European Tribune - Community, Politics & Progress.

Walking On The Waves

by afew
Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 04:35:03 AM EST

Foreign Policy has one of those wonderful end-of-year rankings up. This one is very important, since it lists the 100 Top Global Thinkers.

Foreign Policy's First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy

From the brains behind Iran's Green Revolution to the economic Cassandra who actually did have a crystal ball, they had the big ideas that shaped our world in 2009. Read on to see the 100 minds that mattered most in the year that was.

That sets the tone pretty well. It's "he said, she said", but with the subjacent balance tipping towards the essential rightness of the American way. Another colour revolution on the move, and even Cassandra Roubini is a credit to the system for having been proved right. The system works just great, as we can see by the choice of Number One Mind-That-Mattered-Most:

Foreign Policy's First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy

1. Ben Bernanke
for staving off a new Great Depression.
The Zen-like chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve might not have topped the list solely for turning his superb academic career into a blueprint for action, for single-handedly reinventing the role of a central bank, or for preventing the collapse of the U.S. economy. But to have done all of these within the span of a few months is certainly one of the greatest intellectual feats of recent years. Not long ago a Princeton University professor writing paper after paper on the Great Depression, "Helicopter Ben" spent 2009 dropping hundreds of billions in bailouts seemingly from the skies, vigilantly tracking interest rates, and coordinating with counterparts across the globe. His key insight? The need for massive, damn-the-torpedoes intervention in financial markets.

Yes, "Helicopter Ben" has single-handedly staved off the Great Depression we were going to get without him.

Scanning the list, "fair and balanced he said she said" seems to be the rule. Number Two is Obama, for...

"reimagining America's role in the world". He may fail, though, says Foreign Policy. And gives Dick Cheney the 13th spot (after the Clintons, all the same), "for his full-throated defense of American power".

Foreign Policy's First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy

In May, Cheney delivered his most vociferous argument for Bush's national security policies yet -- just minutes after Obama finished a speech on the same topic a mere mile away. Cheney's case for "enhanced interrogation" didn't budge an inch on the moral, legal, and strategic purity of the issue: Such techniques were, he said, "legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do." By delivering an unapologetic broadside against Obama at a time when many Republicans were apprehensive of refighting the national security battles of the Bush era, Cheney established himself as the most prominent dissenting voice in a moment of Democratic Party dominance.
"In the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground, and half-measures keep you half-exposed." --Cheney, speech on May 21, 2009

Meanwhile, at Number Eight,

Foreign Policy's First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy

8. David Petraeus
for reshaping the way the U.S. military goes to war.

Really?

There are lots of other plums in there, like the defence of Benedict XVI, the inclusion yet now of Henry Kissinger in the 100 Minds That Shaped etc, but pick them out for yourselves.

The overall feeling it leaves me with is that Foreign Policy's "Reader's Digest" kind of world is imperturbably the same. The US's foreign and military policy has been disastrous in this decade? Never mind, ignore that, though you may have to include a few critics just to show "balance". American-led globalizing financial capitalism ran into the wall? Not really, look, Roubini, Stiglitz, and Krugman are American too, and Bernanke and Summers have saved us. Don't look down at the waves, just keep walking.

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Walking On The Waves | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 8)

Can't resist pointing you, though, to Number 21, Thomas Friedman,

for his genius at popularizing complex ideas.

The 21st most important mind in 2009. Wow.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 04:39:49 AM EST

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 4)

Surely inventing the Friedman unit counts for something...

by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 05:31:38 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Suck.On.This. Foreign Policy (4.00 / 4)

[Moustache of Understanding Alert]

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 05:51:28 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Suck.On.This. Foreign Policy (4.00 / 5)

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 05:58:29 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Suck.On.This. Foreign Policy (4.00 / 5)

That's going to be one of the key video records in history classes a century from now.

What's interesting is that from his body language, it's clear at the beginning that he knows he's lying, and he's doing it consciously and deliberately.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 06:18:21 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Suck.On.This. Foreign Policy (4.00 / 3)

It's called performance art, and it sells really well with the base.

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot dotty communists) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 07:17:15 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Suck.On.This. Foreign Policy (4.00 / 3)

WTF?
And he STILL is allowed to publish his drivel in the NYT?

Wow.

"Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. - Galbraith"

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 06:26:35 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 7)

Yeah... Tom Friedman, the Uncrowned Prime Minister of Mixed Metaphor - Norwonk - Open Salon

The New York Times has many excellent writers. They also employ Thomas L. Friedman, triple Pulitzer Prize winner, the man who single-handedly revolutionized the art of the political column. Known to connoisseurs as "The Moustache of Understanding" (explained here and here), Friedman is like a gazelle dancing across the ice, always picking up golden seeds as he fearlessly explores the rugged mountains of truth in his reed boat of prose. Words fall from his pen like diamonds from a waterfall, and his lofty metaphors soar above the land with the grace of a mighty penguin.

LOL, LOL and LOL and ROFLMAO.

One man's genius is another man's ridicule. Why isn't Tom Friedman in Dickipedia? « Carsons Post

Anytime you reduce complex issues to catchy, if confusing slogans you risk ridicule. Do it often enough and you become ridiculous.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 06:35:01 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 4)

Taibbi quotes Friedman:

Even better was this gem from one of Friedman's latest columns: "The fighting, death and destruction in Gaza is painful to watch. But it's all too familiar. It's the latest version of the longest-running play in the modern Middle East, which, if I were to give it a title, would be called: "Who owns this hotel? Can the Jews have a room? And shouldn't we blow up the bar and replace it with a mosque?"

The Dan Brown of op-ed journalism.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 07:07:58 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 5)

You are being most unfair - to Dan Brown

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot dotty communists) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 08:13:10 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (none / 1)

It's a mixed metaphor.

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 08:50:31 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (none / 1)

Some connections, too:

In The World is Flat, the key action scene of the book comes when Friedman experiences his pseudo-epiphany about the Flat world while talking with himself in front of InfoSys CEO Nandan Nilekani. In Hot, Flat and Crowded, the money shot comes when Friedman starts doodling on a napkin over lunch with Moisés Naím, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. The pre-lunching Friedman starts drawing, and the wisdom just comes pouring out:
I laid out my napkin and drew a graph showing how there seemed to be a rough correlation between the price of oil, between 1975 and 2005, and the pace of freedom in oil-producing states during those same years.
Friedman then draws his napkin-graph, and much to the pundit's surprise, it turns out that there is almost an exact correlation between high oil prices and "unfreedom"! The graph contains two lines, one showing a rising and then descending slope of "freedom," and one showing a descending and then rising course of oil prices.

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Sat Dec 5th, 2009 at 04:31:53 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

It's not for nothing they call it "making the world free". Or at least, as cheap as possible.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sat Dec 5th, 2009 at 04:50:25 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Let Freedom Ring (none / 1)

by nanne (zwaerdenmaecker@gmail.com) on Sat Dec 5th, 2009 at 05:19:46 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Let Freedom Ring (4.00 / 2)

This is most suspicious: French licence plates?

(Département du Lot-et-Garonne, 47).

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Dec 6th, 2009 at 04:49:59 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (none / 1)

Wow. That's ... amazing.

(The Stupid. It burns.)

No one could have predicted

by ATinNM on Sat Dec 5th, 2009 at 05:10:20 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 5)

Flathead was my preferred Taibbi takedown. One of the most hilarious articles I've ever read. The ending:

The walls had fallen down and the Windows had opened, making the world much flatter than it had ever beenbut the age of seamless global communication had not yet dawned.
How the fuck do you open a window in a fallen wall? More to the point, why would you open a window in a fallen wall? Or did the walls somehow fall in such a way that they left the windows floating in place to be opened?
Four hundred and 73 pages of this, folks. Is there no God?

Be nice to America. Or we'll bring democracy to your country.

by Drew J Jones (myfriends@thisispancakes.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 12:30:32 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (none / 0)

Emphasis on important...

En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma

by Migeru (migeru at eurotrib dot com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 06:36:45 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 5)

Foreign Policy's First Annual List of the 100 Top Global Thinkers | Foreign Policy

4. Nouriel Roubini
for accurately forecasting the global financial pandemic.

Shouldn't ET get a mention in the list too then?

Ad astra per aspera

by In Wales (inwales aaat eurotrib.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 04:43:16 AM EST

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 6)

Who?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 04:47:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 5)

Foreigners in there? As long as they fit the US foreign policy world view. My personal favourite is money-bags media-grabbing faux philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, Number 31 (yes! 31!)

for offering a powerful critique of how Old Europe's left has failed.
...
...he argued that leftists (particularly in France) abandoned their egalitarian ideals for a toxic knee-jerk hatred of capitalism, the United States, Israel, and Jews -- a hatred that's driven them blindly into enemy-of-my-enemy associations with unsavory figures like Saddam Hussein. It's a powerful, damning argument.

"Old Europe" is still a selling line at Foreign Policy mag?

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 04:46:03 AM EST

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

Foreign Policy: Get the news four years late. The anti-ET in that regard...

Europeans think a hundred miles is a long way. Americans think a hundred years is a long time.

by Bernard on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 04:13:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

How many of them actually did any thinking at all?

Plenty didn't, judging by your list...

"Few can believe that suffering, especially by others, is in vain. - Galbraith"

by Cyrille (cyrillev domain yahoo.fr) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 05:29:04 AM EST

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 7)

It's not thinking - it's thinkiness.

Or possibly think tankiness.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 05:34:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Can I have a Think Tank for Christmas? (4.00 / 2)

notes from no w here

by Frank Schnittger (mail Frankschnittger at hot dotty communists) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 08:14:00 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 2)

Who was it who said something along the lines of "when these think tanks have to come up with a new idea, they sit around saying think tank, think tank?"

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 08:18:17 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

And I'll give my consent to any government that does not deny a man a living wage-Billy Bragg

by ManfromMiddletown (manfrommiddletown at lycos dot com) on Sat Dec 5th, 2009 at 12:55:38 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

there are lots of other plums in there, like the defence of Benedict XVI,

And putting him just ahead of Richard Dawkins....

by gk (g k quattro due due sette "at" gmail.com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 06:43:19 AM EST

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

There's a he said, she said for you.

Utsukushikereba sore de ii

by BruceMcF (agila61 at netscape dot net) on Sat Dec 5th, 2009 at 10:24:41 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (none / 1)

By seeing just first few I could puke...and I lost will to read more.Horror!

by vbo on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 06:56:41 AM EST

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

How come George W. Bush isn't on the list, at the top? I'm shocked!

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

by Melanchthon on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 07:26:40 AM EST

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 3)

Sentience has not yet been unequivocally demonstrated.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

by dvx (dvx.clt ät gmail dotcom) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 08:16:19 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 2)

Well, I'd like to see you with a pretzel stuck in your throat.

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 09:00:44 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (none / 1)

Because this is a fair and balanced list and now it's Obama's turn, what else?

So we have Obama and the Clintons, but Cheney in 12th place...

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 08:57:51 AM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Walking On The Waves (4.00 / 6)

My take here:

From my perspective, it is a curious and problematic exercise to conflate "throwing around one's power" or "saying stuff people listen to no matter how bloody inane it is" with "thinking" and even more curious to award the honor of "Top Thinkers" those whose stunning absence of forethought sent the whole world reeling into a global crisis. And surely any actually thinking person would find curious the assumption that big ideas carry much weight in the application of policy, compared to things like necessity or greed, particularly within one year of their being thought. Also curious: the complete absence of any Russian on the list. I mean, it clearly wasn't a terribly exclusive list. Cheney's up there near the top. Why, in the opinion of Foreign Policy magazine, are there no Russian minds as a great as the former U.S. Vice President's? It wasn't lost on FP:

"Pretending that you already know the answer when you don't is not actually very helpful." ~Migeru.

by poemless on Fri Dec 4th, 2009 at 02:38:09 PM EST

There's three kinds of lies: (4.00 / 2)

White lies, damned lies and one-dimensional ranking schemes.

- Jake

"Terraforming your own planet to make it uninhabitable hardly counts as epic win." - ThatBritGuy

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Sat Dec 5th, 2009 at 02:56:44 PM EST

Walking On The Waves | 36 comments (36 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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