High-quality English language analysis and editorial writing on the news.
It was exactly 10 days ago, I was bored, and broke a cardinal rule. Do not get your news from Facebook, and under no circumstances buy anything from a Facebook ad. Facebook news is about as reliable as a 1970’s British sports car with Lucas electric components. It might get you to the local pub […]
While the press is full of news about Boyance and Justin Bieber, one of the completely ignored stories has been how China is busy taking over Africa. Not politically, of course, but by investing in minerals, exporting their cheap goods to Africa and establishing stores there to sell things cheaply, and by investing in farm […]
MariaElena at Fountain of Elias reminds us that Sept 24 is the (pre Vatican II) feast of Our Lady of Ransom. This feast was one of the church’s way of reminding folks of the many captured by various pirates and to raise money to ransom them. The origins of the Feast can be found in […]
Recently, several instances have been reported from India where Importers and Exporters from India dealing with China and Russia have been cheated by fraudsters and the fraudulent money diverted to Banks in Hing Kong. The modus operandi is to intervene in genuine importer-exporter communication and to send instructions through false e-mail IDs similar to the […]
BBG Watch has learned that a distinguished leader and scholar Tenzin Tethong was chosen as the new Tibetan Service director at Radio Free Asia (RFA). He accompanied his family to India in 1959 a few months after the Dalai Lama had arrived there from Tibet. He has been living in the United States since 1995. […]
In the book The Hobbit, Bilbo was given a short contract that included “funeral expenses” and a right to one fourteenth percentage of the treasure. Peter Jackson in his usual fashion did Tolkien one better, so Balin gives Bilbo a long intricate paper contract with a lot more details, written in a satire of legalese. […]
If I am voting against the President, it is not racism but because he is going out of his way to persecute the Catholic church: The problem? The week after taking office, the President removed conscience rights regulations from the federal regulations. This means that the only thing standing between Catholics and Muslims from being […]
There was a big story by National Geographic last week about illegal ivory being used by Philippino Catholics to make statues. They even named one of our more dubious priests as being involved in the practice. Corruption is not new in the Philippines, where winking at the law is a way of life and bribes […]
In today’s news we read about multicity protests that burned flags and had to be broken up by police using water cannons. So where were these demonstration? Cairo? Beruit? Karachi? No, they were in China. The UK Telegraph has a story about these “spontaneous” demonstrations: China seized by second day of violent anti-Japan protests More […]
The greens in the Philippines are fighting all GM food, which is good in some ways and bad in other ways. I mean, we are in the “organic rice” business, and use locally developed hybrids, so cheap, abundant “Genetically modified” rice imports from China are not in our best interest. But the search for new […]
GMA and ESPN are now promoting hate speech against Catholics under the guise of accusing Filipine boxer Pacquiao of homophobia. From “An Open Letter to Manny Pacquiao From a Gay Filipina American,” …your parents give you Catholicism as a kind of heavy gift. A centuries-old guide for every life transition a human can go through. […]
The Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB www.cusib.org) and the independent BBG Watch (www.bbgwatch.com) website reported that blind Chinese legal activist and dissident Chen Guangcheng, who arrived today in the United States, had been secretly listening to Voice of America Mandarin shortwave radio broadcasts while he was in prison in China. Chen Guangcheng revealed this […]
The local news has been following Chinese threats against the Philippines, and China is getting more threatening. For years, China has claimed to own the Spratlys Island area, which is claimed by the Philippines, Brunai, Taiwan and Viet Nam. These countries have insisted on international arbitration for the claim, something that China is not very […]
Annette Lantos, the wife of the late Congressman Tom Lantos, has joined efforts to oppose the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ (BBG) proposals to cut Voice of America (VOA) services, the independent, nongovernmental Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting reported today on its website www.cusib.org. Mrs. Lantos’s April 4, 2012 letter to the BBG begins: “I write […]
A recently launched Save Voice of America Tibetan Radio website (www.savevoatibetanradio.com) and a Facebook page (www.facebook.com/savevoatibetan) urge supporters to contact their congressmen with a message to oppose elimination of Voice of America Tibetan radio by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. federal government agency which oversees VOA broadcasts and wants to silence VOA […]
I had to laugh. Jane Fonda is among the fainting feminists who want Rush Limbaugh removed from the airways for insulting a woman. Well, she has a point. Technically, the word to describe those of either or both sexes who have sexual relations outside of marriage is “fornicator”, and this is not illegal in the […]
Check this out: Natural Gas,via TPMBarnett’s webpage: natural gas deals are proceeding internationally: the flow out of North America alters things, regionalizing flows more as Japan and Germany move off nukes and seek to ramp up their use of gas to generate electricity, and as emerging markets in general ramp up their gas use… (cheap […]
The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) employees are both annoyed and amused by the International Broadcasting Bureau (IBB) Director Richard Lobo’s memo in which he justifies bonuses paid to BBG executives as being in line with awards received by executives employed by other federal agencies. As some employees point out, there is a problem with […]
BBGWatch.com – December 20, 2011 – Victor Ashe, a member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), has called for keeping open the radio broadcasting facility on U.S. territory that is capable of transmitting shortwave radio programs to China. Some Obama Administration officials want to shut down the last remaining U.S.–based international broadcast station located […]
Ho ho ho! On December 21st, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) will gift the nation with the true number of existing home sales between 2007 and 2010. The NAR’s inflated numbers were flagged earlier this year by CoreLogic, a California based data firm. When confronted, the NAR grumped they’d look into it. Sounding more […]
The president of Women’s Rights Without Frontiers Reggie Littlejohn, who is also a member of the Advisory Board for the Committee for U.S. International Broadcasting (CUSIB), said that Christian Bale is a hero for trying to visit Chinese human rights advocate Chen Guangcheng who is kept under house arrest in China. Women’s Rights Without Frontiers […]
BBG Watch has learned that a top Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) executive has racked up $108,000 in travel expenses so far this year. Sources tell us that the official has no real responsibilities but likes to show up to take credit for the work already done by other BBG employees. According to one source, […]
The NYTimes has an article about problems with the Global fund to fight AIDS. It seems that they checked the books and found some of the money was stolen or diverted, and as a result, a lot of European donors are not giving any more money until the problem is cleared up. You want honesty […]
I do not usually republish articles, but this one really disturbed me – Simon 10,000 Tibetans converge in Tawu for funeral, Chinese Forces Seen Entering Monastery  Footage can be viewed here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6955112/Tawu%20Footage.mp4 High resolution footage can be downloaded here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/6955112/Tawu%20Footage.dv Dharamsala/New York – The most comprehensive footage of protests in Tibet this year, including shocking […]
The media freedom website BBG Watch reported that the Senate Committee on Appropriations has rejected the Broadcasting Board of Governors’ (BBG) proposal to end Voice of America (VOA) radio and TV broadcasts to China and criticized the BBG for the lack of transparency. The committee recommended $740,039,000 for U.S. international broadcasting operations, for the operating […]
Joe Biden’s visit to China has gotten little respect in the US press, who seem to despise his “everyday man” approach to things and who trumpet his verbal gaffes without noticing his common touch is something desperately needed by the elitist Obama administration. During his trip to China, he visited an ordinary Chinese restaurant and […]
FreeMediaOnline.org Truckee, CA, USA, July 28, 2011 –Press freedom advocates and Ethiopian Americans are declaring a partial victory in their fight with the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a U.S. government agency, over the censorship of the Voice of America radio programs to Ethiopia. They credit massive protests and a demonstration held Monday in front […]
FreeMediaOnline.org San Francisco, CA, USA, July 24, 2011 — Leaders of the Ethiopian American community joined by free media advocates are planning a protest rally on Monday, July 25, in front of the Voice of America (VOA) building in Washington, DC amid charges of censorship of VOA news programs to Ethiopia by the Broadcasting Board […]
I am bemused when the sins that we recognized in the past are now being redefined by the modern world. Greed, of course, is behind our “addiction” to oil, the war in the Middle East (no blood for oil”) and the manipulation of the stock market. Lust however is still being touted by the NYTimes […]
Many years ago, conspiracy theorists claimed the US was fighting in Viet Nam in order to exploit the oil fields in the Spratlys islands. This fact allowed the anti war humanitarians to dismiss the story that the US was there because a communist takeover of the region that would result in hundreds of thousand sent […]
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