Category: Current Events

Militant Chikan Subverting Egyptian Democracy, say activists


The BBC reports on a much more targeted and political use of chikan than I had previously though possible:

Egypt anger over ‘grope attacks’

Protesters want senior government figures to admit responsibility

Hundreds of Egyptians have staged an angry protest against the alleged sexual harassment of female activists and reporters by government supporters.

A number of women say they were assaulted by loyalists from the party of President Hosni Mubarak during voting on a referendum last week.

Dressed in black and wearing white ribbons, the women called for senior officials to resign in shame.

Egypt’s government has blamed the assaults on “emotional tension”.

But the crowds outside Egypt’s Press Syndicate building were resolute, calling for the resignation of senior government officials, including interior minister Habib al-Adli.

“Violating the dignity of women is like violating that of our country,” one banner read.

If only the Japanese people would react so swiftly to combat sexual assault!
Continue reading Militant Chikan Subverting Egyptian Democracy, say activists

Highlights From Today’s State Department Press Briefing


I went to another State Dept. briefing today. I even got to ask a question:

MR. BOUCHER: Okay, we’ve got one more in the back. That’s it?

QUESTION: (Inaudible.) [ed: they censored where I said I’m from West Japan Daily] Private Charles Jenkins has been issued a passport by the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo and he wants to meet with his 91-year-old mother in North Carolina. When is he coming and will he face charges when he arrives?

MR. BOUCHER: I think the issue of charges and the military has already been dealt with. I don’t think there’s anything more on that. You can check with the Pentagon.

As far as when is he coming to see his mother that would be between him and his mother. I don’t have anything on it.

Ouch. Some unscrupulous (kidding!) journalists at TBS ripped off my question and used it in their broadcasts. You can watch it here. At least I wasn’t the only one who thought it was newsworthy!

The same “French” guy I mentioned last time had another colorful exchange with Boucher today. He’s actually Serbian or something (Something Seprus):

QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, since this coming Friday, May 27th, is the beginning of the process of the creation of an independent Kosovo, may I raise a couple of questions without interruptions, however?

MR. BOUCHER: I don’t think we’ve put out an announcement like that.

QUESTION: Excuse me?

MR. BOUCHER: I don’t think that’s quite the right way to characterize May 27th [ed: He’s being sarcastic because May 27th hasn’t happened yet], but go on.
Continue reading Highlights From Today’s State Department Press Briefing

Japan and China United in Pedophilia: the unlikely diplomacy of Saaya Irie

I had heard about this a few days ago but was originally too disgusted to report on it. The very existence of this girl as a sex object makes me question my whole involvement with Japanese society. It looks like, however, she is helping to quell anti-Japanese sentiment in China. Here’s the story:

Busty child reported to ease anti-Japan tension in China

By GEOFF BOTTING
Shukan Bunshun (May 19)

The wave of anti-Japanese sentiment in China continues, more than a month since the first round of demonstrations against the Japanese government’s approval of a controversial school textbook flared throughout the country. Diplomats and politicians on both sides have been trying to diffuse tensions in a flurry of meetings and shuttle diplomacy, but so far these methods have had only limited effect.

At this point, it might seem that a miracle is required to put bilateral relations fully back on track.

Saaya Irie, an 11-year-old Japanese girl, may not be that miracle, but she has clearly played a part in pacifying a certain segment of China’s population, according to Shukan Bunshun.

If anything about Saaya is miraculous, it’s her body — she wears an F-cup bra, though she has yet to reach her teens. So when a photo of her in a bikini was posted on a Chinese Internet forum called “100,” she immediately caused a sensation.

The pic was accompanied by message — rendered in mock Marxist rhetoric — reading: “An 11-year-old Japanese girl with large breasts has a proclamation for all Chinese people! Dear elder brothers, a beautiful young Japanese girl is beseeching you.

“Please stop these anti-Japanese hijinks. If you don’t, I won’t like you anymore.”

At the end of the message, she states that her breasts would “rise up” if the people “unite for the sake of China’s democracy.”

According to an anonymous source described as an Internet expert, the message and photo were posted by someone involved in www.2ch.net, a Japanese online forum.

Thanks, 2ch, for helping bridge the gap. Here’s how the poor girl reacted when confronted with the news:

So how does Saaya feel about all the commotion? A bit frightened, actually, an official at her talent agency says .

“She had a worried look on her face and said, ‘I’m shocked. I wish they’d stop,’ ” the official quotes the starlet as saying when hearing the news. The official added that Saaya finds it hard to believe that she has played any kind of role to smooth bilateral relations.

But in a written message, Saaya says: “I would like to see good relations between Japan and China. If relations are good, I think everyone will be happy.”

Her very career should frighten her. I can’t express enough how sick this makes me. Her parents should be ashamed of themselves. She’s eleven freaking years old! (Here‘s a link if you must know what she looks like)

Aichi Expo a hit after all, dammit

From Japan Today:

No. of expo visitors tops 5 million

NAGOYA — The number of visitors to the World Exposition in Aichi Prefecture surpassed the 5 million mark Monday morning, at a faster clip than the organizers’ anticipated, the Japan Association for World Exposition 2005 said.

The number is one-third of the 15 million visitors the association has set as the goal for the total number of visitors to the expo, which runs from March 25 to Sept 25. (Kyodo News)

Bastards. I’ll never live down missing this thing. It still sucks though, right?

Attack of the Clowns

This just in from the AP:

WASHINGTON – President Bush on Friday said he would veto legislation that would loosen restrictions on embryonic stem cell research and expressed deep concern about human cloning research in South Korea.”

I’m very concerned about cloning,” the president said. “I worry about a world in which cloning becomes accepted.”

Now I’m not saying that I am in favor of cloning. To be quite honest, I am not going to pretend I have sufficient grasp of the scientific or moral issues involved to make an educated decision to clone or not to clone.

But the last thing I’m worried about is a world in which cloning becomes accepted and we have a bunch of Jango Fetts running around on a rampage. (Wait, on second thought, that might solve the Army’s recruitment problem! )

And quite frankly, this kind of crap should not rank too high on the President’s agenda either. If he wants to be concerned about human life, how about starting with our soldiers dying in Iraq.

And since that was an admittedly cheap shot (and about as damned intellectually lazy as one can get), here’s a more legitimate criticism: what about the hundreds of murdered women and children in our ally in the Global War on Terror, Uzbekistan.

Or perhpas those Afghans a couple of our sick fuck soldierstortured to death at Bagram?

And while we’re on the subject of South Korea, if the President wants to express his concern, he might want to begin with the Bank of Korea and its irresponsible behavior in the Forex markets during the past two days.

Fear of protesters will keep Jackie Chan from Taiwan

From the Taipei Times

Movie star Jackie Chan (成龍) says he will stay away from Taiwan for four years to avoid protests over remarks he made calling last year’s presidential elections a joke, TVBS reported yesterday.

At a news conference in China last year, the action hero said Taiwan’s disputed presidential election was “the biggest joke in the world,” provoking calls from politicians in this country to ban his movies.

In an interview in Cannes with TVBS broadcast yesterday, Chan said he wanted to avoid Taiwan for the time being.

“If I come, some people might organize something at the airport,” Chan said, alluding to recent political protests at CKS International Airport.

For the record, I don’t think that Taiwan’s presidential election is a joke. Please don’t throw things at me when I come off the airplane in Taipei next week.

Jenkins obtains a U.S. passport

Charles Jenkins, who spent nearly 40 years in North Korea after deserting his U.S. Army unit in 1965, has been issued a U.S. passport, the embassy in Tokyo said Tuesday.

Jenkins, who served 25 days in a U.S. military brig last year after his court-martial, is believed to be planning a trip to the United States to visit his ailing mother.

Jenkins, 65 and frail, has said he has no plans to return permanently to the United States but would like to visit his home in North Carolina with his family.

His wife, Hitomi Soga, was kidnapped by North Korean agents when she was a 19-year-old student and taken to the reclusive state in 1978.

She married Jenkins soon afterward but was only allowed to return to Japan in 2002 when North Korea reversed years of denial and admitted it had kidnapped 13 Japanese in the 1970s and 1980s. Jenkins and their daughters left North Korea and joined Soga last July.

Earlier this year, he told reporters he wants to see his 91-year-old mother as soon as possible. She lives in a nursing home in Roanoke Rapids, N.C.

The Japan Times: May 18, 2005

Attention Saru and Adam- North Carolina isn’t all that far from DC. Think you can manage to track down Jenkins for an interview when he comes to visit? I can’t wait to read the long version of this guy’s autobiography.

Hey China, don’t ask Japan for any more apologies!

Last friday I had to go into Manhattan to　drop off my passport and visa application at the Taiwanese Consulate Taipei Economic and Cultural Center located near the corner of 42st Street and 5th Avenue, conveniently only about a block away from the New York City branch of the popular Japanese used book store Book Off to look around for a bit and spotted last year’s special March issue of the magazine Bungei Shunju (文藝春秋) containing the two stories that won the Akutagawa literary prize for new writers that year on sale for only $2, and having read the beginning of one of the stories (蛇にピアス / Snakes and Earrings by Hitomi Kanehara) and I decided to pick it up to have something a little lighter to read for the five hour bus ride to DC than the books on Taiwanese history that I had brought with me. As it so happens, I was distracted by one of the more serious articles in the magazine, a piece by a Mr. Ma Li-cheng.

Ma Li-cheng was born in 1946 in the Sichuan province of China. He become a commentator for Hong Kong’s Phoenix Television in 2003, but in August 2004 quit that position and returned to Beijing. He has written several controversial pieces on Chinese/Japanese relations, one of which has been published in Japanese as Japan Doesn’t Need to Apologize to China Anymore (日本はもう中国に謝罪しなくていい）. The following article is a summary of that book’s argument, translated into Japanese and with commentary by Japanese journalist Satoshi Tomisaka. Mister Tomisaka’s comments will be in italics, and I will not put add any of my own, although I may post some of my thoughts after finishing the translation of the entire piece. I am not posting Ma Li-cheng’s article because I agree with everything he says, but I think that he does represent a different position from what is currently avaliable online in the English language, and that readers will find something interesting to think and comment on.

This post will be a centralized table of contents for the article, and as I translate each section I will post it in a new blog entry and update the table of contents below with a hyperlink to the appropriate post.

Hey China, don’t ask Japan for any more apologies!

By Ma Li-cheng
Edited by Satoshi Tomisaka

Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: China has also invaded Japan
Part 3: Set aside the history probem
Part 4: Japanese nationalism
Part 5: The ‘Chinese Threat Theory’
Part 6: To a ‘Normal country’

My first State Dept. Press Briefing


In my search for gainful employment I began an internship at the Nishi-Nippon Shimbun last month, and so far it has been pretty rewarding. I already have a press pass, making me a real live journalist (now I just need to learn how to write!) and yesterday I got to attend my first Daily Press Briefing at the State Department. I’ll be going to many of these and other similar functions in the future so let me know if you have any questions you want asked (especially on Japan issues).

My boss hailed us a cab, as he so often does, and we arrived at Foggy Bottom a little late, but they didn’t seem to mind. All I had to do was present my press pass, give my nationality, walk through the metal detector, and I was free to enter. A short hallway led to a huge wooden door emblazoned with the words “Carl T. Rowan Press Briefing Room”. It was a scene I had seen dozens of times on TV: a well-dressed Richard Boucher speaking calmly on every world issue you can think of, reporters asking angry questions, all in an immaculate, velvety-blue room designed to look good on television.

A few things surprised me about the visit: a majority of the reporters were 30-something “hardcore journalist” types who had obviously done their homework and then some and seemed to know Boucher personally. They asked questions like this one about the Newsweek story that got people killed in Afghanistan:

QUESTION: Richard, just to follow up on the timeline — and excuse me if I’m wrong — it’s not a week from Monday, I think it was two weeks from Monday that the actual Newsweek thing came out, right?

They called him Richard! How cool is that?

Another thing: Richard Boucher is sharp as a tack. Say what you want about the State Department, but you can’t claim that they hire idiots. Check out this exchange between Mr. B and an angry French (?) man who sat in front of me:

QUESTION: Mr. Richard Holbrooke, a close friend to Nicholas Burns, stated in Washington Post, “No way U.S. troops to leave Kosovo.” I’m quoting. He predicted that Kosovo will become independent, there is no way about that, there is no question about that, and Montenegro will separate from Serbia. Any comment on this multiple division of the Balkans in the early stage by the U.S. policy? What exactly you are trying to do in that area?

MR. BOUCHER: We’re not making predictions. We’re setting up a process where the outcomes can be decided in a way that stabilizes the region, that helps the region as a whole find its destiny in Europe and Euro-Atlantic institutions.

QUESTION: Mr. Boucher, to be honest with you, and I hate to make comparisons, my only weapon is, as I’ve told you many times in this room, history. And allow me to ask how the two gentlemen, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke, and besides with them, the State Department itself, ignore totally the fact that Kosovo, the so-called sarcoma-kaposis, was created by Adolf Hitler, transferred Albanians from the mainland to fight the Serbs in order to control southeast of Europe seeking an exodus via the port of Thessaloniki to the Aegean Sea.

MR. BOUCHER: I don’t think either — first of all, Nicholas Burns and Richard Holbrooke are two different people so I wouldn’t lump them together in terms of their views. Second of all, I don’t think either one ignores history. I will speak for Under Secretary Burns, since he works for us, and the point here is to overcome that history, is to have a future that’s different from the past, and not to — not to repeat mistakes of the past but rather to move forward where this region can find peace and stability within our Euro-Atlantic framework that makes them part of the whole and not separate chunks to create problems.

QUESTION: But since the end of the Second World War, America was trying to reverse whatever Hitler did, with only exception of Kosovo. Why?

MR. BOUCHER: I don’t think I would characterize U.S. policy as that way.

Notice how Boucher is not only somehow able to formulate an answer to the man’s question (which was delivered in a thick accent from the back of the room) but also manages to totally refute his claim and dress him down.

The coolest thing of all was that at the end of the conference everyone got up and huddled around Boucher for an “off the record briefing”. Obviously, I won’t tell you what was said, but it’s generally known that it’s an opportunity for reporters to ask more candid questions in exchange for agreeing to quote the spokesman as “a senior State Department official”.

I almost feel like a real journalist. Now all I need to do is find someone who will pay me!

WP: North Korea’s decreasing isolation

The Washington Post has an interesting article about closer ties between North and South Korean businesses and the South Korea’s increasingly positive attitude toward their brothers across the border. Some interesting points:


Despite U.S. Attempts, N. Korea Anything but Isolated
Country’s Regional Trade Boom Hints At Split Between Administration, E. Asia

North Korean housewares are the rage these days. The Lotte department store sold out its first shipment of North Korean pots and pans last December and followed up with a bigger sale in January, when another 7,000 pieces of cookware were carted off by eager shoppers. Lee, 39, is now working on the store’s largest North Korean venture yet: New lines of cutlery and frying pans go on sale within the next two weeks.

South Korea, China and Russia have increased their trade with the North, boosting its tattered economy. Fueled by imports of energy and manufactured goods, and exports of minerals, seafood and agricultural products, North Korea’s foreign trade increased 22 percent in two years, from $2.9 billion in 2002 to $3.55 billion in 2004; these levels are the highest since 1991, according to KOTRA, a South Korean government organization that monitors North Korean trade.

Analysts say North Korea may be calculating that if the United States increases pressure, Pyongyang’s other benefactors in Asia may be willing to mend fences, even after a nuclear test.
Continue reading WP: North Korea’s decreasing isolation