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lysieblu · 7 years ago

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Like a river....

If you’ve read my previous posts then you know that Boys Over Flowers is a huge trigger for me. I was recently advised that there are other versions of this and I stumbled upon Meteor Garden (MG)(2018) which is the Chinese/Taiwanese take on the Boys Over Flowers (BOF) story and I am so beyond thrilled I can't contain myself. I am aware that this is the remake of an 2001 original and as soon as I can get my hands on that version I will watch and report. I am also in pursuit of the Japanese version. My review will be in comparison to the Korean version so buckle up buttercup I have SPOILERS.

Overall the series eliminated most of the elements that made BOF cringy like the excessive bullying. This is definitely a more PC version. F4 is described as a smart respectable group of boys that respects women. This attempt is part of the reason you can almost overlook the "overtly nice damsel in distress" archetype. She ends up with the asshole, but I ain't mad

Dao Ming Si: I have never in my foreign drama watching life rooted for the guy before the girl. I love what they did with this character. He has so much more depth than Goon Joon Pyo of BOF. He wasn't just an arrogant asshole. He got his shit together and changed… immediately. He made mistakes…. And FUCKING learned from them!!!! AND ADJUSTED ACCORDINGLY!!! There are grown as people in this world well into their 60s or older who still haven't figured out life like this yet. I applaud this so much. Very rarely do you see a man who has his emotional shit together. Who uses a women as inspiration to be a better person versus relying on her to raise him like she's his god damned mother. He knew that he loved her and showed it everyway he knew how. He didn't play games.

But don't get it twisted. His over all aggression and possessiveness towards Shancai is unhealthy. Wanting her no matter what the costs even if it's not for her benefit, is unhealthy thinking. It's easy to overlook these things because he seems to grow out of it. But when it comes down to real, sustainable relationships, Lei is and will always be the better, healthier choice

is hair.. Sonic the Hedgehog. I CANNOT be the only one who thought this.

Dong Shancai was disappointing to me. I didn't like the character in BOF and she especially frustrated me in MG. There was no reason for her to be so out of touch with her feelings. She was difficult just because; no past trauma or broken heart to explain it. To me, she never returned his feelings with the same intensity Si gave his. Even in the end when they got married. She hesitated towards Si even after he became a better person. It seems as if maintaining her "innocence" was more important than making her a character capable of giving and receiving all types of love. I understand that there are people who are like this in real life, but there is something about this character that doesn't seem genuine. Is it the acting? I couldn't feel the love or connect.. And I feel everything.

Her tendency to put other people before her was admirable but unreasonable. They are not children and she was treating them as such. Her interference with Xiaoyou and Ximen's business angered me. I also feel like a lot of the hardships Shancai went through was her doing. Si said he would never leave her, so why would she take on Feng by herself? It was HIS mother. He is the literal reason why this is all happening. To shut him out was stupid. This whole drama would have been solved long ago if they would have stood their ground earlier. But Shancai chose to be arduous.

I hated every kiss. It seemed forced every time.

Also, why does she pull all these fine ass men?? There is nothing interesting about her. Or at least, what was interesting fizzled in the end.

I loved how each character gained a little more depth but I am on the fence about Mei Zuo's side story. I want every character to find love.. But he doesn't so… do I care? Mei Zuo is my least favorite member of F4 and I think those scenes are what destroyed him.

Huaze Lei: Sweet baby boy. I loved him so much in this version. I just wish he would have found love. I am glad that he protected Shancai without becoming her pet. Hell, he even called her, his pet.

Lei is the realest, most grounded character in this drama. (And low-key savage.) His relationship with the others is the most genuine. He had the best lines and learned the most throughout the drama. He is literally me in male k-drama form: unbothered but totally involved. Although, I would have never let Si just hit me. I'm not a fighter but I will fight, win or lose, I don't care. You are going to understand that I am not the one.

Lei and Si's friendship is everything.

Dao Ming Feng: Mega bitch.. Light. She didn't destroy Shancai's family but was still insufferable. Turns out she was miserable and instead of accepting help, from her own family, she had to crash and burn. Her story line made me think that maybe she was a business women, not because she wanted to be, but because she had to be. She got a fresh start and I respect that.

There is nothing wrong with the way Ximen dates, Shancai!!! He was always upfront with his women. I am glad that in this version, Ximen and Xiaoyou end up together.

(Dear Cesar Wu, Why are you so fucking gorgeous??? You maintained model status the whole 49 episodes. You're killing me son!!!! Sincerely, TheThirstIsReal.com)

Dao Ming Zhuang: The best female character in this drama and everything I hope to be as a big sister to three boys.

Thomas.. Why do I love him??? He aint shit but I love him. Says something about me, right??

Random observations:

Let's talk about shameless product placement because OMG every episode had a commercial moment and while it is marketing genius, it felt dirty. I can't avoid it. It's just there and I don't know when it's coming.

The seasons never changed. It was always Chinese New Year.

Either Si had the hottest breath or there was no heat in any of the buildings they filmed in. WTF?

Production got cleared for 5 songs and played the hell out of those songs. There were moments when it made sense, moments when I wished a certain song would play and it didn't, and moments when I just wanted to flip my TV over if I heard said song again.

That being said… *Adds Bishop Briggs' "River" to playlist* Seriously, this song will be the soundtrack of my life. Whenever shit goes down, "like a river…"

I want all of F4 clothes and shoes. And that one sweater Shauncai had on with the quadratic equation on it.

There were a lot of flashbacks, mostly unnecessary.

Is it bridge or is it poker???

Compared to every other show I have every watched with the "rich douche bag boy and fierce but it eventually fades, poor girl" archetype, this is the most acceptable version. I should write an American version that is psychologically sound and satirical of these versions.. And then she ends up with Lei. That is literally two episodes of material. Ahh.. It could be a movie!

#meteor garden 2018

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pope-francis-quotes · 6 years ago

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2nd February >> (@VaticanNews By Andrea Tornielli) #PopeFrancis #Pope Francis The Editorial Director of the Dicastery for Communication discusses the pastoral duties of Chinese bishops received into communion by #Pope Francis

Pastoral duties of the Chinese bishops received in communion by the Pope

The Vatican newspaper, Osservatore Romano, publishes an article by the Editorial Director of Vatican News, and an interview with the Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, focusing on the Catholic Church in China.

By Andrea Tornielli

An article published Saturday in the Osservatore Romano communicates news about the Catholic Church in China and information about the pastoral appointments assumed by the Chinese bishops, received in communion with Rome by Pope Francis, on the eve of the signing of the "Provisional Agreement on the appointment of Bishops".

"On 22 September 2018 in Beijing”, reads the article, “the Holy See and the People's Republic of China signed a ‘Provisional Agreement on the appointment of Bishops’. Previously, on 8 September 2018, after much reflection and prayer, the Successor of Peter, in a spirit of great benevolence, welcomed into full ecclesial communion seven Chinese bishops, consecrated without pontifical mandate".

"In this context”, continues the article in the Osservatore Romano , “Pope Francis invited all the bishops to renew their total adherence to Christ and the Church. He reminded them that, as they are part of the Chinese people, they are bound to show respect and loyalty towards the civil authorities and, as bishops, are called to be faithful to the Gospel, according to what Jesus Himself teaches: ‘Repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God’ (Mt 22, 21)".

The article also states that the Pope "assigned to each bishop a diocesan pastoral task, taking due account of the particular and complex local situations. Therefore, Msgr. Joseph Guo Jincai was called to carry out his episcopal ministry as first bishop of Chengde; Msgr. Joseph Huang Bingzhang, as bishop of Shantou; Msgr. Joseph Liu Xinhong, as bishop of Anhui; Msgr. Joseph Ma Yinglin, as Bishop of Kunming; Mgr. Joseph Yue Fusheng, as Bishop of Heilongjiang; Mgr. Vincent Zhan Silu, as Bishop of Funing/Mindong; and Mgr. Paul Lei Shiyin, as Bishop of Leshan. Vincent Guo Xijin assumed the office of Auxiliary Bishop of Funing/Mindong, and Bishop Peter Zhuang Jianjian assumed the title of Emeritus Bishop of Shantou.

With regard to their pastoral task, the nine bishops "received the communication of the Holy See on 12 December 2018 in Beijing, in the context of a sober ceremony marked by intense ecclesial communion which concluded with the praying of the Our Father and the singing of the Hail Mary according to a traditional Chinese melody".

Finally, the article defines as "a fact of great ecclesial importance that Msgr. Anthony Tu Shihua, O.F.M., a few months before his death on January 4, 2017, asked to be readmitted into full communion with the Successor of Peter, who welcomed him with the title of Bishop Emeritus of Puqi”.

To understand the ecclesial and pastoral significance of these events, it is appropriate to refer to what Pope Francis stressed in his "Message to the Catholics of China and to the Universal Church", of 26 September 2018: "Precisely for the sake of supporting and promoting the preaching of the Gospel in China and reestablishing full and visible unity in the Church, it was essential, before all else, to deal with the issue of the appointment of bishops. Regrettably, as we know, the recent history of the Catholic Church in China has been marked by deep and painful tensions, hurts and divisions, centred especially on the figure of the bishop as the guardian of the authenticity of the faith and as guarantor of ecclesial communion". Now it is important to live in unity among Catholics and to open “a phase of greater fraternal collaboration, in order to renew our commitment to the mission of proclaiming the Gospel. For the Church exists for the sake of bearing witness to Jesus Christ and to the forgiving and saving love of the Father".

The Holy See, concludes the article published in the Osservatore Romano, "continues to be committed to continuing the path of dialogue, with a view to gradually resolving, with an attitude of mutual understanding and far-sighted patience, the various problems that still exist, beginning with the civil recognition of the ‘unofficial’ clergy, in order to make the life of the Catholic Church in China increasingly normal".

In an interview, published by the Vatican newspaper in its Saturday February 2nd edition, Cardinal Fernando Filoni, Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples, emphasizes the pastoral value of the "Provisional Agreement on the appointmemt of Bishops". Quoting Pope Francis’ Message to the Catholics of China, the Cardinal recalls how "the Provisional Agreement is the fruit of the lengthy and complex institutional dialogue between the Holy See and the Chinese authorities, initiated by Saint John Paul II and continued by Pope Benedict XVI. Through this process, the Holy See has desired – and continues to desire – only to attain the Church’s specific and pastoral aims, namely, to support and advance the preaching of the Gospel, and to reestablish and preserve the full and visible unity of the Catholic community in China".

“While sharing some concerns expressed by many parties because of the difficulties that still remain, and of those that may arise on the journey", Cardinal Filoni says, "I feel that in the Catholic Church in China there is a great expectation of reconciliation, unity, and renewal, for a more decisive revival of the work of evangelization. We cannot stay still in a world that, from many perspectives, is running at a supersonic pace, yet, at the same time, experiences the urgent need to rediscover the spiritual and human values that give firm hope to people’s lives and create a more cohesive society. In a word, this is what Christianity can offer to present-day China".

The Cardinal recalls that many bishops, priests, religious and lay people want the Church in China to “return to a sense of ‘normality’ within the Catholic Church". He describes the "Provisional Agreement” as being "of historical significance" and explains that: “In the light of the Agreement that recognizes the specific role of the Pope, the so-called ‘principle of independence’ now needs to be reinterpreted in view of the relationship between the legitimate pastoral autonomy of the Church in China and the indispensable communion with the Successor of Peter”. Therefore, says the Cardinal, “I hope not to hear or read about local situations in which the Agreement is exploited to compel people to do what is not even required by Chinese law, such as joining the Patriotic Association”.

With regard to the problems still existing between the so-called "officialˮ" and the so-called "clandestineˮ communities, Cardinal Filoni stresses: “There is above-all the need to rebuild trust, perhaps the most difficult aspect, toward ecclesiastical and civil authorities entrusted with religious matters, as well as between the so-called official and unofficial ecclesial currents. It is not about establishing who wins or who loses, who is right or wrong. In the sixty years since the creation of the Patriotic Association, everyone, in perhaps an unequal and dramatic way, has suffered, both in a physical and moral sense. Nor can we ignore the interior anguish of those who had adhered to, or had been bound by the principle of ‘independence’, and therefore brought about a rupturing of relations with the Apostolic See”.

In the interview, Cardinal Filoni continues: “I realize that someone could think that, in this phase, the Apostolic See seems to be asking for a unilateral sacrifice, that is, only from the members of the underground community, who should, one might say, be ‘made official’, while nothing is requested of the ‘official’ members. The issue should not be put in these terms; in fact, it is not about the ‘underground’ surrendering to the ‘official’ or to the civil authorities, regardless of the appearance, nor of a victory over the non-official community. From a more ecclesial perspective, we cannot speak about competition or who is right, but of brothers and sisters in the faith, who all find themselves in a common House”.

In fact, "In the Holy See’s view, it has always been held that in China there are not two Churches, a ‘patriotic Church’ and a ‘faithful Church’ (as used in common parlance). In China, the Church is one, and the wounds that were inflicted upon her come both from within and without. The sensus fidei of the People of God has saved the Church in China from schism. In the current context, we can say that efforts have been made to alleviate the sufferings. It is a challenging task and will require everyone’s contribution to achieve it fully”.

The Cardinal Prefect of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples says he understands the doubts and perplexities expressed after the signing of the Provisional Agreement. However, he adds: “I do not share the attitude of those who, while having their legitimate reservations, not only do not strive to understand others’ views, but most importantly run the risk of rowing out of sync within the ship of Peter. The Pope, together with his coworkers, has done, is doing, and will do, all that is possible to be close to the Church in China”.

Finally, Cardinal Filoni says: "As we know, the Chinese like images. To complete my thought, I would like to give them yet another one: In order to give stability to a tripod, three supports are needed. A tripod, in fact, does not rest upon two legs, that is, on the arrangement between the Holy See and the Chinese government. There needs to be a third support, namely the participation and the contribution of the faithful in China, as well as that of the Catholic community in the diaspora. Only with the contribution of all can the Church of tomorrow be built up, while respecting freedoms, also on the part of the civil Authorities, after sixty years of suffering, division, and misunderstandings within the Catholic community. The Church, therefore, needs the free and fruitful participation of all in order to construct civil, social, and religious harmony, as well as for the proclamation of the Gospel”.

Read the full text of the interview with Cardinal Fernando Filoni

Topics

POPE FRANCIS

CHINA

BISHOPS

CATHOLIC CHURCH

02nd February 2019, 16:00

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angrycollectordaze-me-blog · 6 years ago

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Paper代写：Theory of illusion

下面为大家整理一篇优秀的paper代写范文- Theory of illusion，供大家参考学习，这篇论文讨论了幻象理论。幻象是精神分析理论中的一个核心概念，往事的回忆总是与无意识欲望息息相关，总是在无意识欲望的影响下不断变换、重塑自身，在这一过程中，幻象扮演了重要的角色，它是无意识欲望上演的场景。后来齐泽克把发端于弗洛伊德精神分析学说的幻象理论用于意识形态分析和批判，他的幻象理论启示人们，我们必须穿越幻象，认识到那种把阻碍社会正常发展的因素归因于某个种族或族群的意识形态只是一种幻象，阻碍社会发展、侵蚀社会肌体的“病毒”不是某种外在、外来的入侵者，而是社会自身的必然产物，也就是社会内部深层的矛盾性与对抗性。

Illusion is a core concept in psychoanalytic theory, which first appeared in Freud's works. In his earlier works, Freud argued that memories of early childhood sexual attraction were sometimes the product of illusions rather than actual traces of abuse. This seems to imply that illusion and reality are incompatible, that illusion is the product of illusion and imagination. Not really. According to psychoanalytic theory, reality is not purely objective. "reality is not an undisputed established existence, in which there is only an objective and correct way of perception, but it is constructed by discourse. The memory of the past is always closely related to the unconscious desire, which constantly changes and reconstructs itself under the influence of the unconscious desire. In this process, illusion plays an important role, which is the scene of the unconscious desire.

Later, pull Kang Jicheng Freud's this view, is the illusion as desire, however, show in the illusion is not the satisfaction of desire, is simply the desire itself, because, in essence, desire is not satisfied or implementation, desire often into the opposite of his, or sliding from one object to another object, never attached to a fixed object. "The basic essence of psychoanalysis is that desire is not given in advance, but constructed afterwards." Illusion provides the coordinate and frame for the subject's desire, designates the object of desire for the subject, and makes the subject learn how to desire. Lacan also highlights the protection and defense function of illusion -- illusion protects the subject, making the subject resist the emasement of symbolic order and the lack of the other. The desire built up by the subject in the scene of illusion is to resist the desire of the other.

Lacan to algebraic expression ﹩ derive a to describe the structure of the illusion, for this formula, we can read: split the body of the desire in a small object with a. Symbol ﹩, refers to the division, hit cross-court subject S. In lacan's view, the subject with independent consciousness in Descartes' proposition of "I think therefore I am" is just a myth, and the subject is essentially an other, which is the result of emasculation after entering the symbolic realm. The symbol ◇ is the combination of two Angle brackets, representing "encirclement -- development -- union -- separation", we can understand as the desire of the subject for the object little a. The symbol a, means little a.

For the object little a, we cannot simply understand it as the object or object of desire, but as the object of desire -- the cause, which is not only the object of desire, but also the cause of our desire. "The object little a is not what we desire and pursue. It defines how our desires move. It is a formal framework that gives coherence to our desires. Desire, of course, is metonymic; It always transfers from one object to another; Through these substitutions, however, desire retains a minimal formal coherence, a set of phantasmal features that we desire when we encounter them on a particular object. As the cause of desire, the object little a is nothing more than this coherent formal framework." Zizek points out here that no real object can fill the inner void of desire, and that any object can be an object as long as it constructs our desire and gives our desire coherence, forming an illusion of formal framework.

The object small a is a remnant of the original pleasure. The so-called primary pleasure, refers to the infant and the mother when the original state of integration. When the baby in the mother's arms, food and clothing, feeling love, for the baby, the mother's arms can be said to be an Eden. The subject is eager to return to the state of unity with the mother all his life. However, due to the castration and repression of the "father law", the subject must give up the desire for the mother and place the desire for the mother in some residual objects to pursue the residual of the original pleasure, namely the object small a. The object little a is both within and outside the subject, and it hangs between the subject and the other. So to speak, because the object model of small a mother's breast, voice, eyes, etc., although these objects to a part of the parent, but because the body always have a kind of illusion, namely, he and his mother together, is a part of the mother, so these objects belong to the mother, also belong to him, both within him, and beyond him, between the subject and the mother.

Object small a is never available to us. From the perspective of space, we can only recognize the face of the object small a by "squinting" it in a distorted way. In terms of time, it can only exist as something expected or lost, only in the form of not yet and no longer, and never in the pure here and now. It's like Achilles' tortoise. You can either stay behind it or surpass it. You can never keep pace with it. Therefore, "objectively", the object little a is "empty". This means that human desire is like a bottomless black hole, which can never be filled and can never be satisfied.

For lacan and zizek, our reality, our society, is supported and constructed by illusion. Illusion is a barrier to the real world, once the illusion disappears, too close to the real world, our mansion of reality will collapse and disappear.

According to zizek, "the symbolic order is constructed around a certain traumatic impossibility, around something that cannot be symbolized, that is, around the reality of the original music." The reason why it is impossible is not that it does not exist or do not happen, but that it cannot be symbolized or expressed by linguistic symbols. Occasionally we encounter the reality, but the encounter with the reality causes trauma; The trauma is so heavy and painful that we can't admit it or describe it in words. One of the functions of illusion is to fill in the gaps in the other, the symbolic order, hide the inconsistency of the other, and shield the traumatic impossibility of the other. Illusion can cover the traumatic reality, so that we have a consistent, coherent perception and experience of the symbolic world and the other. Of course, this experience is of a certain illusory nature.

In order to explain the construction and support of illusion to reality, zizek quoted the fable of zhuangzhou's dream butterfly analyzed by lacan in the four basic concepts of psychoanalysis. In one day, zhuangzi's idea on the idea of even things is an idea. "in one day, zhuangzhou dreamed an idea just like a hu butterfly. Russia's natural sleep, QuQuRan weeks also. I wonder if zhou's dream is hu die and hu die's dream is zhou with? Zhou and hu die, then must divide. This is objectification." As for this fable, we can't just interpret it as "life is a dream". Its real ideological connotation lies in the fact that it represents the experience of zhuangzi in his dream and his desire. Zhuangzi and butterflies can be expressed as the relationship between ﹩ derive a, means: chuang tzu thought the butterfly. In reality, in the symbolic world, zhuangzi is of course a person rather than a butterfly. The butterfly is zhuangzi's desire object, which constitutes zhuangzi's illusion -- the framework and structure of identity. However, in the real world of zhuangzi's desire, he is a butterfly dancing without desire. Therefore, we can say that in the real world, zhuangzi is a "real" butterfly; Only in the reality supported by illusion and symbolic order, zhuang zhou was a man. The reality of zhuangzhou as a social person is constructed by the illusion of "zhuangzhou dreams butterfly". If zhuangzhou is too close to the object butterfly of desire, it will lead to the collapse of reality and the collapse of personality.

The unfortunate career of Jonathan hogg, a famous science fiction by heinlein, an American science fiction writer, reveals the illusory nature of reality and the shielding effect of illusion on the real world. At the end of the novel, Jonathan hogg, a mysterious character, tells the randalls, a private investigator, the truth about the universe: the current universe was created by some mysterious species, and there are many similar universes. He himself is a critic of this universe. He discovered several flaws in the universe that he will fix in the next few hours. He warned the detective couple not to open the window of their car on the way back to town, whatever happened, so that they would not notice anything. Hogg closed his eyes and did not wake up. On the drive back to the city, the detective and his wife were initially restrained, but when they saw the policeman on the side of the road, they finally decided to open the window and report the location of hogg's body to the policeman. However, "outside the open window, there was no sunlight, no police, no children -- nothing. Only a grey, invisible mist was moving slowly, as if it were the beginning of chaos. Through the mist they could not see the city ahead, not because it was too foggy, but because there was nothing behind it. There was no sound in the mist, no sign of movement."

In zizek's view, the chaotic world outside the car window is actually the realm of reality; The sunny and busy real world we see through the car window is just a kind of fiction. The car window serves as a barrier separating social reality from reality. The consistency, the coherence, of our hard reality is only an illusion, and at any moment the real world may overflow into reality and be absorbed into it. Once the realm of reality invades reality, the edifice of reality falls apart. "This is the picture that psychoanalysis provides of everyday reality, of a fragile equilibrium. When trauma strikes in an accidental, unpredictable way, that fragile equilibrium can be broken."

To illustrate the obscuration of the real world by illusion, zizek also cites the case of the "burning child" dream explained by lacan in his lectures on the four basic concepts of psychoanalysis. This is an example from Freud's dream interpretation.

A father stayed at his child's bedside for days and nights. When the child died, he went into the next room and lay down, but the door was open so that he could see from his bedroom the room where his child was lying, with tall candles burning around the body. An old man, who had been hired to look after the corpse, sat down beside it, muttering a prayer. After a few hours of sleep, the father dreamed that his child was standing by his bed, shaking his arm and softly complaining, "daddy, can't you see I'm burning?" He awoke, noticed the light in the next room, and hurried towards it, finding the hired man fast asleep. A lighted candle had fallen, setting fire to the shroud and the arm of his beloved child.

The usual explanation for this father's dream is that the main function of dreams is to help the dreamer extend his sleep. The dreamer is often stimulated from the outside world, from reality, and in order to prolong his sleep, the dreamer will quickly construct a dream when the stimulus comes. But when the stimulus was too strong, the dreaming father was awakened.

Lacan's interpretation of the four basic concepts of psychoanalysis is different. The logic of his father's awakening, he thought, was very different from that. The father constructed a dream in his sleep to prolong his sleep and avoid waking up to reality. But in the dream he encountered the reality of his own desires, the child's rebuke to his father: "do you not see that I am burned?" The child's rebuke suggests that the father felt guilty about his child's death. A father is, of course, a loving father, but when the child is sick for a long time, the father unconsciously wants the child to be free from pain. In the dream, the father encounters the reality of his desires: he secretly hopes that the child will simply die in order to be freed from pain. This reality of desire is so sad that it is even more terrible than the external reality, so my father woke up from a dream to escape from the nightmare of his own reality of desire. So "for those who are overwhelmed, reality is a dream." Reality is an illusory construct that shields us from the reality of our desires and prevents us from directly encountering the suffocating pain of that reality.

Illusion structure of people's desire, build people's reality and society, if the invasion, offend the illusion of others, the consequences will be very serious -- will lead to the collapse of the reality of others and collapse, cause fatal blow to others and destroy. For zizek, two short stories by Patricia highsmith are perfect examples of this argument. Her novel black room tells the story of a small town in America. At night, the men of the town would gather in the bar to talk and reminiscence about their youth, always about a desolate old building on a nearby hill they called the black house. The dark room was rumored to be haunted by ghosts and to contain a mad man who would kill anyone who entered it. In addition, the black room is associated with the men's youth memories: there, they smoke for the first time, the first taste of forbidden fruit. So, people warned each other: do not go near the dark room. One day, however, a young man named Tim came to town. After hearing all the stories about the black house, he announced that he would visit the mysterious black house himself the next day. The town has a lot of cynicism about this. The next night, Tim returns to the bar from the black room, crowing that it's just a run-down, dirty building, with nothing mysterious or glamorous about it. The crowd panicked and eventually one of them launched a deadly attack on Tim, who was killed on the spot. According to zizek, the moral of this novel is that illusion is the scene of people's desire, the place of people's desire to bet, and for the residents of a small town, the black house is such an illusion. Tim claims that the black house is just an ordinary bleak house, which no doubt strips away the mysterious aura of the black house, equates the illusion with plain and boring reality, and thus destroys the illusion of infinite charm in people's hearts. The collapse of illusion is the collapse of reality, so Tim is fatally attacked.

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theconservativebrief · 7 years ago

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When Christel Wallace found a piece of paper folded up at the bottom of her purse in March 2017, she threw it in the trash. She hadn’t yet used the maroon bag, made by Walmart and purchased from one of its Arizona stores months ago.

But after a few minutes, she got curious. She took the paper out of the wastebasket, unfolding the sheet to reveal a message scrawled in Mandarin Chinese.

Translated, it read: Inmates in China’s Yingshan Prison work 14 hours a day and are not allowed to rest at noon. We have to work overtime until midnight. People are beaten for not finishing their work. There’s no salt and oil in our meals. The boss pays 2,000 yuan every month for the prison to offer better food, but the food is all consumed by the prison guards. Sick inmates have to pay for their own pills. Prisons in China cannot be compared to prisons in the United States. Horse, cow, goat, pig, dog.

Christel’s daughter-in-law Laura Wallace posted a photo of the note to Facebook on April 23. The post first went viral locally, getting shared and liked several hundred times, mostly by fellow Arizonans. After a few days, local media outlets picked up the story; a week or so after that, dozens of mainstream publications like USA Today and HuffPost followed suit. One video report on the incident accumulated 2.9 million views.

Shares of the note provoked shock and outrage. Even those who were skeptical of the note’s provenance were incensed, pointing to a wider issue. “Who cares if it’s a marketing stunt?” read one comment on Facebook. “If it made five people rethink buying cheap crap, then it’s a success.”

At the time, a Walmart spokesperson told a reporter in Arizona it was unable to comment because it had “no way to verify the origin of the letter.”

You may remember this story or one like it. It follows a long line of SOS-style notes found by shoppers. They crop up a few times a year, and each story follows the same beats.

First, a shopper in the US or Europe finds a note in the pocket or on a tag of a product from a big retailer — Walmart, Saks, Zara. The note claims the product had been made using forced labor or under poor working conditions. The writer of the note also claims to be in a faraway country, usually China. The shopper takes a photo of the note and posts it to social media. It’s reported on by all sorts of publications from Reuters to Refinery29, where the articles reach millions of readers.

Then the hysteria cools, and the story falls into the viral news abyss. There’s no real attempt at verification. There’s no meaningful corporate gesture. There’s no grand reckoning with the system of global production from which this cry for help is said to have emerged.

As for Christel’s particular Walmart note, there are a number of possibilities regarding who wrote and hid it, and its contents are difficult to fact-check. A Chinese prison called Yingshan may exist, or it may not. Forced labor may be practiced there, or it may not. A prisoner in China may have written the note, or maybe a Chinese activist did, or maybe an American activist instead. The note may have been placed in the bag in a prison factory, or somewhere else along the supply chain in China, or perhaps in Arizona.

The only way to make sense of this puzzle — one with actual human stakes that can help explain how what we buy is made — is to try to trace the journey backward, from the moment a note goes viral to its potential place of origin. Which is how I find myself in rural China, outside of a local prison, 7,522 miles away from where Christel first opened her purse.

Guilin is a city in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region of southern China, and a tourist haven, renowned for the tooth-like karst peaks that rise from the banks of the Li River. Its limpid lakes and limestone caves draw tens of millions of visitors every year.

To reach Guilin, it takes me two international flights, two taxis, a one-hour bus ride through border control, and three hours on a high-speed train. I travel from London through Hong Kong on to Shenzhen and then Guilin via the Guangshen Railway. There, I meet Channing, a local reporter hired to help me find the prison.

We’re in Guilin because of the first and only concrete lead in the Walmart note: the name of the prison. The note writer says the prison is called Yingshan, and several weeks of research has led me to believe it’s located in China’s Guangxi region, home to many manufacturing factories because of the area’s cheap labor and low taxes.

The very few details I can find about Yingshan prison come from a 10-year-old report on prisons across China written by a human rights group. The report suggests the prison may be in the suburbs of east Guilin, and so the plan is to explore the neighborhood, talk to locals, and look for signs — barbed wire, security cameras, anything.

But before we embark on our prison scouting, we have something else on the agenda: a visit to the city’s only Walmart store. It feels important, given the note was found in a Walmart, albeit one on the other side of the globe. Perhaps a Chinese Walmart close to where the note supposedly originated can provide clues, or at least context.

The Guilin Walmart is a 10-minute drive from the center of the city, spread across two floors in a shopping mall, on a road lined with scooter repair shops. Walmart is the world’s biggest retailer; it owns 11,700 retail units in 27 countries around the world, including Brazil and South Africa, under various banner names. In China, Walmart owns 389 Walmart Supercenters, in addition to 21 Sam’s Clubs and 15 Hypermarkets.

A note on Walmart’s Chinese site reads: “Walmart China firmly believes in local sourcing. We have established partnerships with more than seven thousand suppliers in China. Over 95% of the merchandise in our stores in China is sourced locally.”

The Guilin Walmart sells athletic shorts made in Vietnam, girls’ T-shirts made in Bangladesh, and sports jackets made in Cambodia. But for the most part, the store’s clothing is made in China, some of it just a few hours away. There are England football shirts and women’s purses from Guangdong, World Cup Russia sandals from Fujian, Frozen and Mickey Mouse tees from Shanghai, and baseball jerseys and Peppa Pig sun hats from Jiangxi.

Countries the world over encourage citizens to “buy local,” so why would China be any different? Still, necessarily, what is local to one place — local practice, local perspective — is foreign to all others. To those in the country, “made in China” means items produced by their fellow Chinese that contribute to the robust economy. Elsewhere in the world, particularly in the US, the phrase draws ire, conjuring images of goods mass-produced in factories with questionable conditions by workers who have supplanted their own country’s workforce.

Walmart in the US has tried and tested the homemade idea. In 1985, founder Sam Walton voiced a commitment to “made in America” products, launching a program called “Bring It Home to the USA” to buy more US-made goods. Around that time, according to reporter Bob Ortega’s book In Sam We Trust, Walton estimated 6 percent of his company’s total sales came from imports; a Frontline report found that number may have been closer to 40 percent. Bill Clinton, then the governor of Walmart’s home state of Arkansas, described “Bring It Home to the USA” as an “act of patriotism.” The program failed.

It’s easy to understand why. The “made in America” ideal comes second to finding the cheapest sources of production — this was true in the ’80s, and it’s true now. A study released in 2016 found that three in four Americans say they would like to buy US-made goods but consider those items too costly or difficult to find. When asked if they’d buy an $85 pair of pants made in the US or a $50 pair made in a different country, 67 percent chose the latter.

To those in the country, “made in China” means items produced by their fellow Chinese that contribute to the robust economy

Today, Walmart outsources the majority of its production around the world. According to a 2011 report in the Atlantic, Chinese suppliers are believed to account for around 70 percent of the company’s merchandise. A 2015 analysis from the Economic Institute, a progressive think tank, found that Walmart’s trade with China may have eliminated 400,000 jobs in the US between 2001 and 2013.

This is something Walmart says it’s trying to change. In its 2014 annual report, the company pledged to spend an additional $250 billion on US-made goods by 2023, saying it believes “we can drive cost savings by sourcing closer to the point of consumption.” Research from Boston Consulting Group projected this could create a million new US jobs.

At the initiative’s 2018 halfway point, though, it’s unclear how many jobs have been created or how much money has actually been spent. Additionally, in 2015, the Federal Trade Commission initiated a probe into Walmart’s mislabeling of foreign goods as “Made in the USA.” Walmart took action by removing inaccurate logos and making its disclosures more transparent, only to come under fire for deceptive “Made in the USA” labels yet again the very next year.

Forced labor is commonly practiced in the Chinese prison system, which the Chinese Communist Party first established countrywide in 1949, modeling it on Soviet gulags. The kind of crimes that land someone in the Chinese penal system range widely, from murder and bribery to saying anything remotely bad about the government. Freedom of speech isn’t a reality for Chinese citizens, who can face decades in prison for publishing articles about human rights online.

A tenet of the Chinese justice system is that labor inside prisons is good for the country. The government, as well as many of its citizens, believes it helps reform corrupted people — and China is far from the only country to use prison labor. The US legally benefits from labor in its prison system, and while not every US prison practices penal labor, hundreds of thousands of American inmates work jobs that include making furniture and fighting fires. In August of this year, prisoners from 17 states went on strike to protest being forced to work, characterizing the practice as “modern slavery.”

Peter E. Müller, a leading specialist at the Laogai Research Foundation, and his team extensively document the human rights abuses inside China’s prison system. This work includes identifying prisons and camps that employ forced labor, tracking the inmate population, and gathering personal testimony from those who have experienced forced labor.

He says prisoners in China, the US, and elsewhere are sometimes paid for their labor. (In the Walmart note, the writer describes forced labor and beatings, as well as low pay for long hours and health care deducted from payment.) The amount depends on the financial situation of the prison; the average pay in American state prisons is 20 cents an hour. Müller says the monthly salary specified in the note (2,000 yuan, or $295) is “unusually high,” but speculates that it may be because the prison “makes good money because of high-quality workers.”

Human rights organizations, such as the Laogai Research Foundation and China Labor Watch, say the biggest problem in stopping the export of products made in prisons is that the supply lines are “almost untraceable.” Supply lines, in general, are very difficult to trace due to the enormous complexity of supplier networks, a lack of communication between actors, and a general dearth of data that can be shared in the first place. The result is a frustratingly opaque global system of production.

Li Qiang, the founder and executive director of China Labor Watch, explains that American companies that manufacture abroad place their orders directly with factories or sourcing companies, and that those factories and companies can transfer the orders to prisons without the company’s knowledge. In fact, some of these relationships are formalized to the point where prisons that use forced labor have a sister factory that coordinates the prison manufacturing.

It’s essentially a front, as sister factories will use a commercial name for outside trade, intentionally mislabeling products that are made in prisons. Prisoners are never physically sent to the sister factories; the main bulk of the production happens on prison grounds. Once nearly complete, items are then sent to the sister factories, where they are prepared and labeled for international delivery. This system isn’t easy for companies to monitor. Suppliers conceal these practices from clients, and supplier checks are not frequent, especially for large corporations like Walmart, which use a large number of suppliers and subcontractors.

Qiang says the issue can feel intractable. “Even if shoppers in the US understand that the items are being made under poor working conditions, there is nothing they can really do,” he says. “Multinational corporations will not invest in improving their supply chain if there are few laws to protect workers whose rights are being violated, and no successful lawsuits against brands, companies, or their factories for violating them.”

On a Tuesday morning in late May, Channing and I sit at a table in our hotel lobby. We browse message boards on Baidu, one of the country’s most popular search engines and social networking sites, to see if the issue of prison labor is discussed on Chinese social media, or if it’s a subject the government censors.

In a matter of seconds, Channing is able to find discussion boards filled with suppliers looking to outsource labor to prisons. The conversations are quite ordinary — there is no coded language, and full addresses and contact numbers are included in postings. We also find dozens of posts from people offering the services of prisons they work with to mass-produce items for overseas companies, including “electronic accessories, bracelets, necklace bead processing, toy assembly, and shirt processing.”

One post in Chinese reads: “Because our processing personnel are from prison, it has the following advantages. The prison personnel are centralized and stable, and they are managed by the prison. There is no need to worry about the flow of people and the shortage of labor. The processing price is low: Since the processing location is in prison, there is no need for manufacturers to provide space and accommodation; and the prison works in the principle of serving the people, so the processing price is guaranteed to be absolutely lower than the market price. If your company needs it, please contact!”

In an effort to verify not only that Yingshan prison exists but also that it’s one of many Chinese factories that use forced labor and contract with manufacturers, Channing and I drive toward the suburbs in the eastern part of Guilin.

Channing asks our driver to drop us at a high school so we can remain undetected. Nearby, I’d marked a spot where I believed the prison to be according to the human rights report I’d found before arriving in China. But the prison isn’t there. In its place is a crossing, though there’s reason to believe the prison is closed — a dilapidated sign pointing left reads: Yingshan.

We walk down the road and find the area under heavy surveillance. Security cameras are hitched onto poles on every corner of the pathway. The farther we walk, the more literal the warnings that we shouldn’t be there. Three different signs hammered into a tree read: “DO NOT APPROACH.”

Yingshan prison, described in a note found in a Walmart handbag thousands of miles away in the US, does exist — and we are standing in front of it.

Though it had been difficult to find, it actually doesn’t seem so hidden after all. It is integrated into the neighborhood, just around the corner from a driving school, near leafy streets and apartment blocks.

The prison doesn’t look like an archetypal prison you’d see in the US. If it weren’t for the two security watchtowers, Yingshan could be mistaken for a modern residential building. Thick bushes cover dark blue metal fences lined with barbed wire. The high walls are painted cream with decorative white lines demarcating each of the building’s five floors. Each window has a neat white frame, with a metal air vent attached.

Several guards in uniform are standing in the parking lot of the building next door. We don’t approach them for fear of being detained. The Chinese government treats both domestic and foreign journalists hostilely. Reporters are often banned from entering the country, and they have also been detained for their work. Our safest bet for gathering information is to speak to people in the area who may have ties to the prison.

Walking down a second pathway that runs alongside Yingshan, the village of Sanjia comes into view. Sanjia is a small village that abuts the prison grounds. In the village, crumbling homes stand alongside gated, modern ones painted gold. Locals say this is because the land is being bought out, and that the village is grappling with redevelopment.

Each person we speak to has a personal connection to the prison. They know people imprisoned, have a family member working inside, or have worked inside themselves. They tell us that guards who work in Yingshan are housed with their families in an apartment complex next to the prison. We realize this is the building with the parking lot filled with uniformed guards.

Zhenzhu, who asked that her surname not be used for fear of retribution from the government, can see the prison from her front door. A jovial woman, she has lived in the village for 14 years, moving to the area right after she was married. As we talk, we hear pigs squealing. Zhenzhu explains that those are her pigs, 100 of them, next door in a slaughterhouse she runs with her husband.

When the building of the prison commenced in 2007, Zhenzhu was three months pregnant, and her husband was employed as a construction worker on the project. By the time their daughter turned 3, the building was complete. Zhenzhu has visited the prison before, to see an inmate; Yingshan allows visits from family members under heavy security. She says its walls are buried so deep into the ground that “even if the prisoners want to break out by digging an underground tunnel, they can’t dig through.”

Yingshan prison, described in a note found in a Walmart handbag thousands of miles away in the US, does exist — and we are standing in front of it

Zhenzhu recounts much of what her husband told her about his experience at Yingshan. For years following the construction, he would visit for maintenance checks and additional building; trucks were always driving fabric in and out of the prison. The trucks, he told Zhenzhu, were from factories located in the Guangdong province. Guangdong is home to an estimated 60,000 factories, which produce around a third of the world’s shoes and much of its textiles, apparel, and toys.

Everyone we speak to, Zhenzhu included, says they’ve seen labor inside the prison or have been told about it directly by inmates. None were familiar with Walmart goods being produced there, but some could confirm that women’s fashion is manufactured inside.

To those in the village, prison labor is not just common knowledge; it’s also necessary. They consider the prisoners “bad guys” who have committed horrible crimes. In their eyes, the labor is a good thing: It helps rehabilitate inmates and gets them to understand the value of work. But that work can come at a great cost. According to local hearsay and furthered by a published account from a woman who was married to a Yingshan prison guard, inmates have been known to kill themselves because of the poor conditions and forced labor.

Zhenzhu leads us around the edge of the village, to get a side view of the prison. She points to the building we first passed and tells us that’s where the inmates eat and sleep. She then points to a building farther in the distance on the left that looks almost exactly the same. It’s also painted cream, but with slightly larger white window frames; a yard obscured behind the prison wall separates the structures. The second building, she tells us, is for “the work.”

The Walmart note followed a tradition of hidden messages found by shoppers. In 2014, shoppers found labels stitched into several items of clothing in Primark stores across the UK. The labels, written in English, read: “forced to work exhausting hours” and “degrading sweatshop conditions.”

As the notes spread across social media, the fast-fashion company conducted an investigation and found the labels were fake. The company said the items were all made by different suppliers, in different factories, on different continents. They stressed it was impossible that the same labels, especially those written in English, would appear on all the items and that they believed the labels were part of an activist stunt carried out in the UK.

Though no one claimed credit for the labels, activist groups had been waging campaigns to protest Primark’s labor practices in the time leading up to their discovery. War on Want led a 2013 campaign against the company after more than 1,100 people died as a result of the Rana Plaza collapse. Primark, along with J.C. Penney and Joe Fresh, was among the retailers whose products were made in the Bangladeshi complex.

Almost all the messages that have been found in stores have come under public scrutiny, as they’re often suspected of being written and planted by activists. The handwriting, the language, and even the paper used for notes have pointed to activist work. For example, several notes and labels, like the Primark ones, were written in English. Many inmates and factory workers in China, as well as Bangladesh, come from poor backgrounds and are unlikely to have had the chance to learn English in school.

There have been, however, at least two instances in which actual workers have claimed the notes. In 2011, a shopper bought a box of Halloween decorations at an Oregon Kmart. She found a note inside the box, allegedly from a prisoner in China explaining that he had made the item under forced labor conditions.

Two years later, Zhang — a man who asked newsrooms to only use his surname for fear of being arrested and imprisoned again — claimed to be the writer of the note. He said he planted 20 such notes during the two years he spent in prison, with hopes they would reach American stores. His handwriting and modest English language proficiency matched those of the note, but even then, it wasn’t feasible to fully corroborate his story. As the New York Times wrote, “it was impossible to know for sure whether there were perhaps other letter writers, one of whose messages might have reached Oregon.”

The second instance came in 2014, when a shopper in New York found a note in a Saks shopping bag she received when purchasing a pair of Hunter rain boots two years earlier. The note, written in English, claimed to have been written by a man in a Chinese prison; it also included his email address, photo, and name, which led to the finding of the alleged author, Tohnain Emmanuel Njong. Originally from Cameroon, he said he’d been teaching English in China when he was arrested in May 2011 and wrongly jailed for fraud charges.

In both cases, the final step of verification would be to confirm with the prisons mentioned in the notes that Zhang and Njong served sentences at their facilities and that forced labor occurs there. But since Chinese prisons refuse to provide comment on such stories, there’s little way of definitively confirming the prisoners’ accounts.

In 2017, the validity of hidden notes came into question yet again. Shoppers in Istanbul found tags inside clothing items in a Zara store that read: “I made this item you are going to buy, but I didn’t get paid for it.”

It turned out Turkish workers, who produced the clothing for Zara in an Istanbul factory, planted the notes in protest. The factory where they had been employed closed down overnight, leaving them suddenly without jobs or a source of income. The workers wrote notes urging shoppers to pressure Zara into giving them the back pay they were owed. They then went to a Zara store in the center of Istanbul and hid the notes in the pockets of clothing being sold inside.

“When we think we’re not getting movement from companies, we turn to confrontational tactics like this”

The Turkish workers didn’t come up with the idea of the notes on their own. The Clean Clothes Campaign and its alliance partner Labour Behind the Label (LBL), an organization that campaigns for garment workers’ rights, helped plan the action.

LBL and other campaign groups have organized “note droppings” like this in retail stores like Zara for many years. The notes describe how poor labor practices are behind the store’s items; LBL gathers information about these practices through its own reports and interviews.

“Dropping notes is an extension of leaving leaflets in stores,” says LBL’s director of policy Dominique Muller. “When we think we’re not getting movement from companies, we turn to confrontational tactics like this.”

LBL doesn’t worry that the notes they plant in stores could overshadow any potentially real notes found in stores. “These notes are just a drop in the ocean. They’re still new” — as an activism tool, that is — “and they will continue to have an impact.”

As of this June, the Turkish workers had only received partial payment.

Finding Yingshan brought some answers about the validity of the note. For one, the prison named in the Walmart note exists. We heard firsthand accounts from locals who said forced labor does occur inside the prison as the note described. What we were told about the work is that the hours are long, the work is done indoors, and the labor involves manufacturing fashion items, which might include bags like the purse Christel bought in Arizona.

After Walmart issued its statement about there being “no way to verify the origin of the letter,” the company launched an internal investigation. It was found that the factory that made the purse didn’t adhere to Walmart’s standards, which stress the need for “labor to be voluntary” and state that “slave, child, underage, forced, bonded, or indentured labor will not be tolerated.” As a result, the company cut ties with the supplier, a decision the company only disclosed after it was contacted for this story. Walmart declined to clarify whether the supplier in question had contracted with Yingshan prison.

In a statement to Vox, a Walmart spokesperson wrote: “Walmart has strict standards for our suppliers, and they must tell us where our products are being made. Through our investigation into this matter, we found the supplier’s factory sent purses to be made at other factories in the region that were not disclosed to us. The supplier failed to follow our standards, so we stopped doing business with them. We take allegations like this seriously, and we are committed to a responsible and transparent supply chain. There are consequences for our suppliers when our standards are not followed.”

One last question did remain unanswered. Was the note written by an actual prisoner, or by an activist with knowledge of the conditions that produced the bag? Müller of the Laogai Research Foundation believes the note is indeed real.

The description and details referenced in the note, he says, mirror much of what he’s heard in interviews with former prisoners. He says the language, the style of writing, and the use of the phrase “horse cow goat pig dog” — a common expression in China that compares the treatment of prisoners to that of animals — add to its authenticity. He believes the writer of the note certainly risked his life to send his message.

Even if the note is real, though, what’s come to light during the reporting of this story is that the Walmart note won’t end forced labor in China. The government is not going to release a public statement condemning human rights abuses inside its prisons because of stories like this one. It doesn’t see forced labor as a human rights abuse; Chinese citizens who don’t support the practices risk arrest if they speak out, and so most won’t.

The pitfall of pinning reform on awareness is expecting a bad thing to end if enough people know about it. Very rarely does mass attention on an issue result in a tangible shift in how things work. If merely sharing information were enough, the countless viral stories about forced labor recounted here would have already resulted in widespread reform.

Still, the incremental change the Walmart note led to — however impossibly small, however seemingly inconsequential — is a step. It has to be.

Additional reporting by Channing Huang.

Original Source -> You buy a purse at Walmart. There’s a note inside from a “Chinese prisoner.” Now what?

via The Conservative Brief

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The Daily Tulip

The Daily Tulip – News From Around The World

Sunday 26th August 2018

Good Morning Gentle Reader…. Left Sandra sleeping soundly in bed, and even Bella seemed to understand that we needed to be quiet, we left the house and wandered with no particular intent to the ocean, which was gently lapping against the sand….I sat on the sand and had a reflective moment as Bella sniffed her way along the sea shore… Looking south, I see the Rif Mountains in Africa, and just above the horizon, Jupiter in all its glory, this month we see the rise and set of this very large planet, we can also see all of the other planets Mars, Venus, Saturn, Pluto Neptune and Uranus, but of course you need a telescope to see some of them, reflective star gazing moment over, we turn for home, I enjoyed having you on the walk this morning, we shall have to do it again…

CHINESE TOURISTS FLOCK TO NORTH YORKSHIRE CHIPPY….A fish and chip shop in North Yorkshire has translated its menu into Mandarin and Cantonese to cope with an influx of Chinese tourists. Scotts Fish and Chips near York has seen coachloads of visitors wanting to try the traditional dish. The passion for the chippy has been put down to the fish and chips Chinese president Xi Jinping shared with then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2015. Manager Roxy Vasai said more than 100 Chinese tourists were visiting a week. Staff said dining at the chippy was a real occasion for the visitors, with many taking photographs with employees both inside and outside the restaurant on the A64 at Bilbrough Top. Ms Vasai said: "We look out for a coach and when they're coming we shout 'they're here, there are 20, 30, 40, let's make it ready for them'. "We are very impressed by the Chinese tourists. They are very friendly, smiley and happy." As well as translating the menu, the restaurant has launched a website and a messaging app on one of China's most popular social media platforms to promote the business. Will Zhuang, ambassador for Make It York, an organisation which promotes the city, said many Chinese visitors had been influenced by their president sampling a fish and chip supper during his visit to the UK in 2015. He added that because of this many Chinese tour operators had added the "fish and chip experience" to their itineraries. York is already a popular destination for tourists from East Asia, with China estimated to be the city's second largest overseas market.

BOY FINED £500 FOR KICKING DOG TO DEATH IN ST IVES…. A 15-year-old boy has been fined £500 for punching and kicking a "much-loved" pet dog to death. The boy, who cannot be named, was 14 when the "prolonged attack" happened in St Ives, Cornwall on 31 October. He was found guilty of causing unnecessary suffering to a protected animal last month after a two-day trial. The teenager has been banned from keeping animals for five years and ordered to pay £500 compensation. In sentencing, Justice Diana Baker said the dog, Teddy, suffered a fractured skull and multiple blunt force trauma injuries to his head, neck and torso resulting in internal bleeding. Addressing the boy, she said domestic violence has "severely affected" his emotional wellbeing. "You are a young man who has lived with domestic violence for a long time," she added. "Domestic violence under the influence of alcohol that has severely affected your emotional wellbeing and ability to deal with stressful situations." A victim impact statement from Teddy's owner Jacqueline Stevens, 71, was read to the court. She explained how she had hand-reared the Staffordshire bull terrier and kept him for nine years. "My life has been ripped apart and has been changed forever," she said. She added that she now "dreads going to St Ives" due to the "sad associations and memories". The incident happened when the dog held down a pet terrier belonging to the family of the convicted boy who had a "total loss of control", the court heard. The boy was sentenced to an 18-month rehabilitation order with 18 months of supervision. He was also given an eight-week curfew. The £500 fine will be paid by his mother at a rate of £50 a week. The boy will not be allowed to apply for the ban on him keeping animals to be lifted for the next three years. However, the court heard the family would be able to keep their pet terrier.

ILLEGAL MAJORCA TURTLE FARM SHUT DOWN BY POLICE…. Europe's biggest illegal turtle and tortoise farm has been shut down on the Spanish island of Majorca, police say. Civil Guard officers say they rescued 1,100 animals from a farm near Llucmajor in the south of the island, many of them endangered. The protected species were reportedly kept in poor conditions on the site. Two German men were arrested on suspicion of running the farm, as well as a Spanish pet shop owner in Barcelona. The three suspects face charges of money laundering and trafficking an endangered species. Authorities said the farm was set up to breed turtles on an industrial scale, while the pet shop owner "laundered" the species bred there for sale. Three other people, a Spaniard and two Germans, are also under investigation. Many turtle and tortoise species are endangered. The animals are killed for their skin, shells and meat, and some consider their eggs to be a delicacy. Several of those turtles rescued in Majorca came from the 14 most threatened species, including the Chinese red-necked turtle, Madagascar radiated tortoise, and the Vietnamese pond turtle. Officers say they also saved 750 eggs in the operation. The investigation began in February 2017 after authorities found a shipment of several protected turtle species at Palma airport. Documents did not match the animals, and so they were seized - eventually leading police to the Llucmajor site.

ARGENTINA CREMATORIUM BURNS RUSSIAN COCAINE HAUL…. Russia and Argentina have used a crematorium in Buenos Aires to burn 389kg (858 pounds) of cocaine seized in a drugs bust at the Russian embassy. The total haul of cocaine destroyed was estimated to be worth €80m (£72m; $93m). A former embassy caretaker and an Argentine policeman are among six people held in both countries. The burning marks the end of a long-running police operation that wouldn't disgrace a crime best-seller. In 2016, the ex Russian ambassador alerted Argentine officials to 12 suitcases found hidden in an embassy annex. The problem? They were packed full of drugs. After the tip-off, Argentine police got into the room with an embassy key in the dead of night, and replaced the cocaine with flour. They also tagged the cases with GPS tracking devices. The plan was to wait for the owners to collect their cases, then swoop. But police were in for a very long wait, as Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich explained. "The operation took 14 months and at one point we thought that they wouldn't come for their cargo, that they realised that someone was under suspicion. But everything went well," she said, quoted by Russia's Tass news agency. A year later, the cases arrived in Moscow, and arrests followed. It is still unclear why the suspects waited so long to move the drugs. Russian Ambassador Dmitry Feoktistov and Ms Bullrich took part in the incineration on Tuesday. The alleged ringleader of the smuggling gang is Andrei Kovalchuk, who was arrested in Germany and extradited to Russia in July. Russian media name the other accused Russians as Vladimir Kalmykov, Ishtimir Khudzhamov, and Ali Abyanov. Authorities suspect that Mr Kovalchuk hired Mr Abyanov to store the cocaine cargo in the school attached to the embassy, and to organise its transfer to Russia. At the time Mr Abyanov was the embassy's caretaker. Russia's RBC news website says Mr Kalmykov and Mr Khudzhamov were arrested when they came to collect the cases at a Russian foreign ministry warehouse. The suspects have called the police operation a "provocation", and have said they were trying to export speciality coffee from Argentina.

THE BIG BANG THEORY FINAL SEASON TO END IN 2019…. US series The Big Bang Theory will air its final episode in 2019, ending one of the longest-running sitcoms in US history. The programme's 12th and final season will premiere on 24 September and is expected to conclude in May. Set in Pasadena, California, the series originally focused on two physicists and their aspiring actress neighbour. The Big Bang Theory has attracted more than 18 million viewers every year since its sixth season aired in 2012. It reportedly averaged 18.6 million viewers per episode in its 11th season, more than any other show on US television. The production teams and CBS said in a joint statement they were "forever grateful" to the fans. "We, along with the cast, writers and crew, are extremely appreciative of the show's success and aim to deliver a final season, and series finale, that will bring The Big Bang Theory to an epic creative close," it read. The series has won seven Emmys from 46 nominations, including four Outstanding Lead Actor wins for Jim Parsons, who plays the socially inept character Sheldon Cooper.

Well Gentle Reader I hope you enjoyed our look at the news from around the world this, morning… …

Our Tulips today are rather lovely... what do you think?

A Sincere Thank You for your company and Thank You for your likes and comments I love them and always try to reply, so please keep them coming, it's always good fun, As is my custom, I will go and get myself another mug of "Colombian" Coffee and wish you a safe Sunday 26th August 2018 from my home on the southern coast of Spain, where the blue waters of the Alboran Sea washes the coast of Africa and Europe and the smell of the night blooming Jasmine and Honeysuckle fills the air…and a crazy old guy and his dog Bella go out for a walk at 4:00 am…on the streets of Estepona…

All good stuff....But remember it’s a dangerous world we live in

Be safe out there…

Robert McAngus #Spain #Africa #Stars #Bella #Sandra

#robertmcangus #robert mcangus #spain #tulips #news #blog #travel

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healthcarebiz · 8 years ago

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New Survey Shows Patients in Asia Pacific Fail to Recognize Their Fragility Fracture is Due to Osteoporosis, Missed Opportunity to Prevent Another Fracture

Nearly half don't know that a fracture is a warning sign for a treatable underlying cause1;

3 out of 4 with early diagnosis of osteoporosis say it's key in preventing another fracture1

HONG KONG, Oct. 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ --

Almost three quarters (74%) of patients in Asia Pacific who have had a fragility fracture say they are worried or very worried about breaking another bone1, but nearly one-third (29%) of patients did not discuss fracture prevention and osteoporosis, the underlying cause, with their doctor1; according to a new survey. The results of the Fight the Fracture-International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) Survey 2017 were announced at the 5th Scientific Meeting of the Asian Federation of Osteoporosis Societies (AFOS) in Kuala Lumpur. The Survey interviewed 400 patients from five Asian countries/territories aged 60 years and over who had suffered a fragility fracture in the last two years and is the first project undertaken by Fight the Fracture, a public education campaign jointly launched by AFOS, IOF and Amgen.

For the full multimedia release, click here: http://www.prnasia.com/mnr/ftf_20171019.shtml

Other key survey findings include:

• Almost 80% of patients say their fractures have had a great impact on their quality of life1.

• Of those patients who had a late diagnosis of osteoporosis, 4 out of 5 (80%) wish they had received earlier diagnosis as they feel they would have benefited from it1.

• Of those patients who had an early diagnosis of osteoporosis, 3 out of 4 (75%) agree that it has been key in helping prevent another fracture1.

"I remember feeling extremely, extremely unwell when the fracture happened and I thought I was going to die," said Madam Zhuang, age 68 of Taipei, who had suffered a fracture three years ago while on holiday in Japan, and was diagnosed with osteoporosis soon after. "I am glad my osteoporosis is being treated now, as I cannot risk another fracture ‒ my orthopaedic specialist told me that a second fracture within a year of the first one could be fatal."

A Failure to Connect

Despite the great extent to which the lives of patients and their families are impacted by fractures, the survey showed that patients in Asia Pacific have a limited understanding of fragility fractures and osteoporosis as an underlying cause, as well as increased risks of another fracture after the first one:

• Although a majority of patients (78%) claim they know what osteoporosis is1, over 80% of patients believe that weak bones are an inevitable feature of the normal ageing process1.

• Almost 40% of patients were not sure, or did not believe that they are at risk of having another fracture, whether at the same or different site1. Research shows however, that once a patient suffers a fragility fracture his or her risk of a future fracture increases up to 10 times2.

• More than one-third (37%) of patients say they were diagnosed with osteoporosis only after multiple subsequent visits to their doctor1.

Public Awareness Critical

"Fragility fractures have crippling consequences for patients and their families. A second or third fracture is even more devastating for a patient, potentially costing his or her healthy mobility, independence or even life," said Professor Cyrus Cooper, IOF President. "These findings are welcomed, timely evidence of the urgent need for greater awareness and understanding among patients, their families and caregivers. We encourage patients who have suffered a fracture to start conversations with their doctors immediately about ways to prevent another fracture from happening to them again."

The survey is the first phase of the Fight the Fracture campaign, which aims to empower patients who have suffered a fragility fracture and their caregivers to proactively seek medical professional help in secondary care prevention ‒ the prevention of a subsequent fracture ‒ by providing them with educational information, tools and resources. These resources are hosted on www.fightthefracture.asia

About AFOS

AFOS consists of 10 member societies spanning 10 Asian countries and regions. It is the only pan Asian professional association that targets osteoporosis as an agenda. It encourages collaborative effort in clinical research and sharing of knowledge into osteoporosis. Osteoporosis and Sarcopenia, the AFOS journal, has been set up to for this platform. There is also concerted effort to reduce the load of osteoporosis in the region by encouraging advocacy, public awareness programmes as well as programmes to identify and treat the high risk populations.

About Amgen

Amgen is committed to unlocking the potential of biology for patients suffering from serious illnesses by discovering, developing, manufacturing and delivering innovative human therapeutics. This approach begins by using tools like advanced human genetics to unravel the complexities of disease and understand the fundamentals of human biology.

Amgen focuses on areas of high unmet medical need and leverages its expertise to strive for solutions that improve health outcomes and dramatically improve people's lives. A biotechnology pioneer since 1980, Amgen has grown to be one of the world's leading independent biotechnology companies, has reached millions of patients around the world and is developing a pipeline of medicines with breakaway potential.

For more information, visit www.amgen.com and follow us on https://twitter.com/amgen

About the International Osteoporosis Foundation

The International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) is the world's largest non-governmental organization dedicated to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of osteoporosis and related musculoskeletal diseases. IOF members, including committees of scientific researchers as well as 240 patient, medical and research societies in 99 locations, work together to make fracture prevention and healthy mobility a worldwide heath care priority. www.iofbonehealth.org

About Fight the Fracture and the Fight the Fracture-IOF Survey 2017

Fight the Fracture, a public education campaign, aims to empower patients who have suffered a fragility fracture and their caregivers to proactively seek medical professional help in secondary care prevention ‒ the prevention of a subsequent fracture ‒ by providing them with educational information, tools and resources. With this support in place, we envision patients will have a better understanding and awareness of fragility fractures and a common underlying cause, osteoporosis, which would encourage them to take the necessary steps to initiate a conversation with their doctor toward improved, proactive management of their condition.

Supported by the International Osteoporosis Foundation and Amgen, the Fight the Fracture-IOF Survey 2017 was conducted in June 2017, through interviews with 400 patients who have suffered a fragility fracture across five Asia Pacific countries/territories – Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand. All patients surveyed had suffered a fracture within the last two years and are aged 60 or older.

About Fragility Fractures and Osteoporosis

Osteoporosis affects both men and women3. Osteoporosis is a condition that weakens bone over time, making them thinner, more brittle and more likely to break3. As a result, the skeleton becomes fragile, so that even a slight bump or fall can lead to a broken bone ‒ referred to as a fragility fracture4. Fractures most often occur in the hip, spine, arm, wrist, ribs, legs and pelvis5. Fractures are expensive to treat, and disabling to the lives of those affected5. Moreover, fractures are associated with heightened risk of death6.

Osteoporosis can significantly compromise quality of life, leading to loss of independence, chronic pain, disability, emotional distress, lost productivity and reduced social interaction6. There is no cure for osteoporosis, however steps can be taken to help prevent, slow, or halt its progression6.

Risk factors for osteoporosis include age, smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, previous broken bones, a family history of osteoporosis and low body weight7.

Osteoporosis may be managed with anti-osteoporotic medication, weight-bearing exercise, adequate calcium intake and vitamin D exposure (sunlight and/or supplements are often required)6.

References

1 Data on file: Fight the Fracture-International Osteoporosis Foundation (IOF) Survey 2017 ‒ Regional Consolidated Report. 17 July 2017.

2 Lyet JP. Fragility Fractures in the Osteoporotic Patient: Special Challenges. JLGH 2006;1(3):91-95.

3 International Osteoporosis Foundation. What Is Osteoporosis? 2015. Available at: http://www.iofbonehealth.org/what-is-osteoporosis (Last accessed Sep 2017)

4 International Osteoporosis Foundation. Capture the Fracture: A Global Campaign to Break the Fragility Fracture Cycle. 2012. Available at: https://www.iofbonehealth.org/capture-fracture (Last accessed Sep 2017)

5 International Osteoporosis Foundation. Gaps and Solutions in Bone Health: A Global Framework for Improvement. Available at: http://share.iofbonehealth.org/WOD/2016/thematic-report/WOD16-report-WEB-EN.pdf (Last accessed Sep 2017)

6 International Osteoporosis Foundation. Facts and Statistics. Available at: https://www.iofbonehealth.org/facts-statistics (Last accessed Sep 2017)

7 International Osteoporosis Foundation. Who's at Risk? 2015. Available at: http://www.iofbonehealth.org/whos-risk (Last accessed Sep 2017)

Contacts

AFOS

Dr Fen Lee Hew President of AFOS [email protected]

Amgen

Seok Lin Hong Director Corporate Affairs JAPAC T +852 2843 1114 [email protected]

International Osteoporosis Foundation

Dr. Philippe Halbout, PhD Chief Executive Officer 9 rue Juste-Olivier, CH-1260 Nyon, Switzerland [email protected]

Read this news on PR Newswire Asia website:

New Survey Shows Patients in Asia Pacific Fail to Recognize Their Fragility Fracture is Due to Osteoporosis, Missed Opportunity to Prevent Another Fracture

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