dan collier

Love and the Internets – A comic titled “Fixed Width” on xkcd. One of many cute drawings.

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“Welcome to Palestine” – This article by Robert Fisk is about both about the coup in Gaza and Middle East politics in general. The author is a 25-year resident of Beirut and widely respected Middle East reporter. This view is mainstream among Europeans, so it is remarkable that such a reasonable argument is almost never put forward in the US popular media.

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We Feel Fine – This site is hard to categorize. Part blog aggregator, part internet visualization, part peep-hole.

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Top Ten Chinese Thinkers – A tongue-in-cheek review of Chinese thinkers on the blog of a dead warlord plotting his future revolution.
Tagged: links

There is an interesting debate-as-article in the journal Foreign Policy titled “What’s Your China Fantasy” that delves into differing opinions concerning US-Chinese relations. It seems to me that anybody that thinks the US can successfully dictate domestic policy in foreign countries through economic (or military) means has not quite grasped the idea of globalization or sovereignty. If properly promoted, ideas like democracy and human rights will float or fail on their own worth.

There is a role for applying pressure on countries to align our interests, but the best pressure is cultural pressure. When it comes to winning hearts and minds, the PC is mightier than the sword. Policies that gently encourage engagement and integration with the world will succeed long before policies that require it. Every Blackberry owner knows that connection comes with compromises. A good example is Google agreeing to censor the internet for China, but in doing so they are able to provide services that will make total censorship of ideas more difficult (like free email to foster communication and the nearly uncensorable YouTube).

One should not overlook what our long-standing base in Guantanamo Bay and invasion of Iraq suggest: a nation’s adherence to international ideals is ultimately à la carte anyway.

The Semiwarriors – An essay by retired Army Lieutenant Colonel and current Boston University professor of international relations Andrew J. Bacevich was published in April. Mr. Bacevich’s son died this week in Iraq.

In this article, Mr Bacevich argues that a long-term movement toward constant conflict and the rise of an imperial American presidency go hand-in-hand. It is particularly heartening to read a complete rebuke of the Bush Doctrine from a conservative scholar.

The Big Lie propagated by the architects of the Iraq War is not that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction nor that he was in cahoots with Osama bin Laden; it is that they possessed a secret formula for keeping America safe, the essential ingredient in that formula being a mandate to engage in open-ended war. Although the semiwarriors advising Bush fancied that they had discovered something original, they were really peddling the same elixir concocted by James Forrestal some six decades ago. Having drunk deeply of that elixir, President Bush is now left holding the bag, with others–chiefly young soldiers and their families–picking up the tab.

After reading this article, I had to read Eisenhower’s farewell address again (with video).

Bill Moyers’ asks his readers if there is something in the DNA of foreign policy elites. When I saw that interview initially, I thought the question sounded like an excuse.

Depending on your point of view, thirty-two years ago today was the Fall of Saigon or the Liberation of Saigon. Yesterday, I believe coincidentally, Richard Posner and Gary Becker posted about why there have not been more violent protests in the US to attempt to end the Iraq war. It is a subject that I’ve been pondering for a while too.

Becker’s argument is that the absence of a draft is the decisive factor in the level of violent protest against the Iraq war compared to the war in Southeast Asia. The lower number of causalities also lowers the impact of the war. Posner does not dismiss conscription as a factor, but points to five other factors he believes are equally or more important. To summarize, they are:

1. The opponents of the war in Iraq have the support of one of the two political parties.

2. The opportunity costs of time are higher today than they were in the 1960s and early 1970s for potential protesters (i.e. higher wages, a higher percentage of employed females, more competitive colleges, higher long-term cost of short-term protests).

3. The great expansion of the electronic media, including the advent of blogs, gives people outlets to blow off steam that are much cheaper, in cost of time, than street demonstrations or acts of violence.

4. Lessons learned. The violent protests against the Vietnam war probably did not shorten the war, but instead helped Nixon become President.

5. For Vietnam war protesters, the war was a symbol of deeper and broader problems with the United States and the entire Western world. Today most of those with anti-war views blame the Iraq war on the incompetence of the Bush Administration.

I find it interesting that the Old Masters limit the discussion to violent protest in response to war. Is the implication that violent protest is more effective than non-violent protest? I think Becker is correct if we consider only violent protest. If the government wanted to draft me or my children for such a misguided cause, I may be provoked to more drastic actions than posting Jon Stewart’s armchair analysis on a blog. Posner’s first four points are valid, my impression is that the fifth is probably not valid for today’s potentially violent protesters.

Posner seems correct regarding the idea of a variety of factors that diminish the overall potential for protest. If aggressive police responses to (or provocation of) violent protests have increased, the costs of protesting in general, and protesting violently in particular, have also increased. Higher costs, even without diminished chance of successful protest, would be a disincentive for protest. Certainly, there is little hope for successful outcomes to protests today.

I wonder if the relative success of the non-violent civil rights era protests has impacted the willingness of subsequent generations to engage in violent protests. For those protesting the Vietnam war, Martin Luther King was a contemporary. For the next generation, he is a saint. Hopefully in 30 years we’ll be able to look back and see that non-violence was also the right tactic today.

Kind of following up the previous post about pretty graphs, it is being reported that Google is buying the technology behind Trendalyzer. My brother first sent me their link last year with a sentence about it being the best website ever.

Gapminder is the organization behind the tool. Their Human Development Trends, 2005 presentation for the UNDP is a great example of a compelling online presentation. I’d like to hear the lecture that went with it.

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On a different topic, I enjoyed Tyler Cowen’s post about our next President. He picks Guiliani, and his reasoning seems sound.

The NY Times had an article about Iraqi immigration to Sweden today. It is my impression that the increasing Arab and Muslim immigration to Sweden is becoming less popular there. While still a virtual heaven for refugees, the significance of the changing attitude towards immigration was under-reported when the socialists lost power in the September general elections.

Reading first-hand accounts of life in Iraq, like this blog by a female software developer in Baghdad, I wonder why anyone who could leave would stay.

Especially George W. Bush.