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By Amy Goodman
$10.80
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U.S. Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Christopher M. Burke
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Tensions between North and South Korea are spiraling out of control. The north has cut all ties, and Kim Jong-il reportedly ordered his forces to prepare to defend against attack. Seoul continues to push for satisfaction in the U.N. Security Council after the north allegedly torpedoed a South Korean warship. (continued)
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AP / Yonhap, Jin Sung-chul
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In a move that predictably provoked the North Korean government, the Pentagon acknowledged that U.S. forces would be conducting naval exercises with their South Korean counterparts as a show of solidarity with Seoul following the sinking of the warship Cheonan in March.
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Fake news by Andy Borowitz —
According to the head of the domestic spying operation, China decided to scrap its elaborate array of spy satellites, eavesdropping devices and closed-circuit surveillance cameras after recognizing that Facebook put them all to shame.
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By Stuart Whatley — Perhaps the most troubling reality in the 21st century is that our economics now dictates our cultural values, rather than the reverse, where we the people would decide how resources, production and mutual prosperity should be systematized to achieve the best society for all.
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Chinese swingers head to jail, Australia hunts down and grounds the founder of WikiLeaks, and David Lynch does Dior. All this and more on today’s list.
Posted on May 19, 2010
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google.com / governmentrequests/
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Google has a new service, but it won’t help you find pictures of Justin Bieber or stay in touch with friends. It’s a map that shows how many times governments around the world have contacted the company with requests—either to remove content or retrieve data about Google users. Who knew Brazil was so nosy? (continued)
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AP / Alexander F. Yuan
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Chinese President Hu Jintao visited the earthquake-rocked region of Qinghai in western China on Sunday as official estimates of the damage to human life rose to 1,700 dead, with 256 missing and 12,128 injured.
Posted on Apr 18, 2010
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news.bbc.co.uk
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A 6.9-magnitude earthquake hit China’s western Qinghai province Wednesday morning, killing an estimated 400 people and injuring thousands more in yet another natural disaster for the developing world.
Posted on Apr 14, 2010
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The announcement of Justice John Paul Stevens’ retirement is bound to set off a political battle of immense proportions. Will it be a test of the merits of the potential candidates or just another political throwdown? And does America’s new nuclear posture justify Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize?
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AP / Hasan Sarbakhshian
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On Thursday, President Barack Obama made his case for a fourth round of sanctions
against Iran to send a strong message to Tehran about its nuclear program, but some other global powers aren’t on board with that plan just yet—namely, China and Russia.
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White House / Pete Souza
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President Barack Obama made the auspicious step of releasing his new Nuclear Posture Review on Tuesday, two days before he was due to co-sign an arms reduction treaty with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Prague.
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Call its decision soulless and/or good business, Microsoft has decided to stay in China despite the departure of its competitor, Google, from the country after a row between the government and the search site over the censorship of Web pages.
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Flickr user George Lu
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China invested nearly twice as much money—$34.6 billion—in clean energy projects in 2009 as the United States. The ecological impact of China’s economic boom could be a factor, but so could ... (continued)
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Wikimedia Commons / Barry Peters
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One hot topic at the United Nations Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora—yes, there is such a thing, and it was going on Tuesday in Qatar—was the protection of certain species of shark that provide the key ingredient in sharkfin soup. Save the spiny dogfish!
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Illustration from an image of Hong Kong by Flickr user skyseeker
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In an effort to work through some of its issues with the Chinese government and circumvent Web censorship, Google is pulling its search operations out of the mainland and routing Chinese traffic through the company’s Hong Kong portal. Google will leave its engineering and business operations in China proper. (continued)
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Al-Jazeera English
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A drought in southwestern China, where it has not rained in more than five months, is putting a damper on the lives of 50 million people, while costing the national economy $3 billion and leaving more than 20 million people without enough potable water.
Posted on Mar 21, 2010
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Is China on its way toward becoming the feared colossus of the 21st century, surpassing the United States in its imperial ambitions and economic hegemony?
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AP / Jae C. Hong
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Google is “99.9 percent” certain it will shut down its search engine operation in China after the government in Beijing warned the company that it was flouting the country’s censorship laws, which require limited access to content like “Tiananmen Square” and “democracy.”
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Flickr / FAB O LENS
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Well, that didn’t take long. China now has more billionaires (89 if you include Hong Kong) than any other country except for the U.S., which, to be fair, has been working overtime to transfer wealth upward. Unlike the U.S., the Chinese government has promised to distribute its bounty to “make our society fairer and more harmonious.”
Posted on Mar 11, 2010
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Flickr / Johan Larsson
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Something’s rotten in the Apple empire—a few things, actually. For starters, the technology titan revealed that at least 11 children, who the company claimed were 15 years old, were employed in three Apple-affiliated factories in undisclosed locations. (continued)
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White House / Pete Souza
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Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader called China “childish” on Thursday after conferring with President Barack Obama in a meeting that was held over Beijing’s objections. The White House released a carefully worded statement (posted after the jump) that praised the Dalai Lama without lending too much weight to his cause.
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United States Treasury
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News that China sold $34 billion in U.S. government bonds at the end of last year has raised the fears of analysts, some of whom think that the move—which involved less than 5 percent of the overall amount of bonds held by China—is meant to signal a loss of confidence in U.S. economic policy.
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A cautionary tale about youthful self-confidence and indiscretion, compounded by the enmity between conservatives and liberals during Cold War America’s attempt to fix blame for the “loss” of China.
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Is it time to remodel Stonehenge? Is M. Night Shyamalan’s latest movie a whitewash? Will the U.S. and China ever go to war? Answers to these questions and more on today’s list.
Posted on Feb 11, 2010
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Flickr / tapasparida
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Leading scientists are criticizing Chinese doctors and farmers for what they believe is a reckless overuse of antibiotics in both the medical and agricultural industries, which, they argue, has led to an explosion of resistant “superbugs” endangering global health.
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With national and global finance still wobbling and the fundamentals of the economy still gone awry, the fellows on “Left, Right & Center” discuss economic policy, China and the politics of apology.
Posted on Feb 5, 2010
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Google already threatened to quit China over a network attack originating from that country, but it seems the Internet giant was shaken up enough to call the National Security Agency (of spying-on-Americans fame) for assistance. (continued)
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — China and India stopped being part of what was called the “third world” when the “second world,” the communist world, disappeared in a shattering of global illusions in 1989.
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Wikimedia Commons / Yancho Sabev
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The Chinese government has issued a warning to the White House that there will be consequences of a diplomatic nature if President Barack Obama goes ahead with a rumored plan to meet the Dalai Lama in Washington later this month. A representative from the Chinese Communist Party hinted vaguely at undesirable outcomes ... (continued)
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AP / Greg Baker
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It certainly did sound dramatic, the whole idea that execs at Google were throwing down the virtual gauntlet and threatening to pull out of China after clashing with the government over censorship, but it turns out that there hasn’t exactly been an uproar among the Chinese about the possibility of losing Google’s services.
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Luojie, China Daily, China —
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Flickr / SmackNHawaii
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The Chinese have leapt past Western competitors in the race for alternative energy, becoming the world’s largest makers of wind turbines and solar panels. And they’re not done yet.
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Wikimedia Commons
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The U.S. State Department has defended a proposed deal to sell $6.4 billion in weapons to Taiwan, claiming the exchange would aid “security and stability” between the island and its mainland big brother, China.
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Flickr / mrfink
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More than a week after a row between China and Google over censorship practices, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly called on Beijing to lift restrictions on Internet use, to which China responded by denouncing the criticism as “groundless.”
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Flickr / Tambako the Jaguar
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Sure, it behooved our Neolithic ancestors to band together and form proto-civilizations for many reasons, but one main motivation, according to archaeologist Patrick McGovern—who works, and we kid you not, at the University of Pennsylvania Museum’s Biomolecular Archaeology Laboratory for Cuisine, Fermented Beverages, and Health—was the time-honored pursuit of alcoholic intoxication.
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Flickr.com / PMorgan
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Even in the face of the global economic crisis, China’s economy still managed to grow by a surprising 8.7 percent last year, according to the bean-counters in Beijing, putting the country on track to overtake Japan as the world’s second-biggest economy.
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Flickr / Marcy Reiford
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Residents of Southern California are no strangers to smog, but new research suggests that South and East Asia could be to blame for increased levels of the brown stuff floating over the Western United States. Ozone and possibly other pollutants are apparently blowing over the ocean, causing all sorts of problems and reminding us that exporting our pollution to the developing world isn’t exactly working out.
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Apple has a big event planned for the end of the month, when the company is supposed to unveil its rumored tablet and perhaps a new iPhone OS, but the workers who make screens used by Apple are a lot more concerned about getting paid and whether they’ve been made to work with hazardous materials.
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AP / Ng Han Guan
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Chinese police dashed the hopes of eight contestants who would have vied for the title of Mr. Gay China in Beijing on Friday by shutting down the show right before it was set to start, claiming that event officials hadn’t followed the correct protocol in putting on the pageant.
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AP / Eugene Hoshiko
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By Robert Scheer — The Chinamen did it. In the great American tradition of finding foreign scapegoats for our problems, the hunt is on to somehow hold China responsible for the misery that Wall Street financiers inflicted upon the world.
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Flickr / Ryanpyle.com
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China is heading into the Year of the Tiger with a roar. Last week it was announced that China has surpassed the U.S. as the world’s biggest auto market, and this week Chinese state media is reporting that the country’s exports leaped 17.7 percent in December, overtaking Germany as the global leader.
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AP
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With the U.S. economic slump and the seemingly never-ending boom in Chinese manufacturing, it comes as no surprise that China has become the world’s biggest car market, with 13.5 million vehicles sold in 2009—or 2.1 million more than the U.S.
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Ireland’s atheists are battling a blasphemy law while the year of gay China is moving forward. And you won’t believe what you’ve been eating. These stories and more on today’s list.
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Flickr / ashwinnavin
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A highly publicized campaign against Internet pornography swept China in 2009, with 5,394 people arrested and 4,186 criminal investigations conducted against the circulation of “smutty and lewd pictures”—a fourfold increase in smut cases compared with 2008.
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amnesty.org.uk
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With less than a day to go before his scheduled execution in China, British supporters of Londoner Akmal Shaikh held an eleventh-hour vigil in London on Monday in an attempt to persuade the Chinese government to spare his life, arguing that Shaikh, 53, suffers from mental illness. Update after the jump.
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Flickr / Richard.Fisher
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China has plenty of Prada and an economy to match, but don’t think Beijing has gone soft on “stability preservation.” A speech published by state media shortly after a prominent dissident was thrown in the can encourages security forces to “Strike hard against hostile forces at home and abroad.”
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Wikimedia Commons
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In one of the most improper of Christmas presents, Liu Xiaobo, a Chinese human rights activist, was sentenced to an unusually harsh 11 years in prison for charges of “subversion.” The decision was ostensibly made on Christmas Day to minimize international attention.
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en.cop15.dk
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A lot of hoopla, and even hope, went into this month’s Copenhagen climate convention, and leaders from a slew of nations showed up to try to strike an agreement. So why wasn’t a bigger, better deal reached by the end of their power huddle?
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problembear.wordpress.com
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The world leaders who showed up for the final stretch of the Copenhagen climate summit, perhaps assuming that their lesser representatives would have paved the way for a relatively easy finale, were in for some long hours and tough talks lasting into the night. Things didn’t go as planned, it seems, and rifts between countries weren’t being resolved in time Friday to strike the deals they sorely needed to make. Updated
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China will soon become “the most powerful and influential country in the world,” says celebrated journalist Martin Jacques. But to what end?
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