Bingfeng has a great montage of villain photos from communist Chinese cinema showing, among other things, how the mainland authorities used to view Taiwan’s Kuomintang.:

it’s not a patent of hollywood hits, in the good old days of red revolution back in 1950s and 1960s, chinese movies are masters of presenting a black-and-white world in which "bad guys", i.e. enemies of the revolution, are demonized and, like in hollywood movies, defeated by "good guys". two differences here - chinese "good guys" are usually a group of heros (or at least a hero supported by a group), and the fight is low-tech and without kung fu.

 On the left a KMT-supported bandit, on the right a KMT naval officer

And in the comments Bingfeng talks on how young mainlanders today view the Nationalists.:

Joshua: How do Chinese people feel about the KMT today, especially compared to the CCP? From my own experience with Chinese people (lived their 4 years), Chinese people are rapidly changing their mindset, even favoring the KMT as a kind of detached, idealized party. Is this true, at least among urban folks?

Bingfeng: absolutely. now the mainland government is revising the official stance to reflect that period of history, and mainland chinese are getting to realize that KMT troops played the key role in resisting the japanese invasions. the sentiments towards KMT are mixed, but in general, the younger generations kind of favor KMT for its leadership role in the anti-japan war, its forward-looking policies with mainland and the courage to face its negative heritage.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia

Via Singabloodypore, Martin See is making yet another film. the release date depends on how long the Singapore authorities jail him for the previous one.:

In the early hours of 2nd February 1963, security police in Singapore launched Operation Coldstore - the mass arrests and detention of more than a hundred leaders and activists of political parties, trade unions and student movements, for their alleged involvement in “leftist” or “communist” activities. One of those arrested was former newspaper editor Said Zahari, who had been appointed the leader of an opposition party just three hours earlier.

A staunch anti-colonialist, Zahari had assumed that the mass arrests, set against the backdrop of Singapore’s struggle for independence, was no more than yet another turn of event in a politically volatile era. Freedom for him and the others, it seemed, would be secured once Singapore gained full independence.

On 9th of August 1965, by way of its separation from Malaysia, Singapore finally gained full independence and sovereignty. And as the republic embarked on a determined quest for economic prosperity, it dawned on Zahari that his new-found Singaporean citizenship did not accord him freedom.

By the time he was released in 1979, he had spent a total of 17 years in detention without trial. He now holds the distinction of being the second longest-serving political detainee in Singapore after Chia Thye Poh.

The total box office numbers for the previous film, , haven’t been released - although the Singapore government stands to gross S$100,000 from fines collected from See, which is actually a fair chunk of change for a 26 minute independent film.

Technorati Tags: asia, censorship, east asia, media, singappore, southeast asia

Asian horror films were dominated by exceptionally bad B-movies until films such as the Ring and Ju-on hit the screens. Ju-on, later remade by Sam Raimi, of Evil Dead and Spider-man fame, was one of AsiaPundit’s first re-introductions to Asian horror… and it was darn creepy (Mrs AsiaPundit, who generally embraces Mr AP’s love of zombie films, couldn’t watch).

Why was a low-budget film so effective at scaring the Gaijin, those who were raised on the Exorcist and Prince of Darkness? Possibly because the Westerners couldn’t figure out why the ghost of a child would be so keen on killing everybody. Japundit explains.:

In many Western stories, ghosts are often motivated by the same things as living people namely the pursuit of justice for wrongdoings. The ghost of a murdered person will seek vengeance on the person or persons responsible for their death.

If a ghost is malevolent, it often turns out they were a bad person in life — as in the back-story to the main ghost character in the Poltergeist (1982-1986) movies.

To understand the nature of the supernatural entity of “The Grudge,” one has to understand Japanese belief in spirits and the supernatural.

In the book Ghosts and the Japanese: Cultural Experience in Japanese Death Legends by Michiko Iwasaka, there is a passage which is a direct echo of the opening lines of the movie:

“Anyone who dies under great emotional stress creates an energy which is not easily dissipated; these yurei [ghosts], thus, have an impact on the local environment. . .”

This type of spirit is called a goryo — vengeful ghost. A goryo, however, is less like a consciously aware ghost that plots revenge and would be more familiar to Western audiences. A goryo is more like the energy of the emotion created at the time of death. And to some degree it represents the unconscious mind free of the limitations and morals of the conscious analytic side.

Formal belief in goryo can be traced to the Heian Period (794-1185) when goryo were thought to be the angry spirits of political enemies that had died in exile or had been executed.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, northeast asia, puppy

Obviously Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountains success in securing seven Golden Globes nominations wasn’t considered enough of an eye-catching headline for the editors of the China Post.:

(Via Wandering to Tamshui.)

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, brokeback mountain, film, northeast asia, taiwan

A military hospital in Nanjing has developed face-transplant technologies. Given that a prime source of China’s organ transplants has been executed prisoners, AsiaPundit considers this a ripe source of material for a new John Woo movie.:

Operations similar to the world’s first partial face transplant in France last month could be set for China.

After experts from a military hospital in Nanjing announced earlier this week that they have the ability to perform such surgery, the hospital has been inundated with telephone inquiries, according to Chen Fang, a nurse with the General Hospital of Nanjing Military Commands in east China’s Jiangsu Province.

"We’ve been preparing for such operations ever since 2003," Hong Zhijian, director of the plastic surgery section of the hospital told China Daily yesterday.

"If there is a suitable patient at the moment, we can graft a new face for him or her," he said.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia

Which came first, Godzilla or King Kong?:

Scientific American—First came a new report on Gigantopithecus, a huge prehistoric ape that inevitably invites comparisons to King Kong because of the imminent release of the film remake by the same name. And now comes the discovery of Dakosaurus andiniensis, a monstrous species of 135-million-year-old aquatic crocodile that has been nicknamed “Godzilla.” The synchronicity of these reports can mean only one thing: People of Tokyo, run for your lives.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia, godzilla

Tomorrow has removed its link to . An understandable move as they are all public bloggers and the video has been banned by Singapore’s Ministry of Propaganda Media Development Authority.:

Recommended by virgin_undergrad: “If you were to recall, Martyn See made headlines a couple of months ago when he was investigated by the police and allegedly forced to withdraw his short film ‘Singapore Rebel’ from the Singapore International Film Festival. It wasn’t until i googled ’singapore’ under the google’s video search did i realise that the video was available on the internet.

Technorati Tags: censorship, east asia, media, southeast asia, singapore rebel, singapore

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.

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…)

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.

This is gravely disturbing, as there are eight of these violence-inspiring devices on our refrigerator. (via Mutant Frog):

A scuffle broke out late Thursday night between a group of Japanese
tourists and locals at a restaurant in Wanhua (萬華), Taipei as result of
language barriers and miscommunication. The group of seven Japanese
were giggling and talking about the “Hello Kitty” magnets which have
recently a stirred frenzy among fans and collectors in Taiwan. Thinking
that the Japanese were laughing at them, a table of Taiwanese patrons
next to them—about 10 in all—approached the group and somehow a fight
started.

Kitty has been at the center of the Singapore riots of 2000 and the gruesome Hong Kong Hello Kitty murder of the same year, which was retold in schlock horror films: Human Pork Chop and There’s a Secret in My Soup.

As a responsible society it is time we consider banning all Kitty products and call upon Sanrio to provide full compensation for all Kitty-related incidents.

Shelton at Ahssa compares the US administration’s current policy towards North Korea to actions by the male lead in a movie that I fell asleep one-quarter of the way through. After making analogies I can’t understand, he forecasts possible war.:

Am I the only one to see what the hell the Bush Adminstration is doing?
I feel like when it comes to the DPRK, the American public is an unsuspecting (if not uninterested) young lass, while the Bush Adminstration is Catcher Block from the movie Down With Love.
The American public is kinda interested in the idea of freeing the enslaved people of the DPRK through possible military conflict (and letting of blood,) but we’ve only had half our first glass of wine. . .
The President meeting a dude like that is like Catcher Block looking deeply into the eyes of his prey and telling her she has an eyelash that needs to be brushed away — before the process is over someone is going to find themselve’s knocking on heaven’s door — or at least slamming against hell’s.
This has all the markings of Preparing The American Public For War, last seen during the lead up to war against Iraq.

Shelton, I don’t get it. Can you please base future analogies on more widely known pop culture artifacts (try Star Wars).

Personally, I feel the diplomatic situation is always similar to the Seinfeld episode with the pony remark, with the US administration (Jerry) making an innocuous comment about hating tyrants (kids with ponies) causing Kim’s regime (Manya) to leave the table. I expect the situation will also end similarly, with Manya collapsing and Jerry being blamed.

For better analysis: One Free Korea has updated his take on the situation (which is quite good and does not reference either Ewan McGregor or Seinfeld).

OxBlog’s Patrick Belton receives a letter from Bangladesh:

IT is the new buzz here, but it is unclear whether it actually exists
besides one sad-looking internet café with two computers in the
“wealthy” part of town (read: less than abject poverty). Both times I
went there was no current and hence no internet, but in theory you
could check your email. Dhaka still does not have a McDonald’s nor any
other international chain, although it does have a Dominous pizza (note
the ingenious way around copyright) and a restaurant that has stolen
the Chili’s logo and sells Thai food. The country has trouble
attracting foreign investment because it has one of the highest
corruption rates in the world, exacerbated by a political system run
almost entirely by two political families who trade off power almost
every election…

When I was here before, women did not adhere strictly to purdah and
many ventured into the marketplace wearing only hijab. Now, women are
largely kept to their homes and are required to wear a burkah in
public. However, some advances have been made in women’s health. Birth
control in the form of contraceptive pills from India is now available,
although apparently the local Madrassa has organized a campaign against
its use (not that it seemed to be having much effect; most of the women
see it as a Godsend)…

The biggest difference has to be the proliferation of cell phones and
televisions. Now, every third person seems to have a cell phone. The people in the
area may still not have reliable electricity, or safe drinking water,
or indoor plumbing, or much of anything else, but now many families do
have a television. The children look just as malnourished but now they
can sing Bollywood songs. Because of this, the people have a greater
awareness of the outside world than they did four years ago.[OxBlog]

Anakin is a made man. Image stolen from Winterson.com (visit here for more):

Silkworms has a review of the Star Wars Episode III opening in Urumqi - the Chinese city farthest from the sea. There, few were expecting Anakin to turn dark and Yoda spoke using proper grammar:

Yoda speaks in Subject - Verb - Object sentences, as opposed to the Object - Subject - Verb format that we all know. Theories as to why include: a) with all the bad dialogue, Chinese translators figured it was just a mistake by Lucasfilm, b) it is impossible for audiences to understand Chinese in this syntax, or c) the previous Star Wars movies were not dubbed by Lucasfilm and used normal syntax, so Lucasfilm decided to change the way Yoda speaks all the sudden would confuse the audience.

Another crackdown in China, but I doubt this one will last very long (via Curzon at Coming Anarchy):

From a friend currently on assignment in Shanghai:
I think Shanghai/China may be in the midst of one of its periodic IP [Intellectual Property]crackdowns. All the DVD stores shut down yesterday and I walked past the fake goods market to see the police impounding louis vuitton bags. A fake watch store told me they couldn’t sell me anything today and come back tomorrow. On top of that, a mate of mine told me all the massage parlors on some street near him had been shut down.
Seems like that’s half of the Chinese economy shut down. All they need to do now is revalues the Yuan and strike at Japanese run factories and that’s them properly f**ked.

UPDATE (21:03): So that explains it (From Danwei):

The Shanghai International Film Festival starts on June 11. Ahead of the festival, the city is organizing a crack down on pirate DVDs.
An Associated Press report about the crackdown gives a crystal clear picture of the real reasons behind China’s occasional anti-piracy actions:

"To crack down against the pirate DVDs is our job and duty," Lan Yiming, deputy head of Shanghai’s culture inspection bureau, said in a telephone interview.
"We want to create a good cultural environment for the international film festival and give guests from home and abroad a good impression," he said…

Gaijin Biker reports that Toy Story 2 did not actually have a happy ending:

I was looking around in the Astro Mike toy store near Harajuku today, and I’ve got some bad news for Toy Story 2 fans. Sadly, it seems that Woody and the rest of the Roundup Gang have ended up on display in Japan after all.