JAPAN NEWS AND DISCUSSION
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- Corporate Business English Trainers
- ACT Systems, Inc.（株式会社アクト・システムズ）, Tokyo
- Salary: ¥269,500 ~ ¥280,000 / Month
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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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goodDonkey
I had barely read the above article but I had seen an hour long program on NBC. It was an update show as they had previously shown the case up to another point. I was mixed up on the details and mistakenly thought I remembered the mother having died initially instead of the divorce that took place. Although I was wrong on the details, my main complaint is the time after she died that the grandparents kept the kid.
Posted in: Boy reunited with American dad in Brazil
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goodDonkey
Taka313 said:
I don't see that happening. I expect the Senate Bill to remain pretty much intact. A few Senators are holding the Bill hostage with their demands. It is a shame but it is a reality of maintaining a successful cloture vote. I do not think this bill goes far enough to meet a threshold of the kind of reform that is truly needed. However, I think we need to pass something now and work on it in the years that follow. I now believe the public option is dead in the water. Many other hopes I had for true reform have vanished.
My hope is that over time we can add the measures that would make us a responsible country with respect to medical care. I believe the simple question is whether we want more healthy Americans or less. The majority of people have spoken; they just want to be greedy. The Republicans have often played upon our citizen's greed. We have an ignorant populace in general who can be led like sheep.
The fascist Republicans use the tool that fascists have always used successfully - fear. Don't get me wrong I believe Lieberman and some Democrats have acted like crooks in this whole affair.
At least we beat the Republicans who just wanted to gain politically by continuing to withhold medical care from those in need. It will take many years to reach truly universal health care but at least we are on the pathway.
Posted in: U.S. Senate passes health care bill
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goodDonkey
More like, for grandparents to keep a child from his only surviving parent for 5 years, is a heinous crime. This case has been a travesty from the beginning. The father has never done anything wrong. The mother was Brazilian so the maternal grandparents kidnapped (as far as I am concerned) the grandson. The grandparents and the scheister attorney in this case should be behind bars on this christmas day.
I am generally against such political practices but the Brazilian government has behaved so badly in this instance that I am glad the U.S. took international political actions. I would not mind seeing someone or some entity like a government stick it to the Brazilians one more time for good measure.
We should have sent Janet Reno and her posse over there to snatch that kid 4.5 years ago!
Posted in: Boy reunited with American dad in Brazil
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goodDonkey
Molenir said:
I think USAFdude was referring to non-fictional people.
Posted in: Democrats push to pass health care by Christmas
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goodDonkey
sailwind said:
This from someone who gets their health insurance from Uncle Sam. Or maybe he likes Japanese universal health care better? Didn't he claim to use the Japanese system in the past?
Hopefully we will get the Public Option. This can be done skillfully in the Reconciliation Bill. Now that would be a beautiful gift for the liberals to hand the conservatives for christmas.
Wouldn't that just look wonderful with a big bow sitting under the national christmas tree?
Posted in: Democrats push to pass health care by Christmas
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goodDonkey
Little boys are NOT pincushions.
Posted in: Doctors operate to extract 50 needles from Brazilian boy
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goodDonkey
Ahhhhh, chump change!
Posted in: Senate sends $1.1 trillion spending bill to Obama
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goodDonkey
Wolfpack said:
Yeah right, that is why they Democrats are responsible for winning the great world wars. The conservatives are so jealous that Obama won the greatly praised Nobel Peace Prize that they, like Wolfpack are in their usual tizzy. They can't understand that a real Obama would make statements that war is sometimes justified because they have invented a mythical Barack. At least they are capable of recognizing Obama making logical statements when it matches their minuscule view on world affairs; that's progress for the ultra-conservatives (i.e. Fascists).
Let us know of those great war victories of the Republican Presidents. Feel free to include Reagan's defeat of Grenada or you could include George H. W. Bush defeat of Iraq, which left Saddam Husein in power.
Posted in: Obama, receiving Nobel Peace Prize, says war sometimes justified
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goodDonkey
Sarge said:
I guess if everything were that simple then you would be a genius. But it is not that simple or the Bush tax cuts would have resulted in our economy rising to the level of the Clinton economy and beyond. It did not even come close. You cannot infinitely cut taxes and see a positive result. There is a time to cut taxes. But in reality there is an optimum tax rate for every economic tier at any given time but is constantly changing as time moves on (stability in the marketplace may mean that is remains constant for longer periods of time). It is a dynamic system that is complicated and not simple like you try to portray it. There are a myriad of other factors at play.
Furthermore, with your reasoning the rules applied to the financial markets and banks following the enormous crash of '29 would never have been put into place and we would have continued to see busts and booms of epic proportions that cannot compare to the relatively stable economic environment that we have had for many decades. We have occasional recessions but not the series of depressions we might have had without the banking and investment rules imposed in the 1930's. We need rules but we must use restraint on imposing new rules to allow our markets to flow freely. I have spoken out, long ago, on the need for regulation in the derivatives market emphasizing the need to regulate credit default swap markets. I also said we must not over regulate risk. I have never been against credit default swaps but I believe they need to be part of the regulated market and not completely unregulated as they have been. 700 trillion was a ridiculous figure of total credit default swaps and it far exceeded the alleged insured financial instruments. The chains of credit default swaps were especially disconcerting. Instead of trading a swap, individuals and institutions would make another swap creating a chain in which all those tied to the swap would fail if the original financial instrument failed. With stock options there are no such chains you buy and sell puts or calls exchanging them in a trade rather than compounding them. Just like with credit default swaps you may buy an option that you do not own. This could result in a huge monetary liability but it is limited in scope because it is not a chain of derivative holders as in a credit default swap.
Sarge, it is time you realized that in a dynamic financial environment new regulations must be made from time to time; just as old regulations need to be modified or retired from time to time. I am not saying tax cuts are never the best solution I am saying that "The only way for the economy to recover is ... by cutting taxes" is incredibly naive. Obviously, by "getting the hell out of the way of private business" was a failure in the late 1920's and a degree of regulation is needed. I would never claim to understand what would be the appropriate level of taxation or regulation at any given time but I do know that none is not the answer.
Posted in: Obama blasts banks for opposing financial overhaul
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goodDonkey
Bento said:
Nonsense! Being non-judgmental or even defending another person's actions is in no way and indicator of similar traits. Making such claims is simply a personal attack to try to prove a point. "Men like you ..." - you don't have a clue what Numbskull or any other poster on JT is "like."
In all reality the essence of your argument is that because people disagree with you on moral issues they must be immoral.
I thought this was a place for intellectual discussion not a church.
Posted in: Tiger Woods to take 'indefinite' leave from golf
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goodDonkey
Oh, the postulations of puritanical prudes. I must have missed the part where he was screwing women on the golf course during tournaments. People like to braid golf and outside sexual activity or any other number of activities to get their agenda forced on others. It is about control as usual; the puritans want to apply their prudish standards upon every segment of society. If Tiger Woods sex life has anything to do with golf let me know. Otherwise it would appear to just be part of the redneck agenda.
Serial adulterer. what a joke. Take up a damn collection and buy a couple of million scarlet letter capital 'A' 's. If you refuse to mind your own business then do it right.
Posted in: Tiger Woods to take 'indefinite' leave from golf
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goodDonkey
RomeoRamenII said:
Please! That is why a couple of hundred million people will be honoring him in the United States. RomeoRamen is just pissed because you can add close to a billion more people around the world that will honor Teddy. Conservatives like RomeoRamen think that anyone who is not a knuckle-dragger is a liberal.
Posted in: Political luminaries to pay tribute to Kennedy
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goodDonkey
USARonin posted the results of a search engine search. However none of the results had one single person stating they heard Joe Wilson claim what USARonin said Joe Wilson said. Not One! You will have to do better than that when trying to spread conservative propaganda on JT.
I am just asking for one person at the "many parties" as you claim on the "cocktail circuit" as you claim, before that is the date we have confirmed that Cheney outed Plame.
Just one person to support your claim. A simple request!
Posted in: CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left
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goodDonkey
I loved this guys take on torture so I posted it seperate:
Merle L. Pribbenow, a 27-year veteran of the agency's clandestine Directorate of Operations. Writing in Studies in Intelligence, the CIA's in-house journal, Pribbenow recalled that an old college friend had recently expressed his belief that "the terrorist threat to America was so grave that any methods, including torture, should be used to obtain the information we need." The friend was vexed that Pribbenow's former colleagues "had not been able to 'crack' these prisoners." Pribbenow sought an answer by revisiting the arcane case of Nguyen Van Tai, the highest-ranking Vietcong prisoner captured and interrogated by both South Vietnamese and American forces during the Vietnam War. Re-examining in detail the techniques used by the South Vietnamese (protracted torture that included electric shocks; beatings; various forms of water torture; stress positions; food, water, and sleep deprivation) and by the Americans (rapport-building and no violence), Pribbenow reached a stark conclusion: "While the South Vietnamese use of torture did result (eventually) in Tai's admission of his true identity, it did not provide any other usable information," he wrote. In the end, he said, "it was the skillful questions and psychological ploys of the Americans, and not any physical infliction of pain, that produced the only useful (albeit limited) information that Tai ever provided." But perhaps most noteworthy was Pribbenow's conclusion: "This brings me back to my college classmate's question. The answer I gave him -- one in which I firmly believe -- is that we, as Americans, must not let our methods betray our goals," he said. "There is nothing wrong with a little psychological intimidation, verbal threats, bright lights and tight handcuffs, and not giving a prisoner a soft drink and a Big Mac every time he asks for them. There are limits, however, beyond which we cannot and should not go if we are to continue to call ourselves Americans. America is as much an ideal as a place, and physical torture of the kind used by the Vietnamese (North as well as South) has no place in it."
Posted in: CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left
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goodDonkey
Alphaape said:
I do not vote for nor do I live in a Taliban territory. I am an American. When my government kills it kills it my name whether I like it or not. When my government does good it does good in your name whether you like it or not.
You choose to stoop to their level I do not.
If so, prove it!
I'll listen to agents who actually worked in the field all their lives. I already posted a former CIA Director's statement here are more.
Former FBI agent Ali Soufan also indicated that the harsh interrogation techniques may actually have hindered the collection of intelligence, causing a high-value prisoner to stop cooperating - during congressional hearings.
For all the bullshit that has been espoused why not listen to an actual expert, William Egan Colby, who died before our most recent Bush was ever elected president. That would be former CIA Director, William E. Colby.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkanFveaCn0
High-profile retired CIA officers like Bob Baer, Frank Anderson, and Vincent Cannistraro spoke out in November of 2005 about their opposition to torture on practical grounds (Cannistraro said that detainees will "say virtually anything to end their torment"). Burton L. Gerber, a decorated Moscow station chief who retired in 1995 after 39 years with the CIA, surprised some when he said he opposes torture "because it corrupts the society that tolerates it." "The reason I believe that torture corrupts the torturers and society," Gerber says, "is that a standard is changed, and that new standard that's acceptable is less than what our nation should stand for. I think the standards in something like this are crucial to the identity of America as a free and just society."
From 1972 to 1975, Frank Snepp was the CIA's top interrogator in Saigon, where he choreographed elaborate, protracted sessions with Nguyen Van Tai and, at one point, seven other senior Vietcong captives. To the question of whether torture or abusive behavior by interrogators is justified, Snepp's answer is unequivocally no. And the fact that this point isn't understood at the agency today, Snepp says, is a sign of serious problems.
I actually to not want any CIA agents prosecuted; this was forced on them by the executive branch.
Posted in: CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left
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goodDonkey
USARonin said:
HILIARIOUS stuff !!!!
Which party were you at? Or you can just give us the name of the person who heard this at a party. Hey Ronin, "Everybody knows he said it." Hey Ronin - "He said it all the time."
So many parties, it should be simple to come up with some names of people who heard this. I'll be waiting.
I heard the same bullshit over and over. I guess when the Republicans got busted so many times for dishonoring America they just started lying to get out of messes. I heard so many smears by the Republicans on Valerie Plame. What I did not hear was the CIA, under the Bush Administration, confirm one damn lie that these gutless wonders were circulating to smear her name.
It takes a real lowlife to out a CIA undercover agent just because you can't stand that you were exposed by her husband for lying about WMD; specifically both manufacturing, distributing and further promulgating lies about yellow cake.
It went down like this:
1.) Joe Wilson exposed the lies about Iraq getting yellow cake to build a nuclear weapon.
2.) Cheney outed Plame.
3.) Cheney's underlings got sacrificed because Cheney got caught.
4.) The Conservative Machine put out lies saying others outied Plame not Cheney who really did
5.) The Conservative Machine put out lies concerning Valerie Plame's job - saying she was unimportant.
6.) The conservatives got caught again lying.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/17/60minutes/main3378089.shtml
Now Cheney has been caught telling the CIA to withhold information which is clearly illegal as I posted the law on another thread.
Cheney is now whining about a probe that may expose his corruption.
Posted in: CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left
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goodDonkey
R.I.P. to the last of the sons of Joe Kennedy. Teddy's legacy is inseparable from the Kennedy dynasty. Although he was a powerful U.S. Senator in his own right his place in the bigger picture must include the tragedies of his brothers and the triumphs of his father. I think this is what made Edward Kennedy a great Senator. Once he gave up his aspirations for the presidency he focused on his place in the U.S. Senate. In my opinion he successfully reinvented himself as a Senate leader, no longer striving for higher office he began to excel. Contrary to those who would only show bitterness toward a man who has made many mistakes in his life, as we all have, he did reach across the aisle. He was deeply concerned about children, focusing on education and their welfare. Amoung his chief concerns towards child welfare was their access to medical care. He later focused those concerns toward every American asking that everyone had access to affordable health care.
Many a Republican Senator and many former Republican Senators will be raising a glass of Irish Whiskey to toast to Teddy as they and so many Democrats have been doing since his death. As for me, I roasted a batch of Hawaiian Peaberry Kauai Reserve Coffee beans last night and will be drinking nothing stronger.
As a footnote he only lasted two weeks after is older sister died (11 years older).
Posted in: Sen Edward Kennedy dies at 77
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goodDonkey
Skip said:
Who said let the guys in Gitmo go free? Did Cheney put them there? Who is to say their interrogators are the same agents who put them there in the first place? So who did "put them there" and who is trying to "put them in jail?" It doesn't take a mind reader to see the implications you are making were never expressed by anyone and it remains to be seen if you can even identify who "the guys," "the people" and "them" are.
skip said:
You are the one making the argument that others should risk their lives for their beliefs. So why shouldn't someone who believes in nothing not risk his life? Don't call for others life until you are ready to risk your own. I know you didn't tell me not to show my young age. Besides the fact that I turned 51 years old today at this early hour in the morning in America I could go through your posts on this thread alone and show a litany of errors that I would not have made at 30 years old much less 35 years old. The bottom line would be that you could not even recognize when someone was mimicking you.
"No, better yet. If proven that these things did save lives, those who were against it should give their lives up." Millions of people were and still are "against it." And yet the suggestion is made and then further defended that the "better yet" way would be for those millions, easily tens of millions if not 100 million, people "should give their lives up." But a person who asks for this mass destruction of human life should give up nothing. Then there is the issue of "save lives." Since it is plural I will assume the threshold would be as low as two lives saved. I guess it does not matter how many non-Americans should die to save two lives. It does not matter their level of innocence. Just as long as the people with the right ethnicity did not lose their life and those with the wrong ethnicity did lose their life to ensure that in fact it "did save lives."
How can anyone not find it morally reprehensible to say an innocent persons life only has the value that their nationality, religion, or ethnicity assigns value to that life. Yes, completely innocent people were sent to Gitmo. They were as young as 14 years old.
Posted in: CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left
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goodDonkey
sarge: "Cheney did no such thing." "Dream on." "Incredible, isn't it?"
Lame.
Posted in: CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left
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goodDonkey
Thanks Taka, but the real question remains; Did Jesse give up any secrets under torture?
skipthesong said:
So, let me get this straight. If those things didn't save lives, Skip is ready to give his life up?
Wow, this grammatical context interpolation stuff really is fun. Almost as fun as putting words in other people's mouths.
Posted in: CIA interrogation probe steams those on right and left