Tragedy!

One of the best traditions in politics has been destroyed by the nefarious Singaporeans and their hatred of laughter and smiles. The ASEAN summit, rescheduled in Phukhet after the protests earlier in the year ended it prematurely, will no longer be keeping with its tradition of having foreign ministers and various other political magnates perform what can only be called fabulous skits, under fairly close guard from media attention. Some highlights that have emerged over the years:

1997: The Australian delegation dresses up like "Men At Work", and sings their only hit, "Down Under", to a horrified audience.

1998: Russian and US delegations dress up as Jets and Sharks in a re-enactment of West Side Story, in what is meant to be a light-hearted parody of the Cold War, but is in effect an admission of defeat to the capitalist US Broadway hegemony.

2000: European delegation revisits ABBA favourite, singing "Knowing Me, Knowing EU"

2001: US Secretary of State Colin Powell kisses Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka whilst performing "El Paso", clearly misunderstanding the preferred sexual orientation of past ASEAN performances.

2004: Powell (pictured above) gets it right by performing "YMCA" in a builders outfit and not kissing a woman.

2005: Perhaps the best of the lot, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (pictured left) inexplicably dresses up as Darth Vader, and swings a plastic lightsabre while singing "Jesus Christ, Superstar" in front of a map showing the US as "East Asia". If anyone can find a video of this, please let me know.

2006:Also one of the best, Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso (Now Prime Minister of Japan) impersonates Humphrey Bogart while behind him members of the Japanese delegation dressed up in sumo wrestler fatsuits, Ultraman costumes, Ultraman villain costumes, and koi carp meander about. Video below.

2006: Also awesome, South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon (Now Secretary General of the UN) dresses up in a green-sequin jacket and sings ABBA again. Again, if anyone can find this on video, please let me know. It's important.

2007: Taro Aso again gets his delegation to dress up in samurai costumes and sumo fatsuits, and leads them in a choreographed dance thing.

And now it's all over.

Political Strongarm!

Some simply awesome videos of Korean politics as usual:


The Associated Press comments say it all: "Brawling South Korean lawmakers tried to sledgehammer their way into a parliamentary meeting room barricaded by the ruling party"

Check out the little guy at 1:36. He probably made the hole in the door at 1:40 with his teeth.

The next one is just priceless, though.

I'd give highlights, but just watch the whole thing. The bitch-fight at 0:50 and the attempted moonsault-cum-crowd surf at 0:53 made my day.

Banzai! Banzai!! Banzai!!!

Reuters released an interesting summary of a policy document they intercepted that was meant for DPJ candidates in anticipation of the upcoming general election. It's particularly interesting given the usually frustratingly insubstantive politics of Japan which produces slogans like "a fraternal society, to realise a politics of love" (-Yukio Hatoyama, head of the DPJ, and probably soon to be prime minister).

Well it turns out that Japanese politicians do actually talk business, if only among themselves. Some of the highlights of the policy document:

-Transfer more state power from the traditionally powerful bureaucracy to politicians themselves.

-Make high schools free of charge, scrap most highway tolls and raise minimum pensions.

-Halve corporate tax and eliminate fuel surcharges, costing over 2.7 trillion yen a year.

-Review 70 trillion yen out of the 207 trillion yen budget to try to cut spending to pay for all this junk.

-Review government-affiliated organisations on charges that they serve no real purpose other than to act as sinecure retirement posts for long-serving bureaucrats.

Two things jumped out at me from looking at this policy statement. Firstly, there is no way in hell they're going to be able to pay for all the things they've listed without making seriously big increases in taxes and/or decreases in public service. Since they seem to be intent on both increasing the domain of welfare (by making high school free), and on being business friendly (by cutting corporate tax), Either one side gives or Japan finds itself in a financial hole bigger than the opening shot of Akira. But this is sort of reminiscent of all political promises.

The second, and more interesting thing is that the DPJ appears to be tentatively trying to dismantle the traditional lifetime employment system that characterised Japanese postwar development. Both in their recognition that too many of the state's functions are dominated by a strong, technocratic bureaucracy, and in their attack on pointless golden-handshake retirement positions, the DPJ seem to be making an attack on the "establishment" of bureaucracy and lifetime employment part of their policy identity.

Of course, extremely old, wealthy, faceless bureaucrats doing nothing in offices make relatively easy targets, especially for a party that bases itself on being just about as anti-mainstream as the political mainstream will allow in Japan.

I honestly doubt the DPJ will actually try to make a serious dent into either government-affiliated retirement offices or bureaucratic control of politics. DPJ political careerists like Ichiro Ozawa have no doubt made a cushy 70+ job part of their life-plans, and Hatoyama himself is neither new (grandson of former PM and son of former Foreign Minister), nor idealistic (he started in the LDP before forming the DPJ with his brother, Kunio, who later went back to the LDP). It's safe to say that Hatoyama is no Obama. The DPJ is also unlikely to win such a comfortable majority that it will be strong enough to wrest control from the bureaucracy, dominant even during Koizumi's government.

And that's not even counting the funding scandals concerning both Ozawa and Hatoyama, both of whom have blamed the entire thing on their respective state-funded aides. Not knowing where politicians and their parties get donations from, and by corollary to whom they're beholden, is really quite serious.

So at first I was excited about the end of "half a century of nearly unbroken LDP rule", as the newspapers have been bleating incessantly to try to interest people in Japanese politics. But now it just seems like the same old whores, with different customers.

Surely Some of the Longest Names in Coup History

Yesterday's presidential election in Mauritania, a surprisingly large North African country, right beneath Morocco, yielded victory for General Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz (pictured above looking unbelievably pleased with his office). This is, in effect, a second-wave coup. Aziz took power by force last year after then-president Sidi Ould Sheikh Abdallahi dismissed him and his crew, and since then he's insisted that he's really a champion of democracy, and that

he had to execute two coups (an earlier one in 2005, as well), in order to protect the fragile Mauritanian democratic ideal from the fate that befalls so many other African countries. That is, military coups.

But to head off any criticism of his landslide electoral victory (52% of the vote, just enough to avoid a run-off round of voting), Aziz's spokesmen came out immediately after the results came in.

Interior Minister Mohamed Rzeizim: "The elections were carried out in excellent conditions. I salute the Mauritanian electorate for responsibility and civic duty. I also want affirm here that there was absolutely nothing suspicious about the vote count."

That the government felt the need to say this before any scandal had broken out doesn't exactly augur well, and of course, accusations started flying soon after. Whether the vote was rigged or not is immaterial, though. The vote cannot be valid when a military general executes a coup and then runs for election a year after. Mauritania wasn't in any way close to an actual open democratic environment. But dictators keep thinking that it's ok to perform a coup as long as at some point down the line you also run an election. They don't goddamn cancel each other out.

But it's not all bad, since there does seem to be some genuine outrage coming from Mauritania's opposition parties. It's doubtful that Aziz (pictured left demonstrating to his nation the correct YMCA form) will actually engage with the criticism. Still, it's more than one would expect from a country which still actually practices slavery, and there's a chance the international community might pick up on it. This has basically shaped up to be the Summer of Electoral Disputes, after all.

P.S. Seriously read the slavery link. 20% of Mauritania's population lives in actual slavery. WTF.

But Are They Jewish ENOUGH?

Two seperate slices of stupidity from Israel today. Firstly, violent demonstrations by ultra-orthodox Jews (also known as ultra-Jews) have caused chaos in Jerusalem, burning tires and rubbish bins and throwing rocks at riot police. The hubbub was caused by the arrest of an ultra-Jewish mother who apparently starved her 3-year-old child, as she has Munchausen Syndrome by proxy (Consult House for an awesome explanation). The ultra-Jews were upset that one of theirs was arrested, and reportedly think it's impossible for an ultra-Jewish mother to commit such a crime.

Although seeing hundreds of people protesting violently in snappy suits and hats is undeniably a sight, it's just stupid to start riots because a member of your community got arrested.

Secondly, the Israeli government is deciding whether or not 3000 Ethiopians are actually Jewish or just pretending. This absurd practice derives from the fact that Israel is legally a Jewish state, even though it's also supposedly secular. This means that Jews immigrating automatically get citizenship if they want it. This puts the Israeli government in the position of judging whether someone is really Jewish or not, regardless of what they say/believe. It's unclear what ridiculous standards Israel is using to quantify "Jewishness", but it probably includes nose-measuring and joke-telling.

The sheer arrogance of a state purporting to decide for someone else what religion the "really" belong to is mind-boggling.

Politics is Jokes

Beppe Grillo, one of the most famous Italian comedians around, has tried and failed to join the Democratic Party (DP), Italy's main opposition party to Silvio Berlusconi's government. His aim was to get elected into the party's secretariat, "to fill a space left empy in the Left". Despite being rejected, and derided, by everyone in the DP, he's going to try to get 2000 signatures to support his candidacy for the party primaries, which should be easy due to his overwhelming popularity in Italy.

Although this is something of a vanity project for him, multi-millionaire that he is, Mr. Grillo's policy platforms are good, if fairly basic in a civilised country. He wants to disallow anyone with convictions from running for Parliament, and he wants to place a limit of two terms on MPs. This last goal is incredibly important in a country with as established and sclerotic a political class as Italy.

This same political class has reacted strongly against Grillo's candidacy, calling him a "buffoon", and reminding everyone that he is "just a comedian, making jokes". This is what irks me most about this affair. Just as happened with the recent election of comedian Al Franken as Senator for Minnesota, a lot of people seem to think that comedians are inherently incapable of being "serious people", and that everything that they say and do must be a joke of some sort.

Leaving aside the fact that most comedians are real people and can thus have identities beyond their career, I'm against the idea that comedy is necessarily an inconsequential distraction. Given the amount of political comedy around, I'd think it was obvious that comedians are able to have actual insights concerning politics, and that these observations are consequential, even if they are funny.

When someone remarks on Picasso's Guernica and the statement it makes about the horrors of fascism, most people don't have the arrogance to shrug and say "pfft, it's just a painting."

Oh Wait, Nevermind

Goldman and Sachs (pictured above), the prominent Wall Street bank, has posted that it is likely to have made $2 billion profits in the March-June period. That's $2 billion profits, above and beyond the rest of the money they spent to run their unholy operation. They're posting estimates for their profits from March through June, which means they literally have more money than they can count. I don't know how much money I have either, but that's just due to the subliminal terror I have of checking my current account that impels me again and again to press "No." when offered a receipt at cashpoints. And Goldman and Sachs made $2 billion in profits since March.

Happy Monday, everyone.

In other depressing news, the Honduran coup that ousted Manuel Zelaya and instated serial coup-monger Roberto Micheletti is not at all likely to be overturned. The OAS has not yet accepted Micheletti, but it will probably only hold out for another week or two before "starting talks", implicitly recognising that Micheletti is now the de facto, and soon de jure leader of the country (Official Politic Blunder prediction).

Let's not even get into Iran, which major news outlets have pretty much completely stopped reporting on. This was only to be expected, as the thrill of having absolutely no news to report because of the total media blackout imposed by the government gives way to the realisation that there is absolutely no news to report. But like I said, I'm not going to get into Iran.

Television holds no solace either. Pakistani MTV was showing a really bad band fronted by an ugly woman ripping off Evanescence's "Everybody's a Fool", a really bad song, down to the last note, really badly.

Clearly Evanescence must have known about this, and sold them the rights to their song (and soul). Which is almost worse than coups in Honduras and brutal government repression in Iran. Almost.

Returning to the issue of Goldman and Sachs, Rolling Stone columnist Matthew Taibbi described Goldman as "a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money." The hilarious thing about this is that Goldman didn't dismiss this as a malicious characterisation or metaphor, but as a conspiracy theory. Which means they're seriously worried that people might start thinking that's actually how they make $2 billion in profits in 3 months.

Which would make more sense than all this "derivatives" and "risk management" hocus-pocus they keep foisting down our throats.

A Poorly Structured Rant on Xinjiang

So yes, the summer so far has been pretty tumultuous politically. There was (and hopefully still is) Iran, the putsch in Honduras, and now the violence in Xinjiang, in China. The worst thing people can do is make too many comparisons between these cases. Since no one really knows enough about Honduras to have a pre-formulated opinion on it, most of the comparisons currently being made are between the violence in China and the protests in Iran.

Most of the comparisons have the predictable tendency to simplify actors and misunderstand issues, resulting in a satisfying but ultimately derelict conclusion. Yes, both the Chinese and the Iranian regimes are bad, and yes, both are experiencing problems trying to stamp out civil unrest. The similarities pretty much end there though.

The protests in Iran were in response to a blatantly rigged election. The protests were widely based (despite demonstrably false assertions that only "rich, westernised Iranians" supported them), were by far the most part peaceful, and had a clear political aim, ideally with a goal of engagement to achieve that aim. They wanted an independent recount of the vote, they wanted public debate and scrutiny on the issue, and they wanted the right to read what the rest of the world had to say.

In China, on the other hand, the violence broke out due to the classic mix of ethnic tension combined with social and economic unease. A Turkic Muslim minority felt as if it was being mistreated by the government. Protests started, and when the security forces tried to break up the crowds, riots broke out, and Uighurs started massacring innocent Han Chinese bystanders.

Of course, this is the official version of the events, and I have no doubt that the Chinese security forces shot, arrested, and will ultimately execute innocent Uighurs. But it's quite clear that the majority of the dead were Han Chinese, and in large part they were beaten to death, not shot. These are racially motivated riots resulting in the senseless deaths of civilians, with no clear political goal and no clear intention of civil engagement.

Not that the Uighurs, or any other group in China have much room to engage politically with the state. It's quite easy to understand why the violence came about, and the Chinese government is clearly at fault for being brutally authoritarian, and for stupidly not realising how easily backwards religious people become violent. The Chinese government needs to take the initiative to engage with the Uighurs, but it was right to put down the riots.

In Iran, the pro-democracy protests deserve full international support. In China, it needs to be recognised that mobs of Uighurs, no matter how marginalised and culturally alienated they feel, are still in the wrong when they go around beating civilians to death for having the wrong facial structure and skin colour.

In The Interests of Shamelessness...

Just to do away with any unrealistic pretence that Minister of Equal Oppo- rtunities Mara Carfagna (pictured left), and Minister of Education Maria Stella Gelmini (below), are anything but leering posts for the men of the Italian parliament, Berlusconi today announced that in the absence of his ex-wife Veronica Lario, Miss Carfagna and Miss Gelmini will be showing the wives of the G8 heads of state around Rome. While the men (and German demi-woman Angela Merkel) take care of the important business.

Miss Carfagna, an ex-topless showgirl, has long been a paragon of the Italian parody of "equal opportunities", and in a country where the majority of 18-year-old girls' greatest ambition is to become a topless showgirl ("velina"), it stands to reason that she would be picked for the role. But of course, she should remember that whatever ministerial position she may occupy in the government, she is first and foremost a woman, and as the most attractive woman Berlusconi has regular access to now, it's only natural that she reverts to the role of surrogate housewife.

Where before I had sympathy for Miss Carfagna, I now have nothing but contempt. If she valued any part of her dignity as a human being, she would refuse and resign. But she won't, will she? Well, let's just hope she wears white, like all other domestic appliances.

An old divan with an even older woman leaning over it. Literally as good as Italian politics gets.

Hell Hath No Fury Like Hentai Scorned

The ridiculous Chinese "Green Dam" internet censorship drive has sparked outrage in the vast community of hentai consumer/producers, who have lashed out by creating Green Dam Girl, a satirical portrayal of the Chinese government's anti-pornographic policies. Ironically (inevitably), Green Dam Girl is Dam Hot (oh dear).

Green Dam Girl has become extremely popular.

Words such as "heresies", "essence" and "cult" have been banned from google searches by the Green Dam software, unintentionally making Warhammer 40,000 unplayable in China.

Even the Chinese government has acknowledged Green Dam Girl's popularity, noting that "the sentiments of the people seem to be in accordance with international feeling".

Green Dam Girl is in favour of international feeling.

Italy Attempts Civilisation, Fails, Again

Yet another issue that blinds and deafens me with rage is the Lodo Alfano. This is a law, brought forth by the fourth Berlusconi administration in 2008, which would completely immunise the four highest posts in the government from any legal prosecution. This would include the President, the Prime Minister, and the Speakers of both houses of parliament. It's a rehash of a law that failed to pass in 2003, the Lodo Maccanico.

I don't really need to tell you how disgusting and scandalous this is, but I will. Italy would be the only country in Europe to actually make democratically elected officials less accountable. It completely undermines the constitutional principle of equality before the law, and the justifications for it are entirely based on the idea that Berlusconi (pictured above detailing how far he's going to climb up Italy's ass before dying), implicated in dozens of legal proceedings, is victim to some sort of far-flung left-wing conspiracy which aims to discredit him. It's a complete fucking embarrassment for the entire political system that a Prime Minister mired in legal proceedings who proposes a law which would immunise the Prime Minister from legal proceedings doesn't get laughed out of parliament, and out of the country.

The most recent chapter regards two constitutional judges, the judges who are to make a ruling on whether this unconstitutional law is constitutional or not (on October 6). One of the judges, Luigi Mazzella, invited Berlusconi, the Minister of Justice Alfano (who wrote up the proposed law), and another constitutional judge, Paolo Napolitano, to a private dinner at his residence. When a scandal broke out because of the clear fucking conflict of interests involved, Mazzella has today had the shameless impunity to write an open letter insisting that he didn't do anything wrong, that the law in question was not discussed, and that it was a lovely dinner he would love to repeat. Throughout he referred to the Prime Minister as “my dear Berlusconi”. What a fucking gay.

This isn't of much surprise to people both inside and outside Italy, of course. In a civilised country, judges don't have private dinners with individuals who've made a law they must rule on, and individuals directly affected by that same law. Politic Blunder FlashQuiz! What kind of fucking travesty of a democracy does that make Italian politics?