Doug Henwood wrote:
> [Serageldin's denial in the last paragraph should evoke Claud
> Cockburn's great law: never believe anything until it's been
> officially denied. When they talk about targeting subsidies to the
> poorest, that's a backdoor way of saying something should be
> commodified.]
This is analogous to Kenneth Burke's argument that official rhetoric is always tended to counterbalance the real policy. He says that as soon as Roosevelt made a speech attacking "Economic Royalists" he knew the banking interests were safe, because if Roosevelt had really intended to attack such a major capitalist institution he would have done so under the cover of pro-banker rhetoric.
Of course the really egregious examples are those which follow the template of "We had to destroy the village to save it." And Clinton's destruction of welfare is probably the all-time champion in this regard.
Carrol