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Typhoon
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Asia

Post by Typhoon »

Bloomberg | Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader’ Dictator, Dead at 70

The 2nd generation kimchee emperor is dead. Let's see how long the 3rd generation little emperor survives.
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Ibrahim
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Ibrahim »

The Reuters story yesterday was that the Dauphin and the military will "share power," which is step one towards military rule, either directly or through the Dauphin as a puppet.
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Azrael »

That wouldn't surprise me. There was a rumor that Kim Jong Il was little more than a puppet himself.
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kanji of the year: kizuna

Post by Typhoon »

May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

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BBC | Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim has been acquitted of sodomy after a two-year trial
The allegations against Mr Anwar surfaced just months after elections in 2008, in which he led the opposition to unprecedented gains at the expense of the ruling party.

This verdict comes ahead of elections widely expected later this year.

Hundreds of police and security personnel were on the streets of Kuala Lumpur ahead of the verdict, and thousands of Mr Anwar's supporters waited outside the court.

Mr Anwar was once Malaysia's deputy prime minister and an ally of former leader Mahathir Mohammad.

But he fell out with Mr Mahathir and was later jailed for corruption and sodomy. The sodomy conviction was later overturned and he was freed in 2004 after spending six years in prison.

He is now seen as the key figure in Malaysia's opposition coalition, which currently controls about a third of the seats in parliament.
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AzariLoveIran

The China Thread

Post by AzariLoveIran »

.

The Audi A6 is the semiofficial car of the Chinese Communist Party; the German automaker's parent, Volkswagen, was an early entry in the 1980s into the Chinese market. According to industry analysts, there are more than 100,000 A6s in China, about 20% of them owned by the government. Each car costs $50,000 to $100,000, depending on engine size.

.

For the cops, luxury SUVs are all the rage. In the southern city of Guangzhou, police were photographed driving a Mercedes-Benz SUV, while those in the northeastern province of Jilin have another deluxe SUV, the Porsche Cayenne.

" No wonder there's no money left for school buses ! "

.

.
Ibrahim
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Ibrahim »

I can never decide how crazy politics in Malaysia is. I guess if you have to even think about it, err on the side of "crazy."
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by cincinnatus »

Typhoon wrote:Bloomberg | Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader’ Dictator, Dead at 70

The 2nd generation kimchee emperor is dead. Let's see how long the 3rd generation little emperor survives.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... l?ITO=1490

Poor bastards....at least the new Supreme Leader is well fed.
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Antipatros »

Military Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula

By Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig
Abstract

There is a sense in both Koreas that reunification is inevitable, but the North and South are economically, politically, and socially incompatible. In the face of the impasse, Pyongyang shows a continuing disposition toward provocation, and its large military is a continuing threat to Seoul, which responds by further strengthening its own military. A comparison of northern and southern capabilities reveals asymmetries, some favoring one and some the other. Yet in the end, neither side seems to want a full-scale war. The decline of the North in all but military prowess and its recent regime change may force a decision, and the hope is that violence can be contained until all Koreans can decide their future at the ballot box.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by monster_gardener »

Antipatros wrote:Military Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula

By Kongdan Oh and Ralph Hassig
Abstract

There is a sense in both Koreas that reunification is inevitable, but the North and South are economically, politically, and socially incompatible. In the face of the impasse, Pyongyang shows a continuing disposition toward provocation, and its large military is a continuing threat to Seoul, which responds by further strengthening its own military. A comparison of northern and southern capabilities reveals asymmetries, some favoring one and some the other. Yet in the end, neither side seems to want a full-scale war. The decline of the North in all but military prowess and its recent regime change may force a decision, and the hope is that violence can be contained until all Koreans can decide their future at the ballot box.

Thank you Very Much for your post, Antipatros.

AIUI* the young generation in South Korea has largely lost interest in re-unification with the Norks.......... So much so that the South Korea government is trying to maintain the flagging interest in it.........

Who knows what the Norks will do.......... If the current Kim ILL doesn't work out better maybe the Chinese will have to appoint a more competent Satrap.........

Was interesting to read about this development mentioned in your link............

Appears that the Norks may just become a pool of low cost labor for their leaders and others................
Kaesŏng Industrial Region is a special administrative industrial region of North Korea. It was formed in 2002 from part of Kaesŏng Directly Governed City.
Contents
[hide]

Kaesŏng Industrial Park

Kaesŏng Industrial Park is being operated in the region, as a collaborative economic development with South Korea. It is located ten kilometres (six miles) north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone with direct road and rail access to South Korea and an hour's drive from Seoul. Construction started in June 2003, and in August 2003 North and South Korea ratified four tax and accountancy agreements to support investment. Pilot phase construction was completed in June 2004, and the industrial park opened in December 2004. [1]
[edit] Initial phase

In the park’s initial phase, 15 South Korean companies constructed manufacturing facilities. Three of the companies had started operations by March 2005. First phase plans envisaged participation by 250 South Korean companies from 2006, employing 100,000 people by 2007. The park was expected to be complete in 2012, covering 25 square miles (65 km2) employing 700,000 people. As of June 2010, 110 factories were employing approximately 42,000 DPRK workers and 800 ROK staff.[2] Companies operating or under construction in the complex are seeking to hire an additional 26,000 North Korean workers. Construction of dormitories and other infrastructure for the additional workers is on hold as the Lee Myung-bak administration has prioritized movement on North Korean nuclear issues. Electrical power and telephone service is supplied from South Korea; 15MW of power is being supplied in 2005, with plans for a 100MW supply by 2007.
[edit] Organization

The Kaesŏng industrial park is run by a South Korean committee that has a fifty-year lease which began in 2004. Hyundai Asan, a division of South Korean conglomerate Hyundai has been hired by Pyongyang to develop the land.[3] The firms are taking advantage of cheap labour available in the North to compete with China to create low-end goods such as shoes, clothes, and watches. Workers earn an average of $57 per month—half of Chinese labour costs and less than 5 percent the salaries of their South Korean counterparts.[3]
[edit] Predictions

Park Suhk Sam, senior economist at the Bank of Korea, figures the industrial zone could create 725,000 jobs and generate $500 million in annual wage income for the North Korean economy by 2012. Five years later, another $1.78 billion would tumble in from annual corporate taxes levied on South Korean companies participating in the industrial project.[4]
[edit] Obstacles

The industrial park is seen as a way for South Korean companies to employ cheap labour that is educated, skilled and speaks Korean which would make communication considerably easier. However the zone still faces a number of obstacles. Among the most pressing are U.S. economic sanctions against the North, prohibiting imports of key technologies and goods, such as computers.[3] More than 1000 South Korean firms are rethinking planned shifts of production from China and Southeast Asia to Kaesong.
[edit] Wage and rent agreements

In May 2009 Pyongyang announced it had unilaterally scrapped wage and rent agreements at the estate. In June they also demanded new salaries of $300 a month for its 40000 workers, compared with around $75 currently. [5] Several months later, a visit to North Korea by the Hyundai Group chairwoman led to a resolution to the North's demands, with mild wage increases and no change in land rents.[6]
[edit] ROKS Cheonan incident

In May 2010, due to the ROKS Cheonan sinking incident and South Korea's response, North Korea severed ties with South Korea and shut down the Consultative Office in the zone,[7] however existing activities in the zone maintained production activities,[8] and transport and telephones to South Korea are operating normally.[9]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaesong_Industrial_Region



*NPR broadcast late 2011. Have not found link as yet.
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Antipatros
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Antipatros »

Let us pray that the North's plans, if any, do not involve Japan. Surely even Obama could not tolerate such ambitions.
Be not too curious of Good and Evil;
Seek not to count the future waves of Time;
But be ye satisfied that you have light
Enough to take your step and find your foothold.

--T.S. Eliot
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Typhoon »

Antipatros wrote:Let us pray that the North's plans, if any, do not involve Japan. Surely even Obama could not tolerate such ambitions.
Indeed. It could cascade into a global war. Let's hope that China has the good sense to keep that nasty pet chihuahua on a very short leash.
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Typhoon »

Guardian | Japan feels like another planet

Okay, the following excerpt is funny because it is so accurate:
Generally though, the TV here is surprisingly dull. The vast majority of programmes consist of several seriously overexcited people sitting in an overlit studio decorated like a novelty grotto made from regurgitated Dolly Mixture, endlessly babbling about food.

Seriously, it's all food, food, food. People eating food, answering questions about food, sometimes even just pointing at food and laughing. It's as they've only just discovered food and are perpetually astonished by its very existence. Imagine watching an endless episode of The One Show with the colour and brightness turned up to 11, where all the guests have been given amphetamines, the screen is peppered with random subtitles, and every 10 seconds it cuts to a close-up shot of a bowl of noodles for no apparent reason. That's 90% of Japanese TV right there.
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Re: Asia and the Antipodes

Post by Typhoon »

Typhoon wrote:Guardian | Japan feels like another planet

Okay, the following excerpt is funny because it is so accurate:
Generally though, the TV here is surprisingly dull. The vast majority of programmes consist of several seriously overexcited people sitting in an overlit studio decorated like a novelty grotto made from regurgitated Dolly Mixture, endlessly babbling about food.

Seriously, it's all food, food, food. People eating food, answering questions about food, sometimes even just pointing at food and laughing. It's as they've only just discovered food and are perpetually astonished by its very existence. Imagine watching an endless episode of The One Show with the colour and brightness turned up to 11, where all the guests have been given amphetamines, the screen is peppered with random subtitles, and every 10 seconds it cuts to a close-up shot of a bowl of noodles for no apparent reason. That's 90% of Japanese TV right there.
The rest is yet another newbie reporter [re]discovers Japan [stereotypes].
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
AzariLoveIran

Japan posts first annual trade deficit since 1980

Post by AzariLoveIran »

.


:lol: :D :)


Japan's endgame nears

.

Japan's economy has been a slow-motion train wreck for the past 20 years. The bursting of the country's 1980s credit, stock market and real estate bubble would have wreaked more than enough havoc on any economy. But on top of the normal debt deflation that would follow the bursting of a financial bubble, Japan adds the worst demographics of any developed country. Japan is aging rapidly, and its population is shrinking.

.
Typhoon wrote:.

This is the it's not our fault, the dog ate our homework, school of history.

.

:)


.
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Re: Japan posts first annual trade deficit since 1980

Post by Typhoon »

Two points the author neglected to mention:

1/ the increased imports of fuel due to nuclear reactor shut downs; and

2/ the near record high value of the JP Yen - if Japan is facing imminent demise, then why people willing to pay top dollar for the Yen?

The high JPY is causing problems for exporters, however, it is making purchasing overseas companies attractive.

Japan certainly faces a number of serious challenges. On the other hand, I've been reading the same arguments by Western pundits for 20 years now.
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AzariLoveIran

Re: Japan posts first annual trade deficit since 1980

Post by AzariLoveIran »

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Blank

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Last edited by AzariLoveIran on Thu Feb 16, 2012 4:40 am, edited 2 times in total.
AzariLoveIran

The Japan Thread

Post by AzariLoveIran »

.

deportation and arrest of foreign journalists in Japan has raised suspicions Tokyo is punishing foreigners critical of its response to the Fukushima nuclear crisis, with the apparently harsh interrogation, detention and deportation procedures at Narita Airport adding to the controversy

.

. . security guards at Narita have harassed them to pay "service fees" of 30,000 yen (about US$400), and denied them rights to make phone calls while separated from their luggage and wallets and detained in windowless cells under the airport.

Amnesty International, citing Ministry of Justice statistics, says more than 7,000 foreigners were detained at Narita in 2010, an average of about 20 per day. Guards demanding "service fees" of 30,000 yen could thus collect about 600,000 yen (about $8,000) per day. A reading of Japan's Immigration Control Act found no reference to laws or procedures governing such actions.

Local media reports, citing Justice Ministry figures, say Japan has deported more than 100,000 foreigners since 2005. Amnesty, the world's largest human-rights organization, has released reports over the past decade accusing immigration officials and guards of harassing foreigners and denying them basic human rights at Narita.

Japan's immigration and detention system has been under fire since Abubakar Awadu Suraj, or "Mac Barry", a man from Ghana who had been working in Tokyo for 22 years, died in the custody of immigration officers while being bound, gagged and forced onto an Egypt Air plane parked at Narita in March 2010. Local press reports say his Japanese widow is suing the immigration officers, who have not been arrested or charged.

An expatriate Canadian journalist who has been working legally in Japan since 1989, I was detained for 20 hours in a windowless cell underneath Narita Airport, expelled from Japan, and forced onto an Air Canada flight to Vancouver on December 24.

Immigration officials, speaking through their own interpreter, said I lacked proof of having sufficient funds to live in Japan, asked questions about my travels and contacts in Fukushima, and issued an Exclusion Order with no official written explanation. I am now exiled in Canada, unable to work or return to my Japanese partner, two dogs and a Japanese-style home in a leafy part of central Tokyo.

Last week, Japanese police also detained two Tokyo-based French journalists for a week and charged them with entering the forbidden zone around the Fukushima reactors with falsified documents. After being released this weekend, the journalists told a fellow reporter in Tokyo that they could face up to five years in jail in Japan, which legal observers say has a 99% rate of conviction.

During my detention, guards, uniformed men in their 50s or 60s who spoke Japanese and another Asian language, demanded a "service fee" of 30,000 yen to buy rice balls and cold noodles at an airport store, and later demanded the same amount in a "hotel fee" for a night in jail.

Police at Narita, seeing me escorted through a tunnel, said I did not have to pay. Asiana also tweeted on Wednesday: "Asiana does/will not ever enforce payment. We believe we had been victimized. Please understand that this was not Asiana."

Immigration Bureau documents say that airlines are responsible for hiring the guards at Narita. "Concerning your expenses for being in Japan [meal, lodging, guard etc] till your departure, the Immigration Bureau cannot take any responsibility," said an officially stamped notice of the Ministry of Justice Tokyo Immigration Bureau, given to me a few hours before my expulsion. "This is a matter between you and your carrier [airline company]."
A sign in the jail said: "This facility is provided by requests of airline companies. Immigration Office doesn't require the expenses about the usage of this facility."

Asiana Airlines, which flew me to Narita on December 23 after a brief reporting trip to Seoul, said in a tweet last weekend that they were also victims of a "third party", referring to a security company at the airport. "We would like to apologize to Mr Johnson and his horrible experience. However we had been victimized as well; this was not us. We believe this was a third party's doing. Please understand Asiana will not do anything to hurt anyone."

Asiana, a Star Alliance member with more than 7,000 employees, was named the airline with the best in-flight service in the world by Global Travelers magazine in 2010.

Asiana and ANA have not said publicly who that "third party" is.

Adam Mynott, former BBC-TV war correspondent and now spokesman for G4S, the world's largest security company, which staffs airports in the United Kingdom, Canada and other countries, said that G4S is not operating at Narita. "(G4S) does not have any security business whatsoever at Narita Airport, nor are there any G4S affiliated Japanese companies working as security guards at the airport," he said in an e-mail. "I have made extensive checks and it simply could not have been a G4S person who escorted you in what was a horrific experience for you, because we don’t operate at Narita and no affiliated company does either."

The Tokyo District Court in 2004 ordered a security firm, I'M Co, and three guards at Narita to pay damages for assaulting and extorting money from two Tunisians denied entry into Japan in 2000, according to Kyodo News. Judge Takaomi Takizawa said "it cannot be denied they were forced to pay money" and awarded them 2.2 million yen in damages. It's not clear if the company, or those guards, are still operating at Narita.

A story in the Economist magazine about what it calls "the ugly whirlpool" of Japan's detention system has drawn at least 690 comments, more than any other story other than the eurozone crisis in recent weeks. More than 1,000 comments have appeared on at least four online forums in Tokyo since a story first appeared on the Tokyo-based blog - by this author - Globalite Magazine three weeks ago.

Some say travelers are victims of "gotcha bureaucracy", where Japanese officials aim to expel foreigners on technicalities, while others wonder if the government is cracking down on foreigners critical of Japan's response to the nuclear meltdown at reactors in Fukushima prefecture.

Most travelers find Japan one of the safest countries in the world, even after last year's March tsunami and nuclear disasters. The Japan National Tourism Organization has launched a "Yokoso Japan" campaign to welcome tourists from China and other countries to visit rural regions whose stagnant economies need cash infusions from outside.

Kyodo News, citing Immigration Bureau statistics, reported that the number of foreign arrivals in Japan dropped by 24.4% in 2011 compared with 2010, meaning that 2.31 million fewer foreigners came for work or pleasure. The number of visitors last year, 7.14 million, is less than half the number of tourists visiting Thailand per year, though Japan's population is double that of Thailand.

Japan's Immigration Bureau says it doesn't comment on individual cases. The Immigration Bureau declares on its website that it's motto is "internationalization in compliance with the rules". It says the bureau makes "contributions to sound development of Japanese society" by "making efforts for smoother cross-border human mobility" and "deporting undesirable aliens".

The problem, say activists and observers, is their view of who is "undesirable". People who would become refugees or immigrants in other countries often end up detained for months in Japan. Amnesty International says Japan accepted only 30 refugees in 2011 out of about 1,000 applicants, and it's not clear how many remain in limbo in three large detention centers nationwide that can house more than 3,000 detainees.

"Japan's immigration bureau can be extremely capricious and unfair," tweeted Tokyo-based author Jake Adelstein, who covered the bureau for a year for the Yomiuri, Japan's largest daily. "I've had one friend deported. Immigration has a horrible history of mistreating people seeking refugee status in Japan. It's a serious problem."

While many foreigners think Japan is a relatively gun-free society, Article 61-4 of the Japanese immigration act confirms that immigration officers are allowed to carry and use weapons to restrain people, force them onto a flight, or injure them if they resist. During negotiations over payment for a one-way ticket to Canada, an officer showed me a weapon in his holster, and said he had the authority to use it if I refused to go.

On December 23, this reporter witnessed guards extort 30,000 yen from an American college professor who had just flown in from the United States to spend Christmas with his son in Japan. He was harassed, strip-searched, and detained for three days over Christmas in a windowless cell underneath Narita Airport. He had lived many years previously in Japan, and had done a presentation in America about anti-nuclear protests in Japan.

"I thought I could go back and visit my son but apparently not," he said in a letter after his return to America from what he calls his "non-trip" to Japan. He asked to remain anonymous. "I was not allowed into Japan and it seems that they will never allow me to enter for the rest of my life. I do have a son there and want to find him to see how he is, but I guess I will just have to wish him the best for his life."

Celebrities such as Sir Paul McCartney, world chess champion Bobby Fischer and Paris Hilton have been detained at Narita and expelled from Japan. Several expatriates and travelers from the US, Canada the United Kingdom and Australia have said privately that they were also victims of wrongful deportation and similar abuses at Narita. The largest number of deportees come from China, South Korea, the Philippines and other Asian nations.

One of Tokyo's most popular British expat DJs was thrown out in 1995 for no valid reason, he says, and forced to pay "service fees" and buy an overpriced ticket to Hong Kong. The head of one of Asia's leading photo agencies said privately in an e-mail that he was once hassled at immigration, on spurious drug charges, even though government tourism officials were waiting for him in the arrivals area.

Another Western male said he was jailed for two weeks, deported and banned for five years. "I have first-hand experience of the blackness of the Japanese immigration authorities," he said in an e-mail. "I have never felt such isolation and helplessness before or since." He said his friend from Canada experienced the same nightmare.

Another person, using the pseudonym "mxlx3" on The Economist's Banyan blog, said he was barred from re-entering Japan from Guam in 2002 after working legally in Japan for 11 years. He said he lost his $125,000 per year job, all his possessions in his apartment, and his Japanese fiancee, because bureaucrats messed up his renewal for a work permit. "The immigration official [at Narita], doing his best 1970s TV bad cop impression took me into a room and then started berating me putting his face within 2 inches of my own. This went on for hours."

He says they "assigned a security guard to me" who demanded 50,000 yen and threatened to jail him for a month. "I was also forced to buy a $2,400 ticket to Vancouver." He was then handcuffed and made to sit down "on plain display" as a warning to passengers arriving for the next three hours.

The guards took him onto the plane like a criminal ahead of other passengers. "I have never been so angry and humiliated. I sincerely believe that there is a bad group of immigration officials at Narita that power trip on detaining foreigners entering Japan - and that unfortunate victims are picked at random daily," he wrote. "Despite all the good things about Japan and all my friends there, I have not returned again after this incident."

Danny Bloom, an American journalist who came to Japan after a frightening experience on a flight to Alaska, was arrested in 1995 on charges of working illegally for five years at the Daily Yomiuri. He says he was never allowed to appear in court, and he was held in solitary confinement for 41 days in a Tokyo prison.

Deported from Japan, he was forced onto a plane, a terrifying experience for victims of agoraphobia and post traumatic stress disorder. Now exiled in Taiwan, he says he's not allowed to return to "the police state" of Japan, even though he still loves Japanese people. "Tell your story loud and clear," he said in an e-mail. "We love Japan and we want to reform it."

.

Japan was never a free country

I remember when I used to go to Japan for business .. absolute control

Not even Western style (in itself dubious) freedom, civil right, human right and and does not exist in Japan, more and less, though stealth, same mentality as 1930s

well

Colonel

do reporters without border, or doctors without border, or human right shitheads without border, or hookers without border (quite a few killed in Tokyo) and all other without borders ranking Iran dead last on their list say anything about Japan

No

why ?

come on Colonel, come on , Iranians housed (still do), fed, educated 10 million Afghani for 20 yrs and took care of Iraqi Kurd's woman and children for 20 yrs when you were gassing them (you not even accepting Koreans living in Kobe for generations)

and you say Iran this and that ?

and

Tinker

No

Azari no fool


.
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Typhoon
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Re: Asia

Post by Typhoon »

Christopher Johnson's claims have apparently been receiving a great deal of discussion by expats living in Japan.

The original article that started it all:

Inside the Gaijin Dungeon at Narita Airport in Japan

Observations by expats living in Japan:
Just in general, if there are so many thousands ... actually it'd be more like tens or hundreds of thousands if this story is to be believed ... of foreigners who have been treated like this, you'd expect to hear a bit more about it, no?

I'm not saying the abuses don't happen, but if they happen on the scale the author claims, it would seem that they'd be much more widely reported.

Any other sources?
I don't know what's fucked about it. There are several glaring things about it. Here's a guy been leaving in Japan since when? 1989? His special friend is " Qumico?" He was having problems with his "papers?" for immigration?
Things just don't read right to me. It's a great piece for trashing immigrations, or could be, if there weren't so many questionable passages that seem to threaten the credibility of the whole piece. I mean he has lived in Japan since the 80's, but also learned to speak Thai? Yet, he had his immigration "documents" with him and they were taken away.

I've been here for damn near a day and a half and made numerous entrances and exits to and from the four seasons theater and have never been required to have any "documentation", beyond my passport and visa, and that stupid immigration card that they've had for years. If you're from a 90 day visa waiver country, you only need a passport deshou?

There's got to be something that our boy ain't telling us here. No where in the story are we told why he was 86'd from Nippon, only reasons that he thought they were using. I may be mistaken, or out of date on my info, but I believe they are legally required to inform you why you are not being admitted, especially when it is done in writing as he claims was done in his case...
"Critical" articles is as weak as it comes. You can right seditious stuff in Japan and although it pisses people off, they can't do anything about it. His whole approach to the topic and descriptions of events seem wrong. It's hard to tell if he truly was detained. I note this passage "..... This time, he came back with a new, younger security guard. He looked like a young Chinese guy, stocky, with a bad case of acne. He was wearing a security guard uniform. "Do you see this gun?" he said in Japanese, turning around to show me the pistol in its holster. "I have the legal authority to use this if you refuse to get on that flight. Now are you going to buy that ticket?"

"I was angry now. They are forcing me at gunpoint to buy an overpriced ticket."

"Led by the gunman, the KBs ushered me out of the room and through the airport. They still had my bag, my passport, my wallet, credit cards, everything. I had no choice.. ...."

He stated the cops left before this, so he is obviously bullshitting because, the law allows that only authorized police officers can be armed. Security people have exemptions for the folding nightsticks, but that is it. No bangers. Keibin, which I assume is what he means by KBs, have no authority to be armed, so that is totally out there and an out right lie.
I've visited two friends in the detention center at Narita, both being kicked out, the worst torture they endured was a slightly stretched tape of the Carpenters Greatest Hits being played repeatedly over the speakers.
Yeah, many things do not add up in the report and it's being updated all the time with information to correct all the mistakes.

Maybe he has been coming in and out of Japan on a Tourist Visa or on another Visa not related to Journalism to do actual work here (which he has done for the Japan Times) and he finally got pinged for working in Japan without the correct Visa.
I'd still like to know what "proper visa" Johnson had.

He refers to Qumico - that's how she chooses to romanize her name, so you can't hold that against him - as his partner rather than his wife. Since he writes about someone else's spouse visa, you'd think he might have specified that status for himself if he held it.

He says the Asiana Airline's staff saw he had a "proper visa" in his passport, and also says that Narita Immigration staff could have checked his passport and seen "proper visas dating back years". It sounds a little like the man has been living in Japan on serial short term visas. If that's the case, then he could not have had a current visa in his passport in Seoul because it would have been cancelled as he departed Japan. All his passport would show, is evidence he had been granted visas before, possible even an expired working visa at one stage, if he had obtained sponsorship in the past.

If he did indeed have a valid working visa or spouse visa, and was legally resident in Japan with registration at a ward office, it would be helpful to know this. That would make his experience at immigration a real concern for other legal residents. It would also raise the question of what written reason he was given when he was denied entry.

If instead he was residing in Japan on serial short term visas - he writes about making the country his home since 1989 - then he would have been vulnerable to a refusal at any stage. It doesn't matter if he had never overstayed. It's is an interesting story if he came to the attention of the authorities through his writing but that would make their refusal capricious at best, rather than wrong. It's possible his writing did raise a red flag on his residency status. We already know that Immigration pays attention to gig schedules on the web to monitor whether visiting bands have applied for valid visas to perform.

All of this would be very easy to clear up if he told us what visa status he held, and what written reason he was given when being denied entry.
The process is different if he had a legitimate visa at entry and was declined. His detention alone is notice that something was wrong with his "documents" and/or visa to begin with. He leaves it up in the air by insinuating that he was not given a definite reason why he was refused entry, even with written notification of refusal of enty. This is always done because GOJ could be subject to immediate legal ramifications for not providing cause. The other mis-statements and/or out right lies in his "story" simply magnify it into that what SJ so often and most accurately describes as "bullshit."
If this guy isn't trolling, he's mentally ill.
But now we're supposed to accept at genuflecting face value that a gaijin who supposedly has been a 'resident of Japan since 1989' has been singled out at Immi for doing something completely genuflecting legal while he flies out of and back to Nippon, all the while waiting for a new visa to be processed.

This story is more fishy than obasan's [grandmother's] pussies. I haven't been in Japan for as long as Chrisse J and neither have most of the assortment of gaijin I know, and some of them wouldn't win any genuflecting Einstein awards. But guess what, they've never screwed up their visa renewal process. The only gaijin I ever knew that was denied entry was an obvious hustler travelling back and forth from Japan to Korea, Korea to Japan to work on a tourist visa.

The bullshit inherent in this 'grievance' and 'legal rights case' blah blah is enough to make ya . . .
I sat next to this man in the airport at Narita. The guards were kind and patient with him and he was aggressive and antagonistic. I cannot speak to what happened to him before he reached departures, but I can tell you that this statement is false:

"Flowing with tears, I ran to the bathroom—to hell with asking the guards. I returned to my seat near the gate. I didn’t even look at anyone. I just covered my face in my hands and cried."

He did go to the bathroom but more swearing than crying, exceedingly aggressive to the guards who tried to ask where he was going. And he certainly did not "not even look at anyone"--he repeatedly tried to talk to me about what was going on.
As for the ATOL article
This really is sneaky:

Naming Amnesty International and then following up with his own unconfirmed story about the shake down. Trying to imply that Amnesty International back-up his claims of regular extortion attempts from the guards. If true, this is of course needs to be cleaned up but Mr Johnson has told so many porkies that it is hard to determine or trust what is true and what is not.
At this point, it's starting to look more like chronic mental instability than self-aggrandizing assholishness (not that the two can't overlap quite a bit).
The volleyball article shows pretty clearly that this side of his character didn't suddenly materialize in response to being denied entry.

Were his crap not getting picked up by outlets that don't know any better and are taking him at face value, I'd feel bad about the scrutiny all his writing has started getting.
And so on . . . the general consensus across gaikokujin - expat forums is that he is full of it.
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Typhoon
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Re: The Japan Thread

Post by Typhoon »

AzariLoveIran wrote: . . .

Japan was never a free country

I remember when I used to go to Japan for business .. absolute control

Not even Western style (in itself dubious) freedom, civil right, human right and and does not exist in Japan, more and less, though stealth, same mentality as 1930s

well

Colonel

do reporters without border, or doctors without border, or human right shitheads without border, or hookers without border (quite a few killed in Tokyo) and all other without borders ranking Iran dead last on their list say anything about Japan

No

why ?

come on Colonel, come on , Iranians housed (still do), fed, educated 10 million Afghani for 20 yrs and took care of Iraqi Kurd's woman and children for 20 yrs when you were gassing them (you not even accepting Koreans living in Kobe for generations)

and you say Iran this and that ?

and

Tinker

No

Azari no fool
So were the secret reconstructed Kempeitai shadowing you during your visit?

Transparency International | Corruption Perceptions Index

Japan: 14

Iran: 120

Q.E.D.
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Typhoon
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Re: Asia

Post by Typhoon »

ueNr7mfFZu8

A fair bit of resentment is brewing in Hong Kong against mainland Chinese.

zOni_4PLLQc
A group of Hong Kong netizens donated money to print a full-page advertisement in today’s Apple Daily newspaper:
Image
Translation:

Do you want Hong Kong to spend $1,000,000 HKD every 18 minutes raising “double negative” children? ["double negative" refers to when neither parent is from Hong Kong.]

Hong Kong people have had enough!

Because we understand that you are victimized by poisonous milk powder, we’ve tolerated you coming to panic buy milk powder;
Because we understand that you have no freedom, we’ve welcome you to “travel freely” to Hong Kong;
Because we understand that your education is backwards, we’ve shared our educational resources with you;
Because we understand that you don’t read complete [traditional] Chinese characters, we’ve used crippled [simplified] Chinese characters below:
“When coming to Hong Kong, please respect local culture, [because] if it weren’t for Hong Kong, you would all be doomed.”

Strongly demand that the government revise the Article 24 of Basic Law!

Stop mainland “double negative” pregnant women from limitless invasion of Hong Kong!
May the gods preserve and defend me from self-righteous altruists; I can defend myself from my enemies and my friends.
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Zack Morris
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Re: Asia

Post by Zack Morris »

I miss Ethan Jin. I'm sure he'd have something hilarious to say about this.
AzariLoveIran

The China Thread

Post by AzariLoveIran »

.

Is China Ripe for a Revolution ?

.
What it does face, however, is enormous, inchoate rural unrest. The dark side of China’s economic rise has been a shocking widening of the gulf between the prosperous coast and the poverty-stricken interior, a flourishing of corruption among local officials and, by such data as we can gather, widespread anger and discontent. The government has acknowledged tens of thousands of yearly “mass incidents,” which can range anywhere from a handful of elderly widows protesting a corrupt real estate grab to communities in open revolt (like the southern village of Wukan) to murderous ethnic rioting, as occurred in the last few years in western Xinjiang Province and in Inner Mongolia.

In that sense, it is instead the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty 50 years earlier, that bears the strongest warnings for the current government. The revolt, which claimed at least 20 million lives before it was quelled, making it the bloodiest civil war in history, suggests caution for those who hope for a popular uprising — a Chinese Spring — today.

The Taiping Rebellion exploded out of southern China during the early 1850s in a period marked, as now, by economic dislocation, corruption and a moral vacuum. Rural poverty abounded; local officials were wildly corrupt; the Beijing government was so distant as to barely seem to exist. The uprising was triggered by bloody ethnic feuds between Cantonese-speaking Chinese and the minority Hakkas, a sub-ethnic Chinese group, over land rights. Many Hakkas had joined a growing religious cult built around a visionary named Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. When local Qing officials took the side of the Chinese farmers, they provoked the Hakkas — and their religious sect — to take up arms and turn against the government.

What was so remarkable, and so troubling, about the Taiping Rebellion was that it spread with such swiftness and spontaneity. It did not depend on years of preliminary “revolutionary” groundwork (as did the revolution that toppled the monarchy in 1912 or the 1949 revolution that brought the Communists to power). And while Hong’s religious followers formed its core, once the sect broke out of its imperial cordon and marched north, it swept up hundreds of thousands of other peasants along the way — multitudes who had their own separate miseries and grievances and saw nothing to lose by joining the revolt. Out-of-work miners, poor farmers, criminal gangs and all manner of other discontents folded into the larger army, which by 1853 numbered half a million recruits and conscripts. The Taiping captured the city of Nanjing that year, massacred its entire Manchu population and held the city as their capital and base for 11 years until the civil war ended.

SCHOOLCHILDREN in China in the 1950s and ’60s were taught that the Taiping were the precursors of the Communist Party, with Hong as Mao’s spiritual ancestor. That analogy has now fallen by the wayside, for China’s government is no longer in any sense revolutionary. So it makes sense that in recent years, the Taiping have often been depicted negatively, as perpetrators of superstition and sectarian violence and a threat to social order. The Chinese general who suppressed them, Zeng Guofan, was for generations reviled as a traitor to his race for supporting the Manchus but has now been redeemed. Today he is one of China’s most popular historical figures, a model of steadfast Confucian loyalty and self-discipline. Conveniently for the state, his primary contribution to China’s history was the merciless crushing of violent dissent.

Beijing has learned its lessons from the past. We see this in the swift and ruthless suppression of Falun Gong and other religious sects that resemble the Taiping before they became militarized. We can see it in the numbers of today’s “mass incidents.” One estimate, 180,000 in 2010, sounds ominous indeed, but in fact the sheer number shows that the dissent is not organized and has not (yet) coalesced into something that can threaten the state. The Chinese Communist Party would far rather be faced with tens or even hundreds of thousands of separate small-scale incidents than one unified and momentum-gathering insurgency. The greatest fear of the government is not that violent dissent should exist; the fear is that it should coalesce.

The rebellion holds lessons for the West, too. China’s rulers in the 19th century were, like today, generally loathed abroad. The Manchus were seen as arrogant and venal despots who obstructed trade and hated foreigners. All romance was on the side of the Taiping rebels, who at the onset were heralded abroad as the liberators of the Chinese people. As one American missionary in Shanghai put it at the time, “Americans are too firmly attached to the principles on which their government was founded and has flourished, to refuse sympathy for a heroic people battling against foreign thralldom.”

As Mr. Xi prepares to visit the United States on Tuesday, a similar sympathy shapes our view of China’s current unrest. Just last weekend, Senator John McCain warned China’s vice foreign minister that “the Arab Spring is coming to China.” The dominant tenor of Western press coverage is that the Communist Party is finally receiving its comeuppance — for its corruption, for its misrule in the countryside, for its indifference to human rights and democracy. And below the surface, usually unspoken, lurks a deeply felt sense of schadenfreude — a desire to see the Communist Party toppled from power by its own people.

But we should be careful about what we wish for. For all of the West’s contempt for China’s government in the 19th century, when the Taiping Rebellion actually drove it to the brink of destruction, it was Britain that intervened to keep it in power. Britain’s economy depended so heavily on the China market at the time (especially after the loss of the United States market to the American Civil War in 1861) that it simply could not bear the risk of what might come from a rebel victory. With American encouragement, the British supplied arms, gunships and military officers to the Manchu government and ultimately helped tip the balance of the war in its favor.

We may not be so far removed. Given the precarious state of our economy today, and America’s nearly existential reliance on our trade with China in particular, one wonders: for all of our principled condemnation of China’s government on political and human rights grounds, if it were actually faced with a revolution from within — even one led by a coalition calling for greater democracy — how likely is it that we, too, wouldn’t, in the end, find ourselves hoping for that revolution to fail?
.

.
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Re: The China Thread

Post by monster_gardener »

AzariLoveIran wrote:.

Is China Ripe for a Revolution ?

.
What it does face, however, is enormous, inchoate rural unrest. The dark side of China’s economic rise has been a shocking widening of the gulf between the prosperous coast and the poverty-stricken interior, a flourishing of corruption among local officials and, by such data as we can gather, widespread anger and discontent. The government has acknowledged tens of thousands of yearly “mass incidents,” which can range anywhere from a handful of elderly widows protesting a corrupt real estate grab to communities in open revolt (like the southern village of Wukan) to murderous ethnic rioting, as occurred in the last few years in western Xinjiang Province and in Inner Mongolia.

In that sense, it is instead the Taiping Rebellion, which nearly toppled the Qing Dynasty 50 years earlier, that bears the strongest warnings for the current government. The revolt, which claimed at least 20 million lives before it was quelled, making it the bloodiest civil war in history, suggests caution for those who hope for a popular uprising — a Chinese Spring — today.

The Taiping Rebellion exploded out of southern China during the early 1850s in a period marked, as now, by economic dislocation, corruption and a moral vacuum. Rural poverty abounded; local officials were wildly corrupt; the Beijing government was so distant as to barely seem to exist. The uprising was triggered by bloody ethnic feuds between Cantonese-speaking Chinese and the minority Hakkas, a sub-ethnic Chinese group, over land rights. Many Hakkas had joined a growing religious cult built around a visionary named Hong Xiuquan, who believed himself to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ. When local Qing officials took the side of the Chinese farmers, they provoked the Hakkas — and their religious sect — to take up arms and turn against the government.

What was so remarkable, and so troubling, about the Taiping Rebellion was that it spread with such swiftness and spontaneity. It did not depend on years of preliminary “revolutionary” groundwork (as did the revolution that toppled the monarchy in 1912 or the 1949 revolution that brought the Communists to power). And while Hong’s religious followers formed its core, once the sect broke out of its imperial cordon and marched north, it swept up hundreds of thousands of other peasants along the way — multitudes who had their own separate miseries and grievances and saw nothing to lose by joining the revolt. Out-of-work miners, poor farmers, criminal gangs and all manner of other discontents folded into the larger army, which by 1853 numbered half a million recruits and conscripts. The Taiping captured the city of Nanjing that year, massacred its entire Manchu population and held the city as their capital and base for 11 years until the civil war ended.

SCHOOLCHILDREN in China in the 1950s and ’60s were taught that the Taiping were the precursors of the Communist Party, with Hong as Mao’s spiritual ancestor. That analogy has now fallen by the wayside, for China’s government is no longer in any sense revolutionary. So it makes sense that in recent years, the Taiping have often been depicted negatively, as perpetrators of superstition and sectarian violence and a threat to social order. The Chinese general who suppressed them, Zeng Guofan, was for generations reviled as a traitor to his race for supporting the Manchus but has now been redeemed. Today he is one of China’s most popular historical figures, a model of steadfast Confucian loyalty and self-discipline. Conveniently for the state, his primary contribution to China’s history was the merciless crushing of violent dissent.

Beijing has learned its lessons from the past. We see this in the swift and ruthless suppression of Falun Gong and other religious sects that resemble the Taiping before they became militarized. We can see it in the numbers of today’s “mass incidents.” One estimate, 180,000 in 2010, sounds ominous indeed, but in fact the sheer number shows that the dissent is not organized and has not (yet) coalesced into something that can threaten the state. The Chinese Communist Party would far rather be faced with tens or even hundreds of thousands of separate small-scale incidents than one unified and momentum-gathering insurgency. The greatest fear of the government is not that violent dissent should exist; the fear is that it should coalesce.

The rebellion holds lessons for the West, too. China’s rulers in the 19th century were, like today, generally loathed abroad. The Manchus were seen as arrogant and venal despots who obstructed trade and hated foreigners. All romance was on the side of the Taiping rebels, who at the onset were heralded abroad as the liberators of the Chinese people. As one American missionary in Shanghai put it at the time, “Americans are too firmly attached to the principles on which their government was founded and has flourished, to refuse sympathy for a heroic people battling against foreign thralldom.”

As Mr. Xi prepares to visit the United States on Tuesday, a similar sympathy shapes our view of China’s current unrest. Just last weekend, Senator John McCain warned China’s vice foreign minister that “the Arab Spring is coming to China.” The dominant tenor of Western press coverage is that the Communist Party is finally receiving its comeuppance — for its corruption, for its misrule in the countryside, for its indifference to human rights and democracy. And below the surface, usually unspoken, lurks a deeply felt sense of schadenfreude — a desire to see the Communist Party toppled from power by its own people.

But we should be careful about what we wish for. For all of the West’s contempt for China’s government in the 19th century, when the Taiping Rebellion actually drove it to the brink of destruction, it was Britain that intervened to keep it in power. Britain’s economy depended so heavily on the China market at the time (especially after the loss of the United States market to the American Civil War in 1861) that it simply could not bear the risk of what might come from a rebel victory. With American encouragement, the British supplied arms, gunships and military officers to the Manchu government and ultimately helped tip the balance of the war in its favor.

We may not be so far removed. Given the precarious state of our economy today, and America’s nearly existential reliance on our trade with China in particular, one wonders: for all of our principled condemnation of China’s government on political and human rights grounds, if it were actually faced with a revolution from within — even one led by a coalition calling for greater democracy — how likely is it that we, too, wouldn’t, in the end, find ourselves hoping for that revolution to fail?
.

.
Thank you Very Much for your post, Azari.
For all of the West’s contempt for China’s government in the 19th century, when the Taiping Rebellion actually drove it to the brink of destruction, it was Britain that intervened to keep it in power. Britain’s economy depended so heavily on the China market at the time (especially after the loss of the United States market to the American Civil War in 1861) that it simply could not bear the risk of what might come from a rebel victory. With American encouragement, the British supplied arms, gunships and military officers to the Manchu government and ultimately helped tip the balance of the war in its favor.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Gordon#China

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noddy
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Re: Asia

Post by noddy »

Typhoon wrote: Hong Kong people have had enough!

Because we understand that you are victimized by poisonous milk powder, we’ve tolerated you coming to panic buy milk powder;
Because we understand that you have no freedom, we’ve welcome you to “travel freely” to Hong Kong;
Because we understand that your education is backwards, we’ve shared our educational resources with you;
Because we understand that you don’t read complete [traditional] Chinese characters, we’ve used crippled [simplified] Chinese characters below:
“When coming to Hong Kong, please respect local culture, [because] if it weren’t for Hong Kong, you would all be doomed.”

Strongly demand that the government revise the Article 24 of Basic Law!

Stop mainland “double negative” pregnant women from limitless invasion of Hong Kong!
the joys of mixing simple rural folk with urban middle class sophisticates.
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