Darin ten Bruggencate

This was a good chuckle from the BBC.

Caption: “Spector had a reputation for being eccentric and domineering”

I wont get into details now, but the smartest people from around the world gather in America for university. When they graduate, hopefully they stay and make America even stronger.

The smartest people go to America, 2nd to England, 3rd the rest of Europe, 4th Australia, and 5th Japan. And really, with this attitude, Japan doesn’t even deserve the 5th smartest people in the world. This job listing to work at JICE really illustrates how the Japanese education system looks at foreign students. All they see are people from the 3rd world and how great the Japanese are for helping them out. Look at the catch phrase for getting people interested in the job:

キャンパスなどで留学生を見かけたことはありませんか？開発途上国の人々が日本の培ってきた技術や知識、経験を学ぶための支援を行っているのがJICEです。あなたの身近にいる留学生もJICEのサポートを受けているかもしれません。

Now, as always, you can’t be too hard on the Japanese because they do not have bad intentions; they’re just subconsciously so condescending and insulting to everyone they come in contact with. (Unlike myself, who am consciously and intentionally condescending.) They just really need to develop the ability to stand in someone else’s shoes, and this applies much further than what I’m talking about here.

This is exactly why people need to get their news from more than one source. Let’s look at this article on Russia’s recent invasion of Georgia, from Xinhua;

Earlier in the day, the 15-member body, at the request of Russia, held an emergency session that continued into the wee hours of Friday morning, but failed to reach an agreement on a Russia-drafted statement.
…
Diplomats said the council failed to adopt the statement because some council members, including the United States, opposed the part calling on the parties to “renounce the use of force.”

Goddamn Americans, always wanting to leave the option of fighting on the table. Or is that really the case? Let’s check the NYTimes too:

But one phrase in particular calling on all parties to “renounce the use of force” met with opposition, particularly from the United States, France and Britain. The three countries argued the statement was unbalanced, one European diplomat said, because that language would have undermined Georgia’s ability to defend itself.
Belgium, which holds the rotating presidency of the Security Council this month, circulated a revised draft with new language calling for an immediate cessation of hostility and for “all parties” to return to the negotiating table. By dropping the specific reference to Georgia and South Ossetia, the compromise statement would also encompass Russia.

Russia’s proposed solution was to demand Georgia lay down it’s arms… so that Russia could further it’s quest to cause as much harm as possible to the human race. America, France, Britain and other civilized nations wanted the UN statement to include Russia too. I’m sure the reason no agreement was reached was because Russia and China hold a veto, so it was the civilized world wanting Russia to stop, and the Chinese and Russian heathens abusing the power the Allied nations were so foolish to give them at the end of WWII. Again, Can We Kick Russia And China Out Of The UN Yet?

The moral of the story is that even though the state run government mouth peace propaganda machine that is the Chinese newspaper Xinhua is actually 100% factually correct in everything it has written in this story, the US does appose the language used in the proposed statement, it doesn’t include all the reasoning as to why. Mainly that the statement the US is apposed to is complete B.S.

This lesson needs to apply to all news, not just obvious propaganda machines like anything that comes out of China or Russia where all non compliant journalists are sent to concentration camps, but even in the US where no one media source can be trusted to tell the whole story on any issue. In the age of the internet, it’s possible for anyone to read multiple news sources, but this isn’t just a privilege, it’s a responsibility to be an informed citizen, especially in an election year so important as this one.

One form of discrimination in japan that has always rubbed me the wrong way is when children say disgusting things. I guess it doesn’t qualify as discrimination because the little brats aren’t taking any rights away from me, but their racist attitudes will guide them to discriminate when they grow up to be racist adults.

Women in Japan, particularly American women, will tend to dismiss these little peoples actions saying “they don’t know any better.” I never liked that argument because it feeds to the lack of individual responsibility that is such a problem in this society. I’ll talk more about that some other time.

But I’ve always just left it at that, after-all we say the exact same thing in America too. But just now on my way to school something happened that has made it impossible to just let it slide any further.

Near my apartment is a facility for the mentally challenged. I walk by it every day on my way to the station. Multiple times if I go to the convenience store on the way, which I do pretty much every day. Today when I was at the convenient store there was a man who clearly had wandered out of the facility, eating food and drinking can coffee in the convenience store before he paid. Naturally everyone just ignored him.

When I was paying though he took an interest in me. When I put out 311 when my bill was only 306 yen so that I can get back a rounded 5 yen coin for change, he said, “he used money like a Jew” to the woman at the register. I don’t think he had the mental capacity to actually understand what was going on with me wanting 5 yen exact change so I don’t know exactly what about the way I paid made me use money like a Jew, but I ignored him either way just like everyone else in the store. Now here’s a man who clearly “doesn’t know any better.” However not in the sense that he doesn’t know what he’s saying, but that he didn’t figure out on his own to say that I “use money like a Jew”, and that someone else specifically and debility taught him to say that.

That’s what bothers me about children who say stupid stuff like that. Someone, most likely their parents, went out of there way to teach their children to be bigots. Because if Japan had so few foreigners, the people shouldn’t grow up hating foreigners but instead grow up to be curious about them. Yet regardless we have a society here that instills this hate and fear from day one. The mayor of Tokyo can no longer count the number of countries and people he has offended on all of his fingers and toes with his famous third rate human comments for Koreans, or telling the French they can’t even count. The children aren’t at fault here, but I have no sympathy for their parents when their company gets bought out by foreign investors and they have to go home and tell their friends and family that they now work for these third rate humans. And these same children that aren’t at fault are now parents, and the cycle repeats because the adults can’t take responsibility for their own actions either.

That is what really bothers me about the racism in this county. It’s just natural to say those type of things to the point that even children and the mentally handicapped do it. Japan is in a position where it needs foreigners far more than foreigners need Japan. And it’s this kind of attitude that will prevent them from themselves falling back to bring a third world country with the government encouraging it’s citizens to live abroad and send money back home. And I know plenty of people who won’t be going out of their way to help Japan when that happens again like it did just two generations ago.

*this post was written entirely on my iPod and probably has some mistakes. I’ll fix them later when I’m at a computer.

Russia and China Veto U.N. Sanctions on Zimbabwe

Western powers mustered nine votes, the minimum needed to gain approval in the 15-nation council. But the resolution pushed by the Bush administration failed because of the action by two of the five veto-wielding permanent members.

The other three states with veto power — the U.S., Britain and France — argued that sanctions were needed to respond to the state-sanctioned violence and intimidation against opponents of President Robert Mugabe before and after Zimbabwe’s recent presidential election.

Sounds like a good cause.

Russian U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said sanctions would have taken the U.N. beyond its mandate in trying to punish political disputes by ”artificially elevating them to the level of a threat” to international peace and security.

Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, whose nation is one of Zimbabwe’s major trading partners, also expressed fears of nation-tinkering and said Zimbabwe was should be left to conduct its own talks on how to resolve its political crisis.

”The development of the situation in Zimbabwe until now has not exceeded the context of domestic affairs,” Wang said. ”It will unavoidably interfere with the negotiation process.”

Russia, the former world leader in corruption is trying to re-assert itself on the global corruption stage that is currently dominated by China. We couldn’t be going around meddling with election corruption, that’s their internal business. Because lets be realistic here, there are probably no two nations that need to have their domestic affairs meddled with than Russia and China.

And really, the proposed sanctions were hardly meddling with domestic affairs.

The proposal would have imposed an international travel ban and freeze on personal assets of Mugabe and 13 key officials.

Too bad there are two bad apples in the UN. If it was just one, perhaps everyone could just vote to kick China or Russia out. But since there are two of them, they’ve got each other’s backs, just like the Mafia.