2008-02-26
Bat Alert
At long last I finally managed to talk in-depth with a Japanese person, and gain some insight into the world's 2nd-largest economy and it's conspicuous absence from the Iraqi blogs and IRC as if they are too busy growing those small trees in potplants things.
One of my ex-students who I managed to discuss the Iraq war with for an hour, returned to visit Australia and was happy to meet me and discuss politics. She is 20 years old and studying "global citizenship" at Uni, which is presumably a good way to get into a career in pizza delivery.
First the good news - she thinks the Japanese of WWII were crazy. In fact, she even objected when I said that they fought very bravely. (As a precursor to explaining why people were willing to fight bravely for a horrible dictatorship but not freedom).
Secondly, she could clearly see the injustice of Korean and Chinese children being reared from birth to hate Japanese, when the Japanese of today were very different from the past.
Now the bad news. It appears that anti-white racism is rife in Japan. She doesn't appear to have learnt about all the people Australia has helped. What she has been taught is how racist Australia was in 1950 (or something like that) when it didn't allow Asian immigration. I pointed out to her that in 2008, the Japanese didn't allow immigration (to citizenship) at all, and that she should therefore see Japan as the equivalent of Australian in 1950. And that additionally she should be learning that Australia in 2008 is far better than Japan in 2008, as the former is non-racist while the latter is racist. To get out of this predicament she said that the Japanese were conservative and had a phobia about foreigners, rather than calling them racist. I can't remember if she allowed 1950 Australians to do the same. However, despite all this she still decided that Howard tried to put Australia 50 years back, despite the fact that he was in power for 12 years or whatever and she couldn't name any policy she objected to. Basically, she's just repeating a lot of crap from "specialists" on TV.
More on those "specialists". The only thing she knew about Bush was that he was a fundamentalist Christian and that's why he invaded Iraq. The "specialists" had told her that. The American people who supported him were fundamentalists and/or they were impressed by his speeches. I asked her why she wasn't impressed by his speeches, and she hadn't heard any of them. The Japanese TV hadn't bothered translating any of them into Japanese. All they did was produce "specialists" to write off everything he said. I asked her what a fundamentalist Christian actually was, given that the bible doesn't say "go and invade Iraq". She said that Iraq was invaded because fundamentalist Christians thought that non-Christians were inferior.
Not only that, but Americans are racist which is why they have the KKK. I asked her what percentage of Americans she thought were in the KKK. She guessed 20% and when I smiled she dropped it down to 10%. A quick google search shows an estimated 3000, which is 0.0001%. I mentioned that with the Japanese producing all these nasty images of white people, maybe it is the Japanese who have 90% membership of the JJJ.
Also, Japan is controlled by America, despite the fact that all their TV is showing such negative things about America.
I got her to call Waheed in Afghanistan so that she could talk to a real Afghan who had been freed and she thought that was cool.
She's never actually talked to a single American to confirm any of these things at all. That's why I'm putting out a Bat Alert. Batman, could you email me so that I can get her to talk to a pro-war American and find out what motivates at least one American Christian to invade Iraq?
Oh yeah, and she simultaneously doesn't want the Americans to leave Japan unprotected, and tentatively supports pre-emptive war with North Korea, while at the same time wants the Americans to leave because the only thing they ever do is rape Japanese women while the American government protects them citing specious claims such as "insufficient evidence". I asked her how many Japanese women were being raped by American soldiers, e.g. 4 per day or whatever, and finally got "1 per year" out of her. A quick google search to find the rape rate in Japan, and there's about 1500 for 1995 I think it was. So 1 out of 1500 rapes in Japan were by US soldiers, and her media focussed on the white boy. If that isn't racist, what is?
She is shocked at the number of rapes in Japan (despite it being a quarter of the Australian rape rate (my memory of the rape rate here)) and I sent her away to go and research Japanese sites in the Japanese language to find out the numbers of rapes etc etc.
I think I need to organize her, Waheed, Abdul to form some sort of pro-war NGO to liberate North Korea etc. And also to put an end to the horrific anti-American bigotry.
By the way. Wherever did you silly Americans pick up the concept of "right to be an enemy"? While I wouldn't go and kill individuals who hate America, I would at least make sure that the education system is teaching people that hating Americans is bad, and for anti-Americanism to be socially unacceptable.
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One of my ex-students who I managed to discuss the Iraq war with for an hour, returned to visit Australia and was happy to meet me and discuss politics. She is 20 years old and studying "global citizenship" at Uni, which is presumably a good way to get into a career in pizza delivery.
First the good news - she thinks the Japanese of WWII were crazy. In fact, she even objected when I said that they fought very bravely. (As a precursor to explaining why people were willing to fight bravely for a horrible dictatorship but not freedom).
Secondly, she could clearly see the injustice of Korean and Chinese children being reared from birth to hate Japanese, when the Japanese of today were very different from the past.
Now the bad news. It appears that anti-white racism is rife in Japan. She doesn't appear to have learnt about all the people Australia has helped. What she has been taught is how racist Australia was in 1950 (or something like that) when it didn't allow Asian immigration. I pointed out to her that in 2008, the Japanese didn't allow immigration (to citizenship) at all, and that she should therefore see Japan as the equivalent of Australian in 1950. And that additionally she should be learning that Australia in 2008 is far better than Japan in 2008, as the former is non-racist while the latter is racist. To get out of this predicament she said that the Japanese were conservative and had a phobia about foreigners, rather than calling them racist. I can't remember if she allowed 1950 Australians to do the same. However, despite all this she still decided that Howard tried to put Australia 50 years back, despite the fact that he was in power for 12 years or whatever and she couldn't name any policy she objected to. Basically, she's just repeating a lot of crap from "specialists" on TV.
More on those "specialists". The only thing she knew about Bush was that he was a fundamentalist Christian and that's why he invaded Iraq. The "specialists" had told her that. The American people who supported him were fundamentalists and/or they were impressed by his speeches. I asked her why she wasn't impressed by his speeches, and she hadn't heard any of them. The Japanese TV hadn't bothered translating any of them into Japanese. All they did was produce "specialists" to write off everything he said. I asked her what a fundamentalist Christian actually was, given that the bible doesn't say "go and invade Iraq". She said that Iraq was invaded because fundamentalist Christians thought that non-Christians were inferior.
Not only that, but Americans are racist which is why they have the KKK. I asked her what percentage of Americans she thought were in the KKK. She guessed 20% and when I smiled she dropped it down to 10%. A quick google search shows an estimated 3000, which is 0.0001%. I mentioned that with the Japanese producing all these nasty images of white people, maybe it is the Japanese who have 90% membership of the JJJ.
Also, Japan is controlled by America, despite the fact that all their TV is showing such negative things about America.
I got her to call Waheed in Afghanistan so that she could talk to a real Afghan who had been freed and she thought that was cool.
She's never actually talked to a single American to confirm any of these things at all. That's why I'm putting out a Bat Alert. Batman, could you email me so that I can get her to talk to a pro-war American and find out what motivates at least one American Christian to invade Iraq?
Oh yeah, and she simultaneously doesn't want the Americans to leave Japan unprotected, and tentatively supports pre-emptive war with North Korea, while at the same time wants the Americans to leave because the only thing they ever do is rape Japanese women while the American government protects them citing specious claims such as "insufficient evidence". I asked her how many Japanese women were being raped by American soldiers, e.g. 4 per day or whatever, and finally got "1 per year" out of her. A quick google search to find the rape rate in Japan, and there's about 1500 for 1995 I think it was. So 1 out of 1500 rapes in Japan were by US soldiers, and her media focussed on the white boy. If that isn't racist, what is?
She is shocked at the number of rapes in Japan (despite it being a quarter of the Australian rape rate (my memory of the rape rate here)) and I sent her away to go and research Japanese sites in the Japanese language to find out the numbers of rapes etc etc.
I think I need to organize her, Waheed, Abdul to form some sort of pro-war NGO to liberate North Korea etc. And also to put an end to the horrific anti-American bigotry.
By the way. Wherever did you silly Americans pick up the concept of "right to be an enemy"? While I wouldn't go and kill individuals who hate America, I would at least make sure that the education system is teaching people that hating Americans is bad, and for anti-Americanism to be socially unacceptable.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 08:57 
