The genesis of this blog post is a bit arcane. In response to news reports about proposed changes in U.S. defense doctrine, Andrew Exum jokingly suggested "replacing the 'Two Wars' strategy with a 'Who Wants Some? You? How About You, Tough Guy?' strategy" on Twitter. This led to other suggested mottos, expressed in YouTube videos, which eventually led to me issuing a grandiose call: suggest the YouTube clip that "best encapsulates American grand strategy."
Yeah, that should bring you up to speed.
Below you will find the ten eleven suggested clips that resonated the most for me, with some further elaboration by your humble blogger. WARNING: some profanity. Then again, if the profane is offensive to you, it's best that you not think too hard about American foreign policy.
A penetrating critique of the orrery of errors that have befallen American foreign policy as of late. Clearly, the United States is trying to conduct its international affairs in a sea of darkness, lacking crucial information to light the way. Despite the best efforts to get all the components of American power into alignment, it's hard to pull off.
The new or not so new defense strategy of having enough of a military to fight one war while deterring or spoiling an adversary's plans requires a "bigger knife" not to use but to dissuade challengers.
Such a grand strategy also plays to the U.S.'s current strength -- dominating conventional war through bigger and better weapons. In the video, Croc Dundee is confronted not by one mugger but several (and one can read race into this if one wants, since the mugger was African-American, and most threats to the U.S. are by non-white folks). His big knife spoils the plans of each of them. Sounds like a good use of resources.
I think it works as an example of soft power and American exceptionalism. Via her affirmations Jessica demonstrates that Americans think America is awesome -- and therefore, why the rest of the world will/should want the same things Americans want.
Not bad, actually. Note that Bluto's inspiring speech has no appreciable effect on the apathetic Deltas at first. Only when other elites -- like Otter -- indicate their support, does the rest of the country -- I mean, fraternity -- rally around the flag. A subtle exegesis of how elite consensus can drive the mass public into stupid, futile gestures.
An utterly brilliant exposition of the ways in which the best strategy in the world will be subverted by the cowboy who shoots first and asks questons later. Indeed, this clip works on two levels. On the one hand, you can think of it as the struggles that go on within the U.S. foreign policy bureaucracy to make sure everyone is on the same page -- and the ways in which hawkish actors can unilaterally set the agenda. Or, look at it as an exegesis of how the United States, through its willingness to take immediate aggressive action, can exacerbate tensions among its less powerful allies. This exuberance can breed resentment among America's partners, but often, Washington doesn't care, because, well, at least we ain't chicken.
Hmmm ... I'm intrigued. This appears to be a subtle indictment of the idealpolitik that occasionally governs American foreign policy. After all, Ray is trying to "think of the most harmless thing ... something that could never destroy us." Naturally, this leads to the creation of an entity that causes his paranormal colleagues to be "terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought." Think of this as a potential metaphor of both liberal and neoconservative enthusiasm for democracy promotion. Sure, it sounds good in your head, but then you see who winds up doing well in the post-Arab Spring political environment, it's easy to lose the capacity for rational choice.
Ha, I bet you think you've been rickrolled. Think again! Rick Astley smartly presaged one of the central dilemmas of America's post-Cold War foreign policy: how do you get nervous allies to believe that the United States will honor its overseas obligations? You have to have attractive bleach-blonde back-up singers reassure them that "a full commitment's what I'm thinking of" and that "you'll never get this from any other guy." You have to pledge, repeatedly, that America is "never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down." Furthermore, the United States is "never gonna run around and desert you." This kind of reassurance mechanism, done with the proper tone and in harmony with other voices, can make even the wariest of allies vault over political barriers and do backflips in celebration of their alliances with the United States.
Steven suggests that, at a minimum, this explains public discourse on grand strategy, and he has a point. On the one hand, you have an angry public that appears to be willing to fabricate evidence to justify taking aggressive action. On the other hand, you have elites that reject the absence of any logic to justify action. Instrad, they rely on their own galactically stupid set of axioms to guide their thinking.
Sure, the song is an obvious choice, but as he notes, it was no accident that he chose this version. The joyful version makes light of America's exuberance for all things American. That's not the point of this clip -- it suggests the dark side of American exceptionalism, the burden that the United States faces as it tries to preserve global order in a world gone amok by odd, tacit alliances between terrorists and rogue states.
Hayes Brown, however, submitted my hands-down favorite, a short but sweet clip: "Go! Bwaaaah!"
In less than three seconds, this clip hints at a myriad number of rich textual interpretations. Does the dog represent what happens when force is used, dragging the rest of the country along? Or, perhaps the canine symbolizes the big influence of small allies. Actors that the United States thinks it has under its thumb are actually driving foreign policy more than you would think. Without question, however, critics of the Obama administration would conclude that this clip is the definitive explication of the perils that come with "leading from behind."
UPDATED BONUS CLIP: Diana Wueger submitted this very late, but it's too good not to add: "Like a BUS!"
Like most of these seemingly short clips, Wueger's submission works on two levels. On the one hand, it demonstrates the ways in which hegemonic power allows some actors to be able to pursue policies that small actors simply cannot. In this comparison, this clip reminds the viewer of the many global public goods that a hegemonic actor might feel obligated to provide. Compare Bus 62 with the U.S. Navy after the 2004 tsunami, for example. On the other hand, hegemonic power can also have unanticipated negative externalities. Sure, Bus 62 simply plows through the barrier. However, it does so without helping the other people stuck in traffic, and, like a boss, nearly plows over the person in the way. A cautionary tale about the uses and possible abuses of power.
I could point to full-blown reports, news stories, or portentious weather forecasts, but American residents already know the truth -- Thanksgiving travel is an ordeal. Traffic jams, crowded flights -- it seems everyone is trying to get somewhere in the days before Turkey Day.
With the general mantra of "hurry up and place your hands in a surrender position wait" governing these next 36 hours, I thought it would be worth considering how a better appreciation of the tools of stateraft might help those of you on the road to avoid unnecessary frustrations.
Let's say that another actor -- which we'll call the target -- is pursuing a course of action that conflicts with your interests in world politics. This presumably means that all your attempts to avoid this clash of interests in the first place have failed. What are your options in developing a policy response?
Well, there's always the denial option -- physically preventing the target from doing the thing that is bothering you. Of course, denial often requires the overpowering, sustained use of force, and therefore is massively expensive. Very few actors have this option available to them.
If denial is not possible, another possibility is compellence. In this case, the goal is to punish the target such that it recalculates the costs and benefits of doing what it is doing and acquiesces to you. While less costly than denial, punishing the target will often involve punishing yourself, albeit not as severely. Some actors possess this option, but its success rate is far from guaranteed
Compellence and denial sound very coercive -- what about inducements? Surely the most efficient way to alter the target's behavior is to buy them off! Not so fast -- sometimes the price is extraordinarily steep. Sometimes the target doesn't want to be thought of as for sale. And sometimes the target might con you.
There's always the possibility of persuasion -- using sweet reason to get the target to reconsider their motives and reverse their actions. Of course, what seems eminently reasonable to you might not look so smart to the target, so this is hardly a surefire recipe for success.
Finally, one should always consider acceptance -- allowing that the costs of trying to change the target's behavior far outweigh the costs of adjusting to the target's behavior. Intuitively, this is a very frustrating outcome -- but if you lack the capability or the budget to pursue the other options, then it still might be the best course of action.
What, you might ask, does this have to do with Thanksgiving travel? Quite a lot, actually. Let's say you're stuck in a traffic jam on I-95, or you're on a plane with a crying toddler sitting next to you. The natural instinct is to declare that the situation is "unacceptable" and that "failure is not an option." All well and good, but let's run through our list of generic policy options and see what's feasible if you're, say, stuck in a traffic jam:
1) Denial: If you're on the road, sure, you could use RPGs to blast a hole through the traffic. That would require an awful lot of them, however, and I hear they're expensive and illegal to use. Good luck having enough of them to force your way through the tri-state area.
2) Compellence: Lot of drivers seem to believe that there are forms of punishment that could be pursued: constant horn-honking, hanging right on someone's bumper, and so forth. This can work with a few drivers, but more often than not it simply creates reciprocal bellicose behavior/minor fender-benders/West Coast shootings by the targets.
3) Inducements: The proffering of inducements on clogged interstates is exceptionally rare, for two reasons. First, what can be offered? Snacks? Drinks? A video player? These are all exhaustible resources -- so in a traffic jam, this will only get you a few car lengths ahead.
4) Persuasion: As Tom Vanderbilt so wonderfully explained in Traffic, communication across cars is difficult. There's that horn, and of course gesticulations with one's fingers can also often be used. Neither of these really persuades, however.
Unfortunately, but logically, this leads us to acceptance as the best approach to handling Thanksgiving traffic jams. It's the best of a bad set of policy options -- much like modern-day statecraft.
[What about the crying toddler on the plane?--ed. Oh, then this metaphor works even better -- crying toddlers are the uncontrollable rogue states of travel. The parent could try denial, but suffocating children still carries serious legal penalties in most states. Compellence is popular, except if the idea is to get a screaming child to stop screaming, punishment isn't really going to work well. Inducements -- "here, have some chocolate!" -- can work, but the child quickly figures out the associated moral hazard and has an incentive to act out again to get more inducements later in the flight. Using persuasion on crying children is something that non-parents are convinced will work -- until the moment they become parents themselves and realize their own utter stupidity. No, if a child is bawling uncontrollably during a flight, it's not because the parent is derelict in their parenting -- it's because they've already exhausted the first four policy options and have no recourse but acceptance.]
[NOTE: The following is a public service message from the hard-working team at FP Magazine to the policy wonks and market analysts inside the Beltway--ed.]
Has this happened to you in 2011? You're stressed out from a long day of reading/writing/number crunching/contingency planning and you're looking to unwind and enjoy yourself. Then you see the latest announcement of a European summit meeting and proclamations of a breakthrough deal that will resolve the plight of the Greek economy, the fragile state of European banks, and the perilous credit rating of southern Mediterranean countries.
As you see stocks rise, credit markets soar, and the euro appreciate, the euro-optimism becomes intoxicating. Pretty soon, the euro-giddiness starts to get to you. You start to tweet things like, "the corner has been turned," post on Facebook that, "it's time to Europarty!!" and talk up the metric system again. Nicolas Sarkozy looks like the brilliant progenitor of grand ideas and grand summits, and Angela Merkel is the shrewd politician who made the bankers blink.
After a few hours or so of this, all the problems in the world look eminently solvable. In your head, you've devised brilliant, intricate plans that solve the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, the India/Pakistan enduring rivalry, and the BCS college football rankings. Before you know it, you've organized and presented a talk in which you provide the Mother of All Powerpoint Presentations to Solving Global Problems, charging the entire, catered affair to the Brookings Institution.
Beware!! You are a victim of Eurogoggles. As the Economist will observe, "in the light of day, the holes in the rescue plan are plain to see." Both AFP and Bloomberg will point out that the policy euphoria has faded the next day. It will turn out that details are left unexplained. The size of the bailout package, which looked massive the night before, will prove to be a limp, unsatisfying half-measure the next day. The bank rescue fund and the Greek deal remain incomplete. All you'll be left with is that vague sense of self-loathing at having been suckered again, and a strem of angry voice-mail messages from a DC think tank. The walk of shame to your water-cooler the next day, in which co-workers mock your tweets of the night before, will be humiliating.
Eurogoggles -- don't let it happen to you or your colleagues.
The Official Blog Son and I were lucky enough to catch Team USA's thrilling come-from-behind victory over Brazil in the FIFA Women's World Cup. It was a great and controversial game, sure to be replayed on ESPN Classic for years to come. It also got me to thinking about how prominent thinkers and writers about world politics would use the game as a hook for their foreign affairs columns and op-eds this week. Here are their opening paragraphs:
I was quaffing hearty German pilsners with FIFA President Sepp Blatter in a luxury box in Dresden's Glücksgas Stadium (try the bratwurst!!) when he said something that hit me like a thunderbolt: "I can't understand why there's so much demand for video replay in soccer. You know, there is no instant replay in the real world." And really, that's what the global economy is like -- a fast-speed, arcing bullet of a free kick with no time to press the pause button. You have to use every part of your being -- your legs, your head, though admittedly not your arms -- just to keep pace.
Watching the thrilling run of the Americans leading up to Abby Wambach's header, I was struck by the complex, free-flowing sequence of passes that got the ball from the American end to Megan Rapinoe's left foot. It was such a seamless, interlaced network of exchanges -- dare I call it a web of them? -- that moved the ball forward. As the passes moved from one player to another, I bet social networking technologies moved even faster, alerting Americans that a Big Moment was about to happen. In winning, the United States showed the power of webbed networks -- or is it networked webs? -- yet again.
All of the Western media will focus on the "theatrics" of the USA-Brazil game, but it doesn't matter. This was an intramural match between Western Hemisphere teams, which means it was irrelevant. Japan's stunning upset of host Germany in the quarterfinals is the real story of this World Cup, yet another signal of how the one remaining Asian team will leave the three "Western" teams still alive in the dust.
This was an example of American exceptionalism and American will to power at its finest. Battling a set of rules and referees that were clearly anti-American in their effect, the noble U.S. side displayed dogged determination and grit, vanquishing their Brazilian counterparts. The only black mark on the U.S. side was the timidity of the U.S. coach Pia Sundhage in obeying FIFA's absurd and corrupt rules. Sundhage, from that socialist bastion of meek multilateralism that is Sweden, adhered to the letter of FIFA law in pulling Rachel Buehler after she was "red-carded." A true American coach would have instead followed the spirit of the law and sent an 11th player onto the pitch in place of the unjustly accused Buehler.
Americans will thump their chests, display their brassy jingoism, and bray to the heavens about how the refereeing in this game was "unfair" or "ridiculous." They'll claim that the referee's red card of Buehler and mandated do-over of the penalty kick during regular time was "anti-American." They'll overlook the fact that the Australian ref could have midfielder Carli Lloyd off the field for a flagrant, deliberate handball but didn't. They'll overlook the granting of a re-kick for U.S. player Shannon Boxx during the penalty kick phase. They'll overlook the aesthetic beauty of Brazilian star Marta's soccer artistry. They'll overlook the arrogance of U.S. goalkeeper Hope Solo -- a perfect American name if there ever was one -- as she had the audacity to question the ref (if the officials weren't so obviously in Corporate America's back pocket, Solo would have been red-carded). They'll overlook the fact that the extra half-hour of play insidiously stacked the deck for the Americans, rewarding their better conditioning against the poorer and put-upon Brazilians. They'll overlook the 158 other things that I will now lay out in excruciating detail. Only when WikiLeaks focuses its might on FIFA will the soccer world be more just.
The sweltering heat in Dresden clearly began to affect the crowd. They booed the Brazilian star Marta with all of her touches. You could sense a growing danger as the boos grew louder. The German fans, upset at seeing their own team get knocked out, had clearly decided to side with their tribal allies. It is likely that only Wambach's header prevented what would have been an unruly German/American riot, breaking down the tenuous social fabric. The riot would have started in the heart of Europe, but I have every confidence that, before long, the unrest would have spread to Halford MacKinder's heartland in the middle of Eurasia.
This match crystallized both the promise and the peril of the rising BRIC powers as they assume more responsibilities in global governance. The game put FIFA's many problems -- bad decision-making, a lack of transparency about the bad decision-making -- on full display. Even after the match, FIFA never explained why Brazil was awarded a re-kick following Solo's block of Christina's penalty kick. Instead of constructively seeking reform, however, the Brazilian side tried to free-ride off of FIFA's flaws. Marta constantly whined to the refs about the lack of Brazilian free kicks. Defender Erkia flopped onto the pitch in a transparent effort to stall play. Unless and until the BRIC countries learn to play cooperatively with the fading West, global governance will look as effective as FIFA's efforts to block corruption. Which is to say, not effective at all.
Readers are warmly encouraged to offer their own suggestions in the comments.
[Note to readers: we are pleased to report that Dan bout with Friedman's Disease appears to have passed quickly. Due to difficulties with accessing the FP site, however, he has sent us his latest blog post via Gmail. Given recent accusations, we can neither confirm nor deny that this post has been edited or altered in any way, which we print below without alteration. Enjoy the read!--ed.]
I cannot emphasize how hospitable and gracious my Chinese hosts have been at this conference. From the excellent logistics to the delicious food that I have consumed in massive quantities in a perfect demonstration of excessive American consumption, I have been made to feel like an honored guest.
The only annoyance, not surprisingly, is accessing the Internet which is so filled with sedition and lies with respect to the People's Republic of China. It's one thing to read about how ordinary Chinese are blocked from accessing Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and various Wikipedia pages out of concern than members of U.S. Congress do not use these pernicious social media to send lascivious photos to vulnerable, unsuspecting Chinese women, but it's another thing to confront that fact in person.
The odd thing is the capricious but nevertheless wise nature of the censorship. I can access the Financial Times but not the Economistbecause the latter is written in a much more condescending, supercilious tone. Even with baseball sites, for several days I could access Baseball Prospectus but not FanGraphs because the latter site's Wins Above Replacement statistic relies on dodgy defensive metrics.
In the end, the irony is that many English-language news-sites are accessible -- it's the social networking sites that are unavailable to encourage our students to pay attention in class unlike their decadent western counterparts.
With China's Internet entrepreneurs being forced to go Redso as to crush all treacherous curs, the Great Fireweall won't be going away anytime soon. Then again, from the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) perspective, in makes some sense. The repeated outbreaks of social unrest over the past decade -- or the past week -- leaves the CCP with no choice but to continue its censorship policies if it wants to keep its hold on power andguide Chinese citizens towards a peaceful, harmonious world with Chinese characteristics.
It is for this reason that I look forward to returning to the United States so that I might rot my midget brain even further with more blog posts about stupid, bourgeois zombie-themed news.
[Note to readers: Because Dan was upgraded to business class on his trip to Beijing, he was exposed to a serious viral infection in the food called metaphoricus overloadus, known more commonly as Friedman's Disease. Rest assured, it is far from fatal -- it usually passes after 24 hours of no travel. As near as we can determine, all the facts in the blog post below are accurate. While suffering from Friedman's Disease, however, side effects do include rapid-fire, over-the-top metaphors. Remember: You've been warned!! --ed.]
To truly understand the phenomenon that is China, you need to fly into Beijing's airport and then try to get into the city. That's it; that's all you need. Just that adventure alone will tell you all you need to know about the contradictions of the Middle Kingdom.
First you enter a glittering, modern airport, with helpful signs in Mandarin and English. It's sheer scale and modernity telegraphs the ways in which China has already entered modernity. The monorail from my terminal to baggage claim was a pointed reminder of how much the United States lags behind in infrastructure investment in recent years.
And yet, there's the traffic. Summer in Beijing is a confusing miasma of traffic and smog and traffic. As my compatriot and I clambered into our taxi at Beijing's immaculately clean and modern airport, we knew that the ride to the hotel could take anywhere from 30 to 90 minutes depending on the traffic. Just as we Americans don't know when exactly China will catch up, the Chinese are not sure how long it will take to get there.
We might like to think that driving in a New York City taxi is as exciting as a carnival ride, but that's nothing compared with a taxi ride on a Beijing superhighway. In New York, there's always that sense that, in the end, the taxi driver won't risk an actual collision. On the road to Beijing, however, I witnessed at least two last-minute swerves and road rage that would have made Los Angelenos blush. Using an accent that an old-style New York cabbie would have admired in
its sheer swarthiness, my cabbie kept honking for at least two minutes after a car viciously cut him off.
It's a fantastical engineering problem, getting so many cars and motorcycles and trucks and buses to merge and move in the same direction. And that's when it hit me like a thunderbolt -- China itself is like this superhighway. It's massive in size, 10 lanes easy. It's filled with an array of vehicles determined to get ahead. The problem is that when you combine all the vehicles together, the real possibility of a two-week-long traffic jam in which everyone wants to go somewhere but nobody gets anywhere is clearly a possibility. Predicting China's future is like predicting the traffic: You know there will be some stop-and-go, but you just don't know how much of it there will be.
When we got to the hotel, I paid my cabbie and he signaled that I owed him four more yuan. I was suffering from ATM disease, so I took out a single U.S. dollar bill and a 100-yuan note, looked at him, and said, "You choose." He paused, and then took the yuan note and made the necessary change. Clearly, all of us participating in this hyperaccelerated, globalized economy are going to have to make the necessary change soon enough.
Andrew Sullivan has wrung a lot of blog mileage from his myriad awards for stupid/extreme statements found in the news. In that spirit, as well as an effort to keep my sanity extract some humor from the 2012 presidential campaign, I hereby announce the Donald Trump Award for Assertive Ignorance in World Politics -- known on the street as the Trumpies.
Named in honor of the erstwhile presidential candidate who really likes to name things after himself, the award can be earned by either a presidential candidate or one of his/her foreign policy minions. To score a Trumpie nomination, the person must satisfy two criteria during a single statement or exchange. First, the nominee must display a breathtaking ignorance of some bailiwick of American foreign policy or world politics. Second, the nominee must do this while simultaneously demonstrating supreme confidence in the factual and/or analytical rightness of their statement.
This second criteria is important. I won't begrudge a candidate who demonstrates uncertainty or befuddlement on a foreign policy question. World politics is a vast canvass, and as I've said before, expecting a candidate to demonstrate foreign policy omniscence is a fool's errand. Similarly, I'm not looking for your garden-variety gaffe or misstatement that just indicates a candidate is sleep-deprived. No, the key here is that a candidate is both too ignorant and too proud to admit or even recognize their own ignorance.
During the brief, shining comedy moment that was Trump's proto-campaign, he managed to demonstrate this kind of cocksure ignorance on multiple occasions. With his decision to bow out of the race, however, the field for the Trumpies is now wide open and your humble blogger will accept nominations from readers and commenters. The actual award, of course, will not be announced until after Election Day 2012.
To get the ball rolling, the first Trumpie nomination goes to GOP presidential candidate Herman Cain, for his comments on Israel and Palestine on Fox News Sunday:
Now, let's be clear about what's so funny about this clip. Cain's first answer, on offering "nothing" to the Palestinians to make peace, is not what's funny. It's reckless and extreme, but Cain's position possesses some internal logical coherence. It's the combination of this answer with his observation that the Palestinian "right of return" should be negotiated that makes the clip so funny (get a Palestinian negotiator good and liquored up -- hell, just have hummus with them -- and they'll acknpwledge that the right of return is one of the things that they'll have to give up in any two-state peace deal). The combination of these two positions boils down to Cain favoring a single state encompassing both Israelis and Palestinians, and I'm pretty sure he doesn't favor that.
The gaffe was significant enough for the Cain campaign to issue a "clarification of these remarks," which is always a good indicator that a Trumpie nomination has been scored.
Congratulations to Mr. Cain for the inaugural Trumpie nomination! The foreign policy analyst in me hopes that these nominations will be few and far between. The politics junkie, surveying the prospective field, is confident that there will be many more nominations to come over the next 18 months.
The field is now open for nominations -- submit yours in the comments or via-e-mail, and if the strict Trumpie criteria are met, you will see it in a future blog post.
UPDATE: Oh, if Trump re-enters the race, there's gonna be a lot of nominations. Bravo to the Donald for trying to preserve the quality of his brand.
ANOTHER UPDATE: See if Cain had simply admitted to Wallace that he didn't know what "the right to return" meant, he'd have avoided the Trumpie nomination. Instead, he admitted it to Sean Hannity the next day.
Yesterday Rush Limbaugh asked a former U.S. serviceman who called into his show a totally-hypothetical-and-not-in-any-way-designed-to-impugn-the-patriotism-of-the-sitting-president-kind of question:
Are you aware of any military contingency plans for a president who might not be your prototypical pro-America president? Are there contingency plans to deal with a president who may not believe that the United States is the solution to the world's problems?
Marc Ambinder provides both a succinct ("No.") and a more detailed answer. Now, some readers might take umbrage at the partisanship of Limbaugh's question, but I think it dovetails nicely with some recent research interests of my own. In particular: what would happen if the president was under threat of turning into a zombie?
Let's break this down into two phases: A) a president who's been bitten but is still clearly human; and B) an undead POTUS.
The first situation could distort the government's initial policy responses. After all, the actors with the most immediate stake in sabotaging any attack on zombies are those who have been bitten by zombies, and the human relatives of zombies. By definition, the moment humans are bitten, they will inevitably become zombies. This fact can dramatically alter their preferences. This change of mind occurs in many zombie films. In George Romero's Land of the Dead (2005), the character of Cholo has the most militant anti-zombie attitude at the outset of the film. After he is bitten, however, he decides that he wants to "see how the other half lives." In Peter Jackson's Dead Alive (2002), as well as Romero's Dawn of the Dead (1978) and Survival of the Dead (2010), family members keep their undead relatives hidden from security and paramilitary forces.
Clearly, soon-to-be-ghouls and their relatives can hamper policy implementation. One would expect a soon-to-be POTUS to order research efforts on finding a cure rather than focusing on prevention, for example.
If the situation is unclear when the president is infected, all hell breaks lose once he becomes a member of the differently animated. The law here is extremely murky. From Ambinder:
The Presidential Succession Act of 1947 spells out a procedure. Let's look at 3 USC 19, subsection "E." We're dealing with a situation where there is no President, no Vice President, no Speaker of the House and no President Pro Tempore. The law then appoints the Secretary of State as President until either the end of the current president's term in office OR someone higher in the chain of command suddenly re-appears or recovers from injuries and is able to discharge the powers of office. (The Secretary of Defense is sixth in line, after the Secretary of the Treasury.)
This seems clear: If it's not clear, after some sort of decapitation attack, whether the President, the Vice President or the two Congressional successors are alive, or if they're all alive but disabled, then the Cabinet secretaries become acting President -- until and unless a "prior entitled individual" is able to act.
Let's say that the POTUS, the VPOTUS, the Speaker and the President Pro Tempore are all injured; only the Vice President recovers. As soon as that person is eligible, he or she can "bump" the Acting President aside whenever he wants....
The problem is that, in a catastrophic emergency, the people who need to know who is in charge might not have the resources to find this out immediately. These people are, in particular, the Secret Service, and the folks who execute lawful orders from the National Command Authority (which is another name for the commander in chief's executive powers).
Well, then what the hell happens if a president is bitten by a zombie, dies, and then becomes a zombie? It seems to me that the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 doesn't cover this contingency.
There is also the question of the conflicting bureaucratic imperatives that some organizations, like the Secret Service, would face in this scenario. For example, in Brian Keene's The Rising, the U.S. government falls apart almost immediately. A key trigger was the Secret Service's difficulties altering their In divining bureaucratic preferences, where you stand depends on who you eat. standard operating procedures. After the president turned into a zombie, he started devouring the secretary of state. As a result, "one Secret Service agent drew his weapon on the undead Commander-in-Chief, and a second agent immediately shot the first."
I think the lesson to draw here for Rush and others is that in divining both bureaucratic and presidential preferences, where you stand depends on who you eat.
Actor Charlie Sheen is a classic example of the difference in Western and Eastern values and norms.
Ignoring public pleas from his father, Sheen has continued a weeklong media blitz, exhibiting obvious signs of mania. With no firm hand to guide them, Western media has deliberately goaded him into making increasingly delusional statements, more concerned about "winning" higher ratings than Sheen's own sense of pride, or the negative example his brash public admissions about his private sex life and unverifiable international conspiracies could be setting for society.
How many young people have been led astray by Sheen's boasts about his substance abuse and freewheeling sex life? And that was when he was in character on national television, as a randy bachelor in Two and a Half Men.
Sheen attracted 1 million Twitter followers in just 24 hours, yet more evidence that microblogs spread the most unhealthy contagions in society like a disease. Chinese family, coworkers, or the authorities would have taken firm steps to make sure someone like Sheen did not make a public spectacle of himself.
It's true: the Obama administration has been ridiculously slow on getting a handle on the Charlie Sheen issue. I mean, you know that if Hillary Clinton got Sheen in a room for an hour, this whole problem would go away. This just reinforces the administration's slowness on handling matters of serious popular culture.
OK, seriously, as I understand it, Global Times is not the same kind of official mouthpiece as, say, China Daily or People's Daily, so I wouldn't take this as the official Chinese Communist Party position. Hell, it might be a parody. Still, a few revealing things from this. There's the swipe against Twitter, and the emphasis on familial loyalties.
I see two other interesting reveals, however. The first is the proposed "Chinese" solution to this problem:
His employers are unhappy that he was distracted with prostitutes and drugs, and didn't show up to work on time. Why not take a tip from the Chinese business community, and make visits to a KTV parlor part of Sheen's workday?
And instead of epic parties at his home with porn stars, why not keep Sheen occupied with business banquets?
Sheen goes on television and boasts that he has two girlfriends, who both sleep in the same bedroom. Is he too poor to set up his wives and mistresses in different houses?
In Chinese society, these problems are dealt with delicately and privately. Sheen is like a typical Westerner throwing fuel on the fire with each interview and tweet. It is almost as if he feels no shame and is loving the attention.
Racism, spousal abuse, addiction, politics, mental illness, boasting about mistresses, - these are all subjects best dealt with behind closed doors.
Er... as near as I can determine, Sheen's bosses have been using this playbook for the entire run of Two and a Half Men. It's only when Sheen thoroughly rejected all outaside intervention that everything blew up. In other words, the Chinese solution to this was exactly the same as the American solution to this -- well, minus the massage parlors. This continued right up until the moment when Sheen decided that the "Charlie Sheen" drug could defeat all comers. And then he was suspended and subsequently fired. Perhaps the fact that the government decided not to send him to the countryside and instead just got his children out of his orbit is peculiarly "western."
Second -- and this is a genuine question to readers -- is Charlie Sheen actually a folk hero to anyone other than substance abusers at this point? I see the attention he's getting now as in the category of, "Wow, look at that massive 12-car pileup on the other side of the road!!! It's horrific, but I can't look away!" Granted, he's now a prime candidate for his own reality show -- but I'm not really sure that's winning the future.
This is the only time I will ask this about Charlie Sheen: what do you think?
UPDATE: A commenter suggests that this must be a parody, albeit one that the editors of Global Times can't detect. But the commenter provides an excellent additional takeaway point:
[I]t's way easier to slip a humour piece disguised as a bizarre anti-US rant past the Chinese censor than it is to get a serious piece that is even vaguely critical of CCP policy published.
LAST UPDATE: According to the Shanghaiist, the editors at Global Times were in on the joke -- in which case your humble blogger will join Al Jazeera and admit to being punk'd.
Rest assured, dear readers, I'm hard at work cobbling together the 2010 Albies. It's a Friday, however, which means there's a preternatural instinct to look for something amusing to blog about. Unfortunately, today's payroll figures don't cut it.
FIFA President Sepp Blatter criticized the International Olympic Committee on Friday while defending his own organization against corruption allegations, saying the Olympic body handles its finances "like a housewife."
Mr. Blatter, a member of the IOC since 1999, said FIFA was more transparent than the IOC, and backtracked on plans to create an anti-corruption commission.
"Our accounts are open to everyone. ... We've [done] it since I'm the president. It wasn't done before," Mr. Blatter said in Qatar, where he is attending the Asian Cup. "The IOC does it like a housewife. She receives some money and she spends some money."
Mr. Blatter also said the IOC "has no transparency," and that any transparency was left to the Olympic-sanctioned sports themselves....
Mr. Blatter's criticism of the IOC comes as FIFA, soccer's governing body, faces an IOC probe.
The IOC ethics commission is studying evidence provided by the BBC after it broadcast allegations that FIFA officials—some with Olympic connections —took kickbacks from the soccer body's former marketing partner in the 1990s.
The story does a decent job of highlighting the absurdities of Blatter's claims, but the New York Times' Rob Hughes details the precise absurdities regarding FIFA's vote to have Qatar host the 2022 World Cup:
The vote for Qatar was jaw-dropping.
Only after the decision did FIFA executives, including Blatter, give credence to the notion that the tournament might have to be switched from June to January. It seems that FIFA is having second thoughts. Having accepted Qatar’s promise to build a dozen stadiums air-conditioned, the fear is that players or spectators could fry in the desert heat in summer.
Franz Beckenbauer, a former player who is about to give up his seat on the FIFA panel, was the first to suggest the switch. But FIFA’s own general secretary said it could not be right to vote for a tournament in June/July, then arbitrarily move it to another time of year. Blatter, on a visit to Qatar, however, contradicted him.
Bloomberg's Tariq Panja explains the problems with Blatter's proposal to switch the time of year for the Cup:
If the tournament is moved, major European competitions like England’s Premier League, Spain's La Liga and Italy's Serie A would be severely disrupted. Those leagues would need to shut down for about two months and a longer-than-normal international break during the season may lead to more injuries.
“That would demand a complete re-organisation of the whole world’s fixtures and I cannot see that happening,” Arsenal coach Arsene Wenger said at a press conference today. “If all the championships are not going from March until November and you re-organise and then the dead (off) season would be in December.”
Here's a good and simple rule of thumb: if an international sports organization has to choose where to host a high-profile, touist-generating moneymaker of an athletic competition, then it's corrupt.
The hard-working staff here at the blog would like to thank Sepp Blatter for managing to live up to the comic presence that his very name suggests. Way to go, Sepp!
I remember a few things about the day of the September 11th attacks. I remember being at Heathrow and wondering why they weren't announcing the gate for my flight. I remember being puzzled why I couldn't complete a transatlantic call when my flight appeared to be delayed. I remember my wife telling me what happened. I remember cursing the fact that I was marooned on another continent on one of the few days when my chosen specialty might have been of some practical use for my wife. And I remember, at some point, telling her, "it could have been worse."
Because it could have been. United 93 could have hit its intended target instead of having the passengers and crew overwhelm the terrorists. Al Qaeda could have had a second wave of attacks planned. With some imagnation, al Qaeda could have killed a lot more people on that day.
The other thing I remember in reaction to that day was when it was OK to be funny again. Many pop culture historians will likely point to the first Saturday Night Live episode featuring Rudy Giuliani -- except that wasn't funny. Slightly more hip pop culture historians might point to the monologues of either David Letterman or Jon Stewart -- except they weren't funny either.
No, the first thing that made me laugh after the terrorist attacks -- and sustained my hope for America -- was The Onion's first post-9/11 issue, from the headline "HOLY F&#KING S*&T" on the front to the television schedule in the back (On NBC at 10: "America's Time Of Trial: Who F**king Wants Some? You? Do You? How 'Bout You?"). Consider just the following list of headlines:
Any country with the capacity for that much self-lacerating humor will be OK in the long run. So I mean this with all sincerity: that issue of The Onion made me proud to be an American.
2) In an effort to allay rising fears of a zombie apocalypse, Cracked proffers Seven Scientific Reasons a Zombie Attack Would Quickly Fail. They're trying to be on the side of the angels with this piece, but I gotta say that I'm pretty unconvinced by most of their arguments. They are correct to point out the myriad ways in which zombies are vulnerable to the elements, animals, and firearms. What they don't talk about is that zombies are not likely to be as seriously affected by these countervailing effects as humans with, well, pain receptors. It doesn't matter if a zombie destroys itself trying to get at live human flesh. What matters is that by having this single-minded pursuit, they're pretty likely to succeed, guaranteeing that the zombie race can replicate even as individual zombies decay.
The oldest evidence of a fungus that turns ants into zombies and makes them stagger to their death has been uncovered by scientists....
The finding shows that parasitic fungi evolved the ability to control the creatures they infect in the distant past, even before the rise of the Himalayas.
The fungus, which is alive and well in forests today, latches on to carpenter ants as they cross the forest floor before returning to their nests high in the canopy.
The fungus grows inside the ants and releases chemicals that affect their behaviour. Some ants leave the colony and wander off to find fresh leaves on their own, while others fall from their tree-top havens on to leaves nearer the ground.
The final stage of the parasitic death sentence is the most macabre. In their last hours, infected ants move towards the underside of the leaf they are on and lock their mandibles in a "death grip" around the central vein, immobilising themselves and locking the fungus in position.
I hate to break it to tem, but this is hardly the first zombie insect story -- Greg Laden at ScienceBlogs was all over the zombie insect question earlier this summer. It turns out that zombie hornets might exist, which sound way scarier to me than zombie ants.
A plant had one of nature's most industrial animals do its physical bidding, somehow bringing the neurons and synapses to heel in a coherent, productive way. The liberal arts major in me is mystified and repelled.
The armchair strategist in me thinks: How can our enemies use that?
I'm no chemical or biological weapons expert, so if you are, tell me if I'm crazy, please: Can you imagine a future powder solution, not unlike weaponizable anthrax or botulinum agent, that spreads a fungus capable of commandeering a human brain? Could particular strains be developed to direct hosts into this behavior or that: jumping out of windows, refusing to eat, choking strangers out? Could it even be used to turn reasonable, free-thinking individuals into PBIEDs -- that is, suicide bombers?
Second of all, even if I violated that principle, I'm not sure that this is as serious a threat as the flesh-eating zombie. What makes that strain particularly virulent is its ability to replicate itself. These kind of zombies, at best, render themselves as total slaves. What they can't seem to do is spread the zombie virus beyond themselves to other agents.
At worst, this kind of bioweapon could, in theory, be used to create a giant army of zombies. Lacking free will, however, they'd be far less effective than the droids in The Phantom Menace.
I think that's all the zombie news this week. More updates as warranted.
I got to thinking – what other musical super stars could run as leaders to help fix the nations of the world? In what way could Lady Gaga help with nation-building projects? Could Paul McCartney advise the World Bank in any way (other than being able to possibly fund a small third world nation by himself for a year)?
I'll leave it to others to answer the latter two questions -- but the first one is a real doozy. Carvin offers some intriguing possibilities. As someone who's researched the link between celebrities and world politics, however, it's worth pondering the question further.
For me, the musicians I'd want in charge are the ones who demonstrated the ability to persist over time (which disqualifies Lady Gaga for now), the ability to fashion a coherent agenda (which disqualifies Bono), and the ability to avoid a shame spiral that embarrasses the country in question (which disqualifies Britney Spears and many, many others).
So, which musician would I trust with, say, American hegemony? Here are my top 5:
5) Flea, Red Hot Chili Peppers. This band has stayed vital for close to two decades, and a crucial moment was Flea's decision to re-recruit guitarist John Frusciante when the band's fortunes were flagging. The result was Californication and the Chili Peppers' return to relevance. Sounds like someone who could make good staffing decisions. Downside: could raise constitutional issues -- Flea was born in Australia.
4) Dave Grohl, Foo Fighters. After 1994, he could have gone through the rest of his life resting on his laurels as the drummer for the greatest American punk band in history. Instead, he became a frontman and formed the Foo Fighters. And here just has to be a negotiating advantage from listening to this song before going into serious international negotiations. Downside: Grohl would need to get a serious grip on his coffee addiction.
3) Justin Timberlake. The only member of 'N Sync to thrive after the death of boy bands. The only ex of Britney Spears to be known for something other than dating Britney Spears. The only person I know who can be consistently funny on Saturday Night Live. Clearly, he's a survivor. Downside: Hmmm... sure, Timberlake is a survivor, but is he responsible for the demise of Britney and boy bands?
2) Snoop Dogg. Anyone who needs his own translator is bound to confuse and obfuscate his adversaries. Also, the man never seems rattled by anything -- exactly the kind of cool head we need in the White House. Downside: there could be reasons beyond temperment that he's so mellow.
1) Madonna. She's been in vogue for decades now. She's been a true blue survivor, a ray of light to other female singers looking to break into the music industry. If there's anyone who knows how to properly game a situation, it's her. Downside: There's this. And this. This too. Oh, don't forget this. Also, I'm not sure she thinks she's an American anymore.
Readers are warmly invited to proffer their own suggestions for musico-political royalty.
Although the Jedis did assist the Rebel Alliance in overthrowing a tyrannical emperor, it's clear that the Knights were originally setup to enforce the Galactic Senate's big government agenda.
I must say, I find Jesse's lack of faith disturbing. Based on the Star Wars films, we know very little about the Galactic Senate's pre-Phantom Menace agenda, but we do know that Chancellor Valorum is a pretty weak leader. We also know Palpatine's designs. Upon becoming chancellor, he vows to put down the separatists, raises a Grand Army of the Republic, stays in power well beyond the expected number of years/terms, and finally reorganizes the Republic into the First Galactic Empire. That's as big of a big government agenda as you're going to get.
Are the Jedi big government advocates? That's unclear. I think it would be more accurate to describe them as cartelistic -- they refuse to permit a free market in learning the ways of the Force. After all, the Jedi Council's initial inclination is not to train Anakin Skywalker despite his obvious talents, using some BS about fear as a cover. Only when Qui-Gon threatens to go rogue do they relent. The Council does not inform the Senate that their ability to detect the force has been compromised. They're reluctant to expand their assigned tasks -- they're keepers of the peace, not soldiers. Just as clearly, their anti-competitive policies weakened their own productivity, given the fact that they were unable to detect a Sith Lord walking around right under their noses for over a decade.
So, were the Jedi perfect agents of liberty? No, probably not. But neither were they handmaidens to the greatest concentration of state power in galactic history.
P.S. Beyond George Lucas' rather bigoted portrayal of anything involving commerce, another source of libertarian resentment against the Jedi might be their lack of respect for property rights. If the Force is an energy field created by all living things, then why the hell to the Jedi get to exploit it without compensating the creatures who create it in the first place? If you think about the Jedi as the Guardians of the Republic, this might sound absurd. Replace "Guardians of the Republic" with "rapacious strip-miners of primordial energy," however, and suddenly they don't look so good. At least the Sith stay small in number, so the externality problem is kept to a minimum.
And then I began to wonder what life would be like if that attitude were applied to the rest of world politics.....
IAEA REFUSES TO REVERSE CALL ON IRAN
VIENNA: Today the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) rejected American and European pleas to review and reverse its latest finding on Iran's nuclear program. Last week IAEA inspectors surprised the world by declaring "there's nothing to see here, move along" after the latest inspections of Iran's nuclear facilities.
Immediately following that report, both the German and U.S. governments provided clear video and satellite photography of a secret nuclear facility in Iran, and requested that the IAEA reconsider its position.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano refused, however, arguing that, "there is a human element to inspections that technology cannot and should not eliminate." He elaborated, "this kind of strategic ambiguity is exactly the kind of uncertainty and controversy that will promote debate and discussion about Iran's intentions for years to come." He went on to argue that nonproliferation will remain more popular than other global governance structures, such as climate change, that have embraced the use of technology in their decision-making.
When asked if the new data wouldn't provide a more accurate assessment of Iran's program, he replied, "if you start disrupting the natural, sclerotic flow of our decision-making, you abandon the best traditions of global governance.
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, flanked by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, praised the IAEA decision and blasted the Obama administration's efforts to reverse the call.
"This is just another example of the United States, with its Zionist cronies, attempting to subvert democratic decision-making with Western imperialist concepts like 'facts' and 'truth.'"
In all seriousness, it is stunning how both FIFA and the International Olympic Committee manage to make other international organizations look uber-competent.
Your humble blogger has occasionally been asked to give speeches and/or presentations at other campuses. Most of the time this comes with an economy-class air ticket and a very modest honorarium. After reading Sarah Palin's standardspeaking contract*, however, I realize I have been far too modest in my demands. So, from now on, any university that wants to bring me out needs to meet the following criteria:
1) The host is responsible for providing a first-class airline ticket between Boston and the event city. The host is further responsible for ensuring that Courtney Love is seated next to me so I can have her thrown off the plane. If neither a first-class airline ticket nor Ms. Love is available, Wonder Woman's invisible jet will suffice -- but only if Wonder Woman herself is piloting the craft.
1 complete edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. None of those condensed/abridged versions, either -- it's the whole smash or nothing.
4) Twenty minutes before the speaker's talk, the host will ensure a student walks out to the podium, wearing an incredible sexy ballroom gown, and reads Book One of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War. Note: the gender of the student doesn't matter, but that ballroom gown had better be damn sexy.
5) The host shall ensure that the following is located on the speakers' podium:
1 t-shirt launcher -- those things really do look like they're a lot of fun.
6) The host shall ensure a moderator asks all of the questions from the audience. The host shall further ensure that the moderator only asks these questions after inhaling lots of helium.
7) At the end of the talk, the host shall ensure that this music is played as the speaker leaves the building.
8) Under no circumstances is Jay Leno to precede or follow the speaker.
Readers are encouraged to list their own demands to be a speaker in the comments.
*Which, while perhaps at odds with her populism, don't seem all that strange given the surging demand for her services at the moment.
An outbreak of zombies infecting humans is likely to be disastrous, unless extremely aggressive tactics are employed against the undead.... A zombie outbreak is likely to lead to the collapse of civilization, unless it is dealt with quickly.
The latter problem may be less intuitive so I'll explain my reasoning: Humans who survive the initial outbreak survive for a reason. Disproportionately, they were faster, smarter, and stronger to begin with than their fallen peers. Even if they weren't, they were luckier and have probably been able to, at least, find a more defensible location than where they started at round zero of the outbreak, increasing their chances of survival simply by virtue of having survived the early rounds of the outbreak.
So, I constructed a computational agent-based zombie outbreak model to test how my assumptions might alter the solution.
His result seems pretty encouraging:
[T]he [Carelton University] team's model leaves something more profound out the equation: human capacity for ex-post organization and response. When accounting for these things, I can find scenarios of large initial zombie outbreaks that, when followed by quick adoption of strong anti-zombie defense policies may help pockets, or even large fractions of civilization to ward off the impending doom of mass zombie infection! How exciting!
Phew!! Sounds like an uprising of the undead won't be as calamitous as we originally thought.
[If] the Romero movies have taught us anything, it’s that the defensive resources are only effective if they aren’t sabotaged by the internal squabbles of humans. (If you’re not familiar with Romero’s movies, think of what Newman from Seinfeld did in “Jurassic Park”). Thus you’d have to add another parameter, which is the probability in any given period that some jackass sabotages the defensive perimeter, steals the battle bus, etc. If such sabotage eliminates or even appreciably reduces the “safe area” efficacy then human survival in the “safe areas” is contingent on the act of sabotage not occurring....
So a more elaborated model would not only have to add in parameters for spatial heterogeneity, but also human sabotage.
[T]he prospect of a zombie apocalypse actually represents a chance to throw off the constrictive fetters of society, shoot your neighbours in the face, steal some guns and a car, and drive off into the sunrise, taking along only those friends and family you trust and care about the most. As such, it represents a simplifying of life.
However, part of what needs to be figured out is whether there is any organizational cohesion in the wake of a zombie attack. As the Carnegie school of political organizations would suggest, organizations exist in part to compensate for the stupidity bounded rationality of individuals. Perhaps hierarchy and standard operating procedures in the wake of zombie attacks would help prevent the kind of sabotage discussed by Rossman.
And yet. If bureaucratic conflicts and organizational pathologies hamper effective counter-terrorism policies, imagine the effect they would have on anti-zombie policies. The bureaucratic turf wars would be significant. Quelling the rise of the undead would require significant interagency coordination. In the United States, one could easily envisage major roles for the Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Transportation, and Health and Human Services. This does not include autonomous or semi-autonomous agencies like the Federal Emergency Management Agency, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, Center for Disease Control, and the myriad intelligence agencies.
So the ability of organizations to adapt to an army of the undead is an open question. Clearly, further research in this area is desperately needed.
Believing that this killer whale acted alone is a fool's errand. This is clearly a harbinger of future killer whale attacks. I demand that the Department of Homeland Security launch a Killer Whale Division immediately. These killer mammals of the theme park ocean must be brought to heed.
Some analysts might argue that this is simply a misunderstanding, and that better communication would help. This is national security naivite at its most extreme. Indeed, according to the Los Angeles Times, this whale "had been involved in two previous deaths, including one at the water park in 1999." I bet authorities are Mirandizing the whale as I type this.
Negotiating with killer whales will accomplish nothing -- after all, they are killer whales. We cannot rest unless we have put the largest mammals in the world in their proper place.
This glut of cruddy romantic movies has prompted Jessica Grose to ask a puzzler over at Slate: what is the worst date movie of all time? Her vote is for the Julia Roberts/Clive Owen/Natalie Portman/Jude Law film Closer.
As an admitted moviebuff and IR geek, I must offer my own very different answer to this question -- one that demonstrates the extent to which my IR geekiness nearly ruined my romantic fortunes.
Back in the early days of courting the Official Blog Wife, we were spending a lovely, romantic vacation weekend together. This was the kind of trip when I was able to forget about the rest of the world and focus on the inherent awesomeess of my bride-to-be. Everything about those three days was perfect -- until the very end of the third day. We were walking along a boardwalk and came upon a movie theater, which was playing a matinee of a film that I had really been wanting to see in the theater.
"Let's go see it!" I said. My future wife, still in the throes of vacation bliss, agreed.
I know, I know. Unless you're into sub movies like Run Silent, Run Deep, Das Boot, or The Hunt For Red October -- and, as an IR film geek, I am so into these movies -- this genre is likely the absolute worst date movie you can take a date. A lesson I learned the hard way fifteen years ago. To this day, when I see Crimson Tide on cable, I feel a little shiver run down my spine. I'll still watch it, of course -- but shivering. When the wife and I are flipping channels and we see it on cable together, she emits a noise that no English word can precisely capture. I'm sure there's a long German word that fits the bill -- something that combines derision and dread, but still leavened with a bit of tenderness.
My dear readers, if you are so lucky as to find a soulmate that shares an enthusiasm for a particular movie genre -- zombies, for example -- then enjoy that shared interest to the hilt on a date movie. Otherwise, do the right thing and go rent The Philadelphia Story.
Later today I promise to mock the Obama administration's National Export Initiative to within an inch of its life; on a Friday morning, however, FP readers deserve a dose of whimsy.
Unlike the other protesters reported killed on Sunday, Ali Moussavi appears to have been assassinated in a political gesture aimed at his uncle, according to Mohsen Makhmalbaf, an opposition figure based in Paris with close ties to the Moussavi family.
Mr. Moussavi was first run over by a sport utility vehicle outside his home, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote on his Web site. Five men then emerged from the car, and one of them shot him. Government officials took the body late Sunday and warned the family not to hold a funeral, Mr. Makhmalbaf wrote.
Whoa there, big fella. Talk about jumping to conclusions! Sure, this looks suspicious, but I can think of several other plausible reasons for why this could have happened:
He was behind on his payments to bookies.... that'll teach him to bet on the New York Giants.
He was in the market for an SUV that could run over people and the haggling over price got out of hand.
The Basij are playing one of those college assaassination games across all of Tehran, and they forgot to use their dart guns rather than real guns.
It was a hit and run accident, and the men in the car decided to put him out of his misery after seeing how badly wounded he was.
Moussavi was really an agent for the Mossad. The men in the SUV were really agents of the Mossad. In fact, 95% of the protestors in the streets of Tehran are actually agents of the Mossad, MI6, or the CIA.
See, these are all plausible alternative storylines, and should be investigated thoroughly before calling this a "political assassination."
The following is an exchange between myself and someone who had clearly taken over a friend's e-mail account, and was attempting to get me to wire money to them. All of the text is true; only the names have been changed to protect the innocent:
12:13 PM Scammer: hi there
me: Hello
12:14 PM Scammer: how are youi?
you
me: OK... how's your daughter Bubbles? [Not her real name --DD]
12:16 PM Scammer: did you got my message?
12:17 PM me: No, is Bubbles OK?
Scammer: yeah
12:18 PM I need your help?
12:19 PM me: What's wrong?
12:20 PM Scammer: well i had a visit to a resort centerin Wales, England..
got mugged by some hoodlums
all cash and credit cards were stolen
12:21 PM me: Oh, no
That's horrible!
12:22 PM Scammer: i need your help?
thank GOD that i wasn't hurt and i still have my passport with me
me: Well, sounds like things will work out then!
12:23 PM Just call the credit card companies!
Scammer: have already canceled my credit cards and my bank account was frozen due to security reason
12:24 PM the mian issue is that i'm financially straned right now and my return flight leaves in few hours time but i need few cash to sort out some bills before coming over
me: Have you contacted your husband Bubba?
12:25 PM Scammer: we are both stuck together
12:26 PM i need you to loan us few cash?
will def refund it as soon as we arrive back tomorrow
me: But surely Bubba can use the $500 he always keeps in his security pouch!
12:27 PM What flight are you on?
Scammer: Virgin Atlantic Airline
12:28 PM me: Have you tried contacting them to advance the money? I hear they do that in situations like these
Scammer: they can't do such thing
me: Sure they can! They did it when I was mugged in Edinburgh last month!
12:29 PM Scammer: i need your help?
me: What do you need?
12:30 PM Scammer: $1,000 is all we need
me: In which currency?
12:32 PM Scammer: 600 pounds is all we need
me: Oh, dear....
How soon do you need it?
12:33 PM Scammer: we need it now
the next available fluight leaves in 2hrs time and we got to be at the airport in 1hr time
12:34 PM me: But I don't see how I could get money to you that quickly
Scammer: you can have it wired to me vis Wetsern Union
do you know any WU outlet nearby?
me: Hold on, I'll check....
12:35 PM Scammer: ok
12:36 PM me: Why, yes! There is one right near Fahrfivgnugen, MA, on Swindler Street! That's only 5 minutes from here!
Scammer: ok
will you leave for the WU outlet now?
12:37 PM don't really have much time to waste
me: Well, where am I supposed to wire it EXACTLY?
Scammer: yeah!
all you need is just my info
a sec...
me: Which is?
12:38 PM Scammer: wire it in my name to
5 King Street, Cardiff, South Glamorgan CF10 1SZ, United Kingdom
me: OK, I'll head out in two minutes...
Wait, there's someone knocking at my door
Oh, no, they've got a gun!!!
12:39 PM Scammer: alright
me: Help!!!
They're asking me for all my money and credit cards!!!
I'm doing what he says!!!
I'm sorry, now I have nothing.
When you get back to the States, could you wire me some cash so I could get gas for my car please?
Scammer: f*** you
12:40 PM you kidding me???
I'm kicking myself that I didn't come up with something more original than that.
Any suggestions for the future? [UPDATE: thanks to alert reader S.C. for the link to this site.]
What is the proper forum for secret doomsday planning? The G-20? The U.N. Security Council? The P5+1 or the EU3 +3? Every country for itself? Mssrs. Drezner and Walt, I'm counting on you to chime in here.
I certainly can't speak for Steve, but it's worth pointing out here how big the mismatch is between how movies think end-of-the-world global governance looks like as compared to what would happen in the real world.
When the movies do it -- and here I'm thinking about Deep Impact, The Core, Children of Men, etc. -- there's usually a coterie of Really Smart People, or a Council of Elders, or some other expert-driven body that devises a risky but brilliant plan to solve the problem.
In the real world... well, I suspect the following would be true:
There would be initial and profound disagreement among experts over what precisely to do;
After a scientific consensus began to emerge, dissenters would go back to their home governments to lobby for political support
There would be rampant suspicion of any multilateral effort by those asked to make an outsized contribution;
The cost overruns... oh, the cost overruns;
Conspiracy theories would pop up all over the friggin' place
The plan wouldn't work.
That said, I suspect the answer to Blake's question is "none of the above." Unless the End of the World matched perfectly onto a pre-existing international organization, my hunch is that the great powers would start up something de novo.
Of course, if I actually knew the answer and was one of those Really Smart Persons tapped to solve the problem... well, then you'e all royally screwed.
UPDATE: Given my pessimism about the global governance of the End of Days, what can you do to prepare? Click here to find out. My favorite quote: "Make a list of friends and family who live nearby, then decide who you want with you."
[I]s the sacrifice of 58,000 Americans worth a bad Yankee team?
The answer is obviously yes.
This is a question that could tear apart the nation... Red Sox Nation, that is.
More here. I really don't think this is anything more than a coincidence, and I certainly don't agree with the blogger's estimation of Lyndon Johnson.
Still, if one wanted to develop a completely unsubstantiated hypothesis, however, one could posit that the explanation for this correlation is that under a GOP president, the mercurial owner of the Yankees faced fewer contraints to royally f**k up interfere in the management of the team, resulting in some spectacular flame-outs on the diamond.
It's not true, of course, but it's a more entertaining urban myth than Obama's citizenship status or Bush's role in the 9/11 attacks.
When someone publishes an op-ed, longer essay, or book, they have to write a tagline. It's usually two sentences describing their title and affiliation, and whatever big projects are associated with them.
After watching the preview for The Invention of Lying, however, I began to wonder what these tag lines would look like if they were brutally honest. With a nod to Megan Mcardle's "Full Disclosure" post from a few years ago, here's fifteen examples I came up with:
Jack Silver is a fellow at the Institute for Strategic Studies. He has been Henry Kissinger's bitch for something like three decades, so when Henry passed on writing something for us, he was the next logical choice.
Suzie Wong has never been to the country about which she is writing. What's in this op-ed is culled from a quick perusal of the Economist and a few phone calls.
Cass Bunstein is a law professor. He dashed off this essay in his head while commuting to work this morning, wrote it in under thirty minutes, and it's still smarter than anything, my dear reader, that will ever pop into your brain.
Augustine Cornington has been teaching at an obscure state school for two decades, lying in the tall grass, waiting for her archnemesis to make a mistake in print. This book review is her chance to completely eviscerate him.
Joe Schlub Jr. is a law professor. This essay is a badly mangled version of an interesting idea he heard Cass Bunstein riff on at a cocktail party last week.
Andrew McClutchen is a former governor. He hopes that this op-ed is the first step in getting beyond that horrible sex scandal from a few years ago.
Madeleine McFadden is a former cabinet secretary, and did not write a single word of this policy essay. It is possible she read the first few paragraphs of it, but that's being really optimistic.
Jane Babbington has no extraordinary policy expertise. She does have an awesome book jacket photo, however, and will have better hair and skin than you do until the day she dies.
Lou Marston is a very smart professor at Princeton University. This op-ed is woefully underplaced because he took his own sweet time writing it, and this issue is from last week's news cycle.
Robert Knaus lost the capacity to write long-form essays years ago - what you just read is what an intern scraped together from one year's worth of Twitter tweets.
Ann Stoneham is the foremost expert on this topic, and cannot write her way out of a paper bag. Her uber-competent editor busted her ass for the last 48 hours to try and convert this essay into semi-readable prose
Gwen Pollard is an area expert at a prominent DC think tank. She fervently hopes that everyone has forgotten how completely wrong she was about this topic just five short years ago.
C. Thomas Pope is a professor at the University of Chicago, and his worldview hardened into an inpenetrable black mass the day he turned twenty-four. As no amount of contradictory evidence will cause him to change his mind, he is perfectly willing to make absurd, idiotic statements without worrying that he is wrong.
Richard Jensen is a professor at Harvard University. He has the Mother of All Balloon Payments due on his mortgage next year, so any extra income helps.
And, of course.....
Daniel Drezner is a professor at Tufts University, and is publishing the fifth version of exact same idea with this essay. Seriously, the man would be nothing without the cut and paste function.
Readers are warmly welcomed to come up with their own brutally honest tag lines in the comments.
This is an excellent start, but I think we can add a few names to the old dissident list. Let me think.... who else is railing against the System these days?
Beyonce (OK, technically, she's not railing against the system -- but as much of a jackass as he might have been, Kanye was right: this is the most awesome video ever. She was robbed, and I blame The Man).
I'm just trying to imagine Medvedev meeting this crew.
Commenters are encouraged to suggest additional names in the comments.
Talking to an attractive woman really can make a man lose his mind, according to a new study.
The research shows men who spend even a few minutes in the company of an attractive woman perform less well in tests designed to measure brain function than those who chat to someone they do not find attractive.
Researchers who carried out the study, published in the Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology, think the reason may be that men use up so much of their brain function or 'cognitive resources' trying to impress beautiful women, they have little left for other tasks.
The findings have implications for the performance of men who flirt with women in the workplace, or even exam results in mixed-sex schools.
Women, however, were not affected by chatting to a handsome man.
2) Attractive first ladies are trouble. The closest the United States came to a nuclear confrontation was the Cuban Missile Crisis -- which just happens to be when Jackie Kennedy is first lady. A coincidence? Oh, I think not!
One can only hope that Presidents Obama and Sarkozy will recognize this and prevent Michelle Obama and Carla Bruni from being the 21st century equivalents of Helen of Troy.
4) Add another explanation to Angelina Jolie's relative success as a celebrity activist. Semi-seriously, it would be interesting if gender was a determining factor in the ability of celebrity activists to move the agenda.
5) Whichever country makes Salma Hayek their queen will have finally chosen the One Woman to Rule Them All!!!
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