Scribblings of the Metropolitician

"Korean comic author: Jews rule U.S."

Kudos to the expat blogosphere!

From original blogging of the book in question, to reporting on all the major websites on the widespread nature of Korean anti-Semitic attitudes, including my "Korea and the Nazis redux" post, for which I was castigated for not only talking about the Nazis and Koreans in the same breath, but for implying that there was *GASP* anti-Semitism in Korea.

From April last year, which itself was from a string of posts on the subject that runs back to February of that year, but was first really broached in my "Gates of the Minjok" post, which went a little far with the interpretations of the anthems and some of the pageantry (although I don't think the suppositions so far-fetched), but which asked some hard questions about anti-Semitism even then, which were dismissed as mere functions of some reality I was just making up in my head.

Well, vindication's a bitch.

At least if CNN's reporting on it, then I'm not totally crazy, right?

Thanks to the Monnara man, for doing the work and bringing the reality of contemporary Korean anti-Semitic attitudes to light.

Kudos to the Korean blogosphere for whipping things up enough for the Wiesenthal Center to get in on things and demand an apology, which sparked a lame-ass response by the author, which then got Korean Americans up in arms, which got new outlets like CNN to notice:

"The Jews are the invisible force that controls the U.S.," Rhie, a professor of visual arts at Duksung Women's University in Seoul, told The Associated Press. "I wrote the chapter to let people know that you can't understand the U.S. without knowing the Jewish community."

Too bad this professor of visual arts (and not history) isn't knowledgeable enough to realize that this same basic notion lay at the root of much of modern European anti-Semitism, which was worked up into a fever pitch of national scapegoating that was carried out to its deadliest conclusion in National Socialist Germany, manifest in a particular and peculiar kind of ideology that itinerant historian of the Holocaus Daniel Goldhagen calls "eliminationist anti-Semitism."

Basically, if "they" control society, and "they" are the root of all of society's evils (when the economy goes bad, or we lose the big war, etc.), then the logical thing to do is eliminate "them."

And that's a bit of basic history that this visual arts professor, who probably never even took a basic introductory European History course, has likely never heard of.

The real questions: Why is this man making books about history? Why do people accept this man's claims? Why didn't the publisher red-flag these obvious problematic and simplistic stereotypes? What other kinds of distortions and horrible stereotypes are being propagated by his series?

I'd like to read the entries on China and Japan. Anyone up for translating those?

For the full chronology of this whole thing, though, you gotta read The Marmot, of course. The grand mammal of them all.

Dizzam!

Go, Korean expat blogosphere!

If the Generals Are Jumping Off the Bandwagon...

Who'll be left to run the war(s)?

And what will be left of the arguments that all of this is "just?"

Seems like Iran is setting itself as being in the same position, and the Bush administration using the same justification for "pre-emptive" actions taken for the apparent national security of the US, to possibly go into Iran.

So if Iran is telling the UN and the international community to go screw itself and is actively pursuing the development of a nuclear arsenal – with far more documented evidence of finger-flipping the international community than Iraq was giving right before the invasion – why aren't we invading Iran, again?

Why are several generals being rumored to be threatening their resignation? Why is the Pentagon constantly squaring off against Bush?

Are they "un-American", too?

So Which Messenger Do We Kill On This One?

So, Abu Graib's not the fault of those who committed the crimes, but that of the good, true Americans who "snitched" and exposed the story, right? Read my previous post – "Of Horrors and Hope, Heroes and History" – on this issue.

So which messenger do we kill on this one? Which good American soldier has to go into a witness protection program for reporting his fellow soldiers committing war crimes?

Or is it the ones who commit war crimes – not the ones who report them – who should be castigated?

The identity cards of murdered mom, dad, and daughter (from The Guardian.)

Read another take on this on AlterNet. Here's a more mainstream one in the NYT.

The F.B.I. affidavit portrays a crime at once chilling and calculated. Before raping one woman, Private Green confined her relatives to a bedroom, the document states. Shots were heard inside, after which Private Green came to the door and said, "I just killed them, all are dead," the affidavit goes on. Then Private Green and another "known participant" were seen raping the woman before Private Green shot her in the head "two to three times," the document states.

An AK-47 already in the house was used in at least some of the slayings and was dumped in a nearby canal afterward, the F.B.I. agent said.

The affidavit says prosecutors have 15 crime-scene photographs that corroborate the accounts of witnesses. "These photos include, but are not limited to, pictures of an Iraqi female, an Iraqi male, a young girl," the affidavit says. "These photos also depict the burned body of what appears to be a woman with blankets thrown over her upper torso."

Good to see that we can continue to read about this through the good ole BBC. Regardless of what this does to the "morale" of the American people, those same "American people" have a right to know what affects the opinion of the GI's on the ground in Iraq, which is also what "the enemy" uses against us to recruit snipers and suicide bombers.

Unjust wars, inhumane policies of torture and interrogation, and horrific crimes such as the ones described in the BBC story – this is what's unnecessarily killing American soldiers on the ground, eroding our reputation abroad, and destroying the moral/ethical core of the greatest of our American values.

But it's easiest just to label such criticism "un-American." Unfortunately, more and more, they're right.

Already, standing up for what's obviously right just because it's unpopular, or criticizing the President, or even engaging in one's right to gather voices into legitimate political protest – these things are becoming more "un-American" by the day.

When I return to America, I wonder if I'll even recognize it anymore.

Oh, right. Me even making this criticism will probably get me labeled as "un-American."

The people who go through the motions of supporting the fundamentally American right to protest one's government and leaders, or blow the whistle on immoral and illegal acts committed in the name of MY country, yet bemoan and belittle those who do so – these are the true hypocrites who eat away at our core American values.

If the soldiers accused are indeed guilty of the crimes for which they are accused, these men are the biggest traitors and walking insults to every good American soldier and citizen. Take a look at this link that I find interesting in that it links the (faked) photos supposedly depicting GI's raping Iraqi women, but mixed in with (very real) photos from Abu Graib,

What has really been lost here is the fact that so many people – even the Boston Globe (here and here) – were ready to believe they were real, because given the reality of the confirmed horrors committed by American troops, now bolstered by real rape/murders by American GI's, such horrible acts are not merely plausible (as they were in 2004) – now, they are established fact.

So sadly, the apparent inauthenticity of those particular "GI Rape" photos is actually merely an academic matter.

Because the real acts in question did actually take place, and were carried out with more horrible cruelty than even the imagination of the suspected anti-American groups who fabricated them could dream up. As always, fact is way more fucked up than fiction.

They capped her family as they took turns gang raping a 14-year-old girl?

Christ. I don't even know where to put that in my head.

Let's Get Crunk Cuz Camille is Back!

Or so I felt like singing.

"Let's get it crunk, we gon' have fun / Up on in this dancery..."

No, really. I did a little dance. Ooh. Ahh. Spin. Repeat.

There's still a hole in my soul from Spy magazine (check out the infamous nude Arnold Schwarzenegger) having taken a fall, where Camille Paglia (whom I wrote about not too long ago) sliced and diced history, literature, politics, and pop culture in her "Ask Camille" columns on a level that I've never seen paralleled.

I try to be her, although I am inevitably and perpetually doomed to failure. But we gotta have role models, right?

A "libertarian Democrat" who voted for Nader but likes to listen to Rush Limbaugh, who is a lesbian feminist from the academy yet called Susan Faludi a "whiny little mouse" (ouch!), who debuted as a columnist in the issue of my beloved Spy that infamously featured the more dour Clinton's head atop a dominatrix's body – oh, and that's just the beginning.

Why do I celebrate her return?

Because she's one of the most gifted writers I've ever encountered, mixing elitist academic prose with street slang and pop culture panache. It's what I default to, although she does a far better job than I could ever hope to do.

Because she's not predictable, nor is she a wannabe politico – she calls 'em as she sees 'em, and skewers everybody in need of being skewered, regardless of whether they wear red or blue on their sleeve.

Because she realizes that the liberal "left" tends to be as boorish, elitist, and dogmatic as the radical "right" tends to be morally bereft, pendantic, and narrow-mindedly "un-American" as either side would never admit.

Because she has a killer sense of humor that stops at just short of outrageous, in the original sense of the word.

And all the while, she's just so fucking obviously smarter than everybody else who would dare call her out for a match of dissing and dismissing.

She's back as a regular columnist for Salon.com, from her original stint on that news and culture site back in 1995.

For those in the expat blogosphere who want, like me, to keep in touch while actually using some of the brain cells and neural connections left on hold by a lot of the work many of us are forced to do in Korea, her writing is one refreshing way to help do that.

I wouldn't be surprised if you are excited, impressed, suspicious, and possibly even offended by what she writes; I like that. Sort of like a fine wine hitting all the taste buds, she covers a lot of interesting bases.

Time to dance again. Ooh. Yeah!

Kudos to the Joongang Ilbo

And let's hope that it takes its own implied advice about the way a media outlet should deal with nationalist boosterism, especially when it comes to Samsung, the company that owns the Joongang Ilbo.

Yet, this article, written by a man who knows from the inside why most Western foreigners I know find Arirang TV unwatchable, was a bold decision in being published, as it named names, and pulled no punches.

We need more of this to make foreigners find English-language news and media outlets seem at all professional and worth taking seriously.

I myself just turned down another request to go on Arirang TV, even though I was very sorry to the personal contact there who was doing the asking. She tried, but it wasn't her fault. Previous run-ins with the show's producers, personal experience from friends who've appeared there, as well as the generally vapid nature of the programming itself – these are what forced me to maintain my present line of "no" to going on Korean TV.

When I was asked to go on a "serious" talk show to talk about my photography back in 2003, the producer heard my mom was Korean and told me that I wasn't what they were looking for (meaning a "real" foreigner, e.g. no Korean Americans, or even halfsies like me).

Another time, some documentary film crew wanted to follow me around, but after they got the message that I wouldn't change my schedule for them, nor would I smile on cue, nor sing and dance, the calls stopped coming, which was just as well for me.

Most importantly, I don't think I belong in front of the camera as much as I do behind it. I think Arirang TV is bad enough, without my mug leaping out from behind the screen.

Yeech.

I'm happy making my own media, thanks very much. And the talk show I would have been on was scripted, like they all are.

No thanks.

Anyway, this is the type of journalism I like, and I think many other foreigners would appreciate.

Keep it up, please!

A Message From "Spacegirl"

Soyeon's leaving for Russia on Wednesday, so we just wanted to give her a happy sendoff and our support, as this site has since well before she was selected as a final candidate (see here and here). As many of you know, I've been doing interviews with her since she started down the final stretch of the Korean Astronaut Program, the first of which was conducted last summer.

Below is a picture from when she was part of the final 10 candidate cut, when the 2nd video interview was recorded.

Below is when she made it to the final two, when the 3rd interview was recorded, which will be presented on this site soon.

And the final shot is of Soyeon conquering everyone's biggest intergalactic fear.

Although Soyeon meant to take the time to write this in English, she has been wrapping things up at school, in her lab, and is spending tonight doing her penultimate night of packing all her things. So she was barely able to get out this message:

"따뜻하고 응원하는 말들을 남겨줘서 너무너무 고마워요
그런 마음들 때문에라도 더 열심히 해야겠단 생각이 들었어요...
그리고...앞으로도 계속 응원해 줄꺼라고 생각해도 되겠죠?
혹시라도 궁금한게 있거나...하고 싶은 말이 있으면 알려주시길..."

"I want to thank you all for the warm words of encouragement you've left.
It is because of such kind sentiments that I've been reminded to try even harder to do my best.
Also, I'll be able to count on you to root for me in the future, right?
If you have anything you're curious about, or anything you want to say, I hope you'll let me know."

What she's referring to is a final interview that we've decided (that we've figured out) is logistically possible since I'll be in Myeongdong working when she is on her way to Seoul Station for the train back to school. Since we've done a summer, fall, and winter series of interviews, we thought a final "spring" one would be nice to lay down, especially since it'll be her last full day in Korea.

How appropriate, right? Also, since some questions have come up, and we're in an interactive medium, we thought it would be cool to see if there were any questions that you'd like to possibly include in the final interview. We might have like only 20 minutes to do this, so we she can't do much, but we'll do what we can.

SeoulGlow #4.2 – Dinner With Soyeon (Part 2 of 3)

It's past 3 AM and I've died another day in front of my computer. But the second episode is done, and something I think you'll find even better than the first, if you've seen that one already.

Man – I think that girl is cut out to go to space, which is why I think I'd be rooting for her even if she weren't already my friend. Soyeon is both mentally and physically fit for it, she has a vision of where she wants Korean space technology to be, and has been able to keep her feet on the ground even as her mind dreams of space.

The Power of Taekwondo

This is actually an experiment with embedding Metacafe content. We'll see how it goes; and if you're reading this and seeing a player, it probably went well.

As a person who did TKD, liked the sparring, but also got knocked in the head a couple times in matches, I feel for this guy. But that's a sweet-ass kick, and right to the head. As my master always told me, "Keep your hands up!"

Tornado Kick - Funny bloopers are a click away

That guy won't forget that lesson.

SeoulGlow #4 - Dinner With Soyeon (1 of 3)

I've technically not broken SeoulGlow's Tuesday deadline for uploading, as the iTunes podcast version of the podcast went up some minutes ago, well before midnight. And the video's on YouTube now, but these days, the old 'Tube has been taking hours to actually process and stream the video, even after it has gone live.

I apologize for the delay, but this was one tough podcast to put together, because it's a good story, a good interview, and lots of subtitling. Carpal tunnel syndrome is in the stars for me.

This podcast has actually been in the works for the longest of any of them, from all the way back in the summer, when my friend Soyeon was still getting through the major weeding-out rounds of the Korean Astronaut program. I had a feeling she was a strong contender, so I just decided to start filming her, since she was already a winner in my book.

So I did two interviews before the big Christmas Day announcement that she had made it, and one a few weeks ago, as she prepares to leave the country for Russia, where she will train for a year before just maybe being the first Korean to go into space, and one of only a fraction of human beings on the planet who ever has.

I tried to have fun with the editing, fun with the space theme, and slog through the subtitling. I personally liked the direct, first-person style interview, and the goal was to be casual, let Soyeon's charm and personality shine through, and to make the viewer feel like they are having the conversation with her. I hope I was able to accomplish those things.

In other news, I've decided that I need a student intern. More on that later, but if you know any smart and motivated students going to Yeondae, Idae, Hongdae, or Seogang (all in my area, and the latter in walking distance of my house), I've got a desire to teach a motivated person video editing on a fast Mac, subtitling, and many other aspects of video production. Being pretty good at English is a must, not so much for communication with me, but because of subtitling. I still plan on doing the English=>Korean translations myself, but need a lot of other help.

We've got other shows coming down the pipe, so the greater our production capacity, the better. I'll be putting up a blurb in an upcoming episode.

And be sure to watch the next two parts to this video – I plan to get these out maybe Thursday or Friday nights, but don't be surprised if these are about 1/2 a day late. It's a one-man production show here.

Subscribe through iTunes directly, or download an MP4 directly.

Enjoy the series, and don't forget to let your Seoooooooul glow!

Happy Birthday, George!

For those of you who might have forgotten one of the reasons George Washington was regarded as such a great man, here's a reminder. And also, here's a little history to go with it, courtesy of The Washington Post.

This speech has been in the history books, but

At the end of the war, Washington was held in such high regard, and people were so weary and shell-shocked, that they were eager to return to what was familiar; so there was a popular desire to crown Washington as king.

Hard as it is to believe that Americans wanted to crown Washington king, even more difficult to believe, in the shadow of history at least, was how Washington the general turned down the request and decided to leave public life. He had decided to move the cult of the individual out of the way of the more democratic form of rule that was, as of yet, untested, untrusted, and still unstable.

Indeed, economic and regional tensions would pull at the inadequate Articles of Confederation, requiring a "Constitution 2.0" – what we now call our revered Constitution, which would become the template for just about every other democratic constitution and movement in the world, from French revolutionaries to Haitian slave revolts, all the way down through history to even Ho Chi Minh (whose declaration of Vietnamese independence was modeled on the American one) and even our former Communist enemies, which still call themselves "democratic republics."

Little do we remember that pure "democracy" was considered a bad and scary word, even well into the times the writing of the present American Constitution, and Senators were generally required to own a certain amount of land as members of a propertied elite, to offset the "riff-raff" of the "democratic" representatives who constituted the lower house of Congress.

Also, little do we remember the public distress over how to define and maintain a sense of "republican virtue" and commitment to the republic over personal, material "interests" in a society in which political participation was increasingly open to the masses. Traditionally, only those educated gentlemen with wealth and the privilege of leisure were thought to be able to be "disinterested" from the concerns of the dirty, material world; what James Madison did was find a way to make "interests" balance to make an overall fair whole.

Such was the genius of men like Washington, and the idea of "democracy" was out of the bag, although it wouldn't take the modern form we now recognize – along with the word "democracy" being celebrated – until the 1830's and the time of Jackson.

Washington, Jefferson, and many other Founders were slaveholders, and women were denied (in most states, but not all) the right to vote, Pandora's Box had been opened. Even the very idea that no one has any inherent political rights over another is very American, although very uncomfortable, unusaual, and economically impractical at the time.

Some might point to this as a mere "contradiction," which it was, to some extent; but many historians of the United States also see this as part of a larger question, an unresolved issue that would only be able to be resolved through violence; in this way, John Quincy Adams called the Civil War "the last battle of the American Revolution," which was a very apt way of understanding the single issue in the Constitution that wouldn't go away – the problem of slavery.

Although its ultimate solution could not have been found at the time, in the circumstances of material interests and the limits of moral courage at the time, the ideas and actions of people such as Washington were indeed momentous ones not just for all Americans, but for people around the world.

And George Washington never cut down a cherry tree. He should be remembered for making the historically unprecedented act of laying down power when it was most crucial to do so, and for returning to public life when it was requested of him to define and assert the authority of the President and the federal government.

He's more than just the old white dude in a wig.