George Marshall wrote the following on Thursday about the Live Earth concerts:

Live Earth will undoubtedly create a buzz and interest around climate change. But I do not believe it will produce significant change because it fundamentally misunderstands the challenge. The reason we are not doing enough about climate change is not because we don't know about it, or that it is not hip, or that we don't care. The problem is that we are locked into patterns of collective denial and have adopted a wide range of strategies to avoid accepting personal responsibility. 

While China agreed to broadcast the concerts, check out this disquieting story:

China rejects binding target to cut greenhouse gas emissions

David Adam, environment correspondent
Friday July 6, 2007
The Guardian
China will not agree any form of binding target to reduce its soaring greenhouse gas emissions as part of a new international deal on climate change, a senior official confirmed yesterday.

Lu Xuedu, deputy director of the Chinese government's office of global environmental affairs, said it "was not the time" for China to consider binding commitments, and he criticised developed countries for playing what he called the "games of children" over global warming.But Mr Xuedu said China had not ruled out binding targets in future. "For the time being we don't have that capability to make those commitments. We hope we will have that capability very soon but it depends on the development process," he said in evidence to the UK joint committee on climate change. "When we can take such binding commitments will depend on our capability, our economical development level."

China does have about 700 million of its citizens living in poverty, but it is considered to have passed the United States as the world's biggest total emitter of GHGs (the U.S. still leads China and virtually all other nations on a per-capita basis). Writing earlier this year in the Guardian, columnist and author George Monbiot said the developed world must help China decarbonize its economy and persuade the U.S. to "do what it did in 1941, and turn the economy around on a dime.

"But above all we need to show that we remain serious about fighting climate change, by setting the targets the science demands."

If China and the U.S. don't take the problem seriously, then this planet -- and everyone on it -- faces a major problem, if not a catastrophe.

If so, big irony on your part.

From the July 4 Guardian story:

Consumers' love of hi-tech gadgets is set to undermine attempts to curb the UK's carbon emissions, the Energy Saving Trust (EST) claimed today.

The proliferation of home entertainment equipment such as flatscreen TVs, digital radios and laptops in homes means that by 2020 this type of technology will account for 45% of domestic electricity use.

This means 14 power stations will be required just to power equipment used for communication and entertainment, the EST said in its report the Ampere Strikes Back.

From the New Yorker article:

The Taliban have made a concerted comeback in the past two years; they are the de-facto authority in much of the Pashtun south and east, and have recently spread their violence to parts of the north as well. The debilitating and corrupting effects of the opium trade on the government of President Hamid Karzai is a significant factor in the Taliban’s revival.

The Taliban instituted a strict Islamist policy against the opium trade during the final years of their regime, and by the time of their overthrow they had virtually eliminated it. But now, Lieutenant General Mohammad Daud-Daud, Afghanistan’s deputy minister of the interior for counter-narcotics, told me, “there has been a coalition between the Taliban and the opium smugglers. This year, they have set up a commission to tax the harvest.” In return, he said, the Taliban had offered opium farmers protection from the government’s eradication efforts. The switch in strategy has an obvious logic: it provides opium money for the Taliban to sustain itself and helps it to win over the farming communities.

The impression I've gotten from journalists who have travelled with the Taliban is the insurgents aren't hurting for money. It also costs far, far less to keep a Taliban foot soldier in the field for a year than his Canadian or other NATO counterpart.

If the Taliban aren't hurting for money as a result of drug revenues, have a safe haven in Pakistan and NATO troops keep killing civilians in the battle against the Taliban, then it would seem this conflict has the potential to go on for a long, long time. :(

China is a key player in an illegal trade that could push some tropical hardwood species to extinction, say activists. However, the West deserves a black eye for providing a market for the finished product.

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From the BBC:

I have spent some time resting in the two days since I was freed, and I have only just switched on my computer.

These are the first words that I have written since I was captured four months ago, and I wanted to dedicate them to all those many tens-of-thousands of people who signed the online petition in support of my release.

To each and every one of you, I want to say that I am so grateful.

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Here's CTV's home page for the event. And here's a live video feed from MSN.

The recipient of the headbutt heard round the world is suing some British newspapers. Italian soccer player Marco Materazzi says the papers libelled him in their speculation over what he told French superstar Zenedine Zidane to prompt the incident.

Materazzi also revealed what he said to Zidane.

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From the BBC:

Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson has admitted that securing oil supplies is a key factor behind the presence of Australian troops in Iraq.

He said maintaining "resource security" in the Middle East was a priority.

But PM John Howard has played down the comments, saying it was "stretching it a bit" to conclude that Australia's Iraq involvement was motivated by oil.

The remarks are causing heated debate as the US-led Iraq coalition has avoided linking the war and oil.

From the Washington Post:

Nearly five months into a security strategy that involves thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops patrolling Baghdad, the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets of the capital was 41 percent higher in June than in January, according to unofficial Health Ministry statistics.

During the month of June, 453 unidentified corpses, some bound, blindfolded, and bearing signs of torture, were found in Baghdad, according to morgue data provided by a Health Ministry official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.

In January, 321 corpses were discovered in the capital, a total that fell steadily until April but then rose sharply over the last two months, the statistics show.

Overall, the level of violent civilian deaths in Iraq is declining, according to the U.S. military and Health Ministry statistics, and there has been a steady drop in fatalities from mass-casualty bombings that have torn through outdoor markets, university bus stops and crowds assembled to collect food rations.

But the number of unidentified bodies found on the streets is considered a key indicator of the malignancy of sectarian strife. While the declining number of bombing victims suggests that efforts to control violence are showing some success, the daily slayings of individuals, in aggregate, speak to an enduring level of aggression.

This Washington Post story talks about how al Qaeda mayhem mentors tell wanna-be jihadists to go the low-tech route in planning terror attacks.

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From the man himself:

BBC reporter Alan Johnston has said it is "just unimaginably good to be free" after 114 days in captivity in Gaza.

He said his ordeal felt like being "buried alive", and was "sometimes quite terrifying". ...

He thanked colleagues, international media and ordinary people for organising "the most extraordinary international campaign" for his release.

"The thing you don't want is to be left behind, buried alive, and have the world go on around you," he said.

He appeared with a cleanly-shaven head, saying one of his first acts after his release was "going to the barbers and getting rid of that just-kidnapped look".

"Maybe you have to have been a prisoner of some kind, for some time, to know how good it is just to be able to do the basic things that freedom allows," he said.

"You want to do everything at the same time, to read books and newspapers, go to the movies, go to the beach and sit in the sun, and eat and talk and all the rest of it."

A related BBC feature -- Journalism: A dangerous profession

Actually, here's the full-meal-deal Alan Johnston page.

This Guardian story suggests Johnston's next posting will be in London at the BBC World Service:

Johnston also suggested it would be some time before he returned to a danger zone. "I probably spent too much time working in the most appalling places I could think of and working too hard, and not enough with family and friends," he said. "I'm going to be careful, I think, and keep out of trouble for a while."

I did this one this evening on the tragic day in Afghanistan: Time for a strategic re-think in Afghanistan?

And here's one from earlier in the week: How the political leaders will spend their summer

From the Guardian:

A worldwide expansion of nuclear power has little chance of significantly reducing carbon emissions but will add dangerously to the proliferation of nuclear weapons-grade materials and the potential for nuclear terrorism, says a leading research group that has analysed the possible uptake of civil atomic power over the next 65 years.

The Oxford Research Group paper, funded by the Joseph Rowntree charitable trust, says that the worldwide nuclear "renaissance" planned by the industry to provide cheap, clean power is a myth. Although global electricity demand is expected to rise by 50% in the next 25 years, only 25 new nuclear reactors are currently being built, with 76 more planned and a further 162 proposed, many of which are unlikely to be built. This compares with 429 reactors in operation today, many of which are already near the end of their useful lives and need replacing soon.

For nuclear power to make any significant contribution to a reduction in global carbon emissions in the next two generations, the paper says, the industry would have to construct nearly 3,000 new reactors - or about one a week for 60 years.

"A civil nuclear construction and supply programme on this scale is a pipe dream, and completely unfeasible. The highest historic rate [of build] is 3.4 new reactors a year," says the report.

There's also this Foreign Policy article, which comes to much the same conclusion and adds that energy efficiency can provide better short-term gains in the fight to cut GHG emissions than does nuclear. (h/t to David Akin)

From the Tyee:

Have Telus managers been brushing up on Orwell?

The company's mantra insists "the future is friendly," but critics say Telus is stifling the Internet to sweep the less-than-friendly bits of their past out of sight.

Earlier this month, Telus ordered YouTube to take down at least 23 videos posted to the site. Each short movie was potentially embarrassing to the telecom's public image since they documented instances of the company's rocky labour relations. Telus claimed their presence on YouTube, a user-generated website, was an act of copyright infringement.

YouTube's owners complied and took the videos off-line, but that set off alarm bells among union activists, who argue much of the footage never belonged to Telus in the first place.

The move also raised hackles with Internet free speech advocates because it appears to be part of a pattern that sees the telecom giant manipulating the web for anti-union purposes. They point to what happened in 2005, when Telus made international headlines by blocking 766 websites in order to bar access to a single pro-union one.

Journalist Marc Edge, author of the forthcoming Asper Nation: Canada's Most Dangerous Media Company, did some digging in the documents available through the Conrad Black trial and found some interesting archival stuff.

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From the BBC:

BBC correspondent Alan Johnston has been released by kidnappers in Gaza after nearly four months in captivity.

He said it was "fantastic" to be free after an "appalling experience". TV footage showed Mr Johnston, 45, leaving a building accompanied by armed men.

He later appeared beside Hamas leader Ismail Haniya and thanked everyone who had worked for his release.

And in an entirely predictable move, Hamas tried to get some political mileage out of this event for itself.

"It showed the difference between the era in which a group used to encourage and commit security anarchy... and the current situation in which Hamas is seeking to stabilise security," Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal told Reuters from Syria.

See this BBC story: Hamas seeks to gain from release

Ken Auletta ponders this question in the New Yorker.

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From the NYT:

Eighteen young men charged in the assassination of the newspaper editor Hrant Dink went on trial here on Monday in what has been described as a test of the rule of law in Turkey.

Mr. Dink, a Turkish citizen of Armenian descent, was shot dead in front of his office on Jan. 19. A day later, a Turkish teenager, Ogun Samast, was arrested and charged with the murder. The government has brought charges against 17 other people.

Mr. Dink, the editor of Agos, a bilingual newspaper, challenged the official Turkish version of the 1915 Armenian genocide, which holds that hundreds of thousands of Armenians perished because of hunger and suffering in World War I.

But he was working to mend relations between Turkey and Armenia and had even taken issue with Armenians who insisted that Turkey’s entry into Europe hinge on its acknowledgment of genocide.

The trial’s verdict will have broad implications for free speech. Ultranationalist Turks have used an article of the country’s criminal code that forbids “insulting Turkishness” to push the government to bring charges against Turkish writers, including Orhan Pamuk, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist. Mr. Dink received a suspended sentence under the statute. His supporters argue that a limp prosecution of his killing will embolden nationalists.

Ken Silverstein posed as the representative of a London-based energy company with interests in Turkmenistan that wanted to buff the image of the former cult-of-personality state.

He found Washington lobbyists tripping over themselves to represent the corrupt petrocracy. After Harper's magazine published the story, there were no shortage of MSM critics tut-tutting about Silverstein's tactic. Silverstein responds.

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From the BBC:

Hamas security forces in Gaza have detained members of the Palestinian militant group which claims to have abducted BBC reporter Alan Johnston.

Among the arrested was Khattab al-Maqdisi, a spokesman of the Army of Islam group, Hamas said.

"The arrests were carried out after all negotiation attempts... failed to free the abducted journalist," the Hamas-run interior ministry said in a statement.

Alan Johnston was kidnapped in Gaza on 12 March.

The BBC is holding a rally for Mr Johnston on Monday to mark the 16th week since his disappearance.

Read this post for worrisome context.

The key recommendations? Be bold and cut through the fog of spin.

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* Yes, it's intended to be a sarcastic headline.

From globeandmail.com:

The scene of Afghanistan's latest civilian bombing was still smoking, the injured still moaning in the dust, when villagers witnessed the Taliban's unnerving ability to exploit the carnage for propaganda.

Armed insurgents arrived almost immediately at the blasted patch of desert near Hyderabad in Helmand province, villagers say - speaking in grateful tones about the gunmen who helped them recover the bodies and ferry the injured to hospitals.

"All the people in this area will start jihad against the foreign troops," said Haji Nazar Mohammed, 50, a small-time farmer who claimed to have lost dozens of relatives. By declaring jihad, or holy war, against the soldiers, the villagers would commit themselves to helping the Taliban.

In the two days since the overnight bombing left an unknown number of people dead on Saturday morning, residents say the Taliban have been busy drumming up support in the affected area, offering rudimentary medical care, and even helping journalists arrange telephone interviews with relatives of the victims.

Dur Ali Shah, the government's district chief, says he cannot offer the victims any help of his own because the area remains too dangerous for him to visit.

Now, check this out from an accompanying article:

New Taliban tactics A group of doctors was drinking green tea at Mirwais hospital in Kandahar earlier this spring, chatting about the worsening security. Ordinary people in the city have reason to feel more relaxed this year, now that foreign troops have forced the Taliban far enough from the city limits that there's little chance of insurgents spilling through the gates. But anybody linked with the government, even doctors, have felt increasingly anxious about the Taliban's shift to terrorist tactics.

A mobile phone rang as they spoke, and a hospital administrator picked it up. All he could hear was screaming, at first, then the desperate voices became recognizable to the medical staff in the room. It was the sound of their colleagues crying for help. A man came on the line, identified himself as a Taliban fighter, and told the hospital workers that the insurgents had captured five outreach workers bringing medical care to refugees west of the city.

That kidnapping dragged on for weeks, and ended when the Taliban beheaded a doctor and released the others.

The International Committee for the Red Cross says health workers across the country are seeing greater numbers of people injured or displaced so far in 2007 compared with the same period last year, although the agency declined to release statistics.

So they'll provide first aid to civilian casualties of coalition artillery or air strikes, but they'll kill doctors who are working to help Afghans. Hmmm ...

The first article also noted this:

The number of civilian deaths inflicted by NATO and U.S. operations in Afghanistan has risen dramatically, with roughly 300 killed so far this year.

One of the major exceptions to this trend has been in Kandahar province, where Canadian commanders say they haven't heard any complaints of civilian casualties in 2007.

Here's a snippet from an Observer story:

Senior British soldiers have previously expressed concerns that (American General Dan) McNeill, who took command of the 32,000 Nato troops in Afghanistan only recently, was 'a fan' of the massive use of air power to defeat insurgents and that his favoured tactics could be counter-productive.

'Every civilian dead means five new Taliban,' said one British officer who has recently returned from Helmand. 'It's a tough call when the enemy are hiding in villages, but you have to be very, very careful,' he added.

The American general has been dubbed 'Bomber McNeill' by his critics.

Press TV will offer a 24/7 English-language satellite news service to compete with the worldview served up through the likes of CNN and the BBC.

Heres something from the Fars News Agency, and here's a June 26 Reuters story posted at washingtonpost.com. And here's a fresh BBC story.

Behold this a snapshot of the lead story from the Press TV home page:

Now, Press TV somehow missed the story about Iranian authorities asking journalists not to cover petrol-rationing-related unrest, but they did manage to write about this on Saturday:

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Khamenei has praised President Ahmadinejad for upholding the values of the Islamic Revolution.  ...

"The petrol rationing scheme is one of the dauntless moves made by the government which is to be continued by the officials."

Read WaPo reporter Joshua Partlow's amusing little yarn about getting stuck at a forward operating base in Iraq for almost two days waiting for a flight out.

From the NYT:

ONE of the most blogged-about sets at this year’s Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival in Southern California took place on a stage dominated by towering Marshall amplifier stacks and a huge illuminated cross. When the dark-clad musicians let loose with a familiar hammering riff, the fans erupted in roars, punching their fists in the air and barking out lyrics.

No, the group wasn’t a heavy-metal revival act — not exactly. Justice is a French D.J. duo at the forefront of a new school of electronic music far removed from the genteel soundtracks one commonly hears in W Hotel lobbies and design-conscious restaurants. The music is harder and hookier, as apt to inspire slam-dancing as hip shaking. It’s more like rock, which effectively dislodged dance music early this decade as the hipster soundtrack of choice.

“Our crowd is more a rock crowd,” said Gaspard Augé of Justice, who is still surprised that fans sometimes stage-dive at its gigs. Young audiences, he suggested, “just want more fun in electronic music, more hedonism.”

So in a year that has seen indie rockers like Bright Eyes and the Shins releasing conservatively tuneful CDs that parents might borrow from their kids, rowdy electronic music seems to be seeding a new underground. “People are dancing again,” said Tom Dunkley of GBH, the New York company behind Cheeky Bastards, a weekly club event that has embraced the new sound. When Justice and several like-minded D.J.’s performed at a Cheeky Bastards event in Manhattan in March, Mr. Dunkley said, the demand for tickets was “crazy, completely unusual.”

If you click through to the story, there's a pretty good podcast by reporter Will Hermes.

From the NYT:

With Americans seemingly developing a taste for news with a Fleet Street twist, British papers are stepping up their efforts to court American readers and advertisers, expanding their coverage of American politics and culture. And the biggest British media organization, the BBC, with a long-established international presence, is making a renewed push to crack the American market, with the Internet playing an important role.

“They got all these readers without even trying,” said Jeff Jarvis, a media blogger and journalism professor at the City University of New York who writes a column for The Guardian. “Now there’s this huge curiosity about America and how they can develop that audience.” ...

American media have been cutting back on international reporting, they said, at a time when audiences are looking for more coverage of the Middle East, for example. And Ms. Bell (Emily, editor of the Guardian Unlimited website) said American readers seem to like the fact that The Guardian is unabashed in its liberal leanings.

“We provide a level of debate and examination you might not get in the mainstream U.S. media,” she said.

Wikipedia is becoming such a rapid repository of knowledge that it's almost as much a news source now as an online encyclopedia. However, its collaboratory nature isn't well-suited to real-time news, and its accuracy rests on a core of volunteers.

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From the Observer:

The arrest of two militants from the radical group holding BBC correspondent Alan Johnston hostage has put the journalist's life in great danger, according to sources in Gaza and within the group itself. Johnston, who was kidnapped on 12 March, today endures his 111th day in captivity. On Monday a video of him wearing what seemed to be an explosives vest was released by his captors.

Late last night, members of Jaish al-Islam were due to meet to discuss his fate after two of their members were arrested earlier by Hamas security forces hoping to pressure the group - led by Mumtaz Dogmosh - into releasing the journalist.

The revelation came even as members of the Dogmosh family - a notorious clan supplying most of the members of 'The Army of Islam' - continued desperate efforts to convince the group not to kill the 45-year-old Scot. However, moderate insiders said the radicals were in charge and out of patience with Hamas, the British government, and the BBC.

Part of the issue appears to be that Jaish al-Islam feels Hamas is throwing its weight around. Hamas has talked about seizing Johnston by force. "'We want them to come,' said another Jaish man. 'We want to show them they cannot take Gaza, our family, or our weapons like they did to Fatah.'"

From the June 24 NYT story by David Barboza:

AS an American journalist based in China, I knew there was a good chance that at some point I’d be detained for pursuing a story. I just never thought I’d be held hostage by a toy factory.

That’s what happened last Monday, when for nine hours I was held, along with a translator and a photographer, by the suppliers of the popular Thomas & Friends toy rail sets.

“You’ve intruded on our property,” one factory boss shouted at me. “Tell me, what exactly is the purpose of this visit?” When I answered that I had come to meet the maker of a toy that had recently been recalled in the United States because it contained lead paint, he suggested I was really a commercial spy intent on stealing the secrets to the factory’s toy manufacturing process.

“How do I know you’re really from The New York Times?” he said. “Anyone can fake a name card.”

Thus began our interrogation, which was followed by hours of negotiations, the partial closing of the factory complex and the arrival of several police cars, a handful of helmet-wearing security officers and some government officials, all trying to free an American journalist and his colleagues from a toy factory.

Iren Karman hasn't given up on an old Hungarian scandal known as Oilgate just yet, and it almost cost the 40-year-old journalist her life.

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From the BBC:

The US-led military coalition in Afghanistan says a number of civilians appear to have died in air strikes in the southern province of Helmand.

Update

Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai has ordered a probe into the incident.

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From the BBC:

Farfur is making way for new programmes, al-Aqsa said

A Palestinian TV station has killed off a controversial Mickey Mouse lookalike that critics said was spreading anti-US and anti-Israeli messages to children.

The Hamas-affiliated al-Aqsa channel aired the last episode on Friday, showing the character, Farfur, being beaten to death by an "Israeli agent".

"Farfur was martyred defending his land," said the show's presenter Saraa.

Israeli critics had said the show was outrageous and some Palestinian ministers tried to get it shelved.

In the final broadcast an actor said to be an Israeli agent tries to buy the land of the squeaky-voiced Mickey Mouse lookalike.

Farfur brands the Israeli a "terrorist" and is beaten to death.

He was killed "by the killers of children", Saraa says.