Lots and Lots of Angry Young Men

Take a look at this AFP photograph from the "protests" in Qidong, China:

I see lots of angry young men in this photograph.  There are women too, but many more males than females.

I couldn't help think about the sex ratio disparity that is now causing both China and India huge albeit mostly unspoken and perhaps even "unrecognized" problems -- in China I think the ratio is 124 males for every 100 female born; in India the ratio is even more out of whack.  I believe the normal birth ratio is 105 females to 100 males.  There are now millions of marriageable men who cannot find a mate because their countries' cultural preferences have succeeded in killing off at least 100 million females (that's in India alone; I assume it's a similar number in China) who otherwise would have been born!

So when I see photographs like this one, and read stories about these flash "protests" -- I sit up and take notice.  It's only going to get worse as the male rage builds.

Pollution protestors clash with police in China

By Peter Parks (AFP)–1 day ago (July 28, 2012)

QIDONG, China — Thousands of people demonstrating over fears of pollution from a sewage pipeline at a paper factory in east China clashed with police Saturday, the latest in a series of environmental protests.

The protestors overturned two cars and ransacked local government offices in the coastal city of Qidong, near Shanghai, an AFP photographer said.

Demonstrators seized bottles of liquor and wine from the offices along with cartons of cigarettes, items which Chinese officials frequently receive as bribes, according to messages on Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like service. [So, the corrupt officials don't even bother to try and hide the items they received as bribes -- they keep the goodies in their offices!]

Thousands of people had gathered in a square in front of the government offices and in adjacent streets Saturday morning, with armed police arriving at the scene at 9:00 am, AFP witnessed. But the crowds dispersed after local authorities used television, radio, the Internet and text message to announce that the waste water pipeline project at the mill, which belongs to Japanese company Oji Paper, would be "permanently cancelled".

Oji Paper denied it was causing pollution and said closing the 110 kilometre (70-mile) pipeline would not affect operations at the plant, located in Nantong, Jiji Press reported. [So where are they going to dump the sewage now?]

"We don't release 'polluted water' as we are currently releasing water after purification that meets the local environmental standards," the news agency quoted a company public relations official as saying. [Oh geez, that's reassuring - NOT!  What standards?  If there are any standards, everyone knows they are ignored due to those nice bribes being paid monthly to the local Communist officials!]

Protests against environmental degradation have increased in China, where three decades of rapid and unfettered industrial expansion have taken their toll.

The sewage pipe from the paper mill would have discharged into the sea in the port of Lusi, one of four fishing harbours in Qidong, one protestor, who for safety reasons only gave her name as Qin, told AFP.

Discharges were set to climb to 150,000 tonnes of sewage a day when the mill was fully operational, according to residents quoted Friday by the state-run Global Times newspaper. [And they were going to dump this into the "sea" -- well, guess what that sea is -- it's the Pacific Ocean!]

Qin said there had been about 50,000 demonstrators but that "almost everyone left after the government's promise to stop the project".

A Nantong official, who gave his name as Chen, denied rumours that an 18-year-old man had been beaten to death by police.  "It must be a rumour, if true we would know," Chen told AFP by phone. [Yeah, right -- just a 'runour.']

A photograph posted on the Internet showed a man, identified online as Sun Jianhua, the party secretary of the city, protected by police. He had apparently been stripped to the waist by protesters.
One microblogger using the name Qidong Longhuisheng estimated numbers at 100,000.

"There are people everywhere, on walls, cars, rooftops, in streets," said another Internet user writing under the name Jiaojiaotaotailang earlier in the day.  "The air is filled with the smell of alcohol, and there are sounds of breaking glass."

Searches including "Qidong" were blocked Saturday on Sina Weibo, which has more than 250 million subscribers.

The move to close the paper mill's waste water pipeline comes after Chinese authorities this month scrapped plans to build a $1.6 billion metals plant in the southwest province of Sichuan following violent protests by local residents concerned about the planned factory's environmental impact.

Similar incidents are reported regularly around China, many over environmental concerns that locals say are linked to corruption, but authorities typically quash the protests and push ahead with the projects.

The Chinese government warned Friday that security would be tightened throughout the country ahead of a major Communist Party Congress this autumn, which should see a new generation of leaders take over the reins of power.

China Poisoning Its Citizens - Again

China's Wuhan city covered in mysterious haze

AFP – 9 hrs ago

Young and old residents of the Chinese metropolis of Wuhan were advised to stay indoors on Monday after a thick haze blanketed the city of nine million people, official media said.

Described by residents as opaque with yellowish and greenish tinges, the fug descended suddenly in the morning, prompting people to rush to put on face masks, witnesses told AFP. The official Xinhua news agency quoted the environmental protection department of Hubei province saying in a statement: "Children, the elderly and people with heart or respiratory diseases are advised to stay indoors."

Xinhua said straw burning was the cause and denied there had been any industrial accidents in or near Wuhan, after Internet rumours suggested there had been an explosion at a chemical complex northeast of the city.

"I looked out of the window of my office and I could not believe my eyes," said resident Li Yunzhong. "At first I thought it was going to rain. In 31 years in Wuhan I have never known anything like it. We are very worried because we do not know what it is." [Yeah, burning straw, and this resident of Wuhan has never seen anything like this in 31 years.  What, haven't the farmers ever burned straw before...]

France's consulate-general in the central city advised residents to stay at home, close their windows and limit the use of air-conditioning.

"The source of the thick cloud that has covered the city of Wuhan since this morning is at present unknown," it said on its website.  "Local authorities have promised us the information as soon as possible."

Xinhua described the haze as grey-yellow in colour and said it was seen in seven cities in Hubei province, including Wuhan.

Air pollution is increasingly acute in major Chinese cities and authorities are frequently accused of underestimating the severity of the problem in urban areas, especially in Beijing. Air-quality monitoring showed Wuhan's PM10 particulate concentration stood at 0.574 mg per cubic metre at 2:00 pm, more than triple the daily average of 0.150 mg, Xinhua reported.

But it quoted the environmental protection department saying industrial accidents were not responsible and analysis showed an increase in carbon particles from burning organic matter.

"Many farmers choose to burn crops that are left behind in their fields after harvesting," Xinhua said.
But Li was sceptical. "I doubt that," he said. "We don't practise large-scale shifting agriculture in our region."

Another resident told AFP she was leaving the city because of the cloud.

Wuhan is the capital of Hubei province and an industrial centre where many foreign firms have set up factories, including the French automotive group PSA Peugeot Citroën. Alstom also manufactures boilers for coal-fired power plants there.

China's environment suffers from industrial pollution, increasing traffic and lax protection measures.
Official air-quality statistics are sometimes at odds with non-government measurements, and are often viewed with distrust.

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The government is trying to blame this on "straw burning" farmers?   And this is what some people want to send the USA back to -- before the EPA, before environmental protection laws that only have been in effect in this country since the 1970's.  Think about that.

Dead Babies Wash Up on Chinese Beach

Dead babies wash up on Chinese beach
Two mortuary workers were detained and two senior hospital staff were sacked in eastern China after the bodies of at least 21 infants and foetuses were found in a river.
Published: 9:25PM BST 30 Mar 2010

At least eight bodies had tags indicating they were from the hospital of Jining Medical University in Shandong province, Xinhua news agency reported.

Authorities were quoted by Beijing News saying the corpses could have been those of aborted foetuses or babies who had died of illness. They were found on the outskirts of the city of Jining.

Xinhua quoted a spokesman for the city government as telling reporters that two mortuary workers had been sacked in connection with the incident and were in police custody.

Naming the two workers as Zhu Zhenyu and Wang Zhijun, Xinhua quoted the spokesman as saying that the two had been paid to dispose of the bodies.

“Investigations by police and health authorities show that Zhu and Wang had reached verbal agreements privately with relatives of the dead babies to dispose the bodies and charged fees,” the spokesman, Gong Zhenhua, said.

“They subsequently transported the bodies secretly to the Guangfu River, but they had failed to bury the bodies completely,” he was quoted as saying.

The river was not a source of drinking water for the city and municipal tests found it had not been contaminated, Xinhua reported. [Yeah, right. One has to now wonder how many other bodies and body parts were dumped into the river.  I don't believe for an instant that any of these bodies were "buried" and somehow became "uncovered."  And that is just an outright lie about the river not being a source of drinking water.  Right now China is experiencing a SEVERE drought of several years' duration and ALL rivers are being used as sources of drinking water, right while unprocessed chemical pollutants and unprocessed human waste continue to be dumped into them at record rates.]

Two senior officials, Li Luning and He Xin, director and deputy director of the hospital’s logistics department, were removed from their posts, and a vice president of the hospital, Niu Haifeng, was suspended, Gong said.

The incident exposed “a serious loophole in the hospital’s management and indicates a lack of ethics and legal awareness of some hospital staff,” Gong said. “It exerts a very negative impact on society and teaches us a profound lesson.”

He said the city government had ordered health authorities to immediately launch a general overhaul of body treatment at all local hospitals.

One of the bodies had been bundled into a plastic bag marked “hospital waste”, Beijing News said.

Abortion is common in China, where at least 13 million births are terminated every year, due in part to the nation’s so-called “one-child policy,” which limits most urban couples to just one offspring.

The family-planning rules are widely blamed for fuelling abortions of female foetuses in China, where boys are traditionally favoured.

Reports of poor treatment of patients – both living and dead – in China’s underfunded hospitals are also not uncommon.

Last June, a hospital in central China’s Hubei province was found to have dumped the bodies of two adults and six aborted foetuses at a construction site after failing to locate relatives of the dead, state media reported. [Question: How could an aborted foetus not have a relative? Is the mother not a relative?]

A bag containing severed human limbs was also discovered in the case, in the city of Xiangfan.

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This is just one incident that has been "discovered" and reported (shocking, actually, that it was allowed to make the news) - multiply this about 10,000 times and you will begin to get a picture of what is really happening in China these days - day in and day out.

A Shocking Case of Pollution in China

More than 2 million people use this lake for their source of drinking water. Can you imagine what is going to happen to them, their children, and their children's children? From The New York Times October 13, 2007 In China, a Lake’s Champion Imperils Himself ZHOUTIE, China — Lake Tai, the center of China’s ancient “land of fish and rice,” succumbed this year to floods of industrial and agricultural waste. Toxic cyanobacteria, commonly referred to as pond scum, turned the big lake fluorescent green. The stench of decay choked anyone who came within a mile of its shores. At least two million people who live amid the canals, rice paddies and chemical plants around the lake had to stop drinking or cooking with their main source of water. The outbreak confirmed the claims of a crusading peasant, Wu Lihong, who protested for more than a decade that the region’s thriving chemical industry, and its powerful friends in the local government, were destroying one of China’s ecological treasures. Mr. Wu, however, bore silent witness. Shortly before the algae crisis erupted in May, the authorities here in his hometown arrested him. In mid-August, with a fetid smell still wafting off the lake, a local court sentenced him to three years on an alchemy of charges that smacked of official retribution. Pollution has reached epidemic proportions in China, in part because the ruling Communist Party still treats environmental advocates as bigger threats than the degradation of air, water and soil that prompts them to speak out. Senior officials have tried to address environmental woes mostly through pulling the traditional levers of China’s authoritarian system: issuing command quotas on energy efficiency and emissions reduction; punishing corrupt officials who shield polluters; planting billions of trees across the country to hold back deserts and absorb carbon dioxide. But they do not dare to unleash individuals who want to make China cleaner. Grass-roots environmentalists arguably do more to expose abuses than any edict emanating from Beijing. But they face a political climate that varies from lukewarm tolerance to icy suppression. Fixing the environment is, in other words, a political problem. Central party officials say they need people to report polluters and hold local governments to account. They granted legal status to private citizens’ groups in 1994 and have allowed environmentalism to emerge as an incipient social force. But local officials in China get ahead mainly by generating high rates of economic growth and ensuring social order. They have wide latitude to achieve those goals, including nearly complete control over the police and the courts in their domains. They have little enthusiasm for environmentalists who appeal over their heads to higher-ups in the capital. Rest of the story.

Friday Night Miscellany

Hola darlings! It's Friday and the start of a three-day weekend the 'unofficial' end of summer - Labor Day weekend. The weather promises to be great - warm and sunny during the day (and NO rain), in the low 60's at night, perfect for sleeping with the windows open (as long as the critters don't wake me up at 3:30 in the morning with their antics). I rushed home tonight and sat out on the deck for an hour, throwing peanuts to the squirrels, it was so nice out! This year's group of baby squirrels are now venturing out of the nest. They are so cute! Fully developed and fully "furred", and their tails are as long as their bodies, but they are small compared to the adults! This year's big nest in the back yard produced three pups. They haven't yet explored the ground - leastwise as far as I could see from watching them for scant minutes, except for one yesterday who went all the way to the base of the big Chinese Elm to grab a small peanut. Fridays are treat days on our floor at the office, and I always look forward to them, although of late I've been awfully disappointed in what people have brought in as offerings. Yuch! Today the offerings looked okay, but they were "low fat" and "health-conscious" - meaning they taste like icky-poo. I passed. The whole point of having a treat day is to get TREATS - not diet crap! This did nothing to help my disposition. I bitched about people bringing in health food instead of FAT FOOD THAT TASTES GOOD! People want treats that melt in the mouth and taste good, not taste and feel like cardboard! People who know me ignore my grousing but I had a go at a new girl from 15 - ha ha! She left the kitchen looking terrorized, and I felt better. I am an evil person... I always grouse in the morning. In fact, I'm generally intolerable until about 11 in the morning, and most people don't even look at me, avoiding eye contact at all costs, let alone talk to me. I cannot stand those cheery people who go about beaming at everyone first thing in the morning - well, actually, I can't stand such people any time of the day, but particularly first thing in the morning. I want to strangle them. Some day I might strangle one - in the elevator - on the way up to the 16th floor at the office. In front of witnesses. That should stop that cheery "good morning" nonsense around me once and for all! Take a lesson, people. Don't be cheerful around Jan in the morning, and bring good-tasting FAT TREATS to the office on treat day. A new book is out on "gut instincts" - by Dr. Gerd Gigerenzer, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. I don't know about the book, but the interview at the New York Times with Dr. Gigerenzer is quite interesting. I disagree with his comments about the "average Joe" investor, though, who (so the good Dr. says) has done better investing with his/her "gut instinct" that many Wall Street experts. Think about it - these people aren't going with their "gut instinct" - according to the Dr.'s own words they are buying stock in companies with whose names they are familiar, and that has nothing to do with "instinct." Once they buy these stocks, they hold them, and won't sell even in a panicky market like we've experienced recently in the US, because the owners of those shares have confidence in the name of the company. Therefore, the stocks of those companies tend to hold their value better than the rest of the market, because the mom and pop holders of 100 odd lot shares all around the country, which account for millions of shares all tolled, are not panicking and are not selling. It then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that the shares in those companies will maintain their value even in down markets - DUH. Pyramids have been in the archaeological and/or esoteric news a lot recently. Bringing some rationality back to the discussion, Egyptologist Margaret Maitland explains why aliens did not build the pyramids. Thanks, Maggie, I needed that! China is dying from its own pollution. Well - DUH! Not just hundreds of thousands of people each year, but millions. Don't drink the water - don't even touch the water - don't get within 50 feet of the water, actually - and for sure don't breathe the air - or eat the food - or handle any product manufactured or grown in China. Yikes! Better yet - don't be born in China if you have anything to say about it (most Chinese people don't, unfortunately). The Communists have come up with a new form of population control - polluting it's own citizens to death. Dead people don't have babies. A couple more years of this, the Chinese Government will be importing people from Mexico.