Just how late-Brezhevian Iran really is

It's the little things that matter (from LAT piece):

Amid soaring prices, sweltering temperatures and escalating international tensions, a Ramadan of discontent is unfolding in the Islamic Republic.

Protests have been brief and contained, nothing like the mass demonstrations that followed the disputed presidential election in 2009. But they are still noteworthy in a nation where the government endeavors to project an image of contentment and defiance to the outside world.

Fast-rising prices, probably fueled in part by new international sanctions tied to Iran'scontroversial nuclear program, have tested the patience of people facing an eroding quality of life. Complaints are muttered at bus stops and cafes. The prices of figs and dates, two items often consumed once the dawn-to-dusk fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan has ended, have risen at least 20% in just a few days, said a fruit hawker in north Tehran.

Perhaps no issue has been so contentious as the cost of chicken, long a relatively inexpensive staple popular during Ramadan. In the last two months, prices have more than doubled, outraging many consumers.

Then we get the word from USA Today (HT to Craid Nordin) that the gov is doing its best to encourage women to start having babies again.  Reason cited is rapid demographic aging, but more upstream, the point is that Iran is suffering a stunning birth dearth.  Women simply don't want to have babies in Iran.

What that says is that Iranians are losing their faith in a better future - in droves.  Birth dearths of this sort represent a populace in depression, because having babies is ultimately an act of supreme optimism, which is in very short supply in Iran.

I lived a summer in the USSR in 1985, and I remember being so depressed by the Russians I met and hung around with that I became a classic crying drunk.  I would drink deep into the night with these people and they were always so sad about their past, their present and their future that, upon getting back to my own place, I would typically burst out crying.  I could only take in so much depression in one night that I'd figuratively "throw it up" like so much excess alcohol.

When I got back to the States, I had one idea firmly fixed in my head:  that place is totally screwed and is going down.  Didn't know when or how.  Just knew it had zero future.

Iran seems very similar.

Q&A Session at Wikistrat's Blog

Ask Wikistrat’s Chief Analyst Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett

Editor’s Note: Every week, Wikistrat’s Facebook followers engage in a 24-hour exclusive Q&A drill with one of Wikistrat’s Senior Analysts via Facebook. This week we featured Wikistrat’s Chief Analyst Dr. Thomas P.M. Barnett.

Q: Timothy Kelly-  Dr. Barnett, how do you think nuclear proliferation will play out in the Middle East?

A: I think the Obama Administration’s oil-focused sanctions will put immense pressure on the Iranian regime to cave in on the nuke question, possibly to the point of striking out in some manner that Israel – and perhaps the U.S. – can use as a pretext for launching substantial strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.  But if I had to bet, I would lay money on Israel striking first for its own reasons versus Tehran providing the excuse.  Iran has always struck me as incredibly aware of which line-crossing activities will elicit direct military responses, and, much in the vein of WS’s recent simulation on this subject, I think Tehran knows well that it needs to avoid any genuine threat to global oil markets – lest it trigger an “all-in” military response from the United States . . . 

Read the entire post at Wikistrat's Blog.

Great "Bottom of the Pyramid" logic

WSJ story on multinationals finding steady profit in marketing to the poor, who offer a "relatively stable demand":

Analysts have long argued that companies selling products and services to people earning less than $4 a day can outperform in tough times.  This is because consumers still must buy food, soap and other basic goods when the economy is bad, even as middle-class buyers cut back on discretionary items like fashion or gadgets.  Companies selling everything from cheese to diapers to frozen fish ahve discovered in Indonesia that they can turbocharge growth and add more stability to sales during slowdowns by offering small package sizes that are more affordable for the poor who have limited spending money on any given day.

One nit:  "Analysts have [not] long argued ..."

That was C.K. Prahalad's Bottom of the Pyramid logic that was first opposed, then ridiculed and now gets passed off as the conventional wisdom of the analysts.

Simplistic point, but smart people can make a lot of money off such simple stuff.

Iran gearing up for naval fight in PG versus US

We've seen the reports of the US bulking up its naval presence, and now we get Iran claiming (via WAPO) more capabilities to strike USN ships.

What to keep in mind: Iran can do damage to US ships, while US ships can do far more damage to Iran, but none of this says Iran can close Straits, which would be a monumentally more complex drill than is commonly portrayed.

But more immediate point:  war of nerves heating up.

US obviously expects iran to lash out at some point as the West's oil-sales-ban comes into effect over coming months, so we're gearing up for the flashpoint all right, which means shooting could easily come.

Does that qualify as war?  It can qualify itself very quickly. That's for damn sure.

The CNOOC bid for Nexen: the inevitable next step in the NorthAm-East Asia energy evolution

Cnooc's bid is the first super-big buy into NorthAm energy (three times the Syncrude buy in 2010).  It follows similar buys into Australia (Rio Tinto), Iraq-KRG (Addax) and Latam (Repsol Brazil).

Cnooc, by all accounts, learned from the failed Unocal bid and built all manner of business and personal networks before launching this bid.  Lotsa regulatory hurdles on this one, but I'm betting Canada ultimately says yes, especially since Nexen's board backs it. Ottawa can't close itself off to China's resource demand and opening itself up to that flow requires some buy-back transactions like this.

(WPR Feature) Skipping Out on the Bill: Obama's Cost-Free Drone Wars

Thanks to the Obama administration’s aggressive use of classified leaks to the press, we are encouraged to believe that President Barack Obama has engineered a revolutionary shift in both America’s geopolitical priorities and our military means of pursuing those ends. As re-election sales jobs go, it presses lukewarm-button issues, but it does so ably. But since foreign policy has never been the president’s focus, we should in turn recognize these maneuvers for what they truly are: an accommodation with inescapable domestic realities, one that at best postpones and at worst sabotages America’s needed geostrategic adjustment to a world co-managed with China and India.

Read the entire article at World Politics Review.

The only solution to our immigration "crisis" that matters

In the 1950s, there was a scare (mostly in NYC) about the seemingly endless influx of Puerto Ricans (you remember "West Side Story" and Leonard Bernstein's attempt to dance the problem away?), but the stream thinned out dramatically when the local GDP per capita reached somewhere in the region of 40% of the US's number.  When it got to that point, all things being equal, PRs preferred staying in PR.

This dynamic is well know and has been pointed out many times before in print.

Point of these charts from WAPO story about how returning migrant workers are bolstering Mexico's middle class is that we are reaching that point on Mexico, where - commensurately and with no surprise - the birth rate falls dramatically.

No, it doesn't end the flow of immigrants from LATAM writ large, but the point is made:  as long as a huge opportunity disaparity exists, they will come.  If you want a more manageable flow, you need to whittle down that delta along the lines I just described.

From the story:

 For a generation, the men of this town have headed north to the land of the mighty dollar, breaking U.S. immigration laws to dig swimming pools in Memphis and grind meat in Chicago.

In the United States, they were illegal aliens. Back home, they are new entrepreneurs using the billions of dollars earned “on the other side” to create a Mexican middle class.

The migrants “did something bad to do something good,” said Mexican economist Luis de la Calle.

Where remittances from El Norte were once mostly used to help hungry families back home simply survive, surveys now reveal that the longer a migrant stays up north, the more likely the cash transfers will be used to start new businesses or to pay for homes, farm equipment and school tuitions.

From Santa Maria del Refugio, a once rural, now almost suburban, community of 2,500 in central Mexico’s Guanajuato state, young men have gone to the United States seeking the social mobility they could not find at home.

Their money, and many of the workers themselves, have since returned, as the U.S. economy slowed in the global recession. For the first time in 40 years, net migration is effectively zero. About the same number of Mexicans left the United States last year as arrived. Migration experts expect the northward flow to pick up again as the U.S. economy improves. It is also possible that as Mexico provides more opportunity for upward mobility, some potential migrants will stay home.

In Santa Maria, dollars scrimped and saved in the United States have transformed a poor pueblo into a town of curbed sidewalks, Internet cafes and rows of two-story homes rising on a hillside where scrawny cattle once grazed.

“Look at this place — it’s practically a city now,” said Roberto Mandujano, 50, who moved back to his home town and opened a hardware store five years ago. “There was nothing here when I left.”

Mandujano is a member of a new demographic in Mexico, the anxious, tenacious, growing middle class who own homes and cars and take vacations. They see the United States more as a model than an exploiter.

Another argument for the US focusing more on amping up growth across LATAM: If we want to grow long-term above what history says we should be restricted to as a mature economy, then the best way to achieve that is for countries in our neighborhood to be experiencing rapid growth. [NOTE: this is ultimately why China will need to cool it on seabed territoriality disputes, but no, this logic does not rule out Beijing's stupid behavior in the meantime - as humans have an unlimited potential for letting idiocy trump logic.]

The resurrection of cheap energy in the US is the lure we should use in such an integration effort, and yes, we should most definitely be thinking about adding more stars to our flag.

You either get busy growing or you get busy shrinking in this globalized world.

Advice sought and delivered

Got a request from somebody who's a protegee of someone Linked In to me.  We subsequently linked to each other.

This fellow then asks me for career advice in the following vein:

The purpose of my message is to learn about your ascent to being a world renowned analyst. 

Often times, analysts are perceived to be indispensable because of their technical ability to first access data and then render it in easy-to-understand graphs and charts. After the completion of this time consuming task, analysts are then expected to explain data trends and irregularities in "plain English". By this time, my eyes are so glazed from normalizing data, my write up - while good - is lackluster at best. 

As I read "The Pentagon's New Map", I see the book's content as a balanced amalgamation of data, research and insights. You are exactly what I want to be what I grow up.I would love to be that analyst who makes a difference in the way business and political decisions are made.

How do you recommend I get to that point in my career?

My reply:

Never turn down a chance to do public speaking.  In fact, seek them out at every opportunity. Even if you do a lot of public speaking, it will take the usual 10,000 hours before you get really good.

Study as many foreign languages as you can fit in.  Studying several languages is more important than mastering one.  Good storytelling is ultimately translation, and the best-communicating experts are experts at talking to other experts from fields other than their own.

Write every day.  If you don't get enough opportunities, then start you own blog or join a group blog.  

Prepare to view good writing as a lifetime pursuit.  It will take nonstop writing for about a decade before you really get good.

Whenever possible, seek out and work with professional editors on everything you write.

Read authors whose style you admire and work their tendencies into your own material.

Listen to what people say you do best and then do that as much as possible, getting others to do things for you that you do poorly.  So if mentors you trust tell you're not a good writer and not a good speaker, then spending your life trying to overcome your weaknesses is probably not a great idea.  You'd be better off sticking to what you're best at and trying to make those skills world class.

Nobody is good at everything.  Life involves choices.

I have learned - over time - to keep my advice general like that, versus trying to plot out career paths for others, because, when you do, you inevitably advise them to either: 1) retrace your "brilliant" journey; or (worse) 2) do the opposite of what's made you such a bitter fuck about your life and career.  It's like when you go around asking profs for advice on your PhD topic (which I did all over greater Boston): they either have you updating their own diss or tilting at some windmill they now wish they'd taken on instead.

In truth, I don't advocate anyone pursue a long and steady career, which is why I'm not partial to dispensing wisdom about following my "brilliant" path, nor am I one to suffer bitterness over the choices I've made. Every choice I made, I made because I felt it was time to move on and I was more fearful of creative stagnation than career stagnation. Simply put, I feel good when I feel creative, and when I don't, I go with no regrets.

Peinvention, as scary as it is, beats stagnation every time. The only thing you can be assured of in this world - in this era - is that your "beloved" or "hated" career will likely terminate much faster than you expect, forcing you into a new one (this one feels like my 5th).

Personally, I love that about this world.  To me, the scariest thing in this world is the person who works the one track for 35 years and then retires - a disappearing notion.  To me, that would hell on earth.  I have always been distinctly aware that I only get one at-bat, so I plan on swinging at everything before I go.

Everybody needs a Plan B.

I am always plotting my escape from my current career, because the minute something become un-negotiable, you might as well cash it in.  Because that's when your career starts owning you instead of you owning your life.

Reasons to be optimistic regarding the global economy's response to global warming

US experiencing warmest year on record and 13 hottest years (going back to 1880) for the planet have all occurred since 1998.

David Leonhardt (whom I like a lot and always read) writing in NYT speaks of a non-punitive vector that seems to be emerging among the big players:

Behind the scenes [of the disappearing public debate on global warming], however, a somewhat different story is starting to emerge — one that offers reason for optimism to anyone worried about the planet. The world’s largest economies may now be in the process of creating a climate-change response that does not depend on the politically painful process of raising the price of dirty energy. The response is not guaranteed to work, given the scale of the problem. But the early successes have been notable.

Over the last several years, the governments of the United States, Europe and China have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on clean-energy research and deployment. And despite some high-profile flops, like ethanol and Solyndra, the investments seem to be succeeding more than they are failing.

The price of solar and wind power have both fallen sharply in the last few years. This country’s largest wind farm, sprawling across eastern Oregon, is scheduled to open next month. Already, the world uses vastly more alternative energy than experts predicted only a decade ago.

Even natural gas, a hotly debated topic among climate experts, helps make the point. Thanks in part to earlier government investments, energy companies have been able to extract much more natural gas than once seemed possible. The use of natural gas to generate electricity — far from perfectly clean but less carbon-intensive than coal use — has jumped 25 percent since 2008, while prices have fallen more than 80 percent. Natural gas now generates as much electricity as coal in the United States, which would have been unthinkable not long ago.

The successes make it possible at least to fathom a transition to clean energy that does not involve putting a price on carbon — either through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program that requires licenses for emissions. It was exactly such a program, supported by both Barack Obama and John McCain in the 2008 campaign, that died in Congress in 2010 and is now opposed by almost all Congressional Republicans and some coal-state and oil-state Democrats.

The real goal, according to one scientist, is the emergence of disruptive technologies that push the planet "down" the hydrocarbon chain (wood-->coal-->oil-->gas-->renewables & hydrogen).

The more we shift from threatening fines to promising record profits, the migration will occur as it should.

Fascinating for me to watch a dozen years after I ran that global warming-focused "economic security exercise" with Cantor Fitzgerald atop World Trade Center One.

NOTE: the falling USG support for renewable energy research is why the influx of China investment is so important.

Why the Chinese military can only get so big

Pentagon hawks tend to do these wonderful extrapolations of Chinese defense spending: taking the highest estimates of gross economic size and then imagining that nothing changes in Chinese politics or economics or society that would threaten the military's share.

This is, of course, complete and utter nonsense, to wit:

WSJ interview with CEO of Frensenius, one of the largest health-care companies in the world.  Based in Germany, already huge around the planet (one-third of the dialysis in US), and gearing up for a big push into China.

The focus?  Dialysis.

What? China has all these patients all of a sudden?

Well, yes.

Yes in that it's always had a sizeable portion of people who've needed it, but maybe had their demand unmet due to poverty.

Yes also in that dialysis requirements tend to rise with the wealth of a country.  The truly poor tend to go without, but the middle class and rich, as their numbers swell . . . tend to demand it - go figure.

Then there's the rising "wealth" of the government itself: China can, and is more willing to, pay for such services as part of government-sponsored health-care:

WSJ: How's the dialysis business in emerging markets?

Mr. Schneider: Fantastically well. [Historically] there's not that much demand for dialysis products or services because it's a fairly expensive treatment. Now, there's a whole lot of catch-up demand. Once a country nears $8,000 to $10,000 in annual per capita GDP, [governments] and insurers really start to pay for dialysis. That's when things take off.

Coincidentally, a lot of non-democratic governments tend to go democratic in that range.

Chart of the day: Economist's listing of top 15 natural gas resources

On the unconvential (shale): the usual list that I work with, with the addition of Russia as #3 in world.  Most experts don't talk all that much about Russia because, with all their conventional gas, there's not a great need to exploit.

But the real kicker for me in the charts is the bottom right one, which is a stunner: by 2030 the projection that gas, coal and oil all converge in the high 20s as basically equal shares in world primary energy usage.  Several stories here:

• Gas displacing coal (not surprising)
• Long slow increase in nat gas production/use
• And then the true stunner of such a huge drop in oil (about 45% in 1970 to high 20s in 2030).

Fascinating stuff.

Where China and the US are clearly collaborating

Nifty WSJ full-page report in mid-June entitled, "Beneath a war of words, money paints a different China-U.S. picture."  The subject?  Chinese investments in US renewable energy efforts.

Just like in the case of hydraulic fracking, we see the Chinese eager to collaborate.

Naturally, as the less advanced technology economy, the Chinese are eager to go beyond collaboration into . . . ahem . . . aggressive collaboration, let's say.  But let's be honest: that's the incentive for the less-technologically gifted party in any technological investment. For the more advanced party, the goal is an expanded pool of opportunity over time:

Read the headlines and you find a war of words between the U.S. and China over clean energy, with the two countries trading barbs over whether Chinese solar-panel makers are dumping their wares onto the U.S. market at prices so low they're illegal. Follow the money more broadly, however, and you see something different: clean-energy investors and executives from the two countries starting to do deals.

Chinese businesses, typically with Beijing's support, are beginning to buy stakes in U.S. clean-energy companies and projects, often with Washington cheering. The deals span technologies from cleaner ways to burn coal to cheaper ways to use renewable power.

Each side has reasons to expand this capital flow. The Americans get the Chinese money and, with it, access to China's vast market, which is far hungrier for clean-energy innovation than the U.S. The Chinese get U.S. technology to help sate their soaring energy demand, and a place to invest that looks positively low-risk compared with their home turf.

As for the fears? Money talks - no matter the language.

One reason is economic. Federal stimulus money for the energy industry is tapering off, and other federal clean-energy subsidies, many of which failed to deliver enough bang for the buck, are likely to get pared back, too. More than ever, U.S. clean-energy companies could use the help of China's investors and consumers.

Another reason is environmental. Many clean-energy technologies are getting cheaper but are still too expensive to compete against conventional fossil fuels. The only way they stand much chance of gaining real scale is if the world develops and deploys them in the most economically efficient way: across national borders. Moreover, if American clean-energy technologies aren't deployed in China, where air pollution is thick and greenhouse-gas emissions are rising, then whatever cleanup those technologies accomplish on U.S. soil won't much matter.

Thank God for the logic of businesspeople.  Imagine if the Pentagon could aspire to such thinking.

Wikistrat's blog shifts into higher gear

Wikistrat has had a blog for months now, but the postings were pretty much limited to noting analytic products as they emerged from simulations, so a relatively low frequency.

That changes now, as Wikistrat starts making the blog available for the global community of analysts to start populating with their own material in sort of a group blog dynamic.

Examples:  

• Nice post by Dr. Dr. Ehsan Ahrari, CEO of Strategic Paradigms, on Russian-Syrian relations.
• Summary analysis of recent global events by the Counter-Terrorism Desk.
• And a 24-hour ask-the-expert drill with Senior Expert Zacharias Michas, currently Director of Studies at the Institute for Security and Defense Analysis in Athens.

Over time, the goal is to get the group blog as the primary public "center of online gravity" for Wikistrat, as we switch from a more "this is Wikistrat" public-facing site.  Of course, a start-up sticks with that sort of here-we-are approach for as long as necessary to build up its initial clientele.  But as that process proceeds quite nicely across 2012, the natural maturation of the site begins - meaning we shift from attracting eyes with our company story to doing the same with analytic product that flows in ever-increasing amounts.

TSA @ SFO, WTF?

You know you're really old when . . . TSA totally writes you off as a terrorist threat.

And here I was all excited about being able to run in the 50-59 pool at road races!

Still, something to look forward to, heh?

Naturally, al-Qaida will adjust . . .

The struggle continues to unfold across Africa

Interesting op-ed in the WSJ over the weekend, from a writer who writes frequently for the paper.

The recent spate of attacks on Muslim historic and religious sites in the ancient city of Timbuktu calls to mind the Taliban's destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in Afghanistan over a decade ago. The Taliban, of course, were obliterating the icons of a rival religion, as they saw it. The Salafist militias that have lately overrun Timbuktu and Mali are obliterating a rival tradition within their own faith . . .

Such incidents have now become a global phenomenon. In effect, primitive iconoclastic strains of tribal Islam have burst out of their historical isolation on the margins of civilization and coalesced globally to attack the more cosmopolitan, syncretistic and culturally advanced centers of their faith.

To Western minds, Mali denotes the most marginal of places in the African desert. But it is home to African Islam . . . 

This is the new power topography of the Muslim geosphere. Oil money has funded extremist madrassas, or religious schools, to propagate a stripped-down, one-size-fits all ideology precisely suited for pollination across impoverished regions such as Somalia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Pakistani-Afghan border and the like. With money and threats, this international extremist franchise has targeted peaceful Muslim lands where the faith had blended with local customs or become more cosmopolitan through contact with other cultures. Places, in other words, where Islam had lost its aggression and exclusivity.

Today, radicalized imams from the outside infiltrate such places and rebuke the natives for their superstitions and weakness, their relaxed and idolatrous ways. Few can resist the irruption of money and guns legitimized by a virulent Quranic rhetoric, however pious they may be.

Some of the oldest communities in Islam, loosely categorized as Sufi for their mystical bent and ecstatic rituals often involving dance and music, have come under attack . . . 

In the radical worldview, violence furnishes the litmus test: All authentic Muslims are jihadists, or holy warriors. The addition of anti-imperialism to the religious ideological mix happened under the Afghan resistance to the Russian occupation. Anti-imperialism has become so central to radical Islam's message and appeal that these days any fellow Muslim daring to demur gets branded a foreign agent.

Yet the real imperialists, the outsiders bent on conquest and control, are the radicals themselves . . . 

Been a projection of mine going back through all three books:  the Mideast middle-ages, going from a median age of about 22 to one in the early-mid 30s by the 2030s.  We are watching that journey now unfold with the Arab Spring.  So the question has long been:  where does the Salafist impulse go?

Two "bottom billion" pools:  interior Africa and Central Asia.  Basically fake states in both instances, created by outsiders.  That artificiality makes the political situation brittle enough for enough money and guns to matter.  

I've never been a betting man regarding Central Asia:  too many great powers too eager to snuff out that situation.  The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation was basically created for this purpose.

Africa doesn't offer rich soil in terms of the local Muslim, who tend to be, as the op-ed points out, moderate in just about all ways.  But I never predicted Africa was suffer this problem because of the nature of Islam there.  the problem is the weakness of the states to deflect the impulse.

That's why America created Africom - in a nutshell.  I know people want to paint the oil, but that's a weak attractor and it flows pretty much no matter what (hasn't exactly stopped out of the PG, has it these past 3 decades?).

No, I don't think radical Islam wins in Africa.  I just think it'll be the last great fight - and it won't go quickly.

Galrahn finally getting his own well-deserved press coverage

Solid Danger Room piece by David Axe (HT Craig Nordin) on Raymond Pritchett and his Information Dissemination blog and the impact it's clearly having on USN thinking over time.

Very nice to see.  Ray (pictured left) is a very nice guy who deserves any positive coverage he gets.

Chart of the Day: the oil sanctions are working on Iran

Arguably the primary reason why Israel holds off attacking - that and its modest satisfaction with the success of the combination strategy of cyber warfare attacks and assassinations of technical personnel.

You can see that the sanctions have taken about a million barrels a day - or about 40% of daily production denied in terms of sales.

That is significant - and a genuine success for Obama.

The hottest subject in oil deals today involves anybody who has been a regular buyer of Iran.  All of these states are looking to replace - now.

And no, they don't all go running to the Saudis.

This chart is a month old.  More recent news says roughly 50% drop in May-June alone.  Not sure I buy that. Lots of desperate deals happening out there involving Iran.  But clearly, the trend is downward and steep.

I honestly do believe that the Arab Spring is helping plenty.  With Syria on the ropes, the anti-Iran long knives are out.

The generational shift emerging in Chinese society

Nifty FT piece on the emerging post-Tiananmen generation - or anyone too young to remember that. Here they're talking only up to 24 years old, but in truth, you could easily go as high as 30-32, because people don't come of age on political matters til around 13 at the earliest.

As it is (rough eye-balling here), you think the under-25 crowd in China is close to 1/3rd of the population.

Piece argues that recent enviro demonstration "exposed a new vein of activism" among this crowd.

You know the old bit (repeated by me) where Chinese activists said, "Before Tiananmen, we thought freedom was 90% political and 10% economic.  After Tiananmen, we decided that freedom was 90% economic and 10% political."

When I first heard that bit, I loved it immediately as a basic expression of the lesson that virtually all revolutionary generations learn throughout history:  it's easier to revolutionize the environment through technology and commerce than through politics (which, in Marxian fashion, reflect those deep underlying realities).  So what I'm saying here is that most revolutionary generations learn that it's smarter to inexorably reshape the base than attempt to smash - one afternoon - the superstructure.

Why environmentalism is such a signpost of change: it's the political issue that translates so clearly to economic progress, because it defines the point where people look up from their economic successes and start asking the tradeoff questions. Yes, labor wages tend to precede as an issue, but that's such an intra-business issue (especially in a place like China where you're talking foreign owners). Environmentalism, in contrast, is undeniably local - even intimate (your bodies and what you put in them).

Overall, a great piece worth reading.  The "post-90" generation is starting to graduate from college and displaying a keen interest in politics.  With a tougher economy awaiting them, the instinct to seek better answers will be strong - along with the communication capacity for self-organization (see the unsurprising youth skew on "netizens").

No, I don't see some fast wave a'coming.  I see about a two-decade struggle where the government and Party consistently yield ground because it's the best choice for continued growth accompanied by political stability.

Time's Battleland: (CYBER) New Air Force Mission: Cyberwar Belongs to Us

The Wall Street Journal noted last Friday about how the “Pentagon digs in on cyberwar front.” Bit misleading, as it’s really the Air Force that’s desperate to corner that market. You know the general story of Big War Blue (Navy, Air Force) feeling disrespected and underfunded across the “war on terror” era, and you’ve been treated ad nauseum to their budgetary counter-revolution in the form of the AirSea Battle Concept (whose combined Air-Navy motto should be: “It’s China’s turn — as well as ours!”).

Read the entire post at Time's Battleland blog.

Chart of the day: Why US ag subsidies are going away

From an Economist story about how Congress will eventually dismantle the ag subsidies long distributed to US farmers and ag corps.