Herro Flom Japan

Here's how I keep them straight in my head.

• I start with Iran by remembering the phrase, "She is from Iran." Iran is Shi'ite.
• I recall the mistake McCain made saying that Iran was training al Qaeda. That is incorrect because al Qaeda is the opposite, Sunni.
• Osama Bin Laden is from Saudi Arabia, which makes the country Sunni.
• Most in the world are Muslims are the same as Saudi Arabia, Sunni.
• Iraq is between Iran and Saudi Arabia, so they're approximately half Shi'ite and half Sunni, but they're politically closer to Iran, so a slight majority of Iraqis are Shi'ite.

How does that work for you?

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First, let me appease those who come here for news about my family and me. Last Sunday while Tony had a soccer game, I took Andy to a local 子ども会 and brought my new camera along. (Seeing as how I bought the thing, I ought to use it once in a while.) A kodomo-kai isn't exactly a festival, and it's more than a party. I guess you could call it a "childrens' fair." Yeah, that's the ticket. There were games like "scoop up as many superballs as you can from a wading pool using a little scoop made of tissue paper before it disintegrates," "ring toss to win other kids' discarded toys," and "shooting gallery to win even more discarded toys." All the kids got yakisoba and shaved ice (kaki-goori), while the parents accompanying them got bupkis, not even water. I ate Andy's yakisoba after we went home because he didn't want it. It was very salty, but I was very hungry, having not eaten all day.

Next, onto Obama, McCain and the surge. I'll assume you know nothing about why there's far less violence in Iraq now as compared to 2006-2007. Here are the facts, and please correct me if I get anything wrong.

• There are two sects of Muslims, Sunni and Shi'ite (pronounced "SHE-ite" not "shitty"). Iran and the Iraq governments are Shiite, as are a slight majority of Iraqis. Al Qaeda, Saudi Arabia and 90% of all Muslims in the world are Sunni. For centuries they've been killing each other over an argument about who has the right to rule over the religion, kind of like who gets to call himself the "pope," but it's a bit more complicated than that. At this point, I expect most people to give up reading. But congratulations, you already know more than McCain. All you need to do now is get shot down over enemy territory and spend a few years being tortured as a POW and you'd be more qualified than him to run for president.
• Bloody ethnic cleansing has taken place throughout Iraq. We're talking wholesale torture and slaughter with victims in the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, and both sides are guilty. Towns and neighborhoods have become segregated, and the cleansing is pretty much over. Note: This is one of the reasons why there is less violence now. Towns and neighborhoods are now segregated.
• Second, some of the Sunni groups that used to be on al Qaeda's side fighting against the coalition troops decided to switch their alliance over to the occupational forces. Why? For security reasons, and because we're paying them. Note, they're Sunni, and the Iraqi government is Shi'ite. They're not fighting the government or the coalition troops for now. We're arming, training and paying them, and in return they're keeping the peace in their neighborhoods particularly by keeping al Qaeda out, but that doesn't mean they have given up fighting forever, only for now. Right now the occupation is probably the only thing keeping them from turning on the Iraqi government, and the government is very worried about them becoming a third power in Iraq. Nobody knows what will happen when we either stop paying them and/or leave. Note: These Sunni groups decided to give up their support for al Qaeda and side with the occupation before the surge. These switches of alliance are called Awakening Movements.
• Third and last, we have The Surge of 2007. Note: The surge happened after most of the ethnic cleansing and awakening movements had already taken place. But this is not what the Bush Administration wants to admit, and even worse, just the other day McCain got it backwards! McCain got it backwards. You really need to understand why this is such a big deal. McCain says that not only did the surge cause a decrease in violence but it actually caused the Anbar awakening! NO!! WRONG!!

So if you're still with me and haven't scurried off to YouTube to watch videos of adorable kittens or people riding bicycles and skateboards into brick walls, we'll get to Obama's take on the matter, but first you have know that Obama opposed the surge. The other day, CBS News asked Obama if he knew then what he knows now, would he have approved the surge. Here was his answer:

If we have shifted away from the central front of terrorism as a consequence of enormous and continuing investments in Iraq, then that's a poor strategic choice.

Huh? But Senator Obama, don't you give any credit to the surge for the decrease in violence in Iraq?

No, no of course I have. There is no doubt that the extraordinary work of our U.S. forces has contributed to a lessening of the violence, just as making sure that the Sadr militia stood down or the fact that the Sunni tribes decided to flip and work with us instead of with al-Qaeda — something that we hadn't anticipated happening. All those things have contributed to a reduction in violence.

So on one hand you have McCain who doesn't understand what's going on in Iraq, and on the other hand Obama who understands that the surge is only one factor in the decrease in violence. As for me, I know which of the two I'd rather have as president.

P.S.In order to keep things simple, I didn't mention that the Mahdi Army, a Shi'ite militia possibly supported by Iran, is currently under a very tenuous cease fire agreement which is set to expire, and hopefully be renewed, in August 2008. When it's all put together, it becomes evident that violence in Iraq could flair up again if either the Mahdi Army or the participants in the Awakening Movements decide they're no longer satisfied with the way things are, or if any of the segregated towns or neighborhoods decide to expand their territory.

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As of yesterday evening, the omnipresent police have completely disappeared, put back into cryogenic storage, ground up into tasty hamburger meat or maybe they were never police to begin with, and they've been given back their tattered homeless rags.

It's a good thing too. By the last day they were all looking pretty bored. I started to see them congregated into groups talking to each other instead of standing watch over commuter/terrorists.

Seriously, I really want to know where the hell they all went.

P.S. I'm posting this using ScribeFire.

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This is pretty old news by now, but I just found out about it. I don't spend much time surfing websites about Japan. When I still lived in the US, I hardly ever followed local news either. I've always been a Time/Newsweek/US News & World Report kinda guy.

For years and years, the English language website for Mainichi News had a section called WaiWai. It translated salacious and bizarre articles from the dregs of Japanese tabloids into English. As far as I know, the authors of WaiWai never made anything up–they left that to the authors of the original articles about such nonsense like a restaurant where you could have sex with a pig then have it cooked for you.

A Japanese person could read the original articles in their original context and considering the source and content easily see through the bullshit, similar to how an American could tell that an article from the National Inquirer or Weekly World News about scientists planning to blow up the moon is most likely not true. But foreigners have a propensity to believe absolutely anything they read about Japan, up to and including the thousands upon thousands of used panty vending machines on every street corner here that don't f**king exist.

Apparently it was the "You screw it we cook it" restaurant story that caught the attention of Japanese bloggers and 2channers back in May. They got fired up about WaiWai sullying the reputation of their beloved country overseas, and from there the mass media caught wind and ran with it.

As reported in Japan Probe, the Mainichi acted all shocked and stunned, as if they had no idea WaiWai even existed, closed down the site, apologized in Japanese and English, and even went so far as to punish the employees responsible for the column. The chief editor, an Australian named Ryann Connell, has become the outraged public's whipping boy and is currently suspended for three months from his job and sequestered in his home with police protection after receiving a number of death threats, as reported in the Australian media.

Here's my take on the whole situation. WaiWai should have been shut down years ago. Republishing tabloid articles under the Mainichi name lent credibility to the articles that were most likely complete fabrications. I used to visit the site a few times a year simply because the articles were painful to read, which is kind of fun in an intellectually masochistic kind of way. They painted a picture of Japan very different from the Japan I know from living here. A news outlet like the Mainichi shouldn't be in the business of publishing stories in a column where a small percentage of them are true and the rest are tabloid trash without any kind of disclaimer attached to the unsourced articles. In the end, the company got what it deserved–a whole lot of bad publicity and a mass exodus of their advertising sponsors.

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