WordPress Anonymity

It was brought to my attention last week that Elizabeth Port had lost her blogger’s anonymity due to a court order calling for google to give out her identity in response to a defamation lawsuit. The root of this lawsuit was from blog posts Port wrote about on of her acquaintances whom she had called a whore in several posts. Well, it took google pressure from a New York City judge to break their privacy agreement but wordpress does not.

You see WordPress.com will simply give out your IP address and relevant info if they get threatened by a “big and scary” corporation into doing so on grounds of loose defamation suits or related lawsuits. From there the corporations will figure out who you are. I would know as a victim of corporate bullying and from WordPress.com’s spinelessness.

Quebec’s New Video Game Language Laws

Quebec’s New Video Game Language Laws
by Karen Sampson

New law forbids English video games if French-translation version exists, prompting some to question the motivation behind the “language police.”

Government gets their hands dirty
Government involvement in the private sector created a big stir in video game stores in Quebec earlier this year thanks to a new law that has come into effect banning English versions of certain video games. But opponents of the law, the stated purpose of which is to promote the French language, say it could put them out of business. Ronnie Rondeau, a local game store owner who own eight stores in the area, remarked that he feared the worst for his business. “If it really was going to make a difference,” he said in an interview in The Star, “I’d be for it, but only a small number of people want to play in French. The rest don’t care.”

The crowds will go elsewhere
Gamers are notorious for wanting new versions of games as soon as they are released, regardless of the language of the programming. Rondeau says that he even stocks several titles in Japanese because demand for the games was so high. But game designers frequently delay the releases of foreign language titles before they can debug the games for fear of future problems. In some cases the game may not be released in Quebec markets at all because the cost of translation isn’t worth it for game producers.

Even when games do get released in these limited markets programmers often take multiple extra weeks to release the new games, like the ever popular Rock Band video game. While sales in the United States were soaring over the Christmas holidays sales in Quebec were nonexistent because the game wasn’t released in French until six weeks later. Gamers simply looked elsewhere. With government involvement causing some businesses to panic, many have asked whether the Office Québécois de la langue Française, or Quebec’s French “language police” have gone too far.

The business of gaming
Gamers have always been known to be a very demanding crowd. Oftentimes games that are delayed even a few days cause the majority of the crowd to look elsewhere, across the border or on the internet, for other options. “I’m afraid it’s going to cost me my business,” Rondeau said. And even if he is able to scrap it out in the increasingly difficult market, “… money-wise, it’s going to hurt.”

About the author
Karen Sampson writes for Select courses. She welcomes your feedback at Karen.Sampson1120@gmail.com

Man killed wife in Facebook row

Man killed wife in Facebook row

A man has been jailed for life for stabbing his wife to death over a posting she made on the social networking site Facebook.

Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he was devastated that his wife Emma, also 34, had changed her online profile to “single” days after he had moved out.

The Old Bailey heard Forrester drove to her home in Croydon, south London, and attacked the mother-of-two.

He stabbed her with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver on 18 February.

Forrester, who pleaded guilty to murder, was ordered to serve a minimum term of 14 years.

Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, told him: “You committed a terrible act. There is no possible excuse or justification.

“This is a tragic killing and what you have done has caused untold anguish.”

What on earth could Emma have done to result in such a brutal, callous attack?
Liza Rothery, victim’s sister

Forrester, an HGV driver, was drunk and high on cocaine when he attacked the mother of two in the early hours as she slept.

He beat her, tore out clumps of her hair, and repeatedly stabbed her in the head and neck.

Neighbours were woken up by her screams. They found him sitting outside the house covered in blood and called the police.

The court heard Forrester thought his wife, a payroll administrator, was having an affair and had threatened to kill her.

The couple, who had been together for 15 years, had a “volatile” marriage, jurors were told.

‘Devastated and humiliated’

The day before the murder, he called her parents and complained about his wife’s Facebook entry which he said “made her look like a fool”, the court heard.

In a statement to police Forrester said: “Emma and I had just split up. She forced me out.

“She then posted messages on an internet website telling everyone she had left me and was looking to meet other men.

“I loved Emma and felt totally devastated and humiliated about what she had done to me.”

In a victim impact statement, Mrs Forrester’s sister Liza Rothery said the murder had had a “devastating” impact on her and parents Frances and Robert.

Miss Rothery added: “What on earth could Emma have done to result in such a brutal, callous attack on a defenceless woman?”
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/7676285.stm

Published: 2008/10/17 14:36:44 GMT

Congratulations Mark Zuckerberg: You’ve now brought Facebook to the levels seen on MySpace.

What happened to Iceland?

What happened to Iceland?

Analysis
Jon Danielsson
Economist, Financial Markets Group, London School of Economics

The first real casualty of the credit crunch is Iceland.

Its failure was caused by two distinct factors, the first entirely predictable, and the second less so.

The predictable element in Iceland’s failure is linked to the actions of its central bank.

Over the past years, Iceland has pursued a policy of inflation targeting, similar to the UK.

This means the central bank targets inflation, raises interest rates if inflation is above the target, and lowers them if inflation is below target.

Such a policy has a sound foundation in economic theory and is often appropriate for large countries.

In the case of Iceland it was disastrous.

Wasted opportunities

Throughout the period of inflation targeting, inflation was above its target rate, resulting in interest rates exceeding at times 15%.

In a small economy such as Iceland, high interest rates both encourage domestic firms and households to borrow in foreign currency, and also attract currency speculators.

This lead to large inflows of foreign currency, leading to sharp exchange rate increases, giving the Icelanders an illusion of wealth.

The speculators and borrowers profited from the interest rate difference between Iceland and abroad as well as the exchange rate appreciation.

These effects encouraged economic growth and inflation, further leading the central bank to raise interest rates.

The end result is a bubble caused by the interaction between domestic interest rates and inflows of foreign currency.

The exchange rate was increasingly out of touch with economic fundamentals, with a rapid depreciation of the currency inevitable.

This should have been clear to the central bank, which wasted several good opportunities to prevent exchange rate appreciations and build up reserves.

Independent bank?

Adding to this is the peculiar governance structure of the Central Bank of Iceland.

Iceland has plenty of untapped natural resources and a well educated workforce

Uniquely, it does not have one but three governors.

One or more of those has generally been a former politician.

Consequently, the governance of the Central Bank of Iceland has always been perceived to be closely tied to the central government, raising doubts about its independence.

Currently, the chairman of the board of governors is a former long-standing prime minister.

Such a governance structure carries with it unfortunate consequences that become especially visible in the financial crisis.

By choosing governors based on their political background rather than economic or financial expertise, the central bank may be perceived to be ill-equipped to deal with an economy in crisis.

State guarantee

The second factor in the implosion of the Icelandic economy this week has been the size of its banking sector.

Before the crisis, the Icelandic banks had foreign assets worth about 10 times the Icelandic gross domestic product (GDP), with debts to match.

In normal economic circumstances this is not a cause for worry, so long as the banks are prudently run.

Indeed, the Icelandic banks were better capitalised and with a lower exposure to high risk assets than many of their European counterparts.

In a crisis, such as the one we are experiencing now, the strength of a bank’s balance sheet is of little consequence.

What matters is the explicit or implicit guarantee provided by the state to the banks to back up their assets and provide liquidity.

Therefore, the size of the state relative to the size of the banks becomes the crucial factor.

The relative size of the Icelandic banking system means that the government is in no position to guarantee the banks, unlike in other European countries.

This effect was further escalated and the collapse brought forward by the failure of the Central Bank to extend its foreign currency reserves, even if it was under considerable pressure to do exactly that.

Real tragedy

This week’s events were caused by the combination of those two factors, inappropriate monetary policy and an outsized banking system.

Throughout this year the Icelandic currency has been falling due to the currency speculators running for shelter.

This has caused doubts about the Icelandic economy and its banking sector.

What eventually tipped the balance was the current extreme global financial uncertainty.

The real tragedy in the crisis is the impact on Icelandic households; they are seeing payments on loans increased by up to 50%, and inflation which may reach 30% or more this year, with salaries frozen and mass layoffs.

Fortunately, the long run macroeconomic potential is good.

Iceland has plenty of untapped natural resources and a well educated workforce.

The long run economic outlook is therefore favourable.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/business/7658908.stm

It’s scary that Iceland was the first country to be taken out by the American-created Credit Crunch.  It’s very troubling because Iceland is not known to be a volatile country and has also been known to be economically and culturally self-sufficient from their neighbours.  The language of Iceland is a continuation of Old Norse with some language reforms and most of the population have a very similar gene pool.

As banks across the world teeter amid the market meltdown, Americans and Europeans watch their governments intervene to stave off catastrophe. But for the 301,000 citizens of Iceland, the slide is more like a free-fall, as the tiny country finds itself engulfed by massive debts that have spun out of control in a matter of weeks. Iceland’s currency, the krona, has plunged about 30% against the euro in just 10 days — and has lost more than half of its value over the past year. The declining krona has caused sharp spikes in the price of essential food and fuel imports to the remote nation, with the country’s dwindling foreign exchange reserves and the collapse of some of its key banks raising questions about Iceland’s ability to service its foreign debt.

Officials in Reykjavik have good reason to be spooked: Iceland’s banks, which account for most of the country’s stock exchange, have ballooned so rapidly that their assets — more than 80% of them being foreign holdings — had been, last month, worth more than eight times the country’s GDP. Iceland, in other words, was betting very heavily not on its own economy, but on the economies of others, and when financial markets began to tank last month, setting off a global avalanche, Iceland was more cruelly exposed than most. The pain was instantly felt among ordinary Icelanders, suddenly forced to contemplate the rapidly rising cost of car, home or student loans.

So Iceland got themselves into this mess when their Central Banks raised interest rates to the point of creating a currency bubble and led to their currency to be overvalued and when their Central Bank failed to provide enough foreign currency reserves during this panic.  Because of these problems and the lack of cash reserves, it’s very possible that Iceland will go bankrupt as a country.

It’s pretty bad when the Icelandic government is grovelling to Moscow for aid money. I reckon more people were expecting one of the Southeast Asian countries or Latin American countries to be hard hit first, but not Iceland of all places.

The New Facebook is awful.

I just logged on and I find that I have been forced into the new Facebook page.  The new design is awful and nearly half of my third party Facebook applications are not compatible with their “Tabbed” layout.  What’s worse if that their wall tab only limits up to four Applications to be displayed on that page.  So far there are no Applications that can be placed on the Info Tab while the rest of the Applications are simply relegated to a Boxes Tab.

The interface is just awful and confusing.  I honestly don’t believe Facebook got any real feedback or did focus group research when they came up with the new interface.  It seems like their product development group simply thought it was cool because it appealed to them without taking account of their actual users.

Mark Slee, product manager for the new Facebook, is excited about the change and thinks the new format will benefit the Facebook community.

“We set out to make Facebook simpler, cleaner, more relevant and easier to control,” he said in a recent post on his blog, known as The Facebook Blog. “We believe we’ve gotten to the best Facebook yet.”

Slee was contacted for further comment via e-mail but did not respond by press time.
With Facebook’s growing popularity, numerous users have let their opinions on the new format be known. Facebook is riddled with groups speaking out both in support and in complaint of the new Facebook.

The vast majority of groups are made up of users who have a problem with the new format. Amongst these groups are “1,000,000 AGAINST THE NEW FACEBOOK LAYOUT!” which includes more than 1.6 million members and “Petition Against the New Facebook,” which features more than 1.2 million members.

From the groups I see, there are more users opposed to the interface than those who actually support it.

It’s one thing for Facebook to open up their service to any users, which led to a proliferation of Internet trolls, sock puppet accounts, and sexual predators to roam the website, but this is just another misstep from Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook.

The redesign row is not the first time Facebook has run into trouble with its users. Last year its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, was forced to apologise for the “bad job” his company had made in implementing a controversial new advertising system, called Beacon.

Users complained that it added information about their shopping habits to their profile without their consent, and in some cases had inadvertently informed friends of what gifts they would be receiving for Christmas.

If there is anything to know about Facebook, it is that the company is actually mismanaged, overvalued and people still use it because it is still perceived as being user-friendly, safe, and more refined than Myspace, Friendster or Mixi.  However, this may soon change as more people learn how bad the New Facebook actually is.

http://media.www.clarksonintegrator.com/media/storage/paper280/news/2008/09/15/Features/New-Facebook.Fails.To.Appeal.To.Users-3431963.shtml

http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.aspx?id=62714&comview=1

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?xml=/connected/2008/09/12/dlface112.xml

UPDATE – READ THIS PAGE TO FIND OUT HOW TO GET THE OLD FACEBOOK BACK – http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=25292399243&ref=share

http://www.facebook.com/apps/application.php?id=2345053339

first click this link, and add the application,

then come back to this page, and click this link,

http://apps.new.facebook.com/?fbnew_opt_out=1

then cancel both windows, start a new window, and u have the old facebook

Bloody Sunday: Wall Street Is Hit by Financial Tsunami

Bloody Sunday: Wall Street Is Hit by Financial Tsunami

LEHMAN AIG, MORGAN STANLEY, JPMORGAN, PAULSON
By CNBC.com With Wires
CNBC staff and wire reports
| 14 Sep 2008 | 10:32 PM ET

The U.S. financial system was badly shaken Sunday by the expected failure of Lehman Brothers , the surprise takeover of Merrill Lynch and big asset sales by major insurer American International Group.

The developments indicate that chief executives on Wall Street and regulators in Washington are accepting that massive triage is necessary in the face of the 13-month old credit crisis and destructive U.S. housing bust.

“The U.S. financial system is finding the tectonic plates underneath its foundation are shifting like they have never shifted before,” said Peter Kenny, managing director at Knight Equity Markets in Jersey City, New Jersey.”It’s a new financial world on the verge of a complete reorganization.”

Growing expectations that Lehman will become Wall Street’s most high profile bankruptcy since junk bond specialist Drexel Burnham Lambert collapsed in 1990 sparked a sell-off in U.S. asset prices.

Both US stock futures and the dollar plunged in reaction to the turmoil on Wall Street.

“It appears that Lehman will file for bankruptcy and the risk of an immediate tsunami is related to the unwind of derivative and swap-related positions worldwide in the dealer, hedge fund, and buying universe,” said Bill Gross, chief investment officer at Pacific Investment Management Co (Pimco).

Sunday’s events signalled a transformation in the power structure on Wall Street with major banking groups like Bank of America , which has agreed to buy Merrill for $43.5 billion, and JPMorgan Chase becoming more dominant.

If Lehman and Merrill disappear, then three of the top five U.S. investment banks would have dissolved or been bought inside six months. Bear Stearns was acquired in a fire sale by JPMorgan in March.

The focus early Sunday was on whether talks between regulators and Wall Street’s top bankers would lead to the sale of Lehman, until recently the No. 4 U.S. investment bank.

Those talks faltered when Britain’s Barclays, which had appeared to be front-runner to take over Lehman — excluding its toxic mortgage-related assets — said it had pulled out of the bidding.

That triggered expectations the investment bank was heading into bankruptcy and prompted a rare emergency trading session to allow Wall Street dealers in the $455 trillion derivatives market to reduce their exposure to the firm.

Within hours of Barclays withdrawal, Merrill agreed to be sold to Bank of America. And AIG , until recently the world’s largest insurer by market value, was expected to sell off assets, including a profitable aircraft leasing arm.There were signs of attempts by banks and regulators to try to prop up market confidence.

To help provide liquidity, the Federal Reserve said it would accept a wider array of securities as collateral at its key borrowing windows.

“The steps we are announcing today, along with significant commitments from the private sector, are intended to mitigate the potential risks and disruptions to markets,” Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said in a statement.

Banks Set up $70 Billion Borrowing Facility

Ten Wall Street banks have also agreed to set up a collateralized borrowing facility, and committed to fund for $7 billion each.

The banks are Bank of America, Barclays, Citibank, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and UBS. These banks have said they are committed to fund $7 billion each for a $70 billion collateralized borrowing facility.

The banks add that they are working together to assist in maximizing market liquidity through ongoing trading relationships, dealer credit terms and capital committed to markets. This will also facilitate the orderly resolution of OTC derivatives exposures between Lehman and its counterparties.

All ten banks say they all intend to use expanded federal reserve primary dealers credit facility this week. The banks say their actions reflect “extraordinary market environment”.

Merrill, AIG and Washington Mutual , the biggest savings and loan institution — which was the subject of conflicting reports Friday about whether it was in advanced talks for a sale to JPMorgan — all face similar problems.

They have all held large amounts of real-estate related assets that have fallen sharply in value. Shares of all three lost more than one-third of their value last week.

The perception is that the losses they have disclosed are far from enough, and that they will have difficulty in raising new capital.

One of the catalysts for this weekend’s events was the stance of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. He was strongly opposed to using government money in any deal aimed at resolving the Lehman crisis.

The lack of such government guarantees was the main reason Barclays decided to exit the negotiations to buy Lehman, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Emergency Sunday Trading Session

An emergency trading session was set between dealers with Lehman Brothers counterparty risk involved credit, equity, rates, foreign exchange and commodity derivatives, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association said.

“This is an extremely, and I stress extremely, rare event. It also speaks to the more general notion that, in today’s highly disrupted financial markets, the unthinkable is thinkable,” said Mohamed El-Erian, CEO of Pimco, the world’s biggest bond fund.

Market sources said the special session was initiated by the Federal Reserve, with the aim of reducing risk associated with a potential bankruptcy filing by Lehman Brothers.

“Trades are contingent on a bankruptcy filing at or before 11:59 p.m. New York time Sunday,” said the statement. “If there is no filing, the trades cease to exist.”

The special session “is a way to offset the risk between the remaining large banks and insurance companies and fund managers prior to the markets opening in Asia,” said Mark Grant, managing director of structured finance at Southwest Securities, based in Dallas.

Grant is expecting a turbulent session when the U.S. markets reopen for business on Monday.

“The market is going to be spooked. People will be fearful and no one outside a very small group of people knows what Lehman going into liquidation will mean.”

Lehman has been collapsing under the weight of toxic assets, mainly related to real-estate, that are now worth only a fraction of their original prices.

The crisis at Lehman presented a delicate balancing act for Paulson and the Federal Reserve, who have urged Wall Street chiefs to come up with their own solution. So far this year, the government has sponsored rescues of Bear Stearns and mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

The authorities don’t want to be accused of encouraging excessive risk-taking by bailing out another yet another investment bank.

But they also cannot afford to let a blow-up of Lehman paralyze the financial system and deepen the credit crisis.

“Anyone else who has these toxic assets, if they haven’t made a full confession, they better do it now,” said Matt McCormick, portfolio manager at Bahl & Gaynor Investment Counsel in Cincinnati, Ohio, which has $2.9 billion of assets under management. “These assets may be hard to unwind, but they can unwind your firm. Lehman tried to deny reality until the bitter end.”

Bankruptcy would mark an ignominious end to a once-proud firm, founded by cotton-trading German immigrants 158 years ago. It would also badly tarnish the reputation of CEO Dick Fuld, who has insisted that his firm could work through its problems to survive as an independent entity.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Sunday he suspected “we will see other major financial firms fail,” but added that this did not need to be a problem. “It depends on how it is handled and how the liquidations take place,” Greenspan told the ABC program “This Week.” “And indeed we shouldn’t try to protect every single institution.

The ordinary course of financial change has winners and losers.” Hundreds of Lehman employees went into the office on Sunday to clear desks and pack personal belongings, according to an employee.

Many even opted to say their farewells with one last office soiree. “We are having pizza and beer,” said one Lehman employee, who declined to be identified.

The news on Sunday was a huge hit to an already wounded financial jobs market, and a dent to New York’s claim to be the pre-eminent world financial center.

Headhunters and consultants said the talent-flush U.S. market — which has shed more than 100,000 financial-sector jobs this year — must now brace for up to 50,000 more.

— Reuters contributed to this story
© 2008 CNBC

URL: http://www.cnbc.com/id/26709718/

The world enters a dangerous new era as Ron Paul has told us time and time again…

NINE INCH NAILS – Capital G

NINE INCH NAILS

“Capital G”

I pushed the button and elected elected him to office and a
He pushed the button and he dropped the bomb
You pushed the button and could watch it on the television
Those motherfuckers didn’t last too long

I’m sick of hearing about the “have’s” and “have not’s”
Have some personal accountability
The biggest problem with the way that we’ve been doing things is
The more we let you have the less that I’ll be keeping for me

Well I used to stand for something
Now I’m on my hands and knees
Trading in my god for this one
And he signs his name with a capital G

Don’t give a shit about the temperature in Guatemala
Don’t really see what all the fuss is about
Ain’t gonna worry about no future generations and a
And I’m sure somebody’s gonna figure it out

Don’t try to tell me that some power can corrupt a person
You haven’t had enough to know what its like
You’re only angry ’cause you wish you were in my position
Now nod your head because you know that I’m right… alright!

Well I used to stand for something
But forgot what that could be
There’s a lot of me inside you
Maybe you’re afraid to see

Well I used to stand for something
Now I’m on my hands and knees
Trading in my god for this one
And he signs his name with a capital G

Tensions rise between Tibetans, Chinese Muslims

Tensions rise between Tibetans, Chinese Muslims
Long-standing enmity is a factor in recent clashes in Lhasa and other areas.
By Barbara Demick
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

June 23, 2008

GUOJIA, CHINA — The riot began with a customer’s complaint about her dinner.

“Waitress, there’s a tooth in my soup,” a Tibetan woman said indignantly.

Before long, a curious crowd of Tibetans gathered around the soup bowl. Restaurant owner Yun Sha came out of the kitchen and insisted that the offending item was just a chip off a lamb bone. “Let’s trash this restaurant,” Yun heard somebody scream, and the crowd proceeded to do just that.

Tables, chairs, a television flew through the air. Kitchen equipment was smashed with bricks. Soon the crowd had moved on to other Muslim restaurants on the same strip as terrified waiters and cooks scurried outside for safety.

Disputes such as that one last summer are common in western China, where a volatile ethnic stew is increasingly erupting into violence. Among China’s dozens of minorities, few get along as badly as Tibetans and Muslims. Animosities have played a major — and largely unreported — role in the clashes that have taken place since mid-March. During the March 14 riots in the Tibetan region’s capital, Lhasa, many of the shops and restaurants attacked were Muslim-owned. A mob tried to storm the city’s main mosque and succeeded in setting fire to the front gate. Shops and restaurants in the Muslim quarter were destroyed.

Over the last five years, there have been dozens of clashes between Tibetans and Muslims in Sichuan, Gansu and Qinghai provinces, as well as in the Tibet Autonomous Region. Most of the incidents go unreported. The state-controlled news media are not eager to publicize anything that belies Communist Party claims that minorities live together in a “harmonious society.”

Andrew M. Fischer, a London-based Tibet scholar who is one of the few who has written on the subject, said the Tibetan exile community also was reluctant to publicize incidents that might harm the international image of Tibetans.

“It is the dark side of Tibetan nationalism,” Fischer said. “It is almost as though the Tibetans are diverting their anger over their own situation towards another vulnerable minority.”

Most of the incidents involve the Hui, who ethnically are Han Chinese but practice Islam. China’s 9.8 million Hui and 5.4 million Tibetans historically have lived in proximity, at various times fighting, competing or intermarrying and collaborating.

As Buddhists, the Tibetans don’t like to kill animals, but they do eat meat and wear furs, so they leave it to Muslim butchers and tanners to do the slaughtering. The Muslims also own many restaurants, and they don’t shy away from remote Tibetan areas where other Han Chinese are loath to tread. They often buy products from Tibetan nomads, who have difficulty selling because of their illiteracy.

“To be honest, the Tibetans don’t have the business savvy of the Hui. The Tibetans have to sell their products to Hui. The Hui have to buy from the Tibetans,” said Genga Jatsi, a Tibetan doctor from Qinghai. “I suppose because we are interdependent we resent each other.”

The tensions are palpable in Golog, a mountainous prefecture in Qinghai. Along a four-lane boulevard called Tuanjie, or “Solidarity,” Street, a large archway separates the Tibetan town of Dawu from the smaller Muslim town of Guojia.

Muslim taxi drivers are nervous about crossing into the Tibetan side at night. And since last summer’s restaurant incident, Tibetans have refused to go to the strip of Muslim eateries specializing in lamb and noodles.

“We’re afraid that there will be more trouble,” said Yun, who sold his restaurant after the incident but still lives in Golog, doing construction work. He sat in an otherwise empty restaurant around the corner from his old place, he and the restaurant owner, Ma Zhongyang, slumped over the linoleum tables, watching a small television in the corner.

The men said about 800 of Guojia’s 3,000 Muslims had left in recent months, frightened by what had happened in Lhasa. During the mid-March riots, Muslim shopkeepers and their families were badly hurt and some were killed when fires set in their shops spread to upstairs apartments.

“We saw what happened on television. After that, I sent away my children from here. I fear for their safety,” Ma said.

Many Muslims have stopped wearing the traditional white caps that identify their religion. Many women now wear a hairnet instead of a scarf. Since the nearest mosque was burned down in August, the Muslims pray at home — “in secret,” Ma said.

Twenty Tibetans, many of them monks, were arrested in the incident and a senior monk, accused of being the ringleader, was sentenced to death, Fischer said.

The animosity dates to at least the 1930s, when Muslim warlord Ma Bufeng tried to establish an Islamic enclave in Qinghai. Tibetans were pushed off their lands, some executed or forced to convert. After the communists took over in 1949, tensions were repressed.

Tsering Shayka, a Tibetan historian, said ethnic conflicts had resurfaced in recent years with the gradual liberalization of China, in particular the relaxation of travel restrictions.

“What is happening now is that you have all this transient population. People are migrating here and there and coming into more and more day-to-day contact. In the past, they weren’t allowed to trespass into each other’s territory and you had no ethnic conflict,” Shayka said.

Tibetans complain frequently about their culture being diluted when non-Tibetans, in particular Muslims, move into their areas and buy Tibetan businesses. That has been especially true in Lhasa, where Muslims now own many of the souvenir shops.

In the mid-1990s, Tibetans started boycotting Muslim restaurants in Lhasa after it was claimed that somebody had found a finger in a bowl of soup, setting off a rumor that Muslims were cannibals. Another rumor had it that Muslim cooks were urinating on food or adding their bathwater to soup, which, it was said, would function as a charm to make Tibetans convert to Islam.

“You hear all these stories about Muslims putting stuff in the soup. But I think it is all about business competition and economics,” said Tsering, 37, a Tibetan businessman from Lhasa who did not want his last name to be published.

Making matters worse, the Hui usually support the Chinese government in its repression of Tibetan separatism.

“They think the Dalai Lama is their leader. But how is independence possible?” whispers Han Rugubai, a 26-year-old Muslim who sells clothing at Dawu’s main market. “With the country developing so fast, life is good. People have enough to eat. They have clothes.”

Han said she believed that the Tibetans’ real quarrel was with the Han Chinese who dominate this country’s population and politics.

“They use us as a scapegoat for their grievances against the country,” she said.

In the last few years, clashes have broken out over the most trivial grievances. In February, a Tibetan child’s complaint about what a Hui merchant was charging for balloons triggered a brawl that involved thousands of people.

Chinese troops intervened in a 2003 dispute that started over a game of billiards. A Tibetan and a Muslim died in tit-for-tat killings, the Muslim stabbed to death with a barbecue skewer.

barbara.demick@latimes.com

Jia Han of The Times’ Beijing Bureau contributed to this report.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-muslims23-2008jun23,0,6188244,full.story

Free Tibet.  One has to wonder if the riots earlier this year were really about fighting the CCP’s rule or just an economically and racially motivated attack against non-Buddhist, non-Tibetan people in “Tibet”.

Sharon Stone Calls Chinese Earthquake “Karma”

ACTOR Sharon Stone is in strife after claiming the Chinese earthquake which claimed the lives of 80,000 people was “karma”.

Stone made the not so smart statement while on the red carpet in Cannes. She was asked if she had heard about the disaster that hit China recently, and her answer was:

“Of course I have. Well you know at first I thought I’m not happy with the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans … and I’ve been concerned with should we have the Olympics because they’re not being nice to the Dalai Lama who’s a good friend of mine.”

“And then all this earthquake and stuff happened and I thought, ‘Is that Karma, when you’re not nice and the bad things happen to you?’ “

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23765295-5012974,00.html

When is a natural disaster a good thing? When the afflicted country commits human rights violations — at least according to Sharon Stone. According to Stone, all those 80,000 deaths that include men, women, children and the elderly are a good thing because China had it coming over Tibet and I quote, “When you are not nice, that bad things happen to you.”

Sharon also name-drops the Dalai Lama just to make her comments sound righteous since we all know associating with the a CIA-asset makes everything people say or do acceptable in the eyes of Westerners.

Well at least Zhang Ziyi is doing something to fight off idiots like Sharon Stone and all the assorted “Free Tibet” idiots who are actually revelling at the deaths of over 80,000 apolitical Chinese citizens.

Zhang Ziyi says she’s outraged by quake ignorance

2 days ago

HONG KONG (AP) — “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” star Zhang Ziyi says she’s outraged by what she says is ignorance about the recent earthquake in China.

Zhang said in several Chinese-language blog entries over the past week that she has been busy raising money for relief efforts after the deadly quake struck in China’s central Sichuan province, which has killed more than 60,000.

But she said she was surprised to find one group she solicited on the sidelines of the Cannes Film Festival in France knew little about the disaster.

“I was as angry as a madwoman. I said, ‘Are you idiots? You are well-dressed people who look like you identify with society, but you don’t know what’s going on on planet Earth.’ It’s incredible!” Zhang said.

Zhang said she has made a pamphlet about the quake to show foreigners. She said she donated $144,000 and received a pledge of $100,000 from Wendi Deng, the Chinese-born wife of media mogul Rupert Murdoch.

Zhang’s other credits include “Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Rush Hour 2″ and “House of Flying Daggers.”

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iL_sCsOTK_uoIBvOq3-a_fKiYRsAD90RTVHG0

Bush For President-For-Life!

Bush the blessed American hero!
By Right-wing Larry

This is an outrage! Just because Bush supporters have a lower average IQ than Obama supporters does not make them any less holy. Bush followers are like Jesus’s disciples; Holy men who realize that Bush was chosen by God to lead us to victory over evil. I cannot imagine anyone getting angry with Bush since he is a man of God, if not God himself. To get mad at Bush is to get mad at God and that is bad. It seems like Bush will have to love all those who hate him with B-52 bombers to make them think clearly and see the light.

We must instead get mad and love our enemies like former CIA asset Osama Bin Laden and installed dictator Saddam with bombs and torture, the way Jesus would have liked us to do. Truly, people who think for themselves are evil and are with the devil. Jesus and Bush will work side by side to bomb the living crap out of our enemies. When Jesus says love thy enemy, he means love them with B-52 bombers and Bush clearly understands that.

Support the troops in Iraq since in a year we will all be in Iran with them; most of all support your President. Bush is truly excellent and a perfect being as God created him. Therefore, we must all learn to shut up and worship him as well to be holy and one with God. Absolute faith requires that one blindly follows Bush and must trust that Bush’s way as the only and right way to Heaven. Thank God we have God’s supreme son Bush leading the country to victory over evil.

Bush is loved by 59,054,087 patriotic Americans

Bush is God’s chosen one to lead us to victory over the rest of sinful humanity. Before Bush, we were a pathetic, liberal nation of sex, sin, and evil. Now that Bush is our president we are once again a nation of supreme faith and holiness. We no longer care about making profits or money. Thank God for Enron, Halliburton, and the Carlyle Group; all these holy companies will lead us to triumph over evil.

How can someone ever hate Bush? It is not as if he started a war for no reason or has many scandals. Also, it is not like he bankrupted the country into the largest national deficit in United States history. It is not as if the gap between the poor and middle class and the rich is getting wider. Like our famous beloved Nazi Arnold says, stop being such “economic girly men!”

Some people say that Bush benefited from 9-11 politically, but that cannot be true since Bush is perfect, is loved by all, and does not sin. Bush is beyond Enron, money or greed; Bush must be respected. The Patriot Act will allow us all to love Bush and worship him correctly; too many rights only lead to sin and that is bad.

Bush has restored faith into our blessed nation!

For those North Koreans who are starving to death, I say that Bush will love you as well, just not now. Bush could liberate and spread freedom to your country but God has told Bush not yet. Before Bush will liberate and eliminate WMD’s from North Korea, he must first conquer a country that has no WMD’s first in order to teach North Korea a lesson. I believe Jesus has instructed our great leader Bush to wait another 10 years before he will liberate the starving people and the WMD’s from that unholy dictator.

For all those innocent Iraqis that died, Bush saved them and now they are in Heaven. Therefore, Bush is truly a compassionate conservative and loves everyone. There are many ways to love someone and sometimes bombing people into Heaven is the fastest and right thing to do as John Ashcroft, Colin Powell, Dick Cheney, and Ariel Sharon will all agree.

Real Americans voted by Real American traditions!

Bush is the future and everyone must love him. There can be no dissent. It is un-American to disagree and we must all follow Bush to glory. Praise God for giving us a leader like Bush! Truly, I say unto thee, we must all vote for his successor John McCain in 2008 and 2012, Amen.