Link Banana

I was torn between linking to this post about what Passport bloggers are reading, which contains a number of interesting suggestions, and this very approachable article from Fareed Zakaria that one mention. Obviously Zakaria won the coin toss; a sample:

It’s also worth noting that ever since World War II, the United States has tended to make its strategic missteps by exaggerating dangers. During the 1950s, conservatives argued that Dwight Eisenhower was guilty of appeasement because he was willing to contain rather than roll back communism. The paranoia about communism helped fuel McCarthyism at home and support for dubious regimes abroad. John Kennedy chose to outflank Nixon on the right by arguing that there was a dangerous missile gap between the Soviets and the United States (when in fact the United States had almost 20,000 missiles and the Soviets had fewer than 2,000). The 1970s witnessed a frenzied argument that the Soviet Union was surpassing the United States militarily and was about to “Finlandize” Europe. The reality, of course, was that when neoconservatives were arguing that the U.S.S.R. was about to conquer the world, it was on the verge of total collapse.

Psychology Today has a great article about the errors in reasoning that (vestigial) fear causes us to make. The ten:

• Risk and emotion are inseparable.
• Fear skews risk analysis in predictable ways.
• We underestimate threats that creep up on us.
• We prefer that which (we think) we can control.
• We substitute one risk for another.
• Using your cortex isn’t always smart.
• The “risk thermostat” varies widely.
• Risk arguments cannot be divorced from values.
• “Natural” risks are easier to accept.
• Worrying about risk is itself risky.

(via Lone Gunman)

The Economist’s Special Report on China arrives with these contentions:

[C]oncerns about the dire consequences of China’s quest for natural resources are overblown. China does indeed treat some dictators with kid gloves, but it is hardly alone in that. Its companies do not always uphold the highest standards, but again, many Western firms are no angels either. Fifty years of European and American aid have not succeeded in bringing much prosperity to Africa and other poor but resource-rich places. A different approach from China might yield better results. At the very least it will spur other donors to seek more effective methods.

For all the hue and cry, China is still just one of many countries looking for raw materials around the world. It has won most influence in countries where Western governments were conspicuous by their absence, and where few important strategic interests are at stake. Moreover, as China is becoming more involved in places such as Congo, its policies are beginning to change. It has promised to co-operate with the World Bank in its development efforts in Africa. It no longer seems prepared to back its most objectionable allies in the face of international opprobrium. Its diplomats, for example, did eventually stop parroting their line about unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and allow United Nations peacekeepers to be deployed in Sudan.

Orlando Patterson makes the claim that “controversial” wouldn’t begin to explain.

The ad could easily have removed its racist sub-message by including images of a black child, mother or father — or by stating that the danger was external terrorism. Instead, the child on whom the camera first focuses is blond. Two other sleeping children, presumably in another bed, are not blond, but they are dimly lighted, leaving them ambiguous. Still it is obvious that they are not black — both, in fact, seem vaguely Latino.

Finally, Hillary Clinton appears, wearing a business suit at 3 a.m., answering the phone. The message: our loved ones are in grave danger and only Mrs. Clinton can save them. An Obama presidency would be dangerous — and not just because of his lack of experience. In my reading, the ad, in the insidious language of symbolism, says that Mr. Obama is himself the danger, the outsider within.

David Grossman presents a fascinating look at the future of Israel though the eyes of a profoundly concerned citizen.

We haven’t gotten off the hook [about the 2006 war with Lebanon] because we haven’t yet really gotten onto it. We have not yet dared to face, open-eyed, this war’s deep and frightening significance. Set aside for a moment the convoluted, supremely cautious final report. Go back to the war days. Recall the moments of anxiety, the sense of ever-widening fissures, when it suddenly became clear to each and every one of us that perhaps the army will not always be able to save us, and that there could be a time when a war could end otherwise.

Isn’t that what suddenly began to seep through the tightly fastened armor of denial that we Israelis always shut ourselves up in? True, existential fear is an almost constant companion; it is always hovering over us; but perhaps precisely for that reason it is so threatening, and so hard for us to look straight at. Maybe that is why we actually do not dare face it soberly, and why we don’t take the necessary measures to counter it. I do not mean just military measures (even there we failed), but also the profound and comprehensive change of consciousness required of all who are truly determined to prevent such a deadly danger.

Psychology Today reports on the theory that dreams are primarily ways that people act out potentially dangerous situations that they’ll encounter or have encountered.

If the threat-simulation theory is correct, dreams should focus on the self, and when confronted with a threat, the dream self should react realistically to ensure its own survival and that of its loved ones. And so it is. We are the heroes of our own dreams. We don’t dream about other people’s adventures or about fictional superheroes battling monsters. We dream about ourselves.

If dreams evolved to simulate the threats in our environment, then being exposed to more dangers in real life should activate the nightmare function, overstuffing our dreams with threats. This is precisely what happens. Even a single exposure to a life-threatening situation can plunge a person into an inferno of post-traumatic nightmares, dreams in which the threatening event—the attack, the rape, the war—is repeated over and over in every possible variation.

(via donklephant)