ch.annel2-i.s-n.ow-a.ngry

Human-rights activists are quick to point out that while the tools are the same, the political contexts are radically different. China has a government that uses its high-tech web to imprison and torture peaceful protesters, Tibetan monks and independent-minded journalists. Yet even here, the lines are getting awfully blurry. The U.S. currently has more people behind bars than China, despite a population less than a quarter of its size. And Sharon Hom, executive director of the advocacy group Human Rights in China, says that when she talks about China’s horrific human-rights record at international gatherings, “There are two words that I hear in response again and again: Guantánamo Bay.”

Good article on the surveillance state of China - very BB sounding, fueled by American actuals (not the ideals we profess) and probably far more intricate than Orwell could have even imagined 60 years ago - Orwell just imagined they’d be editing the history books, he didn’t think they’d be real time photochopping the news.

During the Lhasa riots, police on the scene augmented the footage from the CCTVs with their own video cameras, choosing to film — rather than stop — the violence, which left 19 dead. The police then quickly cut together the surveillance shots that made the Tibetans look most vicious — beating Chinese bystanders, torching shops, ripping metal sheeting off banks — and created a kind of copumentary: Tibetans Gone Wild. These weren’t the celestial beings in flowing robes the Beastie Boys and Richard Gere had told us about. They were angry young men, wielding sticks and long knives. They looked ugly, brutal, tribal. On Chinese state TV, this footage played around the clock.

I heard about that, I’m sure many did, I didn’t hear at the time that China was cutting the news, though I’m not surprised, it’s called ’spin,’ right?

The Fourth Amendment prohibition against illegal search and seizure made it into the U.S. Constitution precisely because its drafters understood that the power to snoop is addictive. Even if we happen to trust in the good intentions of the snoopers, the nature of any government can change rapidly — which is why the Constitution places limits on the tools available to any regime. But the drafters could never have imagined the commercial pressures at play today. The global homeland-security business is now worth an estimated $200 billion — more than Hollywood and the music industry combined. Any sector of that size inevitably takes on its own momentum. New markets must be found — which, in the Big Brother business, means an endless procession of new enemies and new emergencies: crime, immigration, terrorism.

 China-bashing never fails to soothe the Western conscience — here is a large and powerful country that, when it comes to human rights and democracy, is so much worse than Bush’s America. But during my time in Shenzhen, China’s youngest and most modern city, I often have the feeling that I am witnessing not some rogue police state but a global middle ground, the place where more and more countries are converging. China is becoming more like us in very visible ways (Starbucks, Hooters, cellphones that are cooler than ours), and we are becoming more like China in less visible ones (torture, warrantless wiretapping, indefinite detention, though not nearly on the Chinese scale).

We’ve always been at peace with Eastasia (China), we’ve always been at war with Eurasia (Iran). Why? They said your daddy’s momma was fat, and that she could suck on their nuclear weapons.

This sounds like insanity to me - prices on everything are steadily climbing, the housing sector is in the toilet and about to be flushed, and the US is patting itself on the back for making steel pipes from China that are used heavily in house building more than 100% more expensive, to protect American steel interested from Chinese Government Subsidies (all caps because they’re damned scary, right?)

Nevermind that we subsidize the shit out of things. The Iraq war can be seen as a major subsidy for the US military-industrial complex (our Defense budget hasn’t balooned to 3/4th of a trillion dollars for no reason), we subsidize corn growing, ethanol, and oil, YES OIL, the commodity that has nearly sextupled in price since Bush took office.  (By the way, if you want to make money is a sleazy way, the flooding in Iowa has decimated their corn and soybean fields - load up on futures in those two crop - you’ll hate yourself in the morning but will probably make some money. I am not going to do this.) Now for a bit of Shedlockian commentary on this subject, since he knows more than I:

We have tariffs, on agricultural products, ethanol, and scores of other items already. We have bills that restrict the importation of drugs from Canada and Mexico. Those tariffs are increasing the prices consumers (and businesses) have to pay.

The bill effectively says “prices are not high enough, let’s raise them”. It will not save a single job. It will crush imports of these products and that means fewer doc jobs and transportation jobs. It will cause prices to rise for those that need pipes or fencing.

Steel makers will misguidedly cheer this bill, but fence installers sure won’t. Consumers and businesses are being squeezed. No one anywhere can afford higher prices. For every steel making job we save (I doubt any), we will lose 10 times as many fence installing and doc unloading jobs.

Higher Prices = Less Demand. The economy and jobs are already weakening and this will increase that weakness.

I‘m not sure why he’s calling dock workers doc workers - at first I was like “why are doctors gonna be hurt by this?” but then I realized. And he goes on to the probably Chinese response:

The question is whether or not China retaliates. If the US demands higher prices, China could simply voluntarily tax all goods to the US with an export tax and make a statement “You want higher prices, here, you can have them”. At least that way, China keeps the money instead of the US collecting a tariff.

He goes on to describe how the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1929, and how it didn’t cause the Great Depression, but it did serve to further kick us while we were down - foreign governments just raised the prices on their goods, and Canada imposed a 30% tariff on all imported US goods, which kicked imports down by 2/3rds.

This current tariff is nothing more than pandering for political popularity, and will cause nothing more than economic strife.

Holy crap. Wow. Everything you see is like man-made. I saw this giant orange feature speckled with dark little dots. Now, I’m studying microscopy at school, so I’m used to looking at things in the google maps perspective, seeing things and then drilling down to see what else is there. Using google maps for me is a little like sitting at a giant microscop peering down at planet earth in a petri dish - but I digress.

So I see this huge orange feature. 70 kilometers (50 miles) wide and about 100 kilometers (65 miles) tall. I’m thinking, desert? Wrong. Cities, grown together and flung across the landscape. It’s where Suzhou, Fuyang and Huaibei lie. Almost every feature you see on this map is a giant manmade fractal - only the water and mountains are natural. Zoom in anywhere and you will see house after house or field after field. Even places that look like mountains at a zoom of 20 miles turn out to be lichen-like human settlements. I never really thought about it, but having as many people as China does, there really wouldn’t be many places left untouched by man.

“The lack of transparency in China’s military and security affairs poses risks to stability by increasing the potential for misunderstanding and miscalculation. This situation will naturally and understandably lead to hedging against the unknown,” the report states.

And I’m sure no other countries have ever had a report that says that about us.

“In the counterspace area, the Chinese test of an anti-satellite system, a little over a year ago, was something that really brought home, in a very dramatic way, the capabilities that China has been developing…not that we weren’t aware of those developments beforehand,” Sedney noted in this week’s Pentagon briefing.

“But when you see something actually used, then it certainly attracts your attention. Because you’ve seen that, not only are they working on it, but they’ve done it … they’ve acquired that capability,” Sedney told reporters.

And that anti-satellite test we conducted was entirely harmless and absolutely not related to China’s ASAT test. I’m left wondering how much of this is the truth, and how much of it is “truth” as exemplified by the “truth” told to us about Iraq’s capabilities leading up to Operation Iraqi Invasion.

China’s increasing involvement in the United States economy, including the recent purchase by a Chinese government investment fund of stakes in the private equity firm Blackstone and in the investment banker Morgan Stanley, has aggravated concerns in Congress. But the Bush administration does not view these as threats to national security.

Oh crap, did we sell our country for some shiny dvd players and cheap WalMart baubles?

China has also since agreed to ban the use of lead in toys exported to the US.

I’m proud of China. They’ve done what we, apparently, haven’t, banned the use of lead in toys imported to the US.  I say this because I have previously noted that the amount of lead in Chinese toys was an “unsafe amount,” implying that there is a safe amount of toxins in the toys of American children.

Barely a day goes by without some new scandal over a made-in-China product, be it toys, toothpaste or fish, which has raised safety concerns in major export markets around the world.

That is not journalism, that is editorializing. “There have been many scandals recently over made-in-China products, some involving recalls on toys, toothpaste and fish, which has raised safety concerns in major export markets around the world.” No mention has been made of implementing any new (if there already are any) testing standards for imports. Most factories pull in random samples of their products to test. No mention is made if any such action happens on imports.

“About 253,000 Pixar Sarge die-cast toy cars with lead paint were also recalled. Lead has been linked to health problems in children, including brain damage.

Earlier this month Mattel’s Fisher-Price unit recalled about 1.5 million preschool toys made by China-based contract manufacturer Lida Toy Co. because the paint on the toys might contain excessive amounts of lead. The global recall included products based on popular preschool characters from ‘Sesame Street’ and ‘Dora the Explorer.’”

Seriously, what is a safe amount of lead in paint on children’s toys?

Oh, right, NONE.

“Like mercury, another heavy metal, lead is a potent neurotoxin which accumulates in soft tissues and bone over time.”

Seriously, US media, this kind of information took me like 5 seconds to look up. All you have to do is find it, then fact-check it. Even dictionary.com mentions it’s toxic.

“lead poisoning or plumbism, intoxication of the system by organic compounds containing lead. These enter the body by respiration (of dust, fumes, or sprays) or by ingestion of food or other substances that contain lead. Lead poisoning, formerly a leading occupational hazard in industrialized countries, can be an acute episode but is usually a chronic, cumulative disease brought about by continuous exposure.”

And I’m quite sure Reuters employs much better sources of information like Lexis-Nexis or whatever the current shit-hot for-pay vetted information systems are employed today.

Oh! A paragraph on the dangers of lead. Sort of.

“Nancy Nord, acting chairwoman of the CPSC, said the new recall was made especially large to prevent injuries from the toys.

“‘There is absolutely no excuse for lead to be found in toys entering this country,’ she said. ‘It is totally unacceptable and it needs to stop. This agency is going to take whatever action it needs to take to address that problem aggressively.’”

The CPSC is the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission.

So I wonder, exactly, what percentage of toys that Mattel currently has on shelves this 18.5 million toys recalled represents?