Day 2 – sleep, or a lack thereof… The amazing thing about sleep pattern shifting is that you can achieve an almost altered state of reality without having to resort to pharmaceuticals! This is especially noticeable during the first couple of days of arriving in a drastically different time zone.
Continue readingTag: China
LeDaro: Has Harper Government sold out to China?
The Harper government has agreed to an establishment of a Telecommunications Company, Huawei, in Canada. Security experts in both Canada and the US are very concerned as China is known to spy through telecommunications. Both the US and Australia had refused to China to make such an arrangement because of
Continue readingTrashy's World: Trashy in China, 4.0
Day one. Well, that wasn’t so bad, really… yeah, it’s about 22 hours in travel mode door to door, but the flights were uneventful and I had a half-decent sleep last night. Melatonin rocks! After checking in and dropping our stuff off at our rooms, we stuck to what has
Continue readingTrashy's World: On the way…
To China… Bye all. Watch the shop while I’m gone. Trashy, Ottawa, Ontario
Continue readingTrashy's World: One more time, with feeling!!!
And it’s back to the Middle Kingdom. True, the anticipation is not what it was the first time I traveled to China, but being that this is likely my last journey to those parts, there remains a noticeable sense of slight giddiness. In the meantime, I won’t have direct access
Continue readingFrom Orangutan: Canada’s Tiananmen Moments,
This is what police in Quebec are doing to striking students. I know that some people won’t like that I called this post “Canada’s Tiananmen Moments,” but by placing Quebec police brutality within a larger and even more disturbing context, I would hope that the violence against Quebec students stops, once
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Oooh, This Could Get Nasty
China has provoked outrage in the Philippines by deploying this oil platform, the country’s first deepwater drilling rig, into the South China Sea. The rig, CNOOC 981, began drilling operations yesterday in disputed waters 320 km from Hong Kong. According to Reuters, civil society and political groups with links to
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Why Tibet Will Never Be Free
This map says it all: The Tibetan plateau is key to controlling the headwaters of just about every major river in East and South Asia. China controls Tibet, it controls most of the water that it and its neighbours depend upon. As written on this blog for years, it was
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Evade Censorship of Pirate Bay Block
Children learn how to use computers and work around restrictions by experimentation and reading. So too must adults when they are confronted with restrictions. It’s a good idea to learn how to evade censorship before the flow of information is shut off, otherwise working around the problem becomes much more
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Exporting Coal: Struggling U.S. Coal Industry Trying to Stay Relevant By Shipping Through the Northwest
110326007Paul_K_Anderson_Coal-copy.jpg U.S. coal companies are facing some tricky math these days. Production levels have remained more or less the same since 2005, according to the Energy Information Agency (EIA), but during that time domestic consumption has dropped nearly 11 percent. Where is all that extra coal going? Some is piling
Continue readingDeSmogBlog: Coal Train to Boardman: EPA Warns of "Significant" Public Health Threats in Northwest Coal Export Proposal
110326007Paul_K_Anderson_Coal-copy1.jpg As demand for coal in the United States has cooled off in recent years, coal mining companies have been scrambling to deliver their dirty loads to customers abroad. But what does this mean for communities along the transportation routes, particularly at the ports and export terminals where the coal
Continue readingThe Progressive Economics Forum: When a University Recruits Abroad, Who’s in Charge?
A few years ago, I wrote an opinion piece on “pathway colleges”—i.e. private companies that recruit students from other countries and then ‘bridge’ them into Canadian universities by providing pre-university courses, including English as a Second Language. A recent CBC News article underlines how perilous such recruitment of post-secondary students from abroad can
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Arms Race Update
Korea may not yet be able to successfully launch a long-range missile but India can. India has test fired a nuclear-weapon capable, Agni-V missile capable of reaching Beijing or Shanghai and plenty of cities in Europe also. India’s DefMin singled out China in his announcement. He noted that China has
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: Is China Out for Revenge?
China may be looking to the future to avenge real and perceived wrongs from the past. The Guardian reports on war games undertaken by US and Chinese commanders that have taken an eerie twist. The US and China have been discreetly engaging in “war games” amid rising anger in Washington
Continue readingPolygonic: The emperor’s new clothes: North Korea keeps on marching
Sometimes, you just want to give them a hug. Pyongyang put on this earnest show of transparency around its rocket launch, inviting foreign journalists into the heart of their futuristic Space Control Centres (SCCs). Witness the marvels of our microcomputers and our, umm, extraordinarily large antennae! It was one part
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: What Does China Want for Christmas? Coal, More Coal.
China may claim that it ‘gets’ global warming and that it’s going green. It’s not. This chart from the Washington Post’s WonkBlog shows who’s who when it comes to coal consumption from 2000 to 2010. Coal consumption has pretty much flatlined or declined in most of the world. The exception
Continue readingSaskboy's Abandoned Stuff: Canada’s Chinese Influence
Canada was built in large part due to the efforts of Chinese immigrants. Canadians were cruel in their treatment of these immigrants, preventing whole Chinese families from immigrating here in some cases, collecting a Head Tax, and segregating Chinese Canadians to deadly or difficult labour roles (from railroad construction through
Continue readingArt Threat: Ai Wei Wei installs live webcams in home – Artists winks at Chinese authorities with a Big Brother flourish
Artist Ai Wei Wei has installed live webcams in his home so that authorities – and worried supporters – can keep track of his day-to-day whereabouts and welfare. Feeling hemmed in by increasingly invasive state surveillance – being followed day-to-day, round-the-clock surveillance on his home, searches of his studio, phone
Continue readingThe Disaffected Lib: The Cost of Social Engineering
The economic ‘miracles’ sweeping emerging ecopower giants like India and China were always more apparent than real. In large part that happened because we were distracted by the bright, shiny thing – their burgeoning economies – and largely overlooked the wobbly social, environmental, agricultural and political foundations that lay beneath.
Continue readingTrashy's World: Apple and Chinese factories – does anyone care?
Here is a very interesting article on working conditions inside Chinese factories where Apple products are assembled. … but I wonder how many people would actually change their purchasing patterns if they knew about this. People are lazy and only concerned about first world issues, aren’t they? And, hell, not
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