The concept of dual nationality means that a person is a national of two countries at the same time. Each country has its own nationality laws based on its own policy. Persons may have dual nationality by automatic operation of different laws rather than by choice. For example, a child born in a foreign country to U.S. national parents may be both a U.S. national and a national of the country of birth.
Based on the U.S. Department of State regulation on dual citizenship (7 FAM 1162), the Supreme Court of the United States has stated that dual citizenship is a "status long recognized in the law" and that "a person may have and exercise rights of nationality in two countries and be subject to the responsibilities of both. The mere fact he asserts the rights of one citizenship does not, without more, mean that he renounces the other", Kawakita v. U.S., 343 U.S. 717 (1952). In Schneider v. Rusk, 377 U.S. 163 (1964), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a naturalized U.S. citizen has the right to return to his native country and to resume his former citizenship, and also to remain a U.S. citizen even if he never returns to the United States.
US law on this stuff tends to be an exception compared to a lot of the world. This is tied to the fact that we do not only use stuff like jus sanguinis but instead use jus soli as a basis of citizenship in the US.
U.S. law does not mention dual nationality or require a person to choose one nationality or another. Also, a person who is automatically granted another nationality does not risk losing U.S. nationality. However, a person who acquires a foreign nationality by applying for it may lose U.S. nationality. In order to lose U.S. nationality, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign nationality voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. nationality.
Though this may be the act of another state rather than the United States. It's a mildly confusing area for me, I ended up making a lot of phone calls about this topic when I left to be drafted.
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.
I'm skeptical that a fear of deportation is the primary reason that most Zainichi don't try to naturalize.
The U.S. recognizes dual citizenship (e.g., being a citizen of the U.S. and another country) only in that it doesn't give a damn. As far as the U.S. is concerned, if you are an American citizen, you are an American citizen first and foremost and that citizenship trumps any other, along with all the privileges and drawbacks U.S. citizenship carries.
The U.S. recognizes dual citizenship (e.g., being a citizen of the U.S. and another country) only in that it doesn't give a damn. As far as the U.S. is concerned, if you are an American citizen, you are an American citizen first and foremost and that citizenship trumps any other, along with all the privileges and drawbacks U.S. citizenship carries.
That seems pretty standard. South Korea does the same thing. If a male dual citizen born in South Korea and raised in the US sets foot in Korea he can be snatched up and conscripted unless he renounces his Korean citizenship beforehand.
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.
I'm skeptical that a fear of deportation is the primary reason that most Zainichi don't try to naturalize.
I would have to dig up the article it was a few years back. A long time back, not sure where I read it.
But it was part of the reasons given on why they do not apply for citizenship.
The reason I'm skeptical is that it's fairly difficult to deport a "special permanent resident". Even being sent to prison isn't usually serious enough for it to happen, so pissing off a bureaucrat seems unlikely to be sufficient.
I'm not entirely sure why so many Zainichi don't naturalize, though. I know a few people who have done it and my impression from them is that nowadays there's really no question that an application will be approved if made (which was obviously not the case decades ago). One blog I read written by a Zainichi attributed it to: 1. naturalizing costs time and money and doesn't really confer much in the way of benefits; and 2. it can be viewed as a betrayal by other Zainichi. In any case, it seems to be increasing in popularity as the size of the Zainichi population has been steadily decreasing.
I did come across this chart, which I found interesting:
The cyan line is the number of Koreans whose naturalization applications were approved and the dotted line is the number which were rejected. Somewhat confusingly, the cyan line uses the left axis while the dotted line uses the one on the right.
In less exciting news, the planned minimal wage rise in Taiwan has been detailed by the Labor Ministry following its negotiations with organized labor for the last few weeks, both on the hourly and monthly scale. For some comparison, about 31 New Taiwan Dollar (NT) equals one US Dollar--the minimum wage is lower in Taiwan but even in the wake of rising rents and other costs, the cost of living in Taiwan is substantially lower than in the United States (particularly for food, including even imported food).
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
God, it even points out that, yeah, Trump bears the blame for weakening Korean confidence in the US honoring treaties with them.
Yet many here doubt Washington’s allegiance. The recent contention by Donald J. Trump, the Republic presidential candidate, that South Korea was not paying enough to help maintain 28,500 American troops here has only fueled those misgivings.
“We must ask ourselves whether the United States will save Seoul at the risk of sacrificing L.A. or San Francisco,” Chung Mong-joon, a former head of the governing party, wrote in a widely circulated blog post, warning of the North’s potential for striking the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.
An editorial in the Chosun Ilbo this month advised South Korea to study the path Israel took to becoming a de facto nuclear power. “We can no longer depend on the uncertain American nuclear umbrella,” it said.
This fucking election needs to hurry up and end already.
I don't buy that. The US's security guarantee to South Korea doesn't depend on an abstract affection for Seoul. We have 30,000 servicemembers there specifically so our response to a truce violation is unavoidable no matter who's in office.
It's an old idea frankly--I'd need to look it up, but I know it would come up every time a consideration was made for a nuclear-armed Japan (in the old days, in the context as an offset for a recently-nuclear-club China). Of course, back then, reporting on nuclear bombers in Okinawa got you a few weeks of police harassment, or worse.
I'm more interested if we'll see a reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons (as the article does mention, to its credit). It's a possibility under either Sec. Clinton or Mr. Trump.
I don't buy that. The US's security guarantee to South Korea doesn't depend on an abstract affection for Seoul. We have 30,000 servicemembers there specifically so our response to a truce violation is unavoidable no matter who's in office.
Romney would abide by that treaty, Trump - that's a risk SK is unwilling to take a bet on.
I don't buy that. The US's security guarantee to South Korea doesn't depend on an abstract affection for Seoul. We have 30,000 servicemembers there specifically so our response to a truce violation is unavoidable no matter who's in office.
Romney would abide by that treaty, Trump - that's a risk SK is unwilling to take a bet on.
Trump would have no more choice than Romney. Less, really. Nothing about his ego or public persona would let him lose 30,000 American lives and not respond.
I don't buy that. The US's security guarantee to South Korea doesn't depend on an abstract affection for Seoul. We have 30,000 servicemembers there specifically so our response to a truce violation is unavoidable no matter who's in office.
Romney would abide by that treaty, Trump - that's a risk SK is unwilling to take a bet on.
Trump would have no more choice than Romney. Less, really. Nothing about his ego or public persona would let him lose 30,000 American lives and not respond.
You say that like he cares about the troops, or that he'd think about the consequences to his actions. Losing troops like that would only make him double down to save face, which means putting more troops into the line of fire because he hates looking weak.
I don't buy that. The US's security guarantee to South Korea doesn't depend on an abstract affection for Seoul. We have 30,000 servicemembers there specifically so our response to a truce violation is unavoidable no matter who's in office.
Romney would abide by that treaty, Trump - that's a risk SK is unwilling to take a bet on.
Trump would have no more choice than Romney. Less, really. Nothing about his ego or public persona would let him lose 30,000 American lives and not respond.
You say that like he cares about the troops, or that he'd think about the consequences to his actions. Losing troops like that would only make him double down to save face, which means putting more troops into the line of fire because he hates looking weak.
So Trump would not defend Seoul, he would instead... put troops into the line of fire? What are you trying to say here?
Account not recoverable. So long.
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KadokenGiving Ends to my Friends and it Feels StupendousRegistered Userregular
God, it even points out that, yeah, Trump bears the blame for weakening Korean confidence in the US honoring treaties with them.
Yet many here doubt Washington’s allegiance. The recent contention by Donald J. Trump, the Republic presidential candidate, that South Korea was not paying enough to help maintain 28,500 American troops here has only fueled those misgivings.
“We must ask ourselves whether the United States will save Seoul at the risk of sacrificing L.A. or San Francisco,” Chung Mong-joon, a former head of the governing party, wrote in a widely circulated blog post, warning of the North’s potential for striking the United States with a nuclear-tipped intercontinental ballistic missile.
An editorial in the Chosun Ilbo this month advised South Korea to study the path Israel took to becoming a de facto nuclear power. “We can no longer depend on the uncertain American nuclear umbrella,” it said.
This fucking election needs to hurry up and end already.
I would hope the US would choose LA and San Francisco over Seoul every time. However, that is irrelevant as the troops we have there already would not up and leave (unless the Chinese got involved. Again.) as said before, the point of them is to be there in case of a truce violation.
The fear of Trump isn't that he's gonna just let his own troops die, it's that he's going to withdraw the support and military presence from SK entirely, despite the treaty we have with SK.
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Flooding in North Korea is apparently pretty bad, enough that North Korea is actually admitting it
afaik the region doesn't grow much of their food, so maybe no famines as a result, but another public failure of the NK regime to care for its people could lead to more trouble
A trap is for fish: when you've got the fish, you can forget the trap. A snare is for rabbits: when you've got the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words are for meaning: when you've got the meaning, you can forget the words.
Given the media's lack of fact checking with other North Korea stories, probably not true. But reading the original story, it's not that all sarcasm was banned, but that using phrases like "this is America's fault" ironically is bad.
Given the media's lack of fact checking with other North Korea stories, probably not true. But reading the original story, it's not that all sarcasm was banned, but that using phrases like "this is America's fault" ironically is bad.
4 guys sneak across from the Pakistani border in Kashmir and engage in a suicide mission at an Indian Army base. They kill 18 Indian soldiers.
Now the Indian army is pissed and since the current President rode to power on a wave of nationalism (that has included some ugly gang violence in its aftermath, thank you President Trump I mean Modi) there is a great demand in India to "Do something." To another nuclear power.
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TraceGNU Terry Pratchett; GNU Gus; GNU Carrie Fisher; GNU Adam WeRegistered Userregular
wasn't that an episode of West Wing at one point?
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silence1186Character shields down!As a wingmanRegistered Userregular
And here I was figuring President Trump would trigger the global nuclear apocalypse.
And here I was figuring President Trump would trigger the global nuclear apocalypse.
If it makes you feel any better, I don't think an India-Pakistan nuclear war will trigger global nuclear apocalypse. It sure as fuck won't be good for the rest of us, but I don't think total nuclear annihilation of the Indian subcontinent would result in enough blast detritus to block out the sun.
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FencingsaxIt is difficult to get a man to understand, when his salary depends upon his not understandingGNU Terry PratchettRegistered Userregular
And here I was figuring President Trump would trigger the global nuclear apocalypse.
If it makes you feel any better, I don't think an India-Pakistan nuclear war will trigger global nuclear apocalypse. It sure as fuck won't be good for the rest of us, but I don't think total nuclear annihilation of the Indian subcontinent would result in enough blast detritus to block out the sun.
And here I was figuring President Trump would trigger the global nuclear apocalypse.
If it makes you feel any better, I don't think an India-Pakistan nuclear war will trigger global nuclear apocalypse. It sure as fuck won't be good for the rest of us, but I don't think total nuclear annihilation of the Indian subcontinent would result in enough blast detritus to block out the sun.
Both China and Russia would probably react.
Very likely, considering the Soviet Union was instrumental to arbitrating peace between India and Pakistan (which were both 1) endorsed by the United States and 2) ultimately collapsed, sooner or later), and Russia is India's foremost military partner and supplier (while also supplying much smaller amounts of equipment to to Pakistan). Additionally, China is historically Pakistan's closest military partner (along with the United States) and one of its main suppliers (if not the primary supplier).
India is the third largest standing army, if I remember correctly, and something like 70% of India's new military hardware is manufactured in Russia, or in India under Russian license (like the T-90 tank).
That being said, I don't think they'd react with their own nuclear arsenals. But I'm also counting on seeing more than one more conventional war between India and Pakistan in my lifetime.
Some belated news (in light of my newfound addiction to Elite Dangerous): invariably, like every elected president before her, Pres. Tsai's honeymoon with the Taiwanese people was bound to end. That's the nature of democracy in general: you get a few freebies towards the beginning.
I was reluctant to prematurely call an end to the honeymoon, but now I'm fairly confident to call it over. Mass protests in Taipei in front the presidential palace over reductions of pensions for state workers (most obviously, military personnel, civil officials and employees, and educators) earlier this month hit +100,000 by low police estimates (indeed, many estimates were higher)--not bad for a city of under three million, with an island with a total of 23 million people. Possibly as many as a quarter million appeared by high estimates. There are a variety of contentious pension "reforms" (as the government would frame it) under objection, like the cutting of the three yearly holiday cash gifts for pensioners over a certain monthly payment rate. Taiwan, it should be noted, has one of the highest percentages of income as pension in the world (though it's worth noting, our salaries are also some of the lowest by our per capital income--in other words, paychecks in Taiwan are low for a country of our wealth, and have been for decades), often in the area of 100% of salary (compared to 50 to 60% in the United States, I believe).
Since the DPP has a commanding majority in parliament and the presidency, and has long spoken about the need for pension reform (not necessarily incorrectly either, especially in the face of our aging population and the lowest birth rate in the world), the DPP is accordingly the target of the protests. In response, a few DPP officials have said very unfortunate, and sometimes stupid things--at least one argued that these peaceful and lawful, if inconvenient to traffic, protests were "tantamount to rebellion"--which is a hilarious statement coming from the party that rallied against the history of Kuomintang capitalist dictatorship. Others have more subtly suggested that, since government employees (particularly military personnel but also teachers and civil servants) lean more blue, that the KMT may have a hand behind the massive rallies--kind of ironic considering the foretelling of the death of the KMT's leftwing (and some of the protests are very leftist in nature, even if they are not uniformly supported by all labor organizations--many labor organizations criticized the protest). The protests were also held on Armed Forces Day (3 September) and featured some retired military officials. Ultimately, the theory of a "Pan-Blue conspiracy" is difficult to prove in any meaningful way (to the actual population, if not the formal ranks of the DPP) and will just serve to embarrass the Pan-Greens the more they rely on it (and it seems the government smartly abandoned that line of rhetoric).
A week later, a much smaller protest of 10,000 employees of tourism organizations also voiced their displeasure at the marked (or significant or unimportant, depending on your political alignment) decline in group tour numbers from China (separate from small scale or individual tourism), a major sector of the tourism industry overall since 2008 onwards. Of course, the protest of a specific part of the tourism sector is not nearly as prominent as the huge protests in front of the Presidential Residence earlier in the month, but it's still a reality of the difficult but constant debate between the necessity of economic exchange in China versus dependence on Chinese economics. Importantly, some protesters identified with Pres. Tsai's refusal to address the 1992 Consensus in a way pleasing to China, but demanding the government take measures to help sustain the industry so long as it was abiding to its political position, whether they be other economic incentives to Chinese tourism firms, loans for the sector, or other aid.
To put it mildly, things are not looking quite as bright for the DPP--but this should not be considered a collapse of their mandate (and it won't effect their control over the branches over government), but if there was a love affair with Pres. Tsai, with the first hundred days of her presidency over, it too has past. Of course, the nature of the Taiwanese body politics goes something like this: if group a hates group b, and you dislike group a, you can still protest the shit out of group b if they piss you off--you are not indebted to them. In fact, that's arguably your duty as a Taiwanese citizen. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, by god. Some people who consistently protested and rallied against the Ma government can be expected to do against the Tsai government for failing in related areas.
Synthesis on
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
There are already plenty of reasons why North Koreans don't go online, whether it's the low standard of living or a highly oppressive government that blocks anything which might challenge its worldview. However, you can add one more thing to the list: there just isn't much to do in its portion of the internet. North Korea has inadvertently leaked its domain name system data through a badly configured high-level server, showing the rest of the world that there are just 28 .kp domains. And as Reddit users quickly found, the websites at those domains aren't what you'd call riveting reading material.
There are already plenty of reasons why North Koreans don't go online, whether it's the low standard of living or a highly oppressive government that blocks anything which might challenge its worldview. However, you can add one more thing to the list: there just isn't much to do in its portion of the internet. North Korea has inadvertently leaked its domain name system data through a badly configured high-level server, showing the rest of the world that there are just 28 .kp domains. And as Reddit users quickly found, the websites at those domains aren't what you'd call riveting reading material.
Basically how every country that "starts out" on the internet runs into the same problem, if I'm not mistaken. Sort of like what happened when the USSR first "got" the .su domain letters (and it was inherited by Russia since there wasn't a Russian domain code initially).
The embarrassing thing is that they share a borders with South Korea and China, by comparison.
And here I was figuring President Trump would trigger the global nuclear apocalypse.
If it makes you feel any better, I don't think an India-Pakistan nuclear war will trigger global nuclear apocalypse. It sure as fuck won't be good for the rest of us, but I don't think total nuclear annihilation of the Indian subcontinent would result in enough blast detritus to block out the sun.
Both China and Russia would probably react.
Very likely, considering the Soviet Union was instrumental to arbitrating peace between India and Pakistan (which were both 1) endorsed by the United States and 2) ultimately collapsed, sooner or later), and Russia is India's foremost military partner and supplier (while also supplying much smaller amounts of equipment to to Pakistan). Additionally, China is historically Pakistan's closest military partner (along with the United States) and one of its main suppliers (if not the primary supplier).
India is the third largest standing army, if I remember correctly, and something like 70% of India's new military hardware is manufactured in Russia, or in India under Russian license (like the T-90 tank).
That being said, I don't think they'd react with their own nuclear arsenals. But I'm also counting on seeing more than one more conventional war between India and Pakistan in my lifetime.
This is really one of the areas that is most likely to flare up into serious large scale conflict/nukes in the world. They have enough nukes to really do horrors upon their opponents but neither has enough for MAD so they might be stupid enough to actually do a limited nuclear exchange.
There's not much point quoting anything from the article, it's the same thing it always is.
But why do they even have this problem? Wouldn't it be easier if they just changed their judicial system so that people in court against the government don't get defenders? Or if they only appointed orthodox cronies to the position, at least in cases where they really want to squash the defendants? They don't seem to have this problem with their sham media or legislatures, why are they so bad at rigging their judicial system?
There's not much point quoting anything from the article, it's the same thing it always is.
But why do they even have this problem? Wouldn't it be easier if they just changed their judicial system so that people in court against the government don't get defenders? Or if they only appointed orthodox cronies to the position, at least in cases where they really want to squash the defendants? They don't seem to have this problem with their sham media or legislatures, why are they so bad at rigging their judicial system?
What? They're not bad at rigging their judicial system. They're very effective at it. But part of the rigging is that the sham has to be maintained.
There's not much point quoting anything from the article, it's the same thing it always is.
But why do they even have this problem? Wouldn't it be easier if they just changed their judicial system so that people in court against the government don't get defenders? Or if they only appointed orthodox cronies to the position, at least in cases where they really want to squash the defendants? They don't seem to have this problem with their sham media or legislatures, why are they so bad at rigging their judicial system?
What? They're not bad at rigging their judicial system. They're very effective at it. But part of the rigging is that the sham has to be maintained.
I feel like if they were good at it the international news media wouldn't have this kind of headline every few months. They're not constantly tossing their legislators into gulags because they're smart enough to not let just anyone be a legislator. But it seems like they do let just anyone defend political targets and then they feel the need to publicly go after those lawyers, when it seems like it would be a more effective sham if they only appointed cronies to the defense in the first place.
There's not much point quoting anything from the article, it's the same thing it always is.
But why do they even have this problem? Wouldn't it be easier if they just changed their judicial system so that people in court against the government don't get defenders? Or if they only appointed orthodox cronies to the position, at least in cases where they really want to squash the defendants? They don't seem to have this problem with their sham media or legislatures, why are they so bad at rigging their judicial system?
What? They're not bad at rigging their judicial system. They're very effective at it. But part of the rigging is that the sham has to be maintained.
I feel like if they were good at it the international news media wouldn't have this kind of headline every few months. They're not constantly tossing their legislators into gulags because they're smart enough to not let just anyone be a legislator. But it seems like they do let just anyone defend political targets and then they feel the need to publicly go after those lawyers, when it seems like it would be a more effective sham if they only appointed cronies to the defense in the first place.
Purely conjecture here: It's mostly for internal consumption. China doesn't really give that much of a crap what other countries think of their human rights. Most terrible dictatorships have purportedly adversarial justice systems, so they can pose to the public. The trials are shows, and the real "justice" occurs quietly, behind the scenes.
It's also partially intentional. China gets foreign relations mileage out of doing stuff like this, because now they can release him after some Western government or another badgers them about it, and then use that as a negotiation trade, and the message they wanted to send was sent regardless, right? Just this week, China got Canada to formally discuss signing an extradition treaty with them by releasing a Canadian who they had arrested on trumped up spying charges.
There's not much point quoting anything from the article, it's the same thing it always is.
But why do they even have this problem? Wouldn't it be easier if they just changed their judicial system so that people in court against the government don't get defenders? Or if they only appointed orthodox cronies to the position, at least in cases where they really want to squash the defendants? They don't seem to have this problem with their sham media or legislatures, why are they so bad at rigging their judicial system?
What? They're not bad at rigging their judicial system. They're very effective at it. But part of the rigging is that the sham has to be maintained.
I feel like if they were good at it the international news media wouldn't have this kind of headline every few months. They're not constantly tossing their legislators into gulags because they're smart enough to not let just anyone be a legislator. But it seems like they do let just anyone defend political targets and then they feel the need to publicly go after those lawyers, when it seems like it would be a more effective sham if they only appointed cronies to the defense in the first place.
Purely conjecture here: It's mostly for internal consumption. China doesn't really give that much of a crap what other countries think of their human rights. Most terrible dictatorships have purportedly adversarial justice systems, so they can pose to the public. The trials are shows, and the real "justice" occurs quietly, behind the scenes.
It's also partially intentional. China gets foreign relations mileage out of doing stuff like this, because now they can release him after some Western government or another badgers them about it, and then use that as a negotiation trade, and the message they wanted to send was sent regardless, right? Just this week, China got Canada to formally discuss signing an extradition treaty with them by releasing a Canadian who they had arrested on trumped up spying charges.
Yeah, but even if you have a sham adversarial justice system, you'd normally prop it up with sham defense lawyers. If they had a sham lawyer they could still have a show trial, just like they have show votes and show news media. And like other tyrannies. But where China has sham legislatures and sham votes and sham journalists, somehow they have real defense lawyers, and I just don't understand why. It doesn't seem to be a problem in other tyrannies, and it's not a problem China seems to have elsewhere in their governance.
And I don't know about the negotiations angle. You get leverage from releasing foreign nationals; I don't think they're going to gain any from releasing their own dissidents, much less their own dissidents' lawyers. And anyways I don't think anyone's getting released under Xi Jinping.
There's not much point quoting anything from the article, it's the same thing it always is.
But why do they even have this problem? Wouldn't it be easier if they just changed their judicial system so that people in court against the government don't get defenders? Or if they only appointed orthodox cronies to the position, at least in cases where they really want to squash the defendants? They don't seem to have this problem with their sham media or legislatures, why are they so bad at rigging their judicial system?
What? They're not bad at rigging their judicial system. They're very effective at it. But part of the rigging is that the sham has to be maintained.
I feel like if they were good at it the international news media wouldn't have this kind of headline every few months. They're not constantly tossing their legislators into gulags because they're smart enough to not let just anyone be a legislator. But it seems like they do let just anyone defend political targets and then they feel the need to publicly go after those lawyers, when it seems like it would be a more effective sham if they only appointed cronies to the defense in the first place.
Purely conjecture here: It's mostly for internal consumption. China doesn't really give that much of a crap what other countries think of their human rights. Most terrible dictatorships have purportedly adversarial justice systems, so they can pose to the public. The trials are shows, and the real "justice" occurs quietly, behind the scenes.
It's also partially intentional. China gets foreign relations mileage out of doing stuff like this, because now they can release him after some Western government or another badgers them about it, and then use that as a negotiation trade, and the message they wanted to send was sent regardless, right? Just this week, China got Canada to formally discuss signing an extradition treaty with them by releasing a Canadian who they had arrested on trumped up spying charges.
Yeah, but even if you have a sham adversarial justice system, you'd normally prop it up with sham defense lawyers. If they had a sham lawyer they could still have a show trial, just like they have show votes and show news media. And like other tyrannies. But where China has sham legislatures and sham votes and sham journalists, somehow they have real defense lawyers, and I just don't understand why. It doesn't seem to be a problem in other tyrannies, and it's not a problem China seems to have elsewhere in their governance.
And I don't know about the negotiations angle. You get leverage from releasing foreign nationals; I don't think they're going to gain any from releasing their own dissidents, much less their own dissidents' lawyers. And anyways I don't think anyone's getting released under Xi Jinping.
... but you don't have totally show votes and totally show news media. People do have to be actually allowed to vote, and the vote counts do have to roughly resemble the presumptions of its results - at least in everything but the worst autocracies. Countries that try to rig a vote from 90-10 to 10-90 are ones in which violent rebellion is typical. If you want your country to run efficiently, you can't actually provoke public disorder so blatantly. Same with the news media. You can't have state media promote entirely state-sponsored content, because it's too obviously false. So what you do is you let it do its thing most of the time, with a prepared list of no-go topics, as well as inserting your own content some low percentage of the time, and then pull on the leash as needed.
China actually does both of these things. For example, in Hong Kong, Hong Kong citizens are allowed to vote for the legislature. Except they're only allowed to vote for part of the legislature. Chinese news media is actually, mostly, privately run, and even Chinese state media will come out and criticize the Chinese government at times just to maintain its authenticity. These institutions are only as valuable as long as people actually continue to believe in them; destroying their authenticity isn't more efficient - it's just pointless.
You can't use Hong Kong as an example of the electoral system anywhere else in China, for reasons that I think are obvious. I haven't met anyone that "believes in" elections in the rest of China -- they're viewed as part of the internal politics of the Communist Party, not as a tool for regular people to make decisions on the direction of their governance. The people I've met, including (or more accurately, mostly) mainlanders immigrated into the US, believe that the Chinese government rules with an iron fist, and mostly they think it's preferable to democratic rule.
But even accepting that premise, arresting lawyers who defend unpopular positions doesn't seem to be more convincing than just selecting lawyers who will play along in the first place. Or they could have judges keep ruling against the lawyers they don't like and then not arrest them. Constantly throwing them into detention to show that the system isn't totally corrupt doesn't strike me as one that's going to convince anyone.
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US allows dual nationality/citizenship.
US law on this stuff tends to be an exception compared to a lot of the world. This is tied to the fact that we do not only use stuff like jus sanguinis but instead use jus soli as a basis of citizenship in the US.
Though this may be the act of another state rather than the United States. It's a mildly confusing area for me, I ended up making a lot of phone calls about this topic when I left to be drafted.
I'm skeptical that a fear of deportation is the primary reason that most Zainichi don't try to naturalize.
That seems pretty standard. South Korea does the same thing. If a male dual citizen born in South Korea and raised in the US sets foot in Korea he can be snatched up and conscripted unless he renounces his Korean citizenship beforehand.
I would have to dig up the article it was a few years back. A long time back, not sure where I read it.
But it was part of the reasons given on why they do not apply for citizenship.
I'm not entirely sure why so many Zainichi don't naturalize, though. I know a few people who have done it and my impression from them is that nowadays there's really no question that an application will be approved if made (which was obviously not the case decades ago). One blog I read written by a Zainichi attributed it to: 1. naturalizing costs time and money and doesn't really confer much in the way of benefits; and 2. it can be viewed as a betrayal by other Zainichi. In any case, it seems to be increasing in popularity as the size of the Zainichi population has been steadily decreasing.
I did come across this chart, which I found interesting:
The cyan line is the number of Koreans whose naturalization applications were approved and the dotted line is the number which were rejected. Somewhat confusingly, the cyan line uses the left axis while the dotted line uses the one on the right.
In less exciting news, the planned minimal wage rise in Taiwan has been detailed by the Labor Ministry following its negotiations with organized labor for the last few weeks, both on the hourly and monthly scale. For some comparison, about 31 New Taiwan Dollar (NT) equals one US Dollar--the minimum wage is lower in Taiwan but even in the wake of rising rents and other costs, the cost of living in Taiwan is substantially lower than in the United States (particularly for food, including even imported food).
This fucking election needs to hurry up and end already.
It's an old idea frankly--I'd need to look it up, but I know it would come up every time a consideration was made for a nuclear-armed Japan (in the old days, in the context as an offset for a recently-nuclear-club China). Of course, back then, reporting on nuclear bombers in Okinawa got you a few weeks of police harassment, or worse.
I'm more interested if we'll see a reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons (as the article does mention, to its credit). It's a possibility under either Sec. Clinton or Mr. Trump.
Romney would abide by that treaty, Trump - that's a risk SK is unwilling to take a bet on.
Trump would have no more choice than Romney. Less, really. Nothing about his ego or public persona would let him lose 30,000 American lives and not respond.
You say that like he cares about the troops, or that he'd think about the consequences to his actions. Losing troops like that would only make him double down to save face, which means putting more troops into the line of fire because he hates looking weak.
So Trump would not defend Seoul, he would instead... put troops into the line of fire? What are you trying to say here?
I would hope the US would choose LA and San Francisco over Seoul every time. However, that is irrelevant as the troops we have there already would not up and leave (unless the Chinese got involved. Again.) as said before, the point of them is to be there in case of a truce violation.
afaik the region doesn't grow much of their food, so maybe no famines as a result, but another public failure of the NK regime to care for its people could lead to more trouble
http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/12/asia/north-korea-floods-admission/index.html
Thanks Obama
That moment when Wyatt knows things are about to go to shit.
I don't know if India-Pakistan is that bad.
But it kind of feels like it.
So long story short.
4 guys sneak across from the Pakistani border in Kashmir and engage in a suicide mission at an Indian Army base. They kill 18 Indian soldiers.
Now the Indian army is pissed and since the current President rode to power on a wave of nationalism (that has included some ugly gang violence in its aftermath, thank you President Trump I mean Modi) there is a great demand in India to "Do something." To another nuclear power.
If it makes you feel any better, I don't think an India-Pakistan nuclear war will trigger global nuclear apocalypse. It sure as fuck won't be good for the rest of us, but I don't think total nuclear annihilation of the Indian subcontinent would result in enough blast detritus to block out the sun.
Both China and Russia would probably react.
Very likely, considering the Soviet Union was instrumental to arbitrating peace between India and Pakistan (which were both 1) endorsed by the United States and 2) ultimately collapsed, sooner or later), and Russia is India's foremost military partner and supplier (while also supplying much smaller amounts of equipment to to Pakistan). Additionally, China is historically Pakistan's closest military partner (along with the United States) and one of its main suppliers (if not the primary supplier).
India is the third largest standing army, if I remember correctly, and something like 70% of India's new military hardware is manufactured in Russia, or in India under Russian license (like the T-90 tank).
That being said, I don't think they'd react with their own nuclear arsenals. But I'm also counting on seeing more than one more conventional war between India and Pakistan in my lifetime.
I was reluctant to prematurely call an end to the honeymoon, but now I'm fairly confident to call it over. Mass protests in Taipei in front the presidential palace over reductions of pensions for state workers (most obviously, military personnel, civil officials and employees, and educators) earlier this month hit +100,000 by low police estimates (indeed, many estimates were higher)--not bad for a city of under three million, with an island with a total of 23 million people. Possibly as many as a quarter million appeared by high estimates. There are a variety of contentious pension "reforms" (as the government would frame it) under objection, like the cutting of the three yearly holiday cash gifts for pensioners over a certain monthly payment rate. Taiwan, it should be noted, has one of the highest percentages of income as pension in the world (though it's worth noting, our salaries are also some of the lowest by our per capital income--in other words, paychecks in Taiwan are low for a country of our wealth, and have been for decades), often in the area of 100% of salary (compared to 50 to 60% in the United States, I believe).
Since the DPP has a commanding majority in parliament and the presidency, and has long spoken about the need for pension reform (not necessarily incorrectly either, especially in the face of our aging population and the lowest birth rate in the world), the DPP is accordingly the target of the protests. In response, a few DPP officials have said very unfortunate, and sometimes stupid things--at least one argued that these peaceful and lawful, if inconvenient to traffic, protests were "tantamount to rebellion"--which is a hilarious statement coming from the party that rallied against the history of Kuomintang capitalist dictatorship. Others have more subtly suggested that, since government employees (particularly military personnel but also teachers and civil servants) lean more blue, that the KMT may have a hand behind the massive rallies--kind of ironic considering the foretelling of the death of the KMT's leftwing (and some of the protests are very leftist in nature, even if they are not uniformly supported by all labor organizations--many labor organizations criticized the protest). The protests were also held on Armed Forces Day (3 September) and featured some retired military officials. Ultimately, the theory of a "Pan-Blue conspiracy" is difficult to prove in any meaningful way (to the actual population, if not the formal ranks of the DPP) and will just serve to embarrass the Pan-Greens the more they rely on it (and it seems the government smartly abandoned that line of rhetoric).
A week later, a much smaller protest of 10,000 employees of tourism organizations also voiced their displeasure at the marked (or significant or unimportant, depending on your political alignment) decline in group tour numbers from China (separate from small scale or individual tourism), a major sector of the tourism industry overall since 2008 onwards. Of course, the protest of a specific part of the tourism sector is not nearly as prominent as the huge protests in front of the Presidential Residence earlier in the month, but it's still a reality of the difficult but constant debate between the necessity of economic exchange in China versus dependence on Chinese economics. Importantly, some protesters identified with Pres. Tsai's refusal to address the 1992 Consensus in a way pleasing to China, but demanding the government take measures to help sustain the industry so long as it was abiding to its political position, whether they be other economic incentives to Chinese tourism firms, loans for the sector, or other aid.
To put it mildly, things are not looking quite as bright for the DPP--but this should not be considered a collapse of their mandate (and it won't effect their control over the branches over government), but if there was a love affair with Pres. Tsai, with the first hundred days of her presidency over, it too has past. Of course, the nature of the Taiwanese body politics goes something like this: if group a hates group b, and you dislike group a, you can still protest the shit out of group b if they piss you off--you are not indebted to them. In fact, that's arguably your duty as a Taiwanese citizen. The enemy of my enemy is still my enemy, by god. Some people who consistently protested and rallied against the Ma government can be expected to do against the Tsai government for failing in related areas.
Basically how every country that "starts out" on the internet runs into the same problem, if I'm not mistaken. Sort of like what happened when the USSR first "got" the .su domain letters (and it was inherited by Russia since there wasn't a Russian domain code initially).
The embarrassing thing is that they share a borders with South Korea and China, by comparison.
This is really one of the areas that is most likely to flare up into serious large scale conflict/nukes in the world. They have enough nukes to really do horrors upon their opponents but neither has enough for MAD so they might be stupid enough to actually do a limited nuclear exchange.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/22/china-lawyer-for-ai-weiwei-jailed-for-12-years-in-severe-retaliation
There's not much point quoting anything from the article, it's the same thing it always is.
But why do they even have this problem? Wouldn't it be easier if they just changed their judicial system so that people in court against the government don't get defenders? Or if they only appointed orthodox cronies to the position, at least in cases where they really want to squash the defendants? They don't seem to have this problem with their sham media or legislatures, why are they so bad at rigging their judicial system?
What? They're not bad at rigging their judicial system. They're very effective at it. But part of the rigging is that the sham has to be maintained.
I feel like if they were good at it the international news media wouldn't have this kind of headline every few months. They're not constantly tossing their legislators into gulags because they're smart enough to not let just anyone be a legislator. But it seems like they do let just anyone defend political targets and then they feel the need to publicly go after those lawyers, when it seems like it would be a more effective sham if they only appointed cronies to the defense in the first place.
Purely conjecture here: It's mostly for internal consumption. China doesn't really give that much of a crap what other countries think of their human rights. Most terrible dictatorships have purportedly adversarial justice systems, so they can pose to the public. The trials are shows, and the real "justice" occurs quietly, behind the scenes.
It's also partially intentional. China gets foreign relations mileage out of doing stuff like this, because now they can release him after some Western government or another badgers them about it, and then use that as a negotiation trade, and the message they wanted to send was sent regardless, right? Just this week, China got Canada to formally discuss signing an extradition treaty with them by releasing a Canadian who they had arrested on trumped up spying charges.
Yeah, but even if you have a sham adversarial justice system, you'd normally prop it up with sham defense lawyers. If they had a sham lawyer they could still have a show trial, just like they have show votes and show news media. And like other tyrannies. But where China has sham legislatures and sham votes and sham journalists, somehow they have real defense lawyers, and I just don't understand why. It doesn't seem to be a problem in other tyrannies, and it's not a problem China seems to have elsewhere in their governance.
And I don't know about the negotiations angle. You get leverage from releasing foreign nationals; I don't think they're going to gain any from releasing their own dissidents, much less their own dissidents' lawyers. And anyways I don't think anyone's getting released under Xi Jinping.
... but you don't have totally show votes and totally show news media. People do have to be actually allowed to vote, and the vote counts do have to roughly resemble the presumptions of its results - at least in everything but the worst autocracies. Countries that try to rig a vote from 90-10 to 10-90 are ones in which violent rebellion is typical. If you want your country to run efficiently, you can't actually provoke public disorder so blatantly. Same with the news media. You can't have state media promote entirely state-sponsored content, because it's too obviously false. So what you do is you let it do its thing most of the time, with a prepared list of no-go topics, as well as inserting your own content some low percentage of the time, and then pull on the leash as needed.
China actually does both of these things. For example, in Hong Kong, Hong Kong citizens are allowed to vote for the legislature. Except they're only allowed to vote for part of the legislature. Chinese news media is actually, mostly, privately run, and even Chinese state media will come out and criticize the Chinese government at times just to maintain its authenticity. These institutions are only as valuable as long as people actually continue to believe in them; destroying their authenticity isn't more efficient - it's just pointless.
But even accepting that premise, arresting lawyers who defend unpopular positions doesn't seem to be more convincing than just selecting lawyers who will play along in the first place. Or they could have judges keep ruling against the lawyers they don't like and then not arrest them. Constantly throwing them into detention to show that the system isn't totally corrupt doesn't strike me as one that's going to convince anyone.