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Do you think there is merit to this story? http://www.globaltimes.cn/cont...

"Two Northwest China officials were punished after their plan to reduce air pollution readings by spraying water cannons near monitoring equipment backfired and left a government building encrusted in ice."

There are a variety of online articles that contradict your claim that independent labor unions are allowed in China such as this one , this one, and this one. Perhaps Chinese labor unions are defined in law but protections are not enforced in practice like their environmental regulations.

Given Chinese censorship of news and social media it is difficult for anyone including Chinese citizens to know exactly what takes place in that country. I am more inclined to believe the accusations of dissidents than the wealthy authoritarian party's propaganda.

Seriously as engineers we need to have enough balls to say no and stand up to requests from employers to design/implement anything who's ultimate use is to do something immoral, such as suppressing individual freedom.

http://www.globaltimes.cn/cont...

Giiven the indisputable evidence that he actually did circumvent the Chinese firewall, I would love it if the Chinese arrested this joker. If I was Chinese I would have already filed a complaint against him.

Keeping the flight deck doors secured (with felony criminal charges to await any crew that opens them under duress) and having a flight full of passengers ready to beat the carp out of any would-be hijackers are enough to keep the flight reasonably safe.

I'm sure the crew members under duress aren't very concerned about potential felony charges upon landing if they open the doors. I'm sure they are trying to balance the odds of dying immediately if they refuse to open the doors and in short order if they do. I'm sure landing and being arrested for criminal charges would be a near-best case outcome.

The true solution for congestion is to ELIMINATE THE SOURCE OF CONGESTION by going back to 9/10 security screening at the airport. Everything else is just a money grab

FIFY.

The Rape-eye-scan cancer booths, 3 oz bottle limit, forced shoe removal (for some), invasive-but-not-thorough patdowns, and "behavior screening" techniques are security theater ONLY.

Keeping the flight deck doors secured (with felony criminal charges to await any crew that opens them under duress) and having a flight full of passengers ready to beat the carp out of any would-be hijackers are enough to keep the flight reasonably safe.

Actual example:

Tesla

I'm not going to spend unpaid time doing your research (for which I'm quite certain you don't actually want the results that you'll find) for you. Examples are legion. Deal with it.

They have disputed ownership of those island for a long time now so clearly they have not "always belonged to japan" or they wouldn't be in dispute. China claims they owned them since the early 1500's. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/771456.shtml#.UpJ81rVDsic There are always two sides to any story...

so it is believed that if the curtain starts coming down they might try to dispose of the problem by making the camps disappear(by killing everyone, maybe even the staff) rather than face the music.

That worked out real well for the surviving Nazis, I hear.

in any case, some of you may have noticed that China is no longer giving carte-blanche to the DPRK:

In response to UN Security Council Resolution 2087 which was approved on Wednesday [2013-01-23, China time], North Korea vowed that it will carry out a "high-level" nuclear test. This may not be mere angry words, because South Korea says preparation for North Korea's new nuclear test is already in progress.

Wednesday's UN resolution condemned North Korea's rocket launch in December and expanded existing sanctions. After putting a lot of effort into amendments for the draft resolution, China also voted for it.

It seems that North Korea does not appreciate China's efforts. It criticized China without explicitly naming it in its statement yesterday [2013-01-24]: "Those big countries, which are obliged to take the lead in building a fair world order, are abandoning without hesitation even elementary principles, under the influence of the US' arbitrary and high-handed practices, and failing to come to their senses."

China has a dilemma: We are further away from the goal of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and there's no possible way for us to search for a diplomatic balance between North Korea and South Korea, Japan and the US.

China should be more relaxed and reduce our expectations on the effect of our strategies toward the peninsula. We should have a pragmatic attitude to deal with the problems and pursue the optimal ratio between our investment of resources and strategic gains.

China can neither take one side of the peninsula conflict like the US and Japan nor dream of staying aloof. We should readily accept that China is involved and may offend one side or both sides.

China's role and position are clear when discussing North Korea issue in the UN Security Council. If North Korea engages in further nuclear tests, China will not hesitate to reduce its assistance to North Korea. ...

China hopes for a stable peninsula, but it's not the end of the world if there's trouble there. This should be the baseline of China's position.

Translation: "We're starting to figure out that there's precious little advantage to backing up NK much longer, and Kim3 is kidding himself if he thinks otherwise."

Enough said: "It was not a coincidence that the 9/11 attacks took place right after then President George W. Bush declared the US rivalry with China." - Major General Luo Yuan, deputy secretary general with the PLA Academy of Military Sciences source - http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/685193/Terrorism-US-top-priority-not-return-to-Asia.aspx

Like engineer 9-11 to draw us into Afghanistan (and maybe Iraq) , 13 other countries (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Terror ) drain our economy, ruin our diplomatic standing, and now have Pakistan as their puppet which we pay to behave (and also shoot at ISAF troops in Afhganistan) and then the Chinese brag about it AND threaten us with another attack at the same time? "It was not a coincidence that the 9/11 attacks took place right after then President George W. Bush declared the US rivalry with China." "The switching of strategic focus to the Asia-Pacific region is inevitably introducing gaps in the attention paid to international terrorism, which is the real threat. We simply want to point out the loopholes of the US diplomatic strategy out of goodwill to help it avoid another 9/11." - Major General Luo Yuan, deputy secretary general with the PLA Academy of Military Sciences as taken from: http://www.globaltimes.cn/NEWS/tabid/99/ID/685193/Terrorism-US-top-priority-not-return-to-Asia.aspx

No link to original source? And original source is supposedly Chinese state-run media??

Don't believe everything you read on the Internet.

Here is a link from the English China Daily which is state run. And here's a tabloid branch of the People's Daily running the story but usually this paper focuses on global issues.

Just how many peace prizes were created in the last couple of centuries? Of course, I'm somehow excluding "Confucius Peace Prize" - a strange association of a peace prize with words of bellicose connotations.

These days, there are few people (in the West anyway) who know how to create a 'punching' as it is called, and fewer who are interested in learning.

TFA mentions this, "What do young people want to come into this trade for, especially at the manufacturing end - because it's so dirty, you know". Yet there are young people getting into it and Etsy provides them a sells outlet.

Strangely, the remnant of my father's business is just starting to get orders from Asia, so maybe 'Free Trade' is finally coming around to the point where manufacturing costs in the US are competitive with Asia in this regard

Free trade does that, as there's more trade people demand more pay from their employers. China is seeing more suicides, which is going too far, because employers won't give them raises they demand, though employers are giving some raises. China's middle class is rising afterall and there are now 64 Chinese billionaires on Forbes list. The same is seen in India. Free Trade raises everybody's boat.

Of course China doesn't have free trade, the Chinese currency isn't allowed to float, but trade is more open there now than it has been.

Falcon

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129395326

People are getting stuck for long enough to create cottage industries for villagers. I guess those drivers who are lucky enough to be stuck near a village are the ones getting food and water.

Here is a quote that raised my eyebrows;

Wang, driving from Hohhot to Tianjin in a coal truck, had been on the Huai'an section for three days and two nights. "We are advised to take detours, but I would rather stay here since I will travel more distance and increase my costs," Wang said. "The number of roads from northwest China to Beijing are limited," he complained, asking "Why should I pay the toll fee?"

http://china.globaltimes.cn/society/2010-08/566070_2.html