AsianWeek

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> Chinese Americans Attend Transcontinental Railroad Re-Enactment
> MN women allegedly sold protected wildlife parts
> New Textbook Tackles Oregon’s Controversial Racial History
> SD researcher examines flax role as tool against colon cancer
> Hawai’i official state plant will be taro
> Intel agencies seek help recruiting new immigrants
> Protesters call for Ouster of UC Berkeley Law Professor
> Vietnam sentences American man to 6 months in jail on terrorism

Compiled by Stephanie Lau and Lisa Wong Macabasco

AsianWeek Market Report

AsianWeek’s Market Report
Asian Stock Indexes
NIKKEL_225	Tokyo	14,224.12	-45.49	-0.32%
HANG SENG	Hong Kong	25,696.56	-45.67	-0.18%
KRX	Busan	3,880.01	-38.66	-0.99%
SSR IX	Shanghai	13,242.20	44.62	0.34%
BSE	Bombay	17,434.94	81.40	0.47%
HOSE	Ho Chi Minh	448.96	-6.71	-1.47%
SET	Bangkok	870.33	14.72	1.72%
Asian American Market Report
Yahoo!	Y	27.68	+0.02	(0.07%)
Citigroup	C	22.99	-0.13	(-0.56%)
Amkor Technology, Inc	AMKR	12.31	-0.05	(-0.40%)
Sybase	SY	30.63	-0.12	(-0.39%)
UnionBancal Corp	52.44	-0.60	(-1.13%)	(-1.78%)
East West Bank corp,Inc	EWBC	13.69	+0.51	(3.87%)

Chinese Americans Attend Transcontinental Railroad Re-Enactment

PROMONTORY, Utah-More than 100 Chinese-Americans at Golden Spike National Historic Site came to watch and take part in the annual re-enactment of the driving of the Golden Spike on May 10.

Chinese laborers built the railroad from California to Promontory. But, until recently, the Chinese never got the recognition due them.

A crew of Cantonese workers laid the final tie for the ceremony, but were excluded from the famous final picture taken of the event.

The committee that handles the program started working five years ago to get more involvement from representatives of ethnic groups that did the actual work.

Representatives of Irish, Chinese, Shoshone Indians and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints now all join to place a memorial wreath every year for those who died building the railroad.

-Associated Press

MN women allegedly sold protected wildlife parts

MINNEAPOLIS — Two Twin Cities women are accused of smuggling products derived from protected wildlife such as elephants and leopards into Minnesota and selling them at a Hmong marketplace in St. Paul.

An indictment handed up May 12 in U.S. District Court also charges Pa Lor, age unknown, of Oakdale, and Tia Lee Yang, 36, of Lake Elmo, of conspiring to distribute anabolic steroids.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service “has become increasingly concerned about international trade in raw endangered wildlife products,” said an agent in charge of the St. Paul office. “The market, which is fueled by traditional Asian medicinal and cultural needs, is having a devastating effect on some of the world’s most critically endangered wildlife.”

Chupheng Lee, vice president of the Lao Family Community of Minnesota, said Hmong elders use medicines that include animal parts but are unaware they are encouraging illegal smuggling.

-Associated Press

New Textbook Tackles Oregon’s Controversial Racial History

PORTLAND, OR-Portland Public Schools will be Oregon’s first district to use a textbook to explore the state’s racial history with “Beyond the Oregon Trail: Oregon’s Untold History.”

Some of the state’s racial history has been glossed over, and likely will provoke strong feelings.
Over 188 years, federal and Oregon governments passed more than 30 racial discriminatory laws.
For example: an 1862 law charged African Americans, Chinese, Hawaiians and multiracial people an annual tax of $5 to live in the state, about $770 in today’s money.

In 1866 the state rejected the 14th Amendment granting citizenship to blacks, and extended the marriage ban to anybody a quarter or more Chinese or Hawaiian or half or more Indian.

-Associated Press

SD researcher examines flax role as tool against colon cancer

BROOKINGS, S.D.-A South Dakota State University research study is examining the use of flax as a potential tool against colon cancer.

Chandradhar Dwivedi, head of the SDSU College of Pharmacy’s pharmaceutical sciences department, said the flax research came out of his curiosity about mustard.

Dwivedi, who grew up in northeastern India, said most cooking in that region was done in mustard oil, and the incidence of cardiovascular disease and cancer was very low.

Dwivedi said he grew curious about what is in mustard and found that about 24 percent of it is Omega-3 fatty acid.

American mustard has the fatty acids taken out, so Dwivedi decided to work with flax, which has a higher percentage of Omega-3 fatty acids.

He said his initial research has shown that both flaxseed oil and flax meal did help prevent colon cancer development.

-Associated Press

Hawai’i official state plant will be taro

HONOLULU - Taro is in line to become Hawaii’s official state plant this summer. Acting Gov. James “Duke” Aiona signed the bill into law on May 14.

Taro was to have become the state plant last year. But lawmakers made a mistake when they initially passed the measure. It wouldn’t go into effect until the year 2025.

This year, they amended the legislation to make taro the state plant as of July 1.

Aiona also signed a bill designating the Hawaiian monk seal the state’s official mammal.

Aiona is acting governor while Gov. Linda Lingle is out of the state to attend Israel’s 60th anniversary celebrations.

- Associated Press

Intel agencies seek help recruiting new immigrants

McLEAN, VA-The U.S. is its own worst enemy when it comes to the important task of recruiting immigrants as spies, analysts and translators in the war on terror, new Americans are telling intelligence officials.

The intelligence agencies lack people who can speak the languages that are needed most, such as Arabic, Farsi and Pashtu. More importantly, the agencies lack people with the cultural awareness that enables them to grasp the nuances embedded in dialect, body language and even street graffiti.

At a summit on Friday, officials gathered more than a dozen representatives of recent immigrant and other ethnic groups to get their recruiting assistance.

The officials got an earful in return -about immigration and hiring rules and foreign policies that make life harder in immigrants’ old countries. The intelligence agencies’ own practices also came under criticism: extraordinary rendition, holding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, and harsh interrogation practices.

-Associated Press

BAY

Protesters call for Ouster of UC Berkeley Law Professor

BERKELEY, CA-Dozens of protesters, some donning black hoods and orange prisoner jumpsuits, demanded that the University of California, Berkeley’s law school fire John Yoo, a professor whose they said devised the legal basis for the Bush administration’s use of torture in overseas military prisons.

The professor, John Yoo, worked for the U.S. Department of Justice from 2001 to 2003, when his critics say he wrote the “torture memos” that provided legal framework for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The protest took place during the law school’s graduation Saturday. School officials said earlier in the week that Yoo, who is tenured, would not be there.

Graduates and their families were generally supportive of the protests, but many also said they supported Yoo’s right to teach.

-Associated Press

GLOBAL

Vietnam sentences American man to 6 months in jail on terrorism

HANOI, Vietnam-A court in southern Vietnam sentenced Nguyen Quoc Quan, a mathematician from Sacramento, California, on Tuesday to six months in prison on terrorism charges and ordered that he be deported after serving his sentence..

Quan was among several people arrested last November in a house in Ho Chi Minh City. Authorities said they were preparing to circulate anti-government pamphlets on behalf of Viet Tan, a California-based group that Vietnam considers a terrorist organization.

Viet Tan says it promotes nonviolent political change in Communist Vietnam, and U.S. Ambassador Michael Michalak has said he has seen no evidence the group is engaged in terrorism.

Vietnamese authorities have said Quan entered the country on a forged Cambodian passport.

Communist Vietnam does not tolerate any form of dissent, which it considers a threat to its one-party rule.

-Associated Press

Comments

Well, folks:
Does John Yoo retain the “right” to “teach”?
Mmm, maybe.
Should he be fired?
That too.
ANY “academic” who has not been sufficiently “educated” to separate “knowledge” from “wisdom” and “fact” from “fancy,” as in the tortured syntax of those who attempt to make today’s Procrustes fit into the bed of his own making deserves, at the very least. to be pilloried, well, figuratively speaking that is, IN PUBLIC.
This nation’s yahoos, which obviously include the likes of APAs like John Yoo, and need I mention others?, are a sad and sorry lot of juvey self-servers and self-deluders.
Not that they aren’t matched elsewhere, everywhere.
But the fact remains that America today is a tattered tailoring of a once-jovial and jubilant Uncle Sam.
I just read, courtesy of freebie magazine mailings, Newsweek’s redoubtable Fareed Zakaria’s intriguing rose-tinted and resolutely “American” take on a changing, is Obama a mite late?, “globalized” world now in the process of freeing itself from “free enterprise” chains.
Zakaria is persuasive indeed, and he scores more than his quota of “points,” “facts”?, “factoids”?, “factors”?, yes, all of the foregoing.
Major recognitions that include the proper placement of the “Chinese” “threat” within the geopolitical model and his acknowledgment of the fact that the neocon “empire” is kaput, albeit he still believes this nation can be “the leader” in the 21st Century.
I wouldn’t begin to question, much less quarrel with, Zakaria’s overall “take” as far as his premises go herein, premises and parameters that are purely “scientific” determinism of “free enterprise” theory.
Which is to say, ALL numbers-crunching and speculator margins and leveragings, and not clue-one as to the individual human FACTOR.
As with those eelebrated Rand-ites of yore, those admirers of Ayn Rand, Thatcher?, subscribers to male-chauvinist posturings, Zakarias, to me at least, appears to be far too immersed and sated with the blessings of the Establishment table.
He fails to perceive, much less understand, that, to the individual who has lost his/her job and faces the anxieties and stresses of sweating out another, likely lower-paid at that, that single job loss is the entire universe to said individual.
Multiply that by the thousands, millions, and that is the “factor” by which he fails to grasp the “other” reality.
Oh, yes, he cites most of the obvious, including, guys, a one-phrase reference to the coolies in “Silicon Valley,” and he avoids most of the “mainstream media” misrepresentations.
But he still misses the elephant-in-the-room point that America today, this (lack of?) “administration” specifically, has misspent most of its “capital” in the obscene misadventure that is the “iraq war.”
So, this nation’s cup, per Zakaria, is still half-full. But it won’t be for long if the ship-of-state doesn’t attempt a U-turn come November.
Today’s online London Guardian continues its essentially newsworthy coverages, even as its “leader” comments continue to betray its fears and loathings.
Their “human rights” activists continue to focus on “Tibet” and “Darfur” and “torch relays” and seem to insist on “force” as a nostrum in international affairs.
Simply because “they” know “better” and are the sole arbiters of “human” “destiny,” never mind the ecology.
That they should even attempt to categorize a nation’s mourning as a political ploy betrays only THEIR mindsets and THEIR values, or lack thereof.
I think the NBC anchor tonight revealed, or so at least it seemed to me, the true understanding of the tragedy in Sichuan, because, I think, HE got a glimpse of what could very likely happen along the San Andreas Fault, and long overdue at that.
Not that that is something to celebrate, God knows. There have been more than enough reminders of late.
But when 6.8 reaches 7.9, it’s high time to reconfigure our thinking and reorient our compassionate minds.
Perhaps, out of the literal enormity of this tragedy, and that in the “rice-bowl” delta of Myanmar, will emerge the “scientists” and the “engineers” who will blaze the trail to 8.0-resistant constructions, or who will figure out ways to meet Mother Nature on her own terms with better odds for mere humans.
Frank Eng
P.S.: And in the realm of pure numbers and numerology, 50-thousands and 78-thousands pale next to the million-plus already in Iraq, not to mention the 2-million civilian dead in the Vietnam War, are you listening, Art Hu and Anh Tran? May your ancestors forgive you both for your cavalier calumnies and self-serving hypocrisies.

–Frank Eng on May 19, 2008

Daily Dose: 05/19/08

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