Some Links: Chinese Aggression, Climate Change and More

Among the numerous events that have been happening around the world in the past few weeks, there are a couple that I have been paying particular attention to. Since I haven't had time to write extensively about them, I'm going to settle for providing some links plus a few brief comments.

One important story is China's recent aggression in the South China Sea. Here are a few news articles on the subject:
http://news.yahoo.com/vietnam-escalates-dispute-china-over-oil-rig-141520053.html
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/south-china-sea-tensions-flare-160100602.html
http://news.yahoo.com/chinas-oil-rig-move-leaves-vietnam-others-looking-210853575.html
http://news.yahoo.com/us-senators-china-sea-actions-deeply-troubling-233542282.html
http://news.yahoo.com/vietnam-allows-anti-china-protest-over-oil-rig-045751418--finance.html
http://news.yahoo.com/large-protests-vietnam-over-china-oil-rig-050459736.html
http://news.yahoo.com/philippines-releases-photos-chinese-reclamation-053311309.html
http://news.yahoo.com/high-seas-vietnam-china-play-tense-game-052350219.html
Now as I have noted in the context of the similar dispute between China and Japan over the islands to the northeast of Taiwan, I have little sympathy with the claims of either side. As far as I am concerned, there is no reason these uninhabited rocks and coral reefs should belong to anybody. One of the unfortunate consequences of the modern nation-based international system (derived from Europe) is that every tiny piece of land in the world outside of Antarctica is presumed to belong to, or at least claimed by, some nation or other, even if no one has ever lived there. It would be better if all these nations left these places mostly alone, making some agreements about fishing rights (though since overfishing is a big problem, even that should be kept to a minimum), and any oil and gas that is there should be left under the ground, for reasons that should be obvious, considering the other major story I discuss below. So I don't really support the claims of the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei or Taiwan, and I certainly don't sympathize with Vietnamese rioters randomly attacking Chinese workers (and even Taiwanese factories). However, recently, China has been the one aggressively pushing its absurdly broad claims (it claims the entire sea, practically all the way up to the coasts of the surrounding nations, even though in many cases the territory it claims is many hundreds of kilometers from China). China is clearly using its size in an attempt to bully its neighbors. I hope the other countries will eventually have the sense to join together and oppose Chinese imperialism in this area together.

The other story I've been paying particular attention to is climate change, where there have been a number of new and very sobering pieces of news. The US government released a report on the US climate which showed that the climate change is already affecting the US, and if nothing is done it will have an even more devastating effect in the future. Another report noted that access to water will soon become a major problem worldwide. Then in the last few days, there were the reports that the West Antarctic ice sheet has already started an irreversible collapse that will ultimately raise sea levels by at least 1.2 meters and perhaps as much as more than that over the next few centuries, even if we act quickly to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. If we continue business as usual, on the other hand, we can surely expect the ice to melt much more quickly. And for an excellent skewering of the way the American media still treats climate change as if it were a debatable issue, be sure to check out this clip from John Oliver.

Another piece of news worth mentioning is the election victory of the Narendra Modi-led BJP in India. Modi's rhetoric in recent years has been fairly moderate and the long-time ruling party, Congress has a lot of problems with corruption and ineffectiveness, so on the surface this result may seem like a good thing. But the BJP is still a Hindu nationalist party, and Modi himself,a leader of Gujirat, failed to take effective action to stop the horrendous massacre of thousands of Muslims in 2002, to put the best possible spin on what happened (there are some who think he deliberately let the massacre happen). He'll have to do an awful lot of good as prime minister to even begin to make up for that black mark in his past.

Of course the story that has been dominating world news lately, even more than those mentioned above, is that of Boko Haram's kidnapping of over 200 Nigerian girls. Thanks to the campaign to raise awareness of the incident, there is now a lot of pressure on the Nigerian government, and Western and neighboring African governments as well, to try to do something to stop Boko Haram and recover the girls. It won't be easy, however, not least because the Nigerian military itself has committed all sorts of serious human rights violations and so is highly distrusted by the people of the region where Boko Haram operates. Still, with sufficient effort by all parties and a more circumspect, civilian-friendly approach by the Nigerian military, there is some hope that Boko Haram can be defeated or at least severely weakened, and most or all of their victims rescued.