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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

By LORI ANDREWS


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Shifting Strategy of PAX AMERICANA

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

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

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

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

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rIccco4PRRk&feature=fvst

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

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

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.

Download this gallery (ZIP, null KB)Download full size (79 KB)

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 !!!

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"

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 :-)

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!"

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

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

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 ?

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