Sarah Palin still terrifies me

By Frank Moraes 

As The Des Moines Register reported the other day, "Palin Compares Federal Debt to Slavery at Iowa Dinner." And you may well ask why I care. After all, Sarah Palin is always saying something stupid and she is always somewhere. This weekend, it was Iowa.

But I think it is important. I don't care about the slavery bit and all her racist talk. What does bother me is this, "Our free stuff today is being paid for by taking money from our children and borrowing from China." There are two things wrong with this sentence. First: China. It's been a while since I've talked about this, so I think it is worth bringing up again. As I discussed in China Owns America! In Republican Ads, only 32% of our debt is owed to anyone outside the country; only 8% is owed to China. The vast majority of American debt is owed to ourselves.

I see this kind of fear that we are going to bury ourselves in debt -- especially from conservatives. But it is based on an extremely poor understand of finance. Consider this example. When I was five years old, my parents bought a house for $17,000. It is now 44 years later. Imagine that they had kept that house all this time and had only paid the interest on it. Let's also assume that their mortgage rate was 8%, which is actually kind of high. That would mean that today, they would be paying $113 per month in interest. Clearly, they would be better off having paid off the principle -- $113 per month better off. But it's not the case that they would be buried in principle. What's more, they would now have a house that is worth about a quarter million dollars.

That brings us to the second problem with Palin's sentence. We aren't taking money away from our children by borrowing money today. That is especially true if we are using the money we borrow to invest in infrastructure, health, and education. College graduates are having a hard time finding jobs right now. And that will hurt them into the future. Having a low paying job or no job at all will be a big problem compared to that modest $113 mortgage we are supposedly saving our kids from.

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Russia to protect Syria from "hot heads"

By Carl 

In scanning the news this morning, I found this headline:

Russia says it will help Syria deter "hot heads"

Now whom could they possibly mean, I wonder...

All kidding (on the square) aside, this is a bit troubling, although part of the problem could be in translation (or not). "Hot heads" is a pretty demeaning term, and about the only action apart from McCain's apparently unreported and foolish venture into Syria taken this weekend was taken, or rather not taken, by the European Union when it allowed the arms embargo with Syria to expire, thus allowing weapons manufacturers in the EU to sell openly to the rebels.

Already, there's been some backlash against Russia swiping its paws at the EU.

I've discussed in the past some of the background between Syria and Russia, but let me sum it up quickly: Syria buys Russian arms, maintains the sole Russian naval base in the Mediterranean (at Tartus), has energy development deals with Russia in both oil and natural gas, and is closely allied with Iran, also a major Russian arms customer, and also a big customer for Russian natural gas.

There. Not too painful, right?

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As if we don't have enough to worry about

By Carl 

It looks like China and India are heading towards their own version of the Cold War:

Under cover of night last month, a platoon of People's Liberation Army soldiers hiked across barren mountains and set up camp in the foothills of the Himalayas, one of the most inhospitable places on earth for a bivouac.

But it wasn't just an exercise in high-altitude preparedness. The Chinese camp was 19 kilometres on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control (LAC), which separates Ladakh in the state of Jammu & Kashmir from Aksai Chin.

The border here has never been demarcated and remains a thorn in Beijing's side. A Foreign Ministry spokesman insisted the soldiers were still in China.

The incursion comes as Beijing is on an imperialist expansion kick. It is already embroiled in territorial disputes with neighbours like Japan and the Philippines over islands, and mineral and fishing rights. It recently started cruises to to the Paracel Islands, which is claimed by Vietnam.

Now, the latest land grab, which has passed almost unnoticed in the western press. But it has raised alarm bells in New Delhi, brought protesters out onto the streets and recalls alarming memories of 1962, when the two countries fought a short-lived war triggered by border disputes, and a standoff in 1986.

Well, OK, then! Two nuclear powers are edging closer and closer to outright hostilities! How do I sign up for Mars One again?

China has long given assistance to Pakistan to keep India otherwise occupied, but the combination of American intervention in the region as well as Pakistan's own internal struggle to keep the Taliban and Islamists tamped down has rendered that an exercise in academia. So I'm guessing China is finding some other way to kick India in the nuts.

Given China's other pots on burners, like North Korea, Iran, and Africa, you'd think they'd want to fix this as peacefully and unobtrusively as possible. And so far, they've managed to keep the skirmishes on the back burner, even in India. 

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Mythical government waste

By Frank Moraes 

Conservatives have a special fondness for government waste. As I pointed out leading up to the Fiscal Cliff, John Boehner seemed to think there were wasteful government programs, he just needed Obama to tell him what they were. This goes along with polls that shows that the American people want to cut government spending. But when asked about specific programs, they always want to continue funding those -- in many cases they want to increase that funding.

There is one exception. Americans want to cut foreign aid. Of course, that wouldn't do much because foreign aid is generally a bit less than 1% of the federal budget. But Americans think it is much higher. An American Public Opinion poll from two years ago found that the median American thought that foreign aid was 25% of the budget. So there you have it! In the minds of most Americans, we could balance the budget and then some (Quite some!) if we just stopped handing money out to people who hate us.

This kind of thinking is pushed by the conservative movement without actively lying. It is the reason we have Republican politicians constantly talking about "waste" without mentioning what the waste is. It is just a given that the government wastes money. When they do, they present spending on projects that sound wasteful but almost never are.

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The corruption of Republican bankroller Sheldon Adelson

By Michael J.W. Stickings

ThinkProgress:

Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who spent as much as $150 million on independent expenditures to bolster Republicans in the 2012 election, has informed the Securities and Exchange Commission that his Las Vegas Sands Corporation "likely violated a federal law against bribing foreign officials."

*****

The Las Vegas Sands Corporation is suspected of improperly and in some cases illegally bribing Chinese government officials to expand its business in China. The company may have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with a $700,000 payment to a Chinese associate and worked with organized crime gangs to drive business from mainland China to their Macau casino.  

Yes, bribing foreign officials and working with organized crime gangs.

This from the guy who bankrolled Gingrich before moving on to Romney, the guy who has emerged as the Republicans' leading donor, the guy who wants to keep on giving even after his massive 2012 failure.

It all fits together so nicely, doesn't it?

Crazy everywhere, well-armed here

By Frank Moraes

Everyone wants to know why it is we have so many mass shootings -- one every five days on average. Most of all, I want to know. Brad Plumer wrote what turned out to be a disappointing story over at Wonkblog, "Why Are Mass Shootings Becoming More Common?" It was disappointing because it turns out that we don't know. 

One of the more compelling theories is that mass shootings are contagious. I'm serious. Plumer doesn't say, but I think I know how it works. A mentally unstable person sees the news coverage of a mass shooting. He thinks, "Maybe that's what I need! Maybe that will fix me!" I know that line may sound cavalier, but I don't mean it that way at all. I know what it's like to feel that you have no control on your emotions, and the desperation that goes along with it. Luckily, my mental dysfunctions do not go along with a confused sense of reality. But I can see how these people would follow others who have gone before. 

It is much too convenient to hang all of this carnage on the media, however. For one thing, according to Richard Florida's work, there really is no correlation (within the United States) between gun deaths and mental illness. But he did find a correlation between gun deaths and loose gun regulation. To be clear: the more restrictive the gun laws, the lower the rate of gun deaths. So gun availability -- and this surprises no one, right? -- is a critical issue. 

Brad Plumer provided an amazing comparison. Yesterday, another mentally ill man attacked a group of children. Twenty-two of them were injured -- some of them badly. But none were killed. This is because it happened in China and the man only had a knife. 

People are crazy all over the world. We need to do something about that: for them as well as us. But the biggest social problem with the mentally ill here in America is that they are too well armed. 

(photo: "History of gun violence in America grows" at NBC News)

 (Cross-posted at Frankly Curious.)

Lawyers, guns, and money

By Capt. Fogg

This is the title of the song, and as the song goes, the shit has hit the fan, at least for John Hammar, an ex-Marine from Ft. Pierce, Florida, a town just a few miles north of me. I'm sure you've heard that he's been jailed under one of Mexico's tough and comically ineffective gun control laws. Of course, your sense of comedy may differ on this point.

Seems Hammer and his friend had planned to drive across the Mexican border near Matamoros in a Winnebago filled with surfboards and camping gear -- and an old shotgun he'd inherited from his great grandfather which, as purchased from Sears, has a 24" barrel -- an inch too short for Mexico, although just fine in Florida. U.S. officials told him that all he had to do was to file some papers with the Mexican authorities and it would be legal, but they were wrong and Mr. Hammar now sits chained to a cot in a Mexican jail cell hoping at least for lawyers and money. No more guns please.

Fox News of course is running around screaming and yelling about "trumped up charges," which seems strange, U.S. laws about barrel length being just as arbitrary as Mexico's and carrying punishments at least as severe. In fact, U.S. laws require gun owners to know more than you'd expect the average lawyer knows and are just as arbitrary as concerns lengths and dates of manufacture and type of stock. It's possible in fact for a gun to be quite legal to send through the mail and an identical one with a one digit serial number difference to be felonious. It's possible to own a handgun to which fitting a folding stock can put you in jail for being below a certain arbitrary barrel length. Mexican law, unbeknownst to Hammar and his advisors, classifies a nearly antique relic from Sears Roebuck as a military weapon, a practice quite akin to the U.S. classification of an ordinary rifle as being an assault rifle because of the shape of the stock or the country of manufacture. 

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One of these is wrong

By Carl 

Either North Korea successfully placed a "weather satellite" in pole-to-pole orbit around the earth or it's spinning wildly out of control and could crash at any moment.

We report, you duck and cover.

This story is less important for the content -- nearly every nation on the planet, including Russia but not China, have forcefully condemned the launch -- and more important for the interesting spin (pardon the pun) the US is putting on it.

Let's assume for a moment that, indeed, the satellite is wildly out of control. So the U.S. is warning the world to keep an eye out. If this was confirmed by anyone else (South Korea is closely tracking the launch, and even picked up the first stage as it splashed down for further examination,) then the US is prudently advising the world of a potential hazard, much like the US warned about SpaceLab back in the '70s, and Russia about its satellite in 2009.

But there's been no independent confirmation. Which makes the U.S. statement curious, to say the least.

So now let's assume it's all smoke. What is the process for making such a statement in the first place?

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The end of American hegemony

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It's the end of the world as we know it:

A new report by the intelligence community projects that the United States will no longer be the world's only superpower by 2030.

"In terms of the indices of overall power – GDP, population size, military spending and technological investment – Asia will surpass North America and Europe combined," the report concludes. 

"Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds" – prepared by the office of the National Intelligence Council of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence – projects that the "unipolar" world that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union will not continue.

"With the rapid rise of other countries, the 'unipolar moment' is over and no country – whether the U.S., China, or any other country – will be a hegemonic power," the report argues.

Needless to say, non-jingoistic American observers and pretty much anyone with any sense all over the world have seen this coming for a long time, and certainly much of the world is eager for the period of American hegemony to come to an end.

But it is cause for rejoicing?

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Nobody asked me, but...

By Carl 

(Note to The Reaction readers: this is a weekly feature at my own blog, Simply Left Behind, where I whip through stories you might have missed this week. I thought I'd share today, given last night's events.) 

1) Just in case you missed it, IMMORTALITY!

2) I loved Joe Biden's deconstruction of Paul Ryan last night, particularly when he all but called Grover Norquist a traitor to America:

And instead of signing pledges to Grover Norquist not to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute to bring back the middle class, they should be signing a pledge saying to the middle class we're going to level the playing field; we're going to give you a fair shot again; we are going to not repeat the mistakes we made in the past by having a different set of rules for Wall Street and Main Street, making sure that we continue to hemorrhage these tax cuts for the super wealthy.

Subtext? A pledge to Norquist trumps the Pledge of Allegiance. Beatifully done.

3) About all Paul Ryan had to do was to rip his shirt off and start flexing, if he wanted to come off anymore immature and shallow.

4) Your word of the day: Malarkey. When a politician wants to say "bullshit" but the cameras are rolling.

5) If I had been Biden, I would have argued even more forcefully, particularly on tax cuts. For instance, during the Bush years, taxes on the wealthy were at the lowest they've been since Hoover, yet Bush only managed to create 2.3 million new jobs, a figure Obama eclipsed inside of 18 months by passing middle class tax relief (the Social Security suspension), and when "Jack" Kennedy -- something else I would have called Ryan on -- lowered tax rates, the highest marginal rate was 70%, not 38%.

But you'll also note that America's greatest achievements came before Kennedy did that: the interstate highway system, Social Security, rural electrification, the Tennessee Valley Authority, the GI Bill, the Marshall Plan, leaps ahead in public education that benefitted Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden. All of these came about when marginal rates topped out at 90%.

Let me say that again. They occured with taxes reaching as high as 90%. And even under Kennedy, the space program was developed and the moon landed on when taxes were 50%.

America will never lead the world the way it did post-World War II until we recreate those conditions.

6) Just how desperate are our times? The European Union, as a whole, won the Nobel Peace Prize today. 

7) Mitt Romney's timing is impeccably awful, yet again. Even before he shifts focus to China artificially manipulating the yuan to hurt America, the yuan skyrockets on currency markets, improving our economic outlook and bringing more jobs back to America.

8) Note to my L.A. readers: that is not E.T. on Crenshaw.

9) More evidence that water existed on Mars came yesterday. 

10) Finally, apparently you can buy too much toilet paper in New Jersey. Better alert Gov. Christie. I think his quota may be past.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

Behind the Ad: CEOs and presidents (and China)

By Richard K. Barry 

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: The Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: New Hampshire, Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Iowa, Colorado, and Nevada.

What's going on: Romney has decided that President Obama is vulnerable on the issue of U.S. policy towards China. Obama's team has decided to respond with an ad, called "Since When," that came out yesterday and hits Romney on outsourcing jobs to China.

This appears to be an instance of the old James Carville adage that you never let an attack go unanswered. I get that, though I am having a hard time seeing U.S. policy towards China moving many votes.

Perhaps this ad is intended to reenforce the more subtle narrative that while a CEO may only have to care about the bottom line, a president has to care about a lot more. In other words, running a business is not at all like running a country.


(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Mitt Romney's ignorant, far-right views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Trashing 47% of the American people wasn't the only thing Mitt Romney did at that $50,000-a-plate fundraiser in Boca Raton on May 17.

As David Corn of Mother Jones reports, he also expressed his views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, asserting that "the Palestinians have no interest whatsoever in establishing peace, and that the pathway to peace is almost unthinkable to accomplish. He added:

And I look at the Palestinians not wanting to see peace anyway, for political purposes, committed to the destruction and elimination of Israel, and these thorny issues, and I say, "There's just no way." And so what you do is you say, "You move things along the best way you can." You hope for some degree of stability, but you recognize that this is going to remain an unsolved problem. We live with that in China and Taiwan. All right, we have a potentially volatile situation but we sort of live with it, and we kick the ball down the field and hope that ultimately, somehow, something will happen and resolve it. We don't go to war to try and resolve it imminently.

And: "The idea of pushing on the Israelis to give something up to get the Palestinians to act is the worst idea in the world."

As Corn notes, these views conflict with his own party's platform, which stresses the desire for a two-state solution. And Romney himself has said that he supports a two-state solution, including in July: "I believe in a two-state solution which suggests there will be two states, including a Jewish state."


Once more, then, we see Romney the two-faced opportunist saying two different things, and taking two very different positions, in front of two different audiences. As Corn writes: "Romney's remarks to these funders -- this was one of his longest answers at the fundraiser -- suggest he might be hiding his true beliefs regarding Israel and the peace process and that on this subject he is out of sync with the predominant view in foreign policy circles that has existed for decades."

Now, Romney ought to be asked -- and perhaps he will be, at one of the upcoming debates -- about his views on this matter. There is a blatant self-contradiction here, perhaps a strategic one involving lying to voters, and he ought to be required to answer for it.

But let's say his views are indeed those he expressed at the fundraiser. Well, then, he's an extremist, much further to the right on this issue, and on foreign policy generally, than he would have us, and voters generally, believe. Because when you're even further to the right than the Republican Party's platform, well, that puts you pretty far out there on the right. And on this matter it aligns you with a subset of the most extreme neocons and against the broad consensus that has developed, even with ongoing disagreements over the details.

Furthermore, it suggests to me that he would do nothing as president to provide the sort of leadership that is needed to resolve this decades-long crisis. Okay, he wouldn't push for war, and his remarks do show a sense of moderation and humility, but he also seems to have given up on peace, embracing the pro-Israeli status quo that most sensible people realize is simply untenable, not to mention unjust.

And it's not at all like China and Taiwan, because Taiwan, whatever the mainland might like to think, is an independent and sovereign nation and is treated as such by the international community. Indeed, Mitt the foreign policy ignoramus may not know this, but the U.S. has actually supported Taiwan all along, including militarily, and of course supported the Taiwanese and their independence against the Communists on the mainland. Such has certainly not been the case with the Palestinians. Not even close.

I know I'm repeating myself, but more and more we're seeing that Romney is unprepared, unqualified, and unfit to be president. He insulted the Palestinians and revealed his astonishing ignorance during his trip to Israel, and this is really just more of the same.

Behind the Ad: Who's toughest on China?

By Richard K. Barry 

(Another installment in our extensive "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: Obama-Biden campaign.

Where: National cable.

What's going on: Obama and Romney have been going back and forth about who is or would be tougher on China when it comes to trade practices. This ad, called "Tires," by Obama's campaign, points to some specific action the president took against China that Romney opposed.

As The Huffington Post reports:

Tough on China? Not Mitt Romney," a narrator says in the ad. "When a flood of Chinese tires threatened a thousand American jobs, it was President Obama who stood up to China and protected American workers."

The ad refers to a 2009 decision by Obama to impose a tariff on tires from China, which may have flooded the market and hurt U.S. tire makers. Romney criticized that decision.

"How can Mitt Romney take on the cheaters when he’s taking their side?" the narrator continues.

Maybe not the most exciting ad, but it does attempt to enhance President Obama's credibility on the kinds of issues Romney where likes to claim expertise. Although the argument is somewhat obscure, it also suggests that what is good for "business" more generally is not always good for American workers, and that Mitt Romney would come down on the side of profits and not jobs.

In a related issue, Obama filed a new WTO complaint on Monday over China's trade in auto parts, which he turned into a campaign line at an Ohio event yesterday.

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)

Nicholas Kristof on Romney, foreign policy "empty shell"

By Michael J.W. Stickings

In over his head. Way, way, way over his head.

From yesterday's Times:

DIPLOMACY is a minefield, and Mitt Romney spent the last week blowing up his foreign policy credentials to be president. He raised doubts about his capacity to deal with global crises, and we were left hoping that if that 3 a.m. call ever went to him, he'd have set up call forwarding.

A great line. But of course this is serious:

The essential problem is that every time Romney touches foreign policy, he breaks things.

And not just by embarrassing himself in England:

The Republican Party is caught in a civil war on foreign policy, and Romney refuses to pick sides. In contrast to his approach on the economy, he just doesn’t seem to have thought much about global issues. My hunch is that for secretary of state he would pick a steady hand, like Robert Zoellick, but Romney has also surrounded himself with volatile neocons.

With China, Romney seems intent on a trade war. In the Middle East, it appears he’d like to subcontract foreign policy to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

And it gets worse:

Most dangerous of all is Romney's policy on Iran, which can't be dismissed as an offhand misstatement. As my colleagues David E. Sanger and Ashley Parker note, Romney muddles his own position on his nuclear red line for Iran. Plenty of candidates don't write their own foreign policy position papers, but Romney is unusual in that he seems not to have even read his.

According to clarifications from Romney's campaign, he apparently would order a military strike before Iran even acquired a bomb, simply when it was getting close. For anyone who has actually seen a battlefield, that's a blithe, too-light embrace of a path to yet another war. It's emblematic of a candidate who, on foreign policy, appears an empty shell.

I repeat the narrative that has emerged regarding Romney's quest for the presidency:

UNQUALIFIED.

UNPREPARED.

UNFIT.

Gut feeling -- the look of the future

By Infidel753

The future will not be homogenous. To people who recoil from pluralism, people who want everything to be the same as themselves and the same as it always was, the future just viscerally looks wrong, and deep down the future is what they're struggling to prevent.

Reading conservative websites as much as I do, it's impossible to avoid noticing a pervasive resistance to change and difference. Conservatism is saturated with anxiety about the growing acceptance and visibility of gays, about the declining dominance of religion (by which they mean Christianity), about the millions who find that marriage and reproduction do not suit them, about the growing numbers and confidence of non-white and racially-mixed people, about technology that makes information and communication too hard to control, about the prospect of socialist (I use the honest word) reforms that will liberate the poor from the raw struggle for survival and ultimately undermine the dominance of wealth.

It's not exactly fear of the different, it's more an endless stream of half-stated objections and pearl-clutching disapproval, and it isn't the wave of the future. Race-consciousness and religious fervor and befuddled anxiety about gay marriage just don't go with the world of the internet and nanotechnology and stem cells; they belong to the world of outhouses and megachurches and unbathed hillbillies swigging corn mash out of jugs with XXX on them. There are reasons why places like this are built in New York and Massachusetts and California rather than in states that keep trying to put creationism in the schools; on a broader scale, there are reasons why they're built in the U.S. and Europe and Japan rather than in Pakistan or North Korea or Saudi Arabia.

Airplanes are hijacked by those who fear pluralism, but designed and manufactured by those who embrace it.

Take the most insular and conservative major culture in the world today -- Islam. Wherever hard-line Islam has triumphed, it has driven away (or scared into silence) non-Muslim minorities, struggled against non-Muslim influences from the outside or from the past, and enforced conformity of behavior and expression. Even where Islam has taken root in new soil, as in Europe, it seeks to isolate its carriers from the ideas and ways of the higher secular pluralistic civilization around it, for those ideas and ways will seduce them away from it. And Islam will clearly have no role in shaping the future, unless it turns out that there is no real future and the world sinks back into the Dark Ages. Islam can only "stand athwart history, yelling Stop" -- in vain -- as more and more of the millions in whose brains it is rooted slowly begin to cast it off.

This, too, is why I can't see China dominating the future, not unless it gets rid of both its current form of government and its current attitude toward the outside world. A regime obsessed with controlling flows of information, and a "redneck" (in American terms) prickliness toward foreign influences, are crippling handicaps in today's world. There are good reasons why Japan, with its long history of receptivity to outside ideas, was the first non-Western country to modernize and remains the most advanced. The insularity of the samurai era was the exception that proves the rule -- if Japan had stayed like that, rejecting the Meiji transformation, it would be a Third World country today.

The future won't be a retreat into the small and slow and traditional. It won't be about limits and lowered expectations. It will be bigger and faster and smarter, and more and more and more.

The future does not belong to people who feel viscerally uncomfortable when they see a different skin color or a sign in an unfamiliar alphabet or two men holding hands or a new breakthrough in artificial intelligence. I'm sorry, it just doesn't. If we want the United States to lead, we need to make sure that those people aren't the ones setting the pace.

(Cross-posted at Infidel753.)

The political nature of television

By Carl 

On the face of it, this seems like a particularly silly story, unless you're the parent or friend of one of the dead girls: 

Time travel TV series have come under fire since two schoolgirls in East China's Fujian province killed themselves on Thursday after leaving notes saying the suicides could help them travel back to ancient times.

The two girls, Xiao Mei and Xiao Hua (not their real names), were fifth-grade classmates at a primary school in Zhangpu county, Zhangzhou.

On Thursday afternoon, Xiao Hua realized she lost the remote control for a rolling door at her house. She was worried and told her friend Xiao Mei.

At 4 pm, the girls each wrote suicide notes and hid them in a closet at Xiao Hua's home. Then they jumped into a pool and drowned themselves. 

Here's the tell that there's something not right with this story:

According to a media report in February, a 19-year-old Liaoning province woman, Xiao Dan (not her real name), told police she had paid 1,800 yuan ($285) to a Net friend who claimed she could help her travel to the ancient past but disappeared after receiving the money.

Because of several stories along these lines emerging, the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television banned prime time -- 7 to 9 pm -- broadcasts of this kind of TV series at the beginning of this year.

Shades of Tipper Gore and the PMRC!

Let me point out that the link goes to the People's Daily, the official house organ of the Chinese Communist party (and, therefore, the government). 

Cui bono? Who benefits if this kind of programming is banned in China?

Obviously, the government, if only under the guise of preventing teen suicides, which seems an unlikely connection. However, the story itself contains a clue to the real political agenda. Think about where and more important, when the girls wanted to travel to.

The claim is they wanted to travel back to Imperial China, an ancient time of fantasy and glamour, opulence and a clearly rewritten history of wealth and freedom.

Now, these are clearly not poor children, since their parents could afford a house with an electronic door opener. This is not a sign of poverty, of a kid who is desperately trying to escape the crushing burden of being poor with little opportunity to advance her lot.

Or maybe it was. Maybe it's a signal to us that the Chinese economic tiger has fewer teeth than we realize. China will be the largest economy in the world before the end of the century, if not this decade. It's growing at a rate that exceeds an American boom economy, but it has two advantages that America never had, and thus may not see a true bust for decades.

It has a population not very far removed from the government-sponsored slavery of the mid-20th Century and it has such a vast population with so many dialects that communication between regions is difficult.

Think about it: imagine the U.S. (similar size and contours) with four times the population, and instead of regional accents, imagine entirely different forms of English such that many words have different meanings in the South and North, East and West. If I said "mother" in Florida in this scenario, for example, I may understand it as the woman who gave birth to me, but Floridians might take it to mean any woman involved in my upbringing, including sisters, aunts, grandmothers, and perhaps even teachers and nannies.

Those problems will sort themselves out in due time, to be sure, but here's the thing. With a population still working for bottom-dollar wages, the Chinese economy benefits from keeping its people segregated and not sharing information and being unable to communicate as easily as any other nation on the planet can.

As in America, there are income and wealth strata in China (until the 1990s, nearly unheard of) and as in America, the gaps are growing.

And as in America, there is undoubtedly a movement growing in China for income equalization.

Imagine that! A socialist nation with income inequality!

Television, however, is a great leveller. Like it or not, information and education is passed over the airwaves. That means people without a fact gain a fact.

For China to succeed economically, it simply must control this information. It must control the thought processes in the heads of Chinese. It must discourage thinking of a better life in leaps and bounds and force people to be content with a carefully planned balance between incrementally advancing their opportunities while staying in thrall to the economy.

In other words, the Chinese government is acting the part in China that banks act here. Sure, you can have that second car, but it will cost you four years of emotional investment in paying your loan back and woe betide he who misses a payment! And your kids can have a better life if they get an education (we're still talking about America here, to be clear) but they'll owe us for the following 25 years and they won't be able to discharge this debt even if they can't earn enough in salary to pay us back.

All while putting commercials on the ubiquitous infotainment medium, television, advertising that better job for your kids or better sex through Audi.

Control the dialogue, control the people.

This wasn't about a suicide. This was about recognizing that suicide as a danger to the status quo, one that would make people think about their lives and their children's lives.

(Cross-posted to Simply Left Behind.)

The horrendous human costs of your beloved gadgets

By Michael J.W. Stickings

So you like your iPhone, do you? And your iPad? And maybe you're even one of those Apple cultists. (I'm not, but I do love my iPod Touch. I go Samsung/Android with my phone.)

Maybe you love all your gadgets. Maybe you think technology has made your life so much better, so much more fun. Hey, I hear you.

But there's a cost to be paid, and not just whatever low, low, ridiculously low price lured you into your local Best Buy. No, there's a human cost. Actually, many human costs. And it's important that you (and I) know about it (and make decisions accordingly):

In the last decade, Apple has become one of the mightiest, richest and most successful companies in the world, in part by mastering global manufacturing. Apple and its high-technology peers — as well as dozens of other American industries — have achieved a pace of innovation nearly unmatched in modern history.

However, the workers assembling iPhones, iPads and other devices often labor in harsh conditions, according to employees inside those plants, worker advocates and documents published by companies themselves. Problems are as varied as onerous work environments and serious — sometimes deadly — safety problems.

Employees work excessive overtime, in some cases seven days a week, and live in crowded dorms. Some say they stand so long that their legs swell until they can hardly walk. Under-age workers have helped build Apple's products, and the company's suppliers have improperly disposed of hazardous waste and falsified records, according to company reports and advocacy groups that, within China, are often considered reliable, independent monitors.

More troubling, the groups say, is some suppliers' disregard for workers' health. Two years ago, 137 workers at an Apple supplier in eastern China were injured after they were ordered to use a poisonous chemical to clean iPhone screens. Within seven months last year, two explosions at iPad factories, including in Chengdu, killed four people and injured 77. Before those blasts, Apple had been alerted to hazardous conditions inside the Chengdu plant, according to a Chinese group that published that warning. 

And then there's that whole suicide problem. (Yes, a very serious problem. In addition to the suicides themselves, workers at Foxconn, a manufacturer for Apple and others, have threatened mass suicide to protest the horrible working conditions.)

Now, sure, it's easy to pick on Apple and it's huge profits and cash, but it's hardly alone in this. Pretty much every major (and not-so-major) consumer electronics company is implicated.

Will this stop me, or you, or most anyone else from lapping up the latest wonder-gizmo? Maybe not, but, then, what are we to do? Not have these gadgets at all? Please. We need our superphones and tablets and laptops and PCs. I'm on them all the time at home, at work, pretty much everywhere.

But maybe we should at least think twice (or more) about what we're doing, and maybe, if Apple (to take but the most obvious example) is one of the most egregious players in this horrific system, it should pay -- and pay by losing customers, by having customers demand better of it. And perhaps, too, our attention and habits, should we change them in a meaningful way, and the attention this human toll is getting, will turn this into a political issue with governments demanding, and requiring, meaningful change.

Maybe I'm hoping for too much. Actually, I'm sure I am. And I know I'm a hypocrite. Most of us are. But I do know I look at Apple quite a bit differently now, and if making a choice means choosing the less bad of some generally bad options, well, that's something, at least.

Food for thought next time you're playing Angry Birds.

Only Nevada GOP Congressional candidate Mark Amodei can stop the impending Chinese invasion. It's true!

By Richard K. Barry

Who is Mark Amodei and how did he develop such an interesting sense of humour? Well, Mr. Amodei is running for the Republican nomination to fill a vacant congressional seat that became available when Representative Dean Heller filled John Ensign's Senate seat when Ensign resigned due to a sex scandal. On the other point, I don't know where Amodei gets his sense of humour.

Running in a way intended to get the attention of those swayed by Tea Party ideas, Amodei has put together a most entertaining television ad, which links raising the federal debt ceiling to a future takeover of a debt-ridden America by the Chinese. The best part is when the Red Army marches past the U.S. Capitol. No kidding, the freakin' Red Army!

Even The Daily Caller, the hyper right-wing website, seems a little taken aback by this one. Though, in a bizarre headline for the story, they did call the ad: "light-hearted fear-mongering." Let that one rattle around in your head for a while.

Anyway, here's a snippet of an interview with the candidate:

Amodei: The message is, the fiscal situation now is dire, and if you don't change the course, it will go from dire to catastrophic.

The Daily Caller: Does the catastrophic include an Army marching over the Capitol?

Amodei: Let's put it this way: If we start selling it to the French, you could substitute the French, you could substitute anybody you want. The fact of the matter is right now, this is where the ton of debt is being placed. There is no racial tone to it, it's simply factual.

I don't know. I really can't see this ad working with the French army marching in front of the Capitol. It would be marginally funnier. Then again, I can't see this ad working at all. But thanks for the giggle.

Here it is:

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)

Photo of the Day: Exploding Chinese watermelons

By Michael J.W. Stickings

The Guardian:

The flying pips, shattered shells and wet shrapnel still haunt farmer Liu Mingsuo after an effort to chemically boost his fruit crop went spectacularly wrong.

Um, yeah.

Bob Dylan in China - same as he ever was

By Richard K. Barry 

Bob Dylan just released a reply of sorts to those who considered his concert in China last April as not in keeping with whatever mythologized idea they have of him.

This is actually pretty funny for those who have followed Dylan's career with even passing attention. On a date now etched in popular music history, July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan performed with a rock band at the Newport Folk Festival. The folk music establishment (interesting oxymoron that) criticized him for turning his back on political song writing. There are varying interpretations as to what really happened. Did he get booed by the audience, were there sharp words back stage? Whatever happened, it was clear that for some, Bob Dylan would forever have to meet their expectations or suffer the consequences, and their expectation were that he would forever be a protest song singer.

Rather famously, Dylan has always run screaming in the other direction from other peoples' expectations of what he is supposed to say and be and represent, which, to my mind, is a pretty radical message to send the world.

So, Maureen Dowd at The New York Times thought that Dylan should have gone to China, maybe sang "Blowin' in the Wind," and "The Times They Are a-Changin'."Then he should have made a political speech about China's woeful record on human rights. In other words, he should have been the Dylan we think we remember but who, if he ever existed, hasn't for a long time.

Apparently Dylan was asked to supply a set list to the Chinese authorities and did so, but he also claims that nothing in his performance changed as a result. I guess we'll have to take his word for it. But I have seen the man in concert over the past many years and I don't find that hard to believe. His concerts are not a '60s retrospective road show. Sorry Maureen.

If Dylan was still writing the old protest stuff and performing it every day and then went to China and censored himself then fine, get all high and mighty. But that is not what happened. That is not who he is anymore and if you want to talk about freedom, freedom is getting to decide for yourself who you are.

Isn't that what the '60s was supposed to be all about?

(Cross-posted to Lippmann's Ghost.)