The John Bolton nomination battle is one of those rare moments when a window has opened onto how the U.S. public was rushed into war with Iraq and, in a larger sense, how conservatives seized control over the flow of information that shapes policy.

Bolton may be – as former State Department intelligence chief Carl Ford Jr. said – “a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy” who bullies those below him who come up with inconvenient facts. But Bolton’s abusive tendencies are not just a personality flaw; they are part of a broader political strategy.

Since his early days as a protégé of Sen. Jesse Helms, Bolton was part of a new aggressive breed of conservatives, who came of age during the Vietnam War and who thus understand the importance of keeping a lid on public dissent.

In practical terms, that means influencing or controlling what the public perceives as reality, often exaggerating threats to stampede the people in a desired direction. That need to manage information, in turn, requires discrediting individuals who can effectively challenge the factual constraints….

I couldn’t help but notice Senators alternating one Republican followed by one Democrat to ask John Bolton scripted questions on the first day of his confirmation hearings on Monday. The hearing seemed like a well orchestrated formality without much fanfare until it was temporarily suspended by a group of pink protestors.

The Republicans praised his multilateral efforts in the past. The Democrats chastised him for admonishing Intelligence Analysts who didn’t return his desired conclusions along with his stated disdain for the United Nations.

This ping-pong drama went on for hours, and in the end most callers into C-SPAN were playing the same game. Public debate thus far has fallen into our usual dual world perspectives. Everything in political America now a day arrives in only two choices. Red or Blue, Republican or Democrat, Conservative or Liberal, and so on and so forth…

The best news coming out of the first hearing of the Carter-Baker Commission is that the co-chairs recognize that Americans are losing faith in their democracy, and that even in the 2004 presidential election – among the most passionate elections in recent history – 40% did not vote and, increasing numbers of voters lack confidence that their votes were counted as cast.   The bad news is that a corporate conflict of interest of one member of the Commission raises doubts that they will recommend the common sense necessity – voter verified paper ballots.

On Jan. 11 Guatemalan President Oscar Berger spoke to a group of reporters in Guatemala City about ongoing protests against a World Bank mining project in the northern part of the country. He said that his government had to establish law and order.

“We have to protect investors,” said Berger.

Hours later the Guatemalan military and police forces armed in riot gear opened fire on protesters, murdering one man and leaving dozens injured. Berger’s comments about establishing law and order in Guatemala to protect investors and the ensuing violence and state repression that followed that day and in the following months are not isolated incidents indicative of that country’s democratic shortcomings. Rather they illustrates the violent forces employed to secure the expansion of capitalist globalization being forced on people through neoliberal reforms and free trade agreements pushed by transnational corporations, Northern governments, and international lending agencies.

All that glitters isn’t gold

SULTAN'S BATTERY, KERALA: To meet India's rural crisis face to face we drove along the lovely wooded roads of Wyanad, a district in northeastern Kerala, a state on India's southwest coast. To our east rose the Western Ghat mountains. The other night we stayed in Sultan's Battery, so called because it had been the last stand of the local sultan, when the British came three centuries ago.

Along this road the ancient forests have long since logged off and the state-planted young teak trees are usually cut, to judge by the piles at the side of the road, with the trunk at about 12 inches in diameter. Familiar follies of state-sponsored forestry have occurred. Some years ago, the clumps of bamboo, often 40 feet across and 50 feet high, were taken off the ridges and slopes of the western Ghats and eucalyptus globulus put in, the same way it was in California in the 1870s.