u_s__reamer comments

The Vietnam war and Desert Storm were legitimate and legal wars.

A "legal war" is a scary, new term for a non-lawyer like me. America's attack on Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia cost over 3 million people their lives, not counting the victims of the Pol-Pot Frankenstein monster that rose from carpet-bombed Cambodia. History will surely record the enormity of these mass killings that America and its accomplices have so far merely shrugged their cold shoulders over as a war crime. Wars will never end until those who start them on put on notice that they will later pay with their own lives.

All the state and federal charges Trump has accrued can all be put down to the hubris of an unstable, incompetent moron who brought everything down on his own head by his lifelong disdain for the law. I respect the right of people to cast a tribal party vote, but why couldn't the MAGA millions see that their idol had clay feet and that his illiteracy and laziness made him ufit for a job he was bigly unqualified for?

From the photo you can clearly see a band of bros searching for their masculinity in the cult of nationalism, the scourge of the 20th century. Is there a cure, ladies?

Similarly, Osama's remains were disposed of (for domestic consumption) in the aptly named (and revealing of American intentions) "Operation Neptune", even though worshipping at shrines is positively "haram" in the Sunni version of Islam. The intention this time, though, was that by destroying his body it insulted Muslim custom, no doubt a message the US government wanted to send to Al-Qaida et al.

The whiny loser will very soon have something to really kvetch about when another lady of "color" with smarts slaps him down South with racketeering charges. All these upcoming trials are going to be the ultimate "reality" shows that he'll be remembered for. This shameful episode in the history of the nation will serve as a lesson for us all, as, "be careful what you wish for"!

They deep-sixed their ashes but, like whack-a-mole, they popped up as objects of "irei" in Yasukuni (LOL). American custom is different, but it would solve a looming problem for the country in the future: the "perfect" way to dispose of 45.

"Appearance" is all what the culture demands. "Power" ensures they can get away with all the rest. It's "tradition", innit?

That original sin of human complacency, like, "it can't happen here", "it only happens to others and won't affect me/us", was no doubt the starting point of the chain-reaction of events that cost so many people their lives. The changing weather on our planet is just another reason to be afraid, very afraid: by the year 2050 it has been estimated there may be 100,000,000 climate refugees. Perhaps I'm lucky that I won't be around to witness the future inferno that threatens mankind and the biodiversity of our world.

"Barbie" is an American cultural product that will sail over the heads of a Japanese audience. Sure, her pink sugary candy-floss world will go over with the "Hello Kitty" crowd and cos-playing aficionados, but the barbs and sarcastic asides and the cynicism between the lines that Greta Gerwig has undoubtedly inserted will fly under their radar, which, of course, makes the film all the more palatable for Japanese consumers.

The right-wing regimes that have ruled in post-war Japan have ensured through the carefully controlled education of the young generations that they don't grow up critical of the wars of aggression waged by their forebears and the millions of victims who died as a result. Pretty much the same policy of every government in the world, ie., no word of blame for a country's previous warmongering governments and their heinous crimes against humanity. Still, as with many other things, the obfuscation of history is even more egregious in the Land of Wa and other Asian countries.

After Typhoon "Party-Pooper" hits land, we can say goodbye to the short, brutal inferno of the Japanese summer.

... will not be extradited to Japan, citing concerns over the country's human rights record.

Sez the country with probably the worst prison conditions in Europe outside of those in Russia, and where victims of class justice languish and Julian Assange has been left to rot without trial pending the politically expedient moment when he can be suddenly extradited to the draconian punishment awaiting him in the kangaroo courts of Uncle Sam. Still, Japanese notions of humane treatment for prisoners have a distinct whiff of the bad old days. It's pot and kettle again, innit?

So basically, the left ultimately created and caused a device that killed thousands within a blink of an eye. Tragic.

Sure, the bomb was created by some "lefty" nerds, but Truman and his military advisors were no lefties by any stretch of the imagination. They alone made the decision to drop two bombs on helpless populations, a war crime by any other name.

According to Putin's humanitarian values bombing a poor defenseless bridge is "barbaric"! How stupid do they think people are? They don't, but they don't care because humans in positions of power lie shamelessly when there are no consequences and no personal accountability.

I'm from Liverpool UK. Our city was extensively bombed by the German Luftwaffe in WW2. Both of my parents suffered from Post Traumatic Stress for the rest of their lives. 

I'm sorry to hear of your parents' trauma, but most Liverpool people (tough folk) were able to get over WW2 and get on with their lives, even able to watch war movies that "glorify war", which from my understanding of what I have read about "Oppenheimer", is not at all the case. The problem is more that those Japanese who object to the film are likely to have a hidden political agenda that has nothing to do with A-bomb trauma.

What's this horrendous and sickening case of State terrorism to the self-styled "international community", the purported defenders of "democracy" and "human rights", since so far we can only hear their concerted sound of silence?

Mental illness is the scourge of modern industrial society. Now we just have to wait for the next "bad mood" copycat suffering from Japanese anomie to show up with another 4-wheeled lethal weapon.

"Barbie" meets "Hello Kitty", the perfect Japanese marriage of moolah and the politically innocuous.

Bill Lewis has it right: depression afflicts far more people and, as dagon points out, the socio-economic model of right-wing capitalism can answer for many of the stresses that weigh on the millions who work just to exist. At the same time we mortals must face up to the brevity of life, our final inescapable animal fate and the anxiety experienced by all human beings.

Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death", my vade mecum since my youth, explains our human dilemma and the mental toll of creaturely existence.

War-talk is cheap when you're far from the front line. The Aso family no doubt made a killing from the last three wars (WW2, Korea, Indo-China) and will do so from the next. War is a racket, innit?

Anti-corruption will put a target on anybody's back in the venal jungle of politics and, in poverty-stricken, sicario-infested South America, it's a way of making deadly enemies without even trying .

When a snake knocks on your door let your mongoose open it.

Robbie Robertson was a living legend and now dead he becomes a real one. He had a fabled life and this obit does justice to his contribution to popular music which formed part of the soundtrack of a generation. Sad to see him go. RIP

The arrogance of power raises its swinish head again.

Make the Russian economy scream to 11 and Putin will cry "uncle". End of.

They've got our cake and eatin' it.

"Serve the (Deep) State" over "Serve the People" (who can always eat cake).

@proxy

Ditto the "French Connection". I once met a French ex-pilot living in Chiang Mai who told me he used to fly drugs out of Hong Kong after WW2 to France (some of the drug money was used by right-wing elements for combating leftist political parties which enjoyed strong support after the liberation of France).

No wars last forever so while more and more human lives are fed into the maw of Putin's war, somewhere in Russia there is an open window waiting for the war criminals or a bunker where they can put an end their worthless lives. I want to believe that Russians will eventually wake up to the enormity of what has been wrought in their name on their Slav brothers and sisters, and that the "good Russians" will finally prevail by ending the bloodshed and bringing freedom and democracy to their benighted land.

An extra-large toddler pen should suffice for these two clowns to duke it out.