Flagrant Communism!

Without meaning to start a trend, I couldn't resist posting about communism again.

The above picture is from Chongqing, China, where a woman resisted pressure from developers and government officials to allow them demolish her home. She claimed that the compensation offered was below market prices. Unfortunately, this hasn't stopped them from demolishing the 280 other buildings that once surrounded her house, excavating the site, and therefore leaving her unable to access her property. One of the sad things about the whole saga is the fact that the only reason the woman has even been able to resist for so long is the fact that she has political family connections, and the media interest that the story has gotten. According to a quote in the NY Times:

“If it were an ordinary person, they would have hired thugs and beat her up,” said a woman dressed in a green sweater who was drawn by the throng. “Ordinary people don’t dare fight with the developers. They’re too strong.”

After more than two years of battling, the house has since been demolished as the woman finally accepted a new offer of compensation which has allowed her to buy a similarly sized apartment in a different area of the city.

In the past month

"...the National People’s Congress passed a historic law guaranteeing private property rights to China’s swelling ranks of urban, middle-class homeowners, among others. Some here attributed Ms. Wu’s success to that, as well as her knack for generating publicity."

China's innovative integration of communism and capitalism is bound to lead to problems such as private property rights etc. But this is an example of the kind of flagrant corruption that is endemic in every communist system. Even though communism is supposed to benefit the people, a citizen in a communist system has nearly no civil rights. In urban China, it is a case of Chinese people being constrained by communist laws while being exploited by a capitalist system. Civilians can get bullied into accepting shitty compensation so that a PRIVATE developer can build high density condominiums to SELL and PROFIT from.

I'm not naive enough to believe that a similar case can't happen in a capitalist country, and of course not all capitalist countries are democracies, but I just feel there is an element of deceit in the Chinese system, and I don't really like it.

I'd like to know what others think.

Flagrant Fishing.

I dont know if you know this, but i love Bill Dance. He is a fishing presenter on his show Bill Dance Outdoors, But he is no ordinary T.V presenter, heck, he's no ordinary person, because what you don't know about Bill Dance is that he is the unluckiest person alive and it just so happens that we get to see his misfortunes caught on camera time and time again. I'm sure that his own clumsiness plays a small part in his accidents, but even my friend Ronan can testify that you can't be clumsy all the time, you have to be unlucky too. Here's a small taste of his work:


Its hard to find any normal clips of Bill's show on Youtube because when you type in Bill Dance, only a large list of bloopers will come up. Go ahead, try it!

Here is a Compilation of his bloopers (the snake bit is a testament to his absolute lack of luck), enjoy:


Seriously, who would've thought that fishing could be interesting, well Bill makes it interesting heres more:

Thats right, a goddamn tree fell on him!

See what I mean? They are all like this, Here's another (unfortunately some idiots decided that the clips weren't gold enough themselves they had to ad stupid sound effects. Oh well:


I would love to shadow Bill Dance for a day, he gets more popularity for his mistakes then he does for his profession. The man is an accidental comedic genius. I'm sorry that there were so many video posts just in this blog, there's just too many Bill Dance clips that I like, check him out on Youtube for even more of his talents. Bill Dance is his name, Flagrant MisFortunes are his game.