Sunday, May 5, 2013

China Daily Penis

In London we have the Gherkin and the Cheesegrater, so-called for the skyscrapers' physical resemblance to their namesakes.

So one must wonder what the people of China will begin to call the headquarters of the state newspaper, the People's Daily, that recently popped up in Beijing.

With its imposing oblong structure and rounded conical top, the tower has drawn more than a few comparisons with a certain part of the male anatomy.

Criticism of the ongoing construction project has forced moderators on Sina Weibo - China's answer to Twitter - to censor those discussing the unique piece of architecture.

However, some comments have managed to sneak through the vetting process, allowing users to poke fun at the recent erection.

"Of course the national mouthpiece should be imposing," said one user.

"It seems the People's Daily is going to rise up, there's hope for the Chinese dream," said another, referencing a Communist Party slogan.

China's obscure state architecture has attracted attention before, with the China Central Television headquarters being nicknamed The Big Underpants.

It also wouldn't be the first time that a building has been associated with male genitalia - The Palace of Culture in Warsaw is pejoratively known by locals as Stalin's Penis.

Saturday, May 4, 2013

The Greatest Threat To Our Future: FIPA

Whats' This China...Joke Of The Week?

Photo: Reuters South Korean soldiers patrol on Grand Unification Bridge leading to inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex in North Korea, south of demilitarized zone in Paju

The Yonhap News Agency in South Korea reports that China’s nuclear representative has told his South Korean counterpart that China will not accept North Korea as a “nuclear-armed state,” citing a high-ranking Seoul official on Friday. The same official noted that China, South Korea and the United States all were in agreement on their position toward North Korea.
Chinese representative Wu Dawei made the comments during meetings in Beijing with his Seoul counterpart Lim Sung-nam, according to an official at Seoul’s foreign ministry.
The official, speaking under condition of anonymity, said to Yonhap News: "During the talks, Wu made it clear that China will not accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.”
China’s stance is now in alignment with that of the United States.
“The United States will not accept the DPRK [North Korea] as a nuclear state,” U.S. Sec. of State John Kerry said to reporters in Seoul.
Yonhap also said that media reports about China agreeing to enforce U.N. sanctions against North Korea were confirmed by the same official.

*You know you tease the US with your little "enfant terrible" North Korea. China we can see right through you...[me]

Delayed China trade deal reflects Tory dissent

Delayed China trade deal reflects Tory dissent, NDP says

Tory backbenchers troubled by Canada-China trade deal, NDP critic says

By Susana Mas, CBC News

Posted: Apr 22, 2013

Read 203 comments203

Prime Minister Stephen Harper signed an investment treaty with China while at the APEC Summit in Vladivostok, Russia, on Sept. 9, 2012. Harper is seen here speaking with then Chinese President Hu Jintao. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

A delay in the federal government's adoption of a controversial investment treaty with China has energized the Opposition New Democrats, who are opposed to the deal and would like to see it stopped.
MPs will be voting on an NDP motion calling on the Canadian government to inform China that it will not ratify the Canada-China Foreign Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (FIPA).
The government had signalled last fall its intention to ratify the investment treaty it signed with China and tabled in Parliament in September, but six months have passed and the Conservatives have yet to adopt the deal.
"The Canada-China investment treaty has not been unanimously accepted — even among Conservatives," NDP international trade critic Don Davies told CBC News in a telephone interview on Sunday.
The Canadian government has been criticized for negotiating this deal behind closed doors. Opposition critics and experts say it contains significant gaps and provides few benefits for Canada.
Gus Van Harten, an international investment law expert and associate professor at the Osgoode Hall Law School at York University, told CBC News that Canada would come out "on the losing side."
In January, a B.C. First Nation asked the Federal Court to stop Canada from ratifying the FIPA with China until it and other bands have been consulted.
That case is expected to be heard in May at the earliest.

NDP motion is 'anti-trade'

Although a Conservative majority government means the NDP motion will be defeated, Davies said New Democrats have been privately hearing from Conservative backbenchers who are against the deal.
With the rising tide of Conservative backbenchers who feel they have been muzzled by party discipline imposed on them by the Prime Minister's Office, Davies hopes to draw out their support when the motion comes to a vote.
"I believe that many members of the government side are aware of the dangers this deal presents to Canadian interests and are troubled by the agreement's violation of core Canadian values," Davies told the Commons when the motion was debated last Thursday.
While Gerald Keddy, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of international trade, did not give an explanation for the government's delay in ratifying the FIPA with China, he dismissed the NDP motion, telling the Commons "it's not just anti-investment, it's basically anti-trade."
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said she will be voting in favour of the NDP motion, but the Conservatives may not be alone in opposing it.
Liberal international trade critic Wayne Easter, during that same debate, said he disagreed with the NDP motion "to just throw this out" but understood why the NDP had put forth the motion.
Easter took a shot at the Conservatives saying greater transparency and cross-country hearings could have resulted in "a better treaty."
Davies told CBC News the NDP is not against trade with China, it's simply opposed to this deal in its current form. "There's nothing in this motion that says we wouldn't seek to amend it."
Davies said he spent the weekend trying to explain that to Liberals and Conservatives alike.

Defiant Conservative backbenchers

Conservatives have pointed out that the FIPA with China didn't have to be debated in Parliament because treaty making is a royal prerogative and as such can become law through a cabinet order-in-council after sitting in Parliament for no less than 21 days after being tabled on Sept. 26, 2012.
That means the Conservatives could have sent a diplomatic note to China saying the deal was ratified as early as the end of last October.
Requests by CBC News for an interview with Keddy or International Trade Minister Ed Fast went unanswered this week. Fast was on his ninth visit to Asia in less than two years, according to press releases.
While Davies has conceded there may be several reasons for the federal government's delay in ratifying this deal, it would not be the first time Conservatives have been divided where China is involved.
As CBC News reported in January, documents obtained through access to information revealed three Conservative MPs wrote to the prime minister and the industry minister to raise concerns about the controversial $15.1-billion bid by the China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) bid for Calgary-based Nexen before it was approved.
Conservatives Russ Hiebert, LaVar Payne, and Harold Albrecht objected to the deal based on "philosophical and practical" grounds, top among them China's human rights record.
More recently, other backbench MPs such as Conservative Mark Warawa have been increasingly outspoken over what they see as the Prime Minister's Office stifling of debate in the House of Commons.
In a surprise move last Friday, the Conservatives changed this week's Commons agenda, moving the day when Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was to present a motion that would see party whips stripped of their power to decide which MPs are allowed to make members' statements and which are not.
MPs will consider an anti-terrorism bill on Monday that the Conservatives say has taken on a new urgency in the wake of the Boston bombings.
But the Liberals aren't buying the rationale, suggesting instead that moving Trudeau's motion to Wednesday, the same day when the Tory caucus meets, is simply an excuse to give the prime minister another chance to quell defiant Conservative backbenchers before the vote.

Can China Sue BC Canada..YES!

Jesuits In China

Protests in Chinese city

Protests in Chinese city over planned chemical plant

Related News

Protests in Chinese city over planned chemical plant
5:40am EDT
Amid China air, water pollution, soil survey reveals century-old heavy metals
Wed, Apr 10 2013

A boy wearing a mask holds papers as he protests against a planned refinery which produces the chemical paraxylene (PX), at a square in Kunming, Yunnan province, May 4, 2013. REUTERS-Wong Campion

Police officers stand guard as residents raise a banner to protest against a planned refinery which produces the chemical paraxylene (PX), at a square in Kunming, Yunnan province, May 4, 2013. REUTERS-Wong Campion

A resident holds up a piece of paper that reads 'Protest against PX refinery' during a demonstration against a planned refinery which produces the chemical paraxylene (PX), at a square in Kunming, Yunnan province, May 4, 2013. REUTERS-Wong Campion

BEIJING | Sat May 4, 2013 7:16am EDT

(Reuters) - Hundreds of people took to the streets of the Chinese city of Kunming on Saturday to protest against the planned production of a chemical at a refinery, in the latest show of concern over the effects of rapid growth on the environment.
China's increasingly affluent urban population has begun to object to the model of growth at all costs that has fuelled the economy for three decades, with the environment emerging as a focus of protests.
Photographs on Weibo, China's version of Twitter, showed a crowd of protesters in the center of the southwestern city, carrying banners protesting against production at the planned plant of paraxylene (PX), a chemical used in making fabrics and plastic bottles.
Some estimated the crowd was up to 2,000-strong but the official Xinhua news agency said in a report more than 200 people had gathered to protest, many wearing masks printed with slogans including "no PX in Kunming".
They attracted nearly 1,000 onlookers, Xinhua said.
"Give me back a beautiful Kunming. We want to survive, we want health, get PX out of Kunming", read one of the banners, seen in a photo posted on Weibo.
A man at the Kunming Public Security Bureau, who described himself as a member of staff on duty, said he was not aware of the incident. The city government's emergency department referred a phone call to another number, which was not answered.
There were no reports of any violence at the protest.
Last November, the eastern city of Ningbo suspended a petrochemical project after days of street protests. The year before, big protests against a PX plant in the northeastern city of Dalian forced the city government to suspend it.
More recently, heavy pollution that has blanketed the capital Beijing and other cities, as well as scandals over food, have added to the sense of unease.
China National Petroleum Corp, the country's largest oil and gas producer and supplier, announced in February that the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) had approved the refinery project at Anning, just outside Kunming.
The refinery would produce gasoline, diesel, other various chemicals and fertilisers as well as PX, the company said in its submission to the NDRC.
(Reporting by Jonathan Standing, Niu Shuping and Max Duncan; Editing by Robert Birsel)

Coral reef damaged

Chinese boat 'damaged' Philippine coral reef

National park says boat caused "heart-breaking" damage to centuries-old reef after plowing into it last month.

Last Modified: 04 May 2013 11:22

A US naval ship also ran into the UNESCO World Heritage-listed coral reef earlier this year [EPA]

A Chinese fishing vessel has crashed into one of the Philippines' most famous reefs and damaged thousands of square metres of centuries-old coral, the marine park has said.
Some 3,902 square metres of coral was destroyed after the boat became stranded in the Tubbataha marine park, a UNESCO World Heritage-listed coral reef, the park management said on Saturday.
"The damage the Chinese vessel caused to the reef is heart-breaking," Angelique Songco, the head of the marine park said in a statement after experts assessed the affected area.
Some of the coral destroyed by the Chinese vessel was 500 years old, Songco said, adding that the damage was much larger than the area destroyed when a US Navy minesweeper, the USS Guardian, got stranded on Tubbataha in January.
The 48-metre vessel, carrying 12 suspected Chinese fishermen, plowed into the Tubbataha Reef near the western island of Palawan on April 8.
Authorities later found hundreds of dead pangolins, an internationally-protected species, hidden inside the vessel.
Tubbataha marine park information officer Glenda Simon told the AFP news agency that the 12 Chinese would likely be fined about $2.32m just for trespassing into the marine park and destroying the coral.
The government has already charged them with poaching and they could face an additional 12 to 20 years in jail for possession of the pangolins in violation of wildlife law.
Pangolins are widely hunted in parts of Asia for their meat, skin and scales and in China they are considered a delicacy and to have medicinal qualities.
The Philippine office of the World Wide Fund for Nature condemned the poaching of the pangolins after the men were caught, saying that growing demand in China was wiping the animal out in Southeast Asia.

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