Globally Rational

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People often talk about how they prefer “natural” cures or “natural” foods or other things of a “natural” nature. I’m not one of those people.  I don’t deny the value of preserving the environment… but as far as the difference between eating “organic beef” (I won’t even bring up the fact that all beef is technically “organic”) and regular beef, I don’t see the benefit.  Personally, I’d rather eat a cow that received antibiotics to kill all of the bacteria.

Sure, I understand that you don’t want to be pumped full of drugs every time you eat a hamburger.  But luckily, I also understand that antibiotics are cleared out of the cow’s system before it’s slaughtered… unless you have a mutant cow with no kidneys, in which case the antibiotics would kill the cow before it’s slaughtered.  In the end, you’re effectively choosing between a piece of meat that may be infected and another piece of meat that’s exactly the same except for the fact that it’s not infected.

I realize that people are afraid of ionizing radiation in their food… but what about the fact that all of the radiation decays from the food well before it hits the shelves?  You may not like the idea of genetic engineering… but how does it actually affect anything except for the price of the food?  Yeah, growth hormones sound “unnatural”… but the hormone is denatured when you cook the meat, so why would I care?

If a beaver builds a dam, it’s natural… but if a human even builds a swimming pool, it’s not.  If a bee extracts honey from flowers, it’s natural… but if a human extracts sugar from apples, it’s not.  If a bird builds a nest, it’s natural… but if a human builds a house, it’s not.

But if the heat starts a forest fire, it’s somehow a problem; if we don’t put it out, then Smokey Bear will come and yell at us.  Who says that we have a right to stop the natural life cycles of the forests?  Is it the same person who says that only beavers are allowed to build dams and only birds and bees are allowed to build domiciles?  Where do we draw the line?  Is it “natural” to make spears and hunt animals?  And where do monkeys fall in all of this mess?  Recently, we’ve found chimps using tools… should we be telling them to go back to the natural way of doing things?

Try to get everybody to only eat organic food.  See how long it takes before we experience a Malthusian catastrophe.

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This is another in my set of “Sunday Rewinds”, where I re-post one of my favorite articles that I wrote back when nobody was reading. FYI, the status of North Korea has changed a little bit since I first wrote the article.

Wikipedia defines “terrorism” as “violence against civilians to achieve political or ideological objectives by creating fear.” Here are some examples of accepted terrorist organizations:

• —Al-Qaeda, for obvious reasons.
• —The Irish Republican Army (IRA), which conducts violent attacks in an attempt to promote the independence of Northern Ireland from the UK.
• —Hamas, a political party that is said to sponsor violence against Israel.
• —Khmer Rouge, a violent Communist group that controlled Cambodia for part of the 1970s.
• —The Ku Klux Klan, which is responsible for ethnic/racial violence in the US.

Anyway, you get the point. But what about state-sponsored terrorism? We spent a lot of time, resources, and money fighting many of the small groups: for instance, we fought al-Qaeda and the Khmer Rouge directly (with heavy casualties) and we fought Hamas by supplying money and weapons to their targets. Meanwhile, we ignore state-sponsored issues:

• —China’s atrocities against Tibetans speak for themselves, but China is still hosting the Olympics and is still one of our biggest trading partners. They also don’t let the local media tell their residents about the violence, while the Great Firewall of China prevents any Chinese residents from accessing international news.
• —North Korea is as dangerous as ever and, unlike al-Qaeda and Iraq, they have weapons of mass destruction. We seem to just ignore them.
• —Israel still continues to kill far more Palestinian civilians than vice versa. Why do we continue to pay for them to do it?
• —We ignore state-sponsored terrorism in countries like Rwanda and Ethiopia/Eritrea, but we are all over it every time it touches Yugoslavia. My guess is that it’s because it’s much easier for white America to be sympathetic with white Yugoslavia. It’s also interesting that the news never mentions that the terrorism in Yugoslavia was primarily non-Muslims killing Muslims, but they always mention religion when Muslims kill non-Muslims. The same thing happens in Israel… it’s never “Jews killing Muslims”, but you hear a lot about “Muslims killing Jews/Israelis”, even though the former is much more common than the latter.
• —And, of course, there are the allegations of US sponsorship of terrorism, which seem to be irrefutable. Take a look at the link.

It’s hard to make a conclusion with such a small data set… but it’s good food for thought. This tells you a lot about how the US, as a nation, feels about various groups. We tend to ignore all evidence that is contrary to whatever issue it is that we want to support. We want to support China, so the Tibetans are irrelevant and the Olympics will continue. We want to support Yugoslavia, so we make Rwanda less important (the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was very efficient and took care of the issues… the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, on the other hand, has accomplished almost nothing). I don’t mean to suggest that we shouldn’t help Israel or Yugoslavia… but I think we should find a way to help Tibet and Rwanda at the same time instead of discriminating heavily in favor of one or the other.

Leave a comment and tell me what you think about this one. There are many possible explanations and conclusions, and I think we’d all like to see different opinions.

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“Democracy” is a popular buzzword here in the US.  Everybody assumes that if a country is “democratic”, they are also automatically “free”.  While I don’t oppose the idea of freedom and liberty, I don’t think that they should be naturally associated with the word “democracy”.

In America, democracy and freedom both showed up at the same time.  As far back as I can remember, I’ve been taught that we must agree with the Declaration of Independence’s suggestion that “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” just spur automatically from the fact that “to preserve these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just power from the consent of the governed.”  But in fact, that’s not what Jefferson was saying… he didn’t say that democracy creates freedom, but rather that free societies should be democratic.

So why is it that the US pushes the world to create “democratic” societies instead of creating “free” societies?  That’s what we’ve been advocating in Pakistan, Iraq, Eritrea, and many other countries where the elected government is (or soon will be) unimaginably corrupt and self-serving.  Meanwhile, here in the US, everybody assumes that an elected government must have the interests of the people in mind… after all, they want to get re-elected, right?

Maybe not… case in point: Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.  After rigging the first election to make it seem like he didn’t lose clearly, he intimidated the rest of the country to the point where his opponent was forced to withdraw from the run-off election.  Now, Mugabe is declaring victory despite the fact that he obviously distorted the results of the voting to a point where he seemed like a landslide winner when everybody knows that he is highly unpopular.

So why do we try to enforce democracy instead of freedom in countries like Iraq?  Well, I think the reason is obvious… Americans don’t really understand that there is a difference.  Democracy can be enforced by guns, while freedom can only be enforced by schools.  As long as you can convince the American population that you’re doing one or the other, they’ll be happy… so why not just put in a nominal government based on a superficial popular vote?  After all, it’s much easier to buy guns than it is to build schools.

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I called in to NPR’s Talk of the Nation today to discuss my opinion on America’s negative image overseas.  I think that the guest, Fouad Ajami of Johns Hopkins, hit the point perfectly… instead of boring you with an article, I’ll link you to the story:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91812972

If you click “listen now” and forward to about 5-6 minutes into the conversation, you’ll hear a caller named “Shan from Missouri”… that’s me.

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And the answer is Nelson Mandela.  Apparently, the US was against the anti-Apartheid movement because the South African white supremacists were our friends.  After it became apparent that South Africa’s racist philosophies were bad, the world came to accept Mandela as a hero… but we still never got around to taking Mandela off the US terrorist list.  In fact, some people still think he’s a terrorist, even after the US gave him a Medal of Honor in 2003.

I think it’s interesting to consider how much things change over the years.  Sure, Mandela was a little violent during the 1960’s… but he wasn’t anywhere near as bad as the Apartheid government.  Years later, people unanimously hail him as a leader in the fight against racism and global harmony.  40 years from now, what will we be saying about some of the people who are seen as questionable today?

There are a lot of people who are generally very influential.  Some of them, such as Hitler and Milosevic, are obviously bad.  Others, such as Mandela and Jimmy Carter, are obviously good.  But what about the people who are still too fresh in our memories to make any solid conclusions (for instance, much of the current players in Pakistani politics)?  What will we think about them in the future?

I want to make a suggestion.  Before you decide that a person is evil (like we said about Mandela), think about what they do and why they do it.  It’ll tell you a lot about the person… for instance, some Pakistani politicians are motivated by greed and power struggles, while others are motivated by a true dedication to making the world a better place.  Similar things can be said about more violent figures (including people who are actually terrorists)… if we actually try to look at things from their perspective, even if we don’t agree with it, we can go much farther in our attempts to make peace.

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I was browsing Fark.com today (as I often do) and noticed that they classified Pakistan’s recent increase in military spending in their “scary” category.  Personally, I don’t even see why that story was important enough to get noticed by Reuters, but apparently numbers scare people.

If you look at the actual story itself, you’ll see that the spending increase was only a total of 7%.  When you consider the fact that Pakistan faced 7% inflation in 2007 and 11% in the first half of 2008, it seems like a 7% spending increase is actually more like a net decrease.  But if a person wants to make the story seem “scary”, all they have to do is take some things out of context; Fark used a tagline of “Pakistan increases military spending to 300 billion rupees, plans to outfit military with large shields and extra health potions”.  300 billion rupees sounds like a lot more than its equivalent in US Dollars ($4.4 billion); in fact, there are over 200 people in the world who have enough money to pay that entire budget out of their own pockets.

I won’t deny that Pakistan’s military may be too powerful for the country’s own good.  But what choice do they have when their rival neighbor (India) is spending 6 times as much on their military and boasts 6 times as big of a population?  And why is Pakistan’s action labeled as “scary” when India actually increased their spending even more (10% increase, despite only 6% inflation)?

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Yesterday, I outlined the best possible sequence of events that could follow from Israel’s recent prisoner exchange with Hezbollah. The best-case scenario required some forward thinking from the educated part of the population, which would (hopefully) eventually start to promote tolerance. However, here is what will happen if even the educated people let their emotions supersede their rationality (which seems pretty common for enemies):

• May/June 2008: Israel works out a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah (done).
• The next few months: The public, both Israelis and Palestinians, openly resent that their side is negotiating with the enemy.
• The next year or two: Public resentment makes it more difficult for politicians to justify any sort of communication between the two sides.
• The next 3-4 years: Violence continues as usual and open political talks become a distant memory. Public opinion remains irrationally heated.
• The next decade or so: Communication is impossible; each side’s general public sentiment is that the other side needs to be simply eradicated.
• Another 10-20 years later: One of the two sides achieves its goal of killing enough people so that the enemy is forced to abandon their homes.

Of course, we don’t want this scenario to come true. Whoever wins, the end result is bad. That’s why I think that the only solution to the problem is through education… Americans need to be educated about the world, locals need to be educated about tolerance, and everybody needs to learn that it’s really not that hard to live in harmony.

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I think we can all agree that the best possible solution to the Israel problem would be something that involves minimal violence and casualties.  So here is what I’m expecting (as promised in yesterday’s post):

Best-case (realistic)

• May/June 2008: Israel works out a prisoner exchange with Hezbollah (done).
• The next few months: the first exchange gives way to more exchanges.
• The next year or two: more exchanges lead to semi-open talks between Israel and Palestinian groups.
• The next 3-4 years: Semi-open talks slowly evolve into open talks.
• The next decade or so: Open political talks eventually become accepted by the public, which means that they automatically hate each other a little bit less.
• Another 5-10 years later: As the hatred fades, some educated Israelis and Palestinians begin to live in the same areas without killing each other.
• Hopefully, as the more educated people start to live in harmony, this sentiment trickles down to the rest of the public.

Of course, plenty of people will want to say that “the Israelis should all just get out of the Middle East” or “the Palestinians should just go somewhere else”, but I think we can all agree that such an evacuation is highly unlikely.  Tomorrow, I’ll talk about the worst-case scenario.

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Until recently, Israel has been adamant about not negotiating with Hamas and Hezbollah; they went so far as to condemn Jimmy Carter for meeting with Hamas leaders. George W. Bush even visited Israel a couple of weeks ago to celebrate the 60th anniversary of their statehood (which many Palestinians considered a slap in the face because that day was also the 60th anniversary of the day that they were forced to leave their homes). But recently, in a move that is almost shocking to me, Israel actually decided to swap prisoners with Hezbollah.

I think this is a step in the right direction. As I have written once before, it’s becoming increasingly apparent that the only way to reach a permanent solution is to achieve a peaceful solution. If the Israelis and the Palestinians continue to kill each other, then the war will go on until one side or the other is extinct (which can’t happen as long as the US supports Israel and the Arabs outnumber the Israelis). But once the doors are open to peaceful talks, the angry population will slowly cool down until they reach the point where they can live together peacefully.

Tomorrow I’ll predict the best-case and worst-case scenarios (and maybe one in between).

EDIT: Here are the next two posts, also of interest
Click here for the best-case scenario
Click here for the worst-case scenario

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Plenty of us have heard that over 60% of Americans aged 18-24 couldn’t find Iraq on a map of the Middle East (yes, a map of the Middle East… not even a map of the world) in a 2006 survey (that’s three years after the start of the war). I just took a look at that survey and found a few other interesting facts:

• Only 50% think that map-reading skills are “absolutely essential”
• Despite that fact, 75% couldn’t find Iran or Israel on the same Middle East map.
• 65% couldn’t find the UK on a world map.
• 88% couldn’t find Afghanistan on a map of Asia.
• Half of people couldn’t find India or Japan on the Asian map
• 70% couldn’t find North Korea, and only 37% knew that the North/South Korea border is more heavily fortified than the US/Mexico border and the China/Russia border (both of which are mostly barren).
• Only 35% knew about the huge earthquake in Pakistan, which had killed 70,000 people only a few months before the survey.
• 74% of people thought that English is a more common first language than Mandarin (which was picked by 18%).
• When asked to pick the country with a Muslim majority (between Indonesia, India, Armenia, and South Africa), 48% thought it was India (which is only 10% Muslim) and only 25% picked Indonesia (which is over 80% Muslim).
• More interestingly, people thought that the Mississippi’s flow had something to do with Hurricane Katrina.

Apparently, we don’t know anything about the world. This is why the rest of the world looks down on Americans… geography is no longer an important part of our school curricula. How do we expect to succeed through globalization if 90% of our youth don’t even know where Afghanistan is?

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