Links » Crème » Guess who hated Obama’s inaugural address more than American Reaganists

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Guess who hated Obama’s inaugural address more than American Reaganists Posted: 21 Jan 2013 06:49 PM PST President Barack Obama has drawn basically positive reviews for his second inaugural address yesterday, but at least one person was not impressed. (Note: probably tens of millions were not impressed, but you can read the comments section to Hot Air and other sites devoted to the corpse of Ronald Reagan if you're interested.) We're talking about the wizard behind the curtains of Global Times, who penned this: The US is standing at the commanding heights of development of human society. It can just bide its time for four years. However, if China were managed by similar methods, the result would be totally different. China also has a super-sized management system which is less powerful than that of the US, but the US does not have as many contradictions within society as China. These contradictions were buried previously, and they have gradually emerged. China is no longer a country where the government's call is immediately taken up by all of society. <Rubs temples> Compared with the US, obviously China has changed more in the last four years. Last year Internet was not free, and this year it is a little less free. CHANGE YOU CAN BELIEVE IN. We have gotten used to the fact that the changes are growing larger and larger. No one even bats an eye at eight-figure corruption anymore. Almost all social policies are being adjusted to improve people's livelihood and enhance equity. How do we read the "almost" in this sentence? That there are ever social policies enacted to not improve people's livelihood? Or some social policies are so perfect that they don't need to be adjusted? Or are we saying "almost all" social policies are so flawed that they require adjustment? The above three blockquotes form one paragraph — just one dazzling whopper fused together by the upchuck of a propagandist force-fed on party-line millet. The author certainly has the right to allude to the failings of American politics, though to make a tortured comparison with the Chinese system and conclude that Obama has a governance lesson (the words are in the headline) for this country is patently absurd. In other words, it's so Global Times. Obama has governance lesson for China (Global Times)

The Schmidts write about their North Korea trip Posted: 21 Jan 2013 05:54 PM PST Like most visitors of North Korea, Sophie Schmidt, daughter of Google chairman Eric Schmidt, thought the country "weird." It's her that everyone is quoting today, specifically this write-up on Google Sites: It's impossible to know how much we can extrapolate from what we saw in Pyongyang to what the DPRK is really like.  Our trip was a mixture of highly staged encounters, tightly-orchestrated viewings and what seemed like genuine human moments.  We had zero interactions with non-state-approved North Koreans and were never far from our two minders (2, so one can mind the other). The longer I think about what we saw and heard, the less sure I am about what any of it actually meant. On the technology front: Their mobile network, Koryolink, has between 1-2 million subscribers. No data service, but international calls were possible on the phones we rented. Realistically, even basic service is prohibitively expensive, much like every other consumption good (fuel, cars, etc.). The officials we interacted with, and a fair number of people we saw in Pyongyang, had mobiles (but not smart phones). North Korea has a national intranet, a walled garden of scrubbed content taken from the real Internet. Our understanding is that some university students have access to this. On tour at the Korea Computer Center (a deranged version of the Consumer Electronics Show), they demo'd their latest invention: a tablet, running on Android, that had access to the real Internet. Whether anyone, beyond very select students, high-ranking officials or occasional American delegation tourists, actually gets to use it is unknowable. We also saw virtual-reality software, video chat platform, musical composition software (?) and other random stuff. What's so odd about the whole thing is that no one in North Korea can even hope to afford the things they showed us. And it's not like they're going to export this technology. They're building products for a market that doesn't exist. They echo comments from her dad, who wrote on Google Plus: As the world becomes increasingly connected, the North Korean decision to be virtually isolated is very much going to affect their physical world and their economic growth. It will make it harder for them to catch up economically. We made that alternative very, very clear. Once the internet starts in any country, citizens in that country can certainly build on top of it, but the government has to do one thing: open up the Internet first. They have to make it possible for people to use the Internet, which the government of North Korea has not yet done. It is their choice now, and in my view, it's time for them to start, or they will remain behind. I'm guessing, on the list of items North Koreans are clamoring for, Internet isn't No. 1. They don't know what they're missing: Pyongyang Racer, anyone? Via SCMP

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