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
It is not by the intermeddling of...the omniscient and omnipotent State, but by the prudence and energy of the people, that England has hitherto been carried forward in civilization; and it is to the same prudence and the same energy that we now look with comfort and good hope. Our rulers will best promote the improvement of the nation by strictly confining themselves to their own legitimate duties, by leaving capital to find its most lucrative course, commodities their fair price, industry and intelligence their natural reward, idleness and folly their natural punishment, by maintaining peace, by defending property, by diminishing the price of law, and by observing strict economy in every department of the state. Let the Government do this: the People will assuredly do the rest.
- Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1830
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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cheonan said
To the “outside” world intellectuals who don’t read Korean,
This is a remarkable story of people – the governed(although they are in theory supposed to be the actual governor in democracy), not their government – making difference in the world (history).
1. Compare and contrast.
“More enlightened” American people, Congress and media; Bush; WMD; War (and huge suffering),
(http://whitehouser.com/war/CIA-confirms-Bush-WMD-lie )
and,
“Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people; Korean President Lee; Cheonan; prevention of War (so far).
(I am including among ‘the Korean people’ the Korean-Americans.)
2. Also remarkable is that the “inside” Korean people braved the government prosecution.
Caveat: Under the current South Korean regime, South Korean citizens can be sued for defamation by their own government officials, and defamation in South Korea is a crime (as well as a civil offense) prosecuted by the government’s own centrally controlled national prosecutors who selectively choose or choose not whom to prosecute.
Recently, Shin Sang-cheol, “an expert placed on the JIG [Joint Investigation Group] by” the National Assembly, got (criminally) sued for defamation by a government official for expressing disagreement over the current South Korean regime’s version of the Cheonan Incident. (http://www.zimbio.com/Mizuho+Fukushima/articles/BvIMjqn_oLw/South+Korean+Investigation+Team+Member+Mr )
(South Korean people’s firsthand knowledge about the pro-government polls is that they are ridiculously overinflated.
A proof: war-fear-mongering South Korean President Lee Myung-bak got unexpectedly humiliated on the June 2 election by the “Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people,
when “survey conducted by the major daily [pro-government]Dong-A Ilbo and the Korea Research Center from May 24 to 26[7-days-before] forecast[ed] that Oh would beat Han by 20.8 percent.”
Actual election result: 0.6 percent(=”47.4 percent”-”46.8 percent.”)
Source: http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2921960 )
3. A list of early English publications on Questions on the Cheonan Incident and the Power of South Korean Netizens can be found at http://korea.true.ws (by LetsTry Reason) and newer writings at http://letstryreason.wordpress.com .
Also, look at: “the U.S, South Korea, the U.K, Canada and Australia, but not Sweden [NOT Sweden], contributed to the second-statement findings [claiming that North Korea might be guilty]” – “Five reasons why the the JIG’s 5-page statement cannot be considered scientific and objective, nor … ‘international’”
http://japanfocus.org/-JOHN-MCGLYNN/3372 ;
“Russian Probe Sees No North Korea Hand In Cheonan Sinking! Russia Says Sea Mine Sunk Cheonan”
http://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/russian-probe-sees-no-north-korea-hand-in-cheonan-sinking/ ;
http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2010/06/30/pcc-772-cheonan-south-korean-government-admits-the-deception-and-then-lies-about-it/ ;
http://nature.com/news/2010/080710/full/news.2010.343.html ;
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-korea-torpedo-20100724,0,4196801,full.story
4. Compare and contrast.
9/11; Al-Qaeda; brags We did it(, was not wrong, not sorry about it and we will do it again).
Cheonan; North Korea; brags We didn’t do it (therefore, presumably, was wrong, sorry about it and we will not do it). (Why the difference?)
Crime and punishment. If we are taking consequentialist moral philosophy, and if the utilitarian utility of punishment is to prevent future crime, then punishment serves little or no purpose (maybe to others but not)to North Korea who says ‘We didn’t do it,’ because either (a) the North didn’t do it, therefore the punishment will be outrageous injustice,
or (b) the North did do it, but ‘We didn’t do it’ basically implies ‘We will not do it.’
(This particular ‘it’ hardly gives the North any payoff.)
*If you don’t get scared of us, how can We become the terrorist, and if you don’t know We did it, how can you get scared of us?
5. Representative democracy is not pure democracy. (Pure)Direct democracy of a nation-size is now (or becoming) possible, through recent developments in computer science and technology, making secure private Internet-voting, democratic online discussions, cheap instantaneous micro referendum and freedom of choice to vote directly on an issue or use an agent possible.
The science (computer science) should finally make the people, the governed, the actual de facto governor in democracy.
6. I take this honor of hereby formally asking the folks in Norway to consider awarding a Nobel Peace Prize to the “Supposedly less so enlightened” Korean people including myself,
who in early days, among various activities, proposed the “outside” world contact initiative for the Cheonan peace, providing email addresses of all the foreign embassies in Korea, U.N., Hillary, Obama, and the foreign media.