Section 16 Entry 0001. Date: 2003 February 19 Wednesday.
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In the following dialog, Velacharzarig is me. However, Velacharzarig is not my real name. I just thought I'd try going pseudonymous for a day and see what it feels like. A lot of blogs seem to be pseudonomous (or even out-and-out anonymous, since there's a pseudonym somewhere but it's impossible to find) and as a self-publicizing writer with an ego strength about equal to Saddam Hussein's, I find that a little hard to understand.

So, anyway, I'm going to try on the pseudonymous lifestyle for size and see how it feels. So here's the dialog, which took place today at the office:-

Velacharzarig: Where's Olametro?

Nagaljaneftatrung: He's away.

Velacharzarig: What's his excuse?

Nagaljaneftatrung: His wife's at the hospital. In fact, she's being induced right at the moment.

Velacharzarig: But that's not an excuse in Japan! Is it?

Nagaljaneftatrung: No, it's not. Once I asked one of my students how many children he had, and he said one. So then I asked when the child was born, and he said, "Today." And I said, "No, when was your child born?" And he said, "Today." It turns out he dropped his wife off at the hospital and then headed in to work and went to his English class. He didn't see the kid until it was three months old.

Velacharzarig: Well, that's what they do, isn't it?

And it is, it is.

One of the interesting things about Japan is the birth customs. For a start, as a rule, the man has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the birth process itself. He doesn't generally get to see it.

The birth itself typically takes place in a hospital, and. although I've never been in a Japanese hospital, I read somewhere that they're modeled on American hospitals in the 1950s.

Once the kid has been born, the woman then takes the kid and absconds to her mother's house, which is often way out in the backblocks somewhere. And she stays there for three months.

I once asked a guy how he felt about his wife being away for those three months and he said "Really great!"

A woman's comment on this three months away setup was, "Well, it doesn't exactly help the man to bond with the child, does it?"

But historically - that is, since round about the end of the Second World War - the man's role has been to go to the office six days a week, to come home really late at night (after the kids have gone to bed) and to spend Sunday sleeping, getting ready for the next round of brutality due to start on Monday.

If you think I'm kidding about this three months away business, please understand that I'm not. This may not be everyone's way of doing things but it is a standard way of doing things.

At times, like when you walk into McDonald's, Japan looks totally and absolutely Westernized. And then there are other times when you start thinking, "Yeah, it's life, but not as we know it."

When I first got here, there were times at which something would strike me as really weird, even bizarre, and I'd ask myself "What kind of country is this?" However, as the years have gone by, these moments have become less and less common.

In fact, recently, watching TV and reading the newspapers, I've found myself asking:

"What kind of world is it out there?"

I don't think the world beyond the shores of Japan is quite the world I remember. And, in the light of the stuff I'm seeing on TV, Japan is looking more and more a model of normality. Nobody here is rushing out to buy duct tape and plastic sheeting in preparation for biowar.

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Section 16 Entry 0002. Date: 2003 January 20 Thursday.
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Over the last day or so the number one news story here in Japan, and the story which has really hit people where they live, has been Wednesday's fire on a subway train in the city of Daegu in South Korea. This has made such an impact because so many of us commute by train.

On Wednesday, a man of 56 who goes by the name of Kim Dae Han, and who has been described in some news reports as being mentally disturbed, entered a subway train in Daegu with a container of liquid. He seems to have scattered this liquid before setting fire to it.

The TV pictures have been really remarkable, showing an entire train apparently burnt out. So today, on my train, I found myself looking around and thinking, "Well, what is there that would catch fire and burn?" And some of the answers seemed obvious.

I don't know how it is in South Korea, a country I've never visited, but here in Japan there are often large advertizing posters hanging from clips which are glued to the roofs of the passenger cars. (One feature of Japanese trains, whether they run above the ground or under it, is that they have plenty of headroom.)

It also occurred to me that a lot of the clothing that people were wearing would probably catch fire and burn quite nicely. Including, possibly, the nylon and polyester parka I was wearing for warmth on an unpleasantly chilly February morning.

The news from South Korea makes all the more impact because, in the last couple of years, there have been some unpleasant incidents in Japan involving arson. In September of 2001, someone set fire to a building in Kabukicho, Tokyo's most notorious red light district. Forty-four people died in the four-story building.

Then, in another case, a man tried to rob some place - a lending company, I think - using a container of gasoline as a threat. The upshot was that the gasoline ended up getting set alight, and, again, people died.

So a copycat crime looks entirely possible.

Incidentally, when news of this incident first broke, my immediate thought was "North Korean terrorism!" Later, when I discussed this incident with a Japanese national, I found that this person's first thougth, too, had been "North Korean terrorism!"

Even though we're not rushing out and buying duct tape here in Japan, times are obviously not normal. A lot of people are doing a lot of thinking about Iraq, of course, but North Korea also takes a high place on the average agenda. Which brings me to the number two item in the news.


2003 February 20 Thursday continued ....

The number two item in the news has been the growing crisis on the Korean peninsular. It's not clear when this crisis is going to come to the boil, but there seem to be two options.

In Option A, George Bush makes the first move. First he deals with Saddam Hussein at his leisure. And then, being ready for the next step, he reaches out his power and does whatever it is he's going to do to North Korea's Kim Jong Il. That's George's option.

Option B is Kim Jong Il's option.

The North Koreans show every evidence of having a lively awareness of the fact that George Bush is probably going to turn his attention in their direction as soon as he is done with Saddam Hussein. Which raises the question of whether they might try to make the first move.

What that first move might be I have no idea. But if I was Kim Jong Il then I would have people hard at work right now, wargaming the possibilities.

There's some comment on North Korea in today's International Herald Tribune. It's by James E. Goodby, and it has the headline "Playing the long game is risky". It says, in part:-

An unlikely possibility is that the United States is ready to have a military showdown with North Korea once most of the fighting in Iraq has ended. Kim Jong Il probably expects this.

Why is war in Northeast Asia unlikely? Because devastation in Korea would be on a scale not seen since the 1950-1953 Korean War. And there could be other horrific developments - attacks with nuclear weapons by North Korea or the United States or both. The Bush administration understands this as well as anyone.

I'd like to be reassured, but I'm not. For example, if Kim Jong Il "probably expects" a military showdown with the United States, then he might be tempted to make the first move, if only a symbolic move designed to demonstrate a willingness to wage war. And what then if the Americans mistake his symbolic move for a real move?

As far as the Bush administration is concerned, I'm not convinced that those guys understand anything. True, they seem to be a pretty bright bunch, with the lonely exception of George Bush himself. But they don't seem capable of understanding that the numbers on the dice which they are rolling are the numbers of the Apocalypse.

If it all goes to plan, a small number of Americans will be killed, as will an unspecified number of Iraqis. Given victory, the American public will probably accept a small American casualty list, and the Iraqi deaths can always be blamed on Saddam Hussein. Iraqi oil will then be used to pay for the costs of America's military adventure.

(I don't know who it was I saw, but I saw an authority figure on CNN yesterday saying that it's reasonable to expect the Iraqis to "fund the transition to democracy," which I took to be codespeak meaning "America is going to make Iraq pay for this war.")

Well, that's the planned outcome, it seems. A few American dead, an irrelevant number of Iraqi dead, and plenty of Iraqi oil to pump to make the books budget.

But these are, remember, the dice of the Apocalypse which are in play. In the worst case outcome, Saddam Hussein hits Israel with missiles armed with something chemical or biological, and Israel's Sharon nukes Baghdad. America ends up in possession not of a country but of a radioactive garbage dump - burst dams, burning oil fields, and so forth.

At which point the radicals in places like Saudi Arabia decide that they've had enough of the governments which went along with this game, at which point the existing order of the world as we know it starts to unravel.

I don't really know how things will turn out in the Middle East. Maybe George Bush wins his gamble there. Maybe he doesn't. But the risks which the Bush administration is taking in Iraq are, quite simply, impossible to calculate.

So, when the Bush administration does eventually turn its attention to North Korea - assuming that Kim Jong Il does not make the first move - there's nothing to really reassure me that George Bush and company will not take risks which are, quite literally, incalculable.

A few months ago I was more sanguine, even complacent. But, since then, I've watched George and his team at work. And what I've been seeing is telling me that I should be worried.

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I just found a great site with a whole bunch of explanatory details about Iraq, the Kurds, the guys the White House wants to rule the country, and in fact the whole ball of wax. Interesting clickable items include "U.S. to conquered Iraqis: Pay up". The site seems to be by Christopher Allbritton, former AP and New York Daily News reporter, who was in Iraqi Kurdistan in the summer and is raising funds to go back in time for the war. The site is www.back-to-iraq.com and it's very lucid, very well-organized, and a good place to learn a lot very fast.

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Section 16 Entry 0003. Date: 2003 February 21 Friday.
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The Bush administration is preparing to snuff out the democratic future of a free nation, and to permit that nation to be invaded by an enemy. The nation in question is the de facto Kurdish state which has grown up in the northern area of Iraq, which is off-limits to Saddam Hussein, and the enemy in question is Turkey. A former United States ambassador to Croatia has this to say about the situation:-

The Kurds have established a real state within a state, which meets all governmental responsibilities from education to law enforcement. Their militias number 70,000 to 130,000, and there is a real risk of clashes with any Turkish "humanitarian" force.

That comment by Peter W. Galbraith, who, as mentioned above, was at one time U.S. ambassador to Croatia. The quote comes from an article in today's International Herald Tribune (as published in Japan) which has the headline "The Kurds don't want to be Iraqis".

The first two paragraphs of the article lay out the Bush administration's position on Kurdish liberty:-

Zalmay Khalilzad, President George W. Bush's special envoy to the Iraqi opposition, went to Ankara this month and told top Kurdish leaders to accept that a large deployment of Turkish troops - supposedly for humanitarian relief - would enter northern Iraq after any American invasion.

He also told the Kurds that they would have to give up plans for self-government, adding that hundreds of thousands of people driven from their homes by Saddam Hussen would not be able to return to them.

Today, there seems to be considerable uncertainty about exactly what role Turkey is going to play in this war. Turkey got financially mauled as a consequence of the last war in Iraq, and is asking for big bucks as the price for taking part in this one.

At this writing, Turkey's decision is unknown. The dice are rolling, and there is no telling what we will see when they finally come to a stop. But, if all does go to plan - and perhaps it will - then the first fruit of that war looks likely to be the extinction of Kurdish liberty. And, perhaps, war between the Turks and the Kurds.

(Incidentally, on the subject of Turkey holding out for big bucks, I don't think that to be unreasonable. Back in the days when Dubya's dad was president, dad got people like the Japanese to pay the lion's share of America's war costs. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Turkey's treatment of the Kurds, past, present and future, the objective reality is that Turkey is not a rich country, and can expect to take a financial hammering as a consequence of the coming war, particularly if it faces a really large influx of refugees.)

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America and Britain let Turks bomb Kurds

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Entry for 2003 February 21 continued ....

Later ... Jesus wept! This is worse than I thought! I just found my way to a site www.nowarblog.org which has a page with an article headlined Update: The War of the Kurdish Suppression which says the United States has, for years, "allowed the Turkish air force to bomb Iraqi Kurds".

Apparently the data supporting this statement is in "two 2001 Providence Journal articles by Richard Randall". The www.nowarblog.org has a link (duplicated right here) called "Pilots say U.S. allows Turkey to bomb Kurds" which goes to an article by Randall Richard from the Providence Journal 03-25-2001.

So who are these Kurds? I'm aware that they're a minority group and they've had a rough deal, but I'm fuzzy on the details. I've looked it up, and they're an ethnic minority, about 20 million people in all, half in Turkey and the rest in other countries, such as Iran and Iraq. They're Muslims but they're not Arabs.

There's a coherent overview of the Kurds in the Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, here.

The 2001 Randall Richard article on Turkey bombing the Kurds quotes Scott Ritter, who was formerly the United Nations chief weapons inspector in Iraq. He characterizes Turkey's attacks on the Kurds as "a secret, illegal war".

These attacks are said to have taken place in the no-fly zone that British and American warplanes supposedly enforce, theoretically to protect the Kurds from Saddam Hussein ....

Having got this far, I punched "Scott Ritter" into the search box at news.google.com and found some news tagged as being "eight hours old" which says that "Delmar resident Scott Ritter is speaking at the UAlbany campus tonight, reiterating his opposition to President Bush's policy toward Iraq".

.... and now my research on Scott Ritter has brought me back to North Korea, because I've found a recent article (dated February 8, 2003) in which he is quoted as saying maybe the North Korean situation is going to end up with North Korea nuking Tokyo and reducing it to "a slab of radioactive waste".

This article may not be of much interest to the wider world, but anyone who shares with me the pleasure of living and working in or near Tokyo might care to check it out here.

Anyway, we were busy researching the Kurds ... I did a search on Google News for "kurds no fly zone turkey bomb" and came up with an article from the Irish Independent Media Center dated 13 Feb 2003.

The article is on the Irish site here. The article seems to have been originally published in 2002 on December 20 and gives more details about the bombing of the Kurds by the Turks. Apparently some of this has been reported in the Washington Post!

The article on the Irish site is by John Pilger of www.johnpilger.com - this guy I'm aware of as a political journalist who seems to specialize in facing unpleasant truths that other people do not want to acknowledge.

(However, having checked out the www.johnpilger.com website, I have to confess that it's not one of the world's great websites.)

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Section 16 Entry 0004. Date: 2003 February 21 Friday.
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If you're living in Tokyo right at the moment, you might care to check out the Kinokuniya Foreign Books Mega Sale. I wouldn't recommend making a special journey just to go to the sale, but if you happen to be in the Shibuya area then it's worth a look. The sale is on the tenth floor of the Takashimaya department store. (JR Shinjuku, south exit.)

Takashimaya is open from 1000 to 2000. The last day of the Books Kinokuniya sale is Monday (the 24th) and on that Monday the sale ends at 1800. I talked to a couple of people who went to the sale yesterday (the first day) and at that stage all the stands containing books were full. When I went today, the stands were still full, so it seems the staff keep putting out new books.

Apparently last year, at a certain stage on the last day of the sale, there were boxes of books for sale for 500 yen. There's no guarantee, however, that the same thing will happen this year. I'm not sure of my schedule on Monday, but if I'm in the area then I might drop by a second time, just to see what's available.

If your Japanese is not too good, these two questions might help:-

(i) Once you get out of the south exit at Shinjuku and onto the street: "Takashimaya?"

However, if you've come out of the south exit and have gotten to the main road, first try looking across the street and seeing if you can visually locate the Takashimaya department store.

Once you're on the tenth floor of the Takashimaya department store:-

"Kinokuniya? Books?"

Today, when I dropped by at the sale, I bought five books for a tax-included total of 5,065 yen (US $42.92, an average of US $9.98 each). The first of my five books was Creating Web Pages Bible by David Crowder and Rhonda Crowder, which normally sells for 9,498 yen in Japan, which, at US $1 = 118 yen is US $80.49. This book apparently retails for US $49.99 in the States ... at this point it should be clear why the average native speaker of English living in Japan does not buy a lot of books.

On sale, this book was 1,500 yen, or US $12.71, which is a great price for something that I will use a lot. Only last night I was leafing through the very basic HTML primer that I already have, trying to find answers to a bunch of questions which were not in the book.

I also picked up The Best American Science Writing 2001 edited by Timothy Ferris, Everything's Eventual by Stephen King (hardback, for 900 yen), From the Corner of His Eye by Dean Koontz (a great writer of page turners, at least until he starts playing socio-political philosopher, at which point I have to start skipping), and the 2002 edition of The New York Times Almanac, which I hope will answer some of these questions I keep having, like, "Exactly where is Izjikistan, and do they have oil?"

The Almanac cost me 800 yen (US $6.77) which is not bad for a book of 1,002 pages, particularly not when it gives accurate details for a whole heap of things which I vaguely know (or think I know) but can't document without wasting time ferreting around in the junkyards of the Internet.

The biggest drawback to living in Japan has to be the books problem. Well, put it this way: it's the drawback of which I'm most conscious. In big cities like Tokyo and Yokohama, there are public libraries here and there which have a certain number of English-language books, but if you've got a busy schedule then the travel required to get to these can start to become unreasonable.

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