On hating other nations

Politicans talk of  'people' and 'nations' often. They do this to achieve an effect. They are talking rubbish. No nation is unified in the sense in which they say it is. No country, not even a village!, has only people who think in the same way, who live in the same way. No country or nation is 'good' or 'bad'. Governments, leaders, individuals, organizations are eveil, bad, heroic, good, decent, average. But countries?

Talk of nations usually engeders an artifical 'them and us' way of thinking. The army and politicians use it to awaken hate and alienation in people towards others living in different countries. They use this hatred when they are justifying wars and other horrors they inflict on others in the name of their countries.

The truth is that people are the same everywhere. Sure, cultures, habits, efficiency, cleanliness, clothes, etc. differ. What does not differ is that there are good and bad and average people everywhere. That the average Jane, or Cuicui, or Sakura, or Johanna does not want war and does not care about other countries. The average John, or Jose, or Maua, or Xun wants to get on with his job, be safe, and have a healthy family. This is what is universal and what would serve as a perfect platform for peaceful global growth. All war and conflict is about the power-games of leaderships who have interests in gaining more money and power. Be that Russia, China, the US, or the European countries, Japan or African or South-American countries, it is always about the might of the elites. Wars are not for and in the interest of the people.

The section quoted below illustrates eminently well how people find out that other countries have normal folks living in them too.

"Yes, I remember that being at war with the Italians was taken as a licence for Americans to defecate all over them. Even though most of us in the base section at Naples had never closed with an Italian in combat. Our argument was that we should treat the Neapolitans as the Neapolitans would have treated our cities presumably if they'd won the war. I watched old ladies of Naples pushed off the sidewalks by drunken GIs and officers. Every Italian girl was fair pray to propositions we wouldn't have made to a streetwalker back home. Those who spoke Italian used the tu on everyone they met. And I remember seeing American MPs beating the driver of a horse and wagon because they were obstructing traffic on Via Roma. I don't think the Germans could have done any better in their concentration camps. I thought that all humanity had gone from the world, and that this war had smothered decency forever.

- These Eyeties, the mess sergeant said, ain't human beins. They're just Gooks, that's all.
- All I know, the corporal said doggedly and worriedly, is that they ain't Americans...They don't see things the way we do.
- They'd steal anything, the mess sergeant said, stuffing a turkey, his mouth crammed with giblet leavings.

I remember that other arguments against the Neapolitans, besides the cardinal one, that they'd declared war on us, were that they stole and were filthy-dirty. I only know that no Neapolitan ever stole anything from me, for I took pains to see that no temptation was put in their way. Though once my wallet was lifted in a New York subway. And for those Neapolitans to whom I sometimes gave an extra bar of soap, I noticed that they used this soap joyfully on themselves, their children, their clothes. I've buried my face in the hair of Neapolitan girls. It was just as sweet as an American girl's if the Napoletana had the wherewithal to wash it.

I remember that in Naples after my heart broke I decided that a stricly American point of view in itself offered no peace or solution for the world. So I began to make friends with the Neapolitans. And it didn't surprise me to find that, like everyone else in the world, they had their good and their bad and their admixtures of both. To know them, I'd been working on my Italian. That lovely supple language was kind to my tongue. The Neapolitans were gracious in helping me with it.
(...)
This forced me to the not original conclusion that the Neapolitans were like everybody else in the world, and in an infinite variety. Because I was an americano the Neapolitans treated me with a strange pudding of respect, dismay, and bewilderment. A few loathed me. But from most Italians I got a decency and kindness that they'd  have showered on any other American in Naples who'd made up his mind to treat them like human beings. I'm not bragging. I'm not unique."

From John Horn Burns's The Gallery, in the section appearing as 'My Heart Finally Broke in Naples' in War Stories (eds. Sebastian Faulks and Jörg Hensgen), 2014, London: Vintage, pp. 274-5. 

Tim O'Brien on true war stories

"A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behaviour, nor restrain men from doing the things men have always done. If a story seems moral, do not believe it. If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some small bit of rectitude had been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie. There is no rectitude whatsoever. There is no virtue. As a first rule of thumb, therefore, you can tell a true war story by its absolute and uncompromising allegiance to obscenity and evil."


(From Tim O'Brien's 'How to Tell a True War Story', in War Stories (eds. Sebastian Faulks and Jörg Hensgen), 2014., London: Vintage, p. 351.)

On explanation far and close, interesting and uninteresting

When scientists say that explaining the formation of chunks of matter (for example planets, energy, atoms) or the distribution of information is an explanation of everything that is important for us these days, that's exactly as much of an explanation as saying that 'and then people started growing crops, settled down, and that's why we have culture and science today!' Meaning: it is not an interesting explanation. It is an explanation, like it is an explanation of why I eat a pizza now that I am a human and hunger is a powerful motivation that moves me to act. Sure, but this does not explain why I'm eating pizza, why I did go along with this motivation right now, not twenty minutes ago or half an hour later, why I did not rather occupy myself with something else to push the hunger back - as any normal adult human being can do. These further questions are not answered by a hazy allusion to general, species-level motivations.
Of course there would be scientific explanations of why I'm eating a pizza now, or why there science and culture today. But these will be immensely complex, interdisciplinary explanations, where each details will matter a great deal. The world is complex, and hence there are no simple explanations of it. If someone is not willing to get down with the details, then they should not profess that they have explained everything. Such self-serving, ego-boasting phrases don't help anyone.

Putin's nuclear threat to the West

It is a well known fact, publicized by Russian newspapers and confirmed by the Russian military, that Russia is regularly exercising and planning for the offensive use of nuclear weapons in Western Europe, as well against the US.

But then of course there are people who publish this and similar stuff on 9GAG and other social sites:

 

I think what this meme is expresses is perfectly right in one sense: no sane, average civilian wants to nuke any other country. The average Joe, Sara, Teju, or Zoltan wakes up, goes to work, cares and worries for and about her or his family, friends, kids, health, house, hobbies, interests, and job. No normal person wakes up and thinks: 'Oh, gosh, I sure hope today my country's military kills, debilitates, and ruins the lives of tens of thousands of foreigners!'

On the other hand it is not true that no Russian - or for that matter that no Chinese or US - higher ups entertain such ideas. And it is partly our duty as citizens of a given country to oust politicians, administrators, and military leaders who are willing to go down such ways. No other country's civilians can do that instead of us, and if we don't do it we can't blame anyone else. The average, normal people in Russia, China, and the US, and in other countries, have to ensure that their countries work properly. One has to engage with politics, most importantly READ about it serious books and papers not just internet crap, write about it, think about it, talk about it, and if needed go out to the streets, go to the parliament, stage protests, throw eggs at politicians and so on.

Elected people can go berserk, and elections can go wrong. We need to make sure that loonies such as Trump, or tyrants such a Putin, or his pet-wanna-be-dictator Orban don't get into power, and even if they do they don't get the license to do anything their whims drive them to.

UPDATE: This piece on the issue just confirms and supports with more references what I have been saying.

The futility and tragedy of war

Two Vietnamese soldiers talking in 1976 after the war about meeting the dead in their dreams:

" 'Do you speak to them?'
'Yes, but...well, differently. The way you speak in hell. There are no sounds, no words. It's hard to describe. It's like when you're dreaming - you know what I mean.'
'You can't actually do anything to help each other?' asked Kien. 'Do you talk about interesting things?'
'Not very. Just sad and pitiful things, really. Under the ground in the grave human beings aren't the same. You can look at each other, understand each other, but you can't do anything for each other.'
'If we found a way to tell them news of a victory would they be happier?' Kien asked.
'Come on! Even if we could, what would be the point? People in hell don't give a damn about wars. They don't remember killing. Killing is a career for the living, not the dead.'
'Still, wouldn't peacetime be an ideal moment for the resurrection of all the dead?'
'What? Peace? Damn it, peace is a tree that thrives only on the blood and bone of fallen comrades. The ones left behind in the Screaming Soul battlegrounds were the most honoruable peole. Without them there would be no peace,' the driver replied.

'That's a rotten way to look at it. There are so many good people, so many yet to be born, so many survivors now trying to live decent lives. Otherwise it's not been worth it. I mean, what's peace for? Or what's fighting for?' Kien asked.
'Okay, I'll grant you we have to have hope. But we don't even know if the next generation will get a chance to grow up, or if they do, how they'll grow up. We do know that many good people have been killed. Those of us who survived have all been trying to make something of ourselves, but not succeeding.' "

(From Bao Ninh's The Sorrow of War, quoted from the excerpt appearing as 'The Jungle of Screaming Souls' in War Stories (eds. Sebastian Faulks and Jörg Hensgen, pp. 354-55.)

 

Three important things about the Hungarian referendum about refugees

There are three things everyone has to understand about last weekend's Hungarian referendum about the refugees:

1. The referendum is not valid. The number of people who went to vote was too small.

2. Many of the people who did not go to vote did not go because they hate Orban and his regime, government and they did not want to lend their support in any form to their propaganda vote.


3. Still, there are too many Hungarians who bought into the governments propaganda. Roughly 80% of the media is controlled by the government or close allies of the government in Hungary. The message they sent blurred the distinctions between refugees and migrants, and between innocent average people and potential terrorists. It demonized hundreds of thousands of innocents fleeing wars and terrible conditions.

One of the posters of the Ketfarku Kutya Part (The Two-tailed Dog Party), reading: 'Did you know? There is a war in Syria.' These signs were set up to mock the government's state-money sponsored hate campaign against refugees and immigrants. See more posters here.

New month, new books

I've just started reading War Stories, an anthology edited by Sebastian Faulks and Jörg Hengsen. The anthology comprises a long list of excellent short stories and sections of novels that depict different experiences and viewpoints in war, from different nations (US, Germany, Greece, Japan, French, and so on), from writers who have been in the war.

The selection is outstanding: there are pieces focusing on combat, on the strange sides of war - for example the beauty of artillery lights at night -, the horror of rape and killing civilians, of losing one's comrades, of going mad with fear, and so on. The editors obviously knew the literature well and set high standards. The only thing I'm sorry about is that there aren't more Asian perpectives, and Anglo-Saxon writers dominate the list somewhat, but then again I guess if someone is editing a book in English for mostly English speaking audiences that isn't a terrible fault. The authors certainly are aware of other literature than what they have included and provide a helpful bibliography at the end of the book broken down by conflicts with which those writings deal.

It is a great read, and I wish more people - young and old - would read it. In the last few years I have encountered both in TV and on the internet many people who have never experienced war but make big prononouncements about what they would do in a conflict, how other countries should start wars, or how refugees are really lazy or defectors for not picking up arms against well trained armies and militias. The book makes one understandin well that civilians have nothing to do in war, in fact, nobody has anything to do in war. It is a horrible dirty affair, one that always borders on the insane and people wanting to go to war need to be stopped. It is not an affair of nations but of bad leadership.
 

Worrying amount of Russian political misinformation on the internet

Recently I have noticed that several posts in major newspapers (Chinese, German, Japanese, UK, US) have comments written by people with VERY-American or British or German etc. names. At least their accounts look as if they were natives of these countries. Usually these comment-writers pose as man around 40 or 50, who are confident, obviously well informed and in-the-know. They bash what reliable news agencies and independent writers say, and push very forcefully a narrative heavily leaning towards Russia and/or China. In these narratives the US and the EU are always the bad guys, who treat poor Russia and China badly, and are unfair, and start wars everywhere (or finance the wars and make a good buck on them). According to these narratives all these wars started were totally unnecessary and self-serving, and Russia and China are peaceful giants, who would never do the same.

Of course this is total rubbish. It is total rubbish not because the US and the EU are not involved in arms trading or they don't start/finance/participate in wars. But it is total rubbish because the motivations for going to wars are usually a lot more complicated than simply aiming at monetary and territorial gains. And it is also total rubbish because many of these wars are about countering aggressive push by Chinese and Russian armed forces, secret services, or military units.
It is enough to think of the Ukraine: the EU did offer the Ukraine the chance to start the process to become a member state. But it did not attack Russia nor did it threaten it with that. Nor did it occupy the Ukraine. The then-Prime Minister of Ukraine was not forced to agree to this; it was Russia who twisted his arm to back out of the deal. It is easy to see who was the aggressor here, and then Russia aggravated things by pushing into the Ukraine by military force.

Consider also North-Korea, who have pushed the speed of their military missiles development programmes up to maximum. This has taken both South-Korea and Japan by surprise, and both states need to quickly up their defenses. They are at the same time constrained from doing so by contracts enforced on them by the US, and by the aggressive diplomacy of China. China thinks all military development is justified for them, while their neighbours should just sit with their hands crossed in their laps. Whereas any sane country that is the neighbour of a superpower needs a normal, up-to date military. This need is now made even more stringent and urgent by North-Korea's recently upgraded striking capabilities. Now, North-Korea has surely not achieved these striking technological breakthroughs suddenly on its own merit. Either China and/or Russia had to finance and probably support their projects with money, technology and expertise.

Add to this Russia's role in Syria, where it first vetoed all attempts at intervention, letting several millions civilians become displaced, and tens of thousands get killed, only so that its strongman ally leader can stay in power. Then when interventions begone Russia entered into contracts with the US and allies, but refused to stick to those contracts and bombed civilians and those it was supposed to support.

At the same time China is trying to gobble down the whole South-China sea, unilaterally. This incorporates waters well in the economic interests zones and reasonably assigned self-defense zones of several other countries. China is also building up artificial military islands in the region. Surely not the most peaceful move.


In light of all this, it is easy to see that the narratives of the apologists don't add up. It is also well known that there are plenty of government sponsored trolls spreading such news. The funny bit is when one gets into a debate with them and assumes a reasonable, true-to-the-facts-but-open-to-new-evidence approach they take off. They don't stay and engage in substantial debates and conversations. They are only interested in swaying the opinions of people who are dumb enough to think of politics in terms of Good and Bad, and who are willing to force this two dimensional straight-jacket view on current affairs and cast the US or Europe in the role of evil perpetrator.

Ogura Kazuo's 'Japan's Asian Diplomacy

As part of my self-education I'm reading a good deal on Japan, China, and East-Asia in general. The last book that I got in my hand was Ogura Kazuo's Japan's Asian Diplomacy. The author served as Japan's ambassador to Vietnam, France, and Korea.

It quickly becomes obvious from the book that Ogura has plenty of insight into the main ideological and political currents shaping the broader agenda of foreign policy making in Japan, China, and Korea. He offers a historical, ideological, and political overview of Japan's relations with its neighbours going back to the early middle ages, and shows that in most cases the Japanese policies and stances were heavily influenced by internal political interests and leadership contests. In many places in the book he is openly critical about such short sighted diplomacy, and makes an effort to show that in many cases taking a too hard line in domestic politics forced the leadership into a position where to save face it was almost necessary to act aggressively on the international place - to live up to the expectations raised in the public, so to say.

The author was not afraid to point out some harmful and aggressive long standing tendencies of Japanese policies - such as treating the affairs of Korea almost as an internal issue requiring constant intervention - and the lack of long term vision in the building up of relations with China.

The book also offers a very interesting perspective on how the Tokugawa shogunate's closed-door policy served to prepare Japan to see itself ideologically and politically among the Western, colonizing, powers very soon after the Meiji period. This amounted to a significant shift from the earlier Japano- or Sino-centric world views dominating political thinking. It also explains in part why Japan acted quickly and with no sympathy towards other Asian nations.

The book discusses several other issues, and it is a very interesting and thought-provoking reading. I don't have an in depth knowledge of either Japanese history or politics yet, but I'm happy that I took down this volume from the library shelf, and at the moment it seems that it will definitely contribute to my understanding of the Japanese perspectives on diplomacy in Asia.

On relationships and sexual urges

- Instincts! – said he with a satisfied smile, basking in the warm light of the belief that he offered a brilliant one word response, which, not wholly by incident, also happened to justify his behavior towards his wife, and women in general.

- Well, but two questions throw some doubt on this: first, just because something is an instinct, ‘natural’ so to say, is it good, is it something we should act on? I think obviously not. After all we don’t want a society in which people bash in each others’ skull when there is competition for resources, or where man habitually rape woman they want to be with despites that both of these behavior were widespread and prevalent in early humans. Second, we have many different capacities that we can use to live different kinds of lives. Relationships are not only about sex, although sex is an integral part of most grown-up committed partnerships, and there might be very valuable and meaningful relationships that would be seriously harmed and affected by someone following their hedonistic sexual urges. In such cases surely the fact that we – by nature – have some capacities which enable us to have full, enriching experiences shows that i) an urge’s being natural does not count either in favour or against acting on it, and that ii) acting on it might go against a very human type of relationship, the committed relationship. I don’t mean by ii) that only humans have committed relationships. But only humans have the type of committed relationship involving the exercises of long term planning, joint social and ethical values, participation in socially constructed institutions of significance for local communities, and so on. Proper grownup relationships have all these dimensions and are from no perspective – natural or non-natural – second-rate. And they are surely not to be relegated or scrapped in favour of acting on ‘instincts’. Humans have their instincts under control all the time. There is no reason why they shouldn’t be expected to do so in relationships.