Thanks for your comment!

A Mag totally lacked serious issues, and I got tired of reading about clueless celebrities. I was one of those angry readers, though I LOVED the parties…while there was still money, anyway…

We’ve seen the 44s get older and more mature, but as you say, there needs to be a way to provide some support for the younger guys. I think the answer is groundwork and mentorship. It may have to go beyond the web. (I’ve got tons of theories on this, but it’s way beyond anything I could post in this one little comment.) I guess the next question is how we achieve that. That’s the million dollar question.

I’m about to get really really busy, but let’s do a teleconference sometime in the not-too-near but not-too-far future. Unlike the last conference, I’ll announce the next one.

So you had the “angry”-AAs feel the magazine was skirting around the issues, and the “banana”-AAs feel the mag was “too Asian.”

I think the Fighting 44s does a decent job but it has moved quite a bit from it’s angrier roots. Which I can completely understand, but I do feel sad for the younger AAs who want to vent but are shut down (and then they have to go to MM where a few crazies take over all conversations).

* * *

The other issue is that these mags seem to be all talk, and no action. As in, what are the actual benefits that this content can provide? Is it changing opinions somewhere? Empowering AAs and making us feel stronger? etc…

Okay, that makes sense! I guess the 44s could be a magazine too, but it’s usually just me and D who write the longer articles. I think it would be totally cool if we had a general interest mag for men.

I also like your ideas about the comments. On blogs, I think the comments are sometimes more interesting than the articles (it’s definitely true for me on this blog…so keep commenting!), and so the magazine format would definitely have to be somewhat different. I notice on the NY Times site, for example, there are some articles classified as articles, which usually have the comments in another section, and then there are others that are classified as blogs, which usually have commentary right underneath.

I actually liked Jeff Yang’s approach to promoting A Magazine back in its heyday. He had these HUGE parties in NYC, and he invited everyone. They gave away free CDs and free subscriptions, though they went under before any of those subscriptions were mailed. I think they overspent, and perhaps that’s what brought it down, but the idea was right–meet people on their level. Get in people’s faces. We could combine it with online stuff.

Let’s definitely talk more about this. I’m biased towards print–I just think it makes a bigger impact. Online stuff could supplement the print, but print is more real to most people. I proposed another phone meeting in the near future. Perhaps we can discuss then? If we did a print mag, we should definitely all meet in person too. Even if it’s a male issue mag, we could still have female writers–I think Esquire has both. Audrey, which is an Asian American female mag, also has both.

I’m liking this idea!

An online mag would be different from a blog, because a blog typically has one person blogging. Online magazines nowadays have multiple bloggers. 8 Asians is a good example. A boring example, but a good example nonetheless.

Blogging by yourself and generating interesting, provocative material on a daily basis is always tough, and this is why individual bloggers lose readership. When there’s a lull in material, people lose interest, just like you said about the switch from Fighting 44s 1.0 to 2.0.

Having multiple bloggers means more people can take up the slack. Plus an online mag is more interactive with its readership. The comments for an article should be on a separate discussion board and not right below the article. There are too many screwballs who want to ruin an article with their verbal graffiti.

As far as cash, I have no idea how much it costs to jumpstart a print mag. I only do freelance work for magazines, so I have no idea what it actually costs to run it. I’m not totally resistant to the idea of a print mag. Some groups do both: they start out with the online mag, build a readership, then print an issue or book along with the online mag. We can do that through print on demand sites, like createspace.

With regards to news articles and reporters, that’s a hefty expense, time, energy and money-wise. Reporting on current events is exhaustive and you constantly have to keep up that stuff. It’s much easier to blog your opinions on current events.

I would say the best way to select contributing bloggers is to fill select departments we want to cover. For improving the lives of AA men, we could start with 1) dating and relationships, 2) health fitness, 3) life coaching. There can be more of course, but the contributing blogger has to an expert in the field and damn interesting.

I totally hear you on the expense thing. I remember earlier this year when Koreamjournal journalists asked people to just flat out send them money because their magazine was tanking after about a decade of publication. Advertising revenue was down, and they wanted to keep their jobs. Koream is a very good publication, and I felt bad that the switch to online news and bad economy were weighing down on them.

So I guess I have a question since I don’t know much about online magazines. What would be the difference between a blog and an online mag? Is it that the reporters actually go out and report stuff?

I’m just thinking that the real mags have staying power. I know one person, for example, who has tons of copies of the old A mag. I think people take Audrey Magazine a lot more seriously than Asiance. Whichever we do, I think it has to keep on going with regular updates. Magazines build trust by being regular, and sometimes revival is hard. If I remember correctly, when the 44s went from version 1.0 to 2.0, we were down for a week or so and had to work hard to get our audience back. Even then, I think we lost some people because of that break in continuity.

If we need connections in the industry, I can work on that. If we need cash, how much would we need?

I’m thinking online mag, because I’m thinking strategically: maximum exposure with minimal investment. A movement needs to accessible to its people. An online mag is accessible to most people, whereas a print mag is not. An online mag is easy to set up, whereas a print mag requires some background and connections in the industry.

A lot of AA magazines, print and online, have failed. A. Magazine is gone, Yolk is gone, Hyphen is boring, and SAM magazine (the only for Asian American men) is on hiatus. An online mag, if it goes into hiatus, can always be revived.

For such as small niche market (Asian American men), an online mag is best. We’re all pretty busy, but we can talk by email.

I’m open to other people contributing by the way.

Don’t turn this site into a proselyting spam platform for your religion.

In case you didn’t realize, this thread in particular was about PICK-UP ARTISTS–not religion. Jaehwan only mentioned Falungong as a passing reference, no less. No need to get your panties all in a knot.

I’m glad you found your path.

Jason,

It looks like William already responded with a long response in the other post. So I guess we can continue discussing it there. Just make sure to click on the “Eye in the Sky” youtube video every so often just so we all have the same soundtrack!

So find another fool like before
Cause I aint gonna live anymore believing
Some of the lies while all of the signs are deceiving…

James,

I really like your idea of a magazine. I’m personally going to be tied up for at least the next year, and (hopefully) professionally for at least the next two years, but I’m interested in anything that has to do with publications and Asian Americans! Well, these things usually take a while to launch anyway, so maybe we can toss ideas back and forth, either here or over the phone lines.

By the way, is there a reason you would do an online publication as opposed to paper? I may be old school, but I think paper publications make a larger impact. A web site can disappear or go offline, and everything is gone. With paper, it’s there to stay, and it makes a much bolder statement.

Now of course paper has higher costs associated with printing, etc. But I think those costs do end up creating a larger impact. What do you think?

I must say, I can sympathise with opposition to fundamentalist ideas. Four years ago you’d find me stoned, drunk, on speed, going crazy to drum and bass at 3 o’clock in the morning in a club somewhere. I had the understanding that human life has no meaning, and that the only point is to have fun. I really believed that the best thing I could do with my spare time and money was to do drugs, have sex, listen to music–no exaggeration. At the same time I also had other impulses, and I was reading Plato, Spinoza, about Pythagoras, and other philosophies and all kinds of other stuff. To cut a long story short, I came to understand that there is a greater truth to human life that can be accessed, that humans are supposed to access, and that this is predicated on moral discipline. Falun Gong presented itself around this time, and I decided on this path. Of course, giving you super-short version here, just like, for some perspective. I didn’t really get a lot of stuff in the books at first. I just liked to read them, they seemed unusual and positive in some way I couldn’t put my finger on. As time went by I thought this is what I wanted to do, so I stopped doing drugs and all that stuff. That was nearly a year after I first read Zhuan Falun.

I just want to say also that, while Falun Gong embraces traditional morality and all that, it is fundamentally different from fundamentalist religion in a very important way: practitioners make no attempt to export their beliefs onto others, and they do not criticise or attack any other group or individuals for anything they do (except the CCP for persecuting and torturing them). They are the perfect secularists, in that sense. All protests to end the persecution, to let Falun Gong practitioners practice in peace, are being made on secular ideals of human rights, freedom of belief, etc.. I in no way have a wish to make people accept Falun Gong beliefs, or get more people to practice Falun Gong. It’s not like these Christians you get banging on about homosexuality or something. This is about cultivating inward and changing oneself, not about looking outward and trying to change others. This is a really essential point, I reckon.

Just my understanding: they’re on the street because they’ve been vilified and they want to present to people that what they are doing is peaceful and no harm to anyone. You’d have to be nuts to go sit down all day on the concrete, in the dirty streets, knowing that some people don’t want you there, just for fun or something, right? These people are intelligent and rational, they have other things they could be doing on a Sunday afternoon. The reason for this is, however, if they just ignored all the slander about Falun Gong, that all the Chinese media are propagating at the behest of the CCP, then people would have an incredibly distorted understanding of Falun Gong. It’s like the last resort to just go and directly show what Falun Gong is about under these circumstances of persecution and vilification. It is a noble act. It’s not for those practitioners’ own sake that they do these things, it’s for all the people who have been poisoned by the CCP’s vicious propaganda. This point may see obscure, “what do you mean they’re doing it for others?” — I can only explain it in my understanding, what motivates me, and what I understand motivates others. If you care to grasp this point, I suggest reading this: http://www.faluninfo.net/article/493/?cid=29 . It sums it up. I really doubt they meant to deliberately block foot traffic–it’d be a shame if people got angry because their presence was something of an inconvenience, when their intention is to help people understand what they are about.

It really would be too bad if you got a bad impression of practitioners when all they were trying to do was help you understand that they don’t have any agenda, and just want to be left alone. You can see the irony, right? If they just ignore it, then the persecution in China continues. When they go do something about it–like hand out flyers, set up boots, sit outside the embassy, sit on the footpath, trying to show people that all they want to do is meditate, then they cop it the other way. It would be a real shame for people not to get this bit. Of course, if everyone’s sitting outside the front of some obvious area where they shouldn’t sit, they should move, of course. I’ve seen photos of practitioners sitting on the footpath, it appeared to be kind of to the side. These seem issues of basic common sense and logistics. I wasn’t on the ground, so to speak, so I can only make some meta-commentary on my understanding of the motivations. The motivations are pure, righteous, and good.

By the way, did you know that Falun Gong received official recognition and praise in China before the persecution, and that the first place it was taught outside China was upon invitation of the French ambassador, to Li Hongzhi?

Falun Gong hasn’t changed, but the political winds of the CCP are a fickle beast, and if it’s not one group it’s another. Get too popular, look like a competitor for the hearts of the people (which inadvertently creates a crisis of legitimacy for the Party) and find yourself on the chopping block. It’s an absurd series of events, in all honesty. If the CCP, or rather, Jiang, could have just worried about governing the country properly instead of trying to control everyone, this whole mess would not have happened. Of course, when everyone is practicing Falun Gong, you may have a tough time getting soldiers to kill students, and you have a tougher time putting the fear into people. I’m sure this had something to do with it.

The CCP is predicated on making people scared and disempowering them. Practicing Falun Gong, understanding its principles, and applying them to one’s life is a form of power. It is power over oneself only, but this is the only kind of real power there is. My understanding is that on some other level, this itself is scary for a communist government. They require power over people, and they need to be feared. This is a problem of the CCP’s rule, not of people who just want to cultivate their hearts and do meditation.

For a look at what has been going on in Flushing, maybe an understanding that may have slipped by you, or to kind of, see how Falun Gong practitioners see things a bit, check this out: http://en.epochtimes.com/news/8-6-19/72069.html — this is a short but incredibly powerful article which sums up the CCP and what it has done to people.

I don’t know what to say about your mate. I’ve never met the guy. What you said sounds strange though. I’ve never heard of anything like that, I can’t figure it out. If I heard of someone who called themselves a practitioner talking like that to people, I would be surprised. I would share my understanding with them that this isn’t what Falun Gong teaches, or something like that. I can think of half a dozen practitioners who are married with people of other races, mostly Chinese-western. They have kids. Like I say, not a deal. I can only talk from my understanding. Falun Gong can’t dictate anything in this regard, its only power here is in powerlessness. It’s simply about looking within one’s own heart, and leave the rest up the the universe.

Final two things. First, here are some links to authoritative sources on the persecution. A flick through them should establish very quickly that this is real, serious, and very bad. this is in no way comprehensive, but it’s a fair survey of the range of material:

http://www.hrw.org/reports/2002/china02/china0802-11.htm#P1320_428651 — an excerpt which is related to Munro’s piece originally published in the Columbia Journal of Asian Law: full biblio: Munro, Robin. “Judicial Psychiatry in China and its Political Abuses.” Columbia Journal of Asian Law 14.1 (2000): 1-125.

http://www.ohchr.org/english/bodies/chr/docs/62chr/ecn4-2006-6-Add6.doc — Report of the Special Rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment: MISSION TO CHINA, Manfred Nowak, United Nations, Table 1: Victims of alleged torture, p. 13, 2006, accessed October 12 2007 (this has the “Falun Gong practitioners are two thirds of reported torture cases in China” comment)

http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2007/90133.htm — International Religious Freedom Report 2007, US Department of State, Sept 14, 2007, accessed 28th Sept 2007 (this has the “Falun Gong practitioners are over half the labor camp population” comment)

http://www.jaapl.org/cgi/reprint/30/1/126.pdf — Sunny Y. Lu, MD, PhD, and Viviana B. Galli, MD, “Psychiatric Abuse of Falun Gong Practitioners in China”, J Am Acad Psychiatry Law, 30:126–30, 2002

http://flghrwg.net/reports/UN2004/UN2004.pdf — The United Nations Reports on China’s Persecution of Falun Gong (2004)

http://organharvestinvestigation.net/events/Fact_sheet_Amnesty.pdf — Amnesty International Fact Sheet on Persecution of Falun Gong, Falun Gong Persecution Fact Sheet, Amnesty International

http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,773633,00.html — John Gittings, China ‘sending dissidents to mental hospitals, The Guardian, August 13, 200

http://www.forbes.com/technology/2006/02/09/falun-gong-china_cz_rm_0209falungong.html — Morais, Richard C.”China’s Fight With Falun Gong”, Forbes, February 9, 2006, retrieved July 7, 2006

http://web.archive.org/web/20030711022606/http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/engASA170112000 , The crackdown on Falun Gong and other so-called heretical organizations, Amnesty International, 23 March 2000

http://hrw.org/english/docs/1999/11/09/china1959.htm — “China uses Rule of Law to Crackdown on Falun Gong”, Human Rights Watch, New York, November 9, 1999

Julia Ching, “The Falun Gong: Religious and Political Implications,” American Asian Review, Vol. XIX, no. 4, Winter 2001, p. 12

http://www.trincoll.edu/depts/csrpl/RINVol2No3/Falun%20Gong.htm — Michael Lestz, Why Smash the Falun Gong?, Religion in the News, Fall 1999, Vol. 2, No. 3, Trinity College, Massachusetts

http://edition.cnn.com/2001/WORLD/asiapcf/east/02/05/china.willycolumn/index.html — Willy Wo-Lap Lam, China’s sect suppression carries a high price, CNN.com, February 9, 2001

Here is a page on personal testimonies from practitioners: http://faluninfo.net/topic/60/all/ — That page actually has a lot of stuff worth browsing.

Other thing is about people who have defended Falun Gong who aren’t practitioners. I’ll just highlight one case, though it isn’t the only one. Read about Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer who took on a Falun Gong case, had his firm shut down, then sent some open letters to Hu and Wen and was chucked in jail and tortured for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gao_Zhisheng , and his open letter a must: http://en.epochtimes.com/news/7-9-27/60173.html . this is the fourth and final letter his wrote, this time to US Congress, and the one which landed him in jail for the last time. Know one knows where he is now. Last report was that he was being tortured and made to denounce Falun Gong when he doesn’t even practice it. It’s nuts. He was originally given a top award by the ministry of justice for his awesome law work, and he was famous. Until he started on things the regime doesn’t want people to know about.

BTW, just to take you up on one point. There’s no membership in Falun Gong, it’s free for people to come and go, there’s no name lists, money, or anything. Things are just organised on a local level between whoever’s around, no one’s running the show anywhere. We just talk about how to do things then get together and do them. Anyway, increase the peace.