December 2007 Archives
I am a big fan of Fareed Zakaria. He is one of the few columnists out there who not only recognizes America's responsibility to appear moral to the world (and I mean that as an addition to "being" moral, not as an alternative), but also has the ability to understand and articulate how others view us, regardless of whether those people are friends or foes.
In this particular column, Fareed uncomfortably recognizes that the reason he prefers Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton on foreign policy is precisely because he believes Barack has a better "feel" for how non-Americans perceive our country. In other words, it's not about foreign policy "experience", it's about being able to empathize (in the sense of "deep understanding").
I call the recognition "uncomfortable" because of course, Fareed has made a career out of foreign policy (degrees, books, experience…). Yet, here he has to admit that while those gave him the necessary tools, what makes him really good as an advisor to America is his non-American upbringing.
Which leads me to something that always seems to be forgotten when we get around to picking our leaders. In the end, the true strength of a leader is not what they know, but how well they choose their advisors. It's a rare person who has the courage to surround themselves with people who are smarter than they are, and an even rarer one who can do so without being manipulated. Where would Kennedy have been without his brother as Attorney General? And since then, only Carter and (perhaps) George Bush Sr. have had those skills.
A leader may provide the ideology, but the advisors provide the tools and information. A smart leader knows that, and isn't afraid to pick advisors who differ in ideology but have greater skills.
But whomever becomes President next year, they could do far worse than choosing Fareed Zakaria as an advisor.
Flickr, as I noted in my previous post, has a number of groups concerning Iran, and the Iran Air Fans group is one. Since my father-in-law was a Test and Check pilot for Iran Air, as well as Operations Chief, I put a slide show of it up on the TV to surprise him.
It was more of a surprise than I expected. One of the pictures is of him!
Yesterday my daughter Shireen asked me again to help her get around the filters at school. She can get to her email, but she can't get to DeviantArt, where she posts photos and artwork. Nor can she use her IM client, and she'd wanted to ask me a question while she was at school. I pointed her at a web IM client that would probably work, and promised to set up an encrypted proxy server on our web site so she could browse wherever she wanted. I also pointed out that her problem is in miniature the same problem faced by millions of folks in Iran, China and other countries that try to restrict the flow of information to and from the internet.
While I can sympathize (in theory) with people who see the internet as a corrupting influence, I do not sympathize with the view of "the State as parent", and furthermore, I believe the correct solution to corrupting influences (whether you are a parent or a country) is education and knowledge—not hiding them under a rock and pretending they don't exist. If your meme can't win the battle of information, then it doesn't deserve to survive. (I suppose it's not terribly surprising that such a darwinist approach to ideas doesn't go over well with theocracies. :-) And of course in the case of Iran and China, two of the biggest censorship offenders (how nice to know that Iran is using American software to do the job), the censorship has far more to do with maintaining power than any particular ideology.
In any case, while looking for something completely different this morning, I came across the following Firefox web browser extension.
I actually hadn't realized that Iran blocked Flickr, there's an active Iranian community there.
I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. But it's a pity, Flickr's a great way to see what Iran really looks like right now.
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