Osama bin Layton
Today is a day for general musings. It's rainy and miserable and I have these photos from my weekend trip to Nara but I don't think I'm going to get around to posting them for a while. There's too much stuff going on in the world right now, and I am spending way too much time staring at a monitor as is. I'm going to logoff, I think, maybe do some homework, maybe go to the gym. Maybe I'll put up those pictures tomorrow.
A guy I know is in Uganda
Let’s start on a positive note. Sort of. Here’s a little tidbit from a former Ubyssey-er. John Woodward has an article on CBC.ca today that documents the energy crises in Uganda that began four years ago.
North Korea still on the table
Getting back to Korea, I know I tried to point out yesterday how crazy Kim Jong-il is, but then today I ran across this little tidbit from an old CBC.ca biography that I just had to quote.
According to state officials, he was born in February 1942 at his father's guerrilla base on Mount Paektu, North Korea's highest mountain. "At the time of his birth there were flashes of lightning and thunder, the iceberg in the pond on Mount Paektu emitted a mysterious sound as it broke, and bright double rainbows rose up," the official lines read.
[…]
In 1964 he graduated from the Kim Sung Il University where legend has it he wrote 1,500 books, all of which are stored in the state's library. It is also said that he wrote six operas, all of which are better then any in the history of music, and designed the Juche Tower, a 150-metre tower that commemorates his father. (Source)
On the international scene, China, Russia and the US have all publicly ruled out an armed response, while talks on sanctions and blockades remain stalled. While US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton continues to push the six-party talks, Japan, the current president of the security council, continues to push unilateral sanctions, but says it will not take part in cargo inspections, which are considered an act of war and are therefore banned under Article 9 of the constitution.
China is still a horrible place to live
Even putting aside talk of coal mines and “death-vans,” Chinese ex-pat Yang Dazhi has a chilling story of persecution in Communist China. As much laud and honour as China may be getting these days for its transformation into the latest Asian miracle economy, it’s difficult to see what makes it that different from arms-dealing "terrorist regimes" like North Korea, or fascist, anti-Semitic Iran.
Not that we should be that hard on them, really. Among other things, we, the collective plutocrats of the West, have built our fortune largely on the blood and sweat of the lower-class that came before us. The same thing can be said about environmental pollution, or, say, nuclear weapons. The tricky part is, that in all the talk of China being a nation of socialists, or at worst dirty communists, it more closely resembles a fascist dictatorship like Nazi Germany, right down to the nitty-gritty of the internment camps. It’s gotten so bad that even the US Congress is beginning to take note.
David Kilgour, a former Canadian cabinet minister, was among those who testified. "The government of China and its hospitals, detention centers and other agencies in numerous parts of the country, has over the past half decade put to death a large, but unknown number of Falun gong prisoners of conscience,” he said. “Most of the victims were convicted of nothing. They were murdered by medical professions for their vital organs. These organs were, virtually, simultaneously seized for sale at high prices, often to foreigners."
It’s so easy to be a fascist state these days, what with ideas of “cultural differences” and “moral relativism” sprouting up in all the right places. But this guy can’t get away with it anymore. Neither can these guys. Meanwhile, rubes like Jack Layton continue to press for Canadian withdrawal from crisis points like Afghanistan. Whatever happened to Human Rights and anti-fascism?
This will make you laugh. "MR LAYTON: CANADA MUST CHANGE MISSION IN WESTERN EUROPE [1944]"
posted by Matt @ 11:28 AM
4 Comments:
so much things going on eh?
heh, I don't think I will believe what they say about Kim. Unitarian (sp) states tends to love making up stories to propagate their own people, "making out a God".
and they did say Mao was "China's greatest hero", but in the end China still suffers from the mistakes he has made. not to mention I don't believe in judging people by their past. Just because he could be great, doesn't means he will get tripped by accident in his next step. world is a beautiful place for surprises and random things.
I see that you're pretty sensitive to countries that break humanitarianism. my parents always tell me news about how much people suffers in China, and how much that I am lucky to leave that place. Personally I am thankful that I have got out of there. I think back then I really dispised(sp) the Communist Party as well. but after living in another country and watching over the news about China, strangely i'm slowly losing my grip on how much i dispised them.
my biology professor told us that there was a "sick" scientist that did a interesting experiment on rats. what he did is he caged ~50 rats in one small cage, and only 6 in another cage that has the same size, and he measured the hormon contends of those rats after being placed in those cages for a very long time. the result is that the rats from the crowded cage have about 3 times the amount of cortisol (whic is a hormone that triggers anxiety), and another hormone signal for adrenaline (which i forgot the name) than the rat from the rats of the other cage.
another interesting result from the experiment is that female rats tend to be less "feminine", in the sense that they are less likely to produce baby rats, or do they actively sexual reproduce with male rats than the females from the other cage. in fact, they even fight violently against the male and other female rats for living space.
what my point here is that whenever a country is crowded with population, tensions between people are very high not just because of the society, but rather natural. we ourselves have a tendency to want to get rid of others when there is too little resource for everyone. humanitarianism fades. and the only ways to solve the problem are either getting more resource, or be less humane.
The US and western nations have always been accusing the Chinese government, but how much resource have they donated to solve the problem? and did they not use the excuse of China being a Communist state so their aid won't be given to the people who need them? can they even provide enough resource to actually support all the poor who cannot get enough resource in a nation of 13 billion?
after i thought about those, I think the Chinese government is actually doing the right thing, even though it did involve killing some innocents, because there is just no other way.
"there are problems in this universe in which there is no answers" (quoting from Dune the movie.. as cheesy as it sounds)
btw, your funny link is not working, i was so dissapointed.
Thanks for the pointer, I've fixed the link.
I think your analogy to the rat experiment is very poignant. But I don't think that vindicates the Chinese government for organ harvesting and concentration camps.
true, the experiment doesn't explain human behaviors and rats do have differences from human. I was just trying to raise a possibility that the reason Germany used to practice fascism and now China has a similar style might not because of the government's fault, but rather a biological response. i just don't know how can a person live with a good ethics and moral standard if the rich of the country survives with bribery and deceive and the poor with endless labour, and the whole country worships rumors of heros with God-like extreme achievements.
hey there!
seems like you've turned your blog into a current events and commentary site (as it should be anyways~ that's the original purpose of blogs:P)
anyways, the North Korean thing is sure a big shock to international order. The quotes you put up there just shows how preposterous this stout dude is (as in figure, not attribute~ lol). The quotes make me laugh, as it leaves me wondering the extent of lunacy/ostentious grandeur that can go into a political figure; not that President Chen of Taiwan is doing any better~
I was just thinking yesterday what I'd do for a short blurb for the upcoming issue of Perspectives~ maybe N.Korea is a good topic~ I was also thinking if I should pursue the same topic for my grad school proposal~ it must be a pretty interesting topic to research about.
hope you're enjoying Japan~ you went to Nara? that's where all the temples and shrines are right? (as much as I can remember from Asia 344 and 345) keep the page updated with current events~ I'm trying to keep up with all that's happening in the world but is often cut short by all that's happening in the little community called UBC (which makes me feel how petty and worthless I am in this world~ lol)anyways, keep up with ur updates, I'll log on from time to time:D
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