Baucus has no more beef with KORUS FTA

See how I did that? Max Baucus, the Montana Democrat who is Senate Finance Committee, had been threatening to hold up the free-trade agreement penned by then-US President Bush43 and then-ROK President Roh Moohyun, mostly because South Korea stopped importing American beef (as did Japan) following the discovery of Mad Cow Disease in an American cow that had come from Canada.

But now that the Obama administration said it will pursue talks with South Korea on beef sales, Baucus is dropping his opposition, saying he will back the important trade deal.

Many tens of billions of dollars in potential trade of high-end goods and services are no longer going to be held up just because Baucus wants to sell a few dead cows.

From Bloomberg:

Baucus, whose committee has jurisdiction over trade, had faulted President Barack Obama’s administration for failing to win promises from South Korea to drop restrictions on beef from older cattle. He said today that a U.S. request for talks was enough to win his support.

“Our long fight for strong, science-based trade rules around the world to open foreign markets for American ranchers -- and keep them open -- took big steps forward today,” Baucus, a Montana Democrat, said in a statement. “Korea’s age restriction on U.S. beef is both scientifically unjustified and inconsistent with international standards.”

Frankly, I'm bothered by this line of thinking. Though I think the worry about Mad Cow Disease in Korea was over the top and irrational, it actually stems from such very unhealthful and often dangerous practices common in the United States, and Baucus is suggesting it's ridiculous for a sovereign country like South Korea to set its own rules. The whole international standards appeal in the face of South Koreans wanting to establish their own criteria smacks of some of the worst aspects of globalization that are accepted as routine.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office is saying that it will begin talks with Congress tomorrow on legislation to pass free-trade agreements with not just South Korea, but also Colombia and Panama. I don't like the idea of tying them all together, as South Korea is a better deal and lawmakers in Washington may feel compelled to accept problematic deals with Colombia and Panama in order for the country to get the economic benefit of the deal with Korea.

South Korea to be first to make the all-new 2013 Chevy Malibu

General Motors, which recently rebadged its South Korean operation by dropping the Daewoo name for the more global Chevrolet moniker, announced that its plant at Pup'yŏng (Bupyeong) will be the first in the world to make the all-new 2013 Chevy Malibu.

The goal is to expand GM's general footprint — and Chevrolet's specific presence — by pushing some of its more popular global offerings, and they think they have a winner with the Malibu:

Adding the Malibu may further bolster GM’s momentum in the Korean market. The automaker reported today that its Korean unit sold 71,608 vehicles in April, marking an 8.5-percent increase year-to-year, and a 5.9-percent increase over March. It’s unknown exactly how well the Malibu will pan out in the market, but GM points to strong digital interest — Korean fan clubs for the new model reportedly have over 30,000 members — as a predictor of things to come.

It is indeed a smart-looking car. GM also sells several Buick models, which it's marketing as upscale luxury vehicles, so we may see General Motors give Kia and Hyundai a run for their money.

Running (the country) scared

We already have news that the Pyongyang regime, like its benefactors in Beijing, is very nervous that everyday North Koreans are going to find out about the Jasmine Revolution that is irrevocably changing the face of the Middle East.

Simply put, the North Korean government does not want the P in DPRK to find out that people in Tunisia and Egypt have successfully banded together to oust leaders that have been in power for decades, or that folks in Libya have taken up arms against long-time leader Moammar Gaddafi. It's serious enough that they told North Korean workers in Libya — who are in harm's way — to stay right where they are and not to come back to North Korea and spread the information contagion.

And now we get news that, as part of that mini Great Firewall, the North Korean authorities are rounding up illegal cell phones.

From AFP:

North Korea has started a drive to confiscate mobile phones smuggled from China in an attempt to suppress news from the outside world, a group of defectors from the communist state said.

North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said in its latest newsletter police in North Hamkyong and Yangkang provinces bordering Russia and China have started urging residents to voluntarily surrender mobile phones or face punishment.

It cited sources in the border cities of Hyesan and Hoeryong.

Probably a legal phone.

The police warned that special devices to detect mobile phone use had been brought in to punish "those spreading capitalist ideas and eroding socialism", the group quoted one of the sources as saying.

North Korea strictly controls access to outside information and fixes the tuning controls of radios and televisions to official stations.

But many residents in border areas that can receive mobile reception from China are known to use smuggled phones to talk to relatives and friends who escaped the impoverished state to settle in China or South Korea.

At present users restrict conversations to five minutes, the minimum time authorities need to trace a call, said the source.

Such crackdowns are not new, by the way.

Anyhow, I wonder how true that is the police they can detect cell phones. Do they have to be on in order to detect them? I hope it's not Apple's Find My iPhone service.

As usual, whenever I talk about North Korea and mobile phone service, I must include a link to the list of North Korean emoticons.

Orange County Muslim leaders cheer bin Laden's demise

Imam Sayed Moustafa al-Qazwini, founder and director of 
the Islamic Educational Center of Orange County in Costa Mesa

Yup. So the next time you hear how the Muslims all cheered when the towers went down, remember this:

"Bin Laden was never a Muslim leader. ... The attacks on our people on Sept. 11 were the result of his twisted ideology," said Ameena Mirza Qazi, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Greater Los Angeles.

Muzammil Siddiqi, religious director of Islamic Society of Orange County said: "Islam is totally against terrorism, totally against violence," and bin Laden's death has "brought a sense of relief for all of us.

"We hope this chapter that began 10 years ago will close and a new chapter will begin," he added. "We want to live together in peace and harmony."

And of course, informed Monster Island readers know that there are fatwa against terrorism.

Lightning strike over Waikiki

I knew it would be difficult to snap a photo of a lightning strike, so I just switched to video and took a still from that.

In the background is Waikiki, which somehow has power.

It's like living in a dang third-world country sometimes

If I'd known the electricity would go out so often in Honolulu, I would have bought one of those hand-crank radios way back, right after the earthquake in September 2006, when the whole island lost electricity from morning until well into the evening.

This seems to happen a couple times each year. Geez, it's not like we live in the countryside somewhere.

Today we have been having a mild electrical storm (well, maybe not so mild: "M" and her neighbors believe they saw a tornado hovering over Waikiki... we'll have to see if any tourists are missing), but somehow the electricity has gone out all over this area. And it's getting dark. Zombies.

Okay, I should get back to my paper and my presentation, both due tomorrow. Except all the materials for those are both on my desktop, which doesn't work without juice. So on my laptop, with fifteen minutes of battery left, I can connect to the Internet, which mysteriously works. So does the landline. If this keeps up, if I want to finish my paper I may have to literally phone it in.

Sigh.

UPDATE:
The Honolulu Star-Advertiser has finally gotten around to explaining what's going on. And what "M" saw was a water spout, a funnel cloud over water. Cool. Hope no one got hurt.

Osama bin Laden snuff anime

It's not news unless two Taiwanese chicks make animation out of it.

My favorite part is Obama, Clinton, and Bush43 getting all chummy.

Osama bin Laden is dead! Alhamdulillah!

The president's critics have examined the background
in this jpeg file and determined it is fake.

Always a whore for media attention, President Obama interrupted whatever was playing on prime time to announce that Osama (no relation) is dead and can't hurt us anymore. Before that, though, Obama called both former presidents Bush43 and Clinton to gloat.

It was either this or Evil Bert.

This is a man who deserved to die, of course, but his death during his capture — which precludes the need for a trial and then, presumably, punishment — means I won't have to write up an editorial on why Osama bin Laden should be spared capital punishment.

Anyway, I just have one question for Mr Barack Hussein Obama: If you're so much smarter than your predecessor, why did it take you over two years to hunt down OBL? Huh? (I'm guessing, though, that BHO's own Pakistani/Muslim connections were instrumental in bringing down Osama; I guess there's something to be said for having a closet of Muslin in the White House.)

Anyway, I'm fairly confident this is what Osama bin Laden is going through right now.

In all seriousness, though, I'm glad President Obama got this message through:

"We must also reaffirm that the United States is not, and never will be, at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam," Obama said. "Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims."

It was no easy thing for Bush43 to make clear that Islam is not America's enemy, and he deserves credit for that. I wish he hadn't referred to the War on Terror as a "crusade." [face palm]

Anyway, if you'd like to learn more about how Islam views terror, see this post.

Trump get TKO'ed by BHO

Who knew Obama was also Comedian-in-Chief?

At the annual White House Correspondents Dinner, he tossed some jibs and jabs at other political figures, His remarks included some rather pointed hits at Donald "Duckweed" Trump, who was in the audience (see video).



Of course, this was all going on as gas prices creep toward the dreaded $25/gallon mark, everyone in the Middle East from Morocco to Karachi is rising up, and the NFL players are still being locked out. While I would say it's good for political discourse for opponents to sit down and just be normal people with each other, I suppose critics would say Emperor Neo shouldn't be fiddling with punchlines while the homeland burns.

I'll tell you one thing: The Donald doesn't seem to have the capacity to laugh at himself. He looked like he was downright stewing.

What if they threw a May Day parade and no one came?

That's pretty much what happened in Los Angeles:

By 10 a.m. only a few hundred immigrant rights and labor activists had gathered at Broadway and Olympic Boulevard in downtown Los Angeles to rally public support for legislation that would legalize the nation's 11 million illegal immigrants.

"It's really sad," Luis Ortiz, an ice cream vendor who has been coming to the rallies for the last 15 years, said of the small turnout. "I've sold very little, almost nothing."

I wonder if the right-wing media outlets will still run stories complaining that among the few that showed up people were "carrying flags of every nation except the USA." (Or maybe they'll complain that because the May Day rallies were so small, shoplifting didn't go down as much as with previous May Day rallies.)

[East {Sea] of Japan}

The Korea Times is reporting that Seoul will propose that that body of water between the Korean Peninsula and the Japanese Archipelago be officially called both East Sea and the Sea of Japan.

And although the Korea Herald is reporting that some people in South Korea aren't happy about that — it's the East Sea and the East Sea only! — I think it is a fine solution.

In fact, it fits in perfectly with the International Hydrographic Organization's policies on the matter (see also here):

When two or more countries share a geographical feature, its designation is generally standardized through consultations among the countries concerned. If the effort to standardize it fails, however, the names used by each of the countries are used concurrently. This general rule of international cartography is also confirmed in the International Hydrographic Organization Technical Resolution A4.2.6. adopted in 1974 and the United Nations Resolution in the Standardization of Geographical Names Ⅲ/20 adopted in 1977.

There are many in the K-blogopshere who say that Korea is wrong on this issue (not true, since the IHO supports the Korean position) or that Korea is foolish to make a big deal out of this (debatable, since pushing the name allows it to gain currency and acceptance but sometimes comes across as annoying and petty).

...

Everything sunny all the time always

If you're like me, you never miss NBC's Thursday night line-up on Hulu. You are also lactose intolerant, a hopeless procrastinator, and you think pop music has mostly gone downhill since the 1990s.

Owing to a busy schedule, this being the final lap of the semester, I haven't yet made it through all of this week's Thursday offerings, but I did manage to catch this season's penultimate episode of 30 Rock, which featured Margaret Cho playing Kim Jong-il.

I shan't go into any details which might spoil the episode for you, but I will tell you I'm tickled pink that Tina Fey and crew decided to go co-opt a running gag here at Monster Island and make it part of the show.

I am, of course, referring to this and this:

above: Jury's out on this one. Could be a double, but could also be Kim Jong-il in his Margaret Cho phase. (Seriously, this guy looks like the guy two photos up, so they could be the same double.)

And especially this:

At any rate, I think the picture below supports a running theory I've had for a while ...

... that Kim Jong-il is actually a character created and performed by Margaret Cho. 

The 30 Rock episode didn't quite go in this direction, but still, I wonder if I really might have inspired NBC or Margaret Cho herself to have the All-American Girl ham it up as the Dear Leader. Or was this connection just obvious to everyone?

Miki Ando defeats Kim Yuna (UPDATED)

Japan's darling of skating Miki Ando, showing her disdain for all the South Koreans who donated tens of millions of dollars to help the victims of the Tohoku earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, defeated the reigning ice queen Kim Yuna at the Figure Skating World Championship in Moscow.

"I was skating for Japan," Ms Ando said. And we all know exactly what that means.

Miki Ando throws up a little in her mouth when asked
by a reporter what she thinks of Korea.

Seriously, though, mucho congratulations to Ms Ando, who is an incredible skater. The friendly rivalry between Kim Yuna and the top Japanese skaters (to include Mao Asada) makes it all the more interesting to watch (and yeah, it is interesting). I'll go on record as saying it's a little less fun if Kim Yuna wins every time.

Moreover, this kind of thing might be enough to lift the spirits of a lot of people in Japan. The Tohoku tragedy was a nightmare in the middle of a malaise, something that is palpable when talking to young and old from Japan, and I so want for Japanese to rise up and see a bright future on the horizon.

UPDATE:
Kim Yuna has announced through her agent that she will donate the $27,000 prize money from her silver medal finish to UNICEF's relief efforts in Japan. Class act all the way.