by Daniel WK Lee

Beijing’s aggressive promotion of Putonghua (aka Mandarin) across China isn’t a new phenomenon, but when local authorities in Guangdong province insisted in late July that a major local television network broadcast in Mandarin instead of the province’s language Cantonese, protests were sparked in the provincial capital of Guangzhou and neighboring Hong Kong: Mandarin hegemony had gone too far.

The erosion of regional language has been a concern for quite a while Mandarin has become so thoroughly institutionalized. Fortunately, Guangdong and Hong Kong are among the most prosperous areas of all of China and Cantonese, with its firmly established pop music industry, Hong Kong film stars, status as the language of the Chinese diaspora, and still very much a language of commerce, has withstood much of the onslaught. The language, in recent times, has even experienced a “revival” of sorts on the mainland with so many young migrant workers from all over coming to Guangdong’s manufacturing megahubs like Shenzhen and growing Dongguan where it’s become cool to speak Cantonese with each other.

But no matter how well it has been able to resist total take over in the past, Cantonese people aren’t taking any chances in seeing or hearing our language and culture diminished by state policy. Chinese national identity might be powerful, but how sad would it be to the last speaker of your own language?

(Above, A man holds a sign professing his love for Cantonese, the main language in Hong Kong at a rally to help stop Mandarin being promoted in China. Hundreds of protesters rallied in Hong Kong against China’s effort to champion its national language Mandarin over Cantonese, a week after a similar campaign was staged in the neighbouring mainland city of Guangzhou; Below, A man holds a T-shirt saying, “The more you try to silence us, the more we will speak out” at a rally in Hong Kong against what protesters say is China’s effort to champion the national language Mandarin over their local Cantonese. Other t-shirts said, “You want us to shut up! We will speak louder in Cantonese!”) [source]  

by Daniel WK Lee

While attending The Nation Institute’s “Blueprint for Accountability” event last night at NYU (which was absolutely terrific), I was incensed to tears to learn from guest panelist Dr. Allen Keller of the Bellevue/NYU Program for Survivors of Torture and co-author of a report released yesterday by Physicians for Human Rights called Experiments in Torture: Evidence of Human Subject Research and Experimentation in the “Enhanced” Interrogation Program. I agree with Dr. Keller in declaring that human experiments done by CIA doctors on detainees is an utter abomination, and a direct violation of The Nuremberg Code which articulates the right of individuals to choose not be subjected to human experimentation as a result of the atrocities of that occurred during Nazi Germany. The reports says:

Investigation and analysis of US government documents
by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) provides evidence indicating
that the Bush administration, in the period after Sept.
11, conducted human research and experimentation on prisoners
in US custody as part of this monitoring role. Health
professionals working for and on behalf of the CIA monitored
the interrogations of detainees, collected and analyzed the
results of those interrogations, and sought to derive generalizable
inferences to be applied to subsequent interrogations.
Such acts may be seen as the conduct of research and experimentation
by health professionals on prisoners, which could
violate accepted standards of medical ethics, as well as domestic
and international law. These practices could, in some
cases, constitute war crimes and crimes against humanity.

The Obama administration can no longer shield the Bush regime from investigation and prosecution at this juncture. “Looking forward” or “moving forward” dishonorable and morally bankrupt. If the administration doesn’t have the guts to confront the excesses of executive and military power of the previous government, it has a duty to defer to the International Criminal Court to hold the Bush administration accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Get more information and download the report here.

“let them rock” by Dronio

I love this image for it’s evocative instead of provocative quality. It reminds me of Jeff Burton’s photo book DREAMLAND whose images, though documenting the happenings of various gay and straight porn shoots, often find other possible narratives other than a strictly sexual ones. This image does the same work. The viewer cannot be certain what is happening above the knees though a sense of homoeroticism is powerfully present. Likewise though is the playfulness and innocence about it what could be happening with the two lads. The comic art underwear that says, ‘Flame On’ is cheeky in this queer context. Truly a wonderful photograph!

[Daniel WK Lee]

(via mugwumpian)

Considering my mum is a Lutheran, this is great new official policy. As Reverend Dr. Cindi Love (I’m taking it that’s actually her name and not a drag king name) of HuffPo writes:

After twenty-five years of deliberation, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) Church Council has abolished its anti-gay policies, effective immediately. Following from discussions at the ELCA Churchwide Assembly last summer, the ELCA will now allow people in same-sex relationships to serve as rostered leaders. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) human beings are no longer considered abominations but blessed church members with full standing.

And from a press release about the decision by the ELCA:

These actions are important because they are a major milestone along the journey of full inclusion. We have a policy that recognizes the gifts of its members […] and that will allow the return of those who have been removed or alienated […]. [There will] be new life in the church through new leaders. […] [W]e have lifted up crucial questions for the church: What is the relationship of sexuality to salvation in Christ? What is the diversity in God’s wondrous creation? What is sinful? […] Who continues to face barriers to ministry and mission? How do we journey together faithfully, in spite of so many differences? What some people have dismissed as a narrow issue has both opened up and profoundly deepened our moral and theological life.

Though I’m not a Christian, I suspect inclusion is closer aligned with the spirit of Jesus’ teachings. Folks get wrapped up in textual details that betray his more simple commands. Thank you ELCA for opening your arms for queer brethren in search of spiritual guidance that doesn’t condemn for being the way, as they believe, God made them.

[submitted by Daniel WK Lee]

Everything you didn’t want to know about queer blog daniel extra’s founder, Daniel WK Lee, may now be discovered in this new place where he’ll be parking his crazy! Expect GPOYW, expect more rants, pictures of food, clothing purchases, and more shirtless pictures of himself, expect more shameless self-promotion, just expect more beyond the ‘extra!’ Enjoy!

How did they get that childhood photo of daniel extra founder Daniel WK Lee in that poster?

(via kill-yr-idols)

Of all the F-Whitey’s we have featured on daniel extra, none has been so deserving as Virginia governor Bob McDonnell. Seriously, Bob, you are the “massah” of F-Whitey right now.

In proclaiming Confederate History Month in Virginia, McDonnell went head first into an obviously socio-politico-cultural sensitive area that his two Democratic predecessors thought it wise(r) not to enter by making such a declaration. But then his proclamation, McDonnell failed to make any mention of slavery, which of course, is WHOLE REASON WHY there was even a Confederacy and a Civil War. In response to the controversy, the governor had the further gumption to minimize the role of slavery, saying: “There were any number of aspects to that conflict between the states. Obviously, it involved slavery. It involved other issues. But I focused on the ones I thought were most significant for Virginia.”

Salon.com’s Gabriel Winant exposes the idiocy of this notion that slavery was insignificant, or even less significant for Virginia:

This is the point where a hundred amateur Civil War buffs always jump up and start offering their pet theories about the origins of the conflict. So let’s be clear, and wave them off now. Any attempt to downplay the role of slavery in the origins of the Civil War is historically uninformed at best, and white supremacist revisionism at worst.

But I’d argue that the role of a white supremacist attitude is not the worst implication of McDonnell’s omission, but rather, CENTRAL to his omission. How else could the abomination of slavery get “forgotten” without holding on to the belief that its history is minimal, that racial inequality wasn’t a significant issue because it wasn’t really *the* problem? McDonnell attempted to hide Southern Whites’ shame and responsibility in attempting to perpetuate slavery and thus precipitating the Civil War. Such a maneuver is made possible by the conceit that whites can and should rewrite the history of their oppression. F-you, Bob McDonnell. F-you to hell and back.

[submitted by Daniel WK Lee]

Dear Gregory Lee Giusti,

The fact that your middle name shares a spelling with my last name disgusts me. If you are going to bother making serious threats, obscene and harassing phone calls to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, you really should have the chutzpah to stand by your bat-shit-stupidity and not CRY LIKE A LITTLE BITCH at your hearing, you heinous trail of catsick. Now that you are facing up to two years in GenPop and a $250,000 fine, you are gonna have to thank our “socialist” state for the government-run healthcare you get in prison in case some big dude named “Tiny” uses you like a whiny little bitch that you have already shown yourself to be.

Smooches,

Daniel WK Lee

Founder, Editor of daniel extra

(Photo credit: San Mateo Sheriff’s Office/AP Photo)

The Best Jobs In America

Having been in the Product Management track (bottom right, light blue icon), I know that with consumer products especially, the opportunities are highly sensitive to market health and of course, overall consumerism. In a down economy, product development shrinks tremendously.

[submitted by Daniel WK Lee]

(via jmblog)

There isn’t much new discussion here unfortunately as for decades Asian American men have had little progress in dismantling the stereotypes of our representation.  And while the Asian American masculinity continues its tense relationship with “Western” masculinity, Yul Kwon, winner of CBS’s Survivor: Cook Islands, makes the much needed to be (re)-said call to redefine Western masculinity, but says so after stating Asian American men somehow need to prove that we can “live up to Western masculinity while redefining it. I wish I had been there to ask how do they conceive of a modern Asian American masculinity that fully reconciles queer sexualities without dipping into misogynistic and homophobic tropes.

Kwon argues that proliferation of representation is central, which I agree, but for so long we’ve know what kinds of work needs to be done, why is it that we keep on saying the same things year-in and year-out? What other strategies can Asian Americans employ? 

I think of David Beckham, who has probably taken a hammer to “traditional Western masculinity” more than anyone else on the planet in the past decade. Is there a Beckhamanian approach that could be imagined? There is a lot to think about and even more to do.

[Daniel WK Lee]

Aasif Mandvi from The Daily Show and Survivor winner Yul Kwon join the San Francisco Chronicle’s Jeff Yang to discuss the stereotyping of Asian American males in life and work—at the Asia Society 5/31/07

(via shaanmichael)