Smart Meters, Electric Monopolies and The Quest To Go Analog

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Smart Meters, Electric Monopolies and The Quest To Go Analog

Peace quest spurs defense push

Robust response comes after critics hit out at increase in country’s military spending

Peace can only be preserved with strength, the spokeswoman for China’s top legislature said on Tuesday, in one of the strongest responses to concerns over growing military power.

Meanwhile, analysts said that increased defense spending is part of China’s modernization drive amid growing challenges from some Asian countries that keeping raising their military budgets.

Fu Ying, spokeswoman for the second session of the 12th National People’s Congress, said that as a major, China is responsible for regional peace and security.

But “based on our history and experience, we believe that peace can only be maintained by strength”, she said.

Fu said China, whose military policy is entirely defensive in nature, has never treated any country as an enemy or a threat.

“We have heard such concerns. Indeed, certain countries have been selling the idea of China as a major threat,” Fu said. “But we Chinese might ask, can a prosperous country such as China really achieve peace without a strong national defense?”

She said China supports disputes being resolved through negotiations. However, it will “respond effectively” to provocation by those ready to sabotage regional security and order, “for the sake of China’s own territorial sovereignty, as well as for the protection of regional order and peace”.

China’s defense budget, after years of double-digit growth, stood at $ 117.7 billion in 2013, as the United States remained the world’s biggest defense spender with a budget of $ 600.4 billion.

China’s defense budget for this year is expected to be announced on Wednesday when the top legislature begins its meeting.

Qian Lihua, a major general who used to head the Foreign Affairs Office under the Ministry of National Defense, said China’s defense spending is reasonable and moderate, and its growth depends on the nation’s economic performance.

The country’s defense spending is rising along with other kinds of social spending, such as education and social welfare, he said. “It is unrealistic and unreasonable for China’s defense spending to remain at the same level,” he added.

Qian, also a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, said many Asian countries have increased their defense budgets.

Asia’s defense spending surpassed that of the European Union in 2012, and reached $ 320 billion in 2013, Qian said.

The increase was driven by geopolitical changes in Asia, with the emergence of “hot” regional issues, territorial disputes and an Asian strategy adjustment by some countries, Qian said.

Zhong Zhenming, an international relations scholar at Tongji University in Shanghai, said some countries have continued to create an unstable environment for China while accusing it of becoming a regional threat.

China’s increased military strength is partly in response to provocative moves taken by some countries, who should review their own polices first, Zhong said.

Chen Kai, vice-chairman of the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, said a considerable part of China’s military strength has been aimed at securing world peace, including anti-piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden and the Chinese navy’s involvement in escorting shipments of Syrian chemical weapons this year.

Chen said that compared with China’s defense strategy, Japan has repeatedly adopted aggressive policies, and it is absurd for such countries to accuse China of being a military threat.

Ren Yuanzhe, a researcher at China Foreign Affairs University, said China requires more financial support, as it is experiencing military reforms under the new leadership.

Zhao Yanrong and He Liu contributed to this story.

Peace quest spurs defense push

On Consumer Choice And The Quest For Meaning

By JacobSloan on December 4, 2013 in News

Via The New Inquiry Rob Horning warns that attempting to express our identities has become a zero-sum game:

Consumerism is sustained by the ideology that freedom of choice is the only relevant freedom; it implies that society has mastered scarcity and that accumulating things is the primary universal human good, that which allows us to understand and relate to the motives of others.

Choosing among things, in a consumer society, is what allows us to feel autonomous (no one tells us how we must spend our money) and express, or even discover, our unique individuality — which is proposed as the purpose of life. If we can experience ourselves as original, our lives will not have been spent in vain. We will have brought something new to human history; we will have been meaningful. (This is opposed to older notions of being “true” to one’s station or to God’s plan.)

The quest for originality collides with the capitalist economic imperative of growth. Making more choices seems to mean a more attenuated, bigger, more successful self. Originality can be regarded as a question of claiming more things to link to ourselves and combining them in unlikely configurations.

As we articulate our identities within attention-depleting media, recognition increasingly becomes a zero-sum game; one’s recognized identity comes at the expense of another’s in that it steals attention away. The problem worsens as this recognition becomes not a mere matter of ontological security but economic viability, as digital labor (personal brand building, etc.) becomes a required prerequisite for other work, or the only kind of (precarious) work available. This leads to an accompanying ‘administration’ of one’s life that takes the form of an endless to-do list.

disinformation

On Consumer Choice And The Quest For Meaning

Tomb opened in Mona Lisa quest

10 August 2013
Last updated at 05:28 ET

Scientists in the Italian city of Florence have opened a tomb to extract DNA they hope will identify the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa.

The tomb contains the family of Lisa Gherardini, a silk merchant’s wife who is believed to have sat for the artist.

It is hoped DNA will help to identify her from three skeletons found last year in a nearby convent.

Experts have for centuries puzzled over the woman featured in the Mona Lisa, and the reason for her cryptic smile.

To find the DNA they needed, scientists cut a round hole in the stone church floor above the family crypt of Florentine silk merchant Francesco del Giocondo. The tomb lies behind the altar of the Santissima Annunziata Basilica.

Writer and researcher Silvano Vinceti plans to compare DNA from the bones with that of three women buried at the nearby convent of Saint Ursula.

Lisa Gherardini died there as a nun in 1542.

It is hoped that some of the bones will belong to at least one of her blood relation, probably her son, Piero.

“When we find a match between mother and child – then we will have found the Mona Lisa,” said Mr Vinceti.

He added that once a DNA match is made, an image of Gherardini’s face can be generated from the skull and compared with the painting.

Self-portrait?

Leonardo da Vinci took about 15 years to complete what has become one of the most famous paintings of all time.

One of the artist’s favourite paintings, he carried it with him until he died in 1519.

It was acquired by King Francis I, who ruled France from 1515 to 1547. The painting was put on permanent display in the Louvre in Paris at the end of the 18th century.

The piece was stolen from the museum in 1911 by a former employee who believed it belonged in Italy.

He was apprehended by police two years later, and the Mona Lisa was safely returned.

While its small size can surprise Louvre visitors, the painting is the biggest attraction in the museum.

One popular, if unlikely, theory suggests it was a self-portrait.

There are similarities between the facial features of the Mona Lisa and of the artist’s self-portrait painted many years later, with some suggesting this is the reason behind the portrait’s famed enigmatic smile.

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Tomb opened in Mona Lisa quest

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