The Truth Will Out

During the Senkaku incident of September 2010, newspapers mistakenly claimed that a Chinese fishing vessel "collided" with two Japanese coast guard vessels.

Now the video has leaked, so we can all decide:  Collision…or deliberate ram?

You make the call: (It's an 11 minute video, with the impact taking place at 2:18.  There's little of interest beyond the 5 minute mark, but knock yourself out if you like.)

Another video shows the Chinese ship ramming (sorry, "colliding with") the second ship.  This one has English subtitles:

No wonder the current Japanese government wanted to keep these under wraps — for they clearly show that Prime Minister Naoto Kan released guilty men under pressure from the Butchers of Beijing.

Best thing Japan can do now is release ALL the tapes in the interests of transparency.  We've got all the money shots now, but for completeness sake the rest need to be made public.

And the worst thing?  Attempt to cover it all up by maintaining the current fiction that the tapes are part of "an ongoing judicial investigation" and cannot be released.  Because in case Prime Minister Kan hasn't noticed, the case ceased to be a judicial one the day the Chinese took Japanese hostages in order to get Captain Ramboat back.

UPDATE:  Good story, bad headline — Senkaku collisions video leak riles China.  (Bad headline because the story itself makes it clear that China doesn't seem too "riled".  And of course, the two ramming incidents were more than mere "collisions").

Nonetheless, it seems the Japanese government is blustering about prosecuting those whose only crime was revealing the totality of Kan's surrender on this issue.  Idiots.

UPDATE #2:  Great stuff from the Afterword of this post by Ampontan:

"Had the Kan government been born with a spine, they would have done [what Adlai Stevenson did at the U.N. during the Cuban missile crisis].  They could have shown the world what the Chinese did, just as the world saw what the Soviets were doing in 1962."

UPDATE (Nov 9/2010):  Japanese government seizes YouTube records to find identity of leaker.  Dunno how well that's gonna go over — freeing Captain Ramboat but punishing the guy who revealed C.R.'s guilt.

UPDATE #4:  Prosecutor's office bombarded with over a thousand requests from the Japanese public to drop the inquiry against the leaker.

Meanwhile, opposition parties in Japan grouse that the government has shown them less footage (6 minutes in total) than were leaked to the public.

China Wins ANOTHER Peace Prize!

Just who was it who recently was awarded the coveted "World Harmony Foundation" Peace Prize for his notable accomplishments in "improving relations between China and the rest of the world"?

General Chi Haotian, the infamous defense minister who ordered the Tiananmen Square Massacre, that's who.

The icing on the cake: the presenter was none other than Sha Zhukang, China's buffoonish "diplomat" at the U.N.

General Chi Haotian (center), Communist China's architect of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, wins China's World Harmony Foundation Peace Prize. The presenter was Sha Zukang (right), Chinese diplomat and head of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

(Left to Right:  World Harmony Foundation founder Frank Liu, Tiananmen Butcher General Chi Haotian, and Chinese ultranationalist U.N. official Sha Zhukang.  Image from Inner City Press)

Postscript:  Is this some kind of hoax – like Swiss spaghetti trees, or devious plots to dye Wenzhou brown bears and pass them off as giant pandas?

No such luck.  Even P.R.C. media outlets report the story.  (And with an eagerness in marked contrast to their complete coverage blackout of Liu Xiaobo's Nobel win just last month . . .)

UPDATE:  Using a (Chinese) U.N. official to give at least the ILLUSION of U.N. approval.  Nice touch.

UPDATE #2:  Although maybe too clever by half.  There've been some questionable (sometimes VERY questionable) Nobel Peace Prize choices over the years.  But with one fell stroke, the "World Harmony Foundation" has rendered its awards radioactive.  Getting one of them puppies now is like bare-handedly grabbing a plutonium-239 trophy.  The 21st Century equivalent of the Stalin Peace Prize.

Just for a moment, imagine all the time, money and hard work the Chinese Communist Party spent on this thing.  Their goal was to create a credible rival organization to the Nobels via a "private" charity fronted by businessman (and Chinese Communist Party princeling) Frank Liu.

And then they undid it all – in an instant!

In all sincerity, it warms the cockles of my heart to watch the Butchers of Beijing make unforced errors like this.

UPDATE #3:  More commentary from the Rosett Report here.

i-1

Aren’t You Forgetting Something?

Taiwan's China Post wrote a pretty good editorial about the trapped Chilean miners a while back, and concluded on this note:

…the Chilean miners' first steps above ground gave us a timely reminder of what can be achieved when there is optimism, ingenuity and an unerring faith in the human spirit.

None of which can be gainsayed, but the editors seem to have missed one key ingredient to the miners' survival:

D-E-M-O-C-R-A-C-Y.

We know now that pretty much ALL of their decisions were made democratically.  This approach wasn't a panacea – in the coming months, we'll hear more about personal conflicts that occured and even about physical altercations.  But at some point, the miners realized that the best way to minimize the MAJOR frictions existing within their little society was to put matters to the vote.

For them, democracy represented not merely an idealistic dream but a practical neccessity for their own survival.

So yes, "optimism, ingenuity and faith in the human spirit" all had their roles to play in the outcome.  But ponder for a moment how different the conclusion might have been had a small, self-appointed elite resorted to coercion and violence to lord it over the others, all the while cynically trumpeting their own "benevolence".

Phantom Menaces

The China Post (Taiwan's pro-Communist newspaper of record) frets that the greatest menace to peace in Asia is . . . Japan.  Beware a second Pearl Harbor, the editors darkly warn.

LOL.  The chances of PACIFIST Japan pulling Pearl Harbor II anytime during our lifetimes ranks somewhere between an attack by trident-wielding Mer-people and a Zombie Apocalypse.

In other words, not bloody likely.

Mer-Man from He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe.

 Quiet, you.

UPDATE:  China now matches the number of attack submarines (63) that Japan had when it struck at Pearl Harbor.  Funny coincidence, that.  (Modern Japan has only 16.)

Some other facts the Chinese ultranationalist editors of the Post may be aware of:

  • China has nuclear weapons.  Japan has none.
  • China has over a thousand missiles targetted onto Taiwan.  Japan has none.
  • China has offensive weaponry.  Japan is constitutionally prevented from possessing same.
  • China maintains the largest number of territorial disputes (somewhere between 19 and 26) in all of Asia.
  • China has recently laid expansionist claim to the entire South China Sea.  Japan has not.
  • China's military has enjoyed double digit budgetary increases for several years now.  While on the other hand, high Japanese vehicle costs mean that Japan's military expenditure in real terms is roughly on par with South Korea or Taiwan.

And finally, China routinely ranks among the 10 worst countries in the entire world when it comes to press freedom.  Maintaining strict media censorship, the government indoctrinates the population with ultranationalist propaganda, just as Imperial Japan once did.  

(Far more difficult to imagine the Japanese being similarly brainwashed since Japan has the world's 11th freest press.)

So 2,500 Japanese marched in downtown Tokyo in defiance of Chinese bullying over the Senkaku Islands.  Big deal.  With a population of 128 million, that's a 0.002% turnout. 

Reckon more people showed up for the latest "Tentacle Pride" rally . . .

UPDATE (Oct 26/2010):  A profile of those Japanese "wildmen" Taiwan's China Post is so afear'd of.

i-1

Thuggish Is As Thuggish Does

Did you think that Beijing would be selective in its rare earth trade embargo, wielding its market position against Japan (alone, among all the countries of the world) as a weapon of last-resort?

Think again:

American trade officials announced last Friday that they would investigate whether China was violating international trade rules by subsidizing its clean energy industries. The inquiry includes whether China’s steady reductions in rare earth export quotas since 2005, along with steep export taxes on rare earths, are illegal efforts to force multinational companies to produce more of their high-technology goods in China.

[…]

Hours later, according to industry officials, Chinese customs officials began singling out and delaying rare earth shipments to the West. [emphasis added]

Earlier this year, Taiwan's Chinese Nationalist Party signed a free trade agreement with China, all the while insisting that the Benevolent Butchers of Beijing would never abuse their economic power over Taiwan.

That proposition of theirs appears more divorced from reality with each passing day.

UPDATE (Oct 20/2010):  Daniel Drezner on China's rare earth embargo against the West —

"[This is] going to encourage some obvious policy responses by the rest of the world. Non-Chinese production of rare earths will explode over the next five years as countries throw subsidy after subsidy at spurring production. Given China's behavior, not even the most ardent free-market advocate will be in a position to argue otherwise." [emphasis added]

 

Nobel Peace Prize Predictions

Damn.  Remind me never to play a game of Machiavelli with Michael Turton!

All kidding aside, Occam's Razor suggests to me that China was sincere in its brutish objections to Liu Xiaobo's nomination and win.  Thuggish is as thuggish does.

But I'll go further out on a limb and predict that within the next 3 or 5 years Liu will have company, when another Chinese dissident will be awarded the prize.  And my reason for believing that is that the Chinese Communist Party REALLY hacked off the Nobel Committee.  So much so, that the committee broke with precedent and leaked the name of the winner to the media a few days before the official announcement.  (Hard to imagine a bigger F U being issued to the Butchers of Beijing.)

Remember how the Nobel committee spent the last 6 or 7 years repudiating George W. Bush?  It was almost a steady stream – Mohammed ElBaradei…Al Gore…Barack Obama.  (If I'm not mistaken, there were also a couple anti-American authors for the Literature Prize tossed in just for good measure.)

Message received.  Loud and clear.

But one thing cannot be denied:  in response to these rebukes, the American government did most assuredly NOT threaten the government of Norway, nor the livelihood of its people.  Great powers get criticized, and they learn to live with it.  Goes with the territory.

In contrast, the Communist government of China gave the Nobel committee only two alternatives:  humiliating surrender, or honorable defiance.*  One or two more Liu Xiaobo's this decade will drive home to the Chinese what stuff Norwegians are made of.

* During a conversation with some Taiwanese youths a few years back, one of them announced in all seriousness to me that "Face didn't matter to Westerners." 

(No offence was intended by them.  I think the subject came up when I remarked that I wouldn't feel any loss of face if I offered a last-minute dinner party invitation to a coworker, and they declined due to prior commitments.)

It's a view charming in its naivety when held by the young — but foolish to the extreme if it's held by the Chinese leadership.

UPDATE:  An Indian reporter blogs on the Chinese media black-out.

UPDATE #2:  Liu's not hard-line enough, protest some exiled Chinese dissidents.  Sad.

 

Chinese Communist Party Releases Final Japanese Hostage

Beijing graciously releases Japanese chemical munitions removal specialist from captivity.

Advice to the Japanese government:  When you're in a hole, stop digging.  The CCP has demonstrated its eagerness to take hostages, so stop providing them with the hostages it so desperately craves.

They want 65 year-old chemical shells removed from their soil?  Let 'em clean 'em up themselves. 

No need for them to be on the Japanese dole, now that they're a big, rich, powerful country.