There’s going to be a long fight over the Obama administration’s new carbon emissions caps, and it’s just getting started. But today brings encouraging news from beyond our borders: As if on cue, the world’s biggest polluter, China, announced…
- Africa (225)
- Animals (1)
- Asia (1,211)
- Australasia (8)
- Australia (24)
- Authoritarianism (378)
- Canada (4)
- Cats (1)
- Celtic Religion (1)
- Culture (506)
- Dehydration (1)
- Democracy (318)
- Dissent (411)
- Ecology (1)
- Economy (1,003)
- Agriculture (3)
- Banking (67)
- Carbon Footprint (6)
- Corporations (46)
- Cryptocurrency (2)
- Debt (20)
- Democratic Socialism (20)
- Demographic Decline (1)
- Development (26)
- Employment (118)
- Food Insecurity (21)
- Homelessness (15)
- Industry (4)
- Inequality (413)
- Inflation (4)
- infrastructure (10)
- Investment (92)
- Market Crash (10)
- Middle Class (61)
- Monopolies (8)
- Neoliberalism (195)
- Plutocracy (602)
- Poverty (198)
- Regulation (2)
- Sanctions (4)
- Taxes (36)
- Technology (3)
- Trade (113)
- Weapons sales (4)
- Education (113)
- Elderly (3)
- Electricity Cost (2)
- Energy (1,670)
- Batteries (46)
- Coal (136)
- Fossil Fuels (310)
- Fracking (50)
- Geothermal (7)
- Green ammonia (5)
- Green Energy (401)
- Green Hydrogen (8)
- Heat Pumps (5)
- Hydroelectric (10)
- Natural Gas (105)
- Nuclear Energy (155)
- Petroleum (291)
- Power Grid (12)
- Pumped Hydro (6)
- Solar Energy (388)
- Tar Sands (13)
- Wave Energy (9)
- wind energy (322)
- Environment (2,543)
- Climate Change (1,512)
- Acidification of Oceans (54)
- Agriculture (24)
- Biodiversity (10)
- Climate Refugees (1)
- CO2 (105)
- Dehydration (5)
- Denialism (144)
- Desalinization (4)
- Desertification (157)
- Divestment (2)
- Dust Storms (6)
- Environmental Investment (1)
- Extreme Weather (289)
- Flooding (127)
- Food Supply (1)
- Forests (14)
- Green New Deal (39)
- Greenwashing (2)
- Mass Extinction (58)
- Methane (20)
- Net Carbon Zerio (8)
- Nitrous Oxide (2)
- Rainforests (19)
- Rivers (10)
- Sea Level (328)
- Soil Carbon Release (14)
- Super Storms (245)
- wildfires (225)
- Wood Buildings (1)
- Climate Crisis (1,198)
- Drought (277)
- Ecology (8)
- Environmentalism (389)
- Green Transportation (249)
- Ice Melt (128)
- Invasive Species (2)
- Islands (1)
- Oceans (94)
- Oil Spills (7)
- Pollution (225)
- Water (92)
- wildlife (19)
- Climate Change (1,512)
- Europe (1,310)
- Featured (3,740)
- fiction (5)
- Food (13)
- G20 (1)
- Guns (9)
- Health (647)
- History (335)
- Human Rights (1,321)
- Apartheid (252)
- censorship (260)
- Death Penalty (30)
- Disappeared (3)
- Displaced and Refugees (531)
- Gay rights (28)
- Genocide (3)
- Human Rights Watch (90)
- Migrants (4)
- Slavery and Trafficking (16)
- Torture (95)
- Trans Rights (3)
- Transgender Rights (4)
- Unlawful Imprisonment (94)
- Unlwful Killing (66)
- War Crimes (332)
- War Rape (6)
- Immigration (20)
- International (782)
- Islamophobia (368)
- Juan Cole (270)
- Latin America (95)
- Latinos (4)
- leisure (21)
- media (460)
- Middle East (8,991)
- Arab World (5,100)
- Iran (1,252)
- Israel (852)
- Israel/ Palestine (2,818)
- Israel/Palestine (8)
- Kurds (289)
- Turkey (572)
- Turkiye (98)
- military (122)
- Modernism (3)
- nationalism (113)
- NATO (35)
- Natural Disasters (13)
- Neocolonialism (1)
- nuclear weapons (97)
- Patriarchy (10)
- Peace (128)
- Persian mythology (1)
- Pete Buttigieg (1)
- Planetary Exploration (1)
- Popular Culture (24)
- Poverty (12)
- privacy (21)
- racism (458)
- Rape (8)
- religion (1,437)
- Rights (138)
- robots (3)
- Romance (1)
- science (142)
- Secular (West) (9)
- Secularism (30)
- Sexual Assault (2)
- South Pacific (2)
- Spirituality (22)
- Statelessness (15)
- Stranded Assets (1)
- Surveillance (278)
- Terrorism (1,082)
- Tolerance (6)
- Uncategorized (8,074)
- United Nations (119)
- Urbanization (4)
- US Foreign Policy (1,206)
- US politics (5,127)
- Anti-War Movement (11)
- Campaign Finance (31)
- Censors (21)
- Central Intelligence Agency (62)
- Charity (1)
- Civil Rights (96)
- Congress (75)
- Conspiracy Theories (20)
- Constitution (385)
- Courts (9)
- crime (12)
- Democratic Party (898)
- Democratic Socialists of America (22)
- Domestic Terrorism (20)
- Drone Warfare (27)
- Espionage (123)
- Ethnicities (374)
- Far Right (377)
- FBI (47)
- Foreign Policy (204)
- Gay Rights (17)
- Guns (93)
- Immigration (234)
- Israel Lobbies (117)
- Marijuana (4)
- Militarization (269)
- National Security State (468)
- Native Americans (40)
- Nuclear arsenal (7)
- penitentiaries (6)
- Pentagon (547)
- Police (43)
- prison reform (8)
- Private Prisons (2)
- Progressive Politics (12)
- Puerto Rico (30)
- Religious Right (14)
- Reproductive Choice (64)
- Republican Party (2,885)
- Supreme Court (122)
- Voter suppression (35)
- Whistleblowers (5)
- Xenophobia (9)
- Veterans (35)
- Voting Rights (16)
- War (479)
- White Supremacists (219)
- wikileaks (8)
- women (544)
- workers (228)
- Writing (5)
- Youth (203)
China
The NSA Effect: China tells its banks to remove IBM servers as Spyware
THE CHINESE GOVERNMENT has urged its banks to stop using servers built by IBM because it believes that they might be used for espionage. According to unnamed sources cited by Bloomberg, the People’s Bank of China and the Chinese Ministry of Finance…
The Eurasian Pivot: Is it China’s and Russia’s Century?
(By Pepe Escobar via Tomdispatch) HONG KONG — A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass — at the expense of the United States. And no wonder Washington is anxious. That alliance is already a […]
Is Obama right that America’s Future is in Asia, not the Middle East?
(by Juan Cole) Barack Obama, brought up in Hawaii and having lived as a child in Indonesia, is the first Pacific president, and his current trip to Asia, beginning in Japan, is meant to underline his policy of “rebalancing” toward Asia. Although the phrase has miffed some Europeans, the policy isn’t intended to substitute US […]
US Pivot to Asia Should Deploy Soft Power, not the Marines
(By John Feffer) In a future update of The Devil’s Dictionary, the famed Ambrose Bierce dissection of the linguistic hypocrisies of modern life, a single word will accompany the entry for “Pacific pivot”: retreat. It might seem a strange way to characterize the Obama administration’s energetic attempt to reorient its foreign and military policy toward […]
China Installed More Solar Power in 2013 than the US has in its Whole History
(By Joshua S. Hill) China’s Solar Market Beat All Expectations For 2013 (via Clean Technica) Despite predictions all through 2013 suggesting that Japan would walk away the dominant solar PV market, Bloomberg New Energy Finance has revealed that China “outstripped even the most optimistic forecasts” to install a record 12 GW of photovoltaic… ——- […]
Coleridge, Kubla Khan (Poem of the Day)
(By Samuel Taylor Coleridge) Kubla Khan Or, a vision in a dream. A Fragment. In Xanadu did Kubla Khan A stately pleasure-dome decree: Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea. So twice five miles of fertile ground With walls and towers were girdled round; And there […]
China and the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Enter the Dragon?
This video report on China’s new interest in Middle East diplomacy begins by pointing out that the Obama administration has announced a pivot toward Asia (i.e. US interests lie more in the Pacific Rim than the Middle East.). At the same time, China (which dislikes this pivot, fearing it is aimed against Beijing) is moving […]
Rising China’s Muslim Problem: What is the Future of the Uygurs? (Alimglu)
JULIE POUCHER HARBIN, EDITOR, ISLAMiCommentary interviews MUSA ALIMGLU: This week I asked a China and Xinjiang expert — someone who is familiar with China’s ethnic politics and the work of prominent Uyghur human rights activist Rebiya Kadeer — to provide some in-depth background on China’s troubled Xinjiang Uygher Autonomous Republic and leadership challenges for the […]