"The hierarchy of death remains one of the most fascinating aspects of daily newspaper decision-making.":

Another example today of journalism's hierarchy of death. Which is the most important story? The murder of 93 people in Norway or the lonely death of Amy Winehouse?

Editors' choices illustrate, yet again, the two distinct presses that exist in Britain.

[...]

I just received from a friend a power point presentation lauding the engineering and ecological virtues of the $4.1 billion Qinghai-Tibet railway, yet does not say a word about the cultural genocide agenda that this very train helps to advance. The article below is derived from an email reply that I sent in reply to receiving that piece of propaganda.

On Tuesday 26 April 2011 12:16:25 you wrote:
> Qinghai-Tibet_Railway_000_(R).pps
>

While I applaud the engineering feat, and enjoy the great scenery, this presentation is an obvious piece of propaganda; it's really disgusting.

The presentation goes at length to demonstrate how ecology-conscious the whole design is, thereby assuaging well-meaning western environmental concerns. Yet it does not say a single word about the cultural annihilation the communist Chinese have enforced upon the Tibetan people.

It starts by presenting the train as an old dream of the Republic of China, founded in 1911 by Dr. Sun-Yat Tsen (as properly mentioned in the .pps), but it fails to say that the Republic of China (ROC) still exists.... only on the island of Taiwan and that the mainland of China is now controlled by the communist People's Republic of China (PRC). For the last 60 years, the dictatorial PRC has done all it could to deny the ROC any recognition on the world stage. The Republic of China is today a healthy democracy with truly free, multi-party elections which has seen a peaceful transition of power between one party to another (both in 2000 and 2008).

Today, the ROC's only dream is to be recognized on the world stage and to be admitted in such organizations as the World Health Organization, the United Nations, etc. and to be able to compete in the Olympic Games under its own name and flag, instead of the parody of name and flag imposed upon them by the PRC. (Imagine the American Olympic team being called "Caucasian-Washington" instead of "USA" and competing not under the American flag, but under a slightly modified version of the official Olympic games flag....)

Today, and since after WWII, the ROC has certainly NOT dreamed about building a train through all the Chinese provinces.... since the ROC controls only ONE province!

On the other hand, the dictatorial and brutal regime of the PRC has pursued the Beijing-Tibet train project for its own political well-known agenda of cultural annihilation of the Tibetan culture. They want to assimilate, forcibly if necessary (as they have often done during the past), the Tibetan with the Chinese/Han culture. Tibetan people are denied their own culture and history. They are routinely beaten and jailed for even carrying the picture of the Dalai Lama.

The Being-Tibet train extolled in the presentation is a Weapon of Mass Cultural Genocide. But that does not matter to our western consciences because wild life migratory paths have been preserved!!!

Also, the presentation claims that Tibet is not self-sufficient and that it constantly needs give-outs from what should be known as the "Beijing Communist Imperial government". That's a hard piece of propaganda, the talking point that they wish you'll remember: the communists, in their "generosity", build a multi-billion dollar railway in order to "save the tibetan economy"!!
As far as I know, before the Chinese invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the bloody repression and mass murder of Tibetan Lamas, Tibet was doing quite fine on its own, thank you very much.

Please, please, please, before you mass-forward such disgusting propaganda piece of shit (Qinghai-Tibet_Railway_000_(R).pps), please do a minimum of research:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Severn_Cullis-Suzuki

Friends shared this video with me.

You may ask: what has it got to do with French president François Mitterrand, American president Ronald Reagan and the cold war?

Ralph Langner: Cracking Stuxnet, a 21st-century cyber weapon:

Obviously, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia by nerds, for nerds, has a fairly detailed article on this obscure computer virus that has only affected a handful of computers, far, far away from home:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet

It's truly fascinating and it so reminded me of an incident of a similar nature that occurred during the Cold War, involving Soviet KGB spies, French president François Mitterrand and American president Ronald Reagan.

It still remains to be seen the ultimate outcome of the Egyptian revolution. I have not followed the events closely enough to allow myself to comment.

I just wanted to share with you an image and a symbolic gesture that I found particularly moving: in a world plagued by divisions and religious strifes, I was pleased to see expressions of ecumenical unity, as symbolised by the wonderful cartoon by Carlos Latuff (reproduced above).

There have been reports that there was a Coptic Christian mass and prayer held in Tahrir Square today for Christian Egyptians. Christians make up 10% of the country's protests and thousands of Christians have taken part along with the majority Muslim population in anti-Mubarak protests. 1

First, it's the Christians protecting the Muslims during their Friday prayer:

• 1. Source.

Everybody ought to listen to the whole conference (see video) and then make up their own mind. I couldn't not post this:

Disclosure Conference, National Press Club, 27 September 2010 (extended version, English subtitles):

I found this today:

http://www.samasource.org/

A charity giving skilled, computer-based jobs to impoverished workers: it's a different combination of the two same basic ideas that drive the charityware web site http://charityware.info/ : technology and charity. I like it.

Have a look at their service offerings!

I was searching the web for Keller's famous quote:
"When you face the sun, the shadows always fall behind you."
and found this nice editorial which is worth reprinting in its entirety:

Here is my newest web site:
http://searching911.info/

It operates like a controlled wiki to collectively gather the best evidence behind each theory.

From a friend:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/03/world/asia/03chinglish.html?src=me&ref...
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2010/05/03/world/asia/20100503_CHINGLIS...

A couple favorites from my own experience:

A Chinese pastry restaurant in Boston's Chinatown offers a "Pu Pu
Platter" in its menu. (I'm guessing "pu pu" means "common", so it
might be an assortment of common pastries.)

I once stayed in a truly tiny hotel room in Tokyo, and read the list
of things that were prohibited in the room. One of them was "Objects