moonbloom comments

No reason for any country to follow the US, rather every country should learn and observe what not to do.

After Hillary Clinton et al helped engineer the overthrow of Qhadafi once he agreed to abandon his nuclear weapons program Libya was plunged into complete chaos, so these girls and others joining IS is no surprise.

These gestures are simply mandated by the playbook.

Many more to come.

Exactly.

Kishida's pledge could quite probably result in a number of research studies on how best to solve the problem...naturally requiring a few billion yen.

As per the leaked US classified documents, there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes which have invited this response, i.e. the US soldiers in Taiwan aren't just enjoying cocktails on the beach.

Also where did I mention it was commonly accepted?

Ok so then all you did was state your own misguided opinion paraded as some kind of factual statement, that's fine.

@kennyG

Nope, that part is based on a Korean author. Those Korean academia who studied his statue (although seems not many) know he was not as pro-Japan in real sense as having been treated like that later in SK .

Also, the following is from Korean media Korea JoongAng Daily

First, we cannot say that Lee was a born Japanese sympathizer. He passed a government examination to become a public servant in 1882. During the "days of enlightenment" of Choson, he learned English at Yukyeong Gongwon, the nation's first language school. He served as a charge d'affaires to the United States for two years from 1888. With Yun Chi-ho and Yu Gil-jun, Lee, one of the very few Koreans who could speak English, first was known as pro-American. In 1894, he declined to take office as a charge d'affaires to Japan, citing mourning for his mother. Unlike Song Byeong-jun, a devoted member of a pro-Japanese group, Lee never learned to speak Japanese. Surprisingly, he was the founder of the Independence Club established in 1896.

LOL The Korea JoongAng Daily was created by the conservative chaebol group who support Yoon and Yoon's party. And yes there are conservative academics funded by right-wing conservatives in South Korea as elsewhere.

JoongAng Ilbo is considered by some critics as part of Chojoongdong (Korean: 조중동, CJD), a pejorative term that refers to the three highly circulated conservative newspapers in South Korea including JoongAng Ilbo. The word is an acronym of the Chosun, Joong-ang and Dong-a Ilbo newspapers, and the grouping is seen as forming the basis of South Korea's conservative media.[16] The term was used by Hankyoreh editor Jung Yeonju (Korean: 정연주) as early as October 2000.[17] Korean liberals criticize Chojoongdong primarily because of their conservative-biased editorial stances and doing business in a collusive and surreptitious manner.

So yeah you can pretend Korean people view Ye Wanyong as a patriot etc but you'd be very wrong, a fact born out of the conservative Korea JoongAng's desperate attempt to change the narrative with the editorial you referenced (if it was commonly accepted as you said there would be no need for that).

@kennyG

Ye Wanyong（李完用) never spoke Japanese despite he was fluent in it, when dealing with Japanese. He had a Korean Heart and Korean Pride.

What you've written is an anecdotal story perpetuated by radical Japanese nationalists who publish revisionist history and has no basis in fact.

Whats interesting to me is how for the last 20 years I’ve been back here, usually both governments have been driving wedges, and using the media to demonize the other.

Now suddenly we and Korea are mending things and playing all nice?

It seems that Japan and Korea need each other a lot more now.

Yes suddenly the media is cultivating a fuzzy feel good atmosphere in conjunction with both governments setting up nice intimate photos, yesterday's article about Yoon‘s love for Japanese omurice etc. , coincides with the fact that both are pro-US... of course this has all occurred naturally with no thought having been given to manipulating public opinion lol

Bad luck for the guy but he clearly has 0 common sense. Hopefully he can learn a lot from this experience.

Notice when it's a guy nobody rushes to his defense and admonishes not to victim blame? lol

And then after his spectacular success in Japan Curtis LeMay and company bombed the hell out of North Korea.

In addition to firebombing civilians, they also deliberately targeted dams so that normal people / non-combatants would be unable to grow food.

Well the kid did his part to establish an online relationship with the guy, then agreed to meet him, AND willingly got in the car.

The molester is still a creep, but the kid walked right into that one.

So much for the famous British proper etiquette and propriety.

...and a 19-year-old male university student who resides in Tokyo's Nakano Ward.

Not surprised in the least.

Reflects how huge a business it is, and additionally explains why these crimes (rapes are also filmed) will continue...generation after generation of young Japanese men will continue to be socialized in such a manner along with the yellow fever foreigners.

This means of course that Japanese women will continue to be subject to porn-for-profit sex crimes.

Legrande called it years ago, and now that it's pretty much been confirmed people still can't face the music lol

lol So many more things that countries have to collaboratively pour their resources into if they want their descendents to have an environment fit to live in

Peace keeping stablizing force? Yea not so much, bringing the spectre of war more like in addition to massively polluting the region already confirmed that Tokyos water is taimted.

Global health incongruous with nuclear waste.

Nuclear waste is the elephant in the room.

It may provide him with a way out as Abe also quit twice due to health conditions.

Everyone including the US has engaged in extensive spying, so to create this outcry now is just more obvious anti-China propaganda to justify a military conflict (we've seen this type of build-up before, i.e. Iraq etc).

Expect more "shocking " revelations and accusations from now until 2025.

Not a good role model for other countries.

@Ossan

As stated previously, Kishi wasn't charged depite being responsible for death by forced labor, selling opium with yakuza, embezzling and money laundering etc. in order so that he could be used as US proxy in the role of prime minister.

That is the historical reality.

As is the culture of corruption in the LDP created by this US engineered situation that continues to afflict the Japanese people down to the present day.

@Ossan

established facts:

Kishi Nibusuke signed the declaration of war against the US in 1941

Kishi implemented slave labor policies resulting the misery and deaths of countless individuals

Kishi worked closely with yakuza selling opium during the war and continued to collaborate with them after the war even after he became prime minister with the support of the US govt

Kishi talked openly about how to embazzzle money and avoid blame

These and a host of other dirty deeds are not merely part of encyclopedic entries but were activities deliberately engaged in by Kishi which negatively impacted people then and continues to the present day via the corruption culture which he established within the LDP.

So keep on obfuscating and avoiding reality, Ossan.

@Ossan

Yes okay let's learn something, shall we?-

[ Nobusuke Kishi (岸 信介, Kishi Nobusuke, 13 November 1896 – 7 August 1987) was a Japanese bureaucrat and politician who was Prime Minister of Japan from 1957 to 1960.

Known for his exploitative rule of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo in Northeast China in the 1930s, Kishi was nicknamed the "Monster of the Shōwa era" (昭和の妖怪; Shōwa no yōkai).[1] Kishi later served in the wartime cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō as Minister of Commerce and Vice Minister of Munitions,[2] and co-signed the declaration of war against the United States on December 7, 1941.

After World War II, Kishi was imprisoned for three years as a suspected Class A war criminal. However, the U.S. government did not charge, try, or convict him, and eventually released him as they considered Kishi to be the best man to lead a post-war Japan in a pro-American direction.

As prime minister, Kishi's mishandling of the 1960 revision of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty led to the massive 1960 Anpo protests, which were the largest protests in Japan's modern history and which forced him to resign in disgrace.[6]

In order to make it profitable for the zaibatsu to invest in Manchukuo, Kishi had a policy of lowering the wages of the workers to the lowest possible point, even below the "line of necessary social reproduction."[25] The purpose of Manchukuo was to provide the industrial basis for the "national defense state," with American historian Mark Driscoll noting that, "Kishi's planned economy was geared towards production goals and profit taking, not competition with other Japanese firms; profit would come primarily from rationalizing labor costs as much as possible. The ne plus ultra of wage rationalization would be withholding pay altogether—that is, unremunerated forced labor."[26] Accordingly, the Japanese conscripted hundreds of thousands of Chinese as slave labor to work in Manchukuo's heavy industrial plants. In 1937, Kishi signed a decree calling for the use of slave labor to be conscripted both in Manchukuo and in northern China, stating that in these "times of emergency" (i.e. war with China), industry needed to grow at all costs while guaranteeing healthy profits for state and private investors.[27] Starting in 1938 and continuing to 1945, about one million Chinese were taken every year to work as slaves in Manchukuo.[28] The harsh conditions of Manchukuo were well illustrated by the Fushun coal mine, which at any given moment had about 40,000 men working as miners, of whom about 25,000 had to be replaced every year as their predecessors had died due to poor working conditions and low living standards.[23]

Kishi showed little interest in upholding the rule of law in Manchukuo.[29] Kishi expressed views typical of his fellow colonial bureaucrats when he disparagingly referred the Chinese people as "lawless bandits" who were "incapable of governing themselves".[29] According to Kishi's subordinates, he saw little point in following legal or juridical procedures because he felt the Chinese were more akin to dogs than human beings and would only understand brute force.[29] According to Driscoll, Kishi always used the term "Manshū" to refer to Manchukuo, instead of "Manshūkoku", which reflected his viewpoint that Manchukuo was not actually a state, but rather just a region rich in resources and 34 million people to be used for Japan's benefit.[29] In his later years, Kishi recalled how "inhuman" treatment of Chinese people had become naturalized among the Japanese colonial elite, turning human beings into "mechanical instruments of the Imperial Army, non-human automatons, absolutely obedient" to their Japanese masters.[29]

Kishi's dinner companions were fellow bureaucrats, businessmen seeking government contracts, Army officers and yakuza gangsters.[30] The presence of the latter was due to Kishi's involvement with the opium trade; the Manchukuo State Opium Monopoly needed distributors to move its products around the world, which in turn required contacts with the underworld in the form of the yakuza.[31] Additionally, Kishi used yakuza thugs to terrorize the Chinese workers in Manchukuo's factories into submission, and ensure that there were no strikes caused by the long hours, low pay and poor working conditions.[32]

 Before returning to Japan in October 1939, Kishi is reported to have advised his colleagues in the Manchukuo government about corruption: "Political funds should be accepted only after they have passed through a 'filter' and been 'cleansed'. If a problem arises, the 'filter' itself will then become the center of the affair, while the politician, who has consumed the 'clean water', will not be implicated. Political funds become the basis of corruption scandals only when they have not been sufficiently 'filtered.'"[4]

Is it clear enough for you now, Ossan + like-minded folk not familiar with the facts of the situation?- These are the people the US reinstated to power in the post-war era in order to gain control over Japan. And JT, this is totally on topic as Ossan questioned my statements and claimed they were false.

@Ossan

Again the constantly repeated myth. No "War Criminals" were put into power in post WWII Japan. War Criminals were charged, tried, convicted and sentenced by the International Tribunal for the Far East. Nobusuke Kishi was never charged as a WarCriminal.

This is the typical spin put on the situation to obfuscate and deceive people. Kishi etc. were incarcerated in Sugamo prison in 1945 due to the millions who suffered owing to their policies, but were then released in 1948 without being formally charged in order to do the US' bidding without the war criminal stigma.

The fact that you deliberately avoid mentioning this speaks volumes about the views and information you spread here.

People who say countries can kick out the US bases anytime they want are living in some fantasy world detached from the realities of geopolitics.

LDP is so clearly rampant with corruption and rotten to the core, yet because they are pro-US are supported by a large number of posters here.

Far more credible that news out of China, Russia or any other autocracy.

You probably still believe Russia won't invade Ukraine, right?

Your level of reasoning and understanding is simple and predictable.

You probably went along with the western media on the invasion of Iraq, and would have also obviously done so with Vietnam when the alleged Gulf of Tonkin incident was reported.. .both of which led to the unnecessary deaths and suffering of a whole lot of people, so that the elites who manipulate people through the media could cash in.

Well, keep being their follower, not for me.