JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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1
Why do Japanese change their attitude when they communicate with foreigners?
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2
Confrontation
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3
U.S. Navy investigating how parts fell off aircraft near Atsugi
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4
California court to decide if SeaWorld whales are illegal 'slaves'
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5
Kuroki reported pregnant 2 weeks after denying relationship with Akanishi
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- Assistant Language Teacher (ALT) in Kanto region
- RCS (RCSコーポレーション), Kanto
- Salary: ¥180,000 ~ ¥250,000 / Month includes performance bonus
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- Assistant Language Teacher - TOKYO - late-March start
- Interac, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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- Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥230,000 ~ ¥255,000 / Month
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LIBERTAS
I was of the obviously mistaken impression that (any) Church and State were supposed to be separate in the USA? These are the same folks shouting, "Let's build a mosque at ground zero when we can build a synagogue in Mecca!" Obvious lies both: (1) that America is a faith based constitutional republic, and (2) that its faith is Jewish! Who benefits from confusing the sheeple like this. Ask that question: Cui bono? Because what you see is not what's really happening!
The America, its land and people, that I came to admire, once upon a time, most certainly did not promulgate the racist bigotry this Beck/Palin movement is all about.
Posted in: Beck, Palin: Help us restore traditional American values
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LIBERTAS
Really?
When all personnel who are not combat trained are gone, then we can celebrate. Not until then.
Posted in: Obama marks end to combat mission in Iraq
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LIBERTAS
When it comes to anything even remotely related to Islam: an oxymoron if ever there was one!
Posted in: New York mayor tries to ease tensions after Muslim cabbie knifed
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LIBERTAS
You are probably correct. I'm not talking hypothetical situations. I simply said what I saw to be so. As did the writer in Israel. No matter. getting knifed for any reason is still awful. Regardless of beliefs.
Posted in: New York mayor tries to ease tensions after Muslim cabbie knifed
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LIBERTAS
Everything. It is nigh on impossible to spread your arms wide in NY without hitting someone of Jewish origin, that's just a fact of the demographics. The pulse of Israeli-American relations is palpable on the streets of NY. When a high-volume "debate" about mosques occurs, and when a stabbing incident like the one in the article occurs, it automatically piques peoples' interest in both communities. What it has to do with communists, as is suggested above, is beyond me. What it says about Israel and the US is clear to anyone with their fingers on the pulse of both countries, even minimally.
The point made by the writer in Tel Aviv, to which I referred, was the disproportionate amount of attention that assaults, real or imaginary, get from the respective press corps in each country, if at all. And his suggestion that intolerance and hate could be eradicated in both communities regardless. That's the point.
Posted in: New York mayor tries to ease tensions after Muslim cabbie knifed
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LIBERTAS
I still stand by Jimmy Carter. As a former president he has spoken out against injustices more than any other I can think of. In my opinion it is he, not Obama, who deserved the Nobel Peace Prize. His work for Habitat for Humanity is well known. He is continually being besmirched as...
...a charge which is ridiculous, as the real Semitic people are the Palestinians, the Separdhim Jews, and other desert peoples, such as Arabs. Remember, "Not supporting the State of 'Israel' does not make one, in any way, less of a friend of the Jewish people and most certainly does not label one an anti-semite." Rabbi Yisroel Dovid Weiss.
In this instance, regarding the DPRK, rather than high-horse the whole affair, Jimmy Carter found a creative solution, defused tension, and most importantly, got positive results. A true statesman, if ever there was one, proving diplomacy is by far a better way to deal with problems than nuking people. As an aside: Could you just imagine if the US had sent (former unconfirmed US Ambassador to the UN) John Bolton to do this task? Perish the thought!
Posted in: Carter leaves N Korea with freed American
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LIBERTAS
A writer in Israel has this to say about this incident today:
Pardon my crudeness, but I am a bit disgusted at the lack of news coverage in the Israeli press about a hate crime that took place in New York City two nights ago…
A Muslim cab driver was stabbed by a passenger after being asked “are you a Muslim”. This made headline news throughout the world as can be seen if you Google ‘Muslim cabbie stabbed’….. throughout the world except in Israel.
Why the strange heading for this post? If a Jew farts on a crowded subway car in New York and gets dirty looks from his fellow passengers, the ADL immediately jumps in and creates an anti Semitic incident and walla…… it’s front page news throughout Israel.
BUT…. in this case, the cabbie WAS a Muslim…. living in a city consumed by hate because of groups like the ADL….. NOT because of the Ground Zero Mosque, but because of those that oppose the building of it. The ADL might see this incident as ‘collateral damage’ in a war against Islam…. definitely not newsworthy in the Jewish press, definitely not worth a condemnation by a group opposed to defamation.
What seems to be an accurate account of the crime can be read in THIS New York Times article.
Hatred existed in New York long before the issue of the ‘mosque’ became news. New York has a long history of Islamophobia…. this is not to say that it must not or cannot be defeated.
The Mayor of New York ended a speech the other day with the following words;
In that spirit, let me declare that we in New York are Jews and Christians and Muslims, and we always have been. And above all of that, we are Americans, each with an equal right to worship and pray where we choose. There is nowhere in the five boroughs that is off limits to any religion.
By affirming that basic idea, we will honor America’s values and we will keep New York the most open, diverse, tolerant, and free city in the world.
TOLERANT….. that is the key word.
DIVERSE ….. another key word.
Speeches are fine, but let us together work towards the day when hate crimes based on one’s colour, creed or nationality become history.
Let us together work to establish a real citizens committee against defamation and hate, one that will not only battle hatred, but the hate groups in disguise as well.
Let us consume hatred before it consumes all of us, one by one….. ACT NOW…. before they come for you!
Interesting to get another perspective on this case.
Posted in: New York mayor tries to ease tensions after Muslim cabbie knifed
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LIBERTAS
The NYT times spoke yesterday of Karzai, by implication, being up to his wazoo in corruption. In effect, stealing loads of money from the US people. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/26/world/asia/26kabul.html?_r=2&emc=na
One has to ask: With friends like Karzai, who needs enemies? And what the heck is the US sending personnel to die there for anyway?
Posted in: Afghan president questions U.S. timeline for leaving
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LIBERTAS
A "discourse" in the midst of all this high pitched screaming of epithets is unlikely. Akin to the item on internal strife in the GOP yesterday, I still say that America is at war with itself. A house divided will not stand.
Posted in: New York mayor tries to ease tensions after Muslim cabbie knifed
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LIBERTAS
The Taliban mujjahadeen have really just one message. If you don't belong in our countries, go home and leave us alone. The imposition of soldiers and "aid workers" uninvited will lead to more attacks. Imagine the Iranian Red Crescent offering help during Katrina, unasked for and unwanted? All hell would have broken loose. It's exactly the same here. Go home, and let them sort their own problems out by themselves.
Posted in: Pakistani Taliban hint at attacks on aid workers
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LIBERTAS
I have always liked Jimmy Carter as a person. He was and is too nice of a guy to be a successful US politician. Now if we could just pick up his message of "Peace, not Apartheid" the world would be a much better place.
Posted in: Carter leaves N Korea with freed American
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LIBERTAS
This internal strife in the GOP is a microcosm of what's happening in the USA at large. A house divided shall not stand. One has to ask cui bono? Who benefits from fomenting all this internal strife, division and fratricide? Not the ordinary Joe's and Josephine's that's for sure.
Posted in: As GOP civil war rages, Democrats look to benefit
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LIBERTAS
They still do. Muqtadr al Sadr's Mahdi homies rule the entire land. Ain't liberation (from life) just great?
Posted in: Attacks in Iraq kill 56
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LIBERTAS
Might be his last hurrah. Given his state of health, this may be a one-way trip, a la Arafat.
Posted in: N Korean leader visits school in China
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LIBERTAS
Last I looked a citizen of a country that claims to be democratic has the right to enter and leave that country. (Non-democratic countries often have the word "People's" or "Democratic" in their official names, so they don't really count as democracies; PRC, DPRK, DRC, etc.) But commonwealth countries? And by a tax authority, no less? Shame on you Oz!
If the bill is in dispute, then go to court and sort it out like gentlemen.
Posted in: Paul Hogan barred from leaving Australia until he pays tax bill
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LIBERTAS
Myth 1. As of this month, the United States no longer has combat troops in Iraq.
Not even close.
Myth 2. Thanks to the troop "surge," Iraq is secure enough that it will not fall back into civil war as U.S. forces pull out.
Security in Iraq has improved enormously since the darkest days of 2005-2006, but the jury is still out on what will happen in the months and years ahead.
Myth 3. The United States is leaving behind a broken political system.
If some on the right want to claim (incorrectly) that the surge stabilized Iraq to the point that civil war is impossible, their counterparts on the left try to insist (equally incorrectly) that the change in U.S. tactics and strategy in 2007-2008 had no impact on Iraq's politics whatsoever.
Myth 4. Iraqis want U.S. troops to stay. Or they want them leave.
Be very, very careful with Iraqi public opinion.
Myth 5. The war will end "on schedule." Much as we should want the Obama administration to succeed in Iraq, this statement by the president in a speech to veterans this month should make us wary. If uttered in the first act of a Greek tragedy, it is exactly the kind of claim that would end in a Sophoclean fall.
Courtesy of Sunday's Washington Post. Worth a read.
Posted in: U.S. troops unlikely to resume combat duties in Iraq
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LIBERTAS
THE “ground zero mosque,” as you may well know by now, is not at ground zero. It’s not a mosque but an Islamic cultural center containing a prayer room. It’s not going to determine President Obama’s political future or the elections of 2010 or 2012. Still, the battle that has broken out over this project in Lower Manhattan — on the “hallowed ground” of a shuttered Burlington Coat Factory store one block from the New York Dolls Gentlemen’s Club — will prove eventful all the same. And the consequences will be far more profound than any midterm election results or any of the grand debates now raging 24/7 over the parameters of tolerance, religious freedom, and the real estate gospel of location, location, location.
Here’s what’s been lost in all the screaming. The prime movers in the campaign against the “ground zero mosque” just happen to be among the last cheerleaders for America’s nine-year war in Afghanistan. The wrecking ball they’re wielding is not merely pounding Park51, as the project is known, but is demolishing America’s already frail support for that war, which is dedicated to nation-building in a nation whose most conspicuous asset besides opium is actual mosques.
You’d think that American hawks invested in the Afghanistan “surge” would not act against their own professed interests. But they couldn’t stop themselves from placing cynical domestic politics over country. The ginned-up rage over the “ground zero mosque” was not motivated by a serious desire to protect America from the real threat of terrorists lurking at home and abroad — a threat this furor has in all likelihood exacerbated — but by the potential short-term rewards of winning votes by pandering to fear during an election season.
We owe thanks to Justin Elliott of Salon for the single most revealing account of this controversy’s evolution. He reports that there was zero reaction to the “ground zero mosque” from the front-line right or anyone else except marginal bloggers when The Times first reported on the Park51 plans in a lengthy front-page article on Dec. 9, 2009. The sole exception came some two weeks later at Fox News, where Laura Ingraham, filling in on “The O’Reilly Factor,” interviewed Daisy Khan, the wife of the project’s organizer, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Ingraham gave the plans her blessing. “I can’t find many people who really have a problem with it,” she said. “I like what you’re trying to do.”
Posted in: Rallies over mosque near ground zero get heated
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LIBERTAS
Just imagine if Iran invaded Mexico. You think Americans would just sit there and continue to watch TV unmoved? No, they'd seek to influence the situation in their own best interest. As is Iran with Iraq. Good enough for the USA, then good enough for Iran.
Posted in: U.S. troops unlikely to resume combat duties in Iraq
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LIBERTAS
The astute leaders of Iran, following the examples of N. Korea, India and Pakistan, have learned a wonderful lesson, for which Iraq paid the tuition: Those who don't stand up to bullies get pushed around. Having adequate defence capabilities against a regime like the ones which successively occupy Washington DC and Tel Aviv is a necessity these days.
Posted in: Iran inaugurates nation's first unmanned bomber
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LIBERTAS
Key point here. The IAEA has accepted this deal. The US Govt. has accepted this deal. Be rational people, or is fear/warmongering just part of the game? Iran is obviously the enemy du jour.
So what did Ahmadinejad actually say? To quote his exact words in farsi:
That passage will mean nothing to most people, but one word might ring a bell: rezhim-e. It is the word "Regime", pronounced just like the English word with an extra "eh" sound at the end. Ahmadinejad did not refer to Israel the country or Israel the land mass, but the Israeli regime. This is a vastly significant distinction, as one cannot wipe a regime off the map. Ahmadinejad does not even refer to Israel by name, he instead uses the specific phrase "rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods" (regime occupying Jerusalem).
So this raises the question.. what exactly did he want "wiped from the map"? The answer is: nothing. That's because the word "map" was never used. The Persian word for map, "nagsheh", is not contained anywhere in his original farsi quote, or, for that matter, anywhere in his entire speech. Nor was the western phrase "wipe out" ever said. Yet we are led to believe that Iran's President threatened to "wipe Israel off the map", despite never having uttered the words "map", "wipe out" or even "Israel".
Wise up WilliB. Perpetuating a lie doesn't change the fact that it's still a lie.
Posted in: Iran starts nuclear reactor; says intent peaceful