"My working and personal relationship with President Obama is marked by growing trust. I appreciate this. I carefully studied his address to the nation on Tuesday. And I would rather disagree with a case he made on American exceptionalism, stating that the United States’ policy is “what makes America different. It’s what makes us exceptional.” It is extremely dangerous to encourage people to see themselves as exceptional, whatever the motivation. There are big countries and small countries, rich and poor, those with long democratic traditions and those still finding their way to democracy. Their policies differ, too. We are all different,but when we ask for the Lord’s blessings, we must not forget that God created us equal." Russian President Vladimir Putin's Op Ed in New York Times
Clearly, Mr. Putin does not like the fact that the United States considers itself exceptional. But what does "exceptional" mean?
To me, "exceptional" is just another word for "special". I don't know of any nation that doesn't think they are special in some way and they use it to whip up their own brand of nationalism.
In the case of United States, however, there are genuine reasons based on rational data and facts that establish US as "special" in multiple dimensions. The US is a multi-dimensional hyper-power the likes of which the world has not seen.
The current world order and its institutional framework were architected by post-WW II American leaders. Establishment of international institutions like the United Nations and its multiple agencies, the World Bank, IMF, GATT and WTO was spearheaded by Americans.
Not only is the US the biggest military power many times larger than number two Russia, the US dollar is the world's unchallenged currency which is used for the bulk of international trade and as reserve currency by central banks around the globe. The US is the world's largest economy and the biggest trading partner of most of the countries of the world. The US also boasts the world's top entrepreneurs, most innovative companies and bulk of the top universities with the lion's share of Nobel prizes. The US leadership in wide range of technologies and industries is unquestionable. And the US lead is growing, not shrinking with new developments.
In spite of its great technological advances, the US still retains many vestiges of its Wild West. With its powerful gun-rights advocates in many western, mid-western and southern states, the US is still a gun-slinging frontier society in many ways which makes it jealously guard its exceptional status in the world.
The US seeks to avoid the fate of other great empires of the past which were brought down by barbarians and desert tribesmen over the centuries.
Here's a excerpt of a piece by NY Times Nobel Laureate economist-columnist on Ibn Khaldun's lessons for established powers: "Desert tribesmen, he argued, always have more courage and social cohesion than settled, civilized folk, so every once in a while they will sweep in and conquer lands whose rulers have become corrupt and complacent. They create a new dynasty — and, over time, become corrupt and complacent themselves, ready to be overrun by a new set of barbarians...I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to apply this story to Microsoft, a company that did so well with its operating-system monopoly that it lost focus, while Apple — still wandering in the wilderness after all those years — was alert to new opportunities. And so the barbarians swept in from the desert".
US intelligence analyst and author George Friedman in his book "The Next 100 Years" describes the United States as "young and barbaric" with the barbarian instincts to fight off most threats, including those from the rag-tag bands of tribesmen and barbarians who have toppled great empires of the past like the Roman empire, the Byzantine empire, the Persian empires, the Umayyid empire, the Abbasid empire and the Soviet empire.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Is America Young and Barbaric?
US Dollar as International Trade and Reserve Currency
Godfather Metaphor for Uncle Sam
Seeing Bin Laden's Death in Wider Perspective
US Drones and Cyber Warfare
US Dominates List of World's Top Universities
48 comments:
Friedman is blind to demographic changes, not to mention no job prospects future.
US is showing signs of corruption, complacency and cronyism.
http://www.businessinsider.com/everywhere-i-go-i-see-jobs-that-will-be-replaced-by-robots-2013-9
Everywhere I Look I See Jobs That Will Be Replaced By Robots
http://citiwire.net/columns/cities-cant-ignore-big-chains-poverty-wages/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=dispatch
Cities Can’t Ignore Big Chains’ Poverty Wages
http://www.publicintegrity.org/2013/09/10/13326/ex-wall-street-chieftains-living-large-post-meltdown-world
Ex-Wall Street chieftains living large in post-meltdown world
After the Meltdown: Part one in our series looking at the impact of the financial crisis of 2008
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/09/13/want-to-jump-start-the-economy-bring-back-labor-un.aspx
Want to Jump-Start the Economy? Bring Back Labor Unions
http://ourfuture.org/20130913/a-must-see-movie-inequality-for-all-with-robert-reich-opens-sept-27
A Must-See Movie, “Inequality for All” with Robert Reich, Opens Sept. 27
http://ourfuture.org/20130912/conservative-states-starve-public-schools-feed-rich-with-tax-cuts
Conservative States Starve Public Schools, Feed Rich With Tax Cuts
http://ourfuture.org/20130910/capitalism-failed-cronyism-and-corruption-rule
Capitalism Failed; Cronyism and Corruption Rule
http://ourfuture.org/20130908/remember-when-people-had-pensions
Remember When People Had Pensions?
Mayraj: "Friedman is blind to demographic changes, not to mention no job prospects future."
Every time there's talk of the US going down the drain, America re-invents itself. The last time this happened was in 1980s when everyone said Japan would soon own US. Look what happened to Japan, and how the US economy boomed in 1990s while Japan had a lost decade and it has continued to lose ground since.
As to demographics, the first generation poor immigrants have always worked hard and become highly productive within a generation. It happened to the Irish, the Italians, the East Europeans, the Koreans, the Vietnamese etc etc. It's happening with Latinos now. Immigration strengthens US by maintaining sufficient population growth and vitality in society to drive it to new heights.
The 1980s revention was built on debt. America is still dealing with its ramification as demography changes and so does jobs picture.
Mayraj: "The 1980s revention was built on debt. America is still dealing with its ramification as demography changes and so does jobs picture."
US goes through debt cycles too. US owed 113% of its GDP after WW II. It then reduced it to 30% of GDP in 1970s. Now it's approaching 100%, still less than it was in 1940s. The fact that US controls the world's most important currency makes it easier to deal with it through monetary policy.
The re-invention in 1980s was driven mainly by information technology revolution, not debt. The advent of personal computers made a significant contribution to growth in productivity and wages.
There are plenty of jobs today but there's gap in skills which I expect will be reduced over time with the spread of and increased access to technology.
another good piece. In the last para, the huge British empire is not in the list. The reduction and ultimate disappearance of the global British empire was a significant part of modern day changing world order.
Syria ’s Assad May Be Losing Control Over His Deadly Militias.. rise of Shabiha with chem weapons?
One regime official tells TIME that what bothers him most about the long-term prognosis for Syrian stability is not the collapse of the regime, but the rise of Assad’s militias, commonly referred to as shabiha. Says the official: “After this crisis, there will be a 1,000 more crises — the militia leaders. Two years ago they went from nobody to somebody with guns and power. How can we tell these shabiha to go back to being a nobody again?”
http://world.time.com/2013/09/11/syrias-assad-may-be-losing-control-over-his-deadly-militias/
^^RH: "Syria ’s Assad May Be Losing Control Over His Deadly Militias..."
---------
Just like our Khakis lost control of our Religious Militants....
http://alturl.com/xtfrn
....with DEADLY consequences for Pakistan.
What Putin is saying is that Russia has produced at least as much new knowledge as the US. Long before US internetworking boom, Russia was busy communicating over the wires and wireless using their own form of networking. They were the first to send a satellite into space, a man, and a woman in space, they more nukes, and their airplanes are far superior in many ways than the US planes.
What sets aside the US, as you said, is its currency domination. THe only reason US is still able to buy and run a negative bottom line, is its ability to print greenbacks. Its GDP and PPP being equal, it does have lower PPP than, for example, the Chinese.
Shams:"What Putin is saying is that Russia has produced at least as much new knowledge as the US..."
Technology gap between the US and its nearest competitors is so huge and growing that it can not be overcome any time soon. US CIA led long distance covert war with cyber weapons and remote controlled robots alone keep enemies at bay.
Technology gap between the US and its nearest competitors is so huge and growing that it can not be overcome any time soon.
That is a very generic statement what technology:
Cars:Germany
Textiles:Italy
Semiconductors:Japan
Armaments:Russia/Europe
Space Technology:Russia
Mechanical Engineering:Germany
There are very few areas of technology where the US is the absolute leader with no competition in sight...
Overall yes because of its size and economy...but not sector by sector...
The "exceptional" aspects of the US can be analyzed as follows:
1- US is a hyper power but the reasons for its rise to this position after World War 2 are as follows:
- WW2 was neither planned nor initiated by the US; in fact it wanted to keep out of it till Japanese attached US bases prompting it to join the Allied forces. WW1 and WW2 were initiated and fought by the then superpowers Britain, France and Germany. However, at the conclusion of WW2, the strength of all three was decimated leaving the US as a super power. Greatness was thus thrust on the US as a result of WW2, which can be attributed to good luck.
- Till 1990s US and USSR were two super powers till the demise of USSR which is attributed to the lack of will and understanding demonstrated by Gorbachev, who incidentally was a Georgian. Had it been a leader in the traditional Russian mold like Putin, USSR may not have collapsed as it did leaving the US as a single world super power. In a way, a similar lack of will and understanding is being shown by Kayani which may lead to similarly disastrous results for Pakistan. So the rise to hyper power status can also be attributed to good luck.
We can, therefore, conclude that US is "exceptionally" lucky.
2- In terms of quality of human resources and system productivity, US does lead in innovation but other equally important sectors of manufacturing and services have equally (or more) talented nations such as Japan, Germany, Korea and China. Since US is the hyper power, it can afford to be arrogant and keep saying that they are the most talented people in the world, but in fact there are some equally (if not more) talented people in other parts of the world too. So Americans cannot be called "exceptionally" talented people in the world.
3- When USSR was intact, US and Western Europe were following a very focused anti-USSR policy. US started operating an independent foreign policy only since becoming a hyper power about 20 years ago. Immediately it faced an uphill task of maintaining it, also an expensive undertaking, so US started looking for captive resources and markets to fund these costs while still maintaining its prestige. The foreign policy it has been coming up with is generally very illogical and irrational, probably second only to the domestic policy making of Pakistan.
US can, therefore, qualify as "exceptional" in terms of being lucky and when it comes to illogical and irrationality in making foreign policy.
Suhail: "Americans cannot be called "exceptionally" talented people in the world"
Really?
The results over the last century show it.
Almost all of the fundamental breakthroughs have come from the US.. from light-bulbs to electricity, from airplanes to computers, from semiconductor chips to software, from human DNA and genome to the Internet...the list goes on and on.
It's no wonder the world's top universities are in the US which attract the best and the brightest from around the world who come to study and settle in America.
It's no wonder the world's top tech companies are all American.
It's no wonder that the US is the world's biggest economy...much bigger than the #2 China.
It's no wonder the US is the world's #1 hard power (military) and #1 soft power (media and entertainment).
All of the above can't simply be attributed to "being lucky and when it comes to illogical and irrationality in making foreign policy".
You are confusing the Americans' marketing power due to their dollar's influence on the world with US' exceptionalism. You are confusing GDP with financial strength. American GDP is high because the garbage collecting janitor here is paid $75,000 per year, which makes the services component of GDP - but what is the service? When putting together the PPP numbers, only few factors, purchasing power - is taken into account. The unreasonably high payout for services is not taken into account, which puts US high on GDP, and its PPP is the same as its GDP because it is all in $$. If you take the equity in payouts into account, I would say Russia and China are well past the US now.
Americans are all immigrants. There is no such thing as "exceptional" Americans.
Following up on his designs that he developed in Germany, the first powered flight was done by Gustav Weisskopf in 1901, two years before the famed Wright brothers, who unknowingly claimed that they were the first ones to fly in 1903. Even a Scientific American printed about Gustav in 1904. The media was controlled by British, and later by the Jews, who didn't want to see a German name there. But State of Connecticut has recognized Gustav and so have Germany and Australia.
Jet engines were invented by Germany and used during WWII, so were the missiles and rockets. In fact, Tipu Sultan is the first one known to have used missiles in his war against the Brits.
You are confusing Ethernet's protocol from DARPA with an invention of internetworking. Networking was hugely common in Russia and Europe, some using wired and others using wireless networking. I told you before that Russia did not control Sputnik using brain waves - they used microwaves network (Marrconi invented radio in Italy). You are confusing Internet with network, whereas Internet is merely an "application" and there is nothing fundamental about it.
DNA was discovered in 1960s by a British visiting Marin County and working there.
The US did not invent the nukes - the Germans did.
It is not just a coincidence that cars are known as AUTOS or AUTOMOBILE. Benz and Daimler, Diesel and Motor -- these names did not come from the US (or UK).
Many medical advances have been developed in other countries - heart and organ transplants, Radio-keratotomy (RK), bone rebuilding, are techniques that were foreign to the US.
I have said this before - Russia, France, China and Japan make aircraft that compete or beat the Americans'. In a recent competition in India, the Indians found the F16s and other US planes lacking in capabilities compared to the European Advanced Jet. You should look at the largest airplane on this planet - it is a Russian Antonov An-225 Mriya.
Russia built its own Space Shuttle named Buran, but then discontinued its production and use because they found it inefficient in purpose and unsafe in reentry by ineherent factors, favoring instead using rocket transporters. Americans continued their use of Space Shuttle for its "show and awe", and lost three of them in crashes. Americans now use a rocket transporter as well.
You should not confuse software development ability with the software market. As far as ability is concerned, Iranians brought down American RQ drone using their own software. Most of the software these days is developed in India, China, Ukraine, Russia, Europe, etc.
Shams:
Your claims are similar to many others' who believe they invented everything under the sun.
The reality today speaks for itself.
The US has transformed the world in our own lifetime in every way possible...be it agriculture, banking, biotechnology, communications, entertainment, information technology, manufacturing, robotics, etc etc. Others contribution pale in comparison to those of the United States.
The US technology has changed almost every facet of modern life.
And this is just for starters. The stuff that's in the R&D labs is far more transformational..with things in nanotechnology, 3D printing, wearable computing, self-driving all-electric cars, etc etc.
The fact is that the US is light years ahead of all others today. And it's not an accident.
A 2006 report from the London-based Center for European Reform, "The Future of European Universities" points out that the United States invests 2.6 percent of its GDP in higher education, compared with 1.2 percent in Europe and 1.1 percent in Japan. In addition, there are many ingredients that account for the significant edge the Americans continue to have over others. These include a)America's education system that emphasizes openness, free inquiry, creativity, reasoning, research, and debate rather than submissive rote learning, b) the culture of risk-taking backed by the availability of risk capital from venture capital firms, c) massive government investments in basic research, higher education, infrastructure, and human development, and d)insatiable demand for new ideas, products and services in the marketplace.
Your use of verbiage "The US has transformed" speaks of the past, not the current situation. When was the last time you bought a product that said "Made in USA", other than a step ladder or lumber?
Little do you know that Nanotechnology is a Japanese invention, first used by Norio Taniguchi. Some people say that a Jew (yes, JEW) named Richard Feynman "talked" about it, but that is shit because taling is cheap, and Richard Feynman did not even talk about it conceptually.
As for robotics, nearly 100% of manufacturing in Japan is done by robots, not the same in the US.
As for medicine, you need to know that today, 100% of transplant meds are originated in Japan (Cellcept, Tacrolimus (Prograf)), and so on. Due to FDA limitations, more and more medicine research is now being done in Japan, India, Russia, and Germany. The US pharmas are just buying the rights after the research is already done.
Exactly what parts of communication does the US manufacture now? When was the last time you saw a Made in USA at Fry's, Costco, Best Buy, or any other place?
Stop pushing yourself as an American cowboy. For my own benefit, I want to see the US succeed. But get real, Bombing Syria is not the way to do that.
Shams: "..When was the last time you bought a product that said "Made in USA", other than a step ladder or lumber?"
Americans own almost all of the intellectual property for the stuff made overseas and sold here. And the lion's share of value and profits goes to American investors.
Overseas manufacturing is set up by American companies using American technology with American investment as a way to save money and increase return to investors.
It's wage arbitrage, pure and simple.
Meanwhile new revolutionary manufacturing techniques like 3D printing are being pioneered in the US.
Almost all of the pharmas today are the result of US R&D done in the United States. US NIH is the biggest funder of new research in medicine.
Syria is nothing more than rat's nuts in the overall scheme of things. Putin is even less significant.
the Indians found the F16s and other US planes lacking in capabilities compared to the European Advanced Jet.
That is because the F-16 is a 1970s fourth generation jet being phased out by the USAF whereas the EF 2K and Rafale are entering service and fifth generation just entering service.Compare these to the F-22 and they won't know what hit them.
Bottom Line:In Aerospace tech US rules,there are specific subsets where others are equally good if not better.
Aerodynamics-Russia,Avionics-Israel,Engines-UK but overall the US rules!
The fact that it does not sell bleeding edge stuff like the Europeans who are desperate for foreign sales to stabilize production lines doesn't mean its tech is inferior.
Indian American crowned Miss USA...
your views?
Anon: "Indian American crowned Miss USA...
your views?"
The selection of Nina Davuluri, an Indian-American girl, as Miss USA is a celebration of America as a nation of immigrants.
There was a similar moment back in 2010 when Rima Fakih, an Arab-American Muslim from Michigan was crowned Ms. America.
There has also been a backlash to this news from some hateful bigots reminding us that racism and xenophobia still persist in America.
Anon: "the Indians found the F16s and other US planes lacking in capabilities compared to the European Advanced Jet."
European stuff may look good on paper but the Libya operation in 2011 showed that Europeans are much less effective in combat than Americans.
Here's an excerpt from an Economist magazine piece on Libya:
America was visibly reluctant to get involved, let alone lead the action. And, having helped to knock out Libya's air defences and conduct some of the initial air-to-ground strikes, it pulled back from the front-line operations. But America's role remains essential, not least in providing air-to-air refuelling, as well as intelligence and reconnaissance for the European allies.
The war in Libya, far from heralding a new era of European activism, has once again highlighted the limits of Europe's military power, as Robert Gates pointed out today in his valedictory speech in Brussels. He is not the first American defence secretary to complain about low, often declining, defence spending in Europe (The Economist recently ran an interesting chart). Nor is it the first time Mr Gates himself has bemoaned the weakness of European allies. Last year he said the "pacification" of Europe, at first a great achievement, had gone too far and posed a threat to Western security. But his comments today were delivered with the sharpness of a man who knows he is at the end of his career and no longer needs to beg for favours. The speech is worth reading in full.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2011/06/libya-europe-and-future-nato
3-D Printing was first implemented by Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute, Japan. In 1984, Robert Hull, an American, worked off of Hideo's work. I was working at Impell in 1983 when we looked at the solid modeling and 3-D printing, when I was using Anvil 4000 and CADDS 4x and decided to do our own work, which is what I did in creating a solids modeling "interference" checking package for plant design. We sold the product to Boeing, Lockheed, and Chevron.
Shams: "3-D Printing was first implemented by Hideo Kodama of Nagoya Municipal Industrial Research Institute, Japan. In 1984, Robert Hull, an American, worked off of Hideo's work."
Hideo Kodama published a paper. Chuck Hull actually built the first 3D printer.
Today, the world's top 2 companies leading the 3D printing revolution are both American: Chuck Hull's 3D Systems and Stratasys.
European stuff may look good on paper but the Libya operation in 2011 showed that Europeans are much less effective in combat than Americans.
Not really,US has the whole 9 yards satelites,AWACS,smart munitions etcetc
on a plane to plane comparison a EU fifth generation Rafale or Eurofighter will beat US fourth generation F-16 EVERY TIME on almost every objective metric...
Yup its like expecting a us third gen f4 to compete with rusian 4th gen mig 29.u can only compare planes of the same generation.us fifth gen is not available with tot.f22 is export banned and jsf is not gonna get u any tech transfer.hence the non offer in mrca.
Here's a NY Times story on chemical weapons used in Syria:
Details buried in the United Nations report on the Syrian chemical weapons attack point directly at elite military formations loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, some of the strongest findings to date that suggest the government gassed its own people.
The inspectors, instructed to investigate the attack but not to assign blame, nonetheless listed the precise compass directions of flight for two rocket strikes that appeared to lead back to the government’s elite redoubt in Damascus, Mount Qasioun, which overlooks and protects Mr. Assad’s presidential palace and where his Republican Guard and the army’s powerful Fourth Division are entrenched.
“It is the center of gravity of the regime,” said Elias Hanna, a retired general in the Lebanese Army and a lecturer on strategy and geopolitics at the American University of Beirut. “It is the core of the regime.”
In presenting the data concerning two rocket strikes — the significance of which was not commented upon by the United Nations itself — the report provides a stronger indication than the public statements to date of intelligence services of the United States, France or Britain that the Syrian military not only carried out the attack, but apparently did so brazenly, firing from the same ridges from which it has been firing barrages of high-explosive conventional munitions for much of the war.
Looming over a tense capital and outlying neighborhoods bristling with anger and fear, Mount Qasioun is Damascus’s most prominent military position. It is also a complex inseparably linked to the Assad family’s rule, a network of compounds and positions occupied by elite units led by members of the president’s inner circle and clan.
The units based on the mountain are “as close to the Assad regime as it’s going to get,” said Emile Hokayem, an analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Mr. Hokayem added that theories that the chemicals had been launched by a rebel mole seeking to discredit the government were unlikely because of the solidity and tight control of those units.
Mr. Assad’s government and its ally Russia have continued to claim publicly that Syrian rebels were responsible for the attacks, which killed hundreds of people, many of them children, in the most lethal chemical warfare attack in decades. But the United Nations data, if accurate, would undercut that claim and appear to erase some of the remaining ambiguity.
Rebel forces have never penetrated the major military installations of Mount Qasioun. In tactical and technical terms, they would almost certainly have been unable to organize and fire sustained and complex barrages of rockets from there undetected.
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Speaking on Tuesday in New York, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, took pains not to express publicly any conclusions about culpability that could be drawn from the report, noting that assigning blame was explicitly beyond the United Nations’ mandate.
The investigators’ mission, Mr. Ban noted, “is to find out facts and whether or not chemical weapons were used; if used, to what extent.”
“It is,” he added, “for others to decide whether to pursue this matter further to determine responsibility and accountability.”
Pressed later about whether he thought those responsible should be referred to the International Criminal Court, Mr. Ban was unequivocal. “The international community is firm and I am firm that any perpetrators who have used these chemical weapons under any circumstances under any pretext must be brought to justice,” he said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/18/world/middleeast/un-data-on-gas-attack-points-to-assads-top-forces.html
http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/70d26288-1faf-11e3-8861-00144feab7de.html?ftcamp=crm%2Femail%2F2013917%2Fnbe%2FInTodaysFT%2Fproduct&siteedition=intl#axzz2fDLxdDts
Robot cars that can take over most of the driving from their human handlers will be ready for the road within three years, according to Elon Musk, the US electric cars and space entrepreneur whose bold predictions have come to embody an ambitious new era in tech industry thinking.
The attempt to build a driverless car would see Tesla overtake Google, which three years ago fired the starting gun in this technological race but has since struggled to find a partner to build the cars.
It also marks the latest attempt by Mr Musk to gain a technological jump on the rest of the industry after his company’s luxury sedan, the Model S, became the first profitable electric vehicle this year.
“We should be able to do 90 per cent of miles driven within three years,” he said. Mr Musk would not reveal further details of Tesla’s autonomy project, but said it was “internal development” rather than technology being supplied by another company. “It’s not speculation,” he said.
The company is currently advertising a new job for an engineer “responsible for developing vehicle-level decision-making and lateral and longitudinal control strategies for Tesla’s effort to pioneer fully automated driving” on its website.
A number of companies including Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Continental have experimented with self-driving car technology.
Japanese carmaker Nissan said last month that it would release a fully autonomous car by 2020, though Mr Musk said he believed that the idea of creating a car that would control itself under all circumstances was too ambitious.
“My opinion is it’s a bridge too far to go to fully autonomous cars,” Mr Musk said in an interview with the Financial Times. “It’s incredibly hard to get the last few per cent.”
He said, however, that Tesla was working on a plan that would allow drivers to turn on a form of “auto-pilot” in most situations that would allow the vehicle to take over control.
Tesla, which expects to sell 21,000 of its Model S sedans this year, has seen excitement over its industry-leading battery technology and plans to build a more mass-market electric car send its share price up more than 400 per cent so far in 2013, to a market capitalisation of more than $20bn.
In a nutshell, what Indians are saying (many openly and some with chagrin) is that Davuluri is too dark, too dusky, for the conventional standards of Indian beauty. In India a light skin—“fair” is the word most Indians deploy in the vocabulary of beauty—is prized in women, and lightness of skin is elevated above all other facial features as a signifier of beauty. It matters not one whit that Davuluri’s physiognomy is immensely pleasing to the eye, that her smile could light up a small cricket stadium, that her lustrous hair is a thing to marvel at, because her epidermis is far too many shades removed from “fairness” for her to be considered beautiful. This matter is, in the Indian dialectic of beauty, nonnegotiable. In matters of pigment, Indians can be as dogmatic as party chieftains once were in Stalin’s Moscow.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/17/miss-america-meet-india-s-dark-side.html
That gorgeous chocolate (skin tone of Ms USA Nina Davuluri) may play as exotic in the West, but in India, we prefer our beauty queens strictly vanilla — preferably accessorised with blue contact lenses....God forbid, we compromise our cultural biases just to win an international beauty contest.
http://www.firstpost.com/living/miss-america-nina-davuluri-too-indian-to-ever-be-miss-india-1111477.html
https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/09/18-6
Taking Exception to Exceptionalism
Other nations, of course, believe much the same thing, but not with the broad sweep of the claim of America, where we do things on a grander scale.
When people are misinformed, giving them facts to correct those errors only makes them cling to their beliefs more tenaciously.
http://www.salon.com/2013/09/17/the_most_depressing_discovery_about_the_brain_ever_partner/
http://madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com/2013/09/18/loss-of-economic-exceptionalism/#more-3526
Loss of Economic Exceptionalism
http://madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com/2013/07/30/inequality-hits-home/#more-3449
Inequality Hits Home
http://madeinamericathebook.wordpress.com/2013/08/26/economic-equality-1774-and-beyond/#more-3500
Economic Equality, 1774 and Beyond
Most Muslim countries did remain semi-colonized, a minority did get independent (Malaysia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, and Indonesia, etc.). Iraq, Libya, and Egypt have already been re-colonized.
Gen. Nasser kicked the Brits, French, and the US off the Suez Canal.
Mahatir Mohammad kicked the US Navy off from Straits of Malacca.
Ayatullah Khomeini kicked the US out of Iran.
Assad senior kicked everyone out from Syria.
Iraq kicked everyone out under Saddam.
Qaddafi kicked everyone out but kept the 3rd rate Europeans (Italians) in to take the oil out.
Shams: "a minority did get independent (Malaysia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, and Indonesia, etc.). Iraq, Libya, and Egypt have already been re-colonized."
It was all temporary. The US always has the last laugh.
None are truly independent. Attempts have had temp success but failed. Iran is now begging to have sanctions lifted. Syria is in deep turmoil as in Lebanon. Indonesia and Malaysia are heavily dependent on US corporations and beholden to US power and influence in ASEAN.
You lack basic understanding of the current world order with US at its center as the the super hegemon and everyone else allowed a subservient role around it. When anyone gets out of line the US punishes them to bring them back in line and play their assigned role. When will this change? Not in our lifetime or even in our children's lifetime.
Look at it this way, if China and India could become a real independent Nations in our life time then there is a chance that other Nations in our children's lifetimes may become independent too.
Moin: " if China and India could become a real independent Nations in our life time then there is a chance that other Nations in our children's lifetimes may become independent too."
China and India are no more independent than the rest of the world when it comes to the global impact of US power and influence.
They both rely on US dollar as trade and reserve currency and on US markets to sustain their economies.
A recent hint by the US Fed of tapering its $85 billion a month bond purchases sent the Indian rupee reeling and its economy in turmoil which still continues.
Major US policy decisions have a huge impact on the entire world.
I suppose your narrative of the strength of US $ has something to do about rc-colonization of Muslim countries, such as Nigeria
Shams: "I suppose your narrative of the strength of US $ has something to do about rc-colonization of Muslim countries, such as Nigeria"
It's not just about Muslims; it's about the whole world, including major "emerging economies" like India and China.
Here's an Economist mag report comparing entrepreneurship in Europe and America:
standing before Germany’s newly minted entrepreneurs is a series of hurdles that have so far kept them from getting bigger and changing the world. The last German tech start-up to become a global star is SAP—founded in 1972. German firms, both the biggest ones and the much-lauded, family-owned Mittelstand, are innovative themselves. But founders dream of German Googles, and the government is keen to encourage them. The barriers are coming down. Unlike the Berlin Wall, however, they will not tumble quickly.
One problem is that popular attitudes towards entrepreneurship are lukewarm (see chart). Just under 50% of Germans polled by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) agreed that starting a business was an attractive idea. Compare that with attitudes in Germany’s neighbours: 65% in France, 68% in Poland and 79% in the Netherlands had positive views. Germans are no more begrudging of success than the others. The problem seems to be that few start-ups achieve it.
Lack of finance is a big reason. Small companies need angel investors and venture capital to survive and grow. But these sources of capital are puny in Germany. Deutsche Bank reckons that there are as many venture-capital investments in Germany as in America (11-12 per million inhabitants). But the average investment in Germany is just €780,000 ($1m), compared with €6m in America. Lars Hinrichs, founder of Xing, a social network for entrepreneurs (and a growing public company), says that a big reason is that successful entrepreneurs do not become investors themselves, as they do in Silicon Valley.
German venture capitalists are cautious. Rather than bet on many companies in the hope that one will grow explosively, they invest more selectively and expect a high proportion to break even within 18 months. Germany’s banks—the local savings banks and co-operatives that fund many traditional companies—are hesitant to lend to untested digital entrepreneurs.
Fear of failure is another dampener. It would deter 42% of Germans from starting a company, GEM’s polling finds. That is far behind Japan’s 53%, but well ahead of the 32% in the United States, where having flopped a few times is a point of pride. Mr Nohroudi says “there’s no one [in Germany] asking ‘what did you learn?’” Instead, when his first company was shuttered, friends urged him to go back to the comfortable university job he had held....
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21587209-vigorous-start-up-scene-has-yet-produce-its-first-big-breakthrough-slow-climb
Here's an Economist mag report comparing entrepreneurship in Europe and America:
standing before Germany’s newly minted entrepreneurs is a series of hurdles that have so far kept them from getting bigger and changing the world. The last German tech start-up to become a global star is SAP—founded in 1972. German firms, both the biggest ones and the much-lauded, family-owned Mittelstand, are innovative themselves. But founders dream of German Googles, and the government is keen to encourage them. The barriers are coming down. Unlike the Berlin Wall, however, they will not tumble quickly.
One problem is that popular attitudes towards entrepreneurship are lukewarm (see chart). Just under 50% of Germans polled by the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM) agreed that starting a business was an attractive idea. Compare that with attitudes in Germany’s neighbours: 65% in France, 68% in Poland and 79% in the Netherlands had positive views. Germans are no more begrudging of success than the others. The problem seems to be that few start-ups achieve it.
Lack of finance is a big reason. Small companies need angel investors and venture capital to survive and grow. But these sources of capital are puny in Germany. Deutsche Bank reckons that there are as many venture-capital investments in Germany as in America (11-12 per million inhabitants). But the average investment in Germany is just €780,000 ($1m), compared with €6m in America. Lars Hinrichs, founder of Xing, a social network for entrepreneurs (and a growing public company), says that a big reason is that successful entrepreneurs do not become investors themselves, as they do in Silicon Valley.
German venture capitalists are cautious. Rather than bet on many companies in the hope that one will grow explosively, they invest more selectively and expect a high proportion to break even within 18 months. Germany’s banks—the local savings banks and co-operatives that fund many traditional companies—are hesitant to lend to untested digital entrepreneurs.
Fear of failure is another dampener. It would deter 42% of Germans from starting a company, GEM’s polling finds. That is far behind Japan’s 53%, but well ahead of the 32% in the United States, where having flopped a few times is a point of pride. Mr Nohroudi says “there’s no one [in Germany] asking ‘what did you learn?’” Instead, when his first company was shuttered, friends urged him to go back to the comfortable university job he had held....
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21587209-vigorous-start-up-scene-has-yet-produce-its-first-big-breakthrough-slow-climb
Here's a Washington Post Op Ed challenging those talking about US decline:
predicting the decline of the United States has always been risky business. In the 1970s and late 1980s, expectations of waning power were followed by periods of geopolitical resurgence.
There’s every reason to believe that cycle is recurring today. Despite gridlock in Washington, America is recovering from the financial crisis and combining enduring strengths with new sources of influence, including energy. Meanwhile, emerging powers are running into troubles of their own. Taken together, these developments are ushering in a new era of American strategic advantage.
Emerging economies were the darlings of the past decade, growing at an average of roughly 7 percent annually between 2003 and 2012. By some calculations, China was poised to surpass the United States in GDP by 2016.
Today, the picture couldn’t look more different. Brazil’s growth rate has fallen from more than 7 percent in 2010 to just under 1 percent. Likewise, Indian growth tumbled to about 3 percent in 2012, down from double digits as recently as two years earlier. Perhaps most pronounced, China’s government is revising down its official growth targets. Analysts are no longer asking whether there will be a Chinese economic slowdown but rather how hard the landing will be.
Morgan Stanley has identified five particularly fragile emerging-market currencies: Brazil’s real, India’s rupee, Indonesia’s rupiah, South Africa’s rand and Turkey’s lira. Those countries are vulnerable to high inflation, large deficits, low growth and a downturn in China. And they may soon face problems in international financing.
The political systems in emerging powers are fraying, too. There have been huge protests in Brazil over wasteful government spending and inadequate social programs. Russia looks more authoritarian by the day. And the Chinese Communist Party is stepping up efforts to crack down on journalists, academics and bloggers in what seems to be an attempt to control the discontent that accompanies slower growth and painful economic reforms.
These “rising powers” are hardly faring better collectively. The international institutions they established — BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and IBSA — continue to disappoint.
At the same time, the United States is experiencing a turnaround of fortunes. The unemployment rate has fallen to just over 7 percent from an October 2009 peak of 10 percent. By contrast, euro-zone unemployment remains stuck at around 12 percent.
--------------
The United States also remains the linchpin of the international community. Through hard-nosed diplomacy, economic pressure and the specter of military action, Washington has retained its ability to marshal effective multinational coalitions, bringing down Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi, getting weapons inspectors on the ground in Syria and embarking on serious negotiations to curb Iran’s nuclear weapons program. You can quibble with process and style, but it’s hard to argue that any of these would have happened without the United States.
More broadly, and most important, the United States is blessed with a superior combination of sound fundamentals in demography, geography, higher education and innovation. That ensures it has the people, ideas and security to thrive at home and on the world stage. There’s a reason elites around the world remain eager to send their fortunes, and often their families, to the United States.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/americas-not-in-decline--its-on-the-rise/2013/10/18/4dde76be-35b1-11e3-80c6-7e6dd8d22d8f_story_1.html
Here's an excerpt of an article on US $ establishment as reserve currency in 1944:
In July 1944, delegates from 44 nations met at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire – the United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference – and agreed to “peg” their currencies to the U.S. dollar, the only currency strong enough to meet the rising demands for international currency transactions.
Member nations were required to establish a parity of their national currencies in terms of the US dollar, the "peg", and to maintain exchange rates within plus or minus one percent of parity, the "band."
What made the dollar so attractive to use as an international currency was each US dollar was based on 1/35th of an ounce of gold, and the gold was to held in the US Treasury. The value of gold being fixed by law at 35 US dollars an ounce made the value of each dollar very stable.
The US dollar, at the time, was considered better then gold for many reasons:
The strength of the U.S. economy
The fixed relationship of the dollar to gold at $35 an ounce
The commitment of the U.S. government to convert dollars into gold at that price
The dollar earned interest
The dollar was more flexible than gold
There’s a lesson not learned that reverberates throughout monetary history; when government, any government, comes under financial pressure they cannot resist printing money and debasing their currency to pay for debts.
Let's fast forward a few decades…
The Vietnam War was going to cost the US $500 Billion. The stark reality was the US simply could not print enough money to cover its war costs, it’s gold reserve had only $30 billion, most of its reserve was already backing existing US dollars, and the government refused to raise taxes.
In the 1960s President Lyndon B. Johnson's administration declared war on poverty and put in place its Great Society programs:
Head Start
Job Corps
Food stamps
Medicaid
Funded education
Job training
Direct food assistance
Direct medical assistance
More than four million new recipients signed up for welfare.
http://www.mining.com/nixon-gold-and-oil/
Here's NPR Science Friday intro to Craign Venter's "Life at the Speed of Light" about accelerating evolution:
In his new book Life at the Speed of Light: From the Double Helix to the Dawn of Digital Life, Craig Venter writes of the brave new world synthetic biology may some day deliver: from consumer devices that print out the latest flu vaccine to instruments on Mars landers that analyze Martian DNA and teleport it back to Earth to be studied—or recreated.
http://www.sciencefriday.com/segment/10/25/2013/craig-venter-life-at-the-speed-of-light.html
Legitimizing of double standards is the West's idea of the "new liberal imperialism" in post-modern world as proposed by British diplomat Robert cooper....It's ok to play by different rules in developing world than at home.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2002/apr/07/1
Here's a Time Magazine piece titled "China Makes Everything. Why Can't It Create Anything?":
... China's 1.3 billion upwardly mobile people are voracious consumers of everything from cars to smartphones to Kentucky Fried Chicken. Through its relentless exports, China has amassed a mountain of cash reserves and made itself Washington's biggest foreign creditor.
However, the China that vacuumed up factories to become the Workshop of the World is fading into history. The country is a victim of its own success. Decades of nonstop growth have forever altered China's place in the global economy and changed how it must compete with rich nations like the U.S. and emerging economies like India. The tools that China has used to spark its economic miracle — government support, cheap labor, state-directed finance — cannot ensure its future. The country can no longer rely on just making lots of stuff; China has to invent things, design them, brand them and market them. Instead of following the leaders of global industry, China has to produce leaders of its own.
Such a transition is not easy. Few emerging nations in modern times have made the leap from assembler to inventor, copycat to innovator. For China, this would mean an overhaul of its economy. Many of the products China manufactures today aren't really very Chinese at all. Apple iPads might be exported from assembly lines based in China, but the Chinese themselves do little more than piece them together. The core technologies come from elsewhere, and even the factories are run by foreign firms (like Taiwan's Foxconn). For Chinese companies to compete with the world's best, they have to create products of their own that have a similar impact as the iPad. That requires a set of skills and know-how they don't yet possess and a level of managerial expertise they haven't yet developed. Economist William Janeway, author of the book Doing Capitalism in the Innovation Economy, says what has gotten China thus far won't be enough for the next step: "It is hard to start the process of pushing the frontier with [such] practices and policies."
Chinese policymakers fully realize that. The new leadership team in Beijing, ushered into office a year ago, has pledged to press ahead with free-market reforms — liberalizing finance, supporting private enterprise and cracking open protected sectors. "China's modernization will not be accomplished without reform, nor will it be achieved without opening up," Premier Li Keqiang recently conceded. So far, though, progress has been slow. Few meaningful initiatives have been introduced, and even headline-grabbing measures — like the September launch of a special zone in Shanghai to experiment with freer capital flows — have proved mere baby steps. Li and his mandarins must take on vested interests and rein in an overbearing bureaucracy, which will require formidable political will. China's leadership "is not ready yet to deliver a comprehensive reform package with executable specifics and clear timetables," Bank of America Merrill Lynch economists warned in October.
Whether China succeeds or fails will determine where everything from sneakers to cars to smartphones are manufactured, the brands that appear on them and who sells them. Failure could stall China's economic miracle and dampen global growth with it. Here are five challenges China must address:
1. Labor is no longer cheap
2. Companies lag behind in technology
3. Innovation doesn't come easy
4. There are too few global brands
5. Good managers are hard to find
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2156209,00.html
China pulling ahead of #US, #Europe in patents? http://econ.st/1qzO9ZX via @TheEconomist pic.twitter.com/qdvQcVRXYX
“WHAT has long been predicted has now become a reality: China is leading the world in innovation.” So declares a press release promoting a new report by Thomson Reuters, a research firm, called “China’s IQ (Innovation Quotient)”. The report highlights the astonishing increase in patents filed in the country. In 2010 Chinese firms filed roughly the same number of applications for “invention” patents (the most rigorous sort) as their counterparts in Japan and America. By 2013 the Chinese figure had nearly doubled even as the rates in the other two countries held steady (see chart).
Some scepticism is in order, however. For one thing, the explosion of patent filings is not the result of local researchers suddenly coming up with twice as many ingenious inventions: it is a response to a government order. As the report acknowledges, “the growth in output is driven by the 12th Five-Year Plan and the associated Chinese National Patent Development Strategy”. Bureaucrats have decreed that local firms will apply for 2m patents by 2015. Thanks to various subsidies and incentives, China looks set to hit that target.
The quality of many of these patents is in doubt. Of the desired 2m filings, many will be for “utility” or “design” patents, which are less substantial than “invention” patents. Critics suggest that even in the latter category, many Chinese filings fall short of global standards.
That is why it is useful to see what percentage of Chinese invention patents are also filed at foreign patent offices, which tend to be more rigorous and transparent. (When a firm goes to the trouble of filing for patents globally, it is usually a sign that it believes its invention to be genuinely valuable.) Only about 5% of patents filed by local firms in China last year were also filed abroad, whereas over a third of patents originally filed by local firms in Japan were also filed elsewhere.
Almost all of the growth in China’s invention patents over the past three years has come from local firms, not from the Chinese divisions of multinationals. That suggests that the bureaucrats’ orders are responsible, rather than the emergence of a local ecosystem of innovation as seen in Silicon Valley. Intellectual-property rights do matter, but merely churning out patents does little to advance innovation.
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21636100-are-ambitious-bureaucrats-fomenting-or-feigning-innovation-patent-fiction
Best universities in Pakistan 2017
Discover the best universities in Pakistan determined by data collected by Times Higher Education
February 17 2017
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-pakistan
Pakistan is a fascinating country with beautiful natural scenery, a rich culture and a complex history.
The country stretches from the shores of the Arabian sea in the south to the towering heights of the Himalayas in the north, and encompasses the Indus River valley, a cradle of human civilization and home to some of the world’s most ancient cultures. Over the millennia the land has been ruled by many different kingdoms, Hindus, Muslims, Mongols, Sikhs, Achaemenids, Mughals and the British have all controlled parts of modern-day Pakistan.
The country today is an ethnic and linguistic patchwork (more than 60 languages are spoken in Pakistan) where the people mirror the incredible diversity of its landscapes and geography.
Pakistan has around 170 public and private higher education institutions, some of which date back to when the country was first established. Following the establishment of Pakistan as an independent country the government built several universities to provide vital skills to the newly-formed republic, especially in the sciences and engineering. That legacy continues to this day with many universities retaining a focus on science, medicine and technology.
Many Pakistani universities actively encourage foreign students to enrol, and large numbers choose to study abroad in Pakistan. Students come from as far afield as Saudi Arabia, Africa and China as well as some from America and Europe. Higher education is delivered in English at all public universities in Pakistan which, combined with the relatively low cost of living, makes studying abroad here an attractive option.
COMSATS Institute of Information Technology
The COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, or CIIT for short, was established in 1994 by the commission on Science and Technology for Sustainable Development in the South, an intergovernmental organisation whose goal is to promote sustainable growth in developing countries through science and technology. CIIT is spread over six campuses with the main campus in the capital city, Islamabad.
National University of Sciences and Technology
The National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST) is a public research university based in Islamabad. The university was founded in 1991 to further the provision of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) subjects in Pakistan’s higher education system.
Quaid-i-azam University
Also based in Islamabad, Quaid-i-azam University was founded in 1977 to further the study of postgraduate education. A public research university, Quaid-i-azam University was called Islamabad University when it first opened. Since those days the institution has broadened its curriculum and is now proud to call itself an interdisciplinary university offering postgraduate and undergraduate degrees.
Germany calls for global payments system free of US
Foreign minister seeks European autonomy on issues like Iran
https://www.ft.com/content/23ca2986-a569-11e8-8ecf-a7ae1beff35b
German foreign minister Heiko Maas
Germany’s foreign minister has called for the creation of a new payments system independent of the US as a means of rescuing the nuclear deal between Iran and the west that Donald Trump withdrew from in May.
Writing in the German daily Handelsblatt, Heiko Maas said Europe should not allow the US to act “over our heads and at our expense”.
“For that reason it’s essential that we strengthen European autonomy by establishing payment channels that are independent of the US, creating a European Monetary Fund and building up an independent Swift system,” he wrote.
Mr Maas’s intervention was the “strongest call yet for EU financial and monetary autonomy vis-Ã -vis US,” said Thorsten Benner, director of the Global Public Policy Institute, a Berlin-based think-tank.
The foreign minister’s article highlights the depth of the dilemma facing European politicians as they struggle to keep the Iran deal alive while coping with the fallout of US sanctions imposed by Mr Trump against companies doing business with Tehran.
The EU has committed itself to the agreement and has vowed to protect European businesses from punitive measures adopted by Washington. But that has failed to convince EU companies, who are more interested in maintaining their access to the lucrative US market than in the more modest opportunities presented by Iran.
Last month Washington rebuffed a high-level European plea to exempt crucial industries from sanctions. Mike Pompeo, US secretary of state, and Steven Mnuchin, Treasury secretary, formally rejected an appeal for carve-outs in finance, energy and healthcare made by ministers from Germany, France, the UK and the EU.
[Europe must] form a counterweight when the US crosses red lines
Heiko Maas, German foreign minister
On Monday, Total, France’s largest energy company, announced it was pulling out of a big Iranian gas project, after admitting it might be affected by threatened US measures against Iran’s oil and gas industry.
Swift, a Belgium-based global payment system that facilitates many of the world’s cross-border transactions, is also affected. Unless it wins an exemption from sanctions, it will be required by the US to cut off targeted Iranian banks from its network by early November or face possible countermeasures against both its board members and the financial institutions that employ them.
These could include asset freezes and US travel bans for the individuals, and restrictions on banks’ ability to do business in the US.
Mr Maas’s words Handelsblatt come with relations between Germany and the US in their worst state for decades. Mr Trump has chastised Berlin over its large trade surplus, its relatively low military spending and its support for Nord Stream 2, a new gas pipeline that will bring Russian gas directly to Germany.
Meanwhile, Berlin has looked on in dismay as Mr Trump has withdrawn the US from the Iran deal and the Paris climate treaty, imposed import tariffs on EU steel and aluminium and appeared to question America’s commitment to Nato.
Mr Maas said it was vital for Europe to stick with the Iran deal. “Every day the agreement continues to exist is better than the highly explosive crisis that otherwise threatens the Middle East,” he said.
He also called for the creation of a “balanced partnership” with the US in which the Europeans filled the gaps left where the US withdrew from the world. Europe must, he said, “form a counterweight when the US crosses red lines”.
No Cold War
@NoColdWar
Former US President Jimmy Carter turns 98 today. His thoughts on US-China relations may surprise you:
"Since we normalized relations with China in 1979, the US has been in constant war. China has not been in combat with anyone."
"[The US] is the most warlike country on earth."
https://twitter.com/NoColdWar/status/1576317498693414912?s=20&t=aN53JXYT6G-wrMQYu9pn2Q
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