Quote of the Day

I’m investing in something I believe in.  I believe in natural gas as a clean, cheap alternative to fossil fuels.

-Madame Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), on Meet the Press, 24 August 2008.

I Would Like a Keg for My 18th Birthday

Finally, a debate worth having.  Puritans beware, university presidents are mobolizing to ask the only sensible question that can be asked in the face of obscene binge drinking on campuses: shouldn’t we lower the drinking age?

Unequivocally, this writer thinks yes, and it’s long overdue.  I’ve never understood the logic behind the age of 21.   MADD can quote all the statistics they want, but numbers do not remotely tell the story.  Nor do they indicate the real problem.

The issue is education.  Most incoming college students have had to complete some form of an alcohol survey and education course, usually online, mandated by their schools.  This is half the battle.  However, telling kids what drinking is going to do to them and their reaction time is not going to educate them on the proper way to handle alcohol, how to consume in moderation, and plan ahead of time for responsible drinking.  Any educator knows that words and theory are at best half the battle, without experience, those words are worthless.

Contrary to what MADD, furious Puritans, and most likely, lawmakers, believe, this does not need to be a revolution.  I’d be happy with a compromise that at least allows people at the age of 18 to drink with the supervision of adults.  The idea here isn’t to let kids get drunk earlier, the idea is to bring a tabboo topic into the mainstream, to educate kids before they arrive at college and learn their limits the hard way.

On a cultural note, there is also incentive to open certain 21+ venues to younger people.  I think specifically of the many jazz and blues clubs in Chicago.  How are young musicians and fans supposed to identify with their music, a form that is uniquely American, I might add, when they can’t even hear it live?  Concerts are unfairly, not by their choice, exclusive and it should be no surprise that these music forms are shrinking when they can’t capitalize on younger fans.

It’s tough to imagine the statistics MADD fears really escalating if the drinking age is legally lowered.  The reality is that those who want alcohol already get it.  Stricter laws just earn more money for the middleman upperclassmen who can supply the freshmen on campus.

There are many creative ways one can work to enforce it as well.  As I mentioned, a stipulation involving adults in controlled environments could be one.  Also, a limit on the amount purchased at a time can also provide a buffer.  Would it be ridiculous to suggest a learner’s permit for young drinkers?  Perhaps a card that can be swiped that wouldn’t allow them to make more than one purchase a week, per se?

Are there ways to get around these?  Of course.  But students are getting around the rules now, with the drastic results deriving from the education they’re not getting.

Slackers

Ever since Bluto Blutarski, college has been the privileged white American’s extended Rumspringa. Or at least where you went to avoid that Viet Nam draft thing. Now, with the democratization of education and the advent of the business school, by which device can be obtained an undergraduate degree without having to participate in protracted thought and analysis, the debauchery of the university is now available to all races, sexes, and creeds.

A report from sociologists at the Bowling Green University in Ohio now sticks some statistics onto the pimply, Natty-Ice-chugging face of that debauchery, seen every Friday through Sunday night at the frat house basement party or local college dive bar. And what have we learned? That full-time college students, relieved of the necessity of gainful employ so that they can study, use their time to socialize, use/abuse alcohol, and destroy property.

But even the kids getting good grades and degrees in actual subjects (no, food marketing does not count) are opting for low profiles in the towns they just graduated from. Said one ambitious UC Davis graduate,

I guess if I knew there was gold in the hills outside of Davis, I might be more willing to hop out and enter the work force. But I figure our economy is crumbling; I might as well just stay cool and not worry about it.

American ingenuity at its finest: no jobs? declining economy? No problem! Just chill out! This is the can-do attitude that built the railroads and defeated Nazism.

Has academia failed today’s students? Is my generation just generally prone to failure? Perhaps it is not necessarily us, for in almost any age mostly everything is mediocre or worse. The vast majority of poetry and scholarship is terrible, not to mention the moral bankruptcy of commercial, military, and political activity across time and space. So, too, the majority of students.

Still I shudder to think that the same California slacker who is thinking of becoming a teacher, writer, or politician may actually be elected to office one day. Or should I be more afraid that his lack of interest in the public sphere will allow less savory characters to gain power?

More Name Game

Did anyone notice the switcheroo that NBC pulled in its coverage of the men’s 1500 meter freestyle final in Beijing?

For most of the grueling race, Canadian Ryan Cochrane battled it out with Grant Hackett, the obsessive-compulsive Aussie who refuses to take public transportation or touch handrails in the Chinese capital. In the last 400 meters, Tunisian swimmer Oussama Mellouli pulled out in front, eventually putting 0.7 seconds between himself and silver-medalist Hackett. The gold medal is the first swimming medal that Tunisia has brought home.

But at the beginning of the race, Mellouli was identified as Oussama Mellouli. But after his victory, he was described as “Ous” both in print and by the commentators.

I’m not judging you NBC, I’m just taking note.

1914 –> 2008

I am surely not the first to compare the recent conflict in Georgia to the Balkans in 1914, where two bullets from Gavrilo Princip’s revolver started the First World War. Mr. Putin clearly has dreams of a new Russian Empire dancing in his head. If he does not, his strongly nationalist attitudes, couched in nineteenth-century concepts, and the tsar-esque executive powers he has arrogated to himself certainly give a reasonable facsimile. Georgia has its own strongly nationalist president, Mr. Mikheil Saakashvili, who is intent on seeing the whole of Georgia – including breakaway provinces South Ossetia and Abkhazia – under Georgian control.

In order to reassert Georgian control of the de facto independent region, Mr. Saakashvili ordered Georgian troops into South Ossetia after midnight, 8 August. The Russian Federation moved to protect pro-Russian South Ossetia, whose official languages include Russian and whose currency is the Russian Ruble.

On 25 July 1914, Russia became the first nation to mobilize in what would become the First World War. Tsar Nicholas II moved to protect his sphere of influence in the Balkans, which he believed was strengthened by an ethnic bond between South Slavs (Yugo-Slavs) in Serbia and Slavs in Russia, after Austria-Hungary demanded that Serbia severely punish the conspirators of the 28 June assassination of the Austro-Hungarian heir to the throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and suppress all nationalist elements of its government.

The analogy becomes more acute when it is considered how much worse the situation could have been. Georgia has been campaigning for NATO membership for some time. If that had been granted before recent hostilities, the United States would have been legally obligated to give military aid to Georgia. However, a Georgian farmer seems to grasp with relative clarity the moral and political obligation that the United States already has to Georgia.

Spheres of influence and complex alliances formed several automatic systems of defense in late nineteenth and early twentieth century Europe. Russian defeat at the hands of the Japanese in 1905 forced Russia to allow Japanese influence in southern Manchuria and China, and to grant Britain (Japan’s supporter) expansion of its sphere of influence in Afghanistan, in order to maintain its own influence over northern Manchuria and parts of Mongolia. This also fostered anti-American feeling in Russia, whose Far Eastern foreign policy aimed at minimizing the number of other nations with a foothold in China. With Russian potency in the Far East somewhat neutralized, Russia renewed interest in the Balkans, becoming the patron state of Serbia and nurturing Slavic nationalist sentiments. Austria-Hungary similarly supported Bulgaria. Meanwhile, in order to check Austro-Hungarian aggression from the other direction, the Triple Entente powers of Great Britain, France, and Russia signed a secret alliance with Italy in September 1914, when Italy was still formally and openly allied to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Tripping any of the wires criss-crossing Europe and their spheres of influence could set in motion prearranged contingency plans for military action.

Russia has also mobilized its Black Sea Fleet for action against Georgia; the Fleet is bilaterally commanded by Russia and Ukraine. Kjiv has already warned that the Fleet will not be allowed to return to its station at Sevastopol in the Ukrainian Crimea. Both Russia and South Ossetia have accused Ukraine of supplying Georgia with arms.

Western Europe has been relatively ambivalent: a French official called Mr. Saakashvili mad for invading South Ossetia while French President Nicolas Sarkozy flew to Moskva and Tbilisi to broker a cease-fire. After all, Russia controls most of the petroleum supply into Europe. For nations like Germany, almost one-quarter of their petroleum and forty percent of their natural gas needs are provided by Russia. In the past, the Kremlin has not shied away from using this power. Ukraine’s vocal support of Georgia and apparent readiness to help their brother former Soviet republic is even more surprising, and perhaps brave, considering three major flare-ups in an ongoing petrol trade war between Kjiv and Moskva in January 2006, October 2007, and January 2008.

But, should we really be surprised that we engage in complex political and economic relations, and that the webs we weave often bring us to unpleasant choices? Should we renounce these complex foreign alliances, to follow the advice of George Washington? The Peace of Westphalia (1648), the Treaty of Paris (1783), the Congress of Vienna (1815), the Peace of Paris (1919), and the Potsdam Agreement (1945) all stand in a long line of European peace accords that set the standard for diplomatic theory and strategy: peace was instituted, and supposedly guaranteed, by territorial transfers, political quid-pro-quo, and economic provisions with the ultimate goal of enabling a balance of power. Today we have the United Nations – has it changed the rules of the balance of power game, or has it just applied the same strategies to the whole world?

So what are the options on the table for the United States and Europe? Several strategies have been suggested in an attempt to slap Russia’s wrist hard enough without souring relations further. These include denying Russia entrance into the G7, and/or speeding up Georgian and Ukrainian bids for NATO membership. But Western Europe has shown itself reluctant to do the latter, precisely because of the obligations demanded if there are future hostilities between Georgia and Russia. The United States has shown willingness to enter the fray with limited military assistance to Georgia (ferrying its troops in Iraq back home), and a promised humanitarian aid campaign. President Bush delivered some sharp words this morning, saying that Russia has “tended to view the expansion of freedom and democracy as a threat to its interests.” But the tightrope walk for America is made that much thinner by Russia’s support of Iran, which could be aggravated and increased by American action in Georgia – much to the detriment of troops in Iraq and civilians in Israel. The UN has been rendered useless by Russia’s veto power.

Mr. Putin’s strongly centralizing power and foreign policy initiatives are is couched in terms that belong to the nineteenth century or the Cold War: nationalism, spheres of influence, and satellite states. But in order to prevent the Georgian conflict, or any future conflicts propagated by Russia (or other aggressive nations: North Korea, Iran, China), from becoming the spark to the powder keg, there needs to be twenty-first century diplomatic innovation that combines a versatility to deal with complicated economic, military, and political relationships with a strength to solve these problems without allowing compromise to undermine the outcome.

The United States and Europe have the bear by the ears. Europe cannot let go, for fear of an energy crisis. America cannot let go, for fear of Russia’s enduring political clout in areas of the world that have become vital to American interests. But neither can they hold onto it for much longer, for the bear has them too and it has claws.

Something Truly Important

Faced with war in Afghanistan and Iraq, an uneasy cease-fire in Georgia, Russia’s increasingly menacing attitude towards the West, Chinese human rights abuses, mortgage market failure in America, nuclear North Korea, nearly-nuclear and aggressive Iran, genocide in Africa, mass hysteria, and cats and dogs living together, the London Times still finds time to investigate the truly important questions.

Like, where have the breasts gone?

Bravo, London Times. Bravo.

Russia Invades South Ossetia

Yesterday, the Russian Federation invaded the semi-autonomous and pro-Russian Georgian province of South Ossetia in response to Georgia’s increased efforts to rein in the area’s de facto independence. Today, Russian officials report that 1,500 civilians have been killed and that they have taken the regional capital of Tskhinvali. Georgian forces shelled the city today as Russia advanced beyond the southern borders of South Ossetia  and into Georgia proper to the town of Gori. The Russian air force bombed the city, which is the birthplace of Josef Stalin.

Georgia has increasingly faced the Kremlin’s wrath, particularly from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, because of the Caucasus state’s attempts at Westernization. Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili is seeking NATO membership for the country and the country had, until Russia’s invasion forced their recall, the third-largest troop presence in Iraq after the United States and Great Britain.

It should be noted that while Dmitri Medvedev is the President of the Russian Federation, and as such is head of Russia’s foreign policy. Mr. Putin, whose office does not have control over foreign policy, was actually the one who announced the beginning of hostilities.

Russia invaded South Ossetia on the opening day of the Olympic games. Both Russia and Georgia are participating in this summer’s games.