At the outset in early 2007, Wikileaks acknowledged that the project had been “founded by Chinese dissidents, mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan, Europe, Australia and South Africa…. [Its advisory board] includes representatives from expat Russian and Tibetan refugee communities, reporters, a former US intelligence analyst and cryptographers.” This mandate was confirmed by Julian Assange in a June 2010 interview in The New Yorker:
“Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia,
Category: Head Stories
The below is the full text from October 8th’s website announcement of US government-running, -funded, and -sponsored National Endowment for Democracy (NED) in regard to Liu Xiaobo the 2010 Nobel Peace Laureate.
Maintaining this moral standing — hence the slogans of socialism and nationalism — is crucial for China to continue on this path. Western-style electoral democracy, as advocated by the West and some inside China, could only lead to tyrannical populism and its twin brother, extreme nationalism.
What most journalists and sundry pundits have in common is a lack of examination of the facts of the case – if you write what is essentially ideological polemic, facts can get in the way. On top of that, or perhaps part of it, is a failure to understand and attempt to analyse the context in which the event is embedded. This context has two aspects, the contemporary geopolitical environment, and the historical framework. Once you take an event out of its context it often becomes impossible to comprehend it correctly. Worse still, events and the actors that perform them can have their meaning and significance distorted, often to the point of inversion. Prey become predators, victims become villains, and war becomes peace.
The issue of the need for a peace treaty to end the Korean War is a critical issue. It is the obligation of both Ban Ki-moon, as Secretary General of the UN, and of the Security Council, to find a way to support the drafting of such a treaty. It is high time the Security Council takes on to meet its actual obligations.
AP reporting: “The skirmish began when Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills in the area, according to South Korean officials. When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into disputed waters, albeit away from the North Korean shore, the North retaliated by bombarding the small island of Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations.”
The Korean situation differs somewhat because Pyongyang is superimposing a new strategic layer atop the existing Pacific triangle of China, Russia and the United States. In reaction to the centrifuge report, Seoul jumped the gun by calling for the reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons on its territory after a lapse of 19 years. After the recent artillery exchange, Seoul retracted its threat.
As the mirage of a non-nuclear Korean Peninsula dissipates, the prospect of an East Asian nuclear triangle beckons Japan. Though Asians will voice strong objections, Tokyo may soon have to walk out from under the American nuclear umbrella and into the hard rain, just as Tel Aviv and Tehran have done. The superpower era is over, and so a multipolar world for its own security must create a new architecture of nuclear terror.
The only way to do so is to probe through sustained diplomatic give-and-take. That requires offering meaningful steps toward a new political, economic, and strategic relationship–including diplomatic recognition, a summit meeting, a peace treaty to end the Korean war, negative security assurances, and a multilateral pledge not to introduce nuclear weapons into the Korea Peninsula as well as other benefits to its security, agricultural and energy assistance, and conventional power plants if possible or nuclear power plants if necessary. In return the United States would get steps toward full denuclearization.
Such actions can only deepen the crises rather than help to provide the needed solutions. The problem represented by the G20 for the majority of nations and peoples of the world is expressed in the simple question posed by Filipino activist Walden Bello–”Who gave them the authority to solve this crisis?”
The Shanghai World Expo which wrapped up October 31 created a record for host country China as a total of 72 million visitors trooped in to the expo ground. The expo was the biggest most expensive event since the Great Exhibition of 1851 in London that marked the coming of the Industrial Revolution.