I recently wrote about Japan's Prime Minister Abe espousing an irresponsible and cowardly revisionism, denying that there was evidence that Japan exploited Asian women as "Comfort Women," a Japanese euphamism which basically means forced rape of women.

Well, I want to challenge Abe-san to face his accusers, who also are living evidence of what Japan did in WW II. And I challenge him to be a real man and admit the atrocities Japan did to these women and to do the right thing.

Abe-san, face these women:

To learn more, please read this from the Seuol Times, or here, or this wikipedia article.

I tend to tune in Current TV in the morning. In between my wife's intense study of the Weather Channel and leaving for work, I switch on Current TV. Good mix of news and culture in a short attention span theater format. Often something particularly good will be on.

This morning I saw an interesting segment on the difficulty of an Asian/African-American interracial relationship. A Korean daughter runs into trouble with her parents when her mother discovers that she is dating a black man. Her mother freaks out, leading to an ongoing harangue trying to convince her daughter that she is betraying her race and doing something unnatural, while her daughter tries to convince her mother than 2006 in America is different than living in homogenous Korea.

Neither mother nor daughter dare tell the father what's going on. Presumably he doesn't watch Current TV, unless this is her way of telling him.

The segment ends with the statement that the daughter still hopes for understanding from her parents because she loves them.

Racism is universal. I can't say anywhere I have been seemed to be completely free of racism. How race is defined varies. The percentage of tolerant people in the culture varies. But there is always a core group of people who finds ways of defining "us" vs. "them" and who will be horrified every time one of "us" falls in love with one of "them."

Well, after writing about the Jewish vote and youth vote going overwhelmingly Dem this year, I found the following from the Asian-American Legal Defense and Education Fund:

Asian American voters in eight states continued a decade-long shift to support Democratic candidates, with 79% of those polled favoring Democrats in Tuesday's congressional and state elections. According to preliminary results of a nonpartisan, multilingual exit poll of over 4,600 Asian American voters, released today by the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund (AALDEF), Democratic candidates in closely-watched races in Virginia, New Jersey and other states were consistently buoyed by Asian American voter turnout.

So much for the myth of Asian-Americans being overwhelmingly Republican. The article goes on and breaks down the importance of this vote by state:

Virginia Senate: After maintaining a slim lead, Democratic candidate Jim Webb was declared the winner by 0.3% of the total vote (49.6%) beating Republican incumbent Sen. George Allen (49.3%), best known among Asian Americans for his derogatory “macaca” remark to a South Asian campaign worker. According to AALDEF’s exit poll of more than 250 Asian American voters, 76% voted for Jim Webb, 21% voted for Sen. Allen, and 3% voted for Glenda Parker.