My Beauty Best Teacher

Via Big Hollywood, there is a great post by the yeoman Michael Yon, who is now in the Philippines being a great journalist and really writing the story of our times. When I teach my students about modern warfare, I make sure that I mention that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are part of a larger initiative to fight terrorism around the world, and so are not isolated to those countries.

It's not like the US invaded Iraq to conquer it, or overthrew the Taliban because we are a bad country- America is the good guy, the hero, the moral country, and is trying to bring order and civilization to the whole world so that the people of the world can enjoy the blessings of life, liberty, and the protection of property that we enjoy. It is a noble goal, although one you may not really feel comfortable with.

Because it is a large goal, it takes us around the world. There are operations in Somalia, operations in North Africa, and operations in the Philippines. The effort in the Philippines has gone largely unnoticed in the United States, but we do have a sizable force there and it is one of the main fronts in our global war on evil (lawlessness, killing of innocents, barbaric behaviors, piracy, banditry, etc).

If you want to really understand the conflict in the Philippines better, read Michael Yon's account of it here. It's good stuff.

Just got this email from Julie Lindsay with a list of schools coming to the Flat Classroom Conference in Beijing the end of February. This is very exciting!

• Changchun American International School
• Guangzhou Nanhu International School
• RDFZ Xishan School
• International Academy of Beijing
• Hua Shi Yi Fu Zhong High School
• Tsinghua High International School
• Yokohama International School, Japan
• International School Beijing
• Gyeonggi Suwon International School, Korea
• Western Academy Beijing
• Beijing City International School
• Beijing Normal University
• University of Nothern Iowa, USA
• Livingston American School, China
• Al-Azhar Islamic Senior High School, Indonesia
• Dalian Maple Leaf Foreign Nationals School
• American International School of Guangzhou
• Dulwich College Beijing
• Kaohsiung American School, Taiwan
• Shanghai American School
• British School of Beijing -Shunyi Campus
• International School of Tianjin
• International School Yangon, Myanmar
• Cebu International School, Philippines
• Nanjing International School
• British School of Beijing
• The Illawarra Grammar School, Woolongong, Australia
• Nishimachi International School, Japan
• Stonehill International School, Bangalore, India
• International School Bangkok, Thailand
• Shekou International School
• Yew Chung Intern. Beijing
• Harrow International School Beijing
• St Andrew's Cathedral School, Sydney, Australia
• Westwood Schools, Georgia, USA
• Minerva Special Needs School, Australia
• Kristin School, Auckland, NZ
• Vientiane International School, Laos
• Teda International School
• St. Michael's International School, Japan
• Osama Bin Zaid School, Oman
• Senri Osaka International School, Japan 

 There are many schools that understand that what their students need now is not only a world class education where the students know math, literature, writing, reading but also that students need to know this whole new subset of communication skills: technopersonal skills. More than that, they need to know how to relate and work with one another and that we need to have our students working together and co-creating with one another on an ongoing basis.

Our students need so much but they also need each other. They have an uncanny desire to relate. Let's social-network their learning in powerful ways.


I believe that those coming understand that the world is changing and they want to be part of it. In fact, so many of the schools coming are coming because of Twitter, Blogging, and Social networking. Pretty much all of the speakers involved came in to the program through our network.


Project based conferencing as we do it with very very short speeches (when they are given - we call them Flat Learning Action Talks or FLATs) and several projects that run through the conference is still a somewhat "experimental" method of conferencing in the eyes of many. But for those who have seen it in action it is tremendously powerful and transformational.


Wish you call could come - meanwhile, feel free to join the Conference Network and participate virtually. We'll send out instructions through the Ning.

Earlier last week I was critical of Obama's response to Tunisia's revolution, where it appeared that rather than take an active role in events, Obama's administration simply sat on the sidelines and tried to figure out where Tunisia was (I'm kidding- I heard that he had a 40 minute briefing on Tunisia after the revolution broke out- I'm sure he learned about it then). He is dangerously incompetent, especially on important world events that our President is supposed to be the primary actor on in our political system. The revolution in Tunisia though was just the start of something bigger, something that the Iranian Revolution of 1979 has taught us will have repercussions lasting decades, and that is the revolution that is taking place right now in Egypt.

For the past couple days I have been trying to get a handle on events there, much like our President, and like usual, my reactions have mirrored Obama's. First I first supported the young revolutionaries against the bad dictator, while Obama supported the bad dictator. But now I support the bad dictator over the evil militant terrorist groups who want to take power in Egypt, while Obama now supports the evil militant terrorist groups (he supports them by not saying anything bad about them while saying bad stuff about Mubarak- that's an upgrade over his usual 'voting present' by showing support for the bad guys). Obama is dangerously incompetent again and once again, anyone who voted for him or his party made our nation and world a worse place by doing so.

The best article that I have found to help me get a handle on what is going on in Egypt appeared today in the Jerusalum Post by Caroline Glick called Our World: Clueless in Washington. I am going to pass on some of the better parts of it to you to help you too understand a little bit better what is going on in Egypt...

The Egyptian multitudes on the streets of Cairo are a stunning sight. With their banners calling for freedom and an end to the reign of President Hosni Mubarak the story these images tell is a simple one as old as time.


On the one hand we have the young, dispossessed and weak protesters. And on the other we have the old, corrupt and tyrannical Mubarak. Hans Christian Andersen taught us who to support when we were wee tots.

But does his wisdom apply in this case?

Certainly it is true that the regime is populated by old men. Mubarak is 82 years old. It is also true that his regime is corrupt and tyrannical. Since the Muslim Brotherhood spinoff Islamic Jihad terror group murdered Mubarak’s predecessor president Anwar Sadat in 1981, Egypt has been governed by emergency laws that ban democratic freedoms. Mubarak has consistently rejected US pressure to ease regime repression and enact liberal reforms in governance.

This reality has led many American commentators across the political spectrum to side enthusiastically with the rioters. A prestigious working group on Egypt formed in recent months by Middle East experts from Left and Right issued a statement over the weekend calling for the Obama administration to dump Mubarak and withdraw its support for the Egyptian regime. It recommended further that the administration force Mubarak to abdicate and his regime to fall by suspending all economic and military assistance to Egypt for the duration.

The blue ribbon panel’s recommendations were applauded by its members’ many friends across the political spectrum. For instance, the conservative Weekly Standard’s editor William Kristol praised the panel on Sunday and wrote, “It’s time for the US government to take an active role… to bring about a South Korea/Philippines/Chile-like transition in Egypt, from an American-supported dictatorship to an American-supported and popularly legitimate liberal democracy.”

The problem with this recommendation is that it is based entirely on the nature of Mubarak’s regime. If the regime was the biggest problem, then certainly removing US support for it would make sense. However, the character of the protesters is not liberal.

Indeed, their character is a bigger problem than the character of the regime they seek to overthrow.

According to a Pew opinion survey of Egyptians from June 2010, 59 percent said they back Islamists. Only 27% said they back modernizers. Half of Egyptians support Hamas. Thirty percent support Hizbullah and 20% support al Qaida. Moreover, 95% of them would welcome Islamic influence over their politics. When this preference is translated into actual government policy, it is clear that the Islam they support is the al Qaida Salafist version.

Eighty two percent of Egyptians support executing adulterers by stoning, 77% support whipping and cutting the hands off thieves. 84% support executing any Muslim who changes his religion.

When given the opportunity, the crowds on the street are not shy about showing what motivates them. They attack Mubarak and his new Vice President Omar Suleiman as American puppets and Zionist agents. The US, protesters told CNN’s Nick Robertson, is controlled by Israel. They hate and want to destroy Israel. That is why they hate Mubarak and Suleiman.

WHAT ALL of this makes clear is that if the regime falls, the successor regime will not be a liberal democracy. Mubarak’s military authoritarianism will be replaced by Islamic totalitarianism. The US’s greatest Arab ally will become its greatest enemy. Israel’s peace partner will again become its gravest foe.

What has most confounded Israeli officials and commentators alike has not been the strength of the anti-regime protests, but the American response to them. Outside the far Left, commentators from all major newspapers, radio and television stations have variously characterized the US response to events in Egypt as irrational, irresponsible, catastrophic, stupid, blind, treacherous, and terrifying.

They have pointed out that the Obama administration’s behavior – as well as that of many of its prominent conservative critics – is liable to have disastrous consequences for the US’s other authoritarian Arab allies, for Israel and for the US itself.

The question most Israelis are asking is why are the Americans behaving so destructively? Why are President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton charting a course that will necessarily lead to the transformation of Egypt into the first Salafist Islamic theocracy? And why are conservative commentators and Republican politicians urging them to be even more outspoken in their support for the rioters in the streets?

Does the US not understand what will happen in the region as a result of its actions? Does the US really fail to understand what will happen to its strategic interests in the Middle East if the Muslim Brotherhood either forms the next regime or is the power behind the throne of the next regime in Cairo?...

...As Prof. Barry Rubin wrote this week, “There is no good policy for the United States regarding the uprising in Egypt but the Obama administration may be adopting something close to the worst option.”
 
Unfortunately, given the cluelessness of the US foreign policy debate, this situation is only likely to grow worse.

Two more years remain in President Obama's term of office. Hopefully voters in America will wake up and realize how dangerously incompetent his administration has been and how destructive the impulse to take a flier on this unknown was.

From the Council for Foreign Relations Stephanie Hanson writes:

A small group of economists now argue that brain drain might have a positive impact on Africa. Those skilled workers, their research shows, are often sending significant quantities of money back to their home countries. A March 2008 paper by economists William Easterly and Yaw Nyarko says remittances to Africa are likely undercounted, but on average they are equivalent to 81 percent of the foreign aid (PDF) received by an individual country. A 2005 World Bank study showed that remittances from skilled workers to their families in Guatemala, Mexico, and the Philippines helped reduce poverty in those countries.
In some cases, talented workers are even returning to their home countries to work or start businesses. Though research on this phenomenon in Africa is limited, economists have documented the effects of Chinese and Indian tech entrepreneurs returning to their home countries. This so-called brain circulation—in which entrepreneurs start new companies but maintain business links in the United States—has been extensively researched by Anna Lee Saxenian of the University of California, who calls these entrepreneurs "The New Argonauts." Some experts believe African skilled workers could have a similar positive effect on their native economies...[continue reading]

Read the TEDBLog and Mootbox for related coverage.

Goldman Sachs coined the term BRIC countries in 2003, in a 2005 follow-up paper they added eleven potential BRICers to that list, the Next Eleven. Two of which are in Africa, Egypt and Nigeria:

In thinking about other countries that might have BRICslike potential, we focused on demographic profiles, which drive much of the analysis. Without a substantial population, even a successful growth story is unlikely to have a global impact. Hong Kong will never be a global
power nor Luxembourg, despite the very high levels of income and living standards that they have achieved.We call this larger developing-country set the Next Eleven (N-11), though whether they will ‘emerge’ is still an open question for many. This group shows broad representation by region and includes Bangladesh, Egypt,
Indonesia, Iran, Korea, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Philippines, Turkey, Vietnam.

From the IMF's Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa,2008(PDF):

The term “emerging market” was coined in 1980 to refer to countries that had stock markets and were in transition toward having the features of the mature stock markets in industrial countries.This box suggests that some African countries fit within the emerging market group and supports this view by benchmarking these African economies of 2007 against the ASEAN countries (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore,and Thailand) of 1980, when the term “emerging market” entered the lexicon.
Selected African countries compare favorably with the ASEAN countries of 1980. The ASEAN countries were already experiencing strong economic growth. Yet, in many other respects, the ASEAN countries looked quite different from what we see today. Inflation rates were still high in some cases, the depth of their financial sectors was limited, foreign direct investment had yet to accelerate, and their financial
resources, reflected in international reserves, were adequate but not high. Many African countries have perhaps reached broader macroeconomic stability than the 1980 ASEAN benchmark. Growth is strong, inflation moderate, and international reserves relatively high. Like ASEAN, financial depth remains limited.Foreign direct investment is quite high, although this is in large part a reflection of the larger share of naturalresources such as oil in the case of African countries.2 Debt-to-GDP ratios are low.