About four things

I'm in the library today from dawn to dusk, finishing up this paper that I thought was due tomorrow. Turns out that may not be true. I ran into Graeme on the way in, and he pointed out that while the English copy of our instructions simply says that we have to hand a copy into CIEC before our presentation on the ninth, the Japanese copy says we must do this the day before. Maybe. Literally it says "by about the eighth of March."

Huh? "By about the eighth"? Does that mean the morning of the ninth is okay? I don't understand.

Anyway, I've been walking around with this J-pop song stuck in my head for the last couple of days. It's called Chu-Lip, by Otsuka Ai, and the music video is terribly disturbing. I saw the whole crew on one of the many celebrity talk shows that float around Japanese TV. It was pretty hilarious, and the drag queen with the tutu kept hitting on one of the hosts.

Less hilarious but equally disturbing is the trial of Canadian citizen and refugee Husein Dzhelil in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region , China. Exactly what he stands charged with is unclear. Mr. Dzhelil, who fled XUAR in the mid 1990s, was detained by the authorities in Uzbekistan in March 2006, and handed over to China in June. He was held incommunicado initially, but on the 2nd of February a trial was held that, for the first time, his family was permitted to attend. His treatment is shocking, but not terribly surprising. This is China, after all.

Those close to Husein Dzhelil say he claims that he was tortured after his
extradition to China in June 2006, including by being starved and deprived of
sleep during the first fifteen days of his imprisonment. He has also claimed
that Chinese authorities threatened that he would “disappear” and “be buried
alive” unless he signed a document. This document was later held up as a
confession, although Husein Dzhelil reportedly later claimed he did not know
what he had signed. (Amnesty International)

The Amnesty Page has information on how to write the Prime Minister (of China), and other officials. There's also a link to a year-old open-letter to Stephen Harper, whose integrity when dealing with China's human rights record and Chinese officials has been impeccable. You may remember this article from the Epoch Times about Harper's tumultuous chat with Hu Jintao at APEC in November. Mr. Dzhelil was a hot topic at the time.

Whatever else may be said about the Prime Minister, I appreciate his efforts on this front.

Oh, and one last thing that I'm sure will offend my mom. I've decided to sign up for the Prime Minister's mailing list. I look forward to comparing it to the NDP newsletter, which I have found to encapsulate the worst sort of self-important aggression that has come to characterize the Left Wing. We'll see how it goes.

Home for a rest.

I got back to Toronto last night. Spent about 28 hours airborne, and made a bad show of it the whole way.

To begin with, I missed my connecting flight in Tokyo. I had a total of three flights to catch: one domestic from Kansai Airport in Osaka to Haneda Airport in Tokyo; one from Narita to Detroit; and a final flight from Detroit to Toronto. Knowing it was Christmas and all I got to Kansai with time to spare, but the airport was basically empty and I ended up sitting in the terminal for two hours. From there to Haneda, and then a train ride across the entire goddamn city of Tokyo to get from one airport to the other. I think I'll elaborate on this point.

There are two airports in Tokyo. Haneda has existed in one form or another since the prewar era. Narita was opened in 1978 to much domestic protest. In order to build Narita the government had to confiscate a lot of farmer's land, and as a fairly vocal, grassroots, anti-Narita movement popped up. This was in a country that doesn't see a lot of protest movements. Anyway, the airport was built, and now handles most of Japan's international flights, while Haneda has become a domestic airport. While I can't pretend to speak for the farmers, I too have a problem with Narita airport - namely, it's on the other goddamn side of the city from Haneda. This means that if you, for example, fly in from Osaka, and are on your way to, say, Detroit, there is no way in hell you can make your connecting flight because it takes two hours to get from one airport to the other, not counting processing time at either end. Just for example.

Anyway, I paid the penalty fee to get on the next flight and arrived in Detroit some 15 hours later or so. Saw Pirates of the Caribbean II on the flight, it was quite good. Hung out in Detroit for a few hours, had trouble finding somewhere I could eat, but in the end got a veggie burger and it was delicious. I miss burgers.

The flight from Detroit to Toronto was pretty unevenful. I'd been in transit for a full day by that point and was so exhausted that I slept right through takeoff. When we landed we went straight to customs and I realized I'd left my passport in the seat pocket. By the time I got to speak with someone the plane had already been sent off to Minneapolis, but they're going to check when it lands and hopefully I won't have to go back to the Passport Office and the Japanese Embassy and so on.

It is nice to be home though. My family is nice people.

It's already Christmas in Japan. We've still got 12 hours to go in this time zone though.

Two quick notes.

Two quick notes.

The Epoch times has been praising Harper for taking a hard-ish line on
China's lacklustre human rights record. Hu Jintao and Stephen Harper met for a
brief 15-minute chat in Hanoi this week, and apparently Canada has not been
making friends. Among our sins:

Canada is concerned with the case of Huseyincan Celil, a Canadian citizen and human rights activist who fled China in the 1990s and who is being held in a Chinese prison for alleged terrorism links.

Liu said the case was discussed by the leaders who reiterated their positions. China considers Huseyincan a Chinese citizen. In another potential strain to ties, Ottawa declined to renew the visa of a Chinese diplomat who was reported to have spied on followers of the Falun Gong religious sect in Canada.

In September, Canada granted honorary citizenship in September to the Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader and a sworn enemy of Beijing for his
opposition to Chinese Communist rule in the remote, mountainous territory. (Epoch Times)

Even better, is the fact that the Japanese still don't want to go nuclear. Huzzah. Some 80% of over 1700 Japanese citizens interviewed responded that they were against nuclear armament. And on top of that, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pledged at APEC to keep Japan on the nuke-free path.

"Arafat is a slob. If he put on a suit he'd have a country by now."

Wanna see something funny?

Okay, so, APEC is gathering right now. They're in Hanoi, which I learned the other day got a stock market in the last couple of years, but that's not the point.

As part of APEC our great leaders all get together to take a family photo of sorts. It's a wonderful tradition. They get a chance to dress up in the colourful garb of foreign nations. We get to watch them trying not to look uncomfortable. Everybody gets to enjoy themselves a little bit.

They did it in Korea in 2005. Paul Martin is a pimp.



And of course they did it this year too. The traditional Vietnamese garb is not as black and pajama-like as G.B. Trudeau would have us think (Dad, at least, should know what I'm talking about. I hope). It actually looks quite good on, say, Hu Jintao. Vladimir Putin manages to pull it off even.

Harper not so much. He kind of looks like, maybe, an easter egg?

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]"

Canada

I just put a photo album of my bus trip across Canada onto my Facebook. I've filled it with anecdotes and random chatter, so check it out.

I started in Toronto and arrived three days later in Vancouver at about 5 in the morning. I sat beside two guys, both of whom were in bands, and one girl who got on at Moosejaw and promptly changed seats when the bus started moving. It's quite possible I smelled bad by that point.

The first guy, whom I will call The Drummer because I can't remember his actual name, got on in Sudbury. I had been supposed to get off the bus and stay with my friend Evan (who moved there for god knows what reason) for a night, but the ticket's fine print said that it was not to be, so we scrambled out for dinner and then I got right back on and this drummer sat beside me. He was going to Edmonton, we parted ways in Winnipeg I think. For the life of me I can't remember his name. He was from Ottawa, and was moving to the prairies to do something with advertising. He was making good money too, but you'd have to be to move out to Edmonton. OH! POW! Anyway, The Drummer had some bands lined up that he was going to audition for in his new home town.

The second guy, Colvin, was in an actual band, The Hollow. Check out his awesome leather pants. And he was the shiest person ever too, very nice and down to earth and not at all, how you say, EMO. He'd been living in Toronto for the last few years after graduating with a music degree (incidentally, he'd spent some time in Edmonton I think) but had been in small-town Alberta visiting his parents. He said he also played with a pop singer named FiFi Dalore (NB: transliterations are approximate at best) but for the life of me I cannot find this person on the internet so I can only surmise that he was lying. My second best source for music, my sister, also had not heard of her. But apparently they're touring around Europe shortly. Who knows.

Colvin got off in Calgary to catch a plane back to Toronto, and I continued on my way. We hit the rockies in the early afternoon, and I went a bit camera happy.





Anyway, with very little room left on my camera I arrived in Vancouver and settled in on Colleen's basement apartment's living room's futon. I did some random stuff such as banking, changing money into Yen, watching Madison's Panic jam outside the SUB, shopping for お土産 souvenirs for my host family and generally carousing about. I finally got to go to Dharma Kitchen (oh-em-gee so good) and I saw my friend Tony and randomly bumped into Armand and picked up a story at The Ubyssey that I have not yet typed up because my laptop is caput (sorry Colleen and Carolynne), and I generally made myself a nuisance over at Staples because they wouldn't talk to me about recyclable pens.

Yes, my story is about recyclable pens. It will be coming soon, I promise. If I get it done today like I'm intending, and the Ubyssey website ever gets constructed, I will link you.

And that's enough for now I think. This is Colleen and Colleen's angelic aura :)