It begins… Hong Kong’s Disneyland has started dress rehearsals, Little Cart Noodles takes an advanced look. (via Caleb):

Chris at Ordinary Gweillo looks at an SCMP report on the park.:

• Hongkongers can’t get enough of taking photographs. But they
  don’t want to pay for them and will photograph the monitor image of the
  Space Mountain ride, for example
• Parents will also photograph their children standing next to a balloon seller but won’t buy a balloon
• At the Mad Hatter Tea Cups, they will get out just before the ride
  starts to take photographs, causing the ride to stop automatically
• Groups occupy a table in a restaurant for the whole day as a base camp for their trip

Via Howard French, an essay on Japan, nature, vending machines and pornography.:

Japan also has beer vending machines, something I have always
enjoyed the freedom — I mean convenience — of. But by law, beer
machines have to be turned off at 11 p.m. I’ve never understood this,
though. It seems to me this is the time the beer machines should open,
not close. But beer machines are slowly disappearing in a national
movement to curb underage drinking. Instead, let’s encourage people to
wander around at any time of the night looking for a vending machine
where they can drink caffeine, then continue walking around the
neighborhood because they’re wide awake.
Recently, I was surprised to find a stand alongside a country road,
at a place where you’d normally expect to find a fruit stand, where
they were selling something even juicier: porn. From vending machines.
Apparently countryside peeping Toms need reading material too. But even
more surprising was that these machines selling porn DVDs and magazines
were on a bus route. You can actually take the bus to your favorite
porn vending machine. Talk about, um, convenience!

 

Above image from Photomann’s page of Japanese vending machines.

Mr Wang is starting to take this citizen-journalism thing seriously, interviewing Singapore’s Cyril Wong, an openly gay poet in a country where homosexuality is still technically illegal.:

Cyril is also gay, and openly writes about it in his poetry. That makes
him somewhat controversial (in Singapore, and to some people, at
least). Mr Wang exchanged email correspondence with Cyril over the
weekend, and with Cyril’s permission, reproduces some excerpts here.

On whether Mr Wang can blog about him:

"Yes, sure you can feature me. I am very openly gay. And I
think it is possibly immoral to even hide the fact when I am not
exactly living in a place like Iran, where I would get killed for
something like this. So with regards to being seen as gay very
publicly, I do not mind at all. In fact, I kind of encourage myself to
be as open as possible – it’s my one-man ideological war."

From Flying Chair a one-line look at US coverage of Hong Kong’s milkshake murderess.:

I’m sorry, but a headline about Nancy Kissel right next to an ad for Desperate Housewives had to be kept for posterity.

Given the bad blood that often divides Korea and the US, I recommend US readers take the Marmot’s suggestion to heart and .:

The Korean government decided Sunday to offer US$30 million in aid to the United States
in order to help the country recover from the destruction visited upon
the Gulf Coast by Hurricane Katrina. The government will also dispatch
a 50-man search and rescue team to the affected area, and consideration
is also being given to the dispatch of military personnel (which would
require National Assembly approval) should a request be made by the
United States.
South Korea’s offer of US$30 million is, as far
as I know, the second largest offer behind Qatar’s offer of US$100
million, and dwarfs the offers made by other nations in the region
(Japan, for instance, will send US$200,000 and has offered US$300
more). Considering how the Korean economy has seen better days, Seoul’s
offer is beyond generous and I can only hope the U.S. media gives it
more attention than from what I’ve seen so far….
I encourage you to send a message of appreciation to the Korean embassy
in the United States at , or, perhaps even
better, to the Korean consulate-general in Houston
(), which is handling the relief effort in the
devastated areas.

I’ll add that a thank you to another one of my expat homes should also be in order.:

KUWAIT CITY (Agencies): Kuwait said Sunday it was offering $500 million
in oil products to victims of the devastating hurricane in the United
States, the latest contribution from Gulf Arab states to the relief
effort. “We, Kuwaitis, feel it is our duty to stand by our friends to
alleviate this humanitarian tragedy and express our gratitude for the
support extended to us by Washington throughout the distinguished ties
between the two friendly nations,” Energy Minister Sheikh Ahmad Fahd
Al-Sabah told the official KUNA news agency. He said the $500 million
would come in the form of “oil products needed by the afflicted states
in these conditions and other humanitarian assistance.”

Gojira finally crosses the pond.:

The original Godzilla movie - with its strong antinuclear message that
was lost in the version edited for American audiences - will be shown
in British cinemas for the first time. The movie, which was influenced
by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, is being screened
next month in Britain partly because of the 60th anniversary this year
of those attacks. The British Film Institute, which is distributing
“Gojira” to several London cinemas in October, also wants audiences to
see there is a serious message behind the original monster creation.
Some argue this has been lost with the 20 sequels over 50 years and
countless rip offs.

Malaysia is getting rid of its one ringgit coin.:

One week after the news broke on Oriental Daily News, Bank Negara finally confirmed that the RM1 coin will cease to be legal tender with effect from December 7, 2005. However, the RM1 ringgit note will remain valid.
Here’s the BNM official statement on the demonetisation of the RM1 coin, in PDF, 162k. Thanks readers TerenceG, KW Chook, and for the alert.
Without the RM1 coin, I wonder how would Carrefour motivate its customers to self-manage the shopping trolly?

This is really promising news, perhaps someday people won’t have to type dem0cr to get past the firewall.:

Today, according to Reuters,
Wen Jiabao, the Premier of China, has made official what we’ve all
suspected; that democracy in China is just a matter of time. His words:

"China will press ahead with its development of democratic politics,
that is reconstruction, in an unswerving way, including direct
elections," Wen told a news conference ahead of an EU-China summit.

"If the Chinese people can manage a village, I believe in several
years they can manage a township. That would be an evolving system."

China has introduced direct elections for village chiefs in more
than 660,000 villages, and many of those elected are not party members.
But it has dragged its feet on expanding suffrage for the election of
officials at higher levels.

The ramifications of this
statement, though, are immense. It means China has finally admitted
that 1) democratic government is ultimately the best form of government
for social stability, given a mature polity; and 2) that forces within
China are acting as inexorable agents of change that are forcing both
this admission and the evolution itself to a more democratic,
representative form of government. Why do I make conclusion 2)? Because
it seems that when a party such as the CCP has a monopoly on power,
that it would not necessarily want to cede control of that power to
competitive elections.

Finally, happy Labor Day to US and Canadian readers, we close with a cartoon and message from TMV.:

It’s a  somber Labor Day this year.
But for all of us, we can take Labor Day to also labor to think about
how we can help Hurricane Katrina’s many victims — if not by money,
then by giving some old clothing to a local charity that can get it to
the storm’s victims or doing something to help a charity out.

Shanghai is a great place to shop! If you buy your DVD player at Shanghai Carrefour - even a cheap one - you may get a free DVD.:

…so, on our usual weekly/fortnightly/we have no food trip to the Wuning Lu Carrefour, we purchased a new DVD player. All RMB400 worth (about AUD$60). We bought an Oritron-branded DVD player, it looked sweet. It was a lemon. We took it home, hooked it up, and our problems started.
My major gripes were as follows. It wouldn’t turn on. Well, you would
plug it in, and the player power button wouldn’t work - most of the
time. Unplug, wait for 5-10 minutes, and then it would work. Strange.
The converse was also true, you couldn’t turn the thing off. Unplugging
it was the main way we got around this. No worries right? Nah. The
discs we put into the machine would stall, cause the player to crash,
and other such petulant behaviour. Annoying.
But the crux of our decision was the fact that a lovely
surprise was included inside the player. To our delight, we were given
the added bonus of the ‘Adult Tempt‘ DVD. Lovely. It had several, suspicious, greasy fingerprints on the bottom side of the disc. I think ‘the playa’, as it will now be known, had seen some action.

 

How does Jiang Zemin want to be seen by the world and more importantly China. His state-sanctioned bio may give some indication (NYT via Imagethief)

To write his biography, Mao Zedong chose Edgar Snow, a member of the
U.S. Communist Party; Jiang chose Kuhn, a member of the U.S. business
elite. An investment banker with a zeal for science, high culture, and
business, Kuhn personifies the new ideology that has swept through
China since 1989. China’s state propaganda team even chose to leave the
name of Kuhn’s Chinese collaborator out of the book to emphasize the
American financier’s authorship. Nothing better symbolizes Jiang and
his cohort’s transition to a right-wing developmental dictatorship;
every year, they carefully chip away at their socialist heritage

AsiaPundit features a lot of Western expat bloggers in Japan and elsewhere, Global Voices looks at Japanese expat bloggers abroad.

The new CIA director in Seoul is likely a hottie. Or at least I expect she is. Every female Korean spy I’ve seen in a film has been hot.

It was learned Wednesday that a Korean-American woman, identified by her
family name of Han, has taken over as the new station chief of the US
Central Intelligence Agency in Seoul. This is the first time a Korean,
and a Korean women in particular has assumed duties as head of the CIA
station in Korea. Officially, there is no organization going by the
“CIA Korea station.” Instead, the Office of Regional Study inside the
US Embassy plays the role of CIA station here in Korea.

Xinhua, China’s state news agency, may be changing it’s tone on the issue of revisionist Japanese textbooks.:

According to the major Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun, of all
11,035 state and private junior high schools across Japan, only 48
adopted the Fusosha textbook, merely 0.4 percent of the total and far
less than the publisher’s target of 10 percent…

… I don’t remember the Chinese press so clearly mentioning the fact
that less than one percent of Japanese schools use the textbook, or the
fact that some Japanese people don’t like it either. Progress? I wonder
if they are saying these things more clearly for internal consumption
as well, or Xinhua is tired of receiving the same counterarguments.

Google Earth is a spy satellite for the masses. Not only can you get the South Korean presidential compound Cheong Wa Dae, David at Jujuflop noted in the comments that you can get the Chinese Communist Party’s well-guarded compound of Zhongnanhai. Now Curzon of Coming Anarchy turns .:

Pyongyang, North Korea. Note the Ryugong in the upper-left corner.

And the Wannabe Lawyer likes Google Earth too, and says it will cause trouble for one particularly litigious patent holder.:

Virtual-Map, a business entity that specialises in converting public domain data into private ‘intellectual’ property,
had been successful so far in demanding extortionate amounts from
people who make use of their maps. What they have yet to face though,
is competition. No longer.
Now that I have , I don’t see how I would ever need Streetdirectory.com anymore. In fact, I can’t wait for the day when everyone in Singapore starts using . Then its bye bye Virtual-Map, find a new business model please.

There were a number of items in Malaysian blogs about this event, but the NSFW Asian Sex Gazette gives a good summary.:

Kuala Lumpur - A Malaysian men’s magazine may be censured for a cover featuring
a seminude female model draped in the national flag that has sparked an uproar
among Muslims, a senior official said Monday.

The pictures in the August edition of Sensasi Lelaki, or Men’s Sensation, is an
insult to the national flag and disrespectful to the country as it prepares to
mark National Day on Wednesday, said Deputy Internal Minister Noh Omar.

Brand New Malaysian has a picture:

Before anyone gets too upset at the Malaysians for being too uptight, please remember that the West also has its share of fundamentalists and flag worshipers. Why in the US, the issue of making flag burning a capital offense emerges every six months or so. No one in the US would tolerate anyone wrapping themselves in the flag like that. (link nswf near the bottom):

Err, both Japundit and Barbarian Envoy alerted me to this piece of incredible weirdness, OPERATION NUKE KOREA, you don’t even need to scroll to read… just sit back and enjoy the piano.

Travel writer Carl Parks notes another reason why it’s dangerous to use drugs in Bali.:

Few Western tourists actually arrive in
Bali with drugs, since Kuta and other beach towns are overrun with
local Balinese drug dealers who quietly whisper their sales offers near
many discos and nightclubs in Kuta, Legian, and Seminyak. So you buy a
couple of tablets, walk up to the nightclub for an evening of partying,
and find yourself searched and arrested at the front door. An
Australian model (Michelle Leslie) was recently arrested with two tabs
of E in her purse as she approached a nightclub, and now faces 10 years
in prison.
How in the world does the police know to search your
bag or purse? The answer is obvious. The police are the drug dealers in
Bali. Or at least the drug dealers cooperate with the police to turn in
their victims, collect the reward, and most likely enjoy the return of
their drugs. This scam has been going on in Thailand for several
decades, but now it enjoys official endorsement by the Indonesian
government.

One of the first questions asked by the foreign ministry, who needed to authorize my journalists’ visa, was: Do you like Chinese food?" My boss told me to be very diplomatic in the interview, so instead of saying "I prefer Thai," I said: "Yes, especially Sichuan."

I still like Chinese food, though I’m a bit nervous about eating anything here.:

More on the food scandals gripping China - news just in that the
majority of food production, handled by mom-and-pop producers, do not
meet even rudimentary safety standards. An article on Asia News Network
carries the story on why you can’t trust anything you eat in the country…

In 2003, the output value of China’s food industry reached 1.29
trillion yuan (US$161.62 billion), nearly 20 per cent up on 2002. In
the first six months of last year, the industry achieved an output
value of nearly 710 billion yuan ($421.95 billion), a 20 per cent
increase over the same period in 2003.
But reports in the local press say more than 70 per cent of China’s
106,000 registered food makers are family-run outfits of fewer than 10
people. And at least 60 per cent of these cannot meet basic sanitary
standards.Professor Luo Yunbo, dean of China Agricultural University’s college
of food science and nutritional engineering said: "China does not lack
regulations, but there’s a lack of unified supervision and control.

At least food across the Strait is safe… Oh my god is that the chef?!?

I have Taiwan blogger Brian David Phillips on my blogroll and in my Bloglines reader but, truth be told, I never really take the time to read his stuff long enough to figure out what he’s talking about.:

Folks will notice that I have added a new links category in the rightside bar here at Life of Brian . . . hypnocasts which is directly above hypnoblogs.
If you discover other podcasts related to hypnosis, neurolinguistic
programming, influence, focused trance, meditation, changework, and the
like . . . then let me know the address of the webpages that support
the feed and I’ll check ‘em out and add it to the hypnocasts
list (of course, I appreciate linkbacks as well). No, I do NOT mean
commercial sites with payfor mp3 downloads or even free mp3 downloads,
this list is for podcasts or sites that distribute information
interactively or on a semi-regular basis.

Atanu Dey has a must-read opus on the differences between Singapore and India, I’ve had a number of arguments in which I’ve either defended Lee Kwan-yew or lambasted him, but Atanu’s item actually leaves me speechless.:

To root out corruption you can use all sorts of means. You can lecture school children to take an oath to eschew corruption (as in here), you can prosecute a poor milkman for diluting milk (as in here)
— that is, basically you can start at the bottom and implement an
idiotic policy of targeting marginal players while shielding the really
corrupt. Or you can do it by catching the big fish and handing out
exemplary punishments and — this is the important point — publicizing
it so that anyone who is even minimally aware understands that
corruption is not tolerated by the society no matter how powerful the
person is.
This is what I heard. A certain minister, very close to Lee Kuan
Yew, in charge of housing (or some such) was involved in some
kick-backs. The word went around that the guy will surely get off easy
since he was in the inside circle. Lee asked the minister to see him.
The meeting was brief. Two days later the minister blew his brains out.
The message was clear: zero tolerance.

Michael Turton also has some thoughts on Lee’s recent comments on China’s anti-secession law.

This looks promising, Indi Blog Review a profile of Desi or not so Desi Blog(ger)s. First subject, Patrix and Nerve Endings Firing Away.

After being one of the bloggers who ran with the Reuters item saying that Sister Hibiscus was the target of a crackdown, I’ll hold off on comment on this item in the Telegraph suggesting that the CCP are seeking to ban the Mongolian Cow Sour Yoghurt Super
Girl Contest because it’s too democratic.:

China’s propaganda tsars are even less
impressed by the second year of the Mongolian Cow Sour Yoghurt Super
Girl Contest, to give it its full title. One official of the main
broadcasting regulator has said that the show could be taken off the
air if it fails to correct its “worldliness”. Critics from CCTV, the
state-run broadcaster, initially labelled the show vulgar, boorish and
lacking in social responsibility.
Sources said that censors were concerned that the democratic
methods used to select the winner from 120,000 entrants could stir
trouble. For weeks fans have been crowding shopping centres across the
country, carrying posters of their favorite contestants in an attempt
to rally votes for them. On Friday the streets of Changsha, the capital
of Hunan, were swamped with thousands of fans who celebrated until
dawn. Security guards were called in last week at two shopping centres
after Super Girl fans became unruly.

Kim Jong-il’s online public relations site has just received praise from UPI.:

Since it was
launched last summer, North Korea’s Web site to promote the country
with foreigners in mind has taken many by surprise, not least because
of its sleek look and well-organized contents.

There are currently about 30 Web sites backed by Pyongyang, but most are like http://www.uriminzokkiri.com,
which is a site largely devoted to singing the praises of Kim Jong-Il
and his father, as well as the virtues of the hermit nation. In
contrast, Naenara is available not only in Korean, but also seven other
languages, which also include the languages spoken in the five
countries that make up the ongoing six-party talks over the disarming
of North Korea, namely English, Russian, Chinese and Japanese, in
addition to French and German.

I often give UPI a pass over their links to South Korea’s Unification Church (aka, Moonies) but I really must question the agency’s editorial independence from its owner and church head Sun Myung Moon if they consider this to  have a "sleek look and well-organized contents."

Via D J McGuire an item from Taiwan News Online on - among other things - Cisco, Censorship and China:

Gutmann was basing his arguments on those made in his book titled
"Losing the New China - A Story of American Commerce, Desire and
Betrayal," which discusses in detail how American businesses played a
role in restricting freedom of thought in China, in turn betraying the
American values of liberty, democracy, and human rights. Doing business in China could potentially
endanger the national security of Taiwan and the United States as well
as violate democratic values, American scholar-businessman Ethan
Gutmann argued yesterday at a forum held in Taipei.

On a related note, Ian Lamont points to a comprehensive study on China’s Great Firewall.

Warning, the Asia Financial Crisis is coming back! I was going to point to an item in which Andy Xie of Morgan Stanley makes that argument, but I’ll save analysis of Xie for the next China Economic Roundup. Instead, some annecdotal evidence. Why does AsiaPundit sense a crisis? He sees similarities between now and 1997. For instance, we have hot money inflows, overcapacities, and …

this exact same thing happened to me South Korea in 1997 just weeks before the Thai baht crashed!!:

I
once went to a Baskin Robbins ice cream shop here in Korea and asked
for a chocolate shake. I was told they could only make mocha,
strawberry or melon shakes (not the exact flavors because I can’t
remember the exact ones but it doesn’t really matter). Being that they
do advertise themselves as having "31 Flavors," I politely offered to
pay the same price they charge for those options except I would like
chocolate, please.

The worker freaked out. "It’s not on the menu," I was told.
I know," I responded, "but can you not just make one and charge me the same as any other?"
Discussion
among co-workers took place, a phone call was made and the manager came
out from the back to tell me that no, a chocolate shake was impossible.

We’re all screwed!!

Speaking of economic bubbles, I had thought that Shanghai’s recent crackdown of was a draconian but understandable measure. I haven’t read up on Seoul’s problems but ouch!:

On the demand side, the government will raise the capital gains tax
on owners of two houses to 50 percent from the current 9 to 36 percent.
Property holdings tax on apartments and unused land will be raised to 1 percent by 2019 from the current 0.15 percent.
The
assessment base of the comprehensive real estate tax, a national tax
designed to crack down on real estate speculation, will be raised to
100 percent of the standard price gradually by 2009 from the current 50
percent.
And owners of properties worth more than 600 million
won will be subject to a comprehensive real estate tax beginning next
year. Currently, the tax targets people with homes worth more than 900
million won.

And still more bubbling in Hong Kong! We’re all screwed! Blame Baskin Robbins and their inability to make chocolate milkshakes in Pusan.

And on milkshakes, I’m so happy the Brits left Hong Kong with a functional legal system.:

Nancy Kissel slept alongside her husband Robert’s body for two nights, therefore she is not guilty
of murder.  He was into black gay porn websites, cocaine-fuelled sodomy
and other normal, healthy investment bankers’ pastimes, therefore she
is not guilty of murder.  She was helping to organize the United Jewish
Congregation annual dinner, therefore she is not guilty of murder.  Her
handling of pre-Dad’s-visit rotting-corpse- disposal issues was a tad
inexpert, therefore she is not guilty of murder.  The Tai Lam Women’s
Prison baseball team are in high spirits today.

The image of Kissel is snatched without attribution from a Yahoo! image search. Curiously, the first result is Phil!

Congrats, Phil. In a few years your mug will show up in a poorly researched true-crime novel.

Warning to Olympians, if you beat out India for the gold then Bollywood will be mean to you.:

Ahmed Al Maktoum, the shooter from Dubai, is that an assassin from Dubai in the film Sarkar
is referred to as an Olympic gold medalist in shooting. Al Maktoum won
an Olympic gold in the double trap last year, beating India’s
Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, and feels it’s a derogatory reference to
him.

More on lingerie model Michelle Leslie’s ‘conversion’ at IndCoup:

Indonesia is an unpredictable place. You should always expect
the unexpected. Maybe it’s something they put in the water. But
whatever it is, the latest news concerning the Aussie model recently
arrested in Bali for drugs possession is simply astonishing to say the
least. Because, right out of the blue, Michelle Leslie, who was only
recently posing in raunchy photoshoots covered in nothing more than
body paint is now donning the full Muslim headdress!

But why? Bali is a Hindu island after all. And what’s more, her
actions have caused such an uproar back in Aus that her family have had
to make a public apology to offended Muslims who quite understandably
think she’s taking the piss.

You can’t judge a book by the cover, but you can usually judge a movie from the trailer; Danny Bloom says Geisha sucks.

Having recently seen the trailer for Arthur Golden’s Memoirs of a Geisha,
which Hollywood has tried to turn into a movie to hit world movie
screens for Christmas viewing (and Oscar nominations time), I can’t
help but feel this film will be a dud.
Why? Well, I’m not a
New York Times film critic, and I don’t have a Ph.D. in film studies,
but one look at the trailer and it’s obvious that the American
producers erred bigtime by deciding to cast Chinese actresses in the
roles of the Japanese characters in Golden’s book.
For one
thing, the big-name Chinese actresses “look” like Chinese women, from
their faces to their hair to their body language, and they speak
English in the movie with Chinese-accented English. It’s obvious they
are not Japanese. The film becomes a travesty of movie-making.

It’s Blog Day! And no one gave me a present!

Jeff Ooi celebrates with a tour of the Malaysian blogosphere. Kenny Sia celebrates with a tour of the Malaysian babe-o-sphere.

In Singapore, Mr Wang disagrees with the linking policy of metablog Tomorrow.sg, which is - essentially - if you put something in the public domain… it’s PUBLIC!:

At one level, Mr Wang agrees with Tomorrow’s position, for the reasons
that Agagooga has stated. Mr Wang himself regularly links to other
bloggers’ posts without seeking their permission. Although "Did Mr Wang Say So?" is on a much smaller scale than Tomorrow, the same principles ought to apply.
On the other hand, Mr Wang uses his brain when choosing his
hyperlinks. And Mr Wang considers it inappropriate for Tomorrow to take
an overly cavalier approach to this task. It is one thing to say, "Oh,
YOU put your personal story on the Internet yourself, don’t blame US
for publicising it." This kind of excuse, while not entirely invalid,
is a poor excuse for the Tomorrow editors to display bad editorial
taste, to make bad editorial choices and to be lousy human beings.
Tomorrow (or any other blog) is perfectly free to act as a
screaming tabloid if it wants to. It doesn’t necessarily follow that it
is a good thing for Tomorrow (or any other blog) to act as a screaming
tabloid. And the fact that people didn’t stick "Respect My Privacy"
banners or buttons all over their own blogs doesn’t mean that a
Tomorrow editor can’t exercise some good judgment on his own accord to
do what’s right.

AsiaPundit doesn’t mind being a tabloid blog. Asia has a three easily available English-language broadsheets - the AWSJ, IHT and FT all nicely acronymed to increase appeal in Singapore - and it could use a good tabloid. Further, most of the Tomorrow.sg-linked blogs are Blogger hosted. If you want your blog to be private… password protect it. Duh!

But speaking of Tabloid Crap, that’s the category under which :

According to the JoongAng Ilbo (Korean), Koreans fart a lot.
Hey, don’t blame me for this one — blame the JoongAng. Anyway, the
piece said that while it might be hard to draw a hard and fast
conclusion, one could guess that Koreans break wind particularly often
due to the large amount of gas-producing foods they consume — beans,
veggies, fruits and raw foods. The rising consumption of milk doesn’t
help matters, and those with trouble digesting lactose and the elderly
with weakening digestive power are particularly susceptible to
becoming, in the colorful choice of words by the JoongAng, “gas shells”
(like in the WWI artillery round).

And the JoongAng Ilbo, I recall, is a broadsheet.

Hey, Google solved that East Sea/Sea of Japan problem that was causing all of those DNS attacks across the East Sea Sea of Japan body of water that separates the two countries.:

Oh while today is blog day and the day Malaysia gained independence, tomorrow, September 1st, is the day Tibet lost it.

China has declared it will ban tobacco advertising and cigarette machines, things that Imagethief notes, don’t actually exist.:

… I’m not really sure of the impact that this treaty will have,
regardless of the vigor of enforcement. In my time in China, I have
seen almost no cigarette advertising that I can recall, and exactly
zero cigarette vending machines. I have, however, seen cigarettes being
sold in every corner store in the country, in every restaurant (just
ask the waitress to bring you a pack) and by a nearly infinite number
of street vendors operating from suitcases, cardboard boxes and
blankets rolled out flat on the sidewalk. So I’m not sure a ban of
cigarette machines will keep the devil-sticks away from the grasping
hands of China’s innocent babes.
A ban of sidewalks and restaurants might have some effect.

While AsiaPundit acknowledges that smoking is harmful, he doesn’t believe that banning tobacco companies from event sponsorship is a good idea. And it’s a shame China doesn’t have any tobacco advertising, the pre-revolutionary stuff was rather keen.

The bans, no matter how useless, may still be a positive step for China’s health. It was not so long ago that Japan was also a nation of smokers. Now, the government is auctioning its 200,000 yen luxury ashtrays.:

There once was a time in Japan when tobacco was king, with puffing
considered the norm and non-smokers treated as second-class citizens.
Those days are long gone as smoking is now banned on trains, in
stations, in certain areas of the city, and in other areas where large
groups of people gather.
One of the more comical stories to come out of the no smoking era is the report that officials in Yamagata, Japan are planning to auction off 28 cast metal “luxury ashtrays”
that were once positioned at various locations around municipal
offices. The ashtrays are no longer necessary since smoking is now
banned in government buildings.

At Far Outliers, some reminiscing from a Chinese ‘volunteer’ from the Korean War.

One afternoon during the "airing grievances" session [among Chinese
POWs in Korea], the medic said something almost incredible, though
there must have been some truth to the story. He told us: "When our
former division suffered heavy casualties near Wonsan, we rushed over
to evacuate the wounded men. There were hundreds of them lying on a
hillside. I was naive and just went ahead bandaging those crying for
help. But our director told us to check the insides of the men’s
jackets first. If the insignia of a hammer crossed with a cycle was
there, that man must be shipped back immediately and given all medical
help. So we followed his orders. All those men who had the secret sign
in their jackets were Party members. We left behind lots of ordinary
men like ourselves."

Not many people get to take in the Communist Party retreat at Baidaihe. That’s a shame, it sounds like fun.

The waitresses seemed dainty and neat after the big Russian women of
the night before. Then they disappeared into a side room where a lot of
good-natured shouting and screamimg was going on. Some women were
egging someone on in a drinking contest, Mr Dong explained. I thought
the waitresses had gone in to restore order. But then Mr Dong said "It
is the fuwuyuan who are daring the leaders to drink …" One
red-faced man tried to escape but was physically manhandled back into
the room by these petite butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-ther-mouths girls.
Then after a crescendo of squealing and chanting, three men emerged
looking bedraggled and reeking of baijiu.
"These fuwuyuan
are very naughty," said Mr Dong, grinning. "They use very rude words to
make the men drink, saying they are not men and can’t make their wife
happy …"
As we got up and left the dining room, we passed the side
room and saw one man passed out on the floor. The waitresses were just
giggling.
"He is one of the Beijing city party leaders," said Mr Dong. "He won the contest."

The Aseanist refers to an Asia Times article on the shifting of alliances in the region.:

India and South Korea are sitting on the fence and could go either way
depending on how events play themselves out. For example, Chinese
support for Pakistani aggression could put India on the side of the US
against China, while aggressive and unilateral military action by the
US could solidify an Asian alliance. The current Sino-Indian
rapprochement could also be unraveled by a flare-up over their
territorial disputes in Aksai China and Arunachel Pradesh, energy
competition on the world stage and China’s encroachment into India’s
"sphere of influence" as seen by its improving relations with
Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka, attempts to join the South Asian
Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and growing naval presence
in the Indian Ocean.

The maker of political film Singapore Rebel has surrendered his camera and tapes to the police.:

A Singaporean film maker who could be jailed for making a documentary
on an opposition politician has surrendered his video camera and tapes
to police investigators.
Martyn See told AFP the equipment and
six existing tapes of "Singapore Rebel," a documentary about Chee Soon
Juan, secretary-general of the Singapore Democratic Party, were handed
over on Monday evening.
He was told to surrender the tapes,
including two master copies, and the digital video camera after police
questioned him a second time last week about the documentary.
"I
have no idea when they will return or even if they will return at all,"
See said. "They just said they need the camera and tapes to investigate
my case which was violating the Films Act."
Singapore’s Films
Act bans political advertising using films or videos, as well as movies
directed towards any political end such as promoting political parties.

Singapore’s People’s Action Party controls all of the press, which do nothing but positive coverage of the party. You’d think someone would try to get Channel News Asia’s stuff seized by the cops.:

Mr Yap Keng Ho aka Uncle Yap, an activist in Singapore, made a police report today against CNA. Uncle Yap is asking the police to look into two programmes by the state-controlled local broadcaster ChannelNewsAsia or CNA, Success Stories and Up Close. These programmes can also be considered "party political films" under the Films Act.

Why get a spy satellite when you could use Google Earth?:

South Korea is discussing with the United States measures to ban
private American companies from showing satellite photos of South
Korea’s presidential office Cheong Wa Dae, the Defense Security Command
(DSC) and other facilities related to national security on the Internet.
"The
National Security Council is discussing the matter with the U.S. side,"
Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Man-soo said. "At the moment, we have no
way under current laws to prevent U.S. companies from taking satellite
photos (of Korean security facilities) and releasing them publicly as
part of commercial activities."
Kim was responding to a report in
the daily Segye Times that said search portal Google has a service
called Google Earth that makes available images of South Korea’s
presidential office, the DSC and naval and air force bases.

Cool! Look, it’s President Rho’s house!

Google Earth is currently not available on Mac, but I would be interested in seeing if anyone can get me aerial of Zhongnanhai.

Visit OneFreeKorea for the Carnival of Revolutions and the North Korea news update.

Also from Korea:

No judge, no jury, no trial, oh by the way, your father is a Japanese collaborator and a traitor to Korea.

Aussie lingerie model Michelle Leslie, under arrest for drug possession in Indonesia, has changed her faith, the Swanker notes.:

So Michelle Leslie has gone from this… to this.

Quite the contrast.  It seems Michelle has found God:

"Michelle as a Muslim made the decision to wear the hijab
(head-covering) to find solace with God, not for any other purpose,"
family spokesman Sean Mulcahy said yesterday.

This is just a hunch, but AsiaPundit suspects Michelle wasn’t wearing a hijab when she was nabbed with the ecstasy tablets.

AsiaPundit was going to link to at least one post from new group blog Paris Indonesia today, but they were all so good he couldn’t decide. Read the whole thing.

From Angry Chinese Blogger, 101 ways to tell you live in China.:

Spittoons are
considered a foreign contrivance that has no place in Asian society. As
are cheese and non-smoking sections in maternity hospitals.
You
get into the back of a Taxi cab and find that it has no safety belts,
but that the seats are still in the plastic wrappers that they were
delivered in.
You can go to prison for trying to hold an election, but not for rigging one….

Cambodian strongman Hun Sen is not someone I usually agree with, and I’m sure his comment here has a touch of xenophobia, but I heard enough tales about international aid workers in Cambodia and East Timor to understand his point. Via Cambodia Morning:

(Kyodo) _ Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said Monday the foreign aid given to Cambodia every year is spent mostly on .
In the year 2002 alone, he said, some $115 million was spent on technical assistance.
Hun
Sen told a gathering of government officials that much of that money is
spent on first-class air tickets and five-star hotels for foreign
experts, who sometimes come to Cambodia only to polish the results of
hard work done by Cambodians.

Two great Taiwan blogs, Jujuflop and View from Taiwan, have something to say about an AP article on the alleged dwindling support for independence.   

Either
Western journalists do not have the most basic understanding of Taiwan,
or they think it is too complex to explain to their readers. That is my
conclusion after having read the latest article about Taiwan which
fails completely to dig beneath the surface and get any more nuanced
than describing a battle between absolute independence and absolute
unification.

AsiaPundit has posted a few items about healthcare in China recently, from Marginal Revolution, Amit Varma and Sepia Mutiny, a disturbing NYT item on an Indian maternity ward.:

Just as the painful ordeal of childbirth finally ended and Nesam
Velankanni waited for a nurse to lay her squalling newborn on her
chest, the maternity hospital’s ritual of extortion began.
Before
she even glimpsed her baby, she said, a nurse whisked the infant away
and an attendant demanded a bribe. If you want to see your child,
families are told, the price is $12 for a boy and $7 for a girl, a lot
of money for slum dwellers scraping by on a dollar a day. The practice
is common here in the city, surveys confirm.
Mrs. Velankanni was
penniless, and her mother-in-law had to pawn gold earrings that had
been a precious marriage gift so she could give the money to the
attendant, or ayah. Mrs. Velankanni, a migrant to Bangalore who had
been unprepared for the demand, wept in frustration.

Another Malaysian politician has joined the blogosphere.

Perhaps the collapse of the CCP won’t be brought about by laid-off SOE employees or aggrieved farmers. No, perhaps the future belongs to the young.:

Chinese players of the "World of Warcraft" online game have begun an Internet signature campaign protesting Chinese government plans to limit the country’s online gamers to three hours of consecutive playtime.

"These restrictions violate the rights of online game players," one
Chinese player wrote on the petition. "Trying to prevent young players
from being addicted is good, but this new system will be a total
failure."

As of August 29, more than 1,000 Chinese gamers had signed the petition opposing implementation of the new time limits.

Red Herring reports that the crackdown on Sister Hibiscus is less than promised.:

If
there’s been pressure on Sister Hibiscus from on high, it comes as news
to Bokee.com (formerly BlogChina.com), which hosts her blog. A
spokesman for Bokee.com flatly denied that any such instructions had
been handed down. “No one from the government has said anything to us
about Sister Hibiscus,” said Mai Tian, director of Bokee.com’s
Interactivity Center.
Mr.
Mai noted that her blog, at furongjiejie.bokee.com, is still being
updated several times a day and remains, by far, one of Bokee’s most
visited blogs.
A Beijing Youth Daily
reporter who covers society, Internet, and entertainment also said she
had heard nothing about a government pronouncement on Sister Hibiscus.
Jeremy Goldkorn, Beijing-based publisher of Danwei.org, a web site devoted to media in China, compares
Sister Hibiscus to Gary Brolsma, the Saddle Brook, New Jersey man who
rode to unwelcome fame when a self-shot video of his lip-sync and dance
routine to Romanian dance-pop tune “Numa Numa” hit the web.
“That kid is conspicuously absent from Hollywood and the American news media today, and that certainly isn’t because of
some clampdown,” said Mr. Goldkorn. “The whole idea of a Furong Jiejie
clampdown is absurd.”

Rebecca McKinnion has some words for the sister.

Now the important thing to understand about Sister H., who is plain and
not very talented, is that her stardom was basically the result of
bloggers and chatroom denizens making fun of her - a situation which in
her egotism and lack of sophistication she herself failed to
understand.  The plot only thickens from there.

And also for Reuters:

Usually, when somebody claims to have been cracked down upon, a
responsible journalist will make the effort to get at least
off-the-record confirmation from official Chinese contacts (even if
indirectly via friends of Chinese officials or people who work in
Chinese media organizations who tend to know about crackdowns) that
such a crackdown has in fact occurred. When I worked as a journalist in
China, I myself ran across situations in which artists and writers
claimed to have been censored when the reality was they just weren’t
very talented - but were trying to salvage their careers by claiming
political victimhood and getting buzz with Western journalists. The
tactic works surprisingly often, I’m afraid.

In other Asian fraud news, Jeff Ooi has outed a photographer who wasn’t what he claimed to be:

There is a far bigger question to the fraudulent claims made by Natgeo photographer wannabe.
The integrity of photography website PhotoMalaysia.com,
which allows the fraudster prominent visibility in its online space and
on-ground activities distinctively related to it, is now severely in
question!
This
is a live story of how a popular web forum has been found to condone a
fraud, and despite the fact that its administrators have been notified
of questionable claims made in their website, had chosen to endorse the
fraudster.

You know your blog is influential when state media plagiarizes it:

China Economic Net, which is is a website under the state-owned Economic Daily (经济日报), has pirate-published a Danwei article verbatim:
China Economic Net: The final week of super voice girls
Danwei: The final week of TV sensation Super Voice Girls
Socialism is the best!

Big news in Malaysia, Dr Mahathir has returned his Protons, the national car that was part of his legacy.:

In a move that shocked many, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad
has returned all his official vehicles belonging to Proton, in what
seems to be his latest show of displeasure. It is by far the loudest
show of protest that the Proton advisor has undertaken.
In a story so hot that Wong Chun Wai penned it for
The Star, where he reported sources as saying that Dr. Mahathir has
taken to using his personal vehicle to get to work, adding that he was
‘deeply hurt’ with the recent developments within Proton.

From Virginia Postrel, signs that China’s legal system is improving.:

The WaPost’s Philip Pan reports
on an extraordinary development in China: a class-action suit by rural
villagers forced into abortions and sterilizations. The key argument in
the case, which was organized by Chen Guangcheng, a self-taught legal
activist, is that these coercive measures violate a 2002 law
guaranteeing Chinese citizens "informed choice" in reproductive
matters. The country’s population-control policies are now supposed to
rely on financial incentives, not physical threats and coercion.
The lawsuit is not just a human-rights crusade. It’s a crucial test
of China’s commitment to the rule of law–a commitment that matters
greatly to the country’s economic development as well as its civil
society. Pan’s reporting suggests that central-government officials are
at least saying the right things. Toward the end of the piece, which is
well worth reading in its entirety, he interviews a central-government population-control honcho:

Yu Xuejin, a senior official with the national family planning
commission in Beijing, said his office had received complaints about
abuses in Linyi and asked provincial authorities to investigate. He
said the practices described by the farmers, including forced
sterilization and abortion, were "definitely illegal."

Lucia has some questions for the HR department running Malaysia’s space program.:

ahh… so malaysia is now in the process of selecting the right person to become the country’s first astronaut.
imagine!
854 people applied for the post! didn’t know there were so many people
that interested in going to the moon. however, it is not that easy to
get selected. there will be a series of rigorous tests going on to
short list the applicants….
well, malaysia’s vision - destination moon by 2020.
but what i don’t quite understand is the applicants are mostly in late
20s or 30s. let’s say a 32 years old is selected, and malaysia only
hope they’ll be able to send their first man as astronaut in 2020, this
means another 15 years time… by that time the 32 years old will be 48!
*blur blur*

Thailand’s government is regressing.:

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra has extended his offensive
against journalists to his own press conferences, using a hand-held
buzzer to ridicule (and refuse to answer) questions he deems
"destructive." This undignified behavior has aroused considerable anger
in the international journalistic community. Combine this with the
bizarre cabinet meeting last week where Mr. Thaksin grilled his
ministers on which of them had a penis-enlargement operation, and it
looks like the Thai government is regressing back toward infancy.

More Here!

A test on the Great Firewall.

Monday’s gratuitous shots of the female body comes to us via Japundit.:

In case you missed it, Saturday was Samba day in Tokyo.
Samba dancers from Japan and other countries gathered for the Asakusa Samba Carnival parade where they strutted their stuff to drums and whistles before hundreds of thousands of spectators.

From the Marginal Revolution a China Fact.:

…in China, where government regulations severely limit distribution
and piracy is common, Hollywood studios took in a grand total of $1.5
million (slightly more than one-tenth of a penny per capita) from
theaters in the first quarter of 2005.

In spite of that, as noted at Keywords, Hollywood sees the Chinese market as a potential cash cow.:

Writing in the Asia Times, Zafar Anjum explores why China’s film industry has netted so much love from Hollywood, while India hasn’t produced a single art-house hit since Lagaan
won the best foreign language film Oscar in 2001. Part of his answer is
that the Indian film industry is content to live off of its loyal
viewers:

India’s bright directors at home don’t
give a damn about the global entertainment market. For them, netting in
the desis (natives) everywhere generates enough moolah.

Gateway Pundit informs us of the passing of a Bishop in China.

Bishop Xie was arrested for "loyalty and obedience to the Pope."
This painting commemorates the 120 Chinese Martyrs canonized in the year 2000 by John Paul II.
An elderly Chinese Catholic Bishop who had been jailed for 28 years because of his faith has died of leukemia in China:
Monsignor
Xie Shiguang, the bishop of Mingdong, died of leukemia on Thursday.
Xie, 88, was first arrested in 1955 by Chinese authorities "because of
his loyalty and obedience to the pope," and released a year later,
Vatican radio reported late Saturday.
He was arrested
again in 1958 and jailed until 1980, Vatican Radio said. Xie was also
imprisoned from 1984-1987, and finally for two years starting in 1990,
and was kept under surveillance by authorities until his death, the
radio report said.

North Korea may or may not return to the six-party talks. Via the Marmot, an argument from Cato that stopping getting North Korea from getting nukes :

The most recent round of six-party talks (involving China, Russia,
Japan, South Korea, North Korea and the United States) made, at best,
incremental progress toward a solution to the crisis. Throughout the
negotiations, the U.S. goal has remained the same: a complete,
verifiable and irreversible end to North Korea’s nuclear program.
A
growing number of influential Americans are dissatisfied with such a
“narrow” agenda, however. Republican Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas,
Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution and Michael Horowitz of
the Hudson Institute are among those who demand that the United States
add North Korea’s human rights practices and the issue of regime
“transformation” to the list of topics the next round of six-party
talks must address. Congressional passage of the North Korean Human
Rights Act last year points to a similar strategy.
That approach would be a profound mistake.

I’ve said before that no one in Washington should be losing any sleep over the Sino-Russian wargames the same can’t be said for Pyongyang.:

Unless this isn’t a “War game”, but the preparation for staging for a lightning invasion of North Korea.
Not by us, but by the Communist Chinese and the Russians, who both
share a border and an unfortunate history with the Hermit Kingdom.
There are only three routes out of North Korea into China. The
Chinese have spent the last 4 years building elaborate fences to
control those three exits. The very last thing the Chinese want is
millions of famine suffering refugees streaming into China, and the
same goes for Russia.
And the very last thing either of these countries wants is one more
place where the United States has allies sharing a border with their
country. One way or another, North Korea is going to fall, its just a
question of will it be a “controlled fall” or a total catastrophe. If
nothing is done, catastrophe is assured, therefore, something must be
done, but the question is “by whom”. China has a great interest in
seeing that it’s a “controlled fall”, and so does Russia, and they both
have an interest in seeing that we stay out of it.

For more, check out Martyn’s latest post at the Peking Duck.

Finally, Mr Miyagi has new digs and his very own niamod!

(more…)

The bombing of a ferry in Basilan  results in the government pushing anew for an an ant-terrorism law, and suggestions there are terrorists on the loose.

The comedy of errors concerning today’s quasi-holiday aside (sarcastically commented on by Peter Wallace), the weekend has been spent by the contending forces marshaling their strength for this week’s confrontations in the House. The Socialist opposition has been busy using pets for political propaganda; last Saturday the de la Salle community held another forum and meeting (no word yet on the consensus, if any, that emerged from that exercise: former NEDA chief Cielito Habito, Akbayan Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, myself and Prof. July Teehangkee were the speakers); the group I belong to, Citizens for TRUTH held a candle-lighting ceremony at the foot of the Ninoy Aquino Monument in Makati City (JB Baylon has an account of the activity);  civil society has sent out yet another call for people to go to the House on Tuesday; and former DSWD Sec. Dinky Soliman and Friends (the "Hyatt 10") will be holding a press conference at the Metropolitan Club near Rockwell from 10 am to noon pm on Tuesday, to begin unburdening themselves of some of the wrongdoings they observed as members of the cabinet. The Palace, too, has to contend with bad press: Newsbreak today unveils the means by which the manipulation of election-related documents allegedly took place in the premises of the House of Representatives. PCIJ publishes an expose on how agriculture funds were diverted for election-related purposes (there’s also a story on the gift that keeps on giving: Xerox machines, and one on how some army officers helped the President in the elections). There’s also this article, which gives a hint or two about the sort of information the Hyatt 10 has up its sleeves.

The idea of all these activities (which the bad press won’t hurt) are that they’re meant to derail the perceived Palace-determined schedule for throwing out the impeachment complaint.

Newsstand has blogged on why he’s not surprised the opposition seems to be playing perpetual catch-up; the opposition is rushing to clinch the deal, and scuttlebutt is the Nacionalista Party is waiting in the wings, hoping it will achieve the distinction of being the group that made the difference (it can then glory in being more effective than the divided Liberal Party was). I can’t quite explain it, but it seems to me dangerous for the opposition to go hell-for-leather in so obvious a manner (as the Inquirer editorial clearly explains), and with the risk of so obviously failing, at this point. It would be better for the opposition to keep things in committee at least for the duration of the recess, when a political commentator I talked to suggests the opposition (of whatever stripe) could focus on building momentum in the streets and in the provinces, and thereby have better chances for a real slam-bang of a showdown after Congress resumes its session in October. The President and her people might start feeling the pinch by then, and the usual suspects who can dole out informal cash might begin to tire (or run out of money) to keep financing efforts to retain the loyalty of congressmen.

But then again I think Ricky Carandang’s observations two weeks ago about the Speaker’s problems, remains valid: my column today, The Speaker’s Position, I addresses precisely that question. If the Speaker’s sole concern is what will help him establish parliamentary government, I suggest he’s better off letting the impeachment proceed to trial at the Senate.

Of course enough time has passed to influence the senate. The President needs only eight votes to keep her job. The resignation of SBMA Chairman Francisco Licuanan III is being touted as a the result of a deal between the President and Senator Richard Gordon (which Gordon denies, but which Max Soliven thinks might have some truth to it). Whatever the truth, the President may have the numbers: Angara, Recto, Gordon, Enrile, Santiago, Lapid, Revilla are often confidently named as the ones who can be expected to vote to acquit (that only leaves one more needed). As it is, the Speaker is sending mixed signals. Sec. Rigoberto Tiglao, however, argues that impeachment, even if it reaches the trial stage, doesn’t have a leg to stand on as far as the charges are concerned.

In the blogosphere, there are some new blogs worth noticing. First is Prof. July Teehangkee’s spanking new blog, in which he discusses "a continuing crisis of legitimation." The second is the first authentically pro-administration blog of note, ever: Rational Views (naughty comments about the great Sassy Lawyer to the contrary notwithstanding). As an aside, Edwin Lacierda (who guests today at 10 am on Karmina Konstantino’s morning show at ANC) pointed it out to people: Newsstand credits Lacierda with lighting a light bulb over the administration’s head; in an e-mail, Lacierda says I was the one to point out the curious absence of a pro-administration blog; perhaps it’s all serendipity! The third is one found by way of New Economist, the blog of a London-based macroeconomist, who noticed and pointed out Go Figure, the blog of Filipino economist Roehlano Briones.

Also, there’s Big Mango with part three of his series on Understanding Nation Building; and Howie Severino on why local government officials like the President.

In the cultural sphere, too see & log has reproduced a paper by Prof. Jaime Veneracion on Rizal’s Madrid: The Roots of the Ilustrado Concept of Autonomy which makes for an interesting read, indeed; Adel Gabot isn’t amused by AXN channel turning a TV show with black humor into slapstick comedy in its ads; Cogito Ergo Sam writes on Fado music.

The punditocracy has Randy David takes an optimistic look at young politicians; Fr. Joaquin Bernas explaining his views on impeachment (one can detect increasing frustration and even irritation, on his part, with the House); Jojo Robles has a bone to pick with Imee Marcos; Jose Sison examines the curious refusal of the Armed Forces to explain why they accompanied a police raid; Marichu Villanueva examines diplomatic posts being traded for political support; and Iraqis Should Draft Constitution Without US Interference was my Arab News column for last week.

Singapore has started the world’s first toilet college, via CSR Asia.:

Loo cleaning will reach new heights in Singapore with the setting up of
the world’s first Toilet College, organizers said Sunday.
Funded partly by government agencies, the classes starting in October aim to change the perception of toilet cleaning as a menial job accompanied by
poor morale and pay to one with expanded responsibilities, higher salaries and possibilities of travel for those concerned about sanitation elsewhere.
Jack Sim, president of the World Toilet Organization headquartered here, is behind the college to be set up at the Republic Polytechnic, where courses will teach cleaners to use new equipment and techniques from Japan.

Tokyo Times takes a further look at Japan’s developing market for upscale latex sex dolls:

However perhaps not surprisingly, this demand for dolls has resulted in
the opening of a downtown establishment for silicon sex seekers. The
difference being that rather than having the dolls shipped out to
customers, LaLa rents out private rooms that are furnished with a bath,
toilet, and most importantly, a latex lover.

 

In an attempt to get the low-down on this burgeoning business, Dacapo
magazine sent two intrepid students to try out the service. First up,
so to speak, was 21-year-old Hiroshi. Opting to watch a racy video
beforehand to get himself in the mood, he was disappointed to find
that, “After I undressed her, I was upset to see that her head hadn’t
been properly screwed on.”

Actually, I had can recall having at least one flesh-and-blood partner who also didn’t have her head properly screwed on.

The Bharateeya Blog Mela is at Ashish’s Niti.

As Abhi notes, this is sick.:

Q: So how does a terrorist make money these days to fund his activities?
A: Porn.  BBC News reports (thanks for the tip Srinath):

Rebels in India’s north-eastern state of Tripura are making
pornographic films to raise money for their separatist campaign,
officials say.
The information has come from surrendered guerrillas of the National Liberation Front of Tripura (NLFT), according to police.
They say the rebels are forcing captured tribal women, and some men, to take part in the films.
The films are then dubbed to be sold in India and neighbouring countries.

Come on.  It’s one thing if porn is between “willing” participants,
but to force helpless tribal people into it, and then dubbing over
their voices is just sick!

More evil from the mouthless one from Sanrio… reckless driving:

Super Girl, the Chinese version of American Idol, has concluded. The show attracted 300 million viewers, making it a major cultural phenomena. The weirdest part of the phenomena? China had a massive outbreak of voting. ESWN translates some analysis, here the China Daily notes that democracy doesn’t always produce the best results.:

But a more fundamental question
is: How come an imitation of a democratic system ends up selecting the
singer who has the least ability to carry a tune?
Li Yuchun, the androgynous girl with the weakest voice of the top five,
has been leading in popular votes by a huge margin throughout the
season.

HK Dave notes that China has passed another law that won’t be enforced.:

According to Xinhua, a new law is to take effect March 2006 penalizing offences against public order.
From that date, there will be fines for pimps or for streetwalkers
soliciting for sex. They can be held for up to 5 days or fined up to
500 yuan if they do so in a public place.
While there are laws also against prostitution, it seems this may be
an attempt by the hidebound Chinese Communist Party to draw a line
under what it regards as acceptable bounds of morality in 21st century
China. For a quarter century, the gulf has grown between the utopian
idealism of old Marxist regulations and the public reality. Perhaps the
CCP has realized that its statute books have to better reflect the
situation as it really is, if they also want people to respect the
important laws that really matter!

Kim Jong-il’s connection with the Film Actors’ Guild in Team America wasn’t just an idle invention by the lads from South Park. The Dear Leader has long been attracted to Hollywood (Korea Times via NK Zone):

According to an apocryphal but
perhaps true story, it was during
the “studio” meeting of the Politburo
that the then 25 year-old
Kim Jong-il volunteered to take
control of the cinema industry.
Whatever his intentions, this
decision saved many people in
the industry from humiliation
and death. Kim Jong-il staged
large-scale self-criticism sessions,
but more serious punishments
were rare.
In fact, Kim Jong-il protected
his beloved cinema world during
the turbulent years of the
“Kapsan purge,” which was
probably the last large-scale
purge of top leaders and their
associates in North Korean history.
After 1970, purges were
largely isolated albeit frequent
events, not large-scale campaigns
as before.
Under Kim Jong-il’s guidance,
the movie studios were refurbished.
He arranged the best
equipment to be imported from
overseas. This sounds fine until
one remembers that this meant
the re-allocation of scarce hard
currency reserves, which could
be used for buying anything else,
from medical supplies to new
battle tanks. However, the crown
prince loved cinema, and nobody
dared question his demands.
After all, new movie cameras are
much cheaper than missile
launchers.

 

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra is seeking answers from his cabinet!

There are some politicians that I’ve grown to like since they’ve left office, I’m adding another to that very short list:

Influential Muslim cleric Abdurrahman Wahid (aka Gus Dur) and one of Indonesia’s most respected public figures (and its fourth President) has made a stand against the anti-Christian activities of violent Muslim group Front Pembela Islam (Islamic Defenders’ Front):

Wahid on Tuesday (23/8/05) demanded that President Susilo Bambang
Yudhoyono take action against the Islamic Defenders’ Front (FPI), which
is notorious for its attacks on religious minorities and nightlife
venues.
He warned that Banser, the security task force of the
nation’s largest Muslim group Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), would be mobilized
against FPI if the government fails to stop the radical group from
attacking churches. Wahid is the former leader of NU.

HK Dave at Simon World brings us a bit of interesting history.

The New York Times ran a story today about how 1963 tapes reveal that the United States was preparing to drop The Bomb on China
in the event that China invaded India again. President Kennedy and his
advisors, discussing the possibility of another invasion, strongly
believed, given his pro-India stance, that the United States should
support India against China. One of his advisors, Robert McNamara, is
heard on tape as saying that instead of introducing large numbers of
American troops, that nuclear bombs should be dropped on China instead.

From the article:

On the tapes, Robert S. McNamara, who was President Kennedy’s
defense secretary, is heard to say: "Before any substantial commitment
to defend India against China is given, we should recognize that in
order to carry out that commitment against any substantial Chinese
attack, we would have to use nuclear weapons. Any large Chinese
Communist attack on any part of that area would require the use of
nuclear weapons by the U.S., and this is to be preferred over the
introduction of large numbers of U.S. soldiers."
Mr. McNamara
said in a telephone interview on Thursday that he could not remember
the conversation, "but it is probably correct."

Via Boing Boing, a look at Japanese sex toys and other sundries (nsfw):

First, though, there’s plenty of pervasive material available right out
on the street, before you even make it into a porno store. For example,
these delicious-looking treats I found at a market - "Yokohama Bust
Pudding":

 I like how, the way the packages are set up, the girl on the right
appears to be scowling at the girl on the left, as if jealous of her
younger, perkier pudding breasts.

At Peking Duck, something Gordon G Chang didn’t mention: "The Coming Collapse of (apartment buildings in) China"

Recently, a friend of mine was enjoying a quiet Sunday afternoon in his
expensive Guangzhou apartment when suddenly the entire living room
ceiling collapsed. Fortunately, the only damage came from his
girlfriend who, amazingly, took great exception to the fact that he
took more interest in his new plasma television than he did of her.
Trying to diffuse matters by reminding her much it cost was a mistake I
think. Following this incident the neighbours informed the couple that
similar incidents had been occurring all over the estate. As well as
bits of the building literally falling apart, the electrical wiring in
several apartments had also packed in. Not good for an 18-month old
building of ‘executive’ apartments.

Poor workmanship is a common problem for rapidly developing economies - due to a lack of skills, corruption, evolving regulations and a plethora or other reasons. On my first overseas posting in South Korea, I was often asked: "Aren’t you worried about the North invading?" My reply was: "No, but I am worried about a shopping mall collapsing on me."

Anti-globalization protesters are having trouble finding accommodation, I thought they enjoyed camping out al fresco.:

Not unsurprisingly, WTO protester organizations are having difficulty securing hotel rooms for the weekend of the big meeting.

The
Hong Kong People’s Alliance on WTO, which says it’s helping about 3,000
overseas protesters find accommodation, said it has heard of at least
three cases in which hotels and travel agents refused to serve
protesters.

Why should hotels want to serve people that
have been violent in the past? And also, the government probably
doesn’t want these clowns running around throwing rocks and clashing
with police either. It would be an embarrassment to both Hong Kong and
China.

Though I am pro-globalization, I support the right to protest. If anti-WTO crowd can’t find real hotels, I suggest they try looking for some of the free locations reviewed here.

McDonalds
- "The 24 hour MacDonald’s on Peking Road in Tsim Sha Tsui (the Kowloon
      side of Hong Kong) (two blocks west of Nathan Road, the TST MTR stop and the infamously nasty "Chungking Mansions") lets people crash out in the booths at night. On any given night there are a couple backpackers and at least a dozen "locals" snoozing on the tables. (Sorry, MacPillow is NOT on the menu.) It might not be comfortable and it is noisy, but it’s doable! To top it off, they wake you in the morning with a cup of coffee to get you out of there! "

Asiapundit is a pet owner and an animal lover. I will keep this site free of petblogging and stick to politics, economics and salatious tabloidism - I have other places to do my own petblogging. But I was touched by some petblogging in the Asiasphere this week.:

The good news, Jodi is a mother, and her son is a cutie:

The bad news, HK Macs has lost one of the family.:

Seeing a huge cost differential on dialysis treatment in Singapore and Malaysia, Mr Wang spots an opportunity:

The ever-entrepreneurial and creative Mr Wang thinks that
there is a potential business idea here. Singapore bus companies can
diversify into Malaysian health tourism, arranging for Singaporean
kidney patients to get treatment in Malaysia and also providing regular
transport direct from Singapore to the relevant Malaysian medical
centre, and back again.

Amit Varma sums up some of my thoughts on why AsiaPundit calls himself an libertarian. Though in my case I would add it’s because my prefered term, liberal, has been so abused that it is useless.

Indeed, why should we trust Musharraf?

As much as I will complain about Putin and the CPC, they woud probably run North Korea far better than Kim Jong-il and his clique.:

The truth is out. The joint war games on northern Chinese beaches, part
of a military exercise between China and Russia, are not designed to
send warning messages to the United States about the limits of its
global unilateralism.
It’s really all about China and Russia practicing for a joint
occupation of North Korea, or so the Russian media will have us
believe.

Two blogs that I don’t link to enough that you should be reading are The Aseanist and Friskodude.

Via the Flea, AsiaPundit presents art:

I’m not sure if this indicates a growing tolerance of homosexuality in Japan, of if it just further indicates that Japanese television is weird.:

Hard Gay it would appear struts the streets of Tokyo; performing acts
of ‘social improvement’, shouting “Wooooo!” and “Hard Gay!” a lot, and
interspersing all this with liberal doses of hip thrusting – his
trademark movement.

China will soon be receiving some unusual visitors:

I will be going to China during September to lecture at the Dalian World UFO conference. Apart from covering my research, my new book "Hair of the Alien"
and the Australian UFO experience, my key interest will be examining
the UFO experience in China. In earlier posts (see May 2005 archive) I
described some of the material sent to me by the active Beijing based
UFO researcher Zhang JingpingMeng Zhao Guo.

This is serious, and if anyone is interested they can apply here. The invitation letter states.:

All delegates need to inform the conference regarding their landing time and transportation means before coming to China, the conference will arrange the receiving of delegates.

The Communist Youth League is sponsoring an anti-Japanese video game (Interfax via Bills Due):

Shanghai.  August 23.  INTERFAX-CHINA -
PowerNet Technology, a Chinese online gaming firm, has developed a new
online game in cooperation with the China Communist Youth League (CCYL)
named "Anti-Japan War Online," which will begin commercial operation by
the end of 2005, a PowerNet official said Tuesday.
"The game will allow players, especially
younger players, to learn from history. They will get a patriotic
feeling when fighting invaders to safeguard their motherland," a
PowerNet Project Manager, surnamed Liu, told Interfax.
The background for "Anti-Japan War
Online" is the Japanese invasion of China during World War II, from
1937 through 1945. Players are able to play simulations of key battles,
but will only be able to play as the Chinese side. Players will also
not be allowed to kill other players in the game.

Those who are worried that this will enourage anti-Japanese sentiments among the youth need not worry too much. Game play will be limited to three hours (Interfax via CDT):

The Chinese Government unveiled a new system Tuesday to prevent
individuals from playing online games for more than three consecutive
hours, which must be installed for every online game in the country.

"This timing mechanism can prevent young people from becoming
addicted to online games," Kou Xiaowei, Deputy Director of the
Audiovisual and Internet Publication Department of the General
Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), said during a press
conference.

Occasionally, there is something interesting to read in the Shanghai Daily.:

Many Shanghai men are making a highly unusual request: They want
young women wearing halter tops and miniskirts to cover up in the
subway.
It’s not that local males aren’t attracted to the opposite sex. The
problem is that they’re too attracted, and their obvious state of, er,
arousal is getting them in trouble in the confines of Shanghai’s
crowded Metro system.
The victims of sharp glances and sharp elbows, many guys are telling
city newspapers that they girls should stop showing so much skin, even
though skimpy tops and short skirts are comfortable antidotes to the
sultry weather….
"I’ve tried to maintain a distance from women wearing halter tops,
but it’s difficult to avoid bumping into them in you’re jostled by the
crowd," he said.
"One woman stepped on my foot in retaliation. My intentions were innocent, but she didn’t believe me."
Medical experts agree that Mother Nature is often a difficult force to overcome.
"It might be considered sexual harassment if a man has a certain
reaction while standing close to a sexy girl. But it’s a normal
reaction, especially for young men," said Dr. Qi Guangchong, an expert
on men’s health at Jianqiao Hospital.

Bingfeng brings us news of a new Chinese invention, the love making chair.:

MeZhongTai has a good write-up on Donald Rumsfeld’s presscon on Taiwan’s debate of arms purchases, and notes that the Defense Secretary has probably again made some trouble for the State Department:

While speaking of the ROC arms purchase that has been languishing in
the Legislative Yuan due to Pan Blue stonewalling, Rumsfeld commented: "I’ve always believed that countries — sovereign nations have to do what they decide to do."

Some poor diplomat is going to have to restate the "US supports the ‘one China policy’" spiel again. As my (made in China) talking Rumsfeld doll says, "That’s diplomacy and I don’t do diplomacy."

Lloyd’s is standing by it’s risk rating on the Malacca Strait, as it should:

The Joint War Committe of the Lloyd’s Market Association, an advisory organization for insurance companies, announced last week it will stand by a report drafted by Aegis Defense System, a London-based security consultancy.
Aegis
had released a report in July with quite a dim outlook on security in
the Malacca Strait, which resulted in insurance companies designating a
"war risk" rating for the trading route crucial to East Asian
economies. In turn, ASEAN countries and shipping companies throughout
East Asia have been riled. With insurance rates going up, shipping
costs have reportedly increased significantly.

The risk of terrorism in the Strait has been something I’ve written about frequently, and the risk has been noted by the International Marine Bureau’s piracy center and numerous international intelligence agencies. Indonesia and Malaysia, which have admitted the risk, have refused repeatedly to allow non-littoral states to participate in anti-piracy patrols. Singapore, the other littoral state, has sought assistance. If increased insurance costs for Malaysia and Indonesia are what’s needed to convince them that safety is more important than national pride than so be it.

I hope that the Homeland Security department doesn’t read Gaurav Sabnis’ blog. If they do my duty-free single malts will probably be repackaged in plastic bottles:

We are allowed to carry bottles….glass bottles in our cabin baggage.
Doesn’t anybody feel bothered by this? The 9/11 hijackings were carried
out using box cutters. You know what is a more potent weapon than a box
cutter? Anybody who has seen a fight sequence from a Hindi film which
takes place in a college canteen or a restaurant will know the answer.
A glass bottle, broken such that its jagged edges turn it into a weapon.

If my next bottle of duty-free Glenmorangie comes in anything other than a corked glass bottle I’m blaming you Gaurav!
Feedback and links have been very positive for AsiaPundit’s China econonic roundups, so much so that  I’ve considered doing an India economic roundup. I’ve decided against it. If you want an India economic roundup just read the always excellent Indian Economy Blog.

Speaking of Indian economics, 80% of Indian children lead SUCKY lives.:

Though Africa (especially lately) is the continent many of us associate with poverty and desperation, Asia has double the number of “severely deprived” children.  I’m ashamed of my ignorance of this fact.  It’s so easy to focus on Bangalore and Gurgaon, on starbucks-esque “third places”, on “desirable” India.  I heard so much about India’s fabulous new middle class, I forgot that.

I also admit that in ‘world-class’ Shanghai I very rarely consider how many Chinese children live sucky lives.

Further on the Indian economy, does it need a touch of objectivism?:

Now although I’m one of those Desi dudes who cites Atlas Shrugged as an all-time favorite, I’m far from a Randroid.  I readily recognize that being too literal runs headlong into a more, uh, empirical assessment of the human condition.
But, I’m also more than willing to give Rand credit - especially
writing in the 1940s and 1950s - for being far more right than wrong
and a rather courageous contrarian against the intellectual zeitgeist
of the time.  The example of the License Raj - India’s economic regime
“progressively” enacted a scant few years after Atlas Shrugged was
published (1957) proves her eerily, almost literally prescient.

Oh crap. All of my friends in Singapore are going to be arrested and forced to work in telemarketing.:

I am not sure if many of you realise this, but if you own an iPod or
an MP3 player in Singapore, and you ripped music off your OWN CDs, you
are actually breaking the law in Singapore.

After the papers reported about the 3 guys who got arrested for
illegal filesharing under the new law, there was this FAQ that was
quoted off the IPOS site (Intellectual Property Office of Singapore).

Q. How do I know whether the songs in my computer or MP3 player are legal?
A. If you didn’t buy it from a legal site like Soundbuzz, it
is probably illegal. Plus, when you buy a CD, the rights only apply to
the CD; this means you cannot rip songs out and make them into MP3s for
your player.Generally, it’s advisable to check the terms and conditions of
use before you make a copy of the songs. — SOURCE: INTELLECTUAL
PROPERTY OFFICE OF SINGAPORE"

mr brown’s also tipped me to the cyborg name generator which links nicely with my TypePad profile:

I’m a giant robot built by Sony. My hand went bad, so I cut it off at the wrist. I woo women with my sensuous trombone playing.
I’m a mild-mannered reporter.
I’ve been mistaken for various celebrities, including: Kiefer
Sutherland, Hugo Weaving, Leonardo DeCaprio and Iggy Pop. None of them
look alike, but I live in Asia, so we all look alike.

Cool, Singapore is having a Sex Expo (Sexpo?). Maybe someday it will have free and fair elections.:

Look at the words used to describe Singapore,
’staid’,'tightly-controlled’, ’stuffy’ are just a few. Do these words
refer to the political situation or your right to buy an erotic toy?
The idea that these images can be shaken off by turning to the lowest
common denominator is just cheap….
The staid image is an image of the political
situation. Allowing an erotic toy will not somehow undermine that
image. It will merely cheapen it.

Taiwan doesn’t just make laptops and iPods. It makes creepy wheelchairs.:

bet there’s another thing you didn’t know. Those wheelchairs you saw in the 1980 horror opus The Changeling–do
you know where they came from? That’s right! Taiwan. I say
wheelchair"s" because even back in 1980 Hollywood saw Taiwan’s
Innovalue and commissioned them to make a series of wheelchairs for the
film, which starred George C. Scott. One for stunts, one to look old in
the attic scenes, one for the flashbacks, etc., etc. And they did it
all for half the price of what it would cost in the States, just like
many big U.S. electronic companies are finding when it comes to R&D.

If you’re in Laos, your body belongs to the state.:

"Sexual interaction with a Lao citizen who is not your lawful spouse is prohibited; breach of this law carries a $500 fine."

Okay, after you stopped laughing, let’s look at this thing a bit closer. It seems that Lao citizens lent their rights over their own bodies to the government, no? I guess the Lao PDR tries to maintain a "pure" Lao blood, minimizing the entry of the "inferior" Thai genes only to relationships that carry the government-approved piece of paper. Maybe they would do away with that too, if they could. For now, this law effectively turned nearly all Lao women and men to the likes of pricey prostitutes.

HK Dave at Simon World has a post about Chinese and Indian models.:

No, no, not the type that pose in swimsuits and lingerie - I speak of
their models of development. Before you close this browser window
though, consider that the relative success or failure of these two
great Asian nations may very well determine the course of the 21st
century

I closed the window.

But I bookmarked to read tomorrow. Click through and read it all and you’ll be a day ahead of me.

 

With the connectivity problem resolved, we return to daily linking.

Kelvin at Plum Blossoms takes a look at the controversy surrounding Miss Hong Kong and plastic surgery.

Whatever the truth may be (my guess is that no, she hasn’t been under
the knife for cosmetic purposes), I’ve become quite tolerant of Asian
actresses getting cosmetic surgery. Mainly because it’s so hard to
tell. Take, for example, Niki Chow,
who also faces similar rumours. Personally, I distinctively remember
thinking that she’s not all that hot when she first appeared on the
scene. Now I think she looks great. It appears that perhaps it’s not my
taste that’s been changing.

As Kelvin notes, diet and exercise can change a lot. With that we can expect some positive change to come out of Malaysia’s National Slimming Service Program.:

The biggest joke of all is that the Malaysian National Service isn’t
providing any military training at all. Heck, the trainees aren’t even
given the chance to handle weapons! All that pretty army uniforms and
they don’t even get to hold a gun. What the hell, right? I wonder why
the Ministry of Defence is running the program ‘cos all these "racial
integration" and "character building" exercises seem more like the
Education Ministry’s job.
There are military drills. Its just that at most, the
trainees are taught to climb ropes, do monkey bars, and run. But geez,
what are these kids gonna do if Malaysia came under attack? Throw
sticks at them?

As well as self improvement for humans, AsiaPundit is also interested in the betterment of our robotic friends. Boing Boing brings us news that the Japanese have built a robot that has a serious advantage over the average Dalek.

R Daneel, a humanoid robot, can stand up after falling over by kicking
up its legs and rocking onto its feet. Developed at the University of
Tokyo, the 60kg robot was named after an Isaac Asimov character.

But in spite of robotic advances, we are not even close to obtaining Terminator-style killer robots. As the Flea notes, this robotic assault on Junichiro Koizumi is pretty lame.

While there is competition brewing between China and India, it’s worth noting that the two emerging powers have many areas where they can cooperate: resource development, seeking calm in Nepal, and covering up bird flu outbreaks.

Further in the spirit of regional co-operation, the Barbarian Envoy has a great roundup of opinion on the ongoing Sino-Russian wargames. In other military non-military news, the PLA’s aircaft carrier floating casino is getting a paint job.

The Lost Nomad brings us this happy story about a Korean airline’s safety procedures.

Last January, aboard a flight from Sydney to
Incheon, a 36 year old housewife who suffered from depression hanged
herself in one of the bathrooms at the rear of the plane. The crew
quickly discovered the body and did everything they could to avoid any
commotion or disturbance among the other passengers.
But two months later, when the same aircraft touched down in
Washington D.C., the smoke detector in that bathroom went off. Crew
went to check but found no one there. Some of the crew recalled the
suicide two months earlier and were scared stiff. Another two months on
the crew was assigned to the same plane once again, and they decided to
bring some soju — traditional Korean liquor — and sprinkle it in the
bathroom to appease the vengeful spirit.

Soju appeases vengeful spirits?  See, you can learn something new every day.

Silly Nomad, you’ve been in Korea long enough to know that soju does not appease evil spirits. Soju is an evil spirit. I’ve had lots of the stuff and dealt with hangovers so bad they required exorcisms.

Aside from missile-related exports, how does North Korea earn hard currency? Sometimes they just print it.:

Authorities said they seized $4.4 million in high-quality fake $100 bills,
more than 1 billion counterfeit cigarettes worth $42 million, and
ecstasy, methamphetamine and Viagra worth hundreds of thousands of
dollars. Some of the cigarettes were made in China, said acting
assistant Attorney General John Richter.

Singapore’s talk radio is still limited what is allowed on government-regulated stations, and interviews with opposition leaders - unsurprisingly - do not feature prominently. But they haven’t yet regulated online talk show Pilot n’ Jo.

A look at a work-based prison rehabilitation program in Singapore. Mr Wang is impressed, but Stephen wants to know if the prisoners are getting paid. Personally I think being put to work in a call center qualifies as cruel and unusual punishment.

Female inmates at a Singapore prison are working 12-hour shifts
as telephone call-center operators and telemarketers in a state
campaign to rehabilitate lawbreakers, an official said on Wednesday.

In what seems to be an annual event, a coup in Myanmar.

A Japanese bureaucrat protests "I’m a woman in a man’s body." The police retort, "you are a man in a woman’s changing room."

Whilst taking a day off work last week, a 41-year-old government
official in konan, Shiga Prefecture, was arrested for trespassing in a
women’s changing room at a local leisure facility.
Ryuhei
Kameda was dressed as a woman when he was apprehended, but in his
defence he told the police, “I know I am a man, but I want to live as a
woman.” How this information will affect the bureaucrat’s case is
unknown, but Kameda-san may well have gotten away with his changing
room misdemeanour had he managed to curtail his cross-dressing
activities a little more.
It turns out that before his capture,
the 41-year-old had been for a swim. Yet as innocuous as such an
activity may sound, rather surprisingly Kameda chose to wear a
decidedly un-government like bikini.

As if the arrest and imprisonment of buxom Shapelle Corby wasn’t enough to strain Australian-Indonesian relations, police in Bali have busted a Aussie lingerie model.

SYDNEY - Australian lingerie model Michelle Leslie could face up
to 10 years in jail after getting busted on the Indonesian resort of
Bali for allegedly possessing ecstasy tablets, officials said.

The 24-year-old, who has modelled for sassy lingerie line Antz
Pantz and works under the name Michelle Lee, was arrested at a party
near Bali’s popular Kuta beach at the weekend, they said.

The Swanker says:

If you’re one of those people who think the Australian media got into a
big tizz over Schapelle Corby solely because of her looks, wait til
they get a load of Michelle.

In other celebrity news, Other Lisa is horrified that ‘The Donald’ intends to bring the Apprentice to China.

Communist mainland China will soon have its own version of "The Apprentice" — Donald Trump’s reality TV tribute to capitalism.
Trump will be the executive producer of the Chinese show, which
will be hosted by Beijing property mogul Pan Shiyi, the South China
Morning Post newspaper reported Sunday.
The newspaper said China’s version would closely follow the U.S.
original, in which contestants compete for a job with Trump. Details of
the deal are under negotiation.

I wouldn’t worry too much about Trump crossing the Pacific. On top of tightening regulations on joint Sino-foreign productions, Vincent Lo of Hong Kong’s Shui On Group has already commenced a rival project.:

But "Wise Man Takes All" will not feature cut-throat
competition or Trump’s catch-phrase, "You’re fired!"
The show symbolises China’s embrace of market economics
after decades of strict state planning. Entrepreneurs are now
eligible for "model and advanced worker" status, an honour once
reserved for the likes of bus conductors, miners and other
employees of the Communist state sector.
"We are trying to sharpen the entrepreneurial spirit in
young people," Vincent Lo Hongshui, chairman of Hong Kong
property developer Shui On Land, a major sponsor of the show,
was quoted as saying.
Reality television is relatively new but catching on quickly
in China. Millions of people have been tuning in to watch the
late rounds of "Super Girl", a singing showdown that clearly
takes a page from "American Idol" and reaches it finale on
Friday.

Lo’s project may not be as edgy as Trump’s, but it has a better chance of getting off the ground. In grey areas such as the entertainment media, it helps to have guanxi. And, as the Economist has noted, Lo is the "King of Guanxi."

Cyber War! Cyber War! Cyber War!

Japanese netizens are attacking a South Korean website:

The website of the Voluntary Agency Network Korea (VANK)has been hacked and its message board flooded by messages-
in what’s thought to be a retaliation by angry Japanese netizens (can I
call Japanese internet users netizens too?) over Google Earth changing
the name of the body of water between Korea and Japan from Sea of Japan
to East Sea after VANK lobbied Google Earth.

The South Korean government is setting up safeguards to prevent it from being caught in the crossfire as Chinese netizens attack Japan.:

“We don’t know whether cyber warfare will indeed happen between China
and Japan, but to prevent any fallout, we have devised countermeasures
jointly with universities and Internet service providers,” a ministry
official said.
A
Hong Kong daily reported recently that the Association of China’s Red
Hackers, one of the world’s five hacking groups, plans to launch
formidable attacks on the anti-Chinese websites in Japan between July
and September.

Rebecca McKinnion will soon be arriving to mediate moderate:

I’m thrilled to have been asked to moderate a panel at this years first inaugural Chinese Bloggers’ Conference in Shanghai, November 5-6….
One thing I hope we’ll talk about is how we can do more to foster constructive dialogue online between bloggers in China and Japan.

A constructive dialogue would be nice. Though I’d even consider fostering a hostile dialogue progress, so long as it meant a reduction in hacking and ‘DNS atacks.’

In Japan, it’s hip to be square.:

Though Torii may not know it, he’s the type of guy who’s apparently all
the rage among Japanese women nowadays. Much of the media is currently
smitten with the country’s booming otaku culture. This has, in turn,
led to widespread claims that the geeks, freaks, weirdoes and fatties
who, like Torii, are collectively referred to as otaku, a group once
largely shunned by women, are now being seen as the country’s hottest
hunks. Apparently, their appeal lies in the belief that the otaku are
up for a purer form of love and are the obsessive types likely to
become devoted to the one gal once they’ve found her.

It’s tourist season in Pyong’yang. Seriously, to mark the 60th anniversary of Allied Victory in World War Two’s Pacific Front Kim Il-sung’s almost single-handed defeat of Japanese fascist armies and the birth of the juche state, the country is holding three-month long Mass Games. We’ve been assured that these will offer some of the best acrobatics, gymnastics and xenophobia that Northeast Asia has to offer. As NK Zone notes, the Financial Times is offering some free coverage.

It’s been argued that governments are not doing enough to prevent the Avian Flu from becoming a pandemic. Thankfully, we now have "An Investor’s Guide to the Avian Flu," so even if millions do die, at least some of us can profit. (FWIW: CLSA issued a similar report several months ago, they just weren’t as gauche when selecting a title.)

Michael Manoochehri says that Nepal’s border guards are much nicer than the Chinese ones. Both Chinese and Nepalese babies are cute though.

It’s easy to understand why the Chinese border guards were grumpier. The Tibetan region has security problems while Nepal has… err Maoist insurgents and student rioters.

Global Voices offers another fine roundup on the blasts in Bangladesh.

When MasaMania posted his spread of Tokyo street-racing photos today, I was struck by this older link that showed up in my RSS reader today. I thought that a possible reason for the "Korea Wave," and the waning influence of Japan on Asian fashion trends, is that the trends coming out of Japan are just a little bit too freaky for the rest of the continent.

The fashion trends coming out of South Korea, meanwhile, are much safer… even if some of them are copies of trends that originated in Japan.

 

Ian Lamont, who is doing content research on Xinhua at Harvard, is excited by a discovery of an online depositary of almost a decade’s worth of North Korean propaganda.:

This is awesome! Someone in California has taken North Korean propaganda from the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) from 1996 to the present, and dumped it into a searchable database with a Web interface.

Asiapundit is also impressed, particularly with the random insult generator.:

In the wake of the blog-city ban, Imagethief has developed some possible surveys for Xinhua.:

Which lickspittle, Anti-China foreign hate-site should be banned next?
A) The Peking Duck
B) The Horse’s Mouth
C) Angry Chinese Blogger
D) Imagethief
E) Ban ‘em all, and have the authors beaten with rubber hoses! In fact, ban all media.

Unfortunately, they’ve all been banned except for Richard. Speaking of which, I haven’t been missing his absence from the Duck. Other Lisa and Martyn are doing an excellent job as guest bloggers. Lisa delivers an opus on China’s internet censorship. Martyn brings us a must-read on the China no one talks about.:

While China’s surge certainly may continue, it’s also possible that the
awakening giant may stumble badly, a notion not on enough radar screens
in Washington. And a failed China could damage American interests to a
greater extent than a strong China. That’s hardly the conventional
wisdom, but it’s worth examining.

While Korea may have missed out on the iPod craze, Jason at Wandering to Tamshui notes that there is another Northeast Asian economy where Apple still shines.:

Yet another reason to buy an iPod: they play a huge role in Taiwan’s tech economy.
It’s
no secret that most of the world’s notebook computers come from Taiwan,
but not a lot of attention is paid to the fact that most of the guts
found in the ubiquitous iPod are made by Taiwanese companies (some of which have production facilities in China).

Kudos to Mr Wang, the Library of Congress has approved his blog as an official electronic resource.:

Isn’t this amazing? The US Library of Congress cites me as an electronic resource on politics in Singapore.
I’d be really flattered, except that (1) I personally wouldn’t trust
myself very much as a library resource, and (2) looking at the list of
cited Singapore blogs, I really don’t get the impression that the list
was carefully chosen.

This is a true rarity, "good news about governance in the Philippines."

This is another rarity, the Onion is again becoming worth reading. India blog Chapati Mystery points to this:

Calcutta Fire Marshal: Many Indian Homes Lack Bride Extinguisher

CALCUTTA, INDIA—Failure to own or use a bride extinguisher results in
millions of rupees of property damage in India annually, Calcutta fire
marshal Prasad Chandra said in a press conference Monday. "This tragedy
occurs far too often when well-meaning husbands, attempting to collect
on a dowry, ignite their brides indoors. The damage is often compounded
when a burning bride attempts to escape and spreads the flames to other
homes," Chandra said. "If you absolutely must burn your bride, avoid
additional destruction with an affordable bride extinguisher. And, if
possible, confine the burning to your backyard bride pit."

And Younghusband at Coming Anarchy spots an item on the newest member of the nuclear club.:

WASHINGTON, DC—A report released Monday
by the Defense Intelligence Agency suggests that there is reason to
believe that the former Soviet republic of Nukehavistan may be
manufacturing nuclear weapons.
"New intelligence indicates that the likelihood of Nukehavistan
possessing nuclear weapons is moderate to strong," said DIA Director
Vice Adm. Lowell Jacoby in a press conference Monday.

In the US, two things are inevitable: death and taxes. In India, things work differently.:

If you are a tax-paying Indian, you will no doubt be delighted to know that some of your money is every month by the government in Delhi to dead people. Yes, dead people. About 10,000 of them.

I try to find at least one gratuitous image of the female body for each set of daily links. We can thank Manish at Sepia Mutiny for bringing us today’s model.

Kingfisher Beer has put its ‘swimsuit’ calendar
online. It’s just like the CNN site which annoys me daily (‘we
interrupt you with breaking news: Model of the Day!’), but with lotus
pads: zen cheesecake, if you will. There are so many floating flowers in the frame, you’d think it was pitching feminine products instead of beer.

Miss August.

Snopes reports an enduring urban legend from Thailand.

Anwar Ibrahim has been having lots of good fortune since moonbat Mahathir Mohamad retired as Malaysia’s Prime Minister. Now he has a real fortune.:

Yesterday, he won another court victory and claims "I’m Completely Vindicated". For his libel suit against Datuk Abdul Khalid @ Khalid Jafri Bakar Shah, the author of the book 50 Dalil Mengapa Anwar Tidak Boleh Jadi PM
(50 Reasons Why Anwar Cannot Become PM), Justice Mohd Hishamudin
awarded AnwarnRM4.5 million, RM4.0 million for defamation, RM500,000
for "conspiracy to injure", plus all legal costs.

If the Russia-China wargames are a sign of an emerging alliance of interests, Justin at the Moderate Voice ponders what the Russia-India games are a sign of.:

For Russia this is basically a middle finger to Beijing for its wish to
utilize the current ongoing war games with Moscow as a very direct
threat to Taiwan and its American backer. India’s obviously no friend
of China, so Russia’s very visible military cooperation with New Delhi
can be considered a reminder of its true, Russo-centric intentions.
Also, such cooperation will, at least in Putin’s mind, increase Indian
dependence on Russian military tech and help bring the country over
into Russia’s sphere of influence sometime down the line. If China is
the impetus for such an alliance, then so be it for Putin — India’s a
rival power, but its sights are not directly set on the former Soviet
Republics of Central Asia as China’s are.

Have a fun weekend. I’m off to spend an evening with the stars.:

More at the Shanghaiist.

As a Good Beer Blogger, I consider this Fantastic News (via India Uncut);

Tipplers can now get some kick as well as some vitamins out of a new beer, which is supposed to protect the liver from harmful effects of alcohol.
Lady Bird Bio Beer, which was launched in the Kerala markets on Wednesday, increases bio-availability of vitamins, according to its inventor B Srinivas Amarnath of Advaith Biotech Pvt Ltd.
He said the beer contained aloe vera extracts, in addition to the regular barley malt and carbondioxide hops.
"The results of human clinical trials have shown aloe vera increases the bioavailability of vitamins like B1, B6, B12, C and E," said C B Jagannatha Rao, senior vice president, Khoday Group of Industries, which has tied up with Advaith Biotech in the venture.
Years of research have also proved that with the long-term use of the beverage, there was no ulceration, gastric trouble or other harmful effects from drinking it, Amarnath claimed.

Do not sell the sexual services of your co-workers without their consent… it’s illegal.:

Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency on Wednesday arrested a 36 year-old man identified as Kim for hawking the sexual services of colleagues online without their knowledge.
Police say Kim is charged with secretly taking digital photos up the skirts of three of his female colleagues at the Gangnam office of a cosmetics firm in Seoul and uploading the pictures some 30 times from an Internet cafe to an Internet auction site, where he offered to sell his coworkers as sexual partners for W150,000 (US$150).

There is some speculation that South Korea’s recent blockage of TypePad and Blogspot blogs was to prevent bloggers from offending a visiting North Korean delegation. It’s amazing how far Roh Moo-hyun’s administration will go to prevent offending Kim Jong-il’s regime:

Park Chan-sung, who chairs the Citizens Coalition to Stop the Nuclear Development of North Korea, said two-man police teams kept a tight watch on six or seven of the group’s leaders, conducted body searches and confiscated pamphlets and picket signs. He said police confined some to their homes, and on Monday police cars blocked both alley entrances to the group’s office.

The Flea ponders whether Asians are more brand conscious than Westerners, noting an item from Korea’s Chosun Ilbo.:

Japanese writer Usagi Nakamura details her devotion to labels in her book, "I Like Name Brands." She once went into a Chanel shop to buy an umbrella, but the store clerk told her not to use it when it rained a lot. He said it was OK to use the umbrella when it sort of drizzled, but he worried that it would leak in a downpour since it wasn’t waterproof. After giving it a little thought, she bought the umbrella, saying, "I’m not buying an umbrella, I’m buying Chanel."

U2 must visit Tianjin, Where the Streets have no Drains.:

During a “normal” rainfall in Tianjin the streets will fill with large puddles and only a small amount of water will actually make its way into drains. This is because road engineers don’t install gutters or otherwise apply sloping on the roads to make the water run off like it should. Instead, following each rain, work cadre groups made up of middle-aged men or middle-aged women deploy en masse with brooms to sweep the water away.

China’s floating casino is closer to becoming operational. In other military news, Andy at Siberian Light takes a good look at Russian-Chinese war games. First the charitable view:

Several humanitarian assistance operations have required robust military action in recent years, including on occasion actually landing marines on a beach (remember the fanfare as US marines stormed ashore in Somalia in the 1990s?) or potentially invading a country (a huge amount of planning was put in place for a potential invasion of Yugoslavia to protect Kosovo, for example).
And Russia and China both have on their doorsteps a number of basket-case countries that could potentially require a robust intervention.  The most obvious candidate is North Korea which, if it collapses dramatically, may require a speedy response to secure a number of key military and nuclear sites - not to mention the rapid response that would be required to prevent a humanitarian disaster if refugees attempt to flee across the Chinese and Russian borders.  It’s fair to say that, if Russia and/or China needed to launch a military mission into North Korea, it would likely involve operations by both marines and paratroopers.

Read the rest for a fuller analysis.

In India, justice can be slow. From Amit Varma 54 years and one rupee:

The first figure: how long Machang Lalung of Assam spent in prison without a trial.
The second figure: the amount of money he paid to get released.

In Indonesia justice can be non-existent:

Al Qaeda (ed: Jemaah Islamiah ) leader Abu Bakar Bashir has been given a sentence reduction. Well done.
Note
that they don’t say that his status as guilty has changed one whit.
They are just saying he deserves less punishment for what he has been
found guilty of.

Rebecca McKinnion, one of AsiaPundit’s favourite bloggers, is back. She also notes that co-Global Voices blogger, the excellent Paul Frankenstein has finished his internship with GV. Egad! Global Voices can afford an intern? No wonder it’s always better than this blog.

Fellow Canadian and Red Ensign blogger Andrew is looking for the real China.

 

The Taipei Kid reports that love motels are moving upmarket.

Ben Muse notes that 80% of China’s oil has to travel from the Malacca Strait. Noting that the nation would be at risk from a conflict with India or an incident in the Straits would be a problem. This should be an area of mutual concern for the US and China. The former has long been arguing with Malaysia and Indonesia that Straits security is a global concern. Only Singapore has agreed to allow non-littoral states to engage in anti-piracy patrols.

Via BoingBoing, Piracy kills creativity.

In China, even cats know kung fu.

An editor at the China Youth Daily has written an open letter blasting new appraisal regulations that erode editorial freedom. ESWN translates. That an 26-year veteran editor of a Communist Youth League-owned paper should be openly criticising moves to create a more dogmatic paper is impressive. But Ian Lamont at Harvard Extended  notes that the desire for press freedom by Chinese journalists isn’t new.:

Kelly Haggart, on Chinese journalists during and after Tiananmen:
"There is pride among Beijing journalists about those few days of press freedom. For one thing, it showed the potential of Chinese journalists. For the first time they were allowed to act like real reporters and they did no worse at covering the story than their more experienced foreign counterparts. … For almost all city people, no matter what they thought of the students and their hunger strike, that week of relative press freedom brought home to them the importance of more open, more enterprising media. Freedom of the press was no longer a complete abstraction." [page 50]

 

The Eclectic Econoclast points to a site offering Suduko-generating software. Wikipedia notes that the Japanese number puzzle has this year gained global popularity.

If Shappell Corby, the Aussie tourist  sentenced to 20 years in a Balinese prison for drug smuggling, is released on appeal… she could be in the money.:

Men’s magazines will rush to sign-up Schapelle Corby for a raunchy photo shoot if she is freed. And the convicted drug smuggler could earn up to $500,000 for a sexy bikini shoot, according to reports.
FHM magazine has revealed Corby polled strongly in its 100 hottest women vote but editors decided against including the former beauty student, fearing a public backlash.
"At the time she was on trial and potentially could have been executed . . . so it may have been in slightly poor taste," FHM editor John Bastick was quoted as saying in The Courier Mail.

Brand New Malaysian points to the hazards of overplanning photo sessions.:

How corny does that look? At best, it shows the over-enthusiasm of this senior academic to portray, perhaps how attached and devoted he is to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, as to put the book on a pedestal.
At worst, he comes off looking like a brown-nosing hypocrite that set up the placement of the book for the photography session.

Japan isn’t just importing cheap manufactured goods from China, Japundit notes that New Tokyo has imported a beach.

The Marmot doesn’t trust a new poll that finds South Koreans would overwhelmingly side with the North .

The survey by Gallup Korea of 833 individuals born between 1980 and 1989 also found a marked shift in attitude to North Korea and the South’s traditional ally, the U.S. Some 65.9 percent responded they would take North Korea’s side if it was at war with the U.S., while 21.8 percent said South Korea must stand with the U.S. and the rest were undecided.

Singaporean scientists have invented a device that could help solve China’s chronic power shortages. With 1.3 billion people here there is a lot of urine that could power this device.

Taiwan’s first iPod-related crime almost sparks a diplomatic incident.:

A 12-year-old girl tried to threaten her friend to get her iPod back, but accidentally dialed the Swaziland ambassador. The kind ambassador has decided to forgive the twerp who called her up in the middle of the night. Lucky for that girl it was the Swaziland ambassador she accidentally called, and not the ambassador from a certain Central American nation that bitched me out in front of everyone at a Far Eastern Hotel cocktail reception once.

A look at representations of aboriginals in Taiwanese baseball, and the origins of the image on the 500 Taiwan dollar note.

Arms Control Wonk notes that reports of the number of Chinese-government front companies operating in the US are consistently overestimated.

The existence of “3,000 Chinese front companies” is one the most persistent claims about China floating around. The number is often attributed to the FBI, but as far as I can tell that’s wrong too. Or it used to be.

Finally, scientists have determined what an average Korean looks like.

ThaRum has an excellent post on Cambodia’s emerging blogosphere.

Is Taiwan a renegade province, independent country or a US protectorate?

… Japan renounced its sovereignty over Taiwan, but did not turn over that sovereignty to either the PRC in Beijing or the ROC in Taiwan. Neither the PRC nor the ROC were invited to the San Francisco treaty conference, and neither was a signatory to the treaty.
This means that the USMG remained the sovereign legal authority in Taiwan. Article 4(b) of the treaty states this in recognizing the authority of "the United States Military Government in any of the areas referred to in Articles 2 and 3," as does Article 23(a) recognizing "the United States of America as the principal occupying Power."
This treaty is still in effect. In the opinion of a number of scholars of international law, Taiwan is neither a province of China over which the PRC has legitimate sovereignty, nor is Taiwan a sovereign state of itself. It is, rather, an overseas territory of the U.S.

In South Korea, video games have been linked to two deaths.

The Communist Party of China have banned Sister Furong. XiaXue won’t miss the competition, though an alliance would benefit the Sister more than a competition. She could do with more of Wendy’s  photoshopping.

The long-delayed Khmer Rouge trials may soon begin, and they will be blogged.

There’s an in-house argument at Coming Anarchy as Curzon reacts to Chirol’s earlier post on North Korea. Curzon says, Nuke it!

Meanwhile some in South Korea have started to act more French. On top of appeasing, now there is a move to rid the language of Japanese cognates.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister was assassinated on Saturday. Munir at Diplomatic Review and Manish at Sepia Mutiny wonder if the Tamil Tigers have returned to their old ways.

But if Sri Lanka returns to war, perhaps we will be fortunate that Aceh, Indonesia, may finally find peace.:

A Leap of Faith That’s the peace accord between the Government of Indonesia (GoI) and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM) signed today in Helsinki. The deal centers on a decommissioning of the GAM rebel movement, in exchange for participation in the political process, and a withdrawal of the Indonesian army and police forces from the troubled region, to be completed by the end of the year.

Not everyone is happy about the new agreement, Gateway Pundit reports on protests in Jakarta over the fact that the peace deal provides for peacekeepers.

Indonesian protesters raise their fists as they shout ‘Allahuakbar!’ (God is great) during a protest in Jakarta, Sunday, Aug. 14, 2005. Hundreds of Muslims staged the rally rejecting the presence of non-Muslim countries, especially the United States and European Union, in the troubled province of Aceh to participate in the monitoring of the peace accord between the government and the separatist rebels which will be signed in Finland on Monday.

Yes, yes, in conservative majority-Muslim Indonesia protests can be expected from the Islamists, they even protested the "Miss Waria Indonesia 2005" contest. (Agam’s Gecko via FriskoDude).

So the other night, #7 was a story on "Miss Waria Indonesia 2005". And
I thought to myself, "Wow, those are some brave girls… er, guys." For
you see, waria in Indonesia is the same as kathoey in Thailand — although for obvious reasons, not as generally well accepted as part of the local fauna. The word waria
– in line with the Indonesian propensity for making new words out of
cryptic abbreviations for any and everything — is a combination of wanita (woman) and pria
(man). In Thailand, the transvestite cabaret shows are very popular
with locals and tourists alike. Huge venues like Calypso and Alcazar
are world famous for their shows, and are packed every night. For many
foreign visitors, attending a "ladyboy" cabaret is a must-do when in
the Kingdom. They are really quite amazing.

But, protesting ladyboy contests are expected, threatening to boycott Proctor & Gamble because they use this hottie as a model is just plain weird.

But no matter how odd nationalist Chinese netizens can be,

the Japanese can be even stranger (not porn, but nsfw).

Bruce at Naruwan Formosa brings us an Aussie open letter to China’s Premier Hu Jintao.

It seems that China continues to try to emulate Singapore, it’s testing out a state-sponsored matchmaking program for the PLA.

Single 25 year old officer looking for politically reliable, progressive thinking woman of upright conduct to be lawfully wedded spouse. Must be 23 years or older and prepared for extra one week holiday to celebrate our union.
Please apply immediately to my unit’s commissar.

 

In an effort to make up for any disturbance the katooey pic may have caused, I feel obliged to include another photo of an actual woman. The Sarong Party Girl is featured in an interview at Capital Region People (via Tomorrow.sg).

This may be a first, the Wanabe Lawyer has fisked a podcast.:

The ‘podcast’ starts off with a rant against the PAP, using the same old accusations and assertions that attempts to stir up anger and hate. The really funny part was when CSJ immediately went on to claim that they would offer alternative policy proposals, rather than just criticising the PAP, because ‘they believe in being constructive’.
I believe these proposals are rubbish, and I will explain why, and thus provide the reasons why I hold the SDP with particular disdain.

For Indian readers Happy National Day! For Koreans, Happy Liberation Day! Remember, .

 

Thailand has allowed gays in the military… and ladyboys! No word yet on what changes this will mean for the uniforms, but I expect stilettos.

Japundit looks at Koizumi’s dissolution of the Lower House. Good news, it’s looking less like a suicide and more like a showdown.

This article from the Daily Mainichi reports on the latest polls, revealing that support for his Cabinet has climbed 9 percentage points to 46 percent. It is not uncommon for the LDP to do well in elections despite a Cabinet approval rating of less than 50 percent, and these polls show a substantial upswing. Voters also supported Koizumi’s decision to dissolve the Diet by a margin of 54 percent to 36 percent.

John Ziemba has more, plus an item on China’s militaristic past.:

A former Secretary General of Taiwan’s National Security Council reports that South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun made the following comment to George W Bush in June.  From RealClear Politics:

During his visit to the US in June, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun told  President Bush that China had invaded Korea over 100 times in history. His remarks shocked China, which views itself as the victim of invasions (most humiliatingly, by the Japanese) and has forgotten its own history of bullying its neighbors.

The Lost Nomad reports that South Korea has not fallen under the spell of the iPod.:

The iPod may dominate the MP3 player market in almost every country in the world, but one nation is holding out against Apple’s onslaught.
Yes, South Korea, home of a number of contenders to the iPod’s title, favours local product over all that ‘designed in California’ stuff.
According to market watcher GfK’s Korean subsidiary, Apple’s share of the South Korean MP3 player market is a mere 1.8 per cent - enough to put it in 13th place.

 

I’m back from vacation and now happily married. Thanks to all co-pundits for keeping the site active for the past three weeks.

While I was away…

China continued to strengthen its regime of open markets but closed culture. The NY Times has an item here and China Confidential notes:

China’s media regulators, including the Propaganda Department and Ministry of Culture, revealed an array of new regulations designed to stop additional foreign satellite channels from entering the Chinese market, while strictly controlling and seriously limiting the influx of foreign television programs, films, books, newspapers, magazines, Internet sites, video games, cartoons, and performing acts, including theatrical performances.

Meanwhile across the Strait, Taiwan regulators effectively shut down seven TV broadcasters. A situation JuJuflop doesn’t think is too terrible.

But Taipei isn’t just shutting down media organizations, Wandering to Tamshui notes that the Taiwan Daily is being kept afloat with the assistance of state-owned enterprises.

In lovely Singapore, it’s not enough to execute marijuana traffickers, police insist on banning  photographic displays noting that the trafficker ever existed.

Kenny Sia rips into the Sister Furong phenomena while Fons discovers a Brother Furong.

China’s wooing of despots justly gets unfavorable coverage at Traveler’s Tales and The Horse’s Mouth. But Glenzo notes that Mugabe didn’t get everything he wanted.

Jove Francisco has a roundup of the action at the Philippine mini bloggers summit.

Laowiseass is bugged about something.

There’s a nice description of one of my most remembered South Korean street stall dishes at Pharyngula, live octopus tentacle, Including a link to a (currently inaccessible) . On a related note, Preetam has an audiofile of the Bundgie Experience.

The Economist’s View offers an argument on why you should support your third-world sweatshop.

From Japan - the country that gave us the vibrating video game controller vibrator - now comes vibrating cinema seats.

Deeshaa points to a great article on India’s impending rise.

China and the US agree on something, though India and Japan won’t be happy about it.

As the Six-Party talks continue, barbarian envoy brings us a long and informative item from the Atlantic Monthly noting some terrifying scenarios on a conflict on the peninsula.

Japundit has a great two-part series on Koizumi’s post office reform here and here.

Cambodians are rapidly adapting to the mobile phone, although to spread pornography. Some are calling for a crackdown.

The Polish tourism board has developed an ad campaign in which a sexy nurse attempts to woo Japanese tourists. Personally I think this will be effective at wooing other nationals as well.

Jeff explains why you should never go to Busan Beach to relax.

Over at the Big Yuan concerns that China’s failure to secure Unocal will force it to increase its dealings with odious regimes to gain resources. As well, while Big Yuan is somewhat relieved by the deal’s collapse, the jingoism displayed in the US is a greater worry.

Meanwhile, the avidly anti-CPP D.J. McGuire of China-e lobby smells blood and is encouraged to make China an election issue.:

Rather than risk a political tangle that could last long enough for the anti-Communist right and the anti-Communist left to form a lasting alliance - and that is the one thing in the American political arena that scares Zhongnanhai more than anything else - they will pull back and let everything die down.

The Radioactive Chef thinks the ditching of the bid is to prevent the US from getting too riled up ahead of a Chinese move against Taiwan.

Thomas Barnett meanwhile brings us some sober reflection from Ben Stein.

EditorsWeblog is blogging that China will limit media licenses for foreign companies and more generally "exercise tighter control over the country’s cultural life."

On Tuesday China announced that it will tighten restrictions on foreign newspapers, television programs, books and performances. The goal is to strengthen control over China’s cultural life. According to the International Herald Tribune the new rules state: "Import of cultural products contrary to regulations will be punished according to the circumstances, and in serious cases the import license will be revoked. In the near future, there will be no more approvals for setting up cultural import agencies."

China will limit television companies as well as foreign-owned print media businesses as Chinese officials seek to address outside influences on the nation. The previously cited IHT article opines that:

The regulations may also be part of an effort to repair what one Chinese report recently called the "cultural trade deficit." In recent years, China has authorized publication of more than 12,000 foreign books in Chinese translations, but only 81 Chinese books have secured foreign publishing rights, said the report, which appeared in China Comment, a magazine run by the state-run Xinhua news agency.

It’s unclear just how great the impact on foreign media businesses will be, but for now it is clear that bids by Viacom and Disney, among others, are on hold. If the government is trying to balance the 12,000:81 publishing ratio, it has its work cut out for it. Yet China has a strong academic community and as interest in the country grows, there will only be more demand from foreigners to hear about life there.

China’s internet censors are ‘keeping an eye’ on sino-sexblogger Sister Hibiscus. The below item from the Asian Sex Gazette (worksafe, risque banner ads) concludes that her 15 minutes of fame are up.

To monitor what these increasingly curious "netizens" are reading about, the authorities have intensified their internet surveillance by recruiting "web watchdogs" to anonymously police thousands of cyber-cafes and public message forums. And all Chinese websites, bloggers and bulletin-board operators must register with the government - or be fined and shut down.
Furong Jiejie - the name literally means "hibiscus older sister" - seems likely to face that fate. "We have been keeping an eye on sister Furong," said Liu Qiang, an official with the Ministry Of Culture, which is responsible for overseeing the internet. "But there aren’t any explicit regulations to control such a phenomenon." The latest in a series of online celebrities, known in China as BB, or bulletin-board, stars, to have emerged in the past couple of years, 28-year-old Furong is an unlikely candidate to run into trouble with the authorities.
Prone to posing in provocative photos - tame by Western standards - Furong has an obvious hunger for fame. She hardly seems a threat to society.
Nevertheless, the publicity department of the central committee of the Communist Party has told BlogChina, the largest provider of blog-hosting services, to relocate content relating to Furong, whose real name is Shi Heng-xia, to less prominent parts of their website.

Asian diaspora bloggers in the West with ironically-threatening names, such as America’s Angryasianman and New Zealand’s Yellow Peril, are viewing America’s recasting of China as a non-ironically-threatening geopolitical force, to be a uniquely challenging branding dilemma.  Says Yellow Peril:

Since I started my convolutedly ironic, yet politically and culturally challenging diaspora blog, if you Googled ‘Yellow Peril’, the first thing that came up was ME.  That’s the way I like it.  How is the resurgence of Sinophobia and General Zhu’s threat of a nuclear strike [see below] going to affect my hitrate?

Meanwhile, the UK-born Asian diaspora was busy trying to figure out how many of them went to school with the London bombers. 

And in Sydney, one of Yellow Peril’s Chinese doctor ‘cousins’ treated a shambolic, mentally ill Muslim man with a broad Australian accent.  The local police then reported the terrified Muslim to the federal authorities because in the midst of his pavement ramblings, he said the word ‘bus’.

Global Voices has been redesigned and relaunched.

From Xiamen, Andrea says she doesn’t like: "Caucasians who cut the queue in a bank with a clear number queueing system." She asks "We all take a number and wait, why the hell on God’s green earth shouldn’t you?" Answer: Because we all look like Dashan.

Richard spots another ominous article on how the CPC is using the internet to control thought in China. Rebecca offers all of that and more.

CSR Asia reports that Japan and Korea have started investigating whether or not Chinese brewers are using formaldehyde .

Coca Cola’s former CEO David Daft once remarked that the company’s main competitor was not Pepsi, but water. They may be aggressively trying to squeeze out the competition. Tak at the Old Revolution notes that Daft’s former company may sue an Indian artist.

"Mr. Sharad Haksar, a photographer in India, faces a possible lawsuit for a billboard he has displayed in Chennai in an effort to bring attention to the severe water shortage caused by the company’s bottling plants."

Ampontan at Japundit discusses the cultural significance of Godzilla.

China is opening a memorial to martyred journalists. No monument for jailed journalists is expected.

There’s trouble at the boardroom of KFC Malaysia, the Colonel would never have tolerated such shenanigans.

Gloria Aroyo is willing to leave, but wants to set her own terms of exit.

Japan is diversifying away from China, Glenzo says everyone else should too,

Happy Birthday mr brown.

 

Amit Varma reports that Indian actress Pooja Bhatt is upset that someone "stole" the title of her upcoming film… Cabaret.

The report quotes Bhatt as saying:

My production company (Fish Eye Network) registered the film under four names with two spellings — Cabaret, Kabaret, Cabaret — The Dance of Love and Kabaret — The Dance of Love. I have the necessary documents to prove that I am the owner of the title.

She also accuses the film industry of having "a herd mentality and no originality".
And no, the reporter did not ask her if she had seen this particular film directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli.

After Malaysia’s ‘Miss Tourism Pageant expells Miss Tibet‘ due to pressure from China, Imagethief again notices that the Communist Party of China is public-relations deficient.:

Ignore for a moment that beauty pageants are insipid (and muslim Malaysia seems like an odd place for a pageant, although its large number of ethnic Chinese are less wound about such things). If it were a question of international recognition, a political statement or a major piece of journalism I could understand diplomatic involvement. But a beauty pageant? Do you have a hobby? Friends? A dog to walk? A charity to start? Visas to issue? Is there really nothing better that the Chinese consulate in Malaysia could be doing than obsessing about beauty pageants?

Plus, it’s obviously bad PR for the CPC to be attacking this cutie.

UPDATE: Angry Chinese Blogger has more.

Via ESWN, 11 people are being tried for criminal use of the internet.  But it’s not about politics, it’s about porn.

So what exactly were they doing that constituted criminal behavior? Well, this should have been easy to guess.  As a country, China has the second largest number of Internet users.  When Chinese people get on the Internet, most of them are not banging the keyboard to talk about freedom or democracy.  Similarly, as a country, the United States has the largest number of Internet users and most Americans do not get on the Internet to talk about the privatization of social security or the nomination of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nations.  The common thing about the United States and China is that the most popular subject on the Internet is … pornography.
The name of the web site in this case is "99bbs.com."  It was founded in 2002 by a 19-year-old Fujian resident named Wang Rong.  The web servers for the website are located in the United States, and therefore beyond the reach of Chinese law enforcement.  The web site may have begun as a general interest forum, but in 2003 it began to distribute pornographic movies, pictures and articles.  During this time, Wang Rong recruited the defendants over the Internet to manage various aspects of the operations.