The American Media and Asia

America is of course the singular most influential country in the world and has been so for almost 100 years. American influence extends beyond politics and economics to include the media in its various forms. Where does Asia become part of the equation in what is reported on by the various news organizations in that country. Are hard news stories covered? Yes. As are the various forms of popular culture. The question then becomes which is most widely reported? Hard news or news about popular culture?


So, why the question? Because the reality of the situation isn't very good. Most media outlet's in America tend to ignore Asia when it comes to hard news unless it has to do with Lil Kim flipping missiles into the western Pacific or a major disaster has taken place such as the Asian tsunami in December of 2004.

Last Sunday the New York Times published a story on its front page about Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency and its alleged support for the Taliban and of harboring former Taliban leaders in Pakistan. From the reactions of not only the mainstream media but of bloggers in America one would have thought that these were the first revelations of the ISI's involvement with the Taliban. Which of course isn't the case. Pakistan's ISI involvement with the internal affairs of Afghanistan began shortly after the former Soviet Union invaded in an attempt to shore-up Afghanistan's Communist government. Their support of the Mujahideen through cash and weapons transfers would lead to the development of the Taliban.

Pakistan's involvement with the Taliban isn't the only hard news story either under reported or just ignored by the media in America.

In the Indian state of Assam during the first weekend of January the United Liberation Front of Asom carried out a series of attacks against Hindi speaking laborers in the state leaving more than 70 people dead. The ULFA has been fighting a separatist war against India since 1976. One of their main goals besides independence from India is the forced removal of all non-native peoples from the state. The ULFA has continued these attacks through bombings as well as with small arms fire. In addition they have begun targeting members of India's Congress party which holds the reigns of political power in the state.

How many people know that China is participating in President George Bush's War On Terror? Not many. Where is China taking the fight to the worlds terrorists? In northwestern China against the Uyghur's who are Muslims and live in the Provence of Xinjiang.

The attack by the Chinese Police on the alleged terrorist camp left 18 Uighur's and one Chinese policeman dead. It's the claim the of the Chinese government that the attack on the camp is part of the War On Terror as mentioned even though this has been an on going problem since 1998 with the Uighur's claiming wide scale abuse at the hands of the government, the army and security forces. They are also alarmed at the large influx of Han Chinese which has happened through the encouragement of the central government. Further evidence that other countries view the situation in Xijiang with alarm comes from the U.S. governments release of 5 Uighur's from Guantanamo Bay who had been held there since their capture in Afghanistan. Afraid that they would be imprisoned and tortured by Chinese authorities the American government instead sent them to Albania where they now live.

The above stories are important not only because they give Americans a window on to the world but because of the effects they can or will have on American policy. If Pakistan is one of America's staunchest allies in the War On Terror then why have there been continuous reports in the Asian media about Pakistan's ISI's involvement with the Taliban? In the cases of Assam in India and Xijiang in China further unrest could lead to regional conflicts because the populations of both states are not limited to that particular geographic location.

Instead of reporting on these types of stories on a regular basis the American media tends to focus on stories about Asian cultures. Should these kinds of stories be featured in American newspapers and other media outlet's of course. As, we all have a need to learn about the worlds cultures. The question is why are these stories given more importance than those first written about? Here is an example.

TOKYO ? Tomoaki Kurita presides over racks of cellphones lined up outside his shop on a busy sidewalk in Harajuku, Tokyo's catwalk of youth street culture where people attracted by the riot of phone options can stop to flip open and fondle the latest models of what the Japanese call keitai.

This story appeared on the front page of the Los Angeles Times after Apple Inc. announced the release of its i-phone.
Was the story interesting in showing the comparisons between Japanese and American mobile phones yes. Was it really worth putting on the front page of one of America's major newspapers? No. Because when comes down to it there is such a huge difference between these phones that you really can't compare one to the other.

The world does not exist in a vacuum no matter how much people would like to believe it does. Is America the most important country in the world yes. It isn't the only country in the world. Just as it isn't the only place in the world where news occurs. If you insist upon the world paying attention you you should pay attention to the rest of the world.

George Bush's Iraq Failure

President George W. Bush has an amazing ability to turn almost everything he touches into almost complete and abject failure. How can one person achieve this amazing success rate at failure. Here is a look at his biggest failure.



By August of 2001 George Bush was being viewed as a single term president even though he'd been in office a mere 8 months. Another failure loomed on the horizon for George W. Bush except this time it wasn't as the head of a failed oil company Arbusto Energy or as a corporate officer of Harken Energy Corporation this failure was to occur on level George Bush had never even consider: The failure of a Presidency in the United States. To use an over worked phrase everything changed for George W. Bush on the morning of September 11th with the attacks on World Trade Center and the The Pentagon. In a singular moment George Bush's Presidency was transformed from one of failure to that of an Administration at war, but not with a country: With a known terrorist organization Al-Qaeda led by Osama bin Laden whose family is one of the wealthiest in Saudi Arabia and which has done business with the Bush family. Al-Qaeda takes responsibility for the attacks which leads to the Bush Administration requesting that the Taliban government of Afghanistan turn him over to U.S. authorities so that he can be tried in a U.S. court for the crimes he has taken responsibility for. The Taliban refuse at which point President Bush orders the U.S. military to attack Afghanistan and remove the Taliban as its governing authority which they do. Unbeknown-est to the American public or anyone else outside of the Administration planning has begun for an military incursion into Iraq for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power. The justification for this will be laid out in President Bush's first State of the Union Address in which he uses the phrase Axis of Evil to describe the governments of Iran, Iraq and North Korea. The administration will also use September 11th and Saddam's possession of Wepons of Mass Destruction. Administration officials: Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell and President Bush himself will make public statements which are used to help reinforce the Administrations reasoning for attacking Iraq and removing Saddam Hussein from power. Here are some of their statements

President George W. Bush on Nuclear Capabilities:

"I strongly believe he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear weapons program."
Source: President Bush, Prime Minister Blair Discuss War on Terrorism, White House (7/17/2003).

President George W. Bush on Al-Qaeda:

"The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11, 2001 -- and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men -- the shock troops of a hateful ideology -- gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the 'beginning of the end of America.' By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed."
Source: President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended, White House (5/1/2003).

Vice President Richard Cheney on Al-Qaeda:

"I continue to believe. I think there's overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi government. We've discovered since documents indicating that a guy named Abdul Rahman Yasin, who was a part of the team that attacked the World Trade Center in '93, when he arrived back in Iraq was put on the payroll and provided a house, safe harbor and sanctuary. That's public information now. So Saddam Hussein had an established track record of providing safe harbor and sanctuary for terrorists. . . . I mean, this is a guy who was an advocate and a supporter of terrorism whenever it suited his purpose, and I'm very confident that there was an established relationship there."
Source: Morning Edition, NPR (1/22/2004).

Vice President Richard Cheney on Nuclear Capabilities:

"[T]he reporting that we had prior to the war this time around was all consistent with that -- basically said that he had a chemical, biological and nuclear program, and estimated that if he could acquire fissile material, he could have a nuclear weapon within a year or two."
Source: Transcript of interview with Vice President Dick Cheney, Rocky Mountain News (1/9/2004).

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Nuclear Capabilities:

"We said they had a nuclear program. That was never any debate."
Source: This Week with George Stephanopoulos, ABC (7/13/2003)

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on Al-Qaeda:

"Well, there's no question but that Iraq has relationships with countries that are on the terrorist list. They also have relations with terrorist networks. They also have al Qaeda currently in the country, among other -- Abu Nidal just, they say, committed suicide with four or five slugs to the head; that's a hard thing to do -- but he was in Iraq. So there's no question about those relationships."
Source: Testimony of U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld before the House Armed Services Committee, House Armed Services Committee (9/18/2002).

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Al-Qaeda:

"Saddam Hussein -- no one has said that there is evidence that Saddam Hussein directed or controlled 9/11, but let's be very clear, he had ties to al-Qaeda, he had al-Qaeda operatives who had operated out of Baghdad."
Source: Meet the Press, NBC (9/28/2003)

National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice on Nuclear Capabilities:

"The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud."
Source: Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, CNN (9/8/2002).

Yet through all of their pronouncements about the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the Middle East and the world at large none of it was true. Weapons of Mass Destruction which didn't exist. Connections between Iraq and Al-Qaeda that never happened. Bringing Democracy to Iraq. In all of their public statements and their fear mongering not a single reason for the justification for the invasion of Iraq was true.

George W. Bush continues to be a failure at everything he does when its connected to Iraq. The Golden Dome Masque is bombed in February and sets in motion what has become a Civil War in Iraq between the Sunni's and the Shiites and his administration continued to insist that Progress was being made in Iraq. Al-Maliki becomes Prime Minister and this will improve the situation in Iraq now that there is a national unity government even though its suspected that he is under the control of Muqtada al Sadr who heads theMahdi Army who are believed to be responsible for most of the Shiite Death Squads operating in Baghdad having infiltrated the army and the police.

During the run-up to the U.S. midterm elections President Bush tried to frame the Democrats as soft on national security it didn't work and they regained control of both houses of the congress. Last week in a speech he gave concerning Iraq and the administrations policies there he announced there would be an escalation in the number of U.S. military personnel in Iraq its just the fifth time they done this. He even admitted to making mistakes and saying that he would listen all opinions be they inside or outside the administration. Just the opposite has occurred with both Dick Cheney and George Bush saying in interviews today that even with opposition not only from the Democrats but their own party they were going to do what ever they wanted and just ignore congress. George Bush's new policy is just a rehash of his old policies in Iraq all of which have been failures save for one the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

Finally the saddest failure of all. George W. Bush managed to take the worlds empathy and sympathy for the United States after the September 11th attacks and turn the worlds citizens and many of their governments against America. How does one achieve such a thing? Only George Bush knows

U.S. Media Ingor's Asia as Usual

The one thing that can be said about the American media is that for them most of the world doesn't exist. Conflicts and instability abound in places that could cause wide spread disruption not only in the country of origin but in the wider region yet they ignore them. What a surprise. Americas mainstream media aren't the only ones who participate in this. Blogs covering the political spectrum do it as well. Yet if you were to ask them if they believe themselves to be well informed about the state of the world they would tell yes. So informed that they ignore news from Asia. These are just some of the stories making news in Asia today and have done so in the past and they could have a wide ranging effects on the whole of Asia and its stability.

Suspected separatist rebels have carried out more attacks on Hindi-speaking migrants in a third day of violence in India's Assam state.
In one incident, gunmen shot workers at a brick factory, killing seven. A trader was killed in a separate attack.
More than 60 people have been killed in the state's worst violence in a decade.
The authorities are blaming the attacks on rebels of the United Liberation Front of Assam (Ulfa), who are fighting for an independent homeland.
An indefinite curfew has been imposed in parts of the state and Indian troops have begun searching Assam's forests for rebel camps.

Workers block Indian road with bodies

January 8, 2007 - 7:09PM
Hundreds of migrant workers have blocked a highway with the bodies of some of those killed in a series of rebel attacks in India's remote northeast Assam state, officials said.
The death toll from three days of violence that started late on Friday was now at 64, mostly migrant labourers from elsewhere in India.
"People have been squatting on the highway at Longshowal village with the bodies of nine of their kin killed by the rebels on Friday," senior Assam minister Pradyut Bordoloi told The Associated Press.

The conflict in Assam has been going on for more than 20 years with thousands dead. Killed by the United Liberation Front of Assam because they simply spoke Hindi. Its the ULFA's belief that the majority Hindi speaking people of India with the consent of the Federal Government is trying to change the demographics of the state of Assam with the intent of driving out the native residents.

URUMQI: Police have destroyed a terrorist camp in northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region killing18 terrorists, a spokeswoman said on Monday.
One policeman was killed and another wounded in the gunbattle on Friday in the mountains of Pamirs plateau in south Xinjiang, she said.
The police captured 17 terrorists and are searching for many, she said.
They also seized 22 grenades and material for making 1,500 more.
The training camp was run by the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), a group that the United Nations in 2002 labelled a terrorist organisation, she said.
It is believed that more than 1,000 ETIM members have been trained by Al-Qaeda.
The former head of the terrorist group, Hasan Mahsum, was shot dead by Pakistani troops on October 2, 2003 in a joint anti-terror operation along the border of Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The Chinese government has been using President Bush's War On Terror as an excuse for these types of crack downs on the Uygur of this region who ethnic Turks and Muslims. The citizens of Xinjiang see the large influx of Han Chinese as the governments way of making the Uygur's the minority much as they have done in Tibet. The problem here is that the surrounding countries also have large ethnic Turk populations and are majority Muslim and they could see this not only an attack on the Uygur's but an attack upon Islam its self which could led to wider conflict in that part of Central Asia.

DHAKA, Bangladesh: Police in Bangladesh's capital used tear gas, rubber bullets and batons to disperse thousands of stone-throwing protesters who were demanding that coming elections be postponed, witnesses and news reports said.
Organizers said they were set to continue protesting Tuesday.
The clashes Monday injured at least 300 people including several policemen in Dhaka and adjoining areas, the United News of Bangladesh agency reported.
Police declined to comment on the injuries.
The violence came amid a crippling three-day nationwide transportation blockade, imposed by a 19-party alliance led by former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.
The alliance has claimed that the voters' list for the Jan. 22 election has flaws including fake names. The group wants the poll delayed until a problem-free list is available

Saturday Morning: Cheers and Jeers Japan

It's Saturday morning here in the Land of the Rising Sun time to wake up and greet a new day. For those of you who think it's Friday afternoon or evening in America I understand your confusion. Now get out the Rum and Coke and let's have a drink.

Cheers to:Oldest Japanese marks 114th birthday in Fukuoka

FUKUOKA (Kyodo) Japan's oldest person, Yone Minagawa, turned 114 Thursday, celebrating her birthday at the Keijuen special nursing home in Fukuoka Prefecture where she now resides.Born in 1893 in Fukuchi, Fukuoka Prefecture, she was widowed early and raised her five children by selling flowers and vegetables in a coal mining town.

Minagawa now has a daughter, seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

While she now spends a lot of time in bed, Minagawa is in good spirits and asks about the well-being of nursing home staff and jokes with them. She also loves sweets.

Happy Birthday Yone. May you enjoy many more.

Jeers to:Foes of female reign bask in prince's birth
Male-only succession must be preserved at all cost, conservatives say

By MASAMI ITO
Staff writer

"It's a boy!" The news spread like wildfire on red-letter Sept. 6 with the birth of Prince Hisahito, the first male born into the Imperial family in 41 years.Over the past few decades, only girls have been born into the Imperial family. Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako had Princess Aiko, while Prince Akishino and Princess Kiko had Princesses Mako and Kako.

Conservative lawmakers let out a sigh of relief with the birth of Prince Hisahito, safe in the knowledge that male-only Imperial succession is safe for now, and debate on female succession was effectively shelved.

It must be nice to have a mind which lives in the Middle Ages while your body occupies space in the 21st century. That is quite a trick. Perhaps someday the two will converge in the same era? Probably not since you really want to be cave men.

Cheers to:Ex-delinquent now education champion

By AKEMI NAKAMURA
Staff writer

As a troubled teen, Hiroyuki Yoshiie got into lots of fights, ran with motorcycle gangs, extorted money from people on the street and even used a lighter to set a teacher's hair on fire, drawing an expulsion from high school.

Hiroyuki you are proof positive that what one sees isn't always what one gets.


A record 97.95 million people visited shrines and temples across Japan on the first three days of this year, 4.22 million more than the year earlier, the National Police Agency (NPA) said Friday.

The NPA compiled the figure based on those released by major temples and shrines throughout the nation.

In contrast, the number of visitors to tourist spots fell 70,000 from last year to 3.67 million people.

Tokyo Disney Resort in Chiba Prefecture was visited by 345,000 people over the three-day period while Universal Studios Japan in Osaka attracted 140,000 visitors

Stalking granny just wanted to share a cuppa tea
At an age when most women are more concerned about creaking bones and keeping warm in the winter, a 70-year-old Ibaraki Prefecture woman has been arrested for stalking the man of her dreams -- a 79-year-old widower, according to Shukan Asahi (12/29).

Emiko Suzuki, the septuagenarian home helper, arrested for breaking the Stalker Regulation Law, is accused of sending over 200 love letters to the widower, many of which read along the lines of: "It's been my dream for 10 years to share a cup of tea and meals with you," Shukan Asahi says.

You arrested Emiko? This woman is harmless. She just wants some companionship in her reclining years what's wrong with that? She also wants a cup of tea. Knowing these fools they'll probably sentence the poor woman to 50 years in prison just because she was in love.

Cheers:Visitors to Tsutenkaku tower in the Shinsekai district of Osaka, are likely to also encounter a much shorter attraction at the site: a 6-year-old kindergarten boy who loves the tower so much he visits it almost every day.

Hikaru Mizobe, who claims to know everything about the tower, talks to tourists casually and offers them free personal guides to landmarks that can be seen from the tower, which was rebuilt in 1956 and is soon to be registered as a national cultural property.

Tsutenkaku Kanko Co., the tower's operating company, issued a free pass especially for the boy, expecting him to become as popular as the tower's Billiken statue.

Hikaru you had better still be giving tours at the tower the next time I'm in Osaka so that we can meet and you can educate be about the wonders of Tsutenkaku tower.


About 1.5 billion yen in income concealed by a construction company connected to tax-evasion and political bribery scandals apparently went to yakuza groups and aides of Diet members.

Mizutani Kensetsu Co. of Kuwana, Mie Prefecture, and former executives were indicted last year on charges of hiding about 3.8 billion yen in income over a two-year period ending in August 2004 and failing to pay about 1.14 billion yen in corporate income tax.
These fools must be getting advise from the Republicans in America how else can one explain they're behavior.