Apparently, they really cleaned the city up. They're still going to be experiencing the daily sandstorms (due to the environmental disaster the country's interior has become).

I think this was released today. The official Olympic song. Catchy. (and with Jackie Chan)

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I have to hand it to the ChiComs -- they have one hell of a propaganda department.

Why is it propaganda? China gets a bad wrap sometimes... You know, some really screwed up things happen in America that would never fly in China. It is a great country, just different.

Here are some more fun pictures.

Anti-Terrorism Exercises in China - The Big Picture - Boston.com (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2008/07/antiterrorism_exercises_in_chi.html)

Perhaps it can be called propaganda because it is released by the government, approved by it, and all involved were and are government employees?

The depictions of Beijing with blue sky are pure CG.

It's a great music video in the same way that Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky was a great war movie.

-- and what screwed up things happen here which would never fly there? Widespread governmental corruption? Poisoning the people being part of governmental policy rather than a violation of it?

We have a lot of corruption in common actually. China is just a little further behind, but they are making a lot of progress.

Some of the stuff is overblown, imagine if we got our viewpoint on America from conspiracy theorists... Some of the Chinese say that our government is blowing up our own buildings based off tons of evidence, living in America we know this is wrong.

I have a lot of Chinese friends from FFXI, it is fun explaining DHS to them and how it works.

In some ways we are better off, but in some ways they have more liberty than we do. Chinese people are fun to talk to.

Your Chinese friends only have access to information the government wants them to see. The Chinese internet is highly filtered. Political dissident is quashed and punished.

I guess it's perfectly okay though to have entire towns suffering from lead poisoning because the government won't do something as simple as putting scrubbers onto smokestacks or (really) requiring companies to take some care to ensure that the people aren't exposed to toxic waste.

The fact is -- you probably have more access to information about what's going on in China than anyone who is actually in China does.

I do suppose I might agree with you that things are quite rosy if I also depended upon a bunch of indoctrinated teenage players of online video games to appraise the political climate of a foreign nation.

They have access to proxies via friends in the states, so they can see the entire Internet and can read whatever they want.

America went through the same pollution problems during our industrial revolution. We wouldn't be where we are today if early factories had the burdens placed on them then that are placed on them today.

We have children in Oklahoma suffering badly from second hand smoke exposure because the state will not test children in custody for nicotine expsore. In the future a more enlightened society will probably see that as barbaric and look down on us for it.

The people that I talked to are not all teenagers and they were not playing FFXI for fun, it was a job for them. They would play 10 hours a day and earn in game currency in the game and sell it to Americans for real world currency. China is so poor that a person can pay a Chinese person a few dollars to get stuff for them in a video game.

They know there are problems in China, but China is getting better and will eventually be as nice as America or quite nicer the way things are currently going.

Like I said, in some ways people in China have more liberty than we do in America. In Oklahoma the state can take away your child forever without having prove that anything bad actually happened to that child, that wouldn't happen in China. In China, child abuse is treated as a crime(as it should be).

In the Industrial Revolution, we had no idea what carcinogens were. Further, we had no idea how to use technology to make our emissions clean. That argument doesn't wash -- 80 years ago is 80 years ago.

As for smoking in China:


# About 67% of men smoke, and 4% of women.
# Among youths, about a third of male teens smoke and nearly 8% of females.
# One of every three cigarettes consumed worldwide is smoked in China.
# Smoking will kill about a third of all young Chinese men alive (under 30 years).
# About 3,000 people die every day in China due to smoking.
# There are more than 300 million Chinese smokers - more than the entire US population. They consume an estimated 1.7 trillion cigarettes per year - or 3 million cigarettes every minute.
# China is the world's largest tobacco producer, accounting for about a quarter of the global tobacco leaf production.
# China used to be closed to tobacco multinationals. But in the last two decades, with the opening up of the Chinese economy, multinationals have been aggressively fighting for a piece of the Chinese market, seen as a "prize" market.
# In 1990, 68% of male physicians were smokers and 65% of teachers.
# Smoking contributes to four of the five leading causes of death in China today.
# In 1993, WHO estimated that while China gained $5 billion in tobacco taxes, the country lost $7.8 billion in productivity and additional health care costs.
# A study in Minhang district found smokers spent an average of 60% of their personal income and 17% of household income on cigarettes.
# In Hong Kong, tobacco companies spent an estimated $63 million on all forms or advertising and promotion in 1995.

The problem with China is that their government via corruption is destroying the land and the health of the people and they know damned well what their doing (and don't care).

In China, you are a statistic -- the government won't even put rebar in concrete used to construct schools because of the cost.

-- you may recall an earthquake prone region recently experienced an earthquake which due to the poorly constructed (government) buildings, around 95% of their children died. That's a pretty big deal in a country which only allows parents to have one child.

As for children being taken away in Oklahoma for "nothing," that's absurd. The state has to meet all kinds of burdens to remove parental rights.

As for children being taken away in Oklahoma for "nothing," that's absurd. The state has to meet all kinds of burdens to remove parental rights.

Newp!

The process is simple and clean for the state.

1) Find some simple cause, like a bruise on the arm of a child. File with the referee that you have cause and you can now take the kid for awhile... use big words, say nasty things, say the parent eats babies, ask for a termination while you are at it. It is ok because you do not have to back anything you say ever.

2) Delay. Until there is a hearing, you don't have to let the child see the parent. There eventually will be a termination hearing, and it will have to be held by a jury. Screw that, just delay. With the turnover rate of judges and DAs, you can delay for years. Once things are on track, drop the termination request because you don't want to deal with a jury who will see through you. By law the person deserves a jury because you initially requested a termination, but that doesn't matter.

3) Get the child adjudicated. It is pretty easy. You have a bench trial in front of a judge and all you have to convince him is that the child MIGHT have been abused. The legal standard is that the allegation is supported by evidence, not that the allegation is true. Any evidence at all works, a simple bruise will do. Unless the parent can prove that the child was NOT abused(which is impossible), you win. Most judges feel that the state wouldn't press for adjudication unless there was a good reason, so as long as you have something to back up your claim they will go ahead and grant whatever you want.

4) Put the screws down, order the parent to complete an abuse treatment program. In order to pass the treatment program the parent will have to admit to abusing the child. The parent will most likely refuse to admit to doing something that he didn't do, that is ok because that is what you want. The parent may cry about constitutional rights, but they all cry about that. The parent will get some visitation now, but since they will all be supervised by you.. you can control what the reports say and say whatever you want.

5) File for termination against the parent for refusing to complete his treatment program. It will be a jury trial, but that is ok because you don't have to prove that the abuse happened for that is irrelevant at this point. You just have to prove that they did not finish the treatment program, which they didn't. Technically you also have to prove that there is no bond between the parent and child, but since you supervised all of the visits between the parent and child you can say whatever you want and no one will challenge you.

At which step does the state have to prove that the child was even abused? None. You just need one corrupt or stupid caseworker to drive the train. This is how the system works, and it works because naive people think that there are protections in place or something and that no one ever abuses power, lol.

The solution I think, would be to make DHS case workers liable for lying. They get special treatment.. they are not really officers of the court but they are not witnesses either. They can say and file whatever they want and there is no legal consequence for them, if you know of one I would love to hear about it. You can have all of the evidence in the world that your caseworker is dishonest, but no one will listen.

The only person you can complain to is juvenile oversight, but they can only point out situations in which DHS did not follow policy. There is no DHS policy that states that case workers tell the truth, and they are allowed to make judgment calls "in the best interest of the child".

You can ask to speak to their supervisor, but you will get ignored all the way up to the chain.

Oh ya, and lol.. talk to any lawyer that works down there and ask what happens if you file motions :D

You're better off in China man.

Since this personally happened to you, my only comment is that you or your relative should have involved a good attorney and might still be able to.

I could go all legalese on you here, but it occurs to me that someone might accuse me of deigning to give unlicensed legal advice :)

What this has to do with the price of tea in China or the fact that I think that "Welcome to Beijing" song is great, I do not know.

It didn't happen to me, it happened to my brother. He is at step 4. Hopefully it will never get to step 5, but it may because there is no limit to what a caseworker can lie about... he has spent over half a million dollars on various lawyers on this custody battle from start to finish. He had sole custody before the mom got DHS involved, and even if he finally beats DHS he will have to fight for custody all over again. It won't be easy when he has only seen his child 25 out of the last 1500 days or whatever..

What does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Simple, I just overreacted to your use of the word propaganda :P I guess technically it is, but meh.. Most people see propaganda as a bad thing, like when the government is lying to you("Mission Accomplished!"). Technically our government makes a lot of propaganda too, but no one refers to it as propaganda. It is only those evil commies who make propaganda...

You have to admit that some people are a little over critical of China... The way China see it is that you can't make an omelette without cracking a few eggs. They have different problems than we do, and they want to become a great country. They have a different outlook on human rights. Xinhua - English: Human rights can be manifested differently (http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-12/12/content_3908887.htm) is a good read I think. So why refer to them as ChiComs? No one calls us OkieCaps when we talk about a big league city :P

You don't have to go legalese or any of that to accept that we have serious problems of our own in this country.

Why refer to them as ChiComs?

Because they are a Communist Country and Chinese and it rolls off the tongue.

As for their "different" outlook on human rights.... WHAT human rights? The murders in Tibet? The fact that they won't allow their people to have children? Simple reproductive rights are some of the most basic.

When "cracking a few eggs" means essentially an environmental holocaust, I kind of think you're minimizing the issues :)

holocaust?

come on.

On a less serious note, I think you would enjoy this video from The Onion if you haven't seen ti yet.

China Celebrates Its Status As World's Number One Air Polluter | The Onion - America's Finest News Source (http://www.theonion.com/content/video/china_celebrates_its_status_as)

"Cancer is a very modern disease."

http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/3/8/14/f_16am_14d9da9.jpg

Meet Wang Xin, she is a diver that just turned 16 3 days ago, she is kind of cute I guess.

You can find more about her here: Athlete - The official website of the BEIJING 2008 Olympic Games (http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/BIO/Athlete/3/235963.shtml)

http://img28.picoodle.com/img/img28/3/8/14/f_16bm_315af4d.jpg

Meet Chen Ruolin, she is a diver that turns 16 in a few months. I won't lie, if I was drunk enough in the right situation...

You can find out more about her here: Athlete - The official website of the BEIJING 2008 Olympic Games (http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/BIO/Athlete/4/235964.shtml)

http://img32.picoodle.com/img/img32/3/8/14/f_16cm_ccb5def.jpg

Meet Deng Linlin. She is a gymnist that turned 16 last April. What the hell? That's not even right.

Athlete - The official website of the BEIJING 2008 Olympic Games (http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/BIO/Athlete/8/235318.shtml)

http://img34.picoodle.com/img/img34/3/8/14/f_16dm_b32c811.jpg

Meet He Kexin. She is a gymnist that turned 16 over 8 months ago.. do not want.

Athlete - The official website of the BEIJING 2008 Olympic Games (http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/BIO/Athlete/2/235312.shtml)

Maybe all the lead in the water prevents some girls in China from hitting puberty until after 16, or maybe the gymnist are not 16 :P

I wonder if China are forging their players' age.