moonbloom comments

Thank you Suga for another empty LDP pronouncement.

You decide to host, you suck it up and deal with it.

Just as we said, another in a long line of LDP stooges.

The Brits and Yanks feigning moral outrage and accusing others of cloak and dagger attacks abroad is too funny. The two countries that have meddled in, conspired against, destabilized and outright attacked more countries around the globe than any other in history.

But of course they own the media so their version of events becomes "correct."

Hope he wore his expensive mask.

"The attack in South Korea had previously been linked to Russia by cybersecurity researchers but was made to look like the work of Chinese or North Korean hackers, Britain's foreign ministry said."

And of course the same people jumping to conclusions here now and condemning Russia without any hard evidence were the same lemming-like geniuses who were shouting curses about the Chinese/NK at that time.

From 6 to 9 minutes. That’s how long the first wave of missiles from China would take to hit Japan. The 1000+ land attack cruise missiles the PLA have could very quickly cripple American front-line forces.

Yes we know it was the Chinese missiles which devastated Iraq...oh wait...

Welcome to life under the LDP. This ain't about equality, people.

This is the real breaking news we've been waiting for.

[ "If they are not being appointed because they opposed the government, this could limit their activities, restrict their freedom of speech and affect academic freedom," Takashi Onishi, president of the SCJ from 2011-2017, told Reuters in an interview. ]

It is something we may all have to get used to, unfortunately.

Already paying too much.

The student protesters of the 1950's and 60's were correct.

This will not make the US happy at all. They plan to force a war with China’s neighbors was routed around forcing them to buy US weapons.

i think when Suga visits America after the elections, his state diner will be a cold Macdonald burger and a small portion of fries.

Rest assured the US already knew about this information well before it was released to the public.

Great more growth of the military-industrial complex, just what we need in the world to ratchet up the pressure and create more tension.

@Septim

The USA always has a romance with authoritarian regimes. They created the monstrosity known as China, and was responsible for the creation of Imperial Japan. Almost every bad event since 19th century, the USA always plays the role of creator behind every mess in the modern

Yes including the creation of the LDP, as you have noted before.

the LDP was built using Yakuza money alongside CIA slush funds. The LDP owes its existence to the Yakuza. I would not be surprised if the Yakuza also order their members to go out and vote for the LDP. Then the gov turns around and does this. Strange.

All about keeping up appearances. The public at-large has no idea about the true origins of the LDP.

@Septim

Confused. Are you referring to yaks or LDP?

The CIA is the master of both. The ones who have been responsible for all crappy events going in Japan since 1945.

http://www.japansubculture.com/how-the-cia-helped-put-the-yakuza-and-the-ldp-in-power/

https://www.e-flux.com/journal/100/268783/the-imperial-ghost-in-the-neoliberal-machine-figuring-the-cia/

Yes.

@kurisupisu

Chinese money in Macau and Siem-Reap does not automatically mean the same goes down in Japan.

Japan is on a different level compared to Macau and Cambodia. Further, what's happened there is clear for everyone to see...make sense for the LDP to be, like, "Yes, let's go the same way and give it all to them"?

Septim DynastyToday  11:36 am JST

Chinese businesspeople and crime syndicates are going to win bigly! They have been lobbying and bribing the Japanese LDP cronies to make sure that gambling will be legal in Japan. Now, they might finally be successful.

More money will flow inside Japan as well, many rich people across the world will come and gamble.

Japan will become even more attractive, especially to those wealthy.

The accurate demographics will be Chinese and Vietnamese, who are the most hardcore gamblers in the world. Just look at Las Vegas, it is always crawled with Chinese and Vietnamese Americans at weekends.

At the same time, it will be a magnet for crimes in Japan. Chinese and Vietnamese syndicates and black companies will dominate most of the Japanese gambling industry. As you can see what is happening in Cambodia, Chinese and Vietnamese casinos are everywhere, and their gambling revenues fly straight into the foreigners' pockets not the Cambodians. The same thing will repeat in Japan! Not to mention that Chinese shady businesspeople have bribed a prominent LDP figure, so their political influence over Japan may be greater than we thought.

Two questions. Why did the Sands pull out, and what is the government's plan for organized crime?

Americans do not have patience to wait Abe or Suga wrestling successfully against regional bureaucrats to get the gambling bill legalized. Secondly, they don't want to bribe the Japanese politicians every single year like the Chinese do - sort of tributary pay to the local politicians. Thirdly, they really hate the Japanese tax codes and rates. Having no hope to see Japanese tax rates dropping down soon.

In regard of organized crimes, Japan simply imports the Chinese triads and Vietnamese syndicates into their country. Yakuzas are now a bunch of toothless pansies, so the foreign syndicates may give them jobs unofficially. Solving the Yakuza unemployment crisis! The J-govt killed the Yakuza, just to import their foreign counterparts. Thanks, Obama (Yakuza sanctions from the US Treasury in 2008) !

Like I said above, most customers of Japanese casinos will be Chinese and Vietnamese. This will be a huge magnet for foreign organized crimes and black companies who will absolutely launder the casino profits, under the guidance of respective Communist Parties, back to their nations. Japan may get the profitable perks of service economy around the casino, but the gambling revenues will mostly go back to China or Vietnam. Going to be used to fund more of the CCP and VCP's clandestine overseas operations.

*5**( +8 / -3 )*

Highlights the ignorance of posters and readers, and the willingness to immediately tar and feather China. Absolutely no documentation to support the claim that the lion's share of the casino money will go to China/Vietnam. Anyone who thinks the LDP would push for this project just to have all the profits go to their allies' rivals (and that the US would simply stand by helplessly) is really gullible, naive, and easily led.

People seem to have amnesia. Or just never knew.

[ The rival Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which had ruled Japan nearly uninterrupted for decades, had long been tied to Japan’s underworld and ridden by scandals. ]

https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/12/13/the-yakuza-lobby/

[ The scandal began in January, when the Akahata Shimbun reported that a front company for the country’s largest crime group, the Yamaguchi-gumi, had donated ¥180,000 over two years to a branch of the LDP — the Tokyo No. 11 district — headed by Shimomura. The company is banned from accepting public works and recognized by the police in Osaka as a yakuza operation, specifically a Yamaguchi-gumi Kodo-kai operation. ]

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/04/04/national/media-national/learning-valuable-lessons-yakuza/

[ TOKYO - Was it plain coincidence or uncanny timing? On the same day that Japanese opposition lawmakers asked to see the guest list for a controversial spring garden party hosted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the list was shredded by Cabinet Office employees. ]

https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/abes-woes-deepen-as-questions-swirl-over-shredded-guest-list-for-spring-garden-party

OxycodinToday  01:34 pm JST

You know how this will end up a bunch of YAK fights running the business

Obviously, along with US muscle/LDP back-up, let's get real.

Yakuza are still stronger than you can imagine.

For the sake of the LDP's image (who they actively support and coordinate with), they have simply hidden themselves better by getting into legit businesses for cover. Rest assured they will also coordinate with the Chinese syndicates / empower themselves through this casino project.

We already know an LDP lawmaker was arrested for exploiting this project for his own pocket, then had the gall to try to bribe himself out of that...the continuance of this project sure to attract more scum and empower criminal syndicates. Good going Suga continuing on with the same old.

[ TOKYO (Kyodo) -- A Japanese lawmaker charged with bribery was rearrested Thursday by prosecutors for allegedly offering witnesses money to falsely testify in court in connection with a casino graft scandal.

In a rare development, Tsukasa Akimoto, a 48-year-old House of Representatives member, was rearrested while out on bail after being indicted for receiving 7.6 million yen ($72,000) worth of bribes from a Chinese gambling operator in 2017 and 2018 when he was in charge of Japan's move to legalize casino resorts.

Akimoto, who left the ruling Liberal Democratic Party shortly before his initial arrest in December, denied the latest allegation when he was reached by reporters before being rearrested.

He is suspected of asking a former adviser to the Chinese company 500.com Ltd., who had also been released on bail, to give false testimony in return for 30 million yen through his supporters in June and July, according to the prosecutors.

The prosecutors earlier this month arrested three of Akimoto's supporters and looked into his involvement.

One of the arrested supporters has admitted to conspiring with Akimoto, according to investigative sources, while Akimoto has said, "I'm not involved. I don't know why this happened." ]

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200820/p2g/00m/0na/097000c

That ship sailed a long time ago.

Capt USAToday  04:26 pm JST

-moonbloom

Yes, it was nefarious and not something either government is proud of. I always feel a bit sickened whenever I read about our giving the likes of Kishi and other war criminals the VIP treatment.

But should it not have been done? Sure, with hindsight one can posit that the Cold War might have been won without this or that CIA coup, but one must remember the geopolitical situation in the 50s.

The Soviet Union and its beneficiaries were not much less a threat to the world than Germany and Japan had been, and they certainly didn't play by the rules, so we could hardly afford to, either.

It's far more significant that America, by imposing democratic rule, gave the Japanese people sovereignty over their nation; something their own leaders never did. Not to mention freedom of speech, equality of women, etc.

Yes clearly it is so truly democratic here that posts on news websites with factual but 'inconvenient' information are deleted. How right your are.

It's times like this that one can view an individual's true colors.

In other words another in a long line of LDP stooges who will continue to buy ever increasing larger amounts of weapons from the US and continue to help antagonize the countries necessary to justify their procurement.

It was the CIA who established the LDP with these type of aims in mind.

[ In a major covert operation of the cold war, the Central Intelligence Agency spent millions of dollars to support the conservative party that dominated Japan's politics for a generation.

"This story reveals the intimate role that Americans at official and private levels played in promoting structured corruption and one-party conservative democracy in post-war Japan, and that's new," said John Dower, a leading Japan scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We look at the L.D.P. and say it's corrupt and it's unfortunate to have a one-party democracy. But we have played a role in creating that misshapen structure." ]

https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/09/world/cia-spent-millions-to-support-japanese-right-in-50-s-and-60-s.html

[ Military-industrial complex, network of individuals and institutions involved in the production of weapons and military technologies. The military-industrial complex in a country typically attempts to marshal political support for continued or increased military spending by the national government.

The term military-industrial complex was first used by U.S. Pres. Dwight D. Eisenhower in his Farewell Address on January 17, 1961. Eisenhower warned that the United States must “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence…by the military-industrial complex,” which included members of Congress from districts dependent on military industries, the Department of Defense (along with the military services), and privately owned military contractors—e.g., Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Eisenhower believed that the military-industrial complex tended to promote policies that might not be in the country’s best interest (such as participation in the nuclear arms race), and he feared that its growing influence, if left unchecked, could undermine American democracy.

Although Eisenhower is credited with the phrase and many scholars regarded the phenomenon as new, elements of the domestic and international military-industrial complex predate his landmark address. Military forces have been funded overwhelmingly by national governments, which historically have been the target of lobbying efforts by bureaucrats in military-related ministries, by legislators from districts containing military bases or major military manufacturing plants, and by representatives of private firms involved in the production of weapons and munitions. Because the goals and interests of these various actors broadly coincide, they tend to support each other’s activities and to form mutually beneficial relationships—what some critics have called an “iron triangle” between government officials, legislators, and military-industrial firms. For example, legislators who receive campaign contributions from military firms may vote to award funding to projects in which the firms are involved, and military firms may hire former defense-ministry officials as lobbyists. ]

https://www.britannica.com/topic/military-industrial-complex

Something is seriously wrong with that part of society not only in Japan, but greater Asia. Celebrities in Japan and South Korea in particular seem prone to suicide.

It doesn't seem to happen that often with celebrities in other parts of the world.

The entertainment industry in these two countries is rife with darkest happenings that one would not wish on one's worst enemy...and yes, criminal syndicates are very much a part of the equation.

Hey Bambi welcome to the real world.

[ Whales flee from the loud military sonar used by navies to hunt submarines, new research has proven for the first time. The studies provide a missing link in the puzzle that has connected naval exercises around the world to unusual mass strandings of whales and dolphins.

Beaked whales, the most common casualty of the strandings, were shown to be highly sensitive to sonar. But the research also revealed unexpectedly that blue whales, the largest animals on Earth and whose population has plummeted by 95% in the last century, also abandoned feeding and swam rapidly away from sonar noise.

The strong response observed in the beaked whales occurred at noise levels well below those allowed for US navy exercises. "This result has to be taken into consideration by regulators and those planning naval exercises," said Stacy DeRuiter, at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, who led one of the teams. ]

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jul/03/whales-flee-military-sonar-strandings