Estd. 2002. Politics, tech, startups, media, law, history, philosophy
Nick Kristoff’s piece about China and blogging has been making the rounds on the blogosphere – it is a good piece, and well worth a read. To save you clicking the link, here’s the whole thing: The Chinese Communist Party survived a brutal civil war with the Nationalists, battles with American forces in Korea and … Continue reading “Death by a Thousand Blogs”
Kaplan’s Atlantic cover story has stirred quite a hornet’s nest of discussion. It stems from a rather heated response by Thomas Barnett. This led to it being reproduced by praktike over at Liberals Against Terrorism. Matthew Yglesias then got involved in the ‘aircraft carrier’ debate, if you can call it that. He also points to … Continue reading “Aircraft Carriers and Robert Kaplan”
The Economist has oil as its cover story this week, a subject oft-covered on this blog. Vijay Vaitheeswaran is writing this story in the Economist. Here’s a nice graph: Vijay notes, and I will highlight the bits I like: More worryingly, Mr Morse believes the problem extends well beyond just spare production capacity. He points … Continue reading “Oil in troubled waters”
Robert Kaplan said some things that got my interest in an interview he did recently on BookTV. He recently spent an amount of time on a US missile cruiser in the Pacific, and believes that the next major military buildup may be in the field of naval power. His remarks are well worth reading: China … Continue reading “China and future wars”
Following tensions with Taiwan, China is now in a war of words with Japan. Japan asked for an apology but Beijing responded: Beijing has no reason to apologise over a wave of anti-Japanese protests, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing has said. His Japanese counterpart, Nobutaka Machimura, had gone to Beijing seeking an apology, but Mr … Continue reading “China rejects calls for apology”
Interesting stuff on Newsnight tonight, I hope they archive this one: Our Science Editor, Susan Watts, has been speaking to the banned Chinese film director, Li Yang. His new film, “Blind Shaft”, was shot in the small private coal mines of northern China. Unofficial figures suggest up to 10,000 deaths a year occur in China’s … Continue reading “Newsnight now…”
Also in Foreign Affairs, Kenneth Pollack, Director of Research at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution and Ray Takeyh, a Senior Fellow in Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations write about Iran. It’s quite a long piece, but here’s some of the introduction to get you hooked: … Continue reading “Taking on Tehran”
Some ongoing tensions between Japan and China are detailed here. Japan has begun planning for the worst. A conflict with China over rich gas deposits in the East China Sea has escalated since late January when two Chinese destroyers entered the area, which has been in dispute for decades. Japan warned China that it would … Continue reading “Pouring oil on the East China Sea”
So argues David Shambaugh, and I believe rightly so. He takes us through 5 arguments the Europeans are using to justify lifting the embargo, and basically destroys each one. I’ll quote the whole thing: In his meetings with European leaders this week, President George W. Bush will try to persuade the Europeans not to lift … Continue reading “Don't lift the arms embargo on China”
So there you have it, Ireland comes in just above average. The survey can be found here Apparently the British are the world’s most attentive lovers, while the Chinese have the most partners, Italians the most orgasms, and Iceland has the highest vibrator usage. But why oh why do I suspect that the French are … Continue reading “Durex's global sex survey”