Watched a program by Lisa Ling on CNN Sunday night about hate crimes against Asian Americans.  The Vincent Chin case was reviewed along with some of the more recent hate crimes against mostly the elderly during the pandemic.  It was a good program.  Interestingly, it also talked about the Chinese company BYD opening up a factory in Lancaster California.  

The main business of BYD is electrical vehicles.  In Lancaster, BYD is making electric buses.  The buses are well made and price is very competitive.  It also brings in many good paying jobs to an area of California that is suffering economically.  By making buses here, BYD is expanding its market.  Seems like a win win for everybody.

But the U.S. government is making rules against companies that are part of the Chinese government.  So BYD may not be able to sell their buses to U.S. cities and states soon.  That would mean the factory in Lancaster probably has to close and jobs lost.  The thing is, the company is listed in the Hong Kong stock exchange and 60% of the stocks is owned by American investors.  So I don't know why the U.S. thinks that it is Chinese government owned.  

Some Congressmen also said that the buses may be used to spy on people.  Who the heck is going to spy on people riding on a metro bus?  I don't think any Congressmen ride the D.C. Metro to work.  BYD also makes batteries for EV.  Tesla may buy from them in the future because its batteries are innovative.  Even now, Tesla buys its batteries from CATL, a Chinese company, for the EV Tesla makes in China.  So are we going to ban Tesla vehicles in the future because there are parts made in China so it maybe used to spy on us?

Vincent Chin was killed because Asians were scapegoated in the 1980s.  Scapegoating is also the reason that many of the elderly and women of Asian descent were killed or injured recently.  Sure, individual criminals did the harming of innocents.  But it is the demonizing of Asians by those with power that increase the scope of the hate.  In Vincent's case, it was the UAW and the Automakers who set the tone.  During the pandemic it was the politicians like Donald Trump who made hating Asians easy.  I don't really care if BYD is excluded from the American market.  But by banning a Chinese company which is competing fairly and is actually helping Americans send a message that all thing Chinese are bad.  This type of propaganda is dangerous for all Asian Americans.

 Dr. Sanjay Gupta is one of my heroes.  He is a neurosurgeon, a journalist and an author.  I have just about finished his book on the brain and found out yesterday he is already having another book out next week.  Does this guy ever sleep?  His new book is about COVID called World War C.  I am sure it will be good but I am not sure I want to read it since I have been reading about this disease and the pandemic a lot lately.  As he is making his round promoting his book on CNN and other places, I do have something I disagree with him.

Gupta was asked whether he thinks COVID was leaked from the Wuhan Lab.  He said as a scientist he believes that most likely it was from nature and not leaked from a lab.  But he went on and said that it bothers him that if it is not leaked, why doesn't China make it transparent to the rest of the world?  He pointed out that a small pox outbreak had happened in a UK lab and they admitted to it at that time.  I agree with transparency, but how do you prove a negative?

China let the WHO into the lab.  They did not find any evidence.  But could they have hidden any evidence or erased them?  Yes, of course they could have.  But if there was no leak, how do they prove that there was no leak?  It is like if I accuse you of murder but you must prove to me that you did not commit it.  You may have an alibi but if I don't believe your alibi, what can you do?  In this case, what evidence can China come up with that show there was no leak?  Even if they have evidence, the Western media would not buy it anyway.

That is why China tries to deflect by calling on the U.S. to be transparent about the shutting down of Fort Detrick lab in the U.S. during 2019.  What was leaked there, China wanted to know.  Of course, the U.S. is not going to allow WHO to go into Fort Detrick to investigate due to national security concerns.  So China said that they have national security concerns as well.  So there is no apparent resolution in this and that is why when Biden asked the CIA to come up with the answer in a few weeks, it was laughable.

On a lighter note, the Dodgers finished with the second best record in baseball but has to play a wild card game against a surging Cardinals team.  If they win, they get the Giants who has the best record. So one of the top two teams in baseball will be out after the division round.  Does not seem fair, but it is what it is.  They had an abundance of starting pitchers before the season but with all the injuries, I am sure how far they can go anyways.  Kershaw is out again so Urias with have to start and can't be used in big relief situations like last year.  So will see.  The Giants earned the division title though.  They just played great, way above expectations.

 Josh Mandel, a Ohio Senate candidate, is anti-Afghan refugees despite the fact that his grandparents came to this country as refugees.  He calls the Afghan refugees "alligators".  I guess that means if you take them in, eventually they will eat you.  He said there are terrorists among them, that they will bring COVID here, and there will be many child brides.  As if we don't have domestic terrorists, lots of COVID cases and many teenage single moms ourselves.  He said there should be zero refugees allowed in.

When confronted with the fact that his grandparents came as refugees on a military ship in 1949, his campaign doubles down and say that it is "nonsense" and "degrading" comparing Holocaust refugees to the refugees of today.   Well, yes, in 1949 the Nazis were out of power and couldn't kill the Jews anymore.  The Afghan refugees, many of whom worked for the U.S., are in grave danger if left behind because the Taliban is in power today.  We defeated the Nazis but we lost Afghanistan back to the Taliban.  So I think it is degrading for Mandel to call these refugees terrorists and want to leave them in Afghanistan to die.

All of us in this country are either immigrants or have ancestors who are immigrants.  So to be anti-immigrant or anti-refugees is to be anti-American.  I think Mandel's grandparents would be turning over in their graves if they know their grandson's stand.  But Mandel is far from the outlier, there are many in this country who think like him.  But prejudice is not confined to any race.  I know of Asians and Latinos who are anti-immigrants.  Shame on those people.

 Woke up this morning with the news that the Dow is down more than 600 points.  The main reason being that the Chinese giant real estate company Evergrande maybe defaulting on its debts.  This sends shock waves through the financial world.  But I don't think this will trigger a 2008 like financial crisis in China and spread to the rest of the world.

Real estate companies like Evergrande have been rising in China for couple of decades.  With a rising middle class and constant stream of people moving from rural to urban areas to work, building of houses and apartments were going at neck breaking pace in China.  With money to invest but not a great deal of confidence in the Chinese stock market, the people were putting their money in real estate.  Some people were buying two or three apartments, putting down money before the apartments were built.  Sometimes their life savings were invested in buildings that were still on the drawing board.

Evergrande was doing great in real estate but was branching out to other businesses.  They own the biggest soccer team in the country, building the biggest soccer stadium, investing in pig farms, bottled water, solar energy etc.  They accumulated a lot of debt.  The real estate surge in china has slowed.  Most people who were going to move to urban areas have already done so.  There is a very low birth rate in China which may not change in the future.  So the confidence of people and the banks on Evergrande has decreased.  

Evergrande, which is listed in the Hong Kong Exchange, has seen its price gone down almost 90% in recent months.  This has the effect of bringing down other real estates companies in China.  This in turn affect foreign investors who have positions in these companies.  The idea that a large Chinese company would default scares the rest of the world.  They have always said that when America sneezes, the rest of world gets a cold.  This applies to China today as well.

I think ultimately Evergrande won't go out of business completely.  It has property assets it can sell.  China will help in some way although not necessary a direct bailout.  It may push banks to lower the interests that Evergrande is due to pay.  Evergrande, like many U.S. companies in 2008, may be too big to fail.  China has been wheeling in some companies who have made big money but were taking more risks.  This will make China put on brakes on some capitalistic practices that have made money for China.  Regulations are sure to follow.  The regulations will be much more strict than those the U.S. put in after 2008.  They will be even more restrict than Elizabeth Warren wanted!

 In the three days I was in Portland, I observed a few things.  While it is much smaller than LA and much less diverse (there were very few minorities that I came across), the homeless population and the graffiti reminds me of LA or New York.  There were also a lot of businesses in downtown that were boarded up.  I was told it was due to the protests and the vandalism in the past year.  

It is interesting that with a relatively small minority population, Portland was the site of many and lengthy protests and counter protests.  The left and the right squared off in this city.  I have not study this so I won't have much to comment.  But I do sense that there are a lots of liberals around the city and a lot of conservatives in the rural parts of the state who don't like anything going on in the city.

Unlike LA where it takes a good half hour or more to get out to the suburbs, it takes only a few minutes to leave Portland.  But in those few minutes, the world changes dramatically.  I find out that the price of homes been surging in the suburbs.  I wonder if the people who live in these nice homes think about the homeless problems of the city.  Here in Southern California, the city of LA seems like very far away.  But in Portland, the distance is not that far but is the reality closer to the minds of the suburbanites?  In either case, when is the gap between the haves and have nots explode in our faces?

We found out the Lyft driver who took us to Portland airport is from Afghanistan.  He has been in the U.S. for five years but has family that is still in Afghanistan.  Obviously he is worried about their safety.  He said he is making a decent living and is happy to be in the U.S.  But he thinks it was a mistake for the U.S. to go into Afghanistan.  He understands about going after the terrorists after 9/11 but he believes that the military actions of the U.S. have caused more deaths and sufferings in the Middle East than the Muslim extremists like the Taliban.  I would like a woman's perspective on the Taliban.  But I would agree with this driver that you don't advance democracy with guns and bombs.  You just cause more suffering and help the extremists recruit more fighters.

One last thing.  We saw many homeless people in downtown as mentioned.  Many of them had long hair, were unshaved and uncleaned.  Then from a distance a clean cut man with glasses riding a bike was coming toward us.  A "normal" guy, I thought.  But as he passed us, we noticed that he was totally naked!  Well. we hardly saw any police in the area.  I supposed that they didn't want to deal with the homeless.  So I guess this guy didn't think there would be any police stopping him either.

 Just took a trip to Portland.  More on the trip later.  Today I am just going to write about driving to and from the airport.  Trying to avoid going to LAX, which means a terrible drive through the 405, we decided to book a flight from Santa Barbara airport.  The distance is about the same but generally it is about half hour shorter than going to LAX, about an hour normally.  It is also a more pleasant drive passing the Pacific Ocean.

But now there is construction along a big stretch of the 101.  With the Labor Day weekend traveling and a couple of minor accidents, the drive took 3 hours and almost caused us to miss the flight.  On the way back, with multiple construction going on at night and the lane closures and lights shinning in your eyes, it was a very difficult and slow drive.

This makes me think about the infrastructure that we are trying to improve with the new spending bill.  It is a large amount but is not enough and the money is poorly spent.  This stretch of the 101 is going to cost at least 600 million and not all the money is spoken for.  It is supposed to finish in 2026 even though it has been going on for at least 3 years.  The same with freeway 60 near my in-laws house.  All these constructions which I doubt will make a big difference in our traffic situations will cost about a billion and take more than half a decade to complete.

I am think, most of the time the lanes are cut off in these construction zones but there is no work being done except at night where old drivers like me are practically blinded by their lights.  We are talking about a billion dollars for the two projects which will enlarge the two freeways somewhat but I don't see the benefit because the bottleneck areas are not going to be better.  I think they would be better off spending money on fixing bridges which may collapse soon and improving public transportation.

The cost of these works are not justified.  After the Northridge earthquake a big freeway collapsed and the estimate of the repair was several years.  The government agreed to give a bonus of tens of millions if it can be done in a year.  Well, it was done and the company got the bonus.  I think the government overpaid in the first place.  I think in China it would have been done in a couple of months without a bonus.  Or heads would roll, literally perhaps.  While I don't condone execution, I wonder if the mafia runs construction companies.  And is the mafia contributing to the election of public officials?

 Came across a Youtube video by an Australian who used to live in China.  He said that in the past he has seen western media false reporting and commentary on China.  But he never understood why his Chinese friends were so upset about such reporting or commentary.  He told them to just ignore these western media, they have nothing to do with your life.  Why get your blood boil over these idiots?

Now this guy is back in Australia.  Recently Tucker Carlson trashed talk Australia about its lockdown over the Delta variant.  He said things like churchgoers are being called selfish and ignorant, that Australians are back where they started:  a prison colony.  This made the blood of this Australian guy boiled.  Now he understands why his Chinese friends get so upset about people like Carlson.  If people liked Carlson can spread false information about Australia, a friendly country to the U.S., what kind of false reporting and commentary would they say about China?

Our blood should be boiled over people like Carlson.  They are partly responsible for so many deaths in this country.  While he is making fun of Australia, Australia is reopening again.  Their death rates from the virus is miniscule compare to the U.S.  Is Australia becoming a dictatorship like Carlson said?  Or are the Australian leaders more competent than ours?

 I seems just a couple of weeks ago that the U.S. began withdrawal of troops out of Afghanistan.  Then last week, the Taliban took over several cities.  Then Biden decided to evacuate the civilians from the embassy by sending in troops.  They said that maybe in weeks the Taliban will take Kabul.  Well, the take over was much faster than expected.  The Americans barely got out and who knows how many Afghans who helped us are stranded.  This makes the fall of Saigon seem like slow motion.

I think most people, including me, find it hard to believe that after twenty years of training by the American military and given weapons, the Afghan soldiers could not hold against the Taliban forces for even a few weeks.  Upon reflection, I think the major reason for this failure is that the Taliban was fighting for their religion, at least the extreme version of it, and against the infidels who invaded their land.  The government forces were fighting for a paycheck.  Most of the soldiers do not believe in their own government.  This is the same dynamics when the Soviets tried to help the communists who ran the country against the Mujahedin.  The Mujahedin were fighting for their religion and saw the Soviets as invaders.  They were much willing to sacrifice to win.

The Soviets got into the quagmire in Afghanistan.  The U.S. was too happy for that during the Cold War.  In fact they supported the Mujahedin.  What we didn't realize is that after the Mujahedin would give rise to al Qaeda and ISIS.  With the Taliban victory who knows what terrorists groups will be emboldened.  I don't have problem with going into Afghanistan to go after al Qaeda after 9/11.  But veering off to Iraq and did not finish the job led to the mess with have today.  The Russians are probably laughing at us today.

The most important lesson is that we can never listen to war hawks like Rumsfeld, Cheney and Wolfowitz again.  They made up lies about WMDs to get us into Iraq.  I will have more in the future about these war hawks and what are they up to today.  Another lesson is that we have not won a war since WWII.  We have spent trillions, lost thousands of lives and what have we got to show for it?  It is not our military might that is the problem.  It is the leadership that lead us into stupid wars that is the problem.  Our foreign policies need to change.  Otherwise we will keep getting humiliated despite spending tons of money and losing lives overseas.

Even though Bush and Cheney started this mess and Trump had declared the withdrawal before he was voted out, Biden is going to get a lot of the blame here.  His team failed to see how quickly Kabul was going to be lost.  We almost didn't get our people out.  Almost 40 years after Saigon, we are desperately evacuating.  This is going to be hammered by the GOP.  Biden can blame Trump but he is going to look bad just as Nixon did.  Add to the COVID surge which is mostly the fault of the anti-vaxxers who are mostly Trump supporters, Biden is going to have a tough few months ahead.

 The Tokyo Olympic games are over.  I have to give credit to the Japanese for hosting these games under terrible situation.  There were many who felt that the games should not be played.   I was borderline on that.  But Japan pulled it off and even though there were some increased in COVID cases, no great surge occurred.  For that we can all breathe a sigh of relief.  Now for some random thoughts on the games.

I was wrong about the women's soccer team and the men's basketball team.  I didn't think that the women would lose after that first game debacle.  Over the years they have been so much better than other teams and they have the best players available, unlike the men's basketball team which had some non all stars on the team.  But age may be catching up with the women.  Rest of the world may be also.

I was at least right about Kevin Durant needing to play better.  And did he ever!  He was the obvious MVP and the reason the U.S. won the gold medal.  He may be the GOAT of U.S. Olympic basketball.  I was also right about the lack of big men almost cost them.  Gobert dominated inside against them.  If he was a better scorer, we would have been in trouble.  What if we have to face someone like Jokic next time?  We have the best athletes by far but we still need some big men.

I was almost right about Doncic dominating.  He kind of ran out of gas the last two games after shouldering too much of the load to get Slovenia into the semifinals.  If he had taken the last shot against France instead of passing off, they could very well have been in the finals.

Good stories about couple of Asian Americans.  Everybody knows about Sunisa Lee who won the all around in gymnastics after Simone Biles dropped out.  There must have been great pressure on her going from number two to number one all of a sudden.  She is Hmong from the Twin cities.  My daughter went to college there and I remember seeing a lot of Hmong and Somalia refugees who settled there.  Minnesota has a history of taking in people from other countries.  Good to see spotlight on them.

Another Asian American is Jordan Windle who placed 6th in platform diving.  He was a Cambodia orphan who was adopted by a single gay man.  Jordan's father was rejected many times trying to adopt because of his status.  He turned out to be a great father as Jordan recalled how his father supported him all these years and saved him when he was only 16 lbs at two years old!

Simone Biles have put mental health at the front of the conversation which is great.  But the demonstrations expected at the games was practically non existent.  I guess given the pandemic hanging over everybody, nobody feel like protesting.

There were some new games to increase the interests of young people.  So skateboarding, surfing and sports climbing were added.  These all seem like sports for rich westerners.  I think we should find some sports that people in Africa, Southeast Asia and South America are playing.  I doubt that would happen because the people in charge want to increase the medal counts of rich countries and increase the tv ratings in rich countries as well.

I am sure I will think of something else to rant about but I am sure others can also.  On a lighter note, I wonder if people looking at the medal standings are thinking that Taiwan won a lot more medals than expected.  That is because Taiwan calls itself the Republic of China or ROC.  I see ROC has won a lot of medals.  But turns out it is the Russian Olympic Committee, not Taiwan.  This is all stupid if the Russia is banned but their athletes can compete under ROC,  Wasn't the ROC complicit in the cheating in the first place?  Did they sing the ROC anthem when an athlete win the gold or did they sing the Russian national anthem?  

 June 15 was the date that California reopened completely.  That was only one and half month ago.  I wrote a blog which said that we were not out of the woods yet.  So in a little over 6 weeks, things are looking bad again.  The cases are increasing rapidly here in California as is in most states.  I am sure the death rates will climb as well.  The delta variant is proven to be more infectious and dangerous than previous variants.  We are advised to wear masks indoors even if we are fully vaccinated.  

I never did stop wearing masks indoors when I go to public places.  But I can see others who have been vaccinated and thought we were back to normal getting frustrated.  The overwhelming majority of the people who get infected and get seriously ill or die are the unvaccinated.  But by telling the vaccinated that they have to wear masks seem to give the message to the unvaccinated that the vaccines don't protect us.  Those unvaccinated either do not understand or purposely don't care the fact they are not getting the vaccine is allowing this pandemic to continue.  I believe all the incentives in the world are not going to get them to do their part of simply getting a couple of jabs in order to save their lives and those of others.

I think it is time to have a national mandate for the vaccines.  Freedom?  I think the first freedom is not to die because there is no freedom after you die.  We have seat belt laws, we have laws against taking drugs, you can't drive 100 miles an hour etc.  This is a war and in time of war, freedom is going to be curtailed.  We used to have a draft.  You didn't have a choice of not going into the military if you were drafted.  There was no freedom then.  The country took away the freedom of hundreds of thousands of young men and tens of thousands of them died in Vietnam for an unworthy cause.  It is time to take away the freedom of not getting the vaccine in order to save hundreds of thousands of lives.