Blogs and blogging

Torture scenes: perhaps the first video evidence of violence by Fiji's military and police (WARNING: Very graphic video.) The US has quietly and unilaterally reduced its nuclear stockpile by about 500 warheads since 2009. Pollution is now a serious constraint on China's growth. Climate

Danielle Rajendram is a Research Associate in the Lowy Institute's International Security Program whose work focuses on India and China-India relations. Six reasons for India to look east. (Thanks Alex.) Why India has doubts about Chuck Hagel's appointment as US Secretary of Defense. Ramesh

Airbus says there is a market for 10,000 commercial aircraft in the Asia Pacific over the next twenty years. September is grand final season in Australia, and in 2013 it's also a huge month for Australian diplomacy. Is transparency all it's cracked up to be? The downside of 'big data'.

Joel Wing-Lun is a Research Associate in the Lowy Institute's East Asia Program. Zhou Xiaochuan will remain as head of China's central bank despite reaching retirement age, providing stability at the top as the banking system prepares for tricky financial reforms.  Veteran bankers Chen Yuan

Ballooning American think-tank salaries tell you something about think-tank political influence. (Thanks Rodger and David.) Gideon Rachman the latest to bemoan low European defence spending. It's just the free-rider problem at work, and will correct itself if the US retreats and the threat

Why Obama's new cyber defence initiative won't amount to much. Open borders bring peace: when people immigrate, they rarely take their conflicts with them. Powering the Dream: The History and Promise of Green Technology is going on my reading list. What's the best aid blog in the world?

The Development Policy Blog dissect AusAIDs revised budget figures. (Thanks Danielle.) Was Darth Vader the General Haig of the Star War Universe?: a military assessment of the disastrous Battle of Hoth. Follow-up debate here. Part 1 of ABC journalist Sally Sara's Mama Asia series, featuring

'Seismic activity' reported in North Korea. Twitter going off. Pope links: the Vatican has its own news website, and the UK Catholic newspaper, The Tablet, has a Storify page running with lots of links, and here's The Guardian's live blog. Meet the man who killed Osama bin Laden. You may not

Danielle Rajendram is a Research Associate in the Lowy Institute's International Security Program whose work focuses on India and China-India relations. Is freedom of speech under threat in the world's largest democracy? India's Ambassador to the US, Nirupama Rao, delivered a lecture on Indian

David Brooks is an interesting thinker, so it will be worth watching his exploration of the modern preoccupation with big data. South Korean public opinion on North Korea is...complicated. In two recent posts we've discussed the expansion of China's civilian maritime agencies. Here's a blog

Is Indonesia moving towards abolition of the death penalty? Lowy's Dave McRae in Inside Indonesia. The NY Times has been under cyber attack by Chinese hackers ever since they heard that the Times was set to expose Wen Jiabao's family fortune. Why are spies and diplomats so fascinated by the

Relaunching the G20: a new report from the Lowy Institute's G20 Studies Centre. Big news you probably missed: the US and EU set for talks on an FTA that would encompass half the world's economic output. (H/t TAC.) Discovering a Russian family cut off from the world for forty years. (Thanks Dirk

David Cameron's unsentimental EU speech. Does the G20 have too much on its plate? Democracy Arsenal continues the debate, responding to this Interpreter post. Reviewing Kim Jung Un's first year as North Korean leader: 'The Ice Age in North Korea is coming to an end. Although the pace of change is

Google head honcho Eric Schmidt went to Pyongyang recently, taking his daughter. This is her evocative account of the visit. (Thanks James.) Osama bin Laden's last victory over America: Matt Taibbi writes as only he can about Zero Dark Thirty. Anyone seen it and want to offer their views?

A leaked US State Department cable says Syria used chemical weapons against its own people last month. The Economist on the European Central Bank's 'woefully inadequate' macroeconomic policies. I was appalled to learn that my favourite online publication, The Atlantic, was hosting a Scientology

Dirk van der Kley is a Research Associate in the Lowy Institute's East Asia Program. For almost a decade, China's SOEs have blocked plans to make wealth distribution more equal because they don't want to lose tax concessions. Since Tiananmen in 1989, people in China have seldom gathered so

Global population growth is slowing, and world population may actually start declining soon. A prominent Laotian NGO leader went missing last December, grabbed at a police checkpoint. His disappearance has triggered an uproar. A useful primer on Laos today from the Council on Foreign Relations

Video of protests against newspaper censorship in China. (Thanks Danielle.) John Gray: 'liberals have seen the Communist experiment as a hyperbolic expression of their own project of improvement...' China mints coins featuring its new aircraft carrier. (Thanks Graeme.) 'Despite voluminous