Geoscience of Lost

In honor of Catholicgauze’s once favorite television show LOST coming back is a look at the geoscience of LOST. Previously the blog examined maps but I never took into account the weird magnetic feature of the island. According to Geotimes the LOST magnetic pull have to be up to one American quadrillion more than the Earth's. Three possible origins exist for the phenomenon: really big volcano, really big space impact, really big nuclear bomb, really big man-made elector magnet. The article touches on other possible theories for the field as well.

Google Maps' Street View YouTube Parody

I once jokingly sterotyped Map Room Blog as full of "Family Raped, Murdered by GPS Navigation Unit" post. Now I know where he is coming from. Catholicgauze fears Google Maps from this day forward!

Green Map Project

The Green Map Project is an open effort to map green spaces such as parks and other cultural sites. The map page has a mashup which offers one links to various Green Maps around the world.

The Art Insitute in Chicago has created a Green Map course and has a very good results page. It is good to know that a school is teaching urban geography, field methods, and cartography all in one. It is a pitty most geography departments do not do that.

Mexico's Multiculturalism Meets Bigotry

Mexico passed the "use and customs" law earlier this decade. The law allowed for limited self-governance of the various Indian groups mostly located in the southern part of the country. The law was praised as protecting native cultures.

The law, like many other multicultural efforts, has allowed reactionary values to trump the liberal values which allowed the reactionaries the chance to come back. Mexican Indian women have lost the right to vote and hold office in certain parts of the country.

May liberal values such as freedom win out against backwards cultures. However, cases like this are found throughout the world from the international level like Europe turning a blind eye to the oppression of Muslim women in the ghettos to small incidents like the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's policy of banning women from certain parts of the campus because of its openess to the mentally ill homeless.

Hat tip: Catholicgauzette

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

This post is dedicated to the eleven million (11,000,000) people who were murdered by the Nazis. This individuals were massacred just because they were Jewish, Roma, Polish, disabled, homosexual, Jehovah's Witnesses, Serbian, political dissidents, and slaves in the Soviet Army.

On this day we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day as a time to remember the slain in this horrific event, other horrific events in history, those who are being murdered today, and take action so something like this may never happen again.

The Holocaust Museum has the Holocaust Encyclopedia and a maps page for more information.

New Flag of Iraq

Top: New Flag

Bottom: 2004-2008 Flag

The Iraq Parliament has voted to change the national flag. For the mean time they have agreed on a temporary flag.

The post-Saddam flag was a slight modification of the 1991 Saddam flag which in turn was a slight modification of 1963 Baath Iraq flag. That flag had three stars and "God is Great" in Arabic. The stars originally meant Syria, Egypt, and Iraq; representing the Baath Party's goal of uniting all Arab countries. In 1991 "God is Great" in Saddam's handwriting was added in an effort to unite Islamic nations with Iraq against the US-led campaign to liberate Kuwait and the stars meaning was changed to the Baath Party motto of "Unity, Freedom, Socialism." In 2004 the "God is Great" motto was changed to standard font.

The recent change is part of Iraq's effort to move on. The 2004 flag is banned in the Kurdish Autonomous Region and many are upset because the three stars were remained. No one can still agree on what the new flag should be (the Kurds are pressing hard for Kurdish iconography) so the new flag will last for one year. Everyone wants to avoid the fiasco of the proposed 2004 flag.

Impact Craters on Google Earth

Impact Craters on Earth kmz file (download) is more for reference than sight seeing with the exception of the "Coolest" layer. Prepare to be amazed and thank the heavens you did not live where and when the labeled sights were hit

Reaction to A World Without Islam

Foreign Policy has an essay entitled “A World Without Islam” by a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council at the CIA, Graham Fuller. Fuller writes if Islam never existed the world would end up “exactly where it is today.”

Fuller is right in the sense that a world (and especially the Middle East) without Islam would not be some sort of utopia. Terrorism, assassinations, suicide bombings, world wars, weapons of mass destruction, riots, religious violence, and a whole lot of other nasty things all have their origins independent of Islam. The Middle East itself was the scene of wars, just like everywhere else, before Islam. Jewish Zealots waged war for God and nation against the Roman Empire, Arab tribes raided caravans for loot, and Persia and the West fought each other dominance all before Muhammad.

However, the essay falls apart in its historical and cultural geographical analysis. Ignorance about demographics, religion, political, and the rise of Europe greatly hurt the thesis that the world would be the same.

First, there is the statement “Without Islam, the face of the region still remains complex and conflicted. The dominant ethnic groups of the Middle East – Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Jews, even Berbers and Pashtuns – would still dominate politics,” is flawed when one looks beyond face value. The Middle East would probably be more ethnically diverse. Arabs before the Islamic conflict were limited to the Arabian Peninsula and the fringes of Syria and Jordan. The Islamic Conquest spread Arab culture more than actually Arabian Arabs. This shows today with the physical differences between an Iranian Gulf Coast “Arab” and an Egyptian-Sudanese “Arab.” Arab today is much more of an identity, spread through Islam, rather than an actual ethnic group. Without Islam bringing Arab as a common unifier the Middle East would be a salad bowl of Syriacs, Assyrians, Phoenicians, and other groups. The Middle East may be even more ethnically fractured if Islamic Arabs did not unify it.

The assumptions Fuller makes concerning religion also have problems. Fuller states without Islam Christianity would probably have continued its dominance of the region. This is probably correct. However he goes on to discuss how the region would be Eastern Orthodox and that would be bad because Eastern Orthodox tend to be suspicious of the secular and culturally Catholic West. The problem is this is three fold.

First the region would be a mixture of Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, and Oriental Orthodox like the Egyptian Copts and the Assyrian Church of the East. Oriental Orthodox probably would have kept the momentum they had before Islam and would have legitimate shots at converting much of India and China. The mindset of Oriental Orthodox would indeed be counter to the West in that they would negatively see both Roman and Constantinople as those who opposed them during the early days of Christianity. Religion would be even more political with joining the Eastern Orthodox or keeping communion with Rome being even more political than it is today.

Secondly, the Eastern Orthodox would not be so anti-West if Islam was had not arrived. The Eastern Orthodox Church actually reunited with Rome before the fall of Constantinople. After the Turks seized the city they had the new patriarch withdraw from the union. The Muslim Turks kept the Eastern Orthodox separate and rivals of the Western Church (A joke goes: “Q: If Catholics and Eastern Orthodox are so similar in dogma why do Protestants not claim the Patriarch is the anti-Christ? A: Because the anti-Christ has better things to do than listen to the Sultan for 500 years.”). Religious struggles would be present in a world without Islam but the playing field would be completely different.

Thirdly the essay states “what were the Crusades if not a Western adventure driven primarily by political, social, and economic needs? The banner of Christianity was little more than a potent symbol.” Byzantine Emperors Michael VII and Alexius I Comnenus, Pope Urban II, and the peasants of the People’s Crusade disagree. Urban II whole justification was the plea of the Byzantines’ who cited Muslims destroying Christian communities. Western Christians first started caring about the Muslim ruled Holy Land not when it economically suited them but when Fatimid caliph, al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, ordered the Church of the Holy Sepulcher destroyed in 1009. The essay then brings up the Fourth Crusade as premanetly damaging Eastern Orthodox-Catholic relations. Without Islam there would not have been a Fourth Crusade.

The political makeup of the Middle East would be different in a world without Islam. The Muslim goal was to rebuild the world according to their divine revelations. That included disposing with old political, economic, and cultural systems. Muslims were the only group to dispose of the Roman-base system once the Romans or their direct descendants lost control. The Roman-based systems and legal setups would probably be found in the Middle East today and maybe spread as Christianity did. This could mean either a greater respect for human rights but could also leave the door open for dictators who would abuse the power structure for their own benefit like Mussolini or Hitler.

(Side note: If Constantinople had not fallen Moscow could have never of claimed to be the Third Rome. This claim and prestiage help Moscow become a major power.)

The last flaw with the essay is that it assumes only Europe would rise in a world without Islam. The essay states that a Christian Middle East would oppose European colonialism just how all other regions of the world did. But this assumes that only Europe would make “the great leap” forward which spurred the Ages of Exploration, Conquest, and Imperialism. With all of Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and perhaps more in the relatively same cultural sphere, the Renaissance and Age of Reason may have spread throughout the Middle East and elsewhere. The Muslim world we know would not be stuck in the slow decline it has been in for the last 500 years but instead it may have rapidly advanced just like Western Europe did. The Middle East and elsewhere may have shifted its glances in other directions like further south around Africa and maybe even the Americas. The great mercenary explorers of Italy may have guided Christian Indian fleets to Australia, Arab fleets around the Cape of Good Hope, and even African Vandal fleets to Brazil. Who knows. This is a double-edge sword. With so much competition and conflicting thoughts in the same realm, English individualism and Protestant freedom (both of which heavily influence America and the free world today) may not have been able to succeed.

Mr. Fuller is right when he writes the world would not be a peaceful utopia if Islam had not existed. There would still be religious violence and most residence of the current Muslim world would still be peaceful and friendly people like everyone else. The world would not be just like it was; however, it would be radically different. For either good or ill.

Oceanography spurs the last great land grab on Earth

Wired has an excellent series of articles on how physical geographers (oceanographers) are mapping out the sea floor and how this is now a very political issue. (Hat Tip: Platial). Be sure to read Russia Contests Borders with Canada, Denmark, and the United States and Foreigners Keep Out! High Tech Mapping Starts to Redefine International Borders and check out some neat images.

The Law of the Sea Treaty allows countries to claim submerged land all the way to the continental shelf. However, with good but limited mapping ability and politics in the way the exact boundaries of these submerged borders are murky. Add in trillions of dollars of resources up for grabs and one has the last great land grab on Earth.

Continental Shelf mapping may not be as loud as an issue as climate change; however, it is just as political.

America Does Not Need Babies, Yet

Good, Not Great

A long running theme in GTWC! is the "needs babies" thread. So far we have looked at Russia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France. The United States has a different yet similar story.

Hispanos in blue, Blacks in purple, Whites in yellow. Click to enlarge. From National Review Online.

The American birth rate is the highest it has been since the end of the baby boom (1961). Besides more people having children, another reason is the decrease in abortions. The major reason though is the higher birthing rate of minorities in the United States. Blacks have a fertility rate slightly above 2.1 while Hispanos fertility rate is almost 3.0. The fertility rate of Whites is actually below that of France. A final reason for the increase of population (from 1961 to 2007 the fertility rate was in negative growth direction) is immigration. The good economic and political freedoms of the United States have attracted people from all over the world.

To avoid negative population growth and to stay out of the "needs babies" category America must remain free, value life, and be open to a form of immigration. Lacking one of these three traits would make the United States like the other first world countries in a demographic spiral.

America's Presidential Candidates Don't Know Neogeography

Last year I wrote how French presidential candidates used neogeography tools to get people in touch with the campaign, find rallies, and view campaign news and videos. Well, I decided to look at United States presidential candidates and their use of neogeography and boy was I disappointed.

On the Democratic side Barack Obama has a map which allows one to go to local state pages. John Edwards and Hiliary Clinton do not use maps. There are some use of social networking sits though. The Republicans also use social networking like Facebook and MySpace but maps are rare as well. Rudy Guliani has "Why Rudy" testimonial maps but the Google Map mashup was down as of the post publishing. Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul have Meetup pages which have a map option for, well, meetups.

So neogeography fans, like many Americans, feel there is not a candidate for them.

Iraq War Maps - January 2008

Click to Play
Click to play

The Long War Journal and the Jawa Report feature war maps of Iraq. The maps show the reduction of al Qaeda in Iraq's operational zone and the violence in Baghdad. The anamation is from the Jawa Report.

The Onion's "Our Dumb World" Online

The Onion's "Our Dumb World" has been making the rounds on the various geography and cartography blogs. The "atlas" contains stories and "information" about countries around the world. The entries can best be described as horribly, awfully funny.

Now people can enjoy blurbs online using a Google Maps mashup. A fair number of countries are already up with more added each week. The previous and current "featured" countries of the week has multiple entries. One can even download a KML file for viewing in Google Earth.

Be sure and check it out today! If not you will never know the exact time the sun will set on the British Empire, East Timor was a country that got some sense bombed into it, and just what sort of nightmares do occur in the Democratic Republic of The Congo.

Antique Maps of Spain and Europe

The Biblioteca Digital Hispánica is displaying antique maps of Spain and Europe on its website. The maps are from the classical era of the 1700s and early 1800s. The scale of the maps range from the Atlantic Ocean down to castle on an island level. Maps can be downloaded in various forms including TIFF, e-mailed, or viewed. This is a wonderful find by La Cartoteca.

Geotechnology Aids in Discovery of Mexican Smuggler Tunnels

hThere are countless smuggler tunnels under the US-Mexican border. The tunnels are primarily located between Arizona and the Pacific Coast. The reason for this is because the western section of the US-Mexican border has many more towns and cities which lie up next to each other. To the east, New Mexico to the Gulf of Mexico, there are some border meeting points like Brownsville-Matamoros and El Paso-Ciudad Juarez, but these junctions are few and far between with desert separating towns by miles. What is also a greater hinder though is physical obstacles like the Rio Grande.

These tunnels are mostly used for drug smuggling but some are also used for human trafficking. This makes them a law enforcement concern. Geotechnology is playing a part in curbing use of these tunnels. Popular Mechanics has a feature on how the types of geotechnology being used. Everything from "standard" ground penetrating radar to measuring oh so slight changes in Earth's magnetic field can be utilized. The neatest one involves cosmic rays- it is so easy a 12 year old did it!

Review of An Atlas of Radical Geography

"Radical Geography" is the (Catholicgauze Bias Alert!) the mishmash of social geography with "alternative" thoughts such Marxism, feminism, "queer thought," and other ideas in the pursuit of "social justice" and all that jazz.

A new book that is coming out which covers this subfield (note: the editors contacted Catholicgauze and allowed me to view an electronic edition for free) entitled An Atlas of Radical Cartography. The "atlas" is a collection of essays with a visual aid usually in the form of a map.

The politics of the atlas are clearly leftist. Some of the essays though are good like the one which starts off about avoiding security cameras in Manhattan but quickly becomes an article on how geography and geographical products can be used in grassroots campaigns. Others quickly go off the deep end. One article is an interview with a guy at first about rendition flights. After a brief detour into the different types of chart the interviewee states the United States is engaged in a Latin American-style Dirty War complete with tens of thousands of domestic murders.

It is hard to give an objective rating to the product. Those who favor Catholicgauze for President best stay away to avoid leftism combined with academic jargon. On the other hand, if post-Fordism and Hugo Chavez inhabit your dream world then there is something here for you to enjoy.

World Health Organization offends the Azeris

The World Health Organization has done an Economist by making a cartographic affront to the Azeris. The WHO's website had maps which displayed the disputed breakaway republic of Nagorno Karabakh as part of Armenia. The NK is a de facto republic unrecognized, but protected, by its ethnic brothers from Armenia.

Unrecognized countries are a cause of great tension. Expect these to become a greater issue with the upcoming independence (and only partial recognition) of Kosovo and possibly therefore Transnistria and the Georgian breakaway republics.

KMT wins Republic of China's Legislature

The Kuomntang (KMT) has crushed the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in the 2008 Legislature Elections. The stunning blow will greatly affect world politics. The KMT was expected to win a majority of seats but the election was suppose to be close. Now the KMT has about seventy-five percent of the legislature and can do anything it pleases.

The KMT is the party which nominally ruled all of the Chinese Republic until the Communist Revolution. The party has long been in power and favors of "One China" policy while supporting (at least nominally) negotiations with the People's Republic of China (PRC) on reunification under favorable terms. Chen Shui-bian, the President of the Republic of China (RoC) and a leader of the DPP, favors Taiwanese independence and the concept of Taiwan not being China.

The DPP has been pushing a referendum that would mark a radical change in RoC policy: seeking reentry in the United Nations as "Taiwan." This has angered the PRC and has made the thought of war once again a reality in the back of everyone's mind. The victory of the KMT; however, and confusion between the KMT and DPP on the language of the referendum and a counter-referendum should defuse fear of war for now.

The main weak point for the KMT is that its foreign policy program can be described as jerkish. The ROC has territorial claims against almost of all China's neighbors. Instead of trying to make alliance ROC has complaints against everyone including Afghanstan!(?) The KMT victory may calm nerves but one day it may be forced to make sacrifices.

British Vacation Planner

The Telegraph has a Family Days Out activity planner for all of the Great Britain and Northern Ireland. By using the map and categories such as free, outdoor, heritage, music, food and drink, etc. and narrowing down dates one can see if there are any community actives going on. One can even add an event, too! The results are mapped out on a Google Maps with information and directions given. For all my British and Northern Irish readers this is a must see!

German Heritage Website

Up to twenty-five percent of all Americans have some German heritage in them. Americans with some German in them are the largest immigrant nationality in the United States.

The German government recently launched an initiative to appeal to these Americans. German Originality is a site with heritage information and genealogical links for research. But the main feature of the website is the interactive map (guess which caught my attention first). One can view the various regions of Germany and click on towns for heritage and tourist information. One of Catholicgauze's German branches comes from the town of Hilter (yeah, I miss read that too the first time). While nothing is marked for Hilter the Pied-Piper Story historical event occurred right near by.

Sadly the website is not for those Americans of German descendant who's ancestors came from Austria, Switzerland, or the various "lost lands" of East Prussia, North Tyrol, and elsewhere. For more German heritage research be sure to check out the surname mapper.

Astronomers Map Dark Matter

From CTA.CA

The universe is a funny thing. It only weighs about a tenth of what is suppose to using current models and something interferes with the gravitational systems in many places. So the concept of dark matter and dark energy were born to help us comprehend just what the heck is going on out there. These two things play a big role in our space models aiding in warping galaxies and expanding the universe. However, since we know so little about them they are like the blank spaces on the maps of old. While there were no monsters in those; science fiction ingrained monster, space aliens, time travel, and more live in our imaginations of dark matter.

Astronomers were looking at a star system when they noticed some warping going on. For example one stated "A circular galaxy will become distorted to resemble the shape of a banana if its light passes near a dense region of dark matter." The group decided to map out the weirdness to see if there was any pattern. To their surprise dark matter was clumping in spots which mass was ten trillion (10,000,000,000,000) times the Earth's sun Sol! The matter seems to be there because several galaxies have collided here.

New Map Blog: You Are Here, Hon

The Map Room links to a new blog entitled You Are Here, Hon. The blog is fairly new but it has some good posts (especially the latest ones). Check out this new map blog today!

Earth is Lucky with Life-assisting Plate Tectonics

A new study reveals Earth's size is just big enough to support the Plate Tectonics which assist life. Plate Tectonics allows for the recycling of the planet's crust which keeps carbon dioxide at relatively stable levels. Excess gases constantly "weather" away the new rocks which in turn are replaced by newer rocks.

Historical Geography of High Heels

Oddly Catholicgauze has been subject to numerous women commenting on their distaste of high heels.

The high heel shoe has its roots in ancient times. Depictions from Ancient Egypt show both men and women wearing the style of shoe. However, since art work back then only displayed important events it is unknown whether high heels were for ceremonial purposes only or were part of upper class fashion.

In Europe and parts of "Eurasia" the high heel came and went as the preferred horse riding boot. In the 1400s the French began adopting it as a fashion statement. Men would wear the "court shoe" and a sort of arms race began as everyone tried to have the highest yet most uncomfortable shoe. Future French Queen Catherine de Medici started the fashion craze for women by showing that not only do women look in heels but it also brings them to the height of men.

High heels were popular in Europe and the colonies until the era of revolutions (early to mid 1800s). High heels were associated with the monarchies and conservative ways. Once politics settled done high heels made comebacks in cycles.

Imperialism and the various waves of globalization have brought high heels all over the world. Japanese women would wear high heels before World War II, but only during functions where they dressed as Westerners. Koreans therefore hated high heels (like everything else which was associated with the Japanese); however, the fetish market brought the shoe "through the back door." Today high heels are becoming common almost everywhere. A primary exception is more traditional Muslim countries were there are still taboos against women's beauty in public.

Lord's Prayer Map of Europe

Click to Enlarge

Mount St. Sepulchre features the Lord's Prayer and the Hail Mary in dozens of languages. It is neat to see it and try to identify linguistic ties between not only European tongues but also the Asian, African, and American ones.

Well, now one can kinda of see the relationships concerning the European langauges. Strange Maps features the above map which shows the start of the Lord's Prayer in the dominant language around 1750.

As usual Strange Maps describes the map in great detail but I will point out some things mentioned in the article and expand a little bit. Note the presence of German in the Baltics. It took World War II to remove the German population but German archeticture and even the German leader of the Russian Orthodox Church remain. Notice the Russian lands. Just look at the wide range of languages which are found across the Steppes. Just like the proto-Catholicgauzes discovered, Russia has proven to be a land where diverse groups of semi-nomads gather and settle.

Using GIS and Geotechnology to Hunt Terrorists

There is a great article from GeoWorld (PDF) about using geotechnology to hunt terrorist in Iraq. In 2005 this was a new application of geoprofiling. Geoprofiling has been used in the past to study crime patterns and even solve individual cases.

Today's world of asymmetric warfare allows for greater application of geoprofiling. Many terrorist cells are local and territorial. They refuse to leave there small little havens and tend to favor easily accessible attack points from which they can retreat from. Geography skills allows us to understand, identify, and stop these attacks.

America Looks Beyond Gender

The map above comes from reader's blog Nat the Dem. Nat takes a look at states where the governor, lieutenant governor, or the sole state representative is a woman. It is pretty clear that woman have gone along way from the days when only the egalitarian interior West would elect them.

Culture as a Military Weapon

I know there is more to military geography than cultural terrain but understanding culture has proven to be an important section of today's military counterinsurgency operations.

The blog JIOX has a link to the long paper Culture: The New Key Terrain, Integrating Cultural Competence into Joint Intelligence Preparation of the Battlespace (PDF) by Major O. Kent Strader. The paper argues that it is possible to weaponize culture and understanding and exploiting culture will allow for better military operations. It is a long paper but the summary does a good job while using few words for those who do not have the time.

Iowa Caucus Results

The last Iowa Caucus post, I swear! For Saturday look forward to some military geography!

Whenever one has elections one has maps! The Politico has a flash map which shows results by county meanwhile Google (does it strike anyone odd that a search engine is now a leader in geography?) has a map showing county results.

On the Republican side Huckabee won big. Romney manged to win the Sioux City-Council Bluffs corridor and the more populous, industrial Mississippi River coast area.

For the Democrats Edwards won the blue farmers (populists who love their farm subsidies) in the south, Obama won the more youthful votes in the east, and Clinton pulled away the suburban west and north.

Political Geography of the Iowa Caucus Campaign

The Washington Post has a great interactive map on the Political Geography of the Iowa Caucus. Each candidate is studying the geography of Iowa in order to try to win the state.

Mike Huckabee: Huckabee is focusing on the rural, conservative northwestern section of the state. Christian conservatives are more concentrated here (anyone who knows that region knows it is filled with 'Dutch').

Mitt Romney: Romney is going where the votes: Des Moines and Cedar Rapids. He has been in the state for along time and hopes his ground network can suppress the Huckabee insurgency.

Barak Obama: Obama's campaign of "hope and energy" is focusing on youth. In particular Obama is focusing on the university towns of Ames (Iowa State University), Cedar Falls (University of Northern Iowa), and Iowa City (University of Iowa). This may be a smart strategy because the students at these universities will be on break and spread all throughout the state. Obama may have his own missionaries engage in fifth generation warfare (5GW).

John Edwards: Edwards is a union man and has centered his energy around Des Moines and the industrial and populist farmer town of Newton. His energy here has cost him somewhat with possible support from other blue-collar areas like the Mississippi River Coast and Sioux City.

Hillary Clinton: Clinton is focusing on the middle class, (sub)urban woman. The natural environment in Iowa for these women is Des Moines. Attention here has cost here with other caucus voters elsewhere in the state.

Webcams Around the World

Fox News surprsingly has a link to webcams of major cities and cultural sites around the world. Catholicgauze likes the Vatican and the Great Pyramids.

The Story Behind the Sugar Bowl

Going around the internet is an AP story of sugar's relation to Louisiana and the Sugar Bowl. The crop was in the French colony for a while but it took a slave rebellion in present-day Haiti to cause a surge in production with plantation owners moving operations from the island to the mainland.

In the 1920s the sugar industry in Louisiana was nearly destroyed but importing of Asian varieties of the cane allowed the crop to come back. The proposal of the Sugar Bowl was meant to emphasize that sugar was back and its importance to the state.

Today America's sugar industry in Louisiana, Florida, and Hawaii is doing well but under false preeminence. Tariffs keep the cost of foreign sugar high eliminating much foreign competition. This not only makes drinks like Pepsi and Coke use corn syrup instead of sugar, it also limits the marketability of sugar-based ethanol.