It’s the 21st Century, Stupid!

The New York Times titles its article Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts. And it’s right. Those donor countries who relied on the blind belief in free markets that is currently the fashion in many developed countries and the World Bank were wrong and the new president of Malawi was right. Subsidies for poverty stricken farmers to be able to have seed and fertilizer was necessary for them to produce their own food and should probably be expanded to other countries with similar situations. The free market has little to do with farmers whose current production isn’t even enough to allow them to feed themselves.

So can we arrange for the Economics School of the University of Chicago to lose its government funding since we shouldn’t be subsidizing religion even if it’s the First Church of Free Market?

“I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue.

“I was able to get a sense of his soul.

“He’s a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country and I appreciate very much the frank dialogue and that’s the beginning of a very constructive relationship,” Mr Bush said.

This was George W. Bush’s comment concerning Vladimir Putin in 2001. Does trustworthy include tossing your political opponents in jail and having them beaten to make certain that your hand picked successor wins? After all, Vladimir, that good old boy KGB apparatchik, can’t take any chances that he will lose power, can he? And make no mistake, though he might not be President of Russia after the coming elections he won’t be losing his grip on power in any way. Just because they aren’t the Evil (Communist) Empire any more doesn’t mean that they are our friends or allies in any way.

When was consistency declared the supreme virtue? You’d certainly think that it had been promoted to that status based on the actions of our current administration. From “stay the course” to the latest speech on Cuba it seems to be the only virtue that interests the powers that be lately. Time reports on the hard line that Bush echoed yet again. It’s been the constant line from every politician of every party who wanted to pander to an irrational subset of the Cuban immigrant community for over four decades now. And what has it gotten anyone? Maybe some votes, but that’s it. Has it helped one Cuban still in that country? No. Over forty years of embargoes that no one else takes part in and constant rhetorical hits and no real progress towards ending the repressive Castro regime to show for it. I’m not going to say that some of it, maybe a lot of it made sense before the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the client state status of Cuba but that boat sailed 18 years ago now and maybe some change would have made sense by now. But will anyone anytime soon be able to see past the votes that might be gained by political pandering to part of the Cuban population in Florida? Somehow I doubt it.

I am always somewhat puzzled when I read of people speaking of how everyone needs to reason with Iran. While it is most certainly true that there is no justification for the use of military force in the near future I question how much attention the people who make these statements are really paying to conditions in that country. Because I always want to know which Iran they expect us to reason with. An article in the New York Times points out the conditions there that lead me to my opinion.

 There is not one Iran. There are multiple centers of power that don’t always agree with each other but the only two with any real power are the extremely conservative and the fanatically conservative.