THE guardian.co.uk has provided the best backgrounder so far as the Georgia, Russia and the conflict over South Ossetia is concerned.
In addition to a day-by-day update on the latest conflicts in the region, they have also included a brief history of events since before the Russian Revolution, as well as a “who’s who” low-down on the main figures involved.
You’ve got to love the interactivity.
THE games have begun. But medal tallies aside, there is a lot more to be said off the field. China has certainly spared no expense as they marked the opening of the Beijing Olympics. It is no coincidence that it took place on the 08/08/08 – an important number for the Chinese, symbolising wealth, prosperity and auspiciousness.
A brief snapshot on some of the commentaries seen and heard from various notable media in Melbourne and elsewhere:
Jonathan Watts from the guardian.co.uk reports from the streets of Beijing, on the pride of the nation’s people in Stronger, faster and better, and controversery and protest are pushed aside as tens of thousands, rich and poor, gather to share in the triumphal celebration of their country.
Meanwhile, Richard Williams reports on the opening ceremony – and what organisers showed, and didn’t show.
As Williams aptly puts it: “The ceremony that opened the 29th Olympic games last night outdid all of its predecessors in numbers, colour, noise and expense, demonstrating to the world that the new China intends to make its presence felt.”
But while Beijing’s Olympic facilities are intended to show that China is a modern country built on ancient foundations – “As is the way in China today, Mao Zedong was evident neither in word nor image; the only time you see him is when you pull out a banknote,” – William astutely points out.
And more recently, Nick Cohen seeks to lift the wool from his reader’s eyes in The Observer. Don’t be fooled, China hasn’t changed, he says.
The Oberserver has also done a marvellous job in a press round-up of The opening ceremony, what the world said.
In other areas, Lisa Martin from theage.com.au does a simple run-down for students on the issue of security and the internet in China in The great communications wall.
EVER wondered what the World Bank does?
The World Bank was first established in 1944 as the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) to facilitate the reconstruction and development of war-torn Europe after WWII.
But the mission of the World Bank has evolved since then, to the present day mandate of worldwide poverty allevation, and is now a vital source of financial and technical assistance to developing countries around the world.
It is thus not a bank in the common sense. It is made up of two development institutions – the IBRD and the International Development Association (IDA) – owned by 185 member countries.
The two institutions play a different but supportive role in the World Bank’s mission of global poverty reduction and the improvement of living standards. The IBRD focuses on middle income and creditworthy poor countries, while IDA focuses on the poorest countries in the world. Together they provide low-interest loans, interest-free credit and grants to developing countries for education, health, infrastructure, communications and many other purposes.
In politics, the term pork-barrel refers to government spending that is intended to benefit constituents of a politician in return for their political support, either in the form of campaign contributions or votes. This is done typically by diverting government funding for projects to a certain locale – through taxpayers’ money – even though it is likely to benefit only particular constituents or campaign contributors.
There’s a good example from The Australian in The PM rolls out his own pork barrel (3 June, 2008), which claims 90 per cent of almost $150 million in regional grants announced by Labor during last year’s election campaign went to Labor-held or Labor-targeted marginal electorates.
Since we’re on the topic of nation-states, this website, I reckon, deserves a mention. Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest – such as movement, food, resources, income, poverty, education, health, disaster, disease, pollution and religion.
Maps like these no doubt challenges us to think about our world differently, beyond the conventional geopolitical boundaries and the high-powered ideas of nation-states, to other ways in which we organise human affairs.
I’ve just embarked on Keith Suter’s 50 Things You Wanted to Know About World Issues (but were too afraid to ask). It’s a highly recommended text for those who wish to ease their way into world politics minus the jargon and technical gobbledygook.
His list of “50 things” start from the simple but important question, ‘How many countries are there in the world and how are they created?’ to bigger topics, such as ‘Is China the next super power? Can the West win the war on terrorism? Is the world running out of oil? Is Microsoft more powerful than a nation like Australia? Why did the United States invade Iraq? Will there ever be peace in Israel and Palestine?’
I ruminate on the first chapter this week.
On the top of Keith Suter’s list is the question ‘How many countries are there in the world and how are they created?’ It was a question I have never thought to ask, as you would when my first brush with geography saw me learning to place the names of countries and their capitals on the world map.
There are currently around 200 countries in the world, 191 of which belong to the United Nations and are known as nation-states.
As Suter would remind us, the creation of nation-states was a deliberate process that began some centuries ago in Europe as rulers sought to consolidate their power against domestic and foreign forces, creating what we now know as the early monarchies.
Europe began colonising parts of the world as early as AD1500, as traders set forth in search of gold, silver, spices and other commodities.
These included
The overall effect, Suter explains, was that thriving indigenous civilisations were destroyed and European citizens and values were imposed on the land. The victims of colonialism were also drawn into struggles they knew nothing about, such as Indian forces fighting for the UK in WWI and WWII.
The critical voices against colonialism asserted that it was wrong for one country to dominate another. Competing colonial ambitions between Germany and other dominant powers, they argued, had been a catalyst for the First World War. Allied countries agreed after the war that countries who were defeated in the war would be held in a mandate and put on the road to independence, overseen by the League of Nations.
The same agreement was reached after the Second World War, under the protection of the United Nations, which had by that point replaced the League of Nations. The Allied countries were also to grant independence to their extensive colonies.
It is my guess that us folk who belong to gen-y and beyond would hardly be conscious of the impact that colonialisation has had on the world as we know it. As Suter puts it, the world has been permanently transformed by 500 years of Europeanisation. European cultures now dominate the world. That the English language is the “universal” tool for communication – in areas such as commerce, trade and politics – is proof. The colonialists have left their mark on our ideologies, paradigms and culture in this post-colonial era.
Interestingly, Suter also mentions the role of Japan in putting an end to the European imperialism in the Second World War. The Japanese occupation may have been brutish and the atrocities of war repugnant, but the capture of Singapore in 1942 sent a powerful message to the west, that Europeans were not invincible.
Definition: He·gem·o·ny [noun] refers to leadership or dominance, especially by one country or social group over others.
In world politics, hegemony usually refers to power and control exercised by a leading state over other states.
Definition: Peak oil is the point in time when the maximum rate of global petroleum production is reached, after which the rate of production enters its terminal decline.
The topic of peak oil has received quite a lot of attention in the media of late as oil prices soar to $135 a barrel. If it’s the first time you’ve ever heard of the term, Wikipedia gives a simple but detailed backgrounder on peak oil.
FLIGHTS from across Asia Pacific take less than ten hours, and much less if you are hurtling down the information highway and the various channels of communication. We can get things going much faster. But it is easy to forget that this is only happening in some parts of the world. Globalisation as such, can be described as asymmetrical. The world has shrunk in some parts, but not others.
Figures by the World Bank show that in 2006, people in high-income economies held an average income of $36,608 while those in developing economies earned an average of $1,997, with some earning as little as $649 a person per year.
Enormous inequalities of power exists between states, global governance tends to privilege the interests and agenda of global capitalism, and the technocratic nature of much global decision-making, from health to security, can exclude many with a legitimate stake in the outcomes.
Inevitably, we end up with distorted global politics – i.e. those states and groups with greater power resources and access to key sites of global decision-making will most likely have the greatest control or influence over the agenda and outcomes of global politics.
PRESSURE is growing for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to take up the issue of whaling with Japan and to use the same diplomatic vigour that he employed to raise Tibetan human rights with China, The Age reported early last month.
Worried that the Government may be softening its anti-whaling stance against Australia’s best trade customer, opposition parties and environment groups said they wanted Mr Rudd instead to push the issue when he visits Tokyo next month, it was reported.
The issue of whaling, as Anne Cullen points out, is one of the prime examples of globalisation, which has seen governments and non-state actors coming together to address the rapidly declining stocks of whales in the worlds’ oceans.
Globalisation is about the increasing interconnectedness we see in every sphere of social, political and economic life and across political and national frontiers. With globalisation, we see a blurring of the territorial boundaries between nations and states, of national economic and political spaces.
As organisations and lobby groups such as the International Whaling Commission, Greenpeace and the Japan Whaling Association show, social, economic and political activities can be organised not just on a local or national scale, but increasingly on a global scale.
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