Kalistani Major History

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Kalistani News in Brief: Kalistan aims at lead in Shipping
Emperor orders Education Reform; IBSI gets new mission
Sulari, Duchy of Suldanor
April 7, 5540


Port Elga Ship Yards working on fifth of 12 new container ships to meet contract

Kalistan Aims at lead in Shipping in Seleya
Sulari Shipping Consortium, the investment firm that owns and operates the Port Elga Shipyards, says their goal is to take the lead in Shipping in Seleya by 5550. "Port Elga is one of the busiest ports in Northern Seleya," said SSC spokesman Dwight Zapata. "As the owners and operators of the main commercial shipping port, we look to expand beyond our home port to other nations washed by the Anantonese Ocean and beyond." Part of the company's ten year plan is to begin competing directly with other nations currently involved in shipping. "We would like to see a Terra where every other ship you see in any given port hails from Kalistan," said Zapata. "It is an ambitious goal, but Kalistan is ideally positioned to become a transshipment point for the world's commerce, and in turn, to be the teamsters of the ocean."

Zapata touted SSC's pricepoint, as well as the superiority of the Kalistani Merchant Marines. "We have some of the most professionalized Merchant Marines in the world," said Zapata, owing to Kalistan's long and rock solid support for unions. "Our Merchant Marines organize themselves by grade and seniority, have experience in every kind of sea from Arctic to Tropic, and are experts in all passages--In fact, members of at least four of the crews in the Ananto Cup were themselves Merchant Marines. Plus, our price point cannot be beat anywhere in the world. SSC's price point, even after Kalistan takes their commissions, still comes in well below most other nations, as we can build at scale, and much of our heavy industry is still organized along socialist lines, rather than a profit driven model." Zapata said that SSC is about half way through a contract to build 12 container ships for Kalistan itself. "We will compete by glutting the market, dropping the price of shipping overseas significantly, and forcing other countries' firms to either cut their own shipping prices, and therefore profit margins, or go out of business." The new spirit of Kalistani industry is not cooperative, according to Zapata. "We've been in other peoples' shadows for far too long. It's past time we stood up for ourselves." Asked if SSC will seek access to Aldegar, Zapata said "No, we don't need it. If we go to Majatra, we come from Artania. The only reason we would go to Aldegar is to sell things to Aldegar or buy things from Aldegar. We wouldn't turn down free access to the canal, but we aren't gonna pay for it."

Emperor Orders Education Reform
His Imperial Majesty, the Emperor Fredrick II Ananto has ordered his Minister of Education to begin reform in Kalistan's school system. "We have had an opportunity to review the Education System in Kalistan, and the results are simply whelming. Not good nor bad, just sort of adequate," said His Imperial Majesty's Minister of Education and Culture Magda White. "The Ministry then submitted its evaluation to His Imperial Majesty, and the Emperor approved our 7 point plan for Education reform, which includes a rebalancing of the curriculum to begin diagnostic testing at an early age and career tracking in secondary school." The plan involves additional support for pre-K school to allow student's aptitudes to be ascertained throughout primary schooling and specific curricula to foster the aptitude and interest of the children. Once the Student arrives in the 7th Grade, students will end general education, and will be given the opportunity to explore both skills based and ideas based learning. In their 7th Grade, they will focus on ideas based education, which consists mainly of the classical liberal arts: language and rhetoric, algebra, philosophy, music, natural sciences, and music, as well as an introduction to the social sciences. In the 8th grade they will be permitted to explore skills based learning, including subjects in mechanics and physics, chemistry, economics, geometry and trigonometry, introduction to scientific investigation, and business and advertising.

At the end of 8th Grade they will have the opportunity to select a track through secondary school, either the knowledge based track or the skills based track. The knowledge based track will focus on typical liberal arts which are aimed at creation of knowledge, while the skills based track will focus on introducing the students to various trades, and then getting them certified to practice those trades following gradation and National Service. "We want to make sure that the choice for students is a free choice," said Minister White, "so we will give our children the opportunity to take some classes together though they may be on different tracks. But for the most part, our education system has long been in need of an overhaul for a very long time, and this is the opportunity to do it." The adoption of aptitude centered learning will be piloted in the incoming 7th Grade year starting in Kaliburg, Sulari and Vrassa City schools, and will expand out from there. Parent's groups are for the most part in support of the plan, and though some object to it, they do mostly because they want to be able to do homeschooling of their children, and that practice for the most part is highly discourages in the Empire. "After the first graduations, we will implement the program nationwide," said Minister White. "Homeschool parents' opinions notwithstanding."

IBSI's Mission and resources to expand
The Imperial Bureau of Security Information has received a new mandate, said Chancellor of the Empire Dame Lindsay Ontiveros-Maxwell. "We are finding it difficult to keep up with all the little wars that are popping up here and there all over the world," said Dame Ontiveros. "No sooner is one solved than another one is started. I don't really want to say it starts--someone deliberately starts it, and we lack any intelligence on the motivations of what these warmakers are up to. That has to be remedied." Ontiveros also cited the construction and deployment of the Baltusian Aircraft Carrier, which provoked a "major response in Kalistan, primarily because it happened under our nose and we had no clue that Baltusia intended to do this."

The new role for Imperial Security is to open listening posts in all major countries who Kalistan has any interest in, and continually feed intelligence back to Kalistan. "A lot of this involves just passive listening," said Dame Ontiveros, "but we are also wanting to expand beyond that to human sources development, gaining higher level confidences, and learning things before others know we know them." Ontiveros said that Kalistan is also building capacity in a half a dozen Northern Seleyan nations, which she refused to name, to begin generating news items to further Kalistan's interests in those nations. "They will primarily be focused on public relations for Kalistan, to make it easier for our people to interact with people abroad," said Ontiveros. "The operation involves a lot of infrastructure, but another concern is plausible deniability and selective accreditation (PDSA), which is key to Kalistan ensuring that they have a seat at the table in all decisions that affect us by creating a positive attitude in other nations for Kalistan's Government. It would be disingenuous to deny that this infrastructure is multiple use within the country, but the fact is, we have not been developing local resources as we ought to, and the His Imperial Majesty has identified a more robust foreign intelligence service as one of the priorities of his hist five years." Dame Ontiveros confirmed that Kalistan is already beefing up this branch of its foreign service, primarily in nations where the Empire does not have an embassy. "For the time being," said Ontiveros.