Students and More youngers hooked on online gambling lives away to fund habit

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Students turn to Ah Long to fund habit

By SHARIN SHAIK
newsdesk@thestar.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: Students as young as 16 are turning to loan sharks to pay off their Internet gambling debts, forcing their parents to settle their huge debts.

This year alone, the MCA Public Complaints Bureau has received seven such cases with a total debt of RM874,800.

In one case, a 45-year-old mother was now being harassed by loansharks as her 21-year-old son had racked up debts of almost RM30,000 since his college days.

The mother, who identified herself as Madam Yong, said at a press conference yesterday that Ah How had been involved in Internet football gambling since last year when he was in college. She has not seen him for two months now.

Yong said she paid Ah How’s RM2,000 debt the first time.

“He promised never to gamble again, but did not keep his word,” she said. Yong said to fund his betting, Ah How sold the shares she had bought in his name.

On Dec 2, she received a call from a debt collector called “Ah Boon,” telling her that her son still owed him RM26,500.

“I am speaking out so that other parents can be aware of this issue,” said Yong at the MCA Public Complaints Bureau. “Anyone can fall victim to Internet gambling and loan sharks.”

According to bureau chief Datuk Micheal Chong, many parents had come to him with the same problem “and all involved boys aged between 16 and 20”.

“My worry is that this is mostly happening to Chinese students,” he said.
Chong said he suspected that a syndicate was working with bookies and loansharks to lure students into illegal gambling.

“It is easier to target the youngsters by commissioning other students to encourage them to gamble online,” added Yong.

Chong said these bookies and loansharks were not concerned over students not paying up because they know that their parents would.

“It is the parents who suffer the most,” he said.
“Prevention is better than cure; so please advise your children not to get involved in online gambling.”

More teens gambling lives away

By Elizabeth Zachariah , elizbeth@nst.com.my

KUALA LUMPUR: More and more young adults are turning to gambling for fast and easy money.
MCA public services and complaints department head Datuk Michael Chong revealed yesterday that his department had received seven such cases this year alone with debts totalling RM874,800.

"The cases we see nowadays involve teenagers as young as 18," he said at Wisma MCA, adding that this was just the tip of the iceberg as many cases went unreported.

Chong said one of the cases he received involved a 20-year-old student who became an online gambler, running up a debt of RM800,000.
He said as was the case with all the others, the youth had tried paying it off by lying to his parents that he needed the money for studies.

He finally confessed to his parents when the debtors called his home demanding for payment.

His parents, who could not afford to pay back, approached Chong's department for help.

Their son had since gone into hiding to escape the debt collectors' harassment.

Chong said the young gamblers, all male, were described as hardworking, obedient and studious by their families.

"But because they mixed with the wrong crowd, they found themselves in hot water."

He said most of the bookies were classmates and ex-schoolmates of these gamblers.

"Students are easily taken in by the syndicates who use their peers to lure them into gambling," he said, adding that their actions could have a detrimental effect on themselves, their families and careers.

One such student is Ah How, 21, who first became an online gambler last year while he was studying at a college in Petaling Jaya.

His mother, who wanted to be known only as Yong, said she helped him pay off the RM2,000 debt.

But the second time around early this year, Ah How found himself in debt again and borrowed RM8,000 from his friend and used up RM15,000 worth of investment to pay his debt.

Last week, Yong received a call from a debt collector who informed her that Ah How owed him RM26,500.

"He promised me that he would never gamble again after the first time, but he doesn't seem to be able to stop," she said of her eldest son.

Yong said she came forward as she wanted her son's case to serve as a lesson to other young adults who were hooked on gambling

Read more: More teens gambling lives away http://nst.com.my/nst/articles//18gamb/Article/#ixzz17h7NdlFV

Confucius Peace Prize Snubs Nose at Nobel Peace Prize, in Battle of Ideas!

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Confucius Prize could be weapon in battle of ideas

By Liu Zhiqin

The Nobel Peace Prize Committee won Liu Xiaobo while losing the trust of 1.3 billion Chinese people. They support a criminal while creating 1.3 billion "dissidents" that are dissatisfied with the Nobel Committee, which is definitely a bad decision.

However, the Chinese people's discontent or questioning will not change the prejudice of the proud and stubborn Noble Prize Committee members.

On the contrary, China's opposition could inspire their pride as heroes or sense of accomplishment because it has become the mind-set of the current Westerners that they will oppose whatever China supports and support whatever China opposes. In order to make them change their mind-set, more appropriate ways need to be adopted.

We often stress the need to fight for the right to speak. In fact, this is a good opportunity and China's civil society should consider setting up a "Confucius Peace Prize," launching the evaluation and selection and finding the real Peace Prize winners from all over the world.

This is the best opportunity for the Chinese to declare China's view in peace and human rights to the world.
Through such evaluation and selection, people around the world can have the most direct, sensible and comparative opportunity to observe, analyze and understand the Eastern and Western values.

With China's growing economic strength, Chinese culture and ideas will also be spread.

With the establishment of "Confucius Institutes" all over the world, the ideas of Confucius are understood and accepted by more and more people throughout the world.

Against such a good background, the establishment of a worldwide "Confucius Peace Prize" will be welcome by people in different countries. Of course, this step needs the long-term accumulation of different sides, but it is essential for China to step into the world.

While carrying out "Confucius Peace Prize" selection, China can learn more things from the world, especially how people of different cultures, different religions and different political systems think, build their nations and enable their people to live and work in peace.

We should also teach Westerners how to cultivate their own spirits and kindly treat people that have different national values and lifestyles. Only in this way could China and the West really work together to create a harmonious and tolerant world.

In a recent editorial, the Global Times looked "forward to the Nobel Prize Committee that really belongs to the world." I am afraid this good wish will not be realized. At least we should not rely on the members of the Peace Prize Committee. We have suffered too much loss already.

We would rather do something within our power than expect others to change, such as establishing through civil society a "Confucius Peace Prize" Committee and inviting internationally renowned persons to join. Thus the world will surely look at China with new eyes!

The author is the Beijing chief representative of Zurich Bank, Switzerland. globaltimesopinion@ yahoo.com

Confucius Peace Prize Snubs Nose at Nobel Peace Prize Honors

 Confucius Peace Prize - just three weeks after the idea for the honors were first publicly mentioned, isnow a reality. The Confucius Peace Prize is the Chinese snub-nosed attempt to cobble together its own peace prize - and the Confucius Peace Prize will be awarded the day before the Nobel Committee honors an imprisoned Chinese dissident in a move that has enraged Beijing.

Since Liu Xiaobo's selection, China has vilified the 54-year-old democracy advocate, called the choice an effort by the West to contain its rise, disparaged his supporters as "clowns," and launched a campaign to persuade countries not to attend Friday's ceremony in Oslo.

The government is also preventing Liu - who is serving an 11-year sentence for co-authoring a bold appeal for political reforms in the Communist country - and his family members from attending.

Amid the flurry of action came a commentary published on Nov. 17 in a Communist Party-approved tabloid that suggested China create its own award - the "Confucius Peace Prize" - to counter the choice of Liu.

Three weeks later, The Associated Press has learned, China is doing just that.

Named after the famed philosopher, the new prize was created to "interpret the viewpoints of peace of (the) Chinese (people)," the awards committee said in a statement it released to the AP on Tuesday.

Awards committee chairman Tan Changliu said his group was not an official government body, but acknowledged that it worked closely with the Ministry of Culture.

He declined to give specifics about the committee, when it was created and how the five judges were chosen, saying it would be disclosed later.

The first honoree is Lien Chan, Taiwan's former vice president and the honorary chairman of its Nationalist Party, for having "built a bridge of peace between the mainland and Taiwan." A staffer in his Taipei office said she could not comment Tuesday because she knew nothing about the prize.

Lien was chosen from among eight nominees - some of whom are regularly mentioned for, or have already won, that other peace prize: including billionaire Bill Gates, former South African President Nelson Mandela, former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and the Panchen Lama, the second-highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

While China regularly disparages the Dalai Lama, the religion's spiritual leader, the current Panchen Lama is a 20-year-old who was hand-picked by Beijing. The original boy named by the Dalai Lama has disappeared.

"We should not compete, we should not confront the Nobel Prize, but we should try to set up another standard," said Liu Zhiqin, the Beijing businessman who suggested the prize in The Global Times.

"The Nobel prize is not a holy thing that we cannot doubt or question. Everyone has a right to dispute whether it's right or wrong." Liu said in the phone interview that he was not involved in setting up the new awards.

Tan, who leads the awards committee, acknowledged that the new prize, which comes with a purse of 100,000 yuan ($15,000), doesn't have international recognition: "It needs to grow gradually, and we hope people will believe the award is of global significance."

China is not the first nation to be rankled by a Nobel Peace Prize. During Nazi Germany era, Adolf Hitler created the German National Prize for Art and Science in 1937 as a replacement for the Nobel. He had forbidden German pacifist Carl von Ossietzky from accepting his Nobel awarded in 1935.

This year, China's clampdown against Liu and his supporters means the Nobel medal and money won't be handed out for the first time since that period. Nobel officials say the prestigious $1.4 million award can be collected only by the laureate or close family members.

In the meantime, China is chipping away at the Nobel: It succeeded in persuading 18 other countries to boycott the upcoming ceremony, including longtime allies like Pakistan, Venezuela and Cuba as well as business partners Saudi Arabia and Iran, Nobel officials said Tuesday.

Beijing sharpened its denunciations, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu accusing the Nobel committee of "orchestrating an anti-China farce by themselves."

"We are not changing because of interference by a few clowns and we will not change our path," she said.
But Beijing's hastily arranged efforts to provide a distraction to the Nobel ceremony are counterproductive, said Oxford University China scholar Steve Tsang.

"The whole thing is too obviously being rushed to counter the Nobel Prize to Liu Xiaobo. People will see it for what it is. That being the case, it's not going to be very credible," he said.

If anything, China's heavy-handed reactions in the wake of the announcement, which include putting Liu's wife and other supporters under house arrest and barring dozens of activists from traveling to Oslo, "simply give the rest of the world the impression that human rights is really in trouble in China," he said.

American Imperialism! US declared financial war to the world Prof Dr Michael Hudson

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US declared financial war to the world Prof Dr Michael Hudson 

Asian American Men Face Discrimination in Job Market

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Source: American Sociological Association (ASA)

Research Exposes Racial Discrimination Against Asian American Men in Job Market

Newswise — A new study by a University of Kansas sociologist shows that U.S. employers fail to pay Asian American men as much as similarly qualified white men.

“The most striking result is that native-born Asian Americans — who were born in the U.S. and speak English perfectly — their income is 8 percent lower than whites after controlling for their college majors, their places of residence and their level of education,” said ChangHwan Kim, an assistant professor of sociology at KU, who led the study.

Full results of the study — “Have Asian American Men Achieved Labor Market Parity with White Men?” — appear in the December issue of the American Sociological Review.

According to Kim, who co-authored the study with Arthur Sakamoto of the University of Texas at Austin, the findings show that the U.S. falls short of the goal of a colorblind society.

“As an individual, you can reach as high as president,” said Kim. “But as an ethnic group, no group has reached full parity with whites. That’s the current status of racial equality in the United States.”

Kim and Sakamoto combed data from the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to investigate earnings — numbers that have not been used previously in research on Asian Americans.

Among their other notable findings:

- First-generation Asian American men, who were born and completed their education overseas, earn 29 percent less than white men in the U.S.

- 1.25-generation Asian American men, those who earned their highest degree at a U.S. institution, but were born and previously educated in a foreign country, had incomes 14 percent lower than those of white men.

- The only group to have achieved earnings parity with white men is 1.5-generation Asian American men. Though foreign-born, these men came to the U.S. as children, so therefore speak perfect English and have U.S. educations.

Kim said that 1.5-generation Asian American men could benefit economically from their parents’ immigrant work ethic: “They see their parents struggle, and they understand that their achievement in the United States is actually their parents’ achievement. It’s not their own goal, it’s the goal for their whole family,” he said. “They actually have a burden of success.”

Despite the disparity in income levels, Asian American men are less disadvantaged than before the Civil Rights era in the U.S. Advancement towards an end to racial discrimination continues, according to Kim.

“The 8 percent difference is large, but it is small compared to previous Asian American generations,” Kim said. “Previous generations had income levels much lower, so in this sense we’ve made progress.”

About the American Sociological Association and the American Sociological Review
The American Sociological Association (www.asanet.org), founded in 1905, is a non-profit membership association dedicated to serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a science and profession, and promoting the contributions to and use of sociology by society. The American Sociological Review is the ASA’s flagship journal.

The research article described above is available by request for members of the media. For a copy of the full study, contact Daniel Fowler, ASA’s Media Relations and Public Affairs Officer, at (202) 527-7885 or pubinfo@asanet.org.

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Google Misses You

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Facebook has corralled 500 million people into an exclusive club that's out of Google's reach. There's no way Google will stand for that.

• Technology Review By Paul Boutin

Credit: Peter Arkle

Things Reviewed: Google's social-networking efforts
Facebook

  

Last winter, Google made a run at Facebook and fell flat, fast. Google Buzz, the social network it tried to build around its popular Gmail service, failed to live up to its name: it drew only a small fraction of Gmail's more than 100 million users, and it prompted a privacy scare and a lawsuit.

But Google didn't give up. Instead, the company is trying again, on a much bigger scale. It has spent hundreds of millions of dollars buying Web companies and luring talent in hopes of stopping, or at least slowing, Facebook's dominance in online social networking. (The project has been dubbed "Google Me," according to people in Silicon Valley who claim inside knowledge.)

Why would Google--the Web's most profitable public company, an organization that has had no difficulty increasing its commissions from online advertising--have it in for Facebook?

It's this simple: Facebook, from the start, has locked Google's Web-crawling robots away from its exclusive club of 500 million members. Just try to search for yourself or anyone else who you know is on Facebook. Google probably won't deliver more than a skimpy profile page whose goal seems to be to get you intrigued enough to sign up for Facebook yourself.

Facebook lets members reconfigure their accounts to open their photos and personal information to Google, but it prevents search engines from indexing individual status updates, the site's core content.