2014-03-25

MH370

I Have Been Reluctant To Mention, Where You Are And Wherever You Are I'll Gotta Find You.


Windwing - MH370
Windwing - MH370

2014-03-19

Sorry For Nothing

http://www.zaobao.com/forum/bilingual/story20140316-320540/page/0/1
Sorry For Nothing
Windwing - Sorry For Nothing

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is once again stirring Asia's cauldron of national rivalries and historical resentments. This time, he has instructed a committee of historians to reexamine the official apology delivered in 1993 to World War II-era sex slaves held in Japanese military brothels. It is clear from various recent statements that some of Abe's closest advisers believe that the apology was not in order, so the committee might well conclude that Japan was never officially involved in prostitution, and that its "sincere remorse" should therefore be withdrawn.

What perverse reason could Abe have for pursuing such an outcome?

Glossing over, or denying, dark chapters of national history is not unique to Japan, of course. There is no room for Stalin's mass murders in the kind of "patriotic" education favored by Russian President Vladimir Putin. And the Tiananmen Square Massacre, to name but one bloody event in China's recent past, has been officially forgotten.

Still, Japan is a democracy, with freedom of expression. The official apology made in 1993 was prompted by a Japanese historian's discovery of documents showing that the Imperial Japanese Army had been directly involved in setting up, though not necessarily in running, what were known as "comfort stations." One of the official reasons was that widespread rape of Chinese women by Japanese soldiers was provoking too much resistance among the local population.

Various means were used to stock the brothels with young women. But, because there was no escape, the women, once ensnared in the system, were effectively slaves.

This has been officially admitted, so why reopen the ghastly business now, at a time when rescinding the apology would make Japan's already-strained relations with China and South Korea many times worse?

If Abe and his allies were cosmopolitan in their outlook, with a deep understanding of, or concern for, other countries, the decision to revisit the 1993 apology would indeed be extraordinary. But, as is true of many political leaders, especially on the nationalistic right, they are chauvinistic provincials whose concerns are almost entirely domestic. In their efforts to revise the historical record, they are not really thinking of Koreans or Chinese, but of political adversaries at home.

The views of the Japanese on their country's wartime history are deeply divided, reflecting political battle lines drawn in the immediate aftermath of the war, when Japan was under Allied occupation. The United States, which ran the occupation, was keen to reform Japanese society in such a way that another war would be unthinkable. Worship of the emperor was abolished, though Hirohito remained on his throne. Education was purged of all militaristic and "feudal" elements, including favorable references to the samurai spirit. A new pacifist constitution, written by the Americans, banned the use of armed force. And Japan's wartime leaders were tried in Tokyo by Allied judges for "crimes against peace" and "crimes against humanity."

Most Japanese, heartily sick of war and military bullying, were happy to go along with all of this. But there was always a right-wing minority that felt humiliated and resentful of the loss of national pride and, more important, national sovereignty, for Japan's security would henceforth have to depend entirely on the protection offered by the US.

One of the main leaders of this group of disgruntled nationalists was Nobusuke Kishi, Abe's grandfather. Kishi's aim was to regain Japanese pride and sovereignty by revising the constitution and reviving old-fashioned patriotism, thus undoing some of the American educational reforms. He failed, because most Japanese were still allergic to anything that smacked of militarism.

Until not long ago, there was a strong left-wing current in education and some of the media that used Japan's horrendous wartime record as an argument against any kind of revisionism. But, as long as the Japanese left used history to make this political argument, the nationalists pushed back by claiming that stories of wartime atrocities had been greatly exaggerated.

Books about the infamous Nanking Massacre of 1937, or the enslavement of "comfort women" in military brothels, were denounced as "historical masochism" or dismissed as "the Tokyo Trial View of History." The left was accused of being complicit in spreading foreign – Chinese, Korean, or American – propaganda.

This, then, is the modern Japanese version of populism: the "liberal elites," by falsifying the history of Japan's glorious war to "liberate Asia," undermined the Japanese people's moral fiber. Because the ideological collapse of left-wing politics in Japan has been as precipitous as in much of the Western world, the so-called liberal elites have lost much of their former influence. As a result, the voice of the nationalist right has grown louder in recent years.

That is why Abe can get away with appointing cronies to the board of NHK, the national broadcasting company, who openly claim that the military brothels were an entirely private enterprise and that the Nanking Massacre was a foreign fabrication. Historical truth is not the point; political mastery is.

Japan's prime minister is playing a risky game. He is upsetting allies in Asia, embarrassing the US, and making bad relations with China even worse. Like Putin, he is driving himself and his country into further isolation for entirely domestic reasons. In a region increasingly dominated by Chinese power, he will be without Asian friends.

And that is where Abe's behavior becomes truly perverse. After all, a Japan that is isolated in Asia will be even more dependent on the US, the wartime victor, which Abe and his nationalist allies hold responsible for the postwar order that they seek to revise.

(Ian Buruma is Professor of Democracy, Human Rights, and Journalism at Bard College.)

2014-03-13

DiaoYu Island-The Truth

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90777/8564192.html
Windwing - DiaoYu Island-The Truth & Chris D.NeBe
Chris D. Nebe

         

 

Hollywood writer and director Chris DNebe screened a newdocumentary about the Diaoyu Islands at the REAL D Theater on Tuesdaysaying hehopes to show Americans the truth about the territory.

"Diaoyu IslandsThe Truthis produced by Monarex Hollywood Corporation and is one oftwelve documentaries in Nebe's "Mysterious Chinaseries introducing Chinese history,culture and rapid development to the world.

The debut attracted nearly 100 viewerswho learned from the 40-minute film that theDiaoyu Islands have been Chinese territory since ancient timesand that Imperial Japanannexed the Diaoyu Islands from China in 1895 after the First Sino-Japanese War.

The short feature holds the view that "the real Diaoyu Islands conflict goes from the so-called administrative rights of the United StatesAfter the Second World Warinstead ofreturning the islands to Chinathe United States claimed 'administrative rights.' In 1971,America gave the islands back to Japanignoring China's long-standing claim."

In the last part of the filmNebe asserts that "America can quell the tension byencouraging his Japanese ally to return the Diaoyu Islands to China and apologize toChinese people for the war crimes of Imperial Japan."

"My view point is that... the truth about Diaoyu Islands issues are completely wrong toldby Western mediaI hope the movie will change itWe are pushing to help Americansknow the truth of Diaoyu Islands," Nebe said.

Japan should do the right thing and give the islands back to Chinawhile Japanese PrimeMinister Shinzo Abe should go to Nanjing to apologize to China for the war crimes ofImperial JapanThese islands should not be a case for disrupting peace and harmonybetween China and Japanhe added.

Klaus Schmitt came to see the film with his wife. "Very little of my friends know DiaoyuIslandsonly if you who are politically active or interested in historybut most people don'tknow it," he said.

He believed that the film gave him a neutral overall view on the issue.

Audience member Lynn Crandallwho works at the University of Southern Californiasaidthe documentary encouraged peace. "The film is a strong statement for us to try to findpeacewe must find a way to share the world in brotherhoodI believe we should beneutralI think we are too much on the side of JapanI think we should work for peacenotfor divide."

Anthony DRossa lawyer who said he did not previously know about the conflict betweenChina and Japan over the Diaoyu Islandstold Xinhua, "It tells a lot that I did not know."

"Diaoyu IslandsThe Truthwill be broadcast on American public television and is alsoavailable on the Internetaccording to Monarex.

2014-03-08

The 'T-word'

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/03/03/the_t_word_China_kunming_knife_attack_in_western_media

The 'T-word'

Chinese Are Angry At Western Media's Portrayal Of A Dastardly Attack There.

Windwing - KunMing Terrorist Attack

In Chinese, just as in English, quotation marks can indicate attribution, doubt, or dismissiveness. And just like in the United States, terrorism is a sensitive issue in China, where disaffected citizens have at times used violence for political ends. In such an environment, employing quotation marks around a highly-politicized word like terrorism can be combustible. 

On the evening of March 1, a group of knife-wielding assailants dressed in black burst into a crowded railway station in Kunming, the capital of China's southwest Yunnan province, and slashed travelers, passersby, and police, killing 29 and injuring 143, including children and the elderly. Police shot dead four assailants at the scene, and say they have captured all the surviving suspects. Eleven hours after the attack, China's state-run Xinhua News Agency announced that based on evidence found at the crime scene, separatists from the northwest Chinese region of Xinjiang are behind the terrorist attack. (So far, no groups or individuals have claimed responsibility, and Beijing released the name of one alleged perpetrator.)  

Following the Xinhua report, many major Western media outlets covering the event, including The New York TimesCNNReutersBBC, and CBC of Canada, used quotation marks around the word "terrorism," some in the article's headline, some in the body, and some in both. Chinese Internet users and domestic media were quick to notice this punctuation choice, and a storm of anger against perceived Western biasquickly brewed on Sina Weibo, China's largest microblogging platform.

While some Weibo users interpreted the quotation marks as attribution to the Chinese government's official statements, which most Western media outlets usually take with a grain of salt, many detected sympathy with separatist aspirations in Xinjiang, or what one called an "obvious agenda." Another wrote that some of the articles about the Kunming attacks ended "with the Han Chinese's invasion of Xinjiang's religion and culture," which "turned the carnage of civilians into a political game." (Xinjiang became part of the People's Republic of China in 1949, after Communist troops entered the region.) Tech entrepreneur Luo Yonghaotweeted to his 5.8 million followers that "uniformed thugs indiscriminately killing innocent civilians undoubtedly constitutes terrorism." He wrote that he had always admired the West, but "cannot stand" the way Western media first reported the Kunming attack. 

Chinese state media did not sit on the sidelines. The People's Daily, a Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece, also took to Weibo to demand an explanation from Western media for their "blindness and deafness" and "intentional downplaying of the violence and sympathy toward the assailants." "China sympathized with the September 11 terrorist attack," itwrote in a popular tweet. "But some American media harbored double standards regarding the Kunming terrorist attack. Why?"

A post by the official account of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing fueled the outrage. It did not, as many Chinese had hoped, characterize the attack as terrorism, but instead called it a "senseless act of violence." Almost all of the more than 50,000 comments left on the postaccused the U.S. Embassy of a double standard when it comes to violence in China. "If the Kunming attack were a 'horrific, senseless act of violence,'" the most up-voted comment reads, "then the 9/11 attack in New York City would be a 'regrettable traffic accident.'" (The United Nations Security Council released a statement late Sunday condemning "in the strongest terms the terrorist attack.") 

Some of the fallout from the embassy's statement stems from an unfortunate translation. "Senseless violence," a common diplomatic phrase the Obama administration has also used to describe the 2012 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, which killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya, read as "meaningless violence" in Chinese. Many Chinese web users, likely already attuned for signs of disrespect, took that to mean the U.S. sympathized with the assailants. The violence did not serve its supposed purpose, the message seemed to say, but the assailants' goals could be achieved by some other means.

Perceived bias from Western media has roiled Chinese public opinion before. In the spring of 2008, Western media drew widespread criticismin China over coverage of ethnic clashes in Tibet and Xinjiang that many Chinese believed underplayed violence perpetrated by ethnic minorities. In the run-up to the August 2008 Beijing Olympics, many Chineseseethed against Western coverage of the Olympic torch relay, which often focused on the disruptions of the relay by human rights activists. In early 2008, some young Chinese Internet users set up a website called Anti-CNN to call out what they believed was biased reporting on China and, according to China's foreign ministry, to reflect grassroots "condemnation" of some Western media's "distorted and exaggerated" views.

These developments are troubling for U.S. - China relations, but not entirely surprising. In a digital age, it's relatively easy for wired citizens of one country to peer into the media environment of another. But old-fashioned cultural, political, and linguistic barriers remain. Even -- perhaps especially -- at times of tragedy, the combination often spurs more pique than understanding.

AFP/Getty Images

2014-03-02

KunMing Train Station Terrorist Attack

KunMing Train Station Terrorist Attack
Windwing - The police at the scene.

On the night of March 1, the police cordoned off Kunming Train Station. On the night of March 1, at 9:20pm, more than 10 masked assailants with knives [machetes?] wearing the same outfits hacked innocent people at the square, the booking halls, and other locations at Yunnan Kunming Train Station. Up till 1am on March 2, this violent incident had already caused 29 deaths and 113 injuries among the masses. The police shot down 5 assailants at the scene, while the rest of the assailants have yet to be apprehended. 

KUNMING - Twenty-nine civilians were confirmed dead and more than 130 others injured Saturday in a railway station attack in Southwest Chinese city of Kunming, authorities said.

Police have shot dead at least four attackers whose identities are yet to be confirmed and are hunting for the rest.

It was an organized, premeditated violent terrorist attack, according to the authorities.

Chinese president Xi Jinping has urged the law enforcement to investigate and solve the case of Kunming terrorist attack with all-out efforts and punish the terrorists in accordance with the law.

More than 10 terrorist suspects attacked people at the square and ticket hall of Kunming Railway Station at 9:20 p.m. Saturday, killing at least 28 civilians and injuring 113 others.

Xi stressed the careful rescue and treatment of the injured civilians and proper handling of the dead.

He called for full awareness of the grave and complicated situation of anti-terrorism and effective measures to crack down violent terrorist activities in all forms.

Xi has assigned officials, including Meng Jianzhu, head of the Commission for Political and Legal Affairs of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, and Guo Shengkun, Chinese state councilor and minister of public security, to go to Yunnan to guide work and visit injured civilians and relatives of the victims.

Premier Li Keqiang asked relevant departments to catch and punish the terrorists, and public security departments at all levels to strengthen prevention and control measures to guarantee the safety of public places.

A Xinhua reporter on the spot said that injured people have been rushed to more than 10 local hospitals for treatment.

A doctor with the Kunming No.1 People's Hospital told Xinhua over the phone that medical workers of the hospital are busy treating the injured.

According to Xinhua reporters at the hospital, a dozen of bodies were seen at the hospital. As of 0:00 a.m. Sunday, more than 60 victims in the attack have been sent to the hospital, emergency registration records showed.

Liu Chen, a 19-year-old student from Wuhan City of central China's Hubei Province, was traveling in Yunnan. Liu and her friend were at the station for tickets to the tourism city of Lijiang when the attack suddenly happened.

"At first I thought it was just someone fighting, but then I saw blood and heard people scream, and I just ran," Liu said.

Chen Guizhen, a 50-year-old woman, told Xinhua at the hospital that her husband Xiong Wenguang, 59, was killed in the attack.

"Why are the terrorists so cruel? " moaned Chen, holding her husband's blood-stained ID card in shaking hands.

The couple, both farmers from the Chuxiong Yi Autonomous Prefecture, bought Sunday tickets to the eastern province of Zhejiang for their new urban jobs and planned to stay over in the waiting room.

"I found his ID card on his body. I can't believe he has just left me," she cried.

Yang Haifei, a local resident of Yunnan, told Xinhua that he was attacked and sustained injuries on his chest and back.

Yang said he was buying a ticket when he saw a group of people rush into the station, most of them in black, and start attacking others.

"I saw a person come straight at me with a long knife and I ran away with everyone," he said, adding that people who were slower were severely injured.

"They just fell on the ground," he said.

At the guard pavilion in front of the station, three victims were crying. One of them named Yang Ziqing told Xinhua that they were waiting in the station square for a 10:50 p.m. train to Shanghai, but had to escape when a knife-wielding man suddenly came at them.

"My two town-fellows' husbands have been rushed to hospital, but I can't find my husband, and his phone went unanswered," Yang sobbed.

Pictures on Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent of Twitter, show local police patrolling the station. Bodies in blood can be spotted on the ground in the pictures. Doctors were seen transporting injured people to a local hospital.

A Weibo user screen-named "HuangY3xin-Dione," who was dining in a restaurant near the railway station, said that she was "scared to death," adding that she saw a group of men in black with two long knives chasing people.

According to Kunming railway bureau, train departures have not been affected.

The incident has fueled massive anger among the people across China, with netizens severely condemning the violent attacks on social websites like Sina Weibo and WeChat, a popular instant messaging service.

The attacks at the station might have created blood and violence, but it has also awakened a strong sense of justice and strength among us. We strongly condemn violence, and we call on people to stop circulating bloody pictures, read a message on WeChat.

On Sina Weibo, netizens are spreading the word of stopping the circulation of bloody photos on the Internet.

"Stop publishing bloody photos, because that's just what the thugs want," a Weibo user with the screenname "Fuzhaolouzhu" wrote on her Weibo account.

Another Weibo user screennamed "CakeryCupcakes" said she hopes mainstream media could provide immediate and transparent report.

The security management bureau under the Ministry of Public Security called the incident a "severe violent crime" at its official Sina Weibo account.

Now, the situation is gradually going stable, and the injured have been treated, while police are investigating the case, it said.

"No matter what motives the murderers hold, the killing of innocent people is against kindness and justice. The police will crack down the crimes in accordance with the law without any tolerance. May the dead rest in peace," it read.

Zhang Yumin, 59, a retired cashier from Beijing, is flying to Kunming on Sunday morning with her husband for a sight-seeing tour. She said she will not change her schedule despite the attacks.

The Kunming Railway Station, located in the downtown area of the city, is one of the largest railway stations in southwest China. It was put into operation in 1958.

The latest violent terrorist attack that caused most civilian deaths happened in June last year in Lukqun Township of Turpan Prefecture in farwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

A total of 24 people were killed and 23 others were injured in the attack.

On October 28 last year, a jeep crashed at downtown Beijing's Tian'anmen Square, causing five deaths and 40 injuries. Police found gasoline, two knives and steel sticks as well as a flag with extremist religious content in the jeep.

The police later identified the deadly crash as a violent terrorist attack.

Windwing - One of the roads to Kunming Train Station is blocked.

This picture is of the 3 warning lines set up by the police on Beijing Road which leads to Kunming Train Station, prohibiting all vehicles from entering.

Windwing - A passenger at the scene who is still in shock.

This picture is of one of the passengers at the scene still in shock.

Windwing - A group of riot police is on route to the scene.

A group of riot police on route to the scene.

Windwing - A scene of mess after the violent attack.

On the night of March 1, scattered luggage outside one of the ticket booking halls of Kunming Train Station (photo taken by cellphone). Photographed by  Xinhua News Agency  reporter Ling Yiguang.

Windwing - The police is blocking the scene.

On the night of March 1, the police cordoning off the scene outside Kunming Train Station. Photographed by  Xinhua News Agency  reporter Ling Yiguang.

Windwing - Scene of the violent attack.

Windwing - Scene of the violent attack.


Windwing - Scene of the violent attack.

Windwing - Scene of the violent attack.

Windwing - Scene of the violent attack.

Windwing - Scene of the violent attack.

Pictures are of the scenes of the violence.

Windwing - A wounded woman is receiving medical treatment.

On the night of March 1, a wounded woman receiving medical treatment at Kunming City No.1 People's Hospital (cellphone photo). Photographed by  Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Meng.

Windwing - The wounded are receiving medical treatments.

On March 2, before dawn, the wounded receiving medical treatment at Kunming City No.1 People's Hospital. Photographed by  Xinhua News Agency  reporter Ling Yiguang.

Windwing - A wounded man is receiving medical treatment.

On March 2, before dawn, a wounded man receiving medical treatment at Kunming City No.1 People's Hospital. Photographed by  Xinhua News Agency  reporter Ling Yiguang.

Windwing - A wounded person is receiving emergency medical treatment.

This picture is of a wounded person receiving emergency medical treatment at the hospital.

Windwing - KunMing Train Station.

This picture is of KunMing Train Station.