There is no room for cynicism.

And people can smell that, and it feeds cynicism.

But I'll tell you how they do it. No cynicism.

In my defense, I'd say, as naive as this may sound, it's ultimately grounded in cynicism.

The cynicism is astounding, to the point of proclaiming transparent lies, such as that they do not torture, but only use innovative information gathering methods.

On a recent trip to Europe, I encountered both encouragement and skepticism. Many people welcomed the new tone, but wondered if it was simply sugarcoated cynicism.

Against the background of the past failures, there has been much cynicism and concern, not least in Africa itself, that the new millennial momentum will fizzle away.

One senior G 8 official told me that the aid promises are all lies anyway. I don t agree with that, but the cynicism that such a view reflects is alarming.

The second, paradoxically, reflects our growing cynicism towards politics and politicians. And the third is the result of our media culture, obsessed as it is with putting a face to events.

And when they finally hand you heartache, when they slip war and hatred under your door and offer you handouts on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.

That disjunction explains a lot about the cynicism and disaffection with politics that characterizes much of the world nowadays. And, while domestic problems may seem intractable, distance increases the confusion and fatigue induced by seemingly intractable international problems.

Unfortunately, meritocracy has been eroded by a political culture of sycophancy and cynicism. Designing a screening mechanism to minimize adverse selection in choosing bureaucrats and party officials has become one of the biggest challenges that China s ruling elites confront.

The problem is that others are abysmally ignorant about the continent s pre colonial past. One may criticize the cynicism of the Chinese, but it is China that has contributed more than any other country to the transformation of Africa s self image.

Cynicism and schadenfreude may also be playing a role. Raja Mohan, a prominent Indian strategist, notes that Europe has never ceased to lecture Asia on the virtues of regionalism, but now seems unable to cope with its own regional security challenges.

The record level of abstention in the recent European Parliament elections is further proof of that growing cynicism and alienation. Of course, it is neither possible nor desirable to clone Obama in each of the European Union s 27 member states.

Bucking the resource curse requires, first and foremost, strong, legitimate domestic political leadership, underpinned by effective institutional arrangements. But it also requires a global investment community public, private, and mixed that can move beyond short term thinking, ideological bias, ignorance, and cynicism.

The statement by the delegation of the United States was another example of cynicism and political amnesia whereby the main violator of all human rights, a country which did not recognize the right to development or health, presented itself as the champion of human rights.

For example, the bloody conflict in Syria is fraught with challenges and unforeseen consequences. But such realities are lost on bloggers who blithely hold forth on what they claim are patently obvious solutions and on the stupidity, cynicism, or insanity of leaders who fail to implement them.

The Party s abrupt vilification of Bo after lauding him for his leadership in Chongqing has fueled public cynicism over his orchestrated downfall and laid bare the leadership s thin ideological core. If China is to preserve its gains in global stature, it must avoid a political hard landing.

Nor are they set to become a benevolent, altruistic power, ready to use their new strength and reputation to improve the stability of the international system. Chinese cynicism and spontaneous selfishness, however, is now tempered by what they perceive as growing recognition of their unique status.

Yes, Ukraine has Ukrainian speakers and it has Russian speakers yes, it has Orthodox and Catholics. But those divisions were manipulated with the same sort of cynicism that Slobodan Milosevic and Franjo Tudjman used to pit Serbs, Croats, and Bosnian against each other in the former Yugoslavia.

With so many crises afflicting our world, there is perhaps cynicism that yet another global conference did little more than promise to continue talking. But let s see the positive message instead 190 countries agreed on a sensible plan, and the underlying science and technology gives us realistic hopes for achieving it.

The appeal of groups like the Islamic State to young people reared in democratic countries highlights these societies growing disparities in educational and economic opportunity, which are breeding cynicism, resignation, and anger among those who find themselves locked out of the social elite. Feelings of hopelessness and despair at the center incite extremism at the fringes.

The unease, suspicion and even cynicism that bedevil Israeli Palestinian relations can be attributed in large part to the fact that the disengagement is not taking place within an unequivocally agreed framework for the next steps towards the overall solution to which both sides claim adherence, that is, two States living alongside one another in peace.

When the Ottoman Empire collapsed at the end of World War I, the great powers of the day, Britain and France, carved out successor states in order to ensure their control over the Middle East s oil, geopolitics, and transit routes to Asia. Their cynicism reflected, for example, in the Sykes Picot Agreement nbsp established a lasting pattern of destructive outside meddling.

For example, unlike the World Trade Organization, whose dispute settlement mechanism imposes penalties for abandoning negotiated reductions of trade barriers, the targets for emission reductions are not binding and enforceable commitments. The US has not agreed to accept such sanctions for failing to meet emissions targets but, without penalties, the exercise is largely futile and only encourages cynicism about the effort to combat climate change.

Set in a small town on the Barents Sea, Leviathan shows that there is no escape, not even in the Arctic, from the Moscow centric state and its hypocritical doppelganger, the Orthodox Church. The giant skeleton of a whale possibly Leviathan itself is beached on the shoreline, along with the carcasses of old boats, beneath a severe gray sky that frames a human landscape of political abuse, adultery, lawlessness, and the cynicism of all powerful priests.

Now is not the time to discuss how appropriate Orders in Council are for lawmaking in a twenty first century democracy, but this move showed disregard for the Chagossians basic human rights. Earlier this year, we saw this cynicism in action once again, when David Miliband, foreign secretary in the previous Labour government, declared the Chagos Islands to be a protected marine zone, thereby preventing the islanders if eventually they do return from making their living from fishing.

This is our chance to answer that call. This is our moment. This is our time, to put our people back to work and open doors of opportunity for our kids to restore prosperity and promote the cause of peace to reclaim the American dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth, that out of many, we are one that while we breathe, we hope. And where we are met with cynicism and doubt and those who tell us that we can't, we will respond with that timeless creed that sums up the spirit of a people.