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...With the violence showing no signs of dissipating, Buddhist civilian militias patrol potentially dangerous street junctions or congregate in temple grounds where they peer through monsoon downpours with shotguns at the ready. One morning at the temple of Chang Hai Tok village in Pattani province, a batch of Iron Ladies, outfitted all in black, runs through military exercises. Surveying the training from behind a trio of Buddha statues, 60-year-old abbot Pracharoonkittisophano shrugs his shoulders when asked whether women twirling rifles, along with a shooting range behind his sleeping quarters, elicits any spiritual discomfort. "Guns are normal things...
...bill, petitioned by Senators John A. Hart, Jr. and Sonia Chang-Diaz, also specified that the penalty for violating preferred parking spaces would be a fine between...
...Never mind that the World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Moody's Investor Service, and various research houses and investment banks take the number at face value. Chang says "Beijing's statisticians have gone back to their old tactic of making up figures to support the Politburo's predictions." He points to inconsistencies in other statistical indicators: car sales jumped 94.7% in August, for example, yet gasoline sales rose just 6.4%. "There are reports that central government officials have ordered state enterprises to buy fleets of vehicles and that these businesses are storing them in parking lots across the country...
...Like Chang, Chanos claims a "wholesale fudge factor" in Chinese statistics, including unemployment numbers. "Economic activity isn't necessarily building wealth," Chanos argues. "If you have to keep putting up the same bridge every five years because it falls into the river, you're going to show a lot of GDP growth as you keep rebuilding the bridge [but] you're not generating any wealth for your countrymen...
...Unlike Chang, Pivot Capital appears to accept China's reported growth in 2009 at face value, but says the "burst in economic activity has been inflated by a front-loaded stimulus package and a surge in credit growth," two drivers that will run out of steam in 2010. "The chances of a hard landing are increasing," the report warns. "The coming slowdown in China has the potential to be a similar watershed even for world markets as the reversal of the U.S. subprime and housing boom...