Tag: Geography

Closing Thought–19Sep18

We all have those little things that irritate the Hell out of us…..like things not returned to their original location…..or people who use the word “literally” wrong……..mine is when people in authority have NO idea what they are talking about.

And yes I have such a person in mind….

In a clumsy attempt to attack a non-interventionist congressional colleague, Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger got his war geography mixed up — referring to Syrian President Bashar Assad as “the Butcher of Baghdad”.

In an interview with CNN at the weekend, Kinzinger lashed out at his Democratic House colleague, Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, for her controversial decision to meet with Assad in 2017, but ran into some geography trouble when trying to insult the Syrian president.

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/neocon-watch/2018/september/17/republican-congressman-calls-syrian-president-assad-the-butcher-of-baghdad-in-war-geography-fail/

This idiot is a member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs……personally I think anyone on such a committee needs to have a grasp on international reality.  As Randy Newman sez….”they’re Rednecks don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground”.  (Do not take offense…just listen to the words)

All I can say is “bless his heart”…..which is Southern speak for “you’re an asshole”.

Thumbs up to the GOP for putting an ignorant slob on an important committee…..especially these days when a  bit of expertise would be a plus for our foreign policy since nothing positive comes out of the White House.

Sorry I cannot go any further….red face laughter makes it difficult.

Later!

Closing Thought–22Sep17

On The Road To Nambia

We all get tongue tied at times and mispronounce a word or two……but when the president does it then it becomes a a major story…..at least for awhile….

We all remember his new word for the times that he posted on Twitter….”Covete”….seems he has gone and done it again this time the country he was speaking about, Nambia, does not exist…..

The nation that seems to be showing up in most headlines Thursday is Nambia, mainly because it doesn’t actually exist. In a speech to African leaders Wednesday, President Trump referred to “Nambia” not once but twice, first in his general introduction and then later when he mentioned that “Nambia’s health system is increasingly self-sufficient.” As the BBC notes, that led to plenty of online jokes, along with people wondering whether he meant Gambia, Zambia, or Namibia. Turns out, it was the latter. Coverage:

  • For the record: The official White House transcript of the speech made the correction without mention of the mispronunciation. (You can hear for yourself in this video.) But that hasn’t slowed a barrage of coverage making light of the president’s mistake.
  • One example: At CNN, Anderson Cooper referred to Nambia as a “magical land far, far away” in his recap.
  • Namibia 101: The gaffe has led to a slew of civics-type primers about Namibia. Time, for instance, notes the tiny nation of fewer than 2.5 million people is relatively young, having achieved its independence in 1990. Among the factoids it highlights: Namibia is a big producer of diamonds and it has environmental protection written into its constitution.
  • Sliver lining: “If Trump’s blunder was worth anything, it was this: The world now knows about Namibia,” writes Luis Gomez at the San Diego Union-Tribune. He notes that Namibia also is one of the top global producers of uranium.
  • The main point: The gist of Trump’s speech was to tout the region’s economic potential (he said he has friends who go there “trying to get rich”), and a member of the African advocacy group ONE praised the intent. “I know ‘Nambia’ will be the narrative that comes from those remarks, but POTUS is right on this: Africa has tremendous business potential,” tweeted rep Ian Koski.
  • Namibia’s reaction: Officially, nada. No major government official, including President Hage Geingob, who was present, has said anything publicly about the mistake. But the Washington Post reports that Namibians themselves sound a little miffed and are mocking Trump, like so.

To be fair, it he was sticking to the prepared speech then it was more than likely that the err was made by a speech writer and Trump just delivered the faux paux…..I am sure that it was an honest mistake but the country being a fractured as it is this just made a good story….at least for a day.

On to the weekend….everyone have a joyous time….see ya later….chuq

She Made Me Proud Again

Saturday and rain…..and a visit from my granddaughter….she has been very busy with the start of school and her band commitments…but today she is coming by for we need to talk about something she is thinking about doing…..another activity.

She knows that I am a foreign policy wonk and do a lot of international analyses…..she is thinking about joining the Model United Nations Program…..and she wanted my input.

In Model United Nations, students step into the shoes of ambassadors from U.N. member states to debate current issues on the organization’s vast agenda. Student “delegates” in Model United Nations prepare draft resolutions, plot strategy, negotiate with supporters and adversaries, resolve conflicts, and intensely navigate the United Nations rules of procedures, as applied in the respective United Nations bodies, all in the interest of mobilizing “international cooperation” to resolve problems that affect almost every country on Earth. All MUN delegates have to obey these Rules of Procedure, which are a simplified version of those used in the real United Nations conferences. The sessions of the committees will be led by Chairs and Co-Chairs.

Before playing out their ambassadorial roles in Model United Nations, students research global problems to be addressed, drawn from today’s headlines. Model United Nations participants learn how the international community acts on its concerns about topics including peace and security, human rights, the environment, food and hunger, economic development, and globalization. Model United Nations delegates also look closely at the needs, aspirations, and foreign policy of the countries they will represent at the event. In almost all the Model United Nations around the world today, it is a common practice that students (delegates) are not allowed to represent their own countries of origin.

She wants to get the heads up from the old fart…..

I told her that here was also an on-line version of the Model United Nations that she might like to check it out first to get the feel of things that would be expected of her……

Source: Home | Online Model United Nations

What can I say….she NEVER ceases to amaze me.  If all goes well she may well be writing for IST in the future.

Another opinionated chuq….she is already opinionated all she needs is a good solid foundation……I could not ask for more.

That’s my girl!

Closing Thought–13Apr17

They say that “war is the way Americans learn geography”……

I have found in my teaching gigs that the statement is pretty damn accurate.  I had one freshman that did not know the Spain was below France separated by the Pyrenees Mountains……and another that located Vietnam on a blank map in Central Asia…..most did not know the conflict between Palestine and Israel…they could locate Israel but Palestine threw them a curve.  And they are at college level geography…..scary how uninformed our young are these days.

 To illustrate my point……

In 2014, following the Russian invasion of Crimea, The Washington Post published the results of a poll that asked Americans about whether the United States should intervene militarily in Ukraine. Only one in six could identify Ukraine on a map; the median response was off by about 1,800 miles. But this lack of knowledge did not stop people from expressing pointed views. In fact, the respondents favored intervention in direct proportion to their ignorance. Put another way, the people who thought Ukraine was located in Latin America or Australia were the most enthusiastic about using military force there. 

The following year, Public Policy Polling asked a broad sample of Democratic and Republican primary voters whether they would support bombing Agrabah. Nearly a third of Republican respondents said they would, versus 13 percent who opposed the idea. Democratic preferences were roughly reversed; 36 percent were opposed, and 19 percent were in favor. Agrabah doesn’t exist. It’s the fictional country in the 1992 Disney film Aladdin. Liberals crowed that the poll showed Republicans’ aggressive tendencies. Conservatives countered that it showed Democrats’ reflexive pacifism. Experts in national security couldn’t fail to notice that 43 percent of Republicans and 55 percent of Democrats polled had an actual, defined view on bombing a place in a cartoon.

Yeah let’s ignore education and worry about some damn wall…..

That is it……my day has come to a slow end…back with you guys tomorrow…..chuq

Granddaughter Punks The Old Guy

I do not write much of my personal life but from time to time I like to share some of those moments in life that make one proud.

I am a fortunate person….my granddaughter lives less than 2 miles from me and I get to spend time with her often.

Last year she made me a video for Veterans Day about my time in Vietnam and in service to my country….her and her mother were putting some of my pics from those days together in a frame for me…..let me say her vid made this old fart a bit teary.

She had asked me about those days….I told her about the mud,  the rain and the heat….I left out some of the more gruesome parts of those days.  Her interest was for the Monsoons and the mud…..she could not believe how much it rained in those times or just how deep the mud could get thanks to all that rain.

I told her that my unit worked mostly in the Mekong delta of Vietnam and even when it was not raining it was deep mud and rice paddies and WET.  She was grossed out by the leeches that seems to attack from all sides.  To use her words…….eeeeeeewwww!

She came by the other day and showed me this report that she saw in the paper…..

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) – Vietnam’s southern Mekong Delta, the country’s main rice growing region, is experiencing the worst drought and saline intrusion in recent history that has affected more than half a million people, officials said Thursday.

The drought could result in the loss of up to 1 million tons of rice, but is not expected to affect Vietnam’s status as the world’s third largest exporter of grain, said Ma Quang Trung, a department director at the Agriculture Ministry.

The water shortage could drive many farmers into poverty, especially if there are no rains between now and the peak of the dry season in late April, Trung said.

He blamed the drought on the El Nino weather phenomenon and excessive construction of more than 10 hydropower dams on the upper stream of the river.

The level of inland saline intrusion was unprecedented, resulting in damage to some 180,000 hectares (444,780 acres) of paddy fields, Trung said.

This is where she punked me.

She said…..”See if you had waited for 40 years then you would not have had to put up with all that rain and mud.”  “Timing is everything, Popi!”  She laughed out loud and patted herself on the back for being clever.

This tickled her and she went and got a water and some of my cookie stash and returned and grinning from ear to ear for what seemed like hours.

How could I get pissed?  A 12 year old that reads the paper and is clever enough to relate a tale of her grandfather to a situation in the news.

What can I say….she is my girl!

Education, What’s It Good For?

Back in the days when I was younger and more energetic I did some lecturing….I was a popular dude to talk about US foreign policy and wars……especially since it was common knowledge that I spent 2 tours in Southeast Asia…..well I was talking with a class of college freshmen and I began by handing out a blank map of Asia and asked the students to label the countries of China, Vietnam Cambodia and Laos……..after looking at the results I was sadly disappointed because of of 17 students , one knew where Vietnam was only because he also was a vet of that war……more recently I was talking with a group on the same subject and asked them to pick Iraq and Afghanistan off of a blank map….of the 9 students, ZERO could point them out on a map.

I found these results just sad……I mean Vietnam was basically a 10 year war and Afghanistan is going on 13 years and yet it is not important enough for Americans to care……

I decided to do a little research to see if it was just geography that we Americans have a problem with or if it was a symptom of a bigger problem………and in my research I found these things…..

To put the brightest possible spin on this story is to say that three-quarters of Americans are fully aware that the Earth revolves around the sun. The downside, of course, is that means 1 in 4 are in the dark about what Discovery calls “probably the most basic question in science.” The National Science Foundation asked that question and nine others of 2,200 Americans, with the average score on the quiz coming in at 6.5, reports Phys.org.

Some other results noted by NPR:

  • 39% answered correctly that “the universe began with a huge explosion”
  • Fewer than half—48%—agreed that “human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals”
  • 51% knew that antibiotics don’t kill viruses

Meanwhile, about 90% of respondents were enthusiastic about science, and 1 in 3 thought it should get more government funding. The poll was conducted in 2012, but the results were released yesterday at a conference. See page 23 on this PDF for the full survey, which includes older results from other countries.

Or click to read about Bill Nye’s recent debate with a leading creationist.

Studying the data….to me it looks like it is the educational system that is failing…….IMO because we are not teaching students…..we are coaching them on the test process…..there seems to be little to NO emphasis on the retention of data…..and for that I blame the DAMN stupid idea of the privatization of education……we are purposefully dumbing down the population…..privatized education is about the profit not the education…….maximize profits with least amount of effort….that is why it is called capitalism and not a day at the beach……

Now is it intentional?  Or is it just an unfortunate side effect of the privatization process?

Please give me your thoughts……..

Side note—–watch the Bill Nye debate….very interesting……..chuq

The Next Big Debate–2012

The Poke-A In Boca will be all about foreign policy….the battle between Obama and Romney will vie for the hearts and minds of the American voter…..we will hear all about Israel, Iran, Arab Spring, etc etc etc…

But the American people, will they be interested?  Here are a few things about foreign policy and the American voter….

  • 41 percent of Americans believe China is the world’s leading economic power, according to a 2012 Pew poll (the correct answer is the United States, which 40 percent of respondents in the Pew poll selected)
  • 73 percent of Americans could not identify communism as America’s main concern during the Cold War, according to Newsweek, which administered an official citizenship test in 2011 (admittedly, it’s not entirely clear what if any alternative answers — the Soviet Union? Nuclear weapons? — the magazine accepted)
  • 9 percent of Americans frequently worry about becoming a victim of terrorism, according to a 2011 AP-GfK poll (Reason magazine has calculated that the chances of being killed by a terrorist are roughly one in 20 million, and that “in the last five years you were four times more likely to be struck by lightning than killed by a terrorist”)
  • Nearly 25 percent of Americans don’t know that the United States declared its independence from Great Britain, according to a 2011 Marist poll
  • 71 percent of Americans believe Iran already has nuclear weapons, according to a 2010 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll (Israel, the United States, and the International Atomic Energy Agency would beg to differ)
  • 33 percent of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11 as late as 2007, according to a CBS News/New York Times poll (it’s worth noting that the number was down from 53 percent in 2003, and that more recent polls suggest the percentage has continued to decline since 2007)

As the survey shows, Americans are not that knowledgeable on foreign policy…. I do not look for the debate to break any records for viewership….we as a nation are not that interested in foreign policy……we do like winners and people will watch so that they can say they saw the winner work his magic…….who will win?  YOUR guy!  Whoever that may be.

God!  Will this torment ever end?

You Call This Education?

Daily Agitator

I have written a couple times about just how poor our education system is and that it is NOT educating the children…..

Let me reiterate….

The US is lagging behind Kazakhstan in math and science…and in my state the test scores for the US are the bottom…number 50……there is more……recently a study was done in Oklahoma and the high schoolers were asked who was the first president of the US…only 18% (I believe) knew the answer was Washington…

In a recent show Jay Leno went out on the street to ask some geography questions…he aired a couple of the answers…..he asked a woman in her mid twenties what country was our northern neighbor…her answer was Mexico…..Then he asked a male about the same age where Lap Land was?……his answer was is that where Santa lives?……oh, there is more…..finally he asked another same age woman what was the official language of Canada…he let her know there were two……her answer was Canadianese…….

I now asked the question that I have asked before….what the Hell are they teaching these kids in school?

In the South where I live they spend time teach the kids about abstinence in sex….and that has worked so well that my state leads the nation in teen pregnancies…..

I recently gave a lecture at the local community college on foreign policy and I began the class with passing out blank map of the world and ask them to identify Iraq and Afghanistan…..out of 22 students I got 3 accurate answers…..and this was in 2003 when Americans were fighting and dying in the two countries…..

This whole thing scares me…Americans are learning,  if they are learning,  then they are not being taught subjects that need to be taught….they are being taught the superficial stuff that makes them ignorant and hollow…..

We want them to be “good” citizens but we do not teach them the stuff they need to be that “good” citizen….we want them to vote but we do not teach them anything about the system that they are suppose to be in control of when they get to voting age……

Please do not misunderstand…there are a wealth of excellent teachers out there…but unfortunately they can only teach what they are allowed to teach…..the state is failing future generations and we only have ourselves to thank….why?……we find other things that are made a priority and in doing so education suffers badly….