A silver lining of the U.S. messing up the Middle East is that it sucks U.S. oxygen from messing up Latin America. With their own govts in place instead of U.S. dictatorships, they are finally able to make progress on real matters like economic development. Brazil is the prime case in point.

The 21st century will be the century of the BRIC countries, for better or (probably) worse. It could have been ours, but austerity to feed the insatiable greed of the banksters was more important.

each generation has to keep retelling the great moral stories

It is ever so. The world needs more historians, fewer propagandists.

R in BRIC stands for Russia. Looks like it’s falling apart, so I wouldn’t be so optimistic about that country. Been coasting deceptively on high oil prices.

I’ve often thought le Carre’s work was his way of doing penance for his prior life as a real spy.

As far as I’m concerned, he has more than paid the debt he owes the world by making clear to those of us who care to know, just what sort of men rule the world, and how they do it.

It’s le Carre I’d blame credit for my hunch that Obama was ‘chosen’ at the age of twelve, and nurtured like a prize orchid, to serve the MOTU.

Anyway, I’m so glad to have le Carre to offset the execrable output of that shameless cheerleader Tom Clancy.

Coffee beats tea. That explains it all. ;-)

Test

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This history buff has read everything by LeCarre’ because he provides such context which leads one to read the real history of British and American actions in post WWII Europe.

Marshall plan indeed. Cool self interest instead.

Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer in Russia House really nails the CIA to a “T’

Why age 12?

Indeed, one wonders when the globalization of finance workers will leave us all entertained by off shored debt collectors.

http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lms/labour-market-statistics/january-2010/index.html

The UK reports over 6 million of 26 million private sector workers are in the financial and business services sector. But this is a natural process when continual advances in technology and productivity mean fewer and fewer workers are needed in resource extraction, manufacturing or even service industry.

The big job losses in the Northwest US forest industry did not occur when they ran out of trees to cut. They occurred when they modernized the mills.

Which of course brings us to the Fall of Communism that led to PNAC because we always need an enemy to justify the endless conflict.

Good thing 9/11 happened so terrorists are the new RED menace.

Which brings us to the MIC whose decadence is sucking the lifeblood outa our country almost as fast as the vampire bankers.

Yes, love the line about the Russians: “oh, they’re as corrupt as the Americans, but there’s less bullshit.”

LOL

Here’s what I typed about Marshall plan last night.

And the vaunted Marshall Plan?

U.S. assistance hardly exceeded 2.5% of GNP of the recipient countries, and accounted for less than 20% of capital formation in that period. The allocation of aid often seemed to follow political, not economic needs: nearly half the resources never arrived in the disaster areas on the former European battlefields but served to buy political support in England and France, and to fend off communist threats in various countries.

Link.Europe rebuilt itself after complete destruction by U.K. & U.S.

U.S. is good only at destroying.

But this is a natural process when continual advances in technology and productivity mean fewer and fewer workers are needed in resource extraction, manufacturing or even service industry.

The truly sad thing about all this is that the resources saved by technological advances in manufacturing and the service industries ought to go to sectors like education, health, and caring for the aged and infirm, which are for all sorts of reasons provided more efficiently collectively than privately. Eighty years of right-wing propaganda seconded by fellow-traveler teaching by mainstream economists has made it impossible for people to envisage a world not dominated by private goods. John Kenneth Galbraith fingered the problem more than a half century ago in The Affluent Society.

The idea that over time the public sector should grow in relative importance as a consequence of the rising productivity of the private sector is simply not on anyone’s horizon. It’s as if the only way we can survive as an economy is to buy more shit that most of us don’t need.

Hey now! I’m from Iowa. Sure, bullshit stinks, and it attracts mucho flies. But after a long winter, it serves as fertilizer for a new spring and an abundant harvest, and — oh, my metaphor is getting out of hand. Just sayin’ that cowpies get a bad rap. :-P

I resemble that remark.*g*

This Iowan is gettin darn tired of the relentless tv commercials most of which are totally lame. I cannot wait till Jan.4

3 out of 4 ain’t bad :-)

The ‘Great Game’ is played by people with a penchant for long-term planning.

The best way to co-opt the talent you will need in the future is to find them when they are young. The hook more often than not is high praise and an invitation to consider oneself an ‘insider’ in a world populated with outsiders.

For example, if you are considering working towards admission to any of our military academies, you either have to be born into that track, or commit to the process by the time you’re 14.

The point is that what is required is comitted, true-believers, not in a narrow, parochial sense, but in the broadest sense, true believers in the myth of American exceptionalism and the self-evident righteousness of the fight for the supremacy of ‘western’ culture.

Le Carre goes to great lengths to show the extent to which his characters early lives make them vulnerable to the efforts of those who select and mentor the elites who control both our own government, and those of the rest of the world.

Those elites mostly believe they are independent thinkers, when in fact they are well trained puppets.

Invisible, possibly unconscious strings perhaps, but puppets none the less.

To achieve this sort of control, it’s necessary to hook the subject before the habit of introspection can take root.

Get ‘em while they’re young.

Scarecrow; I heard in the past, that there was a lot of human parts also being exported from Brazil, is there any truth too that?

A silver lining of the U.S. messing up the Middle East is that it sucks U.S. oxygen from messing up Latin America.

Good point. Perhaps the only thing of value from Team USA’s endless jack-booted stomping all over the ME, Africa, Asia, etc.

I recently rewatched both PBS/BBC le Carré thrillers and they are magnificent — I don’t know why anyone would want or dare to attempt a remake — though a new Tinker Tailor is here and I will go see it. But I suppose each generation has to keep retelling the great moral stories. The series are six hours each, but riveting from start to finish.

Funny… was thinking about the series, myself, when I read the news about Brazil today. Perhaps partly bc of the new film version of the first novel. Like you, I plan to see the film but know it cannot compare to the series which I was just recommending to some people this past weekend. Go to your public library – while they still exist – and borrow both series immediately. Too bad the BBC didn’t have enough money to make The Honourable Schoolboy which was the 2d novel in the trilogy. Had some brilliant sections about the War in Viet Nam, which had me wondering if that was a partial influence for Coppola when he made Apocalypse Now.

Le Carre has more than made up for anything he may have done while being a spook. Very informative. Yes, these days now only underline the futility so eloquently expressed in Le Carre’s Smiley trilogy.

Much as I like Gary Oldman, I doubt he can do justice to the role so fabulously inhabited by the late Sir Alec Guiness.