Chimerica or Chindia: Who Will Dominate the 21st Century?

A good read from Evans-Pritchard which covers several of the main issues which will determine which nation(s) will prosper the most in the 21st century.

Some of the key pieces of data highlighted in the article:

• Demographic trends (e.g., China's 1.2 males/female ratio suggest social instability)

• China’s workforce peaks in absolute terms in four years

• Birth rates: Beijing and Shanghai are 1.0, Korea is 1.1, Singapore 1.2, Germany 1.3, Poland 1.3, Italy 1.4, Russia 1.4 with the U.S. coming in around the population replenishment rate of 2.1

• Environmental catastrophe: China's growth rate of 10% is outstripped by 13.5% in GDP equivalent eco-damage)

Inside Job Takes Home Oscar for Best Documentary!

Inside Job Director Charles Ferguson

"Three years after a horrific financial crisis, not a single financial executive has gone to jail — and that's wrong" said Director Charles Ferguson during his Academy Award acceptance speech.

Bravo!

University of Revolution

Good read on the Serbian-based organization CANVAS, which provided some inspiration for the April 6 Egypt revolutionaries, here.

Video: Revolution in Cairo (Frontline PBS)

Superb footage of the revolution in Cairo. If you live outside the U.S. and are unable to view this video check out this link for quick and easy way to watch it.



The Frontline website contains some additional videos, articles and links on this topic that are worth your time.

Podcast: The Immortalization Commission - Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death

Link to podcast here.

During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century science became the vehicle for an assault on death. The power of knowledge was summoned to free humans of their mortality. Science was used against science and became a channel for faith.

John Gray is most recently the acclaimed author of Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, and Straw Dogs: Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals. Having been Professor of Politics at Oxford, Visiting Professor at Harvard and Yale and Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, he now writes full time. His selected writings, Gray’s Anatomy, were published by Penguin in 2009. The Immortalization Commission: Science and the Strange Quest to Cheat Death is published in February 2011.

Chart of the Day - Why Might NATO Intervene in Libya?

Is the reason NATO's heartfelt concern over the rising Libyan death toll? 

Courtesy of CNN, that appears to be the television sound bite to be dished out by NATO member politicians. Here's Simon Henderson (a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy) on the rationale for NATO intervention in Libya:

"What's an acceptable number of civilian deaths? I don't know. Choose your figure," Henderson said. "At the very least, instead of having a casualty list certainly in the hundreds, possibly in the thousands, we don't want a casualty list numbering in the tens of thousands, or 100,000 or so."

With all due respect, Simon, here's a figure for you: not-so-long ago NATO couldn't be bothered to lift a finger when approximately one million people were slaughtered in nearby Rwanda.

The below chart illustrates the real reason Libya's civil war matters more to the NATO powers that be than nearby Rwanda's:

(click to enlarge)

Source: Economist

Podcast: A Palestinian-Israeli Grand Bargain is Off (For Now)

A conversation led by Henry Siegman, president of the U.S./Middle East Project, on how current events in North Africa and the Middle East will impact the Israeli-Palestinian peace effort.

There is also a discussion of the recent U.S. veto of the United Nations resolution on Israel, which closely conformed to President Obama's policy on Israeli settlements in disputed territory. The U.S. stood alone on the Security Council with this veto.

An unfortunate likely consequence of a further delay in advancing Israeli-Palestinian negotiations is more violence.

Henry Siegman is president of the U.S./Middle East Project, an initiative focused on U.S.-Middle East policy and the Israel-Palestine conflict, launched by the Council on Foreign Relations in 1994. The organization was established as an independent policy institute in 2006 under the chairmanship of General Brent Scowcroft. 

The Vital Question on Every Fleeing Dictator's and Oligarch's Mind

Preferred getaway vehicle

Is whether to pack gold, cash or something else entirely (i.e., diamonds, bearer bonds, highly enriched uranium) into your getaway airplane?

Courtesy of commenter Greg S. at the Business Insider, here is the gold vs. cash calculation:

Greg figured a G-5 (a popular business jet) couldn't take off with 'tons of gold'. He estimated that $1 million fits in a small duffel bag and about 100 of those would fill a G5's overhead storage bins. Here's what he came up with:

"Business is slow here, so just for fun I calculated the dollar value of gold and currency that you can stuff into a G5 and still take off with 18 passengers. The useful load of a G5 is 6500lbs and the baggage compartment is listed at 226 cubic feet.

Gold in a G5: [6,500lbs - 18*165 lbs passengers]*16oz/lb*$1300/oz = $73.4 million worth of gold (with no passengers you can roughly double the amount of gold)

Currency in a G5: 226 ft3 * 1728 in3/ft3 / 0.06891 in3 * $100USD = $566.7 million USD (you could still put more in the cabin).

No surprise that it makes sense to leave the gold at home. If you figure that 10-15% of the volume is going to go toward the actual suitcases this means that the entire baggage compartment of that jet was packed full of US cash."

However, commenter Matland calculates that diamonds may be an even better call on a space/weight for value basis:

1 carat diamond = $1,000
1 carat weight about 200 milligrams
31,000 milligrams = 1 ounce
$155,000 worth of diamonds = 1 ounce
$500 million in diamonds = 3,225 ounces12 troy ounces = 1 pound
3,225 ounces =268.75 pounds 

$500 million in diamonds = 268.75 pounds

Just leave out the fat account and bring about four duffle bags of shiny stones.

Libyan Civil War: Tactical Military Assessment

Gaddafi maintains a sizable cache of chemical weapons

Today's NY Times provides some insight into the tactical situation in Libya, including force size, how Gadaffi has structured the military, clan loyalties, and other factors likely to prove crucial in Libya's unfolding civil war:

Colonel Qaddafi, who took power in a military coup, has always kept the Libyan military too weak and divided to do the same thing to him. About half its relatively small 50,000-member army is made up of poorly trained and unreliable conscripts, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Many of its battalions are organized along tribal lines, ensuring their loyalty to their own clan rather than to top military commanders — a pattern evident in the defection of portions of the army to help protesters take the eastern city of Benghazi.

Colonel Qaddafi’s own clan dominates the air force and the upper level of army officers, and they are believed to have remained loyal to him, in part because his clan has the most to lose from his ouster.

Other clans, like the large Warfalla tribe, have complained that they have been shut out of the top ranks, Professor Sullivan noted, which may help explain why they were among the first to turn on Colonel Qaddafi.

Untrusting of his officers, Colonel Qaddafi built up an elaborate paramilitary force — accompanied by special segments of the regular army that report primarily to his family. It is designed to check the army and in part to subdue his own population. At the top of that structure is his roughly 3,000-member revolutionary guard corps, which mainly guards him personally.

Then there are the militia units controlled by Colonel Qaddafi’s seven sons. A cable from the United States Embassy in Libya released by WikiLeaks described his son Khamis’s private battalion as the best equipped in the Libyan Army.

His brother Sa’ad has reportedly used his private battalion to help him secure business deals. And a third brother, Muatassim, is Colonel Qaddafi’s national security adviser. In 2008 he asked for $2.8 billion to pay for a battalion of his own, to keep up with his brothers.

But perhaps the most significant force that Colonel Qaddafi has deployed against the current insurrection is one believed to consist of about 2,500 mercenaries from countries like Chad, Sudan and Niger that he calls his Islamic Pan African Brigade.

Colonel Qaddafi began recruiting for his force years ago as part of a scheme to bring the African nations around Libya into a common union, and the mercenaries he trained are believed to have returned to Sudan and other bloody conflicts around Africa. But from the accounts of many witnesses Colonel Qaddafi is believed to have recalled them — and perhaps others — to help suppress the uprising.

And from the WSJ are details on Gaddafi's mustard gas and other chemical-weapons agents.

I'm wondering how many of the nearly 75% of U.S. $100 bills which circulate outside the U.S. are being handed out by Gaddafi to (among others) his Pan African Brigade?

Photos of the Day: Infamous Dictator-Democracy Handshakes

Outrage du jour

Former U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair & Libyan Dictator Gaddafi 

Current French President Sarkozy and Gaddafi

Gaddafi and Current U.S. President Obama

Perhaps history's most ironic...

Meet Your (Future) Maker Moment: Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein

... and arguably the most infamous:

Appeasement: UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler