December 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
China may be fast moving toward global superpower status, with rates of industrialization and wealth-creation nearly unprecedented in human history. But the ancient imperial state still faces pervasive problems of regional and ethnic disharmony and multiple separatist movements intent on breaking up the map of the modern political state. To hold together, Beijing will have to democratize public and private institutions at a rapid pace and in a credible way.
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December 24, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
China has outraged political and diplomatic leaders around the world by aggressively blocking agreement on hard targets for binding emissions cuts, refusing even to agree to any accord that would include mention of other nations’ specific cuts. One observer told the BBC that he observed China, India and Saudi Arabia as the key powers working to prevent binding targets from being adopted, but China was the most immovable opponent to a binding agreement.
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December 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
As ongoing global climate destabilization builds momentum, and fundamental climate-linked environmental processes come apart, we are hearing time and again that melting ice, whether in glaciers or in the Arctic Ocean, is “the canary in the coal mine”. The metaphor is very tempting, indeed, as coal is the most carbon-intensive fuel in use and a major contributing factor to global warming and climate destabilization, but the problem with the metaphor lies in the meaning of the canary being nothing more than an alarm signal. Glaciers are very much more important to human civilization than that.
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December 18, 2009 :: Anjika Sridhar :: One Comment
The United States is pledging to “take the lead” on a global fund of $100 billion over ten years, designed to help developing nations transition to a zero-combustion energy economy and fend off the already mounting ravages of climate destabilization. The offer was announced yesterday by Sec. of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, and was intended in part to put added pressure on China to agree to a binding climate deal with emissions reduction verification processes built in.
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December 14, 2009 :: Evelyn Winston Perez :: No Comment Yet
The World Bank is working with the Chinese government to fund major industrial development in specific areas across Africa, as part of an effort to spur development and create jobs. The effort is needed in order to breathe new life into African cities that are experiencing population explosions, with little new investment to match the demand for resources and jobs. But three key factors raise questions about whether the China plan for African industry will be good for Africa.
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December 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The global food supply is facing major security challenges, as warming global average temperatures and the destabilization of climate patterns and natural services undermine dependable agricultural cycles and threaten resources. The food supply is the most direct and visible connection between the breakdown of global climate systems and human health and wellbeing, but not the only link. The possible collapse of a major part of the human food supply means the collapse of agriculture, i.e. the breakdown of the human habitat.
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November 21, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
From WhiteHouse.gov: “In an address recorded in Seoul, South Korea, the President discusses his trip to Asia. He talks about his push to stop nuclear proliferation in North Korea, Iran, and around the world. He talks about promoting America’s principles for an open society in China while making progress on joint efforts to combat climate change. And talks in-depth about the primary objective of his trip: engaging in new markets that hold tremendous potential to spur job creation here at home.”
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November 21, 2009 :: Eva Scherson :: No Comment Yet
Can we expect China’s cooperation on emissions reduction? It’s clear that China has shifted its energy policy somewhat, to take account for the potential long-term strategic economic benefit of being a major source for green energy technology, know-how and to use green energy to fill out the nation’s energy supply and possibly permit exportation of energy or fuels.
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November 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Pres. Obama has reportedly secured Chinese president Hu Jintao’s pledge of cooperation on global economic recovery, efforts to curb emissions and combat climate destabilization, and nuclear non-proliferation, both in Iran and North Korea. The pledge of cooperation came despite Obama’s demand that China honor the “universal” human rights of its people, alongside differences over how strongly to pressure Iran to guarantee its nuclear pursuits are legal and peaceful in nature.
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September 22, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Pres. Barack Obama today delivered his first address to the UN General Assembly, promoting cooperation to green the global economy and combat climate change. He pledged the US would lead by example, and called on other nations to find common ground and work to secure the global environment against irreversible degradation.
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September 22, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The UN General Assembly, which brings together every head of government in the world, to offer their country’s position on issues, their country’s demands regarding trade and conflict negotiations, their country’s hopes for a more harmonious world, this year truly grapples with issues of global consensus. Economic recovery, for many parts of the world, will require an unprecedented expansion of women’s rights and sustained attention to responsible environmental stewardship.
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September 9, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The Communist party boss for Xinjiang province was is known as one of China’s toughest remaining strongmen, according to numerous reports. But when somewhere between 1,000 and 20,000 residents of Urumqi, the regional capital, took to the streets, Beijing reacted by removing the party chief in hopes of curbing inter-ethnic unrest and growing anti-government sentiment.
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August 15, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
A World Bank study has projected that the global financial crisis and resulting recession will plunge some 53 million people across “emerging markets” —like China and India— into absolute poverty, in 2009 alone. In China, tens of millions of people have lost jobs related to the export-dependent manufacturing sector.
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July 29, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
The United States is working to develop closer strategic and economic relations with China. The relationship has always been tricky, due to the binary opposition of strategies, which is convenient for those who would like to disqualify the other side’s policies as “evil” or contrary to all reason. Pres. Barack Obama has been clear that he sees the US-China relationship as one of global ethical responsibility, and the driving economic and political bond in the 21st century.
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July 23, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Access to the internet must be a basic human right, across the globe, for a number of reasons. First of all, legitimate, transparent democratic processes of government require in today’s world that information flow freely and that citizens be empowered to share information and to find information, according to their choices and their needs.
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July 19, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Khmer Rouge sought to establish a red Khmer empire in Cambodia, with some ambitions of expansion beyond the nation’s borders, by stamping out any human life or mind that varied from the project, as narrowly conceived by Pol Pot and his murderous regime. The “killing fields” that ensued, with the mass slaughter of an estimated 1.5 million people, were an attempt to establish a new break in time, the time before and the time after the purification —as the regime proposed— of all Cambodia.
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July 12, 2009 :: staff :: 5 Comments
The death toll in the capital of Xinjiang rose last week from initial reports of 100, to 140 killed, then 156. Now, there are reports that over 180 people have died in the inter-ethnic clashes between Uighur muslims and ethnic Han Chinese, relative newcomers to the region, brought in by policies imposed from Beijing. Reports of who exactly has borne the brunt of the violence are still difficult to confirm.
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July 10, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
US president Barack Obama convened a G8-parallel Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, comprised of 17 nations representing over 80% of the world’s industrial and consumer greenhouse gas emissions. The goal was to push governments to move their emissions and energy strategies closer to consensus for meeting bold targets for carbon emissions reductions, in anticipation of the September G20 summit in Pittsburgh and the UN climate summit at Copenhagen in December.
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July 8, 2009 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
Developing nations have failed to deliver the collaborative consensus sought by US president Obama and other G8 leaders in anticipation of the Copenhagen Climate Conference scheduled for later this year. While G8 leaders agreed global climate policy should be oriented toward avoiding any increase in global average temperatures of more than 3º Fahrenheit, they did not reach agreement on how to cap or reduce emissions to set levels by 2050.
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July 6, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
A demonstration for Uighur rights in Urumqi, capital of the Xinjiang province, turned violent when security forces clashed with demonstrators, raising the specter of deepening ethnic tensions between Uighur muslims and ethnic Han Chinese. At least 156 people were killed and over 800 injured in the rioting that ensued. Military police were brought in to “lock down” the entire section of the city typically seen as the Uighur quarter.
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July 5, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Barack Obama has been observing, researching and critiquing nuclear weapons policy for three decades. He seeks to put in motion the most ambitious global denuclearization effort ever conceived, grounding his approach in a hard pragmatist awareness of what drives the build-up of ever more destructive weapons arsenals. He has said throughout this year that his plans would never remove the US nuclear deterrent capability while any nuclear threat remains in the world. Now, he goes to Russia to seek a bilateral strategic arms reduction treaty.
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July 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner have a few things in common, among them that they know the rigors of market economics, the ups and the downs, the arguments for and against regulation. They have both seen duty at high levels during good times and bad. But neither of them has a strong record of pushing to include real ecological math in the standard approach to judging value or resource availability across the economy broadly.
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July 1, 2009 :: staff :: 3 Comments
Amid a storm of protest from Chinese citizens, businesses, rights activists and foreign governments, China has suddenly halted its planned installation of a new enhancement to the ‘Great Firewall’ called ‘Green Dam’. In a statement the UK’s Guardian calls “terse”, the state-run news agency Xinhua reported “China will delay the mandatory installation of the ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers.”
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June 25, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Chinese rights activist Liu Xiaobo has been detained on charges of “inciting subversion of state power”. Liu was jailed for 2 years following the TIananmen Square protests in 1989 that ended with a massacre of unarmed protesters. He was one of the co-authors of Charter 08, a petition calling for the diversification of China’s one-party system. Human Rights Watch and other watchdog organizations have strongly condemned his arrest.
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June 18, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
There are still skeptics who say that wind power cannot generate enough power to be useful, or that the transition to renewable sources of energy is not really of urgent necessity. Here I offer some ideas to counter that argument. First of all, the US is shamefully behind in developing wind power generation, but that doesn’t mean it will never happen, as some suggest.
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June 8, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
California-based Korean-American journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee have been sentenced to 12 years hard labor in North Korea for “grave crimes” allegedly stemming from their filming video across the North Korean border, from Chinese soil. Reports suggest the two women were abducted by North Korean border guards, who crossed into Chinese territory to seize the journalists in a military raid, while the two women were reporting for Current TV.
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June 5, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
The Associated Press is reporting that China has marked the 20th anniversary of the bloody military assault on demonstrators gathered peacefully in Tiananmen Square with a comprehensive crackdown on media or public mention of the tragedy. While the regime refuses to acknowledge what was done to unarmed Chinese citizens on 4 June 1989, an effort has been underway for months to prevent reporting online or in print, as well as to track or block text messages that might mention the day’s meaning.
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June 5, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: No Comment Yet
On 8 January 1976, Zhou Enlai died. He had been Chinese premier and was viewed by the Chinese people as a true idealist and “man of the people”, a public servant at odds with the violent radicals who had imposed the reign of terror known as the “Cultural Revolution”. In a spontaneous outpouring of mourning, hundreds of thousands of people began building a memorial altar to Zhou, with wreaths of white flowers, white paper chrysanthemums, and short poems called xiaozibao, which extolled the virtues of the fallen premier.
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June 4, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
On this the 20th anniversary of the massacre that ended the pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, 150,000 people gathered in Hong Kong’s Victoria Park to remember the dead. Hong Kong is the only place on Chinese soil where such an event was permitted to occur, with authorities in Beijing cracking down on all media across the nation and banning public demonstrations.
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June 3, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
BBC reporting from 4 June 1989, day of the massacre at Tiananman Square. A BBC reporter delivers her report from among the crowd, under constant gunfire. She reports: “the air was filled with shouts of ‘fascists! stop killing!’” / “they’re shouting ’stop the killing!’ and ‘down with the government’” / “the young man in front of me fell dead; I fell over him” / “two ambulance drivers were shot and injured” / “There was not one voice on the streets that did not express despair and rage. ‘Tell the world’ they said to us.”
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June 3, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
Historic video footage of the unknown man who risked his life to stop a column of Chinese tanks moving on demonstrators in Tiananman Square, where hundreds were massacred in 1989…
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June 3, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The Chinese government, in Beijing, controlled by a Communist party that allows no dissent, and no opposition, continues to suppress public awareness, discussion or inquiry, regarding the events of June 1989, in which the Chinese military massacred hundreds of student demonstrators. The term Tiananmen produces filtered results in web searches, and the regime has blocked access to Twitter, Flickr, Blogger, the Huffington Post, LiveJournal, MSN’s Bing, and other sites, in an effort to prevent Chinese internauts from locating any reporting on the massacre of 4 June 1989.
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May 26, 2009 :: staff :: No Comment Yet
The isolated Communist regime of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has reportedly tested a nuclear device, raising fears its posturing could escalate or that the outcome of failed negotiations could be an attack on South Korea, US interests or other allies. Later in the day, it was reported North Korea had also launched at least 3 missiles, possibly capable of intercontinental range.
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May 14, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
The private memoirs of former Chinese Communist party (CCP) leader Zhao Ziyang are to be published, as we near the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests and the massacre that ended them. The diaries will be published this month, under the title Prisoner of the State: The Secret Journal of Zhao Ziyang.
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May 4, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 2 Comments
Yi Guan —who gained worldwide fame as a virologist when he isolated the SARS virus in the masked palm civet, in specimens being sold at a feral animal market in Guangdong province, China— says the World Health Organization (WHO) was slow in responding to the outbreak of influenza A H1N1, otherwise known as swine flu. Yi has devoted most of his career to flu virology and has a doctorate in swine flu virology.
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May 3, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
Lin Zhao was a Chinese poet who hoped that the end of feudal imperialism in 20th century China would lead to real democratic rights for its people. She was executed in 1968 as the regime of Mao Zedong sought to crush all dissent and sweep away potential cultural and conceptual rivals to its rule.
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April 24, 2009 :: Riga Listin :: One Comment
North Korea is proceeding with a trial against two Korean-American journalists from California, despite witnesses claiming they were detained when North Korean border guards entered Chinese territory to seize them while their cameras were rolling. The trial will be held behind closed doors, and foreign governments have expressed concern the process will not allow the journalists a fair hearing or even a defense.
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March 30, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
Investigators in several countries say they have uncovered a global “ghost net” of cyber-espionage, with major centers in three Chinese provinces and a foothold in California. Just one of the group’s alleged cyber-spies is said to have created a system that hacked into 30,000 computers per day. The investigation began with a probe into alleged hacking of computers used by the Dalai Lama in exile in India.
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March 11, 2009 :: J.E. Robertson :: 3 Comments
The best thing China’s ruling Communist party can do for itself, for its people and for the stability of the nation, is take seriously all petitions for redress of grievances, investigate all claims of official corruption, negligence or assault, give weight to collective or individual property claims by punishing officials who steal property, blaze a path toward transparency in banking, ban government cover-ups and establish a zero-tolerance policy for public officials who use their power to punish or intimidate citizens who come forward seeking justice.
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January 21, 2009 :: staff :: One Comment
Russia and Ukraine have confirmed that they have arranged for the flow of natural gas from Russia, through Ukraine, to the EU, to be restored, though the two states differ on the details of when that resumed service will occur exactly, and EU monitors will be watching to ensure compliance with ongoing agreements.
The trials [...]
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January 16, 2009 :: staff :: Comments Off
China has sentenced a would-be Olympic protester to 3 years in prison. The Beijing government set up a process whereby protests could be held only in specifically designated zones, and only with a permit; Ji Zizun appears to be victim of a deliberate strategy of using the application process to ferret out protest leaders, then jail them.
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December 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Communist party government of China has resumed blocking some websites it had unblocked as a gesture of good will, after foreign reporters complained during the Olympics that certain foreign information sources were not available to them. The BBC and Reporters without Borders (RSF) report their sites being blocked, and the Chinese government says sites that contain information sympathetic to Tibetan or Taiwanese independence movements cannot be allowed to be read in China.
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December 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), one of the United Nations’ founding charters, today marked 60 years since its official adoption. Promising the most sweeping raft of protections for human beings around the world, the document has long been controversial, as the major powers have each been accused of selectively enforcing the document’s provisions, according to their own governments’ ideologies or convenience.
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November 17, 2008 :: Denver Lessing :: One Comment
The cloud of soot and smog choking India and China and their neighbors is worsening. The massive brown cloud hovering over Asia now poses serious long-term health risks and environmental dangers to much of the continent, according to a new UN report. The world’s largest pollution phenomenon already drastically reduces the amount of daylight reaching ground level in many Chinese cities, and there is concern the sunlight-blocking effects could impede agricultural production.
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October 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), commonly known as North Korea, has been removed from the United States’ government’s official list of “state sponsors of terrorism”. The move comes as part of an agreement among the Six Parties involved in denuclearization talks regarding the DPRK, which will restart the dismantling of all nuclear facilities in North Korea, and will include inspections, document review, and other measures designed to prevent the further production of nuclear weapons in the secretive state.
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August 29, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
China is choking under a thick covering of contaminants produced from burning carbon-based fuels for industrial production, power-generation, and transport. Environmental degradation is so rampant that much of the northwest of the country is being lost to rapidly expanding deserts. And desertification threatens the already shaky balance between China’s available arable land and its skyrocketing demand for cheap food. Policy makers and market theorists in China and abroad should be thinking about whether that desert can produce something to help China escape the mounting environmental and public health cataclysm.
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August 11, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: One Comment
News reports suggest that 7 bomb suspects and at least one security guard were killed after a bombing attack on police and government facilities in China’s far western Xinjiang province. Xinjiang is one of the regions that many believe may attempt to separate from China, if there is any opportunity, political or military to do so. There are active separatist movements there, a large Muslim population that wants independence from Communist China, and they see the example of former Soviet republics of central Asia as evidence that independence is possible.
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August 10, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The World Bank estimates that 750,000 people are killed each year by China’s impenetrable pollution problem; and 400 million people are expected to migrate to China’s already super-saturated metropoli by the year 2025. China is now burning one-third of the world’s coal for electric-power generation, and has opted to move its national transport infrastructure toward the automobile, a potentially catastrophic choice that could have a decidedly negative impact on health and economic wellbeing across the world.
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July 16, 2008 :: J.E. Robertson :: Comments Off
The Hague human rights court’s prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo, investigating allegations of war crimes and genocide in the western Sudanese region of Darfur, has recommended to the International Criminal Court it indict Sudan’s president Omar al-Bashir on charges of war crimes and genocide. Bashir would be the first serving head of state to be indicted by the court.
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July 9, 2008 :: staff :: Comments Off
Petroleum is the most pervasive base resource other than water in the global economy of the 21st century, and as demand is exploding, production is nearing its geological peak, and untenable price increases are hitting a strained economy hard. Oil prices could be in a stagflation lock, unable to readjust to consumers’ means, unable to compete as emerging energy sources repeatedly slash development and commercial prices. Whatever factors are at play, crude oil prices have jumped over 900% since 1998, and it looks like production cannot meet global demand.
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