pacificwest comments

@Serrano

I like how Trump has so far averted a war with Iran or North Korea.

I think you mean "averted attacks on Iran or North Korea" but do Trump supporters really believe stuff like that?

My bet for who is next?

Sadly, whoever Netanyahu and AIPAC wants.

a gun club and gun rights lobbying group

It's more the de facto PR lobbying wing serving the gun industry.

As a marketing arm of the gun industry, the NRA has long understood that fear sells—but now it has a new media platform from which to broadcast a daily drumbeat of extremism and paranoia. “I’m not even sure it’s a dog whistle anymore,” says Watts, the gun control advocate. “It’s just a whistle—to anyone in their base who’s willing to listen. They see the future: They’re selling guns to fewer people. Their demographic is older, white men. They have to create a culture war—to make Americans afraid of each other.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/145001/nra-new-scare-tactic-gun-lobby-remaking-itself-arm-alt-right

Increase funding for women's shelters and support and access of support for victims of domestic violence.

Young single mother, low self-esteem, probably low educational abilities, indebted to controlling violent second husband/boyfriend.

Japanese society is not so liberal when it comes to second and later marriages, it's not so easy for women to reach out; too little support, too many other factors like shame and face involved.

Unless you've had direct experience of women in such relationships, it's hard to understand.

The Asahi covers the story in more detail.

http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201909040056.html

I am trying to imagine what "aggressively" laying one's head on someone else's breasts looks like.

It is kind of like repeatedly head butting someone's boobs?

If so, it's a weird kink.

Has the author never had anyone hit on her before?

Perhaps persistent or forward might have been a better word to use?

Apparently from an investment point of view, stock on all this stuff is going thru the roof.

The product will keep getting better. The ethical and environmental arguments against meat becoming stronger and clearer. Economics, profits, are changing the game.

They reckon that the US Vegan meat market to reach $3 billion by 2024.

Meanwhile, the 9 billion chickens, 32.2 million cattle and calves, 241 million turkeys, 2.2 million sheep and lambs, 121 million hogs slaughtered are worth $7bn.

Sounds a lot easier to grow meat in labs that in a filthy, inhumane feed lots.

@pacificwest

Funny, a Korean activists arranged payment for a 13m video billboard on Times Square about the alleged force laborers.

Update:

The video billboard was a Toshiba high definition LED displays (known as ToshibaVision).

@showchinmono

Not to mention, the fund dissolved already without Japan's consent ,

Where did the money go?

@Heckleberry

how could Moon sign a 2015 SK-Japan agreement, when he did not become President in 2017?!?

I suspect they meant, why hasn’t Moon upheld it?

It was an international accord that SK has now broken and pocketed the money.

Shame because the Busan-Fukuoka trade zone was good for both parties.

Heckleberry

However it is interesting that while Japan argued that rights of individuals to claims were extinguished, it went against its own official stance in negotiating an agreement and compensation for the 'comfort women' in 2015.

Which went on to prove that South Korea is insincere and untrustworthy.

It's not an agreement (treaty), it's an accord. Legally different.

Funny, a Korean activists arranged payment for a 13m video billboard on Times Square about the alleged force laborers.

The joke is ... they used a photo of a Japanese worker, at a different mine, taken in 1950 claiming it was a Korean during the wartime. He was later forced to admit it was fake.

Seo Kyung-duk of Sungshin Women’s University - the first principal of “Dokdo School” - is also behind the Rising Sun means Hakenkreuz campaign. It would be interesting to look into his network. Sounds like he is in bed with SK government funded VANK.

http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20150115001250

He also said that he is joining international Korean students across the world to spearhead a campaign at a much more organized level.

The second joke is ... the ads weren't paid for. A Korean-American ad agency took the money and did not pay.

http://www.koreatimesus.com/dokdo-bibimbap-ads-remain-unpaid/

https://voicesofny.org/2014/03/community-concern-over-unpaid-high-profile-korean-ads/

It starts building up an overall picture of what is going on.

There's copy of the actual accord is here, Korea did not honor it.

https://www.mofa.go.jp/a_o/na/kr/page4e_000364.html

Of course, economic parity will only happen if there is a re-distribution of some of the wealth the US took out of Central and South America, and compensations and reparations for their meddling during the destabilization of the 1980s during the US's bogus cold war, and the multinational companies and CEOs actually paying taxes.

Example, in Guatemala alone an estimated 200,000 people were killed, El Salvador 75,000 civilians dead, Nicaragua 40,000 and so on ...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_involvement_in_regime_change_in_Latin_America

Was it part of their election manifesto to do so? (I dont know).

I think that is the point being made.

With Trump it was on a par with nuking tornadoes.

Define "proper border security".

I dont think it is possible to do so. Especially give so many just fly in. Economic parity is the only way to solve it,

Is it too obvious to point out that the only solution is stop meddling in politics south of the border and raising the standard of living of people down there to the degree where they don't need to want to leave.

Legalizing, regulating and taxing narcotics, instead of profiting out of prohibition, would fix the rest.

I read an interesting article that the majority of people making the crossing actually had native American blood and, as with conflicts caused by other European imperialism, came from people's who ancestral lands straddled the region.

Decades of dictatorship supporting, CIA meddling, School of the Americas inspired genocides, and US corporate abuses have created this problem.

http://www.soaw.org/home/

I suppose it might be cheap than building a 42 km long air conditioned stadium.

Isn't there a long enough complex of shōtengai and depātos that they could hold it in doors and add some local consumer experience flavor, or are they saving that for the introduction of Parkour?

I suppose making runners run through staggered artificial snowstorms in a Tokyo July might cool their body temperatures

They reckon the Battle of Marathon was Aug/Sept, which must have interfered with school holidays a bit, so isn't the date Eurocentric discrimination against less temperate nations?

His affair with Soon-Yi Previn was a step enough too far to sink him. Cherypicking from among your own adopted children? That was sordid enough. The world would not end without his movies.

Personally, I think he went passed his best, and the joke got old, a long time ago and now it's just 'Woody Allen doing a Woody Allen movie; and having the actors irritatingly act out his neurotic self.

Was Farrow the first to have one of those celebrity "United Nations/charity" families?

Then I'd add to the equation the risk of liberal idealism gone sour. And all the legal shenanigans and money wrestling that followed suggests very sour indeed.

Epstein, Weinstein, Polanksi, Allen, even Johansson. We're kind of developing a certain unfortunate theme here against all statistical probability and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Hollywood really needs to broaden its gene pool, and not by dating your own children.

I'm not keen on the Wikipedia because it's such a warzone for activists, but

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rising_Sun_Flag

I'd like to know the history of the correlation and when it first started.

@Richard Burgan

How about a ban on stupid people at the Olympics?

Ticket prices will pretty much achieve that, come the day.

You can guarantee neither the whiners, nor the provokers will be bothered to shell out.

How long until old men draw a line on WWII and move on?

@BertieWooste

I wonder why Japan refuses to ban this flag and at the same time they want to change the Manji (backwards swastika) sign

I can only imagine it is due to internal idiocy and pandering to external idiocy.

In Asia and to pretty much all Asians, what 3bn people?, it means something else entirely and has done so for more than 5,000 years.

In Japan, the ‘counterclock’ Manji — with the trailing lines to the left and called “Omote“ — represents infinite mercy. The ‘clockwise’ Manji — with the trailing lines to the right and called “Ura“ — represents intellect and strength.

@Heckleberry

SK has always maintained that the 1965 agreement has not removed

Actually that's not true. It's only something that has come up recently.

As you know, it was Korea that decided for compensation to be taken by the government rather than paid to individuals, and it was probably the right decision at the time.

Then there were the decades of secrecy over the deal while the general public was deceived.

Newly declassified documents from the Central Intelligence Agency shows that the treaty was largely the work of the United States.

https://www.thenation.com/article/south-korea-japan-cold-war/

@rgcivilian1

As a descendent of a Pearl Harbor survivor I find this atrocious and a slap in the face.

Would you take down a Stars and Stripes from being flown in Vietnam, Cambodian, Laos and at least 50 countries the USA has supported dictatorships or gone to war against?

So rather than likening it to a Nazi Swastika, it's more like the Croatian Ustashe being reminded they fought for the Nazis.

Overall though, I tend to think this fits into what George Carlin called the "pussification" of society by people with no sense of humor.

There was a recent controversy of a similar nature where a British soccer team was playing an Israeli team in a tournament.

Uefa, the organisation that runs European football, deemed the Palestinian flag to be an “illicit banner” and fined the club for doing so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qv709baepTM

No one's going to die from the complete lack of Tuna in their diet.

It's not about need, it's only about making money and conspicuous displays of wealth.

Tuna should be allowed to return to their 100% mark, and then reconsidered.

Just because something exists it does not mean it needs or should be exploited.

I suspect Japan has done near to zero proper scientific research in the role they play in the ecosystem?

Generally "scientific research" in this field goes as far as which brand of seasoning they taste best with.

It's bizarre in a way.

The common theme running through all these issues is that SK, or various elements within SK, are attempting to leverage control over and dictate policies for JPN. All sorts of policies.

Political, economic, educational, etc.

Perhaps it's just a sort beta dog challenging the alpha dog kind of thing.

But is a Rising Sun equivalent to a Swastika, no way.

That to me, sounds like a Chinese Communist Party import. It sounds more inline with their script.

Nagasaki is that still Yamaguchi-gumi or a schism?

Funnily enough, the founder Yamaguchi Harukichi was a former fisherman and started off with a group of longshoremen.

That's funny, I discussed why I thought from an artistic point of view, the introduction of the statue was not appropriate and it was removed.

I also linked to the activists campaign pages as to her campaigning background.

Not only are the habitual Korean activists lying, so is Yuka Okamoto above about the nature of the piece.

Her own Facebook and website is called "Fight for Justice" dedicated to the issue of comfort women. She is an activist and on the steering committee. I don't know her background but it is just all the usual stuff starting from the Kim Hak-sun story (the one who lied about being abducted but was in fact sold to the Korean owner of a brothel by her Korean parents but it is all the Japaneses' fault src: http://www.sdh-fact.com/book-article/229/).

Her history of the redress movement is faulted as she starts it in the 90s when Uemura Takashi of the Asahi Shimbun created the stink it then had to withdraw admitting it was false. The journalist who was married to the daughter of the woman who ran the NK supported comfort woman compaign in Korea.

https://www.facebook.com/fightforjustice.info/about/

http://fightforjustice.info/?lang=en

This is actually enough to have the piece pulled from an art exhibition, because it was not art. It is part of a current propaganda war of which she is part.

@Heckleberry

That's why Germany will always be lauded as a fine example of

Actually, right now "Germany", or at least its center left liberals, are current being accused of destroying Europe by allowing in mass, uncontrolled and largely Muslim immigration, thereby encouraging a swing to the reactionary and Far Right among native Europeans all over Europe, leading it to be torn apart; vis a vis Brexit, the rise of overt racism and nationalist parties, and so on.

Of course, questioning the "Good Germany: Bad Japan" meme is a waste of time as it's directly off the script.

No, Japan should not be cowed and go down that route.

Japan has made its sincere apologies, paid its generous compensation, left behind it assets, transferred its technologies, trained and aided its neighbors, and been a perfect pacifist citizen and ally for approximately 400 out of the last 416 years.

Which White or European nation can say that?

Oh, sorry, I forgot. It's a treaty with the USA, so they will break it. They always do, always have done.

@Ex_Res

Well, if Japan wants help in the future, don't count on it.

Have you read the treaty?

I appreciate Trump operates at that level but do you really think governments do?

And let the USA let Israel fund and fight its own wars.

Or better still, stop it having them.

To quote Carl Sandberg

"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come".

@stormcrow

FDR’s interest in China was linked to the history of his own family that had made a fortune in Opium trade in the 19th century. 

Between 1938 and 1941, he overrode the State Department to initiate economic and military aid to the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) against Japan aiming to supplant British influence in the Far East.

@girl_in_tokyo

the LGBTQIA

I was trying to work out what the I and A stood for. Is it "I don't know" and "Anything", "Animals", or "Anyone"?

I suppose that would be LGBTQIAA.

From a marketing point of view, acronyms suck if no one knows what they mean, and especially if you keep changing them.

I mean, what's the difference between a Gay and a Queer? And if you have Gays and Queers, what about the Queens and Fairies? Why not Dykes and Lesbians? And did no one ask the Bears and the Furries to the party?

Everyone loves Furries.

Ah, Intersex and Asexual? How can an asexuals be *sexuals and are they different from celibates?

And don't forget the Twin Souls, I suppose they'll soon be claiming they are discriminated against because they can't list themselves as whichever two genders they are.

It's getting silly.

Ex_Res

SK and Russia both seized the islands in question when Japan was not in able to defend itself. 

Russia declared war on Japan before Japan surrendered, and still fighting.

History revisionists really are doing an admirable job.

Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration on August 14 and on the Surrender was announced by Hirohito on August 15.

The Russian invasion took place after August 18, therefore when Japan was not in able to defend itself.

When they say "genes contribute to same-sex sexual behavior", do they mean like the camp accent?

Is there a course you can go on after coming out, or is it just symptomatic of doing anal?

(That's my way of underlining the silly misleading title too).

Funny, the article appeared in Scientific American and it was entitled,

"Massive Study Finds No Single Genetic Cause of Same-Sex Sexual Behavior"

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/massive-study-finds-no-single-genetic-cause-of-same-sex-sexual-behavior/

Original paper;

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/365/6456/869

One interesting unexplained statistic from the original source (Ganna et al) is that there are approx 5 times males than females identifying as homosexual.

Conclusion: “Our results overwhelmingly point toward the richness and diversity of human sexuality. … not toward a role for discrimination on the basis of sexual identity or attraction, nor do our results make any conclusive statements about the degree to which ‘nature’ and ‘nurture’ influence sexual preference.”

A caveat common to most genetic discoveries is that the study of Ganna et al. includes only European-ancestry populations from Western high-income countries (United Kingdom, United States, and Sweden for replication). The data also come from older individuals living under stricter social norms and legislative regulations (23andMe, mean age 51.3 years; UK Biobank, aged 40 to 69 years), overrepresented by higher socioeconomic status groups.