Even the most Islamophobic, xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynistic of individuals have the right to speak at the podium, much less run for a second term.
Even the most Islamophobic, xenophobic, homophobic, and misogynistic of individuals have the right to speak at the podium, much less run for a second term.
Peter, there's an old saying:
No man ever steps into the same river twice. For it is not the same river, nor he the same man.
Of Mice and Men is a great novel. The polarity between George and Lennie has been transpiring in these threads.
Dazzer, keep calm. Silencing Peter with your downvoting while upvoting yourself is the hallmark of a fascist.
However much you disdainfully disagree with Peter, let the man speak freely. Engaging in censorship and self-aggrandizing speak more about you than of him.
@napav wrote:
"Homes in Sicilian villages were selling for one dollar. Perhaps for good reason. "Crumbling" comes to mind.
These days, not even the Amazon rainforest is safe from deforestation. Nor its rivers free from industrial water pollution.
Ghost-town countrysides is great for a two-week meditation retreat. May help in mindful flipping of your remote cottage.
Mega cities, particularly capital cities in emerging markets, maintain historical resiliency to housing price downturn if not steady growth rates.
Gov. infrastructural investments in hospitals, schools, and transportation, etc., (deemed important by potential buyers) may be sorely lacking deep in your rain forests.
To say nothing of career opportunities for those who need to work to make ends meet.
FYI, authentic extra virgin olive oil, even organic ones imported from Greece or Spain, can be purchased on TMall flagship stores run by said multinationals. Delivered to our "asia wife" faster than to your forest hermitage....
oh I forgot, Peter processes them fresh from his backyard olive tree garden."
Good points. May I also add Peter has neglected many foreigners are married to locals and have children. Hence, responsibilities to elders, work, and child's education. Not everyone are meant to escape the cityscape.
Actually, more about growing pains of developing nations. Less so about hypocrisy. Learning curve of excrementing in own diaper before learning to flush.
In the deserts you spoke of, life is usually sparse. Short-lived when in bloom. A spectacle, yes.
Yet flora diversity by natural selection can't feed a nation. We can't rely on rare monsoons that momentarily turn barren deserts green.
Sustaining human populations requires human intervention.
Be it artificial selection such as time-tested agricultural revolution, GMO, or thwarting invasive species.
Invasive species that threaten to collapse entire ecosystems at the macro, habitat level. As well as combating invasive plaques and outbreaks at the micro, cellular level. And controversially, at the societal level by rooting out invasive ideological seeds of extremism with algorithmic plows.
Our intrinsic ability to harness nature is the reason human beings have survived. Even thrived, for better or for worse. Without which, extinction wasn't far for our ancestors.
Cultivating the environment is to seize fate in own tilling hands.
Be it harvesting lotus roots every season at Green Lake prior to accommodating arrival of Siberian seagulls. Or reaping the bilateral, economic fruits of connecting BRI rail tracks through once insurmountable land barriers with neighboring rivals. A ripe transformation from building Great Walls centuries earlier.
As mentioned, a learning curve.
Like the maturation process of the States, previous hegemonic Roman and Ottoman empires relied on slavery for growth, let alone genocides of the indigenous. Hegemonic conquests are the extensions of our internal psyche. Particularly those of de facto leaders of reign.
Only time will tell if muddy history of civil rights, which pervaded western colonialism, their slave trade ancestry, and descendants of segregation, will dissolve entirely. Or become renewed in another form.
How an aspiring hegemony like China evolve from mud to lotus pond is yet to be seen.
But one constant in the universe is impermanence and change. Flowers wither below like stars above. Fair or fascist leaders come and go. Their empires rise and fall. If you look further back and forward in scope of time.
Myanmar and Pakistan may bare fruits from mud if you give them time and nutrients to grow.
The cultivation of BRI could be the light, allowing them the opportunity to flourish as flowers. But if leaders/nations depend solely on entropy to cast the dice, dormant seeds of deserts may remain unawakened indefinitely. Or worst, become cesspools for invasive growth that spread far beyond borders.
Yet it is this very cycle of proliferating seed pods and lotus roots that feed hungry mouths in developing nations.
Mud in this context is the foundation of life.
Muddy soil may be perceived dirty and foul by us, yet a blissful haven for most other species in wildlife.
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Snapshot: Trails of Tibet
Posted byCurrently listening to an interesting audiobook called Eat the Buddha: Life and Death in a Tibetan Town by award-winning journalist and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award, Barbara Demick. Nice read/listen on a rainy Saturday with coffee.
Demick lived in China for seven years. One of the extraordinary (and controversial due to >100 monk immolation) places she visited was a remote Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture county 480km Northwest of Chengdu, Sichuan called Ngawa (aka Ngaba). Demick documents Ngawa people's cultural heritage from a historical context, and how the indigenous conformed to modern day China over the last half century.
Sample listening (part 1 of 11):
www.upload.ee/[...]
Getting Away: Eco-tourism in Malaysian Borneo
Posted byBBC Earth, encompassing their "Planet" nature documentary series spanning decades, published their Top 5 "Nature's Oddest Looking Animals" on Youtube yesterday:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLPjP3hjhMM
Borneo's long-nose proboscis monkeys made it on the list as #4:
@3:29
#4: The Proboscis Monkey
Ironically, #1 is awarded to "The Monkey With Blue Skin and No Nose." These Sichuan golden snub-nosed monkey, or 四川金丝猴 in Chinese, are endemic to Southwest China. If memory serves right, I believe they were once featured here on GoKunming:
@11:39
#1: The Monkey With Blue Skin and No Nose
Yunnan reaches out to Cambodia with children's health initiative
Posted byAssisting Cambodians is great. Pink elephant in the room is the looming BRI project through Cambodia. All said and done, BRI will increase Chinese tourism and may gradually lift their country out of poverty and help their people at a macro level.
Kunming dog registration required as of August 1, 2019
Posted byDennis may not fare well in Kunming and in China for that matter. Highly recommend you leave.
Kunming unveils 12-year development plan
Posted byIshmael, are you not one of the polluting air travelers you so despise?
Correct dolphin. I believe Airbus has recently unveiled concept plane that fly on 30-50% less fuel.
Government policies that back sustainable engineering innovations will nudge markets to greener pastures.
To mind & spirit!