STWR - Share The World's Resources

As China and India lose control of their economies, they are failing to provide reliable power to their citizens. How will they manage to curb carbon emissions?

Steven Spielberg has finally decided he does not want to be part of a holocaust stamped "Made in China". It's an overdue decision – but one that could now begin an Olympic chain reaction to save the starved survivors in Darfur.

The Bush Administration’s fixation on security and the “war on terror” is already escalating the militarization of U.S. policy in Africa in 2008. In his last year in office, President George W. Bush will no doubt duplicitously continue to promote economic policies that exacerbate inequalities while seeking to salvage his legacy as a compassionate conservative with rhetorical support for addressing human rights challenges including conflict in Sudan and continued promotion of his unilateral HIV/AIDS initiative.

In my film Death of a Nation, there is a sequence filmed on board an Australian aircraft flying over the island of Timor. A party is in progress, and two men in suits are toasting each other in champagne. "This is an historically unique moment," says one of them, "that is truly uniquely historical." This was Gareth Evans, Australia's then foreign minister. The other man was Ali Alatas, the principal mouthpiece of the Indonesian dictator General Suharto, who died yesterday.

Former President Suharto, an army general who rose to power in Indonesia with the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people and ruled for 32 years over an era of rapid economic growth and extraordinary graft, died Sunday in Indonesia. He was 86.

Benazir Bhutto, the "life chairperson" of Pakistan's largest and most popular political party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), is now dead. Her assassination took place while she was campaigning for national and provincial assembly elections, scheduled for January 8. After the assassination rioting ensued throughout the country, particularly in Karachi and Bhutto's native province of Sindh, which have been aflame with protests and social unrest.

With the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, we are given to understand, by many newspaper stories and broadcasts, that anti-democratic religious zealots killed Pakistan's last hope for democracy.