DISCUSSION
GROUP
Fri
10
May
2013
Dhaka building collapse: Woman pulled alive from rubble
10 May 2013 Last updated at 10:35 ET
A woman has been pulled alive from the ruins of an eight-storey
building that collapsed in a suburb of Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka, 17 days ago.
Rescuers said the woman, named Reshma, was found in the remains of the second floor of the Rana Plaza after they heard her crying: "Please save me."
She has been taken to hospital, but is not thought to have serious injuries.
More than 1,000 are now confirmed to have died, most of them women working in clothes factories.
Tue
07
May
2013
Invitation to Group Conversation
Hi to each of you. I have an idea I want to share and to find out how many of you are interested in it.
I'm thinking of using a YY channel for oral conversations. The framework that I envision is just an informal “get together” talking about some subject.: There will be only conversation. This means we do not have to read any articles or book – we just talk about what we think or know from our experiences. The subject will vary from time to time.
The first topic for the Conversation Group I have in mind is culture. People talking informally about their culture, and asking questions about other peoples culture. I'm thinking of having 5 sessions:
1. A planning meeting – a discussion of what parts of our cultures we want to talk about;
2. Four weekly meetings each discussing some topic which we decided upon in the first meeting.
I'm wondering if 8 PM Saturday, May 11, 2013, Beijing time is a time that fits into the schedules of each of the readers of this invitation.
I think we need people who are pretty fluent in English, who like to discuss topics that require some thought and interest on their part, and who are curious about the world.
I have sent this note to the following people (most of them in the Learning Paradise QQ Chat group).
Tue
07
May
2013
Conversation: Culture in various nations
Hi to each of you. I have an idea I want to share and to find out how many of you are interested in it.
I'm thinking of using a YY channel for oral conversations. The framework that I envision is just an informal “get together” talking about some subject.: There will be only conversation. This means we do not have to read any articles or book – we just talk about what we think or know from our experiences. The subject will vary from time to time.
The first topic for the Conversation Group I have in mind is culture. People talking informally about their culture, and asking questions about other peoples culture. I'm thinking of having 5 sessions:
1. A planning meeting – a discussion of what parts of our cultures we want to talk about;
2. Four weekly meetings each discussing some topic which we decided upon in the first meeting.
I'm wondering if 8 PM Saturday, May 10, 2013, Beijing time is a time that fits into the schedules of each of the readers of this invitation.
I think we need people who are pretty fluent in English, who like to discuss topics that require some thought and interest on their part, and who are curious about the world.
I have sent this note to the following people (most of them in the Learning Paradise QQ Chat group).
Mon
06
May
2013
Ex-Italian PM Giulio Andreotti dies
Ex-Italian PM Giulio Andreotti dies
Giulio Andreotti, one of the most prominent political figures of post-war Italy, dies aged 94, state TV says.
Mr Andreotti was Italian prime minister seven times between 1972 and 1992. He led the Christian Democrat party, which dominated Italian politics for decades.
He was dogged in later years by allegations of corruption and Mafia links.
He died at home in Rome. He was reported to have suffered heart and respiratory problems in recent years.
Thu
31
May
2012
Ancient Roman Shipwrecks: Greece Says Mediterranean's Deepest Rome-Era Wrecks Found
From AOL First Posted: 05/29/12 09:54 AM ET 05/30/12 01:24 PM ET
ATHENS, Greece -- Two Roman-era shipwrecks have been found in deep water off a western Greek island, challenging the conventional theory that ancient shipmasters stuck to coastal routes rather than risking the open sea, an official said Tuesday.
Thu
31
May
2012
Hedging their bets
May 26th 2012 BEIJING
Moving the family abroad
Hedging their bets
Officials, looking for an exit strategy,
send family and cash overseas
THE phrase “naked official”, or luo guan, was coined in 2008 by a bureaucrat and blogger in Anhui province, Zhou Peng’an, to describe officials who have moved their family abroad, often taking assets with them. Once there, they are beyond the clutches of the Communist Party in case anything, such as a corruption investigation, should befall the official, who is left back at home alone (hence “naked”). Mr Zhou says the issue has created a crisis of trust within the party, as officials lecture subordinates on patriotism and incorruptibility, but send their own families abroad.
Mon
28
May
2012
Guide to Maths in various Cultures and Math Topics
History Topics Index
(Source Material)
The links below will take you to individual articles or to index pages for articles on these topics.
Mathematics in various cultures |
Mathematical topics |
|
Other topics |
|
Mon
28
May
2012
Mayan Mathematics
From www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.ukl
Hernán Cortés, excited by stories of the lands which Columbus had recently discovered, sailed from Spain in 1505 landing in Hispaniola which is now Santo Domingo. After farming there for some years he sailed with Velázquez to conquer Cuba in 1511. He was twice elected major of Santiago then, on 18 February 1519, he sailed for the coast of Yucatán with a force of 11 ships, 508 soldiers, 100 sailors, and 16 horses. He landed at Tabasco on the northern coast of the Yucatán peninsular. He met with little resistance from the local population and they presented him with presents including twenty girls. He married Malinche, one of these girls.
Mon
28
May
2012
Maya History Suggests Trade Patterns Played Key Role In Collapse
The Huffington Post
Posted: 05/27/2012 12:19 pm Updated: 05/27/2012 12:36 pm
Maya history--and the civilization's "collapse"--continue to occupy the minds of archeologists. Some research points to a series of droughts as playing an important role in the
Maya demise. Other researchers propose the ancient Maya were less resilient to fight for survival due to religious beliefs.
Mon
28
May
2012
Quebec's New Draconian Anti-strike and Anti-Asssembly Law
The following is from the National Lawyer's Guild - the Michigan Chapter. It is a letter from an organization in Quebec, Canada.
Sisters, brothers,
We write you during a dark time for democratic, human and
associative rights in Quebec with the following appeal for your help
and solidarity. As you have no doubt heard, the government recently
enacted legislation that amounts to the single biggest attack on the
right to organize and freedom of expression in North America since the
McCarthy period and the biggest attack on civil and democratic rights
since the enactment of the War Measures Act in 1970. Arguably, this
recent law will unduly criminalize more law-abiding citizens than even
McCarthy's hearings and the War Measures Act ever could.
Sat
26
May
2012
Evidence of oil spill 2 years ago in birds
Published: May 17, 2012 at 12:29 PM
SAINT PAUL, Minn., May 17 (UPI) -- Researchers say they have found traces of pollutants from the BP oil rig disaster in the Gulf of Mexico
two years ago in the eggs of Minnesota birds.
Sat
26
May
2012
Oceans started warming 135 years ago, study suggests
The world's oceans have been warming for more than 100 years, twice as long as previously believ ed, new research suggests.
The findings could help scientists better understand the Earth's record of sea-level rise, which is partly due to the expansion of water that happens as it heats up, researchers
added.
Sat
26
May
2012
Is Justice Ginsburg Risking the Future of the Supreme Court?
24 May 12
little more than a year ago, Harvard Law School Prof. Randall Kennedy sounded the alarm.
“Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer should soon retire,” Kennedy wrote in the pages ofThe New Republic. “That would be the responsible thing for them to do.”
If they didn’t, Kennedy warned, and “if Obama loses, they will have contributed to a disaster.”
Sat
26
May
2012
Biden shares tales of loss with families, friends of military casualties
WASHINGTON POST
By ,
Fri
25
May
2012
Carbon Dating: The History of life on Earth from The Huffington Post
Fri
25
May
2012
Harry Truman
From delanceyplace.com 5/25/12 - fraud, bloodshed, and votes
Excerpt from Two Americans: Truman, Eisenhower, and a Dangerous World
by William Lee Miller by Knopf Hardcover
Release Date: 2012-04-10
In today's excerpt - the long, hard road to democracy. Decades ago, and for most of its history, political corruption was endemic in America. And not just in Boss Tweed's old
New York and the venal corridors of Tammany Hall, but also the towns of America's heartland. And although Harry Truman was as decent and fair as any American president, he got his start in the
rampant fraud and bloodshed of Tom Pendergrast's Kansas City political machine:
Fri
25
May
2012
Egos and Immortality
The NEW YORK TIMES
Egos and Immorality
By OP-ED COLUMNIST: PAUL KRUGMAN
In the wake of a devastating financial crisis, President Obama has enacted some modest and obviously needed regulation; he has proposed closing a few
outrageous tax loopholes; and he has suggested that Mitt Romney’s history of buying and selling companies, often firing workers and gutting their pensions along the way, doesn’t make him the
right man to run America’s economy.
Sun
20
May
2012
History of the English Language
|
From English Club History of the English Language
A short history of the origins and development of English
The history of the English language really started with the arrival of three Germanic tribes who invaded Britain during the 5th century AD. These tribes, the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes, crossed the North Sea from what today is Denmark and northern Germany. At that time the inhabitants of Britain spoke a Celtic language. But most of the Celtic speakers were pushed west and north by the invaders - mainly into what is now Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Angles came from Englaland and their language was called Englisc - from which the words England and English are derived. |
Sun
20
May
2012
A Little Detroit History - Old-Line Retailers
Arbor Drugs
Arbor Drugs opened its doors in Troy in 1974, when founder Eugene Applebaum combined several drug stores under the name. At the time, he owned a handful of pharmacies, including one in Ann
Arbor. Because the Ann Arbor store was the best of the bunch, he decided to use the second half of the city’s name for his business.
Atlas Beverage Company
Atlas Beverage Company for more than 60 years, Atlas Beverage Company produced carbonated beverages with names like Brownie Root Beer, Bulldog Ginger Beer, Cheer-Up, V-Mix, and Golden & Pale Dry Ginger Ale. A Polish immigrant in Hamtramck founded the company in 1929, and it closed in 1996.
Fri
18
May
2012
The NDAA's Coup d'Etat Foiled
ALSO SEE A Victory For All of Us in Truth Out
18 May 12
On Wednesday 16 May, at about 4pm, the republic of the United States of America was drawn back – at least for now – from a precipice that would have plunged our country into moral darkness. One brave and principled newly-appointed judge ruled against a law that would have brought the legal powers of the authorities of Guantánamo home to our own courthouses, streets and backyards.
US district judge Katherine Forrest, in New York City's eastern district, found that section 1021 – the key section of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) – which had been rushed into law amid secrecy and in haste on New Year's Eve 2011, bestowing on any president the power to detain US citizens indefinitely, without charge or trial, "facially unconstitutional". Forrest concluded that the law does indeed have, as the journalists and peaceful activists who brought the lawsuit against the president and Leon Panetta have argued, a "chilling impact on first amendment rights". Her ruling enjoins that section of the NDAA from becoming law.
Thu
17
May
2012
Is the filibuster unconstitutional?
Washington Post
Posted by Ezra Klein at 10:02 AM ET, 05/15/2012
According to Best Lawyers — “the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession” — Emmet Bondurant “is the go-to lawyer when a business person just can’t afford to lose a lawsuit.” He was its 2010 Lawyer of the Year for Antitrust and Bet-the-Company Litigation. But now, he’s bitten off something even bigger: bet-the-country litigation.
Bondurant thinks the filibuster is unconstitutional. And, alongside Common Cause, where he serves on the board of directors, he’s suing to have the Supreme Court abolish it.
Thu
17
May
2012
Judge Rules NDAA Unconstitutional
17 May 12
A judge on Wednesday struck down a portion of a law giving the government wide powers to regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists, saying it left journalists, scholars and political activists facing the prospect of indefinite detention for exercising First Amendment rights. U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest in Manhattan said in a written ruling that a single page of the law has a "chilling impact on First Amendment rights."
She cited testimony by journalists that they feared their association with certain individuals overseas could result in their arrest because a provision of the law subjects to indefinite detention anyone who "substantially" or "directly" provides "support" to forces such as al-Qaida or the Taliban. She said the wording was too vague and encouraged Congress to change it.
Thu
17
May
2012
How To Save Or Destroy The Earth
Is there a technological solution to global warming?
May 14, 2012
presentation of The New Yorker's Article:
Thu
17
May
2012
Noam Chomsky: Occupy Has Created Solidarity in the US
Noam Chomsky: Occupy Has Created Solidarity in the US
15 May 12
Quoted from Reader Supported News
Noam Chomsky says the Occupy movement has helped rebuild class solidarity and communities of mutual support on a level unseen since the time of the Great Depression. "The Occupy movement spontaneously created something that doesn't really exist in the country: communities of mutual support, cooperation, open spaces for discussion ... just people doing things and helping each other," Chomsky says. "That's very much missing. There is a massive propaganda - it's been going on for a century, but picking up enormously - that you really shouldn't care about anyone else, you should just care about yourself. ... To rebuild [class solidarity], even if it's in small pieces of the society, can become very important, can change the conception of how a society ought to function." Chomsky also gives his assessment of President Obama, whom he says has attacked civil liberties in a way that has "gone beyond [George W.] Bush."
Wed
16
May
2012
Underwater World: Strange Beauties of the Sea
Photography by David Hall | Captions by Della Watson
The sea keeps its secrets well. While humans have explored, documented, and colonized nearly every stitch of land on the planet, the vast expanse of the ocean remains mysterious. Rarely photographed underwater creatures can appear alien—their cloudlike, luminous bodies more heavenly than earthly.
The cold, dark waters of the Pacific Northwest teem with these otherworldly animals. Renowned photographer David Hall's bookBeneath Cold Seas: The Underwater Wilderness of the Pacific Northwest (University of Washington Press, 2011) documents this delicate ecosystem, which is home to exotic specimens like the red-gilled nudibranch (above), a type of shell-less snail.
The inhabitants of this barely charted world may look like the stuff of science fiction, yet our lives are intertwined. Whether or not we're mindful of it, we share this planet with the nudibranch, the sea anemone, and the octopus. The strange and beautiful creatures in this photo gallery inhabit a swath of the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of British Columbia, where they face threats like overfishing, pollution, and oil tanker traffic. Our actions could forever alter the lives of these marine animals—it's time to meet our neighbors.
Mon
07
May
2012
India's Loss of Languages
India's tribal people fast becoming lost for words
INDIA LOSING LANGUAGES FASTER THAN ANYWHERE ELSE ON EARTH
Of the 7000 languages now spoken across the world, only about 600 are expected to survive until the end of the century. Totopara in India is fighting to keep it's language alive.
Read more:
Sun
18
Mar
2012
Decision Making
May 2010
Delanceyplace is a brief daily email with an excerpt or quote we view as interesting or noteworthy, offered with commentary to provide context. There is no theme, except that most excerpts will come from a non-fiction work, mainly works of history, and we hope will have a more universal relevance than simply the subject of the book from which they came
In today's encore excerpt - Jonah Lehrer proposes that morality is a form of decision-making, and is based on emotions, not logic:
Fri
20
May
2011
delanceyplace.com 5/18/11 - chess grandmasters have average intelligence
In today's excerpt - chess grandmasters have average cognitive skills and average memories for matters outside of chess, and only show their extraordinary skills within the discipline of chess. This suggests that expertise in chess (and most other areas) has less to do with analytical skills - the ability to project and weigh the relative merits of hundreds of options - and more to do with long-term immersion and pattern recognition - having experienced and "stored" thousands of game situations and thus having the ability to pluck an optimal answer from among those stored memories. It also suggests that expertise may be less a result of analytical prowess and more a result of passion, love or obsession for a given subject area - enough passion to have spent the hours necessary to accumulate a robust set of experiences and memories in that area:
Fri
13
Nov
2015
Are Languages Products of their Environment?
DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article:
Languages Are Products of Their Environments
The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different
environments.
Tue
03
Jun
2014
The Case for Reparations
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 21, 2014
Chapters
- I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
- II. “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
- III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
- IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
- V. The Quiet Plunder
- VI. Making The Second Ghetto
- VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
- VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
- IX. Toward A New Country
- X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
Mon
02
Jun
2014
A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA
PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.
As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.
The New York Times
Sunday Review
By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014
American children of the 19th century had a reputation. Returning British visitors reported on American kids who showed no respect, who swore and fought, who appeared — at age 10 — “calling for liquor at the bar, or puffing a cigar in the streets,” as one wrote. There were really no children in 19th-century America, travelers often claimed, only “small stuck-up caricatures of men and women.”
This was not a “carefree” nation, too rough-hewed to teach proper manners; adults deliberately chose to express new values by raising “go-ahead” boys and girls. The result mixed democracy and mob rule, assertiveness and cruelty, sudden freedom and strict boundaries. Visitors noted how American fathers would brag that their disobedient children were actually “young republicans,” liberated from old hierarchies. Children were still expected to be deferential to elders, but many were trained to embody their nation’s revolutionary virtues. “The theory of the equality” was present at the ballot box, according to one sympathetic Englishman, but “rampant in the nursery.”
Boys, in particular, spent their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture. After age 5 or so they needed little attention from their mothers, but were not big enough to help their fathers work. So until age 10 or 12 they spent much of their time playing or fighting.
The writer William Dean Howells recalled his ordinary, violent Ohio childhood, immersed in his loose gang of pals, rarely catching a “glimpse of life much higher than the middle of a man.” Howells’s peers were “always stoning something,” whether friends, rivals or stray dogs. They left a trail of maimed animals behind them, often hurt in sloppy attempts to domesticate wild pets.
And though we envision innocents playing with a hoop and a stick, many preferred “mumbletypeg” — a game where two players competed to see who could throw a knife closer to his own foot. Stabbing yourself meant a win by default.
Left to their own devices, boys learned an assertive style that shaped their futures. The story of every 19th-century empire builder — Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt — seems to begin with a striving 10-year-old. “Boy culture” offered training for the challenges of American manhood and a reprieve before a life of labor.
But these unsupervised boys also formed gangs that harassed the mentally ill, the handicapped and racial and ethnic minorities. Boys played an outsize role in the anti-Irish pogroms in 1840s Philadelphia, the brutal New York City draft riots targeting African-Americans during the Civil War and attacks on Chinese laborers in Gilded Age California. These children did not invent the bigotry rampant in white America, but their unrestrained upbringing let them enact what their parents mostly muttered.
Their sisters followed a different path. Girls were usually assigned more of their mothers’ tasks. An 8-year-old girl would be expected to help with the wash or other physically demanding tasks, while her brother might simply be too small, too slow or too annoying to drive the plow with his father. But despite their drudgery, 19th-century American girls still found time for tree climbing, bonfire building and waterfall-jumping antics. There were few pretty pink princesses in 19th-century America: Girls were too rowdy and too republican for that.
So how did we get from “democratic sucklings” to helicopter parents? Though many point to a rise of parental worrying after the 1970s, this was an incremental change in a movement that began a hundred years earlier.
In the last quarter of the 19th century, middle-class parents launched a self-conscious project to protect children. Urban professionals began to focus on children’s vulnerabilities. Well-to-do worriers no longer needed to raise tough dairymaids or cunning newsboys; the changing economy demanded careful managers of businesses or households, and restrained company men, capable of navigating big institutions.
Demographics played a role as well: By 1900 American women had half as many children as they did in 1800, and those children were twice as likely to live through infancy as they were in 1850. Ironically, as their children faced fewer dangers, parents worried more about their protection.
Instead of seeing boys and girls as capable, clever, knockabout scamps, many reconceived children as vulnerable, weak and naïve. Reformers introduced child labor laws, divided kids by age in school and monitored their play. Jane Addams particularly worked to fit children into the new industrial order, condemning “this stupid experiment of organizing work and failing to organize play.”
There was good reason to tame the boys and girls of the 19th century, if only for stray cats’ sake. But somewhere between Jane Addams and Nancy Grace, Americans lost track of their larger goal. Earlier parents raised their kids to express values their society trumpeted.
“Precocious” 19th-century troublemakers asserted their parents’ democratic beliefs and fit into an economy that had little use for 8-year-olds but idealized striving, self-made men. Reformers designed their Boy Scouts to meet the demands of the 20th century, teaching organization and rebalancing the relationship between play and work. Both movements agreed, in their didactic ways, that playtime shaped future citizens.
Does the overprotected child articulate values we are proud of in 2014? Nothing is easier than judging other peoples’ parenting, but there is a side of contemporary American culture — fearful, litigious, controlling — that we do not brag about but that we reveal in our child rearing, and that runs contrary to our self-image as an open, optimistic nation. Maybe this is why sheltering parents come in for so much easy criticism: A visit to the playground exposes traits we would rather not recognize.
There is, however, a saving grace that parents will notice this summer. Kids are harder to guide and shape, as William Dean Howells put it, “than grown people are apt to think.” It is as true today as it was two centuries ago: “Everywhere and always the world of boys is outside of the laws that govern grown-up communities.” Somehow, they’ll manage to go their own way.
________________________________
A National Endowment for the Humanities fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society who is writing a book on the role of young people in 19th-century American democracy.
Mon
21
Apr
2014
Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change
From The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD
APRIL 19, 2014
HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.
In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.
But President Xi Jinping has targeted Mr. Zhou in an extraordinary corruption inquiry, a first for a Chinese party leader of Mr. Zhou’s rank, and put his family’s extensive business interests in the cross hairs.
Even by the cutthroat standards of Chinese politics, it is a bold maneuver. The finances of the families of senior leaders are among the deepest and most politically delicate secrets in China. The party has for years followed a tacit rule that relatives of the elite could prosper from the country’s economic opening, which rewarded loyalty and helped avert rifts in the leadership.
Zhou Family Ties
Fri
13
Nov
2015
Are Languages Products of their Environment?
DISCOVER MAGAZINE published this very interesting article:
Languages Are Products of Their Environments
The characteristics that make each language unique may actually be adaptations to the acoustics of different
environments.
Tue
03
Jun
2014
The Case for Reparations
The Case for Reparations
Two hundred fifty years of slavery. Ninety years of Jim Crow. Sixty years of separate but equal. Thirty-five years of racist housing policy. Until we reckon with our compounding moral debts, America will never be whole.
By Ta-Nehisi Coates
May 21, 2014
Chapters
- I. “So That’s Just One Of My Losses”
- II. “A Difference of Kind, Not Degree”
- III. “We Inherit Our Ample Patrimony”
- IV. “The Ills That Slavery Frees Us From”
- V. The Quiet Plunder
- VI. Making The Second Ghetto
- VII. “A Lot Of People Fell By The Way”
- VIII. “Negro Poverty is not White Poverty”
- IX. Toward A New Country
- X. “There Will Be No ‘Reparations’ From Germany”
Mon
02
Jun
2014
A Look At 19th Century Children In The USA
PHILADELPHIA — DINNER with your children in 19th-century America often required some self-control. Berry stains in your daughter’s hair? Good for her. Raccoon bites running up your boy’s arms? Bet he had an interesting day.
As this year’s summer vacation begins, many parents contemplate how to rein in their kids. But there was a time when Americans pushed in the opposite direction, preserved in Mark Twain’s cat-swinging scamps. Parents back then encouraged kids to get some wildness out of their system, to express the republic’s revolutionary values.
The New York Times
Sunday Review
By JON GRINSPAN MAY 31, 2014
Mon
21
Apr
2014
Investigating Family's Wealth, China's Leader Signals a Change
From The New York Times
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JAD MOUAWAD
APRIL 19, 2014
HONG KONG — His son landed contracts to sell equipment to state oil fields and thousands of filling stations across China. His son’s mother-in-law held stakes in pipelines and natural gas pumps from Sichuan Province in the west to the southern isle of Hainan. And his sister-in-law, working from one of Beijing’s most prestigious office buildings, invested in mines, property and energy projects.
In thousands of pages of corporate documents describing these ventures, the name that never appears is his own: Zhou Yongkang, the formidable Chinese Communist Party leader who served as China’s top security official and the de facto boss of its oil industry.