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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taniwha
Dude, they've socialized the losses and nationalized the profits. But that's not Socialism, that's Capitalism in its dying stages. That's what happens when the wealthy have to run to the bunkers, they make the workers pay the bill. The workers after all are where added value is extracted in the first instance. That's how Capitalism works.
In fact, this is how the real character of Capitalism becomes much clearer toward the end, unfortunately.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
SezWho2
I accept that in part. Because it is clear that Barack Obama is following the trend of American pragmatist politics. Part of the growing problem for his publicity campaign though is that the political pragmatism of his words (e.g. more troops to Afghanistan, accusing Russia of beginning the conflict with Georgia, urging Congress to pass the bailout of Wall Street and so on) conflict with his posture as the idealist visionary who will bring beneficial change to America.
The pragmatic content of his speech is aimed at the right wing military industrial corporate audience, particularly his Wall Street campaign funders. He aims to show he can 'out McCain' John McCain in fulfilling their imperialist aims abroad, and the necessary slashing of expenditure on the domestic front. His John Fitzgerald Kennedy styled image is there to ring in the old Democrat audience yearning for a return to the days of the American Dream, or at least a clear break from the current nightmare.
Posted in: Obama assails McCain over health care proposal
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taniwha
Yes, that would be the 1999 repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, the bill being passed into legislation under Bill Clinton's watch in agreement with the congressional Republicans.
Which demonstrates that both sides of the House were responsible for legislation that has led directly to the credit crises, and the current rapidly progressing financial meltdown.
A truly bipartisan effort.
Posted in: Battered U.S. financial industry faces more oversight
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taniwha
If Barack intended to boost social services (including health care) he would not have supported the plundering of the government coffers to serve up relief for the wealthy few.
Barack's deeds so far counter his words.
Posted in: Obama assails McCain over health care proposal
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taniwha
Obama is making promises he has absolutely no way of fulfilling.
Reality break.
The handover of hundreds of billions of dollars in public funds to Wall Street will preclude the use of those funds to aid working Americans. Should Obama win the presidency (and I don't think so) the legislation that Obama has himself helped to pass will in large measure set the agenda for his administration. It will be one of harsh austerity, budget cuts and attacks on essential social services.
Facts speak for themselves. There is no way Obama can slap together an improved health system when the full burden of this financial meltdown (i.e. the failure of the capitalist financial system) has just been shifted onto the backs of American workers - while providing the wealthiest people in the country with a windfall.
Posted in: Obama assails McCain over health care proposal
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taniwha
The regulators didn't exist. Decades of deregulation rendered regulators such as they are impotent. Travis Plunkett is making appropriate noises now, but the position he occupies has been powerless to affect change in the lending practices of American companies ever since Reagan and particularly Clinton passed the bills that deregulated the industry and set the parasites loose on millions of hapless borrowers.
"Existing authority"? They had none.
Posted in: Battered U.S. financial industry faces more oversight
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taniwha
The word 'socialism' like 'terrorism' can be tossed about endlessly. Hey, now its a label too if that is convenient to your 'argument'.
See my above post: "The only true example of Marxist Socialism to have existed was for a short period of time beginning with the October 1917 take over of government by the Bolsheviks and only up until Joseph Stalin's take-over in 1924..."
North Korea is a Maoist Communist state, just as Pol Pot's Cambodia was also. There have been others modeled on Stalinist communism, one example today is Castro's Cuba, another yesterday was Saddam's Iraq. These are all examples of dictatorships.
Whether they were based on Stalinist or Maoist Communism closely or loosely all of the above were nationalist orientated (not Internationalist!) and all were dictatorships (not Democracies).
Capitalism is attached to the concept of nation state, Socialism is not. Marxist Socialism requires that the economic and political system be embraced internationally. A planned economy is doomed to failure if it is not international. It just so happens that resources are located in specific locations and not equally distributed, hence the need to internationalise the system.
The Stalin and Mao regimes and the rest who modeled them were dictatorships who labelled their project Socialist, and then determined it to be Communist. They were rogues and villians and people suffered because of the drive of those regime's for absolute power.
Whether the Obama and Biden or the McCain and Palin team get into power you the move in America toward a nationalist dictatorship as the final result will greatly accelarate. Whether you define it as Capitalist (it will be) or socialist (you might label it as such) won't change the nature of the beast.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Ha ha. And what? You are saying don't have?
You know something? In times like these it is smarter to consider advice from places you never thought of going to before. Particularly when the advice you followed booted you right up your jacksie (I'm presuming you are something of a free marketeer).
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Hi tclh
Go to www.wsws.org
That will be a more interesting way to understand what really is quite complex, much more interesting than it would be to pick your way through economics 101.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
You forgot Capitalism. Still just a theory. So far it hasn't worked. At least not as a sustainable economic and political reality.
What it has been though is a step. Nothing is absolute and forever. The longer Capitalism is clung to in the hope that it can be revived the less democracy we all have, and the more miserable will be the condition of the world as a whole. That degeneration of Capitalism is not a theory. It is happening now right now.
One way to look at it is parallel the degeneration of world Capitalism with the full growth of cells in living creatures. The telomeres in a cell allow for division to take place a set number of times after which the cell deteriates and dies. If life is prolonged the living body is subject to ever more disease and corruption until it does finally die.
Capitalism's depends on natural resources and division of markets but the world has fixed parameters in terms of both dependencies. When Capitalism can no longer grow because the natural resources have reached a stage where profit can no longer be extracted (e.g. peak oil) and markets can no longer be divided it is dying.
Capitalism depends on constant growth to remain healthy. In the final stages it must eat itself, and this means war and repression of democracy.
Democracy by the way is not dependent on Capitalism. It is though dependent on the rule of the majority. Do you see now? If not you will in a couple more years, or fewer than that.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
This plainly as history has made clear is a recipe for disaster on a horrifically large scale, but this is the nature of dictatorship after all. This is what can take place when democracy is stamped out.
That most certainly is not where any country would want to be heading.
Unfortunately, dictatorship is what will eventuate in order to control the population if the massive divide between rich and the poor remains when the ranks of the poor will grow huge. Remember right now that within the US approximately 1% of the population own most of the country's wealth. How will they control civil unrest that is going to emerge? It seems possible they will protect the current financial dictatorship by implementing a political dictatorship.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
First up, China is running a Capitalist economy fully integrated with the global economy.
Secondly, China implemented the Maoist Communist model of an economic and political systerm after they evicted the Japanese Imperial Army. That is true. But this was an adaption of the Stalinist model reshaped by Mao to fit the rural peasant society that made up most of China. It was a dictatorship, ruled by a nationalist bureaucracy.
That is not Socialism.
The only true example of Marxist Socialism to have existed was for a short period of time beginning with the October 1917 take over of government by the Bolsheviks and only up until Joseph Stalin's take-over in 1924 when his faction pushed for greater market liberalisation. From there Stalin did away with the Socialist conception of an International organisation replacing it with
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Ha ha
"A dictatorship is a definite responsibility". That's was a revealing slip up. I meant this. "A dictatorship is a definite possibility"
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Sarge
Well, basically its going to get messy.
There is no way a very large number of "our citizens" who will very soon find themselves in a truly dire financial situation are going to accept the kind of regulations that will be imposed on them by the government in the coming years. They will find it particularly difficult to accept given the massive amount of wealth in the hands of the very few who rule them.
A dictatorship is a definite responsibility, and that involves the suppression of many kinds of freedoms one might expect in a democracy. One of those freedoms you won't could automatically expect to have rescinded in the US is the right of citizens to carry arms, and nor is it likely they will be able to own them.
So my guess is if a dictatorship is where you are going, and I believe that to be true, yes, things will get a bit messy.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
MrDick
Surely did. It was a relief no doubt for you not to hear Palin repeat her belief that dinosaurs and human beings walked the earth together 6000 years ago.
You have little need to worry then, not for the immediate future at least. Before America become Socialist it will become a Dictatorship.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Bang on! They barely touched on it at all.
In fact they both studiously avoided engaging in any kind of discussion on the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Which was glaringly obvious because most of the TV viewing audience would have been waiting for the blame game over the cause of the virtual leveling of the American economy. There has ever been only one financial crises bigger than the one America now faces (and likely the entire world) - and that was the Great Depression.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Its good that people are questioning the half truths and lies behind Palin's (and McCain's) utterances. But to be honest to yourself you need to look long and hard also at what Biden said during the debates and at what Obama has been offering.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
The last section paragraph above shoud be in quotes.
"On domestic policy, the debate was framed by the agreement of both parties on the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street. Obama, McCain, and Biden all voted for the bailout legislation the day before the vice presidential debate, demonstrating that, despite the exchange of charges and countercharges, the two campaigns share a common standpoint."
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/deba-o04.shtml
But read the whole article, it will throw a spotlight onto the whole inane posturing of the Democratic party as an alternative to the Republicans.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Warning, warning Biden coming in from 9 o'clock. What the heck, the man is attacking McCain and Palin from the right.
Biden echoed Obama’s call for military action against Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and for a a many more US military than at present injected into Afghanistan. Then he claims the White House has been too soft on Hamas and the Lebanese Hezbollah. Then Biden boasts of his years of experience as advocate for US military intervention, in Bosnia in the early 1990s, in Serbia in 1999, and today advocating for militarily taking oil-rich Sudan, and on the back of the misery of Darfur as a pretext.
Hard man. I guess Palin is going to need to get meaner.
In response to one question from moderator Gwen Ifill of PBS, Biden boasted of his long experience as an advocate of US military interventions overseas, going back to Bosnia in the early 1990s, the US bombing of Serbia in 1999, and ongoing efforts to engineer a major military push in oil-rich Sudan, using the mass suffering in Darfur as a pretext.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate
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taniwha
Palin really was sparking on all cylinders, its amazing what difference a week can make.
She was almost light years from her 'caught in the headlights' rendition she gave us when interviewed by Katie Couric. No big goofs. See, that's the brilliance of 'allowing' her the one mistake with the general's name, anyone can get a name wrong. McCain can do that.
But she was still the same Palin. The fact her handlers did not direct her to suppress the 'hockey mum' actually meant that she managed to make Biden look the dried up old politician.
The one moment that Biden came alive was when he defended his experience as a single father who had grieved. I don't know that his expression of personal grief in the face of so much public anquish came across all that well. At best he looked slightly human for a moment. Palin on the other hand came across like a football stadium cheerleader who had for an entire 90 minutes sounded reasonably intelligent. And in the end, that version of human by comparison would have resonated far more with an audience amongst whom I have little doubt, there would have been a good number who were watching just to see her eaten alive by the grizzled senator of more than 30 years.
Posted in: Biden, Palin spar over Iraq, economy in debate