I can't stop laughing at Western businessmen

I don't even know where to start laughing and where to end. It doesn't matter. For years and years people like me (but with better jobs) have been saying that China has some issues and we need to help them along, but the money-men always trumped everything by drooling all over each other in attempts to get into the China market.

"Can't push the gov, nononono they might not let us cash in ..."

Now, only now, at the end, do they realize. And so I have to laugh at them.

The mainstream has caught on to the glaring reality: China's bureaucrats and businessmen always hated and despised you. They stole your stuff, smiled in your face and sold you shit and now they don't need you anymore. So Time Magazine whines. Big time China Hand and Businessman supreme, AllRoads, jumps on the band wagon: "Did we get suckered?"

Of course you did fool. Then again, I know a lot of people who made it rich here (me excluded, hence all of the Schadenfreude) and they basically took a good look at the China business scene, saw it for what it is and jumped in and swam in the feces with all of the other sharks, diving for doubloons.

And this guy here, Paul "I told ya so" Midler. I feel ya Paul. I told a lot of people too. You ain't the only one who saw the signs and such, that feeling. I know it. Hope yer book sells dawg.

I gotta laugh. Even though, now that the drooling suits are hating on this modern China and the Chinese netizens are hating on this modern China, the big bad bureaucrats and their brainless, soulless New Rich cronies might have to bring in their bigger, badder even more brainless PLA bully to keep this country from Gorbacheving. Or not.

I am headed out to take a walk in the sunshine (THAT'S RIGHT SUNSHINE IN THE DU!!).

Holla atchu.

Bumpin Raekwon & Drinking Dew

My sister is in Paris alone ... hoping that my old friend will visit and show her around, listen to her and give her a word or two of advice that she can carry back.

I am in Northern Cali in the midst of the harvest season. Billions of dollars of green gold erupting out of the earth and spilling out as far as NYC and Hawaii. Everyone is in on it on some level or another and it seems to be the oil that greases, eases or helps one carry on a separate legit biz that momz can know about and wifey can be proud of.

gotta go and get some supplies right now, there is a tab can of trichomes sitting next to my screen i rub it and its greasy and brown and its worth a new car.

Big Business in the Prison System

Hey Ya'll here is a story I wrote for Matador.com about the privatization of the prison system in the US. It is filled with links to sites doing work on this topic, i urge you to follow the trail wherever it leads, there will be some shocking revelations for you I guarantee ....

things are going on that we hear about but the truth is always lurking like moldy drawz in the corner ...

Its all bad; its all good

My landlord Nikki V is doing a piece for KBOO Radio about austerity measures people (may or may not have learned from their parents/grandparents) are using to get by in "this nasty economy."

I listen with mild interest, because so far my economy seems unaffected by Wall Street's 777+ drop this week after the big bailout failed to get past the taxpayer. I mean, please, does any of those bankers truly believe we are THAT stupid? Supporting a war for oil is one thing, but supporting the big wig banker down the street -- the same guy working on your foreclosure -- naw man. no love for the banker.

I wonder how long I will be able to sit and observe all of this going on before i have to work the strip again just to pay rent ...

Is anyone out there tightening the belt? I know that there are now about 100,000 yuppies wondering what to do with themselves in NYC. They better start learning Chinese and drinking baijiu with some corrupt greedy bureaucrats in Beijing ... Joint Ventures will need their "help" trying to get lying ass Chinese partners to do the right thing ...

The right thing ... the Shenzhou spacewalk is to the Sanlu milk scandal what Palin is to the Republican Party is what Cruise missiles are to Lewinsky is what TV is to woes is what a religion is to the spirit.

There was an insert in last Sunday's paper called Obsession: Radical Islam's War against the West. It caught the attention of a few people ... as it is some pretty uninformative scare-mongering propaganda. The basic goal of the DVD is to equate Radical Islam with Nazism both as anti-Semitic and anti-Western.

Now a few people have pointed out that the Treaty of Versailles did help to bring about Hitler, but no one would go so far as to excuse the Nazis for what they did because of WWI. The Treaty of Versailles took land from the Germans and brought about massive economic collapse in that country .. is that an excuse for genocide? never.

So if we keep playing this relativist game, then we have to equate

the conditions in Germany during the 1930s
the causes of those conditions
Germany's response

to

the conditions in the Middle East since the end of WWI
the causes of those conditions
and Islam's response

it gets a little messy and circumstantial. But i think if you read the history of the Middle East since WWI and replace the Middle East with, say, the US, then you will (if you are American) most likely find yourself contemplating mass rebellion and guerrilla warfare. The Arab states were partitioned and controlled by outside forces (Britain, France, US) and pitted against each other and eventually placed under the control of the most iron-fisted despots in the region. Of course an ideology of rebellion will arise out of those conditions ...

I suppose the true link between Nazism and Radical Islam is the Jewish State of Israel. The Nazis (and their many many European collaborators) felt guilty enough to give the Jews a state, but they did not feel guilty enough to give them Switzerland or Luxembourg or Prussia or some other swath of territory from the people who slew them.

Instead, Europe made the Arabs pay for their mistake. And used the Book as justification.

What will arise, eventually, out of America's economic crisis and the wars around the world is a new appreciation for History amongst a people (Americans) who have been taught to believe that history died during the boat trip to the New World. If it means re-learning what Grampa did to get by during the hard times, or what exactly hobo glyphs are or just the aftermath of the Great War ... it will be a maturing of our young nation. Maybe I will live to see it.

Moral Authority?

Its not hard to imagine how China manages to get away with being one of the more brazenly oppressive nations to hold the Olympics in recent times. The USSR was able to do so, but only with half the world boycotting and in 1936, Nazi Germany's Olympics were held before boycotts were widely used as a means of protest.

Boycotting China does not seem to be in the cards, although a postponement or outright cancellation of some events might be.

In the end, money talks. Rogge and the IOC most likely got paid. And when the heads of state consider boycotting the Opening Ceremonies, I am sure companies like the sports and media giant IMG and British mining concern CMG will take the politicians aside and whisper a few words ...

To Big Business, the will of the people is naught but an annoying buzzing, augmented only slightly by media blitzes and peep-voiced blogs like this one. China pays off the parents of children killed by the quake and corrupt construction firms and compensates Hakka farmers forcibly removed from their home because they know it works. Same goes for "the moral authority" of the West. Free Tibet indeed ...