Re: US strike options on TSP

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 10 May 2012 04:17

Lugar is a RINO and they dont want RINOs anymore in RNC.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 10 May 2012 20:32

Acharya wrote:Lugar is a RINO and they dont want RINOs anymore in RNC.

Its bigger than that. What we are seeing are the bow shots of the post Christian West being fired. You can see that in the election of Barak Obama, the gay marriage issue and so on. The Tea Party is a reaction and is not only a politicial movment but a religio-political movement.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 11 May 2012 07:06

The Killing Trail (old article)

In short order, eight gay men in Texas were murdered by teenage boys.

vera_k · Post by **vera_k** » 17 May 2012 21:53

One of the Facebook founders decided to quit the US to save on taxes. This is causing local socialists to go Paki on the guy couching the pro-tax agenda in nationalist language.

Senators blast Facebook

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 21 May 2012 03:50

Judt, Tony; Snyder, Timothy (2012-02-02). Thinking the Twentieth Century Penguin Group.

Questions in Bold (by Tim Snyder)
Answers by Tony Judt

A curious related problem is the Americanization of the Holocaust, the belief that the Americans went to fight in Europe because the Germans were killing the Jews—when in fact that had nothing to do with it.

Indeed. Both Churchill and Roosevelt had good grounds for keeping the Jewish issue under wraps. Given contemporary anti-Semitism in both countries, any suggestion that “we” were fighting the Germans to save the Jews might very well have been counterproductive.

Exactly. It makes the whole thing look altogether different when you appreciate that—not so long ago—the United States was a country where it would have been difficult to mobilize people to fight against the Holocaust.

Right—and this is not something people like to think about themselves. Neither Britain nor America did much for the doomed Jews of Europe; the U.S.A. did not even enter the war until December 1941, by which time the extermination process was well under way.

Nearly a million Jews were dead by the time the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Five million were dead by the time of the Normandy landing. The Americans and the British knew about the Holocaust. It wasn’t just that they had intelligence reports from the Poles almost immediately after the first use of gas chambers. The British had decoded radio transmissions about the shooting campaigns in the east and decoded telegrams with the numbers of Jews gassed at Treblinka.

We might want to recall such numbers: an excellent exercise in civic education and national self-knowledge. At times such numbers tell a tale—a tale we prefer to forget.

A few years ago I reviewed Ernest May’s history of the fall of France. In the course of that essay, I enumerated the scale of French losses in the course of the six weeks of fighting that followed the German invasion of May 1940. About 112,000 French soldiers (not to speak of civilians) were killed: a figure that exceeds American deaths in Vietnam and Korea together—and a rate of killing far greater than anything the U.S. has ever experienced. I received a pile of correspondence from otherwise well-meaning readers who assured me that I must have gotten the figures wrong. Surely, they wrote, the French don’t fight and die like that? Recall that this was in 2001, shortly before the paroxysmic patriotic obscenities that followed 9/11 (“freedom fries” etc.). Americans have trouble with the idea that they are not the world’s most heroic warriors or that their soldiers have not fought harder and died braver than everyone else’s.

Something comparable happened when I published, also in The New York Review, a comment to the effect that France has had six Jewish prime ministers, while here in the U.S. of A. we were still awaiting our first successful Jewish vice-presidential candidate: this was when the execrable Joseph Lieberman had just been nominated to Al Gore’s presidential ticket and the country was awash in self-congratulation at its ethnic sensitivity and openness. On this occasion I was positively deluged in mail—not all of it abusive—from readers who assured me that France was and always would be profoundly anti-Semitic, in contrast to our own tolerant heritage.

On these and other occasions I have often thought that what America needs more than anything is a critical education in its own history. That France has a contemptible record of official anti-Semitism is well-known. French anti-Semitism was above all cultural—and under the auspices of the Vichy regime, of course, that cultural prejudice shaded into active participation in genocide. But politically, French Jews have long been free to rise high in the service of the state: and of course they had access to higher education while Harvard, Columbia and other places were still imposing rigid quotas on Jews and other minorities.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 21 May 2012 06:30

Interview: Robert Gates, Former U.S. Secretary of Defense (video)

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 27 May 2012 04:47

Sorority Row: On the enduring political influence and entrenched racism of the Greek system at the University of Alabama. (Old article)

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 30 May 2012 07:59

Yale flunks academic freedom

Yagnasri · Post by **Yagnasri** » 30 May 2012 09:44

Have you gone through the Raiuter report on the Florida shooting incident and the arrested neighborhood watch fellow? The entire media and black leaders are behaving just like our secular brigade. It is US version of modi bashing in India.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 31 May 2012 12:21

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ ... ce=Taboola

Check all the cartoon video to understand the current topics on US

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 06 Jun 2012 10:06

The Unabomber's Pen Pal

Yagnasri · Post by **Yagnasri** » 07 Jun 2012 10:23

Wisconson results indicate that people are fed up with unions in some US areas and Dem Party may find it hard to explain to their union crones how come Obama not even bothered to be in wisconson when he went to all the neibouring states.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 08 Jun 2012 09:29

Good Leak, Bad Leak: A look at the Obama administration's hot-and-cold approach to secrets.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 12 Jun 2012 09:37

The Second Term: What would Obama do if reëlected?

What Would Augustine Do? The President, Drones, and Just War Theory

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 13 Jun 2012 08:55

Benched: The Supreme Court and the struggle for judicial independence.

Happyism: The creepy new economics of pleasure.

Getting Them Dead

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 15 Jun 2012 07:03

A profile of life in one of the country's poorest counties

THE VANISHING

The decline and fall of public housing

Neighbors

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 16 Jun 2012 23:49

Churches of Christ aim to mend longstanding racial divides

Denominations divide

Most American Protestants divided over slavery around the time of the Civil War. Baptists, Methodists, Episcopalians and Presbyterians all split into northern and southern denominations.
Those groups were often divided by race as well — with separate denominations for African-American Christians like the National Baptist Convention and African Methodist Episcopal churches.
By contrast, Churches of Christ leaders have claimed their fellowship never split.
That's not exactly true, Crawford said.
Churches of Christ say their group is not a denomination. Instead they call it a fellowship or brotherhood. So they don't have any denominational boards to officially split, said Crawford, who spoke at a session on race relations at the conference on reconciliation.
But the fellowship has long divided over racial lines.
In the 1940s and 1950s, there was some interaction between black and white Churches of Christ, because of Nashville preacher Marshall Keeble.
The dynamic evangelist was one of few African-Americans welcomed at white Churches of Christ. He often convinced those congregations to donate funds to the Nashville Christian Institute — known to alumni as NCI — where he was president from 1942 to 1958.
Things changed in 1967, when the NCI board of directors closed the school amid dwindling enrollment and gave all its assets to Lipscomb.
Gray and other alumni sued, saying Lipscomb was hostile to African-Americans. They lost in court. But the case — and Keeble's death in 1968 — marked a further split between blacks and whites.
The two groups have grown apart ever since, said Tanya Smith Brice, a Baylor University professor who also spoke at the conference.
"We, as a body, have kept a friendly distance from each other," said Brice, who grew up in a Church of Christ. "We have parallel structures — one that is white and one that is African-American. We pretend as if we are one body, but we are not."
Randy Lowry, Lipscomb's president, said the school can't undo the past.
"All you can do is over and over again do what is right and hope that over time that you are not only making a different impression but you are having a different impact," said Lowry.
Lipscomb now has more than 200 African-American students, according to university officials. It got more than $400,000 from the assets of NCI, which were used to endow the Burton-Keeble college scholarship for African-Americans to attend Lipscomb. Since the late 1960s, Lipscomb has given away $1.3 million in Burton-Keeble scholarships and has $1.34 million in the endowment fund.
University officials are not sure that any graduate of NCI ever received a Burton-Keeble scholarship.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 17 Jun 2012 02:51

My Father and Me: A Spy Story

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 19 Jun 2012 01:48

A new drug menace is sweeping Florida and will soon come to a station near you. Its called bath salts and makes its imbiber potentially the most harmful person ever.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 19 Jun 2012 09:17

Riot Baby

jiteshn · Post by **jiteshn** » 19 Jun 2012 21:38

Okay so what the hell just happened?

There's a news article about an rajashtani man beheading his whore daughter that's floating around on the internet and its been carried by many news companies in the west. They're even supplemented it with a lifafa(envelope) "study" about india being the most dangerous place for women; more dangerous than saudi arabia

There are like ten murder reports printed in the ToI on any given day so why is the above particular article making sudden headlines in the west?

Did we piss off panetta during his last india visit? Iran? NSG membership? Anything interesting happened in the last few days because I have not been in loop

Rudradev · Post by **Rudradev** » 19 Jun 2012 22:08

Check out the vast and all-pervasive sample size of this global Thompson Reuters Poll about the state of women in 20 countries.

To be at least somewhat representative, you'd think they must have queried lakhs of respondents in each of those 20 countries, no? Maybe thousands, if not lakhs? At the very least, a few hundred randomly selected individuals in the major urban areas of each of those countries?

Hmmm...

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/ ... 0420120613

LONDON, June 13 (TrustLaw) - Policies that promote gender equality, safeguards against violence and exploitation and access to healthcare make Canada the best place to be a woman among the world's biggest economies, a global poll of experts showed on Wednesday.

Infanticide, child marriage and slavery make India the worst, the same poll concluded.

Germany, Britain, Australia and France rounded out the top five countries out of the Group of 20 in a perceptions poll of 370 gender specialists conducted by TrustLaw, a legal news service run by Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Fascinating, eh? 370 "gender specialists"... all presumably at "gender studies departments" in (or affiliated to) Western Universities, who will say what they're required to say if they know what's good for their careers.

Jitesh raises an important question. The "poll" (being presented as "global") is utter rubbish as anyone with an elementary understanding of statistics could easily point out. Yet it's being rehashed in every nook and corner of the Western media. This is the purest form of psyops... and its emergence is no coincidence at this point. Why now?

I think this is some sort of shot across the bow to warn India that soft-power leverage against us still exists. Traditionally the US would use Pakistan, Kashmir etc. as fodder for psyops to malign or threaten India. Those options have become difficult for Washington to exercise because of the decline in US-TSP relations. The US finds itself in an uncomfortable position of begging India to do more in Afghanistan (something it was actively trying to stop us from doing in the first 5-6 years of the Afghan war) and requiring India's cooperation on many issues as never before. India has not been forthcoming... turned down the MMRCA, declined to give US nuclear reactor builders a free-chit on nuclear liability, is balancing its relations with the US and China instead of hopping into bed with the Pacific Alliance, and continues to trade with Iran.

The US wants us to know that just because they are having a hard time with Pakistan, they haven't lost all ability to squeeze our testimonials. Hence, this "India izz bad phor wimmenz" psyops.

Agnimitra · Post by **Agnimitra** » 19 Jun 2012 22:23

^^ This anti-India hatchet job is being sprayed all over by the usual suspects. I first came across it on BBC Farsi (Persian) website, as a main headline. In that version, the article even had nuggets like "In this respect, the Indians are worse than Arabs."

Also, an American friend informed me yesterday that he caught a "documentary about India" on the TV last weekend. Unfortunately he couldn't give me any specifics about the name. The "documentary" was lead by "a fat British guy". What it showed was the crassest propaganda imaginable. They went along with a group of eunuchs who woul walk into a store and demand money, and if they didn't receive it, they would plant a curse on the shop owner. Then they said India's favourite game was from the British - cricket. They showed viewers a game of cricket being played in India - by a group of blind and handicapped children. They showed Indian "cities" by focussing on a narrow lane with traffic and loud honking - especially amplifying the loud honking. Etc, etc. The guy telling me this was a redneck type, and even he thought it was over-the-top BS propaganda.

There's no doubt a propaganda offensive is being mounted against India at this point, and the Brit poodles are being instrumental as usual, since they have always projected themselves as the "regional experts" on "South Asia" to the Americans.

jiteshn · Post by **jiteshn** » 19 Jun 2012 22:50

@Rudradev
Yes. But there must be a reason. These campaigns come out of nowhere and hit all news agencies at the same time until the next lull.

Arguing about those reports are useless because what they're doing is looking at the numbers irrespective of the population. But if we look at the statistics on per capita basis then it paints a very different picture. That an example.

The below list shows the number of rapes per 1000 people

1 South Africa: 1.19538 per 1,000 people
2 Seychelles: 0.788294 per 1,000 people
3 Australia: 0.777999 per 1,000 people
4 Montserrat: 0.749384 per 1,000 people
5 Canada: 0.733089 per 1,000 people
6 Jamaica: 0.476608 per 1,000 people
7 Zimbabwe: 0.457775 per 1,000 people
8 Dominica: 0.34768 per 1,000 people
9 United States: 0.301318 per 1,000 people
10 Iceland: 0.246009 per 1,000 people
11 Papua New Guinea: 0.233544 per 1,000 people
12 New Zealand: 0.213383 per 1,000 people
13 United Kingdom: 0.142172 per 1,000 people
14 Spain: 0.140403 per 1,000 people
15 France: 0.139442 per 1,000 people
16 Korea, South: 0.12621 per 1,000 people
17 Mexico: 0.122981 per 1,000 people
18 Norway: 0.120836 per 1,000 people
19 Costa Rica: 0.118277 per 1,000 people
20 Venezuela: 0.115507 per 1,000 people
21 Finland: 0.110856 per 1,000 people
22 Netherlands: 0.100445 per 1,000 people
23 Denmark: 0.0914948 per 1,000 people
24 Germany: 0.0909731 per 1,000 people
25 Bulgaria: 0.0795973 per 1,000 people
26 Chile: 0.0782179 per 1,000 people
27 Thailand: 0.0626305 per 1,000 people
28 Kyrgyzstan: 0.0623785 per 1,000 people
29 Poland: 0.062218 per 1,000 people
30 Sri Lanka: 0.0599053 per 1,000 people
31 Hungary: 0.0588588 per 1,000 people
32 Estonia: 0.0547637 per 1,000 people
33 Ireland: 0.0542829 per 1,000 people
34 Switzerland: 0.0539458 per 1,000 people
35 Belarus: 0.0514563 per 1,000 people
36 Uruguay: 0.0512295 per 1,000 people
37 Lithuania: 0.0508757 per 1,000 people
38 Malaysia: 0.0505156 per 1,000 people
39 Romania: 0.0497089 per 1,000 people
40 Czech Republic: 0.0488234 per 1,000 people
41 Russia: 0.0486543 per 1,000 people
42 Latvia: 0.0454148 per 1,000 people
43 Moldova: 0.0448934 per 1,000 people
44 Colombia: 0.0433254 per 1,000 people
45 Slovenia: 0.0427648 per 1,000 people
46 Italy: 0.0402045 per 1,000 people
47 Portugal: 0.0364376 per 1,000 people
48 Tunisia: 0.0331514 per 1,000 people
49 Zambia: 0.0266383 per 1,000 people
50 Ukraine: 0.0244909 per 1,000 people
51 Slovakia: 0.0237525 per 1,000 people
52 Mauritius: 0.0219334 per 1,000 people
53 Turkey: 0.0180876 per 1,000 people
54 Japan: 0.017737 per 1,000 people
55 Hong Kong: 0.0150746 per 1,000 people
56 India: 0.0143187 per 1,000 people
57 Qatar: 0.0139042 per 1,000 people
58 Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of: 0.0132029 per 1,000 people
59 Greece: 0.0106862 per 1,000 people
60 Georgia: 0.0100492 per 1,000 people

Can you believe that a women is 10 times more likely to get raped in UK than india

83x times in South Africa
21x in USA
51x in Canada
54x in Australia

This is the game they're playing guys. This is how real world politics works. Fk the ruling world administration apparatus and its psy-ops campaigns.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 19 Jun 2012 23:06

Yoga is getting mainstream in US. Hence need to put India in place among those who join Yoga by debunking. Its an internal US issue.

jiteshn · Post by **jiteshn** » 19 Jun 2012 23:16

In my opinion, yoga, meditation, indian philosophy, hinduism and everything that's a part of it must stay indian and within indian borders. If we allow it to spread then we end up diluting our uniqueness.

I believe this is one of the reasons why our ancestors ceased from spreading hinduism beyond indian borders. There are some exceptions like some south east asian states but it must not be encouraged any further.

Let the monotheist loonies spread, clash against each other and raise hell albeit outside india.

------------
With right to the above psy-ops campaign, I think its a blow back from the cold shoulder india gave to panetta last week. Those campaigns are meant to influence consensus. Is some voting thing coming up which we don't know about?

Prem · Post by **Prem** » 19 Jun 2012 23:26

About Women safety, Its the same old BDY Briturd and EJ . Yesterdin when i read this in Poaqpaper bringing in Hindu, Sikhs etc, i kind of suspected its a cooridnated effort.

Opinion State honour - Part
http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-9 ... r-Part---I

Christian Crook

Rudradev · Post by **Rudradev** » 19 Jun 2012 23:42

jiteshn wrote:@Rudradev

Can you believe that a women is 10 times more likely to get raped in UK than india

83x times in South Africa
21x in USA
51x in Canada
54x in Australia

Ahh, but that is why they haven't asked the opinions of law enforcement professionals, or justice systems, or even common citizens of the countries involved in this so-called "global poll."

Whom have they asked? 370 "international gender experts" in a "perceptional" poll.

When you have experts, what do facts and statistics matter? The experts will have some convenient replies on hand when confronted with facts, after all... "rape" is not the only problem, women in India don't report rapes because society oppresses them, it is about the anti-woman milieu reinforced by a backward, caste-ridden Hindoo patriarchy etc.

jiteshn · Post by **jiteshn** » 20 Jun 2012 00:06

@Rudradev
The propaganda has an unusual effect at home. Read a ToI daily for one week and i'll guarantee the sensational stories and write ups will break your heart and desensitize it.

The "honour" thing we inherited from our past. We indians are people who fought wars since forever. Our histories are riddled with invasions. Our ancestors lived in monarchical societies in one of the many princely kingdoms where honour and pride reined supreme coupled with the invaders warfare tactics of rape and torture so we're responsible for creating those counter tactics. And it'll take a lot of time before we shed these away albeit we have to live in a war-less state which i don't see happening for a long time meaning this honour thing is here to stay.

I remember watching a documentary about 1947 partition where a sikh guy mentions how he and the village men rounded up all their mothers and sisters of the village in a room and gave them a clean death(behead) themselves because the mass muslims rioters were heading their way.

It sounds barbaric but I bet you'd lend them a hand if you were in their position.

ManjaM · Post by **ManjaM** » 21 Jun 2012 04:23

[youtube]l93wAqnPQwk&feature=player_embedded#![/youtube]

The fine amreeki youth of today and the future of amreeka.

ramana · Post by **ramana** » 22 Jun 2012 03:23

A slightly dated ppt on SD's new ideas on USAID:

http://www.interaction.org/sites/defaul ... rpoint.pdf

Ravi Karumanchiri · Post by **Ravi Karumanchiri** » 23 Jun 2012 04:03

^^^^
There has been some developments in the case of the "bullied bus monitor" youtubed above.

A Canadian man here in my hometown Toronto, set-up a micro-funding project online to raise $5,000 to send the victim on a vacation; so she could forget the abuse she's endured. Last I heard, the fund had already raised $500,000.

Video of bus monitor bullied by students goes viral
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/artic ... goes-viral

Toronto man raises $387K for elderly bus monitor bullied by students in viral video
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/06/21 ... ral-video/

Fund for bullied U.S. bus driver tops $400,000 thanks to Toronto man's viral video project
http://www.theprovince.com/entertainmen ... story.html

........... but I digress.............

What I wanted to post here was a very well thought-out AJE article by Paul Rosenberg...

Why US conservatives have gone crazy
Why Obama's courting of the right may be disastrous - both for Democrats, and for the United States.

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinio ... 42558.html

IMO, this is a very incisive article, even if you think you know Amreeka better than 'mericans.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 28 Jun 2012 08:55

The Sharp, Sudden Decline of America's Middle Class

LONE WOLF: THE US MARINE WHO CAPTURED 1,000 JAPANESE SOLDIERS

Manu · Post by **Manu** » 28 Jun 2012 16:11

ramana wrote:By 2030 one in five in US will be Hispanic. The project to Anglicize the Hispanics is not working. It led to the sub-prime crisis in 2008 as the Atlantic Monthly detailed. Also the Hispanic Church is based on amalgam of native American beliefs. As they increase in numbers the empahsis on EJihdaism of the Baptists will be blunted.
In other words in a matter of two decades demographics will make itself felt. Is it time for India to hold out?

Hi Ramana,
I do not really believe this. According to contemporary comments in 1900, by 1930 the US would have been 80% Italian and Polish. That's if current trends at the time continued on a linear procession (which they don't, otherwise we would still have been growing at 9% YoY).

I don't think Hispanic Immigration will continue like this forever.

pentaiah · Post by **pentaiah** » 28 Jun 2012 19:31

No process in nature can be exponential growth or decay for eternity
Even the fusion in stars like sun have to end the process.

Also the time scales are vastly different in nature

A linear extrapolation of current data into future is fraught with dangers akin to the financial melt down of 2008

Therefore the projections of Hispanic majority in US is a myth propagated to conceive more children in white families, catholic agenda and a vote winning agenda
I think

devesh · Post by **devesh** » 28 Jun 2012 20:05

what is important is the socio-cultural fabric of Southwestern US. forget rest of US. just focus on that region. that will determine the trajectory of the US post-2050. the current US-Mexico border is an artificial one.the entire stretch from California to Texas once belonged to Mexico. the 1848 War ended in defeat and annexation from Mexico. that is how US got that land. and Mexicans haven't forgotten that.

within 200 miles of the border, for all practical purposes English has been receding as the "dominant" language. that zone has become bi-lingual, with WASP Caucasians having to learn Spanish. that zone will expand to 500 miles within the next 20 years. the entire border zone demographic is tilting heavily in favor of Mexico.

Pranay · Post by **Pranay** » 29 Jun 2012 02:26

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sxeCiPUbm8

Going by the title of this thread... a past President spews his wisdom and a bunch of potential Presidents spew theirs... Enjoy!

Credit goes to the journalists who ask these tough questions and are not afraid to show the whole world the frailties of their politicians.

abhishek_sharma · Post by **abhishek_sharma** » 30 Jun 2012 23:11

A Snitch’s Dilemma

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 04 Jul 2012 11:07

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archi ... picks=true

Trickle-Down Distress: How America's Broken Meritocracy Drives Our National Anxiety Epidemic
JUL 3 2012, 12:24 PM ET 49
Anxiety is growing into a peculiarly American phenomenon. How did we become the world's leading exporter of worrywarts?

America is turning into a country of hand-wringers. Nearly one in five of us -- 40 million American adults -- suffer from anxiety disorders, the most common class of psychiatric ailment we have. By comparison, a mere one in ten are plagued with mood disorders like depression, the second most-common class of psychiatric problems. Panic attacks often besiege Daniel Smith, author of the new anxiety memoir Monkey Mind, out July 3, while others suffer from generalized anxiety disorder, persistent and excessive worrying about everyday things; social anxiety disorder; and a host of other fretful conditions.

So we're more anxious than anything else -- and also more anxious than anyone else, beating out all other nations in our race to the top of the nerve-racked list. According to a recent World Health Organization study, 31 percent of Americans are likely to suffer from an anxiety problem at some point during their lifetimes -- compared to 25.3 percent of those in Colombia, and 24.6 percent in New Zealand, the countries that rank second and third. You'd think people in developing or unstable states -- those preoccupied with concerns farther down on the Maslow Scale -- would be more anxious than we are. Not so. "According to the 2002 World Mental Health Survey, people in developing-world countries such as Nigeria are up to five times less likely to show clinically significant anxiety levels than Americans, despite having more basic life-necessities to worry about," writes Taylor Clark, author of Nerve: Poise Under Pressure, Serenity Under Stress, and the Brave New Science of Fear and Cool. "What's more, when these less-anxious developing-world citizens emigrate to the United States, they tend to get just as anxious as Americans.

"The United States has transformed into the planet's undisputed worry champion," Clark adds.

Things only seem to be getting worse, unfortunately. "Surveys show that stress levels here have progressively increased over the past four decades," says Paul J. Rosch, MD, Chairman of the Board of The American Institute of Stress. New research indicates that anxiety will continue to grow with modernity: Millennials and Generation Xers are more nervous than their elders and less capable of handling the pressure in their lives, much of which comes from worries related to money and work. The screws are tightening for our kids, too: A 2011 study from UCLA found that first-year college students are more tense than ever before. The pressure starts well before they graduate from high school, of course: "American teens, and perhaps even pre-teens now, with Ivy League-obsessed parents, experience sleep deprivation, lack of downtime, and stress due to round-the-clock efforts to create impressive resumes for college admissions," says Carrie Barron, M.D., a New York psychiatrist and co-author of The Creativity Cure: A Do-It Yourself Prescription for Happiness. "Too many hours slumping over screens and study tasks leads to depression and anxiety."

For adults, jobs are the leading source of stress, says Rosch, who points out that work-related anxiety has multiplied in recent years -- both for the unemployed and the employed. So many companies have down-sized and so many industries have shrunk that employees who manage to hold on to their jobs are expected to work longer hours; they have more and more to do, and less time to do it to their satisfaction.

But it's not just the recession -- which is affecting countries around the globe -- that's to blame for America's nervous temperament. Even if the economy were in great shape -- as it was in 2004, when we spent $2.1 billion on anti-anxiety meds, almost double the amount we spent in 1997 -- we'd still be chewing our nails. Here's why.

Reimagining American meritocracy

Despite the fact that most Americans believe our country is still The Land of Opportunity, the greatest meritocracy in the world, the United States is actually a terrible place for fortune-seekers. Chris Hayes, author of the new book Twilight of the Elites: America After Meritocracy, notes that when citizens of different countries are polled about their perception of how easy it is to start off poor and work their way up to wealth, "the U.S. is near or at the top in terms of people who say 'yes.' And yet it is also near the bottom in terms of actual social mobility."

In other words, as Hayes argues in his book, America isn't truly a meritocracy. Sure, the Civil Rights movement, feminism, and equal opportunity laws have helped to remove many of the barriers to success -- but people at the top tend to stay at the top, from clique to clique, and generation after generation. "Those who climb up the ladder will always find a way to pull it up after them, or to selectively lower it down to allow their friends, allies, and kin to scramble up," Hayes writes.

The powerful are liable to game systems (like school admissions processes) designed to reward merit; they'll also go to great lengths to maintain their bank accounts and their positions (consider, for instance, just about everyone involved in creating the subprime mortgage crisis). And despite the fact that we are all supposedly born with the same legal rights, the elite are rarely punished for their misdeeds, particularly compared to those lower down on the socioeconomic chain. "The idea that we are a meritocracy is a vast oversimplification, a self-serving and self-justifying one," says Hayes. "If you believe that the model is that those who are smartest and hardest working end up with the most power or the most lucrative jobs, then ... one conclusion to draw from that [is] that the people currently occupying those positions must be meritorious, which I think is an insidious myth."

The game is rigged from birth

Sociologist Stephen McNamee makes some similar points in his 2004 book The Meritocracy Myth, though he emphasizes the circumstances we are born into as a determining factor in where we'll end up. "The race to get ahead is a relay race in which we inherit a starting point from our parents that in itself creates huge inequalities of opportunity unrelated to the merit of discrete individuals, including, and especially, unequal access to educational opportunity," McNamee explains. Being born to wealthy, powerful, or well-credentialed parents doesn't just help to ensure an individual will have elite educational experiences; his childhood and college experiences in turn ensure that he will make important social connections and fit in culturally, multiplying his chances for unusual success.

"The SAT was supposed to level the playing field so that the Ivies, for example, were not just the provenance of the elite," Barron notes. But the game has become rigged in favor of the wealthy, who can afford to pay for years of test prep and college application tutoring for their children. And yet, in a strict sense, meritocracy often fails for those privileged kids, too. Barron points out that many work extremely hard, and do all the "right" things, yet can't get into the college of their choice because they're not unusual enough.

The meritocratic pressure-cooker

The idea that we can accomplish anything we put our minds to is so pervasive that we often have a lot on our minds. We feel pressure to take on more responsibilities and to make the "right" choices -- and we beat ourselves up when we fail, as Princeton professor Anne-Marie Slaughter, the former director of policy planning for the State Department, wrote in this month's Atlantic cover story . "Millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladder as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot)," she wrote. And unsurprisingly, perhaps, women suffer from a number of anxiety disorders -- including generalized anxiety and panic attacks -- at a rate twice as high as that for men.

But men feel the heat, too. As McNamee puts it: "A reasonable argument could be made that the race to get ahead in America is particularly stressful. If Americans believe that individuals 'get what they deserve' based on their merit (innate abilities, having the right attitude, working hard, playing by the rules), then distain for the unsuccessful is seen as warranted." Comedian D.L. Hughley makes a similar point in his forthcoming book, I Want You to Shut the F#ck Up: How The Audacity of Dopes is Ruining America: "There's this American idea that we're a meritocracy, that people reach the top through the virtue of hard work and perseverance. But the flipside to that thinking is that the poor ... must be flawed, lazy, stupid, or whatever other terrible adjective you would like to use. They didn't work hard enough in some kind of way but had every opportunity."

We all have too many choices

This cultural preoccupation with success as a reflection of worthiness means that decision-making is particularly stressful for us. "Anything about a decision that ... [is] less than perfect is a rebuke to the decision maker," says Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More is Less. Westerners seem particularly sensitive to decision-related regret, as Schwartz notes. He describes a study that he co-authored, currently being reviewed for publication, that used questionnaires to gauge how subjects from the U.S., Europe, and China thought about decision-making. The Chinese "have much less of their core selves on the line with each decision they make," Schwartz says. "For Chinese (and other Asians), sense of self and self-worth are not tied up so much with notions of individual autonomy and choice. So a bad pair of jeans is just a bad pair of jeans. In the U.S., it's a bad pair of jeans AND a statement about you. Think how much weightier your decisions are if every one you make tells the world something about who you are."

Our decision-making anxiety is exacerbated by our tendency to imbue all sorts of decisions with vital importance. For a recent study, Stanford psychology professor Hazel Markus and her colleagues asked Indian and American participants to report how many choices they'd made while doing a series of small tasks. "Though everybody made the same series of decisions" -- choosing a desk to sit at, choosing a pad to use, choosing whether or not to eat free candy, and so on -- "Americans thought that they'd made twice as many choices as the Indians, 20 compared to 10," Markus says.

Having to make too many decisions on a regular basis can stress us out, as can the wild abundance of options we have to choose from. "Too much choice can paralyze people and make them anxious," says Markus. "It used to be good enough to send your kid to preschool or to college. Now you have to choose the perfect one -- and then the perfect teacher and extra-curriculars -- or you are a failure as a chooser, as a mother, as an American."

Technology has multiplied the possibilities, for consumers and socializers. "Online, you can look at literally every option, from every retailer in the world [whereas] a generation ago, you'd go to the one or two department stores in town," says Schwartz. "Instant portable communication encourages people to keep their options open until the last minute, so that they don't miss out on something better. A generation ago, people actually made plans."

But we don't all have the same choices

Another study that Markus conducted found that the more choices we have, the less empathetic we become, and the less supportive of public policies aimed at benefitting society. That points to another problem related to choice: We don't all have the same options, but many at the top tend to assume we do, despite how much the conditions that we are born into delimit and affect all kinds of subsequent decisions -- like whether or not we'll go to college, what kind of school we'll go to, and what type of work we'll do. "Not everyone has the same choice set or the opportunity to choose among good alternatives," as Markus puts it.

"Good choice is not evenly distributed throughout society, so beating people up for [making] bad choice[s] is unfair," says Markus. And yet, because we believe we live in a meritocracy, we often do just that -- and beat ourselves up for it, too.

The Obama example, and genetics

When arguing that anyone can overcome a difficult youth, meritocracy cheerleaders like to point to Barack Obama -- a half-black man raised by a nomadic mother after his father left the two of them. But while Obama's father may have been absent, he was also a charismatic academic who received a master's in economics from Harvard and managed -- along with his second wife, an anthropologist who received her Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii -- to pass some excellent genes to the current president. Like the ones that helped form his exceptional brain: An April 2012 report out of UCLA provides further evidence that DNA determines intelligence, to a large extent. Genetic inheritance also dictates, to a significant degree, how ambitious and optimistic a person is, other traits important for success. Obama's good looks represent yet another powerful advantage. And while he may not have had a conventional family life, his mother was a strong positive force in his life, as were her parents. ("His maternal white grandparents, who had a great deal of influence in his life and also raised him for periods growing up, were solidly middle class," McNamee notes.)

All this isn't to say that many true underdogs haven't managed to achieve exceptional things. "Some individuals do overcome adversity and beat the odds," McNamee acknowledges. But McNamee points out that that wild success stories often involve a substantial amount of luck, as much as merit. Moreover, he says, "exceptions do not prove the rule. Individuals win the lottery but that does not change the fact that the odds of doing so are very remote."

What the recession demonstrates about luck

When using meritocracy calculators to assess achievement, we often overlook or dismiss how much luck can affect lives. If any good has come of the current economic crisis, it's how much harder doing that has become. "Merit hard liners downplay the effects of luck," says McNamee. "But the imperfections and ultimate uncertainty of both the stock market on Wall Street and the labor market on Main Street add an undeniable element of luck into the mix." And while the U.S. government does have a history of passing laws aimed at equalizing opportunity and eliminating discrimination, it has simultaneously encouraged great economic disparities. "Major structural changes in the U.S. economy such as de-industrialization, automation, and globalization have displaced workers quite independent of the merit of individuals," says McNamee. "The historical decline in self-employment and the concomitant rise and dominance of large oligarchic corporations (including chains and franchises) have created barriers of entry for starting and sustaining small businesses and sharply reduced the entrepreneurial path to mobility."

Those at the top sometimes fail to understand how much their wealth and power are a function of their environment. "Often those who are privileged," writes McNamee, "at least compared to the very poor, do not recognize or acknowledge these advantages and often mistakenly attribute their 'success' to individual merit alone -- i.e. being born on third base having thought you hit a triple."

Dealing with anxiety in a meritocracy

But getting back, now, to the question of anxiety: Should we be thinking about ways to make America more of meritocracy in the hopes of quelling our stress? Says McNamee: "A pure meritocracy is not possible and may not even be desirable." (Just ask Harrison Bergeron.) Far more important, he argues, is debunking the myth of meritocracy, harmful "because it provides an incomplete explanation for success and failure, often mistakenly exalting the rich and condemning the poor."

Indeed. As Alain de Botton noted in his engaging book Status Anxiety, there's a much darker side to the meritocracy story. "If the successful merited their success, it necessarily followed that the failures had to merit their failure," he writes. "Low status came to seem not merely regrettable but also deserved. ... To the injury of poverty, a meritocratic system now added the insult of shame."

That, and the pain of anxiety.

svinayak · Post by **svinayak** » 04 Jul 2012 12:25

Obama and Romney on China
Posted on May 4, 2012 in Foreign Policy
http://www.world-affairs.org/obama-and-romney-on-china/

A few weeks ago, Michael Moran of Renaissance Insights and Slate.com had a discussion with the World Affairs Council on the future of American power.
In particular, he stressed the need for the US to come to terms with the geopolitical transition away from a world where it is the sole superpower to one where it is one of a handful of powerful countries such as China, Brazil and India.
Many of the audience questions involved China, from its comparative advantage with lax environmental regulations to American misconceptions of the county. In a recent Gallup poll, Americans were split on whether or not China’s economic rise was good or bad for the country, although there is concern at the trade deficit is a major barrier to stronger ties. China even bought an additional $12.7 billion of US debt in February.
Appropriately, China has also been a centerpiece of the ongoing US Presidential campaign. Mitt Romney in particular has been noted as centering his foreign policy around the world’s second-largest economy. Romney’s campaign website devotes a full section to China, with the following just as an introduction:
China must be discouraged from attempting to intimidate or dominate neighboring states. If the present Chinese regime is permitted to establish itself as the preponderant power in the Western Pacific it could close off large parts of the region to cooperative relations with the United States and the West and dim hope that economic opportunity and democratic freedom will continue to flourish across East Asia. Mitt Romney will implement a strategy that makes the path of regional hegemony for China far more costly than the alternative path of becoming a responsible partner in the international system.
Romney’s main focus on China has been on the topic of economic competition and fairness. With the proposed Reagan Economic Zone, Romney cautions that his “objective is not to build an anti-China coalition” although the following paragraph describes the economic bloc as an attempt to “knit together the entire region, discouraging imbalanced bilateral trade relations between China and its neighbors, limiting China’s ability to coerce other countries.”
In his op-ed piece in The Washington Post, Romney advocates for a forceful push-back and promises to officially declare China a currency manipulator on his first day in office. Due to the enormity of trade between the U.S. and China, this tactic is controversial even among fellow Republicans like John Huntsman, the former Governor of Utah and Ambassador to China.
“When it comes to China, I think it’s wrongheaded when you talk about slapping a tariff on day one. That pushes aside the reality, the complexity of the relationship,” Huntsman said in February.
Hu Xijin, editor of the Chinese newspaper The Global Times, dismissed Romney’s strong words as routine campaign bluster, stating that “over the last 20 years, the China policies of U.S. presidents have always been milder than the threats the same men made on the campaign trail.”
Much like President George W. Bush before him, President Obama has demanded that China step up the pace of changing the way the Chinese government values the yuan. Both presidents stopped short of officially declaring China a currency manipulator. The U.S. Treasury has consistently criticized what it calls a “misalignment” of the yuan’s exchange rate over the last several years.
Both President Obama and Mitt Romney have warned China about acting on its claims to the South China Sea. The US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue initiated under the Obama administration has been praised for allowing regular high-level talks to occur between the Chinese and American governments. President Obama’s “Pacific turn” late last year has formally begun with the posting of a few hundred marines in Darwin, Australia.
Responding to Chinese fears that the small marine base was indicative of a policy of encirclement or containment, Obama replied, “The notion that we fear China is mistaken. The notion that we are looking to exclude China is mistaken. […] We welcome a rising, peaceful China.”
The Republican frontrunner is more blunt on the topic, flatly stating the need to contain China’s rise. Romney’s website declares that “if the present Chinese regime is permitted to establish itself as the preponderant power in the Western Pacific it could close off large parts of the region to cooperative relations with the United States and the West and dim hope that economic opportunity and democratic freedom will continue to flourish across East Asia.”
Reflecting the current administration’s policy, Hillary Clinton on her first trip as Secretary of State in 2009 stated “Some believe that China on the rise is, by definition, an adversary. To the contrary, we believe that the United States and China can benefit from and contribute to each other’s successes. It is in our interests to work harder to build on areas of common concern and shared opportunities.”
Mitt Romney has also criticized the President’s mixed record on speaking up on human rights issues with China. His campaign promises to strongly support groups within China promoting democratic reform, anti-corruption efforts, religious freedom, and women’s and minority rights. Calling China a “prosperous tyranny,” Romney believes that not speaking out loudly and often on human rights abuses in China will only embolden and encourage the Chinese leadership.
In a recent op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Romney even declared that “the dawn of a Chinese century—and the end of an American one—is not inevitable. America possesses inherent strengths that grant us a competitive advantage over China and the rest of the world. We must, however, restore those strengths.”
Michael Moran spoke to the World Affairs Council on the United States’ need to focus on its competitive advantages to maintain American prominence in the areas it does best. That being said, Moran also stated that the inability to acknowledge the already shifting geopolitical situation, such as insisting on another American century, is problematic. In any case, all the candidates agree that the U.S.’s relationship with China is one of the most, if not the most, important to the future of the country.
This is the second in the World Affairs Council’s series on the foreign policy issues in the 2012 US Presidential campaign. The first article can be found here. For those interested in additional information, the Council on Foreign Relations has a fantastic Issue Tracker that goes into more depth on a wide variety of subjects, including a page devoted to the candidates’ policies towards China.