A Flat World and a pie in the face

The site was down this weekend, which is a convenient excuse for me not posting anything.

Anyhow, Tom Friedman, author of the World is Flat, recently got a pie in the face while talking about globalization and the environment.

Which leads me to ask this question: Is there a better way to promote your book than a pie in the face?

Bangladesh garment workers want wages to rise with soaring costs of food

15,000 workers go on strike. When you earn $25/month and rice is 25 cents a pound, something has gotta give.

Daily Show correspondent John Oliver on Fair Trade, China, and Outsourcing

Worried that China is going to dominate the global economy? Stop. Oliver assures us that they won’t because Chinese people will never buy inflatable grills.

What about Free Trade? Oliver says we should demonize unfair trade.

Outsourcing? Yes. Oliver outsources his jokes to a 10-year old Indonesian boy.

Watch the video. It’s just another example of why we should be electing comedians to the land’s highest offices.

Chinese Student says CNN faked images

One of my favorite NPR shows is On Point with Tom Ashbrook. Monday On Point aired from Beijing where they talked with three students about the Olympics, Tibet, China’s place in the world, and the Chinese perception of the USA.

The students, like China, are driven. In fact, I would argue that they have at least three times the amount of drive as most of us Americans. While it was neat to hear about the exciting possibilities they see in their own and China’s future, some of what they had to say was less than exciting.

One of the girls said that CNN faked images from the riots in Tibet. She said that CNN dressed up Nepalese, who she could tell were Nepalese because of their skin color, and staged faux-Tibetan riots. Tom was a bit flabbergasted at the accusation and asked her how she could be for sure since China does not have a free press. She never really answered his question.

I hope this was just some half-baked theory circulating on the internet and not “real” news in the Chinese media. Either way, this girl is China’s future and if she actually believes that the US has it in for China to such an extent that our free press is concocting stories, the future of Chinese and American relations may be more complex than I ever thought.

(Of course, many of we Americans still think that Obama and Osama are related.)

Not that the US media is not influenced by politics and corporate interests, but the day CNN stages a riot is the day I shack up in the woods to grow a very long beard and clean my guns.

If you haven’t already, you should check out the comment thread of this post where Joel and Jessica of China Hope Live talk about the Chinese Media and how it’s reporting recent events versus how the American Media is – very interesting.

Wal-Mart saving the world one funny light bulb at a time

Yep, that Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart’s CEO Lee Scott:

Companies should create businesses that focus on building products and services for the poor. “Such a system would have a twin mission: making profits and also improving lives for those who don’t fully benefit from market forces,” he plans to say….
In particular, he said, he’s troubled that advances in technology, health care and education tend to help the rich and bypass the poor. “The rate of improvement for the third that is better off is pretty rapid,” he said. “The part that’s unsatisfactory is for the bottom third — two billion of six billion.”

In the next three years, we would like to build a very different system. We believe that there should be one framework of social and environmental standards for all major global retailers. And there should be one third party auditing system for everyone.

You can read more about Wal-Mart saving the world on salon.com and in this NY Times story.

Here’s an excerpt from Where am I Wearing? about a buddy recalling the W-A-L-M-A-R-T cheer he had to do each day before his shift:

John told me, “There are a lot of things that I have done in my life that I have tried to forget and having to shake my ass in that cheer is one of them.”

Holy Willie and the China Olympic Boycott

The upcoming Chinese Olympics made writing about China even more difficult. My book comes out in November and I don’t want to date it so I had to skirt the subject. I do talk about human rights and try to do so somewhat objectively, although I suspect it probably isn’t to hard to tell where I stand.

Since I can’t address the Olympics and the storm surrounding it directly in my book, I’ll do so here.

Personally, I think China is reaping what it has sewed. The government seems to do whatever it wants to preserve its own power and grow its own economy while ignoring the suffering it inflicts on its own people and that of others around the world. Not that other governments haven’t done or do such things; it’s just that China seems to be the best at it right now: Tibet. Darfur. Labor camps. No wikipedia, etc.

I don’t mind the torch protests as long as nobody gets hurts. I don’t mind political leaders boycotting the games, but as the issue becomes more heated, I hope the athletes won’t become more pressured to follow suit. The Olympics represents the place where athletes showcase their hard work, training, and abilities. The games only come around every four years and to deny them of their chance to shine would be a great shame.

In Edinburgh’s The Scotsman, Allan Massie does a great job of putting all of this in perspective. The editorial is titled:

We don’t boycott their clothes, so why boycott their Olympics?

And goes on to write:

Anyone who regularly buys clothes from Tesco or Gap or other stores which stock Chinese goods is in no position to call on our athletes to boycott the Beijing Games or even to make some sort of public protest.

As consumers, we are customers of the Chinese regime, and even its accomplices. To pretend otherwise is hypocrisy, something which, as heirs of Holy Willie, we Scots usually do rather well.

I had to Wikipedia Holy Willie (something I couldn’t have done in China). He was a church elder who asked God for forgiveness while at the same time asking God to smite all of the other sinners. I suspect a bake sale and ExLax may have been involved.

U.S. Passports Made in Thailand via the Netherlands

In terms of the previous post, if there is anyone that should be a red, white, and blue consumer, it’s the United States Government. I’m not sure how many hundreds of millions, if not billons, of dollars they spend per year protecting farmers and American jobs, yet they turn around and do something as stupid as outsourcing the production of our passports to save a few bucks.

Apparently there are security issues too.

Your tax dollars at work.

Fantasy Kingdom on the World Vision Report

You might remember my piece in the Christian Science Monitor titled “Frivolous gift or lifelong memory?” in which I take 20 kids and an old man into a Bangladeshi amusement park. If you were too lazy to read it, now all you have to do is sit back and listen to my hick %$#@ redneck accented voice (as a recent YouTube commenter called it) read it to you.

Listen to Fantasy Kingdom on the WVR

Enjoy. Ya’ll come back now…ya hear?

Global warming good for water-skiers

Economist William Nordhaus on global warming:

Snow-skiing will be hurt – but waterskiing will benefit.

As a fella who has dreamed about SCUBA diving around the ruins of Angkor Wat, I think I would enjoy an early morning ski through Manhattan or Athens.

(I read the quote in Bill McKibben’s book Deep Economy)

Pepto Bismol is calling

Literally.

I got a call from Pepto Bismol yesterday.

Apparently, I’m on some travel writing marketing list. I get a couple of press releases a day and a couple of phone calls a month about new products, books, and events.

Anyhow, Pepto is synergyzing with the Travel Channel, specifically the show Bizarre Foods with host Andrew Zimmern. The nice Pepto lady asked me if I read the press release, which I hadn’t. So she resent it. The release includes travel tips from Andrew, half of which involve Pepto. I’ve pasted it below the cut.

I’ve never used Pepto once at home or while traveling. This is for two reasons:

1. Their commercials freak me out. I don’t want my stomach slowly coated with pink paste.

2. I don’t eat like an oinker and therefore don’t require stomach meds. I’m either a-okay or experiencing the subject of the previous post.

If you could be sponsored by a drug what would it be? Me, I would be sponsored by Coppertone Sport SPF 30. I have albino tendencies and can hardly leave the house without it.

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