The Human Consciousness Now...Our World in the Midst of Becoming...to What? Observe, contemplate Now.
BEIJING, Feb 23, 2012 (IPS) - Imported television shows watched by millions will be canned during the countrys prime "golden time" hours, the government announced last week. Last month, popular prime time entertainment programmes were slashed by two- thirds. This was after programmes featuring time travel were all but banned last year.
In the latest signs of an escalating clampdown on entertainment in China, the television broadcast regulator has declared that "vulgar" foreign television shows - which mostly hail from Asia - will be barred 7-10pm.
The newest rules aim to boost Chinas domestic television industry, forcing audiences away from Asian competition towards local shows. Many feel that the move is also an attempt to protect state-run China Central Television (CCTV), known for its stiff evening news and stale dramas.
The incapacitating series of regulations were felt most keenly in October when the industry watchdog, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), announced a cap on mass-watched "entertainment" shows, which were declared pure "poison" by one official.
By the end of last year, Chinas 34 satellite channels had cut the number of entertainment shows - largely spin-offs of Western hits such as American Idol and Top Gear - from 126 to just 38 during the prime-time hours, marking a 69 percent decrease. The ban came into effect officially on Jan. 1.
In the place of the rags to riches singing competitions and sassy dating shows which have proliferated under Chinas enterprising provincial television channels, SARFT stated that each channel must air "morality building" programmes weekly. Talent contents will be limited to just 10 nationwide per year.
"SARFT does not want provincial TV to pose a threat to the national influence of CCTV. So they have stopped many programmes," says Dr. Grace Leung, a visiting scholar at Beijings Tsinghua University who specialises in television regulation.
In the latest rules, announced last Monday, all foreign shows - which are mainly sourced from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand and South Korea - must pass state approval.
"TV series that contain vulgar and violent scenes should not be imported," stated China Daily, adding that "severe punishments" will be handed out to channels who violate the new rules.
According to the state-run newspaper, the regulations will help create a "favourable environment for TV shows made by companies on the Chinese mainland."
Propaganda over profit remains a crucial concern for SARFT, which functions under the propaganda arm of the Communist Party. Pushing the Party creed over the competitiveness of the television industry as a whole remains paramount.
"With more than 96 or 97 percent of the total population (tuning in), TV is still the most influential vehicle for propaganda. One of SARFTs major tasks is ideological control," says Dr Leung.
"There is concern whether (satellite stations) are doing the correct job to educate their audience rather than provide entertainment alone. So profit making is not a primary concern for them - they would prefer to stick to their original task of educating and propaganda to prevent controversial issues arising," she adds.
Programmes that have felt the full force of the state truncheon over the past year include the highly marketable "time-travel" genre, in which characters travel back in time to different dynasties.
In September, SARFT suspended Super Girl, a Pop Idol spin-off. At its peak it generated 400 million messages. Further victims include the dating show If You Are The One, which, although still running, has curtailed its more salacious elements in favour of heavy-handed moral messages.
"The cycle of tightening and loosening up is nothing new in China," says Ying Zhu, author of Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television. "Obviously the tightening up cannot last long when the issue of bread and butter is at stake. The real clash is between the mandate of a Chinese cultural tradition dictated by morality and the demand of a market system dictated by profit."
The newest regulations, however, might backfire. Internet users in China now number over 500 million and many people are switching off their television sets in favour of finding entertainment on their smart phones and laptops, where censorship is less pervasive and the state has less hold.
"Only people like my mother-in-law would watch (programmes) on TV and now even she has switched to the Internet," says Raymond Zhou, 49, a Beijing-based newspaper columnist and social critic. "These regulations are going to drive more and more young people away from television, because they are leaving anyway. You are giving them the extra push - now they leave happily."
Hans Blix warned that all parties in the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear programme "have boxed themselves into a corner".Credit:Dean Calma/IAEAWASHINGTON, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Even as U.N. inspectors expressed disappointment about the results of their visit this week to Iran, a former chief of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) urged all parties to make greater efforts to defuse rapidly rising tensions over Tehran's nuclear programme to avert war.
"We don't expect too much now, but we need to defuse the most acute things and prepare the road for further talks," said Hans Blix, the former Swedish foreign minister who headed the IAEA from 1981 to 1997, at a Capitol Hill briefing for Congressional staffers here Tuesday.
" We are now hoping that there will be a meeting between the Iranians and the P5+1 (the U.S., Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany) perhaps in Istanbul relatively soon, and we are now fearing there could be a war."
"I think we can sit and dream about the big solutions. But for the moment we should be defusing a very acute and dangerous situation," noted Blix, who also led the special U.N. inspection unit that investigated whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the run-up to the 2003 U.S. invasion.
The latest developments came as a high-level IAEA delegation returned from a two-day visit to Iran their second in less than a month apparently frustrated that some of their requests of the Iranian authorities were denied.
Although IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said that the visit to Tehran took place in a "constructive spirit", Iran had refused his delegation's request to visit its Parchin military base, which the IAEA suspects may be used for weapons-related testing.
For its part, an Iranian government spokesman insisted that cooperation with the IAEA "continues and is at its best level".
Mark Fitzpatrick, a nuclear expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), wrote Wednesday that Tehran's refusal to permit the inspectors to go to Parchin did not mean the end of diplomacy.
"In dealing with Iran, nothing ever happens quickly," he wrote, adding that more meetings to press Tehran into answering a series of questions about the possible military applications of its nuclear research will likely take place.
Meanwhile, Blix warned that all parties in the growing crisis over Iran's nuclear programme "have boxed themselves into a corner".
MEXICO CITY, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Orange juice and beef form part of the diet of many people in Mexico and other countries of the Americas. But the traces of antibiotics and fungicides they can contain pose risks to human health, and authorities in the region have begun to address the problem.
In January, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a ban on "extralabel" or unapproved uses of cephalosporin antimicrobial drugs in cattle, swine, chickens and turkeys as of April 2012.
As a result, Mexico will be forced to gradually eliminate the use of this class of antimicrobial drugs in order to continue to export its products to markets like the United States, where the Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA) was signed into law in January 2011 by President Barack Obama.
The FSMA law created the foreign supplier verification programme, which requires importers to provide assurances that imported products comply with safety standards and are not adulterated or misbranded.
"While the law would make great progress towards making the American food supply safer, if the implementation of FSMA is not fully funded, people may be put needlessly at risk," Erik Olson, director of food programmes at the U.S.-based Pew Health Group, told IPS.
Cattle in Mexico, which has a total herd of 25 million head according to the ministry of agriculture, receive large doses of antibiotics like penicillin, tetracycline and cephalosporins to prevent bacterial infections.
FDA statistics show that 13.1 million kilograms of antibacterial drugs were sold in the U.S. for use on animals in 2009, while the amount for 2010 was just one percent less.
The most widely used antibiotic in 2009 was tetracycline (4.6 million kg). In the case of cephalosporins, 41,000 kg were sold for use in animals.
Mexicos ministry of agriculture has a manual for good livestock practices regarding raising beef in feedlots, which recommends only using registered medications, not using approved combinations of medicines, and using narrow spectrum antimicrobials to treat a specific disease whenever possible.
In addition, regulations for the National Animal Identification System are pending approval. The system, which covers cattle, sheep, goats, horses, swine and bees, will provide for complete traceability of animals and products.
TOKYO, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - Kazuya Tarukawa, 36, left a secure job in the Japanese capital to tend to his familys organic farm located 100 km away from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor.
Although falling outside the evacuation zone, set at 60 km from ground zero by the Japanese government, the Tarukawa farm is not immune to suspicions of contamination as consumers grow increasingly wary of radiation contamination.
Ten days after the disaster at the Fukushima plant on Mar. 11, 2011, Tarukawas 74-year-old father, Hisashi Tarukawa, committed suicide in despair.
"My father was devastated after the meltdown in the Fukushima nuclear reactor and reports of radiation contamination spread. He felt hopeless about not only his future but also for agriculture in Japan," the younger Tarukawa told IPS.
The farm, that produces a variety of vegetables in the summer, has been carefully tilled for eight generations, a legacy that in the past decade included organic farming under the devoted efforts of the now deceased Tarukawa.
"The nuclear accident has wiped all our efforts away," said Tarukawas son and successor, who struggles with bouts of deep despair himself.
Farmers in the area are still struggling to come to terms with the fact that one of the worst fallouts of the Fukushima nuclear accident is the blow it dealt to the Japanese food industry, once respected worldwide for quality standards.
"Japanese marine and agricultural products are reeling from domestic and international rejection due to radiation fear," says Prof. Ryota Koyama, an expert on food safety at Fukushima University.
"The time has come to develop new safety policies that are based on both scientific evidence and social concerns, a critical step towards dealing with this issue," said Koyama.
The past few months have seen the government scrambling to regain public trust with food grown in Fukushima and the neighbouring areas by scraping away contaminated top soil from local farms.
Many Afghan refugees in Pakistan do odd jobs, like selling vegetables. Credit: Ashfaq Yusufzai/IPSPESHAWAR, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government recently launched a harsh crackdown on illegal Afghan immigrants who have been pouring across the border into Pakistan, going so far as to request federal government permission to deal with the situation, which has deep social and economic implications for the host country.
During the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, about five million Afghans entered Pakistan through the porous 2400-kilometre-long border between the two countries.
According to the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR), Pakistan is home to 1.7 million documented Afghan refugees. Meanwhile, data compiled by Pakistans home and tribal affairs department found that the country was simultaneously playing host to 400,000 undocumented Afghans, many of who live in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), one of the Pakistans four major provinces.
Despite Argentina's image as a land of pampas, most of the territory actually consists of drylands.Credit:Johnny Hunter/CC BY 2.0BUENOS AIRES, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - How has Argentina managed to maintain its image as one of the world's breadbaskets when a full three-fourths of its territory consists of drylands? This was one of the questions raised by the scientists who decided to create the National Observatory on Land Degradation and Desertification this year.
"The idea is to prevent, curb and mitigate desertification," agronomist Patricia Maccagno of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) told IPS.
Arid, semi-arid and sub-humid lands are vulnerable ecosystems that, if not effectively managed, are at risk of degradation and desertification, with the resultant loss of productive capacity.
Stephanie SeguinoCredit:Courtesy of Stephanie SeguinoUNITED NATIONS, Feb 22, 2012 (IPS) - The phrase "financing for gender equality" may sound dry, but it lies at the heart of some of the most intractable problems faced by women around the world today and whether the political will exists to allocate real resources to solving them or simply pay lip service.
Beginning next week, from Feb. 27 to Mar. 9, ministers and civil society delegates will meet at the United Nations for the 56th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW).
This year's meeting is especially critical because it will assess how governments have made good on promises at the 52nd session in 2008 to boost financing for gender equality and the empowerment of women.