What the film didn’t point out, however, is that the crisis has spawned a whole new set of abuses, many of them illegal as well as immoral. And leading political figures are, at long last, showing some outrage. Unfortunately, this outrage is directed, not at banking abuses, but at those trying to hold banks accountable for these abuses.

The immediate flashpoint is a proposed settlement between state attorneys general and the mortgage servicing industry. That settlement is a “shakedown,” says Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama. The money banks would be required to allot to mortgage modification would be “extorted,” declares The Wall Street Journal. And the bankers themselves warn that any action against them would place economic recovery at risk.

All of which goes to confirm that the rich are different from you and me: when they break the law, it’s the prosecutors who find themselves on trial.

To get an idea of what we’re talking about here, look at the complaint filed by Nevada’s attorney general against Bank of America. The complaint charges the bank with luring families into its loan-modification program — supposedly to help them keep their homes — under false pretenses; with giving false information about the program’s requirements (for example, telling them that they had to default on their mortgages before receiving a modification); with stringing families along with promises of action, then “sending foreclosure notices, scheduling auction dates, and even selling consumers’ homes while they waited for decisions”; and, in general, with exploiting the program to enrich itself at those families’ expense.

The end result, the complaint charges, was that “many Nevada consumers continued to make mortgage payments they could not afford, running through their savings, their retirement funds, or their children’s education funds. Additionally, due to Bank of America’s misleading assurances, consumers deferred short-sales and passed on other attempts to mitigate their losses. And they waited anxiously, month after month, calling Bank of America and submitting their paperwork again and again, not knowing whether or when they would lose their homes.”

Still, things like this only happen to losers who can’t keep up their mortgage payments, right? Wrong. Recently Dana Milbank, the Washington Post columnist, wrote about his own experience: a routine mortgage refinance with Citibank somehow turned into a nightmare of misquoted rates, improper interest charges, and frozen bank accounts. And all the evidence suggests that Mr. Milbank’s experience wasn’t unusual.

Notice, by the way, that we’re not talking about the business practices of fly-by-night operators; we’re talking about two of our three largest financial companies, with roughly $2 trillion each in assets. Yet politicians would have you believe that any attempt to get these abusive banking giants to make modest restitution is a “shakedown.” The only real question is whether the proposed settlement lets them off far too lightly.

What about the argument that placing any demand on the banks would endanger the recovery? There’s a lot to be said about that argument, none of it good. But let me emphasize two points.

First, the proposed settlement only calls for loan modifications that would produce a greater “net present value” than foreclosure — that is, for offering deals that are in the interest of both homeowners and investors. The outrageous truth is that in many cases banks are blocking such mutually beneficial deals, so that they can continue to extract fees. How could ending this highway robbery be bad for the economy?

Second, the biggest obstacle to recovery isn’t the financial condition of major banks, which were bailed out once and are now profiting from the widespread perception that they’ll be bailed out again if anything goes wrong. It is, instead, the overhang of household debt combined with paralysis in the housing market. Getting banks to clear up mortgage debts — instead of stringing families along to extract a few more dollars — would help, not hurt, the economy.

In the days and weeks ahead, we’ll see pro-banker politicians denounce the proposed settlement, asserting that it’s all about defending the rule of law. But what they’re actually defending is the exact opposite — a system in which only the little people have to obey the law, while the rich, and bankers especially, can cheat and defraud without consequences.

Estas dos tendencias contradictorias -la violencia que sigue creciendo, y las elecciones que el PRI sigue perdiendo- definen el perplejo momento que vive México al iniciarse la sucesión presidencial de 2012.

Abundan las explicaciones, tanto casuísticas como tendenciales, de la retahíla de reveses que ha sufrido el PRI en las elecciones citadas, algunas hasta cómicas: por ejemplo, no es derrota si se pierde en un Estado que no se gobernaba. Es decir, si el PP pierde las próximas elecciones legislativas en España, no será una derrota porque no está en el Gobierno. Es cierto que las razones del fracaso priísta en Oaxaca no son las mismas que en Sinaloa, que a su vez son distintas a las de Guerrero, que se diferenciaron de la debacle de Baja California Sur. Y también es obvio que no es lo mismo esta última entidad, la menos poblada del país, que el Estado de México, el más poblado y cuya elección será en julio y crucial para la contienda presidencial del año entrante. Pero a reserva de que los especialistas descubran comportamientos electorales por ahora invisibles, podemos desde ahora aventurar una primera explicación: la gente en México no quiere votar por el PRI. En los comicios que restan este año -Nayarit, Estado de México, Coahuila y Michoacán- es probable que pierda dos más, gane uno holgadamente, y la moneda está en el aire en el reino mexiquense de Enrique Peña Nieto, hoy día el candidato puntero del PRI -y de todos- en la contienda presidencial.

No es imposible que exista un estigma priísta imborrable: cualquiera que sea el candidato -bueno o malo, joven o viejo, honesto o corrupto, inteligente o tonto- el emblema del PRI mata su personalidad o lo hunde. Quienes pronostican un tsunami priísta el año entrante deberán de conseguirse unos buenos binoculares para divisarlo a lo lejos en las aguas del Pacífico. No se ha acercado a costas mexicanas.

De existir ese estigma, se confirmaría la validez de la estrategia diseñada desde 1999 para lograr la alternancia en el país y derrotar al PRI en condiciones sumamente adversas, por lo menos en esa época, y todavía ahora en muchos Estados. Consiste en convertir cada elección en un referéndum sobre la permanencia o regreso del PRI al poder, y obligar a los electores a definirse sobre este tema central, y no otro: ni quién es el mejor candidato, o cómo han gobernado las organizaciones políticas alternativas, ni cuál es la situación económica y social de la entidad o del país, etcétera. La premisa de la campaña de Vicente Fox hace 12 años fue que los mexicanos estaban hartos del PRI, y que si se le imponía al electorado una opción simple -seguir con el PRI o echarlo- se ganaría la elección, sin importar en exceso el panorama nacional, la combinación de virtudes y defectos del candidato, el talento o la mediocridad de su equipo, la estatura y habilidad del adversario.

La estrategia ha funcionado maravillosamente para ganar elecciones, pero no para gobernar. Como Héctor Aguilar Camín y yo hemos dicho en nuestro libro anterior Un futuro para México y ahora en el recién publicado Regreso al futuro, no sirve para transformar y construir un México próspero, equitativo y democrático. Pero esa es harina de otro costal.

Si el PRI y el PAN encuentran una solución de alianza en el Estado de México -y hay una muy buena, la exsecretaria panista de Desarrollo Social y de Educación, Josefina Vázquez Mota- pueden empezar a descarrilar el AVE de Peña Nieto, en pleno ascenso hacia el palacio presidencial de Los Pinos. Y si el PAN logra construir una candidatura ciudadana a la presidencia -interna o externa al partido- para 2012, puede repetir en el poder. Las elecciones realmente existentes, como se hubiera dicho hace algunos años, muestran que la restauración en México es, por lo menos, incierta.

Y lo es a pesar de, y a la vez gracias a, la sangrienta y fútil guerra de Calderón contra el llamado crimen organizado. Me explico. Por un lado, en materia de violencia, inseguridad y miedo, el país hoy está peor que en cualquier momento de los últimos 20 años. Por el otro, sin embargo, la culpa de todo ello puede achacársele a los Gobiernos federales anteriores, y a los Gobiernos estatales actuales. Y la gran mayoría de ambos son… del PRI.

De acuerdo con las cifras del Instituto Nacional de Estadística, Geografía e Informática (INEGI), recopiladas por Fernando Escalante en la revista Nexos de diciembre, en 2007 tuvieron lugar en México 8.507 homicidios dolosos totales, no exclusivamente vinculados al narco, equivalentes a 8,2 por cada 100.000 habitantes. Esta cifra fue ligeramente superior a la de 2006, y la más baja en 20 años.

La tendencia desde 1992 había sido claramente descendente. Pero a partir de 2008 se disparó: 14.009 en 2008 y 19.809 en 2009, arrojando un promedio para ese año de 15,8 por 100.000 habitantes. Aún no están disponibles las cifras para 2010, pero gracias a los cálculos de Kevin Casas-Zamora, de Brookings Institution en Washington, disponemos de una estimación. Desde 2007, la relación entre homicidios vinculados al narco y homicidios dolosos en total en México ha sido de dos a uno; el Gobierno mexicano ha proporcionado cifras de homicidios vinculados al narco para 2010 -15.273- y usando la misma relación de dos a uno, a ojo de buen cubero el número total de homicidios dolosos en México en 2010 alcanzó entre 28.000 y 29.000 por lo menos. Partiendo de una población de 112 millones de habitantes, desembocamos en una proporción de homicidios dolosos por 100.000 habitantes de 27. Es decir, una cifra superior a cualquier que hayamos visto desde 1992, y muy parecida a las de otros países de América Latina. Brasil en particular se sitúa en 25, Colombia en 32. México hoy es un país mucho más violento que antes, y casi tan violento como varios países grandes de América Latina, aunque obviamente no alcanza todavía los niveles de Centroamérica (con la excepción de Costa Rica) o de Venezuela.

Como es lógico, entonces, la población no solo no percibe una mejoría en la seguridad en México; siente que la violencia relacionada con el crimen organizado se ha acelerado. El 95% de los habitantes considera que las condiciones de seguridad existentes son iguales o peores que hace 12 meses, según el INEGI. De acuerdo con su Índice de Percepción sobre la Seguridad Pública (IPSP), en enero del año pasado, 92% de la población pensó que la violencia fue igual o peor a la de un año antes. Respecto al futuro, 85% de la población aseguró que las condiciones no se modificarán o empeorarán.

Los mexicanos obviamente no se tragan la historia del Gobierno calderonista de que todo esto es culpa de los narcos, pero tampoco responsabilizan a las autoridades. Esta aparente contradicción le abre una ventana a Calderón: ligar al PRI con el narco, la corrupción y el crimen organizado, y preguntarle al electorado si quiere que vuelvan a Los Pinos los que crearon, según el presidente, el desastre actual. Con dos o tres encarcelamientos -fundados o no, en México da más o menos lo mismo- de gobernadores priístas en funciones o en retiro, y con la amenaza a los votantes que solo un sucesor designado por Calderón puede ganar la guerra, no es inconcebible la victoria electoral panista. Quién sabe qué quede del país, pero ya en campaña, esa no suele ser la primera preocupación de los políticos.

autor:  Jorge Castañeda

He started making the promise back when he was in the Senate. In “The Audacity of Hope,” published in 2006, he expressed alarm at the “mountain of debt” caused by $300 billion annual budget deficits. (They’re now $1.6 trillion.) During the presidential campaign, he pledged to put away childish things and tackle the tough budget issues.

During the transition, he said the time to act on the debt is now. “What we have done is kicked the can down the road,” he told The Washington Post. “We are now at the end of the road and are not in a position to kick it any further.” He said he would start a budget initiative in February 2009.

After the stimulus package passed, he and his aides said it would soon be time to turn to deficit issues. The same promise was made after health care reform. He made the pledge yet again at a press conference this week. Right now is not the time, the president always says, but tomorrow we will get serious.

But tomorrow never comes.

The biggest tease came last year when the president’s debt commission announced its report. That report produced a series of great conversations. But, yet again, words do not translate into action. The message of the president’s 2012 budget is: Not yet. We’ll get serious tomorrow.

The budget has some fine features. I’ll soon be writing a column about how many of its provisions are better than anything the Republican Party is proposing. But it is laughably inadequate compared with the fiscal problems before us.

In 2012, the only year this budget controls, the president would actually increase the deficit with more spending. Roughly two-thirds of the alleged savings would nominally kick in after 2016. The budget imagines that $328 billion in financing for transportation projects will magically appear. While ignoring tax reform, it lards up the tax code with another layer of special preferences. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget calculates that $780 billion of the proposed deficit cuts are politically dubious.

The budget gets a lot of little things right, but it squanders the opening created by the debt commission. It fails to touch the big programs or ask for any shared sacrifice from the American people.

Two explanations are commonly offered to explain why the White House decided to kick the can down the road. Some analysts say the Democrats are trying for a repeat of 1995: Do nothing on the deficit; goad the Republicans into announcing entitlement cutbacks and then savage them on the campaign trail for cutting off granny.

I don’t believe this is in the president’s head. It would be morally reprehensible to bankrupt the nation for the sake of a campaign theme. Obama is not that sort of person.

The other explanation is that Obama is following the model of the 1983 Social Security deal. Be patient, the president argued at his press conference this week. If I lead from the front my proposal will get stymied in the partisan circus. Better to lead from the back and have negotiations in private with Republican leaders. Then when the time is ripe, we’ll cut a deal outside the glare of the scream machine.

The president and his aides may really believe in this strategy, but it is wrong. This is not like fixing Social Security in the early 1980s. The current debt problem is of an entirely different scale. It requires a rewrite of the social contract, a new way to think about how the government pays for social insurance.

The president has enormous faith in getting smart people around the table and initiating technocratic reform. But you can’t renegotiate the social contract in private. You have to have public buy-in. You have to spend years out in public educating voters about the size of the problem and what will be required. You have to show voters what a solution looks like.

The New Deal wasn’t passed by a president who led quietly from the back. Neither was the Great Society or the Reagan Revolution. President Obama’s softly, softly approach is a rationalization, not a coherent strategy. It’s the latest version of Obama’s eternal promise: I’ll do it tomorrow.

So the mantle of leadership has passed to Capitol Hill. While Obama asked for patience yet again, Eric Cantor announced that Republicans will put entitlements on the table. It may be politically risky, but it looks more like leadership to me.

¿Saben lo que me encontré?

Me encontré un país increíblemente hermoso; pero, como todos, con políticos de derecha e izquierda corruptos e impopulares, con problemas de discriminación grave, con terrible depresión económica, con la mayor tasa de desempleo en décadas, con problemas de migración, con asesinatos y con robos. Un país con leyes absurdas, con famosos ridículos y vulgares, con periódicos de porquería. Un país que enfrenta actualmente una guerra que no se puede ganar contra enemigos que él mismo ayudó a crear. Un país con pobreza, con desigualdad, sumido en el individualismo y la relatividad.

Es decir, un país como todos, con muchos problemas, que en muchas cosas se parece a México.

Digo eso y la gente me pregunta a menudo: Entonces ¿cuál es la principal diferencia entre México e Inglaterra? Y yo les digo: primero, el concepto de patria. Segundo, el concepto de trabajo.

Me explico:

Primero, los ingleses son gente que está orgullosa de ser inglesa. No de dientes para afuera, ni sólo en el mundial, ni sólo en las celebraciones patrias. No sólo para echar balazos o mentar madres. Están profundamente orgullosos de su tierra y de su patria.

Ellos se sienten, por eso, obligados hacia su patria. Uno de ellos me lo dijo con claridad: para cada inglés, su casa es su castillo. Por ello, es verdad que son limpios, cuidadosos y ahorrativos. Porque ellos quieren aportar al país y no se sientan a esperar que el país les de todo.

Ellos saben que hay políticos buenos y malos, fresas y populacheros, de izquierda y de derecha. Con respecto a eso, votan y opinan. Pero ante todo, participan en sus comunidades a nivel local, promueven la cultura en sus colonias y no se sientan a esperar que todo venga desde arriba. Inglaterra es un país que, a nivel local, es dirigido y activado por los ciudadanos; no por la elite política ni por la familia real.

Creo que entienden el concepto de patria, de nación, de república. La patria, para ellos, es de todos. Y eso trae derechos pero, sobre todo, obligaciones. Pagan sus impuestos, ayudan en su colonia, participan en la política, no compran pirata, no dan ni piden mordida, hablan y discuten entre ellos y luego se toman una taza de té.

Jamás escuché a un inglés (y conocí muchos), hablar mal del gobierno o de su país en general frente a mí. Luego uno de ellos me explicó que ellos no suelen hablar mal de su país frente a extranjeros. Cuando alguien de otro país viene a Inglaterra, encuentra, por ello, un país mágico, desarrollado, limpio y alegre. Da la impresión, para el visitante, de que Inglaterra es un país de ensueño.

¿Saben eso qué provoca? Más turismo, más inversión y… más orgullo.

Segundo: los ingleses trabajan. Trabajan mucho. Valoran la importancia del trabajo, desde el punto de vista del trabajador y desde el punto de vista del empleador. Pagan buenos sueldos y trabajan jornadas completas. No están tratando de fregarse uno al otro y, ¿saben? Las empresas funcionan. La gente se siente segura en su empleo y el patrón se siente contento con sus empleados.

¿Saben eso qué provoca? Más desarrollo, más satisfacción y… más orgullo.

Luego volví a México. Un país, como todos, con políticos de derecha e izquierda corruptos e impopulares, con problemas de discriminación grave, con terrible depresión económica, con problemas de migración, con asesinatos y con robos. Un país con leyes absurdas, con famosos ridículos y vulgares, con periódicos de porquería. Un país que enfrenta actualmente una guerra contra enemigos que él mismo ayudó a crear. Un país con pobreza y con desigualdad.

O sea, un país como todos.

Sin embargo, llevo apenas un mes y ya estoy HARTO de que todos se estén quejando todo el tiempo y de que hablen siempre mal de mi país. Estoy harto de que la gente piense que este es un país subdesarrollado, se dedique a hacer huelgas imbéciles y hacer comentarios sobre lo mal que está todo, sobre lo inepto que es el gobernante en turno, sobre lo malos que son los programas de la tele.

Estoy harto de que el taxista, el guía de turismo y todos los que atienden a los visitantes, no hagan más que quejarse de lo mal que está la situación. ¿No saben que el turismo y la inversión extranjera son dos de las principales herramientas para el desarrollo del país? Me desespera que este país esté sumido en la intolerancia y en el pesimismo.

Por eso te vengo a decir lo siguiente:

México es uno de los países más espectaculares y bellos del mundo. Cualquier europeo daría la vida por tener unas playas tan increíbles, una riqueza tan infinita, una variedad tan rica. ¿Somos los únicos que no nos damos cuenta de nuestra propia riqueza cultural, histórica y, sobre todo, humana? El día de hoy, México cuenta con el mayor PIB de su historia, una de las menores tasas de desempleo desde hace décadas, una inflación que nuestros papás no podrían haber soñado, una inversión privada en constante crecimiento y una infraestructura que, créeme, no es mucho peor que la del primer mundo. En Inglaterra también hay baches y los camiones se retrasan a veces.

Si tú crees que México está peor que nunca, una de dos cosas: o has perdido la razón o has perdido la memoria. Pregúntales a tus papás. Pregúntales lo que valía su voto, lo que valían sus ahorros, lo que eran las carreteras. Pregúntales cuántos estudiaban la universidad o la prepa hace cuarenta años.

No soy idiota. Sé que tenemos problemas, muchos y graves. Pero tienes que saber que no somos ni los únicos ni, de lejos, los peores. Hoy México está mejor que nunca en muchos aspectos, y tiene que seguir creciendo.

Por eso, te pido sólo una cosa: piénsalo dos veces cuando hables mal de tu patria. Entre broma y broma, te la vas a acabar creyendo, y luego tus amigos, luego tus colegas, tu comunidad, tu país. Y luego el mundo.

Opina, grita, haz lo que quieras. Pero sobre todo, trabaja y siéntete orgulloso de vivir en un país en donde la gente se cuida, los peatones sonríen, la comida es deliciosa, la cultura es mestiza, las iglesias están llenas, las playas son cálidas, las montañas son majestuosas, las familias están unidas y el clima es fenomenal.

¡Ya quisieran poder tener eso los ingleses!

autor: Francisco García Pimentel Ruiz

But this was no ordinary case. The employee, Kevin M. Shipp, was a veteran Central Intelligence Agency officer. His home was at Camp Stanley, an Army weapons depot just north of San Antonio, in an area where the drinking water was polluted with toxic chemicals. The post includes a secret C.I.A. facility.

Declaring that its need to protect state secrets outweighed the Shipps’ right to a day in court, the government persuaded a judge to seal the case and order the family and their lawyers not to discuss it, and to later dismiss the lawsuit without any hearing on the merits, Mr. Shipp said.

More than half a decade later, Mr. Shipp is going public with his story. He contends that the events broke up his marriage and destroyed his career, and that C.I.A. officials abused the State Secrets Privilege doctrine in an effort to cover up their own negligence.

Jennifer Youngblood, a C.I.A. spokeswoman, denied any wrongdoing by the agency. “The C.I.A. takes great care to help protect the health and welfare of its employees,” she said.

Mr. Shipp recently completed a memoir filled with unclassified documents that he said backed up his assertions. He says that he submitted the manuscript to the agency for the required prepublication review but that it blacked out swaths of information, like accounts of his children’s nosebleeds, strange rashes, vomiting, severe asthma and memory loss.

Citing a confidentiality agreement he signed with the government, Mr. Shipp would not discuss where the secret facility was located, what its purpose was, which agency he worked for or what his duties were.

Still, he said, he was free to say that he worked at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va., both before and after his stint at the facility. And public documents from a separate lawsuit, which he filed against his insurance carrier over a claim for his family’s destroyed belongings, make clear that he was stationed at Camp Stanley.

Mr. Shipp’s ex-wife, Lorena Shipp, and one of his sons, Joel Shipp, now 28, said in interviews that the C.I.A. had assigned Mr. Shipp to a high-ranking job at the facility to uncover suspected security breaches. The family moved to an Army-owned house at Camp Stanley in June 1999 and left in May 2001.

It is not clear what took place at the C.I.A. facility. But the camp had been used as a weapons depot for generations. Joel and Lorena Shipp described bunkers and many old weapons, including Soviet weaponry. They also said that they occasionally saw officials performing tactical drills, and that sometimes items were burned or buried there.

“The house that our family was moved into was planted on top of a lot of buried ammunition,” Joel Shipp said. “One time me and my little brother dug up a mustard gas shell.”

The Shipps soon began to get sick. First they got nosebleeds, then they developed symptoms that doctors said resembled H.I.V. infection or exposure to radiation, according to family members. Eventually, Kevin Shipp said, he discovered that the house was full of a spreading black substance.

Camp Stanley has a troubled environmental record. In August 2001, according to local news reports, military officials began distributing bottled water to residents nearby after it was discovered that toxins from the camp had polluted an aquifer in the area, contaminating the drinking water.

The Shipps said they were twice evacuated from the house after expressing concern about their sudden health troubles. But, Kevin Shipp said, his supervisor played down the problems, declaring that the house was fine after its air was tested — although the windows and doors were open at the time, Mr. Shipp said.

Suspicious of a cover-up, Mr. Shipp said he sent samples from the house to a scientist at Texas Tech University. His manuscript includes a Texas Tech report showing that the samples tested positive for toxic mold.

Eventually, the Shipps sued the C.I.A. using pseudonyms. Meanwhile, Mr. Shipp was transferred to the agency’s headquarters, where he became a polygraph operator. But his relationship with the agency was deteriorating, and the family began to suspect that they had been placed under surveillance.

Mr. Shipp said he quit in 2002 after he was accused of using a government credit card to pay for personal expenses; he says he paid the money back, but had been told by a supervisor to use the card for clothes and lodging after his family had to leave the house and their old clothes were destroyed.

A federal judge overseeing the case ordered the family and the C.I.A. into mediation. Mr. Shipp’s memoir includes a December 2003 settlement agreement — signed by a government counsel — under which the family would be paid $400,000 and would have to stay silent about the matter.

But two days later, he said, one of his attorneys, Clint Blackman, called him to say that the government had withdrawn the settlement. The case would be fought out in court.

The case was already sealed, and the Justice Department invoked the State Secrets Privilege — a judicially created doctrine that the government has increasingly used to win the dismissal of lawsuits related to national security, shielding its actions from judicial review.

A federal judge dismissed the case, and an appeals court in New Orleans, in a secret ruling, later upheld that dismissal, Mr. Shipp said. Mr. Shipp’s manuscript mentions several other lawyers who helped him in the case, including Mark Zaid of Washington, who has represented many intelligence officials in lawsuits against the government, and Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who has filed several lawsuits challenging claims of executive secrecy.

Mr. Blackman and Mr. Zaid confirmed that Mr. Shipp had been a client, but they declined to discuss any sealed lawsuit. Mr. Turley confirmed that he had been asked to consult on the case, but said he was never given details about it.

Mr. Shipp has moved to Florida and tried to rebuild his life. But angry at what had happened to his family, he says he has decided to go public, no matter the risk of talking about a sealed case.

“I decided to just sacrifice myself for the public to know what they did, how illegal it was, how flawed the State Secrets Privilege is, and how they used it to cover up the destruction of my family,” he said. “It’s just abominable what they did.”

The moment of high tension for President Barack Obama arrived last week as the populist uprising against President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt escalated, to the surprise and consternation of Washington. Mr. Obama gave an eloquent speech on the value of democracy in Cairo in 2009; Egypt and Mr. Mubarak have been among the most important U.S. allies in the Middle East, receiving about $1.5 billion a year in assistance.

This schism between national interest and values was on embarrassing display as the Obama administration struggled to keep up with fast-changing events. When street demonstrations started last Tuesday in Cairo — in the aftermath of the rebellion in Tunisia that forced out the autocratic leader, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali — the emphasis in Washington was on regional stability and Egypt’s importance; the president said little. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. went so far as to insist that Mr. Mubarak wasn’t a dictator.

On Friday, after intense internal deliberations, the administration publicly began to change its signals. By midafternoon, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, openly criticized the Egyptian government’s actions, and Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, said the United States might cut off aid if Mr. Mubarak crushed the demonstrators. By early evening, Mr. Obama addressed the nation, reporting that he had called his Egyptian counterpart to warn him against a violent response and vowing that the United States would “stand for the rights of the Egyptian people.”

Privately, the administration has little confidence in its ability to shape the outcome. Even more of a quandary, officials say, is uncertainty over what effect this crisis will have on other countries in the region, including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and, of course, Israel.

Mr. Obama follows in a long line of U.S. presidents with ambivalent positions on promoting democracy in Egypt. Six years ago, the centerpiece of President George W. Bush’s second inaugural speech was his “freedom agenda,” a vow to spread democracy and end tyranny around the world.

“Every ruler and every nation,” the 43rd president said, should know that “success in our relations will require the decent treatment of their own people.”

Mr. Bush was widely praised, though there were skeptics; Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Democratic foreign policy strategist, said the speech was “high-sounding rhetoric” without “a real sense of priorities or directions.”

This proved prophetic, as most entreaties Mr. Bush may have made to Mr. Mubarak were done in private, and in short time Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was publicly embracing the Egyptian ruler. Not surprisingly, by 2008, a survey of public opinion in Arab countries, conducted by the University of Maryland and Zogby International, showed that, overwhelmingly, the people didn’t believe the United States was serious about spreading democracy.

No president came into office more devoted to human rights than Jimmy Carter 30 years earlier. Yet when confronted with the repressive policies of a key strategic ally, the shah of Iran, the administration waffled.

The upshot was that the shah was overthrown by an Islamic revolution, and the Carter administration and the United States lost on all counts. The Iranians, deeply resentful of U.S. support for the shah that long predated Mr. Carter, were virulently anti-American, and the “realpolitik” experts assailed Mr. Carter for failing to support an ally.

And when it comes to human rights, nowhere have the conflicts and contradictions been more pronounced than in Washington’s dealing with other superpowers. President Richard M. Nixon and Henry A. Kissinger, his national security adviser, were deeply embroiled in fights with congressional Democrats and conservative Republicans over issues like the Soviet Union’s treatment of Jews, which the administration considered a distraction from major geopolitical concerns.

This conundrum has been equally evident in dealings with China, as it becomes an emerging economic and political rival. Each of the last three administrations came into office determined to emphasize human rights and political freedoms, and then subsequently decided that economic and security interests were more important.

In Washington this past weekend, there was confusion over the evolving events in Cairo. The best intelligence seemingly came from Al Jazeera, the news network based in Qatar, though the broadcaster said Sunday that the Egyptian government had closed its offices and withdrawn the accreditation of its reporters; the administration had badly underestimated the depth of the protests.

There’s now a broad consensus among Washington policy makers that Mr. Mubarak won’t last, though there is no real sense of exactly how his tenure will end or what will come next. Obama administration officials take solace that the uprising, stoked by Internet social networks, is about freedom and opportunity and not religious or cultural demands.

Still, the tones of anti-Americanism got louder Sunday, and these elements no doubt are aware that for more than 30 years, the U.S. has solidly supported authoritarian rule. Although the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood was late to the parade in Egypt, some officials fear it could emerge as the most formidable post-Mubarak political force.

Moreover, there is no certainty as to whether or how these protests on the Arab streets will spread through the region, or whether they will imperil U.S. strategic allies like Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Though less likely, they could also pose a threat to the anti-American regime in Iran.

Reflecting this long tension in U.S. foreign policy, conservatives may be as ambivalent as the administration. Some of the Tea Party Republican newcomers instinctively side with any anti-authoritarian or anti-government forces. Yet Representative Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan, the chairman of the House Republican Policy Committee, implored the administration to get behind the Mubarak regime, warning of the parallels to Iran three decades ago.

“The Egyptian demonstrations are the reprise of Iran’s 1979 radical revolution,” Mr. McCotter said. “America must stand with her ally Egypt to preserve an imperfect government capable of reform and prevent a tyrannical government capable of harm.”

Predictably, some Republicans will blame the administration no matter the policy or outcome. “Obama has no good choices, and he may blame himself for this in part for two years of laughing at the freedom agenda instead of embracing it,” said Elliot Abrams, a national security adviser in the administrations of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Both presidents, with little equivocation, supported Mr. Mubarak.

This may be smart politics. Arguably, Mr. Obama has enlisted an old cliché on behalf of a good cause, as a way to sell a much-needed increase in public investment to a public thoroughly indoctrinated in the view that government spending is a bad thing.

But let’s not kid ourselves: talking about “competitiveness” as a goal is fundamentally misleading. At best, it’s a misdiagnosis of our problems. At worst, it could lead to policies based on the false idea that what’s good for corporations is good for America.

About that misdiagnosis: What sense does it make to view our current woes as stemming from lack of competitiveness?

It’s true that we’d have more jobs if we exported more and imported less. But the same is true of Europe and Japan, which also have depressed economies. And we can’t all export more while importing less, unless we can find another planet to sell to. Yes, we could demand that China shrink its trade surplus — but if confronting China is what Mr. Obama is proposing, he should say that plainly.

Furthermore, while America is running a trade deficit, this deficit is smaller than it was before the Great Recession began. It would help if we could make it smaller still. But ultimately, we’re in a mess because we had a financial crisis, not because American companies have lost their ability to compete with foreign rivals.

But isn’t it at least somewhat useful to think of our nation as if it were America Inc., competing in the global marketplace? No.

Consider: A corporate leader who increases profits by slashing his work force is thought to be successful. Well, that’s more or less what has happened in America recently: employment is way down, but profits are hitting new records. Who, exactly, considers this economic success?

Still, you might say that talk of competitiveness helps Mr. Obama quiet claims that he’s anti-business. That’s fine, as long as he realizes that the interests of nominally “American” corporations and the interests of the nation, which were never the same, are now less aligned than ever before.

Take the case of General Electric, whose chief executive, Jeffrey Immelt, has just been appointed to head that renamed advisory board. I have nothing against either G.E. or Mr. Immelt. But with fewer than half its workers based in the United States and less than half its revenues coming from U.S. operations, G.E.’s fortunes have very little to do with U.S. prosperity.

By the way, some have praised Mr. Immelt’s appointment on the grounds that at least he represents a company that actually makes things, rather than being yet another financial wheeler-dealer. Sorry to burst this bubble, but these days G.E. derives more revenue from its financial operations than it does from manufacturing — indeed, GE Capital, which received a government guarantee for its debt, was a major beneficiary of the Wall Street bailout.

So what does the administration’s embrace of the rhetoric of competitiveness mean for economic policy?

The favorable interpretation, as I said, is that it’s just packaging for an economic strategy centered on public investment, investment that’s actually about creating jobs now while promoting longer-term growth. The unfavorable interpretation is that Mr. Obama and his advisers really believe that the economy is ailing because they’ve been too tough on business, and that what America needs now is corporate tax cuts and across-the-board deregulation.

My guess is that we’re mainly talking about packaging here. And if the president does propose a serious increase in spending on infrastructure and education, I’ll be pleased.

But even if he proposes good policies, the fact that Mr. Obama feels the need to wrap these policies in bad metaphors is a sad commentary on the state of our discourse.

The financial crisis of 2008 was a teachable moment, an object lesson in what can go wrong if you trust a market economy to regulate itself. Nor should we forget that highly regulated economies, like Germany, did a much better job than we did at sustaining employment after the crisis hit. For whatever reason, however, the teachable moment came and went with nothing learned.

Mr. Obama himself may do all right: his approval rating is up, the economy is showing signs of life, and his chances of re-election look pretty good. But the ideology that brought economic disaster in 2008 is back on top — and seems likely to stay there until it brings disaster again.

Finally, freedom from the tyranny of choice! That $5 per month, 200-message plan that gave you just the right amount of texts every month? Too stressful. The $15 per month, 1,500-message plan that gave heavy texters a way to save money? Not unlimited enough.

If I may remove my thin layer of sarcasm for a moment, how stupid do wireless carriers think we are?

According to a leaked AT&T memo published by Gear Live, AT&T is making the changes to “streamline” its services and “K.I.S.S. — keep it simple, silly.”

This is the second report this week about wireless carriers extracting more money from their customers in the name of “simplicity.” Sprint, in raising its smartphone data rates by $10 to meet data demand, offered a similar explanation for why it isn’t creating optional lower data tiers:

“While some of our competitors impose overage charges and complex plans, Sprint continues to provide a worry-free (emphasis mine) unlimited data experience while on the Sprint network,” Bob Johnson, president of Sprint’s consumer business, said. “This is responsible, sustainable and reflects our commitment to simplicity (emphasis again mine) and value.”

Maybe I have too much faith in the American people, but I don’t think we need to be forced into more expensive service plans for the sake of our fragile little minds. If AT&T offers me a few text messaging options, I’m clever enough to look at my usage history to decide which plan works best. If Sprint were to offer, say, a 2 GB data plan for $10 cheaper, Im sure a significant number of customers would snatch it up without a single anxiety attack.

So please, wireless carriers, don’t treat us like idiots. If you want to tweak your service plans to make more money, just say so, or announce the changes without embellishment and get out of the way. It’s just that simple, silly.

Am I right? Sound off in the comments.

As a sheer physical act, it was almost Olympian in the strength, dexterity and concentration required.

It was also completely ridiculous.

It was RAINING. And cold. The man was, let’s presume, minutes from some destination. At any moment, he could spear a fellow pedestrian with his umbrella because he was only marginally paying attention to where he was going. What message could possibly be so important that it couldn’t wait?

While smart phones and other electronic devices changed popular culture by offering an ability to always stay connected, they have so swiftly turned into such a compelling need that a simple walk down the street is considered wasted time.

One too many times stepping around a shuffling pedestrian immersed in e-mail led me to conduct a social experiment. I decided to count the number of people I saw distracted by their electronic devices during my 25-minute morning walk to work from New York’s Grand Central Station to the far West Side.

Some ground rules: Cell-phone conversations count, along with texting and looking at the devices. I didn’t consider listening to music to be a distraction – that, um, would require counting myself – but people who looked at their iPods while walking made the list. Pulling over to the side to use an electronic device didn’t count, because that’s what a courteous pedestrian should be doing.

So those three construction workers who stood together talking on their phones off Fifth Avenue were safe from wrath. Same for the woman who frequently asks for spare change next to St. Michael’s Church on 33rd Street when she’s on her cell. She’s usually sitting.

In 15 mornings of counting in late November and December, the average was 48.6 people. The most was 67. The fewer was 28, on the rainy day our Fifth Avenue textlete felt he had room to maneuver. Generally speaking, it was about one in 10 pedestrians.

In that time, I saw a woman nearly flattened by a taxi when she stepped off a curb into traffic while looking into her cell phone. A bicycle messenger rode and talked on his phone at the same time. One gabber pushed a baby stroller. One morning two police officers were on the phone. A man nearly bumped into me after swiveling his head mid-step from his screen to watch the backside of a woman passing by.

Even people not using their smart phones kept them in their hands, like drawn weapons. It’s become an accepted part of urban posture.

Mind you, this is winter in the Northeast; the temperature was finger-numbing on many mornings. No problem: I pass by a bus shelter with an advertisement for gloves specially equipped to work touch-screens. There are also smart phone apps that encourage texting while walking, using the device’s camera to show a picture on the screen of where a person is walking, visible as a backdrop behind what they’re typing.

Smart phones have replaced tourists as New York pedestrians’ biggest headache. We used to disdain people from out of town when they wandered slowly on the sidewalks, looking skyward at tall buildings and muttering as we walked by with purpose.

Now we’re the menace.

We also used to walk with a certain amount of hyperawareness. Remember muggers creeping from dark corners? Pickpockets who worked the crowds? Now many people walk down the street oblivious to their surroundings, fiddling with an electronic device worth hundreds of dollars.

One New Yorker who followed my daily Facebook count of distracted pedestrians admits she’s one of them. In fact, she often walks down city streets with her husband, both engrossed not in each other, but in their smart phones.

“I find that my walk to the subway or home at night is the only time I can actually focus on myself,” said the woman, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of looking silly. “All of the other times of the day I’m surrounded by people who are constantly grabbing for my attention. I am the classic multitasker.”

While she walks, her mind’s usually racing with things she needs to remind co-workers or contacts, things she must tell the baby sitter.

Why not do it in the moment?

“I get a lot of dirty looks on the street, from people who are frustrated that I’m not looking where I’m going,” she said. “I try hard to be respectful of the other pedestrians and look up and down very frequently.”

A clip posted on YouTube last week of a woman who fell into a fountain while walking and texting at the Berkshire Mall in Wyomissing, Pa., near Reading, has been seen by more than 3 million people. The Pennsylvania woman, Cathy Cruz Marrero, appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday with a lawyer and said they’re looking into who was responsible for spreading the video. What was so important that she had to text right away? Someone she knew from church had e-mailed to ask when was Marrero’s birthday.

It could be the permanent state of things; smart phone use is growing fast. The Nielsen Co. said that 95 percent of American adults have cell phones. Nearly a third of those are smart phones.

I’ll confess that the devices have driven me to a few minor episodes of sidewalk rage. I’ve lightly bumped into distracted pedestrians on purpose a couple of times. Not to cause harm – just to snap them from their virtual worlds and make them aware of the real one.

I’ve been to parties where clumps of people stared into devices, or texted, instead of actually conversing with humans around them. I always marvel upon landing on a redeye flight from the West Coast at how many people immediately take out their phones and begin dialing. It’s 5:30 a.m. – 2:30 in the city they’ve left. Who are they calling?

William Powers once saw two women in New York crashing baby strollers into one another because they were both concentrating on phones. Powers, a former Washington Post reporter, wrote the book “Hamlet’s BlackBerry,” about how an addiction to technology prevents people from doing their best work or forging healthy relationships.

“We’re hard-wired from our primitive ancestors to pay attention to novelty,” he said. It happens whenever there are major technological shifts, like the establishment of printing presses, he said. Author Henry David Thoreau, famed for writing about a life in solitude around Walden Pond, once observed in the 1850s that people had become addicted to going to the post office.

“Didn’t we say the same thing a while back about boom boxes and Walkmen?” noted Lizabeth Cohen, professor of American Studies in Harvard University’s history department. “Maybe the constant is change.”

Powers believes things will calm down as people become more accustomed to the technology. Knowing you can check your e-mail at any time may become as satisfying as actually doing it, and more phones will stay in the pocket. Society, in its natural course, may impose a new set of behaviors. When cell phones were new, he noted, many people didn’t think twice about answering a call while sitting in a theater. Now that’s much more rare.

Changes are noticeable in another part of my journey to work, too. Cell phone conversations used to be fairly commonplace on the commuter train. Now they are widely frowned upon, a new social order set informally by fellow passengers.

So there’s hope. In the meantime, look out for yourself on the street. No one else is.

El nivel cultural, educativo y de conocimiento científico que tienen los mexicanos hace que casi 38% afirme que algunos de los ovnis (objetos voladores no identificados) que “se han reportado, son en realidad vehículos espaciales de otras civilizaciones”, o bien, confían en “los números de la suerte” y aceptan que “algunas personas poseen poderes síquicos”.

De acuerdo con la Encuesta sobre la Percepción Pública de la Ciencia y la Tecnología en México 2009, que elaboraron el Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (Conacyt) y el Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), 83.6% de los mexicanos reconocen que “confiamos demasiado en la fe y muy poco en la ciencia”.

La encuesta, que se aplica anualmente, concluye que 57.5% de los mexicanos considera que “debido a sus conocimientos, los investigadores científicos tienen un poder que los hace peligrosos”.

Una cifra semejante dijo que el desarrollo tecnológico origina una manera de vivir “artificial y deshumanizada”.

El presidente de la Comisión de Ciencia del Senado de la República, Francisco Castellón Fonseca, afirmó que esta percepción en torno a las aportaciones de la ciencia para el bienestar de la población refleja que hay “una falla estructural en el sistema educativo del país”.

El legislador advirtió que a pesar de que esta idea es permanente, hasta ahora el sistema educativo “no tiene una estrategia para revertir que se privilegie el pensamiento mágico sobre el lógico y científico”.

Desarrollo nacional, estancado

Rosaura Ruiz, directora de la Facultad de Ciencias de la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) y ex presidenta de la Academia Mexicana de Ciencias, afirma que “no es posible que ante los avances tecnológicos y de la ciencia que nos brinda el siglo XXI, en México, la población tenga como opciones, para resolver sus problemas, a los horóscopos, la magia, los números de la suerte, la lectura del café, o a señoras que salen en la televisión o brindan sus servicios por teléfono para resolver lo mismo problemas de amor que de empleo o salud. Esto puede causar risa, pero es desesperante y grave para el desarrollo nacional”.

La académica coincidió con el senador Castellón Fonseca al asegurar que esta concepción de los mexicanos sobre lo que es la ciencia es resultado de las “fallas del sistema educativo” y que se reflejan en los bajos resultados que se obtienen en las pruebas internacionales, como la que aplica la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económicos (OCDE).

En los resultados de la encuesta son los consultados quienes se atribuyen, en promedio, conocimientos “regulares” sobre contaminación, calentamiento global, los alimentos modificados genéticamente, las medicinas que son producto de la ingeniería genética, la nanotecnología y los motores de energía por celdas.

Del total, 60% de los consultados se pronunció en contra de la clonación de animales.

A pesar de todas esas consideraciones, 77.6% dice que en México debería haber más personas trabajando en áreas de investigación, y que los mejores científicos se han ido a Estados Unidos o Europa.

De los consultados por Conacyt e INEGI, 82% comentó que entre una y 24 horas a la semana ve televisión, 47.4% que no lee periódicos, 66.9% que escucha menos de ocho horas las noticias, y 56.9% que tiene acceso a internet.