Watching the events as they unfold in Egypt and earlier in Tunisia, I have been fascinated by the evolving role of the police. Though also true in the Tunisian case, the Egyptian police has long been particularly infamous for its rampant use of torture, a fact sometimes taken advantage of by the US. These police [...]
I just heard from Sayaka that Charles Tilly passed away. He was an amazing scholar whose work has had a powerful impact in the fields of sociology, political science, and my own field of history. I have learnt much from reading his work and attended several of his talks. I have always been impressed by [...]
I opened up my copy of the newspaper this morning and very quickly realized it was a slow news day. Or at least an editor at 조선일보(朝鮮日報) made that call. Today the top right quarter of the front page of the newspaper was dedicated to introducing a series of new articles on prices in Korea, [...]
I was just about to go to bed when suddenly the entire neighborhood erupted with wild cheering. The sounds of joyous voices poured in through the window from all around. “Oh,” I thought to myself, “It must be the world cup and Korea has just scored.” But wait a second, haven’t all the newspapers been [...]
I came across this article in the Korea Times the other day. Apparently Japanese who protest the singing of Japan’s national anthem, 君が代 (J) have created an English parody of the song. The pronunciation is said to be similar enough not to be noticed when students sing it. The Guardian also picked up the story. [...]
Tomorrow is May 1st, and the Great American Boycott 2006 (El Gran Paro Americano 2006). It is also being called “The day without an immigrant” (Un dia sin immigrante). I’ll being joining the citywide gathering at Boston Commons at 4pm tomorrow and I hope there will be a big showing from the immigrant community and [...]
As often as I can, I check the DPRK’s Korean Central News Service for a bit of news from the other side. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be able to learn about things like the “disgusting farce” of the “traitorous acts” reported today: Pyongyang, April 22 (KCNA) — A spokesman for the Committee for the [...]
In Harvard’s “university daily since 1873,” the Harvard Crimson we find an excellent example of the general lack of geographical knowledge often attributed to the United States. Here is the opening paragraph of a provocatively entitled editorial, “The Clash of Civilizations” discussing the current cartoon crisis: When it comes to problems with free speech about [...]
ChinaJapan.org Down My host for my ChinaJapan.org site had a crash and had no functional backups. They handled the whole thing with complete incompetence which I will be describing at major hosting forums to warn future customers. I’m going to be moving the site to another host where I am hosting Muninn and FrogInAWell along [...]
Anyone who has spent any time in Korea is familiar with the irredentist issue of the Dokto/Takeshima/Lioncourt islands. This is one of the hundreds of issues around the world where two or more countries both claim the same hunk of rock as their own. Both sides bring out cute historical maps and literary accounts to [...]