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ReindeerF posted:until it turned out the meeting was only a run of the mill corrupt bag handover and everything calmed down and was forgotten about. Oh man. Possible minor sexual peccadillo? Bring out the mobs. Corruption which undermines the fabric of the state and its instutions? *shrug* Then again I shouldn't be surprised as that seems to be the same is so many other places. It's just rare to see such a perfect example of it.
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Jul 2, 2012 11:30
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After what has been mentioned here I'm still not quite sure how different this microaggression thing is from what tends to happen when you walk around without being aware of social mores in other countries. As a white westerner I have been asked "where are you from" in essentially every European country I've lived in, mostly due to my accent being a bit of a hodgepodge whatever language I happen to speak. I'd generally take the chopstick comment to be the safest general compliment and ice-breaker. If you break certain social taboos you're going to get a strange look wherever you are. I'm pretty sure I could get into some serious hot water in some bits of the US if I bumbled around oblivious that being an atheist could cause issues with some people. I once talked to a Honduran who told me me all about the wonders of free discussion in her society and how open-minded everyone was until I brought up the topic of abortion. I am pretty sure quite a bit of this micro-aggression talk comes to people both being un-aware of the social mores of a very different cultures with some very different rules of behaviour and interaction and of being unused to being an "Ausländer" where they live (a term which has many of the same overtones as the term "gaijin").
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Jul 17, 2012 16:39
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Roadside_Picnic posted:Supposedly Germany's already running about fifty percent off of solar. It makes a lot of sense for Japan to pursue it because a lot of the costs are in R&D and Japan is very strong in high-tech engineering. There is also a real potential for geothermal power, but "our onsen  ".Is that overplayed in the foreign media btw? I can see why it would be a genuine concern should people be poking around and boring holes in a stupid manner but it is stillan important clean source of energy which should be exploited.
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Jul 20, 2012 09:29
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Lemmi Caution posted:What? I think what ErIog is saying is that "Lie back and think of That said, singling out Japan for this is a little unfair since at least one (female) US Republican representative said that the concept of marital rape was bunkum since the woman essentially gave her consent for any sexual intercourse with her marriage vows. [edit] It was Phyllis Schafly who stated: "By getting married, the woman has consented to sex, and I don't think you can call it rape,". She's also restated and defended this when interviewed about it later. [re-edit]To row back to something more relevant. I haven't seen anything in the thread about the recent escalation of the rocks in the middle of the sea spat between Japan and China (and Taiwan gamely trying to stick an oar in too). Could someone give a better outline of what triggered things off on the Japanese side? I heard something about a minister essentially being pushed into making a strong statement but the article didn't go into much detail. Munin fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Aug 31, 2012 |
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Aug 31, 2012 13:48
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Quoting from the article ErIog just posted:CBS Article posted:During a Parliament debate, lawmaker Seiichi Ota, a 57-year-old former Cabinet minister, got a laugh when he quipped: "At least gang rapists are still vigorous. Isn't that at least a little closer to normal?" I think that fits very well in this thread about Japanese Politicians saying things that would be generally seen as utterly beyond the pale. The article also mentions the minister for gender equality, Yasuo Fukuda, contending that his quote of "The problem is that there are lots of women dressed provocatively," during an off the record briefing was taken out of context without being either able or willing to clarify further. Btw, others please feel free to disagree, but I think in this thread it's probably better to focus on the Politicians and Politics side of that issue and approach the societal context from that perspective. Munin fucked around with this message at 00:02 on Sep 1, 2012 |
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Aug 31, 2012 23:58
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From the China thread:PrezCamachoo posted:Oh poo poo Again, if anyone could contribute anything more about the Japanese reaction it would be much appreciated. With this latest move it looks as if things could get very messy indeed.
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Sep 17, 2012 11:44
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So the fleet making its way across hasn't made any waves yet and might not even when it hits the headlines? [edit] As far as power goes how much could they do with Geothermal? has anyone made an assessment of how much could be generated. Due to the mountainous terrain you might be able to do some stuff with hydro but that might not be the best idea in an earthquake prone area. Has there been any thought or outline as to how they'll deal with their energy needs in the future? Munin fucked around with this message at 15:00 on Sep 17, 2012 |
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Sep 17, 2012 14:56
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PrezCamachoo posted:So forcing companies to hold on to inefficient employees is better? Well, the next step along the chain of argument is asking if there is enough work to go around. If there isn't and the issue is structural then you shouldn't be condemning and castigating the poor souls who end up unemployed.
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Sep 28, 2012 21:49
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I was expecting some reaction in this thread to the return of Shinzō Abe. Why did his party want him back after his disastrous time as Prime Minister?
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Oct 5, 2012 16:34
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hadji murad posted:I don't think anyone is surprised at how dire the political choices are anymore. I cackled about it when I heard but even Twitter was quiet. He is a terrible choice, he quit because of making GBS threads too much previously (slightly more complex), but that only makes him as bad as every other choice out there. But still any word on why the members of the diet went for him? Why was he still in the running at all? Does he have a huge patronage network? Is he a puppet for someone else? Nothing I've read actually seems to give any reason why he was in the running and actually won. What (presumably even more horrible) defects made the other two choices worse prospects? I also read read that he might start cooperating more closely with our favourite politician from Osaka.
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Oct 5, 2012 17:13
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Kenishi posted:I have long suspected that the real reason that the LDP wants to modify/remove Article 9 is because it would allow them to pump more money into the defense industry. They would be able to start building new weapons of their own and pad the pockets of the large Japanese corporations which would be doing the work. They could justify the expenses as "re-arming" the military, even if it is a crock of poo poo. No evidence to back this up though, just idle speculation on my part. I wouldn't call it entirely idle speculation. I mean, it's not as if the politicians of most countries lack a track record of using national defense and the defense industries to bring home pork for their constituents and interested parties.
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Nov 15, 2012 16:07
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true.spoon posted:Btw since you brought up a paper by Jeffrey Herf, you might be interested in his Divided Memory: The Nazi Past in the Two Germanys, where he contrasts how East and West Germany dealt with the Nazi past. I haven't read it and am no expert either but apparently the approach of the GDR was kind of similar to the approach taken by Japan, with predictable results as far as the elimination of Nazi thought goes. The surge of the AfD in East Germany does speak to that. Also, lol at the thought of any country dealing with their sins in an honest manner. It's rare enough that people can do it. Heck, I can't. Countries should get better at self-reflection and memorializing of mistakes as well as triumphs though (or memorializing awful mistakes as triumphs...) so that the same stupid poo poo doesn't happen as often. Talking about history and framing this is an excellent episode of on the media focused, of course, on the US but where Japan makes a guest appearance: https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/on-the-media-empire-state-mind-1
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Sep 2, 2019 12:25
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Pornographic Memory posted:Of course, you're not supposed to ask how you defend your homeland from thousands of miles inside of somebody else's homeland in a war you started, I don't know where you get "fighting for the fatherland" = "defending the homeland". Everyone involved was very well aware that it was a power grab very much in the tradition of the European tit-for-tat power grabs that had been going on for centuries. Germany had a good chunk of revanchism on the boil and in Europe the traditional way to deal with that was to merrily revanche yourself all over your neighbours who you thought wronged you and grab some land on the side from people weaker than you. See, Napoleon, the partition of Poland, the Great Northern War, etc etc etc. Centuries of warfare and conflict. Also, the whole manifest destiny, and new frontier to be claimed if only the savages could be displaced somehow was in the air in general in the preceding century. In the case of Hitler and the Slavs they just happened to be whiter and more European than most of the usual targets. Decolonization only seriously kicked off after WW2. What made Hitler (and his many collaborators) special rather than another Napoleon is the fact that he (and they) had turned his anti-semitism up to 12, homophobia, and general bigotry up to 11 instead of the steady rolling boil of the 7 or so it generally was at the time. Then acting on that in the most cruel and depraved manner. Anyway, I would actually be interested in knowing what is currently in the news in Japan which is kinda why I dropped back into this thread in the first place...
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Sep 3, 2019 07:28
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Charles 2 of Spain posted:Abe's reshuffling his cabinet, it's pretty boring. So one of the few places where various political factions are not self-destructing in a hilarious manner. Just a long dark teatime of the soul.
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Sep 3, 2019 08:53
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ntan1 posted:The reason a lot of Japanese people don't really know or care about Okinawa to a great extent is because Japanese people don't really remember history very well except for the center exams. I'm afraid it's as simple as that. Isn't that one of the core thing though? Germany has holocaust memorials all over the place. When I moved there as a kid the first book I read in German was a translation of "When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit" (as an aside, first book on the reading list when I got to the UK was "Across the Barricades" a book about the Troubles...). Then there are initiatives like "Stolpersteine" which incorporate memorialization into the very fabric of the streets and city. If you walk around Berlin these days you have to willfully shut your eyes to overlook what happened there in the past. It permeates society society in a way that, say, the inhumanity and atrocities of the British Empire definitely do not in England. I would be surprised even even 10% of people asked on the street would know of the burning of the Summer Palace or the Opium Wars is general let alone any of the other bullshit we got up to. Another bit of it making minor waves was the treatment of the Mau Mau independence movement in Kenya after some "lost" archives turned up again. Did you know that the UK tortured Obama's grandfather and thousands of other Kenyans? You can't escape it in Germany but it sounds like you very much can in Japan (and also definitely so in the UK).
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Sep 7, 2019 16:23
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mystes posted:Also, lots of older people haven't saved up enough money for retirement and they're going to be screwed over as the government raises pension ages and increases how much they have to pay for healthcare. It is impossible to "save up enough money for retirement" in the system as it is since the underlying problem is a local undersupply of labor and the price for these limited resources will simply rise until the the retained savings are all allocated. The higher prices should in theory be attracting lower priced supply from outside but...
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Dec 27, 2019 02:22
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Sauzer posted:So I guess now that Abe is a private citizen he has immediately resumed his hobby of hanging out at Yasukuni. His love of war criminals is deep, earnest, and true.
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Sep 20, 2020 07:18
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Trump has never met a strongman whose rear end he didn't lick and never met a democratic leader who he hasn't belittled and disparaged.
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Oct 13, 2020 09:31
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I wonder how many of the biggest complainers simply have unbearable halitosis.
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Mar 19, 2021 12:28
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