Conversations of Goethe with Johann Peter Eckermann

1827.2.21 "talking about the panama canal"

"It may be foreseen that this young state (US), with its decided predilection to the West, will in 30 or 40 years, have occupied and peopled the large tract of land beyond the Rocky Mountains. It may furthermore be foreseen that along the whole coast of the Pacific Ocean, where nature has already formed the most capacious and secure harbors, important commercial towns will gradually arise, for the furtherance of a great intercourse between China and the East Indies and the United States."

32 years of waiting and suddenly...

I've lost the last bit of interest in Chinese men's football team. For as long as I lived, China has never won a single game against South Korea. Such was the curse our generation has to endure. What we suffered, time after time, is not simply the lost of games, but the lost of will to win. Starting around the same time of football league games, China, Japan and Korea took different trajectories, but China disappointed everyone by losing virtually all major games. Domestic league was poisoned by all possible problems. Ultimately, Chinese people, just like many of us, lost interest and stopped supporting our own team. For now we know, as we always suspected, there are big rats in the system, eroding the very foundation for a successful football environment. Though the arrests and the sudden win are coincident (maybe not?), I'd rather think that they are linked and from now on if we get rid of those rats and clean up the system, we can still make it work.

One game brings hope and confidence, but not a good system, which need long term construction. I caution myself from being too optimistic, but I certainly hope that the new leadership would not squander the opportunity this time. Finally, I have to agree with Huang Jianxiang at this occasion that we'll have a much better Spring Festival this year!

Google NSA alliance poses threat to the world

Washington Post and NYTimes all reported the new agreement between Google and NSA on the cyber attack incidents which led Google to claiming its quitting from China. Why would some obscure email breach ultimately drive them to this point? According to Mr. Blair, that's because these attacks are highly sophisticated and pose great threat that might equal to a cyber Pearl Harbor. However, without clear explanation or evidence, suddenly world's most advanced IT company married to the world most powerful spy agency. We have to ask, what would be the consequences of such a combination? Now, it seems more and more likely that these institutions are using the so called China threat to push for their own agenda, which is to establish a world super-cyber power to police the vast lawless web world. Surely that LAW must be American, not Freedom!
Google will benefit from the arrangement by "commercializing" the NSA technology, which means better security, survillance, and counter-intelligence. It might get tax-payer financed government technology for free. Also, by cooperating with the government, it could dominate the web sphere without even being questioned or challenged by its competitors. Google effectively becomes national security company of the American government. On the other hand, by joining Google, NSA can finally step into the private sector of the cyber world, doing all kinds of spy work that requires no search warrant due to Google invitation. It finds a new battle ground for weapon experiment offered by a global company with global reaches. That alone poses inmeasuable threat to not only China, but all other countries' national security.
This is probably the first amongst many steps following the Clinton "cyber open door" speech last month. Unfortunately, such imperialsitic move into the global internet system might have severe repressive domestic consequences in the foreseeable future.