The World of WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, the creator of WikiLeaks is famously embroiled in a current controversy which aptly demonstrates the inter-connectedness of the world's states. He is an Australian, wanted by Sweden, arrested in Great Britain, and pursued by America for telling the truth about Iraq. The complexities of international extradition law aside, there seems to be no doubt, anymore, that the extraordinary efforts to return him to Sweden to face a dubious prosecution have really been engineered by American officials who want to bring him to ground so that they can indict him for security leaks here. Needless to say, this is an abiuse of international law, but more to our point (geography) this case illustrates the obsolescnce of locality in an internet driven world. Assange's American crimes, if he committed any, never required that he set foot in America. His disclosure of secret documents, and his receipt of them for that matter, happened in another place that has no relevance to his events. He has no real home, and when found in England he was initially denied bail because he couldn't provide the court with an address. His supporters come from all over the globe, part of his bond was posted by American film maker Michael Moore, and some of them are avenging his detention by launching denial of service attacks on foreign and domestic websites that have abandoned WikiLeaks. Now that he is free on bail, the question of whether he goes back to Sweden seems to be the least of his worries. This global story will, I suspect, end with his arrival in America and with a fantastic show trial which pits our much vaunted love for transparent democracy with the government's persistent efforts to keep its own secrets.

My second column

This month's Patriot Newspaper column is about religious displays on public land. I hope you enjoy it.

Why Study Geography?

For my tenth post of the semester, I thought I'd finish with a few personal thoughts about why I decided to study geography. I graduated from college many years ago, went on to law school, have taught in a law school and have lectured at and been the faculty planner at legal education programs in a variety of subjects. I have been published in national journals and local newspapers, and continue to write fiction and non-fiction on many topics. This is to say that I am not studying geography for the 3 credits, or to satisfy a degree requirement, or because it is a requirement for a program which I hope to complete. I have taken 4 courses at HACC in the last few years and all of them have had one defining connection: I knew next to nothing about the subject. There are other subjects taught here that I would enjoy studying -- philosophy, finance, English, to name a few -- but I already know a fair amount about those. So I decided to devote my limited free time to learning new things and expanding my intellectual horizons. Hence, World Geography -- a field in which I was nearly a total novice.

I still am not an expert, far from it, but the exposure to new fields is always broadening and this one has been no exception. I now know where Singapore is. I know about the Japan Model, and I know why deserts are often near mountain ranges. I haven't mastered Google Earth but I know that it exists and that it has functionalities which I never suspected.

So why study geography? Some answers are here, but my personal answer is simply that new thoughts stretch your mind in unexpected directions. Thanks to all who made this class a worthwhile experience.

The Ninth Nuclear Power?

Recently, Stanford University physicist Siegfried Hecker wrote abpout his inspection of North Korea's nuclear facilities and announced that the country's level of advancement was far higher than suspected by the American public. There is no doubt, says Hecker, that NK's abilities to produce highly enriched uranium make it a significant player in the club of nuclear states. This is hardly news. In 2006 North Korea detonated its first known nuclear bomb, and since then it has made no secret of the fact that it intends to be and act like a nuclear power. As described in the wonderful (and terrifying) documentary Countdown to Zero, NK has long expressed a willingness to partner with other rogue states toward the goal of establishing a nuclear weapon delivery system. Particularly daunting is the threat of a NK and Pakistan alliance. Pakistan is a known nuclear state, it has far more weapons that NK, but it has paltry missle technology. NK, on the other hand, has been developing missle delivery systems for years. It is hard to imagine a more de-stabilizing development on the world stage than a combination of the highly aggressive North Korea and the politically disfunctional pakistan, directed to employing nuclear weapons against their perceived Western enemies.

Our Man in the Orient: Japan

At a time when America's economic interests and security vulnerabilities seem to involve the enhanced commercial force of China and North Korea's forays into increased militancy, it is ironic that we turn to our former military and commercial rival Japan. But that is the point of the Japan's new military focus and outlook. Japan will re-focus its miltary attention to China and Korea, and not surprisingly this will involve American cooperation and involvement. japan and China have ancient enmity, of course. And Korea's aggression is a threat to the entire Pacific rim. But without American prodding there is grave doubt that Japan would have selected this moment to reassign its priorities.

Not really about geography but . . . . .

I have been invited to write a regular monthly column for the Harrisburg Patriot. Here's the first one.

PS to Professor Ernst: I know this does not count towards my quota, but I hope you enjoy reading it nonetheless.

The level of Internet freedom “is better than in any other Arab country, but it is not good.”

In an antiquated battle with current communications technologies, Lebanese authorities have arrested a blogger who criticized that country's army. This effort -- to insulate the national government from criticism -- strikes me as a failure to recognize realistic limits, including the geographical limits, to the physical restraint of speech.

In an earlier world where "free press" really needed a printing press, soldiers could effectively police their jurisdiction by breaking down doors and smashing the machinery of duplication. Today anyone with internet access can flood the world with their opinions, as YouTube recently recognized as it was persuaded to remove jihadist content from its site. As I have suggested in previous posts, the meaning of borders diminishes every day even while the power of locality remains strong. Lebanon is "free-er" than nearby Syria, so Syrians can still be shot for criticizing their government. But criticism remains available to Syrians as long as they can get on-line. Freedom to speak has always entailed freedom to listen and until dictators learn how to stop electrons at the borders, they cannot staunch the invasion of cyber insurgency.

Earth Writer returns after a litigation induced hiatus

New Jersey Governor Christie has killed plans for a tunnel which would have diminished the friction of distance for many commuters and other travelers.

"The tunnel, which would have stretched under the Hudson from North Bergen, N.J., to a new station deep below 34th Street in Manhattan, was intended to double the number of trains that could enter the city from the west each day. The project’s planners said the additional trains would alleviate congestion on local roads, reduce pollution, help the growth of the region’s economy and raise property values for suburban homeowners," according to The New York Times.

This seems to me, at first blush, to be a classic confrontation between geography (which militated strongly in favor of the project) and politics (which allowed its demise because of economic posturing). Deeper analysis may put geographical forces on both sides of the issue. Physical geography -- the project lessens travel time and thus makes distant sites closer --loses out to cultural geography -- which informs the governor that political considerations among his conservative voting base makes this a wise electoral decision.

All geography is local

American statesman Thomas "Tip" O'Neill famously said that "all politics is local" meaning that votes were cast and controlled in their own communities, subject to local political influence. Recent events in New York reaffirm that even global geography has local roots, and local geography has global branches.

Consider the so-called Ground Zero Mosque, more properly known as the Park51 Islamic Community Center: a private use of a small parcel of private property in a city where larger and more complicated real estate transactions happen every moment has taken on world-wide significance. Why? because its planned location is two blocks (or four, or further, or mere footsteps away, depending on the philosophical leanings of the person doing the measurement) from another location which has become invested with huge symbolic importance. The former World Trade Center site is "hallowed ground" some say, and therefore it is a sacrilege to let Muslims pray nearby.

The transparent bigotry which that opinion expresses is only half the point. The rest is that it comes dressed up as an argument about location -- geography -- rather than ideology. "Let them put it somePLACE else," the protesters say. "This is just too close." But where else? Is a mile away far enough away to insulate Ground Zero from the corrupting influence of nearby Islam? How about in the next county? The next state? This entire debacle presents an unusually pristine example of the power of places, the lure of locations. The people who complain that this Islamic Center does not belong near the scene of an islamic crime, would likely not want it anywhere else. But their prejudice takes traction from the fact that this place -- this tiny sliver of land, imbues their cause with a presumed geographical legitimacy.

Does globalization diminish cultural diversity? Is that really the question?

The Globalization Website provides the arguments for and against the thinking that globalization diminishes cultural diversity, but I believe that in a larger and more comprehensive sense this is a false dichotomy. Rather than reducing or enhancing cultural diversity, I believe that the miniaturization of the world which has resulted from advancing communication and transportation technologies have reformed the definition of culture -- requiring that we accept that "culture" itself is no longer exclusively a local or national phenomenon, but now a global one. In a world where cultural influences -- music, art, economics, politics, literature, and education -- are as available remotely as locally, the cultual unit is changing from regions and nations to the global community as a whole.

The scholar John Sexton, president of NYU, puts it this way during an interview with The Huffington Post: "I think the world at this point is miniaturizing. It's miniaturizing in every way so 'gating strategies' are utterly useless at this point. We just learned that you can't gate off of an economy, something we should have known long ago. Clearly you can't gate off the flow of people and ideas and information, so the world is becoming miniaturized, and the question I think, and maybe the most important question of the century is, how is humankind going to react to that miniaturization?"

That seems to me undeniably true. As distant causes have immediate and unavoidable worldwide results and faraway ideas and discoveries have a real time influential availability, the thought that we can isolate -- or even insulate -- our "cultural" development into a localized phenomenon is becoming increasingly obsolete.

Some will object. Local identity and national or regional exceptualism are strong forces. It may be, as Wordsworth wrote two hundred years ago, that "the world is too much with us" but the only way out of this experience is backwards, and that direction is lost to us forever. I hope.

For more, watch economist Jagdish Bhagwati's remarks at The Globalization Arguments.

What makes North "north"?

When cartographer Gerardus Mercator developed the Mercator Projection in 1569, he designed a cylindrical map projection with parallel east west lines to facilitate marine voyages from Europe. But, as we have discussed in class, this projection distorts the size and shape of every location on the globe -- and even their positions.

As the fictional character Dr Don Fallows tells White House staffers CJ Craig and Josh Lyman on this clip from The West Wing, because of the Mercator Projection and its distortions, "Nothing is where you think it is." The Mercator Projection distortion does more than offer a confusing and incorrect view of the world, it implicates issues of social justice by allowing the First World -- North America and Europe -- to appear bigger, and therefore more important that other less favored world areas. "In our society we unconciously equate size with importance and ecven power," explains Fallows.

The cartograpohers in this episode argue for another kind of map, one which is more accurate as to size, shape, and location. It is called the Peters Projection.
It really exists, and it looks like this:
















But wait, there's more.

The top-and-bottom orientation makes the Northern hemisphere -- where the First World is -- seem primary, elevated, and exalted, while the places in the Southern Hemisphere -- the African, South American and Asian Second and Third World are, well, on the "bottom" of the world. In truth, of course, neither is more accurate than the other. On a spinning planet which revolves around a star in a universe which has no top-and-bottom orientation, what -- other than the cultural egotism of the countries which decided -- makes North "north"???

Playing for Change:World Geography and the Information Revolution

In our second session the class discussed the Information Revolution, a term that usually refers to the effects of dramatic technological improvements in communications, data storage, and computing. The relation to world geography is obvious -- just as the Industrial Revolution effectively shrunk the globe by reducing the time for travel to distant points, the Information Revolution has shrunk it further reducing the time for communicating with distant points -- often allowing for an effective time delay of zero (a phenomenon which has given rise to the curiously appropriate phrase "real time," as if previous delays made the passage of time more artificial).

But as the study of Geography is at least partially the study of locations, instantaneous communications can be considered to make the entire world one super-location. If it takes zero time to get to another place (even though virtually), then is it really another place at all?

Which brings me (finally) to Playing for Change. According to Wikipedia, Playing for Change is "a multimedia music project created by the American producer and sound engineer Mark Johnson with his Timeless Media Group, that seeks to bring together musicians from around the world." But just watch this video a few times. PFC is really a way, impossible before the Information Revolution, for musicians from around the world to collaborate on the same performance, while they are miles -- and often thousands of miles -- apart from one another. They bring the culture of their actual location into a concert which takes place -- where? The PFC website says that they are "connecting the world through music." Maybe they are. But it seems to me that Shakespeare's old maxim that "all the world's a stage" has now become literally (and virtually) true.