Surviving Extinction

December 11, 2010

In a conversation (through comments) of Saving Siberian Tigers in Northeast China, I wrote that the tiger poachers, if caught, should be castrated and given a second chance at life then executed if they hunted tigers again.

The individual I was having this conversation with said that castration followed by a death sentences was a bit harsh and he or she was right. 

It is harsh.

However, my response, which follows, shows why such harshness may be necessary for humanity to survive its own extinction.

You are correct to sense my anger over the slaughter of animal species by humans.  It’s one thing for a species to go extinct due to environmental changes in the planet but for humans to slaughter senselessly as Americans did with the North American buffalo in the 19th century when expanding west toward the Pacific was wrong in so many ways.

What explains the 19th century people who sat in trains shooting through open windows at the buffalo to see how many they could kill?

The closest example I can think of is World War II in China when Japanese army officers would have beheading contests to see how many innocent Chinese noncombatant citizens could be beheaded in a given time span.

There are terms for people like this:  sociopaths, narcissists, self-centered, and “A” type personalities such as Hitler.   Humanity would be better off to rid individuals like this from the gene pool, which is why I have no problem with China’s death sentences and execution rate.

I’m reading a book, Living With Evolution or Dying Without It.  Before writing the book, the author, K. D. Koratsky spent most of his life studying all aspects of evolution—not just the evolution of species but culture, civilizations, religions, etc.

In one section, he pointed out that cultures that executed dangerous criminal types with behavior that threatened the stability of the culture such as what happened in 2008 with the global economic crises caused by Wall Street and US banks, tended to be stable and survive for much longer period of time than cultures that were too lenient on such people such as the US is today.

If the men depicted in the Inside Job documentary had been Chinese citizens and had caused the 2008 global financial crises from China instead of the United States, the odds are good that they would all have been tried and convicted in a Chinese court and already have been executed for the 64 trillion US dollars in global losses and millions of jobs that vanished.

Instead, in the US, there hasn’t been an investigation and most of the men who brought the world this crises are still working in the industry doing business the way they did before the 2008 financial crises hit.

In America, repeat child molesters are allowed to go free after prison sentences and are often chemically castrated yet have managed to molest again and then are sent back for another prison sentence with another parole in the future. 

This is insanity.

I was actually going easy on the tiger poachers when I suggested castration and a chance to live.  People like that should be tortured then executed to send a strong message.

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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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The White Lotus Mutation

April 24, 2010

Persecution of the White Lotus Society started during the Yuan Dynasty (Mongols 1271 – 1368). Due to this, the White Lotus Society changed from one of peace and tranquility and organized protests against the Mongol rulers, the first non-Han to rule China.

Since Yuan Imperial authorities distrusted the White Lotus Society, the Dynasty banned them, and the White Lotus went underground.  The White Lotus also started to predict that a messianic (Christ like) figure would come and save them from persecution.

White Lotus Rebellion

A White Lotus led revolution started in 1352 around Guangzhou. A Buddhist monk, Zhu Yuanzhang, joined the rebellion. Soon, he became the leader by forbidding his soldiers to pillage, in observance of White Lotus religious beliefs.

By 1355, the rebellion had spread through much of China. In 1356, Zhu Yuanzhang captured Nanjing and made it his capital. Then Confucian scholars issued pronouncements supporting Zhu’s claim of the Mandate of Heaven, the first step toward establishing a new dynasty.

Zhu Yuanzhang liberated China from the Mongols and became the founding Emperor of the Ming Dynasty (1368 – 1643).  

At this point, you may see the danger of allowing a religious cult like the White Lotus to have any power.

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The Millennium Cult

April 23, 2010

Religions, as Christians, Jews and Muslims practice them, have never played a “major” role in Chinese Culture and Politics. Even today, more than 800 million Chinese say they do not belong to any religion and the largest religion in China is Buddhism (about 10% of the population of China).  Even during Imperial times, most members of government did not belong to organized religions. The same is true today with the Communist government.

China’s struggle with pagan cults (like the White Lotus Society) reaches back almost a thousand years. The White Lotus Society appealed to poor Han Chinese peasants and more so to women, who found peace in worshiping the Eternal Mother. It was believed that this Eternal Mother would gather all her children at the millennium into one family.

The Eternal Mother

White Lotus Societies started out seeking tranquilly through a combination of Buddhism with some elements of Daoism (Taoism) and other native Chinese religions. Even in the 12th century, the Yuan Dynasty was distrustful of the Yellow Lotus Society, which didn’t fit comfortably with Confucianism and the five Great Relationships.

See A Visit from the Falun Gong

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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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Controlling Opinions

April 17, 2010

Have the Tea Baggers in the United States been learning from China, or is it the other way around?

“Another strategy is manipulation. In recent years, local and provincial officials have hired armies of low-paid commentators to monitor blogs and chat rooms for sensitive issues, then spin online comment in the government’s (China’s) favor.

“Mr. Xiao of Berkeley cites one example: Jiaozuo, a city southwest of Beijing, deployed 35 Internet commentators and 120 police officers to defuse online attacks on the local police after a traffic dispute. By flooding chat rooms with pro-police comments, the team turned the tone of online comment from negative to positive in just 20 minutes.” Source: New York Times

The Ku Klux Klan in 1926 - Is there a difference between them and today's American Tea Baggers

Isn’t this what Fox Network’s Glenn Beck, then Rush Limbaugh, who is heard on more than 600 radio stations, have been doing for years. Filling the airwaves with their opinions controlling what people hear and think. The American Tea Baggers are doing the same thing with the same results—behavior control.

Is America really different from China? See American Hypocrisy http://wp.me/pN4pY-6

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Hacking from China – Maybe

April 16, 2010

China-based hackers are at it again.  Since Google fled to Hong Kong to escape being attacked in mainland China, the virtual ghosts slipped into the Dalai Lama’s office and sucked up 1,500 e-mails. I wonder what they discovered.

Researchers at the University of Toronto traced the hackers to the city of Chengdu but didn’t blame China or demand answers as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton did when Google was hacked.  The Canadians said there is no evidence of involvement by the Chinese government.

Instead, the evidence points to a cyber-spy network that has hacked into government and private organization in 103 countries.

It is estimated that close to four hundred million Chinese are connected to the Internet.  In 2008, China required Internet cafes in Beijing to take the photographs of anyone using the Internet as a mean to control public use of cyberspace. Could that also mean discovering who is doing the hacking?

Cybercafe Police in China

Since the Chinese government does not like to be embarrassed, I’m sure they want to stop the amateurs who keep being traced back to China. Then again, some group in another country, like Germany, could be routing the signal through China.

See Google Recycled http://wp.me/pN4pY-2r

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