Free speech and free protests come with a price.
And from our perspective in 3rd Space (my blogsite, Spatium Tienti)), I must shed some light on the largely unreported side of the story which is almost completely ignored in the Western news media, the alleged champions of "freedom of the press and press access. " Hectoring against the Chinese for their missing out on the news, American-style.
Oh mi tofu --- FREE BUT NOT SO FREE.
The tab for all the Anti-Beijing Olympics torch relay protests at the San Francisco leg of the hooh-ha have yet to be finalized. Our city bean counters are still adding up the tab, folks.
But consider the tentative bill thus far just for one day of "San Francisco's day in the protest Beijing Olympics sun":
San Francisco public bus transportation (MUNI) added costs (rerouting):
US$ 150,000.
Police overtime:
US$ 500,000. to $ 600,000.
These are in U.S. dollars, not Hong Kong dollars ( US$ 1 to HKG $ 7.7):
Put these costs overruns in perspective:
San Francisco is facing a budget crunch of at least US $ 300 million
The American economy is in a tailspin from a recession causing a tidal wave of money woes within America, with California alone facing a looming budget "Tsunami" estimated to be between US$ 7 billion to US$ 10 billion, at least.
Johnny Six Pack and Soccer Jane Mom can't afford beer and pizzas anymore. They can't afford rent, gasoline, and the skyrocketing costs of groceries. They can't pay their mortgages and the jobs are being outsourced elswhere to India, China, and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific.
In California alone, more than 10,000 public school teachers face the sad news of not being able to teach our kids anymore because our governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Hollywood action hero of "The Terminator," is terminating teachers jobs and starving education by a US 7 billion cut in funding for the coming fiscal year starting July 1, 2008.
And in our small city of San Francisco of 700,000 inhabitants, at least 500 public school teachers in San Francisco's public schools, serving 50,000 school-age children, facethe prospect of being laid off, many of whom have received pink slips. Many of these soon to be laid off teachers are some of the most enthusiastic teachers savvy to the techno-new-world of the internet. Instead, the deadweights in our schools stay. The teachers' union, in their uncessant mau-mau, talks teachers' seniority which makes no sense.
No wonder - American kids are getting dumb and dumber. Many don't even know where Tibet is in a world map. Nor do their parents. And their parents are part of the screaming China-bashing and demonizing protesters in the din we saw and experienced on April 9, on Ground Zero in San Francisco.
No wonder their parents, Johnny and Jane are hopping mad about CHINDIA. In a recent American poll, the shocking news is that 14 % of Americans consider China to be America's next "enemy, " after Iraq and Iran. Good grief. Is India next ?
Our San Francisco City Hall is strapped with funding for its supposed services to the public, including payroll, police and fire services, public works repairs, upkeep, and infrastrutural projects, parks and recreation, pubic housing, health care, and yes, consider, funding homeless shelters and services for San Francisco's homeless, estimated to be 10,000 of them, wallowing in our mean streets, filled with street vermin, drunks, druggies, and crazies, and yes, our good hearted liberals and so-called progessive activists out to save the world from disastrous consequences of environmental proportions, especially in China.
Talk "Green." Talk Al Gore, and "The Incovenient Truth," And I will respond with "The Convenient Lie" the West and Americans are in denial about themselves and their own banality.
Those of you who have visited America's "most favorite city" may have experienced San Francisco in the raw, i.e. full of potholes, potheads, and crackpots.
In a city that has at least 30 legally city authorized marijuana stores, called "medicinal marijuana clinics" by creative San Franciscan "potheads," the " Baghdad by the Bay," or "America's favorite tourist destination" is in deep "doo-doo."
FREE SPEECH? FREE TIBET ? FREE MARIJUANA? FREE THE HOMELESS BUMS?
Sorry, buddies. There are no more free lunches. Free Marijuana maybe. And free to be reckless vulgar, boorish, and uncivil. And free to be poor and impoverished in spirits and in the pocketbook of Western crass hypermaterialism and hyperconsumerism.
Welcome to the new challenged world of globalization. Click on for more details below.
http://www.examiner.com/a-1343864~City_coffers_feeling_heat_from_torch_relay.html
