That’s freedom! Freedom to choose between Tide and ivory, between Corn Flakes and Cheerios, freedom to consume transformed high profit margin global brands who spend so massively on marketing and publicity as to make Hollywood look like poor orphans. The reality is that the top line revenue growth of these Fortune 500 is iffy; their cost and overhead structure is a beast of burden. They need new markets and the Arab world is a big, enticing one. The Western governments need the tax revenues to support their bloated structures.
Problem is, even if the recalcitrant Islamic states were to roll over and beg like trained dogs in a circus, play nicely and invoke what the West wants from them: nominal democracy based on property law and free markets; the problems they invoke may be more acute and dangerous to world stability than the present despotic kingdoms spiced with healthy portions of religious kooks and other charlatans. Technological unemployment, that is the likes of IBM’s Watson and Google driverless cars are just the cusp of major change that is going to spawn severe unemployment in the short and medium term. But sooner or later, the Arab states are going to have to deal with this as well.
The corporate food chain; and were not even representing identical style charts for communications and media companies, industrials, financials, mining, and oil and gas…. Image:http://p.twimg.com/AyT28TPCMAErzBI.jpg:large
Its hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel for Egypt. China to the rescue laying on the African template? …
(see link at end)… To the Editor:
In the past week The Times has published an important interview with Egypt’s president, Mohamed Morsi (“Egypt’s Leader Spells Out Terms for U.S.-Arab Ties,” front page, Sept. 23), and Pankaj Mishra’s Op-Ed essay, “America’s Inevitable Retreat From the Middle East.” What they have in common is the argument that the United States can no longer act as an imperial power in the region, dictating actions and responses from Arabs or Muslims. Part but not all of this has to do with American support of Israel.
Propping up dictators (Egypt, Tunisia, the shah of Iran) or overthrowing them (Iraq) and assuming that Washington can control the results will no longer work.
I am reminded of a quote from Samuel P. Huntington’s much misrepresented book “The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order”: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas, values or religion … but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact, non-Westerners never do.”
CHARLES D. SMITH Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/opinion/should-us-stay-out-of-mideast-affairs.html?ref=opinion
… “America’s Inevitable Retreat From the Middle East,” by Pankaj Mishra (Op-Ed, Sept. 24), lays out the myopic approach to emerging nations that has cost the United States so dearly in lives, money and prestige over the past 40 years. He correctly points to the victory over fascism and the widespread belief in American exceptionalism as important components of this misguided path. However, Mr. Mishra’s des
tion of American power as “waning” doesn’t seem correct; it waned long ago….
—Remnick offers this description of Said and of Obama’s feelings about his English professor: “Best known for his advocacy of the Palestinian cause, and his academic excoriation of the Eurocentric ‘Orientalism’ practiced by Western authors and scholars, Said had done important work in literary criticism and theory. And yet, Said’s theoretical approach in the course left Obama cold.” Remnick then quotes a friend of Obama’s who also took the course: “My whole thing, and Barack had a similar view, was that we would rather read Shakespeare’s plays than the criticism. Said was more interested in the literary theory, which didn’t appeal to Barack or me.” According to Remnick, the young Obama referred to Said as a “flake.”—Read More:http://harpers.org/archive/2012/05/hbc-90008620 image:http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.ca/2012/02/george-grosz-post-apocalyptic-hunger.html
With the exception of the first Iraq war, we have not prevailed decisively in any major war since World War II. Even Korea was a stalemate. Rather than current events being a re-enactment of the fall of Saigon, they seem to be a continuation of a prewar colonial mentality.
Despite our own revolutionary past, we have never understood the dynamics of emerging nationhood as it has developed since World War II, to the point that our nation’s foreign policy seems to resemble the movie “Groundhog Day” — repeating the same misguided actions. When will we wake up and finally get it right? JOHN N. CORBIN Read More:http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/29/opinion/should-us-stay-out-of-mideast-affairs.html?ref=opiniona
— The head of Reuters’ Tehran bureau chief Parisa Hafezi could be looking at jail time after a special media court found her guilty of “spreading lies” with a February video about Iranian women in martial arts training. The headline to the accompanying story originally said “Thousands of female Ninjas train as Iran’s assassins” before Reuters toned it down read “Three thousand women Ninjas train in Iran,” after the martial arts club where the video was filmed complained to the Irani government that it was inaccurate. It turns out that these women weren’t actually training to become throwing star-toting, samurai sword-swinging killers. They were just looking for a creative way to get into shape.
This sort of offense is taken pretty seriously in Iran. When the story first stirred up trouble earlier this year, Iran stripped all of Reuters journalists their of their press credentials and ejected them from the country. With the exception of Hafezi, an Iranian citizen, the whole bureau has been working from Dubai for the past eight months. Hafezi stayed behind to face the music and now awaits sentencing and a final verdict from a judge which is scheduled for later this week.—Read More:http://www.theatlanticwire.com/global/2012/09/iran-doesnt-appreciate-reuters-calling-their-women-ninja-assassins/57442/ image:http://www.more.com/courage-in-journalism-award-parisa-hafezi?page=2
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