Art… Enlightenment, Cell, Studio: Beijing, Berlin, and Ai Weiwei 4 Apr 20114 Apr 2011 In its typically understated fashion of reasserting totalitarian facts, the Chinese government appears to have arrested the dissident provocateur Ai Weiwei in Beijing. (Hat tip to Evan Osnos in Beijing…
American Foreign Policy… Farewell, Leighton Stuart? The US Ambassador’s Jasmine Stroll in Wangfujing 27 Feb 20115 Mar 2015 Jon Huntsman, the American ambassador to China, caused a bit of a stir with his attendance at a non-demonstration-turned-media-event at the Wangfujing area McDonalds last week, an event held (or not…
North Korean border region… Chinese Capitalism Floods North Korea 28 Sep 201011 Oct 2010 A op-ed of mine which I wrote last week on the subject of Chinese influence and the prospects for reform in North Korea was published yesterday in the Duluth News-Tribune. …
American Foreign Policy… Could North Korea Survive Without the Kim Cult? 22 Sep 2010 In the early summer of 1945, various American military planners bobbed through Pacific typhoons, paced humid Sichuan airfields, and filled their War Department offices with tobacco smoke in anxiety, wondering…
American Foreign Policy… Carter in Pyongyang, Kim Jong Il in Changchun: Commentary 1 Sep 20101 Sep 2010 BEIJING -- Jimmy Carter hardly rehabilitated the malevolent North Korean regime by showing up in Pyongyang, but the country’s communist leaders were undoubtedly glad to see him. Kim Jong Il’s…
Cultural Politics… On Potsdam’s “Hiroshima Plaza” 7 Aug 20107 Aug 2010 In describing German responses to the Hiroshima commemoration yesterday, I made reference to an editorial which appeared in a major Berlin daily paper last June 30: ...probably the most interesting…
Art… Crumbling North America 8 Jan 20108 Jan 2010 The Rust Belt continues to crumble. This past week, my old hometown of Cleveland, Ohio, got some bad news: 18 schools, mainly on the African-American east side, would be closing…
American Foreign Policy… On Contradiction / 关于矛盾 17 Sep 2009 Today is an acrid one in this North American nation. As if we were China and the Tibetans had stepped out of line, race, or, in Chinese Communist terms, "ethnic…
Op-Ed Manufactured Expertise 10 Sep 2009 One of the privileges of living on the West coast is that one day blends easily into the next -- You work late, and when things get into a groove…
North Korea… Dana Rohrabacher vs. Selig Harrison 31 Aug 20095 Jan 2017 North Korea analyst Selig Harrison, an "old North Korea hand" if there ever was one, has returned from Pyongyang bearing a few facts to share with the rest of us. …
Adam Cathcart 