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
I mean there is fundamentally no difference in the direction Obama has declared he is taking the US/the world, fundamentally different, that is, from that in which the present Administration has been going.
Posted in: Obama asks Gates to stay at Pentagon
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taniwha
Gee, is there anyone surprised at that Obama would choose Gates for the job?
Fundamentally, there just is not any difference in the direction Obama has already declared he is taking America/the world. His pre-election run up speeches made it clear that he would carry on the war against terror indefinitely. At least he certainly didn't offer an end to it. Rather Obama offered a scrap to the peaceniks that he would pull the troops from Iraq. Talk about opportunism. And even then he never said he'd be pulling the US bases out of Iraq.
Obama has also directly threatened Iran with a military strike. Surely that would tell anyone that the Whitehouse isn't going to be returning to diplomacy as its principle tool of negotiation where foreign affaires are concerned, not anytime soon, like this side of the next millennium.
And, Obama has made it very clear in more than one speech that he will be calling for the re-instatement of the draft. Sheesh. Don't be surprised if Obama as commander in Chief is initiating the commencement of the next World War. It ain't going to be pretty.
Posted in: Obama asks Gates to stay at Pentagon
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taniwha
Forget the insinuations that Obama has a socialist mission. The man is clearly not a socialist. Accusations of Obama being some kind of closet Fidel are as nonsensical as attempting to paint him as a terrorist because he may have conversations with Muslims.
The man has spent a lifetime working towards this achievement of becoming the first black American president. It would really be something had it not meant selling himself into the fraudulent two party system that serves to mask the plutocracy that really governs the US.
Obama stands in reality not for the middle class and most certainly not for the working class. He stands for incredible wealth and that is the beast he will be seen to serve in the years of his first term in office. It means that the Obama presidency will be driven by the same impulses that served up the kind of policies that filled the world with dread during the years of the Bush Administration.
Obama is a facade. If only he really had bought in the kind of changes so many Americans and so much of the world see him standing for.
Posted in: Obama sweeps to victory, says change has come to America
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taniwha
Obama also thinks a military strike against Iran is not out of the question.
The truth is harsh, Obama does not stand for fundamental change in the kind of policy direction the Bush Administration has been taking the US these past 8 years. While the rhetoric from the new president will now be eloquently delivered the content will not shift from the course already determined. And that means not in the domestic as well as in the foreign arena.
Obama is a defender of the interests that paid for his and the Democrats win over the faction of the American ruling elite represented by McCain and the Republicans. But in Obama's speeches at home and abroad on his last trip to Europe he made it very clear where his political roots were grounded.
Remember it was Obama who supported the Bailout of Wall Street, it was Obama who made it clear harsh cut backs to social services and health care are in store for the American public (although he regularly painted these as beneficial to those most in need).
Just to underline how so not different in terms of broad policy direction the Obama Administration will be compared to the outgoing Bush Administration it was recently reported in mainstream media that Obama behind the scenes has asserted very recently that a US military strike against Iran will be a likelihood.
Posted in: Obama sweeps to victory, says change has come to America
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taniwha
Madadverts
All very true in so many ways.
But if were able to catch any of the last few months of Obama's campaign speeches, recorded in video or text, the audience he talks to principally are the financiers and supporters in other ways of the current administration. So while it is obvious Obama is eloquent, intelligent, informed, and 'in touch', the fundamental changes stop there. Obama has already signalled in those speeches that the direction of American policy both foreign and domestic will remain the same.
My guess is that because there is just so much hope and trust being placed in Obama as president by such a huge section of the US population (and a good part of the worlds as well), the disappointment felt by these people over the next few years will be huge.
Posted in: World hopes for a 'less arrogant America'
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taniwha
The problem with 'US foreign aid' is that the benefactor benefits the most, and to the ultimate cost of the very people that are the supposed focus of their aid.
Its one hell of a fraud really.
Posted in: World hopes for a 'less arrogant America'
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taniwha
Murdoch on terrorism.
Never mind that vast majority of deaths so far in Afghanistan are those of the locals, with most of the explosions from coalition munitions dropped from planes and delivered by so called smart weapons like drones. A large majority of the most recent casualties have been local women and children killed by US missile strikes on their villages.
As for Russia and Georgia the fact remains that it was Georgia that fired the first shots were Georgian troops in Ossetia upon unarmed civilian residents of apartment blocks. and those first shots that did the most damage were from heavy weaponry, fore mostly Georgian tanks. The UN is currently investigating evidence of war crimes by Georgia in those first days that resulted in Russia sending in its own armed forces.
Murdoch is a parasite.
Posted in: Murdoch: China, India will reshape the world
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taniwha
Concepts like GDP and GNP are not measures of the mean wealth of individuals in any one country, certainly not indicators of mean well being. The reality of these labels is they are taken to mean more than they were originally intended, and this is usually intentionally for political reasons.
While Japan may be considered a 'rich country' still, it is not wealth that is spread amongst the population. It is in the hands of a very few who own the corporations and who affect most directly the running of the country itself. Reality is such that Japan's vast middle class was a creation that could only be sustained for a short period of time, from the 1960's through until he 1990's. This is not so different to most of the industrially developed economies.
The middle class has been shrinking across the world for a long while, and in Japan the pace of the shrinkage increased rapidly with the privatization program pushed by Junichiro Koizumi's government. Legislation that saw increased entrenchment of the permanent workforce and their replacement with part-time contracts, and the encouragement of the 'freeter' phenomenon has resulted in thousands /millions of the population dropping out of the category of 'middle class' and into that of the 'working poor'.
Posted in: Japan's burgeoning class: Working poor
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taniwha
...of violence, family abuse, suicide, crime...
Poverty certainly isn't anything to celebrate.
Posted in: Japan's burgeoning class: Working poor
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taniwha
Interesting how Obama at least on the topic of foreign policies virtually steals the Republican traditional right wing policies from under the feet of McCain.
John McCain as a result has been left with virtually only the energy versus environment debate in which to establish his own right wing creds, as he calls out on the podium "drill baby drill".
If the ruling elite had wanted to mollify the voting population with a Democratic president after two terms of the neo-cons while ensuring there was no change in policy direction which is to ensure American hegemony over world energy supplies and control over local dissent to the coming wars that will entail, then what better way would there be to do it then to place a charismatic, eloquent speaker such as Obama as the frontsman.
Posted in: McCain dismisses poll numbers; insists he will win
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taniwha
Which is the point I'm making above in reply to Some14some. Globalism means all economies are inextricably intertwined together. I am not saying Japan is deserving of a damn good whupping from a recession, only that Japan will be unable to escape the recession. History tells us that rapid rallies in the stock markets come before a big fall.
Gulp. I must have missed reading that rule in the textbook. Are you going to test us on it?
Posted in: Nikkei closes above 9,000
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taniwha
Fair point. But the same could be said for the interactions between other governments and local stockmarkets at this time, couldn't it?
Back in 1929 the US government took the same extra-ordinary measures (as Japan is taking and as most countries are taking following on from the US Bail-out) to secure calm again in the stockmarket. It did not stop the crash when it came.
Japan is in recession. The Yen is being manipulated by foreign investment because it is seen as a relatively safe currency at this time. Japan is totally dependent on its exports to China, to the US, and to Europe, and unfortunately the buyers are no longer making the orders they once did. In my assessment, which I think is pretty realistic, Japan is in for hard times, like the majority of the rest of the world in the immediate future.
Posted in: Nikkei closes above 9,000
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taniwha
And would they care?
About Obama. As he is now apparently "on track" to an election win, it should be no more than prudent to consider what his presidency will bring to the US and indeed the world. While the speeches of both candidates and their running mates tell their supporters for the most part what they want to hear, it is far more insightful perhaps to listen to what is being said by those they will call to serve in their administration.
The current US Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been widely rumoured to be assured of staying in the job should Obama take office. On Tuesday Gates gave a speech on nuclear policy to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP). It serves as a clear warning of what lies ahead. He said that conditions in the world today are such they parallel those that existed just prior to WW1. Significantly he listed those US friendly states that by choice have no nuclear weapons, he listed 6, Japan and Germany were not among them and the omittal was not explained.
Gates went on to argue that the US must include nuclear weapons in what has become known as the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strike. In other words, that there must be a proviso that the US first-strike could include the large-scale use of nukes. Gates followed this astonishing threat - to all not willing to stand with it - with the call to substantially increase funding of nuclear weapons programs. As many of us also know, because this last was far more widely reported by the mass media, Gates also called for the establishment of a separate and central command for "nuclear policy and oversight" including a new dedicated headquarters office at Kirkland Air Force Base.
Gates speech far more than any by Obama or McCain for that matter indicates strongly that following the outcome of the 2008 presidential election, the US ruling elite intends to pursue a foreign policy far more aggressive than that in place at present. This will happen no matter whether its will be a Democrat or a Republican administration.
Posted in: Obama now on track for Electoral College majority
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taniwha
Voxman
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong again. That's three strikes feller. Take a walk.
Posted in: Rays of hope from Obama
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taniwha
Chalk up this kind of event as another warning of what is likely to come. The most volatile rises and falls in stocks historically happen before a crash. Prior to last week the largest recorded peaks occurred just prior to the 1929 stock market crash, which heralded the onset of the Great Depression.
Posted in: Nikkei closes above 9,000
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taniwha
The past two elections demonstrated how readily the Democratic Party was to submit to the will of the extreme right amongst the financial elite ruling the USA. I don't see any reason for that tendency to have shifted. This would then point to a win by McCain and Palin.
The stealing of two presidential elections by George Bush junior was not only brazen but up to this very day unquestioned by the Democratics, at least not officially. There has been no call by the Democratic Party to investigate how both senators Gore and Kerry in turn lost what polls clearly indicated was their win.
However, Obama and Biden have secured such a significant lead in the majority of the polls it will need to be a virtual 'terrorist' act to bring about a McCain and Palin win. This can't be discounted. But the reality is, given the reactionary speeches by Obama who has topped most of John McCain's direst threats against Iran, Afghanistan, and all and sundry likely targets for a US military strike, and after Biden's ominous warning the American people must brace themselves for certain harsh decisions by Obama that will not be popular, that the ideology of the American extreme right is in safe hands if Obama becomes president.
Posted in: Rays of hope from Obama
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taniwha
The guy gets less than 4 hours sleep?
JT, someone might want to fix the am's and pm's in the article. If this really is his regular schedule, his investors might want to be a little concerned about this CEOs ability to make decisions.
Posted in: Social lending takes root in Japan
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taniwha
And its still got typos.
So what about the EU, US global summit? Think it will find the solution to funnelling more money faster to the banks and corporations in these coming times of hardship. You almost have to feel pity for that lot, don't you? How are they going to make the population continue to believe in capitalism anymore?
There should be plenty of work in doing just that for the advertising companies. Perhaps it will be the biggest challenge they've ever been given. Making the masses believe capitalism works for them.
Posted in: EU, US call for a global finance summit
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taniwha
Pressed the 'submit' instead of 'preview', it happens. Apologies. Here's what the reply.
Guess so.
There’s the one where the world's financial system collapses. Or the one where the parasitic activities of greedy corporate speculators on Wall Street and in Washington bring the US financial system became a virtual black hole that suck the world economy into its vortex. Or the one where the war in Iraq becomes a financial and political disaster for Washington. Or there’s the one where the war on terror creates more terrorism in the world rather than less, and drags in more countries like Turkey.
Oh, I forgot, they were all accidents, that no one could have foreseen, the result of no planning what so ever.
Guess those excuses will hold up in the history books.
Anyway, it seem that some of us don't know a conspiracy such as is the reason d'etre for the war on terror, and the invasion of Iraq, and the bail out of Wall Street, even if we are the ones who suffer its effect.
I've been posting on JT that all of this would happen since just before the invasion of Iraq went ahead in 2003. I also have posted the reasons why. Its in the JT archives, dude. I didn't dream up the conspiracy theories that led to the war on terror or to the coming deep and long recession, Washington did along with their buddies on Wall Street, and abroad.
Posted in: EU, US call for a global finance summit
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taniwha
Guess so. I've been posting on JT that all of this would happen since just before the invasion of Iraq went ahead in 2003. I also have posted the reasons why. Its in the JT archives, dude. I didn't dream up the conspiracy theories that led to the war on terror or to the coming deep and long recession, Washington did along with their buddies on Wall Street, and abroad.
Oh, you mean the one where the world's financial system collapses? Or the one where the parasitic activities of greedy corporate speculators on Wall Street and in Washington bought the US financial system became a virtual black hole that sucked the world economy into its vortex? Or the one where the war in Iraq would be a financial and political disaster for Washington? Or the one where the war on terror would create more terrorism in the war rather than less, drag in more countries like Turkey?
Oh, yeah, forgot, they were all accidents, no one could have foreseen, the result of no planning what so ever.
Guess those excuses will hold up in the history books.
Guess some of us don't know the difference between a pretend conspiracy, such as reason d'etre for the war on terror, and the invasion of Iraq, and the bail out of Wall Street, and a real conspiracy. Even when they are living it.
Posted in: EU, US call for a global finance summit