Searching for Impurity – Part 2/3

May 22, 2012

Desperate to prove China’s enemies and critics right, I decided to search Google for a bigger list, which led me to Forbes.com where I learned that “all cities are positioned against New York, the base city with an index score of 100. For the Health and Sanitation Rankings, the index scores range from the worst on the list—Baku, Azerbaijan, with a score of 27.6—to the best on the list—Calgary, Canada, with a score of 131.7.”

Forbes used the Mercer Human Resource Consulting’s 2007 Health and Sanitation Rankings. As part of their 2007 Quality of Life Report, they ranked 215 cities worldwide based on levels of air pollution, waste management, water potability, hospital services, medical supplies and the presence of infectious disease.

In last place, number 25, was Port Harcourt in Nigeria. I then crawled through the list one page at a time to find cities in China and there were none. If you don’t believe me, see for yourself and click on the Forbes link and take a trip through the world’s 25 dirtiest cities in pictures.

Knowing China’s critics and bashers would be angry and disappointed and probably call me stupid, a liar and a China lover, I dug deeper struggling to find polluted cities in China that made the list—any valid list.

In September 2011, The Guardian in the UK reported, “Cities in Iran, India, Pakistan and Mongolia are among the worst on the planet for air pollution, while those in the US and Canada are among the best.”

China wasn’t mentioned. I was crushed.

Still desperate to find dirt and soot on China to satisfy its critics and enemies so they could bash her more, I turned to Worst Polluted.org, which used data collected over a three-year period from thousands of toxic hotspots. I then discovered that this site only listed the world’s top ten toxic pollution problems for 2011—not the worst cities. However, I downloaded the seventy-six page pdf document anyway and searched for any mention of pollution in “China”.

It looked like I may have hit pay dirt, or should I say toxic pollution, and started to copy and paste every sentence on those 76 pages that mentioned China.

Continued on May 20, 2012 in Searching for Impurity – Part 3 or return to Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Searching for Impurity – Part 1/3

May 21, 2012

My goal with this post was to prove China’s critics and enemies were correct when they claim China is a horrible place to live and due to pollution—the worst country in the world.

I failed. Sorry guys. I should have only focused on air pollution and the rivers where most of China’s industries are located and stayed away from the global comparison lists.

After having read so much about “horrible” China due to its pollution, I decided to see how many of its cities made the top ten lists and was shocked to discover none made the list in 2011.

Time Magazine has a Blog called Ecocentric, and it is about all things green. Here’s that list of the world’s top-ten most polluted cities for 2011.

1. Ahwaz, Iran

2. Ulan Bator, Mongolia

3. Sanadaj, Iran

4. Ludhiana, India

5. Quetta, Pakistan

6. Kermanshah, Iran

7. Peshawar, Pakistan

8. Gaberone, Botswana

9. Yasouj, Iran

10. Kanpor, India

Did you see China on that list?  You have no idea how disappointed I was.

Ecocentric says that all of these cities have one thing in common—they are fairly poor except for number eight in Botswana, which is considered a middle income country/city. “Residents often burn heavy, polluting fuel for heat and energy—including firewood or even dung, which can produce heavy, thick smoke. Add in old, diesel-powered cars that belch black carbon and growing population density in urban slums—plus weather conditions like Ulan Bator’s extreme cold, which worsens air pollution – and you have an ugly mess.”

But what about China? After all, there is so much attention focused on China by Western Blogs and the media about China’s pollution problems, while often ignoring the same problems in the rest of the world, one would think that with more than 800 million rural Chinese living in near poverty using coal to cook and heat their homes, the air would be a thick, black pea soup one could swim in let alone breathe.

Then I visited the top  ten list at Mibazzar.com and discovered that two cities in China’s made that list: I was overjoyed, and then I saw that the date for that list was 2007. Darn! Failed again!

Those two cities that made the list in 2007 were Linfen, China (3,000,000 people affected) and Tianying China (140,000 people affected). Wow, that wasn’t even one percent of China’s population.

Two of the cities on Mibazzar’s 2007 list were in India, one in Zambia, one in Peru, one Azerbeijan, Chernobyl in the Ukraine, and Norilsk in Russia.

Continued on May 19, 2012 in Searching for Impurity – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Illusion of Freedom – Part 4/4

May 10, 2012

The McCarthy era started in the late 1940s and lasted to the late 1950s.

It is difficult to estimate the number of victims of McCarthyism. The number imprisoned is in the hundreds, and some ten or twelve thousand lost their jobs. In many cases simply being subpoenaed by HUAC or one of the other committees was sufficient cause to be fired. Many of those who were imprisoned, lost their jobs or were questioned by committees did in fact have a past or present connection of some kind with the Communist Party.

However, for the vast majority, both the potential for them to do harm to the nation and the nature of their communist affiliation were tenuous. Suspected homosexuality was also a common cause for being targeted by McCarthyism. The hunt for ‘sexual perverts’, who were presumed to be subversive by nature, resulted in thousands being harassed and denied employment.


HBO Documentary of Freedom of Speech in five parts – Part 4

In fact, in 1954, a Gallup poll found that 50% of the American public supported McCarthy, while only 29% had an unfavorable opinion of the senator. In addition, Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court, said that if the US Bill of Rights had been put to a vote it probably would have been defeated.

McCarthy bullied, threatened and abused witnesses while he accused them of Communist sympathies. However, in the late 1950s, public opinion turned against McCarthy.  He was forced out of public life and died several years later an alcoholic.

Then there is sedition—another restriction on so-called freedom of speech in the US.

In July 1798, Congress passed and the President signed, the Sedition Act – a bill that made it a crime to speak or write anything against the government. A person charged under the Sedition Act was subject to a maximum of two years in prison and a $2,000 fine. The 1798 Sedition Act would be repealed in 1801. However, after the US entered World War I, President Woodrow Wilson signed into federal law the Sedition Act of 1918.  The law made it illegal to speak out against the government, the war or to discourage anyone from enlisting in the military.

By the time the law was repealed in 1920, more than 2,000 people had been prosecuted.


HBO Documentary of Freedom of Speech in five parts – Part 5

According to Cornell University Law School, today, federal law says, “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

What do you consider freedom and does it really exist?

Return to  The Illusion of Freedom – Part 3 or start with Part 1

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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The Illusion of Freedom – Part 2/4

May 8, 2012

Years ago, I was having dinner in a restaurant in Westwood, California and witnessed a grimy homeless person across the street rummaging in a trash can. He found a Styrofoam container full of food and was so happy to have something to eat that he found a shady spot under a tree and rolled around on some cool grass before he started eating the found food. Freedom to him may have been having no job, not paying taxes, and not having to worry about a mortgage or rent. I’ve met homeless people that claim this is the reason they stay homeless—for the abstract sense of freedom it brings.

The last element that led me to write this series of posts was an e-mail a friend sent with a link to Carolina Journal Online.com, which reported that “State Threatens to Shut Down Nutrition Blogger.”

It seems that Steve Cooksey, an American citizen, took advantage of what he believed were his freedom of speech rights in North Carolina and blogged about beating diabetes through diet and exercise.

However, now he may face up to 120 days in jail, because in North Carolina, it is a misdemeanor to “practice dietetics or nutrition” without a license. According to the law, “practicing” nutrition includes “assessing the nutritional needs of individuals and groups” and “providing nutrition counseling,” which it seems Cooksey may have done with his Blog.

In addition, it is illegal to use the word “cure” in the United States unless the F.D.A. gives you permission.


HBO Documentary of Freedom of Speech in five parts – Part 2

“Just talking about curing an illness is literally a criminal offense, because only the F.D.A. can grant permission to use the word ‘cure’, since this word supposedly constitutes making a “medical claim”, and F.D.A. contends that anything producing a positive health effect is automatically a (“unapproved”) drug, under their regulation. This is not a hypothetical risk either. There are doctors and laymen in prison now for curing diseases.” Source: The Health Wyze Report

Freedom Forum.org asks and the answers, Does the (US) First Amendment mean anyone can say anything at any time and the answer is “NO” because the US Supreme Court rejected an interpretation of speech without limits.

Over the years, the courts decided that a few other public interests—for example, national security, justice or personal safety—override freedom of speech.

In fact, the US First Amendment does not protect statements that are uttered to provoke violence or incite illegal action, and jurisdictions may write statutes to punish verbal acts if the statutes are “carefully drawn so as not unduly to impair liberty of expression”.

If the US can restrict freedom of speech in the national interest, why can’t China? When China locks up someone, such as Chen Guangcheng, a blind Chinese Activist, China’s government may feel that what he is saying publicly might provoke violence or incite illegal actions.

To learn more about Chen Guangcheng and the alleged accusations made against China in his case, see NPR’s Blind Chinese Activist Reported Under U.S. Protection.

What do you consider freedom and does it really exist?

Continued on May 9, 2012 in  The Illusion of Freedom – Part 3 or return to Part 1

______________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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Posted by Lloyd Lofthouse

The Illusion of Freedom – Part 1/4

May 7, 2012

Three things happened leading to this series of posts examining what freedom means to different people.

First, I was reading Return to Cambodia” in the February 2012 issue of “Travel + Leisure” magazine. One paragraph gave me cause for thought.  Thomas Beller, a free lance journalist, said, “Phnom Penh, once a lawless haven for adventurers, layabouts, and hedonists of all stripes for whom freedom was just another word for no real law enforcement is now praised in similar terms but for different reasons by a new class of small-business owners who see the place as an opportunity.”

Beller returned to Cambodia recently after a 19 year absence and says that the country experienced an average of nearly 10% annual growth until 2009 leading to an improved economic environment due to Hun Sen, “the despotic prime minister”.  It’s worth reading the “Travel + Leisure” piece to see how a “despotic” leader improved the quality of life for millions of his people.

In case you do not know, “despotic” means: a ruler with absolute power; a person who wields power oppressively; a tyrant.

Just how important is “freedom of speech” anyway, which may be the reason Hun Sen is considered a despotic leader — “The United Nations Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Cambodia Surya Subedi wrapped up his fifth visit to Cambodia on Friday expressing concern about the lack of progress on land rights and freedom of speech in the country.” Source: Voice of America


HBO Documentary of Freedom of Speech in five parts – Part 1

 Yet, according to Beller’s report, the quality of life in Cambodia has improved dramatically in the last nineteen years. Maybe this improvement came about because of restrictions on freedom of speech that might stir up the emotions of the population/mob, which might lead to unrest, an economic downturn and suffering such as starvation and death.

Of course, to many that don’t spend much time thinking about it, it is more important to have freedom of speech and freedom to join any religion/cult one wants to join than starving or living in fear of criminals that take advantage of cultures that allow too much freedom that may lead to anarchy and chaos.

Next, a comment appeared in this site from Jo Ann—she said, “I admire this person wanting to see the world but I am an American and I believe in this country more than a country that doesn’t allow too many freedoms.”

If you think about it, there are only two freedoms that are restricted in China that may lead to jail time: one is freedom of public political speech/expression criticizing China’s government and the restrictions of religious choice. Other than that, the Chinese, if they have the money, may enjoy life as much as any American—maybe even more so.

Then a friend sent me an e-mail with a link to Carolina Journal Online.com, which reported that “State Threatens to Shut Down Nutrition Blogger.”

In this series of posts, I’m going to focus on freedom of expression/speech.  Later, I’ll touch base about the freedom of religion.

What do you consider freedom and does it really exist?

Continued on May 8, 2012  in The Illusion of Freedom – Part 2

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of The Concubine Saga. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. This is the love story Sir Robert Hart did not want the world to discover.

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