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Post-300: Luther on the Book of Revelation

Posted on April 29, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

The two acquaintances I mentioned in #298 (“The Beginning is Near”) belong to a certain Korean church or (church-like entity) with very unorthodox teachings “based on” wild interpretations of the Book of Revelation. They say Revelation specifically prophesies the coming of their own leader (a Korean man born in the 1930s), who is a kind of Christ-like figure in their belief.

I don’t much trust people who talk too much about the Book of Revelation. As I see it, that book and its dream-like apocalyptic imagery is (at best) fuel for wild yet idle speculation under the cover of allegedly divine revelation.

I’ve heard that Luther had similar things to say on it. Here is Luther’s highly critical preface to Revelation:

About this Book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinions. I would not have anyone bound to my opinion or judgment. I say what I feel. I miss more than one thing in this book, and it makes me consider it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.

First and foremost, the apostles do not deal with visions, but prophesy in clear and plain words, as do Peter and Paul, and Christ in the gospel. For it befits the apostolic office to speak clearly of Christ and his deeds, without images and visions. Moreover there is no prophet in the Old Testament, to say nothing of the New, who deals so exclusively with visions and images. For myself, I think it approximates the Fourth Book of Esdras; I can in no way detect that the Holy Spirit produced it.

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Luther’s Preface to Revelation, continued:

Moreover he seems to me to be going much too far when he commends his own book so highly [Revelation 22]—indeed, more than any of the other sacred books do, though they are much more important—and threatens that if anyone takes away anything from it, God will take away from him, etc. Again, they are supposed to be blessed who keep what is written in this book; and yet no one knows what that is, to say nothing of keeping it. This is just the same as if we did not have the book at all. And there are many far better books available for us to keep.

Many of the fathers also rejected this book a long time ago; although St. Jerome, to be sure, refers to it in exalted terms and says that it is above all praise and that there are as many mysteries in it as words. Still, Jerome cannot prove this at all, and his praise at numerous places is too generous.

Finally, let everyone think of it as his own spirit leads him. My spirit cannot accommodate itself to this book. For me this is reason enough not to think highly of it: Christ is neither taught nor known in it. But to teach Christ, this is the thing which an apostle is bound above all else to do; as Christ says in Acts 1[:8], “You shall be my witnesses.” Therefore I stick to the books which present Christ to me clearly and purely.

[1522 “Preface to the Revelation of St. John” in Luther’s translation of the New Testament. Pages 398-399 in Luther’s Works Volume 35: Word and Sacrament I (ed. E. Theodore Bachmann; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1960).]

Post-299: Baltimore Race Riots

Posted on April 28, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

“Ideas have consequences,” someone once famously said.

And so it happened that race riots have struck, again, in 2015, in Baltimore:

I try to imagine what a Martin observer, looking on, would think.

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The Martian would observe, over the past few years, the steady promotion of a certain idea in respectable halls of opinion in the USA. The idea is that there exists a darkly sinister yet enormous conspiracy to oppress Blacks, up to and including murdering innocents in large numbers, and, further, to let the murderous (White) police off scot-free.

Many regular people believe this vicious slander (and others pretend to, for certain personal or political reasons). The Martian would see people in the highest levels of government promoting this idea, more-or-less explicitly. People from the most prestigious and tone-setting positions in the national media (say, the New York Times Editorial Board), too, the Martian would see constantly pushing the idea.

The Martian would be baffled. Why would top officials in a government promote ideas that undermine the authority of their own police, and more generally undermine the entire system they lead, that they control? He would conclude that such a bizarre system cannot be sustainable.

Another baffling thing for the Martian: The authorities do not assert authority. Police were ordered, it seems, to withdraw during the rioting and allow a certain amount of destruction without interference. No one wanted to order any assertive police action. Think of the headlines! “Peaceful Protestors Killed by Police”.

And so hundreds of buildings and vehicles were destroyed, who-knows-how-many-millions’-worth looted, and the loss of prestige as the entire world sees another U.S. race riot.

“Community organizers” from the Nation of Islam and New Black Panther Party and others have been showing up. One such “community organizer” is Deray McKesson (formerly the “Senior Director of Human Capital with Minneapolis Public Schools”). He was interviewed on CNN. The host kept asking him to condemn the violence of the people he was partly leading. He refused, saying variants of this from hisTwitter: “Property damage is not violence, it is property damage. Violence is when people are hurt, injured, harmed. The police have been violent.” (In fact, two dozen police were hospitalized with injuries from brick-throwing rioters. The police’s steady-retreat tactics will have reduced their casualties).

Another Black activist interviewed on TV said (something close to) “People in our community are angry. And just wait until we don’t have a Black president anymore, then things will get worse.”

What the Martian would think upon hearing this, I won’t even begin to guess.

Post-298: The Beginning is Near

Posted on April 25, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

This is a surprising and pleasing image to me. Maybe it’s best to view it from the bottom to top, but viewing it all at once is nearly as good.

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Recently, a couple of Koreans of my acquaintance belonging to a certain “End Times” church have been pressuring me to join an intensive Bible Study with their church, which I have not done. The premise of their Christian-esque religion is that a figure called “The One Who Overcomes” is foretold in the Bible (The Book of Revelation), and that this prophesied figure is a Korean man alive today, the leader of their church, in fact, and that the Korean “One Who Overcomes” will lead the Elect (most of whom live in South Korea and all of whom are members of this particular church) to salvation as the rest of the world comes to an end.

This is a small church but very active and aggressive. It is another in a long line of such churches in Korea. My impression is that the “religiously unaffiliated” in Korea have such a negative impression of Christianity due to these highly visible, aggressive, “fringe” churches that Korean Christianity has reached a glass ceiling.

Another such church had its Bucheon regional headquarters (I think) on the top floor of a particular building at the bottom of which I have often eaten cheap meals. This one proposes that a “God the Mother” is foretold of in the Bible and that she is — yes, a Korean woman, and, yes, alive today. My friend James from California (himself a devout Christian who graduated from a Lutheran college in the USA; previously mentioned here in #128, #178, #212, #225, #227) once went up to that headquarters, at their invitation, and promptly annoyed them by questioning all their premises. One reason cults can succeed in Korea is that you’re supposed to unquestioningly listen to an authority figure. I myself was accosted three or four times on the street by them and shown a video presentation.

Jehovah’s Witnesses are also here, but are much more agreeable and rarely if ever aggressive, in my experience. All of these groups tend to “target” Westerners. But one doesn’t: In certain areas of Seoul, you can often see a pair of well-dressed thin young White men, ties and all, carrying books and folders. These are Mormons, and they seem to have quite many missionaries in Korea. I once even saw a pair at a mega-grocery store in Bupyeong, Incheon. I once studied with one a Brigham Young University student who had previously been a Mormon missionary in Korea. I recall that he told me his main strategy during his tour of duty as a missionary was to sit next to old women who were alone on the subway and say something in Korean, which would delight them, and then he had an opening to do the Mormonism pitch. His Korean was very good, especially his speaking. Never have I met a White man who can speak Korean so well. Practice, practice, practice.

But as far as the One Who Overcomes and all other End-Timesians. I completely reject all End Times scenarios. I am not willing to cede intellectual ground on this End Times issue. Any End Times theorizing can only be destructive, as I see it. When End Times thinking outgrows the metaphorical dank cellar of the cult and enters the semi-mainstream and then inevitably intertwines itself with geopolitics, that ought to alarm us. This is one of the problems with the USA’s relationship with Israel, as I see it. Some so-called Christian churches in the USA today preach a kind of worship of Israel mixed in with End Times theories. (Which is cause and which is effect is open to debate.)

I know one person who is a candidate for a Master’s degree in Psychology at Columbia University. I wonder about the psychological motivations of “End is Near” people. I like the “Beginning is Near” more.

Post-297: Pointless War Story, Tokyo Bay 1945

Posted on April 16, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

I arrived by boat in Japan and left by plane. About seventy years earlier, some unknown American had a brief experience in Japan the precise reverse of mine in the sense that he “arrived by plane and left by boat,” and in a more dramatic fashion. His story is told through the eyes of a Japanese watching:

After discussing the war generally, [the Japanese professor in his 60s] began, with seeming reluctance, to speak of his own war experience as a university draftee who had used all his family’s influence to avoid call-up until he was finally tapped for coastal-defense duty late in the war. One day in July 1945, he went on, the intensity of his voice increasing with each sentence, he found himself in charge of an emplacement of ancient coastal guns just as an American flyer [pilot] parachuted into Tokyo Bay. As the downed American swam towards his position, the youthful candidate-officer found his mind racing. What should he do? Kill him, or take him prisoner? Suddenly, he was spared the choice, for right there in the middle of the bay, a U.S. submarine surfaced, scooped up the pilot, and submerged again, taking him to safety. At that moment in his story, the scholar broke off almost breathlessly, and said, “You see, that’s the only kind of thing you’ll hear. Pointless stories. It’s too late to talk about crucial issues. All the people in decision-making posts are long dead.”

Quite dramatic for a pointless story.

It comes from a book I’d bought cheaply in Tokyo (200 Yen or $1.65 at today’s exchange rate). It’s called Japan At War: An Oral History” published in 1992, an original English publication by an American, Dr. Theodore Cook. The interviews were conducted in 1988-1991 in Japan. He says he “selected people from [the ranks of] general to private, prison-camp guard to journalist, dancer to diplomat, idealistic builder of ‘Greater East Asia’ to ‘thought criminal,’ who talk revealingly of their wars”.

The pointless story has two incredible points to it, as I see it. One, he considered killing a potential prisoner-of-war upon capture. Two, the pilot’s manner of rescue, as described, seems so surreal that if I saw it in a James Bond movie I’d think to myself, “Gee, they’re really pushing it now”. The author makes some more comments about why this little anecdote is not so pointless. A photograph of the page is here.

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This business about killing a captured airman in war seems especially cruel. I read that the Imperial Japanese government, late in the war, in its increasing paranoia and desperation, put captured American airmen on trial for war crimes (the bombing of cities) with possible death sentences, which were often imposed. In this kind of atmosphere, some must’ve also been killed without pretense of trial, on the spot, and a conscripted coastal defense position leader may have felt a kind of social pressure to do the same. (Just another chapter in a long-ago-concluded war.) The professor, recalling this moment in summer 1945, existed in that world. The war swept up everyone. Multiply these kinds of situations by the thousands for every day of the war, and that was the war.

So, as to pointlessness. The professor’s idea can be taken further, if we want. Maybe almost all the stories from almost everyone’s lives are pointless. This is one view, and a depressing one. I reject it. We all have our personal narratives and experiences; we were “there”, somewhere, some time; we were part of it, something, whatever “it” was, whatever it’s still shaping into.

I also recently bought a tattered old copy of the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. His relations of his early life are full of pointless stories, too, but they are greatly enjoyable and help us understand the man and his time and place.

Likewise, I understand that in the 1970s my father did an audio recording of his grandfather (born in the 1890s in Iowa, to parents born in Denmark) asking for, to carry forward the theme of this post, whatever pointless stories he had to tell. I don’t know the full extent of this recording and have never heard it, but I have seen a partial transcript. He described how the original members of his family came to enter the USA. This was more of a retelling of a story his own father had told him, though, I suppose.

An idea that came to me as I’ve been writing this. Q. What is life? A. Life is a series of pointless stories.

Post-296: It Came Out of the Sky

Posted on April 10, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

Towards the end of 1969, a few months after the first human moon landing, an album was released in the USA called “Willy and the Poor Boys” which featured the now iconic song “Fortunate Son”. Another song on the album was “It Came Out of the Sky”.

Below is that song, its lyrics, and some comments on it that occur to me. (As of now, for copyright reasons Youtube blocks the song on mobile devices but it can be heard on desktops.)

I see the song as saying this: People tend to react to new, unknown phenomena or developments based narrowly on the way they already see the world, the way they’ve always done things. Few, if any, can really break free of this mental constraint. (I think this makes the song a musical version of Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.”)

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It Came Out Of The Sky Lyrics

Oh, it came out of the sky, landed just a little south of Moline
Jody fell out of his tractor, couldn’t believe what he’d seen
Laid on the ground and shook, fearin’ for his life
Then he ran all the way to town screamin’ “It came out of the sky!”

Well, a crowd gathered ’round and a scientist said it was marsh gas [1]
Spiro [2] came to make a speech about raising the Mars Tax
The Vatican said, “Woe, the Lord has come”
Hollywood rushed out an epic film
And Ronnie the Populist [3] said it was a communist plot

Oh! [Guitar]

Oh, the newspapers came and made Jody a national hero
Walter and Eric [4] said they’d put him on a network TV show
The White House said, “Put the thing in the Blue Room”
The Vatican said, “No, it belongs in Rome.”
And Jody said, “It’s mine but you can have it for seventeen million!” [5]

Oh, it came out of the sky, landed just a little south of Moline
Jody fell out of his tractor, couldn’t believe what he’d seen
Laid on the ground a shakin’, fearin’ for his life
Then he ran all the way to town screamin’ “It came out of the sky!”

[Notes and Comments]
[1] The government often classified purported UFO sightings as “marsh gas” (whatever that is). The lyric is not “a government spokesman said it was marsh gas,” though, but rather “a scientist.” Scientists have always had an interest, on behalf of pride in their field, in insisting that all phenomena can be explained with presently-known information and theory.
[2] This is Spiro Agnew, Vice President at the time, under Nixon. Why they chose “Spiro” for making a speech about raising a “Mars Tax”, I don’t know.
[3] “Ronnie the Populist” must be Ronald Reagan, then governor of California (elected Nov. 1966, served till Jan. 1975) and conservative spokesman (from the 1950s), later president.
[4] Walter Cronkite, fatherly news figure many years ago. Who Eric was, I don’t know.
[5] “Jody,” a country-bumpkin figure here, is the only character in this song who doesn’t spin the UFO’s arrival for his own personal agenda. He just runs off to alert the others, attracts a crowd of locals, and then worldwide attention. Jody, though, seems uninterested in the UFO, and in the end all he cares about is this potential huge cash payout he asks for. An apparently genuine alien spacecraft (if that’s what “it” of the song is) should be in the national interest to study and understand. That they put in this lyric at all (“you can have it for seventeen million”) shows how confident the USA was in 1969 in itself and its institutions; Here we have this guy, Jody, a nobody, who comes across a UFO landing, would (it is implied) have his rights respected enough to be paid for the UFO, rather than having the UFO seized by the army and Jody punched in the stomach for protesting or jailed for a while (as might happen elsewhere). In the end, this is meant to be a comedic song, but comedy has to be plausible. I don’t think that implied respect for the rights of a “Jody”-like figure is as plausible in today’s USA.

Post-295: Believing in Islam

Posted on April 6, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

I heard somebody from the UK make this comment a while ago:

“I’ve met people who don’t even believe in God, but they believe in Islam.”

He was talking about Muslims living in the UK, I think. What this means is open to interpretation.

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From what I gather, Political Islam is one of the great unexpected developments of the past century. A hundred years ago, around WWI, Westerners believed that Islam was an enfeebled religion, a remnant of the medieval past that had long since faded in vigor and lacked the ability to revitalize itself. My impression is that modern Political Islam was born in 1979, but that even then few people of Western Christian origin paid much attention or worried much about it. As late as the 1990s, it was not a significant issue in American consciousness.

I make some sweeping statements about things that happened before my lifetime, there. I can say this: I’m reasonably sure that neither of my grandfathers, at least, paid any mind to Islam (as a “political” force in the world), any more than they’d have paid to Buddhism, say. They were both born in the late 1910s. I heard them say very many things in the 1990s, when I was a boy, but not one word about Islam or Muslims. I remember being at my grandparents’ house in Iowa when Clinton ordered one of the bombings of Osama Bin Laden, and we saw it unfolding on CNN in their living room. This event elicited no comments from my grandfather about Islam. I remember around the same time my grandfather telling me about a letter he was writing to the local congressman, I think, against the idea of ceding control of the Panama Canal (then still U.S.-controlled) to a Communist Chinese company; something like that. But never one word about Islam.

Post-294: Finding a John Donne Poem

Posted on April 2, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

I turned a piece of paper over and found this:

Go and Catch a Falling Star
By John Donne

Go and catch a falling star,
    Get with child a mandrake root,
Tell me where all past years are,
    Or who cleft the devil’s foot,
Teach me to hear mermaids singing,
Or to keep off envy’s stinging,
            And find
            What wind
Serves to advance an honest mind.

I don’t seek out poetry, but if it seeks me out, I’ll give it a try. But — Nope. Couldn’t understand it. Can you?

I was talking with a nice Korean young man (born 1988) who is an English Literature major at a university in Seoul. We were scribbling on the back side of the paper; on the front was this poem.

I read it again and a third time. Slowly an idea took shape in my mind: Adventure. Could it be? — a poem praising the adventurous spirit, both physical and mental, eternal curiosity, relentless seeking after new knowledge; maybe on the fantastical side, but approving. Life is the eternal pursuit of knowledge and experience, and also full of fool’s errands, and maybe, ultimately, every single thing is a fool’s errand, but that’s okay. Something like this took shape in my mind. Poetry is hard. I said simply in English, “I think this poem means ‘Adventure is good.'” He flatly replied: “No.” A little condescendingly, he explained the real meaning:

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He said it criticizes women for being foolish and unserious in life. I didn’t understand how he could get that from those nine verses. And multiple interpretations of any poem are surely possible!

The paper was a handout he’d made for his class. He’d had to explain the poem, longform lecture style.

At home later, I find that this poem actually has three stanzas (here). Here is the rest:

If thou be’st born to strange sights,
    Things invisible to see,
Ride ten thousand days and nights,
    Till age snow white hairs on thee,
Thou, when thou return’st, wilt tell me,
All strange wonders that befell thee,
            And swear,
            No where
Lives a woman true, and fair.

If thou find’st one, let me know,
    Such a pilgrimage were sweet;
Yet do not, I would not go,
    Though at next door we might meet;
Though she were true, when you met her,
And last, till you write your letter,
            Yet she
            Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.

I see now why he said that.

It’s hard to sift through the Shakespearean phrasings and obsolete grammar forms, but the meaning is clear, I think, if we recognize the phrase “be true” as meaning “loyal in romance” which was still used in old songs from the 1960s I have heard.

Why was only the first stanza on his handout? Did he present that stanza alone and talk all about the poem being about women (something he will have read in a commentary on the poem in Korean, I expect)? Now that would be disorienting. (I know that a lot of language classes in East Asia operate under the watchful eye of the Emperor’s New Clothes Principle, though — Lots of confusion while everyone pretends they know what’s going on; many pass courses and tests by memorizing and not true working competence.)

Post-293: Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel

Posted on March 30, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

“Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel” is a traditional American song out of 1800s with many versions. One version is by Jimmie Driftwood, a prolific songwriter out of Arkansas, active from the 1930s-1990s. The lyrics are nowhere to be found online. I’ll transcribe them and put them up here.

The song was recorded in 1959. It tells the story of a man who went to California during the Gold Rush.

Jordan Am a Hard Road to Travel
By Jimmy Driftwood / 1959 / “The Westward Movement” album

Oh!
There was an old man
from the county called Pike
And his name was Jolly ol’ Higgins

The darned ol’ fool
Who went an’ bought an ol’ mule
And was bound for the California diggins

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[Chorus]
Pull off your overcoat
‘n’ roll up your sleeves
For Jordan am a hard road to travel!
Pull off your overcoat
‘n’ roll up your sleeves
For Jordan am a hard road, I believe.

Well,
He took some bacon
An’ he took some beans
An’ he took some raw corn whiskey

He woulda took more
But he couldn’t pile it on
For the darned ol’ mule was so frisky

On he went
Through the mire and the mud
Till he came to this ol’ Platte River

In he plunged
Head over heels
And the bacon and the beans were lost forever

[Chorus]

Well,
If ever I marry
In this wide world
I’ll marry the ferryman’s daughter

So my wife can stand
In the prow of the boat
And my children can play in the water

If ever I marry
In this wide world
I’ll wed sweet Sally Gordon

She owns half the land
In the You-nited States
And a farm on the other side-a Jordan

[Chorus]

If you’re wondering
Who I am,
My name is jolly ol’ Higgins

I’m the darned ol’ fool
Who went ‘n’ bought the old mule
And I’m bound for the California diggins

[Chorus]

__________________

Pioneer Trails, mid-1800s USA
Trails along the Platte River start at Council Bluffs, Iowa

A section of the South Platte River today (Photograph by Lori Potter, Kearney Hub newspaper [Kearney, Nebraska]).

Painting of a pioneer crossing the Platte River

Comment: I can imagine this simple-seeming song being painfully indecipherable to those not familiar with folksy old-style American English and with the Bible. “Jordan” refers to the Jordan River of Biblical times; here “crossing the Jordan” is a metaphor for hard struggle. Also: Jesus was baptized in the Jordan River; “Jolly ol’ Higgins” is submerged totally in the water, too!

A credit to Jimmie Driftwood that he ends the song with Higgins still on the journey out to California, even after losing all his supplies. Jimmie Driftwood (1907-1998) was a product of 1910s and 1920s America, a time when (I think) the American spirit was optimistic and self-confident. He supposedly wrote many of his songs as aids to teaching his students U.S. history. His first career was as a teacher. His most famous song of all is probably Battle of New Orleans, sung by Johnny Horton.

Post-292: On Lee Kuan Yew, Founder of Singapore

Posted on March 29, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

Singapore was expelled from Malaysia in 1965.

Singapore’s government in ’65 was led by a man born Harry Lee, educated at Cambridge. By then, he was using the name Kuan Yew. He’d led Singapore since 1959, when full self-government was granted by the British. Lee Kuan Yew did everything he could to prevent the expulsion from Malaysia, I’ve read. When it was finalized, he went on television, in front of the entire nation-to-be, and as he announced the expulsion, he wept. He wept!

Singapore was unable to feed itself or even provide itself with water, and so he understandably feared that Singapore would be reduced to a pathetic walled-off island ghetto, a kind of Southeast-Asian Gaza. No wonder he wept.

Lee Kuan Yew in the 1950s

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Fifty years later, Singapore is one of the world’s premier cities.

I’ve been through its airport once, but so far never outside. It felt like a several star hotel, that airport did. (By contrast, I regret to admit that U.S. airports today tend to feel like second-rate bus stations.) By all accounts that I’ve read and heard from others, Singapore is efficient and well-run, with the main criticism being that it’s rather boring.

With the death of Lee Kuan Yew (1923-2015), the Singaporeans of my acquaintance seem truly sad. One, resident in Korea, took the time to go to the Singapore embassy in Seoul and sign a book of condolence (whatever that is) on Friday of the mourning week. Another, who returned to Singapore some time ago, spent hours in line to view the casket, it seems finally getting to view it past 3:30 AM. It is hard for us to imagine the attachment they must feel to him. He led the government for over thirty years and heavily influenced things for over twenty more. His party has never been out of power. His son is the new prime minister.

That Singapore is a one-party state (defacto) with authoritarian overtones (e.g., its very high per capita usage of the death penalty, limited freedom of the press) doesn’t seem to bother the Singaporeans I have known, that I can tell. Lee said that this was the nature of Asians — they want and need strong government.

Lee viewed multiracial society as inherently unstable, it seems. He was an advocate of Singapore maintaining a primarily Chinese racial character (without persecuting the minority races), with a comfortable Chinese racial majority. (If any White American public figure of today said anything comparable [“We need to protect the USA’s majority-European racial character”, e.g.], we all know that he would be mercilessly demonized by the media and would likely be expelled from public life.)

Lee said: “I have to amend [British parliamentary democracy] to fit my people’s position. In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests and social interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion. Supposing I’d run their system here, Malays would vote for Muslims, Indians would vote for Indians, Chinese would vote for Chinese. I would have a constant clash in my Parliament which cannot be resolved because the Chinese majority would always overrule them. So I found a formula that changes that…”

“There are some flaws in the assumptions made for democracy. It is assumed that all men and women are equal or should be equal. Hence, one-man-one-vote. But is equality realistic? If it is not, to insist on equality must lead to regression.“ Lee wrote this. A typical Westerner of today would feel uncomfortable, weak in the stomach, at hearing this kind of talk; it is akin to blasphemy for the true-believing Westerner. “The problem…is the system of one man, one vote when we have to get quality leadership to the top. If we leave it to natural processes it will be a contest of television performances as in the West. And the best television performers and rally entertainers are not necessarily the best leaders who can deliver good government.” I challenge anyone to argue that this is not a rational and sound criticism of democracy.

So let’s say that Lee Kuan Yew got away with saying a lot (things Western public figures are no longer allowed to say). On the other hand, Singapore hasn’t had much time for individuals’ free speech. I have read U.S. journalist Robert Elegant’s 1990 book Pacific Destiny, a survey of each the countries of East Asia, with discussions of their recent pasts, cultures, politics, economic situations, and likely futures based on then-current trends, interspersed with the journalist’s own extensive experiences all across East Asia. The writer, Elegant, tells of his decades-long-running animosity with Lee Yuan Yew. “We have known each other since 1954, but not have been terribly fond of each other,” Elegant wrote this around 1989. (Elegant is an impressive figure: a White American, Yale educated, fluent in Chinese and Japanese, and a journalist for U.S. news magazines and newspapers from the 1950s through at least the 1990s.) It seems that this animosity was kindled by Lee Kuan Yew’s regular defamation lawsuits against Elegant. Elegant sometimes published things critical of the Singapore government, you see. Other journalists had the same problem.

Elegant respected Lee all the same, and the Singapore chapter in the Pacific Destiny book is mostly a mini-biography of Lee Kuan Yew. Elegant comments on this by saying something like, “To discuss Singapore is to discuss Lee Kuan Yew.” He boldly attributes Singapore’s success to the man. Lee is cordial in the interview for the book (Elegant published long quotations of all his interviews in the book, recorded on a tape recorder). Alas, Lee respected Elegant, too, as perhaps the USA’s most eminent journalist in Asia of that era.

Excerpt from the Singapore chapter of “Pacific Destiny” (1990) by U.S. journalist Robert Elegant. ‘Moira’ refers to the author’s Australian wife.

Reading Elegenant’s various comments about Lee Kuan Yew, the idea comes to my mind for a comedy movie, following this pair from their first meeting in 1954 through say 2014, “documenting” their long-running feud.

The entire Singapore chapter of Pacific Destiny is good (the entire book is good). Here is another excerpt:

At one point, Elegant describes the first time he met Lee Kuan Yew. It was 1954. At some kind of Chinese political rally in then-British-Malaya. The atmosphere is lively; one rousing speech in Mandarin after another. Poor ol’ Harry Lee, aspiring politician, can’t understand Mandarin (Elegant himself, fluent in Mandarin, is observing the scene from the back in his capacity as a journalist). A nervous Lee paces around, mostly staying in the back, trying to blend in and hoping no one notices his lack of understanding of the other speeches. Now it’s his turn to speak. Up goes Harry Lee to the podium. He begins to speak, in English. Suddenly, booing! Lee gets shouted down by the more macho ethnic Chinese in the audience (who is this clown using English?) and that’s the end of that!

This bizarre scene, viewed in the right light, can be a metaphor for Singapore itself. The very same man who was booed off the stage in 1954, had, a few decades later, achieved world fame and acclaim as a respected statesman. He will be a secular saint to Singaporeans for many, many years to come.

I admire Lee Kuan Yew, from what I know about him. Whatever his faults, he had the intellectual and moral courage to say what he believed was right and not waffle around, bending this way and that with each passing breeze. This is true leadership and is admirable.

Post-291: “It Works Good” (Or, a 1974 Prediction about the Evolution of English)

Posted on March 27, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

I didn’t exist yet in the summer of 1974 and I wouldn’t for some time to come. No matter. Through the Internet, I can look back at the news published across the world even years before I was born and in places I’ve never been.

On Thursday July 11th, 1974, the Milwaukee Journal (circulation then 400,000) ran front-page stories about the Watergate scandal. That’s too boring to me to re-read. Towards the back of that day’s paper, a certain letter to the editor was also published. (Don’t ask how I found this.) I’ll republish it here, over forty years later, because I think it’s rather clever. It makes certain predictions we can analyze, given the passage of almost forty-one years now.

The writer was a young man called Jack Chiang. From certain things he says, I would guess is from Hong Kong, and would further guess he is today 60s; possibly early 70s. I wonder what he’s made of the past four decades.

Here is the letter:

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In My Opinion
English Is a Fine, Expressive Language, but Please Be Kind to the Learners

If you hear a foreigner say, “He don’t like it,” don’t laugh. There is no big deal. If he says, “I have five hundreds dollars,” don’t feel funny. There are many mad dogs in English waiting to bite foreigners. Only those who learn it as a foreign language know the pain of such bites.

Just think how difficult English sometimes is. We say “spaghetti” but “noodles;” “two sheep” but “two dogs;” and “I do, he does,” but “I did, he did.”

Many sounds in English are very difficult for foreigners to pronounce. When a foreign couple were asked of their ages, the husband replied, “My wife is Dirty, I’m Dirty-two.”

Some people in Hong Kong often confuse the “sh” sound with the “s.” If you say “Happy New Year” to a person from Hong Kong, do not feel offended if he happens to reply, “Shame to you!” In a Chinese restaurant, “fried rice” might become “fly lice.” One foreign student at Marquette said he was almost driven crazy by the unnecessary changes of tenses. He now uses the present tense to indicate different times of actions. It works. Nobody misunderstands him when he says, “I work yesterday and I work tomorrow.”

What is considered incorrect at one time may be considered acceptable at another. The people who speak such “poor” English might become the pioneers of the English of the future. Even today we seldom complain when we hear people say “it works good,” “the mass media is,” or “this is different than that.” Perhaps one day we will be able to say “You do, I do. You not do, I not do,” instead of “If you do it, I’ll do it. If you don’t do it, I won’t do it, either.”

One of the reasons why English is difficult is because of the many foreign words. Many foreigners — and sometimes even Americans — mispronounce such words as Illinois, Arkansas, Des Moines, detente,to name a few.

When I told my American roommate that the word “ketchup” is Chinese, that “ket” means tomato, that “chup” means sauce or juice, and that “tomato ketchup” is repetitious”, he replies “So is ‘stupid Chinese’.”

Fortunately, even learning English as a second language is sometimes fun — if we do not take the mistakes too seriously. In a college English speech class in Hong Kong, a Chinese student brought the house down when he began his speech with “Ladies and Gentlemans…” An American friend of mine always makes fun of me by saying — before we go anywhere together — “Let’s went.”

Of course, hundreds of millions of English speaking people can’t be wrong. With all its difficulties, English is still very expressive. Any foreign student who has studied English for a while would find delight in learning expressions like “sell down the river,” “barking up the wrong tree,” “beat the price down,” and “six of one, half a dozen of another.”

JACK CHIANG

Jack Chiang is a graduate student in journalism at Marquette. He taught Chinese conversation at Marquette Free University during the 1973-’74 academic year, and is spending the summer at Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

[End of Quotation from the newspaper] [Original text]

Jack Chiang (probably born in the 1940s), whoever he is, gives four examples of “wrong English” which he suggests may become standard English in the future. The future has now arrived. I’m curious to see if he was right. Here are the four phrases, and my impressions of them, as an American English native speaker born in the 1980s:

(1) “It works good”. This sounds to me like an uneducated person’s phrasing. Probably we all agree this is a phrase that should not be written, and that if you want to say it in spoken speech, choose your company carefully. I don’t know how people reacted to “It works good” in the 1970s, but I doubt it’s made much more headway (if any) into standard English by the mid-2010s, now, than it had by the mid-1970s. “It works well” has held the line very well these past four decades, for whatever reason. Check again four decades from now, in the 2050s.

(2) “The mass media is”. He got this one right. Media has become a singular. “The media is” has become standard. And as well it should be! In Latin it’s a plural, but English is not Latin. The word functions as a singular in English. Checking Google, I find “the media is…” gets 27.3 million hits. Meanwhile, “the media are…” gets 10.2 million hits, and all the top results for “the media are…” we see to be language-learning websites discussing this very issue(!); in other words, there are not so many ‘living’ usages. Another of the front-page Google hits, as of this writing, for “media are” is a quotation from 1954. So much for “the media is” as incorrect English. One solid point to Jack Chiang.

(3) “This is different than that”. This one took me a little by surprise because it doesn’t even seem obviously wrong at first glance. I looked it up, and found this:

If 30% of Americans prefer “different than”, it means it’s heard commonly enough to not be immediately recognizable as wrong. (I wonder what percent say “It works good”). In writing, “different than” does seem more wrong.

I have probably used “different than” in speech, but rarely in all but the most informal writing. It’s strange how that works. I did a search of this website (again via Google), and I find that I’ve used “different from” many times and have never used “different than”. The latter phrase appears once on this website (before now), as part of a quotation from someone else (post-#129).

(4) “You do, I do. You not do, I not do.” I think Mr. Chiang probably meant this almost entirely as a joke. Even though the Chinese did get “no can do” and “long time, no see” into more-or-less standard spoken English, I can’t imagine any self-respecting English native speaker ever talking like, “You do, I do. You not do, I not do”. At best, that sounds like Yoda from Star Wars. I don’t think Chinese grammar has had any influence on American English. Maybe if China becomes the world’s superpower, this odd phrasing proposed by Jack Chiang forty years ago may become less odd. Check back in a few decades.

And so Jack Chiang, writing in 1974, gets one prediction absolutely right (#2), one sort of right (#3), and two wrong, I think.

It’s only 2015. There’s a lot of future left to be had. And, say, why is “It works good” wrong, anyway?

Post-290: First Impression of Japan

Posted on March 25, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

I’ll write about my trip to Japan in small pieces.

Day One
Outside Hakata Station, Fukuoka, Kyushu Island.

Wheeling my suitcase along, trying to find my way in diminishing daylight, I am forced to stop a while and wait until the little red man gives way to the little green man and we are allowed to cross the street.

It is just then that the Quiet really hits me.

I look around. Buses, and taxis, and bicyclists, and pedestrians, some frantic ones and others less frantic; there is a force-of-nature-like surge of energy to all of it flowing together; overheard, billboards, neon in liberal doses. Behind me, one of the country’s major train stations with its adjacent shopping center. A typical big city. A typical Asian city. But where is the noise?

Yes, it is much quieter than it ought to be. Where is the noise…?

This is my first impression of Japan, and I like it.

This Quiet fit neither my previous experiences of such places nor my expectations. Maybe I should have expected such, from what others have told me about Japan over the years. I didn’t. How can a place with so many thousands of people (and running motors), in close quarters be…so quiet?

Hakata Station in Fukuoka, Japan, early March 2015, sunset.

Let me try to answer my own question.

Urban noise, I suppose, is nothing more than the jumbling together of lots of small, extraneous noises, like a car honking off yonder, someone shouting at a friend in the distance, music blaring from an unseen speaker, loud conversations from passersby, a motor-scooter revving behind you and zooming by on a sidewalk, and these days, cell phone conversations. A lot of small things like that. And, come to think of it, probably the majority of these noises come from individual choices. Do I need to honk that horn? Do I need to shout at my friend? Do I need to play my music loudly? And so on.

I figure that in Japan in public, part of the social contract is “Don’t make noises for no reason”. This does not apply to entertainment districts or shopping areas, where noise is okay and encouraged. Outside those kinds of designated areas, I think this rule applies and is followed by Japanese loyally. When the sum total of thousands of individuals’ decisions “to not make unnecessary noise” are added together, we get quiet. It seems simple, but to actually see it is amazing. Many Americans also basically follow this principle, but many don’t. It only takes a few…

Post-289: Back from Japan

Posted on March 24, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

I have returned to Incheon, South Korea from Japan. Over two weeks with no regular Internet access, I lost the habit of occasionally writing here. It requires discipline to write here. After returning from Japan, I busied myself with moving to a new home. I spent a lot of time with my friend M.P., who has returned to the USA this past Monday.

I really need to write about Japan. There is too much to say. Let me say something simple. I liked Japan. I was all around the country, from Kyushu (about a week) up through Tokyo. My first impression was that Japan was, “per capita”, the quietest place I’ve ever been.

A lot more can be said; maybe later.

Post-287: “Tienanmen Square June 4, 1989” “I’ve Never Heard About That”

Posted on February 28, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

Tanks blocked by an unknown man at Tienanmen Square, Beijing, June 4 1989

I’ve met many more Chinese in the past ten months than I have in the rest of my life combined.

I met them studying Korean at a university in South Korea, one of the most prestigious in the country, at which a certain labor dispute occurred between the cleaning staff and the university administration beginning in December 2014. As far as I know, it is still unresolved as the new academic year approaches (beginning March 2nd, 2015).

During the January to February semester, I brought up the subject of these ongoing protests from time to time, either with our Korean teacher or other students.

One such time was around mid-February. I was with a Singaporean and a Chinese, both of whom have the initials Q.X. The one from China (Korean name’s initials: ㅊ우ㅅ) was born in 1990 and majored in physics in China. She is planning to study in South Korea for a Master’s degree. As we were walking along, for some reason I said something like, “The janitors’ protests are still going on”. The girl from China said, wistfully, “I wish people in China could protest like that”. (She said this in English to us. Using English was a sign that she was trying to make a serious point. Unimportant talk can be in Korean.) As she said this, my mind immediately jumped to images of 1989 Beijing. I decided to cautiously break the taboo.

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The story is well known to every even semi-educated Westerner, I think: In Spring 1989, weeks of protests in Beijing, China against the Communists ended abruptly with a shocking general massacre with an unknowable number of dead protestors. Most believe it was over 1,000 killed outright by the army on that day, with an unknowable but large number of surviving anti-communist protest ringleaders rounded up and executed in subsequent weeks.

I mentioned it, cautiously, something like “They tried that at Tienanmen Square and the result wasn’t good.” Q.X. from China got a puzzled look. I figured maybe she misunderstood my words: Beijing. 1989. Protests. I didn’t even mention the massacre part. Q.X. from China said “I’ve never heard about that. Maybe they never taught us about it.” She looked more confused than defensive. That was the end of that.

A few days later. The semester had ended. (Note: Of the original twelve students in our class, just two passed the exams outright [including Q.X. from China, though this was her second time taking the level], with two others failing narrowly such that they can take a re-test a week later; all others failed outright [including me] or didn’t even take the final exam). Most of those from our class who were still around gathered for dinner, several rounds of it at different places, as is the Korean custom.

At one point, during one of these “rounds”, the group got divided up and I was with the same two “Q.X.”s again. Spirits were high and we all trusted each other, so I decided to follow up on this Tienanmen Square business. The Singaporean and I talked about the world-famous picture of the lone man standing in front of the tanks. I then looked up this photo on my phone, and showed the Chinese girl. “Have you ever seen this before?” The same confused look as before. It was clear that this was the first time she had ever seen the photo in her life.

I said it was my understanding that the lone protestor was killed that day. The Singaporean said this wasn’t the case, as the video shows him climbing the tanks after a while, not run over. We looked around online and found that his most likely fate was an executioner’s bullet to the head in the weeks after June 4th.

Curious and emboldened by the fact that the Singaporean and I were discussing the famous photograph (and video recording) so freely, the Chinese Q.X. found the Chinese Wikipedia entry on the event (I’d guess written by Taiwanese; the article is definitely blocked in China itself). She sat for five minutes, saying nothing, silently reading. I addressed her several times in her trance. She hardly responded and read on. She was highly interested and not about to answer any dumb comment from me at this time.

She was born in 1990. Her parents will remember this event. I’m surprised, that after nearly 25 years of life, she had never heard of the Tienanmen Square protests of June ’89. Schools are banned from teaching about it, okay, but her parents never bothered telling her? She never just happened to hear about it from somewhere?

So it is.

Post-288: Going to Japan for a While

Posted on February 28, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

To Japan. Arriving by boat from Busan; returning by plane from Tokyo. Two weeks. No fixed itinerary. Japan Rail Pass in hand, which means unlimited train travel.. This will be my first time in Japan. More later.

Fuji Mountain

Post-285: Fog of War, at Debaltseve

Posted on February 19, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

See also #280 and #283 and #284.

The term “fog of war” refers to information. War is something dynamic (situation always changing), emotionally charged, and subject to secrecy, disinformation, misinformation, and other forms of perceptional distortion, so nobody really knows what’s going on at any given time.

I was surprised to see the Prestige Media in the West (AP, New York Times, CNN, BBC, and so on) on Wednesday run headlines like “Ukrainian Army Retreats from Debaltseve”. All the sources I was following (mostly pro-Ukrainian) agreed that there was an encirclement (pocket), a seriously bad situation, and that this pocket finally caved in around Tuesday and early Wednesday of this week, with many government casualties. A major rebel victory within the scope of the war so far. The Western major media was simply copying Kiev press releases, I think.

What is the truth of what happened at the place called Debaltseve (Debaltsevo in Russian)? After weeks of inaction by the Ukraine side, a breakout attempt occurred but how organized it was is unclear. What is clear is the Debaltseve vicinity is now under uncontested rebel control. The Ukraine president claims he ordered a successful withdrawal. Rebel sources say the government lose major casualties including up to a thousand prisoners surrendered. Independent journalists seem to favor the rebels’ version of events:

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It was unclear Wednesday [Feb. 18th 2015] how many of the thousands of Ukrainian soldiers trapped in the eastern Ukrainian town [Debaltseve] had survived the hellish retreat under enemy fire and avoided capture. President Petro O. Poroshenko put the figure at 80 percent, but since the Ukrainian military has never commented on its troop strength, the final accounting may never be known.

By midday on Wednesday, as limping and exhausted soldiers began showing up in Ukraine-held territory, it became clear that the Ukrainian forces had suffered major losses, both in equipment and human life.

“Many trucks left, and only a few arrived,” said one soldier, who offered only his rank, sergeant, and first name, Volodomyr, as he knelt on the sidewalk smoking. “A third of us made it, at most.” [NY Times]

The information-saturated world of the mid-2010s is still subject to a fog of war. Huge amounts of information and its easy dissemination doesn’t actually change this.

In every war, on each side, we find hotheads and liars who seek to demonize the enemy (much worse than Kiev’s seemingly false claim of an orderly withdrawal– some government soldiers who escaped reportedly abandoned their equipment and flat-out ran for a few miles in the proper direction without stopping).

Certain people calling themselves journalists, sympathetic to the rebels, are now claiming to have discovered that “Ukraine government soldiers executed civilians” in the Debaltseve pocket. Why Ukraine government soldiers would arbitrarily “execute civilians” is beyond comprehension and not explained, but this is what’s being broadcast now over Russian media, with supposed photographic proof, and presumably many believe it. The Ukraine side, which I support, is also capable of these kinds of malicious lies (and I assume the claim of executions of civilians at Debaltseve is just one of those typical war lies, born in the fog of war, and almost always quietly abandoned when the fog lifts.)

Post-286: [Video] Ukraine Prisoners of War Interviewed

Posted on February 19, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

See also #280 and #283 and #284 and #285.

One government position within the Debaltseve Pocket in the ongoing Ukraine Civil War produced at least sixty prisoners as the pocket collapsed this week. This group was soon paraded before Russian cameras, and a rebel commander gave a speech. This footage was run by Russian TV.

Some interviews were also done with POWs which I found interesting and have transcribed here. Some pro-Ukrainians have commented that parading POWs on film violates the Geneva Convention, but here it is:

Transcripts in English of the rebel commander’s speech and POW interviews are here:

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Translation from Russian (as provided by Youtube video uploader):

[On a snow-covered clearing, daytime, dozens of men are lined up, warmly dressed for the cold]
Rebel Commander: [heavyset, wearing a Soviet-style cap] Your army, your government, abandoned all of you from the beginning. From the very beginning, when you were sent here. They simply you threw you out here. They sent you to kill civilians, not us militia. [Ukraine government POWs are shown listening, many with heads down] Each of you will have the opportunity to return home. We will treat you with honor and dignity. We will feed, bathe, and provide a change of clothes for you. You should know that this is the beginning of our long way. We nevertheless take into account how you grimace and how you wish us ill. But I guarantee, as an army colonel, that no one will harm you or beat you. Understood?
POWs: [Weakly] Understood.

[An extended version of this footage shows several interviews.]

[Interview #1: A reporter interviews one of the Ukraine Government Army POWs. The prisoner looks to be over 30 years old, with a long nose and soft voice]
Reporter: What is your surname?
POW #1: Boreiko.
Reporter: Where are you from?
POW #1: I’m from Kherson.
Reporter: From Kherson?
POW #1: Yes.
Reporter: How did you get into the army?
POW #1: I was summoned (=conscripted)
[The POWs are told to begin to march and do so]
Reporter: Do your relatives know about your current status?
POW #1: No.
[He marches away and the reporter does not follow]

[Interview #2: This POW looks to be in his early or mid 20s and has blonde facial hair]
Reporter: How long have you been at Debaltsevo?
POW #2: Since December 22nd.
Reporter: Did your command inform you that your unit was encircled?
[The POW weakly smiles but hesitates to answer]
Reporter: What was your command telling you? What tasks were you given?
POW #2: They just told us to hold. Stay. We just — Well, guarded the territory.
Reporter: How were you captured?
POW #2: Our commander told us we were laying down our arms and leaving.
Reporter: Leaving with a fight, or were you going to —
POW #2: No. [Pause] The commander told us we were taking our personal belongings and leaving.

[Interview #3: This POW looks to be in his mid or late 20s, with dark eyes and a brown goatee and a blunt style of speaking. He punctuates his statements with emphasis. This interview takes place later, on a bus filled with POWs]
Reporter: Did your relatives tell you that you were encircled?
POW #3: Well, they told us recently. But what could I do? Go on the run? Where to?
Reporter: I see.
POW #3: I’m a private. I was under orders from my command.

Post-284: Ukraine Civil War. Surrender at Debaltseve

Posted on February 18, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

Encircled for almost ten days, thousands of Ukraine government soldiers, I read from the best sources, as I write are in the process of either surrendering to the pro-Russian rebels at Debaltseve, East Ukraine or attempting a breakout.

This closes up the “Debaltseve Pocket” which I wrote about in Post-#283 last week. The total loss was predicted as early as January 27th by a German military intelligence analyst writing under the alias Conflict Reporter, one of the best sources on the war. The end of the fighting at Debaltseve will free up many thousands of pro-Russian rebels for action elsewhere in the present Ukraine war.

Journalists inspect a destroyed tank after the Debaltseve fighting

Russian media is comparing the loss at Debaltseve to Stalingrad:

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(German Field Marshal von Paulus was commander of 250,000 Germans and allies at Stalingrad when the the Soviets sealed the encirclement of that place on November 23, 1942. Exhaustion, cold, sickness, constant fighting, and a frightening lack of food and all other supplies caused a nightmare in the “Stalingrad Pocket” in December and January, and air resupply couldn’t handle the burden. The pocket began to collapse in late January 1943, with 110,000 Germans and 20,000 allies surrendering (the rest of the original 250,000 had since perished). These 130,000 or so, now POWs, were sent to the Soviet gulags on a thousand-mile Bataan-Death-March-style ordeal in which tens of thousand died; most of the rest died while in the gulags. It was only twelve years later, in 1955, that the 5,000 or so of these men who were still living were finally repatriated to Germany.)

Rebel leaders in East Ukraine in 2014-15 have said that Ukraine Army prisoners taken in this war will be tasked with “rebuilding the ruined cities” in the warzone after independence, i.e. forced labor.

Stalin must’ve refused to release the Stalingrad prisoners all those years because they were symbolic of the greatest single Soviet victory in the war (Khruschev finally released them two years into his term as Soviet leader). Debaltseve is likewise a symbol of Russian superiority of arms, as they may see it, and perhaps of Ukraine’s inability to win the present war.

One group of Ukraine Government Army POWs is marched out of the Debaltseve Pocket, Feb. 17 2015

Ukraine Government Army soldiers inspected by rebel captors after Debaltseve surrender (from a Rebel Youtube video)

Another easy comment to make is: The Ukrainians here made the same mistake the Germans did at Stalingrad. Both refused to admit, early enough, that the situation was desperate. Surrender came after weeks of the generals whistling past the graveyard (German intelligence analyst Conflict Reporter and others often criticize them for aloofness).

Conspiracy Theories about the Ukraine Army Command
The most obvious explanation for the fall of Debaltseve is a combination of (a) the Ukrainian Army’s incompetence, (b) heavy Russian intervention plus (c) Russian determination to have their Stalingrad 2015. Depending on your point of view, which side you favor and/or oppose, it seems to me that one will emphasize one or the other of these. All may be valid and explain things well enough. There are also two “conspiracy theories” circulating among serious people.

(1) Mixed Loyalties, or, as some might call it, “treason”. The Kiev military hierarchy is full of old hands from the Soviet era with deep ties to Russian state security (the successor to the KGB), and perhaps vague personal loyalties to “Soviet identity” (an identity that persists strongly in places into the 2010s, as I learned from my time in Kazakhstan). Hundreds in the Ukraine Army have been arrested for spying in the past year. One high-placed officer was arrested two weeks ago for passing secret information on Ukrainian positions to the rebels, which was used to coordinate attacks. (If true, this seems to be blatant treason, no two ways about it, and in any nation at war would call for the firing squad, wouldn’t it?). In other words, this conspiracy theory has it that the Ukraine Army’s own general staff has elements in it that want Ukraine to not win the war as it exists at present — i.e. a war pitting Ukraine as a supposed NATO proxy against the Rebels as a supposed (definite) Russian proxy. These elements in the Ukraine Army, the conspiracy theory holds, subtly sabotage the war effort. This seems a wild theory but has believers in Ukraine itself.

Here is the story of a Ukraine Army Lieutenant Colonel arrested for spying on Feb. 4th, 2015:

[Recently-arrested Ukraine Army] Lt. Col. Mykhailo Chornobai had been at the center of an espionage ring in the capital and had passed military secrets directly to an agent of the separatist Donetsk People’s Republic, including the locations of volunteer regiments that were then used to pinpoint artillery attacks. […] Colonel Chornobai was among about 300 people working in the military sphere who had been arrested since the start of the conflict.

The arrest further deepened mistrust of the leadership in Kiev that is already pervasive among the poorly equipped rank-and-file soldiers and midlevel commanders fighting on the front line. And it reinforced a view prevalent on the battlefield that the military leadership cannot be trusted to manage any weapons delivered by Western allies because of their ties to the Russian military and security service, the F.S.B. […]

“Very often one cannot tell where the F.S.B. stops and one of our military units begins,” said Semyon Semenchenko, a pro-government paramilitary leader [of the Volunteer Donbas Battalion] and member of the Ukrainian Parliament, referring to the Russian successor to the K.G.B. […] [NYTimes]

(Conspiracy Theory #2) Debaltseve was “deliberately sacrificed to get Western support” by the Kiev generals. A one-time loss of thousands of soldiers days after a so-called ceasefire agreement might shock other European states into increasing support for Ukraine. This is too cynical to be true, one hopes.

Ukraine government tank near the Debaltseve Pocket, mid-February 2015

Emperor’s New Clothes
It seems everyone knows that Russia is a defacto belligerent in this war, with constant flows of men and material to the rebels to include lots of shiny new equipment and alleged active-duty Russian soldiers. The big players (NATO, Western governments) and Putin himself don’t want to quite admit this, in a mutual Emperor’s New Clothes situation. Definitely a large majority of rebel fighters are actually from Russia, of course. Some are Middle Eastern (Caucauses) by appearance and others even East Asiatic, which is a dead giveaway that they are from Russia’s Far East.

Then again, the rebels’ entire point is that East Ukraine is majority-Russian, and the border is artificial, which is true.

Ukraine’s Volunteers
Meanwhile, the Ukraine’s volunteer units in this war (which were raised outside the purview of the Army during the crisis last year) it seems continue to have high morale relative to the hapless government soldiers.

I recently learned that an American citizen, age 55, a former U.S. Army Ranger, of Ukrainian heritage, and an early member of the pro-Ukraine Donbas Volunteer Battalion, was killed last August, just weeks after giving an interview with Canadian journalists (here it is on Youtube). His name was Mark Paslawsky, born in New Jersey but moved to Ukraine in the 1990s. He was one the 1,000 or so on the Ukrainian side killed in the disaster at Ilovaisk.

The best of the volunteer units is the Azov Volunteer Battalion, which continues to fight in the south.

A platoon from the Azov Vol,unteer Regiment poses for a picture before deployment
at the frontline town of Shyrokyne, due to east of Mariupol, East Ukraine, Feb. 2015
The sign reads: “Shyrokyne, 1 [km to the right]”

A map of last week’s Azov offensive (blue: Ukraine-held; brown: Rebel-held; orange is the offensive’s gains).

A huge inflow of resources and firepower from Russia followed the successful offensive, which had moved the front eastward 10 km. Azov reported that the town of Shyrokyne (Широкине) was subsequently subject to such an intense artillery bombardment from this new equipment that 70% of the buildings in that town of 1,400 people were destroyed. Azov has since lost control of the town and fighting continues.

An Azov Battalion tank in action at Shyrokyne:

Post-283: Ukraine Civil War — The Azov Battalion

Posted on February 11, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

The Ukrainian Army is considered to be incompetent (see post-280). It is full of draftees (40% of its personnel were conscripts before the 2014 crisis; draft notices have a 70% ignore rate), and its leadership is considered poor.

It has just allowed 5,000 of its soldiers to be encircled by the pro-Russian rebels at a place called Debaltseve. The Ukraine government denies the encirclement, but informed observers are saying it’s true.

Looking at hasty ongoing Ukrainian efforts at this very moment, it seems not impossible that [the Ukraine Army] will be able to breach the de facto pocket [at Debaltseve], which holds since 15 hours [Feb 10], in the coming hours. However if it does so, using all its reserves in the area, it will only be a question of hours or days, before even stronger Russian army reinforcements will push back the Ukrainian army forces and re-close the pocket. […][Up to] 5,000 [Ukrainian] troops are besieged and the outlook is gloomy. [Source]

The Ukrainian Regular Army has bitter experience with encirclement in this war. Last August, it allowed over 1,000 of its troops to be encircled at a place called Ilovaisk (due east of Donetsk City), with the shocking one-time loss of over 1,000 personnel killed and captured (some of these 1,000 were allegedly killed by rebels while under the white flag), and with only 97 escaping the encirclement alive and uncaptured, according to a government spokesman. This humiliating defeat may be about to be repeated on a larger scale at Debaltseve…

Military Situation map published by the Ukraine government, February 2nd, 2015. [See larger version, 1.0mb, here]

I am following the developments at several places, which include translations from original Russian language sources:

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(1) Defence.pk : Civil War in Ukraine — forum, including many pro-Russian contributors.
(2) DefenceTalk.com : Ukraine Crisis — forum, including many translations of Russian sources; tending to professional-level analysis.
(3) ConflictReport.info Up-to-date news and commentary from a pro-Ukraine / pro-NATO perspective by a German conflict intelligence analyst. (This person does some professional-level “geolocating”, i.e. comparing actual locations in the vast amount of video footage released daily by both sides to Google Maps to confirm actual locations of the two sides, thereby slicing past disinformation by both sides about who controls what — he apparently “called” the fall of the Donetsk airport many days before the Kiev government admitted it, using this technique).
(4) Kyiv Post — English-language newspaper and very pro-Ukraine.

A disproportionate share of what military successes Ukraine has had are — this is amazing to me — due to the Azov Battalion (also called the Azov Regiment), a non-professional volunteer formation.

Azov is composed totally of non-(current-)military volunteers, including foreigners (Croatians, Finns, Norwegians, British, French, Italians are active in it). It grew up around Right Sector’s (see #197) armed political paramilitary group that existed before the war (see the screenshot in #197 #197)), dozens of whose members were killed in the February 2014 Kiev (see post-197), dozens of whose members were killed in the February 2014 Kiev streetfighting in February 2014 in Kiev that brought down the conniving pro-Russian government at the time., dozen, sostreetfighting that brought down the conniving pro-Russian government at the time.You can see some of these men pre-war in the screenshot in #197197#197. The video itself has been purged from Youtub

Battalion Azov, Ukraine

Azov insignia patch

New recruits mustered into Battalion Azov / Jan. 2015, Kiev / [from an Azov website]

Its numbers are secret, but the Ukrainian government “approved” bringing this formation to 12,000 volunteers last year.

After a few weeks of steady losses for the Ukrainian side, here is what the Azov Battalion has done in the past 36 hours as of this writing:

[On February 10th, 2015,] Regiment Azov surprised virtually the whole world when it […] started a counteroffensive east and north east of Mariupol mostly along the coastline of the Azov Sea.

Within hours, it had pierced the thin Russian [i.e., “Novorossia” secessionist forces’] line of defense some 2-5 km east of the city and retook important towns like Pavlopil, Shyronkyne, and Kominternove.

At the same time, it took the smaller settlements of Lebedynske and Berdyanske, which over the last month were more than once the launching pads for Russian tank, mortar and artillery attacks on the Ukrainian front east of Mariupol. [Source]

This means the pressure on the major regional city of Mariupol (pre-war population over 500,000), which in recent weeks looked like it would fall to the rebels, has been relieved — A major victory for Ukraine (which is why the report I quoted above from a pro-Ukraine German intelligence analyst was titled “A Glimmer of Hope“). Azov has announced the retaking of Novoazovsk as its goal.

The effectiveness of the Azov Battalion proves that morale and feeling of righteous purpose matter a lot, not just towards military effectiveness in a war, but probably towards any endeavor, any job, anything.

Battalion Azov training, near Mariupol (Kyiv Post, Jan. 28th)

Post-282: Chiang Kai Shek’s Dream

Posted on February 8, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

A certain grammar point in Korean means “I’ve heard that_____; [Is that true?]” (____다던데 [정말 그래요]?). The Chinese next to me (B.B. Lee, born circa 1991) asked me a question about fast food. I asked him something that’s been on my mind for a while (see also post-#244): “I’ve heard that the Chinese dislike Chiang Kai Shek; is that true?“ (중국사람들은 [대만의 옛날 대통령] 장제스을 싫어하는 편이라던데 정말이에요?). I looked up this name in Chinese and showed him. Let me try to describe what he did: Half grin, half shrug, and a shake of the head. In words: “Ahh, No (that’s not the case).” I don’t make a point of asking people about this, but this happens to be the fourth Chinese who has independently told to me there was no ill will toward the man who was the biggest single enemy of Chinese Communism from the 1930s-1970s.

Another time, a certain female Chinese student (Y.J. Tang) asked me about famous American singers. In reply I asked “Who is best Chinese singer?” I asked this in English. (This Y.J. Tang is one of the only PRC Chinese who will use English.) Her answer was “Jay Zhou”.

Chiang Kai Shek with his U.S.-educated wife and General Stilwell, U.S. Chief of Staff in China during WWII

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Who is Jay Zhou? I had no idea. It turns out he’s from Taiwan. The best “Chinese” singer is from Taiwan? I am wise enough to things to not pursue these things. You are never to mention the “Three T’s” — “Tiananmen, Taiwan, Tibet” — to a Chinese in China. I am not in China, but I am in a 90%-Chinese environment, so I follow the rule anyway.

There is an irony to this. Jay Zhou’s grandfather, from what I see online, fled to Taiwan from China in the 1940s, so Jay Zhou is likely one of the millions of descendants of anti-Communist refugees from China who took over Taiwan following the humiliating total defeat of U.S.-supported Chiang Kai Shek’s (inept and corrupt) forces in 1949 and the ascendancy of the original Maoists in China around Mao himself.

As far as I know, General Chiang’s dream was of a capitalist or state-capitalist,Confucian, conservative, assertive China — an authoritarian system, but not one of wild social experiments like those of the reckless Chairman Mao and all other Maoists (e.g. 1970s Cambodia). As far as I know, Chiang opposed in principle multiparty liberal democracy — Taiwan was a one-party state as long as he lived and longer.

Mao’s grinning visage may be on their currency, their ruling party may call itself “Communist”, but you realize that China hasn’t been Maoist or even “Communist” much at all for decades. You realize that, ironically, the China that exists in the mid-2010s is much, much closer to Chiang’s dream than to Mao’s. It would be too difficult, cumbersome, inconvenient, and even self-defeating for PRC China to maintain some kind of anti-Chiang torch when it’s obviously his system that’s won the day. This can be an example of a people’s historical memory reversing itself totally over a period of thirty to forty years. I’m trying to think of a parallel in the West but I can’t.

Post-281: Great Aunt Has Died

Posted on February 4, 2015 12:00 am by Peter

My great aunt (my father’s mother’s sister), whose name was Beatrice, would’ve had her 95th birthday this Saturday, but after a brief illness last week she died As far as I know, she was my oldest living relative so few steps removed on either side. But there are a lot of relatives only hazily known to me in Iowa. She was born in Iowa in February of 1920 to parents both born in Norway.

My last strong memory of her is from July 2010 when I paid a visit with my uncle and aunt in Kansas (I was visiting with them briefly after a trip to the Grand Canyon at the time). Her husband requested my uncle and I try to install some new lightbulbs very high off the ground in a particular room. Following much commotion involving a ladder, I think we managed to do it. Beatrice was in the middle of her 90th year at that time. She seemed to me to be more spry and mentally alert than lots of people are at 60, even some at 50. I wondered what her secret to eternal youth might’ve been. She showed no signs I could see of anything bad either physically or mentally.

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My father in his retirement has made many trips to Kansas (not a short distance) in recent years, as Beatrice was the last “living link” to (as in, sister of) his own mother, who died in 2007 but whose last five or more years were affected by loss of memory. Come to think of it, that was the other impression I had of Beatrice in 2010: She was amazingly similar to her older sister, my grandmother, in appearance, in voice, in personality. To see her and to hear her speak was like stepping back into 1990s Iowa for me, a time I remember fondly.

To live and remain and alert into one’s mid-90s is a blessing. If I live that long, I’ll live to see the 2080s. That’s a lot of time left to get things done….