It's Always Spring Break at Mar-a-Lago

Giant Statue of Mao 121 Feet High Taking a Dump In Chinese Countryside Erected in China

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/giant-statue-for-chinas-chairman-mao/ar-AAgnhMz?ocid=ansmsnnews11

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Alien Abduction? – Malaysia Flight MH370 Harvesting Jet Airliner Spare Parts and Human Organs?

Cosmic Fast Food? Cheap

Based on a dream I had nine days ago, at least a third of the passengers of Malaysia flight MH370 were being held in an unused building in a desert like landscape outside the building.

As good as these other theories that the High Technology fails miserably to explain at this point in time.

Of course maybe the used parts on a $260 million jetliner would bring in maybe $25-50 million in a good black market.

But probably less than harvesting the body parts of 250 people on the used body part - black market.  

It that theory political as in terrorist or merely capitalist as in free market capitalism?

That or the Aliens have read the infamous Rod Serling Cookbook – To Serve Man. LOL

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China - A Nation of Little Yellow Peeps and Not Big Shouts of Freedom

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/04/tiananmen-square-online-search-censored

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China - Oh the Humanity! - People Not Worth Shit on the Chinese Global Success Spreadsheet - No Threat to North America Period!

Sources:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9800047/Chinas-state-run-media-comes-clean-over-Beijing-smog.html

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/01/14/china-pollution/1833257/

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Romney to stop Jeep Production from going to China - Bainsourcing to be Reversed

“I saw a story today that one of the great manufacturers in this state, Jeep — now owned by the Italians — is thinking of moving all production to China,” Romney said at a rally in Defiance, Ohio, home to a General Motors powertrain plant. “I will fight for every good job in America. I’m going to fight to make sure trade is fair, and if it’s fair America will win.”

If there is a profit in it - Romney's soul is for sale - and he is as good as his word. Yeah right.

China Criticizes Romney’s Inept Dangerous Jerusalem Remarks

Romney’s silver foot in his mouth again threatens war in the Middle East per Chinese.

China says Romney comments calling Jerusalem capital of Israel could incite war in Middle East

China criticized Mitt Romney on Tuesday, saying that the United States­ presidential candidate's statement that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel could worsen an already tense Middle East situation, or even re-ignite a war between Palestinians and Israelis.

A commentary Tuesday by the official Xinhua News Agency said Romney's "hawkish remarks" ignored the sensitive nature of Jerusalem. It said the comments disregarded the Palestinians' claim to the war-won eastern sector of the city, which was annexed by Israel in 1967 in a move that is not internationally recognized.

Romney also suggested during a trip to Israel that he was open to move the U.S.­ Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something the Israelis have long sought but the U.S. ­has refused to do because it would imply recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the entire city.

"Romney's remarks totally neglect historical facts and are actually irresponsible if he just meant to appeal to voters at home," Xinhua said. 

Xbox Suicides China - Chairman Bill's Offshore Worker's Paradise Sucks?

Xbox Suicides sounds like an awful off-broadway play using Goth actors etc.

But Chairman Bill and the late Chairman Steve has turned all their offshore worker’s paradises into the sort of place where workers threaten suicide and some actually do that under care of Bill’s and Steve’s go-to Foxconn.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/01/11/world/asia/china-microsoft-factory/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

 "Microsoft is committed to the fair treatment and safety of workers employed by our vendors and to ensuring conformance with Microsoft policy."

http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1310/

All the suicide victims at Foxconn’s two Shenzhen factories have been migrant workers in the 17-25 age group. One obvious factor is overwork – employees are forced to work double or triple the legal limit on overtime on a regular basis, according to independent surveys. While the maximum legal amount of overtime is 36 hours per month in China, researchers report that 80 to 100 hours of overtime is normal at Foxconn. Other violations of China’s labour laws are legion, according to interviews with employees and ex-employees.  

Another factor is systematic repression. The company prefers to employ ex-army officers from Taiwan as line supervisors. Militarisation of the production process is a feature of the ‘Foxconn model’. Nearly 28 percent of workers have been verbally insulted by supervisors or security personnel, and 16 percent have suffered physical abuse, according to a 83-page dossier on Foxconn produced jointly by 20 Chinese, Hong Kong and Taiwanese universities last October. 

“Workers aren’t allowed to talk, smile, sit down, walk around or move unnecessarily during their long working hours, which require them to finish 20,000 products every day,” the report states. More than one in eight employees interviewed for the report said they had passed out on the assembly line due to the high pressure and long working hours. One in four women workers said they suffered menstrual disorders due to overwork. 

Steve Jobs – Culture Bearer or Culture Destroyer

Steve Jobs is dead.  We all die.

He was an active member of the human committee of change that caused so much change in my lifetime.  Personal computers transformed the planet.  They also made it easy to turn paperwork into an abstract digital and make outsourcing millions of American jobs elsewhere possible, in the flash of an eye.

Change is inevitable.

The PCs were from the early part of his career.

Coming out of retirement to give vision to APPLE, I see him in something of a Henry Ford role.  Although he did not invent the computer, the same way that Ford did not invent the automobile, Jobs had a similar knack of finding a better way to mass produce computer technology into the market place.

Hand held mobile technology with narcissistic names like iPod, iTunes, iPhone, and iPad became the eye candy necessities of the upper end of the American middle class.  I assume that “i” stands for information and not the “I” of ego.

I read one tribute that in China, tears were shed at the news of his death.

In all fairness to the slave labor producing this expensive, obsolete in six months, eye candy technology over there, perhaps a fitting epitaph of Steve Jobs life and work can be summed up in fitting tribute:

APPLE, the Nike of hand held mobile technology.


Whatever.

Life goes on. 

A New Global Future Priced at $35

The idea is not new. It has industrial models to draw upon.

Potentially, the way the whole human race sees itself will have profound effects into the future. This modern adaption of the computer to put in every person on the planet’s hands triggers an immeasurable amount of possibilities.

Computers have freed us from useless labor and ripped the heart out of the West’s traditional middle classes. The ability to use some of the tasks listed below is a smell of the future. Why does this idea and concept happen in India and not China? Good question? I don’t know.

Certainly India’s new middle class will expand faster than China’s class system and its recent industrial progress? Friction or cooperation is on future political and economic menus?

Individuals will now have more opportunity to define themselves against a global norm of other peoples and cultures. Peoples and cultures in some areas will dissolve away into a Global category of all things human.

Is this part of Intelligent Design and or the chaos of evolution making new species?

India's $35 PC is the Future of Computing

The Indian prototype is impressive--especially at a $35 price point. The device runs on a variation of Linux. It has no internal storage, but it is capable of storing data on a memory card. It has a built in word processor, video conferencing capabilities, and--most importantly for a cloud-based workforce--a Web browser. Oh--it can also run on solar power.


At $35, the Indian tablet is virtually disposable--far exceeding the $100 laptop developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and used in the non-profit One Laptop One Child program. In fact, in many ways the $35 tablet also makes the $500 iPad seem significantly over-priced.

Charter for Compassion - an Interfaith Road?

This past week we observed the fiftieth anniversary of the flight of the Dalai Lama, the head on a Buddhist sect, and his followers out of their native Tibet and into the neighboring country of northern India.

Tibet of course got annexed by China. I will pass on the judgment of the godless giant and talk about interfaith beliefs.

I put a Tibetan chant on above in honor of a faith in exile. I hope that China one day opens its hearts and minds to the Compassion preached by this man.

I believe that there are interfaith approaches which in some ways talk about talking over the back fence like neighbors. I am also reminded of the line from the poetry of Robert Frost, the American poet, about how “good fences make good neighbors”.

In an increasingly religion-less secular world I am listening to this chant, listening to words I do not understand, in Sanskrit, and hoping to gain a little calm in my life to seek the enlightenment spoken so often about in Buddhism. I am not worshipping the Buddha. Few in Buddhism consider their prophet, their main saint, to be a god.

Surfing the tube last night I landed on the PBS show “Bill Moyers Journal” and happened to hear Dr. Karen Armstrong talking about her attempts to form a global “Charter for Compassion” with others who would forge this document that recognizes the “Golden Rule” as the basis of all world religions and put it back into daily use and cognizance globally both in a religious and secular sense.

Armstrong, who taught for a time at London's Leo Baeck rabbinic college, says she has been particularly inspired by the Jewish tradition's emphasis in matters of faith versus practice: "I say that religion isn’t about believing things. It's about what you do. It’s ethical alchemy. It’s about behaving in a way that changes you, that gives you intimations of holiness and sacredness.” She points out that religious fundamentalism is not just a response to but, paradoxically, a product of contemporary culture. "We need to create a new narrative, get out of the rat-run of hatred, chauvinism and defensiveness; and make the authentic voice of religion a power in the world that is conducive to peace." (Wikipedia)

Perhaps the road to interfaith cooperation and beliefs lay in recognition of common grounds.

Instead of talking over the back fence so to speak, perhaps we should be going into each other’s gardens and seeing and feeling and talking about what the next guy with the other religion or beliefs sees and feels as they share in the same visit.

Her use of the word “Compassion” is what triggered my combining these not so differing points of view (?) of the Dalai Lama and Dr. Armstrong.