In winter, I'm a Buddhist,
And in summer, I'm a nudist.
- Joe Gould
"My Religion"
In fact the whole of Japan is a pure invention. There is no such country, there are no such people.
- Oscar Wilde, aware in 1889 that popular conceptions about the country and its people are mostly fiction.
Not even 10% of what Japanese people are thinking is communicated overseas.
- Watanabe Tsuneo of CSIS
All foreign correspondents, whenever they desert statistics for judgments of opinion...become models of self-deception. They may call themselves, with proper gravity, ‘reporters’. But...they are nothing but quack psychiatrists who do not even know that this is the field they practise.
- Alistair Cooke
Where all news comes at second-hand, where all the testimony is uncertain, men cease to respond to truths, and respond simply to opinions. The environment in which they act is not the realities themselves, but the pseudo-environment of reports, rumors, and guesses.
- Walter Lippmann
We want...a revolution - a turning of the wheel, so that the state becomes once again the servant of the people, and not the other way around. We are the progressives now, comrades, (and) you the reactionaries.
- Daniel Hannan
If the textbook says, "It is well known that...", you can be sure that is a very good place to begin a research inquiry.
- Isaiah Bowman, geographer and former president of Johns Hopkins University
The budget should be balanced, the Treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled, and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People must again learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
- Cicero (55 BC)
We do not need a censorship of the press. We have a censorship by the press. It is not we who silence the press. It is the press that silences us. It is not a case of the Commonwealth settling how much the editors shall say; it is a case of the editors settling how much the Commonwealth shall know. If we attack the press, we shall be rebelling, not repressing.
- G.K. Chesterton
You can see a lot by looking.
- Yogi Berra
All text copyright 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 by William Sakovich
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Aceface said
Reminds me of this incident.
From Reporters without borders 2004 Country Japan:
Harassment and obstruction
The British daily The Guardian revealed on 24 January 2003 that sports journalist Fred Varcoe was unfairly dismissed by the daily Japan Times on 4 July 2002 as a result of pressure from the South Korean authorities. The South Korean website OhmyNews launched a campaign against Varcoe after he alluded to Seoul prostitutes in a story a few weeks before the start of the football world cup. Varcoe’s wife, a South Korean national, received death threats by e-mail. South Korean diplomats went to the headquarters of the Japan Times twice to demand sanctions against Varcoe. Among the reasons the newspaper gave for firing him was “insulting the honour of Korean women.” Varcoe filed a complaint against the newspaper’s management, which failed to stand up to the South Korean government’s pressure.
And read this too
http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,881746,00.html
I was kind of mesmerized by the fact that the conclusion of the article was in a tone like “blame Japan too”.
I have no idea why Marmot chose to snipe at fresh off the boat.He’s gotta stalk bigger game like we do here.
Like NYT,WaPo and ofcourse,the shining shrine of international broadcasting journalism,BBC!
The Marmot said
Well, he wasn’t “fresh off the boat.” He’d been here several years. But since you asked, I read his piece while I was on the john, and I thought it might be fun.
Aceface said
Never knew.Just thought you are a black velt on Korean experience and obviously the author of the article is not.
No hard feelings.
ghoti said
What an annoying read that was! Reminds me of a guy I knew in Japan who walked into an image-club (adorned with provocative ads) just to innocently see what they were about. Like the writer in Korea, he of course had no intention of using the service, but was mightily upset that they refused gaijin – and required a half dozen police to escort him away. Shocking.
So many comments seem to think of discriminating manners as hypocritical. This is where the West gets into trouble. Anything that goes on in a private S&M dungeon should be fair fodder for grade school lessons. To do otherwise would be hypocritical, right?
bender said
How do the “international hotels” compare to those in the US or Japan? I’m sure you don’t look for prostitutes in Hotel Okura.
Dee said
I blame Al-Queda for the prostitution in South Korea.
I’m sure it’s all part of some long term Salafist plot, designed to keep us morally corrupt, whilst Al-Queda agents position themselves in positions of power throughout world governments.
Personally I’m surprised nobody blamed the US Army for it.