JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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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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- Part Time Assistant Language Teacher - Kanagawa Prefecture - late-March start
- Interac, Kanagawa
- Salary: ¥9,000 / Day per 4 class shift
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Mayuki
@BurakuminDes
Why on Earth are you apologising to other faith groups for wishing Christians a happy Easter?! I've never seen a Jew apologize for wishing people a blessed Passover or a Muslim apologize for celebrating Eid.
Is political correctness gone so crazy now that Christians have to qualifiy their greetings not to cause offence?!
Posted in: Japan's Christians celebrate Easter amid disaster
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Mayuki
A pun in bad taste or just a very poor choice of words?
Posted in: What's behind our conflicted feelings on nuclear power?
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Mayuki
Er, what's the problem here? A country is "racist" for deporting non-citizens who commit SERIOUS crimes?
Please.
If only black or Asian or Middle Eastern non-citizens were to be deported, then it could legitimately be considered racist. But the new legislation will apply to ALL non-citizens who commit serious offences.
And we are not talking about shoplifing or parking tickets. We are talking about murder, rape, drug dealing or benefit fraud, the latter constituting stealing from the Swiss people as a whole.
I can't see anything to get upset about here.
@TimRussert
Haha! That's just funny!
Posted in: Swiss voters approve foreigner deportation plan
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Mayuki
It is not racist - the UK has no control over immigration from EU member states. Therefore the only immigration it CAN control is non-EU.
The article is very irresponsible in using the term "non-European" when it should use the term "non-EU".
The article is however correct is saying that the study visa programme is suspected of being abused.
Posted in: UK imposes new permanent immigration quota
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Mayuki
Madverts, TimRussert: did you even read the article?
It was not Michelle Obama's "gaffe". The guy willingly shook her hand.
Madverts, to flip your arguments about respecting traditions - what is "unreasonable" or "harmful" about shaking hands? Nothing. So why not respect it as an offering of friendship from Western people? If this ultraconservative guy refused to shake hands with women on a visit to the US what would you say to him? Would you ask him to respect Western customs because they are reasonable and harmless?
There is no need to castigate Westerners for making a traditional greeting, or in this case, to castigate Michelle Obama for cultural insensitivity when the guy held out his hands and was clearly smiling.
Posted in: Muslim minister admits reluctant Michelle Obama handshake
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Mayuki
Completely wrong.
What most people feel is that a gradual accumulation of education by the Roma populace as a whole will ultimately better the entire community through its being able to provide its own living requirements, healthcare, administration, education, sanitation, infrastructure, and respect for the women (and men) of the community to make their own informed choices about how to live their lives.
Children cannot make informed choices about marriage or reproduction. Educating women delays child bearing - this is borne out across all cultures and countries and lifts the living standards of all societies.
Nobody is saying that this child could be the next Naoko Yamazaki or Condoleeza Rice or Angela Merkel had she not become pregnant at 10. What most people hope for is that she would however receive enough education, along with her peers, to contribute to a gradual change in the living standards of Roma people. It has to start somewhere.
Sneering at the desire for education will not help. Nor will it help to say that she is happy and that's okay. She is 10! With a baby!
If even one Roma child delays her childbearing long enough to finish her education, that is something positive. But it won't happen if people shrug at the status quo.
Posted in: Mom in Spain happy that her 10-year-old daughter gave birth
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Mayuki
The Romanian government is making great efforts to integrate the Roma with the rest of the population and they have guaranteed representation in parliament. Yes, governments must make amends for past mistreatment of the Roma, but that does not mean pussyfooting around the detrimental practices Roma inflict on themselves. And there can be few greater than denying their children education and encouraging child marriage.
m5c32 said it best:
The Roma have to help themselves too. And perpetual victimhood is not the way to do it.
Posted in: Mom in Spain happy that her 10-year-old daughter gave birth
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Mayuki
So they are unable to change their marrying practices because they are persecuted? I still do not see how this actually comes about? The Jewish people were persecuted in Europe prior to and during WWII and yet they have nowhere near the level of social deprivation of the Roma. Simply citing past persecution does not explain the status quo. If it did, the Jewish people would live in uminaginable squalor and backwardness. But they don't. So it must be a great deal more complicated than that!!
That is untrue and a blatant refusal to see Roma as anything other than total victims. Have you heard of Alfie Patten and his girlfriend? Or Tressa Middleton? They are both white British children whose stories of young sexual relationships made international headlines.
The difference is that a pregnant 12 year old girl from mainstream Western society is considered an aberration, and her family condoning it would equally be considered an aberration. In Roma society, very sadly, a marriage involving an educated woman over 25 years of age would be an aberration. Discussing this reality is not "beating them over the head". It's simply stating the truth. It is impossible to address a situation properly without telling it like it is.
Posted in: Mom in Spain happy that her 10-year-old daughter gave birth
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Mayuki
Can you please explain how wider society led to the pregnancy of a 9 or 10 year old Roma child? I am not being argumentative - I am genuinely and sincerely extremely interested to hear your views on how the treatment of wider society has "created" an acceptance among Roma of child marriage (which is a centuries old custom of theirs).
I disagree that the only reason the Roma are poor and ignorant is because of wider society. I think their own behaviour and mindset is a contributing factor to that, and this terrible story is an example of why.
Posted in: Mom in Spain happy that her 10-year-old daughter gave birth
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Mayuki
It would make absolutely no difference to the immorality of this situation if the 10 year old mother and 13 year old father were married. It would still be illegal and, more importantly, extremely detrimental to the child and the wider culture. As another poster wrote above, the Roma are not exempted from legitimate criticism. And a cultural practice whereby children are not encouraged to remain in education but instead to marry and have babies is absolutely legitimately criticized. Simply because something is a cultural practice does not mean it is ipso facto beyond questioning. The Roma are holding themselves back by perpetuating this practice and wider society should not be afraid to articulate that.
Again, completely irrelevant. The issue is whether or not a child should be in a sexual relationship, NOT whether or not that relationship will lead to pregnancy. And as an aside, she is not an "extreme outlier". Many girls begin menstruating at 9 or 10 years old.
I find it extremely sad that people do not call this (condoning sexual relationships for children) what it is: uncivilized.
Posted in: Mom in Spain happy that her 10-year-old daughter gave birth
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Mayuki
@Molenir
Wrong. The knife with the victim's DNA was found at Amanda's boyfriend's apartment, where Meredith had never been.
@ dolphingirl and dammit
Wrong. The prosecution's case was that Amanda and Meredith argued about Amanda bringing men back to the flat and about Amanda's lax hygiene habits. That argument and tension contributed to Amanda's motive to humiliate and ultimately kill Meredith, according to the prosecution.
@5SpeedRacer5
Er, what? Why attribute it to anti-American sentiment when an Italian national was convicted of the same offence and received a 25 year sentence?
Posted in: American college student sentenced to 26 years in Italy for murder
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Mayuki
All freedom-loving people should be utterly dismayed by this movement for a "blasphemy treaty", and Japanese people in particular should be disgusted.
In 1991, Hitoshi Igarashi, the Japanese translator of "The Satanic Verses" was stabbed to death, in Japan, by a Muslim who was obeying the fatwa of Ayatollah Khomeini. The fatwa was issued for all those involved in the creation or dissemination of "The Satanic Verses".
The West's pathetic reaction to the fatwa and the fanatics who attacked bookstores, blew themselves up, and otherwise engaged in mob violence during the Satanic Verses controversy established for Islamists that they could huff and puff and threaten violence and get away with it. He wasn't president at the time, but Jimmy Carter's reaction to the fatwa is a good example of everything wrong with appeasement. It was the wrong road to go down, and we're perhaps finally seeing that now. We regressed, not progressed. The Founding Fathers of the USA showed less deference to religion than the Jimmy Carters of this world, and were they with us now, certainly wouldn't capitulate to demands for a "blasphemy treaty".
I'm not saying that belligerence is the better way of dealing with it. The better way of dealing with it is politely but firmly explaining that the West values freedom to argue and debate far above deferring to religious sentiment. End of. If you don't like it, too bad. We're not for turning.
Heresy is only another word for freedom of thought. - Graham Greene.
All great truths begin as blasphemies. - George Bernard Shaw.
Posted in: Muslim countries seek blasphemy ban
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Mayuki
Er, what? No one is blameless? Can you explain that remark? Or clarify it?
By doing what, for example?
Posted in: Blame game erupts over Fort Hood shooting suspect
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Mayuki
Yes, I know that. I didn't suggest that that was the case, did I? I didn't advocate over-generalizations, or even generalizations. I think that people are so terrified of acknowledging an Islamic motivation for this massacre that they feel the need to qualify their every statement on the matter. Why?
Not according to another psychiatrist, even one who writes for the Huffington Post!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson-md/major-hasan-did-not-catchb349911.html
Posted in: Obama salutes Fort Hood shooting victims
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Mayuki
@cow76
Yes it is a religious problem. You need to see the slides of a presentation he gave to senior army doctors during what was supposed to be a discussion of medical issues. This was a year and a half ago.
Please see the slides here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/09/AR2009110903618.html?hpid=topnews
If a Christian gave a presentation on the religious justification for killing non-Christians a year and a half before killing 13 non-Christians I think it would be reasonable to conlude a link between belief and behaviour.
He had never been in warzone. Any "trauma" he experienced was by proxy.
The fact that his religious beliefs influenced his behaviour, while uncomfortable, is too important to ignore. That's the plain truth.
Posted in: Obama salutes Fort Hood shooting victims
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Mayuki
Depressing news.
Posted in: Ireland OKs EU reform treaty
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Mayuki
@seijichuudo9sha: Good point.
Nazis were left wing (National Socialists) not right-wing, so the above sentence (not including the Jews) describes a disagreement among factions of the left, not a dispute between left and right.
Posted in: UK troubled by anti-Islam rallies, counterprotests
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Mayuki
I am pleasantly surprised by Japan Today's fairly even-handed reporting of yesterday's events. It is still shocking though that the "far-right extremists" and "anti-fascist" tags are not questioned to a greater degree by all news organizations and people generally.
@seijichuudo9sha:
The BBC is sadly no longer reliable as an unbiased reporter of the news. They are very left-wing. The reason that the BNP are growing in popularity is precisely because the concerns of ordinary "indigenous" British people regarding the immigration explosion and the growth of Islam are brushed aside as insular racism, when in fact they are nothing of the sort. The SIOE make it clear that they are not racist: they equally make it clear that they have a problem with Islam. In a truly free country they would be entitled to say so. Islam is not a race, it is a religious and political ideology. It should be permitted to have a discussion of Islam and its potential effects in a non-Islamic country. The PC stranglehold on language however, makes that increasingly difficult, and the result is what you read above. I really don't think that having such a discussion makes a person a fascist. The word is overused to the extent that it is now almost meaningless. It apparently means someone who doesn't accept the multicultural politically correct views of the British Labour Party.
Posted in: UK troubled by anti-Islam rallies, counterprotests
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Mayuki
The Australian media shouldn't have reported this until Caster had been informed herself of the test results and given a chance to accept them, supposing she is intersex. I hope this doesn't destroy her.
This case and others before it make old ideas about sex seem ever more incomplete. So much for the "holy" books and their explanation of Yahweh/God/Allah creating males and females. Clearly the "holy" books missed something and there are some people who are somewhere in between.
I hope Caster and others like her can find their way.
Posted in: S African champion female runner reported to have internal male sex organs
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Mayuki
It seems like Mexico is in freefall.
Posted in: Mexican candidate, his wife and 2 sons killed