What China needs to reduce corruption is not more high-profile capital punishment cases, but a free press and an independent, de-politicized judiciary and police force that will fairly implement and adjudicate the law. Monopoly rule from the top makes it hard to develop such institutions.[…]
Bharat Verma, Editor of the Indian Defence Review, made a controversial statement today. He predicts that China will attack India by 2012 in order to distract its massive populace from rampant internal unrest. He stated: “China will launch an attack on India before 2012. There are multiple reasons for a desperate Beijing to teach India […]
Summer weekends can be rather distracting, so if you missed it, President Obama gave a historic speech during his visit to Africa and several websites have great coverage to get you caught up on events. The speech has been widely seen as an outline of U.S. policy toward Africa. I’ve been impressed the the coverage […]
Desertec Takes Another Giant Leap – I’ve written a few times about this project, bursting with promise to provide clean energy, build bridges and make the desert bloom, most recently here. The “FT” said today that Desertec has been embraced by several major European financial, utility and industrial concerns. “A dozen companies are today set […]
Mexico held its midterm elections last week and while the former ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party regained control of the Congress for the first time since 2000, another story has begun to emerge: the surprise showing of the small Green Party, which garnered 10% of the vote. The reason why this may be significant? The Green […]
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/ccTOaxG-7CQ” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] When Sri Lanka’s 26 year civil war ended in May 2009 with the final defeat of the insurgent Tamil Tigers rebel group (LTTE) by government forces, there were immediate concerns about the civilian death tolls and methods used by the government in the final months of the war. The […]
Mourners gathered in the Bosnian town of Srebrenica to honor the victims and mark the anniversary of the bloodiest massacres during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. War crimes fugitive Gen. Ratko Mladic led his troops in July 1995 into the U.N. safe-haven of Srebrenica and “stripped all the male Muslim prisoners, military and civilian, elderly and […]
Having a loving and caring family is something none of us should ever take for granted, unfortunately most do. We take it as right, we complain about out siblings, our parents, and often take little time to truly get to know the depth of those around us. Yes, of course we love our families without […]
[kml_flashembed movie=”http://www.youtube.com/v/YECvWjZXSTE” width=”425″ height=”350″ wmode=”transparent” /] Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, compared the violence in China’s Xinjiang region against the minority Uighurs to genocide on Friday. Speaking about the violent protests that have taken place between ethnic Han Chinese and Uighurs he said, “The event taking place in China is a kind of genocide […]
Senatus Populusque Romanus – The Senate and the People of Rome. The old Roman Senate was, on paper, representative of the people. Because the US is a representative democracy, the US Senate was meant, up to a certain point, to perpetuate this same principle. It was, however, certainly less representative, from Day One, than its […]
In light of this week’s racially motivated violence and unrest in China’s Xinjiang Uighur Province it may be helpful to reassess China’s ethnic policies in the Autonomous Region. They have been called everything from “genocide” to “stability promotion” but what they really happen to be lies somewhere in between. Since the 1950s the Chinese government […]
President Obama is joining the leaders of allied countries in the annual G8 Summit, this year hosted by Italy. The G8 is not a formal alliance, it was not founded by a treaty and it does not have a permanent headquarters. It’s merely an informal gathering to discuss major international issues and try to chart […]
This movie is hard to describe. It is in part a journey back in time for director Ari Folman, who is disturbed by the fact he cannot remember incidents that happened while he was in the Israeli army. Folman reconnects with others who were with him in 1982 when Bashir Gemayel, Lebanon’s newly elected president, […]
A preliminary report from a review team for the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) has found “horrific violence” on the part of the military against civilians in the diamond-rich Marange District in eastern Zimbabwe. The Kimberley Process was established in 2003 to thwart the trade of so-called conflict diamonds which funded numerous rebel movements in […]
Time to re-read Huntington? His controversial and path-breaking Foreign Affairs article of 1993 and subsequent book posited that the post-Cold War era would be one of conflict and “fault line wars” among the world’s major civilizations: Western, Confucian, Japanese, Islamic, Hindu, Slavic-Orthodox, and Latin American and possibly African… Is the current unrest in China’s western […]