don't rock the boat...

Martin Luther King Day was last Monday. King of course was a pivotal figure in racial integration and equality before the law, but he was largely a figure head a rallying point and his assignation made him larger than life as it did with the other politicians killed during the sixties. If King had lived however he may have lost his popularity for he most certainly would have taken up issues that were not as popular such as social equality and justice for all and a levelling of the obscene income inequalities. He most certainly would have opposed the war. A black man fighting for issues that affected all Americans would not have gone over very well and there would be no holiday in his honor.

there are just too many people...

Ecological disaster looms everywhere in China with little impetus for change. The central government does not have the will or the means to reverse the trend. At the grassroots level resistance to dissent prevails and many environmentalists languish in jail. It is at the local government level that the blame must be levelled. There it is a case of naked self-interest.
But before we get to self-righteous and damn the Chinese for doing nothing about approaching environmental Armageddon there are a few things to be considered. First China argues that during the Industrial Revolution there was much degradation and like in modern China dirty coal was the standard fuel. So it can be argued that China is playing catch up. We are also looking at economies of scale here. According to Jonathan Watts “The über-capitalist Communists now have the highest emissions of global-warming gases in the world (although the average Chinese person generates one-seventh the emissions the average American does)” Further America is outsourcing it’s true level of emissions by relying on China to manufacture things that if manufactured in North America would create green-house gases here.
All of these arguments have some validity but China’s environment continues to degrade at blinding speed with little impetus for change.

i'll call in your debt as long as you keep buying nintendos...

Daniel W. Drezner in an article in Foreign Affairs tries to explode the myth that China presents a direct challenge to Americas political as well as economic power. Many feel China is holding a gun to the US's head by the amount America borrows but Drezner counters
'The "balance of financial terror" constrains China as well as the United States because China needs American consumers at least as much as the United States needs China to buy its debt."