Tropenmuseum Junior zet crossmediale game in

Om een tentoonstelling over China meer onder de aandacht van jongeren te brengen heeft het Tropenmuseum Junior in Amsterdam een crossmediale game door Submarine laten ontwikkelen, genaamd QiGame (spreek uit: tsjie game).

Het spel speelt zich af in een virtuele versie van de stad Chinatown, waarin spelers in vijf wijken verschillende spellen kunnen doen: kalligrafie, restaurantwerk, acupunctuur, kungfu en een qi-sprong. Doel van het spel is dat spelers zoveel mogelijk qi (levensadem, energie) verzamelen.

Het spel speelt zich niet alleen af op de erg mooie flash-site www.qigame.nl, maar ook in het museum en op Hyves. Bezoekers kunnen in het museum een echte qi-sprong maken die wordt gefilmd en vervolgens kan worden geplaatst op je hyves-profiel. De echte sprong levert online extra punten op.

Er is uit onderzoek gebleken dat je door gebruik te maken van een dergelijke game bij kunt dragen aan de leereffecten. Daarnaast kunnen op deze manier ook niet-bezoekers in aanraking komen met de inhoud van de nieuwe tentoonstelling.

Container shippers get that sinking feeling, American bankers not helping

NOL’s announcement that Q3 losses came in more than forecast is a pretty good leading indicator of just how Scrooge-like this Christmas buying season is going to be in the West. Expect a couple of tear-jerker holiday movies this season to depict champagne-sipping bankers yelling “Let them eat cake”.

From today’s BT “NOL’s losses mount, more storms ahead, expects to incur significant losses in Q4 and H1 of 2010“

Neptune Orient Lines (NOL) continued to sink deeper in the red in the third quarter ended Sept 30, racking up net losses of US$138.9 million, compared to a net profit of US$35.1 million a year ago.

For the first three quarters of 2009, NOL has reported cumulative net losses of US$529.7 million. Nine-month loss per share came to 28.52 US cents, against the previous corresponding period’s restated 14.23 cents.

Given the severity of the downturn in container shipping, the group said it expects to incur significant losses in the fourth quarter and at least through the first half of next year.

Revenue for the third quarter slipped 34 per cent year-on-year to US$1.56 billion. At the core Ebit (earnings before interest and tax) level, NOL posted a loss of US$115 million for the third quarter.

‘As anticipated, the third quarter saw a continuation of adverse business operating conditions,’ said NOL group president and CEO Ronald D Widdows. ‘Despite some improvements in certain trades, container shipping freight rates remain at uneconomic levels.’

Container shipping revenue from APL during the quarter slumped 36 per cent year-on-year to US$1.31 billion as volumes and freight rates declined. The Ebit loss from this segment stood at US$143 million.

Q3 volumes carried by the container shipping business dipped 6 per cent year-on-year at 586,000 FEUs (forty-foot equivalent unit) due to declines in volumes in Europe and Americas trade.

Even a price-fixing agreement back in July amongst the container lines failed to stem the red ink, which goes to show just how strong the clamps are on American wallets. From Bloomberg on July 7  “NOL and 13 shippers tries to end price war and panic”:

NOL’s APL Ltd. unit, China Cosco Holdings Co. and 12 other container lines agreed to raise rates on Asia-U.S. routes, seeking to end a price war caused by slumping demand, overcapacity and “panic.”

The lines decided on a $500 increase for carrying a 40-foot box from Aug. 10 as a “voluntary guideline,” the Transpacific Stabilization Agreement said in an e-mailed statement yesterday. The companies will also raise fuel levies and may add peak season surcharges, the group said.

Container lines will try to raise rates again after an April increase collapsed amid rising competition and a 20 percent drop in demand, the TSA said. Spot market Hong Kong-Los Angeles rates have slumped to as low as $900, according to Lloyd’s List, as U.S. retailers pare orders for Asian-made furniture and toys on weak consumer spending.

“The eastbound transpacific trade lane has been driven by panic,” Lee Won Woo, chief executive of TSA member Hanjin Shipping Co.’s container unit, said in the statement. “Panic is difficult to stop once it has begun.”

China shippers aren’t doing much better, as pointed out in Shipping Guide’s “Chinese Container Carriers Suffer As Freight Rates And Cargo Levels Fall“:

CHINA, 28 Oct – Reality bit this week for two more of Asia’s market leaders. Cosco Pacific and China Shipping Container Lines both posted figures showing substantial last period declines. Cosco, responsible for more than twenty container terminals in the region, joined with its two larger competitors, Hong Kong based Hutchison Port Holdings and Singapore Group PSA International in producing results which demonstrate the depths which cargo levels have fallen to. The group, also based in Hong Kong showed a profit fall of almost 50% in Q3 against the previous year.

China Shipping fared even worse seeing a nett loss for the same July to September period of almost $280 million representing a worsening against last years loss over the same period of around $40 million. Both companies cited falling traffic levels from China to Europe and the US as entirely responsible for the depressing figures. Although spokesmen from each were keen to point out that there are signs of an upswing in cargo levels both admitted that the recovery appeared to be moving slowly and the talk is very much of “less bad” than an instant return to former figures.

And from Llyod’s List “Box Barometers”:

THE past few months have been so awful for the container shipping industry that it is hard to remember that this crisis is little more than a year old.

This time last year, Neptune Orient Lines was in the black — just. It was the final quarter of 2008 that tipped lines into the red, and that is where they and most others remain, with cash fast running out.

There were no words of comfort from NOL when it published its latest results, which showed a $139m loss in the third quarter. That is certain to be followed by another significant deficit in the final three months of the year, with NOL warning that these difficult conditions are likely to continue at least through the first half of 2010.

In fact, that may be the one note of optimism. There are still those who believe something will happen to turn markets around, but it is hard to see what. The number of surplus ships continues to rise and demand remains in the doldrums.

Just take a look at the latest inbound figures for Long Beach, which provide a reasonable barometer. The port saw a drop of 19% from a year ago, with the numbers down by almost a third compared with 2007.

Charter rates remain way below operating costs, and many owners are technically bankrupt. Most container shipping players will continue to lose money until the massive overhang of capacity is absorbed. And that could take years.

The US bankers are, in their own inimitable manner, inflicting even more pain to the American consumer: banks like Citi jacked up credit card rates to 29.99% on unsuspecting customers, other banks are following suit (hoping to avoid a new law coming into effect) by punishing credit card holders who pay on time.

With smart moves like these, it’s no wonder entire invasion-of-Troy-sized fleets of cargo ships will continue to sit idle off the coast of Singapore.

China Disingenuous about Re-Balancing Global Trade

 

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousivMolt/idUSTRE59Q0HN20091027

Just in case anyone was deluded into thinking that China was genuinely interested in restoring balance to global trade, along comes this blunt refusal by a Chinese trade official to consider anything that will slow the growth of Chinese exports:

Speaking at a separate forum in Beijing, Jiang Jianjun, a deputy director with the Ministry of Commerce’s Department of Foreign Trade, cited China’s rising share of global output and its swelling foreign exchange reserves as pressures on the yuan to strengthen.

“However, according to our projections, until there’s a noticeable improvement in exports, the exchange rate will not see a major adjustment,” Jiang said.

He said it would take two or three years for China’s combined exports and imports to regain pre-crisis levels.

Of course, exchange rates have nothing to do with trade imbalances, but that’s irrelevant.  Both the U.S. and China think that they do, and China’s refusal to allow any further strengthening of the yuan is proof positive that they have no interest whatsoever in re-balancing trade.  Give China credit.  They understand how to make trade work to their advantage.  It helps their cause that the people across the trade table from them are complete fools.

China still trading illegal snow leopard skins

The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) recently conducted undercover investigations into the illegal big cat skin and bone trade in China and found it easy to get tiger, snow leopard and other leopard skins.

‘China has really run out of excuses. They tell us they are doing their best, but we have been warning them about this for years and there are still huge gaps in their enforcement effort. If they can put a man into space, they can do more to save the wild tiger’, said Debbie Banks, Lead Campaigner at the Environmental Investigation Agency.

The EIA team did three weeks of undecover work during July and August this year and captured the illegal trade on film using a hidden camera while they enquired about animal skins on sale. During this time they were offered 11 snow leopard skins as well as many other cat parts. In a sad video the sellers show skins from Nepal, Mongolia, Pakistan and Afghanistan. “We can get you anything you want,” they say.

While buying and selling any big cat parts is definitely illegal in China it seems a lot of this activity is actually not too difficult to find in many parts of China including Tibet. Researchers found local officials in the vicinity of the shops trading the illegal goods and people at a horse festival in Tibet openly wearing skins in view of local authorities.

The EIA believes that the skins are less in demand from Tibetans themselves these days – perhaps the plea from the Dalai Lama in 2006 for Tibetans to stop wearing skins of endangered animals has worked. But demand from middle class and wealthy Chinese business people, army personell and government officials has not dropped. The skins are bought for home décor or clothing in Tibet and China, costing huge amounts of money that more people can now afford. A snow leopard skins costs around $US2200.

According to the EIA the illegal trade is organised by extensive criminal networks. ‘There is some law enforcement in China, in a few regions, but there are whole swathes of the country where this trade is allowed to carry on with almost no fear of detection. A mixture of corruption and apathy is helping to decimate endangered species and is indicative of what is happening to the wider environment,’ said Alasdair Cameron of EIA.

The EIA has provided the Chinese government with this sort of evidence for over 5 years but there appears so much localised corruption that little has changed.

The Environmental Investigation Agency is a UK-based Non Government Organisation that investigates and campaigns against environmental crime including illegal wildlife trade.

See BBC story and video here.

See interview with Debbie Banks from India Today TV.

China 4: now arriving from Ulan Bator

Yesterday was Sunday. I know that because the carpets in the Chengde hotel lifts boldly declared each day of the week. This morning they tell a different story. Apparently announcing weekdays beneath your feet is traditional across China. So if it’s Monday we have a travel day, driving first to Beijing and then taking the fast train to Taishan. Even then, that latter part of the journey will take five hours. Before which we have the joys (and I use the word without irony) of Beijing East Station. Railway stations invariably have a romance entirely lacking in airports — and Beijing East is no exception.

[There are more pictures on their way -- this is being sent from a slow and flakey connection in Taishan, with me sitting in the hotel lobby as that's the only place I can get wi-fi, plus we're negotiating the Chines firewall...]

Inside the station there’s a stall selling fiftieth anniversary souvenirs — Beijing East was a major construction project for the Communists in the 1950s. Its architecture has a strong strain of fascist grandiloquence but this is softened by Art Deco flourishes both outside and in, as well the inevitable advertising signs, electronic departure boards and McDonalds fascia.

Turning up at the chaotic area for arriving taxi and car passengers, we shake off the insistent porters and commandeer a super-charged golf cart and red-jacketed driver. She and it take the camera kit, our cases and ourselves through a back channel and security check straight to the platform. Trouble is, we’re now an hour early and quite keen on a coffee. So Ning and I head for the exit, joining a stream of new arrivals burdened with cases and their dreams of the city.

Back inside the station hall our assistance is sought by an Australian who needs to ascertain whether the train arriving from Ulan Bator is running to schedule. Ulan Bator! You don’t get enquiries like that at Clapham Junction. Ning discovers that the iron horse from Mongolia is indeed right on time. Browsing in the bookstore I then come across, alongside the titles featured as ‘Hot Fiction’, a substantial section headed ‘Victory Emotion’. One of the heavily featured authors is Dale Carnegie which suggests that this is the local translation for self-help books. On balance I think I prefer the Chinese designation.

We return to the platform (with coffees) through the Fast Train Departures Hall, itself lofty and large enough to hold a substantial Party meeting. Once aboard, and with the kit safely stowed in luggage racks above our heads, we settle down for the ride. ‘Our train is elegant and comfortable,’ the train announcer is proud to announce over the tannoy . And it is.

UNICEF: Washing hands could reduce diarrhoea deaths by 40%

Washing hands with soap after defecation could check up to 40% deaths caused by diarrhoea in children, a UNICEF analysis suggests.

The UNICEF analysis also says that washing hands properly could prove to be the most effective and inexpensive way to prevent diarrhoea and acute respiratory infections, which claim lives of millions of children.

Working to bring about a behavioural change in the mindset of people towards sanitation for building a healthier society, UNICEF sanitation specialist, Nagendra Singh today said that as per the analysis, handwashing can be a critical measure in controlling pandemic outbreaks of respiratory infections by 55%.

In order to wash your hands thoroughly, you should use warm water, and scrub your fingers, the fronts and backs of your hands and in between your fingers with soap for at least 20 seconds.

In China, it has been proved that promotion and distribution of soap in primary schools resulted in reducing absenteeism by 54%.

Singh pointed out that a recent study has shown that proper handwashing by birth attendants and mothers significantly increased the survival rates of new-born children by 44%.

Stating that ensuring proper sanitation both in the rural and urban areas is the biggest challenge, UNICEF water, environment and sanitation specialist Amit Mehrotra said that one gram human excreta has one lakh virus and themagnitude of infection can be imagined in a place where 65% people still defecate in the open.

The Reality of Unreality

Sep 22 2009 11:42AM The Reality of Unreality Hallucinatory, fanciful make-believe government policies and supporting media hype will fool the Sheeple for only so long. New York Banksters and their Washington, D.C. partners in crime are losing a grip. In our weirdest imagination we could not fathom the socialist-commie-bent Obama Gang gaining control let alone being elected. Now the incomprehensible is a fact. The non-existent vision has become real. This outrageous, preposterous, unjustifiable nonsense has become our daily rule. We cannot imagine what comes next. The American presidency has been reduced to one of being cartoonishly rough, crude, unpolished, and coarse. Our reliable foreign partners are skittish. There is no plan and no direction. As economic danger mounts and fiscal discipline is tossed out a closing window, this ad-libbed presidency, flying by the seat of its torn bankrupt pants is on a Weimar monetary collision of revolution and destruction. Their alleged reasoning is poisoning trade relations, making new enemies of old friends and encouraging global criminals and dictators of all stripes. Our meandering leadership with fanciful blurred visions of Utopia will soon learn harsh lessons in an attempt to repudiate massive debts through inflation. We had a terrifying near miss in 1987 with a markets’ biblical moment. That one horrified briefly. The next one will be a years’ long nightmare of legendary, unimaginable proportions. This isn’t just FDR revisited. This is FDR to the 10th power with a toxic mix of our worst economic disasters in a re-run. Pick the top ten economic mistakes of the last 50 years and we are repeating them all-right now. Coupled with an empty leadership vacuum, anything can happen; and probably will. I wondered aloud numerous times over past months that all this noxious action was part of some diabolical plan to destroy the  United States from within by Judas political  enemies of the state. In some ways it’s even worse than that-it’s a naked grab for power. A new theory, of which I have recently learned, is this: These people are not concerned with any outcome either positive or negative. They are not concerned with the rich or, the poor. Destruction of America and its international neighbors and friends is just collateral damage on a magnificently stupid path to grab power. Big corporations and banks have been the closet directors behind Obama’s Throne just as with other presidents. America’s Sheeple, tax money, retirement funds, freedom, liberty, way of life, and the very future of this beautiful nation are mere impediments to gaining complete and final control of America. Hence the hip-attached, world-wide political and economic system so dependent on the U.S goes down, too.  Globalists’ have one dream; to make us all live under the same umbrella of one ruler. To achieve this goal, they must first get past 10-20 million angry US men with guns. We say they might give it a go but would vanish into the mist of revolution if they try it. With Obama puppets at their beck and call, advancement of the One-Worlders’ agenda has moved forward ten years in only six months. Our nation and our world will suffer the consequences. The instigators after a very brief spate of glory shall suffer something far worse. This is history. This is the way of the world. The rude aftermath takes down these enemies of the state by those vastly underestimated. This will be their ultimate demise. Meanwhile, a majority of the innocents are economically and perhaps personally run-over for just existing and being in the way. Sadly, this group contains single mothers, children, the poor and the elderly. What’s Ahead The US Government owns controlling interest in the banks, auto companies, credit, and American real estate. They are the only employer offering jobs in any volume as the rest of our nation sinks into retraction, cutbacks, saves pennies, spends nothing and fends for scraps. Unemployment is skyrocketing and will not be stopped for years. Roughly 50% or less of the real damage in phony statistics is acknowledged. If the truth were known, we suspect insurrection would be immediate. Read this: Cash-for-clunkers was a clunker that ripped-off the auto dealers, and smothered the poor by taking away paid-for but still running old cars and trucks. Now buyer’s remorse has settled in and these folks are stuck with years of new vehicle payments they cannot afford. Further, instead of $1 Billion, Cash-For-Clunkers cost $3 billion and still counting. The next wave of real estate foreclosures hits in the second quarter of 2010. Coupled with that one we see massive commercial loan foreclosures and failures on paper held by large insurance companies. If you think AIG was fun, watch what comes next spring for those unfortunate insurers thinking they had real estate income for years. Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage buyers of last resort are BK but still purchasing (on paper) billions of new mortgages handing out $8,000 buyer credits to build the next bubble. We’re not over the last one yet and they’re busy creating even more new havoc. These jokers finance 2/3rd’s of USA mortgages and they are broke. Retail in 2010-2012 is a holocaust. Only a handful of the national chains can survive. The moms and pops are destroyed as Big Box and intermediate-sized retailers drop like flies. General Growth owned over 100 big malls and went BK to the tune of $27 Billion. Competitor Simon Properties is bottom-feeding through their BK mall wreckage for viable gems. We say they are too early and Simon had better have lots of cash or they are toast, too. With the internet, brick and mortar retail for the most part is passe’. Retail got whacked first with competing internet sales then the depression. Now, we go back to small towns and small neighborhood stores who shuffle for nickels and dimes. While this can be a life-style game-changer, for many in small towns life goes on as usual-not all too bad. The Big Banks are not healed. They just buried 90% of their toxic debt and pretend it’s gone away. It has not gone away and will rear its ugly head again when these Banksters need-demand TARP II, and they can’t get it. More and more people are dropping out of the system providing for themselves; rejecting old paradigms. Small banks cannot compete and big banks are only out of the woods temporarily. Banking is not the place to be for a future. Now the government wants to set wage scales for bankers. Foreign investors are running from US investments to shed dollars, bonds and notes. For the shorter term they appear to be back “in the game.” This too, is only temporary as investors frantically scavenge for other places to hide or, invest cash where it’s safe from loss. Long term bonds and paper are converting to short term. What if Uncle Sam in all his infinite wisdom over a quiet weekend announced with no recourse that all short term paper is now 30 years long? Talk about mayhem! Anything they do would not surprise me. With instigation of the old Smoot-Hawley Tariff plan against Chinese tires, this signals the world you had better run, hide and protect your own stuff with your newly imposed tariffs, too. This paralyzes whatever remaining trade and international credit there is, smothering it to a standstill. Old tragic mistakes are made over and over. Beggar they neighbor rides again. These dumbos just never learn. Japan, for 50 years, one of America’s best allies, is now re-thinking their position. They understand they cannot count on Obama to protect the motherland against external threats any more than Israel can. Their new leaders are proponents of looser credit (inflationary), moving US troops out of Okinawa and eliminating open free entry to in-country Japanese refueling ship stations. This is the early glimmering of a major game changer. Our administration could care less. Soon they will care a lot. Japan will partner more with Australia and China. Stock markets came back after the Lehman related collapse one year ago. With all the US government aid dumped into our immediate world it had to happen. This is a temporary fix placing band aids on mortal economic wounds. This fall we get either a mild -10% haircut or something worse, which we did forecast. However, even if the fall selling is harsh, in November through May, 2010, we forecast a resurgence of the markets buoyed again by the $8.5 trillion in side-lined cash waiting to re-enter long positions. Gold and silver shares should really rock in this atmosphere. Goodbye deflation. Hello inflation. Enter they will and we think Mr. Dow and his S&P brother can enjoy a nice  rally run in these forthcoming months before it ends in the spring of 2010. A belated “Sell In May And Go Away” could turn into a volcano of destruction in June-July, 2010 as several nasty economic elements converge onto that time cycle. That one could be the worst of the worst in this Greater Depression II or perhaps, fall of 2010 might be the ultimate wreckage. One of our very smart and level-headed analyst friends is not only predicting a giant 2010 smash but potential for a 100% complete markets wipeout. As in Dow at ZERO ! We read this one and went immediately pale. The Chinese are encouraging their citizens to buy gold and silver. Further, they are mining the stuff with both hands and NOT SELLING ANY OF IT. China has an estimated M2 money growth of 28% and the 2009 first half stimulus plan (ALL SPENT) exceeded the entire amount of the US’s TARP approvals. All this wild and crazy spending was dumped into an economy 25% the size of the US’s. Yikes! This is Bubblemania to the extreme. Most all the primary nations, those leading the world with former top economies and in trading are into “Quantitative Easing.” This is a disguised euphemism for printing the hell out of the money supply with nothing behind it but thin air, hopes and lies. The USA is a terrible abuser but others are even worse. The most incredible case of course is Zimbabwe. This lowers currency values and incites inflation. American inflation is now running at 6% in our view and in the view of our analyst friends-advisors. This winter it goes ever faster. Food and fuel will be outrageously apparent first; then it spreads out with a vengeance. US GDP annual growth is supposedly running at a negative -4% but our friend and smart statistics guy, John Williams at Shadow Stats says its -6%. This kind of action discourages any new business investment as small business entrepreneurs see no future in an economy with higher taxes, destroyed markets and disincentives from Obama-Land as far as the eye can see. Who will buy? Who has credit? Those with cash refuse to spend. On the energy front, the US has plenty of domestic property to be drilled. However, the EPA and tree-huggers hold the upper hand wrecking any hopes of drilling new fields in top seeded locations. Next, the Greenies are trying to shut-down existing coal fired power plants to kill-off the source of half of America’s electric power. All energy rates and costs will rise on basic shortages, fundamentals and rabid inflation. Cap ‘N’ Trade would hit each family with costs of $1700+ per year if approved. We think it fails this time. What about later? Municipalities, cities, towns, counties and states are beginning to fiscally fail in numbers. Those with foresight and rainy day funds can last a little longer but eventually tax income deteriorates and down they go. California is always first; the leader in all things new. Now they are showing us the darker side of these problems being first in line on a massive scale of self-destruction. Meanwhile, the Obama Health Care Saga goes on like a months’ long migraine headache. Tea parties composing a cross section of the American heartland have had enough. Anger began with the health care plan but lingering disregard for TARP thefts, Cap “N” Trade proposals and a White House full of Commies and socialists throws gas on these fires of discontent. Folks are out for political blood lining-up to disenfranchise their alleged congress people in the 2010 elections. We think that election promises to be super ugly in preliminaries and then succumbs to voter fraud, name-calling; the usual and newly unusual Wild West election happenings. This event should be better than the movies. Florida Chad-Hangers were great fun. What new voting horrors await us next year? Those in the Sheeple public with little or no education and those solidly among welfare supporters will be crying ever louder for more handouts, give-outs and pay-outs. Millions of them are jobless and many more millions join unemployment and food stamp lines. Rhetoric escalates with cries of “do something” as village idiot politicians scream, finger point and eventually do something. Problem is; it’s always the wrong thing they do. Inflation breeds ever more inflation. It feeds on itself unless government raises interest rates (no chance Lucy) careening down a path of self-destruction. Own hard assets; not dollars. Buy silver and gold coins. We say a lot of this stuff is inevitable and some of it may never happen. However, just as in the FDR’s 1930’s, governments make the same mistakes over-and-over again. We think Greater Depression II lasts from 2009 until the next world war. That is sadly the ultimate economic weapon to find depression exit relief. This, we would not wish on any one. Read American and world history from 1776 to the present. This is what we get; all over again. Financials crashed in fall 2008 with Lehman. Recovery began with TARP May, 2009: During this month of September, 2009 we’re having more of a dead cat bounce with a big smash later this month. While precious metals and their shares are higher this September 22, 2009, for the intermediate term (beginning October 31) most all trends reverse and moves to rallies. Keep in mind, if you own paid for stuff it will most likely remain in your hands; not in somebody else’s. That includes gold and silver. Do not get tangled-up in daily noise. Keep studying the larger view and buy precious metals after each profit-taking correction. Headwinds are building into an economic hurricane. Take care of business right now. My dire fall prediction might surprise us and arrive a little later. Time is short. Personally, I can see unbelievable opportunities to trade that we would never see again for many years. Turn these problems into opportunities. Those on the right side of the trade might get rich. Those on the other side are just victims. Stay Alert. –Traderrog Roger Wiegand
Editor Trader Tracks

by Roger Wiegand, Editor Trader Tracks
Originally posted Sep 22, 2009

HALLUCINATORY, FANCIFUL, MAKE-BELIEVE government policies and supporting media hype will fool the Sheeple for only so long. New York Banksters and their Washington, D.C. partners in crime are losing a grip. In our weirdest imagination we could not fathom the socialist-commie-bent Obama Gang gaining control let alone being elected. Now the incomprehensible is a fact. The non-existent vision has become real. This outrageous, preposterous, unjustifiable nonsense has become our daily rule. We cannot imagine what comes next.

The American presidency has been reduced to one of being cartoonishly rough, crude, unpolished, and coarse. Our reliable foreign partners are skittish. There is no plan and no direction. As economic danger mounts and fiscal discipline is tossed out a closing window, this ad-libbed presidency, flying by the seat of its torn bankrupt pants is on a Weimar monetary collision of revolution and destruction.

Their alleged reasoning is poisoning trade relations, making new enemies of old friends and encouraging global criminals and dictators of all stripes. Our meandering leadership with fanciful blurred visions of Utopia will soon learn harsh lessons in an attempt to repudiate massive debts through inflation. We had a terrifying near miss in 1987 with a market’s biblical moment. That one horrified briefly. The next one will be a year’s long nightmare of legendary, unimaginable proportions.

This isn’t just FDR revisited. This is FDR to the 10th power with a toxic mix of our worst economic disasters in a re-run. Pick the top ten economic mistakes of the last 50 years and we are repeating them all-right now. Coupled with an empty leadership vacuum, anything can happen; and probably will.

I wondered aloud numerous times over past months that all this noxious action was part of some diabolical plan to destroy the  United States from within by Judas political  enemies of the state. In some ways it’s even worse than that – it’s a naked grab for power.

A new theory, of which I have recently learned, is this: These people are not concerned with any outcome either positive or negative. They are not concerned with the rich or the poor. Destruction of America and its international neighbors and friends is just collateral damage on a magnificently stupid path to grab power.

Big corporations and banks have been the closet directors behind Obama’s Throne just as with other presidents. America’s Sheeple, tax money, retirement funds, freedom, liberty, way of life, and the very future of this beautiful nation are mere impediments to gaining complete and final control of America. Hence the hip-attached, world-wide political and economic system so dependent on the U.S goes down, too. Globalists have one dream: to make us all live under the same umbrella of one ruler. To achieve this goal, they must first get past 10 to 20 million angry US men with guns. We say they might give it a go but would vanish into the mist of revolution if they try it.

With Obama puppets at their beck and call, advancement of the One-Worlder’s agenda has moved forward ten years in only six months. Our nation and our world will suffer the consequences. The instigators after a very brief spate of glory shall suffer something far worse. This is history. This is the way of the world. The rude aftermath takes down these enemies of the state by those vastly underestimated. This will be their ultimate demise. Meanwhile, a majority of the innocents are economically and perhaps personally run-over for just existing and being in the way. Sadly, this group contains single mothers, children, the poor and the elderly.

What’s Ahead
The US Government owns controlling interest in the banks, auto companies, credit, and American real estate. They are the only employer offering jobs in any volume as the rest of our nation sinks into retraction, cutbacks, saves pennies, spends nothing and fends for scraps. Unemployment is skyrocketing and will not be stopped for years. Roughly 50% or less of the real damage in phony statistics is acknowledged. If the truth were known, we suspect insurrection would be immediate. Read this:

Cash-for-clunkers was a clunker that ripped-off the auto dealers, and smothered the poor by taking away paid-for but still running old cars and trucks. Now buyer’s remorse has settled in and these folks are stuck with years of new vehicle payments they cannot afford. Further, instead of $1 Billion, Cash-For-Clunkers cost $3 billion and still counting.

The next wave of real estate foreclosures hits in the second quarter of 2010. Coupled with that one we see massive commercial loan foreclosures and failures on paper held by large insurance companies. If you think AIG was fun, watch what comes next spring for those unfortunate insurers thinking they had real estate income for years. Fannie and Freddie, the mortgage buyers of last resort are BK but still purchasing (on paper) billions of new mortgages handing out $8,000 buyer credits to build the next bubble. We’re not over the last one yet and they’re busy creating even more new havoc. These jokers finance 2/3rd’s of USA mortgages and they are broke.

Retail in 2010-2012 is a holocaust. Only a handful of the national chains can survive. The moms and pops are destroyed as Big Box and intermediate-sized retailers drop like flies. General Growth owned over 100 big malls and went BK to the tune of $27 Billion. Competitor Simon Properties is bottom-feeding through their BK mall wreckage for viable gems. We say they are too early and Simon had better have lots of cash or they are toast, too. With the internet, brick and mortar retail for the most part is passe’. Retail got whacked first with competing internet sales then the depression. Now, we go back to small towns and small neighborhood stores who shuffle for nickels and dimes. While this can be a life-style game-changer, for many in small towns life goes on as usual-not all too bad.

The Big Banks are not healed. They just buried 90% of their toxic debt and pretend it’s gone away. It has not gone away and will rear its ugly head again when these Banksters need-demand TARP II, and they can’t get it. More and more people are dropping out of the system providing for themselves; rejecting old paradigms. Small banks cannot compete and big banks are only out of the woods temporarily. Banking is not the place to be for a future. Now the government wants to set wage scales for bankers.

Foreign investors are running from US investments to shed dollars, bonds and notes. For the shorter term they appear to be back “in the game.” This too, is only temporary as investors frantically scavenge for other places to hide or, invest cash where it’s safe from loss. Long term bonds and paper are converting to short term. What if Uncle Sam in all his infinite wisdom over a quiet weekend announced with no recourse that all short term paper is now 30 years long? Talk about mayhem! Anything they do would not surprise me.

With instigation of the old Smoot-Hawley Tariff plan against Chinese tires, this signals the world you had better run, hide and protect your own stuff with your newly imposed tariffs, too. This paralyzes whatever remaining trade and international credit there is, smothering it to a standstill. Old tragic mistakes are made over and over. Beggar they neighbor rides again. These dumbos just never learn.

Japan, for 50 years, one of America’s best allies, is now re-thinking their position. They understand they cannot count on Obama to protect the motherland against external threats any more than Israel can. Their new leaders are proponents of looser credit (inflationary), moving US troops out of Okinawa and eliminating open free entry to in-country Japanese refueling ship stations. This is the early glimmering of a major game changer. Our administration could care less. Soon they will care a lot. Japan will partner more with Australia and China.

Stock markets came back after the Lehman related collapse one year ago. With all the US government aid dumped into our immediate world it had to happen. This is a temporary fix placing band aids on mortal economic wounds. This fall we get either a mild -10% haircut or something worse, which we did forecast. However, even if the fall selling is harsh, in November through May, 2010, we forecast a resurgence of the markets buoyed again by the $8.5 trillion in side-lined cash waiting to re-enter long positions. Gold and silver shares should really rock in this atmosphere. Goodbye deflation. Hello inflation.

Enter they will and we think Mr. Dow and his S&P brother can enjoy a nice  rally run in these forthcoming months before it ends in the spring of 2010.

A belated “Sell In May And Go Away” could turn into a volcano of destruction in June-July, 2010 as several nasty economic elements converge onto that time cycle. That one could be the worst of the worst in this Greater Depression II or perhaps, fall of 2010 might be the ultimate wreckage. One of our very smart and level-headed analyst friends is not only predicting a giant 2010 smash but potential for a 100% complete markets wipeout. As in Dow at ZERO ! We read this one and went immediately pale.

The Chinese are encouraging their citizens to buy gold and silver. Further, they are mining the stuff with both hands and NOT SELLING ANY OF IT. China has an estimated M2 money growth of 28% and the 2009 first half stimulus plan (ALL SPENT) exceeded the entire amount of the US’s TARP approvals. All this wild and crazy spending was dumped into an economy 25% the size of the US’s. Yikes! This is Bubblemania to the extreme.

Most all the primary nations, those leading the world with former top economies and in trading are into “Quantitative Easing.” This is a disguised euphemism for printing the hell out of the money supply with nothing behind it but thin air, hopes and lies. The USA is a terrible abuser but others are even worse. The most incredible case of course is Zimbabwe. This lowers currency values and incites inflation. American inflation is now running at 6% in our view and in the view of our analyst friends and advisors. This winter it goes ever faster. Food and fuel will be outrageously apparent first; then it spreads out with a vengeance.

US GDP annual growth is supposedly running at a negative -4% but our friend and smart statistics guy, John Williams at Shadow Stats says its -6%. This kind of action discourages any new business investment as small business entrepreneurs see no future in an economy with higher taxes, destroyed markets and disincentives from Obama-Land as far as the eye can see. Who will buy? Who has credit? Those with cash refuse to spend.

On the energy front, the US has plenty of domestic property to be drilled. However, the EPA and tree-huggers hold the upper hand wrecking any hopes of drilling new fields in top seeded locations. Next, the Greenies are trying to shut down existing coal-fired power plants to kill off the source of half of America’s electric power. All energy rates and costs will rise on basic shortages, fundamentals and rabid inflation. Cap ‘N’ Trade would hit each family with costs of $1700+ per year if approved. We think it fails this time. What about later?

Municipalities, cities, towns, counties and states are beginning to fiscally fail in numbers. Those with foresight and rainy day funds can last a little longer but eventually tax income deteriorates and down they go. California is always first; the leader in all things new. Now they are showing us the darker side of these problems being first in line on a massive scale of self-destruction.

Meanwhile, the Obama Health Care Saga goes on like a months’ long migraine headache. Tea parties composing a cross section of the American heartland have had enough. Anger began with the health care plan but lingering disregard for TARP thefts, Cap ‘N’ Trade proposals and a White House full of Commies and socialists throws gas on these fires of discontent. Folks are out for political blood lining-up to disenfranchise their alleged congress people in the 2010 elections. We think that election promises to be super ugly in preliminaries and then succumbs to voter fraud, name-calling; the usual and newly unusual Wild West election happenings. This event should be better than the movies. Florida Chad-Hangers were great fun. What new voting horrors await us next year?

Those in the Sheeple public with little or no education and those solidly among welfare supporters will be crying ever louder for more handouts, give-outs and pay-outs. Millions of them are jobless and many more millions join unemployment and food stamp lines. Rhetoric escalates with cries of “do something” as village idiot politicians scream, finger point and eventually do something. Problem is; it’s always the wrong thing they do.

Inflation breeds ever more inflation. It feeds on itself unless government raises interest rates (no chance Lucy) careening down a path of self-destruction. Own hard assets; not dollars. Buy silver and gold coins.

We say a lot of this stuff is inevitable and some of it may never happen. However, just as in the FDR’s 1930’s, governments make the same mistakes over-and-over again. We think Greater Depression II lasts from 2009 until the next world war. That is sadly the ultimate economic weapon to find depression exit relief. This, we would not wish on any one. Read American and world history from 1776 to the present. This is what we get; all over again.

Financials crashed in fall 2008 with Lehman. Recovery began with TARP May, 2009: During this month of September, 2009 we’re having more of a dead cat bounce with a big smash later this month. While precious metals and their shares are higher this September 22, 2009, for the intermediate term (beginning October 31) most all trends reverse and moves to rallies.

Keep in mind, if you own paid for stuff it will most likely remain in your hands; not in somebody else’s. That includes gold and silver. Do not get tangled-up in daily noise. Keep studying the larger view and buy precious metals after each profit-taking correction. Headwinds are building into an economic hurricane. Take care of business right now. My dire fall prediction might surprise us and arrive a little later. Time is short.

Being Overqualified Can Cost You A Job

How Being The Slightest Bit Overqualified Can Cost You A Job

by Michael Shedlock

To say the job market is extremely difficult is quite an understatement.

As unemployment rises, the pool of qualified and overqualified applicants for any listed job rises as well. Making things more difficult, is being even slightly overqualified can cost you the job.

To see how and why being overqualified can cost you, please consider $13 an Hour? 500 Sign Up, 1 Wins a Job.

C.R. England, a nationwide trucking company, needed an administrative assistant for its bustling driver training school here. Responsibilities included data entry, assembling paperwork and making copies.

It was a bona-fide opening at a decent wage, making it the rarest of commodities here in northwest Indiana, where steel industry layoffs have helped drive unemployment to about 10 percent.

When Stacey Ross, C. R. England’s head of corporate recruiting, arrived at her desk at the company’s Salt Lake City headquarters the next Monday, she found about 300 applications in the company’s e-mail inbox. And the fax machine had spit out an inch-and-a-half thick stack of résumés before running out of paper. By the time she pulled the posting off Careerbuilder.com later in the day, she guessed nearly 500 people had applied for the $13-an-hour job. “It was just shocking,” she said. “I had never seen anything so big.”

The 34-year-old recruiter decided the fairest approach was simply to start at the beginning, reviewing résumés in the order in which they came in. When she found a desirable candidate, she called to ask a few preliminary questions, before forwarding the name along to Chris Kelsey, the school’s director.

She dropped significantly overqualified candidates right away, reasoning that they would leave when the economy improved. Among them was a former I.B.M. business analyst with 18 years experience; a former director of human resources; and someone with a master’s degree and 12 years at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm.

Mr. Kelsey, 33, had just promoted one of his three administrative assistants, who handle the paperwork needed for drivers to hit the road. He needed a replacement quickly.

To make the task easier, he decided they should be even more rigorous in ruling out anyone who appeared even slightly overqualified.

“We like to get the fair and middling talent that will work for the wages and groom them from within,” he said.

In other words, he said, he did not want the former bank branch manager Ms. Ross had sent, or the woman who had once owned a trucking company, or even the former legal secretary.

[It came down to two candidates both invited back for a second interview].

Mr. Kelsey marched through many of his questions again. Then, trying to gauge ability to be assertive among truck drivers, he added a new hypothetical: if she were in the stands at a baseball game and a foul ball came her way, would she stand up to try to catch it, or wait in her seat and hope it fell her way?

The other finalist had said she would wait. But Ms. Block said immediately that she would jump up to grab it.

Mr. Kelsey decided he had found his hire.

When Applying, Use The Company Website

500 applicants came in a day. To have had any chance one needed to be at the top of the stack.

In that regard, those looking for a job should note how it can help to go straight to the company website rather than fax or email a résumé.

The job in question was simply for an administrative assistant. Responsibilities included data entry, assembling paperwork and making copies. Yet look at what the pool of applicants contained.

Applicant Pool

• I.B.M. business analyst with 18 years experience.
• A former director of human resources.
• Someone with a master’s degree and 12 years at Deloitte & Touche, the accounting firm.
• A former bank branch manager.
• A woman who once owned a trucking company.

All of the above were immediately disqualified as being overqualified.

To land a job you have to be the perfect candidate, near the top of the stack of résumés, neither underqualified nor the slightest bit overqualified and you have to be willing to grab at a fly ball (show eagerness to jump at passing opportunities).

It does not get much harder than that, and there will be no feedback to applicants turned away. Indeed they may have received so many résumés they did not even get to yours.

Dumb Down Guessing Game

Will it help to “dumb down” your résumé when applying for something you are clearly overqualified for? In this case the answer was clearly yes. In general, I am not sure.

One now faces a guessing game of what each individual company’s hiring process is. Adding extra marginal  qualifications to a résumé may or may not be the best thing to do.

Being extremely overqualified though, is likely a kiss of death. Yet, I cannot recommend grossly distorting a résumé hoping for a position.

Some candidates are so overqualified and out of work so long (always a negative factor) that they will never work again. Retraining for news skills hardly seems like it can work. The pool of perfectly qualified applicants with practical on the job actual experience is simply too great.

Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Mike “Mish” Shedlock is a registered investment advisor representative for SitkaPacific Capital Management. Sitka Pacific is an asset management firm whose goal is strong performance and low volatility, regardless of market direction. Visit http://www.sitkapacific.com/account_management.html to learn more about wealth management and capital preservation strategies of Sitka Pacific.

Asian sanitation data book 2008 - achieving sanitation for all

The overall city sanitation picture in Asia is not bright. Sanitation has not been given sufficient priority and certainly lags behind provision of drinking water. This is one of the findings of a survey of 27 cities published by the Asian Development Bank in the “Asian sanitation data book 2008“.

The first data book on sanitation for the Asia and Pacific region, this book features raw data and analyses on the sanitation situation in 27 cities. The cities are members of CITYNET and participants in the Water for Asian Cities Program of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT).

Of the 27 cities, 1 is in Bangladesh, 3 are in the People’s Republic of China, 4 are in India, 1 in Indonesia, 3 in the Lao People’s Democratic Republic (Lao PDR), 5 in Nepal, 3 are in the Philippines, 2 in Sri Lanka, and 5 in Viet Nam

Although the information collected was not complete for all cities, the book draws a number of conclusions from the data.

Based on the survey, the key findings are the following:

• Lack of sanitation and household wastewater treatment facilities is polluting ground and surface waters.
• Sustaining public health is an expected outcome of having adequate sanitation, but over half of the cities were unable to report key health statistics. Those that did reveal increasing diarrheal cases when the share of household wastewater increases.
• Far too many cities still have incidences of open defecation (ranging from 10%–40%) and sanitation coverage depends on private householders investing in toilets and septic tank systems.
• Although almost all cities are aware of their sanitation problems, only 40% of responding cities have sanitation plans, and few were able to provide information on capital expenditure and operations and maintenance costs.
• Most cities that provide sanitation services rely on government funding to pay for capital and operating costs, with only 10% indicating that sanitation fees and charges can cover their costs.
• Multiple agencies have responsibilities for some aspects of sanitation. However, local government seems to be the primary organization. These organizations were operating under at least several national laws and one local law. These institutional arrangements may frustrate action and reduce accountability.

The findings, despite qualifications about data quality, point to several priority actions that government and other stakeholders need to undertake:

• Initiate city sanitation plans, including setting targets for sanitation outcomes and coverage.
• Simplify institutional arrangements to strengthen accountability and avoid multiple-agency involvement that can cause delays in taking action; set in place a coordinating mechanism.
• Review operation and maintenance expenditures and cost recovery policies to ensure sanitation providers can sustain operations and extend services.
• Improve sanitation benchmark indicators and set in place a sanitation information management system that will be regularly updated to help planners and decision makers make investment and operations decisions.
• As significant investment is needed, consider sourcing funds from beyond government sources—such as the private sector and user fees, and other revenue-generating mechanisms.

ADB (2009). Asian sanitation data book 2008 : achieving sanitation for all. Manila, Philippines, Asian Development Bank. x, 134 p. : 2 fig., 27 tab. ISBN 978-971-561-808-3
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China: Young and old face the red tape

China is not exactly known for freedom of the press – more accurately it is known for the exact opposite, and as I will later discuss, something I learned firsthand. I learned this week that Caijing, a Chinese business magazine that has taken a more outspoken stance against the government, might soon be another casualty of government pressure and be going by the wayside. By happenstance, the Saturday profile in the New York Times is about a Chinese man, Du Daozheng, who has dealt with Chinese censorship for decades. These two examples demonstrate how little has changed in Chinese censorship over many years.

Last year while I was in Beijing volunteering at the Olympics, I had the opportunity to visit Caijing because a friend of mine from college was interning there. To help recall my first memories of being there, I will excerpt from my old blog, the Beijing Zou:

I also have a friend who is interning this summer at Caijing, a Chinese business and financial magazine. It is an interesting publication because it is one of the few that can get away with discussing what are normally considered taboo topics by the rest of the media, and for one very important reason: money. While the magazine is technically run by the Stock Exchange Executive Council (SEEC), which in turn is financed by the government, in reality the council is controlled by private investors in whose best interest it is to have an honest assessment of China’s economy. They are thus able to stay away from government funding which would demand they follow the rules which apply to other Chinese media. For example, they were able to keep the recent earthquake story on the front page of their magazine while other media were refrained from any criticism.
My friend said that the journalists in China are some of the best and most dedicated she has ever worked with. Two of those journalists are Mizzou alums, I might add. It was nice to meet alums out and about in the world of international journalism beyond the school’s walls. It gives me a bit more hope that there still is indeed a need for foreign journalists, and more specifically me! I got to have lunch with all of them as well as two other interns which I thoroughly enjoyed as there was some frank discussion of Beijing now.

Now things have changed. “Differences” in editorial policy between the managing editor, Hu Shuli and magazine’s owners have seen over 80 people at the magazine resign. The owners are getting pressure to “tone it down,” according to this New York Times article.  I have asked that same friend about what is happening at the magazine with this news unfolding, but she says she hasn’t heard from anyone yet about the situation. The outcome is still unclear, but as the story on Mr. Du explains, censorship can come at any time.

Mr. Du used to be head of the government’s press and publications administration during the rule of Zhao Ziyang. He obviously therefore knows a thing or two about government censorship, and thus provides a fascinating look on the topic having gone from government employee distributing censored information to dissident citizen who now publishes a small magazine revealing what he once censored. He spoke out against the government, supported Zhao’s promise for a peaceful resolution to Tiananmen Square protests and later listened to and transcribed Zhao’s words for his memoirs. While I have never experienced such limitations as a journalist, I personally experienced censorship on a more profound (rather than abstract) level when I was in Beijing airport prior to departing the country. A man came up to me and tried to communicate something to me, but it seemed most of what he was trying to say was lost in translation. He gave me pieces of paper explaining his story of government corruption gone wrong in badly translated English, hoping that I would pass along this information to someone outside China who could do something about it. He had tried to get his story out to the public, but since it was so negative towards the government, it wasn’t touched by the Chinese media. It is an all too common story that gets lost in the huge Communist-run vacuum that is China. It hit home more than ever the limitations on those in the country I was leaving behind and the freedoms I was allowed back home. P.S. If you are interested in more of my personal experiences in China, including this experience I just mentioned, please read the article “Shadow of Censorship” on my Portfolio page.

Interview: Can China's Luxury Brands Compete At Home And Abroad?

NPR Interview With Nicholas Lardy Of The Peterson Institute for International Economics Discusses How To Make “‘Made In China’ Mean Luxury”

High-end fashion brands like Shanghai Tang are part of the first wave of Chinese luxury brands from the mainland and Hong Kong

We’ve written before about domestic Chinese luxury brands, and the way these brands are working to appeal to luxury consumers in that country by resonating on a cultural level rather than simply promoting their exclusive price-points. In the next few years, as Western luxury brands lose a little of their initial luster in top-tier markets, although they’ll probably maintain their draw in second- or third-tier markets, many analysts think there will be a great opportunity for Chinese luxury brands to squeeze into the luxury market.

In an interview with NPR today, Nicholas Lardy, “a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, a non-profit, non-partisan group based in Washington, D.C,” discusses how China’s burgeoning middle class (which, at more than 200 million potential customers and growing, has the potential to revolutionize buying trends) — rather than the small proportion of “ultra-rich” — will be the customers who will lead to the ascendance of Chinese luxury brands.

SIMON: Now, some of us remember when the term made in Japan was synonymous with inexpensive, dare I say, cheap goods. And of course in our lifetime that’s changed entirely. Made in Japan now means quality, particularly in the car industry. Is China trying to expand in the manufacture of high-quality items itself?

Mr. LARDY: It’s not only trying, I think it’s succeeding and it’s succeeding much earlier than Japan did for the simple reason that they’ve allowed foreign firms to play a much bigger role. We buy computers that say Dell or Toshiba and so forth – they’re all made in China. They’re made by foreign companies operating in China, assembling all the parts and components there.

So the goods are exported from China, but the vast majority of these consumer electronic products are absolutely world class, and the quality is extremely high. So by allowing foreigners to play a very large role in the production, China has moved up the quality ladder, I would say, much faster than Japan did in the 1960s.

A little over half of all of Chinese exports are produced by foreign companies operating in China.

SIMON: So as the expansion of the Chinese middle class continues, at the same time will they in a few years be more interested in buying Chinese goods?

Mr. LARDY: I think Chinese consumers will buy the best quality for the best price they can get. In some cases they’ll be foreign goods. Foreign manufacturers in automobiles, for example, have a very large share of the market. These cars are being produced in China by Volkswagen and General Motors, for example – are the two biggest foreign brands.

SIMON: They just have the foreign tag on them.

Mr. LARDY: Yes. They have the foreign tag, they’re made to the standards specified by the German and American companies, respectively. Much of the content of those vehicles is actually sourced locally, made in factories that, again, frequently are foreign owned. So the parts companies have also migrated to China in order to serve the demand that has emerged there over the last decade, particularly over the last year or two when China has become the world’s largest market for automobiles.

Click here to hear the NPR podcast.

China: Massive Relocation of 330,000 people for water diversion project

BEIJING: China on Sunday unveiled a giant plan to relocate a vast population to make way for the south-north water diversion project. It is this project, which has caused concern with some experts saying it might affect the flow of Brahmaputra in Assam. The Indian government has said it will try to find out if Chinese authoriites are building a dam in Tibet as part of the project, which would cause serious harm to the Brahmaputra.

Resettlement authorities in Henan said they have drawn up a massive resettlement project involving 330,000 people living in central China’s Hubei and Henan provinces to make way for the water diversion project, which cut across the whole country. The process of resettlement will be completed by 2011, sources said.

FILE-In this file photo taken on Jan. 19,2009, a motorist passes by a signboard that promises safe water for the people on display near a water canal link to the South-to-North Water Diversion Project located in Zhengzhou, Henan province, China. Authorities have started resettling 330,000 people in central China to make way for a massive project to divert water hundreds of miles (kilometers) to the booming cities in its arid north, a report said Sunday, Oct. 19, 2009. (AP Photo/Andy Wong, File) (Andy Wong - AP) - Washington Post

Areas around the proposed Danjiangkou reservoir will be evacuated to build sluice for diverting water from the Yangtze River to meet water requirement in Beijing, Tianjin, Henan and Hebei. Government sources said people evacuated from their lands will be resettled in areas with the soil quality is good.

Xichuan County in Henan, which has 185 villages, will see the resettlement of 162,000 people.

Resettlement in Henan is scheduled to be completed in 2011, according to the province’s resettlement authorities.

The government said it has come up with preferential policies to help compensate for the relocation losses suffered by the evacuated people. Besides compensation for unmovable property like old house, each relocated family will be allotted new arable land plus an annual subsidy of 600 yuan ($88) a person for 20 years, the official media quote Duan Shiyao, deputy chief of Hubei Provincial Resettlement Bureau, as saying.

This is China’s second largest resettlement plan after the Three Gorges Hydro-Power Project, which involves the resettlement of 1.27 million residents.

From TIMESOFINDIA

Carnegie Hall's 'Ancient Paths, Modern Voices' Festival Comes To Orange County, CA & NYC

Festival Will Bring Together Performing And Visual Arts, Music, And Film

Several top contemporary Chinese artists like Yue Minjun will be featured during Carnegie Hall's Ancient Paths, Modern Voices" festival later this month

This month is shaping up to be pretty exciting for China-watchers in Orange County, California and New York City, as Carnegie Hall presents a new festival celebrating Chinese culture, “Ancient Paths, Modern Voices.” Scheduled for both cities are a number of performances by top Chinese musicians, film screenings, contemporary Chinese art exhibitions and more. The festivals will take place from October 11 to November 24 in Orange County and from October 21–November 10 in New York. From a release:

“The immemorial culture of China has made itself felt throughout the world for many centuries-but its influence today is arguably more widespread, and more directly present, than at any other time in history,” stated Dean Corey, President and Artistic Director of the Philharmonic Society of Orange County. “That is the source of the richness and excitement of Ancient Paths, Modern Voices. The festival presents extraordinary expressions of the most venerable Chinese artistic traditions, then brings them into the here and now. This is Chinese culture in all its variety, from the deepest roots to the greenest branches.”

In New York, a number of partner organizations across the city will take part in the three-week festival, contributing venues as well as experts in the field of Chinese performing arts:

The festival’s opening days are filled with an incredibly rich variety of traditional music from China. Carnegie Hall presentations include marionette music theater from the city of Quanzhou in southeast China, where this art form stretches back thousands of years, and two programs created by pipa virtuoso Wu Man. She’ll bring together many styles of Chinese music from different cultures and regions for her concerts, featuring some artists who have never before performed outside of China.

Traditional music is also woven into opening weekend events presented by festival partners, from a program pairing calligraphy and the qin (seven-string plucked zither) at the China Institute, to a traditional Chinese teahouse with musical performance at the Asia Society. Moving from ancient music to modern dance, Works & Process at the Guggenheim presents a program of discussion and performance with the Chinese-American choreographer Shen Wei.

To take advantage of the many China-focused contemporary art galleries and organizations in New York’s Chelsea neighborhood, Carnegie Hall’s festival has many events planned that are designed to give attendees a glimpse of China’s vibrant and global contemporary arts movement:

For the festival, Carnegie Hall has partnered with select New York art galleries for China In Chelsea and Beyond, an event celebrating Chinese contemporary visual arts and exhibiting work by some of today’s leading Chinese artists. Participating galleries are Arario Gallery, AW Asia, Chambers Fine Art, ChinaSquare, Goedhuis Contemporary, Max Protetch Gallery, and Stux Gallery, with featured artists including Yue Minjun, Qi Zhilong, Tan Dun, Sun Xun, and many more.

Also, beginning October 21, Carnegie Hall will present Harmonic Visions, an exhibition of contemporary Chinese photography in Zankel Hall, sponsored and curated by Chambers Fine Art. China boasts more than 5,000 years of history, the presence and influence of which can be felt in many aspects of its society and culture. The visual artists featured in this exhibition combine their experiences of living in contemporary China with the country’s rich and diverse traditions. Artists featured are: Hong Hao, Hong Lei, He Yunchang, Qiu Zhijie, Rong Rong, Weng Fen, Wang Tiande, Yin Xiuzhen, Song Dong, and Zhang Huan. The exhibit will be open to Zankel Hall concertgoers through December 31.

Other visual arts events, presented by festival partners, include a panel discussion, China Art(s) Today, on November 2 at the Asia Society, moderated by Asia Society Director Melissa Chiu and featuring avant-garde artist Wenda Gu and award-winning composer and artist Tan Dun; and Silk and Bamboo: Music and Art of China, an exhibition of Chinese instruments and art, presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art through February 7, 2010. On October 18, the museum presents “Sunday at the Met—A Chinese Celebration,” an event related to the exhibition, featuring performance and discussion.

This festival will definitely be a great opportunity for people in Orange County and New York to see a cross-section of China’s exciting performing and visual arts, and with many of China’s top musicians and artists actually attending some of the events, attendees might even get the chance to meet a few. Carnegie Hall has really outdone themselves this year with this ambitious and unique bicoastal event, and if the lineups are any indication, they won’t fail to please.

Singaporean cabbie with a Standford PhD

You can find still find yourself behind the driving wheel of a cab even after forking out loads of cash, and devoting a backbreaking amount of effort and time to obtain a PhD from Stanford. This happened to 57-year-old China-born Dr. Cai Mingjie, who resorted to driving cabs as a way to make ends meet after he was retrenched from his job researching cell genetics at a research institute in Singapore. After facing multiple rejections, he saw the taxi industry with jobs to offer.

He also started blogging about his experiences. His latest post talks about getting an “indecent proposal” from a bar girl.

Fobber Amy and I are chasing our graduate degrees right now, so here’s to hoping that years from now, we’ll be on the career paths we wish to be on. If we ever do find ourselves in dire straits, the lesson to learn from Cai is to suck up your pride, and take on whatever job you can find.

Emily

Link

Notes from China..

China has experienced incredible change in the last twenty years. I used to only hear “mei yo” (don’t have) everywhere but now I can find $80,000 watches, fine restaurants, faster trains, airplane tickets, etc, Imagine thirty hours standing on a train in the cold between cars in the past. Driving through Manchuria in the dead of winter at 100 mph in a black Mercedes. Sleeping on street cots in Hutongs during the hot summers. The spitting or urinating on train floors and carpets. The 80 year old man in Suzhau who spoke Russian, German, and English insisting on walking a mile with me to show me the clearly marked bus sign. China is full of gracious and kind people.

China is still poor but also now a world power. Interesting dichotomy. We need equal relations and China can offer solutions to world problems. We need to communicate, compromise, build relations and exchanges based on respect and recognize China as an equal partner.

As our economy tanks we need to continue to innovate and build more international business. Increase our education and take higher level jobs. We are interdependent with China. In 2005 85% of high-tech Chinese exports were by foreign-owned companies. Watch Buick’s rapid rise in popularity in China now. America should be able to rapidly increase our exports to China and build stronger future relations.

Descubierto un nuevo reptil volador en China

Le han bautizado como Darwinopterus (ala de Darwin). Tenía los dientes puntiagudos y el cuello flexible, y era uno de los muchos tipos de pterosaurios que abundaban en la era Mesozoica, hace unos 220 millones de años. Éstas son las principales características del nuevo reptil volador de la era de los dinosaurios que ha descubierto en China un equipo de científicos del Reino Unido y del propio gigante asiático.

El descubrimiento, consistente en más de 20 fósiles hallados a principios de este año en rocas del noreste de China de una antigüedad de 160 millones de años, se publica hoy en la revista Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences y aporta nueva información sobre la evolución de los pterosaurios, un grupo de reptiles voladores que no se consideran dinosaurios, aunque convivieron con ellos durante decenas de millones de años.

Fuente: El Mundo Ciencia

My Future, My Dreams, My Indonesia

Define future? Gee, even ONE SECOND after…this…is part of your future. Anyway, last Saturday I joined My Future 2 Workshop. (Click HERE for more information regarding this thingy.) As usual, answering some random questions to find out what type of intelligence I do master. My top 2, scoring 9 out 10, are music and interpersonal. (The later one’s kinda unexpected since I don’t think I’m really an interpersonal person.) But, STILL, I don’t think I’m gonna take music. I have a thought of taking journalism, but then my school principal told all of us the juniors and the seniors one day that we gotta pay attention to what the people need. How could I help my dear Indonesia? After I got that thought, I checked my Yahoo! Inbox and got this quotation:

“The future may be made up of many factors but where it truly
lies is in the hearts and minds of men. Your dedication should
not be confined for your own gain, but unleashes your passion
for our beloved country as well as for the integrity and
humanity of mankind.”

- Li Ka Shing

Why China has been so great? Woo, probably they have been upholding this principle. When last time I watched China’s National Day, this’s what I found interesting. During the parade, the president of China shouted to all the soldier. “Soldiers, you’re all working hard.” And all the soldiers said, ” We serve the people!” One word: WOW. No wonder China has been growing becoming such a great nation. All people do their job to serve the people. And how they see their job really inspires me. Actually, it’s been my desire to have a recycling business. When I was still in elementary, I went to a school, where whenever I wanted to go there, I need to pass the TPA (where all the garbages are stored, more exactly, dumped, for whatever “future’s sake.”) So since I was that young, I really want to recycle the garbages and earn some money from it. I don’t think anyone has really does such a thing in Surabaya. Another thing, I would love to build city parks. I want to make a difference that rather than building malls or any high-rise buildings like the others, building parks, (or probably “malls” in form of parks.) Sooo, because I have those dreams, actually I have a thought to taking…majors relating to those areas, whatever they are. I don’t care whether those majors are too “masculine” for me or not – I’m gonna take it/them anyway.

ReadRoidRage

In honor of the baseball playoffs in the United States, I thought I might just recommend a few hundred pages of reading for those intrepid souls for whom Monday means giant injections of prose.

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China’s court system is settling accounts with a public trial of the instigators of the Guangdong brawl that sparked the prairie fire of riots in Xinjiang (New York Times).  It’s sure to be a stern judgment.  As they said in the 1930s Jiangxi Soviet, 先判后审 xian pan, hou shen (first the verdict, then the trial).  And however Confucian the “harmonious society” may endeavor to be, there is still that barbed thread of Legalism holding everything (and everyone) together.

Jeremy Goldkorn of Danwei.org holds forth in the British press with an editorial I wish I could have written: “Comrade, why did you censor my website?” (Via the Guardian.)  This piece really crystallizes a lot of emotions I had this summer in China when I had to start a Sina.com blog to ask the same kind of question, writing out into the Chinese ether.  In a post entitled 自我批评 si wo pi ping [Self-Criticism], I screamed in rather poor grammar, hoping to get a response from a Great Firewall minder:

我真正博客的就在 http://adamcathcart.wordpress.com…不好的是，在国内形式，还是不会公开的。如果有负责干部正在读，请你们联系我（我也可以去您的办公室为谈）因为我不反对改写（反正是，我欢迎改写！）。  好的是，我不会痴查怎么没有用的艺术博客。 所以，如果您们知道我怎么可能干净即解放我 http://adamcathcart.wordpress.com 的博客（因为我的脑子已经很干），请告诉我，我要好好改改，为了中国人民的和谐，现代化，欢迎国际朋友的特色社会主义的社会国家。  那对不对？

But nothing happened.  Silence can be so onerous.

More happily, JustRecently dismantles the World Media Summit in Beijing, where Rupert Murdoch appeared alongside old Hu Jintao.  That made me think: Wouldn’t Lin Biao and Bill O’Reilley get along nicely?

And residents of Beijing are urged to get over to the French Cultural Center for a photography exhibit about Chinese hip-hop.

via AFP

As for the big reading files, I have to recommend two very large pdf. reports on North Korean foreign policy and the Chinese-Korean border area.  The first is called “Flood Across the Border,” the other is…well…via SAIS and the John Hopkins School.

More after my midnight coffee run!

Chinese Buying Drives Sotheby’s Hong Kong Sale To $170 Million

Bidders From Mainland China Dominate As Expectations Are Surpassed In Landmark Autumn Auction

Chinese contemporary artist Liu Ye's "Portrait of L" sold in Hong Kong for $209,000 over its high estimate

Over the last week, we’ve followed the Sotheby’s autumn auction in Hong Kong, which included sales of everything from fine wine to antiquities to contemporary Chinese and Asian art, noting that sales were well above estimates and sell-through rates were promising. Today, in a wrap-up of the sales, Le-Min Lim of Bloomberg illustrates how this series of auctions, led by Chinese rather than American buyers, represents a major shift in auction buying trends:

The total beat both the presale estimate of HK$950 million and last year’s auction, which raised HK$1.1 billion ($141.7 million at that time), half its forecast, three weeks after Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s September 2008 failure.

“The bidding was intense,” auctioneer Henry Howard-Sneyd said in an interview after the auction. The mood in the saleroom was “electric” when Emperor Qianlong’s throne came on the block yesterday, he said: “This shows when the right item comes along, the money is there — especially from China.”

Chinese collectors have come out in force over the last year, recognizing quality lots and quickly developing a sophisticated eye for collection-worthy wines and paintings. In terms of antiquities, an area in which Chinese collectors have more experience, however, they seemingly can’t be beat:

The strength of Chinese bidding at the antiques sale defies a decade-old trend of Western dominance at the priciest end of the market. As recently as June, Sotheby’s rival, Christie’s International, said Americans were its top clients in this category, followed by the Chinese and Hong Kongers. Of the 2,400 lots offered this week, 88 percent found buyers.

The Chinese also bought the priciest wines and oil paintings by masters and contemporary art. Over the weekend, a Chinese buyer paid a record $94,000 for a 6-liter bottle of Chateau Petrus 1982; another spent HK$7.3 million for a 1984 oil-and-color on paper by Li Keran at the auction of classical Chinese paintings; while a third spent HK$36.5 million on a mid- 1950s oil-on-board painting, “Lotus et Poissons Rouges” (“Lotus and Red Fish”) by deceased Chinese master Sanyu.

While this article claims contemporary art underperformed, I think the sell-through at the contemporary Asian art auction speaks for itself. If lumping together all of the pieces at the contemporary auction — which included Chinese, Japanese and Korean artists in one large sale — I would say the final tally is brought down significantly by the Japanese and Korean artists, who sell, on the whole, for significantly less than quality Chinese contemporary artists.

In terms of the Chinese artists up for grabs in the contemporary sale, selling rates were excellent, with 5 of the 6 Zeng Fanzhi paintings up for auction going for well above than their high estimates, Yue Minjun’s “Hats Series – Two Lovers” selling for $372,000 over its high estimate, and works by top Chinese artists like Liu Ye, Wang Guangyi, and Huang Yongping destroying pre-sale estimates.

Chinese steel pipes focus of dumping probe

THE United States has initiated anti-dumping and anti-subsidy investigations into Chinese-made steel pipes that could lead to duties exceeding 100 percent.

The move could increase trade tensions between the two countries as it comes less than a month after US President Barack Obama decided to slap punitive tariffs on Chinese tires. The US also imposed preliminary duties on Chinese-made steel pipes used to transport oil last month.

The US Commerce Department said late on Wednesday that the investigation stemmed from a petition from companies including United States Steel Corp, V&M Star LP, TMK IPSCO and the United Steelworkers union.

The petitioners asked for a 98.37 percent anti-dumping duty to counter competition from China’s steel pipes, alleging the products are sold in the US at unfairly low prices. They also requested additional countervailing tariffs to offset alleged Chinese government subsidies.

Dumping occurs when a company sells its products in another country for below the cost of production.

The products involved in the latest case include seamless carbon and alloy steel pipes used to carry water, steam, oil products and natural gas.

Pipes have been the main targets of foreign investigations into Chinese steel products. Early this week in a final ruling, the Europe Union imposed anti-dumping tariffs on some Chinese seamless steel pipes after concluding that these imports might cause material injury or threat to local industry.

The China Iron and Steel Association, which represents domestic mills, said exports of Chinese-made seamless steel pipes to the EU fell sharply since the EU’s investigation, decreasing 71 percent in volume in the January-August period from a year earlier and down 65 percent in value.

“It’s unlikely that China sells pipe products below cost,” said Mi Yunji, an analyst at Mysteel consultancy. “Prices are higher for exports than for the domestic market. Overseas demand is also not good right now.”

“I think the main pressure for these anti-dumping and anti-subsidy charges comes from labor unions in those foreign companies.”

These new challenges will weigh heavily on Chinese manufacturers, which already suffer from overcapacity. Steel pipes generate higher value than other steel products and account for a big portion of exports, said a domestic steel official.

The latest US investigation will have to win support from the US International Trade Commission by early November to proceed. If the commission approves it, the Commerce Department will make a preliminary decision on anti-dumping duties in December and countervailing duties in February.

Wang Feng, an analyst at Guotai Jun’an Securities Co, said cases of this kind will dampen business confidence among Chinese traders and foreign investors.

Did you know that Bank of China has 650 million customers?

No. Neither did I but it was one of the many interesting bits of information that I picked up at a recent guest presentation by Daniel Cohen of IBM.

Dan was here to talk about how to conduct business in China and it was a very interesting talk. We heard about the many impressive achievements in China and the speed by which things happen, especially infrastructure developments. And the fact that the Chinese economy has to grow 7-8% every year simply to provide jobs for that year’s graduates. These were just some of the examples that Dan used to frame his talk. The key message from Dan was that if you don’t get relationships then you might as well give up on doing business in China. He was kind enough to mention a number of the more important issues, many of which amused the China/Taiwan/Hong Kong contingent of the audience. So did his welcome greeting in Chinese.

If you have kept a note of it then you will know that the new MBA class is now in their third week of classes. Merri (our Careers Management Adviser) and I have just completed the last of the individual sessions. It has been a very useful exercise, to learn about the career aspirations (or confusion) of everyone. These sessions will then be used to inform the career related activities in the programme but also, and more importantly, to line up individual support: course selection, internships, consultancy projects, exchanges and the final project and all that. Exciting times ahead!

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650 million….

Population of Denmark: 5.3 million…

Hmmm….

International concerns grow over the safety of the Indian Nuclear Arsenal

The Naxalite Threat

LONDON – Far removed from the photo-shopped images of ‘Shining India’, lies a dark and sinister shadow that stalks the Indian Republic. The spectre of the Naxalite threat now has middle-class urban Indians nervous as they watch increasingly worrisome media reports of the repeated failures of Indian Security Forces in containing the ‘red menace’ in the jungles and hinterlands of India.

What was once only a peripheral threat to the Indian State has now reached a critical mass that has left even the ivory-tower Indian elites in New Delhi with furrowed brows. An embarrassing problem once ignored and neglected has now broken out into the worlds glare. And rightly so. As the vigour of the Reds grows from strength to strength, and the impotence of the Indian Army and Paramilitary is increasingly apparent, questions are being raised of the safety and security of India’s nuclear weapons arsenal. Similar concerns were raised internationally only a few months ago when the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan were said to be within spitting distance of Islamabad and Pakistan’s own nuclear arsenal was seen as an obvious target. But whereas the Pakistan Army swiftly and efficiently routed the militants from a standing start within just a few weeks, their colleagues in India have struggled to contain an irresistibly growing Naxalite movement that has pledged to bring New Delhi down.

In fact, there are few parallels that can be drawn with the Pakistani case. Whereas the Pakistani militants numbers in a few thousand and were confined to a tiny fraction in the north of the country, their Indian equivalents boast ranks of at least 20,000 strong (and growing) and have had significantly greater success. Now infesting massive swathes of Indian territory, India’s Naxalite problem is the most prolific and violent insurgency in any nuclear armed nation, and leaves Pakistan’s recent troubles far behind in terms of the implications for regional and indeed international security.

According to Indian government sources, the insurgency, which started in 1967 as a peasant uprising, has now spread to 20 of India’s 28 states – and is showing no signs of exhaustion. A staggering 700 people, including civilians and police, have been killed in the rebellion so far this year, up from 638 in total last year. Observers may be shocked that such dangerous developments have been scarce reported in the world’s media, but in September the Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh – probably on a break from being feted in world capitals – let the cat out of the bag when he described Naxalism as India’s greatest security threat, and said that security forces were failing to halt it.

With the rebel movement seemingly unstoppable, the international community is becoming increasingly vocal in its concerns of the very dangerous prospect of nuclear weapons falling into the hands of fanatical extremists. A the same time, the Indian government is desperate to save face and avoid derailing its recent global public relations blitz. Thus it is planning a major assault on the rebels across the four states where their presence is strongest. The move comes as new evidence emerges the Naxalites are stepping up their military and operational deployments as their successes have won them thousands of new recruits across the country.

But commentators are sceptical about what this new campaign can possibly achieve considering all of India’s recent botched attempts to stamp out the growing menace. Ajay Sahni, executive director of the Institute for Conflict Management in New Delhi, says Indian forces do not have the strength – in terms of “numbers, training, transportation, arms” – to gain control over such vast swaths of territory. “Until there’s been a steady, tremendous capacity-building, all deployments will be irrational,” he says. “It will just be a nibbling away at the peripheries, and a lot of security forces will be killed.”

As Indian forces are sent into the rebel-infested eastern states of Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, and Bihar, the world will watch with baited breath. It is too early to say whether international concerns over the security of the Indian state and nuclear arsenal will be alleviated, but considering past performance, the prospect does not look good. The Indian Army may buck past trends and achieve its objectives, but more likely, there will be a great deal of movement in international capitals as contingencies are drawn for the worst-case-scenario.

Atif F Qureshi  PKKH Editorial Team and www.PakDestiny.net

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

I bit the bullet tonight. We went to the Donghuamen Night Market. This is where all the really crazy food is! I mean until now I haven’t actually seen scorpions or bugs on skewers, but tonight that all changed. Add to that sheep penis, seahorse kabobs, lamb stomach or grilled dog and we are getting a feel for the stalls correct?

So if you are going to play your own game of Fear Factor here is where you could accomplish that. However we did not play Fear Factor. In fact it was what are you willing to try just to say you did. Stinky tofu anyone? It really did stink so I was not about to touch it. I mean a stench so bad that I can’t even imagine it being in my mouth! I did have some oysters on the half shell grilled up with garlic and chiles. I know I know not that daring, but I didn’t get them to be daring. I got them because they smelled and looked amazing, and they were.

My big adventure was the fried starfish on a skewer. So there I am, with what looks like a magic wand and decide it can go one of two ways. First it just wouldn’t go down. Or it could go down and actually be good. It smelled like walking on fisherman’s warf, and not in a good way.

Crunchy. Then inside texturally I don’t even know how to start describing it. Taste well there wasn’t much taste to it, a little salty. It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t great. So I figure that I came out ahead and after eating three of the five legs I was over it. Proud of myself for leaving the comfort zone and eating something like that, not that I will again anytime soon.

I finished the night off with some great pork and vegetable dumplings. Much more filling and delicious.

Ooh, speaking of delicious though. Being a tea drinker I am in heaven here. So far my favorite is a black tea with jasmine. All the tea is loose leaf here (unless you get the Lipton that is available back home ) and so the flavor is just amazing. So I finish this as the water boils and I pour a cup.

Tomorrow, the wall, I know you know how pumped I am for this!

2 Wochenenden mit Viel Action !!!

 

BB Gun / Paintball und Siam Park

Viel Action mit ein wenig Schwund……

… wie heist es doch so schön…. Ungeschicktes Fleisch muss ab….

Das letzte Wochenende im September waren wir Paintball schießen. Diese Lust bestand schon in Deutschland, aber nein, in Thailand mit Temperaturen über 33 Grad haben wir es dann gespielt

Mit Langarm Overall, Woll-Gesichtsmaske/Mütze, Schutzweste und Helm (ich wiederhole, bei Temperaturen über 33 Grad) sind wir dann ins Gelände. Da wir alle das noch nie gespielt hatten, fingen wir im “Kinder Gehege” an. Da standen riesige weiße Luftkissen / Gebilde wo sich jeder hinter versteckte und dann fleißig versuchte den Gegner abzuschießen. Bei der Einweisung, wie man sich zu verhalten hatte, lief uns schon die Suppe den Beinen runter und es kam uns vor wie Stunden…. Umso lustiger war es dann, als es losging, und sich erst mal keiner wirklich getraut hatte, sich von seinem Schutzwall fortzubewegen.

2 Runden im “Kinder Gehege” und dann ging es ab ins große freie Gehege. Das hat richtig Laune gemacht. Sich hinter Baume und Hecken zu verstecken, über den Boden zu robben, um sich an die Gegner anzuschleichen, war echt geil, auch wenn man vor lauter Schweiß durchnässt war

Kathy hat sich super geschlagen. Im Ganzen waren wir 5 Männer und 2 Frauen. Zum Schluss waren nur noch Kathy und Kwesi im Rennen, und da Kathy keine Munition mehr hatte, hatte Kwesi das ganze gewonnen. Natürlich hat man hier Blessuren davon getragen. Kathy hatte 2 ganz heftige Einschläge an Schulter und Oberarm abbekommen, welche sich in den darauf folgenden Tagen ziemlich blau/lila und hinterher grün/gelb färbten

Thorsten hatte lediglich ne Beule am Kopf davon getragen, was aber nicht wirklich schlimm war. Denn, wir wollen das auf jeden Fall noch einmal machen aber eher im Dezember oder Januar, wenn die Temperaturen knapp unter 30 Grad liegen

 

 

Erstes Wochenende im Oktober waren wir im Siam Park. Ein Park aufgebaut wie Freizeitpark Rust oder Phantasialand, nur grösser mit Safari Park und Wasserpark.

Dieser Tag war für den Wasserpark geplant, wo wir gegen halb elf morgens bis abends kurz vor sechs, waren. Mit riesigem Wellenbad und Monsterrutschen genossen wir den Tag. In wie so üblich musste Kathy mal wieder verarztet werden. Beim Rutschen hat sie sich den Nagel samt Nagelbett (Fleisch) aufgerissen. Und die Frauen die auch künstliche Nägel haben, wissen wie schmerzvoll das Ganze ist. Also ab mit Ihr in den FIRST AID (Erste Hilfe) und behandeln lassen. Der Nagel wurde komplett runter geschnitten, dann mit Jod und Pflaster verarztet, und für Kathy war Schluss mit Rutschen. Der Tag war aber trotzdem sehr schön, und neue (rötliche) Farbe haben wir auch getankt

Beim Eintrittspreis zum Wasserpark hatte man noch eine Freizeitpark Attraktion seiner Wahl frei. Also sind wir (ohne Thorsten) noch auf die Looping Bahn (Boomerang) gegangen. Oh wow…. Kathy war seit bestimmt 10 Jahren nicht mehr auf einer Achterbahn, und kam daher mit etwas zittrigen Knieen wieder von der Bahn

Was die nächsten Wochenenden so passiert, wissen wir noch nicht, aber wir haben noch so einiges vor….

 

 

nächstes Wochenende kommt bald….Ende Oktober gehts nach Koh Samui.

Political tipping points or natural tipping points?

ngopost.org

Lester Brown’s book, Plan B 4.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization, asks whether we can cut carbon emissions fast enough to save the Greenland ice sheet, whether we can we close coal-fired power plants fast enough to save the glaciers in the Himalayas, and whether we can we stabilise population by lowering birth rates before nature takes over and halts population growth by raising death rates. The political imperative looms ever larger as finite resources — long exploited as though they are in infinite supply — become exhausted. Brown makes reference, for example, to Saudi Arabia which, in early 2008, announced that it would no longer be self-sufficient in wheat because the non-replenishable aquifer it has been pumping for irrigation was largely depleted. Production will cease entirely in 2016, meaning a population of 30 million will need to import all its wheat. The problem of over-pumping is far more acute in India where 175 million Indians are being fed with grain produced from wells that are running dry, and in China where 130 million are affected. Meanwhile, with the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets melting at an accelerating pace, sea level rises are set to inundate much of the Mekong Delta, which produces half of the rice in Viet Nam, the world’s second-ranking rice exporter.

Brown observes that food shortages led to the demise of earlier civilisations such as the Sumerians and the Mayans, and that dwindling food supplies may be the undoing of twenty-first century civilization as well. “It is decision time,” says Brown. “We can stay with business as usual and watch our economy decline and our civilization unravel, or we can adopt Plan B and be the generation that mobilises to save civilisation.”

Chroma OS ar putea fi lansat pe netbook-uri luna viitoare

Sunt zvonuri care afirma ca sistemul de operare Chrome de la Google ar putea fi introdus pe netbookuri inca de luna viitoare. Totusi, comunicatele oficiale Google pastreaza inca data de lansare undeva anul viitor. Se pare ca producatorii de netbookuri din China fac tot ce pot ca sa puna mana macar pe o versiune preliminara a acestui sistem de operare pentru a o impacheta in produsele proprii. Vom vedea in cele din urma cine are dreptate.

Wanted: Tall soldiers with 'big' eyes for China's celebrations

It’s funny the stuff which is meant to impress. It was widely reported the honor guard at this year’s national day parade in Beijing would be goose stepping at exactly 116 paces every minute.

Soldiers on show during China's National Day celebrations, October 1, 2009

I tried to count to make sure, but couldn’t keep up. To do this they trained for six months. And it was pretty impressive, in a North Korean/Cold War era kind of way.

One strange note, according to leader of the honor guard, to be chosen, the soldiers needed to have “big” eyes, double eye lids, measure 1.88 meters tall and from the top of their belt buckle to the ground had to be 1.2m. To be honest such detail escaped me on the day.

It was also impressive to watch the columns of tanks and missiles roll through the heart of Beijing – the new technology we were told again and again was all “made in China”. Perhaps given the history of recent product recalls from this country that may help U.S. military planners rest a little easier.

But possibly most impressive of all wasn’t on show, the improvements in the daily life of hundreds of millions Chinese people.

Since the end of the tumultuous era of Mao Ze Dong the economy has boomed. People here are eating better, living longer and have the kind of life their parents wouldn’t dream of.

But Beijing was so intent on keeping today’s celebrations to the hand picked elite few, it deployed a security operation which was a none too subtle reminder that this country is still run by a one party authoritarian regime.

Somehow, standing there along the parade route, I couldn’t help but think, wouldn’t this have been a better day if the people of China were allowed to take part in some kind of festive celebration, minus the military hardware?

It would have been a much better image for an overseas audience than the tanks and nuclear capable ICBM’s — years of hard work by Chinese diplomats talking about their country’s peaceful rise may just have been undone by 66 minute long parade of some of the most destructive weapons on the planet.