JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- English Instructor (Osaka, Kyoto, Kobe)
- Berlitz Japan, Inc. (ベルリッツ・ジャパン株式会社), Kansai
- Salary: ¥125,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month
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- FT English Teachers for Kids - Osaka
- Kohgakusha Co., Ltd. （株式会社興学社）, Osaka
- Salary: ¥255,000 ~ ¥275,000 / Month Travel Expenses, Encouragement of Japanese learning*
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- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
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Betzee
To avoid a repeat visit to the maternity ward?
I actually was present for the birth of a niece, so even though I haven't done it I've been there. I don't remember the birthing center decor being important, rather it was the demeanor of the doctor and nurses. They have to enthusiastically go through the same emotional, anxiety-inducing, joyous experience day after day with people who will only go through it, at most, several times in a lifetime.
Posted in: Hello Kitty invades Taiwan maternity ward
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Betzee
Adverts,
I hope your reflexes are as good as GWB's, cuz the toys are goin' to be hurled out of the playpen in fast, furious, and scatter-shot fashion. As a matter of principle, I never indulge grown men's temper tantrums. I certainly expected it; the only surprise being that some posters seem unaware they are attacking GWB's stimulus plan, not that proposed by BHO.
I understand El Rushbo has announced on the air, "I want Obama's plan to fail." Presumably so Republicans can get back into office. They ain't gonna do it without any new ideas, however. Simply to say "Obama's plan sucks" isn't going to get you a place at the table. By contrast, anyone with actual ideas will get a fair hearing because we are in uncharted waters here.
Posted in: Obama pushing hard for economic stimulus plan
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Betzee
Indeed it will, cleaning up the mess of the last eight. As Frank Rich commented:
Feckless as it was for Bush to ask Americans to go shopping after 9/11, we all too enthusiastically followed his lead, whether we were wealthy, working-class or in between. We spent a decade feasting on easy money, don’t-pay-as-you-go consumerism and a metastasizing celebrity culture. We did so while a supposedly cost-free, off-the-books war, usually out of sight and out of mind, helped break the bank along with our nation’s spirit and reputation.
Paying for it will be painful.
Posted in: Obama pushing hard for economic stimulus plan
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Betzee
Actually, Sailwind, that was GWB's approach to stimulating the economy. BHO is interested in something more radical, for example using public money to extend broadband access to unwired communities to provide new economic opportunities, selling on eBay or whatever. Giving those same folks a tax refund will not have the same effect. At best it will provide a one-shot stimulus, but probably not even that since many people will use it to pay down existing debt.
Roger2, it was actually Ben Bernanke who argued, several years ago, that Asians save so darn much and, particularly the Chinese, have few investment opportunities at home so it's fine for them to finance our deficits. At some point that system breaks down. The US will not be in a position to resume the level of import consumption achieved over the last few years for the foreseeable future. Therefore, Asians may choose to use their money to reorient their own economies. Both the Japanese and Chinese governments are drawing up their own stimulus plans. Now they should encourage their citizens to "go shopping!"
Posted in: Obama pushing hard for economic stimulus plan
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Betzee
Good point. This is an issue when a pregnant woman is murdered, should a suspect be charged with a single or two counts of homicide? Generally speaking, the fetus is counted as a legal person if, at the time of death, it was developed enough to survive outside the mother (in the preemie ward).
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
In the 2008 US election one thing which went unnoticed is that the state-level abortion restriction measures all failed. The bottom line is, however much abortion remains an uncomfortable issue for most, the majority of Americans do want the government declaring that termination is not allowed in such a private matter.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
It's true, but that reflects the reality that the biological division of labor is not apportioned equally. (I recently had a young male colleague who was stressed out as the birth of his second child approached, confiding "so much more is expected of fathers in the delivery room these days." But the majority of work, or labor, still lands on the mother.) Hence, abortion, as carried out in most post-industrial countries, accords women the sole authority on whether to carry a child to term.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
Though forced abortions were certainly carried out in the past in China, government officials were careful to conduct them out view of foreign nationals cause they knew it would bring bad publicity.
Today's China is a much more mobile society, making such a policy much more difficult to carry out. In fact the growth of the floating population is partly due to births away from the village. These kids are not registered at birth and don't exist officially. As they come of age they will have to be accommodated in some way.
Affluent urbanites grumble about the growth of an underclass and how it's gonna drag China down. They would probably prefer to go back to the more draconian era of strict enforcement of the one-child policy and, since political correctness doesn't really exist in China, would say so upfront.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
Both of these countries remain largely agrarian. And they both suffer from gender imbalances, of concern to both Beijing and New Delhi since social instability is likely to be the result when men outnumber women. It's already led to abductions of nubile young women out looking for work who find themselves captive brides of men who struck out in marriage market.
THE UNFPA is aware the biggest predictor of family size is the mother's education level. Hence their activities are focused on empowering women through education. That can include information on contraception. It most certainly does not extend to forced abortions.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
It looks a bit slow and staid for my taste. When I lived in China one of the few forms of entertainment was dance parties. So I did a lot more classical dance, as opposed to contemporary, in Asia then I ever did closer to where it was invented. One of my favorite pieces of accompanying music was "Die Lorelei," precisely because you can go very fast, almost as if you are on ice skates.
Posted in: Vienna Ball
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Betzee
The same could be said of GWB, and it was when he negotiated with the Norks, as had Clinton, breaking with the policy of "rogue state rollback" which had yielded no results (except the advancement of North Korea's nuclear ambitions). Maybe Toru is on to something...
Posted in: Ex-abductee's brother blasts Japan's stance toward N Korea
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Betzee
As I recall, many people on the Right, such as John Bolton, were unhappy about this development. It was not a "demand" that was acceded to but rather achieved through "negotiation." And "we don't negotiate with evil we defeat it," right?
The abductee issue is a bilateral one between Japan and North Korea.
Posted in: Ex-abductee's brother blasts Japan's stance toward N Korea
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Betzee
If it were really the offspring of the free market, well using it wouldn't be free. Indeed, UC Berkeley, that bastion of leftism which is also in the forefront of technological innovation, has realized "we can't give away anything for free."
Though a public university, they increasingly operate in a privatized economic environment which necessitates getting the best return you can on whatever you invent.
Posted in: Red star rising: With global capitalism on ropes, communism gains in Japan
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Betzee
No. I pretty much made the same point (over and over again).
Exactly. Japan doesn't stand a chance of avoiding it whether the JCP improves its electoral fortunes or not.
Posted in: Red star rising: With global capitalism on ropes, communism gains in Japan
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Betzee
Most of us can muster some sympathy for the poor subsistence farmer somewhere in the world who will be forever in debt up to his eyeballs if he has to assemble a dowry for more than one daughter.
Yet in America's high tech capital the ethnic group which has the highest income also has a gender imbalance. There are fewer female children than had things been left to Mother Nature. Abortion is probably not the culprit; rather parents have availed themselves of PGD — preimplantation genetic diagnosis — a technique used to harvest fertilized embryos and identify their sex after a few cellular divisions in order to implant the desired gender. Now how do those who adhere to the "God Knew Me Before I Was Born" view feel about this?
To me, it reflects how deeply attitudes which favor male over female children are maintained even when there ceases to be any economic logic undergirding it.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
In fact not. China's coercive family planning policies, in which government officials rather than the parents have the final word, make it ineligible to receive international funds for family planning.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
Unfortunately in too many countries which allow international adoption there are problems with baby selling (which leads to kidnapping of cute tykes). I've heard more than one story of a couple being unable to get a visa for their baby owing to concerns, from the US side, over whether the birth mother has really consented to the adoption. Often nobody can even find her...
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
That's quite an assertion, and an incorrect one at that. For several years I lived in a community which experienced the different trends evident in today's globalized economy. One was the mobility of labor, principally undocumented Latinos, who gathered in various places designated by the community to await offers of lawn and construction work. Most probably had very few years of formal education, if any. (California has the highest illiteracy rate in the USA).
In the community there was also no shortage of skilled, highly educated IT workers who'd seen their jobs outsourced, principally to India. Capital was mobile and they were not. Some parts of India have skipped the manufacturing stage of development and gone right into activities we associate with post-industrialism. Moreover, it's no longer a back office operation; sophisticated financial work, along with preparing legal documents, has been outsourced to educated Indians. It will be along time before they are in a position to get American-level wages; for one thing their cost of living is much lower. China has attracted both ends of the FDI spectrum, both the low end and the high end stuff. Hence the huge deficits it runs with just about every post-industrial country it trades with.
So this leaves the JCP in exactly the position I outlined. If they make too many demands on private enterprise to provide higher salaries or greater benefits to salary men those companies are in a position to say, adios pal. Factory jobs disappeared long ago; now it's white-collar workers who face the same prospect.
Posted in: Red star rising: With global capitalism on ropes, communism gains in Japan
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Betzee
Sex selective abortion is presumed common in both India and China. By one UNICEF estimate, 7,000 fewer girls are born in India each day than mother nature intended. Abortion for this reason is illegal in both countries and certainly not underwritten by outside parties. The solution, however, is not to ban abortion altogether in the two most populous countries in the world but to make female children more valued.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy
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Betzee
One in five children in Nigeria and Afghanistan, along with a host of other countries, die before their fifth birthday. Is that part of God's healing plan to which your refer Alphaape, implying that we should just accept it, or are mere mortals allowed to address the reasons this happens? Comprehensive family planning is only part of the remedy.
Posted in: Obama reverses Bush's abortion-funds policy