It seems in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan, there is a
small monastery where the master is illiterate. The teacher was a farmer’s son and he had been taken to the temple when
he was very young. He had never learned to read or write but he completed the koan study and came to complete enlightenment.
The teacher didn’t really know other religions except Buddhism,
he scarcely realized until he heard the monks discussing Christianity. One of the monks had been to the University of Tokyo
and the teacher asked him to explain Christianity.
“I don’t know that much about it,” the monk said.
“But I will bring you the holy book of the Christian religion.”
The master sent the monk to the nearest city and the monk returned
with the Bible.
“That’s a thick book,” the master said, “and
I can’t read. But ....[ more ]
An arrest warrant was presented to the police who did nothing in regards to Condi Rice and her war crime.
A mock cage and look a like staged a street theater of Condi getting locked up by the citizens. http://youtu.be/lMtWnYLF3eM
Austerity measures are typically taken if there is a threat that government
cannot honor its debt liabilities. Such a situation may arise if a government has borrowed in foreign currencies which they
have no right to issue or they have been legally forbidden from issuing their own currency. In such a situation banks may
lose trust in government's ability and/or willingness to pay and refuse to roll over existing debts or demand exorbitant interest
rates. In such situations, inter-governmental institutions such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) typically come in and demand austerity
measures in exchange for functioning as a lender of last resort. When the IMF requires such a policy, the terms are known
as 'IMF conditionalities'.
Nabi Saleh Friday 29.7.2011 nonviolent protest against the theft of the village's land, against the occupation and against
apartheid; harassment of journalists, photographers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpVS8BVXqss&feature=feedlik
Will the US Apologize to Maher Arar? USA allows Torture of Maher Arar and then wont apologize
Click Picture to see video of Portland's Jail-Cell Demonstration
The good nature wasn't returned. Enjoy that grin, the cadre member's scowl seemed to say.
"This is your last chance to smile, big guy."
This was I-Day at the United States Naval Academy: Induction Day. The day that 1,247 brand-new,
mostly fresh out of high school wanna-be Navy officers showed up at this august school on the banks of the confluence of Chesapeake
Bay and the Severn River. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, as the saying goes, these 984 men and 263 women from 10 countries
were about to have their worlds rocked.
I'd come there Thursday as part of Road Trip 2010, my journey around the U.S. Northeast in search of some of the best places to write about I could find.
But this was actually a book-end piece of reporting for me. A year ago, on Road Trip 2009, I'd stopped in on I-Day at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., and once I knew I was going to be on the East Coast for this year's project,
I knew I had to see how the Navy's methods of breaking in the newbies compared to that of the Air Force. Indeed, my visit
to the Naval Academy was the anchor stop of this year's entire trip.
In a live demonstration of globe-straddling communication technologies like Skype, this forum connects to citizen journalists
and activists around the world, some of whom frequently test the limits of governmental authority. Moderator Ethan Zuckerman
wonders if these new digital forms are fundamentally liberating, providing users access to public spaces they might otherwise
be denied. He pursues this line of inquiry in a series of internet conversations with correspondents covering some of the
world’s most ravaged or oppressed regions
The spate of suicides at Foxconn's plant
in Shenzhen has provided an alarming education and raises a perfectly timed red flag over the US-China currency debate. China
has been forced to acknowledge that the real story behind its growth figures is, in many cases, a degrading one.
There are three important practical lessons
to be drawn from the deaths. The first is places like Foxconn must, sadly, exist if we want cheap electronics.
The punishing hours, the 350,000 employees
squeezed into one vast complex, the pseudo-military discipline, the mind-numbing silence of the shop floor, these are all
things that we can deplore, but which belong on the conscience of anyone who has ever made a call from a mobile phone, sent
an e-mail or snapped a friend on a digital camera. Which is to say, all of us.
The glitzy myth of electronics has also
been punctured: Foxconn exists because electronics manufacturing is no longer the work of artisan specialists. This company
has done to technology what McDonald's did to lunch.
The second lesson is that Foxconn represents
the China that Beijing would prefer the country not to be. From the outside, the country looks export-led - one of the main
reasons that China's failure to allow its currency to rise against the dollar has drawn so much condemnation in Washington.
The reality is rather different, and Foxconn usefully demonstrates why.
Take the 30-gigabyte iPod, one of the
many Apple devices that depend on Foxconn. When it first went on sale in the US, it sold in the stores for $US299. It left
the factory in China with a value of $150, but only $7.50 of that value was actually created in China. The remainder belonged
to the other Asian countries (Japan, Taiwan) where the components were made.
According to analysis by CLSA Securities,
globally, workers received $1.06 billion in earnings from iPod-related jobs, or about $25 per iPod sold. Chinese workers received
only about 2 per cent of the global pay cheque, or 55c per unit sold. As it looks to its future, China desperately wants to
be Apple, not Foxconn.
But the third and most critical lesson
of Foxconn is that significant parts of the US rhetoric on China's currency policy are misguided. The Obama administration
is under relentless domestic pressure to "do something" about the undervalued Chinese currency, the yuan, and to prod China
into letting it rise. Attention has turned to the timing of Washington's decision to officially label China a "currency manipulator",
a meaningless slur given that 50 countries around the world peg their currencies to the US dollar.
Beijing, knowing that its economy is
primarily driven by domestic investment, is probably keen for the yuan to appreciate but will not allow itself to appear bullied
into doing so. But Foxconn kicks away one of the main struts of those angrily demanding that Beijing allow the yuan to rise:
many of those manufacturing jobs that China is supposedly stealing from the US are not jobs that Americans could countenance
doing themselves.
An attempt to run a plant like Foxconn
in the US would be disastrous and that is why the jobs were outsourced there in the first place. Even if the yuan rose by
40 per cent against the dollar, it is hard to imagine mass-market electronics assembly jobs moving back to the US.
The currency scuffle between Washington
and Beijing is in a lull, but could flare-up again at any moment: When it does, America must look at Foxconn for a sense of
how the trade world really works.
GreenpeaceGreenpeace activists painted and posted anti-drilling
messages in big letters on the bridge of a ship that is scheduled to depart for Alaska to support drilling operations in July.
Charges have been filed against seven members of Greenpeace who boarded an offshore drilling support ship in a Louisiana
port and painted anti-drilling slogans in crude oil on the vessel’s side on Monday afternoon.
The ship is docked in Port Fourchon, La., an area affected by the BP oil spill in the gulf, and is to sail to the Arctic
this summer to support Royal Dutch Shell’s company’s exploratory drilling plans there, Greenpeace said. Activists
rappelled down the side and painted the phrase “Arctic Next?” on the vessel. They also lowered a sign saying “Salazar:
Ban Arctic Drilling” before being seized by the port police.
Interior Secretary Ken Salazar was visiting the area at the time and was the intended recipient of the message, a Greenpeace
spokeswoman said.
Amid the furor over BP’s so-far unsuccessful effort to stanch the well blowout in the gulf, plans continue for Shell
to drill offshore in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas. The company has been granted several permits and could begin drilling as early as this
summer.
The activists were charged with unauthorized entry of “critical infrastructure” and of an inhabited dwelling,
according to the Lafourche Parish sheriff’s department. Both counts carry a maximum penalty of six years in prison.
The activists were released on bail early Tuesday morning.
A Greenpeace representative argued that the charges were disproportionate. “It is outrageous that prosecutors would
confront peaceful protesters with such a heavy hand while not a single BP executive has been charged for the devastation they
have wrought on the Gulf of Mexico and the people and animals that depend on it,” Phil Radford, the group’s executive
director, said in a statement.
In an e-mail message to a Dow Jones reporter late Monday, Shell confirmed that its ship had been targeted and said it was “disappointed”
by the tactics used by Greenpeace.
A spokeswoman for the Lafourche Parish sheriff’s Office, Sgt. Lesley Hill Peters, suggested that the protesters could
also face terrorism-related charges. The New Orleans Joint Terrorism Task Force “is looking into the matter,”
she said.
