No, I do not like how things work. That’s because I KNOW how things work. It’s doing them, at the expense of your humanity that concern me.

Remember, your life is just a fleeting moment in time. All you have his your conscience in the end.

You pull the trigger; you’ve been trained to do so. Just make sure you use words like “enemy,” “target,” and “sector” so it will make you feel better.

The comment regarding WWII comparisons wasn’t because I wasn’t aware of what world we live in today (effect of WWII). But that you keep implying that *just like WWII” we will rearrange the Middle East the same way. And that I disagree with.

Note that I can always say that the Civil War effected your life you life today. Just as the American revolution did. In a word. Duh! It’s all connected. But to use comparison of WWII to the situation in the Middle East is foolish. They are not the same.

You reaffirmed MY POINT in the rest of you post when you referred to ways the Pentagon has been changed as well as the State Dept. and Homeland Security. That was my point. WWII analogies are not appropriate.

Thomas P.M. Barnett’s PowerPoint Presentations are very familiar to me. And his points are very important! But the question is what and how to do? His ideas are valid in that there are dangers. But his views on what to do about them are not as valid as he believed before.

Don’t believe me. Watch the interviews (CSPAN, Booknotes, Washington Journal and Charlie Rose) of Barnett in 2003 and then compare them to today’s interviews. He’s changed his recommendations. He’s much less sure of his recommendations. He’s not as gung-ho as you make him out to be. Not like he used to be. He knows that his old plans are not sustainable. I do not consider Barnett a radical. I like his demeanor. He even is very careful to not associate himself too much with this administration. I do consider him a public servant (even if he’s a private citizen now) regardless of who is in office.

economic hit men
26th February 2006

raghu, this post is especially for you. http://www.radioopensource.org/economic-hit-men/ let’s not debate the merits of capitalism and if it’s just the execution that’s the [...]

Chris, why do you give a platform to people like this? I appreciate that you showed a good bit of scepticism, but really, aren’t there more thoughtful and intelligent people that you can bring onboard to discuss international aid and development? Think of the thousands of NGOs that are actively doing good micro lending who would die for a little publicity. Instead you put on a silly man peddling tripe to the throngs of anti-globalism “know-nothings”. I picture him in his butterfly costume dancing in the streets of Seattle or Genova or wherever the next G-8 convenes.

Hollywood is making a movie of this mush. Need I say more?!

I immediately thought of two of movies, both involving mice in some fashion. Fantasia’s scene with the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. And the Peter Sellers’ movie “The Mouse That Roared.” Well, I also thought of Wayne’s World I, but since this is a family website, I’ll not jog any memories about the scene of interest.

In terms of moral instruction, I think you hit the essentials.

Yes as you probably guessed long before I did, the actual ending is B.

Said the Economist “I had learned my lesson. I had heard that the US were conducting tank exercises across the border in Djibouti. In Djibouti it is custom to pay a man triple the market price if you accidentally kill his beast. I raised my stout stick and drove my tow goats North before me through the minefields. But that is another story”

And the moral of the story:
-Always look for a bigger margin?
-Nothing comes from nothing?
-Poverty isn’t quaint nor wealth glamorous.
-If wishes were horses then beggars would ride.
-There was a crooked man, who had a crooked goat…
-Who needs an EHM when you have a three-legged goat?
-Don’t gloat over a dead goat.
(any others?)

a) Left a pauper again and having risen so high and fallen so low, the Economist decides to go the way of the goats and he stands in front of a landing plane.

b) In true economist fashion, he takes what little capital he has (the two goats) and he heads for greener pastures and the next opertunity.

c) He decides to seek refugee status in Europe and eventually he gets a job teaching economics and entertaining students with his goat adventure–better to sit on the sidelines and discuss about capital ebbs and flows than swim in the dangerous waters.

It’s about a Somalian man with a Phd. in Economic. Well all his property and wealth have been destroyed or confiscated during the civil war and all he is left with is one three-legged goat. The goat is his only capital as he puts it. But it cannot sustain him.
However being an economist he is taught to find irregularities in the political/econonic system he can exploit for profit. In Somalia there is a rule that if an animal is killed the party responsible must pay back double the cost to replace it. The economist now living near a runway used for UN planes for safety decided to herd his one goat blindfolded right into the path of an incoming plane. The propeller took the goats head clean off and the man got paid for two goat from the airport authority. You can imagine what he did the next day. That’s right he bought two goats and again set them in front of a landing plane.

“The Western ideas of Free Market Democracy led, sometimes by military actions, will continue to grind down and then overcome the remaining parts of the globe that it hasn’t yet reached. The only question is how will it look after it gets there. It will look differently in Iraq than it does in China.”

Probably what we disagree about is whether this is a good thing (I don’t mean this morally) or not for humanity. It is not that I prefer a scant meal of Stalinist communism or the ideological servings of radical Islam to a Capitalist stew flavoured now and again with a touch of democracy. The stew, even with its particular national herbs and spices, is really the only dinner in towns that must organize themselves to feed large numbers of people.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t wish there were other dishes to choose from, that the stew didn’t come with such after-burn and indigestion and that some people didn’t hoard so much that others were left to lick the pot of just live off the aroma.
Does this mean I am–what would you call me (besides pseudo-intellectual)–oh yes, liberal? Or socialist? Or weak? Or a Moonbat? Maybe I am all of these and more or less. Actually I don’t really know what I am, probably because I live between cultures and don’t have a homeland to root me. I guess I am a sidewalker of sorts.
But I also think you have gotten so used to the taste of the stew you don’t care enough about how it is made (whose labour and resources) and what goes into it. Probably that’s not fair. Sorry. You care but you think that the market is the arbitrator of injustice and will correct the externalities.
Actually I should stop blathering and let you tell me. In all sincerity, please do. I want to understand why you think the whole world should be like the US and why you think America is such a force of good in the world.

The Western ideas of Free Market Democracy led, sometimes my military actions, will continue to grind down and then overcome the reamaining parts of the globe that it hasn’t yet reached. The only question is how will it look after it gets there. It will look differently in Iraq than it does in China.

No US President elected after WWII failed to play the “Cold War Game” (even Jimma’ Carter could not remove troops from Korea after he made a campaign promise to do so) and no President after 9/11 will fail to play the “War on Terror” game (even Hillary supports the Iraq war).

The only question is how much, how far, how fast. The ENTIRE stretegic thinking of the Pentagon has been changed and Rice is doing the same for the State Dept and Homeland Security was reoraganized to assist. Goss is at work at the CIA and Negroponte is doing the same as DNI. There hasn’t been reorganizations of such major portions of the US govt since after WWII, And that was in order to fight the Cold War. Here is a the best description of the “war” that we are now in – and I don’t mean the war in Iraq because that is just the first battle. (If you think that I am kidding you should go sit in a bookstore, I know that you will not want to buy it, and read this. Even if you don’t agree, you should because this book IS THE treatise on thinking in this arena today. This doctrine is taught / talked about in all military staff schools and many others in govt carry it around in thier brief cases).

IT EXPLAINS WHY WE�RE GOING TO WAR,
AND WHY WE�LL KEEP GOING TO WAR.

BY

THOMAS P.M. BARNETT, U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE

[MAPS BY WILLIAM MCNULTY]

Read the May letters to the editor
Read the June letters to the editor

Esquire, March 2003 issue

Since the end of the cold war, the United States has been trying to come up with an operating theory of the world�and a military strategy to accompany it. Now there�s a leading contender. It involves identifying the problem parts of the world and aggressively shrinking them. Since September 11, 2001, the author, a professor of warfare analysis, has been advising the Office of the Secretary of Defense and giving this briefing continually at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Now he gives it to you.

LET ME TELL YOU why military engagement with Saddam Hussein�s regime in Baghdad is not only necessary and inevitable, but good.

http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/published/pentagonsnewmap.htm

From WSD – There is an old saying that “If you throw a frog into a boiling pot of water it will jump out. But if you put it in the water cold, and gradually raise the heat it will stay there until it cooks”.

You may not like the way things work and may even pretend like you don’t understand but the only real reason that most don’t recognize what is going on is because, like in the case of the frog, thier perspective and the pace of the change, prevents them.

During the cold war there was tremendous pressure on countries to either choose bourbon or vodka. In this environment, I can picture EHM, Capitalist thugs or whatever we wish to call them trying to buy off leaders and hook those economies into a growing global trade network. Excess capital was also seeking ever fertile ground and the corporate/political elite had to find new methods to grow their profits and power base. But direct private investment in many cases was too risky, so development projects packaged and sold to the public as “aid” made more sense.

Post Cold War times are quite different since the only thing on tap today is bourbon. Also, as one of the guests noted, for countries such as Thailand and now China, direct foreign investment is possible (capital markets have been established) and sufficient (though dangerous when it suddenly flows elsewhere). World Bank loans to poorer counties become less of a political tool and more a way to speed up the transformation of those economies and markets so they become easier to exploit.

So are there people up at the top who sit at a desk and laugh a menacing laugh and know very well what their businesses do to the rest of the world, or is this just the true nature of neo-liberalism/pure capitalism?
furthermore, which answer is worse?!

To go off topic, as if I havn’t already, a big issue here in the US has been immigration. If only everyone could understand that the reason people from Latin America come here to work is because of the terrible economic policies our government enforces upon their home countries. This is a sort of cycle that ends with cheap labor both at home (undocumented workers) and abroad for large corporations who depend upon it. I’m sorry i posted so late and so much, I’m new!

2. I’d rather see John Stewart or Lewis Black play the EHM. Get me the casting director, stat!

3. Nikos: “Do people really wake up and go to work everyday for inarguably nefarious causes?” Yes.

4. Nikos: “I for one felt the show had about another half-hour to go…and just then it was over!” A second show? Maybe that’s a stretch, but there seemed to be a lot of issues still on the table.

I enjoyed this show and wanted to hear more.

My own post-game analysis is that the exploitation-system exists at least in unspoken conspiracy form if not with overt, self-conscious EHM’s. (Think Enron.)
I’m willing to wager that most Third-Worlders believe it too, since they live within the system’s effluents.
Which brings up the question again — especially since ‘EHM’ is about to become a movie (which I didn’t know till tonight) — what backlash will we have to endure from sick-to-death-of-it-and-not-gonna-take-it-anymore victims of transnational corporate exploiters?