Assassins!

Every now and again I run into something that reminds me just how much Japan still resembles a third world country. Sometimes it's the little rickshaws. Sometimes its opinions on homosexuality. Sometimes it's political assassinations.

Take for instance the shooting of Nagasaki Mayor Itcho Ito Tuesday evening.

Ito, who was campaigning for Sunday's mayoral election, was shot twice in the back at about 7:52 p.m. by a man police identified as Tetsuya Shiroo, 59.

Shiroo is second in command of the local gang Suishin-kai, which is affiliated with the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, the nation's largest criminal syndicate with 40,000 members, police said. (The Japan Times)

That the gangsters are accepted as a natural part of Japanese society is tautological. But the rhetoric usually goes that Japanese gangsters are more like businessmen, with a couple shady cards up their sleeves. More and more it's looking like this whole pre-meditated affair has more to do with extremist right-wing politics than it does with "land deals, construction work and other development projects".

It is not the first time a mayor has been shot in Nagasaki. Hitoshi Motoshima was shot and seriously injured in January 1990 by a rightwing extremist after he refused to retract remarks that Emperor Hirohito, known posthumously as Showa, was partially responsible for World War II.

Nagasaki and Hiroshima are the only two cities ever hit by nuclear weapons. Their mayors have traditionally been pacifists who have appealed for world peace.

[...]

The National Police Agency said in its annual report last year that the country's estimated 10,000 hardcore rightists have become increasingly violent in recent years.

Little yellow crescent moons.

The blogosphere has been having a bad run of it recently. A number of clever, older bloggers have taken it upon themselves to highlight the missing scale on the underbelly of the beast. I mentioned two articles yesterday, but the conversation has snowballed. Terry Glavin connected me with Oliver Kamm's commentary ("The blogosphere, in short, is a reliable vehicle for the coagulation of opinion and the poisoning of debate.") which connects to the disastrous debate between blogger Guido Fawkes and veteran Guardian editor Michael White. ("It's all commentary.")

Which of course I wouldn't feel so bad about if I hadn't checked into China Confidential this morning and had my stubborn optimism dashed against the rocky shores of 'Fools, knaves, blowhards and nuts', more specifically that last one. I have an immense amount of respect for the Reporter - his content and his rhetoric, seperately - but recently he's begun mutating into something horrible, horrible. Commenting on the recent, peaceful, Moqtada al-Sadr-instigated demonstrations in Iraq.

The Islamist scum chanted: "Get out occupier!" They waved Iraqi flags and banners saying "Down with Bush, Down with America."

By midday their wannabe Iraqi fuhrer--a piece of human filth that should have been exterminated years ago--had not made an appearance at the rally.

And later, reviewing developments of the Iranian nuclear program.

Iranian monster-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made the announcement with
pomp and ceremony at the heart of the regime's nuclear program, the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

Question: Why is he still alive?

Another question: Why are the Shiite and Sunni Islamist scum of Iraq still alive?

I mean, seriously, how can you condemn the holocaust and incite racial hatred in the same article? There was a day when China Confidential was about China. Those were fiery days, bold days, interesting days. But there's a certain lack of maturity being displayed here that I don't feel I need to elaborate on.

Maybe there's something to what Oliver Kamm was saying. "The great innovation of web-based commentary is that readers may select minutely the material they are exposed to. The corollary is that they may filter out views they find uncongenial." I mean, it's not like there's a lack of news concerning Asian involvement in the Middle East. It's the kind of news that keeps us out of the hyena pen.

Take for instance monday's visit by Iraqi PM Nouri al-Maliki to Japanese PM Shinzo Abe's residence, and the reassurances from Japan that support for the Iraqi reconstruction will continue.

Maliki said Iraq is making a new start for the future, having overcome many problems already. He indicated the country hoped for further support from Japan.

Japan's contribution to the reconstruction of Iraq has been both financial assistance and Self-Defense Forces activities.

Ground SDF troops were based in Samawah in southern Iraq for two years.

In addition, Japan has extended yen loans of up to $3.5 billion (417 billion yen) and grants of more than $1.5 billion. The financial assistance has gone toward improving infrastructure, such as electric power facilities, officials said.

In Monday's meeting, Abe also told Maliki that Japan will offer yen loans to rebuild water supply systems in Basra, southern Iraq. (Asahi Shimbun)

Now there's an uplifting story. Cheer up Reporter. It's not all yellow-stars and car-bombs and knocking off Philistines.

Quit being such a damn Fuhrer.

A petition worth signing. (maybe)

I've been signing up for too many mailing lists recently. My latest acquisition is Avaaz.org, a group that coordinates petitions on issues of international justice. Their newest burning cross is the fresh round of talks in the mid-east being urged on Israel by the Arab League.

Arab leaders are making a serious peace offer, and the world supports them. Ordinary Israelis want negotiations too - but their leaders risk losing this rare chance. Talks just about security will never bring peace. (Avaaz)

The offer centres on an Arab peace plan rejected by Israel outright in 2002, but this time round the word is that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is reacting more positively, if still skeptically. Anyway, the pillars of the international community are generally rallying around the Arab push, notable UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana.

Mr Ban told the summit that "the Arab peace initiative is one of the pillars of the peace process... [it] sends a signal that the Arabs are serious about achieving peace."

Correspondents say no-one expects any breakthroughs, but the fact that Saudi Arabia, the regional powerhouse, is being so pro-active means this will be one of the most scrutinised Arab League summits. (BBC)

So I signed the petition, because it seemed like a no-brainer. And then I ran into this fiery critique over at China Confidential. It's from Wednesday. It's titled Understanding The Saudi Plot to Destroy Israel.

The official version of the kingdom's peace plan calls for all Arab countries to formally recognize Israel's existence and establish relations with Israel if it withdraws from all land held since the 1967 war, recognizes the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with East Jerusalem as its capital, and provides the so-called right of return for all Palestinian refugees. (China Confidential)

The general thrust being to flood Israel with Arabs, making it a dually-religious state, and thus not Israel at all. The pseudonymous Reporter seems to think this is a bad thing of course. I'm not so convinced, but that doesn't make the execution of such a plan any less duplicitous . I mean, God, at least Iran is being honestly malicious.

Nuclear-arming Iran, which has vowed to destroy Israel the old fashioned way--through blood and fire--is skeptical about the Saudi piece-by-piece plan. But Iran's energy-starved ally, China, is a believer. Sun Bigan, Beijing's special envoy to the Middle East, is said to be urging patience and restraint, advising Iranian monster-in-chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that a deescalation of his country's nuclear standoff with the West would allow for implementation of the Saudi scheme. (China Confidential again)

Which brings us back to Asia. To say that China is afraid of an escalation in the Middle-East is an understatement. China is the world's second-largest (second-worst?) oil consumer, and even its recent pax with oil-rich Russia is not enough to wean it off its Arabian addictions. (hint: not talking about coffee) I find myself torn in choosing sides though. Iran's President is a terrible, terrible man, and China's policies are not much better, but if Chinese money is one of the keys to extinguishing the inferno in the Middle-East...

I just don't know what to think. It's too complicated. I give up. I'm going to go read some web comics.

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.

China Exploring Africa's Biodiesel Crop Potential

From the erudite China Confidential. Look for the third entry down, same title.

Energy-starved China is expanding its African oil safari to include oil from plants--the kind that can be used as feedstock for biodiesel production.

[...]

China, the world's second largest oil importer after the US, is showing significant interest in biodiesel as an alternative fuel. China has become the fourth largest--and the fastest growing--motor vehicle market. Under pressure from its own citizens and the international community to seriously address the worsening air polution problem, the government recently set a goal that that by the year 2020, 20 percent of Chinese energy is to be derived from renewable resources. Hence, the interest in securing supplies of feedstock.

Rack one up for China. Not that we should be singing the praises of the CCP mind you. The Middle Kingdom's human rights record in Africa is notoriously bad. At the end of all this, we are as likely to see exploitation under conditions reminiscent of colonial histories as we are to see a a decline in greenhouse gasses.

And then there's the question of small arms and munitions trade. I've commented on this before, but China is running a sort of oil-for-guns program, and the kinds of people they trade with are not the good kind of people.

Togo and the Congo are two countries of focus. In competing for commodities and and, Beijing's energy behemoths, which answer to the Chinese government (controlled by the Communist Party) and not to stockholders, have important competitive advantages over their European and US rivals. Chinese firms can offer African leaders an array of incentives--from presidential palaces and sports stadiums to guns and cash gifts--to achieve company aims and advance the national interest.

You win some you lose some, I guess.

Kim Jong Nam

Come on in. Grab a seat. Let's talk politics.

Me and politics haven't been to close recently, we've been in a test seperation period, seeing other anthropomorphic theoretical paradigms, super-intelligent shades of the colour blue, whatever. But this morning I got to thinking about the old ball and chain again. And here's why.

The eldest known son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has left his residence in Macau and is in Beijing preparing to travel to Pyongyang for his father's 65th birthday, South Korean media reported on Monday. (CNN)

The article goes on to talk about how this prodigal son, Kim Jong Nam, has fallen out with his father over a botched attempt to get into Japan on a forged Dominican passport, (he says he wanted to go to Tokyo Disneyland) and is no longer named as the successor. Moreover, he has been the target of at least two assassination attempts. Kim Jong Il, getting on at 65, has been mumbling about passing on his rule to a military junta, and has set up an Obama-style investigatory committee to this end.



And that's not even considering the implications of the son of one of two remaining communist dictators in the world being permitted to carry on his playboy lifestyle in an international gambling centre in Chinese territory. I hadn't realized before the degree to which the Chinese and North Korean governments were, uhm, interwoven. It also indicates that Great Leader Kim considers his first born expendable. It also adds a new twist to old news like this:

"It's another piece of the puzzle," said Jorge Godinho, an anti-money
laundering expert at University of Macau.

Macau is where North Korea did most of its international banking until late
2005, when Washington accused the city's Banco Delta Asia of helping Pyongyang
launder money and engage in other illicit activities, and threatened to take
action.

The Macau government, under U.S. pressure, froze $24 million in North
Korea-linked accounts, prompting Pyongyang to boycott the six-way talks for over
a year until December. (Reuters)

The Reuters article also has a more detailed breakdown of the dynstic tribulations in the hermit kingdom. It's fairly fascinating.

Anyway, I think that's about all the time I have today. My parents and sister are back in Toronto and I am so far behind on my thesis paper it's not even Seinfeld.

Next time: Chinese bio-fuel plantations in Africa!

Nukes and Pi

You may remember this crazy Japanese guy I talked about back in October who set a record by reciting pie to 100 000 digits. The Japan Times recently ran a feature on him and his life. He's a pretty fascinating guy, mathematically and metaphysically.

Also, the 6-Party talks are set to resume this morning, albeit in a rather underwhelming way. Though the meeting looks good in theory, it doesn't sound like anybody is really expecting it to, how do you say, amount to anything.

"I anticipate it won't be easy to seek substantive measures to resolve the situation partly because the talks will be exploratory in nature," Chun [the South Korean delegate]told reporters after meeting the other envoys except for the North Koreans. (Reuters)

サラリメン

Went to a Christmas party last night hosted at a cafe called Spoon. It was put on by the German language classes at KGU (Kwansei Gakuin University), and was a ton of fun. Anke, the token German exchange student, was I think made into a celebrity for a day. She ate it up.

I was talking with Kenta this morning about an article he'd been reading over Saturday brunch. I can't find it in English, but the gist of it is that the government has passes a law that will extend the legal maximum of hours a company can have its employees work per year. This is bad news for a nation that is already facing a mounting suicide crises, and media-flurries over deaths from overwork.

Not to mention the fact that お父さん (otousan, father) isn't even coming home this weekend. Nishinomiya is in central Japan, in between the major port city of Kobe to the west and Osaka to the east, which is the second largest and second most important city in Japan. But he spends most of his time closer to 東京 (toukyou, Tokyo), and has an apartment there that he stays in during the week. Like most Japanese males, お父さん works hours that are crazy, and as Christmas approaches getting crazier. He's a nice guy, but I don't see him much.

Generalizations about an Oriental or Confucian work ethic aside, it goes without saying that the employment culture here is very different. I don't want to over-state the importance of life-time employment policies, because to be honest they only started to appear in the 1970s, apply to a minority of Japanese, and are already showing signs of decline. But in terms of personal identity, I think corporations play an integral role for Japanese (by which I suppose I mean Japanese men). Japanese businessmen spend a lot of time eating and drinking together, building team work, attending mandatory group picnics and the like.

Anyway, I could blather on for some time about this, but the most concise way I can think of expressing this is to look at the language. A Japanese professor in a TV show we were watching in class on Friday pointed out that in English you say "get a job", but the equivalent phrase in Japanese is quite different. The phrase is 会社に入る　(kaisha ni hairu), and it literally means "enter a company". The verb is the same one you use when you are, for instance, entering a house, or a bath for that matter.

Anyway, that's all for today. I'm going to see ルミナリエ (ruminarie, Luminaria) tomorrow night, it's a spectacle of Christmas lights in Kobe. I'll post pictures, of course.

PS: Some worrying news from Tokyo as the resident conservative government pushes Japan's political climate back towards the pre-war Imperial Rescript on Education in the eleventh hour of the current session of parliament, and at the same time upgrades the Special Defense Forces to a ministry-level body. Some more reasons not to elect a party headed by the grandson of a warcriminal.

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.

Getting back to the Bomb

Today is the start of a Kwansei Gakuin University's 学際 gakusai (school festival), a 6-day event extending through the weekend and all the way to monday. There are a lot of holidays at Kwansei, and I'm making use of this one to go to the beach tomorrow with a bunch of friends.

Yes it's November. Yes it's warm enough to swim. So there.

Let's talk about the DPRK again. At first glance things look promising, with the Six Party Talks purportedly restarting "soon". China, America and North Korea have already held one informal meeting yesterday and are promising to get down to business. Kim Jong-Il is doing his best to look repentant following mounting foreign pressure that looks ready to stove in the hull of his regime - this chiefly means that the blockade on luxury items that Kim uses to buy the support of domestic power blocs (i.e. generals) is putting a dangerous strain on his resources.

But Japan's foreign ministry looks set to blunt the precision instruments of multilateral diplomacy.

Japan cannot accept North Korea's return to the six-party talks on its nuclear program if it comes to the negotiating table as a country possessing nuclear weapons, Foreign Minister Taro Aso was quoted as saying Tuesday.

While Japan welcomed the prospect of a new round of talks, it "does not intend to accept North Korea's return to the talks on the premise that it is a country that owns nuclear weapons," public broadcaster NHK quoted Aso as saying. (Mainichi Shinbun)

The Foreign Ministry has always been a bit of a wildcard in Japanese politics. Koizumi, the previous Prime Minister, enlisted his cabinet in attempts to reign in autonomous tendencies within the ministry in 2001 or so, but largely failed. It's therefore important to emphasize that this opinion is not held in the highest echelons of elected government.

Meanwhile, Kyodo News agency quoted Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki as telling reporters late Tuesday that the six-party talks were the best framework to resolve the standoff over North Korea's nuclear program.

That doesn't necessarily make the remarks less worrying though. Especially when you put it in the context of, say, this article, also from Mainichi Shinbun: Top LDP policymaker says possession of nuclear arms permitted under Constitution.

Another Bureaucratic Scandal!

Here's a bit of a shocker for you: Japanese high schools have not been teaching the entirety of the mandatory curriculum. For the last several years principals at various schools have been trimming down student's course load, chiefly, they say, because of the recent reduction in the school week, which went from six days to just five.

According to a Kyodo News survey of prefectural boards of education and top high schools nationwide, as of Thursday, 213 schools in 35 prefectures have not been teaching all the compulsory subjects, including world history. The number of seniors affected is estimated to be more than 20,000.

[...]

Takashi Tomita, head of the Fukushima prefectural board of education, admitted he was aware of the problem in 2003, when he became a principal of Fukushima High School.

"As weekly school days have been shortened to five (from six since 2002), class hours were reduced. We had no choice but (to omit some compulsory subjects) to have (students) advance to universities. Now I regret it," he said.

The schools will give the seniors extra classes to catch up and will discuss with the school boards how to deal with the people who have already graduated. (Japan Times)

The Japanese bureaucracy has been rocked by a series of scandals in the past ten years or so, most famously a high-level cover-up of HIV-infections from blood transfusions that blew open in 1996. The dirty blood was supplied through a inept government-funded agency that employed pricey retired bureaucrats from the Phramaceutical Affairs Bureau within the Ministry of Health and Welfare.

Since that time, the once-proud Japanese bureaucracy has taken a clobbering in the public arena, for everything from sex scandals to entertainment cost over-runs. This most recent affair, local and only mildly inconvenient, is just another connecting right hook in the ongoing struggle.

It comes at an inconvenient time for the left though. With Prime Minister Abe chomping at the bit to further centralize the education system and bring in his own little dirigisme of "nationalist education" - that's code for glossing over wartime atrocities such as Nanjing and Comfort Women - the leftists in Japan are going to be hard pressed to keep the Prime Minister's Office out of this mess.

Miscellania

A few things to quickly mention, loose ends to wrap up, and news to dish out.

Yesterday was an important milestone. As of today, I have been in Japan for one month and one day.

That article that I talked about ages ago is up on the Ubyssey's website: Recycled pen trend comes to campus. (sounds juicy, no?)

Speaking of the Ubyssey, my favourite campus newspaper has been added to the sidebar. Check out the sexy new website. The other new side dishes are blogs from fellow exchange students Brookie (very proudly of Texas) and Magnus. (very sarcastically of Norway)

In response to the roguest of the rogues' recent actions, my favourite, funny-looking, double-minority politician is headed to the Far East. Condie Rice was dishing out optimism left, right, and centre over the weekend, encouraging China to live up to its sanction obligations against long-time-ally North Korea.

She said, "I am not concerned that the Chinese are going to turn their backs on their obligations. I don't think they would have voted for a resolution that they did not intend to carry through on. And let's remember: no one has an interest in seeing the trade in dangerous materials or weapons of mass destruction. That is, if anything, more destabilizing to the neighbors than even to the interests of the United States." (Epoch Times)

It's nice to hear the US tooting the multilateral horn every now and then. Now that the White House has broken its silence and confirmed what Russia has been saying for weeks I expect we'll be hearing a lot from them over the next few days. If the rhetoric stays this moderate, I'll be willing to give GWB and staff some points for diplomacy.

Not a lot of points mind you.

High-level Japanese politicians seem to be very aware of the need for multilateral and bilateral dialogue, and moderate language. But not surprisingly, it looks like some of the most radical language is coming from lower down.

"There are concerns that North Korea may launch large-scale terrorist attacks or sly and heinous activities in retaliation to additional sanctions," said Hiroto Yoshimura, deputy director general of the National Police Agency.

Yoshimura was addressing the first meeting of a security task force that he heads since North Korea's Oct. 9 atomic test, according to NHK.

Yoshimura told task force members to step up security and intelligence efforts to head off possible retaliation by North Korea. (Japan Times)

And that would be all for the day, if it weren't for some terrible news my old friend Evan told me this morning. He's going through a rough time, and my thoughts are with him and his family.

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]"

Some reasons to maybe not be so worried after all.

Among other things, even if Pyongyang’s touted “nuclear test” turns out to be the real deal, and Russia is saying that it is, it’s unlikely that Kim Jong-Il has the capability to fit his nukes on a Taepodong or the like.

Prototype nuclear weapons in the past have been physically very large and North Korea's is likely to be the same, James Acton, of the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (Vertic) in London, says.
"If North Korea has just tested a first generation device then it is currently likely to be too big to fit on a missile," he said. (BBC)

Moreover, while fears of an Asian conventional arms race are legitimate, it’s important to keep in mind that for historical reasons Japan is one of the most vocal opponents of nuclear weapons, and nuclear technology in general, and is unlikely to acquire a Bomb of its own. If it chose to, Japan could no doubt develop the technology in a matter of days, but the domestic and international opposition to such a measure is broad-based, and very, very robust.

The nuclear topic has been sacrosanct in Japan for decades and the Japanese public remains vehemently opposed to becoming a nuclear power.
While Japan's hawkish new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has won popularity with his tough stance towards Pyongyang and calls for a more assertive foreign policy, persuading Japanese people that they need nuclear weapons would be a tough task.
Equally, Mr Abe will be aware of legal constraints - such as the NPT - that prevent Japan having nuclear weapons, and also of the considerable international opposition, not least from main ally the US, to such a move. (BBC)

From the same source, we have people claiming that a nuclear DPRK may actually be the key to stabilizing the region. As crazy as that sounds, an internationally-relevant Pyongyang may be the key to finally injecting some maturity into Washington’s policies. It goes without saying that nobody in East Asia is interested in a nuclear arms race.

"Anything that causes regional instability is not in China's interests," says Dr Pinkston. Beijing needs stability so that it can focus on its economic development, he says.
Any economic dip could impact badly on a society already coping with rapid change and severe income disparities.
Popular unrest is one of the Chinese political elite's greatest concerns and so maintaining a stable society is the priority, he says.
Countries around the region will more likely put considerable effort into pursing a diplomatic course rather than moving rapidly to arm themselves further.
A North Korean nuclear test could, in fact, be the foundation for better regional dialogue and a more unified effort to put pressure on Pyongyang, says Nicholas Szechenyi of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies. (BBC)

The linchpin will be Pyongyang, and if Pyongyang behaves well it all hangs on how GWB reacts. So far, Kim’s been biding his time, and Washington seems committed to a multilateral approach through the Security Council. I think the most threatening the White House has gotten is to mention, of all things, economic sanctions and setting up a naval blockade of sorts.

And thankfully, despite the poignant timing by Pyongyang, Ban Ki-Moon is still poised to replace Kofi Annan as Secretary General of the UN. Kofi, I think, has been there over-long.

With the support of most of the Security Council and of all of the permanent members, the UN General Assembly can appoint Ban to take over after current Secretary General Kofi Annan's mandate is over at the end of the year.
In Ban, the Security Council, which has the ultimate say in choosing the new head, gets a balanced and neutral choice. His appointment would satisfy both the calls for an Asian secretary general and the United States, which considers South Korea to be a staunch ally.
"The Americans would certainly support the South Korean candidacy because that's sort of a validation of South Korea, which has been under the American orbit since the 1950s," Dr. Arne Kislenko, who teaches history and international relations at Ryerson University and University of Toronto, told CBC.ca. (CBC)

And in case you needed to be told, the entire goddamn world has condemned the test, including the Security Council. Some of the more amusing condemnations come from India, Pakistan, and Venezuela. Except Tehran, of course, which makes some good points about Western hypocrisy, but somewhat trips up its high horse when it buys its plutonium COD from the DPRK.

Then again, the Epoch Times reminds us just how close and worrying the ties are between NK, China, and fascist, Islamist Iran, Syria, and Sudan.

And Kim Myong-chol, unofficial spokesman for the DPRK, lets us know just how crazy "the greatest iron-willed, brilliant commander" Kim Jong-Il really is.

Holy Fuck.

North Korea performs its first-ever nuclear test
Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Monday it had performed its first nuclear weapons test, an underground explosion that defied international warnings but was hailed by the communist nation as a "great leap forward" for its people. (Globe and Mail)

The Situation

The most detailed account of the nuclear situation I have found. Washington Post

Overview of North Korean Nuclear Activities. CBC

Historical Overview of North Korea. CBC

The Korean People's Army is made up of 1.2 million troops, making it the fourth-largest military in the world. North Korea spends more than 30 per cent of its gross domestic product on its military. About 37,000 of those troops guard the demarcation line between the two Koreas.

The most important point of all. CBC

Seoul is a city under the gun – thousands of them, in fact. Nearly half of the South Korea's population lives in and around Seoul with an artillery range only 50 kilometres to the north. That military threat makes South Koreans nervous, says Shim Jae Hoon, a journalist for the South China Morning Post and Jane's Defence Weekly.

"They have artillery positions that can fire half a million shells a day at Seoul," he says. "Militarily we are a target, and we are a hostage of North Korea."

North Korea

North Korea lauds “100% safe” test, China and US condemn. China Daily

"It marks a historic event as it greatly encouraged and pleased the (Korean People's Army) and people that have wished to have powerful self-reliant defense capability," KCNA said. "It will contribute to defending the peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in the area around it."

DPRK’s Korean Central News Agency webpage has yet to make an announcement in English. KCNA

Text of North Korea's nuke announcement. China Daily

America

US confirms seismic activity. China Daily

South Korea

South Korea stocks plunge on nuke report. China Daily

Pinko Commie Bastards!

I've made a few additions to the sidebar.

I don't know how I missed this, but sometime over the summer the perceptive and ardently left-wing Matt Good started blogging again.

The erudite Terry Glavin, of the Georgia Straight and that messy article I featured in last January, has a blog that's too good to miss. Plus he's been helping me out with some journalism stuff recently, and is an alround good guy.

The China Daily is now featured, so that you can get the dish on Abe's visit from the Chinese perspective. It was recommended by my Chinese Industrialization professor, who being Chinese himself, hopefully knows what he's talking about.

I almost forgot this one, but the Epoch Times (Canadian Edition) deserves mention under the Asia category. It's the out-spoken newspaper that spawned the Nine Commentaries on the Comunist Party, and it's available for free in most major cities I know of.

And there's a new category as well, Coin, which features links to daily tabulations of currency values for the Chinese Yuan and the Japanese Yen. My East Asian Finance professor wants us to pay attention to this stuff.