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anonymous

Canada's Geographic Challenge - 2 views

www.stratfor.com/...canadas-geographic-challenge

geopolitics canada geography

shared by anonymous on 11 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Canada became independent from the United Kingdom in 1867. The country is made up of 10 provinces and three territories.
  • A majority of Canada’s 35 million people reside within 100 kilometers of the U.S. border, where the climate and topography support meaningful populations. However this population is spread across a distance of roughly 7,000 kilometers, from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans.
  • Canada's primary geographic challenge is maintaining unity across its diverse population cores
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  • The economies of these population cores are geared toward external trade as they try to meet demand for their services, manufactured goods and natural resources like oil.
  • making Canada the world’s sixth-largest oil producer.
  • Because of its location, Canada is well within the U.S. sphere of influence and the country's freedom to act is constrained by U.S. interests.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 Apr 13
       
      This message brought to you by the department of the obvious.
  • anonymous on 11 Apr 13
     
    "Located on the North American continent, Canada is the world's second-largest country. Most of Canada is uninhabited wilderness, and Arctic temperatures make the northern territories inhospitable to large population centers."
  • Erik Hanson on 16 Apr 13
     
    Just play Hearts of Iron as Canada, and this issue will be un-overlookable.
anonymous

The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 1: The Inevitable Empire - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...tates-part-1-inevitable-empire

geopolitics u.s.

shared by anonymous on 24 Aug 11 - Cached
  • All of the New World entities struggled to carve a modern nation and state out of the American continents. Brazil is an excellent case of how that struggle can be a difficult one. The United States falls on the opposite end of the spectrum.
  • The Greater Mississippi Basin together with the Intracoastal Waterway has more kilometers of navigable internal waterways than the rest of the world combined. The American Midwest is both overlaid by this waterway, and is the world’s largest contiguous piece of farmland. The U.S. Atlantic Coast possesses more major ports than the rest of the Western Hemisphere combined.
  • Two vast oceans insulated the United States from Asian and European powers, deserts separate the United States from Mexico to the south, while lakes and forests separate the population centers in Canada from those in the United States.
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  • The United States has capital, food surpluses and physical insulation in excess of every other country in the world by an exceedingly large margin. So like the Turks, the Americans are not important because of who they are, but because of where they live.
  • Climatically, the continent consists of a series of wide north-south precipitation bands largely shaped by the landmass’ longitudinal topography.
  • The Rocky Mountains dominate the Western third of the northern and central parts of North America
  • Farther east of this semiarid region are the well-watered plains of the prairie provinces of Canada and the American Midwest
  • East of this premier arable zone lies a second mountain chain known as the Appalachians.
  • North of the Great Lakes region lies the Canadian Shield, an area where repeated glaciation has scraped off most of the topsoil.
  • The continent’s final geographic piece is an isthmus of varying width, known as Central America, that is too wet and rugged to develop into anything more than a series of isolated city-states, much less a single country that would have an impact on continental affairs. Due to a series of swamps and mountains where the two American continents join, there still is no road network linking them, and the two Americas only indirectly affect each other’s development.
  • The most distinctive and important feature of North America is the river network in the middle third of the continent.
  • Very few of its tributaries begin at high elevations, making vast tracts of these rivers easily navigable. In the case of the Mississippi, the head of navigation — just north of Minneapolis — is 3,000 kilometers inland.
  • The unified nature of this system greatly enhances the region’s usefulness and potential economic and political power.
  • shipping goods via water is an order of magnitude cheaper than shipping them via land.
  • in the petroleum age in the United States, the cost of transport via water is roughly 10 to 30 times cheaper than overland.
  • This factor is the primary reason why the major economic powers of the past half-millennia have been Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and the United States.
  • the watershed of the Greater Mississippi Basin largely overlays North America’s arable lands.
  • The vast bulk of the prime agricultural lands are within 200 kilometers of a stretch of navigable river.
  • the river network’s unity greatly eases the issue of political integration.
  • All of the peoples of the basin are part of the same economic system, ensuring constant contact and common interests. Regional proclivities obviously still arise, but this is not Northern Europe, where a variety of separate river systems have given rise to multiple national identities.
  • It is worth briefly explaining why STRATFOR fixates on navigable rivers as opposed to coastlines.
  • First, navigable rivers by definition service twice the land area of a coastline (rivers have two banks, coasts only one).
  • Second, rivers are not subject to tidal forces, greatly easing the construction and maintenance of supporting infrastructure.
  • Third, storm surges often accompany oceanic storms, which force the evacuation of oceanic ports.
  • coastal regions are a poor second compared to lands with navigable rivers.
  • There are three other features — all maritime in nature — that further leverage the raw power that the Greater Mississippi Basin provides.
  • First are the severe indentations of North America’s coastline, granting the region a wealth of sheltered bays and natural, deep-water ports.
  • Second, there are the Great Lakes.
  • Third and most important are the lines of barrier islands that parallel the continent’s East and Gulf coasts.
  • Thus, the Greater Mississippi Basin is the continent’s core, and whoever controls that core not only is certain to dominate the East Coast and Great Lakes regions but will also have the agricultural, transport, trade and political unification capacity to be a world power — even without having to interact with the rest of the global system.
  • There are many secondary stretches of agricultural land as well
  • The rivers of the American Atlantic coastal plain — flowing down the eastern side of the Appalachians — are neither particularly long nor interconnected. This makes them much more like the rivers of Northern Europe in that their separation localizes economic existence and fosters distinct political identities, dividing the region rather than uniting it. The formation of such local — as opposed to national — identities in many ways contributed to the American Civil War.
  • What is now Mexico lacks even a single navigable river of any size. Its agricultural zones are disconnected and it boasts few good natural ports.
  • Canada’s maritime transport zones
  • Its first, the Great Lakes, not only requires engineering but is shared with the United States.
  • The second, the St. Lawrence Seaway, is a solid option (again with sufficient engineering), but it services a region too cold to develop many dense population centers.
  • So long as the United States has uninterrupted control of the continental core — which itself enjoys independent and interconnected ocean access — the specific locations of the country’s northern and southern boundaries are somewhat immaterial to continental politics.
  • The eastern end of the border could be anywhere within 300 kilometers north or south of its current location (at present the border region’s southernmost ports — Brownsville and Corpus Christi — lie on the U.S. side of the border). As one moves westward to the barren lands of New Mexico, Arizona, Chihuahua and Sonora, the possible variance increases considerably. Even controlling the mouth of the Colorado River where it empties into the Gulf of California is not a critical issue, since hydroelectric development in the United States prevents the river from reaching the Gulf in most years, making it useless for transport.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Aug 11
       
      As a fun project, I'd love to create a map that depicts what could be the outer edges of the American political map without changing its core strategic position.
  • In the north, the Great Lakes are obviously an ideal break point in the middle of the border region, but the specific location of the line along the rest of the border is largely irrelevant. East of the lakes, low mountains and thick forests dominate the landscape — not the sort of terrain to generate a power that could challenge the U.S. East Coast.
  • The border here could theoretically lie anywhere between the St. Lawrence Seaway and Massachusetts without compromising the American population centers on the East Coast
  • So long as the border lies north of the bulk of the Missouri River’s expansive watershed, the border’s specific location is somewhat academic, and it becomes even more so when one reaches the Rockies.
  • On the far western end of the U.S.-Canada border is the only location where there could be some border friction. The entrance to Puget Sound — one of the world’s best natural harbors — is commanded by Vancouver Island.
  • Most of the former is United States territory, but the latter is Canadian — in fact, the capital of British Columbia, Victoria, sits on the southern tip of that strategic island for precisely that reason.
  • It is common knowledge that the United States began as 13 rebellious colonies along the east coast of the center third of the North American continent. But the United States as an entity was not a sure thing in the beginning
  • France controlled the bulk of the useful territory that in time would enable the United States to rise to power, while the Spanish empire boasted a larger and more robust economy and population in the New World than the fledgling United States.
  • Most of the original 13 colonies were lightly populated by European standards — only Philadelphia could be considered a true city in the European sense — and were linked by only the most basic of physical infrastructure. Additionally, rivers flowed west to east across the coastal plain, tending to sequester regional identities rather than unify them.
  • But the young United States held two advantages.
  • First, without exception, all of the European empires saw their New World holdings as secondary concerns.
  • With European attentions diverted elsewhere, the young United States had an opportunity to carve out a future for itself relatively free of European entanglements.
  • Second, the early United States did not face any severe geographic challenges. The barrier island system and local rivers provided a number of options that allowed for rapid cultural and economic expansion up and down the East Coast.
  • This was not England, an island that forced the early state into the expense of a navy. This was not France, a country with three coasts and two land borders that forced Paris to constantly deal with threats from multiple directions. This was not Russia, a massive country suffering from short growing seasons that was forced to expend inordinate sums of capital on infrastructure simply to attempt to feed itself.
  • Instead, the United States could exist in relative peace for its first few decades without needing to worry about any large-scale, omnipresent military or economic challenges, so it did not have to garrison a large military.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Aug 11
       
      Maybe our obsession with some mythical, truly free market stems from these early roots and is nourished by continued favorable geographic conditions. I wonder if that's one reason we're incredulous that other nations don't adopt our various policies. We have unique circumstances and are oblivious to the fact. 
  • it is inevitable that whoever controls the middle third of North America will be a great power.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Aug 11
       
      In classic StratFor fashion, the monograph extensively lays out the geographic (and some brief historical relevance) situation without reference to founding fathers or 'sacred' mentalities. On a very personal note, this is a reason that I prefer this style. On the left and right, there's a strong desire to steer perceptions. Surely, StratFor is no different, but it steers perceptions to a particular frame of scale.
  • The United States’ strategic imperatives are presented here in five parts. Normally imperatives are pursued in order, but there is considerable time overlap between the first two and the second two.
  • 1. Dominate the Greater Mississippi Basin
  • The early nation was particularly vulnerable to its former colonial master.
  • There are only two ways to protect a coastal community from sea power. The first is to counter with another navy.
  • The second method of protecting a coastal community is to develop territories that are not utterly dependent upon the sea.
  • Achieving such strategic depth was both an economic and a military imperative.
  • The United States was entirely dependent upon the English imperial system not just for finished goods and markets but also for the bulk of its non-agricultural raw materials, in particular coal and iron ore.
  • The Appalachians may not be the Swiss Alps, but they were sufficiently rugged to put a check on any deep and rapid inland expansion.
  • The Ohio River faced the additional problem of draining into the Mississippi, the western shore of which was the French territory of Louisiana
  • The United States solved this problem in three phases.
  • First, there was the direct purchase of the Louisiana Territory from France in 1803.
  • At the time, Napoleon was girding for a major series of wars that would bear his name. France not only needed cash but also to be relieved of the security burden of defending a large but lightly populated territory in a different hemisphere.
  • The Louisiana Purchase not only doubled the size of the United States but also gave it direct ownership of almost all of the Mississippi and Missouri river basins.
  • The inclusion of the city of New Orleans in the purchase granted the United States full control over the entire watershed.
  • The second phase of the strategic-depth strategy was the construction of that different route: the National Road (aka the Cumberland Road).
  • This single road (known in modern times as Interstate 40 or Interstate 70 for most of its length) allowed American pioneers to directly settle Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri and granted them initial access to Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota.
  • For the better part of a century, it was the most heavily trafficked route in the country
  • the original 13 colonies were finally lashed to the Greater Mississippi Basin via a route that could not be challenged by any outside power.
  • The third phase of the early American expansion strategy was in essence an extension of the National Road via a series of settlement trails, by far the most important and famous of which was the Oregon Trail.
  • The trail was directly responsible for the initial settling of Kansas, Nebraska, Wyoming, Idaho and Oregon. A wealth of secondary trails branched off from the main artery — the Mormon, Bozeman, California and Denver trails — and extended the settlement efforts to Montana, Colorado, Utah, Nevada and California.
  • That project’s completion reduced East Coast-West Coast travel time from six months to eight days and slashed the cost by 90 percent (to about $1,100 in 2011 dollars).
  • Collectively, the Louisiana Purchase, the National Road and the Oregon Trail facilitated the largest and fastest cultural expansion in human history.
  • From beginning to end, the entire process required less than 70 years.
  • The Columbia River Valley and California’s Central Valley are not critical American territories.
  • among other things, they grant the United States full access to the Pacific trading basin — only that control of them is not imperative to American security.
  • 2. Eliminate All Land-Based Threats to the Greater Mississippi Basin
  • The first land threat to the young United States was in essence the second phase of the Revolutionary War
  • the British navy could outmatch anything the Americans could float
  • Geopolitically, the most critical part of the war was the participation of semi-independent British Canada.
  • Canadian forces, unlike the British, did not have a supply line that stretched across the Atlantic.
  • Canada is far enough north that its climate is far harsher than that of the United States, with all of the negative complications one would expect for population, agriculture and infrastructure.
  • What few rivers Canada has neither interconnect nor remain usable year round.
  • Most of these river connections also have rapids and falls, greatly limiting their utility as a transport network.
  • the St. Lawrence Seaway — a series of locks that link the St. Lawrence River to the Great Lakes and allow full ocean access — was not completed until 1959.
  • Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island — are disconnected from the Canadian landmass and unable to capitalize on what geographic blessings the rest of the country enjoys
  • what population centers Canada does have are geographically sequestered from one another by the Canadian Shield and the Rocky Mountains.
  • All four provinces have been forced by geography and necessity to be more economically integrated with their southern neighbors than with their fellow Canadian provinces.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 24 Aug 11
       
      Here's a key fact that I have never read anywhere else. I would love to learn more about this. It's surely plausible; I just find it funny that it's been omitted from view.
  • The British were exhausted from the Napoleonic Wars in Europe and, with the French Empire having essentially imploded, were more interested in reshaping the European balance of power than re-engaging the Americans in distant North America.
  • the Americans were mobilized, angry and — remembering vividly the Canadian/British sacking of Washington — mulling revenge.
  • This left a geographically and culturally fractured Canada dreading a long-term, solitary confrontation with a hostile and strengthening local power. During the following decades, the Canadians had little choice but to downgrade their ties to the increasingly disinterested British Empire, adopt political neutrality vis-a-vis Washington, and begin formal economic integration with the United States. Any other choice would have put the Canadians on the path to another war with the Americans (this time likely without the British), and that war could have had only one outcome.
  • Using a combination of illegal settlements, military pressure and diplomacy, the United States was able to gain control of east and west Florida from Madrid in 1819 in exchange for recognizing Spanish claims to what is now known as Texas
  • the United States’ efforts to secure its southwestern borders shifted to a blatant attempt to undermine and ultimately carve up the one remaining Western Hemispheric entity that could potentially challenge the United States: Mexico.
  • the United States quickly transformed itself from a poor coastal nation to a massively capital-rich commodities exporter.
  • But these inner territories harbored a potentially fatal flaw: New Orleans.
  • the biggest potential security threat to the United States was newly independent Mexico, the border with which was only 150 kilometers from New Orleans. In fact, New Orleans’ security was even more precarious than such a small distance suggested.
  • Just as the American plan for dealing with Canada was shaped by Canada’s geographic weakness, Washington’s efforts to first shield against and ultimately take over parts of Mexico were shaped by Mexico’s geographic shortcomings.
  • In the United States, the cheap transport system allowed early settlers to quickly obtain their own small tracts of land.
  • in time the wealth accumulated to the point that portions of the United States had the capital necessary to industrialize.
  • Mexico, in contrast, suffered from a complete lack of navigable rivers and had only a single good port (Veracruz).
  • First and most obviously, the lack of navigable waterways and the non-abundance of ports drastically reduced Mexico’s ability to move goods and thereby generate its own capital. Second, the disassociated nature of Mexico’s agricultural regions forced the construction of separate, non-integrated infrastructures for each individual sub-region, drastically raising the costs of even basic development.
  • Third, the highland nature of the Mexico City core required an even more expensive infrastructure, since everything had to be transported up the mountains from Veracruz.
  • the 410-kilometer railway linking Mexico City and Veracruz was not completed until 1873. (By that point, the United States had two intercontinental lines and roughly 60,000 kilometers of railways.)
  • very different economic and social structure
  • Instead of small landholdings, Mexican agriculture was dominated by a small number of rich Spaniards
  • The Mexican landowners had, in essence, created their own company towns and saw little benefit in pooling their efforts to industrialize. Doing so would have undermined their control of their economic and political fiefdoms.
  • This social structure has survived to the modern day, with the bulk of Mexican political and economic power held by the same 300 families that dominated Mexico’s early years, each with its local geographic power center.
  • In just two generations — by 1870 — the American population had ballooned to 38.6 million while Mexico’s was only 8.8 million.
  • The American effort against Mexico took place in two theaters.
  • The first was Texas, and the primary means was settlement as enabled by the Austin family.
  • anonymous on 24 Aug 11
     
    "This installment on the United States, presented in two parts, is the 16th in a series of STRATFOR monographs on the geopolitics of countries influential in world affairs."
anonymous

The Growing Importance of the Arctic Council - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...wing-importance-arctic-council

shared by anonymous on 17 May 13 - Cached
  • The Arctic Council was established in 1996 by the eight countries that have territory above the Arctic Circle -- the United States, Canada, Iceland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
  • Its main purpose was to be an intergovernmental forum (also involving Arctic indigenous groups) that promoted cooperation primarily regarding environmental matters and research. The Arctic Council's central focus has remained on environmental issues in the Arctic, and the body has had no meaningful decision-making power.
  • However, during this year's meeting, the council's members signed a legally binding agreement coordinating response efforts to marine pollution incidents.
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  • Satellite data collected since 1979 shows that both the thickness of the ice in the Arctic and range of sea ice have decreased substantially, especially during the summer months.
  • U.S. Geological Survey estimates from 2008 suggest that 13 percent of the world's undiscovered oil and 30 percent of undiscovered natural gas reserves are located in the Arctic Circle.
  • In 2012, 46 ships transporting a total of 1.3 million tons reportedly used the Northern Sea Route, which runs along the northern coast of Russia; this represents a considerable increase from 2011, when 34 ships transported approximately 820,000 tons. In response to the route's growing importance, Russia set up the Northern Sea Route administration in March to supervise shipping.
  • Europe has a vested interest in alternative shipping routes to Asia becoming more economically viable, since such routes would allow trade to circumvent numerous bottlenecks like the Suez Canal and increase access to Asia's growing consumer markets.
  •  China has also shown a particular interest in the Arctic, and has lobbied the Nordic countries to support Beijing's bid for observer status in the Arctic Council.
  • Sailing along the Northern Sea Route rather than through the Mediterranean Sea and Suez Canal significantly reduces the trip between Rotterdam and Shanghai -- the Northern Sea Route is around 20 percent shorter. This translates into significant savings in terms of fuel and crew costs.
  • The Arctic Council is just one of many bodies dealing with regional collaboration in the Arctic. The Barents Euro-Arctic Council, the Nordic Council and the Conference of Parliamentarians of the Arctic Region also coordinate intergovernmental or interregional collaboration in the Arctic on a number of issues.
  • Allowing six more countries to become observer states shows that the members of the Arctic Council -- even those initially skeptical of expansion, such as Canada and Russia -- see the expansion as an opportunity to give the Arctic Council greater relevance.
  • In the coming years, the debate among member states to determine whether the Arctic Council should move beyond environmental issues and become a forum to address issues related to militarization, natural resources and trade routes will become more prominent. 
  • On May 10, the U.S. government presented its new general strategy for the Arctic. Little concrete information was revealed, but a clearer plan for implementing the strategy reportedly will be worked out in the coming months.
  • anonymous on 17 May 13
     
    "The Arctic is expected to become more important in the coming decades as climate change makes natural resources and transport routes more accessible. Reflecting the growing interest in the region, the Arctic Council granted six new countries (China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea and Singapore) observer status during a May 15 ministerial meeting in Kiruna, Sweden. By admitting more observers, the Arctic Council -- an organization that promotes cooperation among countries with interests in the Arctic -- will likely become more important as a forum for discussions on Arctic issues. However, this does not necessarily mean it will be able to establish itself as a central decision-making body regarding Arctic matters."
anonymous

Science: Why is the flight journey from Dubai to Los Angeles always over Europe, Greenl... - 0 views

www.quora.com/...rectly-over-the-Atlantic-Ocean

shared by anonymous on 08 Mar 13 - Cached
  • Going across the Atlantic would be out of the way and make the trip longer. Here is the shortest path from Dubai to Los Angeles:
  • This "Mercator projection" is extremely stretched out near the poles, so a path that goes through very high latitudes is stretched out quite a lot on the map. It looks much longer than it really is. Thus, although the path straight across the Atlantic looks shorter, it is actually longer.
  • Mathematically, this impossibility of a perfect map projection means the metric for the Earth is different from that of a map. It results from the Earth being curved in a technical sense.
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  • The outside edge of a cylinder, by contrast, is actually flat in this sense of the word, not curved. It is curved in three-dimensional space, but it is itself two-dimensional, and within two dimensions it has no curvature. This is because it can be cut and set down flat without any stretching, so if the Earth were like the edge of a cylinder we could make nice flat maps and draw straight lines on them to find the shortest distances. Since the Earth is roughly a sphere, which is truly curved, we can't do this, and to find the shortest path between points we need to use a globe or use mathematical techniques; we can't rely on what maps seem to tell us.
  • anonymous on 08 Mar 13
     
    Also how does the rotation of Earth and movement of the atmosphere figure in? If say a flight takes 12 hours, would you not be back in Dubai due to the Earth's rotation?
anonymous

The Myth of Charter Schools by Diane Ravitch | The New York Review of Books - 0 views

www.nybooks.com/...myth-charter-schools

education

shared by anonymous on 25 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Guggenheim presents the popularized version of an account of American public education that is promoted by some of the nation’s most powerful figures and institutions.
  • The message of these films has become alarmingly familiar: American public education is a failed enterprise. The problem is not money. Public schools already spend too much. Test scores are low because there are so many bad teachers, whose jobs are protected by powerful unions. Students drop out because the schools fail them, but they could accomplish practically anything if they were saved from bad teachers. They would get higher test scores if schools could fire more bad teachers and pay more to good ones. The only hope for the future of our society, especially for poor black and Hispanic children, is escape from public schools, especially to charter schools, which are mostly funded by the government but controlled by private organizations, many of them operating to make a profit.
  • The annual Gallup poll about education shows that Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the quality of the nation’s schools, but 77 percent of public school parents award their own child’s public school a grade of A or B, the highest level of approval since the question was first asked in 1985.
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  • The message of the film is clear. Public schools are bad, privately managed charter schools are good.
  • Some fact-checking is in order, and the place to start is with the film’s quiet acknowledgment that only one in five charter schools is able to get the “amazing results” that it celebrates. Nothing more is said about this astonishing statistic.
  • The proportion of charters that get amazing results is far smaller than 17 percent.Why did Davis Guggenheim pay no attention to the charter schools that are run by incompetent leaders or corporations mainly concerned to make money? Why propound to an unknowing public the myth that charter schools are the answer to our educational woes, when the filmmaker knows that there are twice as many failing charters as there are successful ones? Why not give an honest accounting?
  • The propagandistic nature of Waiting for “Superman” is revealed by Guggenheim’s complete indifference to the wide variation among charter schools. There are excellent charter schools, just as there are excellent public schools.
  • Guggenheim seems to believe that teachers alone can overcome the effects of student poverty, even though there are countless studies that demonstrate the link between income and test scores.
  • The movie asserts a central thesis in today’s school reform discussion: the idea that teachers are the most important factor determining student achievement.
  • But this proposition is false. Hanushek has released studies showing that teacher quality accounts for about 7.5–10 percent of student test score gains. Several other high-quality analyses echo this finding, and while estimates vary a bit, there is a relative consensus: teachers statistically account for around 10–20 percent of achievement outcomes. Teachers are the most important factor within schools.
  • But the same body of research shows that nonschool factors matter even more than teachers.
  • The film never acknowledges that charter schools were created mainly at the instigation of Albert Shanker, the president of the American Federation of Teachers from 1974 to 1997.
  • He sold the idea as a way to open schools that would collaborate with public schools and help motivate disengaged students. In 1993, Shanker turned against the charter school idea when he realized that for-profit organizations saw it as a business opportunity and were advancing an agenda of school privatization.
  • Under NCLB, low-performing schools may be closed, while high-performing ones may get bonuses. Some charter schools “counsel out” or expel students just before state testing day. Some have high attrition rates, especially among lower-performing students.
  • Perhaps the greatest distortion in this film is its misrepresentation of data about student academic performance. The film claims that 70 percent of eighth-grade students cannot read at grade level. This is flatly wrong.
  • NAEP doesn’t measure performance in terms of grade-level achievement. The highest level of performance, “advanced,” is equivalent to an A+, representing the highest possible academic performance. The next level, “proficient,” is equivalent to an A or a very strong B. The next level is “basic,” which probably translates into a C grade. The film assumes that any student below proficient is “below grade level.” But it would be far more fitting to worry about students who are “below basic,” who are 25 percent of the national sample, not 70 percent.
  • Guggenheim didn’t bother to take a close look at the heroes of his documentary. Geoffrey Canada is justly celebrated for the creation of the Harlem Children’s Zone, which not only runs two charter schools but surrounds children and their families with a broad array of social and medical services.
  • On the 2010 state tests, 60 percent of the fourth-grade students in one of his charter schools were not proficient in reading, nor were 50 percent in the other. It should be noted—and Guggenheim didn’t note it—that Canada kicked out his entire first class of middle school students when they didn’t get good enough test scores to satisfy his board of trustees.
  • Contrary to Guggenheim’s mythology, even the best-funded charters, with the finest services, can’t completely negate the effects of poverty.
  • While blasting the teachers’ unions, he points to Finland as a nation whose educational system the US should emulate, not bothering to explain that it has a completely unionized teaching force.
  • His documentary showers praise on testing and accountability, yet he does not acknowledge that Finland seldom tests its students.
  • Guggenheim simply ignores the realities of the Finnish system.
  • Becoming a charter is no guarantee that a school serving a tough neighborhood will produce educational miracles.
  • It raises important questions, but all of the answers it offers require a transfer of public funds to the private sector. The stock market crash of 2008 should suffice to remind us that the managers of the private sector do not have a monopoly on success.
  • First, I thought to myself that the charter operators were cynically using children as political pawns in their own campaign to promote their cause.
  • Second, I felt an immense sense of gratitude to the much-maligned American public education system, where no one has to win a lottery to gain admission.
  • anonymous on 25 Oct 10
     
    "Ordinarily, documentaries about education attract little attention, and seldom, if ever, reach neighborhood movie theaters. Davis Guggenheim's Waiting for "Superman" is different. It arrived in late September with the biggest publicity splash I have ever seen for a documentary. Not only was it the subject of major stories in Time and New York, but it was featured twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show and was the centerpiece of several days of programming by NBC, including an interview with President Obama." By Diane Ravitch at The New York Review of Books on November 11, 2010.
anonymous

Preventing an Arctic Cold War - 0 views

www.nytimes.com/...enting-an-arctic-cold-war.html

shared by anonymous on 13 Mar 13 - Cached
  • This unexpected transformation has radically altered the stakes for the Arctic, especially for the eight nations and indigenous peoples that surround it.
  • But while there has been cooperation on extracting the region’s oil, gas and mineral deposits, and exploiting its fisheries, there has been little effort to develop legal mechanisms to prevent or adjudicate conflict. The potential for such conflict is high, even though tensions are now low.
  • In 1996, eight countries — the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Iceland and Denmark (which manages the foreign affairs and defense of Greenland) — and groups representing indigenous peoples established the Arctic Council to chart the region’s future. So far, this high-level forum has identified sustainable development and environmental protection as “common Arctic issues.” But another crucial concern — maintaining the peace — was shelved in the talks that led to the council’s creation. The fear then, as now, was that peace implied demilitarization. It doesn’t. But if these nations are still too timid to discuss peace in the region when tensions are low, how will they possibly cooperate to ease conflicts if they arise?
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • How, for instance, will each nation position its military and police its territory? How will the Arctic states deal with China and other nations that have no formal jurisdictional claims but have strong interests in exploiting Arctic resources? How will Arctic and non-Arctic states work together to manage those resources beyond national jurisdictions, on the high seas and in the deep sea?
  • NATO’s top military commander, Adm. James G. Stavridis of the United States Navy, warned in 2010 of an “icy slope toward a zone of competition, or worse, a zone of conflict” if the world’s leaders failed to ensure Arctic peace.
  • President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, whose economy is reliant on its rich deposits of oil and natural gas, clearly understands the benefits of a northern sea route and of the hydrocarbon deposits on his nation’s continental shelf, and has emphasized the importance of peace and cooperation in the Arctic. So have leaders of other Arctic nations. But we have heard virtually nothing from President Obama, even as he has made the dangers of a warming earth a priority of his second term.
  • anonymous on 13 Mar 13
     
    "JUST a quarter-century ago, and for millenniums before that, the Arctic Ocean was covered year-round by ice, creating an impregnable wilderness that humans rarely negotiated. Today, as the effects of global warming are amplified in the high north, most of the ocean is open water during the summer and covered by ice only in the winter."
anonymous

Researchers Finally Replicated Reinhart-Rogoff, and There Are Serious Problems. - 0 views

www.nextnewdeal.net/...and-there-are-serious-problems

criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 17 Apr 13 - Cached
  • Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate, in fact.
  • This has been one of the most cited stats in the public debate during the Great Recession.
  • In a new paper, "Does High Public Debt Consistently Stifle Economic Growth? A Critique of Reinhart and Rogoff," Thomas Herndon, Michael Ash, and Robert Pollin of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst successfully replicate the results.
  • ...16 more annotations...
  • After trying to replicate the Reinhart-Rogoff results and failing, they reached out to Reinhart and Rogoff and they were willing to share their data spreadhseet. This allowed Herndon et al. to see how how Reinhart and Rogoff's data was constructed.
  • They find that three main issues stand out.
  • First, Reinhart and Rogoff selectively exclude years of high debt and average growth.
  • Second, they use a debatable method to weight the countries.
  • Third, there also appears to be a coding error that excludes high-debt and average-growth countries.
  • All three bias in favor of their result, and without them you don't get their controversial result.
  • Selective Exclusions. Reinhart-Rogoff use 1946-2009 as their period, with the main difference among countries being their starting year.
  • The paper didn't disclose which years they excluded or why.
  • Unconventional Weighting. Reinhart-Rogoff divides country years into debt-to-GDP buckets. They then take the average real growth for each country within the buckets.
  • this weighting significantly reduces the average; if you weight by the number of years you find a higher growth rate above 90 percent.
  • Coding Error. As Herndon-Ash-Pollin puts it: "A coding error in the RR working spreadsheet entirely excludes five countries, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, and Denmark, from the analysis.
  • Being a bit of a doubting Thomas on this coding error, I wouldn't believe unless I touched the digital Excel wound myself. One of the authors was able to show me that, and here it is. You can see the Excel blue-box for formulas missing some data:
  • If this error turns out to be an actual mistake Reinhart-Rogoff made, well, all I can hope is that future historians note that one of the core empirical points providing the intellectual foundation for the global move to austerity in the early 2010s was based on someone accidentally not updating a row formula in Excel.
  • So what do Herndon-Ash-Pollin conclude? They find "the average real GDP growth rate for countries carrying a public debt-to-GDP ratio of over 90 percent is actually 2.2 percent, not -0.1 percent as [Reinhart-Rogoff claim]." [UPDATE: To clarify, they find 2.2 percent if they include all the years, weigh by number of years, and avoid the Excel error.] Going further into the data, they are unable to find a breakpoint where growth falls quickly and significantly.
  • This is also good evidence for why you should release your data online, so it can be properly vetted.
  • But beyond that, looking through the data and how much it can collapse because of this or that assumption, it becomes quite clear that there's no magic number out there. The debt needs to be thought of as a response to the contingent circumstances we find ourselves in, with mass unemployment, a Federal Reserve desperately trying to gain traction at the zero lower bound, and a gap between what we could be producing and what we are. The past guides us, but so far it has failed to provide evidence of an emergency threshold. In fact, it tells us that a larger deficit right now would help us greatly.
  • anonymous on 17 Apr 13
     
    "In 2010, economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff released a paper, "Growth in a Time of Debt." Their "main result is that...median growth rates for countries with public debt over 90 percent of GDP are roughly one percent lower than otherwise; average (mean) growth rates are several percent lower." Countries with debt-to-GDP ratios above 90 percent have a slightly negative average growth rate, in fact."
anonymous

Stratfor-founder George Friedman slams Tea Party in leaked emails from March 2010 - 0 views

politicalgates.blogspot.com/...der-george-friedman-slams.html

geopolitics stratfor

shared by anonymous on 10 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • ----- Original Message ----- From: "George Friedman" To: "Analyst List" Sent: Thursday, March 25, 2010 10:18:35 PM GMT -06:00 US/Canada Central Subject: Re: [OS] US/CT/CALENDAR- Teabagger protest at Harry Reid's house 3/27 The economics of this is far less important than the social and political implications of the response. The lack of civility on TV has now spilled over into the streets. Physical attacks on people and places you don't agree with has become acceptable. The fundamental and absolute principle of a democratic republic is that while your position may be defeated, and you can continue to argue your point, you do it without demonizing your opponents and without ever threatening harm. Whether this is a small fraction of the movement or large is unimportant to me, as is the argument about healthcare. This behavior is more frightening that the largest deficit I can imagine. We use fascist and communist casually, but he definition of each was that it did not absolutely abjure political intimidation. I have not seen anything like this since the segregationists in the south and the anti-war movement in the 1960s.
  • Both triggered massive political counteractions fortunately, and the segregationists and anti-war movement was politically crushed. I certainly hope that the Tea Party has the same fate. You are both supposed to be students of geopolitics. Approach this geopolitically. You are living in a country where disagreements degenerate into massively uncivil behavior. Yet you are both still arguing the issue. That issue is trivial compared to the way the losers are responding. I find the language they use offensive in a civilized polity, and the intimidation tactics of some of them is monstrous. You should both be far more worried about the political dimension than the economic. We will survive the economic. We can't the political. And as a practical matter, this is the best friend the Democrats have. I'm pretty hard right and I'm offended. Imagine how people more moderate than me look at this. These people are guaranteeing Obama's re-election.
  • If this is not educational, I don't know what is!
  • anonymous on 10 Apr 13
     
    "Stratfor-founder George Friedman slams Tea Party in leaked emails from March 2010: "I'm pretty hard right and I'm offended", "You are living in a country where disagreements degenerate into massively uncivil behavior", "Physical attacks on people and places you don't agree with has become acceptable" - Friedman compares Tea Party to "Hitler and Lenin", other analysts also make comparisons to Nazi-movement"
anonymous

The American Public's Indifference to Foreign Affairs - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...s-indifference-foreign-affairs

shared by anonymous on 18 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • At different times, lesser events have transfixed Americans. This week, Americans seemed to be indifferent to all of them. This may be part of a cycle that shapes American interest in public affairs.
  • The United States was founded as a place where private affairs were intended to supersede public life.
  • Public service was intended less as a profession than as a burden to be assumed as a matter of duty -- hence the word "service."
  • ...32 more annotations...
  • In many European countries, the state is at the center of many of the activities that shape private life, but that is less true in the United States.
  • The American public is often most active in public affairs when resisting the state's attempts to increase its presence, as we saw with health care reform. When such matters appear settled, Americans tend to focus their energy on their private lives, pleasures and pains. 
  • Of course, there are times when Americans are aroused not only to public affairs but also to foreign affairs. That is shaped by the degree to which these events are seen as affecting Americans' own lives.
  • There is nothing particularly American in this. People everywhere care more about things that affect them than things that don't.
  • People in European or Middle Eastern countries, where another country is just a two-hour drive away, are going to be more aware of foreign affairs. Still, they will be most concerned about the things that affect them.
  • The United States' geography, obviously, shapes American thinking about the world. The European Peninsula is crowded with peoples and nation-states. In a matter of hours you can find yourself in a country with a different language and religion and a history of recent war with your own. Americans can travel thousands of miles using their own language, experiencing the same culture and rarely a memory of war. Northwestern Europe is packed with countries. The northeastern United States is packed with states.
  • Passing from the Netherlands to Germany is a linguistic, cultural change with historical memories. Traveling from Connecticut to New York is not.
  • American interest is cyclical, heavily influenced by whether they are affected by what goes on. After 9/11, what happened in the Islamic world mattered a great deal. But even then, it went in cycles.
  • It's not that Americans are disinterested in foreign affairs, it's that their interest is finely calibrated. The issues must matter to Americans, so most issues must carry with them a potential threat.
  • The outcome must be uncertain, and the issues must have a sufficient degree of clarity so that they can be understood and dealt with. Americans may turn out to have been wrong about these things in the long run, but at the time, an issue must fit these criteria
  • Context is everything. During times of oil shortage, events in Venezuela might well have interested Americans much more than they did last week. During the Cold War, the left-wing government in Venezuela might have concerned Americans. But advancements in technology have increased oil and natural gas production in the United States. A left-wing government in Venezuela is simply another odd Latin government, and the events of last week are not worth worrying about. The context renders Venezuela a Venezuelan problem.
  • It is not that Americans are disengaged from the world, but rather that the world appears disengaged from them. At the heart of the matter is geography.
  • The American reality is that most important issues, aside from Canada and Mexico, take place across the ocean, and the ocean reasonably is seen as a barrier that renders these events part of a faraway realm.
  • During the Cold War, Americans had a different mindset. They saw themselves in an existential struggle for survival with the communists.
  • One thing that the end of the Cold War and the subsequent 20 years taught the United States was that the world mattered -- a mindset that was as habitual as it was reflective of new realities.
  • Starting in the late 1980s, the United States sent troops to Panama, Somalia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Kuwait. The American public was engaged in all of these for a variety of reasons, some of them good, some bad. Whatever the reasoning, there was a sense of clarity that demanded that something be done.
  • After 9/11, the conviction that something be done turned into an obsession. But over the past 10 years, Americans' sense of clarity has become much more murky, and their appetite for involvement has declined accordingly.
  • More recently, the standards for justifying either type of intervention have become more exacting to policymakers. Syria was not a matter of indifference, but the situation lacked the clarity that justified intervention.
  • The United States seemed poised to intervene and then declined. The American public saw it as avoiding another overseas entanglement with an outcome that could not be shaped by American power.
  • We see the same thing in Ukraine. The United States cannot abide a single power like Russia dominating Eurasia. That would create a power that could challenge the United States. There were times that the Ukrainian crisis would have immediately piqued American interest. While some elements of the U.S. government, particularly in the State Department, did get deeply involved, the American public remained generally indifferent.
  • From a geopolitical point of view, the future of Ukraine as European or Russian helps shape the future of Eurasia. But from the standpoint of the American public, the future is far off and susceptible to interference.
  • (Americans have heard of many things that could have become a major threat -- a few did, most didn't.)
  • This is disconcerting from the standpoint of those who live outside the United States. They experienced the United States through the Cold War, the Clinton years and the post-9/11 era. The United States was deeply involved in everything. The world got used to that.
  • I spoke to a foreign diplomat who insisted the United States was weakening. I tried to explain that it is not weakness that dictates disengagement but indifference. He couldn't accept the idea that the United States has entered a period in which it really doesn't care what happens to his country.
  • The diplomat had lived in a time when everything mattered and all problems required an American position. American indifference is the most startling thing in the world for him.
  • This was the position of American isolationists of the early 20th century.
  • The isolationist period was followed, of course, by the war and the willingness of the United States to "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty," in the words of John F. Kennedy. Until very recently, that sweeping statement was emblematic of U.S. foreign policy since 1941.
  • The current public indifference to foreign policy reflects that shift. But Washington's emerging foreign policy is not the systematic foreign policy of the pre-World War II period. It is an instrumental position, which can adapt to new circumstances and will likely be changed not over the course of decades but over the course of years or months.
  • The sense that private life matters more than public is intense, and that means that Americans are concerned with things that are deemed frivolous by foreigners, academics and others who make their living in public and foreign policy.
  • They care about some things, but are not prepared to care about all things.
  • Whether this sentiment is good or bad is debatable. To me, it is simply becoming a fact to be borne in mind. I would argue that it is a luxury, albeit a temporary one, conferred on Americans by geography.
  • Americans might not be interested in the world, but the world is interested in Americans. Until this luxury comes to an end, the United States has ample assistant secretaries to give the impression that it cares.
  • anonymous on 18 Feb 14
     
    "Last week, several events took place that were important to their respective regions and potentially to the world. Russian government officials suggested turning Ukraine into a federation, following weeks of renewed demonstrations in Kiev. The Venezuelan government was confronted with violent and deadly protests. Kazakhstan experienced a financial crisis that could have destabilized the economies of Central Asia. Russia and Egypt inked a significant arms deal. Right-wing groups in Europe continued their political gains. "
anonymous

Bury the Graveyard - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...bury_the_graveyard

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 27 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Afghanistan, we're told, is "the graveyard of empires."
  • Look, failure is always a possible outcome, especially judging by the way things have been going lately. But if the United States and its allies end up messing up their part of the equation, blame it on their bad policy decisions. Don't blame it on a supersimplified version of Afghanistan's history -- especially if you prefer to overlook the details.
  • One of those myths, for example, is that Afghanistan is inherently unconquerable thanks to the fierceness of its inhabitants and the formidable nature of its terrain. But this isn't at all borne out by the history. "Until 1840 Afghanistan was better known as a 'highway of conquest' rather than the 'graveyard of empires,'" Barfield points out. "For 2,500 years it was always part of somebody's empire, beginning with the Persian Empire in the fifth century B.C."
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Alexander's successors managed to keep the place under their control for another 200 years.
  • Genghis had "no trouble at all overrunning the place," and his descendants would build wide-ranging kingdoms using Afghanistan as a base.
  • But context is everything. Everyone tends to forget what happened after the rout of the British: In 1842 they invaded again, defeating every Afghan army sent out against them.
  • Britain's foreign-policy aim, which it ultimately achieved, was to ensure that Afghanistan remained a buffer state outside the influence of imperial competitors, such as the Russians.
  • But even the most skeptical historians concede that, around 1984 or so, the Soviets were actually getting the better of the mujahideen. It was the U.S. decision to send shoulder-launched anti-aircraft missiles to the Afghan resistance, which robbed the Russian helicopter gunships of their superiority, that allowed the guerrillas to stage a comeback.
  • As Barfield points out, the war against the Soviets was sharply different from previous rebellions in Afghanistan's history as a state, which were relatively fleeting and almost always local affairs, usually revolving around dynastic power struggles. "From 1929 to 1978," he says, "the country was completely at peace."
  • Unfortunately, popular views of the place today are shaped by the past 30 years of seemingly unceasing warfare rather than substantive knowledge of the country's history.
  • Anti-war activists routinely blame the post-2001 Western military presence in the country for the destruction of national infrastructure and the widespread cultivation of opium poppies -- both of which actually date back to the Soviet invasion and the civil war that followed. Others play up the notion of Afghanistan as inherently immune to civilization: "We are not going to ever defeat the insurgency," said Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper on CNN in 2009. "Afghanistan has probably had - my reading of Afghanistan history - it's probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind."
  • One thing is for sure: If we really want Afghans to attain the future they deserve, clinging to a fake version of their history won't help.
  • anonymous on 27 Jul 10
     
    "If you want to figure out a way forward for Afghanistan, fake history is not the place to start. " By Christian Caryl at Foreign Policy on July 26, 2010.
anonymous

A radical pessimist's guide to the next 10 years - The Globe and Mail - 0 views

www.theglobeandmail.com/...singlepage

futurism predictions

shared by anonymous on 11 Oct 10 - Cached
  • 2) The future isn't going to feel futuristic It's simply going to feel weird and out-of-control-ish, the way it does now, because too many things are changing too quickly. The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.
  • 16) “You” will be turning into a cloud of data that circles the planet like a thin gauze While it's already hard enough to tell how others perceive us physically, your global, phantom, information-self will prove equally vexing to you: your shopping trends, blog residues, CCTV appearances – it all works in tandem to create a virtual being that you may neither like nor recognize.
  • North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989 Quebec will decide to quietly and quite pleasantly leave Canada. California contemplates splitting into two states, fiscal and non-fiscal. Cuba becomes a Club Med with weapons. The Hate States will form a coalition.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 11 Oct 10
       
      No it can't. I'm going to trust geography in this instance.
  • anonymous on 11 Oct 10
     
    "The iconic writer reveals the shape of things to come, with 45 tips for survival and a matching glossary of the new words you'll need to talk about your messed-up future." By Douglas Coupland at The Globe and Mail on October 8, 2010.
anonymous

NATO's Lack of a Strategic Concept - 0 views

www.stratfor.com/...1_natos_lack_strategic_concept

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 12 Oct 10 - Cached
  • The gravity of the Soviet threat and the devastation of continental Europe after World War II left the European NATO allies beholden to the United States for defense. Any hope of deterring an ambitious USSR resided in Washington and its nuclear arsenal.
  • the Soviets were confident enough throughout the Cold War to maintain a no-first-use policy on nuclear weapons in the belief that their conventional advantage in armor would yield quick results. NATO simply did not have that luxury.
  • Three major developments changed how different alliance members formulate their threat perception.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • First, 9/11 brought home the reality of the threat represented by militant Islamists.
  • Second, NATO’s enlargement to the Baltic states combined with the pro-Western Georgian and Ukrainian color revolutions — all occurring in a one-year period between the end of 2003 and end of 2004 — jarred Moscow into a resurgence that has altered the threat environment for Central Europe.
  • When the United States does fully reawaken to the Russian resurgence, it will find that only a portion of NATO shares a similar view of Russia.
  • Third, Europe’s severe economic crisis has made Germany’s emergence as the political leader of Europe plain to all.
  • Central Europeans are nervously watching as Paris and Berlin draw closer to Moscow while committed Atlanticists — Western European countries traditionally suspicious of a powerful Germany — such as Denmark, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom want to reaffirm their trans-Atlantic security links with the United States in light of a new, more assertive, Germany.
  • The United States launched proxy wars in Korea and Vietnam largely to demonstrate unequivocally to European governments — and the Kremlin — that the United States was willing to bleed in far corners of the planet for its allies. U.S. troops stationed in West Germany, some of whom were in immediate danger of being cut off in West Berlin, served to demonstrate U.S. resolve against Soviet armor poised on the North European Plain and just to the east of the Fulda Gap in Hesse. Recent years have not seen a reaffirmation of such resolve, but rather the opposite when the United States — and NATO — failed to respond to the Russian military intervention in Georgia, a committed NATO aspirant though not a member. This was due not only to a lack of U.S. forces but also to Germany’s and France’s refusal to risk their relationships with Russia over Georgia.
  • The disparate threat environment is grafted on to a membership pool that can be broadly split into three categories: the United States, Canada and committed European Atlanticists (the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Denmark)
  • Led by the United States, Atlanticists want the alliance oriented toward non-European theaters of operation (e.g., Afghanistan) and non-traditional security threats (think cybersecurity, terrorism, etc.); an increase of commitments from Core Europeans in terms of defense spending; and a reformed decision-making system that eliminates a single-member veto in some situations while allowing the NATO secretary-general to have predetermined powers to act without authorization in others.
  • Led by Germany and France, Core Europe wants more controls and parameters predetermined for non-European deployments (so that it can limit such deployments); a leaner and more efficient alliance (in other words, the freedom to cut defense spending when few are actually spending at the two percent gross domestic product mandated by the alliance); and more cooperation and balance with Russia and more consultations with international organizations like the United Nations (to limit the ability of the United States to go it alone without multilateral approval).
  • The Central Europeans ultimately want NATO to reaffirm Article 5 both rhetorically and via military exercises (if not the stationing of troops); commitment to the European theater and conventional threats specifically (in opposition to the Atlanticists’ non-European focus); and mention of Russia in the new Strategic Concept as a power whose motives cannot be trusted (in opposition of Core European pro-Russian attitudes).
  • The problem with NATO today, and for NATO in the next decade, is that different member states view different threats through different prisms of national interest. Russian tanks concern only roughly a third of member states — the Intermarum states — while the rest of the alliance is split between Atlanticists looking to strengthen the alliance for new threats and non-European theaters of operations and the so-called “Old Europe” that looks to commit as few soldiers and resources as possible toward either set of goals in the next 10 years.
  • Without that looming threat, other matters — other differences — begin to fracture the alliance.
  • During the Cold War, NATO was a military alliance with a clear adversary and purpose. Today, it is becoming a group of friendly countries with interoperability standards that will facilitate the creation of “coalitions of the willing” on an ad-hoc basis and of a discussion forum.
  • anonymous on 12 Oct 10
     
    "Twenty-eight heads of state of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) will meet in Lisbon on Nov. 20 to approve a new "Strategic Concept," the alliance's mission statement for the next decade. This will be NATO's third Strategic Concept since the Cold War ended. The last two came in 1991 - as the Soviet Union was collapsing - and 1999 - as NATO intervened in Yugoslavia, undertaking its first serious military engagement." By Marko Papic at StratFor on October 12, 2010.
anonymous

The 'Israelification' of airports: High security, little bother - 0 views

www.thestar.com/...on-high-security-little-bother

security

shared by anonymous on 16 Nov 10 - Cached
  • First, the screening area is surrounded by contoured, blast-proof glass that can contain the detonation of up to 100 kilos of plastic explosive. Only the few dozen people within the screening area need be removed, and only to a point a few metres away. Second, all the screening areas contain 'bomb boxes'. If a screener spots a suspect bag, he/she is trained to pick it up and place it in the box, which is blast proof. A bomb squad arrives shortly and wheels the box away for further investigation.
  • That's the process — six layers, four hard, two soft. The goal at Ben-Gurion is to move fliers from the parking lot to the airport lounge in a maximum of 25 minutes.
  • In Israel, Sela said, a coordinated intelligence gathering operation produces a constantly evolving series of threat analyses and vulnerability studies. "There is absolutely no intelligence and threat analysis done in Canada or the United States," Sela said. "Absolutely none."
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • "We have a saying in Hebrew that it's much easier to look for a lost key under the light, than to look for the key where you actually lost it, because it's dark over there. That's exactly how (North American airport security officials) act," Sela said. "You can easily do what we do. You don't have to replace anything. You have to add just a little bit — technology, training. But you have to completely change the way you go about doing airport security. And that is something that the bureaucrats have a problem with. They are very well enclosed in their own concept."
  • anonymous on 16 Nov 10
     
    "While North America's airports groan under the weight of another sea-change in security protocols, one word keeps popping out of the mouths of experts: Israelification. That is, how can we make our airports more like Israel's, which deal with far greater terror threat with far less inconvenience. "It is mindboggling for us Israelis to look at what happens in North America, because we went through this 50 years ago," said Rafi Sela, the president of AR Challenges, a global transportation security consultancy. He's worked with the RCMP, the U.S. Navy Seals and airports around the world." By Cathal Kelly at thestar.com on December 30, 2009.
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