Kindle has become the most gifted item in Amazon's history. On Christmas Day 2009, for the first time ever, customers purchased more Kindle books than physical books.
This basically humanitarian medical issue is a linchpin for several vital and contentious issues. State vs. Federal authority, the rights of patients and physicians, the case of victimless "crime" and ultimately, personal freedom. The criminalization of marijuana as a personal recreational choice extends to the prohibition of medical use in the U.S., which cruelly impacts cancer, glaucauma epilepsy, bipolar disorder and other patients for whom it could provide demonstrable efficacious relief. The first known mention of cannabis is in a Chinese medical text of 2737 BC. It was used as medicine throughout Asia and the Middle East to treat a variety of conditions.
The Supreme Court hears a California case Monday that could become a signature decision of the Rehnquist era.
By Warren Richey, Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON - Angel Raich and Diane Monson know plenty about the failings of modern medicine.
Ms. Raich has been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, and Ms. Monson suffers from what her doctors say is a degenerative spine disease. Both women have tried virtually every form of medication legally available, but the multiple side effects from prescription drugs have only compounded their difficulties.
In searching for an alternative, and upon their physicians' advice, the two California residents started using marijuana. Both say it helps them cope with pain.
But, yes, there is a problem. While medical use of marijuana is authorized under a 1996 California law, federal law bans marijuana as an illegal drug.
Monday Raich and Monson's case arrives at the US Supreme Court where the justices must decide whether California law or federal law should apply.
How the justices decide the case could affect more than just the applicability of medical-marijuana laws in California and a handful of other states with similar provisions. It could redefine the balance of power between Congress and the states and become a signature decision of the Supreme Court under Chief Justice William Rehnquist.
"I think it will be a landmark, one way or the other," says Randy Barnett, a professor at Boston University School of Law, who is arguing the case for Raich and Monson.
...Many analysts say the medical- marijuana case places the high court at a crossroads.
Read the rest of this fine article at the Christian Science Monitor which has a map of U.S. States that have pased laws permitting the medical use of cannabis as part of their excellent political, historical, medical and constitutional analysis.
Mottos
The motto for the New York Times is "All The News That's Fit to Print"
The motto for the Japan Times is "All the News without Fear or Favor"
By Munir Kotadia, ZDNet Australia 12 October 2004
An army of more than 500 hackers hired by the North Korean military could find Australian businesses a "softer target" than their US or European-based counterparts, according to security experts.
The hacking army’s mission is to break into South Korean, Japanese and American corporate networks to gather intelligence and steal trade secrets, according to reports.
But security experts are concerned because although Australian-based corporates’ hold the same intellectual property as their US and EU-based offices, they are not as paranoid about security.
A US security expert who requested anonymity said Australia could provide a "back door" into corporate networks and provide the North Koreans’ with intellectual property worth billions of dollars.
"Countries like China and North Korea are not exactly poster children for copyright enforcement. North Korea’s economic position is not favourable and that makes it more dangerous. They want the ability to manufacture goods better and cheaper," the security expert said.
Zhang Yimou's "House of Flying Daggers... is an expression of a significant, if subtle change that is starting to brew in Chinese film: "Daggers," which is being released in New York on Dec. 3 by Sony Pictures Classics, may be the first large-scale mainland Chinese movie to assert a frank, liberated approach to sex. And the Chinese government had no objections.
...snip
In a telephone interview from Beijing, Mr. Zhang said he conceived "Daggers" in the late 1990's as a companion to "Hero," his epic about the birth of the first Chinese empire.
The two movies share the theme of sacrifice. In "Hero," Mr. Zhang said, the individual sacrifices everything for an overriding political goal. In "Daggers," the characters give up everything for romantic love.
"For thousands of years, there's been a tradition of teaching us in China to think in terms of the collective experience, so we are rarely able to act in accordance with personal desires or emotions," he said. "Now young people, especially under Western influences, have become much more interested in themselves and their own values."
...snip
In "Daggers," Jin spies on the bathing Mei (A virgin? Who knows?). Mei realizes he is there, and lets him know she knows. And she lets him continue watching, a lead-up to steamy smooching session that made at least one knowledgeable viewer say he wanted to "leave the theater to give them some privacy."
That viewer was Grady Hendrix, a co-founder of Subway Cinema, a group in New York that fosters and exhibits Asian films. Something else surprised Mr. Hendrix.
"Things get downright fetishy when Mei's captors take her to the dungeon and show her the torture device they're going to use," he said. He also mentioned the scene in which the two male costars are tied up in a "Japanese hemp-and-rope bondage kind of way," adding with a laugh, "It should be called 'House of the Flying Fetish.' " ...
"China may be one of the only countries that can legitimately balance that line between characters who want to tear each other's clothes off or to do nothing but talk and have it be very sexual," Mr. Hendrix said, mentioning similarities with the 1950's in America.
Summing up this critical juncture in mainland Chinese onscreen mores, he said: "They can walk the line between passion and morality. It comes out of a real place in terms of culture and values. It feels Chinese."
Jagger back in prison clothes Sir Mick Jagger is the unwitting star of an advertising campaign for a range of clothing made by prison inmates.
A German company is using the Rolling Stone's image alongside a rogue's gallery of famous crooks.
It's because of his 1967 drugs conviction which landed him with a three month jail sentence that was later overturned on appeal.
Stephan Bohle, an advertising executive for the Haeftling - German for jailbird - line of clothing, said: "We only chose one contempory criminal for the current campaign, and he was British.
"We don't want to say what his name is but he is a celebrity who served time in jail. We didn't ask him for permission - we hope he wont find out! We are not planning to take the campaign to England and he is British, so we dont think he will mind."
Bush Seeks Money for Abstinence Education AP - Thu Nov 25, 4:19 PM ET
President Bush's re-election insures that more federal money will flow to abstinence education that precludes discussion of birth control, even as the administration awaits evidence that the approach gets kids to refrain from sex.
TURKEY! Make that two.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
You GO girl!!
Banned from Driving, Saudi Woman Takes to the Sky Wed Nov 24, 8:55 AM ET
RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi woman is set to challenge religious conservatives by becoming the first female pilot in a country where women are not even allowed to drive.
Tuesday, November 23, 2004
Chinese and American Interests in Inner and Outer Space
More commercial flights between the two countries and space program cooperation demonstrate the increasing flow of people, technology and information between the two great nations whose alliance and disputes will impact progress and events in the worldwide community.
U.S. Airlines Vie for Flights to China AP
Three of the nation's largest airlines and several smaller carriers have made their final presentations to federal regulators and are taking potshots at each other in a competition to win the first new flights between the United States and China in more than a decade.
Chinese Space Official to Visit NASA Chief Reuters
The head of China's space agency will visit NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe next week, a move one U.S. expert said could mean increased cooperation between the two countries.
Cell Phones Continue to Explode
When I blogged Explosive Hong Kong Phone Call in April, I thought it was a relatively isolated, even somewhat comical incident (no injury occurred that time). In fact, I think I found the item in Yahoo's "Oddly Enough" collection. However, it turns out to be a worldwide and not so isolated phenomenon, caused by defective or counterfeit batteries as this report, from Yahoo's Technology News section indicates.
WASHINGTON - Curtis Sathre said it was like a bomb going off. His 13-year-old son Michael stood stunned, ears ringing, hand gushing blood after his cell phone exploded. Safety officials have received 83 reports of cell phones exploding or catching fire in the past two years, usually because of bad batteries or chargers.
If re-unification pressure doesn't start a war between Taiwan and China, the Taiwanification of Chinese brides certainly could. Chinese men are going to have a hard enough time finding marriagable women as the gender gap continues to catch up with the Chinese population as it ages-- without wealthy Taiwanese suitors making off with their young ladies. This story about increasing cross-strait marriages adds a whole new element to the conflict between Taiwan and mainland China
From the Los Angeles Times (free subscription required to read the entire article)
Unions Across a Divide Despite cross-strait tensions, Taiwanese men are flocking to China to find and bring back young brides who are eager for a better life.
By Mark Magnier, Times Staff Writer
LIUZHOU, China and Taiwan and China may be rattling sabers, targeting missiles and threatening war, but that doesn't stop [a Taiwanese man from looking for love on mainland China].
...snip
Despite years of hostility between Taiwan and China, a bridge between the two adversaries is quietly being built by thousands of cross-strait marriages every year. Nowadays, more than 20% of all Taiwanese marry a mainlander, about 55,000 annually, compared with 14% five years ago. The majority of couples meet on their own through friends or business dealings. For those ... without the time or inclination to do their own legwork, however, a vibrant business has developed. Taiwanese men pay $5,000 to $10,000 for a trip to the mainland, scores of introductions and help with the marriage certificate and related paperwork.
...snip
Not everyone thinks cross-strait pairings are such a great idea. Given China's one-child policy, some parents of prospective brides fret about losing their only offspring to Taiwan, which can seem a world away. Occasionally the bride's family will ask for compensation, or raise the fear that a Taiwanese earthquake or Chinese attack on Taiwan could put her in harm's way.
...snip
Although China and Taiwan share a heritage and language, there are inevitable cultural barriers to overcome after half a century apart.
"Mainland girls, especially northerners, like strong, spicy food, while older Taiwanese prefer theirs mild," said agent Yu. "Food is so important to the Chinese, it can break up a marriage." ... And while mainland brides are becoming more mainstream, Taiwanese society can still look down on them as bumpkins with funny accents.
..snip
As the number of cross-strait couples rises, some see a quiet but important political dividend in the making. "In ancient history, warring kings married daughters to the other side to calm things down," said [cross straits marriage broker] Zhu on a trip to Liuzhou with six Taiwanese bachelors." In the same way, I think these marriages can also be an important stabilizing force between China and Taiwan."
"If Chinese President Hu Jintao had a Taiwanese wife and Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian had a mainland wife, the world would be a lot better off," said Yu Ming-ming, a matchmaker with Taipei's Wedding Information Center agency. "I feel we're a really important link."
Mr. Yu may well have to eat his words. The march of time bringing the mainland Chinese gender gap to a head will soon prove this to be a risky philosphy, as this report from the from the Detroit Free Press, which is echoed in somewhat less drastic terms in China Daily, cautions.
China now has the most serious problems with gender imbalance in the world. The nation has 12.7 million more boys than girls under age 9. By 2020, it may have 30 million to 40 million restless young men unable to find spouses.
The gender gap, blamed on the combination of the one-child policy in China (though China Daily scoffs at this, of course) and the traditional preference for male offspring are going to make for overheated tempers if Taiwanese men continue to cherry-pick brides from the mainland.
Thanks to my dear friend and colleague Marc Shnapp for the email tip on this one.
Elephant stomps Chinese keeper, will live to tell about it
This story is flippant enough, but why would the elephant be "possibly suffering from sunstroke?" When I visited the Beijing zoo last March, I saw some animals in conditions of great neglect, elephants included. Elephants are accustomed to hot weather, but they need shelter. What were the occupational safety measures that would have protected the worker? Put those omissions together and you get some idea about journalism with Chinese characteristics.
BEIJING (Reuters) - An elephant that stamped on his keeper at a Chinese zoo in the mating season and crushed him to death has been declared innocent because of mitigating circumstances, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.
Hu Tianmin was cleaning the elephant house at the zoo in Kunming, capital of Yunnan province, in August when the five-ton, 20-year-old male Asian elephant named "Zhongbo" lifted him up, threw him to the ground and stamped on him.
"The production safety administration in Kunming confirmed that the victim was responsible for his own tragedy because he had entered the elephant pen all alone and without adopting any protective measures, in violation of zoo rules," Xinhua said.
Zoo officials said it was the mating season and the elephant was possibly suffering from sunstroke at the time, which made it irritable and prone to attack.
The general manager of the zoo and at least four officials in charge of security were penalized by the production safety administration, Xinhua said without giving details.
"Visitors and zookeepers have been advised not to get too close to the animals in future," it said.
Sunday, November 21, 2004
On Being Blue
Blue Movies (enjambments)
I
blue demise
the complexion
of the resting corpse
like marble
or wound-deep ice.
death's pale shadow
peaceful on the flesh
our last earthly presentation:
an exquisite shade of blue
II
blue cool
sapphire fingered jewels
waved w/ smoky indication
in the bistro and
the kind of jazz that
imprints new
electric blue
circuit streams that
neon rainbow trout can swim in
III
blue day
started out knowing
that nothing will change
hanging on crumbs of hope
that blow away in the wind
scooped up by rollicking birds
my moody, broody
shredded resignation fades
to blue
IV
blue streak
whambam pop
techno tempest
torrents rip monsoon dunes
unbelieving cobalt pain
too fast to feel
V
deep blue
your eyes at low tide
the ocean is careening
dark skies moan
hermit crabs catch
scallops in winks
and probing glances
azure do love you
VI
blue flash
zoom
b-lew
VII
blueberries
nuzzle and nibble them in
suck and sneakslipping sweetness
tasty little knobs
turn me blue
rolling around
pressing between tongue and palate
rocking slightly
they tremble before
they burst
Tuesday, November 16, 2004
How many black holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall
No matter how dire things sometimes seem on terra firma, to the vast panarama we rotate within, it's just another speck in the whirlwind of time.
By Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer
posted: 15 November 200406:23 am ET Astronomers
think they have found a rare if not unique black hole very near the center of the Milky Way. That would make two of the beasts in that part of the galaxy.
...snip
Black holes can't be seen, because everything that falls into them, including light, is trapped. But the swift motions of gas and stars near an otherwise invisible object allows astronomers to calculate that it's a black hole and even to estimate its mass.
If the newfound object, catalogued as GCIRS 13E, is indeed a middleweight black hole, it is likely a rare variety, perhaps one of kind, that formed farther out and has been lured to the galactic center.
Right on, Ensign
Wil Wheaton, he a former Star Trek TNG star, now a much-read blogger and successful author, has this advice at the top of his endearing weblog.
If you have a Gmail invite, why not donate it to gmail4troops.com and help a soldier feel a little bit closer to home?
I thought it was good enough to pass on. Wheaton, you're a stand-up guy.
Monday, November 15, 2004
Clever ways to counterfeit - can original technology be far behind?
A fascinating analysis in the International Herald Tribune explores Chinese counterfeiting schemes that are so clever and complex they may be evidence of the capacity for original technology that would revolutionize the Chinese mentality about intellectual property protection. It starts with:
SHANGHAI International pressure on China to stop its counterfeiters is producing an unexpected twist. Rather than just copying another company's product, many Chinese businesses are filing patents and claiming other intellectual property rights to the counterfeits locally, in effect becoming the legal owners, at least in China.
Companies in the counterfeiting industry, which make everything from knock-offs of Calloway golf clubs and Zippo lighters to brand-name clothes and DVD players for a small fraction of their price in the West, may then even sue foreign companies for ostensibly stealing their patented products.
..snip
"Chinese industry has a phrase for it," said Xiang Wang, an intellectual property lawyer at the Shanghai office of the international law firm White & Case. "They call it 'a Great Wall of Patents."'
...snip
Because patents and trademarks are territorial, unless a foreign company has already filed them in China, its foreign patents and trademarks are invalid in the country.
Thus, Xiang said, if foreign companies do not file their patents and trademarks in China "proactively," their merchandise might be stopped by customs agents and prevented from entering the country. Worse, if they do bring their products into China, the local pirating companies may even sue them for ostensibly stealing patented products, he said.
and ends with
And while the country is criticized for failing to punish the counterfeiters, the enforcement job gets ever more difficult as counterfeiters come up with ingenious ways of masking production. Using DVD players as an example, Xiang said manufacturers set up factories in different places, each one making a different part of the player. The final product is assembled quickly in one place and not stockpiled but distributed immediately, making it next to impossible to prosecute a plant that makes only one part of a copyrighted DVD player.
Henri Richard, executive vice president for worldwide sales and marketing for Advanced Micro Devices, who was in China for the opening of a new headquarters in Beijing, said that making the right strategic decisions in advance was one key to success in China.
He said that he also thought that the Chinese would change over time.
"I think that as they start to build their own intellectual property, they will have a very different view of the whole equation," said Richard, whose company has a new joint venture in the area of software and an embedded processor with a company in China.
"When corporations like Lenovo, Founder and Huawei will have developed a certain number of new technologies and hold patents against them, I'm sure they will be very concerned about the protection of their intellectual property, and that will drive a lot of behavioral change - which, by the way, I think has already taken place."
Do it today, do it now, if you can. If your web host's server goes down and their backups aren't perfect or your database corupts, you lose all that journaling. It happens. It's been on my mind for a while now, but I just read this sad story on Peoria Pundit (don't ask) of a blog that went down. Here's an excerpt:
The problem is that my hosting company had a server crash. And when they restored from a back up, the most recent post they had stored was on Oct. 10.So,all those posts are gone.Like they never existed. Needless to say. I am frosted.Normally, I would go to my own backups, but my last backup preceded theirs apparently. My bad, and I blame no one by myself for my lack of dilligence.
Every blog application has a recipie to do this but basically, you take your blog page and your archives and use the File/Save As: Web Page Complete (on IE; use the corresponding menu commands on your browser) on the top page and each archive page. If you have individual archive pages, change your template temporarily to create one page with all posts, or monthly archives and save these to your hard disk.
Friday, November 12, 2004
Chinese Not So Hip-Hop, Hop Sing Pop?
From the Los Angeles Times, reproduced in its entirety. I was enthralled by this article but I can tell you this. No matter how effete Frammolino thinks Chinese hip-hop is, it's outstanding compared to their pop music. Still I found this piece of culture shock fascinating.
November 12, 2004
You Can't Get a Bad Rap Here Hip-hop has caught on in China, but censorship has cleaned it up. The watered-down ditties are even used in public service announcements.
By Ralph Frammolino, Times Staff Writer
BEIJING He's a high-school dropout who wears a bandana pulled tight across his skull. His hutong, or 'hood, is one of the city's poorest precincts where visitors dodge vegetable vendors on bikes and residents must share the public squat toilets.
But when Wang "MC Webber" Bo opens his mouth to rap, what comes out from one of China's hottest young artists would make an original gangsta' cry.
"In Beijing, walk along Chang'An Avenue. In Beijing, there are many exotic, beautiful women. In Beijing, you can burn incense at the Lama Temple. In Beijing"
China has accomplished what millions of disapproving American parents could not: tamed hip-hop music.
Instead of often obscene and violent tales from the inner city, Wang and other leading rappers here are taking to the stage with lyrics that glorify national pride, celebrate tourist attractions and preach against the dangers of adolescent impulsiveness.
One group is so proud of its songs that it has affixed a sticker to its debut album asking fans to share it with their parents.
State-controlled television features public service announcements in rap about caring for the environment and respecting elders, leading one local academic to suggest that hip-hop has become the unofficial music of the Communist government.
Such rah-rah rap is far removed from the screeds made in the U.S. by some artists whose art reflects their criminal records.
Shanghai rapper Blakk Bubble, who cut his teeth on the likes of Naughty by Nature, said he regards American lyrics as "research" into the "low life of some poor black men."
"I never promote new people to rap such things because, in China, there are actually no gangsters," said Bubble, a.k.a. Wang Fan, 25, an assistant communications manager for Ubisoft computers. "In America, you can get a gun license and you can purchase guns and kill people. But in China, such things would not happen."
Rap was born on the sidewalks of New York in the 1970s as a melding of braggadocio and beat-driven music. It found a home on the blocks where incomes were limited — all that was needed to go pro was a microphone and a turntable.
The genre soon became an outlet for the disaffected. During the 1980s, bands such as Public Enemy and NWA trained their angry cadences on police brutality and the establishment.
By the 1990s, the street-crime imagery and sexually explicit lyrics of "gangsta" rap had hit pay dirt in the U.S. market. It now is ubiquitous in popular American culture.
But Chinese rap has about as much bite as a tiger with false teeth, mainly because of government control.
Before appearing in concert or releasing a record, Chinese artists must submit their lyrics for approval by the Ministry of Culture, which vetoes anything deemed obscene or politically unacceptable. Enforcement has been inconsistent, and the more "radical" elements of Chinese rap still find their way onto the Internet. But the policing of tunes has forced commercial groups and their record companies to give rap a certain wholesomeness.
Rapper "Sketch Krime," of the group Dragon Tongue Squad, explained how censorship works.
Take his big beef, public education.
"I hate school. I hate teachers. I hate my classmates. I hate the Chinese educational system," said Krime, 21, a Beijing resident and high school dropout who was born Junju Lee. "Maybe I think Chinese education would ruin my life, ruin my mind and after graduation, I would be like everybody else, living a boring life."
But try putting that in a flow, as lines of continuous rhymes are called.
He paused. "Can I be honest?" The Chinese government would never tolerate it, he said.
Compliance makes for good business strategy, said Li Hongjie, who runs the Dragon Tongue record label that recruited Krime's band. Li said that the rock genre in China was too political for its own good. As a result, the government limited the number of live concerts and "kept it from developing."
Now rap artists and their managers are trying not to repeat the mistake.
"If you want to spread music, you have to think about the government," Li said.
The tactic has been so successful that the government is all but rapping along, says Teng Jimeng, professor of American culture at Beijing Foreign Studies University.
"Strangely, the Chinese authorities never accepted hard rock, heavy metal and punk," he said. "All that stuff exists on an underground basis. Punk rockers in Beijing are starving. But these rappers are having an easy time."
Rap is now heard on commercials and public service announcements aired over the government-controlled television network.
And talk about a cultural revolution: For the commemoration of Mao Tse-tung's 110th birthday last year, one firm released an album based on the dead leader's writings.
China's fascination with rap is a relatively new phenomenon. Detroit-area native Dana Burton recalled that when he came to Shanghai five years ago to teach English, the closest thing to hip-hop music he could find was a hotel lounge act with a Michael Jackson impersonator.
Burton set out to change all that by holding hip-hop parties in the backroom of a Shanghai nightclub, playing the same kind of industrial-strength gangster flows that were popular in the States.
Although Chinese rock star Cui Jian wowed critics with the first rap song on his mid-1980s debut album, few wannabe MCs tried it because they stumbled over the Mandarin language's need for four distinct tones.
Once they conquered that, a new generation of Chinese rappers copied the hard-edged attitude of their American counterparts -- but only to a point, said Burton, who created a nationwide freestyle rap contest three years ago.
"The attitude comes out. The battle is vicious. It gets really dirty," Burton said. "But people know those limits. This is China. Glorifying street culture doesn't translate.
"Here, it's cut and dried. If you have a gun and you shoot someone, you're going to be executed. You sell drugs, you're gone," he said.
With three national freestyle titles and a debut album, Wang's story is about as ghetto as China gets. After watching an MC Hammer video when he was 15, Wang quit school and set out to make it big as a rapper.
Like Eminem's character in the hit movie "8 Mile," Wang practiced his flows for hours each day in his bedroom. He painted graffiti on the wall of his family's compound. He later formed the group Yin Ts'ang.
The group signed a record deal for $6,000 and its debut album features a tongue-in-cheek song about the SARS epidemic, as well as the popular cut "Welcome to Beijing," a long list of the Chinese capital's tourist attractions.
But Wang, who recently moved out of his parents' home to an apartment uptown, complained about the order from his record label to change the lyrics for a song about two men sent to perdition because they had grown rich by cheating people.
The company's counter-suggestion, according to Wang: "You should do something positive about the economic development in China."
Another group called Kung Fu flaunts the wholesomeness of what its lead singer, 24-year-old Yang Fan, calls "reformed" rap.
The title cut of the group's debut CD, "Impulsion," warns against acting on teenage impulse like a distraught student who commits suicide. To underscore its family-friendly theme, a label on the group's debut album pleads: "Please recommend this record to your parents."
One person who won't be playing such tunes is Beijing-area disk jockey Chen "MC Allan" Shen.
On a recent Friday night, Chen presided over dual turn tables on a raised stage at Club Look, where he pumped a gyrating dance crowd with deafening cuts from Jay-Z, DMX and other American artists.
A few in the crowd walked around in hip-hop regalia: a Chinese man sporting an Afro, another one with an oversized Miami Dolphins jersey, a woman in a white fedora and little else.
Chen was unimpressed.
"Nobody who comes here understands hip-hop," Chen said, admitting that even he didn't fully grasp the genre. "It's just popular in China at the moment."
He refused to play any Chinese rap artists during his hourlong set.
"They can't curse, they basically have to say life is great, life is beautiful, nothing's wrong," he said. "It's not hip-hop."
Thursday, November 11, 2004
Ningxia restauranteur rebels against government freebies
A furious restauranteur in Tongxin county in northern China's Ningxia has a suitcase full of meal checks that officials won't pay. He's now going to try collecting under the law. I'll try to keep you posted but successful "suing of city hall" isn't usually reported in the local media.
How did I miss this 11 days ago? Oh right, the U.S. elections! Here it is, from The Australian, online a newspaper I really enjoy reading.
Restaurateur fed up with fat cats AFP
November 01, 2004
BEIJING: A restaurateur is taking a government bureau to court for not paying for meals for years in what he vows will be the first step to recovering more than 800,000 yuan of unpaid bills from many departments.
Many businessmen in China face frustration over losses caused by officials who are known to abuse their positions and demand products and services for free.
But Yang Kaili, unlike many other victims, has gone public, filing a lawsuit against the development, planning, economic and trade bureau in Tongxin county in northern China's Ningxia province, the Xinhua news agency said in a website report.
"In the past, when I take the bills to the work units to ask them to pay, they acknowledge their bill, tell me they indeed lack money and ask me to wait. But this year, some offices are outright trying to skirt responsibility," Yang said.
"They said they won't accept previous leaders' bills. They tell me to find whoever signed the bill!"
[...snip...]
"This is only the beginning," Yang swore. "I want to use the law to demand payment of all the money owed to me."
I was watching CNN (Asian broadcast) this morning which featured a 5 second pic-bit of a woman negotiating a bicycle through heavy traffic in a busy Beijing intersection with the commentary that the bicycle city is now becoming the automobile city. With progress, some things are gained and others lost but the image of Beijing as a bicycle city will always be one of my fondest. The wide bike lanes on either side of every street are always filled with cyclists, elderly, children, students, tricycle trucks and pedicabs. They flow at a speed the eye can absorb in a fluid threaded line through the city's veins and arteries, their riders preternaturally aware of one another as their courses form sinuous braids that weave through Beijing, a throbbing stream of industriousness. Hundreds of bicycles park in orderly rows outside every school, businesse, mall, supermarket, public transportation terminus and national attraction.
Stacks of parts and accessories surround bike repairmen and women occupying the sidewalks at the ready to fix a tire, tighten brakes and handle bars, install baskets. When my Beijing bicycle needed attention, I brought it one of these and was offered a small plastic stool to sit on and a paper cup of tea to wait with as the repairman, who spoke not a word of English attended to my loose rusty chain. The cost of this and a new basket and bell was less than two dollars.
As more and more automobiles, a potent symbol of the increasing fortunes of the emergent urban Chinese middle class, jam the streets of Beijing and other large cities, the bicycle lanes are under pressure. Most of them are fenced off with lightweight white metal boundaries but many of them, particularly on wide streets are open. Cars now cut in and out of them to get through traffic. As the already crushing traffic increases, with sales of cars increasing exponentialy, the bicycle lanes might be a thing of the past very soon.
There is an independent film made in 2002, available widely on DVD with English subtitles called Bejing Bicycle. It's not very good, but I recommend it anyway. It does offer a realistic view of how the sub middle-class, the vast majority of ordinary people in Beijing, live and relate to one another. A teenage peasant boy from the provinces gets a job in Beijing as a bicycle courrier. He gets a bicycle as part of the employment package but the cost of the bike is deducted from his wages until it is paid back. As soon as the bike is paid off, it is stolen.
To impress a pretty classmate, a teenage schoolboy acquires a cool bicycle, which he has to hide from his family because they can't really afford it. It's the same bike, which the delivery boy soon 'finds.' The film follows the dispute over the bike which reveals the classism between Beijingers and migrant workers. The film was originally banned in China, but the ban was lifted after it and its director, Wang Xiaoshuai won awards at foreign film festivals.
"Under strict interpretation of the rules, we can't run that programming before 10 p.m.," said Ray Cole, president of Citadel, which owns WOI-TV in Des Moines, KCAU-TV in Sioux City and KLKN-TV in Lincoln, Neb.
[...snip...]
"We're just coming off an election where moral issues were cited as a reason by people voting one way or another and, in my opinion, the commissioners are fearful of the new Congress," Cole said.
Monday, November 08, 2004
Hope is just a four-letter word
I have been getting a flood of agonized post-election emails from Americans stateside and abroad. Many contain links to website articles crying foul or newsbytes by psychologists worried about post-traumatic stress and creeping depression and dispair. We've had a week. It's time to exercise that venerable American tradition of recovery. The Sox won the series, f'chrissakes! We can beat this. But first we need to heal. There is nothing more healing than a little perspective and nothing more difficult to achieve when you're depressed. But this essay, from Working for Change is a damn good start. I dare you to read it, I beg you to read it, I urge you to read it.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. This confounds us, because we are talking about exactly the period when human beings became so ingenious technologically that they could plan and predict the exact time of someone landing on the moon, or walk down the street talking to someone halfway around the earth. Let's go back a hundred years. A revolution to overthrow the tsar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers, but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Given the Russian Revolution, who could have predicted Stalin's deformation of it, or Khrushchev's astounding exposure of Stalin, or Gorbachev's succession of surprises?
[--snip--]
If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places-and there are so many-where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Adapted from The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, edited by Paul Rogat Loeb
This is not a dead end, this is a crossroad!
Sunday, November 07, 2004
Oh Canada! Looking good after American Elections?
This is an Andy Borowitz Humor Column from November 3, 2004. When I got it by email from a distraught friend in Los Angeles, in my moment of darkness, I believed it and showed it to my husband, he the scrupulous proprietor of the LongBow Papers, who promptly scoffed me back into my senses.
CANADA REPORTS HUGE JUMP IN IMMIGRATION
Over 55,000,000 Requests for Citizenship Since Tuesday Night
Canadian immigration officials have reported a huge increase in the number of requests for Canadian citizenship in the past twenty-four hours, with over fifty-five million such inquiries pouring in since late Tuesday night.
Of those fifty-five million requests, well over 99.99% of them came from U.S. citizens, the lion's share residing in such states as New York, California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Washington, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, and the District of Columbia.
Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Pierre Pettigrew said that he was "flabbergasted" by the fifty-five-million-plus requests for Canadian citizenship, adding that it was difficult to pinpoint the precise reasons for the staggering increase.
"My only theory is that after many years of exposure in the U.S., hockey is finally starting to catch on," Mr. Pettigrew said.
He cautioned, however, that it is impossible to know exactly what is sparking the sudden interest in America's frozen neighbor to the north: "People answering our immigration hotline say that it is hard to understand many of the American callers because they are sobbing uncontrollably."
In other news, President Bush used his acceptance speech Wednesday to reach out to supporters of Sen. John Kerry, telling them, "You can run, but you can't hide."
Elsewhere, experts said that exit polls may have falsely predicted a Kerry victory because Kerry voters exited while Bush voters stayed behind and voted again.
But it does have some basis in truth: This from the Sydney Morning Herald via Reuters
The number of US citizens visiting Canada's main immigration website has shot up six-fold as Americans flirt with the idea of abandoning their homeland after President George Bush's election win this week.
"When we looked at the first day after the election, November 3, our website hit a new high, almost double the previous record high," immigration ministry spokeswoman Maria Iadinardi said today.
On an average day some 20,000 people in the United States log onto the website, http://www.cic.gc.ca - a figure which rocketed to 115,016 on Wednesday. The number of US visits settled down to 65,803 yesterday, still well above the norm.
Bush's victory sparked speculation that disconsolate Democrats, gay and lesbian couples and others might decide to start a new life in Canada, a country that tilts more to the left than the United States.
Would-be immigrants to Canada can apply to become permanent resident, a process that often takes a year. The other main way to move north on a long-term basis is to find a job, which requires a work permit.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Cleaning up China's Potties for the Olympics
As any foreigner visiting or living in China would say, it's about time.
BEIJING (Reuters) - China's capital is getting new stadiums, new subways and new greenery.
Now, with preparations for the 2008 Beijing Olympics well underway, attention is turning to a less grand but no less important bit of infrastructure: the state of the city's toilets.
China, flushed with pride over its booming economy and successful Olympic bid, will add another feather to its cap when it plays host to the fourth annual World Toilet Summit, to kick off later this month. "We are quickening the pace of toilet construction and the international conference is being held at a time China has already realized unprecedented achievements," Yu Debin, deputy director of Beijing's Bureau of Tourism told reporters on Friday.
Beijing is known for its imperial parks and ancient temples, but along with sites like the Forbidden City and the Summer Palace the city's toilets have gained notoriety in their own right, known more for stink than sanitation.
Most of China's public toilets are squat-style pits with no running water, toilet paper or hand washing facilities.
Officials aim to use the summit to help change that, with workshops on such topics as "Toilet Management and Hygiene," "Energy-Saving Measures" and "The Humanized Toilet."
...
Not to be outdone, nearby Tianjin municipality has launched a "Toilet Renovation Project," state media reported, which will aim to renovate one million local latrines and bring flushing, indoor comfort to rural residents.
But despite offers of subsidies, officials said it would not be easy to persuade villagers, who associate latrines with stink and filth that should not be allowed inside their houses.
I'm glad something like the Olympics has come along to draw official attention to the condition of bathrooms in the Emperor's city and hopefully the rest of China. Certainly one of the most pungent culture shocks greeting a westerner who comes to China to live or visit is the toilets...unless a visitor puddle-jumps from one western style hotel to another. Using "squatters," even those which flush, is an, uh, learning curve. Even when bathrooms are regularly maintained, it is difficult to keep them sanitary with old and faulty plumbing. Toilet paper, when used, is not supposed to be flushed, but put in an uncovered wastebasket, where the overflowing collection of it greets the customer. Toilet paper is often not supplied in the stalls, so everyone carries little packets of tissue with them so they don't get caught without.
In America the health codes require a restaurant employee to wash their hands with hot water and soap after using the w.c. In China, if there is a sink for hand-washing in the w.c. there is no hot water although since the SARS outbreak, I do find that more bathrooms offer soap.
China can deploy a virtual army of workers to quickly master the task of cleaning up and modernizing public toilets. It will be a much better place to visit and live afterwards. As of now, the typical urban Chinese toilet is about on a par with a foul barroom john in America. I've always wondered why this wasn't more of a development priority. Beijing is a wonderful city to visit or live in, despite the pollution and traffic. I'm looking forward to updated clean bathrooms.
Friday, November 05, 2004
One Realist Still Apt
Paul Krassner's satiric magazine The Realist ran this cartoon decades ago. John Doss from B*linas, sent it along to Crackpot Chronicles yesterday as a commentary on the 2004 election. Thanks, John! Shows to go you we've survived this before...and we will again.
Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Gloom!
A very difficult day. But the people have spoken. I love my country but love, especially enduring love, always has episodes of agony. The test of love is whether or not it breaks you. It was a decisive election, I'm not going to throw fits about the process. It'll take me a while to assimilate and accept the meaning that must be evaluated regarding the election results. But I'm heartened and consoled by commentary on The Peking Duck and other liberal blogs and I particularly recommend like minded readers to check out the editorial in today's New York Times, although I can't quite bring myself to concur with their hopeful conclusion.
A snip:
We have had enough of the rancor for a while, and our greatest hope now is that Mr. Bush will set out to earn the right to be seen as leader by all the nation. It was inspiring yesterday morning to see the lines of voters at the polls around the nation, but the mood was worrisome. Party loyalty was not the overarching emotion this year. Neither was enthusiasm for either of the candidates. The main emotion seemed to be contempt for the other side and the main divisions over lines of moral belief and fears about personal and national security that no position paper or 30-second spot can bridge.
...
Those whose candidate was defeated yesterday, and that includes this page, must recognize this political reality and figure out how to deal with it.
And Kerry and Edwards, the people who supported them and the ideals they cherish aren't going to go away or shrink from an uphill struggle. Americans won't be complacent ever again, at least not any time in the forseeable future.
Mainer, New Yawka, Beijinger, Californian, points between. News, views and ballyhoos that piqued my interest and caused me to sigh, cry, chuckle, groan or throw something.
The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons License, except those items which are cited, which belong to their original copyright holders. The photos and cartoons belong to their original copyright holders.
// posted by Ellen @
