Monthly Short Quiz

[johnkarls]

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Monthly Short Quiz

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Intro = As usual, the quiz had to be written before reading the book and, accordingly – (1) some of the questions simply review what we know from other books we have studied, (2) many additional questions have answers that “yours truly” thinks should be relevant to our discussion, and (3) a few questions “yours truly” hopes will be answered in “Monsoon.”

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1. How many of the world’s major religions are represented around the arc of the Indian Ocean from southern Africa to Australia?

2. If it is true that all of the world’s major religions boil down to the Golden Rule (“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”), why have major wars been fought by at least one Indian Ocean country adhering to each of the world’s major religions? (NB: for readers who have been taught that Buddhism is peaceful, Japan is simultaneously more than 90% Buddhist and more than 90% Shinto (ancestor worship) and Japan began its notorious “rape of China” a decade before Pearl Harbor!)

3. There is a famous saying that Islam has “bloody borders” – is this true if one focuses on the borders of the religion itself rather than national borders that were largely drawn by former colonial masters with no thought to the indigenous peoples that were being grouped together or separated?

4. Further to Question 3, what happened to East Pakistan and why does it NOT have “bloody borders”?

5. What is it about Islam that makes it so susceptible to radicalization?

6. Is Islam inherently anti-feminist or is there, for example, a major Islamic population that is matrilineal? How many Islamic countries have had female Prime Ministers?

7. What is the world’s largest functioning democracy?

8. Why did the United Nations abort its study in the 1990’s of India’s public perception of the British Raj?

9. Does the rapid economic growth of India, China, etc., represent little more than American and European multi-national corporations relocating their manufacturing operations to low-wage countries with the manufacturing still being performed under the supervision of, and utilizing the technology of, the MNC’s? Is there any reason to suppose that the current economic growth rates of India, China, etc., are any more significant than the gargantuan growth rates of the old Soviet economy in the 1950’s?

10. What is the world’s largest billionaires’ club?

11. Why is the Central Committee of the People’s Republic of China the world’s largest billionaires’ club?

12. Why was economic reform in the People’s Republic of China radically different from economic reform in the old Soviet Union? Did economic reform in the PRC constitute, in reality, pure capitalism with a 50% income tax rate?

13. Would the American and European MNC’s ever permit any real military hostilities between their two “wholly owned” subsidiaries = America and China?

14. How much of the world’s oil is produced by countries on the Indian Ocean? By countries on the Indian Ocean’s Persian Gulf (aka in recent decades the Arabian Gulf) AND DOWNWIND FROM THE PERSIAN GULF IN NUCLEAR TERMS?

15. Are the majority of Muslims Arab or non-Arab? Did the non-Arab Muslims benefit from the pre-eminence of the Arab Empire (800 > 1800) when Europe was a very backward area of the world and the Arab Empire led the world in mathematics, astronomy, science and medicine (indeed, Arab medical texts were still the standard in Europe through the 1800’s)?

16. What happened to Russian Turkestan and Chinese Turkestan (aka Sinkiang Province)?

17. What was the cause of the Sino-Soviet split in 1959 and why didn’t Western Intelligence services believe the split was real?

18. And for our young members, what was the “Hump” and who flew it?

19. And, for a reality check, why does the American Media assume that the “Arab Spring” is influenced more by American values than the preaching of Osama bin Laden (to the extent it was influenced by either)? After all, Pew Research Polls have always shown that America is loathed by the overwhelming majority in every Muslim country and Osama stood, primarily, for overthrowing Muslim dictators, all of whom Osama claimed were American puppets.

20. Why has there been no public disclosure in the wake of the capture of Osama’s personal documents which have been described as being the size of a small college library, regarding what has happened to Osama’s fatwa to nuke 10 million Americans (the number of Arabs he calculated had been killed by the U.S. or its allies)? After all, (1) Graham Allison, the Founding Dean of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, wrote a book on how to deal with Osama's Fatwa by controlling nuclear material, (2) it has often been pointed out that Allison’s approach is wishful thinking because, for example, the old Soviet Union's missing 178 suitcase-size nuclear weapons contained a considerable amount of recycle-able nuclear material and have long since been universally agreed by experts to be in the hands of terrorists, and (3) this issue has been the subject of intense concern for every recent Chair of the Sen Fgn Rel or Sen Armed Services Committees with, indeed, Sen Fgn Rel Chair Joe Biden writing an Op Ed piece for the Wall St. Journal during the 2008 Presidential campaign arguing that all nuclear material has "DNA" indicating where it was produced and the U.S. should announce to the world that if the U.S. is ever subject to a nuclear attack from terrorists, the U.S. will annihilate with nuclear weapons the country of origin of the nuclear material used against the U.S. (causing some wags to point out that if the U.S. itself is the country of origin, the Biden Doctrine would obligate us to commit nuclear suicide!!!).