Moving beyond Malaysia’s Star and Singapore’s New Paper, Singapore’s Sarong Party Girl makes it on to the BBC.

Mei Zhong Tai and Michael Turton continue to debate the logistics of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.

Arms Control Wonk wonders what was on the menu during the mid-level US-North Korea meeting in Beijing. The answer: steak and cheesecake.

More Phillip K Dick moments, but this time it’s educational:

It was the first time the DPP had hosted a conference like this, and
although they did a really good job organizing and coordinating all the
events, their inexperience in manipulating the delicate mock-crises
eventually took a toll; in the span of forty minutes Saturday night, (
it was a pretty long day, from 8:00am til midnight) we learned that
China was threatening Taiwan unless they immediately accepted the
one-China policy, a Taiwanese dissident had assassinated the Chinese
premier, Muslim extremists had captured and blocked the Singapore
strait, and Pakistan had inexplicably seized the opportunity to invade
India. Perhaps more restraint on the part of the control staff would
have been more appropriate.

No matter how enraged someone may be by terrorism, it would be ignorant to attack a mosque. It is doubly ignorant to attack a Sikh temple, as two have been in the UK. Via Sepia Mutiny:

You know, I had naively hoped that this wouldn’t happen across the pond. Contrary to America, where Sikhs are more scattered and less understood, I thought that in England, people were more knowledgeable about Sikhism, that they could tell the difference between al-Qaeda and an innocent group of people who had nothing to do with transportation treachery. Perhaps some, if not most of the English can…but much to my alarm, there are quite obviously a dangerous few who can’t. To them, a turban is a turban is a turban. Bend it like Beckham and bomb it like someone ignorant.

“Such attacks are an affront not only to the great Sikh religion but to entire humanity,” the spokesman said.
“The Sikh community in the United Kingdom has carved out a highly respected place for itself in the British society through its industriousness and commitment,” the spokesman said.

None of that matters. We are foreign and we wear turbans, just like that bastard Osama. Thanks to a coincidence of complexion, we are complicit and we will pay.

More news from the wonderfully open society that cares more about human lives than it does about saving face:

A leading Hong Kong virologist researching the deadly H5N1 strain of avian influenza told The Scientist this week that new regulations from China’s Ministry of Agriculture will prevent him investigating the virus.
"They are trying to stop me, trying to stop my investigation," said Guan Yi, a University of Hong Kong researcher whose group published a paper in Nature today (6 Jul 2005) describing the latest sequence data isolated from dead geese near Qinghai Lake in western China….
[…] "God help me," Guan said, sounding exasperated, "they are trying to close everyone’s lab." He said he believes the new rules are an excuse for authorities to exert tighter control over the dissemination of lab results, and are not aimed at protecting the wider population from bird flu outbreaks that have dotted the country in recent months.

Sign from a Shanghai Mexican bar.:

(via Kenny Sia)

Well, a particular video game in Japan could be Good for you… if you’re a woman.. if you have the right peripheral… and if you consider "hysterical paroxysm" to be therapeutic. Via Japundit, Game Girl Advance discovers innovative uses for the trance vibrator.:

Even without the trance vibrator, the game puts you into a trance state - it’s a raver’s game, a game of pure sensation. The goals are simply to progress to the next level - not so complicated. But getting there is a sublime visual and aural experience. There’s also an invincible "travelling" mode, if you want to just sit back and move through the levels without worrying about your avatar’s taking damage.
But god damn, the trance vibrator started thumping like crazy in time with the music.
Well, what would you have done? I moved the vibrator into my lap.
"Oh my GOD! This game rocks! Here, you play." I handed him the controller but you’d better believe I kept that vibrator right there in my lap….

If censorship wasn’t enough, this should help encourage at least 51% of us to support the xbox boycott.

A friend of mine, Thirdpartydreamer, who is also a specialist on the history of health and nutrition in China, pens an excellent review of the book, Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman (2003):

I must confess that I picked up this book in an antagonistic spirit.
Aikman is a conservative evangelical who’s just been hired to teach at
Patrick Henry College (the new college designed to send home-schooled
Christian men into government service—women are admitted to the school,
but are not expected to pursue careers. Check out the school’s website, or see the recent New Yorker article
on PHC). Since he styles himself a China expert, and boasts an
impressive set of credentials (Ph.D. in History from the University of
Washington, former Time reporter in Moscow and Beijing), I thought his
take on Christianity in China might be worth checking out…even if his
oeuvre contains such dubious entries as the recent George Bush is the Messiah or whatever it’s called (okay, it’s Man of Faith: the Spiritual Journey of George W. Bush).

Aikman’s
thesis here is that Christianity is spreading like a brush fire in the
People’s Republic today, especially in the form he considers the most
promising: the underground house church. House churches he contrasts
with the state-approved and state-controlled congregations affiliated
with the Three Self Patriotic Association (the government’s Protestant
outfit) and the Catholic Patriotic Association (the government’s
Catholic outfit). He relies for his information on the members of the
underground churches themselves, and participates uncritically in their
boosterism. One suspects that Aikman overestimates how pervasive
underground Christianity really is—not to mention how likely it is that
Chinese Christians will change the way the People’s Republic interacts
with the world (curbing its human rights abuses and bringing it in line
with American foreign policy, as Aikman assumes Christianity will
naturally do).

Read on….

The North Koreans have agreed to return to talks, OneFreeKorea isn’t too optimistic: "North Korea will have to compromise substantially on transparency, something I doubt they’re prepared to do.". Also at 1FK, a reader’s letter indicates that the dictatorship’s film-making propaganda department may soon start to employ focus groups.:

A North Korean propaganda film about the repatriation of a spy Lee In-Mo who had languished for years in a South Korean prison may have a short shelf life, according to defectors now living in the South.
"What we could not believe in the movie was that Lee and others were conducting hunger strikes in the prison," said one defector about the movie.
"Refusing to eat was a form of resistance in the South? Boy, South Korea must be a paradise. That’s what we said among ourselves"

Deng Xiaoping will not be on the 500 yuan note - unfortunately that means, should such a bill come into existence, it will also have Mao’s murderous mug. Also from Danwei, news that China continues to use formaldehyde in beer.

Tokyo and Beijing have agreed to co-operate against the Triad and Yakuza.

After a successful soft launch, the Shanghaiist goes live tomorrow. Given that the venture is headed by Dan Washburn, and features esteemed contributors such as Running Dog and myself, expect nothing less than excellence.

Big media… well Canada’s CTV .. have started to notice Western corporate complicity in China’s internet censorship (though it’s sad that a Canadian broadcaster didn’t bother to mention Nortel (or Alcatel).:

Now, U.S. companies are providing equipment and software that
enables service providers to enter thousands of banned keywords and web
addresses for automatic blocking.
Cisco Systems Inc., which is based in San Jose, Calif., sold the
communist country routers that have the ability to block not only the
main addresses for web sites, but also specific sub-pages, while
leaving the rest of the site accessible.

Japundit continues to debunk myths about the ‘tiny archipelago ‘ although the ‘panty-pulling craze’ is a less attractive myth than two earlier debunked hoaxes.:

Two of the most famous Japan craze hoaxes are the see-through skirt hoax (neither the see-through version nor the printed-on version of this hoax is true) and the scanty bathing suit hoax.

In Malaysia, TV Smith reprints a letter to the editor that really should have been published.:

On April 29 this year, reader Donald Tan copied me a letter he sent to a major newspaper. In it, he stated his worries about a precariously perched flyover. It was being built over a busy expressway he uses daily. He also enclosed a picture (above). The letter was never published by the newspaper nor the subject investigated for reasons unknown…
This afternoon, prophetically enough, the structure collapsed onto the road below, smashed a passing car and injured several workers.

The bishops of the Philippines no longer live under the shadow of Sin (Cardinal Jaime Sin that is) and have decided to remain out of politics. A separation of Church and State in the Philippines would be amazing. Now all that’s needed is a removal of the influence of ex-presidents (While I like Ramos, I  would also extend Torn&Frayed’s list to include the late Marcos).

Who says Singapore is conservative… Cowboy Caleb brings us a look at the phallic souvenirs of the Lion City.

Of course just because Singapore isn’t conservative doesn’t mean it’s entirely liberal.:

Media freedom in Singapore is constrained to such a degree that the vast majority of journalists practice self-censorship rather than risk being charged with defamation or breaking the country’s criminal laws on permissible speech.

Wannabe Lawyer points out why I couldn’t find any decent pinball games in Singapore.