Articles by Greg Guma

In politics, a basic rule of incumbency is to ignore the opposition for as long as possible. Responding to a challenger’s criticisms, as practiced pols know, often tends to confer legitimacy and set the stage for a debate on equal terms. The same rule applies at the global level, in conflicts between elites and their local or regional opposition. Once those in power begin to directly address their critics, the stage is set for some form of accommodation, even if the tactics don’t immediately change or the response takes the form of a vicious counter-attack. read more

At first glance, arguments for privatization of public enterprises and services look reasonable enough. Since they have to compete, private companies supposedly deliver better and cheaper results. In many countries, government is too large and inefficient anyway, cheerleaders for globalized free enterprise endlessly charge. States are involved in industries and services that they have neither the time nor the resources to manage well. To make matters worse, government-run projects too often breed corruption and squander public funds. read more

On the morning after the April 16 rally and street protests in Washington, DC, staged to draw public attention to the destructive policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF), the national press was still missing the point. In a Washington Post Style section feature, for example, one writer defined the A16 mobilization as "get-your-greedy-corporations-out-of-my-old-growth-tree-day." That was about as close as any Post reporter came to explaining why more than 30,000 people had descended on the nation’s capital, or why it was necessary to arrest more than 1200 people and militarize over 20 city blocks. read more

Almost a century ago, novelist and muckraker Upton Sinclair weighed in on the millennial debate with a play that predicted worldwide devastation when a radioactive element causes a deadly explosion on New Year’s Eve. Called The Millennium, his script follows the attempts of a handful of survivors to create a new society. Oddly enough, the long-lost play, written in 1908 yet never performed publicly, is a comedy in which utopia prevails and all the characters live happily ever after. read more

Looking at the behavior of many political leaders, it’s easy to conclude that government itself isn’t to be trusted. Whether the men (and occasionally women) in charge head regimes dominated by military cliques or ethically-challenged bureaucrats, they rarely inspire much faith that the State will consistently promote fairness and protect individual rights in exchange for the power it assumes and penalties it imposes.

In the US, this suspicion dates back to the colonial secession from England – a primal rejection of illegitimate central authority. Since then, distrust and fear of government has fueled many forms of resistance – from Daniel Shays’ 1786 tax revolt to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building. But as Gary Wills argues in his study of government distrust, A Necessary Evil, the real victims of this attitude "are the millions of poor or shelterless or medically indigent who have been told, over the years, that they must lack care or life support in the name of their very own freedom. Better for them to starve than to be enslaved by Ôbig government.’ That is the real cost of our anti-government values." read more

For almost two decades, the US government claimed that it bankrolled the overthrow of Afghanistan’s revolutionary regime only in response to the invasion of Soviet troops in the final days of the 1970s. But early this year, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was President Carter’s national security advisor at the time, finally admitted that covert US intervention began long before the USSR sent in troops. "That secret operation was an excellent idea," he explained. "The effect was to draw the Russians into the Afghan trap." read more