.
Former Nazis and the German
government apologized for the Holocaust and other crimes
committed during WW II. However to this day, Japan
has never acknowledged that their military had
committed atrocities and other acts of brutality in the
Asia Pacific region.
.
Most people are not aware of the magnitude of the Manila
massacre in Feb. 1945, 60 years ago when more than 100k
Filipino civilians were used as human shield by Japanese
soldiers during a month-long battle.
.
Japan, China and South
Korea agreed to boost spending
at home to sustain growth as higher oil prices and a
weak dollar curb overseas demand.
.
Asian economies
are expected to grow at a slower pace this year than in
2004, the result of a slowdown in US & Europe.
.
A flexible exchange rate would
help address growing imbalances in the Chinese economy,
said the head of US delegation to Asian Development
Bank. China’s yuan is too low giving Chinese
exporters an unfair advantage.
.
China does not want Japanese
apologies. It wants to call its invasion an invasion and
not minimize it. Both have ugly skeletons in their
closets. Unlike the West where confession is a virtue,
Asians prefer to simply forget.
.
West and East are literally a
world apart on the matter of confessing historical
mistakes versus burying them.
.
For its part, Beijing no longer calls the Tienanmen
movement in 1989 dongluan (riot or major
disorder), as did the official rhetoric at the time, but
fengbo (disturbance, incident or controversy).
.
Similarly, Beijing no longer brings up the issue of the
Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), or the Great
Leap Forward (late 1950s), meaning that
Beijing wants these mistakes buried in the past.
.
Taiwan’s
Pres. Chen sounded a conciliatory note on
opposition leader’s (Lian Chan of KMT) meeting with
China’s president in effort to retake initiative on
improving relations with Beijing.
.
Many analysts have viewed China’s warm welcome of
Taiwan’s opposition leaders as way to divide & conquer
Taiwan’s politicians.
.
Members of Mr. Chen’s party have criticized Mr. Chan’s
current trip as cozying up to China’s leadership at
Taiwan’s expense.
.
Beijing offered Taiwan a pair
of giant pandas and lifted a ban on Chinese visiting the
island as a goodwill gesture at the end of the historic
trip to the mainland by Taiwan opposition leader Lien
Chan.
.
Bandai
will acquire fellow Japanese toy-and-game maker Namco
in a $1.7 billion stock deal.
.
US auto sales surged in April after a slow start to the
year. Japanese auto makers gained market share over GM &
Ford.
.
South Korea’s
consumer prices rose 0.1% in April after March’s 0.8%
gain. They rose 3.1% versus a year earlier, the same as
in March.
.
The Defense Ministry in South Korea plans to
streamline its military and enhance firepower in
response to a change in security ties with the US.
.
Pres. Roh’s ruling Uri Party suffered a crushing
defeat in by-elections, failing to win a single
Parliamentary seat and losing a race even in Roh’s
hometown.
.
USDIA Chief says North Korea is able to arm a
missile with a nuclear weapon, but hasn’t said whether
it has done so or if such a missile could reach the US.
.
North Korea is believed to have made at least one
nuclear weapon, according to public intelligence
estimates. But combining that weapon with the Taepo
Dong 2 into a nuclear missile is a greater
challenge, defense officials said.
.
Efforts to resolve the North Korean crisis are
unraveling fast and confrontation looms between the
countries involved. Further 6-nation talks are unlikely
as Asian countries perceive that US policy has failed.
.
Polio has been detected in
Indonesia for the first time in 10 years. Health
investigators have concluded that the strain was carried
to the island country by a traveler coming from Saudi
Arabia.
.
Journalists were most at risk
of murders in the Philippines (followed by Iraq &
Columbia), says a study of work-related media deaths
since 2000.
.
Malaysia’s
police want to log all newborn’s fingerprints,
footprints and palm-prints. Civil rights groups
criticize it as treating all newborns as potential
criminal criminals.
.
PM Phan Van Khai of Vietnam
said he plans to become the highest-ranking Vietnamese
leader to visit in the US since the war ended 30 years
ago.
.
Vietnam was a war in which the
lives of Americans drafted from the lower classes,
disproportionately black and Hispanic, were wasted in a
failed intervention in a “civil war” (a misnomer)
between Vietnamese.
.
The war began in the late
1950s with the return of the Communist cadres to South
Vietnam as a “National Liberation Front” to create an
insurgency against the Diem government.
.
Also known as the Vietcong, the NLF was not an
independent political movement of South Vietnamese. It
was a North Vietnamese creation, a campaign of
Vietcong subversion of its southern neighbor.
.
America may have lost Vietnam
and been unable to stop the killing fields in Cambodia.
But the dominoes did not fall. Four years later (1979),
American trade with Asia surpassed trade with Europe.
.
Thirty years later, the new
Asian tigers have standards of living and booming
economies that would astonish old Asia hands, like John
Foster Dulles.
.
Asian prosperity is the wonder of the 21st
century and valuable to US trade. Asian states are
full partners in the global economy, while Vietnam lags
behind economically, and is now realizing its handicap.
.
India
launched a rocket that will deploy 2
satellites, marking a first for its fledgling space
program. India has an ambitious plan to send a probe to
the moon by 2007 and eventually hopes to establish
itself as a leader in the launching of commercial
satellites.
.
Tigers are on verge of
extinction in India, dropping to 3700 today from an
estimated 40k a century ago.
.
How can Americans be so
gullible to be victims of sweet talks by Indians and
lose $500k? This is just the attention that India could
do without, given the antipathy that exists in the West
against its back-end office operations.
.
A probe into allegations of defense kickbacks under
India’s previous ruling party threatens to rain on
India’s $15 billion-plus military modernization parade.
.
India’s #3 (Wipro) software
exporter’s project shot up 58% to $363 million, helped
by a 39%rise in revenue to $1.87 billion.
.
All is not well in Pakistan.
Hundreds of people have been rounded for 2 assassination
attempts against Pres. Musharraf. Only a handful has
been charged, and one has received the death penalty.
The incarcerated include members of the Armed Forces.
.
President Chandrika
Kumaratunga of Sri Lanka has pledged to cooperate
with Tamil Tiger rebels to distribute tsunami aid, even
at risk of bringing down her government.
.
Suspected Maoists fatally shot
one of Nepal’s top Hindu priests as he chanted
hymns before a sacred fire, the first of such shootings
since rebels took up arms in 1996.
.
Former PM Sher Bahadur Deuba was charged by anti-graft
commission with misappropriation of government funds
while in office, said a commission spokesman.
.
India’s decision to renew military assistance to Nepal,
suspended following the royal coup in February, has
angered Delhi’s Communist supporters. With China looming
large in the region, something had to give.
.
Thousands of protesters marched through Nepal’s capital
demanding the restoration of democracy in one of the
biggest demonstrations of opposition since King
Gyanendra seized absolute power in February.
