What is the big deal with Tibet? Every country has its minorities and fare of separatists. And every country, western or not, democracy or not, is more often than usual mistreating its minorities. Macedonians and Turks in Greece, Armenians and Kurds in Turkey, Basques and Catalonia in Spain, native Indians in Canada, the Aboriginals in Australia, Gypsies in the whole of Eastern Europe, even Hawaii has its own indigenous people who were never Americans in the first place. Why would one support a "Free Tibet" more than a "Quebec Libre" or a real "Kurdistan" state?

The root issue at stake here is really China's answer. How to encourage China and all other countries to engage constructively with their minorities? Obviously patriotic classes and muzzling of the press is the childish answer, and this is where China can really show whether it has reached the maturity level of a world actor - not just economically or militarily, but also in terms of mindset.

What is the big deal with China hosting the Olympics? This was approved some years ago and China's track record in human rights was already known then. Now that the Olympics were given to them, isn't it somewhat unfair to contest it? By the way America's track record of human rights is not exactly a beacon of humanity. Can we use the Olympics to stop pointing fingers at others and all take our responsibilities as countries and address together the real humanitarian problems we all face?

...Many people confuse the statement "almost all terrorists are Moslems" with "almost all Moslems are terrorists." Assume that the first statement is true, that 99 percent of terrorists are Moslems. This would mean that only about .001 percent of Moslems are terrorists, since there are more than 1 billion and only, say, ten thousand terrorists, one in a hundred thousand. So the logical mistake makes you (unconsciously) overestimate the odds of a randomly drawn individual Moslem person (between the age of, say, fifteen and fifty) being a terrorist by close to fifty thousand times!

The reader might see in this round-trip fallacy the unfairness of stereotypes - minorities in urban areas in the United States have suffered from the same confusion: even if most criminals come from their ethnic subgroup, most of their ethnic subgroup are not criminals, but they still suffer from discrimination by people who should know better.

"I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative," John Stuart Mill once complained...

(Excerpt from Nassim N. Taleb "The Black Swan". For more on presidential IQs: http://www.lovenstein.org/report/)

"They brought it upon themselves". It was taboo for more than five years to take any critical stance about 9/11 in the US. And it still is. What can be so sensitive about acknowledging that "what goes around comes around"? That "for every action, there is an equal an opposite reaction"? Freedom of speech is not very useful if not accompanied by the freedom to think and be self-critical. Watching "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" the other night somehow reminded me of what is wrong with the foundations of American thinking: it is the constant and simplistic reference to the good and the bad. The black and white belief that there are good people and bad people. Rooted in fundamentalist christian religion or not, this lens is applied to all sauces: NY governor (Eliot Spitzer) tasted it with his prostitution ring "scandal" (I write scandal in brackets to highlight just how we tend to be "naturally shallow and superficial", prefering the sensational to the relevant). Of course politicians are not models of virtue, no less than we are. It is hypocritical to expect examplary virtue when we all know we can hardly abide by them. I dont want to excuse corrupt politicians, but I want to remind to focus on the relevant.

If we start with the fact that we are all fundamentally both good and bad, and that we can all act good and bad, what matters is whether the bad is actually relevant. For the American public Eliot is now banned and bad so he agreed to resign - showing by the way that he himself believes in this simplistic way of judging. Same model with Jeremiah Wright (Obama's pastor): it took some rhetorics from Obama to go beyond the "scandal" (which was only about Wright stating the above somewhat obvious statements about 9/11 really) and touch the relevant ("challenging Americans' intelligence rather than insulting it" - see the Economist March 22nd "The trouble wih uncles").

Anyway where are we? Oh yes, that in the end I bet Americans are capable to put John McCain in power - they proved that well enough by reelecting Bush. McCain best strategy is to keep quiet and gain from the benefit of the doubt, while others struggle to painstakingly justify every corner of their thoughts. At least Obama has done so and continues to do so (do read his book). Unfortunately, massive American ego wont go away in a snap. Obama is too smart, sophisticated, self-critical and "leftish" to be elected. If he was, he would probably get shot (as one of my American friend put it). To officialize the odds, I went to betfair.com and place a 70% bet against Obama to win (2.34 odds). I hope to loose my money.