...said one comment among many that said that Chinese law had helped create a fear of intervening.
It is a story that has deeply unsettled millions in China, posing troubling questions about whether three decades of headlong economic development has left nothing but a moral vacuum in its wake.
It begins last Thursday when a two-year-old girl totters into a narrow lane in a wholesale market in the thriving industrial city of Foshan in Guangdong Province and is hit by a small, white van. The driver pauses, and then pulls away, crushing the child for a second time under his rear wheels.
It is not the accident itself, but what happens next — or rather doesn’t happen – that has left millions of ordinary Chinese wondering where their country is heading.
One by one, no fewer than 18 passers-by are seen on closed circuit television ignoring the girl as she lies, clearly visible in the road, haemorrhaging into the gutter. Not a single one of them stops to help.
The first is a young man in a white T-shirt and trainers. He walks on past the prone form of girl who is by now bleeding profusely, without a second glance.
Next comes a cyclist who wobbles slightly to avoid the dying child and then pedals on, turning his head back momentarily, as if to check he really did see a child dying in the street.
As the pool of blood spreads, a third pedestrian comes by, clearly sees the bleeding girl, but steps out into the small lane to give her a wide berth.
All three could have moved the girl, later named by her parents as 2-year-old Yueyue, but none did, allowing another, larger vehicle following down the lane a few minutes later to run her over for a second time.
The pictures of the incident which happened last Thursday afternoon then show a succession of other cyclists and rickshaw drivers weaving round the girl, including a woman walking with a child who on seeing Yueyue visibly quickens her step, dragging her charge after her.
It is only the nineteenth passer-by, a 58-year-old street cleaner called Chen Xianmei, who drops her bag of rubbish and rushes to the bleeding child, attempting to scoop up her up, but finding her floppy and lifeless.
Mrs Chen, who is only 4ft 7in tall, then calls for the girl’s mother who comes rushing into view, taking up her child in her arms, who is now in intensive care in the military hospital in the city of Guangzhou.
Yueyue remains in a critical condition, a nurse told The Daily Telegraph by phone. Earlier doctors said she had suffered major head injuries and was breathing only with the assistance of a ventilator The story of Yueyue was the leading item across China’s online news portals as the copies of the CCTV highly distressing footage attracted more than a million viewings in a number of hours.
Many viewers reacted with dismay, citing the incident as further evidence that China had become a “world without morals”.
“Everyone is praising the rubbish-collecting granny for helping, but isn’t it normal to help someone who is wounded or dying?”, asked Johnny Yao on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, “This just shows how abnormal is the moral situation in this society! The sad Chinese, poor China are we even rescuable?”
Others blamed China’s compensation culture for the apparent show of callousness, recalling a famous 2006 judgment when a Good Samaritan who helped a woman get to hospital was wrongly ordered to pay her compensation.
“They didn’t ignore the girl, they just didn’t dare help her,” said one comment among many that said that Chinese law had helped create a fear of intervening.
However many others said there could be no excuse, and that the scenes in the video should “shake the soul of every conscientious person” in China.
“Even if the passers-by couldn’t rescue her, they could dial 120 and 110 [China’s emergency numbers] and help to stop vehicles, then the little Yueyue wouldn’t have been run over by the second car,” said another comment posted by 'Dull Baby’.
“What’s up with people these days? They make so many excuses to turn a blind eye. The society is so indifferent, so heartless.” Yueyue’s father, a man surnamed Wang who was shown weeping with his wife on television news bulletins, said he didn’t want to enter the moral debate, only pray for his child’s survival.
“Yueyue is so lovely, often amuses us. Sometime if I quarrelled with her mother and if her mother cried, she would tell us not to cry, she always tried to amuse us. I don’t have any thoughts now, I just hope my child will wake up and call me Dad again.”
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sunday, October 16, 2011
China Used to Steal US Technology , Now US Corporations Give it to Them. For Freetrade of Course.
China's way, or
Here are three examples, provided by Senator Webb's office on how the Chinese use "freetrade"to extort US technology:
- General Electric has handed over aviation avionics technology to the state-owned Aviation Industry Corp. of China.
- Westinghouse Electric has provided some 75,000 documents in an initial technology transfer to gain a share in China's burgeoning nuclear power market.
- And Ford Motor Co. is ready to share proprietary technologies for electric vehicles in exchange for selling cars in China.
Sen. Webb's legislation would prevent U.S. firms from giving away technologies developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars.
Date published: 10/16/2011 Fredricksburg.com
THE UNITED STATES has a peculiar relationship with China. It is our political adversary, but as global financial players and trade partners, we are inexorably intertwined--largely to the U.S.'s disadvantage.
Among the things we have that China wants--besides our interest payments--is our technology, and when American companies want to do business in China, they are forced to share U.S. technologies as a prerequisite.
Sen. Jim Webb takes issue with that, and he has introduced legislation to prevent it. As the Virginia Democrat sees it, many of these technologies were developed in the U.S. with American tax dollars through various federal programs, making American taxpayers part owners. And we ought not be giving them away.
The legislation makes sense, especially given the economic relationship between the two countries. According to the U.S. Treasury Department, China is the largest single foreign holder of U.S. debt at 16 percent, or about $2.25 trillion of the total U.S. debt of $14.1 trillion. Moreover, China also enjoys a lopsided trade balance with the United States. In July, for example, the U.S. imported nearly $27 billion more in goods from China than it exported to China.
Given all that, must we give them our technology? The Chinese, of course, will be ticked should Sen. Webb's legislation pass and put various aspects of our trade diplomacy to the test. But the issue needs to be addressed.
China enjoys incredible benefits from its economic relationships with the United States. Getting our taxpayer-funded technologies just for the asking from private U.S. companies should not be one of them.
Sen. Webb's bill deserves swift and thorough consideration.
Saturday, October 15, 2011
This May Not End Well
"This video is “laugh out loud” funny. Sort of George Orwell meets kindergarten class."
Worldwide 'Occupy' protests held over financial crisis
Protesters took to the streets in Sydney, Tokyo and Taipei
Protesters in cities across the world are taking to the streets to demonstrate against alleged corporate greed and government cutbacks.
Organisers say rallies will be held in 951 cities in 82 countries from Asia and the Americas, to Africa and Europe.
Hundreds of people have already protested in Australia and New Zealand as well as other Asian cities.
Many protest groups are taking their names from the high-profile Occupy Wall Street rally in New York.
Organisers of the 15 October worldwide protests said on their website that the aim was to "initiate the global change we want".
"United in one voice, we will let politicians, and the financial elites they serve, know it is up to us, the people, to decide our future," it said.
CriticismsIn the Australian city of Sydney, some 2,000 people - including representatives of Aboriginal groups, communists and trade unionists - took to the streets outside the central Reserve Bank of Australia, Reuters news agency reports.
Around 1,000 people gathered in Melbourne, and hundreds were marching in the New Zealand cities of Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.
'Occupy' protests were also being held in South Korea, the Phillipines and in Hong Kong.
As many as 1,500 people had said, via Facebook, they would participate in the "Occupy Taipei" protest planned outside Taiwan's tallest building.
The BBC's Cindy Sui in Taipei says such a demonstration is unusual for Taiwan, which has a tradition of looking to family rather than the state for welfare support.
But, our correspondent says, the island's wealth gap is at its worst in history and many middle-class Taiwanese have begun to question whether the system is fair.
Large protests are expected later in the day in the European cities of Madrid, London, Rome and Athens.
It remains to be seen if any of the demonstrations turn into protest camps, such as Occupy Wall Street, which began with a small group of activists in New York's financial district a couple of months ago and has now grown to include several thousand people at times, from many walks of life.
Naomi Colvin, an organiser of the protest outside the London Stock Exchange, said the nature of the rally would be dependent on those that turn up.
"We take the position that we will convene a general assembly in London and like all the other protests which have happened elsewhere, it is the general assembly which is the decision-making body," she told the BBC.
"If the general assembly, made up of everybody who comes today, decides that we want to try and stay, then we will make some efforts to try and stay."
Protests over the global crisis first began in the Spanish capital Madrid back in May, when hundreds took over the city's Puerta del Sol square.
Forming a movement called "Indignant", the protesters said they wanted to demonstrate at the influence of powerful financial institutions over policy-making, and the impact of Spain's deepest economic crisis in decades.
Observers say that, while protesters in Spain had concrete demands such as seeking a cut in working hours to tackle unemployment, many of the 'Occupy' protesters are vague in their demands.
Friday, October 14, 2011
The Death of an Airplane - Air France Flight 447
The newly released final dialogue between the crew of the doomed Air France Flight 447:
Marc Dubois (captain): 'Get your wings horizontal.'
David Robert (pilot): 'Level your wings.'
Pierre-Cedric Bonin (pilot): 'That's what I'm trying to do... What the... how is it we are going down like this?'
Robert: 'See what you can do with the commands up there, the primaries and so on…Climb climb, climb, climb.'
Bonin: 'But I have been pulling back on the stick all the way for a while.'
Dubois: 'No, no, no, don't climb.'
Robert: 'Ok give me control, give me control.'
Dubois: 'Watch out you are pulling up.'
Robert: 'Am I?'
Bonin: 'Well you should, we are at 4,000.'
As they approach the water, the on-board computer is heard to announce: 'Sink rate. Pull up, pull up, pull up.'
To which Captain Dubois reacts with the words: 'Go on: pull.'
Bonin: 'We're pulling, pulling, pulling, pulling.'
The crew never discuss the possibility that they are about to crash, instead concentrating on trying to right the plane throughout the final four minutes.
Dubois: 'Ten degrees pitch.'
Robert: 'Go back up!…Go back up!…Go back up!… Go back up!'
Bonin: 'But I’ve been going down at maximum level for a while.'
Dubois: 'No, No, No!… Don’t go up !… No, No!'
Bonin: 'Go down, then!'
Robert: 'Damn it! We’re going to crash. It can’t be true!'
Bonin: 'But what’s happening?!'
The recording stops.
Daily Mail
Thursday, October 13, 2011
When Netanyahu Exchanges 1,027 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier, is that Not Capitulating to Terrorism?
Everyone Has a Price.
When it comes to negotiating with terrorists, there is a clear disconnect between what governments profess and what they actually do. Believe any politician or bet your life, libery or property on what they say and you will be in danger.
At the time Benjamin Netanyahu was elected in 1996, the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Netanyahu also indicated what he meant by negotiating with Arabs during his debate with Prime Minister Shimon Peres. The Arabs, he said, were 'realistic'—'when they see a weak government like Mr. Peres,' they demand everything, they get everything, and they demand more.'"
Strong words from good old Bibi, but he is not alone and Israel is hardly the exception.
The British dealt with the Irish Republican Army even after the IRA had launched a mortar attack on 10 Downing Street that nearly eliminated the entire British cabinet in 1991. In 1988, the Spanish negotiated the ETA only six months after the group had killed 21 shoppers in a supermarket bombing. The government of Israel in 1993, secretly negotiated the Oslo accords while the PLO continued its terrorist campaign and refused to recognize Israel's right to exist.
If they are politicians, any of them, all of them, trust them at your peril.
------------------------------------------
Robert Fisk, Inedpendent:
Democratic governments don't deal with terrorists – until they do
In three decades, the Israelis have freed 7,000 prisoners in return for 19 Israeli prisoners
Once upon a time, we lived in a world where democratic governments did no deals with "terrorists". No country promoted this nonsense more than Israel. And no Israeli leader repeated the mantra so often as one B Netanyahu Esq. After all, America never "gave way" to "terrorists". No deals would ever be done by Britain.
Indeed, if France were to release 1,000 prisoners for one French hostage – heaven forbid – Obama, La Clinton and Cameron would be loud in their fury at French cowardice. But yesterday there came not a squeak from Washington or London about Israel's latest "deal" with its supposedly "terrorist" enemies: 1,027 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier.
Of all nations on earth, Israel regularly "gives in" or does "deals" over "terrorist" demands more than any other. A quick trip down memory lane: in 1985, Israel released 1,150 prisoners for three captured Israeli soldiers in Lebanon. In 1998, for the remains of an Israeli soldier killed the previous year, Israel released 65 prisoners and the bodies of 40 dead Hezbollah men. I watched the grim procession of the latter to a south Lebanon village where the bodies reeked so badly that families were sick at the stench as they wept in mourning.
In 2004, I watched the arrogant figure of Samir Kantar – convicted of murdering a policeman and an Israeli civilian and his four-year-old daughter – stride across the Lebanese frontier from Israel a free man (along with two tractor loads of Hezbollah bodies, released in return for an Israeli agent lured into Beirut by Hezbollah). He was proclaimed a hero in Lebanon.
And so it goes on. In three decades, the Israelis have freed 7,000 prisoners in return for 19 Israeli prisoners and the remains of four dead Israeli soldiers. Quite an exchange rate. Ironically, Israel's latest "deal" – 1,027 Palestinians for one Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, captured in Gaza in 2006 – suggests that one Israeli life equals 1,300 Palestinian lives; this was almost the exact number of Palestinians killed in Gaza in the 2008-09 invasion when 13 Israelis were killed.
Oddly, Israel never explained – and most journalists never asked – why its soldiers simply could not discover where Shalit was held in Gaza. It must have been Israeli military incompetence on a massive scale – unless the missing soldier was taken briefly through the Gaza tunnels to Egypt. Perhaps, when he is released, he will tell us.
In the past 30 years, the hostage swaps have been engineered by the International Red Cross, the German intelligence service, the United Nations and now the Egyptians. Hamas, crowing as usual at its "success", might choose to hold its tongue. Arrangements currently suggest that in return for Shalit they will receive 500 Palestinians now and 527 Palestinians "later". More than 10 years ago, the UN engineered a similar swap. Half the Lebanese prisoners came home during the hostage swap; then the Israelis decided to keep the other half.
The UN's special negotiator told me personally that when he pointed this out to then-UN Secretary General, the latter said of the remaining prisoners: "Forget them." No doubt Hamas can be equally as ruthless. Since they are now trying to force journalists and others to obtain "visas" before visiting their Republic of Gaza, we may not know.
In any case, it's a dirty and outrageous business, doing deals with "terrorists". Do not utter the word hypocrisy. And don't expect Obama to say a word. After all, the poor man is seeking re-election
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