Normally, I wouldn't be upset with Sharon Stone. She's got a long history of being on PETA's bad side, which usually put her on my good side. While I'm not a fan of wearing fur (it's too hot for my tastes), Sharon Stone truly is - and PETA has been verbal against her and her outfits many times. She even wore a brooch that contained a RAT FOOT, which those animal-rights hippies were severely opposed to.
But alas, nobody is perfect, and Sharon Stone decided to voice her opinion regarding the recent earthquake in China - and is pretty much accusing them of deserving it through karma because of their treatment of Tibet.
First off, I don't think we should ever pay attention to the opinions of actors/actresses. They're paid to look pretty and do/say what they're told through the use of scripts and directors. Just like the notion of a "trophy wife" whose job is to shut up and look pretty, I wouldn't want to trust the opinion of someone who's just supposed to look good - depending on the opinion's relevance. If the person were famous for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics, I'd trust their opinion on physics-related matters; likewise I WOULD trust an actress's opinion on movie-business affairs or getting good representation.
When it comes to earthquakes, politics and international affairs, though? Shut the hell up and look pretty, damn it!
Secondly, if you're Earl Hickey or his brother Randy (AKA "fictional characters on a TV show"), I can understand you attributing things to karma. Unfortunately, you're NOT those people, which means you don't attribute EVERYTHING to karma and pick and choose what is "karma" and what isn't based on your own selfish opinions. I know for a fact that China experienced major earthquakes in 1976, 1975, 1974, 1970, 1969, 1933, 1932, 1927 and 1556 was one of their worst if you're judging by the death toll.
Which is more likely? That some supernatural force judged a country and magically caused this wrath to befall them - or that China is part of the Pacific Rim and is located on top of numerous fault lines where earthquakes naturally occur over time and it occurred again a few weeks ago?
Thirdly, if you were really crazy enough to take the "China is bad and deserved it" approach, why would you choose this earthquake to be the pinnacle point of karmic justice? I mean, China's been repressing Tibet for quite some time. Wouldn't you really want to attribute this disaster to the more recent and more-widely-publicized LEAD PAINT and TAINTED PRODUCT fiascos? I'm just saying, if you're going to argue that being mean to other people yields a natural disaster, it's hard to back that up with further evidence. I don't recall any natural disasters occurring during Hitler-era Germany or even in genocide-filled African/Middle-Eastern countries (unless you consider "living in those countries" as disaster enough, in which case I'm sure there were many countries in those regions NOT performing genocide).
Far worse things have been committed to deserve karmic punishment. I've also never heard of GOOD karma befalling countries, whether they deserved it or not.
So what was China's response to this accusation of being quake-worthy in the eyes of karma?
The founder of one of China's biggest cinema chains said that his company will no longer show Sharon Stone's movies.
While I'm not entirely sure that I agree that this is really much of a retaliation in the first place, it's a symbolic gesture that at least is backed up by an idea that I CAN agree with:
Ng See-Yuen, founder of the UME Cineplex chain and the chairman of the Federation of Hong Kong Filmmakers, called Stone's comments "inappropriate," adding that actors should not bring personal politics to comments about a natural disaster that has left five million Chinese homeless, according to the Reporter.
That's kind of what I've been saying all along, but with an added oomph at the end. Actors aren't supposed to be spouting their opinions about things - especially about things that have had such a devastating effect on mostly-innocent people. You can keep your own opinions about China's governmental policies regarding the Tibet region and people, but saying that some 2-year-old Chinese girl deserved to have her home and worldly possessions destroyed by a natural disaster because she happens to live in a country with a not-perfect record of civil rights?
That is certainly "inappropriate" and it's absurd to even mention it in the first place.
Actors and actresses should just shut up and look pretty because that's what we pay them to do.
Do you agree with Ng that Sharon's comment was inappropriate? Do you agree with Sharon that Ng's people randomly deserved a natural disaster because their government does some naughty things? Or do you just agree with me that you should trust an entertainer's political statements as much as the advice of a blind optometrist?
(The article mentioned here)
Read more!
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Monday, June 02, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Tibetans in the Midwest?
I'm sure you already know how much I am against protesters. It's a running theme in this blog of mine. And apparently yesterday there was a protest here in Chicago led by "Tibetans of the Midwest" that consisted of a short march and then a bunch of yelling outside the Chinese consulate and eventually some minor damage was done.
In my usual state of mind, I am at an impasse regarding the whole China-Tibet situation. On the one hand, it's mean to just storm in, take over land and beat down any nails that try sticking up with a hard military hammer. On the other hand, that's just how things are done and you can't eradicate "mean" from the world. I mean, the only way to stop this situation (and I mean REALLY stop it) is war. Tibet obviously can't do anything against China, both for size/strength reasons as well as the whole pacifist government-in-exile thing. It would need to rely on a country big enough to "liberate" it from China's hands. Which would probably be America, since we're the country everyone looks to for barging into smaller countries and doing what they can't do for themselves. Of course, the largest group in favor of freeing Tibet is the hippie population, which is the least likely to pick up a gun and do something about it.
I'm a little sad that empires are kind of gone. While I realize it was a less peaceful time in history, the notion of living in a country that kicks other country's asses and then takes over sounds keen. Of course, living in a country that sucks and gets trampled on and absorbed into another country wouldn't be great, but if they were good enough to kick our asses, they must be doing SOMETHING right and now that we're part of it, maybe we can get in on the action. Like some better healthcare to pay for the bayonet wound created while we got taken over by a country with better healthcare.
I still think that the solution to the illegal immigration problem in America is just storming in and taking over Mexico. They should just let us, really. Then as part of America, we'd be responsible for taking care of it since their numbers would officially reflect ours. We could move in and industrialize and cultivate and throw some Starbucks locations in there to generate some economic flow. Plus, maybe some of these illegals would move back to be with their families since we'd be bringing jobs THERE instead of having them come HERE to STEAL our jobs.
Anyway, back to Tibet and this insane protest. I call it insane because it's not going to do anything. Protests just don't do anything. The farther away the situation is that you're protesting and the larger the situation is, the less you're going to be able to affect anything and the more you look like idiots for trying. And this situation is across the freakin' Pacific Ocean. I just don't understand what they're expecting to accomplish other than looking like idiots.
Do they think that there's some mentally-challenged newbie who is friends with the Chinese military leader and is working his first day at this consulate after living in a cave for 60 years? He'd see 600 protesters with big signs chanting "Free Tibet" and flip out when a rock goes through the window and he says "OH NO THEY'RE SERIOUS! AND THEIR SIGNS ARE SO SUCCINCT! WHAT A GREAT ARGUMENT! THEY'RE RIGHT!" and calls up his buddy in charge of the entire Chinese military and tells him that there's a crushable number of protesters in another country who are armed with rocks and not afraid to use only one of them so we'd better hand Tibet back over to the Dalai Lama and withdraw the troops??
The only thing dumber than a group of protesters might be the individual protesters themselves.
Demonstrator Tenzin Palkyi, 21, a student at the University of Minnesota on spring break, carried a sign with gruesome pictures of Tibetans she said had been murdered by the Chinese government because of their opposition to Chinese rule.
Seriously, if your idea of a rockin' Spring Break is displaying tableaus of murdered bodies while screaming and marching - you obviously don't eat lunch at the popular kids' table.
One protester, who did not want to be named, said many people knew nothing about Tibet other than the Dalai Lama, which he said was not what the march was about. "It's not about just China or Tibet, it's about basic human rights."
I'm hoping that he didn't want to be named because he knew the possible consequences of being dumb enough to march with the "Tibetans of the Midwest" in a protest of China's occupation of Tibet and murdering Tibetans - and then saying the protest isn't just about China or Tibet.
You can't march in that kind of protest with signs saying "FREE TIBET" and then say it's not about Tibet - it's about "human rights".
That's like throwing a temper tantrum over Denny's not giving you a free Grand Slam breakfast meal and then claiming "This isn't about me getting free food - it's about ending world hunger."
If you can understand the logic there, you're hopefully smart enough to know that protesting is useless, or if you have to be an idiot and protest, at least you'll be smart enough to not say insanely-stupid things about why you're protesting.
And sometimes, that's the least I can hope for. So when ARE we going to take over Mexico, anyway?
(An article about the protest)
Read more!
In my usual state of mind, I am at an impasse regarding the whole China-Tibet situation. On the one hand, it's mean to just storm in, take over land and beat down any nails that try sticking up with a hard military hammer. On the other hand, that's just how things are done and you can't eradicate "mean" from the world. I mean, the only way to stop this situation (and I mean REALLY stop it) is war. Tibet obviously can't do anything against China, both for size/strength reasons as well as the whole pacifist government-in-exile thing. It would need to rely on a country big enough to "liberate" it from China's hands. Which would probably be America, since we're the country everyone looks to for barging into smaller countries and doing what they can't do for themselves. Of course, the largest group in favor of freeing Tibet is the hippie population, which is the least likely to pick up a gun and do something about it.
I'm a little sad that empires are kind of gone. While I realize it was a less peaceful time in history, the notion of living in a country that kicks other country's asses and then takes over sounds keen. Of course, living in a country that sucks and gets trampled on and absorbed into another country wouldn't be great, but if they were good enough to kick our asses, they must be doing SOMETHING right and now that we're part of it, maybe we can get in on the action. Like some better healthcare to pay for the bayonet wound created while we got taken over by a country with better healthcare.
I still think that the solution to the illegal immigration problem in America is just storming in and taking over Mexico. They should just let us, really. Then as part of America, we'd be responsible for taking care of it since their numbers would officially reflect ours. We could move in and industrialize and cultivate and throw some Starbucks locations in there to generate some economic flow. Plus, maybe some of these illegals would move back to be with their families since we'd be bringing jobs THERE instead of having them come HERE to STEAL our jobs.
Anyway, back to Tibet and this insane protest. I call it insane because it's not going to do anything. Protests just don't do anything. The farther away the situation is that you're protesting and the larger the situation is, the less you're going to be able to affect anything and the more you look like idiots for trying. And this situation is across the freakin' Pacific Ocean. I just don't understand what they're expecting to accomplish other than looking like idiots.
Do they think that there's some mentally-challenged newbie who is friends with the Chinese military leader and is working his first day at this consulate after living in a cave for 60 years? He'd see 600 protesters with big signs chanting "Free Tibet" and flip out when a rock goes through the window and he says "OH NO THEY'RE SERIOUS! AND THEIR SIGNS ARE SO SUCCINCT! WHAT A GREAT ARGUMENT! THEY'RE RIGHT!" and calls up his buddy in charge of the entire Chinese military and tells him that there's a crushable number of protesters in another country who are armed with rocks and not afraid to use only one of them so we'd better hand Tibet back over to the Dalai Lama and withdraw the troops??
The only thing dumber than a group of protesters might be the individual protesters themselves.
Demonstrator Tenzin Palkyi, 21, a student at the University of Minnesota on spring break, carried a sign with gruesome pictures of Tibetans she said had been murdered by the Chinese government because of their opposition to Chinese rule.
Seriously, if your idea of a rockin' Spring Break is displaying tableaus of murdered bodies while screaming and marching - you obviously don't eat lunch at the popular kids' table.
One protester, who did not want to be named, said many people knew nothing about Tibet other than the Dalai Lama, which he said was not what the march was about. "It's not about just China or Tibet, it's about basic human rights."
I'm hoping that he didn't want to be named because he knew the possible consequences of being dumb enough to march with the "Tibetans of the Midwest" in a protest of China's occupation of Tibet and murdering Tibetans - and then saying the protest isn't just about China or Tibet.
You can't march in that kind of protest with signs saying "FREE TIBET" and then say it's not about Tibet - it's about "human rights".
That's like throwing a temper tantrum over Denny's not giving you a free Grand Slam breakfast meal and then claiming "This isn't about me getting free food - it's about ending world hunger."
If you can understand the logic there, you're hopefully smart enough to know that protesting is useless, or if you have to be an idiot and protest, at least you'll be smart enough to not say insanely-stupid things about why you're protesting.
And sometimes, that's the least I can hope for. So when ARE we going to take over Mexico, anyway?
(An article about the protest)
Read more!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Rats: A New Delicacy?
Gotta hand it to the Chinese. They're really taking advantage of the saying about every cloud having a silver lining. I'm sure we can all recall the famous line from the Simpsons (because that's more likely than knowing the fact without The Simpsons as guidance) that "the Chinese use the same word for 'crisis' as they do for 'opportunity'." All that aside, it really boils down to another age-old adage:
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Well, the lemons being handed to the Chinese all started when a Hunan lake flooded, possibly as a result of the Three Gorges Dam project. This flooding displaced the home of a few billion rats, who are now plaguing areas in central China. And staying as true as possible to that adage, they're making lemonade - by selling the rats as a delicacy to Guangdong restaurants in the southern part of the country.
"Recently there have been a lot of rats ... Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good," the China News Service quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province.
Some vendors had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said today.
"The buyers offered 6 yuan for a kilo, but as to where they will sell the rats, they would not say," the newspaper quoted a local resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats live.
Yes, I suppose that's the REAL catch of it all - the rats they're catching have to be caught alive. No, not for some purpose of cooking them while they're still alive, but I guess it's more along the lines of "the fresher the better" - akin to giant lobster tanks in fancy restaurants so the customer knows his dinner delight wasn't made from frozen meat or something like that.
Maybe they've got nice big cages writhing with rats in these Guangzhou restaurants?
As for the 6 yuan for a kilogram of rats (about $0.79 in USD), the villagers have no problem with that price, since they claim it's easy to catch up to 150 kilos of rats in a night. There's just that many of them, destroying 1.6 million hectares of crops and possibly spreading disease. And the consumer end of the deal? The restaurants have been advertising "rat banquets" and charging the inflated price of 136 yuan per kilogram of tasty rat meat (almost $18) to the people of Guangdong.
And for those who can't get to a restaurant to enjoy this delicacy? Oh, the Chinese media has reported that citizens have posted several recipes for rat on the internet.
I hope a rat version of "lemonade" is one of those recipes...
The delicious original article Read more!
When life hands you lemons, make lemonade.
Well, the lemons being handed to the Chinese all started when a Hunan lake flooded, possibly as a result of the Three Gorges Dam project. This flooding displaced the home of a few billion rats, who are now plaguing areas in central China. And staying as true as possible to that adage, they're making lemonade - by selling the rats as a delicacy to Guangdong restaurants in the southern part of the country.
"Recently there have been a lot of rats ... Guangzhou people are rich and like to eat exotic things, so business is very good," the China News Service quoted a vendor as saying, referring to the capital of Guangdong province.
Some vendors had asked people from a village in Hunan province, near Dongting Lake, to sell them live rats, the Beijing News said today.
"The buyers offered 6 yuan for a kilo, but as to where they will sell the rats, they would not say," the newspaper quoted a local resident as saying, adding that villagers had to catch the rats live.
Yes, I suppose that's the REAL catch of it all - the rats they're catching have to be caught alive. No, not for some purpose of cooking them while they're still alive, but I guess it's more along the lines of "the fresher the better" - akin to giant lobster tanks in fancy restaurants so the customer knows his dinner delight wasn't made from frozen meat or something like that.
Maybe they've got nice big cages writhing with rats in these Guangzhou restaurants?
As for the 6 yuan for a kilogram of rats (about $0.79 in USD), the villagers have no problem with that price, since they claim it's easy to catch up to 150 kilos of rats in a night. There's just that many of them, destroying 1.6 million hectares of crops and possibly spreading disease. And the consumer end of the deal? The restaurants have been advertising "rat banquets" and charging the inflated price of 136 yuan per kilogram of tasty rat meat (almost $18) to the people of Guangdong.
And for those who can't get to a restaurant to enjoy this delicacy? Oh, the Chinese media has reported that citizens have posted several recipes for rat on the internet.
I hope a rat version of "lemonade" is one of those recipes...
The delicious original article Read more!
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