American Anti-Tax "Tea Party" Map

April 15th is a date ingrained into most Americans' minds. On that day taxes are required to be post marked to the government in order to avoid paying the huge fees. The date is hated by many no matter one's political persuasion. In the past Americans hate taxes so much that we threw tea into Boston Harbor and later on declared the first income tax unconstitutional.

This year the Tea Party movement has become a huge hit with some Americans. The loose movement is upset over a variety of things including tax hikes, trade deficit, and the deficit caused by government spending.

The right-libertarian website FreedomWorks has created a Google Map of the protests they support to mark April 15.

It will be interesting to see how the protests turn out. Conservatives tend to have smaller protests (everything from "lack of passion" to "we have jobs while hippie protesters do not" have been blamed) but so far Tea Party protests have been successful. If they are, I wonder how much Web 2.0 and neogeography can be credited for organizing protesters.

People's Mujahedin of Iran

Communist and Islamist

The group People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK) can be consider the prime example of Middle East weirdness and a strong lesson on the value of choosing friends wisely. The group right now is in international legal limbo stuck between the United States, the Republic of Iraq, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

MEK is a weird combination of Communism, Islamism, North Korean-style personality cult, and dominated by female leadership. The group started off as an anti-monarchist organization in Iran. It quickly turned to terrorist actions including the assassination of several American military attaches. After the fall of the Shah, MEK tried to wage war against before Iranian republicans and Islamists. MEK lost, but not before they managed to take out the chief justice, president, and prime minister of the new Islamic Republic. Iran has never forgiven MEK.

MEK, being led by intelligentsia, fled to France and mixed in with the rest of the educated Persian community. MEK continued to plot attacks against Iran. However, the Iranian-proxy force Lebanese Hezbollah managed to kidnap several French citizens. In exchange for their citizens, French Prime Minister Jacques Chirac agreed to exile MEK for the hostages release.

MEK, an Iranian-Communist-Shia-Personality Cult, then made an alliance with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, an Iraqi-National Socialist-Sunni-Personality Cultist. MEK helped Saddam win some of the final battles of the Iraq-Iran War and crush the Shia/Kurd revolt of 1991. The Shia and Kurds have not forgotten this. Meanwhile, their support of Saddam has cost MEK significant support from anti-mullah Iranians.

The 1990s and 2000s have been ones of setbacks for MEK. Most Western nations declared MEK a terrorist group in an effort to rebuild relations with Iran and their main sponsor Saddam lost power in the Coalition invasion. MEK was under the custody of the United States until early 2009 when their detainment camps were transferred over to Iraqi control.

Today MEK is in a full scale publicity campaign that can be best described as "please don't turn us over to the Iranian to be tortured and killed." The Iranian government is promising aid to the Iraqis in exchange for MEK but Baghdad wants Iran to end its funding of various insurgent groups. The Shia and Kurds hate MEK for 1991 while the Sunnis do not like MEK because they are Persians. A major success for MEK was having the European Union delist them as a terrorist group. Right now MEK front groups like National Council of Resistance of Iran is competing for President Obama's attention. Besides a busy schedule, NCRI also has to worry about Obama listening to pro-regime elements who wish to keep MEK on the terrorist list.

One may be conflicted about MEK. They are anti-mullah and wish (at least publicly) for a pluralistic Iran but they have long been involved in terrorism. An Iraqi who I asked summed up everything I was thinking about when it came to MEK. He looked down, shook his head, and walked away.

Anicent Hermit Crabs-like Animals May Have Been First to Walk the Earth

Many people, including Catholicgauze, know hermit crabs as lovable, easily cared for pets. Whether these crabs live on water or land it is fun to watch them switch shells and interact with their environment.

Few realize though that the process of living in old shells to survive may have its genesis half a billion years ago and led to the first invasion of air-exposed land by animals. Way back 500 million years ago the seas were full of life while land was bare sans patches of algae along the shore. Scientists looking at old sandstone notice what appear to be shell patterns. They propose that shallow water living animals used shells to keep their gills moist as they walked on land to consume algae free of any predator threat. While no fossils have been found of these animals on what is believed to be ancient shore, the scientists continue to research and promote their theory based on shell tracks.

Today hermit crabs continue the process. The species of Caribbean and Ecuadorian hermit crabs (the two most popular hermit crabs used as pets in America) begin their life in the sea but through a process of molting gain the ability to become terrestrial animals. They continue on the old tradition keeping most in shells while also using them as physical protection. Little do they know the role their ancient ancestors played in the epic that is Earth's history.

Easter Sunday 2009

He is Risen
Maronite Icon

USArray Uses Ultrasound to Map and Understand American Underworld

New Scientist has an interesting article on USArray's mission to map the geology of the United States. USArray is a seismic observatory which seeks to monitor seismic activity and map an geologic activity. The hope is scientists will be able to apply gained knowledge to not only understand the geologic underworld of the United States but aide in predicting earthquakes even better.

Easter Geography: Stations of the Cross of Jesus' Passion along the Via Dolorosa on Google Earth

For this Good Friday I have created a Google Earth file (can be download off the Google Earth board) that geolocates the Stations of the Cross along the Via Dolorosa. Data included are station number, station name, and where the station can be found. Data is very close to accurate but not always precise.

Moldovan Spring and Changes to the Fight for Ungoverned Spaces

The book Geography of Happiness describes the European republic of Moldova as the saddest place on Earth. Considering everything that can and does go wrong on this planet that is quite an achievement. Right now the depression is being channelled into rage as Moldova may or may not be experiencing a revolution.

Moldova is a former Soviet state and is the poorest country in Europe. It is populated by ethnic Romanians. Shortly after independence, the Moldovan government lost a war to its eastern section, Transnistria. The much smaller Transnistria is populated by ethnic Russians and Ukrainians (Transnistria was a retirement home for many Soviet World War II veterans) and had the 14th Soviet Army stationed in it. The war was not even close. Today the retro-Soviet state of Transnistria keeps Soviet symbols and titles alive as it continually tries to convince Russia to recognize it. Russia meanwhile is content to use the threat of recognition to keep Moldova neutral and out of NATO.

The 1990s saw several attempts by Moldova and Romania to reunite. However, in 2001 Moldova elected an economically mixed, mostly pro-market, and pro-European Union Communist Party into power. The Communist at first were popular because they fixed some corruption, made progress on Transnistrian reunification, and played up a new Moldovan nationalism against Romania. However, change stagnated and corruption has once again flourished as Transnistria remains de facto independent.

So when the Communist Party won once again via possible vote stealing and gerrymandering, the opposition had enough. Calls for protests against the government quickly morphed into riots. Riot police have so far recovered the president's office building from rioters but roaming bands still protest on the streets. The Communists meanwhile blame Romania for trying to attempt a coup.

The opposition claims term limited President Vladimir Voronin wants to become the "next Putin" by holding onto power by becoming Prime Minister. The opposition differs from the Communists by being more pro-European Union, open to the idea of NATO, favors reunification with Romania (some protesters are waving the EU, Moldovan, and Romanian flags), and support market reforms.

Some commentators have remarked that these protests resemble the color revolutions of Ukraine and Georgia which ushered in pro-Western governments. The same is possible here but the opposition is divided deeply by rival personalities.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An interesting thing is how the protesters and rioters have coordinated. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have been used to communicate and focus on targets. Web 2.0 have allowed for these protests to occur so quickly and degrade into riots quickly as well. In order to curb unrest the government cut internet access.

This is the opposite effect of traditional battles for spaces turned ungovernable between governments and insurgents. In the cases of the 1863 Five Points Riot in New York or 2004 Fallujah, insurgents sought to cut the location and those owning the space off from the outside world by removing communication abilities. The goal in these cases is use choas and momentum to overrun the battlespace owner. Back then in these locations the battlespace owner controlled the communication infrastructure.

Today in the wired world, communication abilities have been democratized. Technology has greatly eased the pains of coordinating large masses. As such, the Moldovan protesters/rioters have shown the usefulness of keeping communication infrastructure intact. This is not total new as French rioters have been known to use cell phones to coordinate in attacks against police. It would be fascinating to see a study which compares the advance of communication tools in the ability of insurgents to make a space ungovernable.