In Asian Media this week: Chinese see Biden Admin as ‘incompetent and ignorant’. Plus: China ready to sign no-nuke zone treaty; spending on nuclear weapons surging; Beijing, Delhi expel each other’s journalists; ambassador slams Seoul’s foreign policy; China passes 50pc non-fossil fuel power supply Anthony Albanese warned of the dangers of the diplomatic deep freeze Continue reading »
World
My first article published here at Pearls and Irritations, titled Built on a tower of lies, described how positive feedback loops have created at a societal level an enormous tower of lies that guide public discourse. I further warned that if we failed to dismantle this tower the consequences would be traumatic. Unfortunately, the horrifically Continue reading »
During a visit to Chile in 1976, Kissinger met the dictator Augusto Pinochet and offered no objection to his violent rule.
The post How Henry Kissinger Paved the Way for Orlando Letelier’s Assassination appeared first on The Intercept.
House Armed Services Committee Ranking Member Adam Smith has expressed openness to the idea — saying he’s just asking questions.
The post House Democrats Refuse to Say Whether They Support Cluster Bomb Shipments to Ukraine appeared first on The Intercept.
Allow me to come clean: I worry every time Max Boot vents enthusiastically about a prospective military action. Whenever that Washington Post columnist professes optimism about some upcoming bloodletting, misfortune tends to follow. And as it happens, he’s positively bullish about the prospect of Ukraine handing Russia a decisive defeat in its upcoming, widely anticipated, sure-to-happen-any-day-now spring Continue reading »
The statistical evidence clearly shows that China is the world’s number one economy. Unfortunately, the US and many commentators are unwilling to acknowledge that reality, but the future stability of the region depends on acceptance that we are living in a multipolar world. For the last hundred years America has been the world’s biggest economy, Continue reading »
The other day I stumbled across a 2014 opinion piece in The Guardian titled “It’s not Russia that’s pushed Ukraine to the brink of war” by Seumas Milne, who the following year would go on to become the Labour Party’s Executive Director of Strategy and Communications under Jeremy Corbyn. I bring this up because the Continue reading »
The effects of the climate crisis intrude with increasing regularity into our lives and yet we do not act. We are as paralysed as past civilisations were when facing catastrophic destruction. Princeton, N.J. — As I write this, the sun is a hazy reddish orange orb. The sky is an inky yellowish gray. The air Continue reading »
Ten years ago Anthony King and Ivor Crewe published their book – The Blunders of Our Governments. They ranged over the Millennium Dome; the 20 billion pounds wasted on a failed scheme to upgrade London’s Underground; punishing tens of thousands of single mothers into poverty; massive IT disaster’s such as the Blair Governments NHS scheme; Continue reading »
Misunderstanding China has a long and distinguished history. Much of that misunderstanding has been generated by western media going right back to the Qing dynasty. The Australian ‘Times’ correspondent of the era George Ernest Morrison was unable to speak Chinese and so depended on Sir Edmund Backhouse as a source of primary information. Sir Edmund Continue reading »