[NEWS] Five politics links: Ai Weiwei on China, nuclear weapons, British navy, Venezuela oil, Iran

[rfmcdonald]

• Ai Weiwei is reported as noting at NOW Toronto the role of Western governments in enabling the rise of the People's Republic of China.


• Business Insider argues that, in terms of numbers, technology, and strategy, the nuclear arsenal of China is the best thought-out of any of the nine nuclear weapons states.


• SCMP notes how the naval ambitions of Britain in the Pacific make little military sense but perhaps some economic sense.


• Foreign Policy looks at how oil, in Venezuela, did not guarantee that country's indefinite prosperity.


• Open Democracy hosts an article suggests that monarchism, in the form of the Shah's son and heir Reza Pahlavi, actually has a chance of opposing the Islamic Republic.

Comments

On the matter of mainland China

[dewline]

I believe that our business dealings with that nation have blown up, in their faces as much as ours.