Contaminated Water and Soil is a Global Problem – Part 3/6

February 17, 2012

CANADA

The CIA Factbook says the total land area of Canada is 9,903,507 square km and  arable land covers 4.57% of that area with permanent crops on 0.65% of that land or 64,372 square km.

For the ‘Environment – curent issues,’ the CIA says, “air pollution and resulting acid rain severely affecting lakes and damaging forests; metal smelting, coal-burning utilities, and vehicle emissions impacting on agricultural and forest productivity; ocean waters becoming contaminated due to agricultural, industrial, mining, and forestry activities”


Tar Sands Oil Extraction – The Dirty Truth

“Once the bitumen from the Tar Sands has been mined out and Fort McMurray becomes the,” Detroit of the North” The Cree will be left with the effects of polluted rivers, Tailings Ponds, a naked landscape that was once Boreal forest and the steam injection operations that have polluted the groundwater, not to mention the health complications brought by all of this pollution.” Source: The Tar Sands video

In a piece titled. North America Shifts Pollution from Air to Land, the Environmental News Service says, “Factories, electric utilities, hazardous waste management facilities and coal mines in the United States and Canada generated almost 3.4 million metric tonnes of toxic chemical waste in 1999, shows an annual report from the Commission for Environmental Cooperation of North America. The wastes included 269,000 tonnes of chemicals known to cause cancer, birth defects or other reproductive problems…

“The five year trend shows a slight overall change in the total of toxic chemicals generated, but big changes in how those pollutants are handled. The North American manufacturing sector’s 25 percent (153,000 tonnes) reduction in releases to air was offset by a 25 percent (33,000 tonnes) increase in on site releases to land and a 35 percent (58,000 tonnes) increase in off site releases, mostly to landfills.”

EcoJustice says, “Right now Canada has no national standards for keeping our drinking water safe. Unlike other countries such as the United States and Australia that have adopted legally binding federal standards to protect every citizen’s right to safe drinking water, Canada continues to leave it up to each province and territory to set their own.

“The result? Canadians are subject to a patchwork of standards that range from excellent to abysmal. This means that how safe your water is depends on where you live.”

________________________

This comment was originally posted at Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 6 on January 31 at 23:34 by an anonymous reader called Bosshard.

Deceit upon deceit?

Dear author, what we find most annoying in the behavior of others are those same behaviors of which we are equally guilty. You appear to dislike: lies, half truths and manipulation.

Regarding water-

You have much to learn.  Boiling water is good for killing bacteria and the like but does nothing to stave off the ill effects of heavy metals like copper, lead and the like. According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.

When you made your comment, were you engaging in ““willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules?” when you state that boiling Chinese water is an anti-dote?

And an aside, do you personally drink the same water as the folks in Guizhou or Gansu, or do you purchase bottled water, a thing many of them cannot do?

As for your forgone conclusion that the need for water is greater than that of religion, I would disagree. Freedom of religion is paramount to many souls, just ask the Tibetans who will take their own lives in order to achieve such an end. If I were forced to give up my religion for water, I would not do so.

Please do not pretend to know the mind of the masses when yours may not be as open as you may believe.

This site has much information, but the author, like the Jesuits of old appears to have conjured up a China that he wishes us to believe in. The brutal reality of the communist regime  and havoc it brings to its people can best be understood by reading books like Empire of Lies, The Beijing Consensus, Poorly Made in China, The Party, and a host of others.

I will not return to this comment nor website but would like to offer this question:

If you have lived in China, and all of your readers, then you truly know the truth of this place. And if you truly know the truth of this place, then do you think it’s right to knowingly deceive the people about it?

God bless and keep all His children safe and informed.

Continued on February 16 at Contaminated Water and Soil is a Global Problem – Part 4 or return to Part 2

______________

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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Contaminated Water and Soil is a Global Problem – Part 1/6

February 15, 2012

In “Deceit upon Deceit?” an anonymous reader called Bosshard left a comment to another post, which I decided to delete and republish in this series after I did some research on the subject.

In fact, the entire comment will end each post in this series as a reminder of what Bosshard wrote, because I see his comment as an example of a double standard, which means China is judged in isolation while many other nations with the same problems/challenges [or worse as you will discover] are often ignored.

When I first read the comment and approved it for the other post, I came away feeling as if Bosshard had singled out China as a villain when in fact, heavy metal pollution of soil and water is a global problem and not exclusive to China.

When I said the Chinese could boil water to rid it of pathogens, I had not considered heavy metals, which I know may only be removed with special filters or by distilling the water.

In fact, drinking unsafe water with pathogens may lead to a miserable death much sooner than drinking water contaminated with heavy metals.  Survival Topics.com says, “According to the Wilderness Medical Society, water temperatures above 160° F (70° C) kill all pathogens within 30 minutes and above 185° F (85° C) within a few minutes. So in the time it takes for the water to reach the boiling point (212° F or 100° C) from 160° F (70° C), all pathogens will be killed, even at high altitude.”


safe drinking water is a global problem.

However, when rural Chinese are faced with the choice of drinking water that may be contaminated with both pathogens and heavy metals and all that is available is boiling, what choice do the Chinese have? As a backpacker that has hiked many times in California’s mountains, I have used both a ceramic filter to purify the water and boiled it.

Drinking water contaminated with pathogens may lead to a quick and miserable death much faster than drinking water contaminated with heavy metals.

Anyone interested in the Health Risks of Heavy Metals may want to click on this link and read about it. Then you may want to make sure to buy a filter designed to remove heavy metals from water or buy a countertop distiller.

If you watched the videos with this post and heard the comment that two billion people, about a third of humanity, drinks unsafe water, then Bosshard’s comment was disingenuous since he focused his criticism on China while ignoring the rest of the world.

Nation Master.com published an environmental ranking of freshwater pollution in sixty-nine countries. Number ONE was Israel with the most freshwater pollution at 27.07 tons/cubic km. China was listed as number FOURTEEN (3.78 tons/cubic km)  right behind Japan (4.27 tons/cubic km).

In fact, South Korea was number NINE with 5.68 tons/cubic km. The United States was number THIRTY with 1.14 tons/cubic km.

What does this mean? It means that thirteen countres had worse freshwater pollution than China did.

Maybe Bosshard didn’t know these facts, because he is only interested in what happens in China. I may never know the answer since Bosshard said, “I will not return to this comment nor website” after he dropped his misleading logical fallacy of a bomb in my lap. What he says may be true but how he said it may cause others to blame China for something that is a global problem and not unique to China.

In the rest of this series, there will be posts that focus on soil and water contamination in America, another on Canada, then China, India and last Russia—five of the world’s largest countries measured by land area and/or population.

________________________

This comment was originally posted at Discovering Intellectual Dishonesty – Part 6 on January 31 at 23:34 by an anonymous reader called Bosshard.

Deceit upon deceit?

Dear author, what we find most annoying in the behavior of others are those same behaviors of which we are equally guilty. You appear to dislike: lies, half truths and manipulation.

Regarding water-

You have much to learn.  Boiling water is good for killing bacteria and the like but does nothing to stave off the ill effects of heavy metals like copper, lead and the like. According to the BBC, at least 10% of all Chinese land is contaminated with heavy metals, which are not rendered inert by boiling. Thus, boiling water in China does no good when these elements are present.

When you made your comment, were you engaging in ““willful deception and a refusal to play by the rules?” when you state that boiling Chinese water is an anti-dote?

And an aside, do you personally drink the same water as the folks in Guizhou or Gansu, or do you purchase bottled water, a thing many of them cannot do?

As for your forgone conclusion that the need for water is greater than that of religion, I would disagree. Freedom of religion is paramount to many souls, just ask the Tibetans who will take their own lives in order to achieve such an end. If I were forced to give up my religion for water, I would not do so.

Please do not pretend to know the mind of the masses when yours may not be as open as you may believe.

This site has much information, but the author, like the Jesuits of old appears to have conjured up a China that he wishes us to believe in. The brutal reality of the communist regime  and havoc it brings to its people can best be understood by reading books like Empire of Lies, The Beijing Consensus, Poorly Made in China, The Party, and a host of others.

I will not return to this comment nor website but would like to offer this question:

If you have lived in China, and all of your readers, then you truly know the truth of this place. And if you truly know the truth of this place, then do you think it’s right to knowingly deceive the people about it?

God bless and keep all His children safe and informed.

Continued on February 14 at Contaminated Water and Soil is a Global Problem – Part 2

______________

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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White-Collar Crime

August 25, 2011

“White-collar crime,” is a phrase first used by a distinguished criminologist in the late 1930s to describe activates of the rich and powerful.  Edwin Sutherland defined “while-collar” crime as a crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his occupation.” Source: Connecticut Public Record Search

In addition, the FBI says, “White-collar crime … is now synonymous with the full range of frauds committed by business and government professionals.”

However, when the same sort of crime takes place in China, the Western media calls it “corruption” and the term “white-collar” is seldom if ever used.

If you read this blog regularly, you may remember that I recently wrote about this topic in The Danger of False Truths. A friend said, “the degree of corruption in China is simply breathtaking,” which was his knee-jerk reaction after reading about thousands of corrupt Chinese officials stealing more than $120 billion dollars from state-owned enterprises over a period of about 15 years.

To clarify a point, before the 1980s, the government in China owned all the factories.

Then China opened its doors to capitalism, and state-owned factories were told to either become profitable or go out of business and many did close their doors.


In China, convicted white-collar criminals go to jail for a long time or are executed. Watch this video to see what happens to most white-collar criminals in the US.

Today, the surviving state-owned factories are managed as if they are private sector businesses and the managers usually do not hold political posts in the government.  If these managers skimmed money from the profits of these government-owned businesses, that crime was no different from “white-collar” crimes in America.

Usually, when I read or hear a criticism of China, I research the country where the criticism originated, which is mostly from the US.

What I learned about white-collar corruption in the United States may shock you.

Security expert Troy Williams says that as many as 30 percent of the average company’s employees do steal, and another 60 percent will steal if given a motive and opportunity. Some estimates indicate that more than $600 billion is stolen annually (in the US), or, roughly $4,500 per employee. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, about a third of all business failures each year trace back to employee theft and other employee crime.

The FBI says employee theft is “the fastest growing crime in America”, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce estimates that 75% of all employees steal from their workplace and that most do it on a regular basis. Furthermore, the American Society of Employers estimates that 20% of every dollar earned by a U.S. company is subsequently lost to employee theft.

However, when the theft of a $120 billion in China over a period of fifteen years elicits “the degree of corruption in China is simply breathtaking“, what describes the degree of corruption in the United States after learning that over the same period of time white-collar corruption in the US adds up to $9 trillion dollars or 75 times what was reported stolen in China?

Discover The Facts about Gambling and Drug Use in China

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.

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Learning from Canada

July 10, 2010

The China Daily reported that China and Canada plan to double trade. “I have agreed with Prime Minister Harper that we should take active measures to make our countries’ two-way trade volume reach a target of $60 billion by 2015,” Hu Jintao said in Ottawa.

President Hu Jintao shaking hands with Prime Minister Harper

While the US pressures China to do something about North Korea, sells modern weapons to Taiwan and hosts the Dalai Lama at the White House, which all upset China, Canada works to build a relationship and earned approved destination status (ADS), so Chinese tourists may travel to Canada in organized, pre-sold tour groups.  Canada’s tourist industry hopes to see $100 million a year increasing tourist revenues and creating jobs.

Canada also signed several energy cooperative agreements involving oil sand, nuclear energy and gas. In addition, one agreement might mean more Canadian food products being sold to China, which creates more jobs for Canadians since so many were lost when the US Sub Prime Mortgage crises caused a global economic meltdown. 

Why can’t the US find constructive ways like these to do the same—shrink the trade imbalance with China and create jobs at home without irritating Beijing?

See Doing Business in China

_________________________

Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too. 

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Jobless in America and Angry at China

May 17, 2010

When the economy tanks and Americans lose jobs, I often read or hear that it’s China’s fault.  Timothy V, a typical China basher that I’ve been debating on Gather, is an example. Using China as a scapegoat for lost jobs in America appears to be a popular pastime.  After all, many in America need someone to blame for the hard times.

The truth is that more jobs have been lost to Mexico and Canada than to China. Citizen.org says that because of NAFTA, Americans lost 3 million manufacturing jobs to Mexico and Canada…

The Economic Policy Institute says that between 1997 and 2006, the trade deficit between the U.S. and China could have supported 2,166,000 jobs. This report doesn’t say that manufacturing jobs were lost in America to China. It means that when China joined the WTO (World Trade Organization), jobs were created for Chinese workers that might have gone to the United States. 

What happened after America’s economic bubble popped in 2008? CNN reported that 2009 was the worst year for jobs lost in the United States since 1945.  A sobering U.S. Labor Department jobs report showed the economy lost 1.9 million jobs in the year’s final four months.

Do not forget who caused the current global economic crises and those job losses. “Global Issues.org” describes the crisis that was caused by greed in America.

If you believe someone like Timothy V, those job losses should be blamed on China, but he is wrong. The BBC reported that Chinese migrant factory job losses mount. A Chinese government official, Ma Jian Tang, told reporters in January (2009) he thought roughly 5% of the country’s 130 million migrant workers had returned to their villages after losing jobs. (Note: I wonder why I couldn’t easily find this from an American news source.)

Out of work in China

In fact, a Chinese government survey revealed that 20 million migrant (factory) workers lost jobs, posing a risk for social instability. Some 15.3 percent of China’s 130 million migrant factory workers became jobless. Since the American induced global economic crisis in 2008, Beijing says about 70,000 factories nationwide have closed.

How can anyone in China be stealing jobs from Americans? Do I need to mention the millions of jobs lost to illegals that cross America’s Southern border and take hard, low-paying jobs that Americans don’t want? According to this report from NPR, that number is about 12 million.

When I was fifteen, I started my first job washing dishes in a department store coffee shop that served lunch and dinner and I worked nights and weekends there for three years while attending high school. There were several of us doing that job, and we were all American born teens. Before I joined the US Marines, I worked in a car wash, a McDonald’s and other jobs that most Americans won’t touch today. In Steinbeck’s novels, the farm workers he writes about were mostly poor Americans who went into the fields to plant and pick—not illegals from south of the border.

In fact, the jobs are there but too many Americans won’t consider them because they won’t pay for an American middle-class credit card driven, consumer lifestyle where people eat out more than they eat in and everyone “has” to have the American dream.  Can’t buy that with low wages.

This has happened before. After World War II, American jobs were lost to Japan and Germany.  Then after the Korean War, more jobs were lost to South Korea and Taiwan as they built factories.  In the 1950s, GM, Ford and Chrysler were building and selling about 90% of the cars and trucks globally.  Then Toyota and VW arrived in the United States. Who was stealing US jobs then?  It wasn’t China.

In reality, it’s all about finding a scapegoat to slaughter while the guilty quietly slip away.

Read about American Hypocrisy

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Lloyd Lofthouse is the author of the award winning novels My Splendid Concubine and Our Hart. He also Blogs at The Soulful Veteran and Crazy Normal.

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