This is incredible:

South Korean students who have trouble with school bullies can soon call on the government to provide them with bodyguards.

South Korea plans to start a trial service next month to cut down on school violence. As a part of that, it will provide personal protection for those bullied students who seek it as they travel to and from school, an official said on Tuesday.

"We are going to try to protect the student who is being bullied and find out who is doing the bullying," said Park Jung-hee, an education ministry official.

Park said the bodyguards — which local media said were likely to come from the police, private security firms and volunteers — will not sit with students during class.

The funding and services are being provided by companies wanting to help cut school violence, Park said.

Sound like the exporting of parenting to the bodyguards. 

This story and this story of an Osan airman and a Osan Captain being tried for rape is just another example to female servicemembers that they need to be extra careful when drinking because as history has shown sexual predators are looking for overly intoxicated women to take advantage of.

Clifton Choy who worked for AAFES for 36 years has been fired over his involvement in the SSRT corruption scandal.  He joins his AAFES partner in crime Lee Holloway in the unemployment line.  The Air Force OSI continues to investigate the two and if the allegations are true let’s all hope they spend a long time behind bars for their involvement in screwing over soldiers to make a quick buck.

UPDATE #2:  More information is coming out from the Korean media about the deceased ROK Army soldier SGT Yoon.  SGT Yoon was sent to the United States by his parents to attend middle school and high school in Indiana.  After completing high school he attended the University of Indiana and studied business.  Yoon hadn’t been back to Korea for over 10 years when he decided to go back and complete his mandatory service commitment to the ROK Army.  He could have stayed in the US and applied for a Green Card, but he decided to serve his country instead. 

Yoon joined the ROK Army in 2005 and became a member of the Korean Special Forces and volunteered to deploy to Afghanistan last September against the wishes of his family.  In Afghanistan he was helping teach local Afghanis job trade skills.  He was scheduled to redeploy from Afghanistan in April of this year and complete his mandatory service in May. 

SGT Yoon’s parents and his two older sibling are understandably distraught over this tragedy and his dad condemned the terrorists for killing his son.  What I found kind of distasteful though was how the Korean media are just storming this poor family.  For the love of God give these people some space and let them grieve. 

I really have nothing but the up most respect for SGT Yoon.  He could of stayed in the US, made money, and avoided the mandatory service, but he decided to go back to Korea and serve his country where he was making probably less than $100 a month base pay for a conscriptee.

People in Korea should really reflect on this and ask themselves, like many in America do about our servicemembers, where does Korea find such great people like SGT Yoon?  Koreans should also take note that their military is filled with many other great soldiers like SGT Yoon and should be proud of the selfless service of all the men and women of the ROK Army as well as all those who volunteer to serve in Iraq and Afghanistan and soon in Lebanon as well.

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UPDATE#1:  Milblogger MAJ John stationed on Bagram has a good posting about the bombing that happened yesterday.  Apparantly the terrorists hid the bomb in a shipping container and as the truck got to the front of the gate to be searched the bomb detonated killing an American soldier and a Korean soldiers along with a host of kids and Afghan truck drivers.  Yes the big, bad Taliban is able to blow up a bomb that kills mostly kids and truck drivers and the media is of course hyping the resurgent Taliban threat because they can blow up kids and truck drivers. 

MAJ John also says that Vice President Cheney was over a mile away from the bombing and in no danger.  However, this hasn’t stopped the media from running irresponsible headlines of an assassination attempt on the Vice President.  Would it be an assassination attempt on President Bush if someone blew up a bomb at the front gate of the White House killing civilians and gate guards?  No it would be labeled as terrorism because that is what this was.  That bomb had no intention of ever getting into the airbase.  It was simply blown up to kill as many people as possible to make the very headlines these idiots in the news media are publishing. 

The conspiracy theorist in me also thinks this bombing was used to send a message to the Vice President.  Remember before visiting Afghanistan Cheney visited Pakistan and had some very strong words to say about President Musharraf’s less than agressive policy to fight the Taliban fighters hiding in western Pakistan.  The Vice President’s trip would be quite secret, but assuredly the Pakistan government would have known about it.  Could the Pakistan government had tipped off the Taliban about the VP’s visit and the Taliban rushed to set off an explosion to grab news headlines while at the same time Pakistan could use the bombing as a great big, –ck you to the VP?

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The ROK Army has suffered its first casualty in the War on Terror:

A suicide bomber attacked the entrance to the main U.S. military base in Afghanistan Tuesday during a visit by Vice President Dick Cheney, killing at least 14 people and wounding a dozen more. The Taliban claimed responsibility and said Cheney was the target.

Cheney’s spokeswoman said he was fine, and the vice president later met with President Hamid Karzai in the capital, Kabul, before leaving the country.

There were conflicting reports on the death toll. Provincial Gov. Abdul Jabar Taqwa said 20 people were killed, while NATO said initial reports indicated three fatalities, including a U.S. soldier, a South Korean coalition soldier and a U.S. government contractor whose nationality wasn’t immediately known. NATO said 27 people also were wounded.

(…)

South Korea’s Defense Ministry said one of its troops stationed in Bagram, Sgt. Yoon Jang-ho, 27, was killed in the explosion. South Korea has about 200 engineers and medics in Bagram.

It just goes to show that no matter how bad the US-ROK alliance may appear to be politically, it doesn’t effect the relationship militarily between the US & ROK armies, as is shown with US and Korean soldiers dying together in Afghanistan.  I have always found soldiers from the ROK Army to be some of the best soldiers from a foreign military I have ever served with. 

SGT Yoon appears to be no different as he was a graduate of Indiana University in the United States and was serving as a translator a translator in Afghanistan.  Initially it was reported SGT Yoon and the other US soldier were working as guards at the entrance of the Bagram Base when they were attacked which I would find surprising to see a ROK soldier working such a dangerous job an entry point guard due to the Korean government’s extremely risk adverse stance with their soldiers in both Afghanistan and Iraq because of the fear of casualties.  However, Joong Ang Ilbo is reporting that SGT Yoon was actually at the entry point to meet some Afghans he was working with:

According to Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the attack took place at the front gate of the base. Mr. Yun, a sergeant with the Dasan unit, was killed instantly.
Sergeant Yun was on a mission right outside the gate, the military said, escorting residents of Afghanistan into the base for a technology training program.
No other casualties or injuries to the Korean contingent were reported, the Joint Chiefs of Staff said, adding that the terror attack was apparently not targeting Korean troops.

The Taliban is saying that the bomber attended to assassinate Vice President Cheney who was visiting the base which is ridiculous.  More than likely the Taliban got word of Cheney visiting the base and sent this suicide bomber out to strike a soft target near the base to get international headlines of trying to assassinate the Vice President.  It just so happens the softest target around any military base is the entry point where people and vehicles are waiting in line to enter the base.  This cowardly suicide bomber probably simply walked to the front of the line and blew himself and the people around him up. 

What will be interesting to see is how the death of SGT Yoon will be portrayed in the Korean media.  Will his death be framed as an honorable and brave soldier serving his country or a needless death in support of an American cause?   Could this start a movement to withdraw Korean engineers from Afghanistan?  Initial reports are encouraging that the Korean government plans to continue with their reconstruction mission in Afghanistan:

Park said the incident is unlikely to affect Seoul’s plan to keep the troops in Afghanistan.

"In my personal view, it seems that there will be no change in the plan to retain the troops there by the end of this year, as set by the National Assembly," he said

Let’s hope the government of Korea honors SGT Yoon properly as a hero who tried to make life better for the people of Afghanistan instead of ignoring or marginalizing his sacrifice like the Korean government has done in the past with the six sailor killed in the 2002 West Sea Naval Battle. 

Rest in peace SGT Yoon and thank you for your sacrifice in support of the United States and most importantly the people of Afghanistan.

You can read more over at the Marmot’s Hole and OFK.

Just when I think the American media couldn’t get any worse it does. I’m not sure if there has been a bigger piece of propaganda under the cover of investigative journalism than this week’s 60 Minutes piece on the Appeal for Redress frauds. If you have the stomach you can download the video here. Let me get everyone up to speed on what Appeal for Redress really is.

Appeal for Redress operates a website where US military personnel can sign a petition to end the war in Iraq. Appeal for Redress has tried to cultivate an image of being a “grassroots” campaign by US military personnel to end the war in Iraq. If you watch the 60 Minutes piece that is exactly what they say that they are a “grassroots” effort with no external financing. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

Appeal for Redress was founded by Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto. No where in the 60 Minutes interview did they bother mentioning Mr. Hutto’s past activities before joining the Navy. Fortunately others have:

Then there is the issue of the spokeman for “Appeals for Redress” featured in the media reports. Jonathan Hutto is described as a Navy seaman based in Norfolk VA who set up the website a month ago. But the media failed to report on Mr. Hutto’s less than pro-American background.

According to his own writings, Hutto “enlisted in the United States Navy in January of 2004” after “working at non-profit organizations and an unsuccessful stint at teaching 5th grade post graduating from Howard University in 1999.” The non-profit organization Hutto worked for was Amnesty International – not your typical volunteer organization. In 2002, Hutto was Membership Program Coordinator for the Mid-Atlantic Region of Amnesty International.

In 2001, Hutto was a speaker at The Fight against Police Violence: from Cincinnati to PG County, Maryland. Hutto’s co-speaker at the event was Glova Scott of the Socialist Workers Party. The speech was posted on The Militant website.

Mr. Hutto was also involved in anti-war demonstrations before the Iraq War as well:

When Hutto graduated from Howard, he worked for the ACLU and then for Amnesty International. Hutto has expressed disdain for President Bush, stating “[Bush’s] agenda is not only anti African/African American, but anti-labor, anti-woman, anti-environment and anti-human rights”, has called the Iraq war “illegal” and the United States “imperialist”.

Here is a picture of Mr. Hutto protesting in his prior life before suddenly joining the Navy:

Here is Hutto now:

So what are the odds that a member of a number of liberal, leftists groups opposed to the war in Iraq suddenly has the urge to go serve his country during war time? Not very good, unless he joined as a plant by the anti-war groups opposed to President Bush and the war in Iraq. Now this is a scenario that has a lot of evidence backing it courtesy of some of the best blogging ever by Greyhawk at the Mudville Gazette.

Mr. Hutto joined the Navy in 2004 and suddenly in October of 2006 he launches his website just before the 2006 Congressional elections. Even more interesting is that he has a slew of media available to promote his website when he launched it in 2006. His “grassroots” effort against the war was instantly covered in over 200 newspapers across the country. If you are in the military and are against the war and started a website do you think you could get over 200 newspapers to cover the launch of your website? Probably not, but Hutto did. How did he do it you may ask?

Well this is how; out of all these newspapers only one exposed Hutto’s website for what it really is:

Yesterday, a company that does public relations for the liberal activist political action committee MoveOn.org, Fenton Communications, organized a conference call for reporters and three active-duty soldiers to unveil the soldiers’ anti-war group Appeal for Redress.
<…>
A staff member at Fenton Communications who requested anonymity said his company was approached last week by a longtime peace activist and former director of the anti-nuclear proliferation front known as SANE/Freeze, David Cortright, to publicize Appeal for Redress. Mr. Cortright is now president of an Indiana-based nonprofit group, the Fourth Freedom Forum, and his biography on the organization’s Web site says he helped raise “more than $300,000 for the Win Without War coalition to avert a preemptive attack on Iraq in 2002–03.”

So who is Fenton Communications exactly you may ask. They are the public relations firm for just about every liberal activist group you can imagine. Here is a list of all the groups that Fenton Communications provides PR services for. I’ll highlight a few of them below:

Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Turner Foundation (Ted Turner connection), Heinz Family Foundation (John Kerry connection), Amnesty International (Hutto connection), every liberal activist group from San Francisco that you can imagine, every gay rights group you can think of, Air America Radio, Al Gore, Salon.com, AFL-CIO, UAW, Arianna Huffington, Moveon.org (George Soros connection), Fourth Freedom and the list goes on and on.

Fenton Communications is obviously a huge media company with massive political power and money behind it. Now we know there is big money behind Hutto’s “grassroots” movement and now who exactly setup his webpage and organized Hutto’s group you may ask? If you look on the Appeal for Redress sponsors page you see three organizations listed as being behind the Appeal for Redress site, Military Families Speak Out, Iraq Veterans Against the War, and Veterans for Peace. None of these groups are listed as being promoted by Fenton Communications. These three groups are actually front groups for the real power behind Appeal for Redress.

The Appeal for Redress webpage as Greyhawk first reported was registered to J.E. Glick, of 803 North Main Street, Goshen, Indiana. So who is J.E. Glick? This person is actually Jennifer Glick, the director of Information Services, for the Fourth Freedom Forum one of the clients of Fenton Communications which proves the NY Sun’s article about the group fronting for the Appeal for Redress group. After Greyhawk uncovered evidence of Fourth Freedom’s involvement and emailed Ms. Glick for an explanation, which she never provided, the organization moved quickly to cover their tracks by re-registering the Appeal for Redress site under a different site owner from Veterans from Peace.

Since Fenton Communications is behind the promoting of this website they have cleverly tried to create a “grassroots” image of Iraq veterans against the war and they are doing this by using what appears to be “grassroots” front groups to do it. This is called Astroturfing:

In politics and advertising, the term astroturfing describes formal public relations (PR) campaigns which seek to create the impression of being a spontaneous, grassroots behavior. Hence the reference to the “AstroTurf” (artificial grass) is a metaphor to indicate “fake grassroots” support.

So now you know Appeal for Redress has big money behind it from shadow sponsors and is being promoted by the biggest liberal public relations firm in the United States that works for billionaire liberal activists like George Soros and Ted Turner. So now is it any wonder why Appeal for Redress is suddenly formed right before the 2006 Congressional elections? Is it also no wonder why now during the debate over President Bush’s “surge” in Iraq a feature story on CBS’s 60 Minutes program is aired? Could it be that Fenton Communications is behind this current media blitz?

If you are still not convinced behind the Fenton Communications involvement in the 60 Minutes program than read what Lara Logan the CBS reporter who put the 60 Minutes feature together had to say about the piece:

“It’s basically a grass roots movement amongst active duty, serving members of the U.S. military.” And “We were very careful to look thoroughly at the group, and to look into their military backgrounds, and to make sure that this wasn’t… people with something hidden in their past or some reason that wasn’t the stated reason to be involved in this.”

She could not find any evidence of “people with something hidden in their past”? WTF? All Ms. Logan had to do was do a Google Search on Jonathan Hutto and all his anti-war and liberal activism before joining the Navy pops right up. Additionally Ms. Logan describes Mr. Hutto like this:

“I’m not anti-war. I’m not a pacifist. I’m not opposed to protecting our country and defending our principles,” says Navy Petty Officer Jonathan Hutto, an Iraq war veteran who, along with another veteran, initiated the petition.

However, Mr. Hutto never served in Iraq, but hey that is a small lie compared to the big lie that Ms. Logan is legitimizing as hard news on 60 Minutes.

I think it is important to note that Ms. Logan is well known for running anti-military pieces including when she tried to pass off Al Qaida propaganda footage as hard news without telling viewers it was an Al Qaida propaganda video:

She would have gotten away with it if it wasn’t for bloggers exposing the story and forcing CBS news to not air the segment. Do a Google search on Lara Logan and read her articles or go to her fan site and read or watch her reports there. Just about every single one from both Iraq and Afghanistan is negative and yet we should trust her reports when she couldn’t even uncover Jonathan Hutto’s past activities when Ms. Logan said in her own words she was being “very careful to look thoroughly at the group” before airing the 60 Minutes report?

I think clearly 60 Minutes and Ms. Logan are both working in concert with Fenton Communications marketing campaign involving Appeal for Redress.

Also notice once again that word “grassroots” that Ms. Logan was using. To paraphrase the infamous words of Joseph Goebbels, if you keep telling a lie over and over again, eventually people begin to believe it. That is exactly the image Fenton Communications is trying to cultivate with Appeal for Redress and Ms. Logan and her ilk are aiding them in that effort. Their ilk now includes Yahoo with the webpage promoting the Appeal for Redress 60 Minutes segment on their site:

The reason the anti-war and liberal activist groups have had to go this route an implement a well organized astroturfing campaign is because of the all volunteer military. It is tougher to create discontent in the ranks when everyone volunteered to serve, especially now that their argument of soldiers being duped into the military and forced to go to war has been proven wrong. It has been over 5 years since the nation went to war on September 11, 2001, which means all the young soldiers, junior sergeants, and officers that make up the vast majority of the soldiers in the US military enlisted knowing full well they were going to war.

So next these groups tried to create a perception of poor troop morale, which failed, along with their efforts to stop military recruiting by attacking and banning recruiters or going after ROTC programs. Remember all the stories of the military not meeting their recruiting numbers a couple years ago? That was because the military was in the midst of expanding the overall force numbers, which meant more people had to be recruited. Now that the force has completed the expansion it is easier to maintain recruiting numbers which the military has been able to do for well over a year during a time of war. Then the media tried to create an image of US soldiers with higher than normal suicide rates, which once again that was quickly debunked. Another parallel effort was to paint soldiers as uneducated low lives that are committing crimes all over Iraq. That hasn’t worked yet either. Is it possible Fenton Communications had any involvement in any of these media campaigns? You be the judge.

Now the latest effort is to create an image of a “grassroots” campaign within the military against the war in Iraq. Hutto’s group is one branch of this effort along with the 1LT Ehren Watada’s refusal to deploy. Just like Mr. Hutto, 1LT Watada joined the military after the war in Iraq had already started. Did he not know the nation was at war? Why join the military if you are against the war in Iraq? It is because he has other motives just like Hutto. 1LT Watada’s dad is a known peace activist who refused to deploy to Vietnam and is a political insider in Hawaii who is known to compare President Bush to Hitler. So who is backing Watada you ask? Well, none other than Iraq Veteran’s Against the War and Veterans for Peace, the same groups backing Hutto’s Appeal for Redress group, which are as I have shown front groups for the Fourth Freedom Forum, which is promoted by Fenton Communications. So when you connect the dots it is easy to see how the groups behind Hutto and Watada receive so much publicity when their groups only represent .04% of the US military. How come the other 99.6% of US soldiers cannot get the same amount of air time on 60 Minutes as Appeal for Redress?

What I have found interesting watching this whole astroturfing campaign unfold is how similar it is to the South Korean spy scandal. In the spy scandal North Korean spies within the Korean political party the Democratic Labor Party planted agents within South Korean activist groups to act as front groups to promote anti-US activities within South Korea. So who taught who? Did Fenton Communications learn this astroturfing scheme from the North Koreans or did the North Koreans learn it from Fenton Communications?

In order to counter the large and elaborate astroturfing campaign members of various milblogs have begun our own real grassroots effort by creating an online petition on February 12th of this year called an Appeal for Courage. In just two weeks 1,197 people have already signed the petition compared to the 1,584 people who have signed the Appeal for Redress petition which has been online since last October and is backed by shadow groups that are using the largest liberal media company Fenton Communications to promote the website in over 200 US newspapers, 60 Minutes, and Yahoo. Despite all this publicity and money behind Hutto’s group, the Appeal for Courage petition is on pace to blow by the Appeal for Redress astroturfers. If you are active duty, reserve, or National Guard it is perfectly legal to sign the petition. You can read the DOD directives and the petition here. Let your voice be heard instead of drowned out by the .04% on 60 Minutes that are backed by an elaborate, well funded liberal marketing campaign.

People, groups, and media like Hutto, Watada, Fourth Freedom forum, CBS News, Fenton Communications, and the rest of their ilk don’t support the troops, and this is nothing new. They are just really damn good at hiding it.

Read more at: Milblogs, Flopping Aces, Malkin, Blackfive, LGF, Ms. Underestimated, Op-For

Bronze tori gate in the park leading to the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo. This bronze tori is supposed to be the largest in the world.

For those that don’t know, the Yasukuni Shrine has been a source of friction between Japan and their Asian neighbors, most notably Korea and China, in recent years. Both countries regularly condemned Japan when former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi would periodically visit the shrine because the shrine honors Japanese war dead including war criminals from World War II. Yasukuni enshrines the names of approximately 2.5 million Japanese who died during the Meiji era of Japanese history. Interestingly enough, something you won’t hear too many Koreans talk about, is that over 21,000 Koreans who fought for the Japanese Imperial military during World War II are also enshrined in Yasukuni. Think of it in the spirit of the Vietnam War Memorial, but instead of a wall a Shinto shrine is used. Korea and China believe the shrine should not include Japanese war criminals from World War II and Japan thinks otherwise.

Statue of Omura Masujiro who organized the Meiji military and promoted the modernization of the military in line with western standards. He was assassinated by discontented samurai in 1869, but his movement to modernize the military lived on.

Having been to the shrine myself, I don’t find the shrine insulting to China, Korea, or anyone else for that matter. There was no banners of General Tojo and other war criminals that the media would lead you to believe that this shrine is all about. In fact the shrine was actually pretty simplistic and underwhelming. The shrine was filled with old Japanese men, some wearing their old Imperial Japanese military hats, hanging out, bowing at the shrine, and then sitting down on the benches smoking their pipes, and maybe sharing memories of their time in the military with each other. These old guys seem hardly a threat to peace and stability in northeast Asia.

The reason the Koreans and the Chinese get so worked up by the Yasukuni issue is because politicians in each of those respective countries use the Yasukuni issue to deflect attention away from their own governmental short comings. George Will in this Washington Post article probably best explains the political dynamics behind both countries’ position on the Yasukuni issue:

Between that enshrinement and 1984, three prime ministers visited Yasukuni 20 times without eliciting protests from China. But both of Japan’s most important East Asian neighbors, China and South Korea, now have national identities partly derived from their experience as victims of Japan’s 1910-45 militarism. To a significant extent, such national identities are political choices .

Leftist ideology causes South Korea’s regime to cultivate victimhood and resentment of a Japan imagined to have expansionism in its national DNA. The choice by China’s regime is more interesting. Marxism is bankrupt and causes cognitive dissonance as China pursues economic growth by markedly un-Marxist means. So China’s regime, needing a new source of legitimacy, seeks it in memories of resistance to Japanese imperialism.

Actually, most of China’s resistance was by Chiang Kai-shek’s forces, Mao’s enemies. And Mao, to whom there is a sort of secular shrine in Beijing, killed millions more Chinese than even Japan’s brutal occupiers did.

Another bronze tori gate before passing through a large wooden gate leading to the Yasukuni Shrine.

However, something a lot of people don’t realize is that their is more to the shrine than the shrine itself. Near the shrine is the Yushukan Museum that is supposed to chronicle Japan’s long military history. After visiting the museum and interpreting the displays from the minimal English language signs, I can safely say that the museum is something that I can see people getting worked up over. The museum’s view of history is vastly different from what is accepted as agreed upon history in the west. If the history being exhibited by the museum was so slanted in English, I can only imagine how bad the display’s signs in Japanese must be.

Most of the museum chronicles the various samurai wars during Japan’s feudal times and then into the Tokugawa era. I would have liked to read what was displayed for the Hideyoshi invasions of Korea between 1592 and 1598 but there was no English language signs available at the time. Really the vast majority of the museum is quite interesting until you get into the post Meiji Restoration years. For one the exhibit for the Russo-Japanese War claimed that the Japanese Army liberated the Korean peninsula from foreign rule and were greeted by an enthusiastic Korean populace as liberators. This is true to an extent because there was many people in Korea happy to see the end of the corrupt Chosun dynasty, however the exhibit made no mention of the brutal Japanese occupation that would follow the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The exhibit also maintained that the Japanese brought much industry and modernization to the peninsula. Once again true to extent, but it makes no reference to the fact that the modernization of the peninsula was implemented in order to increase areas such as rice production in order to ship the majority of Korean grown rice to Japan.

The last bronze tori gate before entering the Yasukuni Shrine.

The World War II exhibit was also quite provocative. According to the museum, World War II is known as the Asia Co-prosperity War where the Japanese single handedly liberated one Asian country after another from foreign colonial occupation and the Asian people were all happy to be liberated. No mention of the atrocities committed by the invading Japanese troops. Additionally the museum blames the US for the attack at Pearl Harbor. Since the US implemented a trade embargo on the Japanese, the militarists felt that an attack by the Americans against Japan would only naturally come next. The museum even alleges that the United States even had a plan to attack Japan in the works and would have been executed if Japan had not pre-empted the American attack by conducting the bombing of Pearl Harbor. The American President Franklin Roosevelt was committed to an attack on Japan as a way for the US to escape the Great Depression. One theme I have picked up on at the museum is that every attack the Japanese conducted was only executed because of foreign colonizers threatening Japan and its neighbors. Japan never wanted to colonize any country, they just wanted to liberate Asians from foreigners.

An elderly couple pay their respects at the Yasukuni Shrine.

This is of course nonsense. I posted before on this, but the Japanese felt modernization of Japan and the colonization of nearby countries were the best way to expand Japanese power and to compete against western rivals. The Japanese had no altruistic reasons of freeing oppressed Asians from European colonizers; it was simply about building Japanese power and influence and the attack on Pearl Harbor was where they over reached in spreading their power and influence. The problems with the museum are to numerous to list here, but the shrine organizers now have a plan to fix it.

Statue outside the Yushukan museum honoring the kamikaze pilots of World War II.

Ampontan has a great posting on the hiring of a former Japanese diplomat, Hisahiko Okazaki, who’s job it will be to reinterpret the historical displays at the Yushukan museum. Unfortunately it appears Mr. Okazaki is just reinterpreting the history in a different way that is equally as distorted as the prior historical displays. Mr. Okazaki in his new interpretation of history has found a new way to blame the US for the Japanese involvement in World War II. Instead of President Roosevelt provoking the war in order to escape the Great Depression, there is a new boogie man, the Hull Note:

The Hull Note of 1941 was, however, meant to close negotiations, so I did not raise any objection to a new quotation from the Stimson Diary, which said that all that was left after the issuance of the note would be to wait for Japan to attack.
It is a historical fact that Roosevelt induced Japan to carry out a first strike. The indication of this fact does not cast aspersions on Yasukuni Shrine’s intellectual integrity.
In his book Diplomacy, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wrote, Roosevelt must have been aware that there was no possibility that Japan would accept (the Hull Note). America’s participation in the war was the great achievement made through the extraordinary efforts of a great and courageous leader.

Fortunately Ampontan shoots down this claim rather quickly:

What Okazaki fails to mention is that the Hull Note was issued on November 26, 1941, fewer than two weeks before the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Japanese strike force had already set sail the day before (American time, but also the 26th Japanese time). They could have been recalled, but the Hull Note made it certain that they wouldn’t be.

Mr. Okazaki must have taken some notes from the anti-American Korean nationalists that use the obscure Taft-Katsura Agreement to bash the United States with. You would think a country like Japan that is so advanced in areas like democracy, human rights, technology, business, etc. would be mature enough to settle this history dispute between them, China, and Korea instead of relying on changing distorted history with revised history. Every country has history that it would rather forget about. You wouldn’t believe how many different countries I’ve been to and people have asked me if Native-Americans still live in teepees and if we have any plans of wiping the rest of them out. Or how many times self righteous foreigners preach to me about the horrors of General Custer and why the US government should condemn him as a war criminal. As annoying as these claims are, not once has someone claimed to me that the US government is trying to cover up the injustices committed against Native-Americans.

Japanese World War II Zero in the Yushukan museum.

By interpreting history the way the Yushukan museum does, it keeps alive the perception that the Imperial Japanese of World War II is still what represents Japanese policy in regards to its Asian neighbors today. This perception is what allows the political demagogues in Korea and China to use anti-Japanese sentiment to deflect attention away from their own political short comings. I just don’t see how Japan will be able to seek a position on the United Nation’s Security Council if it can’t work out an agreement to solve this distorted history issue with its neighbors. If Japan cannot work out an agreement to this issue, how will Japan ever have international creditability to deal with much larger and important issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian issue? Until these issues are solved Japan will never have the credibility and influence in the world that it’s population and economic might should render it.

A steam engine that actually operated on the infamous Thai-Burma Railway made famous by the movie, A Bridge On the River Kwai.

Is anyone surprised this issue hasn’t been corrected yet?:

Korean sailors’ sexual exploitation of teenage girls in Kiribati, a small island country in the Pacific Ocean, is continuing despite major international reports about the sex trade a few years ago, the National Youth Commission said yesterday.

Three girls even gave birth to babies of Korean sailors because the men refused to use condoms, it said.

The commission interviewed 24 women who had sex with Korean sailors during an investigation in Kiribati last December. One-third of them were under 19, the legal age of consent in Korea, and one girl was 14 years old.

As most of such girls live in extreme poverty, they fall into commercial sex for money, it said.

In Kiribati, young sex workers associated with foreign fishing vessels are called “te korekorea,” referring to the Korean sailors to whom the girls provide most of their services.

The commission estimated about 40 to 50 women were involved with Korean sailors last year and the age that they entered the business was getting younger.

You have to be one jacked up person to want to have sex with a 14 year old. 

What is interesting is that Kiribati’s main island is the island of Tarawa.  Tarawa during World War II was the site of the US military’s second offensive against the Imperial Japanese military.  After the Battle of Guadalcanal the US Marines launched an attack to secure the island of Tarawa.  Over 1,000 Marines died securing the island.  Over 4,700 Japanese and Koreans died defending the island.  Even more interesting is that only 17 Japanese and 129 Koreans survived the battle. 

The barbarians are taking over.  According to the Korea Times there is now 536,000 foreigners living in Korea that account for 1.1% of the population. 

Links from this week worth checking out

– Jeff in Pusan has an update of his recovery from his motorcycle accident complete with X-rays. 

– Michael remembers the good old days of partying in Korea. 

– Seoul Hero has some nice pictures of his trip to Bomunsa Temple.

– There has been another North Korean jail break.

– So who is the latest North Korea apologist?  Find out here.

– Will this make the Cartoon Network one day? 

– Does North Korea have a plan of attack on Japan?  Find out here. 

– How could I have missed this, this week was Takeshima Day in Japan.

– Who thinks Gochu man has a small gochu?

No more curfew and off limits areas are needed in places like Hongdae in Seoul anymore, courtesy of some brilliant scientists in Japan.  These scientists have discovered a spray that has the potential to allow foreigners and GIs to safely intermingle once again with the Korean citizens of night club areas like Hongdae. 

The Axe body deodorant spray causes Japanese females to immediately swarm towards Japanese men wearing this spray.  Just look at these Japanese Maiko fleeing from this hapless foreigner when a Japanese man wearing the spray rides by on a bicycle:

If Axe can make a spray that can cause Maiko to flee those big, bad, stinky foreigners in Japan than surely they can make a spray that would cause those naive, innocent Korean girls in Hongdae to flee the evil, drunk GIs and into the warm embraces of the Axe spray wearing, gentle, decent, kind Korean men that frequent the Hongdae area. 

Every soldier knows the Hongdae off limits order is not about "force protection reasons", but about keeping he big, bad foreigners away from Korean women, so here is a way to do it.  The police in Hongdae should be armed with this spray.  As soon as they see a helpless Korean woman talking to a foreigner the police should swoop in and spray the nearest Korean man in order to protect the naive, innocent women of Hongdae.  Peace and joy will return to the streets of Hongdae ironically enough due to the invention of somebody even worse than those big, bad, stink foreigners; the white washing of history, Dokdo denying, not quite as stinky, Japanese.