Free Trade

When I hear presidential candidates or outspoken locals protest free trade I shudder. Recently, they NYT rode to my rescue in an editorial.

Suppose the critics are right and all those workers were displaced by cheap imports and factories moving overseas. Those lost manufacturing jobs — an average of 400,000 a year — amount to less than 3 percent of the 15 million jobs lost each year across the economy. Meanwhile, about 17 million jobs were created annually, which is why the unemployment rate at the end of 2007 was not much different than it was at the end of 1997.

So much for 'blaming NAFTA', or Bush, or Republicans, eh?

Anyway...

Much later the Times asserts: "increased trade since World War II has added about 10 percent to American national income". Fine. Free trade has been a staple of American foreign policy since the birth of our nation (mixed with fits of protectionism which often made things worse). We've fought wars over it, and engaged in several smaller conflicts over it.

Woodrow Wilson was the first modern advocate of it on the world stage. His ideas failed via Versailles. Which is why 'free trade' had to wait until after WWII as the Times notes.

Change

Saw this movie a couple of weeks ago: (Flyboys) http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454824/ about The Lafayette Escadrille, a group of American volunteers flying for the French in WWI. I assume they were paid but, there's no specific mention of this fact one way or the other. If they were, it should be noted that France largely financed WWI through the British who did the same through the US. In other words, we paid them, through the British, then the French, with everybody taking a cut along the way no doubt.

This picture drew my attention to this topic today. 'Private military contractors' fighting for foreign governments (aka China) with US assistance in 1941:


We gave China financial assistance, China paid the Flying Tigers $500/kill plus a regular paycheck.

In both cases The Lafayette Escadrille and Flying Tigers were inducted into the regular US Armed Forces as we entered the wars.

There are differences and similarities between these types of groups and military contractors today. I wonder if anyone has explored them? For example, has the size of the modern US military obviated the need for military contractors in the combat arms community? Has the nature of modern combat outstripped the ability of the contractor to participate effectively?

Convergence and Unraveling

As ideas converge, theories often unravel.

A very smart man once told me, and many others present, that wild-eyed conspiracy theories are often the result of white racism. For example, "backdoor" theories about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 or those of a US Government plot to perpetrate September 11, 2001. The idea is, the Japanese (or Arabs) could not do such things alone and simply must have had help from with in.

After all, this smart man went on to say, none of these conspiracy theories had any evidence to back them up despite (in the case of Pearl Harbor) decades of searching and many, many books and historians making the case.

Today we see the emergence of a conspiracy theorist who breaks this mold (the "dissident", white, "other" hating). One Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

In addition to what Tigerhawk shows us, the BBC shows that Ahmadinejad has joined the chorus of those who believe that vast numbers of people have died in Iraq.

Lastly, it is well known that, if not a holocaust denier himself, Ahmadinejad certainly promotes holocaust denial and subverts the most documented event in human history. Ahmadinejad says the holocaust"is a myth".

So, as those who believe that 600,000+ people have been killed in Iraq converge with those who deny that Arab terrorists conducted suicide attacks in NYC and those who deny the holocaust took place...the notion that white racism drives these conspiracy theories seems to unravel.

What then is causing different people in different places from different cultures to converge in this way? A hard question for sure.

All this said, there are clearly present day examples of racism driving conspiracy theories...but not the ones my very smart man was thinking of. Watched cable news in the last month? And it's not new. The final quote is fascinating from a philosophical sense:

"The whole notion of conspiracy theories and misinformation...removes personal responsibility,"

Cynicism in Ithaca

Trolling, er, using The Google to surf around Al Gore's internets for various opinions on various topics originating in and around Ithaca I came across this bit of wisdom.

It smacks of the 'Merchants of Death' meme which originated after WWI and never really gained any traction. And by the way, you'll notice that Senator Nye would be of the same populist Republican, um, roots, that modern elites deride as anti-intellectual as I previously showed. That's simply because, to me, the criticism is all politically driven and nothing more. When historians examine the causes of war few credible ones cite profit. In fact, they almost all write that nations and policy makers, particularly American policy makers, seek democracy (from Wilson on) and stability (for they bring markets and profit).

But equally important, perhaps, is this idea that:

"there is not a dime's worth of difference" between the elected officials of the two parties

That, dear readers, is nothing short of utter cynicism that equates every individual elected official with his or her party affiliation regardless of personal experience or conviction. Whether they be African-American, female, or a former POW. There is, somehow, no difference between them or what they would bring to office.

And I haven't even mentioned any specific policies. I'm strictly speaking biography. One might say...well, the criticism was of Congress and you're pointing to presidential candidates. True. But each of the 3 contenders are from, yup, the US Senate.

A Fellow Traveler

Amid all the turmoil in the world the latest major issue in Ithaca is a proposed ban on smoking in public places including the "popular" outdoor shopping center known as the Ithaca Commons.

To set the stage: I don't smoke, and I don't want to ban people from smoking in public. But it seems that local government does.

Enter on Cornell University college student who had a column published in the Ithaca Journal this weekend and did his part for towny-student relations.

Read the whole column. Interesting bits quoted below.

"Quite alarmingly, Ithaca is poised to take a misguided step in smoking regulations that is driven by misrepresentations of scientific conclusions and a legislatively inappropriate moralism that is paradoxically absent in other aspects of local culture...

In 2006, the surgeon general released a strongly worded report that summarized the strong consensus of the scientific evidence that exposure to indoor tobacco smoke posed a public health hazard. But what proponents of outdoor smoking restrictions conveniently omit is that the report included no evidence of the effects of outdoor environmental tobacco smoke...Knowing that they don't have science to back up these policies, many anti-smoker groups have taken a moralistic approach: Smoking is shameful, and the more it is out of the public's eyes, the better. Their logic is eerily similar to that of those who think gay couples shouldn't hold hands in public, but to keep that out of public view."

I found the whole column very effective. But, I'm me and I don't view those people up on the hill (at Cornell University) as part of another tribe.

Olympic Chicanery

The "Free Tibet" slogan enjoys broad support here in Ithaca. Recently, the Olympic torch went through San Francisco aided by some chicanery on the part of local officials. I should think few ithacans would be please by this but, I wonder:

How many of them really even know about it? After all, the most thorough documentation I've seen of the events of that day come from a certain 'zombie' who publishes at http://www.zombietime.com and, sometimes, http://pajamasmedia.com.

His photo-essay of the Olympic Torch Relay can be found here. Reading it (in its entirety) or, the zombietime home page will demonstrate why few ithacas are likely to be aware of his work.

It is, quite simply, verboten.

Doped up Elite Intellectuals

Earlier (my last post in fact) I drew attention to Ike's warning about a "scientific-technological elite" coming to dominate public policy. Today, readers of AFP, like me, learned that these "scientific-technological elite" are in fact all doped up:

Scientists take drugs to boost brain power: study
09/04/2008 18h46

PARIS (AFP) - Twenty percent of scientists admit to using performance-enhancing prescription drugs for non-medical reasons, according to a survey released Wednesday by Nature, Britain's top science journal.

Will Congress investigate? As it did in baseball recently? Don't hold your breath.