Well said. And I rather suspect that the core of the matter is deeper than Culture – and that would be an extended conversation. But it is certainly not about rule change and redesign, I think.
Right on, as your imminent study of evolutionary psychology will confirm. I reckon we don't have time for evolutions in our Pleistocene genome to catch up to (and get ahead of) our impact on the planet, so we're just gonna hafta run what we brung. That means cultural engineering and we already have been shown how to do it by the Oligarchy. What's it gonna take to shift the values-balance from hegemonistic concentration at any cost to something closer to sustainability? But then, that's a whole ‘nother conversation barely touched-on in the message below…
The assassination of Salmaan Taseer has shown only too clearly the growing extremism in Pakistan, the radicalisation of its society and the polarisation that is taking hold. This is not just between the religious and the secular, but also the polarisation that the “war on terror” has caused between the various religious sects.
Is the Global War in Terror Creating More Problems than it is Solving?
Chuck Spinney
The late historian Chalmers JOHNSON popularized the term “blowback” to describe the unintended grand-strategic consequences resulting from interventionist foreign policies and military actions. The term blowback dates to the CIA's internal history of the US’s 1953 Iranian coup that threw out the Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh (a progressive social reformer who wanted to nationalize the oil industry among other things) and replaced him with the tyrannical American puppet Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlevi. No one can doubt that contemporary problems with Iran today are rooted in resentments dating back to the 1953 coup.
Cable from the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv says Israeli officials wanted Gaza's economy ‘functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis.'
Israel told U.S. officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza's economy “on the brink of collapse” while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by a Norwegian daily on Wednesday.
Three cables cited by the Aftenposten newspaper, which has said it has all 250,000 U.S. cables leaked to WikiLeaks, showed that Israel kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv briefed on its internationally criticized blockade of the Gaza Strip.
The territory, home to 1.3 million Palestinians, is run by the Islamist Hamas group, which is shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence or accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.
“As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge,” one of the cables read.
Israel wanted the coastal territory's economy “functioning at the lowest level possible consistent with avoiding a humanitarian crisis”, according to the Nov. 3, 2008 cable.
Bruce Sterling and I are well into our annual State of the World conversation over on the WELL. Bruce, who’s traveled the world all his life and has been in unique situations (like his travels through Russia and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Iron Curtain), truly thinks globally, whereas I’m virtually global (via the Internet) though not as well-traveled. I tend to write from a U.S. perspective, which means less these days… sez Bruce,
Back in the 90s, when I was travelling in Europe, I used to get a lot of eager queries about the USA. What’s new over there, what are you doing with your lives and your riches and your technology, why is your government like that? This was considered a matter of urgency, and most Europeans I met, who were naturally from techie, artsy and literary circles, held views of America that were surprisingly like contemporary paranoid Tea Party views. They had interestingly wacky private theologies about the Pentagon, the CIA, Wall Street, the malignant military-industrial complex and so forth… Not that they ever bothered to find out much about the factual operation of these bodies. Stilll, they were sure that the USA really mattered.
Nowadays, the Europeans are just not all that concerned about Yankees. They don’t ask; they’re incurious about America, they are blase’. Being an American in Europe now is rather like being a Canadian, and it’s trending toward being a Brazilian.
…
American soft power is vanishing. Foreigners are much less interested in American television, movies, pop music… America once had a tremendous hammerlock on those expensive channels of distribution, but those old analog megaphones don’t matter half as much in today’s network society.
The USA has become a big banana republic; in other words, it’s come to behave like other countries quite normally behave. The upside is that we don’t get blamed for what happens; the downside is, nothing much happens. Decay and denial. Gothic High Tech.
Phi Beta Iota: the below comment in the larger dialog was especially interesting–the world is giving up on governments, the era of global hybrid networks that are evidenc-driven and amass more spending power than governments and corporations is nearing. Religions might–but with grave doubts–be a starting point, but only if they accept evidence-based sense-making in support of faith-based truth and reconciliation.
inkwell.vue.400 : State of the World 2011: Bruce Sterling and Jon Lebkowsky permalink #16 of 73: gmoke (gmokecamb) Mon 3 Jan 11 18:19
One thing I see on the horizon and which I think will be the next step for 350.org is a kind of ongoing global brainstorm on local, practical solutions and adaptations to climate change. Since the international diplomats aren't going to do anything until 2020 and the incoming US Congress refuses to do anything constructive, those who want to address climate change will have to do it themselves. Online repositories of information where people can share what works where and what doesn't will help speed our climbing the collective learning curve and the replication of successful experiments.
There are some groups online which are trying to pull together parts of this puzzle but no central nexus that I know of. Yet.
After nine years of futility, time is running out.
The lead editorial in a recent WP article, “Steady in Afghanistan,” claimed the early results of President Obama’s escalation strategy in Afghanistan “are mixed — but promising,” because President Obama “has raised the odds for success by committing U.S. forces to Afghanistan for four more years and by promising to negotiate a strategic partnership with the government of Hamid Karzai in 2011.”
Raised the odds for success? Four more year versus 2011? Consider please the unexamined ramifications of these words.
The Associated Press Thursday, January 6, 2011; 7:29 AM
JERUSALEM — A U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks on Thursday quoted American officials as saying a key Israeli cargo crossing for goods entering the Gaza Strip was rife with corruption.
The June 14, 2006, cable, published Thursday by Norway's Aftenposten daily, says major American companies told U.S. diplomats they were forced to pay hefty bribes to get goods into Gaza. It was unclear whether the practice still continues.
Pakistan: Update. On 5 January, Pakistani media reported more details about the assassination of Governor Taseer.
The assassin said everyone in the governor's protective detail knew of his intentions. The weird thing is no background investigation would find adverse information about a devout Muslim, not in Pakistan.
The guard who assassinated Punjab Governor Salman Taseer on 4 January told other police officers of his planned attack but was still assigned to Taseer's security detail, the Wall Street Journal reported 5 January. The assassin, Qadri, previously was removed from a counterterrorism police branch because of concerns about his Islamist leanings. He personally had requested to guard Taseer, according to a senior police official.
