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Warcabbit posted:True, most NYC has ever gotten is 8, as far as I notice. Rained 43 inches in Texas once. My favorite line is the last in the article, though. Seriously, just hunt around for news stories of 18 inches of rain. And this was from like just before noon till 3am. So like 16 hours of rain and the stuff near the end was a lot lighter. You'll find pictures and stories about flooding and death all around the world from less rain over a longer time. Better drainage probably would have been a good thing, but even then, it's an issue of where the hell all that water is being drained to.
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Jul 25, 2012 15:30
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Warcabbit posted:True, most NYC has ever gotten is 8, as far as I notice. Rained 43 inches in Texas once. My favorite line is the last in the article, though.
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Jul 25, 2012 16:26
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Nevermind16 posted:So I have read about male children being captured and sold due to the one child policy, do you think the child kiddnapping is organized by a paticular criminal group in china, or is just a wide spread type of crime Triads and other Chinese mafia guys are more into traditional vice like gambling, prostitution, and racketeering. They also have stakes in film and music studios. The triad influence was quite large in the HK movie industry for a long time and I think it still is. Jackie Chan and a bunch of other film stars got together to protest the organized crime influence. Drug and baby selling is pretty high risk so I imagine it's probably done by specialized desperado groups or highly corrupt border officials. Your standard big time triads try to keep to lower risk, stable, and high profit business.
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Jul 25, 2012 16:34
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http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/news/international/Macau_murder_spate_adds_to_casino_industry_worries.html?cid=33164588 [quote="Modus Operandi" post="405927732"] Triads and other Chinese mafia guys are more into traditional vice like gambling, prostitution, and racketeering. They also have stakes in film and music studios. The triad influence was quite large in the HK movie industry for a long time and I think it still is. Jackie Chan and a bunch of other film stars got together to protest the organized crime influence. So the article posted above talks about how "Triads are typically branches of Chinese criminal groups based in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan, and on the mainland. They are involved in crimes including extortion, money laundering, murder and prostitution." I know the triads have a presence in Taiwan (thought I don't know how strong), I think is it possible they (the triads) both see and use political tension between authorities in Mainland China and Taipei, as a catalyst for smuggling and other crimes, knowing that cooperation between Taiwan and China is always harder than cooperation between say Hong Kong authorities and authorities in Macau or other provinces.
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Jul 26, 2012 16:36
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From what I remember reading about the Chinatown Tong/Triad (On Leong versus Hip Sing) heroin wars in Chicago in the 90s, the Triads here were big Taiwan backers, which leads me to believe they got a lot of support from the US Feds. I used to live in Chinatown in Chicago, so I loved this stuff. Here's an article about a Tong Boss who was convicted of bribing a ton of dirty Chicago pols in the 80s and 90s. http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1994-02-13/news/9402130225_1_gambling-conspiracy-gambling-operation-chicago-police-officers I can't find any info about their support for Taiwan and the KMT, maybe I was mistaken but I'll keep looking.
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Jul 26, 2012 17:29
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menino posted:From what I remember reading about the Chinatown Tong/Triad (On Leong versus Hip Sing) heroin wars in Chicago in the 90s, the Triads here were big Taiwan backers, which leads me to believe they got a lot of support from the US Feds. I used to live in Chinatown in Chicago, so I loved this stuff. They were totally in bed with each other from the very beginning. Something to do with the fact that they were completely shut down in the mainland.
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Jul 26, 2012 18:26
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Nevermind16 posted:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chen_Chi-li This guy was the leader of the United Bamboo mafia which had gang branch affiliations in the U.S. Most of the stateside guys were posers or little high school punks but the core group were bonafide big time wealthy mafia. They were "allegedly" contracted by the Taiwanese government to kill a journalist named Henry Liu in 1984 who published a biography that was highly critical of the KMT. The UB mafia leaders said they'd do it for free. This is where the details get a bit sketchy because assassinating someone over a biography is really extreme and the KMT weren't that paranoid during the 80's. My guess is that there were many other dirty secrets that Henry Liu knew about. Anyways the UB mafia pulled it off and shot the journalist Henry Liu dead in his home in CA. They then fled the U.S. to refuge in Taiwan. The FBI investigated and tried to pressure the Taiwanese government to extradite the leaders involved but Taiwan denied the request. All these guys got away pretty much scott free and live high on the hog. Modus Operandi fucked around with this message at 18:59 on Jul 26, 2012 |
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Jul 26, 2012 18:53
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Modus Operandi posted:There are some large triad groups in Taiwan and I know they are present in the entertainment industry there. They are tied to dirty politicians though and operate in various racketeering schemes. However sometimes the triads work with the TW government and have carried out an assassination on U.S. soil no less. There was even a film made about this starring James van der Beek: Formosa Betrayed
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Jul 26, 2012 20:54
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gret posted:There was even a film made about this starring James van der Beek:
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Jul 26, 2012 21:41
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Jul 27, 2012 01:32
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This foreign angle is feeling rather obtuse.
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Jul 27, 2012 03:31
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Cool thread and awesome OP. About the Beijing flood, weren't there a lot of horror stories on mismanagement of disaster response and people drowning in their cars. I got to dig for the weibo story and the news from Phoenix television. Apparently there was a horror story of a man trapped in his car and he called his wife for help. The wife asked the firemen in person to rescue his husband but nothing came to action until the firemen got orders to move out. Unfortunately, it was too late and the autopsy revealed a fractured skull as the man tried to head butt and other means to escape from his flooded car  Out of the 77 official deaths, I think over 20 were drowning in car. After this tragedy there were lots of information, articles on how to escape from a car. Think taobao had a surge in hammer sales.But nobody in the Chinese internet seem to believe the official death toll numbers, "it's just as accurate as the earth quake numbers"  Then people started saying how awesome, and orderly Hong Kong was in responding to natural disasters It's not true, look at SARs, the city went bat poo poo afterwards.I guess I'm just lucky from the coast and watch enough hollywood action movies  to know that if you drive your car into the water, you got to get the gently caress out.
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Jul 28, 2012 12:08
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TheBuilder posted:This foreign angle is feeling rather obtuse. I wonder if they'll have pictures of some actute foreigners. caberham posted:Cool thread and awesome OP. About the Beijing flood, weren't there a lot of horror stories on mismanagement of disaster response and people drowning in their cars. I got to dig for the weibo story and the news from Phoenix television. Apparently there was a horror story of a man trapped in his car and he called his wife for help. The wife asked the firemen in person to rescue his husband but nothing came to action until the firemen got orders to move out. Unfortunately, it was too late and the autopsy revealed a fractured skull as the man tried to head butt and other means to escape from his flooded car And drat, that sounds like poo poo.
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Jul 29, 2012 00:09
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Is there a separate thread about this murder case involving disgraced politician Bo Xilai and his wife who are accused of murdering some British expat? Is it a fit subject for this thread? http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/bo-xilais-wife-and-aide-are-formally-charged-with-murder/2012/07/26/gJQA5ip5AX_story.html Apparently Bo Xilai was some kind of major power player before everything went sideways for him, now this accusation? Is this a story of major national importance involving some upheaval among power factions in the PRC, or is it strictly a smaller celebrity murder case? If anyone has much knowledge about this or can put it into better context (sorry if I missed it scanning through the thread), it would be appreciated.
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Jul 29, 2012 02:56
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Zwabu posted:Is there a separate thread about this murder case involving disgraced politician Bo Xilai and his wife who are accused of murdering some British expat? Is it a fit subject for this thread?
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Jul 29, 2012 04:09
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ReindeerF posted:What I can't find, though, is any specifics about what these supposed threats were. There are rumors that he was having some kind of affair with her and had the inside track on the family's finances. The affair bit is probably weibo tabloid fodder but the financial info part is real interesting. The wife was moving lots of money overseas and this englishman knew about it and maybe threatened to blab or maybe even tried to extort them. The timing of this makes sense because the PRC has started taking a somewhat harder stance against officials moving all their corruption money overseas and then setting up a second life overseas in case it doesn't "work out" in the motherland.
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Jul 29, 2012 04:57
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Also, Bo was clearly out of favor with many members of the Politburo, and something like this is a perfect way to end his further political aspirations.
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Jul 29, 2012 05:13
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Zwabu posted:Apparently Bo Xilai was some kind of major power player before everything went sideways for him, now this accusation? Is this a story of major national importance involving some upheaval among power factions in the PRC, or is it strictly a smaller celebrity murder case? We did talk about it in the thread but the story broke back around the New Year. Bo Xilai was a major up-and-coming player. He had a number of mayoral and gubernatorial positions, was on the politburo, and was generally assumed to be making a play for a seat on the Standing Committee this leadership cycle, which is pretty much the ruling council of China. He also represented a somewhat leftist populist movement that some people saw as a challenge to the conservative technocratic elite that have dominated Chinese politics ever since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Bo's fall was a major story of PRC power factions, but it probably has very little to do with the Neil Heywood case. Bo was deeply corrupt, not unusual in the upper ranks of the PRC to be sure, but he seemed to be building quite a power structure under his personal control back in Chongqing. For example Chongqing police were being used as a personal enforcement unit way outside their jurisdiction, like arresting reporters Bo didn't like in Beijing. He was also wire-tapping virtually everything in Chongqing, including central government offices that he probably should have left alone if he knew what was good for him. The real deathblow came as soon as Wang Lijun, Bo's right-hand man and chief of police, realized Bo was about to backstab him and ran to the American consulate in nearby Chengdu (I was just there!) for protection. Wang had pretty much all the dirt that any enemy of Bo's could want to bring him down, so as soon as he was in the consulate Bo's fate was virtually sealed. At that point Bo's Chonqing power base couldn't get to him before the Feds showed up and took him from the consulate straight back to Beijing, where I'm sure he immediately spilled the beans on Bo's corruption and accumulation of power. People assumed that Wang was trying to defect at first, but now Wang's trip to the consulate looks like a smart and unexpected move from a man who needed a safe place to hide for a few days. His wife's murder trial is probably just a side-show at this point. My take on it is that Bo Xilai probably had a lot of people suspicious about his politics and motives and were hoping for an opportunity to take him out. The Wang Lijun affair, which Bo really brought on himself at the worst possible moment, probably confirmed a lot of the Party's worst suspicions about Bo's ambitions and gave his enemies more than enough ammunition to annihilate him politically. Does anyone even know where Bo is right now? Last I heard he was under investigation and suspended from all his posts.
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Jul 29, 2012 06:02
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Arglebargle III posted:Does anyone even know where Bo is right now? Last I heard he was under investigation and suspended from all his posts. Are you asking if any of us are members of the standing committee because I think they are probably the only ones who know the whereabouts of Bo at the mo'. I know that Bo, and his father Bo Yibo, were no favorites of the current court. Does anyone have any insights into how he relates to the incoming order?
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Jul 29, 2012 08:22
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Here's a thing http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303567704577519390210114240.html quote:For all Bo Xilai's reputation as big-government leftist, he was a more complex character when it came to policy.
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Jul 29, 2012 17:22
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first of all ,Throatwarbler good post This is a piece on Bo Xilai's father Bo Yibo, who was apparently a pretty important guy in Chinese politics http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2007/jan/24/guardianobituaries.obituaries1 The article says, for those who don't wanna read the whole thing That he (Bo Yibo) was a personal Friend of Mao, that he became an underground party organiser in Tianjin, That he even worked with Deng Xiaoping on economic reform. I'd assume based on news I read (not all of it honest) that Family connections are still one of the most important driving factors in all of China, so what happens in China when all the factory owners without family connections start gaining power? do they simply become part of the machine or do they become as some might say "part of the family"?
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Aug 1, 2012 15:05
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Who enforces this and how? Do the secret police go into Muslim houses and check blood sugar? quote:Chinese authorities in the northwestern province of Xinjiang have banned Muslim officials and students from fasting during the month of Ramadan, prompting an exiled rights group to warn of new violence.
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Aug 2, 2012 15:46
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Informants, of course. But really this just sounds like an opportunity for targeted judicial actions against Muslim leaders.
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Aug 2, 2012 17:02
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az jan jananam posted:Who enforces this and how? Do the secret police go into Muslim houses and check blood sugar? I know it's fashionable to hate on China's ethnic minority policies and a lot of them are legitimately terrible, but this is a profound misreading of the article. The article does not suggest that the Chinese security forces will interfere with private observance of Ramadan. The article states that China expects that Party officials, government officials and students, who in China will be living in public school dorms on government property, will not publicly observe Ramadan. That's what this is talking about. This sort of law would be unsurprising in France, and it shouldn't be surprising from an officially atheist government like China's. Read the drat article jesus christ. It's hard enough to have a rational discussion about China's actual problems without dragging in imaginary bullshit. Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Aug 2, 2012 |
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Aug 2, 2012 17:52
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The kind of people who become part and government officials tend to not be extremely devout and observant muslims anyway.
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Aug 2, 2012 18:03
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Arglebargle, observance of Ramadan consists almost entirely of not eating/drinking/having sex during the day so how can one not observe Ramadan except by eating/drinking/having sex to show you're not observing it? It's not like people put on their Ramadan hats and give Ramadan cards and do their special public places Ramadan dance that ONLY Muslims are allowed to do. This sort of law would never pass the books in France because it's affecting completely private observance to actually refrain from behavior, which is why this is far more like Thought Police type-law than ~*Secular State*~ behavior and that's pretty obvious. It's much more like if someone told Mormons, "Hey no observing your restrictions on intoxicants today." How can they do it except by breaking their restrictions? "Why aren't you drinking coffee right now?? Are you observing Mormonism??" It's impossible... the only lucky thing about this law is that no one will actually pay attention to it because it's completely unenforceable, though it would be pretty cool to have Chengguan running around stuffing food into people's mouths constantly to test if they're observing Ramadan or just taking one of the many breaks people tend to take between meals. Fall Sick and Die fucked around with this message at 19:33 on Aug 2, 2012 |
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Aug 2, 2012 19:30
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Fall Sick and Die posted:Arglebargle, observance of Ramadan consists almost entirely of not eating/drinking/having sex during the day so how can one not observe Ramadan except by eating/drinking/having sex to show you're not observing it? It's not like people put on their Ramadan hats and give Ramadan cards and do their special public places Ramadan dance that ONLY Muslims are allowed to do. This sort of law would never pass the books in France because it's affecting completely private observance to actually refrain from behavior, which is why this is far more like Thought Police type-law than ~*Secular State*~ behavior and that's pretty obvious. I don't know how Muslims in China practice their religion, but what the restriction most likely amounts to is no public observance of the iftar.
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Aug 2, 2012 19:35
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Arglebargle III posted:The article states that China expects that Party officials, government officials and students, who in China will be living in public school dorms on government property, will not publicly observe Ramadan. The article specifically states that the Chinese government is preventing these people from fasting, an essential aspect of Ramadan observance.
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Aug 2, 2012 19:43
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az jan jananam posted:The article specifically states that the Chinese government is preventing these people from fasting, an essential aspect of Ramadan observance. No, the Chinese government is saying people are not allowed to fast. How could they actually prevent anyone from not eating?
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Aug 2, 2012 20:23
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Arakan posted:How could they actually prevent anyone from not eating? Informants, as mentioned. Intimidation, terror tactics, blackmail, exclusionary pressure.
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Aug 2, 2012 20:26
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Or it's just some random posting on the government website that they aren't going to do anything about, because they have barely enough personnel to maintain their control as it is, let alone this sort of dumb thing.
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Aug 2, 2012 20:29
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az jan jananam posted:Informants, as mentioned. Intimidation, terror tactics, blackmail, exclusionary pressure. This seems hard to believe. Would the Chinese government really go to extraordinary lengths just to make you put rice in your mouth? For instance, what if you just said you ate food during the day, but you really didn't. How would the know if you were lying?
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Aug 2, 2012 20:31
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enigma74 posted:This seems hard to believe. Would the Chinese government really go to extraordinary lengths just to make you put rice in your mouth? If repressing Muslim nationalism a pressing need, I don't know what the limits of idiotic policy the CCP can come up with. They could be issuing directives in the mere hope that the issuance has a chilling effect on Muslims. Or they could actually try to enforce it (it is possible). The ban on mosque visitation is certainly trivial. Police states like North Korea are able to compel ridiculous things out of their populace despite their incompetence and fragility, I don't see anything special about China in this regard. az jan jananam fucked around with this message at 20:52 on Aug 2, 2012 |
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Aug 2, 2012 20:37
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enigma74 posted:For instance, what if you just said you ate food during the day, but you really didn't. How would the know if you were lying? They wouldn't. But on the other hand if you bragged about it at the local tavern, there might be a guy willing to become a paid informant and then you'd land in jail. And if they want to jail someone specifically, it's really easy to trump up charges over the matter. So really it's all the same to them since the practice will still die out. Kaal fucked around with this message at 20:41 on Aug 2, 2012 |
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Aug 2, 2012 20:38
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enigma74 posted:This seems hard to believe. Would the Chinese government really go to extraordinary lengths just to make you put rice in your mouth? National leaders say something along the lines of 'Steadfastly increase patriotic integration and combat cultism'. On the level they operate, that's rational. Provincial level authorities create grading scores that measure success in 'integration and cultism combatance' as part of the battery of assessments for their county-level subordinates. On the level they operate, that's rational. County-level administrators are desperate to advance through the party and really start to make some kuai, so they lean pretty heavily on their township subordinates to produce evidence that they've integrated and combated cultism better than the guys in the next county that they're competing with. Empirical evidence is hard, but a policy is the next best thing, even if it's a bit stupid. That's a bit sleazy, but it's certainly rational self-motivation. Township-level guys come out with ideas like this: quote:A statement from Zonglang township in Xinjiang's Kashgar district said that "the county committee has issued comprehensive policies on maintaining social stability during the Ramadan period. Which is going to sound great on the circular they send to the guys at the county office. When you get down to the towns, then you get goons throwing rice at Hui. Which is dumb as gently caress, but a function of a stratified administrative system with weak oversight, highly abstracted inter-level instruction, close to zero attention to human rights or national rule of law and upwardly-mobile local officials. Cefte fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Aug 2, 2012 |
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Aug 2, 2012 21:10
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I just want to point out to that this is definitely aimed toward Uyghurs and not the Hui. It is more about stopping religious awareness among the Uyghurs than singling out Islam. The Uyghurs account for almost half of Chinese Muslims. The Hui outnumber them, but they are usually living in places like Qinghai, Gansu and Ningxia. This policy is Xinjiang(the so-called Uyghur autonomous state) specific and so it is rather apparent that it is singling out Uyghurs as a minority group. Edit: Last summer my Uyghur friend, a Master's student in Beijing, told me that Muslim students were not allowed to fast during Ramadan in Xinjiang province. She told me if students were found to be fasting, through informants presumably, they would be asked to eat food. So frankly, I was surprised by this news because I thought it was already policy. Maybe this is just an attempt to make it official. FaceAttack fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Aug 3, 2012 |
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Aug 2, 2012 21:50
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az jan jananam posted:If repressing Muslim nationalism a pressing need, I don't know what the limits of idiotic policy the CCP can come up with. They could be issuing directives in the mere hope that the issuance has a chilling effect on Muslims. Or they could actually try to enforce it (it is possible). The ban on mosque visitation is certainly trivial. Police states like North Korea are able to compel ridiculous things out of their populace despite their incompetence and fragility, I don't see anything special about China in this regard. China is not a police state like North Korea - it's a state that in actuality has far fewer police per capita than even the US. This rule doesn't even apply to ordinary citizens. It's all about government officials saying they've done something to 'set an example', and won't have the slightest effect on Uighur nationalism except in inflaming tensions. If these guidelines actually enter into enforcement, there will be almost inevitably conflict as a result, someone will get sent down from Beijing to find out what the gently caress happened, and so various locals are going to wind up with undesired attention. Fangz fucked around with this message at 01:40 on Aug 3, 2012 |
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Aug 3, 2012 01:37
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Cefte posted:When you get down to the towns, then you get goons throwing rice at Hui. Which is dumb as gently caress, but a function of a stratified administrative system with weak oversight, highly abstracted inter-level instruction, close to zero attention to human rights or national rule of law and upwardly-mobile local officials. I think people pay attention to upwardly mobile local officials.  Your explanation made me think of Yes Minister: I think a fairly good analogy is when the EU comes out with some random bollocks about British sausages not fitting the legal definition of "sausages". The Daily Mail goes apeshit and suggests that we are going to be eating "high fat emulsified offal tubes" for breakfast because some balding Belgian enjoys a good bit of pointless committee work. Whole thing vanishes the moment the ink has dried on the copy. I have seen female students at a minorities university wearing headscarves around campus and in class. Of course, this being China, the girls were also wearing tiny shorts. Silly China. GuestBob fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Aug 3, 2012 |
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Aug 3, 2012 03:10
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19166788 It appears China is using its fishing industry for foreign policy interests
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Aug 7, 2012 17:59
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Nevermind16 posted:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-19166788 Explain what you mean by this.
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Aug 8, 2012 00:09
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