The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has released a photograph of the recent smog over the city of Harbin, China. Harbin is a city of about 11 million people and the smog was so bad that much of the city was shut down. In some areas of the city, small particulate matter was measured at more than 1,000, on a scale where 300 is considered hazardous. The Chinese government is accelerating its efforts to stop smog, but those efforts have not yet stopped the problem from becoming worse year over year. The grey areas on the photograph is smog.
On the day that Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif met US President Barack Obama and said he emphasized the need to end drone strikes on Pakistani territory, the Washington Post published documents that prove that the drone strikes had in fact been approved by the Pakistani government. One can understand why the government of Pakistan would want to keep its approval secret from its citizens. The hypocrisy of openly condemning the US, however, is standard operating procedure in the world.
Imperialism invariably involved the humiliation of the subject peoples, but often the imperial powers sought to deliberately destroy the sense of dignity of the people they dominated. Nowhere was this more true than in China, where the British wanted to smash the hold of the Emperor over his people. The Atlantic recounts such an episode in the 19th century.
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