PPI - SA thanked their staff for its excellent work at an awards ceremony this November. Here, PPI-SA Ops Manager Ryan Douwie (left) and PPI Fellow Tim Roche (right), receive awards from PPI - SA's Managing Director, Sbo Vilakazi (center).

With the upcoming (in the U.S. at least) Thanksgiving holiday on my mind, I took a moment to think back about all PPI – SA has to be thankful for this year.  Without the support of our generous donors, PPI – SA would not be able to construct basketball courts, teach life skills, or run our Primary School Program (PSP) and Leadership Development Program (LDP).  We would like to thank the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation, Engen, Sasol, Spring Lights Gas, 3M, Mercedes Benz, the RedCap Foundation, and the many individuals who contribute to the program.

To make the daily operations of the PSP and LDP programs run effectively, PPI – SA would like to thank the schools, principals, and superintendants of all its partners.  The schools and their employees not only help PPI – SA from an administrative stand point, but also act as second coaches and help organize tournaments, clinics, and inter-area games.

Equally important in the operations of the PSP and LDP are PPI – SA’s coaches.  Despite not having the funds to pay coaches for the past semester, many chose to continue working with the schools and their kids because they love PPI – SA’s program and mission.  Without our coaches, PPI – SA would not be sustainable.

Among the many things PPI - SA has to be thankful for is its new offices, remodeled pro bono by the Durban University of Technology's Interior Design Programme.

I would like to thank the PPI – SA Program Managers, Area Managers, and the Life Skills team for their tireless work this past year and for making me immediately feel like part of the team.  The PPI – SA office staff works double duties handling administrative tasks and basketball operations.  Area Managers set the tone for PPI in each community, maintaining relationships with community leaders and the image and brand that PPI – SA has created over the years.  I would like to single out two PPI-SA staff members, S’bo Vilakazi and Ryan Douwie, our Managing Director and Operations Manager, respectively, because they are generally the ones giving thanks and not nearly thanked enough for their work.  Both have been, and will be, instrumental in keeping PPI – SA sustainable with local leaders.

Finally, all of PPI – SA would like to thank the staff in Washington, DC.  We are aware of your hard work raising funds for our program, your awareness for the individuality of our program, and your continuously help finding new partners and programs to expand our reach.  We all are looking forward to another successful year in 2010!

The question of U.S/Japan relations becomes an interesting consideration for U.S war designs and power projection in Asia. Will the new Japanese regime reverse it trend towards a U.S “client state” or will this inequitable relationship which forces Japanese to finance U.S operations continue?

Gavan McCormack: Obama vs Hatoyama: The making of an unequal, unconstitutional, illegal, colonial and deceitful US-Japan agreement.

Elections at the end of August gave Japan a new government, headed by Hatoyama Yukio. In electing him and his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the Japanese people, like the American people less than a year earlier, were opting for change – a new relationship with both Asia and the US, including a much more equal one with the latter. Remarkably, however, what followed on the part of the Obama administration has been a campaign of unrelenting pressure to block any such change.

The Obama administration has targeted in particular the Hatoyama desire to re-negotiate the relationship with the United States so as to make it equal instead of dependent. Go back, it seems to be saying, to the golden days of “Sergeant-Major Koizumi” (as George W. Bush reportedly referred to the Japanese Prime Minister) when compliance was assured and annual US policy prescriptions (“yobosho”) were received in Tokyo as holy writ; forget absurd pretensions of independent policies.

The core issue has been the disposition of American military presence in Okinawa and the US insistence that Hatoyama honour an agreement known as the Guam Treaty.

The Guam Treaty

The “Guam International Agreement” is the US-Japan agreement signed by Secretary Hillary Clinton and Japanese Foreign Minister Nakasone Hirofumi in February and adopted as a treaty under special legislation in May 2009, in the first days of the Obama administration. Support for the Aso government in Japan was collapsing and the incoming Obama administration moved urgently to extract formal consent to its plans in such a way as to ensure that any such agreement would bind any subsequent Japanese government.

8,000 Marines and their 9,000 family members were to be relocated from Okinawa to Guam, and the US marine base at Futenma would be transferred to Henoko in Nago City in Northern Okinawa, to a new base to be built by Japan. The Japanese government would also pay $6.09 billion towards the Guam transfer cost ($2.8 billion of it in cash in the current financial year). [1] The effect in Okinawa would be that the US military would vacate some of its larger bases in the densely populated south but concentrate and expand those in the north of the island.

These matters (save for the detailed financial clauses) had all been resolved by a previous agreement, nearly four years earlier under Koizumi – the October 2005 agreement on “US-Japan Alliance: Transformation and Realignment for the Future” reconfirmed by the May 2006 “United States-Japan Roadmap for realignment Implementation.” [2] Now, to compel compliance, Article 3 of the new Agreement declared that “The Government of Japan intends to complete the Futenma replacement facility as stipulated in the Roadmap [i.e. by 2014]” even though the parties had virtually given up hope that that was possible in the face of entrenched Okinawan opposition. [3]

The Agreement was one of the first acts of a popular, “reforming” US administration and one of the last of a Japanese regime in fatal decline after half a century of LDP rule. It set in unusually clear relief the relationship between the world’s No 1 and No 2 economic powers. The Agreement is worthy of close attention because, as analysed below, it was unequal, unconstitutional, illegal, colonial and deceitful

Unequal

First, it was in the classic sense of the term, an “unequal treaty.” The Government of Japan interpreted it as a binding treaty, while for the US it was merely an “executive agreement”, lacking Congressional warrant. [4] It obliged Japan to construct and pay for one new base complex for the US on Okinawa and to contribute a very substantial sum towards constructing another on Guam, while on the American side it merely offered an ambiguous pledge to withdraw a number of troops (on that ambiguity, see below). Though binding on Japan, it was not binding on the US (which even reserved to itself the right, under Article 8, to vary it at will). [5] Furthermore, it may be that the Guam Treaty is in breach of US law: as a revenue raising measure (stipulating the sum of $6 billion to be supplied by Japan), it requires Congressional authorization but has merely presidential executive authority. A treaty binding on one side only is by definition an unequal treaty.

Unconstitutional

Second, it was unconstitutional . Under Article 95 of the Constitution, “A special law, applicable only to one local public entity, cannot be enacted by the Diet without the consent of the majority of the voters of the local public body concerned, obtained in accordance with law.” The Guam treaty was plainly a special law in its effect on the single prefecture of Okinawa, yet not only was no attempt made to consult the people of Okinawa, but the Diet rode roughshod over their well-known wishes.

Furthermore, to ram the Agreement through the Diet, the Aso government utilized extraordinary constitutional powers under a procedure (Article 59) unused for more than half a century that allowed adoption of a bill rejected by the Upper House if passed a second time by a two-thirds majority in the Lower. Ramming the bill through the Diet on 13 May 2009, Aso was sidelining, in effect abolishing, the Upper House in a kind of constitutional coup d’état. [6] Much of the rest of Aso’s legislative record during his 9 months in office – ten major bills including the Terror Special Measures Law and virtually all the legislation of importance to Washington – was of dubious constitutional propriety for this same reason, though it must have been pleasing to Washington.

Illegal

Third, the Guam treaty is in breach of Japanese law. Since the Treaty took precedence over domestic law, it also had the effect of downgrading, in effect vitiating, the requirements of Japan’s environmental protection laws. Any serious and internationally credible environmental impact assessment (EIA) would surely conclude that a massive military construction project was incompatible with the delicate coral and forest environment of the Oura Bay area. But it was taken for granted that Japan’s EIA would be a mere formality and the treaty further undermined the procedure.

Further, the Diet and the Obama administration were pre-empting any order that might issue from the San Francisco court where a judge is hearing a suit against defendants including the Pentagon. The judge has already ordered the Pentagon to take conservation measures as required by the National Historic Observation Act, and to require the same of the Government of Japan, in relation to the Henoko construction project. [7]

Sakurai Kunitoshi, president of Okinawa University and a specialist on environmental assessment law, argues that since 2005 Japanese governments have been in breach of the Environmental Assessment Law in the way they have pursued the Futenma Replacement Facility. Therefore, the process must be reopened. He concludes that any serious and internationally credible EIA would conclude that the FRF cannot be built at Henoko. [8] If Sakurai is right, the Japanese government’s EIA is fatally flawed and an internationally credible, independent scientific survey has to be launched.

Colonial

Fourth, it was colonial. The US had grown increasingly irritated at the lack of progress following the 2005-6 Agreements and peremptory in spelling out what Japan had to do. In November 2007, Defense Secretary Robert Gates instructed Japan to resume its Indian Ocean naval station (then hotly debated), maintain and increase its payments for hosting US bases, increase its defense budget, and pass a permanent law to authorize overseas dispatch of the SDF whenever the need arose. It was essentially the position of the Armitage-Nye report on the US-Japan Alliance through 2020 published earlier that year. [9] Armitage, Gates and other US officials generally added the pious sentiment that everything was up to the sovereign government of Japan. Occasionally, however, they spelled out the consequences of non-compliance, as when Secretary Gates bluntly told Japan that it could not hope to receive US support in its bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council unless it pursued the prescribed agenda. [10]

Richard Lawless, who as Deputy Defense Secretary had headed the negotiations that culminated in the Roadmap, told the Asahi in May 2008 that the alliance was drifting.

“What we really need is a top-down leadership that says, ‘Let’s rededicate ourselves to completing all of these agreements on time; let’s make sure that the budgeting of the money is a national priority’… Japan has to find a way to change its own tempo of decision-making, deployment, integration and operationalizing [sic] this alliance.” [11]

He castigated Japan for “self-marginalization” and for “allowing the alliance to degenerate towards sub-prime because of its withdrawal syndrome.”[12] Under that pressure, Prime Minster Aso appears to have buckled, clinging to power through 2008 and early 2009 at least in part to try to do Washington one last favour by adopting the “top-down” steps it was demanding for “operationalizing” the alliance. That had to be done while the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) still enjoyed the Koizumi majority in the Lower House precisely because support for Aso had sunk below 20 per cent with virtually no prospect of recovery.

In keeping with its colonial character, the Obama administration was firing a shot across the bow of the then opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), assuming without question the prerogative of intervention in the Japanese political process. By pressing the Guam treaty on Japan, sending Hillary Clinton to Tokyo as enforcer in its opening weeks, the Obama administration was maintaining the defining features of Bush diplomacy: paternalistic, interventionist, anti-democratic, intolerant of any Japanese search for an independent, regional or UN-centred foreign policy. Secretary Clinton spoke with satisfaction of the deal: “I think that a responsible nation follows the agreements that have been entered into, and the agreement that I signed today with Foreign Minister Nakasone is one between our two nations, regardless of who’s in power.” [13] What she meant was this: You in the DPJ had better learn which side your bread is buttered on.

Characteristic of colonial policy, the “natives” were to be guided but not consulted, so the thinking of the people of Okinawa was always irrelevant in the deliberations that culminated in the Guam Treaty.

Deceitful

Fifth, the treaty was characterized by what in Japanese is known as “gomakashi” – trickery and deceit dressed in the rhetoric of principle and mutuality. There is no precedent for a sovereign country paying to construct a military base in another country. Thus the Government of Japan had to minimize debate and rely on lies.

Although reported as a US concession to Japan, a “withdrawal” designed “to reduce the burden of post-World War II American military presence in Okinawa,” [14] it was actually something quite different: a design to increase the Japanese contribution to the alliance by having it pay an exorbitant sum towards construction of US military facilities on Guam, in US territory, and by having it substitute a new, high-tech, and greatly expanded base at Henoko for the inconvenient, dangerous, and obsolescent Futenma.

The Agreement was riddled with deception. It stipulated withdrawal of “8,000 Marines from Okinawa to Guam” and the Japanese government insisted this was the key to reducing the burden of the bases on Okinawa, yet interpellations in the Diet early in 2009 revealed that there were only 12,461 Marines actually stationed in Okinawa, and since the Government of Japan insisted that 10,000 was the necessary deterrent force, it meant that fewer than 3,000 would actualy be withdrawn. [15] And only in a San Francisco courtroom hearing a suit on behalf of the endangered dugong was it revealed that the so-called “Futennma replacement” included a 214 meter long wharf. The Government of Japan had not thought to mention that the Futenma facilities were to be expanded by addition of a deep-water Oura Bay port capable of hosting nuclear submarines.

One of the last acts of the Aso government was to hand over 34 billion yen, $363 million, as its fiscal year 2010 contribution towards the Guam construction costs, although the US had yet to produce any detailed cost estimates, let alone to appropriate its proportion of the funds. Months later, Congress slashed by 70 per cent the appropriation sought by the Pentagon for the same year, from $300 million to $89 million, about one-quarter of the Japanese contribution. [16] So dire are the US financial straits that it is far from certain that Congress will authorize any more. The Guam Agreement committed the US side to use the moneys only in the stipulated ways, but Japan had no right to supervise the expenditure. Once the Pentagon pocketed the money it seems highly unlikely Japan will ever see it returned, whether the base works proceed or not. Furthermore, the housing for the Guam Marines was calculated at 70 million yen per unit (enough to construct the most extravagant mansions, three-quarters of a million dollars each. Put differently, this was about 14 times the going rate for housing construction in Guam.

One Japanese member of the Diet protested, what happens if, indeed, the US Congress decides not to fund the Guam plan? Would Japan get its money back? [17]

Obama and the DPJ

While working to tie Japan’s present and future governments by the Guam Agreement, the US knew full well that the then opposition DPJ’s position was clear: no new base should be built within Okinawa and Futenma should be returned tout court. [18] US pressure rose steadily through the months leading to the party’s electoral triumph in August 2009 and from then to this day.

When DPJ leader Ozawa began to adumbrate a shift in Japanese foreign and defense policy from a Washington centre to a UN-centre, ending its deployment of the Maritime Self-Defense Forces to the Indian Ocean in service to the US-led war effort in Iraq (then hotly debated), Ambassador J. Thomas Schieffer, who till then had refused to meet him, suddenly demanded a meeting, and prominent US scholar bureaucrats joined in issuing thinly veiled threats about the “damage” that Ozawa was causing to the alliance. [19] During Hillary Clinton’s February visit to Japan, Ozawa Ichiro spent a perfunctory 30 minutes with her, while he found three times as much time a week later to meet and discuss the future of the region with the Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Section. He also made clear his dissent from the new president’s resolve to expand and intensify the Afghanistan War, and then went further, raising the possibility of reducing the US presence in Japan to the (Yokosuka-based) US 7th fleet. His message was clear. If the 7th Fleet was indeed sufficient to all necessary purposes for the defense of Japan, then the bases – all thirteen of them with their 47,000 officers and military personnel – were unnecessary. Immediately after stating these controversial views, Ozawa was caught up in a corruption scandal involving staff misuse of funds, late in May resigning as party chief and being replaced by Hatoyama Yukio. Though it must have given Washington satisfaction to see Ozawa shunted from party leadership, he remains the party’s undisputed grey eminence. The DPJ issue was not so easily settled.

The Futenma replacement issue gradually became the centrepiece in the confrontation between the Obama and Hatoyama governments. Obama’s “Japan team” simply inherited the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld agenda and applied steadily heightening pressure on Japan to “honour” its Guam Treaty commitment. So much for those in Okinawa who hoped that Obama’s administration might actually mean “change”.

With the exception of the new US Ambassador to Japan, John V. Roos, Obama retained the same personnel who had played formative roles in the negotiation of the agreements since 2005: Kurt Campbell, who had been responsible for the Futenma negotiations under Bush became Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State for East Asia, Wallace Gregson, marine commander in Okinawa under Bush became head of the Department of Defense’s Asia-Pacific section, and Kevin Maher, Consul-General in Okinawa under Bush became director of the State Department’s Office of Japan affairs. [20] The policy settings of the Nye-Armitage vision were adopted, apparently without question. Joseph Nye, principal architect of post-Cold War US Japan policy, issued two unmistakable warnings to the DPJ. In a Tokyo conference in December 2008, he spelled out the three acts that Congress would be inclined to see as “anti-American”: cancelation of the Maritime Self-Defense Agency’s Indian Ocean mission, and any attempt to revise the Status of Forces Agreement or the agreements on relocating US Forces in Japan. [21] He repeated the same basic message when the Democratic Party’s Maehara Seiji visited Washington in the early days of the Obama administration to convey his party’s wishes to renegotiate these agreements, again warning that to do so would be seen as “anti-American.” [22]

As the year wore on and as the new agenda in Tokyo became apparent before and after the August election, the confrontation deepened. Warnings became more forceful. Kurt Campbell told the Asahi there could be no change in the Futenma replacement agreement. [23] Michael Green, formerly George W. Bush’s top adviser on East Asia, though moved under Obama to the private sector at the Centre for International and Strategic Studies, warned that “it would indeed provoke a crisis with the US” if the Democratic Party were to push ahead to try to re-negotiate the military agreements around the Okinawa issue.” [24] Gregson, for the Pentagon, added that the US had “no plans to revise the existing agreements. [25] Ian Kelly, for the State Department, stated that there was no intention on its part to allow revision. [26] Kevin Maher (also at State) added a day later that there could be no reopening of negotiations on something already agreed between states. [27] A “senior Department of Defense spokesperson” in Washington said it would be a “blow to trust” between the two countries if existing plans could not be implemented. [28] Summing up the rising irritation in Washington, an unnamed State Department official commented that “The hardest thing right now is not China. It’s Japan.” [29]

The drumbeats of “concern,” “warning,” “friendly advice” from Washington that Hatoyama and the DPJ had better not implement the party’s electoral pledges and commitments rose steadily leading up to the election and its aftermath, culminating in the October Tokyo visit by Defense Secretary Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen. Gates is reported to have insulted his Japanese hosts, refusing to attend a welcoming ceremony at the Defense Ministry or to dine with senior Japanese Defense officials. [30]

Gates’ message was no-nonsense:

“The Futenma relocation facility is the lynchpin of the realignment road map. Without the Futenma realignment, the Futenma facility, there will be no relocation to Guam. And without relocation to Guam, there will be no consolidation of forces and the return of land in Okinawa.” [31]

For Michael Green, architect of Japan policy under George W. Bush, this showed that Gates was a “shrewd judge of his counterparts,” and that Hatoyama and his government would not be able to “continue slapping around the United States” or to “play with firecrackers.” [32] In case there remained any shadow of doubt in Japanese minds, Admiral Mullen added that the Henoko base construction was an “absolute requirement.” [33] “Challenge the Guam Treaty at your peril,” was the Obama administration’s unambiguous message.

Intimidation had an affect. Defense Secretary Kitazawa Toshimi was first to yield and suggest that there was no real alternative to construction at Henoko. [34] Foreign Minister Okada Katsuya began to waver. In late July, a month before the election, Okada had a brief exchange with U.S. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy: [35]

Fluornoy: The reorganization of US forces in Japan is in accord with agreement between the two countries.
Okada: There are 64 years of history dragging along behind the US-Japan relationship.

Weeks after the victory, he told British journalist Simon Tisdall, “If Japan just follows what the US says, then I think as a sovereign nation that is very pathetic.” [36] He seemed clear on the point that building a new base at Henoko was not the way to reduce the burden on the people of Okinawa. “It should be inconceivable in ordinary thinking,” he said, “for the sea to be destroyed to construct a base.” [37] It was also Okada who said, “The will of the people of Okinawa and the will of the people of Japan was expressed in the elections … I don’t think we will act simply by accepting what the U.S tells us…” [38]

One day after the Gates and Mullen statements, however, Okada shifted ground to say that moving the Futenma base out of Okinawa was “not an option” (kangaerarenai) and to suggest (23 October) that the functions of the Futenma Marine base might after all be transferred within Okinawa. He declined to endorse the Henoko project, but proposed Futenma’s functions be merged with those of the relatively close US Air Force base at Kadena, and that the agreement be limited to 15 years.

Okada’s suggestion of a transfer of the Futenma functions within Okinawa, even though through this rather novel formula, caused shock waves of disbelief in Okinawa. 80 per cent of Kadena township is already occupied by the existing base. The prefecture’s Ryukyu shimpo in a passionate editorial lamented the incapacity of the new Hatoyama government to counter the “intimidatory diplomacy” of Gates and Mullen, and the drift back towards “acceptance of the status quo of following the US.” If that is to be the new government,” it concluded, “then the change of government has been a failure.” [39]

The Okinawan Perspective

Okinawa “reverted” from the US to Japan in 1972, but nearly four decades later most major US bases remain intact, taking up one-fifth of the land surface of Okinawa’s main island. Nowhere is more overwhelmed by the US military presence than the city of Ginowan, which has grown around the US Marine Corps Futenma Air Station. The US and Japan agreed in 1996 that Futenma would be returned, but made return conditional on construction of a replacement, which would also have to be in Okinawa, and not just anywhere in Okinawa but in environmentally sensitive north, the coral and forest environment of Henoko in Nago City, where a precious colony of blue coral was discovered only in 2007, where the internationally protected dugong graze on sea grasses, turtles come to rest, and multiple rare birds, insects, animals thrive.. Thirteen years on, there the matter still stands.

Between 1996 and 2005, a peace and environment citizens’ coalition fought the first version of that plan – for a pontoon-supported structure on the reef just offshore from Henoko (originally a modest “helipad,” as it was referred to in 1996, 45 metres in length according to the first designs), [40] which gradually grew to have a runway stretching to 2,500 meters across the coral – to such effect that in 2005, Prime Minister Koizumi cancelled it, citing “a lot of opposition.” It was an unprecedented triumph for a mobilized citizenry over the combined resources of the two powerful states. The second, and current, version, adopted in 2006, was for a significantly expanded project, this time based on an onshore site in the same Henoko district. It would be built on land and landfill extending from the existing Camp Schwab US base into Oura bay and would boast dual 1,800 meter runways stretching out into Oura Bay, plus a deep sea naval port and other facilities, and a chain of helipads scattered through the forest – a comprehensive air, land and sea base able to project force throughout Asia and the Pacific.

Time and again, the project was blocked by popular opposition, but time and again the Japanese government renewed and expanded it. The struggle continues throughout Okinawa against this latest, largest, most environmentally devastating design. On the sea-floor from 2007, teams of divers acting as surveyors for the state, and even backed by a Maritime Self-Defense Force frigate, confronted civic opponents determined to defend the sea and its creatures; in San Francisco, a judge continued hearings in a suit against the Pentagon on behalf of the Okinawan dugong and their marine habitat; and at Henoko and Takae (deep in the forest) the sit-in continued.

Japan’s nation state under the “old regime” to 2009 of the Liberal-Democratic Party insisted that military priorities prevail over civil or democratic principle, the interests of the Japanese (and American) states over those of the Okinawan people, and the US alliance over the constitution. As government in Tokyo struggled to secure the compliance of the Okinawan people to their own continuing subordination to the military, Okinawa became Japan’s domestic “North Korea” in the sense of a prefecture committed to “Songun” (Military-First-ism). Except that in this case, it was a foreign military power imposing its will. It was bitter for Okinawans to have Nobel Peace laureate Obama continuing to thrust such priorities on them.

On the only occasion the people of Nago were consulted as to whether they would accept a new base, in a 1997 plebiscite, despite massive government intervention designed to sway them in favour, the outcome was unambiguously negative. In a bizarre outcome, the then mayor flew to Tokyo to announce the outcome, reject it on behalf of the City, and announce his resignation. For almost a decade thereafter, the views of Nago citizens were studiously ignored save that monies were poured in to “development” projects designed to subvert them. By dint of enormous effort, however, the people thus far have thwarted Tokyo’s and Washington’s plans.

In October 2009, the “sit-in” protest launched by that opposition at Henoko in 2004 passed its 2,000th day, well outlasting the Solidarnosc Polish worker sit-ins to become the longest in modern history. Despite pressures from the state, anti-base opinion in the prefecture seems, if anything, to have strengthened. Where, in 1999, opinion had been almost evenly divided between those who opposed relocation within Okinawa and those who were ready to accept it, a May 2009 survey by the Okinawa Times found prefectural opinion running at 68 per cent against and only 18 per cent in favour. [41] Six months later, in the heat of the current “battle of Okinawa,” a joint Mainichi shimbun and Ryukyu shimpo survey found the number of Okinawans who wanted the Futenma base shifted outside of Okinawa, whether in Japan or overseas, had risen to 70 per cent, while hardly anyone – a derisory 5 per cent – endorsed the Guam Agreement formula – the formula on which Washington and Washington were insisting, for a base to be constructed at Henoko. [42]

In the national elections of August 2009, DPJ candidates swept the polls in Okinawa, recording a higher vote than ever before in the proportional section and sweeping aside the representatives of the “old regime.” Both prefectural newspapers, the majority in the Okinawan parliament (the Prefectural Assembly, elected in 2008), are also opposed, [43] and 80 per cent of Okinawan mayors believe the Futenma base substitute should be constructed either overseas or elsewhere in Japan. [44] On 2 November, the Naha City Assembly passed a unanimous resolution calling for Futenma to be relocated beyond Okinawa, whether in Japan or elsewhere. [45]

Okinawan newspapers hardly circulate outside the prefecture, or mainland ones within it, and mainland Japanese opinion is remarkably ignorant, and unsympathetic, to Okinawa. Even the “liberal” Asahi editorially scolded the Hatoyama government, saying “There is a limit to Washington’s impatience … It would be very unfortunate for both countries if the Futenma issue became blown out of proportion.” [46] Okinawan civic thinking was paid little attention. At the time of Hillary Clinton’s February 2009 February visit to Tokyo, a representative group of Okinawan civic leaders wrote her an “Open Letter.” It read, in part: [47]

“Okinawa, a small island, has lived under such great stress for over sixty years. The presence of US military bases has distorted not only the politics and economy of Okinawa, but also its society itself and people’s minds and pride.

We do not need to remind you that Okinawa is not your territory. Your fifty thousand military members act freely as if this is their land, but, of course, it is not. Please remember that we, the Okinawa people, own “the inherent dignity” and “the equal and inalienable rights of all the members of the human family,” which is stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, just as your family and friends do.

The governments of the United States and Japan legitimized the US military occupation of Okinawa with the San Francisco Treaty in 1952, and the reversion of administrative rights in 1972 created a structure of economic and financial dependency in exchange for the presence of US military bases on Okinawa. The governments have changed their strategy for maintaining the base presence from using force to using money.

This is very cruel treatment. The people of Okinawa have increased dependency on such money. The money has created a system which has corrupted our minds. It has taken away alternatives. The acceptance of US bases is seen as the only way to live. … It is as if the Japanese government has made Okinawa a drug addict and the US government takes full advantage of the addiction, in order to maintain its military presence …

In 2005 and 2006, the governments of the United States and Japan reached agreement on the construction of new bases and it seems that they are trying to make the US military presence in Okinawa permanent. This plan would add a further burden on the people of Okinawa who have suffered long enough.”

They ended by demanding cancellation of the Henoko plan, immediate and unconditional return of Futenma, and further reductions in the US military presence.

However, although “old regime” thinking, predicated on absolute compliance with the US and on continuing priority to US strategy and planning in determining Okinawa policy, long cultivated by conservative LDP governments in Tokyo, never sank roots in Okinawan society, it did sway high levels of Okinawan administration, especially the prefectural governor and the Nago mayor. In the LDP system, such local dignitaries focussed on “development,” “employment” and the “promotion” of Okinawa, avoiding any stance on base issues, while Tokyo poured in money designed to serve those purposes. A May 2007 law extended nation-wide the policy pioneered in Nago and Okinawa’s northern districts of reward for cooperation and punishment for recalcitrance in promoting US base interests.

Tokyo’s cultivation of regional dependence encouraged cynicism and corruption, while blocking development rooted in local needs. After a decade of such a system, Okinawa’s income levels remained the lowest in the country, unemployment was roughly double the national average, and virtually all local governments were in the throes of unsustainable fiscal crisis.

But, despite the “betrayal of the clerks,” the political winds of 2009 suggested that the Okinawan social consensus against base development had strengthened under the change of government. Certainly the political credibility of the promise of “development” in return for submission had been fatally weakened by failure to deliver. However, when in August 2009 the government of Japan that had tried unsuccessfully by every means to weaken, split, buy off and intimidate those opposed to the construction of the new base was itself thrown from office, the local representatives of the system in Okinawa, the Governor of the Prefecture and the Mayor of Nago, remained in office (till elections in 2010).

Both tried to shield their submission by seeking a slight revision of the Guam Agreement – to shift the construction design a short distance offshore – as if a reversion to the basic scheme of 1998-2005 would somehow solve the problem. Knowing the American resistance to the idea, they made it only in perfunctory way, with no attempt to insist on it. Governor Nakaima also spoke of a “best” solution – even if it was impractical – being relocation somewhere outside the prefecture.

It was characteristic of the Governor’s vacillation that he chose to absent himself from the prefecture on the occasion of the 8 November All-Okinawa Mass Meeting to express opposition to the Futenma relocation within Okinawa. When Okinawans joined in demanding the closure of the “world’s most dangerous base,” their Governor was in Washington. Days before the Mass Meeting, he stood alongside Kanagawa Governor Matsuzawa Shigefumi who, as head of the Association of Base-Hosting Japanese Prefectures, told their hosts that he saw no alternative to construction at Henoko of the Futenma replacement. [48] Nakaima protested only in the most feeble terms.

Regime Change

In the 64 years since the Marines stormed ashore on Okinawa amid a rain of fire and steel, the islands have known no peace. The intractable nature of the prefecture’s problem stems from the fact that the base issue is set in a procrustean bed of assumptions and principles inherited from the US occupation and the Cold War. Hatoyama might declare the aspiration for “equality” in the relation with the United States, but submission, and the assumption that to please the United States was the first principle of Japanese diplomacy was deeply entrenched. Apart from the $6 billion “relocation costs” for the Guam transfer it is estimated that the Henoko base construction, if it went ahead, would cost around one trillion yen (some $11 billion). These sums come on top of the annual subsidy of around 200 billion yen (roughly $2.2 billion) Japan has been paying the US ever since the reversion of Okinawa in 1972 under the rubric of “omoiyari” (consideration or sympathy, known in the US as “Host Nation Support”), [49] the $13 billion subsidy towards the costs of the Gulf War and the many subsequent appropriations towards the costs of the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. [50] It was once said of George W. Bush that he was inclined to think of Japan as “just some ATM machine” for which a pin number was not needed. Hatoyama has made no move to close the “sympathy” spigot, and must know that to do so would provoke Washington even more than his attempts to renegotiate the Guam Treaty.

The Japanese state of the “old regime” became a “mercenary in reverse,” one that paid to subject itself. To explain such a peculiar state formation and its accompanying psychology, I have suggested thinking of Japan as America’s “Client State,” i.e. a state that enjoys the formal trappings of Westphalian sovereignty and independence, and is therefore neither a colony nor a puppet state, but which has internalised the requirement to give preference to “other” interests over its own. [51]

Prime Ministers of the “old regime” sought ways to channel Japanese monies to Washington, while seeking in return help in shoring up their government and resisting the will of the Japanese people. It would be too much to think that a single election could securely install a “new regime,” but the Hatoyama government has taken some steps in that direction.

Throughout the post-1945 decades, there has never been such a confrontation between the US and Japan as grew during 2009 around the change of government in Tokyo. At issue, the Ryukyu Shimpo insisted on the eve of the All-Okinawa Mass Meeting, was nothing less than whether the Japanese constitution’s guarantees of popular sovereignty, basic human rights, and peace applied to Okinawa. [52] The Hatoyama government is split: Defense Minister Kitazawa for implementation of the Guam Agreement and construction at Henoko, Foreign Minister Okada for merger of Futenma facilities with those of the USAF base at Kadena on a 15 year limited basis, while Prime Minister Hatoyama has called for prioritizing the views of Okinawans.

By November, despite their worries, officials in Washington must have felt with satisfaction that they had accomplished a lot in a short space of time, opening divisions within the Hatoyama government. They would have noted with pleasure that Okinawa Governor Nakaima and Nago Mayor Shimabukuro had both kept a low profile as the crisis grew and maintained their distance both from the new Government in Tokyo and the Okinawan popular movement, and that both were conspicuously absent from the platform of the All-Okinawa Mass Protest meeting of 8 November. Washington would be bound to pay more attention to that fact, and to the message of quiet reassurance that Nakaima was delivering to his American hosts, than to the message of the Mass Meeting that followed days afterwards.

With the last shots from the Washington barrage still exploding around him [53] and Obama’s visit imminent, Hatoyama continued to study his options and Washington to insist on its demands. Hatoyama faced an impossible choice: he could reject the US demands, risking a major diplomatic crisis, or he could submit to them, provoking a domestic political crisis and driving Okinawans to despair. The optimism one could feel just a few short months ago as the new Government was elected slowly drained away.

Gavan McCormack is emeritus professor at Australian National University, coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, author, most recently, ofClient State: Japan in the American Embrace (in English, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean), and contributes a monthly column to the Korean daily Kyunghyang shinmun. For his earlier articles on Okinawan matters, see The Asia-Pacific Journal. A much abridged version of this article is to be published in Korean inKyunghyang shinmun on 10 November and in Japanese in Ryukyu shimpo on 11 November.

Recommended citation: Gavan McCormack, “The Battle of Okinawa 2009: Obama vs Hatoyama,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 46-1-09, November 16, 2009.

A game of scramble played in 2007. Miriyam and Nastiya, the two girls shooting the ball, are both currently members of the female LDP squad.

One of the most important ingredients for a successful twinning is a high-energy, exciting game. Fun games bring youth together, fostering cooperation and camaraderie as the team works towards a common goal – winning. No matter their age, gender or basketball level, all PPI – ME participants love to play “scramble.” This teamwork-oriented drill combines passing, dribbling and shooting, as well as an ever-thrilling element of competition. “Scramble” includes only a few simple rules, which are easily grasped by any age level. To play this enjoyable game, follow the steps below:

1. Divide the group into two teams, with each team standing on opposite sidelines of the court facing one another.

A team lined up to play "scramble"

2. Give each team member a number, making sure that both teams have an equal amount of numbers (for example, if one team has six players and the other five, assign the last player numbers 5 and 6).

3. Place a basketball directly in front of each team, and put a cone or hula hoop in between the two groups. The cone or hula hoop marks the “middle,” where the teams should aim to place the ball at the end of the game.

4. Blow the whistle, and call out a number. The person called must run to pick up the ball in front of his/her team, then run back and pass the ball as quickly as possible to each team member in succession.

Passing the ball

5. After completing all of the passes, the player should dribble to the basket and shoot the ball. The ball must go in, and the player should keep shooting until a basket is scored.

6. After scoring the basket, the player should run and place to ball in the “middle.” The first person to put his/her ball in the middle earns one point for the team.

Scoring a point by placing the ball in the "middle"

7. Repeat as many times as desired, making sure to call all of the numbers on the team.

“Scramble” is guaranteed to put a smile on any player’s face. Enjoy!

Even ESPN's Chad Ford loves to play "Scramble"

We’ve already brought you inside PPI – ME’s Conflict Resolution Retreat at Kfar Blum with a video slideshow, and with a post from our Director of Operations, Tal Alter, through the eyes of his father (a special guest at the event). But, thanks to Tal’s father’s assistance, we have one more look to show you – a quick video of the retreat in action, filmed by Tal’s father.

Preuzeto: Medija centar Bor

Opštinski odbor Liberalno demokratske partije smatra da više nema ni razloga ni vremena za objašnjavanje situacije i ubeđivanje sa nosiocima Opštinske vlasti.
Grad Bor je došao do samog dna, građani su izmrcvareni, deca su nam bolesna.
Već dve godine neprestano govorimo kuda nas vodi ova i ovakva vlast.
Situacija u kojoj se nalazimo je posledica krajnje neodgovornosti, nebrige i lopovluka svake vrste.
Upozoravali smo dovoljno dugo sve instance, od Javnog tužioca do svih nadležnih ministarstava i ovo je zaista poslednji put da im se obraćamo na ovaj način.
I nismo upozoravali samo mi, već i 4700 građana potpisnika inicijative za raspisivanje prevremenih lokalnih izbora, kao i Opštinsko sindikalno veće sa svoje strane.
Danas smo se obratili Ministarstvu za državnu upravu i lokalnu samoupravu sa zahtevom da se pod hitno uvedu privremene mere i nećemo dugo čekati na odgovor.
Sledeća naša konferencija će biti poziv građanima na proteste, poziv da prestanu da šalju decu u školu i poziv na građansku neposlušnost do ispunjenja zahteva koji su podneti kroz građansku inicijativu.
Ne želimo više da slušamo opravdanja i međusobna optuživanja predsednika Opštine, odbornika u Skupštini i direktora javnih preduzeća.
Više nas ne zanima da li uglja ima za tri ili pet dana, ne zanima nas zašto kasne plate, potrošeni su svi mogući izgovori.
Neka se više ne pojavljuju pred tv kamerama osim ako reše da podnesu ostavke pred građanima čije su poverenje izneverili.
Odgovorni su svi i svi moraju da odu.
Javni sud ih je jednoglasno proglasio krivim, a krivični sud neka tu krivicu raspodeli i odredi kazne.
Ukoliko u međuvremenu neka politička ili bilo koja druga organizacija bude organizovala proteste sa istim ili sličnim zahtevima, članovi borskog LDP-a će se protestima pridružiti kao i svi ostali gnevni građani Bora.

To get a better feel for how PPI – SA operates in the field, I wanted to get the perspective of Thobani Khumalo, one of PPI – SA’s longest tenured coaches.  Coaches are trained to be both basketball and life skills coaches and are truly the life blood of our program.

Thobani (left), with his players from Summerfield Primary School

Please introduce yourself.

My name is Thobani Khumalo. I’m 22 years old and I’m a basketball coach for PPI – SA.  I’ve been involved with PPI – SA since 2004, and ever since then I’ve never looked back.

How did you learn about PPI – SA?

My friends and I were playing basketball in Lamontville, and a Lamontville local named Michael asked us if we knew about Playing For Peace (Until 2006, PeacePlayers International operated under the name “Playing for Peace”).  We said we did not, so he introduced us to the organization and we immediately joined the program. So from that point on my friends and I have been a part of PPI – SA, starting with being members of the Lamontville LDP team. Now many of us are coaches.

Please tell us about your role with PPI – SA?  What do you enjoy most?

As a coach I play an important role with the kids in the program.  The responsibility that I have is to lead by example.  I not only have to be a good basketball player, but also be a good role model and make the right decisions in life so the kids will respect me.  I lead one basketball practice and one life skills session per week.  Most weeks, I’ll run a third session with games and competitions. I enjoy working with kids.  Having fun with kids is what I do best.

How long have you been a part of PPI – SA?  How has PPI – SA affected your life?

I’ve been with PPI – SA for six years, four years as a coach. PPI – SA has made me a better person.  In many ways, my life has changed for the better and impacted me in a positive way by using the sport I love to educate me and my peers.   PPI also introduced me to Ashoka Youth Ventures, which has given me funding to start my own business, the Dribbling Academy.

Can you tell us about the Dribbling Academy?

The Dribbling Academy is a basketball organization that runs tournaments for youth teams and also offers basketball training sessions.  We want to get the kids involved with PPI to play basketball outside of their schools.

Thobani (right), with his brother (and fellow PPI - SA coach) Cyril

Back to PPI – SA. How do you see PPI affecting the kids that you coach?

PPI – SA has touched the kid’s lives for the better.  Many kids change their bad habits for good hobbies. This impact will be there for the rest of the kid’s lives. Even kids parents have commented to me on the improvements of their kid’s behavior.

Finally, tell us something about yourself that we might not know, and where you will be in 10 years.

Only if you keep it a secret! My brother (Cyril Khumalo, also a PPI – SA coach) is a better basketball player than I am but I am a better streetballer!  In 10 years I see myself as a family man and taking my children to basketball games to watch me play. Also I see the Dribbling Academy making a difference in South African Basketball.

PPI - ME local coach Raneem Nablusi with International Fellow Julie Younes

The PPI – ME coaches serve as role models for their teams and in their communities, both on and off the basketball court. That is why the weekly “coaches run” takes on much more significance than a simple basketball game. It’s a positive example of the unifying power of sport – even in the most divided of places.

Every Thursday evening, PPI – ME Arab and Jewish local coaches, staff members, volunteers and “friends” of the program get together to play basketball at the Hand in Hand School in Jerusalem. Players have been known to travel from as far away as Tel Aviv to join the friendly but competitive games, which often last for several hours. Significantly, members of the Leadership Development Program (LDP) also participate. The “coaches run” allows these young athletes to further hone their basketball skills and witness the benefits of coexistence, lessons that will stay with them as they develop into PPI – ME’s next generation of leaders.

PPI Fellow Michael Vaughan-Cherubin puts up a shot during the 3-on-3 Streetball Tournament

This camaraderie extends beyond the Hand in Hand court. Recently, PPI – ME enrolled several mixed adult teams in the city of Jerusalem’s annual 3-on-3 Streetball Tournament. PPI – ME squads reached the finals of both the men’s and women’s brackets, a testament to the talent and teamwork of the coaches.

The “coaches run” has given participants the opportunity to stay in shape, develop as basketball players, and bond with each other. Says PPI International Fellow Michael Vaughan-Cherubin, “The ‘coaches run’ has helped us strengthen our PPI – ME community, and build cooperation and trust. It’s also a great way for the coaches to be fit while having fun.”

Friends of PPI - ME at the 3-on-3 Streetball Tournament

Preuzeto: Medija centar Bor

“Iako je sakupljeno 4.700 potpisa nismo ni očekivali da se prihvati inicijativa i proveri raspoloženje gradjana (LDP je samo podnosilac gradjanske inicijative) ali smo se nadali da će odbornici bar nekoga pozvati da je javno obrazloži celom Boru. Važnije je bilo da to da su veoma pogodjeni izjavom Dragiše Tujkića kako će ih gradjani “oduvati” iako je to mnogo blaža reč u poredjenju na ranije javno izrečene reči koje smo svi imali prilike da čujemo.” – rekao je na današnjoj konferenciji za novinare OO LDP Bor, Zoran Stanković, a u saopštenju se naglašava:

Odbornička bahatost i licemerje

Bahatost i licemerje koje su u petak demonstrirali odbornici u Skupštini Opštine ovog puta je prešla sve granice.
U prvom redu, to se odnosi na raspravu o odgovornosti Dragoslava Nikolića pri čemu bivšem direktoru Toplane nije pružena šansa da se odbrani.
Ne želimo da branimo bilo koga, a najmanje direktora preduzeća koje nije ispunilo svoju osnovnu funkciju, ali nedopustivo je blatiti ga na taj način u direktnom tv prenosu.
Smatramo, takođe, da je kadrovsko rešenje za novog v. d. Direktora svakako među najgorima koje su odbornici mogli da donesu.
Upuštanje u raspravu o građanskoj inicijativi koju je podneo LDP bez predstavnika podnosioca, koji bi tu inicijativu obrazložili je dovela do toga da odbornici potpuno promaše temu i raspravljaju o nečemu što niko od njih nije ni tražio.
Inicijativa se ne odnosi na raspisivanje izbora, već na proveru raspoloženja za izbore među građanima Bora, tj. za raspisivanje referenduma na kojem bi se građani izjasnili da li su za raspisivanje izbora ili nisu.
Ali je licimerno prepucavanje ko je za izbore a ko nije, dalo apsolutni legitimitet podnetoj građanskoj inicijativi jer su za nju glasali odbornici koji je nisu potpisali (DS), a oni koji su je potpisali (radikali) su glasali protiv. Odnosno, ni jedni ni drugi ne misle da je inicijativa protivna zakonima, radi se samo o tome da jednima u nekom trenutku odgovara, a drugima ne i obrnuto.
Treći momenat koji govori o bahatosti i potpunoj odvojenosti odbornika od građana je bio zajednički napad i vlasti i opozicije na predstavnika sindikata koji se usudio da im u lice kaže ono što svaki građanin ovog grada misli i najavi da će zaposleni u javnom sektoru pronaći način da ih sa vlasti „oduvaju“ kad već ne žele da prihvate odgovornost i povuku se sami.
Od momenta kad su sadašnji odbornici ušli u Skupštinu do danas, oni se svi bave jedino sâmi sobom, razbijanjem starih i stvaranjem novih koalicija, a problemi u opštini se gomilaju i komplikuju.
Danas su neki delovi javnog sektora već započeli štrajkove i proteste, a s obzirom na stanje u budžetu, za očekivati je da se vrlo brzo prošire, jer u našem gradu više ništa ne funkcioniše kako bi trebalo.
Opštinski odbor Liberalno demokratske partije u Boru daje punu podršku nastojanjima zaposlenih da se izbore za svoja zakonska prava koja im svojim pogrešnim potezima svakog dana ugrožavaju predstavnici lokalne samouprave.

“Out of the Box” was a saying heard many times this past weekend (October 15^th – 17^th, 2009) during the PeacePlayers International – Middle East (PPI – ME) – Arbinger retreat at Kfar Blum, a kibbutz in northern Israel. Approximately 30 Palestinian and Israeli youth and 15 coaches attended this two-day intensive workshop meant to launch PeacePlayers International’s organization-wide implementation of its new peacebuilding toolkit, developed in partnership with the Arbinger Institute and the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation.

With support from Laureus, PeacePlayers International – Middle East and the Arbinger Institute have collaborated closely over several months to develop the curriculum as well as a complementary training and evaluation toolkit. After a special coach training session in September, this retreat, attended by PPI – ME Leadership Development Program players and other PPI – ME young leaders, marked the completed curriculum’s first practical use with core PPI program participants.

This drill illustrates how we can sometimes see others as obstacles, not people.

The curriculum integrates the Arbinger Institute’s philosophy of conflict resolution, called “The Anatomy of Peace” into on- and off-the-court lessons and games. Children learn, for example, about “the box,” a state of being which prevents individuals from seeing others as people with feelings and needs equal to their own. “The Box” can leave someone feeling angry or mistreated, creating a perpetual cycle of conflict. During the retreat, youth were taught methods for getting and staying “out of the box,” both on the basketball court and in life. (Click here to learn why PPI believes this curriculum is the key to its organizational future.)

The weekend also provided a unique opportunity for the youth to have fun together and further develop relationships. In addition to daily basketball games, the children played cards, painted, hiked and danced together in their free time – and even engaged in a pillow fight or two. A highlight for many was kayaking down the Jordan River, a trip filled with green riverbanks, a few friendly animals, and a lot of splashing.

The event included social events like kayaking. Here, Israeli and Arab participants wait together to hit the rapids.

Most importantly, by the end of the weekend the children were able to play an “out of the box” basketball game, during which they saw everyone – teammates as well as opponents, referees and coaches – as people. Thus, the youth could move beyond incidents that used to cause controversy, such as a hard foul, a bad call by the referee, or having to sub out of the game.

The curriculum will be a main focus of PPI – ME programming activity this season, helping coaches to teach life skills to all PeacePlayers. The youth who participated in the retreat can now serve as examples for their peers, modeling positive “out of the box” attitudes and behavior.

To learn the main principles and methods of teaching the PPI conflict resolution curriculum – and to see pictures from the weekend retreat – watch the above slideshow.

So many of us have been touched by this video of Jimmy Wambua meeting his sponsor.  If you haven’t seen it, you should take a few minutes to view it — the part with Jimmy begins at 3:45.  You can view it by clicking here:

Catalyst 2009 Compassion Moment

I want to tell you more of the story, because I had an opportunity to talk to Jimmy about this.

I asked him how it came about that his sponsor chose him.  He said that the sponsor (in Canada) had gone to a church where an Advocate was sharing about Compassion International.  He walked up to the table afterwards and looked across over 50 child packets, and his eyes rested on Jimmy.  Something in his eyes seemed to say, “I want to live.  But I don’t know how.”  Then he chose to sponsor him.

At this point in our conversation, Jimmy said to me, “It was at the same time I was roaming the streets eating from dumpsters hoping someone would stop and rescue me from the situation.  God, in a still voice, must have heard my voice and sent for help in Canada.”

I truly believe this is what happened.  God was behind it, and it is a “miracle story.”  Jimmy has since completed not only prep school but also a college degree in Compassion’s Leadership Development Program.  He was then chosen for Compassion’s Moody Scholar program, which allows him to attend Moody Bible Institute for a Master’s degree.  He will then return to his country of Kenya, with his God-given vision of helping youth, identifying leaders, directing them to God, giving them the support and training they need, and literally bringing change to his country.  I’m so pleased to have met this really fine young man.  Thank you, dear sponsor, for making that decision to support Jimmy.

If you would like to sponsor a child, please contact me or go to this website; your life will be forever changed, and another child will begin his journey to whatever purpose and potential God has planned for his/her life. Also, if you let me know, I’ll notify Jimmy so he can be encouraged that his witness has brought more children the help they need.

Ichiro Ozawa was the main candidate for The Democratic Party of Japan, leading up to the election in September. Then leading up the summer he was rocked by a scandal that put his secretary potentially embezzling funds that he shouldn’t have been embezzling. He resigned, and the now current Prime Minister, Hatoyama, took over the Democratic Party of Japan, and ended up winning the prize of Prime Minister. The election was historic for Japan, in its 50 year history since WWII this was the first time the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) had taken the reigns of power from the Liberal Democratic Party, or (LDP).

Nevertheless, Ozawa-san has managed to hold onto power, both behind the scenes and as now the Secretary General of the Democratic Party of Japan. Each newspaper had a different take on Ozawa-san this morning and his meeting with the American ambassador to Japan, John Roos.

Asahi “We should be frank with each other.” The Asahi painted the meeting with the American Ambassador, John Roos, as a tough yet honest discussion. Sources within the DPJ, according to the Asahi, claimed that Ozawa exchanged opinions with the Ambassador about trade frictions during the LDP era. Ozawa-san said to the ambassador, “If America has an issues, I want you to clearly state them.  Japan should also frankly state their opinions in return.”

Yomiuri “Over a drink, let’s talk about the past election.” The Yomiuri’s interpretation of the meeting between Ozawa and Roos was one of friendship, not one of frank speaking. They also had a different take on what Ozawa-san said to John Roos when he asked “If America has an issues, I would appreciate if you could you say them.” The Yomuri used “言ってもらいたい instead of the more direct form,　言ってほしい.

In the Yomiuri not just the language was different, but also what they talked about was apparently friendlier. Ozawa said “Even when I meet the American Ambassador, I can’t really say political things.” Ozawa then went on to say “I commend the majority the Democratic Party in the US has obtained. I also have experience with running a campaign, let’s grab a drink sometime and discuss it.”

Nikkei “A new strand of the virus hospitalizes 445 people.” The Nikkei actually didn’t report on the meeting between the American Ambassador and Ozawa. This could partly be reflective of their lack of support for the new administration…

They instead talked about the Swine Flu, and the surprising impact it has had in the past week. 445 people were hospitalized, and a staggering 8,534 schools were closed due to the threat of flu. Over 50% of those schools were elementary, where as about 25% were middle schools.

Konferencija za novinare OO LDP Bor – saopštenje

Ako je uopšte neko i imao iluzija da će nova koalicija na vlasti promeniti način rukovođenja borskom opštinom i koliko – toliko pružiti nadu da će se nešto pomeriti na bolje, sada ih sigurno više nema.
Posle likvidacije dve ustanove i jednog javnog preduzeća (iako je Vlada pre toga već najavila donošenje Zakona kojim će se regulisati načini za smanjenje broja zaposlenih) pri čemu je veliki broj zaposlenih ostao i bez posla i bez socijalnog programa, građani Bora, evo, dočekuju prvi sneg u stanovima sa hladnim radijatorima.
Javašluk, nemar, neverovatna neozbiljnost skoro svih struktura u Opštini, razbacivanje novca na koncerte i auto trke, kozmetičke promene u rukovodstvima pojedinih preduzeća koja su pod pritiskom stranačkih lidera prinuđena da finansiraju sve i svašta i zapošljavaju članove tih stranaka na nepostojeća radna mesta, samo su najavažniji uzroci situacije u kojoj se danas nalazimo.
Očigledna je i potpuna diskoordinacija u radu javnih preduzeća i opštinske uprave što dovodi do toga da svako skida odgovornost sa sebe i prebacuje je na drugog.
Svakim preduzećem vlada po neka od stranaka iz koalicije, a predsednik opštine se više ne meša ni u šta, verovatno ucenjen najavama da će jedni ili drugi napustiti koaliciju i tako ga ostaviti bez i ovo malo vlasti koju danas ima. Njegove konferencije za novinare liče na konferencije opozicionih stranaka koje nemaju nikakav uticaj na dešavanja ni odluke koje se donose.
Ovo nije prilika da Opštinski odbor Liberalno demokratske partije podseća da smo na vreme upozoravali kud plovi borski brod kojim rukovodi nekoliko kapetana istovremeno.
Ovo je prilika da javno pozovemo Vlašku demokratsku stranku Srbije, kao jedinu iz trenutno vladajuće koalicije koju ne vidimo kao njen prirodni deo, da iz nje izađe i time omogući uvođenje privremenih mera i raspisivanje novih izbora.
Jasno je da u ovom trenutku bez pomoći države nema načina da Bor kao opština preživi još jednu zimu.
Istovremeno smatramo da nikakva pomoć nije dovoljna ako neodgovorni i neozbiljni ljudi nastave da upravljaju opštinom.
Građane Bora ne zanimaju podele i nesuglasice u strankama i kalkulacije kako bi koja od njih prošla na eventualnim izborima.
Ali svima nama je jasno da ovako više ne može i da se već duže vreme sve u gradu svodi na pitanje ko će koliko novca od građana da otme preko preduzeća i ustanova kojima upravlja.
Zbog toga svakim danom vladajuće stranke gube svoje glasače i svakako će biti kažnjene na narednim izborima, ali vremena za čekanje više nema.
Obaveštavamo ovim putem javnost da je Ministarstvo za državnu upravu i lokalnu samoupravu obavestilo Skupštinu opštine Bor još 9. jula da je Skupština dužna da razmatra inicijativu za raspisivanje prevremenih lokalnih izbora na osnovu inicijative koju je pokrenula Liberalno demokratska partija, a potpisalo je 4700 građana Opštine Bor.
S obzirom da nas predsednik Skupštine, o tome nije obavestio a nestavljanjem na dnevni red te inicijative je prekršio Član 68 Zakona o lokalnoj samoupravi kao i 86 Statuta Opštine Bor, podnećemo zahtev za razmatranje te inicijative u najkraćem mogućem roku.

Konferencija za novinare OO LDP Bor – saopštenje

Ako je uopšte neko i imao iluzija da će nova koalicija na vlasti promeniti način rukovođenja borskom opštinom i koliko – toliko pružiti nadu da će se nešto pomeriti na bolje, sada ih sigurno više nema.
Posle likvidacije dve ustanove i jednog javnog preduzeća (iako je Vlada pre toga već najavila donošenje Zakona kojim će se regulisati načini za smanjenje broja zaposlenih) pri čemu je veliki broj zaposlenih ostao i bez posla i bez socijalnog programa, građani Bora, evo, dočekuju prvi sneg u stanovima sa hladnim radijatorima.
Javašluk, nemar, neverovatna neozbiljnost skoro svih struktura u Opštini, razbacivanje novca na koncerte i auto trke, kozmetičke promene u rukovodstvima pojedinih preduzeća koja su pod pritiskom stranačkih lidera prinuđena da finansiraju sve i svašta i zapošljavaju članove tih stranaka na nepostojeća radna mesta, samo su najavažniji uzroci situacije u kojoj se danas nalazimo.
Očigledna je i potpuna diskoordinacija u radu javnih preduzeća i opštinske uprave što dovodi do toga da svako skida odgovornost sa sebe i prebacuje je na drugog.
Svakim preduzećem vlada po neka od stranaka iz koalicije, a predsednik opštine se više ne meša ni u šta, verovatno ucenjen najavama da će jedni ili drugi napustiti koaliciju i tako ga ostaviti bez i ovo malo vlasti koju danas ima. Njegove konferencije za novinare liče na konferencije opozicionih stranaka koje nemaju nikakav uticaj na dešavanja ni odluke koje se donose.
Ovo nije prilika da Opštinski odbor Liberalno demokratske partije podseća da smo na vreme upozoravali kud plovi borski brod kojim rukovodi nekoliko kapetana istovremeno.
Ovo je prilika da javno pozovemo Vlašku demokratsku stranku Srbije, kao jedinu iz trenutno vladajuće koalicije koju ne vidimo kao njen prirodni deo, da iz nje izađe i time omogući uvođenje privremenih mera i raspisivanje novih izbora.
Jasno je da u ovom trenutku bez pomoći države nema načina da Bor kao opština preživi još jednu zimu.
Istovremeno smatramo da nikakva pomoć nije dovoljna ako neodgovorni i neozbiljni ljudi nastave da upravljaju opštinom.
Građane Bora ne zanimaju podele i nesuglasice u strankama i kalkulacije kako bi koja od njih prošla na eventualnim izborima.
Ali svima nama je jasno da ovako više ne može i da se već duže vreme sve u gradu svodi na pitanje ko će koliko novca od građana da otme preko preduzeća i ustanova kojima upravlja.
Zbog toga svakim danom vladajuće stranke gube svoje glasače i svakako će biti kažnjene na narednim izborima, ali vremena za čekanje više nema.
Obaveštavamo ovim putem javnost da je Ministarstvo za državnu upravu i lokalnu samoupravu obavestilo Skupštinu opštine Bor još 9. jula da je Skupština dužna da razmatra inicijativu za raspisivanje prevremenih lokalnih izbora na osnovu inicijative koju je pokrenula Liberalno demokratska partija, a potpisalo je 4700 građana Opštine Bor.
S obzirom da nas predsednik Skupštine, o tome nije obavestio a nestavljanjem na dnevni red te inicijative je prekršio Član 68 Zakona o lokalnoj samoupravi kao i 86 Statuta Opštine Bor, podnećemo zahtev za razmatranje te inicijative u najkraćem mogućem roku.

As Durban heats up for the Southern Hemisphere’s summer, so too does the competition among PPI – SA primary schools.  After two months of practices, clinics, and life skills sessions, each area hosted a day of single elimination games to crown local Boys and Girls champions.  The action kicked off in Wentworth earlier this month and will close out with an LDP (Leadership Development Program) extravaganza weekend.

The progression of both basketball fundamentals and life skills knowledge was easy to see; learners demonstrated a mastery of dribbling, defense, and shooting, while the life skills activities that kicked off the events were fun for all.  The LDP extravaganza will take the event a notch higher, as participants will lead the life skills session with skits and activities to show what was learned this semester.

On the basketball side, Umlazi looks to defend the Boys crown and will be heavy favorites as the team prepares for the Ethekwini Municipality Championship, while the Molweni Girls look to continue their dominance.  Check back for results next week for champions from each area!

Japan’s ex Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa found dead in bed by his wife this morning. He’s the guy who got fired for mixing booze and pain killers before appearing at the G-7 global Finance Minister meeting this spring. He was 56.

From the Wall Street Journal: “considered extremely intelligent but also noted for his temper, [Nakagawa] had served in parliament for 26 years. The seat had previously been held by his father, Ichiro Nakagawa . . . . The senior Mr. Nakagawa died in 1983 in what police said was a suicide.

And the Japan Times reports the presence of vomit, sleeping pills and alcohol. Plus this observation from his wife the night before: “When Nakagawa’s 50-year-old wife came home at around 9 p.m. Saturday, she saw him sleeping half on the floor with his upper body face down on the bed, but she did not sense anything was wrong, they said.”

As promised in a prior post, I’ve finished the data entry for the Kuchikomi (クチコミ総選挙) election predictions. The Kuchikomi election prediction algorithm was created by hottolink (ホットリンク) and it is based on internet chatter (口コミ). The algorithm parses through information on the internet from mass media to blogs on individual politicians and parties to produce a prediction percentage based on historical data. You can I guess think it as a souped up Google AdPlanner:

候補者個人に関するクチコミと所属政党に関するクチコミを集め、それぞれがどの程度得票率に影響を与えるかを過去の国政選挙をもとに分析し、予測モデルを構築して算出した値が予想得票率です。

In terms of very general results, Kuchikomi had about 80% of the single district seats correct (mind you, they didn’t calculate the proportional representation seat — a whole another issue). Both Asahi and Nikkei newspapers predicted more than 94% of the single district seats correct. But considering Kuchikomi is still new technology, 80% isn’t too bad. But as you’ll see, there are some major weaknesses.

Party Bias

First of all, Kuchikomi did really bad for minor parties (namely: YP = Your Party (みんなの党), SDP = Social Democratic Party (社民党), PNP = People’s New Party (国民新党)) and independents (= I). See the graph below as I plotted the predicted vote percentage vs the actual vote percentage of each candidate separated by party:

A perfect prediction will show a one-to-one lines. But for the aforementioned minor parties and independents, we see that Kuchikomi had very low predictions, yet resulted in considerably higher numbers (don’t worry about the mysterious acronyms, some of them are uber-minor parties). In the description of their algorithm, they mentioned that they gather information for both the candidate and the party. But it looks like they put more weight into on the party. For example, Your Party has former LDP members that were fairly well-known before the election. But because Your Party only formed as a political party three weeks before the election, Kuchikomi failed to gain sufficient information; thus, the low predictions. The leader (Watanabe Yoshimi) was predicted highly, but they had only two candidates in that district. Kamei Shizuka, the leader of the People’s New Party, was predicted to have 15% of the vote, but he actually got 60% — a semi-educated human being would have predicted that much better. In a similar vein, Kuchikomi just sucks for Independents. Either the media just doesn’t like to talk about them, or again, Kuchikomi doesn’t weigh the individual as much as the party.

Let’s look a little closer at the two main players: DPJ and LDP. The following graph is basically a mash up of the previous graph, where the red dots indicate the DPJ and the blue ones as LDP:

A one-to-one black line is passed through to indicate anything above it constitute underestimated predictions and anything below are overestimated predictions. The DPJ estimates are generally underestimated, and they are underestimated more strongly for lower prediction percentages. In general, the variance of the actual vote percentage is higher for lower prediction percentages. A paradox that happens here, is that even if Kuchikomi is underestimating the DPJ results in terms of percentages, it actually overestimated the number of seats that the DPJ won.

So what is going on? Well, it is hard to tell. One would think that underestimating the percentages would lead to underestimating the number of seats. This parallel can get broken if the prediction screws up (overestimates) big for a few seats, while underestimating moderately. I decided to plot the movements (difference between prediction percentage and actual percentage) on seats that were won by either the LDP or the DPJ and was predicted to win by either the LDP or the DPJ. Of course there are 4 cases: predict LDP -> observe LDP (upper right), predict LDP -> observe DPJ (upper left), predict DPJ -> observe DPJ (bottom left) and predict DPJ -> observe LDP (bottom right):

The red dots show the predicted percentage of both the DPJ and the LDP. The arrow protruding from the red dot “moves” to the actual vote percentage. So if the arrows going straight up, the prediction was underestimated for the LDP, and if the arrow is going to the right, the prediction was underestimated for the DPJ (and vice-versa). We see the red dots very close to black one-to-one line compared to the actual votes. This indicates that the predictions are a lot more flat than the actual results maybe due to lack of information. We see the arrows on the bottom right graph (predicted DPJ seat but actually went to the LDP) going vertically straight up. This of course means that the DPJ prediction was fine, but it fucked up on LDP results big time.

Now who were the candidates for the bottom right graph? Here is the list:

Aomori 2    “Eto Akinori”
Aomori 3    “Ooshima Tadamori”
Aomori 4    “Kimura Taro”
Chiba11     “Mori Eisuke”
Chiba12     “Hamada Yasukazu”
Ehime 1     “Shiozaki Yasuhisa”
Ehime 4     “Yamamoto Kouichi”
Fukui 1     “Inada Tomomi”
Fukui 2     “Yamamoto Taku”
Fukui 3     “Takagi Tsuyoshi”
Fukuoka 7   “Koga Makoto”
Gifu 2      “Tanahashi Yasufumi”
Gunma 4     “Fukuda Yasuo”
Hiroshima 1 “Kishida Fumio”
Hokkaido 7  “Itou Yoshitaka”
Ibaraki 4   “Kajiyama Hiroshi”
Ishikawa 2  “Mori Yoshirou”
Kagoshima 2 “Tokuda Takeshi”
Kagoshima 4 “Ozato Yasuhiro”
Kagoshima 5 “Moriyama Hiroshi”
Kanagawa 2  “Suga Yoshihide”
Kanagawa11  “Koizumi Shinjiro”
Kanagawa15  “Kouno Taro”
Kouchi 1    “Fukui Teru”
Kouchi 2    “Nakatani Gen”
Kouchi 3    “Yamamoto Yuuji”
Kumamoto 3  “Sakamoto Tetsushi”
Kyoto 5     “Tanigaki Sadakazu”
Mie 5       “Mitsuya Norio”
Miyazaki 2  “Etou Taku”
Nara 4      “Tanose Ryoutarou”
Okayama 1   “Aisawa Ichirou”
Okayama 5   “Katou Katsunobu”
Tokushima 3 “Gotouda Masazumi”
Tokyo17     “Hirasawa Katsuei”
Tottori 2   “Akazawa Ryousei”
Wakayama 3  “Nikai Toshihiro”
Yamaguchi 1 “Koumura Masahiko”

I’m not sure anything general can be derived from this list. I do however see former Prime Ministers (Mori, Fukuda, Koizumi (well, his daddy..)) and pols that appear on TV frequently (Kouno, Hirasawa, Gotouda) in this list. This might indicate a big-name bias that can’t be detected from more neutral mass-media articles (although I would think blogs would give some of this info). It could also mean that the LDP really pushed certain candidates at its last rush (many of the big-names also hold high positions).

How about the graph on the top right? The graph shows again the same movement: no bias for the DPJ but large underestimation for the LDP.

Fukuoka8   “Asou Tarou”
Gifu4      “Kaneko Kazuyoshi”
Shimane1   “Hosoda Hiroyuki”
Tochigi5   “Motegi Toshimitsu”
Tottori1   “Ishiba Shigeru”
Yamaguchi3 “Kawamura Takeo”
Yamaguchi4 “Abe Shinzou”

Former PMs (Abe, Asou), TV personas (Ishiba) and pols that made frequent media appearances (Kawamura, Hosoda).

Geo Effects

Another thing that I looked at, were prediction performances according to each prefecture and district. Each district has their own color that may influence media and blog-related chatter that goes onto the internet.

I first created an error measure as follows:

This basically gives me a proxy for how “bad” the prediction went. I put an exponential simply because I wanted to penalize mistakes at higher prediction percentages. The squared difference is to penalize large mistakes. What I did was calculate this measure for each candidate of each district. Then I can take aggregate statistics to explore how bad the predictions went given the location and the candidate.

In this case, I simply took the mean across districts and the candidates to arrive at a Prefecture-wide value. I can plot this (thanks Prof. Aoki (青木繁伸)) on a Japanese map to neatly see this information at a glance:

This basically shows poorly preforming predictions as a darker color. Is there some sort of pattern here? Again, it is hard to see. The error measure that I picked was fairly arbitrary, and I take the mean a couple times anyways — creating a major loss of detail. One thing though, Miyazaki had easily the largest error among the Prefectures. Can this be caused by media-crowding? Meaning, because the Governor caused a huge ruckus, maybe information let out about the election were superfluous.

A nice thing about these measures, is that we can play with them easily by making correlations with extraneous variables. Because I took Prefecture-wide statistics, I can regress it by, say Prefecture-wide population statistics:

We obviously see something interesting here. The Prefectures with high population has contain their error a lot more efficiently than the country lands. An error measure higher than 0.5 were observed at low population Prefectures (Akita, Gifu, Kagoshima, Kumamoto, Miyazaki, Okinawa, Ooita, Shimane, Tochigi, Toyama, Yamagata) except for Saitama. Can this be called the urban bias? I am guessing this can happen because there are more media outlets, a larger educated populace and a stronger dependence to government policies for populated areas.

Of course this is all very general, but I decided to stop here since my lower back is hurting. But it is easy to see that further analyses can be done.

Last but not least: Gender

A quickie on prediction performance according to gender. Here is a graph that plots actual vote percentage minus predicted vote percentage, separated into the DPJ and the LDP.

The female politicians going above the zero line means that the predictions were underestimated. This is definitely a good thing since Kuchikomi has stated that they use regression results from past elections to get their predictions — meaning, this is slight evidence that people are more likely to vote woman than in the past. Then again, the LDP women predictions were spot on, so it might just be a DPJ thing. The women in general didn’t perform as well as the men .

ah, So?

Aside from being a statistical exercise, what was the reason for doing this? Once the election is over, who cares about these retrospective-I-predicted-better-than-you-chest-pumping?

The obvious benefit is that we learn a few things about the real world. Any prediction is at best, abstract extrapolations of the real world, and based on how things are setup, it’s a good learning process to articulate what is happening. In this case, Kuchikomi data was based on information from the internet. If there are such biases that I mentioned (flattening, urban, big-name, gender, party, etc.), even though it might be bad in terms of prediction performance, these imperfections tell us something about the elections.

The most important imperfection, IMO, was that the LDP was underestimated by a fair amount (not that the DPJ was underestimated). This is somewhat surprising considering that Kuchikomi was using much of the data from historical elections where it was always the case that the LDP won. For whatever reason, certain LDP politicians just did way better in real life. I called it big-name bias, but it could also mean that the Regime Change (政権交代) meme was played so much in the media that Kuchikomi bought into the hype. Conversely, it could mean that Kuchikomi got it right, but the media overplaying the Regime Change meme influenced voters more than anything online. These tidbits you would not learn from opinion polls because opinion polls grab data from real people instead of information from the internet.

Another reason we should care about predictions is for data checking. Recently, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight accused Strategic Vision (a polling company) of having some shoddy, suspicious polling (Nate has huge balls doing this alone). Predictions can be applied to different datasets, and it usually outputs a general trend. When one results in a departure from the trend, it gives some evidence to look into information rigging. This came helpful in the recent Iranian election.

Anyways, for me, the biggest coup was my new ability to graph Japan in R. I also have maps for the districts (but I can’t show both the whole country and the districts at the same time); thus, now I can create pretty pictures on 県民性.

Feel free to contact me if interested in the data, code or the map.

What do LDP students do with their free time?  Well, that’s assuming they have any — with the large load of classes, leadership curriculum and family responsibilities they have.  I’m always amazed to receive letters from the leadership students I correspond with, and to hear what they’re doing to minister to others.  Here are some excerpts from recent letters:

In our youth ministry, I’m glad to tell you that we are doing better with our youth activity called YM ["Youth & Me"].  We have this activity every Sunday after our youth service in the evening.  We motivate the young people by having enjoyable games and by giving some tokens to those who have no absences.  We’re very glad because we grew in numbers and are hoping more souls will come to seek God.  We have also our small group after the game.  During our small group, we used the Serendipity Bible for our discussion time and also we pray for each other.  – Mary Jane, Philippines

I also lead the kid’s ministry in our church named “HUGS” every 3rd and 4th Sunday of the month…I’m so blessed with their lives because they have the passion to lead other kids and passion to serve God though they’re still young.  Truly, it doesn’t matter if you’re a kid or an adult in serving God.  I praised God for the gifts and skills He had given to me and I will use them forever to serve Him for His broader kingdom.  – Mary Jane, Philippines

There is a cell group at church and I’m able to join it on Saturday evenings.  The members are mostly new believers.  I have part in helping lead songs, games, and share the Word.  Many neighbors around the area give interest and join the cell group because they are able to experience God’s love through the life of the house owner.  – Siriporn, Thailand

Recently, our church set up a cell group for each village called “Father Love.”  Each group has 20 people.  I join the Saturday team to evangelize.  God really blesses our team.  Many people are interested and some of them accepted Jesus Christ to their life.  – Siriporn, Thailand

On Saturday afternoons, I sing in the choir at church and then we have a meeting of the youth group.  I am a youth leader.  As I am attending college, I have to be a leader who is not there always but a leader who cares about their young friends.  I think up new ideas of how to teach the word of God to young people.  I get along well with my pastors and we work together to extend God’s kingdom.  On Sunday, my church family gathers together at 4 a.m. and we pray for our community.  We praise God and we pray blessings on our families.  We serve God and we break any chains that separate us from God.  – Luis, Columbia

Three new LDP participants from the community of Beit Safafa.

This past Tuesday evening, at the team’s first practice of the year, the PeacePlayers International – Middle East Girls Leadership Development Program (LDP) Team scrimmaged the Boys LDP Team to a 10 – 10 tie. No one was more surprised about this result than the girls themselves, a few of whom were initially hesitant to play against a group of older boys. The game was both a reflection of the players’ skills as well as an important milestone for PPI – ME, as it marked the debut of PPI – ME’s female LDP Team.

The LDP is a program designed to give PPI veterans the opportunity to continue their basketball and conflict resolution training, while also taking a leading role within PPI’s other programs. In 2007, PPI – ME formed its first LDP team, a group of veteran PeacePlayers hailing from several different Arab and Jewish communities. In addition to intensive basketball training, the boys engaged in community service projects and served as volunteers at PPI – ME events. Since that inaugural year, the LDP team has helped paint and refurbish an old building at a special needs elementary school, competed in a league with teams from across the country, and learned how to teach basketball by assisting local coaches at practice. The boys have truly blossomed in their role as young leaders of the PPI – ME program.

Now the girls are ready to join in the action. This season, for the first time, PPI – ME will field a team of experienced female PeacePlayers, most of whom have been a part of the program for over four years, as an LDP Team. These girls are talented basketball players – as evidenced by the result of the scrimmage – who have also distinguished themselves as exceptional leaders. The group is poised for an outstanding year of games, volunteering, and life skills activities designed to further develop their leadership skills. There will also be many more scrimmages – and next time no one will think twice before challenging the boys.

I haven’t announced it to the world but I guess I will now. El Rey and I bought a 1538 sqf in Casa Tropicana, PJ. We have looked high and low and fell in love with Ara Hill (couldn’t get 90% loan for RM1.2 mil) but we couldn’t afford it and well we didn’t want to giv up the beautiful unhindered  golf view of Tropicana Golf and Country Resort so we decided to buy the biggest unit there that didn’t require facing any main roads.

Tropicana is a great place to invest right now as owners of this new property find their property price (although leasehold) increasing 33% in the last 2 and a half years. Also with the high end Condo (Tropicana Grande) and shoplots (Tropicana Avenue) coming up by Dijaya at the end of 2012, the prices for properties there are sailing through the roof! Also, it is voted best housing development in CNBC in ASIA PACIFIC! That’s a huge award added to the title.

The picture below is on the Dijaya website denoting the floor plan for my unit:

Casa Tropicana 1538 Sqf

Of course I am not satisfied much with it. I need to break down some walls and stuff to make it wonderful and cozy. This is the designer in me speaking! And KT was telling me I couldn’t put in an L-shape sofa..I’ll prove it to him.

Anyhow, the price has already increased since I have negotiated on it. If you check out iProperty, you will be able to see that even facing the noisy main road it’s going for the same price that I bought. And mine faces the FULL golf view. I think I might have gotten a steal. Like El Rey always says, you cheat people out of their hard earn savings which I totally disagree.

I am glad we’re all moving along with our lives… JW also bought a place in Sunway Sutera in Sunway Damansara opposite Riana Green and I will be staying 4 floors below EN so I can go up and grab some eggs when I want to. Even if both of us do not cook at the condo LAWL! We all have careers and we are all doing well with ourselves. Look at me! I’m even married!

In our lil group, everyone thought I’d never get married due to … stuff … but look at me now. I found the man that I want to spend the rest of my life with and happily, though, most of the time sleeping in a bed alone, for now, married…

In any case, look at the actual empty unit and what people have done to the unit. Although I know I can do a much better job than that. The done up unit is quite cluttered, and what’s with the OVAL kitchen counter? I guess each to its own taste.

El Rey does want a walk in closet since the Master bedroom is large enough to do that.

Spending much on renovation is bad. I just want to get it over and done with so I can move in quicker!!! Also I might buy a washer and dryer combo machine so I don’t have to hang my clothes to dry, but I do need to iron them often…ahhh dilemma!

I am extremely happy at my purchase. I hope to have an open party by end of feb/march 2010. Wish me luck!

Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party has elected Sadakazu Tanigaki as its new leader after a crushing electoral defeat last month…. From BBC News. Full story

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