The Book Club will meet Tuesday, January 9, 2018, at The Park, to discuss Mikhail Bulgakov's novel, THE MASTER AND MARGARITA, in which Satan arrives in both Roman Jerusalem 2000 years ago and in Moscow in the stalinist 1930's and turns out to be the most interesting and dramatic dude in town (think Milton's PARADISE LOST).
The Kunming Book Club has a wechat group in which many regular attendees participate, but meetings are open to all. Readings, locations and times of meets are chosen by attendees. New participants welcome.
That's creeping up on Chinese New Year, so you might want to check early on tickets to Jinghong. From Jinghong on you can probably just buy tickets the day before at the bus station.
Yahoo is not a brilliant site for news, but it works consistently for me here - perhaps there was a glitch for a week or so once, but that was a long time ago, can't quite remember.
I am a foreigner and at my local PSB I have never needed my landlord to go with me to register, I just needed lease and photocopy of his ID the first time, when I moved in. Later trips in and out of the country, I just had to show up with my passport - did this last week.
@Magnifico: I don't see American Gangster, which is a film I really like, as alluding to government conspiracy regarding drugs - it alludes to the operations of certain criminal individuals within the US military in Southeast Asia who make use of US coffins etc. to bring drugs into the US for organized crime - not US government policy or that of any government-established black box operations located within it. Anyway, the film is fictionalized, although based on real events, and the facts concerning drug movements etc. are not quite the facts of the events. Great film though.
HFCampo: The EU, whatever its problems, is not totalitarian.
People are murdered everyday - perhaps so, why do you want to contribute?
The US is not a fascist country, at least not yet.
If 'we' have no choice about US-government decisions about what is a drug and what should be illegal, why do you want to kill more people based on these definitions?
If the US government, border police etc. are all in on the drug racket (and at least some of them have to be), then what authority is it that you think would be able to go around killing illegal drug users?
Finally, why are you more interested in some totalitarian control of illegal drug users than you are in the lives of enormous numbers of people?
Your whole approach is frightening. What do you value here?
@HFCampo: The point about illegal drugs is that they are not subject to such a program - i.e., they're uncontrolled, illegal. So who would be able to do this? Anyone who did would be knowingly responsible for the death of another - i.e., random murder of drug users.
The main problem here, of course, is that most of us would not condone such murder, as I think most of us, most of the time, at least when not defending our own lives, consider that the lives of millions of human beings are more important than the control of illegal drugs. You may have a different moral point of view, which you'd have to explain, but I don't know how you could make any stable society out of one, unless you assume totalitarian control of populations, which is ultimately impossible and the members of which would scarcely be human anyway - mere objects. Then maybe it wouldn't matter to anyone whether they lived or died, and they might not know the difference.
As for all drug users dying off, I don't think you understand why people choose to use drugs.
finally, you still haven't told us what an illegal 'drug' is, except that it seems to be whatever some government, which you don't respect and which you say pushes drugs, says it is.
You may be volunteering to enforce fascism, for all you to know.
Not quite what you'd call a jumping place, but not bad at all for rather standard US-type meals, not overly expensive, and with a really good salad bar that's cheap, or free with most dinner dishes after 5:30PM. You can get a bottle of beer or even wine if you really want to, but I've never seen anybody do it - maybe that's just to take out. Chinese Christian run, and they hire people with physical disadvantages, who are pleasant and helpful. Frequented by foreign (mostly North American) Christians and Chinese Christians - was started by a Canadian couple associated with Bless China (previously, Project Grace), who are no longer here, but no religious pressure or any of that. Steaks are nothing special, and I avoid the Korean dishes, which I've had a few times but which did not impress me.
As a shop and bakery, it's very good bread at reasonable prices, of various kinds (Y18 for a good multigrain loaf that certainly weighs well over a pound. Other stuff too, like granola and oatmeal that is local, as well as imported things, including American cornflakes and so forth, which some people seem to require.
Large portions, seriously so with the pizza, which is Brooklyn/American style, I guess. Convivial, conversational, good place to drink with good folks on both sides of the bar, especially after about 9PM.
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者@Magnifico: I don't see American Gangster, which is a film I really like, as alluding to government conspiracy regarding drugs - it alludes to the operations of certain criminal individuals within the US military in Southeast Asia who make use of US coffins etc. to bring drugs into the US for organized crime - not US government policy or that of any government-established black box operations located within it. Anyway, the film is fictionalized, although based on real events, and the facts concerning drug movements etc. are not quite the facts of the events. Great film though.
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者HFCampo: The EU, whatever its problems, is not totalitarian.
People are murdered everyday - perhaps so, why do you want to contribute?
The US is not a fascist country, at least not yet.
If 'we' have no choice about US-government decisions about what is a drug and what should be illegal, why do you want to kill more people based on these definitions?
If the US government, border police etc. are all in on the drug racket (and at least some of them have to be), then what authority is it that you think would be able to go around killing illegal drug users?
Finally, why are you more interested in some totalitarian control of illegal drug users than you are in the lives of enormous numbers of people?
Your whole approach is frightening. What do you value here?
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者@HFCampo: The point about illegal drugs is that they are not subject to such a program - i.e., they're uncontrolled, illegal. So who would be able to do this? Anyone who did would be knowingly responsible for the death of another - i.e., random murder of drug users.
The main problem here, of course, is that most of us would not condone such murder, as I think most of us, most of the time, at least when not defending our own lives, consider that the lives of millions of human beings are more important than the control of illegal drugs. You may have a different moral point of view, which you'd have to explain, but I don't know how you could make any stable society out of one, unless you assume totalitarian control of populations, which is ultimately impossible and the members of which would scarcely be human anyway - mere objects. Then maybe it wouldn't matter to anyone whether they lived or died, and they might not know the difference.
As for all drug users dying off, I don't think you understand why people choose to use drugs.
finally, you still haven't told us what an illegal 'drug' is, except that it seems to be whatever some government, which you don't respect and which you say pushes drugs, says it is.
You may be volunteering to enforce fascism, for all you to know.
Fundraiser: Helping out with impossible medical bills
发布者Count me in.
Laos extradites drug suspects to Yunnan
发布者I like frogs and squirrels.