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August 24, 2010
Posted by Carla René in: Accountability, Advice, African-American, Attitude, Biography & Memoir, Book Marketing Online, Book Review, Books, Business, Business Management, Cancer, Cap and Trade, Children, China, Climate Change, Commentary, Comments & Discussion, Communications, Communism, Community, Computers, Congress, Contributor's Audio/Video, Creative Writing, Current Events, Democracy, Democrat, Diet, Economic Crisis, Economics, Education, Energy, Entertainment, Environment, Environmental Issues, Faith, Family, Fiction, Finance, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations, Freedom, Freelance Author, General Topics, Geopolitical Events, Global Warming, Governance, Habit Change, Health & Fitness, Healthcare, Heroes, History, Homeland Security, Humor, Inspiration & Motivation, Internet, Internet Advice, Interview, Islam, Journalism, Latino & Hispanic, Legal, Life Experiences, Lifestyle, Literature, Marketing, Marriage, Medical, Men's Issues, Mental Health, Mexico, Military, Minorities, Morality, Motivation, Music, Native American, Nature/Wildlife, Non-Fiction, Nutrition, Opinion, Personal Experiences, Philosophical Genres, Poetry, Politics, Publishing, Question of the Day, Recovery, Relationships, Religion, Republican, Rhyme, Satire, Self-Help, Sex, Short Stories, Social Aspects, Social Classes, Social Issues, Sociology, Spirituality, Sports, Technology, Television, Terrorism, The Economy, The Media, The Pundit's Corner, The Writer's Corner, Travel, Uncategorized, Website Instructions, Weight loss, Wellness, Women's Perspective, Women's Rights, Working Women, Workplace, World Issues, Writing Essentials
 Begun back sometime in 2001, this book was originally a fluke of an idea… [...]
August 3, 2010
The good times are rolling again in Macau despite the specter of visa restrictions on visitors from mainland China. [...]
May 7, 2010
In Singapore and Macau, gambling companies have invested billions on shaky propositions. [...]
March 19, 2010
A report from New Jersey investigators gives new insight into corporate malfeasance and arrogance. [...]
February 18, 2010
Flowers, Greenery, and Gardens
by Bob Grant
One of the aspects of my trips to China, that I truly enjoyed, was seeing all of the flowers, greenery, and gardens along the way. I wanted to specifically mention this fact, and state, the photos you might have seen of typical Chinese landscapes are true. In [...]
February 11, 2010
Below is something that I sent to my family and they all said they liked it. However, they are family and what else could they say? I have a manager/partner in China whose name is David – we have associates named Eric and Uncle Wong. I live in Missouri and my relatives live in Wyoming. This sets the stage for the following recap of My Big Day Off – In China:
We found ourselves on a Saturday in a city I have visited before named Hangzhou (Han-Joe) with no appointments and time on our hands before our plane departed for Shenzhen (Sin-Gin). There is a lake in Hangzhou named West Lake. Not a very original name for the Chinese, but using Chinese logic, I am certain – somewhere – there is a North Lake, South Lake, Southeast Lake, Southwest Lake, South South Lake – you get the picture. The possibilities are endless.
David said, “Let’s take a boat ride”. Great – sounded like a good idea. Sitting quietly in a boat watching the countryside and relaxing – NOT. Think Progressive Dinner.
We did take a boat. Not something you would normally see in Missouri – or Wyoming for that matter. Regardless, I followed David and Eric on the boat and settled in for a comfortable ride. Continue reading My Big Day Off – In China
February 7, 2010
I am not the Manchurian Candidate
by Bob Grant
How can you embrace an enemy of the USA? More important – why would you? If these questions have not been outright asked of me – they have been implied. Why I chose to speak highly of China, and its people, is something that I [...]
January 9, 2010
by Lloyd Lofthouse
Within decades, the Middle Kingdom will be rocking the cradle of world civilization—not the United States. While writing this, I thought of a friend I’ve known for more than five decades. He admires President George W. Bush and believes GWB was one of the greatest American Presidents. In other conversations, he said if China didn’t behave, America would spank them. Every time I heard this, I shook my head. Nothing I said could change his mind. He’s never been to China. He doesn’t know the Chinese.
Wiser men than he is would also disagree.
Robert Hart, Jack London and Martin Jacques have something in common. They said China would be a super power again. All three spent enough time in China to learn about the Chinese culture.
In case you don’t know, China was a super power for two thousand years—much longer than Alexander the Great’s Empire, the Roman Empire, the Persian Empire, the British Empire or the United States. No other culture on this earth has ever had that much power for that long. I may have mentioned before that the Han Dynasty was more technologically advanced and more powerful than the Roman Empire ever was. The Chinese invented paper, gunpowder, the compass and the printing press (both wood block and movable type). Continue reading The World in the Hands of China
January 6, 2010
China and US have taken the lead in saving earth away from the UN and fellow travelers that were bungling the job. [...]
December 8, 2009
By Alan Caruba
“The joke among China hands goes like this,” says Michael Economides. “If the Americans and the Chinese start talking about a major project today, in two years the Chinese will be done and the Americans will still be talking and applying for permits.”
Economides is an internationally recognized expert on energy. The Editor-in-Chief of Energy Tribune, he is the author of “From Soviet to Putin and Back: The Dominance of Energy in Today’s Russia”, co-authored with Donna Marie D’Aleo, published in 2008. This year has seen the publication of a new book, written with Xina Xie, a Research Professor at the University of Wyoming, “Energy: China’s Choke Point.”
The joke, as his new book makes clear, is on us. After many disastrous decades under the leadership of Chairman Mae Zedong, China in effect retained communism as its government model, but threw it away as its economic model. In effect, it embraced capitalism and, in sharp contrast to America’s economy, its economy is growing at a rate of nine percent per year. Continue reading A Vital Difference Today Between China and America
November 8, 2009
Posted by Tim Roux in: African-American, China, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations, History, Homeland Security, Islam, Journalism, Latino & Hispanic, Military, Morality, Politics, Religion, Republican, Sociology, Terrorism, Women's Rights
In Britain it is now a criminal offence to make any statement which might incite racial hatred. So, if you go around saying that all Irishmen are stupid or all Welshmen are thieves, then you may well find yourself helping the police with their enquiries and facing a sharp fine or even a term of imprisonment.
Some commentators consider this law to be draconian but it does take a clear political stance and one thing I have learnt over my lifetime is that nearly all racism is neither random nor ‘naturally’ grassroots-derived but rather politically or economically motivated, indeed directed.
Once upon a time, not so long ago, black Africans were slaves or treated as slaves. They were shackled, they died in transit under inhuman conditions, they were worked to death, they were unpaid. How do you justify treating a fellow human being this way? How can it be possible even legally to rape and execute black Africans at whim?
There was a simple answer. Black Africans were not human, they were sub-human. Indeed, they hailed from another, lesser, branch of the human family altogether. And there was no shortage of commentators and pseudo-scientists who popped up to argue that black Africans were so bestial that they were really no different from a cow or a horse, that they were incapable of moral understanding (probably the most obscene argument in history), that they were beyond civilisation and, yes, if you measured their brains they were smaller and lighter than a white man’s. Continue reading Should there be a law against it?
October 22, 2009
Economy
Under Mao Zedong (1893 – 1976), China suffered for twenty-seven years. During Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, thirty-seven million died—many from starvation. Mao’s form of communist socialism did not work.
On June 30, 1984, Deng Xiaoping said, “Given that China is still backward, what road can we take to develop the productive forces and raise the people’s standard of living? … Capitalism can only enrich less than 10 per cent of the Chinese population; it can never enrich the remaining more than 90 per cent. But if we adhere to socialism and apply the principle of distribution to each according to his work, there will not be excessive disparities in wealth. Consequently, no polarization will occur as our productive forces become developed over the next 20 to 30 years.”
Deng Xiaoping may have been right. Bruce Einhom writing for Business Week, Countries with the Biggest Gaps Between Rich and Poor, October 16, 2009, listed the top countries with the biggest gaps. America was number three on the list. China wasn’t on the list—yet.
What does this mean for America? (CBS/AP) The Census Bureau reports that 12.5 percent of Americans, or 37.3 million people, were living in poverty in 2007, up from 36.5 million in 2006.
After 2000, the situation in America deteriorated quickly (with President George W. Bush in the White House)—all of the gains in middle-class economic security since WWII were erased within a few years. Continue reading China in Transition, Part Three
October 15, 2009
In 2012, the new rulers of China will “all” have been educated in the West. After Mao died and the gang of four, responsible for the horrors of the Cultural Revolution, went to prison, Deng Xiaoping and his supporters “rebuilt” the government. The party instituted term limits, two five-year terms for any political position and an age limit of sixty-seven, something we don’t have in the United States.
These changes were implemented to avoid having another modern emperor like Mao. Those who spoke out against Mao usually were killed, went to prison or fell out of favor. Deng Xiaoping was one of those people. When his son was dropped from the top of a high rise and was paralyzed for life, the message to Deng was to “shut up or else”.
A high-ranking, retired Communist that fought with Mao during World War II and the revolution told me that the seventy million party members (like America’s Democrats and Republicans) do not always agree on issues. The difference is that the world hears little of what goes on behind the scenes in China. Doing business that way has little to do with the party. That type of behavior is classically Chinese—not to talk about the Elephant in the room or to hang out your dirty laundry for everyone to see as the West does.
In addition, in America, the outcome for a Presidential Election is decided by the Electoral College, card-carrying members from the two major political parties. The popular vote does not elect the American president. The Communist Party acts similar to America’s Electoral College without the hypocrisy of a popular vote. Critics argue the American Electoral College is inherently undemocratic. Continue reading China in Transition, Part 2
October 1, 2009
On a busy news day, CNN took two hours to wet kiss China’s rulers. [...]
September 25, 2009
Minority Treatment in China, Part 3
by Lloyd Lofthouse If the minority king became powerful and caused unrest, the emperor proposed that this king marry the emperor’s real daughter, as if to say, “You will be a member of my family so stop what you are doing. Since we are soon to be related through [...]
September 19, 2009
 China and Native Minority Treatment, Part Two
by Lloyd Lofthouse
Most of us have heard about Tibet and the demands by Tibetans in exile that Tibet be free from China to rule itself. We hear claims of recent brutal human rights violations taking place without much evidence to support the claims.
Meanwhile, in the United States, news recently revealed that tens of thousands of illegal aliens (some seeking political asylum) locked up in detention centers are not getting proper medical care and are dying because of it.
How does Communist China treat its minorities compared to the way minorities have been treated in the Americas? Yes, human rights violations did take place in Tibet and there is evidence to support such claims.
However, during Mao’s twenty-seven years as the modern emperor of China, almost everyone in China suffered. Most who lived in China during the Cultural Revolution, including my wife, suffered.
Thirty-seven million died including people in Tibet. Since Mao considered Tibet to be part of China (and recorded, nonbiased evidence from primary sources prior to the rise of Communism supports that claim), those who suffered in Tibet were treated the same as the rest of China, horribly. Continue reading China and Native Minority Treatment, Part Two
September 14, 2009
China vs. America
Compare and Contrast Native Minority Treatment
Part One
(a four part series)This post will focus on the United States with some historical background.
by Lloyd Lofthouse
Atrocities abound in the history books concerning treatment of Native American Indians during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The Spanish destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations with disease and warfare. The Catholic mission system in California enslaved American Indians. After the Civil War, the United States military was sent west and drove North American Indians from the land they had lived on for thousands of years and slaughtered men, women and children—millions died.
The American government went on to grab Hawaii from the native Hawaiian people against their will. (There’s a native Hawaiian nonviolent separatist movement asking for freedom from America.)
There’s also a chapter in the history of the Philippines. After the Spanish American War, America took possession of the Philippine islands and waged war against the native people killing more than two hundred thousand people. This went on until World War II. Continue reading China and Native Minority Treatment, Part One
September 7, 2009
Posted by Muhammad Cohen in: China, Current Events, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations, Geopolitical Events, Islam, Journalism, Minorities, Opinion, Politics, Television, Terrorism, The Media, The Pundit's Corner
China allows international reporting on Uighur unrest because it suits China’s interests. [...]
August 26, 2009
Mao’s Western Media Ghost
by Lloyd Lofthouse
Mao Zedong died in 1976. Yet, the Western Media often treats China as if Mao were still alive. During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, there were examples of this. I am going to use a few in this post to make a point.
My sister-in-law was born in Shanghai. Her husband was born in Singapore. My wife grew up in China and suffered during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. All three are now United States citizens. My wife is a published American author whose books are banned in mainland China, which doesn’t bother her. She is satisfied that her books have been translated into more than thirty languages, just not Chinese (there is an underground version and my wife doesn’t know who translated it).
How about me? My grandfather came from Britain and was born inside America’s three-mile limit. My mother said her side of the family arrived with the Pilgrims in 1686 or soon after. Other than native-born American Indians, who arrived from Asia ten thousand years ago, we are all immigrants or descended from immigrants.
During the 2008 Beijing Olympics, Americans supporting the Dalai Lama yelled at Chinese Americans that disagreed with the claims made by Tibetans. Those Chinese Americans were expressing what they believed was the truth. They were told to go home. Continue reading Mao’s Western Media Ghost
August 25, 2009
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse in: Accountability, African-American, China, Democracy, Freedom, Legal, Minorities, Politics, Social Classes, Social Issues, Uncategorized
My wife grew up in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution (it is estimated that thirty-eight million died because of Mao’s policies). When she was a teenager, she was sent to a labor camp. She arrived in the United States in 1984 at twenty-eight. At the time, she did not speak English. She learned enough to survive after several months.
Her first language is Mandarin. If someone speaks English fast, she gets lost. Under pressure, her ability to translate breaks down. She translates (in her head) every word she hears. While attending college in Chicago and working several jobs over the years, she saved enough to invest for her retirement and bought one four-unit apartment building and one condominium. Today, she is an American citizen and she loved capitalism until recently. Now she has a bitter taste in her memory.
Soon after escrow closed on the condominium, an incident took place when my wife first listed the unit so she could rent it. An African American couple came along with many other couples to see the condominium. When my wife didn’t rent to the African American couple, they sent her an e-mail wanting to know the reason why. Continue reading Political Correctness Gone Wrong # 2
August 23, 2009
The Foundation of Chinese Morality
by Lloyd Lofthouse
They say ignorance is bliss. If that is correct than there are many people outside of China that are very happy with their ignorance concerning Chinese culture.
I always find it interesting when the Western media talks about how Communist China prevents or represses freedom of religion as if that were unique to today’s China. The truth is, China has a history of intolerance toward God based religions that tend, by their nature, to interfere with Chinese culture and family based morality.
Religions like Buddhism, that are not as aggressive as Christianity or Islam, tend to do better, which explains why Buddhism is the dominant religion in China today.
Buddhist and Taoist influence on art and poetry have been powerful and entered mainstream Chinese tradition thousands of years ago.
Estimates say that about one hundred million Chinese follow Buddhism while the second largest religion is Taoism. Millions of followers of Islam live in the northwest. Christians claim to be the fastest growing religion, but there are no facts to support this. On the other hand, a recent survey found that eight hundred million Chinese say they belong to no religion. That does not mean that these Chinese have no morality.
There is evidence that Christian and Islamic influence goes back to the third century A.D. Even so, China has never had an organized religion dominating the culture as religions have in Western and Middle Eastern countries. Continue reading The Foundation of Chinese Morality
August 22, 2009
China’s Unwanted Dance with a Devil (?)
by Lloyd Lofthouse
The devil speaks with a soft voice to seduce his victims.
China’s battle with pagan cults reaches back nine-hundred years. The most recent cult China is struggling with is the Falun Gong. In December 2007, a member of this cult visited our home.
My goal in this series is not to whitewash China. On the other hand, I do not see a need to point out flaws, since the mainstream Western media does such a great job doing that when it comes to China. The government that rules China is not a saint, but what government is? Look close enough and misconduct and evil may be found anywhere like in Washington D.C.
I suspect the Western media picks on China because that country is an easy target, and it makes for great headlines. People tend to distrust what they do not understand. Another consideration is if you point at your neighbor’s flaws often enough, maybe those people paying attention will not notice what you are doing. Continue reading China’s Unwanted Dance with a Devil (?)
August 21, 2009
The Meaning of an Education
by Lloyd Lofthouse
Words are cheap. Actions speak loud. The best way to learn about another culture is by comparing and contrasting that culture with yours to see any similarities and differences.
Emperor Constantine lived 280-337 AD. He ruled the Roman Empire and accepted Christianity as the state religion. From that time, Christianity, more than any other influence, set the tone for morality and ethics in the West.
One of my primary Biblical sources is a Concordance of the Holy Bible given to me by a student teacher in 1982. When I checked to see what that Concordance had to say about the importance of an ‘education’, I found nothing in the index under that word (education). I then looked up the word ‘learning’. Six passages mention something about ‘learning’. I also looked up ‘teacher’ and there were a few references but nothing significant.
Here’s what the Bible says about learning:
__________
Proverbs (Old Testament)
1:5 A wise man will hear, and will increase learning; and a man of understanding shall attain unto wise counsels:
9:9 Give instruction to a wise man, and he will be yet wiser; teach a just man, and he will increase in learning.
16:21 The wise in heart shall be called prudent: and the sweetness of the lips increaseth learning.
Daniel
1:4 children in whom was no blemish, but well-favored, and skilful in all wisdom, and cunning in knowledge, and understanding science, and such as had ability in them to stand in the king’s palace, and whom they might teach the learning and the tongue of the Chalde’ans. Continue reading The Meaning of an Education
August 20, 2009
The First of All Virtues
by Lloyd Lofthouse
I read ‘any damn fool can be a parent‘ in an e-mail recently, and it made me think that North America is not a comfortable place to be if you become a geezer. Geezer is the endearing term my seventeen-year-old daughter calls me.
When I was a kid, youngsters were to be seen and not heard. We treated our elders with respect.After the birth of Disneyland, fast food, MTV, the Internet and iPod, something valuable caught a cancer that spread through much of American culture. That something was called ‘respect’.
“Hey, old man, you cannot stop us. You can’t take our picture because it’s dark.” Those were the words I heard after dark one night during the summer of 2008 from a pack of kids taunting me as they raced in and out of our steep driveway on their bicycles.
I finally called the police, and the next day walked the neighborhood door to door seeking support to stop the harassment that had gone on for two years—mostly during the summers when school was out.
When I talked to the mother of one of these kids, she asked, “What was your reason for not letting them play on your driveway?”
Do I need a reason? Continue reading The First of All Virtues
August 19, 2009
Honor
by Lloyd Lofthouse
We were visiting General Yue Fei’s tomb in Hangzhou. Hundreds of Chinese tourists were there. It was early October 2008. This was our third trip to the city in ten years, and I was watching people spitting on the kneeling, life sized metal statues of men dead for more than eight centuries. Those metal effigies with their hands tied behind their backs had been traitors.
It may be difficult to understand what honor means to the Chinese if one isn’t Chinese. One way to possibly understand the importance of this concept is to examine two of China’s historical moral heroes.
General Yue Fei died on January 27, 1142. He was a famous Chinese patriot and military general who fought for the Southern Song Dynasty against the Jurchen armies of the Jin Dynasty. Several, jealous Song ministers lied to the emperor saying that Yue Fei was planning to kill him and take over. The emperor believed these lies and had General Yue Fei executed. When the truth came out, Yue Fei became a model for loyalty in Chinese culture. By spitting on those statues of those ministers that lied, the Chinese honor Yue Fei’s memory.
Although the Communist Chinese government has made it illegal to spit on those statues for public health reasons, hundreds defy that law on a daily basis, and continue to insult those traitors while honoring Yue Fei.
There is another moral hero from China’s history. During the Three Kingdoms era (220-265 A.D.) after the fall of the Han Dynasty, there was a long period of civil war. Out of this era came the story of Guan Yu, who was another model for loyalty and righteousness. Guan Yu lived almost eighteen hundred years ago, yet it is easy to find carvings and statues of him in China today. I have bought several hand carved from wood. Continue reading Honor
August 18, 2009
Mandate of Heaven
by Lloyd Lofthouse
The Mandate of Heaven almost ended Communism in China after Mao’s death in 1976. The reason for that was because everyone in China suffered horribly. Thirty-seven million people died because of Mao’s Great Leap Forward and [...]
August 11, 2009
Oyosa lives in China and wants to publish his manuscript in the United States. He asked if I would share some of his manuscript with our viewers and I am honored to do as he requests. I will post additional chapters as Oyosa asks that I do:
Author’s profile
Oyosa, the book’s author, ever was a Chinese merchant with master degree dealing in satellite TV receveiver, and now a telecom expert. Unfortunately, somehow, he got twice detentions by secret police for his internet article criticizing corruption of communist government and one time sentence of suspended imprisonment by court.
The story is drawn completely from his bumpy experiences full of hardship and complicated interpersonal relations as well as officialdom struggling in sharply society-transiting China.
Actually, Oyosa was positive and humor atheist, all the time just lust for freedom of writing as freelance.
His email: stemul@hotmail.com or Oyosayo@gmail.com
Prelusion: about crow and pie in China
Crow, a kind of bird kindhearted but with bad-mouth.
Crow, a bird with black feather, in Chinese tradition, is a kind of ominous bird with sad tone always predicting imminent cataclysm of somebody. Of long history of thousands years, China right is such an ancient and magic nation most of whose people deem feudal superstition rather than religious belief.
Generally speaking, Chinese people seem to like red not black color, considering red color as sign of fortunate and auspicious coming. There has been being such a custom in folk that elderly use red paper packing money to children as gift celebrating Chinese new year Spring Festival, or to new couple as gift of wedding; any one of emperors in its history also liked red color that seemed to symbolize their sacred power and supremacy. So, up to today, red palace, red pillar, and red wall still can be seen at relic buildings around the country; Buddhist or Taoist temple always is printed red, and even China nation flag and Communist Party flag also are red….
Crow is black and disagreeable for Chinese because of not only its black feather but also its outspoken mouth, and almost is considered as a messenger of unpropitious news, though the news trends to be about truth. If crows sadly cry hovering above somebody, Chinese people will guess some calamitous thing would happen or might have happened to this goddamn guy under the crows. Therefore, in Chinese film, crow’s dismal twitter was constantly used to hype how tragic something such a death of the innocent is. Traditional Chinese could fight you if you spoke bad words to happy thing, rebuking you crow-mouth. Today there still is terrible and thrilling funeral scene seen in remote rural area, where villagers wearing white ribbon and some carrying coffin, stepped towards grave for the dead. Meanwhile, family members and relatives of the death wept loudly and sorrowfully following the coffin amidst funeral music from Chinese traditional instruments. That moment, a swarm of crows trended to be showing up with their bleak cries, hovering above funeral site, strongly impressing people a tragic world in sight. Continue reading Oyosa’s Manuscript (from China) – Prelusion and Chapter 1
August 6, 2009
I like the Chinese People
by Bob Grant
I have been doing business in China for six years – with one of the other companies that I own. I enjoy my visits to China. I enjoy the associations I have built up in China. I like the Chinese People!
Our Speak Without Interruption site has been in existence since December 2008. We have been blessed with tremendous writers who have contributed to this site – from places not only in the United States but all over the world. However, we do not have a contributor from China and I hope to change this fact – soon! Today I wrote to a number of Chinese writing groups inviting them to participate in our site – I am sincerely hopeful I will receive some replies. It is through these contacts – and this posting – that I am inviting Chinese writers, and viewers, to participate in our site.
 As with any business – I had to locate the right personnel, in China, before I could start my business. It took me two years of searching – and visits – to finally meet a young man named David (here is a photo of him and his family). David has a degree in Chemical Engineering and International Business and he is my manager/partner in China. Without David – I would not be doing business in China today or enjoy our success there. Continue reading I like the Chinese People
July 18, 2009
 IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA
by Jack Rochester
Part III
Lijaing, Yunnan Province: Immersion in an utterly foreign culture can be wearing. You spend hour after hour, day after day, unable to read signs or understand what people are saying. Nor are they able to understand you. I have a slight advantage, since I am on tour with about 25 of my wife’s Taiwanese elementary school classmates and their spouses. Some of them now live in the States, and nearly all have a fundamental grasp of English. Richard is an ABC, or American Born Chinese, married to classmate Lily and he, like me, speaks no Chinese. David, a classmate who became a businessman in Taipei, speaks no English at all and avoids me for the most part.
Our tour guides, “Bill” and “Linda,” are both Naxi, a Chinese minority race and, curiously, former high school classmates. Bill is a wiry, happy young guy who lives in Kunming, wears Western-themed T-shirts, and has a girlfriend attending UCLA.
Linda is a very lovely 22-year-old woman with long, black hair that reaches to her waist. She wears a traditional Naxi knee-length coat and skirt over her very Western designer jeans. Her boyfriend-lover is a lawyer in Lijiang. Both guides began speaking in English, but were quick to ascertain that their audience on the tour bus were quite content that they speak Mandarin Chinese.
Once this became clear, I asked Bill and Linda to just give me the headlines so I would know basically what was going on. Linda is pretty reliable, but Bill tends to prattle. For example, he planned to tell us the 18 most important attributes of life in Yunnan, such as the difference between breeds of horses, but couldn’t remember past 13. He told me two or three in English. Continue reading Impressions of China – Part 3
July 17, 2009
IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA
by Jack Rochester
Part II
From Shanghai to Shangri-La
When our plane touched down last night in Shanghai, it was after dark, pouring rain, and the combination of haunting illumination, a dark, unfamiliar environment and the pounding rain evoked the atmosphere of Blade Runner. The cab ride into the city was an introduction to the strange, slow, odd, intense way these people drive.
We were whisked by an elevator to the 28th floor of a modern apartment building where my wife’s son, Dan, lives in an ultra-sleek environment that integrates the latest in consumer electronics with a spare but modern Asian décor. Attached to the wall outside the elevator is an LCD television monitor broadcasting commercials.
The next morning the rain was gone, replaced by a shroud of smog that hovers incessantly over Shanghai, reminiscent of L.A. in the pre-EPA 1970s. Audible pollution complements the particle-dense air: horns honk incessantly. One bus I observed honked its horn all the time: All. The. Time. The streets here are utterly democratic: No matter if you are on foot, bike, scooter, cycle, car, or hand-towed cart, whether you are going with the traffic or crossing the street, whether you are in an auto lane or bike lane, you have equal access to the right-of-way. There are sidewalks, and there are two-wheeled byways, but that doesn’t mean you can’t walk or bike amid the cars, trucks, and buses. Many do. Pedestrians do not have the right of way in crosswalks, and all forms of travel, moving at a very slow pace, somehow achieve confluence. In other words, it’s everyone for themselves, with the larger, more powerful and dangerous, vehicles taking natural precedence. Continue reading Impressions of China – Part 2
July 16, 2009
IMPRESSIONS OF CHINA
by Jack Rochester
Part I
I’m sitting in my so-called five-star hotel room in Lijiang, a city of about 300,000 near the western border of China and Tibet, looking at a Yulong, or “Snow” Mountain, a 4,800-meter-high peak that we’re going to visit tomorrow. Just beyond it are the Himalayas: K2, Everest, India, are not that far away.
I’m a long, long, way from home, well over 12,000 miles, but I’m not uncomfortable with that. However, I’m decidedly in a foreign land, and I use that word deliberately: this country, its people, its customs, are very different from the West. In this place, deep in mainland China, I only occasionally hear snippets of English. I can only sense what people are saying through context or inference. Continue reading Impressions of China – Part 1
July 12, 2009
Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse in: China, Congress, Current Events, Democracy, Economics, Environment, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Relations, Freedom, Geopolitical Events, Military, Morality, Motivation, Politics, Republican, Social Issues, Uncategorized
Is China a danger to the world? This is a topic I have wanted to write about for some time. I suspect my motivation for writing this comes from being sent to Vietnam [...]
June 30, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
As we prepare to celebrate Independence Day, we will hear about our Founding Fathers, about those who fought our wars to preserve and safeguard our nation, and other men and women who contributed to the nation’s greatness.
It is good to look back, but future generations will look back as well and wonder how such a great nation became such a silly nation, the object of scorn and ridicule around the world, challenged by every gangster nation that shares the planet; attacked by Al Qaeda, threatened by North Korea, mocked by Venezuela, insulted by Iran, and sustained by the wealth of China and other lenders.
What other republic is governed by fools who voted without reading “climate” legislation whose 1,200 pages of rules and regulations will enrich a few and leave the rest scrambling to pay the light bill? That is, if the light turns on. If passed by the Senate, it will be the largest tax increase in the history of the nation. It exists to “save the planet” from a “global warming” that is not happening.
What other nation would systematically ensure that its vast resources of coal, enough to power plants to produce electricity for the next hundred or two hundred years, not be used because no new plants will be built? Fully fifty percent of our electricity comes from coal, but this nation is about to waste billions of dollars on wind and solar energy—so called “clean” energy—which accounts for about one percent. Continue reading America, the Silly Nation
June 18, 2009
By Jack B. Rochester
Is it a coincidence that, within a day of the 60th anniversary of the publication of George Orwell’s prescient novel, 1984, the repressive, dictatorial, Communist Chinese government issues an edict that all imported computers must have its homegrown filtering software installed?
As if Vista wasn’t slow enough to begin with!
Chinese officials say that “unhealthy information” must not be exposed to its people. Under the guise of blocking pornography, this “Green Dam” will block other topics the Communist leaders don’t want, “…Web sites that discuss the Dalai Lama, the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square protesters, and the Falun Gong, the banned spiritual movement,” The New York Times reported.
Jon Zittrain, professor of law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, says Green Dam can scan all your personal data, working both directions, so to speak: an insidious Big Brother, just like in Orwell’s 1984. You can hear Jon’s views here in an NPR interview. Continue reading Big Brother Redux in China
June 16, 2009
When it comes to my flag “these colors don’t run”. The banksters (gangsters) and private corporate interests are in control ( aren’t monopolies against the law?) They rob us to the brink of financial disaster, and then instead of bringing them to justice, Obama lends them money to pay back what they stole. War is big business, and these fat cats are enriching our enemies. China, (remember Tienanmen Square?) and Russia ( remember the invasion of Hungary and the recent take over of Georgia?) are among the lowest in the human rights scale. Over 57000 young American soldiers fought communism in Korea, and about another 52000 died in Viet Nam. Now we have a Marxist Muslim presiding over us. How could this happen? I will leave this answer to you.
Practically everything sold in the USA is made in China ( our money is financing one of the largest and most sophisticated navel fleets in the world.( Let us not forget the bloody lesson learned at Pearl Harbor!) The Japanese bought scrap iron from us and gave it back the hard way. When we try to intervene in the human rights issue in Tibet, we are told to mind our own business, and its business as usual. Countries like China and Russia know only one method, Blitzkrieg. By allowing commerce in such countries, we undermined our economic strength and allowed the development of the demise of our currency and economic system It was a policy of buy and sell America. It has been an economic war to break our backs and they are doing a splendid job of it. Continue reading WHAT PRICE FREEDOM?
June 15, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
On June 16, a reception will be held to celebrate the launch of the Global Museum on Communism at the Romanian Ambassador’s residence in Washington, D.C. Other events have preceded the effort to ensure that the millions of victims of Communism in the last century are not forgotten.
I have no doubt that an invitation was extended to President Obama, though I doubt that he will be among the guests. After all, the man who has appointed some fifteen “czars” to run the affairs of his administration seems to have an affinity for direct rule over accountability to the Congress or the Constitution.
In an excellent, recently published book, “United in Hate”, by Jamie Glazov, the author notes in his preface that, “Throughout the twentieth century, the Western Left supported one totalitarian killing machine after another. Prominent intellectuals from George Bernard Shaw to Bertolt Brecht to Susan Sontag venerated mass murderers such as Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, and Ho Chi Minh, habitually excusing their atrocities while blaming America and even the victims of the crimes.”
Glazov noted that, after 9/11 leftists like “Jimmy Carter, Noam Chromsky, Michael Moore, and Tom Hayden, once again reached out to bloodthirsty tyrants bent on human destruction.” Who can forget Sean Penn’s globetrotting to defend the likes of Saddam Hussein or Hugo Chavez? Inherent in the Leftist view of the world is the embrace of despots.
Continue reading Communism Kills
June 7, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
Listening to President Obama one might think that America doesn’t have a single enemy that could not be turned into a friend if only he was given the opportunity to just talk to them. He is a great believer in diplomacy even though diplomacy has rarely stopped a war if one party was determined to wage it. War doesn’t need the consent of both.
Perhaps because I was born just prior to the outbreak of World War II and grew up aware of terrible things happening in both Europe and Asia, followed by having an older brother who served during the Korean War, plus my own service in the U.S. Army, my attitude about wars has been shaped by a lifetime in which I cannot recall a minute when America wasn’t at war, engaged in a war, or threatened by a war.
To this day I have considerable antipathy for “peaceniks” and war protesters even though, as the ill-fated Vietnam War dragged on, I joined a march or two. If ever there was a wrong war in the wrong place, Vietnam was it. For those unfamiliar with it, it was essentially a civil war into which the U.S. inserted itself due to a “domino theory” that, if Vietnam fell to communism, all the other Asian nations would as well. At the time, the Cold War was still raging since the end of WWII and Chairman Mao was still in charge of China.
Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean someone isn’t plotting against you, so it’s always a good idea to take a very general survey of those nations who wish us ill. Continue reading America’s Enemies
May 31, 2009
 By Alan Caruba If you have a suspicion that many of your fellow Americans are too stupid to trust with the great affairs of this nation, you might just be right, but you might not know why.
Take a look at the choices television offers. Do you ever wonder why shows featuring stupid people or animated characters are so popular? I cite The Simpsons, Family Guy, Two and a Half Men, My Name is Earl, et al. Why do we enjoy laughing at stupid people? Does it make us feel smarter?
Does the shallowness of so much that passes for entertainment or even passing itself off as educational actually reflect the lives of those watching? The answer is probably yes and they didn’t get that way by accident. The education system of America has been deliberately fashioned to create a docile, easily controlled population. And that means YOU. Continue reading Stupefying America
May 26, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
The popular TV series, “Hawaii Five-O”, made the line, “Book’m, Danno”, famous as a signoff. The world has surely arrived at a point when we need to say, “Nuke’m” to nations like North Korea and Iran. There simply is no alternative.
Well, not exactly. There is an alternative and it involves North Korea selling a small nuclear weapon to some Islamofascist to smuggle into the United States and destroy one or more of our cities and millions of our citizens.
The memory of the recent slaughter of 3,000 of our countrymen is already fading swiftly.
Soon enough, Iran will be making their own such devices and, since the United States has been their “Great Satan” for the past three decades, they too may choose this option. It is more likely they will fulfill their mission to bring about the return of the Twelfth Imam, a mythical Islamic Shiite figure, by plunging the world into a nuclear holocaust.
Perhaps it will begin with a nuclear attack on Israel, though Israel’s history suggests they will not let that happen. Having risen like the phoenix from the ashes of the Holocaust they will not permit such evil. Continue reading Nuke’m, Danno!
May 17, 2009
 By Alan Caruba
I know you’re thinking the title refers to Al Gore, but no, it belongs to Paul Krugman, an economist best known as a New York Times columnist, and winner in 2008 of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science. He is widely regarded as an expert in international economics and has very impressive curriculum vitae. By all the standards of our times, the man is a genius.
Anyone who has worked for an institution of higher learning as I once did soon loses his awe of PhDs. Their expertise is usually very narrow. The intellectual hot house which they share also includes immense pressure to demonstrate through research and publication that they are productive. There is a herd mentality and some vicious politics that goes on as well.
Krugman may know about economics, otherwise known as the “dismal science” because I suspect the capacity to be very wrong is equal to or greater than the chance of getting things right. Most certainly, his May 15 column, based on a trip to China demonstrated he knows nothing about meteorology, climatology, the science of the Earth’s atmosphere. Continue reading Our Nobel Prize Moron
April 2, 2009
Posted by schreiberapfel in: Accountability, Attitude, China, Communications, Current Events, Freelance Author, General Topics, Journalism, Opinion, Publishing, The Writer's Corner
I would like to post here an article written by a Hong Kong-based magazine columnist who labeled the Philippines as a “nation of servants”.
“The war at home”
by Chip Tsao
HK Magazine
The Russians sank a Hong Kong freighter last month, killing the seven Chinese seamen on board. We can live with that—Lenin and Stalin were once the ideological mentors of all Chinese people. The Japanese planted a flag on Diàoyú Island. That’s no big problem—we Hong Kong Chinese love Japanese cartoons, Hello Kitty, and shopping in Shinjuku, let alone our round-the-clock obsession with karaoke. Continue reading ‘A nation of servants’
March 25, 2009
Religion and China
By Lloyd Lofthouse
The Chinese practice capitalism Chinese style, and those that claim to be Christians practice Christianity the same way.
My wife’s mother called herself a Christian. However, she never left China to visit a Western Christian country. It was not safe for her to belong to a religion during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, so she was a closet Christian. My mother-in-law also told her husband that having children was for God. Continue reading Religion and China
March 25, 2009
Government Controlled Media in China
There are two Chinas, and I’m not talking about Taiwan. I’m talking about the Communist Party, the only legitimate political party in China, and its membership of seventy million compared to the rest of China, the other 1.3 billion Chinese that have little or no say in the daily decisions made by the government.
“Beijing Today”, with a reported circulation of fifty thousand, is the capital of China’s only English weekly newspaper and is published under the auspices of the Information Office of the Beijing Municipal Government and run by Beijing Youth Daily. The Beijing Youth Daily newspaper, with a reported circulation of six hundred thousand, is controlled by the Communist Youth League. Continue reading Government Controlled Media in China
March 25, 2009
The Education Wars
America is losing the education wars to countries like China and India. The reason for that is that the Chinese and the Indians love almost everything American. India even has their own Hollywood churning out movies by the hundreds. It’s called Bollywood.
China and India have hundred of millions of people that grew up watching American television programs and these people have a fever to have the same lifestyle that most Americans take for granted. American fast food outlets like McDonalds and Pizza Hut are considered gourmet restaurants in China. The Chinese are willing to wait to eat sometimes for an hour or more like Americans do at expensive steak houses and seafood restaurants. Continue reading The Education Wars
March 25, 2009
China & America
Minority Treatment
Atrocities abound in the history books concerning treatment of native American Indians during the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries. The Spanish destroyed the Aztec and Inca civilizations with disease and warfare. The Catholic mission system in California enslaved Indians. After the Civil War, the American military pushed west and drove native North American Indians from the land they had lived on for ten thousand years and slaughtered men, women and children. America grabbed Hawaii away from the native Hawaiian people against their will. (There’s a native Hawaiian nonviolent separatist movement asking for freedom from America.) Continue reading China & American – Minority Treatment
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Books by SWI Contributors
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Transporting Goods – by Road – in China
containers and Mercedes carrying people. I have traveled to England, Ireland, Holland, Italy, Canada, Mexico, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea, and China. I would not call myself a “world traveler” but, of all the countries in which I have traveled, I found China to be the most diverse in terms of the types of vehicles that transported goods on their roads.
Regardless of where my travels took me in China – rural or city – there were always a lot of people transporting goods in any type of vehicle that could move or its own, by animal, or under human power. The fact that people were busy – working – was not of particular note. It 
was the diversity of their means of transportation – within a single view – that was of interest to me. Also, they all seemed to
move with purpose – whether carrying large or small items. I suppose that is really not so different than any other parts of the world – for some reason it just struck me as another admirable quality of the Chinese people. 
Most of the smaller commercial trucks are blue – I have no idea why? I asked a couple of times but really did not receive an answer. Maybe there was a sale on blue paint? I am certain there is a reason, but since I don’t know it, I can’t share it with you – rather just make reference to it. 
Not All Factories in China are Sweat Shops
certainly 
clean. The employees (factory workers) wore uniforms at most places I visited. They seemed proficient in their work and the products produced, and for the most part, were without quality problems – certainly no different than products produced in other countries. Most of the factories tended to be in an Industrial Parks and quite large. Usually, the factories were a “small city” into themselves. There was housing provided for the employees on the factory grounds along with areas for recreation. I don’t suppose there was another way of doing it – but I saw a lot of laundry hanging from outside the housing units plus commercial apartments buildings I saw throughout China.
A Contradiction of Times
drive by places in the countryside where it appeared to me that people were living the same way they had for millions of years. We would drive from beautiful multi-lane highways to rutted brick and dirt roads – in a matter of miles. Workers were sweeping the freeways – and other roads – with large straw brooms. Everywhere I looked I could see new and old in a single setting – a large high rise apartment building next to agricultural areas where people were working the land by hand and animals. 
Flying the Friendlier Skies in China
I Ate no Dog – I Ate no Cat
They All Look Alike
I Never met a Communist in China
The Gaslight Journal is Done
Begun back sometime in 2001, this book was originally a fluke of an idea… [...]