As Trump is mysteriously quiet about Russia, Trudeau is silent on China. It is very curious why the two of North America’s leaders are so silent. Is there no leader with the balls to speak about the blatantness of China? China’s increasingly aggressive behaviour includes:
Forced technological transfer to Chinese companies, if you wish to sell product in China
Claiming the South China Sea and all islands as Chinese, with historical reasoning.
blatant human rights abuses against not only their own citizens, but also those of Taiwan and Hong Kong
Tolerance of an increasingly nuclear North Korea
At least the US has representatives, though not Trump, that somewhat says censures China’s aggressive attitude to internationalization.
It is no big news that for the majority of the 99% of regular people the last 10 years in North America has been economically tough. Our young have a difficult time finding stable employment. In fact finding stable work has been a challenge for quite a long time. Products from China undercut our domestic manufacturers who have largely gone out of business. Our kids will not have a better life than us. It is clear that larger forces than the Canadian environment are at play here.
Want you do, to go to a concert, but just after the supposed start time for ticket sales, all the tickets are gone. You, again, have lucked out. Minutes later these tickets are all available on reseller sites for double the price. It really does sound like a scam. While the US just enacted a federal law, here in Ontario we are just starting the investigation phase. I hope that we can adopt something as strong as the US in order to keep an even keel with bot technology and online shopping safe.
Not new, global warming, as a topic for conversation. Oh no. But I fear that it may be unfair for First World countries to point the finger at developing countries around the world and tell them to reduce emissions. They have a valid point. Let us look at CO2 emissions per capita instead.
Talk about a huge inequality. Even in the top 10 countries for CO2 emissions per capita, the bottom 2, Poland and the UK, use less than half of the top 4 polluters.
Free, the Internet should be, freedom to express oneself, is the standard thinking of most people. No one should be able to censor content. All should be able to read whatever they wish, whatever they can find. China, with their “Great Firewall of China”, does censor content for their 1.4B citizens, and is widely condemned for their radical actions. I am rethinking censorship of the Internet. In light of the rise of ISIS and other terrorist organizations maybe we should consider censorship for certain situations.
Since installing an over the air (OTA) antenna and getting a digital TV here in Toronto, Canada, we have been somewhat out of the reach of the Canadian government’s CRTC legislation because we can now watch U.S. TV without mandatory Canadian content commercials. This new tool, American TV, has given me some new insights of our American neighbours.
Race: Clear in American TV is the predominance of Blacks and the lack of multiculturalism we have here in Toronto. Neither good nor bad, this black/white split is simply different and certainly does not reflect my neighbourhood nor Toronto. Watching US TV is like visiting a foreign country, which it is.
This editorial cartoon is a play on the US popular rejection of the Keystone XL pipeline being proposed to run from Canada, through the US, down to Texas. The proposal is facing stiff opposition, with some Canadians editorializing that we should just redirect the pipeline to China.
And because he asked, my Mandarin is quite good. I love this editorial cartoon.
The more the US has access to cheap oil, the more they will waste it. Overall I think the US and therefore the World would benefit by more expensive oil prices. This also applies to us Canadians. While we all talk conservation and environmental protection, I see way too many SUVs and other large vehicles transporting one driver, and a lack of motivation to fund and build mass transit. I hope that gas prices will double and therefore match that of Europe.
It is with great dismay that I have been reading news reports that the recession in Canada has been over for many months, yet I still cannot find work. I consider myself to be an intelligent fellow, very well educated with work experience to match, but somehow I’ve lost my golden touch. Really, that is putting it mildly. Logically speaking if I had not been fortuitous enough to live a frugal and stable life in the past, today I should be in bankruptcy, living off food banks and be a beggar in the street. Smart strategies and a whole lot of luck in the past have saved me this fate. Or was it typical Chinese values. One will never know.
Chinese consumer will not easily become a nation of spenders
Please bear with me for just a moment. So the sub-prime mortgage scandal in the US has precipitated a global credit crisis, where banks cease or curtail new lending and call in outstanding commercial and personal loans. Overdrawn Americans lose their houses to the banks and reduce spending. Companies cannot expand without loans, reduce their business, and lay off employees. US unemployment rates skyrocket and consumers put the brakes on spending. This effect goes around the world, precipitating reduced global spending. China and other predominantly export oriented countries get hit hard. Their factories lay off workers and close. It seems all is not economically well in the world.
Ryan has a great blog called Lost Laowai and writes from China. One of his readers contacted him about a dire situation he faced. The thread is documented here: What to do when your Chinese ex-wife runs away with your child?. Situations such as these seem common enough that they surface from time to time from different countries but always remain under the radar of the international news services. They apply not only to children but to adults as well. If you are living abroad, you start a family and have kids, be aware of these supposedly well known international laws or you might be in for a huge shock when this go badly wrong.
