Friday Reads

Good Morning!

It’s been an interesting few days.  I especially enjoyed watching Boehner cry “uncle” in front of the press yesterday about the payroll tax holiday. He didn’t look at all jolly.

House Republicans on Thursday crumpled under the weight of White House and public pressure and have agreed to pass a two-month extension of the payroll-tax cut, Republican and Democratic sources told National Journal.

The House made the move after Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., agreed to appoint conferees to a committee to resolve differences between the Senate’s two-month, 2 percentage point, payroll-tax cut and the House’s one-year alternative.

The House will pass the two-month extension with a technical correction to the language designed to minimize difficulties businesses might experience implementing the short-term, two-month tax cut extension.

He kept muttering the usual memes like “job creators”, fighting good fights, and we really just want to stop the uncertainty.  He actually looked sober for a change.

So, let’s try to focus on some other things for awhile. There have been two rare white kiwis that have hatched recently in New Zealand.  This has made local zoologists giddy.

A second rare white kiwi has hatched at New Zealand’s national wildlife centre, conservation officials announced Friday, months after the world’s first hatched in captivity.

The chick is believed to have the same parents as Manukura, which arrived in May, and it has given its carers an extra treat in the festive period.

“We were gob-smacked really,” said Kathy Houkamau, the manager at the Pukaha sanctuary north of Wellington.

“To have a second white chick is a delightful gift, especially at this time of year. We thought Christmas had come early in May when Manukura arrived, but now it?s come twice.”

A small number of North Island brown kiwi carry a recessive white gene which both the male and female must have to produce a white chick.

Department of Conservation captive breeding ranger Darren Page said it was remarkable two birds with the rare white gene had paired up in the 940-hectare (2,323 acre) Pukaha forest to produce two white chicks over two seasons.

Isn’t it cute?

Gallup Polls indicate we’ve entered a period of malaise unlike any other since 1979.  Gosh, I hope it doesn’t lead to a repeat of the 1980s.  That was a miserable time  of high unemployment, even higher interest rates, and don’t even get me started on the music and fashion!  The bottom line is that we can’t get no satisfaction. We’ve been headed down hill since about the year 2000 with a slight upward blip in 2009.  Go check out the nifty graph.

Throughout 2011, an average of 17% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things are going in the United States. That is the second-lowest annual average in the more than 30-year history of the question, after the 15% from 2008. Satisfaction has averaged as high as 60% in 1986, 1998, and 2000.

It’s easy to figure out the reason too.  It’s the economy!  Well, that and our lousy government.

Americans’ widespread dissatisfaction with national conditions may largely result from the country’s economic woes. Nearly two-thirds of Americans, 64%, currently mention some economic issue as the most important problem facing the country, and the top two specific issues — the economy in general and unemployment — are economic in nature. Dissatisfaction with government and elected officials, the federal budget deficit, and moral and ethical decline round out the top five.

Ultra-religious Jews were given warnings by the government about segregating and discriminating against women by the Israeli government.  It seems ultra-piety always involves denigrating women doesn’t it? I had no idea there were special buses in the country that cater to “pious” men that don’t want to be in the same part of the bus as women.

A woman’s refusal to sit at the back of a Jerusalem-bound bus as demanded by ultra-religious Jews moved Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday to warn about the dangers of gender segregation in Israel.

The Facebook-fuelled protest by 28-year-old Tanya Rosenblit aboard a public bus on Friday became front-page news in Israel, whose secular Jewish majority often frets at signs of the rising political power of the pious.

The episode followed widespread outrage at zealot settlers in the occupied West Bank who have vandalised Palestinian property and turned on Israel’s revered conscript military by rioting at one of its garrisons.

“Israeli society is a complex mosaic of Jews and Arabs, of secular and religious and ultra-Orthodox, and to this day we have agreed to peaceful coexistence,” Netanyahu told his cabinet in broadcast remarks.

“Recently we have witnessed attempts to fray this coexistence,” he said, citing Rosenblit’s experience. “I totally oppose this. I think that we must not let fringe groups dismantle our common ground, and we must preserve public spaces as open and safe spaces for all the citizens of Israel.”

Several gender-segregated bus routes cross ultra-Orthodox neighbourhoods in Jerusalem. Under Israeli law, women are not obliged to sit in the back of the vehicles but many do so out of deference to tradition or under scrutiny by male passengers.

Rosenblit, who describes herself as a producer for a Jewish news service, said she had been aware that the bus she had taken catered to the ultra-Orthodox and she had dressed conservatively so as not to cause offence.

But she sat up front and refused to move when the bus reached a religious neighbourhood, prompting one man to curse her and block the doorway, while several others watched until police came and removed him, Rosenblit said.

A statue was erected in South Korea in honor of its “comfort women” who were kidnapped to serve as sex slaves by the Japanese Military during World War 2.  Japan’s extremely embarassed by the statue but still refuses to compensate the victims who are mostly in their 80s although some are as young as their mid 70s.  The women have rallied in front of the Japanese embassy.

A group of the women and their supporters unveiled a statue of a girl in traditional costume there.

Demonstrators have rallied since 1992 outside the embassy to demand an apology and compensation from Japan.

Japan has repeatedly apologised and has offered lump-sum compensation, but many Koreans say this is not enough.

Japan also says the matter was settled in bilateral agreements with South Korea in the 1960s.

Up to 200,000 women are thought to have worked as sex slaves for the Japanese army in military camps before and during the war.

The vast majority of the women were Korean.

Japan has reportedly protested about the statue, but South Korean officials have said they cannot do anything about it.

Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Osamu Fujimura, called the statue “extremely regrettable”, the Associated Press reports.

The blinds at the Japanese embassy were drawn shut – as they usually are for this weekly protest, reports the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in Seoul.

“[South Korean] President Lee Myung-bak cannot say he doesn’t know that white-haired grannies come out here, rain or shine, week after week,” said 85-year-old Kim Bok-dong, one of the former “comfort women”.

“President Lee should call on Japan to correct the wrongs of the past, so that things which need apologies can receive them, and compensation can be given,” she added.

About 60,000 Filipino women served as “comfort women” during the war.  Only about 1000 survive today. You can read the story of one such woman from the Philippines at this site.

Felicidad was born on November 22, 1928 in Masbate, Philippines.

One day in 1943 three truckloads of Japanese soldiers from the garrison compound at the back of her school visited Felicidad’s class. Her Japanese teacher had organised the students to perform songs and dances for the visiting soldiers. The Japanese army often introduced Japanese civilian teachers into schools in its conquered territories.

Felicidad, then only 14, was made to sing. The following day her teacher told the class that the soldiers were so impressed with the students’ performance that they wanted to reward them. Felicidad was identified as one who was to be given an award and later that day two soldiers arrived to fetch her. They told her that she would be given the gift at the garrison. Thinking that there might be other students there, Felicidad went along. But when she got there, she did not see any of her school friends. Instead the only other women she saw were doing the soldiers’ cooking and laundry.

She became worried. She asked to leave. The two guards refused. Instead they took her to a small room in the compound and pushed her in. They told her that her gift was coming.

A few hours later five Japanese soldiers arrived. Three of them were in uniform and two in civilian clothes. One of them jumped onto her catching her by the arms and forcing her down onto the ground. When she struggled, another punched her in the face while another grabbed her legs and held them apart. Then they took it in turns to rape her.

Felicidad had no knowledge about sex. She did not even have her menstruation. So she did not understand what they were doing to her. She begged them to stop. But they just laughed and whenever she struggled or screamed, they would punch and kick her.

Confused and frightened and tired and in pain, she drifted in and out of consciousness. That night three more soldiers came and repeatedly raped her. For the next three days a succession of soldiers abused her.

The continual raping and beatings finally took their toll and on the third day she fell ill. Her body and mind could take it no more. But even though she was obviously sick, the abuse continued. Not even her fever drew pity from her rapists.

Finally on the morning of the fourth day, a Filipino interpreter working for the Japanese visited her. She told him she was very sick and wanted to go home to recover. Feeling sympathy for her, he let her out of the compound.

When she arrived home, her parents who had no idea where she was, cried after learning what had happened. Just the year before an older sister had been taken by the Japanese. She died in a comfort house.

Fearing the soldiers would come looking for her, her father hid her in a nearby village. She stayed there for about a year until the American army arrived.

After the War, Felicidad returned to her home town. But her experiences at the hands of the Japanese soldiers had left deep psychological scars. She found it hard to socialise and could not face going back to school. She felt dirty. She dared not tell anyone outside her parents. She was afraid of how others would view her if they knew the truth. So she buried it inside.

When she was 25 she moved to Manila where she met her husband. Before marrying, Felicidad decided she could not conceal her experiences from the man she was going to marry, so she told him.

They were married in 1956 and had six children and 15 grandchildren. But outside her husband, she told no one else for almost 37 years.

There have been some documentaries made about the women survivors.  One such documentary is “63 Years On” which came out last year on the Korean women.

The number of Korean victims was estimated at between 80,000 and 200,000. Japanese government denied that they ran any such system until 1991 when a brave woman named Kim Hak-Soon came out and revealed the Japanese atrocities to the world. Japanese Governor General’s Office in Seoul incinerated all related documents before the closing of WWII.

A 1994 report shows that there are still hundreds of former sex slaves alive. Most of the are women of Asian countries occupied by Japan before and during the Pacific War. Among them are 160 South Koreans, 131 North Koreans, 100 Filipinos, 50 Taiwanese, 8 Indonesians, and two Malays. These numbers are only for those who revealed their real name.

There are much more victims living out there who do not want to identify their tragic past. Even after Korea’s liberation from Japan in 1945, many of the Korean victims chose to live in the Asian country where they were forced to serve sex to Japanese soldiers.

So, that gives you some things to think about.  What’s on your reading and blogging list today?