主题：美国精英对美国选票制度的批判。 -- dolong

Who needs individual freedoms when you can have great infrastructure? Trains are always ranked ahead of free speech in my personal priorities. You too?

You have free speech? It sure isn't getting you anywhere.

You got to love the "Free Speech Zones":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_speech_zone

Free speech is an illusion in the USA. Oh and yes I do prefer, competant, intelligent government that is working for my well being, over the dysfunctional system in the USA where every single politician is in the pockets of the banksters and the only legislation is against my interests and only serves the interests of the 1% elite. Forget the cheap slogans and actually take a look at the US government and your steadily eroding freedoms. In China they are working for the Chinese. In the USA the government is working for and being run by the banks. The only growth industry in the USA is Usury.

You have free speach and hardly any servicable infrastructure. Is there any reason that you have to give up one to get the other?

I'll sleep well knowing that I'll be allowed to say anything I want from my cardboard box under the overpass.

Well said brother. You are free to starve and freeze to death in the dark and living in your cardboard box in the USA. The only guaranteed right.

You have freedom of speech? Are you kidding me?

Can you go to the street and speak loudly that you hate Isreal?

"Sure they are oppressed almost to the point of absurdity. Take a look at this video it's a documentary about the Tank man..." Tank Man,... I dont have time to watch the 52 mins documentary but it probably refers to the guy that stands in front of the tank during the 1989

Tiananmen Massacre. "That will show you how China really is." More like how China was, 20 years ago. I know how China really is, I live and work there 6 months of the year. You can basically do anything, as long as you don't plan to overthrow the government or go protesting. They are the place to be right now, like being in France during the Renaissance or like being in the US during the industrial revolution. They surely got their problems to solve, but they are doing a good job.

I am not a fan of communism, but it is definately the only way to control this huge population right now.

"Democracy", as we understand it, would end up in chaos there in no time.

In Israel or the USA,. the tank would run over the protestors.

I get sick of people that know nothing spewing crap about human rights in other countries.

Most haven't been out of their own county much less country.

Never heard of a cop tasering some old grandma in Europe.

I have never seen a Taser on a cop in Germany, the Netherlands or Europe in general.

In China, the Cops don't even have/need guns.

What a great post! I also have spent time in China, though not quite as much as you, and found it as you describe. Right down to the democracy bit... Imagine what a bunch of slick hucksters like we have in the states would do to a mostly rural, uneducated population. Heck, they do enough of mind-F on the people in the US!

In the rest of the world the people recognize the need for government to take a lead in developing infrastructure. The U.S. public has been indoctrinated to believe that government can't do anything and only the

private sector is the answer. The private sector is not going to invest in infrastructure. The U.S. will continue to fall further and further behind as the rest of the world moves forward.

The abuses of the upper crust in Imperial Russia brought bloody revolution and communism. The abuses of the upper eschelons of French society brought out the guillotine. The rulers of ancient Rome lost their empire to pride,

greed and infighting. America is in a stranglehold of left vs. right while big corps pull the strings of both. We are fools to think corporations value the constitution. Now, with even the Supreme Court doing their bidding, they hardly even have to pretend to. We have crumbling infrastructure, crippling debt, low taxes on corps and the wealthy, constant war, social division, the highest anti-depressant use in the world. The states that preach religion the loudest have the highest teen pregnancy rates, divorce and viewing of porn on the net. Districts where abstinence only is taught have higher teen pregnancy rates. We have candidates cuffing journalists on private property and supporters stomping the head of a member of the opposition. While we burn, some of our candidates talk about birth certificates, the sin of masturbation, seem to have forgotten what the constitutions says, work to do away with social security, healthcare, unemployment benefits. Bullying in our schools is so cruel, children are killing themselves in shocking numbers. Our military is experiencing high numbers of suicide, rape and depression as well. One hedge fund manager makes as much as 20,000 teachers and a fire departments stood by watching a home burn over an unpaid $75 fee. We are sick. Terminally? I don't know.

China is the country of the future, in the present. Of that there is no doubt. Their harbor and rail infrastructure is the best in the world, their industrial capacity allows them to manufacture 80% of the goods on the planet, they are global leaders in the manufacturing of alternative green energy technology and they've DOUBLED their number of colleges and universities in just 10 years!

The US is so freaking toast it's not even funny.

They might have a poverty problem over the coming years. They have hundreds of millions of citizens who live in the type of poverty developed countries simply don't have. This will be a problem for them.

Otherwise I agree with you.

Alexandria Mills was all smiles when she was crowned Miss World on Saturday, making her the third American to nab the title in the pageant's 60-year history. Yet new reports are surfacing that suggest the 18-year-old's victory was primarily the result of ongoing diplomatic tensions between Norway and China following Liu Xiaobo's controversial Nobel Prize win, according to the Daily Mail.

The article cites Miss World authorities who speculate that judges at the ceremony, held in Sanya on China's tropical Hainan Island, may have bowed to pressure from officials in Beijing, who are said to be furious that the Oslo-based Nobel Prize committee honored Liu, a jailed dissident, last month. Though she was considered an early favorite for the Miss World title, Miss Norway Mariann Birkedal wasn't even named into the top five contestants.

"They must have mixed politics and business," 2002 Miss World contestant and Norwegian personality Kathrine Sorland told the Daily Mail. "Without jumping to conclusions, I would stress that Miss World competitions have always been political. And the relations between China and Norway are very strained at the moment."

As for Birkedal, the 23-year-old former Miss Universe has thus far shrugged off the speculation. "I have been very careful with speculating about that myself...it is kind of stupid to start thinking that if this or that had not occurred, I would perhaps have been Miss World 2010," she is quoted as saying. "I do believe everything happens out of a reason."

Let's make a historical comparison. Was the rise of the United States a threat to democratic Britain? The United States was founded on the slaughtering of indigenous population and the slave system. Is this model suitable for other countries? Do you want China to learn from this model? It is true that the US has developed into a democratic country which is strong in many respects, but its democracy is not developed from this model, which any rational person would not want to imitate.

China is developing, but there is no evidence to prove that its internal development is causing a threat to the West. What is challenging the US is not China's development, but its independence. That is the real challenge.

You can tell from every day's headlines that the current focus of US foreign policy is Iran. The year 2010 is called 'The Year of Iran.' Iran is portrayed as a threat to US foreign policy and the world order. The US has imposed harsh, unilateral sanctions, but China has not followed suit. China has never followed the US lead. Instead, it supports UN sanctions, which are too weak to matter. A few days before I left for China, the US States

Department warned China in a very interesting way. It said China has to bear international responsibilities, i.e. follow US orders. This is China's international responsibilities.

This is standard imperialism, which is that other countries have to act according to our requests. If not, they are irresponsible. I think officials from the Chinese Foreign Ministry must laugh when they hear this. But this is the standard logic of imperialism. In fact, Iran becomes a threat because it does not follow US instructions. China is a bigger threat, as it is a

big problem when a major power refuses to obey orders. This is the challenge that the US faces.

A friend was commenting to me this morning that it's become nearly impossible to understand what's happening in Afghanistan today . . . because every news story seems to reflect an agenda-driven leak.

And right on cue we have these two headlines from the Washington Post . . appearing in the same paper on back-to-back days.

U.S. operations in Kandahar push out Taliban - October 26, 2010

U.S. military campaign to topple resilient Taliban hasn't succeeded - October 27, 2010

How does one understand what's happening in Afghanistan when the same major American newspaper has two articles making diametrically opposite arguments about the status of the war?

Well, here's a helpful hint - try to figure out who is leaking the information. Here's what the more pessimistic story has to say:

An intense military campaign aimed at crippling the Taliban has so far failed to inflict more than fleeting setbacks on the insurgency or put meaningful pressure on its leaders to seek peace, according to U.S. military and intelligence officials citing the latest assessments of the war in Afghanistan.

The blunt intelligence assessments are consistent across the main spy agencies responsible for analyzing the conflict, including the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Here's the source of the information from the more optimistic story about US military progress:

With 2,000-pound bombs, 12,000 troops, and one illiterate but charismatic Afghan border police commander, the American military has forced insurgents to retreat from key parts of this strategically vital region, according to U.S. and Afghan commanders.

US military commanders on the ground are more optimistic about the situation on the ground than intelligence analysts across the US government. Imagine that! Seriously, who could have seen that one coming?

But if you're still not sure who to trust, consider the other Washington Post article on Afghanistan today:

U.S. and other international development programs in a key Afghan province are "incoherent" and lack mechanisms to avoid wasteful overlap or to monitor their success, according to a new report by government auditors.

This is happening in Nangahar province, which is considered relatively stable (ish), compared to the situation in Kandahar. So one might be able to draw the conclusion that even if the US is making progress in pushing out the Taliban it's going to have a very difficult time maintaining those gains. Ultimately, that should be the corrective to any of these "we're making progress" or "we're killing lots of Taliban" stories - can we hold what we've gained.

So far the evidence on that count is a bit more conclusive.

If you had a leak in your roof or in the kitchen or basement, you’d probably think it a good idea to have it taken care of before matters got worse, and more expensive.

Aging and corroded pipes are bursting somewhere every couple of minutes. Dilapidated sewer systems are contaminating waterways and drinking water. Many local systems are so old and inadequate — in some cases, so utterly rotten — that they are overwhelmed by heavy rain.

As Charles Duhigg reported in The Times last March: “For decades, these systems — some built around the time of the Civil War — have been ignored by politicians and residents accustomed to paying almost nothing for water delivery and sewage removal. And so each year, hundreds of thousands of ruptures damage streets and homes and cause dangerous pollutants to seep into drinking water supplies.”

There is, of course, no reason for this to be the case. If this were a first-class society we would rebuild our water systems to the point where they would be the envy of the world, and that would bolster the economy in the bargain. But that would take maturity and vision and effort and sacrifice, all of which are in dismayingly short supply right now.

We can’t even build a railroad tunnel beneath the Hudson River from New Jersey to New York.

Improving water systems — and infrastructure generally, if properly done — would go a long way toward improving the nation’s dismal economic outlook. According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, every dollar invested in water and sewer improvements has the potential to increase the long-term gross domestic product by more than six dollars. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be created if the nation were serious about repairing and upgrading water mains, crumbling pipes, water treatment plants, dams, levees and so on.

Millions of jobs would be created if we could bring ourselves to stop fighting mindless wars and use some of those squandered billions to bring the nation’s infrastructure in the broadest sense up to 21st-century standards.

The need is tremendous. The nation’s network of water systems was right at the bottom of the latest infrastructure grades handed out by the American Society of Civil Engineers, receiving a D-minus. Jeffrey Griffiths, a member of the federal government’s National Drinking Water Advisory Council, told The Times: “We’re relying on water systems built by our great-grandparents, and no one wants to pay for the decades we’ve spent ignoring them. There’s a lot of evidence that people are getting sick. But because everything is out of sight, no one really understands how bad things have become.”

What has always struck me about this issue is that there is a desperate need to improve the nation’s infrastructure and a desperate need for the jobs and enhanced economic activity that would come from sustained, long-term infrastructure investment. But somehow the leadership and the will to move forward on the scale that is needed are missing.

A survey to be released this week by the ITT Corporation, which makes and sells water infrastructure equipment, shows that nearly 70 percent of respondents agreed with the statement “I generally take my access to clean water for granted.” But a similar percentage said they would be willing to pay a modest additional amount every month to upgrade their water system and ensure their long-term access to clean water.

If public officials would provide honest leadership on this and other infrastructure issues, making a sound case for the investments that are needed and the benefits that would accrue from rebuilding America’s infrastructure, the public would be likely to sign on.

We can start getting our act together now, or we can pay dearly later. The Obama administration has provided federal support for some water and other infrastructure improvements but nothing close to the kind of effort needed to bring America’s infrastructure into even reasonable shape.

The horror stories abound: the drowning of New Orleans when the levees failed in 2005, the 2007 explosion of an ancient steam pipe in Manhattan that killed one person and injured more than 30, the gas pipeline explosion and fire last month in San Bruno, Calif., that killed seven and injured more than 50. There are endless other examples, tragic, costly and unnecessary.

The sorry state of America’s infrastructure is a hard-core reflection of what is really going on in this increasingly hapless society, whether we choose to acknowledge it or not.