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Departed: The Rat

As remakes go, The Departed is one of the better uber-Hollywood productions produced in recent years. With Leonardo DiCaprio Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg, Martin Sheen, Ray Winstone, and Alec Baldwin it's hard to to dislike the story if only for the glut of star power. The out-sized Hollywood personalities notwithstanding, The Departed was an excellent police film if only due to William Monahan's brilliant adaptation of the original Hong Kong film, 無間道 (Infernal Affairs). Mohahan's academy award winning screenplay brought the film out of Hong Kong and adopted it fittingly into the gritty neighborhoods of South Boston and based loosely on the exploits of Whitey Bulger and the Winter Hill Gang.

In an event, my favorite seen follows, where in Costello (Nicholson) privately questions Costigan (DiCaprio) in a semi-drunken and more than a little insane exchange in which its very clear Costello's suspicions are directed towards Costigan, and Costigan could easily lose his life simply on that basis. What I find particularly dramatic about the scene is the effect to which Costigan knows his life is very much in peril and there is a complex interplay of dialog and mutual deception. And at the crucial moment, the split second in which he must look Costello in the eye and make a direct denial, the very moment where any weakness would reveal the truth in his eyes, Constigan juts his chin forward, stares squarely at Costell and issues his denial to full effect. However, in spite of Costigan's survivalist pleas, it is clear that Costello is unconvinced. Convinced enough to spare Costigan for the moment, but unconvinced.

Below is the trailer for the original film,. Admittedly, I have yet to see, but my Chinese friends give it high marks.

無間道 (Infernal Affairs) Trailer (English Subtitles)

CCTV Footage of the Mumbai Bombings, "Truth Serum" for the "Baby Faced" Terrorist, and Eyewitness Accounts

Not a lot to see here from the CCTV footage, but what appears to be an inconclusive shoot-out and a number Mumbaikars looking appropriately confused, frightened, and running for their lives. Nonetheless, it gives you an inkling of how some experienced it.

Further the Times Online reports that the police intend to use a "truth serum" on the so-called "baby-faced" terrorist.

Police interrogators in Mumbai told The Times that they are poised to settle the matter of Kasab's nationality through the use of "narcoanalysis" – a controversial technique, banned in most democracies, where the subject is injected with a truth serum.

The method was widely used by Western intelligence agencies during the Cold War, before it emerged that the drugs used – typically the barbiturate sodium pentothal – may induce hallucinations, delusions and psychotic manifestations.

Mumbai police said that their evidence of a Pakistan link includes hand grenades manufactured in the city of Rawalpindi, in Pakistan, and satellite phone calls traced back to the country.

Deven Bharti, a deputy police commissioner in Mumbai and one of the interrogators, told The Times that Kasab had shown no remorse for his part in a terror attack that had killed nearly 200 people.

"He is a 24-year-old boy with the eyes of a killer," Mr Bharti said.

"Nobody should doubt: he is a highly-trained murderer. He has told us he came to Mumbai from Pakistan to cause maximum casualties."

For a more descriptive and immediate reaction to the bombings, here are a few eyewitness accounts.

Eyewitness Account 1

Eyewitness Account 2

Based upon my reading of this attack, the nutshell calculus seems to be to increase tensions between India and Pakistan, and thus, draw away some of Pakistan and the US's joint ability to deal with the Taliban and Al Qaeda in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) on the Afghan border.

At this point, its clear that the attack was planned and executed from Pakistan, by Pakistanis, and almost certainly with some element of state support. However, with such a disaggregated state as Pakistan, to call it a Pakistani affair is a gross generalization. Even so, while it was certainly not directly perpetrated by the Pakistani state apparatus, it seems likely that it grew from the actions of factions that at least indirectly have some state affiliation or funding.

Whether or not India, Pakistan, and the United States are capable of coordinating to deal with this problem is the next question.

Labels: india, mumbai, pakistan, terrorism

Current TV: Chinatown, Africa

What are the 1.5 million Chinese in Africa up to? What is the meaning of China's deepening involvement on the African continent?

Current TV's Maria van Zeller provides some clues to the immediate as well as the complex and long-term ramifications of the spread of the Chinese diaspora, industry, and state in Africa.

Are the Chinese to fulfill Thomas Barnett's so-called "SysAdmin" role, or will the Chinese economically dominate the continent as they have throughout other parts of the developing world, incurring resentment of neo-colonials as in places such as Malaysia and Indonesia? Are the "SysAdmin" and neo-colonial one and the same, or is there some measure of mutual exclusion?

There are far more questions than answers, but this piece provides a few clues.

In "Chinatown, Africa", Vanguard correspondent Mariana van Zeller travels to Angola to investigate China's rapidly growing presence in Africa. While many welcome China's investment, others see reason for concern. Chinatown, Africa is revealing look at a growing superpower's adventures abroad.

Labels: africa, china

Rebecca MacKinnon: China's Censorship 2.0 - How companies censor bloggers

Rebecca MacKinnon of the University of Hong Kong's Journalism and Media Studies Centre, has posted the following presentation on the methods of censorship employed by the Great Fire Wall of China (GFW, 金盾工程, jīndùn gōngchéng, or "Golden Shield") implications for the public and activists. The main points from her presentation are summarized below.

Select the "Full Screen" option for best viewing.

In my presentation I offer several conclusions to be drawn from what was a very experimental and relatively small-scale project:
Internet filtering (“the great firewall”) is only one part of Chinese Internet censorship.
Domestic web censorship is not centralized at all.
Domestic web censorship is outsourced by government to the private sector.
Domestic web censorship is inconsistent - if you can't post successfully in one place, it's usually possible to post your content somewhere else, at least for at least a while.
The system of “managing” user-generated web content in China appears to follow a similar logic and approach as the system for controlling professional news media.
When I write my paper those will be elaborated upon. I also identified a number of implications for researching Chinese censorship "inside the great firewall:"
Need larger-scale studies of domestic web censorship (including chat rooms, social networking sites, instant-messaging, mobile services)
Unlike automated ?ltering tests, these tests require manual testing and constant analysis by Chinese speakers with contextual knowledge - it is tedious work requiring attention to detail.
Need surveys of web service company employees.
Need surveys of users and bloggers about their experiences.
The findings also have implications for activists:
Circumvention is important but it's not the solution to the whole censorship problem.
Need to educate bloggers and netizens about strategies for successfully disseminating information online about politically sensitive subjects
Need to do more to foster a global “user rights” movement demanding greater transparency and accountability by Internet companies on privacy and free expression. The Global Network Initiative is a good start in this regard but we need much more.
There is also a set of more global questions:
Where else in the world is this kind of political censorship by web service companies of user- generated content happening? (Companies in the West already censor for child porn, copyright violations and sometimes hate speech.)
Will the “Chinese model” - in which governments demand censorship by web companies - spread globally?
What issues in this vein should the advocacy community be preparing for?
What further research needs to be done to better understand global trends?

Labels: blogs, censorship, china, gfw, rebecca-mackinnon

Books: A glimpse of cultural values

Learn how to force your children into the crucible of academic pressure, live through them vicariously, make them into useful appliances and inculcate neuroses!

Personally, I find the presentation of these books bizarre, unsophisticated and simplistic, and distasteful, but admittedly, I have not and will not read either title.

Please don't take these books to be representative of Asian (be that East Asian, Southeast Asian, Singaporean, Chinese or some segments the various Chinese diasporas) educational and child-rearing values as a whole, but they are at least fragmentary indicators.

If you haven't guessed already, I am speaking of Adam Khoo and Gary Lee's Nurturing The Winner And Genius In Your Child

and Dr. Ng Aik Kwang's even more crassly and offensively entitled Why Asians are Less Creative than Westerners.

I particularly like the cover art here, which seems to imply that the "westerners" creativity is something that ensnares and controls Asians, or does it depict the web of constraints imposed by his own culture? Is this book then the little sword that will allow the reader to free himself of the puppeteer's strings? I guess you would have to read it to find out (my best wishes to those so daring). Anyone else care to interpret this?

I trust that each of the authors is an "educated" man with in his milieu and it is not impossible that some of the prescribed techniques achieve the results promised as the author conceives of them. However, I'm not buying.

Singapore and Lee Kwan Yew: An interview at the INSEAD Leadership Summit

It's impossible to observe Singapore in any depth without forming some opinion of its "founding father," Lee Kwan Yew, if simply because he has been like a force of there for more than 50 years. Even now, at 85 years old, he remains a highly influential figure, and not only because his son, Lee Hsien Loong is his successor as Prime Minister.

Lee Kwan Yew pictured as a much younger man.
Below is an interview which the "Minister Mentor" (MM) gave in October of 2007 at INSEAD. Among the points he makes are his always-interesting prognostications on the future of China and India, as well as the current state of the world. His articulacy regarding all things Asian has long been of great attraction to western leaders seeking insight into Asia and China, in particular. Certainly, he ranks among the great East Asian statesmen of the 20th century, although, it cannot be said that his undertaking was nearly of the same magnitude of Mao Zedong nor can he claim universal admiration and extraordinary accomplishments of Mahatmas Gandhi (not an East Asian, anyway).

Nevertheless, Lee is certainly a remarkable individual, worked to create one of the last true city-states of the world, and whatever criticisms one may lay against Singapore, it an extraordinarily successful country, given its constraints. However, it was (as Lee states in the INSEAD interview), the "capitol" of the British Empire in Southeast Asia, and possesses one of the most strategic locations in the world. Thus, to present Singapore as a society that developed from a humble fishing village on a desert island, into a modern financial metropolis, is highly misleading. Rather, its strategic location and import within the British Empire at least partially explains why this country of about 5 million on an island of only 707.1 km² carries such out-sized importance in the world.

On the other side (as always), Singapore can hardly be said to be a truly democratic society, and much like China, a citizen's place is strictly delimited by the government and most certainly, that place is outside of politics. For example, here is a famous video entitled "Speakers Cornered," which occurred at Speakers Corner, the one place in Singapore where protests may be held -- in theory at least.

Needless to say, the media is strictly controlled, and the Wall Street Journal recently received a hefty fine for questioning the integrity of the court system. Ironically, one of the reasons given for the fine was that the articles undermined the public's confidence in the courts, when in fact, the fine seems to reinforce the Journal's point! More seriously, three men were recently jailed for wearing t-shirt depicting images of kangaroos dressed as justices of the court ("kangaroo court," get it?). Of course, Singapore is famous for its severe restrictions on public freedoms and the media, and discrimination against homosexuals.

Returning to Lee, is clear that during his time in London, he was the victim of racism, which is not surprising given the time period, but his views on race are eccentric (for those of you who don't like reading watch this, but please forgive the source, who seems to be a racist supporting these statements) to say the least, and he has publicly expressed unsavory and unscientific public opinions on race repeatedly. Even recently, he publicly made some rather unusual comments on eugenics.

While racism is something that every individual strives to eliminate from him or herself, it is a deeply pervasive social and historical element that is extremely difficult to eradicate and often, as difficult to recognize. I do not feel that any of the statements I've heard from Lee constitute overt racism, but one's public comments tend to reflect stronger sentiments that may only be expressed in private, kept to oneself, or known only to one's subconscious. That said, I would say that the MM certainly has some "issues" with regard to race, the crux and historical genesis of which I will not speculate.

Lee has long been a champion of so-called "Asian values," which is certainly a loaded term in itself. Certainly, different values exist across Asia, as it is probably the most diverse continent on earth. However, I think that "Asian values" serve a number of purposes in Lee's case, first and foremost in creating a national identity that was wholly endogenous, which is admirable in a sense. However, it has also become a catch-all phrase that is often abused to legitimize every form of self-serving relativism that Asians wish to rationalize. Whatever, the issue -- freedom the press, torture, human rights, land rights, free and fair elections, trial by jury, etc. -- or criticism, "Asian values" can be invoked, end of story. I very much agree with former Hong Kong Governor Sir Chris Patten's views on this subject.

Furthermore, the autocratic nature of Lee's rule and the nearly royal status of his clan in Singapore is quite evident in the INSEAD interview, if you will observe the arrogance and disdain (humorously and cleverly disguised, of course) Lee shows when questioned by a reporter from the Financial Times. Moreover, in his answer, the "ratings" that Lee cites of Singapore's status in the world are a deeply politicized, and institutions (particularly in Asia) very much make it their mission to lobby for placement on these lists in a deeply cynical way that is far removed from their actual progress and performance.

Based upon my limited understanding, the prescription for an East Asian student is extreme pressure from the school, family and peers, a very heavy workload, and the idea that one should be working as much as possible and as intensely as possible to learn in rote-fashion the course material as it is dictated by the system. It produces hard-workers and instills competence, but without further evolution, I am skeptical of its ability to produce true innovation and leadership.

In any event, I can only shape your opinion so much before actually presenting the video in question, so without further ado, please watch MM Lee's interview here.

For more information, here is another notable interview with MM Lee.

Lee Kuan Yew - Interview with Fareed Zakaria