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.