Try this interactive feature from the NYTimes on balancing the US budget by setting priorities and choosing what to cut from the budget, and which taxes to raise. I did it without a problem, by adhering to the following dicta: 1) screw the rich; 2) screw the big corporations; and 3) screw the industrial/military complex. And I'm for that 95% of the US population below the wealthy class; reverting tax rates to Clinton-era levels (Kennedy era would be better); keeping Social Security and Medicare afloat; and keeping tax cuts and breaks for the middle class and those below. As one of my favorite bumperstickers says:
EAT THE RICH
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/13/weekinreview/deficits-graphic.html?hp
Sunday, November 14, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Nepal Feels the Heat from Expansionist China
Short but informative article on how pressure from China on Tibet has contorted Nepal's internal politics. The Chinese, ever so sensitive about their own internal politics, have been bullying Nepal for years now on the status of Tibetan refugees in Nepal, who have been there since China first invaded independent Tibet 60 years ago. China would like to see them returned, not allowed to enter, and if Tibetan refugees are in Nepal, the Chinese would like to see that the Tibetans' lives in Nepal are as uncomfortable as possible. And the Nepalese Communist and Maoist parties, run by ideologues and manned by illiterate thugs, gladly oblige, as they try to create their own Cultural Revolution.
Asian politics
Banyan's notebookChina, Nepal and TibetA thwarted election
Oct 4th 2010, 13:44 by Banyan
DISTURBING pictures of Nepali police in riot gear carting off ballot boxes illustrate both China’s clout in Nepal and its fears about the activities of Tibetan exiles. This was a primary election held among some 80,000 exiles to pick candidates for polls for a new parliament-in-exile and prime minister next year. The Nepali government has made sure that votes in the primary in Nepal at least will not count.
Most of the 120,000 or so exiled Tibetans are in India—either in the north, where the government-in-exile, and Tibet’s spiritual leader, have their seat in the Himalayan foothills at Dharamsala, or in the southern state of Karnataka. Every year more join them, mostly by fleeing the Tibet Autonomous Region of China through Nepal.
Some 20,000 live in Nepal, about half of them eligible to vote. In recent years, Nepal, at China’s behest, has curbed their political activities, such as protests. In 2005, floundering and looking to China to prop up his regime, the former king, Gyanendra, closed the Dalai Lama's representative office in Kathmandu. China has obvious objections to an election for a government-in-exile it does not recognise, and which supports the Dalai Lama, whom it regards as the source of many of its troubles in Tibet.
There are two other reasons why China objects to the voting. It does not want the world—or China—to be reminded that the Dalai Lama has insisted his exiled compatriots embrace democracy. Rather, it prefers to depict him as the representative of a cruel feudal elite which forced the miserable masses into monasteries or serfdom.
Also, the Dalai Lama’s advanced age—he is now 75—give elections increased importance, as the government elected may have to cope with the difficult transition to a new incarnation.
Nepal, sandwiched between two huge and overbearing neighbours, India and China, has no desire to antagonise either. India is by far the bigger influence in Nepal. To keep it in check, Nepal seeks good relations with China. One sure way of ruining those would be to show any sympathy to the Dalai Lama and his followers.
Asian politics
Banyan's notebookChina, Nepal and TibetA thwarted election
Oct 4th 2010, 13:44 by Banyan
DISTURBING pictures of Nepali police in riot gear carting off ballot boxes illustrate both China’s clout in Nepal and its fears about the activities of Tibetan exiles. This was a primary election held among some 80,000 exiles to pick candidates for polls for a new parliament-in-exile and prime minister next year. The Nepali government has made sure that votes in the primary in Nepal at least will not count.
Most of the 120,000 or so exiled Tibetans are in India—either in the north, where the government-in-exile, and Tibet’s spiritual leader, have their seat in the Himalayan foothills at Dharamsala, or in the southern state of Karnataka. Every year more join them, mostly by fleeing the Tibet Autonomous Region of China through Nepal.
Some 20,000 live in Nepal, about half of them eligible to vote. In recent years, Nepal, at China’s behest, has curbed their political activities, such as protests. In 2005, floundering and looking to China to prop up his regime, the former king, Gyanendra, closed the Dalai Lama's representative office in Kathmandu. China has obvious objections to an election for a government-in-exile it does not recognise, and which supports the Dalai Lama, whom it regards as the source of many of its troubles in Tibet.
There are two other reasons why China objects to the voting. It does not want the world—or China—to be reminded that the Dalai Lama has insisted his exiled compatriots embrace democracy. Rather, it prefers to depict him as the representative of a cruel feudal elite which forced the miserable masses into monasteries or serfdom.
Also, the Dalai Lama’s advanced age—he is now 75—give elections increased importance, as the government elected may have to cope with the difficult transition to a new incarnation.
Nepal, sandwiched between two huge and overbearing neighbours, India and China, has no desire to antagonise either. India is by far the bigger influence in Nepal. To keep it in check, Nepal seeks good relations with China. One sure way of ruining those would be to show any sympathy to the Dalai Lama and his followers.
Former CCP Officials Call for End to Censorship, Criticize Current Regime
Maybe there is hope for real change in China, and therefore hope for the many peoples who have suffered under the Hu's government. From today's NYTimes.
Former Chinese Officials Demand Media Freedom
By MICHAEL WINES
BEIJING — A group of retired Communist Party officials and intellectuals issued an unusually blunt demand on Tuesday for total media freedom in China, stating that the current regime of censorship and government control of the press violates China’s constitution and debases the government’s claim to represent its citizens.
The document’s 20 signers, including academics and many former executives of China’s government-controlled press, have no public influence on the nation’s ruling coalition of Communist leaders. Some of them have issued other public demands for reform in past years, to no effect.
Still, the bluntness of their message — and its timing, coming days after the jailed intellectual Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — signaled that not all in the ruling establishment are content with the steadily tightening control over expression in the final years of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao’s leadership.
The letter’s language was notable for including an undisguised attack on the legality of censorship by the party’s Central Propaganda Department, which ultimately controls much of what is published, broadcast or posted on the Internet here.
“This is an invisible black hand,” the signers wrote of the department. “For their own reasons, they violate our Constitution, often ordering by telephone that the works of such and such a person cannot be published, or that such and such an event cannot be reported in the media. The officials who make the call do not leave their names, and the secrecy of the agents is protected, but you must heed their phone instructions.”
The “core demand,” the writers stated, was that China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, dismantle censorship procedures “in favor of a system of legal responsibility” for items that are freely published.
Some experts said that the demands, which were quickly squelched by censors after being posted on the Internet, were unlikely to have a serious impact on government policies.
“To the extent that people will learn about this letter, it resonates, because it shows there are different sensibilities within the party,” Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said in an interview. “But it does not, on the political level, alter the balance.”
Former Chinese Officials Demand Media Freedom
By MICHAEL WINES
BEIJING — A group of retired Communist Party officials and intellectuals issued an unusually blunt demand on Tuesday for total media freedom in China, stating that the current regime of censorship and government control of the press violates China’s constitution and debases the government’s claim to represent its citizens.
The document’s 20 signers, including academics and many former executives of China’s government-controlled press, have no public influence on the nation’s ruling coalition of Communist leaders. Some of them have issued other public demands for reform in past years, to no effect.
Still, the bluntness of their message — and its timing, coming days after the jailed intellectual Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize — signaled that not all in the ruling establishment are content with the steadily tightening control over expression in the final years of President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao’s leadership.
The letter’s language was notable for including an undisguised attack on the legality of censorship by the party’s Central Propaganda Department, which ultimately controls much of what is published, broadcast or posted on the Internet here.
“This is an invisible black hand,” the signers wrote of the department. “For their own reasons, they violate our Constitution, often ordering by telephone that the works of such and such a person cannot be published, or that such and such an event cannot be reported in the media. The officials who make the call do not leave their names, and the secrecy of the agents is protected, but you must heed their phone instructions.”
The “core demand,” the writers stated, was that China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the National People’s Congress, dismantle censorship procedures “in favor of a system of legal responsibility” for items that are freely published.
Some experts said that the demands, which were quickly squelched by censors after being posted on the Internet, were unlikely to have a serious impact on government policies.
“To the extent that people will learn about this letter, it resonates, because it shows there are different sensibilities within the party,” Nicholas Bequelin, a Hong Kong-based researcher for the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said in an interview. “But it does not, on the political level, alter the balance.”
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Binge drinking, insecure 20-year olds are the norm...
As if you needed to be told that - psychology's baseline for judging others is formed on research, conducted by profs and their grad assistants, and their favorite group to study are undergraduate pscyhology majors! Read this article ... I don't agree that Aristotle and Buddha had, as did Freud, limited world views due to their lack of exposure to a wide variety of people, but obviously there's no way to prove that ... oh, from the NYTimes 8/25. Despite being my favorite punching bag, the Old Grey Dame of American journalism does post the odd good article ...
Currents
A Weird Way of Thinking Has Prevailed Worldwide
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
Published: August 25, 2010
CORTES, CANADA — Imagine a country whose inhabitants eat human flesh, wear only pink hats to sleep and banish children into the forest to raise themselves until adulthood.
Now imagine that this country dominates the study of psychology worldwide. Its universities have the best facilities, which draw the best scholars, who write the best papers. Their research subjects are the flesh-eating, pink-hat-wearing, forest-reared locals.
When these psychologists write about their own country, all is well. But things deteriorate when they generalize about human nature.
They view behaviors that are globally commonplace — say, vegetarianism — as deviant. Human nature, as they define it, reflects little of the actual diversity of humankind.
This scenario may sound preposterous. But if a provocative new study is to be believed, the world already lives in such a situation — except that it is American undergraduates, not flesh-eating forest dwellers, who monopolize our knowledge of human nature.
In the study, published last month in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan — all psychologists at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver — condemn their field’s quest for human universals.
Psychologists claim to speak of human nature, the study argues, but they have mostly been telling us about a group of WEIRD outliers, as the study calls them — Westernized, educated people from industrialized, rich democracies.
According to the study, 68 percent of research subjects in a sample of hundreds of studies in leading psychology journals came from the United States, and 96 percent from Western industrialized nations. Of the American subjects, 67 percent were undergraduates studying psychology — making a randomly selected American undergraduate 4,000 times likelier to be a subject than a random non-Westerner.
Western psychologists routinely generalize about “human” traits from data on this slender subpopulation, and psychologists elsewhere cite these papers as evidence.
In itself, such extrapolation is hardly fatal. Freud built his account of human behavior from his work on patients in Vienna and generalized for the world. So many great analysts of human nature, from Aristotle to the Buddha, reached for transcendent human truths despite limited contact with the range of humanity.
The Canadian study’s claim is not to invalidate all extrapolation so much as to suggest that American undergraduates may be especially unsuitable for it.
The study’s method was to analyze a mountain of published, peer-reviewed psychology papers. It found evidence both of a narrow research base and of the eccentricity of that base. Among the many peculiarities of the usual subjects who serve as “universal man” are these, the study found:
American subjects disproportionately prize choice and individualism. In a survey of six Western societies, only Americans preferred a choice of 50 ice creams to 10. Studies have found that Americans are all but alone in giving newborns their own room.
Americans are also peculiar in the so-called Ultimatum Game, in which a subject receives money and must make an offer to share it. The second subject can accept or reject the offer, but if it is rejected, neither subject gets paid.
Americans playing the game are fair in the extreme, making higher offers than most. But they are also outliers in another way. In various places, including Russia and China, psychologists observe the rejection of excessive generosity — a demurring when offered too much. This behavior is absent from American undergraduates.
The study’s list goes on and on. Westerners tend to define themselves by psychological traits, and non-Westerners by relationships. In some languages, including English, directions are built around the self (“Take a right after the church”), while in other languages, they refer to immovable objects (“It is behind the church”).
Americans are worse than many at overcoming common optical illusions about the length of lines. But they are better than East Asians at recalling an object when the background changes, perhaps because the latter focus on context.
(Page 2 of 2)
The data on these differences are patchy, the study’s authors acknowledge. Not enough work has been done on human variation. The Canadian attempt was simply to synthesize the existing research and to establish with their synthesis that psychological sameness is an implausible assumption.
Some critics of the study have suggested that there are universals underlying surface differences, and that the WEIRD variables may not be the right ones. But there has been little dispute about the premise that psychologists have extrapolated from an outlying few the ways of the global many.
It is an extrapolation with consequences. Democracy promoters tell us that all humans feel the same way about authority, despite evidence of diversity. Economists say that all humans are self-interested rational actors, though many succumb to selfless and irrational pursuits. Abstract rights are proclaimed for all humans, overlooking the fact that many prefer their ethics in more grounded, context-specific ways.
China, India and many other societies shy away from such universalizing. Their thinkers avoid proclaiming that all humans do this or do that simply because the Chinese or the Indians do. If they began to do so, how might things change?
For now, those outside the West continue to feel a certain pressure from beyond to think in ways not their own. The television sitcoms they watch, the books they read, the superheroes they grow up with, the PowerPoint presentations they give — these were often designed with someone else’s psychology foremost in mind, on the hope that they fit universally.
One response to the WEIRD study, by the psychologist Paul Rozin, is that extrapolating from Americans is acceptable because the world is Americanizing. “The U.S. is in the vanguard of the global world,” he said, according to Science magazine, “and may provide a glimpse into the future.”
But it is also possible that people around the world are not simply in the process of becoming like American undergraduates, and relying on WEIRD subjects can make others feel alienated, with their ways of thinking framed as deviant, not different.
Among the less-examined facets of globalization is its psychic pressure: a force that makes people feel that they are playing by others’ rules, that makes their own home turf feel like an opponent’s stadium. In this WEIRD people’s world, so many only know away games.
Join an online conversation at http://anand.ly.
Currents
A Weird Way of Thinking Has Prevailed Worldwide
By ANAND GIRIDHARADAS
Published: August 25, 2010
CORTES, CANADA — Imagine a country whose inhabitants eat human flesh, wear only pink hats to sleep and banish children into the forest to raise themselves until adulthood.
Now imagine that this country dominates the study of psychology worldwide. Its universities have the best facilities, which draw the best scholars, who write the best papers. Their research subjects are the flesh-eating, pink-hat-wearing, forest-reared locals.
When these psychologists write about their own country, all is well. But things deteriorate when they generalize about human nature.
They view behaviors that are globally commonplace — say, vegetarianism — as deviant. Human nature, as they define it, reflects little of the actual diversity of humankind.
This scenario may sound preposterous. But if a provocative new study is to be believed, the world already lives in such a situation — except that it is American undergraduates, not flesh-eating forest dwellers, who monopolize our knowledge of human nature.
In the study, published last month in the journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Joseph Henrich, Steven J. Heine and Ara Norenzayan — all psychologists at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver — condemn their field’s quest for human universals.
Psychologists claim to speak of human nature, the study argues, but they have mostly been telling us about a group of WEIRD outliers, as the study calls them — Westernized, educated people from industrialized, rich democracies.
According to the study, 68 percent of research subjects in a sample of hundreds of studies in leading psychology journals came from the United States, and 96 percent from Western industrialized nations. Of the American subjects, 67 percent were undergraduates studying psychology — making a randomly selected American undergraduate 4,000 times likelier to be a subject than a random non-Westerner.
Western psychologists routinely generalize about “human” traits from data on this slender subpopulation, and psychologists elsewhere cite these papers as evidence.
In itself, such extrapolation is hardly fatal. Freud built his account of human behavior from his work on patients in Vienna and generalized for the world. So many great analysts of human nature, from Aristotle to the Buddha, reached for transcendent human truths despite limited contact with the range of humanity.
The Canadian study’s claim is not to invalidate all extrapolation so much as to suggest that American undergraduates may be especially unsuitable for it.
The study’s method was to analyze a mountain of published, peer-reviewed psychology papers. It found evidence both of a narrow research base and of the eccentricity of that base. Among the many peculiarities of the usual subjects who serve as “universal man” are these, the study found:
American subjects disproportionately prize choice and individualism. In a survey of six Western societies, only Americans preferred a choice of 50 ice creams to 10. Studies have found that Americans are all but alone in giving newborns their own room.
Americans are also peculiar in the so-called Ultimatum Game, in which a subject receives money and must make an offer to share it. The second subject can accept or reject the offer, but if it is rejected, neither subject gets paid.
Americans playing the game are fair in the extreme, making higher offers than most. But they are also outliers in another way. In various places, including Russia and China, psychologists observe the rejection of excessive generosity — a demurring when offered too much. This behavior is absent from American undergraduates.
The study’s list goes on and on. Westerners tend to define themselves by psychological traits, and non-Westerners by relationships. In some languages, including English, directions are built around the self (“Take a right after the church”), while in other languages, they refer to immovable objects (“It is behind the church”).
Americans are worse than many at overcoming common optical illusions about the length of lines. But they are better than East Asians at recalling an object when the background changes, perhaps because the latter focus on context.
(Page 2 of 2)
The data on these differences are patchy, the study’s authors acknowledge. Not enough work has been done on human variation. The Canadian attempt was simply to synthesize the existing research and to establish with their synthesis that psychological sameness is an implausible assumption.
Some critics of the study have suggested that there are universals underlying surface differences, and that the WEIRD variables may not be the right ones. But there has been little dispute about the premise that psychologists have extrapolated from an outlying few the ways of the global many.
It is an extrapolation with consequences. Democracy promoters tell us that all humans feel the same way about authority, despite evidence of diversity. Economists say that all humans are self-interested rational actors, though many succumb to selfless and irrational pursuits. Abstract rights are proclaimed for all humans, overlooking the fact that many prefer their ethics in more grounded, context-specific ways.
China, India and many other societies shy away from such universalizing. Their thinkers avoid proclaiming that all humans do this or do that simply because the Chinese or the Indians do. If they began to do so, how might things change?
For now, those outside the West continue to feel a certain pressure from beyond to think in ways not their own. The television sitcoms they watch, the books they read, the superheroes they grow up with, the PowerPoint presentations they give — these were often designed with someone else’s psychology foremost in mind, on the hope that they fit universally.
One response to the WEIRD study, by the psychologist Paul Rozin, is that extrapolating from Americans is acceptable because the world is Americanizing. “The U.S. is in the vanguard of the global world,” he said, according to Science magazine, “and may provide a glimpse into the future.”
But it is also possible that people around the world are not simply in the process of becoming like American undergraduates, and relying on WEIRD subjects can make others feel alienated, with their ways of thinking framed as deviant, not different.
Among the less-examined facets of globalization is its psychic pressure: a force that makes people feel that they are playing by others’ rules, that makes their own home turf feel like an opponent’s stadium. In this WEIRD people’s world, so many only know away games.
Join an online conversation at http://anand.ly.
Monday, August 23, 2010
More Pictures
Looking down the Kali Gandaki towards Dhaulagiri
Bhaktapur
Looking north up the Kali Gandaki into Mustang from the village of Kagbeni
Boudinath, Kathmandu
Annapurna Himal
Friday, August 6, 2010
India angers US Law Firms while saving them LOTS of $$$$$$$
Ahhhhh, the hypocracy of US business. Here's an article about US law firms outsourcing legal research that often is done by junior associates in the US at hundreds of dollars an hour, to India, where equally well trained law associates, whose English is as good as Americans (if not better), do the job for less, for the same result.
Just another example of how uncompetitive America has become, and its assumption of global privilege is sadly outdated. And why should legal services be exempted from fair a balanced competition? One commentor on the website, WSGNY states their view, one I perfectly agree with.
"Perfect knowledge," as any economist will tell you, eliminates the possibility of earning revenues in the relevant field. One does not need an adviser, consultant or lawyer when the knowledge being sought is commonly available. The outsourcing of legal research will ultimately result in a near-zero cost to obtain an informed opinion of how a court should decide any issue. When the binding and persuasive arguments are reduced to briefs written in India, only requiring endorsement by State bar members; and when litigators can argue cases, pro haec vice, by "Court-Call" from locations thousands of miles away, the costs of litigation will become affordable for everyone. It will be a welcome development when "everyman" can have his/her day in court at minimal expense."
Here's the link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?src=me&ref=homepage
Just another example of how uncompetitive America has become, and its assumption of global privilege is sadly outdated. And why should legal services be exempted from fair a balanced competition? One commentor on the website, WSGNY states their view, one I perfectly agree with.
"Perfect knowledge," as any economist will tell you, eliminates the possibility of earning revenues in the relevant field. One does not need an adviser, consultant or lawyer when the knowledge being sought is commonly available. The outsourcing of legal research will ultimately result in a near-zero cost to obtain an informed opinion of how a court should decide any issue. When the binding and persuasive arguments are reduced to briefs written in India, only requiring endorsement by State bar members; and when litigators can argue cases, pro haec vice, by "Court-Call" from locations thousands of miles away, the costs of litigation will become affordable for everyone. It will be a welcome development when "everyman" can have his/her day in court at minimal expense."
Here's the link to the article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/05/business/global/05legal.html?src=me&ref=homepage
Thursday, July 29, 2010
The Economist Weights in on Repression in Tibet
Although, in general, "The Economist' is way to the right of my political thinking, they are spot on in their coverage of the ongoing repression in Tibet, and China's human rights abuses, exploitation of Tibet and Tibetans, and the government's denial and attempted whitewashing of crimes committed against Tibet and Tibetans. Also Human Rights Watch just released their 2010 World Report, and China (again) is one of the world's worst offenders, not the least for their Tibet policies. Here's the report on the pro-independence riots in Tibet in 2008, and the ensuing crackdown:
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/07/22/i-saw-it-my-own-eyes-0
Follow that article to links from Human Rights Watch to other of their publications.
Here's a link to the Economist article, and others, on Tibet:
http://www.economist.com/node/21008942
I have been involved with the International Campaign for Tibet for about 15 years, and have helped my dear friends Karma and Riksang, and their three kids, immigrate as Tibetan refugees from a refugees in Nepal to Toronto. My heart is always with them, and the fight for Tibetan Independence.
http://www.hrw.org/en/reports/2010/07/22/i-saw-it-my-own-eyes-0
Follow that article to links from Human Rights Watch to other of their publications.
Here's a link to the Economist article, and others, on Tibet:
http://www.economist.com/node/21008942
I have been involved with the International Campaign for Tibet for about 15 years, and have helped my dear friends Karma and Riksang, and their three kids, immigrate as Tibetan refugees from a refugees in Nepal to Toronto. My heart is always with them, and the fight for Tibetan Independence.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
Breaking News; The NYTimes figures out that China is exploiting Tibet!!!!
The Times runs this article, openly questioning China's development of Tibet. The dowager of newspapers highlights that fact that CCP policy favors the Han over Tibetans, economically and socially, while suppressing religious beliefs. Is the Times trying to underscore how out of touch they are, and what a pompous and assinine publication they have become? China has been exploiting Tibet for 60 years now, and has official, named government programs aimed at building Tibetr's economy by flooding the country (Tibet, which is and should be an independent country) with Chinese labor and money, seeking to extract wealth from Tibet to China's benefit. Its called colonialism. Look into it
Of course the two listed authors are Chinese. Hmmmm...maybe there's a link there.
If this is really how cognizant the power elite in the US are of Tibet's ongoing struggle against Chinese oppression and murder, then its small wonder that this has been going on for so long.
Appalling. Anyway here's the article.
China’s Money and Migrants Pour Into Tibet
By Edward Wong" China sees development and an enhanced security presence as key to stability, but the flow of people has deepened resentment among many Tibetans."
The New York Times
China’s government invested $3 billion in Tibet last year.
Han Chinese workers, investors, merchants, teachers and soldiers are pouring into remote Tibet. After the violence that ravaged this region in 2008China’s aim is to make Tibet wealthier — and more Chinese.
Chinese leaders see development, along with an enhanced security presence, as the key to pacifying the Buddhist region. The central government invested $3 billion in the Tibet Autonomous Region last year, a 31 percent increase over 2008. Tibet’s gross domestic product is growing at a 12 percent annual rate, faster than the robust Chinese national average.
Simple restaurants located in white prefabricated houses and run by ethnic Han businesspeople who take the train have sprung up even at a remote lake north of Lhasa. About 1.2 million rural Tibetans, nearly 40 percent of the region’s population, have been moved into new residences under a “comfortable housing” program. And officials promise to increase tourism fourfold by 2020, to 20 million visitors a year.
But if the influx of money and people has brought new prosperity, it has also deepened the resentment among many Tibetans. Migrant Han entrepreneurs elbow out Tibetan rivals, then return home for the winter after reaping profits. Large Han-owned companies dominate the main industries, from mining to construction to tourism.
“Why did I come here? To make money, of course!” said Xiong Zhahua, a migrant from Sichuan Province who spends five months a year running a restaurant on the shores of chilly Nam Tso, the lake north of Lhasa.
A rare five-day official tour of Tibet, though carefully managed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, provided a glimpse of life in the region during a period of tight political and military control.
Tibet is more stable after security forces quelled the worst uprising against Chinese rule in five decades. But the increased ethnic Han presence — and the uneven benefits of Han-led investment — have kept the region on edge.
Some Chinese officials acknowledge the disenfranchisement of Tibetans, though they defend the right of Han to migrate here.
“The flow of human resources follows the rule of market economics and is also indispensable for the development of Tibet,” Hao Peng, vice chairman and deputy party secretary of the region, said at a news conference with a small group of foreign journalists. But the current system “may have caused an imbalanced distribution,” he said. “We are taking measures to solve this problem.”
The government bars foreign reporters from traveling independently in Tibet. Journalists on the tour were brought to several development projects by ministry officials, but were occasionally able to interview locals on their own. Tibetans interviewed independently expressed fear of the security forces and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One high school student complained that Tibetans could not compete for jobs with Han migrants who arrived with high school diplomas. “Tibetans just get low-end jobs,” he said.
Chinese officials say Tibetans make up more than 95 percent of the region’s 2.9 million people, but refuse to give estimates on Han migrants, who are not registered residents. In the cities of Lhasa and Shigatse, it is clear that Han neighborhoods are dwarfing Tibetan areas.
Resentment of the Han exploded during the March 2008 rioting — Tibetans in Lhasa burned and looted hundreds of Han and ethnic Hui shops; at least 19 people died, most of them Han civilians, the Chinese government said. Han security forces then cracked down on Tibetans across the plateau. Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibet atColumbia University, said the goal of maintaining double-digit growth in the region had worsened ethnic tensions. “Of course, they achieved that, but it was disastrous,” he said. “They had no priority on local human resources, so of course they relied on outside labor, and sucked in large migration into the towns.”
Now, a heavy security presence is needed to keep control of Lhasa. Around the Barkhor, the city’s central market, paramilitary officers in riot gear, all ethnic Han, march counterclockwise around the sacred Jokhang Temple, against the flow of Tibetan pilgrims. Armed men stand on rooftops near the temple.
A woman showing off her new home, part of a resettlement program.
Development programs are sometimes well received, and sometimes they create resentment. Since 2006, the Tibetan government has mandated that Tibetan farmers, herders and nomads use government subsidies to build new homes closer to roads. New concrete homes with traditional Tibetan decorations dot the stark brown countryside.
But the base government subsidy for building the new homes is usually $1,500 per household, far short of the total needed. Families have generally had to take out multiple times that amount in interest-free three-year loans from state banks as well as private loans from relatives or friends.
“Though the government assures that villagers have not borrowed beyond their means, many villagers around Lhasa have expressed pessimism about their ability to repay these loans, suggesting that the degree of debt for the new houses is beyond what they are comfortable with,” said Emily Yeh, a scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has researched the program. “This should become clearer over the next few years as loans start to become due.”
In the model village of Gaba, right outside Lhasa, residents leased out their farmland for eight years to Han migrants to pay back the loans, which mostly ranged from $3,000 to $4,500. The migrants grow a wide variety of vegetables to be sold across China. Many of the Tibetan villagers now work in construction; they cannot compete with Han farmers because they generally know how to grow only barley.
“Renting out the farmland was suggested by the bank,” said Suolang Jiancan, the village head. “It would be a guaranteed income to pay back the loans.”
Among the Han, it is not just farmers who are profiting from the land. Large companies from other parts of China are finding ways to tap Tibet’s resources.
On July 19, China National Gold Group, the nation’s largest gold producer, began work at a polymetallic mine whose daily output is expected to reach 15,000 tons. Tibet has more than 3,000 proven mineral reserves, including China’s biggest chromium and copper deposits. China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, quoted a Tibetan official in March saying that mining could make up at least 30 percent of Tibet’s gross domestic product by 2020, up from 3 percent now.
A prominent mineral water company called 5100 that is registered in Hong Kong but managed from Beijing has set up a factory in Damxung, on a grassy plateau three hours north of Lhasa, to collect glacial runoff and bottle it as high-end mineral water. Last year, the company, named after the altitude of the glacier, produced almost two million gallons of water. The water is shipped out on the Qinghai-Tibet railway.
The water that is collected would otherwise flow through wetlands where yak graze. It is unclear how the factory’s work has affected the ecosystem. Jiang Xiaohong, the factory manager, who moved to Tibet three years ago, said the company did an environmental assessment before starting operations in 2006. “There’s no impact on the wetlands,” she said.
Because the company employs Tibetans, it receives government subsidies, Ms. Jiang said. About 95 percent of the 150 or so workers are Tibetan, and the average salary, including housing subsidies, is about $740 a month, a small fortune on the Tibetan plateau, she said. But ethnic Han are the company’s managers and owners, and the ones who ultimately profit from it.
Mr. Hao, the regional vice chairman, said the key to making Tibetans more competitive in business “is to enhance Tibetan people’s skills through education and training.”
The government has encouraged wealthier Chinese cities to finance school construction in Tibet. In the city of Shigatse, four hours from Lhasa, the Tibet-Shanghai Experimental School was completed in 2005 with an investment of $8.6 million from the Shanghai government. The principal, Huang Yongdong, arrived in January from Shanghai for a three-year posting. Nearly 1,500 students, all Tibetan, attend junior and senior high schools here.
A portrait of Mao hangs in the lobby. All classes are taught in Mandarin Chinese, except for Tibetan language classes. Critics of the government’s ethnic policies say the education system in Tibet is destroying Tibetans’ fluency in their own language, but officials insist that students need to master Chinese to be competitive. Some students accept that.
“My favorite class is Tibetan because we speak Tibetan at home,” said Gesang Danda, 13. “But our country’s mother tongue is Chinese, so we study in Chinese.”
On a blackboard in one classroom, someone had drawn in chalk a red flag with a hammer and sickle. Written next to it was a slogan in Chinese and Tibetan: “Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China, and certainly no new Tibet.”
Of course the two listed authors are Chinese. Hmmmm...maybe there's a link there.
If this is really how cognizant the power elite in the US are of Tibet's ongoing struggle against Chinese oppression and murder, then its small wonder that this has been going on for so long.
Appalling. Anyway here's the article.
China’s Money and Migrants Pour Into Tibet
By Edward Wong" China sees development and an enhanced security presence as key to stability, but the flow of people has deepened resentment among many Tibetans."
The New York Times
China’s government invested $3 billion in Tibet last year.
Han Chinese workers, investors, merchants, teachers and soldiers are pouring into remote Tibet. After the violence that ravaged this region in 2008China’s aim is to make Tibet wealthier — and more Chinese.
Chinese leaders see development, along with an enhanced security presence, as the key to pacifying the Buddhist region. The central government invested $3 billion in the Tibet Autonomous Region last year, a 31 percent increase over 2008. Tibet’s gross domestic product is growing at a 12 percent annual rate, faster than the robust Chinese national average.
Simple restaurants located in white prefabricated houses and run by ethnic Han businesspeople who take the train have sprung up even at a remote lake north of Lhasa. About 1.2 million rural Tibetans, nearly 40 percent of the region’s population, have been moved into new residences under a “comfortable housing” program. And officials promise to increase tourism fourfold by 2020, to 20 million visitors a year.
But if the influx of money and people has brought new prosperity, it has also deepened the resentment among many Tibetans. Migrant Han entrepreneurs elbow out Tibetan rivals, then return home for the winter after reaping profits. Large Han-owned companies dominate the main industries, from mining to construction to tourism.
“Why did I come here? To make money, of course!” said Xiong Zhahua, a migrant from Sichuan Province who spends five months a year running a restaurant on the shores of chilly Nam Tso, the lake north of Lhasa.
A rare five-day official tour of Tibet, though carefully managed by the Chinese Foreign Ministry, provided a glimpse of life in the region during a period of tight political and military control.
Tibet is more stable after security forces quelled the worst uprising against Chinese rule in five decades. But the increased ethnic Han presence — and the uneven benefits of Han-led investment — have kept the region on edge.
Some Chinese officials acknowledge the disenfranchisement of Tibetans, though they defend the right of Han to migrate here.
“The flow of human resources follows the rule of market economics and is also indispensable for the development of Tibet,” Hao Peng, vice chairman and deputy party secretary of the region, said at a news conference with a small group of foreign journalists. But the current system “may have caused an imbalanced distribution,” he said. “We are taking measures to solve this problem.”
The government bars foreign reporters from traveling independently in Tibet. Journalists on the tour were brought to several development projects by ministry officials, but were occasionally able to interview locals on their own. Tibetans interviewed independently expressed fear of the security forces and spoke on the condition of anonymity.
One high school student complained that Tibetans could not compete for jobs with Han migrants who arrived with high school diplomas. “Tibetans just get low-end jobs,” he said.
Chinese officials say Tibetans make up more than 95 percent of the region’s 2.9 million people, but refuse to give estimates on Han migrants, who are not registered residents. In the cities of Lhasa and Shigatse, it is clear that Han neighborhoods are dwarfing Tibetan areas.
Resentment of the Han exploded during the March 2008 rioting — Tibetans in Lhasa burned and looted hundreds of Han and ethnic Hui shops; at least 19 people died, most of them Han civilians, the Chinese government said. Han security forces then cracked down on Tibetans across the plateau. Robert Barnett, a scholar of Tibet atColumbia University, said the goal of maintaining double-digit growth in the region had worsened ethnic tensions. “Of course, they achieved that, but it was disastrous,” he said. “They had no priority on local human resources, so of course they relied on outside labor, and sucked in large migration into the towns.”
Now, a heavy security presence is needed to keep control of Lhasa. Around the Barkhor, the city’s central market, paramilitary officers in riot gear, all ethnic Han, march counterclockwise around the sacred Jokhang Temple, against the flow of Tibetan pilgrims. Armed men stand on rooftops near the temple.
A woman showing off her new home, part of a resettlement program.
Development programs are sometimes well received, and sometimes they create resentment. Since 2006, the Tibetan government has mandated that Tibetan farmers, herders and nomads use government subsidies to build new homes closer to roads. New concrete homes with traditional Tibetan decorations dot the stark brown countryside.
But the base government subsidy for building the new homes is usually $1,500 per household, far short of the total needed. Families have generally had to take out multiple times that amount in interest-free three-year loans from state banks as well as private loans from relatives or friends.
“Though the government assures that villagers have not borrowed beyond their means, many villagers around Lhasa have expressed pessimism about their ability to repay these loans, suggesting that the degree of debt for the new houses is beyond what they are comfortable with,” said Emily Yeh, a scholar at the University of Colorado at Boulder who has researched the program. “This should become clearer over the next few years as loans start to become due.”
In the model village of Gaba, right outside Lhasa, residents leased out their farmland for eight years to Han migrants to pay back the loans, which mostly ranged from $3,000 to $4,500. The migrants grow a wide variety of vegetables to be sold across China. Many of the Tibetan villagers now work in construction; they cannot compete with Han farmers because they generally know how to grow only barley.
“Renting out the farmland was suggested by the bank,” said Suolang Jiancan, the village head. “It would be a guaranteed income to pay back the loans.”
Among the Han, it is not just farmers who are profiting from the land. Large companies from other parts of China are finding ways to tap Tibet’s resources.
On July 19, China National Gold Group, the nation’s largest gold producer, began work at a polymetallic mine whose daily output is expected to reach 15,000 tons. Tibet has more than 3,000 proven mineral reserves, including China’s biggest chromium and copper deposits. China Daily, an official English-language newspaper, quoted a Tibetan official in March saying that mining could make up at least 30 percent of Tibet’s gross domestic product by 2020, up from 3 percent now.
A prominent mineral water company called 5100 that is registered in Hong Kong but managed from Beijing has set up a factory in Damxung, on a grassy plateau three hours north of Lhasa, to collect glacial runoff and bottle it as high-end mineral water. Last year, the company, named after the altitude of the glacier, produced almost two million gallons of water. The water is shipped out on the Qinghai-Tibet railway.
The water that is collected would otherwise flow through wetlands where yak graze. It is unclear how the factory’s work has affected the ecosystem. Jiang Xiaohong, the factory manager, who moved to Tibet three years ago, said the company did an environmental assessment before starting operations in 2006. “There’s no impact on the wetlands,” she said.
Because the company employs Tibetans, it receives government subsidies, Ms. Jiang said. About 95 percent of the 150 or so workers are Tibetan, and the average salary, including housing subsidies, is about $740 a month, a small fortune on the Tibetan plateau, she said. But ethnic Han are the company’s managers and owners, and the ones who ultimately profit from it.
Mr. Hao, the regional vice chairman, said the key to making Tibetans more competitive in business “is to enhance Tibetan people’s skills through education and training.”
The government has encouraged wealthier Chinese cities to finance school construction in Tibet. In the city of Shigatse, four hours from Lhasa, the Tibet-Shanghai Experimental School was completed in 2005 with an investment of $8.6 million from the Shanghai government. The principal, Huang Yongdong, arrived in January from Shanghai for a three-year posting. Nearly 1,500 students, all Tibetan, attend junior and senior high schools here.
A portrait of Mao hangs in the lobby. All classes are taught in Mandarin Chinese, except for Tibetan language classes. Critics of the government’s ethnic policies say the education system in Tibet is destroying Tibetans’ fluency in their own language, but officials insist that students need to master Chinese to be competitive. Some students accept that.
“My favorite class is Tibetan because we speak Tibetan at home,” said Gesang Danda, 13. “But our country’s mother tongue is Chinese, so we study in Chinese.”
On a blackboard in one classroom, someone had drawn in chalk a red flag with a hammer and sickle. Written next to it was a slogan in Chinese and Tibetan: “Without the Communist Party, there would be no new China, and certainly no new Tibet.”
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Incredibly depressing.
Read article from Yahoo! Finance. Not only is the middle class shrinking, and the ranks of the poor swelling, but even more power and wealth is being concentrated in the hands of the rich. When 83% of stocks are owned by 1%, when corporate execs make 500% of blue collar workers, comparted to be 30% a few decades ago, and unemployment and foodstamp recipients growing, its clear where this country is headed. Shouldn't we string some of these rich bastards up by the toes?
The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it
Posted Jul 15, 2010 02:25pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession
Related: ^DJI, ^GSPC, SPY, MCD, WMT, XRT, DIA
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From The Business Insider
Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com
The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. • 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
Giant Sucking Sound
The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.
What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.
So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.
What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.
Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.
But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.
The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.
The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it
Posted Jul 15, 2010 02:25pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession
Related: ^DJI, ^GSPC, SPY, MCD, WMT, XRT, DIA
Share
retweet
From The Business Insider
Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com
The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.
The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.
So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.
Here are the statistics to prove it:
• 83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people. • 61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.• 66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.• 36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.• A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.• 24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.• Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.• Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.• For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.• In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.• As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.• The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.• Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.• In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.• The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.• In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.• More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.• or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.• This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.• Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.• Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.• The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.
Giant Sucking Sound
The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.
What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.
So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.
What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.
Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.
But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.
The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
New to me ...
7/22 Opening day, world premiere of my blog. It may be incredible, it may be forgetable, but it will be. It will have content, that much I know, and I will not tell you about my lunch.
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