A World In Conflict

With the era of the old Cold War apparently being revived by Russia and China in a New Cold War ....

A World In Conflict

.... the actual end of the official Cold War has generally seen many of the world’s smaller conflicts that were sponsored by the USSR and USA steadily becoming fewer and less bloody, with less war between sovereign states.

China's Future Impact

With some campaigners estimating that in just nine years' time, global emissions of greenhouse gases are set to be roughly double the level required to meet the goal of holding the temperature rise to 1.5C, China's rush to 'modernise' its economy since 1975, and its wish to dominate the second half of the current century and beyond, has a price ..... 

China's Economic Aims Are On Target - But At A Price

 ..... not just for its immediate neighbours, who now live under its ever more aggressive political and military threat (the claim to the entire South China Sea is an example of this threat), but also for the urgent fight against global warming.

The Information Curtain

Once you go down the road of censorship, you open yourself up to the paradoxical and the ridiculous.

Censorship Isn't Just The News .....

The UK for example has the quango that deals with complaints about advertising content, known as the Advertising Standards Authority, it generally deals with misleading content in adverts across al media streams. They are not that intrusive but in my opinion do over react to the smallest number of complaints, when compared to the millions who weren't offended. Generally complaints are that a product advert is offensive or misleading, or both.

China: Cold War Hots Up

Increasingly the US and China are acting as though the 'Cold War' that had existed between the US and USSR in earlier decades has never ended and that they have inherited that mantle. I say that, because its increasingly obvious that the Chinese have two expansionist foreign policy objectives (as well as their interests in Africa), that are going to require the deployment (or the credible threat) of armed force.

 The two main objectives are:

1. "Reunion" with Taiwan, by whatever means, and 
2. The Chinese quite ridiculously claim all the islands in the South China seas, including the Spratly Isles (which as you can see from this map, actually run up to within 30 miles of the Philippines), that are well over a 1,000 miles from the Chinese mainland at their furthest point.  

 

The Taiwan issue is complicated by the fact that its a long-standing ally of the United States, and the Chinese Military need to be able to stop the US Military from supporting Taiwan, if Chinese forces ever blockaded, or even invaded Taiwan.