Category Archives: Int’l Relations

Diplomats with Money

Posted on April 15, 2006 by |

Well, for a while now I’ve been seeking out ways I can combine my IR degree with my technical experiance. I’ve had it said to me that corporations, especially highly globalized tech corporations, need diplomats just as much as governments do.

Today I read about how true that statement really is. Chinese President Hu Jintao’s first visit to the U.S. will not be to Washington D.C., but instead to the state of Washington. C-net is reporting that he will be attending a dinner at Bill Gates’ house, along with other top pacific economic players.

This comes on the heels of the Chineese government requiring all PC makers to ship their product with a “licensed” operating system. Someone should tell them that Linux is both free and licensed. :)

So… when do you think Microsoft will get a seat at the U.N.?

Posted in All, Int'l Relations, Tech

Comparing Prison Populations

Posted on April 14, 2006 by |

An entry posted on Foreign Policy’s “Passport” blog yesterday cited the BBC’s in depth report on prison life. Specifically, a chart on this page.

I’m still reading the BBC’s articles on this topic, which are great, but what I have issue with is the tone of the comment on the Passport blog. To quote:

Seven tenths of a percent of America is behind bars. That doesn’t sound like much, right? Well, that is actually more than 2 million people. And get this: prisoners in China are only .118 percent of the total population, while Brazil locks up only .183 percent of its citizens.

The implication is that there are a LOT of people in US prisons. While it may be true that perhaps there are too many people in US prisons, I’d like to take a moment to clarify the disparity between US and, say, Chinese prisons.

We like to think of the Chinese government as having an iron-clad grip on its citizens, but this is a half-truth. First off, China has 1.3 billion people, and most live in rural areas. Families and communities take care of crime, not a legislature and police force, and one can imagine that crimes like stealing and rape are handled much differently than in a large city.

Other factors, such as the “disappearance” of enemies of the state, China’s extradition policy, their execution policy, as well as corruption within law enforcement all influence this statistic. Be careful when comparing things, prison rates in Brazil or China are very different from those in most developed countries for many reasons.

Not that I don’t think that we may be a bit over-zealous with our drug possession policy ;)

Posted in All, Int'l Relations, Main

Fun Population Map

Posted on April 12, 2006 by |

This site has a really neat graphical way of representing population and area sizes (based on cia world factbook). You can change a ton of different views and filters, and also view by continent. Pretty neat stuff.

The notes are also amusing, and underline the difficulties that map-makers run into, even if they are demonstrating a proof-of-concept relational map. “How do we represent Palestine or Taiwan” are obvious problems, but less obvious ones include “do we count Greenland when representing Denmark’s population density?”

Posted in All, Int'l Relations

Relational CIA World Factbook Browser

Posted on February 19, 2006 by |

For someone that uses the CIA World Factbook regularly, this a pretty neat new way to do it:
http://der-mo.net/WINDS/
The cool part is that the interface allows for various relations, not just borders. Viewing border connections isn’t actually too useful, a normal geographical map which allows you to see the CIA Factbook information would be more handy (like this). Viewing other connections, such as language (which you can do on this map) is what makes this functionality cool.
Other connections would be handy, such as viewing countries with similar population sizes or grouping island/landlocked nations. It’s easy to think of countless more relational “views” that would be really handy.

Posted in All, Int'l Relations

Conan reveals casting of Nuclear Crisis movie

Posted on February 9, 2006 by |

Last night Conan announced an upcoming NBC “made for TV movie” about the current Iranian nuclear weapons crisis, and also revealed the casting lineup. Hopefully I won’t get these people confused in my coursework this semester…


Vladimir Putin will be played by Phil Collins


Jacques Chirac played by James Garner


Acting Prime Minister of Israel Ehud Olmert played by Abe Vigoda


IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei played by Mr Spaceley


Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad played by Ringo Starr


John Bolton played by a walrus


Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei played by ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons


Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing played by Gilbert Godfrey


Condoleeza Rice played by James Brown


Donald Rumsfeld played by Skeletor


George W. Bush played by Kevin Federline


Conan himself will also be starring in the movie, playing Finnish President Tarja Halonen.
What she has to do with the Iranian Crisis I have yet to discover…

Posted in All, Int'l Relations

Horray for Rabid Teachers

Posted on January 4, 2006 by |

This is a response to a blog post located here. I randomly came across this article, which includes a rather bad recording of one of my teachers at SFSU this next semester.

I must say, it’s rather discouraging. The guy seems to be a rather rabidly liberal, believing that the sole reason why U.S. government was concerned about Iran’s nuclear program is so that they can invade and userp control of Iran’s oil. He also, rather pompously, brags that his conversations with his ‘contacts’ in Israel are worthey of being recorded by the FBI, and that said contracts were reporting that Israel was mobalizing it’s forces to invade Iran. He then goes on to say that this is inevitable, because without such a war Israel’s economic situation would deteriorate. Since this was recorded prior to Jan 27th, 2005, obviously not.

Wow. Where do I begin? I am by no means a supporter of Bush or his war on Iraq, but this professor is completely ignoring basic IR principles with his statements. The interview seems to be with the “voice of the Islamic Republic of Iran”, which (with such a title) is understandably biased against the US and Israel. But the Professor goes out of his way to promote propagandist ideas which seem to me to be just as bad as the ones promoted by Bush or Rice.

I heard that this guy was a bit off, but man, it’s going to be a long semester… Here’s a response someone else had on Rob’s Blog

Cheers for the blog. I went to SFSU and I took this guys class. It might not suprise you that this is one of his lectures. He espouses this stuff all the time, and if you disagree then you get an F…no foolin’. I took issue with a comment of his once and he stared me down in front of 35 students and a guest speaker. Cant believe he’s on international radio…..

Oh boy…

Posted in All, Int'l Relations