Posts by fulltimestudent

29

China's New export drive - trains and rail systems

by fulltimestudent in

four or five times a week i travel on sydney's extensive suburban rail network.

these days, most services use a train like this,.

which are modern, double-decked, comfortable carriages.. it's not generally known that most of these train-sets (i.e.

fulltimestudent

Chinese premier Li Keqiang also recently visited the UK. Here's how DW, the German journal quoted above, saw his visit.

Sieren's China: China saves the Queen

China is more important for Britain's future than the British like to admit, says DW columnist Frank Sieren.

What can Premier Li offer the UK? It's no secret that western economies are cash-strapped. Years of supporting their hegemon in various wars have sapped western financial strength. The DW columnist continued ...

China's Prime Minister Li Keqiang traveled to Britain last week for the first time since taking office - right on schedule for the tenth anniversary of the China-UK comprehensive strategic partnership.

His timing could hardly have been better: China definately stands to benefit from Britain's adverse attitude toward the EU. All China has to do is what it does best anyway, namely to invest and finance infrastructure projects.

Chinese express trains for Great Britain

One of those projects is a high-speed railway line scheduled to connect London and the north of the country beginning 2026. The 53 billion euro ($72 billion) project is a highlight for Britain, where railroads were invented in 1825. In fact, Britain was a global leader in the technology until Germans and Americans caught on and stole the technology. In the 20th century, Germany, France and Japan took over world leadership of the technology, and now, they are being challenged by China.

The Chinese don't necessarily build better trains. They entered the game mainly because they are in a position to finance such a project. Cameron can no longer count on the City of London, and the British state hasn't been able to finance such projects for quite some time on its own. The UK is in debt with 89 percent of the GDP, and infrastructure has steadily fallen into a state of decay. And Cameron doesn't want to ask the Europeans for money.

So, to a certain extent, China is what the rich uncle from America used to be, who would help out in times of need. Finance Minister George Osborne, who has been asking himself for quite some time now how the impoverished country is able to finance its anti-European escapades if push comes to shove, heaved a sigh of relief once Li had signed the contracts to the tune of about 22 billion euros. In any case, China pledged that the two countries' volume of trade will rise from currently 62 billion euros to 75 billion euros next year - also for Britain's benefit.

Reference: http://www.dw.de/sierens-china-china-saves-the-queen/a-17733514

29

China's New export drive - trains and rail systems

by fulltimestudent in

four or five times a week i travel on sydney's extensive suburban rail network.

these days, most services use a train like this,.

which are modern, double-decked, comfortable carriages.. it's not generally known that most of these train-sets (i.e.

fulltimestudent

For those people who think that China only makes cheap sh*t*, as a recent poster claimed, China's move up the chain of world technology is going to bring many changes.

This past week, Russia (currently being shunned by the west) accepted a Chinese bit to finance and build a near 800 km long fast train service from Moscow to Kazan (on the River Volga)

High-speed rail deal part of agreements worth $10 billion

Updated: 2014-10-14 02:40

By ZHAO YINAN and FU JING in Moscow and ZHAO LEI in Beijing(China Daily)

Premier Li Keqiang talks to the media at a joint news conference with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev in Moscow on Monday. [Rao Aimin / Xinhua]

China will take a decisive stake in the next stage of Russia's transportation development, with Chinese companies building the country's first high-speed rail line. The agreement formed part of joint deals worth $10 billion being signed on Monday.

Chinese firms and their Russian partners will hold talks on design, financing, supplying facilities and construction of a 770-km high-speed line connecting Moscow and Kazan, an important metropolis on the Volga River.

This was one of 39 agreements being signed after Premier Li Keqiang and Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev met for the 19th Regular Prime Ministers' Meetings.

Under the Russian plan, the line will form the initial section of a railway stretching to Beijing, with completion scheduled for 2018 in time for the World Cup soccer finals in Russia. Kazan is one of the host cities.

Trains on the line will reach speeds of up to 400 km/h, shortening the traveling time between the two cities from 13 hours to three and a half, according to the Moscow Times newspaper.

Reference: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2014-10/14/content_18732945.htm

* The poster who made that comment completely misunderstands how the world works. The poster seemed to have the impression that China sells things in the USA (I think that was the poster's home). The reality is (in that case) that American bulk buyers go to China to buy things. They are presented as they talk to Chinese factories, with a huge range of products of varying qualities and price ranges. The American buyers make a choice of what they think they can sell in America in their outlets. The choice of the quality of a product is made (usually) by an American buyer, not a Chinese seller.

29

China's New export drive - trains and rail systems

by fulltimestudent in

four or five times a week i travel on sydney's extensive suburban rail network.

these days, most services use a train like this,.

which are modern, double-decked, comfortable carriages.. it's not generally known that most of these train-sets (i.e.

fulltimestudent

The DW journal article quoted above goes onto discuss the issue of China developing its own technologies after working in joint ventures, but seems to conclude that in the end the result will be better and cheaper technologies driven by competition, and the ultimate result will be increased demand around the world for high speed train services, and subway systems.

29

China's New export drive - trains and rail systems

by fulltimestudent in

four or five times a week i travel on sydney's extensive suburban rail network.

these days, most services use a train like this,.

which are modern, double-decked, comfortable carriages.. it's not generally known that most of these train-sets (i.e.

fulltimestudent

The chances are that in the future more and more people in the world will be travelling on Chinese built trains.

Thats the prediction of this article in a German trade journal: (Reference: http://www.dw.de/made-in-china-high-speed-trains-going-global/a-17755167 )

'Made in China' high-speed trains going global

Chinese high-speed train makers are increasingly selling their products to Western countries. Experts say the established European firms in the sector urgently need to develop strategies to counter the competition.

Previously known as a manufacturing hub for low-technology and labor-intensive products, China has been increasingly moving up the technology ladder to become an exporter of hi-tech goods.

No other sector symbolizes this shift better than the train market. When China decided over a decade ago to build a high-speed rail network connecting the length and breadth of the vast nation, the country had no domestic production base that could handle such a mammoth project. It had to import trains from foreign companies such as the German conglomerate Siemens, the Japanese corporation Kawasaki and the French firm Alstom.

Fast forward to today and Chinese rail companies have mastered the technology to build the trains and are now actively seeking markets overseas to sell their trains, thus competing with the established players in this segment.

For instance, it is reported that China South Locomotive & Rolling Stock Corporation (CSR), the Asian nation's largest train manufacturer, recently signed a contract with Macedonia's national railway company to sell six bullet trains. The agreement follows deals made by China with several other Eastern European countries such as Romania and Hungary to build high-speed rail lines.

Beijing is also promoting its high speed rail infrastructure and technology in other regions such as Asia and Africa.

29

China's New export drive - trains and rail systems

by fulltimestudent in

four or five times a week i travel on sydney's extensive suburban rail network.

these days, most services use a train like this,.

which are modern, double-decked, comfortable carriages.. it's not generally known that most of these train-sets (i.e.

fulltimestudent

Four or five times a week I travel on Sydney's extensive suburban rail network. These days, most services use a train like this,

which are modern, double-decked, comfortable carriages.

It's not generally known that most of these train-sets (i.e. the carriages) were not manufactured in Australia, but were made as described in this Wikipedia entry,

" The trains are manufactured in China by the Changchun Railway Vehicles , with internal fitting-out performed by Downer Rail at Cardiff Locomotive Workshops . The first Waratah train entered service on 1 July 2011 with 78 sets completed in June 2014." Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sydney_Trains_fleet

So who is Changchun Railway Vehicles, and who are their customers? Another Wikipedia link notes:

Changchun Railway Vehicles Company Ltd. (长春轨道客车) is a Chinese rolling stock manufacturer under China CNR Corporation . While the CRV emerged in 2002, the company's roots date back to the establishment of the Changchun Car Company in 1954.Link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Changchun_Railway_Vehicles

And here's a list of clients, as we see. this factory has quite an impressive list of rail clients and already people around the world are making their daily journeys on Chinese built trains.
Beijing Subway (Line 1, Line 2, Line 5, Line 6, Line 9, Line 10, Line 13, Line 14, Line 15, Yizhuang Line, and Airport Express)
Tianjin Metro (Line 1, Line 9)
Shanghai Metro (Line 6, Line 8)
Guangfo Metro (Line 1)
Shenzhen Metro (Shekou Line, Longgang Line)
Shenyang Metro (Line 1, Shenyang Metro)
Harbin Metro
Xi'an Metro (Line 2)
Chongqing Metro
Changchun Light Rail Transit
Tehran Metro
Hong Kong MTR (Island Line, Kwun Tong Line, Tsuen Wan Line and Tseung Kwan O Line)
Rio de Janeiro Metro (Line 1A)
Supervia (All lines)
Pyongyang Metro
Line A (Buenos Aires Metro))(Buenos Aires, Argentina)
BTS Skytrain (CNR Changchun Bombardier Movia)
Mecca Metro
CityRail A set/Waratah Trains (Sydney, Australia)
KiwiRail 50 Passenger Car Bogies (New Zealand)
Downtown Line (CNR Changchun Bombardier MOVIA C951)(Owner:Land Transport Authority) (Operator: SBS Transit DTL Pte Ltd)(Singapore)
Wuhan Metro (Line 1)

96

This weeks #2 & #3 talk on homosexuality

by granada35 in

jw
friends

after a one year sucessful fade and no longer associated with any congreation, i was visiting my sister this week (who goes to the meeting to please her husband for now; i am slowly planting seeds though) and they decided to year this weeks midweek meeting via the telephone.

since i was a guest in her house, i sat with them in the living room to hear the meeting.

to my surprise (especially growing up as a gay jw with still alot of anger in my heart over how i was treated), the talks 2 and 3 where on, of course, homosexualiy.

fulltimestudent

Island Man: Fulltimestudent, I understand that homosexuals are as attracted to the same sex as I am attracted to the opposite sex. I don't have a problem understanding that. I also understand that homosexuals should not be judged or denied certain privileges or discriminated against on the basis of their sexual orientation.

Cool!

Do I need to understand more than these things?

Nope! Understand what you want to understand. Doesnt matter to me.

If so, what else do I need to understand and why?

If you share opinions, and enter into conversations you may be presented with disssenting ideas. What I attempted to do in this conversation was to present some reasons why we may conflate something like 'disgust' with other people's lives.

I wanted to move the conversation onto why we may feel like that, rather than just whether something should arouse disgust.

One view of the word culture, is that it encompasses all human behavior that is NOT instinctive (i.e. any behaviour that does not have a biological root.) For example, the need to eat is founded in our body, but what we eat and how we prepare it, can be defined as 'culture.' What 'others' eat and how they prepare may arouse a feeling of disgust when we learn of it. Watching a film on Thai people eating cockroaches, at first aroused in me a feeling of disgust. I had to reason with myself to understand that the feeling was rooted in culture and not biology.

So by all means, do nothing, change nothing, from your current position, if that's what you wish. (After all, that's likely how we behaved as Jws, or any other brand of Christianity). Or, you could re-examine your world and embark on a wonderful intellectual world of adventurous understanding.

I am not suggesting anyone has to do something or eat something they are not doin/eating at present, merely suggesting a different approach to the universe.

96

This weeks #2 & #3 talk on homosexuality

by granada35 in

jw
friends

after a one year sucessful fade and no longer associated with any congreation, i was visiting my sister this week (who goes to the meeting to please her husband for now; i am slowly planting seeds though) and they decided to year this weeks midweek meeting via the telephone.

since i was a guest in her house, i sat with them in the living room to hear the meeting.

to my surprise (especially growing up as a gay jw with still alot of anger in my heart over how i was treated), the talks 2 and 3 where on, of course, homosexualiy.

fulltimestudent

A very popular 2007 Korean movie, called, "The Frozen Flower" had a very interesting storyline. It involved a Korean King (a real figure in Korean history) was same sex attracted. In the film, his key General is also his male lover. in this trailer of the movie, you'll see (at about 25 seconds) a brief clip from a much longer segment of the movie, of the King and his General making love:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qUlfJXWenIM

It's quite physically violent at times, but the theme involves the jealousies that are aroused when the King comes under political pressure, to have an heir to ensure political continuity. He tries the make the Queen pregnant but fails. So he thinks up a scheme in which the General can make the Queen pregnant. I'll leave it to your imaginations to work out the consequences.

My point is that although there is not yet a general acceptance for same sex attracted people in Korea, the movie was quite popular ( I saw it at a Korean film festival sponsored by the Korean government) and talking to Koreans, there were no feelings of disgust at the homosexual scenes.

But check out comment by western people and its a different story. If you need to read some try the comments on this website about the movie:

http://jolecole.blogspot.com.au/2012/08/movie-rant-frozen-flower-explores.html

There must be a reason for that, what do you think accounts for objectivity on one hand and disgust on the other?

96

This weeks #2 & #3 talk on homosexuality

by granada35 in

jw
friends

after a one year sucessful fade and no longer associated with any congreation, i was visiting my sister this week (who goes to the meeting to please her husband for now; i am slowly planting seeds though) and they decided to year this weeks midweek meeting via the telephone.

since i was a guest in her house, i sat with them in the living room to hear the meeting.

to my surprise (especially growing up as a gay jw with still alot of anger in my heart over how i was treated), the talks 2 and 3 where on, of course, homosexualiy.

fulltimestudent

Dear Island man,

Of course, you're right - so much of what we do is subjective, but we could make an effort to understand the viewpoints of other sexualities, couldn't we? Not all human societies have adopted you're attitude, which, surely, reinforces your comment on subjectivity. But, I want to make the point that understanding someone else's viewpoint does not mean that you have to adopt the practises that you've come to understand.

Our Christian backgrounds make us see the world in black and white, which is a quite deficient way to see the world of humanity.

A few days ago I helped an acquaintance, who had to have a hernia operation. He's single, lives alone, (25% of Australians live alone these days) and had no-one to give him some support to get to the hospital and accompany him home. Prior to the day of the operation, he wanted to know something about the operation, so I looked up stuff for him on the internet, and found this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VGVlf6LlQ3s the interesting thing was he could hardly watch it, finding a view of anyone's insides "disgusting" - which is just the word you've used.

I find that puzzling, that this person could feel his own body was disgusting surprises me.

Anyway, I'll prepare a second post on this theme, that will compare western and Asian outlooks on the matter.

96

This weeks #2 & #3 talk on homosexuality

by granada35 in

jw
friends

after a one year sucessful fade and no longer associated with any congreation, i was visiting my sister this week (who goes to the meeting to please her husband for now; i am slowly planting seeds though) and they decided to year this weeks midweek meeting via the telephone.

since i was a guest in her house, i sat with them in the living room to hear the meeting.

to my surprise (especially growing up as a gay jw with still alot of anger in my heart over how i was treated), the talks 2 and 3 where on, of course, homosexualiy.

fulltimestudent

Island man:

Personally, the thought of two men getting it on, or trying to imagine myself getting it on with another man, repulses me. ...

This is how I feel about homosexuality. I see homosexuals as persons having a sexual preference that I do not share and even find disgusting to contemplate, I just see them as having a bizzare sexual taste - from my heterosexual perspective.

Island man, there's at least one flaw in your persepective.

All the practises involved in homosexual practise, are mirror images of heterosexual sexual practise. There are only limited things that humans (or animals) can do to each for sexual experience.

Male 2 female practise	Male 2 Male Practise
Oral sex	the same
Anal sex	the same
Vaginal sex	Impossible for males, but possible for females

96

This weeks #2 & #3 talk on homosexuality

by granada35 in

jw
friends

after a one year sucessful fade and no longer associated with any congreation, i was visiting my sister this week (who goes to the meeting to please her husband for now; i am slowly planting seeds though) and they decided to year this weeks midweek meeting via the telephone.

since i was a guest in her house, i sat with them in the living room to hear the meeting.

to my surprise (especially growing up as a gay jw with still alot of anger in my heart over how i was treated), the talks 2 and 3 where on, of course, homosexualiy.

fulltimestudent

granada35:

I forgot to mention in my openning comment regarding hearing this ex-elder giving the #3 talk this week on homosexuality...towards the end of his talk, he not only raised his voice (almost yelling) to display his disgust towards homosexual people but was actually shaking with anger....and then the school overseer got up on stage and told the congreation that this brother did an "excellent job in delivering this talk!!!!"

Separation of Powers, has it right when he says:

I have been in congregations where the zealot against drinking was a drunk, the zealot against pornography was an Internet freak, and the zealot against all things "gay" was a closet homosexual.

The anger shown by the speaker, is as much directed at himself, as at same sex attracted people. That speaker (likely) cannot get rid of his attraction, but despises himself for having an attraction to men.

It's sad isn't it? What a terrible way to have to live!

Even worse, if he's married, he's unlikely to have a good sexual relationship with his wife, and thus denies her the fulfillment of her sexuality.

What a terrible thing Christianity has done to the world.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

For anyone reading this, who has same sex attraction and is experiencing self-hate to the dangerous extent shown by the man giving the talk in granada35's experience, please not that help is available.

A good starting point for you, could be this website: http://www.rainbow-project.org/mh/internalised-homophobia