An overheated European society gone amuck.
As if the scourge of swine flu contaminating the world and threatening public health is bad news enough, a man going amuck plowed through 20 spectators in a parade in Holland targeting the Dutch royals, killing 5 Dutch.
Sign of our times.... Europe crumbling from within.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Car-Careers-Into-Crowd-Watching-Dutch-Queen-Beatrixs-Royal-Motorcade-in-Apeldoorn-Holland/Article/200904415272530?lpos=World_News_Carousel_Region_1&lid=ARTICLE_15272530_Car_Careers_Into_Crowd_Watching_Dutch_Queen_Beatrixs_Royal_Motorcade_in_Apeldoorn%2C_Holland
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Western hubris over the effectiveness of airport thermal imaging machines vs. swine flu detection
Let's face it.... the installation of thermal imaging machines in Asian-Pacific international airports to screen air passengers for fever is one measure being undertaken to detect and prevent the spread of the swine flu.
Asians are quantum leaps ahead compared to the Americans in using these US$ 50,000"Made in Singapore" machines built by Singapore Technologies Electronics.
To their discredit... and American hubris, none of these machines are being used in U.S. airports... from Los Angeles to Chicago, Atlanta to New York City.
Nada. None. No thermal imaging machines.
Yet, many Europeans and Americans including those from the World Health Organization (WHO) are poo-pooing the effectiveness of these machines in detecting swine flu.
See what they have to say:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.f2748afa0a7f6e5a9ac54f23fbbf5942.41&show_article=1
Asians are quantum leaps ahead compared to the Americans in using these US$ 50,000"Made in Singapore" machines built by Singapore Technologies Electronics.
To their discredit... and American hubris, none of these machines are being used in U.S. airports... from Los Angeles to Chicago, Atlanta to New York City.
Nada. None. No thermal imaging machines.
Yet, many Europeans and Americans including those from the World Health Organization (WHO) are poo-pooing the effectiveness of these machines in detecting swine flu.
See what they have to say:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.f2748afa0a7f6e5a9ac54f23fbbf5942.41&show_article=1
Playing the West like a virtuoso with a fiddle - the Dalai Lama plays the "America Card" in campuses from Berkeley to Boston on a "Shangri-la" theme
By "westernizing" his relentless campaign riding on the wave of 'China Bashing" and "Chinese Demonization" in the West, the Dalai Lama is increasingly getting bold and reckless in his gambit to re-establish his theocratic rule in the land of his birth.
Trouble is.... the more he spun... and the more he captures the imagination of Westerners..... the more he raised hackles and resentment from the Chinese inside and outside of China, including many Huarens in the ethnic overseas Diaspora.
This devious political monk is trying to "westernize" his fight, while he is finding that his base inside China and inside Zizhang (aka Tibet) province is fast eroding and evaporating.
The Dalai Lama is worshipped in the West; his market is in the West where he is treated like a rock star, more popular than Mick Jagger. But inside China, his name is now mud.
Desperate times call for desperate moves.
From his base in Dharamsala, the political monk in saffron robe, backed by his Western backers, are relentlessly scheming, planning, scripting, staging, and amplifying their "bad-mouthing" and vicious "China bashing" and "Chinese demonization" campaign, and pressing all the buttons to attempt to cajole, pressure, and arm-twist Chinese officials to allow his theoracy the right to re-implant its roots anew in once feudal Zizhang, aka Tibet.
The footprints are evidencing the pushing of the "I" word, i.e. Independence, while mouthing superficially the "A" word, i.e. autonomy.
Since early last year, in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics Games opening on August 8, 2008, the vicious campaign to derail and "bad-mouth" China, orchestrated by Western governments, with their news media flacks and ratpacks, with the Dalai Lama as "prop" to burnish and validate their PR war, has been incessant and relentless.
And this year, in the lead-up to China's 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 2009, the game plan is already being executed.
The scripted, rehearsal "trial run" of the Dalai Lama, with his "bad-mouthing" campaign was carried last week, first with a visit to California, with stops in liberal campuses in Santa Barbara and in Berkeley.
The "PR" campaign is disingenious. Talk "spirituality;" but do "politics" in action.
And stick it to China with that mischievious laughter that is insidious to White people. White folks love a bald man in monk's robe mouthing subtle esoteric "words of wisdom"
But the signs in Europe are not conducive to the Dalai Lama. Germany's Merkel... then Britain's Brown, and now France's Sarkozy are all caving and shifting course. From the blind support heretofore extended to the Dalai Lama, they are now changing colours and reaffirming China's sovereignty over Zizhang (Tibet) province.
That being the case, the Dalai Lama is now looking to the Barack Obama White House and the liberal Obamaniac bandwagon and constituency in America for his support.
The eye on the prize is to finniggle a "photo-op" with Barack Obama in the White House to burnish the cause of the Dalai Lama and Team Tibet-Shangri-la.
And last week, the launching of this new "PR" campaign on the lead-up to October, 2009 saw its first dress rehearsal in California, first in Santa Barbara and next in the San Francisco Bay Area. The road show wound its way to another Obamaniac bastion, the Boston school area around Harvard, MIT and Boston College.
The ostensible purpose is to promote Tibetan buddhism and spirituality, the hidden agenda to to push Tibetan-Shangri-la independence and the restoration of the Lama theocracy in Zizhang Province.
In the politically putrid environment that is America today, with its economy in near collaspe, and with Johnny Six-Pack and Soccer Jane Mom in dire financial straits, their kids with a college degree facing joblessness, and God knows what is in store... as more corporate banruptcies and bank failures erupt, the notion of a "Spiritual Demi-God" in the form of a stereotypical Swami who can levitate and give ad-hominems are indeed very uplifting and lends a palliative away from economic and spiritual pain.
And here goes the Dalai Lama... with a cult-like "Rock Star" status, and the Westerners lap it all up. :-) There's indeed Nirvana in t'ham t'har SHANGRI-LA!
The land where the Lamas can levitate and lend succor to those stressed out and sitressed from the vulgarity and vacuousness of Western living. Westerners are up to their "yin-yang" in despair, and any relief from someone who appeared and seemed mystic, mythical, and exotic is deemed appropriate and desirable, and certainly much better than alcohol or valium.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/04/30/in_local_visit_dalai_lama_takes_firm_stance_on_china/?page=full
After reading the above, try reading the following blog:
http://www.georgekoo.blogspot.com/
Trouble is.... the more he spun... and the more he captures the imagination of Westerners..... the more he raised hackles and resentment from the Chinese inside and outside of China, including many Huarens in the ethnic overseas Diaspora.
This devious political monk is trying to "westernize" his fight, while he is finding that his base inside China and inside Zizhang (aka Tibet) province is fast eroding and evaporating.
The Dalai Lama is worshipped in the West; his market is in the West where he is treated like a rock star, more popular than Mick Jagger. But inside China, his name is now mud.
Desperate times call for desperate moves.
From his base in Dharamsala, the political monk in saffron robe, backed by his Western backers, are relentlessly scheming, planning, scripting, staging, and amplifying their "bad-mouthing" and vicious "China bashing" and "Chinese demonization" campaign, and pressing all the buttons to attempt to cajole, pressure, and arm-twist Chinese officials to allow his theoracy the right to re-implant its roots anew in once feudal Zizhang, aka Tibet.
The footprints are evidencing the pushing of the "I" word, i.e. Independence, while mouthing superficially the "A" word, i.e. autonomy.
Since early last year, in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics Games opening on August 8, 2008, the vicious campaign to derail and "bad-mouth" China, orchestrated by Western governments, with their news media flacks and ratpacks, with the Dalai Lama as "prop" to burnish and validate their PR war, has been incessant and relentless.
And this year, in the lead-up to China's 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 2009, the game plan is already being executed.
The scripted, rehearsal "trial run" of the Dalai Lama, with his "bad-mouthing" campaign was carried last week, first with a visit to California, with stops in liberal campuses in Santa Barbara and in Berkeley.
The "PR" campaign is disingenious. Talk "spirituality;" but do "politics" in action.
And stick it to China with that mischievious laughter that is insidious to White people. White folks love a bald man in monk's robe mouthing subtle esoteric "words of wisdom"
But the signs in Europe are not conducive to the Dalai Lama. Germany's Merkel... then Britain's Brown, and now France's Sarkozy are all caving and shifting course. From the blind support heretofore extended to the Dalai Lama, they are now changing colours and reaffirming China's sovereignty over Zizhang (Tibet) province.
That being the case, the Dalai Lama is now looking to the Barack Obama White House and the liberal Obamaniac bandwagon and constituency in America for his support.
The eye on the prize is to finniggle a "photo-op" with Barack Obama in the White House to burnish the cause of the Dalai Lama and Team Tibet-Shangri-la.
And last week, the launching of this new "PR" campaign on the lead-up to October, 2009 saw its first dress rehearsal in California, first in Santa Barbara and next in the San Francisco Bay Area. The road show wound its way to another Obamaniac bastion, the Boston school area around Harvard, MIT and Boston College.
The ostensible purpose is to promote Tibetan buddhism and spirituality, the hidden agenda to to push Tibetan-Shangri-la independence and the restoration of the Lama theocracy in Zizhang Province.
In the politically putrid environment that is America today, with its economy in near collaspe, and with Johnny Six-Pack and Soccer Jane Mom in dire financial straits, their kids with a college degree facing joblessness, and God knows what is in store... as more corporate banruptcies and bank failures erupt, the notion of a "Spiritual Demi-God" in the form of a stereotypical Swami who can levitate and give ad-hominems are indeed very uplifting and lends a palliative away from economic and spiritual pain.
And here goes the Dalai Lama... with a cult-like "Rock Star" status, and the Westerners lap it all up. :-) There's indeed Nirvana in t'ham t'har SHANGRI-LA!
The land where the Lamas can levitate and lend succor to those stressed out and sitressed from the vulgarity and vacuousness of Western living. Westerners are up to their "yin-yang" in despair, and any relief from someone who appeared and seemed mystic, mythical, and exotic is deemed appropriate and desirable, and certainly much better than alcohol or valium.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/04/30/in_local_visit_dalai_lama_takes_firm_stance_on_china/?page=full
After reading the above, try reading the following blog:
http://www.georgekoo.blogspot.com/
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
Swine Flu pandemic spreads -- is it cause for alarm ? Some tips to avoid catching the virus
Here's what you need to know about Swine Flu :
Q: How do I protect myself and my family?
A: For now, take commonsense precautions. Cover your coughs and sneezes, with a tissue that you throw away or by sneezing into your elbow rather than your hand. Wash hands frequently; if soap and water aren't available, hand gels can substitute. Stay home if you're sick and keep children home from school if they are.
Q: How easy is it to catch this virus?
A: Scientists don't yet know if it takes fairly close or prolonged contact with someone who's sick, or if it's more easily spread. But in general, flu viruses spread through uncovered coughs and sneezes or — and this is important — by touching your mouth or nose with unwashed hands. Flu viruses can live on surfaces for several hours, like a doorknob just touched by someone who sneezed into his hand.
Q: In Mexico, officials are handing out face masks. Do I need one?
A: The CDC says there's not good evidence that masks really help outside of health care settings. It's safer just to avoid close contact with someone who's sick and avoid crowded gatherings in places where swine flu is known to be spreading. But if you can't do that, CDC guidelines say it's OK to consider a mask — just don't let it substitute for good precautions.
Q: Is swine flu treatable?
A: Yes, with the flu drugs Tamiflu or Relenza, but not with two older flu medications.
Q: Is there enough?
A: Yes. The federal government has stockpiled enough of the drugs to treat 50 million people, and many states have additional stocks. As a precaution, the CDC has shipped a quarter of that supply to the states to keep on hand just in case the virus starts spreading more than it has so far.
Q: Should I take Tamiflu as a precaution if I'm not sick yet?
A: No. "What are you going to do with it, use it when you get a sniffle?" asks Dr. Marc Siegel of New York University Langone Medical Center and author of "Bird Flu: Everything you Need To Know About The Next Pandemic." Overusing antiviral drugs can help germs become resistant to them.
Q: How big is my risk?
A: For most people, very low. Outside of Mexico, so far clusters of illnesses seem related to Mexican travel. New York City's cluster, for instance, consists of students and family members at one school where some students came back ill from spring break in Mexico.
Q: Why are people dying in Mexico and not here?
A: That's a mystery. First, understand that no one really knows just how many people in Mexico are dying of this flu strain, or how many have it. Only a fraction of the suspected deaths have been tested and confirmed as swine flu, and some initially suspected cases were caused by something else.
Q: Should I cancel my planned trip to Mexico?
A: The U.S. did issue a travel advisory Monday discouraging nonessential travel there.
Q: What else is the U.S., or anyone else, doing to try to stop this virus?
A: The U.S. is beginning limited screening of travelers from Mexico, so that the obviously sick can be sent for treatment. Other governments have issued their own travel warnings and restrictions. Mexico is taking the biggest steps, closings that limit most crowded gatherings. In the U.S., communities with clusters of illness also may limit contact — New York closed the affected school for a few days, for example — so stay tuned to hear if your area eventually is affected.
Q: What are the symptoms?
A: They're similar to regular human flu — a fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people also have diarrhea and vomiting.
Q: How do I know if I should see a doctor? Maybe my symptoms are from something else — like pollen?
A: Health authorities say if you live in places where swine flu cases have been confirmed, or you recently traveled to Mexico, and you have flulike symptoms, ask your doctor if you need treatment or to be tested. Allergies won't cause a fever. And run-of-the-mill stomach bugs won't be accompanied by respiratory symptoms, notes Dr. Wayne Reynolds of Newport News, Va., spokesman for the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Q: Is there a vaccine to prevent this new infection?
A: No. And CDC's initial testing suggests that last winter's flu shot didn't offer any cross-protection.
Q: How long would it take to produce a vaccine?
A: A few months. The CDC has created what's called "seed stock" of the new virus that manufacturers would need to start production. But the government hasn't yet decided if the outbreak is bad enough to order that.
Q: What is swine flu?
A: Pigs spread their own strains of influenza and every so often people catch one, usually after contact with the animals. This new strain is a mix of pig viruses with some human and bird viruses. Unlike more typical swine flu, it is spreading person-to-person. A 1976 outbreak of another unusual swine flu at Fort Dix, N.J., prompted a problematic mass vaccination campaign, but that time the flu fizzled out.
Q: So is it safe to eat pork?
A: Yes. Swine influenza viruses don't spread through food.
Q: And whatever happened to bird flu? Wasn't that supposed to be the next pandemic?
A: Specialists have long warned that the issue is a never-before-seen strain that people have little if any natural immunity to, regardless of whether it seems to originate from a bird or a pig. Bird flu hasn't gone away; scientists are tracking it, too.
___
EDITOR's NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Q: How do I protect myself and my family?
A: For now, take commonsense precautions. Cover your coughs and sneezes, with a tissue that you throw away or by sneezing into your elbow rather than your hand. Wash hands frequently; if soap and water aren't available, hand gels can substitute. Stay home if you're sick and keep children home from school if they are.
Q: How easy is it to catch this virus?
A: Scientists don't yet know if it takes fairly close or prolonged contact with someone who's sick, or if it's more easily spread. But in general, flu viruses spread through uncovered coughs and sneezes or — and this is important — by touching your mouth or nose with unwashed hands. Flu viruses can live on surfaces for several hours, like a doorknob just touched by someone who sneezed into his hand.
Q: In Mexico, officials are handing out face masks. Do I need one?
A: The CDC says there's not good evidence that masks really help outside of health care settings. It's safer just to avoid close contact with someone who's sick and avoid crowded gatherings in places where swine flu is known to be spreading. But if you can't do that, CDC guidelines say it's OK to consider a mask — just don't let it substitute for good precautions.
Q: Is swine flu treatable?
A: Yes, with the flu drugs Tamiflu or Relenza, but not with two older flu medications.
Q: Is there enough?
A: Yes. The federal government has stockpiled enough of the drugs to treat 50 million people, and many states have additional stocks. As a precaution, the CDC has shipped a quarter of that supply to the states to keep on hand just in case the virus starts spreading more than it has so far.
Q: Should I take Tamiflu as a precaution if I'm not sick yet?
A: No. "What are you going to do with it, use it when you get a sniffle?" asks Dr. Marc Siegel of New York University Langone Medical Center and author of "Bird Flu: Everything you Need To Know About The Next Pandemic." Overusing antiviral drugs can help germs become resistant to them.
Q: How big is my risk?
A: For most people, very low. Outside of Mexico, so far clusters of illnesses seem related to Mexican travel. New York City's cluster, for instance, consists of students and family members at one school where some students came back ill from spring break in Mexico.
Q: Why are people dying in Mexico and not here?
A: That's a mystery. First, understand that no one really knows just how many people in Mexico are dying of this flu strain, or how many have it. Only a fraction of the suspected deaths have been tested and confirmed as swine flu, and some initially suspected cases were caused by something else.
Q: Should I cancel my planned trip to Mexico?
A: The U.S. did issue a travel advisory Monday discouraging nonessential travel there.
Q: What else is the U.S., or anyone else, doing to try to stop this virus?
A: The U.S. is beginning limited screening of travelers from Mexico, so that the obviously sick can be sent for treatment. Other governments have issued their own travel warnings and restrictions. Mexico is taking the biggest steps, closings that limit most crowded gatherings. In the U.S., communities with clusters of illness also may limit contact — New York closed the affected school for a few days, for example — so stay tuned to hear if your area eventually is affected.
Q: What are the symptoms?
A: They're similar to regular human flu — a fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Some people also have diarrhea and vomiting.
Q: How do I know if I should see a doctor? Maybe my symptoms are from something else — like pollen?
A: Health authorities say if you live in places where swine flu cases have been confirmed, or you recently traveled to Mexico, and you have flulike symptoms, ask your doctor if you need treatment or to be tested. Allergies won't cause a fever. And run-of-the-mill stomach bugs won't be accompanied by respiratory symptoms, notes Dr. Wayne Reynolds of Newport News, Va., spokesman for the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Q: Is there a vaccine to prevent this new infection?
A: No. And CDC's initial testing suggests that last winter's flu shot didn't offer any cross-protection.
Q: How long would it take to produce a vaccine?
A: A few months. The CDC has created what's called "seed stock" of the new virus that manufacturers would need to start production. But the government hasn't yet decided if the outbreak is bad enough to order that.
Q: What is swine flu?
A: Pigs spread their own strains of influenza and every so often people catch one, usually after contact with the animals. This new strain is a mix of pig viruses with some human and bird viruses. Unlike more typical swine flu, it is spreading person-to-person. A 1976 outbreak of another unusual swine flu at Fort Dix, N.J., prompted a problematic mass vaccination campaign, but that time the flu fizzled out.
Q: So is it safe to eat pork?
A: Yes. Swine influenza viruses don't spread through food.
Q: And whatever happened to bird flu? Wasn't that supposed to be the next pandemic?
A: Specialists have long warned that the issue is a never-before-seen strain that people have little if any natural immunity to, regardless of whether it seems to originate from a bird or a pig. Bird flu hasn't gone away; scientists are tracking it, too.
___
EDITOR's NOTE — Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The Associated Press in Washington.
Is it "ultra-nationalism" or is it cleansing China and its people of a genuflecting, craven "neocolonial mentality" - the "yellow monkey" syndrome
The residues of Western imperialism and colonialism a century after gunboat diplomacy, the Opium War, the establishment of foreign concessions and colonies in China and Asia continue to linger and linger and morphed into new viruses of "neo-colonialism" and "neo-colonial mentality" among ethnic Chinese and their fellow Asians.
This proposition is no less true with Asians from the ASEAN countries, whose mentality remains weaned on the notion that "Western means Superior;" or what I have often derisively belittled as "The Western Fart smells more fragrant" mentality.
I have been in China many times and in many high-end luxury hotels, the disparate treatment being accorded by Chinese hotel staff towards Western guests, relative to Chinese guests or other non-Western guests, are dramatically and qualitatively different.
It is not just that "suck up" "kiss White ass" attitude which continually annoys me, especially in the country of one's own roots.
Yellow people should cleanse themselves of any residue of this craven, sick "colonial" and "neo-colonial" suck-up mentality.
Lately, you will noticed that among Western bloggers, including those European, UK and White students, scholars, and visitors to China, living in China... there remains this hubris, arrogance, and condescending attitude that somehow, the ethnic Chinese is less than or inferior to the Westerners.
And many ethnic Chinese, inside and outside China, cravenly and passively accept this "inferior" status.
These days, a few bloggers in the net, myself included, many ethnic Chinese living overseas, are beginning to sound off and raise hackles about this.
We are being branded and tagged as "ultra-nationalists" or "ultra-patriots" or "extremists" by many Western pundits and their Chinese "gungadins" and "spearcarriers" inside and outside China.
Let's not kid ourselves.... among China's current officialdom... there remains a lot of "compradores" and "colonials" in their midst.
The seeming attitude is: " West is infinitely superior; West is absolutely better. We must imitate the WEST."
As Huarens in the ethnic Chinese overseas Diaspora, we must call these Chinese officials on this "yellow monkey syndrome" be they from Beijing, Taipei, HKG or Macau.
This campaign to rid China and its people of the "residues" of Western imperialism and colonialism in China and the rest of Asia will take generations. And all Huarens must be vigilant, persistent and relentless in fighting for the humanity and self-dignity of the Chinese and their fellow Asians... under the principles of mutual respect, reciprocity, and non-interference in each country's internal political affairs.
Western hubris, arrogance and bullying must be curbed and exorcised.
The proponents who agree with the authors of "China is not happy" have a point. All decent Chinese with an iota of sense of Chinese history and civilizational roots in their vein have a right not to be happy, but be unhappy at some of the social cultural winds of the "yellow monkey syndrome" blowing inside China today.
This proposition is no less true with Asians from the ASEAN countries, whose mentality remains weaned on the notion that "Western means Superior;" or what I have often derisively belittled as "The Western Fart smells more fragrant" mentality.
I have been in China many times and in many high-end luxury hotels, the disparate treatment being accorded by Chinese hotel staff towards Western guests, relative to Chinese guests or other non-Western guests, are dramatically and qualitatively different.
It is not just that "suck up" "kiss White ass" attitude which continually annoys me, especially in the country of one's own roots.
Yellow people should cleanse themselves of any residue of this craven, sick "colonial" and "neo-colonial" suck-up mentality.
Lately, you will noticed that among Western bloggers, including those European, UK and White students, scholars, and visitors to China, living in China... there remains this hubris, arrogance, and condescending attitude that somehow, the ethnic Chinese is less than or inferior to the Westerners.
And many ethnic Chinese, inside and outside China, cravenly and passively accept this "inferior" status.
These days, a few bloggers in the net, myself included, many ethnic Chinese living overseas, are beginning to sound off and raise hackles about this.
We are being branded and tagged as "ultra-nationalists" or "ultra-patriots" or "extremists" by many Western pundits and their Chinese "gungadins" and "spearcarriers" inside and outside China.
Let's not kid ourselves.... among China's current officialdom... there remains a lot of "compradores" and "colonials" in their midst.
The seeming attitude is: " West is infinitely superior; West is absolutely better. We must imitate the WEST."
As Huarens in the ethnic Chinese overseas Diaspora, we must call these Chinese officials on this "yellow monkey syndrome" be they from Beijing, Taipei, HKG or Macau.
This campaign to rid China and its people of the "residues" of Western imperialism and colonialism in China and the rest of Asia will take generations. And all Huarens must be vigilant, persistent and relentless in fighting for the humanity and self-dignity of the Chinese and their fellow Asians... under the principles of mutual respect, reciprocity, and non-interference in each country's internal political affairs.
Western hubris, arrogance and bullying must be curbed and exorcised.
The proponents who agree with the authors of "China is not happy" have a point. All decent Chinese with an iota of sense of Chinese history and civilizational roots in their vein have a right not to be happy, but be unhappy at some of the social cultural winds of the "yellow monkey syndrome" blowing inside China today.
Monday, April 27, 2009
The "Cult of the Dalai Lama" warps the Western-European view and distorts their view about Tibet,their mythical spiritual non-existent "Shangri-la."
The "cult of the Dolly" is intensifying in the WEST.
In these trying tough times when civil society is unraveling in Europe, the United Kingdom and in the United States of America, the spiritual vapidness and emptiness of white European people, faced with a bleak dire economic future, the financial collaspe of Wall Street and Canary Wharf, American and Europeans are gasping for some air, succor, and some upliftment from their politically putrid society in dire economic times of high-stress.
The cult of the Dolly," exuding that faraway land of Nirvana, of spiritual upliftment and levitation, of the "Swami" who can bring relief, like Rollaids and those hemmorhoid tablets, has become the mantra for many white people from America and Europe. And many are naive but obsessed with Oriental mysticism and spirituality.
The bald man in saffron rope fits that stereotype of a "spiritual demi-God" and "Superhuman." And those "lame-brained" Hollywood moguls, hooked on dope, in their white supremacist ignorance, provide top billing to that Holy Man and keep spinning this "snake oil" pitch about the mythical, non-existent "Shangri-la." The imagery is spun along this naivite ..... The Messiah or the spiritual monk who can uplift the Westerners from their abject life of vulgarity, vacuousness, vapid spirituality in a political putrid environment. In horrifically bad times, this fanatical worship becomes a "cult."
Just look at some of the spin evident in the latest news media in American media scripting, spinning, and shaping their story of the Dolly.
The "cult of the Dolly" defies logic. And for us Asians.... it just points to the dumb insularity, and racialistic naivite of many whites living in the WEST, especially Europe, America, Canada, Australia. Only on the issue of the Dolly, this racism is a maniacal, obsessive blind worship of a bald man whose feet are to be smelled... never mind that the Dolly is a glutton whose gall bladder was recently removed because of a high-fat diet on high-choleterol meat.
And here our MAN from Dharamsala is proclaiming a life of poverty, asceticism, and spirituality which the White Man absolutely adores and blindly worships. Never mind that high-fat diet and the gall bladder operation. Let's be blunt.... our monk from Dharamsala is not "homeless" but living "high" off of CIA subsidies and peddling "snake oil" to a putrid WEST.
In turn, those who are critical of the Lamas and their feudal history are attacked; and in that offensive, the Western fanatics behind TEAM TIBET SHANGRI-LA conjure up all those imagery of the yellow horde... those slin-eyed, demons and devils from the Hans, led by Athila the Han, who are torturing their Holly Man, their Moses and his flock.
Rubbish.... fanaticism, like the cults which spring up from time to time here in America... from Hollywood's stereotypical imagery of the spiritual "Swami" to a bald-headed monk who can levitate and mouth "words of wisdom" albeit in broken English and with a strong accent. :-)
But try convincing a blind Dolly worshiper in the WEST that there's hypocrisy in this silly "Cult of the Dolly."
You will be lucky if you don't get crucified and get nailed to the cross of American hysterical public opinion. For being a heretic. For promoting heresay.
Dumb society. Dumb politics. A society of ignoramuses, thieves, scoundrels, and cultural philistines.
Welcome to Amerika... an increadingly "dumbed-down society" and a politically and culturally putrid environment. It shows in publications like the New York Times with their "China bashers" working within that news organization.
And here the Americans are accusing China of having a "closed society."
Incidentally, didn't the Chinese go through their own "Cult of Mao Zedong" in its recent contemporary history.
Instead of the "Red Guards," just change the color to "Saffron." They are one and the same except as to choice of colours.
Click on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27iht-edchina.html?hpw
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/26/BAHP17961C.DTL
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j8MUYDcv-2gpNVzEJF-6qtlTWP5w
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gUdUvyJms9c7N7yBCMNL3yAcsIKwD97QI1UG1
In these trying tough times when civil society is unraveling in Europe, the United Kingdom and in the United States of America, the spiritual vapidness and emptiness of white European people, faced with a bleak dire economic future, the financial collaspe of Wall Street and Canary Wharf, American and Europeans are gasping for some air, succor, and some upliftment from their politically putrid society in dire economic times of high-stress.
The cult of the Dolly," exuding that faraway land of Nirvana, of spiritual upliftment and levitation, of the "Swami" who can bring relief, like Rollaids and those hemmorhoid tablets, has become the mantra for many white people from America and Europe. And many are naive but obsessed with Oriental mysticism and spirituality.
The bald man in saffron rope fits that stereotype of a "spiritual demi-God" and "Superhuman." And those "lame-brained" Hollywood moguls, hooked on dope, in their white supremacist ignorance, provide top billing to that Holy Man and keep spinning this "snake oil" pitch about the mythical, non-existent "Shangri-la." The imagery is spun along this naivite ..... The Messiah or the spiritual monk who can uplift the Westerners from their abject life of vulgarity, vacuousness, vapid spirituality in a political putrid environment. In horrifically bad times, this fanatical worship becomes a "cult."
Just look at some of the spin evident in the latest news media in American media scripting, spinning, and shaping their story of the Dolly.
The "cult of the Dolly" defies logic. And for us Asians.... it just points to the dumb insularity, and racialistic naivite of many whites living in the WEST, especially Europe, America, Canada, Australia. Only on the issue of the Dolly, this racism is a maniacal, obsessive blind worship of a bald man whose feet are to be smelled... never mind that the Dolly is a glutton whose gall bladder was recently removed because of a high-fat diet on high-choleterol meat.
And here our MAN from Dharamsala is proclaiming a life of poverty, asceticism, and spirituality which the White Man absolutely adores and blindly worships. Never mind that high-fat diet and the gall bladder operation. Let's be blunt.... our monk from Dharamsala is not "homeless" but living "high" off of CIA subsidies and peddling "snake oil" to a putrid WEST.
In turn, those who are critical of the Lamas and their feudal history are attacked; and in that offensive, the Western fanatics behind TEAM TIBET SHANGRI-LA conjure up all those imagery of the yellow horde... those slin-eyed, demons and devils from the Hans, led by Athila the Han, who are torturing their Holly Man, their Moses and his flock.
Rubbish.... fanaticism, like the cults which spring up from time to time here in America... from Hollywood's stereotypical imagery of the spiritual "Swami" to a bald-headed monk who can levitate and mouth "words of wisdom" albeit in broken English and with a strong accent. :-)
But try convincing a blind Dolly worshiper in the WEST that there's hypocrisy in this silly "Cult of the Dolly."
You will be lucky if you don't get crucified and get nailed to the cross of American hysterical public opinion. For being a heretic. For promoting heresay.
Dumb society. Dumb politics. A society of ignoramuses, thieves, scoundrels, and cultural philistines.
Welcome to Amerika... an increadingly "dumbed-down society" and a politically and culturally putrid environment. It shows in publications like the New York Times with their "China bashers" working within that news organization.
And here the Americans are accusing China of having a "closed society."
Incidentally, didn't the Chinese go through their own "Cult of Mao Zedong" in its recent contemporary history.
Instead of the "Red Guards," just change the color to "Saffron." They are one and the same except as to choice of colours.
Click on:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/27/opinion/27iht-edchina.html?hpw
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/04/26/BAHP17961C.DTL
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j8MUYDcv-2gpNVzEJF-6qtlTWP5w
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gUdUvyJms9c7N7yBCMNL3yAcsIKwD97QI1UG1
The countdown to the dwindlling diminution of American print newspapers amind losing circulation and losing advertisers
The writing is on the wall.... the steady decline of print newspaper circulation all across America... and how many heretofore major print newspaper organizations such as the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Gannett are facing the looming prospect of dwindling circulation and advertising, and running out of cash.
As I took my public transporation this morning on my way to work in San Francisco downtown, there was a young Latino street worker handing out free copies of the San Francisco Examiner, a tabloid-size free newspaper that is now besieging the San Francisco Chronicle... the latter losing money steadily and facing the prospect of continuing economic woes and hemmorrhaging.
American newspapers, as we know it, are likely to be completely transformed in the forseable future. These "red inks" can't go on forever.
Picture the scenario as reported in the net:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/US-newspaper-circulation-sees-apf-15039695.html?.v=6
Here's a breakdown of the List of American daily newspapers and their dwindling circulation:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003966608
Let's face it..... Fact is today our American Johnnys and Janes are no longer reading print newspapers... nor care to be informed nor stay informed.
As I took my public transporation this morning on my way to work in San Francisco downtown, there was a young Latino street worker handing out free copies of the San Francisco Examiner, a tabloid-size free newspaper that is now besieging the San Francisco Chronicle... the latter losing money steadily and facing the prospect of continuing economic woes and hemmorrhaging.
American newspapers, as we know it, are likely to be completely transformed in the forseable future. These "red inks" can't go on forever.
Picture the scenario as reported in the net:
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/US-newspaper-circulation-sees-apf-15039695.html?.v=6
Here's a breakdown of the List of American daily newspapers and their dwindling circulation:
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003966608
Let's face it..... Fact is today our American Johnnys and Janes are no longer reading print newspapers... nor care to be informed nor stay informed.
Retirement pension plans - the "safety net" and "eggs nest" accorded American workers now besieged and under severe stress and getting wobbly
The grim economic news today is being compounded further by the spread of swine flu and the potential health hazard of a global virus pandemic which threatens humankind.
Everyone is getting very skittish and paranoid about the Swine Flu; and public health officials all over the world are closely monitoring, mobilizing, and organizing massive publc health resources to combat the spread and contamination of this public health scourge.
That said, with clear problems surging to the forefront about public health, there is clearly a systemic breakdown and hugh crisis confronting the globe, and most especially the developed nations in the WEST, of colossal proportions.
It extends beyond joblessness to the collaspe of health care coverage, costs of insurance, and now the looming crisis of corporate failures and bankruptcies and how these would impact the millions of aging and retired workers in American and European companies.
This crisis is particularly acute in America's auto industry.
With GM, Chrysler poised to becoming insolvent, and bankruptcies looming, we are facing an "out of control" Mack truck, without brakes careenng out of control in the highway.... and that is the pension plans and benefits which heretofore have borne the burden of taking care of retired auto workers, and their suppliers from top to bottom of the "food chain."
It is estimated that for every American automobile that is being manufactured and head out from Detroit's assembly line, a gross figure estimated to be around US$ 1,500.00 must be paid to provide the pension benefits of those retired auto workers who no longer work the assemblies. They called these "legacy costs"; and they are a a burdensome drag which is making the U.S. auto industry belly up and become uncompetitive.
All down the auto industry labor food chain, there is tremendous stresses and pain being felt. Legacy costs, labor costs, materials costs, and the overall systemic collaspe of the Western-European economic system of unbriddled greed and unfettered capitalism.
In sum, with the looming meltdown and collaspe of GM and Chrysler, we are looking down the line at the collaspe of America's pension system, both publicluy-financed federal social security of its state counterparts, such as the one in California called CALPERS.
Worse, those private pension plans previoulsy guaranteed under The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a government agency created (after lobbying by the United Auto Workers) in 1974,insuring these corporate pension plans, are getting wobbly and facing prospects of insolvency.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation currently insures 29,000 pension plans -- down from 114,000 plans in 1985.
As the population of many developed countries age and keeping getting older, including Japan, Europe, and the United States of America, we are looking at the dire prospects of a collaspe of pensions systems, as we know them, and the social safety net heretofore guaranteeing that retiring workers are taken care of.
Read further:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=7424473&page=1
Everyone is getting very skittish and paranoid about the Swine Flu; and public health officials all over the world are closely monitoring, mobilizing, and organizing massive publc health resources to combat the spread and contamination of this public health scourge.
That said, with clear problems surging to the forefront about public health, there is clearly a systemic breakdown and hugh crisis confronting the globe, and most especially the developed nations in the WEST, of colossal proportions.
It extends beyond joblessness to the collaspe of health care coverage, costs of insurance, and now the looming crisis of corporate failures and bankruptcies and how these would impact the millions of aging and retired workers in American and European companies.
This crisis is particularly acute in America's auto industry.
With GM, Chrysler poised to becoming insolvent, and bankruptcies looming, we are facing an "out of control" Mack truck, without brakes careenng out of control in the highway.... and that is the pension plans and benefits which heretofore have borne the burden of taking care of retired auto workers, and their suppliers from top to bottom of the "food chain."
It is estimated that for every American automobile that is being manufactured and head out from Detroit's assembly line, a gross figure estimated to be around US$ 1,500.00 must be paid to provide the pension benefits of those retired auto workers who no longer work the assemblies. They called these "legacy costs"; and they are a a burdensome drag which is making the U.S. auto industry belly up and become uncompetitive.
All down the auto industry labor food chain, there is tremendous stresses and pain being felt. Legacy costs, labor costs, materials costs, and the overall systemic collaspe of the Western-European economic system of unbriddled greed and unfettered capitalism.
In sum, with the looming meltdown and collaspe of GM and Chrysler, we are looking down the line at the collaspe of America's pension system, both publicluy-financed federal social security of its state counterparts, such as the one in California called CALPERS.
Worse, those private pension plans previoulsy guaranteed under The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a government agency created (after lobbying by the United Auto Workers) in 1974,insuring these corporate pension plans, are getting wobbly and facing prospects of insolvency.
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation currently insures 29,000 pension plans -- down from 114,000 plans in 1985.
As the population of many developed countries age and keeping getting older, including Japan, Europe, and the United States of America, we are looking at the dire prospects of a collaspe of pensions systems, as we know them, and the social safety net heretofore guaranteeing that retiring workers are taken care of.
Read further:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Story?id=7424473&page=1
Friday, April 24, 2009
While the New York Times goes broke, a UK blogger writes a circumspect piece about China's smart move to publish in English- The Global Times
Here's a thoughtful circumspect piece from a UK blogger based in Shanghai, who is a correspondent for the the UK-based Telegraph, who correctly observed the smart move by Chinese news publishers to expand into the English-language news market.
The Chinese are coming.... the Chinese are coming...... and the China bashers in the Western news media..... watch out !
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/malcolmmoore/blog/2009/04/21/the_chinese_governments_smart_media_move
It makes sense after all the China-bashing being spade out in buckets from the Western press, including the grey lady of American newspapers, The New York Times, loaded with "China bashers" within its organization.
Incidentally, the New York Times is teetering and fast running out of cash.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/04/22/new-york-times-hemorrhaging-money
What does it look like for the future of the New York Times ? Here's what a Businessweek report said in January, 2005... some four years ago; since then, the Grey Lady's financial situation has worsened; and the money woes exacerbated :
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_03/b3916001_mz001.htm
The Chinese are coming.... the Chinese are coming...... and the China bashers in the Western news media..... watch out !
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/malcolmmoore/blog/2009/04/21/the_chinese_governments_smart_media_move
It makes sense after all the China-bashing being spade out in buckets from the Western press, including the grey lady of American newspapers, The New York Times, loaded with "China bashers" within its organization.
Incidentally, the New York Times is teetering and fast running out of cash.
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/04/22/new-york-times-hemorrhaging-money
What does it look like for the future of the New York Times ? Here's what a Businessweek report said in January, 2005... some four years ago; since then, the Grey Lady's financial situation has worsened; and the money woes exacerbated :
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_03/b3916001_mz001.htm
Crime pays in America and Misdemeanants caught with drugs are no longer being prosecuted in one California county
I have written below this blog about the increasingly distressed and wacko state I live in.... the State of California.
Dysfunctional and broken, this once great state, America's most populous and most innovative at one time, is careening like a mad truck with a mad driver at the driver's seat.... without much fiscal discipline, rampant looting and piracy of the likes worse than on the Somali coast, and a morally bankrupt and spiritually vapid social culture.
Consider that marijuana laws in California are no longer being enforced. They are talking about legalizing marijuana and taxing the cannabis growers and users as a tax revenue stream to help California's distressed state government fiscal budget.
April 20, i.e. 4-20, the cult "Free Marijuana" smokefest orgy, came and went; and the campus of University of California in Santa Cruz, as usual, saw thousands and thousands of American youths free-basing, bonking out, and getting high on reefers and other drugs, hallucigenics, and alchohol.
Consider that in Contra Costa county, across San Francisco Bay, the city that used to know how and on the "cutting-edge," the district attorney of Contra Costa just announced that because of budget cuts, he will no longer have the staff nor prosecutors to prosecute criminal defendants accused of committing certain misdemeanors, among them those accused and charged with misdemeanor drug possession and drug use. Read further about this banality and perversity that the Post-Dr. Spock generation since the Vietnam War has spawn:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_12200786?source=email
Dysfunctional and broken, this once great state, America's most populous and most innovative at one time, is careening like a mad truck with a mad driver at the driver's seat.... without much fiscal discipline, rampant looting and piracy of the likes worse than on the Somali coast, and a morally bankrupt and spiritually vapid social culture.
Consider that marijuana laws in California are no longer being enforced. They are talking about legalizing marijuana and taxing the cannabis growers and users as a tax revenue stream to help California's distressed state government fiscal budget.
April 20, i.e. 4-20, the cult "Free Marijuana" smokefest orgy, came and went; and the campus of University of California in Santa Cruz, as usual, saw thousands and thousands of American youths free-basing, bonking out, and getting high on reefers and other drugs, hallucigenics, and alchohol.
Consider that in Contra Costa county, across San Francisco Bay, the city that used to know how and on the "cutting-edge," the district attorney of Contra Costa just announced that because of budget cuts, he will no longer have the staff nor prosecutors to prosecute criminal defendants accused of committing certain misdemeanors, among them those accused and charged with misdemeanor drug possession and drug use. Read further about this banality and perversity that the Post-Dr. Spock generation since the Vietnam War has spawn:
http://www.contracostatimes.com/news/ci_12200786?source=email
Jackie Chan's remarks about the Chinese needing to be "controlled" sparks furious debates inside and outside of China - you be the judge.
Even the "greybeard" of American mainstream print journalism, the New York Times, has picked up the debate about Jackie Chan's remarks at the Boao Forum a few days ago at Hainan island.
The question ought to be framed more appropriately:
"Is Western-style democracy, or participatory democracy, American-version, the path that the Chinese people must aspire to and undertake to achieve ?"
Rather, the Western news media, as usual, has distorted, misframed, and spun the topic of debate with dashes of "China bashing" and as usual, reported, scripted, dramatized, and amplified the issue through their warped, biased, filtered lenses.
And to think that the "honorary whites" among the Chinese in the Diasporic communities, and some of those "Western farts are more fragrant" types from Taiwan and HongKong, are tugging on the coattails of the Western 'China Bashers' in this new wedge issue to diss, insult, and "mau mau" China and the Chinese people.
Incidentally, when is Gordon G. Chang going to write his sequel, "The Coming Collaspe of China" with "The Coming Collaspe of America, the UK, and Europe" ?
And to think that the greybeard NYT, teetering on collaspe itself, with less than US$ 34 million in cash available to keep it afloat, is using him as a "talking head" resource in its news forum. No wonder the NYT is collaspsing together with the false prophets of "Collaspsing" hit-literature targeting China and the Non-West.
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/controlling-the-chinese-people/#more-5441
Let a hundred flowers bloom.... let a hundred ideas contend !!
And let's see whether or not it is the WEST or the EAST which is left standing.
The question ought to be framed more appropriately:
"Is Western-style democracy, or participatory democracy, American-version, the path that the Chinese people must aspire to and undertake to achieve ?"
Rather, the Western news media, as usual, has distorted, misframed, and spun the topic of debate with dashes of "China bashing" and as usual, reported, scripted, dramatized, and amplified the issue through their warped, biased, filtered lenses.
And to think that the "honorary whites" among the Chinese in the Diasporic communities, and some of those "Western farts are more fragrant" types from Taiwan and HongKong, are tugging on the coattails of the Western 'China Bashers' in this new wedge issue to diss, insult, and "mau mau" China and the Chinese people.
Incidentally, when is Gordon G. Chang going to write his sequel, "The Coming Collaspe of China" with "The Coming Collaspe of America, the UK, and Europe" ?
And to think that the greybeard NYT, teetering on collaspe itself, with less than US$ 34 million in cash available to keep it afloat, is using him as a "talking head" resource in its news forum. No wonder the NYT is collaspsing together with the false prophets of "Collaspsing" hit-literature targeting China and the Non-West.
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/controlling-the-chinese-people/#more-5441
Let a hundred flowers bloom.... let a hundred ideas contend !!
And let's see whether or not it is the WEST or the EAST which is left standing.
The housing bust in America's bubble real estate market has yet to bottom out as the rate of foreclosures and vacancies soar
The housing bust in the U.S. has not bottomed out yet.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDIhJH3j1sjg&refer=us
The statistics are grim ---- 19 million homes sitting empty as reported by Bloomberg
News is even grimmer when you consider that just for the first quarter of
2009 alone, California is seeing another 350,000 homes under Notices of
Default and the start of bank foreclosures. It is a mess out here in
California.
The tax revenues in America'a most populous state have shrunk so much; but the State legislators don't have a clue to handle this fiscal mess, except to raise taxes, take care of themselves, collect their paycheck and keep raising campaign funds for
their next election. Mr. Hollywood, Governator Arnold Schwazenegger is incompetent, ill-equipped to tackle the state's financial woes. He is talking Green, but the wrong kind of Green. The silly stuff... not the real stuff.
In California's housing market, Notices of Default when served upon these 350,000 homes mean that the distressed homeowners have stopped paying their monthly mortgage payments.
Compounding the problem is rising joblessness. Unemployment figures are shocking. And these have not factored in nor counted those who have stopped looking or those in deep despair and given up.
The latest figures for California reported a staggering 11.2% unemployment rate. The dire straits of joblessness has impacted not just the blue-collar sector but the high-tech sector. In Silicon Valley, the unemployment rate is 11%.
The U.S. credit card market is now a bloodbath, with more American consumers financially stressed while some banks are charging some credit card holders 15% or more in annual interest in credit card interest for credit card debts. The rates vary with those card holders carrying big balances, even though they may be paying timely installments; nonetheless, they are being charged more.
The Barack Obama White House yesterday convened an emergency meeting with some major credit card companies and lenders to try to stem the rising tide of rising credit card defaults. Given the hefty credit card rates being charged, many Americans are dead broke and can't pay their bills. There is no end in sight given America's profligacy.... borrowing, keep borrowing.
And as you know...... Americans, such as "Johnny Six Pack" and "Soccer Jane Mom"
depend on credit cards for their daily expenses.
Americans, as a whole, have little savings. They spend and spend and spend, on credit. :-) And many are now financially strapped.... with joblessness, layoffs, and no prospect of relief.
We have not seen the worst yet.
To make matters downright nasty, many Americans are trying to pick a fight with China and India, assessing these two Asian countries for taking away jobs and sticking it to the WEST with cheap imports, cheap labor, toxic products and what they are blindly saber-rattling as "unfair trade."
They accused Indians of slave child labor; the Chinese of manipulating their currency. Yet they look at themselves for the mess they themselves caused by their lifestyle of profligacy, greed, and lack of discipline. Worse, the new generation of American youth is being dumbed down with a broken education system which breeds idiots more than functioning workers.
The only growth industry today is working as a security guard, joining the U.S. military, or trying to break into "American Idol" in song and dance escapism. Hollywood is crass, vulgar, and vapid of any creative ideas... and the industry is going down the toilet with no signs of any hope but dope.
Just stay away from that dope, beer and alcohol, buddy. Stay clean. And stop bonking and doping away.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aDIhJH3j1sjg&refer=us
The statistics are grim ---- 19 million homes sitting empty as reported by Bloomberg
News is even grimmer when you consider that just for the first quarter of
2009 alone, California is seeing another 350,000 homes under Notices of
Default and the start of bank foreclosures. It is a mess out here in
California.
The tax revenues in America'a most populous state have shrunk so much; but the State legislators don't have a clue to handle this fiscal mess, except to raise taxes, take care of themselves, collect their paycheck and keep raising campaign funds for
their next election. Mr. Hollywood, Governator Arnold Schwazenegger is incompetent, ill-equipped to tackle the state's financial woes. He is talking Green, but the wrong kind of Green. The silly stuff... not the real stuff.
In California's housing market, Notices of Default when served upon these 350,000 homes mean that the distressed homeowners have stopped paying their monthly mortgage payments.
Compounding the problem is rising joblessness. Unemployment figures are shocking. And these have not factored in nor counted those who have stopped looking or those in deep despair and given up.
The latest figures for California reported a staggering 11.2% unemployment rate. The dire straits of joblessness has impacted not just the blue-collar sector but the high-tech sector. In Silicon Valley, the unemployment rate is 11%.
The U.S. credit card market is now a bloodbath, with more American consumers financially stressed while some banks are charging some credit card holders 15% or more in annual interest in credit card interest for credit card debts. The rates vary with those card holders carrying big balances, even though they may be paying timely installments; nonetheless, they are being charged more.
The Barack Obama White House yesterday convened an emergency meeting with some major credit card companies and lenders to try to stem the rising tide of rising credit card defaults. Given the hefty credit card rates being charged, many Americans are dead broke and can't pay their bills. There is no end in sight given America's profligacy.... borrowing, keep borrowing.
And as you know...... Americans, such as "Johnny Six Pack" and "Soccer Jane Mom"
depend on credit cards for their daily expenses.
Americans, as a whole, have little savings. They spend and spend and spend, on credit. :-) And many are now financially strapped.... with joblessness, layoffs, and no prospect of relief.
We have not seen the worst yet.
To make matters downright nasty, many Americans are trying to pick a fight with China and India, assessing these two Asian countries for taking away jobs and sticking it to the WEST with cheap imports, cheap labor, toxic products and what they are blindly saber-rattling as "unfair trade."
They accused Indians of slave child labor; the Chinese of manipulating their currency. Yet they look at themselves for the mess they themselves caused by their lifestyle of profligacy, greed, and lack of discipline. Worse, the new generation of American youth is being dumbed down with a broken education system which breeds idiots more than functioning workers.
The only growth industry today is working as a security guard, joining the U.S. military, or trying to break into "American Idol" in song and dance escapism. Hollywood is crass, vulgar, and vapid of any creative ideas... and the industry is going down the toilet with no signs of any hope but dope.
Just stay away from that dope, beer and alcohol, buddy. Stay clean. And stop bonking and doping away.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
China's "Soft Power" Initiatives in the Americas and in International Finance - "The Beijing Consensus"
Pundits are seeing a shift in global finance initiatives. What used to be the dominant role of the U.S. especially in its own backyard, in Latin America, in the Caribbean, is no longer what it used to be.
Flushed with US$ 2 trillion in foreign reserves, China is smartly and adroitly applying its financial clout on the global stage. Click on a report from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042203823.html
Flushed with US$ 2 trillion in foreign reserves, China is smartly and adroitly applying its financial clout on the global stage. Click on a report from the Washington Post:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/22/AR2009042203823.html
Musings of a Chinese-American on EARTH DAY - April 22, 2009 - Coming down to Earth from Space
It is cool to be Green on Earth Day, i.e. April 22, 2009.
This morning, as soon as I got off my Metro rail station in downtown San Francisco, California, a sales lady was giving away cans of free canned cat food in downtown San Francisco. Just a few footsteps away, a completely "zonked out" street bum was wallowing in a street corner.... drugged and overdozed with heroin in his veins.
No one seems to care and everyone is on the frenetic pace to go to work and make money. At Starbucks... the talk on EARTH DAY is how to curb using plaster bag, and calibrating one's carbon footprints to reduce human pollution.
In San Francisco, if you are not an animal (except human beings)lover, i.e. whether cat, dog, lion, or bear..... or you are not Green... or part of that bandwagon obsessed with reducing your carbon footprint on this earth, or ride a bike, or worship the Dalai Lama, or support same-sex marriage.... you are an exception, a despicable disgusting traitor to the uber-liberal tradition of "chi-chi" San Francisco.
One must be "Green" these days to be an American or you risk being lynched for being a damn traitor to the Cause of Al Gore.
It is no strange wonder that Former Vice-President turned "Global Warming" Czar Al Gore has relocated his home and landed in San Francisco, hyping and promoting his campaign against global warming and from where he left off after his Nobel Prize prize after producing that blockbuster earthling Green movie titled the "Inconvenient Truth."
All in all, it pays to be Green these days in the West, and especially in California.
It is cool to jump into that bandwagon. The advertisers are using buzz words. Even the travel industry is hyping eco-tourism and Green hotels... whatever the word means. Green just sounds so hip.
Even our governor, Mr. Hollywood, Arnold Scharzenegger, "Mr. Muscleman," "The Governator" is hooping it up as the Green governor of California. Arnold drives two hummers...muscle cars, one fueled by hydrogen and the other onhe fueled by renewable biofuels.
Isn't that wonderful ?
Never mind that the jobless in California has skyrockted to over 2 million in a state of 35 million inhabitants.
The unemployment rate is now a whopping 11.2%; and in Silicon Valley, it is an unprecedented 11%... the highest since 1964. These doube-digit unemployment rate does not even count nor factor in those unemployed who have stopped looking and fallen through the cracks. This is about blue-collar to white-collar, low-tech to high-tech workers... all distressed and jobless in tough economic times.
Joblessness has become so critical that the shock waves have swept the credit market and further depressed California's home foreclosure mess.
Californians are broke; and it shows in their state's fiscal mess... left to fester and rot. In the meantime, state legislators are talking up a storm by raising taxes and bridging the widening fiscal gap between revenues and expenditures wth more taxes and creative public accounting.
Who cares ? It is only "OPM," or ehhhh, so to speak "Other People's Money."
As I write this, for the first quarter of 2009, in the first three months of 2009 alone, there are more than 350,000 California homeowners who can't keep up with their mortgage payments and have received Notices of default in their home payments. Another 120 days and these default notices will be tracked and chalked into that distressed foreclosure mess, with banks taking over ownership from these distressed California homeowners.
Nationwide, there were for the first 3 months of 2009 more than 2 million Americans who have lost their homes because they can't afford to make house mortgage payments...... that's equivalent to one in two Singaporean inhabitants who have been rendered "homeless."
At this juncture, on this EARTH DAY, here is how I am musing about in this THIRD SPACE, i.e. Spatium Trientis.:
1. Americans need to get back to Earth, and really do the basic, earthly stuff... and reprioritize their goals. Come down to EARTH, for Pete's and Mary's sake, Dude.
As lofty and cool and hip on this EARTH DAY to think green, do green, reduce carbon footprints, go solar, stop using plastic bags, ride a bike, and grow organic vegetables..... fact remains that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe are breaking apart and have more earthling problems beyond all of this chic GREEN stuff.
How about coming back to EARTH, and talking and doing basics.
2. Fix the goddamn broken education system in the WEST.
When Johnny and Jane can't do the basic rudimentaries of reading, arithmetic and writing in simple English, there is a hugh colossal mess in the WEST.
As the world of globalization, the learning curve is steadily dumbing down and going further "dumbed down" in the Western system of education.
Johnny and Jane can't compete with their counterparts from India, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and yes... China.
Read up on what Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist wrote about Americans and their sick educational system... dumbed down, and careening to more mediocrity and underachievemnt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22friedman.html?em
3. Accept that the WEST, led by Americans and the Brits, have a serious social pandemic of drugs, drug addiction, and alcohol abuse. The social consequences are staggering. It shows in the economic meltdown and its dire fallout.
Having observed the serious social consequences of drugs and drug abuse here in the WEST, it is a mess to which Western youth, all across the board, from the inner cities to the exburbs, are afflicted with..... it is a testament to the harsh reality that our schools in the WEST have become "combat zones" for violence, often releted or stemming from drugs and rampant drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and the social consequences of addiction.
White people in the WEST are in complete self-denial that alcohol and drugs are a epidemic in the WEST which has wracked the basic fundamental fabric of Western societies.
But the "PC" norm nowadays, it appears, is more slackening ... more marijuana. More beer. More "bong" parties, more booze.
Not only is "bonking" affecting our Great White Hope of last year's Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps, caught "bonking away" with a water pipe in an off-campus bong party in South Carolina.
If Michael Phelps is not free from the bong, guess where the rest of the white boys and girls are ?
Two days ago, American youths just went into a "marijuana" dope binge and happily engaged in 4-20. In campuses such as University of California Santa Cruz or University of Colorado in Denver, students and the campus "hangers-on" were openly doping and smoking marijuana, and defiantly pushed for "free marijuana," and "legalizing marijuana."
In California's state legislature, a legislator representing wacko San Francisco is openly pushing to legalize and tax marijuana as a source of state revenues to bridge California's widening fiscal shortfall. Tax marijuana sales to pay for social services... the promoters of legalizing marijuana are clamoring.
That's the WEST for you. Dumbling down and falling apart. Imploding from within from its own banality, vulgarity, and inanity.
Time for some tough talk on this EARTH DAY.
It is great to talk GREEN on EARTH DAY.
It is even more important to admonish the WEST to come down to EARTH and deal with the mess in their own backyard on this EARTH DAY.
This morning, as soon as I got off my Metro rail station in downtown San Francisco, California, a sales lady was giving away cans of free canned cat food in downtown San Francisco. Just a few footsteps away, a completely "zonked out" street bum was wallowing in a street corner.... drugged and overdozed with heroin in his veins.
No one seems to care and everyone is on the frenetic pace to go to work and make money. At Starbucks... the talk on EARTH DAY is how to curb using plaster bag, and calibrating one's carbon footprints to reduce human pollution.
In San Francisco, if you are not an animal (except human beings)lover, i.e. whether cat, dog, lion, or bear..... or you are not Green... or part of that bandwagon obsessed with reducing your carbon footprint on this earth, or ride a bike, or worship the Dalai Lama, or support same-sex marriage.... you are an exception, a despicable disgusting traitor to the uber-liberal tradition of "chi-chi" San Francisco.
One must be "Green" these days to be an American or you risk being lynched for being a damn traitor to the Cause of Al Gore.
It is no strange wonder that Former Vice-President turned "Global Warming" Czar Al Gore has relocated his home and landed in San Francisco, hyping and promoting his campaign against global warming and from where he left off after his Nobel Prize prize after producing that blockbuster earthling Green movie titled the "Inconvenient Truth."
All in all, it pays to be Green these days in the West, and especially in California.
It is cool to jump into that bandwagon. The advertisers are using buzz words. Even the travel industry is hyping eco-tourism and Green hotels... whatever the word means. Green just sounds so hip.
Even our governor, Mr. Hollywood, Arnold Scharzenegger, "Mr. Muscleman," "The Governator" is hooping it up as the Green governor of California. Arnold drives two hummers...muscle cars, one fueled by hydrogen and the other onhe fueled by renewable biofuels.
Isn't that wonderful ?
Never mind that the jobless in California has skyrockted to over 2 million in a state of 35 million inhabitants.
The unemployment rate is now a whopping 11.2%; and in Silicon Valley, it is an unprecedented 11%... the highest since 1964. These doube-digit unemployment rate does not even count nor factor in those unemployed who have stopped looking and fallen through the cracks. This is about blue-collar to white-collar, low-tech to high-tech workers... all distressed and jobless in tough economic times.
Joblessness has become so critical that the shock waves have swept the credit market and further depressed California's home foreclosure mess.
Californians are broke; and it shows in their state's fiscal mess... left to fester and rot. In the meantime, state legislators are talking up a storm by raising taxes and bridging the widening fiscal gap between revenues and expenditures wth more taxes and creative public accounting.
Who cares ? It is only "OPM," or ehhhh, so to speak "Other People's Money."
As I write this, for the first quarter of 2009, in the first three months of 2009 alone, there are more than 350,000 California homeowners who can't keep up with their mortgage payments and have received Notices of default in their home payments. Another 120 days and these default notices will be tracked and chalked into that distressed foreclosure mess, with banks taking over ownership from these distressed California homeowners.
Nationwide, there were for the first 3 months of 2009 more than 2 million Americans who have lost their homes because they can't afford to make house mortgage payments...... that's equivalent to one in two Singaporean inhabitants who have been rendered "homeless."
At this juncture, on this EARTH DAY, here is how I am musing about in this THIRD SPACE, i.e. Spatium Trientis.:
1. Americans need to get back to Earth, and really do the basic, earthly stuff... and reprioritize their goals. Come down to EARTH, for Pete's and Mary's sake, Dude.
As lofty and cool and hip on this EARTH DAY to think green, do green, reduce carbon footprints, go solar, stop using plastic bags, ride a bike, and grow organic vegetables..... fact remains that the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe are breaking apart and have more earthling problems beyond all of this chic GREEN stuff.
How about coming back to EARTH, and talking and doing basics.
2. Fix the goddamn broken education system in the WEST.
When Johnny and Jane can't do the basic rudimentaries of reading, arithmetic and writing in simple English, there is a hugh colossal mess in the WEST.
As the world of globalization, the learning curve is steadily dumbing down and going further "dumbed down" in the Western system of education.
Johnny and Jane can't compete with their counterparts from India, South Korea, Singapore, Japan, and yes... China.
Read up on what Thomas Friedman, New York Times columnist wrote about Americans and their sick educational system... dumbed down, and careening to more mediocrity and underachievemnt:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/opinion/22friedman.html?em
3. Accept that the WEST, led by Americans and the Brits, have a serious social pandemic of drugs, drug addiction, and alcohol abuse. The social consequences are staggering. It shows in the economic meltdown and its dire fallout.
Having observed the serious social consequences of drugs and drug abuse here in the WEST, it is a mess to which Western youth, all across the board, from the inner cities to the exburbs, are afflicted with..... it is a testament to the harsh reality that our schools in the WEST have become "combat zones" for violence, often releted or stemming from drugs and rampant drug abuse, alcohol abuse, and the social consequences of addiction.
White people in the WEST are in complete self-denial that alcohol and drugs are a epidemic in the WEST which has wracked the basic fundamental fabric of Western societies.
But the "PC" norm nowadays, it appears, is more slackening ... more marijuana. More beer. More "bong" parties, more booze.
Not only is "bonking" affecting our Great White Hope of last year's Beijing Olympics, Michael Phelps, caught "bonking away" with a water pipe in an off-campus bong party in South Carolina.
If Michael Phelps is not free from the bong, guess where the rest of the white boys and girls are ?
Two days ago, American youths just went into a "marijuana" dope binge and happily engaged in 4-20. In campuses such as University of California Santa Cruz or University of Colorado in Denver, students and the campus "hangers-on" were openly doping and smoking marijuana, and defiantly pushed for "free marijuana," and "legalizing marijuana."
In California's state legislature, a legislator representing wacko San Francisco is openly pushing to legalize and tax marijuana as a source of state revenues to bridge California's widening fiscal shortfall. Tax marijuana sales to pay for social services... the promoters of legalizing marijuana are clamoring.
That's the WEST for you. Dumbling down and falling apart. Imploding from within from its own banality, vulgarity, and inanity.
Time for some tough talk on this EARTH DAY.
It is great to talk GREEN on EARTH DAY.
It is even more important to admonish the WEST to come down to EARTH and deal with the mess in their own backyard on this EARTH DAY.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
"Kung Fu Confucius" ? Or "Kung Phooey Confucius" ?--- Chow Yun Fat stars in this biopic about China's most famous philosopher and humanist
http://en.huanqiu.com/www/english/world/Entertainment/2009-04/427552.html
News from Xinhua reporting that Chow Yun Fat, HongKong's most famous male action hero being cast in a biopic about Confucius has reverberated and created a buzz in blogosphere.
I have not and will not prejudge what is essentially a major undertaking in portraying a great humanist in Confucius into a 2 to 3 hour movie; or whether such a movie can ever do justice to the sum and substance of Confucius' "Analects" and give justice to one of China's greatest cultural and intellectual icons.
I hope and pray that the script writer, the producer, the director give justice to Confucius and not exploit this icon purely and solely for box-office receipts.
As we all know, Chow Yun Fat is a great Chinese actor and he has wonderfully portrayed some movie characters in multi-dimentional light which were also very poignant and provided the complexities and wonderful dynamic of human character.
That said, we also know that since shifting and relocating to Hollywood, Chow Yun Fat has foundered in his Hollywood endeavors, starring in roles which were not only quite mediocre, and quite unbefitting to suit his heroic and gargantuan roles he used to beget when he was a superstar in HongKong.
For the sake of greed, Chow Yun Fat had acceded to play "heavy roles" as a villain against Johnny Depp's "Pirates of the Caribbean;" a rather demeaning stereotypical role that the white gweillos typecasted this multidimentional Chinese actor.
Let's hope that Chow Yun Fat redeems himself now that he is back starring in a Chinese-made movie, to be made in China.
Will it be another one of those Hollywood chop chop "Kung Phooy" movie, a stereotypical white racist movie made about a Chinese character geared for a white audience ?
You be the judge.
I can't wait to see this movie about Confucius. Let' hope that it does justice to our MAN.
News from Xinhua reporting that Chow Yun Fat, HongKong's most famous male action hero being cast in a biopic about Confucius has reverberated and created a buzz in blogosphere.
I have not and will not prejudge what is essentially a major undertaking in portraying a great humanist in Confucius into a 2 to 3 hour movie; or whether such a movie can ever do justice to the sum and substance of Confucius' "Analects" and give justice to one of China's greatest cultural and intellectual icons.
I hope and pray that the script writer, the producer, the director give justice to Confucius and not exploit this icon purely and solely for box-office receipts.
As we all know, Chow Yun Fat is a great Chinese actor and he has wonderfully portrayed some movie characters in multi-dimentional light which were also very poignant and provided the complexities and wonderful dynamic of human character.
That said, we also know that since shifting and relocating to Hollywood, Chow Yun Fat has foundered in his Hollywood endeavors, starring in roles which were not only quite mediocre, and quite unbefitting to suit his heroic and gargantuan roles he used to beget when he was a superstar in HongKong.
For the sake of greed, Chow Yun Fat had acceded to play "heavy roles" as a villain against Johnny Depp's "Pirates of the Caribbean;" a rather demeaning stereotypical role that the white gweillos typecasted this multidimentional Chinese actor.
Let's hope that Chow Yun Fat redeems himself now that he is back starring in a Chinese-made movie, to be made in China.
Will it be another one of those Hollywood chop chop "Kung Phooy" movie, a stereotypical white racist movie made about a Chinese character geared for a white audience ?
You be the judge.
I can't wait to see this movie about Confucius. Let' hope that it does justice to our MAN.
It is still "unofficial" Pssst - The GREAT WALL is much longer than originally estimated and measured !
The latest news about The GREAT WALL and its actual length and size can't be more astonishing.
Just the length of the Ming Dynasty portion Great Wall, excluding the Qin and Han dynasties portion of the Wall, was under-measured by a whopping 1,500 miles, give or take a few miles.
The new length of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall is 5,500 miles long, revealed the two organizations conducting the research, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM). This is the first time that a study of this kind has been conducted by China using modern and three dimensional measuring methods.
http://www.keyetv.com/content/news/topnews/story/New-research-reveals-Chinas-Great-Wall-is-even/dktXU966TECUMObdjqEMgQ.cspx
Isn't this astounding ? Is there any doubt that there's more to Chinese ancient civilization that has yet to be discovered, probed, studied, and admired ?
Just the length of the Ming Dynasty portion Great Wall, excluding the Qin and Han dynasties portion of the Wall, was under-measured by a whopping 1,500 miles, give or take a few miles.
The new length of the Ming Dynasty Great Wall is 5,500 miles long, revealed the two organizations conducting the research, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage (SACH) and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping (SBSM). This is the first time that a study of this kind has been conducted by China using modern and three dimensional measuring methods.
http://www.keyetv.com/content/news/topnews/story/New-research-reveals-Chinas-Great-Wall-is-even/dktXU966TECUMObdjqEMgQ.cspx
Isn't this astounding ? Is there any doubt that there's more to Chinese ancient civilization that has yet to be discovered, probed, studied, and admired ?
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
It pays to talk and do "GREEN" in China and hitching on to that bandwagon is the noveau "menu du jour"
Click on:
http://www.asiasociety.org/beijingair/
Speaking of green, even Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha,the world's smartest investor, and said to be also the richest billionaire, is intrigued by a new upstart Chinese company called BYD.
He bought 10% of the company, and he has jumped onto the China bandwagon, hitching and banking on the Chinese entrepreneur behind BYD, a man named Wang Chuan-Fu, who is leapfrogging the Americans, the Japanese, and the Europeans in coming out with an "electric car."
Watch out, GM; watch out, Toyota. Watch out, Tesla. When Warren Buffett start investing and being stimulated by "China fever" especially by an upstart auto and electric battery company called BYD, watch out !
There's a buzz on the BYD electric car, called the "F3DM (for DM is for "dual mode")" And they may just eat the lunches of GM, Toyota, and Tesla.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric.fortune/index.htm
http://www.asiasociety.org/beijingair/
Speaking of green, even Warren Buffett, the Sage of Omaha,the world's smartest investor, and said to be also the richest billionaire, is intrigued by a new upstart Chinese company called BYD.
He bought 10% of the company, and he has jumped onto the China bandwagon, hitching and banking on the Chinese entrepreneur behind BYD, a man named Wang Chuan-Fu, who is leapfrogging the Americans, the Japanese, and the Europeans in coming out with an "electric car."
Watch out, GM; watch out, Toyota. Watch out, Tesla. When Warren Buffett start investing and being stimulated by "China fever" especially by an upstart auto and electric battery company called BYD, watch out !
There's a buzz on the BYD electric car, called the "F3DM (for DM is for "dual mode")" And they may just eat the lunches of GM, Toyota, and Tesla.
http://money.cnn.com/2009/04/13/technology/gunther_electric.fortune/index.htm
Great Britannia stumbles as the Brits reel from deep economic crises of gargantuan proportion
The once great colonial empire of Great Britian once never saw the sun sets in its vast exterritorial colonial strongholds..... from Asia to Africa, from the Carribean to the Middle East.
Look at Great Britannia today and now..... facing stark news about its deep and dire collaspsing finance environment. The cascade of bad economic news keeps pounding and pounding away... with no relief in sight.
Are these the twilight years and the flickering out of a once vast colonial empire ?
Is this the harbinger of the future for the United States of America, similarly confronting a deep economic recession and the collaspe of its financial systems --- both public and private ? Is this the beginning of the End ?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23pound.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/business/global/22pound.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124038380644142681.html
China just finished with sponsoring the World Olympics games. Come 2012, is London up to it ? And the fundamental question remains, " Do the Brits have any money to stage the games ?"
Look at Great Britannia today and now..... facing stark news about its deep and dire collaspsing finance environment. The cascade of bad economic news keeps pounding and pounding away... with no relief in sight.
Are these the twilight years and the flickering out of a once vast colonial empire ?
Is this the harbinger of the future for the United States of America, similarly confronting a deep economic recession and the collaspe of its financial systems --- both public and private ? Is this the beginning of the End ?
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/business/global/23pound.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/22/business/global/22pound.html?_r=1&ref=global-home
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124038380644142681.html
China just finished with sponsoring the World Olympics games. Come 2012, is London up to it ? And the fundamental question remains, " Do the Brits have any money to stage the games ?"
The more the merrier - We welcome the launching of another English language online news media, Huanqiu, aka Global Times - Best wishes
The global media landscape is going through major changes.
The seismic shifts in the intellectual-journalistic hubs, which used to center around the European world with its Eurocentric biases and perspectives, based in London, New York city, Boston, and Washington D.C., are creating cracks which reveal a whole new dimension and perspective of the world and societies other than European, Western, and Anglo-White.
I have written before about the new information age, and how the major media behemoths are consolidating and clustering around fewer and fewer owners.
Thankfully, there is a new awakening and renewal happening in the non-West, which sees these changes in this new information age, and the new technology which has brought about easier access to news and information, the generation and shaping of these news in more rapid news cycles of 24-7 coverage, as a challenge and a "wei-ji," i.e. an opportunity in the face of danger.
As I previously wrote in this blogsite, the world will be divided between the new "masters" and the new "slaves;"i.e. those societies capable and nimble enough to seize hold and avail of the opportunities brought about by the internet and the challenges of this new information age, who can go global, and seamlessly shape and control the "wells" of information, albeit, the "faucet" to the wellsprings of news and information, in the arbitraging of this news and information, will rule the day.
We have seen the efforts initiated by Al Jazeera... and how Al Jazeera managed to catapult itself from its desert oasis, in providing the news and information which reach out to a major market in the Islamic World.
Not content to sit on its laurels, Al Jazeera has now gone global, and expanding rapidly in the Anglo-phone world outside of the Islamic world.
It is a model which global Chinese in the Huaren world need to learn from.
I have always taken the position that the global Huaren communities, scattered in over 135 countries around the world, are well-pivoted to face up to the challenges and opportunities in a new world of globalization.
The emergence of the new intellectual centers, news media organizations, in the coverage of news internationally, the analyses of news, the unique perspectives that Chinese-owned news media journalists can potentially offer, on the global stage, have yet to be nurtured and explored, to be creatively and entreprenurially expanded.
But there are signs that change is coming. There is a new generation coming to the fore in Asia-Pacific. And the young are savvy technically; hopefully, they are also resourceful and know where they are coming from and harness the talents from their roots.
More and more... we are seeing more ethnic Chinese reaching out into the Anglo-phone world, beyond the Chinese language, into other languages and dialects, in order to meet the challenges of globalization.
The launching of GLOBAL TIMES, in its English edition, by the PEOPLE'S DAILY, is welcome news. Here's the link to this new English news website; bookmark it:
http://en.huanqiu.com/
As I write this, many major mainstream American news organizations, such as the New York Times or the Chicago Tribune news organizations, are under siege, and on the brink of falling apart financially, and can't cope with rising costs and the burdens of publishing print media. In San Francisco, the Hearst-owned SF Chronicle is hemmorhaging badly. In Seattle, they just shut down the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
In Denver, Colorado, the shutdown of the Rocky Mountain News is just a sign of tough economic times in America. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times is bleeding red ink profusely. Its owner, Sam Zell, who also owns the Chicago Tribune News and its slew of media organizations, keeps cutting staff and paring down with no end in sight.
All in all, it is an ugly media landscape in all of America. Johnny Six Pack and Soccer Jane Mom be damned. They don't read newspapers anymore over here; and advertisers are switching from old media to new online media.
These are signs of the past; and the new paths to news coverage and information arbitrage are upon us. And Asia-Pacific should and must lead the way. In South Asia, we are seeing stirrings among Indian intellectuals, writers, and journalists. Mumbai, India, is becoming more and more visible in the global stage. And a surfeit of Indo-American "talking heads" have penetrated the once dominant Anglo-white American news media networks.. both print and broadcast. Fareed Zakaria is now a regular in the American "talking heads" circuit.
Are the Chinese intellectuals and journalists around the globe, in the Chinese Diaspora, up to the task of meeting these challenges, and thinking beyond the box ?
GLOBAL TIMES is just a minor step but a new beginning.
http://en.huanqiu.com/www/english/china/ChinaNews/2009-04/427242_2.html
The global Huaren communities, outside of China mainland, should and must provide the brain trust and the brain power to lead the way in this new Information Age, and provide new alternatives to the same old, tired ways of disseminating, reporting, analyzing, and understanding the news which shape the social-political-economic-cultural events happening around the world.
WELCOME - GLOBAL TIMES.
THE MORE THE MERRIER.
LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOOM... Let a HUNDRED IDEAS CONTEND !
Incidentally, where's SINGAPORE on this ? One of the few Anglophone Asian countries, with hugh potential among its human resources, of Indian and Chinese writers and journalists, articulate and savvy, have not met up to the challenge. What a cop-out.
Wake up, Singaporeans. Wake up. Don't be "Kiasu." Be "Mumbai" !
The seismic shifts in the intellectual-journalistic hubs, which used to center around the European world with its Eurocentric biases and perspectives, based in London, New York city, Boston, and Washington D.C., are creating cracks which reveal a whole new dimension and perspective of the world and societies other than European, Western, and Anglo-White.
I have written before about the new information age, and how the major media behemoths are consolidating and clustering around fewer and fewer owners.
Thankfully, there is a new awakening and renewal happening in the non-West, which sees these changes in this new information age, and the new technology which has brought about easier access to news and information, the generation and shaping of these news in more rapid news cycles of 24-7 coverage, as a challenge and a "wei-ji," i.e. an opportunity in the face of danger.
As I previously wrote in this blogsite, the world will be divided between the new "masters" and the new "slaves;"i.e. those societies capable and nimble enough to seize hold and avail of the opportunities brought about by the internet and the challenges of this new information age, who can go global, and seamlessly shape and control the "wells" of information, albeit, the "faucet" to the wellsprings of news and information, in the arbitraging of this news and information, will rule the day.
We have seen the efforts initiated by Al Jazeera... and how Al Jazeera managed to catapult itself from its desert oasis, in providing the news and information which reach out to a major market in the Islamic World.
Not content to sit on its laurels, Al Jazeera has now gone global, and expanding rapidly in the Anglo-phone world outside of the Islamic world.
It is a model which global Chinese in the Huaren world need to learn from.
I have always taken the position that the global Huaren communities, scattered in over 135 countries around the world, are well-pivoted to face up to the challenges and opportunities in a new world of globalization.
The emergence of the new intellectual centers, news media organizations, in the coverage of news internationally, the analyses of news, the unique perspectives that Chinese-owned news media journalists can potentially offer, on the global stage, have yet to be nurtured and explored, to be creatively and entreprenurially expanded.
But there are signs that change is coming. There is a new generation coming to the fore in Asia-Pacific. And the young are savvy technically; hopefully, they are also resourceful and know where they are coming from and harness the talents from their roots.
More and more... we are seeing more ethnic Chinese reaching out into the Anglo-phone world, beyond the Chinese language, into other languages and dialects, in order to meet the challenges of globalization.
The launching of GLOBAL TIMES, in its English edition, by the PEOPLE'S DAILY, is welcome news. Here's the link to this new English news website; bookmark it:
http://en.huanqiu.com/
As I write this, many major mainstream American news organizations, such as the New York Times or the Chicago Tribune news organizations, are under siege, and on the brink of falling apart financially, and can't cope with rising costs and the burdens of publishing print media. In San Francisco, the Hearst-owned SF Chronicle is hemmorhaging badly. In Seattle, they just shut down the Seattle Post Intelligencer.
In Denver, Colorado, the shutdown of the Rocky Mountain News is just a sign of tough economic times in America. In Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Times is bleeding red ink profusely. Its owner, Sam Zell, who also owns the Chicago Tribune News and its slew of media organizations, keeps cutting staff and paring down with no end in sight.
All in all, it is an ugly media landscape in all of America. Johnny Six Pack and Soccer Jane Mom be damned. They don't read newspapers anymore over here; and advertisers are switching from old media to new online media.
These are signs of the past; and the new paths to news coverage and information arbitrage are upon us. And Asia-Pacific should and must lead the way. In South Asia, we are seeing stirrings among Indian intellectuals, writers, and journalists. Mumbai, India, is becoming more and more visible in the global stage. And a surfeit of Indo-American "talking heads" have penetrated the once dominant Anglo-white American news media networks.. both print and broadcast. Fareed Zakaria is now a regular in the American "talking heads" circuit.
Are the Chinese intellectuals and journalists around the globe, in the Chinese Diaspora, up to the task of meeting these challenges, and thinking beyond the box ?
GLOBAL TIMES is just a minor step but a new beginning.
http://en.huanqiu.com/www/english/china/ChinaNews/2009-04/427242_2.html
The global Huaren communities, outside of China mainland, should and must provide the brain trust and the brain power to lead the way in this new Information Age, and provide new alternatives to the same old, tired ways of disseminating, reporting, analyzing, and understanding the news which shape the social-political-economic-cultural events happening around the world.
WELCOME - GLOBAL TIMES.
THE MORE THE MERRIER.
LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOOM... Let a HUNDRED IDEAS CONTEND !
Incidentally, where's SINGAPORE on this ? One of the few Anglophone Asian countries, with hugh potential among its human resources, of Indian and Chinese writers and journalists, articulate and savvy, have not met up to the challenge. What a cop-out.
Wake up, Singaporeans. Wake up. Don't be "Kiasu." Be "Mumbai" !
What Jackie Chan really meant at his Boao forum speech at Hainan Island- "Social Order' or harmony trumps "luan" or CHAOS !
Times are rough and tough.
These are not just perilous times fraught with joblessness, business collaspses, bankruptcies, family break-ups and disintegration, social meltdowns, rising predatory crime.
All across the globe... the "tsunami" forces unleased from the collaspe of Wall Street and Canary Wharf have wacked, walloped, and reverberated across the globe, and impacted the Asia-Pacific region, severely stressing societies in the whole region.
At a Boao business forum held last week in Hainan Island, Jackie Chan, the 55-year Kung-Fu actor, was quoted as saying :"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," He further said "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."
He went on to say that freedoms in Hong Kong and Taiwan made those societies "chaotic."
His quoted remarks, placed out of context, immediately drew many rebukes from fellow ethnic Chinese outside of Mainland China, primarily in HKG and TAIWAN.
He was roundly chastised and castigated. And one of the rebuked was attributed to HKG serial protester, i.e. hippie HKG legislator Leung Kwok Hung.
"He's insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets," the Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung told The Associated Press. "Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law."
Another lawmaker, Albert Ho, another one of those HKG "Western Moon is rounder" worshippers, called Jackie Chan's comments "racist," adding: "People around the world are running their own countries. Why can't Chinese do the same?"
Conceptually, in a vacuum, these critiques sounded well-reasoned; but when you place these criticisms in context, given the size, population, culture of China and the Chinese people, at this juncture of China's renewal and resurgence, one can understand that the Western notion of participatory democracy, nor its much vaunted Rule of Law, in truth, are hollow and very misplaced.
The Chinese people, given this stage of its development, should opt for social harmony, social order, over chaos, or "luan."
It is not just plain "common sense;" but it is also the way away from the crass, vulgar, chaotic model we are seeing implode before our very eyes here in the United States of America.
Here... there are too much freedoms, little social or personal responsibility.
Here... it is a "dumbed down" society where the victimizers are guaranteed unbriddled "civil liberties," "human rights;" while their victims are traumatised and abandoned to fend for themselves.
The notion of so-called "due process" or Rule of Law is tilted in favor of the aggressor over the aggrieved victim.
No wonder America today is broken, and unraveling from within.
Drugs and alcohol abuse have become pandemic; social predatory behavior has ruined the social fabric of what used to be an orderly society.
The social compact has unraveled by an environment where criminals, drug lords, con-artists, thieves, looters, plunderers, corrupt officials reign; and where law-abiding ordinary folks are left unprotected, and to fend for themselves.
This is not the kind of democracy that the Chinese people need to emulate nor pattern their social fabric in Chinese society.
Consider one illustration, involving that lone Somali pirate caught in the Horn of Africa by a U.S. Navy ship, after he and three of his fellow pirates tried to comandeer and hold for ransom the US merchant marine ship, the Maersk Alabama.
After all the rigmarole at the coast of East Africa, this darn pirate is being flown into New York City, to face trial before an American court... with American taxpayers paying all the bills for legal defense, show-case trial, and all the concommittant wasteful spending needed to provide a veneer of the "Rule of Law" in this clear-cut case of sea piracy.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7386881&page=1&nwltr=WN_mostviewedstories_hed2
http://online.wsj.com/video/somali-pirate-arrives-in-us-faces-piracy-charges/B7792A68-85E6-4E9A-84D9-19BEAF95C7D8.html
WHAT FOR ? WHY WASTE PUBLIC MONIES FOR THE SAKE OF A PUBLIC SHOWCASE ?
Follow China's way ! Be practical.
Death sentence by firing squad. Fast, expeditious and certain justice. The scums of the earth needed to be expunged.
And here, our "honorary whites" and "Western Moon is rounder" ethnic Chinese, i.e. of the ilk of "serial protester" Leung Kwok Hung, are lambasting Jackie Chan for good ole basic common sense.
The Chinese has to unlearn and wean themselves away from some of the dumb ideas from the WEST... especially on its false, naive, dumb notion of Western "participatory democracy."
Jackie Chan is right..... social harmony trumps "luan" and chaos. Democracy, Western-style, is not suitable for China. And it will only magnify many-fold the colossal mess and chaos which have impacted the U.S.A. these days, and brought down this nation.
These are not just perilous times fraught with joblessness, business collaspses, bankruptcies, family break-ups and disintegration, social meltdowns, rising predatory crime.
All across the globe... the "tsunami" forces unleased from the collaspe of Wall Street and Canary Wharf have wacked, walloped, and reverberated across the globe, and impacted the Asia-Pacific region, severely stressing societies in the whole region.
At a Boao business forum held last week in Hainan Island, Jackie Chan, the 55-year Kung-Fu actor, was quoted as saying :"I'm not sure if it's good to have freedom or not," He further said "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we're not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."
He went on to say that freedoms in Hong Kong and Taiwan made those societies "chaotic."
His quoted remarks, placed out of context, immediately drew many rebukes from fellow ethnic Chinese outside of Mainland China, primarily in HKG and TAIWAN.
He was roundly chastised and castigated. And one of the rebuked was attributed to HKG serial protester, i.e. hippie HKG legislator Leung Kwok Hung.
"He's insulted the Chinese people. Chinese people aren't pets," the Hong Kong pro-democracy legislator Leung Kwok-hung told The Associated Press. "Chinese society needs a democratic system to protect human rights and rule of law."
Another lawmaker, Albert Ho, another one of those HKG "Western Moon is rounder" worshippers, called Jackie Chan's comments "racist," adding: "People around the world are running their own countries. Why can't Chinese do the same?"
Conceptually, in a vacuum, these critiques sounded well-reasoned; but when you place these criticisms in context, given the size, population, culture of China and the Chinese people, at this juncture of China's renewal and resurgence, one can understand that the Western notion of participatory democracy, nor its much vaunted Rule of Law, in truth, are hollow and very misplaced.
The Chinese people, given this stage of its development, should opt for social harmony, social order, over chaos, or "luan."
It is not just plain "common sense;" but it is also the way away from the crass, vulgar, chaotic model we are seeing implode before our very eyes here in the United States of America.
Here... there are too much freedoms, little social or personal responsibility.
Here... it is a "dumbed down" society where the victimizers are guaranteed unbriddled "civil liberties," "human rights;" while their victims are traumatised and abandoned to fend for themselves.
The notion of so-called "due process" or Rule of Law is tilted in favor of the aggressor over the aggrieved victim.
No wonder America today is broken, and unraveling from within.
Drugs and alcohol abuse have become pandemic; social predatory behavior has ruined the social fabric of what used to be an orderly society.
The social compact has unraveled by an environment where criminals, drug lords, con-artists, thieves, looters, plunderers, corrupt officials reign; and where law-abiding ordinary folks are left unprotected, and to fend for themselves.
This is not the kind of democracy that the Chinese people need to emulate nor pattern their social fabric in Chinese society.
Consider one illustration, involving that lone Somali pirate caught in the Horn of Africa by a U.S. Navy ship, after he and three of his fellow pirates tried to comandeer and hold for ransom the US merchant marine ship, the Maersk Alabama.
After all the rigmarole at the coast of East Africa, this darn pirate is being flown into New York City, to face trial before an American court... with American taxpayers paying all the bills for legal defense, show-case trial, and all the concommittant wasteful spending needed to provide a veneer of the "Rule of Law" in this clear-cut case of sea piracy.
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=7386881&page=1&nwltr=WN_mostviewedstories_hed2
http://online.wsj.com/video/somali-pirate-arrives-in-us-faces-piracy-charges/B7792A68-85E6-4E9A-84D9-19BEAF95C7D8.html
WHAT FOR ? WHY WASTE PUBLIC MONIES FOR THE SAKE OF A PUBLIC SHOWCASE ?
Follow China's way ! Be practical.
Death sentence by firing squad. Fast, expeditious and certain justice. The scums of the earth needed to be expunged.
And here, our "honorary whites" and "Western Moon is rounder" ethnic Chinese, i.e. of the ilk of "serial protester" Leung Kwok Hung, are lambasting Jackie Chan for good ole basic common sense.
The Chinese has to unlearn and wean themselves away from some of the dumb ideas from the WEST... especially on its false, naive, dumb notion of Western "participatory democracy."
Jackie Chan is right..... social harmony trumps "luan" and chaos. Democracy, Western-style, is not suitable for China. And it will only magnify many-fold the colossal mess and chaos which have impacted the U.S.A. these days, and brought down this nation.
Monday, April 20, 2009
Rampage rage shootings in American schools - ten years after Columbine High, Americans still don't have a clue as to Why
Rampage shootings in American schools have now become an iconic illustration of and about the malignancy of America's social-civic-values, and the state of mental health among many of its youths.
Ten years after the Columbine High school massacre, there is still no grasp nor sensible solutions to this plague which make violence in schools in America an iconic symbol of America's dysfunctionality and aggression.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30259632/?GT1=43001
Is it just bad parenting ? Is it drugs and the pandemic it has sown in the nationa's social fabric ? Is it the profliferation or easy access to guns and assault weaponhs ? Is it in the erosion of family values ?
Is it alienation or rage simmering within a society and lifestyle known for its "pressure cooker" unforgiving environment?
Or is there more to this malignancy within America ?
Ten years after the Columbine High school massacre, there is still no grasp nor sensible solutions to this plague which make violence in schools in America an iconic symbol of America's dysfunctionality and aggression.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30259632/?GT1=43001
Is it just bad parenting ? Is it drugs and the pandemic it has sown in the nationa's social fabric ? Is it the profliferation or easy access to guns and assault weaponhs ? Is it in the erosion of family values ?
Is it alienation or rage simmering within a society and lifestyle known for its "pressure cooker" unforgiving environment?
Or is there more to this malignancy within America ?
Sunday, April 19, 2009
Socialism according to "American characteristics" - Obamaoism :-)
Obamaoism is the elixir being used by Obamaniacs as a panacea to cure America's ailment.:-)
Consider the following link to learn more about "Socialism according to American characteristics." :-)
Comrada Obamao Ding Hao :-)
http://www.anti-cnn.com/archives/5167.html
Consider the following link to learn more about "Socialism according to American characteristics." :-)
Comrada Obamao Ding Hao :-)
http://www.anti-cnn.com/archives/5167.html
Is there a new emerging "Obama Doctrine" in U.S. foreign relations with the Non-West ?
Western pundits are trying to figure out the signals from what is now seen as the new "OBAMA DOCTRINE" in a completely new attitude in US foreign relations, not just vis a vis Russia, Iran, the American hemisphere, but towards the Asia-Pacific.
Consider what one pundit wrote about Obama's new foreign policy attitude and posture:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97LOI9G0&show_article=1
And here's another one:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/04/20/20090420obama-90days0420.html
Consider what one pundit wrote about Obama's new foreign policy attitude and posture:
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97LOI9G0&show_article=1
And here's another one:
http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/2009/04/20/20090420obama-90days0420.html
Saturday, April 18, 2009
China's New Left looks back with nostalgia at Mao Zedong's egalitarian society where the wealth gap was narrow
In China's dazzling economic growth, there is a listlessness for many who feel left out and abandoned by the thrust of modernization.
There's a New Left emerging in China's intelligentsia that is stirring:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/18/AR2009041801939.html?hpid=artslot
There's a New Left emerging in China's intelligentsia that is stirring:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/04/18/AR2009041801939.html?hpid=artslot
The American Dream goes sour - Going Postal now means Asian immigrant men in rage going amuck and doing heinous violent rage - killings :-(
There is a social pathology to which Asian immigrants in America need to get a grip on and provide a panacea.
Lately, the spate of berserk rage killings in the U.S. involving Asian immigrant males has gripped and dramatized an inexplicable rage and breakdown among Asian immigrants living in America.
It is more than simply bad economic times.... or alienation... or mental health. There is more to the story than simply Asian men "cracking up" and committing killings in a spree of rage.
The stark news of another violent attack by a Chinese immigrant landscape worker of a Chinese couple living in one of Silicon's tony neighborhoods, i.e. Cupertino, California, killing the wife, and seriously wounding the husband, has once again sent shivers down the spines of the Asian immigrant communities in San Francisco Bay Area.
As of this writing, the suspect, one 45-year-old Huaichang Zhao, is still at large. Zhao had been working at the house owned by the couple on the 22000 block of Berry Court, a new cul-de-sac in the Monta Vista district.
http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12166540
Lately it appears that a string of "amuck" rage killings involving Asian assailants acting out and doing heinous killings have afflicted not just California here in the US West Coast but also in the East coast in towns like Binghamton, New York.
Barely two weeks ago, an ethnic Chinese immigrant from New York went into the Immigration Center of Binghampton, with a cache of weapons and ammunition, and went amuck killing 13 victims, wounding four others, before snuffing himself out. The shooter, one named Jiverly Vuong (Wong) appeared to have suffered from a grievous mental illness and feeling "persecuted"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30066772/
In Mountain View, California, next to Cupertino, a few months ago,in November, 2008we just experienced a another "berserk" rage killing by a laid-off tech worker who went to his former employer and took him out together with two other managers of a high-tech company in which he had been recently employed but terminated.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/16/BAUC145B4A.DTL
Recently, an Indian tech-worker, in a similar heat of passion, over a domestic dispute with his brother-in law, went on a mass rampage and massacre, shooting six members of his family from India, under heinous circumstances in a town house complex in Santa Clara.... right at the heart of Silicon Valley. The killer used to work as an engineer at Google.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12166392
One may chalk it up to the tough and rough economic times, exacerbating the "pressure cooker" environment of living in America. But there is more to the story as to why perfectly normal males can go amuck and kill.
This week, California's unemployment rate has skyrocted to 11.2% leaving many jobless bodies and jettisoned workers. The fear and frustration and the slow boil are not being fully reported nor analyzed by the Western mainstream news media.
In Silicon Valley, what used to be the hub of phenomenal growth and wealth expansion clustered around start-ups and high-tech innovation is now seeing an unemployment rate of 11%. Big numbers when you consider that this means with over 100,000 jobless impacted from the meltdown of the high-tech sector in Silicon Valley.
There's more to this social pathology afflicting Asian immigrant men. And the Asian communities in America, whatever are left of them, need to seriously reflect and ponder the social circumstances which compel otherwise ordinary men to go amuck and kill others, especially those with whom they associate with, whether within family, as fellow employees in a workplace setting, or as business customers in a landscaping contract as was what happened in the latest killing spree committed by an immigrant male landscape contractor in Cupetino, California.
"What went wrong?" And "Why?"
Lately, the spate of berserk rage killings in the U.S. involving Asian immigrant males has gripped and dramatized an inexplicable rage and breakdown among Asian immigrants living in America.
It is more than simply bad economic times.... or alienation... or mental health. There is more to the story than simply Asian men "cracking up" and committing killings in a spree of rage.
The stark news of another violent attack by a Chinese immigrant landscape worker of a Chinese couple living in one of Silicon's tony neighborhoods, i.e. Cupertino, California, killing the wife, and seriously wounding the husband, has once again sent shivers down the spines of the Asian immigrant communities in San Francisco Bay Area.
As of this writing, the suspect, one 45-year-old Huaichang Zhao, is still at large. Zhao had been working at the house owned by the couple on the 22000 block of Berry Court, a new cul-de-sac in the Monta Vista district.
http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12166540
Lately it appears that a string of "amuck" rage killings involving Asian assailants acting out and doing heinous killings have afflicted not just California here in the US West Coast but also in the East coast in towns like Binghamton, New York.
Barely two weeks ago, an ethnic Chinese immigrant from New York went into the Immigration Center of Binghampton, with a cache of weapons and ammunition, and went amuck killing 13 victims, wounding four others, before snuffing himself out. The shooter, one named Jiverly Vuong (Wong) appeared to have suffered from a grievous mental illness and feeling "persecuted"
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30066772/
In Mountain View, California, next to Cupertino, a few months ago,in November, 2008we just experienced a another "berserk" rage killing by a laid-off tech worker who went to his former employer and took him out together with two other managers of a high-tech company in which he had been recently employed but terminated.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/11/16/BAUC145B4A.DTL
Recently, an Indian tech-worker, in a similar heat of passion, over a domestic dispute with his brother-in law, went on a mass rampage and massacre, shooting six members of his family from India, under heinous circumstances in a town house complex in Santa Clara.... right at the heart of Silicon Valley. The killer used to work as an engineer at Google.
http://www.mercurynews.com/news/ci_12166392
One may chalk it up to the tough and rough economic times, exacerbating the "pressure cooker" environment of living in America. But there is more to the story as to why perfectly normal males can go amuck and kill.
This week, California's unemployment rate has skyrocted to 11.2% leaving many jobless bodies and jettisoned workers. The fear and frustration and the slow boil are not being fully reported nor analyzed by the Western mainstream news media.
In Silicon Valley, what used to be the hub of phenomenal growth and wealth expansion clustered around start-ups and high-tech innovation is now seeing an unemployment rate of 11%. Big numbers when you consider that this means with over 100,000 jobless impacted from the meltdown of the high-tech sector in Silicon Valley.
There's more to this social pathology afflicting Asian immigrant men. And the Asian communities in America, whatever are left of them, need to seriously reflect and ponder the social circumstances which compel otherwise ordinary men to go amuck and kill others, especially those with whom they associate with, whether within family, as fellow employees in a workplace setting, or as business customers in a landscaping contract as was what happened in the latest killing spree committed by an immigrant male landscape contractor in Cupetino, California.
"What went wrong?" And "Why?"
Movie action star Jackie Chan weighs in on democracy and why it does not fit the Chinese people
Jackie Chan may not be an erudite speaker nor deep thinker; nor may he be articulate in politics... who can really express himself cogently, intelligently or adroiyly. .
But he has a sense of what works for the Chinese people; and what does not work.
And he has had experienced America and Hollywood and how things work in Tinseltown.
That this martial arts entertainer has returned to his roots, as did Jet Li, speaks volumes about his love for China and Chinese culture, unlike the many "honorary whites" that we have among many Chinese artists and actors/actresses who can't wait to disassociate, disidentify, and escape from their roots.
At the BoAo Forum now being convened in Hainan Island, attended by many Chinese business leaders, Jackie Chan was candid in his observation at a forum held to discuss "Tapping into Asia's Creative Industry Potential."
To get the gist of what Jackie Chan was trying to say, it is that he is not sure that the Chinese people are ready for Western-style democracy... with all the "luan" and cacophonous "in your face" confrontational politics and posturings.
Read what he said:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/18/entertainment/e025319D55.DTL&tsp=1
In response, the lunatic "mau mau" protest activists in HKG and Taiwan overreacted. e.g. Leung "long hair" Kwok Hung, the Hong Kong "hippie" known for his publicity stunts and serial "mau mau" protests:
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/jackie-chans-china-comments-prompt-backlash-ap
But he has a sense of what works for the Chinese people; and what does not work.
And he has had experienced America and Hollywood and how things work in Tinseltown.
That this martial arts entertainer has returned to his roots, as did Jet Li, speaks volumes about his love for China and Chinese culture, unlike the many "honorary whites" that we have among many Chinese artists and actors/actresses who can't wait to disassociate, disidentify, and escape from their roots.
At the BoAo Forum now being convened in Hainan Island, attended by many Chinese business leaders, Jackie Chan was candid in his observation at a forum held to discuss "Tapping into Asia's Creative Industry Potential."
To get the gist of what Jackie Chan was trying to say, it is that he is not sure that the Chinese people are ready for Western-style democracy... with all the "luan" and cacophonous "in your face" confrontational politics and posturings.
Read what he said:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2009/04/18/entertainment/e025319D55.DTL&tsp=1
In response, the lunatic "mau mau" protest activists in HKG and Taiwan overreacted. e.g. Leung "long hair" Kwok Hung, the Hong Kong "hippie" known for his publicity stunts and serial "mau mau" protests:
http://movies.yahoo.com/news/movies.ap.org/jackie-chans-china-comments-prompt-backlash-ap
Friday, April 17, 2009
China - Friend or Foe ? Here's how a Wall Street Journal report reads it
Using China's emerging power as an economic power, plus its modernizing military, the People's Liberation Army (PLA), as a "bogeyman" has been a favorite pasttime for many Western news pundits.
Among the Western news media ratpacks, there are more hawks than doves... more bashers than engagers when it comes to China.
Here's another one of those news piece that is being dribbled out.... this one by the Wall Street Journal, captioned, "China --- Friend or Foe ?":
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124001124687130799.html
Imagine what it would be like if a Chinese Navy surveillance ship cruises near the California coast and from Baja California started to snoop around the naval base in San Diego, and monitor the U.S. military activities in the U.S. coastline. This in addition to satellite snooping which is now routine in U.S. Intelligence gathering all around the globe.
Isn't there some "double standards" going on here ? And China is considered expansionist and militarily ambitious ?
Look who's talking, Dude ?
Among the Western news media ratpacks, there are more hawks than doves... more bashers than engagers when it comes to China.
Here's another one of those news piece that is being dribbled out.... this one by the Wall Street Journal, captioned, "China --- Friend or Foe ?":
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124001124687130799.html
Imagine what it would be like if a Chinese Navy surveillance ship cruises near the California coast and from Baja California started to snoop around the naval base in San Diego, and monitor the U.S. military activities in the U.S. coastline. This in addition to satellite snooping which is now routine in U.S. Intelligence gathering all around the globe.
Isn't there some "double standards" going on here ? And China is considered expansionist and militarily ambitious ?
Look who's talking, Dude ?
The thaw in US-Cuba Relations signals a "warm spring" akin to the one across the Taiwan Straits - Let the sunshine in !
There are tectonic shifts happening on the global stage this year. The era of Eurocentrism is waning; and the emerging economic and power centers outside of Europe and North America are seeing stirring signs of change.
Not just across the Taiwan straits; not just in Asia-Pacific, notably South Asia, and the ASEAN countrues, but in Latin America.... a new era has emerged.
The issue of normalization across the Taiwan Straits between Taipei and Beijing is headed in the right direction.
Setting aside half a century of acrimonious tensions, between brothers and sisters, the rapprochment being initiated in good faith across the Taiwan Straits is clearly bringing benefits between the peoples who live across both sides of the straits, and has created a "win-win" environment.
Tourism across the straits is humming along.... the lessening of tension, the focus on mutually beneficial links across the Taiwan Straits is a positive thing that can be chalked up as a good thing for world peace.
More important, the economic integration and synergy developed between the China mainland economy with Taiwan's economy have brought about tremendous benefits across both sides of the Taiwan Straits. Those links are irreversible and unstoppable.
Today, as President Barack Obama ventures into Latin America and engages Latin American leaders from 33 nations, in a summitry about the issues confronting this hemisphere, in a constructive dialogue to start a new page in U.S.-Latin American relations, the issue of Cuba has been catapulted to the frontburner.
Barack Obama can be bold; and he can change the course of America in its relations with its Latin America neighbors south of the U.S. It is clear that the Monroe Doctrine is dead; and Latin America is seeing a new dawn. Barack Obama and the Castro brothers should seize the opportunity to start a "warm springs" dialogue akin to the one that Ma Ying Jeao did when he took office and ramped up the outreach to Beijing's Hu Juntao and Wen Jiabao, who responded in good faith and proactively re-started the dialogue and rapprochment.
The Taiwan Straits has since seen a remarkable thawing after the dialogue started.
Similarly, the U.S. has an opening to re-engage Cuba with Obama now firmly at the helm in the White House. The time is ripe. U.S. policy towards Cuba has been an anachronism for quite some time, locked by the cobwebs and demons of the past.
It is time to think and look forward to the future. At stakes is not just that Caribbean island nation, but the notion of mutual respect, reciprocity, and honoring diversity while seeking common grounds with non-European nations outside of the Western hemisphere.
The era of Eurocentrism in international relations and power politics among nations is now over. Finito. No mas. No more.
Obama is being positioned to bring about this bold change away from the Eurocentrism which has heretofore characterize U.S. international relations. And he has a great Secretary of State in Hilary Clinton who can help pave the way, with a degree of humility, respect, and cultural sensitivity toward the latinos from the South.
Consider reading the following links including some very refreshing signals of contrition and regrets in U.S. past mistakes made by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, particularly on U.S. "failed" policies towards Cuba, Myanmar, Iran and other countries in the non-West:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090418/D97KT7MG0.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/world/americas/18diplo.html?_r=1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123999745284329571.html
Signs of a "warm springs" in U.S. attitude towards countries from the Non-West is palpable; and it is the right thing to do by US President Barack Obama. And the first step made in Trinidad-Tobago by US President Barack Obama is the right step to break the ice between the US and its neighbors in the South side of the Americas.
The hugh divide and tension in Cuba-US relations must be fixed first and foremost. It is time to move forward and look to the future for a thaw.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97KG5HO0&show_article=1
It is time for Cuba and America to make peace, after fifty years of saber-rattling and relentless polemics across the Caribbean. The Latin nations in this 34-nation summit are overwhelmingly in support of a constructive US-Cuba dialogue. At stakes is a new climate of mutual respect of each country's national sovereignty, and the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.
Let's get real.... Fidel Castro has outlived more U.S. presidents.....from Dwight Eisenhower, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush... and he is the last man still left standing. By his longevity, he must be doing something right for Cuba and the Cubans. Previous Americans have made relentless attempts to overthrow and destabilize Cuba, without success.
Obama sees the futility of this Cold War against a small Caribbean neighbor whose only crime is defiance against the big gorrilla up North.
Barack Obama has enough chits, now that he is in the White House, to become a statesman, and make his administration a symbol of a humbler, more conciliatory, more listening world leader leading the world's most powerful country, the U.S.A.
Instead of the usual hubris, arrogance, and bullying exemplified by previous American presidents, Barack Obama is well pivoted to lead America to engage the Non-West with initiatives for peace, dialogue, and constructive engagement which is not suffocating, domineering, and bullying.
And Cuba is as good a start to begin this process in America's new posture in its international relations. A bit of humility and honest listening will be good for Obama. And the American public needs to listen more and talk less.
Let the sunshine in... let the warm springs between the U.S. and Cuba be nurtured.
It is time for the Castro brothers... Fidel and Raul, to engage Barrack Obama in a genuine dialogue to normalize relations and get the mistrust behind them.
Yes... we can; Yes... we all can. Si Se Puede. Si Se Puede.
Not just across the Taiwan straits; not just in Asia-Pacific, notably South Asia, and the ASEAN countrues, but in Latin America.... a new era has emerged.
The issue of normalization across the Taiwan Straits between Taipei and Beijing is headed in the right direction.
Setting aside half a century of acrimonious tensions, between brothers and sisters, the rapprochment being initiated in good faith across the Taiwan Straits is clearly bringing benefits between the peoples who live across both sides of the straits, and has created a "win-win" environment.
Tourism across the straits is humming along.... the lessening of tension, the focus on mutually beneficial links across the Taiwan Straits is a positive thing that can be chalked up as a good thing for world peace.
More important, the economic integration and synergy developed between the China mainland economy with Taiwan's economy have brought about tremendous benefits across both sides of the Taiwan Straits. Those links are irreversible and unstoppable.
Today, as President Barack Obama ventures into Latin America and engages Latin American leaders from 33 nations, in a summitry about the issues confronting this hemisphere, in a constructive dialogue to start a new page in U.S.-Latin American relations, the issue of Cuba has been catapulted to the frontburner.
Barack Obama can be bold; and he can change the course of America in its relations with its Latin America neighbors south of the U.S. It is clear that the Monroe Doctrine is dead; and Latin America is seeing a new dawn. Barack Obama and the Castro brothers should seize the opportunity to start a "warm springs" dialogue akin to the one that Ma Ying Jeao did when he took office and ramped up the outreach to Beijing's Hu Juntao and Wen Jiabao, who responded in good faith and proactively re-started the dialogue and rapprochment.
The Taiwan Straits has since seen a remarkable thawing after the dialogue started.
Similarly, the U.S. has an opening to re-engage Cuba with Obama now firmly at the helm in the White House. The time is ripe. U.S. policy towards Cuba has been an anachronism for quite some time, locked by the cobwebs and demons of the past.
It is time to think and look forward to the future. At stakes is not just that Caribbean island nation, but the notion of mutual respect, reciprocity, and honoring diversity while seeking common grounds with non-European nations outside of the Western hemisphere.
The era of Eurocentrism in international relations and power politics among nations is now over. Finito. No mas. No more.
Obama is being positioned to bring about this bold change away from the Eurocentrism which has heretofore characterize U.S. international relations. And he has a great Secretary of State in Hilary Clinton who can help pave the way, with a degree of humility, respect, and cultural sensitivity toward the latinos from the South.
Consider reading the following links including some very refreshing signals of contrition and regrets in U.S. past mistakes made by US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, particularly on U.S. "failed" policies towards Cuba, Myanmar, Iran and other countries in the non-West:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090418/D97KT7MG0.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/world/americas/18diplo.html?_r=1
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123999745284329571.html
Signs of a "warm springs" in U.S. attitude towards countries from the Non-West is palpable; and it is the right thing to do by US President Barack Obama. And the first step made in Trinidad-Tobago by US President Barack Obama is the right step to break the ice between the US and its neighbors in the South side of the Americas.
The hugh divide and tension in Cuba-US relations must be fixed first and foremost. It is time to move forward and look to the future for a thaw.
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D97KG5HO0&show_article=1
It is time for Cuba and America to make peace, after fifty years of saber-rattling and relentless polemics across the Caribbean. The Latin nations in this 34-nation summit are overwhelmingly in support of a constructive US-Cuba dialogue. At stakes is a new climate of mutual respect of each country's national sovereignty, and the principle of non-interference in each other's internal affairs.
Let's get real.... Fidel Castro has outlived more U.S. presidents.....from Dwight Eisenhower, Jack Kennedy, Lyndon Baines Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jerry Ford, Jimmy Carter, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush... and he is the last man still left standing. By his longevity, he must be doing something right for Cuba and the Cubans. Previous Americans have made relentless attempts to overthrow and destabilize Cuba, without success.
Obama sees the futility of this Cold War against a small Caribbean neighbor whose only crime is defiance against the big gorrilla up North.
Barack Obama has enough chits, now that he is in the White House, to become a statesman, and make his administration a symbol of a humbler, more conciliatory, more listening world leader leading the world's most powerful country, the U.S.A.
Instead of the usual hubris, arrogance, and bullying exemplified by previous American presidents, Barack Obama is well pivoted to lead America to engage the Non-West with initiatives for peace, dialogue, and constructive engagement which is not suffocating, domineering, and bullying.
And Cuba is as good a start to begin this process in America's new posture in its international relations. A bit of humility and honest listening will be good for Obama. And the American public needs to listen more and talk less.
Let the sunshine in... let the warm springs between the U.S. and Cuba be nurtured.
It is time for the Castro brothers... Fidel and Raul, to engage Barrack Obama in a genuine dialogue to normalize relations and get the mistrust behind them.
Yes... we can; Yes... we all can. Si Se Puede. Si Se Puede.
Western "Gweillo" Green Hype is Hollow and Superficial - What does "Eco-friendly" really mean ?
These days, I can't go to the toilet without being carped and being hyped by the mainstream Western news media about joining the "Green Revolution" and reducing my "carbon footprint" in everything I do, from flushing the toilet, to driving "eco-friendly" car, or taking the bike to work, or simply put, just walk like our good ole ancestors, the "homo sapien."
But the incessant drumbeat of "going Green" and "going Organic" being scripted, staged, and amplified here in the West, among the "Greenies" and the commercial opportunists riding on the positive vibes of "Green"ness and "Organic"ness is beginning to grate and annoy me.
Gimme a break, you'all white gweillo dudes.
Today, while America's second biggest shopping mall operator, General Growth Properties, with over 200 shopping malls scattered throughout the U.S., filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy, for the collaspe of retailing and implosion within U.S. consumers.... distressed and overloaded with debt..... and while American youths are snorting cocaine up their noses, smoking dope, and abusing alcohol..... creating a colossal mess in Mexico, its Southern neighbor, coping with a drug cartel primarily supplying the gweillo addicts in El Norte, up north across the U.S.-Mexican borders..... here we are having to listen to all this "Green Hype" from U.S. Greenies.
This is fast becoming a redundant faddish overkill. Hip, hyped-up, full of b.s. signifying nothing.
Lately, the new mantra is being "eco-friendly;" becoming "green;" or minimalizing "one's carbon footprint." It has become the hip thing to do, and even in LA LA land in Southern California, with their fashionistas and Hollywood celebrities living on grand mansions in their opulent lavish lifestyle of hyperconsumerism in Beverly Hills are jumping onto the badwagon on this new chic.
http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-ig-greendosa19-2009apr19,0,6451413.story
Another one of those silly, non-sensical gweillo marketing razzle-dazzle.... like selling a GM American car, with all the bells and whistles, except that the engine does not work or the car can' run. Packaging more than substance.
Incidentally, I just received a Travelocity news blip in my e-mail advertising and promoting a list of so-called "Eco-Friendly" hotels in their list of gweillo-run hyped up hotels.
http://leisure.travelocity.com/Promotions/0,,TRAVELOCITY%7C5357%7Cmkt_main,00.html
Hip Green Hotel ? Eco-Friendly ? Mimimal carbon-footprint ?
What kind of bullshit is this ?
I thought simplicity still matters..... why not check into one of those "no frills" hotel owned and operated by Chinese hoteliers, without the hype and the marketing "packages" stamped with high-fallutin words like "Green," "Eco-Friendly" or "Organic."
What ever happened to good ole "common sense" in the WEST ?
Gweillo dumb. Gweillo angst. Gweillo hype.
All razzle-dazzle... no substance.
But the incessant drumbeat of "going Green" and "going Organic" being scripted, staged, and amplified here in the West, among the "Greenies" and the commercial opportunists riding on the positive vibes of "Green"ness and "Organic"ness is beginning to grate and annoy me.
Gimme a break, you'all white gweillo dudes.
Today, while America's second biggest shopping mall operator, General Growth Properties, with over 200 shopping malls scattered throughout the U.S., filed Chapter 13 bankruptcy, for the collaspe of retailing and implosion within U.S. consumers.... distressed and overloaded with debt..... and while American youths are snorting cocaine up their noses, smoking dope, and abusing alcohol..... creating a colossal mess in Mexico, its Southern neighbor, coping with a drug cartel primarily supplying the gweillo addicts in El Norte, up north across the U.S.-Mexican borders..... here we are having to listen to all this "Green Hype" from U.S. Greenies.
This is fast becoming a redundant faddish overkill. Hip, hyped-up, full of b.s. signifying nothing.
Lately, the new mantra is being "eco-friendly;" becoming "green;" or minimalizing "one's carbon footprint." It has become the hip thing to do, and even in LA LA land in Southern California, with their fashionistas and Hollywood celebrities living on grand mansions in their opulent lavish lifestyle of hyperconsumerism in Beverly Hills are jumping onto the badwagon on this new chic.
http://www.latimes.com/features/lifestyle/la-ig-greendosa19-2009apr19,0,6451413.story
Another one of those silly, non-sensical gweillo marketing razzle-dazzle.... like selling a GM American car, with all the bells and whistles, except that the engine does not work or the car can' run. Packaging more than substance.
Incidentally, I just received a Travelocity news blip in my e-mail advertising and promoting a list of so-called "Eco-Friendly" hotels in their list of gweillo-run hyped up hotels.
http://leisure.travelocity.com/Promotions/0,,TRAVELOCITY%7C5357%7Cmkt_main,00.html
Hip Green Hotel ? Eco-Friendly ? Mimimal carbon-footprint ?
What kind of bullshit is this ?
I thought simplicity still matters..... why not check into one of those "no frills" hotel owned and operated by Chinese hoteliers, without the hype and the marketing "packages" stamped with high-fallutin words like "Green," "Eco-Friendly" or "Organic."
What ever happened to good ole "common sense" in the WEST ?
Gweillo dumb. Gweillo angst. Gweillo hype.
All razzle-dazzle... no substance.
The Global Auto Industry - what a contrast between China and the U.S. in terms of costs, fuel efficiency, models, and labor-management relations
Americans and Europeans are in complete self-denial about the morass that their societies and economies have gotten themselves into.
Apart from the colossal looting and greed which broke the backs of Wall Street and Canary Wharf, bringing down with it what used to be brand-investment and retail banking institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland and a slew of "big name" institutions which used to cluster around the orbit of big-name Western multinational banks..... there is one industry which marks and defines how the WEST has gone wrong, and where CHINA has gotten it right.
It is the auto industry.
Consider General Motors, and what used to be the invincible crucible of high and mightly hard-core industry that American industrialists used to boast about and smugly promote.
Who has not heard of the axiom which states:
"What's good for GM is good for the rest of America."
Fast forward to 2009, and news about GM teetering on the brink of insolvency and looming bankruptcy is increasingly becoming more ominous.
What went wrong ? Apart from legacy costs, health care costs, and an overburdened cost structure and bad management, American cars and brands like GM, Chrysler, and Ford have now gotten a bad name stuck to the cars they build... the onus extends to shoddyness, lack of quality control, and worse, lousy service and awfully bad designs and awfully bad fuel-efficiency.
It is not just the actuality but the imagery associated with the American car which has been disastrous for Detroit. Once the bad reputation stuck, it is difficult to re-shape public perception about its malodorous reputation.
Myself, I drive a GM Chevy Malibu and have driven it for five (5) years. I must confess that I have no major problems with the integrity of the engine or the body of steel that a Chevy, known for the working man's car, is well known for.
One thing though.... the fuel mileage efficiency sucks. The Malibu six-cylinder LS I drive is a gas-guzzler.
And worse, the GM dealership which services GM Chevy cars in my neighborhood sucks. The service department gouges customers and charges an "arm and a leg" for minor service maintenance and repairs... thus forcing me to have my car maintained and serviced by private Asian immigrant mechanics in private shops which charge a fraction it might have caused under highly-labor unionized shops in GM's constellation of dealerships and their service departments.
The writing is on the wall for GM. The encrusted, inflexible and "in denial" United Auto Workers' Union have got to realize that the American auto worker today is overpaid, underworked, and can't compete anymore compared to their counterparts elsewhere around the world.
Consider the two news links today in the online sources about GM and China's nascent auto industry, heading in the direction of fuel-efficient electric-powered small cars.
China, its appears, is jumping onto the business of Lithium-eon technology and rapidly "leap-frogging" the competition, including the established European and American automakers, in pro-typing the "electric war."
This is great for China and the Chinese people.
I have always maintained that the gasoline-powered automobile is a disaster for China, given the size of its population, and the prospect of air pollution caused by the fossil-fueld powered automobile, as designed by foreign car-makers.
Consider Green technology, and adapt alternative fuel to China's nascent transit and automotive industries.
It is a winner for China.
And what a contrast between GM, America's dying auto behemoth, with China's emerging start-ups and auto companies, such as one called BYD, i.e. for "Bring Your Dream."
BYD, it appears, has made a major leap in electric-powered small cars, with a range which is ideal for China's cities.
Click on the two links below and find out the differences between the US and China. One is a bad news story; the other is a good news story.
One... the story about GM:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123997956844329343
.html#mod=testMod
The other, the story about BYD Co., China's upstart electric car manufacturer:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jS6KukQO-Ula0R4r4CGVYJforgrwD97K41QO0
Apart from the colossal looting and greed which broke the backs of Wall Street and Canary Wharf, bringing down with it what used to be brand-investment and retail banking institutions such as Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland and a slew of "big name" institutions which used to cluster around the orbit of big-name Western multinational banks..... there is one industry which marks and defines how the WEST has gone wrong, and where CHINA has gotten it right.
It is the auto industry.
Consider General Motors, and what used to be the invincible crucible of high and mightly hard-core industry that American industrialists used to boast about and smugly promote.
Who has not heard of the axiom which states:
"What's good for GM is good for the rest of America."
Fast forward to 2009, and news about GM teetering on the brink of insolvency and looming bankruptcy is increasingly becoming more ominous.
What went wrong ? Apart from legacy costs, health care costs, and an overburdened cost structure and bad management, American cars and brands like GM, Chrysler, and Ford have now gotten a bad name stuck to the cars they build... the onus extends to shoddyness, lack of quality control, and worse, lousy service and awfully bad designs and awfully bad fuel-efficiency.
It is not just the actuality but the imagery associated with the American car which has been disastrous for Detroit. Once the bad reputation stuck, it is difficult to re-shape public perception about its malodorous reputation.
Myself, I drive a GM Chevy Malibu and have driven it for five (5) years. I must confess that I have no major problems with the integrity of the engine or the body of steel that a Chevy, known for the working man's car, is well known for.
One thing though.... the fuel mileage efficiency sucks. The Malibu six-cylinder LS I drive is a gas-guzzler.
And worse, the GM dealership which services GM Chevy cars in my neighborhood sucks. The service department gouges customers and charges an "arm and a leg" for minor service maintenance and repairs... thus forcing me to have my car maintained and serviced by private Asian immigrant mechanics in private shops which charge a fraction it might have caused under highly-labor unionized shops in GM's constellation of dealerships and their service departments.
The writing is on the wall for GM. The encrusted, inflexible and "in denial" United Auto Workers' Union have got to realize that the American auto worker today is overpaid, underworked, and can't compete anymore compared to their counterparts elsewhere around the world.
Consider the two news links today in the online sources about GM and China's nascent auto industry, heading in the direction of fuel-efficient electric-powered small cars.
China, its appears, is jumping onto the business of Lithium-eon technology and rapidly "leap-frogging" the competition, including the established European and American automakers, in pro-typing the "electric war."
This is great for China and the Chinese people.
I have always maintained that the gasoline-powered automobile is a disaster for China, given the size of its population, and the prospect of air pollution caused by the fossil-fueld powered automobile, as designed by foreign car-makers.
Consider Green technology, and adapt alternative fuel to China's nascent transit and automotive industries.
It is a winner for China.
And what a contrast between GM, America's dying auto behemoth, with China's emerging start-ups and auto companies, such as one called BYD, i.e. for "Bring Your Dream."
BYD, it appears, has made a major leap in electric-powered small cars, with a range which is ideal for China's cities.
Click on the two links below and find out the differences between the US and China. One is a bad news story; the other is a good news story.
One... the story about GM:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123997956844329343
.html#mod=testMod
The other, the story about BYD Co., China's upstart electric car manufacturer:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jS6KukQO-Ula0R4r4CGVYJforgrwD97K41QO0
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Using China's military build-up as a pretext, the Aussie hawks persuade Premier Kevin Rudd to escalate the Aussie military-industrial complex budget
China bashers have evidently won the day in Australia this week.
Premier Kevin Rudd, an avowed knowlegeable Sinophile and one of the few "gweillo" presidents fluent in Mandarin Chinese, in tune and sensitive to Chinese history and culture, has hitched his future with the military hawks in Austalia's political heirarchy.
It appears that Aussie defense strategists have ignored the advice of Australia's most senior intelligence chiefs and rejected the view that China's military expansion poses little threat to the nation's long-term security.
The money for the boosters of Australia's military-industrial complex is too good to pass up, and this is as good a time to use the "bogeyman" of a rising China, as a world economic and military power, to boost and bulk up Australia's military with more muscle, more "teroids." The baksheeh is too good to pass up. And some Aussie military arms brokers stand to make lots of mullah when the procurement decisions come down the pipelines, and the deals are made.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25319012-601,00.html
As I have written before, there's money to be made in China-bashing. And in the West, using and exploiting a rising China, in the face of the financial and social meltdown in America, the UK and Europe, have created opportunities for a whole slew of Western opportunitists hell-bent on unleashing Anti-China hysteria and bigotry.
And apart from the issue of Zizang, being exploited by Team Tibet-Shangri-la and their Western gweillo boosters inside and outside of Dharsamsala, there is an increasingly strident orchestration of imagery of that sneaky, slitty-eyed yellow horde out to take over the world, and flood the West with their toxins.
The backdrop from which this drumbeat has been scripted, staged, and amplified was well analyzed by a friend, who sent me this e-mail:
"The latest round of China-bashing and supposed China threat started
late last month with the release of a Dalai Lama-commissioned report
by the Information Warfare Monitor, a Toronto-based consulting
company/research center. The report concluded that China, Russia,
and other (unspecified) countries have been successfully hacking into
not only the classified documents of the Dalai Lama, but also
classified documents from government and private organizations in 103
countries. This story of cyber-espionage became an instant sensation
in the media across the globe. Before long, China-bashers began to
cite findings of warnings issued by the U.S.-China Economic and
Security Review Commission, a Congressional agency created by Newt
Gingrich when he was still the Speaker of the House. The sole
purpose of this so-called US-China Econ & Security Review Commission
is to issue every six months a China-bashing report. Not surprising,
cyber-espionage has been a pet project of this commission. So, the
findings of the Dalai Lama-commissioned report dovetailed nicely with
what this commission has been saying in its periodic reports in the
last few years, but getting very little traction or attention. Now,
suddenly, we have an alleged independent consulting firm's findings
confirming that China has indeed been spying and stealing information
from government computers in 103 countries.
The next step is going to be calls for US Congressional hearings into
the latest "discoveries" and demands for massive intelligence and
military budget increases from anti-China politicians and the
national security apparatuses. "
Where are the Aussies nowadays ? Are they part of Asia-Pacific ? Or are they alligned with the Western "China-bashers" and Euro-American white supremacists ? Are they volunteering to become the "policemen" for the West in Asia to "contain" China ?
Premier Kevin Rudd, an avowed knowlegeable Sinophile and one of the few "gweillo" presidents fluent in Mandarin Chinese, in tune and sensitive to Chinese history and culture, has hitched his future with the military hawks in Austalia's political heirarchy.
It appears that Aussie defense strategists have ignored the advice of Australia's most senior intelligence chiefs and rejected the view that China's military expansion poses little threat to the nation's long-term security.
The money for the boosters of Australia's military-industrial complex is too good to pass up, and this is as good a time to use the "bogeyman" of a rising China, as a world economic and military power, to boost and bulk up Australia's military with more muscle, more "teroids." The baksheeh is too good to pass up. And some Aussie military arms brokers stand to make lots of mullah when the procurement decisions come down the pipelines, and the deals are made.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,25319012-601,00.html
As I have written before, there's money to be made in China-bashing. And in the West, using and exploiting a rising China, in the face of the financial and social meltdown in America, the UK and Europe, have created opportunities for a whole slew of Western opportunitists hell-bent on unleashing Anti-China hysteria and bigotry.
And apart from the issue of Zizang, being exploited by Team Tibet-Shangri-la and their Western gweillo boosters inside and outside of Dharsamsala, there is an increasingly strident orchestration of imagery of that sneaky, slitty-eyed yellow horde out to take over the world, and flood the West with their toxins.
The backdrop from which this drumbeat has been scripted, staged, and amplified was well analyzed by a friend, who sent me this e-mail:
"The latest round of China-bashing and supposed China threat started
late last month with the release of a Dalai Lama-commissioned report
by the Information Warfare Monitor, a Toronto-based consulting
company/research center. The report concluded that China, Russia,
and other (unspecified) countries have been successfully hacking into
not only the classified documents of the Dalai Lama, but also
classified documents from government and private organizations in 103
countries. This story of cyber-espionage became an instant sensation
in the media across the globe. Before long, China-bashers began to
cite findings of warnings issued by the U.S.-China Economic and
Security Review Commission, a Congressional agency created by Newt
Gingrich when he was still the Speaker of the House. The sole
purpose of this so-called US-China Econ & Security Review Commission
is to issue every six months a China-bashing report. Not surprising,
cyber-espionage has been a pet project of this commission. So, the
findings of the Dalai Lama-commissioned report dovetailed nicely with
what this commission has been saying in its periodic reports in the
last few years, but getting very little traction or attention. Now,
suddenly, we have an alleged independent consulting firm's findings
confirming that China has indeed been spying and stealing information
from government computers in 103 countries.
The next step is going to be calls for US Congressional hearings into
the latest "discoveries" and demands for massive intelligence and
military budget increases from anti-China politicians and the
national security apparatuses. "
Where are the Aussies nowadays ? Are they part of Asia-Pacific ? Or are they alligned with the Western "China-bashers" and Euro-American white supremacists ? Are they volunteering to become the "policemen" for the West in Asia to "contain" China ?
Thursday, April 9, 2009
California in a downward spiral as its civic culture unravels and its fiscal mess deepens
California, America's largest and most populous state, has always prided itself as being the bellweather of change and innovation for Americans.
Who hasn't heard of Silicon Valley and the chip revolution? Over here, cutting-edge technology and the innovators of new-tech, high-tech, from Google to Apple, Facebook to H-P, Intel to Yahoo, Cisco to Oracle, and now green tech give this great state the edge in innovation and creativity and seeming progress.
That's one side of the story. Underneath this veneer of seeming chi-chi culture is a deepening cesspool of civic unraveling and the moral breakdowns splintering families and the social fabric which glue civil society together.
For one, the California state government is not only broke; it is dysfunctional; and it is utterly corrupt. It can't curb its fiscal profligacy and addiction to wasteful spending and looting. Led by a Grade-B action hero-actor, Arnold Schwazenegger, known more for his PR glad-handing, back-slapping, and pep talk, than for substance, the state government is careening from one crisis to another, without any long-term solution to fix what is fundamentally California's core problems, i.e. profligate spending without knowing where the money is coming from... rampant looting, featherbedding and "creative" government accounting.
As ordinary Americans reel from the wallop of a financial meltdown, scandalized by rampant corporate looting at the top, with joblessness on the rise, houses turned upside-down, bank repos and foreclosures increasingly wracking the state of California..... displacing homeowners who no longer could afford the roof over their heads, there is an "armpit" side to this once great state which is not being reported by the mainstream American news media.
Apart from the fiscal mess hurling California into the abyss of a complete fiscal meltdown, with the state budget running amuck, with no viable means to pay for its runaway government bloated with bureaucracy and a leeching public clamoring for more social services with no way to pay for them, there is at the bottom of this mess a social-civic unraveling which is not being reported in the non-West.
A society's social-spiritual health is oftentimes not measured by the numerics and statistics calibrated in $$$ terms.
It is in the state of its civil culture, the quality of its schools, its library facilities, and the overall quality of life which permeates its urban and exurban centers. And furthermore, in the state of its youth and how afflicted they are with drugs and alcohol abuse.
Here in San Francisco, the steady decline in the city's social civic fabric is reflected and poignantly displayed by the breakdowns of its Main San Francisco Public Library. It is a hub for the homeless bums.... street people who are either on drugs, on alcohol, or mentally insane.
Each day, the numbers of homeless people in San Francisco wallow in the mean streets of this # 1 Conde Nast tourist destination are pegged by the thousands.... aggressively pandhandling, defecating in the streets, harrassing tourists for pocket change, or otherwise high on drugs, heroin, or other addictives.
Granted it is not equivalent to the Slumdogs of Mumbai; but here in San Francisco, one of America's most affluent and cutting-edge city, San Francisco is a shocking reminder of the pitfalls of unbriddled greed... of a society crumbling from drug abuse and alcoholism.
Worse, it is causing our neighbors in the South, i.e. Mexico, enormous grief because the insatiable demand for drugs, heroin, cocaine, by Americans feed on the supply being pumped up from south of the border.
Alcoholism in America is rampant, as is drug addiction; and there do not appear to be any solution in sight. Most of these homeless vagrants are young but unemployable or otherwise mentally deranged; and they are simply allowed to fall through the cracks in a society vapid of any moral compass nor social responsibility anymore.
That's America. Home of the free... freedom to snort cocaine, do drugs, smoke pot, and get drunk. No holds barred.
What San Francisco and its public library is supposed to be the center of intellect, the citadel and repository of its books, where its citizenry can devote some quiet time to read, to explore, to unwind from the work treadmill, and to keep up with the knowledge and whet their curiosity for the things around the rest of the world, for history, for fiction or non-fictional exploration, for the food of the mind, has increasingly become a hub for the drunks, the derelicts, the street vermin, the drug addicts, and the street bums. They have taken over.
The Civic Center where San Francisco's Main Library is located is a microcosm of what San Francisco has become.... kook city, loony town......drug-infested, full of street vermin, crazies, bums, drug addicts, and street panhandlers.
The homeless has increasingly taken over and used the Main Library as its public toilet and sleeping berth. It has become so filthy and yes... also unsafe that many people shun it and avoid even going in.
The link below reports on what and how San Francisco and its uber-liberals are trying to cope with this social cancer called "homelessness," otherwise also known as proliferation of drug addiction and endemic alcohol abuse and alcoholism.
The gweillos are in denial that there is a malignant cancer spreading in their sick society. Click on:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Library-helping-homeless-patrons-42719032.html
And here they are blaming China for causing havoc in its deteriorating society in America by flooding the U.S. with "Made in China" goods.
Incidentally, do Americans still produce anything anymore ?
Without yellow and brown people, doing the brawn and brain work.... guess where the gweillos will be and how will they cope ?
In a little over a week, the perversity of April 20 will again bring out the druggies hooked on Marijuana. The annual bong parties with cannabis marijuana users openly smoking dope in campuses like UC Santa Cruz or the University of Colorado in Denver are emblematic of a society hooked on drugs and dope.
China went through the mess with opium; and it broke Chinese society unleashing Western imperialism with its virulence and rapacity to which today the Chinese still remember.
Worth pondering, folks. Isn't this "deja vu"?
Who hasn't heard of Silicon Valley and the chip revolution? Over here, cutting-edge technology and the innovators of new-tech, high-tech, from Google to Apple, Facebook to H-P, Intel to Yahoo, Cisco to Oracle, and now green tech give this great state the edge in innovation and creativity and seeming progress.
That's one side of the story. Underneath this veneer of seeming chi-chi culture is a deepening cesspool of civic unraveling and the moral breakdowns splintering families and the social fabric which glue civil society together.
For one, the California state government is not only broke; it is dysfunctional; and it is utterly corrupt. It can't curb its fiscal profligacy and addiction to wasteful spending and looting. Led by a Grade-B action hero-actor, Arnold Schwazenegger, known more for his PR glad-handing, back-slapping, and pep talk, than for substance, the state government is careening from one crisis to another, without any long-term solution to fix what is fundamentally California's core problems, i.e. profligate spending without knowing where the money is coming from... rampant looting, featherbedding and "creative" government accounting.
As ordinary Americans reel from the wallop of a financial meltdown, scandalized by rampant corporate looting at the top, with joblessness on the rise, houses turned upside-down, bank repos and foreclosures increasingly wracking the state of California..... displacing homeowners who no longer could afford the roof over their heads, there is an "armpit" side to this once great state which is not being reported by the mainstream American news media.
Apart from the fiscal mess hurling California into the abyss of a complete fiscal meltdown, with the state budget running amuck, with no viable means to pay for its runaway government bloated with bureaucracy and a leeching public clamoring for more social services with no way to pay for them, there is at the bottom of this mess a social-civic unraveling which is not being reported in the non-West.
A society's social-spiritual health is oftentimes not measured by the numerics and statistics calibrated in $$$ terms.
It is in the state of its civil culture, the quality of its schools, its library facilities, and the overall quality of life which permeates its urban and exurban centers. And furthermore, in the state of its youth and how afflicted they are with drugs and alcohol abuse.
Here in San Francisco, the steady decline in the city's social civic fabric is reflected and poignantly displayed by the breakdowns of its Main San Francisco Public Library. It is a hub for the homeless bums.... street people who are either on drugs, on alcohol, or mentally insane.
Each day, the numbers of homeless people in San Francisco wallow in the mean streets of this # 1 Conde Nast tourist destination are pegged by the thousands.... aggressively pandhandling, defecating in the streets, harrassing tourists for pocket change, or otherwise high on drugs, heroin, or other addictives.
Granted it is not equivalent to the Slumdogs of Mumbai; but here in San Francisco, one of America's most affluent and cutting-edge city, San Francisco is a shocking reminder of the pitfalls of unbriddled greed... of a society crumbling from drug abuse and alcoholism.
Worse, it is causing our neighbors in the South, i.e. Mexico, enormous grief because the insatiable demand for drugs, heroin, cocaine, by Americans feed on the supply being pumped up from south of the border.
Alcoholism in America is rampant, as is drug addiction; and there do not appear to be any solution in sight. Most of these homeless vagrants are young but unemployable or otherwise mentally deranged; and they are simply allowed to fall through the cracks in a society vapid of any moral compass nor social responsibility anymore.
That's America. Home of the free... freedom to snort cocaine, do drugs, smoke pot, and get drunk. No holds barred.
What San Francisco and its public library is supposed to be the center of intellect, the citadel and repository of its books, where its citizenry can devote some quiet time to read, to explore, to unwind from the work treadmill, and to keep up with the knowledge and whet their curiosity for the things around the rest of the world, for history, for fiction or non-fictional exploration, for the food of the mind, has increasingly become a hub for the drunks, the derelicts, the street vermin, the drug addicts, and the street bums. They have taken over.
The Civic Center where San Francisco's Main Library is located is a microcosm of what San Francisco has become.... kook city, loony town......drug-infested, full of street vermin, crazies, bums, drug addicts, and street panhandlers.
The homeless has increasingly taken over and used the Main Library as its public toilet and sleeping berth. It has become so filthy and yes... also unsafe that many people shun it and avoid even going in.
The link below reports on what and how San Francisco and its uber-liberals are trying to cope with this social cancer called "homelessness," otherwise also known as proliferation of drug addiction and endemic alcohol abuse and alcoholism.
The gweillos are in denial that there is a malignant cancer spreading in their sick society. Click on:
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Library-helping-homeless-patrons-42719032.html
And here they are blaming China for causing havoc in its deteriorating society in America by flooding the U.S. with "Made in China" goods.
Incidentally, do Americans still produce anything anymore ?
Without yellow and brown people, doing the brawn and brain work.... guess where the gweillos will be and how will they cope ?
In a little over a week, the perversity of April 20 will again bring out the druggies hooked on Marijuana. The annual bong parties with cannabis marijuana users openly smoking dope in campuses like UC Santa Cruz or the University of Colorado in Denver are emblematic of a society hooked on drugs and dope.
China went through the mess with opium; and it broke Chinese society unleashing Western imperialism with its virulence and rapacity to which today the Chinese still remember.
Worth pondering, folks. Isn't this "deja vu"?
China Bashing is a lucrative business in the West and the poster boy of the Western Human Rights lobby Harry Wu is capitalizing on hot "Tibet" !
There's money in th'am th'ar hills especially when it comes to China and China bashing. The imagery of those little yellow demons operating dungeons and water-torture reinforces all the stereotypical racist pictures many Western gweillos hold about the yellow people.
For over two decades, the gweillo human rights lobby in the West, bent on demonizing China, has relied on one Harry Wu, the "icon" of supposed exiled Chinese dissidents who sought political assylum in the West.
Harry Wu, it appears, is still around, kicking and still alive. And his new cause has now been hitched to the new "cause celebre" of Zizang, aka Tibet.
Some years back, Harry Wu proclaimed himself as an alumnus of China's Gulag prison system. Supported by a publicist and riding on the Post-Tiananmen China-demonization campaign mounted from the West, Harry Wu went about publicizing his alleged 20-year stint in the dark dungeons of China's prisons, being subjected to "lao gai," i.e. the psycho-brutalizing experience of being subjected to "brain-washing" under the most draconian conditions, where prison guards act as clones of Marquis de Sade.
Never mind that nobody has bothered to vet his story, or that there were any factual bases nor truths or veracity to his version of and "spin" to his alleged "lao gai" experience.Nobody, least of all the Western shills in the mainstream Western press, would bother to check or verify the story. It is just good business; besides, it reinforces what the West has known all along and conjured up in their warped minds about the Chinese and China.
For the Western gweillos, the stereotypical imagery of "Fu Manchu" and all the sinister, sneaky, squinty-eyed yellow tormentors amplified by Hollywood movies, and the devilish "yellow horde" was enough to reinforce and validate their worst fears about China and its people, especially its communist officials.
Never mind that Harry Wu unabasedly was getting financial support from the AFL-CIO, the American labor movement hell-bent on destabilizing China because of the perceived threat of cheap Chinese labor flooding the American market with "prison-made" goods, thus adversely impacting the highly-paid American workers, and in turn destabilizing the American labor movement apparatus.
Never mind that Harry Wu's Lao Gai Museum in Washington D.C. is housed under a building belonging to the AFL-CIO, it pays to be a China basher, and to pass oneself off as a Chinese dissident.
Not unlike Alexander Solzhenitzin, until his disillusionment over his spiritually vapid life in exile in the state of Vermont, the Soviet dissident wrote about the Soviet Gulag, which endeared him to the WEST and the naive gweillos.
Ultimately, Mr. Solzhenitzin saw that he was being "used" by the West, as a prop, as their poster boy in the service of the Western "human rights" special interest lobby.
Lately, the "menu du jour" of the Western human rights lobby has shifted from China's prison systems, organ harvesting, etc. towards the issue of Zizang, aka Tibet, and the political monk with a separatist/ secessionist agenda passing off in the guise of "autonomy."
Gweillos have this fanatical devotion to a fantasy 'Shangri-la," that far-away spiritual land which serves as a "crutch" apart from the spiritual vapid and morally decaying lives many Western gweillos live under in the West and especially in America.
Talk about the Dalai Lama, and the Western gweillos oozes over in a blind worship of this Demi-God who can do no long, thread water, and levitate like those Holy men only seen in Hollywood movies.
The opportunist that he is and continues to be, Harry Wu saw that it is timely and politically expedient to jump onto the Team Tibet-Shangri-la "bandwagon."
The Western gweillos would like nothing better than to see a Han 'Chinese dissident' in the person of Harry Wu joining the "cause celebre" of the Dalai Lama and their maniacal-fanatical quest for Shangri-la.
What a crock of "mi-tian-kung," now that Harry Wu has jumped onto the bandwagon and lend the Dolly a hand by promoting and hyping up an Exhibit in his Lao Gai Museum in the heart of America's capital, Washington D.C.
Click on the link below on the latest adventure of Harry Wu, the poster boy of China's human rights lobby in the West:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iF1o9kBRmGexGmc-1bI3H1RPjOEQ
For over two decades, the gweillo human rights lobby in the West, bent on demonizing China, has relied on one Harry Wu, the "icon" of supposed exiled Chinese dissidents who sought political assylum in the West.
Harry Wu, it appears, is still around, kicking and still alive. And his new cause has now been hitched to the new "cause celebre" of Zizang, aka Tibet.
Some years back, Harry Wu proclaimed himself as an alumnus of China's Gulag prison system. Supported by a publicist and riding on the Post-Tiananmen China-demonization campaign mounted from the West, Harry Wu went about publicizing his alleged 20-year stint in the dark dungeons of China's prisons, being subjected to "lao gai," i.e. the psycho-brutalizing experience of being subjected to "brain-washing" under the most draconian conditions, where prison guards act as clones of Marquis de Sade.
Never mind that nobody has bothered to vet his story, or that there were any factual bases nor truths or veracity to his version of and "spin" to his alleged "lao gai" experience.Nobody, least of all the Western shills in the mainstream Western press, would bother to check or verify the story. It is just good business; besides, it reinforces what the West has known all along and conjured up in their warped minds about the Chinese and China.
For the Western gweillos, the stereotypical imagery of "Fu Manchu" and all the sinister, sneaky, squinty-eyed yellow tormentors amplified by Hollywood movies, and the devilish "yellow horde" was enough to reinforce and validate their worst fears about China and its people, especially its communist officials.
Never mind that Harry Wu unabasedly was getting financial support from the AFL-CIO, the American labor movement hell-bent on destabilizing China because of the perceived threat of cheap Chinese labor flooding the American market with "prison-made" goods, thus adversely impacting the highly-paid American workers, and in turn destabilizing the American labor movement apparatus.
Never mind that Harry Wu's Lao Gai Museum in Washington D.C. is housed under a building belonging to the AFL-CIO, it pays to be a China basher, and to pass oneself off as a Chinese dissident.
Not unlike Alexander Solzhenitzin, until his disillusionment over his spiritually vapid life in exile in the state of Vermont, the Soviet dissident wrote about the Soviet Gulag, which endeared him to the WEST and the naive gweillos.
Ultimately, Mr. Solzhenitzin saw that he was being "used" by the West, as a prop, as their poster boy in the service of the Western "human rights" special interest lobby.
Lately, the "menu du jour" of the Western human rights lobby has shifted from China's prison systems, organ harvesting, etc. towards the issue of Zizang, aka Tibet, and the political monk with a separatist/ secessionist agenda passing off in the guise of "autonomy."
Gweillos have this fanatical devotion to a fantasy 'Shangri-la," that far-away spiritual land which serves as a "crutch" apart from the spiritual vapid and morally decaying lives many Western gweillos live under in the West and especially in America.
Talk about the Dalai Lama, and the Western gweillos oozes over in a blind worship of this Demi-God who can do no long, thread water, and levitate like those Holy men only seen in Hollywood movies.
The opportunist that he is and continues to be, Harry Wu saw that it is timely and politically expedient to jump onto the Team Tibet-Shangri-la "bandwagon."
The Western gweillos would like nothing better than to see a Han 'Chinese dissident' in the person of Harry Wu joining the "cause celebre" of the Dalai Lama and their maniacal-fanatical quest for Shangri-la.
What a crock of "mi-tian-kung," now that Harry Wu has jumped onto the bandwagon and lend the Dolly a hand by promoting and hyping up an Exhibit in his Lao Gai Museum in the heart of America's capital, Washington D.C.
Click on the link below on the latest adventure of Harry Wu, the poster boy of China's human rights lobby in the West:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iF1o9kBRmGexGmc-1bI3H1RPjOEQ
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