Coming to Kindle and Smashwords
November 2013
Mar 31, 2010
wwjd
Nine members of a Christian militia group known as Hutaree (website Google cache) were today indicted on multiple charges involving an alleged plot to attack police, including seditious conspiracy and attempted use of weapons of mass destruction, announced the U.S. Attorney in Michigan. Reports: New York Times, Talking Points Memo. No coincidence they're in Michigan, it would seem: the group reportedly planned attacks on Muslims in Detroit and elsewhere. The state is home to some of America's largest and most densely populated Muslim communities.
"I wonder if these fundamentalist extremist terrorists will be waterboarded and held without trial indefinitely," quipped a friend of a friend.
Above, while it lasts, what is purported to be a Hutaree-produced video grabbed from hutaree.com. The video features guys in camo traipsing through the forest, over a Sisters of Mercy track (Christian militias are into goth? Okay.)
The website makes much reference to a "Christian Republic," "end time battles," and the voices of "Christian martyrs," "Jesus warriors," and talk of "Jesus and the ten virgins." If you translated this website into Arabic, you'd have the sort of stuff that's presented to America as the reason we're in Afghanistan and Iraq.
While the homepage is inaccessible, some portions of the site are accessible at the publish time of this blog post, including details about a training camp planned for April 24, and their rank taxonomy. The top guys in the organization are known as RADOK [RD], BORAMANDER [BM], ZULIF [ZL], and ARKON [AK], and the lowest guys are "gunners." The Hutaree doctine is spelled out here. From the "About us" page:
Christ is our king of kings and top general of all things, for we are not of this world but we live in it. The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it. We will reach out to those who are yet blind in the last days of the kingdoms of men and bring them to life in Christ. (...) Oh and don't forget that you can write us through the contact us link on the Hutaree homepage. Once again thanks for visiting Hutaree.com and may Christ bless you widely
"I wonder if these fundamentalist extremist terrorists will be waterboarded and held without trial indefinitely," quipped a friend of a friend.
Above, while it lasts, what is purported to be a Hutaree-produced video grabbed from hutaree.com. The video features guys in camo traipsing through the forest, over a Sisters of Mercy track (Christian militias are into goth? Okay.)
The website makes much reference to a "Christian Republic," "end time battles," and the voices of "Christian martyrs," "Jesus warriors," and talk of "Jesus and the ten virgins." If you translated this website into Arabic, you'd have the sort of stuff that's presented to America as the reason we're in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Christ is our king of kings and top general of all things, for we are not of this world but we live in it. The Hutaree will one day see its enemy and meet him on the battlefield if so God wills it. We will reach out to those who are yet blind in the last days of the kingdoms of men and bring them to life in Christ. (...) Oh and don't forget that you can write us through the contact us link on the Hutaree homepage. Once again thanks for visiting Hutaree.com and may Christ bless you widely
Mar 30, 2010
Good buzz on this
Year: 2009
Directors: Ivan Engler / Ralph Etter
Writers: Ivan Engler / Patrick Steinmann / Thilo röscheisen
IMDB: linkTrailer: link Review by: agentorange
Rating: 8.2 out of 10
[Editor's note: Cargo is having its North American premier at SXSX 2010 tomorrow night. Be there, or be square.]
Those of you worried that Cargo will turn out to be just another Alien clone are going to be happy by the end of this review. Because, despite what the marketing for the film may have us believe, Cargo is not the typical space-station horror you might be expecting. It is a much grander work than that, blending classic scifi ideas about the destiny of humanity with massive visual scope and confident direction from first-time feature directors Ivan Engler and Ralph Etter. In short, Switzerland has not only produced its first large scale science fiction film, but one that showcases enough smarts and skill that
Mar 29, 2010
Burning down the house...
How Thomas Edison set W. H. Vanderbilt's house on fire
Maggie Koerth-Baker at 1:52 PM Thursday
This anecdote, taken from Edison's autobiographical notes, may well be one of the most awkward moments in the history of public relations.
So, William Henry Vanderbilt was an early investor in Thomas Edison's electric lighting endeavors, and it wasn't terribly surprising that Vanderbilt wanted to be one of the first kids on the block, so to speak, to get the new lights installed at his own house. This was prior to 1882—and the opening of the first centralized power plant—so the lights were run by an on-site generator installed in the basement. Sadly, the first demonstration of Vanderbilts' lighting system went a bit awry.
About 8 o'clock in the evening we lit it up and it was very good. Mr. Vanderbilt, his wife and some of his daughters cam in and were there a few minutes when a fire occurred. The large picture gallery was lined with silk cloth interwoven with fine metallic tinsel. In some manner, two wires had got crossed with the tinsel, which became red-hot and the whole wall was soon afire ... [the fire is put out] ... Mrs. Vanderbilt became hysterical and wanted to know where it came from. We told her we had the plant in the cellar, and when she learned we had a boiler there, she said she would not occupy the house; she would not live over a boiler. We had to take the whole installation out.
Lessons learned: Better insulation on your electrical wiring = good. Tinsel in your wallpaper = bad. Mrs. Vanderbilt = totally freaked out by the wrong
This anecdote, taken from Edison's autobiographical notes, may well be one of the most awkward moments in the history of public relations.
So, William Henry Vanderbilt was an early investor in Thomas Edison's electric lighting endeavors, and it wasn't terribly surprising that Vanderbilt wanted to be one of the first kids on the block, so to speak, to get the new lights installed at his own house. This was prior to 1882—and the opening of the first centralized power plant—so the lights were run by an on-site generator installed in the basement. Sadly, the first demonstration of Vanderbilts' lighting system went a bit awry.
About 8 o'clock in the evening we lit it up and it was very good. Mr. Vanderbilt, his wife and some of his daughters cam in and were there a few minutes when a fire occurred. The large picture gallery was lined with silk cloth interwoven with fine metallic tinsel. In some manner, two wires had got crossed with the tinsel, which became red-hot and the whole wall was soon afire ... [the fire is put out] ... Mrs. Vanderbilt became hysterical and wanted to know where it came from. We told her we had the plant in the cellar, and when she learned we had a boiler there, she said she would not occupy the house; she would not live over a boiler. We had to take the whole installation out.
Lessons learned: Better insulation on your electrical wiring = good. Tinsel in your wallpaper = bad. Mrs. Vanderbilt = totally freaked out by the wrong
Mar 24, 2010
Steam Punk
Steampunk Star Wars costumes
Cory Doctorow at 11:56 PM Tuesday
Outland Armour -- a replica armour company -- produced a set of steampunk Star Wars costumes that include this wonderful Steampunk Boba Fett and Princess Leia.
Cory Doctorow at 11:56 PM Tuesday
Outland Armour -- a replica armour company -- produced a set of steampunk Star Wars costumes that include this wonderful Steampunk Boba Fett and Princess Leia.
Viva!, the French
French TV show uses famous Milgram torture experiment
Mark Frauenfelder at 2:36 PM Monday
Bob Harris pointed me to this BBC story about Stanley Milgram's famous torture experiment, repeated on French TV and contextualized as a reality game show.
Egged on by a glamorous presenter, cries of "punishment" from a studio audience and dramatic music, the overwhelming majority of the participants obeyed orders to continue delivering the shocks - despite the man's screams of agony and pleas for them to stop. Eventually he fell silent, presumably because he had died or lost consciousness. The contestants didn't know that the man, strapped in a chair inside a cubicle so they couldn't see him, was really an actor. There were no shocks and it was all an experiment to see how far they would go.
Only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the ultimate, potentially lethal shock
Mark Frauenfelder at 2:36 PM Monday
Bob Harris pointed me to this BBC story about Stanley Milgram's famous torture experiment, repeated on French TV and contextualized as a reality game show.
Egged on by a glamorous presenter, cries of "punishment" from a studio audience and dramatic music, the overwhelming majority of the participants obeyed orders to continue delivering the shocks - despite the man's screams of agony and pleas for them to stop. Eventually he fell silent, presumably because he had died or lost consciousness. The contestants didn't know that the man, strapped in a chair inside a cubicle so they couldn't see him, was really an actor. There were no shocks and it was all an experiment to see how far they would go.
Only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before the ultimate, potentially lethal shock
Mar 23, 2010
Fantastic books/ Movie?
SXSW 2010: Review of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO Posted on Saturday, March 13th, 2010 1:44:04 GMT by: rochefort
Posted under: movie review thriller Swedish cyber
Year: 2009
Directors: Niels Arden Oplev
Writers: Nikolaj Arcel / Rasmus Heisterberg / Stieg Larsson
Review by: rochefort
Rating: 8 out of 10
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation of the first book of Stieg Larsson's "Millenium Trilogy", is a crackin' thriller in which Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a recently disgraced journalist, and Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a lesbian hacker with a history of violent mental episodes, are hired by the patriarch of the rich and elusive Vanger clan. Uncle Vanger wants them to find out what happened to Harriet Vanger, his niece and favorite relative who disappeared from the family's island some forty years prior. In the course of their investigation they discover a labyrinthine conspiracy involving government cover-ups, a series of unsolved murders, brutal rape and Nazis.
Already a major hit in its native Sweden and across Europe ("The Girl Who Played with Fire", the second film, has already been released overseas), this first film is essentially a tight little mystery thriller with a dark-as-pitch underbelly and top-shelf production values. At first glance it may, at least to American audiences, resemble little more than a well-done mystery akin to the sorts of whodunits Hollywood has been putting out consistently since before World War II; there's a dash of Hitchcock here, a bit of "The Silence of the Lambs" there. But the sum of its parts is still both compelling and distinctly European, and results in a tale that takes its time, establishing both its characters and the plot with a welcome and refreshing level of patience and restraint. It's probably also worth noting that the overseas reception to this film (and the resulting hype), may perplex some U.S. audiences who can appreciate its surface virtues but not really relate to some of the core political undercurrents. Apparently this is one of the first films of its kind to inflect a pulpy noir with references to Swedish/Nazi collaborators and secret societies. But if you dig a well-executed, adult suspense thriller, this movie plays like a master's guide on how it's done.
Blomkvist and Salander spend the entire first act in separate worlds, their stories smoothly converging in a manner that feels neither contrived nor hackneyed. Blomkvist is an idealist, the publisher of Millenium, the magazine after which the literary trilogy is named. Less a square-jawed hero than a slightly-clumsy bookworm, Blomkvist dared to try and expose a major corporation as corrupt but got in over his head, and has only a few weeks to solve Vanger's case before he's sent to prison for libel. Salander is a freelance investigator and hacker who tracks down dirt on people of interest for whomever pays the most, and Blomkvist is her most recent target. She's also been bouncing around from one sponsor to the next, as she's on probation for a number of violent altercations, and the most recent sponsor is a real scumbag who threatens to ruin her run of good behavior unless she submits to his harsh sexual fantasies. A key scene involves one of the roughest rapes I've seen committed to celluloid, but what happens after is not only oddly empowering, but also shines further light on an increasingly complex character.
The secret weapon here is, of course, Salander, easily one of the most fascinating characters to emerge in recent cinema, and Rapace's portrayal is pitch perfect. A tattoo-covered, Mac-using, motorcycle-riding Tank Girl by way of Neo (with a little bit of wounded Jodie Foster thrown in), every moment Salander is onscreen the movie just pumps. She's neither a tragic victim nor an excessively brooding shoegazer, and Rapace sells her untraditional sexual psychology, as well as her proficiency with computers and the clues of the case, with alternating degrees of subtlety and intensity. She almost seems like the sort of character we're more likely to see in some cyberpunk action film, but in "Girl" feels entirely real. Salander isn't interested in our sympathy, but earns it anyway, and by film's end we're rooting for her despite the fact that she's still a little scary. Nyqvist plays Blomkvist like he knows exactly who wears the pants in their weird partnership, and his interest in her (both romantic and intellectual) is tempered with a kind of "aw shucks" awe. Together they make one of the best screen pairings in recent memory.
While the pacing may not be everybody's cup of tea (this is less a sensationalist action-thriller than a creepy procedural), "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" is still an easy one to recommend thanks to its characters and atmosphere. There's just something hard to resist about a punk Sherlock Holmes, you know? This one should get a stateside limited release sometime this year, and the word is that a U.S. remake is in development, but unless you just can't handle dubbing or subtitles, you owe it to yourself to check it out.
Posted under: movie review thriller Swedish cyber
Year: 2009
Directors: Niels Arden Oplev
Writers: Nikolaj Arcel / Rasmus Heisterberg / Stieg Larsson
Review by: rochefort
Rating: 8 out of 10
"The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo", Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation of the first book of Stieg Larsson's "Millenium Trilogy", is a crackin' thriller in which Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist), a recently disgraced journalist, and Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace), a lesbian hacker with a history of violent mental episodes, are hired by the patriarch of the rich and elusive Vanger clan. Uncle Vanger wants them to find out what happened to Harriet Vanger, his niece and favorite relative who disappeared from the family's island some forty years prior. In the course of their investigation they discover a labyrinthine conspiracy involving government cover-ups, a series of unsolved murders, brutal rape and Nazis.
Already a major hit in its native Sweden and across Europe ("The Girl Who Played with Fire", the second film, has already been released overseas), this first film is essentially a tight little mystery thriller with a dark-as-pitch underbelly and top-shelf production values. At first glance it may, at least to American audiences, resemble little more than a well-done mystery akin to the sorts of whodunits Hollywood has been putting out consistently since before World War II; there's a dash of Hitchcock here, a bit of "The Silence of the Lambs" there. But the sum of its parts is still both compelling and distinctly European, and results in a tale that takes its time, establishing both its characters and the plot with a welcome and refreshing level of patience and restraint. It's probably also worth noting that the overseas reception to this film (and the resulting hype), may perplex some U.S. audiences who can appreciate its surface virtues but not really relate to some of the core political undercurrents. Apparently this is one of the first films of its kind to inflect a pulpy noir with references to Swedish/Nazi collaborators and secret societies. But if you dig a well-executed, adult suspense thriller, this movie plays like a master's guide on how it's done.
Blomkvist and Salander spend the entire first act in separate worlds, their stories smoothly converging in a manner that feels neither contrived nor hackneyed. Blomkvist is an idealist, the publisher of Millenium, the magazine after which the literary trilogy is named. Less a square-jawed hero than a slightly-clumsy bookworm, Blomkvist dared to try and expose a major corporation as corrupt but got in over his head, and has only a few weeks to solve Vanger's case before he's sent to prison for libel. Salander is a freelance investigator and hacker who tracks down dirt on people of interest for whomever pays the most, and Blomkvist is her most recent target. She's also been bouncing around from one sponsor to the next, as she's on probation for a number of violent altercations, and the most recent sponsor is a real scumbag who threatens to ruin her run of good behavior unless she submits to his harsh sexual fantasies. A key scene involves one of the roughest rapes I've seen committed to celluloid, but what happens after is not only oddly empowering, but also shines further light on an increasingly complex character.
The secret weapon here is, of course, Salander, easily one of the most fascinating characters to emerge in recent cinema, and Rapace's portrayal is pitch perfect. A tattoo-covered, Mac-using, motorcycle-riding Tank Girl by way of Neo (with a little bit of wounded Jodie Foster thrown in), every moment Salander is onscreen the movie just pumps. She's neither a tragic victim nor an excessively brooding shoegazer, and Rapace sells her untraditional sexual psychology, as well as her proficiency with computers and the clues of the case, with alternating degrees of subtlety and intensity. She almost seems like the sort of character we're more likely to see in some cyberpunk action film, but in "Girl" feels entirely real. Salander isn't interested in our sympathy, but earns it anyway, and by film's end we're rooting for her despite the fact that she's still a little scary. Nyqvist plays Blomkvist like he knows exactly who wears the pants in their weird partnership, and his interest in her (both romantic and intellectual) is tempered with a kind of "aw shucks" awe. Together they make one of the best screen pairings in recent memory.
Mar 21, 2010
Cutting edge Brazilian sci fi
Posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 16:24:46 GMT by: quietearth 
Posted under: trailer news short scifi foreign brazil
The second short film from EBBËTO is currently playing the fest circuit, and at 25 minutes in length and the looks of this trailer, my jaw almost dropped. I want to see the whole thing now. Seriously, check it out folks.
The film tells the tale of a machine travelling in deep-space which has as a primary function the preservation of a living organism: a man. Strange events with biblical analogies begin, disturbing the machine and making it rethink it's priorities.
The second short film from EBBËTO is currently playing the fest circuit, and at 25 minutes in length and the looks of this trailer, my jaw almost dropped. I want to see the whole thing now. Seriously, check it out folks.
The film tells the tale of a machine travelling in deep-space which has as a primary function the preservation of a living organism: a man. Strange events with biblical analogies begin, disturbing the machine and making it rethink it's priorities.
Mar 20, 2010
All they do is yak,yak,yak...
The politics of yakuza (or Q&A with Jake Adelstein pt 2)
The politics of yakuza (or Q&A with Jake Adelstein pt 2)
Lisa Katayama at 8:00 AM March 18, 2010
In part two of our Q&A series with Tokyo Vice author Jake Adelstein, we'll answer some basic questions about the yakuza: why people join, how they operate, and how much influence they have on mainstream Japanese culture. You will also find out why some parents might voluntarily send their kids to mobsters and how landing an innocent-seeming IT job could accidentally spiral you into a lifetime of crime.
If you haven't read part one, which is a more intimate look at Adelstein's own experience as a crime beat reporter in Japan, it's here.
Why do people join the yakuza?
They're usually misfits from Japanese society. The word yakuza itself comes from a losing hand in gambling. 893 (ya-ku-za). It's the worst hand you can have. So when they refer to themselves as yakuza, they're referring to themselves as losers. It's a very self-deprecating term.
In western Japan, there's still a lot of discrimination against burakumin, the outcast class. If you come from certain parts of the country, they might think you're inferior, dirty, and unclean. There are also a lot of Korean-Japanese yakuza because of the discrimination against them. It's getting better, but in the past, the job choices for Korean-Japanese were pretty much pachinko parlor, barbeque restaurant operator, sex club operator, or the yakuza.
Some of them are just normal people who are basically running a very small home security business. They collect money from bars and clubs in the neighborhood and in turn provide a service. If there's an unruly customer, they'll beat the shit out of him without calling the cops. If someone doesn't pay the tab, the yakuza will go to their door and politely ask for the money.
Do they come from broken families?
Not necessarily. A lot of them are from wealthy families — sons of cops, bureaucrats. [My bodyguard and ex-yakuza boss] Mochizuki-san's grandfather was a cop, and his father worked for a government institution his whole life.
Sometimes, if parents were worried about their kid's drug use, they would take him to the local yakuza and be like, beat some sense into this kid, get him off drugs, make him a man. And they would do it. And then the kid would join the yakuza afterwards.
But I'm sure that's not what the parents wanted!
Well at least their kid's not on drugs, right? And he has a job. In fact, lots of normal people go to the yakuza to solve problems. In Japan, civil lawsuits take forever to get resolved, and even if you win the lawsuit nobody will enforce it — if a guy owes you money but won't pay up, police officers aren't going to go out there to seize his assets. If someone owes you money or you're in a civil dispute, the yakuza will take half of whatever they can get out of the person who wronged you. But at last you get half, and it's fast.
Are there any misconceptions we have about the yakuza?
Mochizuki-san is a wonderful father to his child. He's incredibly patient and never yells at him. Some yakuza parents make sure their children don't become yakuza. Some of them actually do charity work and contribute funds to orphanages and things. It's rare, but it always surprises me.
The other thing that surprises me is that on their days off they're at home wearing Mickey Mouse t-shirts and sweatpants, and I'm like, wow. I never would have pictured you like this when you're off the job. I know one yakuza boss who is really into akachan play, where he gets diapered like a baby and sucks on a lactating woman's tits. I'm like, this is what this fearsome guy does for pleasure?
From what you've told me about him, he seems like a perfectly decent guy. What made him join the yakuza?
Excitement, thrills, the promise of women. He racked up huge debts in a Soapland — Japan's legal brothels. He kept putting it on his tab until he couldn't pay it back. He was trying to raise money when the yakuza Soapland owners were like, why don't you work for these guys and you can pay me back?
What happens a lot now is that people graduate college and go work for some IT startup, and then they realize it's being bankrolled by the yakuza. The yakuza go, hey, this guy's smart. He earns money. We could use him. So they'll say to him: how would you like to become a member? We'll make you a corporate associate so you don't have to spend two years cleaning the office and answering the phone. It's employment for life! Because of the reputation of the yakuza, most people would be scared and hesitant to refuse. When you're privy to knowledge of how a large front company works, it's kind of hard to back out.
Do yakuza kill random people?
The traditional yakuza value is: katagi ni meiwaku wo kakenai. We do not bother ordinary citizens. You can come to us for gambling, drugs, or sex, and that's our business. But we're going to leave ordinary citizens alone. We're not involved in robberies, thefts, or muggings, and we don't rape people. This doesn't hold true anymore. Now it's all about money. The ideals that held up the traditional system of meritocracy are gone. You can buy your way into power. The classic yakuza life scheme used to be that you started at the bottom doing whatever enterprises, loan-sharking or prostituion or drug-running or extortion blackmail, pretty standard yakuza stuff. Eventually there would be a gang war and you'd shoot up a member of a rival gang, go to jail, and come out after 10 years to a higher position with a better salary. But as gang wars have declined and the organizations have moved into financial crimes like stock market manipulation or running front companies that are listed companies, capital has become more valuable than honor. There used to be a premium paid on upholding codes of what was proper yakuza living, but nobody pays attention to them anymore.
How involved are the yakuza in the way business in Japan is run today?
In the financial markets, I'd say about 20% of listed companies are heavily connected to the yakuza. There's a hell of a lot more money to be made moving a million shares of stock than a hundred bags of speed on the streets.
How about in politics?
The Liberal Democratic Party was founded on yakuza money. Former prime minister Koizumi's grandfather was a member of the Inagawa-kai; he was tattooed all the way down to his wrists. According to magazine articles written in the nineties, the current minister of finance Kamei Shizuka received $400,000 from a yakuza stock speculator and certainly received donations from the emperor of loan sharks.
What about in pop culture?
A huge part of the entertainment industry is run by the yakuza. When a rather dumb cop accidentally leaked all the Metropolitan Police Department files on Goto-gumi in 2007, a company called Burning Productions — one of the most powerful production companies in the country — was listed as an organized crime front company. Nobody in the Japanese media will that, though, because they'll lose have access to their stars. It's like Hollywood in the 50s when the mafia had a big share in everything.
Do you think that will ever change? Will Japan ever run as a non-yakuza society?
For this to happen, Japan needs a few things. There would have to be a criminal conspiracy law so you can prosecute people at the top for crimes committed by people below them. There would have to be plea bargaining so people at the bottom would rat out people above them, and a witness protection program so that the people who make plea bargains aren't killed as soon as they get out of jail. You need wiretapping laws that allow you to wiretap — the laws are so stringent now that they're almost never used. If you put all those things into place, then Japan could get rid of the yakuza groups. They'd probably go underground but they would never be this powerful again.
Part of the reason they are so powerful now is that they're so out in the open. You can look at the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters on Google Maps. The Inagawa-kai office is across from the Ritz Carlton. Every year, the NPA releases a list of the 22 organized crime groups with their names and addresses. It's not a mystery who they are or where they are.
What's preventing change from taking place?
Polticians. They don't want a criminal conspiracy law in the books. I don't think there are any politicians who don't have any dirt of them. And if any politician starts coming down hard on organized crime — if they don't physcially kill him like they did the mayor of Nagasaki — they'll ruin his reputation. Here's the thing: Japanese people kind of like the yakuza. They admire them. There are movies about them, comic books about them, there are fan magazines... they're part of the culture. They promote traditional values.
One of the reasons Japan has low street crime rates is because these guys are very good enforcers. In the neighborhoods where they're running businesses or collecting protection money, you won't see people getting mugged because the yakuza don't want people to be afraid to come there and spend money. They are a second police force and in that sense, and perform a valuable role in Japanese society.
Over the next two months, we'll be collaborating with Jake Adelstein to bring you a series of Boing Boing exclusive yakuza stories. In a few weeks, we'll go behind-the-scenes with Adelstein and his yakuza buddies to watch how they do ordinary things like play video games, use the computer, and chop off body parts. Stay tuned
The politics of yakuza (or Q&A with Jake Adelstein pt 2)
Lisa Katayama at 8:00 AM March 18, 2010
In part two of our Q&A series with Tokyo Vice author Jake Adelstein, we'll answer some basic questions about the yakuza: why people join, how they operate, and how much influence they have on mainstream Japanese culture. You will also find out why some parents might voluntarily send their kids to mobsters and how landing an innocent-seeming IT job could accidentally spiral you into a lifetime of crime.
If you haven't read part one, which is a more intimate look at Adelstein's own experience as a crime beat reporter in Japan, it's here.
Why do people join the yakuza?
They're usually misfits from Japanese society. The word yakuza itself comes from a losing hand in gambling. 893 (ya-ku-za). It's the worst hand you can have. So when they refer to themselves as yakuza, they're referring to themselves as losers. It's a very self-deprecating term.
In western Japan, there's still a lot of discrimination against burakumin, the outcast class. If you come from certain parts of the country, they might think you're inferior, dirty, and unclean. There are also a lot of Korean-Japanese yakuza because of the discrimination against them. It's getting better, but in the past, the job choices for Korean-Japanese were pretty much pachinko parlor, barbeque restaurant operator, sex club operator, or the yakuza.
Some of them are just normal people who are basically running a very small home security business. They collect money from bars and clubs in the neighborhood and in turn provide a service. If there's an unruly customer, they'll beat the shit out of him without calling the cops. If someone doesn't pay the tab, the yakuza will go to their door and politely ask for the money.
Do they come from broken families?
Not necessarily. A lot of them are from wealthy families — sons of cops, bureaucrats. [My bodyguard and ex-yakuza boss] Mochizuki-san's grandfather was a cop, and his father worked for a government institution his whole life.
Sometimes, if parents were worried about their kid's drug use, they would take him to the local yakuza and be like, beat some sense into this kid, get him off drugs, make him a man. And they would do it. And then the kid would join the yakuza afterwards.
But I'm sure that's not what the parents wanted!
Well at least their kid's not on drugs, right? And he has a job. In fact, lots of normal people go to the yakuza to solve problems. In Japan, civil lawsuits take forever to get resolved, and even if you win the lawsuit nobody will enforce it — if a guy owes you money but won't pay up, police officers aren't going to go out there to seize his assets. If someone owes you money or you're in a civil dispute, the yakuza will take half of whatever they can get out of the person who wronged you. But at last you get half, and it's fast.
Are there any misconceptions we have about the yakuza?
Mochizuki-san is a wonderful father to his child. He's incredibly patient and never yells at him. Some yakuza parents make sure their children don't become yakuza. Some of them actually do charity work and contribute funds to orphanages and things. It's rare, but it always surprises me.
The other thing that surprises me is that on their days off they're at home wearing Mickey Mouse t-shirts and sweatpants, and I'm like, wow. I never would have pictured you like this when you're off the job. I know one yakuza boss who is really into akachan play, where he gets diapered like a baby and sucks on a lactating woman's tits. I'm like, this is what this fearsome guy does for pleasure?
From what you've told me about him, he seems like a perfectly decent guy. What made him join the yakuza?
Excitement, thrills, the promise of women. He racked up huge debts in a Soapland — Japan's legal brothels. He kept putting it on his tab until he couldn't pay it back. He was trying to raise money when the yakuza Soapland owners were like, why don't you work for these guys and you can pay me back?
What happens a lot now is that people graduate college and go work for some IT startup, and then they realize it's being bankrolled by the yakuza. The yakuza go, hey, this guy's smart. He earns money. We could use him. So they'll say to him: how would you like to become a member? We'll make you a corporate associate so you don't have to spend two years cleaning the office and answering the phone. It's employment for life! Because of the reputation of the yakuza, most people would be scared and hesitant to refuse. When you're privy to knowledge of how a large front company works, it's kind of hard to back out.
Do yakuza kill random people?
The traditional yakuza value is: katagi ni meiwaku wo kakenai. We do not bother ordinary citizens. You can come to us for gambling, drugs, or sex, and that's our business. But we're going to leave ordinary citizens alone. We're not involved in robberies, thefts, or muggings, and we don't rape people. This doesn't hold true anymore. Now it's all about money. The ideals that held up the traditional system of meritocracy are gone. You can buy your way into power. The classic yakuza life scheme used to be that you started at the bottom doing whatever enterprises, loan-sharking or prostituion or drug-running or extortion blackmail, pretty standard yakuza stuff. Eventually there would be a gang war and you'd shoot up a member of a rival gang, go to jail, and come out after 10 years to a higher position with a better salary. But as gang wars have declined and the organizations have moved into financial crimes like stock market manipulation or running front companies that are listed companies, capital has become more valuable than honor. There used to be a premium paid on upholding codes of what was proper yakuza living, but nobody pays attention to them anymore.
How involved are the yakuza in the way business in Japan is run today?
In the financial markets, I'd say about 20% of listed companies are heavily connected to the yakuza. There's a hell of a lot more money to be made moving a million shares of stock than a hundred bags of speed on the streets.
How about in politics?
The Liberal Democratic Party was founded on yakuza money. Former prime minister Koizumi's grandfather was a member of the Inagawa-kai; he was tattooed all the way down to his wrists. According to magazine articles written in the nineties, the current minister of finance Kamei Shizuka received $400,000 from a yakuza stock speculator and certainly received donations from the emperor of loan sharks.
What about in pop culture?
A huge part of the entertainment industry is run by the yakuza. When a rather dumb cop accidentally leaked all the Metropolitan Police Department files on Goto-gumi in 2007, a company called Burning Productions — one of the most powerful production companies in the country — was listed as an organized crime front company. Nobody in the Japanese media will that, though, because they'll lose have access to their stars. It's like Hollywood in the 50s when the mafia had a big share in everything.
Do you think that will ever change? Will Japan ever run as a non-yakuza society?
For this to happen, Japan needs a few things. There would have to be a criminal conspiracy law so you can prosecute people at the top for crimes committed by people below them. There would have to be plea bargaining so people at the bottom would rat out people above them, and a witness protection program so that the people who make plea bargains aren't killed as soon as they get out of jail. You need wiretapping laws that allow you to wiretap — the laws are so stringent now that they're almost never used. If you put all those things into place, then Japan could get rid of the yakuza groups. They'd probably go underground but they would never be this powerful again.
Part of the reason they are so powerful now is that they're so out in the open. You can look at the Yamaguchi-gumi headquarters on Google Maps. The Inagawa-kai office is across from the Ritz Carlton. Every year, the NPA releases a list of the 22 organized crime groups with their names and addresses. It's not a mystery who they are or where they are.
What's preventing change from taking place?
Polticians. They don't want a criminal conspiracy law in the books. I don't think there are any politicians who don't have any dirt of them. And if any politician starts coming down hard on organized crime — if they don't physcially kill him like they did the mayor of Nagasaki — they'll ruin his reputation. Here's the thing: Japanese people kind of like the yakuza. They admire them. There are movies about them, comic books about them, there are fan magazines... they're part of the culture. They promote traditional values.
One of the reasons Japan has low street crime rates is because these guys are very good enforcers. In the neighborhoods where they're running businesses or collecting protection money, you won't see people getting mugged because the yakuza don't want people to be afraid to come there and spend money. They are a second police force and in that sense, and perform a valuable role in Japanese society.
Over the next two months, we'll be collaborating with Jake Adelstein to bring you a series of Boing Boing exclusive yakuza stories. In a few weeks, we'll go behind-the-scenes with Adelstein and his yakuza buddies to watch how they do ordinary things like play video games, use the computer, and chop off body parts. Stay tuned
Mar 18, 2010
Ah, yeah...
Fascinating archive of old PopSci Japan stories
Pink Tentacle has found several fascinating Japan-related articles from Popular Science's 137-year archives, now on Google Books. They include folk medicine from the 1890s, a law that forbade people from owning maroon-colored cars (1930s), and one theory from a famous geologist at the time suggesting that the US could bomb Japan's volcanoes to win the war (1944).
Pink Tentacle has found several fascinating Japan-related articles from Popular Science's 137-year archives, now on Google Books. They include folk medicine from the 1890s, a law that forbade people from owning maroon-colored cars (1930s), and one theory from a famous geologist at the time suggesting that the US could bomb Japan's volcanoes to win the war (1944).
Mar 16, 2010
beautiful
Pam Turner of Minnesota created this Spiral Eye Needle, a sewing needle that's easy to thread, thanks to a "sideways" opening that admits thread as it slides down the needle's length. They're a lot more expensive than normal needles -- singles go for $5.50 and up -- but for klutzes, occasional sewers, and people who have vision or coordination problems, they look like godsends.
Mar 15, 2010
hmmmmmmmm....
By Robin Abcarian
March 2, 2010
It's a campaign designed to shock: Dozens of newly installed billboards in Atlanta feature the cherubic face of a black baby and a stark claim: "Black children are an endangered species."
A joint effort of Georgia Right to Life and the pro-adoption, pro-abstinence Radiance Foundation, the campaign ostensibly calls attention to the fact that black women have a disproportionately high number of abortions. But there is a deeper, more disturbing claim at work as well.
An increasingly vocal segment of the antiabortion community has embraced the idea that black women are targeted for abortion in an effort to keep the black population down.
The billboards direct people to a website called toomanyaborted.com, which claims that "Under the false liberty of 'reproductive freedom' we are killing our very future."
Some black antiabortion activists call the phenomenon "womb lynching." One prominent black cleric, the Rev. Clenard Childress Jr. of New Jersey, often says the most dangerous place for a black child is the womb.
No one disputes that black women have more abortions, proportionately, than women of other races. Nationally, African Americans make up about 13% of the population and have about 37% of all abortions, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But abortion rights advocates say that is because African American women have a disproportionate number of unplanned pregnancies, an enduring problem with complex socioeconomic roots, including inadequate insurance coverage.
"The notion that abortion providers are targeting certain groups of people is absurd," said Vanessa Cullins, an African American physician who is vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's using race to undermine decisions that responsible black women are making about whether to terminate a pregnancy or not."
Radiance Foundation founder Ryan Bomberger, a 38-year-old former ad man, came up with the idea for the billboards. Adopted as a baby, he said he was conceived when his white biological mother was raped by a black man.
"I am definitely not a white Southern bigot," he said, alluding to an accusation hurled his way since the ads went up. "I am as black as President Obama."
He has also been accused of shaming black women who seek abortions. Not so, Bomberger said: "It's about exposing an industry that is stealing potential from our community."
Many African American women who support abortion rights find that message patronizing and offensive.
"Ryan is a young advertising executive who has stepped into a food fight that he doesn't quite understand," said Loretta Ross, 56, national coordinator of SisterSong, an Atlanta-based coalition of 80 women's groups that work on reproductive health issues for minorities.
"To be honest, black women aren't fooled by zealots or the church or even the individual men in our lives," Ross said. "We know that the bottom line is you don't have much control over your life when you don't control your body. Should a rapist have the right to choose the mother of his child? That's what Ryan is saying."
But many abortion foes focus on the sheer numbers involved.
Catherine Davis, minority outreach director for Georgia Right to Life, visits black college campuses, bringing the message that abortion is a destructive force for blacks. She often screens a movie called "Maafa 21," made by Texas antiabortion group Life Dynamics, alleging that blacks have been targeted for abortions since the end of slavery by white elites fearful of uncontrolled population growth.
"Let me put it this way," Davis said, "18,870,000 black babies have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade. those babies hadn't been aborted, we would be 59 million strong -- over 19% of the population."
While the abortion rate among black women is higher than average, so is the birth rate. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2006 the black birth rate was 16.5 per 1,000 women of childbearing age compared with 14.2 per 1,000 for all women.
Most black women who have abortions are already mothers or plan to have children later, Cullins said.
The statistics are not persuasive for Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr
March 2, 2010
A joint effort of Georgia Right to Life and the pro-adoption, pro-abstinence Radiance Foundation, the campaign ostensibly calls attention to the fact that black women have a disproportionately high number of abortions. But there is a deeper, more disturbing claim at work as well.
An increasingly vocal segment of the antiabortion community has embraced the idea that black women are targeted for abortion in an effort to keep the black population down.
The billboards direct people to a website called toomanyaborted.com, which claims that "Under the false liberty of 'reproductive freedom' we are killing our very future."
Some black antiabortion activists call the phenomenon "womb lynching." One prominent black cleric, the Rev. Clenard Childress Jr. of New Jersey, often says the most dangerous place for a black child is the womb.
No one disputes that black women have more abortions, proportionately, than women of other races. Nationally, African Americans make up about 13% of the population and have about 37% of all abortions, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But abortion rights advocates say that is because African American women have a disproportionate number of unplanned pregnancies, an enduring problem with complex socioeconomic roots, including inadequate insurance coverage.
"The notion that abortion providers are targeting certain groups of people is absurd," said Vanessa Cullins, an African American physician who is vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "It's using race to undermine decisions that responsible black women are making about whether to terminate a pregnancy or not."
Radiance Foundation founder Ryan Bomberger, a 38-year-old former ad man, came up with the idea for the billboards. Adopted as a baby, he said he was conceived when his white biological mother was raped by a black man.
"I am definitely not a white Southern bigot," he said, alluding to an accusation hurled his way since the ads went up. "I am as black as President Obama."
He has also been accused of shaming black women who seek abortions. Not so, Bomberger said: "It's about exposing an industry that is stealing potential from our community."
Many African American women who support abortion rights find that message patronizing and offensive.
"Ryan is a young advertising executive who has stepped into a food fight that he doesn't quite understand," said Loretta Ross, 56, national coordinator of SisterSong, an Atlanta-based coalition of 80 women's groups that work on reproductive health issues for minorities.
"To be honest, black women aren't fooled by zealots or the church or even the individual men in our lives," Ross said. "We know that the bottom line is you don't have much control over your life when you don't control your body. Should a rapist have the right to choose the mother of his child? That's what Ryan is saying."
But many abortion foes focus on the sheer numbers involved.
Catherine Davis, minority outreach director for Georgia Right to Life, visits black college campuses, bringing the message that abortion is a destructive force for blacks. She often screens a movie called "Maafa 21," made by Texas antiabortion group Life Dynamics, alleging that blacks have been targeted for abortions since the end of slavery by white elites fearful of uncontrolled population growth.
"Let me put it this way," Davis said, "18,870,000 black babies have been aborted since Roe vs. Wade. those babies hadn't been aborted, we would be 59 million strong -- over 19% of the population."
While the abortion rate among black women is higher than average, so is the birth rate. According to the National Center for Health Statistics, in 2006 the black birth rate was 16.5 per 1,000 women of childbearing age compared with 14.2 per 1,000 for all women.
Most black women who have abortions are already mothers or plan to have children later, Cullins said.
The statistics are not persuasive for Alveda King, a niece of Martin Luther King Jr
Mar 10, 2010
cool..
8 Comments Share6Adam Savage: my Blade Runner gun
Adam Savage at 4:00 PM Tuesday
Adam Savage is the co-host of Mythbusters.
I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible:
(Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer)
I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference, it was 20% too small.
Adam Savage at 4:00 PM Tuesday
Adam Savage is the co-host of Mythbusters.
I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible:
(Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer)
Mar 9, 2010
Stomach-churning details of CIA waterboarding crimes
Cory Doctorow at 9:57 PM March 8, 2010
Salon's Mark Benjamin went spelunking in the recently released CIA torture memos and comes back with a stomach-churning account of the waterboarding practiced at Gitmo. This fine-tuned torture process repeatedly took its victims to the brink of death (one victim was waterboarded 180+ times) until many of them simply gave up on breathing and tried to allow themselves to drown, only to be revived by unethical medical personnel who collaborated with the war criminals conducting the torture.
The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding "session." Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to "dam the runoff" and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee's mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second "applications" of liquid in each two-hour session - and could dump water over a detainee's nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session - a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding - the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.
"This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing," said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. "The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, 'This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.' It just sounds like lunacy," he said. "This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine
Cory Doctorow at 9:57 PM March 8, 2010
Salon's Mark Benjamin went spelunking in the recently released CIA torture memos and comes back with a stomach-churning account of the waterboarding practiced at Gitmo. This fine-tuned torture process repeatedly took its victims to the brink of death (one victim was waterboarded 180+ times) until many of them simply gave up on breathing and tried to allow themselves to drown, only to be revived by unethical medical personnel who collaborated with the war criminals conducting the torture.
The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding "session." Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to "dam the runoff" and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee's mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second "applications" of liquid in each two-hour session - and could dump water over a detainee's nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session - a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding - the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.
"This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing," said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. "The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, 'This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.' It just sounds like lunacy," he said. "This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine
Mar 5, 2010
gotta love steampunk
Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 18:32:45 GMT by: Marina Antunes
Posted under: comic book horror poland
Luke Śmigiel is a talented guy. A journalist, PR guy and PhD student in Wroclaw Poland but apparently, that’s not really enough because Śmigiel is also a writer and if his most recent work, a comic book titled "Decathexis," is any indication, we may soon be seeing his name right up there next to Clive Barker’s.
Described as part cloak and dagger and part steampunk, “Decathexis” looks fantastic and very much channelling Barker’s "Hellraiser" comics. Here’s the official synopsis:
In 1888, the world Kirkegaardu, the dominant religion is death, which was subordinated to every aspect of human life. It is in such a sense of the realities of fighting the main characters - a young tanatolog Jon Pendergast, a man with a brilliant mind and uncommon knowledge about the deceased, and his good friend, the first fencer Queen - Dancer of Death, Danse Macabre. The characters try to solve the riddle of the dead, who inexplicably disappeared from the cemeteries.
There are strong indications that the dark mystery of the Church is mysteriously Moria and his high priest Abaddon La Roche. Immerse yourself in a drab world Decathexis and find out why better to burn the corpses, and not buried in the ground. Meet the dark secret of old and ancient evil, which can not defeat or półtoraręczny sword fencer, muskets or soldiers of the Black Troop. Here comes the mother's death, and soon everyone will have their own experiences.
It’s a great looking comic with some great extras including this awesome “motion comic” which is a great companion piece to the book and which is the first of a number of vidcasts all of which are designed to enrich the written story. Don’t laugh, I know the term motion comic brings back nightmares of the botched Watchmen experiment which was laughably bad but this is seriously awesome.
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