompeters.com/toms_world/observations.asp "In the long haul" and no discussion of the outer trends, such as concentration of wealth and power. Note that "productivity" means producing the same with fewer people as well as producing more with the same number. Increased productivity benefits go mostly to owners, some to consumers, and none to workers. A wise manager looks at both the short haul and the long haul. ********

Washington Post: Morley on leaders and Kerry Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 2:42:20 PM     This is interesting, seems right ... Arlington, Va.: I realize that he may have been misquoted, but, presuming it is true, do you get the sense that at least a respectable group of foreign leaders prefer Kerry over Bush? Jefferson Morley: It would not surprise me a bit if French President Jacques Chirac and German leader Gerhard Schroeder would welcome Bush's defeat and Kerry's election. I suspect that Mexican president Vicente Fox, Chilean president Ricardo Lagos, Brazilian president Lula da Silva fall in the pro-Kerry camp. But Bush has his fans too. Colombian president Alvaro Uribe has a good relationship with Bush that might be replicated with Kerry. Other Bush fans include Silvio Berlusconi of Italy, Ariel Sharon of Israel, and the emir of Kuwait who is still grateful to the first President Bush for returning his real estate to him in 1991. ********

Syria and the Bush strategy? Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 1:11:26 PM     But that doesn't mean the admin is not clever. That is at the operations level where there is lots of talent in power newcomers. Dangerous. I take this post with some salt, but beware that the admin will have an oeprational map of what happens betwen now and elections. I'd sure like to see that map. CIA In Syria? link What's happening in Syria has all the hallmarks of a classic, 1950s-era, Cold War-style CIA coup d'etat scheme.     First, on March 7 a gaggle of demonstrators—no more than 20 to 30, according to The New York Times on March 8—was squelched by Syrian police, who arrested not only the demonstrators but swooped up a "junior diplomat from the American Embassy," says the Times. "The United States government protested the detention of the American diplomat to the Syrian government, a spokesman for the embassy told The Associated Press." Now the question is: what was a "junior diplomat" from the United States doing there in the first place. Could he have been from the CIA? (Syria is wondering the same thing.)   ********

What is democracy? Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 11:54:31 AM     The tendency is to confuse American style democracy with deeper democracy economic development with human development. so that we get economic development and American style democracy on one side and non development and popular democracy and human development on the other. This is a bad choice. The possibility of a republic, with representatives and a human development agenda and local level direct democracy is left out. from the UN HDR This Human Development Report is first and foremost about the idea that politics is as important to successful development as economics. Sustained poverty reduction requires equitable growth-but it also requires that poor people have political power. And the best way to achieve that in a manner consistent with human development objectives is by building strong and deep forms of democratic governance at all levels of society. Global - 2002 Another way to see it would be to realize how much democracy is treated as the handmaiden of economic "freedom, or one dollar one vote. The paradox is not resolved. A deeper democracy and human development would focus on the soulful personal development and community development issues, going deep into the lived experience of people's lives. Democracy as spiritual and intellectual freedom is quite different from one that supports economic growth as the major criteria, ********

Helmut Schmidt on Islam and the west. Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 11:33:30 AM     A very direct article hy Helmut Schmidt on Islam and the west. One detail struck me with real pain. But alas, in the meantime, we sell weapons and military technologies to them. I would hope that arms limitation is to remain on the international agenda. Poverty, population explosions, and migrations will probably make for future armed conflicts — and not to forget petrol and natural gas. ... More than one-fifth of the total population of the globe is made of Islamic believers — and their share is growing. Therefore, I take it as a certainty that Europe will try to resist any inclination towards a general clash with Islam. ********

Arab progress (more...) Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 10:21:31 AM     This is a good picture of how the US presence in Iaq (and more of course) is stirring things up, but with very uncertain outcomes. ``Something is extremely wrong in this Arab world,'' said Mansour al-Jamri, editor-in-chief of the Bahraini Al-Wasat newspaper, and a prominent opposition figure in the Gulf country. ``You cannot turn a donkey into a horse.'' With a massive U.S. military presence in their midst, and a Bush administration determined to see real change, Arab leaders are facing their biggest collective challenge ever. They are squeezed from both sides. On the one side is an increasingly sophisticated population that is more connected to the world thanks to the satellite and the Internet, and more aware of democracy's potential to empower them. On the other is rising Islamic fervor, fueled by poverty and despair of secular governments' inability to give their people anything to be proud of. Given all that, al-Jamri and others wonder whether Arab regimes can take the risk of embracing real democracy, knowing it may mean their ouster by one side or the other. ``If there are political reforms, then power will slip from their hands,'' said Hisham Kassem, head of the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. A democratic process will take time and patience, he says, and the reforms so far may seem superficial, but they show that the American message is sinking in - that ``this issue cannot be taken as a joke.'' Theodore Kattouf, the U.S. ambassador to Syria until last August, said that in the Arab-Islamic world today, elections with real political parties are important, but ``People have to know that the process is fair and transparent, that their votes count.'' Some Arab regimes have had bitter experience with elections, especially where they boosted Islamic fundamentalist parties. Algeria held a multiparty election in 1992 but aborted it when Islamic parties looked like winning, and a decade of ferocious bloodshed ensued. Jordan held a parliamentary election in 1989 in which Islamic legislators made impressive gains, only to lose popularity when it became clear they could not deliver on their promise to improve living conditions. ********

Reactions to Spain: the dilema Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 10:14:02 AM     Here is the problem, the good argument for a more balanced reaction to terror is considered by those who want a stronger response to be appeasement to the terrorists. the logic here, fairness, multilateral ism, working on real issues that cause problems in the world - is giving in to the terrorist agenda! What is also significant is the fact that the NR even gets into the discussion to this depth. Might be a good sign that we are learning from each other. But the reaction in the left-wing European press is predictable. The Guardian had already sounded the note the night before the elections in an editorial that reflected the Spanish mood accurately: "We need to take the fight against terror out of America's hands. We need to get beyond the them and us, the good guys and the bad guys, and seek a genuinely collective response. Europe should seize the moment that America failed to grasp." As Spain's left-wing El Pais celebrated the Socialists' "unprecedented" victory, in Libération, the defeat was seen as the price of Aznar's "lies" about al Qaeda culpability. Suddeutsche Zeitung told readers that Aznar was being punished for supporting America's antiterrorism policies in Iraq and elsewhere. In the Independent, Robert Fisk reminded his readers that "The West was warned." He's not referring to September 11, of course. The ultimate wisdom of allowing al Qaeda terrorism to determine national elections is still to be seen. But as the Socialists in Spain get "beyond the them and us, the good guys and the bad guys," and attempt to find the common ground they have with whomever killed 200 innocent citizens and wounded 1,400 others, that country's apology for supporting the war on terrorism will be heard with appreciation by al Qaeda — and ETA, the IRA, Hamas, and every other terrorist organization in the world. ********

The real Bush hides the real America Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 9:56:02 AM     We need to face the possibility that Bush is not so much bad minded, as weak minded, and out of his depth, and because of this he brought on board a bunch of used up has been advisers (not taking the best of his dad's like Baker), and weak provincials like Rove,  and then getting caught in a major event that required breadth and the ability to see it (9/11) in the context of long term trends. Instead, he reacted as a spoiled brat, with a bottom the class private school sense of superiority (I may be at the bottom here, but we here are all better than those who are not). The result has been to take a complex America facing a globalizing world where it plays a smaller, not a larger part, of the whole, and forced it to be a single issue America, replacing the middle class quality of life drive with a sense of fear requiring security requiring an authoritarian focus. And this militaristic paranoid style is as provocative as a red flag to a small bull. Even now, terrorism is a minuscule part of the real consequences and forces in the world -  headline grabber for sure, but hardly the cause of most of the pain in the world. ********

Billmon Keynes Posted here Tuesday, March 16, 2004 at 9:27:18 AM     From Billmon's long essay on Keynes and Barney Frank. This hints at the future where business and government come together "for the social good", which means an authoritarian solution embraced by a wide majoriy. World Beat The growing imbalances in the world capitalist economy, as symbolized by the massive U.S. trade deficit and the equally massive Asian trade surpluses, are symptoms of a potential crisis, one that can only be staved off by keeping the U.S. economy in a state of perpetual boom, so that it can continue to absorb the rest of the world's excess savings (the source of those massive Asian trade surpluses.) But the downward pressure on U.S. employment and wages -- from outsourcing, the substitution of capital for labor and chronic industrial overcapacity -- coupled with the steady rise in household debt loads, the "echo bubble" in the stock market, signs of a housing bubble (at least in some major metropolitan areas) plus the revived terrorist threat -- show how difficult it could be to perpetuate the necessary permanent boom. In other words, in a globalized laissez-faire system, the stimulative powers of the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve may no longer be enough to keep the world economy from sinking into a prolonged deflationary slump -- what Keynes termed a "high unemployment equilibrium." Which means the solution might also have to be a global one. Coordinated economic intervention -- to boost the purchasing power of Asian workers, finance public infrastructure spending in the poorest of the poor countries, and prevent a deflationary round of beggar-thy-neighbor currency devaluations, might be necessary. But who's going to provide that coordination? In the '30s, national economies could still be rescued by national governments. But capitalism is in the process of outgrowing the nation state -- and there is no global mechanism strong enough, or legitimate enough, to play the role of Keynesian stabilizer. Even if such a mechanism existed, one has to wonder: Given how hard it's been for national governments to promote public investment and create jobs (without being totally corrupted in the process) how plausible is it to think that a supranational coordinating body might be able to do it successfully? Not very, I suppose. But just because something is difficult, doesn't mean it isn't necessary. Capitalism has been able to skate around a major systemic crisis for nearly 60 years now -- thanks in part to the conventional tools of neo-Keynesian stabilization. But that string of luck may be running out. Which means that sooner or later, some of Keynes's more radical ideas may also need to be tested out -- on a truly grand scale. ********