Something’s up in North Korea–though, it’s unclear exactly what’s going on. From The New York Times:
Kim Jong-il Had Surgery After Stroke, South Koreans Say
By CHOE SANG-HUN and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: September 10, 2008
SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s leader, had surgery after suffering a stroke in mid-August, South Korean lawmakers told reporters on Wednesday after a briefing by the South’s spy agency. But they said he had recovered enough to walk and talk.
Kim Jong-il in a photograph released by North Korea on Aug. 11. No public appearances by the North Korean leader have been reported since mid-August.
On Tuesday, Mr. Kim failed to attend a celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of North Korea. American intelligence officials in Washington said that he had probably had a stroke several weeks ago and that they believed that he was under the care of doctors in Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital.
Kim Sung-ho, the South’s spy chief, told the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee that the surgery following the stroke was not the first time the leader had had an operation for a circulatory problem, the lawmakers said. There was no sign of unrest in the North, they were told.
Y’all probably heard (or at least saw) our Olympics podcast that we recorded in Portland. It was a fun podcast because we had the opportunity to take a big event like the Olympics and bring an Asian American perspective to it. It was a great opportunity to take a large athletic celebration with which everyone was familiar and to tie it in with our ideas on race, culture, and society. I particularly liked the podcast because it was humanizing; it took something concrete and straight-forward like the Olympics, and it used the event as a springboard for deeper discussions.
The purpose of our Portland meeting, as many of you know, was activism, and so most of our time was spent conducting workshops and setting a future course for collaboration and group efforts towards Asian American empowerment. In addition to the Olympics podcasts (among others…wait and see!), we also recorded an activist summary at the end of our event. This was our last recording. It was a great podcast because not only had we learned by that time to maximize the power of my brand new MacBook Pro (the built-in mic works better than the $20 mic I use for Skype–go Stevie Jobs!), but by that time, we also had had the opportunity to refine and expand our thinking during our awesome workshops. It was great because we had a number of Portland’s best Asian American activists in the room for those workshops, along with the excellent teaching and organizing experiences that nskripchun and Xian brought and the raw intellectual power of THX1138.
Mr. McCain chose Sarah Palin, Governor of Alaska, as his VP today. In doing so, he decided to not only go outside the beltway but to go outside the traditional pool of white men. So either way, history will be made–we’ll either have the first African American president, or we’ll have the first female vice president.
Depending on your outlook, this move was either bold or crazy:
In a surprise move, Senator John McCain chose Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska as his running mate on Friday, shaking up the political world at a time when his campaign has been trying to attract women, especially disaffected supporters of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, McCain officials confirmed.
I doubt many Hillary supporters will jump over to the other side since Palin and Hillary are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but McCain’s choice will shake things up in the party which some describe as a party for old white men. He’s definitely on the political war path. Either that, or he’s desperately seeking some edge against the rising tide of Obama.
By the way, make no mistake about what Palin stands for:
I’m not sure that I agree with his assessment of Democratic motivations and wanting to be “above the fray”; I think it’s more likely that they’re just inefficient and incapable of deciding anything definitively or moving in a unified way (the classic “post-modern” or “pluralist” downfall). But I completely agree with his suggestions for tactics and overall approach.
Steven Grant:
I’m currently giving odds that the Democrats will lose in November, and here’s why: so far they’ve been following the exact same campaign course they’ve followed in the last two elections. Democrats don’t want to win as much as they want everyone to like them. The Obama campaign shows signs of this now, or maybe it’s the influence of the DNC, now that they’re merged toward that one great political goal. But look at the Republicans: a slew of ads, often petty and stupid, that nonetheless chip away at Obama. And it’s not even the ads that are doing the chipping. It’s the Democratic failure to respond to the ads. They’re always so goddamned determined to present themselves as “above the fray,” which just gives the impression that whatever idiot accusations are being hurled have merit. Until the rubbish has taken root to the point that a response must be made, and then it just plays as damage control, and everyone’s hip to that con.
East Asian immigrants are cracking all over the world! This time, a woman in Finland. With their one-hour-a-day-of-sunlight-in-winter, can you blame her?
Woman in Finland convicted of killing three children after custody battle
Tue Aug 26, 7:01 AM
By The Associated Press
HELSINKI, Finland - A court in Finland has convicted a woman of murdering her three young children and has given her a life sentence.
The Espoo District Court says Thai-born Yu-Hsiu Fu was found guilty of strangling her 8-year-old twin daughters and 1-year-old son in her home.
She tried to kill herself afterward.
The verdict on Tuesday says the 41-year-old woman was found to be of sound mind at the time of the murders.
Court papers show the murders were preceded by a bitter custody battle with her Finnish husband who was living separately from her at the time of the murders.
A life sentence in Finland mean convicts usually serve at least 11 years in prison.
This isn’t a race-related article, but a free-speech/ political-correctness one, subjects which greatly interest me.
I don’t doubt that the woman felt genuinely offended or threatened. But were her feelings reasonable? Was her emotional threshold set perhaps too low? Is her subjective state even relevant, for or against the man’s arrest?
Kentucky politician jailed after joke; charge dismissed
By Roger Alford, The Associated Press
HARLAN, Ky. - Politicians are known for lame jokes. But when Otis “Bullman” Hensley tried a generations-old Appalachian jest on a woman and two girls at the grocery store, the family thought it was downright criminal.
Hensley, who earned notoriety for oddball antics as a longshot gubernatorial candidate, spent three days in jail in this eastern Kentucky coal town last week after being arrested over the wisecrack.
“Jay Leno makes jokes every night and makes millions,” Hensley said in his thick Appalachian accent. “I make one joke and go to jail.”
He could have faced as many as 10 years in prison, but a charge of attempted unlawful transaction with a minor was dismissed on Monday.
Here on the West Coast, several of our members are meeting together to discuss issues relating to Asian Americans and recording our discussions as podcasts.
In this inaugural podcast, jaehwan, xian, THX1138, and myself (nskripchun) have a free discussion about the current Beijing Olympics and their implications for Asian Americans. We talk about the Spanish Slant-Eye “Incident” AKA the “Spanish Affectionate Gesture” (as discussed by Dialectic right here and in other blogs such as this one); the medal count, competition, and nationalism; and some comments about the nature of cheating and news coverage.
You can download the podcast from Rapidshare right here. (click on “free user” and wait for the timer to reach zero to download).
The podcast is about 13 megs and about 27 minutes long.
Please download, give it a listen, and post your comments…
I want to make a quick comment about the slant-eyed photo released by the Spanish basketball team which so many Asian American and white liberals were so quick to label “racist.”
I simply don’t think it’s the case. I was a little kid in the U.S. and Canada in the 80s, and I’ve been taunted many times by little kids pulling their eyes up and singing the “me Chinese” rant, but the context here is bigger.
If this had been a North American doing it, then the meaning would be consistent with the way all the liberals here interpreted it, but this was a Spanish team, and they don’t have nearly the same cultural context as we do. They said it was meant to be affectionate, I believe them, and I can see it. It’s no surprise that it didn’t really bother the Chinese or affect Li Ning’s sponsorship of the team.
I don’t think jumping all over them, calling them racist, and underming their bid for a Madrid Olympics helps anyone’s image, Asian American or Spanish.
If PUA is just a set of social skills to make yourself better able to relate to others, they would teach you to relate to women as people, not targets.
–Tokyolovestory
…our end goal should be to capture the mainstream coverage and to change the zeitgeist.
–Jaehwan
No one on the 44s, as far as I know, embraces all PUA, but PUA has pushed our discussions in a good direction. It’s helping us to see issues that cover not only the PUA/IR related issues, but other issues that are tangentially related to gender as well. It’s a good thing that these PUAs have influenced our conversations because we’re seeing things that we didn’t see before. This blog entry will be about differences in the views of men and women that have become apparent in the course of our PUA conversations, as well as in other past conversations. Through understanding these differences, how they occur, and why they occur, I hope we can understand each other better.
This article came in from my NY Times alert. It’s about a middle-aged Chinese American couple who started a basketball program for Chinese American girls and boys in Manhattan. It talks about the challenges they face, which are mostly cultural. RebelAzn talks about Asian Americans and sports on this site, and I agree with him–we need to promote sports, especially given the cultural stigma against sports in many Chinese American/Asian American families. The writer breaks it down by generation and socio-economic standing, which is probably accurate:
One view, particularly common among first-generation, working-class Chinese-Americans, maintains that sports are an unnecessary impediment to academic and professional achievement, according to interviews with Chinese-American athletes, students, educators and community leaders in New York.
An opposite view, typically held by more educated parents or those who have become more assimilated into American culture because they have been in the United States at least one generation, promotes sports as an integral part of a child’s maturation.
I’ve noticed this to be true as well. The article continues:
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