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.

The Aftermath

This will be my last post with Olympic connotations.

The Western AND Chinese media are starting to evaluate for themselves what the meaning of this vast spectacle that went down in Beijing really is. I will just lay down a bunch of links and let you get down on it:

This article in Time is actually pretty good and lays down a few of the real issues that China has to face now that the party is over.

The other night i watched the movie Little Red Flowers about Chinese kindergarten. Beanmilk sang along with all of the little kids and told me that -- except for a slight improvement in amenities -- nothing has changed. This movie is an adaptation of the book by Wang Shuo. The book is widely read in China, but the movie can only be found amongst the pirates slanging them DVDs from out of the back door ... This article here talks about the growing courage of the Chinese art community and the government's tacit approval (or ignorance of) the works that speak out about this society. This interview with the famous crime novelist Qiu Xiaolong also touches on these issues ...

Some people are unsure about what the true aftermath is: some believe that the Chinese are already "affected" and will take their business into their own hands, while others are sure that this is the continuation of the CCP's drive to crate an Orwellian society based on their "experiment" in Shenzhen ... the experiment aint working, as this article tells us.

The reality is too complex for me to comprehend and I am sweating n the Sultan anyway. So here are some more links for ya, keep reading and wonder how this has anything to do with you:

Here are some "reflections" by a favorite target of the ChiCom trolls Geoffrey York. I like what he says: it happens to be true. Thats why ChiCom trolls hate him so much. It probably also has to do with the hard lean of the Western media toward China bashing, but I argue that the hard lean is a function of the Chinese media's overall lack of courage and freedom in covering their own affairs. Other than the Southern Weekend, of course ...

So thats why the media is filled with stories about China's corruption, the Bank of China's nefarious dealings, the insecurity of the government and on the other end: uplifting stories on how the city with the second-most cameras in the world will stage a better Olympics by highlighting .. democracy ...

Here is some interesting commentary on The Fat Teacher and Dongpo Pork (which I have eaten and relished in its hometown of Meishan -- actually a small village outside of Meishan) ...

And last, for no reason other than i could not find a proper category for it now: an idea of "what happens next," in this story about China's forays into the Dark Continent.

Mad love.