Foreign Policy: Can military intervention be justified?

In matters of foreign policy,a nation's credibility is important.

In matters of foreign policy,a nation’s credibility is important. But to defend this credibility,is military intervention necessary? Talking about America as a feared power in the Middle-East,where one and all suspect it has a hand in everything,Shibley Telhmai writes,Focus on defending US credibility in the mid-20th century blurred the difference between vital and non-vital interests,ultimately leading to American intervention in Korea and Vietnam. These experiences show that a state cannot act militarily based simply on fear of a threat to credibility without stating what immediate,objective interests are at stake. At least ask: Is the interest at stake today worth the price of the next possible escalation? She says there are three points of concern for the Arab countries in the Syria crisis. The first is humanitarian in terms of the fact that Bashar-al Assad may have used the might of his army to brutally attack civilians. The strategic side is the Saudi-Iranian competition that has drawn allies on each side. The sectarian dimension is also complex,but at the core is a Sunni-Shiite/Alawite divide. She ends by pointing out: International moral action cannot be separated from the judgment of the international community. And we cannot defend international norms by breaking them.

The Atlantic

The real problem with Ghetto Tracker

When it comes to navigational apps,wheres the line between utility and racism,asks Svati Kirsten Narula,talking about a service called Ghetto Tracker that appeared online at the beginning of last week and was renamed Good Part of Town after drawing criticism for its racist and classist overtones. Narula says it was distasteful to name whole geographic areas good,bad,safe or unsafe. The basic premise of the web application is to crowdsource travel advice. When does technology step over that line from being merely useful to becoming insidiously stereotype-enforcing? asks Narula. She also compares it with Microsofts Pedestrian Route Production technology,patented in January 2012,which was immediately dubbed the avoid-ghetto app. It was designed to let Windows Phone users filter walking routes according to weather information,crime statistics (and) demographic information. Theres another feature mentioned in the Microsoft patent, Narula writes,the ability to sell route directions. Corporations could pay to have the app send users through routes with carefully plotted advertising campaigns. Narula says that we forget to focus on what the motivations and biases behind the scenes are.

Esquire

The classical origins of great TV

Noah Charney says it is not a new trend for old plotlines and character templates to be recycled. He gives an example of Breaking Bad,where a chemistry teacher begins to cook meth after discovering he has cancer. He says the show may have all its modern twists,but also seems like a tale of intrigue from ancient Roman times,with some of the same plot points appearing in the 5-century BC Greek plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles. He uses this idea to make his point of how basic human characteristics have barely changed over the millenniafrom the ancient time of Oedipus,Creon,and Antigone to todays glossy,digital-era protagonists,Walter White (Breaking Bad),Tony Soprano (The Sopranos),and Don Draper (Mad Men). He equates Don Draper to a modern-day Oedipus as he has forgotten much of the past and is constantly revisited by flashbacks which reveal a horrific past,similar to Oedipus discovering he had slept with his mother and killed his father. Dantes falling man theme is underscored by the opening credits of the show,in which Draper literally falls through space before landing,his back to the viewer,seated as king of his domain.