Hito Bito comments

This is, I repeat here once again, not Japan's situation alone.

For example, in the US, a country where "immigration" is often touted as being the "answer" to a declining population (it isn't, but still...), fully 30% of "households" consist of...a single person. Alone. Compare that to 1940, where the number was just 8%.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/07/12/opinions/single-people-increase-america-filipovic/index.html

The CNN editorial I got this info from largely touts this as "an achievement" since women now have careers and blah blah blah, you know the feminist drill (but notice, too, the author doing all this lauding of singles just happens to be happily married)...however the results are the same. What sounded good in your 20s is hard to cope with for most once they "miss" your window for chances of a happy marriage or reproduction. For most "eternal singles" it wasn't planned...it just happens...

Anyway, it's not the "duty" of any one woman or man to have babies to "save" their nation. That's just stupid. One woman could have four kids...and with 30% of the population barren (plus 30% of men also not reproducing) you'd still be losing population! Did "you" fail society? lol. Hardly...

Plus, I'm appalled by people who go ahead and have kids they don't want, because it's "what's done", and then treat them in ways that reveal to the kids that they're a burden...better to not bring those destined to be future emotional wrecks into existence then, no?

"The days of growth at all costs is over. We need new leadership and ideas to manage the shrinkage and decline."

This is the wisest comment so far. The whole system paradigm of "more, increased, growth, up, expand" is coming to an end. All the world's "isms" up until now have been founded on the premise where nonstop growth and more is always a given. It's no longer a given. And the world had this thing called a "Baby Boom"? They don't use explosive terms like "boom" to denote a normal situation: the postwar, unipolar world was the greatest aberration in history, for many reasons, a global boom in babies being just one. So to use a "boom" as a measuring stick to be "outdone" is simply impossible, not to mention irresponsible...yet people simply cannot fathom a world that won't eternally, automatically, GROW.

The ONLY place in the world that is growing is Africa and amongst the poorest of less-developed countries (like in India). These people simply will NOT replace the economic weight that an equivalent consumer in America, Japan or the UK used to do. The Chinese have already hit peak consumption, and their population is set for a spectacular collapse in the next decade, as is Europe, Japan, South Korea and much of the world.

Yet, Japan isn't alone in its demographics problem, and since it has to face the music first, it just might be able to find some post-growth solutions that the whole world could then emulate...TBD!

"Decoupling" from China looks better and better everyday, doesn't it?

Of course, not total withdrawal from the Chinese market. But there isn't really anything that Chinese can do that other Asians can't. We've seen this with China's utter FAILURE to further its high-tech dreams on its own. Besides, personal consumption spending is in the process of collapsing.

As Chinese demographics deteriorate, so will spending, while their property and debt pyramid schemes looks set to give them a "lost decade" of their own, at least. Problem is, China ONLY HAS a decade before the whole game is up. And already, the "world's factory" is looking quite sick.

Open new markets, Japan, where people don't stupidly follow every dumb thing their greasy, fat dictators claim like in China. Japan wouldn't be the only one taking this route. China's fall will happen even more quickly as a result. Win-win.

The fact that the strongest evidence this LONG AND MEANDERING article comes up with is the following UNFOUNDED allegations should tell one all they need to know about the evidence right now:

"Although I cannot swear by it, I strongly suspect..." That's NOT proof. From a complete NOVICE who lives in the area (and who,surprise surprise! has anti-base sentiments).

"There might be other major sources of pollution (oh, really??), such as factories, for instance, but I can say for sure that the extinguisher leakages at the U.S. base are one of the contributing factors" Can you really "say for sure"...based on what? If your unproven allegations are found true, the situation can only be attributed to a TEMPORARY, ACCIDENTAL situation, not a constant ongoing thing? "...An accident that should never have happened" Yes, yes it was.

Do an investigation. Research the situation further beyond "hunches" of the locals. Use the scientific method, and if wrong is being done, prosecute or press for reparations. Because we all can't base our reality on your "hunches" or "gut feelings," now, can we?

It's unprecedented, the way this South Korean president LEADS his country rather than BEING LED around by the whims of a Japanese-hating public. It's a wonder he was even elected in the first place.

South Korea's demographic situation is even more dire than Japan's, if that is even imaginable. They were set to encounter severe economic hardships in the near future unless they could finally shake off their Hermit Kingdom-like aloofness and actively engage to make their Asian Pacific region more cooperative. Yoon has bent over backwards to align his country ever deeper with the West, and Japan is THE other cornerstone alliance partner with the US, along with South Korea. To have these two countries occupy such crucial places of strategic importance...only to have one of them stubbornly refuse to engage with Japan on a serious basis, it was never going to work long term.

Yoon knows the FACT that ALL of South Korea's own nuclear plants ROUTINELY dump TWICE the radioactive elements that Fukushima plans to dump, into the sea, each and every year, for decades running, without ANY questioning of South Korea's commitment to food safety. The latest preposterous criticisms regarding "safety" of seafood because of Japan's plans to release a FRACTION of what the Koreans of Chinese habitually do are, literally, to be laughed at for the ignorant hypocrisy they represent.

I applaud Yoon for not kowtowing to the fools in Beijing (let's talk about the real POLLUTION culprits, shall we??) or the rabidly hate-filled idiots to his Left in his own country, and for pushing on with normalization of Korea/Japan relations based on rational realpolitk and FACTS over scientifically-silly FAKE HYSTERIA.

More info from Reuters: "The Fukushima city hall started receiving calls with country code 86, which is for China, on Thursday, and the number of such calls exceeded 200 the following day, flooding phone lines and disrupting city employees' ordinary work, a city official said.

"On the same day, elementary and junior high schools in the city, 60 km (38 miles) northwest of the crippled plant, received 65 similar calls, he said.

"When a person who understands Chinese took one of those calls, the caller made a comment (in Chinese) to the effect that, "Why are you releasing tainted water into the Pacific Ocean, which is a sea for everyone," the official said.

"Other municipalities, hotels and restaurants have also been getting such calls since the day the water release began, domestic media said.

"In China, a rock was thrown at the Japanese school in the coastal city of Qingdao on Thursday, according to the Consulate-General of Japan in the city."

Disgusting. Absolutely disgusting and completely petty on the part of the Chinese Dictatorship. Let's remind our Chinese friends that scientists have stated over and over again the FACT that Chinese nuclear power plants ROUTINELY DUMP RADIOACTIVE ISOTOPES AT LEAST THREE TIMES HIGHER THAN THAT OF FUKUSHIMA. The hypocrisy is astounding, as is the willful ignorance on the part of the brainwashed Chinese.

Non-Union Tesla wins yet another round. lol.

Never mind that the legacy automakers are losing money hand over fist already, or that Ford, to name one, printed billions of dollars of losses over their EV division, while Tesla moves from strength to strength...

I'm sure increasing the cost of their cars by 15% or more (which is what will inevitably happen...these union demands for more cash won't come out of executives' pay! lol) will only increase their competitive...er...advantages, right?

Unions care so much about their members, they'll drive their golden goose companies paying all their wages into bankruptcy before they let up. Don't believe me? Look at what the Teamsters just did to Yellow Trucking...now bankrupt, with 30,000 staff without jobs. How did THAT help "workers" any?

Gee...this wouldn't have anything to do with the Yen's value crashing by more than a third in under two years, now, would it? Or that the same goods purchased in in Japan in 2020 would now cost, on average, at least 10% more now, right?

Hooray? lol.

From Newsweek: "The water will be diluted to contain 1,500 becquerels of tritium per liter of water. The World Health Organization allows a maximum of 10,000."

You mean these people screaming about "safety", but who regularly munch on seafood during normal operations of nuclear power without batting an eye, when "acceptable" levels are several TIMES HIGHER than in this scenario...NOW they're getting concerned when only a FRACTION additional is being added to the mix? lol.

"For scale, the Pacific Ocean contains 8,400 grams of pure tritium, while Japan will release 0.06 grams (six one-hundreths of one gram) of tritium every YEAR (not day, week or month, but YEAR). ...A LIFETIME'S worth of seafood caught a few kilometres from the ocean outlet has the tritium radiation equivalent of ONE BITE OF A BANANA!", claims Nigel Marks, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at Curtin University in Australia. He added, "In South Korea and Pacific Rim nations, a disinformation campaign has whipped the public into a frenzy about the release...." You don't say! lol

"The doses to consumers of high levels of seafood from the Fukushima area are expected to be no higher than 1 microsievert per year - this is more than 2,000 times LOWER than the annual radiation dose WE ALL GET from sources of natural radiation such as cosmic rays and natural potassium-40 in the ground and in our bodies," stated Jim Smith, a professor of environmental science at the University of Portsmouth.

"There are sites in China and South Korea which discharge 3 TIMES MORE radioactive tritium than the Fukushima release. The La Hague site in Northern France discharges about 450 TIMES as much tritium than the Fukushima release and has been doing so for DECADES. NO significant radiation doses have occurred from these decade-long releases," he said.

All this "concern"...it is based on Junk Science, or worse, on Opportunistic and Cynically-Minded Politics

Wesley is 100% correct in this. The ONLY time that the race of the assailant is mentioned is...when they're "white". Other races do violence against people? It's "man" or "assailant" or "individual". Remember all those "assailants" attacking Asians during COVID? Did you hear that 95% of all attacks against Asians were NOT by "whites" but by..."assailants". Hmm...

You can pretend this is incorrect, but it's not. It's irrefutable. It's policy in the mainstream press. And you're led around by the nose to the conclusion that "whites" are the only ones doing hate crimes. That's also patently false, recently, exceedingly so.

It's amazing how proud these people are of their ignorance. Willful ignorance, a pathological need to ignore the facts of the situation, in order to score petty, short term political points.

What will change? Nothing. In fact, you'll see the resolve of the Japanese quietly become firmer, now that they have THE support of both science and the international regulatory body overseeing such areas. China has...nothing but spite. As for "allies"? lol. Fiji and the Solomon Islands, you say? That's...pretty PATHETIC, China. Surely you could do better at stirring up "friends" beyond some dinky islands literally thousands of miles away from Japan's shores? lol. Nope!

"Never argue with an idiot. They will drag you down to their level and beat you with experience." -Mark Twain.

"...almost forcing Russia, China and North Korea to unite as one." You mean like a new Three Stooges or something? lol.

Yes, the US "forced" Russia to lie about, then invade their neighbor's territory. Smh. Yes, the US "forced" China to lie about, then build fake militarized islands in other country's sovereign economic zones. Smh! And yes, the US "forced" the Dictator Lil' Kim to starve his own people, threaten nuclear war against everyone, and shoot missiles over other country's sovereign territory. LOL!

In short: it's seemingly never the dictators' fault, is it? lol. So my next question is: how low can you go? What next...Stalin's deliberate starving of Ukrainians during the Holodomor was...Ukraine or the US's fault? Japan "had to" bomb Pearl Harbor and wreak death and destruction clear across Asia because..."they were forced to"? lol. Revisionism in its purest form!

Good grief! How we bend over backwards to excuse away what dictators have chosen to do all by themselves!

First: there is a new "anti-espionage" law in China that is extremely ill-defined, yet potentially extremely dangerous for any foreign national now inside the Chinese dictatorship. From Reuters:

-All "documents, data, materials, and items related to national security AND interests" are under the same protection as state secrets following the revisions, according to the full text of the revised law published by Xinhua late Wednesday.

The law does NOT define what falls under China's national security or interests. The revised law allows authorities carrying out an anti-espionage investigation to GAIN ACCESS to data, electronic equipment, information on personal property and also to BAN border crossings."

Not only that, but Second: "China will now encourage its CITIZENS to join counter-espionage work, including creating channels for INDIVIDUALS to report suspicious activity as well as COMMENDING and REWARDING them, the state security ministry said..." (Also Reuters) "A system that makes it "normal" for the MASSES to PARTICIPATE in counter-espionage MUST be established, wrote the Ministry of State Security."

Basically, this law can be used against anyone China wants to target, for literally any reason whatsoever, and it rewards citizens to spy on and report foreigners to the dictatorship. Not just Japanese nationals, but any foreign national is now at risk, while the Kafkaesque ill-defining of such laws provides all the justification China would need to detain and even imprison any foreigner it wants to. And as we saw during the Huawei fiasco, when a legitimately held corrupt family member of the Huawei ownership was held in Canada, China suddenly decided to hold as HOSTAGE Canadian Citizens who had done NOTHING wrong. This is the next step...

You go to/remain in the unfree China at your own peril. Why you would stay there with such dangerous new and anti-foreigner laws now on the books, and with the government whipping citizens up into treating every foreigner as a potential spy would be anyone's guess. The Chinese market isn't worth even one foreigner's freedom being unfairly restricted, IMHO.

Remember that time when you couldn't find "news" on your Facebook page...so there was NO way to access news anymore? lol. Neither do I. What a truly silly contention! But when has silliness ever stopped people before? lol.

Yet that's what the complainers are actually saying here: Facebook without news will leave people "stranded without news", when everyone knows that that is patently, 100% false.

No, the real focus here should be this: that GIANT for-profit media companies want MORE MONEY from Meta, and Meta is saying NO! Those media behemoths, who themselves could rightfully be accused of monopolizing "news" dissemination in our societies, don't think they earn enough already: that a link from Meta to their site and the accompanying increased click traffic isn't enough of a reward for sharing "their" content.

Now, these companies got the corrupt government of Justin True-Dope to come down hard on Meta, to unscrupulously and shamelessly exploit a natural disaster (!) to score political points against ANYONE who resists. They have no shame, and will exploit any prop to their advantage if they can. Smh!~

"The economy is still chugging along and we have been letting in enough immigrant workers to at least get by..."

Okay. Explain why the "chugging" economy in the US is, habitually, THE NUMBER ONE WORRY of American citizens in poll after poll after poll? Things are so "great" you need to BORROW 2,000,000,000,000.00 by the end of this year just to keep the doors open...okay.

I'd also mention that "immigration" worries regularly make it into the top five fears as well?

And how do you say "property, stock and debt bubbles" in Taiwanese again? Because the "chugging" US has hit the trifecta with all three. But of course, P to E earnings at an average of 35 is a sign of "health", right?

Talk about a paper tiger! The entire economy is built on sand.

The market is finally, finally starting to believe Powell when he says, over and over again, that rates will stay "higher for longer".

It's partly the Fed's fault. They've been known to slash rates at the mere whiff of a downturn in the past, while Powell blew it (there's no other way to put it) when he announced that inflation was "transitory" and therefore he'd let it "run hot" for a while. Whoops!

Inflation is a terrible, insidious beast. It loves to play "whack-a-mole" against agencies like the Fed who try to fight it: disappearing here but then popping up over here and there, then over there, too. Once inflation subsides, you're still left with higher prices then you had before - forever. Higher interest rates don't necessarily guarantee inflation will get under control (especially when there's so much debt that must be financed at ever higher interest rates).

And given that there simultaneous systemic changes also occurring (aging and retiring workforce moving into risk-adverse investments and sucking dry government pension funding, lack of new skilled workers, while those available demand more pay for the same work, the move to "re-shore" or "friend-shore" production out of the control of our economic rivals, plus the insane inability of Western countries to control their exploding deficit spending on the fiscal side) make inflationary pressures The New Normal for the rest of the decade, at the very least.

US Intel is...a mixed bag. US intel was manipulated to make false claims about Saddam Hussein, remember that? Then again, US intel was warning that Putin would invade Ukraine when everyone else, including the Ukrainian president, was saying there was no sign that would happen. But...US intel also was used to claim that Russia blew up its own brand new gas pipeline! So...yeah. It can be manipulated politically when moving from raw data to finished product. And even the raw data can be skewed to say things that aren't necessarily true.

Feel terrible for the staff of the plane. They were making money, but had I been on the crew and discovered that my passengers for the day included the head of Wagner this soon after his botched attempted race to Moscow? I would've suddenly gotten real sick, too sick to fly!

How many murdered opponents this makes for Putin now? Hundreds, surely. Thousands, perhaps. Still a drop in the bucket when compared to the millions during Stalin's Great Terror, but still quite impressive. Give him time, lol. From the 1999 Moscow Apartment Bombings, when hexagen was planted by Russian intel in the basements so that Putin could "look tough against terrorism" and first win election to the top job, to the present day "accident" and almost monthly "sudden illnesses" and upper floor defenestrations : In Russia, a citizens' life is truly worth less than spit.

Good thing no actual citizens of the prefecture involved have to participate. lol. How sad.

One would think that the actual human inhabitants of said place might pen a more meaningful ditty about their home...versus some cold computer "intelligence" treating song writing as just yet one more work task...

After promising in elections that Thaksin's Puppet Party, Pheu Thai, will NOT ever form a government with the coup leaders responsible for suspending true democracy in Thailand for almost a decade...now they've just confirmed that the generals' two political parties WILL in fact be part of a Pheu Thai government, in fact will be given control of important ministries to boot! The former dictator himself, Prayut, will be given charge of a ministry! Talk about "crime doesn't pay".../s

I guess Dear Leader Thaksin's return home and pardon was all that really mattered. Getting into bed with former dictators is NOT a good sign for anyone, and this before any real government has even been formed. One can only hope for a quick dissolution and fresh elections, where the Thai people, having seen their supposed "saviors" turn traitor and do deals with the devil, will vote in even greater numbers for the rival (and truly democratically-inclined) Move Forward Party (which took first place in recent elections, but who were disqualified by the very same generals through their overreprentation in the Thai Senate which must approve any new government).

From Reuters: "Japan says the water will be filtered to remove most radioactive elements except for tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is difficult to separate from water. The treated water will be diluted to WELL BELOW INTERNATIONALLY APPROVED LEVELS of tritium before being released into the Pacific."

From AFP: "After a TWO-YEAR review, FIVE review missions to Japan, SIX technical reports and FIVE missions on the ground, the international nuclear watchdog said the discharges of the treated water were consistent with the agency’s safety standards, with 'NEGLIGIBLE radiological impact to people and the environment'”.

Did you catch that? Yes, there's some Tritium, but the amounts still in the water will be WELL BELOW internationally APPROVED levels! Meaning it's actually FAR SAFER than the water needs to be, based on internationally recognized standards of internationally recognized authorities on such matters! lol. In fact, the levels of Tritium might even be LOWER than acceptable levels of Tritium in the treated wastewaters found emanating from neighboring South Korea's own nuke plants!

No, what matters here is that it's "Japan" that is doing the dumping. The South Korean government is already on record saying they're okay with the situation, so the opposition is coming from adversaries that habitually despise everything associated with Japan...or "scientists" with a long record of bias against anything having to do with nuclear power, still the cheapest, safest and greenest form of energy the world has ever known, and probably ever will know.

The amount of blatantly false and uniformed "conventional wisdom" -based fear being spread around about this topic would be simply mind-boggling...had we not just gotten through a similarly uninformed treatment of COVID!

Congratulations to the winners. Good showing and better luck next time to the runners-up.

"France out. USA out."

Wagner in? lol. Coup Lovers Of The World Unite!! Intent on spreading that "Bucha Butcher Love" worldwide, are we? I'm not sure Niger has all that many washing machines for the serial criminals to steal, though, so...lol.

A.U. and ECOWAS in...by the end of summer.

"If the coup leaders fail in doing anything about ISIS, this could be a good way to discredit such anti-Western sentiment."

Interesting thought. But play out the opposite scenario. Putchists who gain power in a coup thumb their nose at due process and gain local popularity...does that increase or decrease the likelihood of future coups? In Africa, where any wannabe tin-pot major or colonel can seize "authority" with just a couple of platoons with sufficient weapons? Hmm...

I look at "approval" polls like I do house value when one purchases a property. You can say "my property doubled in value, has been halved in value, is worth X now" about the present situation, but in reality this situation means nothing UNLESS you actually can sell said property for that stated value. If not, who's to say today's metric is real, will stay static, or not change tomorrow for better or worse?

So half of these 1,049 Japanese supposedly express "disapproval" of Kishida...and? In what way does this effect his ability to lead and legislate (it doesn't). If there were an election tomorrow? Well, that would be different, right, since this supposed "disapproval" would have a chance to be proven in real time.

But as one can see with Biden, Macron, Shultz, Sunak - ALL having underwater approval ratings...yet there they are, still doing their things. And we've seen time and again that seemingly "unpopular" politicians have been able to not only survive in Japan and elsewhere, but actually sometimes even still win elections. Not a good situation, and not a good metric for validating the veracity of such polls, but it is what it is. People's general distrust of all forms of authority is rightfully growing worldwide for plenty of reasons...

"...if someone thinks that a course on Taylor Swift by some unknown Professor Swiftie is going to "educate" you about Mr. Swift better than..."

Whoops! I "mis pronouned" MS. Swift's pronouns! Ohh nooes! Accidents happen. She-her-Ms., She-her-Ms., She-Her-Ms. Got it! Please don't throw me into re-education camp? lol. (Only half joking)

Personally, I don't think much of Taylor Swift's music. I was dragged by a date to one of the Taylor Swift concerts in LA recently, and while it was a "big thing" naturally for most involved, I was bored silly. To be charitable, I'll simply say that I could think of many other things I'd have rather done on that date...oh, well. I've already shook it off, shook it off. lol The things we do for "love" (I'm being lighthearted here!)

Anyway, colleges have "core" or "required" courses that everyone must take, but colleges also have "elective" courses from which one has a choice to "round out" one's knowledge. There's usually quite a lot of frivolous, pop-culture based or just plain silly courses on offer each semester.

And to be honest, if someone thinks that a course on Taylor Swift by some unknown Professor Swiftie is going to "educate" you about Mr. Swift better than the free internet or social media can? lol. Go for it! Sucker born every minute. Again, it's not my thing, but probably WAY better for one's "education" than a course on, say, Black Lives Matter's lie-filled and disgustingly disingenuous propaganda or the radical and ill-will-filled "fourth wave" style of toxic feminism. lol.

Ah..Barbie. lol. My first and last comment.

When you watch the movie, play this drinking game. Every time some character mentions the word "POWER", take a drink! You will...in fact, never mind. My game will kill you if you use alcohol! lol. POWER!!! (Seriously though, check it out...it's uncanny how OFTEN this tiny word gets used in this seemingly fluff-and-fun movie.)

Here's something to consider: what if audiences don't NEED or even WANT "parity" in their entertainment? What if "parity" in everything or keeping tabs on which boxes are checked by which groups in a cultural creation actually often makes for a worse, not better, product?

Is "equality" more important of a factor than "quality" now? Because, judging by the drek content getting churned out in Tinsletown these days, The Messaging is obviously far, far more important than The Movie!

Petulant Babies. lol. The walls are closing in on you, Xinnie The Jingping Pooh Bear, aren't they??

Saw that the VP of Independent Nation Taiwan just got back from the US as well...how many rockets' worth of petulant crybaby protest is that worth, one wonders?

And I just saw that China has ceased reporting on its horrendous levels of youth unemployment...out of sight, out of mind! Unfortunately, dear Xinnie The Pooh, not all in the world can be tossed down your Memory Hole and forgotten like all those domestic troubles you have can, huh. Sucks...

Oh well, good luck at the "amazing" BRICS meeting next week. lol. Can't wait to hear what this "organization" that has yet to produce a SINGLE SUBSTANTIVE ACCOMPLISHMENT gets done! lol.

Sorry, but this sounds like "one writer's opinion", where, far from any tangible metric one can point to by way of proof, the biased writer merely wishes it to be so, then goes out and "finds" the story they want to write. Even if they have to invent the reality they seek to realize!

Abe's faction is still the most powerful faction in the LDP, still the largest, by far, in the LDP. If the faction can't decide amongst themselves who should be leader (following Abe's death they had two co-leaders), while Abe easily swept aside all others when he was still alive, doesn't this suggest how powerful Abe's legacy still is, rather than "weakness"?

It's not easy filling Abe's shoes, even today. Now, you or this writer may not like Abe's legacy, but that doesn't equate to anything other than one's own personal political dislikes, nothing more. Abe's legacy lives on, and if anything, Japanese politics are even more Abe-like now than they were when the man first took power. Even a year after his death.

THAT'S the diametric OPPOSITE of "weakening".

"If Japan offered Koreans free beer and kimchi they’d find a reason to complain." lol. stickman1760 wins Best Comment!

There's this thing called the Environmental Performance Index? It's accessible online: a "data-driven summary of the state of sustainability around the world. Using 40 performance indicators across 11 issue categories, the EPI ranks 180 countries on climate change performance, environmental health, and ecosystem vitality."

Japan ranks 25th in the world with a 57.20 score. South Korea, that bastion of supposed "environmental care and concern"? South Korea ranks DOWN DOWN DOWN at 63rd, with a 47.90 score. In terms of "ecosystem vitality" indexes, Korea's performance is even worse: Japan ranks 28th, while Korea falls to 70th place.

Facts don't lie. These politicians, filled with hatred for anything Japan, in fact fall far short when protecting their own environment. Their record of performance, or rather neglect, regarding sustainable promotion of environment protection at home is appalling in comparison to Japan, yet they point the Eternal Finger Of Rebuke outward at the Other, even when that "other" outperforms them by every conceivable metric!

Don't look here...look over there! sigh. Some things will never change...

Tetsuya Yamagami knows what's at the end of his journey through life: a real short walk followed by a long drop at the end of a rope.

Read all you want! Enjoy the wait. You're life is done.