A promise of the Internet was the abolishment of national borders (at least in cyberspace). That notion has come under fire in the courts of various country taking various forms. The latest defeat of freedom of the press comes from the Australian courts against Dow Jones, a US based news service. The Australian courts have decided that it is permissible for a story published in New Jersey, USA to be sued by an entity in Australia. This is not the precedent of these battles with a few in the European courts against nazi organizations and such. Are we all going to be subject to a global standard to express our thoughts in a public forum?
I keep forgetting today in Thanksgiving Day in the States. This is my favorite holiday of the year. Those marketers haven’t managed to ruin it it. Another reason I enjoy this holiday over the others is getting together with family and friends and enjoying a day in the warm hearth of caring and (do I dare say it?) love (damn it slipped). For really no reason except to say thank you. Here in Japan it’s just another day but I usually try to have a small gathering to enjoy food (nabe is my favorite) and conversation. This year there will be no nabe party for Thanksgiving (so sad).
I wish you all have a great Thanksgiving Day and give a hug to the family for me.
VoIP or Voice over IP is a great way to make cheap phone calls. I’ve wrote about this before and my views have not changed. I live in Japan and calling the US before was prohibitively expense. Expensive to the point that I only called on the major holidays (or if I wanted something). My family would rarely call me, those cheap *^&%^%&*. But they are family for better or worse and I being the great son found that I could make phone calls over the Internet for next to nothing. Now I can bother them at any time of the night. I don’t have to worry about this being in Japan and calling the US butn certain countries are getting upset over this. They can’t tax an Internet call so they’re blocking those calls with a countrywide firewall. Sounds like the peoples best interests are not being looked at.
With the recent election and the Republican led government in place most political pundits aren’t saying IF there will be an war but rather WHEN it will start. I agree with these forecasts and I am sure that there will be many tears shed in Iraq for lost loved ones. Let’s try to keep things in perspective. Here is a cartoon to help.
Something over at Wired caught my eye today. Some organization that’s been given the responsibility to govern web standards, ICANN, has voted to remove the members of the board that where elected by the public.????? Those elected officails where put into place to make the organization accountable to the public. Can we officially say the king has no clothes yet. It seems to me that web standards have some very big money behind it and ICANN is in the pockets of those big companies. If you or I have a complaint about those standards, who is accountable?
I just read a great article over at Wired about a possible positive side effect of Viagra. Viagra is an anti-impotence drug with very few reported side-effects. People are getting the hint and stopping with those ridiculous Chinese medicines to get a boner that wreck havoc with the number of endangered species (if the treatments work why are those animals endangered?). I hope it also does something about those dopes that insist on killing sharks for their fins to make an obnoxious tasting soup.
There has been an interesting bit of news in the Japanese media lately. You can’t turn on the TV without getting an update it seems. Last month there was an admission by the North Korean government that they had abducted 13 Japanese people by force 24 years ago. Of those 13 only 5 remain alive today. They were abducted to provide intelligence and to help NK agents learn the Japanese language so that they could infiltrate Japan. The NK government of course claims that those agents were working independently and have since been punished, yeah right. I don’t buy into Bush’s Axis Of Eviltm thing that pollutes a brain of someone wearing his aluminum hat to tight (damn aliens are always trying to read your mind). But the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-il, has issues with aluminum hats himself. I don’t think he is crazy but honesty is not his forte, he did tell Tokyo that he doesn’t have a nuclear program but proof was brought forward he admitted the program existed. ’Oh, that nuclear program.’ Ok, he’s turned a new leaf and wants to play nice in the sandbox, especially for a new non-aggressions treaty with Japan.
All the living abductees are currently in Japan visiting family and friends they haven’t seen in 24 years. Looks like a real circus when they go out in public but there all very good-natured and very surprised at their reception. The abductees have grown children they did not bring with them and do not know they are really Japanese (Lucy, you have some splaining to do). One of the children, 15-year-old Kim Hye-gyong, does know she is half Japanese. Her mother, Megumi Yokota, was abducted when she was 13 years old. In 1993 Megumi killed herself, so say NK. It is confirmed that Kim Hye-gyong is the daughter of Megumi but the governments are trying to figure out what to do. Japan is willing to welcome all with open arms and give all the children citizenship. Japan has even gone as far as promising permanent residency in Japan to the American defector that is the husband of one of the abductees. He won’t come to Japan until he has assurance that he won’t deported to the states once he comes over.
I’ve read conflicting reports that NK says it’s Ok for anyone who wants to go back to Japan should go, then another report that not so positive. In either case no one ever says no. So I hope to see the abductees giving a choice, something that’s not afforded to anyone else in NK.
The Russian military/police agency with swift brutal force freed most of the captives of the hostage situation in a Moscow theater, they freed the ones they didn’t kill. Should anyone bow to pressures of terrorists to save some lives, not IMHO but 117 innocents killed maybe a high price to pay to stamp out terrorists. There is and will be lots of hindsight call by the media for either argument. They should have done this or that to save lives or the other side is if they didn’t do anything more lives would have been lost. I think the government and Putin in particular wanted to show the Chechnyans how far they would go to destroy them, to save face after failing for so long. But 117 dead … My hindsight call is that something else should have been tried, not negotiations, not with terrorists but some kind of military action designed to spare more lives. They pumped in poison gas to incapacitate the terrorists but it had the same effect of the hostages. Maybe the lost lives would have been more if they hadn’t done it this way and this is so much Monday morning quarter backing. I do believe the Russian troops did what they could to end the situation as best they could but the leadership wanted an easy way out of this. To those how lost something due to the fight against terrorists you have my sympathies.
