a shameful waste of madhouse time

ponderings of a pococurante

a shameful waste of madhouse time header image 4

Journalism needs more explanations and less “information”

August 16th, 2008 · No Comments

PressThink: National Explainer: A Job for Journalists on the Demand Side of News
I noticed something in the weeks after I first listened to “The Giant Pool of Money.” I became a customer for ongoing news about the mortgage mess and the credit crisis that developed from it. (How one caused the other was explained in [...]

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Tags: America · China · film photography media

China: we only hear what we want to hear

August 14th, 2008 · No Comments

美国侨报:世界应无恙,当惊中国殊——百度新闻搜索 via kwout

I was looking at this Baidu news page, scanning through some of the headlines. You notice that most of them are about how impressed the world is with the Olympics, with some obligatory fellow-feeling from the overseas Chinese newspapers. You might as well go ahead and call this the “Beijing Consensus”—though that term [...]

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Tags: China

BBC Chinese on the “harmoniousness” of the Olympics

August 12th, 2008 · No Comments

BBC 中文网 | 中国报道 | 奥运外围:当“和谐”被重复千遍 via kwout

BBC Chinese journalist Meng Ke tells it like it is in the above article. He roasts some of the sacred cows of Olympics propaganda, like the “100 years dream of the Chinese people” (he says: did Chinese people really care about having the Olympics way back in 1908?)as [...]

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Tags: China

China Media Say Ten Multinational Corporations Fail On CSR

August 7th, 2008 · No Comments

This is from the China CSR newsletter:
August 5, 2008
Local sources report that according to a committee organized by Chinese media, ten multinational corporations have been exposed for lack of corporate social responsibility in China.
According to Sina.com, the ten companies are Sanyo, Michelin, P&G, Carlsberg, Starbucks, LG, Federal Express, Honda, Lucent, and Jinmailang.
The committee used the [...]

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Tags: China

Mr. Obama goes to Europe (my thoughts)

July 25th, 2008 · No Comments

I like the title of the IHT article: Obama get’s Europe’s ear, pleasing crowds without specifics. Because, this is exactly what happens with Obama. I know that politicians have to do this whole song and dance–they have to talk about our shared ideals, about WWII, about fighting fascism and communism together, and the new challenges [...]

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Tags: America · Middle East

Notice to Chinese petitioners: if you fight the law, the law will win.

July 20th, 2008 · No Comments

徐贲:善待底层民情_网易新闻中心 via kwout

These two pictures, from Hunan province, have been making the rounds on the internet because of what it says on the banners: the first one says “谁不依法信访就打击谁” which means “whoever unlawfully petitions the government will be attacked” while the second one says “违法上访,坐牢罚款”, which means “illegal petitions will be result in jail sentences [...]

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Tags: China

Photography books capture Wenchuan earthquake and aftermath

July 15th, 2008 · No Comments

I saw this book when i was in the Xingguang Photographic Equipment Center on Luban Lu, in one of the bookstores on the third floor. The book is called 震动中国(百名摄影记者震区全记录 and cost 80 rmb, but I felt cheap at the moment, so didn’t end up buying it. I think it’s a good book, but it’s [...]

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Tags: China

The troubles in Weng’an and Jiang Jie He village: gangs, dams, mines, gambling, death

July 14th, 2008 · No Comments

I was reading Southern Weekend’s investigation into the Weng’an region: the common wisdom now is that the problems didn’t begin or end with the June 28 incident, but that the latter was merely what happened when long simmering problems reached the boiling point. This report about a place called Jiang Jie He Village (瓮安县龙塘乡江界河村), where [...]

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Tags: China · violence

Only in China do you do autopsies in front of the house of the deceased…

July 6th, 2008 · No Comments

Li Shufen, the girl whose mysterious and contested death was the cause of the Weng’an incident of June 28, has had yet another autopsy performed on her corpse, this time in front of her house where naturally, as is the case in China, it became a spectator event with people from around the village coming [...]

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Tags: Uncategorized

Getting rid of the sand in the Yellow River (some pictures)

June 30th, 2008 · No Comments

Original article about Yellow River here.

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Tags: China