theglobaljournal.net: Latest activities of group #05

China Joins World Aircraft Carrier Club

2011-08-16T22:11:20Z

China’s first aircraft carrier made its debut five-day voyage on August 15th, returning to a crowd who welcomed the giant vessel belonging to the resurgent People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with fireworks.

However, at a briefing for journalists (August 10), State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland was peppered with questions about the nature of US concerns given the vast superiority of the US Navy, despite post-Cold War reductions. Was it because of the possibility tensions might increase in the region, especially in Taiwan? Was it concern about the rise of China’s military power and the possibility China may dominate Asian shipping lanes?

To each question, Nuland gave the same response - that the prime US concern has always been about China’s lack of transparency. “We want to see more transparency. We would welcome any kind of explanation that China would like to give for needing this kind of equipment.”

The arrival of a Chinese aircraft carrier was forecast by the May/June issue of The Global Journal in an interview with Taiwan’s former Deputy Defense Minister Lin Chong-pin, who said Beijing’s official line is that aircraft carriers are needed for coastal defense.

“In the beginning Varyag was purchased (from Ukraine) as an amusement park at sea,” he said. “Only in the early 21st century did people start to notice that it was painted in military white.”

Currently a Professor at Tamkang University, Lin is however, not worried about any threat to Taiwan, at least in the near term. In an interview with China’s official Xinhua News Agency following the ship’s return to port, he said the carrier is more of a symbol to enhance China’s self image at home and globally rather than a real milestone in military might.

Iceland New Constitution

2011-08-07T09:47:54Z

Follow-up coming shortly

Schwarzenegger's R20 Comes to the Lake Geneva

2011-05-07T20:02:51Z

Former Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has set the Executive office of the R20 in Geneva with financial assistance from the Cantonal government. Located in Villa Montfleury, the executive secretariat will start operating in a couple of weeks. As he clearly expressed in his interview with The Global Journal, A. Schwarzenegger enters the Climate Change debate, with a bang.

To read his exclusive interview, you can order a copy of the magazine here

Global Military Spending Has Exploded Over the Past Decade

2011-05-03T11:18:56Z

World military spending reached $1.6 trillion in 2010, an increase of 1.3 per cent in real terms.* This increase looks more like a decline when compared with the average annual growth rate of 5.1 percent during 2001- 2009. Indeed, the effects of the 2008 economic crisis show up for the first time in the 2010 figures as slightly lower rates of increase or even as decreased spending in the case of France, down by 8.4 percent; India, by 2.8 percent; Russia, by 1.4; and the UK, by 0.8 percent.

“We see a mixed picture,” says Sam Perlo-Freeman, Head of the SIPRI Military Expenditure Project. “European governments have cut military spending by 2.8 percent to address budget deficits, while South America has increased by 5.8 percent in spite of the lack of military threats to most of those countries.”

To read the interview, order a copy of the magazine

Solar Electricity from Chemistry

2011-05-02T15:01:05Z

Photosystem energy highways are the next big thing to transform solar light into electricity, thanks to organic chemistry. A perfect tribute to the International Year of Chemistry 2011 proclaimed by the UN.

Sunlight is an inexhaustible energy source. However, only a very small part of it can be captured today to create electricity. When light interacts with matter, electrons are ejected into a level of higher energy. Electrons are subatomic particles with a negative charge; the positively charged void left behind when light ejects an electron is called a hole. To convert light into electrical (photovoltaics) or chemical energy (photosynthesis), the hole and the electron that have been separated with light have to be kept apart. Kept apart long enough until they can be used, because all energy is lost if hole and electron meet each other before use. In current solar energy research, one of the big goals is to learn how to do exactly this, how to keep hole and electron separated long enough so that they can be used.

Report by Edouard Archambault, photography by Christian Rochat

To read the full report, order a copy of the magazine here

The Green Climate Fund is Making Progress

2011-05-01T22:17:21Z

Ambassador Franz Perrez belongs to the Swiss diplomatic team to the UNFCCC driving the current negotiations for Climate Change. Since Cancun and the acceptance of the principle of a Green Climate Fund, a Transitional Committee is building up the Fund. From inside this marathon Ambassador Perrez gives an exclusive view on the state of the negotiations. He has a lot to tell.

TGJ: Who came up with the idea of the Green Climate Fund, and when, at the very beginning? Would you say that the Geneva meeting back in September 2010 was a critical moment? Why?

It is difficult to say who was the first to launch the idea of a new Climate Fund. The request for additional financial support and for an additional fund has been formulated by developing countries for several years. In 2008, Mexico tabled a concrete proposal for a World Climate Change Fund. A first critical step towards the establishment of the Green Climate Fund was clearly the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen where the donors agreed in principle to support developing countries with fast start financing of 30 billion US$ for the period of 2010-2012 and committed to mobilize jointly 100 billion US$ a year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.

The ministerial Geneva Dialogue in September 2010 was another critical steppingstone: during that meeting, the US Special Envoy on Climate Change, Todd Stern, outlined a very concrete proposal for a process for establishing such a fund. The Geneva meeting was indeed a critical moment, and for several reasons: it took place at a crucial moment in the lead-up to Cancun as it had become evident that success in Cancun could only be achieved if progress was made on financing.

Moreover, the representatives of the private sector participating in the Geneva meeting had sent a coherent message that clear commitments were needed in Cancun. Finally, the constructive and result oriented atmosphere during the Geneva meeting and its informality allowed the US proposal to develop further and also to catalyze concrete divergent views and proposals. This created a momentum for the further negotiations with regard to financing climate change that was maintained up to Cancun.

To read the full report, order a copy of the magazine here

Ban Ki-Moon Should Merge the G20 and the Security Council

2011-05-01T21:48:26Z

Jacques Attali to The Global Journal : "If Ban Ki-moon made a speech demanding the merging of the G20 and the Security Council he would not jeopardize his election, he would gain a lot of support and we would fi nally have a clear vision."

Read more from former advisor to French President François Mitterrand about Global Governance and Global Issue. He speaks truth to power. Quite refreshing and striking.

To read the full report, order a copy of the magazine here

Iceland Struggles for a New Constitution

2011-05-01T16:04:08Z

"The first thing in your life here is the weather,” says Iris Kramer. A musician from Hamburg, married to an Icelander, Kramer is in a café waiting to hear if the plane to her husband’s hometown in the Western Fjords will be able to take off. Outside on Laugavegur, Reykjavik’s main shopping street, the only moving thing is a shrouded figure trying to advance uphill against the gale whipping the North Atlantic a few blocks below. It is snowing and it is going to snow and in between has come piercing sunlight, fog, hail and rain and it is not yet 10am. The Gulf Stream makes Iceland’s climate milder than the 64° latitude would suggest and, in March, this is a freak storm, although somewhat discouraging just as the days grow longer.

But people are taking it in their stride: there are no fair-weather patriots in Iceland. And not only because of the climate. For the past two and a half years, the entire country has been struggling to make a fresh start after the bank failures that wrecked one of the world’s most affluent societies. Added to the volcanic eruption in Spring 2010 that closed airports across Europe, Iceland’s image as the resilient, hard-working island nation has turned into a reputation for exporting disaster. “Like their weather, Icelanders are either very bad or very good,” says Lýður Arnason.

Good or bad, they don’t lack qualifications and confidence, either. Arnason, both a medical doctor and an acclaimed filmmaker*, has recently taken on a new task: to rewrite his country’s constitution. In November 2010, he and 24 other citizens were chosen from over 520 candidates in a national election to form the new Constitutional Assembly. The international press hailed it as a remarkable demonstration of direct democracy. Inside Iceland, however, things aren’t quite so simple.

When Iceland got its independence from Denmark in 1944, it basically adopted the Danish Constitution. “About the only thing that changed was to substitute the word ‘president’ for ‘king’. “It wasn’t ours”.

To read the full report, order a copy of the magazine here.

by Sarah Meyer de Stadelhofen

China: Not Purely Domestic Power Anymore

2011-05-01T15:19:04Z

In January 2011, the government of Taiwan arrested one of its generals on accusations of spying for China. Major General Lo Hsieh-che was recruited sometime during a posting overseas between 2003 and 2005, declared the Ministry of National Defense. It was another small signal sent to the world that the Chinese Military Tiger is out for some game. Step by step, the Chinese army is building its power, in tandem with its new international ambitions as the world’s no. 2 economy. True, the budget of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is still miles away from that of the U.S. superpower. In 2011, China’s military spending officially amounts to 601.1 billion Yuan (91.4 billion dollars), far behind the 548 billion allotted to U.S. forces this year. But it is the rapid rate of this growth –an increase of 12.7% in one year, according to Li Zhaoxing, spokesman for the National People’s Congress, in early March 2011– and its lack of transparency that worry foreign observers. Our reporter Harold Thibault takes a very close look at this high-speed phenomenon.

To read the full report, order a copy of the magazine here

Attali's Latest Book: "Who Will Govern the World?"

2011-05-01T14:57:50Z

This simple question would alarm a lot of people. But not French essayist and former advisor to French President François Mitterrand, Jacques Attali. Before launching the Estates General of the World, he agreed to meet the Global Journal at the premises of his PlanetGroup, which includes prominent agencies such as MicroCred or Planet Rating. He is active in microfinance, development and he is prepared to browbeat current political leaders, and, no doubt, offer shrewd advice to a future world government President. Jacques Attali is a visionary.

TGJ: In your book you put forward ten concrete proposals, based on multiple examples from history, to offer to a future world government. Without wishing to anticipate the respective importance of these proposals, what is the trigger that will galvanize the citizens? Jean Monnet, founding father of Europe, dreamed of unifying Europe through culture, but in fact he did it through energy.

I think that if Jean Monnet launched Europe around energy, it was because he was concerned about the lack of energy, and especially worried about the use of energy for war. He believed that by making coal, steel and all the materials necessary for the manufacture of cannons communal, a war within Europe, between France and Germany, could be definitively avoided. In fact, the motivation was mankind’s oldest incentive to unite: the wish to avoid war. And I think that the fight against violence is still, today, the principle driving force, both for Europe and utopian ideals all over the world. However, in spite of this powerful incentive, Europe has been waging war for centuries, and doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that there is still a risk of world war, and that it would be better to unite before rather than after. In 1910, nobody thought of a world war.

To read the interview, order a copy of the magazine here