dagon comments

Kishida did not mention Japanese aggression across Asia in the first half of the 1900s or its victims in the region, as with last year, following a precedent set by then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in 2013 in what was seen by his critics as a move to whitewash Japan’s wartime brutality.

Kishida stressed destruction on Japan's own land, including the U.S. atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fire bombings across Japan and the bloody ground battle on Okinawa, and the sufferings of Japanese people.

Bravo to PM Kishida for focusing on the suffering of Japan, especially now when faced by the clear and present danger of Chinese and North Korean aggression in the region.

Germany should wisely follow this example, now with Russian aggression at its door.

Don't mention Nazi expansionist aggression or the Holocaust.

Focus on the firebombing of Dresden, massacres of Germans by Soviet occupiers and the years of suffering caused by the Allies and Soviets by their dismemberment of Germany.

It is the only way to wisely move forward.

With all these indictments and even convictions coming down the pike, having Trump proceeding apace to be the GOP nominee is a clear and present danger.

The machinery is in place, with massive conservative clique funding and political infrastructure, for him and his corporate cronies to steal this election.

https://prospect.org/politics/2023-07-18-donald-trump-plotting-make-himself-dictator/

Trump has denied any wrongdoing, and accuses Willis, an elected Democrat, of being politically motivated.

In the fevered imagination of DT, all black people and their allies are out to get him for his birtherism against Barack Obama which he used to leverage his base and rise to some political prominence.

UBS will pay U.S. authorities $1.44 billion to settle the last lingering legal case over Wall Street's role in the housing bubble of the early 2000s, which ultimately led to the 2008 financial crisis and Great Recession.

The lesson courts and government keep on giving corporations; corporate crime pays, will be infrequently prosecuted, will often be followed by a bailout from the public treasury and if convicted the penalties will be far smaller than the profits gained by violating laws.

Any wonder they continue?

It is just good business.

“I understand why he's trying to twist her words and use them against her, but I don’t think it crosses the line,” said Weinstein, now a white collar criminal defense attorney.

To the Trump defenders who say Trump champions blue-collar interests (ROFL) why was one of the secrets to his business "success" stiffing his blue collar contractors on his properties?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-u-law-makes-easy-165143256.html

Curious.

Trump is a case of privilege gone amok.

Two men who say they were sexually abused as teenagers by a Japanese entertainment mogul were interviewed Monday by a special team set up by the talent agency to look into the allegations.

Imagine if Weinstein or Epstein were allowed to have their organizations to set up "special teams" to investigate the charges against them instead of, you know, the legal and judicial authorities.

Kitagawa, who died in 2019, was never charged.

Comeuppance always seems to come too late.

Screenwriter and humorist Simon Rich collaborated with Brent Katz and Josh Morgenthau for “I Am Code,” a thriller in verse that came out this month and was generated by the AI program “code-davinci-002.” (Filmmaker Werner Herzog reads the audiobook edition).

Sounds fascinating. Though Iain Banks wrote about god-like AI Minds, I wonder if the current gen LLM could competently even mimic his style.

Even coming up with his iconic ship names there is a great amount of weak content.

There was also the Niihau Incident in Hawaii, which triggered concerns about the loyalty of some Japanese residents.

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

Niihau, the "Forbidden Island" of mainly pure Native Hawaiians, were maybe sore about 50 years before having US Marines land and imprison their Queen and a bunch of carpet-bagging missionary families become the biggest landowners on the islands.

In 2020, Higuchi published "Setsuko's Secret," a nonfiction book based on the life story of her mother Setsuko who was incarcerated at a U.S. camp with her family after the December 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The book's Japanese translation was released in March this year.

These people were true blameless victims and proved to be brave Americans. A betrayal of everything America was supposed to stand for, like slavery.

“If you think of what ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ together — just those two movies — have contributed in these weekends at the box office, it’s really a staggering number," Dergarabedian said.

Since that synergy is a NG in Japan maybe instead of complaining the local studio reps could make their own, like pairing Barbie with Crayon Shin-chan?

About half of the companies surveyed said they plan to raise the prices of their goods and services through next fiscal year starting April.

Japan Inc.: We have benefited from generous LDP government stimulus monies during the pandemic and now that the danger is receding are looking for increasing demand and moving on to bigger and better things.

The working public who did not benefit from stimulus monies on the whole and who have seen incomes and living standards decline during the pandemic: I wonder if my 300 yen a month wage increase will cover splurging on the good eel or go into the retirement fund.

What happens when you take Quechua, the most widely spoken Indigenous language in the Americas, and fuse it with K-pop, the global musical sensation with roots in South Korea?

This is very slipstream Sci-Fi and very cool.

As a security technologist, I study how complex systems are subverted – hacked, in my parlance – for the benefit of a few at the expense of the many. Think tax loopholes, or tricks to avoid government regulation. I want any government system to be resilient in the face of that kind of trickery.

I wonder who is trying to enshrine tax loopholes and evasion so billionaires can brag they are so smart they do not pay any taxes.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/us/republicans-reject-white-house-tax-loophole-proposal-debt-talks-wapo-2023-05-15/

It is why as the article suggests we have no democracy, just an oligarchic kleptocracy.

Friday's decision not to extradite Joe Chappell, who is currently on bail, was based on the grounds that the Japanese authorities could not provide "sufficient assurances" that he would be treated in compliance with the European Convention on Human Rights.

What a concept ,bail. The Japanese authorities heads must be spinning.

Japan has argued that police interrogations in principle are recorded.

What an equivocal statement. Can't recall ever having seen one.

The three are suspected of taking 46 pieces of jewelry, including rings and pendants after punching a male security guard and breaking display cases at a Harry Winston store in the Omotesando Hills commercial complex in Shibuya Ward on the night of Nov. 20, 2015.

The only victims here are the poor minimum wage security guard.

Some in the LGBTQ community in Malaysia criticised Healy on social media, saying his actions had made their situation even more challenging.

I think the Islamists enforcing their medieval scriptures edicts with violence, intimidation and coercion are doing a good enough job of that. Sounds like the LGBTQ community in Malaysia is suffering from a form of Muslim Stockholm Syndrome.

The on-stage protest was not a first for Healy, who kissed a male fan at a 2019 concert in the United Arab Emirates, which also has tough anti-LGBTQ laws.

Good on him for confronting head on the contradictions of trying to have a modern consumer economy and supposed liberal democracy wedded to fundamentalist doctrine.

The success of the fantasy-comedy was further boosted by the coupling with "Oppenheimer", the biopic chronicling the creation of the atomic bomb during World War Two that opened on the same weekend.

Haven't seen the movie since I am in Japan of course but have read the book upon which it is based, "American Prometheus". The bomb climax is about midway but a large part of the book focuses on the hysteric Republican persecution of Oppenheimer due to his leftist leanings and that of those around him.

An early harbinger of their anti-intellectual/scientific rhetoric and policies.

Should be required viewing (I wouldn't go as far as reading) for that contingent.

EG.5, which has been unofficially nicknamed "Eris" online, is considered to be a descendant of the XBB lineage of the virus.

Maybe prescient of the strife and discord leading up to 2024.

But maybe we could do with some Discordianism.

Busting this myth and exposing the depth of his malfeasance is a prime reason to show the trial to a wide audience, said Alan Dershowitz, a constitutional law specialist.

With that insincere preface, having a compromised Trump apologist like Dershowitz stating this is a strong sign Trump definitely wants televised trials.

Probably thinks he can be a meme-engineered social phenomena like Johnny Depp at his televised trial and dominate the proceedings and command the 2024 media feed leading up to the election.

It's hard to expect a sharp increase in consumption from there, unless wage growth accelerates," said Toru Suehiro, chief economist at Daiwa Securities.

The last quote invalidates the whole proposition of the article, as that sure is not going to happen with Japan Inc. pulling the LDP strings.

Tourism is a great example of an industry where the vast proportion of the gains go to the owners of the infrastructure and a tiny bit to workers.

Some 72.6 percent of companies in the hotel industry said they do not have enough full-time workers, much higher than the 51.4 percent for all sectors.

Workers may be played for fools by the Japan Inc./LDP combine but they are not stupid.

”Hot up” is chiefly British English.

You are correct Asiaman7, thanks and I thought I was familiar with most Anglicisms.

Wonder if it is of recent coinage.

The number of Americans applying for jobless benefits jumped last week, but not enough to raise concern about the consistently strong U.S. labor market.

Last week the headline was the low rate of unemployment, as the news highlighted health care workers staying unemployed as the health care conglomerates cut wages for them from pandemic levels.

Part of the Fed’s reasoning was to cool the job market and bring down wages, which, in theory, suppresses price growth.

But executive compensation and shareholder value will not fall, god forbid.

The usual Fed complicity in the machine of neo-feudalism.

“Normal” unreality, granted, is easier to live with.

When the reality that these people are swimming in is late stage neo-liberal capitalism it is often the case.

The stark reality is beyond mindset and neurochemistry many of the real world consequences of mental illness from substance abuse to suicide derive from the inability to deal with the circumstances of work, money and the expenses of existence. This study goes into the facts.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8145185/

It is better to be rich and dissatisfied and mentally disturbed than to be poor and mentally disturbed.

Most foreign investment is believed to be brought in by Chinese companies and disguised as foreign money to get tax breaks and other benefits, according to Chinese researchers.

Western oligarchical capital has been complicit with Chinese oligarchs in off-shoring and out-sourcing of labor in a race to the bottom of acquisition; leading to the rise of disaffection and lower living standards for many in the West. And the rise of populist rhetoric there.

Sony’s April-June profit slipped 17% from a year earlier, as worries grew about revenue damage from a strike in the movie sector, the Japanese electronics and entertainment company said Wednesday.

Just pay the actual creators and workers; instead of the execs, shareholders, investors and Private Equity.

You know, like how the whole "free market" capitalism exchange of time and labor for money is supposed to work.

Washington has, however, bristled over human rights concerns in Vietnam, with Blinken saying he continued "to underscore how future progress on human rights is essential to unleashing the full potential of the Vietnamese people."

Please disregard how Agent Orange, landmines, the MyLai massacre and Strategic Air Command carpet bombing may have had a bit of influence on retarding the full potential of the Vietnamese people.

Ongoing turmoil in real estate, a sector that has long accounted for a quarter of China's GDP, is the "main source" for this "deflationary shock", said economist Andrew Batson of Gavekal Dragonomics.

Another real estate bubble like Japan.

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/cff/2023/03/08/is-china-turning-japanese/

And which shows how Xi and the Chinese rulers who have embraced hyper-financializtion of capital have turned away from their socialist roots.

Chinese communists used to drag landlords out and thrash them in the streets and nationalize and distribute their property, such as done with the SCAP rule post-war and which led to Japanese Bubble prosperity.

Th Chinese former communists have studied capitalist doctrine well but are falling into the same neo-liberal pitfalls leading to similar boom and bust cycles.

In 2015, early in his ultimately successful bid for the White House, and when most pundits were dismissing his campaign, Trump flew into the Iowa State Fair in a helicopter.

MAGAs finest will surely come out for him this time too, and the nomination is his to lose.

Or more likely some courtroom drama will decide.

Sad that the era of epic debate between American political candidates and skillful rhetoric is gone and all that remains is empty spectacle.

Both governments have condemned the burnings and said they are considering new laws that could stop them. But domestic critics say freedom of speech and expression is protected in their constitutions and any move to change that would undermine prized freedoms.

Nordic social democracy is also being eroded by corporate rightist influence.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/sweden-less-special-than-it-was

And Muslims are complicit in magnifying culture war issues that distract from the real dangers to the social welfare of the Swedish people.

O'Connor, best known for the 1990 chart-topping hit "Nothing Compares 2 U" and her controversial but often prescient views on religion, sex and feminism, died on July 26 aged 56 after police found her unresponsive at an address in London.

Very prescient, she was an early victim of conservative culture wars meant to distract from their real sinister agenda and rampant projection.

Rest in Power.

World must 'wake up' to Taiwan security threats: Japan ex-PM Aso

The use of 'wake up' is perfect by Aso; notorious for sleeping on the job, being utterly insensitive to the plight of working Japanese and collecting a huge paycheck and benefits for doing absolutely nothing to add to the hoard of his ill-gotten gains well into his 80s.