The collapse on Aug. 14 of the brand-new Tuojiiang bridge in Hunan province, China, is "A bloody lesson," the China Daily wrote in its lead commentary yesterday. At least 36 workers, who were just completing the bridge, are dead, and 22 more are missing.

Chinese President Hu Jintao yesterday called for "utmost rescue efforts," from Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, where he is attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit.

Hu called for an immediate, full investigation, and said that measures must be taken to ensure lessons are learned from the accident so that similiar accidents shall not happen again," China Daily reported. This bridge collapse follows one in June, which killed nine people.

"The nation was rocked by the news," China Daily stated.

"Although summer often bears witness to natural disasters, such as floods and heat waves, no one can blame Mother Nature for this latest bridge collapse. While we wait for the official investigation to shed light on the cause of the incident, it seems possible that human factors might have loomed large behind the sorry scene. Given the techniques and building materials we use today are more advanced and safer, it is inexcusable that a brand-new bridge should collapse on top of those who built it. The public deserves a full account of the cause of the accident, and as there is now a safety accountability system for officials, it is necessary to ascertain where the responsibility lies."

These infrastructure disasters follow the horrific brick-kiln slave labor scandal which sent shock-waves through the entire Chinese population. After one kidnapped boy escaped to his family, police began investigating the brick kilns, and freed at least 500 kidnapped children and poor peasant workers, who were forced to work as starving slaves in the brick kilns of Henan and Shanxi Provinces. Pictures of the freed slaves were shown constantly in the national media for weeks, and President Hu and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao expressed their horror and demand for justice. Some 35,000 police were sent out to rescue the enslaved workers.

This greed economy is causing a big reaction in the Chinese population.

The China Youth Daily, known for exposing exploitation of the population, and Sina.com found that there is a lot of discontent with China's big income gap. Some 57% of the 8,000 polled called China's new rich "extravagant", "greedy" and "corrupt".

A recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said that the richest 10% of Chinese families now own more than 40% of all private assets, while the poorest 10% share less than 2%, Xinhua reported Aug. 14.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y hfbF7Umm_k

Here is the video with me and Pierre Omidyar (and Thomas and Haney)

2002-2005 i make more than 700 high-quality posts at Nabuur.com

a rich Holland-based website with the declared mission to use the internet

to the benefit of villages in the third world. Tecalpulco Guerrero became

village number seven in this new innovative method to replace old fashioned

philanthropy with a new-philanthropy where volunteers would take up the slack

to help the disadvantaged and various marginalized people in the South

http://www.artcamp.com.mx/Nabuur /Workshop.htm

We hosted the LatinAmerican Village Representatives Workshop in Taxco

http://www.artcamp.com.mx/Nabuur / Here is nabuurs press release at the time

you can see how they presented the project this innovative social enterprise concept

"This momentous workshop promises great benefits to the diverse villages of Ibero-America..."

Well if you want to find out how the nabuur.com vision is doing these days, only read the blog....

http://www.nabuur.com/blog/ *** this is the official nabuur.com blog

Now regard these pages ... this effort was made by us, not by any nabuur internet volunteers.

http://www.artcamp.com.mx/aboutu s/ifat/construccion_de_capacidad es/Nabuur/index.php

HOW about the sincerity of Alma Areli and Luz Mariling and Maria Nieves? how did it work out?

well, needless to say, these girls were thrown in the trash without a thought, as always happens

with the slick Fair Trade merchants, and the ephemeral social enterprise initiatives on the Internet.

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz:

.:. Be impeccable with your word.

.:. Don't take anything personally.

.:. Don't make assumptions.

.:. Always do your best.

I think that I came of a reading race, which has always loved literature in a way, and in spite of varying fortunes and many changes.

My Literary Passions by William Dean Howells

Tectonics of Guerrero, Mexico

Vladimir Kostoglodov Kristine Larson

The boundary between the Cocos and North American plates is the locus of numerous subduction earthquakes driven by a convergence velocity of 5-7 cm/yr. Most of the plate boundary has experienced ruptures in historic time - with the exception of the Guerrero Coast. This project hopes to improve our understanding of the subduction process and its potential for rupture by conducting a series of geodetic measurements along the Guerrero Coast. We will will combine GPS and levelling to provide optimal information on both vertical and horizontal crustal deformation. The geodetic data, along with seismic data, will be used to model the Guerrero dislocation and its defining characteristics.

http://spot.colorado.edu/~kristi ne/caya.html

Two National Institutes of Health neuroscientists were amazed, according to a front page piece in the May 28 Washington Post, to find that doing altruistic acts makes people feel good.

The neuroscientists might have decided to devote their efforts to a more pressing problem had they just read that early American Cotton Mather's work, {Doing Good in the World}.

In it he wrote, "It is an Invaluable Honour To Do Good; It is an Incomparable Pleasure."

The Common Good Is the Object of Economics

May 28 -- Two days after the leader of the General Confederation of Italian Industry (Confindustria) had launched an ideological crusade in favor of ``free market,'' Pope Benedict XVI reminded the Young Entrepreneurs of Confindustria that the common good, and not profit, is the purpose of economic enterprise.

"It is indispensable that the ultimate reference of any economic intervention is the Common Good and the satisfaction of the legitimate aspirations of the human being. In other words, human life and its values must always be the principle and the aim of economy," the Pope said on May 26, addressing Confindustria's Young Entrepreneurs led by Matteo Colaninno. "Even at the moment of deep crisis," the Pope added, the criterion governing the entrepreneur's choices cannot be the mere search for a larger profit. Quoting from the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, the Pope called labor "the most precious wealth of the company.... It is necessary that labor become again the framework where man can accomplish his potentialities, implementing personal capacities and ingenuity, and it depends largely on you, entrepreneurs, to create the most favorable conditions to make that happen."

In particular, young people must be given well-paid jobs, the Pope recommended: "In order to build the future with hope, young people must be able to rely on a reliable source of income for themselves and their loved ones."

Finally, the Pope counterposed a critical assessment of globalization, to the fanatic apology proffered by Confindustria's leader Luca Cordero di Montezemolo.

The Pope said of globalization, that "if on the one hand it holds out hopes for a more widespread participation in development and distribution of welfare thanks to the redistribution of production on a world scale," on the other "it also presents various risks associated with new aspects of commercial and financial relations, which tend towards an increase in the gap between the economic wealth of the few and the growing poverty of the many. It is vital, as my venerated predecessor John Paul II so incisively said, 'to ensure a globalization in solidarity, a globalization without marginalization.'"

"...I at least had no illusions; but it was I too, who a moment ago had been so sure of the power of words, and now was afraid to speak; in the same way one dares not move for fear of losing a slippery hold. It is when we try to grapple with another's intimate need that we perceive how incomprehensible, wavering, and misty are the beings that share with us the sight of the stars and the warmth of the sun."

Joseph Conrad

Lord Jim

This is an authentic joke going around Russia in the post-Stalin Soviet era.

There is this guy who has a job keeping a watch out with a big State telescope

for the advent of the classless society. Every day he kisses his wife and goes to work.

Eventually, this guy was approached by one of Truman's spies who offered

him a job at five times the salary to sit on the Statue of Liberty

and keep a sharp watch out for the next capitalist financial crisis.

The guy replied:

"I have a family. I just cant afford to give up

a permanent job, for a temporary job. Sorry"