Gu Chujun, you magnificent bastard.

I salute you!



While # 1 Bush Lifetime Campaign Contributor and Future Cell Block Buttercup Kenny-Boy Lay shows off what the feds mean by “Texas Holdem’”, this “Cats In The Cradle” musical interlude from the Asian Times.





“And as I hung up the phone it occurred to me
He'd grown up just like me.
My boy was just like me.”

Fridge-maker Kelon implodes
By Sam Ng and Yohji Yuan

SHUNDE, China - In a dramatic collapse that has become the talk of southern China business circles, Kelon, a top Chinese appliance maker specializing in refrigerators and air conditioners, has stopped production after its top managers were arrested in late July, and the company's future is now gravely in doubt.

Asia Times Online visited Kelon's headquarters in Guangdong province's Shunde city, where employees have resigned en masse and a parts supplier has claimed arrears against the company. Last year, bank loans to Kelon were cut back drastically, and distributors began selling off its stock to offset looming losses. According to a local source, Kelon began to slash production and cut staff in June. Many workers were already thinking about resignation because they had been preparing for the worst ever since production began to fall earlier in the year.
…
Also in May, the Shunde office of the Bank of China, Kelon's main creditor bank, was already on guard against financial turmoil at Kelon. The BoC, having smelt a rat, had cut back its lending to Kelon in 2004, and the local branch office is now negotiating with Kelon about loans due this September.

In June, the company's troubles deepened when three independent directors resigned, claiming that Kelon had never responded to their proposals or inquiries over certain questionable transactions of its affiliates. Last week, the arrest of ex-president Gu Chujun was announced and company equities and assets valued at over US$100 million were frozen, as if the cooling leader had frozen itself. …

Ex-workers react…
Chen recollected how the staff reacted to Kelon's downfall: "We had prepared for the shutdown, but we'd never expected it to come so fast ... we had little knowledge about what deep trouble the company was in until the management was said to be under detention. …

Kelon, the shooting star
…
A critical player in Kelon's rise was ex-president and chairman Gu Chujun, who, though now under a cloud, undeniably played a key role in the company's fabulous takeoff. In the wake of several acquisitions, the company managed to make ends meet in 2002, and earned a profit of 202 million yuan in the ensuing year. While the domestic electronics sector entered a difficult period due to a price war and the unexpected outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), Kelon stood out amazingly from the industry with strong sales in air-conditioners and refrigerators, its two pillars.

These strong results made a celebrity out of Gu, who was named the "most noteworthy Chinese entrepreneur" in 2003, and was awarded by China Central TV (CCTV) the title "Leading Man for Economic Contributions to China" in the same year. …

But behind the scenes, incomplete ownership reform was nudging the giant manufacturer off the right track. Despite all the fuss over listing and the transition to a stock corporation, the township government retained the final say behind the scenes. The demands of individual shareholders for transparency collided with government dominance, leading the company into disorder and eventual collapse.
…

Even its worst critics (like us unwashed country folk who broke away from it) would give a little grudging respect for some of the invisible exports of the British Empire; its legal system, sense of fair play, a nearly universal language, railroads, the cool BBC announcer voice that gave THIS news fan serious journo-priapism every single time I heard it flowing like a river of naughty honey from the mouth of Ms. Daljit Dhaliwal

And where would all of those deeply S&M/homoerotic Republican frat rituals be without the bewildering game of cricket and the bats derived therefrom?

Britain lost India – its crowned jewel – for a lot of reasons, but in the end it was shamed into it. Gandhi knew the British heart, and knew he could make his non-violent, non-cooperation rebellion work because the British people, deep in their bones, could be embarrassed into doing the right thing, by their own lights and words.

They might or might not like the “wogs”, but they damned well knew when something wasn’t cricket.

America exports food, clothes, entertainment and a million other things…but we also export our values.

Can you even imagine the Bush Regime ever being embarrassed by…anything. Apologetic…for anything? Any lie, no matter how blatant? Any treason, no matter how ruinous? Any atrocity, no matter how revolting and public and irrefutable?

Of course not.

The Bush Administration, their array of anti-Christian “Pecksniffs of Faith” Reverends and the grunting Jughead GOP rank-and-file just shrugs it off, shrieks “mandate”, and goes right on lobbing huge chunks of our legacy and our future in the impound lot car crusher.

What has the rest of the world learned from the invisible exports of George Bush?

1. Attack first; ask later.

2. Preemption means never having to say you’re sorry.

3. Kill as many as you want as long as you think God is on your side.

4. When you get caught lying…keep lying.

5. Get a nuke as fast as you can.

6. Make sure to keep slightly more than half your voters bumblefuck stupid or terrified enough to ask for seconds after they've been soundly ass-raped the first time.

And when it comes to Government, Industry or Religion…the only sin is getting caught. And if that means you have to kill a lot of people, remember that Republican Jesus forgives necessity.

* * *

OK, that was the end of the post, until a commentator dropped the perfect coda on me with which to end our musical interlude.

So here, courtesy of clonar22:

"Gu is gone, none too soon
Hopefully next - the Reverend Moon.
Kenny-boy Lay, Wendy McConnell
Fixer Chao and Rumsfeld, Donald
Anyone with a mind can see
They're guilty, unlike Wen Ho Lee."

Bravo.