After all, if one is near the bottom of freedom and the other is near the top, it's easier for both to move towards the middle
If it makes you comfortable to believe that there is really that much difference, you're certainly entitled to believe that the US is much freer than China, and admittedly in many ways it still is, but not as much as you might think. However, as my original post was about a "feeling" of freedom, here are a few things to consider:
In the US, if you even speak in a raised voice to your child in public, self-appointed citizen watchdogs may come up and tell you that you are "verbally abusing" your child and that they are going to call the social workers. I have personally seen this happen at a Wal-Mart when a whiny child was insisting she get some candy and her tired mother had had enough of her whining. Heaven forbid if she had decided to spank her child in public. An American-Pakistani friend of mine told me that the every time his family traveled to Pakistan, the first thing the father did was slap him in face for all of the disrespect he had shown him in the past year in the US and he knew he had to behave for the next month until he returned to the US where he could take advantage of the situation, knowing that his father wouldn't risk physically punishing him. There are many well-documented cases of people's children being taken away by state social workers on circumstantial evidence presented by "well-intentioned" neighbors. Children in foster care have a high incidence of abuse and even death. (Google search for "foster care death" gave 16,300,000 results.) The US is the only country I know of that has gone to this extreme and the citizens are the ones who turn their neighbors in, often on flimsy circumstantial evidence.
Mandated vaccines have led to brain damage, autism and death to hundreds of thousands of victims, and yet each year more and more vaccines are introduced, bringing billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture them and to the medical industry that deals with the adverse affects. Gulf War syndrome is now widely believed to be mainly caused by the many tons of depleted uranium shells used during the campaigns, but the number of experimental vaccines our troops are forced to accept, with or without their complicity, has factored in some cases as well. Patriot Acts 1 & 2 contain clauses which allow for forced vaccine campaigns that call for anyone who refuses to be placed in "quarantine" indefinitely. I'm thankful to those who have fought for our rights to choose NOT to give the shots to our kids (varies by state) but I'm afraid those days are numbered.
There has already been plenty of discussion on Slashdot about the Patriot Acts 1 and 2 and all of the accompanying loss of rights to citizens they entail. As long as you don't question anything, you should be fine. However, if you don't believe there are any political prisoners in the US, I urge you to investigate. It's not hard to find many cases. I for one smell fascism in the air.
Of course, we haven't touched on how US foreign policy has walked all over the freedoms of sovereign nations that have stood in the way of the juggernaut.
Finally, my message is certainly NOT anti-US, but rather against the oligarchy which usurped the US government and the people who are complicit in maintaining those rulers.
For the record, I absolutely love my country, which is why I can't stand the direction it is going, especially since the coup back in 1913 when the private banking cartel managed to take over the country for real. Perhaps if you don't feel like you're being censored, it's because your views are more mainstream than mine. I left for China, coincidentally, the day after the US invaded Iraq. Leading up to that I was working for Gateway and traveling to South Dakota every week, along with other people involved in the same CRM project. It literally got to the point where I just wouldn't open my mouth because I had to continue working with those people and the looks of hatred that came along with the verbal abuse and labels of "anti-American" "why don't you move back overseas if you don't like it" etc. were quite startling. Before that, I was just a kooky oddball who was always spouting off during flu season about mercury and monkey viruses in vaccines, the fact that fluoride in water is a really bad idea discovered by the Nazis, etc. which got me curious looks, but nothing like the wrath I felt before leaving.
My comment about feeling freer to express myself here in China has a lot to do with finding sympathetic ears when I bemoan US imperialism. However, most Chinese I talk to are buying into all I oppose hook, line and sinker. I do my best to get people to investigate things for themselves instead of just swallowing it down whole, same as I do in the US. Of course there are real limits to my freedoms here, and I am certainly much freer than most Chinese people who can't even travel outside the country except in large groups. It isn't as though I like the Chinese government better, but at least Chinese people don't go around bragging about how "free" they are. Look around you and you will find others there in the US who feel the same way about what's happening, only the might not speak out because they are tired of being called "un-American".
Wow. Is that really what you think? I'm sure such actions would get me a warning to stop, and if I didn't, I would be taken away and given a stern lecture about appropriate behavior in China. Worst case, I'd be sent home to the US. Apologies for not being willing to test it out to see what happens, but I have a few things I'd like to accomplish here.
If you look at Chinese history over several millennia, you'll see that the average Chinese citizen is living at a level of prosperity and freedom never before achieved. Of course, there are certain to be crackdowns if people get overly assertive, but the days of public executions and like are long gone, largely thanks to the public outrage over the events at Tian'anmen square. Sure, the Chinese government still keeps a tight grip, but they are loosening that grip more every day. I'm much more worried about the increase of political arrests and increasing censorship in the US.
Good one! Of course, to be really effective, it would have to be "Free the falun gong political prisoners" on the sign, as Tibet isn't really that much of hot topic anymore. There is as much likelihood of China granting Tibet independence as there is of the US giving California, Oregon and Washington back to Mexico. Once territory is gained it is not likely to be given back. Well, I suppose after the US annexed the Philippines, we decided that as long as we could keep our bases there, we didn't need the hassle of administration as long as we got what we needed, and eventually granted them independence. We even succumbed to pressure and gave up the bases eventually, but now we can rely on our cronies such as the IMF, Halliburton and the like to keep them and others like them in line. We have to have serious cause to invade a nation, such as a natural gas pipeline, rich oil fields, etc. to make it worth the effort of "bringing freedom and democracy" to a people.
Certainly the right to form political parties without the sponsorship of the Communist Party and the right to public assembly are still heavily controlled here in China. The difference is that the people are not under the impression that they are "free". It is amazing to witness the changes that have taken place here in the past two decades and the freedoms people now enjoy. Of course they have a long way to go. However, the trend is toward more freedom, which is exactly opposite of the trend in the US.
Great for now, but let's see how long it lasts.
on
China Unblocks Wikipedia
·
· Score: 4, Interesting
I've been in China for 3 and a half years now and this is good news indeed, but there is still a long way to go. Considering how many times Google has been blocked and unblocked since I've been here, I wouldn't be surprised to find Wikipedia blocked again soon. I still have to play the proxy server game to surf a lot of the sites I want to see, and they have gotten very good at outsmarting proxy servers for certain content they absolutely don't want people to see. Maybe someone can enlighten me how they would be able to block a site even if it's going through an anonymous proxy server in, say Korea. I'm sure they have the brightest of the brightest hard at work on it. Of course, no proxy server ever works for more than a few days before it gets added to the "list". In fact, I'm probably on more than a few lists, myself. Lists only matter if they need evidence for something, and as I'm not inciting anything, I'm not particularly worried. I count my blessings that I have as much freedom to do what I want here as I do. In fact, I feel far more free to express myself here than I did back in the States, with its citizen watchdogs doing their best at every turn to censor me.
Yes, global warming is happening. Certainly the current fossil-based goin-on-all-guns economy isn't helping matters. Nuclear energy appears to be an appealing emmissions-free alternative. But, is it really?
1- Claims of greenhouse reductions made by nuclear power generation supporters focus primarily on only one aspect of the entire process, namely the power generation cycle, which gives off nearly no greenhouse emissions, while downplaying or ignoring greenhouse gas emissions throughout the remainder of the cycle, such as mining of uranium, uranium conversion and enrichment, plant construction, transportation of uranium and spent fuel, nuclear waste storage and nuclear power plant de-commissioning.
In order to produce enough enriched fuel to supply a standard 1GW reactor for one full-power year, about 160 tons of natural uranium must be processed. The hexafluoride method of uranium enrichment commonly employed during both enrichment and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel releases greenhouse gasses in the form of halogens and halogenated compounds, such as Freon-114, with many times greater global warming potential than CO2. When the entire nuclear power cycle is considered, the argument that nuclear power reduces greenhouse gas emissions does not stand under scrutiny.
2- Nuclear power is not cost-effective. The nuclear power industry is the most heavily subsidised among all power generation technologies. Without these subsidies, nuclear power could not compete with other, less labor, time and capital intensive generation technologies. There is currently a backlog of high-level nuclear waste that has accumulated over the course of 60 years into a over a quarter of a million tons that are kept in storage in ponds in temporary storage containers, which have to separated by boron panels to prevent chain reactions. How much energy will be required to dispose of this waste is unknown, but in "Why Nuclear Power Cannot be a Major Energy Source" David Fleming suggests a rough guideline of one third of the total of all energy produced.
When the total life cycle of nuclear power generation, from mining to plant decommissioning is factored in, the cost of nuclear power is greater than the power generated. It is estimated that the energy requirements to create the lead-steel-copper containers required to package the spent nuclear fuel produced by a reactor is nearly equal to that required to construct the reactor.
3- Nuclear power generation decrease national security. Governments have been aware of the security issues raised by nuclear power generation since the inception of the industry. In the US, the FBI has long considered nuclear power plants to be "hardened" targets. After the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, the public became increasingly aware that nuclear power plants could be devastating targets for attack. In 2005, elected officials from counties neighboring the India Point nuclear power plant facilities in New York called for the immediate closure of the plant, citing a history of accidents and toxic leaks, and a growing concern that the dense local population within a fifty-mile radius of the plant, numbering close to 20 million, would be at great risk in the case of a terrorist attack on India Point.
Nuclear reactors are not the only potential targets for terrorists. Because spent fuel contains deadly radioactive particles that remain hazardous for so long, an attack on nuclear storage facilities could lead to a catastrophe on the same scale as an attack on a nuclear reactor. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, over $US 1 billion has been spent on security improvements by the nuclear power industry, in addition to the substantial sums which has already been spent before that time.
4- Toxic waste and pollution is created at every stage of nuclear power production. In mining operations, "in sutu leaching" is a common technique for reaching deeper uranium deposits by injecting hundreds of tons of sulphuric acid, nitric acid, a
I think it could work if each role was identified and taken on by individuals or small entities in a sort of modular matrix. This structure works well on the Internet through partnerships. Many people have found ways to diversify their revenue streams through partnerships that have led to increased profits for both partners. The key is to add value at each stage, which requires specialization. As the network grows, anyone who isn't holding their weight is not likely to survive. This approach relies less on a strong central vision than organic growth. However, the strongest growth will likely occur as a result of a merging of individual visions in a symbiotic fashion. A friend of mine grew a thriving Internet travel agency through a series of partnerships. Each time a new vendor would come online, his sales would jump. The partner, in turn, was thrilled to able to offer his services. Both happy. Both gaining.
You could apply this approach to non-Internet related businesses, but you'd still need to use technology to your advantage. Logistics can certainly be a big issue. Decision-making would occur between stakeholders hacking away at what works. The larger the group affected and the higher the stakes, the more arduous the process.
There isn't any way to do away with leadership. The smaller the group, the more equal each "module" will be. Larger dynamics demand that a fit leader step up to make things work. People latch on to a leader with charisma and vision and are willing to work hard because they share that vision. There is nothing wrong with that at all. The key is to choose to work for a vision with which you are comfortable, rather than electing to be a high-paid wage slave for a company you don't believe in.
Of all places in the world, I feel happy as a clam in "Red" China, except for constant hassles circumventing the "Great Firewall of China." People here are amazed at my views against blind following of the agendas set forth by the oligarchies that control the world's largest governments, which in turn have nearly successfully consolidated all the little governments to create the first de fact world government - never mind it's done in the guise of trade agreements, debt "forgiveness", etc. In China, big government is all they know. All the "thinkers" here are eagerly embracing everything WTO, and I sometimes have to wonder... Has the US finally found another country to balance the power?
Well, not for a good long while, that's for sure. With the EU in one corner, Africa in another, a dubious burgeoning alliance with India in the making, China has the potential to make a huge splash on the world scene, as long as they are willing to let the world walk all over them for a goodly while first. (Get cher slave labor here! Get it while its hot!) Twenty or thirty years from now, those who underestimated the sheer volume of Chinese influence will be wondering what happened. In the mean time, I live in a land where I can do pretty much anything I want without my neighbors looking over my shoulder or casting stones at me, eating great food for next to nothing.
I do miss the beautiful clean streets of American suburbia sometimes though...
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the US is way ahead of them on this one. How can you beat citizens banging on your door and asking for an implant?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchip_implant_(hu man) 7 60 . html
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=48
http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,50187,00
I agree it can't be long until governments and employers everywhere encourage people to "voluntarily" get chipped.
If it makes you comfortable to believe that there is really that much difference, you're certainly entitled to believe that the US is much freer than China, and admittedly in many ways it still is, but not as much as you might think. However, as my original post was about a "feeling" of freedom, here are a few things to consider:
In the US, if you even speak in a raised voice to your child in public, self-appointed citizen watchdogs may come up and tell you that you are "verbally abusing" your child and that they are going to call the social workers. I have personally seen this happen at a Wal-Mart when a whiny child was insisting she get some candy and her tired mother had had enough of her whining. Heaven forbid if she had decided to spank her child in public. An American-Pakistani friend of mine told me that the every time his family traveled to Pakistan, the first thing the father did was slap him in face for all of the disrespect he had shown him in the past year in the US and he knew he had to behave for the next month until he returned to the US where he could take advantage of the situation, knowing that his father wouldn't risk physically punishing him. There are many well-documented cases of people's children being taken away by state social workers on circumstantial evidence presented by "well-intentioned" neighbors. Children in foster care have a high incidence of abuse and even death. (Google search for "foster care death" gave 16,300,000 results.) The US is the only country I know of that has gone to this extreme and the citizens are the ones who turn their neighbors in, often on flimsy circumstantial evidence.
1,700 Bush protesters and dozens of bystanders in New York City were corralled with orange netting, arrested and held for over 40 hours in an old bus cleaning station with hazardous chemical signs displayed and no access to lawyers.
Mandated vaccines have led to brain damage, autism and death to hundreds of thousands of victims, and yet each year more and more vaccines are introduced, bringing billions of dollars to the pharmaceutical companies that manufacture them and to the medical industry that deals with the adverse affects. Gulf War syndrome is now widely believed to be mainly caused by the many tons of depleted uranium shells used during the campaigns, but the number of experimental vaccines our troops are forced to accept, with or without their complicity, has factored in some cases as well. Patriot Acts 1 & 2 contain clauses which allow for forced vaccine campaigns that call for anyone who refuses to be placed in "quarantine" indefinitely. I'm thankful to those who have fought for our rights to choose NOT to give the shots to our kids (varies by state) but I'm afraid those days are numbered.
There has already been plenty of discussion on Slashdot about the Patriot Acts 1 and 2 and all of the accompanying loss of rights to citizens they entail. As long as you don't question anything, you should be fine. However, if you don't believe there are any political prisoners in the US, I urge you to investigate. It's not hard to find many cases. I for one smell fascism in the air.
Of course, we haven't touched on how US foreign policy has walked all over the freedoms of sovereign nations that have stood in the way of the juggernaut.
Finally, my message is certainly NOT anti-US, but rather against the oligarchy which usurped the US government and the people who are complicit in maintaining those rulers.
For the record, I absolutely love my country, which is why I can't stand the direction it is going, especially since the coup back in 1913 when the private banking cartel managed to take over the country for real. Perhaps if you don't feel like you're being censored, it's because your views are more mainstream than mine. I left for China, coincidentally, the day after the US invaded Iraq. Leading up to that I was working for Gateway and traveling to South Dakota every week, along with other people involved in the same CRM project. It literally got to the point where I just wouldn't open my mouth because I had to continue working with those people and the looks of hatred that came along with the verbal abuse and labels of "anti-American" "why don't you move back overseas if you don't like it" etc. were quite startling. Before that, I was just a kooky oddball who was always spouting off during flu season about mercury and monkey viruses in vaccines, the fact that fluoride in water is a really bad idea discovered by the Nazis, etc. which got me curious looks, but nothing like the wrath I felt before leaving.
My comment about feeling freer to express myself here in China has a lot to do with finding sympathetic ears when I bemoan US imperialism. However, most Chinese I talk to are buying into all I oppose hook, line and sinker. I do my best to get people to investigate things for themselves instead of just swallowing it down whole, same as I do in the US. Of course there are real limits to my freedoms here, and I am certainly much freer than most Chinese people who can't even travel outside the country except in large groups. It isn't as though I like the Chinese government better, but at least Chinese people don't go around bragging about how "free" they are. Look around you and you will find others there in the US who feel the same way about what's happening, only the might not speak out because they are tired of being called "un-American".
I like to refer to them as "Venture Communists".
Wow. Is that really what you think? I'm sure such actions would get me a warning to stop, and if I didn't, I would be taken away and given a stern lecture about appropriate behavior in China. Worst case, I'd be sent home to the US. Apologies for not being willing to test it out to see what happens, but I have a few things I'd like to accomplish here.
If you look at Chinese history over several millennia, you'll see that the average Chinese citizen is living at a level of prosperity and freedom never before achieved. Of course, there are certain to be crackdowns if people get overly assertive, but the days of public executions and like are long gone, largely thanks to the public outrage over the events at Tian'anmen square. Sure, the Chinese government still keeps a tight grip, but they are loosening that grip more every day. I'm much more worried about the increase of political arrests and increasing censorship in the US.
Good one! Of course, to be really effective, it would have to be "Free the falun gong political prisoners" on the sign, as Tibet isn't really that much of hot topic anymore. There is as much likelihood of China granting Tibet independence as there is of the US giving California, Oregon and Washington back to Mexico. Once territory is gained it is not likely to be given back. Well, I suppose after the US annexed the Philippines, we decided that as long as we could keep our bases there, we didn't need the hassle of administration as long as we got what we needed, and eventually granted them independence. We even succumbed to pressure and gave up the bases eventually, but now we can rely on our cronies such as the IMF, Halliburton and the like to keep them and others like them in line. We have to have serious cause to invade a nation, such as a natural gas pipeline, rich oil fields, etc. to make it worth the effort of "bringing freedom and democracy" to a people.
Certainly the right to form political parties without the sponsorship of the Communist Party and the right to public assembly are still heavily controlled here in China. The difference is that the people are not under the impression that they are "free". It is amazing to witness the changes that have taken place here in the past two decades and the freedoms people now enjoy. Of course they have a long way to go. However, the trend is toward more freedom, which is exactly opposite of the trend in the US.
I've been in China for 3 and a half years now and this is good news indeed, but there is still a long way to go. Considering how many times Google has been blocked and unblocked since I've been here, I wouldn't be surprised to find Wikipedia blocked again soon. I still have to play the proxy server game to surf a lot of the sites I want to see, and they have gotten very good at outsmarting proxy servers for certain content they absolutely don't want people to see. Maybe someone can enlighten me how they would be able to block a site even if it's going through an anonymous proxy server in, say Korea. I'm sure they have the brightest of the brightest hard at work on it. Of course, no proxy server ever works for more than a few days before it gets added to the "list". In fact, I'm probably on more than a few lists, myself. Lists only matter if they need evidence for something, and as I'm not inciting anything, I'm not particularly worried. I count my blessings that I have as much freedom to do what I want here as I do. In fact, I feel far more free to express myself here than I did back in the States, with its citizen watchdogs doing their best at every turn to censor me.
Yes, global warming is happening. Certainly the current fossil-based goin-on-all-guns economy isn't helping matters. Nuclear energy appears to be an appealing emmissions-free alternative. But, is it really?
1- Claims of greenhouse reductions made by nuclear power generation supporters focus primarily on only one aspect of the entire process, namely the power generation cycle, which gives off nearly no greenhouse emissions, while downplaying or ignoring greenhouse gas emissions throughout the remainder of the cycle, such as mining of uranium, uranium conversion and enrichment, plant construction, transportation of uranium and spent fuel, nuclear waste storage and nuclear power plant de-commissioning.
In order to produce enough enriched fuel to supply a standard 1GW reactor for one full-power year, about 160 tons of natural uranium must be processed. The hexafluoride method of uranium enrichment commonly employed during both enrichment and reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel releases greenhouse gasses in the form of halogens and halogenated compounds, such as Freon-114, with many times greater global warming potential than CO2. When the entire nuclear power cycle is considered, the argument that nuclear power reduces greenhouse gas emissions does not stand under scrutiny.
2- Nuclear power is not cost-effective. The nuclear power industry is the most heavily subsidised among all power generation technologies. Without these subsidies, nuclear power could not compete with other, less labor, time and capital intensive generation technologies. There is currently a backlog of high-level nuclear waste that has accumulated over the course of 60 years into a over a quarter of a million tons that are kept in storage in ponds in temporary storage containers, which have to separated by boron panels to prevent chain reactions. How much energy will be required to dispose of this waste is unknown, but in "Why Nuclear Power Cannot be a Major Energy Source" David Fleming suggests a rough guideline of one third of the total of all energy produced.
When the total life cycle of nuclear power generation, from mining to plant decommissioning is factored in, the cost of nuclear power is greater than the power generated. It is estimated that the energy requirements to create the lead-steel-copper containers required to package the spent nuclear fuel produced by a reactor is nearly equal to that required to construct the reactor.
3- Nuclear power generation decrease national security. Governments have been aware of the security issues raised by nuclear power generation since the inception of the industry. In the US, the FBI has long considered nuclear power plants to be "hardened" targets. After the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City, the public became increasingly aware that nuclear power plants could be devastating targets for attack. In 2005, elected officials from counties neighboring the India Point nuclear power plant facilities in New York called for the immediate closure of the plant, citing a history of accidents and toxic leaks, and a growing concern that the dense local population within a fifty-mile radius of the plant, numbering close to 20 million, would be at great risk in the case of a terrorist attack on India Point.
Nuclear reactors are not the only potential targets for terrorists. Because spent fuel contains deadly radioactive particles that remain hazardous for so long, an attack on nuclear storage facilities could lead to a catastrophe on the same scale as an attack on a nuclear reactor. Since the 2001 terrorist attacks in New York, over $US 1 billion has been spent on security improvements by the nuclear power industry, in addition to the substantial sums which has already been spent before that time.
4- Toxic waste and pollution is created at every stage of nuclear power production. In mining operations, "in sutu leaching" is a common technique for reaching deeper uranium deposits by injecting hundreds of tons of sulphuric acid, nitric acid, a
I think it could work if each role was identified and taken on by individuals or small entities in a sort of modular matrix. This structure works well on the Internet through partnerships. Many people have found ways to diversify their revenue streams through partnerships that have led to increased profits for both partners. The key is to add value at each stage, which requires specialization. As the network grows, anyone who isn't holding their weight is not likely to survive. This approach relies less on a strong central vision than organic growth. However, the strongest growth will likely occur as a result of a merging of individual visions in a symbiotic fashion. A friend of mine grew a thriving Internet travel agency through a series of partnerships. Each time a new vendor would come online, his sales would jump. The partner, in turn, was thrilled to able to offer his services. Both happy. Both gaining.
You could apply this approach to non-Internet related businesses, but you'd still need to use technology to your advantage. Logistics can certainly be a big issue. Decision-making would occur between stakeholders hacking away at what works. The larger the group affected and the higher the stakes, the more arduous the process.
There isn't any way to do away with leadership. The smaller the group, the more equal each "module" will be. Larger dynamics demand that a fit leader step up to make things work. People latch on to a leader with charisma and vision and are willing to work hard because they share that vision. There is nothing wrong with that at all. The key is to choose to work for a vision with which you are comfortable, rather than electing to be a high-paid wage slave for a company you don't believe in.
If anyone comes up with the technology and the big energy companies catch wind of it first, it very well might be! http://forums.streetfire.net/showthread.php?t=7018
Of all places in the world, I feel happy as a clam in "Red" China, except for constant hassles circumventing the "Great Firewall of China." People here are amazed at my views against blind following of the agendas set forth by the oligarchies that control the world's largest governments, which in turn have nearly successfully consolidated all the little governments to create the first de fact world government - never mind it's done in the guise of trade agreements, debt "forgiveness", etc. In China, big government is all they know. All the "thinkers" here are eagerly embracing everything WTO, and I sometimes have to wonder... Has the US finally found another country to balance the power? Well, not for a good long while, that's for sure. With the EU in one corner, Africa in another, a dubious burgeoning alliance with India in the making, China has the potential to make a huge splash on the world scene, as long as they are willing to let the world walk all over them for a goodly while first. (Get cher slave labor here! Get it while its hot!) Twenty or thirty years from now, those who underestimated the sheer volume of Chinese influence will be wondering what happened. In the mean time, I live in a land where I can do pretty much anything I want without my neighbors looking over my shoulder or casting stones at me, eating great food for next to nothing. I do miss the beautiful clean streets of American suburbia sometimes though...