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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Tim Marshall
The madness of the early gold rush meant that the first few waves crashing onto Melbourne’s shores consisted mostly of young single men. They gave rise to a Wild West atmosphere, but prosperity slowly led to a change in the nature of immigration, attracting skilled craftsmen, traders, and professionals such as accountants and lawyers who began to arrive with their families.
Refinement of australian population during gold rush
that the diggers, as the prospectors were called, forged the resourcefulness, can-do attitude and friendliness for which Australians are known.
Nature of strength
Its wool, lamb, beef, wheat, and wine industries remain world leaders; it holds a quarter of the world’s uranium reserves, the largest zinc and lead deposits, and is a major producer of tungsten and gold, as well as having healthy deposits of silver; and it is a key supplier of liquefied natural gas while also still producing large quantities of coal. And there we see how the country is caught between an Ayers Rock and a hard place.
Rich resources of Australia
Australia is vulnerable to blockade. Most of its imports and exports flow through a series of narrow passageways to the north—including the Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok Straits—and many of those could be closed in times of conflict.
Vulnerability Of Australia
Canberra took advantage of the oil price crash in 2020 to top up with a few extra days’ supply, but stored it in America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve stockpiles and so might not be able to access it.
US oil stockpile in AUS
Australia is also an enthusiastic member of what is probably the world’s most efficient intelligence-gathering network—the so-called Five Eyes—along with the US, the UK, New Zealand, and Canada.
5 eyes
“The Pacific and the Indian Oceans are now bringing about a dynamic coupling as seas of freedom and prosperity” and then spoke about ensuring that they would be “open and transparent to all.”
Pacific indian ocean
most of that history, the land was known as Persia. It was renamed Iran only in 1935 in an attempt to represent the country’s non-Persian minorities, which constitute about 40 percent of the population.
Old persia
The origins of the Sunni-Shia split within Islam go back to the dispute over who should succeed the Prophet Muhammad following his death in 632 CE and the Battle of Karbala in 680.
Origin of sunni shia conflict
Ibn Saud had many enemies—not least the Hashemites, who now ruled in Iraq and Jordan.
Hashemites
Ibn Saud was good at timing. FDR headed home and a few days later Saudi Arabia declared war on Germany and Japan,
thus earning a seat at the newly formed United Nations. The Saudis were now players on the world stage, oil made them important, and the Americans made them safe.
Seat in Un saudi
it was no surprise that when they came home, they still wanted to use their military skills in the cause of international jihad. Among them was a man named Osama bin Laden.
Jihad
than 40 percent of Saudis are Wahhabis, and even most of them do not condone the savagery of the current generation of jihadists.
Wahab
Chinese model of ‘state capitalism’ is appealing to most Arab politicians. ‘Economic liberalism’ decoupled from political liberalism is a model most governments in the region pursue, and in the past two decades the Chinese model is lauded as a success.”
Chinese model of success
technology in “making the desert bloom”
Make desert bloom
Britain’s economic and military power accelerated after the 1707 Acts of Union joined Scotland and England as a single entity. For the first time in its history, one authority alone controlled the island. Not only did the English no longer have to worry about Scottish armies heading south, but the back door to potential invasion from a European power was locked. Three centuries later, the Brexit vote has endangered the Union, and although London no longer fears an invasion from France, it is deeply worried about the economic and military effects of an independent Scotland.
United as on island Britain
spent the next forty-three years resisting full integration, opting out of various laws, and allying itself with smaller states to balance what became the Franco-German engine of the EU. Whenever
Reluctant involvement in EU
What if Scotland became independent? What if it took with it, as it would, its share of the UK’s fighter aircraft, helicopters, tanks, and ships? It gets more complicated. What if it insisted, as it would, that the Royal Navy remove its nuclear-armed submarines from its base at Faslane, on the west coast of Scotland, and close the nearby storage and repair base at Coulport? Faslane is a perfect sub base: it has deep water and quick access to the North Atlantic, where you can head up to the GIUK gap (Greenland, Iceland, UK), the old Cold War “kill zone,” in the event of a Soviet naval attack,
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Scotland importance
Water defines Ethiopia’s geopolitical position and importance. Freshwater is its main strength, and salt water one of its weaknesses. It has twelve large lakes and nine major rivers, most of which supply its neighbors, giving Ethiopia enormous political leverage over them. What it lacks, though, is a coast and direct access to the sea.
Ethiopia Land
It has the potential to be self-sufficient in both energy and food; agriculture makes up almost half of Ethiopia’s GDP. However, periodic drought, deforestation, overgrazing, military dictatorship, and poor infrastructure have held it back; and only one river, the Baro, is properly navigable, another factor that impedes internal trade.
Potential Ethiopia issues
these differences there is a sense of Ethiopiawinet, as shown by solidarity on issues such as resistance to invaders, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile, and in sporting achievements by the likes of Olympic gold medalists Haile Gebrselassie, Tirunesh Dibaba, and Tiki Gelana.
Unity amongst differences as Ethiopian
However, all Ethiopian leaders since 1993 have faced the same geographical
Lacking access to sea
Spain will continue to face external pressures, but its main challenges come from within and are based on its geography. For the foreseeable future, the kingdom brought together in the 1500s will still have to balance the tensions of being a nation-state comprised of nations. Despite all this, though, the sentiment of Franco’s general—“Spain is not Europe, it never was”—has never seemed less true.
This “baby” Kosmos also shadowed the American spacecraft before maneuvering toward a third Russian satellite. It then appeared to fire a high-speed projectile traveling at about 435 miles an hour. The Kremlin says it was simply inspecting the condition of its satellites, but the British Ministry of Defence and the US Department of Defense both believe it was a form of weapons test.
Weapons in space
