China and North Korea Supplying Arms to Khartoum and the SPLM

Fred Oluch
It is no longer a secret: Khartoum and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) -- which runs the semi-autonomous south -- have been building up their armies ahead of the 2009 elections or the 2011 referendum when the South will choose whether to secede from the north.

There have been reports that Khartoum has been purchasing arms from China and North Korea, including fighter jets and tankers, while the South, suspecting that Khartoum is bent on scuttling the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), has been preparing for any eventuality.

A veteran journalist based in Khartoum, Adil El-Baz, confirmed to The EastAfrican that both sides are preparing for war because of the shaky peace deal and the oil deposits in the South.

According to Mr El-Baz, there is still much controversy about the boundary of the North and the South, especially around the oil-rich Abyei. Thus, should the separation be confirmed in 2011, there could be war over the oilfields that are mainly in the South.

Khartoum and SPLM have been having an uneasy relationship over the implementation of the 2005 peace deal, especially over Abyei.

But the suspicions were kept under wraps until recently, when pirates hijacked a Ukranian ship with a cargo of arms destined for Mombasa, but which the US Navy officials claimed were headed for Southern Sudan. Both SPLM and the Kenya government have denied this claim.

Moreover, Sudanese ambassador to Kenya, Majok Guandong, told The EastAfrican there are no signs that the two sides could go back to war, arguing that the implementation of the CPA is gradual and that both President Omar al-Bashir and Vice President Salva Kiir are committed to making it work.

"Sixty per cent of the CPA has already been implemented while the rest is going on gradually, so there should be no need for a war. However, after 21 years of war, the issues cannot all be addressed within three years," he said.

The debate comes as various political parties in the country converged in Khartoum last week to discuss the restoration of peace in the troubled western section of Darfur, the east and the south.

SPLM insists that it is dedicating its resources to reconstruction and infrastructure development, while Khartoum has taken a rather lukewarm view of the reported shipment to Southern Sudan mainly because it is still preoccupied with the decision of the International Criminal Court to indict President al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur.

At a recent rally in Juba, al-Bashir said that even though Khartoum is working hard to make unity attractive, the decision on whether to separate or remain within a united Sudan rests solely with the southerners.

Still, Khartoum recently summoned the ambassadors of Ethiopia and Kenya to Sudan regarding the alleged arms shipments to Southern Sudan. It expressed its astonishment that the two countries, which are also members of Igad, could be used as conduits.

The Sudan Ministry of Foreign Affairs claims that an Ethiopian military plane arrived at Juba Airport on October 10 loaded with weapons.

There are unconfirmed reports that assorted arms have passed through Kenya destined for Southern Sudan. What is more, they were given an armed escort by the Kenyan authorities.

Sources in Nairobi maintained that the semi-autonomous South has the capacity to purchase its own arms directly without using Kenya or any other country as a conduit.

However, the CPA states that the replenishment of ammunition, weapons and other military equipment is only allowed if it is approved by a north-south Joint Defence Board.

During the war, the SPLA mainly relied on supplies from Uganda and Eritrea.

But despite working together within the Government of National Unity, suspicion between North and South remains high, with either side second guessing the long term strategies of the other.

Still, the two sides were in solidarity in May when the Darfur rebel outfit, the Justice and Equality Movement, attacked Omdurman with the aim of marching to Khartoum and overthrowing the al-Bashir government.

Analysts say that should the North and South go to war again, it would energise the almost vanquished Uganda rebel group, the Lord's resistance Army, who during the war were used by Khartoum to destabilise the SPLA position in the south.

A source working in Juba intimated that the average southern Sudanese are looking forward to delinking from the north with the hope that it would cut off the Khartoum stranglehold and improve their lives, but those in leadership positions do not want to go back to the war now that they have tasted government goodies.

There is a growing unease, especially among the former SPLA who fighters are getting restless that they are not getting worth what they sacrificed for during the war. For instance, those who have money would prefer investing in Kenya and Uganda because the future is uncertain.

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UK Government: The Chinese Are Hacking Into Our Computer Systems

Howard Dahdah

The UK government has accused the Chinese of hacking into the computer systems of some of its leading companies, according reports published by the English press over the weekend.

According to The Times, the Director-General of intelligence agency MI5, Jonathan Evans, sent a confidential letter to 300 chief executives and security chiefs at financial institutions and legal firms last week warning them that they were under attack from Chinese state organisations.

The summary of the letter, which was posted (securely) on the Web site of the Centre for the Protection of the National Infrastructure, warned its recipients of the "electronic espionage attack".

"The contents of the letter highlight the following: the Director-General's concerns about the possible damage to UK business resulting from electronic attack sponsored by Chinese state organisations, and the fact that the attacks are designed to defeat best-practice IT security systems.

"The letter acknowledges the strong economic and commercial reasons to do business with China, but the need to ensure management of the risks involved."

According to one security expert quoted in the Times article, one of the techniques used by the Chinese groups were "custom Trojans", software designed to hack into the network of a particular firm and feed back confidential data.

The MI5 Web site already acknowledges the UK is a high priority espionage target.

"We estimate that at least 20 foreign intelligence services are operating to some degree against UK interests. Of greatest concern are the Russians and Chinese," it says.

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Former Deputy Senate Speaker Chalerm Promlert, Five Years Jail Term Upheld

The Supreme Court upheld a 36-year jail term given to former deputy Senate speaker Chalerm Promlert, five years after he was accused of having sex with underage girls.

The court found Chalerm, 71, guilty of sexually abusing four girls under the age of 15 between Nov 23, 2000 and Jan 3, 2001.

It upheld the Appeal Court's decision in January this year, which added 20 years to the 16-year sentence the lower court gave Chalerm.

The court said he should be punished more severely because he broke the law while he was a senator.

''The defendant was well aware that what he did was a serious crime,'' the court said.

The former deputy governor of Surat Thani, who had been free on bail of 2.5 million baht pending his final appeal to the Supreme Court, acknowledged the verdict with a pale face.

Police then escorted him to Pathum Thani jail.

Many of Chalerm's relatives, but not his wife, showed up to hear the verdict at the Thanyaburi provincial court.

The mother of one of the victims, whose names were withheld, said she was glad Chalerm did not walk free and thanked all the parties for their support.

Police had charged Chalerm with statutory rape in January 2001 after two girls separately identified him in a line-up as the man who paid them to have sex with him at a motel in Pathum Thani.

Chalerm spent two days in bed with the schoolgirls, one of them aged 16, at a motel in Pathum Thani's Lam Looka district. He paid each 4,000 baht for their services.

The students, aged 13 to 16, were taken to the motel by another girl, a 17-year-old school dropout.

Sex with a girl under 15 years of age brings a charge of statutory rape.

Chalerm resigned as senator in March 2001 amid mounting pressure from fellow senators and civic groups.

The Senate voted 87 to 54 to grant him immunity, splitting it into two camps and upsetting civic groups.

The court of first instance in October 2002 dismissed Chalerm's claim that he had a medical record of receiving treatment for a sexual dysfunction.

Chalerm also said that he had work commitments the days the offences occurred, but his Mercedes was spotted outside the Phaka Inn Hotel in Pathum Thani.

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Unsafe Soyabeans From US Found In China

China said Wednesday it had discovered many safety problems with soybeans imported from the United States, urging US authorities to deal with the problem.

"Inspection and quarantine units in various areas have discovered a large number of quality and safety problems with imports of US soybeans," the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said.

"We have reported this to the US side, demanding that it look into the causes and adopt effective measures to ensure that a situation like this does not repeat itself," it said on its website.

It detailed a series of safety problems, including the discovery of sorghum halepense and other exotic harmful weeds among the soybeans.

There was no mention in the statement of any plan to restrict or halt imports of US soybeans.

Recent global scares over the safety of China's exports -- ranging from toys to clothes to toothpaste -- have not made major headlines in the nation's state-run media.

However, frequent reports have emerged about safety problems in goods imported into China, especially from the United States.

On Monday, China said it had returned 272 heart pacemakers imported from the United States after they failed quality inspections.

The Xinhua news agency quoted the general administration as saying the pacemakers posed potential threats to patients' lives as they could cause misdiagnoses.

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Crocodile Smuggler Busted By Chinese Police

Chinese police have caught a smuggler trying to bring 70 crocodiles into the country, state media reports.
The haul of crocs, each about 70 centimetres and weighing 1.5kg, along with baby turtles was made in Guangdong province in the country's far south, a part of the world where locals have famously adventurous eating habits.
But the report by Xinhua news agency said the crocodiles were "ornamental" and were caught with 3,000 baby turtles in the port city of Zhuhai. It did not say where they came from or what happened to the smuggler.
Southern China has long been the favourite stamping ground of smugglers who, before a crackdown several years ago, easily slipped cars, televisions, luxury goods, and even dismantled bowling alleys into the country.
The captured animals have been handed over to quarantine officials who will test them for disease and "assess their environmental impact," the report said.

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Sex education Via SMS

Singapore's renowned "Dr. Love" on Tuesday launched an SMS sex education campaign in Indonesia, the first of its kind in the world's most populous Muslim nation.
Indonesians are invited to send a text message with any sex-related question to a panel of volunteer local doctors who will either send them a message back or use their question to help compile information on a website.
The brains behind the idea, Wei Siang Yu, who is nicknamed "Dr. Love" for his flamboyant methods of teaching Singaporeans about sex, told a press briefing his scheme would turn conventional sex education on its head.
"In over one month I think we will get a lot of SMS questions and these SMS questions will be answered and compiled into a pool of questions and answers," he said.
These are to be used to create an artificially intelligent "avatar" or virtual character which will later guide people online to the information they want.
"This is not about putting foreign content in Indonesia. This is for Indonesians to participate in public and community-generated health care," the doctor said.
"This is a revolution of the whole landscape of sex education where now you can ask a question in privacy, anytime anywhere."
One survey cited during the press briefing estimated that some 57 percent of young Indonesians learn about sex through their friends or pornographic movies.
The text message programme will be rolled out to Malaysia next, followed by India and China.

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Belzec or Auschwitz - Communist China Had Them Too

A hysteria of sorts has been generated by reports that some of China's products lack quality control. Some cat food has been tainted. A few cell phone batteries have blown up. Cough syrup contained stuff that makes you sick. And so on. In response, the Chinese government actually executed its regulatory head of food and product safety, Zheng Xiaoyu.
How very strange this last point is! In the West, we long ago gave up the idea that these people are actually supposed to carry out their jobs and should be personally responsible for their failure to do so.
What is most striking about these criticisms is how historically insular they appear in light of the modern history of China. This is a subject that is deeply painful, horrifying in its detail, highly instructive in helping us understand politics — and also puts into perspective these reports of recent troubles in China. It's a scandal, in fact, that few Westerners are even aware, or, if they are aware, they are not conscious, of the bloody reality that prevailed in China between the years 1949 and 1976, the years of communist rule by Mao Zedong.
How many died as a result of persecutions and the policies of Mao? Perhaps you care to guess? Many people over the years have attempted to guess. But they have always underestimated. As more data rolled in during the 1980s and 1990s, and specialists have devoted themselves to investigations and estimates, the figures have become ever more reliable. And yet they remain imprecise. What kind of error term are we talking about? It could be as low as 40 million. It could be as high as 100 million or more. In the Great Leap Forward from 1959 to 1961 alone, figures range between 20 million to 75 million. In the period before, 20 million. In the period after, tens of millions more.
As scholars in the area of mass death point out, most of us can't imagine 100 dead or 1000. Above that, we are just talking about statistics: they have no conceptual meaning for us, and it becomes a numbers game that distracts us from the horror itself. And there is only so much ghastly information that our brains can absorb, only so much blood we can imagine. And yet there is more to why China's communist experiment remains a hidden fact: it makes a decisive case against government power, one even more compelling than the cases of Russia or Germany in the 20th century.
The horror was foreshadowed in a bloody civil war following the Second World War. After some nine million people died, the communists emerged victorious in 1949, with Mao as the ruler. The land of Lao-Tzu (rhyme, rhythm, peace), Taoism (compassion, moderation, humility), and Confucianism (piety, social harmony, individual development) was seized by the strangest import to China ever: Marxism from Germany via Russia. It was an ideology that denied all logic, experience, economic law, property rights, and limits on the power of the state on grounds that these notions were merely bourgeois prejudices, and what we needed to transformed society was a cadre with all power to transform all things.
It's bizarre to think about it, really: posters of Marx and Lenin in China, of all places, and rule by an ideology of robbery, dictatorship, and death that did not come to an end until 1976. So spectacular has the transformation been in the last 25 years that one would hardly know that any of this ever happened, except that the Communist Party is still running the place while having tossed out the communist part.
The experiment began in the most bloody way possible following the second world war, when all Western eyes were focused on matters at home and, to the extent there was any foreign focus, it was on Russia. The "good guys" had won the war in China, or so we were led to believe in times when communism was the fashion.
The communization of China took place in the usual three stages: purge, plan, and scapegoat. First there was the purge to bring about communism. There were guerillas to kill and land to nationalize. The churches had to be destroyed. The counterrevolutionaries had to be put down. The violence began in the country and spread later to the cities. All peasants were first divided into four classes that were considered politically acceptable: poor, semi poor, average, and rich. Everyone else was considered a landowner and targeted for elimination. If no landowners could be found, the "rich" were often included in this group. The demonized class was ferreted out in a country-wide series of "bitterness meetings" in which people turned in their neighbors for owning property and being politically disloyal. Those who were so deemed were immediately executed along with those who sympathized with them.
The rule was that there had to be at least one person killed per village. The numbers killed is estimated to be between one and five million. In addition, another four to six million landowners were slaughtered for the crime of being capital owners. If anyone was suspected of hiding wealth, he or she was tortured with hot irons to confess. The families of the killed were then tortured and the graves of their ancestors looted and pillaged. What happened to the land? It was divided into tiny plots and distributed among the remaining peasants.

"There is only so much ghastly information that our brains can absorb, only so much blood we can imagine."
Then the campaign moved to the cities. The political motivations here were at the forefront, but there were also behavioral controls. Anyone who was suspected of involvement in prostitution, gambling, tax evasion, lying, fraud, opium dealing, or telling state secrets was executed as a "bandit." Official estimates put the number of dead at two million with another two million going to prison to die. Resident committees of political loyalists watched every move. A nighttime visit to another person was immediately reported and the parties involved jailed or killed. The cells in the prisons themselves grew ever smaller, with one person living in a space of about 14 inches. Some prisoners were worked death, and anyone involved in a revolt was herded with collaborators and they were all burned.
There was industry in the cities, but those who owned and managed them were subjected to ever tighter restrictions: forced transparency, constant scrutiny, crippling taxes, and pressure to offer up their businesses for collectivization. There were many suicides among the small- and medium-sized business owners who saw the writing on the wall. Joining the party provided only temporary respite, since 1955 began the campaign against hidden counterrevolutionaries in the party itself. A principle here was that one in ten party members was a secret traitor.
As the rivers of blood rose ever higher, Mao brought about the Hundred Flowers Campaign in two months of 1957, the legacy of which is the phrase we often hear: "Let a hundred flowers bloom." People were encouraged to speak freely and give their point of view, an opportunity that was very tempting for intellectuals. The liberalization was short lived. In fact, it was a trick. All those who spoke out against what was happening to China were rounded up and imprisoned, perhaps between 400,000 and 700,000 people, including 10 percent of the well-educated classes. Others were branded as right wingers and subjected to interrogation, reeducation, kicked out of their homes, and shunned.
But this was nothing compared with phase two, which was one of history's great central planning catastrophes. Following collectivization of land, Mao decided to go further to dictate to the peasants what they would grow, how they would grow it, and where they would ship it, or whether they would grow anything at all as versus plunge into industry. This would become the Great Leap Forward that would generate history's most deadly famine. Peasants were grouped into groups of thousands and forced to share all things. All groups were to be economically self-sufficient. Production goals were raised ever higher.
People were moved by the hundreds of thousands from where production was high to where it was low, as a means of boosting production. They were moved too from agriculture to industry. There was a massive campaign to collect tools and transform them into industrial skill. As a means of showing hope for the future, collectives were encouraged to have huge banquets and eat everything, especially meat. This was a way of showing one's belief that the next year's harvest would be even more bountiful.
Mao had this idea that he knew how to grow grain. He proclaimed that "seeds are happiest when growing together" and so seeds were sown at five to ten times their usual density. Plants died, the soil dried out, and the salt rose to the surface. To keep birds from eating grain, sparrows were wiped out, which vastly increased the number of parasites. Erosion and flooding became endemic. Tea plantations were turned to rice fields, on grounds that tea was decadent and capitalistic. Hydraulic equipment built to service the new collective farms didn't work and lacked any replacement parts. This led Mao to put new emphasis on industry, which was forced to appear in the same areas as agriculture, leading to ever more chaos. Workers were drafted from one sector to another, and mandatory cuts in some sectors was balanced by mandatory high quotas in another.
In 1957, the disaster was everywhere. Workers were growing too weak even to harvest their meager crops, so they died watching the rice rot. Industry churned and churned but produced nothing of any use. The government responded by telling people that fat and proteins were unnecessary. But the famine couldn't be denied. The black-market price of rice rose 20 to 30 times. Because trade had been forbidden between collectives (self-sufficiency, you know), millions were left to starve. By 1960, the death rate soared from 15 percent to 68 percent, and the birth rate plummeted. Anyone caught hoarding grain was shot. Peasants found with the smallest amount were imprisoned. Fires were banned. Funerals were prohibited as wasteful.
Villagers who tried to flee the countryside to the city were shot at the gates. Deaths from hunger reached 50 percent in some villages. Survivors boiled grass and bark to make soup and wandered the roads looking for food. Sometimes they banded together and raided houses looking for ground maize. Women were unable to conceive because of malnutrition. People in work camps were used for food experiments that led to sickness and death.

"Because trade had been forbidden between collectives (self-sufficiency, you know), millions were left to starve."
How bad did it get? 1968 an 18-year-old member of the Red Guard, Wei Jingsheng, took refuge with a family in a village of Anhui, and here he lived to write about what he saw:
"We walked along beside the village… Before my eyes, among the weeds, rose up one of the scenes I had been told about, one of the banquets at which the families had swapped children in order to eat them. I could see the worried faces of the families as they chewed the flesh of other people's children. The children who were chasing butterflies in a nearby field seemed to be the reincarnation of the children devoured by their parents. I felt sorry for the children but not as sorry as I felt for their parents. What had made them swallow that human flesh, amidst the tears and grief of others — flesh that they would never have imagined tasting, even in their worst nightmares?"
The author of this passage was jailed as a traitor but his status protected him from death and he was finally released in 1997.
How many people died in the famine of 1959–61? The low range is 20 million. The high range is 43 million. Finally in 1961, the government gave in and permitted food imports, but it was too little and too late. Some peasants were again allowed to grow crops on their own land. A few private workshops were opened. Some markets were permitted. Finally, the famine began to abate and production grew.
But then the third phase came: scapegoating. What had caused the calamity? The official reason was anything but communism, anything but Mao. And so the politically motivated roundup began again, and here we get the very heart of the Culture Revolution. Thousands of camps and detention centers were opened. People sent there died there. In prison, the slightest excuse was used to dispense with people — all to the good, since the prisoners were a drain on the system, so far as those in charge were concerned. The largest penal system ever built was organized in a military fashion, with some camps holding as many as 50,000 people.
There was some sense in which everyone was in prison. Arrests were sweeping and indiscriminate. Everyone had to carry around a copy of Mao's Little Red Book. To question the reason for arrest was itself evidence of disloyalty, since the state was infallible. Once arrested, the safest path was instant and frequent confession. Guards were forbidden from using overt violence, so interrogations would go on for hundreds of hours, and often the prisoner would die during this process. Those named in the confession were then hunted down and rounded up. Once you got through this process, you were sent to a labor camp, where you were graded according to how many hours you could work with little food. You were fed no meat nor given any sugar or oil. Labor prisoners were further controlled by the rationing of the little food they had.
The final phase of this incredible litany of criminality lasted from 1966 to 1976, during which the number killed fell dramatically to "only" one to three million. The government, now tired and in the first stages of demoralization, began to lose control, first within the labor camps and then in the countryside. And it was this weakening that led to the final, and in some ways the most vicious, of the communist periods in China's history.
The first stages of rebellion occurred in the only way permissible: people began to criticize the government for being too soft and too uncommitted to the communist goal. Ironically, this began to appear precisely as moderation became more overt in Russia. Neo-revolutionaries in the Red Guard began to criticize the Chinese communists as "Khrushchev-like reformers." As one writer put it, the guard "rose up against its own government in order to defend it."
During this period, the personality cult of Mao reached it height, with the Little Red Book achieving a mythic status. The Red Guards roamed the country in an attempt to purge the Four Old-Fashioned Things: ideas, culture, customs, and habits. The remaining temples were barricaded. Traditional opera was banned, with all costumes and sets in the Beijing Opera burned. Monks were expelled. The calendar was changed. All Christianity was banned. There were to be no pets such as cats and birds. Humiliation was the order of the day.
Do not give in to evil!
Thus was the Red Terror: in the capital city, there were 1,700 deaths and 84,000 people were run out. In other cities such as Shanghai, the figures were worse. A massive party purge began, with hundreds of thousands arrested and many murdered. Artists, writers, teachers, scientists, technicians: all were targets. Pogroms were visited on community after community, with Mao approving at every step as a means of eliminating every possible political rival. But underneath, the government was splintering and cracking, even as it became ever more brutal and totalitarian in its outlook.
Finally in 1976, Mao died. Without a few months, his closest advisers were all imprisoned. And the reform began slowly at first and then at breakneck speed. Civil liberties were restored (comparatively) and the rehabilitations began. Torturers were prosecuted. Economic controls were gradually relaxed. The economy, by virtue of human and private economic initiative, was transformed.
Having read the above, you are now in a tiny elite of people who know anything about the greatest death camp in the history of the world that China became between 1949 and 1976, an experiment in total control unlike anything else in history. Many more people today know more about China's exploding cell-phone batteries than they do about the hundred million dead and the untold amount of suffering that occurred under communism.
When you hear about shoddy products coming from China or wheat poorly processed, imagine millions in famine, with parents swapping children to eat in order to stay alive. And what do China's critics today recommend? More control by the government. Don't tell me that we've learned anything from history. We don't even know enough about history to learn from it.

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Chinese Embassy A Client of Pamela Martin & Associates

As a front liner in the business, Pamela Martin & Associates escorts counted some of Washington's wealthiest and most elite among their clientèle according to individuals and places WMR has matched to the agency's phone records from 1994 to 2000.

A phone extension at the Cosmos Club in Washington appears on the list. The current and past members of the club include a number of Nobel Prize laureates, and Pulitzer and Presidential Medal of Freedom honorees.

There are a number of lawyer/lobbyists on the list representing a number of sectors, including international banking, high technology, and housing.

WMR has also determined that PMA calls were placed to the District of Columbia courthouse, the DC Housing Authority, and the DC Police 3rd District Headquarters.

A Capitol Hill news bureau is also found in the phone records.

Larry Flynt Exposes GOP Senator David Vitter

Larry Flynt's ongoing investigation into the dirty secrets of prominent elected officials has exposed another hypocrite. Monday's confession of marital infidelity by GOP right-wing marriage-protection advocate Senator David Vitter of Louisiana was the result of a multi-pronged investigation launched and run by Larry Flynt, publisher of HUSTLER Magazine.

Within hours of a phone call from the offices of HUSTLER Magazine asking Vitter to comment on an article HUSTLER reporters were working on, Vitter ran to the Associated Press in an attempt to get ahead of the story.

As of 2 p.m. West Coast time on Monday, only Larry Flynt and the HUSTLER investigative team knew that Vitter's phone number appeared on the phone records of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called D.C. Madam. Flynt's team is currently continuing its investigation into improprieties by other high-ranking elected officials.

Senator Vitter, a churchgoing Catholic who is married and has four children, is seen as a hard-line right-winger. A staunch supporter of President Bush, Vitter has built his reputation on family-values platforms such as marriage protection and abstinence-only programs.

In opposition to same-sex marriage, Vitter recently stated, Marriage is a core institution of societies throughout the world and throughout history. It's something that has provided permanence and stability for our very social structure.

Sen. Vitter announced his support for Rudy Giuliani in March and was tapped by the presidential nomination candidate to serve as his Southern Regional Chair.

Chinese Embassy a Client of Pamela Martin & Associates

The phone records of so-called "Washington Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey show that the embassy of the People's Republic of China was a possible client of the Pamela Martin & Associates (PMA) escort agency.

On August 3, 1999, a phone call was made from PMA to a phone registered to the Chinese embassy at 2201 Wisconsin Avenue, Northwest Washington, DC.

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Microchip Technology Sues Shanghai Haier Integrated Circuit Over Copyright Infringement

U.S.-based Microchip Technology Inc. has brought a leading Chinese semiconductor maker to court in Shanghai, accusing the company of infringing the copyright of its database.

The world's paramount chip maker is suing Shanghai Haier Integrated Circuit Co. on charges of copying the microcode and the data manual of the Microchip-patented Microcontroller Unit (MCU) -- PIC16CXXX.

"Microchip has devoted huge resources to developing the data manual and the microcode, and we have solid evidence to prove Shanghai Haier has violated our copyrights," said Yang Jinzhu, vice president of Microchip Asia Pacific.

According to the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, the copyright should be protected in China just as it is in the United States, Yang said.

Shanghai Haier said in a statement "Microchip's accusation is a distortion aimed to restrain Haier and intimidate its clients, which Haier cannot accept".

The statement said Haier owned the intellectual property rights of all its products. "Haier's MCU is not completely compatible with Microchip's. Our products have more functions and better resistance to interference," it said.

Chen Shu, a Haier marketing manager, said "the company will cooperate with the judicial investigation but I am sure we won't lose the case."

The case has been accepted and will be heard at Shanghai First Intermediate People's Court.

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Report Reveals Japan Army Sex Slavery Racket

Forcing women to become sex slaves was a crime organized by the Japanese military during Japan's invasion of China in the 1930s and 1940s, according to an investigative report published yesterday.

The first report by the Investigative Committee on Former Chinese "Comfort Women", co-founded by All China Lawyers' Association (ACLA) and China Legal Aid Foundation, traced 17 more survivors besides the ones who have already sued the Japanese government.

During its probe from September 2006 to March 2007, the committee found 14 of the 17 survivors were less than 18 when they were forced to become "comfort women", with the youngest being just 12.

Sixteen of the newly identified women were from North China's Shanxi Province and one from South China's Hainan Province, said the report posted on ACLA's website. The committee focused on five counties in Shanxi, two in Hainan and six in Yunnan.

Kang Jian, one of the lawyers behind the investigation, interviewed all the 17 survivors. "Now they are all in their 70s or 80s but they still suffer from serious mental and physical trauma," he said.

The Japanese army even tortured these "comfort women" by slashing them with knives or burning their faces with cigarettes.

"Many of them have no children and live in poverty. They told me their biggest wish was to get an apology and compensation from the Japanese government," Kang said.

But Tokyo has refused to pay direct compensation to any of the estimated 200,000 women, mostly Asian, saying all claims had been settled by subsequent peace treaties.

In April, Japan's top court rejected compensation claims of two Chinese women forced into the military brothels.

"Japanese courts have dismissed three Chinese 'comfort women's' lawsuits, while the fourth is going on," Kang said. "We carried out the investigations in a way that the documentation would help the court case."

The committee also released photographs of six Japanese officers' confessing about how they had "arrested" Chinese women and set up military brothels. Even a temple at Tengchong County in Yunnan Province was turned into a Japanese army brothel.

The "comfort women" practise lasted at least 16 years in China, the report said.

Su Zhiliang, director of the research center on "comfort women" in Shanghai Normal University, said more than 200,000 Chinese women were forced to become "comfort women" and over 75 percent of them were tortured to death.

"It's a shame that the Japanese government has rejected compensation pleas because the regulations and certificates show that the Japanese army and its government had forced women into prostitution," Su said. "In Hainan alone, there were 67 military brothels; there were more than 158 in Shanghai."

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Chinese Pigs - Under Viral Attack

As a mysterious epidemic kill pigs in south-eastern China, Chinese officials are only providing little information about the disease or a contaminated wheat gluten that has been known to cause death and illness in the animals. Thus reviving longstanding questions about whether China is willing to share information about health and food safety issues with potentially global implications.

The virus was probably linked to a reproductive and respiratory condition known as blue-eared pig disease, the ministry said in a statement on its website.

"This disease spreads especially fast during the summer," the ministry said, citing the hot and humid weather of the season.

The agriculture ministry requires veterinary departments to stay on high alert for the disease and immediately report suspect cases.

"Once the virus mutates, it will become more pathogenic and more difficult to cure," the ministry warned.

A major problem are the poor breeding conditions as most farmers tend to raise their pigs in open places, and pens are poorly equipped with anti-epidemic measures, the ministry said.

The frequent transportation of live pigs might also facilitate the spread of the disease, it said.

More than 300 pigs in Guangdong province died late April as a result of a secondary bacterial infection by the virus, the China Daily reported earlier.

The virus entered China from overseas in the mid-1990s and had recently showed signs of mutation, the report said.

Experts say it cannot spread from animals to people.

Tests for the disease are available and a vaccine has received government approval and is to be distributed soon, the statement said.

The agriculture ministry has already urged increased vaccinations for swine fever, pig rash and swine pneumonia and called on animal medical factories to step up production of medicines.

Dead pigs have been buried deep underground and far from sources of water.

The China Daily said the provincial agriculture authority has called for strict measures to ensure sterilisation, vaccination and supervision to avert further outbreaks.

The disease caused a panic in local areas as residents stopped buying pork for fear of eating tainted meat.

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What Will China Do To Its Aging Society?

Judged from the data from the National Population and Family Planning Commission of China and the UN, and the retirement age of 60 in China, the GDP spent on supporting China's elders will be 280% of the current level in 2050, according to Gao Xiqing, deputy director of National Council for Social Security Fund. Gao believes that China will face a faster and more penetrating aging process in the near future. In 2000, the percentage of population above 65 years old was of the same level in the world, and about 50% of the figure in developed countries. However, by 2050, China will approach the developed countries in this aspect. "Nowadays, we are building a nationwide partly accumulated social insurance system based on the monthly fees paid by urban employees, and China has set up a national social security fund already, its market value being 320 billion yuan, but still far from enough," said Gao.

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South China Judge In Detention Died NOT Murdered

An official investigation into the death of a 38-year-old former judge who was being held in detention shows he died from "adult sudden death syndrome."

Investigators say Li Chaoyang was an uncooperative prisoner while being held in detention in Xing'an county in southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and cuts on his face and other injuries were caused by a fall during an escape attempt.

Li Chaoyang, a judge with the local Pingle County Court, had been accused of taking bribes and was detained by local prosecutors on March 23.

Shi Shaosen, head of the Guilin municipal law enforcement supervisory section and the chief investigator of the case, said the prisoner was not maltreated.

"Li Chaoyang's sudden death conforms with adult sudden death syndrome," said Shi citing a forensic report at a news briefing held here on Sunday.

Shi would not take questions from reporters but said the investigation was conducted by law-enforcement agencies from the Guilin city and the Guangxi regional government.

The forensic report did not provide a pathological cause of Li's sudden death such as a heart attack or brain aneurysm.

Detention center officials say they found Li unconscious in his cell on the morning of April 2. He died later in hospital.

Li's relatives claimed there were wounds on his body, a gash across his lip and he was missing one of his front teeth. They questioned the cause of his death and wrote about it on a blog that was later picked by China Courts Online.

Pictures on the internet that purport to be Li, but don't show his face, reveal a body of a man that is battered and bruised with a gash across the upper lip.

"The investigation proves Li Chaoyang's case was handled according to legal procedures and strictly according to the law," said Shi, "there were no reports that torture was used to extract a confession, or bodily harm caused by guards, or an assault by cell mates."

Li was charged with taking bribes on March 23 and was first held at the No.1 Detention House of Guilin. He was transferred to the detention center of Xing'an, a suburban county of Guilin City, three days later.

The joint investigation into Li's death found that Li was mentally unstable and would not stop shouting and refused to return his cell after an exercise period.

Investigators say Li attempted to escape many times and detention center officials say were forced to shackle him.

The investigative group was told that on March 28, Li again attempted to escape but tripped and fell, hitting his face on a piece of angle iron, severely cutting his upper lip cut and knocking out one of his front teeth. He was taken to hospital for treatment and had a six-cm-long cut on his lip sutured, say investigators.

Investigators they were told that Li refused further medical treatment in the days that followed.

The forensic report compiled by a the Guilin Medical Sciences College Hospital on Saturday ruled out violent beatings, suffocation, or poisoning as the cause of Li's death and concluded that Li died of adult sudden death syndrome that might have been sparked by an unstable state of mind, and abnormal sleeping and eating habits.

Li's relatives have not yet made a public statement regarding the report's findings.

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Beijing Police Cracks Down On Prostitution, Gambling.....In Bathhouses.

People who stay at public bathhouses will have to check in with their identity cards under new rules designed to regulate the industry.

The Beijing News on Saturday reported police will detain bathhouse operators who admit clients who refuse to check in with their identity cards.

The Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau, local Bureau of Commerce, Administration for Industry and Commerce, and Health Bureau held a meeting on Friday to discuss how to regulate the public bathhouse and hotel industry.

Beijing currently has around 1,116 public bathhouses and around 700 offer lodging. They have become a haven for criminals because most bathhouses do not register their guests' ID cards. During the first ten months of 2006, police detained 920 people at 503 bathhouses for involvement in prostitution and gambling.

Local police authorities say a lot of public bathhouses run a diverse range of services outside their scope of operation, like massage, catering, performances and lodging.

The newspaper says bathhouses will have to go through licensing and registration procedures at the local administrations, including the public security bureau and the Administration for Industry and Commerce, by the end of May if they wish to offer accommodation. All bathhouses that offer lodging will be investigated in the first three weeks of June.

Public bathhouses will also be required to install closed-circuit TV surveillance systems in public areas and operators will be detained if they fail to check their guests' ID cards. Bathhouse employees will have to report any clients' who refuse to show their ID cards or who use fake ID cards to the police immediately.

Bathhouses that don't provide accommodation will not be allowed to operate between 2 am and 8 am. Violators will be fined between 1,000 yuan to 10,000 yuan.

Any bathhouses involved in prostitution, gambling or drug taking will have their licenses withdrawn.

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Sexual Revolution In China

David Barboza

A Chinese edition of Esquire magazine. The censors aren't as zealous as they used to be.
Shanghai - When Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue hit the newsstands last week in mainland China for the first time, with the sexy singer Beyonce on the cover, the competition was fierce.

Readers here had already seen the February issue of For Him Magazine, which features a Chinese singer, A Duo, on its cover wearing a white V-neck leotard that reveals every other inch of her rather substantial figure.

Inside, A Duo poses like a dominatrix, clutching her breasts, wrapping her naked body in celluloid and bending, sweat-drenched, over a submissive man.

The racy For Him Magazine also offers tips on "how to do it in five minutes" (because a "sex break is the same as a coffee break") and features stories with titles like "The Dangerous Sex Journey of QiQi."

The images and text would hardly be shocking to North American or European readers. And the magazine's photographs are tame compared with what appears in magazines in Japan and other parts of Asia, including the rest of China ¡X Hong Kong and Macao.

But in mainland China, where sex is still a taboo subject and pornography is outlawed by the ruling Communist Party, the images are not only highly provocative, but also perhaps the latest sign that sex and sexuality are infiltrating the mainstream media.

And this powerful burst of sexual energy seems both a symbol of how rapidly the transformation of China is unfolding and, to some, a harbinger of the troubles ahead for a nation that will inevitably struggle to absorb its newfound freedoms. "There is a fine line between the open mind and sexual indulgence," said Xie Xialing, a professor of sociology at Fudan University in Shanghai.

Even five years ago, mainland books and magazines were banned from showing pictures of scantily clad models or publishing content that was deemed offensive or morally corrupt. The only sexual content to be found was in sex education pamphlets or books of nude Chinese women sold as "art works" at big city airports.

Today, however, with the Chinese economy booming and the government loosening its hold on the personal lives of everyday citizens, magazines are beginning to publish soft-core pornographic photographs, sexual fantasies and even clues about where to pick up call girls.

Popular mainland Web sites are going further, posting erotic videos and creating forums for women eager to market their sex appeal and post their photographs on the Internet: images of traveling with friends, undressing at home, even striking erotic poses.

"This is a kind of grass-roots sexual revolution," said Annie Wang, author of "The People's Republic of Desire," a satirical novel about the mad race to modernization.

The government announces periodic crackdowns on pornography and often censors sexual content in magazines and on the Web. But since about 2000, the censors have started to look the other way. Political activism is still a no-no in New China. Entertainment is a different matter. Even the Web site of Xinhua, the official press agency, offers slide shows of the "10 Hottest Babes of 2006" and "Rarely Seen Photos of Sexy Men."

Many say the trend is being driven by the market, and by entrepreneurs eager to cash in on the freer lifestyles on the mainland.

"The market is the No. 1 driving force behind the boom of such magazines," said Pan Suiming, a professor of sociology at Renmin University in Beijing. Western luxury brands entering the mainland market want to advertise in popular magazines and on Web sites that draw consumers. And on the mainland right now, pictures of sex kittens draw.

For Him Magazine is one of the success stories of this genre, with a circulation of about 480,000. It probably helps that the magazine is published by a government agency, the National Tourism Administration, an indication of official interest in investing in the phenomenon.

Jacky Jin, the magazine's editor in chief, said he wanted to affirm a new kind of lifestyle for readers that he calls the new mainland metrosexuals, guys who love cars, gadgets and girls.

"We're opening a new window for Chinese men," he said, noting that he has been criticized by government censors on several occasions.

A decade ago, the private lives of people on the mainland were still quite restricted. Whom you married, where you lived and what was considered permissible were tightly controlled or closely monitored by the government, employers and other authorities.

But urbanization, greater mobility and the power of the World Wide Web have challenged all that.

Now, experts say, the mainland is going through a period of enormous personal and sexual freedom. Young people ¡X most of whom grew up without siblings under the one-child policy ¡X are wearing more hip and provocative clothing. And they're growing addicted to entertainment online, where they can also search for love and indulge their lust.

Pan said he thought one reason for the cultural change was a change in women's attitudes.

"Women, especially young women in the cities, no longer think it's a bad thing to expose their bodies," he said. "Five or six years ago, when some women started to wear clothes that exposed their midriff, most people couldn't understand why belly buttons should be regarded as beautiful and deserve public exposure. Today, young women think it is natural to bare their midriff."

Zha Jianying, a Beijing writer and author of "China Pop," said the growing openness was actually a good thing.

"This trend of being more open about sex is definitely healthy, coming after all those years of puritanism and Maoist suppression," Zha said. "Now, maybe we're seeing the pendulum swing in the other direction."

But Xie at Fudan University said things had gone too far.

"In certain periods in history, such as the decadent Ming dynasty, sex was not a taboo and even intellectuals would talk about their sex skills casually over tea," he said. "Today's society is still better than that. But I do find that people care less about dignity."

He went on to call for limits on how much skin can be shown publicly, and said: "Human beings should have a sense of shame."

Other critics say the new freedoms have brought degeneracy, a boom in prostitution, and what Wang, the author, called "the concubine mentality."

Hard-core pornography remains under assault by the government, which can exact heavy fines on trespassers. One pornography kingpin was recently sentenced to life in prison.

And the censors are wary of influences from the West, like the TV show "Sex and the City," which has a huge following here, mostly on pirated DVDs.

Even "The Vagina Monologues" theater play was canceled in Shanghai recently, apparently because of the title.

But in a country that also happens to be the largest manufacturer of sex toys, being naughty is catching on.

In November a man in Shanghai was selling condoms in packages bearing the likeness of Chairman Mao.

His shop was closed for selling condoms in "inappropriate packages."

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