Category: Uncategorized

Last month, unknown assailants killed three Jewish teenagers in Israel. This month, Israel decided to kill 650 Palestinians (so far) in revenge bombings. “That’ll shown those…unknown assailants.”  Uhh…

It seems that nobody has determined who killed the teenagers or why. Oh, and between the three deaths and the 650 Palestinian deaths [and thousands of woundings], Israel used gestapo tactics to jail hundreds more Palestinians, killing ten or so in the round-up, which inspired some other Palestinians to launch a few useless rockets in anger.

All the same, the “Gaza Conflict” of summer 2014 I view mostly with indifference. I don’t support either side, and see it as senseless and a bit tiring (this happens so often). What does Respectable Opinion say?

Der Spiegel (‘The Mirror’ in German), the news and politics magazine, did an analysis of a few newspapers’ editorial stances on the July 2014 Gaza attack. The axes of opinions:

Vertical:
(top) Hamas’ actions are understandable
(bottom) Hamas’ actions not understandable

Horizontal:
(left) Israel’s response is disproportionate
(right) Israel must respond in this way

Top-right quadrant: “Everybody’s right”.
Bottom-right: “Pro-Israel” (Israel justified, Hamas not)
Bottom-left: “Everybody’s wrong.”
Top-left: Pro-Palestinian (Hamas justified, Israel not).

The icons represent different newspapers’ editorial opinions during the July 2014 crisis:

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The Guardian is alone in the “everybody’s right”. quadrant (top right). Al Jazaeera, predictably, says Israel is wrong, but is neutral on Hamas. The blue dots are Spiegel users’ unscientific opinions, and the red arrow is the average. My own dot I’d put on the left side somewhere.

Predictably, all three German newspapers in the survey are on the “Israel is Right and the Palestinians are Wrong” side (bottom right quadrant). (It’s hard to imagine anyone in today’s Germany, other than marginal political radicals [or Muslim immigrants], offering any criticism of Israel.)

I expect all/most U.S. newspapers would be “Israel is Right, Palestinians are Wrong”, too. This is the default opinion in the USA. We regularly see movies telling us how heroically persecuted Jews are, so that’s a part of it. There is something more going on, though, I think. “Israel is our only ally in the Middle East, surrounded by hostile enemies”. That’s what they say. This image creates a subconscious and powerful “civilizational nostalgia” for eight or nine hundred years ago or so. The Crusader Era. Crusader kingdoms that our ancestors set up in the 1100s-1200s AD in the very same place. Hey, the comparison is there to be made.

With the crusades comes the Middle Ages, romantically imagined to have been a golden age of social harmony. Knights. Chivalry. You know. We gentiles of Western-European ancestry (still a majority of the USA population, and a large majority in the heartland) are susceptible to “nostalgia politics” just like (I guess) everybody else.

Of course, the difference between Israel and the Crusader States is that Israel is not Christian, and, inconveniently, many Palestinians are: Fully a million, in fact, of the total of 10.5 million total Palestinians in the world are Christian, most of them living outside “Palestine” due to the expulsions, according to Wikipedia. (I was surprised to learn that there are even six active Lutheran churches in the occupied Palestinian territories, see ELCJHL.org.)

Here is an assignment from my Korean class, kind of a free writing activity (for once). Choose a product and write a little summary of it. Guidelines, simple: Where was it bought? / Price? / Good points? / Bad points?

I wrote what is in black. Red is the teacher’s. Below is the final text in Korean (corrected) with my English translation.

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Looking back on this little assignment, I can make a few other general comments:

(1) Not Really From a Vending Machine. I actually bought it in the building’s convenience store with my Japanese classmate Toru씨. I’m not sure if I didn’t remember this, or whether I just really wanted to use the word “자동판매기” (jah-dong-pahn-meggi, vending machine) which I think sounds funny.

(2) Sugar? In fact, I didn’t check the sugar content. I was in a rush to finish in the ten minutes allotted. I just assumed.

(3) A Lot of Caffeine? The can includes 65mg of caffeine, as you’ll see in the photo. In Korea they always put the amount of caffeine on the front of the caffeinated products, which I find nice. If you’re like me, you try to maximize the caffeine-per-dollar value. I don’t really think 65mg is “a lot” of caffeine (as I wrote in the assignment). For a man of my size (185 pounds or 84 kilograms, I think), my impression is that it will start to noticeably perk you up only well above the 100mg level.

(4) The Can is Tiny. It can fit in your pocket. The can is 175 ml, a bit less than 6 ounces, so half the volume of the smallest soda cans we sell. In my memory in the USA, I don’t remember such tiny cans of drinks being sold to adults. Judging by how common they are in Korea, they do brisk business.

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                A Memory
                Small boy. It’s me. Short blondish hair.
                Small girl. Long hair. Noisy but pretty.
                A toy car. Nice! Red. Yellow. Fun. I can have fun!
                No. She takes it. She keeps it!
                I want to try! Maybe I can wait.
                Why won’t she share??
                What do I do? I can’t do anything. Sad.
                I wander away. I’m sad.

I remember World Cup 1994.

Now that it’s 2014 and the World Cup is here again, I realize that 1994 is no short time ago.

I remember this team. The wild-looking #22 in the back is Alexei Lalas. He is now a commentator. The little Black guy, #13, was Cobi Jones, who amazed us by his sprinting ability in those days. #18 is Brad Friedel, who is still playing today in the English Premier League, at age 43. I saw him on the BBC as a commentator when watching a game with my friend J.H. We were confused by his accent. Half of his sentences sounded British, half American. #1 was Tony Meola, the starting goalie, whose name I thought was very cool. Looking back on this team, there is only one player who is obviously Mestizo in ancestral origin, #7. Only two players are Black, and both are very light-skinned. This strikes me about how I perceive that the USA has changed. If this team were fielded in 2014, my feeling is that the coach and so on would be accused of racism!

This team performed the best, by far, of any U.S. national team ever up to that point.

There was no Internet in 1994. This probably meant life was more authentic. I played soccer in those days, too. I was in school but June and July, World Cup time, are vacation. I was so excited that I hardly knew what to do with myself.

The World Cup was not only going on, you see, but in my own backyard. I think some of the games were played at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C. and there I was living quite nearby. I went to a game. I am almost sure I did. I have no idea who played, other than two minor teams. Exasperatingly, I am not 100% sure if this is a true memory. I remember seeing a bunch of attention-seekers dressed in bright red-white-and-blue costumes and making a lot of noise at the stadium. Is it possible I saw it on TV? No, it can’t be. A memory of TV cannot be so vivid. Is it possible the memory was of the 1996 Olympic soccer and I went to that instead?

I remember being alone in a car with my friend and then-classmate Pedro, listening on the radio to the USA vs. Brazil game. As it was radio, our clarity of understanding was less than optimal. I remember our huge celebration when the USA scored a goal. Imagine the deflating feeling when we realized that it was actually Brazil that scored! The USA lost.

I wrote the following to my (one and only) Singaporean friend, A.L., yesterday:

How might I describe my mornings these past two weeks? A drowsy haze of soccer punctuated by frustrated sleep and confusion. You see, the games are shown from 1 AM to 8 AM. “Life is too short to sleep through the World Cup”, is my feeling. I don’t follow soccer whatsoever otherwise, so this may not be my most rational decision.

This Sunday/Monday, I got to sleep at 12:30 AM and woke up at 3:00 AM, shaved/showered, packed up my things, and walked over to my friend J.H.’s home to watch the Korea game and then the USA vs. Portgual game. Korea had a terrible first half in which they conceded four goals and lost. They are probably out. As for the USA game, I had to leave before the second half began to go to our class’ last day. The USA and Portugal tied due to a last-second Portugal goal, which I thus missed.

Political Influences on World Cup Results; Speculative
The appeal of the World Cup is definitely “political'” in the sense of it being all about national pride. Within Europe, I cannot help but think of the political situation since the 2008 Economic Crisis.

Southern Europeans
The European “PIIGS”, who fast approach a decade of unending economic unpleasantness and pessimism, did remarkably poorly in the Group Stage:

           Spain: Out. Two losses.
           Italy: Out. Two losses.
           Greece: Out. Two losses.
           Porutgal: Probably Out. Nearly two losses (tied USA at last second).

Now, consider that Spain, Portugal, Italy, Greece respectively rank #1, #4, #9, #12 in the world!

“On paper”, as they say, each of these teams should be in the final 16, i.e., the second round in the World Cup. Three are out for sure and one teeters on the brink. What, then, is the statistical chance, in a 32-team tournament, that the #1, #4, #9, and #12 ranked teams are all eliminated before going onto the second round of 16 teams? The odds have to be very low, in which case we can speculate about a general explanation. Here is mine: As the contest is heavily influenced by national pride, teams from politically-pessimistic societies do more poorly than they should.

Vis-a-vis the “PIIGS”, who are more politically optimistic?

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Northern Europeans
With one glaring exception, Northwestern Europe has done  very. Germany, Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, and England are all there. England was knocked out (and somewhere a dog was biting a man; England usually does poorly at the World Cup; England couldn’t even beat Costa Rica this time).

Germany: Probably advancing
Netherlands: Definitely advancing
Belgium: Definitely advancing
Switzerland: May advance with a final win
England: Out; scored only two goals in three games.

There is talk that certain of England’s potential players refused to play for the national team as they’d prefer a vacation, which points to a kind of cynical political pessimism and anti-patriotism, too.

I saw a surreal vieo-game-esque goal by Dutch star Van Persie, in Netherlands’ 5-1 win over Spain.

The USA has done better than I expected. The German coach of the USA team, Klinsmann, was widely mocked for declaring that the USA “definitely will not win” the World Cup. The USA will play Germany one of these days. (Maybe the most curious thing about the USA team is that it seemed to have zero Hispanic starting players. The USA is approaching 20% Hispanic, but it’s hard, in some ways, to even notice [in media, sports, TV, movies, music, politics], except at the street level in certain regions.)

The South Korea team of 2014 performed poorly and will probably be eliminated. They have one Round One game left. I compare this to their great performance in 2002. The South Korea of 2002 was, in my opinion, much more politically optimistic than the South Korea of 2014.

Today, I woke up at 4:50 AM to watch the Japan vs. Colombia game. I am writing as Japan has just lost. They are out. Why did I watch?

A fictitious classmate named Mincheol invited me to go on a fictitious trip to Jeju (an island which is entirely non-fictitious). My task was to decline and give reasons why. Picture here and translation below.

[My Korean original, after corrections by Teacher Lee]
민철 씨, 제주도에 가지 마세요. 우리는 바쁘니까 여행은 좋지 않은 생각이에요. 시험도 있고 가족하고 약속도 있으니까 인천에 있을 거예요. 저는 여행을 못 가요. 가고 싶지 않아요. 글쎄요, 같이 가고 싶은데 못 가요. 다음 주말에 어때요? 다음 주말이 더 좋아요. 시간이 있으니까 다음 주말에 갈까요? 다음 주말에 가면, 아주 행복할 거예요. [Signed]

[English Translation]
Dear Mincheol,
Don’t go to Jeju Island. As we are so busy, going on a trip is a bad idea. We have an exam coming up, and we have obligations to our families, so we need to (here: “will”) stay in Incheon. I can’t go. I don’t want to go. Well, actually I do want to go with you, but I can’t. How about next week? Next week is better. If you have time, why don’t we go next week instead? If we go next week, I will be very happy. [Signed]
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And the rest of the story: My attempt to sternly warn the fictitious Mincheol of his obligations to his studies and to his family failed; backfired. What do I mean, “backfired”? I mean this:

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I sent the above picture via the KakaoTalk messenger program to a Korean friend, P.R. (one of the people with whom I somehow communicate exclusively in Korean). P.R. wrote back as follows. (Note that the ‘ㅋ’ letter denotes laughter):

                Me: [Sent the above photo]
_                P.R.: ㅋㅋㅋㅋ이게뭐예요?
                P.R.: 민철씨가누구입니까?ㅋㅋㅋㅋ
                Me: 민철씨가 없어요 [grin] 숙제가이죠…내 “편지”가 어때요?
                P.R.: ㅋㅋ아주 그럴듯한데요~?
                P.R.: 민철씨와 꼭 여행을가고싶은게 느껴져요ㅋㅋ

                Me: [Sent the above photo]
                P.R.: Haha, what’s this?
                P.R.: Who is Mr. Mincheol? Hahaha
                (Whereupon I explain that Mincheol is not real and that this is an assignment for class)
                P.R.: Hey it’s pretty good, isn’t it?
                P.R.: It’s just that…Now I feel like *I* want to go on the trip with Mincheol. Hah!

Here is a (hypothetical) person, Mincheol, proposing going on a trip for leisure even with exams upcoming and other obligations. We can criticize Mincheol for being irresponsible, maybe, but I think the Western Mind would (in principle if not in action) more likely sympathize with Mincheol than with the writer, who seems dominated by social pressures and “sounds very Asian”. (Ironically, the writer is [of course] me, who is 100% European by ancestry albeit writing in an Asian language [Korean] and one which I don’t know well at that). Yet my letter rebuking Mincheol for the trip idea made P.R., a Korean, want to join Mincheol! The “Mincheol Life” is appealing (in this case to a highly-amused P.R.), because it is (may be) more “authentic”.

The Authentic Life. Martin Heidegger. The letter-writer’s persona is the kind which Heidegger (if I can make the grand claim of understanding him) might say leads an “inauthentic life”. The writer appeals to the “They” idea. “They say you shouldn’t do any leisure activities before an exam.” Who are “They”? There is no “They”. And yet it is everywhere. All the time. Most of what we do is controlled by the “They”. The Authentic Life, as I understand it, means escaping the clutches of this “They” (see here for more). It may or may not mean going to Jeju Island with Mincheol, though.

Now, I don’t think I’d believe this story if I heard it from someone else, but I trust my own ears well enough. I was there. It was late 2011.

This was it, more or less:
Picture a long table, at the back of a reasonably-priced meat restaurant, in a nice and cozy corner of the Seoul Megalopolis. Beef and pork are on grills built into the tables, cooking, in the Korean style. The grill emanates comfortable heat. Eight or so White Westerners are sitting at this table, eating and talking. Most are coworkers, teachers at the same English language institute (hagwon). Among them is me.

Next to me sits C.H. from California (who is now in China). Others present included J.H., B.L., M.G., E.R., and finally A.S. All these people were born in the mid-1980s (except for C.H. who is a bit older), so are in their mid-20s at the time (2011), Everyone around the table holds a university degree.

A.S., from England, with his close-cropped red hair, is the focal point of my memory here. He was a big fan of one of the soccer teams in England.

It so happens that C.H. is a graduate of a Lutheran college in the USA. At our dinner, as the meat sizzles and all the “accoutrements” are nearby at the ready — lettuce, garlic, peppers (of which we stayed well clear), sauces, kimchi, and who knows what else — I begin to ask C.H. about his thoughts on the Lutheran church(es) in America and so on. He knows much more than I do about it. He was even in a Lutheran seminary for a short time.

Our English friend, A.S., listens in. He chimes in:

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He: [quizzically] “What are you two talking about?”
Us: “The Lutheran Church.”
He: “What’s that?”
Us: “Lutheranism.”
He: “….“
Us: “You don’t know what Lutheranism is?”
He: [puzzled] “Umm, no.“
Us: “It’s a kind of Christianity. It goes back to Martin Luther and the Reformation. Lutherans follow the teachings of Luther. [Matter of factly] You know, Martin Luther.” [The last sentence was not a question; it ended with a falling intonation].
He: “Oh, of course I know Martin Luther King. So it’s a church that follows Martin Luther King, is it?”
Us: “No, not Martin Luther King. Martin Luther. The one who lived in Germany five hundred years ago, who started the Reformation. That one.”
He: [blankly; gently shaking head]  “I’ve never heard of him.”

He’d never heard of him! Imagine. Our English friend, a university-educated European, claimed total ignorance of Luther. I should add that there was nothing ironic or joking about his delivery.

This shocked me. How can a university-educated Western European man have never heard of Luther? Am I wrong to be shocked? Am I wrong to be troubled by this?

You know, previous generations generally didn’t even bother “Martining” him. They spoke of “Luther” in the way we still speak of “Lincoln” or “Darwin”. First name not needed. Just a short few decades later, a native-born Englishman, a product of England’s K-16 system, has never heard of him, one of the most famous Europeans ever to live.

With lots of meat left to be eaten, and not wanting to offend A.S., but genuinely surprised and disheartened a bit, I dropped the subject. I brought it up later with C.H. in private. C.H. attributed A.S.’ ignorance of the Christian Reformer to “secularism” in the UK. (Note: C.H. had had a small book published, around the mid-2000s, by one of the conservative Lutheran church bodies in the USA, which I sought out, found online, ordered, and read. That thin little book is now in the possession of C.H.’s  good friend J.A. [who also went to Korea, is still there, and became my friend too]. I gave it to J.A. when I moved out).

I didn’t find C.H.’s explanation totally satisfying, because Luther is more than a religious figure. Luther is one of the towering figures of European history in general, as I see it. It’s like excusing a Swede who had never heard of Napoleon by arguing that Sweden is a pacifist country so “they wouldn’t have studied about a general”. That doesn’t fly. All Swedes, certainly the educated ones, ought to know about Napoleon. An educated Englishman ought, at minimum, to “have heard of” Luther. If you ask me!
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It so happens that A.S. was highly concerned with seeming “cool”. He was a good athlete, was basically pleasant to talk with, and had a certain charisma at times. He was a big fan of rap music, despite being a freckled, red-haired Englishman (a “ginger”, as he said). It occurs to me that knowledge of rap may correlate with ignorance of things like who Martin Luther was. Those who know all about Luther are generally going to be quite (relatively) ignorant about rap music. There is a correlation there. I have no data, but I’m sure of it.

It was once said to me that A.S. wanted very much to seem “working class” despite being “middle class”. This is a British thing I don’t too much understand. A Scottish teacher in the circle of people of my acquaintance at that time had said this. (The Scotsman’s given name’s first initial is R.; I’ve forgotten his surname — R.’s Korean sojourn ended in unforgettably-surreal circumstances a few months after the late 2011 dinner I tried to sketch out above, but R. is now doing well back in the UK, I’m told.)

I might offer this explanation: If A.S. were twenty years older, I’m almost sure he’d have heard of Luther. At some point in the last few decades, though, part of the “high status” package for Westerners has become “belief in moral superiority of other cultures over our own.” By the 1990s and 2000s, when this A.S. was being educated in England’s K-to-16 pipeline, his teachers and so on must’ve, by consensus, steered the kids’ education away from “Dead White Males” like Luther and more towards the Shaka Zulus and Mansa Musas and so on.

In post-211 I discussed the Luther statue in downtown Washington, D.C. Now I wonder, truly: How many of the seven million residents of the Washington, D.C. metro area today “have ever heard of” Martin Luther”?

I choose to live imagining that the typical educated, native-born Westerner is aware of Luther.

The father of the Reformation, Martin Luther, in Washington, D.C.:

Taking his “Here I Stand” pose, as he so often does when appearing in statue form, Dr. Luther is memorializing his glory days. You know, the Diet of Worms; his dramatic refusal to recant; his death sentence and midnight escape.

The statue is a replica of one which stands in Germany at Worms (pronounced “Verms”) according to Wikipedia. (On Worms being pronounced “Verms”: I may have gone all through confirmation class, at a Lutheran church, unaware that using the wobbly English ‘W’ in that name was not quite right).

More photos of the statue and vicinity are below (including one from the 1920s):

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This is very close to the heart of Downtown Washington D.C.

Have a look at a map pinpointing Thomas Circle. The Luther Statue is adjacent to it, on the north side.

Thomas Circle is named for a Union general from Virginia (George Thomas, who won fame at the battle of Chickamagua). General Thomas gazes southwards, towards his native state, perhaps in the direction of Old Town Alexandria, where a Confederate Soldier, also in statue form, still (as far as I know) stares back.

The above are all my photos, taken in 2014. Below is Thomas Circle in the 1920s, with the Luther Statue in the back:

The trees on either side of General Thomas are still there in 2014, or at least trees of the same species.

Both of these statues are holdovers from a much earlier time. As I see it, there is no way either would’ve been granted statuehood in Washington, D.C. in the past fifty years. Yet there they boldly stand, even into the 2010s.

I once had a Costco Korea membership. That was January 2013 to January 2014. I used it at the Ilsan and Youngdeungpo stores a few times. My conclusion was that Costco Korea’s negatives outweigh its positives. The prices are not better than the other “marts” like HomePlus or E-Mart, and you have to buy in bulk. It’s also a chaotic atmosphere in there. Visits are stressful, and it’s a long trip there.

There are two pluses, though:

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The positives about Costco are:
(1) The availability of certain specific American products unavailable or very expensive anywhere else,
(2) The food court.

In general, the food court is hearty, delicious, and cheap. Hot dogs, pizza, chicken bake, etcetera. A pretty heaping meal can be had for $5 a person. (About half of the Korean patrons of the food court shamelessly pile up small mountains of onions [meant to be a light topping on the hot dogs] onto their paper plates. This is a strange habit.)

Costco in Korea has a place for “How are we doing” comments, which they publish:

Here are some comments they had posted during one of my visits. I photographed the comment sheets. They are under the glass, right under the red arrow in the photo above. I include the translations into English that were provided by the store, verbatim:

Six comments, and one is a complaint about a warranty, which is not the store’s responsibility. Of the remaining five, three are about the food being “too salty”. Costco provided a response something like: “We use a standard recipe from from headquarters and we are not able to change it”. I guess this is a polite way to say, “If you don’t like it, take a hike!”

A few weeks ago, I found a DVD of “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” which is set during the Korean War. It’s a classic, though an obscure one.

The war ended in July 1953. This movie was made in 1954 and released late that year.

The movie is set during that long, cynical stage of the Korean War without a clear and decisive objective and without the intention of victory. American policy was deliberately to “not win the war” starting in spring 1951. From then on, strategic policy was to fight for a status-quo stalemate. (Parallels to Vietnam are here for the taking.)

Now, “Bridges at Toko-Ri” is not what you’d expect. In theory, it’s about the war in Korea. In fact, we see hardly any “War” and even less “Korea” (i.e., there is very little combat and very little of the movie takes place in Korea itself).

The movie interests me for a lot of reasons. One is the differences between the 1950s-USA and the 2010s-USA. There are too many to comment on.

Here is one: During a “mission briefing” scene, almost every single character is puffing away on a cigarette. If you look closely below, you can see four or maybe five of the men with lit cigarettes. The leader is puffing on a big cigar. You won’t see this so much these days. It surprised me to see smoking on a Navy vessel in the first place. Apparently it was done a lot, but is on the way out according to “Smoking in the United States Military“wiki article.

The hero, Brubaker, is seated in the middle (he is the John-Wayne-looking character [actor: William Holden]).

Everything about this character/man fits a certain archetype in pre-1970-or-so American cinema that we seldom see anymore, I think: The “Artistocratic-Yet-Rugged Heroic American Male”: Admirable; honorable; noble. A certain accent, a certain manner, and a certain look. Today, this William Holden would much less likely be cast as the quintessential, timeless American Hero, and much more likely as the “quintessential” Villain!

But it is still 1954. A man like Brubaker is still a heroic figure to be looked up to.

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Brubaker’s wife [actress: Grace Kelly] at one point shows up for a surprise visit to the base in Japan,along with their two adoring daughters. They all go to a “natural hot springs” while Brubaker is on leave in Japan.

Do you see the symbol at the top on the door, of a circle with three wavy lines emanating from it? This is a sign I have never seen in the USA, but have seen quite often in Korea. Businesses use it to tell customers, “Come here for hot water”: So saunas, public baths, motels, yeogwan, and so on. That is South Korea, 2010s. This was Japan, sixty years earlier. Could this symbol originate in Japan, borrowed by South Korea?

Much else about the Japan of the 1950s seems “embryonically South Korean” (as I’ve known SK since 2009). Here is a shot of some of the pilots going to a bar off-base in Japan. This neon-dominated building looks South Korean, too:

That scene flashed a memory of April 2009 across my mind’s eye. It was my first night in South Korea. I remember one moment in which I sat there marveling, in stunned amazement, at an enormous neon wall before me. I wrote about this in post-47.

(These two things are trivial, but point to the bigger message of just how much South Korea [and maybe others in Asia, too] borrowed/appropriated from Japan — including the entirety of their “chaebol” economic model .)

For something completely different: I found this interesting. “Beware of Props and Jet Blasts”. This use of “props” has a funny double meaning, being as this was a movie. It means “propellers”, it seems, in Navy jargon.

It seems that I’ve forgotten, thus far, to mention anything about the plot. Alas, I’m not a very good movie reviewer. I have a cousin who’s quite good at it. If he were doing this, he’d have cut most of the junk above and led with something more like this:

Brubaker is a successful lawyer and family man. He flew planes in WWII. Brubaker is called up to fly again in Korea but is ambivalent about the war. The movie opens with his plane shot up terribly after a mission against the Communists. He manages to make it back over the water and bails out. He is saved by a helicopter crew. The admiral takes him aside after he is saved and asks about his experience of being “fished” out of the water:

(This reminds me of my own daily thoughts in September to October 2013, hiking (halfway) across Korea. What, you might ask, crossed my mind on those long days in which I seldom saw another human being? I would never have guessed this, but the answer is: “Every person I’ve ever known, no matter how remotely“. People floated in and out of my head all the time: Fragments of long-disused memories; long-forgotten glories and long-forgotten quarrels; speculation about how people are doing today…And some were people I haven’t seen since elementary school. People I haven’t thought about in years.)

Back to the plot: As one of the best pilots in the Navy, Brubaker is assigned to destroy the bridges at a place called Toko-Ri. They are very heavily defended, and it’s clear that the pilots on this mission have a high chance of death.

Here is the scene in which the mission is explained, with the admiral’s justification, with the politics of the war and the entire Cold War itself weaved in gracefully:

The admiral is giving a fair view of the pro-intervention side’s philosophy (which, according to my reading, was a minority view in the USA at the time — Most Americans opposed the Korean intervention, especially after the firing of MacArthur). The admiral’s justification of the Toko-Ri mission itself doesn’t really make much sense, though. How will destroying a few more bridges end the war?

Brubaker, suitably, is the American Mainstream: Ambivalent about the war at best, leaning against interventionism: “Why am I here? Why don’t we get out of here? What’s the use?”

Brubaker, in another scene, tries to bail his helicopter pilot friend out of military jail after a fistfight:

Ouch. That seems to be a way of saying “Nobody cares what you did in Korea”. A pointless war.

Near the end of the movie, after a series of unfortunate events for the Americans, a fatalistic Brubaker addresses this issue again.

[Spoiler Below]


Brubaker is hit by the Communists during the Toko-ri raid, and loses too much fuel to make it back to the aircraft carrier. He bails out near the coast, but still on land. The same helicopter crew that saved him in the opening scene shows up again. The helicopter is shot down by more Communists. They bail out and join Brubaker for a last stand. The helicopter crew members are killed one by one. In the final scene, Brubaker himself is killed shortly after making the speech above.

General Park Chung-Hee’s May 16th, 1961 coup d’etat was perhaps the single most important event in South Korean history since independence in 1948 (see also post-53 and post-54).

General Park successfully seized control of Seoul in the pre-dawn hours. Victorious, he posed for photographs that very day in front of Seoul City Hall:

See the wooden doors in the back at left, in front of which five soldiers are standing? You can easily stand in front of these same doors, even 53 years later. These were the front doors to Seoul City Hall.

Here it is today. See the same doors?

That black building behind is the New City Hall (2008 to present). The front building, the former City Hall (1928-2008), is now a museum and/or library. The huge grassy area in front of both is frequently used for events.

But why did they make the New City Hall such a weird shape?

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My impression is that they thought it looked sleek and futuristic and thus symbolized a new Korea.

A tidal wave of futuristic fury, splashing over the dusty-looking old City Hall. That’s how it looks to me. I interpret it to be meant as a metaphor for South Korea moving into a new world, washing away its historical “baggage” of War, Dictatorship, Terror, Foreign Occupation, and Economic Misery. Those are things that Koreans feel defined the majority of the period during which that stone building served as City Hall. All have been washed away by the unstoppable tide of Korean progress and advancement towards status as a global leader (…is the idea).

Certain angles make this “tidal wave” visualization very clear:

The opening of the New City Hall also coincided with the 60th anniversary of South Korea’s foundation (Summer 1948). This summer (2014) will mark 66 years of independence.

Here is the “The Ballad of Forty Dollars”. The song reminds me of the Iowa I knew in the 1990s, when I frequently visited there (my father’s place of birth). Lyrics below.

The tune, the lyrics, the “Americana”; all are appealing.

I like that it tells a story. I just can’t figure out “the moral of the story” (if any). Can you?

The Ballad of Forty Dollars
The Osborne Brothers [1972]

     Well, the man who preached the funeral
     Said it really was a simple way to die

     Well, he laid down to rest one afternoon
     And never opened up his eyes

     They hired me and Fred and Joe
     To dig the grave and carry up some chairs

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     It took us seven hours
     And I guess we must’ve drunk a case of beer

     I guess I oughta go and watch them put him down
     But I don’t own a suit

     Anyway, when they start talking about the fire and hell
     Well, I get spooked

     So I’ll just sit here in my truck
     And act like I don’t know it when they pass.

     Anyway, when they’re all through
     I’ve got to got to work and mow the grass.

     Well, here they come
     And who’s that riding in that big old shiny limousine!

     Mmmm…Look at all that chrome
     I do believe that’s the sharpest thing I’ve seen

     That must belong to his great-uncle,
     Someone said he owned a big old farm

     When they get parked, I’ll mosey down and look it over
     That won’t do no harm!

     Well, that must be the widow in the car
     And would you take a look at that!

     That sure is a pretty dress,
     You know, some women do look good in black

     Why, he’s not even in the ground,
     And they tell me that his truck is up for sale

     They say she took it pretty hard,
     But you can’t tell too much behind the veil

     Well, listen ain’t that pretty
     When the bugler plays the military taps

     I think that when you was in the war
     They always try and play a song like that

     Well, here I am and there they go
     I guess you’d just call it my bad luck

     I hope he’ll rest in peace
     The trouble is, the fella owes me forty bucks!

Fate decreed that I shouldn’t have even one minute of downtime in the wild month of February 2014, which started for me in an airport (see post-204) and ended at a bus station, where I collected my friend J.S. (of Roanoke, VA)

We finished our post-CELTA celebratory events about 11:20 PM on Friday Feb. 28th (see post-200). To the subway. On to home, for the others. Not me. For me, it was on to the bus station. There, I found a recently-arrived J.S. leaning up against a post, backpack at his feet. It was 11:55 PM. As the clock ran out on the month of February, J.S. and I were maneuvering down into the subway. Back to Arlington. Sleep.

J.S. wanted to see the original U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence.

Into the Metro again, in the morning:

Out of the Metro. We found the “Clinton Building”. There is a Clinton Building? There is. I see that it was named in 2013. “Payback”, I’d guess, for Republicans putting in a Reagan Building.

The Archives is (are?) nearby.

This was also my first time seeing the founding documents of the USA, even though I was born and raised just a few miles away. They’re right there (at the National Archives, near the U.S. Capitol).

Here is the very romanesque front of the National Archives:

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We found the room housing the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. A quiet piety dominates that giant, dimly-lit room. The feeling is equal to walking through a religious sanctuary.

It seems to me that very many Americans feel that the Declaration of Independence and so on are, at some level, “sacred”, even “divinely inspired”. In a much more primitive society, maybe we would actually worship Jefferson and Washington and so on, as gods, today. The feelings people have towards them “draw water from the same well”.
__________________________________________________________
J.S. posed a good question: If what they have on display is the “original” Declaration of Independence that was sent to the King in 1776, to legally secede from the British Empire, “how’d they get it back?” I have no answer.

J.S. went off to look at other exhibits. I spent a considerable amount of time slowly reading a replica of the Declaration of Independence. The original cursive is a bit hard. People younger than I won’t be able to read these originals at all, if it’s true that “they” don’t teach cursive anymore.

The Archives’ front side gets 99.9% of the visitors. That’s where the Constitution and all are, along with a waste-of-time exhibition called the Rubinstein Hall or some such name.

The rear side is the Research Center entrance. We went back there, too, thinking to look at microfilms of censuses. Why not?

That Research Center has a strange atmosphere: One part library, one part airport-security-area, two parts prison.

Sign in, get ID card, go through airport-style security, all amid suspicious glares. We did it all. The process took so long that we had to leave before entering the main area. Off to meet A.W.F. & P.F….

Here is a map of the location of the National Archives:

Outside, the Washington Monument is not far away (at left, below). Stone barriers, to prevent anyone driving bombs onto these federal buildings, are along the sidewalks. I don’t think they had those so much when I was young.

Later on, somewhere else, there was this completely-unrelated statue:

February of 2014 was a whirlwind month.

It started like this:

I was flying back to the USA. I flew into New York (much cheaper), then got the bus to Washington. The opportunity to spend a day in New York City was there. I saw my friend T.A.

I would stay at a grey, dreary “hotel” (they were actually shared rooms, so it was a “hostel” — Maybe management ran out of money to pay for that extra letter, S, on the sign).

I arrived on Friday, Jan. 31st (Chinese New Year). Two days later was the Superbowl, an event I beheld with such indifference that I didn’t even know that it was being held in New York City till after my arrival.

In fact, grey, dreary, angry, arrogant New York was not quite as grey, dreary, angry, and arrogant as usual: The festive mood of the Superbowl lifted things up,  I think.

The Superbowl! It’s not quite super enough for non-Americans to care even the smallest bit, though….

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(I ran into a British traveler, huge backpack in tow, at the hostel that evening. He was just stopping over; late that very night, he was on to Mexico. I teased him, “Oh, too bad, you’re going to miss the Superbowl!” I asked him if he was familiar with the sport. His answer was delivered in typical British style: “I know what it is; I’ve never seen it…”). He was from Manchester, and surprised me by declaring himself a fan of the soccer team called “Manchester City”. A British coworker back at the hagwon in Bucheon, also from Manchester, was a “United” fan and hated “City”. I thought that everybody liked “United”. I concede that it makes no sense that a pro sports team would have no fans…I’ll have to rethink this.)

I would meet my Kazakh friend T.A. I would meet him way down at a place with the weird name of “Neck Road”, southern Brooklyn, where he was then working and living. I could make it by subway from the airport. That was my plan. I overestimated my own ability. With two heavy suitcases and seemingly no escalators or elevators in the NY subway system, it required a herculean effort to get there. I was unsure of the right way, and had to transfer several times, lugging the bags.

Two or three hours after leaving the airport arrival area, I arrived at “Neck Road” and met T.A. We walked around Manhattan that evening, as in my previous visit. He took my picture in front of the famous NY Public Library (at right), catching me looking down.

We met T.A.‘s Kyrgyz friend, who is in NY attending some art institute. They speak fluent English but Russian to each other. We had french fries and beer. I was back in the world of tipping. I had to remind myself to do it, when we left.

In our parents’ or grandparents’ generations, Americans and “Soviets” were officially enemies. The three of us are too young to actually remember.

Elsewhere that night, we saw the epicenter of the Superbowl festivities:

You won’t recognize it here, but at right is that famous street called “Broadway”. We passed it only briefly. I once suggested going back, but T.A. and his friend, being from Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan respectively, had even less interest in this Superbowl thing than I did.

It was alluring. I returned the next day (Saturday), alone, in the hours before my bus departed. I walked the entire length. Broadway was converted, that week, into “Superbowl Avenue”, filled with football-related attractions, prize giveaways, tents full of video games to play (with the latest football games), and a lot of other stuff along those lines. Most excitingly was the free “Superbowl pizza”, whatever that is. I didn’t get any on account of the “super”-long line.

I did get some pizza that day, though, which, at $1.00 per slice (tax included), was basically free:

Even McDonald’s put on a big “chicken nugget Superbowl sale”:

All around, that day, people were “cruising around” in football jerseys and hats:

Back home, by bus, it was, on Saturday afternoon.

I didn’t watch more than ten minutes of the Superbowl.

“Analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog. Few people are interested and the frog dies of it.” (E.B. White)

What is “German humor”? I think I can identify it, but I would not hazard to explain it, for a reason something like that “frog problem”. Examples are much better. Here is one (a true story):

I read that anecdote, recently, in a famous war memoir called With Rommel in the Desert by Heinz Werner Schmidt. It’s a line I think I’ve heard before, but that exact line, oddly, produces only a single Google hit as of this writing; that google-hit is from a 1951 Australian newspaper’s “review of new books”! (The author was Rommel’s aide-de-camp in North Africa, later a battalion commander.)

For a war memoir, the book is surprisingly light in tone, peppered with that “German humor” like Rommel’s above remark to that Italian major.

Here is another example. Flies were all over North Africa. Schmidt (the author), e.g., tells a general visiting from Berlin that “the unbearable part of the life [in North Africa] is the aggression of millions of flies. They settle on the food in thousands […]”  [ch.9]. The author relates a farcical scene at the headquarters of one of the Afrika Korps’ constituent divisions. Picture this, sometime in 1941 (In the serious context of a German field command center!) —

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Frivolity or not, Rommel himself actually partook in these “shooting down” sessions:

Being that he is a larger-than-life figure, a legend in his own time, as they say, I find the idea of Rommel sitting around a table swatting flies particularly funny.


Here is another. Rommel was called to Rome to celebrate his 49th birthday in November 1941. The author narrates:

Then there was the mild farce of Rommel’s extensive correspondence. Boys and girls would send him letters, fan mail, really. They asked for photographs. Rommel’s staff actually had thousands of photos on hand, which he would sign and send back! He naturally assigned the drafting of letters to his “aide-de-camp” (the author), though. Imagine what showed up with the mail one day at Rommel’s field headquarters in 1941. A longtime correspondent, who may have been Rommel’s sister (the author didn’t know for sure who it was, but all her letters were jocular) sent a surprise:

It’s getting to be springtime, which is a time when Seoul’s skies have a way of “betaking an awful shade” of orangish-somethingish, allegedly from dust storms way off in China somewhere. One of my first posts here (#12), about this time last year, attempted to document one of those episodes. I was in Korea at the time.

Having been in the USA since January 31st 2014, I missed the most recent episode of this, which was big, sustained. I saw my friend Jared mention it. The “Air-Korea” website confirms it. Pollution data easily accessible there.

Here is the PM-10 air pollution data for February 1st to today, by hour, for “my city”:

The pollution “spike” you see there (yellow and orange) lasted eight full days, from late evening February 21st all the way through till late evening March 1st. (A second [30-hour] spike occurred two days later.)

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March First is “Korean Independence Movement Day”. It’s nice that the pollution decided to lift in line with that holiday. It was even followed by “blue skies” [blue boxes, i.e. clean air] in the AM of March 2nd, even if just briefly.

I think I’m glad I missed this one. It’s quite unhealthy to be in those sustained “orange box” conditions. I remember running late once in Korea (actually running, too, to make time), on a day pollution was at those levels. I wasn’t in bad shape, either. I started to cough pretty quickly. Not good.

It’s in the 60s Fahrenheit (15-20 C) here in Arlington, Va., as I write, after snow last week. I’m pretty sure that most places in the USA (including Arlington) would have blue boxes on the above chart most every day.

Very few people today know the name George Kennan.

He was in the U.S. foreign service in the 1920s-1940s, ambassador to the USSR for a time, a great linguist, and a great thinker; a brilliant man. He was one of the USA’s foremost experts on European affairs, especially Russian affairs. His wife was Norwegian. He drew up the USA’s “containment” doctrine and the Marshall Plan, essentially laying the groundwork for fifty years of U.S. policy in Europe (which became anachronistic after 1991 but sort continued on in mutated form anyway; I wonder what Kennan thought about the interventions in Yugoslavia? Kosovo? Crimea?).

Kennan was one of the only voices in the U.S. government in 1945 and early 1946 who warned that Stalin was not to be trusted, that Stalin was aggressive and intransigent.

It sounds like Kennan was a “good old fashioned” American patriot. He was not. Recently I read (some of) a book called George Kennan: A Study of Character by John Lukacs (2007). In it, we see that Kennan actually grew to dislike the USA:

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This part I found particularly interesting:

This view of “an automobile-dependent society as a weak one” is a view I’ve held for years. My experience traveling abroad and living/working abroad has only strengthened this view, to me. Kennan saw this in its embryonic stage. He lived long enough (he continued writing into the the 2000s) to see it in its advanced form. He was right about a lot.

Kennan did remain loyal to the USA, of course. This is fascinating to me. What makes a man loyal to a state or other organization? How long till the organization changes for “the worse” so much that loyalty of principle wavers and then breaks?

Fareed Zakaria, U.S. media darling, wags his finger disapprovingly at recently-revealed comments made by Kennan:

From the little I’ve seen of Kennan’s late writings, he probably did steadily lose loyalty to the USA. That is just my own conjecture, though. He lived a long life, and his boyhood in the 1910s simply bore no resemblance at all to the USA in which he died, in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s.

This picks up where post-199 (“CELTA Last Day”) left off.

Our end-of-CELTA celebratory dinner was “Himalayan” Indian food (suggested by A.W.F.), which was excellent:

It was various kinds of naan (Indian bread), rice, and various shared dishes, mainly vegetarian and one or two meat (A.W.F. and K.T. don’t eat meat).

At right in the picture above, you can see “Taj Mahal beer”. It was, surprisingly to me, not bad. (Then again, I considered Korean beer to be pretty okay, an opinion I kept well-concealed from other foreigners there, among whom its popularity was similar to anchovies as a pizza topping. What I really liked, I think, was the price [around $2.50 for Korean beer vs. $5.00 for imported].)

Sitting to my left was the loquacious J.F., whom I discussed in post-199 at length.

This evening, amiable J.F. was excited! When he gets excited, all his sentences end like this one! And this one! Hah. And so it happened that, having gotten some of the “spring” back in his step, J.F. started telling some of his famous stories (like his “How I Came to Fall Off a Hawaiian Waterfall” anecdote):

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J.F.’s stories follow a pattern: A slow start, an increasingly-rapid delivery, building to a point where he gets so excited that he begins to raise his voice to a level near shouting.

Now, this Indian restaurant has those cloth napkins you’re supposed to daintily put on your lap. Having those napkins is, of course, a way of saying “no shouting, please”. As J.F.’s latest story was crescendoing, M.F. and A.W.F. (two of the other CELTA classmates, sitting across from us) started to giggle and look embarrassed. M.F.  gestured to J.F. to “quiet down”. The manager came over. In J.F.’s typical style, he proceeded to smoothly talk his way out of it. He immediately shook the man’s hand and started asking the man questions about his life, as if that were the natural and appropriate thing to do in this case. We all sat by, half-laughing at the absurdity of it.

After eating, we went to a nearby bar for a short time, and then A.W.F. had to leave us.

I suggested going to a karaoke bar, as several were nearby. I have good memories of them from South Korea (although in Korea, they are private “singing rooms”, not an open bar). The suggestion was jumped upon by the music-oriented M.H., who played professionally in a band. J.F. was all for it, too, and K.T. followed. The four of us soon entered one.

J.F. turned out to be a great singer, especially of his chosen “Sail Away“. M.H.sang very well, too, but I’d expected that given his background in music. I joined in on the songs I knew. There was one group of Blacks that kept selecting “Hip-Hop” songs, an odd departure from the choices of the Whites, who mainly chose ’80s music, for some reason.

(Sidenote: A human was in charge of loading the songs. I wondered why. People could very easily punch in the codes by themselves for their songs. I realized why, when I saw that “tips” were obligatory. Having a human there coldly demanding “tips” for each song is just…a naked money grab. Think about it, fifteen songs per hour at $5+ per song, yikes, that’s $75/hour! Do that just two or three nights a week and you’re already past $1,000, for doing…nothing.)

At 11:30 PM, we left and walked together to the Metro. I continued on to the bus station, where I met my friend J.S. who had arrived about 11:50 PM. He was visiting me from Roanoke, Va., which kept me busy Saturday and Sunday…

Friends…?
This post is categorized (among others) under “Friends“. The fact is, though, that I didn’t know any of these people before the CELTA course started on February 3rd, just one month ago. The six of us became “friends”, at least for the duration. We are too different to actually be friends, I think, but we did share an intense experience together and came to appreciate each other, and feel a mutual connection; “we were all in it together”.

The Korean language has a word for this. That word is “Juhng” [정] a kind of emotional attachment based around recognition of shared experience and appreciation thereof, with more intense experiences yielding stronger juhng. See also post-50 and post-65 for my comments on this concept. (Note: This word is usually written today as jeong, but as I dislike this spelling and choose to use my own made-up transliteration in my own little forum here. Sorry to fans of the “jeong” transliteration. The pronunciation is like “young” but replacing the ‘y’ with our English ‘j’ sound.)

At one point, I tried to explain juhng to the others at our celebratory dinner, and how/why I thought we had it. Only A.W.F. seemed to get what I was saying.

I can only wonder if I will see any of these people much again, but I won’t forget them.

On Friday, February 28th, I (we) finished the CELTA course in Washington D.C. Here we were, with the students:

There is a lot I can say about CELTA, but to keep a manageable length I’ll limit this to only a description of our last day:

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Our last day was (for once) very relaxed for all of us “trainees”, except for J.F., pictured at left in the striped sweater. If he looks like a football player, that’s just because he was one, fifteen years ago in college.

Also pictured there are several “practice students” (from left): H.B.Y., a friendly Chinese man in his 30s; A.L., a Camerooni living in Madagascar on a longterm visit to the USA; B.K., a Buddhist monk-missionary from Sri Lanka; and in the corner is S.M. from Lebanon; we also see the back of A.S. from Japan’s head. (As you can tell, this lower-intermediate class was legitimately international. East-Asians were the biggest “bloc”, but only formed 25%-30% of the class, usually). Also pictured is the “Willard Hotel” sign I made to help with A.W.F.’s excellent final lesson (finding directions and sightseeing around Washington).

Anyway. Yes, J.F. had to teach on our last day. His teaching style changed a lot during the course. I remember a lot of comical shouting, arm waving, excitement, and a “game” atmosphere, often even during grammar explanations. (He describes his own personality as “the crazy uncle”, whatever that means.) That was then. By the later teaching-practice sessions, especially his last, J.F. had reduced this stuff to very near zero.

If you ask me, J.F. got too subdued. I’d guess that he was sternly told by our first-half trainer to calm things down. He got the message and gradually cut out the energy that animated him in the early lessons. The lessons became better in a way (more focused) but at the cost of the fun. In the world of the Internet, if a real-life teacher cannot provide a dynamic classroom environment, why even have the teacher? Students can watch online videos for passive, detached learning.

Hmm, I think I ought to remind myself that I am trying to describe our last CELTA day, and not analyze J.F.’s teaching or wade into the deep, fast-moving, shark-filled waters of education theory.

The teaching was, as always, in the afternoon. I didn’t yet mention the morning. Back to that: Our last morning was marked by a lot of paper work, chitchat, writing of addresses, more chitchat, signing of documents, questions-and-answers about jobs, and then pizza.

At our suggestion, the two trainers, C.K. and R.P., agreed to eat lunch (pizza) with us. Snacks appeared (most from me, including Thai “chicken-flavored peanuts”, much-chuckled-about, that I got either in Malaysia or Thailand in November. The nuts smelled like popcorn but tasted okay). The drinks were flat Coke Zero and Pepsi Max, left over from the “taste test” I’d done in my last teaching session two days earlier. You can see the bottles there, on the cart that normally holds a projector. It was fun.

At one point before this, we had to make posters giving advice to future CELTA trainees. Here are ours:

The one at left was, conceptually, a collaboration between J.F. and myself.

There are a series of steps (one for each “teaching practice”). A little character stands on each, looking up towards the next step. He holds a different balloon each time, with what we thought was helpful at that stage — i.e., something that would “lift” the guy to the next step, The first step is biggest, and that balloon says “C.K.”, our first trainer and current head of the Washington D.C. center (with whom I didn’t exactly see eye to eye on certain things). Another has the name of a useful grammar book, “Grammar in Use”. “R.P.” appears near the middle (he was our second-half trainer and very friendly/helpful/supportive). The little man has a few “zzz’s” in the middle steps. Accordingly, two of the balloons near the top say “coffee” and “more coffee”. The last ballon says “Triumph of Perseverance”. At the top, the little man says “I made it!”

We’d all made it. (Students sometimes fail and have to retake it.)

All that was left was to watch J.F.’s lesson. In the last slot, which would’ve been S.R.’s, we played a game all together, both students and teachers, competing for candy. He’d been the only teacher that day, so J.F. led the game with a return of that early energy (after the trainer had left!). The game was great, especially after the candy appeared.

Not long afterwards came the obligatory group picture:

Not long after this, we left the building for the last time, riding down in its unusual rectangular-shaped elevator. For the first time, we’d all left together, off to celebrate…!

Continued with post-class activities:
Post-200 (“Celebrating CELTA in Himalayan Style”)

News of the Ukrainian Revolution of February 2014 continues to capture much of what free time I have these days.

To those who read my post-193 (“Ukrainian Insurgent Army, 1940s and 2010s”) and doubted that they were actually looking at the flag of the WWII-era, anti-Soviet, wildly-anti-Communist, pro-German [“collaborationist”] nationalist-paramilitary group called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army [UIA], see here:

I saw today a video put out by “Right Sector” which essentially names the UIA as a forerunner of its own group. Right Sector uses the UIA flag, actually, which explains why it showed up atop Kiev’s anti-government barricades.

I’d never heard of “Right Sector” before last week. It is a Ukrainian street-gang-style nationalist group, and seems to be a kind of armed wing of a political party (Svoboda) that got 11% of the vote two years ago. Russian media, in their typical form, calls them “neo-Nazis” (a term that the Russian media also applies to the meek Estonians).

Reading between the lines, Right Sector does seem to have instigated the major fighting in Kiev last week. They charged the police lines, killed several police, took scores more “hostage”at one point, and provoked the huge counter-attack. Some of their units, meanwhile, had ‘liberated’ a large armory in Lvov (western Ukraine). The weapons began to move towards Kiev. Seeing a determined, disciplined, now-better-armed, fanatical foe, for whom fear of death was not a strong deterrent, the kleptocrats of the Ukrainian government folded; the kleptocrat-in-chief disappeared. As of this writing, headlines are saying that President Yanukovich’s “whereabouts are unknown”.

Here is the video released three days ago by Right Sector, featuring one of its “commanders” [2:19, w/English subtitles]. The video seems to be an introduction to Right Sector, explaining what its goals and views are.

As this video may likely one day disappear, here is my attempt to describe it and transcribe the provided subtitles:

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[Bold is what is spoken/subtitled]   [Bracketed: My description of what is happening on screen]

“Textual Transliteration” of the Right Sector Video

[Title of the video; a serious-sounding voice narrates] The Great Ukrainian Reconquista….

What is Right Sector fighting for?

[The camera cuts to a grizzled, tough-looking man, about 40, who sits at a desk, his hands on the table in non-clenched fists. He wears a wedding band on his finger and a brown, militaryesque shirt. Behind him there is a red-and-black flag with the words “Right Sector” (in Cyrilic) across the middle, with a sword emblem between the two words. When he begins to speak, he maintans a steady gaze at the camera. He speaks in a serious and official tone, as one would expect an actual military commander to speak]

[The man speaks] “We are the fighters and commanders of Right Sector. We remember the heroic struggles of Svyatoslav Khorobry and Danyl Halytsky, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and the fighters of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. We stand for the right of the people to revolt against injustice. We are conscious of the responsibility to the dead and disabled heroes of Maidan [the large Kiev square which was the site of the anti-government protests of November 2013 to February 2014, and the epicenter of the Ukrainian revolution of Feb. 2014].

“We fight!” [Video footage of street fighting is shown without narration; one scene shows a masked man throwing a firebomb; hundreds of police in anti-riot gear are shown; another scene shows masked men (RS members?) pushing a policeman to the ground and beating him]

[Narration returns] We stand for the right of every Ukrainian citizen to be treated with human dignity.

We demand that the “Berkut” (Ukrainian riot police) by criminally prosecuted for their repression of the movement. We stand against the humiliation and the impoverishment of the Ukrainian people. [A man without a shirt on shown amid light snow; he is a prisoner; he is hit on the head and beaten by a masked “Berkut” policeman; other scenes of the “Berkut” in armored vehicles follow.]

We stand against the state’s war against its own people. We stand for the direct election of judges. We stand against corrupt “phony democracy”. We stand against degeneracy and against “totalitarian liberalism”.

We stand for traditional national morality and family values [images of young couples embracing, and young children smiling are shown]. We stand for large Ukrainian families, and for a physically and spiritually healthy youth. [Images of young male RS members, masked and in combat pose, are shown].  We stand against the “cult of corruption” and against moral depravity. [Footage of scantilty-dressed singers at a concert is shown].

We stand against any multinational integration plans that would dictate to Ukraine what to do. [A short video clip of Putin is shown during the preceding line; then, immediately afterward, of EU officials under an EU flag].

[A huge nighttime rally with large numbers of Ukrainian flags waving] We stand for unity; for the greatness of the Ukrainian nation. We are for a Ukrainian, and a European, “Reconquista”! [Images of RS fighters with shields bearing the “Black Sun” emblem are shown; a “Celtic Cross” is briefly shown.]

[The intense-looking man from the early part of the clip returns on screen] “Now is just the beginning. The beginning of the revival of the Kyivska Rus.

The revival of Europe starts — with our Maidan! [End of Video]