Empire Watch

China’s Ecological Mess
Thousands of pigs were found dead in rivers supplying Shanghai’s water, a grisly discovery that has drawn attention again to China’s toxic pollution, which contributes to some 700,000 deaths each year. Here are some points of concern: WASTE Tai Lake—a ...

Millennial Views
The lower you go on the generational totem pole, the more ethnically diverse you get. Young adults between 18-24 (so-called Millennial) don't like racial labels because they don't recognize the dividing lines of the past—they are the vanguard of a ...

Chief Justice’s power over surveillance
Chief Justice John Roberts is even more powerful than you might think, said Ezra Klein. In addition to presiding over the Supreme Court, Roberts also has the “exclusive, unaccountable, lifetime power to shape the surveillance state.” It’s a little known ...

Cleaning Up China’s Dirty Streets
"The Chinese need to learn that public spaces aren’t garbage dumps", said Raymond Zhou. During a recent national holiday, visitors dropped a staggering 32 tons of litter in Tiananmen Square in just four days. Beijing’s army of street cleaners rushed ...

Jesse Jackson Jr – Misuse of Campaign Funds
Chicago Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. plead guilty this to spending $750,000 of campaign funds on luxury items for personal use, including furs, jewelry, and celebrity memorabilia. Jackson, 47, represented Illinois’s 2nd Congressional District for 17 years before taking a medical ...

Urbanization Helps China Eliminate Poverty
BEIJING - The greatest risk China faces in its historic modernization is the massive imbalance between urban and rural areas, according to the country's top agriculture official. "The most important and difficult task is to resolve issues concerning agriculture, countryside ...

Brides Being Trafficked to China
A young girl not from China was forced into a marriage to a man that she didn’t know. She also didn’t know the language, so she was not totally aware that she was married and because her husband forced himself ...

Internment Camps in the United States
Internment Camps in the United States Miyuki is old enough to have been a child during World War II. Indeed, some of her students are that old as well but they are eager to learn and listen to her carefully. ...

China Law Says Children Must Not Ignore Parents
Most of China’s adult children work and live over a thousand miles from their elderly parents which makes it hard to visit on a regular basis. The new law called “Elderly Rights Law” says that adult children must maintain contact ...

The truth about ‘secular’ America
American culture is sick, and secularism is the cause of our disease. That, said Steve Chapman, is the contention of religious conservatives like presidential candidate Rick Santorum, who insist that feminists, liberals, and gay marriage have undermined traditional morality, and ...