How an egalitarian revolution got perverted and created a new oligarchic class of "Red Aristocracy"

Turtle Eggs, --- How Mao Zedong's revolution got "prostituted" by his inner circles-- the "Eight Immortals" and their progeny.... A fascinating expose by Bloomberg on the shenanigans, and looting by China's "Princeling" class.... The West and its ruling class of "banksters" were complicit in assisting these princeling class in fleecing and plundering China. America, Canada, the UK, Australia, France, Switzerland remain the "safe havens" .... and HKG and Singapore remain the "way stations" and "conduit" where the loot and plunder have been siphoned off and parked offshore. As Watergate's "Deep Throat" admonished, "Follow the money!" Read Bloomberg, and be educated by the extent and depth of China's official corruption! China needs another violent revolution to throw out the rascals, and claw back the loot! Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai are just "the tip of a bigger iceberg"! The whole of China's governing elite is rotten, to the very core!
http://go.bloomberg.com/multimedia/mapping-chinas-red-nobility/

FACEBOOK DUMMIES -- $ 100 billion valuation? You must be kidding ! Gimme a break !

I am a Facebook user. I use social media. And I enjoy reading blogs, good or bad. Bring 'em on. I am like a sponge which likes to absorb anything -- good news, bad news, junk news. That said, to this day, I still don't understand how a social media website, based on getting kids and adults to post their blogs, photos, trivia, articles, and musings, with supposedly 900 million members around the world, can be valuated at US$ 100 billion. I don't understand it at all. Maybe young 29-year old Zukkie does. How can a website which has 900 million users, which depend on ads online which nobody reads, be valued at $ 100 billion? As this article, linked below, explains why..... the underwriters, Morgan Stanley and all of these "insiders" from FB, took us dummies for a dummy ride. America is great. We have the best salesmen from Wall Street. But I am not sure we can build widgets, and the real McCoys anymore. It is all hype, jive, and con in America today. And it starts with our President Obama. http://www.nationofchange.org/dumb-money-dummies-1338567079

Is Fareed Zakaria's Critique of China's "Human Rights Report" in America fair ?

Edward Liu From his CNN platform, Indian pundit Fareed Zakaria has written a blog about China's human rights report on America. Here's his link. http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2012/06/01/china-calls-out-overcritical-u-s/ In turn, here's my reaction to his blog, below: Edward Liu Fareed... I respect your smarts and intelligence, as a Yale and Harvard educated Indian who became a naturalized American. Obviously, as a shill for Pax Americana, you have internalized all of the culture drivel about "human rights" Europeanized-Westernized version, in the form of individual rights superceding collective rights. That said, China's "human rights" report on America should not be taken lightly. It is a good snapshot of America's own domestic perversity and inequities. Ultimately, it is up to the Chinese people to determine and fight for themselves what kind of society they would want to have; and it is not up to Americans or Europeans to push China to comport with its model of society, democracy or kleptocracy. Trouble with Americans as a whole, notwithstandng that there is a lot of decency, kindness in the heartland, is that it is an ignorant, provincial, insular society that is not particularly literate nor knowlegeable about other cultures, societies, specially non-European. As an Indian swami, it is your role to help clarify, illuminate, and explain these cross-cultural differences, and attempt to close the gap. Sadly, in your Indophile prism, you harbor a stereotypical Chinaphobia which is becoming more apparent in your writings. It is OK to be awed by America, and many of its good side, which is many. But it is equally important that as an Indian and a fellow Asian, and Asian-American that you keep a perspective which is not suffused with a Chinaphobia anchored in biases and prejudices which are Eurocentric and "colonial." That said, India and China have long ways to go in good governance. But let's be real.... whatever path China or India take is entirely up to the peoples of China and India.... not up to Americans or Europeans. The era of "the White Men's Burden" and the Western missionary zealousness to re-make Asia-Pacific into what the West want Asia-Pacific, or China or India to be, a "Western neo-colony," is over. Get over it. Fareed... you can do much better. If you break bread, eat quiche, and share cheese with America's east coast Brahmin establishment, you may eventually end up looking, talking, and becoming like one of them --- arrogant, ignorant, hubristic, full of fire and brimstone... but out of the loop. Asia-Pacific is changing. BRICs are changing. A new paradigm is being created. And it will absolutely not be within the orbit of Pax Americana. Get over it, Fareed. Or you may miss the train. China calls out 'overcritical' U.S. globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com By Fareed Zakaria Last week, the U.S. State Department released its annual report on human rights around the world. It covers nearly 200 countries, from Tunisia and Egypt and their uprisings, to North Korea and Cuba and the repression in those nations.

May 4th came and went in the year 2012 and China and Chinese intelligentsia did not even remember!

Isn't it truly banal, decadent, and amnesiac that yesterday May 4th came and went in China, and hardly any Chinese intellectuals, historians, students youths, micro bloggers, journalists, brain trusts even remembered much less reflected nor discussed this major historic transformative day in the history of modern China! And to think that after almost 93 years later, a flaky eccentric quirky blind man can not only blindside two countries and their governments, each at the cusp of a civil, social, moral, spiritual meltdown and unraveling. The world has indeed gone to the dogs. I missed Nixon and Zhou Enlai!

The Jeremy Lin Basketball Phenon and the underlying repudiation of racism and the image of the asexuality of the Asian and Asian American male

FINALLY, as my fellow Asian-American male friends gasped and took a gulp of LIN-quor, on reading GWEN KNAPP's SF Chronicle sports column this morning .... a Caucasian female sports columnist gets it.... And she wrote a real doozy. YO... LINSEXUALITY... Jason WHITLOCK: "Dude.... size does not matter.... it's LIN-sexuality..... Stuff your Lin-Dong up your you know where."
And furthermore, WHITLOCK, "Yo know what "LIN" in Taishan dialect means?... it spells "DICK,"... Dickhead ! YO Linhead-WHITLOCK!

GWEN KNAPP, female sports columnist of the SF CHRONICLE gets it... And she is one CAUCASIAN female who broke out and says the truth about the diss and asexuality of the ASIAN MEN as portrayed and imaged in AMERICAN pop culture. SHE GETS IT... TK..GWEN! YO J-LiN is one LINSEXUAL DUDE!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/02/17/SP0S1N8N52.DTL

LIN-SANITY over our Great Yellow Hoop(e) Jeremy Lin, aka Lin, Shuhong, 23-year old NBA Knicks star point guard who rocked the pro-basketball world !

Before this LIN-SANITY gets too partisan, and mired into a nasty, bad-mouthing "trench-war" ... split between Asian-American Obamaniacs and Palinistas...in gridlocked politics between two warring parties, the Democrats and the GOPs, both proclaiming their LINSANITY... whether Barrack LINBAMA, or Sarah Pa-LIN, why don't we all cool it, folks? I suggest our homeboy from Paly High, our LIN-Phenon, be appropriately called from now on, be addressed as our "SHAO-LIN KUNG-HOOP MASTER" --- YO JEREMY ! YO BRUCE LEE... of the courts.
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/basketball/obama-palin-finally-common-lin-sane-article-1.1023976#ixzz1maYG7R3v
Obama and Palin finally have something in common: they’re both Lin-sane
www.nydailynews.com
Call her Sarah Pa-Lin. Linsanity became a bipartisan syndrome Thursday, as the former Alaska governor held up a Jeremy Lin shirt a day after President Obama praised the Knicks phenom.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/44/post/president-obama-catches-jeremy-lin-fever-after-watching-lin-sanity-highlights/2012/02/15/gIQA1oIxFR_blog.html

Cut the "Yellow Girl" some slack... Bro Jeff.... she may be naive, but she ain't Gedde Watanabe, a "Donger" who really demeaned Asian-America big-time

Lately, Asian-American blogosphere was in flames over the indiscretion and controversy arising from a young 20-year old UC Berkeley Asian-American female student, Lisa Chan, an 20-year old student-cum actress-aspirant who played the "yellow girl" in straw hat in a rice paddy in a racist political informercial, which got beamed big-time in Michigan in Superbowl Sunday.
The GOP Candidate Peter Hoekstra ad, targeting Michigan incumbent senator Debbie Stebenow, true, is as racist and repugnant a low, vicious, mean-spirited, ugly China-bashing and Chinese demonization piece of venom, using our "yellow girl," Lisa Chan, a UC Berkeley psychology major, from Daly City, as prop, pictured in a racist caricaturizing clip of a Chinese peasant girl... riding a bicycle in a rice paddy, bad-mouthing America.. and the outsourcing of American jobs, and China and Chinese taking over and arrogantly "sticking into" the poor unemployed working Johnnys and Janes of America.... It culminates with an attack on Michigan incumbent Democratic Senator Stabenow, ridiculing her as a Senator"Spenditnow."
YouTube this campaign clip here and you be the judge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrbdXUWryXk
Michigan, as we all know, is currently the heartland of America's manufacturing base, specifically the auto industry. And it is in deep turmoil by the economic mess now swirling all across America's manufacturing heartland.
20 years ago.... in 1992, we experienced the same racist scapegoating in Michigan,then as now distressed by joblessless and a besieged state suffering from outsourcing and the hollowing of manufacting jobs. And in that era, Vincent Chin, a Chinese-American youth, from Detroit, was the victim behind a racist baseball lynching by two white supremacist auto-workers from Detroit, who mistook him for Japanese, and the cause of their woes as autoworkers being threatened by Japanese car imported en masse to America.
Fast forward 20 years later, a candidate for office, Hoesktra, a GOP right-wing conservative candidate from Holland originally, a Euro-immigrant who aspired to capture incumbent Senator Stebonow's seat, the latter a liberal Democrat.... went racist-demonizing, and bashed China.
Our sis, Lisa Chan, naive at 20, from the West Coast, was used as the "actress," the tool of racist caricaturizing and demeaning scapegoat.
Lo.... the backlash was vicious and ugly.
First and on the outset... let me very clear about this... I am not going to defend Lisa Chan and her ill-advised indiscretion, naivite, and even stupidity of succumbing to her "30 seconds" of informercial fame in a political attack ad, which is vicious, ugly and racist.
But having said that, I am also going to cut her some slack, and will vigorously dissent against those among our fellow-Asian-American bros and sistas who have gone amuck and attack this 20-year sis with "sell-out" or any number of invectives.
Jeff Yang, an exceptional gifted writer and journalist, from the East Coast, today a Wall Street Journal columnist, has followed the story, and clearly felt offended and aggrieved by what Lisa Chan did. Understandable. Accepted. And well-taken.
But to Bro Jeff...I say... "cut our Sis some slack, Bro Jeff..."
She may have made a bad mistake... she is 20 years old.... perhaps fresh off the stick, somewhat naive, and green behind the ears. But put it in context, and give some perspective, bro. This may have been done in a naive and misguided desire to break out and make it to Hollywood, and all the aspirational dream of "belonging" and being part of American celebrity pop culture.
I am from California. And I know what it is like for little Sis Lisa Chan, a student trying to make her way through college in UC -- California's distressed institution of higher learning.... now threatened by privatization, increasingly crushing our young students with student debt overload, over-packed class-rooms.... Add to this is a bleak jobs market out there for many of our younger college generation.
Lisa Chan, you gotta admit, is no Harvard preppie. She is not a super-achiever, academically or otherwise... and she does not have the privilege of being among the few "chosen" super-achieving Asian-American kids who have the opportunity of availing themselves of an Ivy League elite education. No Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Stanford unlike many of our privileged Asian And Asian American kids with pedigree, and the right smarts and backgrounds. She is no "Legatee," nor part of that Legacy admits that Harvard, Yale, and Princeton are so well-known and well-endowed for. And she does not have the footprints of super GPAs and SATs scores.
Lisa Chan, I can almost conjecture, myself being from "lumpen" immigrant roots, is on the public school and public university track. Just a kid trying to break out and achieve her "American Dream" like many of us, in a world dominated by white folks.
And given California's increasingly bleak economic and social-fiscal climate... it is tough and rough out there for our Lisa Chan's generation. And for many young Asian-American kids of her background.
Many of our fellow Asian and Asian-American bros and sistas are now caught between a rock and a hard wall.
Here at home in America, we are being "donged" as invisible, a "perpetual foreigners," as second-class citizens, and worse, as caricaturized "little demons," weaklings, nerdy, the yellow bastard and dog.
Over there in Asia-Pacific, we are also being viewed as "less than" the homeland Asians... who are now soaring with a boom economy, flushed with an upswing, and carry the image of well-being which is supra-and-super than the native-born Asian-Americans. Neither here nor there, this is not a good place to be.
Just look at the latest trends in school admissibilty.... Foreign students from Asia-Pacific are now "hot" commodities --- and the adverse impact of this proclivity to raise tuition and go for the money, has affected native-born Asian-Americans from "lumpen" backgrounds, unlike those blessed with trust funds,from pedigree, and with affluence and smarts to make it to the Ivy League schools. And unlike our yellow preppies going to elite Ivy League elite schools, she, like many who attend public colleges and universities, such as UC, are now finding themselves caught in the vortex of intense competition to enroll in colleges of their choice, public or private. And worse, many have been compelled to find part-time work off-school hours to make tuition and pay rent.
Lisa Chan is no Harvard preppie... and I am sure she is just trying to make her way in this world.... as rough and tough it is now in California... trying to break out and perhaps try to become an actress.
But she is no Gedde Watanabe, our "Long Duk Dong" actor who sold Asian-America down the river for his role in "Sixteen Candles."
In Lisa Chan's case... it may be naivite.... it may be indiscretion... it may be stupidity....
But unlike Gedde Watanabe, the damage done was not as vicious,pernicious mean-spirited, and lasting. This was clearly a political attack ad, but not Hollywood pop culture and its persistent racial caricaturizing which demeans Asians and Asian-Americans head-on.
Many of our "Dongers" who have been racially demeaned and caricaturized know what it had been and continues to be like.
And understandably, Lisa Wong's naivite encaptulates similar angst and anxiety about being "donged."
But cut our naive 20-year old sis from Daly City some slack, Bro Jeff.
She is no Harvard Preppie... she may not be as smart and polished and as foreseeably prescient as you.
Shalom. Peace. We are in this boat together.
The enemy is not within us.... It is out there... against the ruling class of white supremacists... the Hoekstras, the jerks from Hollywood pop culture.... the rascals like John Hughes of "Sixteen Candles." Those, bro Jeff, are our "real enemies."
Can we please shoot straight next time?
Check out "Long Duk Dong" and what a devastating racist stereotype this 1984 caricature creep and jerk, Peter Hoesktra has caused among an entire generation of Asian-American kids, who all all damaged by this Hollywood racism.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=88591800
Finally, Lisa Chan has publicly apologized and expressed contrition and remorse. Isn't this good enough. Can this not be a teachable moment instead of letting it spiral out of control?
Can we not forgive and cut Sis Lisa Chan some slack for her naivite, Bro Jeff?
http://www.clutchmagonline.com/2012/02/actress-from-racist-gop-ad-apologizes-calls-it-absolutely-a-mistake/

LAMENT OF A FACEBOOK USER -- DATA SNOOPING, MINING, AND AGGREGATION -- No Wonder CHINA, INC. has put up a Firewall and banned FACEBOOK

IMAGINE and think back of simpler days when money was made the old fashioned way, and manufacturers really earn it. Those were the days when there were no "data aggregators," "date miners," "internet snoops, spies, hackers,"... no overhyped, overspinning advertizers, spinners, ad agencies, PR firms, image builders, con men and women posing as banksters, politicians....No litigious lawyers and ambulance chasers who will sue at the drop of a pin and chase the deep pockets... Imagine teachers and educators who look at education and schools as a calling, not a paycheck or pension plan... doctors who heal and still believe in the Hippocratic Oath.... Accountants who don't know what creative accounting or all that razzle dazzle about forecasts, projections, tables and charts..... Imagine when the streets are safe, and children can play in the parks without fear of being preyed on by pedophiles, child molesters, kidnappers, and poiverts..... Imagine when a pair of Florsheim shoes can last a lifetime and you don't need to fork over $ 180 for a pair of Air Jordan athletic sneakers.... when all you need is a pair of rubber shoes and play ball without worrying about all this fancy athletic gear.... Imagine when the days when you can go to a baseball game, munch on hot dog, eat popcorn, and not have to pay $ 100 just to sit on a monkey bench.... Imagine the days when a Broadway theater ticket is still affordable and you can watch Off-Broadway and free theaters and 24-hour Samurai movies with Zatoichi, the Blind Swordsman, and bring a blimpie sandwich inside the theater, without being gouged for a $ 18 patrami sandwich on rye. Those days are gonzo, dude. I am now a follower of Lao Tzu, a Taoist... outta the treadmill, the banality, the vulgarity, the hyper-stimulated, hyper-consumerismic, hypermaterialitic world of chic, hip, and fancy Ferragano designer shoes, US$ 180 Air Jordan athletic sneakers, and for women Jimmy Choo shoes. NO MAS. NO MAS. YAU MO KAU CHO AHHHHH !!!
CHINA and the Chinese must learn better. And in the new world of globalization and new technology.... we need to fathom what all these mean and can do to enhance, improve our lives rather than clutter and hinder our quality of life.




2/4/12 NY Times- Facebook Is Using You

By LORI ANDREWS


LAST week, Facebook filed documents with the government that will allow it to sell shares of stock to the public. It is estimated to be worth at least $75 billion. But unlike other big-ticket corporations, it doesn’t have an inventory of widgets or gadgets, cars or phones. Facebook’s inventory consists of personal data — yours and mine.

Facebook makes money by selling ad space to companies that want to reach us. Advertisers choose key words or details — like relationship status, location, activities, favorite books and employment — and then Facebook runs the ads for the targeted subset of its 845 million users. If you indicate that you like cupcakes, live in a certain neighborhood and have invited friends over, expect an ad from a nearby bakery to appear on your page. The magnitude of online information Facebook has available about each of us for targeted marketing is stunning. In Europe, laws give people the right to know what data companies have about them, but that is not the case in the United States.

Facebook made $3.2 billion in advertising revenue last year, 85 percent of its total revenue. Yet Facebook’s inventory of data and its revenue from advertising are small potatoes compared to some others. Google took in more than 10 times as much, with an estimated $36.5 billion in advertising revenue in 2011, by analyzing what people sent over Gmail and what they searched on the Web, and then using that data to sell ads. Hundreds of other companies have also staked claims on people’s online data by depositing software called cookies or other tracking mechanisms on people’s computers and in their browsers. If you’ve mentioned anxiety in an e-mail, done a Google search for “stress” or started using an online medical diary that lets you monitor your mood, expect ads for medications and services to treat your anxiety.

Ads that pop up on your screen might seem useful, or at worst, a nuisance. But they are much more than that. The bits and bytes about your life can easily be used against you. Whether you can obtain a job, credit or insurance can be based on your digital doppelgänger — and you may never know why you’ve been turned down.

Material mined online has been used against people battling for child custody or defending themselves in criminal cases. LexisNexis has a product called Accurint for Law Enforcement, which gives government agents information about what people do on social networks. The Internal Revenue Service searches Facebook and MySpace for evidence of tax evaders’ income and whereabouts, and United States Citizenship and Immigration Services has been known to scrutinize photos and posts to confirm family relationships or weed out sham marriages. Employers sometimes decide whether to hire people based on their online profiles, with one study indicating that 70 percent of recruiters and human resource professionals in the United States have rejected candidates based on data found online. A company called Spokeo gathers online data for employers, the public and anyone else who wants it. The company even posts ads urging “HR Recruiters — Click Here Now!” and asking women to submit their boyfriends’ e-mail addresses for an analysis of their online photos and activities to learn “Is He Cheating on You?”

Stereotyping is alive and well in data aggregation. Your application for credit could be declined not on the basis of your own finances or credit history, but on the basis of aggregate data — what other people whose likes and dislikes are similar to yours have done. If guitar players or divorcing couples are more likely to renege on their credit-card bills, then the fact that you’ve looked at guitar ads or sent an e-mail to a divorce lawyer might cause a data aggregator to classify you as less credit-worthy. When an Atlanta man returned from his honeymoon, he found that his credit limit had been lowered to $3,800 from $10,800. The switch was not based on anything he had done but on aggregate data. A letter from the company told him, “Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express.”

Even though laws allow people to challenge false information in credit reports, there are no laws that require data aggregators to reveal what they know about you. If I’ve Googled “diabetes” for a friend or “date rape drugs” for a mystery I’m writing, data aggregators assume those searches reflect my own health and proclivities. Because no laws regulate what types of data these aggregators can collect, they make their own rules.

In 2007 and 2008, the online advertising company NebuAd contracted with six Internet service providers to install hardware on their networks that monitored users’ Internet activities and transmitted that data to NebuAd’s servers for analysis and use in marketing. For an average of six months, NebuAd copied every e-mail, Web search or purchase that some 400,000 people sent over the Internet. Other companies, like Healthline Networks Inc., have in-house limits on which private information they will collect. Healthline does not use information about people’s searches related to H.I.V., impotence or eating disorders to target ads to people, but it will use information about bipolar disorder, overactive bladder and anxiety, which can be as stigmatizing as the topics on its privacy-protected list.

In the 1970s, a professor of communication studies at Northwestern University named John McKnight popularized the term “redlining” to describe the failure of banks, insurers and other institutions to offer their services to inner city neighborhoods. The term came from the practice of bank officials who drew a red line on a map to indicate where they wouldn’t invest. But use of the term expanded to cover a wide array of racially discriminatory practices, such as not offering home loans to African-Americans, even those who were wealthy or middle class.

Now the map used in redlining is not a geographic map, but the map of your travels across the Web. The term Weblining describes the practice of denying people opportunities based on their digital selves. You might be refused health insurance based on a Google search you did about a medical condition. You might be shown a credit card with a lower credit limit, not because of your credit history, but because of your race, sex or ZIP code or the types of Web sites you visit.

Data aggregation has social implications as well. When young people in poor neighborhoods are bombarded with advertisements for trade schools, will they be more likely than others their age to forgo college? And when women are shown articles about celebrities rather than stock market trends, will they be less likely to develop financial savvy? Advertisers are drawing new redlines, limiting people to the roles society expects them to play.

Data aggregators’ practices conflict with what people say they want. A 2008 Consumer Reports poll of 2,000 people found that 93 percent thought Internet companies should always ask for permission before using personal information, and 72 percent wanted the right to opt out of online tracking. A study by Princeton Survey Research Associates in 2009 using a random sample of 1,000 people found that 69 percent thought that the United States should adopt a law giving people the right to learn everything a Web site knows about them. We need a do-not-track law, similar to the do-not-call one. Now it’s not just about whether my dinner will be interrupted by a telemarketer. It’s about whether my dreams will be dashed by the collection of bits and bytes over which I have no control and for which companies are currently unaccountable.

Lori Andrews is a law professor at Chicago-Kent College of Law and the author of “I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy.”

The Shifting Strategy of PAX AMERICANA

Edward Liu
American Empire and military over-reach overseas have now shifted its resources and strategy away from NATO, Europe, and Russia. Instead the OBAMA DOCTRINE, a resurrection of the John Foster Dulles Cold War strategy once directed to contain Communism, has now shifted to encircle CHINA. The shifting of resources and strategy is being crystalized by reallocating resources away from boots, overseas military bases, and the heavy overload of hardware, arsenals, and equipment. Instead, the use of surrogates, minion, client-states in the Asia-Pacific to do the front-line work to contain China, as a rising power, is now being implemented. Put simply, PAX AMERICANA can no longer afford hugh military budgets and overload.

http://news.yahoo.com/panetta-us-ground-forces-cut-100-000-190046199.html

Panetta: US ground forces would be cut by 100,000
news.yahoo.com
Pentagon leaders outlined a plan Thursday for absorbing $487 billion in defense cuts over the coming decade by shrinking U.S. ground forces, slowing the purchase of a next-generation stealth fighter and retiring older planes and s