Consider that this November, 2010, voters in California will be asked to legalize marijuana in America's most populous state, and as an enducement to push for this perverse drive to push for expanding the envelope for more "freedoms" and so-called "civil liberties," proponents of the voters' initiative are offering to tax marijuana as a panacea to fix California's fiscal mess.
California's current fiscal budget hole has skyrockted to over US$ 20 billion, and growing as this once great state implodes from within. Given the deep economic recession resulting from America's overall collaspsing financial institutions and economic infrastructures, with joblessness, home foreclosures, personal and business bankruptcies exploding all over, it is desperation and lunatic times in America's biggest and most populous state.
As American pundit and the late President Ronald Reagan's speechwriter Peggy Noonan aptly put it, " We (Americans) are living under times of collaspe, with collaspsing institutions from government, churches, jounalism etc." How perilous but on point indeed.
This latest piece of marijuana news originating from California exemplifies the depth and breath of drug and alcohol abuse in the West, with London in Europe, and Los Angeles serving as metaphors of a decaying West.
Go visit any major American and European cities.... from London to San Francisco, New York City to Vancouver, Paris to Philadelphia, the sights of drug addicts, alcoholics, social miscreants, panhandlers, beggars, crazies wallowing in these cities' mean streets are telling and shocking.
In the L.A. Times today, the L.A. City Council reportedly has decided to put a grip on the proliferation of marijuana purveyors passing as "medicinal cannabis clinics.
By latest estimate, there are more than 1,000 to 1,200 of these dope houses operating in Los Angeles. Check out the link below:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100119/ap_on_re_us/us_medical_marijuana_los_angeles
Over a century and a half ago, China and its people went through the scourge of Opium. And the pejorative diss words, "The sick man of Asia" was aptly ascribed to China. That "sick man" insult continues to haunt China and its peoples today.
It is now historical "deja vu." History has a way of repeating itself. Empires rise and empires fall. Are Californians at the precipice ?
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order by Martin Jacques
A book authored by British author Martin Jacques which has just been released late last year has evoked much debate and controversy around the globe.
In particular, this book posits many perceptive thoughts which question and dispute the heretofore European-Western orthodoxy about democracy, human rights (Europeanized defined; and look at China's emergence as a counterfoil to Western hegemonistic hold in the world of ideas, politics, and culture.
Let's debate the contents of this book.
Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred ideas contend.
A small flicker may light a prairie fire. Without a doubt, the re-emergence of China in the world stage ushers an era whereby a sense of direction, and that big over-arching vision of where and how the Chinese people are going to pursue modernization and to what extent should this process incorporate Western values and embodies Western culture, with its good and bad.
For an Amazon.com link to Martin Jacques' book, click on the link below:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=when+china+rules+the+world&sprefix=When+China
Click on the hyperlink below for the link to Bevin Chu's "China Desk."
Bevin Chu's blog sets forth a brief intro to Martin Jacques' book, and you are invited to post your comments and thoughts if you wish to debate and sound off on the subject:
http://thechinadesk.blogspot.com/2010/01/when-china-rules-world.html
In particular, this book posits many perceptive thoughts which question and dispute the heretofore European-Western orthodoxy about democracy, human rights (Europeanized defined; and look at China's emergence as a counterfoil to Western hegemonistic hold in the world of ideas, politics, and culture.
Let's debate the contents of this book.
Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred ideas contend.
A small flicker may light a prairie fire. Without a doubt, the re-emergence of China in the world stage ushers an era whereby a sense of direction, and that big over-arching vision of where and how the Chinese people are going to pursue modernization and to what extent should this process incorporate Western values and embodies Western culture, with its good and bad.
For an Amazon.com link to Martin Jacques' book, click on the link below:
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_10?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=when+china+rules+the+world&sprefix=When+China
Click on the hyperlink below for the link to Bevin Chu's "China Desk."
Bevin Chu's blog sets forth a brief intro to Martin Jacques' book, and you are invited to post your comments and thoughts if you wish to debate and sound off on the subject:
http://thechinadesk.blogspot.com/2010/01/when-china-rules-world.html
Friday, January 22, 2010
The GOOGLE-AMERICA ARROW ACROSS THE BOW -- WHY CHINA and ALL GLOBAL CHINESE MUST STAND STRONG and FIGHT BACK
The gauntlet has been thrown first by Google from Mountain View, California last week-- followed by yesterday's high-profile public excoriation by the U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton against Chinese officials on the issue of internet access and freedoms, and allegations of cyberhacking traced to China.
The biased Western news media such as the New York Times has spun and orchestrated a torrent of "bad-mouthing," China-bashing, Chinese demonization,and disinformation alleging that China has censored, and put up a firewall to suppress dissident views in the internet piped in through Google.cn and its search engine.
Coupled with this attack, the biased Western news media has spun an unsubstantiated story, without clear and convincing proof, or even by a preponderance of evidence, or the higher criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt, that cyberhackers, at control, and direction of the Chinese government, has engaged in cyberattacks and pilfered intellectual property and source codes which are proprietary to Google.
What kind of poppycock is this ? And why is this rhetoric and saber-rattling being orchestrated now, at this time, and at this moment ?
For all global Chinese (Huarens) who have been observing Sino-U.S.-West relations, the writings on the wall, and the signals being calibrated to poison and destabilize China and China's colossal growth by the West and especially by America and Western Europe cannot be clearer.
The Google attack is pretextual. It is a conspiracy which has been hatched, scripted, staged and directed from the West, designed by the China bashers and demonizers to destabilize China and Chinese society, and a sinister attempt to foment "luan" among the naive, growing segment of Chinese netizens who are quickly and exponentially surfing the world wide web and taken on the information highly with must gusto, much enthusiasm, albeit also with much naivite.
Since over a decade ago, from my "third space" perch, then at Huaran.org, I have written about the megatrend of globalization and the consolidation of media and information behemoths in the new frontiers of the internet and the information highway.
In and of itself, the internet is a tool which can do much good, and at the same time do much evil. It is the content and control of content which have become critical. As I predicted, content and software is the name of the game.
Whoever control and dominate the content in the internet and can shape and dominate content can control and shape the minds, and in shaping the minds, they can become the masters over the slaves who are being bombarded and "brain-washed" by this content.
Without a doubt, those of us who are ethnic Chinese living overseas in the Chinese Diaspora know and experience the West and especially America in its rawest, most banal, most perverse side. The picture does not look very good.
We have seen the "armpit" side of the West and especially in London, in San Francisco, in New York City, in Vancouver, in Toronto, in Sydney, in Paris, all across many inner cities in the West and especially in America.
Alcohol and drugs..... moral degradation, predatory behavior, sociopathic and nefarious activities are skyrocketing and running out of control. In short, the West is crumbling from within, not by what the non-West is doing to it, but by what Westerners are doing within and to themselves and to each other in a morally degenerating, puerile, and vulgar environment.
China and all Chinese, whether inside or outside China, must learn from the mistakes of the West.
China's economic growth has been stellar; but at this time, there are storm clouds in the horizon. Aside from robust economic growth demonstrated by statistics and numbers, China and all Chinese must watch out for the real honest-to-goodness growth of its civil society, its moral and social underpinnings. China and all Chinese cannot ape the West and absorb hook, line, and sinker any Western and smells chic Hollywood.
I know. I have lived in the West for the greater part of my life.
Believe me.... "The Western Moon is Not Rounder." "The Westerner's Fart does not Smell fragrant."
Sad to say, Western-European imperialism and colonialism may have left China; but the "Western colonial mentality" and blind worship of the Western Moon and the Western fart have not left China and in the minds of many of its people, and especially in today's post-Mao Zedong era, and post-Deng Xiao Ping youth.
In my opinion, China's most formidable challenge is CULTURAL POLLUTION, and the POISONING OF THE MINDS from the toxic content being spewed from the WEST, not just through the internet, but through social-cultural seepage and contamination resulting from a more open society, more open borders, and more travel by "lao wai" visitors from abroad.
The good side of it is more exchanges and interfaces with "lao wai" brings about more understanding and knowledge. The bad side of it is, if not mindful of the toxins, China and its youths, naive and ignorant as many are, because many have not been exposed to the West, may end up becoming "yellow monkeys," apes of Western depraved values of hyper-selfishness, self-indulgence, hypermaterialism, aggressiveness, lack of "li," and downright vulgarity and perversity.
Already, drugs and pornography have reared their ugly heads in China's cities, towns and villages.
Even in prestigeous Peking University, China's elite university, there are anecdotal stories of marijuana use among students, and most of these "bong parties" and bongheads are Westerners who have brought in the passion, obsession, and binges vis a vis pot use, drug use, and alcohol use and abuse.
China's firewalls, we all know, can be circumvented. Like the Great Wall built by Emperor Qin, designed to blockade the intrusions from foreign invaders, it was not an effective wall nor could successful stop invasion, but nonetheless a symbol.
It is symbolic of Chinese civilization and its sense of itself, and speaks to the Chinese people's awareness that we must be ourselves, cannot be other than ourselves, with a historic civilization rooted in our people's consciousness, and that we must vigilant to do the right thing for our society, our civilization, and our culture, not by Westeners' rules or their standards.
If modernization is equated as westernization; if the West insist on their perverted, warped, "Europeanized" notion of democracy, or human rights, or internet freedoms, of drug use, of "one man, one vote," of "freedom to cavort, get drunk, get sex, get high,"...... all Chinese must resist and refuse to accept.
Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred ideas contend.
But for China and all Chinese' sake, don't let Google or the West dictate, control, or dominate content and the information highway, unconditionally, or according to what the West and the Googlers want, by their whims, and on their own terms.
China and all Chinese must fight. We should fight back. We should stand firm on Tibet, Xinjiang, and resist the "compradores" and those among us who still naively believe that "The Western Moon is Rounder" and that "The Western Fart is More Fragrant."
En Garde. En Garde.
The gauntlet has been thrown. And let the line on the sands be drawn.
As Mao Zedong declared on Oct. 1, 1949, "The Chinese People has risen."
The Dragon awakes.
The biased Western news media such as the New York Times has spun and orchestrated a torrent of "bad-mouthing," China-bashing, Chinese demonization,and disinformation alleging that China has censored, and put up a firewall to suppress dissident views in the internet piped in through Google.cn and its search engine.
Coupled with this attack, the biased Western news media has spun an unsubstantiated story, without clear and convincing proof, or even by a preponderance of evidence, or the higher criminal standard of beyond reasonable doubt, that cyberhackers, at control, and direction of the Chinese government, has engaged in cyberattacks and pilfered intellectual property and source codes which are proprietary to Google.
What kind of poppycock is this ? And why is this rhetoric and saber-rattling being orchestrated now, at this time, and at this moment ?
For all global Chinese (Huarens) who have been observing Sino-U.S.-West relations, the writings on the wall, and the signals being calibrated to poison and destabilize China and China's colossal growth by the West and especially by America and Western Europe cannot be clearer.
The Google attack is pretextual. It is a conspiracy which has been hatched, scripted, staged and directed from the West, designed by the China bashers and demonizers to destabilize China and Chinese society, and a sinister attempt to foment "luan" among the naive, growing segment of Chinese netizens who are quickly and exponentially surfing the world wide web and taken on the information highly with must gusto, much enthusiasm, albeit also with much naivite.
Since over a decade ago, from my "third space" perch, then at Huaran.org, I have written about the megatrend of globalization and the consolidation of media and information behemoths in the new frontiers of the internet and the information highway.
In and of itself, the internet is a tool which can do much good, and at the same time do much evil. It is the content and control of content which have become critical. As I predicted, content and software is the name of the game.
Whoever control and dominate the content in the internet and can shape and dominate content can control and shape the minds, and in shaping the minds, they can become the masters over the slaves who are being bombarded and "brain-washed" by this content.
Without a doubt, those of us who are ethnic Chinese living overseas in the Chinese Diaspora know and experience the West and especially America in its rawest, most banal, most perverse side. The picture does not look very good.
We have seen the "armpit" side of the West and especially in London, in San Francisco, in New York City, in Vancouver, in Toronto, in Sydney, in Paris, all across many inner cities in the West and especially in America.
Alcohol and drugs..... moral degradation, predatory behavior, sociopathic and nefarious activities are skyrocketing and running out of control. In short, the West is crumbling from within, not by what the non-West is doing to it, but by what Westerners are doing within and to themselves and to each other in a morally degenerating, puerile, and vulgar environment.
China and all Chinese, whether inside or outside China, must learn from the mistakes of the West.
China's economic growth has been stellar; but at this time, there are storm clouds in the horizon. Aside from robust economic growth demonstrated by statistics and numbers, China and all Chinese must watch out for the real honest-to-goodness growth of its civil society, its moral and social underpinnings. China and all Chinese cannot ape the West and absorb hook, line, and sinker any Western and smells chic Hollywood.
I know. I have lived in the West for the greater part of my life.
Believe me.... "The Western Moon is Not Rounder." "The Westerner's Fart does not Smell fragrant."
Sad to say, Western-European imperialism and colonialism may have left China; but the "Western colonial mentality" and blind worship of the Western Moon and the Western fart have not left China and in the minds of many of its people, and especially in today's post-Mao Zedong era, and post-Deng Xiao Ping youth.
In my opinion, China's most formidable challenge is CULTURAL POLLUTION, and the POISONING OF THE MINDS from the toxic content being spewed from the WEST, not just through the internet, but through social-cultural seepage and contamination resulting from a more open society, more open borders, and more travel by "lao wai" visitors from abroad.
The good side of it is more exchanges and interfaces with "lao wai" brings about more understanding and knowledge. The bad side of it is, if not mindful of the toxins, China and its youths, naive and ignorant as many are, because many have not been exposed to the West, may end up becoming "yellow monkeys," apes of Western depraved values of hyper-selfishness, self-indulgence, hypermaterialism, aggressiveness, lack of "li," and downright vulgarity and perversity.
Already, drugs and pornography have reared their ugly heads in China's cities, towns and villages.
Even in prestigeous Peking University, China's elite university, there are anecdotal stories of marijuana use among students, and most of these "bong parties" and bongheads are Westerners who have brought in the passion, obsession, and binges vis a vis pot use, drug use, and alcohol use and abuse.
China's firewalls, we all know, can be circumvented. Like the Great Wall built by Emperor Qin, designed to blockade the intrusions from foreign invaders, it was not an effective wall nor could successful stop invasion, but nonetheless a symbol.
It is symbolic of Chinese civilization and its sense of itself, and speaks to the Chinese people's awareness that we must be ourselves, cannot be other than ourselves, with a historic civilization rooted in our people's consciousness, and that we must vigilant to do the right thing for our society, our civilization, and our culture, not by Westeners' rules or their standards.
If modernization is equated as westernization; if the West insist on their perverted, warped, "Europeanized" notion of democracy, or human rights, or internet freedoms, of drug use, of "one man, one vote," of "freedom to cavort, get drunk, get sex, get high,"...... all Chinese must resist and refuse to accept.
Let a hundred flowers bloom. Let a hundred ideas contend.
But for China and all Chinese' sake, don't let Google or the West dictate, control, or dominate content and the information highway, unconditionally, or according to what the West and the Googlers want, by their whims, and on their own terms.
China and all Chinese must fight. We should fight back. We should stand firm on Tibet, Xinjiang, and resist the "compradores" and those among us who still naively believe that "The Western Moon is Rounder" and that "The Western Fart is More Fragrant."
En Garde. En Garde.
The gauntlet has been thrown. And let the line on the sands be drawn.
As Mao Zedong declared on Oct. 1, 1949, "The Chinese People has risen."
The Dragon awakes.
HAITI EARTHQUAKE CATASTROPHE --- The Urgency for Chinese to Declare a Truce Across the Taiwan Straits and Do the Right Thing
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk about more heartbreak in the aftermath of a horrific catastrophe in the poorest, most impoverished "basket case" country in the Western hemisphere.
More than a week after the giant tremors demolished the capital of Haiti, Port Au Prince, and brought deaths to over 200,000 Haitians, 3 million displaced and rendered homeless, in a country with a national population of 9 million, Haiti remains at the crosshairs of geopolitical rivalry, back-biting, fights, incompetence, corruption, opportunism, fear, reprisals.... and all the nasty things about human society.
I am not trying to take away the selfless, heroic, magninimous giving and sacrifices rendered by aid workers on individual personal levels, from doctors to nurses, social workers to ordinary blokes from the streets.
But there is no question that Haiti and the aftermath of the earthquake rescue and relief efforts have been disastrous and speaks to the corrosion of government as we know it, as a safety net. Instead, what the world saw was not Sichuan but headless chickens running around with their wings flapping, with little coordination and organization in Haiti.
Across the board, the chaos, the anarchy, the infighting, posturing, leveraging has made ordinary Haitians the "Sad Sack" stories of today's uglier, unkind, brutal world.
Aside from the gross incompetence and chaos shown by American troops who poured in with assault weapons, lots of military equipment, but not enough medical supplies, make-shift hospitals for emergency care, tents for temporary housing, heavy equipment to dig through the rubble.......
Consider that the rivalry across the Taiwan Straits has now also resulted in a tussle in Haiti between Beijing and Taipei. Beijing and Taipei officials can do better.
The spirit of Sichuan, demonstrated under the leadership of Uncle Wen Jiabao was absent in Haiti. Why ? Where's the age-old Chinese humanity and civilizational trait of altruism without politics and the spirit of "Datong" ?
Is it once again "checkbook diplomacy" ? Or should this be one where across the Taiwan Straits, all Chinese must cut the b.s. over whether Haiti should have diplomatic relations with Beijing or with Taipei.
As an ethnic Chinese, I am angry and aggrieved by this nonsense in the face of a calamity which has brought about such disastrous consequences upon a country and a people in the Caribbean, without a functoning government, if at all, living in utter despair and desperation.
Cut that out..... please. The officials in charge of relief work from Beijing and Taipei must stop "politicking" and stick to doing the right thing. Plain and simple. Read the following Al Jazeera story:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/01/2010122691841411.html
Talk about more heartbreak in the aftermath of a horrific catastrophe in the poorest, most impoverished "basket case" country in the Western hemisphere.
More than a week after the giant tremors demolished the capital of Haiti, Port Au Prince, and brought deaths to over 200,000 Haitians, 3 million displaced and rendered homeless, in a country with a national population of 9 million, Haiti remains at the crosshairs of geopolitical rivalry, back-biting, fights, incompetence, corruption, opportunism, fear, reprisals.... and all the nasty things about human society.
I am not trying to take away the selfless, heroic, magninimous giving and sacrifices rendered by aid workers on individual personal levels, from doctors to nurses, social workers to ordinary blokes from the streets.
But there is no question that Haiti and the aftermath of the earthquake rescue and relief efforts have been disastrous and speaks to the corrosion of government as we know it, as a safety net. Instead, what the world saw was not Sichuan but headless chickens running around with their wings flapping, with little coordination and organization in Haiti.
Across the board, the chaos, the anarchy, the infighting, posturing, leveraging has made ordinary Haitians the "Sad Sack" stories of today's uglier, unkind, brutal world.
Aside from the gross incompetence and chaos shown by American troops who poured in with assault weapons, lots of military equipment, but not enough medical supplies, make-shift hospitals for emergency care, tents for temporary housing, heavy equipment to dig through the rubble.......
Consider that the rivalry across the Taiwan Straits has now also resulted in a tussle in Haiti between Beijing and Taipei. Beijing and Taipei officials can do better.
The spirit of Sichuan, demonstrated under the leadership of Uncle Wen Jiabao was absent in Haiti. Why ? Where's the age-old Chinese humanity and civilizational trait of altruism without politics and the spirit of "Datong" ?
Is it once again "checkbook diplomacy" ? Or should this be one where across the Taiwan Straits, all Chinese must cut the b.s. over whether Haiti should have diplomatic relations with Beijing or with Taipei.
As an ethnic Chinese, I am angry and aggrieved by this nonsense in the face of a calamity which has brought about such disastrous consequences upon a country and a people in the Caribbean, without a functoning government, if at all, living in utter despair and desperation.
Cut that out..... please. The officials in charge of relief work from Beijing and Taipei must stop "politicking" and stick to doing the right thing. Plain and simple. Read the following Al Jazeera story:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2010/01/2010122691841411.html
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