Well, seems like it works.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds

Quote: Original post by Zahlman
... Hold on, the military can recruit minors in the US? WTF?

I was recruited in high school before I was 18. They like to brainwash us before college/independent thinking.

So was I. I don't see it as evidence of brainwashing, but it might constitute taking advantage of naive youth. It depends on the context.

@Zahlman, yes, the military can recruit minors in the US and yes it has stoked controversy, especially when schools are involved. The controversy is connected with complaints about the poverty draft and the disproportionate impact of overseas contingency operations on the populations of particular regions of the country. In other words, poor people aren't down with the war on terror... [grin]

Educators to Stop the War
Anti-Military Recruiting Campaigns Heats up At Seattle Schools (May 25, 2005) four US military recruiting offices in Seattle were shut down when students blocked the entrances to protest recruitment practices and to oppose the occupation of Iraq. Meanwhile the Parent Teacher Student Association at one school has passed a resolution recommending that military recruiters be barred from the campus.
Army of None An “Army of None” gives dramatic expression to how many people feel about the Pentagon and its wars.

I read a couple of articles today that I think are relevant to this discussion.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
Housing bubble? Wall Street thought it was smart to create it, but now that it has blown up, clearly it wasn't that smart. You want to blame socialism for the failures of capitalism? The oversupply of large houses came about through choices made by developers and sloppy banking practices. The under-supply of qualified buyers flows from the oversupply of young people with college loan debts. The absence of universal health care amounts to treating the underclass as less important than beasts of burden and is as primitive as it gets. Economists of all stripes warned about the housing bubble. If Europeans didn't heed those warnings, it means they we're more capitalist than socialist. The article you linked to concluded that the European central banks needed print more money. It didn't offer evidence of bypassing democracy or the like.

There's an argument to be made that developers should not have supplied houses for which there would not have been sufficient demand. That certainly helped create the housing bubble. But the point of the article I posted is that investments have to be allocated somewhere and normally, people are interested in rearing a new generation in which to invest. This isn't happening anymore. The Baby Boomers constituted an enormous labor force which re-energized the United States after the war and it was expected they too would have children -- after all, Westerners, and Americans in particular, are the wealthiest people in all of history. Surely they could afford children more than anyone else on the planet.

But they decided not to and as a result, betting on family-sized homes was a bad idea: there simply aren't enough families anymore. So where are aging people supposed to invest their money? In childless young people who rack up insane amounts of college debt to binge drink for 4 years and learn only a quarter of what they should have learned in high school? What productive careers are these aimless college students aspiring to? Business. What will they manage?

Maybe we should invest in health care for a dying population. I'm sure that's sustainable!

Europe's age crisis begins to bite.

Quote:
The EU's working age population will peak next year before tipping into decline for half a century

This will cause a relentless rise in pension and health costs that risk asphyxiating the region's economy.

A new report by the European Commission said this financial crisis could turn into a "permanent shock to growth" from which Europe never fully recovers unless it moves fast to bring its public debts under control.

...

Every country in the EU has a fertility rate below 2.1 births per woman, the minimum to keep the population stable. The average is 1.51, chiefly caused by women waiting late into their 20s or 30s before having children. This stretches out the generations.

While the fertility rate is expected to rise over time, demographic shifts tend to be glacial. An ageing crunch is already baked into the pie, hitting hardest from 2015 to 2035.

Britain fares relatively well, helped by immigrants and – some say – by its unwed teenage mothers, who lift the fertility rate at 1.8. The British working age cohort will be the biggest of any EU country by mid-century at 45m, followed closely by France.

If demographics is destiny, Britain and France may reclaim their mid-19th century status as the two dominant powers of Europe, but by then the Old World will be a much reduced force.

Germany's working population will shrink by 29pc to just 39m. Poland, Bulgaria, Romania and the Baltic states will all see drops of over 40pc.

Many of these nations will not be able to absorb immigrants. Their fate is sealed. You can't fight the laws of nature with bureaucracy. The Europeans are going to be fun to watch 10 years from now when they are either stripped of their socialist benefit programs outright or silently accept deteriorating quality of services.

But perhaps there is hope yet. Maybe deficit spending will save the day. Sure there won't be enough productive young people to pay off this debt but we'll worry about that another day, like we always do:

The capital well is running dry.

Quote:
The world is running out of capital. We cannot take it for granted that the global bond markets will prove deep enough to fund the $6 trillion or so needed for the Obama fiscal package, US-European bank bail-outs, and ballooning deficits almost everywhere.

...

Unless this capital is forthcoming, a clutch of countries will prove unable to roll over their debts at a bearable cost. Those that cannot print money to tide them through, either because they no longer have a national currency (Ireland, Club Med), or because they borrowed abroad (East Europe), run the biggest risk of default.

Traders already whisper that some governments are buying their own debt through proxies at bond auctions to keep up illusions – not to be confused with transparent buying by central banks under quantitative easing. This cannot continue for long.

Commerzbank said every European bond auction is turning into an "event risk". Britain too finds itself some way down the AAA pecking order as it tries to sell £220bn of Gilts this year to irascible investors, astonished by 5pc deficits into the middle of the next decade.

US hedge fund Hayman Advisers is betting on the biggest wave of state bankruptcies and restructurings since 1934. The worst profiles are almost all in Europe – the epicentre of leverage, and denial. As the IMF said last week, Europe's banks have written down 17pc of their losses – American banks have swallowed half.

"We have spent a good part of six months combing through the world's sovereign balance sheets to understand how much leverage we are dealing with. The results are shocking," said Hayman's Kyle Bass.

It looked easy for Western governments during the credit bubble, when China, Russia, emerging Asia, and petro-powers were accumulating $1.3 trillion a year in reserves, recycling this wealth back into US Treasuries and agency debt, or European bonds.

...

But our world is nothing like the late 1940s, when large families were rearing the workforce that would master the debt. Today we face demographic retreat. West and East are both tipping into old-aged atrophy (though the US is in best shape, nota bene).

...

So where is the $6 trillion going to come from this year, and beyond? For now we must fall back on the Fed, the Bank of England, and fellow central banks, relying on QE (printing money) to pay for our schools, roads, and administration. It is necessary, alas, to stave off debt deflation. But it is also a slippery slope, as Fed hawks keep reminding their chairman Ben Bernanke.

...

Great bankruptcies change the world. Spain's defaults under Philip II ruined the Catholic banking dynasties of Italy and south Germany, shifting the locus of financial power to Amsterdam. Anglo-Dutch forces were able to halt the Counter-Reformation, free northern Europe from absolutism, and break into North America.

Who knows what revolution may come from this crisis if it ever reaches defaults. My hunch is that it would expose Europe's deep fatigue – brutally so – reducing the Old World to a backwater. Whether US hegemony remains intact is an open question. I would bet on US-China condominium for a quarter century, or just G2 for short.

G2 indeed. Where have I heard that before?

I'm more interested in creating a New World than mimicking the Old World, which stands for nothing anymore, has no ideals, no grand visions, and no future.

Quote: That's completely subjective, isn't it? Or maybe they do feel let down and that's why they fudge their studies to get federal approval for their poisons.

How Big Pharma Distorts Science to Get FDA Approval for Dangerous Drugs

You mean that after concentrating all regulatory power, via legal mandate, in the hands of incompetent bureaucrats, companies are targeting the weakest link in the chain? Say it ain't so! Boy, if only I could start my own regulatory business. Too bad the pro-statist media has brainwashed people for decades with the message that government is looking out for their interests.

Quote: Original post by LessBread
@Zahlman, yes, the military can recruit minors in the US and yes it has stoked controversy, especially when schools are involved. The controversy is connected with complaints about the poverty draft and the disproportionate impact of overseas contingency operations on the populations of particular regions of the country. In other words, poor people aren't down with the war on terror... [grin]

Educators to Stop the War
Anti-Military Recruiting Campaigns Heats up At Seattle Schools (May 25, 2005) four US military recruiting offices in Seattle were shut down when students blocked the entrances to protest recruitment practices and to oppose the occupation of Iraq. Meanwhile the Parent Teacher Student Association at one school has passed a resolution recommending that military recruiters be barred from the campus.
Army of None An “Army of None” gives dramatic expression to how many people feel about the Pentagon and its wars.

That poster is incredibly awesome. Shame that it wouldn't do much good to import them here. :)

Here is some commentary that puts the secessionist movement into context.

The Far Right's First 100 Days: Shifting Into Overdrive

Quote:
...
The DHS report laid out the history and the current drivers in straight factual terms, and made some safe predictions about what might make the situation worse. (Interestingly, the nightmare scenario for most right-wing watchers -- a white-hot backlash in the wake of another major terrorist attack -- appears nowhere in the DHS assessment. Perhaps they didn't want to put ideas into paranoid right-wing heads.) But the report stopped short of taking the next step. We need to look at what long experience has taught us about the past escalation patterns of right-wing rhetoric and violence, and figure out where we currently stand within those patterns.

We actually know quite a bit about this. Most national agencies tasked with keeping tabs on political and religious extremist groups look for specific signs that help them sort out who's just talking the talk, and who's actually getting ready to walk the walk. The criteria vary from agency to agency; and our collective insight into these patterns changes and deepens every year. But there are some generally-accepted principles -- and applying them to the current state of conservatism gives a clearer view what's changed in the past 100 days, what the shift really means, and what could be coming next if the right keeps going down this road.
...
The far right wing has been laying the groundwork for violent action for decades. Long before they turn dangerous, political and religious groups take their first step down that road by adopting a worldview that justifies eventual violent action. The particulars of the narrative vary, but the basic themes are always the same. First: their story is apocalyptic, insisting that the end of the world as we've known it is near. Second: it divides the world into a Good-versus-Evil/Us-versus-Them dualism that encourages the group to interpret even small personal, social, or political events as major battles in a Great Cosmic Struggle -- a habit of mind that leads the group to demonize anyone who disagrees with them. This struggle also encourages members to invest everyday events with huge existential meaning, and as a result sometimes overreact wildly to very mundane stuff.

Third: this split allows for a major retreat from consensus reality and the mainstream culture. The group rejects the idea that they share a common future with the rest of society, and curls up into its own insular worldview that's impervious to the outside culture's reasoning or facts. Fourth: insiders feel like they're a persecuted, prophetic elite who are being opposed by wicked, tyrannical forces. Left to fester, this paranoia will eventually drive the group to make concrete preparations for self-defense -- and perhaps go on the offense against their perceived persecutors. Fifth: communities following this logic will also advocate the elimination of their enemies by any means necessary, in order to purify the world for their ideology.

All these ideas have been part of the discourse on the right for decades. You can trace their genesis all the way back to the 1950s, starting with the overheated apocalypticism of the anti-Communist movement. Over time, it came to include the dualism of the John Birch Society and assorted white supremacist groups; the persecution complex of Nixon and his Silent Majority followers; the anti-liberal eliminationism that's been gathering force for the past decade; and the war on evidence-based science and reason that's always been at the heart of conservative arguments. As J. Peter Scoblic argues in Us vs. Them [4], narratives that justify violence have always been deeply ingrained in the right-wing belief system.
...
That's why agencies watching worrisome groups keep their ears open, and listen carefully for a specific shift in tone. A lot of groups seeking change establish the lines of conflict by constantly naming and accusing their enemies, and insisting on their essential evilness. This isn't great politics, but it's not usually a problem -- unless it moves to the next stage, where the group starts expressing a clear intention to eradicate those perceived enemies. This can be a signal that they've accepted the need for violent action in their own minds, and may be actively planning something. It's a shift that should never be ignored.

When Sean Hannity runs a poll [6] asking whether his viewers prefer a military coup, secession, or armed rebellion -- and armed rebellion wins -- that's evidence of this kind of shift. Right-wing talkers have built careers out of demonizing liberals; but when they start talking about what specific steps should be taken against them, that's not something we should ignore.

Second, there's been a quantum leap in the sheer down-the-rabbit-hole surreality of their beliefs about the world. Bloggers have been pointing out for years that conservatives have zero compunction about Making Shit Up; but in the past, their prevarications were almost always built around a kernel of fact, wrapped in thick layers of distortion, misattribution, or lies of omission. What's new in the past 100 days is that we're now seeing stories that are just flat-out fabulation, without even so much as a nod to factual reality. They're not even bothering to try to attach these claims to any kind of truth. Their fantasies are so much truthier to them.

Up is down. Black is white. Obama's not a citizen, he's going to take our guns, Congress is about to legalize incest [7]....this we believe, and there's no expert and no amount of real-world evidence that can ever convince us otherwise. The right wing's retreat from consensus reality has finally left them living in an Orwellian alternative universe all their own.
...
Sixth, they're putting themselves in direct opposition to state power -- and identifying that power as their primary enemy.

All groups headed for a violent confrontation eventually come to believe that their enemies are somehow aligned with the government -- and the government is out to get them. Conservatives are coming up hard against this one now that they no longer control the government themselves. Back when they were gleefully dismantling the Constitution and building a surveillance state, it never occurred to them that they might someday be out of power. Now, of course, they're terrified to find all that unleashed, unaccountable power in the hands of Libruls and That Black Guy.

Weirdly, they seem to have almost total amnesia about their role in all this. To hear them tell it, Barack Obama seized all this power for himself in just the past three months. Given that epic memory failure, there's not much hope that they'll draw the right lessons from this reversal. It's far more likely that their newfound terror of government power will lead them to resent -- and eventually overreact to -- even casual encounters with government authority.
...
Further separation. One of the watershed moments in the development of a religious or political radical group is the day they decide to go upcountry, building some sort of secluded retreat or community away from the prying eyes of the authorities. The Aryan Nations, the Fundamentalist Mormons, Jim Jones....the list is long, because this is such a universal moment in the radicalization process. It's also the next place the gears shift.

The American right is too big to just all go off into the woods together -- but they're obviously trying hard to retreat from the rest of us in other ways. The complete break with factual reality is one part of this. The growing talk of secession is another overt sign that they're desperately looking for someplace to escape to.

Given that impulse, it's very likely that land is already being quietly bought up, and that some people are beginning to plan their moves to various locations around the country where they believe they'll be safer. It's not unreasonable to expect that over the next year or two, we'll start to hear about a new round of separatist compounds; and that a few states will become right-wing havens where secessionist talk will turn more serious.

This is a dangerous development. Groups that try to separate always claim that they're retreating to "live in peace" -- but too often, peace is about the last thing that results from this. Goin' up to the country is an overt declaration that the group believes that the mainstream culture is "out to get us," and is now asserting its right to live outside the law. There's an unquestioned conviction that the outside world means them harm -- and that they must organize and arm themselves for the coming showdown.
...
Overt lawlessness. A group that is separated from society, living in its own world, telling itself stories that justify violence, gripped with paranoia, perfectly willing to engage in petty thuggery and intimidation, and armed to the teeth has pretty much everything required to turn into a first-rate criminal cartel. Members come to believe that they answer to a "higher law," and express that new-found "freedom" by overtly and deliberately defying laws passed by a government they don't respect as legitimate.
...
From here, the most likely case is that vast majority of the folks now drunk on right-wing hate talk will ultimately sober up just soon enough not to follow the movement's emerging leaders down this road. But, if the 1990s were any guide (and the DHS report seems to think that they are), there will also be a small but significant fraction of hardcore right-wingers who will zoom right through the flashing red lights and ride all the way to the bloody end. Without the moderating influence of the saner voices among them, they'll quickly turn violent -- and we could be in for an interesting few years before it all burns itself out.

And, in the end, it probably will burn itself out. In the 1990s, the violence escalated up until the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 -- an event so gruesome and dramatic that it discredited the movement even among its own followers. Tim McVeigh's capture and execution also scared tough-talking movement leaders with the threat of real consequences. And so that round ended.
...

Apocalyptic narrative, us-versus-them dualism, major retreat from consensus reality, paranoid persecution complex, elimination rhetoric, narratives justifying violence, clear expression of intention to eradicate scapegoats, staking direct opposition to state power, retreat and isolation from society, overt lawlessness under the guise of adhering to a "higher law" ...

The growing talk of secession is another overt sign that they're desperately looking for someplace to escape to.

It seems to me that the most important factor distinguishing the extreme from the center of the right is the major retreat from consensus reality. Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. -- Voltaire ---

Don't act like the left-wing wasn't giving Bush death threats and "i'm gonna leave the country" threats a year ago.

I do not support an armed uprising or anything of that sort. But when the conservative story is "apocalyptic", they are completely right. America is about to completely change.

We really shouldn't take a huge turn on the original subject here. But I want to briefly explain why many, very much SANE conservatives, are scared.

Watch this video:

">Just watch it, disregard the surrounding text

Obama: "I will slow our development of future combat systems"

Then compare what Obama is saying with what is going on globally.


1.) Iran is testing missiles and enriching uranium
2.) China is shooting satellites out of space
3.) Russia is testing ballistic missiles capable of carrying a 550 kiloton nuclear warhead
4.)

">"Death to America"


Yes, many conservatives are over-reacting. But the basis for their extreme reasoning is far from delusional.

Quote: Original post by trzy
There's an argument to be made that developers should not have supplied houses for which there would not have been sufficient demand. That certainly helped create the housing bubble. But the point of the article I posted is that investments have to be allocated somewhere and normally, people are interested in rearing a new generation in which to invest. This isn't happening anymore. The Baby Boomers constituted an enormous labor force which re-energized the United States after the war and it was expected they too would have children -- after all, Westerners, and Americans in particular, are the wealthiest people in all of history. Surely they could afford children more than anyone else on the planet.

But they decided not to and as a result, betting on family-sized homes was a bad idea: there simply aren't enough families anymore. So where are aging people supposed to invest their money? In childless young people who rack up insane amounts of college debt to binge drink for 4 years and learn only a quarter of what they should have learned in high school? What productive careers are these aimless college students aspiring to? Business. What will they manage?

Housing development was driven by the soaring prices created by mortgage backed securities and lax lending standards. As far as demographics go, according to birth rate information available here, while the rate has decreased since WWII, the absolute numbers have remained fairly constant, ranging from 3.5 million to 4.2 million births each year in the United States. It's also worth remembering that during this time the GDP of the United States grew from $2 trillion to $13 trillion (source). Your reasoning appears based on assumptions and stereotypes.

Quote: Original post by trzy
Maybe we should invest in health care for a dying population. I'm sure that's sustainable!

Europe's age crisis begins to bite.

Quote:
...
While the fertility rate is expected to rise over time, demographic shifts tend to be glacial. An ageing crunch is already baked into the pie, hitting hardest from 2015 to 2035.
...
The EU "dependency ratio" will soar: there will be two workers to support each person over 65, compared to four today. It will be worse if Europe fails to attract enough immigrants, all too likely given the catch-up under way in the developing world.
...

Many of these nations will not be able to absorb immigrants. Their fate is sealed. You can't fight the laws of nature with bureaucracy. The Europeans are going to be fun to watch 10 years from now when they are either stripped of their socialist benefit programs outright or silently accept deteriorating quality of services.

Won't be able to absorb immigrants? Who says? They'll be plenty of climate change refugees available to supply Europe with fresh blood. If you want to talk up "laws of nature" let's talk up those first, we can worry about fertility later. There is no shortage of human beings right now. China has more than enough to spare. Evans-Pritchard's fretting over the "dependency ratio" completely fails to consider improvements in productivity. He implies that Japan's "lost decade" came about as a result of public debt rather than a weak government policy to prop up drowning banks. He wants to dismantle the safety net to avoid an inevitable 5% tax increase and to that end Evans-Pritchard is engaged in promoting a structural adjustment program for Europe.

Quote: Original post by trzy
But perhaps there is hope yet. Maybe deficit spending will save the day. Sure there won't be enough productive young people to pay off this debt but we'll worry about that another day, like we always do:

The capital well is running dry.

Quote:
The world is running out of capital. We cannot take it for granted that the global bond markets will prove deep enough to fund the $6 trillion or so needed for the Obama fiscal package, US-European bank bail-outs, and ballooning deficits almost everywhere.
...
So where is the $6 trillion going to come from this year, and beyond? For now we must fall back on the Fed, the Bank of England, and fellow central banks, relying on QE (printing money) to pay for our schools, roads, and administration. It is necessary, alas, to stave off debt deflation. But it is also a slippery slope, as Fed hawks keep reminding their chairman Ben Bernanke.
...
Who knows what revolution may come from this crisis if it ever reaches defaults. My hunch is that it would expose Europe's deep fatigue – brutally so – reducing the Old World to a backwater. Whether US hegemony remains intact is an open question. I would bet on US-China condominium for a quarter century, or just G2 for short.

As I wrote above, Evans-Pritchard is engaged in promoting a structural adjustment program for Europe. I disagree that the world is running out of capital. We haven't started eating our seed corn just yet. If anything, what's been happening is that the world is running out of capitalism. That is, the world is finding out that capitalism does not work as advertised, markets don't perform magic and now we're all victims of an ideological fraud cooked up by Milton Friedman et al. decades ago. Curiously enough, Evans-Pritchard's promotion of structural adjustments for Europe echoes that same discordant song. I guess he doesn't want to let the crisis pass without attempting to rekindle the old beliefs. Are the prospects of a bipolar, Sino-American world really all that bad?

Quote: Original post by trzy
G2 indeed. Where have I heard that before?

Brzezinski speech is all well and good. Do you agree with him?

Quote: Original post by trzy
I'm more interested in creating a New World than mimicking the Old World, which stands for nothing anymore, has no ideals, no grand visions, and no future.

I'm not sure what any of that means. Stands for nothing, no ideals, no grand visions -- sounds a lot better than 20th century European militarism to me.

Quote: Original post by trzy

Quote: That's completely subjective, isn't it? Or maybe they do feel let down and that's why they fudge their studies to get federal approval for their poisons.

How Big Pharma Distorts Science to Get FDA Approval for Dangerous Drugs

You mean that after concentrating all regulatory power, via legal mandate, in the hands of incompetent bureaucrats, companies are targeting the weakest link in the chain? Say it ain't so! Boy, if only I could start my own regulatory business. Too bad the pro-statist media has brainwashed people for decades with the message that government is looking out for their interests.

So rather than lay the blame on greedy executives who sell poison to the public, you blame the toothless watchdogs who let it happen? The solution is not to kill the watchdog, the solution is to throw greedy execs in prison for poisoning the public, change the laws concerning pharmaceutical corporations and replace the old watchdog with a fresh team of young rottweilers committed to serving the public interest. As for the supposed pro-statist media brainwashing people for decades with the message that government is looking out for their interest, what country are you talking about? In the United States, the dominant corporate media has been bashing government constantly since 1980 when Reagan convinced them that government was the problem not the solution. Except of course when the government is preparing to unleash the military on some impoverished country that few people can find on a map. In that case, the government is the only solution to the problem. And of course, when it comes to issues where the dominant corporate media stands to benefit directly. In those cases there is no bashing, only blackout.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
Don't act like the left-wing wasn't giving Bush death threats and "i'm gonna leave the country" threats a year ago.

Find me examples. Find me examples of death threats against Bush. Show me how widely publicized they were. Find me examples of left-wing commentary that resembles what is coming out of right-wing radio these days. Find me examples of a Democratic governor toying with secession. Find me examples of a left wing mass movement to leave the country. I'll act that way until you find me examples. Until then, quit trying to pass the buck and own up to what's happening with the conservative movement in the United States today. It's lost in the wilderness and coming unhinged.

Quote: Original post by Chris Reynolds
I do not support an armed uprising or anything of that sort. But when the conservative story is "apocalyptic", they are completely right. America is about to completely change.

We really shouldn't take a huge turn on the original subject here. But I want to briefly explain why many, very much SANE conservatives, are scared.

Watch this video:

">Just watch it, disregard the surrounding text

Obama: "I will slow our development of future combat systems"

Then compare what Obama is saying with what is going on globally.


1.) Iran is testing missiles and enriching uranium
2.) China is shooting satellites out of space
3.) Russia is testing ballistic missiles capable of carrying a 550 kiloton nuclear warhead
4.)

">"Death to America"


Yes, many conservatives are over-reacting. But the basis for their extreme reasoning is far from delusional.

YouTube crashes my browser. Provide me text please.

In the meantime, I don't see the alarm over slowing the development of "future combat systems". Don't get stuck on the name. Those systems are cold war systems, intended to fight a war that never happened. It's time that American conservatives get over their anti-communist hysteria. That dog don't hunt no more. I think it's funny how conservatives will complain about government spending too much on people and then turn around and complain that government isn't spending enough on machines. Do you think that maybe China and Russia and Iran are engaged in those activities because they see the United States spending nearly a $1 trillion a year on the Pentagon? (Double what the rest of the world combined spends on military) Do you think that a thousand overseas United States military bases might make them nervous? How do you think the United States would respond if Russia spent $1 trillion annually on their military and had a thousand overseas bases? or China? or Iran? It seems to me that we wouldn't handle that situation very well at all. We would be totally freaked out and would respond far more aggressively then those countries have.