-------- Original Message -------- Subject: Geography Strikes Back (i.e. look at a map) Date: Sat, 08 Sep 2012 10:04:39 -0400 From: Joel Kovarsky <[log in to unmask]> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]> This appeared late in yesterday's WSJ: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443819404577635332556005436.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories . The author is Robert D. Kaplan, the chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a private (and decidedly non-partisan) global intelligence firm. From the article: If you want to know what Russia, China or Iran will do next, don't read their newspapers or ask what our spies have dug up—consult a map.... As a way of explaining world politics, geography has supposedly been eclipsed by economics, globalization and electronic communications. It has a decidedly musty aura, like a one-room schoolhouse.... But this is nonsense. Elite molders of public opinion may be able to dash across oceans and continents in hours, allowing them to talk glibly of the "flat" world below. But while cyberspace and financial markets know no boundaries, the Carpathian Mountains still separate Central Europe from the Balkans, helping to create two vastly different patterns of development, and the Himalayas still stand between India and China, a towering reminder of two vastly different civilizations.... Joel Kovarsky