The Bush administration has been putting fuses in place for some time now. The Iraq War is the biggest booby trap. The next administration will be saddled with the bulk of the costs — up to $3 trillion, according to estimates by Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes. It will also have to figure out how to pull the knife out of the bleeding country of Iraq without letting the victim die.
The rise of Starbucks also seems to correspond with the expansion of the go-go economy. We used to pay spare change for a cup of coffee. At some point in the 1980s, we decided to go into credit card debt to buy essentially the same thing. Okay, the coffee was better, but those lattes were some seriously leveraged beverages. The profit margins were killer, and Starbucks expanded accordingly.
When pundits talk about the U.S. elections and foreign policy, they focus on Iraq and Iran. But the third member of the infamous “axis of evil” may prove to be just as influential.
Nearly 70 years after the Games began again in the modern era, the Olympics finally took place somewhere outside the West. It was 1964, and the host country was Japan. The Tokyo Olympics were an opportunity for Japan to erase the stain of history. It had been tapped to host the 1940 Olympics, but its invasion of China scotched that deal. The 1964 Olympics would solidify its new reputation as a peaceful country.
Compared to oil, water, land, and carbon emissions, population is the only positive “peak” that we are approaching. The number of human beings will level off in this century and the sooner we get there the better.
Empires die hard. The war that broke out last week between Russia and Georgia is a terrifying reminder that the disintegration of the Soviet Union is far from over.
Forty years after the historic 1968 Olympics, the eyes of the world are focused on Beijing. The torch traveled 85,000 miles across the globe, the longest trip it has taken before a game since the 1936 Olympics held in Berlin. Just as in 1936, the run-up to these games has been fraught with protests focusing on the host country’s human rights record, leaving many to question if China is using the games for political cover, just as Nazi Germany did.
The debate has seesawed back and forth in the press, in blogs, on the street. Will George W. Bush, prodded by his pitchfork-wielding vice president, bomb Iran before the end of his term? According to one camp, an attack on Iran is so last term. In fact, the whole “evil axis” thing is passé. The administration has already done a 180 on North Korea. And, along with sending a negotiator to the talks with Iran in Geneva last week, the administration is considering opening a U.S. interest section in Tehran. The Pentagon is dead set against an attack. Our allies would freak. The poll numbers suggest that even though Iran tops the list of “enemies,” few Americans support bombing the country or even threatening to do so.
The worst aspect of these scenarios – with climate, with financial services – is that the partying and the hangovers have somehow been separated from one another. The rich get to enjoy themselves, and the rest of us have to deal with the morning after.
We need to shift over from the hypermilitary approach to an economic development model, and quick. But that’s going to require a major, immediate, cessation of operations in that most dangerous province of all: the rogue fiefdom of Dickistan.