Saturday, December 18, 2010

Chinese Fishing Boat, Your Coast Guard; Welcome to the Club, ROK

Sorry I haven’t responded to comments on the Senkaku issue, but is this (highly unsuccessful) ramming of a South Korean Coast Guard vessel by a Chinese fishing boat Chinese government subterfuge, a copycat incident, gangster-like behavior by a historically rowdy occupational category, or a symptom of a larger Chinese breakdown in civility, most prominently evidenced in the tens of thousands of violent protests on the mainland?

3 comments:

Mark said...

At the end of 2009, I remember reading a lot of stories written by pundits in America and Europe in which they complained about how awful 2009 was. I’m sure I’ll soon be reading stories from those very same pundits about how much worse 2010 was.

In 2010, Japanese politics became slightly worse, though for the most part it remained the same. Japanese politics still seems focused on wasting everyone’s time. Only with the DPJ in charge, Japanese politics has lost its sense of humor and is now just painful to watch.

Next year could be even worse. At least the DPJ has tried to do a few things to boost domestic demand. Next year, the DPJ could split. We may have new elections. The LDP could return to power. Though that could inject some much needed humor into politics, I imagine a LDP administration would be more mercantilist. Given the option between the two parties, I’d guess I’d personally prefer mercantilist and humorless to really mercantilist and funny.

For those of you that don’t know who I am, I used to be a software engineer. I joined Lockheed Martin in 1999. I left the company in less than a year. In all likelihood, at some point during my time there, my government decided to use me for its own purposes without my consent. In the past couple of years, it has been administering drugs to me without my consent. It has also been using other methods to screw with my mind. Believe it or not, the government does now have ways to read people’s thoughts. It also has the ability to inject thoughts into a person’s mind. My government is doing both of these things to me. How they are doing this, I don’t know. But the fact that they can do this should make other countries very suspicious about sending their citizens abroad. It should also make you even more suspicious of the activities of foreign agents in your own country. In any event, there are several things I’ve learned throughout this experience.

It's good to be an Oriental or a white person. That’s the first thing I’ve learned. I happen to be a Japanese-American. Lucky me. On the other hand, it sucks to be an Oriental person who wants the truth to be known, especially when you live in a white country. That leads me to my second point.

Ideals are absolutely meaningless to every single person in power. That’s the second thing I’ve learned. Throughout this last year there has been so many opportunities to tell the truth and at every single opportunity everyone in power – in the media and in government – in every single country has chosen not to seize that opportunity. In America, we had a bunch of prominent journalists argue that the truth shouldn’t be told. On the other hand, we also had another bunch of prominent journalists say that the truth should be told but then those prominent journalists did absolutely nothing to actually reveal the truth. At least the journalists who said they didn’t want the truth revealed were honest.

At various points during this past year I tried to tell the truth as best I could. It didn’t seem to have much of an impact. Towards the end of the year, as I started to gather more information, my government started drugging me more and more. It became very hard to remember things. It even became difficult to read newspaper articles.

Mark said...

Continued from above...

Throughout the year, I kept thinking to myself that there’s no way the government can keep this stuff hidden forever. In today’s world, anyone with access to the Internet can write an article and publish it on the web and then have a potential audience of 2 billion people. All it takes is for one person to tell the truth. What is the government doing to do, find everyone who knows the truth and start drugging them? There’s no way this could work. But apparently, my government thought this could work. With me, my government has managed to undermine what are supposed to be America’s three most important ideals – democracy, civil liberties, and the rule of law – in one fell swoop.

The other day, one of Obama’s people claimed that Obama was acting in America’s interests. I’m not sure how you can make that argument. As far as I can tell, he’s just been doing more awful things that don’t work. But in doing those things he given other countries the ability to use the knowledge of those activities to extort America. Good job.

In fact, Obama seems to be covering his own ass and the ass of other people who don't deserve it. And he seems to be entangling a whole lot of other people in this process and hurting them too. Meanwhile, unemployment is high and little is getting done. But he extended the Bush tax cuts. Yippee. No one learns anything. The people are unaware of any crisis which might get them to change.

The people in power will stop at nothing to make sure the truth remains a secret. That’s the third thing I’ve learned. I get the feeling everyone is hoping that some government will just kill me. I also get the feeling that other governments know about me and therefore killing me would give the governments that didn’t kill me the ability to extort the government that did kill me. That may be why I’m still alive. The other reason why I’m not dead may be because my government wants to use me to extort other governments.

Despite the fact that the governments of the world have been able to keep a lid on things for roughly forever, I still believe that the truth will come out. But I can’t say when that will happen. That leads me to the fourth thing I’ve learned.

Until the truth is told, don’t give in to any unreasonable demands made by other countries under the threat of having the truth exposed. That’s the fourth thing I’ve learned. The government threatening you doesn’t want the truth known any more than you do. You need to call their bluff. The worst thing you could do is to capitulate to unreasonable demands and then have the truth revealed anyways. For Japan, unless it wants to start telling the truth (and it looks like it doesn’t), focusing on the economy might not be such a bad idea. Of course, if America or Europe starts making too much trouble remember that you can always do what they fear the most – you can tell the truth.

Oriental people need to stick together. That’s the fifth thing I’ve learned. There isn’t anything that America and Europe wouldn’t do to fuck up East Asia. The only way for East Asia to survive is for Japan and China to stick together. Japan has the technology and know-how. China has the scale and it has nuclear weapons, which are needed to deter military action.

If nothing else, the past couple of years have convinced me that a world with China at its center would be better than a world led by America or Europe. That’s the last thing I’ve learned.

Anonymous said...

If nothing else,Cheapest wow gold the last couple of years get confident everyone a world along with Tiongkok in its middle can be superior to a global directed simply by The us or maybe The european Cheapest Diablo 3 goldcountries. That’s not what I’ve mastered.