Remember Haiti? The one with the coup (which we will not at all suggest was supported by our own Federal Democratic Republic because that would have been undemocratic) that is already retro-chic even though it happened less than a month ago?

Haiti is still fucked. No, really, fucked. Just FYI.

The problem with listening to news on the local Pacifica affiliate during NPR pledge drives is that at Pacifica, they tend to see history (and history in the making) as the story of life rather than the story of political leadership. While the story of wartime politics can be interesting, the story of wartime life is awful, and usually ends up with someone hogtied in barbed wire and raped or shot or both.

Or perhaps awful is an overstatement; how's about a vacation in Somalia?

"Tourists can still go and see the former beautiful sights," [Somalia's minister of tourism Abdi Jimale Osman] says. "The only problem is they're all totally destroyed."

...
For those who remain unconvinced, Mr Jimale is reassuring. "I'm sure tourists would leave Somalia alive and I'm hopeful they wouldn't be kidnapped," he says. "At least, we would try to make sure they were not kidnapped, although it can happen."

(link via Alas, A Blog)

Just in case you're thinking of using the "Al Qaeda wuvs you!" line of political attack: a letter received by the London-based quotidien Al-Qods Al-Arabi claims that Al Qaeda does, in fact, wuv widdle Georgie:

En fait, il n'y a pas de diff�rence entre toi et Kerry mais les d�mocrates sont suffisamment rus�s pour maquiller l'infid�lit� et la faire passer pour de la modernit�, pour tuer notre nation arabo-islamique. C'est pourquoi nous voulons ta victoire, Bush le criminel

[In fact, there's no difference between you and Kerry, but the Democrats are sufficiently tricksy to make unfaithfulness pass for modernity, in order to kill our Arabo-Islamic nation. That's why we want your victory, Bush the criminal]

Of course any schmoe can write a letter and sign it "Brigades Abous-Hafs Al Masri/Al Qaida" but if we don't assume that all Arabic-speakers have intimate insight into the hopes and dreams of terrorists, what kind of journalists are we? What kind of Americans are we? I'm shocked that this letter hasn't gotten more Anglo press (Desbladet excepted, of course).

Eugene Volokh wonders if we should ignore the decisions of other countries when we think they might be influenced by terrorism:

The foreign countries' decisions may simply be probative of their own desire not to be attacked, not of what's the morally right thing to do in the abstract, or what's the practically right thing to do for us (or even what's in the aggregate interests of humanity generally). And I don't see why we should ascribe to a view of legitimacy that makes our actions illegitimate whenever the terrorists are able to force other countries to oppose us.

Assume for the sake of argument that the Spanish elections were influenced by the Madrid bombings, as everyone suddenly decided to vote for the party least likely to get them blown to bits, rather than the party that would be good for the economy, or implement the best environmental regulations, or whatever. This isn't much different from voting for Bush because you think he's good on national security (and bad on lots of other things), but there's lots of people planning to do this and no one's calling them cowards or terrorist-appeasers - why not?

1. "Al Qaeda wuvs you!" is a legitimate and astoundingly devastating critique of foreign policy.
2. Reasonable individuals never disagree on the best way to prevent future terrorist attacks. God Bless America and her Glorious Leader, 'cuz everyone else is unreasonable.
3. These people aren't cowards, they're bloodthirsty cowboys!

What the Spanish voters are doing (we assumed) is rejecting a strategy of elevated short-term risks with a possible long-term safety payoff if everything works out as planned, and voting in favor of a strategy with a short-term payoff but a possible long-term increase in terrorist attacks if killing people becomes seen as an effective path to change.* Spanish decisions still have probative value in considering the relative merits of these strategies (particularly the chance that everything will work out as planned in Iraq, cough cough).**

If we're living in a fantasyland where everyone agrees that Strategy X will cause a long-term decline in global terrorism, while the countries responsible for it will suffer a short term spike in attacks, then Eugene has a point. There's an obvious free rider problem, and foreign policy shouldn't be run like a public radio pledge drive.*** So should we ascribe to a view of legitimacy that allows us to toss out the objections of free riders? Or should we err on the side of caution when weighing a nation's objection to self-sacrifice?

I favor multinationalism mainly for its pragmatic and probative values, and not out of belief in some scheme of internationally-derived moral legitimacy, so I'll give that one a pass. Per Curiam addresses the issue, though as an apparently non-multilateralist pre-emptively countering possible arguments rather than a genuine multilateralist.
(more...)

I have two immediate reactions to this whole "Pim Fortuyn being murdered" thing.

1. It's really easy to find rhymes or near-rhymes for a name like Pim, which makes this a very good candidate for a limerick in poor taste.
2. Did Pim have a partner? I'm reminded of a recent election in Missouri - you know, the one won by a dead man and his widow. You just can't go wrong with that sort of thing - who can run a smear campaign against a grieving widow(er)? I mean, aside from pointing out all the horrible xenophobia.

Whatever, time for more math. WHEEE!!

... will be a few Danish commiserators. You see, last year when it became clear that Bush was ultimately going to slip into the White House, I vowed to spend these four years totally piss drunk. Crap political news is much easier to handle that way, I think, and now that the paranoid loonies are effectively part of Denmark's new governing coalition, there's going to be an extra daily dose of crap political news coming from Christiansborg. I found myself dispensing sage advice throughout the day: the first few months are the worst, then you learn to take comfort in satire.

Now, I'm completely baffled and a little bit frightened by all the anti-immigration rhetoric leading up to this election. I mean, by reasonable Angelino standards, there are practically no immigrants here at all, so what's all the fuss about? Copenhagen could use some more ethnic food. Plus I think Pia Kjærsgaard looks like Cruella de Ville. But after putting up with countless snide remarks about the cowboy in Washington, I have to say, I'm feeling a touch smug here. At least now I'm not the only one wandering around feeling responsible for alien viewpoints.

The BBC also has a few things to say on the matter.

Oh, wait, now I remember! It's election season here in Denmark, and the campaign posters have just sprouted like mushrooms after a good rain. Some of them even sprouted in my mailbox, apparently ignorant of the fact that a temporary residence permit does not a voter make. One of them, put out by the Venstre ("venstre" means "left" but the party is actually on the moderately conservative side of Danish politics, if you really want leftists here you're better off with one of several variants on the democratic socialists) bears the headline "STOP CRIMINAL FOREIGNERS." As far as I can translate without going to fetch my dictionary, the rest of the text is something along these lines: Denmark shall not give statsborgerskab or asylum to criminal foreigners. [three lines of gibberish] ... because they can not find work. It is spild (a waste?) of samfundets resources. We can do better than that.

Standard polemic, certainly nothing I haven't seen in the States (remember Pete Wilson? everybody loves Pete Wilson) but it does make me giggle with irony. I'm not much of a criminal of course, but one good illness in the next two months and I'll be a pretty reasonable approximation of a freeloading degenerate sucking off the cream of the Danish welfare state - yeah!
I can't wait until the flyers from the Danish People's Party come out, I'm sure they'll be at least three times as much fun.

I don't know if you've ever wanted to see this, but I've always been curious: the full list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. I've managed to see 14 of them, so far, with one more to come this week. Yay. It's an interesting list, heavy with castles and cathedrals in Western Europe, and low on my pet human heritage favorites like bridges. Also interesting is the average age - though I've not taken a particularly rigorous sample, I'm left with the impression that all the good cultural heritage is roughly 800 years old, plus or minus a few centuries. A function of urban erosion times, certainly, and of the fact that "historical importance" is not properly granted to something without a lot of hindsight.

Segue. The world has been changed forever because some people smashed planes into buildings full of other people. I'll take "changed" to mean that a unique trace of the event has not been obliterated by the normal actions of time, because otherwise the world has been changed forever because I just sneezed and played chaos theory with the weather. So then, in the case of the New York City skyline, "forever" apparently means "about 40-50 years," as that seems to be the time scale for new, important buildings going up. In the case of airport security, major changes such as universal metal detectors (c. 2020), or the toughened screening of electronics and the elminiation of non-accompanied bags (2020) seem to occur on a roughly 20 year timescale, with minor changes happening continuously as technology improves. So here "forever" means "20 years, or thereabouts." It's of course harder to predict the impact of Operation Fuckbomb Afghanistan on the geopolitical scene, but even if one assumes that September 11 marked the end of the American Empire, "forever" will probably mean no more than about 500 years, until the rise of the next fat hegemony. Now, I'm a scientist, so you have to trust me when I say that 500 years is piddly compared to forever.

Geez, I'm bitter tonight.

Thought the First: generally, when I have mostly keenly felt my Americanness, I have also felt loud, and large, and brash, and somewhere on the scale from cheeky to insufferably rude. Today, when I feel like an American it is because I feel small, and quiet, and vulnerable.



Thought the Second: despite having several American friends from my language courses, I haven't felt the presence of an actual expatriate community around me until today. It's been nothing more than exchanged glances and the quiet reassurances of "yes, I'm OK" - but that's really enough.



Thought the Third: since I have been luckily spared from thousands of individual tragedies, what saddens me most is the following: that obviously peaceful Islamic groups in the US are receiving a deluge of hate mail, and also, that so many people in the world believe that violence is their only route to justice.

Outside of my window, they're building a new Metro station, as well as a couple obscure sorts of office buildings. Since I'm seven floors up, the noise isn't too bad, and I can sleep through it during most parts of my sleep cycle - in fact, all the parts except the one I'm usually in when they start up at 8 AM, at which point I've slept enough (roughly 6-7 hours) to be awake, but I haven't really slept enough. Blah.

In addition to lots of noisy yellow shovels and things, said construction site is also home to a variety of military types. Their presence completely mystified me (what, are they going to use the new bridge to invade Sweden?) until recently, when I learned that I live about 50 meters away from an old Nazi weapons testing ground (it was also used by the Danish military in the 60's... but that's not quite so exciting). Unlike many other cities, Copenhagen did not have the crap bombed out of it during World War Two; it's easy to forget that a war was fought on this soil within living memory.

And: last night I was talking with a girlfriend of mine who had just split a week between Vienna and Budapest, as well as a guy who was actually from Vienna. He mentioned that even though Budapest was a mere three hours away, he hadn't been there until just a couple months ago. Even though the Iron Curtain is long gone, a trip to Hungary still felt like a much larger undertaking than a comparable visit to Germany.

Now, I grew up in Iowa. Despite hearing from someone, somewhere, that Cedar Rapids was for some reason in the top twenty list of military targets in the lower 48 states, these kinds of political realities have never had much of an impact on my life. My vacations have been limited by time and money, but never by the presence of the Canadian border. The last battle fought anywhere near my hometown was over 200 years ago, and happened mostly by way of smallpox.

Like many Americans, I have a healthy disrespect for the distance from one European city to the next. The lower population density of the United States has a lot to do with this, as does American car culture. As does the fact that I'm sheltered as all fuck.