Friday, January 10, 2014

Headline below the fold

Drudge is hyperventilating about local politics in NJ, but the real news is elsewhere.

China has closed their "forced labor camps" for political and religious dissadents

  The Communist party has promised since 2007 to end "re-education through labour", a relic of Chairman Mao's era which allowed the police to imprison offenders – including political and religious dissidents – for up to four years without trial, often forcing them to slave in mines and factories, or on farms...At the start of 2013, there were roughly 160,000 people in labour camps, according to Human Rights Watch.
what is even more disturbing is the stories that landed some of these prisoners in jail.... read the whole thing.

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China has also shut down a lot of their solar industry, due to excess capacity.

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Heh. Only 1600 hurt or fell ill in the "Black Nazarene" procession that shuts down Manila every January. This year, an estimated 3 million attended.

Tagle's sermon condemned corruption and reminded people of those who had suffered in various earthquakes/typhoons/terrorist attacks in the last year.

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The Pope is doing it again: He picked up a priest for a spin.

The Rev. Fabian Baez, a parish priest in Francis’ hometown of Buenos Aires, didn’t have a VIP ticket granting him a seat close to the altar or a spot where the pope would chat with well-wishers. But as soon as Francis saw Baez in the crowd of several thousand people, the pope signaled for Vatican gendarmes to help Baez jump the barricade.
Francis then invited Baez to hop aboard his car, and the parish priest accompanied Francis through the square as the pope waved to well-wishers and kissed babies.
Sounds like he's running for office.

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The film "Metro Manila" got a BAFTA nod...because it's essentially a British film.

Most Pinoys, even poor ones, have families to help them when they move to the city, but the film implies that this family "had to" resort to crime to meet the bills. So it makes me wonder if it got the culture correct, or if it is essentially a film where the film makers are merely showing their own country dressed in Filipino clothing.
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But like "Life of Pi", written by a Canadian and filmed by a Taiwanese director, locals are so happy that the bigshots see local culture they forget that such nuances exist

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So what is behind the push to legalize marijuana, not just for "medical" uses but for recreational uses?

Probably just that the aging drug taking yuppies don't want to be arrested. Never mind the social problems caused by this.

And the whole "experiment" reminds me of this conspiracy theory, or the conspiracy theories about cheap gin to London slums/Ireland or selling alcohol to American Indians.

So question to conspiracy theorists: is legalization a way to stop an impending revolt of the masses?

As for all those "'innocents" who are jailed for "simple possession": the dirty little secret is that in these days of plea bargains, often these folks plea bargained down to this from a more serious charge (domestic violence, drug selling/manufacturing etc). But no one wants to mention this.

and then there is the problem of "DUI": accidents and shoddy work done by those under the influence of a drug that has a long halflife. Alcohol is out of the system in 12 hours or less. Your THC test is positive for months...and if one reads the comment, many of us know about the negative effects of  this "harmless drug".

update: those who work with the poor in the inner city, rural poor, or on the Indian reservations know how alcohol and drug use destroys the community. Mrs. Gay Caswell discusses this on her blog here.
Indifference, sluggishness, lack of empathy and compassion are provable common symptons of cannabis use. Users reinforce and rationalise laziness to each other. The worse possible choice for a community with a drug problem is a person in authority such as a teacher, being a user.. . The trouble is recreational users or “medical” users don’t get up for school or work and don’t want to. They ignore the needs of others including their children or other people’s children.
those who support legalized marijuana are often upper class yuppies, who haven't seen these social problem.

and if you are really into conspiracy theories you probably read all about the evil Koch brothers funding things, even when they don't, but did  you know that the Soros money funded organizations were behind a lot of these "medical marijuana" initiatives and promotes the idea that all drugs should be legal (as should euthanasia...and that Catholics should morph into a PC church: the nuns on the bus and Obamacare's assault on Catholic institutions is the legal aspect of this fight).

that last part is worrisome: Because Professor Anderson's lectures on pre Hitler Germany history mentions how in the 1920's, the left hated the Catholic Democrats so much that they ostracized them instead of joining with a group that represented most of the poor who ordinarily welcomed much of their agenda. The result was Hitler.

as I said: I'm getting a bit more paranoid in my old age. Oh well: I guess we Pinoys will learn to love our Chinese masters in the near future. link2
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