K-House eNews for April 15, 2008
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4/17/2008
Behold A Black Horse - MP3 Download by Chuck Missler
4/16/2008
Where Is the USA Heading?
World events are happening very fast. Do you have enough time to digest them in relation to Biblical prophecies?Recently, there was an episode of a prophectic show aired on TBN (Trinity Broadcasting Network) that focuses on world current events and their relationship to Bible prophecies.
One prophetic Bible scholar made a very interesting prediction about the USA. I can not articulate accurately in this blog the exact message because I have not reviewed it since it was a TV show that is rarely shown on that channel.
To those interested about it, you may find a schedule of replay of it in TBN's website. In this Presidential election year of the USA, it may not be unwise for the Presidential candidates to watch and listen to that particular episode's message.
Misunderstanding China
By JI Haojun
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:28:00 04/16/2008
I have to say that we are highly concerned with the editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last April 11. Entitled “Torched,” the editorial accused the Chinese government of carrying out a “brutal crackdown in Tibet” and “rid[ing] on and even stok[ing] nationalism” while expressing concern over “China’s degree of influence over North Korea, Myanmar and Sudan.”
It is a requirement of fair journalism that news be reported in an objective and balanced way. Unfortunately, some Inquirer news reports about China were solely based on sources provided by Western news agencies. The Inquirer never bothers to verify the stories on its own. Such kind of biased reporting is giving rise to much misunderstanding of China in Philippine society. Therefore, I have to make the following clarifications:
First, Tibet has been part of Chinese territory for centuries. It is a pity that many Filipino’s knowledge about Tibet is limited to fiction told by Richard Gere in his movie “Seven Years in Tibet,” which has no historical basis. I hope professional journalists could read more history before making comments on such a complicated and sensitive issue.
In the mid-13th century, Tibet was officially incorporated into the territory of China’s Yuan dynasty. Since then, although China experienced several dynastic changes, Tibet has remained under the jurisdiction of the central government of China. The title of Dalai Lama is an honorific conferred by the emperors. As a matter of fact, “Dalai” is a Mongolian word, which means “ocean.”
Click here to read full text.
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 01:28:00 04/16/2008
I have to say that we are highly concerned with the editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer last April 11. Entitled “Torched,” the editorial accused the Chinese government of carrying out a “brutal crackdown in Tibet” and “rid[ing] on and even stok[ing] nationalism” while expressing concern over “China’s degree of influence over North Korea, Myanmar and Sudan.”
It is a requirement of fair journalism that news be reported in an objective and balanced way. Unfortunately, some Inquirer news reports about China were solely based on sources provided by Western news agencies. The Inquirer never bothers to verify the stories on its own. Such kind of biased reporting is giving rise to much misunderstanding of China in Philippine society. Therefore, I have to make the following clarifications:
First, Tibet has been part of Chinese territory for centuries. It is a pity that many Filipino’s knowledge about Tibet is limited to fiction told by Richard Gere in his movie “Seven Years in Tibet,” which has no historical basis. I hope professional journalists could read more history before making comments on such a complicated and sensitive issue.
In the mid-13th century, Tibet was officially incorporated into the territory of China’s Yuan dynasty. Since then, although China experienced several dynastic changes, Tibet has remained under the jurisdiction of the central government of China. The title of Dalai Lama is an honorific conferred by the emperors. As a matter of fact, “Dalai” is a Mongolian word, which means “ocean.”
Click here to read full text.
4/14/2008
Call to Social Transformation
By Angel Abp. Lagdameo
Archbishop of Jaro
CBCP President
Blog: In and Out of Season
Social transformation is a component and consequence of the work of evangelization. Without it evangelization is incomplete. The necessity of social transformation is not a new demand. It is a demand of Christian discipleship.
1. Evangelization and social transformation must include among their essential elements a proclamation of the church’s social doctrine (cf. CA 5), which have been called the church’s “best kept secrets.” Because they do not land often enough among the teachings explained, developed, discussed and proclaimed in church gatherings and preachings.
If our struggle to build the Kingdom of God , and our striving is to authentically follow the Jesus of the Gospel, then it must be a journey towards social transformation towards truth and justice, love and peace, a journey towards the fullness of life (cf. PCP-II 263). “It is evident that Christian discipleship or a spirituality of social transformation demands a properly formed social conscience, the lack of which in many Filipinos is a major tragedy” (PCP-II 283).
“In the light of our situation we believe that certain truths in the social doctrine of the Church stand out as urgent and necessary. These truths, needing emphasis today for the development of the just life and of the just society which serves that life are: Integral Development based on Human Dignity and Solidarity; Universal Love; Peace and Active Non-violence; Love of Preference for the Poor; the Value of Human Work; the Integrity of Creation; Empowerment of the People” (PCP-II 291), each of which would demand a separate lecture or even a seminar.
2. The way the Church must go is the way of social transformation. There is only one direction that PCP-II says we must take as a Church, and that is to become a BEC- type of Church. “We have envisioned a renewed Church as a community of disciples missioned by the Lord to labor in our particular Filipino situation” (155). Fifteen years after the PCP-II, plus the experience that has gone before in our Philippine situation, BEC as a model of the Church is no longer an abstract vision. BEC as the PCP-II vision of Church is a growing reality in dioceses or parishes that have had the experience of BECs.
When I say that, I do not disregard the fact that particular parishes could still be dominated by the thinking and culture of the Institution. It may be good to evaluate how the BEC ecclesiology is affecting some of our traditional associations in the church, and how the BEC model already influences their internal and external mechanisms as well as their relationships and spirituality.
We know what is implied by being transformed by the BEC model of Church. “In order to be renewed as a Church, we must leave behind many ways of thinking, speaking and acting which no longer effectively serve and perhaps even obstruct our evangelizing mission. This will mean an unsettling pain, a disengagement from what is cherished but is now obsolete or obstructive, a dying to what is sinful, that we may come to newness of life” (PCP-II 143).
3. The object and subject of social transformation is man, every man, in his unique as well as ordinary circumstance, the “concrete” and “historical” man (CA 53). Man is the way the BEC-type of Church must go. “(The human person) is the primary route that the church must travel in fulfilling her mission…the way traced out by Christ himself, the way that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption” (RH 14; CA 53).
As an instrument of evangelization and social transformation, the social doctrine reveals man to himself and gains credibility from the “witness of actions” in the promotion of justice, most especially when it concerns the powerless, the voiceless, the marginalized and the exploited. Social transformation is person-oriented.
CALL TO INTERPERSONAL LEADERSHIP
If the Philippine Church is to become a community of communities of the disciples of the Lord, an embodiment of solidarity and communities of compassion, it must have interdependence as a moral category, and solidarity as a moral and social virtue (SRS 38-40). Underlying the call to lay evangelization and social transformation is the call to interpersonal leadership.
1. T achieve interpersonal leadership, both individual and group must move out of the paradigm of dependence into the paradigm of independence and into the paradigm of interdependence. The servant of God, John Paul II has made us aware of this in “Solicitudo Rei Socialis” when he pointed out to the global nature of the responsibility for development. “The obligation to commit oneself to the development of peoples is not just an individual duty and still less an individualistic one, as if it were possible to achieve this development through the isolated efforts of each individual…” “Collaboration in the development of the whole person and of every human being is in fact a duty of all towards all and must be shared by all parts of the world, East, West, North and South, or as we say today by different ‘words’. If on the contrary, people try to achieve it in only one world, they do so at the expense of the others, and, precisely because the others are ignored, their own development becomes exaggerated and misdirected” (SRS 32).
Working for social transformation means recognizing the truth that we are created for interdependence, for fellowship, for dialogue, for collaboration, for creative cooperation, for community of families.
2. Interdependence and interpersonal leadership is behind the approach of our Lord in sending the twelve apostles and the seventy-two disciples in teams of two (Mk. 6/7; Lk. 10/1). Marked by a common vision and common mission, they could combine their talents and abilities and create something greater together.
`Interdependence is a methodology: “the team approach to evangelizing.” “Such a team approach demands the emergence of a new type of leadership that will animate, facilitate and coordinate apostolic team efforts, activate charisms and maximize participation” (PCP-II 198). Interpersonal leadership is a partnership which shifts the interaction from vertical to horizontal and being partners in results as well as in operation. Our Lord also made his apostles aware of the shift: “I no longer speak of you as slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is about. Instead, I call you friends, since I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father” (Jo 15/15).
Interpersonal leadership will mean one plus one equals three or even more.
3. The communion as leaders of the different communities must reflect that “communion” with which John Paul II describes the Church as a whole, in two of his Encyclicals, one on the Laity (Christifideless Laici) and the other on the Clergy (Pastores Dabo Vobis). Ours is a Church of communion, a Church of participation, patterned after the communion of love that dwells within the Trinity.
The communion of leaders could well be the starting point or the beginning of the ideal “communion of communities.” “The Church in its entirety should become a family of families” (422). PCP-II’s vision of “community of disciples” is the antidote to our “chronic, almost compulsive, dividedness”, group loyalties, obsessions and jealousies, and destructive fragmentedness (PCP-II 665, 668).
Community of Disciples, Communion of Communities: “It is almost an impossible enterprise.” “But we dare it with the certainty of the Man who said: “What is impossible for human beings is possible for God’ (Lk. 18/27). It is with him in him, then that we attempt the impossible. This is how we propose to begin being a community of authentic solidarity” (PCP-II 666).
Through interdependent and interpersonal leadership we will achieve the social transformation that renewed evangelization envisions to achieve, a leadership that in our present critical situation demands transparency, accountability, commitment to truth and justice, the sum total of which is credibility.
1. Evangelization and social transformation must include among their essential elements a proclamation of the church’s social doctrine (cf. CA 5), which have been called the church’s “best kept secrets.” Because they do not land often enough among the teachings explained, developed, discussed and proclaimed in church gatherings and preachings.
If our struggle to build the Kingdom of God , and our striving is to authentically follow the Jesus of the Gospel, then it must be a journey towards social transformation towards truth and justice, love and peace, a journey towards the fullness of life (cf. PCP-II 263). “It is evident that Christian discipleship or a spirituality of social transformation demands a properly formed social conscience, the lack of which in many Filipinos is a major tragedy” (PCP-II 283).
“In the light of our situation we believe that certain truths in the social doctrine of the Church stand out as urgent and necessary. These truths, needing emphasis today for the development of the just life and of the just society which serves that life are: Integral Development based on Human Dignity and Solidarity; Universal Love; Peace and Active Non-violence; Love of Preference for the Poor; the Value of Human Work; the Integrity of Creation; Empowerment of the People” (PCP-II 291), each of which would demand a separate lecture or even a seminar.
2. The way the Church must go is the way of social transformation. There is only one direction that PCP-II says we must take as a Church, and that is to become a BEC- type of Church. “We have envisioned a renewed Church as a community of disciples missioned by the Lord to labor in our particular Filipino situation” (155). Fifteen years after the PCP-II, plus the experience that has gone before in our Philippine situation, BEC as a model of the Church is no longer an abstract vision. BEC as the PCP-II vision of Church is a growing reality in dioceses or parishes that have had the experience of BECs.
When I say that, I do not disregard the fact that particular parishes could still be dominated by the thinking and culture of the Institution. It may be good to evaluate how the BEC ecclesiology is affecting some of our traditional associations in the church, and how the BEC model already influences their internal and external mechanisms as well as their relationships and spirituality.
We know what is implied by being transformed by the BEC model of Church. “In order to be renewed as a Church, we must leave behind many ways of thinking, speaking and acting which no longer effectively serve and perhaps even obstruct our evangelizing mission. This will mean an unsettling pain, a disengagement from what is cherished but is now obsolete or obstructive, a dying to what is sinful, that we may come to newness of life” (PCP-II 143).
3. The object and subject of social transformation is man, every man, in his unique as well as ordinary circumstance, the “concrete” and “historical” man (CA 53). Man is the way the BEC-type of Church must go. “(The human person) is the primary route that the church must travel in fulfilling her mission…the way traced out by Christ himself, the way that leads invariably through the mystery of the Incarnation and the Redemption” (RH 14; CA 53).
As an instrument of evangelization and social transformation, the social doctrine reveals man to himself and gains credibility from the “witness of actions” in the promotion of justice, most especially when it concerns the powerless, the voiceless, the marginalized and the exploited. Social transformation is person-oriented.
CALL TO INTERPERSONAL LEADERSHIP
If the Philippine Church is to become a community of communities of the disciples of the Lord, an embodiment of solidarity and communities of compassion, it must have interdependence as a moral category, and solidarity as a moral and social virtue (SRS 38-40). Underlying the call to lay evangelization and social transformation is the call to interpersonal leadership.
1. T achieve interpersonal leadership, both individual and group must move out of the paradigm of dependence into the paradigm of independence and into the paradigm of interdependence. The servant of God, John Paul II has made us aware of this in “Solicitudo Rei Socialis” when he pointed out to the global nature of the responsibility for development. “The obligation to commit oneself to the development of peoples is not just an individual duty and still less an individualistic one, as if it were possible to achieve this development through the isolated efforts of each individual…” “Collaboration in the development of the whole person and of every human being is in fact a duty of all towards all and must be shared by all parts of the world, East, West, North and South, or as we say today by different ‘words’. If on the contrary, people try to achieve it in only one world, they do so at the expense of the others, and, precisely because the others are ignored, their own development becomes exaggerated and misdirected” (SRS 32).
Working for social transformation means recognizing the truth that we are created for interdependence, for fellowship, for dialogue, for collaboration, for creative cooperation, for community of families.
2. Interdependence and interpersonal leadership is behind the approach of our Lord in sending the twelve apostles and the seventy-two disciples in teams of two (Mk. 6/7; Lk. 10/1). Marked by a common vision and common mission, they could combine their talents and abilities and create something greater together.
`Interdependence is a methodology: “the team approach to evangelizing.” “Such a team approach demands the emergence of a new type of leadership that will animate, facilitate and coordinate apostolic team efforts, activate charisms and maximize participation” (PCP-II 198). Interpersonal leadership is a partnership which shifts the interaction from vertical to horizontal and being partners in results as well as in operation. Our Lord also made his apostles aware of the shift: “I no longer speak of you as slaves, for a slave does not know what his master is about. Instead, I call you friends, since I have made known to you all that I heard from my Father” (Jo 15/15).
Interpersonal leadership will mean one plus one equals three or even more.
3. The communion as leaders of the different communities must reflect that “communion” with which John Paul II describes the Church as a whole, in two of his Encyclicals, one on the Laity (Christifideless Laici) and the other on the Clergy (Pastores Dabo Vobis). Ours is a Church of communion, a Church of participation, patterned after the communion of love that dwells within the Trinity.
The communion of leaders could well be the starting point or the beginning of the ideal “communion of communities.” “The Church in its entirety should become a family of families” (422). PCP-II’s vision of “community of disciples” is the antidote to our “chronic, almost compulsive, dividedness”, group loyalties, obsessions and jealousies, and destructive fragmentedness (PCP-II 665, 668).
Community of Disciples, Communion of Communities: “It is almost an impossible enterprise.” “But we dare it with the certainty of the Man who said: “What is impossible for human beings is possible for God’ (Lk. 18/27). It is with him in him, then that we attempt the impossible. This is how we propose to begin being a community of authentic solidarity” (PCP-II 666).
Through interdependent and interpersonal leadership we will achieve the social transformation that renewed evangelization envisions to achieve, a leadership that in our present critical situation demands transparency, accountability, commitment to truth and justice, the sum total of which is credibility.
Don't Miss This Latest Doha Debate
- MOTION: THIS HOUSE BELIEVES THE PALESTINIANS RISK BECOMING THEIR OWN WORST ENEMY
- RESULT: MOTION CARRIED 70.9% - 29.1%
The latest Doha Debate has sent a powerful warning to Palestinians that they risk supplanting Israel as their own worst enemy.
The motion was passed by more than 70% of the audience.
It followed heated exchanges which focused on allegations of widespread corruption and human rights abuses in the Palestinian territories and the failure of both Hamas and Fatah to settle their differences.
Professor Munther Dajani, Dean of the Faculty of Arts at Al Quds University in Jerusalem, said the Palestinian leaders had already become their own worst enemy." The aggressor has become the victim and the victim the aggressor. We must have failed somewhere." Dajani said the Palestinians' inability to build institutions underpinning accountability and the rule of law had "ushered in corruption and nepotism."
His co-speaker for the motion, Palestinian political analyst Akram Baker, said: "We are now at the cusp of full collapse. The PA (Palestinian Authority) should be dissolved today, not tomorrow, as it has no use."
"What Palestinians need is a genuine government, not this 6th class Palestinian Authority that runs the territory for the Israelis," added Sari Makdisi, a Palestinian professor at UCLA (University of California, Los Angeles) and author of a new book on the Israeli occupation. "Palestinians have a strong sense of unity and justice," he said.
Professor Makdisi was speaking against the motion with Hind Khoury, the Palestinian Delegate General in France. She acknowledged that factional violence in the Occupied Territories had been "shameful" but insisted that only a small minority of Palestinian leaders were corrupt.
Ms Khoury added that Israel was and would remain the Palestinians' principal enemy. "Israel, even after Annapolis, continues with colonisation, making a Palestinian state an illusion. ....We have paid in blood and in the lives of our children. It is not as if we have done nothing."
This Debate will be broadcast on BBC World on April 12th and 13th, 2008
4/13/2008
Extreme Learning
By Sylvia L. Mayuga
Mixed Media - Philippine Daily Inquirer
If the world were a classroom, the present series of interrelated global crises would be final exams...
In America at the opposite end of the industrial revolution, the struggle of millions to keep from losing homes bought on credit also redounds to survival.
“An accident waiting to happen” is how the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has described the so-called U.S. subprime mortgage crisis that brought this crisis about. Because it’s happening in the world’s largest economy, the size and speed of its impact has seen giants of global investment banking teetering, one already fallen, like a line of dominoes. This has in turn led to the present global credit crisis felt in ways large and small most everywhere on the planet.
This is how Paul Volcker, who preceded Alan Greenspan as chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describes a radically shifting a global landscape: “Any return to heavily regulated, bank-dominated, nationally insulated markets is pure nostalgia, not possible in the world of sophisticated financial techniques made possible by the wonders of electronic technology.”
Many are still analyzing how the bubble of this subprime mortgage crisis burst. Reduced to its essence, however, it goes home to an economic system built on credit, personal and institutional, ranging the gamut from individuals and households to global investment banks with formerly unassailable, now besmirched reputations.
The extreme learning this spectacle offers the planetary classroom is simple, however. It revolves around the faith of ordinary citizens in a financial system running on instant gratification on one hand and world-class greed running rampant in the absence of regulation on the other. Again, judge for yourself. Here’s the definition of subprime lending that the George W. Bush regime encouraged against all common sense, in much the same way it took America charging into Iraq five years ago...
No, it doesn’t seem as though anyone, large or small, is exempt from planetary final exams, where answers to life-and-death questions will determine the chances for survival and quality of life of those who survive its extreme learning.
Oh, and one more thing. The spiraling costs of food, fuel and most everything else are driving millions to the poor house now, but it’s global warming that will be ringing the bell to signal the end of exams, ready or not. Time to match extreme learning with extreme faith and ingenuity as though our lives depended on it. They do...
Click here to read full text.
----------
Read also my ff. previous postings:
1. Messages & Notes - January 06, 2008 (note the photo's message)
2. Messages & Notes - March 25, 2008
In America at the opposite end of the industrial revolution, the struggle of millions to keep from losing homes bought on credit also redounds to survival.
“An accident waiting to happen” is how the former U.S. Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has described the so-called U.S. subprime mortgage crisis that brought this crisis about. Because it’s happening in the world’s largest economy, the size and speed of its impact has seen giants of global investment banking teetering, one already fallen, like a line of dominoes. This has in turn led to the present global credit crisis felt in ways large and small most everywhere on the planet.
This is how Paul Volcker, who preceded Alan Greenspan as chairman of the US Federal Reserve, describes a radically shifting a global landscape: “Any return to heavily regulated, bank-dominated, nationally insulated markets is pure nostalgia, not possible in the world of sophisticated financial techniques made possible by the wonders of electronic technology.”
Many are still analyzing how the bubble of this subprime mortgage crisis burst. Reduced to its essence, however, it goes home to an economic system built on credit, personal and institutional, ranging the gamut from individuals and households to global investment banks with formerly unassailable, now besmirched reputations.
The extreme learning this spectacle offers the planetary classroom is simple, however. It revolves around the faith of ordinary citizens in a financial system running on instant gratification on one hand and world-class greed running rampant in the absence of regulation on the other. Again, judge for yourself. Here’s the definition of subprime lending that the George W. Bush regime encouraged against all common sense, in much the same way it took America charging into Iraq five years ago...
No, it doesn’t seem as though anyone, large or small, is exempt from planetary final exams, where answers to life-and-death questions will determine the chances for survival and quality of life of those who survive its extreme learning.
Oh, and one more thing. The spiraling costs of food, fuel and most everything else are driving millions to the poor house now, but it’s global warming that will be ringing the bell to signal the end of exams, ready or not. Time to match extreme learning with extreme faith and ingenuity as though our lives depended on it. They do...
Click here to read full text.
----------
Read also my ff. previous postings:
1. Messages & Notes - January 06, 2008 (note the photo's message)
2. Messages & Notes - March 25, 2008
4/12/2008
Beijing Olympics Flame: A Symbol of Controversial Power
Editorial
Philippine Daily Inquirer
The international relay of the Olympic flame was meant to be a grand passage through some of the world’s great cities, to dramatize the unity that animates the Olympic spirit and to herald the advent of Beijing as the newest capital of the Olympic movement. Instead, it has turned into a public relations nightmare...
The damage has been done. Not to the Olympic movement, because protesters and public alike have learned to distinguish between the Games and the politics of the host country. But to China’s image abroad. Coming on the heels of the violent riots or brutal crackdown in Tibet (the choice of emphasis is almost ideological), the torch relay has revealed, yet again, a disturbing side to China’s politics.
The Tibet issue has festered for half a century; China’s degree of influence over North Korea, Burma (Myanmar) and Sudan has been a concern and an object of speculation of the community of nations for many years. The protests that welcomed the torch relay are therefore not a surprise; in fact, they were expected. And they became inevitable after the recent eruption of violence in Tibet.
What is disturbing is the Chinese national government’s hard-line reaction. Despite the general freedom now enjoyed by ordinary Chinese citizens since the reforms known collectively as the “opening,” and in spite of the greater attention now focused on China because of the Olympics, China’s government has responded to the protests in a manner that can only be described as self-destructive...
Click here to read full text.
----------
All of these happenings are part of the process of China's "opening up of one's self" to the rest of the world.
China is like a new kid in town. USA and some countries in Europe are the town's dominant resident bullies. China's best efforts poured out in preparing for the hosting of the 2008 World Olympics is one of its ways of introducing itself to the town's community.
The attitude of the dominant resident bullies towards China is a typical reaction that tends to show "territorial dominance" insecurity -- for they know that China is a very formidable bully itself.
In the long run, "territorial dominance" will be settled and distributed among the old bullies and the new bully according to their individual strength and capacity. Cooler and mature attitudes is of great help in the settlement of "territorial dominance".
Know that there are other "kids" intending to also come to town and they themselves are preparing to become bullies too because they knew and understood that "bullying is the only game in town".
The damage has been done. Not to the Olympic movement, because protesters and public alike have learned to distinguish between the Games and the politics of the host country. But to China’s image abroad. Coming on the heels of the violent riots or brutal crackdown in Tibet (the choice of emphasis is almost ideological), the torch relay has revealed, yet again, a disturbing side to China’s politics.
The Tibet issue has festered for half a century; China’s degree of influence over North Korea, Burma (Myanmar) and Sudan has been a concern and an object of speculation of the community of nations for many years. The protests that welcomed the torch relay are therefore not a surprise; in fact, they were expected. And they became inevitable after the recent eruption of violence in Tibet.
What is disturbing is the Chinese national government’s hard-line reaction. Despite the general freedom now enjoyed by ordinary Chinese citizens since the reforms known collectively as the “opening,” and in spite of the greater attention now focused on China because of the Olympics, China’s government has responded to the protests in a manner that can only be described as self-destructive...
Click here to read full text.
----------
All of these happenings are part of the process of China's "opening up of one's self" to the rest of the world.
China is like a new kid in town. USA and some countries in Europe are the town's dominant resident bullies. China's best efforts poured out in preparing for the hosting of the 2008 World Olympics is one of its ways of introducing itself to the town's community.
The attitude of the dominant resident bullies towards China is a typical reaction that tends to show "territorial dominance" insecurity -- for they know that China is a very formidable bully itself.
In the long run, "territorial dominance" will be settled and distributed among the old bullies and the new bully according to their individual strength and capacity. Cooler and mature attitudes is of great help in the settlement of "territorial dominance".
Know that there are other "kids" intending to also come to town and they themselves are preparing to become bullies too because they knew and understood that "bullying is the only game in town".
4/09/2008
Free Tibet...later
By Antonio C. Abaya
Blog: On The Other Hand
While it is admitted here that the people of Tibet have a history that goes back 3,000 years and the Chinese did not officially claim sovereignty over the Tibetan Plateau until around 1900, the realities of the 21st Century make the liberation of Tibet from Chinese rule an impossible dream.
Obviously there is no hope of turning Tibet into a battleground for national liberation, as Vietnam spectacularly was in the 1960s. The total Tibetan population, including women and children, adds up to less than the total Vietnamese killed, combatants and civilians, during their struggles against the French and later the Americans. There are no jungles in which guerillas can hide. There is no supply route to sympathetic sources of munitions anywhere.
The on-going agitation in the name of a Free Tibet, timed specifically to coincide with the run-up to the 29th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, is clearly meant merely to embarrass the Chinese, by spoiling their coming-out party in August 2008.
This brouhaha has all the makings of an orchestrated demolition exercise, obviously manipulated and coordinated by some high-powered public relations outfit in New York or London or Paris, and given a glossy veneer by enlisting the public support of Hollywood icons like Richard Gere and Mia Farrow.
The idea is to make sure that CNN and the BBC and the rest of international media give the Free Tibet movement the attention that the publicists are being paid to promote.
I say this because contiguous to Tibet to the east is the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, home to ethnic Uyghurs, who have been agitating for independence from China for decades – exploding bombs occasionally to remind the world that they are still fighting for a homeland – but no one pays any attention to them.
Click here to read full text.
Obviously there is no hope of turning Tibet into a battleground for national liberation, as Vietnam spectacularly was in the 1960s. The total Tibetan population, including women and children, adds up to less than the total Vietnamese killed, combatants and civilians, during their struggles against the French and later the Americans. There are no jungles in which guerillas can hide. There is no supply route to sympathetic sources of munitions anywhere.
The on-going agitation in the name of a Free Tibet, timed specifically to coincide with the run-up to the 29th Summer Olympic Games in Beijing, is clearly meant merely to embarrass the Chinese, by spoiling their coming-out party in August 2008.
This brouhaha has all the makings of an orchestrated demolition exercise, obviously manipulated and coordinated by some high-powered public relations outfit in New York or London or Paris, and given a glossy veneer by enlisting the public support of Hollywood icons like Richard Gere and Mia Farrow.
The idea is to make sure that CNN and the BBC and the rest of international media give the Free Tibet movement the attention that the publicists are being paid to promote.
I say this because contiguous to Tibet to the east is the Autonomous Region of Xinjiang, home to ethnic Uyghurs, who have been agitating for independence from China for decades – exploding bombs occasionally to remind the world that they are still fighting for a homeland – but no one pays any attention to them.
Click here to read full text.
The de facto Nationalization of JPMorgan Chase
By Dr. Mark W. Hendrickson
March 2008 may go down as a major turning point in U.S. financial history. The Federal Reserve crossed a Rubicon of sorts, lending tens of billions of dollars, not to a commercial bank, as has been its historical practice, but for the very first time to an investment bank.
For the record, commercial banks pay the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—FDIC—for deposit insurance, whereas investment banks do not, and yet the Fed suddenly made liquidity available to the latter. Commercial banks are legally allowed to use leverage to a maximum ratio of 13 dollars of debt to every dollar of equity, whereas investment banks—ironically subject to less regulatory oversight than commercial banks—can leverage their equity by a factor of 34.
Invoking an obscure, never-before-invoked legislative provision, the Fed made billions of dollars available to JPMorgan Chase to acquire another investment bank, the essentially insolvent Bear Stearns.
Click here to read full text.
For the record, commercial banks pay the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation—FDIC—for deposit insurance, whereas investment banks do not, and yet the Fed suddenly made liquidity available to the latter. Commercial banks are legally allowed to use leverage to a maximum ratio of 13 dollars of debt to every dollar of equity, whereas investment banks—ironically subject to less regulatory oversight than commercial banks—can leverage their equity by a factor of 34.
Invoking an obscure, never-before-invoked legislative provision, the Fed made billions of dollars available to JPMorgan Chase to acquire another investment bank, the essentially insolvent Bear Stearns.
Click here to read full text.
Robots seen doing work of 3.5 million people in Japan
ABS-CBN News Online
TOKYO - Robots could fill the jobs of 3.5 million people in graying Japan by 2025, a thinktank says, helping to avert worker shortages as the country's population shrinks.
Japan faces a 16 percent slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, the government estimates, raising worries about who will do the work in a country unused to, and unwilling to contemplate, large-scale immigration.
The thinktank, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, says robots could help fill the gaps, ranging from microsized capsules that detect lesions to high-tech vacuum cleaners.
Rather than each robot replacing one person, the foundation said in a report that robots could make time for people to focus on more important things.
Japan could save 2.1 trillion yen ($21 billion) of elderly insurance payments in 2025 by using robots that monitor the health of older people, so they don't have to rely on human nursing care, the foundation said in its report.
Caregivers would save more than an hour a day if robots helped look after children, older people and did some housework, it added. Robotic duties could include reading books out loud or helping bathe the elderly.
"Seniors are pushing back their retirement until they are 65 years old, day care centers are being built so that more women can work during the day, and there is a move to increase the quota of foreign laborers. But none of these can beat the shrinking workforce," said Takao Kobayashi, who worked on the study.
"Robots are important because they could help in some ways to alleviate such shortage of the labor force."
The current fertility rate is 1.3 babies per woman, far below the level needed to maintain the population, while the government estimates that 40 percent of the population will be over 65 by 2055, raising concerns about who will look after the greying population.
Kobayashi said changes was still needed for robots to make a big impact on the workforce.
"There's the expensive price tag, the functions of the robots still need to improve, and then there are the mindsets of people," he said.
"People need to have the will to use the robots."
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Welcome to the era of the new world -- a world of robots, androids, clones.
The only suitable helpers of man in his mission to properly steward all of God's creation on earth are fellow human beings who have body, soul, and spirit.
The Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)
If this drastic population decline of Japan is left uncorrected, whether they like it or not, their land will be inhabited by immigrants who will care for them in their dying moments and who will run their country in their place when they are gone.
Japan faces a 16 percent slide in the size of its workforce by 2030 while the number of elderly will mushroom, the government estimates, raising worries about who will do the work in a country unused to, and unwilling to contemplate, large-scale immigration.
The thinktank, the Machine Industry Memorial Foundation, says robots could help fill the gaps, ranging from microsized capsules that detect lesions to high-tech vacuum cleaners.
Rather than each robot replacing one person, the foundation said in a report that robots could make time for people to focus on more important things.
Japan could save 2.1 trillion yen ($21 billion) of elderly insurance payments in 2025 by using robots that monitor the health of older people, so they don't have to rely on human nursing care, the foundation said in its report.
Caregivers would save more than an hour a day if robots helped look after children, older people and did some housework, it added. Robotic duties could include reading books out loud or helping bathe the elderly.
"Seniors are pushing back their retirement until they are 65 years old, day care centers are being built so that more women can work during the day, and there is a move to increase the quota of foreign laborers. But none of these can beat the shrinking workforce," said Takao Kobayashi, who worked on the study.
"Robots are important because they could help in some ways to alleviate such shortage of the labor force."
The current fertility rate is 1.3 babies per woman, far below the level needed to maintain the population, while the government estimates that 40 percent of the population will be over 65 by 2055, raising concerns about who will look after the greying population.
Kobayashi said changes was still needed for robots to make a big impact on the workforce.
"There's the expensive price tag, the functions of the robots still need to improve, and then there are the mindsets of people," he said.
"People need to have the will to use the robots."
----------
Welcome to the era of the new world -- a world of robots, androids, clones.
The only suitable helpers of man in his mission to properly steward all of God's creation on earth are fellow human beings who have body, soul, and spirit.
The Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.” (Genesis 2:18)
If this drastic population decline of Japan is left uncorrected, whether they like it or not, their land will be inhabited by immigrants who will care for them in their dying moments and who will run their country in their place when they are gone.
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