Questions to Net Nanny: Church Music to be banned?

No unhealthy stuff

Q: Dear Net Nanny: is it true that the public performance of western religious music will be banned in China? Will this include Johann Sebastian Bach, Boney M. and the Village People?

Yours faithfully, Johnny Holycross

x

A: Some people in the West make a wrongful attack against China’s system and practice of Christianity. There were missionaries who worked in the East-India Company and participated in selling opium to the Chinese people. China’s Christian Three-Self Patriotic Movement was not established by the government. It is a patriotic movement formed spontaneously by Chinese Christians who sought to defend themselves against the invasion and bullying of colonialists and imperialists in the early days.

I’m neither confirming nor denying that Western, I repeat: Western, imperialist church music is now banned. Please contact the neighborhood committee in charge for the music hall which you have in mind to perform your grunge, and check with them.

But if there is such a ban, it is because of a spontaneous self-strengthening initiative within our country’s healthy people. This would have nothing to do with the government. As sure as our Patriotic Great Firewall is a spontaneious initiative from within our country’s netizens.

If you find that this healthy initiative really exists, please give me their phone number so that I can congratulate them. And then you big nose should go and learn from them. Because Chinese Patriotic Christianity has a united mass which is observed by everyone. This is in line with the Bible’s teaching that all churches should unite as one.

So I strongly recommend that you accept their leadership, and adopt their mass in every neck of the globe at an early date. Amen.

Justrecently writes to… President Bush

From:
Just Recently, justrecently.wordpress.com

To:
President George W. Bush, 1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW, Washington, DC 20500, U. S. A.

Write a friendly letter. Do it today!

Dear Mr President,

How is it going? Weather was nice here in central Yurop last weekend, and almost warm, and I decided to test if it was really still summer.

So I bought myself an American.

No, don’t get me wrong. An American in Germany isn’t really an American. An American in Germany is more of a Berliner. Or like a Hamburger. But a Hamburger is not as sweet as an American or a Berliner, and it is full of beef.

An American is flat, and sugar icing on one side of it, while a Berliner comes with sugar icing on it and jelly inside.

And while I was eating the American, a wasp came flying and stirred shit. No, not this kind of wasp, but that kind of wasp.

So then I knew that it was still summer last weekend.

Funny, eh?

Just thought I’d drop you a friendly line. Maybe not too many people will do that these days.

Please give the First Lady my best.

Sub-prime Housing Crises: Keep your Seat-Belts fastened

In Shenzhen, the whole holiday week has registered only 82 deals for the whole city, which some say is glacier-cool, writes Guangzhou Daily, translated by China Digital Times. Despite all the efforts by developers to woo buyers, including gift furniture and appliances and discounts, more and more potential home buyers are stepping back instead of rushing to cut a deal.

On a more soothing note, GD lauds Shenzhen’s macro-control policy for (apparently) curbing the bubble.

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“I think there’s a huge bubble in China and I think that I would be surprised if they don’t face similar situations as the US has faced, because banks were lending in China purely on a whim, keeping people in homes that they really couldn’t afford.”

Jonathan Kaufman, Wall Street Journal, quoted by Radio Australia >

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“Except for Germany and Japan, everybody had a housing bubble” among developed nations. “Home prices are correcting everywhere, and that’s causing a problem for mortgage markets everywhere.”

David Wyss, Standard & Poor’s, quoted by the Baltimore Sun >

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Gordon Brown may not be a hero at home, but he is viewed as one elsewhere. Germany’s government had been disoriented after the crisis had hit, says Der Spiegel. But when the British prime minister presented his solution, Berlin happily copied it, to restore trust amongst the banks. The US treasury now seems to move into the same direction.