by liberal japonicus
I recently had what I think was a satori like epiphany, which I inscribe below the fold, along with various other musings. Feel free to follow whichever suits.
Continue reading "Generational shade, homestay satori and DOGE" »
by liberal japonicus
I recently had what I think was a satori like epiphany, which I inscribe below the fold, along with various other musings. Feel free to follow whichever suits.
Continue reading "Generational shade, homestay satori and DOGE" »
Posted by SuperUser at 10:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (26)
by liberal japonicus
Sure that I'm reaching too hard in the title, but the juxtaposition of the bloodlust invoked when celebrating a white guy gunning down a CEO and the editorial tut-tutting that is taking place in talk about the various forces that are now in the ascendancy with Assad out is, well, interesting. I guess the difference is that those guys are jihadists and our guy was a white guy with a bad back. Or that fighting against a 50 year old dictatorship requires proportionality but dealing with health insurance means never having to say you're sorry. Of course, Syria was run by an eye doctor, so it gets complicated.
This politico article suggests that Eric Hobsbawm's 1959 book Primitive Rebels points to an explanation for why we like bad boys so much, but I think his book Bandits might be better, the former (as the title suggests) really leans into the agricultural, but Bandits looks more at the opposition to goverment control. However, as he argues that banditry develops out of an agricultural context and banditry is in danger of being eliminated as the state displays a greater concentration of power, it seems he's in thrall to a Marxist historical argument that imagines a historical progression. The shooting of a CEO in broad daylight, the politico article suggests, is indicative of an "absence of a strong and responsive government". However, that leans into the idea that 'strong and responsive' are obviously positive terms. But it looks like, if you think of those terms as negatives, government is stronger and more responsive than ever, and the shooting a reflection of that. Historical materialism? Or an indication that the US, despite whatever strengths it has, can't organize a single payer system to save itself.
But beyond the terrible pun, the bulk of this post is stuff I've been reading about Syria and my thoughts.
This discussion from the Council on Foreign Affairs is generally interesting and I like the frame of 'catastrophic success' in describing what has happened, even though I think Eliot Abrams' contributions, especially towards the end, are shot thru with the kind of thinking that brought you Iran-Contra. An interesting pull graf
...this is a recurring problem in Turkish foreign policy. They think they have some sort of cultural affinity with the Arab world and they understand these people better than anybody else, and then they get involved in something and they realize that they actually have no control and no influence, and they’re going to be in the middle of a mess in the middle of Damascus if, in fact, that’s what Erdogan thinks he’s doing, is recreating a government in, basically, Turkey’s image. That was the goal when Erdogan was out there publicly demanding that Assad must go, and privately asking the Obama administration to invade Syria but from Jordan. So it’s entirely believable that the Turks have been deeply, deeply involved in this, especially after Aleppo went from limited operation to catastrophic success.
The round table consensus of Erdogan's support makes me wonder about the Kurds, since there is no love lost there, but this link reports about Erdogan's recent moves with the Kurds. I'm not sure what the word is, but it reminds me of Flem Snopes in Faulkner's Wild Horses, who is always able to stay on top, despite the fact that everyone doesn't trust him. Bizarrely enough, there is a strong relationship between Turkey and Japan, based on the Japanese helping the Ottoman frigate Ertugrul, something that always gets trotted out when Turkey comes up.
There isn't as much discussion about Russia, except to laugh at them, but I'm really curious what Russia will do to keep the naval bases they have. There is this Atlantic article that is behind a paywall, however, the premise, that the Russians would try and set up an Alawite state is not really in the cards which makes me wonder if it was a trial balloon that got shot down. Israel has been striking the Syrian naval bases in Latakia and airfield in Tartus, which were Russian bases, and it sounds like Russia is just trying to negotiate with the interim government to retain those bases.
Reading about Alawite minority is quite interesting. Assad was a member of the group and the family's ascension to power was at the expense of Sunni believers, and some reports suggest that the infrastructure for control of the state was dependent on installing Alawite into particular positions. This link was written by a high school senior(!) but following the links, it looks good. The page mentions a fascinating Alawite practice of taqiyya, which is one reason why information on Alawism is not readily available. It is not unique to Alawites, but they do seem to take it further. The wikipedia page has this quote from TE Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom.
The sect, vital in itself, was clannish in feeling and politics. One Nosairi (=Nusayri, a self appelation of the group) would not betray another, and would hardly not betray an unbeliever. Their villages lay in patches down the main hills to the Tripoli gap. They spoke Arabic, but had lived there since the beginning of Greek letters in Syria. Usually they stood aside from affairs, and left the Turkish Government alone in hope of reciprocity
Alawism is supposed to be an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, and Assad pushed that, which is why Hezbollah (Shi'ite Islam) and Iran were backers along with Russia, and when Russia (because of Ukraine) and Hezbollah (because of Israel) were weakened, it had the effect of knocking out the supports, which is also why Sunni countries like Egypt and the rich Gulf states are not saying much.
The whole situation in Syria is even more interesting because of the number of Syrian refugees. This UNCR doc says it is 14 million and other sources say that Turkey has 3 million, Lebanon and Jordan have another 1.4 milllion. Germany has 500,000, but since Merkel allowed Syrians fleeing the civil war to not close the border, this BBC article says that there are a million, which is turning into fodder for the rightist parties.
It's also going to be interesting to see how Trump squares this circle. Maybe he'll send Tulsi Gabbard there.
The curse of interesting times. Have at it.
Posted by SuperUser at 06:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (21)
by liberal japonicus
Just over a year before United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was murdered this week in Midtown Manhattan, a lawsuit filed against the insurance giant he helmed revealed just how draconian its claims-denying process had become.
Last November, the estates of two former UHC patients filed suit in Minnesota alleging that the insurer used an AI algorithm to deny and override claims to elderly patients that had been approved by their doctors.
The algorithm in question, known as nH Predict, allegedly had a 90 percent error rate — and according to the families of the two deceased men who filed the suit, UHC knew it.
There have been other reports, in particular, the fact that "deny," "defend," and "depose" was carved on the shell casing of the bullets. It seems a little too neat, but if it is the case, judging from the shared posts in my facebook, it wouldn't take a lot for crazy people to think they are doing a public service. Discuss.
Posted by SuperUser at 06:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (22)
by liberal japonicus
It occurred to me that all this talk about US centric politics may not serve the blog very well, so this is a quick post about something we might want to talk about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_South_Korean_martial_law
I post the wikipedia page, because wikipedia editors do a pretty good job of collecting lots of info and links and in an event like this, there is a lot more scrutiny, so editing vandalism gets caught. It's also interesting to look at the talk page to see what is going into the discussion. I unfortunately have a full day today, but I wanted to put this up because it was mentioned in a comment.
[added]
A little more grist for the mill. This LGM post doesn't have a lot, but Robert Kelly was visiting Robert Farley, who wrote this. As was pointed out, Robert Kelly was the person in this memorable BBC interview. I don't know if Professor Kelly traveled with his family, but if he did, it reveals a possible motive, get the coup done while those two kids are out of the country.
But seriously, I felt that South Korea was a country that suffered from a form of national PTSD. As this Graniaud article points out, South Korea wasn't free of martial law until 1988(!). Talking to the handful of old-timer English teachers that I got to know who had arrived pre-1988, we might get into a discussion of what it was like when they arrived and it was pretty sobering to think that they had spent the same amount of time as I had in Japan, but the country had gone from martial law to democracy. This also underlines some of the issues with women that I mentioned in previous post.
A bit of a long anecdote. In Japan, you say thank you a lot more than you say in maybe any other country. Non-native speakers like me tend to over-compensate, saying thank you even more. I was told in Vietnam as well that I didn't need to say thank you all the time. A Korean professor I had lunch with also noticed that I often said thank you and he said that instead of saying thank you, I should say 귀하의 협조에 감사드립니다 (gwihaui hyeobjoe kamsadeulibnida), which means 'your cooperation is greatly appreciated', saying that this was what police or other people in authority would say as a kind of sotto voce command. Well, I learned it and pulled it out at places where I got to know the people who worked there. It never failed to get a laugh, the juxtaposition of a foreigner whose Korean was faltering spitting out a phrase that you'd get at a police checkpoint. But it is noteworthy that the joke doesn't translate to other places. That's because it is connected to a familiarity, if only in stories and dramas for younger people, to a time when figures of authority were commanding with a phrase like that.
Most of the commentary makes no connection with other pushes from the Right, but when you think of Orban in Hungary, Meloni in Italy, Wilders in the Netherlands, growing strength of right wing parties in France and Germany, along with countries like Sweden, Finland, New Zealand, you wonder Yoon was totally uninfluenced, or if he was a bit ahead of his time.
This second Guardian article has this
Raphael Rashid, reporting for the Guardian from Seoul, writes that on the morning after the coup, the feeling in South Korea has been one of bafflement and sadness. “For the older generation who fought on the streets against military dictatorships, martial law equals dictatorship, not 21st century Korea. The younger generation is embarrassed that he has ruined their country’s reputation. People are baffled.
I think this is viewpoint is a bit off. The year I was there, 2018-19, I would often pass groups protesting about the impeachment of Park Geun-hye, the female rightest politician who got impeached because of events outside the realm of ordinary politics. She was in office during the Sewol tragedy, and her response was less than sterling. She might have recovered, but she invested a lot of power in an aide who was concurrently involved in a cult led by her father. So she was impeached, but it wasn't in some reaction to the right, it was in response to the personal flaws and I think she still maintains a support base. In fact, the wikipedia page on Park's impeachement has this
In July 2018, it emerged that the Defense Security Command made plans for declaring martial law and authority to use military force to crackdown on protesters, if the Constitutional Court did not uphold Park's removal from office. The DSC had planned to mobilize 200 tanks, 550 armoured vehicles, 4,800 armed personnel, and 1,400 members of special forces in Seoul in order to enforce martial law. Other components of the plan included monitoring and censoring media content and arresting politicians taking part in protests.
So the idea that everyone was shocked by this doesn't seem to capture the fact that this has been looked on as something that might be need to be done, and, like a gun that doesn't really distinguish who it is pointed at, you've got a plan that is in place, so it's easy to see why Yoon, who seems to be in a bubble (especially as his own party denounced him) might think it was an option.
Posted by SuperUser at 01:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (4)
by liberal japonicus
This is another quick post about something that I've been following. My family has not had to deal with these sorts of issues, so it is not because I have some personal experience or a personal stake in this, but because I have an interest in the UK, watching how this has gone down is pretty fascinating. The entire debate in Parliament is here. I don't want to beat up on Brits, but a lot of the British coverage has a 5-10 minute paean to how this was such a respectful debate, because it did not feature the braying of PMQs, but, while I thought it a huge improvement, I didn't get the sense of awe at how the debate went, it just didn't seem as awful in relation to other debates.
Still, everyone knew this was a different kind of debate because at the vote, the chamber was silent.
Anyway, another quick post as a placeholder for discussion.
Posted by SuperUser at 06:14 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
by liberal japonicus
another open-y thread.
Posted by SuperUser at 02:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (181)
by liberal japonicus
GftNC pointed out that there isn't a true open thread. Reading her comment, I just got an image of an open manhole, which, according to OSHA,
requires that "a railing, temporary cover, or other barrier" be erected around the manhole immediately after the manhole is safely removed. This is to prevent accidental falls into the space and to protect employees who enter the space from objects falling on them from above. link
Of course, with RFK Jr and Doctor Oz on the case, we can get rid of this government overreach. Open manholes long to be free!
Have at it.
Posted by SuperUser at 12:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (72)
by liberal japonicus
As tempting as it is to dwell on whatever outrage the Orange Turd has committed, I thought this Grauniad article, about the Korean 4b movement, might be interesting to discuss.
The 4B name stems from four Korean words beginning with “bi” (meaning “no”): bihon (no marriage), bichulsan (no childbirth), biyeonae (no dating), and bisekseu (no sex). As with past “separatist” feminist movements, 4B represents a rejection of heterosexual relationships as a means of resisting patriarchal structures.
As the article notes, it is being picked up in the US after Trump's election and Nick Fuentes' making 'your body, my choice' a thing among MAGA. I read somewhere that Fuentes' defense was that he said this kind of stupid shit all the time, it wasn't until Biden lost that people noticed. Not the brightest bulb in the marquee it seems, and he was doxxed and, if rumors are true, is now staying with his mom.
Anyway, a bit of a dive into 4B. While most people here might be thinking of Lysistrata, that is a comedy, and 4B is dead serious. Here is a background research article on the 4B, written before the election, so hopefully offering a clearer view, because when an idea gets picked up in another culture, it can be changed in ways that make it unrecognizable.
It's interesting to think about the 4B movement in a pan-asian context. I feel like the US reporting is just in light of the election, similar to people saying they are going to emigrate, but in Japan, there has been little uptake on 4B. Admittedly, while the election also went badly for the ruling party here in Japan, it was a conservative LDP government that got its ass whupped. They lost their outright majority, but more related to the topic, the Korean elections have shown, similar to the US, a big gender gap, with the President elected in 2022, conservative Yoon Suk Yeol, getting 59% of the vote of the under 30 males while only 34% of young women under 30. I can't find similar data for the recent Japanese election, but this kind of gender gap wasn't reported anywere I could see.
On one hand, it's not surprising, the viciousness and velocity of misogyny in South Korea is really a level beyond. On the other hand, it's hard to understand why 4B hasn't made at least some inroads (at least that I'm aware of) into Japanese society. One possible reason for the rise of the 4B movement is a confluence of events, court cases and trends which haven't occurred in Japan. While the election and element of societal rebuke of choosing Trump over Harris provides a catalyst in the US, there hasn't been anything like that in Japan. For South Korea, a 2016 murder of a woman in a Seoul train station by a stalker because women in general 'ignored him' became a touchpoint, leading to the Gangnam station Post-it Note protest and there hasn't been a similar incident here in Japan. In addition, Korea suffers from spy cam issues (known as molka) and has become a center for deep-fake porn. This Guardian article describes some details. Japan also has issues with hidden cameras (tōsatsuki), but it doesn't seem to be anything like what is happening in South Korea.
The research article makes a brief mention, but the other articles don't (or I missed it), of the parallel Tal-Corset movement in South Korea, with Korean women rebelling against beauty standards. Again, while beauty standards can be problematic here in Japan, it seemed much more oppressive than in Japan. Plastic surgery is much more common in South Korea, with 1/4 of women under 30 getting it, while only 2% of the men do and that has to feed into what underlies 4B.
South Korea is also one of the few developed countries where pornography is illegal and subject to internet censorship. However, it can't be regulated on social media sites, so I imagine there is an incentive for sharing pornography that has been generated is increased because of the skew in availability. On the other hand, Japan has an astonishing large and varied pornography industry that not only embraces technology, which I imagine makes generating porn less attractive, but is rooted in historical and cultural ideas.
Trying to understand why Japan doesn't seem to have the same issues with deep-fake porn or spy cams, I think there may also be some cultural things that are not directly related to the treatment of women, but I think contribute. South Korean tech is not cutting edge, but they have more public tech availability (wi-fi almost everyone, internet banking to an extent hard to imagine here in Japan, linked information) and more people mucking about with stuff. South Korean internet connectivity is at 97% (US is 94% while Japan is only 84%), along with an online gaming culture that is both greater in public competitiveness through esports, but also in that people don't play at home, but in so called PC bangs.
There are also cyber defamation laws that are often used not to grant relief to victims, but as a way of silencing criticism. Truth is not a defense, so if I wrote that I got shitty service at a restaurant, the restaurant owner could ask the police to pursue a criminal case against me because I defamed him, regardless of the truth. This isn't a hypothetical either. From this article
In a case before Korea’s Supreme Court where a worker truthfully accused his employer of garnishing his wages, the worker failed to satisfy the elements of the public interest defense as he intended to pressure his employer to pay him properly and not to inform the public of his employer’s misdeeds.
These things seem to stack up to make things a lot more fraught in South Korea, which makes a 4B movement more understandable and why it might arise in South Korea but not in find purchase in Japan.
One can't have pan-asianism without mentioning China, but I don't have an good understanding of how societal issues play out in China. Apparently, the 4B movement has been taken up and renamed 6B4T, which is discussed in this article. It is fascinating for me that translation of terms has led to a divided view of exactly what the 4B movement represents, which underlines my thought about how, when movements go across cultural boundaries, often are changed in various ways. There doesn't seem to be anything similar in Taiwan, which seems much more accepting of LGBTQ (It was the first in the Asia-Pacific to legalize same-sex marriage)
According to some, the phrase 비돕비 (bidopbi) should be translated as “do not help married women,” while the opposing party argues that the translation should be rendered as “the unmarried help the unmarried.” The translation controversy points to the dissonance between different feminist paradigms within the online pan-feminist community in China.
It's been over 10 years since I've been back in the States, so I'm having trouble imagining a 4B movement actually catching on in the same way in the US as it seems to have in South Korea. I also realize the our demographics here aren't really going to get at where this is coming up. But I'd be interested in what everyone sees where they are.
Posted by SuperUser at 08:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (137)
by liberal japonicus
The title is a nod to a quote often attributed to Dorothy Parker. I thought it was apropos, and this is your place for those observations. As Ezra Klein observed (via Scott Lemieux at LGM), these are loyalty tests, so absurdity is the point. This Campos post at LGM has pics of the body art of the incoming SecDef and this, from the Daily Show, has him flogging soap.
So a thread to see how low they can go.
Posted by SuperUser at 11:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (87)
by liberal japonicus
I've not been able to look at analyses of what went wrong. I read a paragraph or two, or at most a half page, and just have to go to something else. Same for videos and podcasts, a sense of nausea and disgust after a few minutes. It seems like there is a desire to find a receptacle for folks' anger, a desire I totally understand. To find a target to scream at. It could be a voting bloc, or a non-voting bloc, it could be people who say 'if X had only done X', it could have been people predicting victories in various forms. There is also, from my cursory reading, that ego driven desire to be correct, which means shooting down other theories. It's exhausting, and I can't imagine what it would be like if there wasn't an ocean between.
But in turning away from the notion of apportioning blame, I find myself wondering about how the Democrats will or even can possibly work with Republicans, given that Republican have done everything possible to set up the conditions to take power. Supreme Court nominations, gerrymandering districts, disenfranchising voters. And when these things are threatened, they take steps to short-circuit fixes. Frex
But when it came time to put Issue 1 on the ballot, Ohio Republicans grossly misrepresented the intention of the measure, which would have created a citizens redistricting commission to draw new maps for the state legislature and US House after GOP legislative leaders gutted the previous redistricting initiatives. The summary of the ballot initiative adopted by the Ohio Ballot Board, which has a Republican majority, implied the measure would encourage partisan gerrymandering rather than curb it, claiming the initiative would “repeal constitutional protections against gerrymandering” and “manipulate the boundaries of state legislative and congressional districts to favor the two largest political parties in the state of Ohio.”
Given all this, why would someone imagine that Republicans would give Democrats anything? So it seems that trying to identify the voters that Democrats need to convince runs into the problem of first principles: It denies what the Republicans are and imagines they would step back. They won't. It is not in their nature.
All this has me thinking about Mario Savio's speech at the 1964 sit-in at Sproul Hall at UC Berkeley The part that is often quoted is this
And that -- that brings me to the second mode of civil disobedience. There's a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart that you can't take part! You can't even passively take part! And you've got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus -- and you've got to make it stop! And you've got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it -- that unless you're free the machine will be prevented from working at all!!
That's what I see is needed, but I have no idea how that works out. Given all the analysis explaining why the Dems failed, none of them explain how the Republicans would step back. Some might suggest that this is just sour grapes, but seeing the massive amount of lies and falsehoods that were offered up, I don't see it worth it to try and solve the problems of Harris' loss just to run into these conditions.
Posted by liberal japonicus at 11:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (50)
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