The White Peril 白禍

The site is completely migrated over to Wordpress now. If you're reading this, you're either using the URL whiteperil.powerblogs.com or using the old RSS feed. The new site is at whiteperil.com, and the feed is at http://whiteperil.com/feed/rss/. Thanks for reading!

Busy and not where it's easy to post. But I didn't want to let the D-Day anniversary go by without acknowledging it. Q and O, Rondi, and Eric, among many others, I'm sure, have posts up. We all owe an enormous debt to those who fought.

Not only are the two Japan Post subsidiaries related to the mails less profitable than the bank and the insurance company, but they also, according to the Yomiuri, owe back-taxes for Japanese fiscal year 2008, halfway through which the system was privatized:

Following investigations by the Tokyo Regional Taxation Bureau into the two companies, the bureau notified the firms of their unreported earnings for the business year ending March 2008, according to sources.

The companies are expected to be levied about 9.2 billion yen in back taxes, including penalty, corporate and local taxes, the sources said.

The total undeclared income reportedly is more than 20 billion yen.

...

It also said Japan Post Service and Japan Post Network logged 3.53 billion yen and 5.69 billion yen, respectively, to pay for taxes, on the assumption that the two companies would likely have to pay back taxes.

Although Japan Post Group said it had a "difference in understanding" with the bureau, the group said it would abide by the notification.

Well, you know, in Japan, these things are all about perspective.

The Japan Post family of companies released its first financial statements for a full fiscal year since privatization--well, more like partial governmental divestiture, but in today's climate, anything that even resembles a shift in the direction of less federal control of a major industry feels like a refreshing change--and the numbers are mixed:

In the consolidated financial statements for J-FY 2008 Q4 that Japan Post released on 22 May, current income (corresponding to sales revenues) was JPY 19.9617 trillion, current profits were JPY 830.5 billion, and net profits (for the quarter) were JPY 422.7 billion. Since privatization in October 2007, this round is the first release of financial statements for a full fiscal year, and while all four companies operating under the Japan Post umbrella ultimately secured balances in the black, the three remaining companies when Japan Post Insurance is excluded fell short of standing projections. CEO Yoshifumi Nishikawa indicated in an interview that he intends to stay on the pitcher's mound until the two financial subsidiaries [the insurance companies and the savings bank] are in a condition to list their stock, which is planned for as early as J-FY 2010.

It's the two finance-related arms that are making most of the profits; the holding company wants to jack up the contribution from the remaining two companies, one of which runs the post offices and the other of which runs the shipping and courier logistics of the old postal system. The Mainichi has an English version here, which scrambles the order of the original Japanese article but doesn't omit much of the information.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei this morning is headlined "How should Japan contribute to 'demand within Asia'?"

In getting the global economic crisis under control, Asia, which is called the growth center of the 21st Century, looms large. In a 21 May lecture, Prime Minister Taro Aso called for the expansion of "demand within Asia"; how can Japan fulfill a leading role in doing so? The challenges posed and responsibilities thrust upon it are weighty.

The prime minister took as his topic "Toward an Asia that surmounts the economic crisis and soars again," and he stressed that there is a need to shift the Asian economy from the export-driven structure it's had up to now into a structure driven by internal demand. Where that is concerned, the diverse nations and territories of Asia are not likely to dissent.

...

A supplementary-budget proposal for FY 2009 that undertakes additional economic measures on a scale that exceeds the previous maximum of JPY 15 trillion is not under deliberation in the House of Councillors. It's necessary to start taking financial action, but annual expenditures that it's not unrealistic to expect to be tied to money politics will not contribute to an increase in Japan's ability to grow. There's a need to move forward in parallel with structural reforms, such as deregulation, as well.

On the other hand, we will have to accept more from Asian nations and territories--not just imports but also human resources. Pain will accompany the opening of agricultural markets and things, but there's no way to get around it.

In connection with the stability and expansion of Asian financial markets, the prime minister stated, "we want to make the 'yen' something that different countries can use for financing in times of crisis." The idea is to provide emergency loans of Japanese yen to countries that have insufficient foreign currency, but it can also be considered an intention to "internationalize the yen."

In Asia, China has pushed for an economy built on the yuan with trade negotiations with neighboring nations and territories such as ASEAN. These are activities with a view toward a "yuan currency sphere."

China is the 3rd-largest economy in GDP after the United States and Japan. There's a high probability that it will pull ahead of Japan in one or two years. Still, the hurdles to internationalization for the yuan are higher than for the yen.

The prime minister has issued invitations to heads of state of five nations in the Mekong River Basin, such as Thailand and Vietnam, and also announced that he will hold the first "Japan-Mekong Summit" within the year. The nations of the Mekong Basin, which border China, are of major geographic importance.

It is important for Japan to strengthen its tie-ups with and trust from Asian nations and territories and to show some ability to develop a concept for the expansion of demand within Asia. That will also have an effect on the renaissance of the Japanese economy.

I quote the editorial at some length not because it says anything new but because it doesn't. Take away the figures specific to the budget and to China, and this sounds like just about every editorial on the Japanese economy in the last fifteen years: Asia is becoming more important, we need to liberalize our markets and make nice with the neighbors, and that means not being so closed off. The current crisis does change things, and it will be interesting, if that's the word, to follow possible damage to the dollar as the world currency.

But I'm not so sure the yen is a good candidate for a replacement, even in Asia. I've always found it interesting that we in the West are so bent on explaining Japan; in my experience, people from other places in Asia are far more willing to conclude that Japan is just plain weird and leave it at that. Perhaps part of the reason is that they already understand Buddhism and Confucianism and therefore don't get hung up on trying out novel ways of applying them to the Japanese--I don't know. In any case, countries in Asia know they need Japan and have a lot to gain from tapping into its industrial capacity, but they seem to recognize the Japanese political and economic systems as real headaches for outsiders beyond a certain point. And the Nikkei can wag its finger about the necessary but difficult process of making Japan more open to foreigners, but to this point, somehow talk of "internationalization" has rarely resulted in meaningful action. If nothing else, it should be interesting to see how Beijing reacts to Aso's Mekong Basin thing.

Eric links to a piece by Thomas Frank at the WSJ, in which he accuses conservatives of being too suspicious of Washington bureaucrats. Frank writes:

Mr. Issa's suspicions may be grotesque but they are also typical of the conservative movement. The government and its bureaucrats are, to the right, ever a malign force — jealous, power-hungry and greedy. But it's hard to blame someone for failing after you've worked so hard to make them fail.

...

But back in 2008, he insisted that "the problem starts and ends with the federal government." Among other things, he charged, its regulators "weren't just asleep at the switch but in many ways . . . gave the green light for these practices," meaning the trading of mortgage-backed securities.

On this point, at least, Mr. Issa got it right. The regulators did fail us. They were too cozy with industry and too blinkered by the free-market faith to see the reality unfolding under their noses.

I'm not a particular fan of Issa's, but I'm getting really sick of hearing about how economic policy governed by unbridled "free-market faith" is the cause of our current problems. What meaningful deregulation of anything has there been in the last decade--especially related to the housing market, where one of the big problems was insulation from feedback? And I don't know that the problem with regulators is that they were too "cozy with industry"; rather, to hear the language they used and use, they seemed to think that pushing through their decision-distorting policies justified bringing in the private sector as "partners" when it was useful to do so.

At least, my sense of mischief compels me to point out, Thomas Frank is an apt person to be counseling against being too suspicious. Those of us who subscribed to Harper's a decade ago remember his piece on the soon-defunct band Yum-yum, in which...well, I'll let the Reason piece that ran at the time tell it, since it's online:

In February, a new buzz about Yum-Yum started on e-mail listservs and phone lines among people who both knew the band and read Harper's Magazine. The March issue of Harper's contained a 10-page feature story about Yum-Yum, written by Chris Holmes's childhood pal and former roommate Thomas Frank. Frank is a rising leftist intellectual star who edits The Baffler, a magazine of cultural criticism, and writes critiques of advertising and big business.

What made this obscure failed rock band of interest to Harper's? Frank had a theory about the band, one with which almost everyone who had independent knowledge about Yum-Yum disagreed. The Yum-Yum record, Frank postulated, was not intended as a sincere work of popular music. It was instead an ironic gesture, an attempt to "fake fake itself" (his italics). Pop music was the "fake" being "faked." The album was, Frank asserted, a "critique" of "the pop-music industry" even as it was a product of it. Thus, the story fit well with the main mission of Harper's: helping middle- to highbrow intellectuals confirm their inchoate contempt for the modern market order.

...

By the time I got my copy of the March Harper's, I had already heard, via e-mail lists or phone calls, complaints about the story's dubious premise from about a dozen Yum-Yum-conscious Harper's readers. The executive editor of Spin magazine, Craig Marks, was peeved enough to write in The Village Voice that he found Frank's account "bafflingly misguided." Marks suggested the real story was probably that "Holmes, too embarrassed to admit to his hard-ass buddy that...he actually liked girly-pop...fed Frank a steaming plate of cred-saving b******t. And Frank bought it....Now that's ironic."

If memory serves, the Harper's article was even more obnoxiously smug than Brian Doherty's excerpts would lead you to believe; nevertheless, Frank's impulses are very easy to empathize with. (If you'd backed yourself into profiling your friend in a national magazine, wouldn't you be looking for some way...any way...not to admit, in your head and on paper, that you'd discovered in the course of doing your research that he was failing in his ambitions?) But that didn't make his view of things accurate then, and in a strikingly similar way, it doesn't now.

Frank tries to personalize the animus against Washington: "The government and its bureaucrats are, to the right, ever a malign force--jealous, power-hungry and greedy." Okay, sure, there are some small-government types who seem to be fueled by resentment or uncharitableness; but I think it's fair to say that most of us just think that expecting big government to work well (the way most of us mean when we say "work well") goes against what we know about human nature. Which is to say, when you get a bunch of people--anyone--together where they're mostly removed from scrutiny, then encourage them to think it's their job to queen it over a population of 300 million, it's not all that surprising that they start to think largesse is theirs to give and take at their own discretion.

Or as Eric says:

But if I may say a few words in defense of conservatives here, it would be that the government was never actually being run by conservatives, but by untouchable, unaccountable, and above all unelected bureaucrats. It matters very little who is supposedly in charge of them, as they can't be fired and they often have more power than their purported superiors who have to run for office, and who dare not offend the movers and shakers in the bureaucracy.

Even if through some bizarre miracle there were a libertarian majority in Congress, I doubt they'd be able to do much. Government would still fail to fix problems, and problems that government tries to solve invariably demand more government to fix. It's part of the design.

Added on 22 May: Thanks to Eric for the link back. In case I haven't already linked to Classical Values enough this week, Eric put up a related post about whether it's possible to define the "Republican base" usefully. I sincerely think it's worth a read.

Reason.tv has a hilarious conversation posted between Katherine Mangu-Ward and Greg Gutfeld, who hosts Red Eye on Fox News and apparently used to be editor of Men's Health magazine. (I grew up a stone's throw from Rodale Press HQ.) The Hit & Run link makes it sound as if the clip were full of raunch, but I don't think Gutfeld says anything you couldn't get away with on network TV after 10 p.m. or so. (You may still think that's vulgar, but it doesn't seem like a degree of naughtiness worth playing up.) Anyway, he has a lot to say about health-related nanny-state-ism, tiresome moralizing, and keeping your toaster away from meth addicts. A good listen.

Japan has ream upon ream of exquisite poems about spring and autumn; by contrast, there are comparatively few about summer, possibly because the prevailing feeling during that season in most of the archipelago ("how the hell am I going to keep from dying in this heat?!") does not exactly lend itself to sublimeness of expression. However, one of the early summer tropes--and summer according to the lunar calendar begins during the first week of May--is the return of the cuckoo as certain seasonal flowers begin to bloom.

夏草は茂りにけれど郭公などわが宿に一声もせぬ

延喜御歌

natsu kusa ha/shigerinikeredo/hototogisu/nado waga yado ni/hitokoe mo senu

engi no oon'uta

The summer grasses
have come up in abundance,
but why, O cuckoo,
do you not favor my home
with even a single cry?

Engi no Oon'uta

Ick. That translation came out very precious. On the bright side, I was able to go pretty much line by line without having to shuffle things around much; the Japanese for "cuckoo" is five syllables in and of itself, so in a 5-7-5-7-7 verse it takes up a lot of real estate and tends to force you to use filler if you want to try to adhere to the original as much as you can when translating.

The return of the cuckoo when the grasses grow lush and the orange blossoms and deutzia bloom is considered very moving. The poet sees the thickened grass and purports to wonder whether the cuckoo is somehow shunning him. (If it has any sense, it's probably just decided to summer in Alaska this year.)

John at 21st-Century Schizoid Man has been writing a lot about the way we're getting rubber-hosed by the current administration's forays into business and trade engineering.

The second point is how markets were distorted by government regulation in such a way that market-clearing economic activity led to the results that the critics are now calling market failures: the markets didn't fail. They just punished those who followed government-mandated development that no market could sustain.

This is the great tragedy of the recent crisis: that government, which got us into the situation, is actively making things worse. The markets obey the Gods of the Copybook Headings, the unavoidable effects of cause and effect, the inexorable meeting of demand and supply in clearing the market of available goods, what we economists call equilibrium. Politicians sincerely believe that they can manipulate markets to give them the politically desired effects: that works only for a relatively short period of time, as markets will ruthlessly punish those who mess with them. The invisible hand of Adam Smith doesn't care about political goals and will destroy, in the long run, anyone trying to game the markets for political effects.

The Japanese have spent the last two decades finding that out, too.

If you're not depressed enough, Eric links to a piece by Jim Geraghty that argues, fascinatingly if not surprisingly, that Washington is now following the Alinsky model of governance. (Yes, Saul Alinsky, of course.) Eric adds:

Bear in mind that from the voters' standpoint, both sides always say they care more about principle than power, and they always say that the other side has no principles. I think voters tend to be more cynical than is customarily believed, and certainly they're smart enough to realize that to most politicians, "principles" are all about talk. Something the chattering classes and political junkies might debate, but nothing for which any rational politician would risk losing his seat. Besides, how are ordinary people supposed to evaluate the legitimacy of rival politicians' claims to having "principles"? I think it's more likely that in the end, voters will do what the politicians do, and conclude that it's all about power.

There's certainly plenty of evidence to back that up.

I always find it funny when my more liberal friends get all enthusiastic about government as this wonderful vehicle for us as The People to pool our power and realize our Visions. That sounds nice, but in practice it runs smack up against the fact that Americans disagree in good faith over a lot of policy principles, and not everyone can win. Most government officials have narrow experience and expertise just like the rest of us, and asking them to butt in on all kinds of issues they can't possibly have the knowledge to adjudicate is just asking for trouble. It forces voters to monitor what their congresspersons and senators think about anything and everything. It gives Washington officials a broad range of influence to peddle. (Or, if you prefer to believe venality originates with the private sector, it gives lobbyists of every stripe a reason to come calling.) And it gets those officials addicted to the (heady, one can only imagine) feeling that they have not only the authority but also the know-how to drive the economy and engineer society. And this is what we get.

Added after a few more sips of coffee: I pushed "Submit" before remembering to add this back in: I realize it's not just liberals who openly romanticize government who vote for meddlesome nanny-state policies and distortionary entitlements. There are as many on the right as on the left who could stand to bear in mind the old libertarian saw that it's dangerous to increase the powers of the state under the assumption that your friends are always going to be those enforcing them.

Redundancy of the week goes to Camille Paglia's Salon.com editor, who summarizes her column thus: "The assassination jokes and 'liberal' conspiracy theories on talk radio could be an ominous sign of things to come."

Paglia herself says that her worries stem from listening to talk radio:

With the national Republican party in disarray, an argument is solidifying among grass-roots conservatives: Liberals, who are now in power in Washington, hate America and want to dismantle its foundational institutions and liberties, including capitalism and private property. Liberals are rootless internationalists who cravenly appease those who want to kill us. The primary principle of conservatives, on the other hand, is love of country, for which they are willing to sacrifice and die. America's identity was forged by Christian faith and our Founding Fathers, to whose prudent and unerring 18th-century worldview we must return.

In a harried, fragmented, media-addled time, there is an invigorating simplicity to this political fundamentalism. It is comforting to hold fast to hallowed values, to defend tradition against the slackness of relativism and hedonism. But when the tone darkens toward a rhetoric of purgation and annihilation, there is reason for alarm.

I've never been a talk radio listener, so I can't really determine whether Paglia is accurately perceiving what she hears there. But the read I've gotten--from the Tea Party demonstrations, from my working-class relatives, from news sources, from blogs--is less aimed specifically at "liberals," who have always been in the cross-hairs of much of the American public, than at insider politicians and their hangers-on, who any sensible person knows are on both sides of the aisle. Of course liberals and Democrats are taking most of the heat right now; they are, in fact, in power. They control the presidency and both houses of congress, and they got there by campaigning on pharisaical displays of outrage at conservative and Republican nastiness and making promises that they would change the way things are done. Now that they're in power, of course, it's still politics as usual, only more so: favoritism (whether bestowed on an individual tax evader who happens to be in line for a cabinet post or on a labor union), fantastical levels of spending, and a war policy that has changed very little (despite all the rhetorical arabesques). Paglia baffles me by continuing to insist "what a fresh new breeze Obama represents in Washington." We all saw her susceptibility to charisma in the Clinton era, but at least then she had a rueful sense of self-awareness about it.

Speaking of people who get Camille exercised, Julie Burchill is interviewed in the Guardian--hilarious and well worth reading as always:

Bindel: You describe yourself as a "militant feminist". What does that mean to you?

Burchill: "A girl who likes to have fun" ... and a lot of other stuff obviously. Someone who realises that women's human rights are more important than cultural "sensitivity". Like it's sensitive to cut someone's clitoris off! Someone who doesn't give a toss about the approval of others - men and women.

A woman that cheeks and insults men, righteously and politically, but also for kicks and fun. I like men and get on much better with them one to one than I do women, who can be a bit emotional. But part of what makes a man a man is that he never takes offence! When you see sad-sacks like, what was his name, Neil something [Lyndon, author of No More Sex War: the Failures of Feminism]. "Men's Lib" - that's the opposite of a man, to me. Just shut up and take your lumps. And then we can all have a laugh.

Obviously, having had the father I had I have very high expectations of men. On the whole, in the west, where feminism has made its mark, I think they've done great. It's so lovely that even in prison, men who aren't touchy-feely have to be stopped from beating up rapists - not just child molesters, but rapists of grown women. It's a shame that educated middle-class leftwing men can't take feminism on board so effectively.

Bindel: I much prefer women to men. A lot of them are emotional cripples. Have you not found that? Are we such different feminists do you think?

Burchill: I don't want to hear about every last thing someone is feeling. I think most men have it about right. All men should be like my dad!

...

Bindel: Is your Christian faith still important?

Burchill: I would rather be a Jew. I find it hard to think of myself as an Anglican while the head of the church is a cowardly suck-up like Rowan Williams. I'm hoping that Dr John Sentamu, the Archbishop of York, will get the gig next. He's my absolute hero.

Bindel: Why would you want to be a Jew?

Burchill: I love everything about the Jews. But I probably won't become one, as I like the view from the outside. I will probably just remain a Christian Zionist; it's a long and honourable tradition.

Via Alice.

Bruce Bawer writes that he's received a number of responses to his most recent City Journal piece, which says in part:

More and more Western Europeans, recognizing the threat to their safety and way of life, have turned their backs on the establishment, which has done little or nothing to address these problems, and begun voting for parties—some relatively new, and all considered right-wing—that have dared to speak up about them. One measure of the dimensions of this shift: Owing to the rise in gay-bashings by Muslim youths, Dutch gays—who 10 years ago constituted a reliable left-wing voting bloc—now support conservative parties by a nearly 2-to-1 margin.

The other major reason for the turn against the left is economic. Western Europeans have long paid sky-high taxes for a social safety net that seems increasingly not worth the price. These taxes have slowed economic growth. Timbro's Johnny Munkhammar noted in 2005 that Sweden, for instance, which in the first half of the 20th century had the world's second-highest growth rate, had since fallen to No. 14, owing to enormous tax hikes.

...

The past few decades in Europe have made three things crystal-clear. First, social-democratic welfare systems work best, to the extent they do work, in ethnically and culturally homogeneous (and preferably small) nations whose citizens, viewing one another as members of an extended family, are loath to exploit government provisions for the needy. Second, the best way to destroy such welfare systems is to take in large numbers of immigrants from poor, oppressive and corruption-ridden societies, whose rule of the road is to grab everything you can get your hands on. And third, the system will be wiped out even faster if many of those immigrants are fundamentalist Muslims who view bankrupting the West as a contribution to jihad. Add to all this the growing power of an unelected European Union bureaucracy that has encouraged Muslim immigration and taken steps to punish criticism of it—criminalizing "incitement of racism, xenophobia or hatred against a racial, ethnic or religious group" in 2007, for example—and you can start to understand why Western Europeans who prize their freedoms are resisting the so-called leadership of their see-no-evil elites.

...

If the Danes have affirmed individual liberty, human rights, sexual equality, the rule of law, and freedom of speech and religion, some Western Europeans have reacted to the mindless multiculturalism of their socialist leaders by embracing alternatives that seem uncomfortably close to fascism. Consider Austria's recently deceased Jörg Haider, who belittled the Holocaust, honored Waffen-SS veterans, and found things to praise about Nazism. In 2000, his Freedom Party became part of a coalition government, leading the rest of the EU to isolate Austria diplomatically for a time, and last September his new party, the Alliance for the Future of Austria, won 11% of the vote in parliamentary elections. Or take Jean-Marie Le Pen, who has called the Holocaust "a detail in the history of World War II" and advocated the forced quarantining of people who test HIV-positive—and whose far-right National Front came out on top in the first round of voting for the French presidency in 2002. The British National Party (BNP), which has a whites-only membership policy and has flatly denied the Holocaust, won more than 5% of the vote in London's last mayoral election. Then there's Vlaams Belang (Flemish Interest), formerly Vlaams Bloc, whose leaders have a regrettable tendency to be caught on film singing Nazi songs and buying Nazi books. In 2007, it won 5 out of 40 seats in the Belgian Senate.

He's posted an update on his blog--there are no links to individual posts but this is the one timestamped "Wednesday, May 6, 2009, 9:28 P.M. CET":

The other day, in the wake of my City Journal piece "Heirs to Fortuyn?", a couple of anti-jihad writers who had not yet rebuked me for my stance on Vlaams Belang finally got around to doing so. Not only did they send me e-mails taking me to task for criticizing VB in that article; one of them also took it upon himself to chew me out for, in his view, admiring Pim Fortuyn too much and Geert Wilders too little. (Never mind that I've defended Wilders frequently and that Wilders has blurbed my new book, Surrender.) Wilders, this individual felt compelled to lecture me, is a far greater figure than Fortuyn ever was. Why? Because, he explained, Wilders stands for "Western values," while Fortuyn stood only for – get ready for this – "Dutch libertinism."

Yes, "Dutch libertinism." The words took my breath away. During the last few days (while, as it happened, I was visiting Amsterdam) I haven't been able to get them out of my mind. For a self-styled anti-jihadist – who, by the way, I first met three years ago at the Pim Fortuyn Memorial Conference in The Hague – to refer in this way to a man who sacrificed his life for human liberty is, in my view, not only incomprehensible but profoundly despicable. This is, after all, precisely the sort of language that Dutch Muslim leaders hurled at Fortuyn during his lifetime. And in the present case the words were plainly aimed not only at Fortuyn but at me – a writer who, like Fortuyn, that great martyr for freedom, is gay.

Some of these people probably had contempt for Fortuyn all along but were willing not to repudiate him as long as he was one of the few high-profile advocates of classical liberalism. It doesn't take a major leap to see their becoming fans of the Vlaams Belang (which from everything I've ever heard is seriously wacko), either.

What's more worrisome is the number of sensible, rank-and-file Western European citizens who may be figuring that the emerging alternatives to the left establishment are the only useful corrective and pushback available at this point, and that the unpalatable fascist undercurrents can be dealt with later. It seems a dangerous game to play in light of history.

Added at 20:44: Oh, and speaking of people with Norway connections who don't swim with the social-democratic current around them, Rondi Adamson was profiled last week on Normblog, and it's an interesting read.

Added on 12 May: Thanks to Eric for the link.

Come to think of it, he's got Norwegian blood, too.

You've already been told to watch this, haven't you? I think Jon Stewart's often very funny, but on this particular topic, what Bill Whittle says in response to his statements--which are not only not funny but positively monstrous--cannot be repeated enough. Note that, unless I missed it, he was able to make his case without even mentioning Unit 731 or anything else about the kempeitai, either. He also doesn't mention, regarding the charge that America was just trying to show the Soviet Union who's boss, that it was Japan that had decided it was a good idea to start playing the Soviets off the United States in the first place. (I'm not saying his argument is therefore flawed, only that he hasn't exhausted the material he could have used to support it.)

I adore Japan. I happily took a degree in Japanese literature, and I loved every minute of the eleven years I lived in Tokyo; while I'm very happy to be home, there are many things I miss about it. I work in an all-Japanese office (except for me, obviously). I'm glad we're strategic and military partners now.

But now is not then. War with an implacable enemy requires tough choices, and I'm glad our grandfathers made saving their own people the top priority.

Added later: Whittle also has a blog post with quite a few good comments, including one by Connie du Toit that recommends an episode from the documentary The World at War, which you may remember from when it was broadcast on television.

So if I understand this article correctly, if you give into the (thoroughly understandable) temptation to administer a good, sound beating-up to Barney Frank, the hate-crimes bill that just passed the House says...uh...you'd better not be thinking about his homosexuality while you're doing it? You'd better not be thinking about what other homos might feel if they hear about it?

The legislators quoted as supporting the bill seem to be vague on what actual good it will do. (I realize that soundbites are often like that, but this seems like one of those cases in which a pithy statement of purpose shouldn't be all that hard to make.)

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., a supporter of the bill, contended it was protection for gays that drove the opposition.

"I wonder if our friends on the other side of the aisle would be singing the same offensive tune if we were talking about hate crimes based on race or religion," she said, referring to Republican opponents. "It seems to me it is the category of individuals that they are offended by, rather than the fact that we have hate crimes laws at all."

She then recounted cases where gay people were victims of violence.

The issue was personal for openly gay Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., who said the bill would protect "people like me." He said he wasn't asking for approval from people with whom he didn't want to associate.

Answering those who said the protections were not needed, Frank quoted Chico Marx, one of the Marx Brothers comedy team, from the movie "Duck Soup": "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

Eric, of course, got on this immediately:

The horrendous expansion of federal power in the "Matthew Shepard Act" serves as proof of how wrong it was to have hate crime legislation in the first place. Adding new categories only compounds the error.

Of course, few people will take the time to analyze these things. They just hear the sound bytes about how it's "doing something about gay bashing" on the one hand, or "attacking Christian free speech" on the other.

Eric posted a great deal about hate-crimes legislation a few years ago, and as he mentions in his latest post, he took a lot of heat for it. IIRC, there were two main arguments from supporters: (1) since hate-crimes provisions only apply to sentencing guidelines, they don't actually create a new class of crimes, and (2) hate crimes deserve special designation because they do more harm--they damage whole groups, not just their direct individual victims, and they also damage those victims more--and have been found not to run afoul of the Equal Protection Clause.

Those distinctions aren't meaningless, but I think they mostly score more points with legal theorists than with citizens debating how we want society to run in ethical and moral terms. There's all sorts of legislation that's possible under the Constitution but isn't a good idea. And judges already have latitude in sentencing if they're dealing with seriously egregious criminals.

So I think that what it comes down to is whether you accept the premise of greater harm, which I've always found highly suspect. Knowing that there are psychos--or even just miscreants--out to get you may paralyze you with fear if you're that sort of person, but it could just as easily galvanize you into forming a crime-watch group, taking self-defense lessons, or (here's an idea) buying a gun. I've never once seen good evidence for the constant contention that being targeted by an attacker for being gay somehow necessarily inflicts more psychological distess than being targeted by an attacker who sees you as a Total Perosn and hates you for who you are in all your fascinating, kaleidoscopic modalities. And as for group harm, there's a thoroughly creepy assumption that we have some sort of queer hive-mind, through which we passively receive transmissions of dread.

What I suspect undergirds a lot of this is the idea that gays deserve some sort of redress because we've Suffered Enough. Getting the police to take a gay-bashing seriously used to be for the most part a lost cause. Even today, growing up gay is far from easy, but a lot of the difficulty is stuff that you just have to suck up. You can't punish parents for telegraphing that they're disappointed they won't get grandchildren the conventional way, or kids for keeping a classmate at arm's length because she's on the butch side. However, if someone commits an illegal act motivated by anti-gay animus, you can try to ensure that the law really let's him have it and thereby give gay people some sense that balance has been restored.

But there's a problem with that thinking--aside from the moral outrage of using an offender as a stand-in for others. It sends the message that gays have to be treated with extra-special tenderness, even by law enforcement and the court system, which is not exactly the way to defeat the old charge that we're all drama queens. Enshrining, in federal legislation, the idea that gays are more emotionally vulnerable than others...and that the community fabric is more easily rent when we're victimized, or something...is just a kindly motivated way of telling us yet again that we're not grown-ups.

Added later: I've reinserted a sentence that got lost during cutting and pasting.

It should be obvious by this point that I just kind of stop posting for weeks now and then, but I'm still grateful to those who've dropped a line to ask what's up. Nothing in particular--except, perhaps, that my currently working as a translator considerably lowers the motivation to use free time to search out interesting Japanese news and translate it. And now that cherry blossom season is over there's kind of a dead space for seasonal poetry.

There's never a dead space for political idiocy, however, and Sweden resident Michael Moynihan pounces on some from a recent episode of The Daily Show:

Not a particularly funny bit, considering the available material, but a few points about the total awesomeness of Swedish social democracy and the show's but-we're-only-joking case for the Swedish model. (They are, after all, making a serious political point in an unserious way.) Cenac's interview with ex-Abba frontman Björn Ulvaeus, during which he attempts to get him to admit that the song "Money, Money, Money" is a paean to American capitalism, leaves one with the impression that the millionaire songwriter is rather pleased with his country's glorious socialist history. Well, no.

In 2007, the Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter (DN) reported that governent "authorities claim[ed] Ulvaeus, using the services of a tax haven company, concealed millions in music production income to avoid paying taxes." DN points out that "Since 1990 Ulvaeus royalties have been collected in a Dutch company, now known as Fintage. The company made a deal with the tax haven company Stanove, on the Dutch Antilles, to transfer 95% of [Abba's] royalties there." And avoid giving it to a mother desperately in need of a second year of maternity leave.

Nor is this a new issue for Ulvaeus. In 1982, before the Social Democratic Party returned to power on promises of soaking the rich, the Christian Science Monitor reported that Abba's manager Stig Anderson was "deeply concerned by the threat of a Socialist takeover of his [business] empire. 'If we had had these funds today, we would have been forced this year to part with about $US2.16 million...Why should I continue to work 14-15 hours a day to give money away like this?...We don't want to leave Sweden. Our roots are here. We have our friends here. I intend to stay here and fight these funds even if the Social Democrats are elected. But if it becomes impossible, of course it would be very easy for us to move out.'"

All of this is, of course, just an excuse to indulge my recent ABBA jag. Here the four are performing the song from which I've snagged the title for this post:



Some child-of-the-'70s observations: Agnetha looks like a Cheryl Ladd who might actually pull a gun and waste you if need be. And Benny has exactly the same mannerisms at the piano as Christine McVie--from the little smile to the way the hair moves. And look at how tiny those microphones are! They were cutting edge, they were. And tell me you've every seen anyone look as fierce in a quilted jacket as Frida.

Bjorn doesn't seem to be doing much; he just kind of reminds me of Dana Carvey.

Lest you think I've forgotten about Japan, here's another performance for Japanese TV from the same period:



Can you imagine any production getting away with such a static set and nonexistent choreography today--especially when there's not even any pretense that the band is performing live? Nowadays, poor Agnetha and Frida would have been rehearsed to within an inch of their lives, and there'd have to be something projected on the wall behind that arc-balloon thing.

Added later: Oops--I think Moynihan has permanent residency in Sweden but now lives in DC. At least, he does if his bio at Reason.com is updated.

This article in the Mainichi reports that the flow of refugees across the northern DPRK border has slowed. The reason? Much of it is financed by organizations in prosperous South Korea, but the world economic slowdown is making funding scarce. The blurb says:

The number of dappokusha fleeing from North Korea to China has decreased substantially. Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture, Jilin Province, China, which abuts the PRC-DPRK border. It's the biggest stronghold of the refugee business, but the activities of the brokers who maneuver behind the scenes guiding refugees through are at a standstill. This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and in addition to a heightened level of alert at the border, the effects of the financial crisis have stopped the money that gets to them from South Korea. However, the defections supported by the brokers are a "necessary evil." Beyond the border, there's a backlog of desperate people.

The article itself is of the punchy human-interest type, relating information about a particular broker:

The man is a former member of the PRC armed forces. His role is to move dappokusha who've crossed the Tuman River to a hideout in an apartment building in Yanbian. According to the man, there are (1) a border-crossing team, which works with collaborators on the DPRK side and guides [refugees] through the border crossing; (2) the man's conveyance team; (3) the hideout-management team; (4) the long-distance-conveyance team, [to move people further] to Beijing and elsewhere. When dappokusha succeed in defecting to South Korea, suitable remuneration [in the form of] processing fees is largely provided by a support organization there in the ROK.

The situation on the ROK side is a major reason defection has decreased. It's figured that "processing fees paid to Chinese brokers run an average of 100000 yuan (approx.1.4 million yen)," according to [a source] affiliated with a support organization. The man's client is a South Korean religious group; donations from organizations and individuals were an effective source of capital, but "the Korean economy has cooled off, and donations have dropped of dramatically, so the flow of money is poor," he added.

1.4 million yen is about $14000.

I love this report in the Yomiuri:

South Korea's Yonhap News Agency announced on 29 March that there is a possibility that the launch of North Korea's long-range ballistic missile under the guise of an "artificial satellite" will take place after 6 April due to weather conditions.

North Korea has announced that to international organizations that the launch will take place between 4 and 8 April, but according to the Yonhap wire service, The [Republic of] Korea Meteorological Agency has forecast that, at the launch base in Musudanri, North Hambyong Province, weather conditions will be "overcast beginning 3 April, with rain or snow falling on the afternoon of 4 April, and heavy cloud cover on 5 April also."

However, ROK forecasts have a bad reputation with citizens as "often inaccurate."

Oh. All right, then.

Another Yomiuri article, this time posted to the English site, says that intercepting the missile could be difficult for Japan because, of course, no one knows exactly where it will go. This handy diagram is appended:






If you're having a hard time reading that, the red lines represent paths in which the rocket falls on land in Japan--the solid line if it's the first booster rocket to separate, the dotted line if there's just not enough thrust off the launchpad and the whole thing flops.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei today carries the headline "Make due preparation for North Korea missile tests."

In response to the North Korean ballistic missile test, nominally [for] an "artificial satellite," the government has convened a security meeting and confirmed a plan to intercept the missile if it falls over Japan's territory or territorial waters; Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada has for the first time issued an order, predicated on the Self-Defense Force Law, to destroy it.

...

Prime Minister Taro Aso instructed [attendees] at the security meeting to "be vigilant and adopt a firm and resolute stance." If there is disarray in Japan, the result will only be that we've played into North Korea's hands. In order to avoid that, at the stage when the launch date is imminent, and even more after the launch, the appropriate providing of information by the government will be indispensable. That point must especially be emphasized from the get-go.

The Japanese and United States governments have declared that, even if it were an "artificial satellite," the launch would violate UNSC Resolution 1695, which was adopted after North Korea launched a series of missiles in July 2006, and UNSC Resolution 1718, from after the nuclear tests of October that year. Improvements in the performance of North Korean missiles are a direct threat to the U.S. and Japan.

Accordingly, U.S. Secretary of State Clinton warned that "this will affect the six-party talks revolving around nuclear issues, and [North Korea] will end up paying high compensation." If North Korea ignores the warning and forges ahead with the launch, a debate will be raised at the UNSC [over measures that] include sanctions.

On the other hand, the Spokesperson for the DPRK Minister of Foreign Affairs [stated] that, if the Security Council makes an issue of the "launch of an artificial satellite," then "denuclearization will be set back, and we will adopt the necessary strong measures," implying a resumption of nuclear testing. This development reminds one of 2006, with its series of missile launches and nuclear testing. That's possibly due to expecations that the scenario in which the U.S. government did a 180 [and pursue] a path of conciliation after the nuclear testing.

That switch to a path of conciliation is linked to the refusal [to allow] inspection during denuclearization, and to the new missile tests. If we consider these facts, it is necessary for not only Japan, the U.S., and South Korea, but also [all other] participants in the six-party talks, including China and Russia, to be sure of their resolve not to repeat the mistake.

The Japanese phrase used at the end there is 過ちを繰り替えさない, which echoes--I can't imagine this is a coincidence, given that it's part of the last sentence of an op-ed about nuclear weapons--the inscription on the Hiroshima memorial: 安らかに眠って下さい/過ちは繰り返しませぬから ("Rest in peace, for we will not repeat the mistake").

I'm apparently getting slack, because I didn't look out for this aspect of the Aso-Obama meeting, which had been toyed with a bit beforehand:

It turns out that North Korea and the global financial crisis were not the only topics on Prime Minister Taro Aso's mind during summit talks Tuesday in Washington with President Barack Obama.

He also tried to sell the U.S. leader on Shinkansen technology; Obama's reaction to the pitch was also keenly awaited back in Japan.

...

Aso's pitch to Obama likely came after lobbying by Japanese railway companies eager to join in a plan being pushed by California for the United States' first high-speed rail system. It is estimated to cost 3 trillion yen to construct the system, with plans calling for partial operations starting in 2020.

Yoshiyuki Kasai, chairman of Central Japan Railway Co. (JR Tokai), attended an international conference on the environment in Los Angeles in January.

He played up the advantages of the Shinkansen, saying "among high-speed trains, Japan's bullet trains emit a small volume of carbon dioxide and the trains also cause comparatively little noise and vibration."

The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism is setting up a group to promote bullet train exports that will include members from trading companies and JR Tokai and East Japan Railway Co. (JR East).

A specialist from the ministry's Railway Bureau will be permanently based in the United States.

California's provisional high-speed rail plan is, I have no doubt, as porky as any other such proposal, but at least it's a region in which HSR actually makes sense. Like the Northeast Corridor, the SAN-SAN belt is long and narrow but short enough for it to be reasonable to expect plenty of people to make a trade-off between air speed and rail thrift. (Not sure what happens when you factor in the subsidies.) So, of course, is Japan--especially if you're not going all the way from Sapporo to Fukuoka, which most people aren't.

The bullet train in Japan really is a boon, and so is its newer cousin in Taiwan, which opened two years ago after a string of bidding and construction hiccups. It would be a bad idea for the US to go overboard on the boffo ground transportation projects, though...especially if federal money means Amtrak could be involved.

The lead editorial in the Nikkei munches over whether and why Prime Minister Aso was dissed on his state visit to Washington:

Prime Minister Taro Aso became the first foreign head of state to visit the White House during the Obama administration. It was the worst possible timing from the vantage point of public opinion vis-a-vis America, overlapping with President Obama's first address to congress and [coming when] interest within the US was low.

...

After the meeting, the plan was for both heads of state to announce the content of their conversation to the press corps, but even that didn't happen. The prime minister appeared before the press corps; however, the president didn't show his face, and instead the White House presented a simple statement of twenty-one lines.

The opening of the statement was "Today, President Obama conducted a detailed conference with the prime minister of Japan revolving around cooperation between the two nations in the areas of the global economic crisis and other matters." Really? He thought of himself as hosting "the prime minister of Japan" rather than Prime Minister Aso?

President Obama, during the photo session before the meeting, stated, "US-Japan friendship is of extreme importance, which is the reason that I asked the prime minister to be the first top-ranking foreign official to visit the Oval Office."

However, if one looks at the visit overall, it wasn't really consistent with the gravity of protocol toward the first foreign head of state to make a visit.

The administrations are different, so exact comparisons cannot be made, but during the Bush administration, both Prime Ministers Jun'ichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe went to Camp David for their first visits. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda stayed at Blair House (the state guesthouse). Prime Minister Aso stayed at a hotel in Washington.

In matters of meetings betweent heads of state, the content is crucial, and it isn't appropriate to exaggerate peripheral problems. However, this time around, both the US and Japan underscored the protocol significance of being the first visitor. In the world of diplomacy, if we take protocol to be important also, it comparisons with precedent must be made.

Foreign relations influence domestic politics. Prime Minister Aso, who's in uncomfortable territory where domestic politics is concerned, may have sought an early visit to the US in hopes that the effect would be to buoy him decisively. That the US accepted has been said to be the result of being mindful of China.

On the other hand, domestic politics also influence foreign relations. They give Aso a respectful welcome as the prime minister of Japan, but that doesn't mean they wish to build an individual relationship [as] fellow politicians--and if you look hard at the reality of Japanese domestic politics, for the moment it wouldn't seem unreasonable if that were President Obama's thinking.

The comments section is still going on this piece on IGF, which was given the promising headline "Gay. And Republican. And Not Confused." There are good arguments for gay Republicans to make: it's easier to change social conservatives' minds about gay issues by working alongside them rather than as adversaries, being in the DNC's pocket just gives the Dems a dependable voting bloc without having to deliver in hard policy terms, and politics is always about making trade-offs among competing political principles, among others.

Writer Alex Knepper does touch on those things, but unfortunately, he can't help taking the martyred-gay-conservative tack, which is possibly the single best way to ensure that independents and doubting lefties stay far, far away from the GOP. You, dear reader, may never think about anything but your sexuality, but know ye that Alex Knepper is more complex than you can hope to imagine. (And forget that throwaway final paragraph, which is misdirection at its most disingenuous--no one starts every sentence with "I believe" this and "I realize" that out of humility):

I believe that the gay subculture is destructive. I am not completely sure why a person should be "proud" of his sexuality, which is not an accomplishment. I am confused by the discord between a group of people who insist that they're just like everyone else on one hand and then on the other refuse to assimilate into mainstream society.

I am unable to relate to the faction of gay men who revolve their lives around their sexuality: their neighborhood is gay, their friends are gay, their music and movies are gay, their academic interests are gay, the stores that they frequent are gay — their lives are gay. I am not interested, though, in living my life as a gay man, but simply as a man. I envision a future in which a person's sexual orientation will be an afterthought. I do not in any way whatsoever see the Democratic Party furthering that.

I have been discriminated against more by Democrats than by Republicans. I have been shunned and mocked by Democrats, many of whom will not accept me as a gay man unless I fit into their neatly packaged view of what a gay man is "supposed" to be. I have yet to encounter, on the other hand, a Republican who has rejected my presence in the party, shunned me on a personal level or refused to engage me on the issues.

Well, no, being homosexual isn't an accomplishment, but then, neither is being left-handed or Italian. People express pride in all kinds of characteristics they came to through inheritance or circumstance, and we normally understand them to mean that they're proud to identify with the people with the same raw materials who use them for good rather than ill. Of course, if you wander around gay groups looking for people to feel superior to, you'll find a way. But you can deplore much that's done under the banner of gay pride without dismissing the entire "gay subculture" as worthless and self-destructive. IGF, which is providing Knepper with a broader audience than his college newspaper, is a gay institution.

The commenters are accusing one another of being snippy at the expense of substance, but for the most part, they largely strike me as sticking pretty closely to one major issue: how do you make compromises without being a patsy? (There's also some back-and-forth about actual policy, but it's the usual snowball fight rather than a debate.)

Secretary of State Clinton--who'd have thought a year ago that we'd be typing that?--has visited Japan, where she met separately with Prime Minister Taro Aso, Minister of Foreign Affairs Hirofumi Nakasone, and Minister of Defense Yasukazu Hamada.

Secretary of State Clinton, at a joint press conference after her meeting with the Foreign Minister, issued a warning, strongly underscoring that "North Korea has intimated that there is a possibility of missile launches, but such behavior serves no purpose, and it will not aid in the progress of (US-DPRK) relations." At the meeting with the Prime Minister, she stated, in connection with North Korea issues, "We would like to come to a decisive solution within the framework of the six-party talks, and that would include the Japanese abductee issue."

At the meeting with the Defense Minister, she touched on the activities of the Maritime Defense Force, which is investigating Japanese deployments to combat piracy off the coast of Somalia, and issued a request: "We would be grateful if you could look into the possibility of providing aid and defense to foreign ships in times of emergency." The Defense Minister responded, "We're considering that and looking into a new law [that would make it possible to provide defense for foreign-registered ships as well]."

It's hard to tell whether the "comprehensive solution" referred to in the headline will come to pass. It's not even certain that the DPRK knows where all the abductees as yet unaccounted for ended up, painful as that is for the Japanese families in question. Tokyo has tried to get Washington and Beijing to put pressure on Pyongyang, but the issue tends to get backburnered, and it's not really because of callousness. The nuclear and black-market issues are very pressing, while the abductee issue doesn't appear to be. There's been no information that I've seen recently to suggest that there are known living abductees waiting to be repatriated.

And yes, I've heard about soon-to-be-former Minister of Finance Shoichi Nakagawa's unfortunate sensitivity to his cold medicine. You really have to watch out for those side-effects.

I'm a fan of Miss Manners, so people sometimes assume I must be one of those people who seek out copies of old etiquette books; but I'm really not. To me, writers who lack her Lewis Carroll sense of mischief about human interaction are kind of dull, if improving in an anthropological sense.

The anthropology itself can be fun, though. I wandered into the 1922 Emily Post on Bartleby a few days ago, and just about every chapter has some sort of surprise.

There's the section on how a gentleman asks a lady to dance at a ball, which contains this paragraph:

When a gentleman is introduced to a lady he says, "May I have some of this?" or "Would you care to dance?"

I don't hang out at hetero clubs much anymore, most of my friends being safely paired off by now, but I'm pretty sure if a guy walks up to a woman in a dance place and says, "May I have some of this?" he'd better be staring directly at the plate of sliders parked next to her margarita if he doesn't want serious trouble.

The language can be surprising, too. The association of diamonds with ice is pretty obvious and primal, but I wasn't aware people like Emily Post were throwing it around back then.

In your jewelry let diamonds be conspicuous by their absence. Nothing is more vulgar than a display of "ice" on a man's shirt front, or on his fingers.

It's also somehow comforting to know that elegant was being pretentiously overused even then:

There are certain words which have been singled out and misused by the undiscriminating until their value is destroyed. Long ago "elegant" was turned from a word denoting the essence of refinement and beauty, into gaudy trumpery.

Yes. It's really annoying that you can't actually use elegant to mean "simple and uncluttered" and expect people to know what you mean. A shame that that started so long ago.

I'm not sure what to make of her chapter on traveling abroad. Perhaps at that point, Americans really were the only group that had a tendency toward coarsely loud merriment that wouldn't leave other travelers in peace and a high-handed attitude toward servitors. That crowd seems to have expanded since then, though, if my experience in Asia is any indication.

If the predictable awfulness of the stimulus bill is so predictably awful that you're so incapable of getting worked up over it and kind of fear you're dead inside, Reason.com asked a group of libertarian-leaning economists to descant on the many specific ways it promises to suck. Even Deirdre McCloskey, who's usually good for at least one wicked laugh, doesn't find much funny. She does note one of the ways we got here and will probably get here again:

At less than full employment the Keynesian stuff works. So the minority of the quickie expenditures will "put people back to work"--until we return to almost-full employment, which will happen pretty quickly in the recovery. At that point the stimulus will merely crowd out private investment. In the short run people might get more cheerful, too, always a good thing. But in two years the recession will be over. And the myth will grow up--rather similar to the ones about FDR and war expenditure--that Obama did it. Essentially, Obama will get credit for the self-adjusting character of the economy. I reckon we should start preparing that other face of Mount Rushmore.

Former Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi, who made privatization of Japan Post his line in the sand in the run-up to the 2005 snap election, isn't pleased with current Prime Minister Taro Aso's performance on the subject:

On 12 February, Former Prime Minister Jun'ichiro Koizumi of the LDP made his greetings at a gathering held at party headquarters to call for progress in Japan Post privatization and roundly criticized a series of pronouncements by Prime Minister Taro Aso related to Japan Post privatization: "If there's no trust in the prime minister's statements, we won't be able to put up a good fight in elections."

Koizumi censured the prime minister for his statements, saying, "I'm flat-out disgusted--to the point that I want to laugh more than get angry." He indicated that "the way things have been recently, it makes me wonder whether the prime minister hasn't since before been taking shots at people who are trying to do battle (in the lower house election)."

Among other things, Aso has contended on NHK that the apportionment of the privatized Japan Post has not been settled--which is to say, people knew Japan Post was to be privatized, but not that it was to be divided into four subsidiaries (retail bank, insurance, distribution/conveyance of letters and parcels, and window services/storefront operations) under the holding company.

I'm not sure how it's possible to think such a thing. The structure of the new Japan Post was debated, and debated, and debated. Japanese news yak shows, which love flow charts, diagrammed it. If there were people who didn't understand that the proposed structure was a sticking point, that's their problem.

Of course, the bill that passed was a compromise, meaning that those of us who supported privatization rather than "privatization" were given cause for worry. The government is supposed to spin banking and insurance off completely by 2017 and to retain a one-third stake in the postal operations, but a lot can happen in a decade. From the moment the privatization bill was drafted, its lack of provisions against mutual shareholding raised fears that the four new companies would find a way to remain shackled to each other. There was a bill introduced in 2007 to freeze the selling off of stakes and assets; it passed the upper house, which is in control of the opposition. And the bank (Yucho) and insurance (Kampo) arms have been pushing to compete in the marketplace with their private counterparts, which lack the advantages of continued government stakes and brand assocation.

Yucho is also the world's largest bank by assets. Together with Kampo, it holds roughly a quarter of Japanese household assets (lots of federal bonds, too). But having been a branch of the government and then a semi-public corporation gives Japan Post Holdings and its hatchlings additional potential for collusion and sweetheart deals. The selling off of group of hotels owned by Kampo was canceled after allegations that the bid was far too low. The postal part of the operation has been busy, too. Japan Post Holdings had existed for approximately three nanoseconds when it made a deal with Nittsu (Nippon Express) to consolidate parcel services. The new brand name (it's the Obama Era now, so maybe イエス郵ペリカン?) debuts later this year. There was serious discussion of mutual shareholding, too. Who wouldn't want to get in on infrastructure initally set up by the government and still bearing its imprimatur?

To be competitive without falling back on their state-controlled history, the service companies are going to need to streamline their operations, but the closures and firings that would be necessary to do so have been hotly contested. The old postal service had unprofitable outlets throughout rural Japan, but they became not only embodiments of its mandate to serve all citizens equally but also fiefdoms for ill-supervised local postmasters, who repaid the LDP by drumming up votes in the countryside to help keep it in power. The LDP has more free-market supporters than the opposition, which isn't saying much to begin with, but many officials are wary of biting the hand that has fed them for so long.

OUCH. I love to see Kylie looking fabulous, and I'm glad the girls at Go Fug Yourself noticed, but that last line is so true it's painful. (The poll results are, too, at least at this point.)