Talk about "San Francisco values" in the name of free speech, free protest, and free marijuana.
The city known for its liberal/regressive nuts, kooks, fanatics, and zealouts out to tilt all the windmills of the world, from China's human rights abuses, Darfur, Burma, Iraq, Afghanistan, global warming, animal rights, same-sex marriage, sex change as a human rights issue, and all this flaming causes of the human race have just tallied up the cost of hosting the World Olympics torch during its April 9 stop in the city.
Preliminary costs turned in by the city's "bean-counters" from City Hall put the tab at a whopping US$ 726,400 to San Francisco taxpayers. Click on for more details:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/BANQ106M7K.DTL
The context by which this bill must be exposed for its shocking perversity is demonstrated in this 3rd space, Spatium Trientis.
Consider this.
San Francisco, a city of 750,000 inhabitants, 1/4 of whom is ethnic Chinese, in America's most historic and most unique Chinatown, with a largely unknown, and under-reported narrative (among the mainstream Western press) spanning 150 years of ethnic Chinese overseas diasporic settlement, is:
1. Facing a budget crunch of US$ 300 million in the coming fiscal year;
2. This translates to reduction of social services, the downsizing of City Hall staff serving public needs, from homeless assitance, drug addition rehabitation, health care subsidies, housing for the poor, police and fire suppression services, public transportation needs, filling street potholes, public parks upkeep and maintenance, youth programs, senior and elderly care, etc. etc.
3. This is happening in a city in a region already known for its relative affluence and opulence, including Silicon Valley, home of Google, Apple, Oracle, Facebook, and Cisco, among others, which is now also reeling from the economic meltdown in Wall Street, and by the forces of globalization.
Put further in perspective, this protest "hoo-hah) cost each inhabitant in the city of San Francisco US$ 1 for San Francisco's day in the sun bashing China for hosting the Beijing Olympics games. US$ 1 a day is the equivalent of the daily wage of many of the poor in third world impoverished countries in the world.
Just for what ? Demonstrating what our chief China bashing officials, Supervisor Chris Daly, also nicknamed "Chris Dalai," the San Francisco reincarcanate of the Dalai Lama, San Franciscans' with a grandstanding "protest and alarm" resolution against China's record of human rights abuses and over the Tibet riots.
Measuring San Francisco's inhabitants relative to China's 1.3 billion people, at US$ 1 per person, identical to San Francisco's US$ 1 tab for each San Francisco taxpayer who lives in this city of 750,000 people; imagine what it would be like if the Chinese people in China similarly would mount an "alarm and protest" mau mau and like San Francisco, run up a tab of US$ 1 pro-rata per inhabitant to signify their anger against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, or to protest American "human rights abuses in Abu Graib and Guantanamo or the trampling of the civil liberties of the mujahadins resisting the American invastion of Afghanistan and Iraq.
At a whopping US$ 1 an inhaitant, that would have cost a whopping US$ 1.3 billion, and would cost China and its people, the equivalent of San Francisco's US$ 726,400, at US$ 1 per inhabitant.
Why not ? Because the Chinese people have more brains and make more sense than many of the nutheads and crackpots in San Francisco protest culture.
Consider this, a local TV reporter, Mike Sugarman, of KPIX local station, a CBS affiliate, took his camera crew and asked some of the protesters a simple question, showing each a map to point out "WHERE IS TIBET?" Click on the farcical answers shown by this video clip from YouTube :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQ17W0M9K7Q
Isn't this ridiculous ? Dear Johnny and Jane protester don't even know where TIBET is located in a map !!! And they are protesting !
This sordid story of free speech, free protest, and free marijuana is happening in the face of an imploding mess within America itself, one of which is the breakdown of our civil society, drugs, crime, and the dumbing down of education.
Merits of the underlying grievances aside, the Olympics games is not just about the government of China, but also its people, and the people outside of China. Where do they factor in during April 1, 2008; and where are their rights to access to enjoy the spirit of the Olympian athletes, especially our American Olympians who have trained so hard for this one-in-four-years' world competition in all of this hoo-hah ?
Sadly, Johnny "Six Pack" and "Soccer Jane Mom" in America are financially in deep "doo-doo;" they are losing their jobs, their homes, and their beer and pizza every sports TV game at your vapid U.S. media. They are losing their cars because they can't afford the loan payments anymore. The repo men are hounding Johnny and Jane in no end to pay their bills.
Gasoline prices have hit the roof. Bread and groceries are now rising at a pace unprecedented in recent memory.
At least 4 American airlines have shut down, and ran out of money because they can't fly their planes and keep bleeding red ink.
California, the biggest state in America, faces a US$ 14 billion budget deficit. That translates to $ 140,000 millions of US dollars in red ink. Public schools in California are being starved to death. The children of "Johnny Six Pack" and "Soccer Jane Mom" are not being educated.
And little Johnny and Jane can't catch up on their math, much less basic fundamental reading.
Do we ever wonder why many Americans simply hate China and what China represents ? It is the angst of an imploding society unraveling from within. And today 14% of Americans polled believe China is America's enemy, after Iraq and Iran, assuming that they know where each of these countries are located in the world map. Good grief.
And what so further patenthetically ridiculous is that America now is mired in an Iraq war from which its government and troops can't extricate themselves from; and now they want to pick a fight with Iran, and bash China as the "new evil empire."
All in the name of free speech, free protest, and democracy, U.S. style.
But the Chinese people are not dumb. Only San Franciscans are dumb enough to burn through $ US $ 726,400 in one day, enough to pay the daily wage of the equivalent of the entire city's population in the Third World.
Thanks to the Dalai Lama, his Holliness. And the perversity of his charity, compassion, and benevolence. How I wish that His Holliness should apply his charity, compassion, and benevolence feeding the poor and impoverished in the arrid Saharan desert countries of Africa.
How I wish his Holliness would spread his message of non-violence in the mean streets of San Francisco, where one district of our perverted city, in Bayview-Hunters Point is now "Combat zone" at nightime, with drive-by shootings which replicate Iraq.
For many military medics trained to be assigned overseas in Iraq, it is said that these soon-to-be assigned soldiers from the U.S. military are now undertaking their field training in the inner cities of America, e.g. Philadelphia, where trauma cases in our city hospitals, with gunshot wounds and knife wounds, have now become a pandemic in America's inner cities, including San Francisco.
Compassion, benevolence, harmony, and peace be upon him and his flock of Tibetan activists in the West. Protest cost, your Holliness. The CIA may pay you for your righteous protest in the name of your righteous cause, but they are not paying "Johnny Six Pack" and "Soccer Jane Mom" for their protests, and least of all San Franciscans.
Just visit our 'hood in San Francisco, and across the Bay in Oakland, the murder capital of the U.S. of A. And their congresswoman there, Rep. Barbara Lee, has the audacity to criticize China about human rights abuses and the violence in Tibet.
Look to your own backyard, Rep. Barbara Lee, I say. When you point your fingers at China, make sure that the other three fingers are pointed at yourself, and one is pointed to GOD. Not the Dalai Lama, a mere walking human creature in a safron robe who can talk the talk, but not walk the walk, nor do the do, as our African-American boys in the 'hood are used to saying in their own jargon.
"Walk the Walk ! " " Do the Do ! ." And " Stop givin that Jive !"
May Buddha be with the Dolly and his Hollywood "Shangri-la" wannabes and the Western back-benchers and their perverse "China bashing" leaders, especially Madame Speaker of the U.S. Congress, Nancy Pelosi. Those who throw rocks from big houses with glass windows better beware.
China and its people can't afford your free speech and freedom of the press. And certainly not America's perverted version of democracy, where incivil and uncivilized conduct of hooliganism, mau-mau, and strident protest, in the name of free speech, is passed on to American taxpayers as its society, with all its "armpit" malodorous stench, are being overlooked and ignored
Xie Xie. But no, Xie Xie.
The Chinese people can do better. Read on below
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/04/18/BANQ106M7K.DTL
