Hummmm--- If you continually focus upon fixing problems, then you will risk just staying in one status and not really advancing. You just continually fix things like cars coming into a repair shop.

However, if you carefully choose goals that will advance the Earth, then the process of achieving those goals will weaken the problems so that they eventually dissipate.

I think you mentioned that you ride a bike. Maybe this comparison applies---maybe. When you ride a mountain bike, you need to learn to look where you want to go, but if you look at the rocks and holes, then you are likely to hit them and crash.

Other examples could be: I am in favor of youth development instead of criminal prosecution. Continually prosecuting seldom alleviates the causes or connects to measurable youth development. Or---how about learning how to choose community development goals in violent countries?

It may not be a case of good news or bad news, but how we use the information to choose and achieve the goals that serve healthy interests.

Bob Spencer

Professor Walt:

What is your take on the human rights abuses - some recently revealed on video - by members of Kopassus (I think) - Indonesian special forces. Does a realist simply disregard such abuses? Does one - realist or other - argue that US aid mitigates, rather than encourages or countenances, such as abuses (the School of the Americas argument)?

A former student

1. Poland Lives? What? What did you think the whole country was on that plane? We'd likely be better off if all our Congress were vaporized, it would certainly curtail corruption. Don't over-esteem people or leaders, you'll be disappointed. Realists too often make this error, focusing on leaders rather than the consent of the governed.

3. Terrorism less lethal? Where, what? The centers of terrorism are falling into a civil war, or will shortly, after we leave. Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan are all close to civil war. We've been keeping the peace by propping up dictators and traitors to their own people. Our ability to afford this nonsense is running out. If just a few of these countries flip, what happens to Israel, our policies which are hell bent on supporting tyranny where we keep doubling down won't long endure.

5. War is fun? We don't have war, the US is policing many of these "wars." Calling these "wars" is like calling a police operation a war. War is what will happen once we leave. Again, where are we resolving the divide and conquer policies we've picked up from the Brits? We've kept these democratic time bombs ticking, it suits our purposes. It makes us indispensable. What do we do when we don't want to be needed?

OBS---OBS---OBS---NEWS!
First time ever I hear this. OK, may have read it on some webpage in the past, but that John now is saying it means that it is a fact.

(link to my own website, which is the only site in the world that has Johns speech anc the corresponding transcript on the same page)

[Click ] Professor John J. Mearsheimer, Washington, July 7, 2010:

All sorts of people in the national security establishment wanted to go to great lengths to stop Israel from acquiring nuclear weapons. Because again this wasn’t in our interest.

And the two best examples that show how it’s not in our national interest are what happened during the 1973 war. During that conflict, the Israelis looked like they were in dire straits for the first few days. And they wanted the United States to immediately resupply them. The Nixon administration said "no" because the Nixon administration judged quite correctly that once the Israelis recovered from the initial surprise that they would do very well. And therefore the US government did not what to give the Israelis at that point more arms.The Israelis then threatened to pull the nuclear weapons out, and began talking about using nuclear weapons. That, not surprisingly, spooked the Americans who immediately began resupplying the Israelis even though they did not want to do that. That’s a form of nuclear coercion. From Israel’s point of view this was smart policy from our point of view it was not good".

This, surely, must be the understatement of the year - or the last four score years, at least.... Many, many countries around the world still feels the pain from this cynical, selfish decision that the Israelis made that October day in 1973. a decision which weren't even necessary for the survival of Israel.

I will offer you a look at the cost to the state of Denmark. You can see the chart from Denmarks National Bank on my website - which I linked to earlier. It is under the Consequences for the rest of us -section.

Remember very many nations all over the world suffered as a result of this decision. Great Britain was close to being put under administration from the IMF. I will urge you to construct your own websites and dig the data out from your country's National Bank. In Denmark's case the accumulated debt as a result of the oilcrisis has significantly put a damper on our free economic choices in all the years since then.

surely an understatement

Of course it's a truism that most good news is a subjective matter. Human existence may not be a zero sum game, but in a world of scarcity and competition, any substantive news is rarely good for everyone.

Of the five items proposed here, I suppose it would be churlish and argumentative to dispute that 1 and 5 are good news for the vast majority.

2 is only really good news if you support the US/Israeli side in that particular fight. Of course, many do, because that's the way the preponderance of the money and the propaganda goes.

4 likewise is obviously good news only if you support the US side in the ongoing attempt to maintain US global predominance by whatever means necessary. It's clear that the US gained a huge cosmetic boost from the replacement of the generally (and rightly) hated and despised Bush by Obama. Subsequent changes in international opinion on Obama/US have generally varied according to how apparent has been the reality that Obama represets only a cosmetic change and brings no real substantive improvement in the long run of US behaviour. Obviously, it's the populations of muslim ME countries that have had their noses most forcefully rubbed in this reality so far, and populations further afield are somewhat behind that trend.

As far as Indonesia is concerned it will remain the usual story - regime and elites bought by US wealth, power and propaganda, and the masses forced to lump it.

It is proposal number 3 that is the truly misguided one. It is based upon the flawed foundation of the tendentious and deliberately propagandist concept of "terrorism" as something that only non-state (or in reality non-western-state) actors do. In fact, deaths from terrorism are much higher if you count non-American victims of US and Israeli violence (even if you only count drone-murder strikes perpetrated by the US when they are outside the war zone in Afghanistan).

And, of course, it is inherently propagandist to single out one particular conflict tactic in this way. Those blown to bits and machine-gunned in the course of the US's attempt to impose its control on Iraq and Afghanistan are just as dead as those blown up in terrorist bombings, and for no good cause.

Russia bringing Iran’s Beshehr reactor online is good news. I like to think it was cooked up between the two presidents over those cheeseburgers. That would be good news. Then Ahmadinejad must have been in the loop since it could hardly be done without telling him. That’s good news. If, as I suspect, that surreal spy episode after Medvedev left was a distraction to keep anyone (guess who?) from suspecting such a plan, then that’s good news too. Unless we are all pessimistic misery-boots, we can expect Iran now to play its part and abandon uranium enrichment, and that feels like very good news. If Ahmadinejad does announce such an intention, Obama will have outmanoeuvred Netanyahu, and that would be yet more good news.

As to the 70's oil crisis, I understand that it was illusory. Just as the 2007 oil price spikes had nothing to do with supply and demand. We had ample surpluses in Crude, Refined Gas and distillates. In the 70's I believe there was a concurrent attempt by my Dallas neighbors (within a couple of miles but certainly not the same neighborhood) the Hunt brothers.

Check it out, but I think they were trying to corner both the oil and silver markets to develop an energy/commodity backed "currency" of a type. I have a vague hold on this, but I've heard some talk on this from some contrarian voices that tend to follow facts not propaganda.

A further note, our 2007 oil prices were driven up by speculation. Two of the most known culprits were BP and Goldman Sachs. That said, I can't imagine the Russians and Saudis didn't see some merit in inflating the prices. The Saudis were quite vocal during this time saying that there was ample oil available then, but they increased production anyway. This leads me to believe that they backed out of this before the collapse. But, the collapse of oil prices in Sept of 2007 sucked any remaining liquidity out of the financial markets precipitating the economic collapse and malaise we're enjoying today.

Notice that countries that are more skeptical of financial shenanigans, interest and the like are booming still today--much of the Muslim world and the East.

What I can't forget or ignore is that during the Spring of 2007 both Bush and Sam Bodman, the energy secretary came out publicly declaring oil was short. I earlier stated that oil, gasoline and distillates were in oversupply. That information comes from two sources, the petroleum institute and the US dept. of energy, Bodman's agency. This announcement came in the middle of a 17 week run where we were 1 million barrels surplus in all three categories and our refineries were running around 89%. Full capacity for refineries is 95%. Further, during this time we had a couple of refineries off line. By the way, the only thing that interrupted that 17 week run was fog in Houston's ship channel, this basically shut down tankers from off loading for a couple of days out of the week. This is common, and as our oil and refined gas in reserve were at all time highs totally trivial.

I know you think I'm crazy, that all the "experts" were declaring oil short. That is true, but they were lying. They had bet on oil rising and were willing to say anything to line their pockets. Just as the lady from the Heritage Foundation defending our "defense" budget makes here a venal whore, not a "thinker," scholar nor expert but rather an advocate, pitch man, or sleazy sales man.

You feed us doom and gloom?
Take a look at this Dana Milbank report
on Christina Romer's swan song as CEA chair:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/01/AR2010090106148.html