If Greece leaves the eurozone, Russia will enter it, casting a chill over Europe.
Russia’s Grentrance
The world’s biggest hydropower project may be causing giant landslides in China
A massive landslide this week is only the latest natural disaster critics believe the Three Gorges Dam has caused—even officials admit there have been 70% more landslides and bank collapses in the dam’s reservoir area since it was built 12 years ago. Lily Kuo for Quartz reports.
Massive landslide capsizes boats on Yangtze tributary
Massive landslide in China caught on video along the northern bank of the Daning River, a Yangtze tributary. Details still forthcoming. Various reports say boats capsized, 4 people injured, 1 missing.
Red Cross raised half a billion dollars to help Haiti rebuild … six homes
Publicly it has celebrated its work but, in reality, the Red Cross has repeatedly failed on the ground in Haiti. An investigation reveals damning insider information that exposes the group’s dubious claims.
Environmental protests expose weakness in China’s leadership
Mass protests are a growing fixture in China’s grassroots’ not-in-my-back-yard environmental justice movement. A lightning rod for public action concerns PX plants – chemical factories located elsewhere in the world that do not incite large-scale protests the way they do in China. Yet the Chinese government cannot convince citizens they are “no more harmful than a cup of coffee.”
China gets back to nukes
Driven by the need for clean energy in its war on pollution and further accelerated by worldwide global warming fears, China is set to resume plans for a nuclear renaissance that has many sounding an alarm over safety concerns.
Brazil’s Belo Monte dam puts livelihood of 2,000 families at risk, prosecutors say
Federal prosecutors say the Norte Energia consortium behind the $11-billion Belo Monte dam, the world’s third largest, has violated 55 previously agreed-to items that are endangering locals’ means of survival. Efforts to move residents should be suspended, they say.
Tapajós and other Amazon dams not sustainable development say reports
Research shows that contrary to the current greenwashing trend surrounding hydropower, hydroelectric dams are not the sustainable solution to the world’s energy needs that proponents make them out to be. They could even significantly worsen global emissions and global warming.
Relaxing China’s one-child policy
“No government should regulate birth, period.” Probe International Fellow and correspondent, Dai Qing, discusses China’s population-control policies over the years in this opinion piece for The New York Times.
Three Gorges Group will not stop building hydro dams in Nepal
Projects are strong enough to withstand a rare “thousand year” earthquake, say China Three Gorges Corporation officials: “no need to worry”. Experts beg to differ.
China: Scrap repressive foreign organizations law
The Chinese government should withdraw its draft law on foreign organizations, which represents “nothing more than a means to block the activities of groups Beijing doesn’t like,” Human Rights Watch said today in a submission to the National People’s Congress Standing Committee Legislative Affairs Commission.
The Sword of Damocles hanging over every Chinese NGO
This terrific commentary deals with Beijing’s crackdown on NGOs and its larger ramifications if the country’s (remaining) civil society groups do not stand together against tremendous pressure to steer clear of a “political red line” that keeps moving to ensure anything, if the authorities wish, can be deemed off-limits.
Half empty: China’s vanishing “kidneys”
CCTV, China’s state broadcaster, looks at the use of remote sensing to monitor the country’s vanishing “kidneys” — wetlands that provide a range of invaluable ecosystem services that have become seriously under threat from rapid urbanization and modernization.
Civil society’s diminishing “space to negotiate”
China Digital Times highlights Chinese writer and activist Zeng Jinyan’s post on Beijing’s crackdown on NGOs and, in particular, the independent think tank, Transition Institute. Even groups that historically have played an important role in China are finding themselves on the wrong side of the security apparatus, says Jinyan. Likewise, the space to negotiate is also closing fast for the country’s rights lawyers, reports CDT.
Pussyfooting with China
Western NGOs that operate in China stay silent to remain in the Chinese Communist Party’s good books.
Probe International 