Thu - September 15, 2005

New Oleans cries out for help 

Posted at 02:26 PM    

Thu - July 7, 2005

naming names

Sympathy for and solidarity with our friends across the Atlantic. Props to Blair for the courage to risk challenging Western civilization's misguided religious tolerance by identifying the enemy correctly by name

LONDON, July 7 (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Tony Blair:

"We know that these people act in the name of Islam."

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Update: It appears that I blew it, completely missing that this was only part of Blair's statement. I'd taken the quote from an Associated Press summary clip, and failed to see where that sentence led. Blair balanced his remark with carefully measured expressions of inclusiveness:

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"...but we also know that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims, here and abroad, are decent and law-abiding people who abhor this act of terrorism every bit as we do."

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To my disappointment, as the full quote suggests, Blair bowed respectfully to the typical politically-correct, apologetic, overly-tolerant script that any public speaker is obligated to adhere to when daring to utter such words.

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The problem is, Blair shouldn't have to make distinctions between good or bad Islam in the first place. Islam itself should be at the forefront of denouncing these acts, and unfortunately, it's not. It's not "tolerance" that we need more of. In this case, intolerance is what is required.

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Moderate Islamic leadership has yet to stand up and denounce these acts in a united voice, if for no other reason than to defend and preserve its own interests, as well as reclaim its virtues and principles more courageously against those who misuse its name. We should support Moderate Islam, and we should expect it to stand up and denounce these acts, to be completely intolerant of it, on a large scale. The failure to do this is problematic.

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Moderate Islam--if it even exists as a meaningful entity, and can be united and emboldened--is our best hope.

Posted at 10:08 AM    

Fri - January 7, 2005

Thu - November 11, 2004

Author Iris Chang found dead in South Bay

Iris Chang, the prominent Chinese American author and journalist who fueled an international protest movement against Japan with her incendiary best-selling book, "The Rape of Nanking," was found dead from an apparent self- inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said Wednesday.

Chang, 36, of San Jose was found in her car by a commuter about 9 a.m. Tuesday on a rural road south of Los Gatos, according to the Santa Clara County sheriff's office.

"I'm just shocked," said retired San Francisco Superior Court Judge Lillian Sing, who was helping Chang with a documentary on aging U.S. military veterans who had suffered as POWs in Japanese captivity during World War II. "She was a real woman warrior trying to fight injustice."

Stunned friends and colleagues sought to understand what might have led to the suicide of an energetic and passionate young woman who channeled her outrage over Japanese war atrocities into a busy career of writing and lecturing. Chang also wrote a history of China's missile program and chronicled the Chinese experience in America.

Ignatius Ding, an activist who worked with Chang for several years in seeking to have Japan acknowledge and apology for atrocities it committed during World War II, said Chang's current project videotaping the former U.S. prisoners of war had been emotionally taxing for her.

"She was doing research recently in Kentucky and ran into some problem," he said. "She got really upset, and she flew home." Chang lived in San Jose with her husband, Brett Douglas.

Ding, who heads the Cupertino-based Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, said he did not know what kind of problem Chang might have encountered or whether it was a factor in her death.

He noted that she "took things to heart" and usually became emotionally involved in the tragic stories she wrote about.

Chang's white 1999 Oldsmobile sedan was found on an isolated private road west of Highway 17 near the Cats Restaurant. She apparently had died from a single shot from a handgun.

"There was evidence that was recovered that corroborated and was consistent with a suicide,'' said sheriff's spokesman Terrance Helm, who wouldn't disclose the nature of the evidence or if there was a suicide note. An autopsy is scheduled for today.

Her husband had filed a missing person's report with police at 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, saying he rose early to find his wife missing and that she had been despondent, said San Jose police Sgt. Steve Dixon. Her husband told police he had last seen Chang at 2 a.m.

"She was passionate and articulate," said Ling-Chi Wang, a faculty member in Asian American studies at UC Berkeley. "It's shocking to lose such a young and talented person."

"It's a tragic loss," said Chronicle book editor Oscar Villalon. "She was one of the most visible Chinese American authors, who wrote a landmark book that brought to the attention, at least among her American audience, what was nonexistent as an issue."

Author of three books and many articles and columns, Chang's most famous work was her controversial 1997 book, "The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of World War II," which described one of the war's worst atrocities.

Japanese army troops massacred many Chinese in Nanjing (then called Nanking) in late 1937 and early 1938, and Chang not only believed that the horrible event was in danger of being forgotten but also accused Japanese society of collective denial about it.

Translated into many languages, her book galvanized a redress movement in the United States. It was lauded in the U.S. media, drew criticism from several U.S. scholars on Japan and was vilified by right-wing publications in Japan.

The book also propelled Chang into an international spotlight. The year after it appeared, the Organization of Chinese American Women named her National Woman of the Year.

She received honorary degrees and lectured widely at universities, bookstores and conferences. She delivered the commencement address at Cal State Hayward in June.

"She has been a real role model for young Chinese Americans," Ding said, adding that Chang inspired many to consider being authors and journalists.

"She was also well-respected in China," he said.

Wang said she was an important interpreter of the Chinese American experience to the general public, adding that in her book on Nanjing, "she has done more than anybody to call attention to the outrage that took place."

Helen Zia, Bay Area author of "Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People," said Chang "wanted to bring voices to the fore, the stories shunted aside and ignored in history. This is a huge loss."

Andrew Horvat, Tokyo representative of the San Francisco-based Asia Foundation, said that "there will always be controversy over the accuracy and balance of her writings" but that she "did raise a level of consciousness that wasn't there before. ... In that sense, I think her contribution was very positive."

Chang's most recent book, "The Chinese in America," was named one of the best books of the year by The Chronicle. Her first book, "Thread of the Silkworm," told the story of the Chinese scientist who guided the development of China's Silkworm missile.

Born in Princeton, N.J., Chang grew up in Champaign-Urbana, Ill., where her parents are professors at the University of Illinois. Her grandparents' escape from Nanjing fed her early interest in what happened there.

She received a bachelor's degree in journalism from the University of Illinois and worked briefly as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune and Associated Press before entering a master's program at Johns Hopkins University in 1990.

She appeared on the cover of Reader's Digest as well as on many TV programs, including "Nightline" and "NewsHour With Jim Lehrer," and she wrote for numerous publications, including the New York Times and Newsweek.

Chronicle staff writers Alan Gathright and Vanessa Hua contributed to this story.E-mail Charles Burress at cburress@sfchronicle.com

Iris Chang, the prominent Chinese American author and journalist who fueled an international protest movement against Japan with her incendiary best-selling book, "The Rape of Nanking," was found dead from an apparent self- inflicted gunshot wound, authorities said Wednesday...

Posted at 01:39 PM    

Sun - October 3, 2004

Sat - June 19, 2004

Go East, young man

American publishers in search of new markets are heading to Asia, especially China, the new land of opportunity. The women's books from Hearst went first: Cosmopolitan launched in 1984, Harper's Bazaar in 1988 and CosmoGirl! in 2001. Now the men's magazines are following. Esquire settled in China in 1999, Maxim and Men's Health launched editions there this April and May, respectively. Asia offers fertile territory for print exports. The economy of the People's Republic of China is growing rapidly (9.7 percent in the first quarter of 2004)...



from Folio Magazine:

Maxim launched a Hong Kong version in April and will hit the mainland in Mandarin in a few months. “In the states, we talk about Maxim as ‘a prime-time read for the young buck,’” says Kerin O'Connor, international publishing director for Dennis Publishing, Maxim's parent. “In Mandarin, the literal translation of that is ‘a golden time read for the new golden boy.’ This fits because this is the generation of boys who've grown up in China as it's liberalized and become more commercialized.”

Posted at 02:32 PM    

Sun - March 7, 2004

The story that ate the news

Not A Good Thing For Martha
A lie turned her into a convicted felon. How a woman known for perfection made mistakes at almost every turn
By DANIEL KADLEC

The Martha Stewart jokes didn't seem as funny on Friday. You know, the ones about how black-and-white stripes are in this year and how a little lemon and seltzer can remove those pesky ink stains after you've been fingerprinted. As much as we revel in the failings of the famous, many folks figured she would never face prison. Such jests have the ring of tragedy now that she has been found guilty of obstructing justice and other crimes that all but guarantee she will end up behind bars.

Stewart was caught in a simple lie, the evidence so compelling and her attorney's 20-minute defense testimony so curt—Martha's too smart to do this—that after five weeks of testimony, a jury of eight women and four men needed less than three days to deliberate. And much of that time was spent weighing the case against her co-defendant and former Merrill Lynch stockbroker, Peter Bacanovic. He was found guilty as well on four of five counts and almost certainly will see prison time too.

U.S. Attorney David Kelley insisted that the government was not singling out Martha Stewart for prosecution to make an example of her in an era of spectacular corporate corruption. Take him at his word. But Stewart was no ordinary Jane who traded on inside information to make a quick buck. Her tabloid celebrity, her status as a walking, talking brand name, and her role as CEO of a publicly held corporation turned what would otherwise have been a simple case into a treacherous web of legal and corporate issues. And at almost every turn, she and her advisers made the wrong move, getting her deeper and deeper in trouble.

In the world of criminal defense, where the first three rules are shut up, shut up, shut up, she talked to federal investigators twice. In the world of corporate public relations, where appearance is everything, she disappeared for too long. At trial, the jury seemed to resent her celebrity cheering section—sorry, Rosie—and the fact that her attorney, Robert Morvillo, never let her testify. That might have been proper legal strategy, but the jury had spent all that time in court with her and had never been properly introduced. That's not very Martha.

At the heart of the case was a stock tip that, the government alleged, allowed Stewart, once worth $1 billion, to net a measly $45,000. Prosecutors never filed criminal insider-trading charges, though, and Stewart handed her tormentors a comparatively easy obstruction case when, as the jury decided last week, she lied to cover up why she had sold 3,928 shares of ImClone Systems on the eve of an adverse ruling for its cancer drug Erbitux. Stewart could probably have come clean immediately and received a slap on the wrist from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). But by sticking to a bogus story, she turned a civil case into a criminal one. "When we first indicted this case, we said it was about lies, all about lies," says Kelley. "And as you saw in the evidence, that's what it was. Lies to the FBI, lies to [the SEC] about very important matters."

Stewart suffered her first visible emotional breakdown last Wednesday evening, after the case was handed to jurors, says a source close to her. She might have had an inkling of what was to come on Friday inside a crammed but quiet courtroom in lower Manhattan. The most serious charge against her, securities fraud, had been thrown out the previous week. But four counts remained—obstruction, conspiracy and two charges of making false statements. Stewart, grim-faced and dressed in her ritual uniform, a dark pantsuit, sat and showed no emotion as Judge Miriam Goldman Cedarbaum repeated the word guilty four times. Her daughter Alexis, 38, who had sat behind her throughout the trial, dropped her head into her hands and remained motionless for several minutes. Stewart is likely to get up to two years in prison, say lawyers familiar with the sentencing guidelines. Shortly after leaving court, she posted on her website a statement vowing to "appeal the verdict and continue to fight to clear my name."

Where did Stewart go wrong? Trial lawyers say her attorney, Morvillo, took too big a risk in assuming that the government had not made its case. The defense presented a truncated case and never put Stewart or Bacanovic on the stand to offer a competing version of events. Howard Schiffman, head of securities litigation at Dickstein, Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky in Washington, notes that the defense's main argument—that Stewart and Bacanovic had an oral agreement to sell ImClone at a preset price—was left unsubstantiated. "What was the evidence that there was a prior conversation if they didn't testify?" says Schiffman. "The defense didn't offer an alternative theory." But that was at the end of a long trail of missteps by Stewart and her handlers. Among the fateful errors:

THE DUBIOUS STOCK SALE
Stewart got a hot tip. Her first mistake, clearly, was to sell the ImClone stock, given the impetus for doing so. The bio-tech firm that was then run by her friend Sam Waksal had been riding high on its promising cancer drug. But on Dec. 26, 2001, Waksal got wind that the FDA was going to reject his company's application to move forward with its drug. The Waksal family sent word to Bacanovic, their broker as well as Stewart's, and tried to sell $7.3 million of ImClone stock. Waksal has since pleaded guilty to securities fraud and other charges and is serving a seven-year prison sentence.

Bacanovic was on vacation in Florida on Dec. 27, but Douglas Faneuil, his assistant, relayed the message from Waksal to him, prompting Bacanovic, according to Faneuil, to exclaim, "Oh, my God, get Martha on the phone!" The amount of money at stake was trivial to someone as wealthy as Stewart, who had previously sold 20% of her ImClone holdings. Yet Martha is famously tightfisted and, as testimony showed, an extremely demanding client. She was traveling to a resort in Mexico with her friend Mariana Pasternak. But through a series of phone calls she learned what Waksal was up to. She called Faneuil, who told her Bacanovic thought she might like to act on the information, which she soon did. Pasternak testified that Stewart later said to her, "Isn't it nice to have brokers who tell you those things."

THE CLUMSY COVER-UP
The FDA rejected Erbitux the next day, and ImClone shares promptly dropped 16%. The prescient ImClone sales immediately caught the attention of compliance officers at Merrill Lynch, who on Dec. 31 asked Bacanovic about it. He said it had something to do with tax-loss selling. Later he changed his story, saying he and Stewart had a pre-existing agreement to sell the stock if it dipped to $60, which it did that day. "On Monday, Dec. 31, he said nothing, nothing about any $60 price agreement," assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Schachter argued in his summation. "Four days after the sale, Peter Bacanovic didn't say a word about what is now the cornerstone of his defense." Unsatisfied with Bacanovic's account, Merrill Lynch reported the activity to the SEC, which opened an investigation.

QUESTIONABLE LEGAL ADVICE
Stewart was in a tough spot when the allegations first surfaced. She was the highly visible CEO and namesake of her publicly traded company, and if she said nothing, she risked having her name sullied, her stock trashed and shareholder suits filed. Yet speaking up was worse. Her statements could be used against her in court. Indeed, the whole case flowed from her ill-advised explanation to investigators that she had a stop-loss order at $60. "She and her lawyers violated the first rule of criminal defense, 'Don't talk to the cops,'" says Manhattan criminal-defense attorney Gerald Shargel. That assumes, of course, that the hands-on Stewart was following her lawyers' advice. The fact that she agreed to meet with investigators not once but twice leaves Shargel flabbergasted. "If she had just kept her mouth shut, nothing would have happened," he says. Stewart was initially solely represented by Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen, & Katz, a heavyweight corporate law firm. But by the time she was indicted, she had placed her bets with Morvillo, a white-collar-crime specialist.

THE TALES OF THE ASSISTANTS
Still, Stewart and Bacanovic had a story, and they were sticking to it. And so was Bacanovic's assistant, the 28-year-old Faneuil. At least until the feds got him isolated from his confederates and, as they famously do, squeezed this little fish until he gave up somebody bigger. At trial, Faneuil provided what seemed to be damning testimony about being part of the cover-up. After all, he had arranged Stewart's ImClone trades.

In cross-examination, the defense zeroed in on Faneuil, tarring him as a liar who smoked pot and had tried the drug ecstasy. That might have been a tactical error. Jurors said after the trial that the most damaging testimony came from Stewart's assistant, Ann Armstrong, who sobbed on the stand before describing how Stewart at one point altered part of a phone log showing she had heard from Bacanovic on the day in question. Armstrong convinced the jurors that Faneuil was believable. "That was one of the strongest things that showed there was some kind of cover-up," said juror Chappell Hartridge. When a witness for Bacanovic, Stewart's business manager Heidi DeLuca, seemed to corroborate the $60 agreement, assistant U.S. Attorney Schachter's brilliant cross-examination shot holes in her testimony.

A final courtroom gaffe, it seems, was the presence of celebrity friends—among them Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Cosby—who sat behind Stewart in a show of support. "If anything, we may have taken it as a little bit of an insult," Hartridge said.

THE POOR PUBLIC RELATIONS
There are ways to defend yourself in public without giving prosecutors ammunition—and reasons for doing so. After all, the jury pool is out there listening. But Stewart's longtime handlers at the Susan Magrino Agency seemed overwhelmed. For months the agency failed to put out any kind of message. Says Susan Magrino: "It wasn't a p.r. strategy. The lawyers were calling the shots at the time."

Before she was indicted last summer, Stewart handed the reins to Citigate Sard Verbinnen, the crisis-management firm that Hewlett-Packard's Carly Fiorina used to help win a brutal proxy battle to take over Compaq. Once Citigate took the helm, Stewart starting getting her message out with careful prime-time interviews and the Internet. Within hours of her indictment, Citigate launched marthatalks.com , which posts notes from well-wishers and upbeat messages from Stewart. The site has received more than 16 million hits and 81,000 e-mails.

THE COST TO THE COMPANY
Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia went public amid great fanfare in 1999. But savvy investors have long worried about the proverbial question, "What happens if she gets run over by a bus?" The company is so dependent on her name, likeness and image that if they are not in good standing, the franchise is seriously degraded. After the verdict, shares of Stewart's company dropped nearly 23%.

Since the ImClone troubles first surfaced, the company has made efforts to play down Stewart's role, cutting back on photos of her in its flagship publication, Martha Stewart Living. But the vast majority of the business is still plastered with the name Martha Stewart, and the efforts to branch out are late in coming.

Even if she wins on appeal, a long shot in any criminal case, Martha Stewart's name and company have suffered phenomenal damage. Yet Americans love to rehab their celebrities after they have been trashed seemingly beyond repair, and brand names have proved to be nearly indestructible. Maybe Martha will be too.

The amount of junk that's been written and said about Martha Stewart's recently-announced conviction is numbingly uninteresting, and in many cases, just plain wrong. For those who want a useful summary, without the hand-wringing and pointless drama, here's a link that provides all you need to know in about three minutes of reading.

From TIME Magazine

The Martha Stewart jokes didn't seem as funny on Friday. You know, the ones about how black-and-white stripes are in this year and how a little lemon and seltzer can remove those pesky ink stains after you've been fingerprinted. As much as we revel in the failings of the famous, many folks figured she would never face prison. Such jests have the ring of tragedy now that she has been found guilty of obstructing justice and other crimes that all but guarantee she will end up behind bars...

Posted at 02:05 PM    

Sat - February 7, 2004

Sun - February 1, 2004

Tue - January 20, 2004

Texas Man catches 121-Pound Catfish

Sure, Dean got stomped in Iowa, Bush delivered a State of the Union Address tonight, and war still rages in the middle east, but if you're an East Texas boy like me, THIS is the news that matters.





Lake Texoma, Texas: Cody Mullennix, 27, of Howe, was fishing from a bank on the Texas side of Lake Texoma Friday when his rod and reel went down, the Herald Democrat (Sherman-Denison) reported in Monday editions.

After a 20-minute struggle, he was able to land the 60-inch long blue catfish. He needed help from longtime angling buddy Jason Holbrook to weigh the fish.

"I was out there by myself and we didn't have any scales beside a 50-pound set," Mullennix said. "Jason brought a 100-pound set of scales. This fish bottomed those scales before we ever even got the fish off the ground.''

Officials say it's one of the largest caught in Texas.

After getting an accurate weight of the fish, the Texas Freshwater Fisheries Center in Athens transported the fish back to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department facility to be put on display

Hot damn, boys! Good work! Let's eat!

Posted at 07:31 PM    

Tue - January 6, 2004

Mars in 3-D

This image, representing the first peek at color pictures streaming from the planet Mars, delivers a jolt, reminding us that the 21st Century is really here, just like we pictured it, in science fiction half a century ago.

From Today's Seattle Times:




In a prelude to today's expected release of high-definition color images, scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., yesterday displayed 3-D images beamed from NASA's Mars rover in a scene reminiscent of a 1950s-era movie...

Posted at 02:28 AM