[NON BLOG] At Second Hand

This afternoon at work, while I quickly and efficiently packaged books for return to their vendor, there was an argument in the service corridor behind the store. It was a lovers' spat, actually. I couldn't hear what was actually being said through the door, but the loud male voice and the periodically rising female voice made it clear what was going on.

The argument lasted for almost an hour. Worried about possibly finding myself in the same group of people as Kitty Genovese's useless witnesses, I opened the deliveries door and asked if anything was the matter.

"It's just a fight," he said. She stared at me angrily.

[BRIEF NOTE] The Problem With the Maris

Helsingin Sanomat's International edition has an article regarding the European Parliament's reaction to the persecution of Russia's Maris. The Maris, one of many Finno-Ugric ethnicities living within the frontiers of the Russian Federation, have allegedly been subjected to sustained oppression by Russian-nationalist and conservative forces despite a post-Soviet revival. This has reached a peak in the aftermath of a recent election.

Last year, the indigenous Maris were largely opposed to the re-election of President Leonid Markelov, who enjoyed support from the Kremlin. Markelov, himself a supporter of hard-line nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky, won the election, although the results - according to the indigenous Mari population - did not bear close scrutiny.

Since the election, the indigenous Maris who were against Markelov have been tyrannised through illegal dismissals and violent beatings. Some of the violence has resulted in deaths, but apparently no one has been convicted of the crimes.

A Finno-Ugrian bloc within the European Parliament, comprising parliamentarians from Finland, Estonia, and Hungary, has taken the case of the Maris before Strasbourg. The issue might conceivably have an impact on European Union-Russian relations generally, inasmuch as the Parliament's condemnation of the situation in the Mari Republic would introduce human rights--most importantly, human rights outside of Chechnya--into the bilateral discourse.

[LINK] South Korea's Chinese

Joe at Far Outliers linked to Oranckay's posting on South Korea's ethnic Chinese minority.

South Korea had around 120,000 Chinese in the early seventies, now there are 22,000. There are many reasons as to why they've left though one of them is that most are from families that originate on mainland, whereas because of history (being in SK at the height of anti-Communism) they are all Taiwanese citizens, with the exception of the relatively few who managed too obtain Korean citizenship. Problem with Taiwanese citizenship is that you couldn't go to the mainland all those years and if you obtain Korean citizenship you have to give up your previous citizenship and still would not be able to go to the mainland all those years (things have changed). So, a good option was emigrating to the US; you can obtain US citizenship without renouncing Taiwanese citizenship while still being able to travel to the family hometown on the mainland on your US passport.

[. . .]

History in Korea, however, also made leaving Korea look like a very good option. The Japanese did not treat them well. There was a "massacre" of some sort against Chinese in Korea at one point in the thirties - there is an article written about it by a Westerner here at the time, though I'm still trying to get a hold of it. The late HH Underwood mentioned anti-Chinese sentiment rather matter of factly in an article in Koreana - the link for that seems to have died but I happened to quote it long ago. Specifically he says "....as we came into the 40s, Japanese controls increased and anti-Chinese sentiment was encouraged...."

Perhaps because he was a protégé of the Japanese, the dictator Park Chung Hee was very harsh with the Chinese as well. Chinese who served in the ROK army during the war as interrogators of PRC POWs were denied their benefits. Park limited the Chinese to mostly running restaurants, and then - get this - enacted price limits on how much you could charge for jajangmyeon! For a long time they were not allowed to own their own land and businesses, and many lost everything when Korean friends who acted as proxy property owners turned around and claimed assets as their own.

It's interesting to compare the situation of South Korea's ethnic Chinese with that of the ethnically Korean Chinese citizens who have begun to immigrate to South Korea. More than three million ethnic Koreans live in China, many in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in Jilin Province adjoining North Korea and most of the remainder elsewhere in China's northeast. Since South Korea's rapid economic development has made the country an immigrant-receiving state, many ethnic Koreans from China have begun to move to their nominal homeland, claiming permanent residency and citizenship rights based on their ethnicity.

[LINK] On Self-Consistency

Via Crooked Timber, "A Note on 'Notes' & the Turkey ruse":

Turkey - If your opponent is criticising the policies of some state you favour, demand that he talks about Turkey instead. This may sound a feeble ploy, equivalent to saying ‘please talk about something else’ but can be effective if you use language like ‘if you’re being consistent’ ‘disproportionate and selective attention’. (You may if you wish substitute some other country for Turkey--obviously so if, by chance, your opponent is talking about Turkey.)

A nice example of this at the Tomb.

The reductio ad absurdum of this position is that one should busy oneself with impotent cursing and condemnations of foreign regimes over which one has zero influence, while exempting your own government and its allies from criticism. In other words: ethical bombast on the one hand, and ethical abdication on the other.

At worst, the 'Turkey' tactic can also short-circuit moral universality - the belief that we should apply to ourselves the same principles we apply to others. So, for example, moral condemnation of torture by American and British soldiers (in accordance with moral universality) meets with 'but why are you silent about much more horrific things elsewhere..'; patient criticisms of the 'democratic deficit' in our own societies meets only with our attention rerouted to utterly undemocratic regimes. So it goes on, diversionary and insidious.

[LINK] The Asia Times on Kyrgyzstan's Problems

From Pepe Escobar's article "The Tulip Revolution takes root":

The IMF one-size-fits-all recipe once again was a disaster. Thanks to the IMF, the tiny republic now has the largest debt per capita in Central Asia. This has also meant a massive loss of jobs and next to 60% of the population living below the poverty line, according to World Bank figures. Increased poverty led to increased dissent. Once again, "it's the economy, stupid" - nothing to do with Islamic terrorism.

[. . .]

But that was nothing compared to the south, home of the volatile Fergana Valley - a 300-kilometer lush oasis divided by Josef Stalin among three Soviet republics, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. The Kyrgyz Fergana is crisscrossed by a disgruntled, vocal and relatively well-organized Uzbek minority. In Osh and Jalalabad - the capitals of the current Tulip Revolution - everyone complained about their lack of political power in Bishkek, and how there was no investment in their region. One just had to walk the dark, crumbling and empty streets of Osh at night in the freezing cold to prove their point.

A visit to the sprawling Dar Doil bazaar, outside of Bishkek and one of the largest in Central Asia, also proved the point of how a great deal of the Kyrgyz population depends for its survival on commerce with China.

At least 700,000 Kyrgyz out of a population of 5 million have been forced to emigrate to find work. Most survive as clandestine slave laborers at construction sites in Russia or Kazakhstan. The stagnant economy revolves around gold mines, hydroelectric equipment and some tourism. The country's external debt - US$2 billion - is equivalent to its gross national product.

[BRIEF NOTE] Perusing The Epoch Times

I picked up the most recent copy of the The Epoch Times earlier this afternoon while I was downtown. It's an interesting publication, a weekly syndicated internationally with editions in various world languages. The paper claims to have the widest circulation of any Chinese-language weekly outside of China, though the accuracy of this claim is open to question.

What caught my attention, reading the latest issue of The Epoch Times, was the editorial board's claim that its "Nine Commentaries on the Communist Party" inspired a half-million members of the Chinese Communist Party to defect. Reading them in their English version, I don't see anything many particularly new facts in that document, and certainly, skepticism about impressive but unsbustantiated claims is warranted here as always.

Then again, assuming that The Epoch Times' claims of widespread propagation within China via print are correct, someone reading these commentaries for the first time might indeed be provoked. I find it interesting, and a bit amusing, and somewhat awe-inspiring, to imagine a future where the "Nine Commentaries" really did end up playing a major role in the dissolution of Chinese Communism in the following decade: I would have gotten an inside peek.

[BRIEF NOTE] Moving to .is

Abiola Lapite, over at Foreign Dispatches, has observed that the behaviour of Bobby Fischer as he prepares to leave Japan for Iceland is rather deranged. Speaking--of course--as someone who has no personal experience with the man, based on the press converage I can't disagree with Abiola's conclusion that "it's been a principle of the law since Roman times that the mentally unhinged cannot be held legally responsible for their actions; it would be best for everyone if US action against this lunatic were simply quietly dropped."

Fischer's speedy naturalization in Iceland--he acquired citizenship in twelve minutes--highlights Iceland's very recent evolution into a country of immigration, for, as Jill Lawless' article on immigration to Iceland makes clear, Fischer is only one of many new Icelanders.

The number of foreign-born residents has doubled in the past decade, but is still only 10,000 people, just more than three per cent of the population. There are Portuguese construction workers building a major dam in the east of the country, Poles working in northern fish factories and Thai cleaners in Reykjavik's hotels, as well as a smattering of young Europeans and North Americans attracted by the country's coziness, strong social safety net and high standard of living.

"It was clean, peaceful, isolated - just what I wanted," said Paul Nikolov, an American journalist who moved here six years ago. "Not at all like Baltimore."

The downside is that immigrants often feel like a very visible minority. Many complain it is difficult to gain acceptance from Icelanders.

"Most people ask me why I am here," said Mustapha Moussaoui, an Algerian who works as a chef in a Reykjavik cafe. "And when you work with Icelanders, they won't treat you as a friend for the first year or two - until they get to know you and respect you."

Then there's the weather - "depressing, dark, icy."

"To be honest, it's a really hard life here," said Moussaoui, who is married to an Icelandic woman.

What I find interesting about the whole affair is that Iceland--a prosperous country, an innovative country, an attractive community--is frequently positioned by Atlantic Canadians, especially Newfoundlanders, as the future that could have been. And no, this discussion isn't phrased in terms of a successful Vinland, provocative as that idea is. No, in the late 19th century, Atlantic Canada was still a place that people immigrated to; contemporary Iceland was a place that the natives abandoned in massive numbers. If only, the Atlantic Canadian argument goes, something had gone differently, maybe then we'd be in better shape. Maybe we'd be a place that people moved to; maybe the cod wouldn't have been vacuumed up; maybe we could have had a Björk. Ifs and maybes all, but that implicit counterfactual is always seductive. Certainly we'd have had more sunlight.