How Wide is 44 Inches Really? I am now 44 inches wide. That is the same width as a high end LCD TV. But how WIDE is 44 inches really?? My aunt and I do a comparison... It's all in the perspective really..... No Olympics for me... No Olympics for me.... and not because of any political reasons. I actually REALLY want to cheer the home team on..... http://www.macworld.com/article/134935/2008/08/olympics.html I hate AT&T and Microsoft. I hope they get sued for being a monopoly again. Scheduled C Sections for 080808 China I am amazed what people fuss over when they are expecting a baby. As if there wasn't enough to do.... Chinese couples hoping for lucky birth on 08/08/08 - News and Features, Olympics - The Independent Source: www.independent.co.uk In Beijing's main maternity hospital, there is an even more expectant air than usual. All of the 200 beds in the wards are full, and of the scores of soon-to-be mothers, most have scheduled a Caesarean section to ensure that most auspicious and treasured of babies – an Olympic baby. 11 People For Baby..plus some green points. Mummyhood. Today must be one of the busiest days we have had in a long time in regards to home. At 7:30 am four painters arrived, at 7:45 am the floor person, with his daughter in tow, followed by the contractor who took away the old wood frames from our salvage doors and wood. Followed by our cleaning lady who brought a her friend because she wanted to get out early, then the electrician. People are coming going and the house looks increasingly different by the minute. First the dowdy ex-bedroom suddenly looks bright and clean with all the cracks and holes patched up, then the floor is placed in, looking as if the room is close to finish. The bathroom is now transforming from a strange form of brown and yellow into a mint green. And of course the kitchen looks sparkling. Within a few days the air con will be running and we will have lights in the new room as well as some outside. The closet is reorganized to take account of baby things. The stroller/pram is put together, and once the house is painted and we have moved the old bedroom into the new bedroom then the baby furniture can go into the study. I finally settled on cotton balls for all three rooms. It was quite distressing to realize that I didn't like devonshire cream for the living room AFTER the painters arrived, and we were still trying to figure what's best after five colors tries. And with all the construction, one of the nicest things is we have tried and made the house a bit more green. (To be cont) Freedom in China: Two Views China http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/jamesreynolds/2008/08/freedom_in_china.html Angry Youths, Hidden China, The resentful Dragon. China http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/07/28/080728fa_fact_osnos http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/03/china.olympicgames2008 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1040791/The-resentful-dragon-Beneath-smiles-China-remembers-humiliations-suffered-Western-hands.html It's True, I am using Cloth Diapers.. Mummyhood People think I am nuts but I decided on cloth diapers with a diaper service. I love the fact they feel good, are nice to the environment, cheaper and most of all come to the door step every week and I don't have to do diaper runs to supermarkets I don't go to. http://www.mothering.com/articles/new_baby/diapers/joy-of-cloth.html Olympics, Tianamen Square Massacre and Yahoo China http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/04/yahoo.olympicgames2008 Japanese Tasting Friend Chicken Steak Eat I had some chicken and ginger ale left over, so I thought I would try this and see if it would work... Marinate Chicken breasts in Soy Sauce and some sort of soft drink (7 up, I used ginger ale this time), garlic and ginger. Put over night or a few hours...Take out of marinade and cover with corn starch on a plate. Put a few table spoons of olive oil and make it hot (!!) Fry until golden brown, and then flip, Turn heat down, and make sure it's cooked all the way through. Yummi.... (Happy it worked) Up Again Just a grrl Up again. This is something that happens during pregnancy. When one is calm and relaxed, the baby moves a lot. While one is busy with the day, the baby is lulled into sleep as mummy is rocking him or her. I should have known this will happen as today I hardly felt the baby move, which means baby will be awake longer in the middle of the might. To think I feel worried earlier. Pieter laughs as everyday I feel the baby is moving less and I feel worried. But I do know baby has moved less than before. No more wild kicks and turns. I read this is because he or she is getting larger and there is not a lot of space to play in. I am tired. I would really like to sleep. Tonight is extra tiring as I did not nap. Sometimes I nap. But I was busy with paper work, and so I stayed up through the afternoon. Now I feel slightly hungry, so I might have to make something to eat. Pieter says that I have a whole different second life. He goes to bed and I stay up, I write to my friends, I talk to my mum on skype, I am on the phone to New Zealand, Dubai, Oman, Australia and Messenger friends in HK. I play on the internet, I read, I do things around the house. All the while he sleeps and has no idea. I baked shortbread once early in the pregnancy. He woke up with little biscuits sitting on a cooing rack. He laughed so hard. He found me asleep on the couch as well, as sometimes sleeping somewhere else helps. I had a week or two of great sleep in the bed. Maybe it's time to move to the studio downstairs and sleep on the fold out mattress because it suddenly feels comfortable. Sometimes a hard bed is better, sometimes the soft one is. Pregnancy makes one's needs and wants skew to whatever it is, it's a little like food cravings except I call it "life style cravings." One day I decided i didn't like body gel anymore, I wanted soap. But I wanted something that was really foamy, but had no scent. I walked around silver lake for a few hours looking for soap. I was shopping, but I kept looking for the "right" soap, until i came across a tomato one. It worked well. I was happy and ever since then I have used soap. Don't ask. It makes no sense, but Pieter and I are so used to strange needs and wants that make no sense we don't even give it a second thought. Sometimes I want oranges, others mellon and chocolate milk, sometimes I am happy and sometimes I am sad. One day I feel like everything is under control, the next, I do not. In fact, let me take that back. Sometimes I feel all those things within hours… July 17th 2008: Preparing for Baby Just a grrl How did all this time go? I am not sure. How come I haven't written for so long. Not even sure if I can write. My life is completely different now. My friends, my future. I have a cactus garden. I am renovating, we are building an extension. I spend a lot of time looking at furniture. I pick out paints. I realize I do not have a knack in house decorating even if I thought I would. I am terrible. I can never make any decisions unless I see something that is "perfect" otherwise I look and look and never see what I need. I live with a dichotomy in home furnishing, which is I have expensive tastes but I hate spending huge amounts of money. So I always hope I will find a bargain. I hope that I will find something that will match what I want with the price I want to pay. One thing about the US I have learnt in that over here you get what you pay for. And pay for is a lot more than in HK or Asia, and you still have to pay the damn 8 % sales tax. We are very very far away from the rest of the world. There is no popping over in Macau or Thailand or across the border where labour costs are low, and beautiful pieces of furniture gets made. I know I like modern Asian furniture now. Not modern furniture which LA is full off. Not Asian furniture which you can also find in abundance. I like furniture that is designed now, not five hundred years ago, but has accents of home. I think it would be very hard to find in HK, as European furniture is what we had mostly, but it's really hard to find here as well. I think Americans can be so frumpy. The clothes are frumpy, the furniture is frumpy. Finding a crib for the baby has almost ripped my heart out with dread. I hated every crib I had seen, and the only one I genuinely liked was $800, which I found a bit much as you can get a pretty decent one for $200. I looked in so many places, and in the end there was one if Toys R Us's Baby section that I liked for $400. A good compromise I decided. There are a lot of baby stuff you can spend your money on. Most of it is vanity money, it's "can you live with the design" money. If you don't mind what it looks like, you can get things really cheap. I guess that's with everything, but I never had a baby before. Baby is due September 16th 2008. From then on, I will be a mum for a few years. Maybe I will have another baby as well. I will have a family. I am going to stay home with the baby. I will breast feed, and make my own… Mr. Ching Cheong Release Press Conference Statement "I never spied." Awaiting a Democratic Hong Kong I am listening to RTHK Radio 1 in Hong Kong streaming and they just discussed Mr. Ching Cheong's press conference and so far he's thanking everyone for his release. ----- They are playing part of his statement. (I was translating real time with the feed, so not exact but very very close) "After thanking everyone, I just want to say some simple things about my situation. Number 1: I have never done anything to hurt the country or its security. I have no shame and regret, and I honestly say I deserved the out pouring of support by the public without shame in my heart. I have never spied on China. I have never had any intentions of spying on my country. I have never intended to hurt the country's security. I have never touched any classified documents and never given classified information to Taiwan. To me the country's security is very important to me personally. I take the idea of spying very seriously. It's not something I would consider. It is the complete opposite of my personal belief. As I said in court. Since university graduation every major decision I have made is for the best of the country. When this situation happened, I first thought of what was important for this country's security before myself, my own safety. Which is why I handed over my computer. This showed I have nothing to hide and did not have any question and fear. Today is the 30th Anniversary of the opening up of China. Mr. Ching Cheong hopes that China will be more open in democratic and human rights issue. Ching Cheong a Journalist Jailed without Proof, is Freed. Wikipedia: Ching Cheong Edison Chen Quits Entertainment "Circle." Glutter's Hong Kong. Wah. www.8810903.com just announced that Edison Chen is going to quit the Entertainment "Circle." Poor guy. They are talking about it on RTHK Radio 1 as well. Maybe he will come to the US where people aren't so upset about grown people having sex.. I wonder what the whole statement is. They said he said he's really sorry for all the people who have hurt and that he is not a role model for the youth in HK. Oh more importantly Mr. Ching Chong who was the HK journalist for Strait Times and was jailed for three years by the Chinese government will have a press conference in half an hour as well. The radio hosts are saying that today there have been two really important press conference that can be summed up by a phrase. For Edison Chen, it's "Sorry" "Sorry to the family, Sorry to everyone" and for Mr. Ching Chong it's "Thank you." "Thank you for his family's support, the support of the city, and the government of HK helping his release, and the journalistic community for again, supporting his family and helping to secure his release. -- I just heard it. Mainly Edison apologized to the "ladies" (Not the best choice of word I don't think), and their family, his own mother and father, and the WHOLE of HK society because he feels it's led the society astray... (Actually I can promise that most people had a rollicking good time downloading the photos.) and he's sorry he was unable to live up to his role as a role model which is what is expected of him in the HK entertainment industry and he's made the decision to leave the HK entertainment "Circle" after fulfilling his obligations. Which means he's heading this way to Hollywood. He can now be the Asian version of Paris Hilton! This town loves it! Edison in HK and will have Press Conference. Glutter's HK I have been writing this extremely long winded post about the whole Edison affair. Anyway, still haven't finished, and as with all gossip, it keeps changing. Edison is in HK and will have a press conference at 3pm HK time. It's an hour to go from the time of me writing this.. Wah. I can't wait. It's been a long time that there is some HK stuff that I can really get my teeth into..... I miss home! Okay. I decided I still have SO MUCH more to write about.. You know the police aspect, the censorship aspect, the fact people are being arrested in HK, Taiwan and China over this incident. I might as well split it in different sections. So I am posting the first part of the Edison Chen Writing as (1) which is mainly purely gossip... Nothing Makes Me More Homesick than a Great Great (Edison Chen) Internet Sex Scandal. (1) Glutter's Hong Kong. I admit it. For more than a week now, I have been obsessed with the "sexy photo gate" scandal of the pictorial renditions of Edison Chen's Sex Life. I have discussed it with my mother: "no mum, I really don't think you should look at the photos, they are really naughty." My classmates: "I know you don't know who these people are, but it's HUGE! It's not like Paris Hilton at all, because they are already famous before they got naked! It's like Justin Timberlake's computer got hacked and in it was pictures of a Britney (who still claimed she was a virgin who happened to be dating his classmate), Cameron Diaz who happens to be married also to Justin's classmate, some retired star whose about to marry a really really rich man and a bunch of starlets with a underage girl whose uncle owns the record label, management company some of these women are in, plus he is a bona fide gangsta all at once!!" My brother: "Yeah, they want to hack his hands of for $50, 000!!!" My brother replied, "That's rough, if I was him I would just say, "It's not my fault, they got naked themselves! He needs to stay here." And one night, Pieter said, "I can't really believe you're sitting in bed surfing for porn and making me look at them." "It's not porn." I replied, "Think, this girl who is sprawled naked and sucking, was representing your company over Chinese New Year before they pulled the ad! It won't be in the new employee Disney Magazine would it? Anyway they didn't make it for money, I mean it's not intended to entertain." "Doesn't it tell you something?" "Yeah, I shouldn't look at it. But I am just waiting for the next Kira installation coz maybe there will be pictures of Maggie Q!! That would make me happy." "And why?" "Coz she wasn't very nice to me once, so it would be funny... but really that was a long time ago, and she's really I am sure she is a very nice person now and we were all pretty immature, so really, no reason what so ever at all." But yet, I can't help it. I am compulsively seeking more news, the next installment, more gossip. Is Cecilia and Nic really going to divorce? They have a baby! Is it true she was cheating on Nicolas Tse her soon-to-be-hubby in these photos? If she was why would she allow photos to be taken? His parents Tse Yin and Dicboli don't look too pleased in the photos. I am sure they thought all the scandal is over now he's married and has a kid. No more crashing one's Ferrari on garden road drunk, and then getting his driver to take the blame. How long did Nic end up in prison? Was it two months? And what about poor Bobo, playing the smart not very talented actress card of nabbing a rich man.… Mr. Ching Chong Released.. A Hong Kong journalist who was jailed in mainland China on spying charges has been released after serving less than half a five-year sentence. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7227695.stm So In Love With Murakami Art Have a look at the exhibition I just went to see. LOVE Oval Buddha sculpture... (Part Six of tour) http://www.moca.org/murakami/ If you're wondering why some of the work looks familiar.... Watch Hu Jia's Video of Being under house arrest http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,,2250654,00.html Busy... Just a grrl It's been a year since I relocated to LA. It's taken a year to get into my stride and be used to the vast hugeness of Los Angeles and able to take advantage of all this place has to offer. I am still working on my cactus garden although I had to take a lot of my plants out of the ground and replant them into small pots, as raccoons seem to enjoy chewing up the more expensive (always) and exotic plants. I am starting to get used to the land more and realized that they are too small to look good in the garden. And my off shoot project of going to a pottery studio to make some pots for my plants has grown into a full blown passion onto itself, and I started creating a style of hand building sculpture that is inspired by the South Western Landscape of rocks and canyons and the study of bones I did about six months ago. I also started collecting pieces of pottery both from my teacher and other artists. Mostly I am getting kitchen wear as the artistic space in the house is taken up by my own work. With that I am also baking, I learned to make bread, apple pies, blue berry pies, quiche, roast a chicken, Yorkshire pudding and all sorts of daily dishes that I had not thought of before such as apricots and carrots. I challenged myself with making a ginger bread house with little ginger bread people all decorated with icing, which was a success. I resurrected old childhood favorites of scones, shortbread, chocolate chip cookies, plus added to my repertoire old family recipes such as cauliflower and cheese. I made my first full blown Christmas meal all by myself, with my mum's recipes with twists of my own. Yummi Stuffing with walnuts and Apple. Pieter got my a super duper food processor for Christmas which I am happy to put to use. And for Christmas I got my first REAL Christmas tree, my aunts from Hong Kong decorated it all, and bought us the cutest one and half feet penguins with lights in them. We had candy cane lights in the living room windows and an explosion of tinsel. I can't wait to go to China Town and get some Chinese New Year decorations as that's coming up. Then there is the dancing. This winter I started taking modern dance class in a local community college, plus a history of dance class which includes labs. I have tried my hand at sufi dancing, a little bit of choreography, and studied the Graham method. I love rolling around the floor and dancing across the vast studio in triplets. I love dancing, and with the far more democratic American style of teaching, a non competitive environment, I am excelling at something I loved but was never particularly good at before. I love the fact the teachers point out different moves and who… A snippet of an interview about Internet in China I did for the BBC Freedom of Expression Last week I was interviewed by a journalist at the BBC, and somehow the link to parts of it was sent to me in an alert by google. I am not even sure in what context this is in, or whether I have the rights to put it up. But here goes.... (I have to say it was well edited, because it got a lot of my points across in a more succinct than I put it. Add iPM Radio 4 - Yan Sham-Shackleton to your page 3:39 am, global online freedom act, yahoo case moves forward and thoughts something different Yahoo Case Moves to Discovery Phase "Our lawsuit against Yahoo, filed in April 2007, has now advanced to the discovery phase after the District Court for the Northern District of California granted our motion to begin initial and jurisdictional discovery. The court's order comes after Yahoo attempted to delay initial and jurisdictional discovery by asking the court to bifurcate proceedings, which would have meant that the court would have to delay addressing the merits of the case. Human Rights USA successfully challenged Yahoo's attempts to split up proceedings into multiple parts. Human Rights USA filed suit against Yahoo in April for its complicity in handing over identifying internet user information to Chinese authorities, leading to the arbitrary arrest, long-term detention, abuse, and torture of Chinese journalists and human rights and pro-democracy advocates. Two of the plaintiffs -- Wang Xiaoning and… News: Congress To Google: Don't Sell Out To Censors Forbes: Congress To Google: Don't Sell Out To Censors Andy Greenberg 10.23.07, 2:35 PM ET For global tech companies like Google and Yahoo!, cooperating with repressive states like China has been a public relations nightmare. Now that ethical dilemma may be slowly widening into a legal morass. The House of Representatives Committee on Foreign Affairs voted Tuesday to pass the Global Online Freedom Act, a bill designed to penalize U.S. companies up to $2 million if they cooperate with the technological surveillance of political dissidents or share technology and information used for "Internet-restricting" purposes. "Dictatorships need two pillars to survive: propaganda and secret police. The Internet, if misused, gives them both in spades," said Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey. "Both wittingly and unwittingly, companies operating in places like China have discovered they're a part of these regimes." Tuesday's bill must still pass several hurdles before reaching the House or Senate floor. But it is a clear sign of the growing frustration in Congress over the tug-of-war between supporting U.S. technology companies in politically charged countries and America's long support of human rights abroad. Companies under the congressional microscope included Cisco, which Smith accused of helping China create a "police net" database used to track and imprison political dissidents around the country. He alluded to Yahoo!'s cooperation with Chinese police, offering up email information that led to journalist Shi Tao receiving a 10-year prison term in 2005 for "revealing state secrets." Smith also criticized Google for its decision to appease China by blocking politically controversial search results on its Mandarin site. "Google has joined hook, line and sinker with the propaganda regime of Beijing," Smith said. While Google and Yahoo! couldn't be reached for comment, Cisco responded with a statement denying any participation in government censorship and arguing that the company "supports transparency in the way the Internet is used and complies with applicable regulations." Microsoft faces issues similar to those of Yahoo! and Google in countries that censor search results and track dissidents. The software giant said it is "not advocating for a legislative solution" and is instead working with organizations including Business for Social Responsibility and the Center for Democracy and Technology to develop new guidelines for protecting human rights abroad. Since turning over information key to jailing Shi Tao, Yahoo! has been called before Congress to explain its actions. Yahoo!'s general counsel Michael Callahan told Congress last February that the company was unaware China's government would use Shi Tao's email information as evidence in a politically motivated trial. Earlier this month, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos accused Yahoo! of knowing the Chinese government's intentions in that case and lying in the Congressional hearing. Lantos has demanded Callahan and Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang return to Congress for further questioning next month. Legislators supporting the bill contend it could help protect dissents abroad by making it illegal for companies to store sensitive information that could be used to indentify individuals in countries with restrictive Internet policies, including China, Belarus, Vietnam, Ethiopia, and Tunisia. U.S. search engines and Internet Service Providers would also be prevented from filtering search results at the request of a government or for any Internet-restricting purposes. Not every member of Congress was convinced. Though the committee overwhelmingly supported the measure, Representative Adam Smith of Washington contended the bill was "overly broad," and in its current form, would simply prevent American tech companies from doing business in many countries around the world. "This is a very delicate area, and a very indelicate piece of legislation," he added. Internet companies in China already face an unfriendly business landscape. Despite cooperating with the Chinese government's censorship demands, Google has lagged its competitor Baidu in China. Monday, Google confirmed reports that some users were being mysteriously redirected from Google's search page to Baidu's. But Representative Dan Burton of Indiana countered critiques that the bill would crimp U.S. business abroad by comparing those concerns to arguments in 19th century Britain over the fiscal sacrifices associated with ending slavery. "Some nation has to start to change what's been going on in China," he said. "Let it be us, today." House committee approval for Global Online Freedom Act hailed 23.10.2007 House committee approval for Global Online Freedom Act hailed Reporters Without Borders welcomes today’s decision by the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee to approve the proposed Global Online Freedom Act (GOFA). Drafted in February 2006 by Republican Representative of New Jersey, Christopher Smith, this bipartisan bill would prevent US Internet sector companies from collaborating with repressive governments. It will now go before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. “This is a wonderful advance for online free expression,” the press freedom organisation said. “At least four cyber-dissidents, including Wang Xianing and Shi Tao, have been convicted and jailed because of information supplied by the US company Yahoo! to the Chinese authorities. Cooperation with repressive government by American Internet companies runs counter to the very nature of the Internet and facilitates the work of the censors.” Reporters Without Borders added: “We hope the House committee on energy and commerce will now in turn quickly recognise this bill’s importance so that it can it can be submitted to a floor vote as soon as possible.” The Global Online Freedom Act would prevent repressive governments - those that punish dissidents and human rights activists who use their right to online free expression - from having access to personal data by banning US companies from locating the servers containing this data in the territories controlled by such governments. The bill would also ban US companies from providing information enabling users to be identified, except in cases in which the law is being legitimately applied. This, however, would be decided by the US justice department and not the companies. The US companies concerned would also have to act transparently and transmit information about the type of censorship they apply to an interagency-staffed Office of Global Internet Freedom, which would have the job of defining US government policy for the promotion of the free flow of information online and monitoring violations. The office would also have the job of encouraging US companies, NGOs and academics to draft a voluntary code of conduct. Companies that do not respect the GOFA’s provisions would be sanctioned. The GOFA would also establish a feasibility study for controlling the export of equipment, software and applications sold by US Internet sector companies to countries designated as repressive by the White House. US companies Yahoo!, Google and Microsoft have been repeatedly criticised for agreeing to censor themselves in China. Cisco Systems is accused of providing China with online censorship technology. A Yahoo! representative will appear before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on 6 November in connection with his apparently untruthful claims to Congress on February 2006. He claimed that the company knew nothing about the content of the investigation into Shi Tao as a document published by the Dui Hua Foundation seems to prove the contrary. When American corporations deliver U.S. foreign policy ... When American corporations deliver U.S. foreign policy ... Michael Likosky,Michael Shtender-Auerbach Friday, November 2, 2007 The headlines that Yahoo had handed over Chinese journalist and democratic activist Shi Tao's e-mails and IP address to China's secret police dominated the news last year. This sent a panic through an industry usually praised for its social responsibility and unaccustomed to external scrutiny. Congress called in the general counsels of four of our leading high tech firms - Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo - to account for their collaboration with the Chinese government. In the course of events, it became clear that the problem in the high-tech sector was not isolated but endemic. Since this hearing, human rights activists have uncovered three additional cases whereby Yahoo's policy of sharing personal records of its users with Chinese authorities has led to arrest, alleged torture and lengthy prison terms. When our high-tech firms engage in such behavior abroad, they undermine a basic tenet of our foreign policy. What then is the appropriate response? The U.S. foreign policy of "peaceful evolution" encourages the democratization of authoritarian regimes not through isolationist policies, but instead through constructive commercial engagement; that is, the promotion of free market capitalism abroad. However, some American companies promote and reinforce authoritarian capitalism and suppress democratic movements. The question is: How endemic is corporate-facilitated authoritarianism? In places such as China, one worries that legitimate reform and resistance will be squelched with the help of U.S. corporations. Commercial engagement may at times produce the very authoritarianism that our high-tech firms make a claim to eradicating by virtue of their technologies. Sophisticated commercial actors and governments realize this. On Nov. 6, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs will question Yahoo's senior executives on the veracity of testimony given by the company's general counsel during the 2006 hearing in relation to the Tao case. This offers Congress a unique opportunity to change the status quo for American high-tech companies cooperating with authoritarian regimes. This hearing comes just two weeks after the same committee passed the Global Online Freedom Act, legislation aimed at promoting Internet freedoms and protecting U.S. firms from governments attempting to coerce them into participating in authoritarianism. It, in part, places constraints on U.S. firms, and then backs those constraints with possible civil and criminal sanctions. Yahoo's director of global public affairs, Tracy Schmaler, maintains that Yahoo's legal counsel provided "truthful" testimony in 2006 and that Yahoo is working "to develop a global code of conduct for operating in countries around the world, including China." Corporate codes are important for advancing peaceful evolution and are part of the mandate of the Global Online Freedom Act. However, we must be wary of private solutions in which the regulator and the regulated are one and the same. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has tied wider corporate accountability in his industry to the need for new legislation, modeled perhaps on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Congress must assess the nature and extent of the social risks engendered by high tech corporate collaborations abroad. Are we genuinely concerned with the wider social harm of some transnational commerce? If so, what public or private institutions - domestic, foreign or international, or combination thereof, are the appropriate ones to assess and mitigate transnational high technology social risk? Whether de facto or de jure, our companies are our foreign policy organs. American hi-tech companies - Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Cisco - may not fly an American flag, but Chinese citizens, and others, may see it otherwise. The decision by Congress to summon the legal counsel of our blue chip high-tech firms into a congressional committee room last year was an important step in addressing this issue. The continued congressional inquiry into Yahoo's testimony is further indication that our government values accountability and takes peaceful evolution seriously. While Lantos attempts to get at the truth of Yahoo's actions, Congress should consider legislative action, such as the one proposed by Gates, as an appropriate means for mitigating our collective social risks. Michael Likosky is a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and author of "Law, Infrastructure and Human Rights," (Cambridge University Press). Michael Shtender-Auerbach is managing director and founder of Social Risks, LLC, of which Likosky is also a principal. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/02/EDQGT3KJL.DTL This article appeared on page B - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle When American corporations deliver U.S. foreign policy ... When American corporations deliver U.S. foreign policy ... Michael Likosky,Michael Shtender-Auerbach Friday, November 2, 2007 The headlines that Yahoo had handed over Chinese journalist and democratic activist Shi Tao's e-mails and IP address to China's secret police dominated the news last year. This sent a panic through an industry usually praised for its social responsibility and unaccustomed to external scrutiny. Congress called in the general counsels of four of our leading high tech firms - Cisco, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo - to account for their collaboration with the Chinese government. In the course of events, it became clear that the problem in the high-tech sector was not isolated but endemic. Since this hearing, human rights activists have uncovered three additional cases whereby Yahoo's policy of sharing personal records of its users with Chinese authorities has led to arrest, alleged torture and lengthy prison terms. When our high-tech firms engage in such behavior abroad, they undermine a basic tenet of our foreign policy. What then is the appropriate response? The U.S. foreign policy of "peaceful evolution" encourages the democratization of authoritarian regimes not through isolationist policies, but instead through constructive commercial engagement; that is, the promotion of free market capitalism abroad. However, some American companies promote and reinforce authoritarian capitalism and suppress democratic movements. The question is: How endemic is corporate-facilitated authoritarianism? In places such as China, one worries that legitimate reform and resistance will be squelched with the help of U.S. corporations. Commercial engagement may at times produce the very authoritarianism that our high-tech firms make a claim to eradicating by virtue of their technologies. Sophisticated commercial actors and governments realize this. On Nov. 6, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs will question Yahoo's senior executives on the veracity of testimony given by the company's general counsel during the 2006 hearing in relation to the Tao case. This offers Congress a unique opportunity to change the status quo for American high-tech companies cooperating with authoritarian regimes. This hearing comes just two weeks after the same committee passed the Global Online Freedom Act, legislation aimed at promoting Internet freedoms and protecting U.S. firms from governments attempting to coerce them into participating in authoritarianism. It, in part, places constraints on U.S. firms, and then backs those constraints with possible civil and criminal sanctions. Yahoo's director of global public affairs, Tracy Schmaler, maintains that Yahoo's legal counsel provided "truthful" testimony in 2006 and that Yahoo is working "to develop a global code of conduct for operating in countries around the world, including China." Corporate codes are important for advancing peaceful evolution and are part of the mandate of the Global Online Freedom Act. However, we must be wary of private solutions in which the regulator and the regulated are one and the same. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has tied wider corporate accountability in his industry to the need for new legislation, modeled perhaps on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Congress must assess the nature and extent of the social risks engendered by high tech corporate collaborations abroad. Are we genuinely concerned with the wider social harm of some transnational commerce? If so, what public or private institutions - domestic, foreign or international, or combination thereof, are the appropriate ones to assess and mitigate transnational high technology social risk? Whether de facto or de jure, our companies are our foreign policy organs. American hi-tech companies - Yahoo, Google, Microsoft, Cisco - may not fly an American flag, but Chinese citizens, and others, may see it otherwise. The decision by Congress to summon the legal counsel of our blue chip high-tech firms into a congressional committee room last year was an important step in addressing this issue. The continued congressional inquiry into Yahoo's testimony is further indication that our government values accountability and takes peaceful evolution seriously. While Lantos attempts to get at the truth of Yahoo's actions, Congress should consider legislative action, such as the one proposed by Gates, as an appropriate means for mitigating our collective social risks. Michael Likosky is a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School and author of "Law, Infrastructure and Human Rights," (Cambridge University Press). Michael Shtender-Auerbach is managing director and founder of Social Risks, LLC, of which Likosky is also a principal. http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/11/02/EDQGT3KJL.DTL This article appeared on page B - 11 of the San Francisco Chronicle News: Spotlight: Jerry Yang - China success a two-edged sword Spotlight: Jerry Yang - China success a two-edged sword By Richard Waters in San Francisco Financial Times updated 6:41 p.m. PT, Fri., Nov. 2, 2007 When Jerry Yang, chief executive and co-founder of Yahoo, appears before a congressional committee tomorrow, it is likely to be the kind of political theatre that US business leaders dread. By handing Chinese authorities the e-mail records of one of its users, Yahoo helped to land Shi Tao, a dissident Chinese journalist, with a 10-year jail sentence. The company's chief lawyer apologised publicly last week for failing to hand over all the information he had on the affair to a House committee investigating the matter, but that may not be enough to draw the committee's sting. For Mr Yang, an intensely private man who was an idealistic Stanford University student when he co-founded Yahoo at the start of the dotcom boom, the drawn-out controversy over the Shi case has come at considerable personal cost. "I think this is really painful for him," says one former Yahoo executive. "Yahoo hasn't wrapped itself in grandiose language the way Google has, but he really built Yahoo to be a force for good." Ironically, tomorrow's appearance in Washington will come on the very day that Mr Yang should be celebrating the culmination of Yahoo's new business strategy in China. According to some observers, that strategy should also serve to insulate his company in future from controversies such as this - though others believe it could instead backfire and leave Yahoo's reputation even more exposed. The new approach to China began two years ago, when the US internet company folded its own stumbling operations there into a local e-commerce company, Alibaba. Along with a $1bn injection of cash, that bought Yahoo a 39 per cent stake. Shares in Alibaba are set to start trading in Hong Kong tomorrow, capping the biggest initial public offering for an internet company since Google and valuing Yahoo's investment at about $3.5bn. By reducing Yahoo's involvement in China to a minority investment, Mr Yang's deal with Jack Ma, the entrepreneur behind Alibaba, theoretically distances Yahoo from any future human rights controversies. "It's for Jack Ma to follow local customs," says one person who has been involved in Yahoo's planning. "[The problem] does go away." However, even though it has no direct control, Yahoo's reputation could still be on the line over Alibaba's actions. Mr Ma has made no secret of his own willingness to co-operate closely with the Chinese authorities in any investigations into his company's users. Full Story News: Yahoo Executive Apologizes to a Congressional Panel The New York Times November 3, 2007 Yahoo Executive Apologizes to a Congressional Panel By REUTERS A senior executive at Yahoo has apologized for failing to give American lawmakers additional information about its role in the imprisonment of a Chinese dissident. The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee said that Yahoo’s general counsel, Michael J. Callahan, gave false information at a hearing in 2006 about what the company knew of the Chinese government’s investigation of Shi Tao, a reporter who was sentenced last April to 10 years in prison for leaking state secrets. Mr. Callahan testified that Yahoo China, then a subsidiary of Yahoo, had passed information about one of its users to Chinese authorities in 2004 without knowledge of why China wanted the data. It was only in October 2006 that he realized that the order from the Chinese government had mentioned an investigation into state secrets, a Yahoo spokeswoman, Tracy Schmaler, said. The problem was caused by a bad translation of the 2004 Chinese order given to a company lawyer based in the region, she said. In a statement dated Nov. 1, Mr. Callahan said he had neglected to alert the committee of the new information, leading to “a misunderstanding that I deeply regret and have apologized to the committee for creating.” At a Congressional committee hearing next week, Yahoo’s chief executive, Jerry Yang, is expected to answer questions on his company’s disclosure of information to Chinese authorities. Mr. Callahan is expected to repeat his apology at that hearing. Sir David Attenborough and I on God and Creation or lack thereof Anthropology Lately, I have been asked about what I believed in, and if I had any religious views. I always say, "I believe in science. I believe in having experiments that can be recreated to find the truth of the natural world. I believe in gravity. I would like to believe things happen for a reason, or that there is a meant-to-be but I don't." I am not having a good time right now, a series of really unfortunate things have happened, and in that mist of sadness, I do wonder if religion could possibly give me solace. I wonder if this is time to turn to God, as the pain and circumstance seems so outside of myself, and I am not big enough to deal with. I finally understand that "life is bitterness" as the Chinese says, because sometimes no matter how you try, you cannot control the outcome of what you worked so hard to achieve. Peace of mind does not come, the right decision is not easy, and even if you did your best you can be disappointed because we have no control of others, and we do not have control of nature. We might be able to destroy it, but we cannot stop it from appearing when it does. So I wonder about god quite often. I wonder about going to Church for more than the music and atmosphere. I wonder that if I just let myself go, I can tell myself "this is what is meant to be," but I know better. I know that it didn't have to turn out this way. If humans had more control, foresight, the ability to think ahead, if they could go beyond their myopic emotion of that moment, how I would feel right now would be different. How my life would have turned out would be different, and what I looked forward to and planned would still be here, so I think maybe I should just allow myself to be anesthetized by the comfort of religion or belief, and let go of what I do believe in, maybe just for this moment, maybe for the rest of my life. Then I came across this clip where Naturalist Sir David Attenborough discusses his lack of religious belief, how he believes in nature and I remember that's all I believe in too. Maybe that's how people feel when the find god, when the word is spoken, they find relief to be reminded of what they do believe in again when they have lost their way. Watching it, reminded me I am an atheist, I believe in science, and that used to help me through the day. Maybe tomorrow I can look at the sky and mountain and think of the science of how it all came to be, eel awe and wonder and solace simply because it's there, and I live in a time when I can understand them in ways that was not possible before. One Month of My Life... Just a grrl I love rereading my facebook status, it's like a mini-diary Today Yan is so happy to see her friend Matt, whom she hasn't seen for over 12 years!!! 10:21am Yesterday Yan is unnerved and amused the Sheriffs knocked on our door at 2am... only in LA. 11:06am August 19 Yan is home from her first cactus and succulent show at the LA Botanical Gardens. 9:00pm August 17 Yan is worried she killed her Catapillar. 10:56am August 16 Yan is back online (No thanks to my wireless service). 8:43pm August 9 Yan is fine. Earthquake was small, but it woke me up. 8:40pm August 7 Yan is off to buy some Native Violets so the endangered Oregon Silverspot Butterflies has place to lay eggs. 9:40am August 6 Yan is pleased she has a path to walk on. Applause for Pieter.. 11:03am August 5 Yan is enjoying Sunday and going OFF facebook. 12:22pm August 4 Yan is joining the HK network Fluff Friends Petting Frenzy. 12:03pm Yan is up at 4 43 am and not very happy about it. 4:50am August 2 Yan is "Hurting Feet" from dancing Salsa.... 11:45pm August 1 Yan is trying to put three "tween" boys to bed, and they are making farting noises in the living room. 12:09am July 31 Yan is home after taking her nephews to the Natural History Museum and hung out with dinosaurs and butterlies. 7:46pm July 30 Yan is trying really hard to come up with a good idea for high and dry exhibition..... argh. 11:18am July 27 Yan is home after her first Native American Pow Wow. 11:10pm July 26 Yan is hailing the King (of Kowloon). 3:00am July 25 Yan is saving CACTUS from a construction site and giving it a home (That's for Chris). 10:35pm Yan is sick iuck. 9:18am July 24 Yan is sick of being covered in grout dust, but the piece is done. 4:19pm Yan is waiting for the grout to dry. 2:09pm Yan is planting. 10:37am Glutter.org Supports Free Speech in China.. Just a short note for the KCRW listeners who may have come to the blog when they heard my donation read over the airwaves. Right now the blog is more geared towards my personal discovery in LA, although there are many political articles in the blog as well. I meant to write more or add the old posts up, but my internet is down at the moment, so please come back sometime. As for those not in California or the US. KCRW is a public radio station in the US, and they do rely on fund raising drive to keep it on air. Last week I made a donation and they asked me if they could thank me on air. I didn't really need to have my name read on air, and decided that I rather use my 3 second sound bite for something more useful, which of course is to remind people that the issues of free speech in China is still contencious. So what they read instead was, "Glutter.org supporting Free Speech in China." Say what you may about the fact a public radio station in a country needs donation rather than being completely supported by the government like the BBC or RTHK is, but for not too much money, I was able to get an idea to a huge geographic spread and a lot of different people. I am currently using my neighbour's email at this moment, so I shall get back on line at some other time. Yan