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The climate talks in Glasgow are just days away, and may be the last chance to coordinate global efforts to stop the planet warming beyond 1.5℃ this century. More than 100 world leaders will attend the summit to try to agree on the details of crucial issues, such as timetables to deliver on emissions reduction commitments. So which countries hold the cards? Well, the nature of these particular climate talks make it less likely one or more states – regardless of their power or contribution to climate change – will determine the summit’s success. But this wasn’t always the case. In 1997 Kyoto Protocol talks, all developed states needed to agree on targets, timeframes and what could be included or excluded from calculations. This meant Australia was able to hold the agreement to ransom by threatening to withhold support, unless demands were met. In 2009 talks in Copenhagen, the plan was to develop a new post-Kyoto Protocol agreement, based on new binding emissions targets. The reluctance of China, and even the United States, ultimately prevented a new agreement being reached. Organisers of the Paris talks of 2015 learnt their lesson. Rather than aim to agree on a fair allocation of responsibility across almost 200 countries, organisers allowed states to develop their own nationally determined contributions – targets for reducing emissions. Unity in Glasgow is still crucial While the success of the Glasgow summit doesn’t depend on a consensus across all participating nations, there are three big reasons international cooperation is still crucial. First, the summit serves as the default target date for nations to articulate new emissions reduction commitments since the Paris Agreement. States will also need to agree on the next deadline for updated national climate targets. Second, it will determine commitments from wealthy countries to finance developing states’ transition away from greenhouse-intensive development like […]
In 1993, Soviet Union president Mikhail Gorbachev used part of his Nobel peace prize money to help set up the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, buying the publication its first computers. Nearly 30 years later, the paper has another Nobel peace prize in its history. Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of Novaya Gazeta, was jointly awarded the prize with Filipina journalist Maria Ressa, “for their efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”. The prize is a surprising and welcome show of support to Russia’s independent press, which has been under constant pressure during the 21 years of Vladimir Putin’s rule. Thanks to Gorbachev’s perestroika political reforms and liberation of the press during the 1980s, investigative journalists became national heroes in the late Soviet Union. They revealed the regime’s crimes of the past, tracing them in newly-opened archives, and uncovered corruption among bureaucrats who abused their power to enrich themselves. It was in this context that Muratov’s career skyrocketed. In 1987, he left his hometown to join Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper in Moscow. This newspaper of the young Communists took a critical stance towards the Soviet regime in its final years, and was considered a leading voice of perestroika. Komsomolskaya Pravda was among the newspapers that stood against the 1991 military coup, led by a conservative bloc of the Communist government, to overthrow Gorbachev. The August coup marked the end of the Soviet Union, which collapsed in December that year, and led to a new era for the press. In 1992, Muratov left Komsomolskaya Pravda over a dispute about the paper’s future. Muratov was among those who defended the newspaper as an investigative media outlet, while his competitor Valery Sungorkin sought to turn it into a tabloid to make money. The tabloid view succeeded. Muratov and a team of colleagues began publishing New […]
On the face of it, the fact that Canada’s “two Michaels” — Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor — boarded a Canadian government aircraft in Beijing at about the same time that Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was being released from her extradition hearing bail requirements in Vancouver might indicate to some that China’s “hostage diplomacy” was successful. There was a clear link between Meng’s plea bargain arrangement with the United States Department of Justice, her subsequent release in Vancouver and the release of the two Michaels after more than 1,000 days in captivity. Despite consistent Chinese denials over many months that their arrest was in retaliation for the detention of Meng under the Canada-U.S. extradition treaty, the fact that the two cases were resolved simultaneously (even before Kovrig had been sentenced by the Chinese court) stripped away any pretence that there was no connection. In the past, in cases involving detention in China of foreign nationals when there have been unrelated disputes with their country of origin, the release of the “hostages” has not come for several weeks or months after the resolution of the original dispute. That’s allowed China to maintain the fiction that it doesn’t detain people for retaliatory purposes and to argue that Chinese law must run its course. This time, even that fig leaf was removed. Deferred prosecution agreement In order to secure her release, Meng was given only the lightest of punishments, a deferred prosecution arrangement that required her to neither plead guilty nor pay a fine. All she was required to do was consent to a statement of facts that outlined the U.S. view of what happened when she allegedly misled global bank HSBC into believing that a Huawei subsidiary operating in Iran was not in fact controlled by Huawei. The deferred prosecution agreement will expire in 2022, and then the case […]
By Tim Burrowes Media Unmade presents the definitive story of the decade in which big media in Australia was cut down to size – a decade that forever altered what had until then been perceived as the unbreachable foundations of the industry in this country. Drawing on insights from his ringside seat, independent journalist, commentator and Mumbrella founder Tim Burrowes knits together the big events and conversations with key players then and now to reveal the drama and tell the stories behind the changes that every consumer of Australian media has witnessed over the past decade. In this unprecedented account, Tim considers how the newspaper rivers of gold evaporated, TV viewers turned to Netflix, and radio listeners started streaming instead. He covers how networks went broke, the ABC came under sustained attack, and how News Corporation’s phone hacking drama in the UK delivered Rupert Murdoch to the most humble day of his life. Of course there is no drama without people and as much as Media Unmade is the tale of the fluctuating fortunes of some of the country’s best-known companies, it also presents the compelling stories of the powerful personalities who have shaped them – from the Murdochs, to Antony Catalano and Greg Hywood, to Kim Williams and James Packer, Gina Rinehart, Alan Jones, Michelle Guthrie, Justin Milne and Kerry Stokes. Against the existential threat embodied by Google and Facebook, Australia’s media companies remade their broken business models and plotted takeovers in a battle for survival. And just when the worst seemed to be over, COVID-19 delivered the biggest advertising recession of all time, pushing every media company to the brink. Tim Burrowes is the award-winning founder of Mumbrella. Working on newspapers, magazines and online, he has been a journalist for more than 30 years and has worked in the UK, Middle East and […]
In the headline-making and bestselling tradition of Bill Browder’s Red Notice comes a unique and incendiary memoir from an entrepreneur who rose to the zenith of power and money in 21st century China and whose wife was disappeared – and then mysteriously reappeared four years later on the eve of Red Roulette’s publication and global media coverage about it. As Desmond Shum was growing up impoverished in China, he vowed his life would be different. Through hard work and sheer tenacity, he earned an American college degree and returned to his native country to establish himself in business. There, he met his future wife, the highly intelligent and equally ambitious Whitney Duan who was determined to make her mark within China’s male-dominated society. Whitney and Desmond formed an effective team and, aided by relationships they formed with top members of China’s Communist Party, the so-called Red Aristocracy, he vaulted into China’s billionaire class. Soon they were developing the massive air cargo facility at Beijing International Airport, and they followed that feat with the creation of one of Beijing’s premier hotels. They were dazzlingly successful, travelling in private jets, funding multi-million-dollar buildings and endowments, and purchasing expensive homes, vehicles and art. But in 2017, their fates diverged irrevocably when Desmond, while living overseas with his son, learned that his now ex-wife Whitney had vanished along with three co-workers. In Red Roulette Desmond Shum pulls back the curtain on China’s ruling elite and reveals the real truth of what is happening inside China’s wealth-making machine. This is both Desmond’s story and Whitney’s, because she has not been able to tell it herself.
The withdrawal of US and allied forces, scheduled by President Joe Biden to be completed by September 11, threatens to precipitate the unravelling of the most pro-Western government in Southwest Asia. It also endangers the entire framework of the Afghan state that has been built up since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001. Should this occur, the most likely results would be the establishment of a theocratic regime in Kabul, the collapse of swathes of the country into a civil war (with a distinctly transnational dimension), and attempts by millions of refugees to flee the country. In May 2010, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton pledged to a visiting delegation of Afghan women that We will not abandon you. We will stand with you always. Yet abandoning the Afghans who relied on such commitments is exactly what the US has now done. When pressed about his approach last week, Biden angrily cut off a questioner by saying “I want to talk about happy things”. Afghans at this point are finding it very hard to identify happy things to discuss. Why the psychology of the public matters The mass psychology of the Afghan public will be key in determining how events evolve in the country. And this is something American political leaders have shown little sign of understanding. When regimes change in Afghanistan – as with the collapse of the communist regime in April 1992 or the Taliban regime in November 2001 – it is typically because key players deem it prudent to shift away from powerholders whose power appears to be decaying. While the Afghan government has left many people disappointed and disaffected – it is over-centralised, debilitated by patronage networks, and often extractive in character – the Taliban are anything but popular among Afghans. A careful 2019 survey conducted by the Asia Foundation found 85% […]
-by Samantha Power Tracing her distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official, Samantha Power’s acclaimed memoir is a unique blend of suspenseful storytelling, vivid character portraits, and shrewd political insight. After her critiques of US foreign policy caught the eye of Senator Barack Obama, he invited her to work with him on Capitol Hill and then on his presidential campaign. When Obama won the presidency, Power went from being an activist outsider to serving as his human rights adviser and, in 2013, becoming the youngest-ever US Ambassador to the United Nations. Power transports us from her childhood in Dublin to the streets of war-torn Bosnia to the White House Situation Room and the world of high-stakes diplomacy, offering a compelling and deeply honest look at navigating the halls of power while trying to put one’s ideals into practice. Along the way, she lays bare the searing battles and defining moments of her life, shows how she juggled the demands of a 24/7 national security job with raising two young children, and makes the case for how we each can advance the cause of human dignity. This is an unforgettable account of the power of idealism—and of one person’s fierce determination to make a difference.
A year ago, then-US President Donald Trump was obliged to abandon his plans for a G7 summit at the presidential retreat of Camp David outside Washington. Various excuses were advanced by participants, including the inadvisability of travelling across the world in the midst of a pandemic. But in reality few, if any, G7 leaders wanted to associate themselves with Trump in what was hoped would be the last days of an ill-starred presidency. A year later, these same leaders gathered at an English coastal retreat – in the shadow of a persistent COVID-19 pandemic – to celebrate the end of a disruptive chapter in diplomatic history. Relief was palpable in the interactions of representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Japan, Italy and Canada. America was back, not in its “America First” guise, but as the proclaimed leader of the free world, to use an old-fashioned description. However, in the four years of the Trump presidency, during which Washington effectively abandoned its global leadership role in favour of an inward-looking posture defined by its embrace of an America First doctrine, the world had changed, and shifted dramatically. In 2016, the final year of the Obama administration, the G7 summit in Japan focused on the issue of climate in the wake of the Paris Agreement signed in April of that year. Its other priorities were disputes in the South China Sea and, interestingly enough, the need to strengthen a global response to pandemics in light of experiences with the Ebola virus in Africa. That global response has been found to be inadequate. This prompts the question: what notice did global health authorities, principally the World Health Organization, take of the G7’s 2016 communique? Five years later, the challenges identified in the 2016 document have been vastly magnified. This has been brought about by a combination of lack of […]
Edward-Isaac Dovere’s, an award-winning political journalist for The Atlantic tells the story of an embattled Democratic party seeking a direction for its future during the Trump years, and how it successfully regained the White House. It is the inside story of how the embattled Democratic party, seeking a direction for its future during the Trump years, successfully regained the White House. The 2020 presidential campaign was a defining moment for America. As Donald Trump and his nativist populism cowed the Republican Party into submission, many Democrats—haunted by Hillary Clinton’s shocking loss in 2016, which led to a four-year-long identity crisis—were convinced he would be unbeatable. Their party and the country, it seemed, might never recover. How, then, did Democrats manage to win the presidency, especially after the longest primary race and the biggest field ever? How did they keep themselves united through an internal struggle between newly empowered progressives and establishment forces—playing out against a pandemic, an economic crisis, and a new racial reckoning? Edward-Isaac Dovere’s Battle for the Soul is the searing, fly-on-the-wall account of the Democrats’ journey through recalibration and rebirth. Dovere traces this process from the early days in the wilderness of the post-Obama era, though the jockeying of potential candidates, to the backroom battles and exhausting campaigns, to the unlikely triumph of the man few expected to win, and through the inauguration and insurrection at the Capitol. Dovere draws on years of on-the-ground reporting and contemporaneous conversations with the key players—whether in Pete Buttigieg’s hotel suite in Des Moines an hour before he won the Iowa caucuses or Joe Biden’s first-ever interview in the Oval Office—as well as aides, advisors, and voters. With unparalleled access and an insider’s command of the campaign, Battle for the Soul offers a compelling look at the policies, politics, people and the often absurd process of running […]
