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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SezWho2
You must have a big hand. Last I checked most of the non-aligned nations supported Iran's right to develop nuclear technology. The UN has 192 members which include most of the non-aligned nations 100-plus members. Most of the 100-plus has to be over 50, but as I recall the support level was more like 80 or 90%.
I'm not here focusing on the US and Israel. I'm not even focusing on Israel at all but it's possible that it could be included in my comments. I was focusing on any country that feels free to make war in the name of defense, which might include the US, Britain, France, Russia, China--our rock-solid security council members. Are these the countries that get to spend trillions on defense and then turn those defensive weapons into offensive tools?
Posted in: Iran test-fires missile with range that can hit Israel
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SezWho2
He had stress. Nothing, no doubt, compared to the stress of the family whose country had been invaded, whose lives had been disrupted, who lived in fear of harm and who he killed before raping and killing their daughter and then burning down their house--but he had stress.
I'm not in favor of the civilian death penalty. However, military justice should have taken care of this in the first place. If any people ever "deserve" civilian capital punishment, Green is among them. But we don't do this to our heroes.
Posted in: Ex-soldier spared death penalty for Iraq murders
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SezWho2
Possibly. However, I don't think this is a matter of trust so much as it is a matter of who is doing the trusting. Some of those countries who raise the issue of trust are known to be interested in more than their own defense.
The two have a thin relationship at best. The need to develop missiles with longer and longer ranges has less to do with Iranian support for groups which deny Israel's right to exist than it does with where threats to Iranian security may come from. Other countries who support groups dedicated to the overthrow or destruction of foreign governments also develop missiles with longer and longer ranges and this includes countries whose missiles already have the longest ranges imaginable.
Posted in: Iran test-fires missile with range that can hit Israel
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SezWho2
Oh, yes. We could say it like that. In which case the retort would be that a much more generalized approach that ignores the reality of the situation at hand is probably the best way to get like-minded people to agree with you.
SuperLib, you don't get to decide what the "reality of the situation" is. But kudos for initiating a nice smear without really bothering to address the comment you are smearing. In case you haven't noticed, there are several countries who purport to defend themselves while pursuing policies that kill citizens of other countries.
Posted in: Iran test-fires missile with range that can hit Israel
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SezWho2
Exactly right. Tell it to the Afghani civilians in respect of an even superior and better-tested technology.
It's right, but it's not the point. The point is that sovereign countries have the right to sovereign defensive systems. It's hardly the Iranian's fault that defensive systems can also be used offensively.
Israel occasionally busies itself discussing whether it should or should not try to bomb facilities in Iran. It seems to me to be fairly natural that the Iranians would develop technologies which might make Israel think twice before it attacks.
Posted in: Iran test-fires missile with range that can hit Israel
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SezWho2
This assumes that there is some "responsibility" to bear a child. In my opinion, there is no such responsibility. It is very clear that the conversation about the responsibility to raise a child gets short shrift in comparison to the conversation about bearing one.
Quite simply, those who are unable or unwilling to assume the responsibilities of raising children should not be forced to bear them. Those who insist that they should be so forced must be willing to provide the guarantee of a loving home to protect the life which they say they value. Unfortunately, they are not willing to do so. Forcing a woman to have a child is, then, about punishment and not about responsibility.
Posted in: Obama storms into abortion debate in Notre Dame speech
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SezWho2
To think that torture does not happen is naive. It even happens within the confines of the NYC police department and it even victimizes those who have the unquestionable protection of American law.
The question here is not whether the Dems knew what was going on. It is, specifically, whether the CIA did or did not mislead her at a particular time, on a particular date and at a particular place.
Posted in: Pelosi says CIA misled her on waterboarding
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SezWho2
teleprompter,
I asked
and you said
That was a lie. But it was not Pelosi's lie. Bush, by the way, wanted something equally improbable from Iraq.
Posted in: Pelosi says CIA misled her on waterboarding
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SezWho2
teleprompter,
And the lie was...?
Posted in: Pelosi says CIA misled her on waterboarding
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SezWho2
I think it's important to remember that the CIA is in the business of deception. It may be true that it is not the policy of the CIA to mislead Congress but that is not the same thing as saying that it is the policy of the CIA to not mislead Congress.
The real question about the CIA and Congress is whether the CIA would be willing to mislead Congress in the pursuit of some superior policy objective. Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient George Tenet claims that (as opposed to saying that the existence of WMDs in Iraq was a "slam dunk") he told the President that American support for the Iraq war would be a "slam dunk" if the President explained the dangers of Iraq WMDs.
So apparently the CIA is not averse to misleading the American people. I'm sure it would say that it is not the policy of the CIA to do so.
Posted in: Pelosi says CIA misled her on waterboarding
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SezWho2
It seems to me that it gives the impression that the CIA is under the impression that it talked about these things. It also gives the impression that other lawmakers take issue with the CIA.
Posted in: Pelosi says CIA misled her on waterboarding
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SezWho2
Of course we are able to. No law is ever going to divest us of that ability. No law is ever going to stop torture, just as laws against or embezzlement do not put an end to those crimes either. However, those who torture should be prepared to do the time if they do the crime and it should be a crime.
Waterboarding is not a harmless "dunk" and it is not disqualified as torture just by making sure its victims do not drown. That actually makes it worse and medical professionals who participate in this should lose their licenses at the very least. There are at least two problems with saying that we should be able to do this with people who do such or so. Setting aside that we are abusing the "inalienable" rights of those who are created equal to ourselves and that this rather makes a mockery of our institutions, there is no clear category of those who can be subjected to this treatment.
Cutting off the heads of American troops and killing innocents? How about being willing to do those things? How about associating, harboring or being sympathetic to those who do those things? I think it's pretty easy to extend the list of those for whom we could justify torture.
Posted in: Pelosi says CIA misled her on waterboarding
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SezWho2
You don't need to step back from partisan politics to know that waterboarding is wrong for America. It makes no difference who the subjects of the waterboarding are. The argument that it does make a difference applies with equal force to fingernail extraction, genital electrocution, branding or insertions of hot pokers--you name it.
The only questions here are whether or not waterboarding is torture and whether America is or is not a country that treats its prisoners humanely. The consensus, except among the mentally tortured minds of the last administration and Rush Limbaugh, is that waterboarding is torture. And America is a country that tortures its prisoners.
Waterboarding is unnecessary and, except for sadists, unwanted. We will never eliminate torture and there is a possibility that torture will occasionally be effective in extracting critical information. However, in the cases in which mavericks succeed, through torture, of extracting such information we should thank them for protecting the country and then prosecute them to the full extent of laws which do not brook torture of any kind.
It's kind of like Billy Budd. Yes, the Master-at-Arms was a nasty piece of work and killing him made the ship a smoother-running ship. But it was a breach of naval discipline. As the captain said in assessing the death of the Master-at-Arms, "Struck dead by an angel of God! Yet the angel must hang!" Torture needs to be a breach of US law. No finessing.
Posted in: Pelosi says CIA misled her on waterboarding
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SezWho2
If Obama would stop to think, the mind that the photos have influenced is his own.
I believe that the military is worried less about the effect of the photos on the Muslim world--whose hearts and minds we are not exactly winning over at present--than about the effect on Americans and on the citizens of the NATO countries who are helping us.
What ultimately put the kabosh on the Vietnam war was not the ineffectiveness of 2,000,000 dead Vietnamese or the greater-than-WW2-ordinance bombing of Laos and Cambodia but the extreme unpopularity of the war at home and the growing anti-military sentiment.
I believe that the military is most anxious to avoid this and I believe Obama has capitulated. I think it's good to be able to change your mind, but here I think he is changing it from weakness and not from strength. Americans should be able to continue to vote on the war and that vote does not take place exclusively in Congress but also through the workings of a free press.
Posted in: Obama says releasing detainee abuse photos would endanger U.S. troops
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SezWho2
I should hope so. He owes the military a tremendous debt for its role in protecting Halliburton investments. However, a true friend to military personnel would not send them out on ill-defined missions nor have them fight unwinnable wars.
Tough talk is fine in its place. But when all you have is tough talk you are much more likely to be a bully--which Limbaugh definitely is--than a patriot. Patriots can acknowledge mistakes, errors and can reverse direction. This was sadly lacking in the previous administration.
And, as Gabby Hayes said about tough talk, "A hard-boiled egg always is yaller inside."
Posted in: Cheney backs Limbaugh over Powell
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SezWho2
SuperLib,
I agree that some of the criticism of Cheney and Limbaugh is over the top. However, it would be nice if you could level your even-handedness at some of the equally outrageous statements by Cheney/Limbaugh supporters.
It seems to me to be fairly obvious why Cheney and Limbaugh attract so much vitriol, and that would be because they are so active in generating it themselves. Yes, it would all be very adult if we did not call each other names. But that's the way Limbaugh makes his living and that's the way Cheney has sought political gain.
We have suffered through 8 years of primacy of those who apologize for practices (such as torture, for example) which run counter to the ideals and principles on which America was founded. The apologists fail to see the truths which were self-evident to the founders. "Inalienable rights" is nonsense-talk when we contrive and succeed in alienating them.
Posted in: Cheney backs Limbaugh over Powell
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SezWho2
Noted: the architect of the Bush administration would rather follow an arch-conservative buffoon than entrust the Republican party to a moderate who has spent his life in the service of his country.
Posted in: Cheney backs Limbaugh over Powell
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SezWho2
It's hard for me to see how the Pope expects to mend ties with the Islamic world by stating that the Church and the Jews share an inseparable bond.
In the first place, it is not quite true that the bond is inseparable. It seems to me that a history of Christian prejudice against Jews (and, may I say, vice versa) shows otherwise. Sociology trumps abstract theology.
In the second place, this can sound a lot like "us" versus "them". What about the bond between the Church and Islam? Is there one?
Posted in: Pope, in Jordan, says church and Jews share 'inseparable bond'
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SezWho2
teleprompter,
It's occupation when you say a state is a failed state in order to invade it.
Posted in: Obama expresses regret for Afghan civilian deaths
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SezWho2
Madverts,
Inasmuch as people who sign on to the occupation of a country subsequent to a voluntary invasion can have scruples, that's pretty much true.
Posted in: Obama expresses regret for Afghan civilian deaths