Wednesday February 15, 2012

Bholder's past comments

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    Bholder

    solidarity with french workers! as solomon burke (RIP) sang:

    none of us are free! none of us free if one of us is chained, none of us are free!

    Posted in: French rioters rampage, block airports

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    Bholder

    GJDailleut nailed it with the post above. Please read and re-read it! Seconded...

    Posted in: Bank of America to resume seizing more than 100,000 homes

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    Bholder

    "There can be no real freedom or democracy until the men who do the work in a business also control its management." p26

    B. Russell - Political Ideals 1917

    Posted in: Do you think democracy is the best form of government?

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    Bholder

    thank you citizen12 at 08:38 AM JST - 1st October!!!

    you rephrased it just perfectly! i used to work in the tourist industry for a spell and i have had so much good experience with people of just about any nation, matched with equally bad behaviour from other people of the same countries. i have found that there is no sense in trying to differentiate according to nationality. all it does is create stereotypes and prejudice. but you can meaningfully classify by other criteria:

    in my experience well behaved people usually meant young couples or families (the later sometimes demanding but rarely rude), older people, single or not, people coming to attend some entertainment, sport, cultural etc event since they are more in tune with the country they visit an so on.

    you want to be on the lookout for groups of youngsters, especially all male groups, sometimes even the teacher (trainer, representative) can lose all authority esp if alcohol gets involved. also, people get carried away on occasions like national sports matches, festivals or major holidays with all the partying etc.

    so i would argue that age, or even class, are more of a factor in discerning the degree of well-behaved-ness than nations could ever be (chinese=1.3 billion people).

    Posted in: In your experience, which country's tourists are the least well-behaved whenever you have seen them out and about?

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    Bholder

    it has never been established! we're not talking about mandarins but of involving the interests and needs of the masses into political process and holding those invested with power responsible for its use!

    the stalinist and other national-capitalist projects' failure only shows that socialism can never be established unless on a world-wide scale. you trying to represent this as failure of socialism or rationalization of the economy shows either that you've been brainwashed by propaganda or have an ulterior motive in prolonging the confusion of the population.

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    it doesn't allow me to post links for some reason but go to world socialist web site for yesterday's coverage of this strike and you can find millions of other examples as well

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    you want examples tim? commenting on an article that describes the struggle of european people for basic human rights and being denied them brutally?!?! what do you think the tread is all about?

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    the blatant lie that there is no money will simply not fly! we know how many has been horded, we see the incomes rising for the elite all through the crisis. even now corporations are posting record profits due to all the sacked workers or so called cost cutting measures. just look at the new census data in the us!!

    when all banks and major resources (including the biggest corporations) are put under democratic control and made to work in fulfilling the needs of the majority of the population you will see how hidden money turns up.

    i see you appreciate the fine point that this is a systematic problem which has to be addressed. this is precisely why it cannot be any individual solution to this (systematic) problem and why we need to mobilize to fight it, now! this is what we've been saying all along!

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    tim: "Where it is enforced, at gunpoint, by people who claim we are all equal, but some are more equal than others..."

    i think this is the exact description of the way things are now. we are told that we're all equal but if you try to materialize that equality by asking (god forbid striking) for it, you will only get suppressed, at gunpoint!

    so is it fairer that the minority oppresses the vast majority or are we allowed to fight back?

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    government used tax (population's) money to bail out banksters, and now population has to pay for it again, through cuts in social services (inadequate as they were to begin with). this amounts to having someone unilaterally take your money to casino, lose it, AND have the nerve to ask you to repay him the loss!!! this is what these protests mean! we won't foot your bill. we will not have the losses and risks socialized again while the profits remain private! as simple as that.

    citizens have a formidable front to oppose: world financial elite and their national govt managers PLUS the corrupt unions who have long since stopped representing workers and advancing their rights, and formed a backstabbing coalition with the big capital, for the small piece of the cake. divided by nations, creed, race or any other reactionary notion mainstream propaganda spews we will not rise to the challenge. we are in desperate need of a common identity, one that will not necessarily negate any of the old ones, but will be able to transcend and integrate them all and dominate in times of class struggles.

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    people who cannot comprehend why we complain that abject poverty and deprivation is allowed to coexist side by side with enormous, publicly unaccountable wealth seem to think they live in a vacuum, cut off from society at large in a garden with money-growing trees with magical money that can create more money just by being timely invested or withdrawn.

    in effect, wealth is created by workers, that is overwhelming majority of population who work for pay, as opposed to invest money and expecting return on their investment. clearly thinking people must realize that money cannot breed, it is just numbers we extrapolated from existing wealth to ease the transaction of it. real wealth is only created by work! illusional capital is born when a part of the real wealth created by workers is being plundered from above and privatized by expropriation.

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    it is ridiculous to claim that the wealth is not finite, as if we all live in some financial vacuum of numbers or smt. we live in very finite world and the wealth that privileged few horde in the amounts they do, can only be at the expense of everyone else. to deny this is to be either delusional or deceitful.

    i support tkoind2 in his calls for international citizens' solidarity against the attacks of financial and political elite on the living standards of the population!

    Posted in: Anti-austerity protests sweep across Europe

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    Bholder

    i just love the page outline:

    "38-year-old man admits to groping 100 girls"

    'Confessions' to be Japan's candidate for foreign-language film Oscar

    Posted in: 'Confessions' to be Japan's candidate for foreign-language film Oscar

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    Bholder

    i never bought into the personal responsibility propaganda myself, but it's evident to all now that this crisis is systematic in nature and there can be no solutions to it on an individual level. i.e. work at yoshinoya type!

    lack of empathy on the part of insulated few notwithstanding, i would say it is a fact that jobs paying living wages have largely been terminated, never to return. i speak both from personal experience, and from what i gather from other people when i say this.

    resulting fall in material standards of living, however deploring, is not in itself the worst that will befall the civilization. with it it inevitably brings regresses in spiritual and moral fields as well. as we have less and less we tend to succumb to negative feelings like insecurity, fear, greed, suspicion of others (especially markedly different people) and this in turn leads to corrosion of human and moral mores we came to think of as firmly established. you can see this in whipping up of anti-immigrant, muslim or roma etc. passions being stirred in "the west" nowadays. in the end we might easily proceed to first beggar thy neighbor and then dog eat dog international policies as seen many times before.

    we need solidarity, empathy, imagination, grasp of the bigger picture now more than ever. we must not be divided again by petty considerations of the past: religion, nations, race etc. these problems are the same in nature and very similar in appearance all over the world. they have the same source and painful conclusions have to be made already before another decent into barbarism enflames the globe.

    Posted in: Many will be left behind when job market picks up

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    Bholder

    do these "ground self-defense forces" belong to the ministry of peace by any chance?

    Posted in: Firepower

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    Bholder

    she sure looks kind of pregnantish in this pic

    Posted in: Mona Yamamoto announces her marriage

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    Bholder

    i don't understand comments that say they "detest" gyms just because they don't feel the need to use them? be aware that there are a lot of people who feel, real or percieved, need for gyms and walking or running just isn't cutting it for them.

    for example, anyone seriously working on endurance (whole body, muscle endurance or anaerobic endurance) will find it difficult, not to mention dangerous, to train for it outside at least 2-3 months a year. people working on changing their body composition, gaining lean body mass, toning their muscles or enhancing their power and/or strength have no way but to join a gym or buy expensive and heavy equipment that is virtually impossible to move when relocating and takes more space than is readily found in tokyo aptms.

    also, on a personal note, my trainings are a bit on the longer side and pretty frequent so municipal gyms end up costing the same as the private ones. but for your regular user i think they just terrific, if one happens to be near you.

    Article Unavailable

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    Bholder

    too bad not a single banner is readable. the one under the flag looks like a poem or a song but nothing political. i wonder do these guys have any political programme at all other than your normal right wing scapegoating of foreigners/immigrants with "they took our jobs" kind a pseudo-thinking? "took-a-durrrr"

    Posted in: Generations

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    Bholder

    first of all, i think the title should be changed to the tune of "anytime fitness to open in japan" because that's what it's all about, almost nothing on the overall state of the industry in japan.

    as some posters have said, local, public, community sports facilities are really great but are you aware how few of them are around. same goes for enthusiast run, local private gyms: really good in terms of service and value for money for the lucky few that do have one near by. unfortunately, in metropolitan 23 wards that kind of business model simply does not pay, and that leaves so many people with big chain stores only.

    as someone who worked at megalos as a PT i agree with the posters who said that most of the clubs are really more of a social gathering spots for shufus and elderly with very few serious about their training. an exception is gold gym with very professional staff and guests, high quality new machines and no closing days, some work 24h!! however, i still miss out on it since i don't have one close enough.

    as with a lot of businesses in japan, the real problem is how set in their ways they seem to be, with little or no will to improve or improvise. anything outside of the manual and it's simply not even considered. i had to argue with 3 different instructors in the gym i work out at just because i wanted to squat and deadlift barefoot. apparently, you had to have shoes since it was the rule, and this is japan. honestly, that was their reasoning. i had to have a talk with the manager eventually before i could get my point across and let them leave me to my own training methods that in no way obstruct their work.

    as with eikaiwa, i feel it is simply another tatemae/honne business model. it passes itself as a sports gym but in reality it is just a social club, turning ever more to care for elderly facilities. as such, they feel that their upmost priority is to diminish the risk of anything and everything even if it means that no training or serious fitness activity can take place there anymore. self defeating, i know, but i think i can understand the reasoning of the managers. the result is another sad, listless place in "safety japan", as if we needed any more of those.

    Article Unavailable

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    Bholder

    Historian Thomas McCormick has eloquently summarized the decision: “In two blinding glares—a horrible end to a war waged horribly by all parties—the United States finally found the combination that would unlock the door to American hegemony. A prearranged demonstration of the atomic bomb on a noninhabited target, as some scientists had recommended, would not do. That could demonstrate the power of the bomb, but it could not demonstrate the American will to use the awful power. One reason, therefore, for American unwillingness to pursue Japanese peace feelers in mid-summer 1945 was that the United States did not want the war to end before it had had a chance to use the atomic bomb.” (America’s Half-Century, 44-45.)

    Posted in: Do you think that ceremonies for victims of the A-bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki should include references to the victims of Japan's acts of aggression before and during World War II?

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