BALANCE of CULTURE

Nagoya Mayor Denies Nanjing Massacre From His Bubble

In a statement reminiscent of classic genocidal revisionism (a nice word for "denial"), the mayor of Nagoya, Japan, Takashi Kawamura, has sparked rage with both Chinese and non-Chinese citizens alike by stating that he believes the Nanjing Massacre "probably never happened."

Outside the Nanjing Massacre Memorial Hall

This week in Nagoya Kawamura even told visiting Nanjing Communist Party member Liu Zhiwei that Iris Chang's international bestseller The Rape of Nanking is a work of fiction. Not a smart move, considering several high-ranking Japanese officials have repeatedly angered China by this sort of dismissal despite plenty of evidence (just Google "Nanjing Massacre").

I don't think that the majority of the Japanese public actually believes this sort of extremist rhetoric, although I do believe that plenty of people purposely remain ignorant to the historical facts. This is why it's so important that people continue to keep this tragedy in our social discourse as time goes by, as not to have fools like Kawamura direct which way historical documentation takes us. Books like Chang's 1997 (and very non-fiction) The Rape of Nanking and films like The Flowers of War from 2011 are projects that sustain facts above false political or racial agendas.

Sadly, these kinds of denials will only hurt Japan in the short as well as long run. It's too bad that one unenlightened senior is taking the initiative to heighten tensions with Japan's now very formidable neighbor. He must truly live inside a bubble of ignorance to think that his statements were reasonable and safe for him to publicly say.

The Nanjing Massacre was a six-week genocide in the former Chinese capital by Japanese troops, which stormed the city on December 13, 1937 and murdered and raped at least 300,000 men, women and children, though most historians believe the actual number to be much higher.

 

Burning Korans in Afghanistan

[Update 2/22: The violence continues to escalate.]

As American celebrated a long three-day weekend for Presidents' Day, the US developed quite a messy PR problem in Afghanistan: 2,000 angry local Afghani demonstrators have gathered en masse at the American base, hurling stones and chanting anti-foreigner phrases. And this is all happening because of an extremely shortsighted and utterly stupid mistake made by some of our American troops.

Apparently some US soldiers improperly disposed copies of the Koran (or "Quran") by burning them and then tossing them in the trash. Why they did this is still vague. The local workers who regularly take care of the garbage discovered the remains and reported the findings to outside contacts.

Why would American soldiers screw themselves like this?!

Burning the Koran is an unmistakeable crime in not only Afghanistan but around the Muslim world. This concept isn't so hard to understand. What is difficult to grasp here is why these soldiers would even think this would be a safe thing to do regardless of the reasons behind doing so. Burning an American flag is not something these soldiers would probably like, so why would they choose to burn a holy book while stationed in a nation based upon that text? And how does this reflect upon the entire American presence in the Middle East? Not very positively, that is for sure.

Understandably, General John Allen, head of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) has quickly apologized: "When we learned of these actions, we immediately intervened and stopped them. The materials recovered will be properly handled by appropriate religious authorities. This was NOT intentional in any way."

Too bad the apology has done little to appease the local anger, which is shared among laborers to local Afghan Taliban to NATO's top general in Afghanistan. Surely our soldiers get some kind of cultural/educational training (advice at least?) before being stationed abroad, though whatever they do receive obviously isn't enough (and I've recently seen some footage of interactions between soldiers and local Afghans that would very clearly demonstrate this lacking). They can be against the Koran all they want, but burning a country's holy text within its borders is a weak and senseless act that only downgrades our already contentious and precarious occupation in the Middle East overall.

 

Photo: REUTERS/Mohammad Ismail

Maldives' Next President Needs to Continue Climate Change Efforts

Considering all he has accomplished in just a few years in the educating world leaders and citizens about climate change, Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed -- the first democratically-elected leader of the island nation -- has quit amid growing protests.

Some are calling it a coup or mutiny. Instead of digging his heels in his position, Nasheed decided against using force to maintain his power. He was quickly replaced in about an hour by his VP Mohamed Waheed Hassan Manik.

While most people around the world may not see or feel the effects of climate change directly, the citizens of the Maldives have it quite differently. Because the nation has the lowest level surfaces on earth, they have been struggling with continuously rising sea levels which have already overflowed parts of the country. The now former President Nasheed had been studiously working with other neighboring countries to prepare for a mass exodus of Maldivians to the mainland, perhaps within decades.

Fingers crossed that the next President has the foresight to continue these urgent efforts regarding climate change. He really doesn't have a choice!

Logic & Common Sense

A reader emailed this to me: simple logic and common sense you won't find in any parliament, congress, or religion.

This totally reminds me how social issues continue to be misused by political candidates as a way to relate to their naive voters, even though their opinions on these issues have absolutely zero relevance as to how they will actually function in their positions.

The Big Island Says "Aloha" to Plastic Bags

Thanks to new Hawaii County Mayor Billy Kenoi, the Big Island has joined Kauai and Maui in passing a bill that bans businesses from giving customers single-use plastic bags.

No doubt this will be good news for surfers and ocean lovers alike who deal with increasing amounts of floating debris around the islands' waters. The legislation takes effect in 2013.

Check out "Message in the Waves," a cool BBC documentary on the growing environmental challenges that Hawaiian people and wildlife face. Trailer below:

 

AP in Pyongyang, North Korea

After about one month since Kim Jong-il's death, the Associated Press (AP) has opened up a full news bureau in North Korea. Of course most people are wondering how any fair and balanced news reporting could be executed from within the DPRK's borders, but executive editor Kathleen Carroll assuredly noted from Pyongyang that the new office will adhere to the same standards and practices as all of the other AP bureaus.

AP, for the most part, represents a rigid Westernized approach to journalistic standards (at least compared to the likes of North Korean media). The new Pyongyang location will be an unprecedented direction for both the news organization as well as the North Korean government, which is known as one of the most mysterious and controlled systems in the world -- a big difference from South Korea, where AP has had a busy news bureau for decades now.

At this point I'm still skeptical. Chinese state media is currently busy "curating" public information (especially things that come from Western society) to their own citizens in a bid to maintain power and influence. What chance does AP have in outputting objective news items from within North Korea? I will be very impressed if this new bureau is able to do the job it claims.

North Korea is our "intelligence failure"

NYT:

Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.

Of course it's true what the New York Times asserts above -- Kim Jong-il's death was indeed an "extensive intelligence failure." But I'd take it even further...

It's not just about the man's death…the elusiveness and mystery of North Korea's context as a whole -- in 2011, smack in between a rapidly rising China and first-world South Korea/Japan -- is the true extent of the intelligence failure. It's not that easy for a country to maintain rogue status yet simultaneously scrape by with unpredictable yet sufficient negotiations with its cautious neighbors.

North Korea, not merely Kim Jong-il's death, is the real intelligence "failure."

 

Pakistani actress Veena Malik stirs the pot

Pakistani actress Veena Malik is in trouble again. She has been threatened with murder by the Taliban and many sexist Pakistani clerics cannot stand her for reasons quite obvious -- especially after her latest FHM cover, where she's not only nude but also sports an "ISI" tattoo:

Is she insulting Islam?

ISI is often referred to as the Pakistani version of the US' CIA, and the fiery relationship between Pakistan and India has long involved the covert schematics of the ISI. People are totally upset with the actress for her political "commentary" modeling, and surprisingly Malik has backpedaled on the photo, claiming the photo was published without her full consent and that the "ISI" logo was supposed to cover the majority of the image itself. FHM has denied her claims, saying they have records of her being very excited for the concept.

Not surprisingly, Malik mostly works in India, so we'll see how this affect her reputation and career in the long-term. Maybe it's because I'm familiar with the Hollywood machine of reinvention and comebacks, but I somehow doubt this fiasco will permanently damage her career -- after the dust settles, her personal fame and notoriety will probably be bigger than ever, whether conservative Pakistanis like it or not.

The geopolitical hip hop conversation

From "Leveraging hip hop in US foreign policy":

US diplomacy's embrace of hip hop as a foreign policy tool has sparked a heated debate, among artists and aficionados worldwide, over the purpose of hip hop: whether hip hop is "protest music" or "party music"; whether it is the "soundtrack to the struggle" or to American unipolarity; and what it means now that states - not just corporations - have entered the hip hop game.

Hip hop activists have long been concerned about how to protect their music from corporate power, but now that the music is being used in diplomacy and counterterrorism, the conversation is shifting.

This "shift" in conversation is to be expected as nothing can be excluded from the evolving dynamics of the relationship between today's geopolitics and pop culture. The concerns of hip hop activists who have always tried to "protect" their music from corporate influence may be quite real but what about the myriad hip hop artists (and most artists in all genres, I should add) who constantly seek out corporate sponsorship?

"If You See a Bandwagon, It's Too Late"

Artist? Designer? At this point Shepard Fairey is almost like a lawyer...he can "argue" both sides.

Just a little harmless fun and irony for those who understand economics, politics, and marketing -- even if this Stanford professor disagrees...