Things are getting a bit scary in Minneapolis, MN . . .

Complain to your elected officials, and you just might find your personal info posted online.

Tendor Dorjee and the "Free Tibet" movement’s “White Man in the West" Problem

This is how the former director of Students for a Free Tibet describes (on Facebook and here ) white guys who’ve gotten caught up in the Tibetan exile community’s intra-religious squabbles:

The Ultimate Insult: After 300 years of colonizing, plundering and devastating the East, the White man in the West now claims they're the victims of a homeless refugee monk who has no army nor police nor an inch of territory on which to set up a tent? If these people feel oppressed by the Dalai Lama, all they have to do is take off their robes and walk away, back to their edifice of European privilege built largely from the bricks of former colonies.

As if the problem with groups like the Hare Krishnas was always "white men forgetting to check their privilege"(!).

 While I have no more love for the so-called “New Kadampa Tradition” than I do for Soka Gakkai International, this particular rant spits in the faces of people of European descent (including folks like Richard Gere and Robert Thurman) who’ve devoted much of their time, energy, and resources to the Tibetan exile community and human rights within the modern-day Peoples Republic of China.
 

And I really have to wonder now how folks like the Karma Gagyu monk (and former French translator for the Dalai Lama) Matthieu Ricard are truly thought of by their “adopted community” . . .

New(er) phone scam

"Are you Jose Morales?  We're trying to collect a debt from you.  To clear this up, call":

1-877-577-5601

01/03/2014 Update: Apparently, I'm being robo-called by Minnesota law firm Messerli & Kramer

So I'm half way through F.W. Mote's 1999 book Imperial China 900-1800 and I find this nugget, a mid-14th Century Chinese poet essentially bitching about Mongol gun-control:

Last year the edict forbidding us to ride horseback;
This year another edict saying we cannot carry a bow.
Yet we still hear about all those robbers who by the light of day
Ride their horses and shoot people on the empire's highway.

The footnote lists: Ne & Gaohua 1985, vol. 1 pp. 192-196 

...which is apparently: Yang Ne and Chen Gaohua, Yuandai nongmin zhanzheng shiliao huibian (Beijing, 1985) 4 vols.   

I'm assuming Volume 1 would have the poem in the original Chinese (which would be freaking awesome).

Post-Right to Work vote in Michigan: 

Donors offers $$$ For Info Leading To Arrest Of Union Thug

Donate HERE

c|net: Senate bill rewrite lets feds read your e-mail without warrants

Proposed law scheduled for a vote next week originally increased Americans' e-mail privacy. Then law enforcement complained. Now it increases government access to e-mail and other digital files.

 (via Ace of Spades HQ blog)

From Gizmodo: This Is What Happens When Anonymous Tries to Destroy You

I remember feeling the same way about "Anonymous" when I heard they were taking on Scientology.  Boy, am I glad I didn't get mixed up with that mess . . .