Deel 1237 - Wer den Fritz und seine Soldaten nicht kennt

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Op dinsdag 5 juni 2007 23:31 schreef Rock_de_Braziliaan het volgende:

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Ik heb me vandaag ook al geergerd. Eerst twee keer de site weggeklikt voordat ik door had dat ik wel op de juiste plek zat.

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Op dinsdag 5 juni 2007 23:54 schreef Ryan3 het volgende:

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Anders verdiep je je eens in de materie, voordat je als 18-jarige snotneus iets komt reppen op Fok!. .
Ga maar lekker slapen joh.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 09:15 schreef Autodidact het volgende:
Extreem rechts. Altijd al willen zijn.

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Op dinsdag 5 juni 2007 23:55 schreef Ryan3 het volgende:
Dröge is dood. .

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 10:55 schreef Rock_de_Braziliaan het volgende:
Ik ga zo'n rooie jenever neus missen

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Ruim miljoen Chinezen huis uit door Spelen Peking
Door een onzer redacteuren
Rotterdam, 6 juni. In de Chinese hoofdstad Peking zijn de afgelopen jaren al zo’n 1,25 miljoen mensen hun huis kwijtgeraakt omdat ze plaats moesten maken voor de Olympische Spelen.


Die worden in augustus volgend jaar gehouden. Tot die tijd zullen nog eens 250.000 mensen moeten verhuizen. Dat staat in een rapport van het Centre on Housing Rights and Evictions (COHRE) in Genčve.

Woordvoerder Jean du Plessis noemt de vele gedwongen verhuizingen „onaanvaardbaar”. Volgens het rapport investeert de Chinese regering meer dan dertig miljard euro in infrastructuur en toeristische accommodaties voor de Olympische Spelen.

De slachtoffers zijn meestal kwetsbare groepen die nauwelijks financiële compensatie krijgen. Het Chinese ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken noemde de cijfers zwaar overdreven.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 11:07 schreef Aoristus het volgende:

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dat klappergebit ook, denk ik.

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Gert-Jan Dröge (64) overleden

Rotterdam, 6 juni. Tv-presentator Gert-Jan Dröge is gisteren op 64-jarige leeftijd overleden. Hij leed al enige tijd aan longkanker.

Dröge is vooral bekend door het programma Glamourland uit de jaren negentig. Daarin sjokte hij schijnbaar per ongeluk rond op feestjes tussen de nouveau riche, met een camera in zijn kielzog die genadeloos registreerde.

Ter plekke was hij allercharmantst tegen zijn 'slachtoffers' die hem hun rijkdom graag demonstreerden. Hij keuvelde lekker met ze mee. Maar in de montagestudio voorzag hij de filmpjes van cynische terzijdes.

Het programma had veel fans: niet alleen de bewonderaars van de sterren, ook de sterrenhaters kwamen kijken, gniffelend om de dubbele bodems.

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Fact of the day

The south-central Chinese city of Chongqing is China’s biggest inland city — and within a decade, it could surpass Shanghai and Beijing as the nation’s biggest city.

New York Times

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The central government has recently embarked on an economic policy that is aimed to develop western China: the China Western Development strategy. As part of this new plan, the central government has heavily invested in Chongqing's infrastructure and has made a plan for Chongqing to become the "Gateway to the West". Located at the head of the reservoir behind the Three Gorges Dam, Chongqing is planned to be the beachhead for the development of the western part of the country. With the completion of the Three Gorges project, its reservoir will bring ocean going ships to the quays of Chongqing. The hope is that this gritty fogbound megalopolis may become a Chinese Chicago, opening up the interior, shifting the country's centre of gravity west, and kick-starting the economy – as did Chicago in the United States of the nineteenth century. Massive public works are currently under way in the city, including overhead and surface commuter rail lines connecting the many districts of the city. Foreign investment in the city is growing at a fast pace. Chongqing is enlarging its commercial sector. New development zones such as the Chongqing New North Zone (CNNZ) located north of the downtown district have been established to form Chongqing's modern twenty-first century industrial base.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 12:36 schreef Gabry het volgende:
Vandaag Gisteren was De Pers wel leuk.

Demonstraties tegen de G8 door wereldverbeteraars.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 13:16 schreef Autodidact het volgende:
Dat je 'm nog had...

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 13:20 schreef Autodidact het volgende:

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[afbeelding]

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 10:18 schreef KirmiziBeyaz het volgende:
Je vrouw heeft je verlaten,

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want je pikkie is te klein

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 13:38 schreef Die_Hofstadtgruppe het volgende:

Dus verklaar je eens nader?

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 13:58 schreef KirmiziBeyaz het volgende:

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Wat wil je dat ik verklaar? Waarom je een klein pikkie hebt? Hoe moet ik dat nou weten? Ik noem het je lot.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 15:09 schreef Apropos het volgende:

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Ben jij nou bruin of zwart?

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The Truth about China

By Will Hutton | Wednesday, June 06, 2007

As China's economy continues to surge ahead, its government must now seek ways to take the pressure off investment and exports as the drivers of economic development. As Will Hutton, author of "The Writing on the Wall," argues, China must strive to become a more normal economy — one in which private consumption performs more of the work, and social structures ease the income gap.

A major report commissioned by the Chinese government from a panel of front-rank Chinese and foreign economists concluded that consumption needed to rise from its current 50% of GDP to 60% to sustain economic growth. Determining the necessary rate of consumption is one thing — the issue, of course, is how to accomplish this.

The central problem is that persuading the Chinese to save less, consume more and to make enterprise more productive is not just a technical issue. Rather, it goes to the heart of Leninist corporatism.

A habit of saving

The issue in raising consumption is that the habit of saving is very deeply embedded, largely because China’s health, pension, and social security system is so weak.

The chief explanation of high personal saving is the interaction of China’s chronically weak, patchy welfare system with the one-child policy; saving is needed for health, income in old age and education — and there is no wider support available from either family or welfare.

The intention of the next five-year plan — to improve rural incomes, welfare, and health care — is hard to fault, but it starts from so low a base that it is hard to credit.

A low base

For example, until the 1970s health care in rural China was provided by the communes and covered 90% of rural areas. When the communes collapsed, so did rural healthcare, which by the late 1980s covered only 5% of rural areas.

The government has made no serious effort to compensate — only 15% of the health budget is allocated to rural China, although this is where 900 million people, or 70% of the population, live.

A lacking healthcare system

Worse, the only way health care could be sustained in the countryside was for doctors who used to work for the communes to charge fees — but peasants do not have the money to pay.

Meanwhile, the quality of health care has nose-dived. In 2001, a study of 400 village clinics found that two-thirds did not keep medical records, and that only half of the surgical equipment was sterilized.

The story is similar with regard to education. Much of China’s improvement in literacy and numeracy is a legacy of the Mao years, and progress has largely stopped. China, having made great strides between 1949 and 1976, will not meet UNESCO’s goal for literacy in 2015.

Decline in education

As with health, the central government has not stepped in to supplant the loss of the “iron rice bowl” — the system of care formerly provided by the communes and the state-owned enterprises.

Townships foot four-fifths of the education bill, obtaining the money from a mix of fees, taxes and charges. In the rural areas, the schools have to charge fees — with the inevitable result that the poorer the area, the poorer the education.

No pension system

Low-income countries spend on average about 3.4% of GDP on education. In comparison, China spends only 2% — forcing large areas of the country to make do as best they can. Peasant families save for their children’s education, not because they can, but because they must.

Another factor exacerbating the situation is China’s aging population. Today, 10% of the country's population is over 60 — by 2015, the proportion will have risen to 14%. Yet, there is no national pension system.

Moreover, children have been legally required to take responsibility for their aging parents. Because most families have only one child, the potential burden is thus considerable — and in turn, fear of what will happen to them in old age impels urban and rural Chinese alike to save intensely.

An aging population

Making matters worse, as a result of the one-child policy the ratio of elderly people to the working population will only increase. In the 70 years between 1970 and 2040, China will have gone from a country where every “elder” over 60 was outnumbered by six young people, to one where there are twice as many elders as children. It is a phenomenal switch.

Then there is the lack of property rights, and its complex linkage with saving and spending rates. Consumers in western societies have lower savings in part because they borrow against the collateral in their housing assets. This happens more in Britain, the United States and Scandinavia than in Germany and France, but the trend is apparent everywhere.

Lack of property ownership

Communist China still does not acknowledge private property. Houses and apartments in towns are available on 70-year leases, but typically rural smallholdings are available only on 30-year leases, if at all. China also lacks a national land registry, and this situation aggravates the unclear property structure.

Chinese consumers thus have no backing from their property and face life’s hazards — aging, poor health, unemployment and educating children — largely on their own.

Nor can Chinese workers look to a labor union to advance their interests, protect them from arbitrary layoffs or secure real wage increases. The unions are directed by the All-China Federation of Trade Unions and are creatures of the party — so another piece of China’s soft infrastructure is thus lacking.

Nowhere to complain

Small wonder then that saving is so high. Recent moves to allow collective wage contracts and give unions a role in arbitrating disputes may be welcome, but as David Metcalf and Jianwei Li of the London School of Economics report, hollow collective contracts are not collective bargaining. Chinese workers are not effectively represented and remain at the mercy of their managements.

To move to a lower-saving, higher-spending economy requires solving these conundrums. Solutions will necessarily involve the party in having to concede property rights, allow independent labor unions and impose the taxes needed to finance a more comprehensive welfare system.

No moves from the party

But the party does not dare to move on even one front. To permit private property is to empower Chinese civil society as well as to repudiate the ideological base of communism.

Further, to permit independent labor unions is to lose control of the workforce and create a base for ideological competition. And to raise taxation is to invite taxpayers to want to hold the government that spends their money to account.

As Montesquieu famously observed, the compensation for despotism is modest taxes. Welfare systems, freedom of association, representative government and enforceable property rights are not simply pleasant options.

A maturing dragon

Ultimately, these changes are central to the capacity of a capitalist economy to grow to maturity. Without them, China will be condemned to live with its economic contradictions — but, sooner or later, these will become unsustainable.

Indeed, the dangerously overheated economy in 2006 — refusing to slow down despite interest-rate increases and Beijing’s exhortations, pleading, and instructions — shows how increasingly difficult it is to manage an economy where normal constraints do not apply, and the independent institutional power to enforce normal accountabilities is close to nonexistent.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 13:20 schreef Autodidact het volgende:

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[afbeelding]

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 16:59 schreef Apropos het volgende:

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Ik heb desiredbard niet hoog zitten, maar hij heeft wel deels gelijk. De Rijksdagbrand was namelijk Van der Lubbe's protest tegen Hitler's kanselaarschap.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 17:07 schreef Apropos het volgende:

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Inderdaad, tamelijk dom van mij.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 17:18 schreef Apropos het volgende:

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Je moest mijn vergissing wel geweld aandoen.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 17:47 schreef Sidekick het volgende:
Kastanjelier

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 17:49 schreef Apropos het volgende:

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Dat ben je zelf, eikel.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 17:49 schreef Apropos het volgende:

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Dat ben je zelf, eikel.

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Op woensdag 6 juni 2007 09:41 schreef Die_Hofstadtgruppe het volgende:
Deze extreem-rechtse nazi gaat zo maar naar de speeltuin met dochterlief.

Gezellig....

Misschien valt er nog een MILF te verleiden.