text:
Fukushima, for me, still brings associations of calm and tranquillity, and red leaves. We holidayed up there in Autumn 2008, staying in what the Japanese call a pension, a wee B&B in the country. The red leaf viewing season was just starting up. It was extremely still, ordered, and quiet.
All sorts of images and stories cluster together in my mind when I think of Christchurch's last earthquake. Most are to do with people I know and love, or with areas where particular memories have attached themselves. Others are more general , like those faces attached to media reports and newspaper headers.
Some of those stories now get re-processed into a new narrative and a ghastly sort of retrospection.
A week after Christchurch's last earthquake this comment appeared on 2-channeru, the unmoderated sewer of the Japanese internet.
Under the discussion "Earthquake-hit New Zealand rejects Korean rescue team due to a concern with foot and mouth disease" on e of 2-chan 's users wrote
Koreans will behave disgustingly to get praise, which only lead to their bad reputation. If accepted help from Korean, NZ will forever demanded to thank Korea. New Zealand knew this and that's why they rejected Korean team.
Korean monkeys have vanity, but not sincerity, modesty, respect towards others.
Even though half of Korean population are Christians, their Christianity has produced evil Christians who are totally different from Christianity.
There are no other shameful people like this.
The discussion continued for some time
If you can love a city, I love Tokyo.
It took me a while to work out why William Gibson had put that on his twitter feed and then, as the flow of comments, panicked questions and re-tweets of civil defence instructions built up to a rush, it all became frighteningly clear.
Loving Tokyo has always, in more of less macabre ways, involved feigning indifference or excitement about natural disasters and the dangers of living on earthquake-prone, unstable islands. Inhabitants of Edo used to boast of their city's devastating fires, and Edward Seidensticker's Low City, High City reports, with quite some high conservative-aesthete pride, that, after one of early Tokyo's many massive fires, Ginza stores re-opened with parts of their property still burning.
Isn't some of the attraction of Neo-Tokyo, from Akira to today, in this sense that we – those who know how to love Japan – are already in that future, already living in a post-apocalyptic landscape? It takes real devastation, and the hurt of real loss' humdrum details and complications, to dislodge that self-indulgence.
Junichro Tanizaki, initially at least, exhulted in the Great Kanto Earthquake:
When the earthquake struck I knew that I had survived, and I feared for my wife and daughter, left behind in Yokohama. Almost simultaneously I felt a surge of happiness which I could not keep down. "Tokyo will be better for this!" I said to myself […] Tokyo too would be rebuilt in ten years, into a solid expanse of splendid buildings like the Marunouchi Building and the Marine Insurance Building. I imagined the grandeur of the new metropolis, and all the changes that would come in customs and manners as well. An orderly pattern of streets, their bright new pavements gleaming. A flood of automobiles.
Retrospection, again: we've all now, after this weekend, seen a flood of automobiles.
150 000 people died in Kanto Dai-shinsai, the Great Kanto Earthquake of September 1923. Thousands died during the quake; half of Tokyo was destroyed, and Yokohama was almost completely ruined. After Kanto Dai-shinsai, around 1.5 million people – over half Tokyo's population – were left homeless. Many more people died in the fires which followed the earthquake:
It was not long before the place turned into a veritable sea of fire, and one of the most horrible and shocking events ever recorded in the annals of human tragedy followed; hell was indeed let loose on earth.
That's the official government narrative, from the Home Office 1923 publication The Great Earthquake.
A different kind of hell was let loose after this. Rumours spread that Korean day-labourers and migrants had started the fires, and were poisoning water supplies. Gangs of thugs carried out pogroms in Korean areas, beating and killing perhaps as many as several thousand.
Eventually, to avoid international attention, the army was used to restore order. But the massacre served a valuable role for the Japanese state and, amidst the chaos, the secret police took the opportunity to abduct and murder scores of communists, trade unionists and Korean activists.
Shintaro Ishihara's name for Koreans today? Sangokujin, outsiders who, as he stated in 1999, might be a danger in the case of natural emergencies. This is the man who runs Tokyo.
On the Establishment of Righteousness and the Safety of the Country
Earthquakes and tsunami in 1257 came close to destroying Kamakura. Plague, famine and riots followed. Kamakura's Buddha is a major tourist attraction now; it's also all that stands from the historic city after the earthquakes of 1257, 1369 and 1494.
It was out of the upheaval around the 1257 quake Nichiren's Lotus Sect of Buddhism developed and, after its initial period of persecution, shaped Japanese culture and society.
Government bungling, bureaucratic ineptitude and shonky practice led the novelist Oda Makoto, after the Great Hanshin Earthquake, to ask "Is this a human country?" Ten years on, critic Uchihashi Katsuto echoed this question.
Japan is an enormously wealthy country, and yet official responses to the Great Hanshin Earthquake were unable to deliver simple necessities like shelter, food, and emergency supplies. Survivors stayed, trapped, while rescue workers were kept waiting.
All this occurred in a city dotted with unsafe buildings and structures made in a social world characterised by yakuza influence, corruption and profiteering. The sins of the building industry stand as a symbol of the underside of the 'boom' imagery of the Showa era.
1995 was, of course, the same year that Aum released Sarin gas in the Tokyo Subway system. It's unsurprising, then, that imaginations in the early years of the Heisei era turned towards the apocalyptic.
Another image from the Great Hanshin Earthquake. Speaking to the Kobe Shimbun in November 1995, a 59-year-old Korean man linked surviving the earthquake to developments in an anti-racist consciousness:
Since the tragedy and disaster was a common, shared experience, we have come to enjoy mutual safety and conversation when we meet on the street. Those people who used to adopt a certain attitude have stopped assuming it.
The newspaper itself took the opportunity to editorialise for foreigners' voting rights, by no means an easy political position to assume:
Without mixing with people from other cultures and experiencing their cultures, we cannot find uniqueness and strength in cities like Kobe and Osaka […] the uniqueness of this international consciousness is a significant factor necessary to rebuild the areas. We can even go so far as to say that without the cooperation of foreign residents, it would be impossible to rebuild Kobe and Osaka. In order to reconstruct our cities, we need to build a new society of coexistence and choose a path of reconstruction together with our foreign residents.
H. Porter Abbott, in his Introduction to Narrative, uses the term "narrative jamming" to describe "this experience of indeterminacy, of wanting to know and not being able to know…itself a kind of pain." Those experiences which most steadily resist narrativizing – I mean here of course death above all – are the ones on which we bring the most insistent narrativizing impulses to bear.
Perhaps this is why most reports on disasters, when they strain towards profundity, are so often empty, so often pompously bare. It is, certainly, why I've offered you these fragments of earthquake anecdotes, and feel the need to write something on earthquakes while, at the same time, realising there's nothing of value I can add now.
It's also why, I think, what moved me most in the weeks following the disaster in Christchurch were reports on everyday experience more than poems or services or silences produced to mark our distress. The day the quake struck I was following a discussion at Giovanni's blog on twitter and speed and communication; what followed matched the post as a sort of horrible hidden polemic, as each of us re-posted requests for confirmations of loved ones. In later weeks, I've been moved by friends' accounts of makeshift toilet arrangements, dog anxieties, silt build-up.
An anxious night on Friday, then, as the phone lines jammed and Skype gave out and not everyone was on Facebook or Twitter or email. All our immediate friends and family are safe and accounted for, and I'm very grateful for that. There are comrades from groups we worked with when we lived in Tokyo – in the unions, in the socialist press – still missing, though, and I think of them and their families. We all worry about what's next, about the reactor, about Fukushima and beyond.
As places for donations and workers' aid become available, I'll post their details here.
If you can love a city, I love Tokyo.
The Rev. Jan Cheong-Woon from the Asia Pacific Workers' Solidarity Corea sent a message to his Japanese colleagues over the weekend. It ended with an old slogan, and a good one for these days:
We have had a terrible reminder of the destructive power of nature.
Long live international solidarity
I've taken the Tanizaki quote from Seidensticker's Low City, High City. The official statement on the Great Kanto Earthquake is from de Boer and Sanders, Earthquakes in Human History (Princeton University Press, 2005). The Kobe Shimbun quotes are from Yasuko Takezawa, "The Great Hanshin Earthquake and Town-Making Towards Multiculturalism" in Graburn, Ertl and Tierney (eds.), Multiculturalism in the New Japan (Berghahn, 2008).
The 2-chan quotes are taken from Rumi Sakamoto's very helpful "Koreans, Go Home! Internet Nationalism in Contemporary Japan as a Digitally Mediated Subculture", published at Japan Focus. I'm not linking to 2-channeru itself for obvious reasons of political hygiene.
Monday, 14 March 2011
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)


text:
If you will tell a child that others are bad
If their religion is different
That they will rot in Hell
'Do not say prayers if they die'
'Their prayers will not reach heaven'
That money will buy anything
Work for money without love
'You can only marry from a creed or a race'
Since you are will not tell the truth
You lie that others are dirty and barbaric
This is what you do
This is what you wanna do
This is what you wanna say
To the child yet to be in you
So, please do not have sex and if you do
Use protection if you must
Per chance it breaks
Desmond Tutu will adopt the child from you
If your woman does everything
You will not have anyone to watch this
Best believe me!
That boys do not cry in public
Only girls should have fresh pubic
That all unbelievers must die
The elementary classes on hate
That dreams are for fools
You don't teach or a kind word or two
You cannot give emotional security
No one is forcing you
The world is already messed up without you
Parading prisons of xenophobia and other forms of hate
To those around you - It's okay
But PLEASE do not have sex and if you do
Some contraception will work
Just in case it breaks
Wole Soyinka will adopt the child from you
Kafayat Quadri is a poet, singer/song-writer and guitarist who has been published in both local and international magazines/anthologies and co-edits the Poetry Digest Magazine with Jumoke Verrisimo in Nigeria.
As a musician and singer/songwriter, she has performed on the same stage with the likes of Jimmy Dludlu, Beautiful Nubia, Timi Dakolo, Justin Kingland, Cassandra Chong, Shaneil Devaser, TILU Band, Cats in Love Band, Ksatriya, Aduke, Bez, Ben Bamidele, Akin Cole, Bem Sar, etc. In 2009, she performed at the Renowned Muson Jazz Festival. Her song was also featured as the Open Act for the Wole Oguntokun's Theater at Terra, Victoria Island for 11 months. In the same year, she performed at the Farafina Book Reading For Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie; 9 Writers and 4 Cities Project amongst many other book events and literary festivals in the Nigeria and now more recently has featured in similar events in Malaysia, Sri Lanka and South Africa.
She has just recently released (April 2014) an EP of four songs with recording houses in both Malaysia and Nigeria. The album is titled 'KQ (the EP), with songs produced by Aman Junaid, Poetrydigestion House and Dare David.
Kafayat Quadri is also a Lawyer. She obtained her law degree from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, in 2007 and she's currently studying International Criminal Law in Kuala Lumpur for her PhD. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Mockingbird Company, the publishers of the PoetryDigest Magazine, the first poetry magazine in Nigeria and the proprietors of the Poetrydigestion™ Clothe line.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
As part of The Juilliard Nord Anglia Education Performing Arts Program, BIS Abu Dhabi are thrilled to be welcoming Ms. Salla Saarikangas, Juilliard Dance Specialist, to the school on 17th and 18th October.
Choreographer, restager and dance educator, Salla hails from Helsinki, Finland. She was trained at Balettakademien, Stockholm, received her BA from SUNY Empire State College, and her MA in Dance Research and Reconstruction from the City College of the City University of New York.
She is also a Certified Movement Analyst (CMA) and certified to teach Labanotation. Her reconstructions include works by Doris Humphrey, Helen Tamiris, Ruth St. Denis and Maggie Gripenberg.
Salla will spend the two days working with our Dance teachers, engaging with students, observing and leading lessons, and meeting with key members of staff to share expertise and provide feedback.


text:
The world of Sensation play is so vast that no matter what your preferences in the bedroom may be, there will be something for you to enjoy.
It is widely known that pleasure can be mixed with pain to create enhanced stimulations and feelings, however that is not the only way that sensation play can be experienced.
In fact in some ways a more delicate touch can be all it takes to awaken those hidden nerve endings and send sumptuous shivers across your skin.
If you are looking to experience these delicate and soothing touches we recommend a range of toys that can be used to achieve this.
Though threatening at first glance, the Wartenberg Five Head Pinwheel has a tingling touch when slowly rolled over the skin and without placing any pressure on the pinwheel the metal spikes will create a tantalising prickly sensation that will wake up your skin and enhance your responses to every touch.
For a gentler approach, our Peacock Feather is a full and proud accessory for any truly teasing collection. The fluffy and soft feathers will lightly stroke the skin to create a sublime breath of pleasure that is sure to have your eyes rolling and pleasure sparking.
Our Beaded Riding Crop has the power to leave a lasting sting, but when applied with careful lightness, this metal accessory becomes a soothing tool with which you can render your partner speechless with satisfaction.
Taking more inspiration from our range of spankers, this simple Suede Flogger is a light and soft spanker that can be used to create light caresses over the skin. Gently run the tails slowly down your partner's body or administer light and gentle lashes for a smattering of touches, either way this flogger is small but deadly.


text:
About us
ZappoGame.com - The best Coin Toss game around!™ We are the official importer, manufacturer, distributor, and retailer of the famous Juego de Sapo in the USA. Our goal is to introduce this fun and traditional game in every American home, bar, restaurant and special event. ZappoGame.com produced Sapo game board sets with top quality tornillo wood, hand made by Peruvian artisans. Natively a game stemming from Incan myths in the highlands of Perú, we are sure, you will love playing the "Sapo Game" with your family and friend for many hours and will be surprised if you stop tossing the coins around trying to achieve the ultimate goal of what only a few can. ZappoGame.com also offers this great game addition for different types of business, social activities and events.


text:
Change Currency
Fine trappings with a classical look design to protect your writing instruments. Crafted specially for master leather workers. Made of finest material to suit your needs. Each piece with its own unique grain and wrinkle pattern. This Pelikan pencase fits in 1 pen, suitable for all size of pens.
Type: Single pen case
Dimension: 13cm x 2.7cm x 2cm
This product hasn't received any reviews yet. Be the first to review this product!


text:
It's being reported in the press that, post-Brexit, 10,000 Britons have expressed an interest in migrating to New Zealand. There are those who point out that the country is already experiencing a record migration boom. Economic reports seem to suggest that high immigration numbers are suppressing wages and putting strain on an already overheated property market, especially in Auckland.
As Liam Dann points out in his recent article
"At some point the effects of immigration do have a real impact on a country.
Many of these things are very positive but side-effects have to be considered."
Getting the mix right is vital – for continued economic growth, for meeting the needs of Auckland's burgeoning construction program and for on-going harmonious community relationships.
However, Auckland is not New Zealand. Not all of it.
There are incentives for highly skilled migrants and business migrants who work outside of the Auckland super city in the form of additional points. This is good news for regional New Zealand and great news for job-seeking migrants.
It makes sense to obtain a detailed assessment of your qualifications, skills, experience and options available to you so that you are fully aware of the most advantageous choices. As part of your migration plan, it will help save you time and money in the long run. The kind of detailed assessment and points analysis that Lawlor & Associates provide will enable you to make the best possible decisions for your individual circumstances.
To us, you are not 1 in among 10,000. You are the 1 in 10,000 who is going to have a positive impact on this country.
Absolutely New Zealand wants you!


text:
Blackett Hart & Pratt LLP is a limited liability partnership. Registered in England and Wales. Registration no. OC319059. Registered office: Westgate House, Faverdale, Darlington, DL3 0PZ. Telephone: 01325 466794. E-mail: firstname.lastname@example.com Law Society No. 4427870 VAT Registration No. GB 880781102.
Blackett Hart & Pratt LLP is regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The website for the Solicitors Regulation Authority can be found at www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/code-of-conduct.page.
Any reference to a partner of Blackett Hart & Pratt LLP means a member of Blackett Hart & Pratt LLP or an employee or consultant of Blackett Hart & Pratt LLP with equivalent standing and qualifications
This website is operated by Blackett Hart & Pratt LLP (BHP)Solicitors. The following are trading names or divisions of BHP:
BHP Law;
Blackett Hart & Pratt Solicitors;
BHP for Business;
BHP for You;
For further information please read our Regulatory & Legal Matters


text:
Efficiency retrofit projects are annuities – investments that are made today will pay off over time in the form of lower operating expenses. To reduce your upfront costs, get project incentives and explore financing options.
Incentives for Efficient Buildings Boost project returns with rebates, tax credits, and other incentives
In the United States, there is over $5 billion dollars worth of incentives available from governments, utilities, and non-profits.
Get incentives today...before they're gone.
Incentives Resources
Retrofit Project Financing Reduce upfront expenses with financing solutions
From traditional lending and leasing to emerging financing vehicles, there are more options than ever to fund your retrofit projects.
Know your options for project finance.


text:
Earthquakes prompt Ohio fracking ban
Share Now on:
Kai Ryssdal: The strange sounds the good residents of Youngstown, Ohio, heard Christmas Eve turned out not to have been Santa on the roof. They were earthquakes. Same thing happened New Year's Eve as well — in places close to a controversial type of natural gas drilling that's come to be known as fracking.
Earthquakes are yet another hazard associated with fracking that's led to yet louder calls for bans, which the state of Ohio partially did today. As part of his duties at the Sustainability Desk, Marketplace's Scott Tong has been out and about at some fracking wells. He's got our report.
Scott Tong: Ohio shut down five wells, where wastewater from natural gas drilling was being injected underground.
Did the pressure cause the quakes? Seismologist Leonardo Seeber at Columbia University.
Leonardo Seeber: When you find a quake that's at that distance in time and space with injection of fluid underground, it's clear that there's a relationship. It's not by chance.
Ohio's oil and gas association calls it a "rare and isolated event."
Maybe. But tell that to activists trying to ban fracking. Now they have another cloud to paint over the sector. There's quakes, and maybe dirty drinking water, and maybe gas in my faucet.
Amy Mall is with the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Amy Mall: We do support keeping the most sensitive places, whether it's the most sensitive for human health, for wildlife, for drinking water sources, we do think those areas need to be kept off limits.
Right now New York bans fracking, as does France. Could that happen here?
Most independent observers agree with Rob Jackson. He teaches environmental science at Duke.
Rob Jackson: I don't think in the United States that's likely at all. I don't think the political situation is the same. France also has completely different landowner rights, mineral rights. So that people don't own the mineral rights the same way that people here do.
Investors seem to agree. Just yesterday, French producer Total injected $2 billion into U.S. gas development, as did a Chinese firm — getting the attention of Jack Plunkett, who does energy market research in Houston.
Jack Plunkett: You know the purchases we're seeing are immense. They're in the multi-billion-dollar range many times. And they're paid for with cash. So that implies a really big buyer when that happens.
Big Oil sees global demand for gas, that it's abundant and cheap — and only half as carbon-sinful as coal. By one estimate, global use of gas will leap 50 percent by 2035.
In Washington, I'm Scott Tong for Marketplace.


text:
You must be signed in to access the AAH Member's Area.
Please sign in using the box in the top right of this page.
If you are an AAH Member and this is the first time you have accessed the Member's Area, you will need to register first.
Click here to register now
You can now join AAH online and become a member within minutes.
Click here to become a member


text:
To protect fuel system and engine components, petroleum products such as gasoline, diesel, jet fuel and LPG are required to be non-corrosive towards copper. Copper is especially susceptible to attack by sulfur compounds such as H2S and elemental sulfur. When finished products fail copper corrosion specifications, copper corrosion inhibitors can quickly remediate failing batches. Nalco Champion additives passivate the copper surface and protect the metal from corrosive species.
Nalco Saudi Company Limited
First Industrial City, Dammam – 11th Street
P.O. Box 7372
Dammam, Saudi Arabia 31462
Customer Service
Tel: (+) 966 13 824 9100 | Email: firstname.lastname@example.com
We found no results!