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04 Jun 09
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Live:President Obama speaks to the Muslim World 6 Elections alone do not make democracy: a dig at Mubarrak? Audience member shouts "We love you"
Obligatory passage on democracy highly theoretical: no names. Seems to be well received.
Some wishy-washy stuff about bridges between religions - such as King... |
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04 Jun 09
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Barack Obama speaks to the Muslim World: live update from the audience 7 Has this lost its steam? He's now on the nature of change and modern world.
I don't think the audience came to hear lectures about investing in the new economy
Back on track with references to more scholarships for people like his father
Apparently he... |
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04 Jun 09
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Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim World - live update from the audience 4 Paean of praise to American history met with lukewarm applause at first, then silence.
"Any world order which elevates one nation over another will fail"
Is that an attack on the US right's exceptionalism?
Obama says violent extremism is the number one... |
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04 Jun 09
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Barack Obama speaks to the Muslim World: live update from the audience 5 America acted against its ideals as a result of 9/11, he says. Big round of applause for closing Guantanamo.
Now for the real stuff: Israel and Palestine. America's bonds with Israel unbreakable, he says.
This time there is no applause.
Strong attac... |
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04 Jun 09
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Barack Obama's speech to the Muslim World: live update from the audience 2 Local newspapers report a wave of arrests in and around Cairo last night. Opposition groups Kefaya and Muslim Brotherhood targeted.
That's despite invites to 10 Muslim Brotherhood MPs to the speech. That's already annoyed some US republicans.
Meanwhil... |
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04 Jun 09
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Live: Barack Obama speech to the Muslim World Cairo Uni, awaiting Obama's arrival. Audience mixture of grandees, Muslim & Coptic clerics, students & schoolkidsAuditorium press gallery has been fitted with wifi for travelling press pack. That's one up on China's Great Hall of the People. On the other... |
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04 Jun 09
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Barack Obama speaks to the Muslim World: live update from the audience 3 Obama enters through a sort of vaudeville curtain. Is given standing ovation, then launches straight into speech.
Reception enthusiastic. Cheering from audience, especially when he makes the Arabic greeting salaam aleikoum.
Goes straight to 9/11. Says... |
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03 Apr 09
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Will China get unhappier? You would not expect me to show much sympathy for the new ultra-nationalists in China, many of whose followers have opened both barrels on me in comments on my blog in the last three years.And it's true that a lot of the arguments in books like the... |
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02 Apr 09
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G20: Stop taking the China Kool-Aid We should all stop drinking the Kool-Aid on China, and that includes China itself. China's arrival at the top table of nations is overdue, and its relationship with the United States crucial, but there is as yet no evidence that China has some magic... |
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25 Feb 09
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So who did loot those French-Italian animal heads? Not surprisingly, the Chinese government and people have been unable to persuade the French or Christie's to stop the sale of two bronze animal heads looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.Rat and Rabbit - once in Beijing, n... |
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05 Feb 09
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Mongolian leader falls from horse - world little changed Stories all depend on timing. Propaganda types the world over know that very well: melamine would have been a much bigger story abroad if it had come out before the Olympics instead of after. Britain's propaganda people of course invented the phrase "a... |
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04 Feb 09
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Where was the man with the brush and shovel? Just to clarify something perhaps not realised by some commenters on my blog yesterday: it was written in the afternoon (Chinese time), when there was still no coverage in Chinese media of the shoe-throwing incident. The story |
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04 Feb 09
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Christopher Hill: from North Korea to Iraq? On to matters North Korean. The latest excitement in the endlessly exciting world of bluster, threat, and imminent rains of fire that is the average news story about everyone's favourite crazy dictatorship is the possibility that it is about to have... |
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03 Feb 09
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China shoe-thrower: Why did he miss? Wen Jiabao and the Chinese Foreign Ministry were both very nice to say that the shoe-throwing incident won't affect UK-China friendship. Good thing too; it would be a bit of a precedent if, say, the US pulled its troops out of Iraq (or, alternatively,... |
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22 Jan 09
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Britain's rich can't even be bothered to be criminal any more Sir Fred Goodwin of RBS didn't actually kill anybody, so far as we know. I mean, at least not directly: who knows who will pay with their lives for the mess that the British economy is now in, as hospitals go less well funded and people's lives are... |
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21 Jan 09
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Is there any point in taking on the Communist Party? Back to Mao Yushi and Charter 08, the call for human rights and an end to the Communist Party's monopoly on power published by 300 leading dissidents, lawyers, intellectuals and activists last month.The contents of such appeals tend to pass little noticed... |
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21 Jan 09
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Marmite goes into space Here's a quick and only tenuously China-related post.When I look back over the years, I find I have written important posts on China's political and economic reforms, Tibet, the earthquake, the whole panoply, really.But few have got the readers going as |
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20 Jan 09
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National Chinese Treasure vilifed: Odd, or the shape of things to come? There's an interview in The Sydney Morning Herald today with an elderly economist called Mao Yushi, who will be largely unknown to readers in the West but whose profile this year will be a bellweather of Beijing's mood as it faces the credit crunch. |
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11 Jan 09
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Sixty-four per cent want to end the primacy of EU law I'll say it again: British voters are wiser than their leaders. Sixty-four per cent of us want to end the jurisdiction of EU law in this country. In other words, we want to replace the current terms of EU membership with a voluntary association along the... |
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11 Jan 09
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I'll never understand women Ever since Christmas, my two little girls have been torturing me by singing Abba songs (or, in the case of the three-year-old, approximating Abba songs, mumbling the bits she doesn't really understand and belting out the snatches she does). It's all the... |
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11 Jan 09
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The BNP and folk music, part two: a question of Roots A few weeks back I wrote about the curious case of Nick Griffin, the BNP's leader, and the annoyance he was causing on the folk scene by being an enthusiast for Kate Rusby. There have been some developments. |
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11 Jan 09
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Please tell me someone in the Treasury knows what's going on... Over at his excellent blog, Stumbling and Mumbling, Chris Dillow asks why the Chancellor has apparently ruled out quantitative easing - what most people refer to as printing money - as a potential policy and concludes that the reason might be that he does... |
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11 Jan 09
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Christians and atheists should unite to kill off 'Thought for the Day' The British Humanist Association bus campaign, which tells us to stop worrying because there probably isn't a God, really is an answer to prayers. In the first place, it's counter-productive: plaster double-deckers with posters about the existence of God... |
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11 Jan 09
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The economy: more horrible truths The macroeconomic event of the week, in terms of media coverage, has undoubtedly been the Bank of England's cut in official interest rates of 0.5%. This could well be the last cut of this interest rate cycle as it is increasingly apparent that the impact... |
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11 Jan 09
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History and the interest rate It seems as if every newsblast surrounding the most recent decrease in the interest rate has heralded 'the lowest in English History', or at least since the foundation of the Bank of England in 1694. This is a very good headline but the parallels between... |
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11 Jan 09
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Like it or not, we are all Keynesians now How do you like your Keynesianism: skimmed, semi-skimmed or full cream?
The debate over how much the Government ought to borrow to tackle the recession rages on. This morning we published a selection of views from leading academic and independent... |
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11 Jan 09
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Web wars in French politics |
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11 Jan 09
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Palladio can be moody too Joseph Losey, the film director born 100 years ago on Wednesday, made a very pretty version of Don Giovanni in 1979.
At last, we have caught up with the architect Andrea PalladioMore than the costumes it was the villas of Palladio that made the look o... |
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12 Dec 08
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Why Robert Peston is wrong It doesn't take an economics genius to realise that too much debt is bad for you, and that we are all, therefore, stuffed. Robert Peston, the BBC business editor and presiding ghoul of the cemetery that is the British financial system, nevertheless... |
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12 Dec 08
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Why Robert Peston is wrong about China It doesn't take an economics genius to realise that too much debt is bad for you, and that we are all, therefore, stuffed. Robert Peston, the BBC business editor and presiding ghoul of the cemetery that is the British financial system, nevertheless... |
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05 Dec 08
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China snubs Europe - trebles all round Among the many big stories I missed commenting on during my recent self-imposed break from blogging (enough whither China) was Beijing cancelling the annual China-EU summit. This was in protest at President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, who holds the... |
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03 Dec 08
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DUPLICATE: Xiaogang and the search for the truth Once again I have to confess to writing a tissue of lies.
Xiaogang villagers celebrated in stone
It was about the simplest of stories too: but they are often the ... |
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02 Dec 08
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DUPLICATE - Xiaogang and the search for the truth Once again I have to confess to writing a tissue of lies.
Xiaogang villagers celebrated in stone
It was about the simplest of stories too: but they are often the ... |
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02 Dec 08
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Xiaogang and the search for the truth Once again I have to confess to writing a tissue of lies.Xiaogang villagers celebrated in stone
It was about the simplest of stories too: but they are often the o... |
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16 Oct 08
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Financial crisis: Where China got it right The story, at least until the stock markets tanked, was all of Asian schadenfreude. All those economies that had to be bailed out a decade ago by the International Monetary Fund for getting into debt took the pain of recession like men, tightened their... |
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14 Oct 08
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How you, I and Gordon Brown now own a piece of the Chinese government Well, it's colonisation all over again. Gerald Warner points out that Gordon Brown has just seized the Queen's savings. But it's all more extraordinary than that: Gordon Brown has just seized a piece of the government of China, and an amount of it that... |
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22 Sep 08
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China's poisoned milk versus Beijing's clear skies: what's the score, exactly? Life and politics would be much easier if everything was like a football match, where at the end of every day you could check the score and see if the manager should be sacked.Tainted milk powder being poured away in ChinaHow bad's the economy? Fifteen... |
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17 Sep 08
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What are the Chinese characters for Nelson? I have no intention of saying more about the deep meanings of opening and closing ceremonies, although I've just been to the end of the Paralympics. The spectacular closing ceremony of the Beijing Paral... |
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16 Sep 08
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How Imperial Rome dealt with the credit crunch There is of course nothing new under the sun. For some reason I have recently been reading I, Claudius, Robert Graves's novel about life in early Imperial Rome.The bit I read last night contained a good description of what happens when governments... |
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15 Sep 08
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Why Hank Paulson will rescue China but not Lehman Brothers My favourite friend of China, US Treasury Secretary Henry "Hank" Paulson, has decided not to rescue Lehman Brothers. What has his decision got to do with China? Nothing and everything and a delicious irony, as far as I can see.This news is news because... |
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01 Sep 08
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Hurray, there's no more mist The Beijing environmental bureau tells us that August had the best air quality of any month in the last ten years, thanks to the restrictions on industry and car usage.Shougang has been moved to a new site out of BeijingThis won't come as any surprise to... |
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29 Aug 08
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Boris Johnson and My Part in the Olympics Closing Ceremony The astute will notice from what I write that I played no part in the Olympics closing ceremony, other than as a spectator. Boris Johnson in Beijing: part of the new 'informal' BritainNevertheless, there is a thread that connects me directly to them vi... |
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24 Jul 08
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City of the Past, City of the Future The other day I wrote for the main paper about the shutdown of major industries in Beijing, such as the shift of the giant Capital Steelworks from the Shijingshan district in the west of the city to the coast, and how it represented the end of Chairman... |
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24 Jul 08
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The Pollution Map of Beijing Here's a tool that may well prove useful. It's the result of a collaboration between the Beijing Environmental Protection Bureau and CERC (Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants). It gives a pictorial representation of pollution levels in the city,... |
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22 Jul 08
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Bombs and the common man The bus bombings yesterday in Kunming, southern China, remain a mystery. According to one witness, a short man was seen running away from the first bus shortly before the bomb exploded. Fast enough to get on the second bus and leave a bomb there, perhaps? |
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21 Jul 08
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China's railway stations tell a story I always find China's railway stations paint the most vivid portraits of its society.
There is something melancholic about Beijing's main stations
Actually, that's true the world over - you remember Adelstrop? Yes? Or, by contrast, look at the main... |
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16 Jul 08
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Low hanging fruit Spare a thought for Wang Baozeng. There are many tales of disruption told about the lives of ordinary people in the pre-Olympics security crackdown. Some I mention in my story today.But quite a lot of the people I spoke to were able to think longer term... |
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15 Jul 08
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For Beijing, read Athens, sometimes There is of course nothing new under the sun. Recently I have been browsing what newspapers said about Athens in the run-up to the Olympics there four years ago.In the wake of headlines about how Beijing's hotels are half empty, because ordinary tourists... |
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11 Jul 08
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Chinese Olympics: And who are they doing it for anyway? Further to my post yesterday, and the comments on it, there was one thought I had which I didn't explore.
Who exactly are the guests Mr Liu had in mind?I'm sure most people - including perhaps the organisers - assume the guests are foreigners. But in... |
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10 Jul 08
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Who says the Chinese are smelly socks? Back from a break in Italy to the repressive Beijing heat, and I find myself compelled to worry about my socks.We all know that foreigners here are grumpy about the way the authorities are approaching the Olympics. The Crackdown on Fun is just the mildest... |
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