Good news from Zimbabwe where, despite Western media reports of political crisis, economic stagnation and widespread poverty, the electoral roll indicates the country is actually one of the healthiest on earth. The October 2010 count finds 41,100 voters in Zimbabwe aged 100 or more – four times the number of centenarians in Britain, …
Geo-political tensions
The Google-China Spat Heats Up as Beijing Denies Hacking Attacks
Google and China aren’t exactly pals. The Internet company pulled part of its business out of mainland China last year, saying it was fed up with Beijing-imposed censorship regulations and what it believes were Chinese-originated attacks on its systems. (The fact that Google was lagging behind domestic search engines might have been a …
The Looming Food Crisis: Are the World’s Elites to Blame?
Julian Cribb’s The Coming Famine opens in Hokkaido, Japan, at a meeting of the G8. It’s 2008, the financial crisis is underway and food prices are soaring. Nonetheless, the attendees tuck into an eighteen course feast of caviar, sea urchin roe, Kyoto beef, conger eels, truffles and champagne, prepared by some sixty chefs. They also …
Why the G-8 Should Never Meet Again
The G-8 wraps up its 37th conclave May 27 at the French seaside resort of Deauville. By now, you may have seen some of the gathering’s glitzy snaps. Two seem to define the occasion: one of President Obama and Europe’s top potentates taking a chummy stroll along the Normandy coast, the other of pregnant French first lady Carla …
Meet China’s Newest Soldiers: An Online Blue Army
China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is in the midst of an unprecedented expansion, using ample budgets for everything from developing a blue-water navy to launching a test flight of the country’s first stealth fighter jet last year. Now the PLA has announced the deployment of another crucial military team: a cyber security …
The Dear Leader Does Beijing. But Why Is He in China Again?
What leader of a hungry, isolated regime wouldn’t want to enjoy a little vacation in China? On Wednesday, an armored train carrying North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and his 70-person entourage is believed to have arrived in Beijing, where the man known as the Dear Leader is presumably in town to meet with Chinese President Hu …
Bahrain’s Voiceless: How al-Jazeera’s Coverage of the Arab Spring Is Uneven
A couple of weeks ago, the Qatari English language daily the Peninsula ran the provocative headline, “Why Are We So Timid?” in its Saturday special issue. “Freedom eludes the Qatari media even as the country’s top leadership is keen to promote free expression and has lifted all kinds of restrictions on the local press,” opined …
Facing the Threat of Piracy, China Starts to Talk Like a Superpower
On a visit to the U.S. this week, China’s top military commander Chen Bingde suggested that the international coalition patrolling the Gulf of Aden and the waters off the coast of Somalia ought to take decisive action against pirate dens on land. So far, the counter-piracy strategy has focused on the pirate “mother-ships,” usually …
Could the Chinese Profit from the Strauss-Kahn Scandal?
As jailed Frenchman Dominique Strauss-Kahn submitted his resignation as managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China quickly positioned itself as a possible beneficiary. On Thursday, Chinese state media wondered aloud whether the next IMF leader should be Chinese. One candidate bandied about by the official Chinese …
The Saudi-Iranian Cold War: Is This the Future of the Middle East?
It’s easy to overlook the killing of a single person in violence-plagued Pakistan, not least in Karachi, a seaside metropolis ever in danger of boiling over into sectarian bloodshed. But the murder of a Saudi diplomat by unknown assailants ought to raise eyebrows. Saudi Arabia’s tangled, pervasive influence in Pakistan has been well …
Poor Panama. China’s Just Not That Into You.
The list of countries that have chosen diplomatic relations with Taiwan over mainland China reads like an exercise in national obscurity. The 23-nation compendium includes Burkina Faso, Tuvalu and Saint Kitts and Nevis, along with Palau, Swaziland and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines. Nevertheless, the People’s Republic has assiduously …
China Welcomes bin Laden’s Death, but Concerns About U.S. Focus Emerge
The online reactions in China to the death of Osama bin Laden have been diverse, with some celebrating the death of the terrorist, while a few mourned the passing of someone who challenged the global dominance of the U.S. Officially the Chinese government welcomed news that an American military team took out the Qaeda leader in Pakistan …
EU Revision Proposals For Schengen: A Demonstration Of False Hustle?
The European Commission—the European Union’s executive organ—is slated to present proposals Wednesday responding to the Franco-Italian demand for revision of the 1985 Schengen accords. An excellent story in today’s New York Times offers a forecast of what the EC’s suggestions are likely to include. It also provides a peek into …