Piracy Dino-Tracker

We here at Dino have seen the disturbing upward trend in piracy this fall. We are also aware of our constituency’s deep concern about this issue. You may be asking yourself, where is that 20-ton shipment of short-shorts I ordered? How come my Saudi crude oil hasn’t arrived yet? And our Dino-Staff is committed to bringing you answers to these questions.

That is why we are introducing the Piracy Dino-Tracker, so you can get all of your maritime hijacking related news in one condensed post. Check out this week’s entries:

• Somalia’s Pirates Flourish in Lawless Nation
• Pirates Seize 7 Ships in 12 Days
• Hijacked Supertanker Reaches Somali Port
• Thai Fishing Boat Hijacked
• Indian Navy Sinks Pirate Ship

More Name Game

Did anyone notice the switcheroo that NBC pulled in its coverage of the men’s 1500 meter freestyle final in Beijing?

For most of the grueling race, Canadian Ryan Cochrane battled it out with Grant Hackett, the obsessive-compulsive Aussie who refuses to take public transportation or touch handrails in the Chinese capital. In the last 400 meters, Tunisian swimmer Oussama Mellouli pulled out in front, eventually putting 0.7 seconds between himself and silver-medalist Hackett. The gold medal is the first swimming medal that Tunisia has brought home.

But at the beginning of the race, Mellouli was identified as Oussama Mellouli. But after his victory, he was described as “Ous” both in print and by the commentators.

I’m not judging you NBC, I’m just taking note.

Russia Invades South Ossetia

Yesterday, the Russian Federation invaded the semi-autonomous and pro-Russian Georgian province of South Ossetia in response to Georgia’s increased efforts to rein in the area’s de facto independence. Today, Russian officials report that 1,500 civilians have been killed and that they have taken the regional capital of Tskhinvali. Georgian forces shelled the city today as Russia advanced beyond the southern borders of South Ossetia  and into Georgia proper to the town of Gori. The Russian air force bombed the city, which is the birthplace of Josef Stalin.

Georgia has increasingly faced the Kremlin’s wrath, particularly from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, because of the Caucasus state’s attempts at Westernization. Georgia’s President Mikheil Saakashvili is seeking NATO membership for the country and the country had, until Russia’s invasion forced their recall, the third-largest troop presence in Iraq after the United States and Great Britain.

It should be noted that while Dmitri Medvedev is the President of the Russian Federation, and as such is head of Russia’s foreign policy. Mr. Putin, whose office does not have control over foreign policy, was actually the one who announced the beginning of hostilities.

Russia invaded South Ossetia on the opening day of the Olympic games. Both Russia and Georgia are participating in this summer’s games.

Narcotics, Economics, and the War in Afghanistan

The poverty-crime cycle is well-known to the practitioners of the social sciences. It goes something like this:

Step 1: An area is impoverished for a variety of economic and social reasons.

Step 2: On account of the aforementioned poverty, residents start trafficking in narcotics to their neighbors, who use narcotics because of their impoverished condition.

Step 3: Narcotics trade attracts black market businessmen and violence to the area, which prevents property values from rising and thus overall equity remains low and the potential for high-end business, cultural establishments, and families effectively becomes nil.

So far, pretty simple and sensical. We have all personally witnessed this sort of process in American cities, and if we have not, it is certainly easy to imagine as happening.

Until…WHAMMY! Afghanistan defies all social science logic by actually following the lines of rational thought: Afghanis are gaining wealth by selling drugs. Afghani opium farmers are actually becoming prosperous off of the narcotics trade and supporting Hamid Karzai’s government. However, for many years the drug trade in central Asia has been represented as the recourse of poor farmers in the war-torn north. A recent UN report reveals that the largest opium estates are in the southern part of the country, which is relatively free of violence. Who could have guessed that being the number one exporter of opium could make you rich?

Thomas Schweich, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs, details the fight against opium trading, its involvement in Mr. Karzai’s government, and its relation to the war in Afghanistan in this New York Times article. The recommendation? That we, and our allies (including Mr. Karzai and Europe), need to step up to the plate and offer some serious and consistent negative incentives to opium cultivation. Mr. Karzai may be funded by the narcotics trade, but so too is Al Qaida and putting a stopgap in their funding source needs to be a priority.

I can’t wait to go to India

An Indian business school has named a monkey god the official chairman of the school.

I guess Wharton’s reputation is safe for now.

Says the article:

“The position comes with an incense-filled office, a desk and a laptop computer. Four chairs will be placed facing the empty seat reserved for the chairman and all visitors must enter the office barefoot, said Vivek Kangdi, the school’s vice chairman.”

One can only hope they gave the monkey god a MacBook Pro.

Anyhoo, yours truly, the enigmatic and laconic third wheel of this blogging endeavor, is indeed off to India where he shall be spending the next two years working as an overseas recruit for Mahindra & Mahindra, an Indian conglomerate.

Re: Sad

FYI, Kim Jong-Il did indeed turn away World Food Program workers, opting instead to let the politically expendable classes of North Korean society (btw, what is it with these communist putative “classless societies” always sprouting up classes?). Kim Jong-Il’s cost-benefit analysis concluded (rationally, I’m afraid) that infiltration of outside information and influence was a bigger threat to his regime than letting the North Korean lower-class starve to death.

The legitimacy of Kim Jong Il’s North Korea hinges on maintaining a hermetic seal with the outside world in order to uphold the Big Lie™ that North Korea is a) under threat from evil foreign imperialists who want to kill all the North Korans and b) still better off than the rest of the world. Letting a bunch of foreigners in with bushels of food to spare and a clear desire to help North Koreans undercuts both of those pillars on which Kim Jong Il’s regime rests.

Another fun fact: North Korea is the only industrialized nation in history to have suffered mass famine.

Meanwhile, China continues to destroy any remains of the soft power it had so deftly accumulated up until the Tibet debacle by refusing to use its considerable influence over the Burmese junta to get them to accept food aid–instead insisting on the primacy of the military junta’s “sovereignty.”

I wonder if, a century ago, people ever thought we would reach a world of such stunning moral extremes of high and low that we would be in situations in which Western countries were begging other countries to let us give them food.

Sad.

Pretty much the only word I can think of to sum up the situation in Burma.  Great story here about a journalist’s attempt to see the disaster on the ground.

“The whole country is kind of a basket case,” Rivers said. “Combine that with a disaster on this scale and a government that won’t let anyone in — they’re turning a bad situation into … what really is criminal negligence on a massive scale.”

He’s right, of course.  It’s complete and total madness and no one will ever know how many people simply vanish because of the erratic, inane, and evil junta.

Turning back aid agencies?  I don’t even think Kim Jong-Il could be that crazy (then again…) if a disaster of similar devastation struck North Korea.  There’s little point in praying for Burma’s prisoners–sorry, citizens–I’ve heard those are being turned back as well.

So we’re just left with one moping syllable: sad.