JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
-
- 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
-
- 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*
-
- Translator
- ZAIHON, Inc. (日本財務翻訳株式会社), Tokyo
- Salary: ¥6.0M / Year Negotiable
0
SezWho2
“We will not forget,” Merkel said.
We'll forget Turkey, but not Iran.
Posted in: Obama scoffs at Ahmadinejad's demand for apology
0
SezWho2
So what? Find me an American leader who does not espouse a belief in God. Obama added the "so help me God" phrase to the oath of office. How many Presidents are trinitarians? What is your point? That Iranian Muslims in general have a different belief system than we do?
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
inkjet,
It seems to me that you are saying that you support the protests in Iran even when they lead to violence and death. I don't. I support the right of assembly. However, that right (as is the right to freedom of speech) is not an absolute right and at some point where some see protest, others may see threat. Again, that happens with any government.
If you are looking for the greatest system for allowing people's voices heard, that probably has not yet been devised. You are keen for change. I think that, generally speaking, Americans are keen for change and other cultures place somewhat greater value on continuity. I should think it would be obvious that a country which supported a theocratic revolution would place greater value on continuity.
As far as I am concerned this one term reveals your bias and indicates to me that your prejudice against the Iranian system is not likely to change but to continue:
Another such poohbah would be the Dalai Lama. But he's useful to us because he's a thumb in China's eye. It seems to me that you are not willing to entertain any possibility that there may be value in the Iranian system of government. If that is the case, I'm not sure what value there is in discussing this.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
inkjet,
I think that in Iran it would be appropriate to protest, appropriate to disperse when asked to disperse, appropriate to demand a recount, appropriate to keep the issue alive with further protests from time and, most of all, I think it would be appropriate to work within the system and not try to secure foreign support.
Again, the Supreme Leader is unelected, but he is subject to peer review by the Assembly of Experts. He cannot just do as he pleases and it is interesting to note that the Assembly of Experts are not unanimous in their support of what the government has done lately.
So he appoints people, so what? That is what heads of state do. His appointments do not necessarily spring from a mystic voice within his head. He has an Assembly of Experts for a reason. When men write Constitutions, they tend to put in checks and balances. The Assembly of Experts is a check on the Supreme Leader.
I think the danger of that system is, like the danger of any political system, cronyism. Assemble Experts who are yes-men and you could have a problem. Do you have any evidence that his Assembly is made entirely of yes-men? I think the evidence suggests otherwise. The Supreme Leader gave ground and I don't think Supreme Leaders are wont to do this unless strongly persuaded that their initial reactions fell short of what was necessary.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
Not necessarily. My answer would actually be no, particularly as the protests continued. An oppressive regime tends to eliminate protest, rather than just killing the chicken in the hopes of scaring the monkey.
In the first place, I would--of course--take issue with your language. Iran did not kill the protesters. It did not kill most of them, a majority of them, or even a substantial number of them. A few protesters were killed.
I don't think it is even really clear how these deaths came about. If they were killed by a faction within the government, for example, did the government truly kill them? True, it didn't protect them. But did it kill them? Who gave the order? Was an order even given?
Finally, is it oppression? Is it oppression when other governments do it? Or is it only oppression when governments we don't like--don't like because, they're, well, oppresive--do it?
I know you dislike my comparisons with the United States. But I'll say this anyway. I don't think Kent State was oppression, particularly as it did not happen on a national level. I think that moving anti-Bush protesters to the back where they cannot be seen is at the very least "suppression".
So, really, SuperLib, what is this label "oppression" that you want to hang on Iran?
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
I certainly get your opinion. I also disagree with it.
The ayatollah, the Supreme Leader, is not a dictator for life. He serves at the pleasure of the Assembly of Experts. Even if he were dictator for life, his life span can always be adjusted.
I think you are assuming that the Supreme Leader has no concern for the people when he vets the candidates. I very much doubt that this is true. However, I am quite sure that his concerns are different than yours seem to be.
Whether or not Iranians have genuine elections is one of the points in dispute so I do not think it can be the bottom line in this matter. It may be your bottom line but then your entire argument becomes something of a tautology. In the best case you are assuming the result.
The elections do not lack genuineness just because the Supreme Leader selects the candidates. It seems to me that the Iranians had some good choices in this election. Compare the past elections in the US and ask yourself if we consistently get good candidates with our methods.
It seems to me that one of the candidates, Moussavi, drew considerable support from the Iranian people. Some say he won and others say he did not. Do you know which is true? I don't. The Iranians said they investigated and that there were discrepancies but that the vote was representative. The Russians seem to agree.
Now in the words of Ronald Reagan, "They would say that, wouldn't they?" But then what would we say? Do we really have any choice in our response? Does Obama?
I think that the Supreme Leader has every interest in maintaining an internally stable Iran. So, I am willing to entertain the possibility that he has received a message from a substantial portion of the population and that it will be a message that he and the Assembly of Experts cannot ignore. You seem to entertain the notion that he is intent on oppressing the people and I just don't find that very likely.
So, no, it is not the bottom line that Iran does not have genuine elections.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
SuperLib,
You don't get it at all. We can talk further when you stop telling me what my goals are and start telling me what your goals are. Until then, I am trying to have intelligent dialogue with a person who says pink is mauve and north east is south by south west.
My function in this appears to me to be to say what I believe to be true and to call into question those who define oppression as being equal to "what Iran does". We can talk about oppression as soon as you or anyone else is willing to forward an intelligent working definition of it.
Your language is quite over the top. It is true that people started protesting. It is not true that in the same sense of "starting to do" that the government started killing them. Some of them were killed, yes. But if that amounts to oppression, many countries are guilty, including one so apparently near and dear to yourself that you cannot brook much criticism of it.
I don't think the question is whether or not I am finished. I think the question is whether or not you are finished pot-shotting and ready to talk about the topic. As far as I can see, you are simply whingeing at me because I dare to criticize the US and Obama and because I'm not on the anti-Iran bandwagon.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
Let's try to look at Iran and argue from the specific to the general rather than establishing a hastily-conceived "principle". Then, in response to your questions and observations:
Yes, it is reasonable. It also begs the question of what proper and appropriate action is.
I think this is a great oversimplification. To convene a hundred thousand or so people and accuse the government of disenfranchising them and then not expect violence is foolish.
No, I do not expect them to do nothing. But would it be too much to expect them to follow the law? They may not like it, but neither democracy nor any other form of government allows unlimited protest.
I don't think we've established that the mullahs are oppressors. And it certainly is not true that nothing will change if the protesters just go along. Change characterizes all systems. The question is how things will change. I think the protesters made their point quite early. And making a point is not doing nothing.
This is patently false and the counter-example would be the US, where bloody demonstrations have occurred and will probably continue to occur from time to time, where 8 years ago, in order to reach an early conclusion, the Supreme Court was utilized to determine that the electoral count was fair and where troops were called out in force and protesters were forcibly moved to the back and out of sight.
I don't think you have hit upon any grand principle. I think you are talking about degrees and not absolutes. And I think it is your insistence on seeing absolutes that prevents us from reaching anything resembling an agreement. And I think it has been intransigence on both sides--Iran and the US--that has prevented the exploration of a more fruitful relationship. And it distresses me to see Obama move in that direction.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
--Loretta Lynn
--W. Somerset Maugham
Gov. Sanford's affair? None of my business. Monogamy may be the law, but it's not the rule. Our attempts to make it otherwise are futile unless we pursue Loretta Lynn's approach and then we may end up like the Tasmanians.
I would like to know who leaked the emails, though--and why.
Posted in: Paper reveals South Carolina gov's e-mail exchange
0
SezWho2
Is this a question or a statement? I'd like to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume it is a sincere question, but given the rhetoric of the rest of your post that's awfully difficult to do.
I don't think I'm suggesting anything. I think I'm saying that people who undertake to move others to action bear some responsibility for the consequences of those actions. And I'm saying that they bear more responsibility if they can calculate or could have calculated that those actions will result in dire consequences.
I said nothing at all about oppression. That is you characterizing the conflict. And another characterization on your part is to say that people bearing responsibility for their actions is a liberal concept. In fact, it is a great shibboleth of the Republican party.
It is simply not the case that people are sometimes responsible for their elective behavior and sometimes not. There is no "oppressive government" exclusion. If you encourage your family to play tag with a tiger, do not put all the blame on the tiger if your son or daughter is carried off and eaten.
We could talk, if you would like, about relative blame. But I don't think there is any honest way to speak about the deaths at the protest and pile all the blame on the Iranian government--especially if you are willing to characterize it as oppressive or evil or the adjective du jour.
This is another reason that I think Obama is wrong. I think he is assigning all the blame to the Iranian government. That is very convenient when you support the protesters over the government, but it is not honest.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
SuperLib, is this really the best you can do? twist and distort? If you will reread what I said you will find that I placed no blame upon the (cue violins) lady who lies dead. What I said was that the organizers of the demonstration also bear responsibility. I keep hoping that at some point you will deal with what I said rather than what you want me to have said.
There is at least a modicum of truth in that although one has to clear away a lot of rubbish to get to it. In the first place, this is a glittering generality. I don't think I'm good enough to do this with every point I make, even if I wanted to. Secondly, there is no "outrage 'dead end'" except for those who feel stymied in their inability to create outrage. People who have genuine outrage will not come unhinged by my remarks.
You are perfectly welcome to your outrage. If you feel that my comments stifle it, there may be something wrong with its quality. Personally, I find calls for outrage--especially when mounted by many citizens of the US with respect to Iran--to be childish and tiresome. They play to emotion and not to reason.
You accuse me of having no sense of outrage of my own. (I think it is very shabby of you to try to argue some kind of defect in the man rather than to deal with the points the man is making but this is not new.) If we are going to indulge in playing The Great Karnak in divining people's feelings and emotions, then I would have to say that I reserve my "stalemating" tactics for those who--in my personal divinations--are parading a sense of outrage in an attempt to sharpen the knives they already have out for Iran. I do not, however, ascribe personal motives to them. I try to deal with what I see to be the weak points and inconsistencies in the frameworks that support their rose-bedecked floats.
In the instant case, you say (and in so saying reveal your own biases) that I am taking a step "forward" when I say that the government must own its responsibility in the deaths of Neda and others. I hardly see that as a step, let alone a step in a "forward" direction. Where do you position me in your mental map that this is moving "forward"?
However, when you say that I am taking a step "backward" by saying that organizers must also bear responsibility if they calculated that something like this might happen, that is truly puzzling. To my way of thinking this is an obvious statement but it is also one that has been completely overlooked by most posters here. You don't try to explain why this statement is not true.
You simply whinge that I would bring it up at all and complain about some fictitious outrage stalemate while completely ignoring the context--which was an attempt to bring some sort of relevancy to an irrelevant question and to explain why I though Obama was wrong in his assessment of blame for the protests. Now if you think this is not a valid reason for thinking Obama to be wrong or if you have a more powerful reason of your own for thinking that Obama is right, that is what I would be interested in.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
Hmmm.... You seem to be changing the subject. How are Iranian-trained militia in Lebanon relevant to Obama's comments about the Iranian vote and the protesters?
To answer your question, I think it would be quite fair to call that meddling. However, I don't think it is so terribly different from what other countries do. And I don't think that's at issue here.
What is at issue here is what Obama has said in regard to Iran's internal elections and to Iran's handling of its internal protests: whether Obama was right about his take on the situation and what effect his speech will have if he is right or even if he is wrong. Perhaps you agree with my opinion, since you do not refute it.
My position is that I do not know whether Obama has assessed the situation accurately or not although I do not see how he can have enough information to do so. I think that Obama has been right to let other countries take the lead in this matter if they wish to do so. I also think he was wrong to (apparently) allow himself to be forced into making a stronger statement.
If he is right in the illegitimacy regarding the election, I think that will strongly support the protesters--embolden them if you will--for the future. However, I think it will make the mullahs nervous and I think you will see the government make concessions to the people and to the West. I do not think this will change the basic nature of Iran or its basic position on the nuclear issue. If he is wrong, I think the government will make concessions to the people but will also move to shore up support against the US.
I do not think Obama is essentially right about the Iranian the protests. I think the Iranians (government and protesters alike) could have handled this much better. And I'm not really sure who is to blame for the deaths. Certainly, the government has to own the deaths it inflicted. However, if organizers continued to press the demonstration after being asked to disperse--and particularly if they calculated the risk that deaths might occur--they also must own them.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
No, I have to disagree. When the President of the US weighs in with a comment that the elections were illegitimate, that is meddling. You're right that he has a right to form and express an opinion. You're wrong that it is not meddling. When you express that opinion, you are not meddling unless you're getting substantially more press coverage than I guess. Not so the President of the US.
Out of all the examples I mentioned, you seize only upon the Kent State example. Yes, it was met with outrage. However it was not met with massive demonstrations of people who failed to disperse when told to. I'm not trying to deny the Iranian people their sense of outrage. I'm saying that the Iranian government, like any other government, will do what it thinks it needs to do when confronted with demonstrations. If you want to rewrite US history, please do. I think Howard Zinn already did, however.
No, it will not. Nor will pointless sarcasm refute that the military at the inaugurals of Nixon and Bush were fully geared up to use the weaponry at their disposal. I am not aware of anyone who has no feeling for a life that was snuffed out as the young Iranian girl's was. And she will be made the poster child for the "evil that the mullahs do". However, posters do not bring us truths unless and until they do. If they did, what are we to make of all the Che posters?
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
Helter_Skelter,
The article states that the city estimates it costs $65M per year, probably with benefit costs factored in.
I'm not sure why you find this so depressing. Sure it's wasteful, but it certainly is not clear who is to blame. People, not just teachers, need to be protected from wrongful firings.
Take the case of the teacher who accused the principal of tinkering with test scores and was then fired by the principal. With "No Child Left Behind", schools receive funds based on improvement in test scores. This gives principals (and teachers) a motive to tinker with standardized tests. So, it seems to me that it's rather important to get to the bottom of an issue like that.
Or, take the case of the teacher who was suspended for foul and abusive language after being cut by a student. Without knowing the student in question and the exact circumstances of the incident, its rather hard to make a judgment. I try to keep my language elevated, but let me stub my toe in the dark and you'd think I was a sailor's parrot.
It seems to me that what needs to happen is not suspension-without-pay, but faster resolution of disputes.
Posted in: 700 NYC teachers paid to do nothing
0
SezWho2
And the assessment of Obama's ability to handle the issue is certainly above yours.
I have seen many criticisms of Obama on this issue and I have offered my own, although I suspect they are quite different from yours. However, what is it that you think Obama should do and how would that help?
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
teleprompter,
As Pee-wee Herman might say, "I know you are, but what am I?" More maturely, would you care to develop your claim? Or do you wish only once again to make it and run.
I haven't read of any significant pro-US-government Iranian movement in Iran? Have you? There are a substantial number of people in Iran who question the wisdom of Ahmadinejad's stance and who believe that it is not good for Iran. That does not translate to the love for the US.
In fact, in the past, the Iranian government has been able to use US interference as a rallying point to support a government rather less to US liking than more. That is one of the reasons for Ahmadinejad's rise to power in the first place. Are you suggesting that it could not happen again?
Iranians are not complete strangers to me although I do not know many. However, more knowledgeable persons than I have suggested the danger of open US support for the Iranian protesters, especially when attended with claims that the government is defrauding the people. So I am rather less projecting my feelings and wishes than I am coopting a position that seems quite reasonable to me.
Have you anything sensible to add or do you wish merely to project your feelings and wishes onto me? Me, of course, being a person who seems to be a complete stranger to you.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
I don't think that the US has missed many opportunities to support the democratic forces in Iran. I doubt that it is missing this one. And, if it served our interests to do so, we would support non-democratic forces as we do in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere.
It is true that strong words offer vocal support. However, strong words from the American president may be exactly what the democratic forces do not need. The protesters have no intrinsic love for the US and the government may be able to use strong US support to dampen the protest.
The US is not the leader of the free world. The prior President was not and there is no reason why the current President should be. Even if he were, a good leader knows when it is time for someone else--say, France--to get out in front on an issue.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
The Iranian election and the aftermath is basically not a US concern. When Obama condemns the Iranian government's handling of the protesters and opines that the election results were most likely not legitimate, he leaves no doubt that the US is "meddling" in Iranian affairs--if there was any doubt before.
Again, I do not think that there is a government on this earth that will fail to put down (or attempt to put down) an unlawful assembly. In the US, Shay's "Rebellion", the Pullman Strike, Cox's Army, the Chicago Democratic Convention, and (yes, sorry) Kent State were met with government force and, in most cases, deaths. US Presidential inaugurations have seen the parade route and the White House protected with seriously armed military. Does anyone have any doubt that, push come to shove, the military would not have use its weapons?
Obama said that he will have to see how this plays out. He should have let it go at that.
Posted in: Obama lays down harder line on Iran violence
0
SezWho2
And it's not the only way to love, honor and obey.
Posted in: Sarkozy says burqas are 'not welcome' in France
0
SezWho2
kinniku,
Absolutely. In fact, the US government is perfectly within its rights to make requests of any company in any country. Whether the US has a right to make a request of Twitter has never been in question. What was in question was the reason for the request.
Nor was that the contention. The contention was that communicating in 140 characters or less requires that the discussion be on rails, in other words, not really a discussion. If you really think that the intervention in Twitter was not undertaken to further the protests, OK. But it seems to me that you are ignoring the obvious.
The first sentence above is not necessarily true. And the second is not minor when the charge is "meddling". I think the first statement is one that you make on faith and I don't think you have "enough evidence to lead you there". The second statement is proof of meddling and the extent of the meddling and its impact on the protests is unknown.
I don't think I've "insinuated" anything here. If so, perhaps you would be so good to state what I have insinuated and where I did so.
Posted in: Iran accuses U.S. of meddling after disputed vote