World News Thread & Breaking News!!
- Thread starter kliu0
- Start date
- Status
Wow, two in two weeks. RIP and God comfort them and their friends and families.
They are literally risking their lives and their families' top try and get somewhere where they can have a better life.
antiterror13
Brigadier
I tend to agree with Jeff. When I visited Oak Ridge Lab last year (as part of an international conference), we were allowed to go to more "secret" areas ..... I was very surprised seeing so many Chinese scientists working there, I'd say the majority. I am sure they are the US citizen though.
Another interesting story; when I had a big holiday with my family (Canada and the US) in Dec/Jan13, the last place we visited was San Francisco. It's a great city and nice people. We stayed in the "Wharf" area, it's a heavily tourism area and surprisingly hardly anybody speaking English in the wharf, mostly speaking Chinese and Spanish (in the downtown, mostly speak English). I found out that 33% of SF population are actually Chinese ..... that's a very interesting fact to me
Last edited:
Quickie
Colonel
A turn around in decision, maybe?
NASA says to reconsider Chinese researchers' meeting requests
2013-10-11 07:53:51
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- NASA administrator Charles Bolden said Thursday that he had directed the space agency to reconsider applications of Chinese researchers who were banned from attending an upcoming planetary conference.
Bolden was responding to a letter he received early this week from Frank Wolf, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, who crafted a law in 2011 that prohibits government funds from being used to host Chinese nationals at NASA facilities.
In the letter, Wolf claimed that the law "primarily restricts bilateral, not multilateral, meetings and activities" with the Chinese government or Chinese-owned companies. He also said it " places no restrictions on activities involving individual Chinese nationals unless those nationals are acting as official representatives of the Chinese government."
In his response, Bolden said it's "unfortunate" that six Chinese participants were refused attendance at the Kepler conference, scheduled to take place at NASA's Ames Research Center in California next month.
Bold pledged to review the applications once the U.S. government reopens.
"Any of them applying and meeting the clearance requirements in place for foreign citizens will be accepted for participation in the Conference," he added.
Organizers of the meeting, the Scientific Organizing Committee of the Second Kepler Science Conference, said they learned about the law in late September while drafting the final agenda, and then they denied the registration of six Chinese researchers for the meeting.
"We find the consequences of this law deplorable and strongly object to banning our Chinese colleagues, or colleagues from any nation," the organizers said. "The policies that led to this exclusion have had a negative impact on open scientific inquiry. We feel very strongly that it is wrong to exclude scientists, on the basis of nationality, from a meeting that welcomes free and open exchange of scientific ideas."
The exclusion of Chinese researchers sparked a boycott by several prominent American researchers, including Debra Fischer, who leads a research group at Yale University, and Geoff Marcy, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is well-known for his pioneering work on exoplanets.
The law introduced by Wolf has drawn criticism from some U.S. analysts.
"I believe the current U.S. prohibitions on cooperation with China in the area of human spaceflight are counterproductive," said Gregory Kulacki, a senior analyst with the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program. "They serve no beneficial political, economic or strategic purpose and may, in fact, harm the strategic interests of the United States," he told Xinhua earlier this year.
Kulacki said he was hopeful that with the passage of time, the U.S. Congress "will adopt a more constructive set of policies that encourages greater contact and cooperation between space professional in China and the United States."
NASA says to reconsider Chinese researchers' meeting requests
2013-10-11 07:53:51
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (Xinhua) -- NASA administrator Charles Bolden said Thursday that he had directed the space agency to reconsider applications of Chinese researchers who were banned from attending an upcoming planetary conference.
Bolden was responding to a letter he received early this week from Frank Wolf, chairman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA, who crafted a law in 2011 that prohibits government funds from being used to host Chinese nationals at NASA facilities.
In the letter, Wolf claimed that the law "primarily restricts bilateral, not multilateral, meetings and activities" with the Chinese government or Chinese-owned companies. He also said it " places no restrictions on activities involving individual Chinese nationals unless those nationals are acting as official representatives of the Chinese government."
In his response, Bolden said it's "unfortunate" that six Chinese participants were refused attendance at the Kepler conference, scheduled to take place at NASA's Ames Research Center in California next month.
Bold pledged to review the applications once the U.S. government reopens.
"Any of them applying and meeting the clearance requirements in place for foreign citizens will be accepted for participation in the Conference," he added.
Organizers of the meeting, the Scientific Organizing Committee of the Second Kepler Science Conference, said they learned about the law in late September while drafting the final agenda, and then they denied the registration of six Chinese researchers for the meeting.
"We find the consequences of this law deplorable and strongly object to banning our Chinese colleagues, or colleagues from any nation," the organizers said. "The policies that led to this exclusion have had a negative impact on open scientific inquiry. We feel very strongly that it is wrong to exclude scientists, on the basis of nationality, from a meeting that welcomes free and open exchange of scientific ideas."
The exclusion of Chinese researchers sparked a boycott by several prominent American researchers, including Debra Fischer, who leads a research group at Yale University, and Geoff Marcy, an astronomy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who is well-known for his pioneering work on exoplanets.
The law introduced by Wolf has drawn criticism from some U.S. analysts.
"I believe the current U.S. prohibitions on cooperation with China in the area of human spaceflight are counterproductive," said Gregory Kulacki, a senior analyst with the U.S.-based Union of Concerned Scientists' Global Security Program. "They serve no beneficial political, economic or strategic purpose and may, in fact, harm the strategic interests of the United States," he told Xinhua earlier this year.
Kulacki said he was hopeful that with the passage of time, the U.S. Congress "will adopt a more constructive set of policies that encourages greater contact and cooperation between space professional in China and the United States."
Quickie
Colonel
by Staff Writers
Washington (AFP) Oct 10, 2013
The US space agency Thursday vowed to reconsider the applications of Chinese scientists who were denied access to a NASA conference on security grounds, sparking a boycott by leading American astronomers.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden said the situation was "unfortunate" and pledged to take a fresh look at the applications once the US government reopens.
The government has been partially shut down since October 1 amid a US political crisis, sending home 97 percent of NASA staff without pay as well as hundreds of thousands of federal employees.
"It is unfortunate that potential Chinese participants were refused attendance at the upcoming Kepler Conference at the Ames Research Park," Bolden wrote in an email to Congressman Frank Wolf, seen by AFP.
"Mid-level managers at Ames, in performing the due diligence they believed appropriate following a period of significant concern and scrutiny from Congress about our foreign access to NASA facilities, meetings and websites, acted without consulting NASA HQ (headquarters)," he continued.
"Upon learning of this exclusion, I directed that we review the requests for attendance from scientists of Chinese origin and determine if we can recontact them immediately upon the reopening of the government to allow them to reapply."
Bolden said any scientists who meet "the clearance requirements in place for foreign citizens will be accepted for participation."
The conference is to be held November 4-8 at a NASA facility in northern California.
The applications of six Chinese scientists were denied due to what organizers said was a March 2013 order for a moratorium to visits to NASA facilities by citizens of several nations including China.
The basis for the ban was called into question on Tuesday by Wolf, who authored related legislation in 2011 that he said restricted space cooperation with the Chinese government and Chinese companies but not individuals.
The moratorium and other additional security measures were issued earlier this year by Bolden following a potential security breach at a NASA facility in Virginia by a Chinese citizen, and should have been lifted by now, Wolf said earlier this week.
Some leading US astronomers have vowed to boycott the conference next month on the basis of the denied applications.
One of them, Debra Fischer of Yale University, told AFP that one of her post-doctoral students was among those whose application was denied.
Beijing's foreign ministry described the application denials as discriminatory, and said academic meetings should remain free of politics.
AssassinsMace
Lieutenant General
Sorry Popeye I'm going to have to post this in reply since I've been spending a couple hours researching and writing this.
Sorry but I don't keep files on everything I read. Do you? You know how many times I come across someone who makes a charge without proof? I can name people in here who do that and never show me proof when I ask? The President has a pocket veto where he or she can veto a bill so it dies off from lack of attention without officially making it a part of the record. It's purely a political move. Am I saying this is the case here? No, but it shows there are tricks within the government to nullify things without directly making a record of it.
Yeah the charges were dropped because they had no case in the first place. Meaning they pushed it on a political agenda not because he was actually guilty. The Judge in the case was said to be an arch-conservative and he went to the extent of apologizing, which was said to be unheard of coming from him, to Wen Ho Lee for the poor case by the government. So what was the objective then if they knew they didn't have enough proof? Since it was about Chinese spies infiltrating the national labs, what else was the whole Wen Ho Lee scandal about? The Cox Report used Iris Chang's book Thread of the Silkworm spinning it to charge China had spies in important positions. The book wasn't about Tsien Hsue-Shen being a spy but they spun it that way to give credibility to what they were doing.
Wen Ho Lee said himself that he accepted the charge because he was old and tired being imprisoned and didn't want to go any further. It had nothing to do with admitting actual guilt. They didn't go to trial for one charge. It was a part of a plea deal. If Wen Ho Lee didn't accept the plea deal, the trial wasn't going to be only one charge. The reason why they were insistent for just one charge that others at the lab were guilty too but never charged was so they can say he was guilty and the government was right not wrong.
Go watch the documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? That's where I heard it from. Check this out on page 72:
I already know from experience and living in the liberal Mecca San Francisco/Bay Area that liberals don't care about the rights of Asians unless they have to. So don't believe in stereotypes just because the ACLU are a bunch of liberals they have to care about everyone's civil rights. There are conflicts between groups that are both suppose to be under the umbrella of protection of liberals. Yet the mainstream liberals don't act as mediator of conflict resolution. They pick a side. And from my experience when it regards Asians vs. whoever, Asians always get the short-end of the stick.
Judicial Watch is a conservative group. I don't remember who it was but it was an older gentleman who was a Republican in Congress that brought up Fong's Chinese connections. The accusation used against him wasn't any different from what others have done. The Democrats had nothing directly to do with Matt Fong's withdraw from the nomination so that's hogwash.
Sorry to tell you but nothing is neutral. Credible is relative. Where's the proof that the Democrats were behind killing Matt Fong's nomination? Barbara Boxer used the same info against Fong during the senate race. That information was out there when Bush nominated him for the position. The reason why Bush nor Fong did not fight it was because the Republicans were against it and brought it up in regards to the nomination. Charging the Democrats were the reason behind the scrutiny of Matt Fong's nomination to a Pentagon post shows your bias. It was the right wing that killed Matt Fong's nomination. The Democrats position was a given. Bush wouldn't had even bothered nominating him if he had known the Congressional Republicans' position.
Nothing I give you is going to convince you. You thought it was absurd that the ACLU didn't care about the rights of Chinese which is why they didn't get involved in the Vincent Chin case? I showed you a link supporting it. It was a clear cut violation of civil rights. Are you going to argue otherwise why the ACLU didn't get involved? Rights aren't privileges. That's why there's a violation when people try to take them away. If the ACLU didn't care enough about the civil rights of Vincent Chin, it's because they believed he didn't have rights to begin with. Even the murderers didn't give a "justifiable" excuse in the own eyes why they killed Vincent Chin. They killed him because they thought he was Japanese. Was Vincent Chin responsible for them losing their jobs? That's why there's a violation. Maybe because the murderers ended up with a punishment less serious than if they killed a deer illegally, it wasn't a civil rights violation because killing a deer isn't a civil rights crime.
You know what excuse they used to bring Tsien Hsue-Shen under the McCarthy Communist Hearings? Was he a member of the Communist Party? No. They charged him with being a communist because someone in the same class when he attended Cal Poly way back as a student, where he had no association with except for being in the same class course, ended up marrying a woman who was supposedly a member of the Communist Party. That was the far-fetched excuse used to go after him.
The laws that allowed internment of the Japanese still exists. There has been no repeal or law that prevents internment. What are internment camps for? It's not for imprisoning the guilty. THey have prisons for that. It's targeting entire group of people and concentrating them on suspicion without trial and conviction in the name of national security.
You're going to tell me it's beyond possibility that the US can act against an entire group of people based on suspicion and without trial? National security is always used as the excuse to commit such acts.
You speak of that's how the system works. Expecting only information that you find acceptable goes against how the system works. If everyone recognized when a wrong occurs, there would be no need for debates or trials. Why question Obama when he's the government and the government is the only credible source of information? Same argument can made against Republicans. Trust the government... don't trust the government.. who's right or a credible source under that contradiction.
Sorry but I don't keep files on everything I read. Do you? You know how many times I come across someone who makes a charge without proof? I can name people in here who do that and never show me proof when I ask? The President has a pocket veto where he or she can veto a bill so it dies off from lack of attention without officially making it a part of the record. It's purely a political move. Am I saying this is the case here? No, but it shows there are tricks within the government to nullify things without directly making a record of it.
Yeah the charges were dropped because they had no case in the first place. Meaning they pushed it on a political agenda not because he was actually guilty. The Judge in the case was said to be an arch-conservative and he went to the extent of apologizing, which was said to be unheard of coming from him, to Wen Ho Lee for the poor case by the government. So what was the objective then if they knew they didn't have enough proof? Since it was about Chinese spies infiltrating the national labs, what else was the whole Wen Ho Lee scandal about? The Cox Report used Iris Chang's book Thread of the Silkworm spinning it to charge China had spies in important positions. The book wasn't about Tsien Hsue-Shen being a spy but they spun it that way to give credibility to what they were doing.
Wen Ho Lee said himself that he accepted the charge because he was old and tired being imprisoned and didn't want to go any further. It had nothing to do with admitting actual guilt. They didn't go to trial for one charge. It was a part of a plea deal. If Wen Ho Lee didn't accept the plea deal, the trial wasn't going to be only one charge. The reason why they were insistent for just one charge that others at the lab were guilty too but never charged was so they can say he was guilty and the government was right not wrong.
Go watch the documentary Who Killed Vincent Chin? That's where I heard it from. Check this out on page 72:
I already know from experience and living in the liberal Mecca San Francisco/Bay Area that liberals don't care about the rights of Asians unless they have to. So don't believe in stereotypes just because the ACLU are a bunch of liberals they have to care about everyone's civil rights. There are conflicts between groups that are both suppose to be under the umbrella of protection of liberals. Yet the mainstream liberals don't act as mediator of conflict resolution. They pick a side. And from my experience when it regards Asians vs. whoever, Asians always get the short-end of the stick.
Judicial Watch is a conservative group. I don't remember who it was but it was an older gentleman who was a Republican in Congress that brought up Fong's Chinese connections. The accusation used against him wasn't any different from what others have done. The Democrats had nothing directly to do with Matt Fong's withdraw from the nomination so that's hogwash.
Sorry to tell you but nothing is neutral. Credible is relative. Where's the proof that the Democrats were behind killing Matt Fong's nomination? Barbara Boxer used the same info against Fong during the senate race. That information was out there when Bush nominated him for the position. The reason why Bush nor Fong did not fight it was because the Republicans were against it and brought it up in regards to the nomination. Charging the Democrats were the reason behind the scrutiny of Matt Fong's nomination to a Pentagon post shows your bias. It was the right wing that killed Matt Fong's nomination. The Democrats position was a given. Bush wouldn't had even bothered nominating him if he had known the Congressional Republicans' position.
Nothing I give you is going to convince you. You thought it was absurd that the ACLU didn't care about the rights of Chinese which is why they didn't get involved in the Vincent Chin case? I showed you a link supporting it. It was a clear cut violation of civil rights. Are you going to argue otherwise why the ACLU didn't get involved? Rights aren't privileges. That's why there's a violation when people try to take them away. If the ACLU didn't care enough about the civil rights of Vincent Chin, it's because they believed he didn't have rights to begin with. Even the murderers didn't give a "justifiable" excuse in the own eyes why they killed Vincent Chin. They killed him because they thought he was Japanese. Was Vincent Chin responsible for them losing their jobs? That's why there's a violation. Maybe because the murderers ended up with a punishment less serious than if they killed a deer illegally, it wasn't a civil rights violation because killing a deer isn't a civil rights crime.
You know what excuse they used to bring Tsien Hsue-Shen under the McCarthy Communist Hearings? Was he a member of the Communist Party? No. They charged him with being a communist because someone in the same class when he attended Cal Poly way back as a student, where he had no association with except for being in the same class course, ended up marrying a woman who was supposedly a member of the Communist Party. That was the far-fetched excuse used to go after him.
The laws that allowed internment of the Japanese still exists. There has been no repeal or law that prevents internment. What are internment camps for? It's not for imprisoning the guilty. THey have prisons for that. It's targeting entire group of people and concentrating them on suspicion without trial and conviction in the name of national security.
You're going to tell me it's beyond possibility that the US can act against an entire group of people based on suspicion and without trial? National security is always used as the excuse to commit such acts.
You speak of that's how the system works. Expecting only information that you find acceptable goes against how the system works. If everyone recognized when a wrong occurs, there would be no need for debates or trials. Why question Obama when he's the government and the government is the only credible source of information? Same argument can made against Republicans. Trust the government... don't trust the government.. who's right or a credible source under that contradiction.
Last edited:
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
Equation
Lieutenant General
Uh oh, this can't be good. I think it's more political jostling between Venezuelan President Maduro and US President Obama, remember a couple of weeks ago, both countries kicked out each others diplomats.
TerraN_EmpirE
Tyrant King
I suspect it may have been more saber rattling at Guyana then Obama. Venezuela is engaged in a number of territory disputes. Including with Columbia and Guyana
- Status