Article

2009-03-16 International-UN-NGOs

Center stage for the 21st century: Rivalry in the Indian Ocean

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Posted by ryuge 2009-03-16 06:03|| || Front Page|| [1 views ] Top

The bias is even embedded in mapping conventions: Mercator projections tend to place the Western Hemisphere in the middle of the map, splitting the Indian Ocean at its far edges.

What? Not in any version of the Mercator projection I've ever seen, or am currently able to google. The Mercator usually breaks at the international date line in the west Pacific.

And Burma isn't particularly instable, as far as I can tell. They've got a pack of minor insurgencies, but so does every one of their neighbors other than China.

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2009-03-16 13:28|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/]">[http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/] 2009-03-16 13:28|| Front Page Top

#2 In general, the article seems sound in its basic theme, but distressingly shoddy in its details. The combination of not-quite right lightning-buggishness and rather grand strategical prescriptions makes me doubt the underlying logic of what Kaplan's pushing.

And what he's pushing sounds pretty much like a cats-cradle UN Navy - no navy, no United Nations. It reminds me an awful lot of the UN Navy of SF anime, with their avuncular American admirals and American equipment and multi-national, multi-ethnic casts starring improbably young Japanese leads.

In short, an improbable fiction.

Posted by Mitch H.">Mitch H. 2009-03-16 13:59|| http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/]">[http://blogfonte.blogspot.com/] 2009-03-16 13:59|| Front Page Top

#3 North and South American maps place the Western Hemisphere in the center. European maps place Europe in the center and so on.

Posted by ed 2009-03-16 19:26|| 2009-03-16 19:26|| Front Page Top

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