A Dream for a Better World

The film Pirates of the Caribbean created a tremendous sensation all over the world. The actor is a pirate. He is very cute, with a sense of justice. But film is far from reality and pirates in the real world are greedy, cruel and lack of justice. In recent years, news about Somali pirates takes too much space of newspaper.

Somali is located in Somali Peninsula of the east part in Africa, north to the Gulf of Aden and east to Indian Ocean. Somali is the link for Asia and Africa and a hub for Asia, Africa and Europe as well as the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans. However, unique location can not change the poverty condition in Somali. After the Siad regime fell from power in the year 1991, the country fell apart and was in anarchy. Civil wars often occur and the international community ever tried to mediate conflicts but such meditation was in vain. In the past 19 years, wars happened many times, the society was out of control, commodity price went too high and necessities were far from  enough. When people in Somali did not know how to survive, an idea came into their mind and that was pirating. Some people pretended to join the army and after they got guns, they started to become pirates. Next, they became rich so more and more people have become pirates. Until now, “pirate” has become the mainstay industry in Somali.

According to the estimation from the international anti-piracy organization, there are more than 1000 pirates for direct robbery and there are some other people who are responsible for negotiation, logistics, weapons purchase, training and intelligence collection. In the year 2008, Somali pirates conducted robbery about 23 times and they never passed the chance to rob property from super tankers to general merchants. And in 2009. Somali pirates expanded the scope for robbery. In order to escape Somali pirates, some ocean shipping companies reach to Europe through the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa though it costs too much. The international community also dispatches armies to hit Somali pirates but Somali pirates’ ships are pretending to be fishing boats so it is very difficult to distinguish if they are pirates’ ships or not. Somali pirates always attack a single vessel and after they succeed in attacking, the international army can not do anything because pirates have hostages who can be killed at any time. Then when they get money, they will release hostages. After all, pirates’ main aim is to get money without any political goals. However, the problem is that Somali pirates get more and more greedy and the international community does not know how to solve it.

Somali pirates seriously affect world safety and peace and the international community can just complain but do nothing more. Maybe after Somali becomes a stable country with good industries and people can live a secure life, the number of pirates will go down. But how long it takes to become a stable country with good life for people? No one knows that.

There are two major social systems in the world, socialism and capitalism. Both of them have different special features but they share a commonality that is the gap between rich and poor. In capitalist countries, it is not strange to find rich people and poor people because such phenomenon is decided by the social system because the essence of capitalism is exploiter and the exploited. And maybe it is also common to find the gap between rich and poor in socialist countries. After all, productive forces development in different regions is uneven. The final target of socialism is to realize common prosperity, at least in China. However, the current situation is the gap between rich and poor are growing day by day and the phenomenon is even more terrible than that of capitalist countries. Here we can take China as an example because it has become a big influential country in the world on economy, culture, military, and politics and so on and so forth and it is playing an important role on the earth.

After more than three decades’ reforming and opening up to the world, China has achieved rapid development but the gap between rich and poor is also growing fast and obviously. Large numbers of people cannot afford a house in the whole life but some people can boast luxury real estates in many sites at home and abroad. Some people are suffering hunger but some own private jets and first-class cars. Some have no chance to go to primary school but some can afford expensive tuition to go abroad for further education. So what are the main reasons for the growing gap? Firstly, uneven resources are distributed in different regions on education, welfare, medical treatment etc. The condition in east and coastal part are much better than that of west part. There is not even a school in some rural regions in west part and people also have to go far for medical treatment when they are ill. Some people die of untimely cure. Secondly, income gap is large and the government can not set up a perfect tax system. Thirdly, the government can not establish good welfare system so many people disabled or without ability to work suffer hunger. As for welfare system, many capitalist countries do better than China. Fourthly, unequal competition is widespread in economical field and some people can get high profits from monopolies. Fifthly, government corruption is very terrible. Many officials use government funds illegally and they also help some businessmen to conduct illegal economic activities by getting bribe, that means, if you are rich, you can offer bribe to some officials then you can earn more from illegal activities. So the gap becomes larger and larger.

At present, the growing gap between rich and poor is worrying and it seems out of government control. Crime rises too much. Robbery, murder, fraudulence, blackmailing etc. occurs every day and living environment seems not so safe. More and more people from bottom-class of the society hatred rich people and the resentment of the rich gets fiercer and fiercer. Maybe one day they will pour the resentment into action. Then what will happen?

Five years ago, I interviewed a man.  This guy brought a bottle of water on the train, which costs 1.5 yuan. And then he asked fapiao for the cost from the train attendant. The train attendant laughed and said: “There is no fapiao for the cost on the train ever.”

The guy sent the Ministry of Railway to court afterwards.

He said people always choose to accept when they are facing strong and powerful rules.  But if we give up the right to ask fapiao for 1.5 yuan today, tomorrow we may have to give up the landright, property rights, and even the right to live… If we don’t fight for our rights, these rights will just be a piece of paper.

He won the case at last.  I thought him and the Ministry of Railway will be angry from then on.   However, when next time he ate in the restaurant car on the train, the chief conductor deliver his food in person, and asked him if he wants the fapiao right away or after meal.

I asked him, how you win the respect?

“By the perseverance to fight for my rights.” He said.

His name is Hao Jinsong, a 34 years old lawyer.

I heard the story from a journalist in her speech competition yesterday.  I appreciate Hao Jinsong’s courage to go against the powerful government branch for his legal right.   I also appreciate the journalist’s work to record the small but powerful stories like this and broadcast them.

A nation consist of different idividuals. They create and define the nation.  Only if a nation have the people who has independent thinking, who strives for the truth, who filghts for their constitutioanal right, who knows the world is not perfect but never gives up trying, the nation can have its future, a better one.

Ps: Fapiao is an official receipt. It used for calculating the in-comes, so that the government would know how much that one earns, and then easy for tax.

Medical personnel were deeply involved in the abusive interrogation of terrorist suspects held overseas by the Central Intelligence Agency, including torture, and their participation was a gross breach of medical ethics, a long-secret report by the Red Cross concluded. Based on statements by 14 prisoners who belonged to Al Qaeda and were moved to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in late 2006, Red Cross investigators concluded that medical professionals working for the C.I.A. monitored prisoners undergoing waterboarding, apparently to make sure they did not drown. Medical workers were also present when guards confined prisoners in small boxes, shackled their arms to the ceiling, kept them in frigid cells and slammed them repeatedly into walls, the report said.  Facilitating such practices, which the Red Cross described as torture, was a violation of medical ethics even if the medical workers’ intentions had been to prevent death or permanent injury, the report said.

The Internal Revenue Service is not living up to its pledge to crack down on wealthy tax cheats, an IRS watchdog group says, citing a drop in audits of millionaires last year. Those with incomes of $1 million and above had a 5.6 percent chance of getting audited in fiscal year 2008, which ended last September, down from 6.8 percent the previous year, according to IRS figures. The actual number of millionaires audited fell from 23,200 to 21,874; the number of millionaires filing tax returns grew from 339,138 to 392,776.  The significant drop in audits of richer Americans contrasted with IRS statements last year that it was making strong progress in enforcement, especially of those with incomes of more than $1 million.

Executives at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and hundreds of financial institutions receiving federal aid aren’t likely to be affected by pay restrictions announced February 15th by President Barack Obama.  The rules, created in response to growing public anger about the record bonuses the financial industry doled out last year, will apply only to top executives at companies that need exceptional assistance in the future.  The limits aren’t retroactive, meaning firms that have already taken government money won’t be subject to the restrictions unless they have to come back for more. Pay caps may provide the political cover the administration needs to deliver additional infusions of capital into the financial sector.

In what could turn out to be the greatest fraud in US history, American authorities have started to investigate the alleged role of senior military officers in the misuse of $125bn in a US -directed effort to reconstruct Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. The exact sum missing may never be clear, but a report by the US Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction suggests it may exceed $50bn, making it an even bigger theft than Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme.  Iraqi leaders are convinced that the theft or waste of huge sums of US and Iraqi government money could have happened only if senior US officials were themselves involved in the corruption. American federal investigators are now starting an inquiry into the actions of senior US officers involved in the program to rebuild Iraq.

Two Pennsylvania judges have been charged with taking millions of dollars in kickbacks to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers.  For years, youngsters were brought before judges through the juvenile court system in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. without a lawyer, given hearings that lasted only a minute or two, and then sent off to juvenile prison for months for minor offenses.  Prosecutors say Judges Mark Ciavarella and Michael Conahan took $2.6 million in payoffs to put juvenile offenders in lockups run by PA Child Care LLC and a sister company, Western PA Child Care LLC. The judges were charged on Jan. 26 and removed from the bench by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court shortly afterward.

Although the CIA’s secret prisons, harsh interrogation techniques and Guantanamo Bay are being demantled, President Obama left intact an equally controversial counter-terrorism tool – the secret renditions in which terrorism suspects were kidnapped and transferred to countries that cooperate with the United States.  Under Obama’s executive orders recently, the CIA still has the authority to carry out the renditions.  Current and former U.S. intelligence officials said that the rendition program might be poised to play an expanded role going forward because it took suspected terrorists off the streets.  The secret rendition program became a target of international scorn as details emerged in recent years of botched captures, mistaken identities and allegations that prisoners were turned over to countries where they were tortured.

The U.S. Army is to invest $6 million in riot equipment, a fact that has furthered fears that troops will be used inside the U.S. in order to quell any civil unrest resulting from the ongoing economic crisis.  The U.S. Army Contracting Agency, based at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, has a post on the Federal Business Opportunities website, requesting the equipment and has received several notices of interest from potential vendors.  The request titled “84–RIOT EQUIPMENT” outlines the need for hard polyethylene Shin and Chest Guards, shock absorbing Forearm Protectors, Interior leg brace supports as well as knee and ankle protectors.  The ACA asks that the equipment be able to safely withstand a substantial blow from non-ballistic weapons or flying debris.

The Bush administration has slipped a controversial ingredient into the $770 million aid package to ease the world food crisis, adding language that would promote the use of genetically modified crops in food-deprived countries. The value of genetically modified, or bio-engineered, food is an intensely disputed issue in the U.S. and in Europe, where many countries have banned foods made from genetically modified organisms, or GMOs.  Opponents of GMO crops say they can cause unforeseen medical problems.  They also contend that the administration’s plan is aimed at helping American agribusinesses.  They also say that it is pretty obvious at this point that genetically engineered crops don’t increase yields. There are no commercialized crops that are designed to deal with the climate crisis.

A secret 2006 Pentagon analysis report, suppressed by US defense chiefs, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a ‘Siberian’ climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world. The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents. Climate change ’should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern’, say the authors.  The Bush administration tried to suppress the report for 4 months trying to bury the threat of climate change. 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said that it plans to do away with publishing its national survey tracking pesticide use, despite opposition from prominent scientists, the nation’s largest farming organizations and environmental groups.  The groups’ concern is that if the public doesn’t know what’s being used, then they won’t know what to look for.  Furthermore, in the absence of information, people can be lulled into thinking that there are no problems with the use of pesticides on food in this country.  Since 1990, farmers and consumer advocates have relied on the agency’s detailed annual report to learn which states apply the most pesticides and where bug and weed killers are most heavily sprayed. The EPA also uses the data when figuring out how chemicals should be regulated, and which pesticides pose the greatest risk to public health.

The Navy has settled a lawsuit filed by environmentalists challenging its use of sonar in hundreds of submarine-hunting exercises around the world.  The Navy said the deal reached with the Natural Resources Defense Council and other groups requires it to continue to research how sonar affects whales and other marine mammals.  It doesn’t require sailors to adopt additional measures to protect the animals when they use sonar.   The agreement comes one month after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Navy in another sonar lawsuit the NRDC filed.  According to a Navy spokesman, the Navy is pleased that after more than three years of extensive litigation, this matter has been brought to an end on favorable terms.

Intelligence centers run by states across the country have access to personal information about millions of Americans, including unlisted cellphone numbers, insurance claims, driver’s license photographs and credit reports, according to a document obtained by The Washington Post. One center also has access to top-secret data systems at the CIA, the document shows, though it’s not clear what information those systems contain.  Dozens of the organizations known as fusion centers were created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.  The centers use law enforcement analysts and sophisticated computer systems to compile, or fuse, disparate tips and clues and pass along the refined information to other agencies.