The Chief in China

I haven't been posting much recently, one of the reasons being because I spent 2 weeks in China. It was a rather interesting trip. One of the reasons I decided to study Russian politics and history in college was because I found it complex, but they have nothing on the Chinese. How do you hope to understand a country with 1.3 billion people and a 5,000 year old culture, which simulataneously has a thriving capitalist entrepeneurial class, and a Communist dictatorship?

Going to China has also turned me into a bit of an environmentalist. I have no idea how they intend to host the Olympics next year, unless they shut down Beijing for 2 months. The smog was horrible. How ironic that they were exempted from the Kyoto Accords, given their air pollution was far beyond the worst nightmare of the Sierra Club types, not to mention the lack of sewage systems.

Here are some photographs I took. Hopefully a picture is worth a thousand words:

Mass Transportation in Beijing

The Reds are still there, and this was on a clear sunny afternoon

My artistic photo, at a kindergarten we visited in Beijing.

How Ironical

Would someone please explain to me the fuss they are making over a handful of attorneys being fired at the Justice Department. From the WSJ:

Mr. Stephanopoulos remains just as sober when working solo on Sunday mornings as the host of "This Week" or helping out on "Good Morning America." There hasn't been this much stone-faced comedy in circulation since Buster Keaton's heyday.

It's a pity, because Mr. Stephanopoulos might be able to help viewers understand why the firing of eight U.S. attorneys in the Bush administration has been by far the biggest television-news story lately, and yet when dozens of federal prosecutors were fired during the Clinton administration, it was barely noticed by network newscasts. According to the Tyndall Report, which tracks this sort of thing, during the week of March 12-16, the three network evening newscasts spent a total of 45 minutes on the prosecutors story, with the war in Iraq placing second at 16 minutes. "World News with Charles Gibson" logged 13 of those 45 minutes on the prosecutors.

By contrast, in 1993, Attorney General Janet Reno's wholesale firing of U.S. attorneys appointed by George H.W. Bush was a non-story on the ABC evening news -- literally a non-story, according to records kept by the Vanderbilt University Television News Archive, as in zero coverage. CBS also skipped it; NBC gave it 20 seconds.

And yes, I know ironical is not a word.

The Russians are Coming!

Now, I have covered a lot of nutty conspiracy theories, both here and over at Screw Loose Change, but this article on Russian weather control weapons sets a new benchmark:

Thanks to readers (and you know who you are) who supplied new links to valuable information, we find there are more players in the game of weather terror and control than the US with its HAARP system. One prime rival as you might expect is our old Cold War enemy, Russia. And perhaps it is no coincidence that Katrina as well as Ivan are both Russian names.

I almost hate to mention that Katrina is not Russian, the Russian equivilant is Ekaterina. Hmm, maybe that is why it snowed yesterday morning, and I was almost late for class.