India, US Set To Square Off On Iran Sanctions

The next move in the ongoing geopolitical chess match between the United States and Iran is set to take place this Wednesday when US officials will try once again to get their Indian counterparts onboard with the “crippling” sanctions regime championed by the US.

India's continuing purchase of Iranian crude oil remains a major impediment to the “crippling” part of those sanctions.  By cutting Iran off from the global crude oil markets, the United States is hoping to put enough pressure on Iran to get them to give up their nuclear research program (folks in Washington also really, really hope that the sanctions will lead to the unlikely event of the Iranians overthrowing their government due to the negative impact a lack of oil sales will have on their economy).  While the European Union is phasing in a ban on Iranian oil, plenty of Iranian crude is flowing to China and India; making the sanctions painful, but survivable, at least in the short-to-medium term.

Even the optimists in Washington will admit they can apply little leverage to get China to abandon their Iranian oil purchases, but they hope that India could be swayed.  So far India has maintained that they need to continue to buy Iranian oil since many Indian refineries are configured to process specific types of crude that come out of Iran and that there aren't substitute volumes readily available on the global market.  India has also questioned the validity of the US sanctions since they are not backed by the United Nations.

According to the Indian publication Business Today, Wednesday's meeting is likely to focus on the US suggesting that American shale gas could be a substitute for Iranian crude oil.  This is interesting for a couple of reasons: first we're talking about replacing oil with natural gas, which would mean a massive restructuring of India's energy mix – a drastic shift away from crude oil products to natural gas (using natural gas as a vehicle fuel for example, instead of gasoline); and since the US currently lacks a liquefied natural gas (LNG) export infrastructure, it would be a number of years, at least, before large volumes of US shale gas could be heading to India in a best-case scenario.  How India would get by in the meanwhile without Iranian crude oil imports is an open question.

If accurate, the Business Today report points at American officials desperate to get their Indian allies onside with the Iranian sanctions regime.  According to the sanctions passed by the US Congress, the United States could levy penalties against any country trading with Iran in violation of our sanctions, and while it is hard to imagine the United States fracturing diplomatic relations with India with such an action, it is also clear that as long as India (and China) keep importing Iranian oil, it is highly unlikely that the sanctions will have the desired effect.

Stay tuned for Wednesday's meeting.

New Day Coming For Nano?

A friend of mine says that I have an unusual interest in Tata Motors Nano (a.k.a. “the world's cheapest car”), perhaps that is why this piece on the BBC from “motoring journalist” Hormazd Sorabjee caught my eye.  In it, Sorabjee runs though the various growing pains encountered by the Nano, which have so far kept it from reaching the lofty sales goals originally predicted by Tata Motors chief Ratan Tata, ranging from public protests that forced Tata to abandon the largely-completed factory where the Nano was to be made and instead build them at other plants within the Tata system, to a point I discussed in this post over at The Mantle: that the car's low-cost image worked against its adoption among India's emerging middle class.

“Even at the bottom of the pyramid, a car is highly aspirational and image is crucial. To be seen in the world's cheapest car gave the message that you couldn't afford anything else,” Sorabjee wrote.  But, he goes on to report, that the future may be looking up for the Nano.  An updated 2012 model smoothes out some of the rough edges of the original, like heavy steering and a spartan interior; advanced sales have responded accordingly.  And at heart, the Nano is a decent car, as Sorabjee, himself a Nano owner, personally attests.

Bad Reporting Is Even Worse

Last week I wrote about a bit of bad reporting surrounding the death of the typewriter – NBC News, among other outlets, reported that the last manufacturer of typewriters in the world, India's Godrej & Boyce, ceased production of the iconic office machine. The reality was that Godrej & Boyce in fact halted production of their typewriter line in 2009 and was only now nearing the end of their warehoused stock. Apparently though, to paraphrase Mark Twain, reports of the typewriter's demise have been greatly exaggerated – and some sloppy reporting is even worse than originally thought.

The North Jersey Record tracked down Swintec Corp., a Moonachie, New Jersey-based company that still builds and sells typewriters. According to Swintec's General manager Ed Michael, they still have a fairly solid business selling electronic typewriters, with their main clients being “correctional institutions” who favor a funky version with a clear plastic case (presumably so the residents of said correctional institutions can't hide any contraband within the typewriter's casing). Michael adds that: “we sell to anyone who needs one [a typewriter].” He also tells the Record that he was surprised to read the stories about the death of the typewriter since he has recently been interviewed by media outlets, including the BBC, about Swintec's continued sales of typewriters.

So not only did a whole host of media sources get the initial story about Godrej & Boyce wrong – that they stopped manufacture of typewriters in 2009 not 2011, but Godrej & Boyce wasn't even the “world's last” manufacturer of typewriters in the first place. This might seem like a small story to get worked up over, but as my journalism professors at Gonzaga University taught me, if as a reader I can't trust you to get the small things right, why should I trust you on the big ones?

The Last Typewriter

It was a simple enough story: News that the world's last typewriter manufacturer, Godrej & Boyce of Mumbai, India, had ceased production of the once ubiquitous office appliance, but sadly it turned into yet another example of today's sloppy journalism. I saw the story last night on NBC's Nightly News with Brian Williams. As the owner of a 1940's-vintage manual typewriter (which needs a new ribbon), the story struck me as another example of good, historic technology being surpassed by something more modern, yet perhaps not as good (and here see the recent demise of Kodachrome film for a prime example).

Williams' piece was a brief drop-in near the end of the newscast, so I went looking for more information and found this story from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and that's where the sloppy reporting comes in. Godrej & Boyce were in fact the last manufacturers of typewriters in the world and did halt production of their last model – in 2009. But Williams, and others who picked up the story, portrayed it as though Godrej & Boyce just stopped production, the Nightly News even featured an obituary-style graphic that listed the typewriter's death date as “2011”. How this information hit the news now, and not two years ago, is that Godrej & Boyce announced they only had 500 typewriters left in inventory - from the stock they stopped producing in 2009.

It only took me about three minutes on the Internet to glean this particular piece of information. One would hope that with their vast resources, NBC could exercise the same level of due diligence. As for Godrej & Boyce – which as recently as the mid-2000's still cranked out 10,000 typewrites per year – one of the last “new” typewriters can be had for 12,000 rupees, about $270, shipping not included. And as for me, I think I'll try to scare up a new ribbon for my Remington.

India's Troubled Games

Delhi is the host for this year's Commonwealth Games, and what was suppose a glorious international showcase is quickly turning into a national nightmare for India (to get a sense of feeling in India, check out this series of “man in the street” interviews by the BBC).  The Commonwealth Games, in case you're not familiar with them, are a sort of British Empire Olympics, bringing together teams from 54 nations that were once part of the Empire in a summer celebration of sport every four years.  Indian officials expected that the Commonwealth Games would serve as the same sort of global coming out party for their country as the 2008 Beijing Games were for China.

But the Delhi Games are having the opposite effect as several national teams balked over accommodations at the Athletes' Village, which some officials called “unfit for human habitation,” saying that the construction of the dormitories was poor and the sanitation facilities inadequate.  Not helping matters was the sudden collapse of a pedestrian footbridge on Tuesday, injuring 27 workers who were scrambling to get construction finished for the Games that are scheduled to start just two weeks from now, an event that underscored doubts about the overall quality of the venues for the Games.

Some Indian officials have tried to downplay the concerns of the national sport federations, Delhi's Chief Minister, Sheila Dikshit  was reported in The Guardian as saying, somewhat unbelievably: “something may be dripping, some tile may collapse, doesn't mean the entire Games are bad.” Another official tried to brush off some concerns as a cultural difference over basic standards of hygiene, suggesting that the Westerners were just being too picky about the accommodations. It is an excuse that isn't playing well with the sport federations nor apparently with the Indian people either; the Hindustan Times is reporting that two-thirds of Delhi residents are saying the Games have become a source of national shame, a sentiment echoed in a front-page headline in the Times of India.  Concern over the Games has become such an issue that on Wednesday night, the BBC dedicated the first ten minutes of their international newscast to coverage of the controversy.

Several teams, including New Zealand, Australia and Scotland are seriously considering pulling their athletes out of the Delhi Games over concerns for their health and safety.  The Commonwealth Games are scheduled to kick off on October 3, how many national teams show up remains to be seen.

India’s Laptop For The Masses

On Friday the government of India announced plans to produce and sell a touch-pad laptop computer, with many of the same features of Apple’s new iPad, for the bargain-basement price of just $35. India’s Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal, said the device was designed by the India Institute of Technology and the Indian Institute of Science, two of the country’s elite universities; and that the cost-savings came in large part by using low-cost components: the device uses flash memory instead of a hard drive for data storage and uses an open-source Linux-based operating system.

The Indian device is similar in concept to the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, a low-cost computer aimed at students in developing nations who otherwise couldn’t afford one and is meant to prevent them from being left behind in the digital age by giving them access to the Internet and teaching them how to use digital technology. The OLPC laptop and the new Indian device both rely on the idea of “economy of scale” for their low, low prices; economy of scale reasons that most of the cost of a given device comes in its design and prototype phase, once it is put into production though the cost will drop with every unit produced – make millions and the per unit cost will be quite small.

But OLPC never actually hit its target price of $100, each unit sells for about twice that (though they did succeed in creating a rugged, easy-to-use laptop for students in the developing world). Critics of the Indian project say that the Indian government’s price-point of $35 is utterly unrealistic. Minister Sibal admitted the government still needs to find a producer for the laptop, and that the government tapped scientists on staff at the universities to develop the prototype after the private sector failed to meet a government tender to do so. The Economic Times of India also notes that one in two Indians (roughly half a billion people) already regularly access the Internet via their mobile phones, questioning whether the cheap touch-pad laptop is even needed in the first place.

An earlier attempt by the Indian government to create and distribute a low-cost laptop never got off the ground, we’ll keep an eye on this second attempt and see if it fares any better.

Happy International Women’s Day

You may or may not know it, but March 8 is International Women’s Day. The day was first observed in 1909 to advocate for women’s rights and equality, especially in the rapidly industrializing workplace of the time. It has remained a day to promote equal rights and access for women around the world, though in the Soviet Union and its allied nations the day also became a sort of surrogate Valentine’s Day as well (as indicated by this Soviet-era International Women’s Day card below).

To commemorate International Women’s Day this year, lawmakers in India tried to pass an ambitious bill that would have required that one-third of legislative seats in the country be reserved for women. The bill was held up at the last minute by lawmakers from two of India’s regional political parties, but the government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is strongly behind the bill and is determined to get it passed into law within the next few weeks. A spokesman for the prime minister chided the opposition politicians for keeping the bill from symbolically being passed on International Women’s Day. Women currently make up less than 10% of the legislature, even though they account for 44% of the voting population in India, the world’s largest democracy.

And since Iraq just held their parliamentary elections this past weekend, it is worth noting that by law 25% of the members of their new parliament will be women. That threshold was written into the new Iraqi constitution at the insistence of the United States. According to international monitoring groups, the women in Iraq’s parliament have better attendance and voting records than do their male counterparts. And the 25% representation in the Iraqi parliament is better than the rate of women representation in the United States own Congress, where only 17% of the members are women (17 in the Senate, 74 in the House) – an all-time high level for the United States.

End Coming For Hand-Written Newspaper?

It’s no secret that the future’s not bright for newspapers as people receive more and more of their information from online sources. But tucked away in a corner of India, the days could be dwindling for the world’s only hand-written newspaper.
Russia Today brings us the story of the Musalman, a daily four-page newspaper published in Chennai. Since 1927 the Musalman has painstakingly been written by hand in delicate Urdu calligraphy. According to RT, each page takes a trained calligrapher about four hours to ink by hand. The completed pages are then photographed and turned into printing plates to produce the newspaper’s 20,000 copies. The staff calligraphers say that writing by hand gives them more control over the Musalman’s layout than they would get from using machine or computer-produced fonts, and that the final product has a unique beauty all of its own.

But learning the fancy Urdu script – once a symbol of high status in India - is a dying art; the Musalman’s calligraphers, all into middle age or older, say that no young people want to learn the skill from them. And as more Indians go online, the paper’s circulation is shrinking, meaning the days for the world’s only hand-written newspaper are slowly drawing to an end.

Russian Military Soars Into Future

The Russian military took a huge step into the future on Friday as the prototype of the Sukhoi T-50 finally made its successful maiden flight. The Sukhoi is Russia’s first “fifth generation” fighter aircraft and is slated to become the backbone of the Russian Air Force during the next decade. Fifth generation fighters incorporate stealth, advanced electronics, extreme maneuverability and the ability to fly as supersonic speeds for extended periods of time into their design; currently the United States Air Force’s F-22 Raptor is the only fifth generation aircraft in service anywhere in the world.

The T-50 is more than just Russia’s way to keep up with the Americans though; the successful flight shows that Russia’s defense contractors are able to build world-class, advanced weapons systems. Much of the Russian military is still equipped with Soviet-era weapons and most of what the Russian arms manufacturers are building are systems still based on Soviet designs that are two, three, or more decades old. For example, two of the Russian Navy’s newest ships – the submarine Nerpa and the frigate Yaroslav Mudry – were projects actually begun in the early 1990s at the end of the Soviet Union that laid dormant for more than a decade due to lack of funds and are only being completed now, almost 20 years after their construction began. This lack of modern equipment was on display during 2008’s conflict with Georgia. The Russian army that rolled into battle lacked the unmanned drones, precision guided weapons, integrated computer system and many of the other hi-tech gadgets that their Western counterparts possess, in many ways it was the same army that entered Afghanistan in 1979 (though they were able to handily defeat Georgia’s NATO-advised troops).

“This is an epic event, because it's the first time in post-Soviet history that [the Russian military industry] has been able to create something brand new,” Alexander Khramchikhin, an expert with the independent Institute of Political and Military Analysis in Moscow told the Christian Science Monitor in an interview on Friday, giving an idea of the significance of the jet’s first flight. The Sukhoi T-50 also highlights the growing military ties between Russia and India. The Indian and Russian air forces are each scheduled to eventually purchase 250 of the new Sukhoi aircraft. In addition, the Indians are picking up 25% of the development costs of the project and are supplying the software for the T-50’s computer control systems (fifth generation fighters rely on computers to make minute adjustments to the aircraft’s control surfaces every second just to keep them in the air – it is a system that makes the planes incredibly maneuverable).

And if Wikipedia is correct (which is always an “if”), someone at NATO has a sense of humor about the Sukhoi. Its NATO designation will supposedly be “Firefox”, which also happens to be the title of a late Cold War-era novel and film about a high-tech Soviet jet fighter.

Don't Worry About Iran Getting The Bomb

The Asia Times offers up one of the best and most interesting pieces I've read about the whole topic of Iran's pursuit of a nuclear bomb.

Sure, we'd all love a world without nukes, but that just ain't gonna happen...and currently the international community is bound up over what to do over Iran's (alleged) development of a nuclear weapon. The Asia Times' Aetius Romulous though makes a fairly compelling case that Iran's getting the bomb would be a good thing. His argument goes that an Iran with the bomb would become a regional power in its own right - preventing them from becoming a client state of Russia, while at the same time reducing Iran's need to try to project influence through the Mid-East by funding terrorist proxy groups like Hezbollah. Iran's rise to regional power status would also secure the oil supplies for two of the world's great rising powers, China and India (currently Iran's two biggest customers), likely reducing future tension between them since a big chunk of their energy supplies would now be secure.

It is an argument that goes against the conventional wisdom of keeping Iran from getting the bomb by any means necessary, thus making well worth your time to read.

Fox News "Expert" Shows She's Clueless On Russia, India

Every time I need inspiration to do this site I happen to see something like the the exchange I saw this morning between Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer and FNC "foreign policy expert" KT McFarland, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs and speech writer during the Reagan administration.

Bill and KT were breathlessly discussing the "breaking news" on Fox that the Russians were developing some kind of super-missile. I figured out that they were talking about the BrahMos supersonic cruise missile, a weapon so secret that it has its own page on Wikipedia. Not only that, but this only counts as "breaking news" if this is, say, 2003 - India and Russia have jointly been developing, and now producing, the BrahMos for several years, in fact the missile is currently in service with the Indian military. Bill and KT wondered aloud why, since President Obama "reset" relations with the Russians, were they even developing new weapons in the first place? (Probably for the same reason the US, China, Great Britain, France, Israel, etc. keep developing new weapons systems...)

But KT wasn't done flaunting her ignorance yet. She went on to say that Russia now had a stranglehold on energy supplies to Europe thanks to their new Nord Stream and their second "southern" pipeline. The problem here is that construction on Nord Stream, which will run under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany, won't even start until next year. South Stream (the "southern" pipeline) is still on the drawing board and facing stiff competition from the Nabucco Pipeline (also still in the planning stages), which would link Central Asia and Europe, bypassing Russian territory entirely.

She then went on to chide Obama for cutting funding for the anti-ballistic missile shield bases in the Czech Republic and Poland, leaving us vulnerable to the new Russian super-missile (which the ABM system would have been useless against anyway since the BrahMos is a cruise missile that flies just meters above the ground, not a ballistic one that flies in a high, arching trajectory - the target of the ABM system). Finally she said (and Bill agreed) that India's decision to work with Russia on the BrahMos was because Obama had "weakened" America on the world stage - apparently ignorant of the fact that Russia (and before them the Soviet Union) had been a major arms supplier to India for decades, and that among other systems, Russia is in the process of supplying India with an aircraft carrier, and once the Nerpa completes its sea trials, a nuclear attack submarine.

That's an awful lot of misinformation to pack into just three minutes...Frankly, I don't blame Hemmer so much for this ridiculous segment - he's just a typical news channel talking head, someone who looks pleasant and can read a teleprompter, but who has no real knowledge about, well, anything. McFarland though is another matter. Someone who was deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs should know a little something about two of the world's larger military powers. Next time Fox News wants to put on an "expert" on foreign affairs, they should find someone who knows what they're talking about in the first place.

Tensions On The Rise Between India and China

India and Pakistan have fought two wars over the disputed region of Kashmir, but it's worth remembering that India and China also have competing claims over some of the world's most hotly contested for lands. And lately, as AFP notes, tensions have been growing between the two rising Asian powers.

China is angry that India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh paid a visit to the disputed India-China border in Kashmir earlier in the month and that India will allow Beijing's nemesis, the Dalai Lama, to visit Kashmir in a few weeks. India, meanwhile, is upset that China is underwriting the construction of a massive hydroelectric dam in Pakistani-controlled Kashmir.

India said they hope China will take a "long view" of India-China relations and not build the dam in what they see as Indian land being illegally occupied by Pakistan. India and China fought a brief war over Kashmir in 1962. We're pretty far from a repeat of that, but it's worth noting that tensions over Kashmir aren't just an India-Pakistan affair.

Nuclear Free Follies

Apparently part of the rationale behind awarding Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was to support his efforts at ridding the world of nuclear weapons. This has been a theme in some of his keynote speeches as President, like his address to the United Nations last month; other commentators like Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund have regularly been campaigning for a nuclear-free world he specifically in numerous posts at the Huffington Post.

But on this topic, I'll defer to Rush - the band, not the blowhard. Their song about the development of the nuclear bomb "Manhattan Project" contains this line, which I think sums up the current debate nicely:

The big shots tried to hold it back,
Fools tried to wish it away...

I don't mean to imply that Obama, Cirincione and others in the disarmament campaign are fools, but they are pursuing a goal they'll never attain. Mind you, I wish that disarmament would happen, I remember as a child being scared witless by the movie "The Day After", a made-for-TV film on ABC that showed the aftermath of a limited nuclear war by following a collection of average people in Kansas. An estimated 100 million people watched that movie, even Ronald Reagan said the effects of nuclear war depicted in the film left him feeling "greatly depressed." So yeah, I'd love to see a world free of nukes, I just know that it won't ever happen.

As for the why, let's take a quick look at the world's nuclear powers, starting with Russia. Russia sees itself as one of the world's great powers, but its military is a shell of the mighty Red Army thanks to a couple of decades of neglect and underfunding. The one area where Russia can still claim superpower status though is in its nuclear forces, estimated to be either the world's first or second largest nuclear arsenal depending on the source you use. Russia will agree to reductions in their nuclear forces - largely because they have thousands of warheads nearing or past their effective lifespans that need replacement - the fewer they need to replace, the more money they will save. It's naive to think though that the Russian military will totally give up the one thing that makes them a formidable force.

Then there's India and Pakistan, two nations which in their post-British Empire history have fought three wars, though none since Pakistan officially became a nuclear power in 1998. The two states are mutually suspicious of each other, therefore it's again naive to think either side would believe claims that the other had disarmed, thus it's impossible to imagine either giving up their arsenal.

China views both India and Russia as potential competitors for influence among the nations of Central Asia, so it's hard to imagine the Chinese giving up their nukes so long as Russia and/or India keep theirs (or so long as the United States has its arsenal). And then there's Israel, a country that won't even admit to having nuclear weapons in the first place. Israel's nukes are their ace up the sleeve - a last resort should they ever face another Six Day War scenario, where a pan-Arab army is moving against them on several fronts. Israeli planning dictates that if such a conflict were going badly, it could be quickly ended by use of nuclear weapons (it's also the reason they're so dead set against Iran ever getting the bomb).

So there you have Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel - five nuclear powers all of whom, despite what the anti-proliferation side argues, will never totally give up their nukes since each will argue giving up nuclear weapons will leave them weaker in the face of potential adversaries. And don't think the Pentagon will sign off on a plan to eliminate America's nuclear arsenal either, so long as a half-dozen or so countries are keeping theirs - or that a president will order the Pentagon to fully disarm under those circumstances, no matter how many Nobel Prizes they're awarded.

And there's something the disarmament proponents never discuss, let's call it the Japan Option, which is this: just because you get rid of all your nuclear weapons, that doesn't mean that you immediately forget how to make more. While Japan isn't a nuclear state, it's generally admitted by the folks in the nuclear weapons field that Japan could have a nuclear arsenal if they wanted one: Japanese industries produce some of the world's most advanced electronics, while decades of using nuclear power have left Japan with several tons of plutonium, a by-product of operating nuclear power plants, and also the raw material of choice for making an A-bomb.

Let's imagine for a moment then that tomorrow we were to wake up and all of the world's nuclear arsenals had disappeared. The bombs might be gone, but the knowledge of how to make them would not. And it's hard to believe that some country wouldn't start up production again, especially if they thought it would give them a quick advantage over everyone else.

The nuclear genie is long out of the bottle and sadly she can't be stuffed back in. It would be great to think there could be a world where a city might not be snuffed out in the glow of a mushroom cloud, but realistically that's not the world in which we live. There are some huge issues facing the world, one's that need the international community to come together to address. Maybe it would be best then for our leaders to focus on the problems they can solve, rather than ones - like nuclear disarmament - that they can't.

Rio Wins the Olympics, is India Next?

So you've probably heard by now that Rio de Janeiro won the rights to host the 2016 Summer Olympics yesterday, despite a last-minute appearance by Barack Obama on behalf of America’s entry, Chicago. And you've probably also heard that the President's critics are slamming him for not bringing the games to Chicago, saying it's a sign of his ebbing political fortunes both at home and abroad.


Politics did play a huge role in the selection of Rio as the host city, but the critics are wrong - Obama had nothing to do with Chicago getting, or not getting, the Games, instead the selection of Rio is best seen as the product of the International Olympic Committee's own bizarre internal politics.

Going into the vote, the folks from Chicago were actually worried that, despite having a strong bid, they'd lose in the first round. Why? Because of geography. IOC members tend to support host cities in their neighborhoods, so the Europeans were expected to back Madrid; the Asians, Tokyo; and the South Americans (and likely Africans), Rio. That left Chicago without a real base of geographic support, and their fears of a first-round exit came to pass.

Meanwhile, Juan Antonio Samaranch - the powerful former head of the IOC and the man largely responsible during his two decades of leadership for transforming the Olympics from a quaint quadrennial sporting event into a marketing and merchandising juggernaut - made a personal plea on behalf of his hometown, Madrid, a factor that is probably responsible for Madrid making it to the final round of voting.

And there were other factors at play. The Huffington Post ran a piece suggesting that some IOC members voted against Chicago because of the United States' tough visa regime post 9/11. An IOC member from Pakistan was quoted as saying coming into the US these days for a foreigner can be "a harrowing experience" because of strict visa requirements. Finally, there is a long-running dispute between the IOC and USOC over issues of private funding for the Games as well as sharing television revenues that likely soured some voters on Chicago’s bid.

But the biggest factor working against Chicago was simply that there was a huge desire within the IOC to continue their commitment towards bringing the Games to new parts of the world, and South America (and with the exception of Australia, the entire Southern Hemisphere for that matter) has never before hosted an Olympics Games. This was a fact played up by the Rio delegation, who passed out maps before the vote showing the locations of previous Games - North America and Western Europe were well-covered, the were a few cities highlighted in Asia, but starkly none in South America. While Olympic votes are usually close-fought things, in the final round Rio won by a 2-to-1 margin.

My prediction is now that Rio has won the rights to the 2016 Games, look for India to make a serious push to bring the 2020 Games to Delhi (the 2020 Games will be awarded in the summer of 2011). India is now the only one of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China - the countries seen as having the largest, most-dynamic emerging economies in the world) not to be selected to host an Olympics. Last year China used the Beijing Games as a national coming out party, a chance to show the world China had arrived as a major industrial and cultural power. Russia will use the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi as a similar showcase for their rise from the collapse of the Soviet Union, of course Rio 2016 will be Brazil's chance to show that they too have arrived among the 'First World' of nations. It only follows then that India will be eager to show that they too belong in the club, and in the 21st century, there’s no bigger way of showing that then to host the Olympics.

Should We Just Learn To Love The Bomb?

That question is at the heart of an essay in this week’s issue of Newsweek. The conventional wisdom has been that the world would be much better off if there were no nuclear weapons, even the great ‘Cold Warrior’ Ronald Reagan himself worked towards the goal of a nuclear-free globe. In a few weeks, as heads of state gather for the general assembly of the United Nations, President Obama is expected to make his own push towards eliminating nukes. But should he?

According to Jonathan Tepperman in Newsweek, maybe not. And there are some interesting facts that back up this unconventional point of view. One is that nearly 65 years after the US detonated the first nuclear bomb, the much-feared mass proliferation of these weapons hasn’t occurred. Today there are fewer than a dozen nuclear-armed states, and several countries (Kazakhstan, Belarus, Canada and South Africa) have actually given up their nukes.

Fear of a nuclear war between two nuclear-armed states is another fear that drives the ban the bomb movement but, again, Tepperman argues, nuclear states seem less likely to go to war, because they know the horrible consequences a nuclear war would bring. He cites the example of India and Pakistan, who have fought three wars since independence from Great Britain, but none since Pakistan got the bomb back in 1998, even after a brief conflict in the disputed Kashmir region in 1999 and Pakistan’s involvement in the terror attacks that rocked Mumbai last year.

Critics say that the world has just been exceptionally lucky in the nuclear era and that we’re putting a lot of faith in some sketchy leaders (Kim Jong-Il anyone?) not to go nuclear. But I think Tepperman makes some good points, and one problem I’ve had with the nuclear-free world campaign is that it’s just not going to happen. Russia’s not about to give up its nukes, nor China, and Israel (that won’t even admit it has them in the first place)? Forget it. And now a consensus seems to be building in the international community for “crippling sanctions” against Iran to make them give up their nuclear bomb project. But considering that we’re also still hoping to encourage pro-democracy, pro-western reformers within Iran (the folks who took to the streets in protest this summer), you have to wonder if sanctions that will wreck Iran’s already fragile economy is really the best idea right now. Especially when the alternative might not be all that bad.

Make Friends, Influence People - Hillary In Africa

It looks like reports of the political demise of the Clinton machine have been greatly exaggerated. This morning former President Bill Clinton capped off his mission to North Korea with the tearful reunion of two imprisoned US journalists with their overjoyed families, meanwhile current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a more low-key start to her seven-nation mission to Africa. And while her arrival may have lacked the live TV coverage of Bill’s return, it holds a lot of importance to America’s future.

Her trip is a sign of the importance the continent will play in the coming years to the United States’ foreign and energy policies, and is an admission that right now, the US is trailing China, and to a lesser degree the European Union, Russia and India in making friends in the region. Secretary Clinton is going to try to build on the good feelings that President Obama spread last month during his visit to Ghana, but her trip will include a few doses of tough love as well.

Clinton is (again) prodding the ever-squabbling leaders of Kenya to set aside their differences and get down to the business of actually running their country. Following the disputed presidential election at the end of 2007, Prime Minister Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki have shared power, but have gotten little done in the country, preferring to let their respective sides snipe at each other (she said in Nairobi earlier today that she is disappointed the two men have not set up a tribunal to investigate the violence that rocked the country for weeks following the 2007 election). Clinton will also push South Africa to try to exert some influence on their neighbor, Zimbabwe, to move forward on promised democratic and economic reforms in that country as well.

Other stops on the itinerary include the oil-rich states of Angola and Nigeria (the why there is pretty self-explanatory), the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo and a stop in at the Cape Verde islands off the West Coast of Africa, which like Ghana, the Obama Administration is hoping to promote as a model of democracy and stability for the rest of Africa.

But what remains to be seen is how well Africa takes to the new American attention. The Kenyans were upset that Obama passed them up (his father, of course, was born in Kenya) for his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa; meanwhile other countries, most notably China, have been throwing money around in Africa without strings – like expecting the recipient countries to respect human rights or the rule of law – attached. So you have to wonder if some of Africa’s more dubious regimes (Zimbabwe for one) will take the American call to reform when they know there are countries out there willing to do business with them no matter how heinously they behave.

Russian Subs and Sloppy Reporting

You may have heard this morning that two Russian submarines have been tracked sailing in international waters far off the East Coast of the United States. Patrols like these were once common, but have been far less so since the Soviet Union dissolved in 1991, mostly because throughout the 1990’s the Russian Navy couldn’t afford to stage them.

Of course this isn’t stopping some commentators (notably those on Fox News) for asking if the Cold War is on again – ignoring the fact that the world’s larger navies routinely sail about in the ocean on maneuvers. One of the Russian subs is reported to currently be making a port call in Havana, Cuba.

The main reason though I’m even mentioning this is because of some sloppy reporting by Reuters (the source of the wire story I happened to read on the event). Reuters said the subs were identified as Akula-class boats and that ‘Akula’ was the NATO designation for this class of submarine (Akula is also Russian for “shark”). So far, so good. Reuters then goes on to say that the Russian designation for the Akula is “Nerpa”, which is totally wrong. The Soviet/Russian name for the Akula is “Shchuka” (Russian for “pike”, a type of fish); the Nerpa is a recently-built submarine in the Shchuka-class, but not the name for the entire line of subs (it also happened to suffer a malfunction of its fire fighting system during sea trials that killed 20 workers, a fact Reuters does get right).

Ok, so why the nit-picking? Because in journalism it’s important to get the facts right, this is especially important for a wire service like Reuters, whose stories will be picked up by possibly hundreds of news outlets and run, usually without the news outlets fact-checking the story on their own. And as my first journalism professor once explained, if you get the small details wrong then why should the reader believe you on the big ones?

I knew the class of submarines wasn’t called the Nerpa, it took me all of two minutes online to find a link confirming that fact. I’d expect that a huge organization like Reuters could at least do the same. As for what the Russian subs were doing off the coast in the first place, Russia is trying to finalize an agreement to lease the newly-finished Nerpa to the Indian Navy for about a billion rubles - nothing like a few mentions in the US media to help seal the deal.

BRICs and SCOs

You have to hand it to Russia, even though their economy has taken a beating in the global recession, they're still pushing forward with their efforts to emerge as a counterpoint to American power in the world.

In the past week Russia has played host to not one but two major regional summits - the meetings of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the BRIC Group (that's Brazil, Russia, India and China, the four fastest developing economies in the world). The subtext was clear, that the idea of a "unipolar" world, with the United States as the sole superpower, hasn't worked and needs to be replaced by a "multipolar" world, where global affairs are dominated by several powers, thus better representing the interests of humanity and preventing one powerful nation from imposing their will upon the rest of the world (at least that’s the theory). Of course Russia wants to be one of those "poles".

And both the SCO and BRIC are part of that strategy - powerful organizations where the US doesn't have a seat at the table. One common headline emerged from the dual summits - that the US dollar needs to be replaced as the world's sole reserve currency. Right now, nations tend to value their currency against the dollar (they will exchange their currency for Euros or Yen or whatever, but it’s the currency’s worth against the dollar that remains the important benchmark), many trade deals (like oil sales) are valued in dollars no matter where they occur, and for countries with failing economies buying and selling in dollars is always a safe option (see what happened in Zimbabwe as their currency became worthless last year).

But Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that this is bad for the global economy because it makes the world too vulnerable to fluctuations in the American system - like how last fall's Wall Street credit crunch sparked a global recession. His solution, which he pushed to both the SCO and BRIC, is to have additional reserve currencies. The SCO even backed a Russian idea for a common currency for the SCO - like the European Currency Unit, the forerunner to the Euro.

This sparked some hysterical declarations, like this one from journalist Chris Hedges where he states, "the American Empire is Bankrupt". That's a bit of an overstatement (ok, more than a bit...)

The SCO and BRIC meetings are important, but you have to understand the nature of both bodies, they're not really policy-making groups, in fact this was the first BRIC summit ever. Their talk about other reserve and common currencies was, at this point, just talk. And while Russia would like both groups to become powerful international organizations, right now they're not. Competing interests between Russia and China (both look to dominate Central Asia and the other four current SCO members - Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan) could likely keep the SCO from becoming anything more than it already is - an organization that meets to discuss security concerns (mostly terrorism related) in Asia.

But you do have to hand it to Russia for trying to shake up the geopolitical stage.

E-recycling's dirty face

The Guardian is running an interesting series of articles under the title "Greenwash, Exposing False Environmental Claims." The target of their latest article is the rapidly-growing electronics recycling industry.

While many electronics manufacturers have recently tried to put on a green face by launching recycling programs for your old TVs and PCs, much of this hi-tech gear winds up being dumped in the slums of cities across Africa, India and China, where desperately poor people hack them apart trying to recover trace amounts of valuable metals contained by the devices (not exactly my idea of ‘recycling’). But at the same time they're gathering bits of gold, silver and copper, these workers are being exposed to toxic materials like lead and mercury that are also used in producing modern electronics. And once all the valuable bits have been harvested (often by child workers who of course lack any kind gear to protect them from the toxic materials), the smashed and burned electronic leftovers wind up permanently littering the landscape (60 Minutes also did an in-depth report on e-waste last November).

The Guardian says that PC-maker Dell announced a ban on exporting their used equipment to the developing world unless the gear is in working order - but so far Dell is the exception not the rule when it comes to keeping their merchandise from becoming someone else's environmental problem.

Russia to unveil new spaceship

Russia is ready to debut plans for a new model spaceship on Monday, a ship that could one day carry cosmonauts to the moon.

The as-yet unnamed spacecraft will replace the venerable Soyuz that has been the backbone of manned Russian/Soviet spaceflight since the late 1960's. The new ship would come in at least two versions - a six-seat model for flights in Earth orbit and a four-seater that could travel to the Moon, and possibly beyond. It will be designed to dock either with the International Space Station or a future Russian space station.

Unfortunately though its requirements like that last one, and the moon flight option, that show the International Space Station experiment has ultimately been a failure. Here's why - the whole idea of the ISS was to bring together the world's space-fairing nations (we'll count the European Space Agency as a 'national' program here for simplicity's sake) together on one common project. The rationale is simple, that by working together countries can achieve more than working individually. This is especially true for something as hugely expensive and complex as manned spaceflight.

But in recent years countries have talked less and less about collaborating. The United States has announced plans to return to the Moon, China also has their own lunar plans, so do (apparently) the Russians. The ESA has drawn up plans for its own manned space vehicle; India and even South Korea are working on their own designs as well.

It's a huge duplication of efforts, not to mention costs. A manned mission to Mars would be humankind’s next great step in exploration, and it would also be wildly expensive, likely costing far more than any one country would be willing to spend. It is the type of project that would require international cooperation on a broad scale, the type of cooperation looking less and less likely.