Read this:

http://www.epjournal.net/Press_releases/index.html%3Fmodule=Articles;action=Article.publicShow;ID=256;.html

(p. 416)

Of the 25 socioeconomic and environmental indicators [on the Successful Societies Scale (SSS)]...the U.S. scores the worst in 14 and by a very large margin in 8, very poorly in 2, average in 4, well or very in 4, and the best in 1. Specifically, the U.S., scores the most dysfunctional in homicide, incarceration, juvenile mortality, gonorrhea and syphilis infections, abortions, adolescent pregnancies, marriage duration, income disparity, poverty, work hours, and resource exploitation base. The level of relative and absolute societal pathology in the U.S. is often so severe that it is repeatedly an outlier....

Because the U.S. performs so poorly in so many respects, its cumulative score on the SSS is a uniquely low 2.9, placing it as an outlier so dysfunctional relative to the other advanced democracies that some researchers have described it as “sick”

(p. 420)

Because it performs so poorly relative to more secure democracies, the status of the U.S. as an advanced 1st world nation is marginal and may even be at risk; the World Economic Forum recently downgraded the U.S. from its long standing first place status in global economic competitiveness, ranking some other democracies as more competitive (WEF, 2007). The societal and economic failings of the U.S. are all the more remarkable and difficult to explain because no major nation has such extensive financial and physical resources with which to overcome its internal defects. With ~5% of the world’s population the U.S. possesses a quarter of the global financial assets and uses a similar portion of the planet’s energy production; but this means that America is the least efficient advanced nation in terms of converting wealth and assets into social health….

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Part of the sickness is that we refuse to provide for the health of our citizens, unlike all other western democracies and Japan. BTW, who scores the highest on the SSS? Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Holland.

So at least 1,200 out of 81,000 are going to have to close, meaning there will be at least 79,800 chains throughout the United States (and don't forget worldwide; there are Fridays where I live too). And that is a crisis? Let the crisis grow!

You say, "it's not like anyone in the U.S. had really cared that much about the dire conditions in Somalia that have led to this situation, at least not until Americans were taken hostage...Hopefully now this will at least [lead] to some examination of U.S. policies in the region"

Well, I am no longer in the United States, but I have been watching things in Somalia at least since the United States sent in soldiers under the Clinton administration (at which time I was still inside the US). Not because I am an expert in Somalia. I am simply interested in - and annoyed by- US policies toward popular Islamic movements. It is a tragedy of bungling and unforeseen consequences.

Somalia was already in a chaotic state before US invaded in the 1990s, and the invasion didn’t help things. After US withdrawal, things pretty much reverted to the state they had been before the US came.

Then a group calling itself the Islamic Courts Union (ICU) began to assert its authority. Effectively the only law in Somalia since the mid nineties, the group began as loosely affiliated local Islamic courts. The courts soon began also to provide social services (a source of legitimacy for many Islamic movements), and eventually coalesced into a government, which managed to impose peace on most of the country, and a certain prosperity began to emerge as well.

But the United States, having developed an allergy to anything calling itself Islamic, set up anti-terrorism special-forces bases in Djibouti (on Somalia's northern border and home to large Somali populations), and began providing support to unpopular rival claimants to the government. The US also encouraged another of Somalia's neighbors, Ethiopia, to invade, causing further instability.

The ICU were ousted in 2006. Since then, lawlessness has broken out of an even more severe nature than had heretofore reigned, including the piracy we now see on the high seas.

Now that Ethiopia has withdrawn, parts of the ICU have again formed a government, but they now have rivals in the more radical factions called the shabab 'youths'.

The ICU had put an end to all kinds of banditry, on the principle that thievery of any sort is un-Islamic.

Let's see if the US can restrain itself while the new government reasserts itself.

The brilliant policy architecture of the US does not inspire great confidence.

"We've misinterpreted Darwin. It's not survival of the fittest. It's survival of the most adaptable,"

She is entitled to her own opinion and to her witty aphorisms, but Alford's mother has misrepresented Darwinian fitness, which is defined in terms of the number of viable surviving offspring an organism leaves. Physical fitness and longevity, while they may contribute to that, are not the important measures; neither is aging gracefully. There is some speculation that human longevity incurs some fitness in that babies with living grandmothers seem to do better than those who don't. The fit are the individuals that can adapt to the environment successfully enough to leave large numbers of surviving offspring, who in turn adapt successfully enough that they too leave large numbers (however large numbers are defined, which varies by species and the environment in which they live). Whether they die at thirty or ninety has very little to do with it.