More inadvertent comedy here: “五主張”三次提“行動”胡錦濤擔心小泉只說不做 Hu Jin-tao: "Words of apology? Bah! Just words! Prove you're sincere!" How? Hmm... The conditions for a sincere apology turn out to include 'respect for history' (translation: the traditional pecking order is revived and China is top dog again. And no more humiliations: i.e. no more leadership by upstarts, first Japan and later the US). Another condition is 'agreement to the One China policy.' No apology for historical stretchers could be complete without turning over the nearest Chinese democracy, eh? So... the crude modus operandi tumbles forth. And Wen Jia-bao won't meet the damn Jap PM because his childhood school was bombed by dwarf pirates. Wen's feelings is hurt. Of course, Jiang Ze-min claims he defended the homeland against the Japs personally, though his age of three or so at the time mitigates the claim somewhat. And Mao started out opposing the One China policy. He wasn't even for China. He was a patriot for the Hunan nationalist cause. But thems just words! How do I prove I'm sincere? Either way, I'm sure all these good old boys have a patriotic story or three for public consumption. And playing the tender hurt feelings game goes over well with the hometown rubes. The PRC has 1.3 billion peckers in its pocket. But this dog and donkey show is a bit rich for most First Worlders. Not that these dudes know the difference. China needs free speech in the worst mf way.
Unrelated to China, but perhaps worth a glance. Roy Moore is the Alabama judge who put an ornamental edition of the Ten Commandments in his court and got cashiered. Here you can watch him talk circles around his astonished interviewer. I'm as atheist as they come but it's always refreshing and amusing to watch someone who can think on his feet plaster a simpleton, in this case a member of the fad-chasing MSM, with solid arguments. Watch the underdog bag his quota here: (video link)
Howard French photos of the North Korean border region (link)
[While the Japanese] tend to be quite persuaded that [they] are “unique,” Japanese are among the least nationalistic persons on earth. Japanese in general always score way down on the “patriotism” scale. [There is a] basic failure to distinguish the ordinary Japanese (product of the karma of military defeat, U.S. alliance, conservative political rule for five decades, and an educational system which by discouraging critical thought encourages acceptance of the status quo) and the Koizumis who indeed deserve whatever challenge the Chinese masses might serve up. ... I was put off by [Iris Chang's] assertion that the Nanjing Massacre had been “ignored,” and was the “hidden holocaust” of World War II. ...I questioned whether she should have attempted to explain the massacre in specifically cultural terms, as she had done (the samurai heritage, the Shinto religion); whether she should have repeatedly referred to “the Japanese” (as opposed to “the Japanese military” or “the Japanese government”) as the problem; and whether she should have depicted Japan---in the abstract---as in a state of denial about the massacre. There had in fact been numerous articles and monographs by Japanese scholars honestly relating many of the facts that appeared in her own work, which she, not proficient in Japanese, had not read nor adequately acknowledged. My quote is long but so is the original article. It rumble-bumbles in the professorial manner of Chomsky and VD Hanson mumble-bumbling to their sophomores. It would have been better chopped and repackaged as two or three articles. (Counterpunch)
[President Hu Jin-Tao's] idea of "peaceful" so far has included the blunt suppression of democracy in Hong Kong; outreach to rogue regimes around the world, such as Iran and Sudan; double-digit annual increases in defense spending; adoption of a law committing China to a war of aggression against democratic Taiwan if it fails to satisfy Beijing's demands; and now, the crude use of nationalist sentiment to intimidate Japan. (WP)
Folk in the People's Republic were taught to love the Soviet Union and then to hate it. India was esteemed in the 1950s and vilified in the '60s. Vietnam was "as close as lips and teeth" in the '60s yet invaded by Chinese armies in 1979. When Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka tried to apologise directly to Mao for World War II in 1972, Mao brushed him off, saying the "help" provided by Japan's invasion of China made possible the Communist victory in 1949. ... The main text for middle-school history in China devotes nine chapters to Japan's aggression against China in the 19th and 20th centuries, but does not mention China's invasion of Japan under the Yuan Dynasty. (Vietnam comes off even worse than Japan. Nothing is said of the Han Dynasty's conquest of Vietnam or of China's 1000-year colonisation of thecountry.) (link)
Howard French photos of the North Korean border region (link)
[While the Japanese] tend to be quite persuaded that [they] are “unique,” Japanese are among the least nationalistic persons on earth. Japanese in general always score way down on the “patriotism” scale. [There is a] basic failure to distinguish the ordinary Japanese (product of the karma of military defeat, U.S. alliance, conservative political rule for five decades, and an educational system which by discouraging critical thought encourages acceptance of the status quo) and the Koizumis who indeed deserve whatever challenge the Chinese masses might serve up. ... I was put off by [Iris Chang's] assertion that the Nanjing Massacre had been “ignored,” and was the “hidden holocaust” of World War II. ...I questioned whether she should have attempted to explain the massacre in specifically cultural terms, as she had done (the samurai heritage, the Shinto religion); whether she should have repeatedly referred to “the Japanese” (as opposed to “the Japanese military” or “the Japanese government”) as the problem; and whether she should have depicted Japan---in the abstract---as in a state of denial about the massacre. There had in fact been numerous articles and monographs by Japanese scholars honestly relating many of the facts that appeared in her own work, which she, not proficient in Japanese, had not read nor adequately acknowledged. My quote is long but so is the original article. It rumble-bumbles in the professorial manner of Chomsky and VD Hanson mumble-bumbling to their sophomores. It would have been better chopped and repackaged as two or three articles. (Counterpunch)
[President Hu Jin-Tao's] idea of "peaceful" so far has included the blunt suppression of democracy in Hong Kong; outreach to rogue regimes around the world, such as Iran and Sudan; double-digit annual increases in defense spending; adoption of a law committing China to a war of aggression against democratic Taiwan if it fails to satisfy Beijing's demands; and now, the crude use of nationalist sentiment to intimidate Japan. (WP)
Folk in the People's Republic were taught to love the Soviet Union and then to hate it. India was esteemed in the 1950s and vilified in the '60s. Vietnam was "as close as lips and teeth" in the '60s yet invaded by Chinese armies in 1979. When Japanese prime minister Kakuei Tanaka tried to apologise directly to Mao for World War II in 1972, Mao brushed him off, saying the "help" provided by Japan's invasion of China made possible the Communist victory in 1949. ... The main text for middle-school history in China devotes nine chapters to Japan's aggression against China in the 19th and 20th centuries, but does not mention China's invasion of Japan under the Yuan Dynasty. (Vietnam comes off even worse than Japan. Nothing is said of the Han Dynasty's conquest of Vietnam or of China's 1000-year colonisation of thecountry.) (link)
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