Leaning over his keyboard, author Andrew Keen typed the word “Why?” into the search bar. Keen, who believes that the internet is “cannibalizing culture,” is also fascinated by the secrets of our online universe. He plays with a keyword research tool—a website feature that ranks the frequency of billions of questions inputted into search engines—and the results of his one-word query are sorted into a tidy graph.

“Oh my,” says Keen as he reads down the list. “This is interesting.”

At the top of the graph, with almost 4,000 searches per day: “Sigmund Freud: Why do we dream?” For Keen, this is an uncanny result. Only moments before, he was comparing Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams to what he sees as its modern equivalent: the interpretation of search trends. Freud delved into the human psyche through the analysis of dreams, but the internet is providing a window to the subconscious on a massive scale.

“Freud had to come up with a whole theory of guessing what people were thinking through dreams,” said Keen. “Marx had his theory of thoughts being driven by the reality of economics. Religious people of course have their theory. But in a sense, the people of Google know more than anyone.”

In the U.S. alone, 250 million internet users seek answers from search engines every day.

Keen has been actively raging against what he believes to be the culturally destructive force of the internet since his 2007 book, The Cult of the Amateur. This self-labeled polemic accuses internet users of feeding themselves willfully into Google and creating a monster. The search engine, Keen says, is the “Big Brother” of the modern world. “We pour our innermost secrets into the all-powerful search engine through the tens of millions of questions we enter daily,” Keen writes. “Search engines like Google know more about our habits, our interests, our desires than our friends, our loved ones and our shrink combined.”

Our ignorance is Google’s power, according to Keen, as all our freely given information is manipulated for massive commercial gain. Websites competing for traffic use search engine optimization—the art of catering to search engine rules in order to grab a top spot in their page rankings—and try to interpret search trends so that they can create pages depending on recurring terms or hot topics. The relationship between search engines and websites is financially interdependent. The more information search engines accumulate from users, the more advertising they can sell. The more traffic websites catch, the more advertising revenue they earn. Everyone is vying for clicks, and that means knowing as much as possible about web users.

“Never before have we given out so much information so publicly,” said Keen. “That’s the thing about search that is so shocking, and that most people don’t know—Google is keeping information. Every time we search we’re adding to the intelligence of Google and not being paid for it.”

And what is it that the “people of Google” know about us? Aside from the numerical data that makes up our governmental and financial identity, search engines know the questions we are seeking to answer through the internet. More than 2.5 million people every year search for “How to talk dirty to my boyfriend.” Almost 1.5 million want to know “What does a hymen look like?” and approximately 800,000 people are asking “Where can I buy guns online?” In one of the most popular search categories—the “How to” query term—more than 2.1 million people annually want to know “How to give head” and 1.6 million people want to know “How to have sex”. It is impossible to gauge whether or not these terms are being dictated by bored, uninformed teenagers, but certain results imply something more sinister than curiosity. The 13th most popular term, with 2,500 people a day and 900,000 annually seeking its content, is “How to kill a fetus at home.”

“I think it reveals how pathetic a lot of people are, that they would ask these kinds of questions,” said Keen. “It’s a mystery to me.”

Keen has been widely criticized for his pessimistic view of the internet’s social value, notably by his nemesis Lawrence Lessig, who described The Cult of the Amateur as “shot through with sloppiness, error and ignorance.”  He has been called an “elitist” by bloggers who disagree with his view that the internet is killing our long-established cultural gate-keeping system by democratizing information to the level of lowest common denominator. Bloggers are also quick to point out that for someone who thinks blogs are the amateurish evil of the internet, Keen updates his own–a blog called “The Great Seduction” – daily.

Keen believes he is separated from most of the blogosphere by being a “pre-existing professional artist” for whom the internet is an “exciting vehicle”–a medium that works as a supplement to the real world, not as a replacement. The internet, Keen believes, is nothing more than a pool in which to view our own reflection.

“This technology is a mirror,” said Keen. “The theological and deeply philosophical nature of the internet is such that now we can know what people are really thinking. We didn’t know before. We could only guess.”

Just like Freud’s dreamland – where our anti-social thoughts and repressed behaviors come out to play – something about the internet brings out the primitive, desirous and socially forbidden in us. Whether revealed in a list of search trends or through dream psychoanalysis, desires such as sex and aggression are a deep-rooted part of humanity’s instinctual nature. But in Freud’s theories, the dark side of human behavior was usually kept locked up inside the walls of the subconscious. Dreams were the only place it could flail around unleashed, unguarded by Freud’s super-ego, the moral conscience, the ten-commandments, the inner watchdog who cages wrong from right and polite from perverse. Seventy years later, we have a new playground: an entire virtual world that we can live in real time. And there is no Super-ego here to guard us.

The pleasure of anonymity, according to Cyber-psychologist John Suler, encourages people to “deliberately create a specific online personality for themselves.” Suler writes in his online text The Psychology of Cyberspace that the freedom of the internet allows people to “have some conscious control over the same kind of wish fulfillment that fuels dreams.” Like dreams, virtual online space encourages people to act “out of unconscious fantasies and impulses, which may explain some of the sexuality, aggression, and imaginative role playing we see on the internet.”

In chat rooms such as www.4chan.org, users are given unedited freedom to be as sexually explicit and aggressive as they like. Pornographic pictures are posted into the adult chat rooms every second, and all it takes to access the content is one click on the “I agree” button. One anonymous user describes in chronological detail how he meets women in clubs and drugs them before taking them home, raping and torturing them. “I go out in clubs and spike drinks, get ‘em drunk and take ‘em home,” he writes. Another anonymous user offers “human meat” for fellow cannibals. “I’m not a serial killer,” he writes, “but I have a connection to buy human meat. I am a cannibal. Does that work for you?” In the “random” chat room, a user posts pictures “to piss Christians off” – anonymously, of course. The image shows a figure kneeling, with another figure holding a gun to its head. Underneath, the text reads: “The cure for Christianity.” Another anonymous post follows a thread about the best knives for causing bodily harm. “Blade goes in, twist, twist back, remove,” the user describes. “The bleeding most likely won’t stop without cauterization within the first few minutes. By then he’ll either have been stabbed again or be dead depending on where you got him.”

On average, more than 35,000 users post to 4chan.com every second, with hundreds of posts feeding the site continuously. Although much of the traffic may be driven out of harmless curiosity, sexual and aggressive internet behavior–displayed in public forums or through search trends – can also indicate a more formidable threat. Hans Christian Jasch, who works for the Justice, Freedom and Security department of the European Union – one of the largest and most prominent world organisations tackling global terrorism – believes that the internet has become a breeding ground for extremist ideology and an almost infallible communication device for terrorists. “There is basically no control,” said Jasch. “It is impossible to control the internet.”

Cases of anti-social behaviour encouraged by the internet happen every few seconds. “Because of the nature of the Internet, people are anonymous,” said search engine optimization consultant Michael Gray. “They can go and act like a jerk online and nobody is really going to care – a lot of people do that.”

In the industry, these people are known as “trolls.” Trolls lurk in public forums, waiting for the moment to attack anonymously. Their comments splash individual blogs and respected news outlets alike with vulgar criticisms and personal assaults designed to cause disruption and outrage. “The Internet is so big, so powerful and so pointless that for some people it is a complete substitute for life,” says Andrew Brown, a journalist and blogger for the British newspaper The Guardian.

Of course, the internet isn’t just a breeding ground for uninhibited alter-egos. A major shift has occurred in recent months, as social networking websites have officially become more popular than pornography. Facebook, the master of the social networking universe, more than doubled its user base last year by targeting the global market. In Europe alone, the site’s user base increased from under 9 million members in June 2007 to more than 35 million in June 2008. Globally, the site grew by 153 percent. Approximately 14 percent of all Americans have a Facebook account, and more than 580 million people – making up 7 percent of the world’s population – belong to a social networking site.

But Facebook and similar sites are still dwarfed by search engine use. Google has consistently remained the number one website in the world, with 75 percent of the market share. The exponential growth of the internet has meant a guaranteed increase in search engine use and created the perfect environment for big business.

“Websites and publishers who are able to figure out what people are searching for are going to do a much better job of capturing the traffic,” said Gray.

Figuring out what people want has become a vital skill in the online world. More websites are gearing themselves toward the most popular search terms in the hope of attracting the 250 million daily visitors from search engines like Google, Yahoo or MSN. Every taboo, embarrassing or perverse question – along with many innocent ones – typed into the search bar creates a virtual model of the human mind that SEO experts use as a basis for the mass psychoanalysis of internet users. Google CEO Eric Schmidt describes the search engine as “a giant supercomputer” with dozens of data centers around the world. They keep logs of every website visited and every corresponding IP address – meaning that each word typed into the search bar can be easily traced back to the user. Schmidt says that Google is “reasonably satisfied” with their privacy controls and that the company works hard to ensure that private information cannot be accessed and used for harm. “Although you can never say never,” he added.

Right now, a tool called “Google Trends” allows anyone to view the world’s top search queries down to a specific day and year, country and province. Most websites that offer information—such as news sites and guide pages—regularly check Google trends and create pages specifically to catch search traffic. For example, one of the top “How to” search trends – “How to have sex” – has accumulated 36 million pages in Google. There are more than 28 million pages for the next most popular term – “How to give head.” The question, “Why do we dream?” corresponds to more than 25 million pages. Bringing eyeballs to pages means advertising revenue, so web pages are constantly being created to match consistent search terms – such as “How to have sex.” With topical search terms – such as “Smallville, final episode” or “Sarah Palin SAT scores” – it’s a fast-fleeting competition to catch searchers before their interest in the subject matter wanes.

“It’s sort of an arms race,” said Gray.

Search engines and SEO teams compete to analyse and understand inputted information. For search engines, the more specific model of the human mind they can create, the better targeted advertising can be. For SEO experts, paying close attention to search trends is essential for building websites that will drive traffic. Search engines want to produce the most specific and accurate results they can filter, while SEO experts want to create pages that will rank highly in search engines and get clicks. The relationship is fraught with competition.

“Google is doing everything they possibly can to prevent us from manipulating the search engines,” said Gray. “Because if it’s completely manipulatable, then they’re not in control and we are. That’s a bad spot for them to be in.”

The information that Google accumulates about how and why people search is kept a tight secret. These “algorithms”, which determine how Google ranks pages, are the secret recipe that every internet entrepreneur wishes he could get his hands on. Google is constantly adjusting its methods depending on the terms being typed into search bars every day.

“Google says that every six months, 50 percent of their search terms are new,” said Gray. “But people are always going to searching for the same problems that human beings have been trying to solve forever.”

In internet terms, that means sex and communication – pornography and social networking. In Freudian terms, it represents the fundamental struggle between primitive instincts and social behavior. Freud believed that it is “impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built on a renunciation of instinct.” According to Freud, the animal in us all lies dormant in the recesses of the subconscious. It might be the case that our dream playground has become virtual reality through the internet and the ravaging animals within us are tearing down the walls of polite society. The unfiltered information we provide to search engines may be posing a threat to personal privacy and national security, as well as building mass corporations with God-like omniscience. Or it might just be the case, as Keen suggests, that the internet is nothing more than a shimmering pool of information allowing us to drown in our own reflection.download serial mom

Amid the rampant Obama-mania in the U.S., hearing opinions from across seas, from a cul-de-sac deep in the heart of rural England, can be endlessly refreshing.

“Did you watch the inauguration?”

“Inaugur-what?”

“The swearing-in of America’s new president, Barack Obama.”

“No. For a start, this is England. Who cares who America’s new President is? Anyone is going to be better than Bush.”

As far as some of my British friends are concerned, the mere fact that this new guy “isn’t Bush” is cause for celebration. Expectations are low in the pessimistic isle, because low expectations are more likely to be met. And according to the British public (at least, as far as I can infer) it’s not a good idea to set the bar too high for America, despite their seemingly sane choice for a new president.

Even those who aren’t particularly interested in American politics have adopted the opinion that President Bush’s eight years were a disaster, that he trashed America’s reputation (or, at least, fulfilled all the negative stereotypes that have been bred across seas) and was generally just a “retarded cowboy” (to quote British comedian Russell Brand, who has become a disturbingly influential force in the homeland.)

Anti-American sentiment in the U.K. has significantly grown during Bush’s presidency, roaring into mainstream culture at about the same time the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 was released (July 2004) before quieting to an apathetic lull in the past few years. News became opinion, opinion became gossip, gossip became stereotype, and suddenly everyone thought that “bad president” and “George Bush” went together like tea and biscuits. No argument. Everyone was willing to take part in the Bush-bashing party. Yet ask the average man-on-the-street (outside of London) to name three things that President Bush did during his presidency, good or bad, and you might find that popular opinion deflates like a balloon. The British, as Polly Toynbee from The Guardian explains, are “lazily cynical.” Rather than rejoice, they prefer to believe that “political passion is unfashionable, risky, naive, and destined for disappointment.”

Despite Toynbee’s declaration that Jan. 20 was accompanied by a world-wide “tidal wave of optimism”, reactions to the inauguration (for those I know who watched it in the UK) were pretty tame compared to election night. It was a very polite historical event, and Britain already has its fair share of those (Victory in England day, the Queen’s Speech, the Royal Variety Show… it can seem like one a week sometimes.) As is the case with such events, TV sets were tuned to BBC news and left on, buzzing in the background all day, keeping audiences plugged into what they kept being told was “an important day in history.”

Unlike election night, when that “tidal wave of optimism” was thick and clear around the world, inauguration day in Britain seems to have better suited the image of an ominously still lake. There was a “wait and see” attitude toward the celebrations. “I’ve got a bad feeling about today,” commented one Guardian reader. “Prepare for the worst,” wrote another. “Cynicism isn’t lazy,” explained a third. “It may be wrong but it isn’t lazy. Cynicism is bred of long despairing and we have been long despairing.”

The fears bubbled and frothed. Where is the story going to lead, working backwards from this happy ending? Are the troops really going to come back from Iraq now? Is the American government going to aid its poor, hungry, jobless, huddled masses yearning to breathe free? What’s going to be the new definition for that controversial word, “Israel”? There are too many questions for this new President to answer, and the cynics are waiting with abated breath for the storm to come. “As a purely historical observation,” wrote another Guardian commenter, “America doesn’t do “good” presidents or charismatic black leaders… at least, not for long.”

But having low-expectations (or even extremely morbid expectations) may simply be a sign of Britain’s own esteem issues. This is a country without cheerleaders, root beer, or Las Vegas. This is a country that ceded its power after centuries of global dominance only to watch America become master in a fraction of the time. It’s no wonder that the U.K. ranks 26^th in a global study of self-esteem, a full 20 places behind the U.S. As British journalist Mark Austin bluntly puts it, “Barack Obama makes me jealous.”

Cynical. Optimistic. Jealous. Thankful. Scared. Happy. Historical events always spark a mish-mash of emotion. But there are only two words that will define the next 100 days… “We’ll see.”

My first experience with Joan Didion began when I picked up The Year of Magical Thinking in a thrift store in Cambridge, England. It was her most recent book—published in 2005—and one of the most life-changing, perspective-altering, soul-calming pieces of literature I have ever mentally consumed. The novel is a memoir that begins with her husband’s sudden death due to cardiac arrest while their daughter Quintana is in a coma due to septic shock from pneumonia. Quintana dies less than a year later. Didion loses the two most important people in her life in one foul swoop from 2003 to 2004 and approximately 240 pages.

It sounds depressing. But for anyone who has ever dealt with the strange, inexplicable feelings that we label “grief”, The Year of Magical Thinking is soothing. In her usual magical way, Didion succeeds in articulating the unarticulatable. She explores her own feelings—an oscillation between numbness and shock—with a level of detail that seems much more natural than most literature written about death. There is no sugar-coating, and sometimes the world can look a little dark, but there is a surprising amount of beauty in the shadows.

Didion, now 74-years old, has written 14 books in her lifetime—five of which are fiction—as well as five screenplays and countless articles for Vogue and Time. An avid reader since childhood, she has also regularly contributed to The New York Review of Books since 1973. In November 2005, she was awarded the National Book Award in the category of non-fiction for The Year of Magical Thinking. In 2007, Didion’s “distinctive blend of spare, elegant prose and fierce intelligence” was recognized by the National Book Foundation with a medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. The Writer’s Guild of America decorated her with the Evelyn F. Burkey Award that same year.

But Didion’s greatest distinction is her unparalleled connection to California. In her review of Didion’s 1979 work The White Album, Michiko Kakutani crowned Didion California’s official journalist. If Kilimanjaro belongs to Ernest Hemingway, Oxford, Mississippi, belongs to William Faulkner, and Honolulu belongs to James Jones—“California belongs to Joan Didion,” wrote Kakutani.

Los Angeles, too, became the property of Joan Didion when she composed the vignette “Los Angeles Notebook,” published in her 1968 essay collection Slouching Towards Bethlehem. It was this particular essay that fused Didion with my writer’s soul indefinitely. Very few writers can capture Los Angeles in anything more than a superficial way. Truly interpreting the landscape is like catching a glimpse of Sasquatch, or stumbling upon the crumbling top point of an Ancient Egyptian pyramid buried deep beneath the sand, or witnessing the glistening neck of the Loch Ness Monster stretch beyond the lid of a Scottish lake for little more than an instant.

Raymond Chandler captured it with ease in his short story “Red Wind,” which describes the ominous, unsteady feeling brought to Los Angeles by the Santa Ana wind. After reading “Red Wind” some years ago, I never for a moment thought that the Santa Ana wind would belong to any author other than Chandler. It takes a person of exceptional perception to capture the tone-change—the ethereal flicked switch—that accompanies the desert wind, and Chandler must have squeezed blood from his spiritual peripheral vision to do it. But exactly 30 years later, Didion squeezed too.

There is something uneasy in the Los Angeles air this afternoon, some unnatural stillness, some tension. What it means is that tonight a Santa Ana will begin to blow a hot wind from the northeast whining down through the Cajon and San Gorgonio passes, blowing up sandstorms out along Route 66, drying the hills and the nerves to the flash point. For a few days now we will see smoke in the canyons, and hear sirens in the night. I have neither heard nor read that a Santa Ana is due, but I know it, and almost everyone I have seen today knows it too. We know it because we feel it. The baby frets. The maid sulks. I rekindle a waning argument with the phone company, then cut my losses and lie down, given over to whatever it is in the air. To live with the Santa Ana is to accept, consciously or unconsciously, a deeply mechanistic view of human behaviour.

The Santa Ana wind, Didion tells us, is a foehn wind—a malevolent force that causes headaches, nausea and restlessness. It is a mythological and a scientific wind. Native Indians would throw themselves into the sea when this bad wind blew. In Switzerland, suicide rates increase during a foehn. In Los Angeles, some teachers suspend classes because children become unmanageable during a foehn. “A few years ago an Israeli physicist discovered that not only during such winds, but for the ten or twelve hours which precede them, the air carries an unusually high ratio of positive and negative ions,” writes Didion. “…What an excess of positive ions does, in the simplest terms, is make people unhappy. One cannot get much more mechanistic than that.”

Perception is Didion’s extinguishing characteristic as a writer, but contextual detail is her forte as a journalist. She lays the scene and brings the reader to a point of hungry anticipation: I see it, the reader says. Now tell me what I should think of it. Didion is the trusted guide. She is the vital organs. She is the eyes, the brain and the heart.

“We tell ourselves stories in order to live,” writes Didion in the opening of The White Album. But for writers like Joan Didion it’s the other way around. Writers who are able, so naturally, to capture complete moments in time and transform blank pages and blank thoughts with them—live in order to tell stories.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem

]]> http://www.popandpolitics.com/2008/11/24/classic-journalism-joan-didions-74-years-of-magical-thinking/feed/ 5 http://www.popandpolitics.com/2008/11/14/my-first-presidential-election-turkey-mince-and-tears/ http://www.popandpolitics.com/2008/11/14/my-first-presidential-election-turkey-mince-and-tears/#comments Fri, 14 Nov 2008 23:05:55 +0000 emily henry http://www.popandpolitics.com/?p=9275

I was pan-frying ground turkey when it happened. I added some basil and a pinch of pepper, and turned to glance at the TV. Plastered in red and blue lettering across the bottom half of the screen: “CNN Prediction: Obama Wins Presidential Election.” I turned the gas off—turkey be damned—and stood with my hand over my mouth and goosebumps creeping up my spine. Wow, I thought. So, this is democracy. I had only cast my ballot an hour before, but by 8:20 p.m. my ticket was cashed in.

I’ve never voted before. In fact, I’ve spent my life struggling with the dual identity of being a double major in British and American. I was born here, but grew up there, and returned to the U.S. just in time for my first presidential election. Because of my American identity, I was never allowed to vote in the U.K. and I was never old enough to send an absentee ballot across seas. But then suddenly, there I was—strolling into the polls after a hard day at work, and making my well-rehearsed decisions final. I wore my “I Voted” sticker with pride when I walked to the Starbucks around the corner and claimed my free coffee. I still carry the ballot stub in my wallet.

Back at home, I watched intently as John McCain took the stage. The crowd started to “boo” as he graciously offered congratulations to Barack Obama. McCain put up his hands in protest. “Please,” he ordered. He expressed his admiration for the inspiration Obama had become to millions of Americans. He recognized that both he and Obama loved their country. He emphasized the morals that the two candidates share, not those which separate them from one another. In a single speech, he humanized the campaign. “I offer my sincere sympathy that [Obama's] grandmother did not live to see this day,” said McCain. “Although our faith assures us that she is at rest in the presence of her creator and so very proud of the good man she helped raise.”

At this point, I admit—I was in tears. Not for this white-haired man who stood at the podium the image of dignity and patriotism, nor for the passionate young candidate he was ceding to, but for the country I had loved and missed for more than 20 years. This was the America I was raised to believe in: a land of unification, of determination to propel the wings of greater good, of people standing hand in hand—regardless of life experience, beliefs, age or color—under the flag of the country they all so believe in. America is the land where polar opposites meet: where one can stand in the boiling heat of the Mojave desert and stare up at snowy mountain tops, where homeless people sleep above the stars on Hollywood Boulevard, where peanut butter meets jelly and donuts are a breakfast item.

When Obama walked on stage with his wife and children, there was a strange feeling of nostalgia—as if the anticipation that this moment would be so historically significant had glossed it with an air of repetition. How many times will we see view this moment in the days, months and decades to come? How many times and ways will it be analyzed, criticized or praised? How many people will share this image and store it in their mind for the length of a lifetime? (Q: “Where were you when Obama was elected?” A: “Cooking Spaghetti”)

To me, a certified American just learning about Hamburger Helper, American Football, and SNL, Obama spoke a very specific message during his election night speech. This is a man who is very aware of how the world views America from the outside in, and his words were directed at the cynics across seas. To many, America has become the butt of a bad sitcom joke in the last eight years. I have witnessed the anti-American sentiment grow. European and worldwide perspectives changed and the U.S. became nothing more than a land of ignorance, bigotry and gluttony. What the world needed was a sign that America is on course to regain its dignity and rehabilitate the stereotypical behaviors that have turned so many heads in disgust.

“If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible, who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy… tonight is your answer.”

The following day my sister told me that even in her corner of the quaint English countryside on the outskirts of London, the British were rejoicing. In their usual way, the British media was reacting with dramatic skepticism—broadcasting images of Obama hiding behind a bullet-proof screen while the results were announced, and speaking of the unspeakable fear that Obama will indeed be the next JFK. But excitement was still pulsating through the rainy isle. “It’s like America is entering a new time,” my sister commented. “And the whole world is happy about it.”

Break-ups are tough. Wayne Forrester, a 34 year-old London man, thought he was doing OK. He had handled the initial separation, gone through the painful process of dividing their shared worldly possessions, and moved out. But when his wife changed her relationship status on Facebook four days later to “single”… well, that was the last straw. Forrester, on a drug and alcohol binge, attacked his wife in her bed and killed her. The Guardian confirmed today that he will spend the rest of his life in prison for his Facebook-fueled crime of passion.

Does this mean that we should start taking our Facebook relationship status more seriously? Or should the function be removed altogether?

After all, it causes nothing but trouble. If you happen to be in that hazy part of the courting process where neither of you know whether or not the other person thinks you’re relationship is exclusive, casual, or—god forbid—still platonic, then plopping all your hopes and dreams into a scroll-down bar is a frightening process. We all know plenty of people who have gotten it wrong and ruined whatever chances they had of their relationship achieving a higher status. Or, at the very least, they’ve been humiliated by their friends writing wall posts like, “Oh no! What happened?” or “I’m sorry about you and your bf. Remember, there are plenty more fish in the sea! ”

There is nothing more humiliating than the pity of a thousand strangers.

Of course, women are the main users of the scroll-down relationship status bar. Men just “accept” or “deny” requests, and get to live a much simpler life. The female mind is wired to find an established connection. And as soon as she gets confirmation, she’ll be wondering how long she has to wait until she can change her Facebook status. That goes for most women. Let’s not even get started on the “post-modernists” who get “Facebook engaged” to their best friends in an attempt to defy the real purpose of the function. It’s a louder and even clearer way of saying, “yes. I’m still single.”

Of course, we could try boycotting the system by defining our relationship as “it’s complicated”—which is probably true anyway—but then what fun would it be when you actually do get engaged and Facebook starts decorating your profile with ads for wedding photography?

The moral of the story is this: If Facebook is telling you something about your relationship that you don’t already know—for example, that you are, in fact, “single” again after a break-up, then you’ve got a problem and should consider stepping away from the Internet to solve it. Or just leave the damn box blank from now on.

October 10th is “World Anti-Death Penalty Day”—an annual event supported by world organizations, including Amnesty International, the European Union, and the Council of Europe. They hope that a certain few countries will mark the day on their calendars.

The U.S., of course, still uses the death penalty, along with China, Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and Sudan. According to the European Union, this is a major violation of human rights. The EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights identifies “the right to life” as a basic human right and the entity has frequently renewed its vow to abolish the death penalty across the world. Many countries have ceded in the last decade, but according to EU officials, America continues to ignore the subject in their regular meetings with Europe on the topic of human rights.

European Commission Spokesperson Pia Ahrenkilde Hansen told journalists in Brussels today that “Europe has created a de facto death penalty-free zone, which stretches from Iceland to Norway to Turkey. This is indeed one of Europe’s greatest achievements,” he said. “The EU has the leading role in the international efforts to abolish the death penalty.”

Today, a joint declaration was signed by the president of the European Parliament and top officials from the European Council, European Commission and representatives from the ministry that represents the 27 European countries in the EU. “The declaration confirms their joint commitment to continue to work toward the universal abolition of this punishment,” said Hansen.

A total of 137 countries have abolished the death penalty, with 10 reforming their laws or practices to exclude the punishment since 2005. “But of course, the figures of death penalty application around the world still remain too high,” said Hansen. “The EU’s action as the worldwide leader on the fight against the death penalty therefore remains urgent and necessary.”

China is an especially high priority for the EU. But so far, officials who believe the U.S. will allow reform anytime soon are far and few between. A human rights official from the EU stated that 26 “rounds” of conversations and debates have been conducted with China in recent years about human rights and the abolition of the death penalty, while negotiations with the U.S. have been much less frequent or specific.

Nevertheless, the EU keeps trying to put the pressure on. America is a regular referent in documents regarding the use of the death penalty, including the EU’s Memorandum on the Death Penalty:

“The EU is deeply concerned about the increasing number of executions in the United States of America (USA), all the more since the great majority of executions since reinstatement of the death penalty in 1976 have been carried out in the 1990s. Furthermore, it is permitted to sentence to death and execute young offenders aged under 18 at the time of the commission of the crime, in clear infringement of internationally-recognized human rights norms.”

Although the EU admits that is cannot deal with America in the same way it deals with other countries because the USA is such a strong and powerful ally, the union is targeting the use of the death penalty on minors and certain inhumane methods of execution.

Whether or not the U.S. will respond to the pressure is yet to be seen, but the world’s most prominent human rights organizations have vowed to keep trying.

Two of us hail from USC, with other graduates traversing from Northwest, Berkeley, Texas, Maryland and Missouri. On Monday, Research Fellow Sebastian Kurpas of the Center for European Policy Studies explained the political effects of an under-covered EU, including the difficulty of European policy makers to pass new legislation. Most notably, the recent Treaty of Lisbon—which was rejected by Ireland in June 2008 because the content was unclear to the general population (warranting campaign slogans such as: “If you don’t know, vote no”). Kurpas explained that a strong media presence is necessary in Brussels if convoluted political legislation is going to be translated to ground level.

But this is part of a much larger problem. Europeans across the continent view the EU as an elite and disconnected entity—not an overarching system of unity. The fundamental paradox at the heart of the system is a difficult one to grasp: maintaining nationalistic pride and conservative values while promoting the pooling of sovereign power and a shared European community. In practice, this means countries consult with the EU before making big decisions, and the recent financial mess proves that Europeans have not yet achieved this level of oneness. Rather than look for a continent-wide solution to the economy’s downturn, such as a European financial fund —a shared “pot” of emergency money to bail out banks across EU member countries, the sentiment has been “Every man for himself.” The UK began nationalizing banks, Germany pulled a surprise card, Ireland announced that it would guarantee all bank accounts, and everyone started clambering in different directions hoping to save themselves.

And then there is America: a whole other ball game. Officials here tell us that American and European power heads meet face to face less times a year than either country meets with Russia. Yet, the two are financially inextricable. Together, the U.S. and Europe have the biggest trade flow than anywhere else in the world. If one goes down, the dominoes fall quickly across the Atlantic. Recent financial events have been a big reminder of this connection; America’s economic struggle is not confined from sea to shining sea. In Europe, the “real” economy—the effect of economic crisis inside the homes of the population—is already a harsh and oppressive monster.

According to Antonio Missiroli, the Director of Studies for the European Policy Center, taking an individualist attitude is absurd. Global interdependence means that the world cannot return to a time of continental fortresses. European nations cannot stand alone, and many hands must be extended across the Atlantic to steady the Western world in times of turmoil and peace alike.

Europeans don’t feel like many hands have been extended to them from America’s side in the last eight years, and the U.S. favorability rating has maintained a constant low. According to the 2008 favorability rating survey from the EU, America falls in 11th place—one position above Iran. But Europeans are more critical of President Bush than they are of American leadership in general. The 2008 findings of the Transatlantic Trends study show that 36% of Europeans view American leadership favorably, versus the 19% who approve of President Bush’s handling of international policies. The gap between “leadership” and “president” favorability has been a constant since 2002.

Officials here are clearly excited about a change of presidential administration. For the most part, they don’t really care who wins. They’re just glad that Bush can’t run again. When I asked an official from the European Commission what he thinks the new administration needs to do to improve relations with Europe, the answer was “not much”. A simple change will do them good. But whoever takes over the next administration needs to poke their head into Europe a little more often, shake some hands and acknowledge that we need each other.

Famed war journalist Martha Gellhorn reported from every major war zone in her lifetime. At 28 years old, she covered the Spanish Civil War from Barcelona. At 80, she was in Panama reporting on the American invasion.

She was Ernest Hemingway’s third wife, a fact which threatens to overshadow Gellhorn’s legacy as one of the greatest war reporters of the twentieth century. She died in 1998, at 89 years old, after a 60-year career in war correspondence and travel writing.

She also published 21 books, both journalism and fiction. Her well-honed writing skills and activist attitude made Gellhorn a compassionate asset to the wars she covered.
Her warfront dispatches were published in Collier’s Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly and the Guardian, as well as her most famed book of war reportage, The Face of War (1959).

It is this book that hides the gem of Gellhorn’s long career: a report from the first Nazi concentration camp, simply titled “Dachau.” It needs nothing more than this. Her writing is so intense, so perceptive, and so penetrative that it is impossible to read the story without feeling permanently altered by it.

“All I did was report from the group up, not the other way round,” Gellhorn told her editor at the Daily Mirror, Hugh Cudlipp.

This is what great muckrakers do: they rake the muck and they get dirty. Gellhorn spent her life on the ground with the people her stories were about, producing journalism that was able to explain, define, and capture the unimaginable truth.

In addition to this “in the thick of it” reporting, Gellhorn never neglected her medium; she recognized the importance of the written word as a powerful tool, and she used it accordingly.

Through reports like “Dachau,” the West was exposed to the reality of the Nazi regime and confronted with the inhumanity of concentration camps for the first time. Gellhorn was one of the first journalist’s to enter the concentration camp, and one of the last to leave. The images remained with her for the rest of her life. Gellhorn describes the dehumanization of the prisoners through malnutrition, physical brutality, and medical experimentation:

“They have no age and no faces; they all look alike and like nothing you will ever see if you are lucky.”

Gellhorn’s piece is rife with visceral and disturbing description, creating an immediacy and presence that-60 years since Dachau was abolished-is still uncomfortable to read. Despite the sameness of the prisoners’ appearance, Gellhorn tells their stories individually-ensuring that she gives enough time and attention to the atrocities that the men and women of Dachau have had to live through. One man-or as Gellhorn describes, “what had been a man”-had arrived at Dachau in the last boxcar, where he was locked inside with other men, women, and children by German guards. The people inside the boxcar “slowly died of hunger and thirst and suffocation,” Gellhorn writes, adding, “from time to time, the guards fired into the cars to stop the noise.” But “this man had survived.” Gellhorn describes her encounter with him, which is both disturbing and moving, writing with a compassion and humanity that makes the horror of the situation even more unbearable:

“He was found under a pile of dead. Now he stood on the bones that were his legs and talked and suddenly he wept. ‘Everyone is dead,’ he said, and the face that was not a face twisted with pain or sorrow or horror… ‘Here I am and I am finished and cannot help myself. Everyone is dead.’”

Martha Gellhorn captured this moment by reporting it as one human to another, rather than as an objected, disinterested party.

The “Dachau” piece is full of precious human moments, full of stories and characters, full of pain, and suffering, but also of hope. In the beginning of the piece, Gellhorn is flying away from Dachau with American soldiers when one of the soldiers says to her: “We’ve got to talk about it, if anyone believes us or not.” And so she did. And the Western world was forced to sit up and listen.

Ready “Dachau” here.

Dear American Voter,

Have you ever wondered what the rest of the world is saying about you?

Here’s an idea:

“America is not the savior of the world, nor its hope. It is up to you Americans to make sure that you are loved more than you are hated.”

“Anyone who is American, who thrives on the remains of Red Indians, is a rapist. Rapists don’t give rights to anyone. They do not know about the suffering of the people. The suffering of Iraqis, Palestinians or Muslims in general. The thing Americans know best is how to take oil.”

“American leaders should behave like world leaders. They should spread love, not hatred. Vote for a candidate who wants peace, not just in America, but in the whole world.”

Link TV has been collecting videos from around the world, asking international non-voters to speak directly to Americans and tell them what they think their priorities should be during voting season. The result is a candid array of foreign perspectives, ranging from the moving to the disturbing, and an insight into the global awareness of America’s big decision.

So far, the project has accumulated more than 90 videos from 22 countries.

“Essentially, we are asking the American people what issues are important to them, as well as trying to get a global audience to respond to the question, ‘What would you want Americans to think about in the upcoming elections?’” said Sadaf Siddique, project manager for Dear American Voter.

Here is a sampling of some of the most popular international voices:

The world does not perceive you as strong, but arrogant; not powerful, but as a bully. People love America, and we want to love it even more. America’s strength must come from its confidence, not its aggression. We were united with you after 9/11, but your leaders destroyed that good will soon after. America is not the savior of the world, nor its hope. America is as loved as much as it is hated. It is up to you Americans to make sure that you are loved more than you are hated. (South Africa)

I would like them to withdraw all American troops out of Iraq to leave us in peace in the Arab world. (Jordan)

Is the government helping Main St., or are they helping Wall St.? Are they helping the citizens by saving the system or are they helping the suits and ties? I didn’t ask them to use my money to save them. But now that I am an official owner of these companies, I’m entitled to ask. Are they helping me, or are they just helping the companies? (U.S.A.)

Never did an elected president give rights to Iraqis, Arabs, Muslims or Palestinians. I cross out 99 percent of Americans. One percent of them are honorable, but they are from the people, not the government. Anyone who is American, who thrives on the remains of Red Indians, is a rapist. Rapists don’t give rights to anyone. They do not know about the suffering of the people. The suffering of Iraqis, Palestinians or Muslims in general. The thing Americans know best is how to take oil. (Iraqi refugee living in Syria)

American leaders should behave like world leaders. They should spread love, not hatred. Vote for a candidate who wants peace, not just in America, but in the whole world. (Pakistan)

The project is calling for submissions from Americans as well as internationals, and the site has a vibrant commenting community. Much of it might be pretty hard to swallow, but seeing the world gather in an international forum is amazing. Above all, it serves as a colorful reminder that this election is as important to the rest of the world as it is to most Americans. We’re all going to be affected. But Americans are the only ones with the ballot power.

That’s a lot of pressure to RSVP.

What made the show such a success was its unbridled parodying of people-types in the U.K. The show spoke aloud what everyone else was witnessing in day-to-day life, from the “Chav” persona of Vicky Pollard—a teenage girl with a fondness for sports brand clothing, shop-lifting, smoking, binge-drinking and pregnancy—to the ancient socialites in charge of judging village events like jam-making or cake-baking—one of whom is plagued by bigotry and vomits on anyone who isn’t white or heterosexual. These were caricatures, with a high level of disgustingness thrown in, but they evoked the real-life counterparts in a way that allowed Britain to acknowledge them together.

The show’s tag line, “Class, Culture and Dignity” is, of course, a little British sarcasm. Little Britain USA lives up to the British show’s reputation for being crude, lewd and rude. But the show’s fondness for coarse, unrestrained sketches may be its downfall in the U.S. While the British public watched LB move from parody to perversity over five years, Americans are getting the rawest deal. This season’s Little Britain USA is the result of five years of broaching and breaking boundaries. The sketches are shocking, even for someone who owns the first few seasons on DVD and would consider herself an addict gone cold turkey since moving to the U.S.

Vicky Pollard: Proud mother of six, photo courtesy of the BBC

Many of the characters have been invented to parody American stereotypes—the gun-clinging cop, the brownie-guide going to camp, the muscle-bound gym-goer—but each with a hard-to-swallow outrageousness factor that makes it difficult to appreciate what the characters represent. The cop has more than an obsession with guns; it’s an erotic fascination that comes to a climax right before our eyes. The young brownie guide can’t help but spurt out references to Internet pornography as she waves goodbye to her mother and leaves for camp. The “gym buddies” sketch involves a couple of grotesque body suits, heaped with muscle and overshadowing the miniature body part beneath it all, bikini-line shaving, and sex simulation in a very precarious position for a public gym locker.

The sketches that remain funny without the involvement of bodily fluids include the Weight Watchers equivalent “Fat Fighters” and its team leader Marjorie Dawes. Her unabashed anti-“fatty” mentality is not only hypocritical, but hilarious. This week, Rosie O’Donnell had to defend her sexuality and size as two independent facets, after Dawes asked: “Are you a lesbian because you’re fat, or are you fat because you’re a lesbian?”

And then there is Carol Beer, the most unhelpful receptionist of all time, who instead of answering questions will cough in your face and tell you, “Computer says no.” Vicky Pollard, the classic Little Britain character, also returns this season to go to boot camp, and Lou and his wheel-chair bound friend Andy go to a preacher for healing.

But many of my favorite sketches seem to have disappeared, perhaps because the producers deemed them un-translatable to an American audience: The strange Scottish hotel owner who speaks only in riddles and plays the pipe-whistle; Mr Mann, the annoying customer who is always looking for something unattainably specific (like a picture of a disappointed horse) or unhelpfully broad (like a book); or Mr Cleaves, a teacher at Kelsey Grammar School who sets ridiculously unachievable goals for his students (e.g.: “find the square root of Popeye” or “divide Henry VIII by Edward II”).

These were the more Monty Python-esque pieces in terms of outright silliness, and it’s a shame to see them exchanged for the cruder sketches. Still, I’ll be watching avidly to see how many different ways Matt Lucas and David Walliams can both annoy and charm America with their candid displays of “Class, Culture and Dignity” as they take Little Britain to big U.S.A.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the strange curse suffered by so many great writers should strike so close to home— at least, as close as my coffee table, where Infinite Jest resides, or my desk, stacked with books of David Foster Wallace’s short stories. Even my memo board is filled with words given to me by D.F.W, scribbled on post-it notes: “You‘ve got to discipline yourself to talk out of the part of you that loves the thing, loves what you‘re working on. Maybe that just plain loves.”

News of his suicide came as a shock. He hanged himself on Friday night at his home in Claremont, California. He was 46, a professor of creative writing at Pomona College, and a literary revolutionist.

I had hoped one day to meet this man and glean some of his genius through even the briefest of conversations. I watched in awe of as even Charlie Rose couldn’t keep up. Now he is to become what all my other mentors are: words on pages, tinted by the knowledge of a tragic end. Ernest Hemingway, Hunter S. Thompson, Sylvia Plath… David Foster Wallace, or “D.F.W.” as he is affectionately referred to by his cult following. Lives weighed down by words in an endless struggle to articulate meaning and find release.

My fascination with David Foster Wallace began in 2006 when I bought his short story collection Brief Interviews with Hideous Men on a literary whim. I opened the book at random in Borders and began reading a story written in second person about a boy assessing the progression of puberty on his thirteenth birthday (“You have seven hairs in your left armpit now. Twelve in your right. Hard dangerous spirals of brittle black hair. Crunchy, animal hair.”) I was confused by the content and astonished by the writing. It made no sense. It was offensive. It was perfect. Foster Wallace could mesh Hemingway-esque terseness with aggressive, arrogant verbosity like no other.

“Death is Not the End,” another story in the collection, is a three-page sentence. Many of the other stories are structured as Q&As, the questions not really questions at all, but independent statements that are as equally confusing as the “answers” accompanying them. “A Radically condensed History of Post-Industrial Life” is just a short paragraph and yet an entire story, heavy with silent sadness and irony.

Foster Wallace was as obsessively unconventional in all his writing as James Joyce was with “Ulysses,” but what Joyce spent years trying to achieve through thorough planning and execution, Foster-Wallace did with an ease that only those with a supernatural level of intelligence can access. The only author able to surpass David Foster Wallace was David Foster Wallace.

To everyone else in the literary world, this was very annoying. Zadie Smith captured a universal sentiment after reading Foster-Wallace’s 1989 collection Girl with Curious Hair, saying: “He’s in a different time-space continuum from the rest of us… Goddamn him.”

He didn’t write the kind of books that people take on vacation, read by the fire on a cold winter’s night or discuss in book groups. His fiction was purposefully difficult. He wanted to make people squirm. He wanted to make his readers work really, really hard for it. But if they did, it would all be worthwhile. If they made the effort to engage, analyze and sweat their way through the pages, they would level-up onto a new plane and be somewhere nearer (although, still very far away from) where Foster-Wallace himself was standing and peering down at the world with a calculator in hand. He was passionate about mathematics, and complicated numeric digressions often pervade his writing. Sometimes it progresses into incomprehensible equations that look more like algebra than narrative. His writing is, above all, an open-ended calculation.

Or else, it is one never-ending footnote that spirals into a story different from the one it squeezes off the page. Or a collection of dictionary definitions, backward chronology, free-association, fragmentation; everything that makes meaning difficult to grasp. Any object he can find to throw in the reader’s way, he does, turning each event into an obstacle course.

This is “serious art”, and as D.F.W. once said: “Serious art is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort.”

But why put his reader through all this effort, when the author could so easily hand them the plot and meaning in a neatly wrapped bundle? One possible clue is revealed in his essay “E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction” (Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993), in which Foster-Wallace explains that television has replaced fiction as the medium for access to an unknown world. “Television’s greatest minute-by-minute appeal is that it engages without demanding,” wrote Foster-Wallace. In a land of television-watchers, art becomes passive and the world over-familiarized. So D.F.W took it upon himself to switch the balance, re-claim “uncomfortable” art and de-familiarize the world.

He was hated. He made people furious. He ignited a hardcore set of “anti-fans” who accused him of pointlessness, impenetrable arrogance and wasting paper. Nowhere in my long chain of literature-lovers is there someone who has completed the one thousand-plus pages of Infinite Jest, nor have I met anyone who knows of anyone who has. There is, however, someone who was so offended by its presence that they used it as toilet paper (and it lasted six months).

To the critics: say what you will about David Foster Wallace, but the man dedicated his life to the “high art” of fiction. He poured his genius into words, sculpted meaning into a form of literary electricity, and wrote long and hard without intellectual restraint. For a short life, his works span infinity. All we can do is try to catch up.

In his own words—a sampling of D.F.W.:

“People read fiction the way relatives of the kidnapped listen to the captive’s voice on the captor-held phone: paying attention, natch, to what the victim says, but absolutely hanging on the pitch, quaver, and hue of what’s said, reading a code born of intimacy for interlinear clues about condition, location, and the likelihood of safe return…”—“Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way” (“Girl with Curious Hair”, 1989)

“Fiction-writing is lonely in a way most people misunderstand. It’s yourself you have to be estranged from, really, to work.”

“Fiction is about what it is to be a human being.”

“I had a teacher I liked who used to say good fiction’s job was to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”

“I guess a big part of serious fiction’s purpose is to give the reader, who like all of us is sort of marooned in her own skull, to give her imaginative access to other selves. Since an ineluctable part of being a human self is suffering, part of what we humans come to art for is an experience of suffering… We all suffer alone in the real world; true empathy’s impossible. But if a piece of fiction can allow us imaginatively to identify with characters’ pain, we might then also more easily conceive of others identifying with our own. This is nourishing, redemptive; we become less alone inside. It might be just that simple.”—(An Interview with David Foster Wallace, Larry McCaffery, the Review of Contemporary Fiction, 1993)

“Serious art… is more apt to make you uncomfortable, or to force you to work hard to access its pleasures, the same way that in real life true pleasure is usually a by-product of hard work and discomfort.”

“You‘ve got to discipline yourself to talk out of the part of you that loves the thing, loves what you‘re working on. Maybe that just plain loves.”

“Sometimes things do happen. Even in reality. In real realism. It’s a myth that truth is stranger than fiction. Actually they’re about equally strange.” —(“Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way”, from the Girl with Curious Hair collection)

“The preceding generation of cripplingly self-conscious writers, obsessed with their own interpretation, would mention at this point, just as we’re possibly getting somewhere, that the story is getting anywhere.”—(“Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way”, from the Girl with Curious Hair collection)

“Hell hath no fury like a coolly received postmodernist.”—(“Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way”, from the Girl with Curious Hair collection)

“Kissing someone is actually sucking on a long tube the other end of which is full of excrement.”—(“Here and There”, from the Girl with Curious Hair collection)

“I became in myself axiom, language, and formation rule, and seemed to glow filament-white with a righteous fire.”—(“Here and There”, from the Girl with Curious Hair collection)

“Things become bad. I now have a haircut the shadow of which scares me.”—(“Here and There”, from the Girl with Curious Hair collection)

“I’m afraid of absolutely everything there is.”

“Then welcome.”—(The end of “Here and There”.)

“And here’s what I did.”—(The last sentence of “Girl with Curious Hair”.)

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown backs Obama. Russell Brand (we think, but he didn’t make himself too clear on this one at the VMAs…) is also in the Obama Camp. Now a BBC poll shows that the majority of the world, given the chance, would stamp their hopes next to Obama’s name on the ballot. But do Brits back Obama wholeheartedly, or because there seems no better option?

The results of a BBC survey released Tuesday suggest that presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama is the preferred candidate internationally. The poll spanned 22 countries and surveyed 22,500 people to discover that global sentiment leans in Obama’s favor by a four-to-one margin, with 46 percent of participants saying that Obama would improve America’s relationship with the rest of the world if he took office, compared to 20 percent who believed the same of Republican Sen. John McCain. All 22 countries were dominated by a pro-Obama sentiment, but four out of ten survey participants remained undecided.

That’s forty percent of the world not being able to choose between two of the most politically opposed candidates America has ever seen. These guys are the definition of polar opposites: young vs. old, liberal vs. conservative, rookie vs. veteran…Or so it seems.

Judging by the furious debate being held by my British friends in a Facebook group I created called “What the World thinks of America”, Obama and McCain are no more than a hair’s width apart.

“It’s the same guy in different packaging,” said Conor Quigley, who graduated from my alma mater (the University of Kent) with a degree in social anthropology. “Seriously, this decision is as important as deciding Coke or Diet Coke in McDonalds.”

“Make your own minds up as to which is McCain and which is Obama,” added John Bakie, a Kent graduate in politics and history.

What is the reasoning behind this crazy talk? Many Brits believe that there is one thing and one thing only controlling the decisions being made in the White House, regardless of who is making them: it’s that dirty word again…OIL.

“Resources are scarce, and it’s not irresponsible of Bush or McCain to secure them for their own citizens,” said Bakie. “Oil has peaked, and it is only going to become more expensive and more difficult to obtain in the future. You may think [Washington’s] attempts to secure oil in the Middle East are a waste of cash, but really they need to secure [oil] because if they don’t then Russia or China will eventually.”

Regardless of experience, race or views on the Iraq war, my slightly pessimistic friends believe that no president can resist the battle for oil.

“[Obama and McCain] are both guilty of taking part in the back-scratching culture of U.S. politics,” said politics graduate Dave Roe. “It’s just that Obama has been doing it for fewer years so it’s easy to paint him as this kind of idealist.”

And now is no time for ideals.

“Long-term of course the U.S. needs to reduce its dependency on oil,” said Bakie. “But it takes time and money to develop these technologies, and given a recession is upon the western world, both time and money are also scarce. We are moving towards a trilateral age, and the three powers of the world (the U.S., Russia and China) will all be aiming to secure the world’s remaining resources for themselves, and it’s quite reasonable to see why they would.”

So, what happens when the oil runs out? According to these Englishmen, governments don’t peer far enough into the future to care.

“None of this is sustainable in the long-term,” said Bakie about the oil rush. “But governments aren’t long-term, and the people who run them now will be dead in 30 years. But that’s another problem altogether…”

In the meantime, despite growing apathy in Britain for either candidate, many Brits are leaning toward Obama. It was an unusual move for a British government head, but British Prime Minister Gordon Brown also indicated his preference for Obama this week. Prime Ministers in the past have favored a more neutral approach to presidential politics by declining to state a preference, the Telegraph describes, but Mr. Brown broke the mould by writing an article for Parliamentary Monitor magazine praising Obama’s political mentality and stating that the Democrats were “generating the ideas to help people through more difficult times.”

And then there was Russell Brand, declaring his Obama-love in a manner much less tactful than the British PM. While hosting the MTV Video Music awards, the British comedian ignited a frenzy of complaints by pleading for America to elect Obama “on behalf of the world,” calling President Bush a “retarded cowboy” and no doubt successfully managing to embarrass both the British public and Democrats everywhere.

But despite Brown’s backing, a nine percent lead in a BBC world service poll, and Russell Brand’s ruined career, the Obama campaign has suffered some setbacks recently. A number of polls indicated a lead for McCain after the Republican convention, and critics attributed a renewed urgency in Obama’s recent public appearances to the explosion of support for vice-presidential candidate, Gov. Sarah Palin. The democrats will be pleased to know that Palin isn’t going over so well in the U.K.

“I think McCain’s election would be a bad time for America,” said Daniel Clarke, who graduated from the University of Kent with a degree in Biomedical Science. “Put aside any problems you have with him, and think [about the] very real chance that [Gov. Sarah] Palin could become president. Now there’s a headache for the world: an evangelical, pro-life, pro-guns “hockey mum” commander-in-chief who wants creationism taught in schools and Alaska to be independent.”

It’s refreshing to virtually hop across the Atlantic and get a bird’s eye view of what my generation is thinking about the presidential campaign: many thanks to the twenty-something British intelligentsia.

N.B: The conversation has since spiraled out of control into discussions of “dying superpowers” and the end of world (2012 apparently).

Across the Atlantic, however, British news outlets made a different judgment call. Most of the mainstream daily newspapers chose to headline with the Obama “plot.” The Guardian, The Times and The Independent all pegged the story for a front-page feature, focusing on the prevalence of racism in America as a breeding ground for “rednecks with rifles.” British TV stations covered the story, too. National newscasts teased the story throughout the day, including the BBC, and the public were a-buzz with talk of the “Obama assassination plot.”

So, what happened here? Was it underplayed by America, or over-played everywhere else?

CBS Denver reporter Brian Maass broke the story. One of his sources in the Denver police department told him Sunday that they had been briefed about a possible plot to assassinate Obama.

“From there, I spoke to another contact of mine in law enforcement who was in a separate briefing and had been told the same thing,” said Maass, who spoke with Pop and Politics over the phone. “I ended up speaking to somebody who helped me out with the FBI’s internal bulletin that they had put out on this, which they gave to me verbatim. That was an enormous help.”

With hard evidence to back up the claims of a possible plot, the story ran on CBS Denver the next day (Monday, Aug. 25). On Sunday evening, Maass had interviewed one of the supposed “conspirators” on camera. Although the footage was picked up by a few news outlets, the story remained a local feature and didn’t make national headlines in America on the same scale it had in Britain. Why?

“I think people wanted to take a “wait and see” attitude toward it,” said Maass. “That would be one guess I have.”

Because the four men had been arrested and nothing had actually “happened,” there was no credible “plot” to speak of. The US Attorney’s office announced that nothing of significance had been discovered, and that was that.

But according to Maass’ report, although Tharin Gartrell, 28, had been arrested for driving “erratically” in his truck, the police had found good reason to suspect a possible assassination plot. Two sniper rifles were discovered in the back of the vehicle, “along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of methamphetamine.” When the police went to contact an “associate” of Gartell’s, the suspect jumped out of a sixth floor hotel window. Maass’ report says that the man was wearing a swastika and had connections to white supremacist organizations (it’s tough for a guy with a name like Shawn Robert Adolf.)

A third man arrested Sunday morning told police outright that the other two men had “planned to kill Barack Obama at his acceptance speech.” He then later told Maass his thoughts about Obama: “He don’t belong in political office,” said the suspect, Nathan Johnson, 32. “Blacks don’t belong in political office. He ought to be shot”.

Los Angeles Times reporter, Andrew Malcolm covered the story in their “Top of the Ticket” blog, “because it was breaking and interesting and had good video.” As to why it wasn’t picked up more broadly, Malcolm said he could only guess. “Federal officials, for their own reasons were pooh-poohing it from the start,” Malcolm told Pop and Politics in an email. “[You] can’t expect them to scream, “Run for your lives!” with 50,000 people in town and the world watching.”

In the end, the story seeped out of the wire and was replaced by short blurbs stating that the whole thing was nothing but the product of “racist rantings” from a bunch of meth druggies. US Attorney Troy Eid described the men as “meth heads” who wouldn’t have been able to pull-off a full-fledged attack.

But why did the story spark such little interest at home, when it garnered far more attention abroad? And what is happening to these guys now? The CBS Denver report was full of questions that remain to be answered. If there was no “credible plot”, then why did these guys have a full sniper’s kit and warrant an investigation by the FBI, the secret service and a terrorist task force?

One of the suspects, Shawn Adolf, is apparently being held on a $1 million bond for “drug charges”. According to bailbondservices.com, a million dollar bond is equivalent to a murder charge. Possessing a firearm as well as being sought for drug offenses equivalents to $20,000 of bail bonds, according to the site. Even if Adolf had a bomb inside the Democratic Convention, he would only get hit with a $500,000 bail bond amount for carrying an explosive in a public place.

A report from Australia suggests that a woman was also arrested and notes that “Obama has had secret service protection for 18 months thanks to credible death threats against him”.

Perhaps the cover-up was less sinister than practical. The British daily The Independent accused authorities of playing down the plot and being “determined not to allow the investigation to overshadow Mr. Obama’s big moment” at Invesco Field Stadium. Being that the potentially dangerous circumstances were cushioned by the pillow of the Atlantic Ocean, the British media—renowned for sensationalism—could flag the story for its “wow” factor and color it with hype. Meanwhile, the American press chose to take precautions.

Most Jamaicans keep their homes pretty low-key. Huts made with wooden slats or metal sheets dot the landscape along the coast and for miles inland. Most of them are no more than one large room, so families congregate on the fields outside instead. Hustlers hoping to make their money from tourists spend the hot, lazy days on plastic chairs along the road, shouting occasionally at passers by to come and view their goods, buy a beer or share a joint.

Everything on the island is transitory, from the tourists to the real estate. Concrete makes no sense to the citizens of this Caribbean paradise, who know that it only takes one stormy summer to level everything back down to zero. Last year, Hurricane Dean pummeled the island with torrential rain and biting winds. On Thursday, Hurricane Gustav flooded the plains of low-lying areas, including the city of Portmore on the outskirts of Kingston.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Gustav swept along the east side of the Jamaica Thursday, hovering threateningly close to the capital city of Kingston, before creeping further toward the U.S. border. The winds are up to 70 mph, and as the hurricane heads North-East, New Orleanians are being told to evacuate. Meanwhile, Jamaica’s Northern region battles the tropical storm. Residents and tourists in high-risk areas were told Wednesday to evacuate, or hunker down and prepare for a big one. Three years to the day after Hurricane Katrina, the people of New Orleans are in panic-mode. But Jamaicans experience the same sense of déjà vu every summer.

In Negril, a tourist haven in West Jamaica famous for its seven-mile beach, Rick’s Café has been rebuilt twice since 1988. Despite towering high above the cliffs, the building was trashed by 25-foot waves during Hurricane Gilbert in September 1988. Rick’s was rebuilt, only to be obliterated on Sep. 11, 2004 by Hurricane Ivan. This time, the waves reached a staggering 80 feet as they crashed over the cliffs and treetops. What was left of Rick’s was strewn along the road. But perseverance has paid off. Negril’s tourists still flock to Rick’s to watch the cliff divers and the sunset while enjoying a goat curry and some creative rum cocktails. If Hurricane Gustav brings the house down for the third time, Rick’s will no doubt start picking up the bits and pieces as soon as the wind dies down.

This regular rotation is part of the Jamaican lifestyle. Being able to carry what you own and start afresh at the first drop of a rain cloud is a skill quickly acquired by residents of this tropical paradise on the hurricane strip. It’s not a fluke catastrophe – it’s geography.

West End Road runs along the shore and up to Rick’s, where a number of cliff-lining restaurants are situated as well as Negril’s quaint lighthouse, making it a famous route for tourist-hauling taxi drivers. At the beginning of August, the route toured a host of abandoned buildings and construction sites on the way. Some of the empty houses are the size of mansions, wood flayed off and decaying, windows gaping open like eye sockets.

According to a driver from Jamaica Tours Limited, foreign money has been buying up real estate on the island. Bill Cosby owns a multi-million mansion on the outskirts of Montego Bay. Considering that most two-bedroom houses cost approximately $20,000 here, a million goes a long, long way in creating the ultimate paradise home. According to The Jamaica Observer, even though real estate prices are relatively low, the industry is booming.

But to the Jamaicans, masterful, luxuriant architecture is ridiculously superfluous and sticks out like a fortress in the jungle. Construction workers wave lazily at passers by as they rebuild the vacation homes that will soon be taken once again by nature’s appetite. At dusk, they leave these castles on the sand and go home to their makeshift huts, watching the horizon for rainstorms.

In December 2001, The Daily Telegraph captured the beginning of a battle of wills between the British public and its government. The headline said it all: “Blair’s Shiver of Fear as Bush Sets his Sights on Iraq.”

“What to do about Saddam Hussein’s Iraq is now an embarrassing disagreement at the heart of the special relationship between America and Britain,” wrote The Telegraph’s journalists. “It has led to a palpable cooling in the hitherto warm discussions held by the White House and 10 Downing Street.”

The pressure had been building in the three months after 9/11, and Tony Blair had to decide if Britain would be friend or for to the Iraq war and consequently, America.

Politics Professor Hugh Miall from the University of Kent in Canterbury, England, described in an email how the “widespread unease about Bush’s presidency” in Britain became the undoing force of the Labour party government.

“[Former Prime Minister Tony] Blair’s attempts to place himself within hailing distance of Bush’s positions—while trying to rein back on them-ended up being hugely damaging for the Labour government,” said Miall.

Trying to maintain a relationship with America ended up costing Labour the relationship with their defining ideology: mouthpiece of the people, hand of the laborer, mind of the masses. The majority of Brits did not want to participate in what they considered to be America’s war, with almost two million of them gathering in London in 2003 to form the biggest protest the country had ever seen. Anti-war demonstrators waved signs reading: “Make tea, not war,” and tried to sway Blair from Britain’s Iraq involvement, reminding him that the country’s once crushing imperialism should remain a thing of the past. As the ties became stronger between the leaders of the two nations,  popular sentiment swiftly became anti-Bush/Blair/Iraq. By 2006, even the band, Radiohead, was calling for Blair’s immediate resignation.

“We must throw Tony Blair out of office NOW,” Thom Yorke wrote on the band’s website on February 8, 2006. “He does not represent the views of the British people. He does not represent the views of his foreign office and officials. He does not even represent the views of those in his cabinet. He cares far too much about his relationship with Bush, and Murdoch. The man is not fit to be our Prime Minister.”

When the name “Barack Obama” began to creep its way through England in 2006, the news of his potential candidacy was greeted with modest shock. It wasn’t that England didn’t have any faith in America. It was just hard to fit this new development into the traditional Hollywood-American narrative. Add the Iraq war to blockbuster movies like Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) and it could be said that some Anti-Americanism was brewing.
Seeing a woman or a black man as president seemed just about the only two things that the phrase “only in America” would never apply to. Presidential politics were traditionally overrun by the same families, faces and ideas. But suddenly, America unsheathed a double-edged sword and joined the battle for liberalism with Sens. Hilary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Miall says that Britain views American politics with concern because of the influence American politics has on world affairs. Since the onset of Britain’s involvement in the Iraq war, leading to Blair’s resignation in June 2007, the Labour party has seen a steady decline in public support. The party currently staggers behind their competitors , the Conservative Party, by 21 points, according to a ComRes opinion poll conducted for the British daily The Independent.
Call it a learning experience. But the British public know very well that a decision made by the President of the United States does not dissolve when it reaches the banks of the Atlantic. Optimists and pessimists alike, many Brits are keeping a close eye on what happens in the coming months. For many, there is still a glimmer of that overused word—hope—for a new start, a new relationship and a new president.