cerebureaucracy@hotmail.com (neurocratic malfunction) wrote in message news:<1d7e2eb0.0411161053.29163d0a@posting.google.com>...

wexford1778@yahoo.com (Wexford) wrote in message news:<f53a27bf.0411152030.21235bad@posting.google.com>...

cerebureaucracy@hotmail.com (neurocratic malfunction) wrote in message news:<1d7e2eb0.0411130113.4c145ce9@posting.google.com>...

bye bye dumb *****.

A few things about Iris Chang: She publised her first book, Thread of
the Silkworm, about Chinese espionage and the development of the
Silkworm missile, when she was 25. Her other books, "The Rape of
Nanking," and "The Chinese in America: A Narraive History," were -- to
use a tired cliche -- groundbreaking.

Born in the USA, Iris Chang nevertheless spoke fluent Mandarin as well
as several European languages. She single-handedly awakened the world
to the horrors of the Japanese occupation of Nanking by interviewing
survivors, collecting photographs (Japanese soldiers took pictures of
their atrocities then turned them over to Chinese photo studios to be
developed. Many of the pictures were copied and retained by the
Chinese in the hope that some future justice would be done.), and
tracing the steps of a German who lived in the city (a member of the
Nazi Party, as a matter of fact) who was so appalled by the brutality
of the Japanese that at great personal risk he did all he could to
save as many Chinese as possible from rape and torture. She was able
to contact his living relatives in Germany and secure his detailed
notebooks as independent proof of Japanese brutality.

Whatever demons were inhabiting Iris Chang's mind, I can't guess.
Sometimes when you follow a story to its conclusion and the dismal
revelation dawns that men are cruel and evil and justice is not often
done, it wears you out. Whatever happened to her, she was a brave and
honorable woman, a scholar, and a fighter. She had a great heart and a
great mind. It's a shame there was no one there to help her when she
needed it.

I seldom weep for stangers but I can freely weep for her.

you realize this is what she always wanted. sympathy for HER people
and HERSELF, recognition as TRUTH-TELLER, GROUNDBREAKER, HUMANITARIAN.
she was just another victimologist extraordinaire, the sort that
comes on oprah and wins book-of-the-month recogntion. scholars gave
'rape of nanking' a free pass though they knew it was sensationalistic
and shoddy cuz it was just sooooooo grave.
iris chang used the memory of nanking to feel good about herself as a
noble chinese victim just as some japanese get a real kick out of
going on and on about hiroshima or jews with holocaust. look, i
sympathize with the real victims of those horrors but have little
tolerance for well-fed yuppie idiots who use past horrors just to feel
oh-so-noble themselves.

Chang raised issues in all her books that had been obscured, ignored
or just lied-about. The Japanese acted with appalling cruelty in
Nanking then refused to admit it. Chang brought it out in the open,
backed her claims with irrefutable proof, and demanded that they admit
their crimes. I'm not Chinese, I'm Irish-American, but if my parents
had survived the Japanese occupation of Nanking and I had dug up
incontrovertible evidence of the abject cruelty of the Japanese, I'd
demand a reconing, too.

indeed, her suicide was just another attempt to have everyone feel
sorry for her. she didn't care for her hubby, her child, her family.
she just wanted all of them and us to feel guilt-ridden and sorry for
her.

YOu don't know what drove her to it.

oh poor girl, she was soooo depressed boo hoo hoo.

Severe depression is a disease, not a cry for sympathy.

yeah, let's
expand our sympathy on her instead of on her 2 yr old child. the
***** was spoiled! maybe her life wasn't perfect--who's is?--but to
destroy it because it wasn't perfect by her standards or some lameass
excuse like depression--which all of us go thru--is really shameful.
imagine the survivors of nanking. many of them lost entire families,
were crippled, nearly starving, etc. their depression, horror,
suffering was far far beyond anything chang could have imagined;
indeed, she just compiled the horrors to win accolades for herself
such a noble crusader. those victims of nanking--who were so
traumatized that if anyone had a reason for suicide, they certainly
did--chose to go on and rebuild their city and nation. but *****
chang decided her life wasn't just so fulfilling or perfect enough for
her to go on living. what she did to herself is sicker than what
japanese did to her brethren in nanking. there was no courage, no
will, no guts, no strength, or concern for others. it was just 'me,
me, me'. well, fuc* you ***** and burn in hell.

Look at your response. Your anger is over the top, virtually
pathological. The woman killed herself. She was an accomplished,
well-respected writer whose books were read world-wide, not a
self-absorbed adolescent drowning in self-pity. There was something
wrong with her. She needed therapy, that's all.

the psychology of her life and her books is 'feel sorry for me'. i
don't waste sympathy on people who beg for it.

also, if chang is so angered by oppression, why didn't she said one
critical thing about maoist china or the oppression of tibetans
perpetrated by chinese? no, she's ONLY concerned about chinese as
victims of japanese, of americans. oh, chinee soooo good.

She wrote three well-researched books which were in wide circulation
at the time of her death at age 36. That's a lot of work for a person
of her age. I've written articles, and believe me, 1,200 words can
take a long time and lot of anguish. I can't even imagine researching
and writing a book like "The Thread of the Silk Worm."

AS for the topics she chose, people write about what interests them,
or what they stumble upon. Maybe she would have gotten to Mao had she
lived long enough, or maybe enough other authors were dismembering his
memory, lamenting the rape of Tibet and the other monstrocities of his
reign, and she found other things to write about.

Asians were treated badly in the United States. Chinese were denied
citizenship and Chinese born here were harrassed by immigration
authorities until the end of World War II. The actress Anna May Wong,
a third-generation Aemrican, who appeared in many films and was very
well known, had to submit travel itineraries to the INS before she
left the country and then was subjected to hours of debriefing when
she returned, only because she was of the Chinese "race." She never
married because the few men she dated and loved were Western and until
1948 California had mischegnation laws that forbad the marriage of
"whites" and "orientals." In the 1950s, when she tried to sell some
property she owned and buy a house, she was refused because the
neighborhood was closed to "orientals." This all seems rather bizarre
today, but it was considered common and natural to my father's
generation.

You don't understand people until you understand where they came from
and how their attitudes were formed. Chang popularized the story of
Chinese Americans and their struggles. What's wrong with that? The
Chinese are some of the most productive and vigorous citizens we have.
They don't welter in victimhood, claim reparations, or hold their past
travails as evidence of our guilt and meanness. But if we didn't know
these things had been done, we'd uderstand them and ourselves less.


Wexford