In a very recent post about Germany opening a memorial to Nazi forced labor victims, I asked "Japan, are you listening?" Well, today I got an answer from Japanese women of conscience.

Japan's sexual slavery focus of museum

Activists aim to remember 'victimizers,' even if new textbooks don't

Female activists in Japan are set to open a museum in Tokyo to collect and display materials mainly about those who were forced into sexual slavery for the Imperial Japanese Army during the war.

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Much has been written about the Chinese demanding a proper apology for atrocities committed during WWII, which are documented, displayed and often referred to by the Chinese, particularly the media. In the tradition of "never forget" these reminders of the Chinese Holocaust are appropriate. But it goes beyond that, evidenced by the public anti-Japanese riots in April, which the government encouraged, or at least condoned, until it threatened to get out of hand.

The Chinese, I have found, are very good at bifurcating their attitudes between people and their governments. With the US resentfully and fearfully regarded as a bullying, greedy, protectionist and scapegoating nation all over the world and certainly in Asia, Chinese treat Americans in China with respect and helpful friendship. But this doesn't include the Japanese, who are commonly ridiculed, excluded, discriminated against and vilified by the Chinese. Recently the story of a Western-style Chinese restaurant in Jilin, China, which demanded a war apology from Japanese customers before it would serve them was widely circulated. It borders on the fanatic and what government tolerance there is, I believe, and timing suggests, serves to foment nationalistic bigotry to deface Japan to the world and hopefully circumvent consideration of allowing Japan a seat on the U.N. Security Council. Of course, it backfired, making the Chinese look absurd and petty, even as their complaints have a reasonable ground.

Not surprisingly, this has precipitated a backlash as the Japanese now request Chinese apologies for property was damaged in Beijing during the riots and demonstrations. Ping pong, anyone?

Japan and China are joined at the hip economically, being vital trading partners. Both countries rely on tourism from each other. With nuclear threats from Korea between them, it seems they might start to settle these differences and turn to more pressing and dangerous matters that they could help solve together. Here's to the supremely elegant, hip and wise Japanese women for making a start.

Thoughts from the Middle Kingdom on a shrinking lonely planet.

This is one of those expat moments that come to you after a while as you live away from your Western homeland and how the rest of the world sees it sinks in.


You may or may not be aware that there was a recent expedition to the top of the world's highest peak, situated on the border of Nepal and China, to remeasure its altitude, which may have changed because of environmental conditions. There were a score of Tibetan women on the team. What you may not know is the original and proper name of this peak is Qomolanga, not Everest. Qomolangma, named after the Tibetan mother goddess of the earth (varies with translation) was and is the name the Tibetan name that the Chinese use for the peak, which was charted with that name by the Chinese over 280 years ago, more than a century before the British "discovered it" and named it Everest. This 2002 article in People's Daily suggests the world get with the Chinese name of this planetary landmark and acknowledge the authenticity of its origin.

Seems a reasonable request, considering. And it came to mind this week, as the data from the current expedition is being evaluated and the Chinese media observes the 600th anniversary of the seafaring expeditions of Zheng He's treasure fleets who's historic explorations may have, among other stunning accomplishments, preceded Columbus in the discovery of the Americas. I read a great (and controversial) book about this a couple of years ago, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. I highly recommend at least poking around this website if not the hefty book itself (great summer reading).

Members of a panel on the CCTV English Language show Dialogue, mentioned how in all Admiral Zheng's explorations, he never colonized the territories that he discovered, nor abused the natives such as Portugese explorer Vasco de Gama did, cutting off the noses and other body parts of the crews of ships bringing rice to Calcutta when Calcutta refused to surrender to his authority in the late 15th Century. However, an article a learned and China-wise colleague sent me today, China's warring Sinbad reinvented as good neighbour disputes that.

Chinese lesson:
Can you say "Cho-mo-lungma"? (Qomolangma)
And try "Jung Huh" (Zheng He)

Afterthought:

The Nepalese name for this peak is Sagarmatha, which, upon some thought, is as original and legitimate a name as the Tibetan Qomolangma. It is not unheard of for mountains which straddle borders to be called different names by the different nations they occupy. The Alpine peak called the Matterhorn in Switzerland is known as Cervinia in Italy. (At the Cervinia ski resort you can take a chairlift up to a trailhead and ski down to Switzerland and vice versa.) But calling the world's highest summit by its British-given name is a slap at both cultures and in China particularly (or perhaps I sense it more emphatically because I'm here) it's a reminder of colonialism, an era they quite understandably don't recall fondly.

Countries defeated in war can and do make ethical as well as financial restitution to victims of their war crimes. Japan, are you listening?

First Memorial To Nazi Forced Labor Victims

The state government of Berlin said Monday it had bought a Nazi-era former labor camp with the aim of opening a memorial next year, the first of its kind in Germany. The city-state said in a statement it had paid 1.4 million euros ($1.7 million) for the site, where more than 2,000 foreigners from German-occupied countries were put to work during World War II. The memorial, in Schöneweide in the east of the capital, will be managed by the Topography of Terror Foundation, which also runs a documentation center in the former Berlin headquarters of the Gestapo secret police. The camp was opened in 1943 under the supervision of armaments minister Albert Speer. Berlin Culture Senator Thomas Flierl said that the memorial would be the first in Germany to document the lives of forced laborers under the Nazis.

[snip]

The memorial is expected to open in the summer of 2006. German companies and the Nazi regime operated a massive forced labor program during World War II, enslaving hundreds of thousands of people to build railroads and air bases and work in factories, military production and concentration camps. It was instituted to replace a work force that had been recruited for the war effort. The German government and industry established a 5.1-billion-euro restitution fund in 2000 after negotiations with victims' groups and the governments of the United States, Israel and several eastern European countries.

Cartoon from USA Today:

By Steve Kelley, The Times-Picayune, New Orleans

Editorial from the New York Times:

It's All Happening at the Tulsa Zoo

July 10, 2005

Christian creationists won too much of a victory for their own good in Tulsa, where the local zoo was ordered to balance its evolution science exhibit with a display extolling the Genesis account of God's creating the universe from nothing in six days. A determined creationist somehow talked three of the four zoo directors, including Mayor Bill LaFortune, into the addition by arguing that a statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesh at the elephant house amounted to an anti-Christian bias toward Hinduism.

After the inevitable backlash from bewildered taxpayers warning that Tulsa would be dismissed as a science backwater, the directors "clarified" their vote to say they intended no monopoly for the Adam and Eve tale but rather wanted "six or seven" creation myths afforded equal time. There was the rub: there are hundreds of creation tales properly honored by the world's multifarious cultures, starting with the American Indian tribes around Tulsa.

You want creationism? How about the Cherokee buzzard that gouged the valleys and mountains? And why should Chinese-Americans tolerate neglect of P'an Ku and the cosmic egg at the zoo, or Norse descendants not speak up for Audhumla, the giant cow?

The futility of this exercise was emphatically made clear last week when a crowd of critics demanded reconsideration. With the speed of the Mayan jaguar sun god, zoo directors reversed themselves, realizing they had opened a Pandora's box. In stumbling upon so many worthy cosmogonies, Tulsa did us all a favor by underlining how truly singular the evolution explanation is, rooted firmly in scientific demonstration.

Second thoughts are a creative characteristic of Homo sapiens, and the Tulsa Zoo directors did well by theirs. They were fortunate to have Ganesh, known to true believers as the remover of obstacles and the god of harmony, on the grounds.

From the Christian Science Monitor, London's Calling

Terrorists learn by each new reaction to their dreaded deeds. Evil acts thrive only when good people respond in ways that play to the very purposes of those acts.

Did you know this? From Deutsche Welle

Tourists Face Unauthorized Organ Removal

Not many tourists know that in some popular destinations, organs can be removed without consent after death. ... in some countries, such as Austria, France, Italy and Spain, doctors are allowed to remove human organs without consent to save the lives of others. That doesn't exclude foreign tourists.

[snip]

"After brain death has been confirmed, the victim may -- without consulting relatives -- be deboned, be exploited," said Dresden-based attorney Heinrich Meyer-Götz. "That means kidneys, liver, lungs, all the cartilage, corneas, veins -- today they can make use of almost everything. And the relatives have no opportunity to file a protest...

[snip]

... if they're unable to contact a relative, doctors are allowed to remove organs without permission, according to what is known as the 'refusal regulation.'

Lawyer Meyer-Götz provides his clients with protection from having their organs removed without consent. They can apply for an extension to their passports that declares that the holder is unwilling to donate his or her organs. The information is also entered into an international refusal register.

The Union Jack is reflected in raindrops on a car window from the electronic message sign at the NASDAQ Market Site in New York's Times Square July 8, 2005, which has been displaying the flag as part of a tribute to victims of Thursday's bombings in London. (Photo and caption from Reuters)

Now I'm particularly glad that London was awarded the 2012 Olympic Games. She's survived blitzes and IRA attacks and will survive this despicable attack as well.

Another one hits the dust:

Police arrest Chinese hacker in Tokyo

Big News Network via China National News via UPI
Reported on Wednesday 6th July, 2005

Police have arrested a Chinese university student in Tokyo, accusing him of hacking into companies' computer systems to obtain information on their customers.

Yu Hua, 27, a student at a private university and resident of Tokyo, is accused of violating the anti-hacking law, the Mainichi Shimbun http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/ reported Wednesday.

He had placed an advertisement on an Internet bulletin board offering the customer information for sale. Yu admitted to the allegations during questioning, telling investigators he needed money for his tuition fees.

In the specific case for which he was arrested, police said Yu used his home computer to hack into the computer system of the Club Tourism travel agent between March 15 and 17, obtaining about 160,000 pieces of personal information on its customers, including their passwords and names.

Investigators are questioning him over allegations that he also hacked into the computer systems of 13 other companies and obtained approximately 360,000 pieces of personal information on their customers.

The police suspect that Yu used Chinese software that allows users to look for security loopholes in computer systems.

I wonder what his major is/was? Not computer science, I hope. Nice to know the Chinese have software to assist hackers, isn't it?

Hacking and identity theft is rampant and this also helps explain the avalanche of worms and trojans and virii that have plagued our computers since we've come to China. My Zonealarm personal firewall lit up like a Christmas tree the first time I went online three years ago when we first arrived in China and my virus software worked overtime stomping worms that embedded themselves in in the registry and kept replicating themselves. These critters use ports opened by legitimate internet communication and file transport and are especially fond of piggybacking on P2P file sharing networks. Sometimes these cybervermin use your computer to redirect communications anonymously, slowing your system down, sometimes they look for information that can be used for identity theft or in this case, customer information that can be exploited or sold.

About a month ago, I experienced a catastrophic computer crash on a fairly new computer running XP. I'd upgraded from Win98 and thought I was safe with the built-in firewall so I didn't add a personal firewall. That was a bit of ignorance that cost me a lot of time and stress. It took over a week to find a tech and a translator here in Beijing that could help. Most Chinese computer techs just come in and tell you they have to wipe the disk and reinstall Windows, which destroys all your files. It's easy to do, gets the job done and they really don't care much about your files anyway.

Incompetent Chinese techs can be more dangerous than cyberattacks. Two and a half years ago when we were in Xiamen, two techs came over to install the ADSL internet service and had problems making it work on one of our computers. After a few hours, they asked for the Windows disc and I assumed they were going to install a driver, but I asked anyway, through Hank, our student friend who came to translate. They intended to reinstall Windows (which would have wiped the hard disk)! Without even asking! I refused in no uncertain terms (to put it mildly) and after another couple of hours of unsuccessful tinkering, they left. The next day someone who knew what they were doing showed up and installed the ADSL connection in ten minutes.

Flash forward to recent past when my computer was down and out, reason undetermined at the time. I'd recently bought a 10-pak of CDs to do backups, but my CD writer was malfunctioning intermittently and I couldn't get it done. Nor could I use the system repair CD that came with my new computer. I wondered if the problem that crashed my computer originated from the balky CD drive. I would find out that that CD drive problem had a much simpler cause, one both I and the tech overlooked. The tech, a really sweet man and sympathetic to my urgency to recover my personal files, spent two days overseeing the problem and dealing with my panic. He sold me a portable hard disk, and we installed Windows on that. This required going to an outside shop, which let us use their equipment, since my CD drive wasn't working. They charged us 200 RMB for the bench time and use of their equipment. Once Windows was installed on the outboard hard disk, we used it to access the hard drive on the computer that was down. There were all my files. I spent all night transferring them from the computer to the portable hard drive and the tech came back in the morning to install XP on the computer. That was successful and I transferred all my personal files back and began the slow process of rebuilding the software environment. As I did, my virus software reported a worm, which it eliminated. Curious, I looked into the "exclusion" list in the virus software and what I found astonished me: the worm had installed itself as an exclusion, meaning it set the virus software to ignore its location. It was only when it began to generate some activity on the computer that the virus software found it. You have to be a real detective to keep up with this stuff. Password protecting the Options function of the virus software, the module in which exclusions are specified, at least made that back door more difficult to hack. I was then fairly certain that a virus had taken my computer down, which is what the tech suspected.

There are heroes here too. The tech, who'd put in 2 days time, refused to let me pay him, but accepted an invitation to lunch.

I put a new Zonealarm personal firewall on this computer and have at least 40 alerts of attempts to find an entry point into my computer a day. I feel a little more protected now and I've backed my files up on CDs--oh, yes, it's working now. I got a CD/DVD cleaning disk and that solved that problem--a bit embarrassing to admit that it didn't occur to me before. It certainly would have saved a lot of trouble.

I'm now up and running again somewhat the worse for wear and wiser--hopefully wiser enough.

For whom? What about the Iraqis?
Sometimes you just have to hang your head.