Mikaela says:
Small world these days, ain't it?
An m-pyre reader and rising grammatical star just called today's NY Times article buried in the technology section to my attention. They think blogs are the communique mode of choice in the Paris riots. Go bloggers! Go internet! Go technology! Take over the world! (Frankenstein rolls in his grave...)
Similarly, technology shortens the distance between two points, geographically and chronologically. I'm talking Iraq & America and Then (when he was a spy for Iran) & Now (when we fly him in to talk to Condi). That's right, lynchpin diplomat Ahmad Chalabi, who passed faulty information that helped Bush justify our invasion of a sovereign country and was later discredited and accused of selling intelligence to another country who hates us -- Iran -- dropped by yesterday for a little visit and gets high-level access to our government (why not? I mean, Karl Rove gives away secrets for free, and he gets to keep his high-level access and classified security clearance...we can't be hypocrites in EVERYTHING...)
And technology links global capitalism with two other important global phenomena: global warming and global terror. Our own champion wordsmith, President Bush, coins the phrase "Global Terror" only to be surprised that terror, too, can be outsourced, and it appears everyone's doing it. Paris, Annan, London months ago (although isn't it interesting that no one talks about that anymore?) ... no place is exempt.
Interesting that both "Global Terror" and "Global Warming" are controversial yet observable, highly destructive yet slow-building, and stoppable yet slipperty to solve. Interesting, too, that the causes are hard to trace directly; similarly, the solutions are hard to argue for.
The solutions most often proposed don't really get to the heart of the matter. Even if you believe in global warming, it's hard to give up your car or advocate for the U.S. to sign the Kyoto Treaty (ahem). Instead, let's recycle a little more and maybe if we're really wild and crazy, carpool occasionally with whoever drives the biggest car. Likewise, if you're worried about global terror, you won't agitate in the streets to stop the World Bank or the IMF, support your senators when they try to get the U.S. to stop developing and stockpiling the biggest military arsenal in the history of the world, or wonder outloud whether the presence of our troops in Iraq is helping or hurting the cause. You won't even stop driving so goddamn much even when gas hits $3.00 a gallon and you start to sweat that oil maybe did have something to do with this war. Instead, you stay silent, allowing Bush to declare war, send our soldiers to kill people and get killed.
Hmmm... Most of us won't give up our SUVs or attend a peace rally, but we will silently endorse killing people.
That's global terror, alright.
Some Kenyan official was on NPR last night raving about how terrorism is a foreign problem. Surely it can't happen there. Right.
But it did raise a flag for me. Wouldn't it be an interesting strategy to adapt what Maggie analyzed below -- reasons why America and France can both expect to be hit by chaos and violence -- to learn from countries who AREN'T currently experiencing terrorist attacks?
You could look at all the factors that we don't share and try to do more of what they do to keep terrorists from targeting them (or less of what we do to piss people off). I'm thinking Switzerland might be an interesting case study. They've got capitalism, so we wouldn't immediately lose our genial libertarian friends in this analysis, and they haven't been to war ... ummm ... let me demonstrate my ignorance, here ... in a really long time? ever?
So what do the Swiss do right?
- Neutrality vs. world bullying and outright attempts at world domination. They have that going for them for sure.
- Chocolate. Cause even the hardest of suicide bombers has to love chocolate, right? We're all human, afterall.
- The Alps. Make tough border crossings. Hard to angle planes in for attack landings. Plus, everyone's having so much fun skiing, no one's focused on planting slope-side bombs.
- Open border policies. If you can make it across, you're welcome across. Actually, I don't know that that's true, but it sounds good.
- A good economy balanced with social programs that help everyone to have a high quality of life and equal access to opportunity. That used to describe America, too, but I think we can all admit that's no longer true.
- Watchmaking. No, I'm not talking philosophy or religious ideology. This is really about focus on the details and the system and the balance between the two.
Regular spottings of Big Foot. "Saskwatch" is scary. Let's be honest. Even the terrorists are terrified. Who needs neighborhood watches when you've got big foot wandering around? Who needs the FBI, CIA, and IRS spying on everyone, for that matter?
- Stop terrorizing the world. Economically and militarily.
- Be more like Willy Wonka and less like Freddy Krueger on the world stage. More chocolate, less blood.
- Move to Europe to be close to the Alps.
- Open our borders and embrace the children born here from workers who help our economy.
- Balance capitalism with socialism -- all for one, one for all. We can do it! Together! Cue the singing!
- Less intelligent design, more human design that's intelligent. We need to balance our emphasis on what's natural and what's human and stop forgetting about all the people suffering on the poor end of the spectrum.
- Capture, stun, transport a couple Big Feet and let them loose in Yellowstone. Stand back and watch peace flourish forever.
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