When news of the latest "Final deal" regarding the Comfort Women came out on December 28, I wasn't as excited as a few of my Facebook friends. Sadly, my initial "Wait and see" reservations proved correct as the story soured faster than milk and pickle juice.
This topic is overwhelming to write about, because writing about any one aspect causes every single other thing to rush out for inclusion as well. It's like drinking a cup of jello: poke. Nothing. Poke. Nothing. Bigger poke. Omygoodnesseverythingiscomingatoncewhatwasithinking? Plus, no matter how carefully I write this piece, everything I omitted for simplicity or brevity will get thrown in my face in the comments anyway. It's daunting, and I'm frustrated at yet another apology doomed to be rejected both by Korea's and Japan's publics, followed by further recriminations, deepening grievance and apology/insincerity fatigue that will make it harder for both sides to offer and accept the next (hopefully final) apology, when or if it ever comes.
So this was in the news.From here.
Ahn Cheol su has been running the biggest political tease I've seen in a while. Here's what I think:
Dear Ahn Cheol Su: Please Do Not Run for President
Mr. Ahn, you are very famous, and very accomplished. These days, it seems like everybody loves you: simply indicating you are interested in politics vaulted you ahead of Park Geun-Hye in speculative polls, and your support carried Park Won-soon into the position of Seoul Mayor. The idea that you might consider running for president, makes a lot of people shake with excitement.
But please don't.
Let's look at this logically:
We've seen the outsider before:
Why are people are so excited you might go into politics? Because they are tired, and cynical, about the current system, and current politicians. Yes, you have your own impressive qualities, intelligence and talent, but part of the reason for your popularity is not really about you: it is an expression of people's discontent with the other options, and with the general climate of politics in Korea: nothing intrinsic to you at all. People have been betrayed too often by the politicians running the country, who abandon their principles when white envelopes change hands under the table.
I am sure you remember the sad story of Roh Moo-hyun: he was a political outsider (like you) and he said all the right things (like you). People voted for him because he seemed to promise a fresh start and a change from the ugly way politics were done until then (like you). Roh really meant something to a lot of people - I still have students and friends who speak passionately, with eyes shining, about the promises he made.
Then what? Once he entered office, all those high principles were hidden from view, blocked by political squabbling inside and outside his party, as he was attacked by everybody who felt threatened by his promise of a new way to do politics. His presidency started with a bloody fight that nearly led to his impeachment, and ended in allegations of corruption and disappointment... even though those pointing fingers at him were at least as corrupt as he was.
Is it possible you could become Korea's president, and start a new era in Korean politics? Perhaps. But I think it is more likely that the Korean politicians who have gotten fat abusing their power, and benefiting from their corruption and connections, will (for once) come together in their mission to either remove you, destroy you, or worse: to drag you down into their mud pit, and make you just as dirty as they are. This would leave Korean voters once again heartbroken and disappointed, and even more cynical than before. Like ex-president Roh, I fear that your ideals will disappear under the pile of garbage other politicians will throw at you, to protect their privileged way of life, and distract people from their own corruption.
The important question:
The important question is not "Could I be elected as president if I ran?" The question is, "If elected, could I fill the promise that makes people vote for me?" And I don't think you can. I don't think anyone can. The system has been in place too long, it is too savage and ugly, and there are too many people in powerful positions with reasons of self-interest to keep it in place. The political process is too slow, and too easily derailed in Korea by childish gestures from politicians, like tear gas bombs and secret sessions, for one person to actually change it, during one five-year presidential term (five years is really short for such a huge change!), while all the seasoned politicians work (in self-preservation) to undo him and his efforts.
But if Korea's people truly are sick of Korea's corrupt, unchanging system, one where corrupt officials favor the moneyed rather than the common citizen, there is something you can do instead, with your fame and influence: something that keeps your reputation for integrity pure, and something that will, over a long time, even create a better political atmosphere in Korean politics.
A different idea:
Rather than running for political office yourself, I ask you to use your influence to become a name all politicians, from either side, fear and respect: a name that causes them to reconsider accepting a bribe or using their influence to benefit their friends and connections.
How?
The prizes named after Alfred Nobel and Joseph Pulitzer have lived on long after the men who founded them, and the ideals their awards honor and promote are a legacy that has become greater than any of their lifetime accomplishments. The achievements of other humans aiming to win the prizes named after Pulitzer and Nobel, have led to countless other achievements in many different fields, that have benefited all mankind.
If you really want to change politics in Korea, let me suggest the Ahn Chul-soo Integrity Award. Use some of your money (you've got plenty!) to establish a foundation to provide award money, and every year, with your bipartisan or non-affiliated selection committee, give out two Ahn Chul-soo Integrity Awards: one to the politician who has behaved in a way that brings the most honor to Korean politics, through honesty, transparency, and dignity, and one to the journalist, blogger, citizen-reporter, or whistle-blower who uncovers the act of corruption, cronyism, or dishonesty among politicians and business leaders, that is most damaging to the reputation of Korean politics, and Korean democracy. Establish a committee with representatives from different age groups and political beliefs, with a transparent procedure (for accountability), who choose among nominees. Publicize the nominees, both for good, to praise those who fight corruption, and for bad, to shame those who are corrupt. Every ambitious young journalist in Korea will focus their attention on exposing corruption, in hopes of winning your award, and every politician will fear to engage in dirty dealings, knowing that Korea's most ambitious reporters are searching for ways to expose them.
Rather than join the mud fight of South Korean politics, and run the danger of beginning to look like just another pig twisting in the mud, I encourage you to use your influence and popularity to shine the brightest spotlight possible on Korea's politicians, so that if the private shame of dishonesty and indignity is not enough to dissuade Korea's politicians from acting corrupt in secret, and childishly in the National Assembly, perhaps the fear of discovery and public embarrassment will motivate them to change their behavior.
I firmly believe that this is the best way you could use your fame and influence to truly improve the political atmosphere in Korea, and give Korean citizens and voters the fresh start they long for.
Please consider my suggestion.
Sincerely:
Rob Ouwehand
(if you like my idea: tweet it, post it, share it... translate it)
Step 1: Hire a hypnotist. Better find a good one. Step 2: Have the hypnotist hypnotize you into believing your crap smells like roses and tastes like caviar. Step 3: Stick out your tongue and grab it firmly. Step 4: Pull your tongue until your head turns inside out. Step 5: Punch your now-exposed brain until at least one lobe stops working. Step 6: Take your inside-out-head and bruised brain, and stick it up your own butt (which you've been hypnotized to believe smells like roses and tastes like caviar) Step 7: Start talking.
You'll look like this:
You'll say things like this (recent North Korean news release):
Explicitly speaking, there is no “human rights issue” much touted by the U.S. in the DPRK. The Korean people fully enjoy genuine freedom and rights under the socialist system where all people form a big family. It is the consistent popular policy of the DPRK government to fully guarantee the rights of the citizens in a responsible manner. In the DPRK based on the man-centered Juche idea all working people do labor according to their abilities and wishes and lead a genuine life, given ample opportunity of learning. It is absolutely illogical for the U.S. to talk about the “human rights issue” while ignoring such reality.
There is the most serious human rights issue in the U.S. as it is a rogue state that exterminated tens of millions of native Indians and accumulated wealth through slave trade and flesh traffic and a country where the almighty dollar principle and the fin de sickle lifestyle based on the law of the jungle prevail. The impoverishment of Americans in the mental and cultural lives is actively fostered institutionally, driving them into the abyss of corruption, despair and crimes. This is a true picture of the American society today.
The “human rights” piffle made by the U.S. high-ranking officials indicates that they have no stand to recognize and respect the dialogue partner. The U.S. is persisting in the politically motivated provocations as evidenced by the ruckus kicked up over the non-existent “human rights issue” in the DPRK, an indication of its deep-rooted hostility and inveterate enmity toward the DPRK.
This attitude leaves the DPRK and the countries concerned skeptical about the U.S. intention to implement the points of the October 3 agreement. Such provocative acts of the U.S. as slandering and pulling up its dialogue partner can never help the talks make any progress in the positive direction. [KCNA]
North Korea said on Wednesday it saw as “unjust” calls from global powers such as the United States for Pyongyang to verify claims it made in disarmament talks about producing arms-grade plutonium. The North’s KCNA news agency quoted an unnamed spokesman from its Foreign Ministry as also saying that South Korean-U.S. military exercises, which started on Monday, had spoiled the atmosphere for the disarmament discussions.
“This situation compels the DPRK (North Korea) to heighten vigilance against such unjust demands as the ‘verification in line with the international standard’ recently claimed by the U.S. as regards the nuclear issue,” the spokesman said. [Reuters]
North Korea “will increase its war deterrent in every way as long as the U.S. and its followers continue posing military threats to it,” a spokesman for the North’s Foreign Ministry said in comments carried by the country’s official Korean Central News Agency. The remarks came two days after South Korea and the U.S. launched Ulchi Freedom Guardian, an annual computer-simulated war game and follow daily criticisms of the exercises in North Korean media. The exercises come amid a dispute between the U.S. and North Korea over ways to verify the North’s declared nuclear programs under an aid-for disarmament deal. [AP, Kwang-Tae Kim]
In the North Korean vernacular, “war deterrent” means nukes.
How's the view from in there, Comrade Kim?
Sigh.
There's actually nothing funny about it. The best I can muster is bitter, angry derision. . . people are dying there, so as much fun as it is to laugh at "I'm Ronely" jokes, the dying people of North Korea deserve more.
wait a minute. . . this movie's been in Korea for about two months, but is still waiting for its North American release. . . what an interesting thing, to be both after the fact and before the fact at the same time.
Movie #1: Taken
Taken is a movie where a retired secret service agent's daughter gets kidnapped in France, and he pulls out all the stops, leaving a trail of death and destruction, to rescue her from the Algerian human traffickers who meant to sell her into slavery. If you care that I gave away the ending, you aren't the kind of watcher who enjoys this kind of movie anyway, because it's not a movie for the plot-twist surprise-ending clever story-line unexpected-revelation crew (go watch The Usual Suspects again, instead, or Oceans' Eleven, or even Fight Club).
This is a movie for people who like to see shit get blew up good (sorry: is that blowed up? I always get my dick-flick diction confused), this picture is for you. Giving away the ending of this film doesn't really matter much, just as long as shit still gets blowed up. Basically, take Die Hard, take out Bruce Willis, and put in a salt-and-pepper-haired Jason Bourne with an absentee father complex instead of amnesia, and you'd have Taken.
While Liam Neeson may be a bit past his Rob Ray/Schindler's List/Best Thing About Star Wars Episode 1 heyday, he still has the gravitas to sell a film, and maybe even to make it better than it should be (cf: Star Wars). Who's to say how Taken'll do in North America? Regardless, it's been surprisingly successful in Korea, for reasons that elude me: it's no better or worse than other action movies that usually last three or four weeks in the cinemas, but this one has been around for a good two months, now.
There are three levels on which the movie works, and this is interesting.
First of all, as a movie you can watch to see shit get blowed up reeeeal good, it is a wild success. While not written or filmed with as much wit and style as Kill Bill I, the action is nearly as non-stop, the plot is linear enough not to confuse any mouth-breathers in the crowd, and the body count is bloody high (pun intended). The fighting sequences are gritty and real (especially the hand-combat stuff, which is almost as impressive as the stuff in The Bourne trilogy, which I think had the best non Kung-fu movie hand-combat ever) Liam Neeson is convincing as the penultimate aging asskicker -- not quite Bill Munny from Unforgiven, but not too far off, either. He's now on the shortlist of candidates to play Batman if they ever decide to put The Dark Night Returns (the greatest Batman story, and maybe the greatest graphic novel outright) on screen.
On the second level, it plays as a morality tale, and it's abysmal: manipulative, lurid and kind of cruel. A man's daughter sneaks away on a tour of Europe under false pretenses, and as punishment for disobeying her father, she gets kidnapped and nearly has her virginity auctioned off to a rich oil shiek, but fortunately, her patriarchal protector happens to be a papa bear as vengeful as Wyatt Erp in Tombstone. This reading of the movie is xenophobic (the darker-skinned Algerian kidnappers: illegal immigrants in a foreign country, to stack evil upon evil for all the adventureless homebodies who never felt wanderlust, or who want the wanderlust to be scared out of their sons and especially daughters). The movie is sexist: the females in the movie are all passive: the ex-wife is now a trophy-wife, and a manipulating bitch, and all the other females are kidnapping victims strung out on drugs and chained to beds to be sold as whores, for the sin of travelling alone. It belittles women, especially the daughter, who is sixteen, played by about a twenty-four year-old, acts fourteen, and dresses as if she were seven, in polka-dot one-pieces. The big bad world is full of big bad dark-skinned baddies who want to kidnap and rape you if you dare wish to see the world. . . better to stay home in your drawing room and cultivate more feminine arts like drawing, needlepoint, conversation, and swooning.
In fact, the reason I saw it at all is because Girlfriendoseyo's friend recommended it to her. . . after the movie it occurred to Girlfriendoseyo that this very friend is the same one who disapproves of her wish to travel and her love of walking around her neighbourhood alone at night, for fear of rapists and organ harvesting kidnappers (I kid you not). She'd sent her friend to see Taken to have the wanderlust frightened out of her. This read of the movie is cruel, brutal, ugly, xenophobic, and would have us all glance at darker-skinned people with suspicion, suspect government officials of corruption, and never vacation farther than the nearest beach, because we all know that rapists and creeps live in some other town and not here.
I'm not sure which of these reads is the one that appeals to Korean viewers so much: the movie's still playing here in Korea, after two full months -- a surprisingly long run.
The third read of the movie didn't come out until about halfway through, and it was interesting. See, there's this torture scene halfway through, where papa bear needs to get some information (I think it's a name), in order to move to the next notch on the "rising action" plotline arc. Pardon the graphic description, but at least you didn't have to see it: he does it by tying his prisoner to a chair, jamming iron spikes into his thighs, attaching jumper cables to the spikes, and connecting the cables with the light switch in the room. He comments casually how the power grid in France is excellent, so the supply of electricity will never falter and ruin the rhythm of the interrogation. . . isn't that nice! Much better than messing about with extreme rendition, outsourcing torture to Syria or something, where the infrastructure isn't as reliable. The torture scene ends with papa bear getting the information he needs, turning the power supply on, and leaving his prisoner anyway, to die of electrocution/pain/thirst - whichever comes first; he doesn't really care. Now here's what that scene accomplished:
2. it was disgusting. It really was. It was shocking and brutal and the way the tortur-ee acted stirred up real pathos: yeah, he did bad things, but. . . to be treated like this?
3. That fact -- the fact I was disturbed by this torture scene, pointed out to me the fact that, up until that point, I had basically written Papa Bear a moral blank check to act however he wanted, because he was a retired special agent looking for his daughter. All it took for the filmmakers, was to play the family card -- the papa bear ploy, if you will, and suddenly (as in Kill Bill, with the elemental "revenge" narrative) we moviegoers happily suspend all moral judgment, and justify any behaviour, because he's doing it for his family. . . given the ability and the circumstances, wouldn't you do the same? Later in the movie, he goes into someone's house, threatens his family, shoots his wife in the shoulder, and threatens to finish her off, if he doesn't tell him where to find the traffickers. Violating someone else's family, to defend his own family? So what if the other guy's a creep -- Papa Bear's lost any moral high ground, any hero cachet he once had. Now he's just the merciless avenger -- the Man With No Name from Clint Eastwood's old trilogy, ready to kill for money, for pride, or just because I'm Clint Eastwood, who the hell are you?
(badass quote of the day: from Unforgiven: "That's right. I've killed women and children. I've killed just about everything that walks or crawled at one time or another. And I'm here to kill you, Little Bill, for what you did to Ned.")
and finally, once I'd had that realization, back to point two. . .
4. It wasn't OK to give him a free pass. So what if he's doing it for his family. Does that final scene where he rescues his daughter from the dark-skinned baddies and their lupine-faced, morbidly obese boss, justify the fifty or seventy people he killed? No, it doesn't. Curb-stomping fifty other people, often brutally, to save the virginal daughter isn't inherently OK, even if his daughter is really great and pretty and innocent. Papa Bear's methods sapped whatever moral authority he had at first, and his short time-frame (ninety-six hours from kidnapping to losing his chance to recover his daughter) didn't justify it; what he did was still shocking and cruel.
By the way: (Another great exploration of moral authority is Spielberg's movie "Munich," which gave an honest and complex enough look at the terror/counterterror, "you kill my guy, I kill yours" war of retribution Israel fights against its enemies, that Spielberg was criticized for being both too pro-Israel AND too pro-Palestine [and then criticized again by those who thought the movie suffered because he didn't take a side]...a paradox interesting enough to make me want to see the movie.)
So, in the end, the reunion between father and daughter was unsatisfying to me, because the means had gone so far beyond the pale, that the end was hollow. Now, maybe I was looking too far into this one, and maybe I'm giving Luc Besson too much credit, but regardless, that's what I got out of the movie.
And so, masked in this shoot-em up kicker, and a cloying morality tale, by the mere fact it goes beyond what we're willing to forgive under the Papa-Bear clause, back again into the realm of the disgusting and shocking, and highlighted by the brief discussion of American torture methods, is an interesting critique of the U.S. "better your children than ours"/"security by any, and we mean any means necessary" foreign and domestic security policies, wherein it's OK for Iraq to live in a police state, and for Iraqi kids to be afraid to walk to school, so long as American kids can feel safe when THEY walk to school, because the rest of the world (or at least those looking to stir up trouble in the rest of the world) looks at the mess in Iraq and goes "Holy hell! That's how far they'll go if we piss them off. Let's try to bully England instead: those crazy Yankees are NOT to be F*CKED with!"
A pertinent quote:
"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
- Michael Ledeen, holder of the Freedom Chair at the American Enterprise Institute
Interesting movie, though. Much more thought provoking than I thought it would be. And yeah, I've been told I think too much before. Why do you ask?
P.S.: Liam Neeson's most badass scene, from Rob Ray: arguably the best film sword fight ever, certainly the best since The Princess Bride. (and mercy me, I remember absolutely despising the bad guy in this movie) -- is the correct term "badassitude" or "badassery"? Anyway, in case you ever doubted Liam Neeson's badass. . . ness, here you go.
and from The Princess Bride (did you know in the screenplay, it actually says, "And what we are starting now is one of the two greatest sword fights in modern movies (the other one happens later on)..."
. . . more discussion of the "greatest cinematic sword fights" topic here.
Other Nominees:
Kill Bill 1
Highlander
Star Wars, Episodes 1, 3, 5, and 6
Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring
Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Thugs and goons. Take that.And that. (feeling a bit cowed yet?) Well, their intimidation tactics worked. Here's my new official line:
Soundtrack courtesy of Monty Python. Don't want to piss anybody off, eh?
Saw history today right out in my face, waving flags, noisy feet forward. Sure, it wasn't Ground Zero, Archduke Ferdinand-level history -- I won't get a book deal just for surviving it, but dear readers, I saw history nonetheless.
It started innocently enough -- I went to a Seoul Writer's club meeting near City Hall. . . but on my way over there, I noticed what looked like a new trend in fashion accessories: red capes with yellow stars on them.
On second glance, I realized what they were: Chinese flags. The Olympic Torch came through downtown Seoul on Sunday afternoon, starting at Olympic Park (where I lived in 2003) and ending in Jongno, by City Hall (where I live now.) You may have heard some rumours about protestors hectoring the Chinese Olympic Torch Relay -- over in Paris and London they caused a fair bit of embarrassment, and San Francisco bent so far backwards to avoid turmoil and embarrassment (and a pissed off exporter of cheap plastic toys, clothing, and shoes), that it wasn't so much a relay as a game of hide-and-seek.
Starting a fifteen minute walk from City Hall, the boosters came out in Red. And the riot police buses came out, too. I don't know where they got so many, huuuuuge flags (I know I took my wall-sized flag out of the suitcase when my luggage was overweight at the airport), but they were literally everywhere. Recently, Chinese news sources and netizens have responded to protests and criticism with hurt outrage: the Western Media wants to sabotage our party; like ants at our Olym-picnic, those biased Western journalists want to ruin our fun! And meanwhile, back home, the propaganderthals in charge of the media are playing up the us-vs.-them narrative to stoke nationalistic rage.
(One of my students saw this picture and said, "Are we in Korea?") Meanwhile, anyone who suggests that this kind of hurt-pride defensiveness is less than the best possible way to respond to the attack, is thrown, nay, hurled up against the wall, gored on the spike of nationalistic pride, slaughtered as a scapegoat: a Chinese student at Duke University had her picture and her parents' address in China published on the internet (scroll down after the link to see a youtube clip, and read the poison on the Chinese comment board, too). She was attacked on the net (and her parents house was vandalized) for stepping between a group of Chinese boosters and Tibetan protesters having a holler at each other, and trying to suggest that, in the spirit of free speech, the Chinese boosters ought to stop shouting down their pro-Tibetters. (She should have sided unthinkingly with her fellow Chinese and found something heavy to use as a weapon -- anything short of that proves she hates China and might be a spy, it seems).
Giant flag. Big as my classroom. And blurry. Moving quickly as they shook it. Things are ugly back in the mainland, too, and even paralympic athlete Jin Jing, who protected the torch from protesters in Paris and became a hero to the Chinese nationalists, couldn't talk them out of their "Boycott Carrefour" fervour -- instead, they turned on her, too. It must feel pretty lonely to be ostracized by a 1.3 billion strong nation -- the most I've ever been ostracized by is an elementary school class of twenty-six.
(metal detector to enter the main seating area) There's a new strategy in play with this [debacle] torch relay: it started in Australia, and will rear its head, no doubt, through the rest of the torch relay.
On Sunday, 6000 mostly young Chinese, probably overseas exchange students, descended upon the torch trail in force, wielding huge flags (big enough indeed to block a Tibetan flag from view), waving them, and chanting pro-China, pro-Beijing Olympic slogans loudly (loud enough to drown out any protesters, in fact). This kind of a preemptive napalm-strike strategy works, insofar as it drowns out any voice of dissent in an ocean of unison, marching in lockstep, chanting in time, and they might have needed it: South Korea has its own grudges with China, including a historical grudge about the kingdom of Goguryeo, and (the big one) the Chinese policy of sending captured North Korean refugees back to North Korea (to near-certain torture and incarceration in a death camp). In fact, a North Korean protestor tried to jump in front of the relay route and set himself on fire in protest.
Here are some pictures I took, making a strong case for my need for a better camera. I wasn't getting closer to the scrum than that. Robert "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough," Capa I ain't. What you can't see is the torch actually moving along the column of gray-shirted police officers.
More pictures better than mine are here. (like this one: highly recommended link) So many flags. As far as I could tell, the basic goal of the Red Army Escorts was to haul any protester to the ground as fast as possible, hopefully before any media outlets pointed their cameras.
This Tibet protester was beaten down in the lobby of four-star Seoul Plaza Hotel -- I'm told the crowd is chanting, among other things, "Apologize" and "beat him to death," as the police surround him.
Bullying and intimidation, friends. When you don't want to listen to criticism, making a fist and snarling "shut the hell up" will do. It was kind of disgusting.
8000 Seoul police came out to keep order. The lump of red in the middle of the picture are Chinese flags thrown up to mask a bunch of Tibetan flags that had just appeared. Before the police got there, all the Tibet protesters had been hauled to the ground, overwhelmed by rabid China-boosters. Vehicle escorts: a big bus gives protesters another obstacle to get around, and increases the chance they'll be intercepted before they can reach the torch.Coke led the procession in a shiny float. Write a letter to Coke and tell them you won't buy more Coke products until they withdraw their sponsorship of the Olympics. Ditto for Samsung. In the hotel lobby again. The ugly, disrespectful (to Korea, to Korea's police force, and to Korea's laws about freedom of expression), disruptive behaviour of China's own citizens in Seoul and other cities is more embarrassing to China than any protest could be.
Some of the facts in this video montage are off base -- it's not a policeman stabbed, but a journalist hit by a projectile in the picture of the guy in green bleeding from the head, and I can't vouch for the text that goes with the footage in the other countries. . . but just look at the footage!
The Propaganda Olympics will go on -- really, whether they go smoothly or tank doesn't even matter to China anymore. Either they go badly, and China can use the embarrassment to stoke the "West hates us" resentment for their propaganda purposes -- a powerful, angry country full of rabid nationalists is just perfect if China decides to go expansionist, or the Olympics go well, and China can use it to strut and preen, declaring they're "arrived" as a major world player, and fuel the nationalism that way.
Last word goes to this kid: a sign held by a college-age student with big old glasses, standing quietly (but confidently: he has 1.3 billion brothers and sisters standing behind him). It reads: "Respect the Olympic Spirit, All men -- are brothers! Interfere with China's internal affairs, Annihilate -- in the far distance."
Somehow the first and last two lines don't quite match, eh? And how does the threat of annihilation fit with the proclaimed wish for a peaceful torch relay? Dunno.
Not that I was going to ask him: don't care to be wrestled to the ground and sat upon by 6000 angry China-boosters. Yup. The intimidation worked.
Hat tip to OneFreeKorea, the blog where I found links to this documentary.
People have been sneaking video cameras into North Korea to record what actually happens there. If caught, the camerapersons would be tried for espionage, and almost certainly either executed, or punished by being sent, along with their parents, family, and children, to a work camp/death camp.
We owe it to them to see what happens there.
Parts 1 and 5 are especially shocking.
thanks, CNN [correction: thanks, BBC].
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3: the sequence (near the beginning) showing about a dozen dead bodies lying out in the street is shocking and sad.
Rice sent as aid for citizens is being sold for profit, or channeled into the military.
Part 4
It's becoming impossible for Kim Jong-il to keep outside information out.
Part 5
The reporter hired someone to track down a person she met years before, a boy who used to sneak into China, beg, and bring the profits back to his family in North Korea. The tracker found him, and she chats briefly with him on the phone. Having that cellphone is dangerous in North Korea. At one point she asks, "Is there something you want to say to me, but are afraid to say over the phone?" "Yes."
For talking with her on the phone, he is arrested and questioned for three days.
When China finds North Korean refugees, it arrests them and sends them back to North Korea, to near certain death, or life imprisonment in a work camp, if they don't have the cash to bribe themselves out of their pickle.
This is where Canada will send its Olympic team: to a country that sends refugees back to this, and nobody says anything about it, because then China might block up the flow of cheap, outsourced merchandise into whatever country dares to defend the oppressed.
Well, buddy, you're on the world stage now, and if you pass the buck, then who IS supposed to take a stance? Everybody's waiting for someone ELSE to say something, sort of like the awkward pause around the dinner table when somebody makes a racist joke, and I'm afraid nobody but bloggers are gonna feel any outrage about this.
Saying nothing is taken as tacit approval of things like organ harvesting on religious prisoners, that stuff about Tibet and Darfur. But keep your eye on the air quality, over in Beijing, boys! Don't want those athletes to get a scratchy throat! That would be terrible, and we'd have to reprimand Beijing. . . if we can get a hold of them while they're so busy organ-harvesting Falun Gong practitioners and coordinating "pay no attention to the man behind the curtain" tours of Tibet for foreign journalists, and deporting North Korean refugees to life in a death camp and stuff.
I guess the Olympics are about sport and not politics, sure whatever . . . but if the IOC sticks to that stance, they're basically telling me that there are no ideals other than "Higher Faster Stronger," that they don't really care if the Olympics helps make the world a better place or not -- let's just watch some people throw some stuff really far, and jump over some other things really fast. I'm afraid I'll stop caring about something that started off seeming to me like a song for world peace, and has ended up ringing out as just another race for TV advertising revenues.
[Update: this morning, the president of the IOC spoke about Tibet. Read the article yourself to decide if you think he's sincere, or using doublespeak. I could use pull-quotes and make you think what I think, but you already know where I stand, so read it for yourself.]
Soundtrack time: hit play and start reading. I'm intentionally choosing religious music outside my own culture for this essay.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, luminary of Quawwali singing, a form of worship from Sufi Mystic Islam, where they repeat lines praising God until they reach a nearly ecstatic state. If you give it a chance, it's actually quite amazing. Our man Nusrat has an amazing voice; Quawwali singing is a tradition that's been passed down through his family for six hundred years! Even Jeff Buckley paid his respects to him.
There's a babble of voices these days, see, where so much information is coming at us from every direction that it becomes difficult to even look at most of it, much less investigate, inquire, and discern spirits. While wading through such an overload of input, the difference between a voice I attend and a voice I ignore can be razor thin. When competing with so many other voices for people's attention (to say nothing of trust), the voice of faith and spirituality needs every bit of help it can get, and can barely afford any clutter before it starts losing credibility.
There are different ways a voice can gain influence: the threat of violence, the potential for profit, the sheer power or extremity of the rhetoric, the sheer number (or wealth, or might) of the group speaking (a billion Catholics can't be wrong, can they? What if a billion and three Muslims say they are?), the potential to help one/many/the world toward some goal (world peace, environmental sustainability, personal profit, peace of mind), the qualifications and history of the speaker (when the Dalai Lama speaks on human rights, more people listen than when Kim Jong-il does). All these things can increase the volume of one's voice in the babble. Some of them increase the volume at the cost of credibility (like people who use violence to demonstrate their beliefs), while others increase their volume through credibility.
With so many voices out there, the voice for faith must actually be what it claims to be: this is the first step toward legitimate moral authority. Every time religion gets mixed up in politics, or money, every time any religion attacks something it doesn't understand (science and art come to mind) instead of engaging, it loses credibility: we appear stubborn and disingenuous, angling our spiritual claims into political or financial power, to protect our interests, or to suppress ideas that make us uncomfortable. I would never trust a church which had a tithing chart on the wall to shame members into giving the full 10% (as one of my students' mothers' church does): how could I know whether the pastor gave me godly counsel, or just flattered me to maintain his meal ticket? When Korea's new Presidentnames Somang Church deacons to important positions in his government, or George Bush says stuff like this, it makes religion look like a way to get ahead, a card to play for political points, rather than a worthy pursuit of holiness, or an example of the kingdom of heaven on earth. It's at the point, here in Korea, that when church leaders start talking, a lot of people automatically startlooking for the angle. In a country with so many Christians, having a church that often seems more interestedin political influence, publicity, money, outperforming other churches, and inflated membership numbers, over community, integrity, and help for the helpless is an outright tragedy!
Faith gets dragged through the mud when people tack religion onto their agendas in a play for a little extra legitimacy. Religion's credibility and moral authority is in tatters, when it should be the very engine of our claim to legitimacy, and the longer we let all this agenda-poisoned, disingenuous angling pass for religion, the less religion will be able to compete with other influential voices, that are what they say they are.
It's no wonder Dawkins wants to picture religion as a disease in human society, of which humanity is slowly curing itself. Imagining that the aforementioned duplicity will eventually end is a hopeful, cheerful wish for the future indeed! Baby nothing, this bathwater is emitting mustard gas!
So what's to be done, eh?
Well, here's the ten point list for restoring our credibility. Yes, I'm gonna be prescriptive.
1. Head for the front-lines: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere. Don't wait for video cameras to show up: just do it. While I don't know enough to speak for the other major religions, the most respected Christians of the last century were Mother Theresa, who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, helped the sick, and visited the prisoner, and Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who fought for social justice. Pope John-Paul II and Billy Graham might come next, and both of them may have faced criticism for this and that, but they also both were exactly who they said they were.
2. If we don't understand it, don't talk about it. There are very smart religious people in every field of knowledge, who have well-informed and worthwhile views on everything from Harry Potter to Creation to the moral questions raised by medical technology that can keep a person alive long after they would have died back in the days when religious positions on euthanasia were originally formed. Let's listen to them, and support them, instead of wading in over our heads! If I meet another Christian who says "I haven't read them, but I'm sure the Harry Potter books are all about the occult, so you shouldn’t read them, either," I'm gonna scream. (Also: respect other fields of knowledge for what they do. If I meet another Christian who flatly says, "I'd never see a counselor: I'm a believer!" I'll scream, too.)
3. Stop being satisfied with "well, that's what I believe." Nobody else is satisfied with that answer, so if we want to get beyond, "I guess we'll have to agree to disagree," we'll need to dig up something a little more convincing.
4. Recognize that fundamentalism is not only off-putting, but too inflexible to respond to a quickly-changing world. (See here if you disagree) -- fundamentalism turns faith into a foxhole where we hide, when a framework of belief ought to be a hill on which we stand to get a better view of things. Once faith began repudiating society, rather than working in and with it, we started the long march toward irrelevance.
5. Find a positive definition for who we are and what we believe, instead of a negative one. Instead of focusing on how the others are wrong, or bad, let's create and maintain a positive community, where the communal and spiritual benefits of membership are so obvious that recruiting is unnecessary. Instead of writing hate letters to Richard Dawkins, let's get our butts into the community and help so many people, in such tangible ways, that non-religious people stop nodding their heads in assent with Dawkins, and start exclaiming, "Who is this clown? Has he ever actually met a Christian? Why doesn't he attack groups that deserve to be taken down a notch?"
6. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
7. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people use religion and religious language for personal, political, social, or financial gain.
(by the way, if religion must get political, we need to pick our battles better: it is an outrage that the Christian lobby in America is fighting against gay marriage and supporting the war in Iraq, rather than lobbying with every ounce for universal health care in America, help for the poor, and social freedoms everywhere. So what if Christians were called "bleeding heart liberals" when they opposed slavery -- it's better than getting tied in with Bush's oil crusade.)
8. Get mad, real mad, and loud, when people preach hate, murder or fear, while waving religious flags. The world needs to know that we are just as offended as they are by Fred Phelps, and his ilk, and that they are a lunatic fringe, in no way representative of the majority of religious people, who are decent, moral, and helpful, and loving: these people are the straw man I mentioned in part three. Instead, we need to get behind people like the writer of this letter, and represent. If we don't hold the wackos accountable in-house, we'll be grouped with them.
9. Get on the right side in the LGBT (Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals, Transgender/Transsexual) debate. Every other time a group was oppressed, disenfranchised, or in need, Christians were on their side offering compassion, love and support, until this one, and it’s hurting us. As my friend Mel said in an e-mail once, "We're on the wrong side on this one." Doesn't "I cried for hours when I heard about that gay teenager who got beaten to death" sound a little closer to the Godly compassion we're told to have than "AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals." (Jerry Falwell) or "[Homosexuals] want to come into churches and disrupt church services and throw blood all around and try to give people AIDS and spit in the face of ministers." (Pat Robertson) Who are these guys and what have they done with my faith?
10. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, help the sick, visit the prisoner, fight for social justice everywhere.
Soundtrack: hit play on Huun Huur Tu, the Tuvan Throat Singers who are like nothing you've EVER heard before.
Yeh.
On Modern Religion's To Do List for finding a way spirituality can jive with the Global Village and the Information Age: Here's where things get harder. We have to do something about these dilemmas; if we bend too far, then we don't really stand for anything, but if we're unwilling to bend, we're irrelevant, because we can't contribute anything to a dialogue if we aren't also listening.
Engage with: art, other religions, humanities and science in a way that doesn't condemn, condescend to, inherently repudiate, or attempt to establish primacy over any of them, and that is more meaningful than simply "agree to disagree." Religion is no longer the core value of society, and the faster we adjust to this, the better off we'll be.
Recognize that the polemical passages in the holy books were written at times when religious groups needed to band together in the face of persecution, or to create a good strong "in-group" feeling that helped them fight off the raiders from the hills, and do not fit in a global village with quickly dissolving borders. It's a new world, where "us" meets "them" every day, such Amish-style segregation or cloistered fear of the "other" no longer washes. Think really carefully about such passages, and how they ARE used vs. how they SHOULD be used, if at all (we've stopped following other parts of the bible; I'm sure it's the same for the Quran). The world will allow us to keep repeating the same "we're right, they're wrong" points. . . but our audience will shrink with each repetition, until religion as we know it will remain only in quaint little pockets, neatly segregated like the Pennsylvanian Amish now, and ignored except as a novelty.
Recognize that the world is very different than it was when the holy books were written and when the organized religions' infrastructures were designed. We must adapt or fade away: an overly rigid top-down model is too cumbersome for the quick shifts of the information age. We need to recognize and empower grass roots movements, and make information freely available. In the age of transparency, being authoritarian and mysterious breeds mistrust instead of a sense of sacred awe.
Think very carefully about the arrogance inherent in any claim to be the "one, true religion," and how often one's religion mostly depends on one's birthplace and family. Think long and hard about what kind of creator would send all Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Taoists, Jews, Christians, Atheists (basically, all Notmygroupians), to hell, basically because they had the misfortune of being born in Saudi Arabia, Thailand, India, China, Israel, America, or France, instead of in Myculturesville. Think long and hard about how the claim God would send every Muslim to hell for the sin of being born in the Middle East or North Africa, makes God look a little arbitrary and capricious, and also kind of reeks of 19th century colonial arrogance. Think about the possibility (and the hope) that God is subtle enough to see beyond a checklist of signifiers ("Baptized? Check. Communion? Check. Sinner’s prayer? Check. Went to church every Sunday? Check. OK, You’re in." "You? Sorry. My name's God, not Allah. You wanted to serve me, but you were reading the wrong book. Tough nuts for you!") and actually read the heart. Think about the parable of the blind men and the elephant.
(a sidenote tangentially related to the previous point:
One final thought about Richard Dawkins and his book:
I must say that I respect Dawkins' integrity in qualifying even the chapter that "has contained the central argument of [his] book" (187), by titling it "Why there Almost Certainly Is No God" (my emphasis) rather than "Why There Is Definitely No God" -- to qualify even the statement he most passionately believes to be true shows an impressive accountability to the other side, to the possibility that he might yet be wrong. One of the things I respect about the scientific method is that scientists always know exactly what it would take to change their mind about a topic: compelling evidence. If faced with that evidence, any self-respecting scientist WOULD change sides.
This might sound like a petty swipe, but I sincerely wish I saw such "I don't think I am, but I still might be wrong" intellectual integrity and humility in more religious debates and inter-faith dialogues; things might go a little more smoothly if we did.
sidenote over.)
Create a framework that is integrated and useful. By integrated I mean NOT saying "Here's the sphere of religion; here's the sphere of art; here's the sphere of science, and never the twain shall meet," but one that acknowledges all aspects of being a human, alive and learning, in the modern world, and finds useful ways that each aspect can enhance and inform the others.
See, I think organized religion can be really good. It can offer people a chance at connection and community; it offers a hope for the future that'll get you through the deep valley, when applied properly and compassionately. It provides a concrete moral compass as well as a community that can be around, ready to help when the things get confusing, or when the feces hit the fan. It can connect people with opportunities to make a difference in others' lives, to help others in concrete ways, and it can inspire them to get involved. These are all good things, and I (unlike Mr. Dawkins) am convinced that despite having been abused, and despite some hiccups of intolerance and ugliness, the world IS better because of religion's influence through history.
Yeah, things look bad right now, and it's time for a splash of cold water and an honest look in the mirror for pastors, priests, imams, rabbis, monks and everyone else who is responsible for saying of religion, "This is what we are." It's time for a calling to account of those who are manipulating religion and the religious for their own ends. It's not too late.
You know, the only time in the Bible that we see Jesus fly into a full-blown rage is when he was cleaning the money-changers and crooks out of the temple: the people who used the name of God for their own personal business made Christ himself see red! When religion has become a lever for financial or political gain to many, let's ask again, "What would Jesus do"? He would have stormed into those bastards' offices and started flipping tables!
To survive this atheist attack, faithful readers, it's time our religious institutions did the same.
Update: My friend tamie is a beautiful human being, in all the important senses of the word, and she writes beautifully about why religion, why going to a church (or a temple, or a mosque) IS a good thing. Don't take it from me; Here's why faith can still be relevant.
I strongly recommend you read my summary/explanation Dawkins' his attack on Christian morality, here. I did not include it in the essay, for the sake of length and aesthetics, but it is important/worthwhile to read, and know what I'm talking about, and my basis for the assertions I make here.
I read Dawkins' book carefully: I sure wasn't going to let him get away with anything, when he's taking aim, among other things, at the first twenty-two years of my life, and the better part of the following six, most of my moral fiber, as well as my Dad's livelihood. I was looking, and expecting, to find the straw man argument -- a logical error where someone misrepresents an opponent's position.
And oh, I had my radar set on ultra-sensitive! I would sniff out the first hint of straw like a bloodhound with hayfever! And. . . Dawkins looked ready to offer a straw man. In Chapter Nine, he describes a Jewish child being kidnapped (rescued) by the Catholic Church, taken from his home to be raised by good Catholics instead of by hellbound Jesus-killers (according to them). Now, the problem is, this happened in the late 1800s, and after the ground-rules he himself established in Chapter Seven (about the moral zeitgeist, and the necessity to refrain from judging other eras according to modern values), Dawkins' offering an example of religious fervour gone haywire from bygone times is a red herring. "Yes!" I thought, "Next he's going to start referencing the Inquisition and the Crusades, and then we'll have him: all we have to do is answer, 'Well times have changed, you know; we don't do that kind of stuff anymore.' " Every bickering couple knows that bringing up the past just makes things ugly, and only hurts your case. Never give up the high ground!
I had my "the scientist doth protest too much" defense at the ready, tucked in my sleeve and ready to lay on the table decisively and gleefully!
But then Dawkins did something. . . not entirely unexpected, but much more problematic for the defense. He didn't name-drop the Crusades or the Inquisition, except to mention that he wouldn't unfairly dredge up times when religion was a mere excuse for manipulative, power-mad or hateful people to puke their black souls all over whatever institution had given them power and leeway. Darn! He saw me coming, and refused to pull the cheap trick that would have given me the rhetorical high ground! Instead. . . (Mayday! Mayday!). . . he started drawing examples from mainstream religion in the last seven years!
Forget corrupt Medieval Popes and Bloody Mary and all the Reformation wars -- that stuff's easy to dismiss. Our man Dawkins planned to use relevant examples!
So instead of this:
he was using this:
(Ann Coulter is the most abrasive person I've ever seen.)
and this:
(Pat Robertson calling for Hugo Chavez to be assassinated.)
This would be harder than I thought. In fact, it shaped up as the worst-case scenario: he had a leg to stand on! His one example of the Church's immoral behaviour from times past (when the moral zeitgeist hadn't developed as far as it has now), got my hopes up, but the following pages and chapters chronicled examples of religious intolerance, clannishness, and extreme fundamentalism from our very own day and age. So many, and so sharp, it is shocking and dismaying.
Soundtrack: Hit play and read. Jim White: If Jesus Drove a Motorhome
Pastor Poposeyo called on Wednesday night, and we brushed on some of this, and then I veered away, saying, "Yeah, I'm gonna talk about that in my next post."
Here's the problem, dear readers.
Of all the spiritual and faithful people I know, I don't think any of them believe America, or any government, should be(come) a theocracy. Most of them bluster when they hear somebody lobbying to put creation into the science curriculum. They rankle when somebody says that the only proper place for a Christian woman is in the home, submitting humbly to her husband and head. Most of the Christian women I know don't wear floral prints, and none of them own any precious moments paraphernalia. They can't listen to Christian Talk Radio without squirming.
To a person, they agree that faith works best when tempered by sensitivity, humility, tact, and reason, and that it behooves each person of faith to build a workable framework by which they can be spiritual and intelligent, guided by faith and common sense, living integrated and edifying lives. Most of them try, in different ways, to develop their social consciousness and make the world better in practical ways. They volunteer, and sponsor acres of rain-forest and children in Afghanistan.
Problem is, these aren't the people jumping in front of TV cameras, representing the various faiths. Somehow, the media digs up the dumbest, most knee-jerk conservatives for their pundits and random interviewees, and make it look like Christian folk are all either gun totin' tabacca chewin', gay-hatin' furraner fearin' right-wing nuts, or Ann Coulter. Ditto for the other faiths. The Christian lobby's agenda is so different from the goals of the spiritual people I know personally, that it's a little startling to see them both described as Christian. The way the religious are portrayed in movies is even worse (case in point: I watched "There Will Be Blood" today;) but whose fault is it that screenwriters only have Pat Robertson to watch on TV as an example of "What Christians are like"?
Unfortunately, it is our fault. You see, we let those wingnuts speak for us. The moderate faithful, rather than kicking up a duststorm of our own, asserting our existence and saying "Hey! Not every Christian agrees with Jerry Falwell!" and getting behind the spokespeople who do, we quietly distance ourselves from the fundamentalist wingnuts, and the politicized, fundamentalist Christian Lobby. Oh, so quietly, we distance ourselves. We do not denounce them publicly so that it damages their credibility (and boosts ours) but quietly, so that nobody notices, and our silence is mistaken for tacit approval, or even assent.
As a result, instead of the Christan community marginalizing the crazies in-house, thus marking our turf and claiming a workable place in enlightened society, we have allowed them to bark and squeal, never complaining that they do not actually represent us. Because, in our complacency, we did not marginalize them, we have now been grouped with them, and marginalized by ever-growing tracts of the educated, democratic world.
In conclusion, the problem is not that Richard Dawkins uses a straw-man argument to discredit organized religion, dear readers; the problem is, we have given him the straw man, and it is not surprising, now that we have allowed the media and the intelligentsia to lump us all together, that we find ourselves under attack.
Dear, faithful readers, the moderates have dropped the ball, and now we are reaping what we allowed others to sow, as if on our behalf: we are losing our credibility, and our voice.
From the outside, this is how we look:
"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity." Ann Coulter, on 9/12/2001
All of us are being made to look smug, tribal, belligerent, interested (that is, angling for our own interests, rather than fighting for things like social justice), willfully ignorant, and (thanks, gay-bashers) hateful. Soon to be irrelevant, too if we keep on in this direction.
If Christians at large represented themselves, and supported moderate, sensible spokespeople, and leaned on the media for going with the unfair, cheap stereotypes instead of actual representatives, and meanwhile became the kind of wellspring of grace and love and acceptance, the powerful force fighting for justice and defending the helpless that religion has (at its best, during certain periods) been, then people would read Dawkins' attack and say, "Who is this clown, and where is he digging up his examples? I don't think he's ever met an actual Christian in his life!" instead of nodding their heads and thinking, "Yeah, I've seen/heard/read/met someone exactly like that." It is our fault that people do not. The dire truth, faithful readers, is that at this point, Dawkins IS right, far too often, and we need to get back to proving him wrong. Stay tuned for part 4: How.
