You Can't Make This Stuff Up

[jk]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Undercover cops posing as drug buyers attempt to buy drugs from undercover cops posing as drug dealers. Everyone tries to arrest everyone else and a fist fight breaks out in the street

https://t.co/Kzlp2mpuBU

[Chris Coles]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

This sounds almost as good as a Wall Street hedge fund

BEIJING (Reuters) - Thousands of people in north-eastern China have protested on the streets and surrounded government offices demanding help recovering money from a get-rich-quick scheme to raise ants to make an aphrodisiac tonic.

Hundreds of anti-riot troops and police in Shenyang, capital of Liaoning province, were deployed to stop protesters reaching the provincial government and Communist Party headquarters, residents said on Wednesday.

The irate investors from across Liaoning, a rustbelt province striving to attract investment, have demonstrated in Shenyang since Monday and sporadic clashes with police have broken out, they said.

Several thousand protesters gathered near the provincial government offices on Wednesday, a resident told Reuters by telephone.

The investors -- many of them laid-off workers or farmers -- put their savings into Shenyang's Yilishen Group for a scheme in which they raised ants to provide ingredients for a health tonic promising an aphrodisiac boost.

For every 10,000 yuan (655 pounds) they paid the company as "deposit", investors were promised a dividend of 3,250 yuan.

The tonic was promoted on television by Zhao Benshan, the country's best-known comic who specialises in playing innocent bumpkins with a north-eastern twang.

But since October, the group has twice delayed payment of dividends, fuelling investor fears that it was on the brink of bankruptcy or that the government might have frozen its funds.

"We strongly demand the government offer a way out for Yilishen!" read a banner held by protesters as they marched along a Shenyang street. A photo of the banner was posted on Internet and blog sites.

China has seen rising protests from farmers and disgruntled workers as inequality and corruption stoke popular resentment

The unusual origin of this latest uproar was a reminder that even as China's economy booms, there are pitfalls that can spark discontent from citizens eager for a share of wealth.

Chinese media have said the scheme collected more than 10 billion yuan from hundreds of thousands of Liaoning residents.

USELESS RUSE?

Some local reports have said the ants were a useless ruse for an illegal scam, but the group has survived several probes in the past eight years and investors had previously received their dividends on time, protesters said.

As they looked for reassurance, panicked investors have turned their ire on the government.

"If Yilishen goes bankrupt, the government will be the chief culprit," said a message that appeared briefly on domestic Chinese Web sites before it was removed. "The government will be drinking our blood."

A Shenyang resident told Reuters that about 1,000 people had collected in front of the company's head office on Wednesday. Repeated calls to the office by Reuters went unanswered.

Investors said the group's good relations with the government and its commercials on state television had convinced them Yilishen was legitimate.

"It has been out there for eight years and the government has given the company and the manager so many honours. We thought there mustn't be any problem," investor Li Dechun told Reuters.

He said he had poured more than 200,000 yuan into the scheme.

A spokesman for the Liaoning provincial government said officials had been talking to the protesters, and the company's failure to pay dividends was not due to any government action.

"Most of the investors are from the lower class of society. Some have threatened to take more radical actions, such as blocking trains at the railway station," a local resident surnamed Cong told Reuters.

Online discussions about the protests and the ant scheme were quickly removed from Web sites, as were recent news reports about Yilishen. The Group's Web site was also shut, announcing "service unavailable".

(Reporting by Beijing office, editing by Nick Macfie and Roger Crabb)

By chance I am currently reading The Coming Collapse of China by Gordon G. Chang; he tells us that such incidents are common. A very interesting read.

[kriden]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

By chance I am currently reading The Coming Collapse of China by Gordon G. Chang; he tells us that such incidents are common. A very interesting read.

Published July 31, 2001?

[jk]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

By chance I am currently reading The Coming Collapse of China by Gordon G. Chang; he tells us that such incidents are common. A very interesting read.

a fool and his money are welcome everywhere

[Chris Coles]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

The earliest book I have in my library was printed 1825 a fifth edition of book 3 of Tales from a Grandfather by Sir Walter Scott, Bart. (I do have the full work published 1869, being the history of Scotland from the earliest times, addressed to his Grandson, Hugh Littlejohn (John Hugh Lockart))., while I have read The Wealth of Nations and indeed The Principia by Isaac Newton. Again History of Inductive Sciences by William Whewell, D.D., my copy 1857, has opened up a new line of thought on the subject of the history of the discovery of gravity. However, to get back to the above two remarks; recently a friend had given me a copy of 1421, that led me to buy 1434 and then the book that you two seem to think a stupid buy. No one has all the answers; it is simply that I read a lot, right across the ages. Any point of view has its use, the challenge is to take it all in and then make a choice of where it fits into ones personal view.

[touchring]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

By chance I am currently reading The Coming Collapse of China by Gordon G. Chang; he tells us that such incidents are common. A very interesting read.

Gordon chang, being an american, doesn't understand how things work in China.

The peasants are irrelevant.

[Chris Coles]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

Gordon chang, being an american, doesn't understand how things work in China.

The peasants are irrelevant.

And I am sure the same thing was said in France a few centuries ago.

[Chris Coles]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

And I am sure the same thing was said in France a few centuries ago.

Indeed, my thoughts immediately took to remind me that I have a copy of Honore DAUMIER, 240 Lithographs selected and introduced by Wilhelm Wartmann, Translated by Harry C. Schnur, London Nicholson & Watson 1946. One of my best "finds" recently.

[touchring]

Re: China ant aphrodisiac scheme

And I am sure the same thing was said in France a few centuries ago.

Just look at North Korea, anyone outside of Pyongyong is irrelevant. There is a famine in 90s, millions died like fleas but nothing happened as long as the elites have food and privileges.

The same thing is happening in Venezuela. As long as you can keep an elite group happy, there will be no problems.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

More than a decade after this thread was started, Saudi Arabia, even with it's celebrity "reformer ()" Crown Prince, continues to be a source of amusing material. Who knows maybe the fawning Friedman might write an Op Ed column on such remarkable progress in our now flat world?

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/...6fN?ocid=ientp



Saudi Women Will Now Be Informed of a Divorce Via Text

Aristos Georgiou
6 hrs ago

The Saudi Justice Ministry has announced that from Sunday onwards, courts will be required to notify women via text about proceedings in which divorces have been finalized, the BBC reported...

...“Women in the kingdom will be able to view documents related to the termination of their marriage contracts through the ministry’s website,” the spokesperson added.

It is hoped that the changes to the law will mean that women are no longer be kept in the dark about their marital status.

“This is a very excellent service because previously there have been many cases in which women are divorced without knowing their status,” Saudi lawyer Bayan Zahran told a local television channel, the Financial Times reported. “It is one of her most basic rights to be informed if the husband divorces her.”...

[Polish_Silver]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Along those lines, I recently spoke with a young woman who had traveled there. She is fluent in arabic, but had never visited the kingdom.

A policeman upbraided her for having a lock of hair showing. "I never want to go there again" was her summary of the trip.

[GRG55]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Seemed appropriate to put news like this in this thread. Unbelievable. The world has completely lost its mind.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...onth-bill-sale

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...b63_story.html

[Southernguy]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

If only the Greek people could benefit from such insanity

Seemed appropriate to put news like this in this thread. Unbelievable. The world has completely lost its mind.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...onth-bill-sale

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...b63_story.html

[Chris Coles]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

Seemed appropriate to put news like this in this thread. Unbelievable. The world has completely lost its mind.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/artic...onth-bill-sale

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world...b63_story.html

It isn't the world that has lost it's mind; it is the leadership of the European Central Bank, (as with all other such organisations), still doing everything they can to prevent their ongoing failures from being brought to the surface and made available for everyone else to see; that they have no clothes!

But let me give you another one; Monday, in Paris, at the Paris Europlace conference in the French Ministry of Finance, I watched several Saudi present a detailed explanation of all the things they were doing; in science, tourism, you name it; other than bringing oil to the surface to sell . . . and then one quietly said; we do not have enough money to pay for it . . .

[touchring]

Re: You Can't Make This Stuff Up

It isn't the world that has lost it's mind; it is the leadership of the European Central Bank, (as with all other such organisations), still doing everything they can to prevent their ongoing failures from being brought to the surface and made available for everyone else to see; that they have no clothes!

But let me give you another one; Monday, in Paris, at the Paris Europlace conference in the French Ministry of Finance, I watched several Saudi present a detailed explanation of all the things they were doing; in science, tourism, you name it; other than bringing oil to the surface to sell . . . and then one quietly said; we do not have enough money to pay for it . . .

If they need dollars, they can get from the Fed.