Category: Current Events

Chilling in Tokyo vs. political martyrdom

, Peru’s first president of Japanese ancestry, was managing to get some peace in Tokyo, where he’s a citizen and outside the scope of extradition treaties. But for some reason, he decided to fly back to South America. He says he wants to run for president again in 2006: the national legislature passed a law barring him from running until 2011, but he claims the law is unconstitutional. (You’d think it would be, assuming Peru has some sort of equal protection…)

Well, whatever his motive, here’s what happened: once he got to Chile, the authorities showed up at his hotel room and arrested him. He’s been denied bail and Peru wants him extradited; his supporters in Peru say that he has “a plan” and won’t be extradited. Whatever happens, he’s going to be in Chile for about four weeks, as that’s how long the criminal procedures in Peru are supposed to take. Chile has authority to hold him for up to two months before he is sent to Peru.

Peru has charged Fujimori with a number of nasty crimes, including supporting the FARC forces in Colombia, “disappearing” a few scores of students, and pushing a policy of forced sterilization for population control. The more plausible charges include millions of dollars’ worth of corruption and way too much zeal in going after terrorist groups, including the Shining Path guerillas and the MRTA forces that took over the Japanese embassy in Lima in 1997.

Make no mistake, though: Fujimori is not a demon in his home country. Peru is sharply divided over him. His supporters see him as a hero for liberalizing Peru’s economy and shutting down terrorist groups that made life difficult in the eighties. His opponents, including President Toledo, see him as a tyrant who stole from the people, handing back just enough to keep his popularity up. While he isn’t doing too well in the polls for president right now, he’s doing all right for someone who’s been campaigning illegally in absentia.

It’ll be interesting to see what kind of trial he ends up getting. Will it be a giant political show? Which charges will be brought, and which will be substantiated? Will he ever become president? Will he rot in a prison cell? Or will he spend his final days hawking ?

Taro Aso, Muneo Suzuki violated Japanese Election Law

What, me worry?
According to the awesome citizen reporting site JANJAN, Taro Aso and Muneo Suzuki are among many Japanese politicians who were in violation of the Public Office Election Law as late as October 7.

Article 178 of the law (can be found here after a somewhat cumbersome search) states that it is illegal for the winner or loser of an election to distribute or display letters thanking constituents.

However, as of October 7, Taro Aso had this message on his site:

“I achieved my 9th victory in the 44th Lower House election, held this past September 11, thanks to the passionate support of all of you in [my] election district [Fukuoka 8th]. I give my hearty thanks from the bottom of my heart.”

And Muneo Suzuki, this:
“I express my gratitude regarding [my] recent election victory.”

The Diet members violating this law cannot be punished for it, as the POE Law is one of Japan’s “bekarazu ho” (“shouldn’t laws”) that gives lots of guidelines but little enforcement. However, one can face punishment if there is any sort of direct monetary benefit to voters pre- or post-election.

The same article bans “election victory celebrations,” morale-boosting act such as riding around cars or marching in groups, and giving out the names of people and groups that supported your election.

This issue is not new. In 2000, Shukan Post, one of Japan’s infamous weeklies, fingered MOF bureaucrat-turned-Diet member Ichizo Miyamoto for writing a letter thanking his constituents (article cached by Google here). Kind of unfair, though, (especially given the article’s inflammatory tone) considering that more than 80 politicians (or ex-politicians) are engaging in the same activity almost unscathed!

The article hints that the laws exist to prevent “ex post facto vote buying,” which makes sense. I mean, who wouldn’t vote for whoever throws the most bitchin’ parties?

So long and thanks for all the fish

Iruka

Curzon over at ComingAnarchy.com has this to say on Japan’s scientific whaling program, which incidentally will double the number of minke whales caught this year:

Be against whaling if you like, it’s all a distraction from the vast overfishing of fish, not whales, that is the real environmental issue of the day. And as for the ban on hunting whales, nothing makes people want to eat this relatively untasty meat than being told they can’t eat it by a bunch of self-righteous outsiders.

I’ve never been all that opposed to, or all that bothered by Japan’s whaling policies, so I don’t see much point in beating a close ally over the head about this. And Curzon’s right that there’s no better way to really make whale meat a part of Japan’s culture then to tell the Japanese that it isn’t.

So, I don’t have much to add to that.

However, with regards to the program’s function as a distraction, I think Japan should be glad that environmentalists were too busy gearing up for this fight to pay much attention to the Taiji Dolphin Slaughter. (Japan might also be glad that one of their nickname for the whales, 海のゴキブリ or “cockroach of the sea” hasn’t been widely translated in to English. Why in God’s name anyone would want to eat a cockroach, I’ve not the slightest idea.)

The Taiji Dolphin Slaughter, you say?

Surely you remember last month’s massive Worldwide Day of Protest against the Japanese Dolphin Slaughter?

protest

No?

Actually, I almost didn’t hear about it either. In fact, the only reason I even knew about it was a full page advert in the NYT announcing it. And then I forgot all about it until I read Curzon’s post earlier today.

Anyway, go check out some video and what happens when an environmentalist with a computer has way too much time on his hands here.

Sure, this is some pretty greusome stuff. But I’m not sure it’s all that different from the still moving fish, with its belly meat lined up on a bed of grated daikon, one pays damned good money to be served on a plate at a nice sushi restaurant.

Besides, Japan fought to save the dugong. Don’t they deserve some credit for that?

Please, people, get the Alito debate right

The SEPTA strike finally ended early this morning. In a way, losing mass transit was beneficial: with a 90-minute commute on foot, I had some forced spare time to listen to podcasts on my way to and from campus, including Face The Nation and Meet The Press. The episodes two weekends ago, coming in the wake of the Scooter Libby indictment, were most amusing.

But this weekend, it was all about Alito. And I had to hear Democrats on both shows go on about how “he wanted to strip-search a 10-year-old.” The case was Doe v. Groody, 361 F.3d 232 (3d Cir. 2004), text available here. Now, I know these senators must know better—they went to law school, for feck’s sake. So let’s get this straight.

  • The searches took place as part of a drug bust. The suspected dealer is referred to as “John Doe.”
  • When the police applied for a search warrant, they asked several times to be able to “search all occupants of the residence and their belongings to prevent the removal, concealment, or destruction of any evidence requested in this warrant.” In fact, it says “all occupants” several times, as if to scream “DON’T LET ANYONE GET AWAY!”
  • When they got the warrant, the box marked “premises and/or persons to be searched” said “John Doe” and gave some of his personal information. This information filled up the entire box on the form.
  • The police conducting the raid knew there were going to be women in the house, and didn’t want the suspected dealer to hide the goods on the women, so they got a female meter maid to go in with them.
  • The meter maid took the wife and daughter of the suspect into the bathroom and had them strip down to show they didn’t have anything hidden in their clothes.
  • After this happened, the victims sued the police officers individually under Section 1983. The police officers argued that they should get qualified immunity because they didn’t violate “clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.”
  • The district court rejected this argument and decided the officers should be liable. They appealed. Alito was one of the three-judge panel who got the appeal.
  • Two of the judges voted to affirm the district court’s decision, since the warrant only said “John Doe.” Alito dissented on the grounds that the officers clearly intended to get a warrant to search everyone, and had a decent reason to believe they were given the right to do so.

Now, criticizing Alito on this last issue is one thing, but he certainly isn’t in favor of strip-searching children left and right. All he wanted was to keep police officers from being sued when they were doing something they thought they were authorized to do. If you want to go after perverts in the government, go after Scooter.

Shinzo Abe, barbarian-defeating shogun?

Now that we’ve completely trashed Foreign Minister Taro Aso’s political qualifications, it’s time to look at Shinzo Abe, the new Chief Cabinet Secretary and Minister of State for Taking Over After Koizumi, shown here in all-out “I’m gonna be a world leader someday!” mode.

Like Koizumi, Abe is a popular guy. Also like Koizumi, he enjoys ruffling feathers, whether it’s advocating a tougher defense policy or visiting Yasukuni Shrine. He is often described as “hawkish,” although I think that word is a bit loaded. He’s certainly confrontational, though: his fame comes from negotiations with North Korea over the abductee issue, in which he refused to take much crap.

Like Aso, he has a political pedigree, although it doesn’t go too far back. Abe’s father Shintaro Abe was Secretary-General of the LDP and served in the Nakasone cabinet back in the mid-80’s. His maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi was Prime Minister in the late 1950’s and younger brother of Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. Kishi and Sato were both rags-to-riches stories, so Abe’s political lineage ends there.

He started out at Kobe Steel after college, then worked his way into the bureaucracy and became his father’s secretary during the elder Abe’s tenure as Secretary-General. After his father died in 1991, he ran for the empty seat representing Yamaguchi Prefecture, won it, and slipped from the administration into the government.

The Chief Cabinet Secretary position, a combination of press secretary and chief of staff, gives Abe an excellent platform to become even more well-known to the people (many CCSes have gone on to become prime ministers, most recently the late Keizo Obuchi). But he shouldn’t need too much help: he’s already way ahead of the field in opinion polls. Abe has been getting some blogger support too: Lord Curzon is a longtime fan, for one.

Koizumi is using his great political capital to give the country a choice between a hard-ass and a wack-ass. This Yomiuri writer says it Japanese-style:

Koizumi, by including possible successors in the Cabinet, intends to let them compete with each other to come up with ideas and efforts for reform, a decision that suggests the prime minister is grooming an heir to inherit a shogunate named “reform.” … Koizumi, in his reshuffle, made it quite clear he wants this shogunate of reform to be inherited by Abe.

The choice is pretty obvious; hopefully the obvious choice will be made, so Japan doesn’t end up with a prime minister who’s obsessed with “floppies.”

CAVEAT: It could be one of those dark horses, too, like finance minister Sadakazu Tanigaki. But Abe is who just about everyone seems to want.

Taro Aso: the future of Japan?


Prime Minister Koizumi’s new cabinet is in place this week, and one of the apparent front-runners to succeed him is this interesting fellow, Taro Aso, now Minister of Foreign Affairs.

We’ve already talked about some of his more asinine comments: that burakumin shouldn’t be in government, that Japan is one race, that Korea was better off under colonial rule, that floppy disks are the future, and all that.

But there’s more to Aso-san than just knee-jerk right-wingery. Let’s look at his colorful past:

  • Aso’s father, Takakichi Aso, was a big businessman: he owned a large cement company, Aso Cement. He later entered the Diet and was buddies with Kakuei Tanaka, the Nixonian prime minister of Japan who spent half of his life amassing political capital in Niigata and the other half split between running the LDP from the shadows and fending off prosecution for corruption. (Tanaka’s daughter Makiko is the short-lived foreign minister who called Bush an asshole.)
  • Takakichi’s wife (Taro’s mother) was Shigeru Yoshida’s daughter—Yoshida being the postwar prime minister who set up Japan’s foreign and domestic policy for much of the Cold War era.
  • Yoshida’s wife’s father was Nobuaki Makino, a Meiji-era diplomat and politician; Makino’s father was the famous samurai Okubo Toshimichi.
  • Back to Taro Aso himself: he represented Japan in the shooting events at the 1976 Olympics in Montreal, while still president of the cement company he inherited from his father (he gave it up to run for office in 1978, and now his brother runs the company).
  • He was appointed Minister of Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications in 2003, and Koizumi apparently likes him, because he’s survived two subsequent cabinet reshuffles.

Now, he’s certainly qualified to be prime minister given the generally low standards that have been accepted historically: take a look at Koizumi’s predecessor, Yoshiro Mori, who greeted Bill Clinton by saying “Who are you?” and went on to screw up the Buddhist rites at Keizo Obuchi’s funeral later that day. Part of me wants Aso to become prime minister because there’s an excellent chance he’ll produce all sorts of hilarious Mori-esque gaffes that will make great blog material.

On the other hand, I love Japan too much to subject its people to this man’s leadership. His gaffes are not silly and laughable like Mori’s, but dark and pitiful, likely to kill what few good relations Japan enjoys with the rest of East Asia. Hopefully the LDP will not be foolish enough to elevate him to the top post; maybe he’s just a foil to make Shinzo Abe look better. We can only hope.

Japan’s intestinal fortitude

Some of you may have heard the claim that Japanese intestines are longer, or in some other way, different from those of other people. This is of course just one part of the entire school of Nihonjinron (日本人論), or discussions on the uniqueness of the Japanese race/culture/nation/language. Unlike most of the nihongjinron pseudo-science (like Japanese use the opposite side of their brain to process language, etc.) this one sounds at least vaguely plausible. After all, there are all sorts of morpholigical differences between races; hair, skin, facial features, height, and so on. Could it be true?

Continue reading Japan’s intestinal fortitude

The future of China (or, exactly what is realist?)

That Tom Barnett interview I mentioned is creating some dissension within our cousin blog Coming Anarchy.

The authors of CA (correction: two of them), as you might know, are fans of Barnett, but bigger fans of Robert Kaplan (hence the title). Barnett and Kaplan are divided on how the U.S. should deal with China, and their divide really represents two views that are fighting for prevalence in Washington.

Kaplan’s view, which is more in line with official Defense Department policy since the Cold War (and also gets lots of nods on the Japanese right), is that China is an emerging military threat that the U.S. has to contain with ships, airplanes, and missiles. Barnett’s view is that the U.S. has to become partners with China, as the economies of the two countries dictate, rather than let political concerns screw up the countries’ mostly-beneficial symbiosis.

Which view prevails will necessarily determine the future of U.S. policy toward Taiwan. A Kaplan view means that the U.S. has to defend Taiwanese sovereignty at all costs, as a roadblock to Chinese ambition in the Pacific. A Barnett view leads to the U.S. maintaining the status quo in Taiwan until the two countries can be united without force, either through incorporation in a democratic China or as part of a larger EU-style Asian community.

It hurts to admit this, because I’ve been a Taiwan supporter for some time now, but Barnett has a good point. Is it worth it to antagonize China when the U.S. is dependent on China and China is dependent on the U.S.? Wouldn’t it be easier if both countries could focus resources on their own problems, rather than needlessly breathe down each other’s throats? Do we really need to be bracing for World War III right now?

These are all tough questions that Bush and Rumsfeld should be asking themselves. Perhaps the best answer is to do as Barnett advises: maintain the status quo until China and Taiwan have evolved to the point where they can discuss their differences without threatening to lob bombs at each other. I think this is more likely to happen if and when we see closer business ties and more transparent democracy on both sides.

Where do you draw the line?

[N]o sooner do we depart from sense and instinct to follow the light of a superior principle, to reason, meditate, and reflect on the nature of things, but a thousand scruples spring up in our minds concerning those things which before we seemed fully to comprehend. Prejudices and errors of sense do from all parts discover themselves to our view; and, endeavoring to correct these by reason, we are insensibly drawn into uncouth paradoxes, difficulties, and inconsistencies, which multiply and grow upon us as we advance into speculation, till at length, having wandered through many intricate mazes, we find ourselves just where we were, or, which is worse, sit down in a forlorn Skepticism.

– George Berkeley, The Principles of Human Knowledge

In daily life, we assume as certain many things which, on a closer scrutiny, are found to be so full of apparent contradictions that only a great amount of thought enables us to know what it is that we really may believe. In the search for certainty, it is natural to begin with our present experiences, and in some sense, no doubt, knowledge is to be derived from them. But any statement as to what it is that our immediate experiences make us know is very likely to be wrong.

– Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy

The passages above describe eloquently an idea that has long lingered troublingly in the back of my mind, but remained unarticulated due to principally to my own laziness in fleshing it out. I don’t expect to exorcize all of my demons on the subject here, but at least it will be a start.

I’ve never perceived myself as being the type to fall easily into one camp or another on things. Consequently, I either find myself taking a position of devil’s advocate in order to participate in a conversation, or find myself sinking into a disappointed indecision. If I’m around conservatives, for example, I usually feel myself inexorably being pulled in the opposite direction. When around liberals, the opposite is true.

In either instance, I am left wondering, “how can this or that person be so sure about himself or herself?” Furthermore, I wonder, “how can I be so unsure of myself?” Granted, I may be objecting to attitudes more than to opinions in the aforementioned examples, but the questions still remain unanswered.

It’s not that I lack the ability to construct a logical argument and follow through on the conclusion. But on what basis are such conclusions ultimately derived?

Consider the following question: Is abortion right?

Now consider the following two answers to this question:

– Life begins at conception.
– The taking of a life is wrong.
– Abortion takes a life.
– Therefore, abortion is wrong.

Fine, but what about this:

– A fetus is part of a woman’s body.
– A woman has a right to do with her body as she pleases.
– Therefore, if she wishes to have an abortion, she is justified.

They are both simplified examples to be sure, and while I’m no logician, they suit my purposes here. There appears to be no problem with the arguments themselves; the rub lies in the assumptions. Then we are forced to ask: which assumption is right? That just leads to another argument, founded on other, more basic assumptions.

But if we keep digging, what eventually remains? I wonder how often people stop to ask themselves this question. It seems possible that one could rely on “sense and instinct” clothed in the type of arguments above without ever considering the soundness of their assumptions. For practicality’s sake we must we draw a mental line somewhere if we are to avoid a slippery slope that leads to relativism or worse. We can’t go around denying the existence of tables all day long. But where and when should that line be drawn?