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By Ann Patchett
By Michael Gorra
$ 18.00
$40
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AP / Saul Loeb
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By Robert Scheer — I get angry because betrayal by the “good guys” for whom I have ended up voting has become the norm.
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Wikimedia Commons / Raymond (CC-BY-SA)
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Savvy Truthdig readers (as if there were any other kind) already know that the drug business is highly political here in the States, but the story of the Chinese malaria remedy artemisinin takes it up several notches on the international stage with a saga spanning several decades. Oh, and Chairman Mao is also involved.
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Gage Skidmore (CC-BY-SA)
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People often knock polls, but in the case of Jon Huntsman, the numbers didn’t lie. After trailing most candidates for the majority of the race, Huntsman has reportedly decided to quit the stump and endorse fellow Mormon and alleged moderate Mitt Romney. Updated
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bbc.co.uk
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Republicans weren’t the only ones irked at our nation’s leader this week. President Obama has also ruffled some feathers in the Chinese government with his newly hatched military strategy, which he announced in a rare news conference at the Pentagon on Thursday, and which apparently strikes the Chinese as a potentially unwelcome display of U.S. prowess on their side of the globe.
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AP / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
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On Thursday, President Obama dropped in at the Pentagon to outline some sizable changes he’s making to America’s defense strategy in this last year of his first elected term. His plans will no doubt lay him open to criticism on the campaign trail, but at least it seems to make room for the possibility of focusing funds on the home front.
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dominikfoto (CC-BY)
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The name Steve Jobs has been sweet on the lips of techno-capitalist fankids pining for a cultural hero since long before the Apple CEO succumbed to cancer late last year. Since his death, an author and an actor have taken some of the first shots at shaping his legacy. With an eye on the man’s cruelty toward his employees at home and abroad, n+1 reviewer Gary Sernovitz tries to fill in the blanks.
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U.S. Air Force / Staff Sgt. Nathanael Callon
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This colonialism thing ain’t what it used to be. Without spending the hundreds of billions of dollars and countless lives the United States has invested in the effort to determine Afghanistan’s future, the Chinese government managed to swoop in and walk away with as many as 87 million barrels of the country’s oil.
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An Israeli woman is relegated to the back of the bus by a group of Orthodox Jews; New York celebs party with the Occupiers; and studying fish may be the key to understanding why uninformed voters are a necessary evil in our democracy. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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Fanghong (CC-BY-SA)
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Villagers in Southern China have accused authorities of seizing their land and killing a village representative in custody. The BBC reports that residents of Wukan in Guangdong province, one of China’s red-hot economic zones, are in a standoff with police.
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Friends of the Earth International (CC-BY)
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How will nations finance the effort to slow and adapt to climate change? What role will the U.S. play? And will the countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol vote to renew it? These are some of the questions journalists are looking to answer during the U.N. climate talks under way in Durban, South Africa, this week. (more)
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AP / Alex Brandon
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November’s dip in the official unemployment rate is nothing to clap about. Scrutiny of the details reveals that the new figure of 8.6 percent is due mostly to 315,000 Americans dropping out of the search for work, and most of the newly created positions were low-paying ones. That includes temporary jobs created to support the spike in commerce that comes with the holiday season. (more)
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Preston Rhea (CC-BY-SA)
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By Barry Lando — For several years now the Pakistanis have found China a very willing and increasingly powerful counterweight to the Americans and their often strident political demands.
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Jonathan Kos-Read (CC-BY-ND)
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By Eugene Robinson — Even the briefest acquaintance with this smoggy, sprawling capital is basis enough to conclude that much of the campaign rhetoric we’re hearing about China is unrealistic, dishonest or just dumb.
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Thomas Galvez (CC-BY)
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In the spirit of fostering a more “socialist culture,” the Chinese government is banning commercials that interrupt television dramas. Judging by this BBC report, China’s TV executives seem much more concerned with lost revenue than with government interference.
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Lars Christopher Nøttaasen (CC-BY)
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Truthdig contributor and former “60 Minutes” producer Barry Lando argues that China has cleverly exploited poor relations between Tehran and Washington, to the point that the Middle Kingdom now imports more oil and gas from Iran than the U.S. does from Saudi Arabia.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — One might think that a bitter Central Asian war in Afghanistan and an ambiguous commitment to Iraq would be enough for President Barack Obama to cope with.
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Wikimedia Commons / www.kremlin.ru (CC-BY)
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The competition included Bill Gates, Angela Merkel and Kofi Annan, among others, but this week a little-known organization called the China International Peace Research Center named Russia’s bombastic Prime Minister ... (more)
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The search term “Occupy” is now banned in China; online anonymity is becoming a thing of the past; and a new app called Bully Button protects children but it might just be another Big Brother act. These discoveries and more after the jump.
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AP / Mark Lennihan
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Even bad news has a way of turning around fast for Goldman Sachs. The financial giant was forced to concede Tuesday that it did not, for once, defy the laws of market physics as it has done even in the throes of the ongoing recession (you can keep your sketchy recession timeline, New York Times), and that it had ... (more)
Posted on Oct 18, 2011
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AP / Andy Wong
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By Bill Boyarsky — A recent trip to China made me think about the way life can go on in a police state when people are much more preoccupied with economic survival than with civil liberties.
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Flickr / ¡Que comunismo!
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Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been busy courting countries from Latin America to Eastern Europe to the Middle East to the Far East to assemble a political and economic bulwark against American imperialism. (more)
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YouTube / RonPaul2008dotcom
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With the simple dictum “don’t be evil” as its motto, the Internet software giant Google—which ranked as the third-highest lobbying spender in the tech industry in 2010—wages an aggressive image and relations campaign with an international public, and its strategy is evolving. (more)
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Martin Abegglen (CC-BY-SA)
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By David Sirota — Many economic Nostradamuses have long predicted that the epitaph on America’s tombstone will ultimately read, “Made in China.” But casual observers probably didn’t think the funeral procession would happen this fast.
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Kevin Dooley (CC-BY)
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By Joe Conason — A downgrading of U.S. Treasury securities will mean enormous and completely unnecessary increases in our interest payments to the nation’s largest creditor—and our most important competitor in the international arena.
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AP / Greg Baker
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By Dan Siegel — Even in the midst of economic expansion, China is far from a model of unbridled capitalism.
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Deng Coy Miel, Cagle Cartoons, Singapore —
Posted on Jul 3, 2011
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By John Pomfret —
For decades during the Cold War, the most captivating spy-vs.-spy battle was the one waged between Moscow and Washington. With the rise of China, a new player has entered the game.
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AP / Ng Han Guan
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It took two months and not-so-subtle protests from within and beyond the art world, but on Wednesday the Chinese government freed 54-year-old artist Ai Weiwei from prison, hinting at tax issues and not artistic dissent as the reason behind his stint in lockup.
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U.S. Department of State
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Here are some fun facts about Jon Huntsman Jr.: He’s the former governor of Utah; he’s a Mormon; he last worked as an envoy to China for President Obama; and he’s now challenging his former boss for the White House by running for president on the Republican ticket. Updated
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imdb.com
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By Richard Schickel — “City of Life and Death,” by the Chinese writer-director Lu Chuan, is the second film about Nanking, and it is a work that aspires to the definitive and almost achieves that status.
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Nate Beeler, Cagle Cartoons, The Washington Examiner —
Posted on Jun 12, 2011
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Flickr / abraham.williams (CC-BY-SA)
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The Google email accounts of hundreds of American journalists and government and military officials were successfully raided as part of a spear-phishing operation conducted by Chinese hackers who tricked their targets into signing in on a decoy login page.
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Kenny Louie (CC-BY)
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The Pentagon has decided to treat Internet-borne attacks on the United States as acts of war. The change is motivated in part by a brewing leet arms race with China and Russia. Essentially the U.S. is playing catch-up in what someone from the 1990s would call “cyberspace” and the military is buying time by creating, it hopes, a deterrent. (more)
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Flickr/dyashman
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Hard manual labor is one time-honored method of putting prisoners to work, but Chinese jail bosses have caught on to another lucrative way to keep inmates occupied while lining their own pockets: online gaming.
Posted on May 26, 2011
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Flickr / Gustavo Thomas
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While China celebrates the 60-year mark of its “peaceful liberation” of Tibet, about 300 monks have been rounded up in a “patriotic re-education” campaign, which authorities hope will encourage them to renounce their devotion to the Dalai Lama, swear allegiance to China’s ruling Communist Party and stop lighting themselves on fire.
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Illustration by PZS
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After a few months of fuss, from anointing himself King Birther to calling the Chinese “motherfuckers,” Donald Trump has decided that “Celebrity Apprentice” needs him more than America does, even though “... If I were to run, I would be able to win the primary and ultimately, the general election.”
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Flickr / sanfamedia.com
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According to his wife, who was granted a visit with the dissident artist for the first time in the six weeks since he was detained at an airport and accused of tax evasion, Chinese authorities seem to be looking after the physical welfare of Ai Weiwei. The news dispels earlier rumors that he was being physically tortured, though he appeared mentally distressed, his wife said.
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State Department
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells The Atlantic that China’s “deplorable human rights record” is “a fool’s errand” to “stop history.” That’s some tough talk from the global representative of a country that throws its enemies in an island gulag when it isn’t remotely executing them.
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AP / Ng Han Guan
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By Juan Cole — In 1957, a United States shocked by the Soviet launch of the Sputnik 1 satellite bounced into action to compete on the world stage. More than 50 years later, in May of 2011, the U.S. is facing a new challenge.
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Flickr / longtrekhome
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Prominent human rights lawyer Li Fangping went missing Friday as Chinese authorities released fellow attorney Teng Biao after a two-month detainment.
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AP / J. Scott Applewhite
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By Robert Scheer — Of course it will be argued that multinational corporations have the right to arrange their businesses as they see fit in order to maximize profit. But if that is the case, do beleaguered American taxpayers have to foot the bill?
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Wikimedia Commons
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The U.S. and China are bickering again over human rights after the U.S. condemned the arrest of Chinese dissidents. Beijing dismissed Washington’s latest criticism and said the U.S. is beset by violence, racism and torture and thus has no authority to condemn the actions of other governments. Above, Ai Weiwei, a jailed activist.
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Courtesy of Apple
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A new “panic button” cellphone application is being promoted by the U.S. State Department for pro-democracy activists, especially those in the Arab world and China, that wipes out the phone’s contacts and alerts fellow activists.
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By David Sirota — Wielding its increasing market leverage, China is now countering our First Amendment ethos with a push for what L.A. Times reporter Ben Fritz calls pervasive “self-censorship.”
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Illustration by PZS
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While Japan is busy trying to keep babies from drinking irradiated water, officials in nearby China are getting ready to roll out a reactor they say is more advanced and safer than the one currently poisoning Tokyo’s water supply.
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AP / Jerome Delay
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Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin wasn’t thrilled with the U.N. Security Council’s go-ahead to let U.S. and European forces fire on Moammar Gadhafi’s troops in Libya, and he said so Monday. He wasn’t alone in his criticism of what began as ...
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Real American Boy: How Our Byzantine Immigration System and Failed Economy May Have Made a Terrorist
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