Spatium Trientis 　第三空间

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

2012-02-08T12:01:00.000-08:00

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

2012-01-26T14:37:00.000-08:00

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

UC DAVIS PEPPER-SPRAYING OF PASSIVE STUDENTS PROTESTING AGAINST TUITION HIKES AND THE PRIVATIZATION OF CALIFORNIA'S PUBLIC COLLEGES IS RIGHTEOUS

2011-11-22T12:32:00.000-08:00

It is an alarming trend, as America increasingly becomes paranoid, and civil society comes unglued.
The amazing thing about these trends is that the injection of more sophisticated tech weaponry and introduction of tools like mace, pepper spray, tear gas, bigger truncheons, rubber bullets, pepper spray guns, bullet-proof vests, bullet-proof helmets completely loses sight of what we are fighting against.
This environment of "us against them" now has seeped into the campuses, where security guards who used to be formed and organised for the purpose of protecting students and faculty from nefarious acts and predators are now being used as paramilitary forces to subdue free speech and righteous protests.
Campuses are supposed to be "intellectual free zones" where robust debates, clashes of ideas, in an atmosphere of non-violence, are allowed the widest ambit to flower and allowed a platform to vent and express themselves.
That's what the "free speech movement" of Mario Savio in the sixties at UC Berkeley was all about.
I may not agree with some of those ventings and the goals of that civil disobedience, but I will be damned if I cave and won't defend your right to freely express yourself in the "free zone" of an academic environment, so long as you don't infringe upon other's rights to also express a counterpoint of view.
I have been to UC Davis many times, as my niece attends engineering school there, in her sophomore year.
That quad is hugh. It is open space. And there is a lot of green in the middle of a large swath of open space in a hugh campus.
For Linda Katehi to suggest that pitching a few tents in the middle of the campus Quad is an issue of public safety is hooey.
Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred ideas contend.
That's what campus life and academic freedom is all about.
For the campus police chief of UCD to even suggest that her fully armed security force of 35 campus security guards, fully-armed with truncheons, a hugh arsenals of anti-riot tech equipment, in the midst of a few hundred sitting, passive protesters, are threatened or surrounded with no escape is ridiculous.
UCD Police Chief Annette Spicuzza is either an idiot or a congenital liar.
The militarization of our campuses in California is completely unacceptable.
We need to vigilantly voice our collective indignation as parents of children attending public colleges that this is not acceptable.
And we need to hold the ruling and governing officials of this once great state,California, including the state governor, Jerry Brown, and the State legislative officials, plus the UC Board of Regents, that the dismantling of California's public institutions of higher learning, with relentless rounds of budget cuts, leading to privatization, and the crushing of our kids, our future generation, can no longer be breached and that there is a line which will have be drawn.
No more. No mas. No mas.
I am righteously indignant.
And I am outraged that some of the academics, both active and retired, are not as outraged as I am with this current sordid mess and completely unacceptable state of affairs.
My daughter from UCSC is headed home tonight. And I plan to have a long Thanksgiving conversation with her and feel her out about her angst, anxiety, and trepidation as a UC student.
My friend, a UC professor, had made a point about the lack of empathy and connectedness between the campus police and the kids that they are supposed to protect.
This is one manifestation of what I have been raving and ranting and bitching all this time.
What has this society and its crumbling moral compass wrought when we don't take care of our young kids -- our future generation.
Even animals take care of their young. For Pete's sake !
Wherefore our California adults and parents !
Our old geezers here in this group ought to do some real soul-searching.
Our time on this earth is limited. This fight is one fight that we must fight for our kids and our grandkids.
I am ready to join the barricades. Are you?
Check out further the link to James Fallows blogs:

A Prophetic Article by the late Prof. Chalmers Johnson about American Military Overreach

2011-08-10T18:13:00.000-07:00

Recently in Beijing --- PLA chief Chen Bingde, in a blunt face-to-face meeting with his counterpart, Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chief of Staff of the U.S. Pentagon, admonished America and its official ruling elite on a very significant point; that is, in essence :

In the face of its national debt overload, becoming the world's largest debtor nation, America needs to curb its excessive military spending and do something about its overreaching military-industrial complex.

In the face of the downgrading of U.S. credit rating over its national debt by Standard & Poor's this week, the decline of America is becoming more noticeable and reverberated across the globe.

The following article by Prof. Chalmers Johnson, professor emeritus of the University of California, written by him in 2009, prior to his death in December, 2010, is a prophetic reminder that all is not well with America, and its continuing degeneration and decline from within and without is becoming more and more evident.

That this downgrading of America's credit rating by S&P is further compounded by the quagmire of America's war in Afghanistan. Now, this war has become Barack Obama's war, and no longer George W. Bush war.

This week, the news from Afghanistan was exacerbated by the amplification of this week's downing of a Chinook helicopter by a Taliban ground to air hand-held missile, killing 22 elite U.S. Seals, among others, including Karzai's special troops riding with the Seals -- the killed Seals were supposedly the best trained and best equipped warriors in America's almighty military machine. The shock waves of this one-day loss reverberated across America and the rest of the globe.

The ultimate question still remains: "Is the Afghan war a winnable war for Americans and America?"

As Prof. Chalmers Johnson wrote in this prophetic article of 2009, the American Empire and its overreach and entanglements overseas is crushing and breaking America and bankrupting this once great power. Read on below:

Best of TomDispatch: Chalmers Johnson, Dismantling the Empire
By Chalmers Johnson
Posted on August 7, 2011, Printed on August 10, 2011
http://www.tomdispatch.com/blog/175427/

Chalmers Johnson died on November 20, 2010, but -- for me at least -- his spirit lives on in the most active of ways. In his last years at TomDispatch.com, he regularly chewed over the profligacy of the Pentagon, our unbridled urge for military spending, and our penchant for war-making and war preparations without end. He was convinced that we had long passed the point at which we were still a “republic,” that we had decisively opted for empire, and -- long before the U.S. intelligence community came to that conclusion -- that we were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a “military Keynesianism” run amok.

One question he raised regularly in conversation, but never answered in print, was: What would it mean for the United States -- i.e. a great military superpower -- to bankrupt itself? After all, we aren't Argentina. But if there was no obvious model to draw on, he never doubted one thing: if we didn’t change our ways and reverse course on empire, we would certainly be a candidate for debtor’s prison and a wreck of a country. In his last major essay, also the title of his last (and still unbearably relevant) book, he turned to the issue of “dismantling the empire,” knowing full well that it wasn’t on any imaginable Washington agenda.

Having just lived through one of the more bizarre months in the history of the former republic -- what I recently termed “a psychotic spectacle of American decline” -- it seemed to me that Johnson’s “dismantling” essay couldn’t be more timely, and so on this quiet Sunday in August, on the weekend the author of Blowback would have turned 80, I’m bringing it back from the TomDispatch archives. It was first posted on July 30, 2009, and it has only gained in relevance from the two years of debacle that have followed. If only I could bring Chalmers back as well. This country could use him right now. Tom

Three Good Reasons To Liquidate Our Empire
And Ten Steps to Take to Do So By Chalmers Johnson

However ambitious President Barack Obama's domestic plans, one unacknowledged issue has the potential to destroy any reform efforts he might launch. Think of it as the 800-pound gorilla in the American living room: our longstanding reliance on imperialism and militarism in our relations with other countries and the vast, potentially ruinous global empire of bases that goes with it. The failure to begin to deal with our bloated military establishment and the profligate use of it in missions for which it is hopelessly inappropriate will, sooner rather than later, condemn the United States to a devastating trio of consequences: imperial overstretch, perpetual war, and insolvency, leading to a likely collapse similar to that of the former Soviet Union.

According to the 2008 official Pentagon inventory of our military bases around the world, our empire consists of 865 facilities in more than 40 countries and overseas U.S. territories. We deploy over 190,000 troops in 46 countries and territories. In just one such country, Japan, at the end of March 2008, we still had 99,295 people connected to U.S. military forces living and working there -- 49,364 members of our armed services, 45,753 dependent family members, and 4,178 civilian employees. Some 13,975 of these were crowded into the small island of Okinawa, the largest concentration of foreign troops anywhere in Japan.

These massive concentrations of American military power outside the United States are not needed for our defense. They are, if anything, a prime contributor to our numerous conflicts with other countries. They are also unimaginably expensive. According to Anita Dancs, an analyst for the website Foreign Policy in Focus, the United States spends approximately $250 billion each year maintaining its global military presence. The sole purpose of this is to give us hegemony -- that is, control or dominance -- over as many nations on the planet as possible.

We are like the British at the end of World War II: desperately trying to shore up an empire that we never needed and can no longer afford, using methods that often resemble those of failed empires of the past -- including the Axis powers of World War II and the former Soviet Union. There is an important lesson for us in the British decision, starting in 1945, to liquidate their empire relatively voluntarily, rather than being forced to do so by defeat in war, as were Japan and Germany, or by debilitating colonial conflicts, as were the French and Dutch. We should follow the British example. (Alas, they are currently backsliding and following our example by assisting us in the war in Afghanistan.)

Here are three basic reasons why we must liquidate our empire or else watch it liquidate us.

1. We Can No Longer Afford Our Postwar Expansionism
Shortly after his election as president, Barack Obama, in a speech announcing several members of his new cabinet, stated as fact that "[w]e have to maintain the strongest military on the planet." A few weeks later, on March 12, 2009, in a speech at the National Defense University in Washington D.C., the president again insisted, "Now make no mistake, this nation will maintain our military dominance. We will have the strongest armed forces in the history of the world." And in a commencement address to the cadets of the U.S. Naval Academy on May 22nd, Obama stressed that "[w]e will maintain America's military dominance and keep you the finest fighting force the world has ever seen."

What he failed to note is that the United States no longer has the capability to remain a global hegemon, and to pretend otherwise is to invite disaster.

According to a growing consensus of economists and political scientists around the world, it is impossible for the United States to continue in that role while emerging into full view as a crippled economic power. No such configuration has ever persisted in the history of imperialism. The University of Chicago's Robert Pape, author of the important study Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism (Random House, 2005), typically writes:

"America is in unprecedented decline. The self-inflicted wounds of the Iraq war, growing government debt, increasingly negative current-account balances and other internal economic weaknesses have cost the United States real power in today's world of rapidly spreading knowledge and technology. If present trends continue, we will look back on the Bush years as the death knell of American hegemony."

There is something absurd, even Kafkaesque, about our military empire. Jay Barr, a bankruptcy attorney, makes this point using an insightful analogy:

"Whether liquidating or reorganizing, a debtor who desires bankruptcy protection must provide a list of expenses, which, if considered reasonable, are offset against income to show that only limited funds are available to repay the bankrupted creditors. Now imagine a person filing for bankruptcy claiming that he could not repay his debts because he had the astronomical expense of maintaining at least 737 facilities overseas that provide exactly zero return on the significant investment required to sustain them... He could not qualify for liquidation without turning over many of his assets for the benefit of creditors, including the valuable foreign real estate on which he placed his bases."

In other words, the United States is not seriously contemplating its own bankruptcy. It is instead ignoring the meaning of its precipitate economic decline and flirting with insolvency.

Nick Turse, author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (Metropolitan Books, 2008), calculates that we could clear $2.6 billion if we would sell our base assets at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and earn another $2.2 billion if we did the same with Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. These are only two of our over 800 overblown military enclaves.

Our unwillingness to retrench, no less liquidate, represents a striking historical failure of the imagination. In his first official visit to China since becoming Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner assured an audience of students at Beijing University, "Chinese assets [invested in the United States] are very safe." According to press reports, the students responded with loud laughter. Well they might.

In May 2009, the Office of Management and Budget predicted that in 2010 the United States will be burdened with a budget deficit of at least $1.75 trillion. This includes neither a projected $640 billion budget for the Pentagon, nor the costs of waging two remarkably expensive wars. The sum is so immense that it will take several generations for American citizens to repay the costs of George W. Bush's imperial adventures -- if they ever can or will. It represents about 13% of our current gross domestic product (that is, the value of everything we produce). It is worth noting that the target demanded of European nations wanting to join the Euro Zone is a deficit no greater than 3% of GDP.

Thus far, President Obama has announced measly cuts of only $8.8 billion in wasteful and worthless weapons spending, including his cancellation of the F-22 fighter aircraft. The actual Pentagon budget for next year will, in fact, be larger, not smaller, than the bloated final budget of the Bush era. Far bolder cuts in our military expenditures will obviously be required in the very near future if we intend to maintain any semblance of fiscal integrity.

2. We Are Going to Lose the War in Afghanistan and It Will Help Bankrupt Us
One of our major strategic blunders in Afghanistan was not to have recognized that both Great Britain and the Soviet Union attempted to pacify Afghanistan using the same military methods as ours and failed disastrously. We seem to have learned nothing from Afghanistan's modern history -- to the extent that we even know what it is. Between 1849 and 1947, Britain sent almost annual expeditions against the Pashtun tribes and sub-tribes living in what was then called the North-West Frontier Territories -- the area along either side of the artificial border between Afghanistan and Pakistan called the Durand Line. This frontier was created in 1893 by Britain's foreign secretary for India, Sir Mortimer Durand.

Neither Britain nor Pakistan has ever managed to establish effective control over the area. As the eminent historian Louis Dupree put it in his book Afghanistan (Oxford University Press, 2002, p. 425): "Pashtun tribes, almost genetically expert at guerrilla warfare after resisting centuries of all comers and fighting among themselves when no comers were available, plagued attempts to extend the Pax Britannica into their mountain homeland." An estimated 41 million Pashtuns live in an undemarcated area along the Durand Line and profess no loyalties to the central governments of either Pakistan or Afghanistan.

The region known today as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) of Pakistan is administered directly by Islamabad, which -- just as British imperial officials did -- has divided the territory into seven agencies, each with its own "political agent" who wields much the same powers as his colonial-era predecessor. Then as now, the part of FATA known as Waziristan and the home of Pashtun tribesmen offered the fiercest resistance.

According to Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, experienced Afghan hands and coauthors of Invisible History: Afghanistan's Untold Story (City Lights, 2009, p. 317):

"If Washington's bureaucrats don't remember the history of the region, the Afghans do. The British used air power to bomb these same Pashtun villages after World War I and were condemned for it. When the Soviets used MiGs and the dreaded Mi-24 Hind helicopter gunships to do it during the 1980s, they were called criminals. For America to use its overwhelming firepower in the same reckless and indiscriminate manner defies the world's sense of justice and morality while turning the Afghan people and the Islamic world even further against the United States."

In 1932, in a series of Guernica-like atrocities, the British used poison gas in Waziristan. The disarmament convention of the same year sought a ban against the aerial bombardment of civilians, but Lloyd George, who had been British prime minister during World War I, gloated: "We insisted on reserving the right to bomb niggers" (Fitzgerald and Gould, p. 65). His view prevailed.

The U.S. continues to act similarly, but with the new excuse that our killing of noncombatants is a result of "collateral damage," or human error. Using pilotless drones guided with only minimal accuracy from computers at military bases in the Arizona and Nevada deserts, among other places, we have killed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of unarmed bystanders in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Pakistani and Afghan governments have repeatedly warned that we are alienating precisely the people we claim to be saving for democracy.

When in May 2009 General Stanley McChrystal was appointed as the commander in Afghanistan, he ordered new limits on air attacks, including those carried out by the CIA, except when needed to protect allied troops. Unfortunately, as if to illustrate the incompetence of our chain of command, only two days after this order, on June 23, 2009, the United States carried out a drone attack against a funeral procession that killed at least 80 people, the single deadliest U.S. attack on Pakistani soil so far. There was virtually no reporting of these developments by the mainstream American press or on the network television news. (At the time, the media were almost totally preoccupied by the sexual adventures of the governor of South Carolina and the death of pop star Michael Jackson.)

Our military operations in both Pakistan and Afghanistan have long been plagued by inadequate and inaccurate intelligence about both countries, ideological preconceptions about which parties we should support and which ones we should oppose, and myopic understandings of what we could possibly hope to achieve. Fitzgerald and Gould, for example, charge that, contrary to our own intelligence service's focus on Afghanistan, "Pakistan has always been the problem." They add:

"Pakistan's army and its Inter-Services Intelligence branch... from 1973 on, has played the key role in funding and directing first the mujahideen [anti-Soviet fighters during the 1980s] and then the Taliban. It is Pakistan's army that controls its nuclear weapons, constrains the development of democratic institutions, trains Taliban fighters in suicide attacks and orders them to fight American and NATO soldiers protecting the Afghan government." (p. 322-324)

The Pakistani army and its intelligence arm are staffed, in part, by devout Muslims who fostered the Taliban in Afghanistan to meet the needs of their own agenda, though not necessarily to advance an Islamic jihad. Their purposes have always included: keeping Afghanistan free of Russian or Indian influence, providing a training and recruiting ground for mujahideen guerrillas to be used in places like Kashmir (fought over by both Pakistan and India), containing Islamic radicalism in Afghanistan (and so keeping it out of Pakistan), and extorting huge amounts of money from Saudi Arabia, the Persian Gulf emirates, and the United States to pay and train "freedom fighters" throughout the Islamic world. Pakistan's consistent policy has been to support the clandestine policies of the Inter-Services Intelligence and thwart the influence of its major enemy and competitor, India.

Colonel Douglas MacGregor, U.S. Army (retired), an adviser to the Center for Defense Information in Washington, summarizes our hopeless project in South Asia this way: "Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in Pakistan to make common cause with a United States in league with the two states that are unambiguously anti-Muslim: Israel and India."

Obama's mid-2009 "surge" of troops into southern Afghanistan and particularly into Helmand Province, a Taliban stronghold, is fast becoming darkly reminiscent of General William Westmoreland's continuous requests in Vietnam for more troops and his promises that if we would ratchet up the violence just a little more and tolerate a few more casualties, we would certainly break the will of the Vietnamese insurgents. This was a total misreading of the nature of the conflict in Vietnam, just as it is in Afghanistan today.

Twenty years after the forces of the Red Army withdrew from Afghanistan in disgrace, the last Russian general to command them, Gen. Boris Gromov, issued his own prediction: Disaster, he insisted, will come to the thousands of new forces Obama is sending there, just as it did to the Soviet Union's, which lost some 15,000 soldiers in its own Afghan war. We should recognize that we are wasting time, lives, and resources in an area where we have never understood the political dynamics and continue to make the wrong choices.

3. We Need to End the Secret Shame of Our Empire of Bases
In March, New York Times op-ed columnist Bob Herbert noted, "Rape and other forms of sexual assault against women is the great shame of the U.S. armed forces, and there is no evidence that this ghastly problem, kept out of sight as much as possible, is diminishing." He continued:

"New data released by the Pentagon showed an almost 9 percent increase in the number of sexual assaults -- 2,923 -- and a 25 percent increase in such assaults reported by women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan [over the past year]. Try to imagine how bizarre it is that women in American uniforms who are enduring all the stresses related to serving in a combat zone have to also worry about defending themselves against rapists wearing the same uniform and lining up in formation right beside them."

The problem is exacerbated by having our troops garrisoned in overseas bases located cheek-by-jowl next to civilian populations and often preying on them like foreign conquerors. For example, sexual violence against women and girls by American GIs has been out of control in Okinawa, Japan's poorest prefecture, ever since it was permanently occupied by our soldiers, Marines, and airmen some 64 years ago.

That island was the scene of the largest anti-American demonstrations since the end of World War II after the 1995 kidnapping, rape, and attempted murder of a 12-year-old schoolgirl by two Marines and a sailor. The problem of rape has been ubiquitous around all of our bases on every continent and has probably contributed as much to our being loathed abroad as the policies of the Bush administration or our economic exploitation of poverty-stricken countries whose raw materials we covet.

The military itself has done next to nothing to protect its own female soldiers or to defend the rights of innocent bystanders forced to live next to our often racially biased and predatory troops. "The military's record of prosecuting rapists is not just lousy, it's atrocious," writes Herbert. In territories occupied by American military forces, the high command and the State Department make strenuous efforts to enact so-called "Status of Forces Agreements" (SOFAs) that will prevent host governments from gaining jurisdiction over our troops who commit crimes overseas. The SOFAs also make it easier for our military to spirit culprits out of a country before they can be apprehended by local authorities.

This issue was well illustrated by the case of an Australian teacher, a long-time resident of Japan, who in April 2002 was raped by a sailor from the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, then based at the big naval base at Yokosuka. She identified her assailant and reported him to both Japanese and U.S. authorities. Instead of his being arrested and effectively prosecuted, the victim herself was harassed and humiliated by the local Japanese police. Meanwhile, the U.S. discharged the suspect from the Navy but allowed him to escape Japanese law by returning him to the U.S., where he lives today.

In the course of trying to obtain justice, the Australian teacher discovered that almost fifty years earlier, in October 1953, the Japanese and American governments signed a secret "understanding" as part of their SOFA in which Japan agreed to waive its jurisdiction if the crime was not of "national importance to Japan." The U.S. argued strenuously for this codicil because it feared that otherwise it would face the likelihood of some 350 servicemen per year being sent to Japanese jails for sex crimes.

Since that time the U.S. has negotiated similar wording in SOFAs with Canada, Ireland, Italy, and Denmark. According to the Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces (2001), the Japanese practice has become the norm for SOFAs throughout the world, with predictable results. In Japan, of 3,184 U.S. military personnel who committed crimes between 2001 and 2008, 83% were not prosecuted. In Iraq, we have just signed a SOFA that bears a strong resemblance to the first postwar one we had with Japan: namely, military personnel and military contractors accused of off-duty crimes will remain in U.S. custody while Iraqis investigate. This is, of course, a perfect opportunity to spirit the culprits out of the country before they can be charged.

Within the military itself, the journalist Dahr Jamail, author of Beyond the Green Zone: Dispatches from an Unembedded Journalist in Occupied Iraq (Haymarket Books, 2007), speaks of the "culture of unpunished sexual assaults" and the "shockingly low numbers of courts martial" for rapes and other forms of sexual attacks. Helen Benedict, author of The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq (Beacon Press, 2009), quotes this figure in a 2009 Pentagon report on military sexual assaults: 90% of the rapes in the military are never reported at all and, when they are, the consequences for the perpetrator are negligible.

It is fair to say that the U.S. military has created a worldwide sexual playground for its personnel and protected them to a large extent from the consequences of their behavior. I believe a better solution would be to radically reduce the size of our standing army, and bring the troops home from countries where they do not understand their environments and have been taught to think of the inhabitants as inferior to themselves.

10 Steps Toward Liquidating the Empire
Dismantling the American empire would, of course, involve many steps. Here are ten key places to begin:

1. We need to put a halt to the serious environmental damage done by our bases planet-wide. We also need to stop writing SOFAs that exempt us from any responsibility for cleaning up after ourselves.

2. Liquidating the empire will end the burden of carrying our empire of bases and so of the "opportunity costs" that go with them -- the things we might otherwise do with our talents and resources but can't or won't.

3. As we already know (but often forget), imperialism breeds the use of torture. In the 1960s and 1970s we helped overthrow the elected governments in Brazil and Chile and underwrote regimes of torture that prefigured our own treatment of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan. (See, for instance, A.J. Langguth, Hidden Terrors [Pantheon, 1979], on how the U.S. spread torture methods to Brazil and Uruguay.) Dismantling the empire would potentially mean a real end to the modern American record of using torture abroad.

4. We need to cut the ever-lengthening train of camp followers, dependents, civilian employees of the Department of Defense, and hucksters -- along with their expensive medical facilities, housing requirements, swimming pools, clubs, golf courses, and so forth -- that follow our military enclaves around the world.

5. We need to discredit the myth promoted by the military-industrial complex that our military establishment is valuable to us in terms of jobs, scientific research, and defense. These alleged advantages have long been discredited by serious economic research. Ending empire would make this happen.

6. As a self-respecting democratic nation, we need to stop being the world's largest exporter of arms and munitions and quit educating Third World militaries in the techniques of torture, military coups, and service as proxies for our imperialism. A prime candidate for immediate closure is the so-called School of the Americas, the U.S. Army's infamous military academy at Fort Benning, Georgia, for Latin American military officers. (See Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire [Metropolitan Books, 2004], pp. 136-40.)

7. Given the growing constraints on the federal budget, we should abolish the Reserve Officers' Training Corps and other long-standing programs that promote militarism in our schools.

8. We need to restore discipline and accountability in our armed forces by radically scaling back our reliance on civilian contractors, private military companies, and agents working for the military outside the chain of command and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. (See Jeremy Scahill, Blackwater:The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army [Nation Books, 2007]). Ending empire would make this possible.

9. We need to reduce, not increase, the size of our standing army and deal much more effectively with the wounds our soldiers receive and combat stress they undergo.

10. To repeat the main message of this essay, we must give up our inappropriate reliance on military force as the chief means of attempting to achieve foreign policy objectives.

Unfortunately, few empires of the past voluntarily gave up their dominions in order to remain independent, self-governing polities. The two most important recent examples are the British and Soviet empires. If we do not learn from their examples, our decline and fall is foreordained.

Chalmers Johnson was the author of Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006), and editor of Okinawa: Cold War Island (1999). His final book was Dismantling the Empire: America's Last Best Hope (2010).

[Note on further reading on the matter of sexual violence in and around our overseas bases and rapes in the military: On the response to the 1995 Okinawa rape, see Chalmers Johnson, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire, chapter 2. On related subjects, see David McNeil, "Justice for Some. Crime, Victims, and the US-Japan SOFA," Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 8-1-09, March 15, 2009; "Bilateral Secret Agreement Is Preventing U.S. Servicemen Committing Crimes in Japan from Being Prosecuted," Japan Press Weekly, May 23, 2009; Dieter Fleck, ed., The Handbook of the Law of Visiting Forces, Oxford University Press, 2001; Minoru Matsutani, "'53 Secret Japan-US Deal Waived GI Prosecutions," Japan Times, October 24, 2008; "Crime Without Punishment in Japan," the Economist, December 10, 2008; "Japan: Declassified Document Reveals Agreement to Relinquish Jurisdiction Over U.S. Forces," Akahata, October 30, 2008; "Government's Decision First Case in Japan," Ryukyu Shimpo, May 20, 2008; Dahr Jamail, "Culture of Unpunished Sexual Assault in Military," Antiwar.com, May 1, 2009; and Helen Benedict, "The Plight of Women Soldiers," the Nation, May 5, 2009.]

A Chinese Blogger Jeff Yang responds to David Sedaris' "Turd Piece" Rant about Chinese Public Hygiene and Chinese Food -- Kudos

2011-07-22T21:14:00.001-07:00

Jeff Yang, a Chinese-American blogger, responding to David Sedaris' "Turd Piece" rant published at the UK Guardian, piled back with his blog, about Sedaris' Racist Venom. Check it out:

OriginalSpin
David Sedaris thinks Chinese people (and food) are repulsive, which makes me sad, because I used to like David Sedaris.

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What do you do when a literary idol decides to take a huge metaphorical dump on the culture and civilization from whence your ancestors emerged? I'm not sure I've figured out the answer to that question yet, but I'm grappling with it.

You see, master mock-and-droller David Sedaris, who's unequivocally one of the great essayists of our time and a personal favorite of mine, has chosen to take his parodic talent and point it at China, its people and its food. Except the piece he's written for the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper is less amusing than it is venomous, xenophobic and dissipated.

Which, to be fair, describes many of his genuinely funny essays as well.

The difference, I think, is that in his adventures in France, Japan and, well, Raleigh, North Carolina, he is usually as self-deprecating as he is other-; he comes off as a general, equal-opportunity misanthrope in the classic Molièrean vein. He also actually bothers to create human characters and enliven them with dialogue, and often wit — they become his comic foils, or he theirs, in a widening outspiral of mannered absurdity.

Not so here. Sedaris announces from the outset that he dislikes Chinese food — "I'll eat it if the alternative means starving" — and thinks of visiting China itself as an unpleasant prospect: "'I have to go to China.' I told people this in the way I might say, 'I need to insulate my crawl space' or, 'I've got to get these moles looked at.' That's the way it felt, though. Like a chore."

But he goes anyway, after spending a week in vastly more civilized (but no less exotic) Tokyo — which he extolls as being sublime, delicate and sanitary. And then, China. China, as described by Sedaris, is a land of phlegm-hawking savages who eat animals that no right thinking person would consume, and eat parts of those animals that no sane person would consider, preparing and presenting them in the most foul and revolting fashion possible. Also, Chinese people shit everywhere, they practically bathe in the stuff, and of course they have no problem eating shit, or at least things that eat shit.

In fact, shit, in its many forms — stinking, floating, abandoned, stepped in or, in his mind, coyly tucked into entrees — ends up being the closest thing Sedaris finds to the satirical counter his prose always seeks out. He and shit engage in a kind of capoiera-like martial ballet throughout the 2700-odd word piece (though mucus and urine do occasionally enter the fray); by the middle of the essay, Sedaris's preoccupation has become less shocking than annoying, and by its final throes, less annoying than tedious. (He's brilliantly noted before that "Shit is the tofu of cursing and can be molded to whichever condition the speaker desires"; the larding-up of his narrative here with shit references points to what this essay really is, e.g., bulk filler with limited taste and nutritional value.)

So look, David: Chinese people eat weird food. There is a saying that "Chinese will eat anything with its back to the sky," and another that says "Chinese will eat anything with legs but a table and anything with wings but an airplane." These are Chinese sayings, I might point out — a sign that Chinese aren't exactly unaware that the "delicacies" that send prim Westerners to their fainting couches are a little off the beaten path.

But Chinese are far from the only culture that eats weird food, and fuck, given that you're from North Carolina, have you looked at what American Southerners traditionally eat? No? Chitlins! Possum! Muskrat! Bull testicles! Oh wait, you're from suburban Raleigh, so probably not, given that most of the more exotic dishes in Southern cuisine, like in many culinary traditions, was the offspring of necessity — invention midwived by destitution. If you're hungry enough, rodents will start to look tasty, as will chicken claws, stray innards and balls. And once you've eaten them long enough, all these things evolve into nostalgic signifiers — especially after you've pulled yourself out of poverty. They go from things you have to eat all the time to things you choose to eat once in a while, to remind yourself you don't have to eat them all the time.

And this is what's truly ugly about your piece, David: For someone who's spent a lot of your career puncturing middle-class aspiration and self-delusion, your essay is unpleasantly blind to the fact that all of China is just a few generations removed from dire, desperate want, and that many people, like the peasant family you had such a bad experience sharing a meal with, continue to subsist on an annual income that's a tiny fraction of what a sophisticated awesome American literary superstar like you loses in his sofa. And in a country of 1.3 billion people, even having braised pig's stomach to occasionally go with your daily rice is a fucking luxury.

But you should note: Those 1.3 billion people have a standard of living that's skyrocketing upward. They're crawling up and out of the economic muck, while we seem determined to drag ourselves down into it. And more and more of them are learning English and traveling abroad and reading international newspapers like the Guardian. So, just sayin': The next time you're eating at a fancy New York restaurant near a table of tourists from Shanghai...maybe you shouldn't turn your back on your Coke.

A Gweillo Turd and his Racist Rant about Chinese Food and Public Hygiene !!!

2011-07-22T21:04:00.000-07:00

Is this David Sedaris --- a celebrated writer, for real?

In an essay published by the UK Guardian, this aging Aryan homo went visiting Beijing, evidently bringing his Eurocentric "bags and baggages," and full of himself, and started unloading his pile of "white turd" about Chinese food, and public hygience in China.

This racist drivel would have ran passed me for just plain provincialism and ignorance, were it not for the fact that this "heung har lo" is so full of white supremacist venom in his China bashing and put-downs of the Chinese people.

Check this out.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2011/jul/15/david-sedaris-chinese-food-chicken-toenails

"China Doll Syndrome" - Asian Women Diss Asian Men in "Joyless Luckless Club" - White Male Supremacist Fantasy with Subservient "China Dolls"

2011-06-21T11:41:00.000-07:00

A 1999 thoughtful piece by Texas-based Japanese-American intellectual William Nakayama commenting on Amy Tan's book, "Joy Luck Club," made into a Hollywood movie under the directorship of Chinese-American director Wayne Wang is noteworthy and passes the test of time.

Read William Nakayama's column about the "China Doll Syndrome" afflicting many Asian females who fantasize about the White "Macho" males.

"China Doll Syndrome" meshes with the white male supremacist attitude dehumanizing and demeaning the Asian male, as demonstrated in Amy Tan's book, "The Joy Luck Club."

White pricks are more potent than the tiny weeners of the Yellow males, in blunt terms.
This diss permeates the cultural landscape all across Asia today, from China mainland to Taiwan, Hong Kong to Singapore, Vietnam to the Philippines, Japan to South Korea.

Below is William Nakayama's piece:

Women Without Men

By William Nakayama

It isn’t easy for an Asian writer — or any writer for that matter — to achieve the level of success enjoyed by the likes of Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang. But the degree of acclaim their works have enjoyed has always made me ambivalent.

What turned my ambivalence into outright disgust is Joy Luck Club, the movie. It does nothing to enhance or balance the prevailing image of Asians in the American media. Instead it caters to the most chauvinistic impulses fueling Hollywood portrayal of Asians. Not to beat around the bush, the movie caters to two groups: Caucasian men and Asian women who are discomfited by Asian men. And it does so entirely at the expense of Asian men, and ultimately, of all Asian Americans.

The movie is premised on the suffering of four Chinese mothers whose lives are so un-credibly pathetic (bathetic?) that they verge on the comical. How many Asian American women have been forced to abandon two daughters by the side of a road, drown an infant son to avenge the cruelty of her playboy husband, or forced into concubinage by her own malign family? Not one of these unfortunate women’s stories contains a single sympathetic Asian male character. Their tales of woe depict Asian males as crass, cruel, weak or simply non-existent. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? It’s typical of the worst products of white Hollywood exploiting Asians as a handy foil to demonstrate the superiority of white America.

Here’s the payoff. Each of these unfortunate women bears a daughter who, to a greater or lesser degree, is given the option of suffering her mother’s sorry fate by proxy or escaping this whole gruesome Asian scene by marrying a white man. Well, what is a rational girl to do?

Of the four daughters, the two who are more spirited and physically attractive marry Whites. Both white husbands are successful and attractive notwithstanding one or two cute, understandable flaws corrected in the course of the movie. One is a lawyer, the other is the dashing scion of a publishing family.

The third of the daughters — the simpering loser of the bunch — is given an Asian husband who is financially successful but pathetically miserly, geeky and cold. He insists on maintaining separate checking accounts and keeping a list on the refrigerator of every item of grocery either of them buys so that at the end of each month they can split the total. I found this character not only offensive but downright un-credible.

As a group we Asian men may possess our share of unappealing characteristics, but miserliness with groceries isn’t one of them. Every Asian male I know turns over care of the checkbook to the wife. I know of a number of Asians who are tight-fisted but none stingy enough to make the wife pay for half his ice cream habit. In fact, most Asians I know are baffled by the sight of groups of white people divvying up the restaurant tab.

As for the fourth daughter, the narrator, the only man in her life is a doddering father.

Where are the Asian men in this universe?

I understand that this pastiche of stories is supposed to be about mother-daughter relations, but how validly and interestingly can that be explored in a world devoid of credible Asian males? Not even the most radical feminist, I suspect, would argue for that particular vision of the universe.

The net effect of the Joy Luck Club — which could more aptly have been titled Joyless, Luckless Club — is to reinforce existing strereotypes in which Asian life is miserable and cheap and Asian women are plentiful and available in the absence of virile, sympathetic Asian males. What’s more, it subtly supports the notion that the faults of white males are superficial, even cute, and easily correctible (i.e., learning to use chopsticks, learning not to slop soy sauce on the mother-in-law’s culinary masterpiece) while Asian males are incorrigible sadists and hopeless geeks. An Asian girl — or boy for that matter — would likely come away from the movie thinking that anything is preferable to marrying an Asian and suffering unrelenting misery.

All this is made worse by the fact that the movie is directed by an Asian American though Tan’s book was adapted for the screen by a veteran Hollywood screenwriter who probably had much to do with making the changes calculated to make the movie play to white audiences (like making the miserable tightwad, a White in the book, an Asian). Putting Wayne Wang’s name on the thing as director says it’s okay to look at Asians as a race of women without men.

Despite all their rhetoric about being solicitous of the Asian image, neither Amy Tan nor Wayne Wang evidences concern about the stereotypes that Asian men must .suffer day in and day out. They’ve been turned into willing accomplices by the lure of Hollywood success.

Then there’s David Henry Hwang’s M. Butterfly which not only won a Tony but will be turned into a movie. The main characters are a French diplomat and a Chinese male spy who becomes a drag queen to seduce the diplomat and steal state secrets. Don’t ask me how the couple manage to be lovers for some ridiculous number of years. I know that this is supposed to be based on a real-life incident. I know that Hwang’s artistic rationalization for writing the play is to show that racial preconceptions hurt both sides. But there’s no escaping the play’s visceral impact. The handsome, slightly effeminate John Lone playing a devious and cunning drag queen not only undercuts Asian masculinity on a fundamental level, it reinforces the image of Asians as being so debased that we would do anything for a cause.

Rising Sun, starring Sean Connery and the charismatic Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, provided a badly needed relief from the usually sorry portrayal of Asian males but was booed by some on the ground that it made Japanese seem too threatening.

Amy Tan and David Henry Hwang have rubber stamped the most egregiously offensive exploitation of Asian stereotypes in recent memory and we’re supposed to applaud just because they’re Asian. Yet we’re supposed to rise up in outrage over a movie like Rising Sun which treated Asian males with far more dignity than either of the so-called Asian American works. At least Rising Sun portrayed Asian men as effective, fun-loving and virile.

Rather than blindly applauding the likes of David Henry Hwang, Amy Tan and Wayne Wang just because they’re Asians, no matter what kind of offensive drivel they produce, let’s ask ourselves this question: How would we feel about their works if they had been written and produced by non-Asians? By that test we would be outraged. Should our response be

"Asians in the UCLA Library" YouTube White Racist Rant Ignited Firestorm from Asian Bloggers who Learned How to Fight Back with Humor and Song :-)

2011-03-29T16:33:00.000-07:00

A UCLA female white student went on YouTube and posted the racially-charged video rant about "UCLA Asian students in the library" which went viral in blogosphere.

This largest University of California campus in Los Angeles, out of a ten-campus UC network of public universities in America's most populous and diverse state, consisting of over 35,000 students, 40% of whom are of Asian and Asian-American descent, has been at the cross-hair of major demographic seismic shift in the "yellowing" and browning" of California. With more Asian students enrolled, the culture wars over values, lifestyles, and taste have created much animosity bigotry, racism.

Her YouTube video created a firestorm in the internet, drawing many sensational and ingenious responses from many Asian youths, who used parody, dark humor, and ballads to excoriate and react to her ignorance and racial insensitivity.

This teachable moment about the power of the internet in leveling the playing field against racist white supremacist attacks demonstrates that with new technology, the dominance of the heretofore Western Anglo-white media gatekeepers are no longer supreme; and that there are ways to fight back, and fight back with creativity, ingenuity, and dark humor.

To illustrate, here's Alexandra Wallace, a UCLA political science white female student from Sacramento, who ranted and created a firestorm in the net.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9UK7XEBi3s

Here's an ingenious ballad created and posted by a talented young Asian musician, Jimmy Wong which posted in response to Ms. Wallace's attack. This has become a sensation in YouTube:

http://www.npr.org/2011/03/24/134827085/a-racial-quarrel-inspires-an-internet-balladeer

Here's another hilarious response from an Asian comic who used dark humor to underscore his displeasure:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lOGpGoEMu2s&feature=related

Here's another ingenious creative response from another Asian youth using dark humor playing the role of a "yellow nerd" with a $ 300 electronic calculator who is a super-achieving "straight A student "which is absolutely hilarious :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKpf9YT4x8o&feature=related

The playing field is leveling out. White Hollywood and the White Supremacist world have been undermined and depleted by many creative Asian youths who are learning how to use new technology, dark humor, parody to circumvent and ingeniously circle around the media gatekeeping by using YouTube and the blogosphere.

Showing white racism, and baring its ludicruousness and ignorance, with surgical attacks, even with self-deprecating stereotypical humor, and racist caricaturizing, can sometimes be very effective, in fact more effective than a straight confrontational "mano a mano" counter-attack.

Ding Hao. Ding Hao. Touche. Magnifique. :-)

Legislating Filial Piety - China Inc. - "It has come to this!"

2011-01-29T08:30:00.000-08:00

First it was Singapore. Now it is China's turn to legislate and compel filial piety among unfilial sons who abandon and don't take care of their own parents.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/world/asia/30beijing.html?ref=world

Ahhhhh.... The wonderful world of China, Inc., rapid modernization, urbanization, high-speed rails, dazzling megamalls, trendy Italian fashions, private automobiles, and fancy condo high rises furnished with chic Ikea and Euro-chic furniture.

It is glorious to be rich. It is not so glorious to dump your parents and leave them isolated, lonely, and living a forlorn existence, worse than America's dogs unleashed in a pet-manic world where dogs are valued more than American children.

In Singapore, the obsessive pursuit of the Five (5) "C"s have just added a six "C" to the Singaporean hipster's modernistic, fast-paced lifestyle on the go.

Now it is: (1) Cash; (2) Car; (3) Condo; (4) Career; (5) Credit Card, and yes, a sixth one, (6) Casino gaming.

This obsessive mania to pursue the six "C's has resulted in Singaporeans dumping and flushing their elderly parents down their immaculately clean toilets. Who can argue that Singapore has the best loo in the world, perhaps somewhat better than the Swiss, in fastidiousness and prissyness?

Who can argue that if you are old, in Singapore, you are entitled, legally, to seek recourse against your children, seeking money support and restitution for the duration you had supported your own children when they were growing up? It is in the Singaporean "kiasu" blood --- everything needs to be calibrated in $$$$ terms, no more no less, precise, concise, and to the penny.

And so it will be, as the late Deng Xiaoping worshiped Singapore's "model" society and its pristine, squeaky clean society. Why not follow Singapore and empower China's elderly to sue their own children for money support? Zhung Guo Lao Ren Bu Gao Xing !

No wonder, Chinese officials are now exhuming Confucius from his Qifu grave, and prominently transferred this Chinese sage into Tiananmen, where together with the giant pantheon of China's grand communist egalitarian revolution launched by the helmsman, Mao Zedong, a stirring of some sort can at least salvage a sliver of caring, kindness, or what we Chinese call "jing" among China's new millenials.

ZHUNG GUO is wonderful. MEI GUO is beautiful.

In America, they eat their young. In China, they are beginning to eat their old.

In both societies, something within is dreadfully wrong, and went awry.

Are the Arab streets giving us a glimspe of our future as human society crumbles ? The rich keeps getting richer; well the poor, they can always protest, mau-mau, and riot in the means streets. Not that it makes much of a difference.

As Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen roils in "luan," China is blocking all reference to "Egypt" in its closely-monitored blogosphere.

"Luan" in China? Arab streets turn and shifts to Chinese streets and America's streets?

Get ready for the Year of Reckoning. 2011 will be a major watershed in world society.I feel the "luan."

__._,_.___

Post-Oslo Nobel Ceremonies - Zhung Guo Bu Gao Xing 中国不高兴

2010-12-10T16:29:00.000-08:00

Now that the Nobel Peace Prize hoopla in Oslo is all but done with, with Western media bullhorns at full blast amplifying the cause of Liu Xiaobo, it is now China's turn for payback time.

Instead of doing the "Rope a Dope" Muhammad Ali defensive routine, it is time for Chinese officials to show some "testosterone" in their verbal posturings lambasting the Nobel Peace Prize, and follow through on what they said they would do, in a concrete, clear and unequivocal way..

With regard to those countries who "dissed" China by attending the Oslo ceremonies, enabling the Western news media the tools to bash and insult China, the Chinese government must exercised sure and certain retribution for payback.

With respect to those 18 countries who respected China's request not to dispatch their ambassadors to attend the Oslo ceremonies, the Chinese government should act and move shiftly to solidify and express its gratitude and appreciation.

Here are a few immediate moves which should be made loud and clear pronto.

1. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao should announced that his visit to New Delhi, India, next week, is now cancelled; in lieu of visiting New Delhi, Wen Jiabao should visit Pakistan and engage the Pakistanis in Islamabad with a package of new trade deals. The Chinese PLA should sell more arms to Pakistan, since India is playing "the American Card" and prancing around hoping to be "America's imperial policeman" in South Asia. Let the Indians go with their "American Sahib."

2. Chinese President Hu Juntao should also announced that his upcoming state visit to the U.S., at the invitation of President Barack Obama, is now cancelled, with no new schedule being considered, followed by China's shifting of and cashing in US$ 100 billion in U.S., treasury notes, designed and calculated to signal America's financial market that China is not happy. 中国不高兴.

3. In the Korean peninsula, the consensus reached by Chinese State Councillor Dai Bingguo with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il this week, must be followed by concrete measures and new steps of Chinese food and economic aid to Pyongyang. As a further signal that this move by South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. to encircle China on its eastern flank and to rachet up the trio's bellicosity will not be allowed to stand, China should immediately convene a summit among the Russian, North Korean, and Chinese military officials to discuss joint military exercises as a counterfoil to the "Gang of Three," i.e. the U.S.South Korea, Japan in the China Seas.

4. China should immediately dispatch a high-level delegation to Teheran to discuss with Iranian officials on areas of cooperation that Iran and China can work together and consolidate their trade, economic, military, and strategic colloboration and coordination.

5. China's aviation authorities should cancel the 103 Airbus purchases which was announced a month ago during President Hu Juntao's visit to Paris. Instead of ordering from Airbus, and ignoring Boeing, Chinese officials should instead steer its aircraft purchases to is domestic manufacturers, given the that China's Commercial Aircraft Corporation can do their own C919 passenger civilian passenger jets, breaking Airbus SAS and Boeing Co.’s stranglehold. China must and should signal to the European community its total displeasure in response to the insulting and disrespectful move by the European community in Oslo, Norway.

6. China should cancel any pending orders from British Rolls Royce on any aircraft engines currently on order. It should be made loud and clear to the Brits that China is displeased by British duplicity, disrespect, and dishonor by its posture vis a vis the Oslo Nobel Peace Prize.

7. China should also announced major cancellations of mineral supply contracts from Australian export mining, Rio Tonto, as a signal of China's displeasure with Australian belligrence, insult, and disrespect.

Zhung Guo Bu Gao Xing 中国不高兴

Finally, instead of visiting the White House, President Hu Juntao should shift his American state visit instead to the American hemisphere, and enplane instead to Cuba and Venezuela on or around the same time next spring at the dates and time that Hu Juntao was supposed to be visiting Barack Obama at the White House in D.C. In this vein, Chinese trade officials should work to solidify some trade deals with Cuba and Venezuela, and steer some business to Cuba and Venezuela.

China, must at the same time, signal to Brazil that its official attendance at the Oslo Nobel Peace ceremonies will not be seen as a friendly move by a fellow BRIC nation. Perhaps, China must now reconfigure BRIC to become RIC instead, meaning Russia, Iran, and China, and drop Brazil and India.

Zhung Guo Bu Gao Xing 中国不高兴.

Above all said.... do you think the current officials in Beijing, the fourth generation, have the cujones to do these moves ?

Are they wimps or are they leaders ?

All eyes of the global Huarens are upon China and its supposed leaders.

Zhung Guo Bu Gao Xing 中国不高兴.

Western Wacko Lynching and Dirty Tricks vs. Wikileaks

2010-12-07T17:21:00.002-08:00

The tranche of documents disclosures, in the form of over 250,000 diplomatic cables by American diplomats released by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange reeks with duplicitous, hypocritical, under-handed behavior underneath the seeming "howdy-doody" image of American liberal democracy.

In truth, underneath this seeming platitude and veneer of clean, transparent government and governance is a rotten system and process of government and governance by deception, falsehoods, and duplicity.

Americans have no standing to hector or lecture China and the Chinese people about free expression, freedom of the internet, or about transparency and the freedom of ideas.

What has happened since the expose unleashed by Wikileak's chief leaker Julian Assange is nothing short of collective massive government meltdown and a
governmental nervous breakdown of obscene proportion and reaction which demonstrates the very utter hypocrisy of Western liberal democracies.

Look who is talking ? Look who is committing political dirty tricks to take out an Australian dissident who dared expose American government hypocrisy?

TRANSPARENCY? THE RULE OF LAW? DUE PROCESS? ABUSE OF HUMAN RIGHTS?

What is unfolding right before our eyes surrounding the "honey trap" of Julian Assange on four alleged trumped-up sexual assault charges by two Swedish female groupies is not only specious but a grand conspiracy by Western governments led by their ruling class to muzzle, muffle, and suppress the truths about the nefarious acts and activities of government officials who lie and lie through their teeth about the ugly, armpit side of their governance, most notably led by U.S. government officials, of whom we have just begun to scratch the surface.

May Julian Assange continue to be unleashed and further illuminate on more of the hidden, nefarious, duplicitous acts of misgovernance of Western regimes.... from their opacity, double-talk, lies and deception, manipulation, and connivance.

This Friday, December 5, 2010, in Oslo, the connivers, the co-conspirators, the duplicitous Western officials will congregate in Oslo, and do their ritualistic hypocritical hoopla for PEACE, HUMAN RIGHTS, and FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION.

While these hypocrites beam their headlights pointing to China and its treatment of LIU XIAOBO, for allegedly muffling Mr. LIU's freedom of thought, and right to dissent, don't forget that right in their own Baltic backyard, the Norwegians and the Swedes, with their American masters, are deep in their own wicked machination, deep smuck in a wacko mob-lynching orchestration to lynch one JULIAN ASSANGE, by charging him with a flimsy, bogus "honey trap" charges, as a pretext to muzzle, and muffle Mr. ASSANGE'S rights of expression.

Between LIU XIAOBO and JULIAN ASSANGE...... whose rights of expression is being wantonly abridged and suppressed?

Whose human rights are being suppressed and grossly trampled upon?

Consider the following piece from the UK GUARDIAN, which points to the utter hypocrisy of Western governments, including but not limited to the U.S.A., NORWAY, SWEDEN, and yes Mr. ASSANGE'S own home country, Australia.

HYPOCRITES. HYPOCRITES. HYPOCRITES.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/dec/06/western-democracies-must-live-with-leaks

The U.S.-India-China Dance - Will India play "the American Card" with China ?

2010-11-01T16:02:00.000-07:00

The world is at a cross-road. The stakes cannot be bigger and more significant in determining whether or not a new age of global relations is in or the resuscitation of the Cold War is back.

As BO embarks on his trip to Asia-Pacific this weekend, a few days after the mid-term elections, expected to be a debacle on the domestic policy front, the symbolism of his trip to India, his first as a U.S. president, cannot be more revealing.

In the face of China's continuing recalcitrance in not caving nor succumbing to Western and in particular American pressures on a host of issues, from human rights, democratization (Western style), currency revaluation of the renminbie relative to the U.S. dollar, trade deficits, Tibet and the political monk's platform from the West using Chinese officials as whipping boys for defanging Tibetan "cultural autonomy," America today, under Barack Obama, is increasingly looking to India as a "counter-foil" to blunt and contain China's re-emergence on the world stage.

The big ultimate question for India and India's ruling Congress Party, under Indian premier Manmohan Singh is: "Will India play the "American Card" against China?"

What does India want and are Indians leveraging its position for certain advantages, such as:

(a) a permanent seat at the United Nations Security Council Seat ?
(b) a comprehensive resolution of the border boundaries issues between China and India specifically on Arunachal Pradesh?
(c) Concessions from China vis a vis Muslim-majority Kashmir, which is a volatile issue in South Asia which has triggered several skirmishes and outright wars between India and Pakistan ?

What does America, through Barack Obama's emergent "Encirclement of China" or "Neo-Containment of China," want from India ? Are Americans focused on:

(1) Enlisting India as a "watchdog" for Western and American interests at China's southern perimeters, at China's southern flank, as Japan and Japanese ruling class under Naoko Kan being enlisted to be America's "watchdog" in China's eastern flank?
(2) Getting India to open up its potentially vast market to bail out America's deep economic depression by buying up more American goods and services ?
(3) Cultivating India, as one of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, China) new emerging states, as a counterfoil to China's rise ?

On the sides of the East Asian summit in Hanoi a this week, the signals as demonstrated in the body language, contacts, photo-ops, demeanors shown by Premier Wen Jiabao points to China's outreach to India's premier Manmohan Singh to prevail upon him and his government, as well as the Indian people, not to play "the American Card" with China. It is also very clear that as to relations between China and India, Beijing offiicials are prioritizing it as a more strategically important and more salvageable relationship than that with Japan.

Please note:

On the sidelines of the Hanoi summit, the relationship shown between that of Premier Wen and Japanese premier Naoto Kan was not only cold, but sour, and pointed to a deteriorating relationship by virtue of Japan's belligerency on the issue of disputed Diaoyutai, and worse, its internanationalizing of the dispute by drawing in the Americans and playing the "American Card" to the max. This was a slap in the face. And clearly Chinese officials are showing their displeasure against the Japanese government of Naoko Kan.

That BO's trip to India provides a "texture" on how important this trip is to BO in terms of his foreign policy attitude and mind-set.

40 airplanes will be part of BO's entourage. The entire Taj Mahal Hotel has been booked, en toto, for the presidential party and his gungadins, an entourage full of American businessmen salivating to sell trains, nuclear technology, and do other deals with India.

Michelle Obama and their two daughters will accompany BO on the India leg of the trip. Telling signals on the demeanor and nuances of this trip.

Premier Wen Jiabao, by a surprise visit to the India Pavilion at the closing of the World Expo in Shanghai, calibrated a very significant and "nuanced" signal to his Indian counterpart, Premier Manmohan Singh. The signal is loud and clear, " don't steer over-exuberantly too close to the American Tiger, or you may end up being devoured by it." As it now appear, following BO's trip to India, Premier Wen Jiabao will schedule his trip to India, to try a last ditch effort to stabilize China's relationship with India, and remind India that it should not be the West' "running dog" in Asia, as Japan's Naoko Kan and the Japanese have become America's "running dogs" in Asia.

Check out the report of Premier Wen Jiabao's side trip to the Indian Pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai, after his Hanoi appearance for the East Asian summit, with the ASEAN countries. Wen's deliberate and intentional visit to the Indian Pavilion was intended to be an olive branch designed to reach out to India to do the right thing. You will note that Wen Jiabao deliberately avoided the Japan Pavilion or the U.S. Pavilion on his trip to Shanghai World Expo, following Hanoi.

Zhung Guo Bu Gao Xing. Zhung Guo Bu Gao Xing.

Check out the logistics of BO's upcoming visit to India, and the calibrated nuances being desciphered by "Amerika Watchers" inside China.

The signals at the Hanoi summit insofar as Premier's Wen Jiabao's demeanor pointed at Japan's Naoko Kan are unmistable. Icy Cold.

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE69U0AV20101031

The politics behind the Nobel Peace Prize and the Norwegian "cold warrior" behind its crusade to demonize, destabilize and encircle China

2010-10-19T11:17:00.000-07:00

There's more to the story behind Liu Xiaobo, as an "asset" of the Western cold warriors -- hell-bent on a crusade to effect regime change and to re-make China to comport and conform with their "Europeanized" version of democracy. This devious plan is part of a grand conspiracy to burnish Liu Xiaobo with the aura of a "champion" of Chinese human rights, and deserving of the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.

Why are the Norwegians behind this prize doing this at this time, at this juncture with this frontal media assault and "in your face" insult against Beijing and its governing officials ?

As the secret informant behind the Watergate scandal which swirled around former President Richard Nixon, code-named "Deep Throat," admonished the duo reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, "Follow the money;" so should we "follow the money" behind the Nobel Peace Prize and see who is "on the take" and "why." The dynamics behind the selection of Liu Xiaobo, as this year's awardee cannot be more revealing of Western machinations.

Yoichi Shimatzu, a Japanese journalist and former editor for Japan Times, an iconaclast, who has lectured at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and who has written about Tibet and the Nazi links of the Dalai Lama, the"political monk in saffron robe," whom many Chinese dubbed as "the wolf in sheep's clothing" (You may Google Mr. Shitmatzu's writings and find out more about his views) filed a fascinating report and analysis which is linked below with the website of New America Media. (Read link below)

Mr. Shimitzu's think piece (linked below) is very illuminating and provides some background about the politics behind the Nobel Peace Prize. In its overzealous, missionary zeal to promote freedom of expression, what is so ironic and hypocritical about the "spin" behind news coverage in the Western media is the deliberate blockade, suppression, and tamping down of Mr. Shimitsu's "contrarian" view. Apparently, the Western news gatekeepers, from the New York Times to others, deem Mr. Shimitzu's contrarian views "not fit to print." Censorship and suppression cut both ways, in both East and West, it appears.

This year's award recipient, Liu Xiaobo, reeks with the smell of "NATO" Cold War politics, with a Czech "asset" for NATO, Vaclav Havel, and a Norwegian "cold warrior," its former premier, Thorbjoern Jagland, machinating from behind the scene in Oslo. Why? and what are their hidden motives ?

In his piece, Mr. Shitmatsu, analyzed the "dark hand" and the politics behind the Nobel Peace Prize, and how this once prestigious award for the promotion of true world peace, named after a Norwegian explosives entrepreneur, Alfred Nobel, has been prostituted and usurped as a vehicle to promote Cold War politics and the imperatives of a Western-dictated new world order.

Thorbjoern Jagland the former Norwegian premier, foreign minister, dubbbed the "George Bush Jr." of Norway, is the chairman of the Nobel Peace Prize award committee.

Mr. Jagland's Cold War stance and his push to expand NATO's role in projecting the European hegemonistic world view of "democracy" and his anti-Russia, anti-China "cold war" views are analyzed succinctly.

The geopolitical hidden agenda and the politicization of the Nobel Peace Prize award, in the recent selections of Barack Obama for 2009, and now Liu Xiaobo, is anything but about true world peace. It is about power, and projecting power to reshape the world in the face of the emergence of the BRICs in the non-European world, namely Brazil, Russia, India and China. At this juncture, it appears that we may have a new "I," i.e. Iran, to replace India, if Barack Obama is successful in enlisting India's premier to sign on as its "western proxy" to contain China from South Asia, through China's southern flank.

Barack Obama's November state visit to India, South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia bear watching, to see how successful this "neo-containment" policy to encircle China, in this new cold war geostrategy, will succeed or not.

That Vaclav Havel of Czekoslavakia, the "asset" behind delivering this former Eastern European country from the Soviet orbit into NATO is very telling.

That Czech and Norwegian troops are now part of the NATO "coalition of the willing" to pacify and wage counter-insurgency in Afghanistan as part of NATO's pacification and subjugation efforts in Amerika's expanding war in Afghnaistan is described and well analyzed as part and parcel of this new world order, and the Neo-Containment policy to destabilize China from within, and encircle China from without.

The neo-containment Cold War playbook has been dusted up,brought out and resurrected from the attic, with the imprints of George F. Kennan, the father of America's "Containment" policy, and John Foster Dulles. Only this time, the neo-Cold Warriors have added China to the targeted list of "enemy".

Below is the link to Mr. Shimatsu's think piece analyzing the geopolitics behind the Nobel Peace Prize and how one Norwegian politician prostituted and perverted this annual peace prize into a drumbeat for war, albert a new cold war :

http://newamericamedia.org/2010/10/nobel-chairmans-pro-military-agenda-and-the-future-world-order.php

Does Liu Xiao Bo deserve the Nobel Peace Prize ? Or is he a tool used by the West to bludgeon and bash China ?

2010-10-12T16:37:00.000-07:00

Why Liu Xiabo is a "Trojan Horse" to destabilize China

I want all global Huarens, overseas and specially those resettled in the West, to read what I have to say. Circulate this e-mail to your friends and own network.

Let there be no doubt whatsoever about the Nobel Peace Prize award for Liu Xiaobo. It is a "Trojan Horse" in a sinister move to contain China, and weaken its resurgence. Worse, it is a calculated conspiracy to try to "re-make" China in accordance with what the Western hegemonists and their minions in Asia-Pacific want China to be..... weak, compliant, and subservient.

Why must China and its people remain steadfast and resolute in not succumbing to Western pressures and bullying in the spin to burnish and embellish this "hanjian" as a champion of Chinese human rights ?

"Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred ideas contend." China's intellectuals and huaren overseas must debate this vigorously and not be reticent to call the rascals, charlattans and the "hanjians" who are in our midst, the Liu Xiaobos" of the East, sucking up to their Western masters.

Liu Xiaobo is wholly a creature of the West.

In choosing him this year for the Nobel Peace Prize award, the Euro-hegemonists from the West are showing its last gasp to try to foment "luan" inside China.

The Norwegians are just a minor complicit player in this "Neo-Containment" Policy which is not being foisted by Western governments, now mired in their own morass.

There are hidden motives and a sinister agenda in this emergent "neo-containment" agenda now playing out from Western Europe, Australia, Canada and the United States, with its minions, in Asia-Pacific, joining the chorus.

This clash cuts at the the very heart of Chinese intellectual debate not just within China but outside in the Chinese Diaspora.

And we who are global Huarens must not shirk in our independence to call it like it is, despite of, inspite of, and notwithstanding the fervour for "the Western Moon" which is now very pervasive in Singapore, Taiwan, HongKong, and even inside China, among the "yellow monkeys" who lap up all this "Euro" chic and hogwash.

In my "third space" 第三空间 perch looking at the West and its relentless and increasingly strident campaign to destabilize China and the "gweillo' overzealousness to attempt "re-make" China to conform and comport with and to its"Europeanized" concepts of democracy, human rights, and its hollow "Rule of Law," the choice of Liu Xiaobo, the "hanjian" cannot be more disingenious.

The significance of this "mother of all battles" cannot be more glaring. There are more of these "hanjians" in Asia's midst. And the minions and "gungadins" of Western neo-colonialism is relentless, vicious, and uncontrollable in their overreaching and overzealousness to destabilize, marginalize, isolate, and fragment China.

Let's look back at post-World War I, and revisit the May 4th movement to gain some illuminating lessons from this intellectual clash within China and the Chinese Diaspora.

The core debate is whether or not the followin China's march to the modern era should be built by the following vision:

"While Western studies and culture are good for utilization and application, Chinese studies and culture must serve as the basis to check and balance them." (Xi xue wei yong, zhong xue wei ben.)"

Consider the following think piece from inside China, from a Chinese student studying at Renmin University, who saw through the cultural betrayal by Liu Xiaobo, and explained the context behind this clash, and Liu's betrayal.

Chinese all throughout the world must not succumb to cultural "self-hatred." And China must chart its own course; seek its own path; and not allow the West to interlope and meddle in its internal affairs, least of all, now that Europe and America are mired in its own big mess, economically, socially, culturally, and spiritually.

http://newamericamedia.org/2010/10/a-nobel-peace-prize-for-cultural-self-hatred.php

I say this to Ma Ying Jeau, the President of Taiwan, who talks "blue" but act "green."

"Don't sell out China's sovereignty and independence." "Do the right thing as a proud Chinese, not a neo-colonial."

I say this to Singapore and its current crop of "kiasu" "Western Moon is Rounder" and "Western Worship" officials.

"Don't underestimate the intelligence of the Global Huarens." And "don't coat-tail behind the Western neo-colonialists and Euro-hegemonists." "Know who you are, and know your cultural identity."

Western Neocolonialism is sowing its oats today in Asia-Pacific and the Third World; and we must be resolute in not only resisting, but in fighting back.

Global Huarens must know whose side they are on.

The Scourge of Drugs and the Putrid Smell of Marijuana and Alcohol Abuse in the West - the Chinese people must take heed

2010-01-26T16:22:00.000-08:00

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 ?

When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order by Martin Jacques

2010-01-25T18:40:00.000-08:00

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

The GOOGLE-AMERICA ARROW ACROSS THE BOW -- WHY CHINA and ALL GLOBAL CHINESE MUST STAND STRONG and FIGHT BACK

2010-01-22T08:54:00.000-08:00

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.

HAITI EARTHQUAKE CATASTROPHE --- The Urgency for Chinese to Declare a Truce Across the Taiwan Straits and Do the Right Thing

2010-01-22T08:37:00.000-08:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

LIU XIAO BO - Righteous Dissident or Traitor -"Han Jian"?

2009-12-26T08:18:00.001-08:00

Critics of China ought to know the line which must not be crossed.

There is more than meets the eye in the high-profile trial, conviction, and meting out of an 11-year sentence of Liu Xiao Bo, the Chinese intellectual dissident who had been the "brains" befind Charter 08, a naive, simplistic "Western Moon is Rounder" promotion of a purported Manifesto which sought to ape and transform China into a "Western Model" of democracy.

The glove of Western-style democracy, as naively propounded by Charter 08, simply does not and cannot fit China, in my view.

The context by which this trial and conviction of Liu Xiao Bo has to be gauged from a Chinese perspective, based on Chinese values and priorities, its history, and its state of civil society, which is clearly defiant and resistant to foreign, especially Western interloping, meddling, and interference.

The more the heads of states of Europe hector and insult China and its officials, the more stiffened and defiant China and its peoples are against the West.

Gweillos from the West are naive if not ignorant if they spin the case as one predicated in unbriddled freedom of expression and the rights to ideas, which under Western "Europeanized" notions of basic fundamental freedoms, brooks no infringement by the state.

Liu Xiao Bo was not simply convicted by his ideas and writings, but by the fact that in expressing these ideas, he manipulated, machinated, and used the West and especially Western media and official institutions, whether as an actor or a tool, to destabilize and attempt to overthrow the Chinese government, over its substance of one-party rule.

This is a path of divergence which clearly placed Mr. Liu in the path an "irreconciliable critic" of China acting in bad faith,and serving as a bludgeon on behalf of the West.

This is a devious subterfuge by the West, and by coat-tailing behind Western China bashing and Chinese demonization, Liu Xiao Bo is a "han jian, " i.e. a traitor, a "colonial."

No matter how unhappy or critical a Chinese national is about Chinese governance or about its officials or about its system of one-party Communist Party rule, in the eyes and honest view of a Chinese citizen, a line must not be crossed and the principle of national sovereignty and Chinese dignity must not be abriged in and by "coat-tailing," or riding the waves of the West, especially its media and official institutions, as a bludgeon and hatchet to attack China from the outside.

Liu Xiao Bo understood this as a Chinese yet he sided with the West, and sucked up to the West by betraying this basic fundamental tenet which all Chinese understands.

In the case of Liu Xiao Bo, he was deliberately calibrating, dribbling, leaking, massaging the Western news media as a shill, an amplifier, a broadcast disseminator to attack and destabilize China from the outside. In so doing, he insulted not just the national sovereignty of China, but also collectively caused the collective Chinese people "lose face" in the outside world.

Given China's horrific history of Western imperialist meddling, bullyng, and extra-territorial occupation and carving out of Chinese soil, heaping insults upon the Chinese peoples, metaporized by the insulting street signs at the gates of foreign concessions and colonies, e.g. in Shanghai, a century ago, with "No dogs and Chinese allowed," the stiffening resistance an anger of the Chinese peoples over the "nefarious" acts of Liu Xiao Bo must be understood.

In the eyes of the gweillos and Western news media, Liu Xiao Bo is a "dissident," a victim prosecuted and persecuted for his ideas.

In the eyes of the Chinese peoples and its officials, Liu Xiao Bo is a "han jian," a traitor, an Western ass-licker, a "Western Moon is Rounder" compradore, a naive, craven "Western Fart is more fragrant" colonial, who worships "Western-style" democracy, which has proven to irreconcialiable, unworkable, and impossible under the unique circumstances and conditions of China.

"Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred ideas contend"....... but please, don't use, ride, or be used by the West as a weapon or tool, wittingly or unwittingly, to try to destabilize, demonize, and bash China, especially on the outside.

To all Chinese, this is a "no-no." Comprende ?

Conider one of the perspective from a Western expat in China, who sees this in context, yet refused to get off his "high horse" from a white knight's perspective. His blog at Huffington Post is set forth in the link below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-doctoroff/a-chinese-dissidents-conv_b_403766.html

Analysis - Barack Obama's First China Trip - Why the West just Don't Get it about China's Own Path

2009-11-22T09:19:00.000-08:00

Martin Jackques, a UK based writer, has the following take on President Barack Obama's first trip to China. His analysis is one of the few rare ones from Westerners who grasp China and seek to understand the civilization.

Understanding ChinaThe West has gotten it wrong on China for decades -- even as it embraces a market economy, it has shunned Western-style freedoms. And its power is only growing.
By Martin Jacques

November 22, 2009

The dynamics of President Obama's trip to China were markedly different from those evident on visits made by President Clinton and President George W. Bush. This time the Chinese made clear that they were unwilling even to discuss issues such as human rights or free speech. Why? The relationship between the countries has changed: America feels weak and China strong in their bilateral ties. This is not a temporary shift that will reverse itself once the U.S. has escaped from its mountain of debt. Rather, it is the expression of a deep and progressive shift in the balance of power between the two nations, one that is giving the Chinese -- though studiously cautious in their approach -- a rising sense of self-confidence.

Nor should we be surprised by the Chinese response. They may have appeared more conciliatory on previous visits by American leaders, but that was largely decorative. The Chinese have a powerful sense of their identity and worth. They have never behaved toward the West in a supplicant manner, for reasons Westerners persistently fail to understand or grasp.

Ever since the Nixon-Mao rapprochement, and through the various iterations of the Sino-American relationship over the subsequent almost four decades, there has been an overriding belief in the West that eventually China would become like us: that, for example, a market economy would lead to democratization and that a free media was inevitable. This hubristic outlook is deeply flawed, but it still prevails, albeit with small cracks of self-doubt starting to appear.

The issue here is much deeper than Western-style democracy, a free media or human rights. China is simply not like the West and never will be. There has been an underlying assumption that the process of modernization would inevitably lead to Westernization; yet modernization is not just shaped by markets, competition and technology but by history and culture. And Chinese history and culture are very different from that of any Western nation-state.

If we want to understand China, this must be our starting point.

The West's failure to understand the Chinese has repeatedly undermined its ability to anticipate their behavior. Again and again, our predictions and beliefsabout China have proved wrong: that the Chinese Communist Party would fall after 1989, that the country would divide, that its economic growth could not be sustained, that its growth figures were greatly exaggerated, that China was not sincere about its offer of "one country two systems" at the time of the hand-over of Hong Kong from Britain -- and, of course, that it would steadily Westernize. We have a long track record of getting China wrong.

The fundamental reason for our inability to accurately predict China's future is our failure to understand its past. Although China has described itself as a nation-state for the last century, it is in essence a civilization-state. The longest continually existing polity in the world, it dates to 221 BC and the victory of the Qin. Unlike Western nation-states, China's sense of identity comes from its long history as a civilization-state.

Of course, there are many civilizations -- Western civilization is one example -- but China is the only civilization-state. It is defined by its extraordinarily long history and also its huge geographic and demographic scale and diversity. The implications are profound: Unity is its first priority, plurality the condition of its existence (which is why China could offer Hong Kong "one country two systems," a formula alien to a nation-state).

The Chinese state enjoys a very different kind of relationship with society compared with the Western state. It enjoys much greater natural authority, legitimacy and respect, even though not a single vote is cast for the government. The reason is that the state is seen by the Chinese as the guardian, custodian and embodiment of their civilization. The duty of the state is to protect its unity. The legitimacy of the state therefore lies deep in Chinese history. This is utterly different from how the state is seen in Western societies.

If we are to understand China, we must move beyond the compass of Western reality and experience and the body of concepts that has grown up to explain that history. We find this extremely difficult. For 200 years the West, first in the shape of Europe and then the United States, has dominated the world and has not been required to understand others or The Other. If need be it could always bully the latter into submission.

The emergence of China as a global power marks the end of that era. We now have to deal with The Other -- in the form of China -- on increasingly equal terms.

China, moreover, is possessed, like the West, with its own form of universalism. It long believed that it was "the land under heaven," the center of the world, superior to all other cultures. That sense of self, which has engendered a powerful self-confidence, has been persistently evident over the last 40 years, but with China's rise, it is becoming more apparent as the country's sense of achievement and restoration gains pace. Or to put it another way, when the presidents of China and the United States meet in Beijing in 2019, with the Chinese economy fast approaching the size of the American economy, we can be sure that the Chinese sense of hubris will be far stronger than in 2009.

But long before that, we need to try and understand what China is and how it behaves. If we don't, then relations between China and the United States will never move beyond the polite and the formal -- and that will be a bad omen for the future relationship between the two countries.

Martin Jacques is the author of "When China Rules the World: the End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order."
_____________________________________________________________________

Here's another link to Martin Jacque's blog:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-21/why-america-must-learn-to-bow/

Barack Obama's First State Visit to China - Form over Substance

2009-11-18T15:41:00.000-08:00

Here's my maverick "3rd space" blog about the first state visit of Barack Obama to China:

My read of BARACK OBAMA (BO), after ten (10) months in the White House, is that his strength and forte is in the domestic front. And on the international arena, he is not up to par with say a Richard Nixon.

I gauge his international trips since he became President. There's quantity but little quality. He reportedly made more foreign state visits in the brief period since he took office at the White House than his predecessor, W. Bush.

Obviously, compared to Dubya, BO is a lot smarter and savvier; but that is a very low bar.

Compared to Bill Clinton, BO is less agile and nimble on the affairs of international politics and diplomacy. Bill Clinton can knock your socks off with his charisma and Southern bubba charm. Bill Clinton can drink your booze, steal your wife, undress her, go to bed with her, take your money, and you would still applaud him and yell, "Ding Hao ! Ding Hao."

In comparison, BO appears to be "over-programmed," stiff, professorial, and went by the teleprompter, and go by scripted plays.

He did not exude the "cool" or "folksiness" of a Bill Clinton, a real "charmer" who can look you straight in the eyes and say, I never had sex with your wife..." even though his hands are in her crotch. :-)

BO clearly needs to practice with foreigners, especially Asians, short of his limited experience as a Punahou High kid.

That Town Hall meeting in Shanghai, was designed more for the Amerikan domestic audience back home. It fell flat, not only because on the Chinese end, the pool of students selected to serve as the audience and the visual backdrop, were over-programmed, lack spontaneity, and worse, too dumb, timid, and "ke-qi" to be effective to ask the right overarching questions about US-China relations, some of which we have argued and debated here among us.

And unfortunately, by my experience doing "Amerika Watching," and astutely observing the nuances, demeanor, and symbolism, I think BO succeeded on this first foray into Asia-Pacific to the extent that he tried to project that he is ready to re-set the button in Amerikan international relations, yet could not come up with anything "concrete" by way of substantive change.

The following issues were unresolved:

1. The issue of Okinawa and removal of Amerikan troops from its forward base in that island.
2. The issue of Amerikan trade sanctions against Chinese tires and steel imports to which Chinese premier Wen Jiabao called "protectionism" which was placed at the front-burner.
3. The issue of colossal deficits that Amerika is strapped with, with no end in sight, and the reverberations and adverse consequences in the global financial system and its stability.
4. The issue of mutual respect, reciprocity, and comity to which Asia-Pacific nations, not just in APEC, ASEAN, but the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

BO went with the following priority issues on Amerika's plate, hoping for China's cooperation:
a. Help in the Korean peninsula to denuclearize North Korea;
b. Help in Pakistan and Afghanistan in Amerika's fight against Al Queda and the Taliban;
c. Help in Iran with respect to Iranian nuclearization;
d. Help in balancing US trade deficits with more and more Chinese goods entering Amerika than vice-versa.
e. Help in Climate Change in terms of China's carbon emissions and greenhouse gas problems.
f. Help in Myanmar, Darfur, with regard to the issues presented by the domestic Gweillo human rights lobby.
g. Help to re-start the dialogue with the Dalai Lama over the issue of Tibet/Zizhang.

On a. through g. above, BO got very little substantive during this trip.

In legal jargon, it means, "no go;" an agreement to "talk further" down the line.

All in all, it was a trip to appease the domestic constituency.

To me, what is really very revealing about the First Family is the following:

I. The absence of Michelle Obama as a presidential spouse in this first Asia-Pacific state visit, relative to Michelle's presence in the European trip, with two daughters in tow.

II. The relative brief visit, relative to other state visits. Already, many pundits have criticized BO and Michelle's state visit to Africa, especially Ghana, as being tepid, lackluster, and lacking in empathy. It was a whirlwind "PR" tour without the heart and the guts. Clearly, the First Family's "uppity" outlooke remains "Eurocentric," focused on the gweillo "white people."

Will BO change ? Let's hope he is as smart and agile as Bill Clinton.

I miss the guy Bill Clinton. Even though I won't trust my wife being present when he shows up. :-) Bill Clinton can charm the socks out of you.

California's Disgraceful Anti-Chinese Past

2009-07-14T17:57:00.000-07:00

California legislative bill, entitled AJR 42, has passed both the California Lower Assembly and the Senate. It is awaiting Governor Arnold Swazenegger's signature. It was the brainchild of Assembly Appropriation Committee chair, Kevin De Leon and he co-authored that with first term Assemblyman Paul Fong.

Consider the following editorial in a California daily newspaper, the Sacramento Bee. Amazingly, there is hardly any coverage by other daily newspapers in other cities in California, notably San Franciso and Los Angeles. Why not?

http://www.sacbee.com/editorials/story/2020469.html

Editorial: A disgrace from California's past

Published: Monday, Jul. 13, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 15A
Last Modified: Monday, Jul. 13, 2009 - 8:13 am

We didn't know. We weren't part of it.
That's what many newcomers and younger Californians can justly say about the century-long exclusion of the Chinese from legal immigration, citizenship and ownership of property.
They had no part in making citizenship illegal for Chinese laborers who mined the Mother Lode, worked farms and built the transcontinental railroad and levees – a situation that changed only in 1943. And many can honestly say that they didn't know that non-citizen Asians have been able to own property in California only since 1952.
They can reasonably say that they were not involved in the local ordinances and burnings that drove the Chinese from Sacramento and towns in the Sierra foothills, the Sacramento Valley and the Delta in the 1880s.
So why not just let that history go, move on?
This is a live question today because California legislators have passed a bipartisan resolution to "express regret for past discriminatory laws and constitutional provisions."
This isn't mere symbolism. The debate itself has been valuable. The reality is that California and the nation today face heated discussions about immigration – and can learn from Chinese immigrant experience. We need to understand it, confront it and not fall into the same traps that ensnared earlier generations of Californians.
For a century, California went out of its way to enshrine anti-Chinese sentiment in law. Even The Bee promoted that disgraceful agenda.
California's 1879 Constitution declared that Chinese were "dangerous to the well- being of the State." Among other things, it called for removal of Chinese from city limits. Californians lobbied Congress to pass the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which blocked Chinese laborers from the United States, the first U.S. law to limit immigration by race. California then passed the Alien Land Law of 1913, prohibiting Chinese from buying land.
Congress repealed Chinese exclusion laws in 1943. But California pressed on. In 1943 and 1945, new laws strengthened powers to seize property. Only in 1952 did things change.
Faced with few legal options for entry, Chinese immigrants took matters into their own hands. Since a U.S. treaty with China exempted merchants from the Exclusion Act, a 1906 report notes that "the Chinese gain unlawful access to this country by constantly declaring to be merchants." A tiny store in Sacramento, for example, listed 22 partners and 21 silent partners. Other Chinese immigrants would adopt the identity of a merchant or the child of a merchant (an arrangement known as "paper father and paper son").
Assembly Concurrent Resolution 42 should not be the end of this discussion. It should be the beginning. California educators should now explore including material on the treatment of Chinese in our students' textbooks, and the state should consider an official memorial that will remind this and future generations of what can happen when bigotry overrides respect for all.

More Information
What you can read
Philip P. Choy, "Canton Footprints: Sacramento's Chinese Legacy" (2007)

Jean Pfaelzer, "Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans" (2007)

Hiroshi Motomura, "Americans in Waiting: The Lost Story of Immigration and Citizenship in the United States" (2006)

Daniel J. Tichenor, "Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America" (2002)

It is about time ! More than a century later after the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, official California apology in state legislature being proposed

2009-06-12T11:41:00.000-07:00

The history of ethnic Chinese immigration into California is a blemished and sullied record of ethnic and Chinese discrimination and anti-yellow racism.

At one time, a Chinese cannot testify in a court of law against a white criminal defendant, because he or she is not adjudged to be human.

In 1882, after much bashing from white settlers in the competition accompanying the Gold Rush, a Chinese Exclusion Act was passed effectively barring any new Chinese immigration into America, and California, with the exception of students, merchants and diplomats.

It was not until 1943, during World War II that Congress repealed the discriminatory exclusion laws against Chinese immigrants and to establish an immigration quota for China of around 105 visas per year.

The repeal was grounded by consideration of World War II, as Japanese propaganda made repeated reference to Chinese exclusion from the United States in order to weaken the ties between the United States and the KMT forces of Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek and his military forces.

In addition to the general measures preventing Asian immigration, the Chinese were subject to their own, unique prohibition.

And this had long been a source of contention in Sino‑American relations. The Immigration Act of 1924 stated that aliens ineligible for U.S. citizenship were not permitted to enter the United States, and this included the Chinese.

Many white Americans have never owed up and 'fessed up to this sordid and disgustingly racist past. In fact, there is historical amnesia and moralizing which often distort and spin the story of a past.... blocked out and blockaded by the gatekeepers of mainstream American news media.

But for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the whole demographic landscape of California would have been wholly different today.

Well, thankfully, a Chinese-American legislator from a suburb of San Francisco, Paul Fong,of Mountain View, California, has not forgotten the past. He has introduced legislation in the California State Legislature seeking a formal official apology on behalf of many of our Chinese immigrant ancestors who were horrifically dissed, insulted, and banned from entering America all because of the color of their skin.

http://www.mercurynews.com/topstories/ci_12572795

California should apologize for persecution of Chinese immigrants, legislator says

By Jessie Mangaliman, Mercury News staff

California should formally "express regrets" to the Chinese immigrants who were historically persecuted and abused while they helped build the Golden State's railroads, mines and agricultural fields, said a state legislator who is promoting legislation that would lead to the first-ever government apology to Chinese-Americans.

Assemblyman Paul Fong, D-Mountain View, the grandson of a Chinese immigrant who was interned at Angel Island, said his goal is to eventually convince the federal government to also issue an apology, and then legislate redress for the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, which specifically barred Chinese immigrants from the U.S. It was repealed in 1943.

The first Chinese immigrants to California — who called it "gam saan," or Gold Mountain — faced discriminatory laws that prevented them from marrying or owning property. They were paid less and taxed more while children were denied access to public schools. They were forced out of towns, and in one case in San Jose's old Chinatown, burned out of their enclaves. And at Angel Island in San Francisco Bay, the "Ellis Island of the West," tens of thousands of Chinese immigrants were detained for months, and sometimes years, separated from their families.

"Those who know history will know that those laws were discriminatory," Fong said. "Those who don't know will be informed of it for the first time."

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, joined by leaders from civil and immigrant rights groups, and historical associations, Fong said he's seeking public support for the resolution, ACR 42. Assemblyman Kevin de León, D-Los Angeles, is a sponsor.

The resolution states: The "Legislature deeply regrets the enactment of past discriminatory laws and constitutional provisions which resulted in the persecution of Chinese living in California, which forced them to live in fear of unjust prosecutions on baseless charges, and which unfairly prevented from earning a living."

If he gets the state apology, Fong said, he will seek federal redress for the people interned in camps that operated from 1910 to 1942 at Angel Island. However, he did not say how much he wanted the government to pay.

When the U.S. government issued a 1988 apology for the World War II internment of 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-American citizens, it paid reparation of $20,000 for each individual who was interned.

"I was hoping that when the government apologized for the internment of Japanese-Americans, it would eventually apologize for the Chinese exclusion," he said.

Redress movements are rarely successful. Efforts for redress for the enslavement of African-Americans, and the massacre and displacement of Native Americans, have been in circulation for years.

For Eddie Wong, executive director of the Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation, it isn't reparation but public education that counts.

"It's a point of respect," he said. "I'm not discounting the need for redress, but if the history and contribution are acknowledged in textbooks and pop culture, that's the ultimate reward."

Fong's legislation is scheduled for a hearing June 26 before the Assembly Judiciary Committee.

"Such recognition is long overdue," said Helen Zia, author of "American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People," a 2001 book that examines the history of Chinese and other Asian immigrants to the United States.

Many people think that the Chinese-Americans are recent immigrants, she said, and are unaware of their long history in the state and the country.

"A bill like this would recognize that history and acknowledge what happened," Zia said. "An apology is really symbolic," she said, but without it, the struggle of early Chinese immigrants would "go missing in history."

Contact Jessie Mangaliman at jmangaliman@mercurynews.com or 408-920-5794.

As the 20th anniversary of June 4th Tiananmen approaches, a Chinese Scholar looks at human rights from within Chinese history and through Confucius

2009-05-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

Richard Low, a retired Chinese-American professor, wrote the following thoughtful piece which is worth reading and analysing as China goes through its 20th anniversary of June 4th Tiananmen, and the debate continues about "human rights" as seen through "Europeanized" lenses. Mr. Low has a different perspective worth noting:

"Sixty years ago, in the hopes of creating a better world, world thinkers came together to devise international standards for how we should live and governments committed to uphold and guarantee the rights and freedoms set out in these standards for the people of their nations.

Despite the fact that there has been progress in the area of human rights around when the world, there still exist many observable instances of human rights violations."

In China, it is just the opposite.

It was not the people nor the thinkers who had ever given any thought to human rights. It was the ruler who, in order to rule them, must first have accepted the so-called Mandate of Heaven which required him/her to serve the ruled with love (or human-heartedness) and justice. This scheme got started when Zhou Dynasty (1122-770 BCE) took power by defeating the brutal and repressive Shang Dynasty (?1766-?1122 BCE). So it was a ruler's duty or obligation to provide human care or service to the ruled. Why so? It was because during that period one of the very popular maxims circulating among the people says, "People are the foundation of a state. When the foundation is firm and solid, the state will enjoy peace and harmony."

But what would this foundation be like and how to build it? Then, there came Confucius (557-497 BCE) who proposed a Great Universal Society (Datong) or Utopia, as given below:

When the Great Way prevails, the world belongs to all. Men of great virtue and talent are selected (or elected) who will foster mutual trust and promote universal understanding. Thus, men do not regard as their parents only their own parents nor treat as their own children only their own children. Sufficient provision is secured for the aged till their death, employment assured for the able-bodied, and funds provided for the loving care of the young. The widowers, widows, orphans, the childless, and those who are disabled by diseases or mishaps are adequately cared for. Each man has his duty, and each woman her hearth. While they detest those who throw away things wastefully, they do not hoard things for their own self-gratification. Disliking idleness they labor, but not alone with a view to their own advantage. In this way, selfish acts of cheating and profiteering are discouraged. Hence, their front doors need not be locked.

Such is the State of Universal Peace and Harmony for All

- The Book of Rites (Li Ji)

Except for the few decades when Mao Zedong tried to replace Confucius,through his shameful Cultural Revolution, with Marx, Confucianism has guided China politically and ethically for over 2,000 years - even during the 300 some years of occupation by the Mongols and the Manchus. Now that Mao has passed away, the new regime has gradually brought Confucius back, and once again the Chinese become the only people on this planet who have enjoyed the same living civilization continuously for such a long time.

So, if the Chinese government ever violates any of the human rights, all that the UN or the so-called NGO has to do is to ask if it still respects the Mandate of Heaven and remembers Confucius's teachings. After all, a sense of shame is considered one of the most important virtues for being a virtuous gentleman (Junzi).

Unfortunately, Westerners do not seem to possess this kind of culture in their history. Thus, even when Jesus told them to love their enemies and bless them that curse them and so on, more Christians were killed by Christians than by the pagan Romans when the Roman emperor Constantine (306-337), tired of the unending heated debate over Trinitarianism, decided to take it as the Christian doctrine of the West, according to the great historian Edward Gibbon in his "Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" and, then, the bloody fights betweeen so-called Christians during the period of Reformation resulting "in the death of 10-20 million," according to the "Bible Handbook" by Henry Halley (1951).

So, it is no wonder that "some governments have used the concepts of human rights and democracy to their own advantage and used it to advance their own political agendas."

How about some governments using the United Nations "to their own advantage" and "to advance their own political agenda?"

Well,it seems that perhaps the United Nations may need a total reform!

The above thoughtful posting by Mr. Low should be read in tandem with the following link:

http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/email/obstacles-to-the-progress-of-human-rights-in-the-world

What's good for the goose is good for the gander - HKG Democrats criticized Macau for banning their entry -- look what the Brits in UK are doing too !

2009-05-05T19:04:00.000-07:00

Recently, I read about how a group of HKG Democrats drew international media attention, especially in the Western press, about how some of them were barred from entry to MACAU and prevented from disembarking from the piers after attempting to take the HKG-Macau ferry.

The ostensible reason, of "shit-disturber" mau-mau legislator such as Leung Kwok Hung (aka as "Long Hair Leung"), that hippie-looking serial protester in the HKG legislature who is constantly a sore in the butt for HKG's Chief Executive and a hemmorhoidal "pain" on the backside of Beijing, is that the rights of free speech and freedom of assembly, and as their extension, the freedom of dissent, is guaranteed under the "one country, two systems" policy of CHINA.

Well, we have also heard from Jackie Chan, the "kung fu" movie actor, who was roundly excoriated for his "foot in mouth" remarks about the Chinese people needing "control" or "regulation;" further, Jackie Chan noted that "chaotic" environment of HKG where "luan" as he described it is not something that he is sure the Chinese need.

Well, look across the United Kingdom, the cradle of the Magna Carta of Human rights. See what the Brits just did in declaring an American radio "talk show jock," Michael Savage, a blabbermouth of an extreme arch-conservative who hates immigrants, advocates nuking Iran, "persona non grata" and barred him from entering Great Britain.

Savage, in his usual raging "fire and brimstone" screaming and hectoring, from his pulpit in San Francisco, the "chi-chi" capital of American uber-liberals, lefties, and greenies, is crying "persecution" and infringement of his free speech rights.

Savage is threatening to sue the British government.

Doesn't this show shades of HKG's blabbermouth "Long Hair" Leung, otherwise known as Leung Kwok Hung, and his raving and ranting against Macau for declaring him "persona non-grata" and banning him from visiting Macau ?

Read on the story about Michael Savage, our San Francisco version of a "Long Hair" Leung, otherwise known as Leung Kwok Hung.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/nov05election/detail?entry_id=39618

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Now the Brits know what Jackie Chan is talking about, and may even comiscerate with poor Jackie Chan, whose butt was kicked all over the place, from the "honorary whites" and "Western farts smell more fragrant" constituency in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.

Touche. Touche. Touche. YAU MO KAU CHO AAHHHHH !

"European Price" as U.S. dollar declines; the New York Times will cost US$ 2 for each print newspaper for weekdays and US$ 6 on weekends starting June

2009-05-05T14:38:00.000-07:00

Setting aside all these "culture food fights" raging within America, from same-sex marriage, legalizing marijuana use, animal rights, banning foie gras in French restaurants, banning plastic bags, and a carbon tax imposed on one's excess carbon footprints and emissions, Many Americans are not thinking straight and focusing on the fundamental issues that face their society from within.

Forget the pain and hemorrhaging suffered in terms of human fatalities and casualties in two wars, i.e. Iraq and Afghanistan, with consequences, social and economic, and yes, psychic, in the form of war-shocked returning troops suffering "post-traumatic stress syndrome" and readjustment to peacetime and the bleak jobs market at home.

Forget the Wall Street bailouts, the handouts to big banks, and the handouts to the auto industry, CHRYSLER and GM, included.

Forget the joblessness and the hollowing out of America's core economy. Forget the unemployed and underemployed college graduates increasingly stressed out and distressed.

Forget the housing meltdown, and the credit crunch, forcing "Johnny Six Pack" and "Soccer Jane Mom" to go belly-up and bankrupt.

The sage of Omaha, Warren Buffett, already prophesied that the U.S. is primed to face an inflationary spiral which is bound to impact the U.S. economy in the form of rising prices. INFLATION. INFLATION. INFLATION with the capital "I."

Somehow, no one is thinking straight and applying some common sense that all these financial borrowing and leverating, and all these bail-outs and economic stimuli packages from the government, will eventually have to be paid for sometime, somewhere by somebody.

And from the looks of things, it will be the ordinary folks in Main Street who will bear the burden.

Consider the latest.... faced with dwindling circulation and an erosion of its advertising base, America's premier newspaper, the New York Times just announced that it will cost US$2 to obtain a copy its daily newspapers, and US$6 a copy for its Sunday edition.

What kind of desperado act is this ? Yao Mo Kao Cho ahhhhh !!!!

GIMME A BREAK.

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D9808NR81&show_article=1

Is this now "Europe pricing" now working its way into America ?

In Western Europe, we all know how they gouge consumers with prices which are downright obscene. e.g. US$ 10 for a soggy, miserable looking "bockwurst" sausage in a miserable looking bun.

Unfortunately, this model, i.e. the "European pricing" model, appears to be the trend which is increasingly happening in America.

The U.S. dollar ain't worth beans pretty soon.

Hoard up on the yuan (renminbi), fellas.

The professor of doom and gloom, Noriel Roubini,and his fellow professor from New York University Stern School of Business, Matthew Richardson penned the following op-ed article, which appeared in the WSJ. You be the judge.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124147831175584985.html

The Silk Route trade between the Middle East and China renewed and growing

2009-05-04T08:11:00.000-07:00

Linkage between the Middle East and China, in commercial as well as cultural ties, with China's Hui minority in Xinjiang Province as hub, has grown dramatically as reported by the following blog:

http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2009/04/27/middle-east-looks-east-to-china/

The head of the World Health Organization --- answers critics ---defends HKG's quarantine;; Margaret Chan: "you ain't seen nuthing yet" - 2nd Wave ?

2009-05-03T14:28:00.000-07:00

Many in the Western news media ratpacks are "pooh-poohing" the draconian methods applied by Asian-Pacific countries against the spread of the swine flu.

"Overblown" seems to be the theme of the carping.

CNN's "talking head" Jack Cafferty (remember him during the Beijing Olympucs Games torch relay run-up and his racist comments") is once again one of those white "jackasses." Counting dead bodies, Cafferty once again shot from his mouth, claiming that the "old flu" bug alone already claimed 13,000 American lives this year alone, compared to one death chalked up to the swine flu:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/05/03/MN3B17CKP7.DTL

Hong Kong doctor Margaret Chan, who now heads the World Health Organization, would have none of this "dumbed-down" raving and ranting by these gweillo ratpacks. She gave a press conference setting up the record:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e6260d9a-37d4-11de-9211-00144feabdc0.html

Will Wolfram Alpha come out and eat the lunch of Google ?

2009-05-03T14:17:00.001-07:00

Find out about the buzz over Wolfram Alpha and why this new upstart software can eat the lunch of Google as a more versatile search engine ?

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/an-invention-that-could-change-the-internet-for-ever-1678109.html

Fortress Australia - Aussie Premier Kevin Rudd bulking up its own military on rise of CHINDIA (China and India)

2009-05-03T13:46:00.001-07:00

Who's kidding who, Mr. Kevin Rudd ?

Fundamentally, Australia still sees itself alligned with Europe and America and is the bulwark state acting as Asia policeman for the Europeans and North Americans.

In the face of an emerging CHINDIA, i.e. China and India, and the increasing role China and India play in the world's geopolitical stage, Aussies are getting skittish about their role as America's "junior policeman" providing the containment rim to curb a rising CHINDIA.

And here we are seeing the rationale and justification of a "bulking up" of Australia's military by a whooping US$ 72 billion, spread out over 20 years. That's a lot of 'baksheeh' , folks.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0503/p99s01-woap.html

Shades of that "white supremacy" world hegemony at play. The Aussies are always ambivalent and confused about whether they are Asians or Europeans.

And understandably, upon seeing a weakening Uncle Sam (or Uncle Obama), Uncle Kevin is preparing for contingency.... just in case.

Uncle Kevin may speak Mandarin; but his heart is screwed on the wrong place. And it shows lately in his political posturing in the international stage.

Triple whammies of global financial meltdown, drug cartels violence, and now..... swine flu whack Mexico

2009-05-03T08:58:00.000-07:00

Lately, the people of Mexico, some 110,000,000 (110 million) masses of them, are going through a hellacious time.

It is a sad state of affairs. And the pandemic of swine flu could not have happened at a worse time. Right smack at a time of Cinco de Mayo (May 5th)... Mexico's National Independence Day, a festive celebratory occasion.

The triple whammies of the global financial meltdown triggered by Wall Street and Canary Wharf have unleashed a first wave of tsunami striking at the heart of Mexico's economy. This horrific scenario is worse than the SARS crisis which whacked HKG, Singapore and China before because then, the global financial system was intact, and there was not the added mess created by the pandemic of drugs, heroin, cocaine growing and smuggling which have now beset Mexico and their American and Canadian customers.

With the price of oil plunging, Mexico's oil industry, a major source of state revenues, has been hurting....as demand has shriveled and global oil consumption shrunk.

Furthermore, because of incessant demand and the rampant abuse and ingestion of drugs by the "gringos" in the North, i.e. namely Americans, there erupted an internecine war which has heated up inside Mexico by rival drug growers and smugglers.

The rival drug gangs were emboldened by a weak anti-drug law enforcement policy and a weak U.S.-Mexican border which experienced rampant smuggling of drugs being smuggled from one way across the border from Mexico; and from the other way across from the U.S. to Mexico.... money laundering and high-powered weapons and assault rifles.

There is a largely unreported "hot war" among rival drug cartels inside Mexico which has wracked the Mexican citizenry caught in the crossfire, and the Central government in Mexico is frantically fighting very hard to stomp out the violence.

The U.S. President Barack Obama knows that Americans and American drug users, gun stores, and American proclivity to buy high-powered assault weapons compound and add to the problems of Mexico's fight against the cross-border drug cartels.

And now...... here we go with the horrific news and perilous pandemic of the swine flu.

This is the third hugh wave of the "tsunami" which struck this sad country of 110 million peoples.

With the news of swine flu afflicting Mexico...... tourism, which is one of its biggest source of cash revenues, is now dead. Hotel occupancy in resort destinations like Cancun, in the Caribbean side of the country, is now down to single digit occupancy, i.e. 7% to 8%.

Cross-border traffic and weekend visitors across the U.S.-Mexican border have virtually come to a complete standstill.

Cruise ships which have provided Mexico's coastal port stops... from Puerto Vallarta, Acapulco, Mazatlan, Cabo San Lucas, Zihuatenejo, Conzumel, with steady streams of dollar-spending tourists have stopped plying these ports of call as cruise destinations because of the fear of the swine flu.

Read on the story on how much damage this triple whammy has wrought upon the peoples of Mexico:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2009/05/03/MNC317CR8L.DTL

Swine flu blues ... while China and HKG act vigorously and vigilantly, gweillos fulminate and attack quarantine as draconian and excessive

2009-05-03T08:06:00.000-07:00

The difference in responses and the regimens between China, Singapore,and their Asian-Pacific neighors relative to those government officials in America and Europe demonstrates a major policy and mind gap between the gweillos/ Westerners/Europeans and the Chinese about sleuthing, containing, and eliminating viruses and the spread of communicable diseases.

This difference of approach is based on a fundamental divergence in attitude about worrying about the collective good as an overarching imperative and utmost priority as opposed to worrying about individual rights in the name of privacy and a Europeanized version of "civil liberties" and so-called "human rights."

This fight against the swine flu is playing out with a clear divergence in draconian measures imposed by China and the "PC" position practiced by some Western officials. The Chinese, in my opinion, have had more experiences with containing contagious disease, and their record has always been about the "collective good," i.e. "da qu mien;" not "PC" nor "PR" spin.

Given the Chinese experience and history with SARS, avian flu, and other epidemic, do you blame them ?

In my book, the science of epidemiology is one which is "hit and miss" and requires some luck, and some science. Sleuthing to find the cause and spread of contagious disease is not an exact science.

Respectful scientists can differ; but I would much rather go wrong on the side of overcaution than to go wrong on the side of carelessness and laxness.

China has 1.3 billion inhabitants; and it has some of the densest and most populated cities in the world. Cities like Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen are hubs for international travellers. And given that the swine flu is ascertained to have originated and flared up outside of China, it is logical and prudent for China to act vigorously and vigilantly.

Already, Chinese authorities have quarantined at least 50 Mexican nationals suspected of carrying the swine flu virus and isolated them in their hotels in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou.

This shut-down and draconian measures were executed because the country cannot afford to lose on this. Besides, there does not appear to be a tinge of racism in this.

Anyone with these symptoms or contact with someone with the swine flu are immediately quarantined. And these include Taiwanese, Indians, Singaporeans, Koreans, Japanese, Sri-Lankans, Arabs...... and not just Europeans, Mexicans, Americans. It is the Western news media which are hyping on this controversy and protests by the Europeans and American health authorities, as well as the Mexican foreign minister.

Rather than overemphasize on individual rights, and despite all the fulmigation, Chinese authorities are doing what they have to do in order to fight the spread of this virus, which may have the tendency of mutation and morphing into a more virulent and deadly strain.

Look at the "lock-down" in Mexico city; the Mexican foreign minister has no cause nor bases to protest.

Read the latest about the quarantine inside China inside China, i.e. Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou.

These are densely populated cities, not unlike Mexico City. Cities with over 10 million people packed in subways, streets, alleys, food places.
http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Sunday/NewsBreak/20090503153119/Article/index_html

More to the story from MSNBC
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30471035/

Amazingly, the Red Cross through Atlanta's Center for Disease Control, has a website which also explained the method of containing the spread of viruses, and in it, the use of quarantine is advocated.
http://www.redcross.org/preparedness/cdc_english/IsoQuar.asp

Overall, when you are fighting a fire, or trying to catch a criminal, or fighting an epidemic... you have to do what you have to do.

I think Americans are dumb and stupid and always play the "PC" side.

It applies in identifying suspects in crime and never mentioning their race.

Hey, if the serial bank robber on a crime spree preying on victimns is a Black, White, Brown or a Yellow..... you need to have that information on race in order to catch him. It is only good common sense.

Again, with regard to the swine flu, if more Mexicans come in contact with the virus from Mexican city, is it not logical to identify and isolate them more as potential carriers of the virus ?

Again, we must underscore that along with Mexicans and Europeans, China and HKG are also quaranteeing Taiwanese, Malaysians, SIngaporeans, or anyone who came in contact or were close to the Mexican traveller afflicted with the Swine Flu on that China Eastern Airlines flight from Shanghai to HKG.

That's not "PC;", i.e.playing "political correctnes"; but that is the right thing to do.

HKG epidemiologists ought to be applauded for being thorough and vigilant. HKG's Wanchai, Central, Tsimsatsui, Causeway Bay, Mongkok, Yaumatei, and other densely populated districts are too perilous to take a chance. Imagine if the virus spreads through contact on the underground MRT, or onto the trains headed to Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta region. All hell freezes when that happens.

Compare Americans with their "PC" bullshit. They have not even introduced thermal imaging equipment at their airports processing international travellers. They even asked their border guards across the U.S.-Mexican not to wear masks in order to be "PC." Wait until the Swine Flu mixed up with the HIV-AIDS virus. Imagine AIDs mixed with the swine flu.

All hell will freeze. When that happens, my butt will be outta San Francisco pronto.

You can have this chi-chi city by the Bay full of loonies, crazies, and uber-liberals. Yesterday,while the rest of the world is fighting this viral scourge, some San Franciscans in the streets were vigorously protesting eating "foie gras" and paraded before a French restaurant, proclaiming that eating "foie gras," i.e. goose liver, is abusing the geese.

Gimme a break.

SingaBore (the derisive term for Singapore) may suck; but better suck than be sorry. :-) I say, worry about the "da qu mien," the collective good.

Mexico's foreign minister reacts angrily to China's quarantine and suspension of flights to and from Mexico City as "discriminatory"

2009-05-02T21:16:00.001-07:00

China and four other Latin American countries, i.e. Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador and Peru were angrily denounced by the Mexican foreign minister for undertaking draconian measures to fight the spread of the swine flu.

From Mexico city, the foreign minister angrily advised Mexican nationals not
to travel to China. This was partly in response to draconian measure undertaken by HKG's health officials to quarantine and isolate the Mexican traveller and other foreign tourists in Wanchai's Metro Park hotel, after the Mexican traveller was found to be contaminated by the swine flu after enplaning from Shanghai to HKG flying via China Eastern Airlines.

At the same time, four other Latin countries stopped and suspended Mexican airlines from flying to and from their countries.

These include Cuba, Argentina, Ecuador and Peru.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N02360932.htm

Draconian Quarantine in HKG Metropark Hotel in Wanchai --- better be safe than regrets; European guests #*@#!#@

2009-05-02T19:08:00.000-07:00

Given HKG and China's past experience with SARS and Avian Flu, the health officials are taking no chances with the swine flu.

The quarantine and lock-down of all hotel guests at Wanchai district's Metropark Hotel after a Mexican national who flew in from Shanghai to HKG after catching swine flu and spreading it on his China Eastern Air flight from Shanghai to HKG is causing a lot of consternation among European guests in the hotel.

Let them fulminate.

Better be safe than have regrets later.

Click on how HKG health authorities are managing this pandemic:

http://www.reuters.com/article/latestCrisis/idUSHKG2279

The density level in Hong Kong is at par if not worse than in Mexico City, the latter with 20 million in population.

And certainly, across the border in Shenzhen and the Pearl River Delta, there is no room for mistake.

It is imperative that Chinese officials be ever vigilant in taking steps to curb the spread of this swine flu virus. No room for mistake.

The debate between simplified vs. traditional Chinese characters is a non-issue; in fact all Chinese are learning global languages including English

2009-05-02T18:40:00.000-07:00

You be the judge.

There is a simmering debate among ethnic Chinese as to whether to use and adopt simplified Chinese or traditional Chinese characters as the "lingua franca" for the 1.5 billion peoples around the world who use, speak, or write Chinese.

To many in the Huaren community overseas, the debate is really moot.

Many of us are fluidly adapting to both simplified Chinese characters, or jiantizi, to the traditional characters, fantizi, with ease.

Piece of cake.

On top of that, the facility and fluency in English, Spanish, and other world languages are increasingly pervasive and prevalent.

I would suggest that Arabic, Farsi, Russian and Hindu are languages that all Huarens in the Diasporic communities all are adapting to.

In a world of globalization, where cultures, businesses, and media are intersecting and evolving, it is imperative that there be impetus to open the door for more languages fluency and adaptation. To close that door to the windows of other cultures is a death knell and not the way to go.

Look at the debate between simplified Chinese and traditional Chinese in the link below:

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/05/02/chinese-language-ever-evolving/

Amid swine flu panic, white racism goes viral directed against Mexicans

2009-05-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

The Chinese have been through this before.... with SARS, Avian Flu, the Hong Kong flu, the Taiwan flu etc. etc.

Anytime there is a virus epidemic which flares up, there is invariably an acompanying strain of racism virus which also flares up. and white supremacy and racism comes out of the woodwork.

Consider how some American radio talk show jocks are saying about the swine flu; this outbreak is more pervasive, vicious, and reckless than is being reported:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30467300

Consider another radio talk show host in Boston, Massachusetts and what he said about Mexicans:

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2009/05/01/severin_suspended_for_comments_about_mexican_immigrants/

Remember the recent "peanuts" salmonella contamination which erupted in a warehouse of an American peanut farm and processor in Arkansas ? Or the salmonella poisoning in American-grown lettuce in California's farms ? Or how about "mad cow disease" when the disease erupted in the U.K. and then spread to Canada ?

Did we ever hear the same raving and ranting cacophony or racist diatribes from Asians or the Chinese about this contamination and toxic poisoning erupting in the WEST ? Did the Chinese call "Mad Cow Disease" the "The British virus"?

Talk about double standards. Hubris. Hambug. Haughtiness.

Carnage in Holland - Euro went berserk plows through 20 targeting Dutch royals in parade

2009-04-30T21:50:00.000-07:00

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

Western hubris over the effectiveness of airport thermal imaging machines vs. swine flu detection

2009-04-30T18:50:00.000-07:00

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

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

2009-04-30T11:46:00.000-07:00

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/

Swine Flu pandemic spreads -- is it cause for alarm ? Some tips to avoid catching the virus

2009-04-28T13:19:00.000-07:00

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.

Is it "ultra-nationalism" or is it cleansing China and its people of a genuflecting, craven "neocolonial mentality" - the "yellow monkey" syndrome

2009-04-28T12:36:00.000-07:00

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.

The "Cult of the Dalai Lama" warps the Western-European view and distorts their view about Tibet,their mythical spiritual non-existent "Shangri-la."

2009-04-27T19:08:00.000-07:00

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

The countdown to the dwindlling diminution of American print newspapers amind losing circulation and losing advertisers

2009-04-27T12:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Retirement pension plans - the "safety net" and "eggs nest" accorded American workers now besieged and under severe stress and getting wobbly

2009-04-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

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

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

2009-04-24T21:55:00.000-07:00

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

Crime pays in America and Misdemeanants caught with drugs are no longer being prosecuted in one California county

2009-04-24T11:03:00.001-07:00

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

Jackie Chan's remarks about the Chinese needing to be "controlled" sparks furious debates inside and outside of China - you be the judge.

2009-04-24T10:21:00.000-07:00

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 housing bust in America's bubble real estate market has yet to bottom out as the rate of foreclosures and vacancies soar

2009-04-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

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.

China's "Soft Power" Initiatives in the Americas and in International Finance - "The Beijing Consensus"

2009-04-23T23:37:00.000-07:00

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

Musings of a Chinese-American on EARTH DAY - April 22, 2009 - Coming down to Earth from Space

2009-04-23T18:36:00.000-07:00

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.

"Kung Fu Confucius" ? Or "Kung Phooey Confucius" ?--- Chow Yun Fat stars in this biopic about China's most famous philosopher and humanist

2009-04-22T18:28:00.000-07:00

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.

It is still "unofficial" Pssst - The GREAT WALL is much longer than originally estimated and measured !

2009-04-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

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 ?

It pays to talk and do "GREEN" in China and hitching on to that bandwagon is the noveau "menu du jour"

2009-04-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

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

Great Britannia stumbles as the Brits reel from deep economic crises of gargantuan proportion

2009-04-21T15:53:00.000-07:00

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 ?"

The more the merrier - We welcome the launching of another English language online news media, Huanqiu, aka Global Times - Best wishes

2009-04-21T13:12:00.000-07:00

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" !

What Jackie Chan really meant at his Boao forum speech at Hainan Island- "Social Order' or harmony trumps "luan" or CHAOS !

2009-04-21T10:37:00.000-07:00

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.

Rampage rage shootings in American schools - ten years after Columbine High, Americans still don't have a clue as to Why

2009-04-20T08:13:00.001-07:00

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 ?

Socialism according to "American characteristics" - Obamaoism :-)

2009-04-19T23:39:00.000-07:00

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

Is there a new emerging "Obama Doctrine" in U.S. foreign relations with the Non-West ?

2009-04-19T16:26:00.000-07:00

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

China's New Left looks back with nostalgia at Mao Zedong's egalitarian society where the wealth gap was narrow

2009-04-18T21:50:00.000-07:00

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

The American Dream goes sour - Going Postal now means Asian immigrant men in rage going amuck and doing heinous violent rage - killings :-(

2009-04-18T17:00:00.000-07:00

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?"

Movie action star Jackie Chan weighs in on democracy and why it does not fit the Chinese people

2009-04-18T07:36:00.000-07:00

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

China - Friend or Foe ? Here's how a Wall Street Journal report reads it

2009-04-17T23:29:00.001-07:00

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 ?

The thaw in US-Cuba Relations signals a "warm spring" akin to the one across the Taiwan Straits - Let the sunshine in !

2009-04-17T16:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Western "Gweillo" Green Hype is Hollow and Superficial - What does "Eco-friendly" really mean ?

2009-04-17T15:47:00.000-07:00

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.

The Global Auto Industry - what a contrast between China and the U.S. in terms of costs, fuel efficiency, models, and labor-management relations

2009-04-17T11:35:00.000-07:00

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

Using China's military build-up as a pretext, the Aussie hawks persuade Premier Kevin Rudd to escalate the Aussie military-industrial complex budget

2009-04-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

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 ?

California in a downward spiral as its civic culture unravels and its fiscal mess deepens

2009-04-09T20:09:00.000-07:00

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"?

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" !

2009-04-09T11:54:00.001-07:00

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

"America Sucks" - a decaying society wracked by violence and running amuck - from "An American Dream" to "An American Nightmare"

2009-04-04T16:05:00.000-07:00

Something is going awry in America today.

The spate of unprecedented violence seen and reported of late in the form of mass killings, family killings, cop killings.... all inexplicable heinous rage killings evidences a society imploding from within.

Whether it was in Binghamton, New York, involving a 42-year old Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant who went amuck and took 13 lives with him, in a fit of rage; or whether it was in San Francisco Bay Area when an Indian high-tech engineer went on a killing spree targeting his own family and that of his in-laws; or whether it is in Los Angeles involving a Latino man over the Christmas holidays targeting his estranged ex-wife's family in a pique..... these are emblematic of a systemic breakdown far more serious than the economic meltdown unleashed by rampant looting, plundering by Wall Street bankers.

Consider the latest tragedy of an immigrant from Vietnam, an ethnic Chinese, who was catapulted to the notoriety of mass killer... that of Jiverly Vuong, aka Jiverly Wong. The Binghamton, NY mass killing involving an Asian immigrant from Vietnam shocks the consicence. But there is more to it. It is more than the proliferation of guns and lack of gun control in America. Click on below:

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20090404/D97BTI0O0.html

America used to be a land of opportunity for new immigrants from all over the world.

But lately, there appears to be a social pathology which has set in and contaminated the social fabric of this once Great Society.

The immigrant "American Dream," for many, has unfortunately turned and became the "American Nightmare."

And there are deeper roots to this social pathology that is being fully explored.

The thing to ponder is: "WHY?"

"What's causing some immigrants to America to become so alienated, disillusioned, and enraged that they are resorting to utter desperate acts of killings others ?"

"WHY?"

It is totally counter-productive for the police chief of Billingham, New York, to tag the gunman, Jiverly Vuong, "a coward" without going behind the root cause of this act of "going amuck."

French Ambassador "Plays Ball" re: Xizang (Tibet) history of "Slave Society;" Western news media embargoes news about speech !

2009-04-04T10:32:00.000-07:00

I don't know what to read into French motive behind the "shift" in official posturing regarding the Dalai Lama and their Zizang (Tibet) "doublespeak."

But the latest news report about French Ambassador to China Herve Ladsous declaring that Westerners need to know more about "the reality of Tibet" and the fact that it was a "slave society over 60 years ago," sounded like a signal from French President Sarkozy that the French are ready to "flip-flop," like the Brits, vis a vis the issue of Tibet, otherwise known to Chinese as Xizang Province.

Chinese tourism to Paris has dwindled; Carrefour in China is being shunned and boycotted by Chinese shoppers. The indignation of the Chinese common masses against the arrogance and bullying of French officials led by Sarkozy is being acted out in economic boycotts at the grassroots level, with or without official approval.

Given the precarious financial situation in the West, with North America, Europe, and Great Britain, and Australasia reeling from the financial tsunami unleased by the collaspe of Wall Street and Canary Wharf, the West is ready to "play ball" and backpedal from their rabid support of the "political monk in saffron robe."

Click on the news below which was glaringly blockcaded and embargoed by the Western shills behind the mainstream Western news media and their TEAM TIBET SHANGRI-LA fanatics:

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-04/04/content_11130201.htm

"China is Unhappy" - Why the East is East; and the West is Putrid

2009-04-01T16:16:00.000-07:00

At a time when the U.S., Great Britain, Europe reel from a financial meltdown which has spread and brought about economic torment to the rest of the world, in the non-West, leaders from the G-20 are meeting in London this week to attempt to stabilize the global financial system.

The mess in the streets of London is gargantuan. The gweillos are going berserk. Tough times make people desperate.

Against this backdrop, the non-West, led first by Russian president Medvedev, are now clamoring for a new global financial architecture, de-linked from the U.S.-dominated and denominated greebuck, i.e. the dollar. Why not after all the greed and looting happening at the Western financial institutions in London and New York ?

President Lula of Brazil bluntly laid it upon the white folks for causing the latest global economic-financial meltdown and the misery; the French and Germans are pointing their fingers at the Anglo-Saxons, directing their ire against the Brits in London, and the Americans in Washington and New York City for their fiscal mismanagement, greed, recklessness and rapacity.

Clearly, there is enough blame to go around. But it is the gweillo in the WEST whose hubris, greed, profligacy, and increasing incivility and unraveling of social discipline which have unleashed the mess we see in New York city and in London and Paris, and all across the West. Asia, Latin America, the Middle East became contaminated by this toxic spread.

In China, an emboldened new generation of Chinese and intelligentsia and youths are rethinking through the notion of modernization and China's imperatives in a world of globalization where China's foreign surpluses and reserves are "parked" in U.S. treasury notes, now under siege in America.

Is Western democracy a model for China ? Why should it be even emulated ? Should the Chinese people seek their own path ?

With close to US$ 2 trillion in foreign reserves, the Chinese people deservedly are asking, " why should we park our money in America? Or " Is America a responsible stakeholder ?" "Why should China remain passive and be "pussycats"?"

Thoughts to ponder..... and specially noteworthy is a new book just released and circulating among China's youthful new generation of intelligentsia entitled "China is Unhappy." The book in Chinese is entitled, Zhongguo bu Gaoxing (Unhappy China: The Great Time, Grand Vision and Our Challenges). It is written by the same authors who in 1996 published a high profile book, China Can Say No. Both books are considered ultranationalistic in the West.

http://en.huanqiu.com/www/english/specialreport/2009-04/427082.html

In the West, pundits are attacking this book as a surge of Chinese nationalism and jingoism. In their usual maniacal passion to put down the Chinese people, Western critics are waging and orchestrating a media attack in the Anglo-press.

Here's a website from which you can read a little more about this book:

http://chinadigitaltimes.net/2009/03/nationalism-rages-in-new-chinese-book/

Given the drivel of misinformation, disinformation, and warped China-bashing going on in the West, in particular by the TEAM TIBET Western fanatics,to whom the exile Tibetans are coat-tailing their separatist cause..... these fanatics..... overzealous in their blind worship and halo placed upon their Demigod, the Dolly, i.e. Dalai Lama,are relentlessly embellishing, and scripting their "Nirvana" in Tibet's Shangri-la, the La-La land of mysticism and spiritual heaven.

This naive notion is irreconciliable between the intellegentsia between those in the East and the West. These two mindsets are diametrically contradictory when it comes to the issue of Zizang Province, aka Tibet; because for many Chinese, Xizang, aka Tibet, of the past was a feudal theocratic fiefdom dominated by a ruling class of monks running roughshod over and exploiting the slaves in a theocratic heirarchy of utter oppression monopolized by the Lamas.

The Western "gweillos" are completely close-minded and blindsided by their blind worship of the Dolly. No room to change. The " Cult of the Dolly" is pervasive, pernicious, and prevalent in the WEST.

Faced with the toxic, morally bankrupt, spiritually vapid, materially-greedy environment of their own Western societies, these "gweillos" look at a mystical, mythical Tibet, as their escape, an idyliic destination of "Shangri-la."

Consider the kind of propaganda which are being spade out in buckets, in the form of "Worship the Dalai Lama" or what I described as "The Cult of the Dolly" talks, as demonstrated by a talk being sponsored by the Asia Society of Northern California, called " The Mind and Heart of the Dalai Lama" as follows:

Discussion
The Mind and Heart of the Dalai Lama:
A Conversation Between Pico Iyer and Paul Ekman
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
For millions of people around the world, His Holiness the Dalai Lama is a symbol of human kindness and wisdom. Is the true nature of the human heart and mind basically good, as Buddhist philosophy suggests, and if so, why do we so often bring suffering to ourselves and others? What can we learn from the Dalai Lama's own path of training and spiritual practice about how we can discover our own kindness and wisdom?
Writer Pico Iyer has known the Dalai Lama for three decades, and his unique insights into the Dalai Lama's character and global role are on display in his most recent book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Dalai Lama. Iyer is the author of nine books, including such long-running best-sellers as Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk, and The Global Soul. A prolific journalist and writer for Time since 1982, he is known for his adventures everywhere from North Korea to Easter Island, Ethiopia to Paraguay-while also writing novels about Revolutionary Cuba and mystical Islam.
Psychologist Paul Ekman is a leading researcher on human emotions. His new book, Emotional Awareness: Overcoming the Obstacles to Psychological Balance and Compassion, is a record of his remarkable conversations with the Dalai Lama about science, spirituality, and the nature of the mind. Articles on Dr. Ekman's work have appeared in Time Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine, Psychology Today, The New Yorker, the New York Times, Washington Postand other publications. He has appeared on TV programs including 48 Hours, the News Hour with Jim Lehrer, Dateline, Good Morning America, 20/20, Larry King, and Oprah.
The program will be introduced by Richard Blum, ASNC Board Member and Chairman of Blum Capital Partners, L.P., and moderated by Melvin McLeod, editor-in-chief of the Shambhala Sun and author of Mindful Politics: A Buddhist Guide to Making the World a Better Place.
Co-sponsored by the Shambhala Sun,CIIS, Graduate Theological Union, Greater Good Magazine, Green Apple Books, India Community Center, and the San Francisco Zen Center.
To register please call (415) 392-4400 or online.

With this kind of fanaticism, have you ever wondered why East is East and West is West?

China should be unhappy. Zhingguo bu Gaoxing.

The Drumbeat of China Demonization and Bashing re: Xizang Province (Tibet) 50 years after the Dalai Lama was dethroned - the West fumes and plots

2009-03-17T11:40:00.000-07:00

http://www.pslweb.org/>http://www.pslweb.org/

News and Analysis
Tuesday, March 17, 2009

Imperialists commemorate 1959 CIA-backed uprising of Tibetan elites

By: Heather Benno

Media ignore gains in Tibet, focus on demonization campaign

March 10, 2009, marked the 50th anniversary of a failed aristocratic uprising in Tibet that led to the exile of the Dalai Lama. The corporate media, in collusion with Western imperialists, are using the anniversary as an opportunity to continue their demonization campaign targeting China.

The Dalai Lama was the traditional Tibetan head of church and state, who derived political authority as a reincarnated divine monarch. In March 1959, the Dalai Lama, using feudal landlord-backed troops, invaded Lhasa in an attempt to stop the land reform and other progressive measures promised by the new revolutionary government of the People’s Republic of China.

The aristocratic uprising failed because it did not garner popular support. After waiting in its barracks for 10 days, the People’s Liberation Army swiftly defeated the rebels. The Dalai Lama fled to India.

By 1961, Tibetan serfs voted for the first time, and in 1965, China recognized the Tibetan Autonomous Region. Since the ouster of the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan people have seen real progress in infrastructure construction, education, housing and life expectancy.

Why then do corporate media outlets and imperialist regimes give popular credence to a deposed spiritual leader who was the anointed leader of a system responsible for the widespread poverty and oppression of the Tibetan people?
Support for the Dalai Lama and the "Free Tibet Movement" is part of a demonization campaign against China to further secure U.S. global economic dominance and to weaken communist China in the eyes of the world.

Tibet under the lamas

Tibet became part of the Chinese empire in the 13th century, when Ghenghis Khan conquered it.
The political rule of the lamas began later, at the end of the 16th century. Under the lamas, the monasteries, the nobility and the Lhasa government controlled the land, retaining absolute power over the lives of the peasants and serfs, who made up about 90 percent of the populace. There were no schools or health care, yet peasants supported the wealthy monasteries through rampant taxation and child conscription.

After the 1949 revolution in China, the revolutionary government treaded slowly in changing the political structure of Tibet.
Tibetan and Chinese leaders signed the "Agreement of the Central People’s Government and the Tibetan Local Government on Measures for Peaceful Liberation of Tibet," or the 17-Point Agreement, in 1951. The accord recognized and promoted the preservation of Tibetan language and culture. In the decades following the agreements, the theocracy was slowly dismantled, slavery was abolished and serfs and peasants were hired for public works projects necessary to modernize the region.

Progress made under the revolution

Tibet has come a long way since the days of serfdom and theocracy. The communists have built over 44,000 km of roads throughout the region.
Due to available health care, the average life expectancy of people in Tibet has increased by 32.5 years.

Under the lamas, less than 2 percent of school-aged children had access to education, and the illiteracy rate was over 95 percent. Now, nine-year compulsory education is available in 63 out of 73 counties, and the illiteracy rate among workers has dropped to 4.76 percent. Housing is guaranteed as a right. Over 4,000 religious and cultural sites have been preserved and funded by the government.

The demonization campaign against China

The Dalai Lamanot the gains made by the Tibetan peopletook center stage in the corporate media for the week of the anniversary. The Dalai Lama claimed that Tibet has become a "hell on earth,"
and that the Tibetan language and culture are nearing extinction.

Adulation for the Dalai Lama among imperialists is nothing new. The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency began to fund and train counterrevolutionary military units in Tibet in the early 1950s. Many of those recruited were members of the former elite.

From the early 1960s until 1973, the Tibetan "government in exile" received approximately $1.7 million per year from the CIA to airlift counterrevolutionaries into Tibet to attack the government.

The leader of this movement, the Dalai Lama, was awarded the Nobel Prize for peace and the U.S.
Congressional Medal of Honor. In March 2008, groups supporting the Dalai Lama and the "Free Tibet Movement" ravaged the streets of Lhasa, murdering Han Chinese and vandalizing Chinese homes and businesses.

The media blitz surrounding the 50th anniversary of the 1959 aristocratic rebellion in Tibet is a ruse. The track record of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan shows that the ruling class is far from concerned with human rights and religious freedom. Nevertheless, demonizing China and supporting an illegitimate "Free Tibet Movement" are useful tools as the United States seeks to undermine China’s growing global strength.

True solidarity with the people of Tibet means standing against the demonization of China and supporting Tibetan freedom from imperialist intervention and brutal aristocratic rule.

Which is the real Dolly ? The one who speaks the "A" Word or the one who does the "I" word ?

2009-03-11T20:15:00.000-07:00

On this the 50th anniversary of the escape from China's Xizang province(Western colonials called it "Tibet") and went into exile in Dharamsala, the "political monk in saffron robe" is a "walking conflict" between burnishing and camouflaging his credentials in the West as a "spiritual" or "holy" man, committed to peace, harmony, non-violence and a proponent of "autonomy" and not "independence;" while on the other hand, his base of exile supporters in the West relentlessly pursue the path of separatism, secession, "mau mau" and independence.

This man talks the "A" word; but unfortunately he does the "I" word. Talk of "autonomy" is hollow when he and his base from abroad relentlessly sabotage, insult and pursue a "theocracy" not just in Xizang but in Sichuan and Gansu, with grandiose plans to carve out "Greater Tibet" by ethnically cleansing out and eliminating any other than the Theocrats and religious "fascists" who worship the faction of the Dalai Lama, one of many Lamaist factions.

From the looks of things, the Dolly's exile community, what little remains of it, in Dharamsala, and elsewhere in the West, is increasingly disconnected and disassociated on the ground in the heartland of Xizang. They talk east but they act West. Their base camp look east but in reality, it is a camp mainly supported by Westerners or "honorary whites" posing as Tibetans.

Compounding this is the fact that those Tibetan youths born outside of China, i.e. those descendants and offshoots from the fleeing "ruling class" of masters and slave-owners forced to flee to India and the West when revolution succeeded in overthrowing Xizang's backward "caste system" of masters-serfs under an oppressive feudal system..... they are today more "Western" and think and does like " the white man" rather than think and does "Tibetan."

These are not Tibetans in exile, but Tibetans in name but actually Westerners trapped in an Asian body.

Tibetan in their superficial veneer, in native attire, but really empty and bereft of its indiginous "Tibetan" culture or thought, these walking "monstrosities" called Tibetan youths, born outside of Xizang, in the West, are increasingly becoming "white" and corroding whatever residual "Tibetan" culture they have, in name and form. But not in substance. In Dharsamsala, the youth culture of drugs, dope, alcohol and sexual promiscuity have become an epidemic, replicating the sickness of and affliction of corrupting and corrosive "affluenza" happening in the West with its youths. Bongheads, dopeheads, druggies.... that's the bane of Western civilization as we know it.

Worse, those Western "fanatics" who worship the Dolly, as their "God" and spiritual deity are living in a fantasy world of "Shangri-la," a perverted naive notion about a society which never existed but in their own naive, spiritually void hearts and warped minds here in the West.

Consider what the waning and dimming New York Times has to say in today's editorial, with another trajectory aiming for their "fantasy" Shangri-la, masking the Dolly's "I" do while talking the "A" word. Click on the link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/opinion/11wed3.html
A man of peace? Gimme a break.

You don't insult China and the Chinese people; and do it by coat-tailing behind your Western white masters, and expect the Chinese people to passively sit by and do nothing.

With all the saboteurs, agent provocateurs, and spies from the West all hell-bent in destabilizing and casuing havoc and "luan" inside Xizang, in these past weeks, it is indeed prudent for Chinese authorities to tighten up security and deal with these saboteurs, agent provocateurs, spies.... all rascals, scoundrels, and charlattans hell-bent on disrupting harmony and causing "luan" not only in Xizang, but provinces like Sichuan and Gansu. This is an expansionist attempt to carve up China and threaten's China's sovereignty. No nation can allow it.

Imagine, secessionists in America clamoring for Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California to secede, and go the "I" route.

The 1.3 billion peoples of China won't stand for this about Xizhang, much more "Greater Tibet" gobbling up Sichuan and Gansu provinces. And the Westerners who are interloping on China, in the name of "Shangri-la" Tibet, have no standing nor have the right mind to hector or bash China when they themselves in their own backyard in the West don't practice what they preach about "human rights" and the much "vaunted" freedoms that they confer upon themselves but not others. What hubris. What arrogance. What chutzpah !

Just look at Amerika's prisons and see who are the incarcerated.:-(

Western Tibetophiles angling for Tibetan independence and separatism miffed by British tilt towards China's sovereignty over Tibet

2008-11-25T12:57:00.000-08:00

A sense of foreboding has seeped into the air in Dharamsala, as the Dalai Lama realized that his cause for Tibetan independence and separatism has evaporated.

In the face of the global financial meltdown, the West has lost what little leverage it held in their pursuit of Tibetan separatism and to carve Tibet out of China's sovereignty.

Consider the following op-ed piece by Robert Barnett, an American Tibetophile from Columbia University, which illustrates the angst and letdown precipitated by British Premier's Gordon Brown's recent tilt in the Brits' Tibet policy.

November 25, 2008

Did Britain Just Sell Tibet?

By ROBERT BARNETT, as published in the New York Times op-ed page, 11/25/08

THE financial crisis is going to do more than increase unemployment, bankruptcy and homelessness. It is also likely to reshape international alignments, sometimes in ways that we would not expect.

As Western powers struggle with the huge scale of the measures needed to revive their economies, they have turned increasingly to China. Last month, for example, Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, asked China to give money to the International Monetary Fund, in return for which Beijing would expect an increase in its voting share.

Now there is speculation that a trade-off for this arrangement involved a major shift in the British position on Tibet, whose leading representatives in exile this weekend called on their leader, the Dalai Lama, to stop sending envoys to Beijing — bringing the faltering talks between China and the exiles to a standstill.

The exiles’ decision followed an announcement on Oct. 29 by David Miliband, the British foreign secretary, that after almost a century of recognizing Tibet as an autonomous entity, Britain had changed its mind. Mr. Miliband said that Britain had decided to recognize Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China. He even apologized that Britain had not done so earlier.

Until that day, the British had described Tibet as autonomous, with China having a “special position” there. This formula did not endorse the Tibetan claim to independence. But it meant that in the British view China’s control over Tibet was limited to a condition once known as suzerainty, somewhat similar to administering a protectorate. Britain, alone among major powers, had exchanged official agreements with the Tibetan government before the Chinese takeover in 1951, so it could scarcely have said otherwise unless it was to vitiate those agreements.

After the People’s Republic of China joined the United Nations in 1971, British politicians refrained from referring to their country’s recognition of Tibet’s autonomy to avoid embarrassing Beijing. But that didn’t make it less significant. It remained the silent but enduring legal basis for 30 years of talks between the Dalai Lama and Beijing, in which the Tibetans have called only for autonomy and not independence — a position that a conference of Tibetan exiles in India reaffirmed on Saturday.

Mr. Miliband described the British position as an anachronism and a colonial legacy. It certainly emerged out of a shabby episode in colonial history, Francis Younghusband’s cavalier invasion of Tibet in 1903. But the British description of Tibet’s status in the era before the modern nation-state was more finely tuned than the versions claimed by Beijing or many exiles, and it was close to the findings of most historians.

Britain’s change of heart risks tearing up a historical record that frames the international order and could provide the basis for resolving China’s dispute with Tibet. The British government may have thought the issue of no significance to Britain’s current national interests and so did not submit it to public debate. But the decision has wider implications. India’s claim to a part of its northeast territories, for example, is largely based on the same agreements — notes exchanged during the Simla convention of 1914, which set the boundary between India and Tibet — that the British appear to have just discarded. That may seem minor to London, but it was over those same documents that a major war between India and China was fought in 1962, as well as a smaller conflict in 1987.

The British concession to China last month was buried within a public statement calling on Beijing to grant autonomy in Tibet, leading some to accuse the British government of hypocrisy. It is more worrying if it was a miscalculation. The statement was released two days before the Dalai Lama’s envoys began the eighth round of talks with Beijing on their longstanding request for greater autonomy, apparently because the British believed — or had been told — that their giveaway to Beijing would relax the atmosphere and so encourage China to make concessions to the Dalai Lama.

The result was the opposite. On Nov. 10, China issued a damning attack on the exile leader, saying his autonomy plan amounted to ethnic cleansing, disguised independence and the reintroduction of serfdom and theocracy. The only thing that China will henceforth discuss with the exiles is the Dalai Lama’s personal status, meaning roughly which luxury residence he can retire to in Beijing.

The official press in China has gleefully attributed European concessions on Tibet to the financial crisis. “Of course these European countries are at this time not collectively changing their tune because their conscience has gotten the better of them,” announced The International Herald Leader, a government-owned paper in Beijing, on Nov. 7. It added that the financial crisis “has made it impossible for them not to consider the ‘cost problem’ in continuing to ‘aid Tibetan independence’ and anger China. After all, compared to the Dalai, to as quickly as possible pull China onto Europe’s rescue boat is even more important and urgent.”

Britain’s concession could be China’s most significant achievement on Tibet since American support for Tibetan guerillas was ended before Nixon’s visit to Beijing. Including China in global decision-making is welcome, but Western powers should not rewrite history to get support in the financial crisis. It may be more than banks and failed mortgages that are sold off cheap in the rush to shore up ailing economies.

Robert Barnett, the director of the Modern Tibetan Studies Program at Columbia, is the author of “Lhasa: Streets With Memories.”

Russian analyst predicts collaspe of U.S.A. - from superpower to mendicant and bankrupt society -- grim scenario of a nation melting down :-(

2008-11-25T10:30:00.000-08:00

RUSSIAN ANALYST PREDICTS DECLINE AND BREAKUP OF USA
Tue Nov 25 2008 09:04:22 ET

A leading Russian political analyst has said the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the country is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin said in an interview with the respected daily IZVESTIA published on Monday: "The dollar is not secured by anything. The country's foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse."

The paper said Panarin's dire predictions for the U.S. economy, initially made at an international conference in Australia 10 years ago at a time when the economy appeared strong, have been given more credence by this year's events.

When asked when the U.S. economy would collapse, Panarin said: "It is already collapsing. Due to the financial crisis, three of the largest and oldest five banks on Wall Street have already ceased to exist, and two are barely surviving. Their losses are the biggest in history. Now what we will see is a change in the regulatory system on a global financial scale: America will no longer be the world's financial regulator."

When asked who would replace the U.S. in regulating world markets, he said: "Two countries could assume this role: China, with its vast reserves, and Russia, which could play the role of a regulator in Eurasia."

Asked why he expected the U.S. to break up into separate parts, he said: "A whole range of reasons. Firstly, the financial problems in the U.S. will get worse. Millions of citizens there have lost their savings. Prices and unemployment are on the rise. General Motors and Ford are on the verge of collapse, and this means that whole cities will be left without work. Governors are already insistently demanding money from the federal center. Dissatisfaction is growing, and at the moment it is only being held back by the elections and the hope that Obama can work miracles. But by spring, it will be clear that there are no miracles."

He also cited the "vulnerable political setup", "lack of unified national laws", and "divisions among the elite, which have become clear in these crisis conditions."

He predicted that the U.S. will break up into six parts - the Pacific coast, with its growing Chinese population; the South, with its Hispanics; Texas, where independence movements are on the rise; the Atlantic coast, with its distinct and separate mentality; five of the poorer central states with their large Native American populations; and the northern states, where the influence from Canada is strong.

He even suggested that "we could claim Alaska - it was only granted on lease, after all." Panarin, 60, is a professor at the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and has authored several books on information warfare.

British hambug -- 2012 Olympics Games -"Fun Games" vs. 2008 Beijing Olympics - "No Fun" Games :-)

2008-08-29T11:34:00.000-07:00

Talk about British Gweillo hambug.

After 17-days of a spectacular Olympics in Beijing, the focus is on London as the next venue.

The Brits know that they can't closely match what China and the Chinese put up to host the Beijing Olympics. And they can't stand being matched and compared to the Chinese. No way that Londoners can mobilize over 1 million volunteers to work gratis to help out. In the Western press, they have derisively called these youths, "minders," a stupid misguided allusion to "authoritarian" oversight over visitors to the Games.

London, they are hyping, is not Beijing. And they are coining the words, "Fun Olympics," as distinguishable to the "No Fun Olympics."

"No Fun Olympics" ? Who's kidding who ?

If "No fun" for the Gweillos and Westerners mean no booze, no dope, no boobs, no whores, no night-clubbing hooliganism..... yes, the Beijing Olympics is "No Fun Olympics."

And London 2012...... "Fun Olympics"? You must be kidding !

Who wants to be clipped and gouged in London, an overpriced, seedy city where nothing works. The subway stinks. The city is filthy. And but for foreign money from Arab countries, Russia, and Asia-Pacific, London would have become a "basket case."

Yes.... "Fun Olympics." Yes, British hambug. Those fading colors of Great Britannia are apparent. Click on:

http://www.businessweek.com/print/globalbiz/content/aug2008/gb20080825_369147.htm

After these Beijing Olympics Games, now "open season" for "Chinaman Lynching" in San Francisco Bay Area with takeover armed robberies !

2008-08-26T14:03:00.001-07:00

In the Beijing Olympics, the Western news media had relentlessly attacked and piled on Chinese authorities for overreaching, overreacting, and overcommitting public security resources in making Beijing safe.

They accused Chinese authorities of stifling dissent and protests.

They caricaturized the XXIX Olympics Games as a "no fun" Olympics Games. No guzzling-beer parties, no wild nightclubs, and no dope/no sex. Worse, no sensationalistic "mau mau" protests.

Better be safe rather than be mugged in Oakland, California, I say. And if you are a Chinaman, you put your life at peril if you now live in Oakland, the city across the Bay from San Francisco.

America's most densely populated Chinese region, the San Francisco Bay Area, is currently gripped in a violent crime epidemic with armed "takeover" robberies targeting many small "Mom and Pop" food establishments and other small businesses in cities like Oakland, and now Hayward, California.

After all the China-bashing and demonizing bigotry being spewed out by the venomous Western news media, the piling has now shifted to "open season" in "Chinaman lynching" in the form of "takeover" armed robberies of Chinese restaurants in Oakland and Hayward, California.

Talk about racism, and the illusion of democracy, "American style."

And here the West is trying to hector China to follow after the model of "democracy, American style." Click on this banality:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/26/BAGN12IGAF.DTL&tsp=1

And yet another one, and more to come -- "Chinaman lynching" unleashed to target Chinese "mom-and-pop" restaurants. From "takeaway" Chinese food, it is now "takeover" armed robberies and muggings.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/27/BA4Q12J8V9.DTL&tsp=1

Why the West has lost any credibility and standing in the Caucasus Region and Georgia's secessionists from South Ossetia and Abkhazia - think Tibet !

2008-08-26T13:02:00.000-07:00

The independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two Russian-controlled breakaway regions of Georgia, have demonstrated clearly the dilemna of the West, i.e. the European Union and America. Think about the precedents of Tibet and Kosovo.

On the one hand, Europe and America are both stoking the cause of the Tibetan separatists, burnishing the Dalai Lama from Dharsamsala with the "I" word, while mouthing the "A" word......... now, in Georgia, with South Ossetia and Abkhazia similarly pushing for and declaring their own "I" word, neither Nicholas Sarkozy (France), Gordon Brown (Great Britain), Angela Merkel (Germany), and Dubya Bush (U.S.) can now legitimately clamor against South Ossetia and Abkhazia from seceding from Georgia. You can't stoke Tibet and muzzle South Ossetia and Abkhazia at the same time, West !

Also, think Kosovo.... when Western countries recognized the independence of Kosovo, where NATO helped an ethnic Albanian population wrest independence from Serbia.

This time, the tide has turned on the other direction. And the West lost any moral, geopolitical, and legitimate standing against South Ossetia and Abkhazia after stocking independence on behalf of Tibet and Kosovo.

It would be inconsistent and hypocritical. Read on about the geopolitical maneuvers in the Caucasus Region:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0043d384-7362-11dd-8a66-0000779fd18c.html?nclick_check=1

And here's more background and history as to why Georgia, the "spear carrier" of Western Europe and Nato, may be on the wrong side of history:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121974624440772443.html?mod=hps_us_whats_news

Further, interestingly, here's American conservative commentator Pat Buchanan and his take on the American folly in the Caucasus and its misread of the geostrategic politics:

http://www.creators.com/opinion/pat-buchanan.html?columnsName=pbu

The Dalai Lama miscalculated and his Free Tibet-Shangri-la "Mau Mau" backfired; he is now spent and in "no man's land"

2008-08-26T11:28:00.000-07:00
The trouble with Dolly, the alleged "Holy Man" in safrron monk's robe, is that he completely misread, miscalculted, and misplaced his trust and confidence upon his Western masters, and ended up getting absolutely nothing after these Olympics Games.

Absolutely nothing except some faded memories of "grandstanding," "mau-mau" banners, and some videotapes of the orchestrated "China bashing" and "Chinese Demonization" directed by the biased Western news media who are his patrons and financiers.

Worse, the Dolly's broken reputation, in the eyes of all China and the Chinese peoples, as a "wolf camouflaged in sheep's clothing," as a man who speak from "both sides" of his mouth, as a man who talks the "A" word, while doing the "I" word has now stuck among 1/5 of humanity.

You can't have it both ways, your Holiness. And compounding the problem is the maniacal lunatic quest for a "God-King" iconic theocracy which these "Shangri-la" white boys and girls from the West are trying to pursue to escape the spiritual vapidness of their own Western existence. OK. But to take over Gansu, Qinghai, Szechuan provinces... almost 1/3 of China's landmass in the name of a "Shangri-la theocracy"? You must be kidding, dude.

On the one hand, the Dolly mouthed platitudes about supporting the Beijing Olympics Games, then turned around and publicly joining the Western's conspiracy to diss, insult and boycott these Beijing Olympics... by his high-profile visits to the West to amplify his cause for the "I" campaign instead of "A", he has lost any credibility and wasted the opportunity or room to engage China's authorities in peaceful dialogue. To boot, those young Tibetans, i.e. "whites trapped in Tibetan bodies" from the Students for a Free Tibet, have shown and demonstrated that they are racist against the Chinese and worse, alligned with the Western bashers, demonizers, and bigots. You don't interlope into a sovereign nation's embassy or consulate and expect to be treated gingerly. No Sovereign country and its government will tolerate this insult.

The Chinese peoples saw through this duplicity, doublespeak, and chicanery. End result, you have caused more mistrust, and skepticism that you are a man of your words, and worse, that you can't control the lunatic "hotheads," white wannabes who are behind all the "Free Tibet-Shangrila" mau mau during these Games.

Let's face it : many of the Tibetan youths, born and raised outside of Tibet, are faux Tibetans.... more Western than Asian. They are no more Tibetan than those Hollywood "yellow faces" used by American filmmakers as backdrops and 2nd and 3rd minions for their white masters in the continuing narrative of Virtual Tibet !

Be it as it may, it is very clear that the lunatic white boys and girls behind Team Tibet-Shangrila who have relentlessly spearheaded this "bad-mouth" insulting and denigrating bash China and demonize Chinese campaign have lost the masses of Chinese laobaixing by their racist, insulting, confrontational campaign.

They are seen as being crude, vulgar, ignorant, and worse, lacking in civility and reciprocity that the substance of the Tibetan grievances have become lost in the din of "mau mau" grandstanding.

It backfired. And China and its peoples will never forgive the Dalai Lama and his Western bashers and demonizers behind this attempted and failed derailment of the Beijing Olympics Games.

The Dalai Lama gambled with the West; and lost big-time.

Read below some very perceptive opinions from London about the China Bashing from the Team Tibet-Shangrila loonies:

Brendan O'Neill's Challenging China Bashing (Click onto Mr. O Neill's blogs from London:

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/issues/C136/

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/4975/

http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/article/5602/

Is Tony Blair seeing the light about China and steering away from China Bashing and Demonization ?

2008-08-26T00:05:00.000-07:00
Tony Blair, former Brit prime Minister, has written an op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal.

In it, it appears that he has shifted his attitude and views about China somewhat.... or has he ?

Our best admonition for many Westerners, especially the liberal, sanctimonious "do gooders" from America, Britain, Europe, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand is:

"Butt Out ! Butt Off !"

China's problems are enormous, but it is for the Chinese peoples themselves to fix and resolve.

Likewise, the West has enormous problems with its heavy debt burdens and imploding social fissures and collaspsing economies severely eroded by deteriorating infrastructures, dysynchronization between a dumber work force, poorly educated and poorly skilled... and the needs of a post-industrial information-based economy which requires a nimbler work force.

Let's face it.... the next generation of Westerners are dumber, less focused on education, and too slack..... and the rest of the non-Western world is catching up and leapfrogging the West in skills and brain power.

To the West: stick with your own problems. Fix 'em within your own home front.

China does not need your shining white knights in their white horses galloping to the rescue of the distressed yellow folks.

And yes, Lord Jim is fiction. Those days of the "White Man's Burden" and a messianic zeal to save Asia is now over.

To those Euro-white Tibetan-Shangrila fanatics and lunatic "mau mau" grandstanders and protesters, stay out of China's internal problems... and don't run ahead of the Tibetans in your messianic obsession to pursue the myth of Shangri-La.

And check out Tony Blair and his gradual metamorphosis and redemption in the following op-ed piece he authored; you be the judge to gauge but from the title, you can see that Tony Blair is still sanctimonious about "helping" China embrace the Future.

Goodness gracious, get off your high horse, Tony Blair. The Brits need more help than the Chinese with its "basket case" economy in deep doo-doo :

We Can Help China Embrace the Future
By TONY BLAIR
August 26, 2008;

The Beijing Olympic Games were a powerful spectacle, stunning in sight and sound. But the moment that made the biggest impression on me came during an informal visit just before the Games to one of the new Chinese Internet companies, and in conversation with some of the younger Chinese entrepreneurs.

These people, men and women, were smart, sharp, forthright, unafraid to express their views about China and its future. Above all, there was a confidence, an optimism, a lack of the cynical, and a presence of the spirit of get up and go, that reminded me greatly of the U.S. at its best and any country on its way forward.

These people weren't living in fear, but looking forward in hope. And for all the millions still in poverty in China, for all the sweep of issues -- political, social and economic -- still to be addressed, that was the spirit of China during this festival of sport, and that is the spirit that will define its future.

During my 10 years as British leader, I could see the accelerating pace of China's continued emergence as a major power. I gave speeches about China, I understood it analytically. But I did not feel it emotionally and therefore did not fully understand it politically.

Since leaving office I have visited four times and will shortly return again. People ask what is the legacy of these Olympics for China? It is that they mark a new epoch -- an opening up of China that can never be reversed. It also means that ignorance and fear of China will steadily decline as the reality of modern China becomes more apparent.

Power and influence is shifting to the East. In time will come India, too. Some see all this as a threat. I see it as an enormous opportunity. But we have to exercise a lot of imagination and eliminate any vestiges of historic arrogance.

The volunteer force that staged the Games was interested, friendly and helpful. The whole feel of the city was a world away from the China I remember on my first visit 20 years ago. And the people are proud, really and honestly proud, of their country and its progress.

No sensible Chinese person -- including the country's leadership -- doubts there remain issues of human rights and political and religious freedom to be resolved. But neither do the sensible people -- including the most Western-orientated Chinese -- doubt the huge change, for the better, there has been. China is on a journey. It is moving forward quickly. But it knows perfectly well the journey is not complete. Observers should illuminate the distance to go, by all means, but recognize the distance traveled.

The Chinese leadership is understandably preoccupied with internal development. Beijing and Shanghai no more paint for you the complete picture of China than New York and Washington do of the U.S. Understanding the internal challenge is fundamental to understanding China, its politics and its psyche. We in Europe have roughly 5% of our population employed in agriculture. China has almost 60%. Over the coming years it will seek to move hundreds of millions of its people from a rural to an urban economy. Of course India will seek to do the same, and the scale of this transformation will create huge challenges and opportunities in the economy, the environment and politically.

For China, this economic and social transformation has to come with political stability. It is in all our interests that it does. The policy of One China is not a piece of indulgent nationalism. It is an existential issue if China is to hold together in a peaceful and stable manner as it modernizes. This is why Tibet is not simply a religious issue for China but a profoundly political one -- Tibet being roughly a quarter of China's land mass albeit with a small population.

So we should continue to engage in a dialogue over the issues that rightly concern people, but we should conduct it with at least some sensitivity to the way China sees them.

This means that the West needs a strong partnership with China, one that goes deep, not just economically but politically and culturally. The truth is that nothing in the 21st century will work well without China's full engagement. The challenges we face today are global. China is now a major global player. So whether the issue is climate change, Africa, world trade or the myriad of security questions, we need China to be constructive; we need it to be using its power in partnership with us. None of this means we shouldn't continue to raise the issues of human rights, religious freedoms and democratic reforms as European and American leaders have done in recent weeks.

It is possible to hyperbolize about the rise of China. For example, Europe's economies are still major and combined outreach those of China and India combined. But, as the Olympics and its medal tables show, it is not going to stay that way. This is a historic moment of change. Fast forward 10 years and everyone will know it.

For centuries, the power has resided in the West, with various European powers including the British Empire and then, in the 20th century, the U.S. Now we will have to come to terms with a world in which the power is shared with the Far East. I wonder if we quite understand what that means, we whose culture (not just our politics and economies) has dominated for so long. It will be a rather strange, possibly unnerving experience. Personally, I think it will be incredibly enriching. New experiences; new ways of thinking liberate creative energy. But in any event, it will be a fact we have to come to terms with. For the next U.S. president, this will be or should be at the very top of the agenda, and as a result of the strength of the Sino-U.S. relationship under President Bush, there is a sound platform to build upon.

The Olympics is now the biggest sporting event in the world, and because of the popularity of sport it is therefore one of the events that makes a genuine impact on real people. These Games have given people a glimpse of modern China in a way that no amount of political speeches could do.

London 2012 gives Britain a tremendous chance to explore some of these changes and explain to the East what the modern West is about. One thing is for certain: Hosting the Olympics is now a fantastic opportunity for any nation. My thoughts after the Beijing Games are that we shouldn't try to emulate the wonder of the opening ceremony. It was the spectacular to end all spectaculars and probably can never be bettered. We should instead do something different, drawing maybe on the ideals and spirit of the Olympic movement. We should do it our way, like they did it theirs. And we should learn from and respect each other. That is the way of the 21st century.

Mr. Blair, former prime minister of Great Britain, is teaching a course on faith and globalization at the Yale Schools of Management and Divinity.

Former Aussie Premier Paul Keating calls Western Media Beijing Olympics coverage "Elitist"

2008-08-25T21:42:00.000-07:00
Paul Keating, former Prime Minister of Australia, is quoted by the Sydney Morning Herald for criticizing the Western News Media coverage of the Beijing Olympics as "elitist" and "condescending."

Further, Mr. Keating was "spot-on" in criticizing Western media for reporting China through the prism of Tibet.

Mr. Keating is being too kind.

My take: it is much worse; it is underladen by white supremacy, racism, and cultural arrogance, and viciously piling in "China bashing" and "Chinese demonization."

The Chinese people, especially the emerging young educated Chinese who are increasingly world-savvy and probative, will never forget this about the Western news media.

Click on the report from the Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/08/24/1219516262691.html

With the current Aussie Premier Kevin Rudd being the only Mandarin Chinese-fluent prime minister who can bridge the widening chasm between East and West, it is a missed opportunity for Mr. Rudd who appears to have been suffused by a naive and Europeanized view about Tibet and China.

So be it.... the Aussies have to decide whether they are East or West.

Keating, at least, is saying it like it is.

In Bejing, the Western news media are carping about overreaching Chinese Security; In Oakland, CA, they are gripped by violent takeover robberies !

2008-08-25T18:11:00.001-07:00
For all the carping coming from the Western news media "rat pack" covering the Beijing Olympics, the common thread is their reporting about these "no fun" Olympics, and the omnipresent Chinese security blanketing Beijing. The Americans vicious "pit bull" reporters are livid over alleged overzealous, omnipresent, and overvigorous Chinese security checking against errant and disruptive behavior.

Talk about proportionality.

Let me give you the spill from this end of the globe, i.e. in Oakland, California, in one of America's most crime-ridden cities....Oakland, California.... America's eighth most populous city, and right across the Bay Bridge, the Bay Area which Conde Nast Travel Magazine described as the # 1 favorite tourist destination in America... San Francisco, CA.

Oakland, California. A city wracked a rash of violent armed robberies and a city gripped by fear of thugs making it a "combat zone" at night time, when no one dares venture out to dine anymore in the city's restaurants because of fear of being mugged.

And this is happening in the U.S.A. Michael Phelps country.

The Western news media has underreported and failed to responsibly report about the "armpit" side of their own societies. And over-reported of China's armpit side.

Picture Oakland, California.... an American city gripped by a violent crime wave out of control, and a completely broken down City Hall wracked by mismanagement, official corruption.

Oakland, California.... a city of 400,000 inhabitants, 15% of which are Asian, is gripped in a violent crime wave of "takeover armed robberies" which have struck mostly Asian restaurants in Oakland.

In the last six weeks alone, there were at least 16 violent armed "takeover" robberies targeting small businessess, including food establishments, nail salons, pizza parlors, Chinese restaurants.

The latest one, targeting a Chinese restaurant in Oakland, California. In the latest, an armed gunman struck an employee with his pistol during the robbery of Full Moon Seafood, 2042 MacArthur Boulevard.

Full Moon Seafood is an ethnic Chinese restaurant owned and operated by a Chinese immigrant.

http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_10297748?source=rss

And here the Western News Media is carping about Beijing's overzealous security during these Olympics Games ?

Talk about proportionality. Rather be safe in Beijing than to be mugged, in Oakland, California?

Right, Dude ?

Did the World truly learn more about China and vice-versa from these Beijing Olympics Games ?

2008-08-25T16:46:00.000-07:00
I wish that I have the positive vibes from these Olympics Games in Beijing as seen up close by International Olympics Games Chair Jacques Rogge. He has said :

"Throughout these Games, the world learned more about China, and China learned more about the world," Rogge said.

His predecessor as Olympics Games "point man, " Juan Antonio Samaranch, was even more ebullient:

"I think it is the best Olympics ever," said Juan Antonio Samaranch, former head of the International Olympic Committee. "China is No. 1."

That said, I have mixed feelings that the incorrigible "vicious attack dogs" from the Western news media have changed in any shape, form, and manner in their narrow-minded, bigoted stance of piling, bad-mouthing, and spreading venom about China and the Chinese peoples. Eurocentrism and white supremacy remain the fundamental anchors from which you look at the non-West; and China bashing, badmouthing and insulting remain at the core of the "modus operandi."

Let's be real ! You can't teach these old dogs new tricks. No way.

All these CBs (China bashers) and CDs (Chinese Demonizers)are too set in their rigidity, and they are like maggots who have infected the dying cadavers of many of these aging old media such as the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Sadly, we Chinese around the globe can forgive ignorance or even bigotry that is based on lack of knowledge or access to news and information.

But if you are supposedly learned, well-educated, and part of the Western intelligentsia, supposedly with all the tools that will enable you to understand cross-culturally beyond your eurocentric lenses, but you remain close-minded, and have a consticted mindset, what can be done to change this narrow-mindedness and puniness of the minds ?

Time to move on. My take is for the non-West to seriously ponder, "Does the West still matter anymore ?"

For the Intelligentsia from CHINDIA, i.e. China and India, and the rest of the non-West, I think we have some serious reflections and thinking ahead in the days ahead.

I am less and less optimistic that the West can turn around in its steadily rapid decline in this new challenging world of globalization. With or without the World Olympics Games.

If you look back at how the American news media reported on these games, you can't help but wonder the jingoism that they have demonstrated. With 212 nations competing in these games, solely with NBC and other American news media reporting on these games, you would think that the athletes are primarily American and European.

And you would think that the Chinese (51 Gold medals), the Koreans (13 Gold Medals), and the Japanese (9 Gold Medals) are not even close to medal contention, but less visible. Just look at the actual medal count overall:

http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/INF/GL/95A/GL0000000.shtml

And from the way the Western news media spin the story, these Games are all about Michael Phelps, the American Basketball Redeem Team, and Usain Bolt (of Jamaica). Everything else is just a backdrop.

You ask yourself why ? I say racism and white supremacy.

The Boorish Behavior the London Mayor at the handover ceremony at the Beijing Olympics - "Lose Some Weight, Fat Boy !"

2008-08-25T15:44:00.000-07:00
Since the British press has been merciless when it comes to covering the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese peoples, and the Chinese athletes, let me spade a bucketful back at y'all Britons.

Fact is that eight (8) minute show at the closing ceremonies at the Bird's Nest comes out short in creativity, imagination, and aesthetics. Worse, it not only failed to highlight Great Britannia at its best..... it actually displayed British decline, economic recession, and a pitiful tepid performance in Beijing.

And the Mayor of London, Borish Johnson is shown to be a fat slob - overweight, out of shape, and crude in manners and civility; not very Britishy. He is more like a "poster boy" for junk food and McDonald's. Johnson did not even have the basic decency to shake the hands of the Beijing mayor for hosting a successful XXIX Olympiad. What ever happened to British manners ? Consider that London, the once great city that Johnson runs, is now gripped by turmoil, including hooliganism, crime, and broken infrastructures. Read how the Economist says about his mayorship:
http://www.economist.com/world/britain/displayStory.cfm?story_id=11975512&fsrc=nwlgafree
Hail to the Queen. The Brits have to plucked an American, Michael Phelps, aka "The Great White Hope" to help them render a facade of "feel good" vipes. And look at how far down the barrel the Brits have to dig just to put up a credible sports icon, namely a "wash-out" soccer star, David Beckham, as their fading "Great White Hope."

If there is a metaphor of past glory of Great Britannia, it is David Beckham.... old, aging, and "wash-out" can't play anymore. From all global Chinese to Hollywood, "You can have David Beckham and live on the past glory of "The Great White Hope." We know soccer, and Beckham is not our hope.

Given how bad and worsening the British economy is these days, and the steadily declining European Market, it is no wonder that the British news media, in conspirary with their American news media ratpacks, have been relentless in their vicious attacks and bad-mouthing of China and Beijing's staging of these Olympics Games.

Between now and 2012, let's see if y'all Brits can pull off half of what the Chinese people have done and accomplished.

But before you get into that, get your Lord Mayor Boris Johnson to lose some weight.

Lose some of that bulk, fatso ! Click on:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1049036/Chinese-attack-Boris-Johnson-rude-arrogant-disrespectful-Olympic-handover-ceremony.html

All that piling and carping from the Western News Media ratpacks - a sampling; London 2012 can't fit Beijing's jockstraps - LOL, Brits !

2008-08-25T15:26:00.000-07:00
The Brits are in a surly mood these days.

From the way British governance is going, fast becoming an economic "basket case," rumor are swirling in the British media as to whether or not British premier Harold Brown will be around come Christmas.

Last night, from that 8-minute spot of Britannia show put on at the Bird's Nest in Beijing, to close off and transition the Beijing Olympics games on to London in 2012, it is clear that the Brits are getting fidgety, ainsy, listless, and most of all, feeling that they can't fit the jocks of Beijing four years from now.

The Brits know it; the West knows it; and most of all the Western news media know it.

But given that they can't get their mud to stick at any part of the Great Wall of China, and their management of these Olympics Games; and given that they know they don't have the ability to mobilize its people, and pour the kinds of resources into mounting the next Olympics Games in London, The Brits, their Western news media white supremacist Numenklatura and their media rat packs are understating the next London Olympics Games in 2012.

Folks.... we Chinese are no longer ninnies when it comes to reading the biased and racist Western news media. We know where they are in terms of their narrow-minded blinders. And we know the nuances of their reporting. Like the good ole days of the People's Daily, we have learned how to read behind the page, between the lines, and look at their massage of the news media, including BBC, with a jaundiced eye.

Consider a sampling of how some of the Western news media pit bulls are opining and spinning these last Olympics Games in Beijing, as gleaned by the Shanghaiist.com link:

http://shanghaiist.com/2008/08/25/recommended_reads_beijings_olympic.php

The Best Olympics Ever - Now What ? Read this close-minded, bigoted American mind and you figure out.

2008-08-25T13:36:00.000-07:00
As Kishore Mahbhubani, the fomer Singaporean ambassador so correctly stated, "China is a closed country with an open mind; but the West is an open country with a closed mind."

How true indeed.

The Beijing Games was one opportunity that the West had in opening its mind and its heart.... to reach out, understand, and engage 1/5 of humanity in an honest dialogue.

But consider how narrow-minded, and weighed down with "cultural baggages" many pundits and so-called journalists exhibited in their reporting, analysis, and soundbites out of Beijing. Many American mainstream journalists just blew it. The maniacal obsession with dissing, insulting, bashing China, as shills for the bald-headed political monk for their illusionary pursuit of Shangri-la (which never existed) overwhelmed any rational attempt to understand one-fifth of humanity, in all its array and pockets of subcultures and complexity. They blew it.

And this one from the Los Angeles Times says it all. It is entitled, "The Best Olympics Games ever... but now what ?" Now what ? Gimme a break.

Goodness gracious, talk about "gweillo" narrow-mindness and bigotry. They are incorrigibles... these "pit bulls" from some in the Western news media.

Click on:

http://www.latimes.com/sports/olympics/la-fg-olywrap25-2008aug25,0,6197330.story?track=rss

Jettisoning "the Yellow Monkey Syndrome," the Chinese People can and must do better - A global Huaren/Huayi ponders over lessons from Beijing Games

2008-08-25T10:26:00.000-07:00
17 days after a spectacular opening of the Beijing Games, we Chinese from the global Diaspora have been pivoted between East and West. And we see things which the established mainstream press, both Chinese and the West, don't see or want to report about.

Finally from our perch, straddled between two cultures, two civilizations, two sets of values, and from our 3rd space, i.e. Spatium Trientis, we are illuminated by the clarid revelations from these Games, not just by the competition of world athletes, but by how the WEST, and in particular, how the biased Western News Media, in particular in the anglophone world, have filtered, distorted, and fundamentally warped what would have been otherwise a grand opportunity to reach out and engage the citizens of the world in a honest dialogue, in consonance of the Beijing Games theme of "One World, One Harmony."

Many Europeans and Americans passed a grand opportunity to learn about not just China and the Chinese people, but the rest of the world, and instead got overwhelmed by their bigotry, narrow-mindedness, and white supremacy. As Fareed Zakaria, the editor of Newsweek International said, "The Rise of the Rest," i.e. non-West, is unstoppable. And Western nations and societies better take heed, or else. Europe and America will be left behind and it shows in their ossified and close-minded news media institutions.

Sadly, it is not to be, with some rare exceptions, which are lucid intervals of true sportsmanship of the truly Gold world champions.

First of all, lots of kudos have to extended to the over 1 million (some said over 1.5 million) Chinese citizen-volunteers, youths from the nations' schools, colleges and univerties, who have worked their hearts and souls out to make Beijing a very "user-friendly" and hospitable city. The world, and the Huaren community in the Chinese Diaspora, owe them our sincere thanks. Xie Xie.

In the spirit of the Sichuan Earthquake and the magnanimity and "big heartedness" of the ordinary laobaixing, China's citizen-volunteers at these Olympics Games, underscored and highlighted that fundamental fact about China, i.e. that its people still have jing, and still harbor a lot of good decent Confucian values of humanity, civility, courtesy, and reciprocity.

Something that many Gweillos can't understand and can't seem to fathom.

Despite of, inspite of, and notwithstanding the genuflection, the craven, suck-up, and downright supplicating of many Chinese officials in kowtowing to boorish, bullying, arrogant behavior from many in the West, among its heirarchy of public officials to its institionalized and ossified mainstream news media, carping, and relentlessly piling in the China-bashing, Chinese-demonizing , we have to chalk up one for China in that overall, the Chinese have eaten lots of bitterness ("qi-qu) from some of the utterly reckless and brutish behavior from the West.

CB and CD are here to stay. And we global Chinese will fight back. Come 2012, in London, it will be "payback" time, mark my words.

That said, I can accept the "yellow monkey" syndrome from some Chinese ..... especially those who are so naively enamored with a set of colonial baggage which seems to "worship" and "idolizes" anything "Western." They are dumb, and perhaps unexposed to the West in its blunt core reality, and they have been "brainwashed" by the drivel of Western propaganda, through its Hollywood and insidious pop culture.

This Western chic and enamoration is suffused with the mania that the "Western Gweillo farts smell more fragrant;" or the "Western Moon is absolutely rounder." It is very Hollywood. The white man always stay on top. and the yellow man is always the backdrop. Hollywood, anyone ?

Let those of us Huarens and Huayis who have lived in the West in the Chinese Diaspora provide some very sobering insights as to why China and the Chinese peoples inside China and Mainstream Greater China can and must do better than some of its "Yellow Monkeys" inside China who are the pliant and genuflecting officials at the top; the "compradores;" the "sell-outs" who are selling China's "self-dignity."

The Chinese laobaixing can and must do better !

If there is one athelete from the West that I would like to point out as the epitome of the West, and its boorishness and selfishness, it is our "Great White Hope", namely, Michael Phelps.

For one, I think what he did at the Cube was a superhuman, herculean feat, winning an unprecedented eight (8) Olympics gold in his feat.... swimming. No one can honestly take that away from this 22-year white boy. He was a magnificent swimmer.

Magnificent in the swimming pool, yes. But outside ? He lacks "li;" lacks manners; and vapid of any decency, humanity, and sense of commisceration, reciprocity for fellow human beings. He is, in short, a "gweillo" who is a crude, impolite brute, lacking in manners and politeness.

Off the swimming pool...in the demeanor and demonstration of "character," "li." "jing".... off the swimming competition, outside of his sports, I give Michael Phelps a "C" minus ! He is a selfish brute. He may be a fish. But we Chinese steam fish and eat 'em with ginger, scallions over soy sauce !

Why and what is Michael Phelps deficient in, pray tell ? Because he has no sense of misceration, manners, decency, and politeness, first and foremost, of thanking the Chinese people, and his Beijing Olympics Games hosts.... the peoples of China, for making it possible for him to win his eight (8) golds at the Cube.

What did he do right after his wins ? Instead of being polite, he has now focused on nothing but greed, unbriddled greed to capitalize on his fame and glory. It is all about commercial greed, endorsements, and hyping up his herculean feats in the pool for the kaching of $$$$$$$.

For me, that is not a true Olympian, a true champion who acts graciously and courteously. He can have his Gold. And he can have his gazillions in peddling Speedos and whatever else he might want to peddle, like a good ole American hustler. It is all about $$$$$$$$.

For me, he is a typical white boy who lacks basic, fundamental manners of li, jing, especially grace, class, and refinement. He is, in short, a "jerk."

Even a poor Jamaican from a lumpen background, namely Usain Bolt, the Lightning from the sports of the sprinting at track and field, is posssessed of the unique trait of "humanity," "li," "jing." Usain Bolt touched my heart profusely because he had the basic decency, humanity to thank China as host for these Olympics Games, and had the humanity to contribute US$ 50,000 to the victimized kids traumatised by the April, 2008 Sichuan Earthquake.

That showed a "bigness" of heart, despite of, inspite of, and notwithstanding his track antics, such as "thumping his chest," drawing the ire of World Olympics Federation chief Jacgues Rogge.

But Phelps is a lower creature in my book. As soon as he counted his eight (8) Gold Medals, he and his PR machine in America started ramping up the hype, and cash in onto the cash register. It is all about "me," "me," "me."

To boot, instead of graciously showing up at the closing ceremonies, to thank his Chinese hosts, especially the over 1 million Chinese youths who worked so hard to provide the selfless background support for the success of these Games, Michael Phelps jetted off to London to be with his white boys and girls from London.

I gotta give it to Olympians Shawn Johnson, the U.S. Gold Olympian who so graciously and humbly showed up at the closing ceremonies, together with other Gold Olympians.

I was impressed by the decency of Yao Ming, who showed up, despite of the fact that he did not need to, as did many of the Sports Stars of America's Dream Team in basketball.

Yao Ming, like his fellow basketball counterparts from the NBA, could have just zooted off to his 6-star hotel, and skip the closing ceremonies.

But he showed "face."

And Shawn Johnson of the U.S. Gymnastics Team showed "face." She was polite, humble, and truly civil in her loss, and gracious in her win. An exceptional American.

And most important, the Ethiopian Gold Olympian who won the 25-mile marathon showed face. For a small country like Ethiopia, granted an economically poor country, at least their Olympics Team showed respect, civility, and some basic fundamental "li."

And where are some of the Team USA Olympians with their Gold ? They are so selfish in their glorified win that they are thinking more about the kaching in the cash register..... the $$$$$ that can be reaped.

America..... the citadel of boorish, impolite, selfish, self-centered, behavior. Hambug. Hubris, and Chutzpah. Jerks.

And to think Michael Phelps' mother is an educator ? A school principal who failed to inculcate basic manners, civility, and "li" in her acknowledged very talented and amazingly great child ? What's with responsible parenting in America ?

When is the right time to teach your child how to say "Thank You;" how to say "Xie Xie."

What can I say about those "pit bulls" from the mainstream Western news media, who are equally dogged, ill-manned, and vapid of any basic decency, civility, and politeness.

We Chinese must jettison that "yellow monkey" syndrome. We can and must do better than the Gweillos.

And how best to spot-on the difference than when the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, took over the Olympics flag and London put on their show at the closing ceremonies.

Talk about British vapidity, and its fast eroding society.

If the best they can put up is another fading "Great White Hope," a soccer celebrity vapid of any basic manners and politeness, David Beckham..... how do you think the Brits will do come 2012 ?

Clearly, if sports were a microcosm of a country's culture and values, these Games demonstrated that we Chinese can and must do better than the West and the Westerners.

China must jettison its colonial mentality; it must not ape the Western perverse values. It must jettison the "yellow monkey" syndrome.

Let the West and Westerners wallow in their own banality, obscenity, and eroding society vapid of decency, humanity, and civility.

And their "pit bulls" in the news media showed it.

China "jia you" "jia you" "jia you."

The Lightning Bolt from Jamaica vs. The Great White Hope from America - the Methaphors of these Beijing Olympics Games - You be the Judge

2008-08-23T10:34:00.001-07:00
Many folks in the Western and Non-Western World have watched these Olympics Games in Beijing through their cultural prisms, often filtered through and massaged by the media "gatekeepers." And the hype being dribbled out often fail to give a fuller picture behind the athletes as they are, in the sports they excel in, and in particular, off the field.

If there is something which metaphorizes Beijing's games in terms of athletes and the countries they represent, and how they compete in and outside the game venues, it is the difference between "lightning Bolt" Jamaican Triple-Gold champion, Usain Bolt, and Michael Phelps, the great American swimmer, called "The Fish" who won a spectacular unprecedented eight (8) Gold medals in swimming.

As the poster boy of these Games, there is no question that the Lightning Bolt from Jamaica exemplies the spirit of these games and Bolt has endeared himself to the hearts of the world by his touch,for and on behalf of the Chinese kids victimized by the Sichuan Earthquake. Bolt left Michael Phelps in the dust by his classy behavior. And he knows how to reciprocate.

But let me give you my take between Lighting Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps, whom I call "Great White Hope" from America.

That Usain Bolt had the heart and sensitivity to voluntarily contribute US$ 50,0000 for Chinese kids who suffered in the Sichuan Earthquake, through the Red Cross, says volumes about the character and class of this athlete from Jamaica. He has raw emotion and passion. He may clown during the competition at the Bird's Nest, thumping his chest, psyching himself in the tracks, like most competitive athletes.

But off the field, he is my true champion, ma man. He knows "how to "cho-ren," as we Chinese love to gauge the content of one's character, i.e. how to be "human."

And to me, Usain Bolt is Chinese, not a "gweillo". He has heart. He has "jing." and He has comisceration for those who are less fortunate that he is. That's very Chinese. And Bolt has "li" which many Westerners don't have and can't understand because they are too hyper-individualistic, egocentric, and self-centered. Click on to see how "classy" Bolt is to the Chinese people:
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-08/23/content_9649842.htm

Compare our "Great White Hope" from America.... Michael Phelps. I am not taking away his glory in the Cube. He deserves his eight Golds. His mama is ecstatic. His Papa has stayed away, and stayed away from his ex-wife.

But there is a very distinct difference between Ma Man and Michael Phelps in terms of character and off-the-sports behavior. Phelps is self-indugled, and off to promote his glory to cash in on the eight Golds. And he will be laughing all the way to the bank. But has he done anything to thank his hosts, or to learn something about the city and country he is competing in, i.e. Beijing and China? Can he connect and relate to any other than White People and Europeans ?

Did he do anything for anybody else or donate to the poor Chinese kids from the Sichuan Earthquake ?

You be the judge.

Usain Bolt is ma man.

You think the Western News Media will report or publicize this touch of "class" for the Chinese kids of the Sichuan Earthquake ? You think those rascals from the Western news media ratpack at the Media Center even know anything about "li," "jing" and how to "cho-ren" ? Don't count on it.

If there is anyone whom I utterly despises in these games, it is Bruto Karolyi, the loudmouth gymnastics analyst for NBC. Karolyi is the poster boy of the surliness of the Western news sports commentators --- extremely biased, and bigoted, and very anti-China and anti-Chinese.

The Exact words of China's Executive Vice-President of the Beijing Olympics Committee commenting on Western Media Bias

2008-08-23T09:31:00.000-07:00
The press conference link is http://en.beijing2008.cn/live/pressconference/mpc/n214573397_2.shtml and here are some of the actual verbatim exchange which the Western News Media "rat packs" and partisans, for Team Tibet-Shangri-la masking as "journalists" cannot distort or spin according to their own biased CB and CD manipulation, read and judge for yourself instead of allowing these be filtered through AP:

Wang Wei (Executive VP- Being Olumpics Organizing Committee)

"I do have some follow up on Giselle's comments. I think about your question. The answer I have that there are so many criticisms in this room. This reflects how biased some of the media are about China, how little the media understand China. The same experience also tested when the torch relay outside China. I think the Olympic Games staged in China provides a good window, good showcasing for the real China. I think the history will show what China is really like, how china advances progressing along a wide path. The history will show how correct the decision the IOC took in 2001 in awarding the Olympic Games to China."

"With regard to the issue in Tibet, people do not know the issue about Tibet. I said before you should ask ordinary people in Beijing, in China or even Tibet. I've been to Tibet twice myself. In Tibet, I would like to say a few words. It's not the obligation of BOCOG but since you raised so many questions about Tibet, I am obliged to say a few things about that. In 1998, I was the Secretary General of the Beijing Municipal Education Commission. I went to Tibet to support the education in Lhasa, the capital of Tibet. At that point, I think the population in Tibet is something like 2.34 million people and the state sponsored Tibet with the funding like 2.34 million RMB. That's a lot of money. So every Tibetan will get something like 10,000 RMB a year. At the same time, all the provinces in China are encouraged to support Tibet. For Lhasa, the capital of Tibet, there are two cities, and that's Beijing and one Jiangsu Province, one of the largest province. The province and the city are competing against each in supporting Tibet. I have friends in Tibet who generally welcome the reform and opening up policy. Their living standards have been drastically improved. They liked that. I think it's better for you to know something before you come to the conclusion. That's how China is progressing. China is developing. That is why people walk on the streets are so happy, are so optimistic to talk about their own tomorrow."

"The athletes are happy here about their performance, competition, venues and everything they see. But media, somehow, want to write their articles, want to find something to write about. I understand. But you can not do it at the cost of sacrificing the people of the world. Tell the true stories please. Thank you."

AP

"Mr. Wang, about 2 nights ago the new China looked liked the old China. The Associated Press had 2 photographers out trying to photograph a Tibetan protests. They were bundled away, cameras are taken away. They were pushed to the ground, put in the car, taken away, police never identified themselves, were held. Would you explain this kind of behavior? Giselle, you promised a week ago that this would not happen again but it happened again. Your comments please."

Wang Wei"Thank you for your questions. To be accurate, I will do it in Chinese again. Based on the information we obtained from the police. On 21st of August at 00:05 a.m., the National Stadium to its southwest on Beichen Bridge, 6 Tibetans separatist showed the flag of the separatist movement and cried slogans. The people there were indignant and tried to prevent them from doing so. Whether you like it or not, Tibetan separation is not popular in China. The police in order to prevent the aggravation of the situation and any possible injuries to the pedestrians took the 6 separatist to the police station for investigation, 2 were found to be AP journalists. There was no confiscation of the belongings of the journalists. That's the information we obtained from the police."

AP

"The AP photographers were not part of the protests. They were trying to photograph the protest. They were taken away, the camera, the digital recording device was taken away. Nobody identified themselves. They were never identified by who they were. They were not part of the protests. Giselle, your comment on this."

Wang Wei

"As I told you, that's the information I got so far. Thank you."

Now Comes the Big Spin.... It is the medal total, not gold that matters ! Liars ! Quick, Put on your Air Masks - Hide !

2008-08-23T00:59:00.001-07:00

Click on to read the farcical "mea culpas" posed by the U.S. spin doctors from the USOC and the how one of the mainstream Anglo-American news media go about helping with the spin:

http://www.mercurynews.com/sports/ci_10281360?nclick_check=1

Washington Post reckless broadside from their "attack dog" columnist posing as journalist

2008-08-22T19:21:00.000-07:00

Here's another "attack dog" from the Washington Post, regarding the age of Chinese female Olympics gymnast, He Kexin.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/22/AR2008082201782.html?hpid=topnews

Imagine if He Kexin were black ? Do you think the Washington Post would dare attack her ? This viciousness is another demonstration of the racism in the ultra-biased mainstream U.S. news media, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN.

Further, click on the reaction of He Kexin's parents over this piling and vicious attacks from these "attack dogs" from the shitty Western so-called news media (more like garbage rag sheets):

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080822/D92N9GC00.html

Exec Veep of Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee slams media bias

2008-08-22T18:30:00.001-07:00

I smell rats from the contingent of saboteurs and agent provocateurs who have penetrated these Olympics Games in Beijing... hell-bent on creating havoc, sabotaging, and derailing China's hosting of these Games.

Consider what the Executive Vice-President of the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee said about these rascals in the news media:
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/227447,organizing-committee-executive-vice-president-slams-media.html

There is no question that these schemers, rascals, and scoundrels from the Western press are motivated by racism, white supremacy, and a blind rage to hector, diss, and insult China and the Chinese people, and spite them by any and all means at their arsenal.

And they are shielding themselves with a veneer called "press freedom" and America's so-called constitutionally-protected First Amendment rights of free speech, political speech, and right of protest.

Granted the U.S. Constitution grants any American or inhabitant in Amerika the constitutional right "to be stupid," "to be arrogant" "to be surly" "to be boorish" within their own soil, in their own country, by their own warped set of values..... fact is China is not the USA; nor is it England; and definitely they are no France or Germany.

So what is the "beef" ? Dude ?

If you visit our home, respect our rules, and abide by our standards and values. Be respectful. Be civil. And don't behave like "jerks."

Western news jerks indeed these so-called "rats" and "pit bulls" from the Western news media, including some of these from so-called prestigeous news organizations we call the New York Times, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN, ABC etc.

Those of us Chinese who straddle East and West that the Western mainstream news media doesn't practice what it preaches. A free press is only available for white people, not minorities in their midst.

And the New York Times is one illustration of this chutzpah. Somewhere within that organization, there exists an arrogant white ole man who seems to have a rage within him about China and the Chinese people. He can't see through his racist prejudices and he can't get beyond his high white horse in screaming bloody Mary about China's human rights records, Darfur, Myammar, June 4th Tiananmen, and yes, their favorite icon, the bald-headed "wolf in safron robe," the political monk, His Holiness, the Dolly, aka Dalai Lama.

This liberal "jerk" from within the New York Times is pressing all the levers to bash, to demonize, and to demogogue these Olympics Games, by any and all means necessary and as needed to derail its success. This fart is seething with rage from within his office in the New York Times offices when he sees that the "stink bombs" and mud that the New York Times has been flinging all through these past six months have not hit their targets, but have backfired.

The earth is now flat; and according to their celebrity columnist, Thomas Friedman, Chindia, i.e. China and India have to be reckoned with. And the New York Times and their aging good ole white boys simply can't stand it anymore !

So be it, shitheads. The train has left the station in the new changing brave new world of globalization.

Thanks to the internet, multimedia, and the alternative resources out there for news pespectives of news reporting, news gathering, and news analysis.

That said, I have to lend my kudos to unequivocally state that not all, and I say this qualifiedly, that not all within the Western news media are jerks, pit bulls, rats, rascals, scoundrels, and white supremacists.

There are indeed some very zealous and open-minded professionals. And I have been noticing it, as have any global Chinese, including many savvy Chinese inside China.

In particular, distinguishing themselves with their openness and sensitivity in these Olympics Games coverage, from the Western news media, have been the entire cast and crew of NBC's Today Show.

Hosts Meredith Viera, Matt Lauer, Ann Curry, and especially Al Roker have been exemplary and went out of their cultural blinders to really feel, be sensitized, report on, and understand Beijing, the nuances, the substance and values of the Chinese and its complex society.

And they have reported and shed light in NBC's Today morning show some fascinating glimpses about China and the Chinese people, and how the laobaixing live their lives in China.

When more than 85% of the Chinese people support their government and overwhelmingly tell Pew Research and their pollsters that they are satisfied with China's direction, it says something about the sentiments of the Chinese people.

Do you think the New York Times see this ? Do you think those good ole white boys have the decency to tamp down their bigotry, their CB, and their CD ?

Hell, No. Bastards. Rats. Pit Bulls. +#$@&*

Big Deal. Let the Games Continue.

And London and the Brits.... be forewarned. 2012 can and will be payback time if your Prime Minister Gordon Brown tries to grandstand and throw a "stink bomb" during the closing ceremonies.

We ethnic Chinese globally will always remember. And we will fight back, by our own way, in our own time, by our own methods, as deemed necessary and applicable.

Be admonished. Be Gwei. And be on your best behavior, Brits.

London is next.

'Fessing up to the reality -McClatchy News admits U.S. Gold Medal count falls short and will be Number 2, not Number 1; but compare how NYT spins it.

2008-08-22T16:40:00.000-07:00

The biased U.S. mainstream news media has been allowed to get away with a lot of spin to the point where I honestly believe that the Americans have just rifled in and succeded in making "top-spinning" as an Olympics sports for the next Olympics Games in London for 2012 since they are so good at it.

Finally, the McClatchy News organizations 'fesses up to the Gold Medal Count and that Team USA will fall short to being and staing Numero Uno.... Number One, ceding that to China.

Click on:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/49891.html

And compare and read how the biased New York Times spun the story:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/23/sports/olympics/23olympics.html?hp

Talk all they can, and spin all they will.... the fact remains that a bare-footed Jamaican sprinter, 6 foot 6 inches Usain Bolt, on chicken mcnuggets as diet, no hype, no special diet, no specially-customed made Nike running shoes, no Colorado Olympics training regimen, no Speedo, no nothing, is able to sprint past TEAM USA, and win not one, not two, but three Gold medals and broke the world records, with room to spare.

And talk about the cyclists from Team USA landing at the Beijing International Airport, air masks and all. Where are those rude gringo jerks now ?

Talk about the special food, the container-load of specially-prepared meals for Team USA, the chefs, the dieticians, the trainers, the masseuse, the coaches, the sports doctors, the sports gear experts, the what-not rigmarole associated with the sports machine of Team USA, and guess what ? They can't even pass the batons right on the 400-metre relay competition, for both males and female Olympians.

And they had to use marker pens to write on their Team USA shirts to identify themselves as qualifiable during the race with their assigned numbers ?

What kind of crock is this ?

Shame. Shame. Shame.

"Double Standard" U.S. Pol insists right for political speech and rabble-rousing in Beijing, but denies same in the U.S. Congress by a GOP legislator

2008-08-22T16:24:00.002-07:00

Madame Speaker Nancy Pelosi.... where's the logic of your human rights advocacy and the insistence on political free speech by your "mau mau" Team Tibet-Shangri-la protesters clamoring to unfurl banners and scale and interlope upon Chinese consulate roofs in the name of "free speech" and First Amendment rights of protest ?

Here we go ... it is "kosher" for mau-mau Tibetan tribalists to grandstand in Beijing in the name of "free speech" and "human rights" but it is not kosher for a U.S. congressman from the GOP representing North Carolina to post a memorial board outside of his congressional office hallway in memory of the U.S. soldiers in Camp Lejeune who have been killed in Iraq !

Why the difference in treatment accorded the "mau mau" grandstanders from Team Tibet-Shangrila relative to the congressman from North Carolina both asserting their right for political "free speech" ?

As native-Americans have always said of the white man, "White man (woman) speaks with a "forked" tongue !

Isn't this absurd ? Why the CB and CD ? Read post below:

2008-08-22T16:24:00.001-07:00

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