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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GJDailleult
No, they are worried that someone will take over who isn't willing to cut a deal, Muslim brotherhood or anybody else. Mubarak has kept Egypt off of Israel's back for 30 years, and has been well compensated for it with US foreign aid and all the money that has flowed into his Swiss bank accounts. He is one very rich guy. The next guy might not be willing to go along with that, or might not be able to control those in Egypt who are anti-Israel. That is all they care about.
Just because the facts and arguments behind a smokescreen are or might be true doesn't mean it is not a smokescreen. It just means it is a more effective smokescreen, and means the Muslim brotherhood have become a very useful organization.
Posted in: Anti-Mubarak activists pour into Cairo's main square
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GJDailleult
I think lovejapan21 is probably right, but there is a lot of, let's say Israeli / US "spin" going on to try and justify keeping their guy in power. It is pretty obvious the deal that was made with Mubarak, and they want to keep the deal in place.
Posted in: Anti-Mubarak activists pour into Cairo's main square
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GJDailleult
Sounds like lots of damage, but people were able to stay safe. Best possible outcome.
Posted in: Northeast Australia survives cyclone's onslaught
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GJDailleult
The pro-Mubarak protesters are just regular Egyptian people who happen to have camels and horses!
Posted in: Egyptian army moves to stop assault on protesters
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GJDailleult
Just want to pass on to any Australians, especially Queenslanders, in Japan trying to get information that ABC has removed the geographical blocking on the ABC News 24 station and it can be now watched over the internet here in Japan. Just go to the ABC news website.
Posted in: Monster cyclone pummels northeast Australian coast
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GJDailleult
It might have a heck of a lot to do with it, but hopefully people can save that battle for another day. This looks like VERY serious stuff, right now the important thing is that people stay as safe as possible. The satellite photos look unbelievable and it seems to be a huge size and the eye heading straight for Cairns.
Also, that one meter of rain forecast, wow. I don't know how much rain fell in Darwin in '74, but I remember my uncle was working there at the time and often talked about that cyclone.
Posted in: Monster cyclone pummels northeast Australian coast
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GJDailleult
I take it Alphaape is talking about Medicaid there, and I can see why he would be ticked off, but hey, that is the system you guys came up with.
It is always weird seeing the world's self-proclaimed leader of free-market capitalism fail to understand basic concepts of how capitalism works. I suspect actually a lot of people are just pretending not to understand as that is where the money is. But a simple rule - if something can not be provided at a profit it won't be. Universal health care can not be provided at a profit, and private insurance companies can only make a profit by segmenting the market. In other words they dump off the oldies and the really poor on the government (which then has to decide what to do), and sell insurance to the profitable ones, with a lot of people getting stuck in the middle.
So either an American has no insurance because he can't afford it but is not poor enough to get it, or he has it. But even the guy who has it is still getting ripped off, because he is paying twice. He is paying for the oldies and the poor through his taxes and the deficit, and he is also paying his insurance premiums. Private insurance profits are basically just the money that would have been used to subsidize insurance for the unprofitable by the healthy, and so reduce taxes. A pickpocket couldn't steal your money any easier.
As for the constitutionality of forcing people to buy a product from a private company, my guess is the judge is probably right. The government can only force people to pay money to the government, rightly or wrongly (car insurance being a special case, but you are not forced to buy a car if you don't like it). But I am guessing also that the fix is already in, the insurance companies want it too much.
Posted in: Florida judge strikes down Obama health care overhaul
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GJDailleult
that should read "after foolishly and idioticly driving his country into bankruptcy". Cowen is a criminal who hopefully will be charged and sentenced in the future.
Posted in: Irish prime minister won't run for re-election
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GJDailleult
That would be because UFOs and tap dancers have nothing to do with why Americans are fat. Corn and subsidies do.
In the wonderful, fantasy world of the free-market, capitalist USA, the reality is that the US government pays out multi-billion dollar subsidies to the agribusiness to subsidize the growing of corn and keep the price down. Corn is subsidized because it is not fresh produce that will go bad quickly, and so is perfect for use in the processed and fast food industries - corn syrup for a sweetener, corn-fed feed lot beef etc. High calorie, low in nutrition food, which because of government subsidies is cheaper than low calorie, high nutrition food.
In other words, Americans pay taxes so that they can become fat. Great deal that.
Posted in: Smoking, obesity are why U.S. lifespans lag a bit
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GJDailleult
A quick use of the find function shows not a single post on this article mentions the words "corn" or "subsidy", so not much point reading the comments. Just be lots of stuff and arguing about why Americans are fat from people who don't know why Americans are fat.
Posted in: Smoking, obesity are why U.S. lifespans lag a bit
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GJDailleult
Remove evil dictator - Iraq: great idea, Egypt: mmmm,not so fast. Risk destabilizing the country and opening space up for Islamic groups - Iraq: don't worry about it, won't happen, Egypt: worry. Spread the flower of democracy in the middle east - Iraq: great idea, Egypt: that might not be such a good idea. Spend billions on a multi-year war to overthrow evil dictator - Iraq: yes, let's do it! Watch as the public attempts to overthrow evil dictator at no expense to you - Egypt: not sure if this is good, not so fast guys.
In other words US foreign policy is based on geo-political reality. You are working with us or working against us. All the other stuff is just rhetoric to be used when it is useful. That is not a good thing or a bad thing, it is just the reality of how things work. It is OK if some people understand that, problem for the USA is they don't want the reality to be so obvious to everybody. Not a criticism of the US, saying they are in a tough spot here.
Posted in: Egyptian reform leader calls on Mubarak to go
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GJDailleult
I have heard of leaving a man unmarked in the penalty area, but that was unbelievable. Not a good time to go walkabout. Great shot though, it looked after the game like Lee was surprised that he had pulled it off when the camera showed him demonstrating what he did to another player.
Just out of curiosity, anybody know why Lee has kept his Korean name. I was under the impression that when ethnic Koreans, or anybody else, took out Japanese citizenship, they were required to take a Japanese name. Wikipedia says he took out his citizenship in 2007. Not saying his ethnicity is any big deal, no more than England starting a striker named "Rooney" is a big deal, but I am just wondering exactly how the name thing works.
Posted in: Japan lifts Asian Cup with 1-0 win over Australia
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GJDailleult
Badsey is making more sense to me everyday! Better go out and buy my own tin hat soon. No need for "conspiracy theories" though when everything is being done so blatantly and out in the open. Just call it the conspiracy.
Limbaugh is paid by his employers to get people arguing about the trivial issues that his bosses don't care about, and to send them off on the old wild goose-chases so they don't notice the other stuff going on. In magic, this is called misdirection, and Limbaugh has been doing it a long time and is very, very good at it. Leland Lee either does not understand any of that or is pretending not to. Means he is either a fool or a teammate.
Posted in: Asian-American lawmakers demand Limbaugh apology
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GJDailleult
Not sure where and when JM Keynes said that you should build a trillion yen bridge. Could you send a link? Obviously you have read a lot of Keynes' work, so you know where to find it.
Posted in: Kan, referring to Japan's debt rating cut, says fiscal discipline vital
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GJDailleult
Problem is, it ain't that simple. Every time in the last 20 years that Japan has tried to cut down spending or raise taxes, the economy has nosedived. What they saved by cutting, they ended up losing more in revenues, and so they reversed course. UK and other European countries are learning now that that is how things work. That doesn't mean they should keep spending, it means that it is a catch-22, and if the choice is between take your pain now or put it off until later and hope it goes away, politicians will usually in the end choose the second option.
Anyways, looking more and more like Japan did everything wrong the last twenty years by giving away money to banks (that would be quantitative easing in plain English), and deficit government spending. The one logical solution was never tried, that would be the one that the guy who came up with the term quantitative easing says it was really supposed to mean, increasing the amount of money in circulation. The problem is that by following that solution, the world financial system would be exposed for the fraud that it is. Until the costs of maintaining that system are seen to be greater than the costs of exposing it, nothing is going to change and things will just get worse.
And the scariest thing is that the rest of the world seems to be following blindly down the same path Japan has blazed for them.
Posted in: Kan, referring to Japan's debt rating cut, says fiscal discipline vital
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GJDailleult
Reports coming out now say the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood have been rounded up and arrested, yesterday and overnight I guess. Wall Street Journal says at least 20 arrests.
Let's see, there is corruption, oppression, unemployment, food price inflation, religious extremism. That is quite a mix, a possible perfect storm brewing. However it plays out today, hopefully it happens without innocent people getting hurt or killed.
Posted in: As unrest sweeps Egypt, president refuses to quit
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GJDailleult
Can't forget the look on McAuliffe's father's face as he slowly realized what was happening. An unimaginable thing to go through for all the families involved, but to go through it with TV cameras focused on you...
Poor guy died a few years later too, and from some articles it sounds like he was pretty much shattered by the loss in his final years.
Posted in: Challenger: 25 years later, a still painful wound
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GJDailleult
Cheers Yabits, apologies for being an old crank, but I do get very tired, and also suspicious, of people who spend all their time fighting over trivialities and ideological fantasies while they ignore what is really happening in the world. Reality doesn't care about their ideology.
Didn't mean to lump you in with that group, if that is how it came across.
Posted in: Obama calls for unity in State of the Union address
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GJDailleult
Just because the older generation always complains that the younger generation is dumb and clueless doesn't mean the older generation is always wrong with their complaint. A dead clock is right twice a day.
Two theories on why the oldies might be right this time. First when I was a kid, cartoons were something you watched on Saturday mornings, with maybe Bugs Bunny on Saturday afternoon before the hockey game, and a half hour of The Flintstones one night in the week. A diversion. Kids today have 24 hour a day Cartoon Network, Disney Channel etc. (if the parent is stupid enough to have cable, and yes, I am). Also 24 hour a day access to their Nintendo/Sony/Xbox and when they get older their cell phone. They also have no comprehension that there was ever a world without those things. My son's jaw almost fell off when I said there was no internet when I was a kid. What my generation sees as diversions for when you have free time, they see as what you do with your time. And if you are doing those things, then you obviously are not doing other things, ie. things that make you smarter.
Second, each generation grows up in a world that is much more technologically and socially complicated than the generation before. But the brain gets no bigger. At some point there must be a tipping point where it all becomes too much to process, maybe we are there. Put it this way, 1000 or so years ago when my likely Viking ancestor jumped onto the boat in Denmark or Norway to head off to England, his total sum of knowledge was a fraction of what I know today. But his relative knowledge and understanding of the world he lived in and the available information and technology he had would have been many, many times greater than the percent of available knowledge that I understand in my world today. Maybe the kids aren't really getting dumber in an IQ sense, but they are getting dumber relative to the world around them.
Posted in: Job seekers flop at impressing potential employers
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GJDailleult
On the off chance you check back for an answer, I will answer your post.
First off, the US problem is not political, although the politicians are part of the mix, and it is the same problem in all other countries. The problem is financial and monetary. The money supply exceeds the ability of the country to support it, so somebody has to lose.
As for who articulates the problems, here is a short list of economists and writers. Off the top of my head check out Steve Keen, Mike Shedlock, Michael Hudson, Ellen Brown, Matt Taibbi, Dean Baker, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, Simon Johnson, Joseph Stiglitz, Eric Janszen, Gonzalo Lira, Nouriel Roubini, if you can stomach him Max Keiser, and blogs like Naked Capitalism and The Big Picture. And there are more. Lots of people on both the left and right, but all kept off the US MSM for completely non-mysterious reasons.
And if you have the time, watch The Money Masters and the follow up The Secret of Oz. Completely loony tin-hat stuff, except for the unfortunate fact that the predictions have all come true.
Posted in: Obama calls for unity in State of the Union address