Seoul: Odds and Ends

Not much to report today. Mostly current events and other tidbits, but they are after the photos below. I traveled to Costco in the northeastern portion of Seoul, then back to COEX Mall for some more blackjack. Temperatures warmed up considerably, and I actually went out without my leggings under my slacks. With the snow turning into slush, it was quite miserable walking in daytime - and as the slush re-froze, nighttime walk was quite slippery.

A look at prototype signage to be possibly used in the Seoul subway system in the future.

Current Seoul Subway signage, consistent across both Seoul Metro and SMRT (and also used at Korail with minor variations), dates back to designs devised by Seoul Metro a quarter-century ago, which made line colors more prominent. (Reminders existed back then everywhere: red = Line 1, green = Line 2, orange = Line 3, blue = Line 4, gray = Korail, yellow = exit.) The station name above the platform screen doors follows the current signage conventions. The 1982 extensions of Line 2 were the first sections to get the new signs, and by 1985, they had spread to the entire Seoul Metro network. Those signs were the first to use the McCune-Reischauer romanization of Korean, officially adopted in 1984 and used through 2000.

Before then, rectangular Japanese-style signs, with no color information whatsoever (Line 1 used black letters on white background, and Line 2 reversed that), had been used.

Back in the 1980s, signs were made only in Korean and English, as spoken Chinese back then was a language only for the dwindling, undesirable local Chinese population, and written Chinese was being seen as a remnant of Japanese colonial rule and therefore severely discouraged. Things have changed, however; numerous visitors, from both Japan and the Chinese-speaking world, demand Chinese characters, and even locals take a much more positive view toward Chinese characters. Some current signs feature Chinese characters as afterthoughts, while others don't even feature them at all.

The black prototype signs overhead were seen at Gunja Station, the transfer point between Lines 5 and 7. They are much sleeker than the current signs, even though the current signs, which use white and the line color as backgrounds, still look quite attractive. They use standard fonts instead of the stylized 1980s subway font. And most importantly, they accommodate both English and Chinese - with more grace than current signs. I'd love to see more of these signs during a future Seoul visit, though it'll be lots of work and money involved to replace all the signs. There was another wholesale sign replacement project just back in 2000, due to the change in romanization, and due to the change of Line 1 from red to dark blue.

On a side note, I personally love Chinese characters, because they allow me to figure out what a given placename means, and even have educated guesses at the place's history. I shared some of that with Bundang Line stations in a recent post.

Speaking of prototype signage, Korea Expressway Corporation has two high-legibility prototype exit signs on northbound Expressway 1 as well, near Suwon. Honestly, one of them is actually much less legible than existing signs.

I am nearing my first stop - Costco. I am passing in front of a cell phone store, located on a thoroughfare that belongs to both National Highways 6 and 47. This promotion poster is done in the format of a political campaign, with the cat as the candidate, and it allows me to note some South Korean political conventions.

First, candidates are given, and listed by, candidate numbers; Candidate 1 is always the one from the political party with the most National Assembly representation (currently the Republicans), the numbers go up with decreasing representation, and independents get the highest candidate numbers. This ensures that it's easier for a candidate from the majority/plurality party to get votes - a major consideration during the dictatorship era.

The cat is Candidate 1, and its political affiliation is 딴나라당 (Other National Party), a derogatory play on 한나라당 (Grand National Party, though it can also be One National Party), the official name of the Republicans. Apparently, the store's owner shares my belief that the Republicans prefer to work for foreign right-wing movements rather than the South Korean people.

The cat's name is 공짜냥 (free money). 냥 (nyang, or ryang) is an old Korean unit of money, and in colloquial Korean, it may be substituted for won. Its campaign promise is that if you enter the store, you can grab a cell phone for 1,000 won.

Some news and other stuff I picked up today. I love continuing to pick up tons of useless stuff about South Korean society - that'll be the one thing I'll miss as I return home.

• As I was obtaining my vital records (see last post), I saw some news feeds via YTN. South Korea's export tally this year has broken the USD $400 billion mark for the first time ever. It had broken $100 million in 1964, back when human hair wigs were the best things South Korea could export. $10 billion was accomplished in 1977, and $100 billion in the 1990s. South Korea's current leading export products are ships and petrochemicals, with electronics and motor vehicles running close behind. Count me in with the motor vehicle tally, as I take delivery of a Hyundai Genesis later this month; the car should already be sitting either at a dealership or at a Hyundai import processing facility - US territory, in any case. Given that this record was set in a year of crummy world economy, it's impressive.
• The same news feed also indicated that the favorable exchange rates are leading many Japanese tourists to visit South Korea. Casinos, which normally handle foreigners only, are doing very well. 100 Japanese yen could buy only 1,000 won, but now it can easily buy 1,600 won or more. Speaking of gambling, I lost big at the blackjack table - well in excess of 300,000 won tonight - but due to the favorable exchange rates, I can still afford the loss. My tablemates were Korean-Americans, however, not Japanese tourists.
• Speaking of the casino, I saw cheques (I'll use the European spelling, though American spelling of "check" may also be used) as valid forms of payment. Handwritten personal/business checks, as in North America and Europe, do not exist in South Korea. But cashier's cheques, with no payor/payee information (therefore allowing reuse, and even use by foreigners and others with no local banking accounts), are very common. The most common variety are the pre-printed ones with 100,000-won value, often used as high-denomination banknotes due to cash going up to only 10,000. Cheques do expire, and require processing, so they don't stay in circulation for long. But the 100,000-won cheques will stick around, as the 2MB government has pretty much killed off the 100,000-won banknote due to its portrait of Kim Ku, a leftist independence fighter/patriot to the vast majority of South Koreans but a vicious terrorist to 2MB and his supporters.
  
• The Hankyoreh, the leading center-left newspaper, reports that a new government DVD of South Korea's modern history, made for classroom use in elementary and secondary schools, has now demoted the April 19, 1960 pro-democracy revolution, which overthrew the reactionary Syngman Rhee government and established South Korea's first, short-lived democracy, as a mere "demonstration." The DVD also offers glowing praises of the dictatorial rules of Rhee, Park Chung-hee, and Chun Doo-hwan, and glorifies the accomplishments of 2MB as the Mayor of Seoul (even though they are at best local, not national, topics), while leaving out the inter-Korean summits and other liberal accomplishments altogether. While the Hankyoreh surely uses very biased language, it is certainly truthful and accurate in its reporting, something I cannot claim of, say, the right-wing mouthpiece Chosun Ilbo. 2MB may be laughing for now as he gets to teach his brand of revisionist history, but the losers will be the future leaders of South Korea's society. Again, 2MB and his cronies will never be forgiven.
• Some stores are now stocking American beef once again, but Costco isn't - just not yet. While I am very well convinced that American beef is safe, I believe that to buy and eat American beef in South Korea today is to give approval to 2MB's refusal to do his independent verification of safety (in other words, dereliction of his duty to the people in order to please W). I'll have plenty of American beef when I go home, and until then, it's either Australian beef or pricey domestic beef for me.
• Some subway tidbits. Free tickets for seniors and the disabled are being converted from one-use magnetic paper tickets to permanent smart cards; paper tickets will not be issued after mid-May. Some stations issue such free tickets by reading the smart chip inside the passenger's eligible government ID, at a vending machine. On Korail sections, convenience stores are StoryWay, Korail's own brand. And Line 7, which has the only above-water Han River crossing in the SMRT system, offers excellent views of Jamsil and the Olympic Stadium. (Line 5 crosses the river twice, but uses tunnels, while Lines 6 and 8 do not cross the river. By contrast, all Seoul Metro and Korail lines with river crossings use above-water bridges, though Line 7 still offers the best views.)
• After a subway arson killed dozens in Daegu in 2003, preventing arson is a huge concern on South Korean subway systems. Korail reminds me that if I enter the subway with gasoline or some other flammable, I can expect a year in jail and/or 500,000 won fine. Cold comfort - half a million is a pittance! Hong Kong charges twice as much for merely smoking a cigarette. Seriously, the fine needs to be jacked up to at least 50 million, and jail terms need to be heftier - to be in line with attempted murder, depending on circumstances of the offender.
• Speaking of the criminal system, it's been standard procedure to get more lenient sentencing for rape, after claiming to be drunk and judgment-impaired. Fortunately, that will no longer work. I don't support Sharia law for anything, but in case of rape, I do support something close to it.
  

I had good time playing blackjack, but did not communicate much with the Korean-American tablemates, beyond any game calls (and shared joy at a dealer bust). And while losing 400,000+ won over two nights sounds more painful than it really is, it is still a sizable loss, so I will no longer play blackjack for the rest of my South Korean stay. For that matter, I'm reconsidering my year-end Las Vegas trip, which is really intended to break in my new Hyundai. It'll probably make much more sense to head up to San Francisco for two nights instead, as I can do a more scenic drive on California 1 (AND drive flat-out on I-5 in the other direction), and it's probably not a good idea to leave the state with only temporary registration anyway. Doing a photo shoot of my new car at various Bay Area locales - especially Haight-Ashbury, the Castro gay district, and the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley - will be priceless. In any case, I'll be very proud to show up in something other than a BMW, while carrying the spirit of Kwan Yin while at it.

Before I leave for Hong Kong

In less than six hours, I'll be gone from this cut-rate Republican colony. I never thought I'd feel more free in Chinese territory than in Korea, but tonight, I probably will. The next several days in Hong Kong will be absolutely great, I am sure.

Here are two photos that pertain to my last few posts, taken from a Korail subway train.

For some reason, this older poster survived the changeover to the new ones. This is from the National Intelligence Service (NIS), formerly the Korean Central Intellgence Agency (KCIA), which is South Korea's state thought police. Up until a few weeks ago, this was what I could expect to find in every subway car, from three (SMRT) to six (Seoul Metro) in each car.

Its message says "National security is national competitiveness." The lower left lists the hotlines: 111 for NIS, 113 for local police, and 1337 for the military. The lower right lists the rewards: 150 million won for spy ships, and 100 million for spies. "Spies" include those from North Korea, as well as industrial espionage from the likes of China.

In a highly publicized case, Chery Motors of China sent industrial spies to GM Daewoo, stole the engineering specs for the Matiz microcar, and ended up manufacturing an unauthorized clone named QQ. The QQ is a death trap in crashes, but is much cheaper than the real Matiz, and as a result, GM Daewoo can't sell the Matiz in China, and is at a competitive disadvantage in other Third World markets where both the Matiz and the QQ are available.

Here is the current poster, which started popping up overnight, and replaced the design above just about everywhere.

Its message says: "Please stay straight - national security awareness in the Republic of Korea." The hotlines and the rewards stay the same; however, there is an additional reward of 30 million won for reporting domestic left-wing activists.

South Korea, using its confrontation with North Korea as an excuse (a valid excuse, technically, as the war never ended with a peace treaty), maintains the National Security Law, which allows severe punishments for any and all seditious activities, including and up to death. The list of seditious activities has varied over the years, depending on the ideology of the government. In recent years, merely being left-of-center was protected under the constitutional guarantee of freedom of conscience, and in any case, nobody in South Korea has been executed since 1997. However, 2MB has vowed to put an end to all of this, use the death penalty extensively for seditious activities, and include leftist political leanings as part of that.

This is exactly the same police state that the US neocons, the colonial masters of 2MB, have always dreamed of, and almost made reality in the US.

I was very tempted to cross out the "Republic of Korea" portion and scribble "Third-rate colony of the discredited US Republican neocons" in instead. And while SMRT trains have lower ceilings, and therefore fewer places to post these thought police posters, the higher-ceiling Korail trains feature a few more of them, though neither match Seoul Metro's enthusiasm.

Travel around Seoul today: I traveled to downtown for meditation. I made sure to stay away from Seoul Metro at all costs; my routing involved Line 8 to Line 5 into downtown. After meditation, I took a bus, then Line 1, to Yongsan for a cheap Thai lunch, before taking the Korail Jungang Line to pick up Line 5 again and retrace my route back to Seongnam. Given that my farecard is scanned only at the origin and destination stations, my fare is always calculated based on the most efficient route possible between them, regardless of my actual route taken; if the "best" routing includes Seoul Metro lines, Seoul Metro will get a cut of my fare. It stinks, as many downtown routings make most sense using Seoul Metro. But I am still avoiding Seoul Metro if only to feel a bit more empowered. For the Line 1 section into Yongsan, the most logical routing would've involved getting off the bus at Seoul Station, whose subway station is Seoul Metro; I refused, and traveled another stop to Namyeong, the first Korail station south of downtown, and entered it using Korail turnstiles. A train pulled in, but it was a Seoul Metro train - actually, the very rare one made up of old extra insert cars; I refused to board it, and waited for the next Korail train, even though I only needed to go one stop, wholly on Korail tracks, and Korail would've gotten all my money anyway.

I felt much better as I returned to Seongnam, but I still don't feel line taking another lengthy ride to the airport, using the subway and staring at the thought police posters. I'll shell out a small fortune and take a deluxe bus instead; thanks to the colonial currency depreciating like there's no tomorrow, I can afford the bus ride anyway.

Other items:

• There is a bill under consideration (probably from the Republicans) which would allow taxicabs to drive on bus-only lanes. Cabbies welcome it, as they consider themselves to be part of Seoul's mass transit network. Bus operators and drivers oppose it, as Seoul has way too many cabs - even more than places like New York or London - and the cabs will jam up the bus lanes. Every Seoul bus now carries a banner expressing strong opposition to this bill.
• Throughout downtown Seoul, there are many television displays, sort of like the ones from Times Square. Most are owned and operated by Chosun Ilbo - which I now consider to be as much of a propaganda organ as North Korea's Rodong Shinmun. The City of Seoul likes to use them as well to spread city news and propaganda. They make me sick to the stomach.
• Seoul certainly saw some poorly-executed but nevertheless beneficial traffic and other improvements. I'll give 2MB, the former mayor, credit. However, he was trying to do this not to serve the citizens of Seoul, but to (1) buy crucial support for the presidential run, (2) build up his resume while at it, and (3) ensure that his hand-picked successor, current mayor Oh Se-hun, would succeed him. Oh is pretty much wrecking the entire city as I speak.
• A decal on a Bundang Line train showed strong opposition to widespread standardized testing in public schools, part of 2MB's plans which echo his master W's "No Child Left Behind"program. No Child Left Behind was a program with a great premise, as it vowed to improve schools and keep them accountable to students and parents, but instead, it ended up creating an examination hell just like the ones here in South Korea. Students are no longer learning; they are just preparing for meaningless tests. South Korea currently devotes its entire public education curriculum to such meaningless test preparations, and 2MB's plans will only worsen it.
• Another aspect of 2MB's education agenda is school choice. Standardized testing will allow parents to pick the most desirable school for their children. Sounds good, but as school choice is really a means for America's Christian extremists to send their children to propaganda schools at public taxpayer expense, it's also a means for South Koreans to kill off the public schools they don't like. In conjunction with this, the numbers and lists of all unionized teachers at each school will be made public. The connotation: schools with lots of unionized teachers will feed your children leftist propaganda - so stay away, and force them to close, and force other schools to fire their unionized teachers.
• Speaking of fears of leftist propaganda, the textbook publishers have agreed to roll over dead and cave in to the demands made by the colonials, for a more right-wing history textbook. News reports I am hearing clearly identify the Republican colonial government and the various New Right organizations as the main driving forces, though the "Ministry of National Defense" (which is more like a subdivision of the US neocon command, as it will defer to the US in wartime, and even though the US would like to relinquish command, it doesn't want it) is also strongly behind this. It looks like "New Right" doesn't just refer to the New Right Foundation, but rather the entire South Korean-style neocon movement, where it's patriotic to sell out to Japan and the US Republicans, and treasonous to be an independence fighter or a nationalist.
• Speaking of the military, South Korea's Marines, whose first major accomplishment is "quelling the Communist uprising of Jeju Island in 1948" (which wasn't all that Communist at all, in real life), is truly a subdivision of the United States Marine Corps. The slogans are merely Korean translations of the USMC ones, including "Once a Marine, always a Marine." The colors and the decals are identical as well. I know the USMC - it is certainly the most reactionary of the military branches - and the "ROK" MC can only be worse.
• The international crises - a terrorist bombing in Mumbai, and a pro-democracy uprising in Bangkok - do make major headlines. This is NOT a time for 2MB to terrorize his subjects, but rather, to respond appropriately and ensure stability and democracy to prevent future events like this. Sure, Thailand has a long tradition of modern democracy, and a streak of sovereignty that remained unbroken through the colonial era (only China and Japan can claim that elsewhere in Asia), but the military and corrupt politicians have been too vocal. Over here in South Korea, the military had two major coups in recent memory, and even though democracy has been safe for the past two decades, it's now destroyed thanks to 2MB, and the reactionary military commanders may get emboldened to again start killing the very people they are sworn to protect.
• Last, but not the least, Seoul's extensive subway system can be too much for some. I had to give directions to some fellow passengers - and Seoul isn't even my primary home anymore. (And I don't want it to ever be one again - and it looks like my next return to Seoul can wait a few months.) But it felt good to interact with the good everyday South Koreans again. I was also reminded of other overwhelmingly complex subway systems around the world - namely the New York Subway and the London Tube, both of which I know well. The major difference is that both New York and London are run by one agency (though New York used to be three separate systems), while Seoul uses two city companies to run the system, thanks to the utter ineptitude of Seoul Metro. If Seoul Metro were actually any good, it would've gone on to oversee Lines 5-8 as opposed to having to create SMRT just for those newer four lines.
  
• As I progressed back toward Seongnam, another leggings salesperson came on board - but this was a man in a business suit, with a trousers leg rolled up to reveal that he is wearing what he's selling. Same 4,000 won price. As the quality appears very good, and as it's getting bitterly cold in Seoul, I may have to grab a pair at the next opportunity.

Hong Kong, here I come.

Revisionist History

As I was out and about in and around downtown Seoul, I came across another banner, courtesy of the Korean Railroad Workers' Union. It read: "Mad cow-tainted American beef threatens Korean families and farmers, and as such, the railroad workers refuse to transport it." Of course, this is a continuation of the American beef hysteria - and more importantly, the people's disapproval of Lee Myung-bak and his coddling of the US Republicans.

But that is not my biggest concern today - a bigger news item popped up on today's Joongang Ilbo (published as The Korea Daily in major US cities). As if naming 23 books as "subversive" (including designating patriotic American books as "anti-American") was not enough, South Korea's Ministry of National Defence now wants the nation's textbooks re-written, to stamp out what it calls the "leftist bias" in the public education system. (It also ties into Lee Myung-bak's plans to reveal the number of unionized teachers at each public school.) Some details of the proposed changes are as follows:

• President Park Chung-hee, who collaborated with the Japanese colonial rulers under the name Masao Takaki, and who was the nation's unitary executive from 1961 to 1979, is currently described in textbooks as "a man above the Constitution," but the Ministry of National Defence wants him described as "the visionary who masterminded the nation's industrialization."
• The inaugural President Syngman Rhee, an autocratic Korean-American who led South Korea during the war, is currently described as "a dictator who used the division and the war as excuses to consolidate his grip on power." It is generally well agreed among Koreans of all political stripes that Rhee didn't get much done during his 12 years in power. The proposed changes will describe him as "the founder of Korean democracy and a patriotic anticommunist fighter." No mentions whatsoever will be made of his war crimes.
  
• President Chun Doo-hwan, a Reagan puppet who seized power in a 1979 coup and killed hundreds of pro-democracy protesters in 1980, and ruled until 1988, will be described in much more positive terms, including his winning the rights to host the 1988 Summer Olympics, overseeing an economic boom, and being the first South Korean President to peacefully step down at the end of his term. His negative aspects, including the coup, ties to Reagan, support of the Unification Church, and eventual death sentence for his coup (later commuted by a leftist regime), will be left out altogether.
• Currently, North Korea is described as "an autocratic personality cult of Kim Il-sung, succeeded by his son Kim Jong-il." The proposed changes will change that to simply "an extraordinarily evil regime, even by communist standards."

South Korea is currently up in arms over Japan's own right-wing revisionist history books, which describe the Korean-administered island of Dokdo, or Liancourt Rocks, as the Japanese territory of Takeshima, as well as Japan's World War II-era war crimes as "liberation of the Asian peoples from Western powers," and even the Comfort Women as "voluntary sex workers." But given that South Korea wants to teach revisionist history of its own, the cries against Japanese revisionist history are starting to sound a lot more hollow - especially given that the very conservative forces that want the revisionist history taught in South Korea tend to be soft on Japan (to a point where they want to thank the Japanese colonizers for industrializing and modernizing Korea - never mind that Japan was really exploiting Korea instead).

I do believe that democratic traditions, which developed despite the decades of dictatorships, will triumph over the military in the end, here in South Korea. The children of South Korea need to learn facts, not propaganda. I strongly denounce the Lee Myung-bak government for putting its own selfish goals (including meddling in US politics) above the well-being of the South Korean people.

And in the wake of this news item, I have decided to strike the War Memorial, with its McCarthyist propaganda galore, off of my list of place to visit during my stay. I had wanted to go there to study military history, to pay homage to my 11th Century ancestor General Seo Hui (whose bust is at the memorial), and to look at some pro-peace artwork, but I cannot, in good conscience, support the South Korean military and its mentality anymore.

A quick-and-dirty guide to fascist victory

As appeared in a TruthOut editorial by Rob Kall:

Italics are my emphasis. Brackets are my comments.

Tips to fascists, dictators, corporatists, militarists, imperialists, neocons, right-wingers, theocrats, theofascists and terrorists.

1. Kill the strongest opposition candidate and then pretend that elections should go on as normal, without allowing the opposition party to reorganize. Examples:
• Benazir Bhutto: strategy - hamstring security abilities to the extent that the candidate actually writes a letter accusing the government leadership of intentional sabotage of security.
• Paul Wellstone: rush through a replacement candidate and politicize the funeral. Get the mainstream media "partners" to portray the funeral as despicably political to eliminate sympathy for the new candidate. (Expect something like this with the candidate who replaces Bhutto.
2. Steal elections using e-voting with nonpublic software code, no paper ballot records, purges from lists of eligible voters, phone-bank jamming and fraudulent registration drives, where you throw away the registrations of opposition party registrants. Multiple examples in US - Florida and Ohio, particularly. Essential: this only works with weak, cowardly candidates who fail to aggressively work to prevent these actions and then fail to challenge questionable outcomes. This has been relatively easy, since even when candidates do get tough in response to rigged elections, there are plenty of weak, compromised legislators who will enable the election theft. Clint Curtis's campaign is a good example. The Dems in Congress allowed the theft.
3. Erode constitutional rights. Violate laws and treaties. Make excuses that there are imminent threats to national security, or that the treaties will hurt the nation's economy. Take the most horrific of these and get the media to boost hysteria and fear, then get the most fascist members of the legislature to push through laws retroactively making violations of the law legal. The majority of sold-out legislators will work with your lobbyists, avoid your media mockery and pass the legislation or approve appointees who allow or refuse to not condemn the assaults upon the Constitution and international law. Example - Mukasey approval, FISA approval, continuation of Iraq war (started on lies). [And make new laws and treaties, such as the new free trade agreements, without the knowledge and consent of American people. Thank you, Samsung.]
   
4. Gradually destroy the economy. Engage in "Shock Doctrine" disaster capitalism, so the nation's citizens are more worried about survival than maintaining democracy. Naomi Klein has documented how fascist neocon Milton Friedman economists have used this tried and true approach to destruction of democracy in dozen of nations - usually with the help of the USA's CIA. See Naomi Klein's book, "Shock Doctrine," for detailed examples. [This works so well.]
   
5. Corporatize the nation. Maximize laws that give corporations human rights as persons. Allow corporations to pollute the election process, so their money is the primary factor in deterring the ability of candidates to reach voters, as is the law and policy in the US. Have legislators you own create bogus, chimera laws that look like and call themselves election reform, that are really so full of loopholes that they actually improve the power of corporations while taking away the power of citizens. See US policy for excellent examples.
6. Deregulate the media so a handful of corporate owners control most of the message. Then filter the news so viewers/readers/listeners are turned off to paying attention. Do this by using the same footage over and over again, and numb the viewers' minds with focus on coverage of morally impaired and stupid celebrities, tabloid news such as weird surgeries, kidnappings, horrific mass murders, strange diseases, detachment of Siamese twins.... And when you do cover real news, mock the most serious defenders of democracy. Attempt to embarrass them, to get viewers and readers to think of them as fools and kooks. Especially, use this mockery approach to sabotage and attack any candidates not "with the program" who are surging in polls.
7. Infiltrate alternative media. Hijack comment threads with negative, cynical remarks, or distract commenters from staying on focus. Provoke incivility among regular readers of pro-democracy media.
8. Widen class differences. Keep as many people as possible hungry, without health care, worried about where they will get the money to pay for housing, clothing, education, food and medicine. [Sell the jobs to the lowest foreign bidder - it's great, because domestic labor unions have no counter.]
   
9. Take advantage of natural disasters to weaken democratic factors. Allow floods, hurricanes and fires to "cleanse" unwanted voters in selected regions. Replace them with high-end real estate and corporate assets. Use the disasters as opportunities to spend taxpayer money to reward political allies.
10. Pretend that everything you do is the patriotic support of Democracy, even if it is directly opposed to democracy. Attack the pro-democracy party and organizations as being communist, socialist, fringe, kook, even dangerous to democracy. Depend upon anti-democracy mainstream media allies to help pound this message so the fools produced by the dumbed-down, "most children left behind" educational system buy these messages. Use talk radio to nail this down. See US education laws and policies for examples. This is already working quite effectively in the US as low international scores indicate.
11. Allow candidates to run repeatedly, without term limits. Eventually, candidates who do not toe the anti-democracy line in all parties will burn out or run out of funding. That will leave, even in the supposed liberal parties, reliable legislators who will keep the anti-democracy program going. Eventually, they will get themselves into key leadership positions, either at the top of the party or just below the top. Consider Chuck Schumer, Stenny Hoyer and Rahm Emanuel as excellent examples. [Or until recently, Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.]
    
12. Build fear into the culture. Say you are fighting terrorism, but engage in international policies that foment and encourage terrorism, helping terrorists to massively expand recruitment and even training of operatives. See Iraq for Islamic terrorists. See the US for anti-abortion Christian terrorists. [Think South Korea and Taiwan of the Cold War era as well.]

I would also love to add #13 in the form of "bring as many immigrants who support your anti-democratic agenda as you can, and keep out/deport as many immigrants who oppose it as possible." That will explain the special treatment doled out to the Cuban and Korean communities, and the human rights violations occurring against members of Mexican, Chinese, and most other communities.

Any questions?

TruthOut

The white American liberals' perception problem

As I wrote my post on Venezuelan politics yesterday, and briefly discussed the American liberals' support for the policies of Hugo Chavez, I had several thoughts on the state of white American liberalism, and how out of touch it feels to the nonwhites like me - the very ones they are claiming to stand for.

According to the white American liberal orthodoxy, Venezuela is a commendable example of a nation breaking free of Western European cultures' influences, by charting its own course of spreading the prosperity to the weak, and defying the imperial fascist tendencies of the W regime. Chavez came to power, by running on a populist platform, and by defeating a pro-Western candidate, former Miss Universe Irene Saez, who had met with President Bill Clinton during his visit to Venezuela. While it is true that there is a lot of oil wealth in Venezuela, and it has not been distributed fairly in the past, even Chavez hasn't been able to make much of an improvement, despite his flashy grand social programs. Fixing Venezuela's problems requires long-term visionary plans by several successive regimes, and the power-hungry personality of Chavez is now working against that.

But nobody on the American left dares to suggest that Chavez is power-hungry. In fact, they continue to point to his high approval ratings - but that's pretty much the only thing that's going well for him now. In particular, no white American liberal dares to point out the discrepancy between Chavez's supposed regard for human rights in Venezuela, and his friendships with Ahmadinejad and Mugabe, the world's worst human rights abusers.

The white American liberal premise seems to be that dictatorship and imperialism are evil values of the Western white man, transplanted into the Third World by centuries of colonialism. By extension, racism, sexism, and homophobia are related Western white man values to enforce control over the Third World inhabitants. I couldn't disagree more. First of all, democracy is another Western white man value (it started in Greece) - does it need to be thrown out too? Also, almost all cultures in the world have historically considered themselves superior to others, so racism is a universal value, regardless of culture. As for sexism and homophobia, they are severe problems with Confucianism and Islam, purely Asian value systems that the white man has had nothing to do with. The white American liberal may be enamored of the existence of Indian hijras and Thai kathoeys, but they do not enjoy the social acceptance that the white American liberal thinks they do.

Speaking of Confucianism, just about the only thing it has to do with the Western world would be its adherents' receptiveness to primitive fundamentalist Christianity (as evidenced by the Christians' success in Korea and failure in Japan), with the shared values of sexism and homophobia, but even that doesn't change the fact that those values are home-grown in Asia and not by the white man.

In fact, the fact remains that despite the self-loathing of white American liberals, the Western world still continues to offer the most personal freedoms and the most opportunities. And in fact, it's this aspect of the Western world that allows the white man to be critical of his own values, and seek better values from elsewhere. Non-Western cultures, being more communally minded and never believing in individual happiness, work differently, and are much less tolerant of differences. Back to Venezuela, that's why Hugo Chavez wants Halloween, a "decadent custom of the Western imperialists," banned.

Of course, for someone like me, a culture that values individuality and diversity is a MUST, and that's why I've been outspoken in my criticism of Confucianism and some other conformist non-Western cultures and values; of course, the clueless white American liberals have dared to accuse ME of self-hatred. If anyone's guilty of self-hatred, however, it's them, not me. The fact remains that if Venezuela were a white man's country in Europe, these same white American liberals would've ripped it to shreds, and it's only because it's a Latin country in the Third World that they tolerate and celebrate its "defiance." And the fact remains that Toyota and Samsung can be at least as neoliberal and antisocial as Halliburton or any other white man's company.

All this reminds me that just like conservatism, white American liberalism is orthodox and rigid - and less tolerant of dissent than it wants to admit. My goal will be to seek out the truly educated people, whose liberal backgrounds are rooted in actual understanding of the issues they claim to support and embrace, not the lemmings who blindly follow the feel-good issue of the day.

Ivy League: Worth It?

I just read a very interesting analysis from Microsoft's Encarta encyclopedia service, that concludes that Ivy League universities, while brilliant, may not be the best fit for a prospective student. Some facts noted in the analysis - and my comments as a Columbia grad:

• Ivy League schools are primarily graduate and research schools.
• Specific departments are NOT necessarily top notch. (For example, I know that Columbia's engineering school is only so-so.)
• Grad schools don't necessarily favor Ivy League grads over others. (I know this too well - I would've had much better chance at grad school, being the top of the class at an average state school, than what actually happened to me - barely graduating from Columbia.)
• Ivy League can be intimidating to some. (My parents never get this, but the fact is, even though I may have been among the smartest in high school, and would've been the top of the class at other colleges as well, I was in fact only average at Columbia, since there were plenty of even smarter people.)
• High-tech employers don't necessarily favor Ivy League grads either. (In fact, in some cases, lesser schools actually prepare their students better for a given job than the highly theoretical Ivy League schools.)

Although the experience of progressive New York and the East Coast was something I truly cherish from my college days - something the likes of UC Irvine and other schools of reactionary Southern California would have never provided - the fact remains that I would have done just as well at another progressive place, like Northern California. The only true East Coast edge, IMO, was the relative proximity to Europe, allowing me to take a cheap flight to London for spring breaks. (I will admit that this was absolutely priceless.)

Ivy League schools are also very expensive, though good financial assistance packages may be available depending on the school. However, I still count myself very lucky, to have paid off all my student loan obligations before age 30.

So the verdict is in. The only good reason, IMO, to go to the Ivy League, is if you really need/want that East Coast experience. (Or if you are rich and well-connected, like W at Yale.)

Encarta