I've been considering doing a teaching abroad in Taiwan after I finish my degree. Though I'd be happy anywhere.
Benefit for Taiwan: Have already taken a year of Mandarin
Benefit for Japan: Don't have to speak any more Mandarin
Benefit for Korea: Korean food
Well, in my own experience, Japan and South Korea (or at least the far south, where I lived) both have more pleasant weather overall.
August is horrifying in Japan.
But the spring and fall are fantastic.
Spoken like someone who's never endured a Taiwanese summer. I'll take August in Japan over August in Taiwan (as someone who's not keen on high humidity--it is bad in Japan too).
Surely Georgia was a poor choice then (I used to live in Athens).
Yes, it was. I hate the climate here in Athens as well.
Though to be clear, it's not the humidity I hate, so much as the "four to five continuous months of +90 degrees Fahrenheit every single goddamn day," that invariably happens every year. Summer lasts about 8 months in Georgia, and when it doesn't rain for multiple weeks in a row, it's goddamn miserable (and a drought).
This year and last, though, we actually got adequate rain to avoid drought.
I was still in middle school at that time but I definitely remember outrage about Chen Shui-bian's perceived inaction on the comfort women issue. Of course it didn't really become weaponized to its current extent until the Ma administration, but it was definitely a talking point.
I was still in middle school at that time but I definitely remember outrage about Chen Shui-bian's perceived inaction on the comfort women issue. Of course it didn't really become weaponized to its current extent until the Ma administration, but it was definitely a talking point.
Being in Japan and otherwise abroad during those years probably hurt my perspective--I mostly just remember it as an occasional blip that come up and a lack of government response. Of course, the Comfort Woman movement has often been left out with belated or otherwise inadequate responses across multiple governments, since it is a historical justice issue.
The later years of the Chen administration were a sort of slow-moving train wreck courtesy of that move from "genuinely revolutionary and new political thought" to "self-destruction crisis addiction", but it felt like it got buried until lobbying tried again under the Ma government, where they found a more receptive audience across the board.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
A US student who supposedly died in China in 2004 has reportedly turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un's personal tutor.
David Sneddon of Brigham Young University disappeared in Yunnan Province aged 24, in what Chinese police said was probably a hiking accident.
But the reality, according to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea's Abductees' Family Union, is that he was kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then-heir to North Korea Yahoo News Japan reported Wednesday.
I've been considering doing a teaching abroad in Taiwan after I finish my degree. Though I'd be happy anywhere.
Benefit for Taiwan: Have already taken a year of Mandarin
Benefit for Japan: Don't have to speak any more Mandarin
Benefit for Korea: Korean food
Well, in my own experience, Japan and South Korea (or at least the far south, where I lived) both have more pleasant weather overall.
August is horrifying in Japan.
But the spring and fall are fantastic.
South Korean winter is an icy nightmare. From New Years and beyond, they get Siberian wind that will chew on your flesh and soul. Ski trips are nice, especially at the High 1 Ski Resort, which gives foreigners half off the slopes with a display of a passport, but the powder is not as good as Japan.
Spring has a beautiful cherry bloom everywhere but they also get Yellow Dust, courtesy of the Gobi Desert and Chinese pollution.
Summer is muggy as Mississippi. And yet you can't hit the beach until August because the seaside fog is so intense it blocks out the sun. It kinda messed up my trip to Jeju-do. The last weekend you can swim is Labor Day.
A US student who supposedly died in China in 2004 has reportedly turned up alive in North Korea after being kidnapped to serve as Kim Jong Un's personal tutor.
David Sneddon of Brigham Young University disappeared in Yunnan Province aged 24, in what Chinese police said was probably a hiking accident.
But the reality, according to Choi Sung-yong, head of South Korea's Abductees' Family Union, is that he was kidnapped to be an English tutor to the then-heir to North Korea Yahoo News Japan reported Wednesday.
Such a wild story. The guy's got a family now and has been in country for 12 years, a third of his life. Also wild that they got him all the way down in Yunnan province, very far from North Korea within China.
I've been considering doing a teaching abroad in Taiwan after I finish my degree. Though I'd be happy anywhere.
Benefit for Taiwan: Have already taken a year of Mandarin
Benefit for Japan: Don't have to speak any more Mandarin
Benefit for Korea: Korean food
Well, in my own experience, Japan and South Korea (or at least the far south, where I lived) both have more pleasant weather overall.
August is horrifying in Japan.
But the spring and fall are fantastic.
South Korean winter is an icy nightmare. From New Years and beyond, they get Siberian wind that will chew on your flesh and soul. Ski trips are nice, especially at the High 1 Ski Resort, which gives foreigners half off the slopes with a display of a passport, but the powder is not as good as Japan.
Spring has a beautiful cherry bloom everywhere but they also get Yellow Dust, courtesy of the Gobi Desert and Chinese pollution.
Summer is muggy as Mississippi. And yet you can't hit the beach until August because the seaside fog is so intense it blocks out the sun. It kinda messed up my trip to Jeju-do. The last weekend you can swim is Labor Day.
And of course, autumn is breathtaking.
Yeah, spring and fall are the nicest times, but they seem to last for all of a week or so before jumping into another 6 months of summer or winter. That's mostly around Seoul though. I spent a few years in Busan and the temperature there was great all year round.
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MayabirdPecking at the keyboardRegistered Userregular
Would the Philippines fall closely enough under East Asia for this thread? Because there was a bombing in Davao, which is the hometown of their new President Duterte, and on a day when he was visiting. Abu Sayyaf, which swore loyality to ISIS, has claimed responsibility. This is coming a few days after Duterte ordered thousands of troops to the area for a military operation against them.
I've been considering doing a teaching abroad in Taiwan after I finish my degree. Though I'd be happy anywhere.
Benefit for Taiwan: Have already taken a year of Mandarin
Benefit for Japan: Don't have to speak any more Mandarin
Benefit for Korea: Korean food
Well, in my own experience, Japan and South Korea (or at least the far south, where I lived) both have more pleasant weather overall.
August is horrifying in Japan.
But the spring and fall are fantastic.
South Korean winter is an icy nightmare. From New Years and beyond, they get Siberian wind that will chew on your flesh and soul. Ski trips are nice, especially at the High 1 Ski Resort, which gives foreigners half off the slopes with a display of a passport, but the powder is not as good as Japan.
Spring has a beautiful cherry bloom everywhere but they also get Yellow Dust, courtesy of the Gobi Desert and Chinese pollution.
Summer is muggy as Mississippi. And yet you can't hit the beach until August because the seaside fog is so intense it blocks out the sun. It kinda messed up my trip to Jeju-do. The last weekend you can swim is Labor Day.
And of course, autumn is breathtaking.
The winter in Sunchang County (the only place I ever lived in South Korea) was pretty tolerable in my humble opinion. No worse than winters in Yokohama. Of course, that's not the furthest north you can go in the country, but it's towards the middle. Hardly nightmarish in the least, and I say this as someone born in the tropics.
I left before the end of spring though, so I can't attest to what the summer was like.
I've been considering doing a teaching abroad in Taiwan after I finish my degree. Though I'd be happy anywhere.
Benefit for Taiwan: Have already taken a year of Mandarin
Benefit for Japan: Don't have to speak any more Mandarin
Benefit for Korea: Korean food
Well, in my own experience, Japan and South Korea (or at least the far south, where I lived) both have more pleasant weather overall.
August is horrifying in Japan.
But the spring and fall are fantastic.
South Korean winter is an icy nightmare. From New Years and beyond, they get Siberian wind that will chew on your flesh and soul. Ski trips are nice, especially at the High 1 Ski Resort, which gives foreigners half off the slopes with a display of a passport, but the powder is not as good as Japan.
Spring has a beautiful cherry bloom everywhere but they also get Yellow Dust, courtesy of the Gobi Desert and Chinese pollution.
Summer is muggy as Mississippi. And yet you can't hit the beach until August because the seaside fog is so intense it blocks out the sun. It kinda messed up my trip to Jeju-do. The last weekend you can swim is Labor Day.
And of course, autumn is breathtaking.
The winter in Sunchang County (the only place I ever lived in South Korea) was pretty tolerable in my humble opinion. No worse than winters in Yokohama. Of course, that's not the furthest north you can go in the country, but it's towards the middle. Hardly nightmarish in the least, and I say this as someone born in the tropics.
I left before the end of spring though, so I can't attest to what the summer was like.
I'm from Florida so take my distaste for Korean winter with a grain of salt.
I'm in DC now, which has the same longitude as Korea, and the same seasons. But DC gets more snow and Korea gets more wind.
An interesting article about the upcoming opening for the "Ama" comfort women memorial museum this month.
"Ama" is a Taiwanese (Hokkien) word for grandmother, more commonly used than the Mandarin Chinese word--probably well into my teens, I didn't realize it wasn't actually Chinese.
An interesting article about the upcoming opening for the "Ama" comfort women memorial museum this month.
"Ama" is a Taiwanese (Hokkien) word for grandmother, more commonly used than the Mandarin Chinese word--probably well into my teens, I didn't realize it wasn't actually Chinese.
I'm impressed that they managed to certify 58 out of the 1,000 Taiwanese comfort women. That's a much higher ratio than in Korea (where I believe it's something like 2-300 out of 75,000+).
An interesting article about the upcoming opening for the "Ama" comfort women memorial museum this month.
"Ama" is a Taiwanese (Hokkien) word for grandmother, more commonly used than the Mandarin Chinese word--probably well into my teens, I didn't realize it wasn't actually Chinese.
I'm impressed that they managed to certify 58 out of the 1,000 Taiwanese comfort women. That's a much higher ratio than in Korea (where I believe it's something like 2-300 out of 75,000+).
I sort of imagine that it's easier when dealing with a smaller pool of people.
On the other hand, between the Allied bombing campaign, then the 228 revolt and crackdown, statistically some small portion of them had to have died before the end of the 1940s. I've also seen the figure put at 2,000, rather than 1,000.
Synthesis on
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
Barack Obama has cancelled a meeting with the president of the Philippines after Rodrigo Duterte appeared to call him a “son of a whore”.
The move followed a warning from Duterte to the US president to keep off the subject of extrajudicial killings in his country’s brutal drug war when they were due to meet on Tuesday at a regional summit in Laos. Duterte told a press conference that Obama “must be respectful”.
The firebrand president was answering a reporter’s question about how he intended to explain the extrajudicial killings to Obama, before boarding a plane to Laos for the Association of South-east Asian Nations summit.
“You must be respectful. Do not just throw away questions and statements. Son of a whore, I will curse you in that forum,” Duterte was quoted by as saying by Agence-France Presse. “We will be wallowing in the mud like pigs if you do that to me.”
this guy is a fruitloop
edit:
Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte is expressing regret after his obscenity-laden rant against President Barack Obama prompted the White House to cancel planned bilateral talks between the two leaders.
Duterte, who cursed Obama as a "son of a bitch" Monday, said in a statement through his spokesman that he regretted "it came across as a personal attack on the US President."
"We look forward to ironing out differences arising out of national priorities and perceptions," the statement released on Tuesday read.
boy howdy I wonder if he expected Obama to just straight up cancel on him like that
Seriously. This is interesting if not good news. The fact that you are getting young, anti-Beijing/pro-Independence candidates through the CCP grip is interesting. This is very much connected to the how Beijing has been overplaying its hand in HK.
Seriously. This is interesting if not good news. The fact that you are getting young, anti-Beijing/pro-Independence candidates through the CCP grip is interesting. This is very much connected to the how Beijing has been overplaying its hand in HK.
Will the CCP try to strangle this insurgence before it gets too strong?
Seriously. This is interesting if not good news. The fact that you are getting young, anti-Beijing/pro-Independence candidates through the CCP grip is interesting. This is very much connected to the how Beijing has been overplaying its hand in HK.
Will the CCP try to strangle this insurgence before it gets too strong?
Its super weak, like the CCP loyalist are the majority through groups like the major trade associations.
They have two choices, let the insurgent group stay small and marginalized and left alone. or clamp down and see if that causes more backlash. The ones elected from this group are mostly young folks in the early 30's so they aren't going away by age anytime soon. And that could really cause issues if you push it too much against them.
I get the feeling that most people in Hong Kong were fine with the one China, 2 systems approach. Hong Kong should of been an example to Taiwan of how intergration could work, but now I feel it's a example of all that could go wrong.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
Seriously, Teddy Roosevelt spirit. Philippines is the only former Imperial holding of the US that might be better off under us again. Oe a good 'ol fashioned CIA led coup
Seriously, Teddy Roosevelt spirit. Philippines is the only former Imperial holding of the US that might be better off under us again. Oe a good 'ol fashioned CIA led coup
Um, no. The US occupation of the Philippines was pretty rough. Like "concentration camp" rough.
So in regards to Duterte and the Philippines. I read up on this guys history as mayor of Davao, the allegations of his assassination squads killing suspected drug dealers and criminals and all sorts of shit, his apparent dislike for the church and his support of Gay Marriage. So how bad is it in the Philippines where a dude outrights says he is going to start killing people asap when he is elected, and he is elected president with a large margin on the next guy. Is "tough" on crime the hot button topic in the Philippines?
I get the feeling that most people in Hong Kong were fine with the one China, 2 systems approach. Hong Kong should of been an example to Taiwan of how intergration could work, but now I feel it's a example of all that could go wrong.
Yes and no. Even during the "Honeymoon" period, there were fundamental differences, many of them historical and publicly understood--ironically, even during the good times there were a lot of problems that have only been replaced by other problems. The "Two Systems" approach is often held up as an example, and it's not totally irrelevant, but Hong Kong and Taiwan were at very different stages of their democratization processes when Hong Kong was transferred from British sovereignty to Chinese. Importantly, Hong Kong was generally not an independent state with its own military and ruling political clique, and quite firmly under the control as a British dependency (with its own local political traditions) and had only been decolonized for two decades. There's a cultural difference--we've long since past the point of Chinese self-identification in the island of Taiwan that Hong Kong had, you would've had to ask this question decades ago to get comparable numbers. A half-century of Japanese Imperial rule being the catalyst for Taiwanese national thought will do that. If you asked most Taiwanese, they'd say (correctly or incorrectly) that Hong Kong and Taiwan have less in common than the Republic of Ireland and the country of England (for starters, the later two have shared the same government for a lot longer a lot more recently).
Of course, the argument cuts both ways--not everyone in China even favors a Hong Kong-style "Two System" solution, and it's generally understood as simplistic, but there are fundamental differences between Taiwan and Hong Kong. It's not an uncommon argument that the nature of the Chinese Republican Government, less colonial in nature than that of British Hong Kong, would demand a fundamentally different region-to-region relationship. Back then, it was harder to sell the One China, 2 Systems Approach when half the population was sympathetic to the idea that they're not Chinese, and the other half was sympathetic to the notion that they are, politically, the real Chinese--it's a funny coincidence that when the Hong Kong transfer was happening, the notion that the (Kuomintang-led) elected government in Taipei had a political and moral duty to lead the whole of a Chinese Republic, and that Beijing to defer to their vision of leadership, and not the reverse. A lot of these people were probably the strongest advocates of Taiwan's unification with China--ironically, their ideological position was pretty repugnant to the large majority of Chinese as well as their government (why on Earth would one billion Chinese consent to be ruled by the clique of Civil War losers who fled to a little island like they were the last gasps of the Ming Dynasty?).
At least after Chiang Kai-shek's death, if not before, the clear idea of a Chinese Republican government was beginning to break to pieces. It's not just a problem for Beijing, we're dealing with the fallout of that today--even if China, collectively, renounced military force on the strait and decided they wanted absolutely nothing to do with Taiwan, abolishing the Republic of China might be impossible in the face of the public outcry.
Plus, Taiwan had more than three times the population of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (and its share of overseas holdings), which would've proved more challenging too.
EDIT: In simple terms, I sometimes think the reason "we" Taiwanese are considered so friendly to foreigners is because, secretly, we're just waiting for any reason to stick it to our countrymen. We occupied the occupied the Legislative Yuan, our unicameral parliament, because we were opposed to a trade deal (not to mention the Executive Yuan, just for a lot shorter). Then we promptly protested against the occupiers for their occupation. Never mind China, it's very hard for me to imagine where a group of unarmed students occupy the United States Capitol for multiple weeks to oppose NAFTA that doesn't begin or end in violence.
I get the feeling that most people in Hong Kong were fine with the one China, 2 systems approach. Hong Kong should of been an example to Taiwan of how intergration could work, but now I feel it's a example of all that could go wrong.
I think anybody in Hong Kong who legitimately believed that the One China, 2 Systems approach was going to last is a goddamned fool.
Isn't the Philippines pres super popular right now?
I would be a little wary of any polls conducted when the dude in charge has basically given the police carte blanche to summarily execute people for super-flimsy excuses. Tends to make people wary of speaking out against those in authority.
Isn't the Philippines pres super popular right now?
I would be a little wary of any polls conducted when the dude in charge has basically given the police carte blanche to summarily execute people for super-flimsy excuses. Tends to make people wary of speaking out against those in authority.
He was popular enough to get elected in a landslide promising to do the thing he is doing so...
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Isn't the Philippines pres super popular right now?
I would be a little wary of any polls conducted when the dude in charge has basically given the police carte blanche to summarily execute people for super-flimsy excuses. Tends to make people wary of speaking out against those in authority.
He was popular enough to get elected in a landslide promising to do the thing he is doing so...
Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if he installed himself as dictator for life under threat of kill squads, but I don't think that's what's going on (yet.)
Disclaimer: I'm not a Filipino, and while I've spent some time there in the past couple years I'm still not REMOTELY fluent in the political situation, so take with as much salt as necessary. That being said, I'm getting married to a Filipina in a few weeks, and had some insight into the campaign/election/concerns of some of the people from my facebook feed with her family/friends/friends of family.
First off, important thing to note is that Duterte's election, while a decent margin of victory, was still only a plurality - it wasn't a landslide. There were four viable candidates before things broke late - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/2016_Philippine_presidential_election_polling.svg - so Duterte was elected with (just) under 40% of the vote. That being said, right now polls are showing him with 91% approval rating, but I can't help but wonder how much of that are people scared to not voice disapproval - it's definitely up there with dictatorial approval ratings.
Second thing to understand is that some of the things which people (myself included) painted Duterte with were taken somewhat out of context - some of the monstrous quotes made recently were actually him commenting on how the media would interpret statements, or were quoting things he said decades ago, or along those lines. I cannot speak to the validity of it myself, but I do know that, at least with Filipino media, there was at least a small amount of making fun of foreign media mistranslating/misinterpreting things.
Third, my understanding is that the overwhelming political "problem" in the Philippines is perceived to be corruption. Like "the person elected after a President was kicked out for being corrupt was, themselves, corrupt, and their replacement who campaigned against that person's corruption was also corrupt" levels of corruption, coupled with some serious electoral allegations ala the 1992 election where Miriam Defensor Santiago was winning, power cut out while counting the votes, and when it came back on the vote totals had changed and she was losing (sidenote: look up some of her quotes sometimes. She really knows how to write one-liners.) Anyway, much of this corruption/paying off comes from the drug cartels/moneyed interests. Duterte is seen as opposed to these folks (for obvious reasons), and as such was able to successfully campaign on the anti-corruption "I can't be bought" front. This played well, and was a large part of why he got elected.
Finally....drugs are a major problem in the Philippines. It has the largest meth usage rate in east asia, its location makes it a major international narcotics hub, and from my understanding there were a number of prison guards who were paid off so heads of cartels who were elected were still easily able to run their operations from inside of prison. So for a lot of people, it ended up more along the lines of after decades, it seemed like he was finally someone who would do something. I don't think it was quite to the level that some sections of Mexico are said to be, where the cartels are the only real political power, but the impression that I get is that people felt that it was on the threshold of falling into that.
Not saying I agree with any of that, but that's kinda the filtered zeitgeist that I was able to glean during the election period.
Renho, the favorite to take over the leadership of the main Japanese opposition party, is getting caught up in her own birther scandal. Most of the accusations are coming from the usual suspects; I'm not sure how much the general public cares/believes the accusation. Renho's very popular, so her selection could potentially help the Democrats. God knows they need it... the most recent poll shows that only 9% of the public supports them (compared to 38.5% for the LDP and 36.5% for "no one").
Renho, the favorite to take over the leadership of the main Japanese opposition party, is getting caught up in her own birther scandal. Most of the accusations are coming from the usual suspects; I'm not sure how much the general public cares/believes the accusation. Renho's very popular, so her selection could potentially help the Democrats. God knows they need it... the most recent poll shows that only 9% of the public supports them (compared to 38.5% for the LDP and 36.5% for "no one").
I've literally only heard of Renho Murata in the past because of her ethnicity.
Honestly, Taiwanese citizenship is pretty worthless for anyone who isn't actually planning to live in Taiwan (and if you're committing crimes overseas, you can increasingly expect to be deported to China). I'm surprised she didn't do it sooner.
She wasn't eligible for Japanese citizenship at the time of her birth because Japanese law required that the father be Japanese. She adopted Japanese citizenship immediately after a change in the law made her eligible through her mother.
She wasn't eligible for Japanese citizenship at the time of her birth because Japanese law required that the father be Japanese. She adopted Japanese citizenship immediately after a change in the law made her eligible through her mother.
I meant more in the context of when she was 17 (though it seems to be that she had attempted too back then too).
The Minister of Justice shall not permit the naturalization of an alien unless he or she fulfills all of the following conditions:
(1) that he or she has domiciled in Japan for five years or more consecutively;
(2) that he or she is twenty years of age or more and of full capacity to act according to the law of his or her home country;
(3) that he or she is of upright conduct;
(4) that he or she is able to secure a livelihood by one's own property or ability, or those of one's spouse or other relatives with whom one lives on common living expenses; (5) that he or she has no nationality, or the acquisition of Japanese nationality will result in the loss of foreign nationality;
(6) that he or she has never plotted or advocated, or formed or belonged to a political party or other organization which has plotted or advocated the overthrow of the Constitution of Japan or the Government existing thereunder, since the enforcement of the Constitution of Japan.
2. When an alien is, regardless of his or her intention, unable to deprive himself or herself of his or her current nationality, the Minister of Justice may permit the naturalization of the alien, notwithstanding that the alien does not fulfill the conditions set forth in item (5) of the preceding paragraph, if the Minister of Justice finds exceptional circumstances in his or her family relationship with a Japanese national, or other circumstances.
Barring extremely rare circumstances, Japan does not allow dual-citizenship. Not even children born to a Japanese parent and a foreigner can be dual-citizens! (Well, technically, they enjoy dual-citizenship until the age of twenty, when they must legally declare if they choose to be a Japanese citizen - requiring them to renounce other nationalities - or not.)
The Minister of Justice shall not permit the naturalization of an alien unless he or she fulfills all of the following conditions:
(1) that he or she has domiciled in Japan for five years or more consecutively;
(2) that he or she is twenty years of age or more and of full capacity to act according to the law of his or her home country;
(3) that he or she is of upright conduct;
(4) that he or she is able to secure a livelihood by one's own property or ability, or those of one's spouse or other relatives with whom one lives on common living expenses; (5) that he or she has no nationality, or the acquisition of Japanese nationality will result in the loss of foreign nationality;
(6) that he or she has never plotted or advocated, or formed or belonged to a political party or other organization which has plotted or advocated the overthrow of the Constitution of Japan or the Government existing thereunder, since the enforcement of the Constitution of Japan.
2. When an alien is, regardless of his or her intention, unable to deprive himself or herself of his or her current nationality, the Minister of Justice may permit the naturalization of the alien, notwithstanding that the alien does not fulfill the conditions set forth in item (5) of the preceding paragraph, if the Minister of Justice finds exceptional circumstances in his or her family relationship with a Japanese national, or other circumstances.
Barring extremely rare circumstances, Japan does not allow dual-citizenship. Not even children born to a Japanese parent and a foreigner can be dual-citizens! (Well, technically, they enjoy dual-citizenship until the age of twenty, when they must legally declare if they choose to be a Japanese citizen - requiring them to renounce other nationalities - or not.)
I remember reading these posters when I lived in Japan.
Though if I remember that is actually a pretty new thing, which is surprising because it is Japan and Xenophobia. Though I think it was added due to an influx of half Japanese kids. Well influx for Japan. So a very small percentage.
Though this is a country where you still have Koreans who are now 3rd and 4th generation in Japan who are on kind of permanent resident status but are not citizens due to the fact they are not natural born Japanese. And most do not apply for citizenship though they are allowed to because all it takes is one cranky Japanese bureaucrat to send them to Korea. A country they have never lived in or don't speak the language of.
Disclaimer: I'm not a Filipino, and while I've spent some time there in the past couple years I'm still not REMOTELY fluent in the political situation, so take with as much salt as necessary. That being said, I'm getting married to a Filipina in a few weeks, and had some insight into the campaign/election/concerns of some of the people from my facebook feed with her family/friends/friends of family.
First off, important thing to note is that Duterte's election, while a decent margin of victory, was still only a plurality - it wasn't a landslide. There were four viable candidates before things broke late - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/2016_Philippine_presidential_election_polling.svg - so Duterte was elected with (just) under 40% of the vote. That being said, right now polls are showing him with 91% approval rating, but I can't help but wonder how much of that are people scared to not voice disapproval - it's definitely up there with dictatorial approval ratings.
Second thing to understand is that some of the things which people (myself included) painted Duterte with were taken somewhat out of context - some of the monstrous quotes made recently were actually him commenting on how the media would interpret statements, or were quoting things he said decades ago, or along those lines. I cannot speak to the validity of it myself, but I do know that, at least with Filipino media, there was at least a small amount of making fun of foreign media mistranslating/misinterpreting things.
Third, my understanding is that the overwhelming political "problem" in the Philippines is perceived to be corruption. Like "the person elected after a President was kicked out for being corrupt was, themselves, corrupt, and their replacement who campaigned against that person's corruption was also corrupt" levels of corruption, coupled with some serious electoral allegations ala the 1992 election where Miriam Defensor Santiago was winning, power cut out while counting the votes, and when it came back on the vote totals had changed and she was losing (sidenote: look up some of her quotes sometimes. She really knows how to write one-liners.) Anyway, much of this corruption/paying off comes from the drug cartels/moneyed interests. Duterte is seen as opposed to these folks (for obvious reasons), and as such was able to successfully campaign on the anti-corruption "I can't be bought" front. This played well, and was a large part of why he got elected.
Finally....drugs are a major problem in the Philippines. It has the largest meth usage rate in east asia, its location makes it a major international narcotics hub, and from my understanding there were a number of prison guards who were paid off so heads of cartels who were elected were still easily able to run their operations from inside of prison. So for a lot of people, it ended up more along the lines of after decades, it seemed like he was finally someone who would do something. I don't think it was quite to the level that some sections of Mexico are said to be, where the cartels are the only real political power, but the impression that I get is that people felt that it was on the threshold of falling into that.
Not saying I agree with any of that, but that's kinda the filtered zeitgeist that I was able to glean during the election period.
Interesting, I did some more searches "Duterte comments taken out of context" being the search criteria and came up with a few hits.
As I recall, the United States does not always acknowledge dual citizenship either--then again, all large countries have exclusion situations, and the exceptions have it on a country-to-country basis.
In Taiwan, there are measures to deliberately prevent males from renouncing their citizenship due in part to mandatory mobilization, because this has historically been a problem.
? I'm pretty sure US always recognizes dual citizenship, although for entering and leaving the US you're supposed to present your US Passport rather than your other citizenship. Its main oddity is the IRS taxing US citizens abroad.
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Yes, it was. I hate the climate here in Athens as well.
Though to be clear, it's not the humidity I hate, so much as the "four to five continuous months of +90 degrees Fahrenheit every single goddamn day," that invariably happens every year. Summer lasts about 8 months in Georgia, and when it doesn't rain for multiple weeks in a row, it's goddamn miserable (and a drought).
This year and last, though, we actually got adequate rain to avoid drought.
Being in Japan and otherwise abroad during those years probably hurt my perspective--I mostly just remember it as an occasional blip that come up and a lack of government response. Of course, the Comfort Woman movement has often been left out with belated or otherwise inadequate responses across multiple governments, since it is a historical justice issue.
The later years of the Chen administration were a sort of slow-moving train wreck courtesy of that move from "genuinely revolutionary and new political thought" to "self-destruction crisis addiction", but it felt like it got buried until lobbying tried again under the Ma government, where they found a more receptive audience across the board.
South Korean winter is an icy nightmare. From New Years and beyond, they get Siberian wind that will chew on your flesh and soul. Ski trips are nice, especially at the High 1 Ski Resort, which gives foreigners half off the slopes with a display of a passport, but the powder is not as good as Japan.
Spring has a beautiful cherry bloom everywhere but they also get Yellow Dust, courtesy of the Gobi Desert and Chinese pollution.
Summer is muggy as Mississippi. And yet you can't hit the beach until August because the seaside fog is so intense it blocks out the sun. It kinda messed up my trip to Jeju-do. The last weekend you can swim is Labor Day.
And of course, autumn is breathtaking.
Such a wild story. The guy's got a family now and has been in country for 12 years, a third of his life. Also wild that they got him all the way down in Yunnan province, very far from North Korea within China.
Yeah, spring and fall are the nicest times, but they seem to last for all of a week or so before jumping into another 6 months of summer or winter. That's mostly around Seoul though. I spent a few years in Busan and the temperature there was great all year round.
The winter in Sunchang County (the only place I ever lived in South Korea) was pretty tolerable in my humble opinion. No worse than winters in Yokohama. Of course, that's not the furthest north you can go in the country, but it's towards the middle. Hardly nightmarish in the least, and I say this as someone born in the tropics.
I left before the end of spring though, so I can't attest to what the summer was like.
I'm from Florida so take my distaste for Korean winter with a grain of salt.
I'm in DC now, which has the same longitude as Korea, and the same seasons. But DC gets more snow and Korea gets more wind.
"Ama" is a Taiwanese (Hokkien) word for grandmother, more commonly used than the Mandarin Chinese word--probably well into my teens, I didn't realize it wasn't actually Chinese.
I'm impressed that they managed to certify 58 out of the 1,000 Taiwanese comfort women. That's a much higher ratio than in Korea (where I believe it's something like 2-300 out of 75,000+).
finally the bars will be open again
I wonder what the next mass display of inferiority complex will be
I sort of imagine that it's easier when dealing with a smaller pool of people.
On the other hand, between the Allied bombing campaign, then the 228 revolt and crackdown, statistically some small portion of them had to have died before the end of the 1940s. I've also seen the figure put at 2,000, rather than 1,000.
this guy is a fruitloop
edit:
boy howdy I wonder if he expected Obama to just straight up cancel on him like that
Seriously. This is interesting if not good news. The fact that you are getting young, anti-Beijing/pro-Independence candidates through the CCP grip is interesting. This is very much connected to the how Beijing has been overplaying its hand in HK.
Will the CCP try to strangle this insurgence before it gets too strong?
Its super weak, like the CCP loyalist are the majority through groups like the major trade associations.
They have two choices, let the insurgent group stay small and marginalized and left alone. or clamp down and see if that causes more backlash. The ones elected from this group are mostly young folks in the early 30's so they aren't going away by age anytime soon. And that could really cause issues if you push it too much against them.
Um, no. The US occupation of the Philippines was pretty rough. Like "concentration camp" rough.
Yes and no. Even during the "Honeymoon" period, there were fundamental differences, many of them historical and publicly understood--ironically, even during the good times there were a lot of problems that have only been replaced by other problems. The "Two Systems" approach is often held up as an example, and it's not totally irrelevant, but Hong Kong and Taiwan were at very different stages of their democratization processes when Hong Kong was transferred from British sovereignty to Chinese. Importantly, Hong Kong was generally not an independent state with its own military and ruling political clique, and quite firmly under the control as a British dependency (with its own local political traditions) and had only been decolonized for two decades. There's a cultural difference--we've long since past the point of Chinese self-identification in the island of Taiwan that Hong Kong had, you would've had to ask this question decades ago to get comparable numbers. A half-century of Japanese Imperial rule being the catalyst for Taiwanese national thought will do that. If you asked most Taiwanese, they'd say (correctly or incorrectly) that Hong Kong and Taiwan have less in common than the Republic of Ireland and the country of England (for starters, the later two have shared the same government for a lot longer a lot more recently).
Of course, the argument cuts both ways--not everyone in China even favors a Hong Kong-style "Two System" solution, and it's generally understood as simplistic, but there are fundamental differences between Taiwan and Hong Kong. It's not an uncommon argument that the nature of the Chinese Republican Government, less colonial in nature than that of British Hong Kong, would demand a fundamentally different region-to-region relationship. Back then, it was harder to sell the One China, 2 Systems Approach when half the population was sympathetic to the idea that they're not Chinese, and the other half was sympathetic to the notion that they are, politically, the real Chinese--it's a funny coincidence that when the Hong Kong transfer was happening, the notion that the (Kuomintang-led) elected government in Taipei had a political and moral duty to lead the whole of a Chinese Republic, and that Beijing to defer to their vision of leadership, and not the reverse. A lot of these people were probably the strongest advocates of Taiwan's unification with China--ironically, their ideological position was pretty repugnant to the large majority of Chinese as well as their government (why on Earth would one billion Chinese consent to be ruled by the clique of Civil War losers who fled to a little island like they were the last gasps of the Ming Dynasty?).
At least after Chiang Kai-shek's death, if not before, the clear idea of a Chinese Republican government was beginning to break to pieces. It's not just a problem for Beijing, we're dealing with the fallout of that today--even if China, collectively, renounced military force on the strait and decided they wanted absolutely nothing to do with Taiwan, abolishing the Republic of China might be impossible in the face of the public outcry.
Plus, Taiwan had more than three times the population of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (and its share of overseas holdings), which would've proved more challenging too.
EDIT: In simple terms, I sometimes think the reason "we" Taiwanese are considered so friendly to foreigners is because, secretly, we're just waiting for any reason to stick it to our countrymen. We occupied the occupied the Legislative Yuan, our unicameral parliament, because we were opposed to a trade deal (not to mention the Executive Yuan, just for a lot shorter). Then we promptly protested against the occupiers for their occupation. Never mind China, it's very hard for me to imagine where a group of unarmed students occupy the United States Capitol for multiple weeks to oppose NAFTA that doesn't begin or end in violence.
I think anybody in Hong Kong who legitimately believed that the One China, 2 Systems approach was going to last is a goddamned fool.
I would be a little wary of any polls conducted when the dude in charge has basically given the police carte blanche to summarily execute people for super-flimsy excuses. Tends to make people wary of speaking out against those in authority.
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
He was popular enough to get elected in a landslide promising to do the thing he is doing so...
Yeah. I wouldn't be surprised if he installed himself as dictator for life under threat of kill squads, but I don't think that's what's going on (yet.)
First off, important thing to note is that Duterte's election, while a decent margin of victory, was still only a plurality - it wasn't a landslide. There were four viable candidates before things broke late - https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2d/2016_Philippine_presidential_election_polling.svg - so Duterte was elected with (just) under 40% of the vote. That being said, right now polls are showing him with 91% approval rating, but I can't help but wonder how much of that are people scared to not voice disapproval - it's definitely up there with dictatorial approval ratings.
Second thing to understand is that some of the things which people (myself included) painted Duterte with were taken somewhat out of context - some of the monstrous quotes made recently were actually him commenting on how the media would interpret statements, or were quoting things he said decades ago, or along those lines. I cannot speak to the validity of it myself, but I do know that, at least with Filipino media, there was at least a small amount of making fun of foreign media mistranslating/misinterpreting things.
Third, my understanding is that the overwhelming political "problem" in the Philippines is perceived to be corruption. Like "the person elected after a President was kicked out for being corrupt was, themselves, corrupt, and their replacement who campaigned against that person's corruption was also corrupt" levels of corruption, coupled with some serious electoral allegations ala the 1992 election where Miriam Defensor Santiago was winning, power cut out while counting the votes, and when it came back on the vote totals had changed and she was losing (sidenote: look up some of her quotes sometimes. She really knows how to write one-liners.) Anyway, much of this corruption/paying off comes from the drug cartels/moneyed interests. Duterte is seen as opposed to these folks (for obvious reasons), and as such was able to successfully campaign on the anti-corruption "I can't be bought" front. This played well, and was a large part of why he got elected.
Finally....drugs are a major problem in the Philippines. It has the largest meth usage rate in east asia, its location makes it a major international narcotics hub, and from my understanding there were a number of prison guards who were paid off so heads of cartels who were elected were still easily able to run their operations from inside of prison. So for a lot of people, it ended up more along the lines of after decades, it seemed like he was finally someone who would do something. I don't think it was quite to the level that some sections of Mexico are said to be, where the cartels are the only real political power, but the impression that I get is that people felt that it was on the threshold of falling into that.
Not saying I agree with any of that, but that's kinda the filtered zeitgeist that I was able to glean during the election period.
I've literally only heard of Renho Murata in the past because of her ethnicity.
Honestly, Taiwanese citizenship is pretty worthless for anyone who isn't actually planning to live in Taiwan (and if you're committing crimes overseas, you can increasingly expect to be deported to China). I'm surprised she didn't do it sooner.
She wasn't eligible for Japanese citizenship at the time of her birth because Japanese law required that the father be Japanese. She adopted Japanese citizenship immediately after a change in the law made her eligible through her mother.
I meant more in the context of when she was 17 (though it seems to be that she had attempted too back then too).
Er, you do.
Barring extremely rare circumstances, Japan does not allow dual-citizenship. Not even children born to a Japanese parent and a foreigner can be dual-citizens! (Well, technically, they enjoy dual-citizenship until the age of twenty, when they must legally declare if they choose to be a Japanese citizen - requiring them to renounce other nationalities - or not.)
Rock Band DLC | GW:OttW - arrcd | WLD - Thortar
I remember reading these posters when I lived in Japan.
Though if I remember that is actually a pretty new thing, which is surprising because it is Japan and Xenophobia. Though I think it was added due to an influx of half Japanese kids. Well influx for Japan. So a very small percentage.
Though this is a country where you still have Koreans who are now 3rd and 4th generation in Japan who are on kind of permanent resident status but are not citizens due to the fact they are not natural born Japanese. And most do not apply for citizenship though they are allowed to because all it takes is one cranky Japanese bureaucrat to send them to Korea. A country they have never lived in or don't speak the language of.
Interesting, I did some more searches "Duterte comments taken out of context" being the search criteria and came up with a few hits.
This one is in regards to his statement about Media Killings.
http://news.abs-cbn.com/nation/06/01/16/dutertes-media-killings-statement-taken-out-of-context
most recently his comment regarding Obama
http://news.abs-cbn.com/news/09/06/16/panelo-us-may-have-taken-duterte-statement-out-of-context
both articles from ABS-CBN (not familiar with the network so I cant say if they are respected or if they are FOX news like. )
In Taiwan, there are measures to deliberately prevent males from renouncing their citizenship due in part to mandatory mobilization, because this has historically been a problem.