WeToldYouSo1 is an educational and activism channel. As of Oct 31, 2014, we became the media library for 'East-West Dichotomy' (website) and 'You've Heard About It' (blog).
Our main focus is on language, empire, political theory, philosophy of history, and East-Asian thought. The channel's admin is Mya.
Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2014. Show all posts
Thursday, October 16, 2014
Friday, July 25, 2014
The 2014 Berlin Espionage Scandal And NSA Surveillance Of German Citizens
US-German Relations in the Wake of NSA Surveillance of German Citizens
"Soon, the soccer after-party and media shindigs will be over, and Berlin gets sober again. German politicians from left and right are trenching in for a US revenge. It won’t be pretty. Ask any senior official or diplomat from Vietnam, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Japan, China, or any place really, what happened when their governments tackled US interests: economic penalties, political manipulations, and personal defamations."
[READ FULL ARTICLE on Dissident Voice ]
Monday, June 23, 2014
Monday, June 2, 2014
Cult Killings at McDonald's in China: Killer claimed she was an "evil spirit" (Video)
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| Woman killed in a McDonald's in China by Cult member Zhang Lidong who claimed she was an "evil spirit" |
ZHAOYUAN – Six people, four of them related, have been arrested for assaulting and killing a 37-years old woman at a McDonald's in China, Shandong Province, on May 29th.
As of May 30th, little details are known,* and there are conflicting reports (some say the woman was in her 20s; and that she “spurned his advances”) about the perpetrators (allegedly members of a Christian cult). A quarrel insured. The victim is said to have refused to give her phone number. What is undisputed, however, is the crime itself which was video-recorded. In addition, images from what looks like a security camera footage were broadcast on the province's TV.
RELATED China’s new eugenics: the poor are aborted, the rich shall live
Net citizens (China has over 600 million internet users) were outraged at what presents itself as yet another instance of complete moral failure of this pseudo-harmonious nation: The McDonald's was apparently jammed with customers and staff workers who either quickly left the scene, stood by and watched, or (helpful for police and investigators -it needs to be said), even filmed the gory incident: YOU WILL BE ASKED TO VERIFY YOUR AGE FOR THIS VIDEO FOOTAGE:
Some commentators searched China's soul to blame -they quickly compared it to the case of Yue Yue, a two-years old Chinese girl that a few years ago was run over by two cars in daylight and in a busy place and left to die by at least 18 passers-by.
“Why is nobody helping this poor woman?!” Someone posted, angrily. In addition to the exceptional barbarity of the murder, the case is likely to stir up the debate about widespread violence against women.
Finally, the incident happened at a time when a spell of killing rampages and mass stabbings at train stations and public spaces (often in open daylight) has gripped the nation's psyche, leaving ordinary citizens indeed fearful of meeting with random meaningless death.
RELATED Years of the Knife – The Stabbing Culture in East Asia
To show some leniency for the frightened observers (and staff members) in the video: The action escalated rather quick, and savagely, and after just 2 minutes or so, and after a bullish thug bashed the victim’s skull with what looks like an iron bar, the woman died on the spot. Having said that, in the end it all feels like some form of collective failure to render any assistance to that poor lady.
Chinese society may be harmonious and peaceful and all; but have them watch a stranger suffer pain and injustice… Holy Laozi, you can hear the callousness crackling.
*On May 31, CCTV published this interview with Zhang Lidong in which he said the killed the woman because she was an evil spirit:
Image credits: hz1188.com
Cross-posted at Dragons and Pandas, Big Think.
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Wednesday, May 28, 2014
Pattberg: Businessweek Propagandizes "China's War on English"
"Chinese authorities are waging a war on American culture and the use of English." --Dexter Roberts
LIVE COMMENT: Haha, cry me the internet, Bloomberg. If there's a war on language, it is the English one against all others (I am a German native speaker, so take some from me):
It has been shown -over and over again- how European translations of all things Asian have directly misinterpreted those other civilizations, and robbed the Asians of their originality, their inventiveness, and their intellectual property rights.
This great destruction of foreign words follows the history of the Europeans like genocide, colonialism, and orientalism.
For years, established scholars try to reach Western media outlets like Bloomberg, NYT, WSJ, Science, The Economist, and what not to inform people like Mr. Roberts of this systematic, relentless US-Anglophone language imperialism.
RELATED Zero Translation - As Chinese Are Madly In Love With English Words, Abandon The Archaic Habit
But he, like all others, tries to play it safe in life and instead accuses China of a war of resistance against Anglicism. But this resistance has a precursor. I'll suggest, for the sake of a balanced argument, to write about the war on non-Western words some time in your distinguished publication.
To be sure, English may be the international language, but it is NOT the global language. The future of global language would require tens of thousands of non-European vocabularies on top of it. China knows it, Japan knows it, India knows it, Iran knows it... you won't print it, so their ideas do not exist.
RELATED The Resurrection of Non-Western Civilizations
Europeans and Americans have been particularly cruel to the Chinese tradition. Very few words entered the English parlance (as compared to Sanskrit words, or Japanese ones). China has basically sucked up the knowledge of the Western world; yet what it had to offer back in return had been categorically censored, rejected, omitted, obliterated, or translated into convenient (often biblical and philosophical) European vocabularies.
We all know, America takes great pride in having "liberated" the races, the genders, and entire countries from foreign oppression. But you forgot to liberate the words.
China, in all fairness, is far more closer to the truth than America ... that knowledge is a polyglot.
Sunday, March 23, 2014
Michelle Obama Visited China's Mother Lode of Higher Education
BEIJING - Michelle Obama, the wife of the US president, loves to do things in a big way. What better place to talk about the future of education and academic exchange between the two superpowers during her trip to Beijing than visiting China's mother lode of Higher Education -Peking University.
This event will long been used by the sages of PKU to boost their prestige in the world, as Wang Enge, the current president of PKU (also known as 'Beida' in China) and other leaders have invested greatest efforts in attracting some of the most visible and renowned speakers (from world leaders to economists, professors, and celebrities) of all walks of life to hold lecturers here. The speaker's fee of Ms Obama was not disclosed (if there was any) -but it isn't uncommon that (instead of cash) valuable gifts or favors are presented. President Wang Enge allegedly offered admission of Ms Obama's two daughters to Peking University should they decide to study in China in the future.
Peking University recently crashed down on democrats and dissident voices, fulminating into the dismissal of Xia Yeliang -an outspoken critic against corruption in China's academia.
Note: The Stanford Center is pretty posh; usually underused. It's two levels underground. You can see the daylight falling in through the ceiling. Great picture!
Image credit: FLOTUSSinChina via +Veooz
Sunday, February 23, 2014
Chinese migrants are taking corruption abroad
READ MORE Asylum Fraud in Chinatown: Industry of Lies -by Kirk Semple, Joseph Goldstein, and Jeffrey E. Singer
There once were lectures on corruption at Peking University, with several case studies. To our surprise, Chinese scholars mostly thought nothing wrong with rent seeking, forgery and bribery. Students were oblivious to fraud, with over half of them in one class I witnessed at Tsinghua University admitting that they employ 'agencies' that ghostwrite their applications and personal statements for studying abroad. Zero feelings of guilt. Everyone is doing it, they say. It is the herd instinct, or, shall we say, the will to succeed in such an ultra-competitive culture at all costs.
READ MORE Chinese Top Universities Plagued With Corruption -by Thorsten Pattberg
As may forms of corruption like the abuse of officialdom and the wining-dining-doing-favors culture are institutionalized, many young Chinese scholars think this is simply how the world works. Moreover, it confirms their daily experiences and they way they were brought up. At that was Peking University, mind you! In fact, many Chinese want to quit China for the West because they are tired of all the stress, cheating, callousness, exploitation and abuse in the Chinese society or, worse, they are afraid of getting caught in Xi Jinping's recent anti-corruption campaign.
READ MORE Author: In China, 'everyone is guilty of corruption' -by Zhang Lijia
We are going to witness hundreds of thousands of new corruption scandals in the coming years. [Here is today's latest]. It won't look pretty, but it needs to be done. This is a very rotten society, and the Chinese people deserve better!
Saturday, February 22, 2014
Roderick MacFarquhar sees in Xi Jinping's sex trade clampdown an 'earthquake'
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| Roderick MacFarquhar at the Stanford Center of Peking University, October 2013 |
China's Crackdown On Sex Trade: An Anti-Corruption Campaign In Disguise? by Heng Shao
Roderick MacFarquhar, a professor at Harvard University, is quoted in the above article as saying that Confucianism is about virtuous women and "men un-corrupt!" It is quite a stretch of imagination that Xi Jinping's thought is guided by Confucius, and a very interesting statement in itself that, if it's true, may change 300 years of China Studies. That's because Confucianism, a 2500 years old tradition, is ANYTHING BUT un-corrupt, at least from a modern perspective. It's about hierarchies, patriarchy, nepotism, abuse of officialdom, and moral dictatorship, and not a few people (Lu Xun, say, and most European philosophers and world historians, and Japan who willfully abandoned Confucianism, for a starter) in fact have argued that Confucianism had been the main reason for China's cultural backwardness, no offense intended.
The Confucian canon, often referred to as a code of conduct rather than a proper religion, is essentially an instruction manual for cult leaders and dictators on how to morally blackmail the people into obedience. Hence the absence of universal concepts of freedom, individualism, and human rights (although there's a lot in it about human responsibilities, like filial piety, obedience, dependence) in China. The vibrant sex trade might as well be an afterbirth or direct expression of the out-dated but not defeated Confucian tradition, and Xi Jinping's Anti-Corruption Campaign might as well be another attempt of modernism to drive out out-dated customs that blemished China's image in the world. How so? Well, we know quite well that it was the Communist Party who battled the Confucian traditions of polygamy, concubinage, arranged marriages, and mistress culture (albeit not always successfully). In fact, it takes forever to establish the rule of law in China precisely because Confucianism thought that coercing people with a sense of obligation, shame and "face" works just fine, with the unenviable consequences that the people of China, in Hegel's words, "cherish the meanest opinion of themselves, and believe that they are born only to drag the car of Imperial Power."
Professor MacFarquhar, a political analyst, must know all this well but he and/or the article may have intentionally linked corruption in China to Communism, rather than Confucianism. I don't know which one is the greater evil. But I have this notion that actions such as the crackdown on rampant prostitution and corruption are based on reason and common sense of modern statesmanship and should not be attributed to the recommendations of Jesus Christ, the Buddha, Confucius, or any other quack who lived in the 1st millennium BC. This is the 21st Century!
Professor MacFarquhar seems to suggest that the troubled Communist Party of China under Xi Jinping, instead of dashing into an unknown future (of liberal democracy and Westernization, perhaps?), may want to revive Confucianism in order to justify its authoritarian leadership. As said, Confucianism works pretty good at that: The Confucian ideal of a government run by supreme human beings -the junzi- with superior moral values, not dissimilar to Plato's Philosopher Kings, is possibly the greatest corruption of all.
Friday, February 21, 2014
What if 99% of all books written on China are wrong...
...because they relied on erroneous and misleading translations? Because they are de facto Chinese-free. It is strange that no one seemed to have noticed this before...
A book on China entirely written in English is literally Chinese-free and cannot be taken serious, I think. Yes, ALL Western media reports on China are
READ MORE Language and Empire - Why We Shun Asian Words
READ MORE Language and Empire - Why We Shun Asian Words
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
With friends like that we don't need enemies: US targeted German chancellor's mobile phone
BERLIN - Former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in an interview with BILD, Germany's leading tabloid newspaper, accused the USA of impudence towards its allies and friends. He went as far as using the word "disrespect" towards the "sovereignty of his country." Mr. Schröder said he expected a political backlash when he declined to go to war against Iraq during his time as German Chancellor, but he never thought that America would go so far as to spy the phones of European leaders. Background of this story is the NSA's global espionage activity that wiretapped Mr. Schröder's phone and the mobile phone of his predecessor Chancellor Angela Merkel. Mr. Schröder showed especially discontent over the US's reluctance, if not outright dismissal, of Europe's proposal for a future 'anti-spy-agreement.' The US ignored such a proposal and continues to eavesdrop on all German communication regardless of German laws and the constitution.
Read at Spiegel Online English Version: Iraq War Critic: NSA Targeted Gerhard Schröder's Mobile Phone
Image credit: GlynLowe/Flickr.com
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Can Asians think? Yes, and no
BEIJING - A book published in 2001 entitled 'Can Asians think?' recently surfaced on my desk again after having met its famous author, Kishore Mahbubani, in Beijing in October 2013. Mr. Mahbubani is a Dean, Professor, former diplomat, and author of other East-West books like his latest 'Asia, the West, and the Logic of One World' or, his best known one, 'The New Asian Hemisphere'. The 'Can Asians think?' question is both rhetorical and self-deprecating, if not self-loathing. Asia was believed to be on top of things until small European powers set out to colonize the world. That Asians can think is unquestionable the case since Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, reminded us that he who thinks necessarily exists - Cogito, ergo sum -; yet what Mr. Mahbubani has in mind, I think, is the quality of that Asian thinking.
Leaving the great Western philosophers, inventors, and Nobel Laureates aside, the Western hemisphere for the last 300 years of Western imperialism, colonialism, and orientalism, has been credited with leading humanity not only into bloody wars but also into the Ages of Enlightenment, Sciences and Technologies, Modernity, Globalization, and, finally, the total Westernization of economics, politics, scholarship, education, entertainment, and the arts. Even uniquely Asian originals can only achieve global recognition and credentials - like Confucianism, Taoism, and Buddhism - if those traditions are studied and understood by the West and leading Western scholars, and it is still the case, as a general rule, that Asians who want to study their own cultures, must do so in the United States or Europe because it's there where they have all the theories.
Mr. Mahbubani argues in this book and his three others that the East, having absorbed and studied the Western theories, is now coming back onto the stage of world history with some sort of peaceful vengeance. What is more, the East was always thinking, Mr. Mahbubani argues, but quite differently from the West and therefore never quite being understood by Western analysts. This line of argument falls well into the well-known East-West discourse which argues that there is some kind of benign, spiritual competition going on between East and West, as ancient as the 'Greeks versus the Persians', that has seen the 'West versus the rest' throughout the centuries competing not only for the better arts and the better theories, but also for world domination. Mr. Mahbubani believes that certain Asian values like hard-working, filial piety, love for learning, patriarchy, and Confucian family values were ill-advisable in the past, but might be just the right formula to success in the 21st century. [Read more on Asian Values here.]
Despite Asia's rise little has been reported on what Asian intellectuals truly think when they are not just thinking about the West. Mr. Mahbubani's education, career, and intellectual output (he writes in beautiful English) are but the products of his westernization.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Pattberg in Wall Street Journal: Gewaltenteilung wird nicht gewährt
Go to Wall Street Journal Germany: Chinas Kampf gegen Korruption macht Firmen zu schaffen
Mehr Einzelheiten zur Korruption in China: The East-West Dichotomy (Englisch).
Sunday, January 26, 2014
They did it again (Big Think)
BEIJING - Xi Jinping's Anti-Corruption initiative resembles more and more Mao Zedong's Hundred Flowers campaign. People are encouraged to speak up and against abuses of state power and corruption, only to find themselves facing trial and ending up in prison for subversion of state power or disturbing public order. Looks like Xu Zhiyong joins the ranks of famous dissidents like Liu Xiaobo (Nobel Peace Prize laureate), Ai Weiwei (a world renowned artist), and Dalai Lama (His Holiness). Protest from the US and Europe as usual, but business with China must go on.
Read it at Big Think: They did it again
Wednesday, January 15, 2014
Exploring the origin and the future of cultural differences
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Formally established in July 1, 1952, Foreign Languages Press (FLP) is a comprehensive publishing house targeted at the international market; it specializes in editing, translating and publishing foreign-language books for readers abroad. It also publishes foreign-language textbooks, reference books and books in Chinese.
(Available in bookshops, libraries, and at Amazon HERE.)
Monday, January 13, 2014
Thinkibility: Key Concepts as Optical Fitlers
This great website for creativity and an open mind sets some of Dr. Pattberg's ideas in the right context. Invaluable insights from psychology and spirituality that are highly challenging for cultural policy makers and politicians: Just how much foreigness do we allow to enter our heads?
"Optical filters are devices that selectively transmit light of different wavelengths. They absorb some wavelengths of light – that is, colors – while transmitting others. Optical filters define what we see and what is left out.
Key concepts and filtersKey concepts do exactly the same with what we perceive. They strengthen or weaken information, change “colors”, let things out or vary the contrast. As you will see in the image below a key Western concept like “University” colors the way Westerners interpret the Chinese concept of Dá Xué."Read more at Thinkibility: Key Concepts as Optical Filters - Thinkibility Boost.
Pattberg: How to Live Forever: 12 Steps
Most successful spiritual leaders have much in common: they have powerful personalities, they touch the hearts of the people, and they all climb through more or less similar developmental stages in order to be recognized by society.
Read it at Big Think: How to Live Forever: 12 Steps
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
5 Million People Visit Yasukuni War Shrine Every Year
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