What would Mata Hari call it?

There are few things that stir the blood in American veins as much as espionage tales. It's the American dream, but with a badass Ninja flavor that recalls the Old World. According to these stories, anyone with courage, determination and Internet access can become James Bond or Jason Bourne. Or at least a halfway decent imitation.

Most modern covert operations - those that take place on college campuses, anyway -involve alcohol, sex, or the overly optimistic hope that one will lead to the other. And while I love chilling outside the dining hall, smoking a string of imaginary cigarettes while waiting for my best friend's secret crush to appear, or handing off cartons of Franzia to an unmarked van full of freshmen, I feel like there's something missing.

I finally realized what it was. It's the name. Imagine, for a moment, that Operation Iraqi Freedom was instead called Operation Fruitless Search for WMD's in the Vast Deserts of the Middle East. Would that have inspired millions of young Americans to think up ways to evade the draft? Or what if Operation Northwoods had instead been called Operation Cause Suspicious Accidents and Blame Them On Cuba? The US public certainly wouldn't have slept through that one. What about Operation Ajax? If the CIA had settled for calling it Operation Remove Nationalist Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh from Power and Support the Western-Friendly Pahlavi Dynasty in Iran...well, just reading the name is like sitting through a world history lecture back in high school.

It's not just the CIA. The DEA is famous for its covert ops. What about Operation Black Gold Rush? Damn, that sounds sexy. A hell of a lot more fun times than Operation Holy Shit Don't Shoot Me but That's a Lot of Black Tar Heroin.

Or what about the recent Operation Jacket Racket? It sounds like an arcade game, the kind cool kids played back in the 80's (not that anyone was all that cool in the 80's). In fact, considering how important name is to the image of a covert op, I think both the CIA and the DEA need boots on the ground in the naming department.

Here are some of the suggestions I would give.

CIA:
Operation Obama...We Mean, Osama
Operation Oops We Did it Again
Operation Enduring Quagmire
Operation Howzabout These Guns
Operation Shmoperation

DEA:
Operation Smooth Dealin'
Operation I Like Big Busts and I Cannot Lie
Operation You Should Have Just Said No
Operation Is That An Eight Ball in Your Pocket...No, Really, Is It?

A Man By Any Other Name

The other day I read the heartfelt online blog of a man who was questioning his masculinity. In particular, he was considering coming out as transgender. (He'd used a pink blog template with magenta accents, which sounds to me like a man with something to prove.) Most of us aren't transgender, after all, that's a serious and psychological state. But who hasn't questioned their gender at some point?

Years ago, I read in a newsletter that certain mental traits were associated with boys. Among them, "logic" and "spatial reasoning." Interestingly, those were the areas in which I scored the highest on all my grade school aptitude tests (I was, for many years, better at math than verbal on standardized tests). As I got older, "inability to communicate" and "immaturity" became male traits. Unlike most women, I never competed for men. But I often competed with them. As if this weren't enough, I could do more push-ups than any girl in my class, and my shoulders were always wider than my hips. I became convinced, for many years, that there was something inherently masculine about my brain.

But I wasn't interested in an all-out sex change. First off, there's the prickly question of sexual orientation. Obviously, I could never be a straight man. I'm not attracted to women (all those experiments failed). So, that's a no go. And I just don't have what it takes to be a gay man (after all, this is a population that frequents bathhouses, tosses around expressions like 'top' and 'bottom', and gave us the expression 'bareback.' Shudder.) Also, I don't follow sports.

I retired the question for a few years, but tonight, with an economics midterm on the horizon, I thought it was the perfect time to answer this question. I spent exhaustive hours taking online gender tests, and here are the results.

According to SparkLife, I am almost certainly a man. In fact, only 11% of Spark test takers are more masculine than I am, and these results are based on over 8 million people! (I don't get this result: I definitely checked 'no' when they asked if nuclear war would be, in a strange way, entertaining.)

According to a quiz on Blogthings, I communite like a man. However, another Blogthing told me my brain was 60% female. Yet a third told me 45% feminine and 55% masculine.

According to this more scientific-looking test, I have a "gender aptitude" of 105, which puts me in a category I don't like, so I'm going to ignore it.

This more frilly test told me I scored 60% femininity, 46% masculinity and 39% "uncertainty." What the hell is uncertainty? And why don't those percentages add up to 100?

This test, which seems a lot more scientific and also brings back nausea-inducing memories of high school aptitude tests, tells me my brain is largely female.

The results, of course, aren't conclusive. In fact, they're by and large useless. The only thing I carry away from this is the sad realization that my spatial reasoning has worsened with time (it took me ages to get the hang of that first angles exercise, on which I did worse than both men and women. But after I figured it out, I got it every time...) Actually, the only result I like is the following:

According to yet another Blogthing, I am 82% sexy. Who gives a fuck what gender you are when you have numbers like that?

The Sins of the Taxpayer

Reading about the tax code (which, incidentally, makes a career in data entry sound like fun) dredged up this interesting line, in relation to the federal income tax child credit. The footnote reads,

"Some taxpayers with children qualify for both the child credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, but the two provisions have different definitions of 'child.'"

Different definitions of child? It's true that two Americans, depending on their religion and creed, might have different definitions of immorality, bravery, marriage and the phrase
"enemy combatant." But to quote Justice Potter Stewart's famous line, "I can't define pornography, but I know it when I see it." Majority of Americans probably feel the same way about children. Too bad the IRS can't adopt the same standard.

(By the way, was anyone else disturbed that I adapted a quote about porn and applied it to kids? Because looking back, I kind of am.)

The Price of Idealism

I think history will remember Bill Clinton as a better President than George W. Bush, but not because Clinton was a Democrat. In fact, in his own way Clinton was much more of a challenge to the Democratic base built under FDR than George W ever was to the Reagan Republicans.

As the 2008 election looms, I think the distinction between Clinton and Bush is more important than ever. We face a slew of candidates with real experience - Hillary, McCain, Romney, Giuliani. Despite the symphony of flip-flopping coming from the direction of these power-brokers, I feel confident about this election. I'm almost walking on air. Because these men (and woman) aren't like Bush - in fact, they're all a lot more like Clinton.

Clinton wasn't a Democrat. He wasn't much of an idealist at all. He passed on the terrorist threat, but he contributed troops to the NATO forces that bombed the Balkans during the Kosovo war (a deployment for which he, much like Bush II in Iraq, was roundly criticized). Clinton was a big believer in "Coalitions of the Willing," although unlike Bush he didn't borrow heavily from the black-and-white rhetoric of the Apocalypse.

Nonetheless, Clinton cut federal spending and capped government welfare benefits. He gave the States the right to distribute their own welfare income, a distribution of power long associated with the Republican Party. In this, he was a centrist, as has been noted. But he was also part of a longer and more glorious political tradition: realpolitik.

Realpolitik was a term first coined by Otto von Bismarck, the pragmatic political genius who engineered German unification in the late nineteenth century. He is remembered as one of the most diabolitical and brilliant minds of all time. Henry of Navarre, one of the most popular kings of old France, was another real politician. In 1593, he said that "Paris was well worth a Mass" and converted to Catholicism. In so doing, he won over France's Catholic majority and tolerated its Protestant minority. He passed laws that united the nation's warring religious parties, and ushered in a new era of religious tolerance. Queen Elizabeth the First was another example: the rare ruler who managed multiple factions with ease. Even Abraham Lincoln, who held the US together during the Civil War, only freed slaves in Confederate states, letting those in border territories fend for themselves.

Meanwhile, history regales us with stories of brilliant but misguided idealists, whose governments were marked by both spectacular successes and failures. Indira Gandhi, an idealistic federalist, wrought havoc on Indian society with her agricultural initiatives and forced sterilization programs. Margaret Thatcher, as British Prime Minister, won military acclaim in the Falklands, but mismanaged taxes that later led to massive unemployment. Meanwhile, Ronald Reagan (a real prototype for Bush II) helped initiate unsustainable tax cuts, escalated the Cold War, witnessed the Iran-Contra scandal, armed Osama bin Laden and invented "Reagonomics" from wholecloth. (He also took the laudable step of reforming Social Security.) Jimmy Carter, an idealist if ever there was one, raised payroll taxes and manhandled the Iran hostage crisis.

Not to suggest that Gandhi, Thatcher, Reagan and Carter were failures as national leaders. The truth is, to stay in power, everyone compromises. But some people do it brilliantly and often, whereas others do it grudgingly and rarely. The begruders are the problem. They lack real unifying power, and their political reigns usually end in a morass of ineffectiveness and public distrust.

George W Bush has fallen - actually, run willingly - into the same trap. He's tried to keep every campaign promise he ever made. He's given us our tax cuts, our prescription drug benefit, and our homeland security department. He's stayed true to his vision of America, which is larger than any one man. And yet, against all the odds, it isn't working. He himself admits he's no great student of history, which might explain why he missed this critical lesson. In order to hold a country together, a leader has to sell out. Bush can't sell out - it's against his stubborn Texan nature. If he doesn't like a policy, he gives it the death penalty.

And that's why Clinton was, underneath it all, more effective. True, he wasn't all that moral. He did screw an intern. But Bush, by placing personal morality above political necessity, managed to screw the entire nation.

Pride Goes Before a (Wind)Fall

Last quarter I wrote a paper on IMF and World Bank structural adjustment programs in Haiti. These well-intentioned but misguided programs aimed to sponsor industrial growth and general upliftment throughout the country. Instead, they led to agricultural atrophy and economic stagnation.

The so-called SAP's, the now discredited mental byproduct of the neoliberal school of economic thought, wrought havoc in many developing countries before they were finally brought to heel. But for me, who'd always believed the World Bank was a knight in shining green armor, learning that the men behind the curtain at the WB had messed up was a little like learning Santa doesn't bring presents to Hindus.

I was upset. I said to my TA, "Why does anyone even trust the World Bank anymore?" He replied, "They don't. The World Bank and the IMF are some of the most hated institutions in the world right now."

Maybe he was exaggerating. After all, what happened to Gitmo? But nonetheless, the comment suggests what many power-brokers already know. The Bank was rotten to the core, and the now-ended Wolfowitz-Riza debacle was just another sad story in a series of tragedies. Over the years, the WB has developed the image of a Western toadie, its dedication to democracy relegated to the same closet as ethics reviews and responsible hiring.

The debate over Wolfowitz was, at its heart, a debate over who was responsible for this decline in image. Wolfy, a Bush neocon, represented all that was wrong with American diplomacy: its hypocrisy, cronyism and hamfistedness. Meanwhile, the European Powers That Be, who had long felt like spectators at a U.S. vs. Developing World soccer match, insisted that this whole mess could have been avoided, if only someone had listened to them.

It's a common refrain these days, and hindsight is perfect, so we'll never know who's actually right. A recent article in Newsweek does point out the obvious: no one ever cared about Wolfowitz. He was a symbol of the corrupt partnership between the WB and the US. His ludicrous pay package - indeed, the ludicious pay awarded to most WB employees - brought back memories of the abuse of WB funds that Wolfowitz once blessed as a highly-paid ambassador to Southeast Asia. Wolfowitz is yet another crony CEO, whose pay never reflected his performance. In this, he is the image of what the rest of the world is starting to think about America: crony CEO's, unable to finance their debt or cheaply produce their own goods, living off the sweat and savings of the rest of the world. He didn't deserve his good fortune, and neither do we.

It was too much to stomach, and it was only a matter of time before Europe tried to toss Wolfy out on his ear. The assumption is that now, if Europeans get on top once more, the world will see a smarter, gentler capitalism. You don't have to be for it or against it. You don't care whether God blesses it. Hey, says Europe, you can't spread this stuff by force.

And the World Bank will rise from the ashes.

We'll see. Whether this Resurrection is possible - and let's not forget Europe's record of colonial exploitation - is a matter for the history books. In the meantime, the developed world can sit back, relax, and enjoy the fruits of other people's labor.

I, Anika

A few weeks ago, I felt something I hadn't felt since sophomore year of high school. I was chilling in a cafe with my creative writing group, and somehow we got started on the subject of The Brothers Karamazov. I was unusually quiet. I rustled my papers and clicked my heels. I said everything except the truth: I've never read the damn book. In fact, I've never read anything by Dostoevsky. For the first time in years, I felt uninformed.

Dostoevsky is one of those authors whose books appear on every reading list and "Top 100" list of all time. Another is James Joyce, whom I also haven't read. Yet a third is Charles Dickens. I have read a few books of his - a few too many. Reading Dickens, to me, is like eating boiled carrots. I do it because someone else says it's good for me, but I don't like it. I feel similarly about Virginia Woolf and William Faulkner (I know, someone call the Feds). Reading Woolf and Faulkner is like watching the Cirque du Soleil. They performs feats of contortionist derring-do with the English language, and I ooh and aah and admire their technical expertise, but at the end I feel vaguely uncomfortable, like I've just witnessed something unnatural.

Where are the books in between? The ones you can bring home to your English teacher, but also have fun with on the side?

In honor of that ideal, I've put together a list of my top books of all time. There is a writing standard - for example, you won't find Bridget Jones' Diary on this list - but these are the books I most loved to actually read. They changed my perception of writing, and occasionally humanity. One of them (Jonathan Safran-Foer's Everything is Illuminated) is so powerful that when I was reading the last chapter I started crying silently into the pages. On a train. In Italy. Surrounded by strangers. Which isn't so remarkable, except that a few minutes earlier I'd been laughing hysterically. Be warned.

1. The Kite Runner, by Khaled Hosseini
2. Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, by Jonathan Safran Foer
3. Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
4. A Prayer for Owen Meany, by John Irving
5. Fear of Flying, by Erica Jong
6. The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. LeGuin
7. The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver
8. The Lost Girl, by DH Lawrence
9. Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov
10. Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte

Opposite of Money

Recently, my mother considered quitting her current job but asking the same company to immediately hire her back as an independent contractor. I asked her, what's the point? You're doing the same job.

She said, if I were hired on as a consultant, my salary would be 200% of what it is now. That is, 100% higher. Why? Congress currently levies enormous taxes on labor. Think about it: the Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes, unemployment benefits and health insurance programs eat up a sizable chunk of labor profit. (And might be one of the reasons why, all other things being equal, firms would outsource to countries with more favorable labor laws even if the standard of living was just as high)

You might be asking (and you'd be right) Congress levies these taxes on employers. That is to say, the statutory incidence (the people required to pay by law) are the corporations, so why should employees take such a huge paycut?

Research shows that the supply of labor hours in the United States is relatively inelastic. What this means is, the amount of work hours available to a firm doesn't change depending on the wages the firm pays. Obviously, this depends on the labor being sought - one of the reasons educated workers make more money is because there are fewer of them, and they have more options, meaning the elasticity of labor supply for, say MBAs might be greater than for burger-flippers at McDonald's. (On a side note, educated workers are more likely to be married or cohabitating with a higher-earning partner, which also increases the elasticity of their labor supply.)

What this means is that firms can pay whatever they want, and still attract workers. They might attract better workers if they pay slightly more, but workers will still bear most of the burden of labor taxes. What does this mean for people like me? Let's say my summer salary is $10/hr (totally hypothetical - ha!). Every time I get my paycheck, I see two federal payroll tax deductions. The first is for Social Security - a charming 7.65%. The other is Medicare - another 1.45%. That cuts my check down to $9.10/hr. According to Congress, my employer also pays the same percent for Social Security and Medicare. However, according to economics, I also pay my employer's percent of the payroll tax, in the form of a lower wage than I would otherwise earn. The total taxes levied for Social Security and Medicare together are 18.2%, and I pay most of it.

But now consider this: with the costs of Social Security and Medicare rising out of control, I will certainly receive less from both these programs than I paid into them. Essentially, I am paying almost 18% of my annual income for benefits that I may never receive. If I'm a married person whose health insurance comes through my spouse, I'm also paying for health care benefits that I will never take advantage of.

Basically, corporations pass the cost of employment on to us. And we (the rising generation) might not have anything to show for it.

This is not how the system is supposed to work. Kudos to George W Bush for trying to reform it - although his plan, obviously, has serious flaws of its own.

The Man Who Won't Be Missed

Death is strange. It's strange because it makes the living forget things. The most despotic, intolerant individuals (people whose awfulness exceeds even Donald Rumsfeld's, for example), can expect sappy Hallmark eulogies once they finally do the world a favor and expire.

That said, I'm curious to see what people will make of Jerry Falwell's death. I can't say I'm upset, although I am surprised. The most obnoxious people seem to linger forever on the cusp of death, tantalizing and teasing their opponents with the promise of their coming end. So I fully expected Falwell to live on, like Castro, to confront the Apocalypse. Now that he hasn't, we get the next worst thing: misplaced nostalgia. I say, there's no harm in calling Falwell what he was: a bigot, a misogynist, and a fool. However, newspapers might disagree. Here are a few thoughts on the media spin we might see in the next few days.

"He loved children." (Translation: he condemned abortion, and encouraged violence against operators of legal abortion clinics.)

"He accepted that all people must choose how to live their lives." (Code for: He said homosexuality had no basis in biology.)

"He forgave and forgot." (Years after condmening Martin Luther King Jr., Falwell pretended to have supported the civil rights leader.)

"He was fluent in many religious traditions." (Falwell, who read portions of the Qu'ran, referred to Mohammad as a terrorist and a 'man of war.')

Yes, there's really no end to how creative we can be with this. Here's my problem with eulogizing goons like Falwell: future generations can't learn anything from such a sugarcoated history. If nothing else, Falwell's ideas polarized Republican politics and gave voice to an extreme evangelical minority. For this alone, we should reprint his ideas and statements exactly as they were.

The Washington Post seems to be doing that, but with mixed results. For example, they refer to Falwell as a man who preached "traditional values." I have read (a lot of) the Bible, and nowhere is intolerance listed as a value. Falwell practiced his own preachings, but they were grounded in personal interpretation. And although his interpretation has taken hold in the Heartland, I like to think there are Christians out there - active, even evangelical ones - who see traditional values as respecting your mother and father and doing good work in the community. Many of these people have no truck with Falwell and his self-aggrandizing agenda (or am I just deluded? One of those hopeless romantics who insists, even after seeing Borat, that Americans are good at heart?)

I also have another motive for wanting Falwell depicted scrupulously. I hope at some point John McCain sees the real Falwell and demonstrates some shame for his 2006 reconciliation with the man. The presidential campaign has turned McCain into a tragic hero. We have a man who, before his candidacy, spoke out bravely in favor of his reasoned, principled views. Now, he can no longer sort his elbow from his ass. He's trying to please, and he's doing it with the awkwardness of a debutante on her wedding night. It's ironic, really. The two front-runners for the Republican nomination are now tying themselves in knots trying to prove that they're not Democrats. We face a slew of the same candidates pretending to be different candidates. (With the exception of Barack Obama, who actually is different, although whether in a good way or a bad way I still can't decide.)

A Modern Magdalene

I stand corrected.

After doing some research on Shaha Ali Riza (and by research I mean, sitting in front of my computer and watching the headlines pop up for a few minutes) I've come to realize that I was 100% wrong about Paul Wolfowitz's girlfriend. Very few of the gleeful tales detailing Wolfy's slow unraveling have focused on Riza as more than an accessory to a very political murder. Many people have giggled over her famous photo, where she appears in an unflattering profile. Others have gaped at her astronomic salary (not astronomic considering her years of experience at the World Bank.)

But who mentions that she worked for the WB long before Wolfy was all but appointed? That her superiors recommended her for promotion multiple times? That she has a brilliant mind, and consistently spoke in favor of reason and justice in the Middle East? That her career was, by all accounts, more illustrious and admirable than Wolfowitz's?

He, of course, has a history of cronyism and blindness (and one wonders what W saw in him). But I will say one thing about Wolfy: he chose a woman who was his equal, and one from a different religious background. Let's debunk the inevitable comparison - Wolfowitz isn't sneaking off into corners to get blowjobs from a White House intern. (Which paints him in stark contrast to another, supposedly more feminist leader I could name.) He's engaging in a long-term partnership with a brilliant, intelligent woman his own age, and he isn't married or previously committed. In fact, it is the very women who hate Wolfy and his blighted history (me) who aspire to be the kind of woman he ended up dating. It's no wonder the liberal media are confused. On the one hand, we want Wolfy dead or alive. On the other, our pro-humanist impulses cry out that Riza must have her day. I hope she does. I hope she emerges from this, that she doesn't become yet another civilian casualty on a political battlefield dominated by misguided politicians and hatchet-wielding journalists.

For more on Riza, click here.

The International Men of Mystery

I thought Italian men were vain. Not in the sense of matching shoes and belt (after all, the modern fashionisto makes his mark in colorful, clashing accessories). They are vain conversationalists, and they are always looking to unloose their talk on some unsuspecting girl. They start conversations about famous operas, jazz pianos, ancient architecture and liquors that blend well with absinthe. And they toss off opinions with the confidence of people who know that their audience will never be able to correct them. Why? Because their audience is American. I once shocked a group of "writer-revolutionaries" by asking them, in Italian, if they'd ever read Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Of course, neither had I, but in those dark and pretentious moments around Sergei's bar, we shared the conspiracy of people who pretend to be better-informed than we are for purposes of getting laid.

Which is what it all boils down to. This is the country that invented love at first sight. But as Shakespeare once said, a rose by another name is still a rose. Similarly, the biological drive to reproduce with attractive people is still, by any other name, rude lust. But the story's not over! Petrarch, father of the Italian sonnet, wrote hundreds of love poems to a woman he saw once, from a distance. She grew older, got married (to another man!) and died, but the flow of his verbose passion never faltered. Petrarch, for all his maidenly protestations, was most in love with himself. It is a proud tradition. Italian men nowadays flirt with themselves and each other. Their partners - the much-touted long cool women in black dresses - are supposed to sigh their way through to the good parts. And demographers wonder why Italy has a negative population growth rate?

So imagine how surprised I was to read a recent review of Brazilian men that ranked them right up there with Italians. Brazilian men are beautiful in the same way that yachts are beautiful: costly to maintain, but all your fancy friends will want a ride. Which makes for a fun time at the beach, but there are pitfalls. Among them, a group of commentators dissecting Brazilian soccer player Ronaldo's recent image problems at the World Cup. Ronaldo is one of the best soccer players in the world, but the judges are fixating on his so-called "gut" like middle school girls at a cheerleading competition. My opinion: if these Nancies want to see a gut, they should hop up to North America. I know plenty of Midwestern guys (and girls!) who put their belly where their beer is. In some states, you may even get an eyeful of middle-aged nipple piercings. This is the stuff of nightmares in nations where trans fats don't need to be banned, because no one ever eats them.