A matter of truth

Yesterday I watched the movie “Stranger than Fiction” starring Will Ferrell about an IRS agent who suddenly changes his life after learning that someone is narrating his life.  It wasn’t a mindless comedy like past Will Ferrell movies, but it proved that Will Ferrell is capable of playing serious roles.  The story is about how a series of random events changes Will’s character, Harold Crick, from living a routine life to falling in love and learning the simple joys of life.

For some reason, I already became bored of Virtua Fighter 5 after playing it for about a week now.  First there is no storyline in this game and much of the gameplay is devoted to fighting AI characters as a way to practice using the selected character.  For the most part, the fighting game is a great deal of fun, but it can reach a point where it can get boring if there really is no real incentive to keep playing other than obtaining items or unlocking secrets.  The only possible secret worth getting is the hidden character Dural, but that requires beating Arcade mode with every single character.  Unlike Tekken, which is largely based on mashing buttons, Virtua Fighter 5 actually requires strategy in dodging the opponent and setting up successful chain attacks to knock out the other player.

In any case I am considering whether to download Tekken 5: Dark Resurrection when it is out later this month.  I have tried Ridge Racer 7 and so far the gameplay doesn’t really impress me.  It’s too bad that Gundam Warriors will not be out in North America until June.  I could order the Japanese version, but I don’t really know the language.  My lack of understanding Japanese has been used against me in the past…

Plans are discussed for a meet up during the NY Auto Show Around April.  I will need to make some calls to gauge interest.  People I have in mind are Salman, Will, Will McG, Lazlo, Jehangir, Sinan, Brian.  I don’t expect many girls to go to a car show but people are more than welcome to bring their female friends.

MySims looks fun!

The Sims and its sequels and spin offs have found great success on computers and videogame consoles. The latest version produced on the Nintendo Wii is called MySims and it revolves around a user created player that will work to restore a rundown town back to its former glory while attracting unique residents. Like another other Sims game before it, MySims allows players to create their own characters, build their own structures, and freely roam around their town and creations. However, one major difference in MySims is that the characters for the Wii and DS are short, stubby and can be made to all look like cute anime characters down to the eyes and facial expressions.

Other features include the ability to grow flowers and plants by planting seeds outside, and extracting “essences” from the player’s objects which can be used for decoration. The DS version will have a number of mini games including fishing. On the Wii, the Nunchuk will be utilized for “direct movement”, with the remote for object moving and building. The DS version will support the touch screen and microphone.

Compared to previous Sims titles, MySims has a more cartoonish and anime-inspired look, with chibified character designs. This was the idea of Emmy Toyonaga; in Official Nintendo Magazine she quotes “Well, Mario and other Nintendo characters are pretty short and stubby. Also, being Japanese I’m used to the mindset that fun games should have shorter, stubbier characters. So these characters kind of came naturally.” In Nintendo Power, designer Robin Hunicke claims that the character designs also imply “youthfulness “, and that the aesthetic was chosen for “world-wide appeal”, while referencing the average sales of previous Sims games in Japan

Some of the reasons they decided to turn the Sims on the Wii into cute anime characters is to appeal to the broad customer segments that use the Wii.  From popular reports and word-of-mouth it appears that the Wii has caught on with non-gamers, young children. families and even the elderly so it would make sense to design a game that would have common appeal to these groups.

Additionally, it was suggested that the game developers for the Sims are making an effort to penetrate the Japanese market, where they were not doing so strongly in sales because their character designs and gameplay did not appeal to the casual Japanese gamer.

With that in mind, they made cultural adjustments to their successful Sims formula by simplifying aspects of the gameplay and making their characters cute and anime-like.  For some reason, a Japanese-American game developer felt the need to play on existing Japanese stereotypes to further explain the changes they made for the Sims series in MySims.

One of my friends has a Wii and there is a running joke that she resembles an anime character.  This game may prove to be a lot of fun for her…

It would be interesting to see all of us in MySims form to boot.

Why do we exist?

Had to coordinate the approval and release of a press release to the PR Newswire and ensure that the website, entire corporation, clients and PR Newswire get the proper update.  The market took a beating today because of the sell-off of shares in China due to fears of new securities regulations and the restriction of equities trading.  The panic in China set off a shitstorm in East Asia which eventually hit the United States bring the Dow down by about 400 or so points today.

One would not realise it but our national economies are greatly interconnected such that if something horrible happened in country A, the effects would spillover to countries C, D, F and so on.  People could feel this in the form of crazy terrorist attacks to wondering why the hell a can of tomato soup would suddenly cost $40.  This is also another reason why kids should start reading the New York Times and BBCnews.com before it’s too late.  The effects of globalisation have already affected my work in that I always have a need to be aware of timezones in other regions to the point of memorisation and I just trained a new colleague from the HK office on the trading platform.

People can read all the publications they want or simply regurgitate the horror stories of others to assert their understanding of the world, but it all means dick if you can’t apply it to your daily life.    The gym can be a real pain even if I just missed one week of exercise.  The weights felt heavier and I got tired sooner than I would have thought.

Prison Break Season 2, Episode 18

C-Note committed suicide, the heroes try to find answers, Kellerman plans to kill the President, and T-Bag is leaving the country.

Micheal, Lincoln and Sara listen to the conversation from the flash drive and appear to be shocked at the contents of the conversation. We don’t get to really know what was said in the recorded audio, but we are supposed to be know that this conspiracy is much worse than we are led to believe in the show. Shocked at the conversation, Michael suggests turning the information over to people who were affiliated with his late father. Lincoln later calls Jane, one of the contacts, and winds up talking to LJ, who tells Lincoln that he is able to get his life back with a fake identity provided by Jane and doesn’t want to leave his new life. They later get a contact with someone called Cooper Green who is an attorney general that worked with their father.

They decide to set up a meeting with Cooper Green near the Chicago park. Meanwhile, Sara visits her father’s grave and bumps into Bruce, one of his father’s associates. She is initially hostile to him because she thinks he is the one who tipped the Company to her whereabouts and tells him it is useless to torture her since she has no secrets. Bruce tells her that they also tapped into their conversation and he would not betray his father after working with him for so many years. For some reason Sara trusts him and they go visit Cooper Green’s office, and learn that he never got in contact with either Scofield or Lincoln.

The Cooper Green Lincoln and Michael contacted showed up at the park as expected, but is followed. They contact him through the nearby payphone where Green is first instructed to dump his suit jacket into the trash can, then immerse himself at the park fountain, and run through a series of underground corridors in the nearby museum before he could meet Michael. After getting in touch with Michael, Lincoln gets a call from Sara telling him that the Cooper Green they met is an impostor. At the same time, the fake Cooper Green tells Michael that he needs the flash drive and pushes Michael to leave the museum so he can get his inhaler for his asthma. Once they were outside Michael, asks him if he uses Cortisone or another drug as his inhaler to which the fake Cooper responds by saying he uses Cortisone. Michael then knocks him out because Cortisone is actually a drug used for skin irritation instead of asthma just as Lincoln found him.

The trio later meet up with the real Cooper Green and show him the conversation. Green informs them that this is very strong evidence but it cannot be used in a court of law since there is no original timestamp in the conversation that would prove that the conversation was made after Steadman was “killed”. He also pointed out that the conversation has something that could destroy the current President’s career and implies they can blackmail her for a Presidential pardon. As this is happening, Agent Mahone is sent by Agent Kim to catch Scofield in Chicago, but he is too late.

By the time he arrives, all he gets is a debriefing from the fake Cooper Green, who was actually an FBI agent, and Mahone spends time figuring out why they had the meeting at the Park. After learning from Agent Kim that they were trying to contact Green, Mahone realises that he may be going after an innocent man. He eventually deduces that they chose the park because it was within viewing distance and goes to search for them in the nearest hotel. At the hotel he finds that Sara checked in a room and goes on the pursuit.

C-Note hangs himself at the end of the episode. At the start of his story, he was making posts asking Michael for help at www.europeangoldfinch.net to fulfill his end of the bargain with Mahone. While this is happening, Mahone gets a call from Kim about Michael’s whereabouts in Chicago and instructs him to kill Franklin. Mahone is clearly conflicted when he visits C-Note in prison by first telling him he would have made the same decisions if he was in the same situation and tells Franklin that he is a good father. He also emphasises that he will honour his end of the bargain by providing care for his daughter and keeping his wife free despite knowing Scofield’s location. However, he tells C-Note that he must do something in return or else he will make decisions that will ruin his family and himself and he will understand when he gets a package in his cell. Sometime later, C-Note gets a package and it turns out to be a rope with a noose, suggesting that he must commit suicide. During his prison visitation, Franklin tells his wife that he loves her and that he is sorry for everything that has happened.

T-Bag kills a therapist and steals his identity. The episode begins with T-Bag going to a therapist claiming to need therapy. We see that T-Bag really did feel better after the session with the doctor telling him that all he needs to do is to start with a clean slate. T-Bag thanks the doctor and tells him he wasn’t planning on having a session, but he did notice the he shared a strong resemblance to the doctor after seeing his ads on the buses. We then see that the doctor is actually played by the same actor who plays T-Bag before he is killed. We later see T-Bag trying to get an international flight to Bangkok using the dead doctor’s passport, but the only flights available are a series of stopovers and they have to check-in his backpack with the money because it’s too heavy as a carry-on. The episode ends with T-Bag enjoying his first class seats while sharing a flight with Bellick.

Kellerman plans on killing the President. He first gets his sniper rifle and visits his distant sister at her workplace. We learn that Kellerman and his sister came from an abusive family and that Kellerman actually regrets leaving his sister in that situation when he left home at 18. He tells his sister that he has changed for the worse with no real sense or right and wrong and wants her to only remember the brother she grew up with because he is about to do something very bad. The episode closes with Kellerman infiltrating the Secret Service to secure a position within the city to snipe the President, who was making an appearance in Chicago.

Sucre and Maricruz are hiding at their aunt’s home in Mexico. The episode ends with Sucre talking about how things are only going to get better.

Bellick shows up at Mahone’s field office to get his reward money for Haywire. Mahone is upset because he doesn’t want others to know about their secret arrangement and points out it takes paperwork to get reward money processed. He then directs Bellick to hunt down Sucre who was spotted by Mexican police. Bradley then goes to Fox River where he tries to get Sucre’s cousin to spill information by offering him a transfer to minimum security where there are arcades, billiard halls, and friendlier guards. The episode ends with Bellick in economy class seats sharing the same flight as T-Bag.

Next week’s previews show Michael being interrogated by Agent Kim, Bellick confronting Sucre in Mexico, and T-Bag fighting to protect his millions.

我愛台妹－ＭＣ ＨＯＴＤＯＧ

Declassified CIA records reveal American hand in birth of Japan’s right wing

A 1959 file photo of Col. Masanobu Tsuji. (AP Photo)

AP – Col. Masanobu Tsuji was a fanatical Japanese militarist and brutal warrior, hunted after World War II for massacres of Chinese civilians and complicity in the Bataan Death March.

And then he became a U.S. spy.

Newly declassified CIA records, released by the U.S. National Archives and examined by The Associated Press, document more fully than ever how Tsuji and other suspected Japanese war criminals were recruited by U.S. intelligence in the early days of the Cold War.

The documents also show how ineffective the effort was, in the CIA’s view.

The records, declassified in 2005 and 2006 under an act of Congress in tandem with Nazi war crime-related files, fill in many of the blanks in the previously spotty documentation of the occupation authority’s intelligence arm and its involvement with Japanese ultra-nationalists and war criminals, historians say.

In addition to Tsuji, who escaped Allied prosecution and was elected to parliament in the 1950s, conspicuous figures in U.S.-funded operations included mob boss and war profiteer Yoshio Kodama, and Takushiro Hattori, former private secretary to Hideki Tojo, the wartime prime minister hanged as a war criminal in 1948.

The CIA also cast a harsh eye on its counterparts — and institutional rivals — at G-2, the occupation’s intelligence arm, providing evidence for the first time that the Japanese operatives often bilked gullible American patrons, passing on useless intelligence and using their U.S. ties to boost smuggling operations and further their efforts to resurrect a militarist Japan.

The assessments in the files are far from uniform. They show evidence that other U.S. agencies, such as the Air Force, were also looking into using some of the same people as spies, and that the CIA itself had contacts with former Japanese war criminals. Some CIA reports gave passing grades to the G-2 contacts’ intelligence potential.

But on balance, the reports were negative, and historians say there is scant documentary evidence from occupation authorities to contradict the CIA assessment.

The files, hundreds of pages of which were obtained last month by the AP, depict operations that were deeply flawed by agents’ lack of expertise, rivalries and shifting alliances between competing groups, and Japanese operatives’ overriding interest in right-wing activities and money rather than U.S. security aims.

“Frequently they resorted to padding or outright fabrication of information for the purposes of prestige or profit,” a 1951 CIA assessment said of the agents. “The postwar era in Japan … produced a phenomenal increase in the number of these worthless information brokers, intelligence informants and agents.”

The contacts in Japan mirror similar efforts in postwar Germany by the Americans to glean intelligence on the Soviet Union from ex-Nazis. But historians say a major contrast is the ineffectiveness of the Japanese operations.

The main aims were to spy on Communists inside Japan, place agents in Soviet and North Korean territory, and use Japanese mercenaries to bolster Taiwanese defenses against the triumphant Communist forces in mainland China.

Some of the missions detailed by the CIA papers, however, bordered on the comical.

Nearing the end of the Bataan Death March, a thinning line of American and Filipino prisoners of war carry casualties in improvised stretchers as they approach Camp O’Donnell, a new Japanese POW camp in Philippines, in April 1942 during World War II. (AP Photo)

The Americans, for instance, provided money for a boat to infiltrate Japanese agents into the Soviet island of Sakhalin — but the money, boat and agents apparently disappeared, one report said. In Taiwan, the Japanese traded recruits for shiploads of bananas to sell on the black market back home.

The operatives also were suspected of having murky links with the Communists they were assigned to undermine, the documents say. The CIA also said some agents sold the same information to different U.S. contacts, increasing their earnings, and funneled information on the American military back into the Japanese nationalist underground.

The files and historians strongly suggest that American lack of knowledge about Japan or interest in war crimes committed in Asia, and a reliance on operatives’ own assessment of their intelligence skills, made U.S. officials, in the words of one CIA report, “easy to fool for a time.”

“This was a bunch of Japanese nationalists taking the G-2 for a ride,” said Carol Gluck, a specialist in Japanese history at Columbia University and adviser to the archives working group administering the papers. “One thing that was interesting was how absolutely nonsensical it was, of no use to anybody but the people involved. Almost funny in a way.”

The informants, many of whom were held as war criminals after Tokyo’s surrender and subsequently released, operated under the patronage of Maj. Gen. Charles Willoughby, a German-born, monocle-wearing admirer of Mussolini, a staunch anti-Communist and, as the chief of G-2 in the occupation government, second in power only to his boss, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

Some of Willoughby’s proteges were seen as prime war trial material by Allied prosecutors.

But even as the occupation authorities were recrafting Japan into a democracy, their focus was shifting to containing the Soviets. Willoughby saw the military men as key to making Japan an anti-Communist bulwark in Asia — and ensuring that Tokyo would rapidly rearm, this time as a U.S. ally.

Historians long ago concluded that the Allies turned a blind eye to many Japanese war crimes, particularly those committed against other Asians, as fighting communism became the West’s priority.

Chief among the Japanese operatives was Seizo Arisue, Japan’s intelligence chief at the end of the war. Arisue had been a key figure in the pro-war camp and in forging Japan’s alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy in the 1930s.

According to the files, Arisue was soon ensconced in G-2, working with former Lt. Gen. Yorashiro Kawabe, who was a military intelligence officer in China in 1938 — to organize groups of veterans and others for underground operations.

These groups consisted of former war buddies and often retained the same chains of command and militarist ideology of the war machine that ground much of Asia into submission in the 1930s and ’40s.

“It shows how we acquiesced to the Japanese … in order to continue to build up Japan as our ally,” said Linda Goetz Holmes, author of “Unjust Enrichment: How Japan’s Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs.”

“The whole thing was Cold War fear and an awful lot of postwar compensation issues … all of that was subservient to our total fear of Russia,” said Holmes, also a historical adviser to the National Archives.

Indeed, that new focus brought some of Japan’s most notorious wartime killers under U.S. sponsorship.

Tsuji, for instance, was wanted for involvement in the Bataan Death March of early 1942, in which thousands of Americans and Filipinos perished, and for allegedly co-signing an order to massacre anti-Japanese Chinese merchants in Malaya.

Yet none of that seemed to matter much to American intelligence. The U.S. Air Force attempted unsuccessfully to recruit him after he was taken off the war crimes list in 1949 and came out of hiding, and CIA and U.S. Army files show him working for G-2. In the 1950s he was elected to Japan’s parliament. He vanished in Laos in 1961 and was never seen again.

The Army considered him a potentially valuable source, but the CIA was not impressed with Tsuji’s skills as an agent. The files show he was far more concerned with furthering various right-wing causes and basking in publicity generated by controversial political statements.

“In either politics or intelligence work, he is hopelessly lost both by reason of personality and lack of experience,” said a CIA assessment from 1954. Another 1954 file says: “Tsuji is the type of man who, given the chance, would start World War III without any misgivings.”

Yoshio Kodama salutes as he inspects troops in Japan in this Nov. 1969 file photo. (AP Photo)

Kodama was another unsavory player. A virulent anti-communist and superbly connected smuggler and political fixer, Kodama commanded a vast network of black marketeers and former Japanese secret police agents in East Asia.

The CIA, however, concluded he was much more concerned about making money than furthering U.S. interests. A gangland boss, he later played a major role in the Lockheed Scandal, one of the country’s biggest post-World War II bribery cases. He died in 1984.

“Kodama Yoshio’s value as an intelligence operative is virtually nil,” says a particularly harsh 1953 CIA report. “He is a professional liar, gangster, charlatan and outright thief… Kodama is completely incapable of intelligence operations, and has no interest in anything but the profits.”

Nowadays, the most powerful legacy of the U.S. occupation is the democratic freedoms and pacifism built into Japan’s 1947 constitution. But the U.S. association with Japanese war criminals illustrates how Washington embraced nationalist and conservative forces after World War II, helping them reassert their grip on the government once the occupation ended in 1952.

“Its hard to imagine back in those days how intent the U.S. was on rapid remilitarization of Japan,” said John Dower, historian and author of “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II.”

“When we talk about the emergence of neo-nationalism or a strong right wing in Japan today, this has very deep roots and it involves a very strong element of American support,” he said.

Yet the ex-war criminals failed to rebuild a militarist Japan. “Prewar right-wing activists who escaped war crime charges in fact did not have much influence in the postwar period,” said Eiji Takemae, historian and author of The Allied Occupation of Japan.

To the Americans, he said, “they were in fact not very useful.”

“Play nice until the Americans leave.” Although the right-wingers and pardoned war criminals did not have influence as individuals in postwar Japanese politics, their ideals lived on in future generations in the form of postwar politicians and the growing numbers of disillusioned Japanese citizens, who are being exposed to changing values in the post-communist era.

Prison Break, Season 2 Episode 17

Turns out Sucre met up with Maricruz after all, Michael had to ask Warden Pope for a favor, C-Note turned himself in to Agent Mahone, and T-Bag let that family.

Michael and Sara walked into the cigar club but they were both spotted by workers who recognised them. Then then escape the club and go to Warden Pope’s house since he is a prominent member of that club. At his home, Michael and Sara try to convince Pope to help them retrieve a flash drive with sensitive information using the key Sara found, but Pope is reluctant since he is still angry at Michael’s betrayal during the prison break. Scofield was able to convince Pope to help him by first reasoning with him and then offering to turn himself in once they get the flash drive. Agent Kim later learns Michael and Sara were spotted and flies to Chicago immediately.

Pope agrees to help then and they drop him off at the cigar club. Once at the club, Pope retrieves the flash drive and borrow someone’s laptop to review the contents. Meanwhile Agent Kim meets up with Pope as he walks out of the club and threatens to kill him if he doesn’t turn over the drive. Michael drives over to pick up the warden while Lincoln confronts Agent Kim for the first time. They manage to escape but Sara locks to doors to their car to keep Kellerman from going with them. Once they return to Pope’s house, the warden tells Michael he does not need to turn himself in and wishes them luck based on what he heard on the flash drive. Their story ends with them listening to the drive in a hotel.

Sucre continues his road trip to the Ixtapa airport to meet Maricruz. His car later runs out of gas and he hitches a ride from another driver, who we later learn works in the Ixtapa airport security and are expecting a fugitive to land at the airport. Once they arrive Sucre goes to look for Maricruz just as the driver gets a flyer with Sucre’s picture and description. Fernando is able to finally meet up with Maricruz, who looks completely different from the Season 1 Maricruz, and they escape the airport with a cab.

T-Bag takes the entire family down to his old home in Alabama, which is completely abandoned. While T-Bag is looking through the house we learn that his father always encouraged young T-Bag to study the dictionary and sexually abused him on the side. Also, we do learn that T-Bag may be inbred since the flashback make references to the family having the same genes. While they are at the house, T-Bag confesses to Susan that he is sterile and he is not proud that he is from a cursed family. The reason he took them with him is because he wants to start over through Susan’s family and begs her to love him. She refuses and T-Bag locks the entire family in the basement. He considers killing them but calls 911 so the police can free them.

C-Note’s daughter is extremely ill since she does not have her medication so he first tries to get her help at a hospital. They refuse to treat her and call the police on them. Agent Mahone shows up and is unable to shoot him because he is carrying his daughter. Franklin later goes to a medical clinic and bribes to doctor to get treatment but backs out when he says she will need emergency treatment. C-Note then calls Mahone to turn himself in under the condition his wife is freed, his daughter gets treated and offers to help him catch Scofield.

Next week’s previews show Mahone having tensions with Bellwick, Kellerman getting weapons, and our heroes looking desperate.

Lunch at Sahara’s w/ Bill

It was a slow Friday at work and I later met up with Bill for lunch as scheduled.  He seemed to be feeling better since his semester abroad in Holland seeing that he has improved to the point of no longer use a walking cane.  We recalled how we were both depressed the previous year for different reasons but agreed that these should not get to the point of being depressed.  It’s always good to stay occupied or to reassess the situation to realise that it is not a big deal.

We went to the Sahara restaurant for lunch and it was pretty good considering it was my first time there.  I learned that Bill is enjoying his time at his history internship and actually showed up to an event with a severe hangover after a crazy night he barely remembers.  I just gave him advice on how to get around the business school and updates on the events of last year of which he unfortunately was partly a witness to.  He pointed out that things worked out for the most part and that some people are just really pathetic.

The question we have to ask ourselves is: do we improve ourselves by being in the company of certain individuals?  I for one think I am bettering myself by being with down-to-earth friends like Bill and Ted and enjoying fun acts of randomness with the company of Will, Jehangir, Mike and the honours gang.  Talking with Hide and Hirozo as penpals reminds me that there are sane groups of people in this world, contrary to what I have experienced on facebook, RONs and MIXI.  I am learning more about personal finance and office socialising from my co-workers while getting good ideas on how I want to live from my boss’s lifestyle.

I really would have liked to have joined up and hung out with Danielle tonight for a night of randomness but I have to eat out with the extended family for Chinese New Year.

There are people who I felt were making me worse.  Most of them happen to be in that dragon-head club, the business school, and then there is that Kathleen girl.  It’s funny how I joined the RONs club to meet new people and learn, but came out feeling angry, confused, rejected and almost ignited with anti-Japanese sentiment.  None of those outcomes should have happened under normal circumstances after joining a club with seemingly approachable individual. “Play nice until the Americans leave…”

My 2 worst years were at the RBS, where I became somewhat of a person who had little to no loyalty towards insitutions.  Organisations are shiftless and can be easily remoulded into the vision of the power structure.  It can be an organisation that can bring excitement and interest or one that promotes rampant cheating and incompetence.  They failed to help me and others when there were serious problems in terms of cheating and abusive professors and all they gave RBS graduates were a 2-hour graduation ceremony without a diploma and a glass mug for all their troubles.  The only time the RBS was of any use was when Arbinet emailed openings on their listserv.

Kathleen: I don’t want to be your surrogate or your personal Choi.  You always call me up for company without caring for my schedule, you lied to me about your relationship with Scott, you didn’t care when I told you I needed time away from you, and you took me for granted.  If you didn’t get it for the first three times, I am not sure what to tell you anymore.  You seem to just think everything’s ok if you resume contact after 1-2 weeks after I ignored you or told you how I felt.  This is not working anymore because I will not pickup your calls and I will not respond to your IMs.  I know this comes off as immature but enough sick people from RONs did it and it worked on me.

I still can’t believe that my downward spiral started with your need to hide your relationship with patronising Scott from me.  So you broke my heart and still took me for granted just for basic companionship and advice, but you would never give me a chance.  If I had kept hanging with you long enough, my mind would have been warped and I would delude myself into believing we’ll be together at the end just like that Choi fellow, who actually became worse as a person from chasing that girl despite help from his friends (or so it seems).  You broke my heart and I became vulnerable to that point where I allowed that bitch to later rip it out and impale it with a bayonet.

I believed all their lies.  The world is a sick place and it’s hard to find good people to trust…but I found a few =D

I am still being harassed by that one right-wing Japanese troll on Facebook for moderating that Dokdo group.  Why in the hell do right-wing Japanese and their Wapanese fanboys think that Any Criticism of Japan = Racist Anti-Japanese?  If that is true then everyone who dislikes George W. Bush is an anti-American terrorist who wants to destroy Americans and their culture.  Anyway, facebook customer service have repeatedly ban that troll’s multiple accounts, but he continues to resurface worse than before and now bordering on identity theft.  I know in the past Facebook can actually get people arrested because users can be tracked from their university, high school or corporate networks.  This is no longer the case because Facebook allows for anyone to join in some sad bid to compete with MySpace and raise Web 2.0 financing.

Role of nationalism in Sino-Japanese relations

Role of nationalism in Sino-Japanese relations

People’s Daily – Scholars from both China and Japan have called for rational nationalism in both countries to foster a better relationship between the two neighboring countries.

Experts and scholars from China, Japan, the US, South Korea and Sweden have participated in a workshop organized by the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in Stockholm. They mainly discussed the role of nationalism in Sino-Japanese relations.

What is nationalism?

Professor Yu Tiejun from the School of International Studies at Peking University listed outbreaks of nationalistic sentiment that have occurred in China in recent years, analyzed the reasons behind them and talked about why Japan was targeted.

He rejected mainstream Western thought that Chinese nationalism is purely an instrument of the Communist Party of China, used to serve its own domestic and foreign policy goals. He said current Chinese nationalism is largely spontaneous, with internet and mobile phones the main organizational tools. It’s outspoken, emotional, radical and often exaggerated and biased, rather than rational. It is devoid of systematic thought, and results from a mass group mentality in society.

The Professor said that China is in the process of democratization and unlike the charismatic Chinese leadership in the past, China’s foreign policy makers are now more responsive to domestic opinions, especially on those issues related to fundamental foreign policies.

“China is changing. Now neither the Party nor the government can ignore the grassroots voices, especially those speaking out against Japan, the main target of modern Chinese nationalism owing to its aggression towards China during the first half of the 20th century.”

Professor Suisheng Zhao is the Executive Director of the Center for China-US Cooperation at the Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver in the US.

He said that the nationalism in China is liberal nationalism. For historical, geopolitical and economic reasons, Japan has always occupied a central place in China’s nationalist sentiments.

Sense and sensibility

Professor Suisheng Zhao thinks that although Chinese nationalism is more radical and emotional, the Chinese government is very rational and has tried everything possible to channel nationalist expression into peaceful activities. This has much to do with the principles and knowledge of the Chinese leaders, who know that China’s economic success depends heavily upon integration with the outside world and particularly upon cooperative relations with advanced Western countries, including Japan. The principles of peaceful-co-existence, peaceful orientation, peaceful rise and peaceful development are emphasized as China rises to the status of a great power.

Professor Zhao said that the Chinese government has always looked for opportunities to improve its relationship with Japan, thus Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s China visit was warmly welcomed by Chinese leaders.

He also noted that the rise of nationalism has not greatly affected Chinese foreign policy in Japan. He said that as a result of reform and opening up, Chinese leaders have become far more accountable to public opinion. The average Chinese is plugged into the information network by phone and internet, and has found ways to express his or her views, which include nationalist sentiment.

Professor Yu Tiejun cited measures taken by the Chinese government to rationalize nationalism. This included a report given by Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing on Sino-Japanese relations to an audience of more than 3500 elites in the Great Hall of the People on April 19, 2005. The main idea of the report was that it is in China’s national interest to keep Sino-Japanese relations stable and healthy. Li’s report was estimated to reach an audience of 200 million in China through television broadcasting.

Changes to Japan’s policy-making

Professor Koji Murata from the Department of Political Science at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan, said there have been a lot of changes to the way Japan drafts its policy on China. He said that “older pro-China politicians such as Nonaka Hiromu have lost their influence while the experienced China school under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which has a deep knowledge of China, was not utilized in policy making under Koizumi Junichiro”.

He said, “Japanese nationalism is very much due to Chinese behavior in international relations, the diversification of Japanese society and domestic political and economic frustrations in Japan.”

He said that in recent years, the Japanese policy-making process towards China has become increasingly decentralized and fragmented. “The Japanese public, politicians and bureaucrats are often sharply divided over issues related to China. Probably the Chinese government can no longer find reliable allies in the Japanese state and society,” said Professor Koji Murata. “It is likely to be difficult for China to predict the Japanese reaction to China’s policies towards Japan due to an increasing diversity in values and interests within the Japanese state and society.”

Nonetheless, socio-economic interactions between the two countries are growing stronger.

More importantly, younger people in both countries are, in general, becoming more and more pragmatic and flexible, even if they are sometimes outspoken and emotional.

Bilateral cooperation is essential for regional stability

Profession Koji Murata said Japan-China cooperation is essential for regional stability in Asia. It is necessary for Japan, for example to cooperate with China in order to address the North Korean issue.

He thinks the strategic importance of China for the US and Japan has increased. He said that Beijing’s successful negotiations to establish Free Trade Agreements with Southeast Asian countries and its assertive access to natural resources in Africa and other areas, has made Tokyo anxious to catch up. The increasing trade deficit between China and the US has made Washington, especially Congress, impatient. The rise of China, whether real or imagined, is and will continue to be a concern for Japan and the United States.

Profession Koji Murata thinks the lack of a stable party system and a more diverse society in Japan will be a challenge to Tokyo’s policy formulation towards Beijing. He said that so far, new Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s strategy of ambiguity on the Yasukuni issue has worked. The Prime Minister has not yet made clear whether or not he will visit the shrine, but his China policy will be seriously questioned and tested by both the Japanese public and China after the Upper House election in July this year.

He said there was some suggestion in Japan of setting up a separate site for WWII war dead, in order to resolve the Yasukuni Shrine problem, but it was not taken up by the former government. He can’t see the new cabinet taking up this option either.

The Japanese professor said Chinese people should consider more closely post-war bilateral development. Many Chinese scholars suggest that China should recognize Japan’s role in China’s economic development, as well as look at the huge bilateral trade and history prior to the war.

Nationalism is a double-edged sword

Professor Yu Tiejun said nationalism is a double-edged sword. Those who are good at wielding it will benefit; those who are not risk hurting themselves. He said that it is the work of both countries to foster open, moderate and rational nationalism. He suggested that both nations try to foster a benign domestic environment, which means maintaining political stability, ensuring economic development and improving social justice. Facts show that those who have a tendency towards violence are mostly unemployed.

Bilateral cooperation should be strengthened in mutually beneficial fields such as environment protection, energy, trade, finance, information technology and crisis management. More institutions and mechanisms should be established to push forward cooperation and make it resilient to the shock of popular nationalism.

The voices of China and Japan’s neighbors should also be listened to closely, especially if those voices are discordant or are likely to stimulate aggressive nationalism. Both nations should reflect on their own actions and think about what is proper for better relations. More accurate information is needed and the communication network should be strengthened.

It is good to see that both nations have taken action and that historians are opting to co-write history books about the 1930s and 40s.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has accepted an invitation from Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to visit Japan in April. People hope that all these measures will help put Sino-Japanese relations onto a neighborly and friendly track. It is in the interest of China, Japan, Asia and the world, that a healthy and steady relationship exists between the two countries.

It appears nationalism in the PRC is the result of Chinese citizens becoming more informed and having the means to exchanges ideas with like-minded individuals. It may be true that communist education may have stimulated such emotional nationalism, but ultimately individuals have enough freedom to make their own choices about whether to assemble, exchange ideas, and how to express their views in a changing China. Fortunately, the CCP actually takes into account the grassroots nationalism in a rising China and feels that stable ties are the best way to continue their economic and social progress in a globalised world.

Japan on the other hand, is divided in their dealings with China and are also experiencing a level of nationalism. Like China, Japanese nationalism is also developing in the grassroots among individuals through clubs, anonymous forums, and observations of Chinese sentiment towards Japan. At the same time, the government, bureaucrats, and Japanese citizens seem to be divided on how to deal with this rising non-democratic neighbour with relatively unpleasant shared history. Abe seems to be more focused on rebuilding stable Sino-Japanese ties that were reduced to what resembled a Japanese train wreck by taking actions to show he means business. At the same time, anti-Chinese sentiment is growing in response to perceived racist anti-Japanese sentiment and China’s disruption of the status quo that was once enjoyed by Japan.

In any event, both Japan and China will have to work together or become divided at the expense of mutual progress.

The 2008 Ford Mondeo

Much of the world first caught a glimpse of the Ford Mondeo in “Casino Royale” when Bond drives the car to go to the hotel to find answers on Le Chiffe. Many Americans were surprised at seeing the car and wondered if that was really a Ford or just a fantasy concept car. Unfortunately, the big shots at FoMoCo decided that Americans are only fit for cars such as the F-series pickup trucks, an outdated Ford Focus, Crown Victoria, a renamed Ford 500 (Taurus) and an Americanised Mazda6 (Fusion) while the rest of the world gets a brand new Ford Focus, Mondeo, Galaxy, Fiesta, Ka, S-Max, and Falcon.

Here are some pictures of a car Americans will not get to drive:

The so-called brain trust at Ford Motor Company argue that it would be unfeasible to import the Mondeo to the States because of the horrible Dollar-Euro exchange rate, which is now around 1USD=0.76EUR. They also rationalise that the new “Kinetic Design” styling is not American enough to satisfy American buyers who see ford as being “Bold and tough”. Interestingly enough, this is what the eggheads at GM said when people wondered why they couldn’t be bothered with importing Opels to the United States until Bob Lutz converted Saturn into Opel’s American brand.

To be honest there are many reasons why the Big 2.5 keep loosing market share to the import market: quality is slowly becoming a non-issue, but it is largely incompetent management that ultimately ruins them. We can see that in the background of some of the Big 2.5’s former CEOs: Rick Wagoner has a background in finance, Bill Ford also did finance and Dieter Zetsche worked as an engineer. This is partly the explanation why GM and Ford were loosing to the competition and this was also the same period Chrysler was being praised for having a successful turnaround.

Now looking at the current CEOs we can see that Tom LaSorda has a lean manufacturing background, Alan Mulally was a Boeing engineer while Rick Wagoner is still around but letting Bob Lutz play with GM’s product portfolio. With these changes in leadership and functions, one can see Chrysler’s product quality improve but with the overproduction of cars dealers don’t need. On the other hand, by bringing in a complete outsider who admitted to applying Toyota’s lean manufacturing techniques to save Boeing, Alan Mulally finds himself locked in office politics against those that wish to keep the status quo; even it if meant financial ruin. On the other hand, GM is finally seeing some signs of a turnaround after Bob Lutz was able to convince Wagoner to aggressively create synergies from their global resources.

Like most of us watching “Casino Royale” and noticing that Mondeo, Alan Mulally also wondered why Americans are not getting such cars over the States. It’s interesting to note that Ford Europe produces cars that are of higher quality than their American counterparts and were the ones who engineered the Ford Focus that became a hit when it first arrived in North America. It’s funny how Ford seems to have a schizophrenic personality when it comes to a coherent and original business strategy: first they decide to flush their brand equity for their Lincoln away by switching over from heritage names to an alphanumeric scheme used by Acura and Cadillac (that nearly got them sued by the former), they keep burning money away on Jaguar without really giving them a distinct identity within FoMoCo, decide to source technology from Mazda because they can’t develop their own decent platforms and then decide to pull off several massive buyouts just like GM when things went wrong. Out of all these problems, they still had no idea what to make of Mercury.

Can someone please tell me what Mercury stands for in the Ford Motor Company? What is Mercury’s target market and where the hell is it positioned in the market? What is considered the brand’s direct competitors? What is the brand culture behind Mercury? These are some tough questions for a brand that mainly exists to help Lincoln dealers sell relatively cheaper cars and was positioned as a “glorified Ford” to a “cheap Lincoln” during it’s lifespan. Much of Mercury’s current models are slightly pricier Fords with that trademark Mercury grille and badge.

Here’s an idea: Ford should actually consider importing European Fords and rebadge them as Mercuries. That way, they can actually justify the higher price points and have some unique products that would give the Mercury brand a real distinct identity. Ford had done this in the past when they imported Ford Capris and sold them in Mercury dealerships and with their two-door Cougar that was based off a first generation Mondeo platform. Bring over the S-Max, the Focus CC, Mondeo, and the Galaxy with more Aggressive European names like the Milan and rebrand Mercury as a brand that appeals to driver who strive for reasonable refinement and European elegance to differentiate it from Lincoln and Ford.

We have seen how GM was able to successfully revive the Saturn brand by transforming it into an American Opel and a long-wheelbase Vectra called the Aura actually won the North American Car of the Year Award for 2007. Then again, most of the innovators originally working in FoMoCo have already moved on to companies such as Toyota, Honda, Nissan, GM and even Chrysler… Well, here is to wishful thinking.