bigWOWO » history

Aung Sung Suu Kyi Movie with Michelle Yeoh

bigWOWO — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 01:28:22 +0000

For those of you who like historical movies, or for those of you who are hungry for yet another AF/WM movie, check out The Lady with Michelle Yeoh. I read about it on 8A. Check out the blogger’s thoughts, and also check out the opinion of the commenters.

I agree with the commenter xxxtine, who writes: “It is through the help of her husband Michael Aris, on the outside in England, that got her the recognition and ultimately the Nobel Peace Prize. No one would’ve known about her otherwise, or cared to hear if he wasn’t trying to get his wife freed.” What is true of Amy Chua is true of Aung Sung Suu Kyi and is true of Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan–if there isn’t a White man involved with the subject matter, the Western world often doesn’t give a shit. It’s sad but true.

As for Aung Sung Suu Kyi, I like what she stands for, and there’s no doubt that she has some powerful tenacity and personal strength, but I wonder if she’d really make Burma a better place or whether she’d burn the place to the ground and mess it up worse than the military government ever could. Historically speaking, the U.S. government doesn’t always do the best job of picking leaders of other countries.

Anyway, the movie looks well done. And Michelle Yeoh really looks like ASSK.

Edit 5:30: Awww, fuck. I didn’t read the full DailyMail article before posting. You too, Michelle Yeoh?

Michelle Yeoh with her fiance

Michelle gradually fell in love with her subject with whom she had so many similarities. Like Suu, Michelle went to school in the UK; her Hong Kong based parents moved here when she was 15 and she attended the Royal Academy of Dance. She is also in love with a Westerner. The actress was briefly married to Harvey Nichols billionaire Dickson Poon but has been engaged to French Formula 1 boss Jean Todt for five years.

Her huge engagement ring sparkles as she describes how, like Michael Aris, Jean gives her the freedom to do as she chooses.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2084268/The-Lady-Michelle-Yeoh-brings-story-Aung-San-Suu-Kyi-big-screen.html#ixzz1jll8wdpk

That’s another thing the Western world does. Equates Whiteness with freedom.

“It Didn’t Happen On My Watch” by George E. Murphy (Review)

bigWOWO — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 05:31:57 +0000

I grew up hearing George Murphy’s speeches during family events in New York, where Mr. Murphy often gave speeches and toasts. I knew that he was a friend of my grandfather and that they worked together at U.S. Lines. I knew that both he and my grandfather were engineers who worked on ships, but beyond that, I had no idea what they did. I remember once saying something to my grandfather about “working for the captain,” and my grandfather said, “I didn’t work for the captain. We have the same number of stripes.” (George Murphy might even correct me further–they’re not “captains;” they’re called “masters.”) It was through this book that I got a glimpse of what my grandfather did when he was working.

It Didn’t Happen On My Watch is a collection of stories at sea written by Mr. Murphy, who worked for U.S. Lines for 43 years, working his way up to Chief Engineer and then Port Engineer. After my grandfather’s passing, I read a few books on the Merchant Marine, but this book was by far the best book on the actual details of what engineers do. A team of ship engineers–from the Chief Engineer and his three assistants (first, second, and third assistant engineer), along with the electricians, carpenters, oilers, and others who work with them–are responsible for the engine that propels the ship, along with maintenance of the ship parts, everything from the steel on the hull to the refrigeration units. The engineer’s most important job (aside from maintaining safety) is to maintain the boiler, which produces the steam that rotates the propeller that moves the ship. They don’t just maintain the boiler either; they have to calculate the amount of fuel to bring and manage the guys who keep it hot and running.

Murphy writes about life in the Massachusetts Maritime Academy, where he graduated during the early 1940′s. He writes about shipping ordnance into the line of battle during World War II, the experience of being part of a war convoy, how he snuck into Normandy in order to see what was across the water. He writes about the different kinds of cargo and interactions with longshoremen and the like. He writes about the many different personalities on the ship, the humorous competitions between engine and deck, and the many places he visited during his career. He writes about the different countries he was able to visit as part of his job. He writes about his issues with the U.S. Coast Guard and recounts the story of how U.S. Lines eventually fell into bankruptcy. My grandfather makes three appearances in the book.

The Merchant Marine is much smaller these days, as most ship manufacturing and shipping jobs have moved overseas to countries like Korea. Murphy (and my grandfather) served during what was probably the heyday of the Merchant Marine, as the economy expanded and America was shipping and trading many goods. I don’t know if others are interested in this part of history, but it was eye-opening for me. Check it out. (This book is currently out of print but available used on Amazon. Mr. Murphy’s other book, Scuttlebutt, is still in print.)

Eugenics in American History

bigWOWO — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:00:25 +0000

I can’t forget our HBD podcast, where our conversation partner talked about instituting a eugenics program to eliminate those of low IQ. He prefaced it by saying that it would never happen.

However…apparently, it did happen. Not just in this country, but as recently as the early 1970′s. Check out this NY Times article here. They even had an institution called the Eugenics Board of North Carolina. Thousands were sterilized, many of whom were minors and victims of rape. Now North Carolina is pondering ways in which they can pay back the victims.

5 Old Timey Movie Prejudices

bigWOWO — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 18:00:38 +0000

This is a funny article: 5 Old-Timey Prejudices That Show Up in Every Movie. They’re all funny, but the funniest one by far is #1 (on the second page): We Still Don’t Care About History That Doesn’t Involve White People.

As examples, they bring up movies about colored-people history, but of course, the stars are always White. As an example, they mention The Last Samurai, Last of the Mohicans, and–representing the Chinese–The Flowers of War, starring Christian Bale (na na na na Batman!) and based on a book written by Geling Yan, who coincidentally also wrote The Lost Daughter of Happiness, another happy sappy book that kowtows to White Manhood. In The Flowers of War, Ms. Yan tells us her story of the Nanjing Massacres–with the White Christian Bale as the White Christian hero. The author of the article brings up some good examples of movies made by White people–but in the case of the Chinese, he found one written by a Chinese woman and directed by a Chinese man (Zhang Yimou), but still, they had to make a hero of a White dude.

I mean, really. What would our snowlipsistic Chinese artists do without White men? There’d be no one to write about! No asses to kiss, no d#$s to s#$k. (Apologies for the language, but I can only take so much. If this doesn’t piss you off, it should. They did the same exact thing when they turned the story of the Chinese building the railroad into an AF/WM love story.)

Civilization: The West and the Rest by Niall Ferguson (Review)

bigWOWO — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 00:00:26 +0000

bigWOWO Review: Non-Fiction Bronze

Niall Ferguson is a gifted writer. The way he writes history makes it come alive. He does his research well, and he tells a great story. He’s the kind of history professor I wish I’d had in school. (And if I had made Harvard, maybe I would have had him.)And for the most part, this book was good. But then it slowly started to fall apart after the first few chapters, before completely landing in the toilet in the second-to-last chapter.

The thesis of Civilization is that the world has become Western, that the West had critical superiorities over the rest of the world that enabled it to conquer and subjugate everyone else. According to Ferguson, there are six “killer aps” that the West used: competition, science, property, medicine, consumption, and work. The intro was great–Ferguson talks about why history is important, and how people now wrongly study history as a collection of events rather than as a combination of forces that take place to move the world in a certain direction. The chapters on competition, science, property, and consumption were good, although you can feel Ferguson’s biases. He says in one area that the scientific racism of the 1800s was wrong, and then he has a footnote at a later point where he claims that the Jews might have a genetic advantage over everyone else (p 235…and no, this isn’t an HBD thread, so the rules apply).He takes mad swipes at fundamentalist Islam, while remaining quite tame on the topic of fundamentalist Christianity, even as he covers the Spanish explorers and their “explorations” in South America.

In the chapter on work, everything falls apart completely. Rather than write about history, Ferguson takes off his professor’s cap and extols the virtues of Christianity above other religions. It is really quite bizarre. He says that Christianity was one of the defining features of Western culture (which is true), and then he talks about how other countries are “downloading” this application by converting more and more. He makes the bizarre and likely inaccurate statement (his footnotes don’t prove his statements…rare for a historian) that Christianity is growing in the U.S., and he quotes a bunch of Chinese people saying how Christianity is helping people become better people in China. (since when has Christianity helped people become better? I think it helps people point fingers and shout “thou art a sinner,” but the jury is still out on whether Christians are actually more moral than non-Christians. Most people remain the same whether they convert or not.) He talks about the Protestant work ethic, as if no one else knows how to work.

What really galled me was his complete lack of logic in the Christ, I mean work, chapter. He talks about the Taiping Rebellion in China, and he describes the leader Hong Xiuquan as a crazy man who underwent “complete collapse” (279) which led to him claiming to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. He then talks about other Chinese “cult” behavior as if it’s obvious these people are loons. Dude, what’s crazier, Jesus Christ claiming to be the Son of God, or Hong Xiuquan claiming to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, who claims to be the Son of God? No offense to my Christian readers, but based on pure logic alone, they’re EQUALLY crazy. Or at least it’s fair to say that a purely logical person should not believe one over the other. Richard Dawkins would be having a field day with this chapter.

In any case, people may enjoy the early chapters. He’s got a lot of insight, and his writing style is really engaging. It’s a shame he let it all fall out at the end. The Christian chapter was annoying and wrong. I felt like I was paying a Jehovah’s Witness to knock on my door.

Real Band of Brothers

bigWOWO — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 11:07:56 +0000

Story about seven Japanese and Japanese American brothers on both sides of the war: Brothers went to war, but not all on the same side. Happy Veterans Day.

An Wang and the Politics of Getting Credit

bigWOWO — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 17:09:09 +0000

Dali and I have been having an interesting conversation in the final HBD thread about whether the modern computer (aka Byron’s Mac, since that was how one HBDer brought in the topic) is a White invention. His opinion is that Whites invented all the technology necessary to make the modern computer, that Asians simply latched on to the moving train of invention, and that therefore the computer is a White invention. My view is that calling a modern computer a “White invention” is akin to calling an M-16 a “Chinese invention;” while White people may have invented the first computer and Chinese may have invented the first gun, the modern laptop or desktop is a completely different beast. The modern computer is multicultural.

I brought up An Wang, who was not only the inventor who “made magnetic core memory a reality,” but also had over 35 patents to his name. He became a big player in the early computer industry through his company Wang Laboratories, which virtually all comprehensive histories (even the ones online) mention when chronicling the growth of the computer industry. Wang wasn’t the only Asian American guy either–he had a Chinese partner (twice), and I’m sure there were lots of Asians at his company AND also working for his competitors like IBM. Bill Gates mentions Wang as a serious competitor in Gates’ early career. I’ve seen some specious pro-minority claims in the past, but in this case, it’s true: Asian Americans have been in the tech industry a long time, inventing major technologies and contributing to the computer industry’s creative capital. I mention to Dali that I knew Asian Americans in tech when I was a kid, back in the 70′s and 80′s, before the personal computer. They were engineers. They weren’t just on the payroll to bring coffee to the brilliant White guys doing all the inventing. If we’re going to be diligent in our understanding of history, we need to give these Asian Americans credit.

The funny thing about this conversation is this: had Wang not run his own company and had instead become an inventor at IBM or some other big company, we would not have ever heard his name. Even these days, when you walk onto the Intel campus in Hillsboro, OR, there are tons and tons of racial minorities doing “invention” work, but you would never know unless you go there yourself. In fact, in another twenty years when historians look at the historical record, most likely they’ll see that in 2011, four out of the five highest executives were White guys. No one is going to remember the hundreds of thousands of other creative workers and high-ranking managers who didn’t fit this demographic. Intel does more than most companies in showcasing its diversity to the public, but because of the way corporations are structured, certain stories get left out.

Such is the politics of getting credit. To get credit, one often has to stand out, which is why many engineers don’t get credit for the work they do. Back in An Wang’s day, years before the Civil Rights movement, it was hard for an Asian engineer to stand out. In this day and age, it’s easier to stand out, but we sometimes still need to dig in order to find their stories.

Chinese Men Fighting in the Civil War

bigWOWO — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 23:51:58 +0000

I had no idea–Chinese Americans actually fought in the Civil War. There were Chinese men on both sides of the battle, both in the North and the South. There weren’t many–only 58 soldiers out of the 200 Chinese people in the U.S. at the time. At least one Chinese American fought with distinction:

Corporal Joseph Pierce, who as a child was brought to the United States from China by his adoptive father, fought in several major campaigns of the war including Antietam and Gettysburg. He was honored by having his picture displayed at the Gettysburg Museum.

The sons of Chang and Eng, the famous Siamese twins (who were actually of Chinese descent), fought for the South, which makes sense, given that Chang and Eng were slaveowning farmers. Damn Chinese slaveowners–now I might owe reparations to Neutral Observer.

There’s something nice about knowing that we were there during the most important conflict in American history.

(Thanks, MLC, for this article!)

David Duke and Dukian Doppelgangers

bigWOWO — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 22:59:36 +0000

: David Duke

A “doppelganger,” in the game Dungeons and Dragons, is a monster that changes shapes to mimic other humanoid creatures. In the X-men, the same kind of creature is called a shapeshifter. On the internet, a doppelganger is one who pretends to be someone that he or she is not. It is a form of troll. On Asian American sites, common doppelgangers tell people that they’re Asian when they really aren’t.

In 1973, David Duke, the famous Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, wrote a book called “African Atto,” a self defense manual for African American militants. He wrote it under the pseudonym “Mohammed X.” According to some reports, he did this in order to collect the names and addresses of black militants for future Klan usage. Others say he was just trying to make a quick buck from black people. I bet his racist heart got a kick out of that.

We’ve got a racist doppelganger on this site too. He calls himself Chris and has claimed to be an Asian woman. His story quickly fell apart when John Doe and mT started prodding (good work btw guys). I don’t understand all the motivations of such racists, but I think they are vying for attention. In their minds they see themselves as being above us and able to easily outsmart us. Plus, they see our struggles and our humanity as trivial. It’s just a game to them. But let’s not take our eye off the ball–they are racist. Their reason for acting as they do rests on their superiority complexes. Just as David Duke took pleasure in making money from the very people against whom he committed his acts of racism and violence, so do racist doppelgangers enjoy playing with minority Asians.

Let me update my comment policy once again. Doppelganging is not allowed. You don’t have to tell all details of your life, but if you’re a non-Asian boy, don’t claim to be an Asian girl. Sock puppets–when one person takes two user names in order to double the force of his or her own voice–are also not allowed. Both of these tricks are deceitful and cowardly. You don’t have to come forward with your identity in order to post here, but don’t claim to be something you’re not in order to lend more credence to your ideas. People on this site (most of all me) don’t have time to play stupid games.

John Mayer and his "David Duke cock"

William Hohri, Rest in Peace

bigWOWO — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 20:00:42 +0000

We need to remember our heroes. Bill Hohri was a freedom fighter who was interned at Manzanar during the Japanese American internment. When he got out, he refused to accept the government’s crimes, and he took them to court, asking for $210k for each survivor. He ultimately lost the suit, but Reagan later signed a law giving each survivor $20,000.

Hohri’s group researched the law and detailed numerous constitutional violations. In 1983 he became the lead plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit, which charged that the federal government had “maliciously and unlawfully conspired” to imprison Japanese Americans in a campaign of “invidious racial discrimination.”

For several years, he rose at 5 a.m. every day to work on the lawsuit before work. He considered the $25 billion in damages sought as “modest compared to the injuries suffered” by Japanese Americans who lost their homes and livelihoods.

In 1988 the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that the suit was barred by a six-year statute of limitations governing such claims. The Supreme Court let the appellate ruling stand. But all was not lost. That year, Reagan signed a law that provided $20,000 tax free to survivors of the wartime camps.

Check out the article. I love the story about buying his Nissan, and I agree with him 150%–it’s yours, it’s designed to partially atone for a crime committed against you, so don’t give it away, spend it on yourself! He died at the age of 83 on November 12th. Rest in Peace.

You can hear his interviews with Densho here.

(Thank you, NH, FC, and CC.)