...embeddedness in an industrial structure whose major relationships and transactions are in the final analysis by and large not based on economic considerations of profit-making, but rather on political considerations of mutual protection and long-range expansionary goals. Two huge intersecting organizational structures ensure order among Japan’s large corporations: the set of horizontal keiretsu and the web of federations in every branch of industry. They perform powerful complementary functions that are extralegal and frequently at odds with official regulations (such as the anti-trust legislation that is supposed to be enforced by Japan’s Fair Trade Commission). The keiretsu that tie companies in different industries together, and form huge corporate safety nets, have become relatively well-known since 1989. But the many federations that tie companies in the same industry together, ensuring relative stability, order and hierarchy among firms in the same field, have remained largely unexamined. There are no all-powerful keiretsu centers that exist to dictate corporate policies to members. But the assertive tendencies of each firm are strongly curtailed by the informal commands of group integration, mistakenly represented in Japanese parlance as loyalty (they have no choice). A few very powerful companies (Toyota, for example) need not worry much about fellow keiretsu...

...on political and economic -they should always be seen as parts of the same thing – events as they evolve and connect those with earlier writing of myself and the writing of others. A lot of the time I will just be thinking out loud. I will, in a rather wandering way, follow the unfolding of events in areas that interest me, with jottings under the customary dateline, and link subjects that come up with relevant bits and pieces in earlier writing with which I will gradually fill up the reservoir. There are a number of themes that I intend to come back to again and again, when I think they are relevant to the questions and dilemmas of twentyfirst century existence. My focus is on American developments and what these mean for the world. And on the vicissitudes of European integration, especially in the context of how a Europe with a voice could play a beneficent role in the world. I am very interested in the institution of the citizen, and in which manner citizenship remains possible on the supranational level of the European Union. The subjects will of course grow in number, and can be found in a...

...result of a widespread feeling among commentators and those who “bring the news” that, as everyone already knows of Bush’s awkwardness with the English language, it would be unseemly to rub it in any further. compensating propaganda In the lifetime of most of us there has probably not been an instance of propaganda as effective as that which was successful in eradicating doubts about George W. Bush’s competence from American TV viewers’ minds. For comparable effectiveness in directing the political thinking of an entire nation we must go back to Germany or Japan in the early part of World War II, or to newly communist countries before unfulfilled promises and political suppression could create widespread doubt. Some significant national doubt was beginning to gather around the presidency of George W. Bush when it was eight months old. But in the aftermath of the terrorist massacres it was pushed back and out of the national consciousness. The attacks were a godsend to the floundering Bush administration. There was no question that in living memory there had been no president less respected when he was sworn in. The thought that he was not elected, but appointed to the presidency by a partisan...

see also a new Sampiemon columnn about NATO in Afghanistan What I hoped to read has finally been written: A plea from an American addressed to all Europeans for help with bringing the United States to its senses. It ought to be on the editorial pages of every serious newspaper in Europe. In a speech contributed to the Mut zur Ethik Conference held in Austria a couple of weeks ago, Paul Craig Roberts lays out the case for Europe to “go into active opposition to US foreign policy.” American freedom as well as “sovereign independence elsewhere in the world” require this. Both the political leaders and the people of the United States “need Europe’s help in order to avoid the degeneration of the American political entity.” Europeans insufficiently clued in about the gyrations of American non-mainstream media discussion might imagine such exhortation as coming from rather far-off leftist quarters. But Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal, and has held numerous academic appointments in what in the US are categorized as ‘conservative’ institutions. I first came across his writing on a well-known ‘conservative’ website. He disappeared from that...

...sensitive memories will say no. Who could disagree with the observation that we live in a world less promising, less secure, less hopeful and with more uncertainty, than the world was in the final decade of the twentieth century? Democracy was going to be the wave of the future. But the notion of a properly represented citizenry has become so pale in the putative democracies that it is almost non-existent among the generation now coming of age politically. The notion of a “peace dividend” became a popular political slogan with which especially the then American president and British prime minister speculated about new economic benefits of money left over from reduced defense budgets. Instead we now see a metastasizing American military-industrial complex, which gained an extra “security” component with a dramatic rise in civil surveillance. There is greater job uncertainty in the countries that once comprised the Cold-War Atlantic Alliance, and in several we may note a considerable shrinking of the middle class. Then there have been the two wars against Islamic countries, and their continued occupation by “coalitions” of countries that after World War II denounced the very idea of new foreign occupations, but now engage in large-scale state-condoned...

...a concept that belongs to religious discourse as you grade practical political action? How to evaluate the degree of ‘evil’ represented by roadside bombs with which the Taleban try to make Americans and allies leave their country compared to the wanton wiping out of an entire city – Fallujah – in Iraq? What the Nobel speech did for Obama’s prestige at home was one thing that the rightwing and liberal hawks, as well as quite a number of moderate liberals, could agree on: At least he did not go to Europe to ‘apologize’ for America! I read that several times as I followed the editorial comment at the time. When our thoughts wander to the main motives for the cultivation of an enemy mythology, what immediately comes into view are the material ones. Fortunes and business power are involved in the stimulation of fear and paranoia; huge revenues for weapon makers and the new security industries that directly profit from having enemies. The out-of-control institution of the American military industrial complex keeps it all going. But in the national imagination profit-making does not justify war. America’s warmaking in Afghanistan and Iraq would not have had much merit in the popular...