The Cartels May Have Committed One Massacre Too Many

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/homero-aridjis/mexico-missing-students_b_6062000.html?utm_hp_ref=world&utm_hp_ref=world

The long bubbling cauldron of Mexican narco-politics has begun to boil over in recent weeks. A buss full of university age students was sprayed with machinegun fire by a combination of local "police" and cartel gunmen. Forty-three surviving students were thrown into government vans and have since disappeared. The Mexican peoples' tolerance for corruption may have reached its limit. This incident is merely the latest, and most overtly egregious, in a long line of murders at the intersection of drugs and politics in Mexico. The various drug cartels have infiltrated the governments of their respective territories so deeply that cooperation is much more a rule then an exception. The control exerted by the cartels results from their uncompromising brutality. Opponents' families are routinely targeted, rather than the opponents themselves, so they cannot earn the title of martyr by dying at the hands of the cartels. The cartels employ the stick and the carrot simultaneously with the phrase "plata o plomo." This phrase, meaning silver or lead, gives an opponent the opportunity to either take a bribe or get shot. Aside from its alliterative flare and intimidation factor, the plata o plomo policy ensures that any politician powerful enough to damage the cartels will be prevented from doing so by the money in their pockets. A professors union is calling for what amounts to a strike if the students are not returned alive. The historical pattern makes it a near certainty that the students are already long dead.

            The citizens of Mexico are in a truly heartbreaking situation. Every trade in Mexico could strike, legitimate life in Mexico would come to a standstill, and the cartels would still keep operating. They have the necessary monetary and political resources to weather any foreseeable cessation in public services brought on by civil disobedience. Military force has already proven ineffective. The death toll in the previous president's War on Drugs is estimated at around 120,000, and the cartels are still in de facto control of much of Mexico. The Mexican government has broken one of the fundamental rules of governance. For a government to be effective it must have a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Cartel violence is not legitimate; perhaps the word legitimate should be replaced with the word effective. The Mexican government has lost the monopoly on the effective use of violence. The problem facing legitimate forces in Mexico is one of resources. Mexico may have nation-state level resources, but many of these resources are dedicated to running a country. The cartels, on the other hand do not have to deal with the financial burdens of governance, and they have a near monopoly on the most lucrative market in the world for their product.

            It is uncertain how Mexicans will be able to shake the grip of the cartels. The advantage they have is that they are willing to exploit human flaws. If every customer were to willingly stop buying illicit drugs at once, the cartels would lose money in a period of restructuring and reemerge to cater to another vice. The only solution I can see is some brand of popular uprising against the narcos, but this would involve mob violence and mass execution, because that is how popular uprisings work, and that might lead to a state of affairs just as dangerous for the average Mexican as the current one.

The Next Arms Race: Straight Out of Sci-Fi

http://www.financialexpress.com/news/india-working-on-supersonic-missile-aircraft/1298527

India is developing a hypersonic aircraft. The goal of the future craft is to reach twenty-five times the speed of sound. Although mach 25 is a mere three and a half thousandths of one percent of light speed, it is almost ten times faster than the fastest manned, unassisted flight; and almost ten thousand KPH faster than the fastest powered aerial vehicle ever tested. The speed, of the projected craft is not, in itself, particularly groundbreaking. What sets the Indian project apart is its proposed propulsion system. The Indian equivalent of DARPA (DRDO) is planning to build the world's first nuclear fusion powered aircraft.

Building a fusion driven aircraft is ambitious because the scientific community has yet to harness fusion energy in a way sufficient to turn a simple steam turbine, let alone power an aircraft. As if the construction of the world's first fusion drive wasn't enough, the planned acquisition process of the fusion fuel takes another page out of science fiction. The proposed fuel source is helium three. He₃ is only available in practical quantities on the moon. This means that Humanity will have to initiate its first sustained, extraterrestrial mining operation.

This is the part of the process where scientific speculation meets geopolitical intrigue. It is highly doubtful that any one actor, private or governmental, will have the resources to initiate a He₃ supply line. The amount of standard chemical rocket fuel needed to get some sort of space tanker out of earth's atmosphere would be unprecedented; this fact alone rules out unilateral action. I am envisioning the formation of a multinational He₃ mining and refining consortium, similar to OPEC. The immense resources required to manufacture He₃ fusion fuel would give this organization, and its member nations, a massive amount of global political influence. Imagine all of the Faustian bargains various nations have made for oil increased in scale and deviousness by a couple orders of magnitude. The country at the forefront of fusion technology, say India, may be willing to trade some of this technology with whoever controls the supply line, say Russia, and the U.S., in exchange for a better deal on He₃.

Once applied fusion technology becomes available, an arms race may begin that will make the arms/space race of the Cold War era look like an elementary school science fair. Our only current application of nuclear fusion is the thermo-nuclear bomb. As destructive as an H bomb is, it is the strong force equivalent of banging rocks together to make fire. Once a weapons designer can use a fusion engine to accelerate a projectile to mach 25, the entire concept of a warhead, thermo-nuclear or otherwise, will become superfluous. The kinetic damage alone will cause the desired result. The complete shift in warfare technology may alter the balance of power similar to tanks in WWI and planes in WWII.

Mystery Kim

http://www.cnn.com/2014/10/07/world/asia/north-korea-where-is-kim-jong-un/index.html

Speculation abounds as to the whereabouts of your favorite child dictator, and mine, North Korea's Kim Jong Un. Kim has not been seen in public for over a month. On October 8th CNN published an article detailing the various hypotheses regarding Kim's absence. First, I must congratulate CNN for not falling for the temptation of wild speculation that comes with this story. The author clearly laid out each theory and carefully indicated to the reader the line between fact and supposition. The theories range from the mundane, like gout, to the intriguing, like a potential coup. I was expecting CNNs print (web) coverage to be as hollow and sensationalistic as their television reports; I was pleasantly surprised to discover otherwise. The author gave the mundane theories about the same amount of words as the more intriguing theories.  I am also impressed with the author's presentation of the background information.  The piece took time to explain that Kim was always more of a symbolic leader and that many political decisions are made by a council of men loyal to the late Kim Jong Il. The author then went on to cite a source that explained how the toppling of Kim Jong Un in a coup would not necessarily be better for the world than his temporary absence due to injury. The CNN television news tends to avoid reporting on North Korea through any lens other than the traditional, two dimensional narrative: Kim Jong Un is bad, so therefore the removal of Kim in a coup is good.

I am divided as to my favorite hypothesis for Kim's disappearance. The part of me inclined to wishful thinking really wants to believe that there was a coup, but my willingness to believe a given hypothesis automatically makes me suspicious of said hypothesis. The one piece of evidence that even circumstantially supports the possibility of a coup is the last minute visit to South Korea paid by the two top men in Kim's government. The fact that these men discussed the adoption of a "one country two systems" unification plan with South Korean diplomats leads many to believe that Kim is losing de facto control of his government. The more pedestrian explanation for Kim's absence is his health. He has a family history of diabetes. This predisposition is no doubt exacerbated by Kim's excessive consumption of Coca Kola, one of his favorite beverages. The high fat content of Kim's diet supports the hypothesis that gout is behind Kim's limp and subsequent isolation.

Mr. Putin, Mugging Foreign Journalists is Bad PR

http://online.wsj.com/articles/bbc-journalists-attacked-investigating-servicemen-deaths-in-russia-1411038737

Vladimir Putin often seems to make decisions as though he is playing the role of a stereotypical Russian villain in a B-list Cold War spy film. Whether it is casually threatening nuclear annihilation or jovially bantering about his ability to have any political opponents killed, he seems to derive personal enjoyment from inflating his cloak and dagger, ex KGB image.  This image may be ideal for domestic consumption, but it seems to work against Russia's interest on the world stage. Earlier this month, a crew of BBC journalists who were investigating the deaths of Russian servicemen alleged to be fighting in Ukraine were accosted in the street and beaten. The crew's cameras and tapes were also destroyed.

While there is no concrete proof that the "mugging" was sanctioned by the Kremlin, it is hard to see this event as a coincidence.  A Russian journalist and opposition leader named Lev

Shlosberg was attacked in a similar manner following the same story. The fact that a second attack occurred rules out coincidence.

Attacking journalists seems counterproductive from the point of view of the Kremlin. If one wants a journalist to stop pursuing a certain line of evidence, the last thing to do is attack him/her. A beaten reporter is the journalistic equivalent of a neon sign telling prying eyes exactly where to look. Having ones tapes destroyed represents a logistical setback, but nothing more; one can always buy new tapes. If the attackers' goal was simply to scare the journalists off the story, attacking them may have the opposite effect. Many young Western journalists want to be seen as the next Edward R. Murrow, bravely risking life and limb to get the tough story. Getting a solid beating in pursuit of a controversial story is seen by this type of journalist as more of a merit badge than a deterrent. If an older, more risk averse journalist in the group chooses to abandon the story, there will doubtless be a younger journalist with a bigger Murrow complex eager to take his/her place.

The most vexing aspect of this story is that the Russians are aware of the Murrow complex. There are people employed by the Russian government whose job it is to analyze Western media. These analysts would certainly inform their superiors of the Western journalistic tendency to perceive injury in the line of duty as a badge of honor. Given the above suppositions, there are two potential explanations for the beating of the BBC team. The less likely, but more amusing, possibility is that Putin simply enjoys playing the role of a cartoon villain. The more likely, but less amusing, possibility is that the decision to attack the journalists was made by a lower level, local official who was either unaware of or unconcerned with the downstream geopolitical consequences.