The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| China’s love affair with golf causing concern Posted: 21 Sep 2011 07:54 AM PDT  Hugh Grant of Great Britain putts on the 10th green during day four of the Mission Hills Start Trophy tournament at Mission Hills Resort on October 30, 2010 in Haikou, China. The Mission Hills Star Trophy is Asia's leading leisure liflestyle event and features Hollywood celebrities and international golf stars. – AFP/Getty Images Such has been the growth of golf in China that the government in 2004 placed an almost blanket ban on construction of new courses, worried about the land – and the resources – developers were swallowing up in their efforts to tap into the golfing craze. But, as anyone who has travelled through the country since that time can attest, the ban has up until now had little to no effect. According to mainland Chinese media reports, the country in 2004 had 170 golf courses but by 2009 there were 570. How many are operating now is anyone's guess as canny operators have used all manner of disguises to cover their ambitions, variously describing the courses as everything from practise ranges to exercise areas to escape the eyes of authorities. But action is afoot. In the area around the southern city of Shenzhen alone five courses are currently under investigation and there are threats that this is only the beginning. Estimations are that there are currently three million people who regularly play golf in China, but that figure will rise to six million in five years and 12 million within 10 years. The game was only formally introduced to China in 1984 with the opening of the Zhongshan City course in the southern province of Guangdong, having previously been outlawed by the communists as an "elite" sport. The irony today is that golf's success in China is being built on exactly the same image as the country's new rich rush to embrace anything with a whiff of exclusivity. That's a point not lost on Zhang Xiaochun, who has the unique position of dean at China's only "college of golf," which is run as part of the Shenzhen University. He thinks the government crackdown has come following the golfing industry's decision to hype the sport on its value as a luxury-style endeavour alone. "I've been telling them to make it less ostentatious and to say that golf belongs to everyone," he told the China Daily newspaper. "But they wouldn't listen." – AFP |
| PETA to launch porn site in name of animal rights Posted: 21 Sep 2011 12:17 AM PDT NEW YORK, Sept 21 — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, no stranger to attention-grabbing campaigns featuring nude women, plans to launch a pornography website in the name of animal rights.  The lengths PETA would go to: Dutch porn actress Zara Whites packaged on the pavement labelled "flesh", outside the Agriculture Fair in Paris, March 7, 2007. — Reuters pic "We're hoping to reach a whole new audience of people, some of whom will be shocked by graphic images that maybe they didn't anticipate seeing when they went to the PETA triple-X site," said Lindsay Rajt, PETA's associate director of campaigns. PETA has been accused of campaigning for animal rights at the cost of exploiting women. A Facebook group, Real Women Against PETA, was launched after the organisation paid for a billboard showing an obese woman with the message: "Save the Whales. Lose the Blubber. Go Vegetarian." Another critical Facebook group is called "Vegans (and Vegetarians) Against PETA". "PETA is extremely disingenuous," said Jennifer Pozner, executive director of the New York-based advocacy group Women In Media & News. "They have consistently used active sexism as their marketing strategy to garner attention. Their use of sexism has gotten more extreme and more degrading. "This may be in their minds the only thing left at their disposal to lower the bar." PETA has filed paperwork to launch its pornography site when the controversial new .xxx domain becomes active in early December. While many non-profits and corporations are scrambling to protect their website names from being hijacked by a pornographer slapping on a .xxx domain, PETA is embracing the new domain as just another way to conduct business. "We try to use every outlet that we can to speak up for animals," Rajt said. "We anticipated that this new triple-X domain name would be a hot topic and we immediately decided to use it and take advantage of it to try to promote the animal rights message." Jill Dolan, director of the programme in gender and sexuality studies at Princeton University, was critical of the PETA campaigns. "Exploiting porn to get people's juices going seems lame; exploiting pornographic images only of women to make their point is retrograde and misogynist," Dolan said in an email. "Come on, PETA. Don't be Neanderthals." Rajt denied that PETA has been insensitive to women. "Our demonstrators, the models, all chose to participate in our campaigns . . . It's not a very feminist thing to do to turn to women and tell them whether or not they can use their voices, their bodies to express their voice." Visitors to the X-rated site would initially be presented with pornographic content as well as images from PETA's salacious ads and campaigns, Rajt said. Those images will be followed by pictures and video shot undercover of the mistreatment of animals. The site will also include links to vegetarian and vegan — using no animal products — starter kits as well as recipes. PETA's ad campaigns have featured adult film stars Sasha Grey, Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson. In 2008, the organisation's YouTube account was temporarily shut down after showing racy videos of celebrities and others posing nude. "When people first visit the site, it will be very enticing and once they go just a little bit deeper, that's when they'll be confronted with images that we hope will make them stop and think and get them talking and hopefully encourage them to make a lifestyle change to a plant-based diet," Rajt said. — Reuters |
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