The South China Sea: A Look into China’s Modern Times Maritime Silk Road and Its Geopolitical Implications

The South China Sea: A Look into China’s Modern Times Maritime Silk Road and Its Geopolitical Implications
Author: Fritz Dufour, Linguist, MBA, DESS
Publisher: Fritz Dufour
Total Pages: 12
Release: 2017-07-08
Genre: Political Science
ISBN:

Westward expansion has always been more important to China than eastward expansion because except for the Korean peninsula and Japan, China is looking at the vast Pacific Ocean. The west has always been and continues to be China’s lifeline. China has come a long way. Civilizations rise and fall. They come and go. But the Chinese civilization is one of the oldest and most stable. The Chinese engaged in world trade way before America was even discovered. They did that thanks to the Silk Road, which was an ancient caravan route linking Xi'an in central China with the eastern Mediterranean. It was established during the period of Roman rule in Europe, and took its name from the silk which was brought to the west from China . Although trading with the West was quintessential, China has always sought to retain their own economic model. When the four leading powers of the West – England, France, Spain, and Portugal - decided to build their politico-economic empires on triangular trade or face failure, China was thriving, as it had been for millennia. But World War II dealt a serious blow to China’s economy as the United states emerged as the only superpower on both the political and economic levels and put shortly after a policy of containment towards China. That, along with past failures, exacerbated if not China’s resentment at least its mistrust towards the West and, especially towards the United States.

Capitalism and the Sea

Capitalism and the Sea
Author: Liam Campling
Publisher: Verso Books
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2021-01-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1784785237

What keeps capitalism afloat? The global ocean has through the centuries served as a trade route, strategic space, fish bank and supply chain for the modern capitalist economy. While sea beds are drilled for their fossil fuels and minerals, and coastlines developed for real estate and leisure, the oceans continue to absorb the toxic discharges of our carbon civilization - warming, expanding, and acidifying the blue water part of the planet in ways that will bring unpredictable but irreversible consequences for the rest of the biosphere. In this bold and radical new book, Campling and Colás analyze these and other sea-related phenomena through a historical and geographical lens. In successive chapters dealing with the political economy, ecology and geopolitics of the sea, the authors argue that the earth's geographical separation into land and sea has significant consequences for capitalist development. The distinctive features of this mode of production continuously seek to transcend the land-sea binary in an incessant quest for profit, engendering new alignments of sovereignty, exploitation and appropriation in the capture and coding of maritime spaces and resources.

China’s Maritime Silk Road

China’s Maritime Silk Road
Author: Gerald Chan
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2020-09-25
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1789907497

This innovative book examines the maritime component of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), focusing on three key trade routes and addressing the question of how China protects its overseas assets. Gerald Chan explores China’s rising maritime power, using geo-developmentalism as a theoretical framework to analyse the country’s development of port facilities and infrastructure along important trade routes. Through developing these sea routes, he argues that a new global order is in the making.

Geocultural Power

Geocultural Power
Author: Tim Winter
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 303
Release: 2019-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 022665849X

Launched in 2013, China's Belt and Road Initiative is forging connections in infrastructure, trade, energy, finance, tourism, and culture across Eurasia and Africa. This extraordinarily ambitious strategy places China at the center of a geography of overland and maritime connectivity stretching across more than sixty countries and incorporating almost two-thirds of the world’s population. But what does it mean to revive the Silk Roads for the twenty-first century? Geocultural Power explores this question by considering how China is couching its strategy for building trade, foreign relations, and energy and political security in an evocative topography of history. Until now Belt and Road has been discussed as a geopolitical and geoeconomic project. This book introduces geocultural power to the analysis of international affairs. Tim Winter highlights how many countries—including Iran, Sri Lanka, Kenya, Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan, and others—are revisiting their histories to find points of diplomatic and cultural connection. Through the revived Silk Roads, China becomes the new author of Eurasian history and the architect of the bridge between East and West. In a diplomatic dance of forgetting, episodes of violence, invasion, and bloodshed are left behind for a language of history and heritage that crosses borders in ways that further the trade ambitions of an increasingly networked China-driven economy.

The Realities of Reality - Part I: It All Starts from Within

The Realities of Reality - Part I: It All Starts from Within
Author: Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS
Publisher: Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS
Total Pages: 146
Release: 2018-03-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN:

This book is the first of a series that considers the many aspects of reality. I call it ‘It all starts from within’ because reality starts with each of us individually and independently. It starts from our inner self before evolving into what I would call the collective reality, meaning a generally agreed upon state in which groups of people, entire nations, or the whole world believe. That reality includes beliefs, cultures, ideologies, etc. As we change and adapt to our environment, our reality changes as well. New realities emerge… Chapter one is about perception and our senses. It demonstrates how perception is impossible without our senses. Whatever angle of reality that’s being analyzed, one or more of our senses plays a momentous role in its understanding… Chapter two considers the role of the brain in the making of reality. It delves into how the brain can make the mind behave a certain way under certain circumstances… Chapter three looks at the mind, which I call the ultimate maker of reality. This chapter describes the mind as that intangible component of the brain and where reality or all realities stem from after, of course, being picked up by the senses and the brain… Chapter four attempts to define reality itself after it’s perceived by our senses, analyzed by our brain, and processed by our mind…I consider five questions in my attempt to answer the question: what is reality? They are: what are things and why do they look different from one another? What is life and its origins? What is death? What is superstition? What is space and are we alone in the universe?

Reflections and Observations on Mark Twain's "The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today"

Reflections and Observations on Mark Twain's
Author: Fritz Dufour
Publisher: Fritz Dufour
Total Pages: 433
Release: 2021-02-27
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN:

The Gilded Age: a Tale of Today is a depiction of those crimes committed in the United States in the late 19th Century which so frequently went unpunished and of the casualties which ought to be called crimes. The description severely winds up with the satirical verdict “No one to blame.” The project of Colonel Sellers for raising mules for the Southern markets is a satire upon the fraudulency and soap-bubble speculation of capitalists. The work is full of hints and descriptions that take their rise from the frauds and outrages under which the country had plagued for so many years. Family, social and national questions are all cleverly satirized. The monument erected to the memory of the Father of his country – a monument begun, but, of course, never completed – calls forth some strokes of bitter but not unjust humor. The means by which preferment is obtained in Washington are amply satirized. There are two views of this book: favorable and unfavorable. This essay considers both. For instance, while some critics think that it is incoherent, others suggests that the narrative departs from the traditional methods of concluding and is thereby more natural than most novels because every chapter of the book bears the marks of both writers and is therefore a novelty in its way. In this essay I argue that The Gilded Age is essentially a satire and should always be accepted as such. Of course, other good contemporary books did not make it to our time in terms of popularity and legacy. The Gilded Age did. We talk, write, and read about it to this day. Evidently, it is an integral part of the annals of American literature and fully contributes to Mark Twain’s reputation, legacy, and lasting influence.

The Costs and Implications of Our Demand for Energy: A Comparative and Comprehensive Analysis of the Available Energy Resources

The Costs and Implications of Our Demand for Energy: A Comparative and Comprehensive Analysis of the Available Energy Resources
Author: Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS
Publisher: Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS
Total Pages: 223
Release: 2018-06-03
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN:

This book is an in-depth analysis of the dynamics of energy in the 21st century. It looks at the risks presented by non-renewable energy sources such as fossil fuels by giving a special consideration to their single most implication: climate change and by considering some fundamental yet important aspects of energy such as its forms, conservation, measure, and distribution. In it, Fritz Dufour also dives deep into the economics of energy by analyzing important concepts such as energy efficiency and the behavioral gap, energy security and its quantification, and the costs and policies of energy programs. Each type of energy – from the non-renewable category of energies (coal, petroleum, and natural gaz) – to the renewable category of energies (solar, wind, hydro, biomass, and geothermal energies) – is analyzed in terms of its discovery, extraction, storage, distribution, use, and pros and cons. A strong argument is presented in favor of being proactive by prioritizing energy-efficient technologies in order to fortify the bleak future of energy, as the world’s population is set to double by the end of the century and as each energy source has its strengths and weaknesses. Finally, the book stresses the dilemma that we face: no known single renewable source of energy can yet make up for or effectively replace the fossil fuels that have been making our world turn and upon which every single human being is directly or indirectly dependent.

The Realities of Reality - Part II: Making Sense of Why Modern Science Advances (Volume 1)

The Realities of Reality - Part II: Making Sense of Why Modern Science Advances (Volume 1)
Author: Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS
Publisher: Fritz Dufour
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2018-09-19
Genre: Science
ISBN:

This Volume 1 of Part II considers the factors that make science progress. It lays out the differences between normal science and pseudoscience by showing the importance of the scientific method in the advancement of science. It introduces the concept of Truth in science by raising the point that even though truth is based on the scientific method, can science be true? Can it depict reality? The author focuses on modern science, which, he thinks, was born thanks to the Scientific Revolution which started with Galileo Galilei and led to the Industrial Revolution. The impacts of the latter is analyzed in light modernism, modernization, and modernity, all three linked to scientific progress. The book also talks about the Newtonian scientific leap – by analyzing particularly the then social and political fabrics of England – and Albert Einstein by showing how he changed history. According to the author, our very physical world can help us understand scientific progress. So, he explains, among other things, the structure of atoms and molecules, the role of physics in the understanding of our universe, Quantum Mechanics, and the importance of Higgs-Boson. On the other hand, the book is a stunning revelation of how important information is to scientific progress. To make his point, the author, first, talks about John Vincent Atanasoff as the Father of computer thanks to the invention of his ABC computer and then, Alan Turing as the Father of modern computer thanks to his Turing Test and his views on Artificial Intelligence. Both men played a momentous role in the Digital Revolution and in the Information Age, according to the book. Finally, the author talks about nanotechnology, which explores the world of small, meaning at the atomic and the molecular levels and is an inescapable tool in the molecular biology revolution which, itself, is an important factor in scientific progress and in transhumanism or human enhancement defined as the ideology according to which man can surpass his present state by improving his genetic material.

Exploring the Possibilities for the Emergence of a Single and Global Native Language

Exploring the Possibilities for the Emergence of a Single and Global Native Language
Author: Fritz Dufour, Linguist, MBA, DESS
Publisher: Fritz Dufour
Total Pages: 236
Release: 2017-11-09
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN:

This book is a look into the possibilities for the emergence of a single and universal native language by taking into consideration the common denominator that characterizes all spoken languages: sounds. This book describes the acquisition of language in terms of speech, its use, and its development or evolution. The hypothesis of a monolingual world is supported by strong arguments, facts, and theories. This is both a descriptive and a prescriptive approach in the sens that not only Mr. Dufour portrays the current linguistic status quo as it is, but also, he prescribes a way to go about making our planet monolingual through a detailed awareness campaign plan and practical views likely to help us achieve that goal if followed properly. His approach is a novel one and is commendable. This is a reference book, definitely one to read, whether you're a linguist or not.

How Translational Medicine Is Progressively Redefining Healthcare

How Translational Medicine Is Progressively Redefining Healthcare
Author: Fritz Dufour, MBA, DESS
Publisher: Fritz Dufour
Total Pages: 23
Release: 2017-12-19
Genre: Medical
ISBN:

The preliminary idea behind translational medicine, conducting biological research to treat diseases, is not a new concept. But, scientists have been serious about placing the patient at all levels of the research process – right at the basic science level phase and all the way to the bedside – since only the 1990s. Today, translational research is a scientific field, although multidisciplinary. That innovation stemmed from the discoveries of new diseases and new technologies that allow healthcare professionals to have new perspectives on how to better and more efficiently treat patients. Translational medicine is viable, and it has already proved itself in many areas. Normally, every great discovery or innovation comes with both rewards and challenges, and continuous improvement is what keeps it alive. Translational research, an innovative concept, is not impervious to that rule. This paper examines the antecedents of translational medicine and how it came about. It considers the importance of incorporating basic science, applied science or clinical research, and the patient at every turn of the processes by analyzing the importance of translational research and its direct applications. On the other hand, this paper considers the challenges faced by translational medicine in an age where healthcare costs are skyrocketing, and suggests what can be done to circumvent the downsides. Finally, because the field is relatively new and promising, the discussion that follows also considers the outlook for translational medicine, and how important it is for scientists – artificial intelligence experts, computer, or bioengineers, healthcare professionals and healthcare management professionals – to lay right now the groundwork for future generations.