Loose Change 911

[Torrent Link] 911 Loose Change
I would never really classify myself as a conspiracy theorist. I remember reading the Operation Majority crap when I was a kid and being totally engulfed in the idea that there was a world of things happening that we, the public, weren't allowed to see. Secret things like alien presence on earth, global masterminds that controlled the world, governments lying to the public to cover things up, etc., etc.

All but the last one I think I've grown weary of. Because, unlike the other two, the last one only relies on one simple thing: greed and power. Ok, two simple things. These two principles have ruled history, and aren't we supposed to look to our pasts to reveal our future? Why now, in a time of greater self-realization and global conception, do most of us really believe that these two things are not ever present.

This is why, I guess, when I watch something like Loose Change 911, a documentary about the massive conspiracy behind the 'attacks' on September 11, 2001, I usually sit back and just shake my head. Basically the documentary (which I've provided a BitTorrent link to above) is a rather well done, indepth analysis of the attacks - the stuff we saw/didn't see on CNN. It's quite incredible.

Films like this are always going to sit precariously with me, as while watching it I eat it up wide-eyed, open-mouthed and nodding at the appropriate times. Then after, I sort of sit back, reflect and wait for people to debunk it all.

The content is what it is, I say watch it and make up your own mind. And if you do watch it, please come back here and comment on it. I'm curious what everyone thinks.

AIDS In China

Right, so I'm becoming a little too accustomed to posting about stuff I've read on other people's sites, especially the ever interesting and insightful EastSouthWestNorth Blog. But if ideas had to be original, we'd all be in short supply.

As such, I just finished reading "Being Alive Is Not Just An Instinct", ESWN's lastest post/translation of a Southern Weekend article by Zhang Ying. The article is about Chinese author Yan Lianke and his experiences with AIDS riddled small-town China.

Some selected quotes from the article:

On that day, Gao Yaojie [a top civilian In AIDS prevention] also told me another shocking detail. She said that when the peasants sold blood back then, they might be working in the field. When the Blood Heads went to the fields to collect blood, they said that they would take 500 cc but actually they were taking 600 cc or 700 cc for the same money (at most 80 RMB). The peasants who had the blood drawn were often dizzy afterwards because too much blood had been taken. At those moments, the Blood Head would pick up the peasants and turn them upside down, shaking their bodies until the blood went back into their heads. Then the peasants didn't feel as dizzy as before and so they continued to work.

... a Blood Head in real life told me that when they collected blood, they diluted it with beer to increase the volume. As another example, when this village began to collect blood originally, bottles were used. But since bottles cost too much, they used soy sauce and vinegar plastic bags later. Then they used those plastic bags again and again. There was a water pool about two mu in area, and every night he would wash out the blood plastic bags at this pool. After the while, the water pool was dyed red.

Then there was another a family of three in which the male was an AIDS patient and the female had been healthy. After the woman married the man, she was infected. That was seven years ago. The man said that he was unaware that he had been infected when he married her (of course, there is a phenomenon in which when a man is ill, the family and the village will try to conceal the truth and get him a wife from outside quickly so that she can become pregnant and continue the family lineage). After getting married and then infected, the woman collapsed mentally. She hated her husband, she hated the family, she hated the village and she even hated the whole society. From that moment on, she would not do any housekeeping or farming work, she just threw the dishes and bowls around, she cursed the man, and she was hostile to her parents-in-law.

So yeah, some crazy stuff. I knew that the AIDS situation in China was troubled, but this article really filled in some of the gaps in my knowledge about it. I really hope I can find an English transation of Mr. Yan's new book, "The Dream of Ding Village".

Something that I'm constantly surprised about is the naivety in China about AIDS. The government, for all their merits, are trying their best to educate - and I'm sure nary a day goes by that there's not some sort of ad or article (一样吗?) in the newspaper about how they are battling this horrible disease that the damn foreigners have forced upon the otherwise innocent and undeserving Chinese population.

No joke. I honestly believe that the biggest reason the AIDS epidemic wasn't faced quicker was that China (blanket statement) simply didn't feel it was their problem. I mean, it wasn't "created" by a Chinese person, it MUST have been some dirty African or sluty American [would both nationalities please forgive the dramatics] that brought it here - they should be the ones taking care of this.

I know that's a bit harsh - but I've had several conversations about this with Chinese people (of mixed stature in society) and all have said only slight variations of the above.

So, for all my Chinese readers (of which I'm not aware I have - do comment if you are), please read the following very carefully:

Gao Yaojie and Mr. Shao explained many things to me about AIDS. I know that there are three ways by which AIDS can come about. One way is through blood infection, such as sharing a needle. The proportion is high, about 96% to 97%. The second way is infection through sexual intercourse, about 2%. The rest comes from mother-child infection. There is no other way of infection. About this, we should trust science and not be too scared.

Have we given up thinking we're going to get it from toilet seats or shaking hands yet?

A Lil' Somethin' For Everyone

If you come to my site for news about me...

I've finally settled into my new routine. Teaching at a primary school as opposed to teaching at a private language school does comes with some differences.

1) More kids. At Future School I was teaching class sizes ranging from 5 to 19 kids at various levels of English. At my new school I am teaching average class sizes of about 35-40 ranging in age from 7 to 11. Where at FS I taught a wide range of ages and levels (from pre-school to adults, can barely say their name to near-fluent conversation), at the primary school most days I'm lucky if I can get them to remember "I'm ## years old."

2) Staff. Man, the last few weeks has done more to improve my Chinese than any single thing I've done for my Chinese education thus far. Where at Future School there MIGHT be 2-3 people on staff that can't speak English at the primary school it is effectively the opposite. Most teachers (having had a reasonable education) can manage some basic sentences and such, but for fluency, I think there are maybe only 5 people out of a faculty of 50 or so that can really speak reasonably comfortably. I may see this change over time, as I think at first many of the teachers are rather shy.

This is actually something I have to combat quite a bit. Whereas the teachers at Future School are used to working with foreigners, the teachers at the primary school aren't. I often find that I feel I'm stepping on their toes when I come into their classroom. I also get the sense that they're a bit worried I might call their bluff on what they may have indicated on their job application as their English ability. (more so for the English teachers).

3) Distance to school. I'm now subject to the arduous task of taking public transport every morning to get to school (gasp!). While working in Jinzhou I did have to do this, it was pretty simple, and my last 6 months at FS in Dalian, it's just been a short walk to work three times a week. Now however, I have to take a bus at the busiest time of the day, often having to wait two or three buses to find one where it's not so full peoples limbs are getting caught when the doors close. I've worked it out if I leave a little later, getting to school just before my 10:10 class starts, the buses aren't half as crowded.

4) Work days. It's a bit surreal having the weekends off after working nearly every weekend for the last year and a bit. It's nice in some regards, but is hurting my social life with all my old FS friends as they're all on my old schedule and have to get to bed early on the weekends. And in reverse I'm playing the wuss by calling early nights during the week, when they all go out.

5) Class length. FS classes are generally 2 hours long with a variety of levels per day. At my new school the classes are 40 minutes long and I only teach three grades all week. Basically I do a lesson plan Monday for Gr. 1, teach the exact same thing 6 times Monday, then modify it slightly for my tuesday classes of Gr. 2 and Gr. 3. I repeat this process on Thursday and Friday (I've Wed., Sat. and Sun. off).

6) Freedom. I've a lot more freedom in what/how I teach the kids. The curriculum calls for the use of an Oxford Press English book for Primary Students, but it is totally retarded. These kids can barely remember "Where are you from? I'm from China" after three weeks of review, and the Oxford book would have me teaching them "Do you want to see my present?" "Show me your new shoes"... just stupid. Anyway.. needless to say, I've sort of scrapped the book. I'm going to make a modest effort to include it in some classes so the kids' parents don't feel they've wasted their money in purchasing it. Next term I'm going to seriously recommend changing books. If anyone has any suggestions, please e-mail me.

Anyway, those are the major differences. I'd say mostly they are positive. I am enjoying the new job so far, and am not regretting leaving the safety of Future School, as I thought I might.

If you come to my site for my sometimes interesting, sometimes stupid, and often scathing criticisms of life here...
So, Taiwan has once again declined an offer from the Mainland for some pandas as a rather dear peace offering. I'm not really sure who cooked up this 'panda diplomacy', but I think it's passed its novelty.

If you ask most people in China, they are under the opinion that China gives pandas to other countries as a way of extending friendship to that country. They see it as an altruistic way of sharing Chinese culture and kindness with nations that want to be friendly with China.

Bollocks.

It, like almost everything when it comes to China, is a money grab. China lends these little monochrome bamboo eaters out on a 10-year loan at about $1,000,000/yr.

Under current agreements, the zoos in Atlanta, Memphis, Washington and San Diego each pay more than $1 million a year for what the Chinese government says is a fund to protect endangered animals. In addition, China charges the zoos a one-time fee of about $600,000 each time a panda cub, such as Tai Shan, is born. - Pricey pandas put squeeze on zoo finances, By Gary Emerling, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, February 26, 2006

After revealing that it wasn't a "gift", I asked my adult students once if they felt it was fair for China to charge this money. They immediately said "of course". So I furthered the conversation by asking if it is "right" for a country to claim they "own" a species of animal simply because its natural habitat resides within the country's border. They again said, "Of course! China is a poor country, Western countries have the money to pay for it." Using this logic, I finished the discussion by asking if they felt that China should pay - to the respectively poorer countries than China - approximately 8,000,000 RMB/yr. for each non-native cat (tigers, panthers, lions) I saw at the Haerbin Dongbei Tiger Forest Zoo. No comment was given.

Since 1998, thanks to the WWF, U.S. zoos must make sure that at least half of the money paid for the loans is spent on panda conservation in China. Don't get me wrong, I don't disagree with large amounts of money being paid by zoos into the conservation efforts for a severly endangered species (even if that species seems just completely out of wack with natural selection when it comes to its breeding/birthing process). I just, and maybe I'm wrong, don't trust the Chinese powers that be to be responsible with it. "Conservation" is a term that has a somewhat alternative definition when it comes to China. I've not been to Sichuan and seen the panda conservation parks, but if they're anything like the Siberian tiger "conservation" park that I went to ... a lot is left to be desired.

and finally...
If you come to my site because you are also a blogger or into Web site design...

You might have noticed I've put some ads on my site for my provider. I've been asked a few times about them, and as I've always had good experiences with them (cheap price, competitive services, ultra-fast responses to help issues), I've decided to become an affiliate of theirs. So, if you are currently hosting your site on some free service, messing around with free photo hosting sites with size limits and bandwidth limits, but you thought like I did that it's REALLY expensive to have your own server to avoid all that crap - nope. It's $6/mo. for hosting plus $5/yr. for domain (that dot.com thingy that you type into the address bar) registration.

For that you get 750 MB of storage, unlimted customized e-mails (ie. yourname@yourdomain.com), FTP accounts, 15 GB of bandwidth (that's how much stuff people can download per month from you). It's not bad eh?

For more details, check out the page I've set up for a bit better explaination of everything, or use your mouse on the colourful box-like links that go directly to a non-G00gle related page, but rather a page for additional information about what I'm talking about.

Inboxinated

Hey, always in a rush to add little gizmos to my site that make it just the coolest thing since sliced bread (and you thought it was sliced bagels!), I've set up a Daily E-mail Update.

So, if you like reading my site, keeping posted on what's going on with me in China, but can't really be bothered to check more than your e-mail when you come online... just put your e-mail in the little box here, or in the identical one on my ever-expanding sidebar, and like magic you'll see an e-mail from me everytime I post a new entry. Pretty fancy eh?

Just put your e-mail here:


And click this:


The whole thing is powered by FeedBlitz for those that are interested in such things.

Do On To Others ...

Right, so does anyone else think the world is just stupidly retarded these days? And I don't mean to throw the term retarded out there to offend anyone with special needs, as they are certainly more abled than the planet at large.

I just read about this case in Afganistan, where an Afgan man is being tried (and seemingly convicted) for converting to Christianity 14 years ago. Unless he renounces his ways and again affirms his belief in Allah, wait, not Allah... just Mohammad -- the rest of the cast and crew are pretty much the same aren't they -- they're going to sentence him to death.

Now, lemme get this straight, the Muslim world gets up in arms (literally) when the "Christian" (rather, the multi-ethnic, rather tollerant and aware that there IS an entire world of people that live on this planet) world publishes A SINGLE defamatory cartoon about the Prophet, which characterizes the fact that the Muslim world tends to blow up innocent people to show their dislike of other people blowing up innocent Muslim people (a la G.W. Bush and his bedmates).

So, now we've got a Christian guy in Afganistan who's going to be killed for being Christian. If the Muslim's unite when their faith is attacked (by horribly damaging cartoons), where the hell are the Christians? Bunch of pacifists. I say the Christian powers that largely rule the US, and now Canada, should illustrate to Afganistan just how astronomically stupid they are by extending the same level of "justice" to the Muslim people in North America. Hell, Tony Blair and John Howard ... they'd probably admit to being Christians too right? (do when the votes are needed anyway). So lets get the UK and Australia in this too.

If a man can be killed in a Muslim country for being Christian, isn't it fair that a man, woman or child in a largely Christian country be killed for being a Muslim? No, it's not fair... it's remarkably brainless... and I'm SURE that the Muslims in "civilized" Western countries would agree. So... what the fuck?

It's common to hear that all this shit going down in the Middle-East by America is just causing more and more terrorists (and I'm the first to advocate that it does, and denounce the whole thing), but what the hell is the Muslim world doing? I mean, they're not exactly giving the world a lot to like about their religion.

Worth A Thousand Words...

The Humanaught's Photo Gallery

So, it's finally up. It's not complete, it's got a few kinks, and there's no Dalian section (bit ironic I think)... but my photo gallery is finally complete enough that I'd thought I'd put a link on here for it. Check it out, and leave some comments about what you think.

Putting The Rough Back In The Diamond

Maybe about a year ago I was talking to my friend Matt about "old nobility" versus "nouveau riche". To be honest, being from a country with a limited amount of direct history, these two terms were, well, foreign to me.

I mean, I'm sure Canada has some nobility attached to it, but most of the nobles would have stayed in England, and not ventured to the "New World" themselves. As such, the rich in North America I would summize are all what nobility would call "nouveau riche".

Matt sided that the "nouveau riche" lacked a class and manners that is instilled on nobility and basically nouveau riche are just a bunch of brutes with money. At first I disagreed with him, thinking that nobility is just a fancy way of saying you didn't have to work for your money and the "nouveau riche" are hard workers that have done well (English Royalty vs. American Dream and all that).

After reading a translation of The Most Popular Forum Post Ever In China, my opinions have swayed a little. It is basically an online battle between the rich ("nouveau riche") and the inconceivably rich ("old nobility") in China.

It starts with a rich woman (Yi Yeqing), who claims to be "upper-class", harping on how shitty and worthless the poor are - she hates even looking at them. This is when a man (NL), who claims to be a member of one of China's six "noble" families, entered the dialog. He, with the edge of a razor, put her in her place and explained that she had no right "waving the upper-class banner".

Yi Yeqing said that her family can spend "several thousand US dollars" in a blink and they fly every two to three days, such as from Moscow in Europe to San Francisco in the United States for tens of thousands of US dollars. NL commented: "We don't pay for airline tickets when we travel. We fly in our own private plane."

Yi Yeqing said that the red wine that she drank on New Year's Eve cost 1-2 thousand RMB (US$125-250). NL said that the a bottle French wine that he drank on New Year's Eve cost US$13,000.

He systematically destroys her claims to being "rich" (though I'm sure she's quite rich by most of our standards). He explains that the true "upper-class" would never act in such a way. They are taught to respect all people, be broad-minded and generous - as they have "class" in every sense of the term.

This is when I began to possibly understand where Matt was coming from. Money means ability, mobility and accessibility - but it doesn't at all come with a stipulation or guidebook that explains you should also have presentation, ideology, ethics, manners, and etiquette. This, at least as NL alleges, comes from being "nobel".

Maybe there are a million examples for and against the above - but the real thing that happened for me after reading the dialog was that I began to understand that all wealth is not created equal.

Sadly, it also made me realize that most everywhere, but definitely here in China, people are questing Yi Yeqing's style of life and views, not the "noble" path. With the use of Guanxi (relationships), it is quite common for the cruelest, most manipulative and deceitful people to be the ones that are populating China's bustling (now renamed in my mind) upper-middle class. This creates some rather powerful and rich people in China that have no regard for the people around them - or "below" them, if you will.

New Apartment: The Tour

Download the video (if it doesn't play above).

Hey, so I finally got around to taking some photos, and even making a little video, of our apartment. It's pretty sweet. For 1000 RMB ($142 CAN)/mo. we have a 2-bedroom, approx. 100 sq. metre place. Seventh floor, but hell, I need the excercise.


[LEFT] The livingroom, complete with a comfortable sofa, two comfortable armchairs and a nice big TV with sound system. [RIGHT] Our dining room, which we've admittedly put to little use thus far, but it'll be nice to finally have people over for dinner.


[LEFT] Also adding more comfort to this place is a bed that actually feels like a bed, not a sparsely padded piece of stone. [RIGHT] The quaint, but functional kitchen comes complete with a dish sanitizer - wahtever that is.


The Office: Where I spend FAR too much time.

Shamed To Suicide: The Lesser-Known Victims of Kiddie Porn

Yeah, so this is going to be a tad controversial of a post. If you’re like me, just hearing the term “kiddie porn” fills you with squeamish and uncomfortable feelings, but two things got me thinking/talking about this topic lately.

Hit Me Baby One More Time
Sadly, I know from a conversation I had last night with a new friend of mine, Tom, that just having this topic on my site is going to land me a lot of unfounded hits. I got chatting with Tom, a bit of a guru in Internet marketing and an advocate for NGOs, about this topic last night and how rampant it is in S.E. Asia (that’s Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar and Malaysia for those that don’t know).

The area is often portrayed in Western media as a major gathering point for all the perverts of Western nations, but what Tom enlightened me about was that something like 90%+ of the business comes from Asian men. That means for every 10 little boys or girls that are horribly abused in this way, only one is by a white guy (not to be gender or multi-ethnically biased here, but I think we can agree that if we’re talking percentages, white males are going to dominate the ‘Western’ category).

He brought this to my attention because we were talking about an amazing group he’s the project leader of (www.nomadicmarketing.com) that provides marketing services to Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) that otherwise couldn’t afford good marketing. He was talking about a few of the groups they help, and how they’re fighting this sex trade.

More to the point, he told me because they mention this topic on their site, they get a lot more hits. I immediately replied that this can’t be good as it’s the wrong sort of visitor – but he corrected me that if the hits are high, the search rankings are high, and site statistics are high, it doesn’t matter who the visitors are – computers can’t really discern. And yeah, I'm still getting hits for "Shanghai KTV Girls".

Anyway, check out the site and donate in some way if you can.

The second bit…
Shamed To Suicide
As horrible as sexual child abuse is, there is a side to it that we often forget about – the victims who get no sympathy from us - those accused. Notice, I didn’t say tried, and convicted. Just being accused of purchasing, watching, creating or supporting kiddie porn in anyway is enough to completely ruin your life.

I watched “Goodnight, And Good Luck” a few weeks back, and though the content is about McCarthy-era Communist witch hunts, the same ‘witch hunt’ term can easily be applied to child pornography today. We hear about someone accused of having a den full of kiddie porno and we want to sauté his balls and feed them to him. We lose all sense of rationale and justice.

I just read a fantastic article on CBC.ca, ‘Global child porn probe led to false accusations’ as well as The Landslide Case from The Fifth Estate. If there’s one thing that is consistent in this world it’s the short-comings of our justice systems – which is why we have “presumed innocent until proven guilty” built into it. However, with child porn cases, the opposite is true. Just being associated or investigated in a case will generally cost you your job, your friends, your relationship and you’ll be forced to live in a anonymous state of exile or, as is quite often the case, kill yourself. And you're completely innocent.

The article illustrated the gross mistakes that can be made in child porn cases, not at risk of hurting the obvious victims (the children), but hurting the unseen, and often uncared for victims – the accused.

Why is it someone can be accused of killing people and we don’t mind rallying behind him as being innocent, but if someone is accused of being affiliated with kiddie porn they are immediately shunned – whether they have a good chance of being innocent or not.

In my opinion it’s for the simple reason I began this all with. Kiddie porn and sexual child abuse gives us a queasy feeling in our stomachs. It doesn’t jive right with our souls. We can sit at home and find in our hearts a bit of sympathy for someone who has killed someone, especially in rage, as we’ve all been very, very pissed off before. But add sex, and then children to the mix (even minus the murder), and it becomes a huge taboo. These people our freaks, they have no place in our society and if they’ve been accused there MUST be some sort of evidence there. Police don’t just accuse innocent people. Maybe they aren’t guilty of exactly what the police are looking for, but hell, they MUST be guilty of something. Burn them. BURN THEM!

Herein lies the problem. I really don’t think A) those that are innocent should be treated this way, and neither do I think that B) the guilty should be either. These people have a sexual deviance and it’s a problem, but treating them like social outcasts is what leads to child murderers. And I don’t care how you stack it in this post-90s, soft-spoken, 'I-have-issues' world we live in – but being abused and being alive is better than being abused and being dead.

We should be creating programs for pedophilia and finding solutions to – by better examining the causes of – this problem.

And that’s my two bits on that. Oh, and if you’re looking for pictures of naked kids, I can only hope that you read this and now seriously examine your choices. The world doesn’t have much sympathy for pedophiles, and there is no “level” of guilt when it comes to this.

NOTE: Please, please, PLEASE don't bombard me with a bunch of "pedophilia sympathizer" hate-mail. Honestly, I don't support pedophilia at all. I think it's horrible. I am only trying to make a point that the way we're tackling this issue isn't working. We have to recognize that a) innocent people are having their lives ruined in our quest for "justice" and b) guilty people are being treated like they are monsters for a sickness they need help with.

2008: The Year of Manners

For anyone that has been to China, and certianly for those of us that live here, one of the hardest things to deal with is that many [not all] Chinese people seem to have a complete lack of any sort of manners.

Near every day walking to or from the bus stop I pass no less than several hundred gobs of mucous spewn about the sidewalk and road. Spitting is something I hardly notice anymore, but when I first arrived in China it was strange to see everyone from big burly men to frail little old ladies horking like I thought only a trucker could (I apologize to the phlegmless transport workers I've likely offended).

If I'm not dodging the recently dispatched contents of someone's throat/nasal passage, I'm trying hard to avoid the plastic bags and rubbish blowing about. Litter is, by Western standards, quite rampant in China. People have very little regard for the practice of placing trash in the appropriate recepticals. This said, in China, Dalian is considered one of the cleanest cities, and from my experiences in a handful of other Chinese cities it does earn that title. But you don't have to travel too far from the well-swept downtown core to see what "real" China is like.

Finally, once I reach the bus stop, I encounter the third part of Chinese society that conflicts with my Western ideas about manners - no lines. I can't count how many times I've been elbowed by surprisingly agile old men in their attempts to be the one ahead of me on the bus. This anti-queueing phenom spreds well passed the curbside scrum to overload public transport. Lines are absent at train stations, food stands, McDonalds, and basically anywhere organization would assist in putting the "civil" back into "the world's oldest CIVILization". I've heard things have improved from years past, but it's still a long way off from being "polite" society.

Like the good public-caretakers that they are, in recent years the government has put fines in place to try to deteur spitting and littering, but I've yet to see or hear of any tickets being handed out. I recently read an article on MSN News that reported how Beijing is preparing for the 2008 Summer Olympics. It's a great article because it really illustrates the tackling of the problem with both Chinese and Western values.

"I'm trying to wake up a sense of decency, I know it's there." - Lu-chin Mischke, the Pride Institute

The quote above is from a Chinese woman who lived in the US for 10 years, only to return to her homeland with a complete look of disgust on her face at how Chinese people are treating the place. She, and I agree with her, couldn't believe that people would have such a lack of respect for their country.

Whereby the Government run program is "teaching people the right way to spit", Mrs. Mischke's Pride Institute attempts a much more ambitious feat - teaching people the right way to live. It's easy to become desensitized to the rather rude habits here, and it's easy to write them off as just a "cultural difference". But in the end, any culture that promotes defiling the environment, lack of respect for other's personal space, and complete disregard for a basic sense of civility - well, what's so cultural about that?

So while most Chinese people are eagerly awaiting the sun-lit days of 2008 for all the wealth and prosperity it will bring - I can't help but feel that the biggest thing that China might gain from having all eyes in the world turn to them for a couple short weeks is a sense of civic responsibility.

PS: They also chew with their mouths open. I know that's petty, but well, it is a PS and it really pisses me off listening to a restaurant full of people chomping every bite.