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 […]

Popularity: 26% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 24% [?]

“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 […]

Popularity: 30% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 22% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 24% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 22% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 27% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 25% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 26% [?]

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 […]

Popularity: 100% [?]