I am two things, I am a scientist foremost, and a humanist second. There are very clear reasons why humanity comes second to science in my mind -which may sound evil or heartless, but it's actually nothing of the sort. Without Science, humanity will soon be a moot point. The Earth will continue regardless of us.
So, when I see these many articles critical of China, I am appalled and aghast at THE REPORTING. Journalists have NO IDEA how to handle raw data, and do so at the expense of human lives. They routinely, and often intentionally, overstate or misstate the realities to generate a public reaction. This is known as sensationalism. This is why China gets increasingly frustrated with the USA.
FACTS:
China
Total Population: 1.6 Billion.
Abductions estimate: less than 100 per province per year. [At least I've seen no data indicating larger numbers, all reports are in the dozens, sometimes as few as 6, and it is VERY difficult to average out.] Going with a clearly high estimate, that is ONE in 16 Million. [Gross - all ages.] ((Data? See link 2.))
USA
Total Population: 310 Million.
Abductions estimate: 600,000[1]
That's one in 517 people. [All ages, again.]
Which country has a problem? The United States has 30,000 times more trafficking than China. Again, these are raw numbers, arguable numbers, but the overall data is completely clear - America has a much worse problem than China.
China reacts to incidents of trafficking by punishing everyone involved, and in China, jail isn't a place I'd want to end up. They don't give you televisions and horse racing tracks in China, no matter who you are. There is no "house arrest" for the rich. It's a brick and iron cell - they way a prison should be if you're to have one at all. Yes, Science backs incarceration - when done properly and humanely. The purpose of prison is to punish AND reform. You want to release a viable citizen back into the population as soon as reasonable to do so.
In the United States, prisons are run by abusive overzealous religious wingnuts who enjoy tormenting others. I've met too many of them in my pursuit of a law degree and as someone born into extreme poverty. US jailers are to be feared. I'm not so sure I'd be afraid of jailers in China, where abuses by the officials are met with extreme sanctions, including death.
I am not pro-China, or pro-Communist. I think it's easy to show where science and humanity suffered under "pure" communist rule. However, China is no longer purely communist, and much of the worst that we've come to associate with China is simply no longer true. In fact, the United States is currently much more dangerous than China in many ways. People who protest at the White House get shot with rubber bullets, thrown down by firehoses, arrested, beaten, and even killed. Protests in China are generally met with a calm disdain. The tables, as it were, have turned.
The News Media, I will capitalize because it's a monopoly, more properly known as an OLIGOPOLY of media, will routinely show old footage of people being harassed, and entitle it "today's protest in Beijing." There are major problems with reporting like this, not the least of which is that it's lying, but that not all protests go like that. Peaceful disagreement is respected by the Chinese. Most Americans are completely unaware that China has respect for and actually listens to appropriate political discourse. That's just not what one sees in the news, is it?
What you see on the news are foreign activists who are inciting riot, throwing things, and using loudspeakers. Shouting is extremely rude in most Asian cultures. You can tell a native protest by the quiet, by the symmetry, and by the intellectual level of the protest. The loud, violent, and unruly mobs - those are often lead by non-Chinese persons. These are the people who are arrested and deported, as one of our professors [dumbass] from Evergreen State College discovered.
Here is a quote from a science article about the actual response of the Chinese government in a typical child trafficking ring:
"
Chinese officials arrested 27 suspects in November of 2005.
The Hengdong SWI director’s one-year sentence was the lightest.
The court sent three of the traffickers to prison for 15 years and
fined them each 50,000 yuan (U.S. $6,250).
It sentenced another six traffickers to between three and thirteen years.
Also, the gov-ernment fired 23 county officials in Hengyang and prohibited in-
tercountry adoptions from Hunan Province for several months.
"[2]
I wish we had that level of direct action in the US government when it comes to ANY act of treason by our own Congress: Selling secrets, giving nukes to allies, killing for fun, giving immunity for bribes, accepting bribes to pass laws, and so on ad nauseum. China tolerates none of that.
1
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/trafficking/about/fact_human.html
2
http://www.ethicanet.org/MeierZhang.pdf
Sunday, March 7, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
It's now possible to affect voting via internet.
Ars often overstates things, but this data comes from Pew, a conservative foundation that rarely overstates anything. More Americans get their news online than from newspapers, and the internet is now third as a source of news - the boob tube is still raking in more eyeballs in both #1 and #2 positions for national and local broadcasts.
Personally, I find it harder and harder to even watch a single TV show. I've expunged all older TVs from my house but for two - those two owned by my mate. We've got a new LCD coming and I hope to convince her to give away the last two CRTs. What's the big deal? Energy, for one. Attention is the other.
CRTs have a way of sucking people in, drawing your consciousness away from family and your surroundings. Flat screens do not have that affect on me or my kids. I don't know what it is, either the emissions, the light, or something else is just different. Movies look a hell of a lot better on an LCD, and I love movies, but after the movie I can easily get up and go do something else instead of sitting there watching whatever comes on next. Since I started watching movies on my laptop a few years ago I noticed this phenomena.
I've gone kayaking more, gone running more, and I'm generally less interested in television. I wonder how this will shift when more Americans have had their CRTs pass away. Will TV still be the #1 news source? I can't imagine it. The internet is so much more interactive, and with blindingly fast coverage of evolving events. Often long before anyone can cover something up, the video is on youtube.
What's this about voting then? The internet is already affecting voting. People get a more diverse opinion from reading online than is possible from newsprint. Editors carefully control what goes into a newspaper. I know, I've worked for a few. They're so tightly wound they could make coal into diamonds if they sit on it. The internet? Not nearly so much. Often webmasters are their own editors, which gives the lie to grammar nazis worldwide: It doesn't matter. Spelling, word order, and usage, all right out the window.
What's important is the message, and how intelligently is it delivered. TV? Not very intelligent. People like O'Really and Snowjob and Coultroll seem to dominate the press - they're everywhere and overquoted. Stupid is absolutely the rule of the day in TVland. Internet? Intelligence and logic have much more bearing, with actual scientists, experts, and millions of commenters ready to correct any obvious lie.
Obviously, I am biased, for I am a blogger. Not widely read? I don't really care. Blogging has never been about being a media whore. It's about getting information out there. When it comes to voting, knowing the truths about your party and the enemy party is vital. I credit the internet for Obama's election, and thank science for it.
Re:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/02/internet-overtakes-print-in-news-consumption-among-americans.ars
Personally, I find it harder and harder to even watch a single TV show. I've expunged all older TVs from my house but for two - those two owned by my mate. We've got a new LCD coming and I hope to convince her to give away the last two CRTs. What's the big deal? Energy, for one. Attention is the other.
CRTs have a way of sucking people in, drawing your consciousness away from family and your surroundings. Flat screens do not have that affect on me or my kids. I don't know what it is, either the emissions, the light, or something else is just different. Movies look a hell of a lot better on an LCD, and I love movies, but after the movie I can easily get up and go do something else instead of sitting there watching whatever comes on next. Since I started watching movies on my laptop a few years ago I noticed this phenomena.
I've gone kayaking more, gone running more, and I'm generally less interested in television. I wonder how this will shift when more Americans have had their CRTs pass away. Will TV still be the #1 news source? I can't imagine it. The internet is so much more interactive, and with blindingly fast coverage of evolving events. Often long before anyone can cover something up, the video is on youtube.
What's this about voting then? The internet is already affecting voting. People get a more diverse opinion from reading online than is possible from newsprint. Editors carefully control what goes into a newspaper. I know, I've worked for a few. They're so tightly wound they could make coal into diamonds if they sit on it. The internet? Not nearly so much. Often webmasters are their own editors, which gives the lie to grammar nazis worldwide: It doesn't matter. Spelling, word order, and usage, all right out the window.
What's important is the message, and how intelligently is it delivered. TV? Not very intelligent. People like O'Really and Snowjob and Coultroll seem to dominate the press - they're everywhere and overquoted. Stupid is absolutely the rule of the day in TVland. Internet? Intelligence and logic have much more bearing, with actual scientists, experts, and millions of commenters ready to correct any obvious lie.
Obviously, I am biased, for I am a blogger. Not widely read? I don't really care. Blogging has never been about being a media whore. It's about getting information out there. When it comes to voting, knowing the truths about your party and the enemy party is vital. I credit the internet for Obama's election, and thank science for it.
Re:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2010/02/internet-overtakes-print-in-news-consumption-among-americans.ars
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Statocide - The Act of Killing by Numbers.
Israel is the worst evil to ever grace the Earth since the Third Reich, as no other nation has relentlessly executed civilians with such venom and vigor the way Hitler did. Nobody, that is, until Israel - a state bent on the complete genocide of Palestinians. A fictional state, in a land that never existed, a land called "wishful thinking."
No evidence exists for pre-industrial Israelites except the bible itself, which is well documented as a complete fabrication of fairy tales. Why should the world take a book, known and admitted as a farce, as any serious historic legend? There ARE other books and scrolls which actually enumerate the population, show census maps, and taxes collected by ethnicity and business. The middle ages and early B.C.E. were pretty well documented, and the bible contradicts everything we know.
So why take it seriously? Because of the insanity of faith. Faith allows for Americans to turn their heads and whistle while Israel bombs schools and hospitals. Faith allows Americans to approve and shout "support our troops" while the USA destroys Afghanistan and Iraq for profits. Millions have died, and the rough numbers in the middle East have already exceeded the genocide of Nazi Germany.
Faith make this possible. Is it any wonder that non-believers look upon believers as dangerous and crazy? Believers are otherwise kind, intelligent, and productive people - who support mass murder, suppression of equality on a world scale, and the destruction of opponent religions on a world scale.
Israel itself has built up such a history of abuse of power and destruction that its enemies are prepared to destroy their own families just for a shot at getting even. You never read about Palestine invading Israel, raping and pillaging, bulldozing communities, and then having the nerve to accuse Israel of "offending" it. But, you read that sort of drivel from Israel almost every day. Each atrocity is committed with bland statements of "sovereignty" or "destiny." Israel's only destiny is immediately apparent when one simply looks at a globe map of the Earth.
Without the constant military, financial, and political support of the United States, not only would Israel not ever have existed, but it will immediately cease to exist. Israel has surrounded itself with enemies that could have been close allies. Muslims and Jews are not so different. In fact, they lived side-by-side, in peace, for over a thousand years before Americans decided to "Fix things."
Now, as America falters, and her dollar wanes, the USA is suddenly worried about the future of Israel. They should have thought of that in 1948, when the US sent tanks and bombers against peaceful desert nomads and tribal societies. The victory was quick, not because of god, but because of wave after wave of high-explosives and armor-piercing ammo used against an unarmed opponent who had no reason to expect an invasion.
The future of Israel is the same future that they wished upon Palestine. Death. All will die, and I say this not out of hate, for I am Jewish, but out of a scientific certainty. These are the categories of Israel's death.
They will die Economically:
Israel is a nation of less than 8 million people, and only 22K sq kilometers, with a per-capita military spending of over 25% of their GDP per person, and only 23K average earnings per person. They are heavily indebted to the tune of trillions, to the United States for ongoing financial and military support that they otherwise could never afford. There is no sign that the USA is requiring payment, in fact the USA continues to sink Billions a year into Israel with no sign of slowing, despite an economic slide in Israel from +3% to -1% annual growth rate. [2009]
They will die Geopolitically:
Israel is surrounded on ALL sides by enemies. Even the Mediterranean Sea offer no protection, as it is largely controlled on the Eastern shores by Russian allies who are strongly anti-Israel. The 12 nations surrounding Israel are entirely Arab, massing more than 140 million people, with an area better than 20 times larger than Israel. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are particularly well armed, far more powerful each of them than Israel. Syria is now receiving Russian munitions, nuclear power, and training. The Arab states have met repeatedly to discuss the "Israel" situation and are of one mind on the problem. Eliminate it.
They will die from Powerlessness:
Israel may have one or two nukes. That'd be unfortunate, because if they attempted to use them, they'd soon find that several of their enemies have quite a bit more than two. Also, if it were discovered that they used a U.S. produced system to deliver nuclear weapons, the United States would immediately face international scorn and legal entanglements that we'd be decades sorting out. The United States has repeatedly denied arming Israel, which is a patent lie on the face of things.
They will die from Starvation:
Israel has destroyed the farmlands. Palestine was a nation rich in agriculture - once, before Israel. Now, they slave Palestinian farmers for their food source, but still need to import over 50 Billion a year in resources - for a nation with a GDP of only 500 Billion and over two thirds of that is US Foreign Aid, that's pretty bad news. When the fighting starts in earnest, Israel will get no food.
They will die from International Isolation:
Israel has become such a political pariah, internationally condemned for gross violations of Human rights, and such a malignant cancer on the peace process, that nobody will feel the least bit sorry for Israel - not even American Jews like me. I have distant family there who will possibly die. My words to them are "get out while you can. I won't feel sorry for you if you stay."
Enough Israel. It's time for world peace. It's time for Israel to fade from the stage.
No evidence exists for pre-industrial Israelites except the bible itself, which is well documented as a complete fabrication of fairy tales. Why should the world take a book, known and admitted as a farce, as any serious historic legend? There ARE other books and scrolls which actually enumerate the population, show census maps, and taxes collected by ethnicity and business. The middle ages and early B.C.E. were pretty well documented, and the bible contradicts everything we know.
So why take it seriously? Because of the insanity of faith. Faith allows for Americans to turn their heads and whistle while Israel bombs schools and hospitals. Faith allows Americans to approve and shout "support our troops" while the USA destroys Afghanistan and Iraq for profits. Millions have died, and the rough numbers in the middle East have already exceeded the genocide of Nazi Germany.
Faith make this possible. Is it any wonder that non-believers look upon believers as dangerous and crazy? Believers are otherwise kind, intelligent, and productive people - who support mass murder, suppression of equality on a world scale, and the destruction of opponent religions on a world scale.
Israel itself has built up such a history of abuse of power and destruction that its enemies are prepared to destroy their own families just for a shot at getting even. You never read about Palestine invading Israel, raping and pillaging, bulldozing communities, and then having the nerve to accuse Israel of "offending" it. But, you read that sort of drivel from Israel almost every day. Each atrocity is committed with bland statements of "sovereignty" or "destiny." Israel's only destiny is immediately apparent when one simply looks at a globe map of the Earth.
Without the constant military, financial, and political support of the United States, not only would Israel not ever have existed, but it will immediately cease to exist. Israel has surrounded itself with enemies that could have been close allies. Muslims and Jews are not so different. In fact, they lived side-by-side, in peace, for over a thousand years before Americans decided to "Fix things."
Now, as America falters, and her dollar wanes, the USA is suddenly worried about the future of Israel. They should have thought of that in 1948, when the US sent tanks and bombers against peaceful desert nomads and tribal societies. The victory was quick, not because of god, but because of wave after wave of high-explosives and armor-piercing ammo used against an unarmed opponent who had no reason to expect an invasion.
The future of Israel is the same future that they wished upon Palestine. Death. All will die, and I say this not out of hate, for I am Jewish, but out of a scientific certainty. These are the categories of Israel's death.
They will die Economically:
Israel is a nation of less than 8 million people, and only 22K sq kilometers, with a per-capita military spending of over 25% of their GDP per person, and only 23K average earnings per person. They are heavily indebted to the tune of trillions, to the United States for ongoing financial and military support that they otherwise could never afford. There is no sign that the USA is requiring payment, in fact the USA continues to sink Billions a year into Israel with no sign of slowing, despite an economic slide in Israel from +3% to -1% annual growth rate. [2009]
They will die Geopolitically:
Israel is surrounded on ALL sides by enemies. Even the Mediterranean Sea offer no protection, as it is largely controlled on the Eastern shores by Russian allies who are strongly anti-Israel. The 12 nations surrounding Israel are entirely Arab, massing more than 140 million people, with an area better than 20 times larger than Israel. Saudi Arabia and Egypt are particularly well armed, far more powerful each of them than Israel. Syria is now receiving Russian munitions, nuclear power, and training. The Arab states have met repeatedly to discuss the "Israel" situation and are of one mind on the problem. Eliminate it.
They will die from Powerlessness:
Israel may have one or two nukes. That'd be unfortunate, because if they attempted to use them, they'd soon find that several of their enemies have quite a bit more than two. Also, if it were discovered that they used a U.S. produced system to deliver nuclear weapons, the United States would immediately face international scorn and legal entanglements that we'd be decades sorting out. The United States has repeatedly denied arming Israel, which is a patent lie on the face of things.
They will die from Starvation:
Israel has destroyed the farmlands. Palestine was a nation rich in agriculture - once, before Israel. Now, they slave Palestinian farmers for their food source, but still need to import over 50 Billion a year in resources - for a nation with a GDP of only 500 Billion and over two thirds of that is US Foreign Aid, that's pretty bad news. When the fighting starts in earnest, Israel will get no food.
They will die from International Isolation:
Israel has become such a political pariah, internationally condemned for gross violations of Human rights, and such a malignant cancer on the peace process, that nobody will feel the least bit sorry for Israel - not even American Jews like me. I have distant family there who will possibly die. My words to them are "get out while you can. I won't feel sorry for you if you stay."
Enough Israel. It's time for world peace. It's time for Israel to fade from the stage.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Gmail is fucking up.
They decided that because I wrote two or three people on craigslist that I meet the characteristics of a "spammer." They disabled my email account and I can't write anyone.
This is yet another reason NEVER to trust any corporation, not even Google.
They're fucking idiots.
[update]
Two days later, and the fucktards at Gmail still are blocking most of my outgoing Email. I can't even write to other Gmail addresses today. It actually looks like it might be time to DUMP GMAIL.
I downloaded a gmail archiver and backed-up all my mail last night as a precaution. Now, on to my own mail servers. You can rest assured that my corporate server will auto-reject gmail.com. I won't be screwed with either through malice or idiocy.
This is yet another reason NEVER to trust any corporation, not even Google.
They're fucking idiots.
[update]
Two days later, and the fucktards at Gmail still are blocking most of my outgoing Email. I can't even write to other Gmail addresses today. It actually looks like it might be time to DUMP GMAIL.
I downloaded a gmail archiver and backed-up all my mail last night as a precaution. Now, on to my own mail servers. You can rest assured that my corporate server will auto-reject gmail.com. I won't be screwed with either through malice or idiocy.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
coincidence?
http://i.ytimg.com/vi/A0cOmJIugEU/0.jpg
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6151JD20100217
look similar?
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6151JD20100217
look similar?
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