Author: Roy Berman

Best hits of Aum – Part I

Earlier this year I spent an entire month working fulltime translating documents about Aum Shinrikyo into English to be used as research materials for a report on international religious terrorism being created by a Washington DC based organization that shall remain nameless.

While I did a couple of articles and some excerpts from various books, I spent almost the entire time translating large sections of Aum and I, the confessional jailhouse memoir of Ikuo Hayashi, a former medical doctor who helped to spread sarin gas in the Tokyo subway on that infamous day.

Although I was paid to do this translation, it was not intended for publication and my client has no rights over the material, only requesting the translation in the first place for their own reference. Therefore, I’ve decided to excerpt some of my very favorite sections of evil cult related goodness to post every once in a while.

Here is the very first installment – my translation of page 133 of Aum and I.

***

There was nothing I could say in response to that, but I do remember feeling terribly remorseful about delaying the salvation plan. Because of that., I thought that maybe I could perhaps advance my training a bit, and even performed a bit of secret surgery, cutting my tongue’s frenulum with the aim of perfecting my Yoga’s “Nagomdoni.” I also thought I had failed to become a Siddha because I hadn’t pushed myself to the limit, so I started fasting. The result was that my body became progressively weaker, and I became unable to do breathing exercises. Whenever I tried I would develop an irregular pulse.

Over the course of three days of fasting I was able to maintain consciousness even without getting any sleep. I tasted one part of the “experience” described as the so-called “sequential states of consciousness.” As a “prithag-jana” [an unenlightened person still a slave to their worldly desires], I had trouble during the period after the fasting, when I started eating again. I was reading an article by someone who had achieved Siddha, which contained some sections specifically talking about people tormented by gluttony, or pained by fasting. Upon reading these sections, I was swept up by the images of food, and felt the same lust to eat say, eel or bread. I thought that I had been overcome.

At exactly that time, the Aum magazine Mayahana printed a story about the Buddhist training from the time of Shakyamuni. It said that during the time of Shakyamuni’s spiritual training, there was a practice of eating the feces of some animal, say a dog. Thinking that the reason I hadn’t yet become a Siddha was because I just hadn’t been pushing my limits, I thought that perhaps I should try doing the same thing as the original Buddha. I decided to begin eating my own feces.

When first facing my own feces I seriously hesitated. It was originally a part of me though, and there are even living things that eat feces. Since it’s the same E. Coli that just came out of me, it couldn’t upset my stomach, right? Inflammation of the pharanyx is a possibility though… I tried to reason through the various possibilities before finally eating it.

Perhaps because at that time I had been eating nothing but roots and vegetables for three months solid, there was actually no smell.

Does China own your box?

There have been rumours going around that Microsoft has been cooperating with the US government to build secret backdoors into the upcoming edition of Windows known as Vista to allow easy government access to all of your private data. Well, Arstechnica yesterday did what I think is a pretty good job of putting that particular rumour to rest, primarily with this quote from one of Microsoft’s cryptography programmers.

Over my dead body.

Well, maybe not literally-I’m not ready to be a martyr quite yet-but certainly not in any product I work on. And I’m not alone in that sentiment. The official line from high up is that we do not create back doors. And in the unlikely situation that we are forced to by law we’ll either announce it publicly or withdraw the entire feature. Back doors are simply not acceptable. Besides, they wouldn’t find anybody on this team willing to implement and test the back door.

If you stop and think about it, it’s really a rather absurd idea for Microsoft to add a “feature” like that. It would provide them with no business advantage, since they’re already going to achieve high market penetration based on other features, without having to agree to the NSA’s Big Brother demands.

Now, on the other side we have China. Last year this brief article was published.

Lenovo Group on Monday in Beijing released China’s first security chip – “Hengzhi” which has been approved by the State Encryption Administration and independently developed by the company.

It means that China’s information security-sensitive departments in the government, military and research institutions can now purchase safe PCs independently developed and controlled by Chinese.

According to relevant regulations the design, development and manufacture of China’s encryption chips must rely on independent domestic ability and are forbidden from using relevant foreign products.

Safe Lenovo PCs installed with Hengzhi chips will provide security-sensitive departments in the government, military and research institutions with PC terminals completely developed and controlled by Chinese.

As learned Lenovo will officially launch safe PCs installed with Hengzhi security chips within this year.

hengzhi
A reporter is taking photo for Lenovo’s Hengzhi chip at the 8th Beijing International High-tech Expo.

You may remember Lenovo as the company that now own’s what was formerly IBM’s popular Thinkpad brand of notebook PCs. What you have probably never heard of, however, is the State Encryption Administration. Unfortunately, little information is avaliable in English about China’s encryption regularions (and I wouldn’t be surprised if much of it isn’t even publicly avaliable in Chinese.) We do know, however, that this group was first created in 2000, and while specifics are unclear, the basic framework implemented by the law was as follows:

Import into the PRC: The import of foreign encryption products will only be permissible if approval has been obtained from the State Encryption Administration

Sale/distribution: Encryption products can only be sold or distributed within the PRC by entities which have acquired special permits. Such permits are unlikely to be granted to non-PRC entities such as foreign invested enterprises.

Manufacture: Restrictions also apply to the type of entities which can manufacture encryption products, and such products will require approval.

End-users: Users of foreign encryption products, in use prior to the introduction of the new law, must have registered such use with the State Encryption Administration by last January 31 2000 in order to continue using such equipment. In addition, unlike PRC entities, foreign users must also obtain approval for the use of encryption products.

What this basically means is that any encryption product imported to, or sold in China requires government approval, and I think it is fairly safe to assume that said approval requires a backdoor of the very same type as the rumoured Microsoft one.

In a wonderful bit of double-speak, another news tidbit describes the hengzhi chip as a “significant breakthrough in the field of trusted computing technology.” I presume that the breakthrough in “trusted computing” would be knowing in advance that you cannot trust your own hardware to protect your secrets no matter what procedures you implement. Clearly this does, in the most pedantic sense, represent a breakthrough of a kind.

This article, also referenced by Ars, has a little more to say.

“Lenovo ships a lot of PCs inside China with a Chinese government chip instead of the TPM,” he says. “We don’t know what it does.”

The obvious fear is that the chip gives the Chinese government the ability to access any encrypted communications, something that seems particularly sinister in light of the recent allegations that American technology companies (in particular Yahoo) have helped the Chinese government locate dissidents. But Anderson emphasizes that these machines are only sold within China. “They’re completely unsuitable for the American market,” he says.

The last part is important. While many of are computers are assembled in China, I don’t think that there is any significant danger that secret Chinese spy chips are installed in your Dell, Apple, or even Lenovo computer. Were such a thing discovered, it would immediately trigger the highest level sanctions against the Chinese government, and probably cripple their subcontracted manufacturing industry overnight. However, it seems to be certain that any new computer you buy inside China will most likely have this chip installed, and even a moderately lower price is not, in my mind, enough to make up for inviting the secret police into your secret documents. It may sound paranoid, but I would strongly caution anyone to reconsider a decision to buy computer hardware in China, and if you want to get a cheaper but well made notebook PC, just save your money for a nice Taiwanese Asus or BenQ .

It’s not just for Catholics anymore

Zakzak reports:

At Nagata Jinja in Nagatu-ku in Kobe city it was learned on the 4th of this month that a male priest(30) at the Shinto shrine (shrine head: Masakatsu Fujiwara) had installed a hidden video camera in the dressing room used by the shrine’s Miko and recorded them changing clothes. The shrine then fired him. The Nagata office of the Hyogo Prefectural police then filed charges with the Kobe District Prosecutor on suspicion of the minor offense of peeping.

According to the investigation, when on February 14th a worker was cleaning the shrine, they discovered that a video camera had been installed in an unused locker inside the girl’s changing room. Fujiwara shrine manager, along with reporting this to the Nagata police, also asked the 11 male staff about the situation, and one of the lower ranking male shrine priests known as “Gonnegi”
confessed to the crime.
The man made a statement that he had “made recordings on several occasionas.” The girl’s changing room was normally used by two Miko.

The Nagata shrine is said to have been built in the year 201 A.D. by Goshintaku(御神託). It is counted as one of the representative Shinto shrines of Kobe, along with Ikuta(生田) Jinja and Minatogawa(湊川) Jinja.

Note: Miko are so-called “shrine maidens” who assist in rituals, somewhat like an altar boy in Catholicism, but often with more responsibility and a wider range of dutied. They can be aged anywhere from early teens to mid-twenties, and despite the name virginity, or even marital status, is not a consideration in modern times.

Watch who you talk to

From today’s NYT article on the contents of newly released documents on the Guantanama Bay prisoners.

Another Saudi, Mazin Salih Musaid al-Awfi, was one of at least half a dozen men against whom the “relevant data” considered by the annual review boards included the possession at the time of his capture of a Casio model F-91W watch. According to evidentiary summaries in those cases, such watches have “been used in bombings linked to Al Qaeda.”

“I am a bit surprised at this piece of evidence,” Mr. Awfi said. “If that is a crime, why doesn’t the United States arrest and sentence all the shops and people who own them?”

Another detainee whose evidence sheet also included a Casio F-91W, Abdullah Kamal, was an electrical engineer from Kuwait who once played on his country’s national volleyball team. He was also accused of being a leader of a Kuwaiti militant group that collected money for Mr. bin Laden.

As for the Casio allegation, Mr. Kamal said the watch was a common one in Kuwait and had a compass that could be used to find the direction of Mecca for his prayers. “We have four chaplains” at Guantánamo, he said. “All of them wear this watch.”

Obviously the real issue is not are any of these men innocent, but how long as Casio been in league with the terrorists.

Asian History Carnival approaching – submissions needed!

The Frog in a Well group Asian history blog (unaffiliated, but good name) is hosting the third Asian History Carnival on March 5rd and is still short on good submissions. If you are a blogger who has written anything since the previous carnival on December 12th or a blog reader who has spotted something that they think would make a good submission, either email it directly to Jonathan Dresner or use this handy web form for submission. Interested bloggers are also invited to pass along this request to their own readers.

What sort of material is Jonathan looking for? I’ll just quote his description.

When recommending postings for inclusion in the carnival you may submit your own work or suggest good posts by someone else. You may submit multiple posts, but not by the same blogger. The host, of course, is not bound by such restrictions, though we will attempt to provide as much geographical and chronological coverage as possible. Carnivals will be limited to posts written since the previous installment. As with most such carnivals, each host has final, absolute, and arbitrary authority with regard to inclusion, exclusion, scope, scale, format and presentation.

You do not have to be Asian, an historian, or a carny (you do have to be a blogger, at least once); all you have to do is blog about Asian history. Our definition of Asia, for the purposes of this carnival, is pretty much the same as that of the Association for Asian Studies: East Asia, Central Asia, South Asia, North Asia, Southeast Asia, Far East, Middle East, Near East, all regions are welcome.

Those who are still unsure about what sort of material is appropriate, or just want to read something about history (Nice thing about history posts-unlike current events commentary, they don’t go out of date!) should check out the previous two roundups.

Carnival #2 – Muninn, Decmeber 12, 2005
Carnival #1 – Frog in a Well – Japan, October 10th, 2005

Please try and send in submissions by March 4 so that Jonathan has time to collate them and organize the post.

Harry Potter and the Filler of Big

A couple of years ago the fact that a fake sequel to Harry Potter was illegally published in China made headlines and drew large amounts of attention online. And yet, despite the huge numbers of blogs that linked to the story at the time, nobody had any decent visual evidence, or any details beyond that in the short BBC article I linked to above.

When I went to China for the first time in 2003, one of my main goals was to locate a copy of one of these fake Harry Potter novels. As I was utterly unable to speak Chinese at that time, when I and my travel companion passed a movie theatre showing the film I noted down the Chinese title in the little notebook I carried in my pocket. (哈利 波特) so that I could show it to a bookstore clerk in the hope of finding my very own fake Harry Potter novel, nestled alongside the real ones.

After trying a couple of different bookstores, I met with success! There were actually two different fake Harry Potter novels alongside the real four that had already been published at that time. While neither one of them was the famous Harry Potter and Leopard-Walk-Up-to-Dragon (see an English translation of a few paragraphs of that novel here), but they were still gloriously, authentically fake, and of course I bought them both.

Here, for your pleasure, are scans of the front and rear cover of the first of my amazing purchases, which for various reasons have not been presented until now. As you can see, the English title is “Harry Potter and the Filler of Big.” The Chinese title is literally “Harry Potter and the Great Funnel,” which goes at least 35% of the way towards explaining the English translation.

Later on I will post some scans of the interior, lovingly illustrated using bad clip-art, and very possibly type-set using dramatically out of date software. I’ll also post some scans of my second fake Harry Potter novel, which according to what one could ironically call the copyright information page, is entitled “Harry Potter and beaker snd burn.” And as a special bonus, some sample art from a Harry Potter dojinshi from Japan.

Harry Potter and the Filler of Big (Front Cover)

Harry Potter and the Filler of Big (Back Cover)

A Scanner Darkly

I’m applying for a job in Japan. In the latest email, the potential boss asked me to send a headshot, standard for Japanese resumes. I wanted to say that as soon as I get home to the US I can scan it in and send it, but I wasn’t quite sure how “scanner” is spelled in Japanese. I checked the always useful ALC dictionary, and they had this example:

Scanner Darkly
【著作】 《A ～》暗闇のスキャナー◆米1977《著》フィリップ・K・ディック(Philip K. Dick)

Dick is right around the top of my favorite authors of all time list, and this just reminds me how excited I am about the movie adaptation of this book that’s about to come out. The awesome trailer is here, and Wired has an article here about the trials of the rotoscoping animation they used.