May 30, 2010
May 29, 2010
Chained boy, 8, put up for sale by his dad
Fury ... bystanders grab the father
CEN
May 27, 2010
May 25, 2010
Taiwan's largest underground air base revealed
Taiwan's largest underground air base revealed_News About Taiwan_English_Chbcnet With a 2,400-meter runway through Chiashan hangar, the base has hidden taxiways connecting it to the neighboring Huanlien Base. The base is capable of withstanding conventional missiles. Construction of the base started in 1985 and lasted nearly nine years.
Consisting of dozens of connected caves and capable of holding 200 planes, Chiashan Base, located in Huanlien County, Taiwan, is the largest underground air base of the Taiwan air force, according to news form Taiwan-based Broadcasting Corporation of China. A
fter years of operating in secret, the base was finally made open to the media in April.
May 22, 2010
May 18, 2010
May 16, 2010
Here We Are - In Korea!
His & Hers
Just trying to make our way through life, with some fun experiences and challenges along the way.
http://thehansonsinkorea.weebly.com
Just trying to make our way through life, with some fun experiences and challenges along the way.
http://thehansonsinkorea.weebly.com
As death toll rises, Thai PM defends crackdown
By VIJAY JOSHI, Associated Press Writer Vijay Joshi, Associated Press Writer – Sat May 15, 4:10 pm ET
BANGKOK – Thailand's leader defended the deadly army crackdown on protesters besieging the capital's heart, saying Saturday the country's very future was at stake. Protesters dragged away the bodies of three people from sidewalks — shot by army snipers, they claim — as soldiers blocked major roads and pinned up notices of a "Live Firing Zone."
"I insist that what we are doing is necessary," Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said in a defiant broadcast on national television, making it clear he would not compromise. "The government must move forward. We cannot retreat because we are doing things that will benefit the entire country."
On Saturday, the protesters launched a steady stream of rudimentary missiles at troops who fired back with live ammunition in several areas around a key commercial district of Bangkok.
Army snipers were perched with high-powered rifles atop tall buildings, viewing the action below through telescopic sights. Thick black smoke billowed from tires set ablaze by demonstrators as gunfire rang out.
The spiraling violence has raised concerns of sustained, widespread chaos in Thailand — a key U.S. ally and Southeast Asia's most popular tourist destination that promotes its easygoing culture as the "Land of Smiles."
"The situation right now is getting close to a civil war each minute," Jatuporn Prompan, a protest leader, told reporters. "Please don't ask us how we are going to end this situation, because we are the ones being killed."
Since Thursday, the once-bustling commercial and shopping district has become a war zone with Red Shirt protesters firing weapons, throwing homemade explosives, and hurling rocks at troops firing live ammunition and rubber bullets.
The violence ignited after the army started forming a cordon around the protesters' encampment and a sniper shot and gravely wounded a rogue general reputed to be the Red Shirts' military adviser.
At least 24 people have been killed and more than 194 wounded since Thursday. Previous violence since the protest began in mid-March caused 29 deaths and injured 1,640.
This is the most prolonged and deadliest bout of political violence that Thailand has faced in decades despite having a history of coups — 18 since it became a constitutional monarchy in 1932.
The protesters have occupied a tire-and-bamboo-spike barricaded, 1-square-mile (3-square-kilometer) zone in one of the capital's ritziest areas, Rajprasong, for about two months to push their demands for Abhisit to resign immediately, dissolve Parliament and call new elections.
The crisis had appeared to be near a resolution last week when Abhisit offered to hold elections in November, a year early. But the hopes were dashed after Red Shirt leaders made more demands.
The political uncertainty has spooked foreign investors and damaged the vital tourism industry, which accounts for 6 percent of the economy, Southeast Asia's second largest.
Abhisit, in his first comments since Thursday, said the protesters have "held the people of Bangkok hostage" and described them as "armed terrorists" who attacked security forces.
"Officers on duty have the right to defend themselves," he said.
The Red Shirts, drawn mostly from the rural and urban poor, say Abhisit's coalition government came to power through manipulation of the courts and the backing of the powerful military, and that it symbolizes a national elite indifferent to the poor.
The fighting is taking place in the no man's land between the encampment and the army cordon, a normally bustling area with hotels, businesses, embassies, shopping malls and apartments. Most of them are now shut and public transport is off the roads.
The army said its cordon has been effective, and the number of protesters at the encampment has dwindled by half. Water and power also were cut off to the area Thursday.
About 5,000 hard-core demonstrators held their ground under threat of military operations to oust them, down from about 10,000 days earlier, army spokesman Col. Sansern Kaewkamnerd said.
"If the protesters will not end the situation, we will have to enter the encampment," Sansern said.
The army says it is not shooting to kill, but protesters crawled along sidewalks to slowly drag away corpses of three people near the city's Victory Monument traffic circle in the Ratchaprarop area. Demonstrators accused army snipers of shooting all three in the head.
On Saturday, soldiers unrolled razor wire across roads leading to Ratchaprarop — a commercial district north of the main protest site — area and pinned up Thai and English-language notices saying "Live Firing Zone" and "Restricted Area. No Entry."
Ratchaprarop houses high-rise buildings, posh hotels and designer shops. It was the scene of some of the worst fighting Friday night between troops and anti-government protesters.
Amid the violence, the rest of the capital has remained largely normal with shops, restaurants and cinemas open and busy, albeit with customers and workers expressing concern about the clashes. Rural Thailand also has not seen violence, though demonstrations and other protest-related activity has occurred in the rural home provinces of many Red Shirts and supporters.
The Red Shirts especially despise the military, which had forced Thaksin Shinawatra, the populist premier favored by the Red Shirts, from office in a 2006 coup. Two subsequent pro-Thaksin governments were disbanded by court rulings before Abhisit became prime minister.
"The reality is that this conflict also draws heavily on the frustrated political aspirations of a large numbers of rural voters," said Andrew Walker, a political scientist at The Australian National University.
"If election results are going to be overturned, people's political aspirations and frustrations will find expression in other forms," he said.
Defense Ministry spokesman Tarit Pengdit said 27 protesters have been sentenced to six months' jail for joining an illegal protest. He did not elaborate.
The U.S. Embassy said it will evacuate family members of its staff who want to leave Bangkok.
Embassy spokeswoman Cynthia Brown said the U.S. State Department also issued a "travel warning advising all citizens to defer travel to Bangkok."
___
Associated Press writers Thanyarat Doksone, Denis D. Gray, Grant Peck and Jocelyn Gecker contributed to this report. Additional research by Warangkana Tempati.
Finding a Wholesome Refuge in China
"Casual sex is a concept that literally does not exist here."
March 2, 2010
by David Richards
(for henrymakow.com)
(David is a 22-year old Brit teaching English in China. He authored "Porn--Drugged, Bruised Prostitutes" for this site.)
March 2, 2010
by David Richards
(for henrymakow.com)
(David is a 22-year old Brit teaching English in China. He authored "Porn--Drugged, Bruised Prostitutes" for this site.)
I left University last summer to a bleak future. I was living in a war zone; the elite were systematically dismantling the economy. People around me were lost in entertainment reducing conversation to 'twitter-ing.' Chemtrails laced the sky of my hometown in the UK.
Living in a war zone isn't what hurt; it was that no one else could see it.
So I decided to move to China. I didn't choose one of the futuristic metropolis, rather a city in the North known for it's freezing winters appealed to me because it is '20 years behind the South.' Perhaps there I could find a chance for reflection.
What hit me upon arrival was the incredible vibrancy here. People sing in the streets; men play board games on corners, children run in roads. In Britain it felt like a blanket had been put over the country, stifling and suffocating the population.
As I settled in, my brain unwound. I slowly realized that British people are under the most sophisticated and complete form of psychological terrorism waged in history. An informational atom bomb is dropped every day, dizzying us with mindless trivia, sensationalism and political farce. We are ordered how to act and think down to the smallest detail, manufacturing all-consuming feelings of paranoia and worthlessness. When securely locked into this state of paralysis, our society is easily altered around us.
COMMUNIST CHINA IN COMPARISON
This is why China is a far less controlled country than Britain; the Chinese consume a weaker quality and quantity of propaganda everyday. They are controlled by force, we by psychology. They get a boot to the face, we exist in a restless, surrealistic dream. Which is most cruel?
The Chinese are grounded by their family. The men and women perform the traditional parental roles that every child innately desires, with wider family living close by and creating a strong web of support. In a land known for destructive social upheavals, having a strong family is necessary for survival.
Unlike the UK, the people here are not obsessed with sex. There is constant social interaction, a level of connectedness that reduces it to a small part of life. Many of my students are older than me but mentioning sex to them would be terribly embarrassing. Saying 'kiss' would entice nervous laughs, even from the boys.
One teacher from the US went clubbing expecting a one-night stand as a birthright. Drunk and blaring, 'the white monkey is king,' he was shocked to realize that his come-ons were terrifying girls. Casual sex is a concept that literally does not exist here.
MEDIA PROMOTES WHOLESOME VALUES; PORN ILLEGAL
Girls are not programmed to be promiscuous, instead they're told; you are beautiful at 20, less at 30 and not when you're 40. So fall in love with a man who will take care of you for life; it is imperative for a happy future. Playing sexual games with boys is simply reckless. When their body clock runs down in their 30's, single English women will slowly realize that they've been conned and have a potentially grim future for the next 50 years (if they don't die of liver failure much sooner). Chinese girls are in a stable family.
Young fathers in parks seem content pushing their kid on a swing. They gain social approval by providing a good future for their family rather than heavy drinking and notches on the bedpost.
The culture industry promotes family values. MTV China airs songs about respecting your mother, being kind to your friends and romance. Tellingly, the only place where traditional gender roles are undermined are on comedy programs, where sketches of dominating wives bullying their husbands induce howls of laughter from the audience.
Porn is illegal. Many of the foreigners are outraged, but I tell them creating sexual deviancy in the minds of men breaks up families. Legalizing pornography would mean social chaos in a country of 1.3 billion people fighting to make ends meet.
Young people are not taught to ignore family and embrace their true 'uninhibited free will', rather it is understood that the folly of youth is potentially reckless and guidance is needed from elders with a lifetime of experience. This is enforced with violent expressions of love. Children are rarely beaten in England. It often comes with the absence of any human touch.
The youth even have a healthier social life among themselves than in Britain. They meet as couples or small groups and have long drawn out conversations over tea or dinner. In England you have to be drunk and babbling like an idiot to get your social fix.
THREATS
However, there are signs that the social fabric is beginning to tear. An elderly man complained to me that the younger generations are becoming dismissive of their parents and some are refusing to support them in old age. I asked why and he told me that both parents work long hours and are tired so they increasingly view TV as the perfect babysitter. He saw a truth long forgotten in the west; TV makes us strangers.
Many of the youth are addicted to their computers and are entering deeper and deeper recesses of escapism. The only thing that grounds them is strong family interaction, without which they would be living in a total fantasy world like the friends I left behind.
You know dark side of Chinese life. I have spoken of what makes life here more functional than the West. China is the model state of the NWO and is planned to be the driving economic and military force in the world. For this to work, the culture creators sell functionality. To aid our destruction, we in the West are seduced with commodity deviance.
So from this strange arctic city, where I have been exiled by stealth, I can now see clearly what is happening at home; a devastating cultural war. Do I feel angry at the treatment of my people? I can't say deep down that I do. They are not my people. I have no people. The social engineers destroyed any glue that would have bound us together. They have made nomads of us all.
http://www.henrymakow.com/finding_wholesome_refuge_in_ch.html
Thai red-shirt supporter Gen Khattiya shot
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8680455.stm
The BBC's Rachel Harvey says Gen Khattiya was quickly taken to hospital
A renegade Thai general who backs anti-government protesters has been shot, shortly after a deadline for troops to seal their Bangkok protest camp passed.
Khattiya Sawasdipol, better known as Seh Daeng (Commander Red), was shot in the head and seriously injured.
In clashes later, a protester was shot dead. The army has moved to seal off the protesters' large camp.
A state of emergency in place in the capital and surrounding areas is to be extended to 15 other provinces.
The BBC's Rachel Harvey in Bangkok says all talk of reconciliation and election timetables has been abandoned and the Thai capital is braced for further bloodshed.
The US has closed its embassy in Bangkok saying it is "very concerned" - and the UK also said it was closing its embassy on Friday because of the situation.
'Military strategist'
People were earlier urged to leave the area near the protesters' sprawling camp, and shops and businesses were advised to close before the 1800 (1100 GMT) deadline passed. Public transport was suspended in the area.
 | KHATTIYA SAWASDIPOL  Describes himself as a key military adviser to the red-shirts Suspended from duty in the Thai army where he has the rank of major-general Dubbed Seh Daeng (English: Commander Red), enjoys a cult following among the opposition's radical wing Aged 58, has likened himself to the Mel Gibson character in the film Braveheart  |
Some time after the deadline had passed, a volley of shots rang out and an explosion was heard.
Then reports came that Seh Daeng had been shot and rushed to hospital.
He is a suspended army officer who describes himself as the red-shirts' military strategist.
Seh Daeng is part of the protesters' more radical wing and had accused red-shirt leaders - many of whom have distanced themselves from him - of not being hard-line enough.
Circumstances surrounding the shooting, near the Silom business area, are not clear.
However, the New York Times reported that Seh Daeng was shot in the head during an interview with one of its reporters.
Sean Boonpracong, international spokesman for the red-shirt movement, told the BBC he believed an army sniper had shot the general.
A military spokesman, Col Sansern Kaewkumnerd, had earlier warned that sharpshooters armed with live ammunition would move into position in the area.
Government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn told the BBC that troops could only use their weapons in self-defence.
He said any "unusual" engagement would be investigated.
The second, and fatal, shooting happened as a group of more than 100 protesters advanced towards security forces, our correspondent says.
Street lights have been switched off in the protesters' camp, plunging parts of it into darkness, but they continue to defiantly blast out music, she adds.
Earlier in the day BBC reporters saw trucks unloading heavily-armed soldiers several blocks from the encampment, and later a group of about 200 soldiers moving towards it.
The decree extending the state of emergency to a further 15 provinces gives the army broad powers to deal with protesters.
Mr Panitan said the new measures were intended to prevent "masses of people trying to come to Bangkok".
Elections demanded
The protesters - who have been occupying parts of Bangkok for more than two months - want Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to dissolve parliament and call fresh elections.
Their camp stretches from the city's shopping district south to its business hub.
Mr Abhisit is under severe pressure to end the protests, which have paralysed Bangkok since 14 March.
He had offered polls on 14 November - but the two sides failed to agree a deal because of divisions over who should be held accountable for a deadly crackdown on protests last month.
The 10 April operation left 19 protesters, one journalist and five soldiers dead.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8680455.stm
Thai troops battle defiant protesters as crisis deepens
By Ambika Ahuja and Martin Petty Ambika Ahuja And Martin Petty
BANGKOK (Reuters) – Thai troops and rioting anti-government demonstrators clashed again early on Saturday, intensifying a violent political conflict and turning Bangkok's commercial district into a bloody battlefield.
Troops battled during the night with protesters who hurled rocks and petrol bombs on roads surrounding an area of luxury hotels and shopping malls they have occupied for nearly six weeks, witnesses said.
The violence, which erupted on Thursday, left the city of 15 million tense, with gunfire and loud blasts heard on major roads where protesters faced off with the army as it battled to establish a perimeter around the sprawling encampment.
The turbulence adds to a five-year crisis that pits a royalist urban elite who back Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva against rural and urban poor, many of which have adopted red as a protest color, who say they are disenfranchised.
The "red shirts" broadly support former premier Thaksin Shinawatra, a graft-convicted populist billionaire ousted in a 2006 coup.
A journalist among a group of demonstrators north of the site said violence had intensified during the night. Multiple blasts and gunshots were heard, followed by loud cheers from the protesters, who refused to disperse.
Thai television showed footage of injured protesters being loaded into ambulances after street battles with soldiers that appeared to be spreading toward a major intersection.
The military said some people among the protesters fired handguns and grenades on Friday, causing chaos.
Five-year Thai credit default swaps, used to hedge against debt default, widened by more than 30 basis points -- the biggest jump in 15 months -- to 142 basis points.
Fires blazed in the road as troops closed off streets after firing volleys of warning shots at protesters who hurled Molotov cocktails and set piles of tires alight in a commercial area dotted with hotels, banks and Western embassies.
"We hope to return the situation to normal in the next few days," said government spokesman Panitan Wattanayagorn.
The fresh wave of violence follows an assassination attempt on Thursday on renegade general Khattiya Sawasdipol, a military advisor to the red shirts, who was critically wounded while speaking to reporters. He underwent brain surgery and was in a critical condition.
Ten people have been killed and at least 125 were wounded, including three journalists -- two Thais and a Canadian working for France 24 television -- since the fighting erupted Thursday night, according to the Erawan medical center.
Much of the city was braced for a crackdown at the main protest site where thousands of the red-shirted demonstrators, including women and children, have gathered, protected by medieval-like walls made from tires and wooden staves soaked in kerosene and topped by razor wire.
Army spokesmen Sansern Kaewkamnerd on Friday said there were an estimated 500 armed "terrorists" among the thousands of protesters in the city.
A source close to army chief Anupong Paochinda said more troop reinforcements would be deployed, fearing more protesters would arrive to surround and attack soldiers.
"It's unlikely to end quickly. There will be several skirmishes in the coming days but we are still confident we will get the numbers down and seal the area," the source said.
POOR VS ELITE
The protestors say Oxford-educated Prime Minister Abhisit lacks a popular mandate after coming to power in a controversial parliamentary vote influenced by the politically powerful military.
The two months of protests have spiraled into a crisis that has killed 36 people, wounded more than 1,400, paralyzed parts of Bangkok, scared off investors and squeezed the economy.
Thousands of protesters remained defiant, calling for Abhisit to dissolve parliament immediately and take responsibility for the violence. Protest leaders wore flak jackets, fearing snipers might try to shoot them.
Some protest leaders, including the movement's chairman, have not been seen at their 3 sq-km (1.2 sq-mile) encampment for days.
CHAOTIC CLASHES
In clashes during Friday, protesters set fire to a police bus and truck, a motorbike and tires as they retreated down a road lined with office towers, hotels, the U.S. ambassador's home and several embassies, which were closed and evacuated.
The latest violence followed the collapse of a reconciliation plan Abhisit proposed last week. An emergency decree was declared in 17 provinces deemed red shirt strongholds, to prevent unrest and to stop convoys of protesters from coming into Bangkok.
Abhisit is under enormous pressure to end the protests, which began with festive rallies on March 12 and descended into Thailand's deadliest political violence in 18 years.
The Thai government stands a good chance of clearing the streets, the Eurasia Group political risk consultancy said.
"But it will not end the polarization that has led to the current instability ... political volatility will remain a persistent problem for Thailand for the foreseeable future."
(Additional reporting by Khettiya Jittapong and Panarat Thepgumpanart; Editing by Matthew Jones
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100514/ts_nm/us_thailand
May 09, 2010
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